by Warhammer
‘The guild house armoury still stands,’ Marika replied. ‘We could wage a guerrilla campaign, clear them out bit by bit, get the surviving citizens to safety. And if the rains return, then we’d see how long their filthy fungus stands up to a good honest Draconium downpour. Scald the lot of them, I say.’
‘We might hurt them, for a while, but look at this place,’ said Thackeray. He gestured to the patches of damp spreading across the walls, the nub-like toadstools that had begun to push up through the wood of the desk. They had cleaned glistening spiders’ webs out of the corners several times already, but somehow, they kept returning larger and more sinister-looking than before. ‘While the Bad Moon hangs above our city, I do not believe we can stop the corruption that is spreading, and I don’t think we can count on the rains. Sigmar’s hammer, we’ve not even seen cheffing night and day now for… well, does anyone know?’
‘It has been in the region of three days and four hours since the Bad Moon rose,’ said Aelyn.
‘Right,’ said Thackeray, faltering for a moment then ploughing on. ‘Even if we could somehow banish that damned moon from the skies, even if we could stop the rot, there must be thousands of grots and monsters infesting Draconium by this point. We’re outnumbered so severely it’s a dark jest. We’re prey in our own city, and they the predators.’
‘Well then, should we not try to evacuate those who still live?’ demanded Shen. ‘We swore an oath to protect the people of Draconium, Thackeray. Are you going to let some sellswords talk you into abandoning that in favour of a vainglorious gesture of defiance?’
‘Vainglorious? Sellswords?’ Bartiman’s voice was indignant, and Romilla was glad to hear at least a ghost of his normal vitriol return. ‘Young man, we could have turned around and walked away any number of times this last turning, and left you fools and your doomed city to rot. But we haven’t, have we? We’ve fought, and we’ve lost, right alongside you, long after the coin dried up, because above all we serve Sigmar, as do you! There is nothing vainglorious about that!’
‘Even if you could gather the survivors, even if you could somehow lead them out of Draconium without suffering the same fate as those cultists, what then?’ asked Romilla. ‘The only safe direction to take them would be south, towards the settled lands around Hammerhal. The greenskins’ poisons would catch up to you and that would be an end to it.’
She watched the expressions of the three watchmen carefully. She understood the frustration and struggle she saw there. Romilla knew what it was to feel powerless as those you had sworn to protect were taken from you.
‘So, we blow it all up,’ said Shen, eventually. His shoulders slumped in defeat. ‘How?’
Marika turned away and paced to the window, waves of bitterness and anger rolling off her.
‘Eleanora?’ prompted Romilla. The engineer looked up, her eyes fighting to focus. Romilla had given her every tincture and potion she could think of that might halt the spread of poison from that damned spider bite; she had laid hands upon Eleanora’s wound and prayed for Sigmar’s intercession, but she had felt only the malevolence of the Bad Moon burning down upon them, and the faint but nauseating sensation of things twitching beneath the taut skin of Eleanora’s shin. Romilla felt dread for the fate of her young ward, but also a fierce pride that despite everything Eleanora had not given in.
‘My first thought was that we could use the stores of powder that you described in the guild house,’ said Eleanora, her words sounding laboured.
‘Those stores are meant for our cannons, not for indiscriminate demolition,’ snapped Marika.
‘It doesn’t matter what they’re meant for, they wouldn’t be any good to us anyway,’ replied Eleanora. ‘The last we saw, the Moonclan grots were making stacks of poison barrels beside their idol in the middle of Fountains Square. Located directly beside the headwater of the canal into which we’re assuming they wish to dump the poison. I believe we can therefore safely work on the basis that they do not intend to move the poison again until they are ready to use it. Providing they have not already done so, obviously.’
A few faces paled at this thought, but Thackeray shook his head.
‘A runner reached us from the guild hall an hour ago. She reported no sign of the poisons being dumped yet. Lots of what looked like ritual preparation, though.’
Eleanora blinked at Thackeray, began to count off the fingers of her right hand, stopped herself and then carried on as though he hadn’t spoken.
‘Making a direct attempt to reach the poison seems unlikely to succeed,’ she said. ‘Too exposed, too many greenskins. Besides which, the powder barrels are large and unwieldy and would require wagons for transportation, which we do not possess.’
