by Warhammer
‘Really, we need to move right now,’ she urged. Borik and Olt appeared at her side, accompanied by Morthan and all nine of the watchmen who had crammed into the carriage with her. The captain’s followers gaped in open horror at the state of the palace, recoiling as another wing burst asunder and collapsed to reveal more bulging, swelling fungus.
‘We’ll meet you in Fountains Square,’ called Romilla as she, Bartiman and a limping Eleanora hurried away towards the city end of the tunnel.
‘Cover your skin as best you can,’ replied Aelyn, wishing she had not left her hooded cloak behind at the inn. ‘Only what it touches, remember?’
Romilla waved understanding, and the three of them pulled sleeves down, dragged hoods forwards, and did whatever else they could do to keep the moon’s light from their flesh.
‘And stay alive,’ muttered Aelyn as her comrades departed.
‘Let’s concentrate on doing that ourselves, shall we?’ asked Helena Morthan, looking grim.
‘Now or never,’ said Borik, eyeing the spreading tide of darkness that was the insect swarm. It looked like oil, spilling over the moon-slick cobbles. ‘I’ve no desire to get in the way of that lot.’
‘On my word, then,’ said Aelyn. Fear tried to clamp itself around her heart at the thought of stepping out into the open beneath that daemon moon once more, but she knew it had to be done. It was that or flee the city they had sworn to save, and for her, that had now become a quest that both the Saul brothers had died for. She would be damned to Shyish before she abandoned their memories.
‘Move,’ she hissed, and the small group burst from the mouth of the tunnel at a run. Morthan and her watchmen had thrown up their hoods and pulled cloth masks up over the lower portions of their faces, so they had precious little skin on show. Aelyn was not so fortunate, still clad in her blood-stained feast garb, and she felt the immediate crawling prickle upon her skin again as fungus began to push through her pores.
She tried not to think about it, nor about the onrushing tide of insects now only a hundred or so yards distant, nor about the fungal abomination overrunning the palace and the spore-sickened now vanished into the streets and causing Sigmar alone knew what carnage. Most of all, she tried not to think about the vast presence that loomed above her and radiated such a crushing weight of malice and hate.
They made straight for the fuel wagon. So vast had the fungus grown that it had wholly buried the palace steps, and was now only a few dozen yards from the bowser and its braziers. Aelyn hurdled the fallen body of a mummer with half his grease-painted face missing and skidded to a halt beside the bowser. Olt reached her a moment later, followed by a puffing and blowing Borik. Morthan and her watchmen formed a loose cordon around the three Swords, pistols out and eyes alert for danger.
‘The insects are getting closer,’ one of the watchmen sang out.
‘Borik, get that bomb onto–’
Aelyn was interrupted by another tectonic lurch, this one so ferocious that it almost knocked her from her feet. Cracks erupted across the square and loose cobbles flew a dozen feet into the air before clattering back down.
‘What was that?’ gasped Morthan.
Her answer came in the form of an explosion of cobbles and mortar, which blew skywards like a geyser directly in the path of the insects. Something huge moved amidst the drifting dust, and Aelyn made out an arm as thick as a tree trunk pushing up from the hole. Huge, blunt talons sank into the ground, and a lumpen figure hauled itself into the moonlight. She saw rubbery flesh thick with fungal growths, grotesquely large ears, nose and jutting tusks, small eyes that glittered with idiot malevolence, and a gigantic body corded with ropey muscle.
‘Troggoth!’ yelled a watchman. ‘That’s some kind of troggoth!’
‘Biggest damned trog I’ve ever seen,’ breathed Borik.
The troggoth threw back its boulder-like head, opened its jaws and gave vent to a deafening roar. As it did so, smaller figures squirmed out of the hole around it. There were dozens, Aelyn saw, perhaps the size of a human adolescent, clad in mouldering black robes with pointed hoods, their green skin pale in the moonlight and their red eyes gleaming.
‘Borik, the bomb, now!’ she urged. The duardin hurriedly twisted the clamp on Eleanora’s device and slapped it into place.
‘How long?’ he asked.
Aelyn looked up to see a wall of pulsating fungus rolling towards them, dripping tendrils spewing from its surface to grope for the fuel bowser and the bodies around it.
