by Warhammer
Veins of ur-gold glimmered on the duardin’s heavily muscled form, like cracks in some ancient statue. His beard bristled, and his eyes were wide and staring. ‘Say it again,’ he snarled. ‘Say it to my face.’
‘I thought I had. But then it’s hard to tell with you duardin, misshapen lumps that you are.’ Zana twitched her sword, as if in invitation.
Lugash stared at her in silence for long moments. Then he gave a gap-toothed grin. He threw back his head and laughed. It was not a pleasant sound, and Volker didn’t remove his hand from his pistol. But it appeared that Zana’s baiting had had the intended effect. The fyreslayer shook his head, still chuckling. ‘You are brave, umgi. If your folk had more like you, they wouldn’t need us to fight their battles for them.’ He paused. ‘Then maybe that’s a good thing.’ He turned and made for the bulkhead hatch. ‘I’m going to get some air. It reeks of demigryph down here.’
Roggen paused in his exercises to sniff the air. ‘She doesn’t smell that bad.’
Zana chuckled and shook her head. ‘You took quite a risk, there,’ Volker said. ‘He might’ve killed you.’
‘No, he wouldn’t have. He wanted an argument, so I gave him one. Fyreslayers are like that – prickly. They need conflict the way we need food and drink. Without it, they go a bit crazy.’ She frowned. ‘Crazier, I should say.’ She looked at Volker. ‘Speaking of crazy duardin, known Oken long, then?’
Volker smiled at the segue. ‘He taught me everything I know.’ He gestured to his weapons. ‘Everything I am, I owe to him. Without him, I wouldn’t be anything to speak of.’ He chuckled. ‘Just another highborn Azyrite brat.’
Zana blinked. ‘Ah. That’d have been a waste.’
‘I like to think so.’ Volker set his rifle aside and retrieved his artisan pistol. Oken had taken his education in hand, though he’d never said why. And if his mother knew the reason, she hadn’t shared it with him. One more secret. Catrin Volker was good at keeping secrets. But then that was practically a way of life in Azyrheim.
He hadn’t seen her in years. Not since he’d decided he was more suited to a life in Ghur. For better or worse, she’d abided by his decision. He frowned and tried to concentrate on disassembling the pistol. Normally he could do it blindfolded. But he’d been rattled since Grungni had first appeared to him.
Being a gunmaster was to ritualise routine. Weapons had to be oiled and cleaned, calculations made and adjusted. Not just his, but those of the men nominally under his command. Artillery pieces required constant supervision to keep them in working order. Granted, you could fob it off on to your assistants – if you could afford assistants – but there was no substitute for doing it yourself.
‘He might be dead, you know. Grungni didn’t say it, but…’
Volker paused. ‘He might,’ he said finally, completing the reassembly. ‘Then, he might not.’
‘Is that why you came?’
He looked at her. ‘Is that so strange? He’s my friend.’
She leaned back. ‘Strange? I suppose not. Everyone knows you Azyrites are touched in the head. Too much time spent with your god shouting at you, I suppose.’
‘I’ve never seen Sigmar, let alone been shouted at by him.’
‘Maybe Grungni will introduce you.’
He studied her. ‘Why do you do that?’
‘What?’ She looked at him, her expression unreadable.
He shook his head. ‘I think Lugash had the right idea. I’m for some air. Excuse me.’ He stuffed his pistol into his belt and left the hold, angry at himself. She was right, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Oken might very well be dead. And this would all be for nothing. The thought resonated through him like a sour note.
As he followed the cramped stairwell to the upper deck, something else occurred to him. Zana had spoken of Oken as if she knew him as well. He paused, wondering if he should go back down and ask her. He dismissed the idea a moment later; it didn’t matter. He was forced to flatten himself against the wall several times on his ascent as Kharadron bustled past him, going about their business. The duardin paid him little attention, and the few attempts he made at striking up conversation were ignored.
