Every so often, Ghow would call down a course correction from his vantage point in the sentinel’s nest. The fatigue in his voice was painfully obvious.
It struck Roth that the reef formed a kind of inverse moat surrounding the Galleon’s Graveyard, a guardian barrier that could sink an unwary vessel surer than any cannon. No natural reef formed in so dense an arc as this, not on any map Roth had ever seen. The whole thing had to have been fashioned by necromantic ritual. Noctilus was no doubt using that same strange magic even now to rebuild his galleon’s damaged flank.
Roth looked up at Sigmar’s Wrath. Its face was as stern and impassive as ever.
“Next time, we must press home the attack,” said the captain. “Preferably when the Reaver’s escape is cut off completely.”
“Sail ho,” came an exultant cry from the topnest. “Sail ho.”
Roth started from his reverie, rushing to the foremost point of the bow. Above him, other sentry-men picked up the cry until all five of the galleon’s sentinel nests sang out in jubilation.
“Speak on,” Roth shouted up to them. “What sail?”
“It’s the Swordfysh, sir,” Ghow shouted from the sentinel’s nest above the mortar batteries. “Dead ahead. She’s in the lee o’ some castle.”
Sure enough, the Swordfysh lay up ahead. Roth laughed, firing his thrice-pistol in the air in celebration.
“I knew she’d make it through. Too tough to die, that one.”
Aranessa’s vessel had run aground upon a large island plateau, all sheer sides and jagged rocks, and her ribbed sails were tilted towards a rocky cliff stained black with age. Its steep sides had been carved into leering death’s heads. A crenellated fortress wall ran around its summit, built in much the same style as the Sylvanian keep atop the Bloody Reaver. A crude stairway had been hewn into the cliff, wending its way up past the Swordfysh’s impromptu berth to what looked like a castle gate above. The citadel beyond the walls jutted high, its jagged spires piercing the sky.
The place was disturbingly familiar to Roth. The island, the castle atop it and the citadel inside had all featured prominently in the oil paintings daubed across the walls and ceilings of the Enlightenment. Roth had always thought of it as the forbidden citadel, back when he thought it was make-believe.
And here it was, as real as the planks under his feet.
“What the hell is she up to?” asked Roth, his joy turning to unease at the stillness of the scene. “It’d be just like the wench to send in a landing party, regardless of the danger. Drag us all down while she’s about it.”
A thin, haunting scream pierced the air.
“Damn it! We can’t just sit here. For all we know she may already lie at the feet of some undead monster. We’re going in, hammer first.”
“But captain, we’re not out of the reef yet!” protested Ghow, “We can’t just barge in and hope for the best!”
“Actually,” grinned Roth, “that’s exactly what we’re going to do. You’re as anxious to see our friend Sigmar here in action as I am. She’s alive in there, I can feel it, and we’re going get her out, if only so I can wring the bitch’s neck myself.”
The great heraldic sails of the Heldenhammer snapped outwards and the temple-ship picked up speed as it curved around towards the island. Roth stood at the foremost point of his warship, teeth bared and leaning over the rail as if to increase the galleon’s speed through sheer force of will.
“Tack in,” he shouted, “Ready the—”
A resounding boom cut off Roth’s order as artillery mounted upon the citadel’s crenellations fired upon them. Three cannonballs punched straight through the lion-faced sun upon the Heldenhammer’s foresail, ripping through one of the skull-headed mergryphons rearing up behind it and smashing into the frontis of the Grand Templus in a spray of rubble. The holes where the cannonballs had punched through the sails smouldered and smoked as green flames began to lick upwards from their edges. Roth cursed in frustration as the scent of magical fire filtered down towards him.
“Fighting tops, get that quenched,” shouted Roth. “Hoist some barrels up there and pour beer on it if you have to.”
In truth, Roth had no patience for defence. The Heldenhammer was bearing down upon the island with an unstoppable momentum, crunching aside skeletal protrusions that clawed feebly at the hull as it passed. The temple-ship was so large that the gigantic figurehead’s hammer came level with the fortress walls of the island ahead.
“Now,” shouted the captain, thumping the gunwale. “Release the Wrath!”
