He’d underestimated them before, and paid the price. And now he’d done it again. Angry, he slammed his fist against the mast. He looked at his hand, at the splinters and the oozing blood, and felt a sense of calm settle over him. Suddenly, he understood what the flydandy’s message had meant. He’d assumed the Stormcasts would be driven back, or else contained in the swampy outer ring.
But it seemed that wasn’t what Grandfather wanted. A bark of laughter slipped from him. He was to be the bait, drawing them deeper into the garden, and to the walls of Desolation itself. It was a simple enough plan, he supposed.
Draw the shiny-skins in, and close off any route of escape. Tighten the noose, slowly but surely, until they finally realised that they were on the scaffold. Their despair would be all the sweeter when that realisation hit.
‘And what will be my reward for bringing that about, I wonder?’ The Court of Ruination was a snake pit second only to the bureaucracy of the Impossible Fortress. Many was the loyal warrior who had been ground to mulch by their machinations. Spume didn’t intend to suffer the same fate.
There were places he could go to seek refuge. The Ossified Hills, even the Septic Isles. But none were certain to be there when he arrived. Parts of the garden were ever shifting and changing according to the whims of its master, and if Grandfather had decided his fate, there’d be no escaping it.
No. He’d never run from a fight before, and didn’t intend to start now. He’d stay the course, and prove himself Grandfather’s most favoured son.
Screams danced on the plague wind. The slave galleys of the Eternal Swamps had never been a match for the invaders. Their captains were lazy, their crews fat with easy meat. The daemons aboard those ships were unfit even for service in Grandfather’s blighted legions. It was no surprise that they’d been defeated so quickly. For too long they’d pillaged the waters of the first tier, hunting souls that couldn’t fight back. But Spume was made of sterner stuff than that.
Perhaps this was the way Grandfather intended for him to prove his worth. He’d ride out this storm, lead them on, and stand tall against the winds. And, at the end, he’d claim the glory for himself. Perhaps he would even ascend to the Court of Ruin. They would name him Grand Admiral of the Plague-Fleets.
But if he intended to turn this to his advantage, he needed to know the secrets of the captive dangling in his hold. He raised his axe. ‘Whip them harder, Durg. I would be gone from these waters as soon as possible.’
Order given, he started towards the hold. It was time to let Urslaug know that she’d rejoined his crew, whatever her feelings on the matter. He smiled, pleased at the thought. It had been too long since he’d sailed without a witch at his side.
‘We are moving,’ the witch said, peering up. ‘What has that fool done now?’ The balefire lanterns twisted on their hooks, casting weird shadows across the hull.
‘Maybe you’d best go and see,’ Grymn said. He could hear the crack of thunder and, for an instant, wondered again if someone, perhaps Sigmar himself, had come for him. As he had earlier, he dismissed the thought with a savage twitch of his head. No one was coming. Not even Gardus would be so foolish. Doubtless some sorcery was at work. The servants of Chaos warred with each other as often as they did anyone else. And Spume seemed like the sort to have plenty of enemies, even here.
Urslaug twitched an admonishing finger. ‘Shame. Do you think me so foolish as that, just because moss grows on my skull?’
Grymn didn’t bother to reply. She leaned close. ‘Or perhaps it’s not you, eh?’ She held up a giggling nurgling. ‘What do you say, my pretty? Which soul so insults me?’ The little daemon chortled and bounced on her palms.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Another insult,’ she said, tossing the nurgling over her shoulder. It struck a beam and slid to the floor with a wet plop. ‘I know the stink of the Order of the Fly when I smell it. Their chivalry is like a canker, infecting all it touches. Honour. Pfaugh. What is honour, save the hope of order?’
Insulting witch! Would that I had a blade and a hand to wield it with.
‘And if you had, what then, pox-knight? Remove my head?’
Grymn jerked, and looked up in shock. She cackled and tugged on an ear. ‘Yes, I hear him. And I suppose you would kill me if you could, pox-knight. You lot are worse at taking criticism than even fat-bellied Spume. His arrogance, at least, is tolerable in its simplicity. Yours is unearned, save in your own delusions.’ The witch spat into her cauldron.
‘You speak harshly of your ally,’ Grymn said. ‘Or is he your master?’
