"Lost with all hands," Snorri added with the almost happy expression with which dwarfs always seemed to confront the worst news.

"Except Makaisson. He was picked up later by human ship. He was thrown clear by the explosion and clung to a wooden spar."

"Then he built a flying ship," Gotrek said, savage irony evident in his voice.

"That's right. Makaisson built a flying ship," Snorri said.

"The Indestructible," Varek said.

Felix tried to imagine a ship flying. In the abstract he could manage it. In his mind's eye, he saw something like the old river barges on the Reik, their sails filled, their sweeps tugging. It was powerful sorcery indeed that could do that.

"Amazing thing it was," Varek said. "Big as a sailing ship. Wrought iron cupola. Fuselage almost hundred paces long. It could fly at ten leagues an hour—with the wind behind it, of course."

"What happened to it?" Felix asked, a sinking feeling hinting that he already knew the answer.

"It crashed," Snorri said.

"Crosswinds and some liftgas leaks," Varek said. "Big explosion."

"Killed everybody aboard."

"Except Makaisson," Varek said, as if this made a big difference. He seemed to think this was an important point. "He was thrown clear and landed in some treetops. They broke his fall along with both his legs. Had to use crutches for the next two years. Anyway, the Indestructible had a few teething problems. What do you expect? It was the first of its kind. But Makaisson has sorted them now."

"Teething problems?" Gotrek said. Twenty good dwarf engineers killed, including Under-Guildmaster Ulli and you call that ‘teething problems'? Makaisson should have shaved his head."

"He did," Varek said. "After he was drummed out of the guild. He couldn't face the shame, you know. They did the Trouser Legs Ritual to him. Pity. My uncle says he's the best engineer who ever lived. He says Makaisson is a genius."

"A genius at getting other dwarfs killed."

Felix was thinking about what Gotrek had said about Makaisson shaving his head. "Do you mean Makaisson became a Trollslayer?" he asked Varek.

"Yes. Of course. He still does engineering work though. Says he'll prove his theories work or die trying."

"I'll bet he will," Gotrek muttered darkly.

Felix wasn't listening. He was wrestling with another, far more troubling concept. Counting Gotrek and Snorri, that would make three Trollslayers in one place. What was Varek's uncle up to? A mission which required three Slayers didn't sound good. In fart, it sounded positively suicidal. Suddenly something that Varek had said earlier came sharply into focus in Felix's mind, cutting through even the awful fog of his hangover.

"You said earlier you heard scuttling," Felix said, thinking of the small shape he had seen in the undergrowth. He was starting to have an awful suspicion about that. "On your way to meet Gotrek and myself."

Varek nodded. "Only at night, when we made camp."

"You've no idea what made the scuttling?"

"No. A fox, maybe."

"Foxes don't scuttle."

"A big rat."

"A big rat…" Felix nodded his head. That was exactly what he hadn't wanted to hear. He looked over at Gotrek to see if the Slayer was thinking what he was thinking, but the dwarf had his head thrown back and was staring blankly into space. He appeared to be lost in his own thoughts and was paying not the slightest bit of attention to the conversation.

Rats made Felix think of only one thing, and that thing scared him. They made him think of skaven. Could it be possible that the foul rat-men had tracked him even here? It was not a comforting thought.

Felix sat beside the fire and listened to the tremulous whickering of the mules. The darkness and the occasional distant howls of the wolves made them nervous. Felix rose and ran his hand over the nearest one's flanks in an effort to calm it and then returned to the fire where the others were sleeping.

All day the track had risen into the Bone Hills, which had turned out to be as bleak and unprepossessing as their name suggested. There were no trees around them, only lichen covered rocks and sharp hills covered by short stunted grass. It was fortunate that Varek had thought touring firewood with them or they would have spent an even more uncomfortable night camped out. It was cold in the hills, despite the summer heat of the day.

Supper had consisted of some bread bought at the inn back in Guntersbad and hunks of hard dwarf cheese. Afterwards, they had sat round the fire and all three dwarfs had lit their pipes. For entertainment they had the distant howling of the wolves. Felix found this marginally less depressing than dwarfish conversation which always seemed to rotate around ancient grudges, tales of misery long endured and epic drinking bouts. And horrifying as the howling was, it at least drowned out the sound of dwarfish snoring. Felix had drawn the short straw and won the dubious privilege of taking the first watch.

He tried not to stare into the fire and kept his eyes turned in the direction of the darkness so that he would not ruin his night vision. He was worried. He kept thinking about skaven and the thought of those ferocious Chaos-spawned rat-men appalled him. He remembered encountering them in the Battle of Nuln. It had been like a scene from a nightmare, battling in the dark with man-sized humanoid rats who walked upright and fought with weapons just as humans did. The memory of their hideous chittering language and the way their red eyes glittered in the darkness came back to him and made him shudder.

The most awful thing about the skaven was that they were organised in a hideous parody of human civilisation. They had their own culture, their own fiendish technologies. They had armies and sophisticated weapons that were in some ways more advanced than anything humanity had ever produced. Felix had seen them when they had erupted from the sewers to invade Nuln. He could still picture that monstrous horde rushing through the burning buildings, spearing anything that got in their way. Vividly he remembered the green flames of their warpfire throwers illuminating the night and the sizzle of human flesh as it was eaten away by the blazing jets.

The skaven were the implacable enemies of humanity, of all the civilised races, but there were those who sided with them for pay. Felix himself had killed their agent, Fritz von Halstadt, who had risen to become the chief of the Elector Countess Emmanuelle's secret police. He wondered how many other agents the rat-men had in high places. He did not want to think about it now in this lonely spot. He pushed thoughts of the skaven aside and tried to turn his mind to other things.

He let his thoughts drift back into the past. The howling reminded him of the terrible last nights of Fort von Diehl down in the Border Princes, where he watched his first great love Kirsten die, murdered by Manfred von Diehl, and seen most of the population slaughtered by goblin wolf riders let in by Manfred's treachery. It was strange, but he could still remember Kirsten's gaunt face and her soft voice. He wondered if there was anything he could have done to make things turn out differently. It was a thought that tormented him sometimes in the quiet watches of the night. It was an event that still caused him pain although of late he had felt it less often and knew that it was fading. He could even consider other women now. Back in Nuln, there had been the tavern girl, Elissa, but she had left in the end.

The picture of the smiling peasant girl in the field came back to him very vividly. He wondered what she was doing right now. He resigned himself to the fact that he would never even know her name, just as she would never know his. There were so many encounters in the world like that. Chances that never turned out right. Romances which died stillborn before ever they had a chance to live. He wondered whether he would ever meet another woman who touched him as much as Kirsten had.