‘Ten seconds, that’s all we’ll need,’ she said. Borik twisted the mechanism again, and as he did so there was a ripple of pistol fire from Morthan and her watchmen. The troggoth, which was stomping towards them clutching a stalactite club taller than Aelyn, staggered as the volley of shots struck home. It gave a subsonic growl of annoyance and kept going. Behind it slunk dozens of hooded greenskins, fangs bared in cruel grins, hands clutching crude shivs and spears. Around their feet flowed the insect tide, rushing like a river towards the Swords and the watchmen.
‘The bomb is set! Run!’ shouted Aelyn.
‘This way,’ replied Morthan, discharging her pistol into the troggoth’s face before turning and dashing away with her cloak flowing behind her. Aelyn felt the ground shake again as she pelted after the captain. The moonlight made her feel nauseous and light headed, and she almost missed her footing. She counted in her head.
‘Four.’
‘Five.’
‘Six.’
One of the watchmen screamed as he stumbled, and insects flowed over him in a tide. For an instant there came an awful sound of massed chewing, and Aelyn glanced back helplessly before the troggoth’s club whistled down and smashed the fallen man into bloody paste. Insects fountained into the air at the blow.
‘Seven.’
‘Eight.’
There came an awful creak of stressed metal, and another stolen look showed the fungal abomination rolling over the fuel bowser, spreading its tendrils into the corpses around it, polyps rising on its surface and bursting wetly to spew clouds of glowing spores.
This had to work, she thought, or they were all going to die.
‘Nine.’
‘Ten.’
‘Eleven.’
She felt her heart sink and an awful tingle of dread at the lack of a detonation. Spears clattered from the cobbles around her, and she heard the clang as one rang from Borik’s armour. Cloaked figures sprinted out to either side of her, fungi sprouting from their weapons and cloaks, the lambent moonlight lending the scene a nightmarish quality.
‘Twelve.’
‘Thirteen.’
The troggoth roared, the sound frighteningly close. Insects chittered and skittered.
Then came the blast. Aelyn felt it like a kick in the back from an enraged horse. Her feet left the ground and she was thrown through the air, her back hot with pain. She felt her skin sting in a dozen places at once, though whether from fungi or stone shrapnel she didn’t know. The world spun, and instinct took over. Aelyn hit the ground on her uninjured shoulder and rolled, coming back to her feet with the sort of grace that only aelves could achieve. Still, bolts of pain shot through her and she stumbled, looking back. Her ears rang as she took in the devastation Eleanora’s bomb had wrought.
The explosion had been ferocious; for an instant, Aelyn feared too ferocious. Lumps of blackened and burning fungus were strewn across the square, some still raining down hundreds of yards distant. The growth itself had been annihilated all the way back to the palace steps, simply blown to bits by the force of the blast. As the black smoke billowed, Aelyn realised with a surge of triumph that the fungal mass was burning fiercely. The flames crackled, spreading further into its enormity with every passing second. The fungus writhed, as though trying to squirm away from the inferno that was eating it alive, and Aelyn felt a sting of bitter satisfaction at the thoug
ht that this awful thing might feel pain.
The explosion had scattered the insect tide, burning many to windblown ash, and Aelyn spat a mouthful of charred bug-dust onto the slick cobbles. The blackened bodies of greenskins were strewn about, still burning. The troggoth was lying on its face, the flesh of its back aflame.
Three watchmen had also been consumed by the blast, Aelyn saw with a stab of regret, but the rest were staggering groggily to their feet. Captain Morthan stood, the cut on her forehead reopened and spilling blood down over one eye. Borik and Olt rose, the latter shaking his head as though to clear the ringing in his ears.
The ground shook again beneath Aelyn’s feet, another savage tremor, and a fresh geyser of sundered rock spat skywards on the other side of the square. Diminutive black-clad figures spilled up from below. As her hearing returned, she became aware of fresh screams ringing from within buildings all around her, and crash after crash as more tunnel entrances burst open from below.
Captain Morthan spat a tooth, blinked twice, then turned and hauled one of her watchmen to her feet. ‘Fountains Square,’ she barked, and to Aelyn her voice still sounded muffled by the blast. ‘We’ve done all we can here. Fountains Square!’
Morthan set off, weaving slightly as she ran. Aelyn and her companions shared a look, then followed the captain and her surviving men. Morthan led them along the square’s western edge, as far away from the emerging greenskins as was possible, and hurriedly unlocked a postern door in the inner wall.
