Warriors Of The Freeguilds, page 99
The trio of hatches set into the slope of the hull swung open with loud clanks and the grinding of unseen cogs. The sound of battle was no longer muffled, and Adhema could hear the crackle of warpfire and the screams of the dying. The landscape below was a blur of sandy brown, split by green streaks and azure slashes. Roggen thumped Harrow into motion before the first Thunderer had moved, and the demigryph sprang through an open hatch with a snarl. Adhema followed, laughing.
She struck the ground lightly, and was moving before the dust of Harrow’s landing had settled. She relished her speed, and the way the ratkin twitched and fell to pieces in her wake. In Shyish, the skaven were considered abominations – Nagash had declared them unworthy of life, or what came after, and they were to be destroyed utterly. Exterminated like the vermin they were.
From behind her, she heard the clatter of the descent-ladders unfurling. She glanced up and saw the Thunderers descending, their gauntlets sparking as they slid to the ground. Nyoka was among them, mouth moving in what Adhema assumed were prayers. She shuddered slightly. Prayers had no place on the battlefield. Death ground belonged to Nagash, whatever the inclinations of the combatants.
She stepped aside as Roggen galloped past, roaring out a war-cry. The demigryph bowled over a trio of skaven before lunging to meet a bellowing rat-ogre. Skaven scuttled in every direction, throwing up clouds of dust, fighting black-clad warriors or daemonic shapes. The stink of Chaos hung heavy over the slopes, and warp-flames raged in the depths of the crag, causing stockpiled ammunition to cook off and ricochet about the battlefield.
A high-pitched cackle caused her to turn, and she saw gambolling pink-fleshed daemons swing and leap among the walkways and gantries above. The creatures were fleshy nightmares, with leering features marking their wide torsos, and massive, grasping hands flapping at the ends of too-long arms. They stuttered forwards on bowed legs, chortling and shrieking. One mass of shifting, gangly limbs bounded towards her with an excited squeal.
She ducked beneath its lunge and chopped through its torso, splitting it in half. Pink flushed purple, before fading to blue, and the chuckling monstrosity collapsed into two smaller, squabbling shapes. She kicked these aside and turned, as the shadow of the Zank passed overhead, sliding towards the rounded shape of the skaven war-machine.
Yuhdak gestured, and a skaven screamed as his spell twisted it into a new and more monstrous shape. Its flesh burst and boiled, erupting in scabrous tendrils, even as its torso split, revealing a newly made maw of dagger-like teeth. The skaven-thing fell on its comrades, ripping and tearing with unnatural hunger. Yuhdak left the spawn to its feeding and pressed on, trailing warpfire from his hands.
He felt a strange sense of peace at times like this, when there was no greater objective in the moment than to ride the wave of chaos over the enemy. He felt the strands of binding that connected him to the daemons he’d summoned twitch and hum, as the creatures set about indulging themselves. The writhing lesser daemons were fashioned from raw warp stuff, and eager to entertain themselves with the more solid inhabitants of the mortal realms. They served to occupy the skaven well enough, while the Ninety-Nine Feathers saw to more pragmatic concerns.
He’d considered summoning such creatures earlier, but the effort was tiring, and he had no intention of making any more pacts with the Neverborn than was absolutely necessary. While some adepts could drag daemons from the Realm of Chaos through sheer brute strength, he was not one of them. Instead, he bargained – or failing that, wagered – with them. This for that, tit for tat. A favour here, a favour there. Luckily, lesser daemons were rarely capable of thinking beyond their own immediate gratification.
Yuhdak turned, unleashing a gout of coruscating flame with a twitch of his fingers. A rickety-looking wooden watchtower convulsed and bent, becoming something horrible and hungry. It gnashed the skaven who’d occupied it to red, wet rags with splintery teeth, before lurching awkwardly after new prey. Yuhdak laughed gaily. It pleased him no end to bring new life into the world.
A different sound intruded on his good cheer. The hard bark of duardin guns. He spun, searching the battlefield, and cursed as he saw a familiar shape sliding through the sky above. He lifted his hands, intending to bathe the vessel’s hull in witchfire and send it crashing to earth. But before he could loose the spell, something struck him in the belly, driving the air from his lungs and the words from his mind.
