[Warhammer] - Dreadfleet

by Phil Kelly - (ebook by Undead)

  The Magus stepped over to his ogre bodyguard.

  “Guth, hand me the sword now please, no by the hilt! By the hilt, Guth, that’s the blunt part… good… that’s better… careful now…there we are. Thank you so much.”

  Holding the white-hot artefact out wide, the Magus took a little bow and shooed the ogre away.

  He turned to Roth and pulled an apologetic face. “Spirits appreciate a bit of theatre. Have to show willing.”

  With that, the Magus violently kicked the sea-blue urn against the gunwale, shattering it into a hundred pieces and sending the water inside gushing everywhere.

  “Rise, daughter of the deep! Rise, sea-nymph, for soon you shall be released!”

  To Roth’s mounting amazement, the urn-water flowed upwards instead of outwards. It was like watching an amphora being poured out in reverse. There seemed to be far, far more water than could ever have fitted in the ceramic container. Brine, too, by the sea-salt smell of it, gathering higher and higher in a glittering pillar. As Roth watched in fascination, the upwards cascade of sparkling water grew larger than the Magus, then Guth, then larger still.

  The elemental spirit was taking the rough form of a human female, and a shapely one at that. A rippling meniscus kept the humanoid column from collapsing, and when the spirit bowed towards the Magus in greeting, droplets of seawater flicked outwards from hair-tendrils that swirled around her featureless head.

  “A salt-devil,” murmured Roth. “Is this not folly? If she decides to take us under…”

  “Do hush, Jaego,” said the Magus out of the corner of his mouth. “I know what I am doing.”

  The Magus carved a strange sigil in the air with the burning sword, his conjurer’s cloak billowing in the invisible energies that whirled around him. The sea-nymph recoiled from his fiercely glowing blade until her sinuous body described a perfect crescent.

  “Hark, mighty princess of the waves!” shouted the Magus as he raised his arms high. “I raise my command unto you! Guide us to the one men call the Queen of Tides, wherever she may be! Do this I bid you, and be free!”

  As soon as the Magus had finished his speech the towering sea-nymph twisted around and dived over the gunwale, leaving a rainbow spray of droplets in her wake.

  “Oh, ho ho! Best cast off, eh Jaego? It seems the Magus still has a way with the ladies after all!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Rat-Coves, Tilea

  13th Day of Pflugzeit, 2522

  “Sail ho!” Came the shout, relayed from the topmost sentinel’s nest to the decks below. “Sail ho, captain. The Swordfysh, away to starboard.”

  The Heldenhammer thundered along the Tilean coastline, her full sails straining as great fans of spume roared up on either side of her broad stern. A few hundred metres ahead, the Flaming Scimitar cut smoothly through the water. Just ahead of the pleasure palace’s bow was a jutting wave capped by the torso and head of the Magus’ salt-devil, curving left and right like a sea snake as it led the two great vessels to their quarry.

  True enough, the Swordfysh could be seen tucked into one of the gaping coves that ranged the coast. Black as the void and twice as nasty, her ribbed sails were emblazoned with the skeletons of strange sea monsters, and the crack-snap of her stylised seaweed pennants echoed across the waves. Along her flanks were ranks of well-used cannons interspersed with carvings of razorshells and tritons. The ivory teeth of slain megalodons formed a rough crenellation along her gunwales.

  The prow of the pirate warship sported a great jag-toothed blade that had broken open many a victim vessel’s hull over the years. Her bowsprit was fashioned from the horn of a unicorn whale topped with the skull of a sea giant, the spiral horn jutting from its forehead lending it the appearance of a hybrid mythical beast. Glimmering in each of the enormous skull’s eye sockets was a jewel the size of a powder barrel.

  The Swordfysh’s exploits were legend, yet the stories that surrounded it were as nothing compared to the tales told about its mistress.

  “I heard she has brine in her veins, sir,” said Ghow, leaning over to his captain. “Brine instead o’ blood.”

  Roth smiled ruefully.

  “Yes, thank you, Ghow, for that pearl of insight.” He shielded his eyes from the sun, scanning the horizon. “You might be right, apparently. I’ve never seen her bleed, anyway. She’s too mean for it.”

