This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury, it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

THE SEA-CURSE

The Dreadfleet, the fishwives called it. Scourge of the high seas and harbinger of the Curse. Its impossible warships were fireside scare-stories brought to life, legends that had breached the veil between this world and the next. The undead fleet’s approach was as stealthy as a shark, they said, its victories as inevitable as the tide.

For countless years the Dreadfleet lurked in the memories of the old and the infirm, shrouded in hearsay. But last Geheim-nisnacht, that most unhallowed of eves, its mythical warships had returned to wreak havoc upon the lands of man.

Even the most battle-scarred pirate lord secretly feared the Dreadfleet’s vampiric commander, Count Noctilus. Rumour had it that he and his unliving captains had armies of drowned sailors and ghosts at their command, and that the count’s flagship – the Bloody Reaver – was unsinkable. Over the last six months, the doomsayers and gutter-prophets had been proven correct time and time again. The Reaver and its thrall warships had systematically demolished the city-ports of neighbouring Tilea before melting back into the darkness.

None dared meet the Dreadfleet in open battle, for the legends told that to die at sea was to fall under Noctilus’s power forever. Since the Sea-Curse began, sunken ships had a mysterious habit of disappearing completely overnight. The pirates of Sartosa believed it was the fabled realm known as the Galleon’s Graveyard that stole away the drowned vessels and the corpses of their crewmen. None truly understood it, though all agreed that it was the work of the vampire, Count Noctilus, and his black-hearted captains.

The Sea-Curse had lingered over the oceans of the world for decades. Burial at sea was strictly forbidden. None would venture into the waves for fear of being claimed, and many a king’s ransom was left for the fish.

As the shipping lanes of the world were slowly abandoned and sea trade dwindled away, the pirate isle of Sartosa sank into rum-sodden decline and the war-galleons of that lawless realm remained in their docks. The grandiose and wealthy port-cities of the Empire were taking the brunt of Noctilus’s deadly attentions, after all, and Sartosa owed them nothing. The pirate lords of that hidden isle were all but convinced that the Dreadfleet would not come to them.

And yet, one dark and humid midnight, come to them it did.

CHAPTER ONE

Sartosa

13th Day of Nachhexen, 2522

The night of Jaego Roth’s return to Sartosa was lit as bright as day.

That infamous nest of rogues was slowly being consumed by a raging inferno, and the clamour of battle ebbed and flowed through the orange-tinged mist. Sartosa’s ramshackle harbours burned so fiercely that the sea glowed red and gold around the bilges of Captain Roth’s warship, the Nightwatch, as it wallowed at anchor by the docks.

Captain Roth wiped soot-blackened seawater from his good eye and caught his breath for a moment in the shadow of a tumbledown galleon. Less than ten minutes ago, he had been at the helm of his ship, aghast at his crew’s reluctance to fight for the city-port most of them called home. His decision to dive into the cold waters, swim to Skeeter’s Jetty and clamber shivering into the mists had been madness, no doubt about it. He was freezing cold and his old bones ached even more than usual. But his family home was less than a mile from the burning docks.

The weatherbeaten captain shook his head like a wet dog, droplets flying from his mass of braided white hair, and grimaced. He hadn’t seen his family for decades and they probably hated him because of it. Still, he couldn’t just let them burn.

Taking a deep breath, the captain plunged onwards through the dense warren of alleyways that led from the Shanties toward Rusting Harbour. Rigging clinked against the broken masts and fishervanes of the ship-houses above, and the familiar stink of rotting fish hung in the air, a note of decay under the acrid tang of smoke.

Close by, a thick, gurgling scream echoed through the streets. As Roth rushed out to cross a badly cobbled road, he saw a flash of movement amongst the clustered architecture. The captain readied his sabre, suddenly wary.

A pair of skeletal figures stalked out from a burning townhouse fashioned from an upturned brigantine, dragging the corpse of an old man behind them. The stooped and unnatural things were armed with rusted cutlasses and had glimmering emeralds hammered into their eye sockets. Pinpoints of green light flared as they stared straight at Roth, their bony feet clicking and scraping on the cobbles. Seaweed dangled from their mouldering limbs. One wore its lower jaw around its neck on a leather string, and the other had kelp draped across its bald scalp like an off-kilter wig. Men o’ bones, the seafolk called them, undead servants raised from their watery graves by forbidden rituals.

