Slayer’s Honour
Nathan Long


 	1


 	‘What a cesspit,’ said Gotrek Gurnisson.

 	Felix Jaeger had to agree. They had smelled it before they topped the last rise in the road – a heady reek of rotting garbage, raw sewage, burnt meat and stale beer. Now that they were walking through its weathered wooden gates, Felix thought the sight of the place as offensive to the eye as the odour had been to the nose.

 	Deadgate squatted at the end of a narrow valley in the shadow of the ruined dwarf hold, Karak Azgal, which loomed on a rocky eminence above it. To Felix, the settlement’s spread of crude, shingled roofs and dirty streets looked like a crusty brown stain seeping down the slope from an ancient granite cistern.

 	This was near enough the truth, to hear Gotrek speak of it. When the dwarf lords who ruled Karak Azgal had stopped trying to win the hold back from the orcs and goblins and other monsters that had taken up residence in its depths, they had instead thrown it open to adventurers, letting them delve into it in search of its fabled treasures – for a fee, of course. Word spread of this great opportunity and, despite the fact that Karak Azgal lay far from civilized lands, deep in the remote southern tail of the Worlds Edge Mountains, the valley was soon crawling with fortune hunters, all hoping to come away with dwarf gold, ancient weapons of great power, and gems the size of apples. To service these newcomers, a human settlement had grown up outside the hold. At first it was just a trading post, selling food and supplies for those going underground, but places to spend what loot the adventurers brought back to the surface quickly sprang into being – taverns, fighting pits, gaming parlours, brothels, mortuaries – until it became Deadgate, not so much a town as a clapboard abattoir, designed to flense gold from pockets before their owners made it out of the valley.

 	Garish signs assaulted Felix’s eyes as he and Gotrek walked down the muddy main street, all painted on the fronts of the buildings or swinging over their open doors – the Painted Lady, the Red Rooster, the Pit of Blood, the Palace – each with its bill of fare beneath it, whether this were beer, wine, gambling, fighting, or female companionship.

 	Below the signs, barkers in flashy clothes sang out those same bills of fare to the hard-faced men who wandered the streets, trying to entice them within, while in the street, costermongers, charm sellers and professional criers were all making their pitches at the top of their voices.

 	‘Gold-hunting canaries! Take one into the deeps and it will lead you to treasure!’

 	‘Pears from the Badlands! One fresh for two pfennigs! Ten rotten for one!’

 	A human man holding a banner with a rearing dragon emblazoned upon it was shouting the loudest. ‘Thane Thorgrin Dragonslayer needs you to fight the greenskin menace! Apply at the hold to join his throng. One gold coin per day of fighting, and free access to the deeps for a month. Make your fortune and save the hold!’

 	As they walked past a gaudy tavern called the Grail, Gotrek and Felix were accosted by a smiling villain who bowed and scraped before them. ‘Come right in, mein herr and herr dwarf. This way. It’s a long, dusty road from the Badlands to the Worlds Edge Mountains. Why not wet those dry throats with a few mugs of real dwarf ale? Or if your navel is touching your spine, we can fill you up. We have sausages and pies and–’

 	‘Dwarf ale?’ asked Gotrek, stopping.

 	‘Indeed, herr dwarf,’ said the tout. ‘Bugman’s Best. Six kegs, brought up through the pass just this morning.’

 	The Slayer glared at the man. ‘If you are lying, I’ll come back here and feed you the mug.’

 	‘No lie, friend,’ said the man, holding up his hands. ‘We aren’t so foolish as to try to fool those who know. Indeed, there’s another of your kin within, and he can’t get enough of the stuff.’

 	Gotrek grunted and pushed through the swinging double doors. Felix followed him into the smoky interior, looking around warily. It did not look like the sort of place that would serve Bugman’s – and if it didn’t, there would be trouble. It was decorated in a shoddy attempt at Bretonnian courtly style, with arched doors and heraldic tapestries and high-backed chairs – but the patrons did not look like they would be at home reciting chivalric poetry at the High Castle of Couronne. A harder, more scarred collection of sell swords and fortune hunters Felix had never seen. Nor did the thick-necked bruisers who manned the bar look like they had been hired for their knowledge of viticulture.

 	‘Are you sure you want to die in a town this ugly?’ Felix asked as he and Gotrek stepped around a pair of bouncers dragging an unconscious patron to the door.

 	‘I won’t die here,’ said Gotrek, pushing to the bar. ‘The spider is in the deeps, so that jeweller said.’

 	‘Ah, the deeps,’ said Felix. ‘I’m sure they’ll be much more attractive.’

 	‘They will be dwarf halls,’ said Gotrek. ‘A fitting place for a Slayer to die.’

 	‘Not so fitting for a poet, unfortunately,’ said Felix with a sigh, then signalled the barman. ‘Two Bugman’s, please.’

 	They had first heard of the dread spider known as the White Widow in the dwarf hold of Ekrund, where they had ended up after their misadventures in the Black Gulf left them stranded south of the Dragonback Mountains. A dwarf jeweller there, Harn Taphammer, had told them of it as he was appraising the few gems they had salvaged from the shipwreck. He said a human adventurer had come to him to have a ruby the size of a knuckle bone set into a medallion. The man had no left arm and no ears, and walked with a limp – all wounds, he said, from the guardian of the treasure trove from which he stole the ruby, the White Widow, an albino cave spider the size of a hay wagon that made its nest in the deepest reaches of Karak Azgal.

 	Naturally, Gotrek had set off for the Worlds Edge Mountains the next day. Naturally, Felix had gone with him.

 	The barman set two froth-capped mugs down in front of them. ‘A silver shilling each, please.’

 	Gotrek scowled, incredulous. ‘You’re selling Bugman’s Best for only a shilling?’

 	‘Aye, herr dwarf. Good beer at fair prices, that’s the Grail’s motto.’

 	Gotrek slid two shillings across the bar then picked up his mug. His single eye glittered sceptically as he lifted the mug to his nose. He inhaled, then grunted, noncommittal, and stuck his flame-red moustache in the foam and drank. Almost immediately he choked and coughed and held the mug at arm’s length, staring at it.

 	‘Grungni,’ he breathed. ‘It is Bugman’s.’

 	Felix blinked, surprised, and tried his. It was cool and clean and crisp, with a taste that brought to mind wheat fields and mild autumn days, and it went down his throat like golden light. It was quite possibly the best beer he had ever drunk.

 	‘How does a hole in the wall tavern at the godforsaken arse-end of nowhere have Bugman’s Best on tap?’ he asked as he came up for air.

 	‘Good, isn’t it?’ said someone at his shoulder.

 	Felix turned. A wiry man with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail stood beside him, waving to the barman. He had a nose like an axe blade and an engaging smile, and was dressed in stained, sturdy travelling clothes.

 	‘Very good,’ said Felix.

 	The man’s blue eyes took in Gotrek then darted back to Felix. ‘A Slayer and his rememberer, am I right?’

 	‘That’s right,’ said Felix. The Grail was proving a place of wonders. First Bugman’s Best at rotgut prices, and now this. Many men knew what a Slayer was, but few knew the position of rememberer. Felix was more used to explaining what he did than acknowledging it. ‘I’m surprised you know the word.’

 	The man grinned. ‘I’ve some little experience with it.’ He took two fresh mugs from the barman, then nodded towards the fireplace. ‘My companion Agnar and I have a table by the hearth. Would you care to join us?’

 	Felix followed his gaze and stopped, staring. At the table the man indicated sat a Slayer, staring into the fire, his three orange crests bright red in the light of the flames.

 	2


 	Gotrek stared too, and his brow lowered. Felix knew from experience that Slayers did not always relish the company of others of their kind. They were generally solitary types, brooding on their pasts and singularly focussed on making their futures as short as possible. Gotrek’s best friends Snorri Nosebiter and Malakai Makaisson were Slayers, but there had been others of his kind to whom he had taken an instant dislike. Felix, on the other hand, had never met another rememberer before, and the prospect of talking to someone who understood what his life entailed was too tempting to pass up. Despite Gotrek’s wary glare, Felix nodded to the dark-haired man.

 	‘Lead on.’

 	In any other company, the grizzled Slayer sitting at the table would have been the most intimidating drinker in the tavern. He was old enough that grey roots were showing at the base of his three red-dyed crests and braided beard, and his oft-scarred, heavily-muscled arms were so covered with fading tattoos that they were nearly solid blue from thick wrists to broad, bulging shoulders. His face was like a wood knot – so gnarled and battered that Felix could barely see his eyes – and he had a drinker’s nose in the centre of it as red and lumpy as a halfling’s fist.

 	Compared to Gotrek, however, he was practically puny. Gotrek was the biggest dwarf Felix had ever met. Even without his foot-high Slayer’s crest, he was nearly five feet tall – half a head taller than Agnar – and almost a foot broader in the shoulder, with arm muscles that writhed like mating pythons at his every move. A great red beard flowed down over Gotrek’s broad chest to tuck into a wide leather belt, and a patch covered his missing left eye. The eye that remained was as sharp as an ice-pick, and as bright as the gleaming blade of his ancient rune axe. Felix had known raging drunks twice Gotrek’s size to mumble apologies and quietly leave the room when confronted with the full power of that malefic gaze.

 	Agnar looked up at Gotrek as they approached with ill-concealed mistrust, but his rememberer was all smiles.

 	‘Agnar Arvastsson, may I present to you…’ He looked to Felix. ‘Pardon me, who may I present?’

 	Felix inclined his head. ‘Felix Jaeger and Gotrek Gurnisson, at your service.’

 	‘A pleasure,’ said the rememberer. ‘And I am Henrik Daschke, late of Talabheim – and just about every other city in the Empire.’

 	Agnar eyed them anew at their names. ‘I’ve heard of you,’ he said in a heavy voice. It sounded like he’d put away quite a bit of Bugman’s already. ‘You went north into the Wastes. You found Karag Dum.’

 	‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, and took a seat opposite him.

 	‘I heard also that you found your doom,’ said Agnar. ‘In Sylvania.’

 	‘No,’ said Felix, taking the seat to Gotrek’s right as Henrik sat by Agnar and gave him his mug. ‘We were–’ He paused, not wanting to try to explain the tunnels of the Old Ones and Albion and all that had come after. ‘We just got lost.’

 	‘I remember now.’ Henrik raised an eyebrow. ‘But that was years ago. A long time to be aslaying.’

 	Gotrek bristled. ‘What do you mean by that?’

 	Henrik held up his hands. ‘Nothing, Slayer. Only that you must be indomitable in battle.’

 	Gotrek grunted and took another long pull at his Bugman’s.

 	Henrik turned to Felix. ‘And I’m surprised you are alive at all,’ he said. ‘The lot of a rememberer is an uncertain one, is it not?’

 	Felix shrugged, uncomfortable. Henrik was right, of course. Like Agnar, Gotrek was a Slayer, sworn to redeem himself for some secret shame by dying in battle against the deadliest monsters he could find. Felix had become his rememberer when, in the middle of a drunken binge, he had vowed to immortalise his death in an epic poem. Since then he had found himself the victim of a precarious paradox. How was he to stay close enough to Gotrek to faithfully record the details of his doom, and at the same time escape that doom himself? It was a puzzle that he had thought about often since their travels began, but it felt strange discussing it in front of the Slayers. ‘It has its moments,’ he said at last.

 	Henrik laughed. ‘Moments indeed. How many times have I followed Agnar into some deadly melee in order to witness his last moments, only to find that they were likely to be mine too. It’s enough to make one want to stay at the inn and make up a doom out of whole cloth, hey?’

 	He clapped Felix on the shoulder, and Felix smiled weakly, then shot a glance at Agnar to see how he was taking it. He was shaking his head, but did not look particularly put out.

 	‘Always with the jokes, rememberer,’ he said. ‘One day you’ll take it too far and I’ll slay you.’

 	‘Then who would do your remembering for you?’ asked Henrik.

 	Agnar just chuckled and had another drink. Gotrek eyed him with an expression halfway between pity and disgust. Felix felt a similar emotion, and was going to make his excuses when Henrik turned to him again.

 	‘And what brings you to Karak Azgal?’ he asked. ‘Going after some horror of the deeps?’

 	‘A spider called the White Widow,’ said Felix. ‘We heard rumour of it in Ekrund. As big as a steam tank, they said.’

 	‘You’re here for the same?’ asked Gotrek.

 	Henrik laughed. ‘Fear not, Slayer. There are dooms for all in the halls of the Dragon Crag. No, we came hoping to fight a monster of Chaos it is said lurks in the very deepest part of the mines, but another menace has risen that prevents us from descending.’

 	‘What’s that?’ asked Felix.

 	‘Orcs,’ said Agnar.

 	‘Did you not hear old Thorgrin’s criers in the street as you came in?’ asked Henrik.

 	‘“Make your fortune and save the hold”?’ asked Felix.

 	‘That’s the one,’ said Henrik. ‘And it needs saving. Thorgrin is desperate. Apparently, a warboss by the name of Gutgob Stinkfoot has conquered all the orcs that live in the lower depths, and is stirring them up to make war on the hold above. Thorgrin fears Gutgob has the numbers to wipe out Karak Azgal and Deadgate both and he’s recruiting everyone who can hold a weapon to help him make a stand.’

 	‘The orcs stand between us and our dooms?’ asked Gotrek.

 	‘And Thorgrin,’ said Henrik. ‘He has forbidden entry into the hold until the greenskins are dealt with. The only way to get in is to sign up with his throng.’

 	Gotrek snorted. ‘Let me hunt this spider, and I’ll kill any orcs I find on the way.’

 	‘He wants an army,’ said Agnar, shaking his head. ‘Anyone acting alone lessens the troops he can field.’

 	Gotrek growled and took another drink.

 	‘But he’ll let anyone who fights into the depths afterwards, without paying the treasure hunting licence?’ asked Felix.

 	Henrik nodded. ‘It’s not a bad deal. But I know a better one.’

 	‘What’s that?’ asked Gotrek.

 	Henrik jerked his thumb at the bar. ‘Louis Lanquin, who owns this place, has got Thorgrin’s go-ahead to raise a regiment of his own, to fight alongside the dwarfs. He’s paying twice what Thorgrin is paying, and he’ll pay the licence fee for any who are in at the kill.’

 	‘And why would he spend all this coin?’

 	‘A simple matter of economics, friend dwarf,’ said an accented voice behind Felix.

 	Felix turned and saw a richly dressed man with oiled blond hair and lace at his throat and cuffs stepping towards the table. He had a paunch and a double chin, but the breadth of his shoulders and the scar that crossed his nose at the bridge spoke of a more vigorous past. His eyes too had the keen alertness of a fighting man, no matter that he tried to hide it with a merry twinkle.

 	‘I am Louis Lanquin of Quenelles, at your service,’ he said, bowing with a flourish of his hand.

 	Felix inclined his head politely. ‘Felix Jaeger and Gotrek Gurnisson, at yours,’ he said. ‘And my compliments to your cellar. We were surprised to find Bugman’s here.’

 	Lanquin quirked a smile. ‘Another enticement to woo men – and dwarfs – to my cause. Those who sign with me will drink free in my establishment for the rest of their lives.’

 	‘Why?’ asked Gotrek again.

 	Lanquin put his hand to his breast. ‘Thane Thorgrin is not the only one to have a stake in the survival of this town. The dwarfs may rob the treasure seekers coming and going with their tolls for entry and their taxes on what is taken from the hold, but there is still enough left in their pockets afterwards for a poor innkeeper to make a living. I do well here, and I would like to continue to do well, and I do not have the confidence that Thorgrin’s few recruits will guarantee that. Thus–’ He produced a stack of four gold coins between his fingers as if by magic, then set it on the table. ‘I am willing to make a substantial outlay now, in order to assure continued return in the years to come.’

 	He divided the stack in two and slid two gold coins towards Gotrek, and two towards Felix. ‘Monsieurs Agnar and Henrik have signed on. What say you join them? With warriors of your calibre in our ranks, we are sure to win.’

 	Felix looked to Gotrek. This was his to answer.

 	The Slayer stared at the gold with a dwarf’s usual reverence, but at last he shook his head. ‘A Slayer who finds his doom needs neither gold nor ale afterwards. Your reward is meaningless.’

 	Agnar blinked at this statement, as if he hadn’t considered it that way before, and Lanquin looked as if he were going to make another argument, but finally he shrugged and took back his gold.

 	‘As you will, friend dwarf,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you will change your mind. Until then, drink your fill. It is on the house.’

 	Felix groaned. Giving free beer to a Slayer was sure to lead to fighting and property damage, and the prospect of paying more gold to Lanquin than he had offered in order to repair tables, chairs and broken windows loomed large before him, but to his surprise, Gotrek was practically abstemious for the rest of the night. He only drank ten mugs of Bugman’s, and did little more than exchange war stories with Agnar. Felix did the same with Henrik, enjoying himself despite the mocking tone the man put into every tale he told. Henrik might be a blowhard, but he knew Felix’s every concern and complaint. He laughed at jokes and stories that only another rememberer would understand. He had known the loneliness and the homesickness and the cold nights in the middle of nowhere. He had suffered through the rages and black moods of his companion. He had made the hair’s breadth escapes and survived the wounds and fevers that were an inescapable part of following a Slayer. Henrik might not be Felix’s friend, but he was his brother. That could not be denied.

 	3


 	After sleeping the night at the Grail, Gotrek and Felix woke to a light but steady rain that soaked them to the skin as they trudged up the muddy zigzag path to Skalf’s Hold, the dwarfs’ above-ground settlement built upon the ruins of Karak Azgal.

 	Walking with Gotrek through the dragon-mouthed gate in the thick stone walls at the top of the broad plateau, Felix was struck with wonder. There could not have been a greater contrast between the town on the hill and the town in the valley. Within the hold’s walls was a tidy grid of neatly paved, rain-washed streets, all lined with squat stone houses and commercial buildings of dwarfish design, and all immaculately cared for. There was no trash in the gutters, and the only smell was that of someone baking bread. Felix had seen dwarf riches before – vast, gilded chambers deep underground – but this modest holdfast in the middle of the moonscape of the Worlds Edge Mountains struck him as more ostentatious than the most lavish guild hall. It was as if some nobleman had allowed his beautiful daughter to walk naked and unescorted through the worst slums of Altdorf. She might not show any outward display of wealth, but the noble’s confidence in her safety spoke of great reserves of hidden power.

 	Gotrek grumbled under his breath as they walked towards the keep that rose in the centre of the town. ‘Not proper. A dressed-up defeat.’

 	‘What do you mean?’ asked Felix.

 	Gotrek snorted. ‘The kin of Skalf Dragonslayer lost Karak Azgal, and couldn’t win it back. Instead they built a town on top of it and charged others to do their fighting for them.’ He flashed a thick-fingered hand at the prosperous houses. ‘All this was built not on mining or smithing. It was built on fees and taxes taken from the fools who come to seek their fortune below.’

 	Felix looked around again, seeing it in a new light. ‘So it’s no different than Deadgate.’

 	‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘A marble-walled cesspit instead of a clapboard one.’

 	The streets around the town’s central keep were filled with heavily armed dwarfs with the dragon of Karak Azgal on their shields, as well as a more motley collection of mercenaries, adventurers and fighting men, all hunching stoically in the rain. The square to the north of the keep had been turned into a makeshift military camp, with tents of all shapes and descriptions lined up in ragged rows. Recruiters were out in force, offering Thane Thorgrin’s coin to fight the greenskins, and ale and food sellers were carting their wares around in barrows and doing brisk business with the troops and applicants.

 	Gotrek ignored it all and strode through the open doors of the keep itself. A table had been set up under a tent in the middle of the courtyard, and would-be warriors were lined up to make their mark in the recruitment book. Gotrek ignored this too and stumped towards a door that led into the keep itself. The dwarf guards who stood on either side of it stepped in his way, and a dwarf sergeant crossed to him, his hand on his axe.

 	‘What’s your business here, Slayer?’

 	‘I want a licence to enter the hold,’ said Gotrek. ‘I seek the cave spider.’

 	‘Licences are not being issued,’ said the sergeant. ‘Not until Stinkfoot’s been dealt with. You want to go down, join up. You’ll have plenty of fighting.’

 	‘I don’t care about your fight. I go to my doom.’

 	The sergeant’s eyes went cold. ‘You don’t want to help your race? You don’t want to help your brothers save their hold?’

