by Warhammer
They crossed to the second barracks and looked through those windows. These were clearly the officers’ quarters. There was a well-appointed entry way, the stone walls covered with ebony panelling and mounted with witchlights, and a central corridor leading away into darkness. No one was in sight.
‘This one first,’ said Felix.
Gotrek stepped to the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped through. Felix, Aethenir, Farnir and Jochen’s pirates followed him in. They padded silently down the corridor. It had two lavishly carved doors on each side and a plain one at the far end. Felix and Aethenir listened at each of the carved doors in turn, but heard nothing. They continued on.
Gotrek listened at the door at the end of the hall, then tried it. It too was unlocked. A feeling of unease crept over Felix. They should have been challenged by now. They should have met some resistance.
On the other side of the door was a narrow set of stairs going down into darkness. Aethenir made a tiny ball of light with a snap of his fingers and Gotrek started down. Felix and the others followed.
They came down into a supply room, bedding and candles and sundries stacked in crates along the walls. At the far end of the room was a heavy door. There was a chair and a table outside it, and the remains of a meal drawing flies.
‘That’s it,’ said Gotrek, and started forwards.
Felix and the others crept along behind him, weapons at the ready. Felix held his breath, expecting hidden druchii to leap out of the shadows at every step. No attack came.
Gotrek put his hand on the latch and turned it. It opened easily. He threw the door wide, revealing blackness beyond.
Aethenir sent his light in before them. The room was small and bare but for two piles of filthy straw. Gotrek and Felix stepped cautiously inside. It smelled of urine and sweat and rotting food. There were grimy, blood-spattered rags on the floor. Some of them might have once been deep blue, others might have once been gold and white, but of Max and Claudia there was no sign.
SEVENTEEN
A druchii voice called a question behind them and they turned. A young dark elf stood upon the stairs, a witchlight torch in one hand.
Aethenir called to him, beckoning him forwards, but the youth, seeing them all with their weapons, sensed something wrong and ran back up the stairs, shouting warnings.
Felix cursed and sprinted after him, pounding up the stairs and into the hall. A door opened halfway down, and the youth, looking back towards Felix, ran smack into it and fell reeling to the ground. A slave looked out from the open door, then shrieked and darted back, slamming it behind him.
Felix pounced on the young druchii before he could recover himself and pinned him to the floor, putting his sword across his throat.
‘The mages!’ he hissed. ‘Where are they? Where have you taken them?’
The youth babbled in the druchii tongue. Felix shook him. ‘Reikspiel, damn you!’
There were footsteps behind him and Gotrek and Aethenir joined him, followed closely by the pirates.
Aethenir asked something in the elf tongue and the youth stared at him, then spat on his boots. Aethenir kicked him in the ribs. Felix pressed his sword harder against the druchii’s neck. Gotrek stepped forwards and raised his axe over him, his single eye cold and dead.
The youth blanched at the sight of Gotrek and blurted out something. Aethenir asked a few more questions and got short replies.
He sighed and turned to Felix and Gotrek. ‘The sorceresses came and took them away several hours ago. The Endless went with them.’
‘Where?’ asked Felix. ‘Where have they gone?’
‘He doesn’t know,’ said the high elf. ‘Only that they took the stairs at the end of this avenue, which go only down.’
‘Further down?’ said Jochen, looking uneasy. ‘Let’s give up on these magisters.’
‘What is below us?’ asked Gotrek, ignoring him.
‘The menagerie of the beastmasters,’ said Farnir. ‘And those flesh houses reserved for officers and the nobility.’
Felix blinked. ‘Are they going to feed them to wild beasts? Are they going to…?’ he couldn’t complete the thought.
The dwarf slave suddenly paled. His eyes widened. ‘It is rumoured among the slaves that there is a secret temple in the depths of the ark, with its entrance somewhere inside one of the flesh houses. They say many are taken there, never to return.’
‘What sort of temple?’ growled Gotrek.
‘None dare say,’ said the dwarf.
