Gardus pointed with his sword. ‘There. Do you see that?’
Aetius and Feros followed his gesture. ‘What is it, my lord?’ Feros said.
‘Our way in,’ Gardus said.
It was a gap in the towering span of stone. A crack, twice the height and width of the galley, but cleverly disguised with vines and packed soil. Or it had been – something had passed that way recently, to judge by the torn vines and clumps of filth floating in the water. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it look as if it were nothing at all, but he could see the strange, claw-like runes that marked its edges. The same runes that had been branded on the gargants.
‘Sentries,’ he said. ‘Those beasts were set here to guard this place.’
‘By whom?’ Aetius asked.
‘The loathsome ratmen and their vile kin.’
Gardus turned. Tornus approached, hauling Gatrog in his wake. Cadoc and Morbus followed after. The Knight-Azyros had one hand on his sword, and appeared ready to remove Gatrog’s head at the least provocation. The Rotbringer looked around with distaste. ‘Poor brutes. To be enslaved so is a foul fate, and one I’d not wish on my worst enemy. The ratkin have no understanding of honour or the beauty of despair, and they twist Nurgle’s blessings for their own duplicitous ends.’
‘You offer up such information freely,’ Gardus said.
Gatrog shrugged. ‘I swore an oath.’
‘Fair enough. Where does that passage lead?’ Gardus swung his hammer up, to indicate the concealed aperture.
‘It is called the Gape. A wound, carved in the flesh of the Great Vent. I’d heard stories, but gave them little credence.’ Gatrog stared at the immense crack in fascination. ‘Truly, there are yet wonders undreamed by humble knights.’
‘You are having a strange definition of wonder,’ Tornus said.
‘And of humble,’ Cadoc said.
Gatrog glared at him. ‘I am humbler than thee, at least.’ Cadoc reached for the hilt of his blade, but a look from Gardus stopped him from drawing it. ‘Skaven carved it, after they’d diverted the river, with help from their gargant slaves. The King of all Flies was magnanimous and allowed his allies to find sanctuary in his garden. For what is a garden without vermin?’
‘And where does it lead?’
‘To the fourth tier, and the Hopeless City. The skaven sought to avoid the tallies rightfully collected by the guardians of the Great Vent.’ Gatrog’s smile spoke as to the nature of those tallies. Suddenly, Gardus was glad for the efforts they’d taken to avoid travelling via the river. ‘The ratmen have a warren within. It is a deadly road, but swift.’
‘Deadly or not, it is a road we must take. Aetius, Feros, see to bringing the galley to water. Tornus, restrain our guide.’ For once, Gatrog went without complaint. Undoubtedly, the creature saw an opportunity for escape in their chosen course.
‘We should kill it now,’ Cadoc said, watching as Tornus hauled his prisoner back to the galley. The Knight-Azyros tapped the hilt of his blade for emphasis. ‘We will catch up to our prey in the tunnel. We have no more need of such foulness.’
‘Save that Tornus believes that he might be redeemed,’ Gardus said.
Cadoc said nothing. Gardus did not press the issue, merely watched as the Knight-Azyros took to the air, to scout ahead. In truth, Cadoc was right. They should have executed Gatrog long before now, however useful he’d proven himself. But, time and again, Gardus had stayed his hand. Part of him wished to believe that Tornus was right, that some spark of humanity yet remained in their prisoner. For if that were the case, then perhaps there was hope for all that the Dark Gods had touched.
‘You put much stock in the word of one we have only just met,’ Morbus said.
‘Who? Tornus or the Rotbringer?’
‘Either.’
‘Gatrog is being more helpful than I anticipated,’ Gardus said. ‘He seems to hold his honour sacred. Unusual for such a being.’
‘The Order of the Fly were heroes once. Men of virtue. The true horror of Chaos comes not from what is warped, but from what remains the same.’
‘Perhaps Tornus is right, and he can be redeemed in some fashion.’
‘Perhaps.’ Morbus sounded amused. ‘And perhaps the light of Cadoc’s beacon is having a deleterious effect on him. Being exposed to the pure light of Azyr on a constant basis… perhaps it is cleansing his soul.’
‘Is that possible?’
