The peddler looked at him gratefully.

“The same thing happened last year, in Hartzroch, just down the road. Goodwife Hauptmann looked in on her teenage daughter Ingrid just after sunset. She thought she heard banging coming from her daughter’s room. The girl was gone, snatched by who-knows-what sorcerous power from her bed in a locked house. The next day the hue and cry went up. We found Ingrid. She was covered in bruises and in a terrible state.”

He looked at them to make sure he had their attention. “You asked her what happened?” Felix said.

“Aye, sir. It seems she had been carried off by daemons, wild things of the wood, to Darkstone Ring. There the coven waited with evil creatures from the forests. They made to sacrifice her at the altar but she broke free from her captors and invoked the good name of blessed Sigmar. While they reeled she fled. They pursued her but could not overtake her.”

“That was lucky,” Felix said dryly.

“There is no need to mock, Herr Doktor. We made our way to the stones and we did find all sorts of tracks in the disturbed earth. Including those of humans and beasts and cloven-hoofed daemons. And a yearling infant gutted like a pig upon the altar.”

“Cloven-hoofed daemons?” Gotrek asked. Felix didn’t like the look of interest in his eye. The peddler nodded.

“I would not venture up to Darkstone Ring tonight,” the peddler said. “Not for all the gold in Altdorf.”

“It would be a task fit for a hero,” Gotrek said, looking meaningfully at Felix. Felix was shocked.

“Surely you cannot mean—”

“What better task for a Trollslayer than to face these daemons on their sacred night? It would be a mighty death.”

“It would be a stupid death,” Felix muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“You are coming, aren’t you?” Gotrek said menacingly. He was rubbing his thumb along the blade of his axe. Felix noticed that it was bleeding again.

He nodded slowly. “An oath is an oath.”

The dwarf slapped him upon the back with such force that he thought his ribs would break. “Sometimes, manling, I think you must have dwarf blood in you. Not that any of the Elder race would stoop to such a mixed marriage, of course.”

He stomped back to his ale.

“Of course,” his companion said, glaring at his back.


Felix fumbled in his pack for his mail shirt. He noticed that the innkeeper and his wife and the peddlers were looking at him. Their eyes held something that looked close to awe. Gotrek sat near the fire drinking ale and grumbling in dwarfish.

“You’re not really going with him?” the fat peddler whispered. Felix nodded.

“Why?”

“He saved my life. I owe him a debt.” Felix thought it best not to mention the circumstances under which Gotrek had saved him.

“I pulled the manling out from under the hooves of the Emperor’s cavalry,” Gotrek shouted.

Felix cursed bitterly.