I was wrong. For it seemed that one of them at least had not forgotten us and was plotting revenge…”

—From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol. III,

by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)



Felix Jaeger ducked the drunken mercenary’s punch. The brass-knuckled fist hurtled by his ear and hit the doorjamb, sending splinters of wood flying. Felix jabbed forward with his knee, catching the mercenary in the groin. The man moaned in pain and bent over. Felix caught him around the neck and tugged him towards the swing doors. The drunk barely resisted. He was too busy throwing up stale wine. Felix booted the door open, then pushed the mercenary out, propelling him on his way with a hard kick to the backside. The mercenary rolled in the dirt of Commerce Street, clutching his groin, tears dribbling from his eyes, his mouth open in a rictus of pain.

Felix rubbed his hands together ostentatiously before turning to go back into the bar. He was all too aware of the eyes watching him from beyond every pool of torchlight. At this time of night, Commerce Street was full of bravos, street-girls and hired muscle. Keeping up his reputation for toughness was plain common sense. It reduced his chances of taking a knife in the back when he wandered the streets at night.

What a life, he thought. If anybody had told him a year ago that he would be working as a bouncer in the roughest bar in Nuln, he would have laughed at them. He would have said he was a scholar, a poet and a gentleman, not some barroom brawler. He would have almost preferred being back in the sewer watch to this.

Things change, he told himself, pushing his way back into the crowded bar. Things certainly change.

The stink of stale sweat and cheap perfume slapped him in the face. He squinted as his vision adjusted to the gloomy, lantern-lit interior of the Blind Pig. For a moment he was aware that all the eyes in the place were on him. He scowled, in what he hoped was a fearsome manner, glaring around in exactly the fashion Gotrek did. From behind the bar, big Heinz, the tavern owner, gave a wink of approval for the way in which Felix had dealt with the drunk, then returned to working the pumps.

Felix liked Heinz. He was grateful to him as well. The big man was a former comrade from Gotrek’s mercenary days. He was the only man in Nuln who had offered them a job after they had been dishonourably discharged from the sewer watch.

Now that was a new low, Felix thought. He and Gotrek were the only two warriors ever to be kicked out of the sewer watch in all its long and sordid history. In fact they had been lucky to escape a stretch in the Iron Tower, Countess Emmanuelle’s infamous prison. Gotrek had called the watch captain a corrupt, incompetent snotling fondler when the man had refused to take their report of skaven in the sewers seriously. To make matters worse, the dwarf had broken the man’s jaw when he had ordered the pair of them horsewhipped.

Felix winced.