Ghoulslayer

Chapter Five The Iron Shroud

The wall of spirits was thick. As Maleneth staggered on, the cries became deafening. Deeper within, the ghosts summoned the strength to attack, their cold, waxy fingers clawing at her face.

After a few steps she was fighting, punching and kicking her way through the tangled limbs. The dead were desperate, trying to tear her skin, hungry for her warmth, craving her pulse. For a while she fought in silence, but as the attacks became more frantic she felt like she was drowning. She howled in defiance. Then, as the crush was about to overwhelm her, she burst through the other side of the wall and tumbled to the ground, gasping for breath.

The air was so thick and greasy that she gagged. It was like breathing cremation fumes. She lurched to her feet, coughing, and looked around.

They had entered another expanse of grey, encircled by another tower of mist. But there was a difference. In some places, the tower had collapsed, spilling ghosts across the ground. The spirits were trying to crawl away from the walls, but outside the mist their substance gave way, dissipating as they grasped at the air, thrashing across the ground like stranded fish. Gotrek was standing in the middle of the tower, and waves of spectral debris were crawling towards him, pleading and weeping. He seemed unaware of them. He was looking around in confusion.

‘Where’d the wizard go?’ he cried, glancing back at Maleneth.

Then he laughed as Trachos tumbled through the wall and landed with a clatter. ‘Still with us, manling?’

Trachos did not reply.

‘Get over here, Lord Ordinator,’ said Gotrek, sneering Trachos’ title.

Maleneth and Trachos hurried into the centre of the mist tower and stood next to the Slayer.

‘Which way did he go?’ asked Gotrek.

The spirits were whipping across the ground, kicking up dust. It was hard to see anything clearly.

Gotrek studied the astrological equipment fixed to Trachos’ belt. ‘Can one of your devices track him?’

Trachos staggered as ghosts whipped through the darkness, battering against his armour. ‘What?’ he gasped as he fended off the spectral shapes.

‘Take that bloody hat off and you might hear me.’ Gotrek tapped one of his slab-like fingers on Trachos’ helmet. ‘Where. Is. The. Wizard?’

‘I am a Lord Ordinator,’ replied Trachos, ‘not a scout. These are instruments of Sigmar’s divine will. They measure aetheonic currents. They plot the celestial spheres. They do not track conjurors.’

‘The bell,’ said Maleneth.

‘What?’ snarled Gotrek.

‘I heard it earlier, and now it’s louder. Do you hear?’

Gotrek looked at the ground, concentrating.

‘We’re getting closer to it,’ Maleneth said. ‘This…’ She waved vaguely at the diaphanous structure that was collapsing all around them. ‘This place is closer to wherever the bell is ringing. The creatures Kurin called mordants were heading towards it, so he might be too.’

Gotrek grinned and clapped her on the back so hard she staggered. He looked through the crowds of struggling spectres to the opposite side of the circular wall. It was the section that was most crumbled, and it was heaving with anguished souls. ‘Of course. A bell means a building. And buildings mean civilisation.’ He shrugged, grimacing at the bleak wasteland. ‘Civilisation might be stretching it.’

‘There’s something else, too,’ said Maleneth.

They all listened. Along with the bell there was a clamour – incoherent, bestial cries and a low, smashing sound, like a war engine pummelling a wall.

‘Sounds like a fight!’ Gotrek stomped off through the dust, waving for Maleneth to follow.

‘That’s a warning bell,’ said Trachos, staring at the tumbling walls of mist.

Maleneth nodded.

She turned to follow Gotrek, but Trachos grabbed her arm. ‘No one gets the rune if he destroys himself.’

She looked at him, her expression neutral.

‘And we can’t keep him alive if we don’t trust each other,’ he continued.

Maleneth’s smile was as cold as the dust. ‘Of course you can trust me.’ She jogged lightly away, weaving around the tumbling ghosts as she followed Gotrek.

Each tower of mist was more ruined than the previous one, and the spirits grew more desperate the further they went, but Gotrek strode on with purpose, heading unerringly towards the clanging bell. The closer they came to the sound, the more it mingled with the din of battle and the deep, seismic thudding they had heard earlier.

