Standing in the prow, Claudia was the first to see it. “There… there’s a hole. In the water.”
Felix stopped rowing and turned around with the others. “A hole?”
Max stood, shielding his eyes and looking ahead. “A whirlpool.”
“It’s… it’s huge!” said Captain Oberhoff.
Gotrek grunted, as if to say that this was just the sort of thing he would expect from water.
Felix stood and looked ahead. There was indeed a whirlpool, and it was indeed huge—almost half a mile across—an exact mirror of the hole in the clouds that roiled above it. The sea around it swirled and frothed like water going down a drain, and a noise like an endlessly crashing wave reached their ears now that they were out of the rain. Felix swallowed, terrified. It was a great maw in the sea, hungry to swallow them.
“Well, there it is then,” he said nervously. “Now we’ve seen it we can go back. We’ll tell the Marienburg High Council a whirlpool is coming their way and they can, ah, take measures.”
“It is not the whirlpool that is the threat,” said Claudia. “It is what’s within it. I can feel it, but we must get closer.”
Felix cursed. The woman’s visions kept leading them into trouble. Shouldn’t prophecy warn one away from danger, not drag one towards it? “You can’t be serious! We’ll be sucked in! We’ll die!”
“I too can feel it,” said Aethenir. “There is great evil here. Row on.”
Felix looked to Max for support. The wizard hesitated, but Felix could see the lust for knowledge in his eyes.
“I can’t protect you from that, lord magister,” said Captain Oberhoff, piping up. “Best to turn back.”
“Aye, lord,” said Captain Rion to Aethenir. “Our swords are useless against such a threat.”
Finally some voices of reason, thought Felix.
“Nevertheless,” said Aethenir. “We must get closer so that we may try to sense what is causing it. Row on.”
Max looked from Felix to Oberhoff to Aethenir. “Perhaps a little closer,” he said at last. “Only be careful.”
Captain Oberhoff sighed. Rion’s jaw clenched. They exchanged a look of comradely suffering. Felix and the others reluctantly picked up their oars again and rowed slowly closer. There was a visible line between the choppy waves of the sea and the fast rippling current that raced around the great vortex. They edged towards the line, measuring every stroke. At last they began to feel the fatal tug of the current upon the keel of the boat.
“It’s pulling now!” said Felix, louder than he meant to.
“Then retreat slightly and hold,” said Aethenir calmly, and stepped towards the front of the boat.
Felix cast a glance at his comrades as they worked together to reverse their strokes and bring the boat to a halt. The swordsmen looked nervous, Gotrek furious, and the elves as calm as milk. At last the boat came to a shaky stop, wavering restlessly in the water as the current drew it one way and their oar-work pulled it the other. It felt like they were balancing on a teetering rock. One slip and they would all go down. Felix wiped the sweat from his brow with his shoulder and kept back-stroking.
Claudia and Max joined Aethenir in the prow of the boat and closed their eyes, mumbling under their breath. A glow of light began to shimmer around Max’s grey-haired head. Ripples distorted the air around Aethenir. Claudia looked up at the patch of sky that showed through the clouds, whispering fiercely.
Felix, Gotrek and the others kept pushing slowly but steadily on the oars, keeping the boat in place as the wizards’ incantations grew louder and more droning. The three different spells weaved in and out of each other like some unearthly melody, and Felix felt weird pressures and unexpected emotions pushing at him from within and without. Claudia began to sway in place, and Felix feared—or perhaps hoped—she would fall out of the boat.
In the middle of it all, Captain Oberhoff raised a shout. “A ship!”
Max broke off instantly—Claudia and Aethenir more reluctantly. Gotrek, Felix and the others turned, following the captain’s finger. On the far side of the storm’s eye, a dark shape was moving, just within the curtain of the rain.
“Keep pulling, human,” said Captain Rion.
Felix hastily returned to his oar, but his quick glance had shown him a black-hulled ship, small, but with a prow like a knife, with black sails and rows of long oars on both sides.
