by Warhammer
‘I will banish them if you speak-speak,’ said the skaven.
And at last Aethenir spoke, weeping as he did. ‘It is called the Harp of Ruin,’ he moaned, as Gotrek snarled curses at him. ‘A weapon that can cause earthquakes… tidal waves… raise valleys and lower mountains. The druchii mean to use it on fair Ulthuan.’
The old skaven stared past the elf as it digested this information, scratching distractedly at a patch of scaly skin on its withered neck as it mused. ‘A great weapon indeed,’ it said at last. ‘What the skaven might do with such a weapon. What I might do with such a weapon! The warrens of the overdwellers I would crash low, and raise-lift skaven cities in their place! I would show the council the greatness of my power! They would bow-scrape before me! At last I would rise-return to my true stature!’
Its eye refocused on Aethenir. ‘Where is this harp?’ it snapped. ‘Quick-quick! I must have it!’
The high elf looked like he was going to resist again, but the ancient had only to raise a hand that glowed with green fire and he spoke again, babbling in his fear. ‘A druchii ship takes it north. Six powerful sorceresses guard it. Their destination may be Naggaroth, or Ulthuan itself.’
The skaven nodded and began to pace. ‘The ship I spied. Small-small, easily taken. But six sorceresses.’ It looked hesitant. ‘The prick-ears are great in the ways of magic. Equals nearly of the skaven. The whirlpool. Could even I have created such a…?’ It shook its head, as if banishing the thought. ‘How to accomplish this without risk-pain to myself. There must some trick weapon I could deploy that…’ its eye fell suddenly on Gotrek and Felix. It paused, looking at them appraisingly, then turned away again, angry.
‘No,’ it said. ‘Never-never! Not when I have them at last. I have waited for this too long. They are mine, mine, to do with as I wish.’ It looked at Aethenir. ‘And yet… and yet will vengeance win me power? Is it better to use them as tools to reclaim my former position? Better, isn’t it, to set them against my enemies as my enemies once turned them against me? Yes-yes! That is the skaven way! They will smash-kill the tainted prick-ears, and I will pluck pick the harp from the wreckage.’ It looked at its captives and a hissing giggle escaped it. ‘You will be the cheese in the trap!’
It turned to its guards and chittered something to them in its own tongue. They bowed and went to a metal locker in one corner of the room.
When they turned back to the prisoners they held leather sacks, crusted on the edges with green muck.
Felix opened his eyes, then blinked with shock. There were white clouds above him, drifting across a blue sky. He felt a cool breeze on his cheek, and a gentle rocking as if he were in a hammock. This was a decided improvement on the humid skaven torture chamber he had woken in last. Were they free? Had some incredible miracle happened? Had it all been a dream?
All at once the pain returned, worse than ever, blinding him with its savagery, and he nearly blacked out again. When he had mastered it, he raised his head like a man might raise a brimming mug, afraid the slightest motion would cause some of the contents to slop out. Again his vision was distorted, as if he was seeing the world through an imperfect mirror, and nausea and vertigo threatened to overwhelm him with each turn of his head.
He tried to sit up and realised that his hands and feet were still bound. With a lot of grunting and cursing he finally managed to get up on one elbow and look around. His heart sank.
They were indeed free. The gentle rocking he felt was waves, lapping at the sides of a small wooden rowboat. There were no skaven in sight. In fact there was nothing in sight. All he could see, in every direction, was endless cold grey ocean. Aethenir lay in the bottom of the boat, his head down, trussed as Felix was, but with Gotrek the skaven had taken no chances. He was still cocooned to the pipe that he had awoken on. It had been freed from its moorings and now lay across the rowing bench. The Slayer hung from it like a meaty, but particularly ugly, chicken on a spit.
‘The knife,’ the Slayer rasped.
‘Eh?’ said Felix, looking around. ‘What knife?’
A curved dagger, rusted and filthy, had been stabbed, point first, into the edge of the boat. It pinned a piece of vellum to the wood.
Felix flopped over painfully and began wiggling it from the wood.
‘Don’t drop it,’ said Gotrek.
‘I won’t,’ said Felix, then dropped it. Fortunately it clattered into the boat instead of out. The folded vellum fluttered down next to it. Felix picked up the vellum and unfolded it. He frowned.