 	Gotrek spat at his feet. ‘You don’t want to save the hold. You want to save your little sky-bare surface town so you can go on selling licences and candle stubs.’

 	‘What did you say?’ The sergeant’s eyes had gone from ice to fire in a blink.

 	Felix swallowed and dropped his hand to his hilt. If this came to blows it would be bad. Gotrek might find his doom at the hands of fellow dwarfs, or worse, he might slaughter half the settlement.

 	‘If you saved the hold,’ continued Gotrek. ‘You’d lose all your business. You’d have to work for a living.’

 	‘Get out,’ said the sergeant through clenched teeth. ‘Before I throw you out. We don’t want help from the likes of you.’

 	‘On the contrary,’ said a voice from behind him. ‘A Slayer is just what I need.’

 	The sergeant looked around as a white-bearded dwarf in gromril plate stepped through the door into the rain, followed by a retinue of dwarf Hammerers. The sergeant and the guards saluted him but he looked only at Gotrek. He had a bulging gut beneath a breastplate that had been custom-made to accommodate it, and a round, pink face under his white beard. He looked like a shop keep, but the fine armour and the deference of the guards said otherwise.

 	‘Thane Thorgrin,’ said the sergeant. ‘I was just removing this–’

 	‘Stand down, Sergeant Holdborn,’ said the thane, then nodded to Gotrek. ‘Your assessment of the situation is harsh but accurate, Slayer. We have profited from the loss of the hold, but better that than abandon it altogether. The sale of all those candle stubs will one day allow us to raise an army strong enough to purge the depths once and for all.’

 	‘And meanwhile you let greenskins nest in the halls of your ancestors and grant licences to fools to be eaten by them.’

 	The rotund thane smiled. ‘I have often thought that it was much easier for a dwarf to be uncompromising when he intended to die at his earlier opportunity.’

 	Gotrek snorted and turned back towards the gates. ‘I’ll go back to the Bretonnian. At least he’s an honest thief.’

 	‘Go if you wish,’ said Thorgrin as Felix started after the Slayer. ‘But I can give you one thing the innkeeper can’t.’

 	Gotrek kept walking.

 	‘The lair of the White Widow,’ called the thane. ‘My scouts have found its location.’

 	Gotrek stopped, then turned back.

 	‘Help us defeat the greenskins,’ said Thorgrin. ‘And I will tell you where it lives.’

 	‘Where do I sign?’ said Gotrek.

 	By the time Gotrek and Felix had penned their names in Thorgrin’s book and received his coin, and been told to report back to the keep the next morning before sunrise for the thane’s big push into the hold, the earlier light rain had become a downpour. It came straight down in sheets so thick it was impossible to see more than five paces in any direction, and the gutters of Skalf’s Hold’s cobbled streets were swift-running streams a foot deep.

 	Deadgate had no cobbled streets or gutters, and was consequently a swamp. By the time Gotrek and Felix had made their way down the zigzag path and passed through the settlement’s eastern gate, they were slogging through knee-high mud, and the streets had emptied completely, the doors and shutters of the ramshackle inns and houses closed tight against the torrent. The place might have been a ghost town.

 	Even so, Felix was surprised when he started seeing ghosts. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a hooded figure hunched in the mouth of an alley to their right, but when he looked properly, it was gone. There was nothing but rain and a pile of barrels. Another figure appeared at the corner of a building, but it too vanished when he turned towards it.

 	Gotrek stopped in the middle of the flooded street and glared around, peering out from under his sodden crest, which had flopped down over his one eye. ‘We are being hunted.’

 	‘Haunted?’

 	‘Hunted.’ He lifted his rune axe from his back and readied it.

 	‘Only two streets to the Grail,’ said Felix, drawing his sword. ‘Should we make a break for it?’

 	‘We’ll have to get through them first,’ said Gotrek.

 	Felix followed the Slayer’s gaze. Five hooded figures were appearing out of the obscuring torrent like spectres materialising from the ether. Unlike spectres, however, they were armed with very real looking swords. He heard a splash behind him and the scrape of steel. Four more were blocking their retreat, and more stepped from the alleys on either side.

 	Felix went on guard and raised his voice to be heard over the rain. ‘What do you want?’

 	‘To get paid,’ said one.

 	And with that, they attacked.

 	4


 	Felix faced out behind Gotrek and braced for the ambushers’ attack. The Slayer, however, didn’t wait. He roared towards the charging men, churning the mud and whirling his axe around his head like the blade of a dwarf gyrocopter. Busy with his own assailants, Felix didn’t see what happened next, but he heard the clang of steel meeting steel and the sick chop of steel meeting flesh, followed by the shrieks and gasps of butchered men, and knew Gotrek was faring well.

 	He, on the other hand, was in some difficulty. The men he faced were not great swordsmen by any stretch, but there were a lot of them, and they all had one target, while he had many. He flashed around with Karaghul and knocked aside two blades, but three more were sweeping towards him. He jerked back and left to avoid them, and nearly pitched face-first into the mud as it sucked at his boots.

 	A bright bite of pain flared above his elbow as one of the blades nicked him, and two more swords stabbed for his face as he stumbled. With a desperate swat, he batted them aside, then crashed into the men who had wielded them, more by accident than design.

 	The first went down at the impact, but Felix clung to the second and spun him around, just in time for him to take the blades of two of his comrades in the stomach. Felix shoved the gutted man forward, then slashed over his shoulder with Karaghul and caught one of the assassins in the neck and the other on the back of the hand. As they staggered back, the man who had fallen tried to push himself up under Felix’s feet. Felix chopped down and he sank into the mud, red staining the brown.

 	The others came in again, more wary now, six of them, and Felix backed away, sword out, tearing off his cloak with his free hand. The heavy wool was saturated with water and made him feel as if he were being dragged down by the shoulders. He wrapped a few folds of it around his wrist for a buckler and held it out to the side.

 	‘Come on, then,’ he said.

 	But the men were staring past him, faces uncertain, and when he dared a glance over his shoulder, he knew why. One of Gotrek’s attackers was toppling, headless, into the mud, and the bodies of five others floated face down in spreading pools of crimson. The slayer was backing up two more, one of which was holding a bent sword in front of him and weeping, while the other was missing his left forearm and clutching the stump. Two more were fleeing into the rain.

 	Felix grinned savagely at the men who hesitated before him. ‘Aye. And if you kill me, he’ll really be mad.’

 	He had to give them credit. Three of them actually came at him again. Felix slapped the leftmost one with his drenched cloak, knocking him into the centre one, then parried the blade of the right-hand one and backhanded him across the arm.

 	The man stumbled away, hissing and dropping his sword, and Felix turned on the other two, whirling his cloak in their faces and stabbing under it. They leapt back, then kept retreating, staring over his shoulder.

 	Felix looked back and saw Gotrek slogging through the mud towards him, spattered in blood, with brains dripping from the blade of his axe.

 	Felix cursed and splashed after them. ‘Stop!’ he called. ‘Stand where you are! Who sent you? Who is paying you?’

 	They turned and ran without answering and he splashed after them, but floundered in the mud and went to his knees as they vanished into the downpour. With a sigh he struggled to his feet and slogged back to Gotrek, who was turning the bodies of the fallen face-up in the mud and pulling back their hoods.

 	‘Any left alive?’

 	The slayer shook his head. ‘Those we didn’t kill drowned.’

 	Felix looked at the uncovered faces of their attackers. He recognised none of them. They were all of the type common to Deadgate – lean, scarred men who looked hungry enough to kill their own mothers for meat. Well, they were sated now.

 	‘Any idea who they were, or what they wanted?’

 	Gotrek grabbed one by the ankle. ‘No. But I know who might.’

 	He started down the swampy street towards the Grail, dragging one of the corpses through the mud behind him.

 	Louis Lanquin wrinkled his nose as he looked at the dead man lying in a spreading puddle of filth and blood in the middle of his tavern.

 	‘He is no acquaintance of mine,’ he said. ‘And I wish you had asked me to come out to see him, rather than bringing him in and dirtying my floor.’

 	The place was crowded with patrons seeking shelter from the rain, and they were all staring at Felix, Gotrek and the corpse. Felix noticed that Agnar and Henrik were not among them. Maybe they were still sleeping it off. Agnar had outdrunk Gotrek three to one the night before.

 	‘You didn’t pay him to kill us?’ growled Gotrek.

 	The Bretonnian laughed. ‘My friends, if I had wanted to kill you, I could have poisoned your Bugman’s last night, or murdered you as you were sleeping it off.’ He signalled two bouncers and gestured to the body, then looked back to the Slayer. ‘There are many factions here in Deadgate, and more in Skalf’s Hold, and some of them do not want the dwarfs to win. If they thought your deaths would further their cause, they would not hesitate.’

 	With practiced speed, the bouncers brought a sheet of canvas, laid it beside the dead man and rolled him onto it. As they dragged him towards the door, a servant came in with a mop and bucket and began cleaning up the mud. Within a minute, all trace of the corpse’s visit was gone.

 	‘I bear you no ill will for suspecting me,’ said Lanquin. ‘They who have just fought for their lives are bound to look on the world with some mistrust.’ He waved to the bar. ‘Please. You are welcome to drink as before, on the house. Think of it as an apology for how shabbily my adopted town has treated you thus far.’

 	Felix looked at Gotrek. The Slayer shook his head.

 	‘We would not presume upon your hospitality further, monsieur,’ Felix said. ‘You have already been too generous. Thank you all the same.’

 	Lanquin shrugged. ‘As you will, and I wish you a more restful time wherever you go.’

 	He bowed as Gotrek and Felix strode to the door and splashed out into the rain again.

 	‘He’s lying,’ said Gotrek. ‘Those killers were his.’

 	‘You can’t know that,’ said Felix.

 	‘I don’t have to know it, manling. I know it.’

 	‘But why would he want us dead? Because we took Thorgrin’s coin instead of his? That doesn’t make sense. Don’t they both want the same thing? Why would Lanquin kill anyone who aimed to fight the orcs?’

 	‘Maybe he wants the orcs to win,’ said Gotrek.

 	Felix looked at him askance. ‘That makes even less sense. You heard him last night. It is a simple question of economics. He needs Deadgate to survive just as much as Thorgrin does.’

 	Gotrek shrugged. ‘Sense or no sense, I sleep with one hand on my axe tonight.’

 	‘Aye,’ said Felix. ‘Aye.’

 	After spending a night at an inn called the Palace, Gotrek and Felix woke, mildly surprised they hadn’t been attacked in their sleep, and returned before sunrise to Thane Thorgrin’s keep. They were not alone. The courtyard of the keep was packed with dwarfs of Karak Azgal’s throng, neat blocks of axe-wielding warriors, Thunderers with their blunderbusses over their shoulders, and Ironbreakers clad head-to-toe in heavy plate armour. Behind the dwarfs were a less orderly mass of human mercenaries – a mix of hardened adventurers, greedy treasure seekers and nervous shopkeeps, come to protect their properties and investments in Deadgate. They were divided into squads behind more seasoned captains, and were haphazardly armed and armoured. Nevertheless, there were a fair amount of them. Felix reckoned that, all told, there were roughly three hundred dwarfs, and two hundred mercenaries lined up and awaiting orders, and to his surprise, Agnar and Henrik were among them.

 	The grizzled Slayer kept his eyes on the floor and seemed to weave on his feet as Felix and Gotrek crossed to them, while Henrik gave them a chagrined look.

 	‘Agnar took what you said about gold and free ale to heart,’ he said. ‘So we followed your example.’

 	‘A Slayer who meets his doom doesn’t need those things,’ said Agnar, still not looking up. ‘And I didn’t trust the Bretonnian.’

 	‘Aye,’ said Henrik with a snort. ‘Too nice by half. We’ll fight for Thorgrin and let fate lead us, as we always have.’

 	‘We’re glad to have you at our side,’ said Felix, though he wasn’t sure he was speaking for Gotrek. The Slayer just grunted and glared into the middle distance with his single eye while they waited for orders. Of course, that was his expression whether happy, angry or indifferent, so it was difficult to tell.

 	A short while later, Louis Lanquin arrived with the troops he had recruited, a force of about a hundred men, and was directed by Thorgrin’s lieutenants to squeeze them in on the left side of the courtyard. He bowed with stiff politeness to the Slayers, then kept his eyes forward. It seemed to Felix that the innkeeper had done better with his recruiting than the thane had. Though there were fewer of them, most of his troops looked harder and more experienced than the humans Thorgrin had managed to recruit, and better equipped. He seemed to have spared no expense in outfiting them with quality arms and armour.

 	‘A substantial outlay to assure a continued return,’ murmured Felix.

 	With a rumble, the doors to the inner keep opened, and Thane Thorgrin strode out onto the steps with his Hammerers and banner carrier behind him. He saluted the assembly, then raised his voice.

 	‘Citizens and friends of Karak Azgal, today begins a great venture. With this great army of dwarfs and men, we will shatter the alliance of tribes that Gutgob Stinkfoot has bullied together, and beat back the greenskin menace for decades to come. The safety and security of the Dragon Crag will be assured, and we will all be able to get back to business as usual.’

 	Gotrek snorted, and a few of the surrounding dwarfs looked around at him, but none spoke.

 	‘It will not be an easy fight, nor a pleasant one,’ continued Thorgrin. ‘But I am confident that our superior tactics and weaponry will win the day. We intend to lead the orcs into a slaughterhouse from which there is no escape, and you will be the butchers!’

 	There was a cheer, mostly from the dwarfs, and Thorgrin waved for silence.

 	‘A word of warning, before we enter the depths, to those not of our throng,’ he said. ‘During this war, our laws pertaining to treasure hunting remain in effect. All volunteers leaving the hold will be searched, and any treasures found are subject to the usual taxes. Any treasures deemed to be important relics of Karak Azgal’s history will be confiscated. Anyone attempting to hide treasures from the authorities will be imprisoned. You are already being paid handsomely, and given opportunities to search the depths not normally granted. We will not take kindly to those who attempt to take advantage of our generosity.’

 	There was a general grumbling, but nobody made any open complaint, and Thorgrin continued, outlining his battle plans and the responsibilities of each of his sub-commanders. Felix didn’t get to hear most of it, however, for only a moment later, Holdborn, the dwarf sergeant who had butted heads with Gotrek, stepped up to him and Agnar and gave a curt bow. ‘Slayers,’ he said. ‘If you would come with me. Thane Thorgrin has a special duty he would like to give you.’

 	Gotrek barked a laugh. ‘Does he want us to unclog his jakes?’

 	Sergeant Holdborn gave him a cold smile. ‘I only wish. It is a clearance hardly more pleasant, though. This way.’

 	5


 	Gotrek, Agnar, Felix and Henrik followed Sergeant Holdborn through a side door into the keep, then down a narrow stair into an underground chamber surrounding a great shaft that slanted into the earth. A mechanism of pulleys and chains for hauling things up and down the incline hunched at the top of the shaft, and a crew of dwarfs was fixing a stout, wheeled cannon to a hook. As Sergeant Holdborn crossed to them, they began to let out the chain and lower it into the depths.

 	Holdborn nodded to the leader of the crew, a burly dwarf in a leather apron with a tightly braided beard and a handkerchief tied around his bald head, then turned to Felix, Henrik and the Slayers.

 	‘This is Engineer Migrunssun. He and his crew are tasked with bringing cannon to the old firing platform in the minehead of the eastern gem shafts. They will be part of our enfilade when the battle starts. Unfortunately, the minehead is overrun with ghouls. This is where you come in.’

 	Gotrek and Agnar nodded, pleased, while Felix swallowed. He noticed Henrik was looking pale as well.

 	‘Thick as maggots on a week-old corpse,’ said Migrunsson, grinning. ‘And we’ll need to clear them out completely. Can’t have ghouls trying to eat you while you’re aiming a field piece. Distracting.’

 	‘You expect the orcs to come up through the mine shafts, then?’ asked Henrik. ‘You’re training your guns on them?’

 	Holdborn shook his head. ‘That is the other duty of the engineers. They will be caving in the shafts, among other passages. Sealing them off, so the greenskins can’t come up behind us.’

 	‘The firing platform looks two ways,’ said Migrunsson. ‘It’s a fortified room above an archway between the minehead chamber and the Great Hall of the Guild of Jewellers, and it has gun ports into both rooms. Thorgrin plans to make the great hall his field of battle. We’ll poke our muzzles through the windows up top and be able to rake the orc flanks from an untouchable emplacement.’

 	‘Untouchable?’ asked Gotrek. ‘What’s to stop the greenskins coming through the archway from the great hall?’

 	‘Ah, well,’ said Migrunsson. ‘That arch is sealed off. Has been since the ghouls started congregating in the minehead. The orcs won’t get through it. Not without a battering ram.’

 	‘But with the arch sealed off,’ said Sergeant Holdborn, ‘neither will you. You’ll have to go the long way around.’

 	‘Naturally,’ said Felix under his breath.

 	Henrik grinned bleakly at him.

 	The dwarf cannon crews pushed a heavily laden wagon towards the slanting shaft. It was loaded with blackpowder barrels and crates of cannon shot. A smaller wagon rolled out behind it, piled with food, firewood and other supplies. Felix’s eyes widened. How far was it to the eastern minehead?

 	Catching his look, Migrunsson chuckled. ‘It’s only a few hours’ march, rememberer. But we might be waiting a long time for the greenskins to accept our invitation to dance.’

 	‘I hope you find your doom, Slayer,’ said Sergeant Holdborn, saluting Gotrek. ‘It’ll save me seeing your face again.’

 	Gotrek growled at his back as he turned and strode off. ‘It’ll save your hide, watchman.’

 	The chain stopped rattling off the winch and then went slack. Migrunsson started winding it back up and nodded to Felix, Henrik and the Slayers.

 	‘Head on down,’ he said. ‘Two more carts and we’re off.’

 	Gotrek and Agnar started down the slant shoulder to shoulder. Felix and Henrik hesitated, then went after them.

 	‘Once more, eh?’ asked Henrik.

 	‘At least,’ said Felix.

 	The walls of the shaft closed in around him and a chill wind blew up from below. He shivered, though from cold or premonition, he could not tell.

 	Sturdy little mine ponies were hitched in teams of two to the cannons and the wagons once they reached the bottom of the incline, and soon the artillery train was under way. Gotrek, Felix, Agnar and Henrik went first, followed by Migrunsson and the cannon crews – three dwarfs to a gun – then the guns themselves, the powder wagon and supply wagon, each with a dwarf driver, and the last with a dwarf field surgeon, and lastly, a rearguard of six Thunderers, who would be adding musket fire to the heavy shot of the cannons when they reached the emplacement.

 	‘The long way around’ was long indeed, and treacherous. Engineer Migrunsson assured them that things were much worse further down, but Felix thought that this first ‘civilized’ level was bad enough to be getting along with. They went by way of service passages and side tunnels, which, being dwarf work, were still wide enough for six dwarfs to walk abreast, and three times as tall as Felix – at least they would have been had they been in good repair. Unfortunately, they were not.

 	In the light of the torches that swung from the wagons, Felix saw everywhere signs of battle and cataclysm. Walls were slumped into rubble around blackened craters. Huge stones had fallen from the ceiling. In some places, the ceiling had come down entirely and the train had to skirt the blockage by way of smaller tunnels. In other places, the floor had buckled so steeply that all the dwarfs had to get behind the cannons and push, to help the ponies get them over the hump.

 	Though Felix saw no orcs or ghouls or other horrors, their spoor was everywhere – gnawed human bones, piles of scat, mounds of rotting rubbish, a long streak of dried blood where a body had been dragged – and he heard strange moans and screeches echoing out of dark cross tunnels. There were signs of human intrusion as well – holes broken through walls with pickaxe or explosives, abandoned lanterns and gloves and canteens scattered about, dead ‘gold-hunting canaries’ in tiny wicker cages, messages scrawled at intersections in many different languages.

 	‘Go not this way. Giant rats.’

 	‘Anya, I waited, but they’re coming. I love you.’

 	‘Merde. Je tourne en rond.’

 	There was a place where the ceiling had bulged down to within six feet of the floor, as if melted by some terrible heat, and the drivers had to lead the ponies through for it was too low to ride on the wagons. Felix’s hair rose on his scalp as he ducked under that bulge and he felt a sick prickling under his skin that made him want to scrub himself with lye.

