As she plunged into the Kraken’s interior the sea-captain felt a jarring impact. Below her was a control room no larger than Roth’s sanctum, lit by an eerie green by row upon row of crackling green orbs. Sitting in the control seat was something that had once been a dwarf. It was grunting guttural oaths as it hurried to reload a fat-barrelled six-pistol. Seawater swilled around its legs as the torrent from the shattered eye-port grew into a raging flood.
The strange figure was disentangling itself from a nest of levers and segmented tendrils that writhed and grasped after it. Sprouting from its chin was a nest of mechanical cables and dangling plugs, a strange echo of Redd Brokk’s metal-capped beard. Several pairs of eyes winked and stared from what had once been a close-fitting helm.
Steam hissed from the creature’s nostrils as it growled a threat in debased dwarfish. Aranessa held her trident out towards the once-dwarf as the water level in the control room gushed ever higher.
“Hackhart, isn’t it? Tordrek Hackhart? Brokk Gunnarsson sends his regards, you piss-streaked, goblin-fondling excuse for a master engineer.”
With a bestial growl, the Kraken’s captain leapt out of its command throne and splashed into the roiling waters. It churned through the waist-high waters towards her. Aranessa readied her trident for a killing thrust, but a thick metal cable snaked down from above and dealt her a heavy blow to the head. Her vision spun, and she swore she could hear daemonic laughter ringing in her ears.
The hissing once-dwarf barrelled towards Aranessa with hands that clicked and whirred. She whipped her trident round just in time and fixed its butt against the inner wall so that its prongs jabbed hard into Hackhart’s metal-sheathed body. The once-dwarf seemed not to notice, eyes bulging as it grasped for Aranessa’s throat. She kicked out with her metal tail, slamming it hard into her assailant’s kneecap, and was rewarded with a grunt of pain.
Behind her, the seawater gushed in from above, the mounting pressure of the stunned Kraken’s slow descent forcing more and more brine into the command chamber.
Hackhart changed tack, pulling backwards sharply and wrenching Aranessa’s trident from her grip. The creature spun it round deftly and thrust it toward the sea-captain’s chest, but she slid to one side at the last moment, and the sea-spear wedged deep into the network of dials and cables behind Aranessa. Something screamed in her ear, but she blotted it out. Wrapping her arms around the trident’s shaft, she lifted her hips and slammed her tail so hard into the once-dwarf’s head that she knocked it reeling. A thin shriek came from the banks of cables behind her as she struggled to wrench the trident free, but it was stuck fast amongst the dials and pistons.
Aranessa realised with a sick jolt that the infernal machine itself was alive. Sliding out her slipknife, she cut savagely at one of the cable-veins behind her and yanked it out from the nest of its fellows, pointing the cut end towards Hackhart. Just as she had hoped, a spray of superheated ichor gushed out, pouring into the once-dwarf’s face. Blinded, the creature staggered backwards.
Casting around, Aranessa’s eyes fell on something that looked very much like a furnace, though it burned with an unnatural green fire. The water was up to her neck now, so she submerged completely, swimming over to the trident and finally wrestling it free from the wall of cables and dials. Spinning it over her wrist in the water, she used the butt of the sea-spear to batter open the lock on the furnace door and lever it open.
Almost immediately the water around the furnace began to bubble and simmer. The heat level in the waterlogged cabin tripled in the space of a few seconds. The once-dwarf shrieked, churning through the waters towards her with murder in its staring round eyes, but Aranessa was too quick. She darted around him and swam up to the torrent of water gushing into the command centre, hauling herself out with a supreme effort.
Just as she was squeezing herself free the once-dwarf grabbed hold of her tail and pulled with all its strength. Her face contorted in agony, Aranessa hurriedly cut herself free from the straps that held her new tail around her. She wriggled free, leaving her tail wedged firmly in the shattered eye-port and trapping the once-dwarf inside. Risking a glance backwards, Aranessa saw the malevolent creature staring at her from behind the thick glass of its cabled prison. Pink bubbles seethed out of its nose and mouth as it boiled alive like a lobster in a pot.
