Contents

Cover

The Lost Karak – Guy Haley

Notes

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Ghoulslayer’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

THE LOST KARAK

By Guy Haley

‘Kedren, stop me if I’m getting you wrong, but you want me to haul over the Aelsling and put you off on that?’

Drekki Flynt jerked his flat thumb over his shoulder, making his drillbill dance out of the way. Gauntlet leather creaked with the insistence of the gesture. The crew couldn’t help but shift their gazes to the mass of rock drifting out past the gunwales, three thousand aerial raadfathom[1] away. The lads were all on deck, fourteen of them, Gord the ogor at the back towering over the lot. Even he was drawn in by the dispute, and that was saying something for the tension.

‘That’s about the size of it, yes,’ said Kedren. The old runesmith grabbed at his belt and pulled it up. He’d never got comfortable with Kharadron aeronautical gear. You just had to be born to it, Drekki supposed.

Drekki flipped up his flight mask, revealing a face as full of contrasts as snowfields on stone: dark skin and bright white beard, laughter lines and the cracks of yesterday’s frowns. Steel-grey eyes narrowed against the raw, unfiltered Hyshlight.

‘I don’t know. Can’t it keep?’ Drekki said. He sucked the wind through his teeth. He liked the way it tasted in the elevations of the Third Air; cool and clean and full of life. ‘We’ve a fair tailwind. We’re making good headway. We’ve got a schedule to keep. Five days to Bavardia from here. We have to be on time for this one, Kedren. The client was insistent on that.’

‘Master Grunnbor,’ the Dispossessed corrected him. He drew himself taller, though he could not match Drekki’s uncommon height. No one aboard but Gord was bigger than the captain. Four foot two!

‘Right,’ said Drekki. ‘We’re having one of those days, are we?’

Kedren’s nostrils flared. Brows beetled over a craggy scowl, cliffs on the edge of collapse. The atmosphere thickened under his rising temper. If there’d been a barometer near, it would have burst. Kedren Grunnbor kept his moods stoppered but when they blew, they blew.

‘Just let me off. I have to go there. It’s a short diversion for you. You can just leave me.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m not being ridiculous. This is a serious business.’

‘What is your business?’ said Drekki pleasantly.

The look he got back was anything but pleasant. ‘My business,’ said Kedren.

‘Hmm,’ said Drekki. He looked at the island. It was middling large by the standards of the Third Air, but otherwise unremarkable, just one of hundreds of thousands of chunks of land that made up the Adromite Skyshoals. An unruly forest thatched the top. Clouds streamed across the tree crowns, a sure promise of localised rains. A little vegetation tumbled off the drop; mostly the sides were raw, sharp-edged planes of granite seamed with glinting ores. Could it be that? Dispossessed duardin were hungry for metals mined from the ground, but this was Chamon, and where in the realm were there not minerals aplenty?

‘One way or another, I’m going over. I’m asking nicely.’ Kedren took in a resentful breath so expansive his flight suit squeaked. ‘Please,’ he added.

‘I’m sorry, what… Please?’ said Drekki. ‘Did you just say please?’

‘You heard, lad.’ Kedren muttered something too quick and quiet for the crew to catch. The most ancient of Kharadron beard lords spoke Khazalid as it had been spoken on the ground, but Drekki’s crew were young and full of fire. The language had evolved somewhat in the sky. A lot had changed since the Age of Myth.

Drekki sucked air again, making it whistle, then let it out all at once.

‘Master Zhurafon, if you please!’ He beckoned his aether-khemist to him, and walked a little way up the deck where they would not be overheard.

Magnetic boots clicked and released on the Aelsling’s plating. ‘Yes, Captain Flynt?’ Otherek Zhurafon said.

‘You and old Kedren are two nuts on one bolt thread, tight as rivets,’ said Drekki, low and conspiratorial.

‘He’s as much your friend, Drekki,’ said Otherek.

‘Aye, he’s a mentor to me, but he talks to you from the bottom of his ground-stamping heart. He respects you. You’ve got history, he’s contracted by you. So tell me, what’s he want with this pebble? Why’s he not want to say?’

Otherek Zhurafon turned to the island. A grumble reverberated in the breathing flutes of his mask, followed by a pronounced sniffing.

‘Can’t smell anything valuable. No aether-gold.’ He lifted up a gauge at his belt. Blue light flashed on a flat screen as he clicked it on. Numbers danced. ‘Chamonite, zero point zero three parts per million – Grungni’s Breath, less. No other traces. Nothing harvestable here.’ He clicked it off.

‘Something more mundane?’ asked Drekki. ‘Gems? Ivories? Useful alchemicals? Maybe a touch of treasure for us?’ His eyes glinted.

‘Couldn’t rightly say,’ said the khemist.

Drekki thought him somewhat reluctant, and pressed. ‘Then what can you rightly say, Otherek?’

‘Well, it could be… I thought it could be…’ He trailed off.

‘Speak your mind, master khemist.’

‘Home,’ said Otherek simply.

‘Is it?’ Drekki said. ‘Could it?’ He glanced at the runesmith, but his face remained as unchanging as a crag of sulky granite, secrets sealed in the grain. Drekki peered back at the island. Crow’s feet bunched round his eyes. They crinkled deeply when he smiled, though now he squinted in search of profit.