‘He’s a fool and a braggart,’ the witch said, peering up at Grymn. ‘Brave, but no wiser than that kraken which shares his skin.’ She thrust a finger up to its knuckle into her eye, and withdrew the glistening digit with agonising slowness. With it, she painted a strange sigil on the curve of the hull. ‘Else he would not have stopped here.’
‘You intend treachery,’ Grymn said, testing his chains. He needed to keep the creature talking, keep her from beginning whatever sorcery she intended. ‘That is to be expected.’
‘And what would you know of it?’ she snapped.
‘I know that you are a broken thing. Without hope or beauty in you.’
Urslaug stared at him, her eye expanding and contracting like a beating heart. ‘Then you know nothing at all,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Like Spume, you are ignorant and deserve whatever fate befalls you.’
She pressed her sticky fingers to his chest. He flinched back, and she laughed. ‘Scared? Good. No reason to be, though. I have no intention of doing as he wishes. No soul-carving for you this day.’ She smiled, displaying brown teeth. ‘No. Others will be interested in you as well, I’d wager. Ones more willing to cross my palm with something of real value… ah.’ Grymn saw that the mark she’d made on the hull was glowing.
‘Why do you summon me, witch?’
The voice shivered dully through the planks of the hull, causing Grymn to shudder in his chains. ‘Not just you, Gulax,’ she said. ‘Wait but a moment and all will be revealed.’ Swiftly, she drew a second sigil with a dripping finger, this one on the deck. Greenish vapour rose from it, twisting into the long, lean shape of a verminous, horned skull.
‘Speak-speak, hag. I have no time to waste-spend in idle talk!’
‘If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have answered my summoning, Rancik,’ Urslaug said, sinking inelegantly to her haunches. ‘I have something here that the both of you might be interested in. Something I am willing to barter, should you be of a mind.’
‘I am Filthblade of the Rotguard, witch. I do not barter,’ Gulax rumbled.
‘No? Then you may leave.’ The witch spoke confidently, but Grymn could see the tension in her withered form. She turned her pulsing eye on the smoking sigil on the floor. ‘What about you, Bleak One? Or have the Children of the Great Corrupter also lost their taste for honest trade?’
‘I am listening-heeding, yes-yes… speak-talk, quick-fast.’
‘I have a soul for you. A soul heavy with the stuff of the storm. You know of that which I speak.’ She sat back on her heels.
‘Yesss,’ both voices murmured in unison.
‘I offer it up to one of you, in return for…’
‘Death.’
Urslaug shot to her feet with a squawk. She whirled, hands full of balefire, but not swiftly enough. Spume’s axe swept out and thudded home in a support beam. Urslaug’s head tumbled into her own cauldron, as her body slumped to the deck.
Spume kicked her body and shook his head in disgust. ‘This is the thanks I get for offering ye a share of the plunder.’
‘I know that voice,’ Gulax growled. ‘Thief. Corsair. Liar. Reaver…’
Spume chopped into the sigil, obliterating it, and silencing the basso voice. He whirled, ready to do the same to the second sigil, but it had alre
ady faded to a smudge of ash on the deck. He cursed. ‘I should have known. Never trust a woman, or a witch, shiny-skin.’
Grymn laughed. ‘It seems you are to be undone by your own kind, beast.’
Spume lifted Grymn’s chin with the edge of his axe. ‘Competition is a fact of life, in the garden or otherwise. And I welcome the chance to prove my superiority.’
‘Let me loose, and I’ll prove which of us is superior,’ Grymn said, with a cough. Something wriggled from between his lips and plopped to the deck. Spume trod on the maggot. He chuckled.
‘And who said that, then? Ye, or the worm that gnaws?’
‘Either will serve,’ Grymn said. ‘For neither of us care much for you.’
Spume threw back his head and gave a hoarse laugh. ‘Good. I’ve friends aplenty, and need no more of them. But good enemies are in short supply.’ He kicked over Urslaug’s cauldron, spilling the bubbling brew everywhere. Nurglings fled in every direction, warbling in dismay. The souls in the hold screamed in agony as the liquid spilled through the bars of the cage. The Rotbringer scooped up a tentacleful of the hissing stew, and slapped it across Grymn’s chest-plate. The tentacle writhed, smearing the concoction. Grymn could feel the heat of it through his armour.
