Callis & Toll: The Silver Shard

by Nick Horth

  ‘We do not follow the weak,’ said the beastman. The eye on his staff pulsed, flicked from side to side. The creatures stepped back as one, and the shaman followed. Vermyre ground his teeth together so hard he tasted blood. Not like this. It could not end like this.

  ‘Do not turn your back on me!’ he screamed. ‘I command you.’

  They stopped. Turned as one. Gazed at him, with pitiless eyes.

  ‘We do not follow the weak,’ the shaman-creature repeated. ‘Only the strong. The worthy.’

  Then he heard the tread of heavy feet, crashing through the undergrowth. The tzaangors began to chant, a high-pitched sound that made his gorge rise. An enormous form burst into the clearing. It was tzaangor, but a true monster of its kind. Where its kin were lithe, this thing was huge and musclebound, clutching a great two-handed club, dotted with vicious shards of green-black stone. Above its thick, corded neck the creature’s head split, as if it had been cleaved in two by an axe swing. Two malformed half-skulls emerged from the torn flesh, filled with misshapen needles of yellow-brown teeth. The thing howled, a sound of fury, pain and sorrow. Vermyre felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy, and almost laughed at the inappropriateness of it. The creature stalked towards him, spinning that great club around as if it weighed nothing at all.

  The creature roared, and spittle flew from its twisted horror show of a face. Vermyre’s staff was a dead weight in his hands, but he grasped it close. The monstrosity began to stalk forward. He backed off, forming the shape of a spell in his mind.

  It moved astonishingly fast. Before he could even mutter the arcane phrase that would have sent a spear of force tearing through its chest, the creature leapt forward, bringing the club around in an arcing swing towards Vermyre’s shoulder. He ducked, hearing the rush of air as the weapon whipped past. He was rising to his feet when something struck him in the chest, sending him flying through the air. He landed hard on his stomach and the air was blasted from his lungs. Through bleary eyes, he saw the trunk-like legs of the creature striding relentlessly after him. He tried once more to shape a spell, but the pain was too much and the power slipped away from his fingers. Suddenly, the beast was upon him again. He ducked an overhead swing that would have crushed him into bloody paste, rolled aside and scrambled away on all fours. His audience hissed and jeered. One leaned close, jabbering in what he assumed was laughter. He struck it in the face with his staff, wrapped his arms around its neck and hauled it down, twisted and sent it staggering into the path of the oncoming monster. The startled tzaangor cried in outrage, and then the great club came down and split its skull, splattering the ground with brains and purplish blood. The creature tossed the carcass aside, still coming for Vermyre relentlessly.

  He muttered an arcane phrase and the tip of his staff blazed with purple flame. He lashed it across at chest height, unleashing a wave of fire that rushed out to envelop the creature. It shrieked in pain, its flesh bubbling and scarring, its limbs twitching in agony.

  Laughing, he came forward to strike the burning tzaangor hard between the eyes, spilling its blood.

  ‘Worthless, wretched creatures,’ he snarled. ‘I should destroy you all.’

  He summoned another gout of flame and sent it whipping out towards the watching beastmen. It enveloped three of the brutes, and to Vermyre their screams were the most exquisite symphony. If the tzaangor’s kin were enraged by this callous murder, they did not show it. The leader, the shaman-beast carrying the eye-tipped staff, simply gazed at Vermyre through expressionless eyes.

  Beneath him, the smoking flesh of the monstrous champion was stirring. Though he had scorched the creature to the bone, it somehow managed to drag itself upright. He struck it hard in the chest, battering with the heavy metal of his staff and feeling bone give way. The creature did not seem to notice. Its eyes were frenzied, maddened, its awful cloven skull now marked by patches of raw flesh. Even as he shattered part of the thing’s beak with a two-handed blow, it rose and slammed the tip of its club into Vermyre’s chest, bowling him over.

  The blow was as powerful as a close-range volley of scattershot. Vermyre’s head spun.