Exhausted and bereft of her new tail, Aranessa was tugged backwards into the darkness by a slow but irresistible force. She stuck her tongue out as she passed the glass eye of the mechanical monster, jabbing the three-fingered sign of the trident at its dying captain.
As the Queen of Tides drifted backward toward the maelstrom’s gnashing maw, the sickly green lights inside the Black Kraken flickered, ebbed, and died.
Roth’s joy at his victory over the Reaver drained away as a dark cloud floated up from the castle atop the shattered remnants of the crag. It billowed like robes in the wind, floating through the pelting rain towards the Heldenhammer.
As it came closer, Roth made out four robed and skeletal figures, each holding a scythe aloft in its bony fingers. A fell light glimmered in the eye sockets of their fleshless skulls. Strange symbols writhed at the hems of their tattered black garments; symbols that hurt the eye.
The deathly apparitions moved through the air directly towards Roth himself. A sharpshooter up in the rigging sniped one of the creatures, but his bullet passed straight through the spectre’s skull without so much as slowing it.
In the midst of the spectral escorts was a gold-armoured figure in a red bicorn, its deathly features distorted by a pair of long fangs that curved over his lower lip. The creature’s eyes blazed red, leaving trails of fire in the darkness.
Count Noctilus himself.
Roth’s heart hammered as if it knew it only had minutes left to beat. Pulling out the sickle from his artificial hand, Roth folded out the pressure lever and pumped it back and forth frantically until the device groaned fit to burst. He kissed the trident talisman hung around his neck and, rubbing the gannet’s foot beside it with a superstitious fervour that would have done Ghow proud, offered up a silent prayer to Sigmar and to the spirits of his family. The figures were growing close.
“Lads!” shouted Roth. “I think I’m going to need some help up here!” There was an edge of panic in his voice.
No response came.
The vampire alighted upon the forecastle of the Heldenhammer with the delicacy of an Estalian fencer stepping into the ring. It drew a long, basket-hilted blade, smiling cruelly at Roth. The pale-skinned creature was a foot taller than the captain, and as it threw a duellist’s salute its movements spoke of martial skill honed over countless years of war. Roth was not fooled by the pretence of honour. He knew from experience that the vampire fought dirty, just like any pirate should.
The captain was ready when the four robed figures came for him from above, scythes raised. He whipped his father’s Cathayan sword around in a bright silver arc that cut right through one of the creatures at the neck.
It whistled right through the spectre as if it were not there.
Off balance, Roth stumbled forward, barely ducking under an evil-looking scythe that almost lopped off the top of his head. Another scythe thudded down into the deck where his boot had been a fraction of a second before.
Roth turned his stumble into a roll, passing beneath one of the spectres and coming up against the front balustrade. The four robed figures came for him, scythes raised. Trapped, the captain jumped over the side of the gunwale and, still holding onto the balustrade, turned his momentum into a full-body swing. He vaulted back over the railing to land behind the robed figures and lashed out with his blade once more, plunging it through the torso of one of the spectres. He felt no resistance at all.
The vampire laughed hollowly, wiping blood from its sword with a silk handkerchief. The decapitated body of Ghow Southman lay at his feet.
Roth cried out in anger, but his lapse of concentration cost him dearly. Silent as death, the spectres
had surrounded Roth. Their scythes glinted in the otherworldly light as they closed in for the kill.
The sky above the forecastle flashed autumn red as the scaled belly and long, back-jointed legs of a dragon swooped over the deck. Prince Yrellian leapt down from the creature’s back, slashing downward with the burning scimitar in his gauntleted hand as he landed with feline grace upon the deck. The wraith nearest Roth exploded in a puff of brimstone-smelling flame, a thin scream ebbing away in its wake.
The elf rolled with the momentum of his vertical charge and came up cobra-fast, stabbing the Magus’ fiery blade straight through the wailing skull of another of the apparitions and causing it to burn away like gossamer.
Roth fell backwards, crawling away desperately as the third of the spectres slashed its long-bladed scythe at torso height. Its weapon came down as Roth slipped in the mire, but just as the point was about to pierce his chest the flaming scimitar burst from its neck in an explosion of red-hot fire, exorcising it utterly.