  Burke, the master gunner, leant in conspiratorially. “Mate o’ mine,” he said. “He got lured into her bedchambers by them big blue eyes. Last mistake he ever made. Eats her lovers raw, that one, raw as fish. Any cove worth their jerky knows she’s half-shark, or used to be before she cut the tail off herself. I’ll wager them stumps ain’t from no battle.”

  “Back to your guns, Burke,” said Roth, shaking his head. “Unless you’d prefer to swim over there and ask her yourself.”

  Saltspite’s galleon was too large to easily hide, but the captain had to admit she’d done a pretty good job. Something told him she would not be glad to have uninvited guests.

  “Close in, lads,” ordered Roth. “But not too close, mind. There are hidden rocks about this part of the coast, and I’ll not have the Heldenhammer run aground. I want that ugly great auxiliary out of the hold and into the water, quick as you can.”

  The captain strode over towards Dallard, who was idly sighting down the barrel of one of his beloved pistols. “Dallard, look lively. Signal the lads up on the Templus battlements, we’ll need those cable-pulleys on the gargoyles working hard. Ghow, rustle up the big sea-chest with all the whalebone and get a sally of your strongest oarsmen ready for five bells.”

  The first mate nodded his assent before heading below decks.

  “And wear your best hat,” Roth called after him. “We’ve a lady to impress!”

  Dallard snorted derisively. His men were already hard at work, eager to haul open the Heldenhammer’s hinged decks and lift the curious vessel underneath into the water.

  The temple-ship’s subsidiary craft, the Alaric, was as heavily built as its parent warship. It took sixty men, using a complex system of pulleys hung from the jutting beaks of the Templus gargoyles, to haul the stout cog out from its housing. A great deal of sweat and fury was expended in order to manoeuvre the Alaric overboard without capsizing the damned thing. Impressive, perhaps, but impractically large, mused Roth. Much like the Heldenhammer. Across the water, the Flaming Scimitar was deploying its own auxiliary craft.

  Roth only hoped that the Queen of Tides wasn’t in one of her legendarily foul moods. If she didn’t notice the Sartosan heraldry upon the Alaric’s fluttering pennants, they ran a serious risk of being blown to pieces before they’d even reached her warship.

  Half an hour of hard oarsmanship later, the auxiliaries of both the Heldenhammer and the Flaming Scimitar came alongside the Swordfysh’s black-tarred hull. Roth’s lip curled as he saw that the cove was thick with black-furred rats, some of which were as large as pigs. There was a living curtain of the scabrous things pouring down the cliffs at the back of the cove, flooding out of a dank black tunnel that led to who knew where.

  The great pirate ship’s guns remained silent as they approached, much to Roth’s relief. Not so its captain.

  “What in the name of Manann do you think you’re playing at, Roth, you senile old ape?”

  Aranessa Saltspite leaned from the Swordfysh’s aftcastle, flushed and furious.

  “You lot conspicuous enough, do you think? Some of us are trying to avoid attention, not go trumpeting around the high seas looking for trouble, you bloody moron!”

  “Oh, joy,” muttered Roth. “Off to a good start, then.”

  “You scrag-ended, one-eyed, dog-faced cur! I should have blown you and your mate out of the water when I had the chance.”

  “Mother of pearl, sir, she’s not happy,” whispered Ghow.

  “Well spotted, Ghow,” said Roth. “There’s one way, and one way alone, to get out of this. Open the sea-chest and show it to her. And for Manann’s sake, do
it quickly.”

  The tattooed islander unchained the whalebone sea-chest at Roth’s side and opened the lid wide. On the deck above, Aranessa’s ice-blue eyes widened in response.

  “All right, Roth, you old soak. I’m interested. But you’d better bring that box up here right now, or you’re all food for the rats.”

  Roth and Ghow Southman manhandled the bone-inlaid sea-chest on to the Swordfysh’s top deck, the Golden Magus huffing and panting as he climbed up behind them. As soon as they stepped aboard, the three ambassadors were surrounded by a half-circle of black-toothed murderers, each one more weather-beaten and stinking than the last. Roth cast around for a face he recognised, but found nothing but pointed steel and contempt.

