by Warhammer
The smoke was rising thickly now from the black paste, and a sweet, cloying scent reached Felix’s nose. His eyes watered. The slaves quickly covered the lamps with ceramic caps that looked like tobacco pipes with two stems. Felix had no idea what the strange devices were for until the slave who knelt next to him put one of the stems to his lips and pointed the other at Felix’s face.
A stream of sweet smoke shot from the stem, right at Felix’s nose. He pulled back and tried to turn his head, but the ropes held him too tightly. He couldn’t get away from it.
‘The black lotus,’ said Aethenir, choking. ‘They seek to drug us!’
Felix held his breath, but a second slave, a little boy of no more than nine or ten, reached forwards and pinched Felix’s nostrils shut while the first punched him in the stomach. Felix gasped and sucked in an involuntary gulp of smoke. He choked and sputtered as the resinous poison filled his lungs, but then had to inhale again just to breathe, and took in more smoke. He could hear Aethenir and Gotrek coughing and cursing as well.
The third lungful was easier, and the fourth was actually pleasant, the smoke slipping silkily down his throat and spreading sweet languor through his veins. The cold and the discomfort of the ropes felt far away, cushioned by a delicious warmth that felt like the heat of a summer sun radiating from his lungs. By the fifth lungful he was straining forwards to catch as much of the smoke as he could.
Aethenir’s choking protests quietened as well. Only Gotrek continued coughing and cursing. Felix wished he would stop. The Slayer‘s struggles were disturbing his lovely lethargy.
A moment later, Felix’s pipe slave got up and went to blow smoke in Gotrek’s face instead, as did Aethenir’s. Felix was sad that the smoke was gone, and he was angry with Gotrek for being so greedy, but sadness and anger took too much energy to maintain, and he quickly let go of them, content to relax into the sluggish current of contentment that flowed through his veins.
After a while even Gotrek’s struggles subsided, and then more slaves came, this time with buckets of some foul-smelling grease that they rubbed into the ropes to loosen their hold. Felix watched with idle interest as his sword was carried away, followed by Gotrek’s axe. There was some sort of seismic convulsion behind him at this, and another when further slaves carried away the Slayer‘s golden bracelets, but both times the eruptions subsided again in a rumble of slurring curses.
Then the grease was rubbed on the rest of the ropes and Felix, Gotrek and Aethenir were pulled from the net. More slaves helped Felix to his feet and took off his armour, jerkin and shirt, then put shackles on his wrists and his ankles that were connected by a chain so short he couldn’t stand upright. He thought the shackles were silly. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He just wanted to lie down again. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let him. They locked his chains to a ring on the central mast and left him there with Gotrek and Aethenir. It wasn’t comfortable, but he was too happy to care. He just stared ahead as the high crags of the black island loomed closer. It quickly filled his vision from edge to edge. It must be the size of Nuln, he thought dreamily. He wondered if they had a college of engineering too. That would be nice.
After a time he could differentiate between the island’s jagged grey granite cliffs and the towering black basalt walls that topped them. Tall, crenellated watchtowers rose up at every turn of the wall, each crowned with a halo of wind-whipped fire. For a moment Felix thought that they were going to crash right into the granite cliffs, and he giggled at the druchii’s foolishness. They would smash their pretty boat. But then he saw that what he had taken for a dark shadow next to a craggy outcropping was actually the mouth of a black cave. Felix’s head tipped back and back as the roof of the cave came closer and closer, then swallowed them entirely. For a while all was dark, and he found that restful, but then an orange glow appeared in the darkness before the ship, a flickering light that reflected on rough stone walls and a baroque filigree of stalactites that thrust down from the ceiling high above them.
Then the dark channel opened out into a vast underground bay, at the far end of which great fires blazed in giant braziers mounted on towers that rose above a long line of docks and wharfs. It reminded Felix of Barak Varr – not nearly as big, or as brightly lit, but just as full of ships. There must have been more than thirty low-slung galleys docked in the harbour, as well as many smaller ships and boats, including some that looked like Old World merchantmen. Felix thought the light of the flames dancing on the black water as their ship rowed towards the braziers was the most fascinating thing he had ever seen.
