by Warhammer
The half closer to Felix sank more quickly, its towers toppling as it slid down into the sea to show blazing rooms and corridors and frantic silhouetted figures burning like paper dolls as they leapt into the water. The other half followed immediately, and suddenly Felix and Claudia’s barrel was tilting down a surging hill of water as the tallest tower of the keep slipped down into the sea and disappeared into the centre of a swirling whirlpool. Felix saw a glossy black carriage heave up beside them and topple towards them as the vortex sucked them down, and he dropped back down into the barrel and clung to Claudia for dear life.
‘Hold on, fraulein!’ he shouted.
Then everything became a terrifying jumble of sound, motion and jarring impacts. Water swallowed the cask, whirling and slamming it around like a cork beneath a waterfall. Felix was upside down, then right-side up, crashing into Claudia, then mashed by her, all in the space of a second, unable to see anything but swirling bubbles, crashing water and flashes of waves, refuse and sky, as the cask was sucked under the pummelling waves. Bodies flew past in the water – men, women, druchii, horses, rats. Things slammed into the barrel, knocking it up, down and sideways. A human child caught the edge of it, looking pleadingly into his eyes, then was gone again before he could react.
The barrel filled with water as it went down and down. His lungs screamed for air and the world began to turn black and blurry at the edges. He wondered if they would be pulled all the way to the bottom of the sea, or smashed out of the barrel and crushed to death by whirling debris. He felt himself floating and pressed against the sides to keep himself in.
Then, long after it seemed possible that it could continue, the water began to calm, and he felt the cask slowly rising through the silt-clouded water. They broke the surface miraculously face-up, the top of the barrel almost level with the water. Felix pushed up and sucked air greedily, then realised that Claudia was still in the barrel, under the water. He reached down and hauled her up and she clung to him, choking and puking water down his chest and shivering.
He looked around at the mad scene around them, hoping to see the Slayer and Max. The sea in all directions was cluttered with ships and floating junk – barrels, boxes, planks, carts, wooden spoons, bits of clothing, papers, trash, what appeared to be a wig, and corpses of all races floated everywhere. To his left, three small druchii sloops were entangled, thrown together by the mad whirlpool of the ark’s sinking. Further away, more black ships pulled swimming druchii out of the water, or fired crossbows into floating masses of pleading slaves while sea serpents, both mounted and unmounted, breasted through the rubbish and fed indiscriminately upon all.
Felix heard a splash and a familiar cough. He turned. Another barrel floated not far away, upside down! Was it the one?
‘Gotrek!’ called Felix. ‘Max!’
Gotrek’s head bobbed up next to the barrel, and he hauled Max up beside him and helped him cling to the cask. The magister was barely conscious, but he was alive. Felix shook his head in wonder. They had made it. They had survived. As impossible as it had seemed, they had escaped the black ark.
Then Felix heard a noise behind the moans, screams and shouts of the survivors and the ‘hoog’ of the serpents that sent a chill up his spine – the clamouring wail of the Harp of Ruin.
TWENTY
Felix and Gotrek looked around, searching for the hellish instrument amid the chaos of ships and trash and fighting. Then Felix found it. He blinked, confused, for it seemed to be floating about a yard above the water, as if it were somehow levitating. He looked closer and saw that the harp was hooked to a halberd, and that the halberd was strapped to the back of a dog-paddling skaven, who was heading right for them at the head of a cluster of swimming skaven. The water around them frothed with the thing’s vibrations.
Gotrek pulled his axe from his back and shook it over his head. ‘Come on, you vermin!’ He roared.
But it seemed he might not be the first to reach the ratmen. Bearing down on them from behind was a phalanx of sea dragon knights, with High Sorceress Heshor mounted behind Commander Tarlkhir on the first. Heshor looked entirely healed from the wound the daemon had inflicted upon her. Tarlkhir spurred his mount and the serpent scooped a skaven out of the water and choked it down with a single gulp.
‘Hoog!’
‘Foul serpents!’ cried Felix, drawing his sword.