Finally, after breaking through a fifth wall, they saw the source of the din. Even by the standards of Shyish it was a macabre sight. Ghouls were clambering over a shrine, dozens of them, thrashing and snarling as they fought. The shrine was a splayed, claw-like structure perched on a rocky outcrop. It was made of stone, but its limbs were as sharp and twisted as a briar, hung low to the ground and knitted together in a jumble of knuckles and thorns. There were cylindrical cages hung at the end of each bristling limb, and in each cage there was a corpse. Some were no more than dusty skeletons while others were rot-bloated husks, bruise-dark and waxy, gleaming under a low-hanging moon. The corpses were moving, lunging and hacking at the ghouls, defending the shrine with silent determination.

At the sight of the frantic battle, Gotrek halted and let out an eager growl. He gripped his axe tightly and its brazier blazed with inner fire. ‘We’ve found the puppet master!’ he roared, pointing his weapon at the centre of the shrine.

At the heart of the stone briar there was a circular block, like a crooked pulpit, and inside it there was a slender man dressed in a white gown, his face hidden in a deep hood. He was waving a scythe back and forth, and with every sweep, the briar’s limbs lashed out, tearing the ghouls apart and allowing the caged corpses to attack with rusting swords. It was grotesque and surreal. The monsters fought like animals, spitting and twitching, but the briar corpses were silent, even when their cages hit the ghouls with so much force they exploded, scattering shards of bone and flesh.

‘A necromancer!’ cried Gotrek, charging through the dust towards the shrine. There was a worrying gleam in his eye that Maleneth had seen before. His muscles were trembling and the rune in his chest shimmered with aetheric power.

Maleneth was about to follow when she noticed another shrine a few hundred yards away. It was similar to the one Gotrek was approaching, but it had collapsed. Ghouls were swarming over it from every direction, and as they reached its summit something strange was happening – they were vanishing from view, tumbling into it as though they were falling into a well. As the shrine crumbled, the spirit mist lashed down from the towers, spiralling around the crumbling stones.

‘This is a wall,’ she said.

Trachos stared at her.

She pointed one of her knives at the shapes in the distance. ‘There are dozens of these things. They’re a barrier.’

All of the shrines were under attack. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of ghouls were spilling from the mist and tearing down the stone briars. As the shrines crumbled, the spirit winds lashed around them like sails torn from their masts.

A bellowed war cry drew Maleneth’s attention back to Gotrek. He drew back his axe and hurled it into the shrine wall, creating an explosion of shattered stone. Then he strode forwards, wrenched the axe free and began laying about himself, smashing mordants from the barbed limbs and bellowing. He made such a terrifying sight that even the ghouls hesitated, seemingly taken aback by the arrival of someone more deranged than they were.

The shrine heaved and lurched like an enormous crustacean, lashing out with its cages in an attempt to batter Gotrek away.

In his berserk state the Slayer was surprisingly agile. His short, muscular legs powered him through the tumult as he hacked chunks of stone from his path, howling the whole time.

The necromancer remained motionless, head down, his face still hidden in his hood, but it was clear he had noticed Gotrek’s approach. The stone briar became a storm of lashing limbs and whirling blades.

A stone branch thudded into the Slayer as if to hurl him clear, but Gotrek gripped it tightly with one hand and headbutted it. The stone broke with an explosion of sparks, and for a moment Maleneth lost sight of the Slayer.

When the flash faded, she saw him halfway up the shrine, punching a ghoul and roaring with laughter, hauling himself through the contorted shapes.

She raced towards the shrine, dodging the mordants’ grasping talons and leaping up onto the twisted mass, cutting down more of the creatures as she began to climb. When the Slayer was in the grip of a kill-fever, anything could happen. She had to get close enough to protect the rune.

Trachos lurched after her with a clatter of ruined armour. Then, absurdly, he launched into song. ‘Oh, faint, deluded hearts!’ he sang, his voice metallic and inhuman. ‘The God-King hath descended!’ Ever since Gotrek had dragged them down to the Realm of Death, the Stormcast had taken to singing hymns as he fought. Either his wounds had damaged his hearing or he had never had a musical ear. He turned every melody into a bludgeoning, tuneless dirge.

