by Warhammer
Certainly most of the crew capable of going about their business stank of it. Up on the bridge, Captain Ahabsson glugged back a stein with one hand while his hook rested on the wheel. Even as Felix watched, he leaned forward and said something into the speaking tubes. A few seconds later, as if in response, a steam-whistle sounded, its long lonely scream racing outwards over the water, startling the gulls into higher flight. Moments later, a shortbeard – a young dwarf – clambered up the ladder onto the bridge with another jack of ale foaming in his hand. The captain eyed it appreciatively before taking a slug.
Ahabsson pushed a lever beside the wheel, in response the ship picked up speed, smashing through the next wave in a cloud of spray. Wetness splashed Felix’s face. He wiped salt water away with the hem of his old red cloak and returned to studying the dolphins.
Oncoming storm or no, he felt glad to be here, glad that the haunted desert lands of Araby, with their fanatical warriors, hollow-eyed prophets and liche-haunted tombs were falling below the horizon behind them. He had had enough of the mazy cities and teeming bazaars to last him a lifetime. If he never saw them again, it would be too soon. Enough of doomed princesses, treacherous dancing girls and hidden treasures, he thought, and then smiled cynically.
He doubted he and Gotrek would ever stop looking for treasure. Though such quests had never brought them any luck and always ended in a confrontation with huge monsters or wicked magicians, dwarfen goldlust combined with the Slayer’s doomed quest for death would ensure they followed up every rumour.
He glanced at the black sky ahead, and the huge wave of cloud rushing toward them. Ahabsson sighted his spyglass on the horizon and studied the storm clouds. He raised a huge speaking trumpet to his mouth and bellowed orders.
‘Avast ye! Batten down the hatches! Ready the pumps! It looks like a mighty blow be coming!’
Well spotted, thought Felix sourly. The seasick dwarfs heaved themselves upright, wiped their mouths and stomped about their business, grabbing steins and filling them from the open barrels as they went. They still looked sick and drunk, but they moved with the purposefulness that Felix had come to associate with dwarfs, but their appearance was as strange as any he had seen. Some wore headscarves, and their clothes were a motley assortment of rags and finery. Some went barefoot while wearing what might have been the cast-off jacket of a Bretonnian admiral over ragged britches. Others were stripped to the waist, showing tanned arms and shoulders and huge white patches of belly when the rising wind blew their beards aside. Many had hooks or peg-legs or eyepatches and all bore an assortment of villainous-looking scars. Most had their beards and hair plaited, the knots sealed with tar.
No, these were hardly typical dwarfs he thought. But he supposed that was only to be expected. According to Gotrek, few dwarfs went to sea, and those that did were all considered mad. Felix considered this judgement a little rich given the lunacy of the Slayer’s own vocation.
Caught on a steamship, with half the crew drunk and the other half sea-sick, heading into a storm, he thought – what more could possibly go wrong? He looked around again and saw that the dolphins had disappeared, vanished as though they had never been. The reason became clear. A huge head had broached the surface: a leviathan of the deep! A long sinuous neck and massive body followed. The beast was almost as large as the ship, with a mouth that could swallow a man whole. It looked at the ship with evil beady eyes as if it wanted to challenge this intruder in its domain. It blew a huge spout of water and then vanished below the surface. The last Felix saw of it was the flukes of its vast tail before it too slid beneath the surface. It seemed even the sea monsters had enough sense to avoid the coming storm. He was glad it had vanished before someone had summoned Gotrek to challenge it.
More than ever, Felix felt useless. All of the dwarfs had something to do. They rushed around turning windlasses and closing pressure spigots, slugging back ale, and slamming down hatches. Some sealed the ale barrels and rolled them below. A few banged rivets into place with hammers. Water spouted through tubes on the ship’s sides as the pumps were tested. Felix felt like the only one on board with nothing to do. He was a useless, purposeless outsider here.
Still, he thought, he should not complain. The steamship was a blessing. Lone armed merchantmen out of Barak Varr were rare in this part of the world. When it had steamed into the harbour at Quadira, they had been only too glad to take passage on it. Gotrek had even managed to put aside his prejudice against ships in order to escape the astonishing summer heat. It had cost them the last of the gold they had taken from Sulmander’s tomb, and the promise to aid in any fighting if the ship was attacked, but it had been a way out of the hot empty lands and back to civilisation, or at least somewhere near it.
