Before departing last night he had intimated that his agents were about to ferret out a particularly important mutant plot. Von Halstadt had to admit he was far more concerned with the assassination attempt on the sewerjacks. He knew that Hef and Spider were dead. His agents had reported on the fire in Cheap Street.
That had been a neat bit of work, disposing of two traitors and half a hundred riffraff at the same time. Come to think of it, perhaps the rat-man had inadvertently provided a solution to another problem. Perhaps he could have fires set across the New Quarter. That would certainly cut down on the numbers of mutant-worshipping scum who dwelled there.
The thought of burning the dregs of society out of their festering sinkhole of vice warmed the cockles of his heart. He took the stairs two at a time and rushed down the corridor to his filing room. But his heart sank when he saw the door had been forced. Anger filled him. Someone had desecrated his sanctum. After Emmanuelle, his beloved files were the most important thing in his life. If someone had harmed a page of them…
He drew his sword and pushed the door open with his foot. A lantern shone in his face.
“Good evening, von Halstadt,” a cultured voice said. “I think you and I have some business.”
As the chief magistrate’s eyes grew accustomed to the illumination he recognised the face of the young man he had seen with Otto Jaeger the other night. “Who are you, whelp?” he asked.
“My name is Felix Jaeger. I am the man who is going to kill you.”
Rudi had never seen so much wine before. It was everywhere in the cellar: old bottles covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs, newer ones with only the slightest gilding of dirt. There was so much of it he wondered how any one man could drink it all. Maybe if he had plenty of guests, he supposed.
What was that noise? Probably nothing. It would be best to pretend there was nothing there.
Ever since they had found the rat-man in the sewers, nothing had gone right. Perhaps he could hide. But there was no place into which he could squeeze his large frame.
He should go back to the top of the ladder and take a look. He was sure he had heard the rungs of the metal ladder creak. Yes, he should.
He swallowed and tried to make himself move back to the hidden niche. His limbs responded slowly. It was as if all strength had been drained out of them. His heartbeat sounded loud in his ears. It raced like he had just run a mile.
He realised that he had been holding his breath, and let it out in a long sigh. The sound seemed unnaturally loud in the silence. He wished Gotrek or even that cocky young snob Felix would come back. He didn’t like being here on his own, in the basement of a powerful noble whose wealth and influence he could hardly imagine.
It was ridiculous, he told himself. He’d spent nearly fifteen years, man and boy, in the sewers, hunting mutants and monsters in the dark. He shouldn’t be frightened. Ah, but it had been different then. He had been younger and he’d been with friends and comrades, Gant and the brothers and the others now dead or gone.
The last few days had truly shaken him. The solid foundations of his life had vanished. He was alone: no wife, no children. His last friends had vanished or died. And if young Felix was right, the order that he had sworn to protect, the city’s rulers who he was pledged to defend against all enemies, were the enemy. Life didn’t make sense any more.
Wait! There was definitely something moving inside the niche Something heavy had stealthily pulled itself over the lip of the sinkhole. It was here in the cellar.
“Who’s there?” Rudi asked. His voice sounded weak and strange to him. It was the voice of a stranger. The soft padding footfalls came closer.
His lantern revealed the shape as it emerged into the wine cellar. It was huge, a head taller than him and perhaps twice as heavy. Great muscles bulged under its ruddy fur; long claws slid from the sheaths in its fingertips. Its face was a mixture of rat and wolf. A chilling, malign intelligence burned in its pink, beady little eyes.
Rudi raised his club to defend himself, but it was on him with one leap, startlingly swift for so large a creature. Pain flared through Rudi’s weapon arm as its great claws bit into the flesh of his wrist. He opened his mouth to scream. He looked up into the pink eyes of death. He felt the breath of the monster on him. It smelled of blood and fresh meat.
“Don’t be foolish, young man,” Fritz von Halstadt said. As he spoke, he put his hand on the hilt of his longsword. He was confident. He was a formidable swordsman and his opponent had only a short stabbing blade. “One shout and I’ll have six Knights of the White Wolf in here. They’ll hand me your head.”
