by Warhammer
Gotrek grinned and nodded towards the ranks of beautiful ceremonial armour along the left wall. ‘We will carry armour for weight,’ he said. ‘Though you should put your own armour on top of the raft, or you won’t be light enough to float when we rise.’
As Felix struggled out of his armour and threw it onto the raft with the treasure, he marvelled once again at the change that had come over the Slayer. Only two weeks ago he had been slumped in the Three Bells, unable to string more than three words together, and now he was solving problems of engineering and survival of which Felix would never have been able to conceive. It was an amazing transformation.
The waiting was the hardest part. With all the work done, there was nothing to do but watch the water rise. They sat inside empty treasure chests, rising slowly with the water, hour after hour, inch by incremental inch, with the elven armour that Gotrek had insisted they use for weight belted around themselves so that they could swiftly drop it when they needed to later.
‘What do you know of this Harp of Ruin, Lord Aethenir?’ asked Max as they rose. His voice echoed strangely in the enclosed space.
Aethenir looked guilty at the mention of the thing. ‘Nothing more than Belryeth said,’ he replied. ‘I believe I might have read the name in some old texts, but I remember nothing else. There were many weapons created out of desperation during the first rise of Chaos that were later deemed too dangerous to use safely, and also too dangerous to destroy.’ He looked around the flooded room. ‘Thus they were locked away and often forgotten.’ He sighed. ‘One would have thought that this harp was doubly safe, hidden in this vault and buried as it was beneath the sea.’
‘Yes,’ said Rion bitterly. ‘One would have thought.’
Aethenir hung his head in shame.
After that, conversation faltered and they all just stared at the walls, glum and silent. With the water of the deep sea all around them, the vault, which had been chilly to begin with, now grew painfully cold, and they all shivered and hugged their knees. Only Gotrek, shirtless though he was, bore it without any sign of discomfort.
When it got too much to bear, Max cast a further spell of light which gave off a mild pleasant warmth as well. It wasn’t nearly enough.
Eventually the water rose above the doors, and its climb slowed even further. Still Gotrek told them they must wait, saying that the pressure must be completely equal or the doors wouldn’t budge. Now that the air wasn’t escaping through the crack that the water was coming in through, it started to become compressed, and Felix could feel it pushing on his eardrums and his chest. A while later it seemed to be pressing against his eyes. His head ached terribly, and the others were similarly affected. Aethenir got a spontaneous nosebleed that he had difficulty stopping.
Finally, after an hour where Felix’s pulse pounded in his temples like an orc war drum and they had to hunch down in their floating chests to avoid knocking their heads against the carved and gilded beams of the vault’s ceiling, Gotrek nodded.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Into the water. When you’re on the floor, lift the raft over your heads and set it down over your shoulders. Walk forwards and push the chests against the door. When we’re free of the palace, drop the armour. I’ll shift some of the treasure off the top too so we’ll rise.’ He looked around at them all. ‘Ready?’
Everyone nodded, though they didn’t look particularly ready.
‘Go,’ said Gotrek, and, taking a deep breath, he leaned to the side, tipped out of his chest and sank like a stone.
Rion and his warriors followed his example instantly, but Felix, Claudia, Max and Aethenir all hesitated a moment, looking around at each other with unhappy eyes, then they too took deep breaths, capsized their chests and plunged into the icy water.
The cold shock of it was like a blow to the head, and Felix fought a desperate urge to flail back to the surface. He opened his eyes. Max’s magical ball of light shone just as well under the water as above it, and suffused the sunken vault with an eerie greenish light, suspended silt sparkling like diamond dust in the murky water. Gotrek was already on the floor, the elves landing with dreamlike slowness all around him. Felix saw Max, Claudia and Aethenir sinking as well, their robes billowing around them like living flowers, then they too were on the floor and stepping with strange, bouncing strides to the treasure-laden raft, which hovered at about knee height.
Felix touched down a second later, his slow impact raising a puff of silt. His lungs were now crying for air, and the pressure on his chest was like a crushing fist. He bounced to the front of the raft and grabbed for an edge. Gotrek’s hand stopped him and he looked up.
