by Warhammer
‘Perhaps, but it’s far from an isolated incident,’ said Helena. ‘It’s just… I don’t know, everything, I suppose. There’s been inexplicable subsidence, animal attacks, break-ins that I simply can’t perceive motive or method for. Then there are the omens.’
‘Omens?’ asked Romilla.
‘Runti born… wrong,’ said Helena. ‘Ashwings seen flying backwards across the sky, which I wouldn’t have believed but for the fact that I saw it myself just this morning. The poor thing took to the wing, shot backwards on itself with a cry of alarm and struck the blockhouse window hard enough to leave a blood smear. It was most unsettling. The lightning shrines on the mountainsides have started to rust, so badly in some cases that they’ve collapsed. We’ve had actual lightning strikes on city buildings for the first time in years. Then there are the dreams.’
‘The eyes that see into your soul,’ said Eleanora without looking up from the bulky nest of gears and wiring she was working on.
Aelyn looked around at the engineer in surprise, as did all her comrades. Eleanora continued to tinker, oblivious to their stares.
‘How did you know that?’ asked Helena.
‘I saw them too, last night,’ said Eleanora, not looking up from her work.
‘Why did you not tell us this?’ Romilla asked in a concerned voice at the same time as Helena said, ‘You’ve seen them too? Outside the city?’
Eleanora looked from Romilla to Helena and back.
‘I didn’t feel safe,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want the eyes to come back while I was awake. And I thought if I mentioned it then you might decide not to come here, and then I might not get access to a workshop…’ she trailed off miserably, clearly remembering that she was no closer to that goal.
‘It’s all a bit vague, isn’t it?’ mused Bartiman. ‘Alarming, certainly! But how does it all tie together?’
‘Not our problem,’ said Borik. ‘We have a job to finish and neither business nor pay here. The moment those gates open, we leave.’
‘It may well be our problem, if whatever is coming happens before the gates open,’ said Bartiman.
‘And I can tell you now those gates will not open again until whatever threat we face has been dealt with,’ said Helena. ‘Though how precisely I’m meant to deal with a threat I can’t place or understand, Sigmar only knows…’
‘There are always routes in or out,’ said Borik, glowering. ‘Hendrick, this is hullrust, we should be about our business and you know it.’
‘Try it, duardin,’ said Helena. ‘You’ll be in the scald-cells before nightfall tomorrow.’
‘Look. Perhaps we could be of aid?’ asked Romilla. ‘As Bartiman says, we’re stuck here anyway, and we’ve skills that might be of use to you. If there really is a threat to Sigmar’s subjects…’
‘What skills, precisely?’ asked Helena. ‘You’ll excuse me, but so far I’ve done most of the talking and frankly, you don’t look like any mercenaries I’ve seen before. Normally they have numbers, swords a-plenty and faces like an Ogor’s knucklebones. You’re… unconventional.’
The Swords of Sigmar hesitated and looked to Hendrick, all except Borik who grunted in disgust and got up to elbow his way to the bar.
Hendrick stirred himself, and looked around at them all as though surfacing from a reverie. Aelyn virtually felt him crush down his emotions and come to a decision. Suddenly brisk, he pointed at each of his comrades in turn.
‘Romilla Aiden, Sigmarite warrior priest and military veteran. Eleanora VanGhest, brilliant, outcast, and if there’s anything she can’t blow up it’s not worth the black powder. Aelyn Melethryl, Wanderer, waywatcher, if you mean us any harm at any point she will know and you will die with an arrow in your skull. Bartiman Kotrin, death wizard, does very much what it says on the keg. Olt Shev, scout, another veteran from Azyrheim’s glorious armies just like me, and the surly arse at the bar is Borik Jorgensson, who my brother Varlen hired as a bodyguard a couple of years back and who, I’m sure you will have noticed, carries a very large gun. There, you know us. Now, hire us and then we can get some damn sleep.’
Helena seemed taken aback, but Aelyn detected a hint of something else behind her apparent surprise, something like satisfaction.