Maleneth weaved and ducked, planting kicks and dancing around lunges, but it was impossible to keep pace with Gotrek. Her blades flashed through necks and wrists, slicing the ghouls apart with calm efficiency. They tried to swarm over her, but she was too light on her feet, dancing away from them as blood-frenzy washed over her. At moments like this she could not deny her true faith. She fought in tribute to the Bloody-Handed God, making every cut as cruel and painful as she could, laughing mercilessly as the creatures tumbled away, gasping and choking, Khaine’s symbol scored into their flesh.

There was an explosion of light, and the whole scene became a frozen tableau of silhouettes. Then the light vanished and Maleneth stumbled, blinded, as ghouls rushed at her.

Hot pain erupted across her back as claws raked over her skin.

She whirled around, lashing out blindly, cutting through muscle and cartilage as she jumped clear.

Once she had gained a safer vantage point she saw the source of the light. Trachos had taken some objects from his belt and clasped them together, forming a slender sceptre with an ornate mechanical cube at its head. The cube was trailing strands of smoke, and there was a charred heap where several ghouls had been standing.

‘Steadfast and majestic!’ boomed the Stormcast, still singing. ‘Fiery hammer swinging!’

Maleneth grimaced and bounded up the shrine after Gotrek.

They reached the necromancer at the same moment, the howling Slayer barrelling through ghouls from one direction while Maleneth leapt gracefully from the other.

The necromancer whirled his scythe, and stone limbs stabbed towards the Slayer.

Gotrek was covered in blood and his grin was daemonic as he slammed his axe into the cages, shattering every corpse that tried to land a blow on him. He leapt through a storm of bone, blood and rock, grabbing the necromancer by the throat.

Maleneth arrived just in time to see the look of confusion on Gotrek’s face as the hood fell back.

Rather than a wizened old man, there was a young woman staring back at the Slayer.

Gotrek froze, shocked into momentary silence.

The girl took her chance. As the Slayer hesitated, she sank her scythe into his chest.

There was another explosion, and this one was so powerful that it kicked Maleneth back from the pulpit, sending her crashing into the ghouls.

‘Sound the starlit trumpets!’ sang Trachos from somewhere nearby. ‘Rouse the ardent host!’

‘Trachos!’ Maleneth howled, attacked on all sides and unable to rush after Gotrek.

The singing paused, and there were more flashes of light. Mal­eneth fought blind, weaving through the ghouls until she was back on the ground.

As her eyes adjusted to the glare, she saw Trachos swing his sceptre and hurl silver-blue flames. ‘Never-ending glory!’ he cried as the blast left a landslide of charred body parts at her feet. ‘Foes vanquished and unbound!’

Maleneth ducked and rounded on another mordant, opening its throat with a backhanded slash before leaping clear.

When she turned to look back at the fight, it was over. Gotrek had hacked down half the ghouls, and she and Trachos had dealt with the rest. The shrine was empty, its stone branches lying in the dust.

‘Where is he?’ she gasped, glancing at Trachos.

He did not seem to hear. His head was thrown back and he was still gripping the sceptre in both hands, aetheric energy sizzling around his gauntlets. He was still singing, but only to himself now, the words muffled and faint inside his helmet. Then he shook his head and lowered the sceptre, turning to face Maleneth. The light faded from his eyes and he suddenly looked dazed from his exertions. He leant on the sceptre as a crutch.

‘He fell when the necromancer stabbed him.’

They both looked around.

‘We need to get out of here,’ said Maleneth, looking past the Stormcast Eternal to the mist towers. There were hundreds more ghouls approaching from every direction. Even with the Slayer they could never face down so many. ‘That sorcerer you put so much faith in has abandoned us.’

She leapt over the dead bodies, looking for Gotrek and the sorcerer, leaving Trachos to stagger after her.

They found the girl first. She had rolled down through the nest of spiny stones and landed in a heap at the bottom of the shrine. Her hood was thrown back, so they could see her flushed, furious face. Her teeth were bared, and she glowered at Maleneth like she wanted to tear her throat out.

She tried to rise, but Maleneth held a knife against her throat, smiling. ‘Just give me a reason.’

The woman was shivering with rage. ‘The Unburied will endure.’ Her eyes were so bloodshot they looked wholly red. ‘Morbium eternal!’

