With a hiss of fury, a vampire in oiled green lorica scales broke from his unit of mortals and punched through a line of el Talame’s soldiers like a ballista bolt fired from Shyish. Hamilcar yelled for Thracius as men began to cartwheel from the frenzied vampire.
Before the Liberator-Prime could intervene, the bushes behind the vampire burst apart and Crow bore the undying champion to the ground. There was a gargling scream as the gryph-hound’s beak tore through the armour of its chest. Hamilcar grunted at the sudden, shared pain in his breast, and splashed for the stream’s bank. Inexplicably breathless, he turned to see Broudiccan. The Decimator was now holding his own against three more, warring through the rubble of demolished statuary.
The Stormcast could handle the vampires, Hamilcar had no doubt, but that still left the Solar Guards.
‘Hold them, Thracius!’ he bellowed. He turned to find el Talame, shouting instructions to his own men, beset, on the other side of the bridge. Their rear ranks were ankle-deep in the water. ‘With me, my friend. Bring me to the sun-king.’
‘Take your own,’ the general called back across the water. ‘They will be more use to you.’
‘The Bear-Eaters can hold their own. You cannot. And I would hate to come so far to strike the wrong head from its shoulders.’ His chest was tight. Breathing came hard. ‘Lead me through this nightmare!’
One of Thracius’ Liberators took the slack as el Talame and his soldiers splashed across the water to Hamilcar’s side. The general himself was last, covered by a boltstorm from a kneeling Judicator that drove the Solar Guard from the water’s edge and allowed the Liberator to put down the vampire that had led them. Another with a snarling leopard daubed across his facemask took station on the bridge and grimly stood their ground.
‘This way.’ El Talame swept past Hamilcar. The pace he set was impressive for one so old, but Hamilcar had time enough to look back and see Broudiccan’s thunderaxe obliterate a statue and shred a dozen Solar Guard with shrapnel and still better it. He swatted aside a silver bower that grew across the path.
Unkempt for a court. And Hamilcar had once ruled from a cave.
And just like that he began to laugh.
Mortality had never seemed so distant.
With strength and vigour twenty times a mortal man’s, he forged a path to the front of the company of warriors, and forced his way through a tangle of ornamental dwarf trees to stumble into a clearing.
An elevated platform of eerie silver-grey stone rose above the small trees and tiered gardens. It looked ancient. The moon shone with a caged, furious splendour, shackled to the form of a splintered throne in which sat the sun-king, Joraad el Ranoon.
His golden mask beheld Hamilcar from his high throne.
With a series of shouts intended to bolster each other’s courage, el Talame’s men took the steps. In response the sun-king lifted one sleeve from the shining rest of his throne.
At his gesture a host of men and women, and even children, shuffled, unseeing, from the crackling glare of the throne and moved to block the steps. Some wore blazing suits of armour, similar to the woman that Hamilcar had bested in the gatehouse, although nothing so impressive in this penumbral shadow-realm. Others were in simple habits emblazoned with the unsetting sun. None of them spoke, smiled, or even looked down at the cracked steps as they pressed together between the oncoming soldiers and their king. If there was one amongst them that could appreciate the incongruity of that emblem in this place then it was the self-proclaimed God-King on the throne behind them, but he did not seem to.
The soldiers hesitated a few steps below the vacant Rays.
The Rays themselves looked over the soldiers as if they were blind, and soporific with the experience of their remaining senses.
‘You seek to best me with children,’ Hamilcar shouted up to the impassive sun-king. ‘Know that you face Hamilcar of the Astral Templars. I am a Stormcast Eternal!’ Hamilcar hefted his halberd high above his head, his lantern in the other. ‘Tell the Lord of Death when you cross the Stygxx Gate that it is the Bear-Eater that sends you, prince of lies. Tell him that you are down payment on the soul of a brother.’
The assembled host opened their mouths, and with one voice alone they spoke.
