by C. L. Werner
The cold ones, among their other nasty qualities, exuded a poisonous slime from their skin. Over time, this poison would deaden a rider’s own sense of touch. The slime also contributed to the pungent, musky smell of the reptiles. In their own caverns, the cold ones would never gather in packs so large as to smother themselves with their own toxic reek, but in the confines of the black ark, the creatures had to be removed from their pens and allowed up into the open air periodically so that their cages could be fumigated. It also allowed the beast-keepers to exercise the reptiles so that they didn’t become either lethargic or too aggressive. It was often a delicate thing to remind the savage brutes of who was master and who was beast.
Malus needed the creatures to be in prime condition when his army reached Ulthuan. Despite the Witch King’s assurances that the hated asur were beset by other foes, invading the island continent would not be an easy accomplishment. It would take the steel of sword and spear and the strength of claw and fang. The cold ones would need to be at their most vicious when they were unleashed against Ulthuan.
Towards that purpose, Malus had squandered precious space in the black ark’s holds to embark a supply of living captives. Elves too weak to fight, as well as many human and dwarf slaves. Fresh meat was the staple of a cold one’s diet. When the reptiles had to catch their dinners it helped to keep their instincts sharp and their dull wits focused. The beast-keepers were even now preparing to feed the brutes. A cluster of ragged human wretches were being herded out onto the platform. The laggards were jabbed mercilessly by the prongs of the tridents their captors stabbed into their flanks. The coppery smell of blood excited the cold ones. The lizards swung their heads around, their tongues licking the air as they sensed the injured humans marching towards them.
It had been a long time since the cold ones had been fed. Two of the brutes started to lumber forwards. The beast-keepers lashed out with their whips, driving the creatures back. It was a necessary display of discipline.
Among the clutch of reptiles there was a smaller, more sparely built creature. Great horns jutted out from the sides of its head, stabbing back over its neck. The reptile belonged to a rarer breed called ‘horned ones’: beasts of slighter size but much sharper intelligence. This one was actually exploiting the punishment being dispatched against the over-anxious cold ones to start its own advance upon the slaves. In its display of craft, however, the horned one missed an unengaged beast-keeper off to its left. As the beast started forwards, the beast-keeper slashed at it with his whip. The steel barbs on the end of the lash raked across the reptile’s muzzle, scarring the scales and drawing blood from the flesh beneath.
In a matter of heartbeats, Malus was upon the beast-keeper, snatching the whip from the elf’s hand as he made to strike the horned one again. The druchii swung around, but the expression of outrage collapsed into one of mortal terror when he saw who had taken the lash away.
‘You’re beating my steed, pig,’ Malus growled at the beast-keeper. The elf fell to his knees, started to whine some fawning plea for forgiveness. Malus looked over at the other beast-keepers and the slave-drivers. There were many times when a necessary display of discipline was in order.
‘Feed, Spite,’ Malus snarled as he kicked the pleading beast-keeper. The druchii fell flat on his back. The elf didn’t even have a chance to scream before the horned one pounced on him. Spite’s immense weight crushed the beast-keeper’s ribcage, driving a fountain of blood from his mouth. The ravenous reptile chomped down on its former tormentor’s shoulder, tearing away a ragged chunk of meat and bone.
Malus glared across at the other beast-keepers, savouring the fear he saw on their faces. ‘This animal belongs to me. You will treat him accordingly,’ he warned. Leaving Spite to continue its gory repast, the drachau resumed his march across the platform. Silar hurried after his master.
‘After they take Spite and the others back below, I want every beast-keeper in that company stripped of rank,’ Malus told Silar. ‘They lose name, position and liberty. Give them over to Kunor.’
‘Those are druchii of Hag Graef,’ Silar cautioned. ‘If they’re put in with the Naggorites, they’ll be killed.’
‘If they are, we’ll be able to feed the harpies a bit extra,’ Malus said. ‘They’re not so particular about how lively their meals are.’