‘Hire you? Why should I hire you? You don’t know anything more about this madness than me, perhaps less, and I’ve an army of watchmen at my disposal who I trust a damn sight more than any of you.’
‘You need more resources, you said so yourself. We’ve got a varied skillset that your watchmen lack, and if we had their authority we could aid you without coming to blows with your people. We want to leave, and never see Draconium again, and whatever in Sigmar’s name is coming we want to avoid being caught by it as much as you do. Sitting around ignoring the situation won’t achieve any of those ends, but taking a hand in dealing with the impending threat? That might.’
Aelyn heard the words her sergeant didn’t say, that this was still about Varlen, about Hendrick proving his brother hadn’t died in vain, but she said nothing. Now was not the time to undermine him and besides, she agreed with him. They were better off taking action than sitting and drinking themselves into a stupor in this inn for however long it took for the nebulous danger to manifest. She just wished it didn’t feel so much like Hendrick was inadvertently giving Captain Morthan precisely what she had wanted all along.
‘Our fee is naught but bed and board in this inn, on the city’s tab. And Eleanora wants access to an Ironweld workshop.’
Helena blanched slightly. Eleanora looked up with sudden delight.
‘You wouldn’t require payment?’
‘We have cash to spare, captain,’ said Hendrick matter-of-factly. ‘We can hole up in this inn and start looking for a way to escape your city tomorrow if you’ve no use for us. We’ll likely do some damage on our way out, hazard of the job. And I understand you’re already short on watchmen.’
‘You can spend the next few turnings in the scald-cells instead, if you like?’ asked Helena, cocking an eyebrow.
‘You can try to arrest us,’ said Hendrick. ‘It’ll cost you. And besides, what use would we be to you in the cells?’
Aelyn felt her lips quirk slightly in amusement. Hendrick wasn’t as good with people as Varlen had been, but she had always admired his blunt courage. Evidently, Helena felt something the same as, after a moment, she laughed.
‘Very well, Sergeant Saul, consider yourselves hired. Find rooms here and I will send a scribe across first thing tomorrow to swear you all in and draw up a contract.’
‘Send the details of whichever matters you want us to look into, also,’ said Romilla.
‘We’re quite happy with the stranger cases,’ added Bartiman with undisguised relish. Olt shrank lower in his chair but made no comment.
‘Well–’ began Helena as she stood from the table, but she was interrupted by a phenomenal crash of thunder so violent that it shook the window panes and killed conversation in the common room quicker than a headsman’s axe. Outside, the ferocity of the rain redoubled. Then came a cry of alarm and disgust.
‘Oh, Sigmar! Oh that’s revolting!’
There came the sound of a tankard hitting the floor, then others. Cries of alarm and horror rose throughout the common room, shocked shouts of disgust and oaths to Sigmar filling the air. Aelyn looked down at the glass of spring water she had been nursing and slowly, carefully, took her hands away from it. The water had turned thick and clotted, and now gave off a rancid stink. Something moved in it, something black and squirming pinwheeling in circles as it drowned. She looked around the table; all of her comrades had recoiled from their own drinks while Borik, who had just thumped another three ale tankards down on the table, was cursing roundly in Kharadron.
‘Whatever this is, Captain Morthan, we need to resolve it swiftly,’ Aelyn said to the horrified captain. Helena could only nod in ret
urn, as outside the rain fell harder.
Chapter Five
CRACKS
Dawn brought no cessation to the rain, and for the next five days the downpour continued. Overflow drains gurgled and sloshed as they struggled to keep pace with the whitewater flows that filled the gutters to bursting. Building frontages peeled and began to erode, their owners unable to apply fresh coats of scald-proofing with no break in the torrential rains. Great covers had to be raised over the Statuegarden, over the runti paddocks of Westslope, and over the canal channels where they flowed out of Fountains Square.
The city folk hurried through the streets, swaddled against the rain and muttering darkly about the unending storm. Wagon and carriage traffic on the streets thinned to a trickle, most drovers being unwilling to risk their animal teams being scalded in their traces.
