Maleneth listened, then nodded, impressed. The ranger was good.
For a human.
‘Footsteps,’ she said.
‘And still only one set,’ said Halik.
‘He has somehow bypassed a locked door, a watch patrol and now a skaven ambush as well,’ said Maleneth. ‘He belongs in a temple of Khaine, this child.’ She turned to join the old ranger in her study of the arch. ‘It reeks of soulblight and carrion. Whatever dwells beyond this portal, I fear it is beyond even Khaine’s reach now. Such things are best left buried.’
Gotrek heaved himself to his feet with a clink of gold chain and a dying splutter of half-seen flame. Maleneth had to marvel at his determination. And all this for the myth of an ancient ghost, for surely Gotrek Gurnisson cared less for this Tambrin boy than even she did, and she cared nothing at all. It was with a mixture of amazement and frustration she was lately becoming painfully familiar with that she watched the Slayer limp towards her.
‘What are you all standing about for?’ he said. ‘There’s black work ahead of us yet.’
After what he had inflicted on the plague monks, nobody felt inclined to argue.
A chill blue light shone from the passage beyond the archway. The languid movements of the mist that filled the corridor diffused and scattered it. It was like being submerged in water. Maleneth felt her breath starting to come quick and shallow. She studied the walls. Frost prickled the weeds and mosses that encrusted their ancient stonework. But aside from the chill the plants looked healthy. The air in this part of the dungeon smelled clean. For some reason, that pristine quality troubled her more than the rank despoliation in the chamber that had preceded it. It was the sterility of abandonment. Nothing had moved in to claim these halls. That alone was enough to give Maleneth’s heart jitters.
There was a tired creak as Halik raised her bow.
The ranger’s aim wavered.
‘Sigmar preserve us.’
Maleneth drew her hand from the frost-stippled wall and looked up. Her eyes were sharper than those of the human ranger. At that precise moment she wished they were not.
Between her looking away and turning back the mists ahead had parted. Or rather, something had drawn them apart. They clung to the walls of the passage in a way that was wholly unnatural, trembling like cold skin, and bathed in blueish light. A taller-than-human figure stood revealed in the ankle-deep mist. Its body was formed of crackling energy. A long cloak and a suit of ribbed, holly-like armour filtered its fell glow. It turned its head to look back over its shoulder and Maleneth felt that her heart would stop. A black helmet masked its face with coiling shadows. In one fizzing blue hand it led a small boy. Were one to mentally unbox the ears and reset the nose then the resemblance to Junas would have been striking. For all that he was standing upright, the boy seemed to be sound asleep.
‘Thambrin,’ said Junas, the most recent break to his nose making his voice come out as a frightened honk. ‘Praith Thigmar.’ He shook off Alanaer’s supporting arm and tottered forwards, hand outstretched to his son. ‘I’m here, Thambrin.’
The shade drew the boy in close.
‘Begone, spirit.’ Gotrek hefted his axe. Its forgefires chased the shadows from his face, filling its creases with new ones. ‘Release the child and walk amongst the living no longer.’
The shade turned to regard them fully, pushing the boy behind its back. It flickered rather than moved, its outline stuttering in and out of focus with a horrible vibration as though it were only weakly tethered to the living realm.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Junas snarled. ‘Thoot it.’
Maleneth was not sure if Halik did as Junas demanded or if terror had simply loosened her hold on her bowstring.
A foot away from the ragged armour of its chest her arrow disintegrated. Aged a thousand years in the blink of an eye, the shaft fell to dust like a stick fed into a Kharadron steam-shredder. A brittle wedge of rusted and barely recognisable steel dinked on the spirit’s breastplate and dropped to the floor. The apparition crunched it under one icy boot. It looked up. Maleneth gasped in horror as its helmet melted back. A skull face glared out from a hood of shadow, eyes blazing with malefic lightning. The breath that Maleneth had taken caught. It refused to come out. She felt it freeze in her lungs where it hid, icicles creeping outwards into her heart. Her mouth stretched into a silent scream, her black hair turning slowly white.
Then the ghost screamed.
It hit Maleneth like a lightning bolt. Something inside her braced, clinging on to meat and bone like a drowning woman to a wrecked ship in a storm. From the corner of her eye she saw Halik as her soul was blasted from her body. Pale and ephemeral, its hands grasped for the ranger’s body, but passed through, unable to prevent the corpse from toppling. With a plaintive wail the disembodied soul dissolved into the aether. Maleneth grit her teeth. Junas had folded to the ground, his hands over his ears. Alanaer was screaming. Over and over. As if to block out the banshee cry with the terrified sound of his own voice.
‘It is the ghost of Hanberra!’ the warrior-priest wailed, holding his hammer before him as if its crossed shadow would ward the visitation from his sight. ‘By the light of my Queen, it is true. The hero who broke free from Sigmar’s lightning to go back for his family!’
Even without the benefit of a dark legend, Maleneth would have known that this was no ordinary shade. The empty halls. The skaven’s terror. Its bearing and raiment – all made it clear that this had been the spirit of a great hero in life. But death had eroded him until only the deepest core of the warrior’s former personality remained.
A solitary purpose.
‘I said unhand him,’ said Gotrek.
Unlike the others, the Slayer simply looked weary, as though having been burned once by the purple sun of Uthan Barrowalker, the winds of Shyish could no longer touch him. Maleneth looked for the warning flicker of runefire, but in vain. The master rune was cool in the Slayer’s chest. It was, perhaps, a sign of the tremendous power it contained that once unleashed it took time to recharge. Not that that came as any great solace to Maleneth at that moment.
‘Give me my thon,’ snarled Junas. ‘He’th mine, not yours.’
‘He’s mine. Not yours.’
The words echoed back at them as if from a deep well.
Maleneth shuddered.
The ghost of Hanberra did not move. One moment it was upright. Then it was turned away, hunched over the sleepwalking boy. And then it was facing its mortal pursuers again, the boy held in its arms, drifting away from them as though drawn on the freezing in-breath of the deep earth itself.
‘Thambrin!’
Junas lurched into a charge.
Gotrek caught his scuffed and damaged wrist with one hand. Despite barely coming up to the big man’s chest, the duardin stopped him without effort.
‘Don’t be an idiot, manling,’ he said in a voice like stone. ‘You’ve failed the boy once today already. Don’t fail him again by dying now.’ The Slayer pulled back on Junas’ arm, dragging him easily to the floor at his feet. He looked down the passageway towards the towering wraith. ‘Your boy is dead, spirit, as are you. Unhand this one and face a dwarf nearer your own age. My axe will grant you the release you seek.’
The spirit issued a sepulchral moan.
‘Release.’
Its cloak flapped about it like the wings of a bat and a warhammer of truly monstrous proportion appeared in one gauntleted fist. With the other hand, it cosseted the still-sleeping infant to its chest.
Then with a hiss it swung.
Gotrek ducked his head at the last moment.