The Slayer held up a hand and looked around at everyone, then, when he had their attention, motioned for them to lift all at once. The raft, which not even Gotrek would have been able to lift by himself on dry land, came up with ease and they raised it above their heads, then shuffled around until they were all under one of the upside-down chests – Felix, Gotrek and Rion in the first rank, Aethenir and the two remaining elf warriors in the middle rank, and Max and Claudia in the corner chests of the last rank.
Felix’s blood was beating in his throat now, and black spots danced in front of his eyes, so it was a great relief when they pulled on the under-slung ropes and lowered the strange contraption down over themselves. Felix gasped in great gulps of air as his head broke the surface, then he tried to slow his breathing as he realised how little air was within the inverted chest. Though it might save his life, the little cubicle was terrifyingly small, and he felt more closed in here than he had pressing against the roof of the vault. He hoped that none of the others suffered from a fear of small spaces.
There was a loud rap from Gotrek’s side of the chest and Felix started walking forwards. He looked down through the water and saw that Rion was doing the same, but Gotrek’s short legs were pedalling uselessly above the floor. He heard a muffled dwarf curse through the wood.
Another step and the raft boomed hollowly against the vault’s left-hand door. Felix placed his hands on the front wall of his chest and pushed with all his might. His feet scraped and slipped, struggling to gain purchase against the slick marble floor. Through the water he could see Rion doing the same, and the chests creaked as the others behind him applied pressure too.
The doors didn’t move. Felix strained harder. Still nothing. Panic began to rise in his chest. He heard another curse from his right, then a small splash. He looked down into the water again and saw Gotrek, out of his chest, pushing at the door with both hands. Still nothing happened, and Felix’s panic grew worse. Had the doors locked when they closed? Was the pressure still too unequal? Were the doors just too heavy to move without magic?
Then, with agonising slowness, Felix saw the bottom edge of the door inch forwards. He let out a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding, loud in the confines of the chest, and pressed all the harder. Slowly, but then more swiftly, the door began to swing open. Gotrek gave a final push, then leapt back up to his chest, and Felix heard hoarse breathing coming through the wood.
The door opened all the way with a shuddering thud that reverberated through the water and they were free. The raft shot ahead, the momentum almost dragging them across the antechamber towards the archway. They slowed by the time they reached the stairs, and began to ascend. After the first few steps, Felix noticed that the front of the raft started to angle up – only natural as they were on stairs – but alarming, as he heard the heaps of treasure above him shift, and a stream of bubbles escaped under the leading edge of his chest.
He heard another curse from Gotrek’s chest, then an angry slap.
‘Crouch down, manling!’ came Gotrek’s blunted voice. ‘Crawl! Tell the elf!’
Felix rapped at the left side of the chest. ‘Crouch down!’ he shouted. ‘Crawl!’ Then he started pulling down on the rope that underslung the chest. To his relief, the elf did the same, and the raft’s angle slowly evened out again. Felix, Gotrek and the elf began crawling up the sta
irs like turtles sharing the same shell.
At the first landing, Felix cautiously rose again. Fortunately, both the stairs and the landings were built on a grand scale, and they had no trouble manoeuvring around to start crawling up the next flight.
By the time they reached the entry chamber, the air inside the chest was rank and humid and thin. Felix tried to stop his heart from pumping in panic. It would be the cruellest of jokes if, after all of Gotrek’s genius invention, they died of asphyxiation just short of the surface.
They pushed quickly across the entry hall. Felix had a momentary flash of panic as he remembered that Max had closed the palace doors, and he ducked down into the water to look ahead. He needn’t have worried. The doors lay, splintered and bent on the marble floor, ripped off their hinges by the wall of water that had rocked the palace. Felix and the others walked over their twisted remains, then out onto the wide front steps, where Gotrek banged on the chests for them to stop.
‘Drop the armour!’ he called. ‘Pass it on!’
Felix rapped on the high elf’s side of his chest. ‘Drop the armour! Pass it on!’ He reached down into the water and undid the belt that held the elaborate elven ceremonial armour around his waist. It dropped away and he felt his toes rise off the steps.
