by Warhammer
‘Where is Ikrit?’ I shouted.
The shadows tittered. ‘Did you not learn-hear, Bear-Eater? He is away-gone. Long-scurried.’ The voice came from the ceiling now, and I held my torch up towards it, banishing the shadows from the claw-dug rock. Inky threads fled along gouged tracks and furrows towards the walls, away from the torchlight. ‘We were equal before, priestess of the Savage Maiden. But here-now?’ The walls chittered with quiet laughter. ‘Think not-not. Not without tree-things in which to hide-skulk.’
‘You overlook the Lord Hamilcar, vermin!’ shouted Hamuz, his voice echoing.
My grin was forced, but nobody seemed to notice in the dark.
‘I live lots-many years, but I forget nothing. My soul belongs to Malerion’s cage. Nothing escapes its shadow.’
The darkness at the edge of the torchlight suddenly swirled into humanoid form, Malikcek bursting from its diaphanous cowl like a newborn with a dripping knife. The Jerech captain screamed in surprise, pushing his torch into the path of the blade. An explosion of sparks showered the assassin. The assassin tittered, bursting into formless wisps of shadow as Nassam’s greatsword swept through him, and scattering before the injured sputtering of Hamuz’s torch. Nassam’s sword banged on hard rock. He cursed as it leapt out of his hand and clattered away.
‘Stay where you are,’ I yelled at him, walking quickly to the edge of the light and picking up the lost sword.
Holding it easily by the wide blade, I handed it back.
‘Go away-back. Do not squeak-say you were not warned.’
‘Hamuz. Nassam. Keep between Brychen and me. Watch each other’s backs.’
‘What if he’s right?’ Hamuz hissed. ‘What if the warlock isn’t here?’
‘Then why is he still here?’
‘And why does he wish for us to leave?’ added Brychen.
‘Unless…’ Hamuz trailed off as he thought. ‘Unless that’s what he means for you to think, and he’s trying to trap you here or trick you.’
I gave him a nonchalant shrug, which I certainly didn’t feel but which I knew would be reassuring. ‘That all sounds a bit too complicated for me, my friend.’
‘You should listen to the man-thing. Ikrit’s interest has moved on. Now you die-die.’
A flurry of throwing stars descended on us from all directions. Most were flung at me and ricocheted off my bastion plate, but the attack was sufficiently indiscriminate to send Hamuz and Nassam scrambling for whatever cover they could find amongst the scraps of hide and armour. Brychen issued a long, sonorous vowel sound, her voice deepening as her body stretched and hardened, shaping into a sweeping canopy above the two Jerech men. Metal stars thudded into her bark and stuck. The growth spurt lasted only a moment before it ran in reverse. The wild priestess frowned down at the twisted metal sticking out of her armour.
‘I wouldn’t try to pull them out,’ I said. ‘They’re probably poisoned.’
Her lips twitched. ‘Probably.’
A clang of steel pulled my attention from her.
Malikcek drove Nassam towards the edge of the torchlight in a blur of shadowed limbs and blackened steel. The greatsword was a soldier of great skill and tremendous pride, but the assassin had him grossly outmatched. I threw my halberd with a roar, only to see Malikcek evaporate with a shriek of laughter, and my storm-forged blade smash through the side-wall of a beast-cart.
‘I will wear you down. Claim you one by one. I am darkness. I am death. The light cannot flee from shadow forever.’
‘Use your lantern,’ said Brychen.
‘Not yet.’
‘If not now, then when?’ shouted Hamuz.
There was a whisper of silk moving through shadow as I bent to pick up my halberd and I spun, halberd spinning with me like the spoke of a wheel, knocking aside the knife that Malikcek had intended for the spot between my shoulder blades. Then I spun again, and repeated the same trick on the second knife that had been driven towards my groin. I threw a punch. The assassin melted around my fist. Darkness streamed over and around my arm to reform on the outside of my punch.
The assassin’s kick landed in my stomach with the force of a whole herd of warhorses.
I staggered back, one hand over my cracked plate.
