by Nick Horth
‘We exist out here only by the barest of threads,’ said Lorse, shrugging Vermyre’s hand free. ‘I’m not fool enough to think we’d last a day if the Scourge fleets sailed upon Bilgeport. Kaskin, Azrekh, they see the Sigmar-worshippers’ indifference to us, and they mistake it as fear. We overreach ourselves.’
‘Only by risking the unthinkable do we forge our destinies,’ said Vermyre.
‘You can stow that mealy-mouthed trash,’ sneered Lorse.
Vermyre was not a tall man. Yet he seemed to loom over the High Captain. The air in the vicinity turned thick and oppressive, and Toll imagined that he felt a low, rumbling sound like rushing blood.
‘You may leave,’ said the masked man. ‘See to your prisoners.’
Lorse, his face pale and hand twitching towards his gun-belt but never truly threatening to reach it, shook his head and began to stride away, a mob of burly cut-throats forming up around him. Toll heard his boots crunching across the shattered glass of the square as he retreated.
‘You need me here for this,’ said Azrekh, running his finger along the flat of his flensing knife. ‘If there’s something you need from this wretch, I’m the man to get it… Always wondered how a witchfinder would fare under the blade.’
‘That will not be necessary, High Captain. Our business will shortly be concluded.’
Vermyre turned his gaze to Toll.
‘Here we are then,’ he said. ‘Reunited at long last.’
Toll thought of a thousand threats and curses he wished to hurl at the traitor, but gave voice to none of them. He locked his gaze with that impassive mask.
‘Nothing to say? You’ve pursued me across the vast ocean, worked your old bones to dust in order to see me dead, and when you finally catch up with me you stand sullen and silent?’
Toll’s eyes flickered around the square, searching for some form of escape route. Ahead, a hundred yards or so to the north-west, he could hear the sound of running water. One of the filth-encrusted canals that sluiced down towards the harbour, carrying the detritus of the city’s population. If he could reach it…
‘I did truly regard you as a friend, Hanniver,’ said Vermyre.
Toll let out a bark of bitter laughter. ‘Don’t speak to me of friendship. You betrayed me, Ortam. You made a fool of me for years. Decades. You set my city aflame, and you allied yourself with daemons and witchkin.’
‘I did as I–’
‘And for what?’ Toll hissed. ‘For power? For your wretched faith? Look what that has brought you. You wear that mask to hide your face, not because you fear Azyr’s hunters, but because you fear what you are becoming. Arclis told me what is happening to you, old friend, and why you seek this Silver Shard.’
Vermyre’s hand twitched, as if he would reach to unclasp his false face. Then he lowered his hand, and gave a soft, sad chuckle.
‘You know, there are those who believe I am blessed,’ he said. ‘That the reshaping of my flesh is some form of gift from the Changemaker.’
‘And this is the master to whom you swore your soul?’ asked Toll, shaking his head. ‘You’re an intelligent man, Ortam. A cultured, educated man. You must know what awaits those who worship the Lord of Lies.’
‘I am no priest of the gods, Hanniver. I never was. I seek only an escape. Freedom from the doomed cause to which the God-King has bound us. Strife and endless war, against a foe we can never defeat. You of all people should know the futility of this struggle. You have glimpsed the true scale of the powers arrayed against mortalkind. We cannot triumph.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Toll said, shaking his head. ‘Better death. Better oblivion than whatever has happened to you.’
‘In that we at last find agreement,’ said Vermyre. ‘I am done serving the will of gods and monsters, Toll. I will find this Silver Shard, and I will use its power to remake my flesh. Then, I will drive you Sigmarites and your hypocrisy from these lands one city at a time. I will start with Excelsis. Let that wretched place burn first, and let the gods bicker over its ashes.’
‘That’s all you can think of?’ Toll said, shaking his head in disgust. ‘All this scheming, and the best you can do is to attempt an atrocity you failed at once before?’
‘That will serve for now. And it will hurt you, Toll. You reduced me to my current state. It is only fair I destroy your world in turn.’