  Breathing was agony. He could feel the grinding of smashed bones in his chest, each rise and fall sending barbs of white-hot pain knifing through him. He got the staff up and somehow deflected another blow, but then the creature slugged him hard with its meaty fist, catching him in the neck and spinning him to the floor. He choked on a mouthful of dust and crawled away with a whimper. He felt a vice-like grip around his nape, and then he was being lifted into the air. The beast whipped him around and sent him flying through the air. He lost his grip on the staff, and crunched into something hard and unyielding. He felt more bones give way. His arm was twisted unnaturally, and blood poured from smashed teeth and torn gums. The tzaangors had fallen silent. They knew it was the end. As did he. The sad end of Ortam Vermyre. Butchered in the darkness before an audience of savages. He staggered to his feet, refusing to die on his back like some mewling coward.

  The beast charged forward, and again it grasped him around the throat. It lifted him into the air. His vision swam as the thing squeezed, and he spluttered and gurgled. The light faded. He felt a peace fall over him, for the first time in many seasons. Even the pain of his shattered bones seemed to fade.

  And then, he saw it. The sea of twisted blasphemies, the endless nightmare that awaited his soul. He saw figures screaming in unknowable agony as they burned for an eternity in the fires of change. He saw fields of silvered skulls, fields of writhing flesh. The sky was a bleeding wound, from which emerged a tower of crystal, impossible in dimension. Within that ancient fortress dwelt something ancient and eternal, something beyond the comprehension of mortalkind. And he could feel the heat of its fury from here, melting his skin, which ran from his bones in seeping torrents. That unconscionable horror had come for him and him alone, so badly had he failed. He felt a terror such as he had never known, almost agonising in its intensity.

  ‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Not that. Anything but that.’

  He tore at his face, yanking the cool metal mask loose. Suddenly, he was staring into the misshapen faces of the hulking avian beast. Its eyes widened in shock. He felt the writhing beneath his bones, and the cracking and popping as his true face emerged. He started to laugh. Great, choking gasps of laughter in a voice that was not his own. He pressed his head against the creature’s, and he felt the thing beneath his skin reach forth and wrap its barbed tendrils around the beast’s twin skulls. It loosened its grip on his neck and desperately scratched at his skin, hammered at his ribs, but to no avail. He could hear the tearing of flesh, and hot blood poured into his mouth. He chortled wetly as he bore the creature to the ground, tendrils dug deep into its brain, sucking greedily. The creature kicked and struggled, but eventually it lay still. He rolled free, slipping in a pool of spreading gore. He noticed with interest that his broken arm supported his weight with no pain. In fact, he felt no pain at all. He glanced at the mangled corpse of his enemy. There was nothing but crushed bone and meat where its two heads used to be. Around him was silence. He rose to his knees, and stared around the circle at the watching tzaangors, smiling broadly. Showing them the truth of what he was. What he had become.

  ‘The Conduit,’ hissed the shaman. ‘Blessed of the Changemaker.’

  ‘Blessed?’ said Vermyre disbelievingly. ‘Blessed?’

  ‘We follow the Conduit,’ said the creature, bowing before him. Its brethren followed suit, as one.

  Vermyre’s body shook. He could not keep it in. He burst into wracking laughter, clutching his belly and sprawling onto the floor, roaring so hard that it hurt. He could not breathe. It was too perfect.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Singing Isles were well-named. Even from a distance, Callis could hear a mournful, lilting sound drifting over the crashing of the waves and the roar of the wind. As the Thrice Lucky drew closer, he could see
purplish, rolling beaches and twisting coils of bleached coral. There were dozens of these rocky outcroppings protruding from the waves, some barely larger than a house, others far larger and dotted with clusters of swaying trees. The water here was so clear they could see right down to the sea bed, a carpet of shimmering colours and darting fish.

  ‘What’s making that sound?’ he asked.

  ‘The trees,’ said Shev, pointing to the nearest cluster. The trunks were all encrusted with a glittering substance which cast a prismatic glimmer across the water. The leaves were similarly iridescent, and chimed gently as the breeze sent them tumbling against one another.

  Now that Callis looked, that pearly, glimmering dust was everywhere. Trails of it ran across the ocean floor beneath them, and the beaches they passed were not made of grains of sand, but of multi-coloured motes of the same substance.

  The Thrice Lucky drifted gently through this strange landscape, the corsairs running a line of chain over the side to measure the distance to the bottom, making sure they did not stray into the shallows and find themselves stranded.