‘A temple with an entrance in such a house can only serve one god,’ whispered Aethenir, looking sick with fear.
‘What house is it in?’ Felix asked Farnir.
He shook his head. ‘I know not.’
‘Then we’ll have to check every one,’ said Gotrek.
‘There are more guards before the stairs,’ said Farnir. ‘You will need your disguises again.’
‘We’ll need a new disguise,’ said Gotrek, thinking. He turned to Aethenir. ‘Trade that armour for Endless kit, elf. And hurry.’
‘What do we do with this fool?’ asked Jochen, pointing to the young druchii still cowering under Felix’s sword.
Gotrek dropped his axe and buried it in the young dark elf’s face, shattering his skull and splashing blood everywhere.
‘That,’ he said, and turned away.
A few minutes later, once more locked to their chain, and with their weapons once more bundled in the sack, they shuffled down the long corridor between the unused barracks towards the menagerie stair gate, trailing behind the trembling figure of Aethenir, dressed as an officer of the Endless and wearing a silver skull mask.
This time there was no bribery required. The guards at the gate seemed awed by the uniform of the Endless, and bowed Aethenir through without question. The high elf led them to a narrow stairwell that zigzagged down into the rock for twelve flights before ending in a broad, low-roofed corridor that reeked of animal dung and rotting meat.
The roars of fierce beasts and the crack of whips echoed all around them as they started down it. The sounds and the smells came from a wide archway on the left-hand wall, sealed by elaborate wrought iron gates, and guarded by druchii in uniforms adorned with leopardskin capes and carrying long, wickedly barbed spears.
Aethenir ignored them and continued on, as he had been instructed to by Farnir, and soon they came to a much smaller archway with no gate and no guard. The sounds and smells that wafted from this arch were of an entirely different sort of wildlife. Felix smelled wine and perfume, incense and the smoke of the black lotus, as well as sweat and sex and death. Raucous laughter and strange discordant singing reached his ears, mixed with far-off shrieks of pain.
They filed through the arch and stopped dead at the scene that opened before them. The street, or tunnel – it was hard to make the distinction – was narrow and tall, with houses carved from the solid rock rising three storeys on either side. The high arched roof of the tunnel was cut back deeply, so that the houses had roofs and rooftop gardens and verandas. Witchlights blazed purple and red in iron lanterns hung from baroque facades, and the sights illuminated by this blood-coloured light were enough to turn Felix’s stomach. He had been in the red light districts of cities from Kislev to Araby, but never had he seen a place so dedicated to pleasure, pain and perversion. Usually, even in the loosest of cities, the joy houses kept a somewhat respectable front. Such a pretence was apparently unnecessary here.
Friezes and statues depicting the most lewd and vile acts decorated the fronts of every establishment. Some places had iron cages hung above their doors, within which dull-eyed human slaves flagellated one another or performed listless acts of coitus. In front of every house stood armed guards dressed in fanciful armour that seemed to have more to do with titillation than protection.
Strolling from house to house were the flower of druchii society – tall, cruelly handsome lords, sultry, sway-hipped ladies, swaggering officers, naked, silver-masked courtesans, e
xquisite persons whose gender it was impossible to tell, and pushing through the crush to the sound of cracking whips, covered palanquins carried by stooped, scarred human slaves, transporting those who wished to keep their identities secret.
‘Asuryan protect me,’ murmured Aethenir. ‘This place is an abomination.’
‘For once we agree,’ said Gotrek. ‘Even for elves this is disgusting.’
Felix concurred, but the thing that concerned him more than the vileness of the place was its vastness. The street curved away into the smoke-shrouded distance before them and more streets branched from it on either side, and every house that they could see was a house of pleasure. They might search for the next three days and not find the house that hid the entrance to the secret temple.
His fear was unfounded, however, for as he and the others stood staring around slack-jawed, Farnir called to a female slave who was displaying herself lewdly in a window cage.
‘Sister,’ he said. ‘Did a troop of Endless and a party of sorceresses pass this way?’
‘Aye,’ said the woman, not ceasing her gyrations.