He staggered, wrenching his sword from its sheath, driving his attacker back. Words lashed at him – holy words, spoken in a panting rush. The woman came for him again, two-handed hammer raised. A blinding aura suffused her, making him wince. The power of Azyr flowed through her, and it made his soul ache to be near it. He recognised her, if dimly – a priestess, then. ‘Vampires, lunatic duardin, and now a fanatic – the Crippled God chooses strange tools,’ he said, backing away.
‘It is not for us to question the gods,’ she said. She paced after him. ‘I know your stench. You sent your feathered assassins to desecrate our holy fane, witch. For that, you must deliver an accounting.’
‘And who are you to judge me?’
‘You have already been judged,’ she said, with a serenity that irked him. ‘And I am the sentence.’ Her hammer snapped out, almost faster than he could follow. He ducked back, startled. She whipped towards him, allowing him no respite, giving him no chance to gather himself. She spun, catching him in the side. He skidded, barely managing to remain on his feet, and whistled once, sharply.
A pink horror leapt for her, out of the smoke. She struck it in the face, pulping it. Its unnatural flesh smoked where her weapon struck it and it sagged back, deflating with a maudlin sigh. Two more daemons flung themselves at her, chortling. As she fought, the light within her grew brighter, almost blinding, and he felt a shiver in his soul.
This was no simple fanatic. This was something else. As she moved, something moved with her – a great shape, guiding her, lending her strength. A shape made of starlight, and the sound of rattling swords. ‘Changer give me strength,’ he murmured. Was this a test, then? Had he been sent here for some reason other than the obvious? The sword in his hand wailed as it sensed the god-light.
A daemon burst into flame and crumpled. She stepped over its burning remains. ‘Judgement cannot be denied, only postponed.’ Her voice struck him like a barb, and he tensed. ‘Perhaps Sigmar has guided me here to be the instrument of his wrath. I make no assumptions. I merely follow his will.’ She sprang forwards in a swirl of robes and a rattle of armour, hammer raised.
The air split as several black, feathered shapes shot past him, intercepting the priestess. The ravens swooped and pecked, causing her to falter. Several twisted into bipedal shapes, attacking with blades rather than beaks and talons. The priestess spun one way and then the next, holding them back through sheer momentum. But only for a moment.
A raven darted in, swooping towards her face. An instant later she screamed. The hammer fell from her grip and she stumbled, clutching at her face. A sword blow scraped sparks from her war-plate and knocked her to the ground. Black boots pinned her arms. Yuhdak laughed softly.
‘Then it is his will that you die, I suppose.’ Ravens settled on his shoulders as he strode towards her, lifting his blade.
Ahazian Kel cursed, and split the stormvermin’s skull with a single blow. Without bothering to wrench the axe free, he hauled the twitching body up and swung it at the other skaven, knocking several sprawling. He was on them a moment later, skullhammer snapping down. The survivor tried to crawl away, squealing in terror. Ahazian took two steps and caught up with it. He stamped on its back, pinning the black-furred ratkin to the ground. ‘That was the best horse I ever stole,’ he growled, before removing its head.
He turned, watching as the black stallion-thing kicked its last. The skaven’s jezzails had been lethally accurate, and even the horses of the dead weren’t immune to warpstone bullets, fired at high velocity. The animal lay amid the remains of its killers, having crashed into them in its death throes. Ahazian felt a flicker of regret. Soon enough, it was snuffed out by the relentless song hammering through his soul. The hunter’s song, the murder-song. It tugged at him, drawing him towards the towering wheel-like war-machine that loomed amid a network of rope bridges and temporary gantries, stretching from the surrounding rocks.
Skaven seethed in its shadow. Armoured stormvermin had formed up into disciplined phalanxes, their shields planted, awaiting him with spears lowered. He laughed softly. He’d broken shieldwalls before. Jezzail-fire plucked at the ground near his feet, kicking up dust. He glanced up, eyes narrowing. Skaven slunk across the high ledges, moving to better positions. As they did so, black-clad shapes dropped down among them, blades singing. The Ninety-Nine Feathers were moving again, even before the bodies fell. The ravens swooped overhead, croaking, seeking further prey.
