Ghoulslayer

Chapter Twenty-Nine Feeding Frenzy

‘Bloody wizards,’ muttered Gotrek as the darkness dropped away from him. He stamped on the shadows that tumbled across the floor and writhed away from him. Within seconds, they had all faded and he was left glowering at the flagstones. He caught sight of Maleneth, still holding her knife with the dead ghoul at her feet.

‘Saved by an aelf,’ he groaned.

She laughed at his ingratitude. ‘Ah, but you’re a charmer, Gotrek Gurnisson – humble and eloquent in equal measure. You always know just the right thing to say. Truly, you are a credit to your species.’

He glared at her, embers dancing in his furnace-like eye.

Maleneth tensed and gripped her knives.

Then a broad grin spread across Gotrek’s face. ‘You’re almost funny,’ he laughed. ‘For a backstabbing aelf.’

She bowed with an exaggerated flourish. ‘I can but try.’

One of the ghouls reared up from the dead horse, its throat jammed with meat and blood rushing down its skin. It reached out towards them, groaning hungrily, but before it could take a step, another mordant dragged it to the floor and began eating it, snarling and gasping as it ripped flesh with its teeth.

Maleneth and Gotrek watched, bemused, as the ghouls all turned on each other in a snorting, growling kill-frenzy. They seemed oblivious to anything but the body nearest to them, and they quickly devolved into a heap of thrashing limbs and clawing fingers.

Through the windows, Maleneth could see the ghouls gathered outside in the boulevard, and they were all behaving the same way. They abandoned all pretence of being an army and turned on each other, lunging at whoever was nearest. Even the terrorgheists had joined the carnage, diving from the rooftops and devouring creatures they had previously fought alongside. ‘What in the name of Khaine are they doing?’

Gotrek watched the carnage, shaking his head. ‘Even ghouls usually manage to attack someone other than themselves.’

‘You killed their leader,’ called Trachos from the stairs above. ‘These things have no minds of their own. They were only acting with a purpose because of that.’ He waved his sceptre at the Ghoul King’s corpse. ‘You have achieved what the prince asked of you.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Gotrek. He nodded at the cocoons up in the rafters of the tower. ‘They’re not saved yet.’

‘You have saved them from the ghouls. The flesh-eaters will be so busy devouring each other, the Erebid will have no problem slaughtering them when Prince Volant summons them back out of the sewers.’

Gotrek glanced at Maleneth, and she gave him another exaggerated curtsy, delighting in the fact that she had done his job for him.

‘All that remains now is for Volant and Lhosia to perform the rite they spoke of,’ she said. ‘To fire up their magic stone and protect the Erebid from future invasions.’

Gotrek looked up towards the top of the tower. The hexagonal platform in its eaves was shining so brightly he had to shield his eyes. ‘Let’s get up there before they get so excited they forget what they promised me.’