Ghoulslayer

Chapter Twenty-Six A Path through the Darkness

Maleneth lost herself to the ritual of sacred murder. She abandoned every thought of Sigmar and the Order and thought only of Khaine, moving with more speed, cruelty and elegance than she ever had before. Bodies piled up around her, scored with holy sigils and drained of blood, until finally, inevitably, the sheer volume of them began to overwhelm her. As the piles of dead collapsed towards her, she stumbled, banged against the sewer wall and fell cursing to her knees in the water.

A ghoul locked its bony hand around her neck, but she sliced through the wrist, cutting the hand free and staggering clear as the mordant lunged after her, oblivious to the blood rushing from its arm.

As Maleneth backed away, cutting down more ghouls, she trod on something hard and cold under the water.

It was Trachos’ sceptre, shining through the murk.

Still fighting, she crouched and grabbed the golden rod.

The ghouls stumbled, dazzled by Azyrite sorcery. The thing was covered in runes and dials, like all of Trachos’ equipment, but Mal­eneth did not attempt to decipher its workings – she simply used it as a club, smashing it into the face of the next ghoul to reach her and scattering beams of frigid light through its shattered skull.

The sceptre proved a useful weapon, but the memory of Trachos dulled some of her fervour. She glanced over at the fallen pipe. His turquoise armour was still visible, but he was no longer moving.

Khaine’s hunger still pounded through her veins, but another thought was now vying for her attention. An idea had occurred to her. She vaulted a ghoul and splashed down near Trachos.

She jammed the sceptre into the water, forcing it under the fallen pipe. Then she stood on it, using her weight to try to lever the masonry off Trachos.

The sceptre was made of the same unyielding alloy as Trachos’ armour, and it took her weight, lifting the pipe up from the water.

Maleneth balanced on it like an acrobat, ducking and swaying as she fought, then fell back as Trachos rose like a river god, swinging his hammers furiously and driving the ghouls back.

‘Don’t expect my help every time you fall over,’ she gasped, dodging to Trachos’ side and fighting with her back to his.

He laughed, but it turned into a series of hacking, liquid coughs. He managed to keep fighting, but he looked like he could barely stand.

‘Gotrek?’ he managed to gasp.

She shook her head.

He snarled in frustration, lashing out at the ghouls with growing strength. ‘He needs you!’

‘What?’ In the confusion of the fighting, she wondered if she had misheard him.

‘Gotrek needs you,’ said Trachos. ‘You’re his sanity.’

She laughed. ‘You dunce. I’ve been looking for a way to get rid of that oaf since the first day I met him.’

‘Then why are you still with him?’

Maleneth thought of how she had failed to kill the Slayer on the Spindrift, when it would have been so easy.

Trachos pointed at the sceptre Maleneth had left sticking out from beneath the fallen pipe. ‘I have an idea,’ he coughed, blood spraying from his helmet. ‘On the count of three.’

‘On the count of three what?’

‘Jump.’

They were now so completely surrounded by ghouls that she could no longer see the walls of the tunnel. ‘Where?’

He started counting.

‘Wait!’ Maleneth cast around for a place to leap, but he ignored her, and as he reached three she jumped, landing feet first on a ghoul’s shoulders and knocking it back into the others.

Trachos moved at the same moment, but rather than jumping clear, he dropped down onto the sceptre wedged beneath the pipe.

The metal held even under his weight, and it levered the remains of the pipe from the wall. Bricks and mortar smashed into the tunnel, along with a deafening torrent of water.

Maleneth fell back, knocked from her feet. She scrambled to right herself, but jumping clear had kept her from being washed away by the sudden influx of water.

Bodies and stones thudded into her, and as the water rose, she thought she might suffer the same fate she had just spared Trachos.

She tumbled backwards, coughing and cursing, then managed to leap from the stinking water and get back on her feet.

‘What in the name of Khaine are you doing?’ she cried as she saw Trachos a few feet away, the sceptre in one hand, a hammer in his other.

He punched his hammer into a knot of ghouls and nodded to the opening he had made.

‘It will rejoin the main tunnel further up.’

Maleneth glanced at the quickly rising water. ‘So will our corpses.’

She leapt past him, diving into the tunnel. She had only moved a few feet when she realised that Trachos was not with her. She twisted to look back over her shoulder.

Trachos had staggered away from her, hammering his way into the centre of the ghouls.

‘Go!’ he cried, glancing towards her as the ghouls boiled over him, tearing at his armour. Cracks of light appeared in his neck brace – tiny fingers of lightning that danced across his armour, scorching the air and flinging shadows across the walls.

‘Now!’ he yelled, a furious warning in his voice, as he hurled his sceptre towards her.

