For someone who professed no interest in religion, Maleneth was constantly surprised by Gotrek’s unshakeable faith. He believed resolutely in his own indestructibility. He wore self-belief like a suit of inch-thick plate.
He marched back out into the city like he was taking an evening stroll with nothing more pressing on his mind than finding a tavern. There were hundreds of ghouls crowded into the boulevard, thousands more in the surrounding streets, and he was blind to all of them, leaving the Gravesward to cut them down as he chatted calmly to Lord Aurun, asking for directions to the docks and discussing options for a destination. As they walked and talked, Maleneth noticed how animated Aurun was becoming – despite everything that had happened, despite the destruction all around him, he seemed excited. Gotrek had no trace of diplomacy, no tact, no desire to be political, but he had turned the Erebid noble into an eager convert and given him hope in the face of ruin.
Behind them, Erebid priests hauled their ancestors into the streets, abandoning centuries of religion on the word of a one-eyed duardin with an ale-matted beard and a face that looked dredged from a wreck.
‘How does he do it?’ muttered Maleneth.
Trachos was a few paces behind her, readying his hammers as the ghouls started to gather, sniffing the air and slavering. ‘He’s headed somewhere,’ he said. ‘It’s written in his face.’
‘To his grave,’ she said, but she could not make her cynicism ring true. She knew what Trachos meant. Everyone else was limping through life, but Gotrek was charging.
She drew her knives and grinned, wading into the fight.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ghost Ships
Gotrek staggered down to the quayside, wiping sweat from his face and laughing. He glanced back at Trachos, who was a few paces behind him, cleaning blood from his hammers. ‘On my oath, manling, what a sight. That’s the most glorious thing I’ve seen since falling into these wretched hells.’
Trachos looked up from his hammers and nodded in agreement.
Arrayed before them, glimmering in the darkness, were six vast edifices – colossal duardin faces, wrought of metal and wearing coats of faded, peeling paint. The figureheads towered over Gotrek, grander even than the one on the Spindrift and just as ferocious – savage, battle-hungry goliaths, roaring in silence, lit up by the fires of the burning city. They were of a different design to the Spindrift. They looked more like traditional ships, but were forged of iron and brass and topped by enormous metal spheres. Runes were painted across the hulls and mechanical weapons bristled from every gunwale.
Gotrek placed his hand on the first prow he reached, patting the ancient riveted metal with a low, resonant clang. ‘I don’t have much time for the Kharadron, but this is impressive. Proper, sturdy engineering. Almost reminds me of honest, well-crafted dwarf work. It will do me good to travel this way.’
Lhosia followed him to the ship, and over the next ten minutes, hundreds more people poured down onto the quayside – civilians and priests, flanked by lines of Gravesward, fleeing from the carnage behind them. The Lingering Keep was aflame. As buildings had collapsed, destroyed by the confused, rampaging ghouls, fires broke out, whipping through the corpse-filled streets and engulfing the city’s temples and townhouses. The tower where Prince Volant had died had collapsed not long after the Gravesward removed the Unburied. The whole structure had been weakened by the terrorgheists, and there was now a column of whirling dust and embers where it had once stood.
Lord Aurun had seemed reinvigorated since Gotrek suggested leaving the city. He had taken command of Prince Volant’s armies without a moment’s thought, ordering them to form a defensive perimeter around the docks until the city’s surviving civilians had made it down to the quayside. The bone rain had massacred many of the refugees, and the ghouls had killed even more, but there were still thousands of people left to swarm around the ancient ships, filling the air with a panicked clamour, laden with belongings and, in the case of the priests, cradling the cocoons that held the Unburied.
‘Not much of a fight, eh?’ said Gotrek as Lord Aurun made his way through the crowds.
Aurun nodded. ‘They seem more interested in destroying each other than attacking us.’
‘They are only the beginning,’ said Trachos, his tone bleak. ‘I have seen this happen in other underworlds. First come the creatures you call mordants, and then, once the kingdom is in tatters, the spirit hosts arrive, led by Nagash’s own generals.’
Aurun looked back at the flames. ‘I understand. The princedom is gone. I knew that the moment I heard Prince Volant’s lies. It is time to begin again.’
Lhosia gazed up at the vast, furious face that loomed over them. ‘But can we really leave? What will you do? How do we make them sail again?’
Trachos headed over to a ladder that reached up the side of the hull. ‘If these ships still have aether-gold on board, as the Spindrift did, we should only have one problem.’
He started to climb, his sigmarite boots hammering on the ladder’s metal rungs.
Gotrek nodded, looking pleased with himself. Then he frowned, staring up at Trachos. ‘What problem?’
Maleneth might have been imagining it, but she thought she heard a trace of humour in Trachos’ reply.
‘The conduits. They will most likely have corroded, as they did on the Spindrift. We’ll need some way to channel the fuel.’ He hesitated. ‘A powerful piece of ur-gold would do it.’
Gotrek looked at his chest rune with a furious expression, preparing to howl an insult at Trachos.
Maleneth started to laugh.
Your Celestial Highnesses,
Forgive the break in communication, but after leaving Klemp, the Slayer’s quest to find Nagash took a strange turn that led me beyond the reach of even the most dedicated Azyrite agents. I will spare you the details, at least until I return to Azyr, but suffice to say, I am still in Gotrek’s company, as is the Stormcast Eternal, Lord Ordinator Trachos. We have finished our delightful sojourn in the Amethyst Princedoms and are now on the road to a stormkeep recommended by Trachos. It is a large fortress known as Hammerskáld, where I hope to find a messenger who can carry this missive to you. I find it hard to explain exactly how this has come to pass, but we will reach Hammerskáld travelling in a fleet of ancient Kharadron aether-ships, with a dispossessed nation trailing in our wake. The entire population of a forgotten underworld has adopted Gotrek as their holy saviour. Since leaving their homeland, many of their priests have painted stripes on their heads in mimicry of his greasy mohawk, and soldiers have hammered their weapons into new shapes in an attempt to make them resemble the Slayer’s axe. It is singularly the most absurd thing I have ever seen – pale-faced waifs, in their hundreds, attempting to emulate the heavy tread of an inebriated duardin.
By all the gods of all the realms, I swear that I have no idea how such a thing is possible. But along with the absurdity of it, I sense something else. It is hard to explain, but I sense a significance to all of this that I cannot quite explain in words. I imagine you now think me as deluded as the refugees, but if you could see him, hauling an entire diaspora through these ruined hells, you might understand. He has an inexplicable magnetism. He attracts people as easily as he attracts flies. They are drawn to him, caught in his trajectory, convinced he can help even though he is so clearly unable to help himself.