Roth roared in anger and charged straight at the skeletal swordsmen, parrying the first creature’s clumsy thrust and ducking underneath the wild swing of the second before slamming the top of his head into its skull. He brought his sabre up hilt-first into the jawless face of the man o’ bones, taking its skull clean from its neck. Headless, the flailing creature continued to slash wildly for a second before collapsing to its knees.

The captain flung himself backwards, colliding hard with the man o’ bones coming up behind him and crushing its ribcage against the stout timbers of the town house. Ducking fast, Roth spun about, the steam-powered sickle that served as his right hand swinging up to embed itself in the creature’s kelp-encrusted forehead. The captain jerked his wrist and the sickle’s mechanism clicked round in a quick half-circle, snapping his foe’s neck in two at the nape and leaving its skull stuck fast to the point of his blade.

Roth spat on the skeletal warrior’s decapitated remains and ran onward into the burning city, using the least rotten of his teeth to pry the emeralds free from his trophy as he went. ‘Coin be damned,’ muttered Roth, spitting out fragments of bone, but he pocketed the gems anyway.

There came a distant crash from behind him and Roth cast a black look over his shoulder as he crossed the oil-slicked broadwalk of Lantern Street.

Jutting above the floating city of captured galleons that formed Sartosa’s outer fortifications was a sight to make a daemon weep.

Noctilus’s warship was an iceberg-sized wedge of stained rock clad in the shattered hulls of its conquests. Silhouetted against the moon was a bladed Sylvanian keep that crested the warship’s craggy central mass like a tyrant’s crown. At the Reaver’s prow, a great scalloped wedge of age-dulled metal swept outwards, forming a battering ram so large it rose above the ramshackle taverns of the southern Shanties. The warship was a monstrous giant in comparison to the captured galleons that formed Sartosa’s outer walls. It was slowly grinding its way through the city’s tightly-packed defences like an axe forced through a stack of kindling.

Roth cursed in disbelief as he pushed on towards his home territory of Rusting Harbour. Above him, malnourished thieves and guttersnipes climbed along ropes made of everything from plaited seaweed to the sinew of sea-beasts, emboldened to new levels of larceny by the distraction. The night air stank of salt, urine and burning wood.

Vaulting onto an empty sea-chest and climbing the stacked barrels behind it, Roth hoisted himself up onto the gabled roof of Maud Sully’s whorehouse in order to get a better view of the incredible warship. At the harbourside below, dozens of pirate revellers had spilled out of the taverns, drawing their blades and priming flintlocks. Some shouted obscene oaths, some laughed with drunken disbelief. Others just stood agog, eyes wide as they watched the stony behemoth carve its way through their defences.

‘Don’t just stand there gawping,’ hollered Roth as he crested the brothel’s roof and slid awkwardly down the other side. ‘Get to the jetty and stand ready to repel!’

Some of the figures on the dock below recognised him and started to move towards the water just as a series of broadsides roared out from the chained galleons that formed Sartosa’s outer defences. Cannonball after cannonball smashed great chunks of rock and rotten timber from the Bloody Reaver’s hull. The Bretonnian gallows-ship Stilletante levelled a point-blank blast, tearing down one of the Reaver’s tilted masts and ripping loose a skull-emblazoned sail the size of a castle courtyard.

A great wail rose from the pitted walls of the Reaver as if the warship itself was in pain. A creaking chorus of rusted metal filled the air as cannons protruded from archways and gun ports all along the Reaver’s stony length.

With an ear-splitting boom, over a hundred ancient guns fired into the densely-packed Sartosan galleons. The Stilletante was blasted apart, jagged spars of splintered wood pinwheeling in all directions and impaling dozens of incredulous bystanders down by the dock.

The Reaver’s lumpen aftquarters slewed around, the invading warship crushing the Beast o’ Blades with its vast bulk as it shouldered its way flush with the harbourside bedrock. The juggernaut ground to a halt, a path of devastation leading out to sea in its wake. Roth spat an oath as dozens of boarding planks and ropes were hurled onto the jetties from the castle-ship’s sloping decks.

At some unseen signal, a clattering tide of men o’ bones spilled out from between the great spiked ribs that framed the Reaver’s foresection. Hundreds of the undead warriors clambered from cave and crypt, leaping down onto what remained of the docks. They were clad in little more than dangling scraps of dried seaweed and mouldering leather belts, and in their teeth were rusted blades and marlinspikes. Each man o’ bones had glowing gems hammered into its eye sockets, points of glimmering light that left traces in the mist as they scuttled towards the vagabond militia awaiting them.

