by Nick Horth
Callis estimated they had perhaps another ten minutes before they were treading water. He shuddered to think of those barbed horrors slithering towards him from below, wrapping themselves around him and dragging him down to be torn apart.
Zenthe splashed forward, stowing her weapon and raising up a flat disc of smooth rock from the shallows. She hefted the weight and brought it crashing down upon another of the beasts, crushing it in place. Its tail whipped and lashed the air in helpless protest. Oscus knelt by its head and brought his rock down once, twice, three times. Sickly pink matter spilled from the thing’s shattered skull.
Two down, thought Callis.
He heard the chortling, nasal laughter of Kaskin above the crowd.
‘Good show,’ giggled the High Captain. ‘A good show indeed!’
Working in pairs, cautious and lethal, the aelves isolated and carved up three more of the serpents, hacking them into pieces or bludgeoning them to death with whatever came to hand. As Oscus struggled against the last remaining beast, Callis pried the rock from his ally’s grasp and drove the crude weapon under the creature’s chin, slitting its throat. The water had now risen to their knees, and two-thirds of the arena was now submerged. Only a few scattered islands of shale and stacked rocks remained above the water line. No aelf had yet fallen, though Huvon had lost much blood and looked pale and haggard. Callis had seen similar wounds before, and guessed that the corsair would soon bleed out. The aching certainty of their demise was a greater horror than any deep-spawned thing that could spill out of those sluice gates. One by one they would be dragged down, torn apart and devoured, all to the sound of ringing laughter. He looked up to the stands, saw the bared teeth and sweat-soaked faces of the frenzied crowd.
Was this it, Callis wondered? Had he abandoned a promising career in the Freeguild to die for the entertainment of these wretches? He prayed for a glimpse of Hanniver Toll’s weather-worn face amidst that crowd, but saw nothing. It was a fool’s hope, he knew. Most likely the witch hunter was already dead.
‘That was just a taster,’ bellowed High Captain Azrekh. ‘Let them test themselves against Old Skinshear.’
The roar from the audience became, if possible, even more raucous. They began to chant as one.
‘Skinshear! Skinshear! Skinshear!’
At the far end of the arena, another gate slid open, three times the size of the first. From within, Callis heard a skittering, scratching sound. An enormous sabre-like limb emerged from the darkness, tapping on the floor with a strangely sickening precision. Its rough, calloused surface shone in the sunlight, and it widened at the bottom, forming a spade-shaped blade. Another limb followed the first, along with a wiry frond of antennae, curling and twitching as they tasted the air.
Crawling from the darkness came a shape from Callis’ darkest nightmares. Arachnoid in form, slender and thickly plated with chitin, it advanced on eight skittering legs, the front two armoured and thick, the rear ones bunched, stubbier. It was the size of a small house, yet it scuttled across the rushing streams of seawater with horrid swiftness and grace. In the midst of its sclerotised head were buried a dozen pitch-black, shining eyes, above a mouth stuffed with dripping fangs. Callis felt a rush of terror and revulsion that threatened to steal the strength from his bones.
‘That’s an abyssal flayer,’ said Oscus, and Callis registered the fear in the usually unflappable aelf’s voice. ‘By the deep, how did they capture one of those?’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Callis leapt aside as the monster’s armoured forelimb crashed down, shattering the rock he had been perched on into pieces. He landed in cold seawater, kicking his legs frantically as he sought to escape the thing’s reach. A corpse bobbed in front of him, torn nearly in half, seeping bright blood into the frothing surf. He saw a pale, aelven face, eyes lifeless, features twisted in horror. An arm grasped him by the shoulder, and aided him out of the water onto a shelf of rock covered with spined barnacles.
It was Oscus. His teeth were gritted, and he clutched his arm, but other than that he seemed unscathed.
‘How in Sigmar’s name do we kill that thing?’ Callis gasped, staring at the chitinous horror as it circled them, twitching and clicking its great limbs together with an awful snapping sound. Two aelves were dead already, ripped apart with sickening ease, their ruptured remains hurled aside or stuffed into the monster’s maw. Blood and saliva drooled from the thing’s hooked fangs, and its eyes were fixed on the survivors.