  Aranessa Saltspite leapt down from the raised stairway behind them, landing on her sawfish legs with a percussive thunk. She held her asymmetrical trident at eye-height, the jagged prongs weaving back and forth between Roth and the Magus.

  “Well, well. And here I was thinking all the vermin in this little hidey-hole had tails.”

  “Oh ho,” said the Golden Magus, “She is a live one all right. My lady, an utmost pleasure to make your—”

  “Shut it, fatness,” interrupted Aranessa, whipping her trident around so that it was an inch from the sorcerer’s eye. “You’re on my ship now, and you’ll speak when spoken to.”

  She turned to Roth, her trident still held unwavering in the Magus’ flabbergasted face.

  “First, you can tell me who this gilded futtock thinks he is and what the hell he’s doing on my ship. Second, you can tell me all about this little present you’ve brought me. Third, you can explain to me why you’re so keen on getting me killed.”

  She looked out to sea.

  “There’s some bloody horrible monster out there, looks like a leviathan ate a shipwreck and it didn’t work out well for either of ’em. Don’t know what it is, before you ask, but it’s ugly as all sin, it makes this terrible noise, and it fires lightning instead of shot.”

  Aranessa’s gaze didn’t waver and she gnawed at her lip in worry.

  “It’s been hunting me since late last night. It’d have to be blind as well as dead not to have spotted those fancy great ships of yours, which means it’ll almost certainly be on its way here right now.”

  Frowning, Roth opened his mouth to ask her what the hell she was talking about, but closed it again when he saw the look in her eye.

  Aranessa pulled a spyglass from the leather pouches hung at her waist and leant over the gunwale between two barnacle-patterned cannons. “Oh no, not already, no, no,” she whispered. “Here it comes again. It’s found me.”

  Roth gulped. He had never seen Aranessa like this.

  “Manann’s balls, that thing’s big,” she said, narrowing her eyes as she turned back to face Roth and the Magus. “You two, start talking, right now. Make it good and I might just let you die fighting instead of squealing in the water while the rats eat you alive.”

  “Very well. There’s little time for it, so I’ll make this quick,” said Roth, taking a sharp breath. “This is the Golden Magus, he’s helping me hunt down and destroy the Dreadfleet. I reckoned the Heldenhammer was the ship for the job, so I stole it. I’m making enemies port and starboard but I’ve enough to buy myself a few friends too.” Roth hoisted the whalebone sea-chest up onto a barrel of Tilean rum and opened the lid. “This particular part of the haul, for instance,” he said. “This is for you.”

  The contents of the chest reflected on their faces with a soft blue light. Three dozen glittering and perfectly cut sapphires, each the size of a fist.

  Aranessa smiled. Just for a second, the priceless jewels were completely outshone.

  “Well, well,” said Aranessa, “You remembered. I always liked the blue ones best. I get the whole lot of ’em, do I, if we survive this fool’s errand?” She looked haunted for a few seconds, staring out to sea, biting her swollen lip and playing with one of the bird skulls that hung from her braids. “Reckon I’ll be remembered too, if we pull this off. But we have to be quick.”

  Roth looked sideways at the Magus, who raised an eyebrow. The moment was shattered by a crackling roar as a bolt of green-black lightning slammed into the cliff face above. All three of them ducked as a curtain of rubble cascaded into the water metres from the Swordfysh’s prow.

  “What did you say it was that is firing lightning at us?” asked the Magus, a note of panic in his voice. “Some kind of sea monster?”

  “Time’s running out, Nessa,” said Roth. “Are you in or out?”

  The Queen of Tides raised her spyglass and leant out once more.

  “All right, Jaego, all right. I’m in. But we have to leave, right now.”

  “Splendid,” said the Golden Magus, jubilantly clapping his hands. Roth and Aranessa both shot him a look and he deflated like a spent bladder.

  Another bolt of dark lightning shot towards them, exploding with shocking force against the mouth of the cove and sending barnacle-encrusted rock flying in all directions. There was a distant roar as the Heldenhammer returned fire.

  “The problem is,” said Aranessa, “we’ve got to get through that first.”

  “If I might be permitted to speak, your wondrous majesty,” said the Golden Magus, sketching a mocking curtsey. “That is one problem I believe I can solve.”