The prow of the warship shuddered as its keel ground into the corpse-coral at the base of the island. To either side of Roth, the clanking of two metre-thick chains filled the air as the steam winches holding the gigantic figurehead in place were released.
With a metallic shriek, the massive bronze sculpture of Sigmar swung downwards on its pivot, accelerating with a giddying burst of speed. Its hammer thundered into the fortress wall with the force of a meteor, crushing an entire section of the citadel walls to dust and leaving a rubble-strewn gap the size of a town hall.
Hundreds of bloated corpses spilled out of the breach like maggots from a festering wound. Flailing and clawing, they flung themselves upon the great figurehead as it lay embedded in the rubble of the castle wall. The corpse-things below grasped and moaned, clambering over the simulacrum of Ghal Maraz towards them.
“Hoist back,” shouted Roth, waving urgently at the forecastle. “Hoist back and go in again.”
Tucking his father’s sword behind him, the captain swung over the balustrade onto the fat steam piston at the rear of the statue. He ran deftly over it and leapt onto the bronze effigy’s back. Cannon fire boomed from the citadel above Roth’s head, but he paid it no mind. He sprinted between the massive chains affixed to the statue’s shoulder blades, crashing bodily into the swollen corpses that were clambering onto its crowned pate.
Bellowing like a charging ox, Roth drew his Cathayan blade and lashed out wildly, slicing off limbs with each stroke. A foul tide of dead flesh climbed up towards him, using each other for purchase. Black-nailed hands tugged at his coat and distended torsos sprayed rotting bile on his boots as he slashed and stamped. On they came, unrelenting. Roth’s sword arm began to tire, and his chest filled with the acid of exertion. One of the creatures grabbed his legs. Another gnawed at his boot. Roth stabbed the first through the head and kicked it away, pulling out his pistol and blasting the second in the face. The dead thing’s headless body tumbled end over end to burst with a wet smack on the jagged rocks below.
The statue underneath his feet lurched and began to rise backwards. The clanking of the great winches in the forecastle filled Roth with panic and hope at the same time. Stepping forward onto the statue’s great mane of hair, he kicked the last of the drowned from their perches and rammed the tip of his sickle-hand into the seam at the top the warrior-god’s head, riding the effigy’s ascent until he was high above the crenellated wall of the fortress. Hundreds more of the drowned spilled through the breach, moaning and clawing impotently at Roth on his lofty perch. Making certain of his grip, Roth braced his feet on the statue’s circlet crown.
“That’s it, you scum,” said Roth. “Pack yourselves in nice and tight.”
With a protesting creak, the gigantic hammer came thundering down.
Roth’s shoulder was almost wrenched out of its socket as scores of the drowned were pulverised by the giant bronze hammer. He barely felt the pain, his heart was beating so hard. Blood thundered through his veins as he twisted his sickle-hand free from the statue’s head and steadied himself.
“Sorry about that, Sigmar, old man,” said Roth, leaning against the statue as he hurriedly reloaded his pistol, “but you would have done the same.”
A harsh curse came from the battlements above, and Roth’s eyes widened as he saw flailing bodies tumble over the battlements onto the cliffs below. Silhouetted against the bruised green skies was an unmistakeably female figure, h
er plaits whipping around her head as she stabbed and slashed with a bladed trident. She was covered head to toe in crimson-black blood, but there was no mistaking Aranessa Saltspite. No one else could swear like that.
The trident stabbed and yanked, thudding into those of the drowned that came too close and pitching them over the battlements. Dozens more stumbled towards her, and though she was in control for the moment, Roth could see that she was tiring fast.
Roth pulled a long coil of fine Cathayan rope from his belt and willed his fingers not to shake as he fed it through the mechanism of his sickle-hand.
“This had better still work, Magus,” he said, folding out a bronze lever from the back of his sickle-hand and cranking it for all he was worth.
Pointing the contraption at the walls of the citadel, Roth depressed the release lever. With a loud pop, the sickle shot from its bronze housing and sailed through the air, trailing the rope behind it as it unspooled from Roth’s wrist. The sickle smacked into one of the drowned as it lumbered towards Aranessa, pitching it into the courtyard below.