The island was turning slowly on its axis, bringing more interesting aspects to view. Drekki unsnapped his telescope from his harness, and pulled out the tube. Crystal lenses flashed. Swarms of smaller rocks leapt close, the bigger island blurry behind. Drekki twisted the focusing ring, and the little islands became dark smears; now it was the large fragment’s turn to loom. It turned as if on display, revealing by degree a gentler incline that the forest crawled cautiously down. It was even thicker, greener and wilder than that on top, but not so choking it could conceal the works of elder days. Statues poked out of dripping groves. Pale scar lines of stairs and paths threaded the trees.

‘It’s a Karak,’ Drekki said with a quiet awe.

‘It’s more than a Karak,’ said Zhurafon. ‘It’s one of the Karaks. One of the elder ones.’

They both looked at Kedren now. He’d sucked his lips into his beard, so sour his glower had become.

‘You’re right,’ said Drekki. He snapped his telescope shut. ‘That settles it. We’re all going.’

‘There was no need for you to come with me, no need at all!’ grumped Kedren Grunnbor, his complaints delivered to the rhythmic thwack! of his axe cutting a trail up the stair. ‘I should be doing this on my own. This is my business.’

‘You can’t be serious, oldbeard,’ said Drekki, huffing and cutting four steps behind. ‘Grungni knows what could be living in this place.’

‘I thought you didn’t hold worship,’ snarled Kedren, taking his irritation out on a thick branch.

‘I like to hedge my bets,’ called Drekki, with a forced wink. He feigned his carefree manner. The lands of the Third Air could be muggy, and they were all sweating into their boots so hard they squelched. His head throbbed with the heat. Biting insects dive-bombed the Kharadron’s faces the moment they lifted their visors. Only Gord was unbothered, but then the ogor was unbothered by most things. A riotous crashing came from above where he pressed ahead, bashing the trees down with his fists, making enough noise for an army. The duardin took a methodical approach, clearing the grand stair properly. The path they carved behind was so neat a mechanical flail could have done it.

‘The trouble with you Kharadron is that you have no sense of tradition,’ Kedren said. He stopped beneath the carved effigy of an ancestor with an expression so stern it could have been copied from the runesmith’s face. Drekki suppressed a smirk. They really did look alike. ‘I should be doing this on my own. This was my people’s Karak before Testudinos fell. My ancestors are here, not yours. Bugger off back to the ship, why don’t you!’

‘My ancestors could be here too,’ said Drekki. ‘This might be holy land to me.’ Trokwi pecked his helm in rebuke. The drillbill didn’t like Drekki’s manipulations.

Kedren mashed a huge biting fly against his bicep. Unlike the Kharadron, he’d removed his flight suit before landfall. He only wore the gear when he had to, and worked bare-armed and bare-faced when he could. Upon his back he carried a rucksack even more massive than the Kharadron’s aetherpacks. A hefty blunderbuss, stamped with runes, was strapped to one side. Neither garb, weapon nor burden seemed particularly wise choices.

‘That’s my bloody point,’ Kedren said, loud enough that the whole party could hear, probably the ogor too, right up the top. ‘If you lot had a sense of tradition, you’d know where your ancestors are buried.’ He turned back to the task of widening Gord’s trail.

Drekki shook his head. Another duardin might have felt grudge-made, but Drekki wasn’t that kind at all. The Kharadron of Barak-Mhornar paid lip service to the old ways, no more.

He shrugged at the landing party. They shrugged back. He’d taken six of the crew in the end. Kedren Grunnbor wouldn’t accept any more, and that was only after much argument. Otherek Zhurafon, Grunnbor, Gord, Drekki, and a couple of trusted arkanauts made the climb. It was arduous going. The island’s mass had settled off centre, so the stair road winding up to the gates was aslant. Doubtlessly the mountain had worn a mantle of snow when duardin dwelled there, when it had been an actual mountain, but now it floated in tropical climes, thick with forest but two steps from jungle. Gnarled roots followed masons’ lines, splitting stairs and snagging feet. The plants were pliable, hard to cut, as likely to bounce back and smack a duardin in the face as submit to the axe. When they deigned to fall, they oozed thick, milky sap that coated blades and made them dull.

There was money on this mountain, Drekki thought. Rubber commanded a good price on the Geldrungburz[2]. He made a mental note of its location.

Wealth was the last thing on Kedren’s mind. He remained sullen after that, thrashing away at the trees as if he bore a grudge against each and every one.

By the time they reached the main gate, Hysh had swung over and down under the plane of the realm to shine from below, sending their shadows scampering up the slope before them, lighting up nostrils and illuminating beards with sunset colours. It only got hotter. All but Zhurafon had discarded their helms, gauntlets and suit sleeves, leaving them to be collected on the way back, insects be damned.

Gord was waiting by the vine-fringed maingate. A contented smile was fixed on his face. He sat in a circle of crushed vegetation, some of it shredded by ogor teeth. Gord would never pass up new flavours. For the main course he’d followed habit and dined upon meat, an animal of some sort, now unrecognisable, the last bloody shreds clutched in one lumpen fist as if it might still get away.

‘Hot work,’ said Drekki, panting, beard damply flopping. It was windy up there, but it did little to lessen the heat. ‘All right for you though. Nice picnic?’ His joke lacked lightness. His grey eyes were flinty. It had not been a fun climb.

The ogor nodded. ‘Always good eating with you, Drekki.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, at least. No need to go out of your way to help.’

It was an even roll of the dice whether Gord got sarcasm or not. This time it came up negative. Gord stuffed the last of the beast into his mouth, hide, hoof and all. He crunched it with relish.

‘Thanks,’ he said, spraying unspeakable gobbets about. ‘I was hungry.’ It was a rare day Gord wasn’t hungry. He got up. ‘Done some scouting. Found the way in. This is it,’ he said, pointing at the entrance.

