by Nick Horth
Shev carefully made her way towards the Golden Lord. He was leaning heavily on his staff, but otherwise seemed unharmed. He gazed at her as she approached.
‘Is it…’ she began.
‘Quite dead, I assure you.’
She crept closer to the smoking body of the creature. Bones showed through its blasted flesh. She took in the great, flat head, tipped with those curved horns, the teeth as big as daggers.
‘An extraordinary creature,’ said the Golden Lord, sounding entirely unimpressed. ‘It discharged some form of… poison, yes? A method of debilitating its prey, I would assume.’
‘It’s a powerful hallucinogenic,’ said Shev, running her hand across one of the brachitor’s strange growths, and examining the powder-like substance that surrounded the polyps. Unable to resist, she pulled a small vial from her pocket and brushed some of the dust into it. Even from this distance, it had a powerful smell, like sulphur mixed with rotten meat.
‘I think it’s more for defence,’ she continued. ‘It disorients and confuses attackers, letting the brachitor escape.’
‘Which rather begs the question, what has such a remarkably dangerous specimen to fear?’
The groans and shrieks of the remaining stricken sellswords went suddenly silent. Shev turned from the corpse of the beast, and glanced back at the rest of their band. Howle stood next to one of the downed warriors, wiping blood from his blade. He glanced over and met her stare, utterly untroubled, as if he had just swatted a fly.
She started forwards, but the Golden Lord laid a firm hand on her shoulder.
‘Madame Arclis, we do not have the time or resources to care for the wounded.’
‘But we can’t just–’
‘Their screams risk bringing more hostile creatures to our location,’ the masked figure continued. His voice was firm, and for the first time she heard a hard, uncompromising edge to his words. ‘This is for the best. Carrying the wounded would simply endanger us all.’
The Golden Lord nodded at Howle, and the sellsword bent down and drove his blade through the last of the twitching victims. The woman rasped a final breath and went limp. Shev wanted to vomit. She looked imploringly at the nearest sellswords, but saw nothing but grim resolve and indifference. No one else seemed to care at all that they had just killed five of their own.
‘Take their waterskins,’ said the Golden Lord, before striding off and leaving the corpse-strewn stream behind. ‘And leave the bodies, we’ve no time for looting. There will be more than enough compensation for you all once we reach Quatzhymos.’
Howle gave Shev a black-toothed smirk before he and the others strode after their leader. Shev looked at the littered corpses, their glazed eyes staring sightlessly at the azure skies above, and then spun to follow.
Chapter Three
They trudged onwards through the fading light, cursing and grunting as the land became rougher and steeper with every step. Shev could not dispel the image of Howle culling their injured companions from her head. In this job, it paid to be practical, she told herself. Truly, what could they have done? Dragged half a dozen mortally wounded souls through this death-trap of a jungle? Or left them behind, to suffer a slow and painful death, rotting in the heat like overripe fruit? The reality was, out here in the wilds, you had to accept a number of uneasy truths. It was better this way, for everyone.
So why did she feel so godsdamned low?
‘My lord,’ came a voice from way up ahead. It was Kurdh, one of their trackers – a thin, wiry Excelsian covered with tattoos. He carried a battered but well-crafted sabre and a red and green checked sash that marked him as a former Freeguild man. How he’d come to be out here, she had no idea, but decided it was probably best not to ask.
‘I believe we’ve found it,’ he said softly with wide eyes.
Shev bounded up the steep incline towards the man, zipping past several sellswords grappling with the tangled undergrowth.
Clambering over the ridge, she saw what had taken Kurdh’s breath away. Ahead of them, the ground fell away into a vast, circular pit, a rent in the earth several thousand paces across. Shards of broken rock circled the rim of this crater, and limbs of ancient trees jutted out from the earth, dangling over the precipice like a giant’s crooked fingers. At several points, streams of water poured over the edge, gleaming and glittering as they tumbled away into vast channels far below. The city of Quatzhymos spread out ahead of them. A sprawling ruin littered with shattered buildings, tumbledown spires and great marble columns half-devoured by vines and creepers. At the rear of the canyon the ground sloped away, disappearing into darkness. It was as if the earth had opened its maw to devour the city whole.