“Asuryan preserve thy noble sons,” said Aethenir, his pale skin turning even whiter. “It is as I feared. The corsairs of Naggaroth.”
“The what?” asked Captain Oberhoff.
“The dark elves,” said Max.
“We’d better get back to shore,” said Felix.
Max nodded. “That would be wisest, yes.”
“But the source of the prophecy!” said Claudia.
No one listened to her. Even Aethenir, staring in frozen terror at the black ship, seemed no longer interested in the whirlpool. Gotrek, Felix, and the human and elf warriors bent to their oars and began backing them again, much more quickly now. Even so, they were only barely moving away from the vortex.
“Lord Aethenir, Fraulein Pallenberger, sit down,” said Max. “We must stay as low as possible and hope they don’t see us.”
Claudia and Aethenir crouched down; she petulantly, he like a tent collapsing. He looked back at the rowers.
“Can we go no faster?” he asked.
“If you want to go faster,” said Gotrek, “row.”
The high elf looked with horror at the last pair of oars in the bottom of the boat. “Impossible. I have never…”
“Let me,” said Captain Oberhoff, stepping forwards and picking up one of the oars.
“And I’ll take the other,” said Max as he lifted the second.
The Reiksguard captain and the magister sat on the last bench, slotted the oars into the oarlocks and began to row with the others.
Gotrek snorted at Aethenir with disgust. “Letting an old man pull an oar. Weak-wristed little…”
His muttering drifted off as he put his back into it again. They rowed on, pulling as hard as they could while the dark elf ship continued its circular route around the eye of the storm, but even with the added help of Max and Rion they went very slowly indeed.
“What is it doing?” asked Claudia, watching the ship.
“Staying a sensible distance from that hole,” said Felix, gloomily.
“We should have tried that,” said Captain Oberhoff under his breath.
The black ship sailed closer, moving like the sweep hand of a watch around the edge of the circle. Felix found himself hunching down over his oars, trying to stay as low as possible. The druchii craft was soon near enough that, even through the curtain of rain, he could pick out the individual ropes that rose to the black sails and the elves climbing them. He saw the burnished helmet of an officer glinting on the aft deck, and the cruel emblems emblazoned on the banners that fluttered at the tops of the masts.
The ship was nearly parallel with them now. Felix held his breath. Sail on, he thought, closing his eyes. Sail on. Pass us by and continue around the circle. Another revolution and we will be gone.
Alas, it worked as well as most other childish incantations. A harsh cry echoed over the water and Felix opened his eyes again. A druchii sailor was pointing at them from the weather top and calling to the deck below.
“That’s torn it,” said Captain Oberhoff with a curse.
With a swiftness that spoke of a decisive captain and a well-trained crew, the black ship arced off its course and aimed straight at them, its wet black sails gleaming like beetle shells as it broke into the sunshine of the storm’s eye. It cut an oblique angle towards them across the open circle of sea, like a man laying a knife across the top of his dinner plate, and moved at an alarming speed.
“Row!” cried Aethenir. “Row harder!”
“Why don’t you use that hot air and blow?” said Gotrek, pulling powerfully at his oar.
“Don’t any of you have any
spells that could help?” asked Felix, before the elf could return the insult.
“All my spells are of healing and divination,” said Aethenir.
“Rowing is more helpful than anything I could muster at the moment,” said Max.
Felix turned his gaze towards the seeress. “Claudia?”
“I… I don’t know,” she said helplessly.
Felix ground his teeth as he and Gotrek and the others pulled for all they were worth. Still the little boat only crawled, while the druchii ship loomed closer with every second. It was like one of those bad dreams where one ran in place but never seemed to get anywhere.
“He means to ram us!” cried Aethenir. “Does he not fear to go into the vortex himself?”
“He has enough speed and sailpower to pull out,” said Max. “We do not.”
The little boat was moving faster now, as it moved further from the whirlpool’s insidious grip, but still it was not fast enough. The black ship was only fifty yards away now. There was no way they could escape it.
“It’s useless,” wailed Aethenir. “We are doomed.”
