Hammer and Bolter Issue Eighteen Page 11

  ‘False pirate?’ said Felix. ‘He seemed piratical enough to me.’

  ‘A true pirate worships Stromfels,’ she sniffed. ‘That fat lubber was just a thief with a boat, and we’re obliged to you for getting the Heart back from his safe. Most kind of you. Mind the bloodsedge, mein herr,’ she added.

  Felix jerked his foot back as a bush in his path rattled to life and extended vine-like tendrils towards him. He hacked at one that tried to snare his ankle, then danced away after Gotrek and the woman. The thing rustled in agitated frustration behind them.

  ‘I hate this place,’ said Felix.

  ‘At least were off the cursed boat,’ said Gotrek.

  They pressed on.

  A half hour later, they came to a dense stand of bulrushes growing from the water of a wide, shallow inlet. The plants were taller than Felix’s head.

  ‘Just through here, mein herren,’ said the fin-woman, smiling back at them as she stepped down into the water. ‘Hurry now.’ And with that she disappeared into the towering thicket.

  They splashed after her and shouldered into the close set plants. The tall stalks bent aside as they parted them, then sprung back after they had passed. Felix couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead, and lost sight of the woman almost immediately. He tried to listen for the slosh of her footsteps, but they were drowned out by their own.

  Felix looked over his left shoulder, then his right. ‘This is an ambush,’ he muttered.

  ‘We can only hope,’ said Gotrek.

  He lashed out with his axe, hacking a swath through the tall plants. Felix drew his sword and joined him, swinging wide. The bulrushes toppled before them, but didn’t reveal hidden assailants, only more bulrushes.

  ‘Quicker, mein herren!’ echoed the fin-woman’s voice from far ahead. ‘You don’t want to be late.’

  They pressed on, cursing, and a few minutes later came to the far edge of the stand, and a muddy shore that fringed another sea of sawgrass. They stepped warily up out of the water and looked around. The fin-woman was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Where are you, woman?’ called Felix. ‘Come out!’

  There was no response. Felix cursed and slashed angrily at the sawgrass. ‘She’s tricked us. She’s led us off into the middle of nowhere. I’ll wager the ceremony is miles from here.’

  ‘No, manling,’ said Gotrek, pointing. ‘It is there.’

  Felix turned and followed the slayer’s gaze. Far across the waving grass was a low hill, rising from the marsh like the back of some aquatic behemoth, and behind it, glowing dimly through the shrubs that furred its spine, was an orange flicker of fire.

  A short while later, Felix and Gotrek hid among those shrubs and peered at the scene below them. The hill sloped down to a shale beach that curved around a tidal lagoon, hemmed in on all sides by the sawgrass marsh. A bonfire blazed on the beach, illuminating an ancient, sea-weathered standing stone that rose from the shallows. The thing was twice as high as a man and carved to resemble a shark’s head, with a crude triangular notch in the front to delineate a mouth. Around this central stone eight smaller stones, man-high and carved all over with saucer-sized circles, also poked from the waves. An altar to Stromfels, Felix was certain, though it wasn’t clear to him what the lesser stones might represent.

  More than a score of fish-featured mutants stood on the beach and in the water around the stone circle, chanting and raising their misshapen arms in exaltation as their long shadows undulated across the water like black snakes. In their centre, standing knee-deep in front of the shark stone, was the old pirate from the Pelican’s Perch, stripped to the waist and holding aloft Gotrek’s bracelet as he shouted an invocation to the sky. Felix wasn’t surprised to see him, nor his men, who stood and chanted along with the other worshippers. In fact, it made the night’s events fall into place. And though it sickened him, he wasn’t surprised that they were mutants either.

  With their coats flung off in the heat of the fire, the pirates’ abnormalities were revealed – scales, fins, gills, webbed fingers, eel-like tails, trailing tendrils like those of a jellyfish. It was as if their god was slowly shaping them in his own image.

  The old pirate’s mutation was the subtlest, but also the most disturbing. As the man gyrated in his ecstasy, Felix saw what he at first thought were strands from his beard waving in the wind. But a longer look revealed that the strands were actually finger-sized tentacles that ringed his mouth, and which had been hidden within the luxuriousness of his moustaches.