Kurdh whistled softly. ‘That’s a view you don’t see every day.’
‘Madame Arclis, I knew I was right to put my faith in you,’ said the Golden Lord, kneeling down beside them. If he was at all tired from their long march, he showed no sign. He showed no outward sign of emotion either, but she could hear an excited tremor in his voice. ‘Quatzhymos, the fabled library-city. I have searched for this place for a very long time. Let us see what secrets it conceals.’
Several sellswords brought up silkhemp ropes and grapples, and found a firmly lodged cluster of thick oaks that hung out into empty space over the drop. They looped and secured them with thick iron bands, and several men and women strapped on gloves and boots tipped with thick metal spikes. Even Shev, no stranger to heights, felt her stomach swirl queasily as several of the climbers let themselves fall into empty space, dangling on harnesses and digging crampons into the face of the rock.
The work was slow, but after a few hours the climbers made the pit’s floor, and signalled up that the line was secure. Shev didn’t wait; she pushed forward to claim her spot on one of the lines, securing her belt to the rope with a clamp, and strapping on a pair of fingerless auroch-hide gloves. The sooner the descent was over, the better. She gritted her teeth, banished a sudden rush of vertigo, and slid over the precipice. Foot by foot, she descended. The crater’s wall was rough and full of torn roots and gaping holes. Several times she reached for a grip only to tear loose a cluster of soil and rocks, which tumbled away into the gloom below. A squat, oval-eyed lizard gazed at her disinterestedly as she lowered herself past its lair.
‘Sorry for the intrusion,’ she muttered.
The lizard ran a long, blue-tipped tongue lazily over its eyeball.
Suddenly, it disappeared in a snap of fangs and spurt of blood as something with too many eyes and stretching claws burst out from the darkness.
Shev’s heart somersaulted. She let out a squawk of horror and hurled herself to the side as the wall exploded in a shower of soil and gore. She dangled there, spinning and cursing, her heart hammering in her chest. Then the screams started. She glanced up and saw a sellsword scrabbling for his blade. He’d barely drawn metal when long, barbed pincers reached out from the wall to snatch him away into darkness. His frenzied, awful screeches cut an icy hole into her heart, until they abruptly cut off. Soil and rocks rained down into her hair and her eyes. Something fell past her, shrieking, close enough to make her ears ache. Desperately, she began to climb down. Abandoning caution for haste, she missed a grip and fell, scrabbling for a handhold. Her head struck something hard, and stars exploded behind her eyes, but by some miracle she managed to hold onto something firm and gnarled, jutting out of the wall. The impact sent a shock of pain up her arm, but she clung on, opening her eyes. A tree root. She wrapped herself around it, holding on to it like a shipwrecked sailor on a piece of driftwood. There was more screaming, and the snap-click of crossbow bolts thudding into solid surfaces. Blearily, she looked upwards and saw at least a dozen sellswords descending at speed as the cliff face erupted to life around them, insectile appendages darting out in search of prey.
She had to get down. Below was only a long drop to certain death. Those fortunate few who’d
managed to get down safely had crossbows and repeaters drawn, but what could they do, really? If they fired a hail of bolts, they’d be as likely to skewer their own as strike one of the creatures.
Another cloud of sun-baked mud exploded outwards to Shev’s left, and she caught sight of one of the beasts for the first time. It had a long, segmented body like a centipede, bedecked with barbed armour plates that shone razor-sharp in the sunlight. Its head was small, bulbous – like that of a spider, with hundreds of pitch-black eyes and a pair of snapping mandibles. Its fore-legs were long, thin spears of jet-black chitin. It swept those enormous limbs around while a pair of curling antennae whipped at the air. She clutched her lifeline even harder, frozen in both terror and indecision. Yet, even though she was only a few feet away, the beast did not seem to notice her. It was blind in the sunlight, she realised with a surge of relief. As long as she stayed corpse-still, maybe she could survive this yet.