‘It might please you to know that you’re not the only one of your sort in the garden,’ Spume said. ‘Someone is out there, tearing apart ships. Ye must be friendlier than ye seem, if they’d come all this way to get ye.’
Grymn felt a spark of hope. Then, a rush of anger. What fool had come for him? There were easier ways to die, if they wished. Spume wrapped a tendril around his helmet and forced his head up. ‘I know now why Father Decay is interested in you. And why I’ve been commanded to drag your carcass to Desolation. It’s not just you the Court of Ruination is interested in.’
Grymn didn’t know what Spume was ranting about, but he understood the implications well enough. He sagged in his chains, and Spume chortled. ‘Aye, ye see it now, don’t ye? The deeper ye are taken into the garden, the deeper they’ll have to come to get ye. Why settle for one drink, when ye can have a cask, eh?’ He stepped back. ‘It’s no wonder Father Decay wants ye, the fat lubber. To offer up such a prize to Grandfather is a worthy dream indeed.’
And one you will not willingly share, I’d warrant, Bubonicus murmured.
Spume twitched, and chuckled. ‘No need to worry, though. I’ll offer you up to Nurgle myself, even if I must chop a path to his manse and drag this ship with my teeth.’ He slammed Grymn’s head back against the hull. ‘You’re very welcome, I’m sure.’
Grymn watched the chuckling creature climb back above decks, dearly wishing he was free. Just one hand, even.
Clink.
He looked. The bilious stew was sizzling against the chains. Several links had been eaten clean through. He tested them, and found a little give. Not much, but maybe enough.
And where will you go then, Lorrus?
‘Anywhere is better than here,’ Grymn muttered.
I do agree, but now is not the ideal moment.
A dull pain flared through him, and he tensed, gritting his teeth. ‘You’re just trying to buy yourself time, monster.’
Yes. But my time is your time. I would no more have you die to that brute’s axe than I would have you offered up by some wretched princeling looking to curry favour. I have set my standard in the soil of your soul, and I shall defend what I have taken.
Grymn laughed, painful as it was to do so. ‘The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy. You all serve the same darkness, whatever you call it.’
Oh, aye, and your God-King is a singular being, is he?
Grymn fell silent. Sigmar had many names, it was true. And with each name, a face. All of these were equally true. Facets of a greater whole.
And so it is with us. The King of all Flies is vast and contains multitudes. Only once you accept your fate will you see his more beneficent side, Lorrus…
‘Do not speak my name,’ Grymn said.
And why not? We are boon companions, now. Your fight is my fight, and my fight, yours. Once you accept this, we can–
‘Be silent, damn you,’ Grymn thundered. His voice echoed through the hold, silencing even the whimpers of the trapped souls below. ‘Be silent,’ he said again, more softly. Bubonicus said nothing. Grymn sagged in his chains, and tried to ignore the feeling of worms gnawing at his innards.
‘Only the faithful,’ he said.
It was less a prayer than a plea.
Chapter Sixteen
ROT IN TOOTH AND CLAW
The jungle seethed.
The trees stretched to the very pox-clouds, which spewed from between the grinding tiers, and the canopy formed a crude roof over the entirety of the jungle below, blotting out the light of the Plague-Moon. Filthy waters pattered down along the trunks of twisted trees and soaked the spongy earth, or filled the raging rivers that stretched like gangrenous wounds across the body of a dying man.
There had been a city here once. Temples and avenues. All of them lost to the jungle, by the whim of Nurgle, and their inhabitants made over into new, more amusingly monstrous shapes. All that remained of their great works clung like scabs to the continent-spanning edifice known as the Great Vent. A mountainous burrow of stone and dirt, dug by the great god-worm that had once been worshipped here, before Nurgle had claimed it for his own. The Great Vent wound about the jungle, before spilling down through its heart, and into the depths of the garden.
As everywhere in the garden, there was no death in its green embrace, only life. And that life was engaged solely in wrathful predation, seeking only to devour, before being devoured in turn. Mould-covered monsters, born from the corpses of those who had perished before their time, hunted one another through a green hell of hungry plants and strange, fungal growths. The dark waters of the river that wound through the jungle in serpentine fashion boiled with hungry shapes, which thrashed and coiled in never-ending battle. Things perished, only to rise anew from spores or scat.
