Nassam, on the other hand, stumbled along behind us under his own power. The Jerech greatsword actually seemed to be coping a little better out here than he had been in Ikrit’s chambers. I assumed it had something to do with at least now being able to see the madness he was feeling. Whatever the reason for it, I was grateful. I had broad enough shoulders to carry both men, but I preferred keeping one hand free for my halberd and a spare blade at my back. Somehow I doubted that Brychen was going to be much use if we ran into anything that objected to our presence, which experience told me we would, eventually.
The priestess shuddered and sank into the upright support of her spear.
‘Bounteous destruction!’ she wailed. ‘It is failing.’
‘What is?’
‘My sight. My breath. I can feel the ghurlines stretching thin. The lair falls deeper into the foundations of the realm, leaving the sphere entirely.’
‘Do you have any idea where it’s taking us?’
‘No, I…’ She ground her forehead to the wood of her spear and groaned. ‘There is a destination. That I can say. But where? I am a bird on her first migration. I feel my course though I cannot know it. I am Ghur. It is all I can recognise.’
It was reassuring to know that if Brychen failed to guide us back to the Gorwood then we would eventually wash up somewhere in the Mortal Realms, but kicking back and waiting to face Ikrit at a time and place of his convenience was hardly my plan of choice. And besides, being inside this place as it had detached from Ghur had been traumatic enough. Being in it when it crash-landed gods knew where was something I was keen to avoid.
‘I believe in you,’ I said, imbuing those words with all the strength of confidence I could muster. ‘Take a moment.’
‘We don’t have a moment,’ she snapped. ‘The trail weakens by the second.’
‘Well then, try concentrating.’
‘I am concentrating!’
‘Lord?’
‘Not now, Nassam.’ I crouched down beside Brychen and spoke softly. ‘It’s like holding a wild, monstrous beast by the leash. It’s difficult to imagine that you could lose it and ever have it under control again.’
‘Yes,’ Brychen hissed, staring.
‘But it’s too savage. Too bright. This is prey that can’t hide, that won’t hide. Hear its roar. Feel the ground tremble.’
‘Lord?’ Nassam tugged on the bearskin draped over my armour.
‘Shhh.’
‘I feel it.’ Brychen drew her head from her spear and turned towards me, her eyes so de-thorned, so round, that just meeting her gaze felt like an abuse of her vulnerability. ‘Can you feel it too?’
‘Not here, no. But I am a Stormcast Eternal, I have felt it before.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You did it yourself,’ I said, confident that we both knew otherwise.
‘Lord.’
‘What is it, Nassam?’
‘I can see through the walls, lord.’
I sighed. ‘Just blink a few times. It’ll pass.’
‘I think I see something coming towards us.’
‘What? Where?’
‘Skaven. Over that way.’
The Jerech lifted a hand to point a shaking finger. I stared at the solid (ish) patch of wall in question, but forcing yourself to relax at sword point seldom works, and is far more likely to achieve the opposite of what you were aiming for. Nassam, however, was proving to be the most reliably nonchalant mortal I’d ever encountered which, for a man who consumed as much qahua as he did, was quite the gift. After a few seconds’ determined squinting I did see something. A silhouette, like a night skyline glimpsed for a split-second beneath a lightning flash. Ten or eleven elongated snouts. Long implements that might have been pikes or firearms. Admittedly, they could have been lamplighters or extra-long-handled paintbrushes for all I knew. There was no depth, no texture to the impression, the hunched figures superimposed over one another like the blast shadow of some kind of mutant spawn.
Then I lost it.
I rubbed my aching eyes.
‘What should we–?’ Nassam began before I shushed him.
Skaven eyesight, I knew from experience, was so poor they probably couldn’t make out the tail waving about in front of their snouts. Even if they could peer through the tunnel walls, as we could, I doubted very much that they would have been able to pick anything as insignificant as a Stormcast Eternal and three mortal humans from the roiling mayhem of the Allpoints. Provided we stayed quiet, then unless the skaven got behind us and managed to pick up our scent, they would probably scurry on by us, no harm done. It wasn’t that fighting a dozen skaven of unknown armament and intention with just one arm and while dizzy troubled me unduly, but Brychen looked one small upset from complete mental disintegration.
And I didn’t think much of my chances of getting out of this place without her.
I put a finger over my lips.
Nassam nodded, understanding.
‘I have lost the trace of them, most understanding of overseers.’ The nervous chitter carried through the spongy barrier between us.
‘Then find-find it again.Warlock-Master Krittak smelled an intruder in these tunnels, and I will not scurry home empty-pawed.’
‘I am trying, most patient of potentates.’
‘What do you think is down here?’ A third squeak.
‘A daemon-thing from the Eightpoints,’ said the authoritative voice. ‘Until Krittak and his tinker-rats close-finish the walls they will find-burrow a way through.’
‘Daemon-thing?’
Nassam shifted position to better free his sword. ‘Are they talking about u–?’
I waved him urgently to stay quiet.
‘A small daemon-thing. If it was scary-big then Pekreek would not have lost-lost.’
‘I still look-feel for most understanding of masters.’
‘We cannot stay here,’ hissed Brychen. ‘With every moment, the great beast moves further from us.’
I held my hand up, waiting – aware, through a discombobulated assortment of senses that was not exactly sight, not exactly sound, of the skaven shuffling away from us. I exhaled and let my hand drop.
‘Alright.’ I tapped Brychen on the shoulder. ‘Go. Quietly.’
She nodded and tiptoed forwards.
‘Wait-wait!’
I squeezed Brychen’s shoulder. She stopped with a stifled groan. Nassam drew up against the tunnel wall, looking to get his sword out from between his legs. The half-formed ground sponged and quivered underfoot.
Suddenly, it dawned on me just how the skaven had been tracking us.
‘Nassam. Stop moving.’
‘That way.’ I was aware of a long, tubular apparatus like a broom being swung across the floor of a separate passage towards ours. ‘That way, master. Go-go!’
Before I even had the chance to shout a warning, a dozen tin-pot skaven warriors wielding a motley collection of spears, man-catchers and what looked like spring-loaded nets came spilling around the flex of the passage behind us. Typical skaven, they seemed preternaturally at home in the insane environment they had chosen to lair in, sprinting sure-footedly and with little obvious fear as Nassam and I struggled to stand upright and just about managed to avoid decapitating one another as we readied our weapons.
‘Stand behind me,’ I bellowed, turning to place the solid width of one Hamilcar Bear-Eater between the delirious Captain el-Shaah and the onrushing skaven.