‘Distract it,’ said Zenthe. She had somehow got hold of another blade to match her rusted half-sword, this one a saw-bladed dagger she had pried from the hands of a floating corpse.
‘What are you going to do?’ said Callis, but before the captain could answer, Oscus was dragging him away, rushing and splashing through the knee-deep water towards the south-eastern edge of the arena. The creature known as Skinshear tracked them with beady eyes, scuttling its great body across to face them.
Oscus hefted a good-sized rock and sent it whipping out towards the abyssal flayer’s head. It flicked a leg out and blocked the blow, and its multiple orbs seemed to lock onto the first mate with alien malice.
Callis, for his part, really had no idea what he should do about the hideous thing bearing down upon him. He opted to scramble up onto the nearest formation of rock, a narrow ridge of coral-encrusted stone that ran alongside the eastern wall for a dozen paces. A glass bottle hurled from the crowd glinted at his feet, and he reached into the bloody water and grasped it. Arching his back, he hurled the missile at Skinshear. It struck the creature on the back, shattering into a thousand glinting shards as it broke upon its hardened armour shell.
The monster flicked its gaze between its two assailants, no doubt judging which one it should dismember first. Its eyes settled upon Oscus, and Callis felt a surge of relief accompanied by only the slightest twinge of guilt.
Skinshear skittered forward, its forelimbs jabbing out at the first mate. Oscus ducked under one and hurled himself out of the way of the other, landing nimbly upon a protruding rock, then skipping to another, somehow weaving his way through the wall of slashing limbs. The crowd groaned and howled at each near miss. The first mate was scampering with light-footed grace beneath the beast’s armoured torso, while Skinshear shrieked, then circled, trying to split the aelf with its blade-limbs.
Callis kept up a rain of missiles – rocks, plates of coral and whatever else was near at hand. He’d lost sight of Zenthe, but if she didn’t act soon, Oscus was dead. He couldn’t keep this up much longer.
Then the creature did something that took Callis entirely by surprise. It ignored the troublesome aelf dashing beneath it, and dashed towards the other visible prey instead. The movement was sudden, terrifyingly so. One enormous, stabbing forelimb was mere inches from his face when his frozen body snapped into motion, and staggered aside. Replaying that same moment in his mind later, Callis would wonder how Skinshear could possibly have missed its strike. All he would remember was that limb arcing down to splinter rock into scattered shards, and the sudden sensation of flight as the creature whipped its leg back swiftly, catching him in the chest with the broad flat of the claw and sending him hurtling backwards through the air, his arms windmilling crazily.
He struck the wall of the arena hard, enough to blast the breath from his lungs and briefly darken his vision, but blessedly not enough to shatter bone. He slithered down and splashed face first into the water, and in his delirium he swallowed a huge mouthful of bitter brine, and began to choke and thrash. In his punch-drunk daze he staggered upright, gagging and spluttering, to see the beast rise up above him. He could see the glistening streams of water cascading down its armoured form, and those awful, piercing orbs gazing down upon him with alien hunger.
There was a peal of insane laughter, and he looked to his right to see Arika Zenthe dashing along the crest of rock, twin blades raised above her head, wild deligh
t in her eyes. She leapt, impossibly high, and sailed beneath Skinshear’s flailing arms straight towards its ugly face. It managed a hiss-shriek of fury before both weapons sank deep into the pitch-black orbs of its eyes.
Skinshear rocked back, armoured thorax twisting as it turned circles in maddened pain. Zenthe tucked her legs and hit the water in a graceful dive, somehow angling her body so that she missed the teeth of the rocks below.
The roar of the crowd choked, then died.
As the monster writhed, Oscus approached it steadily. He held a jagged harpoon of rusted iron scavenged from the arena floor. Hefting the weapon, he whipped his arm forwards, hurling the missile with unerring accuracy. It struck the abyssal flayer in the mouth, sinking deep and sending up a gout of thick, black blood. There was a horrid, wet rattle, and Skinshear collapsed on its back, its limbs whipping about spasmodically. After a few moments, the movement ceased.
Zenthe pulled herself out of the water alongside Callis.
‘How many playthings do you think they have left?’ she said, casually wiping spatters of black ichor from her forearms.