As the skeletal invaders scuttled towards the taverns of South Dock, marksmen shattered fleshless skulls from the portholes of the Crooked Billet and prizefighters punched calloused fists through the spines of those that got too close. Bawdy Gus, the famously obese landlord of the Roaring Wyrm, laid about himself with a cart axle that smashed bone to powder wherever it fell. The skeletal warriors fought back against the mariners with jittery speed, their daggers and cutlasses stabbing at exposed backs and stomachs. Bawdy Gus took a blade through the back of the neck, its point bursting out of his mouth in a spray of blood.

Roth rushed onwards, passing beneath the glowing bowls of seawater that lined the street outside the Alchemist’s Fug. Each bowl held a fat electric eel goaded into a crackling frenzy by the sounds of battle. The sharp flickering light from the water-globes and the fires that danced across the Fug’s rotten rooftop made the escalating conflict resemble a scene from the End Times.

Down in the harbour, the Bloody Reaver’s cannons roared again. Streaks of fire glowed in the mists overhead as a fusillade of incendiary shot smashed into the dockside ship-buildings, bringing aged timbers crashing down in choking clouds of debris. Raging flames spread from tavern to tavern.

On the hilltops to the north, the cannon batteries ranged along the battlements of Castilla Diablos returned fire. The gunners of Sartosa’s hillside fortress were the best on the island, and they hammered volley after volley of shot into the Bloody Reaver. Wherever the cannonades struck home, cascades of rubble and rotting timber slid into the seas.

Turning a corner near the docks, Roth glimpsed the rear of the castle-ship looming above a scrapyard pile of captured figureheads. His eyes widened in shock. Rising from the waters around the Reaver were the splintered remains of those galleons the castle-ship had smashed to pieces. Under the control of some strange force, they were shoring up the wounds inflicted by the Castilla’s cannons, joining with the castle-ship’s flanks as if held there by invisible hands. Already the hulls and gun-decks of the Velvet Coffyn and the Beast o’ Blades had stuck fast to the war-hulk. Thick beams of wood flew from the water to scaffold the incongruous armour in place. It looked to Roth like a cascade of debris in reverse.

The captain ducked back into Piper’s Alley as yet more men o’ bones spilled from the depths of the Bloody Reaver. A rag-tag army of smugglers and buccaneers charged past the mouth of the alleyway to intercept the undead warriors. Some discharged pistols and blunderbusses at close range, others hacked at skeletal necks with heavy swords or bodily charged the invaders back into the sea. On the opposite jetty, the notorious stevedore Blacklegges the giant, roused from his rum-sodden slumbers by the resounding crack of cannon fire, used the remains of a loading crane to sweep men o’ bones and pirates alike into the frothing waters. The great oaf laughed madly at the carnage he was causing until a well-aimed shot from the Reaver’s chasing cannons took his head clean off with a dull crack. The body of the decapitated giant swayed uncertainly for a second before keeling backwards into the sea.

Under the sounds of battle, a dolorous chanting wound through the mists. From every jetty and pier, hundreds of bloated corpses hauled themselves out of the harbourside waters and flopped onto the boardwalks like beached fish. Before long, the southern jetties were thronged with swollen, white-bellied sailors that writhed and crawled over each other like grubs in a fisherman’s pot. One by one, they stood and staggered forwards, pallid skin stretched and gaping with decomposition. Black liquid streamed from their mouths and eye sockets as the drowned horde limped and stumbled into the streets.

Pistoliers and sharpshooters bullseyed the lumpen forms of the invaders, bursting heads and torsos apart, but still more of the foul things were hauling themselves from the churning black waters that surrounded the Reaver. Within minutes, those Sartosans who had brought the fight to the enemy were brought down screaming by sheer weight of numbers, their bodies wrenched apart by yellowed teeth and blackened fingernails.

The gunners and pistoliers at the rear of the pirate line clambered into the safety of the rigging above them before opening fire upon the mass of drowned sailors below. Hanging upside down by their knees or balancing on parallel ropes, they discharged shot after shot into the horrors battering their way inside the converted dwelling-ships, but when more of the drowned hauled themselves out of the water and began to shuffle towards the defenders, the marksmen made themselves scarce.

From his hidden vantage point in the alleyway, Roth watched the drowned mariners stagger in and out of the galleon-houses before dispersing in small groups. This was no haphazard invasion.