‘What is it?’ asked Gotrek.
‘A note.’ Felix struggled to read the jagged script. ‘Druchii… coming. Fight… well.’
Felix groaned, then scooped the dagger up and started towards Gotrek. Humping across a wobbling boat with one’s wrists and ankles tied and a knife in one’s hands was no easy task, and more than once he fell forwards and nearly impaled himself before he reached Gotrek and began sawing.
‘Cowards,’ he said as the strands of rope began to part. ‘Wouldn’t free us even though we were unconscious.’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘They lead from the back.’
‘This time they lead from under the water.’
After another minute of sawing, the heavy ropes came free, and Felix moved to the thin grey cord. This parted more quickly and soon Gotrek thudded heavily to the bottom of the boat. He grunted, then closed his eye and lay where he had fallen, massaging his cruelly abraded arms and flexing his fingers to get the blood back into them.
Felix turned to Aethenir and began sawing at the ropes that encircled his wrists. He winced when he looked at the elf’s injuries. Aethenir looked as if he should be dead. The old skaven had robbed him of his beauty and done terrible things to him. His face was a mass of cuts, his nose was broken and both eyes blackened, the skin of his right forearm was black and blistered from fire, the pinkies and middle fingers of both hands bent at unnatural angles, and Felix knew that more atrocities were hidden beneath the elf’s blood-smeared robes.
Aethenir twitched and whimpered as his last rope fell away, then opened his eyes. ‘The fiend has killed me,’ he moaned.
‘He would have if you had any honour,’ said Gotrek from where he lay. ‘Instead, you talked.’
Felix scowled at that. Gotrek’s words seemed a bit unfair. The elf had held out a long time – longer than he would have. He wasn’t sure he could have stood half what the elf had endured, but he hesitated to say anything. Gotrek would just think him weak.
Though he was free, Aethenir continued to lay in a stupor, so Felix put the knife between his knees and tried to saw through his own wrist cords.
‘I’ll do that, manling,’ said Gotrek.
Felix looked around. The Slayer was sitting up and rolling his shoulders. The marks the ropes had left on his arms, chest and wrists looked like deep scars, but there was colour in his hands again.
He crawled to Felix and took the knife, then cut swiftly through his bonds. Felix hissed in agony as the blood rushed back into his fingers. The pins and needles were more like daggers and spikes. He couldn’t imagine how much pain Gotrek must have been in when all his ropes had come off, and yet the Slayer had shown no emotion or discomfort at all.
‘Where are we?’ murmured Aethenir, blinking up at the sky.
‘You got your wish, high one,’ said Felix. ‘We are free.’
Aethenir raised his head and looked around. He moaned and lay back. ‘But... where are the druchii? Where are the skaven?’
Felix reached a tingling hand to the vellum note and handed it to the elf. Aethenir took it with his three unbroken fingers and read it. He sighed, disgusted.
‘And do they think we will win their battle for them like this?’ he asked. ‘Have they even given us weapons?’
‘You’re lying on them,’ said Gotrek.
Aethenir and Felix looked down. There was a lumpy canvas sack under the elf, also tied up securely.
‘Not taking any chances, were they?’ said Feli
x.
He took the knife from Gotrek and cut open the sack. Inside it were Karaghul, Felix’s chainmail and Gotrek’s rune axe, as well as all their belts, clothes and packs. There was also a slim elven dagger that Felix had never seen Aethenir draw.
After that there was little to do but prepare themselves for the arrival of the druchii. Aethenir summoned his magic and did his best to cleanse and heal his and Felix’s wounds. When he took off his robe and shirt to attend to the wounds the skaven seer had given him during its interrogation, Felix had to look away, and found he had to reappraise once again his estimate of the elf’s fortitude.
Aethenir’s spells of healing were not as powerful as before, but they closed up most of the open wounds and burns on his face and torso, and eased Felix’s aches considerably. The elf’s four mangled fingers however were too badly broken for him to fix with spells, so Felix helped him set and bind them with canvas from the sack that had held their weapons. The elf took the manipulation of his bones with closed eyes and gritted teeth, but neither cursed nor wept. Gotrek refused to be magicked and just washed his cuts and bruises in the ocean.
