Gotrek and Felix: The Anthology Read Free Page B

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