 	Migrunsson led them through all of it as if they were going on a walk through a meadow, turning left and right without hesitation and humming a jaunty little marching song. Henrik sang too. Not the same song, but a tuneless little tune like a nursery rhyme, though so soft Felix couldn’t make out the words. It began to grate on his nerves after a while, but he didn’t want to start an argument, so he didn’t say anything. Agnar walked in silence, drinking from a canteen that Felix was almost certain didn’t contain water.

 	They walked until Felix got hungry, and quite a while after that, but finally Migrunsson put up a hand and slowed to a stop.

 	‘Eat something and have a drink,’ he said. ‘We are close to the ghoul nest now. You’ll need your strength.’

 	The cannon crews and drivers took biscuit and dried meat from their packs, and lined up for ale poured from a keg on the supply wagon.

 	‘Ghouls started biding in the minehead twenty years or so ago,’ Migrunssun told the Slayers as they knocked back a few mugs. ‘Some master of the dark arts set up house there, stealing bodies of dead adventurers and performing weird rites upon them, but he didn’t last long. A band of heroes led by a hammer priest went down there and caved his head in, then burned his body. Ever since then, though, ghouls seem to be drawn to the place. It’s like they can still smell the black magic in the stones.’

 	‘And you haven’t tried to cleanse the place?’ asked Henrik.

 	‘Oh aye,’ said Migrunsson. ‘Many a time. But they always come back. Worse than roaches.’

 	When the dwarfs had finished their meat and drink, they drew their hand axes and jammed their helms down on their heads and murmured vows to their ancestors. The Slayers didn’t pray, just rolled their necks and limbered up their arms in preparation for the fight to come.

 	Agnar’s weapon was a long axe as tall as he was, with a sharply curved head and a vicious spike at the heel. He and Henrik drank one last mug of ale each, and Henrik refilled Agnar’s canteen from the keg for him. When they were finished, Henrik drew a heavy broadsword and made the sign of Sigmar’s hammer on his chest.

 	‘I’ve never quite got over it,’ the rememberer murmured to Felix as they went to stand behind the Slayers in the line of march. ‘The nerves before a battle.’

 	‘Nor I,’ said Felix.

 	Engineer Migrunsson whistled the column forward and the Slayers strode ahead into the darkness beyond the wagon lanterns. Agnar was listing a little as he walked.

 	The smell came first – a faint sourness that wrinkled the nose and clung to the back of the throat. A minute later it was an eye-watering reek, equal parts rotting corpse and unwashed beggar, and as the flags of the tunnel became littered with bones, excrement and torn clothes, it swelled to a choking miasma of death that made Felix wish he had not eaten anything at their stop. Henrik turned and vomited against the wall, and the dwarfs soaked their kerchiefs in ale and tied them over their noses and mouths before continuing.

 	The glow of a fire flickered on the walls of the tunnel ahead, and a hunched form was briefly silhouetted. It raised a misshapen head towards the oncoming company, then darted into an open archway, gibbering warnings.

 	‘Through there is the minehead chamber,’ said Migrunsson, priming a flintlock. ‘Their home sweet home.’

 	Ahead, the passage echoed with howls of rage and the slap of bare feet on stone. Felix’s stomach slid into his guts as he watched churning shadows looming larger against the tunnel wall. Then they appeared. A seething tide of fish-white horrors poured out of the archway and bounded at the dwarfs: long-armed, crook-backed subhumans – males and females – their slavering mouths filled with sharp teeth and their eyes filled with nothing but hunger.

 	The nearest went down to Migrunsson’s musket, its head exploding in a crimson shower, but the rest vaulted its toppling body and surged ahead, clawing and shrieking and snapping their jaws. Gotrek and Agnar charged forward to meet them, and dismantled half a dozen into bloody chunks with their first swings, but the tunnel was too wide for the two Slayers to stop them all, and dozens more swarmed past to launch themselves at Felix, Henrik and Migrunsson’s cannon crews.

 	Hook-clawed hands slashed at Felix’s face and grabbed at his arms. Saw-toothed mouths shrieked at him, nearly overwhelming him with breath that smelled like putrid meat. He lashed out with Karaghul, gagging, and carved great wounds into the horrors, cleaving flesh and shattering bones and knocking them to the floor. Beside him, Henrik fought with a wide-eyed determination that showed both skill and terror. Felix guessed he looked about the same.

 	Around them, the dwarfs met the ghouls’ crazed flailing with practised formation, spreading across the width of the tunnel and hewing with their hand axes like threshers advancing down a field. Felix and Henrik kept pace with them, content to take the protection of their flanks and let the Slayers do their butcher’s work out in front of the line.

 	Watching them, Felix was once again stunned by the speed and savage fury of their kind. They spun like drunken tops, axes blurring and red crests whipping about, and the ghouls seemed to just fall apart around them. White limbs flew in arcs of blood. Scarred heads toppled from bony shoulders. Guts spilled from torn torsos. Agnar was not quite as fast or strong as Gotrek, but his long axe had a greater reach, and he whirled it around him like a fan blade, lopping heads and crushing skulls. Gotrek got in closer, shearing legs and splitting ribcages, and was soon crimson from head to toe.

 	With this red whirlwind at its head, the dwarf column chopped its way to the archway and through it into the minehead, a high, firelit staging room with a huge black opening on the west wall and a smaller on the north. On the east wall, a wide flight of steps rose to a door above a sealed arch – the firing platform. They had reached their destination.

 	Scores of ghouls were rising from where they crouched around feeble fires and loped across the filth-slicked floor for the dwarfs. Beyond them, the flames showed shoulder-high heaps of bones and clothing and broken implements piled in the corners, and crusted rag-mounds that Felix feared were beds. Bodies lay half-eaten near the fires – some human, some dwarf, some ghoul. The death reek wafting from them was so thick Felix could almost see it.

 	‘Hold the cannons in the passage!’ called Migrunsson.

 	The driver of the first cannon parked it side-on to the door as the dwarfs followed Gotrek and Agnar into the room. The other drivers ranked up in front of the cannon, protecting it, while the Thunderers who had been the rearguard climbed on top of it, straddling the barrel, and began firing their muskets over the dwarf line into the ghouls with a steady, ceaseless rate of fire.

 	Without the walls of the tunnel to protect their flanks, the dwarfs were quickly surrounded, and fought in a tight square against the leaping, shrieking ghouls. Even so, and outnumbered two to one, the battle seemed a foregone victory for Migrunsson’s troops. Not one dwarf had yet fallen, and the floor was littered with the dismembered corpses of ghouls. Between the dwarf line’s steady winnowing, the Thunderers’ sniping, and the Slayers’ mad slaughter, the gibbering fiends would soon fall.

 	Felix shattered a ghoul’s clavicle with a heavy down-stroke then glanced at Henrik, fighting beside him in the dwarf square. The rememberer fought with a tight smile lining his face.

 	‘Better once it starts, eh?’ said Felix.

 	‘Much,’ said Henrik. ‘Anticipation is always worse than–’ His head lifted. ‘What was that?’

 	Felix cocked an ear as he fought on. He didn’t hear anything other than the shrieks of the ghouls and the butcher shop chop of steel cutting flesh – or did he? Was that a rumble he felt through his feet? The cannons weren’t rolling. The dwarfs weren’t charging. What was shaking the ground?

 	Then, above the rumble, he heard a roar. Not the shrill howling of ghouls, but a deeper, angrier sound.

 	‘Retreat to the door!’ called Engineer Migrunsson. ‘Something’s coming from the mines!’

 	Felix gutted another ghoul and stole a look back towards the great square portal of the minehead, beyond which a broad ramp descended into darkness – except the ramp was no longer dark. Fire moved in its depths now, and huge shadows loomed on its bare rock walls.

 	Henrik groaned. ‘Sigmar’s balls, one thing at a time!’

 	His prayer, if prayer it was, was not answered. As the dwarfs began an orderly retreat towards the door, up from the ramp poured a flood of armoured green brutes, all howling a savage battle cry.

 	6


 	‘Waaagh!’

 	Two score orcs charged for the dwarfs in a foaming, yellow-eyed rage, huge cleavers and crude axes swinging from fists bigger than Felix’s head. The ghouls scattered before them, shrieking in terror, as the dwarfs continued to retreat to the door. The Slayers, however, answered the greenskins’ roar with one of their own, and chopped through the fleeing ghouls to meet them.

 	A massive monster with a crude helmet that seemed to have been nailed to his head broke from the pack and smashed down at them with a mace like a beer keg stuck on the end of a fence post. They dodged aside as it shattered the flagstones, and Agnar hewed at its elbow, splintering the bone. Gotrek leapt onto its forward leg and buried his rune axe in its skull, splitting its spiked helm and its face. The orc toppled backwards, dead, and Gotrek leapt from its falling body into the mob, slashing around in a frenzy. Agnar fell in beside him, matching him stroke for stroke and seeming no worse for the constant stream of drink he had poured into himself.

 	After that there was no time for Felix to look to anything but his own survival. More than half the orcs had swept past the Slayers, and Felix, Henrik and Migrunsson’s dwarfs only had a second to form up in the door before they ploughed into their line like a green avalanche.

 	Felix ducked a swipe by a cleaver and stabbed the orc who wielded it with Karaghul, but the weight and momentum of the hulking savage drove him back into the hall until he crashed into the wheel of the gun carriage behind him. To either side of him it was the same. Henrik was flat on his back, an orc careening past him with its guts looping to the floor. Migrunsson was pressed against the muzzle of the gun, exchanging blows with an orc more than twice his height. Two of his dwarfs were dead, cut down and trampled under heavy, steel-shod boots.

 	Nevertheless, the line held. When the orcs’ impetus ran out, the dwarfs were still standing, and still fighting, while the Thunderers atop the first cannon fired into the faces of the orcs, sending them reeling back with shattered jaws and burst eyes.

 	Felix knocked aside a cleaver that would have split Henrik in two and hauled him to his feet.

 	‘Much obliged,’ Henrik gasped, and impaled the neck of an orc that was aiming for Felix.

 	‘Likewise,’ said Felix.

 	He cut the legs out from under the orc that Henrik had spitted, but as he spun to slash at the next, he heard the crack of a gun from inside the minehead chamber. He would have mistaken it for an echo from the dwarfs’ muskets, except that he saw, through the orcs’ flailing limbs, Gotrek stagger, and a blossom of blood appear on his broad left shoulder.

 	Felix choked in surprise as the slayer recovered and fought on. Someone had shot Gotrek! But who? Orcs didn’t use guns. Felix tried to see further into the minehead chamber, but the row of brawling monsters blocked his view.

 	‘Curse you! Let me by!’

 	In a panic, Felix fought forward, stepping out from the dwarf lines and driving back the orcs before him. He chopped through the fingers of one, then shattered its knees as its cleaver fell from its stumps. He hacked open the skull of another that had taken a dwarf musket ball to the shoulder.

 	‘You madman,’ called Henrik. ‘You’re exposing your flanks!’

 	‘Someone’s shooting at the slayers!’

 	As the next orc fell, Felix was afraid he would see Gotrek and Agnar with their heads blown off, but they were still fighting back to back in the centre of a dozen roaring greenskins, with a dozen more sprawled across the floor amongst the white corpses of the ghouls the slayers had slain before.

 	Another shot came, and one of the orcs fighting Agnar stumbled, howling. Felix turned at the muzzle flash, an afterimage of a spindly, kneeling figure holding a long-barrelled gun etched into the backs of his eyes. The shot had come from the mine shaft. He tried to see into it, but it was too dark.

 	‘Engineer Migrunsson!’ he called. ‘Someone’s shooting from the minehead.’

 	Migrunsson looked, and apparently saw the gunner.

 	‘Thunderers!’ he barked. ‘The minehead! Get that shooter!’

 	Two of the Thunderers turned from blasting the orc line and fired on the ramp. Felix could not see the result, but they must have struck true, for no more shots came from the darkness.

 	Another dwarf fell at the line, his chest caved in by an orc axe, and the greenskins pressed for the gap. Three Thunderers jumped down to fill it, swinging their gun butts, but one died before his feet touched the ground, and the other two were driven back into the cannon.

 	‘Close up!’ called Migrunsson. ‘Keep them out!’

 	An orc broke through the line and leaped onto the gun to smash the rest of the Thunderers. Felix thought it was the end, but just as the greenskins cut down the closest gunner, a high shrieking shivered the air and the ghouls, their courage restored, flooded back into the chamber, howling for vengeance.

 	They fell upon the orcs first, and their interference ended the battle. Attacked from front and back, the orcs quickly fell to the slayers’ axes and the steady murder of Migrunsson’s line. Sadly, the thanks the ghouls received for this timely intervention was their extinction. With the orcs dead, Felix, Henrik and the dwarfs fell upon them and slaughtered them all. Even those that turned and fled were shot down by the Thunderers before they reached the doors.

 	As the dwarfs saw to their dead and Migrunssun called for the surgeon, Felix and Henrik looked to the slayers. Agnar was on one knee, catching his breath and drinking from his canteen, while Gotrek was examining his shoulder wound, one of many he had received in the fight.

 	Henrik shook his head. ‘Your Gotrek certainly slays his share, doesn’t he? And then some.’

 	Felix glanced at him. It seemed an odd thing to say. ‘He likes to fight, yes. As does Agnar, I see.’

 	‘A bit,’ said Henrik, then crossed to the old slayer. ‘Another doom missed, Agnar. I’m sorry. Have a drink?’

 	Felix frowned after him for a moment then joined Gotrek. ‘How bad is it?’

 	Gotrek shrugged. ‘It passed through.’

 	‘Did you see the gunner?’ asked Henrik, looking uneasily towards the mine shaft.

 	‘I saw him fall,’ said Agnar.

 	He stood and started for the ramp. Gotrek, Felix and Henrik followed him. There was no body, but Gotrek found a spatter of blood on the stones, and then a trail of drops that went down into the darkness.

 	‘Who do you think it was?’ asked Henrik. ‘Or what?’

 	Felix frowned and sniffed around the area where the blood drops were thickest. He couldn’t smell anything. The reek of ghouls was too overpowering. Still…

 	‘I only saw a silhouette,’ he said. ‘But something about it…’ He shrugged. ‘It didn’t look human to me.’

 	‘An orc?’ asked Agnar, incredulous. ‘A ghoul? They don’t use guns.’

 	Felix shook his head. ‘It was skinnier than that, and smaller, except for its head. I think it might have been–’

 	‘A skaven,’ said Gotrek.

 	Henrik laughed. ‘A skaven? Ridiculous.’

 	Felix turned to him, raising an eyebrow. ‘You don’t believe in them?’

 	Henrik gave Agnar an amused roll of the eyes.

 	‘Oh no,’ said the rememberer. ‘We’ve proof of their existence carved upon us. I can show you the scars. I only meant it is ridiculous that skaven would be helping orcs.’

 	‘You think it was human, then?’ asked Felix. ‘Would that be any less ridiculous?’

 	‘Not all humans love dwarfs,’ said Henrik. ‘Perhaps it was a servant of the Ruinous Powers, causing chaos where he might.’

 	Felix nodded. That made more sense than a skaven assassin, if only slightly, though it didn’t explain how the shooter had come to be there. Was he following the orcs? Was he their ally?

 	‘We should go after it and find out,’ said Agnar, looking down the dark ramp.

 	Gotrek grunted agreement, but Henrik looked askance.

 	‘We’ve agreed to help Migrunsson. We can’t leave him now. He’s lost five dwarfs.’

 	The slayers nodded reluctantly and started back up to the chamber, but as Felix fell in with Gotrek he saw Henrik hold Agnar back and begin speaking to him in low tones. The old slayer’s brow lowered as he listened, and he scratched his beard and frowned after Gotrek. Felix wondered what Henrik was saying, and was going to mention it to Gotrek, but just then Migrunsson and the surviving cannon crews appeared at the top of the ramp, rolling blackpowder barrels and resting pickaxes on their shoulders.

 	‘Well fought, slayers,’ said the engineer, as they started down the ramp. ‘Your prowess saved us, and the cannons.’ He gestured back to the chamber. ‘Rest while we set the charges and place the guns. We should be on our way to the second spot in an hour or so.’

 	‘Thank you, Engineer Migrunsson,’ said Felix, then looked back at Henrik and Agnar. Whatever they had been talking about, they were done now, and Henrik gave him a cheery smile. Felix smiled back reflexively, then continued up the ramp into the chamber, unsettled without knowing why.

 	7


 	The slayers did not rest. After allowing themselves to be patched up by the dwarf field surgeon, they went to help the cannon crews get the cannons up the stairs and into the enclosed firing platform, but they did not work together. When Gotrek joined one crew, Agnar joined the other. When Gotrek asked Agnar to pass him a pry bar, Agnar did it without looking Gotrek in the face, and answered him in monosyllabic grunts.

 	Felix would have taken this for typical dwarfish terseness, but for the fact that he had seen the slayers conversing together before, and they had been practically chatty then. Gotrek seemed to notice this new tension as well, but being a dwarf, he made no mention of it, merely grunted in turn and got on with his work.

 	The stairs to the gun emplacement were wide, but the door was narrow, so the cannons needed to be dismantled and carried through it a piece at a time – first the barrel, then the wheels and pieces of the gun carriage – before being reassembled within. Also, the gun ports had been sealed up at the same time as the archway below, so they had to be reopened to make room for the barrels of the cannons. Felix helped with this, swinging a mattock to knock the bricks loose, then took the opportunity to look through one into the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild, which was Thane Thorgrin’s chosen field of battle.

 	By the bright glow of the tall work-lamps that shone above the engineers and dwarf troops who were preparing the ground, Felix could see that the guild hall was an enormous room, handsomely decorated in the monumental dwarf style. Towering statues of dwarfs in guild vestments held up an arched roof that stretched over an open floor that looked to Felix to be as big as the Reikplatz in Nuln. It was longer going north and south than it was east and west, with large archways in the narrow ends. Felix saw teams of dwarfs preparing supplies and chalking off the dwarf lines at the north end of the hall, while other cannon crews placed guns on a balcony above the north arch.

 	Migrunsson mopped his gleaming scalp with his kerchief and leaned in the gun port next to Felix, pointing to the arch in the south wall. ‘Thane Thorgrin’s plan is that we close off all paths into the hall except that one. If the greenskins want battle, they will have to come through there – straight into those guns there. We’ll leave them no way to flank us or sneak around behind.’

 	‘And from here you’ll be able to shoot into their sides as they charge,’ said Felix.

 	‘Aye,’ said the engineer, grinning. ‘It’ll be a slaughter.’ He pushed away from the port. ‘But first we have to finish closing off the other paths.’

 	He gave Felix a friendly salute, then went to supervise the second team of dwarfs who were busy setting charges in the walls of the mineshaft.

 	Less than an hour later, they were ready to light the fuses. The dwarfs moved the carts and ponies well up into the passage to the north of the minehead chamber, playing out matchcord as they went, then, when everyone was clear, Migrunsson took up the fuses and bowed his head.

 	‘It’s a sad day when a dwarf must destroy the works of his fathers,’ he said. ‘But to save the body, sometimes a limb must be severed. Forgive us, ancestors, for this necessary sin.’

 	And with that, he touched flame to the fuse ends. Felix and the others watched them hiss and spark down the corridor.

 	Felix tensed as he saw the flames vanish into the minehead chamber, waiting for the roof to come down on his head, but the blasts, when they came, were surprisingly small – a quartet of heel-jarring thumps and a billow of smoke and flame that dissipated as it entered the passage.

 	Henrik looked up and took his fingers from his ears. ‘That’s it? Did all the charges go–’

 	A heavy rumble interrupted him, growing louder and shaking dust and pebbles from the ceiling, before tailing away again. Now a much thicker cloud billowed into the passage and rolled their way. Henrik blinked.

 	Migrunsson smirked. ‘A true engineer knows it isn’t the size of the blast, but the placement of the charges.’ He pulled his kerchief up over his nose and started forward into the dust. ‘It’s done, I think. But best go back and have a look.’

 	The minehead chamber was entirely covered in a thin coating of grey granite powder. The corpses of the orcs and ghouls looked like stone statues of themselves, and the geometric designs on the floor were completely hidden. The mineshaft portal was still there. Indeed it had been blown wider and taller, and for a moment, Felix thought the dwarfs had failed, but then he saw that all the rock that had fallen from the ceiling and walls had tumbled down into the slanting shaft, choking it completely. It would take days to remove all the rubble, particularly if one were working from below.