Life at its truest, in all its glorious fury.
At any other time, the black galley sweeping down the river would almost certainly have been attacked. But there were greater predators about, and they had marked the galley and its crew for their own. And on the seventh hour of the third day, they attacked.
Plague drones swooped low over the opalescent waters and swarmed over the galley. Plaguebearers, clad in rust-riddled cuirasses and grimy mail, flopped to the decks with clumsy eagerness. They launched themselves into battle with the galley’s crew. Duelling, droning chants punctured the damp air as the two groups of daemons traded blows.
‘Avast and avaunt, ye scabrous dogs,’ Gutrot Spume roared, as he swept his axe out and bisected the rot fly in mid-swoop. Its rider tumbled to the deck with a frustrated grunt, single eye glaring. Before the plaguebearer could find its feet, Spume removed its head. He punted the pustulating skull over the rail. ‘This ship and all it carries is mine, and I’ll not give her over to any poxy lubberworts, whatever their purpose.’
‘You speak harshly, corsair, and with an ignorant tongue,’ a thunderous voice rumbled. Spume turned, axe raised. The Great Unclean One squatted among the rower’s benches, crushing dozens of souls beneath his flabby weight. His vast bulk was still wet from the river’s embrace. The greater daemon had hauled himself aboard even as his vanguard of blight drones had swooped down out of the miasma to attack. He’d nearly capsized the galley in his haste, which now rode dangerously low in the water.
The creature was almost the height of the galley’s mast, and bulky with fat and muscle. He was clad in rusty armour plates and mail, which strained to contain his grey-green form. Where his flesh was visible, it was by turns stretched tight or else torn and oozing. Infected coils of intestine bulged between the plates of armour like ribbons of merit, and his head was nothing more than a lump set on his broad shou
lders. The creature wore a dented, full-face helm, topped by a single, curved horn of pockmarked iron. He pointed a heavy, square-tipped blade, dripping with tarry poisons, at Spume. ‘A dog should know its betters, even if only by instinct. I am Gulax, oldest blot-son of Bolathrax, and Filthblade of the Rotguard. What are you, but a mote in Grandfather’s smallest pustule?’
‘A mote serves well enough to bring down a mite such as yourself, ye overbearing moss-brained oaf,’ Spume gurgled in reply. ‘I bow before no one, daemon or otherwise, on the deck of my ship.’
‘Not yours for much longer, mote,’ Gulax rumbled. ‘I knew you would not dare traverse the Great Vent. Instead, you seek a lesser waterway, more fitting for such a puling wretch. You wish to reach the Hopeless City in secret, as if the ways and means of your journey are not high entertainment for the Court of Ruination.’
‘And ye think to stop me then? To take my glory for your own?’ Spume wriggled a tentacle invitingly. ‘Well then, come and have a dance, if you’re of a mind to return to Grandfather’s cauldrons. Here, let me choose the tune for us.’ He broke into a sudden, lumbering charge, axe raised. The Great Unclean One reared back, murky eyes widening in shock. Gulax’s blade swept down, but thudded into the deck, rather than bisecting Spume, as the creature had apparently intended.
Spume leapt onto the edge of the immense sword and swiftly scaled its length, as the daemon tried to wrench it free of the swollen wood. It was no more difficult than running along the mast in a storm. Spume’s axe crashed down, splitting the rusty shoulder-plate and biting deep into rancid flesh. Gulax howled and heaved his blade free in a cloud of splinters, but Spume had already found a new perch.
One tentacle held tight to the horn on Gulax’s helm, allowing Spume to tear his axe free in a welter of ichor. Gulax shrieked again, and stumbled, nearly snapping the mast in two with his weight. The galley rocked dangerously, and daemons tumbled into the river, still locked in combat. Spume chopped down at the point where Gulax’s flabby neck met the fat of his shoulder. Gulax dropped his blade and clawed for his attacker, trying to pluck him from his perch. The daemon staggered towards the foredeck, heedlessly squashing his own warriors. ‘Get off me,’ he roared.
Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden Page 24