‘Unburied?’ Maleneth glanced at Trachos for an explanation, but the Stormcast shrugged.

The woman sneered, her words thick with hate. ‘Kill me. Be done with it. I don’t know how you uncovered the Iron Shroud, but this will not be the end of us. The ancestors will endure. As was will always be. The past remains in the now. The Unburied will still be here when the traitor-god is overturned and the–’

‘Your walls are falling,’ interrupted Maleneth, annoyed by the woman’s pompous tone. ‘Take a look.’ She hauled her to her feet and showed her the line of shrines. All of them were collapsing under the weight of the ghouls’ attacks, surrounded by storms of mist.

‘Morbium will endure,’ snapped the woman, her fingers trembling, her weapon lost.

‘Your spiky shrub is the only one still standing, and that’s only thanks to Gotrek,’ said Maleneth. At the mention of his name, she remembered that the girl had wounded the Slayer. ‘Where is he?’ she muttered, looking across the still-twitching bodies.

Trachos barged past her, striding through veils of mist, his sceptre shimmering.

‘Wait!’ demanded Maleneth, still crouched over the woman with her blade at her throat. ‘What are you?’ she said, wondering if there was any reason for letting her live. ‘Are you a necromancer?’

The woman looked appalled. ‘I’m the High Priestess of the Cerement.’

‘Good for you,’ said Maleneth, pressing on the blade.

Gotrek staggered through the mist, dazed but apparently unharmed.

He shoved Maleneth aside and dragged the white-robed woman to her feet. He held up the scythe she’d used on him and tapped it against the rune in his chest. ‘Aim higher, lass, if you get another chance.’

‘Prince Volant will have your head,’ hissed the woman. ‘When he hears you attacked the Iron Shroud, there’ll be no sorcery in all of Shyish that can protect you.’

‘The Iron Shroud?’ asked Gotrek.

Maleneth leant close, speaking with mock discretion. ‘I think she means this impregnable edifice.’ She pointed at the ruined shrines that trailed away from them in both directions.

‘Attacked?’ Gotrek shook his head. ‘What are you talking about?’ He looked at the tides of ghouls racing towards them. ‘You think these things are mine?’ He waved at the bodies that surrounded them and laughed. ‘Perhaps you didn’t notice me trimming their necks.’

The woman shook her head. ‘Then who are you?’

‘Gotrek, son of Gurni, born in the Everpeak and–’

‘Gotrek,’ said Maleneth, drawing the Slayer’s attention to the host thundering towards them.

He grunted, annoyed at the interruption, and looked back at the woman. ‘How do I get to your master?’

‘Prince Volant?’

‘Prince who?’ Gotrek shook his head. ‘Is that the Morn-Prince? Prince Volant? Is he the one who can get me to Nagash?’

The woman stared at him. ‘Nagash? You’re insane.’

Maleneth laughed. ‘She’s a sound judge of character, at least.’

‘They’re almost on us,’ said Trachos.

Maleneth glanced at Gotrek. ‘Any suggestions?’ There were so many ghouls charging through the mist that the ground was trembling.

The woman looked past Gotrek to the approaching horde and then back at the shrine.

Gotrek caught the glance. ‘Is there something you can do? What have you got in that shrine?’

‘Why do you seek Nagash?’ asked the woman. ‘To pledge allegiance?’

‘Allegiance?’ Gotrek laughed. ‘I didn’t come here to bend the bloody knee.’

‘Trachos,’ said Maleneth. The ghouls were only moments away. She could see their rolling, feverish eyes and the blood on their teeth. ‘Your staff?’

He nodded, whispered a prayer and adjusted the cogs around the sceptre’s head. Energy shimmered down the metal, splashing light over his faceplate. The air crackled as he strode away, launching into another tuneless hymn. ‘Stooping from celestial spires, he rides the storm to conquer!’

Maleneth looked back at Gotrek. Even now he seemed oblivious to the host rushing towards them. He was holding the woman’s gaze.

The woman stared at the dead ghouls Gotrek had scattered around the shrine. Her expression was tormented.

‘If you can do something, it needs to be now,’ said Maleneth, infuriated by the woman’s indecision.

They all staggered as Trachos hammered his sceptre down onto the ground. An aether-wave splashed through the mist, hitting the front ranks of the ghouls, and Trachos’ song rose in volume and fervour.