The great gates were gone, and the door gaped at them, all one hundred feet of it. Trees leaned out from the top, limbs ready to snag. Towers had slumped either side. Past them, bare rock and broken statues made an impressive wall. The wind curled back with some force where it hit the cliffs. Drekki had regretted his decision to moor the ship and climb about halfway up, hating the heat. Confronted with this deathtrap, he reassessed his choice again. Dropping from the ship on lines or by aether-globe into those cross-currents would have invited Nagash’s touch.

Sunbeams angled at the arched ceiling of the entrance, picking out mildewed carvings. Beyond, darkness. Steps went up to the brink, then headed right back down.

‘Very black down there. Can’t see far. Thought I’d wait,’ said Gord.

Otherek joined Drekki at the brink and sniffed. Khemist noses were good for more than gold.

‘This place isn’t safe. There’s something in there,’ he said. ‘Something nasty.’

‘Hmm,’ said Drekki. He turned around, looked down the crooked stair, over the forest. It was a fine view. The Adromite Skyshoals spread their spirals wide, populating the void with pocket lands and boulder kingdoms. Far, far below at the foot of the mountain, the Aelsling was tiny, a piece of swarf lodged in the boundless sky. Drekki’s endrinrigger was out, his one-duardin endrin rig flashing as he flitted around. Scraping the hull of air-barnacles, probably. Bokko never missed a chance to get in a little extra work. He was admirable like that.

The rest of the landing party was coming up: Kedren first, then Adrimm and Evrokk, Drekki’s crewduardin. The arkanauts slowed, anticipating a rest, but Kedren huffed on, straight at the gate.

‘There’s something unpleasant about, my old long-bearded friend. Perhaps we should turn back?’ said Drekki, who was now entirely equivocal about the adventure.

‘I heard,’ Kedren said, and passed straight within.

His footsteps echoed loudly a few dozen paces, then stopped. There was the sound of a pack hitting stone, and a rummaging accompanied by yet more complaining. A moment later, the cold, blue cone of a rune-lamp shone out. The footsteps recommenced. Kedren descended.

Monsters in the dark, but treasure too. Drekki weighed up his choices. Profit and loss. Profit and loss. Trokwi peeped uncertainly. His bill rotated once, twice.

‘How nasty, Otherek,’ Drekki asked, ‘on a scale of one to ten?’

‘I cannot enumerate, captain, but I’ll give it a name – troggoth,’ said Otherek. ‘What sort, I can’t tell. Not my field of expertise.’ He paused. ‘Kedren’s not stopping.’

‘He’s not, is he?’ said Drekki. He stroked his beard. ‘Ah well, in one, in all, that’s my way, and there’s no wealth at all in running away. Come on, lads, weapons out.’

Pistols and cutters rasped out of leather. Aether-generators whined. Shoulder-mounted lamps winked on.

‘Let’s hope it’s just the one,’ said Drekki. ‘Gord?’

The ogor nodded. He’d already strapped his dagger fist on and loosened his outsized pistol in its holster. Now he drew his hefty sword.

‘Me first. Always me first. Best eating to him in front, so says the gulping god.’

‘And right he is,’ said Drekki. ‘So in we go.’

Hot on the mountain, dank within. Duardin sweat chilled on duardin flesh. They did not shiver, but bore the change stolidly.

‘Stone above and stone below, like the forefathers demanded,’ said Otherek. ‘Comforting, in its way.’

‘Like it all you want,’ said Drekki. ‘I prefer the open sky.’

It was a half-lie. Kharadron were born in the clouds, but all of Grungni’s folk came of the mountains once, and a deep, ancestral calm descended on the crew. They walked the stairs sure-footedly, and quietly, boots slap-slapping with the faintest of treads. Only Gord’s steps crunched. He was a block in the dark, flashed up by lamps one moment, a creeping menhir the next, obvious either way. When they spoke, their voices echoed. The technological hum of active aether-generators buzzed off the carvings like the ghosts of mosquitoes. For all their connection with the places beneath the earth – and Drekki was right, his ancestors could have walked those very steps – they felt like intruders.

Kedren Grunnbor had no such feeling. He was two hundred feet ahead, moving surely, rune-lantern flashing from duardin faces carved from stone, their mouths open with timeless outrage. They had grumbled at the heights of Khazalid power, and grumbled still in the dark.

‘You can wait back upstairs, you know,’ the runesmith hollered. His voice boomed at them. Drekki winced. Every living thing in the mountain would have heard that. ‘I’ll be an hour at most, no more. You don’t need to come with me, Captain Flynt!’

‘Captain, is it? Flynt, is it?’ muttered Drekki. ‘He’s in a mood. He’s going to get himself killed.’

Otherek put a hand on his arm. ‘Maybe we should wait. Maybe he should do this himself. He’s proud. All the Dispossessed are. Perhaps he’ll be fine? He’s more used to tunnels than we.’

‘Yeah?’ said Drekki. His lamp beam flashed off-white in the gloom. Ribcages and skulls, the remains of exotic grots. ‘These fellows didn’t make themselves into bones all alone, did they? You said yourself it’s not safe, Otherek.’ He gave the khemist a grave look. The serried lenses on Otherek’s helm glowed back with aethermatical secrets. ‘What does your nose say?’

Otherek released the captain’s arm. ‘Nothing good, captain, nothing good.’

‘Ground thumper or not, he’s one of us, and I’ll not lose him, pride and honour can hie to realm’s edge.’

‘His pride. His honour,’ said Zhurafon.

‘My crew, my command,’ said Drekki. ‘We follow.’

