by Warhammer
‘The rooftop road,’ said Thackeray, gesturing to an arrangement of badly rain-eaten boards that ran along the downslope of the roof and bridged the gap to the next rooftop along.
‘How delightfully perilous,’ gasped Romilla, wishing that blood loss had not left her feeling so woozy and light headed.
‘Come on, that must be the guild hall,’ said Aelyn, pointing to an imposing fortress of a building some way upslope across the rooftops. It was slab-sided, built from rain-treated granite and boasting what looked like a battlement’s crenulations at its peak.
‘We’ll get our view from there,’ said Thackeray. ‘But we’ll need to enter two floors down. That’s where, Sigmar willing, they’ll be dug in.’
‘Very well, let’s move,’ said Aelyn and set off along the boards at an alarming pace. Romilla followed, her heart lurching at every creak, groan and sudden lurch of the boardwalk.
‘Sigmar, if you can hear me, guide my steps,’ she prayed as she ran, and tried to ignore the sickening drop to either side of her into the fungus-thick streets below.
They were halfway across the rooftops when Aelyn heard the cries of greenskins behind them. She glanced back, still running surefooted across the roofboards. Thackeray and his remaining watchman were close on her heels, Romilla lagging slightly further back, looking pale but determined.
A hundred yards or so further behind them, Moonclan grots were spilling up like insects from a collapsed attic space, swarming up the fungus-dotted roof tiles and onto the boards of the roadway.
‘Romilla, faster!’ shouted Aelyn, and saw the wounded priest dutifully redouble her efforts. Aelyn swung herself up onto a chimney stack and crouched there like a gargoyle. She swept her bow off her back and swiftly strung it. Thackeray and his watchman passed her at as close to a run as they dared, their cloaks flapping behind them.
‘Get to the guild hall and secure our entry,’ she ordered as they dashed past. Then she drew an arrow from her quiver, drew back her bowstring and, ignoring the foul Bad Moon hanging fat and low overhead, she loosed. The shaft whipped through the air, passing over Romilla’s head and dropping neatly into the eye socket of a Moonclan grot. The creature shrieked as it was spun from its feet to topple bonelessly down the roof and into the void beyond. Its body hit the cobbles far below with a distant splat. By that time, Aelyn had loosed three more arrows that sped through the air and plucked three more greenskins from their feet.
As she had hoped, the rest lost their nerve and scattered to cower behind buttresses, chimney-pots and the like. Romilla kept running, reaching then passing Aelyn’s position with a grim nod of thanks.
‘It won’t keep them back for long,’ said the aelf, dropping from her vantage point and following her comrade.
She ran, and as she did black-fletched arrows the length of her forearm started to fall around her. One skipped off the roof tiles just feet to her left. Another thrummed over her shoulder and thumped, quivering, into the roofboards in front of her. Aelyn kept running, turning her innate talents to blurring her outline and blending with the shadows. Yet there was so little cover, exposed as they were, silhouetted against the skyline with the bloated Bad Moon shining its light down upon her like a beacon. At any second Aelyn expected to feel an arrow thump into her back and pitch her from the roof.
The tingle of her instincts warned her of something worse, however. Crying out a warning, Aelyn threw herself flat. Romilla heard her and half-ducked, half-fell onto her face. There came a crackling roar and a foul fungal stench, and a roiling orb of green energy flashed over their heads to hit a chimney stack two roofs ahead. The stonework detonated in a greasy green fireball, and Thackeray and his companion shielded their heads as blazing lumps of rock rained about them.
Aelyn spun, and saw a greenskin with a gnarled staff clutched in one hand and half a cat’s worth of animal bones piercing his nose and ears. The creature was festooned with amulets and gewgaws, and pale green energy crackled around his head as he capered and shrieked. As Aelyn sprang back to her feet, the sickly moonlight condensed around the greenskin’s staff then leapt out as another coruscating blast of energy. Aelyn flipped backwards, cartwheeling through the air and landing in a crouch on the roofboards a dozen yards closer to the guild hall. The roof where she had been standing erupted in a blast of green energy that left a twisted, glowing crater that belched spore-thick smoke.