‘The men you have killed thus far have followed me freely. Not by choice perhaps, but they could have chosen death and that is as much a choice as any other. But these…’ The enthroned king waved a hand over his thralls. The proximity to his person of genuine peril must have caused his attention to lapse somewhat, for several of the thralls mimicked the gesture. ‘These are innocents. You will have to butcher them all to reach me, Eternal. I will see to it. Has Sigmar forged you the stomach for it?’
Joraad leaned forward then, and in a hundred distinct voices, male and female, old and young, began to laugh.
With a grunt, Hamilcar tossed up his halberd, reversed the grip, and then hurled it.
Like a javelin it hissed from his extended arm over the heads of the uncaring slaves and through el Ranoon’s belly.
There was a snarl of moonlight as the blade tip skewered him to his throne’s high back. A cry tore from Joraad’s throat. Blood and dark lumpy juices spurted from the hole made by the halberd shaft and turned the king’s banyan silks black. The gathered Rays echoed their master’s scream, then one by one passed into unconscious. The sheer number of them packed onto the steps kept them from falling far.
‘They call me the Bear-Eater,’ he called up to the pitifully crying sun-king. ‘You do not want to test my stomach.’
He frowned then as the increasingly pale king of Jercho slumped forward onto the halberd shaft.
‘Light above,’ muttered el Talame. ‘Is it dead?’
‘He is.’ Hamilcar was surprised.
Joraad el Ranoon was no vampire. It was true then: anyone could make a mistake.
Perhaps the mind-controlling magicks by which he ruled would have been affected by the transition to unlife. Or perhaps the land of the unsetting sun was simply no place for a vampire king.
‘I suspect Mannfred found him more useful as a willing puppet than a slave.’
‘So your vampire is still out there?’
Hamilcar laughed aloud at that, despite his disappointment at seeing the betrayer slip through his fingers once again. There was truth in what the old man said.
The vampire was his.
‘There is only so much of Ghur for him to run into. Say one thing for Hamilcar – in the end, he always triumphs.’
GRAVESEND GOLD
C L Werner
Captain Brokrin leaned on the portside railing that framed the Iron Dragon’s deck and stared out across the cloud-swept skies. The ironclad was flying high above the desolate wadis of Droost and the dying sun set fantastic lights glimmering from the metallic desert sands. He always found the display somehow eerie, like something from another world. Those Kharadron who traded with the human inhabitants of Arlk said that the lights created strange mirages to befuddle those travelling across the desert on the ground. Brokrin was at least glad he had a sturdy ironclad to keep him well away from that hazard.
While he still had her, that was.
Brokrin tightened his grip on the rail, as though he could vent all the frustration and despair he felt by twisting the metal into a knot. ‘Ghazul’s curse,’ he muttered to himself. The ironclad had escaped destruction in the monster’s claws, but the bad luck that had dogged it ever since was starting to make even him start to believe in the jinx. The current voyage was looking no better than the three before it, the holds only half-filled. Crop blight, orruk raiders, even a religious festival had each made their ports of call less advantageous than they should have been. By the Ancestors! He was running out of excuses to offer his backers for their poor return on investment.
The sound of steps on the deck behind him brought Brokrin around. Old Mortrim
m was favouring his good leg; the artificial one had been seizing up on him recently. Another weight added to Brokrin’s burden of responsibility. If these last voyages had been as profitable as they should have been, Mortrimm’s share would have been big enough to get the aether-work mechanisms inside the leg overhauled.
‘A word with you, cap’n?’ Mortrimm asked when he approached. Brokrin nodded and the old navigator continued. ‘Skaggi has evaluated what is in the hold,’ he said, referring to the ship’s logisticator. ‘He calculates that…’
‘After we share out to the backers and re-provision the ship we might each get enough to buy a flagon of beer, so long as it isn’t top-shelf stuff,’ Brokrin grumbled. He clenched his hand into a fist and banged it against the gunwale.
Mortrimm shrugged. ‘Maybe not as bad as that. Probably three flagons and a trencher of broiled goat.’ The navigator ran his fingers through his beard. ‘That was a joke, cap’n.’
