“That’s right,” agreed Roth, “and woe betide anything that stands in my way.”
“Same old Jaego,” said the Golden Magus, smiling widely. “Though this time you have the semblance of a plan. You must be getting old.”
Quiet laughter rippled round the table. Even Roth chuckled.
“We have a good plan,” said Gunnarsson, “and a grand alliance with which to enact it.”
“The Grand Alliance,” said Roth, proudly. “I like the sound of that. Five of us now. That’s more like a fleet. It should be enough.”
“I hope so, Jaego my love,” said Aranessa, smiling sadly. “I really do.”
“To the ships, then?” said Yrellian.
“Aye, to the ships,” agreed Gunnarsson. “It’s time we finished this.”
The captains rose from their chairs and filed out of the sanctum. The last to leave, Roth glanced up at the lone stained glass window above him. He held the sign of the comet over his heart for a second, and shut the heavy oak door behind him with a thud.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Grand Alliance pressed onwards through the mists, no helmsman daring to push his warship faster than a few knots. All around them were the scattered cadavers of broken galleons, their rotted superstructures jutting from the rock-strewn water like the ribcages of titanic sea monsters. Through the stale air came banshee shrieks and menacing groans, an intermittent and confusing barrage that meant orders had to be transferred man to man. The allied warships were making slow progress as they wound and snaked in single file through the labyrinth. To say they were vulnerable to an ambush would be a gross understatement, but it was the only way they could progress through the deathly white mist.
The Heldenhammer led the way, Roth standing rigid at the prow. Despite the thick fog winding all about them, the view through the captain’s spyglass was completely clear, enabling him to chart a path through the maze of rotten vessels without running aground. They saw a crumbling citadel away to port, its forbidding black silhouette tallying with his father’s map and reassuring Roth that they were on the right track, but it was hard going. The detritus of a thousand shipwrecks lay scattered around and about, each reduced to little more than its own headstone. Roth was sure he recognised several of them. A couple of them he had even sunk himself.
Roth risked surveying the waters behind him for a moment. Sure enough, the vessels of the Grand Alliance were there, following him through the mists. Thinking of the elf’s words back in the Sanctum Templus, Roth gave an involuntary shudder. Each wisp of fog was a bodiless soul trapped in limbo, its mortal remains bound to Noctilus’ realm. Should things go wrong, it was very likely their own immortal souls would suffer the same fate.
Roth’s breath started to frost in the air. Shivering, the captain turned his gaze upwards. A thin white rime was creeping across the battered and holed sails that rose high into the mists above Roth’s vantage point on the forecastle.
Sails that were no longer filled with wind.
“Beware front, captain,” came a shout from above. “We’ve got—”
The booming roar of a broadside split the air as a volley of cannonballs hammered through the fog. Several smashed into the Heldenhammer’s prow, blasting holes in the thick oak panelling and thundering through the gun decks below.
Roth was shaken from his feet as a series of explosions rumbled within the temple-ship’s belly. The bodies of unlucky watchmen tumbled down from the fighting tower to land hard upon the topdeck.
Roth picked himself up, blood seeping where a splinter of wood had gashed his cheek.
Just for a second the mist parted up ahead, revealing the softly-glowing skeleton of a warship that drifted past as if suspended in thin air. Underneath its spine-carved keel trailed a morass of rusted chain and rotting vegetation. Aranessa had been right. The Shadewraith, as patient as death, had waited until they were at their most vulnerable.
Without the wind in its sails, the Heldenhammer was slowing to a halt. The Swordfysh and the Flaming Scimitar were attempting to use their momentum to carve around its flanks, but without wind they were as stranded as the temple-ship. They merely succeeded in presenting their sterns toward the Shadewraith, vulnerable to the same raking fire that had ploughed into the Heldenhammer. Behind them, Grimnir’s Thunder was changing tack, but it was hemmed in between the sail warships up ahead and the shipwrecks clustered all around it. They were sitting ducks.
Up ahead, the ghastly glow of the Shadewraith ebbed away, only to light the mists once more as it came about.
