That wasn't going to last. Looking around them, Felix could see that they were ringed by fierce skaven warriors. Hundreds of reddish eyes glittered in the darkness. The light of the burning buildings reflected off a similar number of glistening blades. The skaven had pulled back momentarily to regroup for what he knew would be their final rush. They moved with a strange precision as if being organised by some swift, evil and unseen intelligence. In that moment Felix knew that he was definitely going to die, right here.

He took advantage of the momentarily lull to wipe the sweat from his brow. His breath came raggedly from his lungs. He gulped in air as greedily as a drowning man. All his muscles were on fire. His blade weighed a ton or more. He felt sure that he could not raise it again, even to save his life, but was thankful that he had enough experience to know how false that feeling was. When the time came, there was always a little more strength with which to fight. Not that it made much difference now, looking out onto those rows and rows of silent rat-like faces.

"Form up there," he thought he heard someone say behind him. "Get ready to repel the charge. Let's give those verminous scum a taste of true dwarf steel!"

Felix wondered at the sheer stubborn courage of the dwarfs. The sergeant who spoke must know it was thoroughly hopeless, yet he was heartening his troops to sell their lives dearly. Felix prepared to do the same but only because he had no choice in the matter. If he could have seen a way out of here to live to fight another day, he would have taken it.

Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard a droning as of some monstrous insect—or an engine. What was going on? Was this some new infernal device that the skaven were launching at their foes. Oddly enough, it seemed to be coming from the direction of the castle. A faint hope stirred in Felix's breast. Perhaps the dwarfs had a surprise waiting for their attackers. Although it seemed unlikely they could do anything before the skaven overwhelmed their current position, perhaps they might be avenged.

The skaven leaders seemed to be grunting orders to their teeming followers. Slowly, almost reluctantly, as if they feared to be first to spend their lives against the living wall of their grim foes, the skaven began to advance. As they took their first faltering steps they seemed to gain in confidence and their advance picked up speed and momentum at a terrifying rate. The strange thrumming noise grew much louder. It seemed to be coming from overhead. Felix wanted to look up but couldn't tear his eyes from the rush of the rat-men.

"Come on and die!" Gotrek roared and the skaven looked prepared to take him at his word as they charged forward ever faster, brandishing their weapons, chittering their evil sounding war-cries, swishing their tails in fury. Felix braced himself for the impact and then fought the urge to throw himself flat as some outlandish shape roared close overhead. This time he did look up, and he saw a great flight of bizarre machines passing above them. Trails of fire leaked from their boilers as they blazed across the night. Enormous rotor blades whirled near-invisibly over their hulls.

"Gyrocopters!" he heard somebody roar and realised that he was witnessing the night flight of some of the legendary dwarfish aircraft.

Blazing sparkles of light descended from the machines and landed in the middle of the oncoming skaven. It was only when they began to explode in the rat-men's midst that Felix realised that they must have been the fizzling fuses of dwarf bombs.

The skaven rush slowed as the bombs tore their targets limb from limb. Their apoplectic leaders tried frantically to rally them, but as they did so one of the copters descended almost to head height and sent a wide jet of scalding, super-heated steam into their midst. Yelping with unutterable terror a huge group of the rat-men turned tail and fled. The panic was contagious. Within moments the charge had become a rout. The dwarfs around Felix watched with almost numbed disbelief, too weary even to chase after the fleeing foe.

FIVE

THE GREAT PLAN

Felix slumped down against the broken wreckage of the wagon and inspected the blade of his sword. It had seen a lot of use in this battle but somehow it wasn't notched. The edge was still as keen as ever, even after all the hacking and chopping he had done. The ancient enchantment on the weapon obviously still held good.

Somewhere off to his right, the wall of a burned-out shed, unable to support its own weight any more, came down with a crash. Overhead a gyrocopter moved with the sinister grace of an enormous insect, pausing for a moment to hover over a blazing building. Its nose swivelled downwards and with a hiss like an angry serpent a jet of steam emerged. Felix wondered what the pilot hoped to achieve.

The steam met the fire and the flickering flames changed colour, becoming a duller yellow with perhaps a hint of blue. As the jet continued to spray, the fire slowly died down, smothered by the vapour and condensation like a small rainstorm. Even as Felix watched, the gyrocopter swung around on the spot and moved towards the next nearest blaze.

He suddenly felt enormously tired, drained of all energy by the conflict. He was bruised and battered, bleeding from dozens of small nicks and cuts which he had not noticed during the frenzy of combat. His right shoulder, ,the shoulder of his sword arm, ached horribly. He was almost convinced that the repeated swinging of the sword had dislocated it. It was an illusion he was familiar with, having survived many other battles. He wanted to lie down and sleep for a hundred years.

Looking around him, he wondered where the dwarfs got their energy. Already they were starting to clear up the debris of the bat-de. Bodies of fallen dwarfs were being gathered for burial in the sacred earth. Skaven corpses, meanwhile, were being lugged into a huge pile for burning. Fully armoured sentinels had descended from the keep and kept watch, just in case the skaven should return.

Felix doubted that they would tonight. In his experience it took the skaven longer than a human army to recover and reassemble after a defeat. They did not seem to like to return so swiftly to the scene of a defeat, and for this he was profoundly glad. At this moment he doubted he could move a muscle, even if the rat-ogre was to rise from the dead and come looking for him. He pushed that evil thought from his mind and searched for a happier topic.

He found one: at least he was still alive. He was beginning to believe again that he just might live. Sometimes before and during a battle, when fear threatened to overwhelm his reason, he had this terrible sensation that he was certain to die. It settled on him like a curse, this certainty of his own mortality. Now it amazed him that he was still here, that his heart still beat, that breath still moved in and out of his lungs. Looking around he could see plenty of evidence that this could easily not have been the case.

Blood-covered corpses were everywhere, being pulled like sacks of dead meat through the thoroughfares by bone-weary, grumbling dwarfs. The sightless eyes of the dead stared at the sky. Despite his earlier imaginings, he knew they would not get up again. They would never laugh or cry or sing or eat or breathe. The thought filled him with a profound melancholy. Yet at the same time, he knew with certainty that he still lived, that he could do all those things, and for that he should therefore rejoice. Life is all too brief and fragile, he told himself, so enjoy it while you can.

He began to laugh softly, filled with a quiet joy which felt strangely like sorrow. After a moment he limped painfully off into the night to see if he could find Gotrek or Snorri or anybody else he might know amidst this vast shambles.