The creature’s death revealed Prince Yrellian standing tall above him, fending off the lightning-quick strikes of Count Noctilus. The exchange of blows was so fast that the clanging blades sounded like the ringing of a sally-bell. The vampire moved with such speed it was barely visible; one moment pressing at Yrellian’s flank, the next cutting under his sweeping curves of flame to stab at the elf’s heart.
The elf’s face was fixed in a mask of concentration as he parried and struck back in riposte, the burning scimitar leaving complex trails in the air.
Scrambling to his feet, Roth moved around to tip the balance, but his passage was blocked by the last of the wraith-creatures. It drove the point of its scythe at Roth’s chest, eye sockets burning with ancient fury. Roth parried the reaper’s blade with his father’s sword, but terror was constricting his throat. The creature’s very presence was sapping the strength from his exhausted body; even keeping upright as the Heldenhammer plunged onwards into the maelstrom’s yawning gullet was proving extremely difficult. This was a fight he could not hope to win. The scythe arced down again and again, battering Roth’s guard down.
A golden rapier lanced out from Roth’s side, ripping away part of the deathly creature’s skull with a pinpoint thrust. The captain didn’t so much as glance at his saviour, instead swinging his sword hard at the blade of his enemy’s scythe and forcing it out wide. The rapier came in again, and this time the glowing golden ghost of a young elf warrior followed it. Roth caught a glimpse of what could have been Yrellian’s double as the swordsman drove his slender blade into the robed spectre with a double lunge that would have done an Ulthuan sword master proud.
The wraith vanished with a despairing shriek. By the time Roth had regained his balance, the elven spirit-warrior was gone.
Atop the Heldenhammer’s figurehead, Count Noctilus and Prince Yrellian were duelling at lightning speed, neither able to get the better of the other in a fair fight. Roth growled as Noctilus sought to win by underhand means, chanting a phrase as old as the desert and deliberately allowing the elf prince to strike him. The Magus’ burning blade lodged in the bad meat of the vampire’s shoulder, but just as Yrellian gave a shout of triumph the vampire grabbed the elf’s wrist with a pallid claw.
Decrepitude raced across the handsome elf’s physique, skin blotching and whitening hair falling away in the wind. The vampire kept his death-grip even as the flesh of its shoulder scorched and crackled, its armour blackening and cracking in the roasting heat of the white-hot blade. The elf aged at a terrible rate, his proud physique bending almost double as he shrunk in his own clothes. Rot took hold, and the elf’s agonised face collapsed in on itself. Within the space of a few seconds, nothing more than a slender skeleton was left holding the burning blade.
The fiend plucked the scimitar from its shoulder and advanced towards Roth, backhanding the elf’s skeleton into the roiling waters below. The gloating cruelty etched upon its face was horrible to behold.
The captain called up the memories of his family’s funeral as the vampire leapt clear over the balustrade to land a dozen yards away from him. The coals of his inner fire flared. He stood up straight, meeting the vampire’s terrible gaze without flinching.
“I know you, fiend,” spat Roth, his voice hoarse with tension. “You killed my wife, my father, and my only son. You may yet kill me.”
The vampire nodded in assent, slowly coming forward with a sword in each hand. The flaming scimitar was painfully bright in its gloved hand.
“But by Sigmar, I will drag you and your undead scum screaming to hell with me…”
Roth whipped out his thrice-pistol and fired a tight volley, the bullets blasting open the ash-black cracks in the vampire’s breastplate and leaving a smoking hole of burned meat in its chest. Roth could just about see the vampire’s dead, dry heart within the shattered remains of its ribcage.
Noctilus just laughed, a sound as ancient and hollow as death. The burned flesh began to pucker and heal over, regenerating at an astonishing rate.
The vampire leapt.