 	Migrunsson nodded sadly as he examined the cave-in, then turned back to the north corridor. ‘Well done, lads. On to the next.’

 	The next was a bridge.

 	Migrunsson led them down two levels to a wide natural chasm that cut east and west for as far as Felix could see – admittedly not very far – and dropped away to a glowing red line far below. An oven-hot updraft rose from it that had them all sweating in moments. The bridge that spanned the chasm was wide and solid, with statues of dwarf ancestors holding lamps set at regular intervals along its length, and stretched from an archway cut into the north side of the chasm to another arch in the south side.

 	Looking up, Felix could faintly see more archways in the sides of the rift, and the broken remains of other bridges, all fallen away, before the heights of the chasm swallowed them in darkness.

 	‘This one’s a bit trickier,’ said Migrunsson. ‘It would be easy enough to blow it up and be done with it, but…’ He grinned. ‘I’d rather take a few score greenskins with it, so we’ll weaken it instead – and let them find out it’s broken when they’re falling towards the lava.’

 	Gotrek chuckled approvingly. Agnar seemed about to do the same, but then shot a look at Gotrek and only grunted.

 	‘What do you want us to do?’ asked Felix.

 	Migrunsson pointed to the south end of the bridge. ‘Guard that arch. We don’t want any greenskins discovering the surprise before it’s ready.’

 	Henrik swallowed. ‘Er, you’re going to weaken the bridge, then ask us to walk back across it when you’re done?’

 	Migrunsson laughed. ‘The four of you could jump up and down on it from here to Valdazet and it wouldn’t fall. It will take all the weight and stomping of a greenskin warband on the march to shake it down.’

 	Henrik nodded, but did not look entirely convinced. Nevertheless, he went with Gotrek, Agnar and Felix to guard the end of the bridge.

 	Though there was nothing to do but stand around while the dwarfs worked, Felix found it impossible to relax. The heat from the lava made him sweat inside his chainmail, and the thought of invisible assassins firing on them or orcs raging out of the darkness made the space between his shoulder blades itch as if someone had carved a target there with a poisoned thorn. For more than an hour, he did nothing but pace and check his weapons and watch Migrunsson and his crew don harnesses and drop over the sides of the bridge to chip away at the network of stone supports that made up its understructure.

 	Gotrek seemed entirely absorbed with the process, watching with arms folded and single eye intent. Agnar watched too – though he stood as far from Gotrek as he could manage – but Henrik soon grew bored, and once again began to sing his repetitive little melody while staring into the darkness of the tunnel.

 	Felix ground his teeth and tried to shut out the tune, but Gotrek was not so polite.

 	‘Do you have do to that?’ he asked over his shoulder.

 	Henrik sniffed. ‘I only do it when I’m nervous.’

 	‘So, all the time then,’ said Gotrek, and turned back to watching the engineers.

 	‘You’ll take that back, Gotrek Gurnisson,’ said Agnar, glaring at him.

 	‘Take what back?’

 	Felix turned, wary. Now what?

 	‘No one insults my rememberer,’ growled Agnar. His voice was slurring a little with drink and anger. ‘Particularly not an underhanded doom-stealer like you, Gurnisson.’

 	Gotrek raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve stolen no doom.’

 	‘You have!’ Agnar stepped towards the slayer. ‘You interfered with my fight. You killed greenskins that might have killed me. I saw you! Henrik saw you!’

 	‘I killed every greenskin I could reach,’ said Gotrek. ‘You did the same. What of it?’

 	Felix looked at Henrik. His eyes were glittering. It was as if he wanted to see the slayers fight. Felix flashed back to the aftermath of the fight with the orcs. Was this the nonsense that Henrik had whispered in Agnar’s ear?

 	‘You deliberately blocked attacks that were aimed at me. I might have found my doom but for you.’

 	Gotrek snorted, dismissive. ‘I didn’t stop to weigh which were yours and which were mine. I fought to kill.’

 	‘You fought to keep me from finding my doom before you found–!’

 	Gotrek held up a hand. ‘Stop.’

 	‘I’ll not stop, you cheating–’

 	‘Be quiet. Listen!’

 	Agnar cut off and listened. Felix strained, but could hear nothing. Apparently Agnar could, however, for the anger vanished from his face, to be replaced by grim concentration. He and Gotrek drew their weapons and stepped silently onto the span, then craned their necks to look up at an archway above them that pierced the south face of the chasm. Felix and Henrik tiptoed after them.

 	The archway was more utilitarian than the ones that capped the bridge they were on, with little ornamentation, and a torn and twisted end of a mine cart rail-line dangling from it like the lolling tongue of some steel serpent.

 	‘What is it, Gotrek?’ asked Felix.

 	‘Something moving in that rail tunnel,’ said the slayer.

 	‘Aye,’ said Agnar. ‘Gone now though, I think.’

 	They all stood silent, but the noise of Migrunsson’s crews tapping on the stone supports of the bridge drowned out all else.

 	‘Engineer,’ called Gotrek. ‘Hold your work.’

 	Migrunsson waved his dwarfs silent and everyone stopped what they were doing and strained their ears.

 	At first Felix could hear nothing, but then a faint metallic keening reached his ears, like someone rubbing a rosined bow across a flexed saw blade.

 	‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘It sounds like–’

 	‘The rails,’ said Agnar. ‘The rails are singing. Something is coming down the track!’

 	8


 	‘Clear the bridge!’ roared Gotrek. ‘Get off now!’

 	The gun crews scrambled to comply, but half were still busy under the span, weakening the understructure, and those on top did not abandon them. They hurried to the ropes and heaved mightily to pull their brothers up. Migrunsson fell in with the rest, holding down a hand to haul a gunner over the rail and then pulling at another rope.

 	Gotrek, Agnar and Felix started forward to help, but before they had taken a step, the singing of the rails rose in volume and a clattering rumble added to it. The whole chasm shook with the noise.

 	Felix looked up at the twisted ends of the rail-line. Dust was shivering from them and they twitched like insect antenna. The rumble became a roar, drowning out the hoarse cries of the dwarfs, and then, as if the cliff face had vomited a string of iron sausages, a long train of mine-carts shot out of the tunnel mouth and arched down in freefall, straight at the bridge.

 	Felix watched in horror as the carts, all filled to the brim with rocks and boulders, crashed down amongst the scattering dwarfs and punched through the bridge like a massive cannon ball, smashing it in two. Half the dwarfs fell instantly, dropping away with the shattered stones, or dragged over the edge as the carts snagged their ropes. The others scrabbled to get clear, but they had done their sabotage too well.

 	With the centre of the span gone, and the rest of the supports weakened, the remains of the bridge could not stand. As the dwarfs crawled for the ends or climbed their ropes, the stones fell out from under them, toppling after the broken centre like sand running out of an hourglass. The gunners, the cannon crews, and Migrunsson too, trying even to the last to push the others to safety, plummeted away towards the glowing red line, ropes and harnesses trailing after them, their howls of rage rising on the hot wind.

 	Gotrek stood at the broken end of the span, ten paces out from the wall of the chasm, clutching the railing with one hand, and gripping Agnar by the wrist with the other. The old slayer was dangling over the abyss, his face as grey as river clay.

 	Gotrek gave him a nasty grin. ‘Should I let you go, Agnar Arvastsson? I wouldn’t want to rob you of a doom.’

 	‘Pull me up, curse you,’ rasped Agnar. ‘You know falling is not a proper slayer’s death!’

 	Gotrek hauled Agnar up and dropped him on the broken flagstones beside him. The old slayer grunted and pushed himself to his feet.

 	Henrik stepped forward to help him. ‘Maybe Gurnisson’s forgotten what a proper slayer’s death is,’ he sneered. ‘After all, he’s been ten years searching for one.’

 	Gotrek’s brow lowered and he balled a fist, but before he could use it, a shot rang out from above and a bullet struck between the three of them, spraying them with splinters of stone. The slayers dodged left and right, and Henrik hunched back towards the archway with Felix. They looked up. The same spindly shadow was backing into the darkness of the rail tunnel, reloading as it went. Gotrek snatched up a chunk of rubble from the edge of the bridge and heaved it up after it.

 	The rock vanished into the arch and an angry squeal echoed from the hole. Gotrek, Felix and Agnar all looked at each other and backed under the lee of the arch.

 	‘Skaven,’ they said in unison.

 	‘Hoy!’ came a voice. ‘Who still lives?’

 	They looked across the chasm. Two of the wagon drivers stood in the opposite arch, peering across at them.

 	‘The slayers and their rememberers!’ called Felix. ‘But take cover. There is a marksman above us.’

 	The drivers looked up, then stepped back into the tunnel. One shouted from the shadows. ‘We have ropes and pegs. We can get you across.’

 	‘Not with that gunner above us,’ muttered Felix.

 	‘We shouldn’t go back anyway,’ said Henrik. ‘Thorgrin will want to know what part the skaven are playing in all this. We should find them and discover their plans.’

 	Felix laughed. The way he spoke of it, it sounded as simple as going to the baker for some bread, not making their way through trackless, troll- and orc-infested catacombs without guide or map. ‘You know the way to their lair, do you? An hour ago you didn’t think they were involved.’

 	Henrik raised his chin. ‘Agnar is an excellent tracker. If we can find the trail of the assassin above us, he can find their lair.’

 	‘Aye,’ said Agnar. ‘I’ll find them. Let’s go. There’s no going back anyway.’

 	Gotrek didn’t move. He was staring directly at Henrik. The rememberer caught the look square between the eyes and stumbled at its fierceness.

 	‘Wh-what are you looking at?’

 	‘You have twice questioned my dedication to seeking my doom, human,’ said Gotrek. ‘Do not do so a third time.’

 	‘Or what?’ growled Agnar, stepping up to him.

 	Gotrek looked him up and down. ‘If a dog bites me, I beat the master for not teaching it manners.’

 	Agnar snarled and raised his fists. Felix jumped between him and Gotrek.

 	‘Slayers, please!’ he said. ‘Save it for the skaven, eh?’

 	The slayers stood nose to nose for a long moment, then Gotrek turned and stumped down the passage. Agnar and Henrik started after him, glaring at his back.

 	Felix sighed and looked across to the drivers. ‘Go back to Thorgrin. Tell him he fights skaven as well as orcs. We’re going further in.’

 	‘Skaven?’ called the drivers in unison.

 	‘Aye,’ said Felix. ‘Skaven.’

 	‘Very well,’ said the first. ‘If we make it, we will tell him. Good luck to you.’

 	‘Thank you,’ said Felix, then lit his slotted lantern and started down the passage after the others into the unknown. ‘We’ll need it.’

 	Felix and Henrik followed Gotrek and Agnar as they stumped forward, exploring side passages and debris-strewn stairways, looking for a way up to the rail-line tunnel and the trail of the skaven long-gunner. The whole party moved in a sullen silence, the recent squabbling suspended but most decidedly not forgotten. Felix could practically see the waves of anger pulsing between Agnar, Henrik and Gotrek. And he was fairly angry himself.

 	It seemed obvious to him that the rememberer was trying to provoke a fight between Agnar and Gotrek, but he couldn’t figure out why. As far as Felix could remember, Gotrek had given Henrik no cause to be angry – at least no more cause than the brusque slayer normally generated. The rememberer seemed to have developed his dislike for him in an instant. What was the reason for it? He couldn’t truly think that Gotrek had denied Agnar his doom on purpose, could he?

 	After a lot of dead ends and backtracking, the slayers eventually found their way up to the rail-line tunnel above the broken bridge, but the skaven gunner was long gone. Its spoor, however, was not. Tracks in the dust led back along the twisted rails and its greasy rodent stink lingered in the air.

 	They followed the tracks along the rails and through an ancient foundry. Ten great stone smelting furnaces squatted along the walls of a long, rubble strewn room – one of them had exploded some time in the distant past, and its stones were scattered all over. A dozen or so mine carts sat on the rails that ran past the smelters, or lay smashed and toppled on their sides.

 	In the centre of the room, they found a wide area of overlapping skaven tracks. Some were the usual, narrow dewclawed imprints, but some were bigger, with heavier claws. The prints went back and forth from the rails to the piles of rubble around the exploded smelter.

 	‘Rat-ogres,’ said Gotrek, pointing to the larger prints as Felix held up his lamp. ‘The ratkin made them fill the carts with stones, then push them down the rails.’

 	‘That would have taken all the time Migrunsson’s crew were working on the bridge,’ said Felix.

 	Gotrek nodded. ‘They spied on us from the beginning.’

 	Agnar and Henrik added nothing to this conversation. Henrik just hummed his annoying tune. Agnar followed the skaven’s trail out of the room to the west.

 	Gotrek fell in beside him, and the party followed the tracks down a broad stair to a lower level, then through a series of chambers that seemed to have been dwarf clan halls and common areas – galleries, meeting halls, feast halls – each larger and grander than the last. There was more ancient damage here – ceilings fallen in, walls crumbled. One room was charred black, and the stone pitted as if by acid. Another was filled with the skeletons of goblins, hundreds of them, all mounded at the edges of the room, as if they had died trying to escape something in the centre.

 	As they descended to the next level, the copper tang of recently spilled blood and the stench of skaven and acrid chemicals grew so strong that Henrik and Felix covered their mouths.

 	‘We must be close to their lair,’ said Felix, wiping tears from his eyes.

 	Gotrek shook his head. ‘The stench of a burrow is much worse. This is… something else.’

 	They followed the smell to an ancient workshop – and discovered a scene out of a nightmare. Between the dusty work tables and forges lay the bodies of scores of human warriors, their faces and bodies twisted in attitudes of agonising rictus, and the lanterns they had carried still burning. Felix stepped into the room to examine them more closely, then stepped back, gagging. Whatever poison had killed the men still lingered in the air, and it burned his eyes and nose.

 	‘This just happened,’ said Gotrek, covering his nose. ‘Not an hour ago. Their blood is still fresh.’

 	Felix squatted and raised his lamp, deciding it wisest to make his examination from the door. The eyes of the corpses bulged from their sockets, and bloated black tongues stuck from their mouths. The men’s hands were at their throats, and some had clawed great wounds in their necks in their desperation. The blood was still pooling beneath them.

 	‘Who are they?’ he choked. ‘And why didn’t they flee?’

 	‘They tried,’ said Gotrek. ‘Look.’

 	In the dim light of the dead men’s lanterns, Felix could barely make out what he was indicating, but he saw it at last. Splintered wood on the other doors of the room. One still had an axe buried in it. The men had tried to cut their way out.

 	‘They were locked in,’ he said at last. ‘A trap. What a horrible way to die.’

 	Agnar broke his silence at last. ‘I know that one,’ he said, pointing at a well-armoured man near the door. ‘He took Lanquin’s coin. As did that one. And him too.’

 	Felix turned to him. ‘They are all Lanquin’s mercenaries? But how did they come here?’

 	Henrik cleared his throat. ‘He made us swear not to speak of it to any who did not sign up with him, but Lanquin did not think Thane Thorgrin’s battle would win the day. He thought it would be better to take the fight to the orcs, and said he would send the best of his recruits to kill Stinkfoot in his lair.’

 	‘And he didn’t tell the thane?’ asked Felix.

 	Agnar shook his head. ‘The thane wouldn’t have allowed it.’

 	‘With good reason, it seems.’ Felix shuddered. ‘What a fool. To send his best men to die in a skaven trap. Who is left to fight in Thorgrin’s battle?’

 	‘The rank and file,’ said Henrik. He shivered too. ‘I warned him it was a mistake. He wouldn’t listen.’

 	Gotrek turned back to the corridor.

 	‘A mistake the ratkin saw coming,’ he muttered, but only Felix heard him.

 	Another level down and things got more confusing. The area was a warren of clan burial chambers and treasure vaults, all mostly ransacked and desecrated. Tracks of all kinds wound through the halls – the boots of men, the hind-claws of skaven, the calloused feet of orcs, the paws of huge beasts – and Felix lost the trail of their particular skaven entirely, but Gotrek still seemed to be on the scent.

 	A while later the tracks of men, dwarfs and skaven all but vanished, and those of the orcs multiplied. The sour, fungal reek of the greenskins grew thick in the air, and rough symbols were daubed on the walls in blood and dung. These depicted fists, axes, skulls, but most of them had been crossed out, and a crudely drawn foot with wavy lines rising from it drawn on top.

 	‘I guess the rumours about this Stinkfoot becoming boss are true,’ said Henrik.

 	‘And the skaven walk openly into his territory,’ said Felix, looking at the skinny tracks that overlay the orcs’ heavier prints in the muck of the corridor.

 	‘Not openly.’

 	Gotrek turned at an intersection, then stopped at a narrow crack broken through the wall of the side corridor, studying it. ‘They’re sneaking in. This way.’

 	‘And we’re going to follow them?’ asked Henrik, uneasily.

 	‘You wanted to discover their plans,’ said Gotrek.

 	He gripped the edges of the hole and pulled himself through. It was a tight squeeze, and he scraped his naked torso front and back before he called for the rest to come ahead.

 	Henrik swallowed and pushed his lantern through before him. ‘At least we know the rat-ogres didn’t go through this.’

 	Felix followed him, and Agnar brought up the rear. They found themselves on a narrow ledge, close to the ceiling of a looted vault. Dwarf ancestor faces looked down on smashed chests, heaps of trash, broken furniture and skeletons – dwarf, man, orc and skaven – that lay littered across the floor. A crude wooden ladder ran down to the mess from the ledge, but Gotrek disdained it and leapt to a stone statue of a prim dwarf maiden standing on a pedestal, then slid down to the floor. Agnar followed suit, but Henrik took the ladder and Felix followed him.

 	Looking around with his lantern, he saw that the skaven tracks crossed to a bigger hole knocked through the far wall. The doors of the vault were ajar, but the dust there was undisturbed. Felix could hear faint noises coming through it, however – the distant howling of orcs, the throb of their drums, and somewhat closer, a grunting and snorting that sounded like angry boars.

 	Gotrek started to the hole in the far wall, but before he got halfway there, orc shouting erupted in the near distance, and running boot steps thudded beyond the vault’s partially open door. Gotrek and Agnar went instantly on guard, and Henrik and Felix drew their swords a second later, lining up behind them. The boot steps boomed closer, but ahead of them came a skittering clicking, then something scrawny and hunched scrambled through the vault doors and bolted for the ladder.

 	Gotrek and Agnar slashed at it as it went by, but it dodged past in a streak of brown fur, then ducked Felix’s thrust and shot up the ladder to the ledge – the skaven gunner, hiding no more.

 	It grabbed the ladder in its disturbingly human hands and began to pull it up behind it, beady black eyes glittering malevolently. Felix lunged for the ladder, but just then the doors of vault slammed open and a crowd of orcs shoved in, shouting and holding up torches as they looked around. They pulled up short as they saw the slayers in front of them, and raised their weapons, roaring. Felix let go of the ladder to face them as Henrik glared up at the skaven.

 	‘Won’t do your own dirty work, will you? Clever bastard.’

 	Its chittering sounded like laughter as it wormed through the hole, dragging the ladder after it.

 	Henrik turned back to the orcs and readied his sword. ‘Well, we’ve killed this many before, haven’t we, Agnar? We’ve killed ten times as many.’

 	Even as he spoke, the room shook with a heavy tread, and the orcs guffawed, grinning at the slayers as if they had a secret. Felix looked uneasily to the door in time to see an ugly head the size of a beer keg duck under the lintel and look around, ears flapping like drooping flags.

 	‘Sigmar’s balls,’ said Henrik. ‘A troll.’

 	9


 	Agnar seemed considerably happier than his companion. ‘I knew I would find a doom here.’ He shot a hard look at Gotrek. ‘Unless you rob me of this one too.’

 	‘I robbed you of nothing,’ growled Gotrek.

 	The troll stood to its full height as it came into the room, a looming, lumpy horror with skin the texture of lichen-blotched stone, muscles like ship’s cables, and a reek that smelled like low-tide in high summer. It held no weapon. The massive, bone-knuckled hands at the end of its ape-like arms were weapons enough. Its lugubrious long-nosed face stared stupidly as the orcs prodded it forward, pointing at the slayers.

 	‘Prepare fire, rememberer,’ said Agnar.