A thunderous bang almost deafened me. Hamuz. I watched in disbelief as the Jerech’s bullet passed straight through Malikcek’s ear and out the other, before ripping through the flapping wall of a yurt. Hamuz wailed in horror as the assassin rounded on him with a snarl.
‘Sigmarite-tipped rounds!’ I bellowed, gripping my halberd short, like a sickle, and hacking it across the assassin’s midriff. He bent under it, then somehow flipped his body, wriggled back to front and whipped out with a tail knife that punched through my knee-plate and put me down on one knee. I grunted, the muscles in my leg spasming as storm-infused sinew repelled Chaos-bred poison. ‘Nothing less will stop him.’ I turned my halberd so that I held it like a spearman facing a wild dog, and stabbed it through the skaven assassin.
He reappeared behind me.
‘The first time was fun-good, Bear-Eater. Now it is almost boring.’
‘To live is to suffer and die, shadow-touched,’ came Brychen’s snarl.
The priestess’ hand suddenly ignited. Molten amber energy blazed through the leafy bark of her gauntlet fingers, her whole body shaking with its fury. ‘Feel the kiss of the sun.’ Malikcek shrieked, evaporating before my eyes as the priestess thrust her blazing hand towards him and irradiated him in amber. This was not the cleansing white light of Azyr. It was a wild, consuming energy, one that I was able to look on only for another second before the light surge forced my eyes away.
But it burned some of the chill from my armour, which was nice.
Brychen sagged to the floor. The light, untamed and ever hungry, continued to spill from her splayed palm and across the ground before she was able to seal the gates again. Nassam ran to her side.
‘Use… your lantern,’ she growled.
An ungodly howl of pain and rage shook the cavern. The shadows whipped and roiled, like a god-serpent of black scales and monstrous size that had attempted to swallow a mortal creature and been stung by it.
‘Run?’ I suggested.
‘You are wise, my lord,’ Hamuz cried.
‘Which way?’ Brychen hissed, leaning heavily on Nassam’s shoulder.
‘Follow me.’
I hurtled off in the remembered direction of the passage that would take us deeper into the skaven lair. Hamuz sprinted unquestioningly after me. I leapt over a rockfall where the tunnel mouth had partially collapsed, felt a momentary dizziness as I landed, as though the realmsphere were a plate that tilted and pivoted under my weight, before haring on. There was a hiss and a rush of shadow, the hum of quartz and a stab-flash of amber light telling me that Brychen and Nassam were busy holding the assassin at bay.
‘Where now?’ said Hamuz. His eyes were wide and gaping, the proximity of his torch narrowing his pupils to pinpricks.
‘This way.’
Without giving myself time to think, or the others time to doubt, I plunged into a branching passage. Then another. Then another. Zig-zagging my way ever deeper into the crumbling labyrinth of tunnels and slumbering rock.
I had a vague notion of the route in my head, but the lair itself seemed to be playing tricks on me. Tunnels and scratch-posts that looked familiar would lead to dead ends and cave-ins, as if the maze had restructured itself in my absence to twist me back onto paths of its own intention. Stringy-looking rats squeaked and scampered from my torchlight. Hamuz splattered one with a precious sigmarite-tipped round, which spoke highly of the Jerech’s marksmanship, if not his nerve. Brychen screamed and rammed her spear into the wall as Malikcek seeped out of the rock between. Around a blind corner, I came to a passage that I would have sworn led to Ikrit’s apotheosis chamber, only to find
myself thumping against a blank wall. The passage was gone. Uncurling my fingers, I placed my palm against the stone and shuddered. The light of Sigendil had dipped almost below my horizon. I couldn’t say why or how, but I got the feeling that the chambers I was trying to reach were not there anymore.
Then the shadows behind us furled into a hissing, verminous shape, and we were running again.
A mile or more of tortuously winding tunnels brought us to the lip of an enormous bowl of a cavern. A wooden bridge had once spanned it, but it had broken and now hung against the two sides of the abyss. I remembered this place well. With a snarl of frustration, I went to the ledge and looked down. Twisted machines held in upright sarcophagi of warped iron lay silent in their own, darkly glittering filth. Movement from the other side of the chasm caught my eye and I looked up.