She caught the sceptre, but instead of fleeing, she scrambled back down the pipe towards him. The water was already up to her waist and the walls were juddering, filling the sewers with a worrying groaning sound.

‘What are you doing?’ demanded Trachos, smashing more ghouls back into the water.

She glared at him. ‘It’s your fault I’m down here. You’re going to lead me out.’

‘It’s not safe to be near me,’ he grunted, grabbing the neck brace of his battleplate, causing more sparks to slash through the gloom. ‘I’m damaged.’

‘Who isn’t?’ She threw his sceptre back to him. ‘Lead me out.’ The water was now up to her chest. ‘You’re no Slayer. Doom-seeking doesn’t suit you. Stop looking for a glorious death. I’ll never get out of this wretched place without you to lead me. It’s a damned labyrinth. Without you and your machines, I’ll wander down here forever.’

He hissed a curse and used the sceptre to punch through the ghouls, pushing back towards the hole he had torn in the wall.

‘Follow me!’ he said as he clambered up into the pipe.

The mordants tried to rush after them, but after Maleneth had killed the first few, the way became clogged with twitching bodies. Dozens more tried to cram into the pipe, but they were so frenzied they only compounded the problem, jamming it with thrashing limbs.

‘This way!’ called Trachos, wading on through the water, his torchlight flickering over wet, mossy bricks.

As she hurried after him, she noticed something. ‘The water’s rising in here too!’

He nodded without pausing to look back. ‘The whole system is flooding. Something is destroying the city.’

Water was spraying from overhead, and every now and then came a resounding boom that caused the structure to shudder as though it had been punched.

‘Is this thing going to come down?’

Trachos nodded, pausing at a crossroads and pointing his sceptre down each route, shining blue light into the darkness as he tried to decide which way to go. ‘Something is smashing through it.’

He took out a small, golden box and flipped back the lid to reveal whirling needles in a polished wooden frame. He stared at them until they stopped spinning and all pointed in the same direction, then snapped the box shut and waded on through the water.

They had not gone more than a few steps when there was another boom, much closer this time, and a shuddering crash as the ceiling behind them gave way, filling the tunnel with bricks and clouds of dust. When the dust cleared, Maleneth saw that the way back was completely blocked by fallen rubble.

The water was now almost as high as it had been out in the main sewer. Maleneth was waist-deep in filth.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Trachos, carrying on. ‘My aetherlabe was clear – there is an exit up here that will lead back to a larger pipe.’

He rushed on towards a rusty, circular door with an iron wheel for a handle, similar to the doors on the Spindrift. He grabbed the wheel and tried to turn it, but the mechanism started to crumble in his grip, shedding lumps of rusty metal.

The water was up to Maleneth’s chest. She moved to Trachos’ side and grabbed the wheel, lending the Stormcast Eternal all her strength.

More rusty metal came away, but there was no sign of the thing turning.

The tunnel was shaken by another booming blow, and the sound was now so loud that there was no mistaking the truth – something big was headed their way.

Trachos handed her his sceptre and took something else from his belt. It looked like a sapphire encased in silver, and as he raised it over his head, light shimmered in the heart of the stone. With his other hand, he unclasped his helmet and removed it, letting his white plaits tumble down his breastplate.

Maleneth gasped at the sight of his face. It was even more brutal than the last time she had seen it – the mass of old scars had been joined by a new kind of injury. In several places, the rough mahogany of his skin had changed, covered now by a tracery of silver capillaries that glittered and flashed as he moved. There were pulses of light blinking across his cheeks and jaw where the silver threads were most numerous.

‘What’s happening to you?’ she said, but Trachos did not seem to hear. His eyes were closed, and he pressed the blue gemstone to his forehead.

The walls shook again. ‘Whatever that is, it’s close,’ she muttered.

Trachos was mouthing words. He took the stone away from his face and shook his head, looking at Maleneth. ‘This is the only way.’ He returned the stone to his belt and turned back to the rusted door. ‘There is no other route back to the main sewer.’

The water was up to Maleneth’s chin by this point, and she cursed. The wheel that opened the door was now completely submerged. She ducked under the surface and tried to grab it, but her hands could not even grip it in the filthy water.

‘What now?’ she gasped as she stood back up.

Trachos shook his head, looking at the wall of rubble behind them. ‘We could try digging.’

She laughed, stepping on some broken bricks and hauling herself a little further away from the quickly rising water.

The walls shook with so much fury that she fell. From underwater she saw Trachos stagger backwards, away from the rusty door, bathed in light and trying to shield his un-armoured face.

She leapt back up out of the water and came face to face with a demented, blood-splattered snarl.

‘What are you two playing at?’ yelled Gotrek, framed by the door he had just destroyed. ‘I have a god to slay.’