[Gotrek & Felix 10] - Elfslayer Read online

  The watchmen started after them, but slowly, keeping in cover. Gotrek turned and twisted through the maze of stalls, trailing feathers and leaving bloody footprints. His eye never left the roof of the townhouse.

  “We’ll never catch them,” said Felix, falling in with him.

  Gotrek said nothing, walking through a stall full of complaining chickens and out the back as the owner cowered behind a chopping block. They were on the edge of the square now. The townhouse was to their left. Behind them Felix heard a babble of voices, as the watchmen trailed reluctantly after them.

  A silhouetted head popped up on the townhouse roof. Gotrek swung his axe in an arc before him and knocked another dart to the ground.

  “Cowards,” he rumbled.

  “He’s moving,” said Felix, pointing to where the silhouette had appeared briefly again at the top of the roof.

  Gotrek ran into the alley between the townhouse and another building. The dark form blurred as it leapt from roof to roof further down the alley—an impossible jump—then disappeared over a gable.

  Gotrek grunted and hurried on.

  “Gotrek, it’s useless!” called Felix. “He’s too fast.”

  The Slayer ignored him.

  * * * * *

  Seven blocks later, Gotrek stopped and glared around at the roofs above him. Felix caught his breath, relieved. He was hot and sticky, and the feathers he was covered with itched horribly.

  They had seen no sign of the dart shooter for four blocks, and he was just going to suggest to Gotrek that they give up, when the Slayer grunted, disgusted, then turned and started shuffling slowly down a side street. Felix stared after him. One moment he had been angry and determined and nearly his old self, the next his eye had gone dull and far-away again, like it had been for the last month. It was like someone had pulled his spine out.

  “Gotrek? Where are we going?” asked Felix, trailing after him.

  “I need a drink.”

  “At the Griffon? But, uh, the watch will ask around. They’ll find us there.”

  “Let them.”

  Felix hemmed uneasily. “Listen, Gotrek, I have no interest in fighting the watch. Nor do I wish to live the life of an outlaw again. Why don’t we go to another inn? Say in Marienburg.”

  Gotrek said nothing, only plodded on dully.

  Just then, three watchmen ran out of an alley ahead of them. They saw Gotrek and Felix and skidded to a stop in surprise.

  “Halt!” said the first, the oldest of the three, though no more than twenty at the most. The watch recruited young these days, with so many older men dead in the war.

  The boys went on guard. Gotrek didn’t slow, only lowered his head and readied his axe. Felix groaned. This was just what they needed.

  “Gotrek, they’re only doing their job,” he murmured.

  “They’re in my way.”

  “Gotrek, please!”

  “Hand over your weapons,” said the young watchman. His voice quavered, but he stood firm.

  Still stumping forwards, Gotrek raised his head and looked the watchman in the face. Felix saw the boy’s eyes widen with fear. Felix didn’t blame him. He’d taken the full brunt of that piercing, one-eyed glare before. It had shrivelled his guts every time.

  “Step aside,” the Slayer said calmly. “Tell your captain you didn’t find us.”

  The watchmen shot nervous glances at each other, hesitating.

  Gotrek kept coming. He raised his axe, still crusted with blood and feathers and filth. Felix held his breath, not wanting to look.

  The young men fled.

  Felix let out a sigh of relief.

  Gotrek grunted and walked on. “Marienburg,” he said, nodding. “One place is as good as another.”

  An hour later, after a wash at a bathhouse of less than sterling repute, Felix slipped through the back door of the Griffon while Rudgar and Irmele were busy serving dinner, changed into his old clothes and his old red Sudenland cloak, collected his and Gotrek’s few belongings, slipped back out again, and walked with the Slayer to the Reikside docks. He left a stack of coins on the dresser to pay for the room, and the bloodstained grey doublet as well, cursing the ruination of yet another set of good clothes. He decided that he would never again buy clothes of any quality for himself. He always managed to destroy them almost instantly.

  At the docks he enquired about services to Marienburg and learned that the Jilfte Bateau, a Marienburg passenger boat, was leaving in two hours, so he and Gotrek settled into the Broken Anchor to wait. Though the Anchor was far from the Griffon and the Huhnmarkt, and there was little likelihood of the watch coming to look for them there, Felix still picked the table in the darkest corner of the room and looked up nervously every time someone walked through the door.