‘I’m not in a jesting mood,’ Brokrin replied. ‘The crew has worked hard on this voyage. They deserve to have something to show for their efforts.’
‘So do you,’ Mortrimm said. ‘But the knucklebones didn’t roll so good this time. Everybody knows there is some risk and they accept that when they sign the charter. A bit of good luck and you get a good share…’
‘And a sting of bad fortune sees you with an empty belly, a dry throat and boots so worn-down they can double as sandals.’ Brokrin fixed Mortrimm with a questioning look. ‘I thought things would turn around by now. I mean, we have had bad streaks before, but never anything like this. That fiasco at the lamasery with the skaven, then that run-in with the flock of manticores over Silverreach… It just never seems to end.’
Mortrimm wagged his finger in reproach. ‘You have been listening to all that prattle about Ghazul’s curse. Dockyard drivel, and you know it! There is not a blasted thing wrong with the Iron Dragon. Grungni’s Beard, if you want to talk about luck, consider that despite everything we have gone through, the ship is still in one piece. There is some luck for you to chew over.’
Brokrin scratched at his beard. ‘You raise a fair point, old friend. She has weathered hardships that would have knocked another ship out of the sky.’ He rapped his knuckles against the gunwale again. ‘Maybe we are doing all right in the luck ledger, but we sure could use something we can enter in the “coin in the pocket” book.’
A commotion from the ironclad’s elevated endrin brought both the captain and the navigator looking upwards. Affixed to the front of the cylindrical endrin was a metal cupola where a single endrinrigger acted as lookout. The duardin had his bronze mask lowered and was peering through a tube-like far-glass while gesticulating excitedly with his free hand.
‘Starboard!’ the endrinrigger cried out. ‘Down four hundred fathoms!’
Brokrin fished his own far-glass from where it hung from a hook on his harness. Extending the instrument, he peered over the side and followed the directions the endrinrigger was calling out. A wide stretch of canyon dominated the landscape below, a fissure through which the gleaming band of the River Chael coursed. The walls of the canyon were vibrant with colour, bands of dark mineral showing through the rough limestone and granite. Here and there a columnar butte reared up or a hardy stand of desert trees sprouted from a patch of soil, but Brokrin saw nothing to occasion the lookout’s excitement.
Not until he turned his glass a bit higher, near the crest of the canyon wall. There Brokrin spotted something that caught and reflected the dimming sun. The unmistakable gleam of metal. As he narrowed the focus of his far-glass, he brought the image into sharper resolution. His own pulse quickened when he recognised the outline of a ship protruding from the rock face.
‘Have a look at this.’ Brokrin proffered his far-glass to Mortrimm. The navigator’s brow crinkled with surprise as he gazed at the canyon wall.
‘That wreck has been there a fair time, cap’n.’ Mortrimm was silent a moment, then handed the glass back to Brokrin. ‘Can’t make out her colours, whatever they were. No telling what skyhold she fared from.’
‘But it is a Kharadron ship?’ Brokrin asked. He turned his head and looked across the Iron Dragon’s decks. The lookout’s calls had drawn much of the crew up from below. Gotramm and his arkanauts jostled with Drumark’s thunderers for places at the rails as they tried to see what had caused such excitement.
‘Aye,’ Mortrimm said. ‘She is an old make, what they used to call a steam-gut for all the fumes her engines would spit. You can just make out one of the side-funnels on her hull. They stopped making that kind before my great-great grandfather was a beardling.’
Brokrin fixed the far-glass once more on the wreck. He pored over the lines of her hull, the corroded metal stabbing outwards from the cliff face. The funnel Mortrimm had described was there, its mouth shaped into the angry face of a duardin ancestor, its length banded by rune-etched rings at regular intervals. He saw the axe-like remnant of a rudder hanging off the ship’s tail, and somewhere near its topside a suggestion of a guardrail not unlike that on the Iron Dragon herself.
