Chapter 17
All the former slaves responded to my call immediately. Marcus, with his hoarse, booming voice, led the chant:
— Siiiigmar!
The motley crowd of ragged men plunged into a furious attack, sensing the weakness of a foe that had been mighty only moments before. The cultists, however, made a mistake. Instead of firing a solid volley at us, their archers sent all their bolts and bullets toward the elf. With inhuman speed, she dove to the side. The keen-ear's reaction beat the shooters' action. The bolts and bullets slammed into the rocky road where the elf had been a fraction of a second earlier.
My sword was still with the keen-ear. Therefore, I went into battle with a shield and the Skaven cleaver that Eric had handed me. We had about twenty meters to run. Ahead of us, a colorful, ragged mob of cultists surged and writhed.
But even before we reached them, the elf crashed into the Chaos followers. She charged the crowd alone, with my sword in her hands. The attack seemed hopeless. Suicidal, even. Yet, as soon as the girl reached the enemy, one could quote "Breaking Bad."
She is not in danger. She is the danger.
Or, in Russian, "Она не в опасности. Она и есть опасность."
The large Gor Beastmen from the sorcerer's guard advanced to meet her, flanked by five horned brutes and civilian cultists armed with short boar spears and swords. A white-furred, goat-headed Gor swung a two-handed axe at the elf. She counter-attacked. Diving under the sweeping blow, she executed a thrust and sprang back. A bloody patch began to spread on the Beastman's white fur in the area of his stomach. Right in the liver. Amazing! I want to be able to strike with the first lunge too, not hack an enemy into mincemeat for a couple of minutes.
A civilian cultist in a green doublet tried to stab the elf with a wide-bladed, winged boar spear. This weapon was clearly meant for hunting boars. However, the keen-ear proved to be much more nimble prey. She dodged, while slashing the enemy's fingers with the sword on her retreat. Blows rained down on her from all sides, but the elf possessed a phenomenal fighting sense.
We were about to join her, but a mob of mutants rushed to cut off our crowd. Bent, distorted bastards formed a wall of squirming flesh in front of us.
A brute with a moose head towered above them. In one hand, he held a hunting horn, and in the other, a working maul. The mutant roared, but the sound was cut short by a gunshot. Eric discharged his pistol into the brute's chest. He staggered back.
I found myself opposite the mutant leader. He was an excessively huge fat man. His head resembled the grotesque face of an ugly infant. The mutant, jiggling his folds, swung a heavy mace with a spherical head. Without waiting for the blow, I stabbed him in the face with the Skaven cleaver. Then, I shifted to the side as much as possible, covering myself with the shield. The wood cracked, and my left arm ached with pain. Still, I blocked the enemy's blow. It's nothing. Even Orcs had hit my block. This fat man's strength wouldn't surprise me.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to completely avoid enemy attacks. Comrades were on both sides and behind me. You can't leap around much in a tight formation.
I jabbed the opponent in the neck, trying to slice through his fat armor. The brute grabbed my blade with his free hand. A nasty sneer appeared on his face. As if to say I wouldn't take him down so easily and now he'd show me the full power of the dark gods.
At the same moment, Adora's spear from the second row plunged into the mutant's left eye. The brute howled, and I violently yanked the blade back, slicing through the flesh of his palm.
Surprisingly, there was very little blood. The mutant's wounds revealed pink bare flesh and yellow fat, but barely bled. I struck him on the nose with the edge of the shield. Adora twisted the spear in the wound. A glaive from the second row slashed at his bald head.
The basics of close-order drill that Javier had managed to instill in us were working.
— Filthy scullions! — the fat man shrieked, clubbing my shield and helmet with his mace. — How dare you! I am of noble lineage!
However, the mutant's blows were already weakening. I countered by jabbing him with the Skaven blade in the side and the solar plexus area. The glaive hacked at his bald scalp. Adora's spear went deep into his skull.