Staircases broke off the main steps, leading to empty feasting halls, plundered treasuries, dry breweries. Kedren Grunnbor ignored them, going down and down, until the great stairs narrowed. They ceased their straightforward descent and turned back upon themselves again and again, cutting the stone like an angular drill.

The lower halls were shattered. Rubble spilled from blocked doors. Fissures cracked the walls. There were holes in the mountain. Passages that led to deeper strata had been interrupted by the fall of Great Testudinos, leaving them open to the sky. There were glimmers of light, and storms of rock-swallows that burst into the passage, then off in a chittering whirl out some gap or other. The wind got in, making music. The mountain’s was not a happy song, but mournful and low, ever-changing, always the same.

‘That hooting straightens my beard curls,’ said Adrimm. ‘Not natural.’

‘Quiet back there, arkanaut second class!’ said Flynt. His heart wasn’t in it, and he rarely pulled rank so obviously. Adrimm fell silent anyway.

A greyness filled the tunnel, displacing the dark. They turned yet another perfectly square corner. Bright light flooded over them. Drekki squinted and swore.

‘The bottom’s fallen out,’ he said.

‘No more down,’ said Gord philosophically. He stood upon the last crumbling step, completely unafraid. ‘Except all the down.’ He hawked up a huge gob of phlegm and spat. Legend said the sky in the shoals had no bottom. Gord’s spit would fall forever.

‘Grungni’s beard,’ said Drekki. ‘Where is Kedren?’

The runesmith had vanished. They looked about, shoulder lamps dancing. The main stair sprouted a dozen lesser passageways.

‘Anyone see which one he took?’ Drekki said.

‘That way!’ Otherek said. He jabbed a finger at a cracked door arch. A glint of rune-light betrayed their friend.

‘Trokwi, get after him,’ said Drekki. The drillbill rose with a clatter of metal wings and speared off. ‘The old fool’s trying to lose us!’

‘He’s going up. It’s steep,’ said Evrokk, when he reached the door. He cocked the hammer on his volley pistol.

‘More bloody climbing,’ Adrimm moaned.

‘Just get on, fast!’ said Drekki. They filed in.

‘The smell is worse up there,’ warned Otherek.

‘Marvellous,’ said Drekki. ‘Right into the jaws of danger.’

‘Only dangerous jaws round here are mine.’ Gord dragged his arm across his nose, then wiped that upon his greasy fleece jerkin. ‘Not had a good troggoth steak in a while,’ he said. He was so looking forward to it he didn’t complain about having to stoop to fit in the tunnel.

A roar boomed down the steps.

‘Faster!’ Drekki yelled.

Duardin feet pounded. A rancid wash of air rolled down the stairs. Another roar. A multilingual mix of profanities next, chased by the boom of a gun.

They burst into a large antechamber, surrounded by doors.

‘Looks like he’s found that troggoth,’ muttered Otherek at what they saw.

‘He only bloody has,’ said Drekki.

It was huge, and stinking, and rather upset. A dankhold troggoth, one of the larger kinds, exactly the kind you didn’t want taking up residence in your ancestral halls. They often did. There was a cavity in the floor that would fit it perfectly, like the stone had grown around it while it hibernated. A few tons of silver and you’d have a perfect relief of a sleeping troggoth, thought Drekki, not that anyone would want something that hideous. Now the creature was awake, looming over the beleaguered Kedren Grunnbor.

‘We need to be quick about this. Lads, bring it down!’ Drekki yelled.

He pulled his own pistol. Karon, he called it, after his mother. He squeezed the trigger and it spoke like she had, rapidly, and with violence, sending streams of solidifying aethershot at the troggoth’s back. His men followed suit. The chamber flashed with blue and gold, strobing off ancient tomb entrances.

The monster moaned. It was so big most of the bullets found their mark, peppering its hide and blasting off the forest of mushrooms that grew on its skin. When it turned, Drekki got a look at its full hideousness. The mushrooms grew only down the left side, which had been exposed to the air as it slept. It looked as if it had been half-shaved by a trickster god. The face on the left side was lopsided, crushed in, eye half shut and weeping. Snaggly tusks poked in every direction.

‘What are you waiting for, fire again!’ Drekki yelled.

The Kharadron shot. Muzzles blazed. The troggoth threw up gargantuan, poorly formed hands to protect its face. Gord roared in, sword descending. To a duardin, Gord was huge, but he came up only as far as the troggoth’s hip, like an unbearded babe bothering its mother.

The sword bit deep into the knee. The troggoth shrieked, and backhanded the ogor. A great knuckle stove in Gord’s bellyplate, lifted him high, and sent him crashing into a door lintel lined with duardin faces.

‘Kruntzi-brog!’ Drekki swore. ‘He got Gord.’ There wasn’t much more he could think of than a good old fashioned charge. ‘Concerted attack!’ he shouted. ‘Take it all at once. It’s our only chance!’

Drekki, Adrimm and Evrokk cried out ‘Kharadrar-Kharadror!’ and charged, cutters flashing. Heavy blades hacked mercilessly into the troggoth’s shins. It howled, and kicked, flipping Evrokk up and over. Gord groaned, held his head, slumped in the rubble of his landing. Adrimm chopped and chopped at a tree-trunk leg. Drekki fired point-blank into its belly.

Glowing mushroom caps exploded, showering fungal slimes. The wounds the aethershot made were grave, but only briefly visible. Already the troggoth’s healing powers were kicking into gear, closing bullet wounds, sealing sword cuts tight as secretive mouths.