The Clan Skryre skaven at the periscope turned and bowed to Thanquol, who stood in the centre of the bridge of the mighty skaven submersible, trembling with excitement.
‘They have been taken into the ark, grey seer,’ said the sailor.
Issfet smiled up at Thanquol fawningly. ‘It has happened just as you hoped, oh most geriatric of masters,’ he shrilled.
‘Yes-yes,’ said Thanquol, rubbing his paws together. ‘Now we must only be patient, for surely, where my nemeses go, ruin and confusion must follow.’
It had better, he thought darkly. For he had paid dearly for the use of the submersible, in oaths of alliance, promises of warp tokens and pledges of future services rendered, none of which he was in any position to deliver. If he failed to recover the Harp of Ruin, he was ruined.
By the time the dark elf ship docked, and Felix, Gotrek and Aethenir were prodded down the gangplank to the busy stone dock by spear-wielding druchii, the lotus smoke’s sweet euphoria had soured and gone flat. The warmth that had filled Felix’s veins had turned to a dull numbness, and his fascinated gaze had become a blank stare. It was hard to think, hard to remember to move until the butt of a spear thudded into his back. His feet, as he shuffled through the crowded streets of the cave-roofed port with the others, felt encased in mud, and he tripped often on the too-short chains that rattled between them. When his captors stopped to talk to guards who stood at either side of a great arch set in a rock wall, he stopped and stared straight ahead until they pushed him forwards again, too torpid to care about his surroundings.
He passed unseeing through wide, crowded corridors, looking neither right nor left. Only once did he look up, when he heard a garbled mumble from Aethenir and saw the elf staring dully ahead of them. Felix swung his head around heavily and saw, coming up the wide passage that they were shuffling down, a tall, scarred druchii noble in beautiful black and silver armour, accompanying a proud, cold-eyed druchii woman in flowing black robes and an elaborate headdress. They were escorted by a double file of silver-masked warriors who shoved aside anyone who didn’t get out of their way.
Felix blinked at the woman. He knew her. His lotus-smothered brain churned as he wondered how. Then he remembered. It was the sorceress who had spun the silver ring on the metal wand. The one who had let the ocean close on top of them. Fear tried to fight through his lethargy, tried to tell him to look away so that she would not see him and recognise him, but the warning reached him much too late, and he didn’t look down until the sorceress and her noble companion had already passed him. It hadn’t mattered. They had spared not a glance for chained slaves. They hadn’t even noticed their existence.
Their guards led them down a long zigzag stairway into the depths of the floating island, which got colder and damper the deeper they descended, until they passed through a gate into a chamber lit with thickly smoking torches, then through another gate, and finally into a low square chamber with iron doors in its walls. A number of wooden railings sectioned the floor of the room off into paths that led to the doors. Felix couldn’t think what they reminded him of until a dim memory of his father taking him to a stockyard in Averheim formed in his head. The cows had been forced into runs just like this as they were divided into lots.
Druchii guards in leather armour came out of a room to one side, followed by another in robes who prodded forwards a bent-over slave with what looked like an enormous book strapped t
o his back. The robed druchii talked with their captors briefly, examined Felix, Gotrek and Aethenir from all sides, then stepped to the slave and opened the book on his back. He made some notations in it, then gave their captors some sort of receipt. The slavers left the way they had come as the guards led Felix, Gotrek and Aethenir to one of the iron doors, unlocked it, and prodded them into a pitch-dark cell, then slammed and locked the door behind them.
Felix could see nothing at first, and could hear nothing but rustling and a constant low buzzing. His nose wasn’t so lucky. The reek of human waste hit him like a solid wall, forcing its way through his smoke-deadened senses and making him gag. Then his eyes became accustomed to the dim reflected light of the torches outside, and he saw the source of the smell.
The room was like a tunnel – long, low and dark – with what appeared to be a raised bench running down the centre at knee height, and it was packed with more people than Felix had ever seen in so small a place. Emaciated men, women and children covered the filth-smeared floor like a carpet, sitting, squatting or lying as best they could – the short chains between their wrists and ankles making it impossible to stretch out. Hundreds of dull eyes turned to look at him and Gotrek and Aethenir, blinking at them with empty misery.