It was not so hot now. The gusting winds had picked up speed and carried with it the first drops of rain. The sea was suddenly a lot rougher too. He could hear the engines strain to drive the paddles.
On impulse, Felix strode over to the bottom of the conning tower, and looked up at the captain. ‘Permission to come up, sir,’ he asked. He had learned early that no one set foot on that tower without either being invited or ordered there. Surprisingly, it was something even the usually rebellious Slayer seemed to accept.
‘Aye, Felix Jaeger, climb up and have some brew.’ The captain seemed remarkably less taciturn, now that he had ten or so beers in him, Felix thought.
He pulled himself up the metal ladder that was riveted to the wall and surveyed the command deck.
‘Aye, manling, I bet you’ve never looked on the likes of this before!’ bellowed Ahabsson.
‘Actually, I have,’ said Felix. Ahabsson sputtered out some of his ale.
‘Where?’ he shouted. ‘Speak up, lubber!’
Felix found himself shouting back: ‘It looks remarkably similar to the command deck of the airship Spirit of Grungni!’
A look of astonishment passed over the captain’s face. ‘I knew a dwarf once who was always talking about building an airship. They said he was mad, you know!’
‘Malakai Makaisson,’ said Felix. ‘I know him.’
‘You know Makaisson? The greatest dwarf shipwright who ever lived? Although I understand his Unsinkable had a few teething troubles.’
‘I understand it sank,’ said Felix. He eyed the oncoming storm clouds warily. They filled most of the sky ahead now, and the waves looked the size of mountains. The Storm Hammer was already beginning to climb up the side of one long swell.
‘Aye, but she was a beautiful ship,’ said Ahabsson. ‘Beautiful. I watched her pull out of port the day of her shakedown cruise. She never came back of course. He shaved his head afterwards, or so the wharf rats say.’
‘He became a Slayer,’ said Felix.
‘A rare pity. Malakai Makaisson’s compressor engines are still the best ever designed.’
‘He built his airship. I travelled on it. To the Chaos Wastes.’
Spray whipped into Felix’s face. The wind had turned very cold and rain pattered off the decks, forming puddles in the indented metal. All of the dwarfs were below now, save the watchman in the crow’s-nest and the captain on the tower. All of the hatches were sealed. Felix suddenly felt very lonely and exposed.
‘If you were not travelling in the company of Gotrek Gurnisson, human, I would be inclined to doubt ye.’
Felix looked at the controls. ‘That would be the throttle, for controlling the power to the engines,’ he said, pointing to the lever next to the captain’s hand. ‘Those gauges monitor steam pressure. The compass there points to true north, when it’s not been distorted by the influence of Chaos, and you can navigate by it, and by the stars.’
‘In truth, I thought these were secrets known only to dwarf mariners and engineers,’ said the captain. ‘How did you come by them?’
‘Malakai Makaisson taught me how to fly the Spirit of Grungni.’
‘Then he overstepped himself, laddie, but then he was a dwarf that never cared too much for the proprieties. Ye
reckon ye can handle a ship then?’
‘I could probably steer her if need be,’ said Felix.
‘Aye, as long as we are out in the deeps, maybe ye could. But I’ll bet you have no knowledge of tides or currents or…’
‘No need if you’re flying,’ said Felix.
‘No, I suppose not,’ said Ahabsson. The howling of the wind made his bellow almost inaudible. Huge waves had begun to break over the ship’s prow. Sheets of white water ran down the decks as the ship rose into the crest. Felix felt a hint of his seasickness return.
‘Best get below, laddie,’ said Ahabsson. ‘This is going to be a rough one.’
Felix dropped down the ladder as he had seen the dwarfs do, keeping his feet on the outside, sliding rather than climbing. His palms were hot from friction as he hit the deck. Suddenly he wished he were back above again.