‘We’ll cut along Makeweave Street, down the back of the Red Firkin and across Tinker’s Square to the Fieldway,’ she said to her watchmen. ‘That should bring us to the square from the west.’
Aelyn took one last glance behind her before she ducked through the postern gate after the watchmen. The fungal abomination burned, and the palace with it, a vast pyre for all those who had died at the victory feast.
‘Goodbye, old friend,’ she whispered, then ducked into the tunnel and was gone.
Chapter Ten
FALL
The dash through the city streets was chaotic and horrible. From the moment Aelyn emerged from the outer face of the Holyheart Wall, she found herself immersed in panicking, pushing crowds. Faces reared up, eyes wild, mouths yawning in cries of terror. Townsfolk shoved past, clutching children close or dragging maddened animals in their wake. Some fought, crazed with terror or moon-madness Aelyn could not tell. She saw a man in blacksmith’s garb swinging his hammer indiscriminately at everyone who came close, screaming over and over that he felt the Bad Moon’s gaze as he broke bones and skulls. White whiskers of mycelium had pushed out from his scalp and face and waved around him like a silvery halo. Three watchmen bore him to the ground, and his cries were silenced by a pistol shot. Only two cloaked figures rose again from the brawl.
Aelyn was almost run down as a carriage thundered down the street, scattering panicked city dwellers before it and crushing those too slow to clear its path. Olt grabbed her by her collar and wrenched her back before she could vanish under the vehicle’s wheels.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘You saved me enough times,’ he said, and his awkward half-smile reminded Aelyn how young he was.
Captain Morthan bulled through the press, shouldering people aside and menacing them with her pistol where she had to. Her watchmen had raised their halberds and activated their blinding lanterns, and folk instinctively scrambled aside from the piercing beams that signified authority in Draconium.
Aelyn kept her eyes on the captain, trying to ignore the bloodshed and bedlam, her pain and nausea, and the building sense of horror as more fungal blooms pushed through her skin. As they passed an overturned stall, she gratefully snatched up a hooded cloak that had spilled onto the cobbles, grabbing one for Olt as well. The garments were trampled and torn, cheaply made, but as she pulled the hood up to shield her face Aelyn felt blessed relief. It warded away the moon’s clammy touch and hid her from its leering gaze.
That was enough.
Morthan led them into a back alley beside a pub. Its frontage was sprouting vile green fungal fronds that spat streams of spores into the night air. Aelyn heard screams coming from within the building, saw that its windows were broken from the inside and that blood drizzled from several of them.
As she entered the alley, black-clad figures swarmed out of the pub’s doorway and set upon the panicked crowd. They cackled and shrieked in a crude tongue she couldn’t understand.
‘What are those things?’ she asked.
‘Moonclan grots,’ replied Borik. ‘Or Grobi-the-blackcap, whatever you prefer. Folklore.’
They made swift progress along the alleyway, until another vicious earth tremor threw them against the wall of the pub. A scullery door smashed open in the building’s flank, and three of the Moonclan burst into the alley. One raised a flintwood bow and loosed a black-fletched arrow from point blank range. The shaft struck a watchman in the face, snapping her head back and throwing her to the ground. Captain Morthan yelled and shot the archer, blasting away half of its face. Borik shot another grot in the chest, and the third was quickly spitted on a pair of watch halberds.
The group stepped over the corpses and pressed on, leaving the fallen watchman where she lay.
‘They’re grots all right,’ said Olt. ‘But they don’t act like them. Big greenies, orruks and the like, sure they get a sniff of battle and they’re brave as heroes. But I’ve never seen grots attack like this. Usually cowards, you know?’
‘Only know what I heard,’ said Borik tinnily, reloading his pistol as they approached the end of the alley. ‘Something about the Bad Moon filling them with a sort of madness. Draws them up from their caves and tunnels like the ocean tides. They call it the Gloomspite.’
‘Oh, damnation,’ said Captain Morthan quietly as they halted at the mouth of the alleyway. She brushed a stray strand of red hair out of her eyes, rubbing away the crusted blood on her face with her knuckles. Aelyn caught up to the captain and saw what had caused her to halt.