“Perhaps they’ll be interested in the fact that you consort with skaven and keep a ledger of your dealings with them.”
Felix’s words chilled von Halstadt to the bone. He didn’t know whether the grey seer was in the house already or about to arrive He couldn’t risk summoning the knights if that was the case. They were reassuringly anti-mutant but their zeal also extended to dealing with the likes of the skaven.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, boy!” the magistrate spat. His blade rung as he pulled it from the scabbard.
“I’m afraid I do. You see I saw you in the sewers the other day. I saw you with my own eyes. I nearly didn’t believe them when I saw you again in the Golden Hammer.”
The young man seemed certain. There would be no reasoning with him, he would have to die. Von Halstadt let his blade point to the floor as he moved closer. He let his shoulders slump in defeat.
“How did you know?”
“I’m a sewerjack.”
“You can’t be. Sewerjacks don’t eat at the Golden Hammer. Not in the company of Otto Jaeg…” As he spoke the words, realisation dawned on von Halstadt. Felix Jaeger, Otto Jaeger. The family black sheep. He knew that had been worth looking into.
“What do you want, boy? Money? Preferment? I can arrange for either but it will take time.” He edged ever closer. The young man had relaxed a little, seeing how cowed he had become. Soon it would be time to strike.
“No, I think I want your head.”
Even as Felix spoke, von Halstadt struck, serpent-swift. To his surprise the young man parried his blow. Steel sparked where the blades met. Felix lashed out with his foot catching von Halstadt on the shin. Pain flared in his leg. He only just managed to leap back out of the way as the younger man thrust. He knew he had to keep his distance, to use his longer blade to advantage.
They circled and wheeled, moving with the precision of masters as they sought out openings. Blades wheeled and glittered in the shadows of the two lanterns. They moved too fast for the eye to follow, danced with a life of their own, seeking holes in the other’s defences. Von Halstadt allowed himself a snarl of satisfaction as he pinked Jaeger’s arm. It turned into a smile as he cut open a nasty gash above the young man’s eye.
Soon blood would drip down, blinding him. Both breathed hard now. But Fritz von Halstadt knew that he would win this duel. He could sense it. He would fight defensively for the moment. It was simply a matter of waiting.
Thanquol heard the noise upstairs. It sounded like a dance was taking place. Heavy boots slammed into the stone floor. Well-well, he thought, it was fortunate that he had arrived when he did. It would seem that von Halstadt’s enemies had tracked him to his lair and were even now in the process of assassinating him.
Assassination had a long and honourable history in skaven politics, and Thanquol was tempted to let things run their course. It would gratify his sense of petty malice to let the man-thing die. Pleasing though the thought was, he couldn’t allow himself the pleasure. It would interfere too much with the great plan.
He kicked Boneripper. The rat-ogre raised its bloody muzzle from the remnants of its meal. It growled at him. Thanquol glared at it, letting his slave feel his will. Slowly the rat-ogre rose. They climbed the stairs out of the cellar towards the battle above.
Felix was forced to admit that perhaps this had not been such a good
idea after all. He blamed too much watching the plays of Detlef Sierck as a youth. He had always wanted to play out one of those melodramatic scenes where the hero confronts the scheming villain.
Unfortunately things weren’t quite going according to script. It was the story of his life. His arms burned with fatigue and the pain of the wound von Halstadt had inflicted. He jerked his head quickly to one side to shake off the blood running down his forehead, a risky move against a swordsman as skilled as his opponent.
Red droplets splattered onto the desktop. Felix was relieved that von Halstadt hadn’t been quite swift enough to take advantage of the opening. His breathing was coming swift and laboured. It sounded like a bellows. Pain interfered with the smooth flow of his movements.
Von Halstadt’s long blade seemed to be everywhere. It was the sword that made the difference. Felix believed that had the blades been of equal length he would just have been the nobleman’s superior. But they were not and it was killing him.
“Hurry-hurry!” Thanquol ordered Boneripper as they ran towards the bottom of the stairs. The fight above was still going on but now that he had decided to save his pawn he didn’t want to take the chance of fate intervening.
