Gotrek & Felix- the Fourth Omnibus - Nathan Long Read online

  BACKLIST

  Discover more about Warhammer Chronicles from Black Library

  • THE LEGEND OF SIGMAR •

  Graham McNeill

  BOOK ONE: Heldenhammer

  BOOK TWO: Empire

  BOOK THREE: God King

  • THE RISE OF NAGASH •

  Mike Lee

  BOOK ONE: Nagash the Sorcerer

  BOOK TWO: Nagash the Unbroken

  BOOK THREE: Nagash Immortal

  • VAMPIRE WARS: THE VON CARSTEIN TRILOGY •

  Steven Savile

  BOOK ONE: Inheritance

  BOOK TWO: Dominion

  BOOK THREE: Retribution

  • THE SUNDERING •

  Gav Thorpe

  BOOK ONE: Malekith

  BOOK TWO: Shadow King

  BOOK THREE: Caledor

  • CHAMPIONS OF CHAOS •

  Darius Hinks, S P Cawkwell & Ben Counter

  BOOK ONE: Sigvald

  BOOK TWO: Valkia the Bloody

  BOOK THREE: Van Horstmann

  • THE WAR OF VENGEANCE •

  Nick Kyme, Chris Wraight & C L Werner

  BOOK ONE: The Great Betrayal

  BOOK TWO: Master of Dragons

  BOOK THREE: The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

  • MATHIAS THULMANN: WITCH HUNTER •

  C L Werner

  BOOK ONE: Witch Hunter

  BOOK TWO: Witch Finder

  BOOK THREE: Witch Killer

  • ULRIKA THE VAMPIRE •

  Nathan Long

  BOOK ONE: Bloodborn

  BOOK TWO: Bloodforged

  BOOK THREE: Bloodsworn

  • MASTERS OF STONE AND STEEL •

  Gav Thorpe and Nick Kyme

  BOOK ONE: The Doom of Dragonback

  BOOK TWO: Grudge Bearer

  BOOK THREE: Oathbreaker

  BOOK FOUR: Honourkeeper

  • THE TYRION & TECLIS OMNIBUS •

  William King

  BOOK ONE: Blood of Aenarion

  BOOK TWO: Sword of Caldor

  BOOK THREE: Bane of Malekith

  • WARRIORS OF THE CHAOS WASTES •

  C L Werner

  BOOK ONE: Wulfrik

  BOOK TWO: Palace of the Plague Lord

  BOOK THREE: Blood for the Blood God

  • KNIGHTS OF THE EMPIRE •

  Various Authors

  BOOK ONE: Hammers of Ulric

  BOOK TWO: Reiksguard

  BOOK THREE: Knight of the Blazing Sun

  • WARLORDS OF KARAK EIGHT PEAKS •

  Guy Haley & David Guymer

  BOOK ONE: Skarsnik

  BOOK TWO: Headtaker

  BOOK THREE: Thorgrim

  • SKAVEN WARS: THE BLACK PLAGUE TRILOGY •

  C L Werner

  BOOK ONE: Dead Winter

  BOOK TWO: Blighted Empire

  BOOK THREE: Wolf of Sigmar

  • GOTREK & FELIX: THE FIRST OMNIBUS •

  William King

  BOOK ONE: Trollslayer

  BOOK TWO: Skavenslayer

  BOOK THREE: Daemonslayer

  • GOTREK & FELIX: THE SECOND OMNIBUS •

  William King

  BOOK ONE: Dragonslayer

  BOOK TWO: Beastslayer

  BOOK THREE: Vampireslayer

  • GOTREK & FELIX: THE THIRD OMNIBUS •

  William King & Nathan long

  BOOK ONE: Giantslayer

  BOOK TWO: Orcslayer

  BOOK THREE: Manslayer

  • GOTREK & FELIX: THE FOURTH OMNIBUS •

  Nathan Long

  BOOK ONE: Elfslayer

  BOOK TWO: Shamanslayer

  BOOK THREE: Zombieslayer

  Discover more stories set in the Age of Sigmar from Black Library

  ~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

  THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1

  Various authors

  Contains the novels The Gates of Azyr, War Storm, Ghal Maraz, Hammers of Sigmar, Wardens of the Everqueen and Black Rift

  THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 2

  Various authors

  Contains the novels Call of Archaon, Warbeast, Fury of Gork, Bladestorm, Mortarch of Night and Lord of Undeath

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Warhammer Chronicles

  Map

  ELFSLAYER

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  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  SLAYER OF THE STORM GOD

  SHAMANSLAYER

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  ZOMBIESLAYER

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  THE FUNERAL OF GOTREK GURNISSON

  SLAYER’S HONOUR

  A Gotrek & Felix Gazetteer

  About the Authors

  An Extract from ‘Overlords of the Iron Dragon’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

  At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

  But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

  ELFSLAYER

  Nathan Long

  ‘And so, for the first time since
that long ago night when I made my vow to the Slayer, I returned to the city of my birth, to find neither the welcome I had hoped for, nor that which I had feared, but a reality more strange and terrible than either.