Beyond the alley, lit a sickly green in the moon’s poison light, was a scene from some gruesome underhell. A wide square sat at a confluence of smaller streets, flanked on two sides by townhouses and on its other two by some kind of eatery and what looked like a public library. The centre of the square had collapsed into a wide pit from which spore-laden fumes rose. A wagon lay half-in and half-out of the hole, its dray beast lying dead in its traces with great chunks missing from its flesh and mycelium crawling into its wounds.
A handful of palace guards and militia-militant were fighting against a swarm of bizarre beasts. The monsters were bulbous, each one easily three feet across and roughly spherical in shape, its flesh spongy and burnt orange in colouration. The creatures had stubby, muscular legs ending in vicious talons, short, jutting tails and the entire front of each one’s body was taken up by a pair of piggy eyes set above a massive lantern jaw stuffed full of crooked fangs.
Squigs, Aelyn thought. These horrors she had seen before, after she and some companions disturbed a nest of the things amidst an ancient ruin south of Taelfen many years ago. Those creatures had scuttled through the undergrowth and gnashed ferociously at her and her comrades. By comparison, these squigs were bounding along in great arcing leaps, ricocheting from the walls and bulling headlong into screaming humans like huge rubbery cannonballs. Sat atop the back of each squig, clinging on for dear life and cackling with deranged glee, was a Moonclan grot.
Even as they watched, another wave of squig riders bounded up from the pit. Jaws gaping, the beasts ploughed into luckless militiamen, their fangs snapping shut in sprays of blood to sever limbs, crush skulls and eviscerate torsos. The grot riders flailed madly, clubbing and stabbing at anything in reach before their steeds bounded off in all directions like misfiring volley-gun rounds.
‘We can’t leave these men and women to die,’ said Captain Morthan,
drawing her blade.
‘There are a lot of those beasts,’ said Aelyn.
‘Then we’ll have to fight hard and kill them quickly, won’t we?’ said Morthan.
‘And pay well,’ muttered Borik, but Aelyn could hear the duardin’s heart wasn’t in it. His people had many reasons to hate greenskins. He would fight willingly enough, she knew.
The decision was made for them as one of the squigs caromed back across the square and shot straight towards the alley. The grot sat atop it spotted them and shrieked something at its comrades. The next instant, its steed slammed into the levelled blades of several watch halberds, the impact sending their wielders staggering back and the grot rider catapulting forwards amidst a shower of his steed’s blood. Aelyn wove aside from the greenskin’s awkward trajectory and heard its bones crack as it hit the cobbles. Borik’s ironclad boot came down on its head before it had even finished rolling, splattering blood and brains across the alley floor.
‘Charge,’ barked Captain Morthan, and surged from the alley with her blade levelled. The watchmen and the Swords of Sigmar followed her. The beleaguered soldiers raised a ragged cheer and redoubled their efforts.
Aelyn swept a needle-like dagger from her belt and threw it in one smooth motion. The blade sang through the air and struck a squig in the eye just as it landed. The beast convulsed, throwing its rider and toppling onto its side with a weak kick of its legs. Another blade in hand, Aelyn slid in beside the fallen grot and slit its throat before it could rise. She plucked the first dagger from the dead squig, then dropped forwards onto all fours as she sensed a rush of air. Another squig hurtled over her, close enough for her to smell the rancid stink of its breath. She sprang to her feet and threw her blade again, sinking it into the back of the grot rider’s neck and spilling him from his saddle. Riderless, the squig bounded high into the air, landed on a nearby rooftop in a shower of slates, then leapt away into the night.
Aelyn heard a cry, and spun in time to see Olt surge across the square with flames licking around him. His tattoos glowed furiously as he slammed bodily into a squig and smashed it from the air. The creature landed on its side, rider squealing with fury, the squig’s legs kicking and clawing for purchase. Swift as thought, Olt drove his forehead into the grot’s nose and slammed its skull against the cobbles hard enough to break it. He bellowed in his tribal tongue and conjured a swimming heat haze around his fist before driving it savagely into the squig’s flank. Fungal flesh gave way, hissing and sizzling as it literally cooked. The monster’s eyes bulged, and it bicycled its stubby legs in panic, but Olt wasn’t letting his quarry get away. Ignoring the gouge it cut across his chest with its talons, he reached deep into the monster and, with a feral cry, tore out a smouldering fistful of its guts. Sparks belched from the squig’s maw. It convulsed once more before lying still.
