Ghoulslayer

Chapter Twenty-Four Sacrament of Blood

Trachos’ light flashed over barrel-vaulted ceilings, revealing the incredible age of the sewers. The stones had been rounded and smoothed by the centuries, slumping and swelling in places, as though bloated by tumours. It looked like they were crawling through diseased innards.

The foetid river running down the tunnel was knee-deep on Mal­eneth, but that meant Gotrek was wading up to his thighs. The water had no chance of slowing the Slayer though. While Trachos called out directions, a brass compass in one hand and his blazing sceptre in the other, Gotrek raced through the filth, vaulting pipes and leaping over the remains of old cave-ins.

‘This is more like it!’ he shouted, his greataxe slung across his back as he rushed through the darkness. He slapped the wall. ‘Good, solid work. I could be back in the Eight Peaks.’

Trachos looked to Maleneth for an explanation.

She shrugged. ‘He shares your enthusiasm for drains. How nice.’

‘The north pipe,’ said Trachos, casting light down another tunnel.

Gotrek nodded, humming cheerfully to himself as he splashed off in that direction.

‘How long will this take?’ Maleneth asked, catching up with Trachos.

‘It looks like the main sewer runs from the central tower out to the city walls. We should be able to take a more direct route than if we were above ground. We might be there in less than an hour.’

She was about to reply when the tunnels juddered. Dust and brick fell from overhead, throwing up splashes of muck and clouds of flies, and Maleneth would have fallen if Trachos hadn’t grabbed her arm.

‘Prince of Murder,’ she said. ‘What was that?’

He shook his head. ‘Maybe Nagash’s storms are powerful enough to shake city walls?’

‘I don’t think so. It didn’t seem like that in Klemp. I think that’s the flesh-eaters entering the city.’

He strode on through the sewer, hurrying after the disappearing shape of Gotrek. ‘Ghouls? How could they shake walls?’

‘Siege engines?’

Trachos shook his head. ‘You’ve seen them. How would they have the skill to use war machines?’

‘Remember that giant?’ she said, racing after him. ‘The thing that Gotrek fought in the Barren Points? Perhaps they have creatures like that up there?’

He glanced at her, then nodded. ‘We need to move faster.’

They ran as fast as they could through the effluence, but after a few minutes there was another tremor, then another, and Maleneth found herself struggling to keep up with Gotrek.

‘What if he succeeds?’ she gasped, swatting flies away.

‘What?’

‘What if we make it to the tower and Gotrek holds back the ghouls until the prince performs his spell?’

He shrugged. ‘We have to hope that Lhosia and Prince Volant are right – that her rite will protect this city.’

‘They said it would protect the Unburied. That’s not quite the same thing.’

‘What option do we have?’

‘None, but that’s not really what I meant, anyway. If this works how Gotrek hopes it will – if the Erebid really do send him to Nagash – what will you do then?’

Trachos glanced at her. ‘I will…’ He hurried on, shaking his head. ‘I will go with him.’

‘Really?’ She nodded to Gotrek. His broad, hulking shape was clearly picked out in Trachos’ light, and they could hear him humming cheerfully to himself and laughing at jokes he was muttering under his breath. ‘You’d follow that to the Lord of Undeath?’

‘Whenever you speak of him, your voice is full of such bile.’

She laughed. ‘Of course. Look at him. Who wouldn’t find him ridi–’

‘But…’ Trachos looked at her again. ‘Since the Barren Points, I hear something else in your voice too.’

‘What?’

‘You have seen the same thing I have seen. The Slayer is not just some wandering brigand. He’s important. He means something. He’s here for a reason. The priestess saw it too. And so does the Morn-Prince. Gotrek has more than his own doom riding on those tattooed shoulders.’

She sneered, but could not find it in herself to disagree.

‘What will you do if he succeeds?’ asked Trachos. ‘If they send him to Nagash, will you just stay here?’

‘I don’t know!’ she snapped. ‘None of my options seem particularly enticing at the moment.’

She was about to change the subject when an explosion rocked through the sewer, bathing her in amethyst light.

They fell into the muck, unbalanced by a tremor even more violent than the preceding ones.

Maleneth thrashed under the water for a moment, then lurched from the filth, cursing and spitting.

Gotrek was up ahead, shrugging off rubble and looking up at an opening that had appeared in the ceiling. A column of purple light was shining down through the hole and it framed the Slayer, picking him out of the darkness.

‘Trachos,’ hissed Maleneth, realising that his torchlight had faded.