  ‘Our failure to reach Middenheim in time to take part in its defence precipitated the Slayer into the most prolonged despondency of our acquaintance. Indeed, I feared for a time that he might never recover from it. But then a chance meeting with an old ally drew us into one of the maddest, most desperate adventures we ever shared, and the Slayer’s spirits revived, though it seemed on many occasions during those days that we might pay for his recovery with our lives.’

  – From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol VII, by Herr Felix Jaeger

  (Altdorf Press, 2528)

  ONE

  Felix Jaeger looked at himself in the gilt-framed mirror in the grand entry hall of his father’s Altdorf mansion as he smoothed his new grey doublet and fixed the collar of his shirt for the tenth time. The deep gash in his forehead that he had received when the Spirit of Grungni exploded was now just a curving pink scar above his left eyebrow. The other smaller cuts and scrapes were gone entirely. The physicians who were caring for him were astonished. Less than two months had passed since the crash, and he was fully recovered. The sprains in both ankles from hitting the ground while wearing Makaisson’s ‘reliable’ no longer hurt. The headaches and the double vision had cleared up. Even the multitude of burns had left no marks, and the cultist’s sword cut that had opened him to the ribs under his left arm was no more than a fading line.

  He sighed. It was of course a very good thing to be fit and healthy again, but it also meant he’d had no more excuses not to visit his father.

  There was a discreet cough from behind him. He turned. His father’s butler stood on the marble stair that led to the upper floors.

  ‘He’ll see you now.’

  Right, thought Felix, this is it. Can’t be worse than facing down a daemon, can it?

  He swallowed, then started up the stairs after the butler.

  Gustav Jaeger was a shrivelled manikin drowning in a sea of white bedclothes. His withered hands lay still and pink on the top of an eiderdown quilt. A gaudy gold ring, set with sapphires surrounding the letter ‘J’ picked out in rubies, hung loose on one shrunken finger. His face sagged from his bones like wet laundry on a line. He looked like he was already dead. Felix barely recognised him as the man he still thought of as towering over him. Only his eyes were as he remembered – alive and angry, and capable of turning Felix’s insides to water with a single steel-blue glance.

  ‘Forty-two years,’ came a voice like steam. ‘Forty-two years and nothing to show for it. Pathetic.’

  ‘I’ve travelled the world, Father,’ said Felix. ‘I’ve written books. I…’

  ‘I’ve read ’em,’ snapped his father. ‘Or tried to. Rubbish. The lot of them. Didn’t make a crown, I’ll warrant.’

  ‘Actually, Otto says…’

  ‘Have you any savings? Any property? A wife? Children?’

  ‘Uh…’

  ‘I thought not. Thank the gods Otto’s pupped. There’d be no one left to carry on the Jaeger name if I’d left it to you.’ Gustav lifted his feeble head from the pillow and fixed Felix with an acid glare. ‘I suppose you’ve come back to beg for your inheritance.’

  Felix was offended. He hadn’t come for money. He had come to make peace. ‘No, Father. I…’

  ‘Well, you will beg in vain,’ the old man sneered. ‘Wasting all the advantages I offered you – the education, the position in the family business, the money I earned by the sweat of my brow, all to become a poet.’ He spat the word out like another man might say ‘orc’ or ‘mutant’. ‘Tell me when a poet has ever done anything useful in the world!’

  ‘Well, the great Detlef…’

  ‘Don’t tell me, you idiot! You think I want to hear your milk-sop prattle?’

  ‘Father, don’t excite yourself,’ said Felix, alarmed as he saw Gustav’s pink face turning a blotchy red. ‘You’re not well. Shall I fetch your nurse?’

  His father sank back onto his pillow, his breath coming in whistling wheezes. ‘Keep that… fat poisoner… away from me.’ He turned his head and looked at Felix again. His eyes looked clouded now – troubled. One of his claws beckoned Felix closer. ‘Come here.’

  Felix shifted forwards on his chair, heart thudding. ‘Yes, Father?’ Perhaps his father was finally going to soften. Perhaps they would heal the old wounds at last. Perhaps he was going to tell him that in his heart of hearts he had actually always loved him.

  ‘There is… one way you may regain my favour and… your inheritance.’

  ‘But, I don’t want an inheritance. I only want your–’

  ‘Don’t interrupt, damn you! Did they teach you nothing at university?’

  ‘Sorry, Father.’

  Gustav lay back and looked up at the ceiling. He was silent and still for so long that Felix began to be afraid he had died then and there – and with his words of reconciliation unspoken and Felix to blame for interrupting.

  ‘I…’ said Gustav, his voice almost inaudible.

  Felix leaned forwards eagerly. ‘Yes, father?’

  ‘I am in danger of losing Jaeger and Sons… to a villainous pirate by the name of Hans Euler.’

  Felix blinked. Those were not the words he expected. ‘Losing…? Who is this man? How did this happen?’