The dead were searching for something.

CHAPTER TWO

Captain Roth ran onwards through the tangled streets of the plunder quarter, panting heavily. Up ahead, in Gallows Square, a skirmish was breaking out between a scattered crew of mariners and a dripping horde of the drowned. Roth cursed in irritation. Short of climbing over the rooftops, he could see no way around it. Even then, most of the roofs hereabouts were on fire. Images of his wife and son flitted through his mind. The captain gritted his teeth and headed for the square.

Padding down the street, Roth hacked down one of the drowned men from behind as it lumbered towards the commotion. The fishy stink of its open wounds was nauseating enough to turn even Roth’s hardened stomach. Its clammy fingers clutched feebly at his boot as he strode past.

The square stretched out and down, every overhang decorated with gargoyles that had nooses tied around their necks, some of which were occupied by hanged traitors. As the captain emerged into the open, he saw a band of mariners atop the central gallows platform. They were fighting furiously against a small army of the drowned, their blades hacking hands and fingers from the bloated creatures clutching at their legs.

At the forefront of the cutthroat gang was a ten-foot lump of muscle and scar tissue, his features as blunt as the sledging mallet he was using to crush the undead attackers. The captain immediately recognised him as Ogg Halfheart, the ogre first mate of the Swordfysh. Roth’s heart thumped in his chest as he cast about for the pirate galleon’s commander, the Queen of Tides herself.

He saw her on the far end of the platform. Aranessa Saltspite, moving like a dancer upon the giant sawfish blades that served for her lower legs. Her dexterity was entrancing, even after all these years. She was singing a lewd shanty at the top of her voice as she cut down one assailant after another, pushing her own men out of the way in order to stab at the faces and necks of the drowned mariners with her triple-pronged spear.

Roth sprinted around the raised decks that lined the back of the square. Grabbing hold of a noose that dangled from a squid-headed gargoyle, he pushed outwards from a balcony, swinging out and over the throng of the drowned. The rope twisted him round in mid-air as he sailed over the heads of the undead creatures and he came down hard onto the hangman’s platform, colliding with one of Aranessa’s crew and knocking him into the crowd below.

‘Oops,’ grimaced Roth as the screaming crewman was pulled apart by grasping, clammy hands.

He heard a feminine laugh from behind him, a musical sound that jarred with the unfortunate crewman’s shrieks of pain. Aranessa had fought her way to his side. She was so close that he could smell her scent.

‘Jaego! Long time. Nice entrance, by the way.’ She plucked a dagger from the scabbard of a fallen mariner and flung it point-first into the eye socket of one of the drowned that was climbing on to the platform. ‘This ain’t quite how we left it between us, eh?’

Memories of supple female flesh sailed across the stormy waters of Roth’s mind.

‘Er… no,’ said Roth, drawing his sabre and kicking hard at the bloated face of one of the undead clutching at his boot. ‘Look, I’d love to stop and chat, but I need to get to Rusting Harbour before it’s burnt to the ground.’

‘Hold still,’ said Aranessa, grabbing Roth’s arm and leaning out to kick at the nearest foe with her saw-bladed leg. It fell back into the crowd, its head all but torn from its shoulders. ‘Ha! You’re still drunk then, I take it,’ she said, thrusting her spear into the chest of one of the drowned that had gained the platform, hurling it back into the square below. ‘You’ll be hard pressed to get out of this little mess without a crew, let alone get across the city and back. And you’re not having mine, before you ask.’

A strangled moan came from a hundred throats at once. Around the square, the hanged men that dangled from the gargoyle-nooses began to jerk like puppets, clawing rabidly at the air. The two dozen drowned that Aranessa’s crew had put down twitched and stood upright once more, cracked heads lolling and gashed-open throats spurting black fluids. They surged forwards, blood bubbling from their lips as they frenziedly grabbed and clawed at the legs of the nearest mariners.

Roth redoubled his attack, grunting with effort as he stabbed at faces with his sabre and hacked through wrists with his sickle-hand. Around him, Aranessa’s crew slashed and stamped and shoved, doing everything they could to stop the drowned from clambering up onto the platform.

Roth glimpsed a flash of colour at the back of the crowd. A blood red bicorn topped a pallid, drawn face, and dead black eyes stared unblinking back at him. Above the figure swirled tendrils of living smoke, each crested by a shrieking skull. The newcomer’s fanged mouth opened wide, like a snake, as it pointed a crooked finger at Roth. He felt an invisible grip on his mind and his limbs went weak. Every one of his long years was dragging him down, down into the darkness of an early grave.

