Read Online Gotrek & Felix: Slayer by David Guymer - Free Book Online Page B

longbeard’s lips ticked. Gotrek had always been hard, but Felix could not remember him ever being deliberately cruel. The dwarf who stood before him now was not the same one to whom Felix had once sworn an oath of friendship over a river of ale in an Altdorf tavern all those years ago. He was embittered and twisted, either by the horrors he had witnessed or those he had wrought himself, and had darkened as the world around him darkened. It was surprising to look back and realise that Gotrek had once had soft edges, but it was true: he had enjoyed good beer and good pipeweed, had on occasion been moved to make a joke and even smile at some of Felix’s; he had revelled in good food and had shared every dwarf’s passion for gold and old debts.
    It was as if all of that had been chipped away and all that remained now was the iron core.
    The Slayer.
    ‘You would condemn these men to their fates?’ said Felix, angry again before he even realised he was speaking. ‘And if they insisted, what then? Would you kill them? My own nephew? Perhaps I should expect no less from a Kinslayer.’
    ‘What did you call me?’ Gotrek rumbled dangerously, squaring up to Felix.
    ‘You heard,’ Felix shouted in the Slayer’s face. ‘I’ve been hearing about superior dwarf hearing for long enough to know that.’
    Some trace residue of common sense urged Felix to stop there, but he felt as if a dam had just been breached. Gotrek had killed Snorri, the best of them by any measure of common goodness. They hadn’t spoken of it since Praag. Felix had tried not to think of it. Even Gustav and his men had taken the hint and pretended it had never happened – they had their own reasons to forget those events – and sometimes hours could go by in which Felix actually believed it, but then he would hear the splitting of bone in his mind and see the blood seeping through the snow between his boots and know that it had. Felix had failed to stand up to the Slayer then and every day the guilt of it gnawed at him, and he damn well wasn’t going to let things go the same with Gustav, Max, or anyone else for that matter.
    ‘You’re the coward, Gotrek. You’re stubborn, block-headed, and you can go and bury your head in the Middle Mountains if you want, but Gustav and I will be taking our men to Averheim.’
    Gotrek regarded him stonily. ‘You done?’
    Felix let out a hot breath and nodded. ‘ We’re done, Gotrek. There’s nothing you can say to convince me to leave all these men behind.’
    ‘Nothing?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Good. We can cut straight to it then.’
    There was a smack of impact in the centre of Felix’s face and he staggered back. He heard what sounded like a pistol going off, but that might equally have been the sound of Gotrek’s knuckles cracking his jaw. Disbelief swam through his mind. Gotrek had hit him. The Slayer had never hit him before. His limbs turned to jelly as still, stumbling back, he tried to draw his sword. He saw two slightly blurred Slayers crack their knuckles before being suddenly whisked away.
    Felix’s last thought before he hit the ground was to realise that he was falling.
    He was unconscious before he had another.

FOUR
    Half-Ogre
    Fire spat into the rain, struggling like bound sacrifices from stakes eight feet high. Eight of them formed a ring to enclose a portion of the cobbled square. Behind that line of fire was held a dark, roaring sea of bestial heads and pointed helms, many-armed trophy poles and rippling banners. Out of the hundreds whose voices could be heard, only eight were visible from inside of the ring: two semicircles of proudly attired warriors with the courage and conviction to back one champion against another. Each held a weapon in either hand. The two combatants bore none.
    Khagash-Fél paced the border of his side of the ring with his giant stride. Cracked and ancient armour hung loosely from his broad shoulders, a battered harness of black hellsteel plates, faded runes and