  There was a stillness in the air that sat uneasily with Callis. After months on the trail, he was used to shrieking jungles and treacherous seas, to always being on edge. This place was so still it felt unnatural to him, a mirage of peace in a wilderness of rage and motion.

  ‘I don’t like this place,’ he said. ‘It’s too calm. Something doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘Captain Zenthe says this is as safe a haven as you’ll find on the Taloncoast,’ said Shev. ‘Something here keeps the beasts of the sea at bay, she says.’

  ‘Does she now?’ said Callis. ‘You’re developing quite the rapport with our noble captain.’

  ‘Right now I’m short of allies,’ Shev replied, shrugging. ‘I’ll take those I can find.’

  ‘Arika Zenthe is no one’s ally but her own,’ said Callis. ‘Trust me. If she values you, it’s because she thinks you could be useful to her. Just watch yourself. This woman rules the waters within a hundred leagues of Excelsis, and you don’t climb that high without leaving a mountain of bodies beneath you.’

  ‘I’ve heard the stories.’

  ‘And I’ve seen her work,’ said Callis sharply. ‘I’m just saying, watch yourself.’

  The aelf smirked, and leaned out over the rail, letting the wind rush through her outstretched fingers. They were sailing into a wide, semi-circular atoll, hidden from sight by a wall of dead coral that wound along the island ahead like a ridged backbone. A long strip of beach reached out into the bay, and beyond that was a tangle of woodland, filled by yet more of those strange, crystal-lined trees.

  ‘Sigmar’s teeth, I can’t wait to set foot on dry land,’ sighed Callis. Doubtless there would be all manner of blood-sucking beasts hiding in the vegetation just waiting to sink their teeth into him as soon as he hopped ashore, but right now he hardly cared.

  They anchored a few dozen paces from the beach, and lowered one of the shore boats into the water. Callis immediately clambered in, much to the grumbling annoyance of the corsairs. He checked his pistol to make sure it was primed, and took a bench next to the first mate, Oscus. The aelf eyed him blankly, but didn’t speak. There were nine other aelves in the boat, all armed. They would be the scouting party.

  There was a great splash, and a spray of water cascaded over them.

  Shev Arclis emerged from the water, spitting and grinning.

  ‘Oh gods, that’s the first time I’ve felt clean for weeks,’ she laughed, and flicked a handful of water at Callis, striking him in the face. He snorted with laughter and jabbed out with the tip of an oar, pushing her under.

  ‘Enough,’ grunted Oscus. The aelves began to row them in, and Shev swam alongside on her back, kicking her long legs in exaggerated arcs. Her hair swirled around her scarred face in an auburn halo. She flashed him a wide grin. Callis realised he was staring, and looked away.

  The beach drew nearer, and they hopped over the side, weapons drawn, splashing through the shallows and onto dry ground. It was quiet. The undergrowth barely stirred. A few long-plumed avian creatures trilled from the tops of the gleaming trees. A faint, pungent smell met Callis’ nostrils, like rotting meat. Shev emerged from the water, shaking her hair dry, leaving gleaming footprints as she strode up the beach towards them.

  ‘We are alone,’ said Oscus, waving to the Thrice Lucky. More boats were lowered in the water, and several aelves began to dive into the water to examine the wolf-ship’s many abrasions. From the shore Callis could get a better look at the damage. She had held up surprisingly well against the ghyreshark’s battering strikes, but had not escaped unharmed. There was a gaping hole that ran across a section of the middle deck, and the ship was listing badly, which suggested a breach on the lower hull.

  ‘It’ll take a good few hours to get her sea-ready,’ said Oscus grimly. ‘I do not like being out here, exposed. Reavers hunt these waters, and worse things will come drifting out from the abyss come nightfall.’