Karaghul’s runes were glowing brightly in the presence of so many sea dragons, and Felix could feel the urge to swim towards them welling up in him. His muscles twitched and tingled with barely controlled violence. He fought down his fury with difficulty. He had already fought a sea dragon while bobbing helplessly in the middle of the sea and hadn’t cared for it much. Doing so floating precariously in a flooded beer keg with a half-conscious girl beside him was unlikely to be an improvement. Maybe the damned serpent would choke to death on the barrel, he thought.
But then, without warning, the cask rose up under him as if lifted by a hand. He swayed and clutched the lip of the cask. All around them the sea was mounding up into a hill of water.
‘What in Sigmar’s name?’ he said.
Gotrek and Max and their barrel tumbled down the hill of water as it continued to grow, and Felix and Claudia’s cask toppled with them, spinning end over end and plunging them under the sea again. Felix pushed and kicked out of the barrel, then took Claudia’s arms and pulled her after him. Was the ark rising again? Did they have to do it all over again?
They came gasping to the surface and clung to a raft of debris beside Max and Gotrek as a massive rusted tower burst out of the mounded water, bristling with pipes, tanks and brass guns. Then, below the tower, a great bulk breached the waves – a verdigrised monstrosity like a scrap-metal whale, longer than a druchii galley, with a corroded metal deck and strange weapons jutting from a prow like a rat’s snout. It loomed more than a storey above them, a barnacle-covered brass cliff, shedding water and hissing and blowing like a living thing.
The serpents reared back fearfully at the sight of it, fighting their riders’ spurs, and in the distance, the cries of the druchii echoed from their ships, alarmed at the appearance of this massive threat in their midst. Felix could see galleys turning towards it, their ranked oars raising and pulling as one.
‘What kind of machine is this?’ asked Max.
‘It is the thing that ate Felix and Herr Gurnisson,’ said Claudia miserably. ‘The thing that I allowed to take them.’
‘A skaven submersible,’ said Gotrek, spitting contemptuously.
Max grimaced. ‘It reeks of warpstone.’
The swimming skaven clambered up the submersible’s tall side as Tarlkhir’s sea dragon snapped at them, ripping two away and chewing them in half. The other serpents lunged in behind the first, their heads snaking after the fleeing thieves. Skaven armed with rust-grimed swords poured out of a hatch and raced forwards to defend their brothers, then shied as the submersible began to vibrate like a gong when the black-clad skaven who carried the howling harp set foot on the deck. The water around the edges of the craft simmered and splashed as if it was on the boil.
‘The harp is going to shake it apart,’ Max said.
‘Good,’ said Gotrek.
Next out of the hatch was the ancient skaven sorcerer, hobbling forwards with the aid of its staff, and surrounded by a retinue of black-armoured vermin and followed by its albino rat ogre and its tottering tailless minion.
Felix found himself growling in his throat as he watched the black-clad thief hurry the grey seer. He was free, he had his sword, and the vermin that had hurt his father was before him.
‘Him,’ rumbled Gotrek. ‘Come, manling. I owe him much.’
‘Not if I get him first,’ said Felix, and kicked for the side of the skaven submersible. Gotrek followed. Max did too.
Felix looked back. ‘Maybe you should stay behind, Max.’
‘There is too much magic there,’ said Max. ‘You will not prevail without me.’
Felix was
more worried about Max prevailing. The magister looked more dead than alive.
‘I will come too,’ said Claudia, paddling after them.
‘Claudia–’ said Felix, but she shook her head.
‘I must make recompense for my crime,’ she said.
Felix was going to protest more, but then he shrugged. Was she really any safer clinging to a barrel in the middle of a sea full of sea dragons?
The black-clad skaven went down on one knee before the grey seer, the halberd strapped to its back extending forwards over its head to put the harp within the sorcerer’s reach. Its fellow thieves knelt behind it.
‘We did exactly what he wanted,’ said Felix angrily as they reached the side of the submersible near its stern. ‘We stirred up trouble with the dark elves and allowed his thieves to snatch the harp in the confusion. He’s been pulling our strings since he freed us.’
‘I am no one’s puppet,’ growled Gotrek, and began to climb the side of the submersible.