  ‘His father Ulfgang was an old associate of mine, an honourable man of Marienburg who dealt in… er, tariff-free merchandise.’

  ‘A smuggler.’

  ‘Call him what you will – he always dealt fairly with me.’ Gustav’s face darkened. ‘His son, however, is another matter. Ulfgang died last year, and Hans, the black-hearted little extortionist, has come into possession of a private letter I wrote to his father thirty years ago which he claims proves I imported contraband into the Empire and avoided Imperial tariffs. He says he will show the letter to the Emperor and the board of the Altdorf Merchants’ Guild if I do not give him a controlling interest in Jaeger and Sons before the end of next month.’

  Felix frowned. ‘Did you import contraband and avoid Imperial tariffs?’

  ‘Eh? Of course I did. Everybody does. How do you think I paid for your wasted education, boy?’

  ‘Ah.’ Felix was quietly shocked. He had always known that his father was a ruthless man of business, but he hadn’t realised he had actually broken the law. ‘And what will happen if this Euler brings the letter to the authorities?’

  Gustav began to turn red again. ‘Are you a lawyer suddenly? Are you weighing the merits of my case? I’m your father, damn your eyes! It should be enough that I ask.’

  ‘I was only…’

  ‘The Guild will blackball me and the Imperial Fisc will seize my assets, is what will happen,’ said Gustav. ‘That corrupt old bitch Hochsvoll will take away my charter and give it to one of her cronies. It will mean prison for me, and no inheritance for Otto, or for you. Is that enough to move your pity?’

  Felix flushed. ‘I didn’t mean…’

  ‘Euler awaits my answer at his house in Marienburg,’ continued the old man, lying back again. ‘I want you to go there and recover the letter from him, by any means that you see fit. Bring it to me and you shall have your inheritance. Otherwise you can die in poverty as you deserve.’

  Felix frowned. He wasn’t sure what he had expected from this meeting, but this wasn’t it. ‘You want me to rob him?’

  ‘I don’t want to know how you do it! Just do it!’

  ‘But…’

  ‘What is the difficulty?’ rasped Gustav. ‘I read your books. You go about the world, killing all and sundry and taking their treasure. Will you baulk to do the same for your father?’

  Felix hesitated to answer. Why should he do this? He didn’t want his inheritance, he didn’t care enough for his brother Otto to be concerned that he wouldn’t get his, and he doubted that his father would live long enough to serve any time in priso
n. He certainly didn’t feel he owed the old man anything. Gustav had cast him out without a pfennig twenty years ago and hadn’t asked after him since, and he had been a harsh, uncaring father before that. There had been numerous times over the years when Felix had hoped that the old man would choke on his morning porridge and die, and yet…

  And yet, hadn’t Felix come here to put an end to the old anger? Hadn’t he wanted to tell his father that he at last understood that, in his way, he had tried? Gustav might have scolded his sons unmercifully, and held them to impossibly high standards, but he had also given them a childhood free from want, paid for the best schools and tutors, spent untold amounts of money trying to buy them titles, and offered them positions in his thriving business. He might not have been able to express himself except with curses and slaps and insults, but he had wanted his sons to have good lives – and Felix had come to thank him for that, and to put the past behind them. How, then, could he refuse what might well be his father’s last request?

  He couldn’t.

  Felix sighed and lowered his head. ‘Very well, Father. I will get the letter back.’

  So anxious had Felix been before meeting his father that he had looked neither left nor right on the way to his house, but now, as he walked back towards the Griffon, clutching his cloak about him in the chill of a late autumn morning, his eyes roamed hither and thither and the crowded Altdorf streets became streets of memory.

  There on the right, with the green wall of the Jade College looming behind them, were the apartments of Herr Klampfert, the tutor who had taught him his alphabet and his history and who had smelled strongly of rosewater. There was the house of Mara Gosthoff who, at the tender age of fourteen, had let him kiss her at a Sonnstill Day dance. Off to the west, as he turned and pushed south down the bustling Austauschstrasse, he could just see the towers of the University of Altdorf, where he had studied literature and poetry and had fallen in with the young rabble-rousers who had preached abolishment of the ruling classes and equality for all.

  The further he walked, the faster the memories came, rushing towards the moment when his life had changed forever and there had been no going back. Just down that street was the courtyard where he had fought his duel with Krassner and killed him when he had only meant to wound. Now he was entering the Konigsplatz, where he and his fellow agitators had lit their bonfires and led the crowds in their grand protest against the injustice of the Window Tax. There was the statue of Emperor Wilhelm that Gotrek had dragged him behind when the Reiksguard cavalry had charged the protesters, slashing indiscriminately with their swords. Those were the cobbles on which half a dozen lancers had died by Gotrek’s axe, their blood soaking into the filth and black ash of the bonfires. And here, just before the Reiksbruck bridge, was the tiny alley that led to the tavern where he and Gotrek had got blind drunk together, and where, in the wee hours of the morning, Felix had pledged to follow the Slayer and record in an epic poem his great quest to die in battle.