“Get out of there, Nessa!” shouted Roth, gesturing frantically at the rope dangling only a few feet away from her.
She was too busy fighting for her life, fending off a grasping pair of the drowned using both ends of her trident. Still more were pressing in.
A sharpshooter from the fighting top of the Swordfysh bullseyed one of the pallid creatures, blasting it from the walls just as Aranessa punched her sea-spear through the chest of another. Twisting backwards, she grabbed Roth’s rope, swiftly hauling up the sickle on the other end and whirling it around her head. Dozens more of the drowned staggered towards her, arms outstretched.
Roth’s heart lurched violently as Aranessa pitched herself from the ramparts with a great leap, hurling the sickle like a grappling hook as she did so. Dead hands flailed after her, the drowned spilling over the battlements in their eagerness to sink their fingers into her flesh.
The sickle-hand sailed through the air and caught on the Swordfysh’s topmast where it met the crow’s nest. Aranessa’s headlong dive towards the cruel rocks quickly turned into a graceful arc as the rope pulled taut. She swung round the bow of the Swordfysh in a sweeping parabola, dropping down at the perfect moment so that the twin saws of her legs speared the forecastle deck with a wooden thunk. Roth shook his head in wonder. That impact would have broken both his ankles. He heard Aranessa’s jubilant cry of thanks over the crash of the waves below, and threw an exaggerated salute in her direction as the Heldenhammer’s figurehead was winched back from the breach.
Roth’s joy caught in his throat as the statue raised him higher. The Bloody Reaver loomed around the far side of the island, shockingly close. Far off to port, a great curved blade was pushing through the mists. The Nehekharan war galley they had fought at the battle of the Vigils was cutting off the Swordfysh’s escape.
“Cast off. Take poles and cast off,” shouted Roth, leaping back onto the steam piston behind Sigmar’s back as it pulled the statue fully upright.
In his heart he knew such an evasive manoeuvre was all but impossible in these conditions. He had run the Heldenhammer aground in his haste to rescue Aranessa. There was no way they could gain the sea while under fire from the citadel, and certainly not with the Bloody Reaver bearing down on them. Roth had doomed them all to an ignominious death.
His eyes wide, the captain scrabbled across the slate roofs to the forecastle’s nearest cannon house and wriggled his way through one of the gun ports. No easy feat with one of his hands missing, but he managed it.
“As you were, lads,” said Roth, struggling past the cannon’s massive bulk. Soot-stained powder monkeys blinked in surprise as he sprinted up the stairs.
The captain burst out onto the forecastle behind Sigmar’s Wrath. A cry of dismay escaped him as the Bloody Reaver took up position outside of the Heldenhammer’s field of fire, cannons poised.
Distant booms echoed from the corpse-coral as the Reaver’s guns opened up, shot after shot thundering into the temple-ship’s prow. One of the crenellated fighting tops was blown to smithereens, pitching over into the sea in a confusion of brick and tumbling bodies. More cannonballs ploughed into the decks below Roth’s feet and explosions rocked the forecastle as barrels of black powder detonated below. The gunners Roth had just squeezed past on his way back into the warship would have likely been killed in the blast, or close enough not to matter.
“Mortars,” shouted Roth, his face a livid red. “Maximum forward elevation and give that thing a taste of our fire.”
Despite his anger, he knew it was futile. As formidable as they were, the Heldenhammer’s mortar batteries could not hope to suppress an entire galleon, especially one the size of Noctilus’ flagship. Another few broadsides like the last one and they would be scuppered.
Despite it all, the Reaver had them in its teeth.
Roth ran over to the gunwale and looked out to the Swordfysh. All along its length, men with long stout poles were trying to push the warship away from the rocky cliffs. They were having no more success than Roth’s crew.
The Nehekharan galley was closing in slowly from the other side of the island, its approach as inexorable as death. Oars rose and fell in perfect unison as hundreds of skeletal slaves drove it through the crashing waves. With a crackling snap, a thick bolt of blinding light arced up from the pyramid at the war galley’s heart and into the enormous jewel held within its curving stern. The searing beam lanced out from the giant gemstone and raked across the deck of the Swordfysh with the intensity of dragonfire, leaving dozens of crewmen burned to ashes in its wake.