  ‘It seems you were right not to sell to him,’ said Felix, chagrined.

  ‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, but that was all. The slayer wasn’t one to say ‘I told you so.’

  Felix looked further down the beach. At the edge of the firelight, a number of longboats were pulled up on the shale, and near them crouched half a dozen pitiful figures, all bound hand and foot, their ropes staked to the ground so they couldn’t escape. Felix thought he recognised their guide, the fin-woman, among the guards that watched over them. He could see her peering around into the shadows – looking for him and Gotrek no doubt.

  ‘The vanished revellers?’ Felix asked, nodding towards the six prisoners.

  Gotrek nodded. ‘Sacrifices,’ he growled.

  Felix feared he was right. He gripped his sword. ‘Then we’d better go stop the ceremony before it is complete.’

  ‘No,’ said Gotrek. ‘We wait.’

  Felix turned to him, confused. ‘But if we wait, they will call their god, and–’

  ‘Aye,’ Gotrek interrupted. ‘Mutants are nothing. I want to fight this harbinger, whatever it is.’

  ‘But, the sacrifices,’ said Felix.

  ‘I’ll kill it before it comes to that,’ said Gotrek dismissively.

  Felix shook his head. He sometimes forgot that, though Gotrek generally fought for the good of the Old World, and hated Chaos with a passion, he chose his fights for glory as much as for any other reason.

  A rising wail from the mutants returned his attention to the ceremony below. Things seemed to be reaching a climax.

  While the mutants writhed and chanted, in the centre of the ring, the old pirate turned to the shore and dropped to his knees in the water, the bracelet raised high over his head.

  Felix blinked and squinted at the thing. This far away, it was hard to make out details, but its appearance had definitely changed. The braided gold coil that the central bezel was fixed to seemed to have unwoven itself, the gleaming strands spreading out from the gem like spider legs. They even appeared to be stretching and curling – a grasping hand of yellow wire.

  Gotrek edged forward, his single eye glittering eagerly in the firelight.

  As the wild chant grew faster and louder, the old pirate lowered the clutching golden thing to his chest and pressed it against his sternum. Felix saw the gold wires clench, digging into his tattooed flesh. The pirate grimaced, but held the jewel in place. The wires gripped harder. He screamed and spasmed, his mouth tentacles trembling. The gold claws dug down into his chest like they were seeking his heart.

  The pirate thrashed and convulsed, but made no move to try to pull off the burrowing bracelet. Finally, with a last agonised bellow, he stiffened and pitched face-first into the waves, his head completely submerged.

  The mutant worshippers all fell silent, staring, as he floated face down in the water. Felix stared too. Had the old man died? Had the evil jewel killed him?

  ‘Do you think perhaps that didn’t go as planned?’ he whispered.

  ‘Quiet, manling,’ said Gotrek.

  Felix turned back to the beach. For a long moment there was no movement at all, and no noise but for the crackle of the bonfire. But then, with a splash and a cry, the old pirate twitched and floundered in the water.

  Felix could hear an indrawn breath from the mutants, and then a huge cheer as the pirate pushed himself up and stood, streaming with water.

  ‘The Harbinger!’ they cried. ‘Stromfels’ Harbinger is here!’

  Felix
did not feel like cheering. He felt like vomiting, for a horrible transformation had come over the old pirate, and was continuing as he watched.

  For one thing, he was larger than before, and was growing bigger still. He now towered head and shoulders above his followers, and his body was thickening and turning a dull iron grey. For another, he was distorting hideously. His neck swelled with muscle until it was as wide as his shoulders and his head grew to match. A triangular fin sprouted from his back, and his eyes became black orbs and shifted position, moving above his ears, which shrank into his skull and vanished. His nose widened and lengthened until it took over his whole face, and his mouth stretched along with it, a black, lipless gash filled with razor-sharp teeth. But more horrible still was the transformation of the eight little tentacles that had surrounded his mouth. As he grew and changed, so did they, lengthening and thickening until they were as big around as pythons, while their inner surfaces sprouted cup-sized suckers that clenched and contracted obscenely.