Felix, Gotrek and Aethenir stared back at them. They were horrible-looking wretches, dressed in rags, covered in filth and gaunt with starvation. Many of them showed open, untreated wounds and trembled with fever, and Felix realised that the buzzing he had heard was the sound of the thousand, thousand flies that crawled all over them, feasting.
A man halfway down the left wall stood and glared at them. ‘Stolen treasure, you said!’ he rasped, shaking his chains. ‘A tiny druchii scout ship, you said!’
It took a moment for Felix to realise that the haggard wreck who was spitting so venomously at him was Hans Euler.
FOURTEEN
Surprise fought through Felix’s drug-induced dullness. ‘Herr Euler?’
‘Aye, you lying little trickster!’ said Euler, as the remnants of his crew began to stand all around him. ‘First the damned rats come for you, then an entire fleet of dark elves. By Manann’s deeps, I curse the day you walked into my house, you wrecker!’
His men glared at Felix menacingly. Felix saw Broken-Nose and One-Ear among them. He didn’t know how much damage they could do with their wrists and ankles shackled, but he didn’t want to find out. He shot a glance at Gotrek. The Slayer was still staring straight ahead, apparently oblivious to everything around him.
Felix put his hands as high as the chains would let him. ‘Herr Euler, please. I didn’t lie. I just didn’t know all the facts. I thought the scout ship was alone.’
‘A likely story,’ sneered Euler.
‘But what happened?’ asked Felix. ‘Are Magister Schreiber and Fraulein Pallenberger with you? Did they survive?’
‘Does my guard, Celorael, live? Asked Aethenir.
Euler shrugged. ‘The elf died fighting the rats. The magisters were alive when we were brought here, but they were taken away.’
Felix’s heart sank at that. Where had they been taken? What had been done to them? Did they still live?
‘They did well by us at least,’ said Euler. ‘Didn’t sneak off like some I could mention when the going got rough. Although the little seeress is a regular little nutcase, I have to say.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Felix.
‘Jumped in the sea when she’d found you’d disappeared during the fight with the rats. Thought they had taken you.’
Felix blinked. ‘She jumped in the water?’
‘Aye,’ said Euler. ‘We’d chased the rat-things away and found you were missing. Magister Schreiber insisted that we come about and look for you, thinking you had fallen overboard, but the seeress said the rats had you and that we had to swim down to their ship and save you.’ He shook his head. ‘There was no ship to be seen, but she said it was under the water and that it was all her fault. She dived in with all her clothes on, and we had to get a hook out before she drowned.’
Felix blinked again. ‘That… does sound peculiar.’ What could Claudia have meant, saying it was her fault? Surely she hadn’t summoned the skaven. They had been after him and Gotrek all along.
‘But she did well when we found the dark elves. She and the magister blasted them with light and lightning like they were sun and storm, but it wasn’t enough.’ He shook his head. ‘We’d nearly chased down your little scout ship when out of the fog came five black galleys. We turned and ran, but we were no match for their sweeps. The magister and the girl loosed their spells over the aft rail as we peppered them with the nine-pounders. Her lightning set one of the galleys alight and it crashed into another, but then the scout ship came to the fore and six elf women stepped into her prow.’ He spat. ‘That was the end of your friends, and then the end of us. Weird black clouds balled them up and dropped them to the deck, choking and puking – and with them gone, we didn’t stand a chance.’
Aethenir muttered something at this, but Felix didn’t hear what it was.
‘I’m sorry, Herr Euler,’ said Felix. ‘I had no idea it would end like this.’ Much as he disliked the man, he wouldn’t wish this fate on anyone. Of course, if the fool hadn’t come chasing after them looking for treasure, he would be at home nibbling on jam tarts in his cosy little office.
‘Never mind your damned “sorry”,’ said Euler. ‘We’ll settle what’s between us if we somehow manage to escape this pit.’ He sat back down against the wall. ‘Until then, just stay away from me and mine. You’re bad luck.’
