SLAYER OF THE STORM GOD Nathan Long ‘Knock again, manling,’ said Gotrek Gurnisson. Felix Jaeger raised his fist and rapped on the door of Hans Euler’s Marienburg town house, louder this time. A window opened in the house next door and a maid in a winged cap leaned out. ‘Herr Euler is away, mein herren,’ she said. ‘You won’t find him home.’ Felix would have been very surprised if he had, for he had stabbed Euler through the heart on the dark elves’ black ark more than a week ago, and the treacherous pirate was hopefully rotting at the bottom of the sea at the moment. He was about to tell the girl some lie about leaving a card, or delivering a letter, but then Gotrek turned towards her and her eyes went wide. She disappeared into the house with a squeak of fright. Felix didn’t blame her. Gotrek was a fearsome sight. He was a dwarf trollslayer, and ugly even for that ugly breed. Short, broad, and muscled like a jungle ape, his scarred, sun-browned flesh was covered in swirling blue tattoos, and a crest of flame-orange hair rose from his shaved head. Add to this an eye-patch, a face like a weathered boulder, and a rune-inscribed battle-axe in a fist the size of a baked ham, and one had a vision to make a hardened veteran blanch, let alone a Marienburg housemaid. Felix knocked again. Again there was no answer, but this time he thought he heard faint shufflings and thumpings inside. ‘Someone’s after your safe,’ said Gotrek. ‘Stand aside.’ Felix stepped back and the slayer gripped the doorknob, twisting it with slow, inexorable strength. His biceps bulged. The lock mechanism squealed for a moment in pain, then, with a sharp snap, the knob spun loose and the door creaked open. There were more thumpings and rustlings from within. Felix drew his sword as Gotrek pushed the door wide and stepped into the dim interior. All was as he remembered it – or nearly all. The wood-paneled entry hall was still dark and stuffy, with a spiral staircase to the left and a door that opened into a richly furnished parlour at the back. The parlour’s bay window still had a big hole – now partially boarded up – where Gotrek and Felix had been shoved out of it during their last visit, and the small safe that Gotrek had thrown down the stairs was still half-sunk into the wooden floor where it had smashed through the polished planks. The dead butler sprawled on the floor was new, however, as were the chisels and hammers and files that were scattered in a puddle of water surrounding the safe. Felix turned away from the butler, whose brains were spilling out of the hole in his head. The thieves must have been hard men indeed to murder the man and then leave him where he fell as they went about their work. Gotrek snorted as he looked at the safe-cracking tools. ‘Cheap human chisels. No match for dwarf workmanship.’ Felix rolled his eyes at this typical dwarfen bias, but had to admit that the safe showed hardly a mark. Beyond it, a trail of wet footprints led from the broken parlour window to the puddle and back again. ‘They’ve gone out the back,’ he said. He and Gotrek strode to the back window and looked out. Euler’s back wall dropped straight down to the canal they had plunged into when his bodyguards had thrown them out. If the housebreakers had gone out the window, they’d have had to have gone into the water, but Felix saw no swimmers, only circular ripples spreading out across the calm water. ‘Strange,’ said Felix. Gotrek shrugged. ‘At least they didn’t get into the safe,’ he said, and turned away, pulling a ring of keys from his belt pouch. Felix followed the slayer to the safe. They had stolen the keys from Euler on their previous visit, but their abrupt exit had prevented them from using them. The whole business had been distasteful. Not the sort of thing Felix normally cared to do. Euler had been in possession of some incriminating letter with which he’d attempted to blackmail Felix’s father, and the old man had asked Felix to get it back. If he hadn’t been on his death bed when he’d made the request, Felix would never have done it, but as it was he’d felt obliged, and had come reluctantly to Euler’s house to try to intimidate him into giving it up. Needless to say, it hadn’t gone well, and then the business with the dark elves had intervened, with Euler chasing them across the Sea of Chaos, thinking that they were on the trail of great treasure, and Felix had been forced to kill the pirate when he had turned on them in the bowels of the black ark. That nightmare was over, thankfully, and now he and Gotrek were back in Marienburg until the following morning, when they and their old friend Max Schreiber, a magister of the College of Light, and Claudia Pallenberger, a seeress from the Celestial College, would board a riverboat to Altdorf for the last leg of their journey home. Max and Claudia were staying the night at the house of an acquaintance of Max’s, and Gotrek would have been content to bide his time drinking at their inn, the Pelican’s Perch, but Felix still felt an obligation to recover the letter, even though Euler was dead and there was a distinct possibility that his father was as well. So he had asked the slayer to accompany him back to the smuggler’s house for one last try. The key turned in its lock with a satisfying click, and Felix knelt as Gotrek hauled on the handle and opened the safe’s heavy steel door. The walls of it were inches thick, and the space inside hardly big enough to hold a loaf of bread, but what lay within glittered in a way that made Felix’s heart race and Gotrek’s ugly face split in a terrifying smile. ‘You can have the letter, manling,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the rest.’ He pulled out a sheaf of papers and handed them to Felix, then began scooping out the treasure and dumping it on the floor – a small spill of jewelry, loose gems, and gold coins of strange foreign design. Felix sorted through the papers. There were contracts, promissory notes, articles of incorporation, and, at last, an envelope scrawled upon in his father’s scratchy hand. His heart thumping with relief, Felix opened it and made sure there was a letter within, then stuffed it in his belt pouch. ‘I have it,’ he said. Gotrek just grunted and kept sorting the treasure, entirely engrossed. He held a thick gold circlet up to his single appraising eye. ‘Dwarf gold, human work,’ he said. ‘Not bad for all that.’ Felix looked at the coil as the slayer slipped it on his wrist. He thought it might have once been a necklace, but it barely fit around Gotrek’s meaty arm. It was made of heavy gold wire – eight braided strands branching from a central bezel set with a sea-green gem the size of a walnut. Though it was undeniably beautiful, Felix found he didn’t like the look of the thing. Perhaps he was just sick of anything that reminded him of the sea. ‘Are you sure it’s not elven?’ he asked, hoping to make Gotrek take it off. Gotrek snorted. ‘Not flimsy enough.’ He tossed a delicate gold necklace into the puddle. ‘That’s elven,’ he said with a sneer, then began picking through the rest and putting the choicer bits in his belt pouch. Felix thought the elven necklace was beautiful, but he wasn’t going to argue the point with a dwarf. He’d just take it. But as he picked it up, voices reached them from the street. ‘Aye, sergeant,’ came the housemaid’s voice. ‘I saw ‘em. They broke down Herr Euler’s door.’ A man’s voice answered her. ‘Back inside, miss. We’ll take care of this. Swords out, boys.’ ‘The watch,’ whispered Felix. Gotrek grunted angrily, and for a moment Felix was afraid he meant to stay and fight, but instead he just swept up the treasure in his big hands, stuffed it down his breeches, then stumped towards the spiral staircase, jingling with each step. ‘To the roof, manling,’ he said. ‘While they follow the footprints to the canal.’ Felix followed, surprised and relieved. Apparently Gotrek’s lust for gold had momentarily won out over his lust for battle. As they started up the stairs, Felix paused and looked back at the wet footprints, suddenly wondering why they seemed so wide and splayed. Had the housebreakers used some sort of special shoes to swim the canal? There was a crash as the front door burst in. Felix hurried after the slayer. Gotrek shook another ruby out of his trouser leg and put it on the table with the rest. ‘I think that’s the last of them.’ Felix looked up from reading his father’s letter and glanced askance at the little pile of now-pungent treasure the slayer had amassed. Showing so much wealth in a tavern like the Pelican’s Perch would bring nothing but trouble, but perhaps that was what the slayer wanted, or perhaps he just didn’t care. Even with the sun still up, the taproom was crowded with rowdy revellers. In fact all Marienburg was crowded with rowdy revellers, piling into town for the Storm Festival, a local holiday that culminated with the priests of the sea god Manann leading their congregations in a prayer to spare their fishing and trading fleets from harsh winter storms. Despite the freezing winter winds that whipped spray off the canals and blew it in their faces, the merry celebrants were singing songs in the streets and carousing from inn to inn, red-cheeked and rubber-legged and praising Manann with every bend of their elbows. A squad of Black Caps pushed into the tavern. Felix hid his face behind his father’s letter, but the watchmen only spoke with the barman, scanned the place cursorily, and headed back out to the street. The watchmen looked on edge – understandable, what with the town full of drunks, and also rumours that some of those drunks were going missing – pulled into the canals by strange assailants, never to be seen again. The Storm Festival Curse, the locals called it, for apparently it happened every year. Felix thought it much more likely that the missing revellers had fallen into the canals after one too many toasts to Manann. As Gotrek muttered over his glittering hoard, Felix returned to the old letter. So far he hadn’t found anything particularly blackmail-worthy. It was a note from his father, acknowledging that he had received some goods from Euler’s father – a smuggler just like his son. There were lists of Tilean glass, Bretonnian brandy, Cathay silk, and other fancy goods that Felix supposed might have been smuggled or stolen. It didn’t seem enough somehow. His father had been terrified that this letter would rob him of Jaeger and Sons. Nothing here seemed to merit that terror. Felix turned the letter over. His heart stopped. He had found it. At the top of the page was a list of six books, with a note scrawled to one side in his father’s hand. Felix didn’t recognise all the titles, but even the ones he did were enough to tie his stomach in sailors’ knots – The Maelificarium by Salini. Urbanus’s The Seven Gates, Sudenberg’s Treatise on the Hidden World. All were forbidden texts in the eyes of the Temple of Sigmar – tomes of darkest sorcery. The possession of any one of them would be enough to have a man burned at the stake. Felix read the note his father had written beside them. Returning the Urbanus and the Bastory. Estlemann says they are damaged and unsellable. Will want full refund. GJ Felix’s head swam. His father had dealt, was perhaps still dealing, in forbidden books! This was indeed something that would destroy Jaeger and Sons if exposed. He was filled once again with loathing for the old man’s greed. This proved beyond a doubt that Gustav would do anything to increase his fortune. Of course, Felix thought with a twinge of guilt, his father might be dead now, and he shouldn’t think ill of him, but the old villain certainly made it difficult to be charitable. A shadow passed over the letter and a voice jarred Felix from his musings. ‘How much for the bracelet?’ Felix looked up. A piratical old sailor in a long coat stood at the table, jostled on all sides by the crowd that filled the tap room. He was a barrel-chested man, with a bald head, gold earrings, and a clay pipe that stuck out from an enormous white moustache and beard. He pointed a thick finger at Gotrek’s wrist, indicating the bracelet with the sea-green gem. ‘Not for sale,’ said Gotrek. He pushed a small pile of jewelry towards the man. ‘If you want any of that, we can deal. It’s elven.’ The old sailor shook his head. ‘Just the bracelet.’ ‘Then you’re out of luck,’ said Gotrek. The sailor frowned. ‘Double its weight in Altdorf Crowns,’ he said. Gotrek snorted. ‘Crowns are cut with copper. This is pure. Ten times its weight wouldn’t be enough.’ ‘So, you’re willing to haggle?’ ‘No,’ said the slayer, and returned his attention to his sorting. The sailor shrugged. ‘Can’t say I didn’t try.’ He stepped back. ‘Get ‘em, messmates.’ All at once, all the men who had been jostling and laughing and drinking behind the old man turned towards Gotrek and Felix, grinning as they readied cudgels, brass knuckles and saps. Felix had never in his life seen so few teeth among so many men. Gotrek jumped up, laughing, and snatched up two three-legged stools. ‘Come and get it, you wharf rats!’ The wharf rats obliged him, roaring and leaping over the table at him as bracelets and necklaces scattered everywhere. Felix was shouldered to the floor in the rush. Boots stomped his spine as he rolled under the table, covering his head, and the smack of fists on flesh was loud in his ears. He took the opportunity to stuff his father’s letter back into his doublet, then looked around for a suitable weapon. Unfortunately, just then, Gotrek heaved up on the table, overturning it and sending the pirates that fought upon it flying – along with the rest of his treasure. A pirate crashed down on Felix’s ribs, knocking the wind out of him. Felix sucked in a stabbing breath and elbowed the man in the face, then ripped the cudgel from his hands and staggered up, looking around. Pirates were reeling away from Gotrek as he windmilled about him with a stool in each fist, but others still surged in, howling and slashing furiously, as the rest of the tavern-goers pressed to the walls, trying to get away. Felix waded into the scrum, cracking heads and elbows with his cudgel. The pirates snarled and lashed back at him. He took a punch to the ribs. Then a woman’s voice shrilled over the cacophony. ‘Gold! The floor’s covered with it!’ Suddenly, all the onlookers, who had been doing their best to keep out of the melee, charged forward, diving under the pirates’ feet and bowling them over in their frenzy to reach the spilled treasure. ‘Keep back, ye lubbers!’ bellowed the old pirate, but no one paid him any heed. A pirate with a face like a frog leapt on Gotrek’s arm, weighing it down and trying to pull off the braided gold bracelet. ‘Get it!’ roared the old pirate. ‘Throw it here.’ Gotrek brained frog-face with one of his stools and heaved him into the others. He held up his left arm, showing them all the bracelet. ‘It this what you want?’ the slayer roared. ‘Come–!’ He was drowned out by a pair of deafening explosions. The whole room stopped where they were and everyone turned towards the bar. The landlord, a short, round man with sailor’s tattoos and a peg leg, stood upon it, two smoking pistols in his hands as plaster rained down all around him. From the look of the ceiling it wasn’t the first time such measures had been warranted. ‘Right, you wreckers!’ he said, dropping the pistols and taking an enormous bell-mouthed blunderbuss from a serving girl behind the bar. ‘Outside or I’ll give you a volley of shot in yer tender parts!’ The threat worked well enough on most of the patrons – particularly those that already had some of Gotrek’s gold clutched in their hands – and they ran for the exits, but the pirates were made of sterner stuff. One of them pulled a pistol of his own and aimed it at the landlord. ‘And I’ll give you a hole where yer mouth is,’ he snarled. Felix raised his cudgel to beat the man’s arm down, but just then the Black Caps ran back in, whistles blowing and truncheons at the ready. The landlord waved them towards the pirates. ‘Them there, Captain Schnell! They’re disturbing the peace!’ The old pirate backed away. ‘Hard about, messmates!’ he croaked, as the watchmen started forward. He shot a glare at Gotrek. ‘We’ll finish this later.’ The pirates scattered in every direction, and the Black Caps raced after them. The taproom was suddenly empty. Gotrek glared around at the floor, which was conspicuously bare of treasure. ‘All gone,’ he said, disgusted. ‘The dirty thieves.’ ‘Serves you right for sorting it in public,’ said Felix wearily. He looked around for a place to sit, but before he could right a bench, the landlord turned his blunderbuss their way. ‘You too, buckos,’ he called, jerking his chin towards the door. ‘You were in the middle of it. On yer way.’ ‘But....’ said Felix. ‘But we have a room here.’ ‘You had a room here,’ said the landlord. Felix was about to argue the point, but Gotrek grunted and started towards the door. ‘Forget it, manling. The beer was terrible anyway.’ As they crossed to the door, Gotrek paused, then bent and picked something up from the floor – a wayward topaz. ‘Here,’ he said, flipping it to the surprised landlord, who almost dropped his blunderbuss trying to catch it. ‘For the damages.’ With the old pirate’s vow that he would ‘finish this later’ still ringing in his ears, Felix was afraid that they would be jumped as soon as they left the inn, but apparently the Black Caps had chased the pirates off, for they made their way through the crowded streets without incident. Unfortunately, because of those crowds, finding another room was difficult, and they spent more than an hour walking from inn to inn, and being turned away at every one. But finally, at the western-most end of the Suiddock, on a street that reeked of tar and rotting fish, they discovered a place that had a vacancy. Felix didn’t wonder why. The Bunk and Binnacle was dreadful. Anyone with any money or sense would never have looked twice at the place. It was small and cramped and reeked of damp and mildew, and every surface felt like it was covered in a thin layer of slime. Its floors dipped in the centre, its ceilings sagged, and its walls bulged in on either side. Felix was afraid to lean against them for fear they would collapse. ‘This place is a deathtrap,’ he said as he and Gotrek made their way up the three cockeyed flights of stairs to their room. Gotrek shrugged. ‘No worse than most human places,’ he said. Felix was too tired to argue. They had been walking forever. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Felix stared around, appalled, as they entered their room. He had been in nicer prison cells. The smell of mildew was even stronger here, and seemed to be coming from the beds. The floor sloped down alarmingly towards the back wall, where the winter wind whistled through a shuttered window. He stepped cautiously down the slippery incline and opened it. One of the shutters tore from its rusty hinges and fell away. Felix looked down and saw it splash into the water of the harbour, directly below him. The inn leaned out over it like a vulture preparing to swoop down on a carcass. Felix backed cautiously from the drop, wiping his hands on his breeches. ‘I really would have preferred to give up the bracelet and keep our room at the Pelican’s Perch,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your bracelet,’ said Gotrek, and started laying out his bedroll on the floor. Felix was dragged from sleep some time later by soft squelching noises and angry dwarfen grunts. He pried open his eyes and peered around at the darkness, feeling for his sword. ‘Gotrek?’ ‘Get off me, you snot-skinned invertebrates!’ came the slayer’s voice, followed by the crunch of an axe through bone and a shriek of pain. Felix jumped to his feet and drew his sword. In the fuzzy dimness of the room he could see a dozen black shapes squirming and thrashing where Gotrek had been lying. The reek of damp, which before had been only unbearable, was now too thick to breathe. ‘Hoy!’ he choked, then stabbed at the back of a flailing form. The thing snarled and turned on him, lashing out with long arms. It was wearing breeches and a shirt, but that was Felix’s only clue that it had once been human. As his eyes adjusted, he could see that the inner side of its arms and hands were covered with disc-shaped suckers, and it had a head like a trout. Felix slashed at it, nausea and pity warring within him. The trout-man ducked and caught his blade in a suckered hand. Felix tried to jerk it away, but the discs stuck fast to the smooth steel, and the mutant pulled at it with uncanny strength. Sounds of terrible violence continued from Gotrek’s side of the room as Felix fought the trout-man for the sword. Then two more mutants charge out of the dark. One had a rusty boarding axe clutched in hands like crab claws. The other was a woman – or had been – with hair like a sea anemone and translucent fins running down the length of her forearms. She slashed at him and they sliced through his clothes to his skin. They were razor sharp! Felix kicked her in the face, then ducked crab-hands’ rusty axe. Trout-face tried to catch Felix’s neck with his other tentacle. Felix let go of his sword and grabbed the slimy thing, yanking him off his feet and sending him careening into crab-hands. The mutants crashed down on the flimsy bed, collapsing it. Felix stomped on trout-face’s wrist. He yelped and let go of the sword. Felix snatched it up and spun just in time to block another swipe from the fin-woman. His sword tore through her right fin and into her arm. She staggered back, wailing, and fell in a heap against the door. Felix whipped back and gutted crab-hands and trout-face as they tried to stand. They toppled back into the ruin of the bed, gushing black blood. Felix stumbled over the uneven floor towards Gotrek. The slayer was in the centre of a whirlwind of crazed mutants. Half a dozen lay dead and dismembered on the floor, but just as many still surrounded him, swinging boathooks, cutlasses and belaying pins at him with wild abandon. One of them, a sleek-skinned, barrel-shaped little runt with flipper arms, had swallowed Gotrek’s left arm up to the elbow in its sphincter-like mouth. Gotrek swung him around like a flesh mace, knocking down his comrades with his bulbous body, then cleaving their heads and chests with his axe as they fell. Felix leapt into the fray and cut down two of Gotrek’s attackers from behind. Gotrek clubbed three more to the floor and hacked them to pieces. Only the flipper-man remained, stuck on the end of Gotrek’s arm like a living gauntlet. ‘Mutant filth!’ rasped Gotrek, and slammed him down as hard as he could. The mutant slapped against the planks like a carp against a cutting board, letting go of Gotrek’s arm with a fishy gasp. Gotrek chopped down at it, but it squirmed wetly down the sloping floor and the slayer’s axe smashed through rotting floorboards. Felix leapt after the thing, but the canted planks were slick with blood and slime and he fell. ‘I’ve got him,’ said Gotrek, skating forward on the film of muck with his axe raised. But he didn’t, for before the slayer could reach him, the flipper-man humped himself upright against the wall and threw himself out the window. Gotrek slammed into the sill and looked out and down. He cursed as, from far below, there came a splash. Felix picked himself up, his clothes wet with blood and noxious fluids. All the remaining mutants seemed to be dead or dying. The battle was over. ‘Is everyone out to get us in this miserable town?’ he sighed. ‘What did they want?’ ‘The bracelet,’ said Gotrek. He turned away from the window and held up the arm the flipper-man had been gnawing on. ‘And they took it. That thing swallowed it.’ Felix groaned. The damned bracelet again. From the door came a shrill cackling. They looked around. The wounded fin woman was grinning at them, a demented gleam in her too-widely-spaced eyes. ‘Though you kill a thousand of us, we will prevail. Stromfels’ will shall not be denied.’ Felix hadn’t heard that name since he and Gotrek had sailed with the pirates of Sartosa. Stromfels was a sea god – a shark god – the evil mirror of Manann, sworn to by pirates up and down the coast of the Old World. Gotrek strode towards the woman, his axe raised menacingly. ‘Do you know where they took it?’ ‘Oh yes,’ she laughed. ‘To the swamps. To the ceremony. To Stromfels’ Reach.’ Gotrek put the axe blade to her throat. ‘You will take us there, wretch.’ The fin-woman tittered. ‘No need for threats, mein herren. I’ll take you. Stromfels welcomes sacrifices.’ By the shifting light of the moons, which peeked occasionally through breaks in the roiling clouds like pale eyes through knotholes, Gotrek and Felix set down their poles and followed the fin-woman as she stepped from the weathered flatboat onto a mist-shrouded mud bank deep in the middle of the Cursed Marshes. Gotrek steadied himself with his axe and spat a fat gob of phlegm. ‘The only thing worse than sitting in a boat,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘Is standing in one.’ Felix for once agreed with him. Dwarfs were notoriously unhappy on water, but even for Felix, piloting the wobbly little craft had been a stomach-churning chore. Something shrieked like a banshee in the middle distance. Felix jumped, heart thudding. Gotrek turned, ready to fight. The fin-woman paid the noise no attention. ‘Hurry, mien herren,’ she said, beckoning them on. ‘They will beginning soon. They will want you.’ Felix let out a breath, then glared at Gotrek as they followed the fin-woman into the sea of chest-high sawgrass that rippled and whispered around them in all directions. There was no reason for them to be traipsing through a swamp in the middle of the night. They could have been back in Marienburg, asleep in a comfortable bed – or at least looking for one – if not for Gotrek’s stubbornness. Felix had tried his best to convince him to forget the bracelet and go back to Altdorf, but the slayer would have none of it. ‘No, manling,’ he had said. ‘A slayer cannot stand by when there are mutants to be killed, and a dwarf can never forgive a theft.’ ‘But you stole it from Euler,’ Felix had countered. Gotrek had snorted. ‘Stealing from a thief is not stealing.’ After that faultless display of dwarf logic, Felix had given up. Now he wished he had tried harder. Even on a summer’s day, the Cursed Marshes were unlikely to have been a pleasant place for a stroll, but now, in winter, in the coldest hours of the morning, with a fitful wind spitting icy swamp-water in Felix’s face and the sopping ground sucking at his boots and freezing his toes through the leather, it was a nightmare. Weird rustlings and moanings came from every direction, and writhing arms of mist curled up from the tall grass like looming spectres. He kept looking over his shoulders at things that weren’t there. ‘Careful, mein herren,’ said the fin-woman as Felix almost stepped into a hidden channel. She giggled. ‘Wouldn’t want to deny Stromfels’ Harbinger his snack.’ Felix backed from the channel and followed more carefully behind her. She might once have been attractive, for she had a shapely figure and piercing blue eyes, but now she was repulsive. In addition to the fins that stuck from her wiry forearms, her mouth hung open in a fishy gape, and her eyes were pushed to the sides of her head, peering slyly from under a mop of tiny, translucent tentacles that writhed with a mind of their own. ‘What do your friends want with this bracelet?’ he asked her as they swished through the grass. ‘Stromfels’ Heart?’ she said, chuckling. ‘Why, it’s the centre of the whole thing, mein herr. It calls the Harbinger. Wakes him, y’might say. Gives him his strength. Without it, there ain’t no ceremony.’ Her lower lip pushed out in a pout. ‘Like last year. Very sad, that was, when that false pirate Euler took it.’ ‘False pirate?’ said Felix. ‘He seemed piratical enough to me.’ ‘A true pirate worships Stromfels,’ she sniffed. ‘That fat lubber was just a thief with a boat, and we’re obliged to you for getting the Heart back from his safe. Most kind of you. Mind the bloodsedge, mein herr,’ she added. Felix jerked his foot back as a bush in his path rattled to life and extended vine-like tendrils towards him. He hacked at one that tried to snare his ankle, then danced away after Gotrek and the woman. The thing rustled in agitated frustration behind them. ‘I hate this place,’ said Felix. ‘At least were off the cursed boat,’ said Gotrek. They pressed on. A half hour later, they came to a dense stand of bulrushes growing from the water of a wide, shallow inlet. The plants were taller than Felix’s head. ‘Just through here, mein herren,’ said the fin-woman, smiling back at them as she stepped down into the water. ‘Hurry now.’ And with that she disappeared into the towering thicket. They splashed after her and shouldered into the close set plants. The tall stalks bent aside as they parted them, then sprung back after they had passed. Felix couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead, and lost sight of the woman almost immediately. He tried to listen for the slosh of her footsteps, but they were drowned out by their own. Felix looked over his left shoulder, then his right. ‘This is an ambush,’ he muttered. ‘We can only hope,’ said Gotrek. He lashed out with his axe, hacking a swath through the tall plants. Felix drew his sword and joined him, swinging wide. The bulrushes toppled before them, but didn’t reveal hidden assailants, only more bulrushes. ‘Quicker, mein herren!’ echoed the fin-woman’s voice from far ahead. ‘You don’t want to be late.’ They pressed on, cursing, and a few minutes later came to the far edge of the stand, and a muddy shore that fringed another sea of sawgrass. They stepped warily up out of the water and looked around. The fin-woman was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where are you, woman?’ called Felix. ‘Come out!’ There was no response. Felix cursed and slashed angrily at the sawgrass. ‘She’s tricked us. She’s led us off into the middle of nowhere. I’ll wager the ceremony is miles from here.’ ‘No, manling,’ said Gotrek, pointing. ‘It is there.’ Felix turned and followed the slayer’s gaze. Far across the waving grass was a low hill, rising from the marsh like the back of some aquatic behemoth, and behind it, glowing dimly through the shrubs that furred its spine, was an orange flicker of fire. A short while later, Felix and Gotrek hid among those shrubs and peered at the scene below them. The hill sloped down to a shale beach that curved around a tidal lagoon, hemmed in on all sides by the sawgrass marsh. A bonfire blazed on the beach, illuminating an ancient, sea-weathered standing stone that rose from the shallows. The thing was twice as high as a man and carved to resemble a shark’s head, with a crude triangular notch in the front to delineate a mouth. Around this central stone eight smaller stones, man-high and carved all over with saucer-sized circles, also poked from the waves. An altar to Stromfels, Felix was certain, though it wasn’t clear to him what the lesser stones might represent. More than a score of fish-featured mutants stood on the beach and in the water around the stone circle, chanting and raising their misshapen arms in exaltation as their long shadows undulated across the water like black snakes. In their centre, standing knee-deep in front of the shark stone, was the old pirate from the Pelican’s Perch, stripped to the waist and holding aloft Gotrek’s bracelet as he shouted an invocation to the sky. Felix wasn’t surprised to see him, nor his men, who stood and chanted along with the other worshippers. In fact, it made the night’s events fall into place. And though it sickened him, he wasn’t surprised that they were mutants either. With their coats flung off in the heat of the fire, the pirates’ abnormalities were revealed – scales, fins, gills, webbed fingers, eel-like tails, trailing tendrils like those of a jellyfish. It was as if their god was slowly shaping them in his own image. The old pirate’s mutation was the subtlest, but also the most disturbing. As the man gyrated in his ecstasy, Felix saw what he at first thought were strands from his beard waving in the wind. But a longer look revealed that the strands were actually finger-sized tentacles that ringed his mouth, and which had been hidden within the luxuriousness of his moustaches. ‘It seems you were right not to sell to him,’ said Felix, chagrined. ‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, but that was all. The slayer wasn’t one to say ‘I told you so.’ Felix looked further down the beach. At the edge of the firelight, a number of longboats were pulled up on the shale, and near them crouched half a dozen pitiful figures, all bound hand and foot, their ropes staked to the ground so they couldn’t escape. Felix thought he recognised their guide, the fin-woman, among the guards that watched over them. He could see her peering around into the shadows – looking for him and Gotrek no doubt. ‘The vanished revellers?’ Felix asked, nodding towards the six prisoners. Gotrek nodded. ‘Sacrifices,’ he growled. Felix feared he was right. He gripped his sword. ‘Then we’d better go stop the ceremony before it is complete.’ ‘No,’ said Gotrek. ‘We wait.’ Felix turned to him, confused. ‘But if we wait, they will call their god, and–’ ‘Aye,’ Gotrek interrupted. ‘Mutants are nothing. I want to fight this harbinger, whatever it is.’ ‘But, the sacrifices,’ said Felix. ‘I’ll kill it before it comes to that,’ said Gotrek dismissively. Felix shook his head. He sometimes forgot that, though Gotrek generally fought for the good of the Old World, and hated Chaos with a passion, he chose his fights for glory as much as for any other reason. A rising wail from the mutants returned his attention to the ceremony below. Things seemed to be reaching a climax. While the mutants writhed and chanted, in the centre of the ring, the old pirate turned to the shore and dropped to his knees in the water, the bracelet raised high over his head. Felix blinked and squinted at the thing. This far away, it was hard to make out details, but its appearance had definitely changed. The braided gold coil that the central bezel was fixed to seemed to have unwoven itself, the gleaming strands spreading out from the gem like spider legs. They even appeared to be stretching and curling – a grasping hand of yellow wire. Gotrek edged forward, his single eye glittering eagerly in the firelight. As the wild chant grew faster and louder, the old pirate lowered the clutching golden thing to his chest and pressed it against his sternum. Felix saw the gold wires clench, digging into his tattooed flesh. The pirate grimaced, but held the jewel in place. The wires gripped harder. He screamed and spasmed, his mouth tentacles trembling. The gold claws dug down into his chest like they were seeking his heart. The pirate thrashed and convulsed, but made no move to try to pull off the burrowing bracelet. Finally, with a last agonised bellow, he stiffened and pitched face-first into the waves, his head completely submerged. The mutant worshippers all fell silent, staring, as he floated face down in the water. Felix stared too. Had the old man died? Had the evil jewel killed him? ‘Do you think perhaps that didn’t go as planned?’ he whispered. ‘Quiet, manling,’ said Gotrek. Felix turned back to the beach. For a long moment there was no movement at all, and no noise but for the crackle of the bonfire. But then, with a splash and a cry, the old pirate twitched and floundered in the water. Felix could hear an indrawn breath from the mutants, and then a huge cheer as the pirate pushed himself up and stood, streaming with water. ‘The Harbinger!’ they cried. ‘Stromfels’ Harbinger is here!’ Felix did not feel like cheering. He felt like vomiting, for a horrible transformation had come over the old pirate, and was continuing as he watched. For one thing, he was larger than before, and was growing bigger still. He now towered head and shoulders above his followers, and his body was thickening and turning a dull iron grey. For another, he was distorting hideously. His neck swelled with muscle until it was as wide as his shoulders and his head grew to match. A triangular fin sprouted from his back, and his eyes became black orbs and shifted position, moving above his ears, which shrank into his skull and vanished. His nose widened and lengthened until it took over his whole face, and his mouth stretched along with it, a black, lipless gash filled with razor-sharp teeth. But more horrible still was the transformation of the eight little tentacles that had surrounded his mouth. As he grew and changed, so did they, lengthening and thickening until they were as big around as pythons, while their inner surfaces sprouted cup-sized suckers that clenched and contracted obscenely. The pirate-turned-monster threw back his head and howled in a voice like a howling winter storm, his arms and tentacles raised in triumph. ‘Bring the offerings!’ he roared. The gem from the evil bracelet glowed blue-green in the centre of his chest. Gotrek stood and drew his axe from his back, grinning savagely. ‘Now this will be a fight,’ he said, then charged down the slope towards the beach, roaring a wordless battle-cry. Felix hesitated as the mutants all turned and stared, then he sighed and ran after the slayer. It rankled somewhat that Gotrek seemed to assume that he would automatically follow him into battle. That certainly hadn’t been their original bargain. Felix had sworn to record Gotrek’s doom, not share it. But he had fought so many times at the slayer’s side that it had indeed become second nature, and he did sometimes charge in after him without thinking. Had he, Felix wondered with sudden concern, come to look forward to it? The pirates and mutants swarmed to meet them as the hulking, shark-mouthed octopoid howled behind them from the water. ‘Bring me the trespassers!’ it cried. ‘They will be first!’ Gotrek ploughed into the horde, driving those at the front back into the rest as his rune axe splintered spears and sheared through swords and arms and stranger appendages in a bloody blur. He didn’t slow to fight them, however, only cut a path through them, his attention entirely on Stromfels’ Harbinger, who surged out of the lagoon to face him. Felix fell on the mutants before they had recovered from Gotrek’s passage, impaling the wounded and hacking down those who were trying to stand. Not exactly sporting, but then again, they meant to feed him to their god as a snack, so he felt little remorse. The rest turned and leapt at him as, beyond them, Gotrek pounded across the shale at the looming monster. Now Felix did regret following the slayer, for a dozen weapons were stabbing at him all at once, and he had to whirl like a top with his sword at full extent just to keep them at bay. At least, he thought, there is room enough here to swing and light enough to see, luxuries he hadn’t had in his earlier fights against them. ‘Get ‘im, my darlings!’ screeched a familiar female voice from the edges of the mob. ‘He ain’t nice to ladies!’ Felix cut down a man with gaping fish-heads for hands and dodged past him to the bonfire, then snatched up a burning branch in his left hand and turned to face the rest. A brilliant plan, he thought. With the flames at his back he would only have to defend in front of him. They charged in, howling, and he stumbled back, nearly falling into the fire as he blocked their blows. A brilliant plan, he thought again, as his backside began to grow unpleasantly warm. Beyond the mutants, Felix saw Gotrek’s fight in brief glimpses – two heavy, suckered tentacles spinning away in a spray of black blood – the Harbinger of Stromfels howling in agony – Gotrek clubbed into the lagoon by another tentacle. ‘You are fools,’ the fin-backed behemoth shouted as it waded out after him. ‘Just like the damned Marienburgers.’ The slayer jumped up again, axe raised, but to Felix’s horror, the monster’s two severed tentacles had grown back, as thick and strong as before. ‘They think it is their milquetoast prayers to Manann that protect them from the winter gales,’ the monster rumbled as it lashed the slayer with its limbs and drove him back amongst the standing stones. ‘Ha! Only appeasing Stromfels will stop the storms. We are the true protectors of Marienburg!’ Gotrek chopped furiously, severing tentacle after tentacle as he tried to reach the monster’s shark-like trunk, but no matter how many he cut, by the time he had finished cutting the last, the first had grown back again. Felix, too, was in desperate straits. A woman with stinging whips growing from her neck lashed them at his face while a dozen more mutants stabbed at him. He hacked wildly around at them all while trying to shield his face from the whips. One burned his cheek and he flinched back, crying out. His heel crunched down on a burning log. He smelled burning wool. He was standing in the fire! An iron-shod staff rammed him in the chest, knocking him further back. He was falling! Desperate, he snatched at the staff, hauling at it with all his might. Fortunately, the mutant was pulling too, trying to jerk the staff from Felix’s grip. Felix used the momentum to launch himself forward and shouldered the man to the ground, then hurriedly tore off the flaming cloak, his heart pounding, and whirled it over his head. ‘Back, damn you!’ he gasped, fighting for breath. ‘I’ll burn you!’ A mutant snagged the cloak on his spear tip and whipped it contemptuously away. The others pressed in again from all sides. Felix cursed and spun around with his sword, his lungs aching as he tried to hold them all away – right back where he’d started. At least he’d gotten away from the fire. In the water, the Harbinger of Stromfels shouted in triumph and lifted a struggling Gotrek over his gaping mouth, pinning his right arm and axe with a tentacle. Felix cursed and charged towards it, trying to break through the ring of mutants to reach the slayer in time. ‘Gotrek!’ he cried, hacking wildly. ‘Hang on!’ The slayer’s left hand scrabbled for the haft his axe, then tore it free and hacked down at the tentacle, severing it. He splashed at the monsters feet and disappeared under the water as it screamed in agony. It plunged its arms and tentacles below the surface, feeling for him. ‘I will tear you apart!’ Gotrek surged up behind the thing, the severed tentacle still wrapped around him, and aimed a left-handed slash at its spine, but the massive beast turned with surprising speed and the axe blade caught it under the ribs instead, sinking deep. The Harbinger roared in pain and fell back into the water, crashing down by the standing stone. All around Felix, the mutants wailed and spasmed in eerie unison to their leader’s agony. Felix lashed out at them, trying to take advantage of their weakness, but they staggered away, shrieking. He was too tired to pursue. He stumbled towards the slayer. Gotrek was wading deeper into the water, axe raised for another strike. Felix sloshed in after him, and they strode out past the circle of stones together, looking all around, but the water remained calm and flat. ‘He has defeated the Harbinger of Stromfels!’ cried the mutants, fleeing into the shadows. ‘He’ll kill us all!’ Gotrek ignored them, chopping at the water with his axe. ‘Come back, you coward!’ he bellowed. ‘I know you’re not dead!’ His voice echoed away across the lagoon, to be answered only with silence. He grunted and spit into the waves, then turned and slogged back to the shore, prying the severed tentacle from his skin with a series of dull pops. Felix looked around the beach. The mutants had vanished, leaving their dead behind. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Bah,’ said the slayer, disgusted. ‘It ran away, and took the bracelet with it.’ Felix nodded, knowing the slayer would accept no sympathy. ‘Well, at least we can bring these poor wretches back to safety.’ He pointed down the beach. ‘They left their boats.’ Gotrek shrugged, not at all consoled. ‘I suppose.’ They walked down the beach to the prisoners, keeping their eyes on the shadows, but the mutants remained hidden. ‘What have you done, you meddlers?’ whined a tired-looking woman in a shopkeeper’s apron as Felix knelt to cut her ropes. ‘Eh?’ said Felix. ‘We’re saving you.’ ‘And dooming Marienburg,’ said a captured stevedore. ‘You should have left well enough alone.’ Felix frowned. ‘You came willingly?’ Then why did they tie you down?’ The stevedore hung his head. ‘Some change their minds at the last minute.’ ‘Now Stromfels will send the storms,’ said a third captive, a young man in the uniform of the Black Caps. ‘Our deaths would have appeased him, but now....’ Gotrek turned his single baleful eye on him. ‘You worship that abomination?’ ‘No,’ said the shop wife. ‘Never. But the swamp men are right. It is he who calls the storms, not Manann, and so we give ourselves up to keep our families safe for another winter.’ Gotrek spat, disgusted. ‘You’re to blame for its power. You make it stronger with your fear.’ ‘And you’ve made it angry with your slaughter,’ said the stevedore. ‘Many ships will sink this winter because of you.’ Gotrek snorted and turned away. Despite their protestations, the rescued prisoners were quite willing to go back to Marienburg with Gotrek and Felix before the mutants returned, so they stole one of the longboats and set off. Gotrek refused to row, or do anything but sit in the stern looking green at the gills, so Felix and the men took up the oars and poles, with the shop wife at the prow, calling out the hazards. After a long hour of rowing and poling through weed-choked and winding waterways, then fighting the strong currents of the Manannspoort Sea, they pulled wearily into Marienburg’s harbour and rowed through the Brunwasser Kanal just as the first grey light of the day began to tinge the eastern sky. Already, the big merchant ships that lined the docks were being loaded and unloaded by armies of longshoremen, while huge winches lifted cargo nets full of barrels and burlap sacks from deep holds, and carts and wagons piled to the point of collapse with goods from all over the world creaked away into the city. It made Felix tired just to look at it all. He was ready to drop. Except for a fitful hour’s sleep on the damp floor of the Bunk and Binnacle, the entire night had been spent walking, rowing, fighting, or slogging across swampy ground. Finally, they nosed the longboat under the prow of a cargo ship and glided towards a little wooden dock that stuck out from a stone bank. Felix reached out to grab a piling and pull them close as the others backed their oars, but just as he touched the post the boat stopped suddenly, and then jerked backward in the water. Felix stumbled and fell on top of the shop wife. ‘Easy,’ he said, pushing himself upright. ‘No need to...’ He paused as he saw the other rowers looking around too. ‘Who did that?’ Gotrek growled, raising his head. The boat lurched suddenly down at the stern, and the nose shot up. Felix fell again as the others cried out. Something snaked from the water and curled over the side of the boat. A tentacle. ‘Stromfels’ Harbinger!’ screamed the shop wife. Felix’s heart lurched as he stood again. More tentacles gripped the boat from all sides. ‘Off!’ roared Gotrek. ‘Onto the dock!’ Felix shouted. He tried to run to the side, but the boat tilted and rose out of the water. He fought for balance, then threw himself towards the dock, now a man’s height below him. He landed hard on his hands and rolled across the planks. A thud and a curse told him that Gotrek had done the same. A few splashes told him that others had fallen short. He rolled on his back and looked up. Eight huge tentacles were lifting the longboat as the rescued sacrifices wailed and clung to it. Then, with a splintering crack, the curling limbs ripped the boat asunder, and the men and women fell into the water, flailing and screaming. A blunt grey island poked up directly under the shop wife, and she clung to it. The island had a mouth. It yawned open and the woman tumbled in, shrieking. Teeth like elven shields closed, crushing her. The shrieks ceased. The others floundered desperately for the dock, but the huge tentacles caught them and raised them high. ‘Gods,’ said Felix, backing away. ‘It’s grown.’ Gotrek grinned maniacally. ‘Good.’ He drew his axe. The Harbinger of Stromfels breached the waves, water streaming down it in sheets – a shark’s head and body, twice the height of a man, with tiny, useless arms, but eight tree-trunk tentacles ringing its mouth. The axe wound Gotrek had given it earlier was nothing more than a puckered line on one flank. The gem of the golden bracelet looked as small as a nail head in the centre of its broad grey chest. Felix stared in horrified wonder. The thing could tear down a temple of Sigmar. ‘Did you think Stromfels would let the sea be my grave?’ it roared, turning eyes like black glass cannonballs on them as the shop wife’s blood streamed from its mouth. All over the docks people ran and screamed. Stevedores abandoned their loads. Merchants and sailors fled their ships. The crew of a winch left a pallet of grain sacks swinging in mid-air as they ran and called for the Black Caps. ‘I’ve come for what is mine!’ the Harbinger rumbled, shaking four of its squirming victims at Gotrek as it stuffed a fifth into its maw. ‘Let them go, fish!’ bellowed Gotrek, sprinting to the end of the dock and swiping at one of the extended tentacles. ‘Fight me!’ The beast howled in pain and jerked the tentacle back as Gotrek’s axe bit deep. It glared at the slayer. ‘Very well,’ it said. ‘They will wait.’ It tossed the captives aside and whipped its tentacles at Gotrek, trying to sweep him off the dock. The slayer rolled between two sturdy pilings, then lashed out at the Harbinger’s limbs from their cover. Felix ran forward to help him, but leapt back again immediately as a tentacle nearly knocked his legs out from under him. He swiped wildly at it as it passed, opening a red groove in it. The monster roared and grabbed for him, but he dodged out of reach. Gotrek, however, was in the middle of a tentacle hurricane. Some tried to knock him from between the pilings. Some tried to squash him to the dock. Some tried to grab him. He countered them all, making the beast pay for each attack with bloody, trench-deep gashes. It howled at every strike, but kept flailing. Its tentacles were too thick now to be severed with one blow, and to Felix’s horror, the wounds grew closed in the time it took for it to draw back and strike again. It seemed impossible that Gotrek could kill it before it found some way to pry him from his cover. A tentacle slammed into the dock, smashing through the planks at Gotrek’s feet. It had found a way. The slayer jumped back. Another tentacle slapped down and more planks caved in. Gotrek fell back again. The Harbinger came on, hauling itself out of the water with its tentacles and stomping forward on huge human legs that shook the dock with each step. Felix backed towards the stone embankment with the slayer as the tentacles swatted at them, inches away. ‘What now?’ he asked. ‘The fish-woman said the bracelet gives it its power,’ Gotrek rasped. ‘If I can take it, I wager I can kill it.’ They reached the embankment and ducked behind a wall of crates. ‘But how will you get past its tentacles?’ The slayer shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’ The monster tore down the crates and hurled them away. Gotrek and Felix dove to the ground as they bounced over their heads and smashed to pieces beyond them. People fled screaming. Felix and Gotrek picked themselves up and joined them. The Harbinger lumbered after them on its tentacles like an ape on its knuckles. A handful of sailors appeared at the rail of the ship to their left, all armed with long guns. They fired. The beast writhed as the bullets tore into its body, but kept on, not turning from its prey. Gotrek looked up at the ship and paused, almost taking a tentacle in the small of the back. He spun and lopped off the tip of the thing, then started up the ramp to the big cargo dock. ‘Lead it this way.’ There was no time to wonder what Gotrek’s plan was. The Harbinger was pulling itself up the ramp faster than they could run. Felix slashed behind him at a questing tentacle and missed, then had to leap like a scalded cat to avoid being flattened by a barrel it flung after them. ‘Faster, manling,’ said Gotrek. Felix grunted, he was going faster. They topped the ramp and stumbled on, weaving through piles of cargo as the towering mutant smashed barrels and crates into the water. Gotrek looked up as they ran under the pallet of grain sacks that dangled high over the dock, and Felix suddenly knew what the slayer intended. Gotrek looked over his shoulder. The Harbinger was just ducking under the pallet. Gotrek chuckled evilly. ‘Away, manling!’ The slayer veered left, sprinting for the winch that held the pallet and raising his axe. Felix dived over a pile of rolled carpets and looked back. He gaped as Gotrek fell flat on his face, inches from the base of the winch. A tentacle jerked the slayer up off the ground by the ankles and raised him high. ‘You think I’m such a fool?’ laughed the monster. It stepped out from under the dangling pallet, more tentacles wrapping around Gotrek as it lowered him towards its gaping mouth. The slayer wrenched his axe arm free and slashed around, but the limbs healed as fast as he cut them and didn’t let go. With a grunt, Gotrek threw his axe at the Harbinger of Stromfels’s head. The weapon spun through the air and chunked into its shark-like snout, right between its oval nostrils, and stuck. The beast bellowed and staggered back, cracking its head on the pallet as it blundered under it. ‘Manling, get the–’ A tentacle clamped over Gotrek’s face. Felix ran for the winch, raising his sword. The monster saw him and swayed forward unsteadily, shooting a pair of unoccupied tentacles after him. Felix dove, slashing. His sword sliced the rope, making it sing like a harp string, but a few strands still held. Felix cursed and crashed to the dock. A tentacle wrapped around his leg, lifting him into the air. He swiped at the rope again as he was dragged back. The last strands parted. Swinging upside down in the Harbinger’s grip, Felix saw the pallet of grain sacks drop as the rope zipped through the pulleys. The monster lurched out of the way, but not fast enough. The pallet hit it on the hip, crushing its right leg and knocking it into a pile of crates. It crashed to the dock on its back, tentacles flailing for balance, and flung Felix away. He slammed down on the lip of the dock and almost bounced off into the water. Only catching a wooden piling in the ribs stopped him from going over. He gasped as all the air shot out of him and lay there glaze-eyed, clinging feebly to the post. The monster shoved feebly at the grain sacks with its tentacles, trying to free its legs. For a moment, Felix couldn’t see Gotrek amidst all the coiling limbs, but then he appeared, climbing the monster’s broad chest and reaching for the bracelet. ‘No!’ it roared. The slayer got his thick fingers around the glowing green gem and pulled as tentacles bludgeoned his shoulders and back. Gotrek only tucked his head and pulled harder. Felix staggered to his feet, clutching his aching ribs, and stumbled forward. He could see the golden wires of the bracelet pulling from the Harbinger’s flesh as Gotrek hauled on it. They stretched and strained, fighting to maintain their grip. Felix hacked weakly at a flailing tentacle, hoping to divert the monster’s attention. It worked. It swatted him across the dock. Unfortunately, the rest of its tentacles were not distracted. As Felix sat up, dazed, he saw the suckered limbs wrap around Gotrek’s arms, legs, torso and head, pulling him in eight directions at once. Felix winced. It was like watching someone being torn apart by horses. The slayer was so wrapped in tentacles that all Felix could see of him was one foot, a bit of orange crest, and his left arm, pinned fast against his back. With a howl of frustration, Stromfels’ Harbinger pushed Gotrek away from its chest like someone trying to peel off an overly affectionate monkey, but Gotrek was still gripping the gem, and as the monster thrust him away, the bracelet tore from its chest. Felix saw the golden strands waving in the air like the legs of an inverted crab as Gotrek held it high. The Harbinger screamed and convulsed, whipping its tentacles about in a frenzy and slamming Gotrek down on the deck of a nearby ship like a sack of wet clay. The bracelet spun away from Gotrek’s slack fingers and bounced down to the dock as the massive monster pushed up and looked around, the rune axe still sticking from its snout. ‘My heart!’ the Harbinger roared, as it saw the golden bracelet rolling along the planks. Felix blanched. The cursed bauble was coming right towards him! The beast surged up and thundered after it. ‘You will pay for this! All will pay!’ Felix scrambled between some crates as the Harbinger loomed over him, but it only snatched up the bracelet in a tentacle and held it high, its black eyes glittering triumphantly. Felix gripped his sword, preparing to dash out and sever the tip of the tentacle that held the evil thing, but then he saw movement above and behind the monster. Gotrek was running along the rail of the merchant ship. He leapt and landed on the beast’s broad back, clambering up its triangular fin towards its snout. The harbinger spun around, nearly throwing him off, but the slayer held tight and wrenched his axe free, then hacked down at its skull. The monster roared and stumbled as the axe struck bone. Its tentacles whipped around, trying to dislodge the slayer. Gotrek struck again, laughing maniacally, and this time shattered the beast’s boney carapace. Blood and ooze soaked his face and beard as he pulled back for another blow. Felix’s heart pounded with sudden hope. The Harbinger’s wound was not healing! The bracelet was no longer protecting it! A third stroke and the monster’s tentacles sagged. It weaved on its legs, then toppled to the deck, crushing a pyramid of wine barrels. A pool of red spread out from beneath it as Gotrek rolled off its back and lay panting on the planks. His skin was marked from head to foot with red, saucer-sized rings. Felix limped out of hiding as the slayer pulled himself to his feet. They looked down at the massive corpse. ‘This time,’ said Felix. ‘I think it’s finished.’ Gotrek shook his head, then turned to scan the dock. ‘There’s still the bracelet.’ Felix stared at him. ‘You’re not going to keep it?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘Not after this!’ ‘No,’ said Gotrek. He crossed to the tentacle that held the jewel and pulled it free. He held it up. The thing had reverted to its original shape – a coil of woven gold holding a sea-green gem. ‘It needs to be destroyed. Cleansed.’ The slayer turned towards the city. ‘Come on, manling. There has to be a dwarf smith somewhere in this human swamp.’ Three hours later, as a cold wind whipped whitecaps across the harbour, Gotrek and Felix trudged wearily up the gangplank of the Jilfte Bateau, the river boat that would take them up the Reik to Altdorf. Leaning on the rail at the top of the ramp was their old friend Max Schreiber, smoking a meditative pipe. Beside him was the young seeress, Claudia Pallenberger, still gaunt and weak from their recent adventure on the Sea of Chaos. Max smiled as Felix and the slayer stepped onto the deck. ‘You two look like you visited every taproom in Marienburg,’ he said. ‘Almost,’ answered Felix, too tired to deny his implication. ‘You nearly missed the boat,’ said Claudia. ‘We were busy,’ said Gotrek. ‘Purifying cursed gold.’ Max smirked and blew a stream of smoke into the air. ‘Some euphemism for drinking beer, no doubt,’ he said. ‘No,’ said Felix. ‘Not really.’ He shuffled with Gotrek towards the door to the cabins. He would explain later. Right now all he wanted to do was sleep all the way to Altdorf. Just as he ducked through the door, raindrops spattered across the deck and the wind pushed hard at his back. He turned and looked to the west. The sky over the Manannspoort Sea was black with clouds. Felix’s chest tightened as they rolled closer. It looked like a terrible storm was about to hit Marienburg.