|
---
The slayer’s companions held him down on the table, trying to allow the apothecary to do his work. The two beardlings struggled to hold Bootstrap still while one of their marksmen lay over his legs.
“Keep your filthy hands off me human!” he screamed, blood and pus pulsing from the empty socket where his right eye had been. He fought to free his hands from the beardlings’ grip, but even his burly musculature couldn’t overcome the strength of his three dwarf companions. “Don’t touch me! I’ll chop your bloody hands off.”
Their engineer, Handy Harry as they called him, looked over to examine the man’s work, “do your best human, it’s just the pain talking.”
The apothecary was a grizzled old man, a servant of Sigmar who had long ago come to preach the gospel to the fallen of Mordheim. But finding few willing to suffer his words, he’d long ago given up and began to sell his healing services to the myriad foolhardy warriors that came in search of fortune. Whether it was a fall from a dilapidated roof top, a slew of gashes from one of the city’s sewer rats, or one of the infected burns from wyrdstone, they all found their way onto his operating table, cleared off in the corner of a small inn outside of the city. He was used to the idle boasts of wounded warriors as he tried to heal them. But few of them had felled a troll in battle; as such he was more than a little wary at Bootstrap’s threats.
Harry winced at the screams of his friend as the apothecary applied some herbs to the slayer’s wounds, attempting to staunch the blood loss. Beside him Kyzak Sourfoot, the dwarf viscount and the leader of their band, puffed at a stubby pipe, in his other hand he turned a barely nibbled biscuit, the only food for their meager dinner. Sourfoot was sober as death, a poor sign for any dwarf at nightfall.
Harry heard the grinding scratch outside the window; he looked to see their other troll slayer, Thick Skull and brother to Bootstrap, applying a whetstone to his karak-forged axe. Such a weapon had little need for sharpening, but he took the meaning in the action. The slayer was restless. “A debt must be repaid,” said Harry.
Sourfoot held still, “it will be.” A thin wisp of smoke puffed from his pipe. It lingered in the air before slipping through the drafty cracks in the windowsill. He felt the fury building within him. His warband had often crossed blades with humans on their journey to Mordheim: liars, thieves, and cheats, each looking to pinch an extra coin from a band of dwarves, well known for their wealth.
But this had been different. Sourfoot knew humans to be honorless scum, little better than elves, but he’d not expected such a shameless ambush. The Middenheimers had descended on them at their most vulnerable, while the dwarves were scattered among the ruins looking for the precious magic infused artifacts.
The wyrdstone was a precious resource for his father’s hold, the magical fuel that imbued their enchanted runes with their power. Hubris had led to his family’s fall from grace, and their liege lord had recalled his runesmiths from their service. Without those magical runes guiding their artillery and reinforcing their armor, it was only a matter of time before his family’s mines and breweries fell before the tide of beastmen. His mission wasn’t merely one of treasure; his very bloodline was at stake.
Sourfoot had come to this forsaken city with one purpose. But now, with the face of those foul humans burned into his memory, he had a new score to settle in the vast ruins of this broken place. It would be a new chapter in his family’s book of grudges...
---
|