Orcslayer (Novel)

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Orcslayer
G&FOrcslayer.jpg
Author(s) Nathan Long
Preceded by Giantslayer
Followed by Manslayer


Orcslayer is the eighth novel in the Gotrek & Felix (novel series). It was the first novel in the series written by Nathan Long.

Cover Description

After twenty years exploring other lands, Gotrek and Felix return to the Old World to find Chaos invaders rampaging through the lands of men, and the mountain-holds of the dwarfs overrun by the foul orcs and goblins. Fulfilling an ancient oath, the pair travel deep beneath the world to help a dwarf prince reclaim his realm from the greenskins. But all is not as it seems, and Gotrek may finally meet him doom in the halls of his ancestors...

Plot Summary

Orcslayer picks up Gotrek and Felix's adventures after a seventeen-year time gap, during which they have ventured out of the Old World through Araby, Ind and Cathay. Finally returning towards 'civilized' lands with little to show for their time away, they arrive at Barak Varr on board a Bretonnian merchant ship, only to find the Dwarf port blockaded by an Orc fleet. Forced to run the blockade when further Orc ships ambush them, Gotrek gets the crew to catapult him onto the deck of an Orc ship equipped with cannons and sets off its powder store, causing an explosion which clears a path for the heroes to break through. Their hero's welcome is quickly soured, however, when they discover that the people of Barak Varr are besieged by land as well and that their cargo of spices is useless to the defenders.[1a]

While in Barak Varr, Gotrek is approached by a Dwarf named Hamnir Ranulfsson, a former friend whom he now hates. Hamnir explains that his family hold, Karak Hirn, has fallen to Orcs and he calls upon Gotrek to honour an old oath by helping him retake it. Gotrek grudgingly agrees, and Felix is forced to follow along.[1b]

Gotrek and Felix join a small army Hamnir has gathered from the Dwarf refugees crowding Barak Varr. The local garrison launch a diversionary attack on the Orcs besieging the fort that protects the landward entrance to the port, while Hamnir's force sneaks out a side gate. Hamnir's force is spotted and attacked, but Gotrek kills an Orc chieftain wielding an enchanted cleaver and the remaining Orcs start fighting over the weapon, allowing Hamnir's force to disengage. They march towards Karak Hirn.[1c]

Arriving at a human fort near Karak Hirn where further Dwarfs have taken shelter from the roving armies of Orcs, Hamnir and his advisors make plans to retake the hold. Karak Hirn fell largely because most of its defenders, including Hamnir's father King Alrik Ranulfsson, are away in the north helping the Empire battle the Storm of Chaos, and Gotrek is eager to fulfill his oath to Hamnir so that he can go north to find his doom before the invasion is defeated. Using his knowledge of the hold, Hamnir devises a plan wherein a team of volunteers will gain entrance to an engineer's workshop via a hidden door and open the hold gates from the inside before the Orcs become aware of them, allowing Hamnir's army to enter and retake the hold.[1d]

A group of Dwarf volunteers assembles, and Gotrek and Felix join them. They march up the mountain, scale a cliff and slaughter an Orc patrol which stumbles across them, but upon gaining entrance to the hold they find that the secret passage they plan to use has been rigged with new traps. Proceeding regardless, they are foiled when their volunteer engineer accidentally triggers the cunningly hidden final trap. Three of the Dwarfs are killed by falling rocks and a fourth is so badly wounded that he forces the others to leave him behind. The Orcs are alerted to their presence, foiling the plan, and the surviving volunteers are forced to flee back the way they came. Caught on the clifftop, Gotrek buys time for Felix and the three other Dwarfs to begin their descent, but is then shot off the cliff by Orcs wielding Dwarf-made long-guns. Remarkably, he survives by landing in a pool of water. The volunteers fall back to Hamnir's position.[1e]