  He spent the rest of the time looking to the diamond-paned windows, expecting drugged darts to come whistling from missing panes again at any moment. He still didn’t know who their strange attackers had been. His money was on the Lahmians, but he couldn’t rule out the Cleansing Flame either. Did they have any other enemies in the Empire? They had been away for so long, how could they? Whoever they were, would the men find them again? Would they follow them to Marienburg? From things Ulrika and the countess said, he had the impression that the Lahmians had agents everywhere. If it was them, he and Gotrek might never escape their reach.

  Despite Felix’s worry, their wait at the Anchor passed without incident and they made their way through the twilit Altdorf streets to the bustling docks just as the Jilfte Bateau’s purser dropped the rope and waved the passengers aboard.

  Gotrek grumbled and spat as he climbed the gangplank to the foredeck of the long low boat. “Slopping about on the water in a leaky wooden bucket,” he muttered. “Makes me sick. I’m going below.”

  Felix smiled to himself. Every time they travelled by water Gotrek made the same complaints, but it never stopped him from boarding.

  “You’ll feel better if you stay above,” he said. “Seeing the shore pass helps, I’m told.”

  “Man wisdom,” said Gotrek contemptuously, and stumped for the door to the staterooms.

  Felix shook his head, bemused, then turned to the rail. He wasn’t going to share a cramped cabin with the Slayer when he was in such a foul mood. Better by far to watch his fellow passengers board the boat and enjoy the warmth of the late autumn sun.

  The people making their way up the gangplank were a mixed lot: poor folk who had obviously paid their last coin for a berth in steerage, merchants in broadcloth on their way to trade in Bretonnia or Marienburg, their bullies carrying their baggage for them, a full company of Hochland handgunners under a bellowing captain, nobles and their retinues in silks and velvets being ushered aboard by fawning stewards, tanned and bearded sailors with packs on their backs, and fat merchant princes of Marienburg, dressed more gaudily than the nobles, returning home after signing trade agreements with wholesalers and distributors of the Empire.

  It was all so normal and mundane that Felix felt an unaccustomed longing for a regular life. These people weren’t attacked by strange, drooling madmen in taverns. These people weren’t on a first-name basis with vampire countesses. These people didn’t know anybody who had vowed to die a glorious death in battle. They’d never fought a troll. They most likely had never even seen a troll.

  Maybe his father was right. Maybe he should have followed the path the old man had set out for him. Things certainly would have been more comfortable. But also more boring. Not that boredom was the worst fate that could happen to a man. It was certainly preferable to finding oneself covered in blood and chicken feathers and being hunted by the watch.

  A richly appointed coach rolled up the dock and stopped near the gangplank. Though it had no insignia, it was obvious that someone important was inside. The coach was flanked by eight Reiksguard knights in steel breastplates and blue and red uniforms, and the purser ran out to meet it, bringing a low step and setting it before the door while stewards hurried to take t
he luggage handed down to them by the coachmen.

  Felix watched with interest as the coach door opened, wondering who would emerge. First to step out was an older man in long, cream-coloured robes, over which he wore a darker travelling cloak, the voluminous hood pulled up to hide his features. Felix marked him for a wizard, not just because of his clothes and the long amber-tipped staff that he carried, but also for the fear and awe that he inspired in the purser and the stewards who waited upon him. The purser seemed torn between showing him every courtesy and bolting like a scared rabbit. The stewards handled his luggage as if it might explode at any moment.

  The wizard turned back to the coach and offered a hand to its other occupant. Felix raised his head for a better look, for the woman who stepped delicately down to the dock was striking to say the least.

  She was dressed in silk robes of a deep, rich blue, like a summer sky just after sunset, embroidered all over with sigils of the stars, planets and moons—a seeress of the Celestial College then—but no wizened crone, weighed down with the burden of foreknowledge that came from years of divination. This woman was young, hardly more than twenty by Felix’s estimate, and as slim and graceful as a cat. Long straight hair the colour of honey fell down her back almost to her waist, and she carried her fine-featured head high, looking about her with alert interest, her lips quirked into a permanent half-smile, as if she knew a secret no one else did, which, considering her college, she undoubtedly did.