‘What house did they enter?’
The woman didn’t know, but she told them that the procession had turned the corner to the left, a few hours ago.
It was in this way that they proceeded – Aethenir marching along as if he knew where he was going, while Farnir whispered questions to the slaves they passed – and they were legion – to learn where they should go. At last, after several more lefts and rights, they were directed to a house known as the Crucible of Joy.
Just before they reached it, Aethenir marched them into a dark alley between two houses and began unlocking their shackles. ‘What am I to say?’ he whimpered. ‘What if we are turned away?’
‘Then we fight at last,’ said Gotrek.
‘What if it isn’t the right place after all?’
‘We still fight,’ said Gotrek.
‘Tell them…’ said Felix, trying to think. ‘Tell them, “She awaits”. If it is the right place, they will lead us to the sorceress. If it isn’t, we haven’t compromised ourselves.’
They left the unlocked shackles loose around their wrists and followed Aethenir out of the alley and up to the guards that stood before the door of the Crucible of Joy. From the outside at least, it looked little different than any of the other flesh houses. Its sign, if one could call it that, was a bubbling crucible hung over a fire in an alcove cut in the front wall, out of which spilled something that looked – and smelled – very much like blood. The guards were towering druchii women, dressed only in stained leather blacksmiths’ aprons, golden greaves and gauntlets, and helmets crested with pink and purple feathers that looked like flames. They came to attention as Aethenir stopped in front of them.
Again, Felix could not understand what passed between them, but the guards seemed to treat him with the utmost deference. They bowed to him, and then one went to the door and spoke to someone within. After a moment, a human slave clad only in a purple loincloth came out, bowed almost to the floor, then motioned for them to follow.
The interior was everything that Felix had feared, and worse. The fire motif continued through a hexagonal entry chamber where braziers blazed with purple flames. A druchii woman, topless, but wearing a black veil, bowed to Aethenir as the slave led them into a corridor painted with black and purple flames. From above and below and all around Felix could hear sounds of ecstasy and excruciation – moans and screams and whimpers of fear. A girl pleaded heartbreakingly for mercy in Bretonnian. A male voice laughed or screamed, Felix couldn’t decide which.
Through open archways only partially curtained, Felix saw glimpses of fire and flesh and murder being done. He flinched from brandings and scarrings and knives that glowed a cherry-red. Memories of fighting in the cellars of the Cleansing Flame, and the fires that Lichtmann had attacked them with, came unbidden to his mind and made him shiver. In one room he saw a ring of druchii men and women passing around an enamelled pipe as they watched molten gold being dripped from a crucible onto the face of a bound woman, one drop at a time. They laughed dreamily at each scream and convulsion.
Felix heard Gotrek growling beside him, and realised that he was echoing him with growls of his own.
The house slave led them down a winding iron staircase that was hot to the touch. Three flights later he bowed them into a square black marble chamber with doors on each wall and a chandelier of purple-flamed torches hanging above. Veins in the marble glinted pink in the flickering light. The door directly opposite the stair was grander than the others, framed by fluted columns and topped by a decorative arch, into which was set a white stone face of cold, immaculate beauty. Three Endless stood before the door, rigidly at attention.
Aethenir slowed when he saw them.
‘Go on, elf,’ muttered Gotrek.
‘But surely they will know that I am not one of their fellows,’ said the high elf.
‘They will if you cower back here,’ said Felix. ‘Be bold.’
The elf snorted angrily at this, but it seemed to have some effect. He straightened his shoulders and strode towards the guards. Felix held his breath and loosened the mouth of the sack that carried their weapons. The guards eyed Aethenir as he approached, motionless and impassive behind their silver masks. Then the centre one spoke.
Aethenir replied, but apparently the answer was not to the Endless’s liking. He asked a second question. This time Aethenir faltered in his response.
The hands of the guards dropped to the hilts of their swords and the centre one motioned for Aethenir to remove his mask.
‘Right,’ said Gotrek, throwing off his chains and dropping the sack with a clang. ‘That’s it.’
