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//-->A WARHAMMER NOVELSKAVENSLAYERGotrek & Felix - 02William King1This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemonsand of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of theworld’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and furyit is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deedsand great courage.At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, thelargest and most powerful of the human realms. Known forits engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it isa land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forestsand vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reignsthe Emperor Karl-Franz, sacred descendant of thefounder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielderof his magical warhammer.But these are far from civilised times. Across the lengthand breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palacesof Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, comerumblings of war. In the towering World’s Edge Mountains,the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits andrenegades harry the wild southern lands ofthe Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, theskaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across theland. And from the northern wildernesses there is theever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmencorrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods.As the time of battle draws ever near.the Empire needs heroeslike never before.2SKAVEN’S CLAW“I would like to forget the long, hard trudge through the winter woods which followed ourencounter with the children of Ulric. And it pains me to this day to think of the punishment wemeted out to the girl, Magdalena, but my companion was unrelenting, and no evil weencountered was ever spared if that could be avoided. In this case it could not be. With aheavy hearts, we entered the forest once more and set off northwards.“At long last we found ourselves in the great Elector city of Nuln, a place of refinement,sophistication, wealth and great learning—and a city in which my family had long hadbusiness dealings. At that time, the Countess Emmanuelle was at the height of her fame, powerand beauty and her city attracted the wealthy, the aristocratic and the famous like a candleflame attracts moths. Nuln was one of the most beautiful cities in all the Empire.“Of course, our own entry into the life of the city was made at a level far lower on thesocial scale. Short of cash, hungry and weary from our long journey, we were forced to takeemployment in what was possibly the very worst occupation we were to pursue in our longwanderings. And during that period we encountered a fiend who was to bedevil our paths forlong years to come.”—FromMy Travels With Gotrek, Vol. III,by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)3“Stuck in a sewer, hunting goblins. What a life,” Felix Jaeger muttered with feeling. He cursed allthe gods roundly. In his time he had come to consider himself something of an expert onunprepossessing surroundings but this must surely take the prize. Twenty feet overhead, thepopulation of the city of Nuln went about its lawful daily business. And here he was, in the dark,creeping along narrow walkways where a single slip could put him over his head in reekingfoulness. His back ached from stooping for hours on end. Truly, in all of his long association withthe Trollslayer, Gotrek Gurnisson, he had never before plumbed such depths.“Stop moaning, manling. It’s a job, isn’t it?” Gotrek said cheerfully, paying not the slightestheed to the smell or the narrowness of the ledge or the closeness of the bubbling broth of excrementthe sewerjacks called “the stew”.The Slayer looked right at home in the endless maze of brickwork and channels. Gotrek’s squatmuscular form was far better adapted to the work than Felix’s own. The dwarf picked his way alongthe ledges as sure-footed as a cat. In the two weeks they had been part of the sewer watch, Gotrekhad become far more adroit at the job than ten-year veterans of the service. But then he was a dwarf;his people were reared in the lightless places far beneath the Old World.It probably helped that he could see in the dark, Felix thought, and did not have to depend onthe flickering light of the watchmen’s lanterns. That still did not explain how he endured the stink,though. Felix doubted whether even the dwarfholds smelled quite so bad. The stench down here wasexquisitely vile. His head swam from the fumes.The Trollslayer looked peculiar without his usual weapon. Felix had come to think of thebattle-axe as being grafted to his hand. Now the dwarf had his huge starmetal axe strapped acrosshis back. There was not enough space to swing it in most areas of the sewer. Felix had tried to getGotrek to leave the weapon in the watch armoury alongside his own magical sword but had failed.Not even the prospect of its weight dragging him below the sewage if he fell in could cause theSlayer to part with his beloved heirloom. So Gotrek carried a throwing hatchet in his right hand anda huge military pick in the other. Felix shuddered when he imagined the latter being used. Itresembled a large hammer with a cruel hooked spike on one side. Driven by the dwarf’s awesomestrength he did not doubt that it could shatter bone and tear through muscle with ease.Felix tightened his grip on his own short stabbing sword and wished that he still carried theTemplar Aldred’s dragon-hilted mageblade. The prospect of facing goblins in the dark made himlong for the reassurance of using his familiar weapon. Perhaps Gotrek was right to keep his axe soclose.In the gloom of the lantern light, his fellow sewerjacks were ominous shadowy figures. Theywore no uniform save the ubiquitous scarves wrapped round their heads like Araby turbans, with along fold obscuring their mouths. Over the last two weeks, though, Felix had become familiarenough with them to recognise their silhouettes.There was tall, spare Gant whose scarf concealed a face turned into a moonscape bypockmarks and whose neck was a volcanic archipelago of erupting boils. If ever there was a goodadvertisement for not staying a sewerjack for twenty years Gant was it. The thought of his toothlesssmile, bad breath and worse jokes made Felix want to cringe. Not that he had ever pointed this outto Gant’s face. The sergeant had hinted that he had killed many a man for it.There was the squat, ape-like giant Rudi, with his massive barrel chest and hands almost as bigas Gotrek’s. He and the Trollslayer often arm-wrestled in the tavern after work. Despite straininguntil the sweat ran down his bald pate, Rudi had never beaten the dwarf, although he had comecloser than any man Felix had ever seen.Then there were Hef and Spider, the new boys as Gant liked to call them, because they hadonly been with the sewer watch for seven years. They were identical twins who lived with the samewoman on the surface and who had the habit of finishing each other’s sentences. So strange were4 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |