His face was tanned and worry lines radiated out from his eyes that really should not have been etched on the face of one so young. But then, as Felix would have been the first to admit, he was a man who in his time had endured more than his share of worries.

His hands were braced on the great wheel of the airship as he made a course correction, steering the mighty vessel directly towards where he believed the pass out of the Chaos Wastes should lie. His hand still hurt from the burns he had taken wielding the Hammer of Firebeard. He was grateful to be able to grasp anything at all. He had been lucky. The dwarf healing salve had helped a good deal.
His keen eyes scanned the tormented land below him, watching the arid semi-desert scroll along beneath the Spirit of Grungni. In the distance, he thought he could make out a rising dust cloud.
He shivered. Whatever was making it, it was not friendly. Nothing here was.
He looked at the compass but he knew it was not always reliable in the Wastes. Several times he had seen the lodestone needle rotate around in a circle under the influence of evil magic. Fortunately they were now nearing the edge of the cursed land, where the oddly-coloured storm clouds did not always obscure the sky, and the stars were often visible by night and sometimes in the dim light of day. These gave him something to navigate by. Several times they had drifted far off course until they had found a star to navigate by, which had added days to their travel time.
Felix exhaled loudly. He was bone weary. He was no longer glad now that Malakai Makaisson had taught him how to fly the vessel — although it gave him something to do, and kept his mind from worrying about things he could not control.
The nose came round sluggishly, which was not surprising. The Spirit of Grungni was loaded to capacity and then some. The survivors of the dwarf community of Karag Dum, those who had been left alive after the last fatal confrontation with the daemonic bloodthirster and its minions, filled every cabin and spare cranny on the airship. The hold bulged with the treasures they had taken from the lost citadel. Felix wondered how Hargrim and his people would take to their new life beyond the Wastes.
The drone of the engines was loud as they struggled to drive the ship into the wind. Felix cursed, for it seemed that the very elements conspired against them on their journey out of the Wastes. He half-suspected evil magic. There were dozens of mages sworn to serve the Dark Powers down there, and it was easy to imagine one of them whistling up a wind to slow the airship down, or a storm to drive it into the ground. The Spirit of Grungni was protected against the direct effects of magic but there was really nothing anyone except another magician could do against such indirect methods.
Felix strove to push such thoughts aside, to think of happier things. He wondered what Ulrika was doing just now, whether she missed him, or even thought about him at all. Perhaps she had forgotten all about him. Perhaps he had just been a brief fling for her. Any such thoughts were driven from his head by the sound of loud cursing from behind him.
Gotrek Gurnisson entered the bridge of the airship and made his presence felt in no uncertain terms. He stomped around the command deck, glaring at the apprentice engineers, and casting irate glances through the crystal windows as if half-expecting to see an enemy flying towards them. Considering that a mere few days ago Gotrek had been near death from the wounds he had taken in his battle with the Bloodthirster of Khorne, the dwarf had made a remarkable recovery. He still did not look well.