‘Enough to keep us going for a while yet,’ muttered Callis, groaning as he massaged his aching head. ‘Throne of Azyr, this hangover is murder.’
Zenthe chuckled at that, and clapped him on the back.
Then she strode forward along the shelf of rock, which was by now almost submerged by the rising tide. She raised her hands, waved and then gave an elaborate bow pretending to take in applause that was certainly not forthcoming.
‘So,’ she shouted, gesturing up at the High Captains, who were staring down at her with ill-disguised fury and hatred. ‘What else do you have for me to kill? Perhaps one of you might like to come down here and challenge me yourself? How about you, Azrekh? Maybe I’ll cut that slave-mark off your face, sell you on as damaged goods.’
There was a faint but unmistakable ripple of disbelieving laughter amongst the crowd.
Azrekh started forwards, hands grasping the rail at the edge of the stand as if he meant to leap down upon the aelf. Kaskin rose to his feet, surprisingly swiftly for such an enormous man, and placed a hand on the duardin’s shoulder.
‘You hear me now,’ shouted Zenthe, circling with her finger raised at the now quiet crowd. ‘My words are for all of you. None of your pitiful pets can slay me. I’ve hunted deep-drakes in the mists of the Shadow Sea. I slaughtered the Abyssal Queen and took her skull for my drinking cup. I duelled the Lord Rukhar amidst the crystal-reefs of the Ten Thousand Eyes, and sent his flagship to the depths. I will escape this cage. I will kill everything you send at me, and I’ll build a mountain of their torn corpses and scale these walls.’
Perhaps it was Callis’ imagination, but he swore that at least a dozen onlookers began to back away from the stands as the captain finished her speech.
‘All of you, ask yourselves now, do you wish to be here when I do so? When your mothers told you tales of the corsair queen Arika Zenthe, did they say that she was a merciful woman? Or did they warn you that if you crossed her, she would flay the skin from your bones and use it to patch her sails? Ask yourselves that.’
‘Very amusing, Arika,’ Kaskin crooned, and doffed his ludicrous hat in mock praise. ‘Very impressive. But I think it is time that the day’s entertainments came to a close. Release the cages. All of them.’
The ogors grunted and resumed turning the enormous levers, and there was a rumbling, clanking sound. The gushing streams of water became even more violent, and at the far end of the arena they heard the sound of rusting bars creaking open.
Oscus had retrieved his harpoon, and now made his way over to Callis and Zenthe. There was now no part of the arena that was not submerged. They were standing on the tallest shelf of rock, but even there the tide reached up to their knees. Callis’ feet had gone numb, frozen by the cold water.
Serrated, blade-like fins cut through the gushing channel at the far end of the arena, scything through the water with lazy menace. Silhouettes rippled just below the surface, large and sleek-bodied.
Oscus, Zenthe and Callis moved back to back, blades drawn. As the creatures came close, Callis saw the glint of needle-sharp teeth, and a flash of luminescent scales shining beneath the waves.
Chapter Thirty
As the underwater beasts drew closer and closer, Callis heard a new sound. It was a low, rolling hum, something like the accumulated noise of a swarm of insects. It set his teeth on edge. Looking up, he saw people in the crowd begin to point and shout. Confusion, then worry became evident on their faces even at this distance. Up in their podium, the High Captains were standing, staring up past the far wall of the arena and into the bright early morning sky.
A shadow fell across the arena. Looking up, Callis saw the enormous wedge-like shape of a ship’s hull drift overhead, iron-riveted plates bristling with shaped charges, vicious-looking harpoons and gas-powered cannons. A fleet’s worth of firepower crammed into one ship. Admiral Bengtsson’s flagship, the Indefatigable.
‘I’ll be damned,’ chuckled Zenthe, shaking her head.
Flying alongside the enormous vessel like pilot fish were stocky, armoured figures strapped to floating spheres of metal, longrifles and barbed boarding spears clutched in their hands. These figures descended with surprising grace, and as they came close Callis saw the gleam of their metal face-masks. The Kharadron opened fire, flares of bright light erupting from the barrels of their firing pieces. Bullets fizzed and splashed through the water all around the exhausted survivors. Blood sprayed, and tails thrashed and writhed in the surf as the sky duardins’ shots blasted apart beast after beast. One of the descending duardin hurled a harpoon, and Callis gave a startled cry as it missed him by mere inches, whipping past his shoulder. He spun, and found himself gazing into the jagged-toothed maw of one of the sharks, split by a length of polished metal. The harpoon had gone straight through the creature’s ugly, hammer-shaped head.