‘Nor am I,’ said Felix, as he, Max and Claudia followed, pulling themselves up the strange pipes, flanges and poorly fitted plates that made up the behemoth’s skin. The metal was vibrating so much that holding it stung the hands.
The ancient skaven stared at the screaming harp, seemingly caught between horror and desire, as his minions edged away from it. The rat ogre moaned unhappily and covered its ears. The seer reached out a tentative claw towards it, but before it could touch it, a cloud of black fire exploded around it, staggering it. The skaven thieves dived away from the black flames with uncanny quickness, while the tailless minion fell back clumsily and the rat ogre howled, but many of the warrior skaven around the seer shrieked and died in the ebony fire, shrinking to charred skeletons within their armour. The seer squealed in agony and rage, but seemed to absorb the fire without damage. It turned towards the front of the submersible, where Heshor and Tarlkhir rode high on their sea dragon, surrounded by the other serpent riders.
The skaven sorcerer swept its staff in a circle and the air rippled before it, travelling out in a spreading arc towards the druchii. The sea dragons went mad, roaring and thrashing as if beset by wasps. They threw their riders and attacked themselves and each other, ripping their scaly hides with dagger teeth. Heshor and Tarlkhir were tossed into the sea as their knights screamed and tried to regain control of their mounts.
Karaghul howled for Felix to run and dive and slaughter them all. He ground his teeth, forcing himself to ignore the insistent call, and instead stepped with Gotrek, Claudia and Max onto the rattling deck of the submersible. There would be a time to unleash the sword’s fury, but now wasn’t it, and they weren’t the targets. It was the ratman sorcerer he wanted to kill.
They crept towards the central tower as the loose plates of the submersible clanged and clattered in deafening harmony to the harp’s howl.
The skaven seer returned its attention to the harp, which the thief again held before it at the end of the halberd. It threw its arms wide, shrilling a harsh incantation, and the air around the harp began to thicken, warping light and muffling its whine. Then the old skaven slowly brought its arms closer together, squeaking all the while, and the air between its paws grew thicker still, gelling like aspic, and the harp quietened even more. The seer trembled with the effort.
The rattling metal plate around Felix and the others calmed, and the deck under their feet grew still.
‘Such power,’ said Max, in wonder, as they watched from the shadow of the central tower. ‘To quell so powerful a thing.’
‘I’ll still kill him,’ snarled Felix.
The grey seer brought its paws together and the harp stopped ringing entirely. It reached out and took it from the halberd as easily as if it picked up a book.
The sudden silence was eerie. It felt as if Felix had been hearing the sound of the harp all his life and, with it gone, a weight he had carried since childhood was lifted off his shoulders. The cries of the dying, the slap of the waves, the rumblings from within the submersible, the roars of the sea dragons, all were clear and close, the chittering of the skaven and the shouting of the druchii knights loud in Felix’s ears.
There were more distant cries too, and Felix saw that two dark elf galleys were sailing their way, their prows cleaving paths through the floating debris as their sweeps rose and fell.
The grey seer hurried back towards the hatch from which it had emerged, triumphant, surrounded by its remaining guards and followed by the shambling rat ogre and its scampering servant. Gotrek drew his axe and prepared to charge. Felix, enflamed by Karaghul’s hate for the sea dragons and his own for the skaven sorcerer, fought the urge to run out ahead of the Slayer.
‘Now?’ he asked eagerly.
Just then the hatch cover trembled and slammed shut by itself with a loud clang, cutting in half a skaven who was just climbing out.
The other skaven fell back, frightened. The grey seer whipped around. Behind it, at the prow of the submersible, Heshor floated up out of the sea, arms still extended from casting the spell that had closed the hatch, while Tarlkhir and his sea dragon knights clambered out more prosaically and surrounded her.
Still clutching the harp in its right paw, the skaven sorcerer snarled and shot spears of green light towards Heshor with its left. She threw up her hands and a shield of dark air flared into being in front of her and the green spears glanced away. She shot curling snakes of smoke back towards the seer and the battle was joined. Leather-clad sword-rats charged Tarlkhir and his knights. The albino rat ogre and the black-armoured skaven warriors remained at the seer’s side.