Felix nodded, then picked his way awkwardly through the close-packed bodies of his fellow prisoners towards the opposite wall to find a space to sit. Gotrek and Aethenir clanked dully after him.
Felix woke some unknowable time later, his mouth dry and foul, his head aching, but at last clear of the black smoke’s lulling lethargy. He looked around blearily. The torch-tinged darkness of the cell was unchanged, so it was impossible to tell how long he had been asleep. The filthy bodies of other prisoners pressed against him from all sides. Most lay curled up in sleep, though others moaned with pain, or sat and stared straight ahead, or shivered and twitched in the throes of sickness as the flies rose and fell in clouds all around them and the dark shapes of bold rats squirmed through the crowd. Aethenir had his head on his knees next to him, his splinted, fettered hands curled in his lap. Gotrek lay on his side. No one spoke. No one raged. No one tried to free themselves from their fetters.
And why should they? The reality of their situation hadn’t truly sunk in for Felix before. The lassitude of the drug, the surprise of seeing Euler there, the story he had told – all had momentarily pushed it aside. But now, waking among the lost and the damned in a slave pen in the depths of a floating dark elf island, no doubt sailing at this moment towards the far shores of Naggaroth, with their weapons taken from them and numberless dark elf warriors and sorceresses between them and the dubious escape of the sea, he could understand their despair. There was no hope. None at all. They would die here, or as slaves in some dark elf city. He wished he had more of the black smoke. Everything would be better with a few whiffs of blissful oblivion.
To his right, Aethenir shifted, then raised his head and opened his eyes.
He closed them again with a groan. ‘So it wasn’t a dream.’
‘You aren’t pleased?’ asked Felix sourly. ‘Didn’t you want to find the dark elves so we could recover the harp?’
‘Do not make jokes, Herr Jaeger,’ said the high elf. ‘There is no hope for us now. It would have been better for us to have died by the teeth of the sea dragon, for the death the druchii give their slaves is cruel by comparison.’ He shivered.
Strangely, though he had been thinking much the same thing only seconds before, hearing Aethenir say it out loud stirred Felix’s contrary nature.
‘While we have life there is hope,’ he said, trying to sound like he meant it.
‘We have no li
fe,’ said Aethenir. ‘We were dead the moment the druchii net settled over our heads. Our corpses still twitch, that is all.’
Gotrek woke with a snort to Felix’s left. He blinked his eye and looked around, then instinctively tried to reach over his shoulder for his axe. His chains stopped him. He tugged harder.
‘It’s gone, Gotrek,’ said Felix.
‘Where is it?’
‘The dark elves took it.’
Gotrek struggled to sit up, fighting the shackles. He stopped as he looked down at his blood-caked bare arms. ‘Where is my gold?’
‘They took that too.’
Gotrek went still, his hands clenching so tight that the bulging of his thick wrists made his manacles creak. ‘I will kill every elf in this place.’
He stood, growling, and gripped the chain that connected his wrist manacles to his ankle fetters, preparing to wrench it.
‘Wait, Gotrek,’ said Felix. If he was going to pretend to be hopeful, he had to pretend to do his best to turn that hope into a reality. ‘We need a plan.’
‘Damn all plans,’ said Gotrek, wrapping the chain around his bound wrists. ‘I will not be chained.’
The other prisoners were looking around sleepily at the Slayer.
‘Shut up, can’t you?’ said a tired voice.
‘Gotrek,’ Felix whispered quickly. ‘If you reveal your strength now, the druchii will kill you before you get a chance to use it. Hide it until we can do something useful with it.’
‘What’s more useful than killing druchii?’
‘How many will you kill unarmed?’ Felix asked. ‘A few jailors? Is that enough? Wouldn’t you like to die with your axe in your hands?’
Gotrek paused and turned to Felix, his eye blazing. ‘Aye. I would.’
‘Then wait. We may find a way to escape this cell and find it.’
‘And if not?’ asked Gotrek.
‘Then you’re more than welcome to break free and kill as many as you can.’