Ahazian grunted and shook his head. He took a step towards the stormvermin, but was beaten to the punch by a raucous pack of horrors. The pink-fleshed daemons capered past, filling the air with oily flames of a hue drawn from the mind of a lunatic. The flames splashed against the raised shields of the skaven, causing them to run like water and drenching the ratkin with splatters of molten metal.
With an annoyed growl, Ahazian loped through the carnage, leaving the daemons to their play. Let Yuhdak’s pets enjoy the fruits of the killing field. He had greater rewards to reap, at any rate. The fragment rattled against his chest-plate and tugged at its rawhide thong. He followed its pull, killing anything, skaven or daemon, that got in his way.
Daemons crawled over the machine’s hull, and were unceremoniously shot off by skaven snipers, or burnt to greasy motes by the machine’s weaponry. But more pink horrors swung chuckling about the guy-wires that held the immense wheel firmly anchored to the rocks, or scaled the crag, seeking skaven to burn or throttle. Yuhdak had summoned a small army, though some of them were already wavering back into the void from which they’d sprung. Daemons couldn’t long maintain their hold on the realms, even in places like this, befouled as it was.
When he reached the machine, he took the crude wooden steps up to the closest open hatch, two at a time. Jezzails fired from the upper walkways, and a bullet struck his shoulder-plate, nearly knocking him from his feet. He snarled and hurled himself through the hatch, just in time to meet the skaven rushing to close it.
‘Too late,’ he growled. The skaven immediately scrambled in the opposite direction, biting and clawing each other in an attempt to be the first through the closest bulkhead. Ahazian followed. That was the direction in which the fragment was pulling him in. The slowest of the vermin died first, then the next slowest. Whip-wielding overseers goaded panicked clanrats through cramped corridors into his path. He met them with savage elation, and his weapons hummed in his grip, well-pleased with the slaughter. The axe in particular seemed to be enjoying itself.
Ahazian tightened his grip on the weapons, and felt the thorns dig into his flesh, somewhat affectionately. ‘Do not worry, my friends, I shall not forsake you when I have the spear. You shall taste blood – seas of it – when the Huntsman is mine. We will carve a hole in the realms, you and I.’
He pressed on, hacking through squealing skaven and trampling the rats that fled across his path. Warning klaxons screamed, warring with the spear’s song for his attentions. And then, sooner than he’d expected, he was there.
The spear hung suspended in a nest of chains, screaming his name above a dais being turned by a number of hunched slaves, beneath a whirring orrery around which warp lightning crackled. As the rings of the orrery passed through one another, Ahazian saw strange sights stretch, solidify and fade into crackling excrescence. At one point, he thought he saw the familiar sight of the Felstone Plains in Aqshy, but dismissed it as more skaven trickery. Several stormvermin raced forwards to intercept him. The big, black-furred skaven leapt upon him, hacking and screeching.
Ahazian met them, the spear’s song on his lips.
There were enemies everywhere. Just… everywhere.
Quell felt as if he were going to vibrate to pieces, so intense was his anxiety. Warning klaxons squealed and his assistants ran back and forth, attempting to look busy. He hunched forwards, gnawing on his tail, trying to focus. The warp-wheel shuddered, and sparks cascaded down from the rat-cages above, carrying with them the stink of burning hair and flesh. The battle outside was taking its toll on his lair. He could hear it, even through the thick hull of the warp-wheel. He shouldn’t have been able to. That meant some of the hull plates hadn’t been reattached.
They also weren’t moving. That was more important than the hull plates. As long as the warp-wheel was moving, nothing could stop them. No foe could catch them, and any who got aboard could be run down and killed by his warriors. But when they weren’t moving… well. That didn’t bear thinking about.
Quell spat out his tail and reached for a squealing-tube. ‘Vex! Where are you, fool-fool? Have you cornered them yet?’
‘No, most worshipful warlock,’ came the static-y reply. Vex sounded nervous. Quell’s anxiety redoubled. He’d sent his assistant out to take command of the defence personally. That Vex had time to reply was a sure sign he was hiding somewhere, rather than seeing to his duties. Understandable, but annoying.