The branch groaned beneath her, and there was a crack of splintering wood.
Of course.
With a shriek, the tunnel-horror stabbed its claws out at the sudden sound. Shev rolled, hanging by her aching fingers underneath the drooping tree branch. She tugged at the rope secured to her belt. It was hopelessly tangled, pulled so taut that it was cutting into her stomach. All she could hear was the frenzied hissing of the tunnel-horror and the thunk as its spear-limbs thudded into the branch that held her. It swiped a leg across horizontally, and snipped clean through the silkweave rope. The pressure on her abdomen was blissfully released. She fumbled, unhooking the slack, which fell away. Now at least she could move. Unfortunately, she was also now hanging free a few feet above cold, hard rock, with a frenzied monster doing its best to eviscerate her.
First things first. She snapped her head around, looking for some escape. There, below her and to the left, was another jutting root, maybe large enough to hold her weight. Maybe not, of course, but Shev knew sometimes you had to take your chances. She waited until the thing had stopped thrashing, slipped her flask free from her pack and hurled it over the monster’s head and into the canyon wall. The tunnel-horror whirled its many-eyed head about with a rattling hiss. Shev hauled herself up onto the branch, swaying as it dropped lower. It splintered, and she saw a jagged line zig-zag down the length of the wood. The tunnel-horror spun back around, its limbs raised high.
She took a step and flung herself into space. Something whipped past her head, close enough to brush her scalp. There was a moment of stomach-churning vertigo, and then she struck rock hard enough to blast all the air from her lungs, hard enough that she very nearly lost her grip entirely. Wheezing and spitting blood, she wrapped her legs around her new home. She lay there for a few blessed moments, whimpering softly, clutching her bruised ribcage. Then her new home started creaking too. Of course, she thought with a sigh.
She dragged her aching bones upright, looking around desperately for another escape route. Below, possibly too far away for her to reach, was a pool of glittering green water covered with algae and drooping vines. It looked deep enough, but there was a good to fair chance that it was merely disguising a cluster of sharp rocks. There was a chorus of hissing behind her, and two more insectoid monstrosities hauled their chitinous bodies free, antennae lashing, razor-tipped legs gleaming wetly in the fading light.
That made her decision to jump much easier.
She ran and leapt high into space, tucking her arms across her chest, pointing her toes and screaming so loudly it hurt as she plummeted down.
She struck the pool of water like an arrow. The chill made her reflexively gasp, and she swallowed a brackish mouthful. Her foot struck soft, muddy earth and stuck fast, and she kicked and struggled in panic, swallowing more water. Finally, her lungs burning, she tugged her foot free of the sucking morass and darted for the surface. One hand scrabbled for a hold, and she raised her head into daylight, spitting out the rancid liquid.
Strong hands grasped her under the arms, and she felt herself being lifted free of the pool. She blinked foul-smelling water out of her eyes, and a figure swam into focus. Kurdh. He was shaking his head.
‘Sigmar’s teeth,’ he said, with a chuckle. ‘You’re a mad one, aelf. You’re godsdamned lucky you didn’t splatter all over the flagstones.’
‘Every inch of me hurts,’ she groaned.
‘Yeah, well. It could have been worse,’ he replied.
She hauled her aching body to its knees and looked around. Barely twenty souls remained of their brave fellowship, and at least a couple of them were sporting deep lacerations across their arms and chests. She was irritated to see that Howle was one of the survivors, though she noted he was nursing a nasty gash across his upper arm and grimacing in pain. The tunnel-horrors had disappeared back into their lairs, presumably having gorged themselves to their satisfaction. Shev decided not to think about how in the eight realms they were going to make it back up that cliff face later.
The Golden Lord was there, somehow unharmed and barely out of breath. He muttered an arcane phrase, and the tip of his staff began to glow with a soft yellow light, bathing the weathered stones beneath their feet in a warm amber haze. The ground on which they stood sloped away into a wide avenue, which led further into the ruins.