 	‘Aye, Agnar,’ said Henrik, unhooking his lantern from his belt and looking around.

 	Felix did the same, hunting for something to burn. He and Gotrek had fought a troll once before, in the crypts below Karak Eight Peaks, and had only defeated it by setting it aflame. Without fire, its flesh regenerated almost instantly. Even severed limbs grew back in time. But what to burn? The sundered treasure chests would provide some wood, but not enough for a big blaze. He supposed they could gather all the furniture and smashed chests, but– He stopped as he saw the solution. Hidden under a broken table was a pile of rolled up carpets, covered in dust.

 	‘Henrik, here!’

 	They ran to the table and heaved it up as Agnar charged the troll, roaring a Khazalid battle cry. Gotrek, to Felix’s surprise, charged the orcs. Was he letting Agnar have the glory? Was he avoiding the troll? Neither seemed likely, but what then?

 	The orcs seemed surprised as well, and stumbled back, wrong-footed, in the face of his fury. Gotrek opened up the first with a slash across its belly, then smashed the cleaver from the hands of the second and buried his axe in its spine as it turned to flee. It fell and he severed its leg at the hip, then flung it at the troll.

 	‘Hungry, rock head?’

 	The leg smacked the troll in the side of the head, and the smell of blood and fresh orc meat made it lick its lips and turn for the treat. Agnar took advantage of this distraction and stepped in, swinging for its legs. His long-hafted axe bit halfway through the monster’s left knee and it crashed down on its side, lowing like a lovesick moose.

 	As Felix and Henrik pulled at a heavy roll of carpet, the six remaining orcs roared to see their champion laid flat and charged in, attacking the two slayers. Agnar ignored them, severing the troll’s knee so the wound wouldn’t heal, and paid for it. An orc with a cleaver took a chunk from his arm, spinning him around with the weight of the blow, but Agnar whipped his axe up in mid-turn and sank it into its bare green chest, then recovered and faced two more as blood poured down his forearm. Gotrek fought three more, a fourth dead at his feet. Behind him, the troll was pushing to its knees, its stump already closing.

 	‘Come on!’ called Felix. ‘We’ve got to start the fire!’

 	Felix shouldered one carpet while Henrik grabbed another, and they ran them back. The troll was up, weaving unsteadily on its right knee and its severed left leg, and lashing around in a blind rage. It crushed the skull of Gotrek’s last opponent with its stone-hard fist, and knocked Gotrek flying. The slayer crashed headfirst into a sealed stone treasure chest, then slumped to the floor beside it, dazed and bleeding.

 	Unable to crawl after Gotrek on its mismatched legs, the troll picked up the stone statue of the dwarf maiden and threw it at him. Felix’s heart thudded in alarm, for its aim was true, but at the last second the slayer flung himself aside and the statue smashed into the wall, sending marble chips flying everywhere.

 	Gotrek staggered to his feet, off-balance, and charged the troll, roaring defiance. At the same time, Agnar finished the last of his orcs and ran at the troll from behind. The monster swiped at Gotrek, tearing tufts from his crest with its claws, but the slayer ducked and hacked through its elbow, severing its right arm. Agnar swung for its right thigh and chopped its leg off. It fell back, howling, three limbs lost, and clawed for Agnar with the last. He dodged back and Gotrek stomped on the thing’s wrist, pinning it, then sliced through its arm at the shoulder.

 	Felix had never felt sorry for a troll before, and likely never would again, but the sight of the monster lying helpless, armless and legless, like a turtle on its back, as it keened in pain and confusion, jolted him with pangs of unwanted empathy. Still, the limbs were already growing back, white spurs of bone extending from the severed tibias and fibulas, and strands of muscle beginning to form around them.

 	‘Burn it,’ said Gotrek.

 	Felix threw his carpet over the troll as Henrik did the same. Henrik then emptied the contents of his lamp’s oil reservoir over everything and took up a torch from a fallen orc.

 	‘Maybe next time you won’t be so foolish as to be born a troll,’ he sneered, then touched the torch to the carpets and stepped back as they started to burn.

 	He and Felix and the slayers threw broken furniture and shattered chests onto the flames, then tossed the monster’s severed limbs in the middle of it. Gotrek stepped to the troll’s head and severed it with a swift chop. Felix breathed a sigh of relief as its frightened howls ceased.

 	After they were sure the thing was well and truly burning, and after Henrik had helped Agnar bandage the wound in his arm, Gotrek started again for the skaven’s hole in the wall. Felix and Agnar made to follow, but Henrik held the old slayer back and whispered in his ear, gesturing angrily at the burning troll.

 	Felix looked back, suspicious. ‘Coming?’

 	Henrik stepped from Agnar and they started forward, the old slayer shooting a hard look at Gotrek’s back.

 	‘Aye, coming.’

 	The skaven’s hole in the wall led into what seemed to be a tight drainage pipe. It was covered with a crust of dry algae and the reeking residue of the passage of many skaven, and angled down to the left and up to the right. Gotrek examined the tracks, then started up on hands and knees with Felix following. It quickly turned left and levelled out, and Felix guessed that it was running above the corridor outside the vault.

 	A moment later, he was proved right, for he came to a tiny hole bored through the floor of the pipe that looked down into the corridor.

 	‘Skaven spy holes,’ he murmured. ‘Have we been watched all along?’

 	As the party moved on, the pounding of drums began to echo loudly down the pipe ahead of them, and they heard the guttural grunting of arguing orcs. A few more yards and the pipe split left and right, and the drums boomed up from a wide hole in the floor of the left-hand pipe. Gotrek stuck his head through it, then lowered himself down. Felix, Agnar and Henrik followed, dropping one after the other into what appeared to be a pump room. A smaller pipe ran down one wall into a fat brass reservoir, and there were valves and levers sticking from it, and more pipes running from it. A narrow door, held open by a pile of garbage, led back into the corridor, and noise and light spilled in through the gap. It sounded as if the orc argument were reaching a crescendo.

 	Gotrek eased through the half-open door with the others following behind. To the east, the passage vanished into darkness, but just ten paces to the west, it opened onto a wide, pillared balcony that looked out over a vast dwarf-built chamber with a soaring cross-vaulted roof. The walls were pierced with balconies and galleries that rose in overhanging tiers above the smoky light of the fires that burned below, and echoed with the deafening howls of hundreds of orc warriors.

 	Gotrek, Felix, Agnar and Henrik crouched on the balcony and peered through the balustrade to the savage horde below.

 	Gotrek’s single eye kindled eagerly at the sight. ‘This is a worthy doom.’

 	10


 	The floor of the enormous chamber was crammed with a seething ocean of orcs, above which rose banners marked with dozens of crude symbols – glaring suns, red fists, grinning moons, cracked skulls and bloody axes. The green monsters were all shouting and shaking weapons and torches over their heads and looking towards the middle of the room where four big bonfires blazed.

 	There crowded the biggest mob of all, over three hundred orcs rallying around dirty green banners with the crude symbol of a stinking foot painted on them in white. Inside the area marked off by the four bonfires was a square of open floor, and two orcs lay dead within it, while two more circled each other.

 	‘What’s going on?’ asked Henrik.

 	‘A challenge,’ said Gotrek.

 	One of the orcs was as big as any Felix had ever seen, head, shoulders and chest above the rest, and muscled like a mutated ape. He was dressed in heavy rusted armour, studded all over with spikes, and had a helm with an even bigger spike sticking straight up from the top of his head.

 	His opponent was shorter, and, though well-muscled and encased in crude plate, was not nearly as massive as Spike Helm. He also walked with a limp, his right foot bound up in dirty bandages. But there was a confidence to his stance, and a cunning in the turn of his head.

 	‘The little one is Stinkfoot?’ asked Henrik. ‘He doesn’t stand a chance.’

 	‘Let’s hope so,’ said Felix. ‘With him dead, the orc alliance falls apart, and we can all go back to the tavern.’

 	‘Let’s hope not, then,’ said Agnar, shooting a sour glance at Gotrek. ‘I still haven’t been able to claim my doom.’

 	Spike Helm took a few exploratory swipes at Stinkfoot, all the while howling and gargling orcish insults, but Stinkfoot did not fight back. He just stared at the bigger orc and turned to keep him in front of him. Enraged by this behaviour, Spike Helm charged. Stinkfoot side-slipped and Spike Helm stumbled past, his spiked mace crushing only air, then turned again to face the warboss.

 	Across the circle, Stinkfoot raised his bandaged foot and thrust it at Spike Helm as if he was trying to kick him in the privates. He didn’t come close. His opponent was six paces away from him, and yet, astoundingly, the huge orc went down anyway, toppling like a side of beef cut from a hook to sprawl on the floor, unmoving.

 	Felix stared as all the orcs in the room quieted in fear and awe. Had it been magic? Had it been a trick? Was the stink of Stinkfoot’s foot so vile that it could kill an orc at six paces?

 	‘That wasn’t right,’ said Agnar. ‘How did he do that?’

 	Stinkfoot stepped up onto the huge barrel chest of his fallen rival and raised his bulging arms, roaring his dominance to the others. The orcs echoed his roar, shaking their weapons and headbutting each other in excitement. The chamber shuddered with the sound of it.

 	Over this clamour, Stinkfoot roared again, and pointed with his axe to a great archway on the north side of the chamber. The orcs howled in response, then gathered up and started forward.

 	‘It begins,’ said Agnar. ‘They go to war.’

 	‘And we’re too late to warn Thorgrin,’ said Henrik.

 	‘But not too late to do what that dead orc couldn’t,’ said Gotrek. He nodded towards a balcony over the great arch through which Stinkfoot’s army was flowing, and towards which Stinkfoot himself was slowly moving. It was connected to the one they were on by a columned gallery. ‘If we run, we can jump down on the greenskin before he passes under that arch.’

 	Agnar’s eyes glittered eagerly. ‘Aye. Aye!’

 	The two Slayers hurried north into the gallery.

 	As Felix and Henrik started after them, Henrik cleared his throat. ‘Slayer Gurnisson, ah, perhaps you should let Agnar jump first when we get there.’

 	‘Why?’ asked Gotrek without slowing.

 	‘Er, well, you have robbed Agnar of two dooms already on this trek. To make up for it–’

 	Gotrek ground his teeth. ‘I’ve robbed no one. If he wants to jump first, let him try.’

 	‘You interfered. Twice,’ insisted Henrik, raising his voice.

 	Felix cringed. ‘Quiet! The orcs are right below us.’

 	Henrik ignored him. ‘You blocked blows meant for Agnar during the minehead fight! And just now you distracted the troll when it was sure to have killed him! A slayer’s honour demands–’

 	Gotrek snorted. ‘No manling can lecture me about a slayer’s honour. I warned you I would–’

 	‘Then I will lecture you!’ barked Agnar, and stopped to face him. ‘Gotrek Gurnisson, you have left the way of the slayer. A true slayer could not follow the true path for ten years and still live.’

 	Gotrek stopped and stared at him with his single baleful eye for a moment, then turned and continued down the passage. ‘There’s no time for this. We must reach the arch.’

 	‘Do you deny it, then?’ asked Henrik. ‘Do you call Agnar a liar?’

 	‘What are you doing?’ whispered Felix. ‘Why stir trouble when they’ll both find their dooms in that jump? Leave it be!’

 	Henrik carried on as if Felix hadn’t spoken. ‘Will you let him call you a liar, Agnar?’

 	‘I will not!’ Agnar stumped after Gotrek and spun him around with a hand on his shoulder. Gotrek shoved him back, sending him into the wall.

 	‘Do not lay hands on me, Agnar Arvastsson.’

 	Agnar pushed off the wall and stepped again in front of Gotrek, blocking the way to the balcony. ‘Why did you attack the orcs just now, when there was a troll before you?’ He asked. ‘A true slayer should attack the most dangerous foe.’

 	‘I killed the orcs to distract the troll with their meat,’ said Gotrek, with surprising restraint. ‘It made it easier to kill. Now let me by.’

 	‘Easier to kill?’ Agnar shook with rage. ‘Easier to kill? A slayer does not make his enemies easier to kill!’

 	‘For Sigmar’s sake, lower your voice!’ said Felix.

 	Nobody paid him any attention.

 	‘Does he not?’ asked Gotrek. ‘Why do you carry that axe?’

 	Agnar blinked, confused.

 	‘If you wanted to make your enemies harder to kill,’ said Gotrek. ‘You would attack them unarmed, yet you don’t.’

 	‘An axe is a Slayer’s weapon!’ said Agnar. ‘It is tradition. That’s not the same as–’

 	‘Grimnir asks of us that we fight our enemies with all our skill and strength,’ said Gotrek. ‘Anything less is suicide, which he disdains. Do you think he means us not to use our strength of mind? I fight with all the strength I possess.’ He gave Agnar a withering look and stepped past him. ‘It seems you do too.’

 	‘I do!’ shouted Agnar, thumping his chest. ‘I fight with all my strength. Who says I do not?’

 	‘Quiet!’ whispered Felix again, but fortunately, the orcs were making too much noise and didn’t hear.

 	‘He’s insulted you, Agnar,’ called Henrik. ‘He says you have no strength of mind!’

 	Felix shoved him, hissing. ‘Do you want them to fight? You are keeping them from their doom!’

 	Henrik shoved him back. ‘I am defending my friend’s honour, which you and your friend seem determined to take from him!’

 	‘Is that what you say, Gurnisson?’ asked Agnar, getting in front of Gotrek again. ‘Do you think me a fool?’

 	‘You’re both fools!’ cried Felix, pointing over the balcony. ‘Stinkfoot is getting away.’

 	Agnar looked up from glaring at Gotrek and blinked as if waking. ‘Curse you. You’ve slowed me down!’

 	He raced down the galley again with Gotrek pounding after.

 	‘I’ve slowed you down?’

 	‘Agnar!’ called Henrik, but this time the old slayer was deaf to his words and continued on. Felix was glad of it. It meant he wouldn’t have to shut Henrik’s mouth for him.

 	Unfortunately, Agnar’s belated hurry was too little too late. By the time they reached the balcony, the very tail of the orc army was filing through the arch below it, and Gutgob Stinkfoot was long gone.

 	Agnar punched the balustrade in frustration and glared at Gotrek. ‘We might have made it if not for your arguing!’

 	‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘I shouldn’t have argued. I should have knocked you out and been done with it.’

 	‘Well, there’s no time to argue now,’ said Felix, trying to change the subject. ‘We must find a way back to the first level and warn Thorgrin of their coming.’

 	Gotrek shook his head and turned away from Agnar, who was looking murder at him. ‘First I want to see what killed the greenskin’s challenger.’

 	Gotrek stumped to a broad stair that descended from the balcony to the floor of the chamber. Agnar glared after him, looking as if he might bury his axe in Gotrek’s back, but then cursed under his breath and followed. Felix did the same, watching Henrik like a hawk. He still didn’t know what the rememberer was up to, but whatever it was, he wasn’t going to let him do it.

 	At the bottom of the stairs, Gotrek stepped onto the broad floor and started towards the four bonfires. As Felix followed his spine itched between his shoulder blades. He felt as exposed as a cockroach in the middle of a bare floor. Anybody could see them, but they could see nothing outside the fires’ square of light.

 	As he reached the challenge ground, Gotrek knelt by the enormous, spike-helmed orc, examining his legs and torso, but found no mark or sign of sorcery. Neither was there any wound on his arms or face, but when he heaved the great brute over onto his front, Felix noticed something sticking from the back of its neck.

 	‘A dart.’

 	He plucked it out carefully and showed it to Gotrek, who examined it. It was small and crudely made, and fletched with what looked like beetle wings. The rusty iron tip was crusted with some tarry greenish black substance.

 	‘A ratkin dart.’

 	Henrik and Agnar examined the other two challengers. They had died in the same fashion.

 	‘Stinkfoot’s foot did not win the day after all,’ said Felix.

 	‘Does he know that?’ asked Gotrek, then cocked his ear.

 	There was a whizzing sound, and the slayer snapped out his hand and clamped it shut. When he opened it again there was another dart in it, poisoned like the others.

 	Felix and Henrik hit the floor, covering their heads, but the slayers stood and drew their weapons, looking in the direction the dart had come from – the gallery on the south wall of the chamber. Four strange missiles arced out of the darkness after the dart, and Gotrek and Agnar braced to knock them out of the air, but they didn’t fall upon the slayers, but instead landed in the fires.

 	In the brief second before they struck, Felix saw they were little burlap bags, each trailing a tail of dust, and he feared they were blackpowder, but when they touched the fire they burst into clouds of blackness that put out the flames and left them in darkness but for the lamps at their belts.

 	In the dim light that remained, Gotrek hauled up one of the smaller dead orcs and held it up before him. Agnar followed his example, and not a moment too soon. Another dart thudded into his orc a second later. A third whizzed by Felix’s ear.

 	Gotrek turned to him and Henrik. ‘Darken your lanterns. They’re shooting at the light.’

 	Felix and Henrik gulped and closed the slots of their lanterns, then crouched in the lee of the huge green corpse-shields as the slayers started towards the south gallery. Henrik started his singing again, but this time Felix had had enough.

 	‘Stop that,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll hear you!’

 	‘They already know we’re here,’ said Henrik. ‘And it calms my nerves.’

 	‘So does poison.’

 	The skitter of clawed feet in the darkness made Felix freeze. They were coming from all directions. Henrik fumbled for his lamp.

 	‘Wait,’ said Gotrek. ‘Wait for my word.’

 	Felix put his finger on the lever that opened the slots, and held his breath. The skittering was closing in all around. It sounded like they were right on top of them. It took all his willpower not to open the lantern.

 	‘Now!’ said Gotrek.

 	Felix slapped open the slots, and the light streamed out, revealing a black-clad skaven in mid-leap. It squealed and shielded its eyes at the fire-glow, and Felix slashed with Karaghul, biting deep into its hip. It rolled off into the darkness, yelping, but there were more behind it.

 	Gotrek heaved his orc at two, flattening them, then shattered the legs of a third with his rune axe as it leapt the green corpse. Agnar shrugged his orc off his shoulders and swung his long axe at two that charged in at him, curved knives glistening green in the flickering light. The dead orc’s back was pincushioned with throwing stars.

 	Henrik ducked another skaven as it leapt over his head, then slashed after it, but missed by a mile. Two more appeared at the edge of Felix’s vision, hurling more throwing stars. He grabbed the edge of his red Sudenland cape and swept it in front of him, and felt them thud into the heavy wool.

 	The assassins sprung in after their stars, hooked steel claws strapped to their wrists. They were blindingly fast. Felix parried the claws of the first an inch from his neck, and only his chainmail saved him from those of the second. They cracked across his forearm like hammers, but did not break the rings.

 	He swept Karaghul in a backhand as they flitted past him, and caught one in the back, sending him sprawling and thrashing, but the second eluded the blow and tossed a glass globe over its shoulder.

 	‘Oh, bollocks!’

 	Felix dove for the thing and caught it just before it shattered on the floor, then rolled up and hurled it into the darkness after the skaven who had thrown it. A tinkle of glass and a horrible retching told him he had found his mark.

 	Gotrek snatched another dart out of the air and threw it at a skaven that fought Henrik, then hurled his axe in the direction the dart had come from. There was a terrible squeal and then a thud, and all the other skaven suddenly froze, then turned and fled, leaving a stinking cloud of animal musk behind.

 	Felix coughed and spat and squeezed his burning eyes, then followed Gotrek as he strode into the darkness to retrieve his axe. On the floor lay a skaven with a blowgun in one hand and a long-barrelled gun strapped across its back.

 	‘The one who shot you,’ said Agnar, coming up behind them.

 	‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, pulling his axe from its chest. It had buried itself in its solar plexus. ‘The one who knew we would be in the minehead chamber. The one who led the greenskins and the troll to us.’

 	Gotrek wiped his axe blade off on the skaven’s black head-wrap, then noticed a roll of parchment sticking from a pouch on its belt. He pulled the parchment free.

 	‘You shouldn’t touch them,’ said Henrik. ‘They cover themselves in poison.’

 	Gotrek ignored him and unrolled the parchment.

 	‘What is it?’ asked Agnar.