“Brace!” shouted Roth, but his voice was drowned out by the mocking howls of the spirits that wound and circled about his masts. “Dead,” they shrieked, every time Roth opened his mouth to bellow an order. “Dead, dead.”
An ear-splitting boom rent the air as more cannonballs ploughed through the spirit-fog towards them. Half of the flying galleon’s fusillade tore great gouges in the white timber hull of the Seadrake. The elven ship listed to one side, its proud azure sails hanging limp as the wind ebbed away completely.
The other half of the broadside smashed into the engine rooms of Sigmar’s Wrath with a deafening metallic clang. A massive brass cog burst from the rear of the forecastle, crashing down into the topdeck and grinding across it like a rolling millstone before spinning crazily to a halt.
Above Roth, the Heldenhammer’s stab-cannons fired upon the Shadewraith from the fighting tops, but their shots did little more than tear a few wisps of smoke from the skeletal ribs of the ghostly galleon.
Roth watched aghast as the enemy warship carved gracefully through the mists away from them. By the glow of its passage, it was turning back round in order to give them another volley from its port side. At this rate they would be taken apart in a matter of minutes.
Something barrelled through the mists towards the enemy warship, a red streak of scales and muscle followed by a fat-bellied tempest djinn. The spirit’s lower half billowed out behind it in a column of air, a spiral of souls left in its wake.
Prince Yrellian’s dragon was swooping down upon the distant Shadewraith, pulling up short at the last minute to breathe a gout of flame across the ghost ship’s decks. The fire billowed over and through the Shadewraith’s ribbed hull, but the fires did not catch. The ghost galleon was impervious to flame too. Roth snarled in frustration and smashed his fist on the timbers. He could feel his destiny slipping away, second by torturous second.
The tempest djinn, having curved around to the far side of the Shadewraith during the dragon’s attack, inhaled so much of the spirit-fog that wreathed the ghost ship that the haunting cries ebbed away. Ahead, the glowing galleon was left naked and exposed as the djinn exhaled with hurricane force.
The Shadewraith was propelled towards the Heldenhammer at great speed, borne upon gale-force winds by the djinn’s mighty breath. Insubstantial as the mist, the ghostly galleon had no way of halting its progress. Roth cried out in jubilation as he realised that the glowing warship was heading flank-on towards Sigmar’s Wrath.
“Release the winches!” screamed Roth over the moaning in the mists. “Release the Wrath! Hit that thing and hit it hard!”
“Aye, sir!” came the cry from the forecastle engine rooms. The Shadewraith was so close they could almost touch it, filling Roth’s vision with a wall of glowing white timbers and the miasma of rotten souls trapped within.
There came a great clunking from the engine rooms, followed by a dull and final thud. Sigmar’s Wrath descended a few yards, warhammer poised, before lurching to a complete halt.
His eyes stinging with tears of frustration, the captain sprinted up the spiral staircases that led to the fighting tops. Emerging in the upper lofts where the two remaining stab-cannons were being reloaded, Roth struggled to catch his breath. He could hear the cries of the damned issuing from inside the Shadewraith as its cannons were brought to bear for a devastating close-range volley. The engine rooms would not survive another direct hit.
Roth dived
over to the first of the stab-cannons, screaming to make himself heard. The crew just shook their heads, dumbfounded and shivering as rime formed across their beards and eyelashes. With a great effort, the captain heaved the stab-cannon around and pointed it down at the Heldenhammer’s forecastle. His men gibbered and wailed, but all that came out of their mouths were the harsh cries of the spirits above.
“Dead! Dead!”
Roth grabbed the taper from the lightsman at the rear of the first cannon and shoved it hard into the vent. He was rewarded with a blinding flash, and with an ear-splitting boom the fighting top filled with black smoke. One of the chainlinks holding Sigmar’s Wrath upright shattered in two as a cannonball ploughed into it.
A crewman grabbed hold of Roth, thinking that he had gone berserk. Roth elbowed him so hard in the chin that he was knocked out cold and shoved his way past the others with his teeth bared. Still holding the burning taper, Roth lurched over to the other gun and slammed into its barrel, wrestling it around and down. He pushed the taper hard into the priming powder around the vent.