‘Shaman,’ shouted Aelyn as she turned and pelted along the shuddering roofboards. She heard the cries of emboldened grots rise behind her as they gave chase again.
Ahead, Romilla turned and raised her amulet in her fist. All the pain and exhaustion left her for an instant as she raised her voice in a booming prayer, and blue light haloed her head.
‘Sigmar almighty, God-King of the heavens, hear my prayers! Abjure the foul sorcery of thy base foes, that we might prevail in thy name!’
There came a crackling boom from behind Aelyn, and a flare of green light. She glanced back to see that the shaman’s staff had shattered in his hand with such force that the grot’s broken body was bounding away down the rooftops trailing smoke. The damage was done, however; dozens of grots poured from top-floor windows and shattered rooftops to join the chase. They swarmed after her, sure-footed and maniacally courageous beneath the gaze of the monstrous moon.
Aelyn reached Romilla, who was staggering with the effort of calling upon the God-King’s aid. She looped the priest’s arm around her shoulders, took some of Romilla’s weight and urged her onwards.
The two of them kept going, limping as fast as they could across the rooftops. Fungi splattered and broke underfoot, more than once giving Aelyn a nasty shock as they threatened to pitch her and Romilla from the boardwalk. Arrows fell around them, several coming close enough to nick her flesh through her cloak. Aelyn hoped none of the heads were poisoned.
Ahead, she saw that Thackeray had reached the roof below the guild hall and was yelling up at an arched window full of dark, leaded glass a dozen feet above him. She was alarmed to see that the watchman looked angry and frantic as he shouted.
‘I might be able to make that leap,’ said Aelyn. ‘But there’s no way any of you can, and I won’t leave you.’
‘Much… appreciated,’ grunted Romilla, who was leaning ever more heavily on Aelyn and who had gone alarmingly pale. Her side was blood-slick, and her hammer hung from her hand ready to drop.
‘Looks like Borik might have had the right of it after all,’ said Aelyn as they came up on Thackeray’s position. His surviving watchman had already dropped to one knee on the wooden platform he stood on and was sighting along her pistol at the tide of greenskins flowing closer with every heartbeat.
‘Piss on Borik,’ spat Romilla.
‘You don’t mean that,’ said Aelyn.
‘I don’t, but his guns would be useful right now, wouldn’t they?’ replied the priest with a wan smile.
Aelyn could hear Thackeray now, even over the demented chorus of the pursuing grots.
‘Damnation, I know you’re in there! We have Captain Morthan’s seal! I order you in her name to open that window and lower the bridge!’
Aelyn skidded to a halt and lowered Romilla down next to the crouching watchman. She turned, reaching for an arrow to nock to her bowstring.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked as she did so.
‘Polenna,’ replied the watchman, whose hand and pistol were shaking slightly.
‘If we die here, know it was an honour to fight for your city,’ said Aelyn. Polenna nodded to her but didn’t take her eyes from the approaching greenskins. The creatures poured along the roofboards and made them shudder, their red eyes and bared fangs glinting in the moonlight.
‘In the name of Captain Helena Morthan and the regent militant of Draconium, I order you to open the window and lower the damned bridge!’ roared Thackeray, and at last the leaded glass window cracked open.
‘Show us the seal,’ came a querulous voice from within. Aelyn drew back her bowstring and loosed an arrow, slaying a grot who was about to take a shot of his own. The greenskin tumbled and put his half-drawn arrow straight through the cheek of the grot next to him, who howled and fell in a spray of blood. More grotesque figures trampled both corpses as they flowed closer.
‘Just lower the cheffing bridge!’ cried Thackeray, almost shrieking with frustration.
‘The seal,’ came the obstinate reply. ‘You could be anyone. You could be bandits trying to gain entry.’
Thackeray’s response was so littered with profanity that Romilla actually raised an eyebrow. Polenna took her shot and blew another grot sideways off the rooftops. Dozens remained, though, and they were bare yards away now. Dropping her bow, Aelyn reached into a pouch and raised the captain’s brooch high. It glinted in the moonlight.
