‘He’s not here,’ said Hamuz, covering his mouth with his hand as I shouldered open a mould-framed wooden doorway. ‘Nobody’s here.’ Then he walked into a stench that finally had him on his knees and vomiting over the blood-stained floor.
I grimaced. It looked like something between a charnel house and an abattoir. Sides of meat, including a number of human-looking limbs and torsos, hung from the ceiling on hooks over a system of clogged and rusted drains. Organs had been stuffed into drawers and cupboards. Bloody cutting implements and cookware was jumbled up on top of stoves and surfaces. It rattled softly together with a quiet vibration that nobody else seemed to be aware of but me.
Their attention was on other things.
Brychen prodded one of the hanging torsos with the butt of her spear. It swayed, creaking on its hook, butting against the one behind. They were pale and bloodless, but the skin was recognisably green.
‘This is what became of my people,’ she murmured. ‘The Wild Harvest. The Gorkai. First the vengeance of Ghur’thu, and the loss of the Maiden. And now this.’
‘I doubt your brother is here,’ I said, partly because I needed her mind on the assassin rather than her loss, but also because it was true. I thought of the crushed and twisted thing that Malikcek’s poison had left of Barrach.
Some things even a ratman would know better than to put in their mouth.
‘It does not matter,’ she said, lowering her spear. ‘When the jepard tears the throat out of the ghurzelle, or the fire consumes a forest and roasts all the life it harbours alive, it is no different to this.’ She turned to the Jerech and me, dead-eyed. ‘This is how we all end.’
Inspiring stuff, I think you’ll agree.
‘Let’s move on,’ I said. ‘Before he finds us again.’
I kicked in the door at the far end of the chamber. It had already rotted half away, what was left hanging off its hinges, but smashing it down seemed expedient and infinitely more satisfying at the time.
Nassam came next with Brychen under one arm, Hamuz following quickly, walking backwards, firelight and pistol both trained shakily on the passage behind us.
‘Her light fades fast-quick…’
‘Don’t let him taunt you,’ I called back, before the Jerech captain could waste another shot. ‘Remember who stands here beside you.’ I thumped my weapon haft against my halberd and roared, ‘Hamilcar does!’
‘Leave her to me. Maybe you get out-out alive.’
‘The warlock’s not here, lord,’ said Hamuz, a quaver in his voice. ‘We should get out of here.’
‘Not without her,’ I said.
As heroic as that came across, it was partly practical. I had been so intent on locating Ikrit’s apotheosis chamber – or better yet, Ikrit himself – that I’d been paying only a passing regard to our route.
I had been hoping that Brychen was paying attention.
‘We’re getting close to something,’ I said.
And we were. I could feel it. Sigendil had dipped out of view entirely, leaving me chilled and alone, but the nauseating sensation of the realmsphere tipping and turning beneath me had gone with it. Wherever the new makeup of the lair had been funnelling us, we were close to it, I was sure.
‘It looks like the apprentice workshops in the Ironweld armoury,’ said Nassam.
I nodded, though I’d avoided the place like it was a plague house.
Scraps of parchment lay everywhere, as though torn from the crooked metal cabinets and discarded drawers in some haste. The covers of books with their pages torn out. Bits of metal. Tools. Wires. Coloured glass.
‘Someone ransacked this place in a hurry,’ observed Hamuz.
‘Clearing out,’ agreed Nassam.
‘Going where, I wonder?’ I said.
Brychen looked thoughtful. ‘There have not always been skaven in the Nevermarsh. One day there were none and the next… it was as though the rains came.’
‘So they move on,’ I grunted. That was going to make my life harder. ‘I suppose that makes sense, the powers lined up in pursuit of Ikrit’s undead tail.’
‘How long ago was this?’ Nassam asked the priestess.
‘Nine seasons.’
‘A year and a half,’ Hamuz murmured. ‘No way they could have dug all these tunnels in a year and a half.’
I had no idea if it was possible or not, so I shrugged. ‘Deviant skaven sorcery. This would be the least impossible thing that I’ve seen it do.’ I gestured towards another passageway. ‘Over here. I think I know where we are.’
And to my immense satisfaction, I discovered that I wasn’t lying.
Ikrit’s burrows.
Leaving the others to catch up, I hurried towards the big circular door at the end of the undamaged tunnel. I stared at it for what was, in hindsight, an inordinately long time.
‘What is it, lord?’ said Hamuz.
‘This door was open before.’
‘What of it?’ asked Nassam.
‘Someone’s been here.’
‘One of Ikrit’s minions?’ said Brychen. ‘We have seen none now, but I despatched dozens when I came here the first time.’
I shook my head. ‘Not in their master’s own burrow. You haven’t seen him, but trust me. Even with the lair falling down around their ears they wouldn’t have dared shelter in there.’
‘Malikcek then,’ said Hamuz.
‘Not big on doors,’ I said. ‘You may have noticed.’
The Jerech captain glanced nervously back down the passageway. ‘You might be right.’
‘So… someone else has been in there?’ said Nassam, catching on.
‘Someone’s still in there,’ I said, a grin coming slowly. ‘It can only be opened from the inside.’
‘Well, let’s get what we came for.’ Hamuz pointed his pistol at the fiendishly complicated setup of rods and wheels and chains that constituted the lock. ‘Then get back out.’
‘No.’
Putting one hand over the Jerech’s wrist, guiding his aim down to the ground, Brychen placed the other against the door. At first, nothing much happened. Then there was a creak. Hamuz jumped back with a start as a strip of brass plating buckled outwards and a green shoot forced its way underneath it. My first thought was that the priestess was going to goad the dead wood to new life, ripping out the artifice of the warlock’s doorway, but where that idea came from, or how being presented with a tree rather than a door would have been preferable, I have no idea.
Before I had a chance to answer that question, the priestess was gone, sucked into the wood of the door through that sapling growth.
We all took a step back.
‘Gods… damn,’ muttered Nassam, signing the hammer.
There was a click, and the door hinged open. Brychen stood on the other side, leaning even more wearily on her spear than she already had been.
‘I’m glad she’s on our side,’ Hamuz whispered to me.
I clapped him on the shoulder and ushered him in. Having experienced Brychen from both sides, I wholeheartedly concurred. I went in last. My vision swam and my knees weakened the moment I crossed the threshold. At first I thought that my constitution had finally been defeated and Malikcek’s poison had won out, but it wasn’t that. The weakness was spiritual, not physical. The High Star was gone, its blurry radiance consigned below the strange horizon of this room. I touched the door frame, but the telltale tremors and aetheric vibrations of the Realm of Beasts were no more.
I hadn’t crossed a door. I’d gone through an Arcgate into some kind of dead zone between realms.
Or so it felt at the time.
‘Are you well, lord?’ said Hamuz.
‘Fine. Shut the door and lock it.’