She whirled around, scattering flies and water. The light from overhead was enough to reveal him, trapped beneath the surface of the water, pinned in place by a huge section of pipe that had been dislodged by the blast.

‘Can you breathe underwater?’ she muttered, rushing back towards him, realising how little she knew about Sigmar’s storm-born warriors.

She could see him straining in the murk, trying to heave the shattered masonry off his chest.

Let the dullard die, said the voice in her head. Good riddance.

To Maleneth’s surprise, she found that she was not willing to leave Trachos behind. Something about their conversations had intrigued her. And she felt that they were unfinished. Besides, she had a feeling that Trachos might still prove to be the key to getting the rune back to Azyr.

She grabbed the fallen pipe, trying to heave it away. It was impossible – she could not shift it an inch, even with Trachos shoving from the other side. Bubbles rushed from his armour and he thrashed furiously.

‘Gotrek!’ she cried. The Slayer had backed away to the far side of the hole in the ceiling and there were now shapes in the column of light that separated her from him – pale, glittering shards clattering down through the hole.

‘Bone rain,’ she muttered.

It was hard to see Gotrek clearly through the downpour, but she could tell he was shaking his head, powerless to reach her.

She looked the other way, back down the tunnel, and saw pale purple light coming from that direction too. ‘Another hole,’ she muttered. ‘The whole place is coming down.’

Trachos twisted violently under the water, straining and bucking against the pipe.

She grabbed it again and pulled with all her strength, but it was hopeless.

‘Khaine,’ she wheezed, backing away and shaking her head. As she watched Trachos drowning, an unexpected fury washed through her. If she had engineered his death, she might have seen matters differently, but the idea of him being taken against her will was infuriating. ‘We need you,’ she muttered, trying again to shift the stone.

Light flickered over the walls and flashed in her eyes. She thought for a moment that another hole had opened in the ceiling, but it was Trachos’ torch, shining beneath the surface of the water and throwing rippling lights across the arched ceiling.

‘Gotrek!’ she shouted again, but she knew it was useless. If the Slayer passed through that curtain of rain, he would be cut apart like anyone else.

Splashes echoed down the tunnel and she turned to see a hunched, loping shape lurching into view. Even in silhouette, she could recognise the wiry, twisted frame of a ghoul.

She cursed and backed away from Trachos, whipping her knives from her belt as more ghouls rushed from the shadows, their pus-yellow eyes flashing in the light of Trachos’ torch.

She could see the Stormcast Eternal watching her from under­water as his struggles grew weaker.

‘What can I do?’ she said, taking another step away from him as the crowd of ghouls thundered through the sewer, twitching and grunting as they splashed through the effluence. There were dozens of them, just minutes away, and even more dropping into view behind.

‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Any advice?’

You should have killed the Slayer. Then you wouldn’t be stuck down here with your back to the bone rain and flesh-eaters about to rip your lungs open.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Very helpful.’

She looked up the tunnel again. Gotrek had gone, carrying on without them. It made sense. The Slayer had never made any pretence of friendship. If he had ever had friends they had died a long time ago. But, absurdly, she still felt an odd sense of betrayal. In the months that she had travelled with the Slayer, she had begun to feel as though their fates were somehow entwined.

‘I’m a fool,’ she muttered. The first of the ghouls was only a minute or two away. She could see its black, jagged teeth drooling saliva as it tried to fix its febrile gaze on her.

Give us a death to be proud of. There was none of the usual venom in her mistress’ voice. She sounded unusually calm. Show Khaine we deserve a place at his side. These things bleed. Cut prayers into them.

A cruel smile stretched across Maleneth’s face. There were far too many ghouls for her to win this fight. There was no need to play it safe. Her mistress was right – she may as well abandon herself to the glory of the kill. She could revel in the bloodshed and devote herself, body and soul, to the Lord of Murder.

‘In mine hand is the power and the might,’ she whispered, dropping into a battle stance. ‘None may withstand me. By the Will of Khaine I will bathe in the blood of mine enemies.’

Not far from where she was standing, Trachos finally became still, but Maleneth had already forgotten him. There was nothing left in her mind but the moves of a lethal dance.

She lashed out as the first ghoul reached her, spinning on her heel in an elegant pirouette to open its throat and send it crashing into the water.

A bright umbrella of blood engulfed her, and she sighed with pleasure before sidestepping the next ghoul, hammering her knives into its back and ripping it apart with an ecstatic howl.

The kills merged into a fluid ballet of hacks and lunges. Maleneth flipped and rolled, singing to Khaine as she opened throats in his name. Her mistress howled along with every cut.