“Good,” said Gotrek, throwing down his oar and drawing his axe off his back. He stepped to the prow and beckoned to the onrushing ship with one meaty hand. “Come on, you beardless skeletons, I’ll smash that floating toothpick to driftwood!”
Everyone else braced for impact. The druchii captain, however, did not attack them directly. Instead, at the last moment, he turned hard to port and shaved past them just out of reach.
But though the ship did not touch them, its bow wave did, nearly capsizing them and pushing them up and back on a mountain of white froth that threw Felix and the other rowers from their benches. Gotrek flew head over heels into the water and only prevented himself from disappearing beneath the waves by grabbing one of the oarlocks as he went over and holding on for dear life. Felix could hear haughty laughter coming from the black ship as its high hull hissed by only yards away from them.
As the others recovered themselves, Felix scrambled to his knees and grabbed the Slayer’s arm, helping him pull himself back in.
“What were those villains laughing about?” said Captain Oberhoff, climbing back to his oar. “They missed.”
“No,” said Aethenir, looking towards the whirlpool. “They did not.”
Felix and the others turned to see what he was looking at. Felix’s heart sank. The little boat was now deep within the band of rushing current that surrounded the hole. He could feel it pulling at them like an insistent lover.
“Bugger,” said Captain Oberhoff.
“Row,” cried Max. “Quickly, friends!”
Gotrek, Felix, and the elves and men clambered back to their oars and tried to pull in unison. It was hopeless. The current dragged them sideways around the whirlpool faster than a man could run, and always a little closer to the centre. Their oars did nothing but jerk the boat this way and that. Felix’s blood ran cold in his veins. There was no way out. They would die here, not beaten by some great monster or devious enemy, but by simple gravity. The vortex would pull them down into its gullet and they would drown.
The glistening slope was getting closer, so smooth and glossy that it seemed almost motionless. Felix looked around at his companions. Gotrek, Captain Oberhoff and his Reiksguarders, Rion and his warriors, all bent grimly to their oars, trying to the last. Max rowed too, but his eyes seemed far-away, as if searching for some solution. Claudia stared towards the whirlpool, eyes wide, crouching in the prow of the boat and mumbling under her breath. Aethenir seemed to be praying as well, his eyes closed and his delicate hands clamped together in supplication.
Captain Oberhoff murmured, “Sigmar, welcome me to your hall,” over and over again, his eyes closed, and Felix found he was repeating the prayer with him.
Then they were tipping backwards down into the maw, sweeping down it at an angle like a marble spiralling down a funnel made of glittering green bottle glass. The angle of the slope steepened every second, and everyone shrank down into the boat, clinging to the sides. At last the slope became entirely vertical and they plummeted down in free fall.
Claudia screamed, and Felix was afraid he might have too. The others cursed and shouted, starting to fall faster than the boat as the drag of the hull against the watery walls slowed it. Felix clutched instinctively at one of the oar benches to hold himself in, then looked down into the green well, terrified, but determined to face his death head-on. The shock of what he saw there almost knocked the fear right out of him. Firstly, the walls of the whirlpool did not taper, as he expected, but went straight down, leaving a half-mile-wide circle of ocean floor exposed to the sky. Secondly, rising from that muddy floor were the shattered white towers and ruined buildings of an ancient city.
“By the Everqueen!” said Aethenir.
“A city,” said Max, in awe.
A city that would be their final resting place in a matter of seconds, thought Felix.
Claudia’s murmuring rose in pitch and volume. Felix could not tell what god or goddess she was praying to, but it seemed that whichever it was, they weren’t listening.
“This is a bad doom,” said Gotrek, glaring down at the rapidly approaching sea floor.
“I agree,” said Felix, a lump of helpless rage rising in his throat. Now he would never find out what had happened to his father. Now he would never resolve things with Ulrika. Now he would never finish the epic of Gotrek’s death. He put the blame squarely on Claudia. It was her damned visions that had brought them out here in the first place. The woman had seemed determined to ruin his life and his peace of mind since the first moment she laid eyes on him. This calamity was exactly what she deserved for her foolishness. He would have laughed at her demise if he hadn’t been about to share it.