  The older wizard walked her to the boat, his head bent to talk to her as they went, while the purser bowed and scraped before them and their Reiksguard escort marched on either side of them.

  Felix’s fellow passengers whispered and muttered amongst themselves as the pair started up the gangplank.

  “Sigmar preserve us, they’re not travelling with us?” asked an Altdorf matron.

  “Oh, they’re all right,” said her husband. “They’re from the colleges. Reikers wouldn’t be travelling with ’em if they weren’t.”

  “Still warlocks all the same,” said another man. “Can’t trust ’em.”

  “And even if they’re good ’uns, what’re they doing here? Nothing good happens around a wizard,” said a third man.

  “Aye,” said the matron. “I’m not travelling with ’em. Heinrich, talk to the purser.”

  “But, Heike, my love. There isn’t another boat for two days. And we must get to Carroburg by Aubentag.”

  And on and on. Felix didn’t blame them. Even the best of wizards made him nervous. Like any weapon in the Empire’s arsenal they could be as dangerous to friend as to foe if something went wrong—powder could explode, cannons could crack, a sword could be turned against its owner, and wizards could go mad or bad, as he knew from recent personal experience.

  He turned with the other passengers as the sorcerous pair reached the top of the gangplank and allowed themselves to be led towards the door to the staterooms. Felix gave the young seeress another look now that she was nearer. She was as beautiful close up as she had been far away, with high cheekbones, full lips and bright eyes that matched the deep blue of her robe.

  She smiled at him as they passed, and the older wizard looked up to see who she was looking at.

  Felix blinked in recognition as they made eye contact. There was a beard now where there once had been none, and grey hair where there had once been brown, but the eyes that looked at him from the lean, lined face were the same, as was the sad, slow smile that broke through the man’s solemn expression.

  “Felix Jaeger,” said Maximilian Schreiber. “You haven’t aged a day.”

  THREE

  In a chamber far beneath the deepest cellars of Altdorf, Grey Seer Thanquol hand-fed his personal rat ogre Boneripper, the thirteenth of that name. It was important with such beasts to make sure that their food—and their punishment—came only from their master. In that way was meek devotion and savage loyalty won. In that way were they his and his alone.

  With some effort he lifted a fat man-leg from the basket of scraps his servants had brought and tossed into the corner where the massive rat ogre crouched, devouring another choice niblet. This incarnation of Boneripper was particularly impressive, for it was milk-white from its thick-clawed feet to its misshapen, blunt-horned head, and had the viscera-pink eyes of an albino. Thanquol had picked him from the litter Clan Moulder had offered him, particularly for his colour, which matched his own.

  He looked up from watching Boneripper suck the marrow from a femur as his simpering, tailless servant, Issfet Loptail, pulled back the manskin door curtain and bowed in a lean skaven in the black garb and mask of a night runner. The skaven, an accomplished assassin known only as Shadowfang, who Thanquol had hired from Clan Eshin at great expense, knelt before him, head down, tail flat and meek. He only flinched a little as he heard Boneripper crack the leg bone with his teeth.

  “I return, oh sage of the underdark,” whispered the assassin.

  “Yes-yes,” said the seer impatiently. Wasn’t it obvious he had returned? “Speak-speak! Do you have them? Are they mine at last?”

  Shadowfang hesitated. “I… I crave your pardon, grey seer. The kidnap did not go as planned.”

  Thanquol slammed his bony claw on the table, almost upsetting his inkpot. Boneripper rumbled ominously. “You promised me success! You promised you had anticipated every contingency!”

  “I thought I had, your supremacy,” said the assassin.

  “You thought? You thought incorrectly then, yes? What happened? Tell me, quick-quick!” Thanquol’s tail lashed with impatience.

