Lord Aurun and the Gravesward grabbed their weapons and dusted down their armour.
‘You could have gone with him to Nagash.’ Maleneth was, once again, baffled by the Slayer’s behaviour. ‘You could have fulfilled your destiny. You could have met your doom.’
Gotrek nodded, staring at Volant’s splintered corpse, his expression grim. ‘Aye.’
Trachos walked across the platform and stood next to the Slayer. His breath was wheezing inside his helmet and he was clutching the rent in his neck armour, but he managed to stand straight and there was no sign of the tremors that had troubled him before.
‘I thought you and the prince were of one mind,’ sneered Maleneth. ‘I thought you would see yourself in him.’
In the harsh light of the Unburied, Gotrek’s face looked more weathered and beaten than ever. ‘I did. I did see myself in him. And I did not like what I saw.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Trachos.
Gotrek shrugged. ‘He cared for nothing but his own future. He was deluding himself that he was fighting for his race, but he was just a coward. I might not have been so sure.’ He turned towards Lord Aurun and Lhosia. ‘If I had not seen your bravery.’ He placed his hand over the rune in his scarred chest. ‘The gods haven’t tainted everything. Not yet. So perhaps I was sent here to…’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps I came here to do more than die?’
They all fell quiet again as Gotrek wrestled with his thoughts. Even Maleneth felt reluctant to interrupt.
‘What about your old friend?’ she said after a while. ‘Felix, was it? He wanted you to come here, didn’t he? And face Nagash.’
Gotrek scowled. ‘Maybe the wizard in Klemp was tricking me? He did have the look of a charlatan. Or perhaps Felix wanted me to come here to stop Prince Volant.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Besides, the manling is dead. Long dead. Which makes me a gullible fool.’
Lhosia spoke up, looking at Gotrek with newfound respect. ‘You saved the Unburied. You saved all of us. But what will we do now?’ She was addressing him like a subordinate requesting orders. ‘The city is still conquered. If everything Volant told us is a lie, then there is no rite that will save them. There is no new Iron Shroud.’ She looked at the shards of Cerement Stone. ‘The mordants are everywhere, and we have no way to escape them.’
‘Then we make our stand here,’ said Lord Aurun in strident tones. ‘We will not abandon a single soul. We will hold this tower until our dying breaths. The Lingering Keep is not lost while we live.’
The Gravesward clanged their scythes against their breastplates, but Lhosia looked doubtful.
‘Think,’ said Aurun. ‘Most of our men should have reached the sewers before the rain hit. I can muster them. However many mordants there are out there, they will have a hard fight making it up these stairs with a thousand archers firing down on them and a shield wall waiting at the top.’
One of the knights saluted. ‘I will sound the horns, my lord.’
‘Wait,’ said Gotrek, halting the knight before he reached the stairs. He looked at Aurun. ‘The halls of my ancestors were filled with the corpses of warriors who died defending their homes. It is an honourable way to die.’
Aurun tilted his head in a slight bow. ‘You have given us another chance, Slayer. Whatever the odds, we will fight on.’
Gotrek nodded. ‘You are brave, and honourable, but…’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘Perhaps, like me, you can do more than just die with honour? I never expected to find anything of worth in these realms. People of worth. And now that I have found a thing of value, I wonder if there is a way to preserve it.’
Aurun shook his head. ‘We will not abandon our ancestors.’
‘Nor should you. But perhaps you could abandon something else.’
Gotrek was staring into the middle distance, his expression rigid. ‘I come from a proud race. As proud as your own. And in our pride, we refused to change. We refused to move on.’ He glanced at the rune in his chest. ‘And we died. All that pride, all that wisdom, sacrificed for bricks and mortar.’ He waved at the building around them. ‘For towers like this. To honour the past is good, and right, Lord Aurun, but to be enslaved by it is another matter.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ asked Lhosia.
Gotrek pointed with his axe at the rows of cocoons that lined the tower walls. ‘Your duty is to the Unburied, not this city. And the Unburied can be moved. You could die here, fighting until the end – and by Grungni I would honour your memory for doing it – or you could take them away and find a new place to live, find a new way to live.’
‘How?’ demanded Aurun. ‘Where could we go?’
Gotrek shrugged and waved at the ruins outside, smoking and crowded with feasting ghouls. ‘What could be worse than this? And now Nagash has thrown your borders open to the other princedoms, there will be plenty more ghouls coming your way. Along with any other army that happens to be passing.’
Maleneth shook her head. ‘Even if we could fight our way to the gates, the wynds would be crawling with mordants. How could we go anywhere?’
Gotrek looked at Trachos and raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes.’ Trachos’ voice was hoarse but confident. ‘I can do it.’
‘Do what?’ demanded Maleneth, irritated that they seemed to be sharing secrets.
Gotrek turned back to Aurun. ‘When we first reached the city, we spoke to someone in the chapter house – a captain. He spoke of strange happenings at the docks.’
‘Captain Ridens, yes. He said something had triggered the old Kharadron engines. The aether-ships. He said they lit up.’ Aurun looked at Trachos. ‘You said you might be responsible.’
Trachos nodded. ‘At the Barren Points I ignited power lines that run beneath the whole of the Eventide. They date back to whenever the princedom was first colonised.’
‘So the aether-ships are working again?’ said Lhosia. ‘Could you pilot them?’
‘They might be working. Some of them, at least.’
Lhosia gripped Gotrek’s arm. ‘Then we could cross the Eventide. With the Iron Shroud gone, we would be free to cross the underworlds. With you to help us, we could find a new home, another corner of Shyish, far from the mordants.’
Gotrek gave a grim laugh. ‘I’ve seen this realm. You won’t like it. But there are other places.’ He nodded towards Maleneth and Trachos. ‘Places where people like this hold sway rather than Nagash.’
Lhosia shook her head. ‘But could we reach the docks?’ She looked out through a window. Seen from so high, the city was like an ant’s nest, teeming with life as mordants flooded from every direction.
‘Have you noticed that none of them are attacking us?’ said Maleneth. ‘Since I killed their king, I mean.’
Trachos nodded. ‘They are leaderless. They are no longer an army.’
‘They’ll still try to chew your face off,’ grunted Gotrek, ‘but they’re quite busy killing each other. We should be able to cut a path through them once you muster your men.’
‘Lhosia, is there any reason the Unburied can’t be moved?’ Lord Aurun said.
She seemed dazed by the direction of the conversation, but she shook her head, waving to her acolytes. ‘We could perform the necessary rituals. It would take a few hours, but it can be done.’
‘Then perhaps we could save them,’ muttered Aurun.
Gotrek stretched, rolling his massive shoulders and arching his back, causing the face in his chest to glint in the torchlight. ‘I gave you my word I’d save them.’ He clanged the haft of his axe on the floor and unleashed one of his terrifying grins. ‘And I keep my bloody oaths.’