‘Why not?’
‘They’ve – ah – they’ve cornered us.’ A crash reverberated through the squealing-tube, causing Quell to wince. ‘But we are regrouping, your magnanimousness! We will have them soon enough, yes-yes.’ Another crash followed this boast. And screams. Many-many screams. And daemonic giggling.
Quell flung the tube away with a panicked snarl. He bared his teeth at the crew, trying to reassert his superiority. He was beginning to suspect that some among them might be responsible for the current predicament. That was the time-honoured way of advancement among the Clans Skryre, after all.
He snorted a knuckle’s worth of warpstone, trying to induce brilliance. The dust blazed through him, as thoughts coalesced. The warp-wheel was trapped where it was, for the time being. Unless… yes. Yes! That would work. ‘Geniussss,’ he hissed.
The spear was the answer. Where it went, the warp-wheel would travel as well. If he could just get the machine moving, then they could escape, possibly even relatively intact. Whatever else, the warp-wheel must be preserved. And its creator with it.
‘Alert-command the engineers,’ he screeched. ‘Whip-lash the slaves! Activate the oscillation overgrinder! Set the warp-wheel into motion, now-now!’
‘It’s starting to move, lad,’ Brondt yelled. ‘We’ll have to be quick. If they catch us before we’re down…’ He trailed off. Volker didn’t need him to finish. The Zank hung just above the war-machine. Through the open hatch below him, he could see the immense, wheel-like machine shuddering into motion, preparing to propel itself away from Lion Crag. Temporary walkways twisted and shattered, hurling unlucky skaven and giggling daemons alike to the ground far below. The great, grinding wheels began to churn against the ground as exhaust ports vomited a noxious smoke.
He swallowed and took hold of the ladder. The weighted ends thudded against the hull below, unable to find purchase. With a quick prayer, he began to descend. Halfway down, he let go and dropped to the hull. The vibrations shook up through his legs and wrenched his spine, knocking him onto all fours. He began to crawl towards the hatch. He heard the others descending behind him, but he kept his attentions focused on the hatch. Just as he reached for it, the hinges squealed and it flipped open. A snarling, verminous snout poked out. Volker lunged.
He slammed into the skaven and followed it down through the hatch. The creature gave a strangled screech and flailed at him. As they struck the gantry below, it clawed for the blade thrust through its belt. Volker wrapped his arm around its neck, braced himself, and twisted. Bone popped and the skaven went still.
He heard a whistle and looked up. Zana crouched at the top of the hatch. ‘Well done, Azyrite. I thought you gunmasters didn’t like getting your hands dirty.’
He shoved the carcass away. ‘We work with what we have.’ He hauled himself to his feet as the others climbed down.
Lugash dropped to the gantry and gave the corpse a cursory kick. ‘Neatly done, manling.’ He stepped over the body, weighing a throwing axe in his hand. Alarms were blaring somewhere. ‘Sounds like we’re late to the feast.’
‘Or right on time,’ Zana said. She stepped to the edge of the gantry, sword drawn.
Volker looked up at the hatchway. ‘Brondt…?’
Zana shook her head. ‘We barely made it down ourselves. This thing is already rolling away from the crag. Feel it? We’re on our own. We’ll be lucky if the Zank is waiting for us when it’s time to go.’ She looked around. ‘Now, if you were a magic bloody spear, where would you be?’ She started down the corridor, after Lugash. Volker hefted his long rifle and followed.
‘Somewhere under heavy guard,’ he said.
‘Good,’ Lugash grunted.
They found the first bodies a moment later, and Volker realised the skaven he’d killed had likely been trying to escape the slaughter. The stink of death hung heavy over everything, and blood painted the hull and deck. Mangled skaven lay everywhere, in various states of mutilation. Someone – or something – had torn a path straight through them.
They followed the trail of dead down through the swaying, rattling corridors of the war-machine. Sparks rained down occasionally, cascading across them, and more than once Volker was forced to brace himself against the wall as the machine lurched one way or another. The internal lighting system flickered, and entire passageways were plunged into darkness, lit only by the warpstone tumours flickering on the flesh of the rats in the cages that hung above certain junctions.