  The pirate-turned-monster threw back his head and howled in a voice like a howling winter storm, his arms and tentacles raised in triumph. ‘Bring the offerings!’ he roared. The gem from the evil bracelet glowed blue-green in the centre of his chest.

  Gotrek stood and drew his axe from his back, grinning savagely. ‘Now this will be a fight,’ he said, then charged down the slope towards the beach, roaring a wordless battle-cry.

  Felix hesitated as the mutants all turned and stared, then he sighed and ran after the slayer. It rankled somewhat that Gotrek seemed to assume that he would automatically follow him into battle. That certainly hadn’t been their original bargain. Felix had sworn to record Gotrek’s doom, not share it. But he had fought so many times at the slayer’s side that it had indeed become second nature, and he did sometimes charge in after him without thinking. Had he, Felix wondered with sudden concern, come to look forward to it?

  The pirates and mutants swarmed to meet them as the hulking, shark-mouthed octopoid howled behind them from the water.

  ‘Bring me the trespassers!’ it cried. ‘They will be first!’

  Gotrek ploughed into the horde, driving those at the front back into the rest as his rune axe splintered spears and sheared through swords and arms and stranger appendages in a bloody blur. He didn’t slow to fight them, however, only cut a path through them, his attention entirely on Stromfels’ Harbinger, who surged out of the lagoon to face him.

  Felix fell on the mutants before they had recovered from Gotrek’s passage, impaling the wounded and hacking down those who were trying to stand. Not exactly sporting, but then again, they meant to feed him to their god as a snack, so he felt little remorse. The rest turned and leapt at him as, beyond them, Gotrek pounded across the shale at the looming monster.

  Now Felix did regret following the slayer, for a dozen weapons were stabbing at him all at once, and he had to whirl like a top with his sword at full extent just to keep them at bay. At least, he thought, there is room enough here to swing and light enough to see, luxuries he hadn’t had in his earlier fights against them.

  ‘Get ‘im, my darlings!’ screeched a familiar female voice from the edges of the mob. ‘He ain’t nice to ladies!’

  Felix cut down a man with gaping fish-heads for hands and dodged past him to the bonfire, then snatched up a burning branch in his left hand and turned to face the rest. A brilliant plan, he thought. With the flames at his back he would only have to defend in front of him.

  They charged in, howling, and he stumbled back, nearly falling into the fire as he blocked their blows. A brilliant plan, he thought again, as his backside began to grow unpleasantly warm.

  Beyond the mutants, Felix saw Gotrek’s fight in brief glimpses – two heavy, suckered tentacles spinning away in a spray of black blood – the Harbinger of Stromfels howling in agony – Gotrek clubbed into the lagoon by another tentacle.

  ‘You are fools,’ the fin-backed behemoth shouted as it waded out after him. ‘Just like the damned Marienburgers.’

  The slayer jumped up again, axe raised, but to Felix’s horror, the monster’s two severed tentacles had grown back, as thick and strong as before.

  ‘They think it is their milquetoast prayers to Manann that protect them from the winter gales,’ the monster rumbled as it lashed the slayer with its limbs and drove him back amongst the standing stones. ‘Ha! Only appeasing Stromfels will stop the storms. We are the true protectors of Marienburg!’

  Gotrek chopped furiously, severing tentacle after tentacle as he tried to reach the monster’s shark-like trunk, but no matter how many he cut, by the time he had finished cutting the last, the first had grown back again.

  Felix, too, was in desperate straits. A woman with stinging whips growing from her neck lashed them at his face while a dozen more mutants stabbed at him. He hacked wildly around at them all while trying to shield his face from the whips. One burned his cheek and he flinched back, crying out. His heel crunched down on a burning log. He smelled burning wool. He was standing in the fire!

  An iron-shod staff rammed him in the chest, knocking him further back. He was falling! Desperate, he snatched at the staff, hauling at it with all his might.

  Fortunately, the mutant was pulling too, trying to jerk the staff from Felix’s grip. Felix used the momentum to launch himself forward and shouldered the man to the ground, then hurriedly tore off the flaming cloak, his heart pounding, and whirled it over his head.