‘All right, not the powder barrels, we understand that much,’ said Shen impatiently.
‘Just let her do this her way, you won’t be disappointed,’ said Romilla, her tone firm.
‘I then factored in alternative methods of approach. Specifically, the sewer tunnels that run beneath all the major streets of this city. While I was working in the Ironweld Guildhouse I acquired reading materials on my rest breaks and learned as much as I could about the city’s infrastructure and design. They hold… um, held… extremely detailed plans of Draconium’s transport systems, defensive structures, some impressively advanced spark-lantern patents, and the sewer network.’
‘You’re suggesting we could approach through the sewers, get the powder supplies in under the square?’ asked Thackeray. ‘We’d need maps from the guildhouse, wouldn’t we?’
Eleanora stopped long enough to check he wasn’t going to say anything else, then continued.
‘The powder barrels still could not be deployed in this way. Too confined a space, too slow a method, and we wouldn’t be able to guarantee a large enough concentration of explosives in the pumping chamber located beneath Fountains Square, especially if it has sustained structural damage, which seems likely.’
‘So what then?’ snapped Shen. ‘Sigmar’s oath, we’ll all be dead by the time you get to the point.’
Eleanora levelled a flat stare at him. ‘Without understanding the reasoning behind what I am suggesting, you would only ask unhelpful questions that I would then have to provide answers for anyway. By showing you how I reached my conclusions, I save us all time having to explain why I am right.’
Romilla couldn’t help but feel a little spark of amusement at Shen’s expression, despite the grimness of the situation. He looked as though he had swallowed a frog, she thought.
‘By all means, continue. We will not interrupt again,’ said Thackeray stiffly.
‘The thermal pipes,’ said Eleanora, leaping suddenly to the point as though it should be obvious to everyone in the room. ‘According to the plans that I memorised, they draw vast quantities of heat and pressure up from the volcanic reservoir beneath Draconium, then diffuse it through a series of shunt-pipes and cogwork heat-locks while bleeding off the excess via venting valves at regular intervals. If given access to the shunting board controls in the pipeworks, and assuming damage to the pipe network itself has not been in excess of workable parameters, I ought to be able to close enough valves and direct enough pressure flows to create a catastrophic overpressure event directly beneath the square.’
‘And that would be a violent enough explosion to guarantee the poison was destroyed, not just, say, blown sky high and scattered across the city?’ asked Marika.
‘It would,’ replied Eleanora. ‘I calculate that with the correct application of heat and pressure, magnified by the ferocity-factor applicable to all Aqshian natural magics, we will entirely incinerate the barrels and boil off the poison within. In addition, anything stood within one hundred paces of the greenskins’ meteor shrine will be killed in the blast, which I believe will cave in the heart of the square entirely. To warn you of an undesireable side-effect – if successful, my plan will definitel
y render the thermal heating system permanently inoperable.’
‘I think the people of Draconium have greater worries than their heating just now,’ said Romilla.
‘Will it definitely work?’ asked Shen.
Eleanora just stared at him, then counted off her fingers, right then left.
‘If she says it will work, then it will,’ said Romilla. ‘The question is, how do we make it happen?’
‘I’ve heard nothing of the pipeworks, but I can’t imagine it’s any safer or less beset than any other part of Draconium,’ said Thackeray. ‘Send too small a band of soldiery and we risk being caught or devoured. Send too large a force and we’ll draw the attention of the greenskins from half the city. And Sigmar knows, we can’t let any harm come to Ms VanGhest there – none of the rest of us would have the first notion of how to effect the act of sabotage you just described.’
‘What if we staged a diversionary attack?’ asked Aelyn. ‘Ensure that our enemies are looking anywhere but the pipeworks at the crucial moment?’
‘The square itself?’ suggested Thackeray.
‘Sticking one’s hand into the squig burrow, rather, isn’t it?’ asked Bartiman.
‘Yes, but that’s exactly why it’s a good idea,’ said Marika, sounding excited. ‘Their idol is there, yes? Their poison? If I were to gamble, I would suggest their leaders can’t be far from the site either, or who else would be commanding such industry from such anarchic creatures?’