A roar of a different kind. Kedren discharged his black-powder blunderbuss. The Kharadron mocked the oldbeard for his antique technology. Black powder was a joke to those armed with the latest aethermatics. At least, it seemed so, until Kedren got off a blast. Runic ammunition belched out in a cone, each carefully crafted pellet igniting with captured magic. It was a storm of fire the troggoth faced, and it screamed in terror.

Flaming runic shot stripped skin from its front, put out its eyes, smashed its tusks. It flailed arms long as mooring ropes. Pain and fear added to its already formidable strength. Kedren ducked a clenched fist. A tomb entrance exploded into shards, hundreds of hours of duardin-work transformed into gravel in an instant.

The rune fires guttered. The stink of burning troggoth and chargrilled mushroom made Drekki gag. He leapt over a swinging foot. The cutter wounds were closing. Fire slowed troggoth healing, but not enough. The fresh injuries were shivering all down its front, creeping shut. New eyes were budding in bloody sockets.

‘Drekki!’ Otherek shouted.

Drekki turned. The khemist had a bomb in one hand.

‘Great ideaaaaaaaa…’ he started. A troggoth paw swipe interrupted him. He was carried up, up, towards the healing face. Broken teeth gaped wide.

Drekki threw up his hands. This was not how he’d imagined his day progressing.

Trokwi dived, drillbill whirring, going for the troggoth’s new eyes. The troggoth moaned and swiped. The hand holding Drekki dropped away from its mouth.

‘Drekki!’ Otherek called again. ‘Take the grenade!’

Drekki twisted around; the khemist was below. Evrokk was having another go at the troggoth’s lower portions, this time severing toes. They crawled off like determined worms.

Drekki dropped his pistol. ‘Now!’ he shouted.

The khemist tossed up the bomb. Drekki’s heart hammered with fear he would miss. He did not. Cool metal slapped into his palm.

Roaring again, the troggoth hoisted Drekki back up, intent on making a meal of him.

Drekki grinned. ‘Chew on this, you funti-druk!’

He ripped out the pin from the bomb with his teeth and jammed it into the troggoth’s mouth. It swallowed, reflexively, troggoths being even less particular about what they eat than ogors are.

‘Get away from it!’ Otherek was shouting, running and waving the others back. Drekki already had a mind to, setting about the troggoth’s wrist with his axe. It cut partway through, and he pressed down, rocking the blade back and forth two-handed like he were sawing through particularly tough stonebread.

The beast roared. The hand dropped. Drekki landed, troggoth fingers still wrapped tight about him. Black blood spouted from the wrist stump. He tried to breathe, but couldn’t, winded.

The troggoth exploded. It started in the gut, which swelled with pretty fires before bursting and showering them all with viscera. If Drekki had been breathing at that point, he’d have sucked in a lungful. The head lifted off and banged off the ceiling, landing hard and heavy by Drekki’s side, tongue still moving. He let out a yelp at that. The arms fell down, slap, slap, the body bifurcated. It rocked back and forth on its legs. Drekki winced, expecting to be buried alive in troggoth offal, but the carcass collapsed the other way, falling back into its cavity in the floor, which it filled now far less neatly.

Drekki kicked his way free of still-twitching fingers. He wiped stinging blood from his eyes and flicked it from his hand. Behind him the shattered remains of the troggoth shuddered, one last attempt to live, but there was no regenerating from an aether-bomb blast. Potent stomach acids burned holes in the stone. In the corner, Evrokk gave out a most un-duardin like shriek as he struggled out of his melting flight suit.

‘What the funti-druk are you playing at?’ Drekki shouted at Kedren.

‘Playing? I’m not playing at anything, you disrespectful flying beardling! You could have just left me alone to do this.’ The runesmith tried to strike a pose of indignation, but slipped about in troggoth guts.

‘But do what? Why won’t you tell me? Have you come to gather up your heirlooms? Is that it?’

Drekki might as well have accused Grunnbor of outright tomb robbery, so explosive was his response.

‘Gather heirlooms? What do you think I am, that I’d come up here and steal from my own clan?’ Kedren’s beard quivered with rage.

‘But these are tombs.’ He assessed the damage. ‘Were tombs.’

‘Yes, tombs, that’s right. Well done,’ said Kedren in such a withering tone Drekki took a step back and everyone else looked away. ‘I’m here to honour my ancestors, you undawi, cloud-hopping ne’er-do-well! My great-grandfather is here. His great-grandfather is here. All my people, back to the beginning of the realms, are entombed in this place. I’ve come back to lay his hammer to rest!’

‘To rest?’

‘Yes, to rest! A mark of respect, not that you would know anything about that!’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Grunnbor’s beard quivered. He didn’t need to say why.

‘Oh, right,’ said Drekki. ‘Because you thought I’d rob your ancestors? Really?’

‘What, Drekki Flynt, notorious privateer, registered company slogan “profit first”? Forgive me if the thought did cross my bloody mind that yes, you’d absolutely strip these tombs bare for a few tuns of Aqua Ghyranis!’

Kedren Grunnbor had gone too far. He knew it. He stopped. A shocked silence fell. Foetid gases puffed from the dead troggoth.

‘Do you trust me so little?’ said Drekki. He actually felt quite hurt.

Grunnbor dragged his hand down his face, pulling his beard out of alignment. When he spoke again, it was quietly. He kept his eyes averted.

‘Can you blame me? This is too important to trust to anyone. I didn’t even tell Otherek.’

‘He didn’t,’ the khemist offered. His words fell into a deep silence.