The ghouls ignited like kindling, howling as they fell, shrouded in embers.

The woman’s eyes widened. She looked at the wreckage of the other shrines and then at Gotrek’s axe and the rune in his chest, both of which were still glowing.

‘The Iron Shroud is both wall and door,’ she said. ‘If it is the will of the Unburied, I may be able to return to Morbium and take you with me.’ Her eyes were still burning with hate and outrage, but she kept glancing back to the shrine and she made no attempt to attack.

‘Morbium?’ Gotrek shook his head. ‘That’s it. That’s the one. Get us there quick, lass, and I might forgive you for trying to gut me.’

They staggered again as Trachos unleashed another wave of light, toppling more ghouls as his song reached a triumphant crescendo.

The young woman gripped her head, drumming her fingers on her skull. ‘Prince Volant was right to send me out here. The Shroud has been breached.’ She shook her head, glancing at the shrine. ‘I have to reach him.’

‘If he knows the way to Nagash, I’ll get you to him,’ said Gotrek. ‘Consider that an oath.’

She glared at Gotrek but seemed to be considering his offer. ‘If the mordants have breached the Shroud, I may need protection.’

Gotrek tapped his bloody axe. ‘If protection is what you need–’

‘Slayer!’ cried Trachos, rushing back and smashing his sceptre into the face of a ghoul. Its skull detonated, scattering flames and grey matter.

Maleneth dodged the gore then stopped the next one with a flurry of knife blows, and Gotrek dropped a third, crumpling its skull with his axe.

‘Follow me to the pulpit!’ cried the woman. She clambered quickly up the gnarled, twisted mass of stone, waving for them to follow.

They climbed backwards up the stones, still facing the ghouls, parrying their attacks.

Gotrek grinned as he fought, scattering heads and limbs as he hurried after the woman. Trachos used his sceptre like a hammer, swinging it with almost as much ferocity as Gotrek, and every blow triggered a flash of Azyrite sorcery that flashed over his armour, catching on the lightning bolts and stars that decorated the polished plate. His song had become a meaningless jumble of unconnected words. ‘Swift! Blessed! Heart! Strife!’

When they reached the centre of the shrine, the woman waved them into the pulpit and indicated that they should sit beside her on the knotted shapes.

‘Press your palms to the stone!’ she cried.

Maleneth rushed to Gotrek’s side. ‘Is there anyone you won’t put your trust in?’

The Slayer laughed and nodded to the chaotic scenes around them. The ghouls were in such a frenzy that they were turning on each other, tearing at their crooked limbs in their desperation to reach the last standing shrine. ‘Stay here if you like.’

Gotrek slapped his meaty hand down next to the woman’s, gripping a spur of stone that jutted up from the centre of the pulpit.

Trachos pointed his sceptre and lightning ripped from the metal, tearing a ghoul’s chest open before lashing through another one’s head. ‘There’s no option,’ he said, using the sceptre to club a ghoul that leapt at him from another direction. He put his hand down next to Gotrek’s, the metal of his gauntlet clanging against the stone.

Maleneth looked at the red-faced woman. She had gripped the stone in both hands and closed her eyes, whispering furiously. Indigo flames flickered between her fingers, and a breeze washed through the pulpit, causing Maleneth to shiver and curse. This was necromancy, whatever the woman claimed. She could smell death magic on the air.

The shrine began to judder, crumbling under the weight of the ghouls.

Maleneth muttered another curse and put her hand on the stone.

Cold rushed through her, and she gasped in pain. She tried to pull her hand free, but it was frozen in place.

‘What is this?’ she hissed at the woman, but the priestess was oblivious to anything other than her incantation. Her eyes were closed, her head was tilted back, and she was mouthing arcane, sibilant phrases.

‘If you have betrayed–’ began Maleneth, but her words were drowned out by a deafening grinding sound as the stone briar tightened its grip, clenching like an enormous fist, enveloping them all in a cage of bristles.

Maleneth cried out as thorns punched into her. She tried again to wrench her hand free, but it was no use.

Dozens of crumbling tusks sliced into her, and as the world grew dark, the talisman at her neck spoke up, its voice full of derision.

You can’t even die elegantly.