Volker climbed to the deck, and was immediately struck by a cold wind. The glow of the aether-endrins kept the vessel free of frost, but that was about it. The wind whistled, coiling around the struts and across the rails. Night had fallen, and the savage stars of Ghur gleamed like the eyes of immense beasts, out in the dark.
The deck curved upwards at the prow, and everywhere he looked, hoses, ropes and stiff iron struts rose to meet the globular aether endrins. It was a forest of esoteric machinery, and the engineer in him wanted nothing more than to begin taking it apart, then and there, to figure out the secrets of its function.
The deck rolled strangely beneath Volker’s feet. It wasn’t like walking on a sea-going vessel. It was smoother, somehow. He found an out-of-the-way spot near the starboard rail and turned to study his hosts. The duardin were hard at their various duties.
He knew next to nothing about the Kharadron. What little he’d heard made them out to be as different from the Dispossessed as the fyreslayers were. All three shared a common ancestor in the Khazalid empires, which spread across the mortal realms during the Age of Myth. But all three had diverged greatly from the course set by their ancestors.
The Dispossessed venerated tradition above all else. They clung tightly to half-remembered rituals and centuried grudges, as if they could hold onto the last glimmerings of their former greatness through sheer will. The lodges of the fyreslayers, on the other hand, had developed their own rituals and a greatness all their own in their isolation.
And the Kharadron, from what little he knew of them, seemed to have shed the oldest Khazalid traditions in favour of survival. They had abandoned all that made duardin duardin, and become something other, yet familiar. A strange folk, with strange ways.
He turned, and spotted a solid form crouched on the curved snout of the prow. Lugash hunched there, a fingerbreadth from falling, staring out into the dark. He wondered what the fyreslayer was thinking about. It was probably best not to ask.
Volker sighed and leaned over the rail. Startled, a raven took wing from a dip in the hull, and sailed away with a croak of recrimination. Far below him, the grassy expanse of the Amber Steppes stretched from horizon to horizon. Occasional tumbledown hills and craggy expanses of stone jutted from the grasslands like tombstones, marking the last resting places of fallen empires. The Ghurlands were full of forgotten kingdoms. The great Waaagh!s of Gorkamorka had broken them, and the servants of Chaos had finished off those that remained. Now, only a few nomadic tribesmen called the grasslands home. He could see the glow of their campfires from this height, dozens of them, many hundreds of leagues apart. Tiny motes of humanity, adrift in the dark.
In the end, that was what it was all about, Volker thought. That was perhaps why cities like Excelsis had been founded. For all their flaws, they would serve as beacons to the scattered children of men, calling them home. Excelsis and the other Founding Cities were the seeds of a new beginning. One for all mortals.
He blinked as something glimmered in the dark. Not starlight, or the glare of a fire down below, but something almost… metallic. He leaned forwards. The clouds had thickened, and faint seams of glittering radiance ran through them.
‘Star-dust,’ Volker murmured. He had seen such motes before, as a child. They swirled about the highest peaks in Azyr and collected in the thickest clouds.
‘Is that what they call it where you’re from, then?’
He turned. Captain Brondt stood behind him, chewing on his ever-present cheroot. The duardin joined him at the rail. ‘Surprised you’re able to breathe, manling. Usually your kind can’t tolerate these altitudes.’
Volker inhaled. He hadn’t even thought about it. ‘This? This is mild, compared to where I
was born.’ He looked up. ‘I could almost touch the stars from my crib.’
Brondt grunted. ‘Could you now?’ He swept his hand out, and caught a fistful of the sparkling motes. They clung to him like dust. ‘Aether-gold – the breath of Grungni, some call it. Rich seams run through these clouds. Through the whole realm, really.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Volker said.
‘It’s more than that. Without it, our ships wouldn’t fly. Our cities would fall from the skies. Our people – our society – would crumble, as that of our ancestors did.’ Brondt stared at his hand. ‘It’s everything.’
‘Are you a miner, then?’