‘All their most crucial targets, all in one place,’ mused Romilla. ‘That would prompt a response wouldn’t it?’
‘It would be all the more dangerous, that’s for damned sure,’ said Bartiman, but his tone carried more excitement than his words. ‘I mean, you do remember that is the same square that we’re planning to blow up, yes? With fire?’
‘Hit and fade,’ said Aelyn. ‘We muster as much strength as we can, send runners to the other safehouses, to the guild house… we coordinate on a signal, make as much noise as we can on the way in to really draw their attention. Meanwhile, Eleanora and a band of your watchmen make for the pipeworks, reach the controls and do what must be done.’
‘We could instruct the garrisons to evacuate their civilians a short time after the signal, also?’ suggested Marika. ‘It’s the best chance they’re going to have to get the people of Draconium out of here.’
‘Slim chance all the same,’ said Bartiman. ‘And damnation but there’s a lot that could go wrong with this plan. What if the greenskins don’t take the bait? What if Eleanora gets to the pipeworks and finds it seething with monsters, or just wrecked? What if the pipes aren’t up to snuff after all the tremors and explosions and what have you?’
‘That, I’m afraid, is where faith must come in, Bartiman,’ said Romilla. ‘I don’t think anyone else has a better plan?’ She looked around the room, receiving only blank expressions and shaken heads in reply. ‘No, then this is what we will do, and we will offer up prayers to Sigmar, to Grungni, to Alarielle and all the other gods of good that it works.’
‘Righto then,’ said Bartiman with a wheezing chuckle. ‘Just wanted to check. I don’t think Eleanora should go alone, though, eh? No offence,’ he said, gesturing airily to the assembled watchmen. ‘But the Swords of Sigmar watch out for one another. One of us should accompany our young engineer.’
‘It should be you,’ said Aelyn to Romilla.
The priest had seen this coming, and took a deep breath.
‘You know that I would be of great help in the march upon the square,’ she said. ‘My prayers, my oratory – I was trained for the battlefield, Aelyn.’
‘And yet, if Eleanora’s… condition… overcomes her before the work can be completed, this will all be for naught,’ said Aelyn. ‘You alone possess such skills.’
Romilla knew she could have added that the priest had acted as a virtual mother-figure to Eleanora for years, that the two shared a bond the rest of the Swords couldn’t touch. She didn’t need to. They all knew it.
‘Very well,’ said Romilla, and Eleanora favoured her with a wan smile.
‘We’ll detail half of the watchmen in this safehouse to accompany you,’ said Shen. ‘That’ll give you twelve able-bodied protectors, Ms VanGhest. The rest of us will accompany the diversionary attack.’
‘I’ll have Yenstin and O’Mord hang back with the civilians,’ said Marika. ‘I’ll have them wait for a steady count of six hundred then take the survivors out along Cotter’s Rise and down through the Shiftings. It’s the quickest route to the East Postern.’
‘We’ll send out runners at once,’ said Shen. ‘It will take time to disseminate the plan, and we don’t have time to dicker with anyone squeamish. We shall just have to pray to Sigmar that they hold to the plan.’
‘What shall be our signal?’ asked Aelyn.
‘We’ve a few signalling rockets still dry in the first-floor armoury,’ said Marika. ‘I’ll have a team take them a couple of streets over where they won’t draw undue attention to this safehouse, then let them off. The whole city ought to see those things fly.’
With that, the plan was set and the watchmen first class hurried off to issue orders and prepare their soldiery. The Swords of Sigmar were left in the office to gird themselves for one last fight. They were all injured, Romilla thought, all bone tired and numb from their losses.
‘We are still here,’ she said aloud, and her friends looked up from their preparations. ‘We are still alive, still able to do Sigmar’s will, still able to avenge our friends.’
‘In the names of Varlen, Hendrick and Olt then,’ said Aelyn. She didn’t add Borik, Romilla noted. They all wanted to hope their comrade had made it out alive. To name him would have felt like a jinx.
‘Good fortune to us all, and we will meet again when the battle is done,’ said Romilla, raising her hammer amulet and tracing it through the air in blessing.