‘Flog me rigid, that’s him,’ hissed Aranessa. ‘That’s Noctilus.’

She plucked a strange metal sea-urchin device from her belt and flung it hard at the pale figure. The device detonated with a sharp crack, filling the area with choking smoke. Roth gasped for air as the spell upon him was lifted, black spots dancing in front of his eyes.

‘We’re leaving, lads!’ shouted Aranessa, gesturing to the far side of the square. ‘Back to the Swordfysh and cast off before even more of these dead bastards turn up.’ For all the sea-captain’s bravado, Roth could see no way out without charging headlong into the morass of flailing drowned that surrounded them on all sides.

Punching a gasping corpse from the platform with the hilt of his sabre, Roth grabbed a coil of thick, greasy rope from the gallows balustrade and widened its noose-end with a sharp tug. He flung it hard at the burning building opposite, breathing a quick prayer of thanks as the noose caught on the end of the lintel above the doorway. Behind him, a pistol shot bowled over one of the drowned just as it was about to sink its teeth into his leg.

‘Ogg! Ogg Halfheart!’ shouted Roth, throwing the other end of the rope towards Aranessa’s first mate. ‘Pull this, and pull it hard!’

The ogre caught the oiled rope in his meaty hand, looking at it dimly before absently backhanding three of the drowned from the platform into the square below.

‘You heard him, Ogg-boy – pull!’ shouted Aranessa, panic rising in her voice as the figure in the blood-red bicorn moved purposefully through the throng towards her.

The ogre shrugged and leant backwards, his great muscles straining at the rope. Roth shouldered his way through the melee, stamping hard on the filthy hands that were grasping up at them through the trapdoors of the gallows platform. He grabbed hold of the rope too and added his strength to Ogg’s, several other crewmen getting the same idea and putting their weight into the task.

With a great groaning crack, the supporting lintel came free. The mariners pulling the rope were suddenly bowled over backwards as the façade of the entire structure tumbled down into the square, crushing a great mass of the drowned under several tons of masonry. The air filled with mortar dust and billowing smoke, the ground was strewn with rubble and twitching corpses, but the way to the alleyways beyond lay open.

Aranessa was off the platform and picking her way across the square before Roth could even get back to his feet.

‘Nessa, wait!’ shouted Roth, but she didn’t turn back. Ogg and the rest of her crewmen were following her example, jumping from brickwork to spar as they fled the grasping, clambering undead that stumbled clumsily after them.

Glancing anxiously around for the telltale flash of a red bicorn, Roth leapt down from the platform and ran for his life.

Roth stumbled along Merwight Alley, smoke burning in his lungs. ‘Not far now’, he told himself. ‘Almost there, old man.’ But he had a sick suspicion that he was already too late.

An involuntary shiver ran through his body and some nameless instinct made him look up. Something was coalescing in the fog above him. Something big.

To Roth’s mounting amazement, a glowing white galleon was emerging from the mists above him. It was easily twice as large as the Nightwatch. Its hull looked very much like a gigantic ribcage and its keel took the form of a great curved spine. Under its bowsprit loomed a skeletal figurehead holding a sword in either hand, its jaw agape in challenge. Great braziers of sickly green fire burned away the mist on its fore and aftcastle, and tattered sails flapped from its fore, mizzen and aft masts like flayed skin.

Acres of rusted chain and a forest of tangled kelp dangled beneath the warship and Roth fancied he could make out groaning faces and skeletal hands writhing in the morass. It was the Shadewraith, no doubt about it: a ghost story made real and sent to plague the lands of men. One of the Dreadfleet.

The spectral galleon came about, its keel carving the air as if on invisible waters. Port side on, it discharged a thunderous volley into the distant Castilla Diablos. A spike of return fire boomed from the fortress walls, but the cannonade did nothing more than tear a few thin wisps of ectoplasm from the Shadewraith’s hull. The sound of dead men’s laughter echoed from within its cavernous interior.

The captain broke into a sprint.

After a few minutes, he looked anxiously over his shoulder, and was relieved to see that he had left the Shadewraith behind. Panting and spitting, the captain ran pell-mell up the crazily-angled length of Hangman’s Lane and staggered up the vomit-stained sides of the Brinebridge. From here, he should be able to thread his way through the Fifth Ace – or the Hel’s Rest, whichever had been left the most intact – and get to the aftquarters of his family’s dwelling-ship.

