Gotrek & Felix - 8. Orcslayer

"Down, Ironskin!" came Gotrek's voice from the bloody scrum to their right.

Narin cursed as he gutted another orc, but backed from the combat as ordered, while Felix, Thorgig and Leatherbeard closed ranks. Narin snatched up the rope and started backwards down the cliff. "You dare not die here, Gurnisson!" he shouted over the clash of weapons. "You owe my father a fight."

Felix and the others were pressed back to back with Gotrek as the orcs pushed in on them from all sides, a surging green wall, out of which lashed snapping tusks, massive fists and black-iron axes. Every swing and shift of weight made Felix's ankle scream. Gotrek fought the leader, a huge, milky-skinned orc whose beady black eyes glittered silently at the Slayer with cold intensity as they fought. Felix frowned. Didn't orcs have red eyes? Or yellow?

"Thorgig, down!" called Gotrek.

"What?" cried the young dwarf. "Me before the human? I won't!"

"Down, or I throw you down," growled Gotrek, swinging his rune axe up through the black-eyed orc's jaw and into his brain. "The manling's fought by me for more than twenty years. He knows his business."

The strangeness of the orc's eyes flew out of Felix's head and he felt a burst of pride as Thorgig started, snarling and reluctant, down the rope. He didn't think he'd ever heard Gotrek compliment his prowess as a fighter before. He fought with renewed vigour, inspired by the off-hand praise, protecting the Slayer's flank and rear as he'd always done, while Gotrek dealt brutal death left, right and centre.

On the other hand, he thought sheepishly, he wouldn't have minded entirely if Gotrek had thought less of him and let him go down first.

Dead orcs lay thick on the ground, but there didn't seem to be any less pressing them, and with Thorgig and Narin making their way down the cliff, Gotrek, Leatherbeard and Felix fought harder than ever. Felix wondered if even Gotrek could keep the orcs away from the rope alone. A cleaver grazed Felix's leg, opening up an angry red gash, and a dead orc, falling from Gotrek's axe, nearly knocked him backwards off the cliff. His ankle throbbed, one pain among many. He felt dazed and numb, the green horde blurred before him. He could hardly hold up his sword.

"Down, manling," Gotrek shouted. "It's Slayers' work now."

Felix nodded and backed out of the fight, relieved, and took up the rope. He saw Leatherbeard puff up at Gotrek's words, just as Felix had a moment earlier, and lay into the orcs afresh, pleased to think that Gotrek counted him his equal. Strange how such a taciturn misanthrope could inspire with an unconsidered word.

As he let himself down, hand under hand, feeling gingerly for footholds with his damaged foot, Felix watched the two Slayers fight back to back, axes flashing crimson in the last rays of the sun, their deep-muscled chests and backs streaked with sweat and blood, their thick legs braced wide before the onslaught of the ravening green horde. And the mad thing was, they were laughing. Inches from the cliff-edge — where a single misstep could send them plummeting — battling scores of savage behemoths that lusted for their blood, and they laughed.

Felix understood this to a certain extent. He was not immune to the euphoria of battle, to the mad rush that came with putting one's life on the line, when pain and weariness and any thoughts of the future went away and one was lost entirely in the glorious violence of the moment. But, for him at least, this was a joy that always teetered on the edge of terror, the excitement always well mixed with fear. The Slayers seemed to have no such qualms. They looked entirely content.

As Felix edged below the bulge, he heard Gotrek shatter that contentment with three little words.

"Leatherbeard, go down!"

"Down? No!" shouted the second Slayer through his mask. "The glory is here!"

"There's no glory in orcs," said Gotrek. "You heard what the ranger said. Down!"

"This is not the respect due to one Slayer from another Slayer!" said Leatherbeard angrily, but finally Felix felt the rope jerk above him as the masked dwarf began his descent.

Though Felix could no longer see the fight, the sounds of it rang down from the cliff like the clanging of a foundry, harsh cries and the clash of steel echoing through the thin mountain air. He looked down. Narin and Thorgig waited by the first peg, each hanging from his own pegged rope, looking up. The rope from the cliff top was, as Gotrek had requested, doubled pegged at its nether end.

"Hurry, human," said Thorgig. "The Slayer can't hold forever."

"I begin to wonder," said Narin thoughtfully. "He will be a fearsome opponent. If my father dies fighting him, I will become Thane, Grungni save me..."

There was a thunder-crack bang from above. A body with a Slayer's crest hurtled past Felix, plunging down the cliff into the twilight shadows below. Felix gaped. Had it been Gotrek? Leatherbeard? He looked up.

The rope went slack in his hands.

He fell away from the cliff.