‘You’ll never stop being a tool of the Dark Gods, Ortam. Even now, you’re dancing to their tune. They own your soul and your fate, and there’s no cure that can save you.’
Vermyre was silent for a long while. ‘I should kill you,’ he said at last.
‘If you leave me alive, I’ll come for you. They won’t hold me here, not forever. I won’t stop hunting you.’
Vermyre approached. He clutched his staff tightly, raising it across his chest in two hands. Again, Toll could hear that strange pulsing sound, growing ever louder and more resonant.
‘I should,’ he muttered.
‘Why don’t you have your slave do it for you?’ said Toll, gesturing to High Captain Azrekh. ‘This one professes such a love of knifework. I wonder, if the High Captain here is such a terrifying scourge of the seas, why is he rotting out here in this wretched hive, surrounded by drunken sots and fools? Could it be that you’re just a thug with a blade, Azrekh, and there are more terrifying things festering at the bottom of the city’s midden-pits?’
Azrekh’s eye glazed over with fury.
‘Oh, I’m going to enjoy skinning the flesh from your bones, boy,’ said the duardin, starting forwards with his blade twirling in his hands.
‘Azrekh, stand back,’ snapped Vermyre. ‘This is my business.’
The High Captain raised a hand, and the crossbows swung away from Toll, and levelled at the masked figure.
Vermyre hissed in anger. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he snapped.
‘You don’t ought to talk down to me, masked one,’ said the duardin. He was only a few yards from Toll now, his two bodyguards keeping pace. ‘This is my city. Mine! I will show you what happens to those who insult me in my own hall.’
Using the distraction, Toll clenched his wrist and snapped his hand out to the side. The sleeve-gun clicked and whirred as the clockwork mechanisms sent it nestling into his palm. He turned, and fired at the man on his left. There was a small, sharp crack, and a dark stain spread across the man’s shirt. With a small cough, he tumbled backwards into the dirt.
The witch hunter was already moving, stepping within the reach of the stunned Azrekh and locking his arms around the duardin’s thick neck, driving a knee into the man’s leg and knocking him down. Someone loosed their repeater in panic, and the other bodyguard let out a pained shriek as the bolt took him in the leg.
Toll saw Vermyre making a shape with his fingers, and threw himself aside. A bolt of searing fire flashed past him, engulfing a wooden shack in purple flames. Suddenly, the night was alive with dancing trails of light. Crossbow bolts skittered and slammed into the wall behind Toll as he ran, hands covering his face from the scorching heat of the blaze. He saw Vermyre weave another bolt of fire, but then he was barrelling through a decaying gate of mildewed driftwood, which burst apart in a hail of wet shards. He disturbed a colony of yellow-fanged bilge-rats as big as hounds, and they scattered, screeching and shrieking in indignation as they flooded around his legs.
Something slammed hard into his shoulder blade, tearing through flesh and striking bone, but he did not stop for he knew that to do so would be to die.
Ahead, he could see the curving wall of the canal, and beyond that the crude, square-shaped line of a sewer outflow, gushing a stream of thick, soup-like brown-grey into the river.
He slipped on the cobbles, reaching down to steady himself, and a hail of bolts slammed into the wall where his head been just seconds ago. Then he was running again, and the backstreet trailed off into a dirty slop
e piled with filth, broken bottles and picked-clean bones. He skidded down this foul-smelling hill, and threw himself into a dive, the oil-sheen surface of the foul canal water reaching up to envelop him with a freezing embrace.
‘Slippery bastard,’ cursed Azrekh, as he strode along the shoreline searching for Toll’s body. They’d found only his wide-brimmed hat, the torn impact of a crossbow bolt gouged along the left side. But there was no blood, even though the High Captain swore that he’d caught the fleeing man with a thrown blade.
Vermyre considered burning the impulsive duardin alive. His blood was thundering in his veins, and the dark presence that had nestled in his soul demanded a blood sacrifice for this failure. He could – should – have killed the witch hunter outright, but now he was loose, and Vermyre knew Hanniver well enough to know that a few wounds would not stay him for long.
He cursed.