Felix mopped his face clean the same way, hissing as the salt water attacked his wounds. He rinsed out his doublet and cloak too, as they were filthy with muck from the skaven ship, then put them on and pulled his chainmail over them, so that he would be ready when the druchii came.
Then they settled in to wait.
And wait.
After an hour of nothing, they discovered that the skaven had not provided them with water or food, nor oars. Felix had a little water in the skin he’d had when the vermin had captured him, but that was all.
‘So,’ said Aethenir, sighing. ‘We will go into battle hungry and athirst, and if the druchii fail to see us and sail by, there will be no battle at all, and we will float here until we die of starvation.’
‘I’ll kill you long before that,’ muttered Gotrek, then turned away and stared out to sea as the high elf glared at his back.
Felix had nothing to add, so he looked off in the other direction and tried to pretend he wasn’t thirsty.
It had been mid-afternoon when they had regained consciousness on the boat, and still no ship had appeared from any direction as they watched the sun set in the west and a thick fog roll in from the north on the back of a cold breeze. An hour later, with the light fading to purple, the fog wrapped its cold, clammy arms around them and they could see no more than twenty feet from the boat. Then darkness fell completely and they couldn’t see at all. The druchii ship could have passed within spitting distance of them and they would never have known it.
Gotrek took first watch, and Felix and Aethenir curled up to sleep as best they could in the bottom of the boat.
After a surprisingly deep sleep, Felix woke to Gotrek tapping his shoulder. ‘Your watch, manling,’ he said.
Felix grunted and pushed himself up, hissing at the stiffness in his limbs. He felt miserable. Every part of his body ached. His muscles were sore from the fighting and the swimming and from being tied up for so long, his head still hurt from the skaven’s horrible sleep drug, his lips were cracked and bleeding, his tongue thick from lack of water, and he was starving.
He pulled the cork from his waterskin and took a sip, but only a small one. There was less than two cupfuls left, and it might have to last, well, forever.
He looked around him as Gotrek lay down in the back of the boat. The fog had thinned somewhat, becoming a fine mist that he could see into for nearly forty feet, with thicker drifts roiling slowly by in patches that glowed a sickly green in the dim light of Morrslieb, shining almost full above them. The sea was dead calm, as if the fog had pressed it flat, and the silence was eerie, just the soft slap of wavelets on the hull of the boat and, after a few moments, Gotrek’s snores.
Felix sat on the oar bench and put his sword on his knees, ready, and tried not to think about how hungry he was. It was impossible. His mind drifted back to grilled chops in taverns, to pheasant in noble houses, to rabbit stew and wild vegetables on the march, to grilled sea bass in Barak Varr, to strange spiced dishes in the lands to the east. He cursed as his stomach growled.
It had only been a day since he’d eaten last. He had gone longer than that. Much longer. And longer without water too. Now his mind flashed back to a less savoury time – the brutal brazen sun, the sea of sand, hiding in the shade of the ancient statues and waiting for the cool of night.
He cursed again. Now he wanted a drink! His hand reached for his water skin. Just one more sip, just to rinse the taste of hot sand from his mouth. But no, he mustn’t. He must save it for morning when the sun would rise again.
He leaned forwards on his knees and stared out into the misty nothingness. The curls of fog suggested menacing shapes in the darkness, but then dissolved into nothing again. He sighed. It was going to be a long night.
Felix jerked his head up and blinked around, instantly angry with himself as he realised that he’d fallen asleep. It couldn’t have been for long. The sea hadn’t changed, the mist hadn’t changed, and Morrslieb was still in the sky. But something had woken him up. What had it been?
He turned on the bench, checking behind him. Gotrek and Aethenir were both asleep, and there was no black ship prow looming behind the little boat.
Then he heard it again – a quiet splash somewhere far off in the fog. He looked in the direction he thought the sound had come from, but he could see nothing, just the drifts of mist billowing silently by. What was it? It could have been anything – a wave, a fish breaking the surface. A…
‘Hoog!’