SIX
The Star Spire was a narrow spindle of stone and iron stabbing far above the black ark’s foundations. It seemed impossible that such a delicate structure could soar to such a height, easily a hundred feet higher than Fleetmaster Hadrith’s own tower. Unlike the other towers that rose from the foundation, there were few platforms and bridges connecting to the Star Spire. The mystics of the Eternal Malediction were fiercely protective of their privacy and the corsairs of the black ark were happy to allow them to keep their sinister secrets to themselves. Among the upper reaches of the spire, only a single bridge connected to it – a narrow ladder of steel rising from the parapets of the fleetmaster’s tower. Malus eyed the high bridge with more than a little envy, but to trespass upon Hadrith’s inner circle would be to expose his fears to the corsair king. He wasn’t about to make a gift of his own weakness to Hadrith. It might give the fleetmaster ideas.
Instead, Malus and Silar were hurrying to one of the lower landings, the causeways that snaked up from the slave pits to the Star Spire’s base. The bloody auguries and divinations of the black ark’s seers required a constant stream of sacrifices. The more potent the ritual, the more blood and souls it needed to fuel its magics. Now, with the tide of slaves being herded into the tower, it seemed as though the Star Spire were trying to call up Khaine himself.
Malus was thankful for the slaves and guards trooping into the Star Spire. It would obscure his own entrance into the tower, at least from casual observers. He couldn’t be too subtle; he’d need his position and authority to get inside. All he could hope was that the period of grace won by the confusion at the gate would be enough to put distance between himself and any opportunistic enemies.
The enemy is already here.
The daemon’s voice was like thunder roaring inside Malus. It nearly sent him pitching from the bridge he was on, precipitating him down into the mass of slaves below. He reeled, snatching hold of a support pillar as his insides boiled from the force of Tz’arkan’s intrusion. Silar started to reach for him, but quickly withdrew in alarm when he saw the distortion on his master’s face. Despite the wine, despite the fierce will of Malus, the daemon was beginning to bleed through. Silar knew enough to be horrified at that prospect.
His retainer didn’t know nearly enough, though. He didn’t understand how Tz’arkan had mustered such strength. He didn’t know the emotion in the daemon’s cry. The monster was afraid. It was panic that had driven it to such a desperate exertion of power, risking the destruction of its mortal host in a bid to assert control.
‘You’ll kill us both,’ Malus growled through teeth clenched in pain.
Death is already here.
The daemon’s voice was weaker, only a whisper now. Tz’arkan had expended too much of itself in that first burst of panic. Malus could already feel it slinking back into the dark corners of himself, like a spider crawling along the threads of its web. For the first time, the drachau took no pleasure in Tz’arkan’s retreat. The daemon wouldn’t have panicked over nothing.
Malus was sent reeling once more, clinging to the support pillar as his legs whipped out from under him and dangled over the side of the bridge. He saw elves and cold ones hurtling past, thrown from platforms and bridges high above, their bodies smashing down into the herd of slaves below. Screams, cries of disbelief and confusion rang out from every quarter. Not simple fear, but the shrieks of beings confronted by the impossible.
The black ark, built upon the mightiest of ancient sorceries, floating inviolate upon its foundations of magic, was rolling and pitching, floundering in the sea like any munda
ne ship of wood and sail. The corsairs, in all the millennia since the city had ripped itself from the drowned shores of Nagarythe, had never been beset by such elemental violence.
The turmoil increased. The black ark began to list to port, throwing still more bodies from the higher ramparts and bridges. Blocks of stone, spans of iron and wood came crashing down as causeways buckled and stairways crumbled, the Eternal Malediction’s yaw twisting them in ways and patterns never imagined by their architects.
Screams rang out all around, rising into a deafening bedlam. But that despairing din was preferable to the ghastly silence that followed, a silence so terrible that it struck Malus like a physical blow. A silence born from blackest terror.
It was felt before it could be seen or smelt or heard. The druchii felt the atrocity’s presence like a foulness, a spiritual contagion that spread a skein of slime across their souls. It was the phantom touch of raw evil – not the petty evil as mortal beings imagined it, but the cosmic malignance that profaned the very essence of reality. It was the hate of things impossible and unborn, the bitterness of what could not be, the profaneness of the unknown.