‘You don’t understand,’ Kedren said eventually. ‘None of you Kharadron do. You’ve changed too much, moved on too far. Everything you value is new. Profit trumps all. It’s not like that for us. For us it’s about the old. Especially now, when Sigmar’s cities rise yet the old Karaks lie empty.’

‘The Kharadron of Barak-Thryng are the same,’ piped up Adrimm.

‘They are not the same, Adrimm Andrimmsson!’ Grunnbor snapped. ‘None of you are the same.’

‘You don’t understand, Kedren. I–’

‘Oh just let me do this in peace!’

‘No, let me finish. I do understand,’ Drekki said calmly. He came forward and grasped the older duardin’s shoulders in his hands. ‘Your people lost everything. My father and brother are gone too. I feel a little of what you feel. We do care. It’s you that doesn’t understand. You can’t see why we’re here.’ He held up a hand and swept it around the small group. ‘Me, Adrimm, Otherek, Evrokk – we’ve come for you, not for profit.’ He gave his best, most sincere smile, which, on balance, didn’t look all that sincere. ‘You’re one of us.’

They looked around the circle of faces. The duardin nodded solemnly.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Evrokk said.

‘Part of the crew,’ Adrimm added.

‘You see?’

Kedren’s lips went thin. His moustache jutted. He nodded tightly. The two duardin, Dispossessed and Kharadron, embraced stiffly, slapping each other on the back.

‘All right, all right,’ said Kedren. ‘I’m sorry. I let my emotions get ahead of me. This is really important.’

‘I understand. But you need to know that we came to support you.’

‘Er, I came to eat,’ said Gord.

‘Shut up, Gord,’ said Drekki.

They watched at a respectful distance as Kedren Grunnbor paid his respects. The ritual was brief, quiet. The runesmith took out a cloth-wrapped bundle from his pack. Kneeling on one knee before the tomb, he held it up, presenting it to the ancestor-effigy guarding his great-grandfather’s resting place. He remained in that uncomfortable position for quite some time, grunting and grumbling in the ground pounders’ dialect.

‘It’s kind of beautiful, don’t you think, Otherek?’ said Drekki. ‘Different to the prayers of the sky-pyres. Less terse. More moving. I suppose,’ he added, ‘the first refugees didn’t have time for all this, and too many dead to bury.’

‘Aye, maybe so,’ said Otherek.

‘Maybe the old ways are the best.’

The khemist gave him a sidelong look. ‘Holes in the ground and axes?’

‘Maybe not,’ Drekki conceded.

They listened a few moments more to Kedren’s lament.

‘Did you mean all that stuff that you said to Kedren?’ asked Otherek.

‘Absolutely,’ said Drekki.

Trokwi chirruped, shook his mechanical head, and covered his beak with his wing, a sure sign he detected a lie. Drekki frowned at him. ‘Hush now.’

Otherek Zhurafon felt the same way. ‘So you weren’t intent on plundering this place?’ he said with studied innocence. ‘I mean, these tombs are rammed full of treasure.’

‘Well… I did think they’re not using any of this stuff any more, so…’ He grinned suddenly, a flash in the dark. ‘Nah. I’m joking. Of course not.’

‘Then,’ said Zhurafon quietly, ‘can I ask what that is in your pouch there? And in that other pouch, and indeed, in all of your pockets?’

Drekki sighed; there was no cheating the keen eye of an aether-khemist. ‘All right. Just a little something. Nothing emotionally important, shall we say. Portable but valuable. I mean, what can I do? Every duardin in the ports has two masters, Otherek – his clan, and the Code.’

‘Artycle two, Prosperity one, point twelve?’ suggested Otherek.

Drekki nodded. ‘That’s the one. “For every venture, a profit,”’ he quoted. ‘You can look after your friends, but you can’t cheat the Code, Otherek. You can’t cheat the Code.’

Notes

1. One aerial raadfathom is the distance a hypothetically average sky-ship powered by the long-obsolete Mark I Grindisson aether-endrin would traverse horizontally in a single second. The measurement is old, from the dawn of the sky-ports, and calculated according to Nav-Master Groffin Terrenk’s aethermatical mode.

2. The Kharadron commodities and stock market.

About the Author

Guy Haley is the author of the Siege of Terra novel The Lost and the Damned, as well as the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, and the Primarchs novels Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Corax: Lord of Shadows and Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia. He has also written many Warhammer 40,000 novels, including the first book in the Dawn of Fire series, Avenging Son, as well as Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Darkness in the Blood and Astorath: Angel of Mercy. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

An extract from Ghoulslayer.

Gotrek was snoring, attacking the night with brutal barks. Even asleep he was savage, hammering Maleneth’s skull with every snort. The sound rattled through the Slayer’s chest and shook the chain linking his ear to his nose. The brazier in his rune-axe was still smouldering, but the light had faded from his filthy muscles. He shifted, as though about to speak, let out a ripe belch and then lay still again. He had drunk for hours, downing ale like water, before finally collapsing next to an outhouse, surrounded by the corpses of brigands who had had the ill-conceived idea of trying to rob him. There was no dawn in this particular corner of Shyish, but even the endless gloom could not hide the rune buried in Gotrek’s chest. A great slab of burnished power. The tie that bound her to him. The face of a god, glaring from his ribs, demanding that she hold her nerve.

She stepped gracefully through the dead, as though gliding through a ballroom, scattering flies and gore, a dagger held lightly in each hand. The Stormcast Eternal had gone, scouring Klemp for news of his own kind, and she was alone with the Slayer.

The heart-shaped silver amulet at her throat flickered, revealing the vial of blood at its core. Now. This is your chance.