Felix froze. That had not been a fish. A seal perhaps, but not a fish. Once again he tried to pinpoint the far-off sound, but he could not. It had seemed to echo from every direction at once. He stood, drawing his sword. At least it had been far away. Perhaps whatever it was would miss them in the fog and pass on.
The hooting came again, closer now! Much closer! He stepped over the oar bench to Gotrek and Aethenir and shook them, whispering in their ears.
‘Gotrek, high one, wake up. Something said “hoog”.’
Gotrek grimaced and yawned. ‘What’s that, manling?’ He scratched his chin through his beard.
Aethenir rubbed his eyes with his splinted fingers and groaned. ‘Something said what?’ he murmured.
‘Hoog!’
Gotrek and Aethenir leapt up at the sound, almost capsizing the boat. Gotrek had his axe in his hands. Aethenir clutched his delicate dagger. Felix gripped his sword. They stared out at the fog.
The high elf swallowed, his eyes wide. ‘I know that sound,’ he hissed. ‘I have read a description of it in the diaries of Captain Riabbrin, hero of the Lothern Sea Guard. It is the hunting cry of the menlui-sarath, used as scout beasts by the druchii corsairs.’
‘The what?’ asked Felix. Was that something moving in the fog? He couldn’t be sure. He strove to listen, but the pounding of his heart was too loud.
‘The menlui-sarath,’ repeated Aethenir. ‘The hunter of the deep. A sea dragon. If such a thing is abroad, then the black ships cannot be far behind.’
‘HOOG!’
They spun around. Out of the fog loomed a towering silhouette, a supple swaying trunk like a swan’s neck, but as thick around as a tree and rising higher than a house.
‘By Sigmar, it’s enormous,’ said Felix.
‘And still only a juvenile,’ breathed Aethenir. ‘The adults are large enough to pull ships.’
Perched on top of the supple trunk was an angular, asymmetrical mass that Felix at first mistook for some gigantic misshapen head. Then it drifted closer and he could see that the silhouette was not just a beast, but a beast and rider.
The beast was a sleek silver-green serpent with a blunt reptilian head the size of a cask of ale, and a chin full of dangling, tentacle-like feelers. Its glistening hide was made of thick overlapping plates, and rippling ribbons of fin ran down its flanks. Felix hated it on sight. The rider was a dark elf in
black plate armour, sitting on an elaborate saddle strapped just behind the monster’s head. She carried a long curved sword in one hand, and a strange conical shield in the other, like the pointed roof of a castle tower, made of polished steel.
The rider saw them at the same moment as they saw her, and her reaction was instantaneous. She shouted a harsh cry and jabbed her spurred boots into the sea dragon’s neck.
With another deafening hoot, the beast’s head shot down like a fist, straight at the boat. Felix and Aethenir leapt aside, yelping. Gotrek swung as he dived the other way. Felix couldn’t tell if he connected, because the dragon smashed its huge skull into the boat and sent them all flying in an explosion of water and spinning timbers.
Felix came down on something hard, then bounced off it into the water. His armour and heavy clothes dragged him down and he grabbed desperately at what he had hit. He caught it and held on. It was the boat – half the boat, rather – the prow end, upside down in the water. He sucked in a gulp of air as he tried to pull himself on top of it. Aethenir thrashed and coughed in the water beside him. Felix caught him by the collar and pulled him to the broken boat. The elf clung desperately, panting and wheezing. A few yards away, Gotrek clawed up onto the stern half of the boat.
Of the sea dragon and its rider, there was no sign except the ever-widening ripple where it had plunged beneath the sea.
‘Where is it?’ snarled Felix. ‘I must kill it!’ He found himself boiling with rage and righteous fury. ‘On land or sea, dragons are the bane of mankind!’
‘Herr Jaeger,’ said Aethenir, still breathing hard. ‘The runes of your sword are glowing.’
Felix looked down. Aethenir was right. The dwarf runes engraved along Karaghul’s length, which Felix hardly noticed most of the time, were glowing with an inner light. He cursed. This was the source of his sudden hatred of the sea dragon. Once again, the sword was trying to take over his will, trying to force its purpose upon him. It hadn’t happened often, but when it did, it infuriated him. His mind and his will were his own, and any attempt to wrest control from him was an intimate violation of his self.