Returning to the army, the surviving volunteers discover that it was attacked by the Orcs while they were on their mission, and that Hamnir held his position near Karak Hirn's main gate for too long and suffered avoidable casualties as a result because he still has faith in Gotrek despite their falling-out. Falling back to a temporary camp, Hamnir and his advisors, Gotrek included, devise a new plan. Hamnir reluctantly reveals the location of his father's secret treasure chamber, and that only ten feet of rock separate it from one of the mine tunnels beneath Karak Hirn. A new team of volunteers is assembled, including Gotrek, Felix and the survivors of the first team: Narin, Thorgig, and the unusual Slayer named Leatherbeard, plus three triplet brothers who were once miners from the hold named Ragar, Karl and Arn Rasmusson and an engineer named Galin. Conceding that he is a poor general whose mistakes cost lives, Hamnir gives command of the army to his lieutenant Gorril and joins the mission as its leader.[1f]

Gotrek, Felix, Hamnir and the others travel to an abandoned railhead and enter the mines which run beneath Karak Hirn, stumbling upon a pair of trolls who have made the tunnels their lair. The group manage to kill both trolls without taking any casualties but Leatherbeard's mask is partially melted by troll vomit, revealing that he is completely hairless, a great shame in Dwarfen society, as a result of being hit by skaven poison gas. Continuing through the partially collapsed tunnels, Felix finally loses patience with Gotrek and Hamnir's acrimony and forces them to explain their feud: many years ago they traveled the Old World together as mercenaries, always dividing the spoils of war 50/50. However, Hamnir once kept a small book of love poems for himself without adding it to the tally, claiming that it was not part of the spoils, something Gotrek disputed. For this petty reason the once close friends stopped speaking to each other. Enraged by their stubborn stupidity, Felix takes the book (which Hamnir still has) and chops it in half, mirroring an earlier act by Gotrek in which he chopped a disputed shield in half to stop two Dwarf clans from bickering. The other dwarfs find this hilarious, and Gotrek and Hamnir reconcile.[1g]

The party reaches a mine tunnel which runs close to Karak Hirn's treasure vault, but Galin deduces that the intervening wall is almost twice as thick as Hamnir thought. Working in shifts throughout the night the dwarfs mine their way through, but while he sleeps Felix's dreams are invaded by a malevolent presence which tries to make him murder his companions. Breaking through into the treasure vault, the party race upwards into Karak Hirn and make it to the twin gatehouses which house the levers that open the hold's main gate. Alerted to the intrusion, the orcs man the defences and besiege Hamnir's party in the gatehouse. Thorgig, Leatherbeard and all three brothers Rasmusson are killed in the desperate fighting, but the group succeed in opening the gates and Hamnir's army retakes Karak Hirn, defeating the mysteriously pale and puppet-like orcs after Gotrek slays an orc champion wearing a torc which heals its wounds. Some dwarfen survivors are found shut in one of the treasure vaults including Hamnir's betrothed, but though they are relieved to be rescued the survivors are starved to the point of death and unable to celebrate with their rescuers at a feast that night.[1h]

Felix is awoken in the middle of the night by a wounded dwarf who runs into the feasting hall and warns the slumbering warriors that the orcs have come back to life. Undead orcs and dwarfs then attack the living, who initially struggle to awaken and defend themselves. After the battle the dwarfs their brethren from the hold under the influence of the same malign power which controlled and reanimated the orcs, and are forced to seal them in a vault. They then realise that Hamnir has gone missing and Gotrek, Felix, Galin and Narin go in search of him, eventually tracking him to the lair of a giant, telepathic spider-like monster called the Sleeper, which has recently awoken from its aeons-long slumber and used the orcs to try and cleanse Karak Hirn of dwarfs. Galin and Narin are killed by the Sleeper's orc guards and Gotrek is forced to kill Hamnir, but he and Felix manage to slay the Sleeper after a desperate fight. Returning to the hold, Gotrek leads the survivors of Hamnir's army in one last, dreadful task: killing the survivors from the hold, who are still under the Sleeper's power.[1i]

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