For a moment she thought nothing would happen, that they would be left to their fates and overrun by stabbing grots. Then came a clatter as the windows along the guild house’s second-from-top floor slammed open in unison.
‘Fire!’ came the bellowed command, and a hail of pistol shot and hissing arrows filled the air. The grots were decimated. Stunted green bodies bounced and rolled down steep slate slopes, their black robes flapping around them as they fell. Some screamed in terror as they plunged to their deaths.
‘Again!’ came the commanding voice, and another withering volley hit the remaining grots. The few who survived turned tail and fled, their black hoods streaming behind them.
Aelyn turned to see a long wooden bridge, rather like a gang-plank, swing down out of the tallest window and thump into place. It spanned the gap between the platform they stood on and the guild house.
‘Romilla, one last effort,’ she said, helping her comrade to her feet. ‘Beware the drop, have a care not to fall.’
‘Oh, I won’t,’ Romilla replied with a scowl. ‘I’m staying conscious until I’ve given the officious arse in that window a black eye.’
In the event, they all made it across the plank-bridge safely and into the guild house beyond. Aelyn clambered through the window, the last one across, to find herself in a large gallery that she assumed must take up most of the entire floor. Wood and brass candelabras hung from the vaulted ceiling. A well-built firestep ran beneath the leaded windows all around the chamber, and Aelyn saw that a mixture of militia-militant and watchmen stood upon it. They had spyglasses with which to keep watch on the streets and rooftops all around, and copious stocks of ammunition close to hand. Much of the space was given over to solid workbenches and copious weapons racks, while through a nearby arched door she saw barrels marked with the Ironweld sigil for black powder marching away into shadow.
Aelyn took in a fair number of men and women in the gallery – easily more than a hundred at arms, she thought. From the faint sounds and smells of numerous unwashed and uneasy folk that came from elsewhere nearby, Aelyn assumed there must be refugees hiding here too. What was this place, she wondered. The watchmen had been cagey, when they were planning. They had only spoken of another safehouse, but this was clearly something more.
Two militiamen were reeling the gang-plank back in, while a group of ten watchmen kept the new arrivals at halberd-point. Nearby, a man clad in what Aelyn took to be clerk’s garb looked on with a face like thunder. She saw Romilla would not have to waste her energies; the man was already clutching a hand to what looked like a magnificently swelling bruise under his right eye.
‘What in Sigmar’s name was that?’ demanded Thackeray of the watchmen who guarded them. ‘We were almost killed!’
Another watchman first class, a tall woman with short-cut blonde hair, saluted and lowered her halberd.
‘Precautions, Thackeray. I had to remove a bit of red tape before you could be given admittance,’ she shook one fist ruefully and winced.
The clerk made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat. ‘Let us see the brooch again, then – properly, now that we can,’ he demanded, mopping sweat from his narrow brow with his free hand. ‘I might be the only one here still following proper protocol, but I’d like to make sure we’ve not admitted agents of the enemy into our midst. If you wouldn’t mind, Watchman First Class Kole?’
The blonde watchman sighed in exasperation. ‘We’ve seen the damned brooch, Stephan, we don’t–’
‘My friend is wounded and bleeding,’ said Aelyn, producing the brooch again from her pocket. ‘Have your proof then aid her, please.’
Shooting a pointed look at Stephan the clerk, Watchman First Class Kole gave the brooch a long look then gestured for her comrades to lower their weapons.
‘Get this one aid,’ she said, pointing to Romilla, who was pale and swaying. Polenna and another watchman hastened to the priest’s side and led her away to a row of nearby pallets where they laid her down and set to cleaning and sealing her wound.
‘Since when did guild clerks give orders to the city watch?’ asked Thackeray.
‘Since you chose to site your reserve armoury in the upper floors of our guild house,’ answered Stephan, stalking over to join them. ‘The mercantile guild must be protected in these terrible times. We’ve got dozens of merchants, traders and their families ensconced one floor down from this… fortress… and I’ll not allow the militia to draw hostile attention to them. I don’t care how many palms your captain greased in order to hide this facility up here.’