I don't know whose specific efforts killed this little aristocrat, but may the earth be glass wool for him.
Having regained a little rage, I shoved his lifeless carcass away and brought my next blow down on the goat face of a scrawny Ungor. Nearby, Eric, using a butcher's mallet with both hands, was pummeling some monstrosity overgrown with tentacles. Marcus impaled a hunchbacked mutant on his glaive and lifted him off the ground. He was a small brute, of course, but the old man's strength was still astonishing.
Under our onslaught, the mutants quickly crumbled. Their howling mob scattered in all directions, bleeding and oozing foul slime.
I saw the elf again. Several dead, half-naked cultists and another Gor Beastman now lay at her feet. The keen-ear seemed an invincible embodiment of the slaughter. Her pale skin was covered in foreign blood and small cuts. The blade fluttered in her hands. I hadn't even suspected such artistry could be performed with such a simple weapon.
However, there was still someone capable of harming the elven maiden. The sorcerer whom she had skewered with the glaive had not died instantly. His body was enveloped in a purple shimmer. He was clearly wounded, but still able to stand. On his right side, he leaned on a metal staff. Supporting his left arm was a naked, busty woman in a human-skin mask.
The sorcerer made a gesture with his fingers. Purple energy began to spread around. It writhed like a colossal snake. A moment later, it coalesced into the outline of a giant spectral whip. The Chaos sorcerer swung his left arm and the spell crashed down on the elf, the scattering mutants, and our left flank. A wind smelling of some suffocatingly sweet perfume struck my face.
I watched as the magical force of the spell slammed the screeching mutants into the rocky ground. Shouts of terror also erupted from our people. The elf was hit. She was flung onto the stones, but the girl immediately sprang up, though she had clearly suffered from the blow. I had to rush to her aid.
I ran, trying to navigate around the wounded and crazed mutants. Some creature tried to grab my leg with a huge paw, but I managed to raise my shield in time. Then, I nearly fell myself, stumbling over the corpse of a Beastman.
The sorcerer cast another spell. Two clouds of purple stupefaction appeared on either side of the elf and instantly closed in. For the first time, I saw the girl slow down, barely avoiding a spear thrust from a four-horned Gor.
I leaped up, blocking the enemy's next lunge with my shield. It was just a spear, but my arm barely withstood the wild creature's pressure. However, the Gor's strength played a dirty trick on him. The spear got stuck in the shield. I realized this and deliberately tried to fix it tighter, simultaneously slashing the Gor across the face. He acted surprisingly rationally, deflecting the blow with his horns, and then...
Bitch!
I had to drop the shield to avoid the ramming charge of his horns. The damned ram. But before the Gor could attempt anything else, a barely discernible shadow of a blade flashed from the side, slitting his throat. The elf could fight again. The Beastman slumped, losing blood, and I moved forward to keep up with the keen-ear.
The Chaos sorcerer saw the threat and was casting spells like crazy. First, with a snap of his fingers, everything around was enveloped in a purple haze. Images of Beastmen, Daemonettes, and warriors in horned helmets immediately began to emerge from it. They caused no harm, but the elf started batting them away as if they were real enemies. It seemed that's exactly how she saw them. Damn it!
I needed to get closer to her to break the illusion.
However, the Chaos sorcerer's spell also had a beneficial effect for us. It covered a part of the cultists too. They began fighting the illusory enemies and even hitting each other.
I rushed up to the elf, now without a shield, and...
Was immediately elbowed in the teeth. The blow was so powerful that I lost consciousness for a moment and woke up already on the rocky ground. A taste of blood was in my mouth. The purple mist continued to swirl around. My head was spinning and I couldn't get up.
"Devour," I commanded.
I don't know if she hit me by accident or mistook me for an enemy, but I needed to be cautious with the keen-ear.
Healed through the absorption of rage, I got back on my feet. The sorcerer was just a few steps away from me. Neither the elf nor his bodyguards were visible amidst the purple mist and dancing phantoms. It was time to finish off the Chaos spellcaster. Mage-slaying was my main skill now.