  The Alaric sped through the waves, pulled bodily towards the Flaming Scimitar by the Magus’ water-spirit. The sorcerer’s own craft was close behind. As Roth’s cog rounded the cliff of the rat-coves, he saw the creature Aranessa had described in the clear light of day.

  It was a sea monster all right, but one that had clearly been dead for a very long time. An orb leviathan, by the look of it, somewhere between a spined whale and one of the lantern-jawed terrors that sometimes floated up from the deep, dark ocean. Waves crashed upon its snaggletoothed maw as it churned through the sea towards them. Its pallid white flanks had sagged and sloughed from its ribcage, exposing masses of scaffolding and strange metallic cannons that crackled with green-black energy. Jutting forward from its sloping forehead was an enormous spar of hardwood, a glowing green bell of enormous size dangling where a lantern-fish would have its lure.

  A terrible ringing clangour drifted across the waves, and Roth’s head pulsed with pain. He felt liquid on his moustache and neck, and reached up to touch it, looking at his fingers. Blood was running out of his nose and ears.

  “We’re leaving, lads, even if it’s on the Scimitar!” shouted Roth. “I don’t like the look of that thing any more than you do!”

  The monstrous craft convulsed, and bolts of unnatural lightning crackled out across the bay. Two of them punched through the Heldenhammer’s flank, bursting out the other side as if it was parchment instead of stout Drakwald oak. The temple-ship returned fire, smashing the spines from the monster’s exposed back in an explosion of rotting bone.

  Still it came on, its eldritch bell clanging madly. Roth felt as if his head was going to split apart. There were hundreds of rats scrabbling inside his skull and they were all desperate to get out. A single word swam to the forefront of his tortured mind, a rumour from the gutters of Sartosa.

  Skaven. Few men had heard of such creatures. Most of those that had refused to believe that they existed at all, rats that walked on two legs like men.

  “Grapples,” shouted Roth at the top of his voice, hands pressed over his ears. “Grapples to the Scimitar!”

  Those of Ghow’s men who still had their wits about them leapt to obey, hurling their grappling hooks onto the gunwales of the Scimitar and pulling them taut. The captain turned, searching for the Golden Magus. The Scimitar’s auxiliary was docking, its master borne up towards his palace by a glittering pillar of living ice.

  The chittering inside Roth’s head was growing unbearable. He shook his head and banged it against the mast in agony, but to no avail; the verminous voices were still there. He could no longer tell what was real and what was his imagination. The men around
him were shimmering and twitching uncontrollably, their noses extending into long snouts, whiskers sprouting from their cheeks.

  Salvation, when it came, did so in an unlikely form.

  A trio of tornados came whirling out from the gold-capped minarets of the Arabyan craft above them, spiralling and spinning as they grew larger and larger. The waters around the Alaric were whipped into a white frenzy as the living winds swelled and bulged. To Roth’s tortured senses it looked as if the tornados were taking the forms of three fat-bellied giants, thickly muscled arms stretching out as if they had been kept in cramped conditions for far too long.

  The air-devils were parting, now, swirling round in wide arcs and taking up positions behind the Heldenhammer, Swordfysh and Scimitar. One by one, they drew in huge breaths before exhaling great cones of ice-cold air.

  Slowly at first, then with alarming speed, the vessels were turned about until they faced out to sea. Their sails snapped full with a series of muffled cracks, bellying out as they harnessed the winds blowing along the coast. The air-devils swirled around again until they were astern of each warship, funnelling their tempestuous breath into the sails.

  Another crackling blast of lightning ripped out of the leviathan’s flanks, punching through the hull of the Swordfysh in a spray of timber and flailing limbs. She reeled, but rode it out, returning fire with an eighty-cannon broadside of her own as her protesting sails strained under the tremendous winds poured into them.

  Propelled by the gale force breath of the wind-daemons, the warships carved into the open seas at great speed. The monstrous vessel was left behind, receding into the distance until it was no more than a pale stain against the horizon.

  Roth dropped to his knees in the flooded bilges of the Alaric and gave fervent thanks to the gods, his head finally clear of the terrible cacophony. His men followed his example, every one of them a true believer after their narrow escape. They were exhausted and scared, but—to Roth’s immense relief—they were most definitely human.