Roth fired the table leg he had thrust into the empty socket of his sickle-hand during the elf’s final moments. The improvised stake, whittled from the same spar of hardwood he had taken from the Enlightenment at the scene of his father’s death, plunged into the vampire’s exposed heart with the power of a steam-driven piston. It flung the undead creature back, pinning it against the balustrade with the sheer force of its expulsion. The vampire’s head went back and its mouth opened in a silent scream, but its limbs did no more than twitch impotently.
Roth ran forward and wrenched the flaming scimitar from the vampire’s grip. Great gobbets of flesh sizzled from Roth’s hand as the blade screamed through the air, cutting Noctilus’ head from its neck in a puff of bloody steam. Roth turned the scimitar around so the point was facing downward and thrust it right down the vampire’s open throat.
The smell of cremated flesh was overpowering as the burning blade turned the vampire to ash from the inside out.
Roth staggered backwards, ripping the ruin of his hand free from the flaming scimitar. His nerves screamed black with agony, but he could not allow himself to pass out just yet. There was still work to be done.
The maelstrom roared and whirled, furious at the death of its master. The Heldenhammer span around the inside of its gullet, tossed this way and that by the heaving pressures of the vast whirlpool. Roth staggered across the decks, an explosion of pain bursting behind his eyes every time he reached out to steady himself with his crippled hand. The deck was slick with blood and corpses; men o’ bones and drowned alike had pulled themselves out of the water to assail the crew whilst Roth had been fighting on the forecastle. Barely a dozen of his men were still alive, gibbering in terror and praying to the gods for salvation.
“Deliver us!” they cried, arms raised imploringly to the uncaring skies. “Manann, deliver us!”
“Deliver yourselves, you lazy bastards!” roared Roth over the din of the tempest. “Help me unshackle these urns! We have to do this ourselves.”
The men screamed and cried in fear, not listening to a word their captain said.
The captain lurched and hobbled across the wildly bucking deck, blind with pain and exhaustion. The lashing salt of the maelstrom stung his ruined hand, and his ears bled with the pressure of the unholy maw grinding them further into its gullet.
The urns were up ahead, lashed to the base of the forecastle with stout rope.
With a great effort, Roth pushed his body up the incline of the Heldenhammer’s deck. He thrust his arm through the stout cable of rope holding the grand urns in place, anchoring himself for a moment. There was no way he could undo the complex knotwork holding the urns tight with his ruined hand and empty stump.
Desperate, the captain cast about for something with which to sever the rope. He found nothing. Despair seeped through him like poison. Even if he had found something, how would he use it? An axe? A knife? Little use to a man with no hands.
Roth slumped against the grand urns, his vision dwindling to a point.
A tall, massively built corpse grabbed Roth by his shoulder and forced him upright against the urns, backhanding him across the face so that his head rebounded from the painted ceramic. Roth snarled and shook himself, blood, puke and tears mingling in his beard. He stared with the intensity of a wounded beast at his persecutor, his mind flaring into life once more.
It was Salt Pietr. Dead, rotting, and clad in seaweed, but by the sheer size of the bastard and the tattoos on his bald head it had definitely once been Salt Pietr. No one else Roth knew had a neck thicker than his head, for a start.
The lumbering apparition drew its cutlass and brought it downward in a great arc. Too tired to dodge the blow, Roth almost felt relief that his death was finally at hand.
The cutlass slashed through the stout rope that bound the grand urns to the forecastle, bisecting it with a single strike. Salt Pietr staggered with the effort of catching and holding the rope’s end before the grand urns rolled away into the water. No mortal man could have achieved such a feat, but by the sheer strength of his arm, Roth’s old mate was stopping the urns from tumbling away. Shaking tears from his eyes, Roth saw that they would pass the fang-like rocks at the heart of the vortex with their next revolution around the living tunnel of water.
The captain’s breath caught in his throat. This could still work.
“Salty, now!” he shouted, his voice ragged and desperate as he kicked out at the urns, “Drop the rope!”
The first mate did as he was told, just like always. The thick cable whipped away, and the grand urns tumbled onto the rocks below. Roth tumbled with them, but Salt Pietr grabbed his arm at the last moment, holding his captain suspended over the void.
[Warhammer] - Dreadfleet Page 16