The stab-cannon jerked backwards as the charge caught, sending a cannonball ploughing into the other chain holding Sigmar’s Wrath upright. The links fractured with a dull crack as the shot slammed onwards into the forecastle, causing yet more damage to the battered temple-ship’s prow. Ears ringing and face black with soot, Roth muttered a prayer and leaned out from the gunport.
With a ringing crack, the chains holding Sigmar’s Wrath in place gave way, and the gigantic statue swung downwards with the unstoppable force of a falling building. The holy warhammer held in its grasp thundered down into the Shadewraith’s midsection with devastating results. It ploughed through the ghostly galleon in a storm of golden light, shattering its gun decks, crushing its ribcage hull and breaking its keel in half.
With a despairing howl, the Shadewraith dissipated into a thousand swirling wisps of light. The tempest djinn billowing behind it inhaled, sucking the ectoplasm of the banished ship deep into itself. It breathed deeper, its chest and belly expanding until it ceased to be humanoid altogether and instead became a perfect glowing sphere. The ball of light span frantically, burning away the mists around it before diminishing in size and zipping through the air toward the deck of Flaming Scimitar.
Fascinated, Roth leaned out of the murder-hole at the back of the fighting top. Now that the mists were dispersed it was simple enough to follow the glowing sphere as it wound around and down towards a tiny figure standing on the pleasure barge’s foredeck with his arms raised.
Roth rested his spyglass on the sill, and it sprang instantly into focus just in time to show the Golden Magus open an ornate glass bottle. Shrinking further as it descended, the glowing sphere vanished inside, and the sorcerer deftly corked the bottle with a silver cone. Roth could just make out the tiny glowing galleon trapped inside before the vessel was hidden away in the Magus’ robes.
Despite the distance between them, the sorcerer looked straight at Roth and gave an elaborate little bow. Roth felt the hairs on his arms stand upright. The Golden Magus was smiling, but his eyes were as cold as death.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
With the deadly mists dissipated, the winds picked up and the Grand Alliance made good speed towards Sculler’s Gate. The Heldenhammer led them though the remainder of the shipwreck-strewn reaches, Sigmar’s Wrath hanging crippled at its prow.
Though they had won the battle against the Shadewraith, there was no way to reforge the chains that Captain Roth had broken when he had opened fire upon his own ship. The sagging figurehead had been robbed of its majesty as a result, and the morale of many of the Heldenhammer’s crew had been damaged along with it.
Roth, for his part, was distraught.
“Mother of pearl, sir, it was your thinking that killed the damned thing!” protested Ghow Southman as he struggled to keep up with Roth’s constant pacing. “If it weren’t for you, the lot of us would be dead in the water by now.”
“You’re missing the point,” snarled Roth, eyes locked on the horizon. “That weapon was my one chance of pulling down the Reaver. Cannonballs just aren’t enough. We know that from bitter experience.”
“No problem as can’t be solved if you throw enough cannonballs at it,” said the islander, tugging at the silver rings in his chin. “An old cove called Jaego Roth told me that, years back. Real scrapper, that one, you would have liked him. Never gave up.”
The first mate narrowed his eyes. “Though he could be a right pig-headed bastard when he set his mind to it. And they say his spine turned to jelly right when it mattered most.”
Roth gave a long sigh. “Ghow, you may look simple, but I know that inside that fat head lurks a decent brain. Spare me the parrot act. This is different and you know it.”
The mountainous wall of islands that formed the inner keep of Noctilus’ realm loomed in the distance, a broken spine of black rock with caves like eye sockets dotted along its length. On either side of the break were two great cliffs that faced each other, their teeth a set of jagged rocks jutting up from the water. One cliff was crowned by a henge of standing stones, much like those of old Albion, its face carved into the likeness of a titanic skull. Sculler’s Gate, just as the mapwright had painted it on the walls of the Enlightenment, and barely half a mile distant.
Despite the fact that the wind had diminished to little more than a zephyr, the Heldenhammer was gathering speed.