Malikcek waved to me and bowed before dispersing into the shadow.
‘I hate that rat,’ I growled.
‘Hate the ghyrlion, not its claws,’ said Brychen.
We took another way.
We wormed through a collapsed passageway on our bellies, Brychen last, me staring into the darkness for what felt like an age, with such high-strung alertness that I began to see assassins in every bulge of rock and chewed-on corpse. I think that he chose not to attack me then on purpose, amused by my fear. We ran through chambers that reeked of meat and spoil, airless pockets where the fear stench had been allowed to fester and left the four of us retching and gagging.
‘He’s not here,’ said Hamuz, covering his mouth with his hand as I shouldered open a mould-framed wooden doorway. ‘Nobody’s here.’ Then he walked into a stench that finally had him on his knees and vomiting over the blood-stained floor.
I grimaced. It looked like something between a charnel house and an abattoir. Sides of meat, including a number of human-looking limbs and torsos, hung from the ceiling on hooks over a system of clogged and rusted drains. Organs had been stuffed into drawers and cupboards. Bloody cutting implements and cookware was jumbled up on top of stoves and surfaces. It rattled softly together with a quiet vibration that nobody else seemed to be aware of but me.
Their attention was on other things.
Brychen prodded one of the hanging torsos with the butt of her spear. It swayed, creaking on its hook, butting against the one behind. They were pale and bloodless, but the skin was recognisably green.
‘This is what became of my people,’ she murmured. ‘The Wild Harvest. The Gorkai. First the vengeance of Ghur’thu, and the loss of the Maiden. And now this.’
‘I doubt your brother is here,’ I said, partly because I needed her mind on the assassin rather than her loss, but also because it was true. I thought of the crushed and twisted thing that Malikcek’s poison had left of Barrach.
Some things even a ratman would know better than to put in their mouth.
‘It does not matter,’ she said, lowering her spear. ‘When the jepard tears the throat out of the ghurzelle, or the fire consumes a forest and roasts all the life it harbours alive, it is no different to this.’ She turned to the Jerech and me, dead-eyed. ‘This is how we all end.’
Inspiring stuff, I think you’ll agree.
‘Let’s move on,’ I said. ‘Before he finds us again.’
I kicked in the door at the far end of the chamber. It had already rotted half away, what was left hanging off its hinges, but smashing it down seemed expedient and infinitely more satisfying at the time.
Nassam came next with Brychen under one arm, Hamuz following quickly, walking backwards, firelight and pistol both trained shakily on the passage behind us.
‘Her light fades fast-quick…’
‘Don’t let him taunt you,’ I called back, before the Jerech captain could waste another shot. ‘Remember who stands here beside you.’ I thumped my weapon haft against my halberd and roared, ‘Hamilcar does!’
‘Leave her to me. Maybe you get out-out alive.’
‘The warlock’s not here, lord,’ said Hamuz, a quaver in his voice. ‘We should get out of here.’
‘Not without her,’ I said.
As heroic as that came across, it was partly practical. I had been so intent on locating Ikrit’s apotheosis chamber – or better yet, Ikrit himself – that I’d been paying only a passing regard to our route.
I had been hoping that Brychen was paying attention.
‘We’re getting close to something,’ I said.
And we were. I could feel it. Sigendil had dipped out of view entirely, leaving me chilled and alone, but the nauseating sensation of the realmsphere tipping and turning beneath me had gone with it. Wherever the new makeup of the lair had been funnelling us, we were close to it, I was sure.
‘It looks like the apprentice workshops in the Ironweld armoury,’ said Nassam.
I nodded, though I’d avoided the place like it was a plague house.
Scraps of parchment lay everywhere, as though torn from the crooked metal cabinets and discarded drawers in some haste. The covers of books with their pages torn out. Bits of metal. Tools. Wires. Coloured glass.
‘Someone ransacked this place in a hurry,’ observed Hamuz.
‘Clearing out,’ agreed Nassam.
‘Going where, I wonder?’ I said.