Morbus laughed softly. ‘You should know by now, Gardus, that all things are possible, for the faithful.’
Gardus hoped there was truth in what the Lord-Relictor said. He hoped that he had not doomed them all with this quest. More, he hoped that those left behind were not suffering because of his choice. ‘Only the faithful,’ he said.
‘Only the faithful,’ Kurunta, Lion of the Hyaketes, roared as he killed. His broadsword dripped with foul ichors as it rose and fell to a butcher’s rhythm. The plaguebearers were no match for him – few things were. It was a sad fact that he could find little challenge in these fallen realms. He, who had once warred with demigods, was now little more than a night-soil collector. A daemon lunged up at him out of the bubbling muck. He caught its greenstick wrist and pulped it, before chopping through its chest and abdomen.
He began to sing as he kicked aside the suppurating mass of intestine and flesh. The war-songs of his people were still sung in the mountains west of the Black Grasses. The songs had changed some, in the intervening centuries, but the melody was the same. The sound of his voice rose up, drowning out the droning cries of the daemons crawling out of the half-sealed realmgate.
The retinues under his command joined him in song, their voices following his, as they had these past five days. He elbowed a plaguebearer, perforating its soft skull with the force of the blow. Something about the crackling remains of Grymn’s broken lantern was weakening the daemons, draining them of vitality. Even now, Grymn was warding them. Kurunta spun, blade licking out. A cyclopean head fell to the water with a splash.
Five days. Five days since Gardus had led the others into the Garden of Nurgle. Angstun was beside himself. Kurunta wasn’t worried, however. He would worry on the seventh day, no earlier. Five days was nothing. He stamped down on a knobbly claw, crushing it. He whirled his blade about and drove it down, piercing the daemon’s shapeless skull. More daemons squirmed on the walls and floor, trying to drag themselves from the semi-solid sargassum. They had burst into being like hellish flowers, but found themselves trapped. Now, they clutched at the legs and arms of his warriors, trying to slow them down. More daemons, flesh sloughing from half-formed bones, stumbled out of the swirling black waters. His warriors were holding their own. If the creatures had been at full strength, the Stormcasts would have been overwhelmed and driven back.
The chamber shook. Debris fell from the ceiling. It sounded like Angstun was having his own difficulties. A Liberator had brought word that the Rotbringers were attacking again. They were determined to reclaim their citadels. But where Angstun set his standard, no enemy would pass, no matter how determined. Angstun would hold.
‘Even unto his death,’ Kurunta murmured. Much was demanded of those to whom much was given. Such was the first canticle of the Hallowed Knights, and the truest expression of their ethos. Kurunta had never thought of faith, either its lack or its power, in his time as a mortal. For him, faith simply was. To worship the Great Bull-Roarer was what all men did, unless they were godless and profane.
A plaguebearer’s blade drew sparks from his shoulder-plate. He split it open with a single blow, and shoved what was left back into the waters. A crackle of lightning alerted him to the death of one of his warriors, and he cursed. More and more half-formed daemons were rising from the waters. Their droning chant grew louder, and the glow from the shattered lantern was growing dimmer. He gestured to the nearest Liberator. ‘Advika, pull the others back. It’s time our g
uests heard my roar.’ He whirled his sword about, driving it point first into the muck, and reached for his war-horn.
The horn had been bestowed upon him by Gardus after the battle at the Celestine Glaciers. He’d had it recast in a more familiar shape by the Six Smiths, made over into a curling shape which resembled a stylised lion, crouching on four bent limbs. From between its jaws emerged the rounded bell, and the mouthpiece was set between its shoulders. Oath-ribbons and prayer scrolls, akin to those that decorated his armour, hung from its golden shape. He raised it to his lips.
Stormcasts retreated, backing away from the bubbling waters. They knew what was coming next. Kurunta relished the chance to make a joyful noise. There was power in such things. A great roaring, to break the enemy’s will and send them fleeing, or to destroy them utterly. He would settle for the former. To destroy them would mean destroying this chamber, and sealing it. And that he would not do, until those who had gone were returned.