  ‘Back, damn you!’ he gasped, fighting for breath. ‘I’ll burn you!’

  A mutant snagged the cloak on his spear tip and whipped it contemptuously away. The others pressed in again from all sides. Felix cursed and spun around with his sword, his lungs aching as he tried to hold them all away – right back where he’d started. At least he’d gotten away from the fire.

  In the water, the Harbinger of Stromfels shouted in triumph and lifted a struggling Gotrek over his gaping mouth, pinning his right arm and axe with a tentacle.

  Felix cursed and charged towards it, trying to break through the ring of mutants to reach the slayer in time.

  ‘Gotrek!’ he cried, hacking wildly. ‘Hang on!’

  The slayer’s left hand scrabbled for the haft his axe, then tore it free and hacked down at the tentacle, severing it. He splashed at the monsters feet and disappeared under the water as it screamed in agony.

  It plunged its arms and tentacles below the surface, feeling for him. ‘I will tear you apart!’

  Gotrek surged up behind the thing, the severed tentacle still wrapped around him, and aimed a left-handed slash at its spine, but the massive beast turned with surprising speed and the axe blade caught it under the ribs instead, sinking deep. The Harbinger roared in pain and fell back into the water, crashing down by the standing stone.

  All around Felix, the mutants wailed and spasmed in eerie unison to their leader’s agony. Felix lashed out at them, trying to take advantage of their weakness, but they staggered away, shrieking. He was too tired to pursue. He stumbled towards the slayer.

  Gotrek was wading deeper into the water, axe raised for another strike. Felix sloshed in after him, and they strode out past the circle of stones together, looking all around, but the water remained calm and flat.

  ‘He has defeated the Harbinger of Stromfels!’ cried the mutants, fleeing into the shadows. ‘He’ll kill us all!’

  Gotrek ignored them, chopping at the water with his axe. ‘Come back, you coward!’ he bellowed. ‘I know you’re not dead!’

  His voice echoed away across the lagoon, to be answered only with silence. He grunted and spit into the waves, then turned and slogged back to the shore, prying the severed tentacle from his skin with a series of dull pops.

  Felix looked around the beach. The mutants had vanished, leaving their dead behind. ‘Well done,’ he said.

  ‘Bah,’ said the slayer, disgusted. ‘It ran away, and took the bracelet with it.’

  Felix nodded, knowing the slayer would accept no sympathy. ‘Well, at le
ast we can bring these poor wretches back to safety.’ He pointed down the beach. ‘They left their boats.’

  Gotrek shrugged, not at all consoled. ‘I suppose.’

  They walked down the beach to the prisoners, keeping their eyes on the shadows, but the mutants remained hidden.

  ‘What have you done, you meddlers?’ whined a tired-looking woman in a shopkeeper’s apron as Felix knelt to cut her ropes.

  ‘Eh?’ said Felix. ‘We’re saving you.’

  ‘And dooming Marienburg,’ said a captured stevedore. ‘You should have left well enough alone.’

  Felix frowned. ‘You came willingly?’ Then why did they tie you down?’

  The stevedore hung his head. ‘Some change their minds at the last minute.’

  ‘Now Stromfels will send the storms,’ said a third captive, a young man in the uniform of the Black Caps. ‘Our deaths would have appeased him, but now....’

  Gotrek turned his single baleful eye on him. ‘You worship that abomination?’

  ‘No,’ said the shop wife. ‘Never. But the swamp men are right. It is he who calls the storms, not Manann, and so we give ourselves up to keep our families safe for another winter.’

  Gotrek spat, disgusted. ‘You’re to blame for its power. You make it stronger with your fear.’

  ‘And you’ve made it angry with your slaughter,’ said the stevedore. ‘Many ships will sink this winter because of you.’

  Gotrek snorted and turned away.

  Despite their protestations, the rescued prisoners were quite willing to go back to Marienburg with Gotrek and Felix before the mutants returned, so they stole one of the longboats and set off. Gotrek refused to row, or do anything but sit in the stern looking green at the gills, so Felix and the men took up the oars and poles, with the shop wife at the prow, calling out the hazards.