by Warhammer
The druchii soldiers fell back before the savagery of Gotrek’s bloodthirsty attack and the instrument’s horrible noise, retreating to the bottom of the steps and holding their ears, ten of their fellows dead in as many seconds. Gotrek strode out and looked across to Heshor, who was staring at him from her divan next to Commander Tarlkhir on the far side of the street.
‘Here’s your harp, witch!’ he bellowed, holding it up. It looked like the thing was shaking the meat from his arm. ‘Come get it.’
He threw it down on the porch in front of him.
It was possibly not one of the Slayer’s better ideas.
The harp clanged off the flagstones, and a shockwave like a mortar impact rocked the building and knocked them all to the ground. The witchlight globes in the foyer’s chandelier exploded and rained crystal shards down upon them. Cracks ran up the plastered walls, and the steaming crucible that was the symbol of the house jumped its hooks and clattered to the ground, spilling boiling blood across the cobbles. The street was pelted with falling masonry and black slate roof tiles. Spearmen were clubbed to the ground by stones. The floor Felix lay on split and buckled. The harp rang in his ears like a hundred temple bells. His sword sang as if it was being struck with a mallet, and shook so hard he could barely hold it. His guts churned. His heart hammered in his chest.
‘Fool of a dwarf!’ shouted Heshor in Reikspiel. ‘Surrender it before it buries you in rubble. Only I can stop it. Only I can save you.’
Gotrek picked himself up, laughing as more masonry smashed down all around him. ‘Save a Slayer? I’m taking you all with me!’ He picked up his axe and started to raise it. Heshor shrieked. The druchii soldiers scrambled back, trying to get away. A block the size of a cow slammed down from above, crushing three of them.
Gotrek cackled maniacally and raised his axe high above his head, but just as he started to slash down, something bright shot down past him from above and jerked the harp aside. Gotrek’s axe missed it, and shattered the black marble of the porch instead.
Gotrek ripped his axe from the stone, cursing, and swung again at the harp, but it hopped into the air like a puppet and his axe swished under it. Felix gaped as it rose higher. It was hooked to a crossbow bolt with flanges like a grapnel, swinging at the end of a grey silk cord.
Felix and Gotrek stared after the harp as it shot up towards the rooftops. Heshor and Commander Tarlkhir shouted and pointed. Halfway up, it clanged against the wall of a house, and this time the impact rocked the whole ark, making it boom like a giant drum. The street lurched and dropped, knocking everyone to the cobbles, and the roaring throb that filled the air drowned out even the sounds of half-ton stones tearing from the ceiling and smashing druchii to a pulp in the street. From the depths of the ark came a sound like muffled thunder and a deep tectonic rumbling.
Felix looked up through the rain of debris that was falling from the cave ceiling, searching for the harp. Then he saw it – a glittering, bouncing spark, hanging from the barbed bolt that had whisked it away, dragged, banging and clanging across the shaking, shattering rooftops of the pleasure houses behind a pack of scrawny scampering black shadows.
NINETEEN
‘Skaven!’ shouted Felix, pointing.
‘After them,’ roared Gotrek.
Heshor and Commander Tarlkhir were shouting the same thing to their troops, and the druchii spear companies hared off down the street, following the leaping shadows.
Gotrek and Felix ran after them, but it quickly became clear that it was impossible. The skaven were already out of sight, and there were thousands of druchii spears in the way, all trying to do the same thing.
Gotrek stopped when they reached the first intersection, watching Heshor and Tarlkhir’s forces hurry away ahead of them. ‘This won’t work,’ he shouted.
‘No,’ Felix shouted back.
Though they no longer stood beside the harp, the walls and streets around them still throbbed with deafening sympathetic vibrations, and they were getting worse. It was like being inside a snoring giant’s nose. Blocks of stone and spear-tip stalactites dropped all around them. Felix had a vision of the harp getting louder and louder and its resonances and reverberations stronger and stronger until at last it shook the whole world apart. The ark would only be the beginning. When it shattered, the harp would fall to the ocean floor and continue vibrating, causing earthquakes and tidal waves that would drown the Old World, the Northlands and Ulthuan alike beneath the waves. The high elves had been right to lock the vile instrument in a vault. Perhaps they had even sunk the city on purpose to hide the horrible thing away for all time.
