“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?”
“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 beast-masters 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—you your duel, Aethenir his 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 and slapping 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.
“We’re not going to make it,” said Claudia.
Felix hoped it wasn’t a prophecy.
He was on tiptoes as they came around the last landing and saw to his great relief the gate at the top, flung wide and abandoned by its guards. He felt with his toes for the submerged steps and pushed on. They reached the top neck and neck—quite literally—with the water, and slogged up out of it as it crested the top step and spilled through the open gate into the barracks corridor beyond.
Felix set Claudia on her feet and Gotrek helped Max to his.
“Keep moving,” said the Slayer. “This will fill slower than the stairs, but it’ll still fill.”
He strode through the gate and down the sharply tilted corridor towards the barracks like he was walking along the side of a peaked roof. Felix, Max and Claudia shambled after him, moaning with weariness. The rising water chased them as they went, running along the base of the left wall like it was a mill race.
The barracks area was deserted and destroyed, a chalky mist of rock dust still settling as they hurried through. Great portions of the roof had come down, and most of the barracks, cut into the solid rock, had caved in, their fronts fallen away to reveal collapsed floors and ceilings with bunks and chairs all fallen and smashed, the mangled bodies of slaves jumbled into the mess. But the truly terrifying damage was to the parade ground, which slanted away before them like they were walking down a hill. There was a jagged gaping crack running at a diagonal across it, the ground on the near side of the crack a foot higher than the ground on the far side. Out of the crack gurgled more water, racing away down the slanted ground. Felix looked up and saw that there was a corresponding crack running across the roof.
“It’s going to split in half,” he murmured, swallowing nervously.
“Might sink first,” said Gotrek.
The Slayer picked up his pace, splashing quickly through the knee-deep water to the front gate—the gate that had cost him two gold bracelets to pass through only hours before. It had collapsed. The massive wooden doors lay shattered and askew between the ruins of the guard towers and gate house, with the cave roof fallen in on top of the lot—a solid mountain of rock. All the water from the crack in the floor was pooling here, rapidly hiding the doors and the bottom-most rubble.
“Trapped again,” said Max dully.
“Bah!” said Gotrek and started towards the right-hand guard tower, which was still semi-whole. There was a wooden door in its base, half-submerged in the water. He tried the handle, but the door was stuck in its frame, twisted from the pressure pushing down on it from above.
“Stay back,” said Gotrek, then slammed his axe into the door. The curved blade bit deep, and he kept chopping, ripping long chunks out of the door near the frame. Felix kept an eye on the tower above, afraid that the door was the only thing holding it
up. Finally, Gotrek hacked a hole through it, then reached in and pulled. The door wrenched open with a splintering shriek.
Felix closed his eyes, expecting the whole structure to crash down and bury the Slayer. He should have known better.
“Come on,” said the Slayer, and waded into the tower.
Felix, Max and Claudia followed. The water at the door was up to Felix’s waist, and got deeper within. Gotrek was up to his neck in it. Felix looked around. There was no other door in the small room. What was the Slayer doing?
“Up,” said the Slayer, and started up an iron-runged ladder set in the wall. Felix followed him warily up through a hole in the ceiling into another tiny room—this one studded with narrow arrow slots and completely crushed on the left side by the fallen cave roof. The walls that still stood did so only barely, the stones sitting precariously one atop the other with all the mortar turned to powder between them.
As Max and Claudia crawled up through the trap, Gotrek crossed to one of the arrow slots and kicked at the frame. Felix flinched back, expecting the ceiling to come down as the narrow window shifted and the wall around it crumbled, but once again the Slayer seemed to know what he was doing. A few more kicks and the stone frame fell out of the wall in one piece. An avalanche of mortared stone tumbled out after it, but to Felix’s great relief, the roof stayed where it was. Gotrek stepped to the V-shaped hole he created and looked out. After a slight hesitation, Felix joined him.
The tower looked out over a lake where the wide plaza that fronted the barracks area had once been. On the far side was a broad arch that opened into the huge central stairwell that led both up and down to the other levels. The plaza was tilted at the same angle as the parade ground, and it was flooded with rapidly rising water—shallow at Gotrek and Felix’s end, and deep near the stairwell, and filled with floating corpses. As Felix watched, the two witchlights that flanked the archway to the stairs were swallowed up, and glowed strangely from beneath the waves.
“Throw the seeress down to me, then jump,” said Gotrek. He stepped up into the gap and leapt down into the water with a big splash.
[Gotrek & Felix 10] - Elfslayer Page 31