From the depths, it slobbered upwards, a heaving undulation of carrion-meat, flesh bloated and necrotic. It had some semblance of form about it. The things that grappled the sides of the black ark were as much like arms as they were branches; the things that oozed from the ends of those arms were not unlike titanic hands. From each hand, ropy coils that rudely simulated fingers snaked around the towers, corroding stone and iron with their touch, engulfing flesh and bone until their victims were absorbed into the necrotic essence of the tendril that gripped him.
There was a head, of sorts, and it squatted upon bony, cadaverous shoulders. It was something like a skull that had been wrapped in a veil of slime and decay, each line of bone clearly defined yet still obscured by the encrustations it had accumulated. Hagworms writhed from the thing’s sunken cheeks, while anemones and polyps squirmed between its teeth. Four cavernous hollows flanked a gash-like nasal opening. In the depths of those hollows, flickering at the ends of fleshy ribbons, were hundreds of blazing red orbs. As the behemoth surged upwards and wrapped its arms about the black ark, the eye-stalks extruded themselves outwards, whipping about the skull-like face to peer and probe the world the abomination had invaded.
‘By the Gates of Nethu, what is that thing?’ Silar screamed. The noble had lost his footing, sprawling across the bridge like an armoured crab. A jagged piece of masonry torn from one of the towers had ripped open his arm, but he was oblivious to the injury. Like every elf on the black ark, his mind was frozen with terror, his attention focused solely upon the oceanic horror that had crawled up from the nameless depths to seize the ship.
It is doom. Tz’arkan’s voice was a mere whisper, but it was enough to stir Malus from his paralysis of terrified fascination. It is obscenity made flesh. Such a thing as this might have been your slave, Darkblade, had you but the vision to embrace me. Now we are both doomed.
Malus stared up at the daemonic giant’s face. He thought he’d seen some of those eye-stalks shift and turn when Tz’arkan whispered to him. A horrible thought came to him. ‘It’s looking for something, isn’t it?’
I vanquished it once. Tricked and betrayed it, bound it in chains just as I was later bound until you freed me. The chains that held it were stronger, but they relied too much upon mortal substance and mortal concepts. The mortal world is dying, Darkblade. The old barriers are breaking down. The old horrors are free once more.
‘It is looking for you,’ Malus snarled. Even as he said it, dozens of the eye-stalks unfurled from the depths of the atrocity’s face, peering down through the nest of bridges and platforms. A crawling, crippling sense of insignificance smashed down upon Malus as he felt those hideous eyes trying to find him. It was like having a mountain suddenly aware of his presence, aware with all the limitless belligerence of eternity.
It is looking for us. You are my vessel, Malus. Do you think that power will pause to make a distinction between us? Do you believe it is even capable of bothering to do so?
‘You’ll destroy everything,’ Malus gasped. The giant was reaching around with one of its arms, stretching into the heart of the ark, trying to bring its tendrils closer. He could see now that there were chains dripping from the daemon’s flesh, corroded and rusted, caked in coral and salt. From each chain, swollen and decayed like the titan itself, was shackled a body. Bodies of men and elves mostly, but there were other things too – orcs and goblins and beings even the druchii had no name for. As each of the drowned corpses fell across a bridge or platform, they jerked into a twisted semblance of life. Like horrible puppets, the things stalked and slaughtered, falling upon the shocked druchii with cutlasses and tridents.
Now you see the deceit of mortal ambition. We must both of us suffer for your short-sighted pride. We will become another of that power’s toys, doomed to languish upon one of its chains until…
Again, the bloated titan reacted to Tz’arkan’s whisper. Its flabby arm came crashing downwards, smashing through bridges as it reached between the towers, groping its way towards the Star Spire. Towards Malus.
‘Shut up, daemon!’ Malus growled. Tz’arkan couldn’t have failed to notice that its persistent mutterings were drawing the thing’s attention. If it was truly afraid of the titan, why would it try to draw it out? Had fear usurped the daemon’s reason, or was it playing its own game? Maybe the giant wasn’t here to destroy or enslave Tz’arkan, but to free it. Maybe it wasn’t the daemon’s ancient enemy, but rather an old friend.