Bartiman gave a dry chuckle. ‘And for those who don’t make it,’ he said, ‘we’ll be sure to meet again in the Land of Endings, where Hendrick, Olt and Varlen wait.’
Chapter Sixteen
LURKING
In the event, it took several hours to send out runners, receive replies and ready the city’s meagre forces for their last fight back. Crouched in the gloom of the safehouse, the Swords of Sigmar could do little more than watch the damp creep up the walls, stand their turns peering out of the windows and watching for danger, and try not to think too hard about what came next.
Aelyn was relieved when, at last, Marika’s team of signalmen slipped out of the safehouse’s side door with their armful of alchemical rockets. When the projectiles exploded in bright red and green starbursts a few minutes later, she was standing in the house’s hallway amongst the press of watchmen and her few remaining comrades, her weapons in hand. Aelyn did not show her feelings as the humans did, but the creatures that had attacked this city had cost her much and caused her great pain and sorrow. Now those feelings turned to a cold and furious determination. Bartiman had been right, their plan was a desperate one and liable to fail, but Aelyn vowed that it would not do so on her account. She would honour her distant Wanderer clan with her deeds this day, even if word never reached them of how she had fought and, likely, fallen.
‘That’s the signal,’ said Watchman Shen, who stood at the fore. ‘Thackeray, you and your men get her to the pipehouse no matter what, understood?’
‘In the name of Sigmar and Draconium,’ replied Watchman Thackeray.
‘No harm will come to Eleanora while we draw breath,’ added Romilla. Looking at her comrade’s shaved, scarred and tattooed scalp, her broad shoulders, heavy warhammer and look of absolute determination, Aelyn could well believe it.
‘We do this now in Captain Morthan’s name,’ said Shen, and the assembled watchmen gave a murmur of approval. They would not shout, or cheer, not yet while they still wished to remain u
nseen. Soon, though, thought Aelyn. Soon.
Hoods were raised, gloves and cloth masks adjusted to ward off the filthy moonlight and the choking spores. Pistols were checked one last time and halberds hefted.
Shen opened the safehouse door, pistol drawn, and led the way out into the twilight.
Watchman Thackeray led the way through the city’s winding streets, and Romilla followed with Eleanora close on her heels. Their bodyguard of watchmen maintained a loose cordon around them, alert for the slightest sign of danger.
The footing was treacherous as they tramped over slimy cobbles and through thick outcroppings of fungi. A spore-thick mist drifted between the buildings and reduced visibility to a hazy suggestion of shadows through which the Bad Moon’s light shone, diffuse and leprous. It made it hard to avoid tripping over the rotting corpses that lay scattered about the streets, their bodies thick with mould. The effect was worsened by the waves of strange energies that pulsed from the Bad Moon above, causing them moments of sudden dizziness and confusing aural hallucinations, and making it appear that ghosts wrought in psychedelic hues flickered through the mists around them.
The pipehouse stood on the edge of the Pipers’ District, a good half-hour’s trek through the city streets under such conditions. Eleanora had suggested another route, however, one they were now approaching. Thackeray stopped as snarls and jabbered words echoed through the muffling fog. He motioned for them to close up, and backed carefully into the shadows of a half-collapsed eatery. Romilla glanced through a shattered window into the eatery’s dark interior as they hunkered outside. A rudimentary barricade had been raised here, she saw, fashioned from heaped tables and benches. It was sundered at its centre, smashed apart, its splintered wreckage damp with rot and seething with burrowing worms. Further back, she saw the suggestion of flyblown corpses.
Romilla’s attention snapped back to the street as something moved in the spore-mists. She saw dark shapes, short and hunched with pointed black hoods and glinting red eyes. The grots picked their way along the street in a ragged column, a dozen or so chattering in their crude, spiteful voices. One near the front hefted a tattered flag depicting a leering half-moon on a field of black. Romilla saw freshly flensed skulls dangling from the banner’s cross-pole, crude twine looped through their eye sockets and beetles skittering over their surface. Several of the greenskins looked to be arguing with one another, while one near the back was carrying a human-sized helmet upside down like a bucket, plucking small objects out of it and popping them into its mouth with gusto. Romilla did her best not to look any closer. She had no desire to find out what such creatures considered a delicacy.