The Kharadrons reached out, grasping Callis, Zenthe and Oscus with steady hands, two duardin taking a firm hold of each while the others formed a shield of guns and blades. Callis found himself hauled bodily out of the water, gasping and laughing as the duardin’s back-mounted engines fired and lifted them into the air towards the hovering sky-ship. Up, up they went, and Callis could see the pale, scared faces of the crowd staring up at them in astonishment. Kaskin and Azrekh were on their feet, the former backing away towards a narrow, rising staircase that led from the High Captains’ seats to the upper level of the city.
‘Remain where you are, Kaskin,’ bellowed a familiar voice. ‘You all stay exactly where you are. Nobody take a single step, or this ship will unload with every ounce of ammunition it has.’
Through his fug of pain and exhaustion, Callis felt a surge of blessed relief. His carriers soared up past the gunwale of the duardin vessel and landed on the deck, depositing their living cargo none too gently. Callis smacked the corrugated metal hard, and rolled. He felt rough hands hauling him to his feet. There stood Toll, bruised and bloodied but otherwise intact, standing next to an imposing duardin clad in metal plate armour and strapped into an enormous, vented backpack. Tubes and piping connected this bizarre device to the duardin’s ornate, golden chestplate, and to the brace of pistols he wore at his belt. Like all of the duardin on deck, this fellow went fully masked, but it was clear to Callis immediately that this one gave the commands on this vessel.
‘Welcome to the Indefatigable,’ grunted the duardin.
Toll gave Callis a brief nod, and his top lip raised just slightly in an almost imperceptible smile. Zenthe was deposited by another pair of engine-clad duardin, and landed gracefully on her haunches, followed swiftly by the wounded Oscus.
‘Toll, my old friend,’ said Captain Zenthe, with an approving nod. ‘I must say that you certainly know how to make an entrance.’
‘Arika,’ said the witch hunter.
C
allis turned back to the gunwale. Below, the High Captains’ bodyguards had formed a circle around their masters, but even at this distance Callis could see they were nervous, and on the verge of fleeing. After all, what possible use could their matchlocks and cutlasses be against the metal behemoth that had its cannons levelled squarely in their direction?
‘We had a deal, Bengtsson,’ Azrekh roared. ‘A duardin, even one of your kind, keeps his word. No actions, covert or otherwise, against the city of Bilgeport while you trade at our docks, that was the agreement. Signed by your own hand. You’re going to break your oaths? Is Radrick Bengtsson nothing more than a backstabbing coward?’
The heavily armoured duardin – Bengtsson, Callis presumed – unfurled a waxen scroll from a pocket on his belt. The document was almost as long as the captain was tall, every inch of its surface covered in a precise, even script.
‘You did, of course, review the contract we agreed upon?’ said the admiral, his rumbling burr of a voice strangely modulated by his mask. ‘In particular, sub-clause two hundred and sixteen?’
Azrekh’s face contorted with irritated confusion.
‘What in the hells are you prattling about?’ he snarled.
‘I’ll spare you the exact details, but suffice to say that after an initial period of three seasons has passed, the agreement offering my trade convoy exclusive buying and selling rights within your borders – along with the corresponding pledge on my part to withhold force of arms while my ships are berthed within the vicinity – may be annulled at any time by the delivery of a notice of cessation. I trust you received my missive in the early hours of the morning?’
‘Your… missive?’ stammered Kaskin.
‘I fulfilled all the requirements we agreed upon during our initial negotiations,’ continued Bengtsson, in a matter of fact and slightly stern tone, as if he was a disappointed father addressing his lackadaisical son. ‘Our business is concluded, and as is written in artycle three, point twenty-nine of the Kharadron Code, I am free to negotiate a new trading charter with any party that I choose. And, as a subsequent result, I am no longer bound by pledge of neutrality.’