“Well, captain, by my reckoning we’re going through that gap whether we like it or not. That’s some current drawing us onward.”
“It’s nothing compared to the pull it exerts on the dead,” Roth sighed. He looked over to the three grand urns the Magus had entrusted to his care, each roped tightly to the forecastle.
“I suppose it’s possible we can still disrupt the maelstrom, even if killing the Reaver’s out of the question.”
“Sir,” said Roth. “With all due respect; you brought us in here, and like as not we’re not getting back out. If you’re going in through those cliffs with the seeds o’ failure in your heart, then failure you will reap, sure as fish stink in the sun. That dead bastard killed hundreds of us Sartosans already. And you know what, sir? He’s going to kill us too, most like. So let’s make him pay for it, eh?”
Roth nodded, lips pursed.
“Aye. Aye, Ghow, let’s do that.”
One by one, the ships of the Grand Alliance steered into the pull of the maelstrom. They had little choice but to aim for the gap in between the skull-faced cliffs; any other course would result in their running aground against the jagged rocks that lined the bottom of each peak.
High above, Yrellian’s dragon and the dwarf ironclad’s dirigible patrolled the skies. Roth would have given anything to have advance warning of whatever was behind the gate, but he had learned to trust to his own intuition long ago. His instincts were warning him against sailing between the two leering death’s heads that stood sentinel outside Noctilus’ accursed lair, but it was the only gap in the mountain peaks large enough to accommodate a warship the size of the Heldenhammer.
The dirigible turned about in the air, a red rune that Roth now recognised as the dwarf sign for danger flickering at its prow. Distant horns sounded as the craft floated back to its parent warship. In response, Grimnir’s Thunder belched twin plumes of black smoke and churned forwards with its engines at full power. Murky blue water frothed white in its wake as it gathered pace, outdistancing the sail-powered warships to either side.
“That’s odd,” said Roth, extending his spyglass. “Dwarfs aren’t given to rushing headlong into battle, unless there’s honour at stake, that is. I’ll wager the Kraken’s the other side of that gap.”
“Aye, sir,” said Ghow, looking worried.
“Still, I’d rather dwarf silversteel takes the brunt of whatever’s waiting there. Sigmar knows we’ve taken enough damage ourselves.”
As the dwarf ironclad moved towards the gap, the cliff faces began to shudder. Purple lig
htning played about the standing stones atop the leftmost crag, and the air filled with the distinctive tang of magic. Loose boulders fell in a series of small rockslides from their steep sides.
As the Thunder chugged into their shadow, the peaks themselves began to groan as if protesting against the forces shaking them to life. The cliff faces ground and juddered towards each other, the waters crashing against their jagged teeth foaming like the saliva of a rabid dog. Roth’s nails dug into the balustrade as he willed the ironclad to go faster. Smoke belched from the valve-chimneys arranged above the Thunder’s stern as the ironclad accelerated, attempting to run the gauntlet before the crags closed upon its hull.
To Roth’s eye, it looked like it might just make it through. Better yet, in closing upon the dwarf warship, the two craggy peaks had left wide gaps behind them. Gaps wide enough to sail a flagship through.
“Ha!” shouted Roth. “Hard-a-starboard, and aim for that gap!” He waved frantically at the opening to his right. “The current will take us through there just as well as wind, if not better!”
“Aye, captain!” came the call from the tiller capstan. “Coming about!”
Just as the Thunder began to emerge from between the two halves of Sculler’s Gate, a flabby, white-fleshed monster appeared on the far side. The skaven leviathan, its open ribs crackling with painfully bright warp-lightning, was cutting across the rapidly closing gate.
Roth cried out as the monstrous thing let fly, thick bolts of diabolical energy leaping out in great arcs that grounded one after another upon the metallic hull of the Thunder. The crippling energies of the chain explosion blasted a great smoking hole in the ironclad’s engine quarters and shook an avalanche of rocks from the cliff faces that ground ever closer on either side. With a groaning cough, the steam paddles of Grimnir’s Thunder fell silent, leaving the ironclad at the mercy of the grinding cliffs.
[Warhammer] - Dreadfleet Page 14