An accident at this stage would be most annoying. Boneripper let out a little moan and stopped so suddenly that Thanquol ran into the solid wall of his back and bounced. The pain in his snout was considerable. The grey seer glanced around his pet. He saw why Boneripper had halted.
A dwarf stood there, blocking the way to the stairs. He was massive and his fur was strangely crested. In one hand he held an enormous battle-axe. He, too, looked as if he had been racing to get up the steps and intervene in the ongoing fight. He, too, looked astonished to discover there was another in the house.
“Bloody palaces!” he grumbled. “You never know who you’ll meet in them.”
“Die-die, foolish dwarfthing,” chittered Thanquol. “Boneripper! Kill! Kill!”
Boneripper surged forward, claws extended. He loomed up over the dwarf, a terrifying daemonic apparition, a living tribute to the fearsome imaginations of the sorcerer-scientists of Clan Moulder. It would not have surprised Thanquol if the dwarf, too, was paralysed with fear by the very sight of him, as the others had been.
“Chew on this,” the dwarf said.
Brains splattered everywhere as the axe clove Boneripper’s head in two. Thanquol found himself confronting an irate Trollslayer.
The musk of fear sprayed as he reached into his pouch for a weapon. Then, deciding discretion was the better part of valour, he turned and scuttled off. To his relief the dwarf did not follow, but raced up the staircase. Thanquol headed for the sewers, swearing that if it took him a lifetime, he’d make that dwarf pay.
Both men heard the noise from below. It sounded like an immense tree had crashed to the ground. Felix saw von Halstadt’s eyes flicker to the window. He knew this would be his only chance. Throwing caution to the wind he dived straight at the nobleman, all defences down. Momentarily he expected to feel von Halstadt’s blade bite into his chest. The split-second of distraction proved almost enough. Too late, his opponent tried to bring his blade around. Felix was already within the sweep. It bit into his side as his own shortsword tore up through von Halstadt’s stomach, under his ribs and into the heart. With a gurgle, the chief magistrate died. Agony seared Felix’s brain and he fell.
“Wake up, manling. This is no time to be lying around.”
Felix felt water splash over his face. He coughed and spluttered and shook his head. “What the—”
“We’d better get out of here before the White Wolves arrive.”
“Leave me alone.” Felix just wanted to lie there. “You go and fight them. You always wanted to die heroically.” Gotrek shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed. “I can’t, manling. I’m a Slayer. I’m supposed to die honourably. If we’re caught now folk might think we were committing a burglary.”
“So?”
“Theft brings disgrace. I’m trying to atone for my disgrace.”
“I can imagine some worse crimes, like drowning a dying man, for instance.”
“You’re not dying, manling. That’s barely a scratch.”
“Well, if we must.” Felix pulled himself to his feet. He looked around at the files. It occurred to him that the information here would be worth a fortune to the right person. Even a small selection of what was here would be invaluable. The possibilities for blackmail and extortion were endless.
He looked at the Slayer and remembered what he had said of theft. Gotrek wouldn’t condone him taking the papers. Even if he would, Felix decided he could not take them. It was corrupt, the life work of a maniac like von Halstadt. Contained in those papers were things that could ruin men’s lives. There were too many secrets already in Nuln. These represented too much power to fall into anybody’s hands. He took the lanterns and poured their oil over the filing cases. Then he set them alight.
Running downstairs with the smell of burning paper filling his nostrils, Felix felt oddly free. He realised that he would not be going to work with Otto after all, and that pleased him tremendously.
GUTTER RUNNERS
“Needless to say, we could not tell the authorities the whole truth of our encounter with the skaven, for in doing so we would implicate ourselves in the murder of a high official of the court of the Countess Emmanuelle. And murder, no matter how deserving the victim, is a capital crime.
“We were dismissed from service and forced to seek alternate employment. As luck would have it, during a drunken spree in one of the less salubrious quarters of the city, we happened upon a tavern, the owner of which had been a companion of the Slayer’s in his mercenary days. We were employed to eject undesirables from the bar, and believe me when I tell you that people had to be very undesirable indeed to warrant being thrown out of the Blind Pig.