The Endless turned, drawing their swords as Gotrek and Felix pulled their weapons from the sack. Gotrek roared and charged them, shoving the paralysed Aethenir behind him. Felix followed the Slayer in, though he knew from past experience that it was hopeless. The slave in the loincloth ran shrieking back up the stairs as Farnir, Jochen and the pirates snatched up their weapons and joined the fray.
The Endless in the centre died on the first pass, parrying perfectly, but totally unprepared for the Slayer‘s strength. The flashing axe drove his blade back into his helm, staggering him, and Gotrek hacked him in the side, cutting through both armour and ribs like they were brittle shale.
Felix’s first exchange with the druchii he faced was almost exactly opposite. He slashed with his sword, only to find that the druchii had moved and was stabbing at his chest with an overhand thrust. Felix twisted, and the sword grazed his ribs. He fell back, slashing desperate figure-eights in the air. The druchii followed and he thought he was dead, but then Farnir, Jochen and the pirates came to his rescue, hacking and stabbing and howling.
The druchii didn’t bat an eye. He blocked every wild attack and returned with a riposte that skewered a pirate’s neck. Felix lunged at him again, but his sword was turned neatly aside in passing as the druchii gashed another man’s wrist and turned to face Felix again.
Felix fell back, then felt himself shoved aside, as Gotrek stepped in, swinging his axe up from the floor. The druchii saw him and spun to counter, but Gotrek was faster. The axe split the dark elf from crotch to chest and his guts slapped wetly on the polished floor. He crumpled on top of them.
Felix and the pirates stepped back, looking for the last druchii. He was already dead – his head missing. Another pirate had fallen as well, pierced through the heart.
‘Well done, friends,’ said Aethenir, stepping forwards.
‘You might have helped,’ said Jochen, looking around at his dead and wounded comrades.
‘Better he didn’t,’ said Gotrek with a sneer.
The pirate searched the dead dark elves for the key to the door as Felix pulled his mail from the sack and put it on. There was no key. Whoever had entered had locked it behind them.
Gotrek shrugged and stepped to the door. ‘Get ready,’ he said.
Fe
lix, Aethenir and the remaining pirates lined up behind him. Farnir armed himself with one of the druchii blades and joined them. Felix took a deep breath and got a firmer grip on Karaghul.
The door was of heavy, intricately carved wood. The lock was protected by a sturdy, black iron plate. Gotrek was through it in three swings of his axe, then kicked open the splintered panel and strode in, on his guard.
Inside was a large and entirely empty bedchamber.
Felix stared around him, confused. This was not the secret temple to some foul god that he had been expecting. This was – by druchii flesh house standards at any rate – a perfectly ordinary boudoir. A nightmarish mural of carnal atrocities was painted on the four walls above intricately worked ebony panelling. Fetters, whips and instruments of torture were displayed on racks to the right and left. Against the wall in front of them rose a massive sleeping platform, piled with furs and pillows, all in disarray, and so high that it was reached by a set of shallow black marble steps. At its four corners were hung columns of red velvet drapery, and torches were set into the wall on either side of it. All very grand and nasty, but a dead end.
‘This can’t be right,’ said Jochen.
‘We have been led astray somehow,’ said Aethenir.
‘Is it a trap?’ asked Felix, looking back at the door.
Gotrek snorted. ‘Men and elves are blind.’
He stumped across the room to the torch on the left-hand side of the sleeping platform and pressed the wood panelling below it. There was a click, and everyone stepped back, wary.
Felix watched the wall beside the torch, expecting to see a secret door open in it, but then movement caught his eye and he turned. The entire sleeping platform was slowly rising like the lid of a treasure chest, and folding back against the wall. The underside of the bed was revealed to be a large marble panel, carved into a bas-relief of a graceful figure that appeared to be both masculine and feminine, and who danced upon a mound of naked copulating bodies, all of them maimed in the most horrible ways. In the flickering torchlight of the room it almost seemed as if the figure and the bodies that it trod on writhed and squirmed lasciviously.
