by David Guymer
Rudi muttered something under his breath and started fumbling with the clasp of his cloak. Felix stepped back from him, rubbing his own temples, as though the reminder of the malady was sufficient to bring on its symptoms.
‘I always knew you were a fraud, Schlanger. Have you ever been inside a temple?’
‘Oh, I feel it. The wheel of time turns but here, at its hub, all things stay the same. The Damned are drawn here as we are. That is why it gets worse.’
‘You know a lot,’ said Gotrek. ‘Considering.’
‘I know my history,’ Caul answered, offering the grimmest smile, then mocked a courtly bow. ‘And in my youth was one apprenticed to a magister of the Gold College.’
Felix groaned, swept up a hand to cut the man off.
‘I still recall a cantrip or two,’ Caul concluded with a smirk.
‘I wish Konrad had just killed me in my sleep,’ Felix muttered. ‘It would have spared me this.’
‘Konrad is a virtuous man,’ said Caul.
‘Yes, I think I saw his virtue come for me with a knife in the dark.’
‘Konrad holds men to nobler standards.’ Caul chuckled briefly, then shuddered in a sudden cold that all six men felt. Gotrek merely stood with arms crossed over his bare chest and glowered. ‘It is no discredit to him that all men cannot meet them.’
Felix turned his face to the temple. He was cold, he was hungry, he had been beaten half to hell. He vented an exasperated sigh.
‘What are you–’ He spun back, finger raised to Caul as though it was a knife. ‘You! You sent those men to kill us that night in Sigmarshafen.’
The man greeted the accusation with a grin, only for a tattooed ham of a fist to close over his elbow and wipe that smirk from his face.
‘Did you put something in my ale?’
‘No, I put something in my ale.’ Caul struggled against the dwarf’s grip but abandoned the effort as pointless. ‘Maybe this will teach you not to steal.’
‘I’ve a lesson coming for you as well, manling. You think a handful of cut-throats and a mug of tainted grog will fell me?’
‘Of course not,’ Caul laughed. ‘If they could then you were not what I needed and I would not have mourned you. But as it was, I needed you in the City of the Damned before Konrad’s… virtues bettered him at last.’
Gotrek shoved the man off with a snarl. ‘Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.’ The dwarf patted the haft of his axe against his meaty palm. The chain jangled against his bracer. ‘Maybe I’ll consider it.’
Caul spread his palms in peace. His gaunt features betrayed no fear, but Felix suspected there was nothing about the man that was true.
‘I am here for von Kuber. And to prevent a daemon’s rise. That should be reason enough.’
Gotrek leered, his axe twitching for the man’s neck, but pulled back at the last with an angry snort.
‘Well come on then. Show me this daemon I’ve heard so much about. This city’s a haunted bloody deathtrap and even I grow sick of it.’
Felix could not help a wry smile. He flinched at a touch on his neck, jerking around to find Rudi laying his cloak across his shoulders. The Sudenland wool was ragged, singed, and with a few more blood stains even than it had had before. Felix proceeded to fasten the collar ties. He felt a little more himself just for wearing it. He smiled thanks, but Rudi had already turned his back, shuffling through the dust towards the temple.
On second viewing, the temple did not appear nearly so unmarred. Its walls were dusted with dirt and mould, more grey than white, slumped under the weight of ash on its tiled roof like an arch-lector under his robes of investiture. It summoned no fire to Felix’s heart.
‘Sigmar and those that serve him created this,’ he murmured. ‘And Sigmar was once a man like us. Does that make him less than powers like Be’lakor?’
Gotrek shoved past Caul Schlanger until he was at Felix’s side, hands on his hip before the temple of Sigmar. ‘You’re speaking to a dwarf, manling. Our gods lived, wed, drank, and aye, they died.’ A thick digit like an Averland bockwurst scored the line of blue tattoos from his eye patch, down his cheek, to his dyed and crusted beard. ‘Grimnir didn’t take these with a mind to a long and happy life.’
Felix stole a deep breath. The temple beckoned but, despite Gotrek’s words, the presence of Sigmar was well distant, his aegis unfelt. In his heart, Felix knew.
It had not been the god of men that had spared this place.
