Lhosia swore under her breath and shook her head.
Gotrek grunted in annoyance and booted the door down, stomping into the room with his axe raised.
They rushed in after the Slayer, and Trachos’ sceptre revealed a gruesome scene. Body parts were scattered across the floor, glistening in pools of blood and shrouded in fluttering moths.
Gotrek grimaced, but Lhosia fell to her knees as though she had been gut-punched, gasping, reaching out to the remains but not daring to touch them. Moths rose from the blood as her hands hovered over it.
Maleneth scoured the room for signs of the killer, but it was empty apart from the corpses, torn apart with such savagery that the whole chamber was splattered with gore. ‘Impressive,’ she muttered, nodding at the carnage.
Gotrek glanced at her and nodded to Lhosia.
Maleneth shrugged and gave him an apologetic smile.
The room was unfurnished apart from a few chairs arranged either side of a tall, curved door that led further into the temple. The door was ajar and there were trails of blood leading to it. A snuffling, grunting noise came from the next room, and then the sound of something heavy moving around.
‘The Unburied,’ whispered Lhosia, her words barely audible. She climbed slowly to her feet and staggered to the door.
Gotrek grabbed her arm and shook his head. ‘Let me go first, lass,’ he said, his voice softer than usual.
She wrenched her arm free and carried on, the others close behind.
Maleneth staggered to a halt on the other side, unable to understand what she was seeing. The room looked like a man-made orchard. The circular walls were punctuated by six trunk-like columns of bone that arched upwards and met in the centre of a domed ceiling. Each of the columns had a protruding limb about twelve feet in the air, and dangling from them was what looked like pale, rotten fruit, each one about the size of a man’s head. No, realised Maleneth, they were more like cocoons – dusty, bone-white bundles, like elongated eggs made of paper strips. And they were not rotten – they had been attacked. The six cocoons had been slashed by claws or a knife, and dark, viscous liquid dripped from the shredded remains.
Lhosia howled at the sight of them, her expression more horrified than when she had seen the corpses in the previous room.
‘What is this?’ said Gotrek, reaching up to one of the torn cocoons.
‘No!’ cried Lhosia, her words rough with fury. ‘They should not have been here! The prince swore that they would be moved!’
‘What are they?’ asked Maleneth, peering into one of the dangling sacks. She could see what looked like pieces of dried meat inside.
‘The Unburied,’ said Lhosia, her voice trembling.
‘Your ancestors?’ asked Maleneth.
‘My grandmother!’ gasped Lhosia. ‘My great-grandfather! His great-grandmother! All of them. They were all–’
Gotrek silenced her by raising his hand and nodding to the next doorway. The light of Trachos’ sceptre shone through into the next chamber, and there was something coming towards them.
Lhosia slumped against the wall, clutching her head. ‘Prince Volant swore an oath.’ She sounded furious. ‘They should have been taken to the capital.’
One of the mechanisms fixed to Trachos’ belt began to whirr and click. He looked like he was about to say something when the doorway exploded towards them.
Fragments of metal and bone filled the air as a huge shape smashed through, tearing half the wall down as it came.
‘Grungni’s Beard!’ snarled Gotrek. ‘That’s more like it.’
The creature lumbered into the room, shrugging pieces of masonry from its shoulders. It was twice the height of Trachos. It was clearly a cousin of the ghouls they had fought on the borders of the princedom, with the same deranged eyes and slavering jaws, but it was massive, clad in thick, scarred muscle and bristling with mutant growth – every inch of its greasy flesh sported tusks of bone that jutted through its muscles like spines on a burr. Its face was smeared with the same dark liquid that dripped from the cocoons, and as it locked eyes on Gotrek, it let out a feral roar, dragging down more wall as it launched itself at the Slayer.
Gotrek answered with a roar of his own and leapt at the giant, swinging his axe as he flew through the air.
The blade flashed, thudding into the ghoul’s chest with such force that the monster staggered back, carrying Gotrek with it. They smashed through the ruined doorway and landed in the room beyond.
Gotrek howled in annoyance as he stood atop the prone giant and tried to haul his axe free.
The blade refused to move. Rather than bleeding, the ghoul’s chest had swallowed the axe head, puckering around it and holding it fast.
The ghoul rose to its feet and punched Gotrek with an enormous fist, sending him flying across the room. The Slayer smashed into a stone column and slammed to the floor.
‘Gods,’ he muttered as rubble pattered down on his scalp. ‘You’re a big lad.’
While Gotrek grabbed the broken column and tried to climb to his feet, Maleneth sprinted past him, knives drawn, and leapt at the monster’s chest.
The ghoul lashed out with talons like swords, but Maleneth whirled out of reach, arching her back as she dodged the blow.
Before the monster knew what was happening, she dragged her blades across its throat and leapt away.
Maleneth landed with a curse. Her blades had remained embedded in the ghoul’s neck. Just like Gotrek’s axe, her weapons were being absorbed by the creature’s flesh. Now that she saw it more clearly in Trachos’ light, she realised that not only was the monster covered in spurs of bone, but also fragments of weapons – hilts and hafts jutted from between its ribs and shoulder blades, mementos from previous battles.
The ghoul locked its fist around Trachos’ throat, lifted him into the air and slammed him into Gotrek like a club. They crashed to the floor just as Maleneth reached the monster, and the three of them ended up in a mangled heap.
They helped each other up and backed away, panting and limping.
Gotrek wiped blood and dust from his face. ‘I didn’t escape the Dark Gods to be pummelled by this oaf. Distract the bugger and I’ll…’ The Slayer’s words trailed off as two more of the creatures stumbled into the room, just as massive and deformed as the first, their combined bulk almost filling the chamber. One was unarmed, but the second had wrenched a bone column free and was gripping it like a makeshift spear, its splintered point glistening with dark liquid.
‘Three of them,’ muttered Gotrek. ‘And they swallow weapons…’
Maleneth was gripping her head, trying to quell the agony reverberating round her skull, and Trachos was leaning against the wall, sparks coiling around his neck brace as he took deep, ragged breaths.
Lhosia strode past Gotrek, gripping her scythe and glaring up at the three giants with no trace of fear. ‘They murdered the Unburied.’
She sliced her scythe cleanly through one of the ghouls’ legs, causing it to stagger, then whirled away into the shadows, swallowed by the darkness before the creatures could fight back.
Maleneth nodded, impressed by the girl’s speed and bravery. She grabbed Trachos’ sceptre from a shattered plinth and hurled it to him.
The Stormcast raised the light, dazzling the giants, as Gotrek bounded across the room and leapt for his axe again. ‘Blazed pennants!’ cried Trachos, launching into song as his sceptre shone brighter. ‘And wondrous, gleaming pinions!’
The first ghoul staggered back into the other two, unbalanced by the impact of the Slayer slamming into it. As it fell, Gotrek roared in triumph, drowning out Trachos’ song. Rune-light rippled across his knotted muscles, blazing in his beard.