Maleneth ignored the voice, creeping closer to the Slayer, wincing at his stench. He was grotesque. A graceless lump of scarred muscle, bristling with porcine hair and covered in knotted tattoos. Even by the low standards of the duardin race he was primitive – like a hog that had learned to stand and carry an axe. He was shorter than the brigands he had carved his bed from, but twice their width and built like a barn. The stale, sweet smell of beer shrouded the bodies, mixing with Gotrek’s belches and stinging Maleneth’s eyes. She could see the dregs glistening in his matted beard as she leant closer, keeping her eyes fixed on the rune. The rune stared back.

Despite her loathing she hesitated, knives trembling, inches from his body.

The amulet around her neck flickered again. Coward.

That was enough to spur her on. Her dead mistress was right. Klemp would soon be rubble, just like all the other towns they had passed through. The whole region was in uproar. And when the fighting started, who knew where the Slayer would end up? Once he was in one of his rages there was no way of predicting what he would do next. It was a miracle she had stayed with him this far. This might be her last chance. The Slayer’s skin was like iron, though. She would need to punch the blade home with all her strength to get the poison into his bloodstream. She tightened her grip and leant back to strike.

‘Maleneth.’ The voice echoed down the alley, heavy with warning.

She whirled around, blades lowered.

Trachos’ armour glimmered as he limped through the darkness, sparks flickering from his ruined leg plate. He was wearing his expressionless helmet, but she could tell by the way he moved, careful and slow, that he understood what she was planning. His head kicked to one side and light crackled from his mouth grille. He gripped the metal, holding it still, but the damage went deeper than the mask. All that god-wrought armour had done nothing to protect his mind.

He stopped near the corpses, staring at her, lights flickering behind his faceplate.

He remained silent, but the way he raised his warhammers spoke clearly enough. That rune is mine.

They stood like that for a long moment, glaring at each other across Gotrek’s snorting bulk.

Trachos came closer, his metal boots crunching through broken weapons and shattered armour. The sky had grown paler, outlining him, and she saw how confidently he gripped the warhammers. Damaged or not, he was still a Stormcast Eternal. A scion of the thunder god. He was several feet taller than a normal man and, even broken, his plate armour made a fearsome sight.

Maleneth stepped through the pile of bodies, readying herself. She had always known this moment would come. They could not both claim the rune. There was a rent in Trachos’ leg armour from his left knee to his left boot. It had been there when he first approached Maleneth months ago, wandering out of the hills like a deranged prophet. He was in desperate need of medicine, or repairs, or whatever help Stormcast Eternals received when they returned to the Celestial Realm. Every step he took was difficult, and his Azyrite armour sparked whenever he moved. She smiled. Usually, such a warrior would be a test for even her skills, but in this state he should be easy prey. There would be blood for Khaine this night.

Maleneth dragged one of her blades across a vial at her belt. The crystal broke in silence, but she could smell the venom as it spilled across the metal.

Trachos dropped into a crouch, hammers raised.

The two warriors tensed, preparing to strike.

‘Grungni’s arse beard!’ cried Gotrek, lurching to his feet and grabbing his rune-axe. ‘Don’t you people know when you’re beaten?’

He swayed, obviously confused, still drunk, piercing the night with his one, scowling eye, trying to focus, trying to spot an opponent. Seeing none, he turned to Maleneth.

‘Aelf! Point me to the simpletons.’

Maleneth lowered her weapons and Trachos did the same. The chance was gone. She shook her head. ‘All dead.’ She backed away from Trachos with a warning glare.

Gotrek’s face was locked in a thunderous scowl and his skin was as grey as the corpses. He kicked one of them. ‘Lightweights. They could barely swing a sword. Even splitting skulls is no fun in your stinking realm.’

Trachos’ hands trembled as he slid his hammers back into his belt. ‘This is no realm of mine.’

‘Nor mine,’ said Maleneth, looking around at the peculiar hell Gotrek had led them to. The sky was the colour of old pewter, dull, bleak and riveted with stars. The stars did not shine but radiated a pitiless black. Points of absolute darkness surrounded by purple coronas, wounds in the sky, dripping fingers of pitch. And the town was equally grim. Crooked, ramshackle huts made of warped, colourless driftwood. There were panicked shouts in the distance and the sound of vehicles being hastily loaded. Columns of smoke stretched across the sky, signalling the approach of another army. They looked like claw marks on dead skin.

Gotrek muttered a duardin curse and picked his way through the corpses. ‘Where’s the ale?’

‘You drank it,’ replied Trachos.

The Slayer frowned and scratched his shaven head, causing his enormous, grease-slicked mohawk to tremble. Then he glared at the ground, his massive shoulders drooping and the haft of his greataxe hanging loosely in his grip. He whispered to himself, shaking his head, and Maleneth wondered what he was thinking. Was he remembering his home? The world he claimed was so superior to the Mortal Realms? She suspected most of his thoughts concerned his past. What else did he have? There was something tragic about him, she decided. He was like a fossil, revived by cruel necromancy and abandoned in a world where no one knew his face.

‘You’re right,’ said Gotrek, looking up with a sudden smile. ‘We need more ale.’

Maleneth shook her head in disbelief. She and Trachos were glaring at him. Anyone else would feel their hatred like a physical blow, but the Slayer was oblivious. He waved them back down the alley, away from the outbuilding, humming cheerfully to himself as he headed out onto the main street.

