He saw his own red blood trickle down its central channel. Felix froze. All Hef had to do was lean forward and Felix would be walking in the kingdom of Morr.

“That was downright unfriendly, boy,” Hef said. “Old Lars was only bein’ affectionate and you had to go and bust his teeth. Now what you reckon we should do about that, we bein’ his friends ’n’ all?”

“Kill the thnotling fondler,” Lars gasped. Felix felt Kell push his arm further up his back until he feared it would break. He moaned in pain.

“Reckon we’ll just do that,” Hef said.

“You can’t,” the trader behind the bar whined. “That’d be murder.”

“Shut up, Pike! Who asked you?”

Felix could see they meant to do it. They were full of drunken violence and ready to kill. Felix had just given them the excuse they needed.

“Been a long time since I killed me a pretty boy,” Hef said, pushing his knife forward just a fraction. Felix grimaced with the pain. “Gonna beg, pretty boy? Gonna beg for your life?”

“Go to hell,” Felix said. He would have liked to spit but his mouth felt dry and his knees were weak. He was shaking. He closed his eyes.

“Not so polite now, city boy?” Felix felt thick laughter rumble in Kell’s throat. What a place to die, he thought incongruously, some hell-spawned outpost in the Grey Mountains.

There was a blast of chill air and the sound of a door opening.

“The first one to hurt the manling dies instantly,” said a deep voice that grated like stone crushed against stone. “The second one I take my time over.”

Felix opened his eyes. Over Hef’s shoulders he could see Gotrek Gurnisson, the Trollslayer. The dwarf stood silhouetted in the doorway, his squat form filling it widthwise. He was only the height of a boy of nine years but he was muscled like two strong men. Torchlight illuminated the strange tattoos that covered his half-naked body and turned his eye sockets into shadowy caves from which mad eyes glittered.

Hef laughed, then spoke without turning round. “Get lost, stranger, or we’ll deal with you after we’ve finished your friend.”

Felix felt the grip on his arm relax. Over his shoulder, Kell’s hand pointed to the doorway.

“That so?” Gotrek said, stomping into the room, shaking his head to clear the snow from his huge crest of orange-dyed hair. The chain that ran from his nose to his right ear jingled. “By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll sing as high as a girly elf.”

Hef laughed again and turned around to face Gotrek. His laughter died into a sputtering cough. Colour drained from his face until it was corpse-white. Gotrek grinned nastily at him, revealing missing teeth, then he ran his thumb across the blade of the great two-handed axe that he carried in one ham-sized fist. Blood dripped freely from the cut but the dwarf just grinned more widely. The knife in Hef’s hand clattered to the floor.

“We don’t want no trouble,” Hef said.