Azrekh stared back at him, his expression daring Vermyre to open his mouth. It would be so sweet to peel this arrogant wretch’s flesh back from his face, to feast upon his brain-matter in full view of his minions, to hear them scream and run in terror.
No.
Not here.
Not now.
Such reckless displays of his power would only draw further attention. Toll was unlikely to be the only agent of Azyr operating in these waters. It would be a fine thing indeed to outsmart his nemesis, only to blunder into the gun sights of another bounty hunter or hired killer.
‘You should find him,’ he said, instead. ‘You do not want Hanniver Toll loose in your city, believe me. He has a way of upsetting things.’
‘He won’t. He’ll be dead before the opportunity presents itself,’ snapped Azrekh.
‘I suggest you simply kill your remaining prisoners, rather than allowing them to escape also. Or else you can be assured that your reign as High Captain will be even shorter than most.’
He scanned the bubbling waters of the canal one last time, but saw nothing. As he turned to leave, Azrekh’s men leapt aside to clear his way.
This had been a setback, but he was still ahead of schedule, and his pursuers had been dealt a heavy blow. It was time to move. The lost city of Xoantica awaited.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The door of the Drowned Rat exploded inwards, slamming into the far wall with a sound like a gunshot. As the first cloaked figures began to charge through, Zenthe’s crew were already on their feet, drawing blades, handbows and pistols. The first man to enter, a shaven-headed brute wielding a heavy mace, fell riddled with bolts. There was the crack of a pistol, deafening in the cramped confines of the tavern, and one of the Thrice Lucky aelves went down with a gargling scream. The duardin bartender howled, lying flat on the floor with his hands over his head. Callis rose, kicked the table over to free himself and drew his own weapon.
‘The back door,’ shouted Shev, huddled in the corner. ‘More of them.’
Callis swivelled and fired. Splinters flew up as his shot smashed through the shell-covered doorway. He heard a muffled groan on the other side, but it burst open a mere moment later, and more figures poured in. He hurriedly fished a fresh cartridge out of his belt pouch, and as he did so he saw that Captain Zenthe was sitting idly on her chair amidst the carnage, with an expression of bored indifference upon her face.
A bullet ripped past and shattered the glass decanter she held, sending glittering shards of crystal scattering across the floor.
‘Oh, enough,’ Zenthe shouted, a look of irritation breaking out across her face at last. ‘Enough.’
To Callis’ astonishment, the shooting ceased. The newcomers, whoever they were, filtered into the tavern, which was now filled with the bitter tang of gunshots and the smell of freshly spilled blood. Over to Callis’ left, someone let out a long, drawn-out moan of agony, soundly ignored by everybody in the room.
‘Which of you is it then?’ Zenthe continued, pacing up and down in the middle of the chaos. ‘High Captain Kaskin, do I smell your particular stench wafting in through the door? Or is it the noble Azrekh I should be conversing with?’
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the barkeep’s whimpering. As Captain Zenthe passed his prone form, she aimed a swift kick at his buttocks. He fell silent.
‘Arika, my dear,’ came a high-pitched, nasal voice, which was oddly childlike. ‘It is a pleasure as always. I would ask you and your crew to drop your weapons, if you would be so kind. Otherwise I’m afraid we may have to resort to knifework, and you know how much I despise needless bloodshed.’
Zenthe snorted. ‘Oh, you’re a saint amongst cutthroats, Kaskin, the gods know it.’
The captain gave a curt nod to Oscus, and the brawny aelf let his handbow fall to the floor. Zenthe’s crewmates did the same, muttering and cursing as they did so, and – with no little reluctance – so did Callis. The High Captain’s men scooped up the fallen arsenal, and went through the routine of patting down their captives, searching for hidden weapons. They found a not insignificant arsenal – a vicious collection of punching daggers, knuckle-bars, coshes and razor-wire garrottes.
‘Is it clear?’ came that childlike voice again.
‘Aye, sir,’ said the largest of the thugs, a split-nosed brute swinging a heavy two-handed club.