‘They’re going out. So we go out,’ called the Slayer. ‘This way.’
The Slayer turned around and stomped back towards the flesh house, pushing through the crowds of druchii gallants and whores and half-dressed officers who were spilling out of the houses and screaming orders at each other and the jostling throngs of slaves – all so frightened that they ignored Gotrek and Felix entirely.
Max and Claudia stood in the door of the crumbling pleasure house when they returned to it, looking fearfully out at the rain of debris. Gotrek beckoned to them and continued on down the street, back the way they had originally come. The magister and the seeress ducked their heads and limped out after them.
‘The skaven have stolen the harp,’ said Felix as they fell in beside him. ‘We went after them but it was impossible. We’re getting out.’
‘An admirable idea,’ said Max.
Felix took Claudia’s arm, hurrying her along and keeping her steady as the ground continued to vibrate beneath their feet.
‘Are you well, Fraulein Pallenberger?’ he shouted over the din of destruction.
‘I… I no longer know,’ she said dully. ‘But I am glad you live.’
Felix looked at her with concern. Her voice was utterly devoid of life or spark. Had her experiences shattered her mind? Imprisoned and abused by the druchii, attacked by the blackest of magics and exposed to the reality-altering presence of a daemon, it would be little wonder if they had.
Gotrek led them back towards the stair to the barracks, but before they had gone two blocks, another titanic crack rocked the ark, sending everyone lurching sideways as the street tilted violently to the left. Felix caught Claudia before she fell, then almost fell himself. Ahead of them the facade of a building toppled forwards and sloughed to the ground like a spill of gravel, crushing dozens of druchii and their slaves.
Max looked pale. ‘The harp’s vibrations have disrupted the magics that hold the ark level. I don’t think it will survive.’
‘Good,’ said Gotrek.
Water started to stream down from the ceiling.
They all looked up, as did the druchii and the slaves all around them.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Felix.
‘We’re under the harbour,’ said Gotrek. ‘It’s sprung a leak. Keep moving.’
‘Not again,’ murmured Claudia, but when Felix asked her to repeat herself, she had sunk back into dull silence.
Too soon the water was ankle deep and rising steadily. Great columns of it poured down from the cracks in the roof, and carriage-sized stones were breaking away around the rifts and thundering down to smash houses to bits.
They reached the narrow door to the corridor that passed the beastmaster’s menagerie and found scores of druchii and slaves running out of it, shouting and waving others back. Gotrek and Felix pushed through against the tide and pulled Max and Claudia in after them.
The crowded corridor echoed with frightened animal roaring and the screams of terrified humans and druchii. In the shadowed distance near the menagerie gates, fur-cloaked druchii were struggling with some mammoth beast that Felix couldn’t quite make out. He got the impression of mass and violent movement, and a dark elf flew through the air and smashed against the wall, but it was too dark and congested in the corridor to see what had thrown him.
Felix paused. ‘Do we find another way?’
&nb
sp; ‘Any other way will be under water by the time we reach it, manling,’ said Gotrek, and pressed on.
Felix looked down. The water was knee deep now. He followed with the others.
As they got closer the shapes became clearer. Druchii with whips were trying to lead a pair of massive reptilian beasts out of the gate towards the stair. Felix quailed at the sight of the monsters. He had never seen the like – lizards that walked on their hind legs, taller at the shoulder than a man. Their sinewy forelegs ended in cruelly hooked claws, and their heads were enormous bony things with spear-tip teeth gnashing in roaring, slavering mouths.
Gotrek chuckled dangerously when he saw them, and stomped forwards eagerly.
‘Slayer,’ said Felix, following unhappily. ‘Now is perhaps not the time.’