The air was close and foetid. It reeked of ale, vomit and the acrid stink of metal. There was a sulphurous stench that came from the boiler rooms, along with the clangour of pistons rising and falling and paddle-wheels turning. It was like being trapped inside a huge drum while a giant beat time. He had to crouch, for the ship had been built for people shorter and wider than himself. He was suddenly abruptly aware of being on a moving tube of metal surrounded on all sides by water. The pounding of the waves on the deck above reminded him that sometimes he was well under water. A look out of a porthole showed him only blackness and rising bubbles.
He pushed forward into the mess room, and saw Gotrek Gurnisson at the bench next to the metal table. The benches had been riveted to the floor. The table itself was a sheet of iron, mounted on top of a steel pillar that rose directly from the deck. Other queasy looking dwarfs surrounded Gotrek. They drank ale dourly. The Slayer looked utterly different from the sailors. He was much broader and heavier and half a head taller than all of the other dwarfs, even without the huge crest of orange dyed hair that rose above his tattooed scalp. A patch covered his ruined eye. In one massive fist he clutched a tankard. In the other was an axe, the like of which a strong man would have struggled to wield with two hands.
‘It was on a night such as this that the Karak Varn went down,’ shouted Ugly Urli. The marine sergeant wore an expression of sour pleasure on his shrapnel pocked face. ‘Aye a terrible storm that was.’
‘She was washed up on the beach at Kregaerak, a huge hole in the hull. Some say she hit a rock, others that it was one of the terrors of the deep, the giant dragon shark,’ said Mobi. He was short, even for a dwarf, and very, very wide.
‘No,’ said Tobi, one of the shortbeards. ‘It was a kraken.’
Gotrek showed some interest now, despite his queasy appearance. Talk of huge monsters always got his attention. It was hardly surprising. After all, he had sworn an oath to seek his death in combat with such creatures. To tell the truth, Felix could have done without hearing these tales. It seemed that no matter what the situation, dwarfs could always find a way to make it worse by recalling great disasters from their history.
Felix hunched across the chamber, almost on all fours, and was suddenly glad of it when the ship shuddered and rocked hugely. A surge of nausea filled him, and he was convinced that something massive had struck the ship. The image of the Storm Hammer hurtling to the bottom like a huge water-filled metal coffin jumped into his mind.
The ship shook again, and all of the dwarfs grabbed the table, the benches or the door handles, whatever came to hand. Felix found himself tossed right across the room. He felt briefly weightless and wondered what was going on. Had the ship been lifted from the sea by some huge monster, or simply tossed by one of the mountainous waves?
The dwarfs returned to swilling their drinks as if nothing had happened. ‘And a ship crewed by dead men rose from the among sea-weed,’ said Narli, a wizened ancient with a face like a diseased prune and a long, shaggy beard that came almost to his feet.
Felix could feel the hull creaking and flexing below him, and wondered how much strain the ship could take before being broken in two. He wished he was an engineer, and knew about such things, but one look at Gotrek’s face convinced him that perhaps it was better not to know. The Slayer rose to his feet and padded across the deck, heading for the ladder.
‘Where are you going?’ Felix asked.
‘To get some fresh air,’ the Slayer replied. Gotrek reached the stairs at the end of the cabin and was greeted by a rush of water when he thrust open the door. It was almost as if someone had thrown a filled bucket in the dwarf’s face. Undaunted, Gotrek strode out onto the soaking deck. Just before the other dwarfs shut the door, Felix could see him raise both arms above his head and bellow defiance at the lightning-scored sky. He seemed to be daring the gods of the sea to take him.
The door closed. The last Felix saw of the Slayer was him reeling across the deck, bellowing madly at the uncaring sky. Then the ship surged forward into another huge wave. Felix turned and looked at the drunken dwarfs. They avoided his gaze, their faces filled with superstitious dread, as they muttered to themselves in Dwarfish.
CHAPTER TWO
WILD ORCISH REAVERS
Felix pulled himself wearily onto the deck. The sky was blue and clear. The gulls had returned overhead. A huge albatross rode the air above their stern, ignoring the pot shots the dwarfs took at it with the gymbal-mounted stern cannon. The sea was calm and flat as a mirror.