‘Families?’ asked Thackeray, somewhat mollified.
‘This is not a safehouse, that much is obvious,’ Aelyn observed. She looked questioningly around.
‘You are not a watchman,’ replied Kole. ‘How do you come to carry the captain’s seal? What is this, Thackeray? And what’s happening out there?’
‘Aelyn, I couldn’t tell you precisely where we were going in case anything happened to us on the way. The fewer people who know about it the better, you see? This is the city’s reserve armoury. A shared facility between the militia and the watch, stocked in case of a disaster like the one that has occurred. You learn about it when you progress from third class to second. Kole, this is Aelyn and the injured priest is Romilla. They’re… crusaders, in the captain’s employ. She charged them to aid us with the city’s defence before she passed.’
‘The captain is dead? How?’ exclaimed Kole, and a ripple of dismay radiated outwards through her fellow watchmen. While Thackeray explained as best he could, Aelyn had time to feel silently grateful to him for avoiding the term mercenaries. She supposed that crusader was closer to the truth, now, than mercenary. Certainly, vengeance for her friends had become a crusade to her, and Aelyn highly doubted she would be getting paid for her work here. If she even survived it.
The watchmen were interrogating Thackeray for more information on Captain Morthan’s death, but Aelyn interrupted.
‘Her loss is tragic. I have not long been in this city, and of all those I have met within its walls she was without doubt the most courageous and determined soul. But if I’m right, there is no time to discuss it now. I am sorry.’
The watchmen all turned to look at her, and Aelyn felt hostility radiating from many of them.
‘Why do you say this?’ asked Stephan sharply.
‘The omens. The Bad Moon’s rise. The level of planning the greenskins’ attack must have taken. We believe this to be more than just a chance invasion,’ said Aelyn, looking to Thackeray for support.
‘We came here for the view, Kole,’ he said. ‘What have your people seen from on high?’
‘Bloodshed, carnage and horror,’ she answered, and for a moment Aelyn saw just how tired and drawn the watchman was. ‘The enemy have looted and rampaged, and we’ve been forced to sit up here out of sight and watch it all occur. No orders, no communication, nothing. And when the rocks fell from the skies…’ she tailed off and exchanged looks with several of her comrades.
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‘There’s the rock in the square,’ said one of them. ‘Whatever they’re doing there.’
‘The meteor that hit Fountains Square?’ asked Aelyn. ‘What of it?’
‘When the fumes cleared, we saw that a few of the meteors had survived the impacts. Bits of them, anyway,’ said Kole. ‘That one’s the largest by far, and the greens have been swarming round it like skitterlings. Last word from the rooftop came down an hour ago, said they were carving a face on it, but how that could put the city in any more danger than it’s already in, Sigmar only knows.’
‘Show us,’ said Aelyn.
Kole looked to Thackeray, who nodded.
Aelyn stepped through an ironoak door and out onto the flat rooftop of the mercantile guild house. The view took her breath away, even dominated as it was by the bloated Bad Moon. The city spread out below, stretching away for miles around. Over there, Gallowhill loomed, smoke still drifting from the blasted crater on its peak. In every other direction she saw district upon district, street upon street, turning the foul colours of rot and ruin as fungi and squirming things overtook them. Up here, in the shadows of the looming volcanoes, one could truly appreciate the corruption that had taken root throughout Draconium. This was not a city they could save, she thought despairingly. It was already dead.
Still, Aelyn and Thackeray followed watchman Kole across the rooftop to where a pair of lookouts stood next to a bulky brass telescope. Others were dotted around the roof’s edge, she saw, concealed behind its bulky crenulations and watching silently as their city perished around them.
Kole issued brisk orders, and the two men at the telescope retrained it then stepped smartly aside. The watchman gestured, and Aelyn stepped forwards to stare through the telescope. Initially everything was blurred, until she realised that the watchmen had adjusted the device for human eyes. With their guidance, she gently turned the sighting wheels until the ruins of Fountains Square leapt suddenly into focus.