Brondt chuckled. ‘A speculator, let’s say. I come before the miners. To see what there is to see.’ He sighed. ‘A good life, if you’re of a certain turn of mind.’ He gestured to the clouds. ‘We’re not the only ones who hunt it. The harkraken and other, worse things, eat it. No idea why, since they prey on flesh as well as aether. They can smell it for leagues and they’ll go after a ship carrying it quicker than you can spit. Case in point–’
He reached and caught a handful of Volker’s coat as something monstrous surged up through the clouds below and rose towards them with a sound like an avalanche. Volker had an impression of thousands upon thousands of triangular teeth, each the size of a man, lining jaws as wide as the Bastion, before a wall of pebbled flesh rose past the rail for what seemed an eternity. The Zank rocked, its aether-endrins groaning with strain as it was displaced by the sudden arrival. Klaxons blared and shouts of alarm rose from the crew as the force of the entity’s passing sent a reeking torrent of wind crashing across the deck.
Brondt shoved Volker back, and turned. ‘All hands to the guns,’ he roared. ‘Man the belaying valves! It looks like we’re not the only ones in the sky tonight!’
Volker stared upwards as the monstrosity continued to rise past the aethercraft. Hillocks of aether-barnacles dotted its belly, and he thought he saw the shattered remains of other craft dangling from its immense flanks, their hulls crushed and splintered. ‘What is that thing?’ he shouted, a burst of primitive fear coursing through him. Nothing could be that big and still fly – it defied all logic.
Brondt laughed. ‘Not a what, manling – a who!’ He grinned fiercely. ‘It’s the Great King himself, come to see who’s invading his territory!’
Elsewhere on the Amber Steppes, the Jaws sagged open for the second time in as many days. Amethyst lightning frenzied forth, causing the corpses that lay about it to jerk and dance. Those orruks who had survived the deathbringer’s arrival had soon after plunged into the open realmgate, seeking a fight.
They’d got one. And paid a high price for it.
The monstrous shape that burst forth from within the Jaws issued an ear-splitting shriek of challenge as it entered this new realm. It had been a bat, once. An enormous bat, larger than any such creature should have been, but a natural creature nonetheless. Now, it was anything but.
The terrorgheist screamed again as it hauled itself out of the realmgate. Folded wings gouged the bloody soil as the rotted remains of its spear-blade nose twitched in phantom hunger. It wore the tatters of a once-fine livery and war-plate, as befitting a beast that had, in life, been ridden to war by one of the long-dead dukes of Gheist.
Now its rider was like it, a thing cold and dead.
Adhema, last noblewoman of a fallen kingdom, did not think of herself as such. Blood still pumped in her veins after all, stolen though it was. Heat filled her, at the thought of battle, or the hunt. That was life enough for now.
Her armour and blade were spattered with the tarry blood of orruks, and her nose full of their rancid scent. They had come boiling out of the gate like hungry insects, and she’d been forced to carve herself a path through their ranks. An amusing diversion, but one she’d had little time to indulge in.
She jerked the reins, bringing her monstrous steed to a lumbering halt. The massive chiropteran hissed in protest and squirmed beneath her. It smelled blood. And where there was blood, there was prey. Leaning over the pommel of her saddle, she studied the crude encampment. It was empty now, abandoned by the living and occupied only by the bodies of the newly slain.
She clambered from the saddle and dropped to the ground. The terrorgheist grunted, but a single gesture was enough to calm it. She knew little of the necromantic arts, but enough to control such a simple spirit. Carefully, she moved through the camp, stopping to taste the air every so often.
Her quarry had come this way. His particular scent – like hot iron and roasted meat – hung heavy amid the greenskin miasma. But she had no idea which way he’d gone. She sank to her haunches, and traced the faint indentation of a horse’s hoof. The hard soil did little to capture the tracks of those who trod it.
Adhema.
The voice echoed like soft thunder in her mind. Adhema rose from her crouch. Dead orruks littered the ground in all directions; they had been killed recently, and with great violence. Her quarry had definitely come this way, and not long ago. ‘I hear, my lady, and I await your command,’ she murmured, still studying the battlefield.