 	Gotrek looked at it, then handed it to Felix. At first what was drawn upon it just looked like a jumble of squares and lines and arrows, but then he realized it was a map of the depths – part of them anyway – with portions marked in the claw-scratch script of skaven writing, but the ratmen weren’t the only ones to have written upon the map. Notes had been scribbled upon it in a human hand, in Bretonnian. A cold chill went down Felix’s spine as he saw them.

 	‘Lanquin wrote this.’

 	‘You can’t know that,’ said Henrik. ‘He’s not the only Bretonnian in the world. There’s a whole nation of them.’

 	‘What does it say?’ asked Agnar.

 	Calling upon the meagre Bretonnian he had learned while studying poetry at the University of Altdorf, Felix struggled to decipher the words. ‘Apportez votre rongeurs ici. Uh, transport… no, bring, your rats… to here. Nous allons laisser cette voie accessible. We will allow… passage to… No, that’s not right. We will let the path to be… unguarded!’

 	Felix looked at the map again and saw an arrow pointing to a small passage that led into what he recognised must be the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild. It opened up behind where the dwarfs intended to set their battle line. ‘Blood of Sigmar! Whoever wrote this says he will let the skaven come in and attack the dwarfs from the rear!’

 	‘Let me see that,’ said Henrik, and snatched the map from Felix’s fingers.

 	‘It must be Lanquin,’ said Felix as Henrik pored over the parchment. ‘Who else would be in a position to promise them such an advantage? How does a man stoop so low!’

 	‘He’s already done worse,’ said Gotrek.

 	‘What could be worse than that?’ snarled Agnar.

 	Gotrek motioned back the way they had come. ‘The room with the poisoned men. The Bretonnian didn’t send the best of his recruits into the deeps to kill Stinkfoot. He sent them to die – in a skaven trap.’

 	Felix stared at him. ‘But – but why would he do that?’

 	Gotrek shrugged. ‘To take them out of the fight. To weaken the thane’s army so the orcs win.’

 	‘That’s insane! He can’t want that! He–’ Felix cut off as another thought blasted that one aside. ‘That’s why he wanted us to take his coin! He wanted us to sign up with him so he could send us to our deaths with the others!’

 	Agnar shook his head like a confused bull. ‘All that Bugman’s – a trap.’

 	Felix pointed to the parchment in Henrik’s hands. ‘We have a map. We must use it to find a way back to Thane Thorgrin as quickly as we can. We must warn him of this treachery before the battle begins.’

 	‘Two of us must,’ said Gotrek. ‘The other two must attack the ratkin where they prepare their attack and slay all that can be slain.’

 	Agnar grunted in agreement, but Henrik rolled his eyes. ‘And I suppose that’ll be you and Jaeger, then. While Agnar and I run your errands for you.’

 	‘What?’ said Agnar, looking up. He turned hard eyes on Gotrek and hefted his axe. ‘I’ll be damned if I will.’

 	11


 	Gotrek snorted. ‘Put it away, puppet. Your master pulls your strings again.’

 	‘I am no one’s puppet, Gotrek Gurnisson,’ said Agnar, dangerously. ‘Least of all yours. If you think to send me away while you go to your doom–’

 	‘Your twister said that,’ growled Gotrek. ‘Not I. Come with me if you wish. The manlings can return to the thane.’

 	Henrik’s eyes blazed. ‘Now he would deny you your rememberer! He would have you die alone and forgotten, with no one to tell the tale of your last battle!’

 	Felix had had enough. Henrik’s carping and accusations had worn him raw at last. He shoved the rememberer, sending him sprawling over the corpse of the black-clad rat.

 	‘You’re talking rubbish!’ he barked. ‘Gotrek denies Agnar nothing he doesn’t deny himself!’

 	Henrik’s eyes glittered with triumph as he looked up from the floor. ‘Agnar, they lay hands upon us! They mean us harm!’

 	The old slayer turned towards Felix, raising his long axe. ‘No one touches my rememberer, human. Defend yourself.’

 	Gotrek snarled and knocked the axe aside with his own. ‘Stand down, fool! You’ve listened to this jackal for too long!’

 	Agnar brought his axe back into guard, his eyes blazing and his arms trembling with rage. ‘You strike me now, Gurnisson? You insult me to my face? Henrik is right. It is you I have listened to for too long!’

 	And with that, he charged, slashing wildly. Gotrek backed away, blocking the attacks, but made none of his own. Nonetheless, Henrik chose to see Gotrek’s retreat as an act of aggression, and leapt at his back, his sword high.

 	‘Die, coward!’

 	Felix cursed and whipped Karaghul from its scabbard just in time to block the strike. Henrik grinned like a skull as he turned to face him, slashing high and low.

 	‘Ah, you show your true colours at last!’ he hissed. ‘All “hail-fellow-well-met” in the tap room, but it’s knives in the back when we’re too deep to call for help. I know your kind!’

 	Felix parried the blows with difficulty. Ordinarily he would not have called Henrik his equal as a swordsman, but whatever madness was possessing him had given him a frenzied strength and speed, jittery and unpredictable, and it was hard to know where he was going to strike next.

 	‘You describe yourself!’ said Felix, retreating before the torrent. ‘You invite us to drink with you, you fight by our side, and now you attack us on the flimsiest of pretexts. I begin to wonder if you are a pair of rogues in disguise, or–’

 	Felix faltered as something clicked in his head. Henrik saw the opening and gashed his leg. It stung, but not as sharply as Felix’s epiphany. Not a pair of rogues, no. Agnar was a true slayer, of that there was no doubt. But Henrik? Who had suggested Gotrek and Felix take Louis Lanquin’s coin? Who had had a barely credible ‘change of heart’ when Gotrek and Felix joined Thorgrin’s throng? Who had sung an annoying little tune before every appearance of the skaven?

 	‘You’re with Lanquin!’ cried Felix, attacking Henrik with new vigour. ‘You never changed sides! You joined Thorgrin’s horde to keep an eye on us, to make sure we died in the depths! You are with the skaven!’

 	Henrik choked. ‘The skaven? You’re mad! No dwarf would side with the ratkin!’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Do you hear him, Agnar? Now he calls you a traitor to your–!’

 	He broke off with a yelp as Felix took advantage of his distraction and sliced open his arm above the elbow, then knocked his blade from his hands.

 	Agnar roared at this and tried to fight past Gotrek. ‘Let me by!’

 	Felix advanced on Henrik, sword extended. ‘I said nothing of Agnar Arvastsson, you conniver. You tricked him too. You’re pitting him against Gotrek, hoping both will die.’

 	‘Don’t listen to him, Agnar!’ cried Henrik. ‘You know I am your truest friend. I would never–’

 	Felix put Karaghul to his throat.

 	‘Talk, rememberer,’ he said. ‘What are Lanquin’s plans? Why is he colluding with the skaven?’

 	Henrik put his hands up and opened his mouth as if to comply, then turned and fled across the huge room like a scalded dog. Felix cursed and pounded after him, but Henrik was younger, slimmer and less heavily armoured, and outran him with ease.

 	‘Rememberer!’ called Agnar. ‘Where are you going?’

 	‘Goodbye, Agnar,’ Henrik called over his shoulder. ‘I will sing the song of your doom in the taproom of the Grail. It will be the greatest doom ever remembered – hundreds of skaven, thousands! Men will weep to hear it.’

 	‘But… but the skaven didn’t kill me.’

 	‘Oh, they will,’ laughed Henrik as he sped for an archway on the western wall. ‘That I promise you! They’ll kill all of you.’ And with that he began singing his annoying song again as loud as he could manage.

 	Felix slowed to a stop as Henrik ran under the archway into the corridor, and quickly vanished but for the bobbing glow of his lantern. Felix watched it dance out of sight, then sighed and started back towards the slayers. They were no longer fighting. Agnar was staring at the archway with a look so blank and stunned that it would have been comical if it hadn’t been heartbreaking. Gotrek put a hand on his shoulder, but had the decency not to say anything.

 	‘Five years,’ said Agnar. ‘Five years, he was my rememberer.’ His brow lowered. ‘I must find him. I must slay him.’

 	‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘But his villainy must be stopped first. Time enough for vengeance after the skaven are slaughtered.’

 	Agnar hesitated, then nodded. ‘Very well. But who will warn the thane?’

 	‘I’ll go,’ said Felix, though he had no idea how he’d manage it. He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know how to get to the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild, the place was crawling with orcs, skaven, trolls and Sigmar knew what else, and…

 	Felix groaned. ‘Henrik has the map. That tricky little–’

 	Noises to the east brought his head up. Hunched shadows were moving in the darkness at the east end of the chamber, spilling out of the tunnels that fed into it. He swallowed. ‘Maybe the map is the least of our problems.’

 	Gotrek and Agnar looked around, and Agnar started forward, growling under his breath.

 	Gotrek stopped him. ‘We must make sure the manling gets away first.’

 	Agnar shot him a look that had some of his old animosity in it, but then nodded, and he and Gotrek started for the western end of the hall, jogging as fast as their short legs could carry them.

 	Felix struggled to shorten his pace so that he wouldn’t swiftly outdistance them. ‘Are they after us?’ he asked, looking warily over his shoulder. He heard no squeals of challenge.

 	Gotrek shook his head. ‘They head for the same shaft as we do. It is the quickest way to the upper levels.’

 	Felix stared at him. ‘How do you know where they’re going? How do you know where we’re going?’

 	Gotrek shrugged. ‘I read the map.’

 	There was a shriek of dismay behind them. Felix looked back, but all he could see was milling shadows.

 	‘They have found the bodies of their assassins,’ said Agnar, without looking back.

 	‘Now they’re after us,’ said Gotrek.

 	Gotrek led Felix and Agnar through the corridors of the vault level with the shrill cries of the skaven growing steadily closer behind them. The passages were high and wide in this area, with few twists and turns, and it felt to Felix as if they were trying to outrun a cresting wave. At last he and the slayers ran through a crumbling arch into a large square chamber that made Felix’s skin prickle and his shoulders hunch with fear as soon as he entered it.

 	A ghostly grey glow illuminated a scene out of a builder’s nightmare. It looked as if some drunk giant had constructed a house of cards within the chamber and hadn’t been too neat about it. Scrap-wood scaffolding rose up in uneven layers along all four walls, and a precarious forest of supports held up portions of the mortared stone ceiling, which looked as if it might come down in a heap if someone sneezed. The walls behind the scaffolding showed signs of battle damage – shattered marble, scorched granite, and broken bas-reliefs – and it seemed the scaffolding had been erected to attempt repairs, but it must have all happened a long time ago, for the wooden joists were warped and sagging under the weight of stone they supported, and the whole thing was covered in dust and thick with spiderwebs.

 	It was from these webs that the light emanated, a pale putrid pearlescence that made the scaffolding look as if it were covered in spectral shrouds. Lumpy cocoons hung from the beams as well, tethered by thicker strands. Some were the size of dwarfs. Some were the size of orcs. All glowed like misshapen moons.

 	In the centre of the room, a more well-constructed structure rose amidst the cobwebbed scaffolding. It was a square column of iron latticework, roughly twenty feet to a side, that vanished up into darkness through a wide hole in the ceiling, as well as down into a corresponding hole in the floor. Felix had seen such cage-lifts in other dwarf holds, but none so elaborate or ornate. On this one, in addition to the metal cage enclosed within it, an iron stairway wound around the outside of the shaft, going both up and down.

 	The slayers ran for the wide iron bridge that extended from the edge of the hole to the shaft, but as they got closer Felix saw they were too late. The lift cage was already rising.

 	Henrik’s grinning face appeared between the bars as it rattled up towards the darkness. ‘Weep not, Agnar! You are no worse a dupe than the fools who stand beside you, or Thorgrin and his kin, or the orcs who go to fight him. We duped them all! Duped the skaven into helping Stinkfoot become warboss so he would rise against the dwarfs. Duped the dwarfs into fighting back. And once they wipe each other out, it will be Lanquin and I who rule Skalf’s Keep and collect the taxes, while our skaven partners rule the deeps. A mutually beneficial relationship.’

 	‘If you believe that,’ snarled Gotrek, ‘you’re more a dupe than any of us.’

 	‘Rememberer!’ roared Agnar. ‘You will die by my axe for your treachery! I swear it!’

 	‘Treachery?’ called Henrik as he vanished through the roof. ‘I have given you a certain doom! What more could a slayer want from his rememberer?’

 	The rainstorm patter of hundreds of clawed feet behind them turned Felix and the slayers around. The ratmen were spilling through the scaffolding-supported archway in a gibbering, chittering tide – spearskaven in rags and human-skin hoods; swordskaven in rusty armour and brass helms, towering, hideously mutated rat-ogres with crude weapons grafted to the stumps of their wrists and giant mutant rats the size of bulldogs, all spreading to the right and left to surround them.

 	Gotrek stepped to the base of the iron stairway and readied his rune axe. ‘This is their route to the top. Manling, go to the thane. We’ll hold them here.’

 	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 slayer 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 slayer. ‘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, slayers,’ 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 slayers 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 slayers 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 slayer 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 ‘slayer’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 slayer.

 	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.’

 	Felix frowned as he slotted a second ladder into the shaft about five feet below the first. ‘What gold is this?’

 	‘All I have collected over my years of slaying, I put in a dwarf bank in Talabheim. It is to go to my family, who I shamed before becoming a Slayer, but I granted Henrik a part of it.’

 	‘And he will take all of it,’ growled Gotrek.

 	With a final swipe of his axe, he finished the hole in the lattice, then squeezed through and crossed the ladder to the cables. Each was as thick as his leg and made of wound steel. He tapped them with the heel of his axe, listening to the tone, then nodded and scored one with the blade.

 	‘Bring the rope, manling.’

 	Felix stooped through the hole, then edged out onto the ladder and crossed to the cables, clinging to the walls of the shaft for support. He handed Gotrek a coil of rope recovered from the collapsed scaffolding, and the slayer proceeded to tie him tightly to the cable at the waist and under the arms so that he was facing out. The ropes were so constricting that Felix could hardly breathe, and he began to panic again about slamming into the walls when the cable was loosed, but there was nothing for it now.

 	When Gotrek finished tying him, he beckoned Agnar ahead. The old slayer squeezed into the shaft with his own coil of rope over one shoulder, and let Gotrek tie him to the cable too, back to back with Felix. When that was done, Gotrek lowered himself down to the second ladder and took his axe from his back, then started hacking at the woven steel.

 	Felix closed his eyes in helpless terror as he felt the shuddering of it through his spine. The rune axe bit into the softer metal with ease, and the smaller strands parted with deep, heartstopping twangs.

 	After a moment, the chopping stopped, and Felix pried open his eyes and looked down. Gotrek was tying himself to the cable at the waist, leaving his torso free. Just below him, a few thin strands of the cable remained uncut, twanging and singing with the stress of holding so much weight. Once he had bound himself to his satisfaction, Gotrek used the leftover rope to tie his axe to his wrist so that even if he lost his grip it would not fall.

 	Finally he was ready, and raised the axe over his head. Felix wanted to close his eyes, but couldn’t. If he was going to die, he wanted to see it coming.

 	Gotrek swung down between his legs, chopping into the remaining strands below his feet. One snapped and the rest groaned. He swung again.

 	Felix heard a bright twang and, with a jolting rush, his stomach dropped into his boots. The filigreed lattice blurred past at an alarming rate, inches from his eyes, and the upward force was so strong that he could not raise his arms against it or take a breath. At least the thing he had feared the most did not happen. Though the cable bowed out towards the side of the shaft and the struts flashed by less than an arm’s length from his chest, he was not crushed against it.

 	A look below showed him why. The frayed end of the cable, less than a yard below Gotrek, was pressed against the side of the shaft, scraping off a cascading shower of sparks and making a deafening shriek as it rose, holding its passengers away from death with its rigidity. Gotrek, closer to the end than Felix, was even closer to the wall, and was sucking in his gut and holding down his beard to keep it from being ripped off at the roots. Over the screaming of metal on metal and the rattle of the shaking shaft, Felix heard a wild whooping. It took him a moment to realise it was the slayers, howling with savage glee.

 	Chambers and rooms flicked by as they whipped past, separated by short intervals of black, and a few seconds later the plummeting cage shot by inches behind them, dropping so fast that Felix hadn’t time to fear it crushing them before it was gone.

 	An eyeblink after that, Felix saw a flash of movement outside the cage, and caught a frozen picture of a gaping ratty face staring at him amongst a swarm of others. They had shot past the skaven troops, still labouring up the stairs that wound around the shaft one step at a time. Gotrek had been right. They were going to beat them to the first level – if they lived.

 	Only seconds later, the ride came to an end, and what Felix had earlier feared finally happened. As the boom of a huge impact echoed up from below, the cable jerked to a stop, snapping Felix’s teeth shut, then slapped back and forth like a pendulum in a wind storm. Felix was crushed against the side of the shaft, and only great good fortune let his heavily bound chest take the blow and not his head. Even so, all the air was knocked out of him and his ribs felt like they had been hit with a sledgehammer. His knees too cracked against the steel, and he hissed in agony.

 	‘All… alive?’ he asked as the swaying stopped.

 	Behind him and below, the slayers grunted in the affirmative, and he saw that they had taken some damage too. Agnar had blood streaming from his scalp where the front few inches of his slayer’s crest had been ripped away by some passing snag, and it looked like his nose had been broken. Gotrek had deep scrapes and bruises on his shoulders and forearms, and a great welt over one eye.

 	As he looked around, however, Felix feared that they had a greater problem than their wounds. They were dangling over a bottomless pit in the centre of the shaft, tied securely to the cable, and the door they had hoped to reach was more than thirty feet above their heads.

 	‘Are you certain you thought this through, Gotrek?’ Felix asked.

 	‘Swing, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘With me. You too, Arvastsson.’

 	Gotrek began to swing his arms, legs and rune axe back and forth in a slow, strong rhythm. Felix and Agnar did the same, moving as he moved. At first the effect of their motion on the heavy cable was negligible, and Felix feared it was all for naught, but after a while their feeble wiggle became a slight sway, and then, as the movement of the cable added itself to their momentum, their swings got longer and longer, until, finally, Gotrek was able to reach out and grab the lattice of the shaft.

 	The first time, it ripped from his hand, but the second time he was able to catch a crossbar with the hook of his axe and they stopped in mid-swing. Gotrek pulled himself hand over hand up the haft of the axe, then grabbed onto the lattice and clung there as he untied the rope that bound his waist to the cable. One end of this he retied to the lattice, then unwound the other.

 	‘Gotrek!’ Felix cried. ‘You’ll–’

 	The last few coils whipped off Gotrek like a chain going through a pulley and the cable sprang free again.

 	‘All part of the plan, manling,’ said Gotrek, as Felix and Agnar swung again to a stop in the middle of the shaft.

 	‘I’m relieved to hear there is a plan,’ said Felix.

 	Gotrek coiled up the loose rope and made to throw it at him. ‘Catch it and pass it around you, then throw it back.’

 	Felix caught it with a wild grab, then passed it behind him to Agnar, who handed it back to him on the other side.

 	‘Now lift it so it is above your heads,’ said Gotrek as Felix heaved the remaining length back to him.

 	Agnar and Felix took the rope, which was at their waists, and edged it up over their shoulders and heads until it was wrapped around nothing but the cable.

 	Gotrek nodded approvingly, then threaded the loose end of the rope through the lattice and started hauling at it, winching them closer and closer to the side with every pull.

 	Finally, Felix was able to grab the lattice and pull himself closer. Gotrek swiftly tied off the rope, then used his rune axe to cut through Felix and Agnar’s bonds, and they were all clinging like flies to the side of the shaft.

 	‘To the door,’ said Gotrek.

 	Though Felix’s knees ached and his arms shook, and his head spun with vertigo, he climbed with the slayers to the folding gate. It was closed, and locked with a geared hook, but one swing of Gotrek’s axe and the lock fell away in pieces. Felix crawled gratefully out onto an iron bridge as the slayers pushed the doors open, and into a room very similar to the one in which they had entered the shaft, except that this one was in better repair. He sighed with relief as he reached the floor. It felt good to have solid stone under his feet again.

 	The room had a large arch on its north wall, but it had been sealed up with granite blocks, and recently, if the footprints and blobs of dried mortar around its base were any indication. The sounds of a big battle came from behind it – the roar of orcs, the battle chants of the dwarfs, the clash of weapons and the thunder of cannons – all muffled, but still loud.

 	Gotrek grunted. ‘They’ve already begun. Come on.’