Roth could just make out Aranessa kneeling on the deck, head bowed and hands clasped together. The blackened corpses of her men lay all around her.
“What the hell are you doing woman?” bawled Roth. “Move!”
Just when Roth thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, the waters far out to port boiled upwards. Three titanic blades burst from the waves, each large enough to spear Morrslieb itself. Pitted and ancient, they ground upwards with thunderous slowness. Water cascaded from the blades as they pushed up into the skies like the spires of an ancient civilisation rising from the deep.
Tidal waves heaved outwards from the riding blades, their sudden force hammering the decks of the Nehekharan galley and the Bloody Reaver and carrying them away from the island in the process. Roth watched in amazement as the Reaver heaved its prow around with a snap of its mainsail, riding the momentum of the tidal eruption and escaping into the distant mist at speed.
Moments later, tremendous waves bore down on the Heldenhammer and the Swordfysh.
“Brace, men!” shouted Roth. “For the love of Sigmar, brace!”
Hundreds of tons of water slammed into them with terrible force. Both the temple-ship and the pirate galleon were hurled back from the island plateau. Dozens of men were swept overboard as a deluge cascaded over the deck.
As the power of the waves abated, the captain was amazed to realise that he was still alive and that his warship was still afloat. Better yet, both the Heldenhammer and the Swordfysh were freed from the island’s craggy grip and the enemy was nowhere to be seen.
Roth didn’t fully understand what had just happened, but neither did he really care. They were alive, and that was all that mattered.
“On your feet, lads!” shouted Roth, pulling himself upright, “Look sharp! Best not waste our luck, eh!”
The captain went to clang the back of his sickle-hand on the nearest cannon before realising it was missing. And his best hat, come to that.
“Damn it,” laughed Roth, shaking his head as relief flooded through his body. He had a growing feeling that he was way out of his depth, not that he would admit it while he still drew breath. He’d make sure Noctilus died first, too; that much was for sure.
“Full sail, please, Ghow, eyes out for sails,” said Roth, striding confidently past Will o’ the Waves as if vast tridents burst from the waters every wee
k. “Billy-o, do something worthwhile for once in your life and get the surgeons up here. The rest of you back to your posts.”
Roth turned to his first mate and threw him a lopsided smile across the bustling deck.
“Haven’t you heard? We’ve a war to win!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Within the hour, Roth’s lookouts had spied the Flaming Scimitar threading its way through a volcanic island chain to the north. As the Heldenhammer changed course towards it, the lookouts in the top nests saw that the twin plumes they had thought were coming from a stricken Scimitar were instead coming from the engines of Grimnir’s Thunder. The news that the dwarf warship was chugging alongside the Magus’ barge came as a great relief. Soon Roth’s fleet would be reunited, battered but unbowed.
The captain’s elation at locating the rest of his fleet was tempered by the fact that the Dreadfleet was long gone. Even in his own lair, Noctilus had been careful not to overreach himself.
“No wonder he’s survived for decades,” said Roth, ruefully looking up at Sigmar’s Wrath. “He’s as slippery as a greased eel. He’s playing the long game, he must be. Exchanging fire, melting away. Coming back again once he’s recovered his strength.”
“What say, captain?” said Old Ruger, his wrinkled face riddled with anxiety.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Roth. “Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. We want speed, not a holed hull. We’ve taken far too much damage as it is.”
Up ahead, Grimnir’s Thunder and the Flaming Scimitar had converged. The sounds of carpentry came from the Magus’ warship and a bright blue flag of parley fluttered from the pleasure barge’s mainmast. The Swordfysh lay at anchor, not too far from an atoll formed by the caldera of some long-extinct volcano.
Above them, the dwarf airship slowly began to manoeuvre itself toward the Thunder’s dirigible dock, the sound of its cargo chains clanking away on the cusp of hearing. Just as Roth turned away, a red rune flickered at the airship’s prow.
[Warhammer] - Dreadfleet Page 11