The sorcerer noticed that I was not distracted by the illusions. He snapped the fingers of his left hand again, the arm supported by the naked woman. A pink vortex enveloped me, suffocating me with the insanely strong scent of floral filth. I struggled to pass through this veil. However, an ordinary person would probably have suffered much more. Passing through the mist, I felt many touches of ghostly hands. They tried to hold me, squeeze me, tear me apart, but they couldn't harm me.
"Keep your mind cold," Loam-Pia reminded me, and for good reason.
If Skaven magic filled me with energy, the interaction with Slaaneshi magic clouded my judgment and sharpened my senses. For a moment, I felt my entire body all at once. Every single hair and every pore. But casting off the delusion, I advanced on the sorcerer, holding out the curved blade.
The sorcerer in the bronze mask struck his staff. The fog around us instantly dissipated, rising upward. There, the Chaos magic condensed, forming a huge, round, purple-tinted mirror.
"Don't look at it!" Loam-Pia commanded.
I barely managed to turn away. It seemed that the world's reflection in the purple mirror was drawing me in. It appears my protection does have some vulnerability to the psychological effects of Chaos.
I was only two steps away from the sorcerer. I had reached the blunt end of the glaive sticking out of his chest. The Chaos sorcerer struck his staff on the ground again. A nightmarish, jarring clang rang out from above. The mirror above us had probably shattered. Its fragments rained down. Each one that hit my body felt like it was burning with fire and ice simultaneously. I saw a fragment slice off the head of the naked woman assisting the sorcerer, and another fragment cut a huge chunk of flesh from her body.
The sorcerer didn't care about his minions; he so passionately wanted to kill me.
Behind him, the hail of fragments turned one of the Gor bodyguards into bloody pulp. Only the sorcerer and I survived the deadly rain of magic.
Terrible pain gripped me. Every spot where a fragment had hit was throbbing and smoking. They had burned through my gambeson. The severed helmet strap fell apart, and the casque, cracked down the middle, dropped from my buzzing head. I screamed. And with that scream, I shook off the stupor. Overcoming the horrible sensations, I lunged forward. I stabbed the enemy in the belly with the curved blade in a run. However, the blade was stopped by some kind of armor. Chainmail was probably hidden beneath the sorcerer's purple robe. My weapon got stuck in it.
The sorcerer didn't flinch. It seemed that due to his wound, he could barely stand and could only cast spells. However, he had enough strength to draw a long sword, flickering with unholy runes, from its scabbard with his left hand. The sorcerer wielded it slowly. He seemed to lazily swing at me, and I, dropping the Skaven blade, snatched backward, grasping the glaive with both hands. With all the strength of my body, I managed to rip the weapon out of the wound.
— Die! — I shouted, heated by the thrill. — Heretics suck!
Only later did I think about how stupid it was to insult a Slaaneshi like that. However, at that moment, I wasn't concerned with the heights of elegant expression. Dodging the lunge of the long sword, I struck the enemy in the neck right beneath the bronze mask. Then again and again. Well, I couldn't kill with one or two blows yet. I had to make a mess.
The sorcerer collapsed after the fifth jab. The sword fell from his hand. The iron staff with the Chaos Star was engulfed in arcane flame. The metal melted like wax. The same thing happened a moment later with the sorcerer's sword. It seemed that the magical power of his artifacts was tied to the life of their owner.
With a heavy sigh, I looked around.
The fight was practically over. The sorcerer had been the last serious threat, and his death completely undermined the morale of the Chaos followers.
The mutants on the left flank had been heavily defeated by our squad of combat bums, and then hit again by their own sorcerer's magic whip. The berserk elf had broken into the cultists' right flank. She crashed into the humans just as some of them were distracted by illusions. Panic quickly gripped the cultists' ranks. A dozen and a half died, and the rest fled, pursued by the keen-eared killer.