A huge man stepped through the door. He was enormously fat, and swathed in a crimson silk shirt and bright blue pantaloons, with a ridiculously colossal hat perched jauntily upon his big, square head. His arms and hands were bedecked with gleaming jewellery and chunky golden rings, and his broad, youthful face was split in a delighted grin.
‘Arika, Arika,’ he crooned, dipping into an elaborate bow. ‘It is a wondrous pleasure as always, my dear. Tell me, how have the seasons been treating you?’
Zenthe took a step closer to Kaskin, and the High Captain’s guards immediately closed around him, weapons raised. Kaskin waved them down.
‘Rough seas out there, as you know,’ said Zenthe.
‘Oh, as always. I was appalled to hear of the state of the Thrice Lucky, my dear. Such a shame, to see a ship that conjures such a ferocious reputation limping into port like a wounded beast. My commiserations, Arika.’
He bent his head and clasped his hands as if in prayer, a gesture that dripped with naked insincerity.
‘Gods below, spare me the theatrics, you beached whale,’ sighed Captain Zenthe. ‘I assume those other two deviants are nearby? There’s no chance you’d have the spine to orchestrate this without them.’
‘Just so,’ came a voice from the rear entrance. There stood a duardin bearing a vicious skull-mark tattoo on the left side of his face, idly spinning a flensing knife in his hand. He was slighter than most duardin Callis had known, but there was a whip-like tension to his stance that spoke of swift and lethal grace. He frowned as he noticed the duardin’s face was smeared with blood, and flecked with ashes. His jaw was clenched shut, and his eyes were dark slits of malice. He looked like a man ready to kill.
‘And Captain Azrekh joins our little gathering,’ laughed Zenthe. ‘Tell me, Oddo, how did the wound I left you at our last meeting heal up? Did I leave a scar?’
The duardin’s face didn’t move, but his eyes glinted. Another figure slipped in behind him, entering the tavern cautiously.
‘And here’s the last of your wretched little triumvirate,’ said Zenthe. ‘High Captain Lorse.’
‘Zenthe,’ nodded the newcomer. He scanned the room, eyes passing briefly over Callis and resting on Shev. He clicked his fingers, and two of his men moved forward and grabbed the aelf by the arms, hauling her towards the door as she kicked and struggled.
Callis took a step forward and immediately drew the aim of several pistols and crossbows.
‘What do you want with her?’ he said.
Lorse raised an eyebrow. ‘We don’t want a thing. She’s just a part of the deal. Sit down.’
C
allis’ eyes darted about the room, searching for anything he could use to his advantage. Lorse had a pistol tucked loosely into his belt, and two knives sheathed on a leather strap across his chest. The nearest guard was bleary-eyed, rubbing his temple with the haggard look of someone who had whiled the night away drinking. If Callis could get hold of the High Captain’s blade, kill him quick and hurl his body into the guard…
He would never make it. Too many pistols drawn, and too great a distance.
Shev’s eyes met his own, and she gave a slight shake of her head. He took a deep breath. She was right. Now was not the time for ill-advised heroics. Then the aelf was gone, dragged out into the cloaking darkness.
‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ growled Azrekh. ‘And there’s no getting away, Zenthe. No one’s going to pull you out of the fire this time.’
Zenthe simply fixed the duardin with a cold smile.
‘I’m telling you, we should just kill them all now,’ muttered Lorse. ‘Put an end to it.’
‘No,’ said Kaskin. ‘Bilgeport has to see her die at our hands. They have to know who rules these seas now, from here to Excelsis. That’s the only way.’
Azrekh nodded. ‘Death’s one thing. Humiliation’s another. They’re going in the Pit. We’re going to host a spectacle the likes of which the scum of this city have never seen before.’
Rough hands grabbed Callis and the others, and dragged them towards the door.
Shev tried to keep her footing as they half-carried, half-dragged her down alley after alley. She thought, perhaps, they were heading towards the harbour. She saw the rising silhouette of the High Captains’ Tower looming ever closer. It was almost pitch black now, but she could see pale, hostile faces peering out at their party with predatory interest, like carrion birds waiting for their turn at the corpses.