Overcome by emptiness and regret, Morzanna’s spirit re-united with her body. Nerves fired, expecting cold winds and drizzle, and finding instead the harsh glare of balefire. The temple was oddly quiet and it took her a moment to rationalise the change. The acropolis was empty, the amphitheatre deserted.
It was as if the End Times had passed and left her behind.
The sudden beating of her heart was a ready reminder that she was not too lost to humanity to fear. She knew what it meant to be alone. The power of fire, of death, had taught her well the true face of suffering. Nothing survived forever; not unchanged.
Vividly, she remembered her black world after Magnus had come, when nothing stalked the ash but loneliness. The visions brought by second sight had been as close to contact as she could grasp. She could not remember now how many years had passed before she learned the consequences of her farseeing; dark magic crystallising from the contrail of her spirit self, raining like pollen to seed the subconscious mind with nightmares. Nor could she recall how, exactly, she had come to master the ability to manipulate how and in what form those seeds would flourish. The ability to share her thoughts through the dreams of another. After so many years alone, it had been glorious.
‘Do all follow-come?’
The flat voice startled her, a clawed paw settling upon her shoulder. The skaven overseer regarded her without emotion or recognition. Morzanna covered the ratman’s gnarled hand in hers. Even in the darkest days, she had not been truly alone. And even as the disfigured Beast had shunned her, had hidden from all the monster it had become, in its way it had been as lonely as her.
‘Then come-quick,’ the rat insisted, drawing back on her arm. She gasped as its claws burrowed between her fingers to clasp her hand in its paw.
Morzanna smiled and let it lead her.
‘You have served well, Hurrlk. We have all earned our rest.’
Chapter 19
The Temple of Sigmar
The arch of sunlight throbbed against the sky like a vein. An intermittent drizzle came and went, dappling the marble steps of the acropolis. But always there was the wind. Felix’s hair and cloak thrashed, as if even they wished to climb no higher. He tried to ignore the elements, and it was not hard. His mind was numb from the legions of voices. They grew louder as he scaled the steps of the acropolis.
Halfway up, the amphitheatre spread vast before them like a gaping maw, Rudi cried out, weeping as if seeing a loved one in pain. He started towards them. Felix grabbed him before he could throw himself onto the escarpment.
‘They died,’ Rudi yelled, fighting against Felix’s arm. ‘The Beast took them in the Totenwald. I saw them die and I see them.’
Felix and Caul shared a glance. They both felt it.
‘It’s getting worse,’ said Caul. ‘It will get worse still.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Felix, shepherding the boy towards Nikolaus who seemed to be a calming influence on the others.
The flagellants stumbled ahead. The wind whipped at their sackcloth, throwing their knotted belts like censers. Felix’s calves ached like something Shallya had forgotten. But he could see the top. Growling a hymn to fortify his mind against the voices, he soldiered on. He only recalled the chorus, but there were only a handful more steps.
Gotrek, his dwarfish stamina indefatigable, met them at the summit. He stood upon a courtyard of lustrous white marble. The stone was pigeon-coloured, swept clean but stained with dirt. Ash had sunk into the joins. All manner of rubble had been piled up around the sides of the courty
ard, like some mountaintop rockery.
The dwarf’s one good eye was bloodshot from the constant buffeting of ash and the glittering warpstone on the wind. His beard pressed to his mouth to strain the air, he turned to Felix. ‘Something’s shifting beneath us. I can feel it in the stones.’
Felix covered his face with a bundle of cloak and moved to join his companion. Caul was moving towards the temple’s colonnaded frontage. His eyes darted above the rumpled grey wool he had pressed to his mouth. Rudi and the flagellants had been herded towards the centre of the courtyard. Too mindless to know better, they choked on ash between their crazed utterances. Their cheeks were stained crimson where their eyes bled.
‘What’s this?’ Gotrek muttered, attention drawn by a rectangular panel of marble entablature recessed beneath the decorative cornices above the columns. The principle motif was of a comet, but it was circumscribed by the angular engravings of a runic script.
‘We haven’t the time for this,’ said Caul, making a futile effort to usher Gotrek from his find.
‘Shift your hand or I’ll shift it for you,’ said Gotrek without removing his eyes from the engraved script.
