Free Gotrek & Felix: Slayer by David Guymer Page A

and had been an exalted champion in his own right until Khagash-Fél had crushed him and claimed his men. The man’s customs and thinking were strange to a man of the steppe. In the Empire, it seemed, a lord expected the fealty of his warriors, who gave it without question. Amongst the tribes, a lord would buy the loyalty of the strongest warriors with gifts and glory. And what was true for men was true also for the gods, only more so.
    One of the big beastmen strained to offer up a huge spiked mace and Buhruk took it, wielding it lightly in one massive fist.
    A smile teased at the corners of Khagash-Fél’s self-control. The hum of daemonic energy filled his gut, battle-rage coursing through his veins like the aqueducts of fire that fed the Desolation of Zharr. It was in moments such as these when one felt the interconnectedness of Chaos. A man could take pleasure from killing, from the staging of a slaughter and the revelry that followed. It was madness to hollow one’s existence by denying the gifts of all the gods but one.
    On his forehead, the Eye of Katchar snapped open.
    A murmur of dread and awe passed through the watching warriors, stretching out towards the deep yawn of time as the world around Khagash-Fél slowed to a crawl. He could see the individual gobbets of flame that spat out from the torches, watch each drop of rain as it smashed against Buhruk’s helmet into hundreds of tiny, infinitely reflective pieces. In contrast to the stalled immensity of the minotaur, the sepia-tinted shades that danced around him were a disjointed blur of action, reaction and possibility. Khagash-Fél felt his heart beat faster. Even this brief and incoherent glimpse of the future was intoxicating. The temptation was always to look a little deeper, see a little further, but with an effort of will he pulled back. To see all that the Eye would have him see was to duel with madness.
    Such prophecy was the demesne of the gods alone.
    Absorbing as much of the following minutes’ most likely course as he could, Khagash-Fél held out his hand for a weapon. His hand moved towards the leather-scaled tribesmen as if through deep water. Of the eight weapons presented he selected an axe, and for a moment the future lost a measure of its uncertainty and became clear. Then the Eye of Katchar closed. Khagash-Fél blinked away disorientation, the feeling of limitation that always followed the return to the present as the world resumed its normal pace and hue.
    He brought up his axe. ‘I accept your challenge, Buhruk.’
    The minotaur thrashed his head through the air as though fending off a daemonic possession, then issued a thunderous bellow as he dropped his horns and charged. Khagash-Fél looked up as the Doombull loomed over him, opening up his massive chest to deliver a blow from his mace intended to crush the champion’s skull in one hit.
    Exactly as Khagash-Fél had foreseen.
    He punched the head of his axe up into the Doombull’s unarmoured belly, forcing a wheeze of rotten, meaty breath from the minotaur as he dropped to one knee. Khagash-Fél side-stepped, reversed his grip on his axe and then lashed it back across the minotaur’s cheek guard. Blood and metal sparks sprayed from the open face of Buhruk’s helm and Khagash-Fél strode behind him, lifting his bloodied axe above his head to the rapture of the crowd.
    Buhruk rose slowly and turned, wiping his bloody snout on his wrist. ‘You are fool to goad the Doombull. I will break your bones and drink their juices, half-man.’
    Khagash-Fél made a come gesture with his axe.
    Nothing was as beloved by the gods as drama.
    With a howl of primal rage the minotaur roared forward, frenzied strokes carving through the air like a barrage of rockets. Khagash-Fél parried and dodged, always a second ahead of every blow. Each time Buhruk paused in his assault for breath, Khagash-Fél was already exploiting the opportunity to back away, his axe throwing fresh blood from another shallow