From atop Gallowhill, Captain Morthan watched it all through eyes of paper and ink, poring over the reports that flowed in from her watchmen and supposing that she should have been glad of the slight lessening in crime rates that the storm brought. Even ne’er-do-wells had more sense than to venture out for long amidst such an unheard-of deluge.
Still the strange reports came, however; earth tremors causing one of the Rookswatch towers to lean so perilously that the watch had to evacuate its inhabitants; a fungal blight spreading amongst the runti herds on Westslope, causing frightened whispers to spread that the Plaguefather must surely have turned his eyes upon Draconium; a street performer running mad, bludgeoning three onlookers to death with his lute, screaming about ‘the eyes in his mind’ and the ‘pallid pale’.
No, mused Captain Morthan as she sipped metha at her desk and listened to the rain battering at her office window; storm or no storm, this was only getting worse. At least the Swords of Sigmar were making good on their end of the deal, she thought, shuffling through a few more reports and casting a critical eye over their efforts. They’d investigated several strange disappearances. Their priest had talked down an angry gathering of folk from Marketsway and Pipers that could easily have turned into a mob. They had even aided her watchmen in a raid on what they had initially hoped was the hideout of the cult responsible for the disturbances. It had turned out to be a ring of kidnappers and extortionists. Largely dead kidnappers and extortionists now, she noted; she was glad she hadn’t pushed Hendrick too far that first night in the tavern.
‘Damn it, Selvador, when will you open your eyes?’ she muttered, fighting down the compulsion to go and speak to the regent militant again directly. He had been cloistered away for days now, allegedly deep in prayer, but he had issued no new edicts and offered no additional aid. Her entreaties to the arch-lector had produced nothing, either. The man was a climber, who was no doubt hoping she would appear the alarmist and allow him to expand his control to the watch as well when she was inevitably dismissed.
And still her dreams continued.
Hendrick, Bartiman and Olt stood outside the Alchemists’ Guild beneath a pair of wide leather scald-shades. Hendrick was trying to avoid the worst of the downpour. Captain Morthan had sent the scald-shades along with their first assignments, seals of marque that would allow the Swords of Sigmar to operate under her authority, and enough heavy leather rain-capes for all of them. With the weather this dreadful, her note had explained, they would all be scalded by nightfall if they didn’t wear them. The sergeant and his followers had made use of all the captain’s gifts every day since.
The guildhouse loomed over him now, an impressive brick pile painted in thick layers of rain-proofing whitewash and adorned with dozens of weird gargoyles above its arched windows.
‘Not many folk stupid enough to be out in this,’ commented Olt, glowering up and down the empty street. They had seen precious few people on their way from the Drake’s Crown, and those they passed hurried along under the lowering thunderheads, swaddled in rain-cloaks and not looking one another in the eye. This street boasted several well-to-do looking shop fronts, and lamps burned hopefully in a couple of windows, but most were dark and quiet.
‘It’s not just the rain, though, is it?’ asked Bartiman. ‘Whatever deviltry is at work here, why, you’d have to be a lump of rock not to feel it. Or Borik,’ he added speculatively, and Olt snorted.
‘Is there a difference?’
‘Borik and the others have their own assignments,’ said Hendrick, his tone communicating he was unamused. ‘We’re here for this place. The report said they’ve had two separate break-ins now, both times via tunnels penetrating the building’s basement level.’
‘And Captain Morthan thinks someone stealing bottles from alchemists is worth our attention, does she?’ asked Bartiman. ‘I mean, it’s her time, her money, but after all that about deaths and disappearances… omens… what have you…’ He trailed off with a wafting of hands, then leaned heavily on his staff and harrumphed to himself.
‘Did she strike you as a time-waster?’ asked Hendrick.
‘Nope,’ Olt replied without pause. ‘Steel ’n’ fire, that one.’
As though to underpin Olt’s words, a rumble of thunder rolled through the still air. As it did so, Hendrick thought he felt the ground shift, almost imperceptibly, beneath his feet. There was a slight juddering, and as he watched he saw the surfaces of nearby puddles rippling. Just the rain, he wondered? Or something else?