  “Yes-yes, grey seer. I begin,” said Shadowfang, touching his snout to the floor and casting a nervous glance at the rat ogre. “The crested one blocked Mao Shing’s sleep darts—he has been punished for his incompetence, I assure you—then, as I foresaw, the crested one and the yellow fur ran, fast-fast, out of the drinking place to fight. There they fell into my second trap, and success was nearly ours.”

  “Nearly?” asked Thanquol, sneering.

  The assassin’s tail quivered at his devastating disdain. “The fault is not mine, most benevolent of seers!” he shrilled. “Had I been able to employ brave, proud gutter runners instead of sickly man-slaves, the targets would be even now in your noble claws. But outside in the day-sun in the over-burrow, skaven might have been discovered, so man-slaves must suffice.”

  “But suffice they did not,” snarled Thanquol.

  “No, grey seer,” said Shadowfang, swallowing nervously. “They failed. The dwarf and the human kill-maimed them all, then escaped.”

  “Escaped?” said Thanquol. “Where-where?”

  “I… I know not.”

  “You know not?” Thanquol’s voice was quickly rising to an imperious squeak. Boneripper sensed his distress and lowed unhappily. “You know not? You, who I was told could sniff-sniff the trail of a crow through a swamp seven days after it had flown past? You know not?”

  “Mercy-mercy, your eminence,” whined Shadowfang. “I… I made a strategic withdrawal after the man-slaves died, and when I returned to the drinking place, they had vanished.”

  “A strategic withdrawal,” said Thanquol dryly. “You skitter-ran. You squirted the musk of fear.”

  “No-no, your magnificence,” insisted Shadowfang. “I merely redeployed to a rearwards position.”

  Thanquol closed his eyes, so that he would not have to see the miserable excuse for an assassin that knelt before him. He was tempted to blast the worthless incompetent with a bolt of sorcerous fire, or feed him to Boneripper, but then he recalled how many long-hoarded warp tokens he had spent procuring the fool’s services, and resisted the urge. He would get his money’s worth out of him, and then he would let the rat ogre eat him.

  “If I might speak, your fearsomeness,” said Shadowfang.

  Thanquol sighed and opened his eyes. “Oh yes, pray speak, enlightened one. Speak-speak. Let your wisdom shine upon us.”

  Behind his mask, the assassin’s red eyes blinked, confused
. He was apparently a stranger to sarcasm. “Er, had you allowed me to kill-maim the overdwellers instead of snare-catching them, even lowly man-slaves might have succeeded…”

  “No-no!” shrieked Thanquol, causing Boneripper to bellow and Shadowfang and Issfet to curl their tails around them in fear. “No! It must be I that take-takes their lives. It must be I that wreaks my vengeance upon their helpless bodies for all the pain-shame they have caused me. Only I can have that joy. Only I! You hear?”

  He scrabbled among his papers until he found a stoppered bottle, then uncorked it and stuffed it up one cankered nostril. He inhaled deeply, shivering to the tip of his tail as the powdered warpstone began to spread throughout his system. Issfet and Shadowfang took a further step back as the seer’s eyes glowed a malefic green.

  “They will die,” Thanquol said, after he had at last controlled his trembling. “Yes-yes, but only at my whim, and long after they have beg-cried to be free of life.” His glowing eyes snapped back to the assassin. “Find them! Find them! And this time you must not fail to take them!”

  “Yes, grey seer,” said Shadowfang, touching his snout again to the floor. “At once, grey seer. I go, grey seer.”

  “Master,” said Issfet, wobbling unsteadily on his hind paws. “A man-spy tells me that the crested one and the yellow fur have left the drinking burrow, taking their hoardings with them. It may be that they journey again.”

  “They have left?” said Thanquol, turning on him. “Why did you not tell me this before?”

  “I only just learned of it, your malfeasance,” said Issfet. “I was coming to say when Master Shadowfang arrived.”

  “But how will I find them?” whined Thanquol. “They might vanish again for another twenty years.”

  “I will send my gutter runners to every corner of the over-burrow,” said Shadowfang.

  “I will question my man-spies,” said Issfet.

  “No,” said Thanquol, raising a yellowed claw. “I have it!” The powdered warpstone was once again clearing his head and allowing his genius to blossom. “The yellow fur spoke with its brood sire today, yes-yes?”