Only Magg-Gut-Smasher remained calmly seated, meditatively gnawing the remains of a barrel of Chaos brew.
At that moment, I allowed myself to feel how exhausted I was. Not so much physically as mentally. First, Javier's death, despair, new hope, and the sorcerer's magic. His spells had steamrolled my nervous system. My hands were shaking, my legs were buckling. Leaning on the glaive, I trudged away. I squeezed with difficulty through the ranks of the cheering former slaves. Ignoring their congratulations, I made my way straight to the cart, pulled by a chronically frightened donkey.
— Yeah, yeah, I'm fed up with all this too, — I said, meeting the gaze of the wretched animal.
Afterward, I climbed onto the cart and, settling comfortably among our supplies, instantly fell into a deep sleep. Besides the familiar misty knight, I was met there by images inspired by the effect of the Chaos magic. Some of them were even pleasant. I dreamed I was making love, sometimes with Adora, sometimes with some unfamiliar girl. But other visions only caused nausea. In these horrible nightmares, Javier's corpse danced, shaking the entrails trailing from his wound, and a headless werewolf copulated with the cut-up body of the woman who had helped the sorcerer.
— Jurgen... Jurgen...
I took the voice for part of the visions and didn't react for a while, but then I started being shaken. Gently at first, then more persistently. Opening my eyes, I saw Adora's face before me against the evening sky.
— Good, — the girl sighed. — Losing you too would have been utterly miserable.
— Thanks for your concern, — I grunted, sitting up on the cart.
My back ached, and my mouth was drier than the Nehekharan deserts. Reaching for the flask on my belt, I found it torn to shreds. All those damned shards of the magic mirror. I was in rags again.
— Adora... Do you have any water?
— No. I have another gift. Here.
The girl placed a trophy sword in a worn, light-walnut leather scabbard beside me.
— Thank you... — I replied, taking the weapon and sitting on the cart. — And my own?
Adora shrugged.
— The keen-ear ran off, taking your sword. Eric wanted to look for her, but he was wounded in the leg. The others have no thought of tracking the elf.
— Why? — I was slightly surprised, climbing off the cart and looking for the waterskins we had hung on it. — She helped us.
— Jurgen, she's insane. And, she doesn't seem to know our language. Do you think if she meets us on a mountain path, she'll somehow distinguish us from the Chaos cultists? I'm not sure.
Hmm. I could understand the former slaves' fears. Despite her entirely humanoid appearance, the elf was a greater monster to them than Magg. They didn't understand her, but they saw how dangerous this creature could be. Perhaps several men were now fervently praying to Sigmar, who had saved them from the temptation to proposition the silent woman.
— What? — I smirked, taking a drink of water. — Are there no more volunteers to test how the keen-ear would react if someone shagged her? Will she blink, moan, or just tear out a larynx right away?
— Do you want to go and check? — Adora asked challengingly.
— I think this elf could become a very valuable ally for us.
— Or cut off your head in the name of her insane gods.
Hmm. How much do I actually know about her? Eric suggested she might be one of the Wardancers of the Wood Elves. It's possible. The fighting style is indeed somewhat similar.
Mister Wolf-D**k, before losing his head, said something about shattered dreams. That this keen-ear despised and hated herself. She probably suffered a heavy defeat in the recent past. How else would an elf end up in Skaven captivity?
I don't know much about the keen-eared races to figure out which one she belongs to. However, all elves, with very rare exceptions, don't like Chaos. So, we're on the same side. I think I know what I need to talk about with the pointy-eared beast.
— I'll go after her, — I finally said, having drunk my fill of water.
— Suit yourself, — Adora said coldly. — Don't expect any help from me. I need to keep these people from dying prematurely.
A hint at my irresponsibility towards the collective? How sweet. But simple tricks like that don't get through to me.
Taking the new sword and the Skaven triangular shield, I set off on the search. First, I walked past Eric, who was sitting near the sleeping Magg. The halfling gave me a guilty smile. His left leg was bandaged with rags.
