Ghoulslayer

Chapter Twenty-One The Ghoul King

The Morn-Prince ordered Lord Aurun to accompany Lhosia and the Unburied to the Halls of Separation, promising to join them shortly, then led Gotrek to the battlements above the city gates. As Maleneth and Trachos followed, they received shocked glances from the soldiers who lined the steps. Maleneth smiled at them, conscious of how white and hungry her grin would look in her bloodstained face. She was probably the first aelf they had ever seen. She was keen to make the right impression.

‘We spied the mordants even before we saw you approaching,’ said Captain Ridens as they climbed the stairs inside one of the thorn-like towers that lined the walls. ‘Every survivor who reached us brought news of them, explaining that the prominents had been taken.’ He grimaced, shaking his head. ‘They described terrible things, all of them. But it was not until two days ago that we started to see what they were talking about.’

They reached the top of the tower and stepped out onto the curtain wall. A chill wind lashed against Maleneth, and ranks of soldiers backed away, bowing, as they made space for the prince to approach the wall.

He stared out into the darkness. ‘What do you mean? I can’t see any mordants out there.’

The captain nodded to some soldiers further down the wall, standing beside a catapult the size of a house. They leapt into action, lighting tapers and fastening bundles of dried wood to the weapon. There was a rattle of whirring cogs as the catapult sent an arc of fire towards the stars. It landed with an explosion of sparks, half a mile from the city, splashing light over the Eventide.

Maleneth hissed in disgust. Lit up briefly by the explosion were lines of ghouls. She had seen plenty of the creatures by this point, so it was not their crooked, hunched bodies that shocked her, nor the gore dripping from their wasted arms. It was their lack of movement. Every ghoul she had seen was frenzied, but the light had revealed lines of motionless flesh-eaters. They had gathered in ranks, like a normal, reasonable army. Seeing them like that, standing with such a vile pretence of sanity, was worse than watching them leap and claw.

‘How long have they been like that?’ she said as the light faded, leaving her with a disturbing after-image.

Captain Ridens looked at Prince Volant, who nodded.

‘For five days.’

‘They’ve been standing there for five days?’ Maleneth laughed in disbelief. ‘Doing nothing?’

The captain nodded. ‘Survivors from the other prominents say this is unusual – that the mordants are not usually so well ordered.’

‘Damn right,’ she muttered. ‘What is this?’ she asked Gotrek. ‘What are they doing?’

The Slayer shrugged. ‘Looks like they’re waiting for a command.’

‘A command from whom? And how would they follow an order even if it came? They have no minds.’

Prince Volant replied without taking his gaze from the darkness. ‘The histories talk of such behaviour. It is not unheard of. Mordants have been known to act with reason in the presence of a…’ He hesitated, looking for the right word. ‘A leader of some kind.’

‘A leader?’ Maleneth was incredulous. ‘You saw them. They’re like wolves fighting over a carcass. They can’t recognise leadership skills. They couldn’t distinguish a leader from a thigh bone.’

The prince looked past her to Trachos. The Stormcast Eternal had taken out his square-framed spyglass and was adjusting its nest of lenses, flipping clasps and turning rows of polished brass cogs. He held the device up to one of the eyeholes in his helmet.

‘Can you see in the dark with that machine?’ asked Volant, but Trachos did not answer. He stood in silence for several seconds, looking in different directions, until he spotted something and gave a grunt of recognition.

He handed the device to Gotrek and pointed out past the wynd that led to the gates.

Gotrek looked where Trachos was indicating and laughed. ‘Well, would you look at that. He’s impressively ugly.’

Maleneth snatched the spyglass from him and stared through the lens. By some cunning artifice of its Azyrite makers, the device was able to penetrate the pitch dark. It was not true vision but a ghostly approximation of sight. Lines of ghouls simmered into view, as if they were painted in smoke, faint, ephemeral and grotesque.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Who’s ugly?’ She flinched, forgetting that she was looking into the distance as a revolting shape filled the eyepiece. It was a monstrous, snub-faced creature, like the one Prince Volant had battled over the Spindrift, but this one was saddled and ridden by one of the large species of ghouls. The rider was as corpse-grey and withered as all the other mordants, but where they hunched and lurched, this one affected an attitude of regal disdain, reins held loosely in one listless hand and its chin raised in haughty indifference. Of all the flesh-eaters she had seen since reaching Shyish, this was the first one that Maleneth had found truly shocking. Its flesh had the same rotten, rag-like texture as the others, and its eyes were the same blank, oversized orbs, but unlike all the rest, this creature was dressed in scraps of armour and carried a rusty longsword on its back. As it shifted in its saddle, Maleneth realised that the ghoul was even wearing a dented circle of metal on its gleaming pate.

‘It thinks it’s still a man,’ she said, with a mixture of amusement and unease. There was something unnerving about seeing such a debased creature assuming the air of a noble warrior.

‘There are more of them,’ she laughed as she spotted other riders circling the one with the crown. There were half a dozen or so, all with the same bat-like steeds and the same absurd facade of regal bearing. Some of them carried shields and pennants, as though they were proud knights, and one of them was riding side-saddle, as though it were a noblewoman heading out on a hunt with her courtiers and servants.

Prince Volant held out his hand and she handed the device up to him. ‘I have not seen them behave like this before,’ he said after study­ing the strange figures. ‘What does it mean?’ He looked at Captain Ridens. ‘Have you seen this? Mordants behaving like nobles?’

Captain Ridens seemed unnerved every time Volant so much as glanced his way. At this question he looked distinctly panicked. ‘Your majesty,’ he mumbled. ‘I do not understand the question.’

Volant handed Ridens the spyglass and directed him to the riders circling above the army.

Ridens paled. ‘Those things were not there last time we fired the flares, Morn-Prince. They must have been following close behind you. I have heard…’ He lowered the spyglass and looked up at the prince. ‘The survivors all have something terrible to tell. Some spoke of a ruler of the mordants, leading them into battle as if they were rational, human soldiers.’

Maleneth frowned up at the prince. ‘Did you say ghouls have been known to act with reason in the presence of a “leader”?’

Volant nodded. ‘According to the histories.’

Gotrek grinned. ‘Then this might be even more interesting than the last scrap. At the Barren Points they were like drunks trying to find their own feet, but if they fight like actual soldiers, in those kinds of numbers…’

‘It might not matter,’ said Trachos, still staring out into the darkness.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Maleneth.

‘Lift the spyglass a little higher. Look past the ghouls.’

Volant did as Trachos suggested. ‘Nothing,’ he said after a moment. ‘Storm clouds. Nothing else.’

Maleneth stared at Trachos with a feeling of grim realisation. ‘Storm clouds?’

He nodded. ‘Bone rain. Coming fast.’