They stumbled into a chaotic scene. There were wicker cages rattling against every lintel and doorframe – hundreds of them, the size of a human head and crammed with teeth, skin and bones. Alongside the offerings to Nagash there were wooden eight-pointed stars, hastily hammered together and painted in gaudy colours. Braziers spewed clouds of blue embers across wooden icons that had been painted with the faces of daemons and saints. And all of this jostled happily against yellow hammer-shaped idols that had been scored with an approximation of Azyrite runes. Every corner revealed some desperate attempt to appease a god. And through this carnival of colours and shapes, people were rushing in every direction, hurling belongings from windows and clambering into carts. There was a cold wind whipping through the streets that seemed heavy with portent. Men and women howled at each other, arguing while their children fought in the dust, like a premonition of the violence about to be visited on the town. For weeks, seers across the region had been wracked by agonising prophecies. Some sprouted mouths in their armpits and spewed torrents of bile, others were visited by horrific, sanity-flaying visions, and some had found their voices replaced by a bestial, guttural language they could no more understand than silence. Whatever the nature of their visitation, all of them agreed on one thing – death was coming to the region. Most people had taken that as a cue to flee, but Gotrek, still furious at not finding Nagash, had decided to stay, relishing the coming fight as a distraction if nothing else.

As Gotrek swaggered onto the wind-lashed street, he almost collided with an enormous beast that was being led through the crowds – an armour-clad mammoth, draped in furs and sacks and scraping tracks through the dirt with its tusks. Dozens of fur-clad nomads were crowded into its howdah, and more were swarming round it, driving it on with sticks and insults, trying to goad more speed out of the plodding creature.

Gotrek halted, glaring at the nomads, and Maleneth guessed immediately what had annoyed him. She hated to admit it, but she was starting to understand him. He was brutal and heartless in many respects, but there were a few things that seemed to offend his primitive sensibilities. The sight of a wild creature bound into servitude was one of them. For a moment, she thought he might accost the nomads, but then he shook his head and marched on, barging through the traders and making for the largest building on the street, muttering into his beard.

Maleneth struggled to keep up as the Slayer booted the door open and plunged into the gloomy interior of the Muffled Drum. Despite the scenes of panic outside, Klemp’s only inn was crowded with languorous, dazed patrons – people so far gone they lacked the sense to try to save their own skin, calling the prophecies scaremongering nonsense. There were more nomads, wearing the same filthy furs as the travellers outside, but there was also a bewildering array of other creeds and races – humans from every corner of the Amethyst Princedoms and beyond. Maleneth saw hulking savages from the east, as heavily tattooed as Gotrek and looking just as uncouth. There were waif-like pilgrims, dressed in sackcloth and wearing charcoal eye makeup that had been smeared by the beer they were lying in. In one corner there was a party of duardin, dispossessed travellers, hunched over their drinks and eyeing Gotrek from under battered crested helmets.

Gotrek made a point of ignoring the duardin and stormed straight across the room to the bar, where a tall, fierce-looking woman was looming over one of her customers, shaking him back and forth until coins fell from his grip and rattled across the bar.

‘Next time,’ she snarled, ‘it’s your guts I’ll spill.’

The man fell away from her, collapsing in a shocked heap on the floor before scrabbling away on all fours as Gotrek strode past him and approached the woman.

‘Still no good,’ said the Slayer, looking up at her.

She shook her head in disbelief, then leant across the bar and stared down at him, peering at his impressive gut. ‘You drank all of it?’

Gotrek pounded a fist against his stomach and belched. ‘For all the good it did me.’

The woman looked at Maleneth as she reached the bar. ‘He drank it all?’

Maleneth nodded, grudgingly, annoyed to notice that the landlady looked impressed.

Gotrek studied the bottles behind the woman. ‘Got anything stronger?’

She stared at him. ‘Are you with them?’ she asked, nodding at the party of duardin.

Gotrek kept studying the drinks, ignoring the question. The only sign of a response was a slight tightening of his jaw.

She shrugged, taking a bottle from the shelf and placing it before him. It was the shape of an elongated teardrop and it was clearly ancient – a plump dollop of green, murky glass covered in dust and ash. There were fragments of something suspended in the liquid.

Gotrek grabbed the bottle and held it towards a fire that was crackling by the bar, squinting at the whirling sediment.

The woman grabbed one of his tree-trunk biceps. ‘It’s not cheap.’

Gotrek threw some coins at her, then continued eyeing the drink.

He jammed the cork into the bottle with his fat, dirty thumb, and a heady stink filled the room.

Maleneth coughed and put a hand to her face.

Gotrek sniffed the bottle and grimaced. ‘It’s not Bugman’s.’

‘Don’t drink it then,’ said Maleneth, remembering what had happened the last time the Slayer got drunk. There was no way they would leave Klemp intact if Gotrek picked a fight just as an army came over the horizon.

He gave her a warning glare.

‘What about Nagash?’ she said, the first thing that came to mind.

His scowl grew even more fierce, but he did not put the bottle to his lips.

‘You dragged us all this way to find him.’ Maleneth looked over at Trachos. He was standing a few feet away, watching the exchange, but as usual he seemed oblivious, locked in his own personal hell. Realising the Stormcast would be no help, she turned back to Gotrek. ‘And now, just as his armies are about to reach us, you’re going to drink yourself into a stupor. You could miss the very chance you’ve been looking for. The chance to face him. Or whatever it is you were hoping to achieve.’

Gotrek glowered. ‘He’s not here. Gods don’t have the balls to lead from the front. Nagash will be hiding somewhere, like the rest of them.’ He drank deeply from the bottle, holding Maleneth’s gaze.

Click here to buy Ghoulslayer.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1,D01 K199, Ireland.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-719-0

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