 	He and Agnar started for a smaller open door in the west wall. Felix followed, confused. It looked hardly large enough for him to fit through, let alone a rat-ogre.

 	‘The skaven are coming here?’ he asked. ‘I thought Lanquin had kept a passage open for them.’

 	‘You didn’t look at the map,’ said Gotrek. ‘They are exiting the stair one level down and coming up from the north, behind the thane.’

 	‘Ah,’ said Felix, chagrined. He had looked at the map, but he didn’t have a dwarf’s perfect recall of such things. ‘I must have misread it.’

 	Gotrek stepped into the narrow passage. ‘This funnels into the path Thorgrin left open for the greenskins. Part of the plan to make sure they could approach the battlefield from only one direction.’

 	Felix swallowed. ‘So we’ll be entering the great hall on the orc side of the battle?’

 	Agnar smiled, an evil glint in his eye. ‘Aye. Right at their backs.’

 	14


 	After a few twists and turns in the dark, the passage opened into a grand promenade, fully thirty paces wide, and five times Felix’s height. It was decorated in high dwarf style, with towering ancestor figures holding massive braziers in outstretched hands, and great battle scenes laid out in mosaic on the wall panels between them – and it reeked of orcs.

 	The signs of their passage were hard to miss – grimy footprints in the dust, greasy smears where their hands and shoulders had rubbed against the walls, discarded bones where they had eaten on the march – and the sounds of their advent came loud from the north.

 	Gotrek and Agnar started towards the noise at a trot and Felix followed, drawing Karaghul. Ahead, an arch as wide and tall as the promenade flickered with fire and movement, and as they jogged through it into the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild, it resolved into a scene of furious battle.

 	The dwarfs had set huge bonfires around the great hall to illuminate it for the battle, and in their hot orange light, Felix could see Stinkfoot’s orc army swarming the tight dwarf front. As Engineer Migrunssun had pointed out to him before, Thorgrin had chosen his position carefully, lining up his dwarf and human infantry four-deep across the narrow end of the great hall with the walls at either end protecting his flanks. This limited the number of orcs that could face his dwarfs at one time, and left a lot of the greenskins crowded together behind their comrades, all scrabbling and shoving at each other to get to the front.

 	All in all it was as neat and tidy a battle line as Felix had ever seen, but unfortunately, he and the slayers were on the wrong side of it, and there was no way to reach it except through the orcs. The closing off passages that had forced the greenskins to attack from the front had brought Gotrek, Agnar and himself to the same place – and there were more dangers than just rabid orcs in the way.

 	On the east side of the room, the cannons and gunners that Migrunsson had placed in the minehead firing platform had perfect position to rake these frustrated tag-alongs in the flank, and mangled orc bodies splashed up like green spray every time a cannon fired and the huge iron balls skipped through them. Felix looked at them askance as the slayers advanced. He didn’t fancy being blown to bits by cannons he had helped to place.

 	More cannons and muskets boomed behind Thorgrin’s line, firing over the dwarfs’ heads from a balcony above the archway that led to the stairs to the surface, while Lanquin’s mercenaries – those he hadn’t sent to the depths to die – held the west end of the line, keeping the orcs at bay with spears and swords.

 	As Felix scanned the mercenaries, he saw Henrik behind them, gesturing feverishly as he talked in Lanquin’s ear. Agnar saw him too, and changed course towards their position.

 	‘There you are, rememberer,’ he growled and picked up his pace.

 	‘Manling,’ said Gotrek as they followed. ‘When we’re through the line, go to the thane. Tell him the ratkin will attack from behind his guns, from the balcony.’

 	‘Aye, Gotrek.’

 	Ten paces on, the Slayers charged into the back of the massed orcs. The greenskins didn’t hear them coming. All their attention was focused on the dwarfs and humans ahead of them, and the bite of Gotrek and Agnar’s axes severing their spines was their first indication that they were flanked.

 	Five died before the rest even knew the slayers were among them. Then flying blood and body parts alerted them and they turned, roaring, upon their whirling, slashing foes. It was then that Felix attacked, hacking at their necks and backs as they closed on the slayers. He killed two in as many seconds, and hamstrung a third as he dodged through the press.

 	An orc with a rusty cleaver swung at his head. Felix ducked and Gotrek’s rune axe arced up and smashed through the brute’s lantern jaw from below. Felix sidestepped to avoid its falling corpse and stabbed over Gotrek’s shoulder into the neck of another.

 	It fell, spraying blood from a severed artery, and they pressed on, carving a red swathe through the green tide, step by step, until only one last rank of orcs stood between them and Lanquin’s mercenaries, and these, attacked from both in front and behind, died quicker than the rest.

 	‘Who are you?’ barked a dark-browed sergeant as Felix and the slayers stepped over the corpses of the last orcs.

 	‘We have news for Lanquin!’ called Felix before the slayers could say anything undiplomatic. ‘News from the deeps.’

 	‘Aye,’ muttered Agnar as the man waved them impatiently past and the line closed up behind them. ‘News of his death.’

 	Gotrek and Agnar pushed through the mercenaries and started immediately for Lanquin and Henrik. The two men stared in shock at the slayers, then backed away, pointing and shouting. Felix grinned at their reaction as he turned and ran for Thane Thorgrin, who was fighting at the centre of the dwarf line. It was a fool’s game betting on a slayer’s demise, as the two traitors were learning to their cost.

 	Thorgrin, for all Gotrek’s grumbling that he was a soft-handed, surface-dwelling brigand who had grown fat by charging others to fight his battles for him, was still dwarf enough to lead from the front when forced to war. He stood upon a broad shield held aloft by two sturdy shieldbearers, and was hewing away at the front line of Stinkfoot’s black orc retinue with a will. Stinkfoot, by contrast, was hanging back and kicking his rotting foot in Thorgrin’s direction, but it seemed its magic had abandoned him, for the thane did not fall.

 	‘Thane Thorgrin,’ Felix called from the back of the ranks. ‘You are betrayed. Louis Lanquin has sided with the skaven and is going to let them attack your rear! They will come from the balcony.’

 	The battle was too loud. Thorgrin didn’t hear, but Sergeant Holdborn was in the second row of the Hammerers who protected the thane’s right side. He heard.

 	‘What is that, rememberer?’ he asked, stepping back from his troops. ‘Where is Engineer Migrunsson? Where are the other engineers?’

 	‘Killed by a skaven trap,’ said Felix. ‘Two survivors were to have come back and told you.’

 	Holdborn scowled suspiciously. ‘No one came back to us. And what is this talk of skaven? We fight the greenskins.’

 	‘The skaven manipulate the orcs, and Lanquin too, and–’ He broke off with a curse. ‘There’s no time to explain! Tell Thorgrin that Lanquin has cleared a path for the skaven, they will attack from–’

 	‘Fall back! Retreat! Retreat!’

 	Felix and Holdborn whipped around to see Lanquin and Henrik running for the archway that led to the surface and shouting over their shoulders for their mercenaries to follow. Gotrek and Agnar were in hot pursuit, but their short dwarf legs could not match the traitors’ pace, and the two men were through the arch before the slayers had crossed half the floor.

 	The mercenaries ran past them, breaking from the orcs all along the west flank and fleeing after Lanquin. Many died as the greenskins surged after them and cut them down, but just as many made the archway and vanished.

 	Sergeant Holdborn cursed as a tide of orcs began to sweep around the now undefended west wing of the dwarf line and attack them from the rear. Felix groaned as a realisation struck him. The Slayers may have goaded Lanquin into running earlier than he had planned, but this retreat had always been part of his plan. He had always intended to take his troops to the surface and leave the dwarfs in the lurch. How else to ensure their destruction and leave himself the last man standing? His treachery was now complete.

 	Gotrek and Agnar abandoned Lanquin and Henrik and turned to stop the orcs, but though they fought like ten dwarfs, they were only two, and could not hold them all back.

 	‘Thane Thorgrin!’ roared Holdborn. ‘We are flanked! We must shore up the west!’

 	Thorgrin looked around, and nearly died for it as the black orcs he was facing took advantage of his distraction. Fortunately, his shieldbearers did their job, and backed him out of the arc of the orcs’ cleavers, and he returned to the fight a second later, calling out orders as he parried the greenskins’ blows.

 	‘Sergeant! Peel off the back rows of the Hammerers and Ironbreakers. Wheel and cap the flank! Tell the Thunderers to turn all their guns to the west!’

 	Holdborn bawled the orders to his troops and they stepped back and turned towards the new front with practised calm, marching at the crazed orc charge in a perfect line.

 	The sergeant next looked up to shout orders to the Thunderers on the balcony, but there was no need. They had already turned on their own initiative, and were firing down into the greenskins, while the cannon crews were starting to wheel their field pieces into position.

 	They died before they could finish the turn.

 	The closed door behind them smashed open and an enormous rat-ogre roared out, sweeping around with handless arms that ended in metal scythes, severing dwarf heads and impaling dwarf chests. From around the mutated monster a seething swarm of ratmen spilled onto the balcony, and the Thunderers and cannon crews fell to knives in the back and claws across the throat.

 	Felix cursed and ran for Gotrek and Agnar. ‘Slayers! The skaven! The skaven are here!’

 	15


 	Gotrek and Agnar looked up to the balcony as one, then jumped back from their combats and ran for the balcony stairs as the Hammerers and Ironbreakers took their place and tore into the orc advance. The torrent of skaven flooded down the stairs and slammed into the Slayers on the bottom step, but Gotrek and Agnar crushed them back like a fist to the face, snapping brass-tipped spears and rusty swords and making red ruin of the furred limbs that wielded them. Felix fell in behind, hacking down those ratmen who tried to leap over the Slayers to swarm easier prey beyond. He knocked a spearrat out of the air with a swipe from Karaghul, then spitted the belly of another as it flew at him, a verdigrised scimitar clutched in its paws.

 	‘Go back to the greenskins, Gurnisson,’ said Agnar, as the slayers battled step by step up the flight. ‘This is my doom. Though I did not know it, my actions aided the skaven. I have lost honour a second time, and I will die for it here.’

 	‘It will take more than you to close that door, Arvastsson,’ said Gotrek. ‘But I will give you the holding of it.’

 	Agnar nodded, and they fell silent, concentrating on mowing down the skaven and driving them back up the stairs. On the balcony above, the rat-ogre picked up one of the cannons and hurled it over the balustrade at the dwarf troops. It slammed down in the midst of a squad of Longbeards just to the left of Thane Thorgrin, crushing half of them before bouncing into the greenskin lines and flattening as many orcs.

 	‘Leave off, you pea-brain rodent!’ roared Agnar, as the rat-ogre bent to pick up another cannon. ‘Fight me!’

 	The rat-ogre ignored him and got the second gun up to his chest. With twin bellows of rage, Agnar and Gotrek redoubled their attacks and surged up the stairs, making mincemeat out of the skaven that stood in their way.

 	They reached the top just as the rat-ogre got the gun over its head. It roared at Gotrek as he hove up before it, and made to drop the cannon on him, but Agnar darted behind it and hamstrung it. With a howl of pain, it fell, its legs buckling, and the cannon crashed down on its chest, pinning it.

 	Gotrek hacked its head off and pointed at the door, where a second rat-ogre was bursting onto the balcony at the head of a second wave of skaven. ‘Go, Arvastsson. Hold it until I can seal it shut.’

 	‘Aye, Gurnisson,’ said the old slayer, his eyes glittering. ‘Take your time.’

 	And with that he charged.

 	The rat-ogre slashed at him with wrist-blades the size of scythes. Agnar dodged its left-hand blade and shattered the right with a chopping parry from his long axe, then followed up with an overhand smash. The rat-ogre dodged back to avoid having its head caved in and pressed into the skaven that followed it. They squealed in fear, but some squirmed by and sprang at Felix and Gotrek.

 	‘How will you close the door?’ asked Felix, slashing at the ratmen. ‘It’s smashed to bits.’

 	‘Smash it some more,’ said Gotrek.

 	Felix heard him grunt and risked a look back. The slayer stood under the muzzle of the last cannon, and was pulling down on it with one hand as he swept his axe around at the skaven with the other. His efforts were tipping the cannon forward and lifting its back stock off the ground so it was balanced only on its wheels, and he was leaning on it with all his strength, urging it around.

 	‘Keep… the rats… clear,’ Gotrek rasped. The cords of his neck stood out like taut rope.

 	‘Aye, Gotrek,’ said Felix, and laid into the skaven, cutting them down and kicking them out of the path of the cannon’s ponderous turning.

 	In the door, Agnar battered the rat-ogre back with furious blows, carving red trenches in its grey fur and shearing off its second wrist blade, but it gave as good as it got, rocking the old slayer with bone-knuckled blows and rending his flesh with its chisel-shaped claws. Agnar was reeling on his feet, and sprays of blood flew from his beard with every swing of his axe.

 	The lesser skaven squeezed past this titanic battle in ones and twos, ducking the flashing steel and flying fists, and charged on. Felix thought he could hold them – at least until Gotrek got the gun around – but a quick glance to the floor of the great hall and he wondered if it would matter. The dwarfs were in dire shape, with the Hammerers and Ironbreakers who had been sent to stop the flank attack nearly overrun, and Thorgrin’s retinue being pushed back almost to the balcony.

 	‘The orcs are winning, Gotrek.’

 	‘One… more… minute…’ grunted the slayer.

 	Facing back to cut down a pair of leaping skaven, Felix saw that Gotrek had turned the gun so it was pointing directly at the arch, and was now cranking the elevation screw vigorously and raising the barrel higher. Felix wondered if he meant to blow the rat-ogre’s head off.

 	A second later, he saw there would be no need.

 	He heard a bellow, and looked over the heads of his chittering opponents. The beast had Agnar in its grip, its claws digging deep into his flesh and snapping his ribs as it lifted him off the ground. It tried to catch his fighting arm with its other hand, but Agnar fought through the pain and swatted at the snatching claw, severing two thick fingers, then chopped down at its neck, cutting though meat and bone and arteries. The monster hissed an airless roar and dropped him to clutch at its throat. Agnar swung again as he fell, gashing open its belly so that its bloated black intestines spilled to the floor. The steaming viscera entangled the old slayer as the rat-ogre toppled. He tried to stand, but the floor was too slick. The monster’s massive skull crashed down, headbutting him and knocking him flat on his back across the threshold of the door with the rat-ogre on top of him.

 	Immediately, the skaven that had been trapped behind the mutated behemoth flooded out, scrambling over its body and stabbing at Agnar with spears, swords and daggers. He swept at them with his axe and fist, but there were too many, and he was too stunned. Though a handful fell to his deadly flailing, twice as many buried their blades in his naked torso, then surged on as he twitched and gouted blood. And there were more behind them – many more.

 	‘Gotrek!’ cried Felix as he braced for their impact.

 	‘Fire in the hole!’ roared Gotrek.

 	Felix glanced behind and saw the slayer putting a flame to the touch hole of the cannon, which was pointing directly at Felix’s head!

 	He yelped and ducked away, cutting down skaven as he went, before a deafening boom shook the balcony and smoke and fire blinded him. The shot was followed immediately by an even louder crack, like thunder directly overhead, and yet more shaking and booming.

 	Coughing and blinking, Felix looked through the smoke to see the arch of the door collapsing. Gotrek’s shot had shattered the keystone, and with its removal, the door could not support itself. Huge blocks of masonry caved in on top of shrieking skaven, and the roof of the passage beyond the door followed suit like dominoes. In seconds it was filled to the ceiling with rubble and the shrill agony of dying ratmen. The skaven sneak attack was stopped.

 	But as he and Gotrek clambered over the rubble to finish off the ratmen who had escaped the collapse, Felix saw that, as he had predicted, it wasn’t going to matter. The thin line of Hammerers and Ironbreakers was dead, trampled underfoot by five times their number of orcs, and now the rest of the dwarfs and men were pressed front and back by slavering greenskins.

 	Stinkfoot, either frustrated by his foot’s poor showing as a weapon, or emboldened by the dwarfs’ desperate situation, finally limped through his black orc bodyguards and closed with Thorgrin, swinging an axe that looked like it had been crusted with the grot from between his toes.

 	As he and Gotrek killed the last of the skaven, Felix looked down to see the warboss’s vile weapon flash down like a grimy lightning bolt. Thorgrin flinched back, covering his nose with his free hand, and the axe only nicked his vambrace, but it didn’t stop there. The greasy blade swept on to chop through the shield the thane stood on, splitting it in two and sending Thorgrin crashing to the ground as Stinkfoot slashed at his shieldbearers.

 	‘Thorgrin’s down, Gotrek,’ said Felix. ‘We better–’

 	With a Khazalid war cry, the slayer vaulted the balustrade and leapt down at Stinkfoot, his axe high over his head. The warboss looked up just in time to take the keen blade of the rune axe right between his beady yellow eyes. Gotrek split his head like a melon, all the way down to his underbite, then hit him high in the chest with his knees and rode his body down to the ground to roll to his feet right in the middle of his retinue of black orcs.

 	‘Come on, you snot heaps!’ roared Gotrek. ‘Avenge your leader!’

 	Felix’s heart thudded, expecting the end as all the towering orc champions turned towards the slayer, but they were looking as much at Stinkfoot’s corpse as they were at Gotrek, and when one began to advance on the slayer, raising its club, another shoved it and tried to get ahead of it. Within seconds, they were all fighting each other, fist and cleaver and headbutt, with Gotrek standing forgotten in their middle.

 	The slayer roared, enraged, and hacked Stinkfoot’s stinking foot off at the knee, then dug his fingers into the oozing meat of the cut to wrap them around the severed shinbone and raised it up like a club. With this foul instrument in one hand and his rune axe in the other, he laid into the brawling black orcs like a whirlwind, swatting them in the teeth with the rotting appendage, then hacking them to bits as they fell back, choking and retching.

 	The dwarfs and humans were not slow to take advantage of this turn of events, and rallied all along their lines, driving the orcs back and reforming into squares.

 	‘Sigmar,’ Felix breathed. ‘Has he done it? Has he turned the battle–?’

 	Before he could complete the thought, the room shook from a great impact. The orcs and dwarfs were too engaged in their battle, and didn’t seem to notice, but Felix had felt it and looked around, trying to see the source. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, and was about to start down the stairs to join Gotrek when it came again. This time he was able to pinpoint the source of the sound. It was coming from the far left end of the room. He stared into the dim distance and saw grey dust hovering near the sealed-up entrance to the lift chamber.

 	Another heavy boom and Felix saw the dust shiver from the arch as it shook from an impact. A fracture line appeared between the blocks of the barricade. Something was trying to smash through!

 	‘Gotrek!’ Felix shouted, but the clamour of battle was too loud. The slayer didn’t hear him.

 	‘Gotrek!’

 	With a final thunderous impact, the wall that sealed up the entrance exploded outward in a jumble of heavy blocks, and a shape like a glowing white hand smashed through to stagger into the room.

 	The White Widow had returned from its rubble grave, and both the warpstone bomb that was strapped to its back and the wrinkled skaven who rode it appeared mostly intact.

 	16


 	As the White Widow made its unsteady way towards the battle on its seven good legs and one broken one, the ancient skaven leapt from its back and scuttled away to hunch in the shattered archway, where it began waving its scrawny arms and shaking its orb-topped brass staff. A dim green light glowed to life within the orb, and Felix saw a similar light begin to glow within the matching globe on the rod that sprouted from the bomb on the spider’s back.

 	Felix’s insides fluttered with moths of dread as he realised that the skaven sorcerer meant to use a spell to detonate the bomb from afar!

 	Felix hopped over the balustrade and jumped down on the pile of black orc corpses that Gotrek had left heaped there. It wasn’t a pleasant landing, and he ended up covered in black blood and orc smell, but it was softer than the floor and quicker than the stairs. He rolled off the putrid bodies and ran through the battle, setting his sights on the White Widow and the skaven.

 	Two orcs slashed at him as he ran past. He ducked their blows and tried to run on, but they blocked the way. He snarled with frustration. He had to stop the sorcerer!

 	A rotting, bandage-covered foot hit the left orc in the face as Felix ducked its axe, and it stumbled back, gagging. Felix chopped it in the ribs, then flinched aside, his eyes watering, as the foetid foot bounced his way. Gotrek appeared next to him and finished the orc off with an axe to the chest, then turned on the second. It snarled as it swung at the Slayer, and Felix thrust Karaghul through its neck.