‘Don’t fret, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘Get along the wall, and be ready to run.’
Felix led Claudia and Max to the right wall, edging towards the confusion as Gotrek splashed openly down the centre of the corridor, shoving frightened druchii and slaves out of the way. The beastmasters didn’t look around. They were too busy trying to control their charges, who seemed to have been driven to a frenzy by the noise, the rising water and the ground shaking and tilting beneath their feet. Already two of the trainers were down, one lying in a broken lump at the foot of the left wall, half-underwater, the other kneeling and holding a crushed arm close to his chest.
The others were hauling on long leads attached to the beasts’ saddles and bridles while a few brave souls whipped them and shouted commands at them, trying to make them turn towards the stairwell. The beasts were having none of it, bellowing and whipping their heads around and snapping at anyone who came close.
Ten paces behind them, Gotrek crouched down, axe ready, then looked to Felix, Max and Claudia, continuing to inch along the wall in the shadows of the milling beastmasters. Felix nodded. He still didn’t know what the Slayer intended, but they were ready to run from it, whatever it was.
Gotrek grinned in a worrying way, then turned back and charged, silent. The two closest druchii turned at his splashing steps, and died before they could open their mouths to scream. They went down in a spray of blood, the leads slipping from their hands.
By Sigmar, thought Felix. The lunatic is freeing the beasts!
Gotrek swung into two more beastmasters, chopping through their padded leather armour like it wasn’t there. They collapsed into the water, screaming.
The giant lizards roared and turned towards the scent of blood, dragging their handlers with them. The beastmasters screamed and shouted. A druchii with a whip lashed at a monster’s face. It lunged and snapped him in half.
Gotrek ran between the beasts, ducking under a massive tail, and pounded for the end of the tunnel. ‘Now, manling! Now!’
Felix took Claudia’s arm and propelled her forwards. Max ran with them, skirting the edge of the chaos as the beastmasters fled and fell before the rampaging monsters. One beast brought down two of them in a terrifying hop, then nosed in the water for their corpses. It came up with a head.
Felix didn’t look back to see more, just splashed with Max and Claudia into the shadows again, the roars of the monsters and the shrieks of the eaten echoing in their ears.
‘Well… well done, Slayer,’ said Max, as they hurried on.
Gotrek snorted. ‘I could wish the same for the entire race.’
By the time they reached the stairwell the water was hip deep – rib deep on Gotrek – and rising faster than before.
‘The water appears to be sinking the ark,’ said Max. ‘The druchii’s magic cannot support the added weight.’
‘Then hurry,’ growled Gotrek. ‘There are twelve flights to this stair.’
They started up as quickly as they could, Felix half-carrying Claudia along with her arm over his shoulder while Gotrek did the same for Max. Even so it was slow going. The stairwell shook and twisted like a tent in a high wind, the walls and ceiling groaning and cracking and falling apart, making every step a challenge. At the fourth landing they had to climb over a portion of wall that had buckled and filled the landing almost to the roof, on the next flight there was a cavernous booming from above and they flattened themselves to the walls just in time to avoid being crushed by a massive boulder that bounced away down the stairs. Ominously, they heard it splash only a few flights below them.
A little further on, Felix felt Claudia staring at him and turned his head to her as they walked. ‘Yes, fraulein?’
She looked away, flushing, but then, after a few more steps, she spoke up.
‘Herr Jaeger,’ she said. ‘I have a confession to make.’
‘Oh yes?’ he said, as he helped her over a spill of rock.
‘It is my fault that you were taken by the ratmen,’ she said, and her lower lip trembled.
Felix frowned. ‘I think you might be mistaken, fraulein. They had been following us from Altdorf. In fact, you might say they have been following us for twenty years.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she said, hanging her head. ‘I… I saw it. I saw the attack, before it happened. I saw you fighting shadows on the deck of a ship. I might have warned you, but…’ She sobbed suddenly. ‘But because you had… had spurned me, I… I was angry with you, and I decided I wouldn’t speak!’