Brychen looked thoughtful. ‘There have not always been skaven in the Nevermarsh. One day there were none and the next… it was as though the rains came.’
‘So they move on,’ I grunted. That was going to make my life harder. ‘I suppose that makes sense, the powers lined up in pursuit of Ikrit’s undead tail.’
‘How long ago was this?’ Nassam asked the priestess.
‘Nine seasons.’
‘A year and a half,’ Hamuz murmured. ‘No way they could have dug all these tunnels in a year and a half.’
I had no idea if it was possible or not, so I shrugged. ‘Deviant skaven sorcery. This would be the least impossible thing that I’ve seen it do.’ I gestured towards another passageway. ‘Over here. I think I know where we are.’
And to my immense satisfaction, I discovered that I wasn’t lying.
Ikrit’s burrows.
Leaving the others to catch up, I hurried towards the big circular door at the end of the undamaged tunnel. I stared at it for what was, in hindsight, an inordinately long time.
‘What is it, lord?’ said Hamuz.
‘This door was open before.’
‘What of it?’ asked Nassam.
‘Someone’s been here.’
‘One of Ikrit’s minions?’ said Brychen. ‘We have seen none now, but I despatched dozens when I came here the first time.’
I shook my head. ‘Not in their master’s own burrow. You haven’t seen him, but trust me. Even with the lair falling down around their ears they wouldn’t have dared shelter in there.’
‘Malikcek then,’ said Hamuz.
‘Not big on doors,’ I said. ‘You may have noticed.’
The Jerech captain glanced nervously back down the passageway. ‘You might be right.’
‘So… someone else has been in there?’ said Nassam, catching on.
‘Someone’s still in there,’ I said, a grin coming slowly. ‘It can only be opened from the inside.’
‘Well, let’s get what we came for.’ Hamuz pointed his pistol at the fiendishly complicated setup of rods and wheels and chains that constituted the lock. ‘Then get back out.’
‘No.’
Putting one hand over the Jerech’s wrist, guiding his aim down to the ground, Brychen placed the other against the door. At first, nothing much happened. Then there was a creak. Hamuz jumped back with a start as a strip of brass plating buckled outwards and a green shoot forced its way underneath it. My first thought was that the priestess was going to goad the dead wood to new life, ripping out the artifice of the warlock’s doorway, but where that idea
came from, or how being presented with a tree rather than a door would have been preferable, I have no idea.
Before I had a chance to answer that question, the priestess was gone, sucked into the wood of the door through that sapling growth.
We all took a step back.
‘Gods… damn,’ muttered Nassam, signing the hammer.
There was a click, and the door hinged open. Brychen stood on the other side, leaning even more wearily on her spear than she already had been.
‘I’m glad she’s on our side,’ Hamuz whispered to me.
I clapped him on the shoulder and ushered him in. Having experienced Brychen from both sides, I wholeheartedly concurred. I went in last. My vision swam and my knees weakened the moment I crossed the threshold. At first I thought that my constitution had finally been defeated and Malikcek’s poison had won out, but it wasn’t that. The weakness was spiritual, not physical. The High Star was gone, its blurry radiance consigned below the strange horizon of this room. I touched the door frame, but the telltale tremors and aetheric vibrations of the Realm of Beasts were no more.
I hadn’t crossed a door. I’d gone through an Arcgate into some kind of dead zone between realms.
Or so it felt at the time.
‘Are you well, lord?’ said Hamuz.
‘Fine. Shut the door and lock it.’
‘Are you sure? It seems to be the only way in or–’
‘Are you wanting to go somewhere? Lock it.’
‘Lord.’
The Jerech captain set about his orders.
‘And you.’ I pointed at Brychen, spotting the ripped Magrittan chaise that Malikcek had dumped me in when I’d first attended upon his master in his lair. ‘Sit. Recover your strength.’
‘There can be no recovery for me here,’ she said. ‘Cut off from the currents of the Ghurlands as we are.’
I blinked at her. ‘You felt it too? Why didn’t you say something?’
‘I assumed you knew.’
I rolled my eyes.
‘What’s she talking about, lord?’ said Hamuz, just finishing up with the door.