Beside him, the Slayer‘s thick legs disappeared again and he heard heavy thuds and clunks above him. He looked up, then down as something bumped his boot. One of the treasure chests was settling down sideways on the steps, spilling bubbles and golden treasures.
A thud to the rear of the raft told him that Gotrek was being careful to dump their ballast in a way that wouldn’t raise one side of the raft before the others.
And the raft was indeed rising. Felix was busy thinking how much treasure was being lost forever, and didn’t notice at first, but then he was up to his chin in the water instead of his chest. He caught at the underslung rope and pulled himself up into the chest again as his feet floated off the steps. After another second he heard a splash and a gasp and a smug chuckle from Gotrek’s chest. The Slayer had reason to be proud. Everything he had planned seemed to be working.
Felix tried to look down at the city as they rose, but couldn’t see any distance through the ripples on the surface of the water in the chest, so he took a breath and ducked his head under again.
The sight below him was an eerie wonderland. What had looked like a sad, crumbling relic of lost glory when exposed to the air and the harsh light of day was, by the light of Max’s glowing globe, a beautiful blue dream of ruined towers and swaying seaweed taller than cedars. The coral and the strange undersea plants which had looked so dull and dry out of the water were now bright and lurid. Things like jewels glowed in the shadows with their own luminescence. It was a city where mermaids should live.
He pulled himself back into the air of the chest, gasping as his lungs burned, and found that the air within was hardly enough to give him relief. The spots in front of his eyes remained, and the blood pounded against the roof of his mouth, demanding to be fed.
He clung to the rope, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible and praying for the raft to rise faster. How deep was the city below the waves? A hundred feet? A hundred yards? A hundred fathoms? He had no idea. Deep enough that no sailor had ever seen or suspected the elven towers below.
The black spots began to crowd his eyes. His fingers tingled with pins and needles. He couldn’t feel the rope and had to look to be sure he was holding it. Then his heart leapt with hope. The sea around them was becoming brighter and Max’s light paler. They must be nearing the surface. He could hold on a little longer knowing that.
Then something heavy pushed past his legs. At first he thought it was Gotrek, heading for the back of the raft for some reason, but when he looked down he saw a thick grey trunk and a sharp tail. His air-starved mind took a second to put those things together, and then he gasped.
A shark!
Just as the realisation came to him, he heard a muffled scream from behind. He dropped his head down into the water and looked back. Beyond the kicking, dangling limbs of his companions, a shark the size of the Pride of Skintstaad’s long boat had an elf warrior in its jaws and was shaking him back and forth violently. The elf’s limbs flopped like a doll’s as plumes of red billowed from his body.
Felix fumbled for his sword, holding on to the rope with one hand. He looked towards Gotrek. The Slayer was in the water too, readying his axe and kicking towards the shark as Rion and the other warrior drew their swords and guarded Aethenir. Max and Claudia looked like they were trying to crawl up into their chests. Then Felix saw something beyond and below them that stopped his heart. Rising up from the murky, tower-pierced depths were more moving shadows – a whole school of sharks. Manann preserve us, he thought, we’re all dead.
Gotrek caught the shark by the tail and swung his axe, burying it in the creature’s slate-coloured side. Blood blossomed into the water and the shark flinched and spun, dropping its mangled prey to face this new threat. It lunged at Gotrek with a mouth the size of a rain barrel. Gotrek kicked up, trying to get out of the way, and the thing butted him in the stomach with its snout, smashing him back twenty feet. Felix slashed at it uselessly as it rushed past, and saw, to his horror, that a smaller snout was growing from the side of the shark’s head, complete with eyes and mouth, and its needle teeth were clamped down on the golden bracelets on the Slayer‘s left wrist. Was not even the sea free from the taint of Chaos?
Through a storm of black spots, Felix watched as the Slayer rained blow after blow on the head of the massive grey monster. The other sharks were close enough now that Felix could see their beady eyes gleaming through the murk. Rion and his last elf stayed close to Aethenir and turned towards the monsters as their dead comrade spun lazily down and away, red blood and white and green surcoat trailing gracefully behind him. Some of the sharks turned towards him, but most came on.