The battle was raging in earnest now, its flames consuming the entire city-port. From the cobbled path atop the Brinebridge, the captain saw a woman cut down by a man o’ bones, a young man fall from a rooftop, a tough old buzzard screaming in defiance as he was pulled apart by a pack of the drowned. The dead were everywhere.

In the distance, Roth saw that several large galleons had cast off from their moorings and were sailing out to the open sea to intercept the Reaver. By the looks of their headings, they were hoping to cut off the castle-ship’s escape route and rake its stern while they were about it.

Behind the vanguard warships came the Man o’ War, Commodore Hamzik at the helm. The Man o’ War was a ninety-gun galleon that had more kills to its name than any other Sartosan vessel. Roth felt a surge of hope rise in his chest. The Swordfysh would be long gone by now, but while the pride of Sartosa still fought there was a chance they could repel the undead invaders.

Roth frowned, adjusting the clockwork lenses embedded in his ruined right eye as he made his way across the bridge. Something was snaking up the stern of the Man o’ War, curling outwards as it rose up from the water. The captain wondered if it was some kind of sea serpent, but he had a sinking feeling that it was something far worse. He closed his good eye and squinted through his artificial replacement as the magnifying lenses clicked into place.

It was no living thing, but a black mechanical tentacle, barbed and glinting dully in the gloom. Each segment was the size of an outhouse. Another tentacle slithered up the side, then another and another, swaying and curling as they rose high into the air. Seawater and rank black oil drizzled from between the segmented sections of each tentacle as they rose with the sound of clanking metal. Distant cries came from the deck of the Man o’ War as it opened fire on the tentacle-limbs curving around it with blunt culverins and stab-cannons.

One tentacle was hit square on and recoiled instantly, thrashing like a stuck snake. The other mechanical arms came down heavily upon the Man o’ War with a crash of splintering wood and tearing metal, followed by a juddering roar as barbed segments sawed through its painted finery. To Roth, it looked as if two taloned hands had reached out of the water and throttled the life from the warship. He made out a glowing greenish-yellow light beneath the water, no doubt the malevolent eye of whatever blasphemous creation was wrapping its tendrils around Captain Hamzik’s ship.

Roth shook his head in disbelief. Only the dwarfs had the ability to build submersible craft, and the mountain-folk were the allies of mankind. For one of the honour-bound sons of Grungni to join forces with the undead was unheard of, even amongst the dwarf outcasts that operated out of Sartosa.

Terse orders drifted up from the riverside below. Roth broke into a run, crossing the bridge and loping along the banks. Ahead, he could see a team of stevedores hurrying to pivot a converted harbour crane toward the tentacled beast, intending to use it as an improvised catapult. As the captain pounded towards them, the stevedores searched around for a projectile to hurl at the mechanical monster, settling upon a broken cornerstone that seemed a pitifully inadequate weapon to Roth’s eyes. Clicking his tongue in frustration, the captain upended an algae-slicked barrel from the alleyway next to the Death’s Head and gave it a good hard shove so that it rumbled across the cobbles toward the stevedores.

‘Fling that instead, but tap and taper it first!’ shouted Roth, his face flushed. ‘Whatever that squid thing is, it’s slick with oil, so if this barrel contains anything like Swillard’s usual rotgut, it’ll burn like fury.’

The stevedores shouted their thanks, hefting the barrel into position before stuffing a sheaf of burning thatch into the barrel’s tap. The contraption’s counterweight clunked loudly and sent the flaming barrel soaring high into the air. It turned end over end before breaking apart against one of the tentacles with a loud bang. Great gouts of flaming alcohol shot out in all directions, setting aflame the oily gunk that leaked from the tentacle’s composite sections and causing the writhing limb to withdraw under the water. The stevedores gave a great cheer, but their efforts were not enough.

With a series of shuddering, splintering cracks, the mechanical monster tightened its tentacled grip. It broke its beleaguered prey apart with the ease of an iron gauntlet crushing a tinderbox. Roth almost bit through his lip as the remnants of the Man o’ War began to sink, a confusion of broken timbers spreading across the water. The oil-black tentacles of the mechanical beast withdrew almost immediately, slick and sickening as they slid back into the water.