— What wounded you? — I asked. — A spear? An arrow?
— A hoof, — the halfling chuckled. — That moose-head tried his best before I broke his knee and cracked his skull. He stepped on my leg.
— A glorious feat, — I smiled.
— Come on, my boy. He was already wounded by the pistol.
At that moment, the sleeping Magg let out a characteristic booming sound. I expected a cloud of stench to cover everything within a five-meter radius, but... it smelled of flowers and perfume?
— Is that him? — I asked in surprise.
— Yeah, yeah. After the Chaos brew, old Magg only passes fragrant winds, — the hobbit chuckled.
— Wonderful. I want to find the elf. Did you see where she went?
Eric pointed up the road into the mountains.
— I won't talk you out of it, Jurgen, but be careful. I don't think she's evil. She just had a really hard time with the rats. I saw a couple of elves back home in Mootland. Not the worst folk. They don't eat much, but they appreciate good cooking and don't waste food.
Ha! I'm sure any elf would burst into tears of happiness if they knew a halfling called them "not the worst folk."
"This warm-blood is under the influence of excessive friendliness," Loam-Pia countered as I set off to find the keen-ear. "Elven creatures are not meant to live anywhere but their island-continent. That is the plan of the Old Ones. Outside of Ulthuan, destructive tendencies awaken in them. They are not servants of the Ruinous Powers, but they are still dangerous, both to the world order and to themselves."
"You're probably right, but we desperately need allies right now."
Tracking the elf turned out to be quite simple. I just had to follow the path of hacked-up corpses. The keen-ear was driving the cultists, slaughtering them one by one. Severed limbs, deep wounds, faces contorted with terror—I looked at all this, while simultaneously searching the dead. The keen-ear hadn't taken any loot from them. I got copper and silver coins, small trinkets, and from one civilian cultist, I stripped and tried on his boots. A bit large, but I can stuff them with rags. It'll do! And the sole is thick. In general, I need to bring our people here. I won't collect every dagger and spear for now, but these weapons could be useful to us.
About five hundred meters further, I noticed tracks. Not that Eric had trained me in reading them, but the elf was walking barefoot on the stones, and her feet were bleeding. She had probably been jumping too much on the mountain roads without footwear.
There was a lot of blood. I hope she's even still alive.
The tracks veered off the main road onto a mountain path, climbing higher and higher among the gloomy rocks. It was getting dark. I was starting to feel very uneasy. I was alone, not counting the virtual toad, walking at dusk along the bloody trail of an unbalanced warrior capable of killing a person with her bare hands. I remember that elbow blow of hers. If it hadn't been for the rage enhancement, I would have had a deep knockout. Creepy. On the other hand, such power fascinated me. I wanted to gain such an ally.
Finally, we met. The elf stood in the rays of the sunset, facing right towards the cliff. She was balancing on the very edge. Hacked-up corpses of half-naked men and women lay nearby. I don't even know exactly how many there were. Three or four. I could easily imagine what happened. The elf pursued the cultists and cornered the last of them here. Then she killed them, but her rage didn't subside. So the keen-ear began hacking at the bodies to release the accumulated fury. As soon as the rage quieted, emptiness followed. Despair covered her tortured soul with a black veil again. Now the keen-ear was on the brink in every sense. Standing at the very edge of the cliff, trying to figure out if there were any reasons left to live?
It's nothing. I'll try to help you with that now. To throw you a few reasons not to jump down. I have an entire sacred mission, and any help would be very useful.
— Hello, — I said from a distance of about six meters.
The girl didn't react for a couple of seconds, then turned to me. Her face was covered in caked blood. Her eyes were two dark abysses. I felt a chill again. Now I had to be extremely careful. To choose the best and safest lines in the dialogue. I hope there will be any at all. Because in some dialogues, you only manage to say "help me" or "f**k."