‘Then there’s a reason we’re here,’ said Hendrick. ‘Come on.’ He led them towards the building’s arched front door, striding up the rain-slick marble steps to pound a fist upon the treated ironoak.
‘I’d have preferred to get a look at some of these insect attacks,’ grumbled Bartiman as they waited for the doors to open. ‘Fascinating necro-entomology there, I’ll just bet. I’ve been asking about that for days now, you know, and I’m not getting any younger.’
‘I don’t care what we look at, so long as I can get away from the rain imps,’ replied Olt, pulling his cloak tighter around himself. ‘Let’s just get off the street, and we can worry about the rest after.’
A few miles away from the Alchemists’ Guild, Borik, Romilla and Aelyn stood on a metal gantry and looked down upon a sea of putrefaction. Rotting grain filled the warehouse floor where its swollen mass had split the storage sacks and spilled out in reeking drifts.
‘That stench is truly unholy,’ said Romilla, covering her nose and mouth with one hand and clutching her hammer talisman with the other.
‘Wouldn’t know,’ said Borik, his voice rendered tinny by his helm.
Aelyn shook her head slowly. The grain hadn’t just spoiled; it had turned black, puffing up until it looked more like mountains of black maggots. It was drenched in a mucal-looking slime, and busy with buzzing flies and slithering white worms. Their constant motion was dizzying. Shapes poked up from amidst the drifts of ruined grain, white and purple nubs that Aelyn realised were fungi. Romilla was correct, the stink rising from the ruined food stocks was beyond nauseating.
‘You say it was found like this?’ she asked the warehouse overseer, a man named Toftin, who had escorted them in. He had been so distracted that he had barely even glanced at their seal of marque, nor questioned their presence. Now Overseer Toftin looked at her with an expression of helpless horror over the cloth he had wrapped around his mouth and nose.
‘This morning,’ he said. ‘Bastley and Jens ran the checks last night and reported nothing amiss. No rain getting in, no sign of vermin, nothing.’
‘Does anyone guard the food stores overnight?’ asked Romilla.
‘Of course, the company employs a couple of night watchmen to keep an eye on things. Grain’s hard to come by this far north of Hammerhal. We have to guard it against thieves…’ Toftin trailed off, looked over the horror of spoiled food below and swallowed.
‘Where are the watchmen?’ asked Aelyn, thinking that if anyone was likely to have seen what took place, surely it would be them. Her hopes were dashed as Toftin r
aised a shaking hand and pointed down at the mounds of oozing sludge. Aelyn followed his gesture and felt a twinge of horror as she realised that what she had first taken to be a clotted lump of spoiled food was in fact a pale hand rising from amidst the foulness. It was as bloated as the grain, thrice the size it should have been with taut skin purple and blue, slime and worms slicking it.
‘Oh, Sigmar’s throne…’ gasped Romilla.
‘No one has dared touch the stuff, in case…’ Toftin shrugged helplessly again. ‘But no one has seen either watchman since we left last night and, well, it seems a safe assumption.’
Romilla began to pray for the departed souls of the watchmen. Borik craned over the railing to peer at the befouled grain, then looked back at Toftin with his helm-lenses glinting.
‘How much of the city’s food reserve is this?’ Borik asked.
‘There are three warehouses, each a private concern endorsed by the regent militant’s office,’ said Toftin as though reciting from a script. ‘You’re stood in the main warehouse for Grange Grain. The Hazyrtein and O’Phennik families own the others.’
‘About a third, then,’ said Borik, turning back to the railing with a grunt. ‘Anyone know if it’s like this at the other warehouses?’
Aelyn hadn’t thought Toftin could look any more alarmed, but the thought clearly hadn’t occurred to him and now he turned white as a sheet.
‘Do you think it could be?’ he asked. Aelyn could see fear for the city warring with the selfish thought that, if all the warehouses had suffered a similar fate, he would not receive sole blame when fingers began to point. None of them answered, too busy staring down aghast at the slime-ridden crops.
Romilla concluded her prayers for the dead. ‘What now?’ she asked. ‘There’s no way that this is natural. Is it the work of the Plaguefather, do you think?’