‘Now, manling!’ roared Gotrek.
‘Wait,’ said Max, ‘Let me provide you with some protection…’
But Gotrek and Felix were already charging straight at the skaven sorcerer’s back, roaring jubilant battle cries. Felix let Karaghul take full control and a red rage consumed him.
The armoured skaven turned at their roar, but not quickly enough. Gotrek’s axe took the head of one, carved a trench through the chest of a second and hacked through the legs of a third. Felix cut down two more. The Slayer bellowed for the hulking rat ogre to face him. It obliged, roaring and raising battering-ram fists as it rushed to meet him. Felix leapt at three black-armoured skaven, trying to smash through them towards the grey seer.
The old skaven spun in mid-spell and shrieked at the sight of the carnage behind it. It raised a hand and began a new spell, this time directed at them. Felix felt a tingle and for a moment thought the worst, but then a sphere of golden light enveloped them and he realised that Max had completed his spell.
As Gotrek hacked at the albino monstrosity and Felix fought the armoured skaven, a flash of blinding un-light shot from Heshor and the skaven sorcerer hissed and twitched, blackness crawling over its body and invading every orifice. The seer stumbled, trying to force a counter-spell through grinding teeth.
Felix cut down two of the big skaven. To his left, Gotrek was in the grip of the rat ogre, which lifted him high over its head. Felix ducked a slash and parried another. When he looked back, the rat ogre was toppling backwards, Gotrek’s axe blade deep in its skull. It hit the metal deck with a hollow boom and Gotrek wrenched his axe free, then bulled on towards the seer, who was still fighting Heshor’s web of power. As Gotrek slashed at the ancient skaven, it shrieked and threw itself backwards. Gotrek’s axe chopped through its wrist, severing it in a spray of black blood.
The grey seer screamed as the harp clanged away across the deck towards the dark elves, its right claw still gripping it. It fell to the deck, squeaking and clutching the bloody stump of its scrawny wrist as it turned terrified black eyes on Gotrek.
‘Your head is next, vermin!’ roared the Slayer.
A knot of skaven swarmed in to defend the grey seer. Gotrek charged into them.
‘No, Gotrek!’ shouted Felix. ‘He’s mine. He hurt my father!’
Felix hacked through the armour-clad skaven, trying to reach the fallen seer, but just then th
e black-clad skaven assassin leapt at him, stabbing with gauntlets from which jutted long metal claws.
Felix gutted the assassin as it crashed into him, its claws ripping red grooves in his back and chest. He threw it aside and joined Gotrek just as he decapitated the seer’s last guard and loomed over the figure that writhed at the edge of the submersible.
‘I would have to kill you a dozen times to cancel my debt with you, vermin,’ said Felix.
‘Once will have to do,’ growled Gotrek.
Together they raised their weapons over the cowering grey seer, but suddenly, with a shrill squeak, its little lop-tailed servant leapt forwards and tackled its master over the side of the submersible and into the sea.
‘Come back here!’ shouted Felix.
Gotrek roared angrily. ‘Face your death, coward!’
‘Gotrek! Felix!’ shouted Max, from cover. ‘The harp! The druchii! The ships are getting closer!’
Gotrek and Felix turned reluctantly. The harp, with the old skaven’s severed paw still clutching it, had awoken again, and was dancing and jittering in the middle of a crazed melee as the submersible began to shake anew with its resonance. Tarlkhir and his knights fought a horde of sword-wielding skaven over it, while to port and starboard, the two druchii warships ploughed ever closer. Felix swallowed. If they didn’t get the harp now, it would be too late.
He and Gotrek started towards the harp, hewing their way through skaven and dark elves as they went, but Heshor wasn’t about to let them close to it. She cried a foul phrase and beams of un-light shot at them. Max’s golden sphere absorbed some of their power before popping like a soap bubble. The beams came on.
The Slayer cursed and threw up his axe. The beams parted around him, glancing off the blade and impaling the skaven around them, sending them squealing to the deck with blood pouring from their mouths, noses and eyes. Felix crouched behind the Slayer, but even so, horrible scything pains shot through his lungs and joints and nearly brought him to his knees.