‘We are near,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’
They began to walk down what was once a central thoroughfare, and now a stretch of broken flagstones lined with toppled statues, invaded on all fronts by thick, barbed gorse and patches of yellow-green grass. The statues were of men, aelves and duardin, but not warriors or rulers as you might expect from a city this size. All of them bore the trappings of inventors and scholars. A man reaching out towards the heavens, a bizarre, mechanical contraption in one hand, wearing what seemed to be a pair of many-lensed goggles. There was an aelf, wielding nothing more than a long feathered quill, a look of intense concentration upon his angular face, slightly ruined now by the smears of verdigris that covered his body like a rash.
‘I don’t think it was a battle that caused all this,’ Shev said, wondering aloud. ‘There’s no sign of weapons, no skeletons lying in piles on the streets.’
‘I would estimate this city to have had a population in the low thousands,’ said the Golden Lord. ‘It is indeed strange to see so few remains. Most likely, Quatzhymos was abandoned.’
‘If so, what caused them to leave?’
‘Let us continue on. Perhaps we may find answers within.’
The Golden Lord kept up a fearsome pace, hardly caring to take in the wonders that surrounded them. That seemed strange to her, considering how effusive he had been about discovering this place. Perhaps the dangers they had already faced had robbed him of his excitement. They continued on, tramping over scattered masonry, shards of age-old glass and broken pottery. All around them was the spectre of destruction. Entire avenues of columned halls lay crumpled and crushed, as if they were the abandoned playthings of some vast titan.
After what seemed like several hours of travel, Howle held up a hand.
‘Listen,’ he growled, kneeling to press one hand to the ground.
They fell silent, weapons drawn, gazing around at the ghost of Quatzhymos uneasily. The light was fading now, and shadows crept from doors and hallways like questing fingers.
After a moment, Shev could hear the sounds. Drums, beating to a frenzied, staccato rhythm. Low, guttural sounds, like bellowed chants. They were only a few hundred paces from the far side of the canyon now. The sheer cliff face rose above them at an angle, and the city descended beneath it, into darkness. It was as if the earth itself was opening its jaws to devour Quatzhymos, and the ruins of the city were sliding slowly down its gullet.
‘We’re going down there?’ said Howle. Even the old mercenary’s voice was hesitant.
‘We are,’ said the Golden Lord, who showed no sign of fear or trepidation. He might as well have been announcing a camping trip.
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‘You heard the drums,’ said Howle. ‘There’s something down there.’
‘Then we shall take great pains to avoid it, if it poses a threat to us. We have suffered greatly to get here, my friends, but we have made it. Within lies our fortune, if we only have the fortitude to seize it. Are you with me?’
There was a mumbled sound of assent, decisive if not particularly enthusiastic.
Chapter Four
‘Well, that complicates things,’ said Shev, staring down at the clusters of roaring fires in the clearing below. Hulking figures whirled and bellowed around the flames, casting flickering shadows across the ground. Their skin was dark green, covered with thick smears of warpaint in all colours, while they carried crude clubs or axes made of chipped stone. Around these capering figures loomed the broken spires of the shattered city, great arcing gateways rent and torn, the skeletons of burned-out towers and piles of scattered rubble.
The orruks had found Quatzhymos, and they had indulged their passion for thoughtless destruction on this ancient place of learning. The light of their roaring fires danced across the cavernous ceiling of the chamber, high above their heads.
‘They have been here for many years,’ said the Golden Lord, kneeling beside her. ‘This devastation is decades old. Perhaps centuries old.’
Leering, bestial faces were carved into the walls in this corner of the city, and great totems of bone littered the chamber, painted garishly with lurid colour. The place stank of sweat and filth.
‘More and more of ‘em every season,’ said Howle, spitting in disgust. ‘Come pourin’ out of the jungles, chantin’ like mad folk. Port Crassin fell not two months past, burned to ashes.’