Suddenly Felix felt the rope go slack in his hand. He looked up, frightened. The raft had stopped rising. Had they hit some obstruction? Was something holding it down? Then he saw the dapple and shine of sunlight on water. They were at the surface!
Every fibre of his body screamed for him to climb to the air, but he couldn’t leave the others to the mercy of the sharks. He looked back and saw Rion and his last elf pushing Aethenir to the edge of the raft. Max was doing the same for Claudia. Felix clambered hand under hand to them and caught the seeress’s other arm. He and Max reached the side and lifted her up so that her head broke the surface. Felix’s face hit the air a second later. He took one gasping, glorious breath, saw that Claudia was doing the same, then ducked back down and grabbed her left leg as Max grabbed her right. Together they raised her up until her torso flopped on top of the raft.
Felix looked back towards Gotrek. The Slayer had hit some vital spot on the shark and it was flipping and flailing down through the water, a curling column of blood erupting from its side, while Gotrek frog-kicked back towards the surface, his left arm also spewing blood.
Half the oncoming sharks turned towards their wounded cousin but the rest still came on. Felix looked around. All he could see were the flailing legs of the others clambering onto the raft. He joined them, kicking up out of the water and gripping the soggy carpet with desperate fingers. He could feel the wound Aethenir had just healed ripping internally as he humped himself up. Max was crawling out beside him, hampered by his waterlogged robes. Rion and the other elf were rolling Aethenir up onto the chests by brute force. Felix flopped himself out at last and immediately turned back to the water. Gotrek’s head broke the surface and he sucked air as he kicked forwards, chopping his axe into top of the raft to try to pull himself up. Felix saw deep gashes in the Slayer‘s left wrist as he rushed to help. Half the gold bracelets upon it had been crushed so badly by the shark’s bite that they pressed deep into his flesh. Felix grabbed Gotrek by the shoulder, and hauled at him. The Slayer surged up and crashed to the carpet, breathing deeply.
‘
Friends, help me!’ called Aethenir.
Felix and Max crawled to where the high elf and the last elf warrior were trying to pull Rion out of the water. Felix caught him under the left arm, while Max grabbed his right.
But suddenly the elf captain jerked down in the water, nearly torn from their hands. He gasped, his eyes bulging.
‘Rion!’ cried Aethenir.
Gotrek joined them and all pulled desperately at Rion as something below tried to drag him down in the water. Then, with a horrible scream, the elf captain came up all at once and they fell back in a heap.
‘Rion!’ cried Aethenir again, scrambling up. ‘Are you…?’ His words ended in a cry of horror and he collapsed again.
Felix sat up to see what had happened. Rion’s right leg was covered in blood. His left leg was… gone. The ragged stump pumped gore all over the wet carpet in thick gouts. Max and Gotrek cursed. Claudia looked away.
Aethenir crawled to Rion and cradled his head. ‘Rion, I… I am sorry. I never…’
The dying captain reached up and clutched at Aethenir’s sleeve. He looked hard into his eyes. ‘Follow… the path of honour.’
‘I will,’ wept Aethenir. ‘I promise you. By Asuryan and Aenarion, I promise.’
Rion nodded, apparently satisfied, then closed his eyes and sank back, dead. Aethenir sobbed. His last elf hung his head. Felix found a lump blocking his throat, and fought down the unworthy thought that he would rather that it had been Aethenir who had died and Rion who had lived, for the captain had been the epitome of elven virtue that Aethenir should have been.
The last elf warrior began to pull Rion’s body to the centre of the carpet, but before he could take a step, a huge grey snout full of picket-fence teeth surged up out of the water and smashed the little raft, raising it out of the water and sending everyone flying. Felix crashed down on his wounded shoulder and nearly rolled off. Only Max’s sprawled body stopped him. The wizard tottered at the edge. Felix grabbed him and pulled him back. Nearby, Gotrek and the elf warrior were doing the same for Claudia and Aethenir.