‘She is a Kharadron ship,’ Brokrin stated. He turned towards Mortrimm. ‘The Code makes it clear that we are under obligation to investigate her.’
Mortrimm nodded slowly. ‘Aye, unless it would prove an undue commercial burden to our voyage to do so.’
Brokrin laughed at the stipulation the navigator brought up. ‘This entire voyage has been an undue commercial burden,’ he grumbled. ‘But if that wreck has enough salvage on her, we might turn things about.’
‘She has been there a long time…’
‘All the more reason to see what is inside her,’ Brokrin told him. He flattened his far-glass and looked towards the horizon. ‘If we are quick, we can send a few endrinriggers down to inspect her before we lose the sun.’ Brokrin turned around and shouted to his crew. ‘There’s an old shipwreck down there, lads! So old there won’t be any question about our salvage rights! Don’t bet your beards on it, but if her hold is full then your shares in this venture will be too!’ He looked towards the wheel-house where the ship’s endrinmaster, Horgarr, was standing. ‘Get an aether-endrin ready for me! I’m going over with the lads to have a look at what we have found!’
Brokrin manipulated the drift of his aether-endrin, swinging around so that he could better observe the wreck. Only about a third of the old ship was projecting from the cliff face; the rest of it was buried in the rock. The amount of dust and debris that coated the deck was mute testimony to the many centuries that had passed since it crashed. He wondered what had become of the ship’s crew. Had they managed to abandon her before her fall or had they taken the final plunge along with her? He wanted to believe they’d got away. This was a lonely tomb for any duardin.
Horgarr and one of the endrinriggers were at work at the stern of the ship. The magnets in their boots allowed them to maintain position while they attacked the stern of the ship with aether-torches. Since time was essential, they had made the decision to force a way through the exposed stern rather than excavating the debris above to find one of the buried hatches.
‘She is so worn down it is like cutting butter,’ Horgarr called up to Brokrin. ‘We can be through her before Drumark can finish his grog.’
Brokrin looked aside to Gotramm. The young privateer captain and a few of his arkanauts had accompanied the explorers to act as guards, each of them keeping a pistol at the ready as they watched the shadows lengthen in the canyon below. It was always prudent to be wary with night so near.
‘Horgarr might be going fast, but I doubt he is that fast,’ Brokrin quipped.
Gotramm nodded, but kept his gaze on the buttes that arose off to the left. ‘He can’t work fast enough to suit me. There is something about this place that is wrong. I can feel it in my beard. It’s like something is close. Unaware of us right now, but still dangerous.’
‘Any idea what you
think is out there?’ Brokrin asked. Gotramm was a newer addition to his crew, but he was a graduate of the Academy and knew how to handle himself in a scrape… and to recognise when one might be in the offing.
‘Can’t say,’ Gotramm admitted. He darted a look at the stern and the hole Horgarr was cutting. ‘That’s why I wish he could go even faster. If you know what you are up against it is easy to gauge your chances.’
‘Nobody likes to fight blind,’ Brokrin agreed. He looked away towards the horizon where only the thinnest sliver of sun remained. ‘I would still like to have a look at her. A good bit of salvage right now would go far to turning this venture around.’
‘We’re in!’ Horgarr suddenly called out. The endrinmaster and his helper shut off their torches and pressed their hands to the rounded area of hull they had been cutting. Pushing against the improvised hatch, they sent it slamming inwards. There was a dull boom as the metal plate crashed against the floor within.
Brokrin glanced towards the horizon once again. The sun was gone now; only the last flicker of light lingered to contend with the growing night. A thin sliver of moon could be seen starting its slow ascent.
‘We can at least have a look around,’ he decided. ‘Evaluate what is down in there. See if it is worthwhile sticking around until the morning.’
‘Then I am going in first,’ Gotramm said. ‘The Iron Dragon can afford to lose a privateer more than she can her captain.’ He quickly called out orders to the other arkanauts, advising them to keep a careful watch on both the wreck and the surrounding canyon.
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