  Toll followed Zenthe down into the depths of the Thrice Lucky. They could hear the moans and shrieks of injured crew echoing from the gunnery deck. Toll had seen the wounded, and had no illusions about the likelihood of many survivors. The barbs that the ghyreshark had expelled were lined with small coarse growths, like thorns, that snapped away when you tried to pull them free, scattering into flesh. If that happened it was as good as a death sentence, he knew. They would quickly turn septic and poisonous, like a bullet ­fragment, and you’d slip into an agonising fever and eventually blissful oblivion. Another piercing scream cut through the gloom. His own scars ached in sympathy. The cross-shaped wound on his back, where a bullet had ricocheted deep and his old friend Kazrug had set to work digging it out with a fire-heated blade, while he writhed and screamed. The great gouge on his thigh, where he’d been forced to perform the same operation with trembling fingers, removing the splintered fragments of an arrowhead while ravenous hounds howled in the distance, coming closer with every moment.

  He banished the unpleasant memories. They descended into the lowest deck, the bilge. It reeked. Even Toll, who had been around death, disease and war for all of his adult life, was taken aback by the smell. It was a piquant blend of week-old corpses, filth and decay, backed by the sickly-sweet aroma of rotting fish. Brown-green water lapped around the length of the hull, thigh-deep, dotted with the floating corpses of various vermin. He could see the ridge of the keel running down the far end of the chamber. Thank Sigmar, it looked to be undamaged. By the soft glow of lambent sconces that dotted the wall – filled with some kind of luminescent shell-dwelling creatures – Toll could see scores of pale, long-legged arachnids skittering across the ceiling of the chamber.

  Four aelves were wading through the foetid murk, inspecting a large wound in the side of the Thrice Lucky. Wedges of dark wood had been hammered into the breach, and the makeshift repairs smothered with a stained strip of sail. Yet, even now, a torrent of water was spilling through holes in the blockage. Toll was astonished that they were still afloat.

  ‘It’s bad, captain,’ said one of the crew, a heavily scarred aelf with a shock of white hair wrapped up in a tail on the top of his skull, his face smeared with sweat and grime. ‘But not fatal. It can be patched with a little effort, but we’ll have to sail easy until we reach Bilgeport and make more extensive repairs. She’ll handle the journey, but another bad hit and she could splinter along the length of the hull. If that happens, we’re all heading to the deep within moments.’

  Zenthe let loose an impressive stream of curses that went on for some time.

  ‘Arkir,’ she said, at last. ‘You’re in charge of the repairs. Get it done. We’re a day and a half’s sail from port. We’ll make it.’

  She turned and pushed past Toll, heading back up the stairs. He said nothing. There was little point. He knew Zenthe well enough not to press her when she was in a foul mood, and
the joy of the ghyreshark kill had swiftly worn off. He supposed that the damage was worse than she had thought.

  ‘Don’t utter a word, Toll,’ she said, as if reading his mind. ‘The catch will more than make up for the damages. I could buy a whole new ship for what we’ll make from the liver alone. There’s always some damn-fool alchemist with more money than sense who’s willing to trade a fortune for new ingredients.’

  ‘This is your ship,’ said Toll, and when she turned to glare at him he simply shrugged. ‘I’ve no interest in going over the same territory again. Just get me to Bilgeport, and I’ll be on my way. Our partnership is over.’

  ‘You still owe me,’ she said. ‘And I mean to collect what is due.’

  ‘I’m a man of my word, Arika. You’ll get what you seek when we return to Excelsis.’

  The tension hung in the air between them for several long moments. Finally, the captain turned and headed up the stairs to the main deck, saying not a word.

  A chill breeze was beginning to blow by the time the work teams had hacked down a supply of timber for repairs, a refreshing zephyr that was a welcome change after several days of unrelenting heat. The aelves had stripped to the waist and fashioned makeshift lifts out of the ballista tracks, winching piles of thick timber to the main deck. Callis watched them work, enjoying the sensation of the sand trickling between his toes, the slight chill of the lapping waves. He closed his eyes, and sighed. What he would not give now for a pint of amber mead, a bustling tavern. Street cobbles under his feet. He heard the scuffed footsteps of someone approaching, and reluctantly climbed to his feet. Oscus appeared, his shirt drenched in sweat, sleeves rolled up to expose well-muscled, tattooed arms.

  ‘We will the survey the island,’ said the first mate. ‘To make sure we are alone. We don’t want to be surprised while Thrice Lucky is vulnerable like this. You’re coming with us, guilder. Fetch your blade and follow me.’