“The work was hard, violent and unrewarding but at least I thought we were safe from the skaven. Of course, as was so often the case. I was wrong. For it seemed that one of them at least had not forgotten us and was plotting revenge…”
—From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol. III,
by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)
Felix Jaeger ducked the drunken mercenary’s punch. The brass-knuckled fist hurtled by his ear and hit the doorjamb, sending splinters of wood flying. Felix jabbed forward with his knee, catching the mercenary in the groin. The man moaned in pain and bent over. Felix caught him around the neck and tugged him towards the swing doors. The drunk barely resisted. He was too busy throwing up stale wine. Felix booted the door open, then pushed the mercenary out, propelling him on his way with a hard kick to the backside. The mercenary rolled in the dirt of Commerce Street, clutching his groin, tears dribbling from his eyes, his mouth open in a rictus of pain.
Felix rubbed his hands together ostentatiously before turning to go back into the bar. He was all too aware of the eyes watching him from beyond every pool of torchlight. At this time of night, Commerce Street was full of bravos, street-girls and hired muscle. Keeping up his reputation for toughness was plain common sense. It reduced his chances of taking a knife in the back when he wandered the streets at night.
What a life, he thought. If anybody had told him a year ago that he would be working as a bouncer in the roughest bar in Nuln, he would have laughed at them. He would have said he was a scholar, a poet and a gentleman, not some barroom brawler. He would have almost preferred being back in the sewer watch to this.
Things change, he told himself, pushing his way back into the crowded bar. Things certainly change.
The stink of stale sweat and cheap perfume slapped him in the face. He squinted as his vision adjusted to the gloomy, lantern-lit interior of the Blind Pig. For a moment he was aware that all the eyes in the place were on him. He scowled, in what he hoped was a fearsome manner, glaring around in exactly the fashion Gotrek did. From behind the bar, big Heinz, the tavern owner, gave a wink of approval for the way in which Felix had
dealt with the drunk, then returned to working the pumps.
Felix liked Heinz. He was grateful to him as well. The big man was a former comrade from Gotrek’s mercenary days. He was the only man in Nuln who had offered them a job after they had been dishonourably discharged from the sewer watch.
Now that was a new low, Felix thought. He and Gotrek were the only two warriors ever to be kicked out of the sewer watch in all its long and sordid history. In fact they had been lucky to escape a stretch in the Iron Tower, Countess Emmanuelle’s infamous prison. Gotrek had called the watch captain a corrupt, incompetent snotling fondler when the man had refused to take their report of skaven in the sewers seriously. To make matters worse, the dwarf had broken the man’s jaw when he had ordered the pair of them horsewhipped.
Felix winced. He still had some half-faded bruises from the ensuing brawl. They had fought against half of the watch station before being bludgeoned unconscious. He remembered waking up in the squalid cell the morning after. It was just as well his brother Otto had got them out, wishing to hush up any possible scandal that might blacken the Jaeger family name.
Otto had wanted the pair of them to leave town, but Gotrek insisted that they stay. He was not going to be run out of town like some common criminal, particularly not when a skaven wizard was still at large and doubtless plotting some terrible crime. The Trollslayer sensed an opportunity to confront the forces of darkness in all their evil splendour and he was not going to be robbed of his chance of a mighty death in battle against them. And bound by his old oath, Felix had to remain with the dwarf and record that doom for posterity.
Some mighty death, Felix thought sourly. He could see Gotrek now, huddled in a corner with a group of dwarfish warriors, waiting to start his shift. His enormous crest of dyed orange hair rose over the crowd. His hugely muscular figure hunched forward over the table. The dwarfs slugged back their beer from huge tankards, growling and tugging at their beards, and muttering something in their harsh, flinty tongue. Doubtless they were remembering some old slight to their people or working through the long list of the grudges they had to avenge. Or maybe they were just remembering the good old days when beer was a copper piece a flagon, and men showed the Elder Races proper respect.