Wisely, Caul removed his hand.
‘For once I agree, Gotrek,’ said Felix. ‘We should move while we still can.’
Without answering, the dwarf looked around, found a hunk of rock as long as he was broad, and wrapped his arms around it. Baring his teeth, he strained, slowly dragging the stone backwards until, in an astounding feat of strength, he tilted the thing up, letting it teeter until, with a shove in the right direction, it crashed into one of the pillars.
Caul’s cloak dropped away from his gaping mouth.
Still not offering an explanation, Gotrek proceeded to clamber up the impromptu ramp towards the cornice. There, he licked his thumb, reached up on tiptoes, and wiped a layer of dust from the marble frieze.
‘Is it dwarfish?’ Felix asked.
‘Aye,’ Gotrek nodded, cleaning his thumb under his armpit. He lay his fingers to the frieze, shifting them slowly left to right, left to right, as though by touch reading words upon a page. ‘Little wonder this structure endured while the human-built rubbish around it crumbled.’
‘Gotrek, Can you please hurry this–’
‘Shhh!’
A sudden drizzle spattered against Felix’s face. It was the harsh, vivid chill of the Ostermark Moors.
‘Gotrek?’
‘Here we go.’ Gotrek cleared his throat, then read aloud. ‘And on the sixth day of the two hundred and thirty-ninth year after the crowning of Sigmar, was this temple completed in his name. This last stone is laid by Hadri Greyback, master stonesmith of Zhufbar. May it endure as long as the mountain from which it was hewn, in honourable service to the dwarf-friends of…’
His finger held over some runic inscription at the frieze’s bottom. Felix held his breath. Caul watched with one hand buried beneath his cloak; possibly for warmth, but suspiciously close to his belt of knives.
‘Of where?’ said Felix, after the silence had become untenable. He glanced warily towards Caul. He needed to know. ‘What city is this?’
In silence, Gotrek climbed back down. He looked first to Caul, then back to that last runic mark.
‘Mordheim,’ said Gotrek. ‘This place was called Mordheim.’
The mention of that name gave Felix a shudder. He tried it in his own mouth, uncertain where he had heard it. It was not a name commonly known, even amongst those who made it their business to learn that which was uncommon. And then Felix remembered where he had come across it. The books of Doktor Drexler, in Nuln. At the time he had thought it apocryphal. In its descriptions of comets directed by the hand of Sigmar, of warbands of every race converging to battle for the city’s scraps, of the exploitation of its dark power by daemon princes to manifest human form and wreak terror, it had seemed wholly fanciful. The clues had been here for him to see. He should have put them together before now.
‘Mordheim,’ Caul scowled. ‘The City of the Damned. Trust a dwarf to be unable to keep a secret.’
Gotrek bristled at the implication. ‘This place was no secret. Your people forgot, as you always do.’ One meaty fist thumped his chest. The arm was grazed red from dragging the massive stone, but its strength was undiminished. ‘We remembered and knew well enough to keep away.’
‘Forgotten, indeed, and rightfully so. If we could have purged every record from your books of grudges we would have done that too. Albrecht von Kuber made emissary to King Barundin of Zhufbar to that effect, but was given short shrift.’
To Felix’s surprise, Gotrek burst into roaring laughter.
‘Aye! I’d wager.’
Caul positioned himself beneath the architrave at the temple’s entrance, pulling a long knife from his baldric. ‘So now you know. Know also that Albrecht’s diaries make it clear that the daemon prince Be’lakor must not be slain, that doing so could free it to return to the Wastes, to enact its purpose as bringer of the End Times.’
‘And anyway,’ Felix cut in. ‘I was told that it can’t be killed, that it has no body.’
Gotrek chuckled, clearing his beard from his nose to take a hearty draw of the tainted air, which he promptly spluttered back up. ‘Such foulness as I’ve not tasted since our voyage to the Wastes. A daemon could be solid here if it chose to be.’ Gotrek flourished his axe with a manic grin. ‘It’s freedom it wants, and I’ve got freedom for it right here.’
‘You’d risk the end of the world for your own impish honour?’ Caul spat the final word as though it tasted bitter.
‘Better hope it kills me first then, hadn’t you.’