Gotrek stood at the prow, looking ahead, still and stolid as a statue. A glance showed Felix that Captain Ahabsson was asleep in a metal chair on the conning tower while one of the other dwarfs had taken the wheel. The ship looked the way Felix felt. Many plates on the deck were bent out of shape. He could tell just by the sound of the wheels and engines that there was some damage. The amount of water the side pumps were spewing spoke of a hull that had sprung leaks. The sound of hammering from below told him that the dwarfs were busy about their repairs.
He touched his bruises. They were still tender. He had been tossed around all night by the motion of the ship as it crashed through the storm. He had dozed fitfully, plagued by nightmares and he had woken often to the sound of screaming metal and tortured engines as the Storm Hammer clove a path through the mountainous seas. Sometimes he had been sick. At other times he was so certain that he was going to die by being swallowed by the waves that he had considered throwing himself overboard just to get it over with.
In the bright calm light of the quiet morning such thoughts seemed like mad fantasies, but he knew they had passed through his mind the previous night. He strode over to Gotrek.
‘Where are we?’
‘Damned if I know, manling,’ the Slayer replied. ‘Are those islands?’
Felix shaded his eyes with one hand. It certainly looked as if there were peaks on the horizon, and perhaps something else, something moving. ‘Looks like another ship,’ he said.
‘I’ll take your word for it. Your eyes are better than mine.’
Felix clambered up to the crow’s-nest on the mainmast. It had been abandoned sometime during the storm. He hoped the watcher had made it below and had not been carried off by the sea. He unlimbered the huge spyglass from its protective case and trained it on the distant spot, turning the eyepiece and tracking wheels to bring it into focus as he had been taught. The telescope was a powerful one, and it seemed like his vision had been sent flashing towards the horizon. When it reached its target, he wished it had not. Another ship was indeed out there, and it was like no vessel Felix had ever seen before.
It looked like a cross between a raft and a Bretonnian galleon, propelled by a combination of oars, paddle-wheels and sails. It had a makeshift look combined with a brutal functionality that told Felix who its builders were even before he caught sight of his first green skin. He banged the alarm bell and shouted: ‘Beware! Orcs!’
If he had claimed that the ship was sinking he could not have received a swifter response. Suddenly the decks seethed with dwarfs, all straining to see in the direction of the oncoming ship. Ahabsson had ri
sen from his chair and trained his spyglass on the horizon. Felix returned to gazing into his.
He guessed that the orc ship was twice the size of the Storm Hammer, and it had perhaps four or five times the crew. A number of massive orcs filled the vessel’s huge stern and forecastles. Goblin sailors swarmed over the sails and rigging. Strange crude rune signs had been painted on the sails. The skull of some large beast and its thighbones crossed beneath it had been nailed to the largest mast. A large catapult was mounted on some sort of rotating platform at the fore. Another smaller one dominated the stern.
The dwarfs’ response was not what he had expected. Ahabsson leaned forward and pulled a lever before returning to the wheel. The speed of the Storm Hammer picked up as it swerved towards the orc craft. What were these maniacs up to, Felix wondered? He had expected flight before a craft so obviously superior. After all, Gotrek was the only Slayer on board, and they were carrying a cargo of precious spices. Felix shouted into the speaking tube: ‘Captain. We are heading towards the orcs!’
Even distorted by the speaking tube, Ahabsson’s cackle was recognisable. ‘Don’t fret laddie. We’ll have her soon enough for ye. Keep your eyes peeled and let me know of any surprises.’
‘You intend to sink her?’ Felix asked incredulously.
‘No! Board her, and take her treasure. Thon’s an orc freebooter. She’s bound to have loot in her hold.’
‘I didn’t know you were a pirate captain,’ said Felix, instantly regretting the words.
‘Privateer, laddie, and don’t you forget it. We’ve letters of marque from the Shipwrights’ Council at Barak Varr.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ muttered Felix. Steam hissed below, as the ironclad’s turret began to bring itself to bear on the orc hulk. There was a strange grinding sound as it moved, and one of the shortbeards moved to lubricate the base with oil. Felix wondered how much damage the ship had really sustained during the storm.