Kurunta blew a single, booming note. What emerged from the stylised lion’s maw was a roar worthy of the great beasts of the Felstone Plains. It flared outward, and plaguebearers were smashed back off their feet. Their rotten forms disintegrated as the note ravaged among them, casting them back into the primordial soup from which they’d emerged.
Pillars cracked and burst as the echo bounced among them. A section of the roof plummeted down, piercing the skin of the water and casting up a shower of blighted liquid. Kurunta stepped back, lowering his horn. For the moment, the daemons had retreated. Even the ones stuck in the walls and the floor were silent. They glared at him as he strode back towards the other Stormcasts.
The others would return, and in greater numbers. He glanced at the broken lantern, its blue glow barely a flicker within the shattered casing. He estimated it would vanish entirely in two days. And then there’d be nothing to stop the servants of Nurgle from flooding the fortress, and killing all within.
‘Two days left. Then I will worry.’ He slung his war-horn and looked around. Some of his warriors were wounded. Many were dead. But those who remained had no give in them. Steel, down to the soul. ‘Who knows no despair, save in failure?’
‘Only the faithful,’ came the response.
Kurunta nodded and planted his broadsword before him, resting his hands upon the hilt. ‘Aye. And we are that. Whatever else, we are that.’ Even as he said it, his eyes could not help but fix on the fading light of Grymn’s lantern. Some said that the light in such a lantern was tied to the soul of the one who carried it. He hoped that was not the case.
He hoped for many things.
‘Two days,’ he said quietly.
Chapter Seventeen
THE RAT NEST
Tornus snarled in fury and loosed one arrow after the next, so swiftly that his movements were a blur of silver. Hunched, verminous shapes were punched backwards, nailed to the rail, or sent hurtling over it. But still the skaven came on. The diseased adherents of the Clans Pestilens were everywhere, clinging to the rigging or scurrying across the deck, swinging enormous, smoke-spewing censers.
The attack had begun mere moments after the Stormcasts’ vessel had passed through the Gape. True to Gatrog’s word, the tunnel had been carved by the skaven. The cavern rose above and around the river like the petals of some obscene flower. It was larger than it had appeared from the outside, as if the space within extended into some other, overlapping realm of existence. Strange lights flickered from the mouths of tunnels, and skaven wrapped in mouldering robes poured into view, pursuing the galley from the shore.
Crooked walkways and bridges made from bone and wood stretched across the upper levels, hanging from ancient archways and crumbled walls. Skaven-sign marked every surface, and nets full of steaming warpstone hung from every surface, casting an eerie green glow through the darkness. The diverted stretch of river ran through the warren, kept on course by dams and blockages of toppled stone and packed filth. Skaven ran everywhere, ringing the great bells that hung from the highest archways. Some hurled rocks, empty cauldrons and makeshift spears down on the galley as it passed below them.
Worst of all was the trio of monstrous flying rat-beasts, which swooped low under gantries and around crumbling columns, keeping pace with the galley. Pox-smoke belched from their distended maws, and greenish ichor dripped from the brands of ownership on their flanks. Crude howdahs were strapped to the beasts’ backs by slime-encrusted ropes and cruel hooks embedded in their abused flesh. Whenever one drew close, the plague monks crammed onto the howdah attempted to board the galley, or else hurled sling stones at those fighting near the rails.
A Judicator staggered as one of these stones crunched into his helmet. Skaven hurled themselves at him, crawling over him, their rusty blades seeking the joins of his armour. Tornus’ arrows plucked them away, one by one, but too late. The warrior spasmed and fell, poisons leaking from every pore. Tornus looked away. Another life lost, because of him. His stomach clenched, tightened and twisted. He felt as if something were reaching up inside him to clutch at his heart. He staggered.
It almost cost him his own life. A blade sawed at his side. He stumbled, and brought his bow around like a club, smacking the skaven aside. Before it could rise, Ospheonis swooped down on it, screeching. Tornus groped for another arrow, trying to ignore the familiar, hateful whispers that echoed through his head.
‘To your left!’
Tornus spun, driving his arrow into the throat of a skaven as it leapt at him. Sore-covered paws scrabbled at his forearm as he twisted the arrow in the wound, killing the ratkin. An instant later, he ripped it free, nocked and loosed it in one smooth motion, killing a second. He turned. ‘You are having my thanks, sister.’