He was sloppy, this deathbringer. All force and no artistry. A whirlwind of carnage, lacking even the barest subtlety. Yet even so, he fought with cunning. There was a mind there, beneath the muscle and brass. That made him dangerous. Behind her the terrorgheist gave a rumble of impatience. The hungers that had driven it in life had grown doubly fierce in death, though it no longer required meat in its belly.
Have you found him yet? Neferata’s voice was like the rustle of dark silk. It sang through Adhema’s blood, as it had done many times throughout the centuries. Her blood was Neferata’s, and Neferata’s hers, and wherever she went in the realms, her mistress was there with her. Like a shadow on her mind.
‘No, mistress. He was here, but I have lost his trail.’ She looked up, shading her eyes against the light of the pale, reddish moon. She felt the flicker of Neferata’s anger and hurried to excuse her failure. ‘It’s one of your own stallions he’s riding. No faster steeds exist than those bred in Nulahmia.’
And who let him take that steed, sister?
Adhema winced. ‘He killed her before he took her horse,’ she murmured.
A dark chuckle tumbled through her mind. Her mistress was amused, at least. That counted for something. ‘I can track him, but it will take time.’
Something we do not have.
Adhema frowned. ‘We are immortal. Surely that is the one thing we do have.’
Neferata sighed. We are not the only wolves on this trail, sister. My agents in the courts of the great powers send warning – the Eight Lamentations are known now. Vast mechanisms have begun to turn, and spies slink forth from the Varanspire and the Inevitable Citadel, to seek the weapons out.
Adhema felt an elemental chill slither down her spine. If the Three Eyed King had dealt himself into this game, could the Great Necromancer be far behind?
But he is, dear sister. We are his hand in this endeavour, though I grant we move without his acknowledgement. In any event, it is not Archaon himself who strides forth, but one of his courtiers. This is, as yet, a game for pawns, not kings and queens.
Adhema frowned. She had no illusions as to her importance in the scheme of things, but it rankled nonetheless. ‘As you say, mistress.’
Ah, my dear, sweet, Adhema. So fierce, so eager to spill blood. But I need you to think like a player of games, not a warrior. He is ahead, yes, yet the solution is not to pursue him, but to anticipate him.
‘He has the fragment,’ Adhema protested. That she’d failed to acquire the fragment herself still stung her pride. She’d been unprepared for the deathbringer to flee, as he had. Usually they fought to the death – theirs.
Which he follows blindly. He is a blunt object, stampeding in whichever direction the wind takes him. But you, my dear, are a swordswoman. Think like
one!
Adhema paused, considering. ‘If I follow him, I risk a confrontation. But there must be some other way of telling where the spear rests – some other source of information.’
The servants of the Crippled God obviously think so, for they hurtle southwards across the Amber Steppes even now. Neferata laughed. Such clever creatures, the sky-duardin, to build such magnificent vessels. Look, sister – see!
Adhema gasped as her vision was overridden by that of another. The world spun crazily, erratically, and her skull echoed with the high-pitched squeal of bats. Through their manifold eyes she saw a strange armour-plated craft cut smoothly through the clouds, travelling south. The world returned to normal a moment later and she staggered, clutching at her aching head.
My apologies, sister, I often forget how difficult some find it, looking at the world through different eyes. Still, you saw?
‘More than I realised. I know where they’re heading.’ Adhema straightened. ‘The Crawling City.’
And why might they do that? Neferata’s purr said she knew the answer already.
‘Something is there. Something that will lead them to the spear.’ Adhema turned and hauled herself up onto the terrorgheist’s neck. The monstrous bat-thing emitted a shriek of eagerness as she slammed her heels against its tattered flesh and hauled on the reins. It leapt into the air with a single beat of its ragged wings.
‘And I will find it first.’
Seven
The Great King
The Great King.
The words sent a tremor of fear through Volker. There wasn’t a soul in Excelsis that hadn’t heard the stories of the mountainous megalofin – a shark-like beast that swam through the skies of the realms and even the void itself, as easily as its smaller, aquatic cousins did the water. The megalofins were immense – easily the size of Kharadron aethercraft, or larger. But the Great King was larger still.