Suddenly, the seeress rose from her crouch, throwing out her arms and diving from the boat. Felix stared. Had she gone mad at last? Was she giving in to the inevitable?
But then she rose above them—or rather they dropped faster than she—while at the same time she turned in the air and swept an arm towards them. Felix felt himself buffeted by an impossible wind—a wind that came from below them, a wind that grabbed at his sleeves and his cloak and tried to tear his grip from the boat.
“What is it?” cried one of the Reiksguard. “What is the witch doing?”
“Let go!” called Max. “She cannot support the boat as well.”
Felix’s eyes bulged, and shame flooded his heart. The girl was trying to save them, using some sort of wind spell. He fought his natural inclination to cling for safety and forced his fingers to let go of the boat.
“Push off!” Max cried.
Felix kicked away from the floor of the boat, trying to tell himself it didn’t matter how he fell. It would all end the same. The others did likewise. Even Gotrek pushed off, muttering about the untrustworthiness of magic all the while.
Felix looked down as the wind blew up at him from below, and his heart dropped faster than his body. The seeress had left it too late. The ground was rushing up at them too fast. They were too close. She would never stop their descent in time.
But then the wind from below increased tenfold, blasting him like an icy furnace and beating at his face like a living thing. His clothes flapped around him deafeningly. He was slowing! They all were! She was doing it! The wind was stopping them. They were hanging in the air, almost as if they were attached to Makaisson’s air catchers. Claudia floated in the midst of them, her eyes closed tight, her arms out rigidly to her sides, her lips moving furiously.
“It’s a miracle,” breathed Captain Oberhoff, looking around him in terrified wonder.
It was indeed a miracle, but they were still going the wrong way. Lift us up, Felix wanted to call, but he didn’t dare break Claudia’s concentration. Get us out of this hole!
They continued to drift down. Was she mad? It was all very well to save them from smashing into a pulp on the ocean floor, but this unnatural whirlpool could collapse any moment
.
Twenty feet above the sea floor, Gotrek dropped like a stone. He barked in surprise and fell away from the rest, landing with a wet smack in the mud.
Claudia whimpered and Felix dropped too. He yelped and flailed his arms as the wind that had been supporting him weakened to nothing, and he slammed into the mud a few feet from Gotrek. He bent his knees as he hit and found himself kneeling waist deep in blue-grey silt the consistency of wet plaster. His body rang with shock from the impact, but he didn’t think anything had been broken or sprained. The others plopped down all around him, cursing and crying out, with the last being Claudia, landing ungracefully on her posterior.
Felix looked around as he tried to free himself from the sucking mud. They had landed very close to the shimmering, humming wall of water, on the very outskirts of the ruined city. The shattered remains of their boat stuck out of the muck not far away, and to their left he could see low walls, now little more than piles of seaweed-covered rubble, that might once have been a grand house. The city rose high and white and broken in the distance beyond them, like a collection of impossibly slim and delicate porcelain vases that had been smashed with a mattock. And beyond the ruined spires, lay the towering green cliff of water that was the other side of the whirlpool going up and up and up. The weight of all that water was palpable. It crushed him just looking at it. He didn’t know what was keeping it up, but whatever it was, it certainly couldn’t last. At some point the impossible walls would collapse and the water would come crashing back down to smash and drown them all. It made Felix want to curl up and cover his head.
Around him, the others were struggling to stand, mired to the knees or deeper in the mud, but apparently unhurt. Only Claudia remained motionless, sagging sideways, half-conscious, knee-deep in the muck. Gotrek was in the worst straits, buried up to his chest. He spat out a mouthful of mud.
“Magic,” he said, like a curse.
“Stupid woman,” snapped Aethenir as he tried to pull the hem of his robes free of the mud. “Why did you not lift us out! We are stuck here now!”
[Gotrek & Felix 10] - Elfslayer Page 12