Enyo nodded as she reached into her quiver. ‘You shouldn’t let your attention wander during a fight, brother.’
‘So I am being told,’ Tornus said. He loosed an arrow and nailed a skaven’s tail to the deck. The plague monk shrilled in pain, before Feros’ lightning hammer tore its head from its shoulders. ‘There are not being as many of them as I am expecting.’
‘I think our quarry stirred them up,’ Enyo said, as she sent an arrow through a censer bearer’s skull. The skaven leapt up, as if stung, and then collapsed into a heap. ‘With luck, they’re taking a worse beating than we are.’
Tornus was about to reply when he heard a ripping sound and looked up. Skaven slid down the sails, shredding them in the process. He smacked his fist into Enyo’s arm and pointed. They leapt skyward, each taking a side. Arrows hummed like wasps, and skaven fell to the deck with despairing squeals.
Tornus swooped over the deck and the heads of those Stormcasts bent over the oars. Morbus had filled the sails with a conjured wind, but it wasn’t enough in these waters. The Lord-Relictor stood in his customary place at the prow, reliquary staff planted before him. His head was bent, and Tornus felt, rather than heard, the rumble of his prayers as he tried to lend strength to the oarsmen.
Lightning crawled across Morbus’ armour and flickered over the deck. The spectral shapes of fallen Stormcasts knelt in a circle about him, their forms fading or strengthening with each passing moment. Any skaven so foolish as to draw close to the Lord-Relictor and his ghostly coterie was immediately struck by flickering strands of chain lightning.
Gardus led the defence of the vessel, launching himself into battle wherever the skaven massed. Feros and his Retributors warded the Lord-Celestant, keeping the ratmen from overwhelming him. Everywhere, those Judicators and Liberators not manning the oars had formed into small phalanxes.
A searing burst of celestial radiance caught Tornus’ attention. He saw Cadoc drop down onto the howdah on the back of one of the flying monstrosities, starblade flashing. Tornus banked and sped back along the length of the galley, loosing arrows as he did so. He and Enyo met near the prow and raced upwards, their wings carving shimmering trails in the miasmatic air. They split up and shot bet
ween the swooping bat-creatures.
Tornus rose up in front of one of the beasts and sent an arrow into each of its eyes. It gave a thunderous squeal and its movements became panicked. A moment later, the creature slammed into a wooden bridge and hung from it. Skaven tumbled from the howdah as the massive creature thrashed about. As he raced away from it, he saw Enyo land on the head of the second of the beasts, and loose an arrow down into the centre of its flat skull.
Ospheonis screeched and Tornus saw the last creature hurtling towards him, jaws wide. He shot upwards, narrowly avoiding the snapping portcullis of teeth. The star-eagle dived at the monster’s eyes. Tornus swept down along its length, and caught sight of Cadoc wreaking havoc amongst the plague monks on its back. Then the Knight-Venator was past and plunging downwards, back towards the glowing shape of their galley.
Gatrog watched in no small amount of amusement as skaven swarmed across the deck, chanting shrilly. They wore the corroded armour and ragged robes of one of the more militant Clans Pestilens, and fought with ferocity, if little enthusiasm.
The Stormcasts, in contrast, fought with a vigour he found surprising, given the circumstances. Most, seeing the odds stacked against them, would have given up by now. The cobalt fires that had protected them were dimming as their skull-faced shaman stumbled beneath the weight of the souls that clung to him like chains.
Gatrog strained against his own chains, wishing that he were free. While he was at it, he wished that he had a sword. And some armsmen. Tornus had left him bound to the mast, able only to move a short distance. ‘Release me,’ he bellowed at one of the skaven. ‘I am a true knight, and servant of the King of all Flies.’
The plague monk glanced in his direction. The skaven bared broken black teeth in what might have been a smile. It sidled towards him, lifting a notched and rust-splotched blade. More plague monks joined the first, closing in on him. Gatrog realised his error a moment before the first blade jabbed at his thigh. Roaring in anger, he booted the skaven in the head, snapping its neck. The skaven crowded close, sensing easy prey.
Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden Page 26