‘In Sigmar’s name, I’ll kill you both!’ Felix screamed.
His eyes were trembling, the sky turning cartwheels, and a strange darkness was thundering towards him under the architrave.
There was a snort, the clatter of hooves bearing down, and before Felix could shout a warning, the daemonic mount of Golkhan the Anointed burst from the temple. Felix saw dark eyes flash with hunger within the deep sockets of its champron. Caul was dashed aside, the man’s lissom frame thrown from the daemon’s hell-steel barding. It threw its mane and, ignoring Felix entirely, snapped its jaw for Gotrek’s face.
The Slayer screwed back with a curse, twisting his axe to swat the daemon’s muzzle aside, only for the creature to rear, flailing its fore hooves and batting the axe down. Gotrek drew back, switching his axe from right to left and shaking out his ringing hand. Felix charged, Karaghul thrust underarm like a spear for the creature’s throat. Six legs rattled like a spider’s and the daemon’s hindquarters swung around, smacking Felix onto his back and sending his sword skimming across the courtyard.
With an exultant snort, the daemon kicked at Gotrek with its hind legs. The dwarf ducked, spinning underneath to come level with the creature’s formidably armoured broadside. He lifted his axe high in both hands, bunched the muscles of his shoulders and gave a mighty roar as he sliced clean through the daemon’s neck. The daemon’s head thumped to the flagstones. Its torso wavered upright for a fraction of a second before that too yawned backwards, crashed into a marble column and slid down.
Gotrek clapped dark blood theatrically from his palms, then turned on the recumbent form of Caul Schlanger.
‘I forget what it was you were saying.’
Caul grimaced, but thought better of picking up the argument where they had left off.
Recollecting his sword, Felix gently stabbed the daemon’s unarmoured belly. With daemons, it was impossible to be too careful.
‘This was the mount of the daemon’s champion. I saw him ride it.’
‘A gift from his dark master, no doubt,’ said Gotrek.
‘If he left it behind then my guess is he went somewhere it couldn’t follow?’
Gotrek grinned. ‘Below my feet, I tell you.’ He started inside, calling over his shoulder as he passed under the architrave. ‘Look for a low door. A tight stairwell. Something like that.’
> Leaving Caul to recover his dignity and muster the others, Felix followed his companion into the temple of Sigmar.
Morzanna descended the stair to the crypts, following the rhythmic click of claws. The darkness was so complete she could no longer see the hand upon the wall beside her face, but she could hear the slither of his tail across the stones, smell the soft, peppery scent of his fur. She did not try to speak. Unless he had something to say, then she knew she would be wasting her time. Warpstone, mutation, and the cruel perversion of immortality the master moulder had thought he craved had broken him. That was how he and the twisted ghosts of his clan-mates could cross the mists while no other could.
They were already mad.
And that was not going to be changed, however many warpstone-spawned monstrosities he created to then ‘cure’. The work pits and the arena were littered with the insane monuments to his failure.
The stairwell opened onto eerie quiet, their footfalls echoing through the roughly excavated chamber. Daemons did not scream for release. Men did not gnash their teeth or make futile struggle against the drills and steam-hammers that Hurrlk had grafted to their limbs. She missed the cry of steel and rock, the pressurised whistle of steam. For unchanging centuries those sounds had been with her. They were comforting. Like the sound of her father’s prayers when she had been a child. Her heart hardened.
She was not a child anymore.
Columns of limestone marched in sombre procession from the arched entrance through to a bloodstained altars where there hung the tarnished likeness of Ghal-maraz. The benches had been taken to leave standing room for a thousand. The open floor was bathed in shifting colours, alternately gold, crimson, pink, and aquamarine. The creeping display made Felix’s guts clench, but he soon realised there was a prosaic force at work. Roundel windows of stained glass were set into both longer walls. They had been broken. Felix could see the creeping tracks of some murky brown adhesive, as though the windows had been traversed by a maddened slug. The walls were panelled with marble. More dwarfish letters ran their length, the script passing unbroken from panel to panel the full circumference of the temple, interspersed only by windows. Even after centuries of neglect, the gold of hammers and the silver of comet’s tails glinted with colour when the light struck them just right. Felix held, just for a moment.