The wreckage of the once-proud Man o’ War blocked the river completely, stalling the advance of the Sartosan warships intending to cut off the Reaver’s escape. With one shocking blow, the Dreadfleet had turned the odds in its favour.

CHAPTER THREE

Scores of dead bodies were strewn throughout the streets of Rusting Harbour. Some were smouldering and fire-blackened. Others had been cut down by nameless assailants or blasted to pieces by the Reaver’s incendiary broadsides. Scattered bones and bloated corpses lay mingled wherever the Sartosans had mounted a decent defence, but there was not a soul to be seen.

As he rounded the corner of Rottmettle Walk, Roth hurdled a pair of crouching scavengers dispassionately prising the jewels from the eye sockets of the men o’ bones strewn along the street. Twenty years ago, he’d have done the same, but wealth was no good to anyone unless you were alive to spend it.

Up on the hilltop, the gunners of Castilla Diablos poured yet more cannon fire into the Shadewraith as the cursed ship drifted slowly towards them. It had no more effect than if they were firing blindly at the mist. The spectral vessel floated up towards the fortress, setting a course that led straight into the Castilla’s thick stone perimeter. Roth caught a glimpse of the Shadewraith just as it sailed clean through the curtain walls like a ghost, leaving the stonework clad in crackling ice in its wake. The sound of distant explosions intensified and the sky glowed red over the ramparts of the Castilla. Roth thanked the sea god Manann that he was not amongst the defenders of the hill fortress.

The captain ran on, heart pounding. There she was: the Enlightenment, a masterpiece of shipbuilding. It had been decades since Roth had last seen her. In his father’s day, she was the most beautiful vessel on the high seas, but the constant grind of Sartosa had taken its toll. Now she leant heavily upon scaffolds and rusted iron spars. Her once-green hull was caked in soot and guano, and a spider’s web of ropes stretched out over the ramshackle outhouses clamped upon her hull like giant barnacles.

The raging fires started by the Bloody Reaver had crawled up the lesser boathouses leaning drunkenly against the Enlightenment’s hull and now fully half of the captain’s old homestead was ablaze. Roth leapt up onto the shanty-dwellings at the galleon-house’s stern, reflecting grimly that it had been a lot easier to do this when he was twenty years of age, back before he had walked out on his family and exchanged the love of a good wife for the life of a pirate.

His heart heavy, Roth jumped from roof to roof, taking care to put his muscled weight on lintels and ridges where he could. Instead of trying to steady himself, he used his momentum to plunge bodily through the stained-glass windows at the Enlightenment’s stern, losing his scabbard and sabre in the process. No time to go back for them now.

Thick smoke billowed toward the smashed window like a physical presence, forcing its way into his lungs. Roth’s father, the Mapwright of Tilea, had clothed the interior of his galleon with countless treasures over the course of his illustrious career, and virtually all of them were highly flammable.

The drawing room Roth had smashed his way into was crammed full of exotic volumes that would have been worth a fortune to the Colleges of Magic in Altdorf, but right now they were less than worthless. The corridors and stairwells leading from the drawing room were hung with priceless tapestries and the friezes painted on the ceilings were exceptional examples of the cartographer’s art.

Just fuel for the flames, thought Roth. They mattered little.

‘Lisabet?’ Roth shouted. ‘Armando?’

A muffled roar of flame answered.

A hot surge of panic rose in his throat. Spluttering and coughing, Roth ripped off a piece of his shirt and wound it around his face before grabbing one of his wife’s precious flower vases from a side table and upending it over his shoulders. Water was the best armour for a man trapped in a burning ship.

The Enlightenment was a labyrinth of corridors and rooms, and had Roth not known it inside and out, he soon would have been lost. A childhood of exploration meant that he could navigate it blindfold. Just as well, for the clouds of choking smoke pouring through the corridors made it virtually impossible to see anything. Even his clockwork eye-lenses were useless.

As he stumbled towards the living quarters, the few glimpses Roth did manage to snatch made his skin prickle with loathing. He had hated this part of the galleon-house as a young man. The painstakingly accurate star-charts and navigational parchments that hung from the walls had been defaced by strange depictions of bladed citadels, skull-faced cliffs and daemon-mouthed volcanoes afloat in a sea of bone. Roth frowned as he barrelled through the flickering corridors. His father’s condition had worsened, like as not, but unless the fire had claimed him he was probably still alive. There was no way Lisabet would leave that disturbing filth everywhere if he wasn’t.