Felix stopped climbing the stairs and stared at her. ‘You… you saw that I was to fall into the clutches of the skaven and said nothing?’ His heart was pounding in his chest.
Above them Max and Gotrek paused and looked back.
‘I didn’t see that!’ she wailed. ‘I didn’t see so much! Only that you would be fighting! I thought… I thought you might be hurt a little, or…’ She faltered and sobbed again. ‘I didn’t think you would be taken away! I only wanted you to have a fright, a petty vengeance for your coldness. Oh what a fool I am! I thought I had killed you.’
Felix clenched his fists and started up the stairs again, pulling her more forcefully than necessary. ‘You nearly did kill Aethenir,’ he snarled. ‘In fact he would most likely have preferred it. Those fiends tortured him, broke his fingers, cut into the muscles of his chest and–’
‘Felix!’ snapped Max, as Claudia went white. ‘Enough!’
Felix turned to him. ‘Enough? After what she’s done? She should be charged with aiding the enemies of mankind! You didn’t see what those vermin did–’
‘She made a terrible mistake, Felix,’ said Max, stepping in his way. ‘A terrible mistake. It, more than anything the druchii have done to us, has tortured her mind and driven her to despair.’
‘She deserves it,’ grunted Gotrek.
‘She does deserve it,’ said Max. ‘For it is part of the charter of her college that its students shall not use their powers for personal gain, or allow someone to come to harm by failing to warn them of danger. If we escape this nightmare and return to Altdorf, I will see to it that she is punished by the Celestial Order, and she has agreed to accept that punishment without complaint.’
‘That’s all well and good,’ said Felix, not at all satisfied. ‘But–’
‘Did you not tell me once that you killed a man in a duel, Felix?’ asked Max evenly.
‘Yes, but…’
‘Youth is a terrible time, Felix,’ Max continued, ‘as you may remember. A time when our strength and prowess often outstrip our ability to use them wisely. We may do a thing out of petulance or quick anger that we then regret for the rest of our lives – your duel, Aethenir’s Belryeth, Claudia her silence. But, given a chance, given the gift of forgiveness and a second chance by older, wiser heads, we may live long enough to learn from those mistakes, and make amends for them.’
Felix turned away, unable to let go of his anger. He had certainly done things in his youth that he regretted, but this… this was criminally irresponsible. The girl deserved more than just punishment. He should give her to the skaven. He…
‘Come on, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘A long way to go yet.’
Felix
grunted, angry, but faced the stairs and started up them again, helping Claudia up as before, though he felt like leaving her to drown.
As they reached the seventh flight, there came a deep, muffled crack from the depths of the ark. It was followed by ominous thunderings and crashes that echoed from above and below and all around. Then the stairwell tilted, sending them all slamming into the left wall, and the stone around them groaned and splintered. Everyone froze and looked around, waiting for death to strike.
The howling reverberations that had been shaking the ark lessened slightly, as if some great pressure had been released, and in the relative silence they heard a noise coming from below them that turned Felix’s spine into a column of ice – the gurgling, slapping roar of swiftly rising water.
Gotrek stood. ‘The cracks have gone through to the bottom of the ark,’ he said. ‘Hurry.’
He started up the stairs with Max again, practically carrying the magister. Felix pulled Claudia up and they all fled up the stairwell as the water whispered and giggled at their backs, closer and closer with every step.
The water was faster. At the top of the flight, Felix turned and looked back. The dim light of Max’s globe of light reflected on the ripples of black water at the bottom of the flight. He could see it moving, inching up the dust-powdered walls.
They ran on. The water closed the gap. At the eighth landing it was half a flight back. Ten steps later it was licking at their heels. At the ninth landing they were wading through it. Halfway to the tenth, it was up to their waists, and bitterly cold. It dragged at Felix’s legs, slowing him and numbing his body.
As they rounded onto the eleventh flight, Felix had to keep his chin up, and was lifting Claudia out of the water so she could breathe. Gotrek was paddling as much as walking and Max was floundering weakly.