Would you gamble flesh and soul on your paranoia?
Malus almost allowed Tz’arkan to distract him. Very nearly he missed the long chain dangling from the bloated wrist that was yet far overhead. The corpse at the end of the chain slapped against the surface of the bridge, then jerked into grisly animation. It still had the beard and vestments of a human barbarian and its hands gripped the crude lethality of a double-bladed axe. The drowned carcass lurched towards him as it gained its feet, two tiny eye-stalks wriggling from the sockets of its skull.
The warpsword flashed in Malus’s hand, raking across the drowned man, ripping through his tattered hauberk and the blue-tinged flesh beneath. Worms and crabs spilled from the grievous wound, but the ghastly creature continued to press its attack. Malus tried to defend himself, but found his strength ebbing. Tz’arkan was draining it from him, drawing it off. He could feel the monster trying to wrest control of his body away from him. Whether the daemon fought to save them from the giant’s slave or deliver them to it, Malus neither knew nor cared. He wouldn’t relinquish control. He’d die before submitting to that.
Then we die.
The double-axe came chopping down, its edge crunching into Malus’s pauldron. The corroded state of the blade caused it to crumble from the impact, but it didn’t need to penetrate the drachau’s armour to send him sprawling. As he slammed down onto his back, Malus watched the drowned barbarian raise his ancient weapon for a downward slash at his face. The warpsword felt as though it weighed as much as the entire black ark when he tried to lift it and fend off the murderous blow. Even now, however, he wasn’t going to submit to Tz’arkan. He might save his life, but he’d lose everything else.
Before the chained corpse could strike, Silar was rushing the creature, bowling him over and smashing him to the ground. The barbarian struggled beneath Silar, trying to throw off the armoured elf. The noble kept his foe pinned and began stabbing him again and again with a crooked dagger. ‘It won’t die,’ Silar snarled.
The paralysis Tz’arkan had inflicted upon Malus diminished enough that he was able to stumble over towards his retainer. He glared at the hideous barbarian and the ghoulish eye-stalks. ‘It will die,’ Malus swore. Driven by some instinct imparted to him by the enchanted blade, or some fragment of knowledge Tz’arkan had inadvertently left behind in his subconscious, the
drachau brought his sword slashing down into the rusty chain binding the zombie to the bloated giant.
Silar rose from his abruptly lifeless foe. The severed chain flopped and flailed, flecks of rusty ichor dripping from its broken links. For all that it looked like iron, the chain was actually an extension of the behemoth, an umbilical attaching its slave to its grotesque bulk. Once that connection was broken, the power animating the drowned thrall was extinguished. Even as Silar scrambled away from the corpse, it was rapidly dissolving into a mire of putrescence.
Any jubilation at their victory over the corpse-puppet was quickly stifled. From the arm of the giant, a dozen other chains were dropping and with them a dozen more of the hideously animated carcasses. Behind the creatures came the monstrous hand of the giant itself. Malus tightened his grip on the warpsword, fearful that any moment Tz’arkan would again exert its debilitating malignance.
‘Maybe Hadrith’s pirates will kill it,’ Silar said, pointing with his blade at the towers overhead. The giant was indeed beset by the black ark’s defenders now. Repeater bolt throwers peppered the thing’s ghastly flesh with yard-long spikes of steel. Bold corsairs swung out upon lines to hack at the titan with halberds and axes. Flocks of harpies darted about its skull, trying to claw eye-stalks from its face. The flash and fire of magic crackled and flamed about its body, charring small patches of the monster’s skin.
An army was doing its best to fight off the giant, but Malus didn’t think it would be enough. Tz’arkan might have lied to him about many things, but he was certain the daemon was right when it claimed the mortal barriers were breaking down. With the gates of reality ripped asunder, the ability of mortal weapons to visit harm against a daemonic behemoth such as this was doubtful. Such magic as was being employed against it was too little to cause any real hurt. Malus looked up towards the heights of the Star Spire. Lady Eldire and Drusala were up there, along with many of Fleetmaster Hadrith’s own seers and sorceresses, yet there had been not even the slightest suggestion of attack from that quarter.