 	‘Gotrek!’ he gasped as he ran on. ‘The White Widow! The bomb! The skaven–’

 	‘Get the rat, manling,’ said Gotrek, shoving the dying orc out of his way as he started forward again. ‘I’ll get the spider.’

 	Felix ran on, pounding across the endless marble floor as the green glow in the matching orbs grew brighter and brighter. If the warpstone bomb detonated here it would not only kill everyone in the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild, it would make all of the upper levels unlivable for anyone except for the skaven, who thrived on the vile stuff. For decades – perhaps centuries – to come, anything that descended into Karak Azgal would die from its eldritch emanations.

 	His heart thudded at the implications. Was that what the skaven had intended all along? Had they helped Stinkfoot unite the orcs and lead them against the dwarfs just so both sides would be all together in one place – an easy target for their bomb? It sounded like just the sort of thing the ratmen would do. Felix almost laughed to think of Lanquin and Henrik helping the skaven in the belief that they would share the depths with them. What had Henrik called it? A mutually beneficial relationship? The cracked and leaking bomb strapped to the back of the White Widow was proof that the ratmen wanted Karak Azgal all to themselves. Lanquin and Henrik were betrayed along with everyone else.

 	The skaven sorcerer backed under the broken arch as Felix sprinted at him, pulling a long bronze knife that buzzed with strange black energy. Just the drawing of it made the hair stand up on Felix’s arms, and the hum it emitted drilled into his brain.

 	Felix slashed at the ratmage without slowing, trying to bear it down by sheer momentum, but it slipped left with jittery speed and he missed, while its buzzing blade flicked past less than an inch from his ear.

 	He flinched and spun to face the sorcerer, and the blade was again in his face. He parried desperately and felt a sick trembling as the blades touched and the knife’s power crackled down Karaghul’s length. In all this, the skaven had not stopped his chant, and his staff continued to glow brighter.

 	Over the ratmage’s shoulder, Felix saw Gotrek hacking madly at the White Widow. The eight-legged monster slashed back just as furiously, stabbing down with its sabre-sharp forelegs and striking sparks from the marble floor. The slayer dodged past the blows and tried to close with it, aiming for the soft underbelly of its abdomen, but it skittered in a nimble circle and kept him before it.

 	Beyond that fight, Felix could see the battle raging on, with the dwarfs now firmly back in command, while the orc army disintegrated into a dozen squabbling warbands. The various bosses who had bowed to the power of Stinkfoot’s stinking foot, now realising that there was no leader, had all decided that they could be the leader, and all over the field, the bosses were ignoring their common enemy and turning on each other. The dwarfs were now sure to win.

 	It would not matter, however. It wouldn’t even matter whether Gotrek killed the White Widow. If Felix didn’t kill the skaven mage, the bomb would still blow, and all would be for naught. They would die from the blast, or worse, become twisted, mutated parodies of themselves. He had to finish it.

 	In desperation, he barged forward, slashing wildly, and deliberately left himself open. The skaven could not resist the bait. It stabbed at his chest.

 	Felix caught its stringy wrist and stopped the blade a half-inch from his chest. Hissing angrily, the mage swiped its only available weapon at him – its staff. This was what Felix had wanted. He parried the swipe with Karaghul, putting all the strength he could muster into the block, and bit deep into the brass shaft. A bright flash blinded him and leaping arcs of energy sizzled down Karaghul to paralyze his arm with stabbing shocks, but the glowing orb dimmed and fizzled.

 	The skaven sorcerer shrieked with rage and clubbed Felix’s head with the staff, making suns explode behind his eyes and sending him reeling into the arch. With limp arms, he raised Karaghul to defend himself, but the ratmage was turning away from him, chanting and shaking the staff at the spider, which continued to battle Gotrek.

 	The globe on the staff flared bright for a moment, then died completely and fell off to bounce across the floor. Chittering with fury, the skaven hurled the rest of the staff away and scampered for the White Widow, its robes flapping like dirty wings. For a second, Felix thought the mage was racing to attack Gotrek, but instead it danced between the spider’s legs and clambered onto its back.

 	In his stunned state, this seemed to Felix a bizarre and foolhardy thing to do. Gotrek was backing the White Widow up with every slash of his axe. He had sheared off the first yard of its left foreleg and caved in three of its eight eyes, and its thicket of mandibles was a splintered, oozing mess. But then Felix saw the skaven reaching for the lever beside the fading orb, and he realised its intent. It was going to trigger the bomb manually. It was going to blow itself up, and the rest of them with it.

 	Heart thumping in his chest, Felix pushed himself up and ran for the fight. ‘Gotrek! The skaven! Kill the skaven!’

 	The slayer was too focused to hear him, and it was too late anyway. The ratmage had grabbed the lever and was pulling on it. They were all going to die.

 	The lever didn’t move.

 	While Gotrek laid into the White Widow, meeting its every leg-slash with a hack from his axe, the skaven hauled repeatedly upon the bomb’s brass-handled switch, but nothing happened. Felix laughed with relief. The contraption must have been damaged when the roof fell in on it.

 	Squealing with frustration, the skaven bent closer to the mechanism, trying to find some way to unstick it and being jounced around like a flea on a hot skillet as Gotrek drove the White Widow into the lift room. Felix added his sword to the slayer’s axe, hope rising in his chest. If they could kill the spider before the skaven freed the switch, they might just have a chance.

 	Gotrek was bruised and running with gore from head to foot, and the little finger of his left hand was bent backwards at an alarming angle. Nevertheless, he attacked the beast in a wild fury, his one eye ablaze with savage joy, and his teeth bared in a bloody grimace.

 	‘The bomb, Gotrek,’ said Felix. ‘We have to stop the skaven from setting it off.’

 	‘Just as soon as I’m done with this spider, manling.’

 	‘But–’

 	But what other course was there? It would be impossible to reach the skaven until the White Widow was dead. Unless….

 	Felix looked around for something to throw at the mage, as he had done before, but the blocks that had fallen from the arch when the spider had smashed through it were too large. There was nothing the right size.

 	Then, suddenly, there was.

 	As Gotrek and Felix slashed at the spider, it reared up to avoid a blow, and its flailing forelegs cracked against the broken arch above them. A fresh course of blocks tumbled down at the impact, and smashed those that had already fallen, sending Gotrek and Felix diving aside to avoid being crushed by rubble.

 	The White Widow pounced upon Gotrek as he struggled to rise, stabbing at him with its one remaining foreleg, but the slayer rolled, and the sharp tip only tore his thigh instead of impaling it. Gotrek grunted and staggered up under the spider, his leg buckling, but right where he wanted to be, and he did not let pain stop him from striking true. He chopped upward with his rune axe and buried it deep in the monster’s abdomen.

 	The White Widow reared up like a spooked stallion and backed away, ichor gushing from the wound, and for a second time, Felix heard it scream. Gotrek limped after it, slashing at the spider’s legs where they connected to its body, and it cringed back to the edge of the lift hole, its back feet slipping off into thin air.

 	On the thing’s back, the ratmage was continuing to yank on the lever, still to no avail. Felix picked up a turnip-sized piece of rubble and hurled it, but missed. The White Widow was scrabbling at the edge now, clinging on desperately in the face of Gotrek’s brutal barrage, and the skaven was being jerked around like a puppet.

 	Gotrek’s axe burst one of the spider’s larger eyes, then crushed a mandible. ‘Come on, you oversized woodlouse!’ he roared. ‘Fight back! Slay me!’

 	The spider tried, but with the loss of an eye, its aim was off, and its strikes landed wide. Gotrek hacked off a leg and it jerked back, its fat abdomen hanging out over open space. Felix thought that would be the end of it, but its back legs found purchase on the filigree of the lift shaft, and it braced itself over the drop.

 	Felix saw the opening just as Gotrek did, and together they sprang forward to hack at the White Widow’s three middle legs, spread wide on the lip of the hole. Gotrek sheared through one, Felix cracked another, then kicked it off the edge as it drew back.

 	The spider listed sharply as its props fell away, and stabbed down with its remaining foreleg to catch its weight, but Gotrek chopped through that one too and it collapsed, its hammer-hard head crashing against the edge, then slipping off. The hooks of its back feet tried to hold onto the lift shaft, but its weight was too great, and they lost their grip. The White Widow fell.

 	Felix stepped to the edge with Gotrek and looked down as it plummeted away, bouncing and jolting off the walls. The last thing he saw before the spider vanished into the darkness was the skaven sorcerer, still pulling feverishly on the lever of the bomb.

 	Gotrek spat after it. ‘Interfering rats. Without the weight of that scrap yard contraption on its back, the spider might have beaten me.’

 	Felix nodded. ‘It would have made a grand doom.’

 	‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, then turned and started back into the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild.

 	As Felix followed him, a huge shock jolted the room, bringing rocks and dust down from the high ceiling and stopping dead every combat on the field of battle as the dwarfs and orcs looked up and dodged falling rubble. Felix picked himself up from where the impact had knocked him off his feet, then scrabbled away as a giant block broke from the arch and bounced across the floor. He looked around, heart pounding. A hellish green glow was pulsing from the depths of the lift shaft.

 	‘Wh-what was that?’

 	Gotrek shrugged and kept walking. ‘The ratmage finally got that lever to work.’

 	17


 	Gotrek and Felix strode back towards the battle, but it was nearly over. Riven with infighting, the orcs had had enough, and were scattering for the promenade with the dwarfs and humans in hot pursuit. Those orcs left on the field were dead or dying under the dwarfs’ thorough throat cutting.

 	Gotrek ignored it all and continued towards the balcony where Agnar had met his doom. To one side, Felix saw Thorgrin on his back, his helmet off, surrounded by a circle of concerned dwarfs. A dwarf surgeon was tending to his wounds. Gotrek ignored him too, and stumped up the balcony stairs. Agnar lay dead from a score of stab wounds amongst drifts of slaughtered skaven. His legs were buried under the massive corpse of the rat-ogre he had slain, and the rubble of the collapsed doorway, but his butchered torso was uncovered and his face, in death, had a look of peace that Felix had never seen upon it in life.

 	Gotrek pried Agnar’s axe from his still-clenched hands, then cleared the rubble and the rat-ogre’s corpse from his legs and lifted him up as if he weighed no more than a child.

 	‘Bring his axe, manling.’

 	Felix grunted as he picked up the long-hafted weapon. It was twice as heavy as he had expected. He followed Gotrek down the stairs, then to the corridor that led to the stairs to the surface, where the dwarfs and humans were laying their dead. As Gotrek knelt and laid Agnar with the others, Thorgrin, now bandaged and splinted, limped forward with the assistance of his remaining shieldbearer.

 	‘Well met, slayer,’ he said. ‘I mourn that you did not find your doom as your comrade did, but I thank you for slaying the orc and the White Widow. I – we – are in your debt.’

 	Gotrek bowed his head over Agnar as if Thorgrin wasn’t there. ‘You have restored your honour, Arvastsson, and died as a slayer should,’ he said. ‘May Grimnir welcome you to his halls.’

 	Felix stepped forward to lay Agnar’s axe on his chest, but Gotrek took it. ‘No, manling,’ he said, standing and turning towards the door. ‘That axe has a vow to keep.’

 	Thorgrin bowed and tried again to thank him. ‘Is there any reward we could offer you? Two months’ entry into the hold with the licence waived, perhaps? Lodgings at the Golden Mug?

 	Gotrek stepped past him and through the door without slowing. ‘Your war isn’t over, brigand. There are still more rats to kill.’

 	The Grail appeared to be closed when Gotrek and Felix reached it. The front door was locked and barred, and the gate to the stable yard was chained shut. Sounds of frantic activity drifting over the high fence, however, suggested that it was not entirely empty.

 	Gotrek sheared through the chain with one swipe of his axe and pushed the gate open. In the yard, still soupy with mud from the recent rain, Louis Lanquin and Henrik Daschke were busily saddling and bridling a pair of horses and throwing heavy-laden saddle bags over their rumps. A pack mule was already loaded with satchels and trunks. They looked up at the noise of the gate and froze as they saw Felix and the Slayer sloshing towards them.

 	Henrik backed to his horse, scrabbling blindly for the reins with one hand and his sword with the other. ‘Ride,’ he said. ‘Now. The dwarf is a maniac. We must not face him.’

 	Lanquin smiled. ‘And we won’t.’ He drew a pair of heavy pistols from his saddle holsters and aimed them at Gotrek and Felix. ‘You should have taken my gold, dwarf. You might have died as a slayer should.’

 	Gotrek sneered. ‘By poison gas? That is not a slayer’s death.’

 	Lanquin’s cool amusement faltered as Gotrek kept walking towards him, undaunted. Henrik clutched the innkeeper’s shoulder.

 	‘Come on! Let’s fly!’

 	Lanquin shook him off. ‘I have more saddlebags to pack.’ He thumbed back the hammers on the guns. ‘Stand where you are, curse you!’

 	‘A loaded gun is no threat to those who are ready to die,’ growled Gotrek.

 	Felix wanted to remind him that some present were not quite ready to die, but at that moment Lanquin turned both guns on the slayer.

 	‘Then I shall unload them,’ he said.

 	Gotrek hurled his axe as the Bretonnian squeezed the triggers. The axe hit first, smashing into Lanquin’s shoulder, and the pistols went off at wide angles as he crashed to the mud, screaming in pain. Felix ran forward to kick the pistols from Lanquin’s hands, but Henrik leapt in his way, slashing with his sword. Felix parried the blow, then raised Karaghul to riposte.

 	‘Hold, manling,’ said Gotrek.

 	Felix held, on guard, and glanced back at him. ‘You want me to spare him? After all he’s done?’

 	‘Agnar Arvastsson swore that this betrayer would die by his axe. It would not be fitting to let a slayer’s last oath go unfulfilled.’ Gotrek pulled Agnar’s long axe from his back and stood before Henrik.

 	‘Step aside, manling.’

 	‘You’re going to kill me in cold blood?’ squealed the rememberer. ‘That’s murder.’

 	‘You have your sword. Defend yourself,’ said Gotrek.

 	Henrik stepped back, shaking.

 	‘Defend myself? Against you? That’s still murder! You know I can’t win!’

 	‘You should have thought of that before you betrayed the oath you took to your slayer,’ said Gotrek. ‘Now fight.’

 	‘No listen, slayer,’ whined Henrik. ‘I was wrong, I know that. But you don’t know–’

 	He stabbed for Gotrek’s throat with his sword, trying to take him by surprise. The slayer was too quick. He knocked the thrust aside with such force that the blade snapped, then buried his axe in Henrik’s chest.

 	Henrik coughed blood all over Gotrek’s hands as his body went rigid, then his head slumped forward and he sagged to his knees in the mud.

 	Felix heard splashing behind him as Gotrek pulled Agnar’s axe free, and turned to see Lanquin staggering for the back gate, his left arm red to the wrist from Gotrek’s axe cut, which had laid him open to the bone. Felix leapt after him and put himself between the Bretonnian and escape.

 	Lanquin held up his hands.

 	‘Please, I beg you,’ he sobbed. ‘I only want to leave. Take my gold, all of it!’

 	‘Why would we let you go when we killed Henrik?’ asked Felix. ‘You’re the worst of the lot. You colluded with the skaven to kill the dwarfs. You sent men who had sworn loyalty to you to their deaths. You tried to have us killed in the street.’

 	‘Yes, but what will you get if you kill me?’ It was a cold day, but the sweat was pouring from Lanquin’s brow like a river. ‘Only what I have here. Spare me and I’ll tell you where I have more. You may have it all. All my wealth!’

 	Gotrek retrieved his axe from where it had fallen in the mud, then stepped up to Lanquin and cleaned it on his fancy cape before sheathing it on his back beside Agnar’s.

 	Lanquin swallowed, hope kindling in his terrified eyes. ‘You – you’re not going to kill me?’

 	‘You don’t deserve a quick death, innkeep,’ rumbled the slayer, then turned towards the stables. ‘Hold him while I fetch some rope, manling. We’ll leave him for the thane.’

 	Lanquin whined and complained, but a minute later they had tied him to a hitching post and were examining the contents of the saddle bags and trunks as he wept quietly behind them. There was a fortune of gold coins in the satchels, and a treasure trove of jewel-studded crowns, armour and weapons that looked like they had been worn by dwarf kings and princes in the mule’s packs and trunks, items far too fine for the thane to have ever allowed to be taken from the hold.

 	‘Hmmm,’ said Felix, looking at a jewelled comb that might have bought a townhouse in Altdorf. ‘Take the relics back to Thorgrin and keep the coin?’

 	Gotrek grunted. ‘It’s more than the brigand deserves, but who wants to lug all that around? Maybe just… this.’

 	He took a sturdy gold bracelet and slipped it around his wrist, then sealed the saddlebags and slung them over his shoulder. Felix shouldered the other set and grunted to his feet under its weight. He gave Lanquin a sly salute, then led the pack mule out of the stable after Gotrek – where they came face to face with Thane Thorgrin, Sergeant Holdborn, and a phalanx of dwarf constables. A rough crowd of mercenaries and treasure hunters had gathered behind the dwarfs to see what had brought the thane of Skalf’s Keep to the stinking streets of Deadgate.

 	Thorgrin bowed politely as he looked past them into the yard. ‘It seems we owe you another debt, slayer. You have detained the villain who masterminded this whole false war.’ He nodded to the saddlebags and the pack mule. ‘And I see that you have already chosen your reward. Very good. For all that you have done, you deserve it.’

 	Gotrek just glared at him, so Felix bowed for the both of them. ‘Thank you, thane. And we have also–’

 	‘There is the small matter of the tax, however,’ said Thorgrin, speaking over him. ‘As you know, all treasures taken within the confines of Karak Azgal are subject to a ten per cent tax, and if they are of particular historical significance to the hold they may not be taken at–’

 	‘You mealy-mouthed thief!’ snarled Gotrek. ‘We were bringing it back to you! Here. We don’t want it!’

 	He took the reins of the mule from Felix and handed them to Thorgrin.

 	‘It’s all yours.’

 	The thane stared as the dwarf constables took down and opened the trunks and revealed the great treasures within, then turned back to Gotrek and Felix and bowed again. ‘The return of such important relics is a fine and noble gesture, heroes, and I am humbled by it, but, may I ask, what do you carry in the other saddlebags?’

 	The veins in Gotrek’s neck were throbbing, and his face was turning a dangerous red. Felix stepped ahead of him, speaking quickly.

 	‘It is nothing from Karak Azgal. We took it from Lanquin. Gold coins. His profits from the Grail, I would guess.’

 	‘No doubt,’ said Thorgrin. ‘And you are welcome to it, b-but–’ He stuttered as Gotrek fixed him with his blazing single eye, then continued. ‘But, you seem to be under a misapprehension about the boundaries of Karak Azgal. It is not just the deeps, but also Skalf’s Keep and Deadgate. The tax applies to treasures found here as well. If you would allow us to count–’

 	Gotrek exploded. ‘You cheap chiseller! I came here to seek my doom, not to hunt treasure.’ He ripped open the saddlebags, then snatched Felix’s from his shoulder and did the same to them. ‘If you want your ten per cent, take it.’

 	And with that he hurled the open saddlebags over the heads of the thane and the constables and into the crowd. The gold coins flew everywhere, and the mob immediately cried out and dropped to their knees to scrabble in the mud for them.

 	As the constables strode into the confusion, bellowing for everyone to stop, Gotrek picked up the trunks carrying the ancient crowns and axes and armour and threw them too, spilling the ‘important relics’ into the muck, to the horror of Thorgrin, but the wild delight of the crowd.

 	Felix laughed as the thane sputtered and gaped. It was worth the loss of the gold to see the look on his face.

 	‘Slayer!’ Thorgrin cried. ‘This is an outrage! You have deprived the council of its rightful–’

 	Gotrek pulled Agnar’s axe off his back, and the thane stepped backwards, wary.

 	‘Will you attack me now?’ he cried. ‘What do you want?’

 	Gotrek slashed down with the axe and planted its blade in the mud at Thorgrin’s feet. ‘I want you to bury that with the body of Slayer Agnar Arvastsson, the only dwarf or man I met in this cesspit who wasn’t a thief.’

 	The slayer turned away from the stricken thane and started for the town gate.

 	‘Come on, manling. This place stinks.’