A rusted blade jabbed out from the smoke-filled room to Roth’s right. Caught off guard, the captain jerked backwards, tripping over a key-chest and flailing into a burning tapestry in his haste to avoid the blade. Several braids of his white hair caught light, filling his flaring nostrils with an acrid stench.

The blade stabbed out again, gripped by a fleshless hand. A man o’ bones emerged from the burning remnants of Roth’s old sleeping quarters, diamonds burning brightly in its eye sockets. Its clawed feet left strange scratches in the polished wood of the deck. Sticking sideways through its ribcage was a Cathayan blade that Roth recognised as his father’s favourite sword.

Roth swore in horror as he remembered that he had lost his own blade. The thing came forward in syncopated bursts, its mildewed skull following Roth’s clumsy attempts to put something between them. Roth clutched at a broken cabinet, pulling a plank from its underside and throwing it awkwardly at the man o’ bones. It bounced from the creature’s bony scalp, but did not slow it.

Roth reached down again, not daring to look away, and was rewarded with the jagged remains of a table leg. He brought the improvised cudgel round in front of him, parrying the creature’s next thrust and narrowly avoiding being run through. The force of the blow had almost numbed his arm. This thing was a lot stronger than it looked.

The man o’ bones was upon him, slashing with its rusted blade. Its diamond eyes shone crazily in the firelight. Roth yelled in frustration as flames licked his face. His beard caught fire and his hair crackled and curled.

Grinding his teeth, Roth smacked the creature’s guard wide open with his table leg, bodily charging it and slamming it into the burning tapestry on the wall. They collided so violently that the captain felt the creature’s ribs break against the timbered wall. Roth pinned its bony wrist with his shoulder, forcing its sword out wide. He yanked hard at the heavy tapestry, pulling it down over his assailant’s head, and bundled the man o’ bones to the floor. Coughing hard, Roth stamped on the thing under the tapestry until it stopped moving altogether. He batted out the fires in his hair and beard before pulling his father’s blade from its broken remains, shoving the table leg into his belt, just in case.

Suppressing another coughing fit, Roth battered his way into the forequarters of the burning galleon-house.

‘Lisabet?’ he shouted again, anxiety choking him as much as smoke. ‘Armando? Father?’

Cutlery and chairs lay scattered everywhere, drawers were pulled out and cabinets smashed open. The shattered remains of three men o’ bones lay in awkward heaps across the ruined furniture, bones blackening and seaweed curling in the heat.

Roth picked his way through the debris, tripping over the body of a well-dressed man cut down in his prime. A rusted cutlass protruded from his throat, and his fine white doublet was stained crimson with blood. Each hand still held a short sword of exceptional craftsmanship. He looked somehow familiar. Broad shoulders, strong chin, large nose…

The realisation slammed into him like a punch to the heart. It was the corpse of Armando, his only son and heir.

The captain collapsed to his knees, his face contorting into a mask of remorse. The last time he had seen the lad had been on his seventh birthday. A cruel wound to deal a young boy, leaving without saying goodbye. Now that wound would never heal.

Roth’s fear and trepidation turned to hot rage. Shouting incoherently, he barged through the half-burning door at the far end of the dining room and entered an antechamber filled with his father’s trophy weapons. Dozens of handguns, thrice-pistols, Arabyan jezzailachis, antique flintlocks and Cathayan firesticks lined the shelves. Roth dimly remembered his childish glee whenever his father had let him use the armoury’s contents to repel any pirate scum stupid or desperate enough to try and rob them. Memories, foolish and useless. His wife was in here somewhere.

Roth barrelled through into the last of his father’s studies, a large and well-furnished room lined with flame-lit portholes. The blaze had yet to breach it. A confusion of flesh, bone and cloth lay tangled on the floor.

A sick dread melted into Roth’s chest as he neared the first of the bloodstained corpses. He recognised the long, tousled hair instantly, though it was grey now instead of black. He had called her his sea-siren because of that glorious mane. That and the way she sang in the morning to lure him into her bathing quarters.

Roth closed his eyes for a moment, his chest shaking. His Lisabet. They’d had their differences, by the gods. There had even been times when they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. But she’d done nothing to deserve this. He planted a kiss on her cold cheek, and rested his forehead on hers for a second before staggering to his feet.

Roth’s tear-blurred gaze fell on the body of an old man hunched protectively in the far corner of the room, and he cried out in anguish. Around him lay the bodies of at least a dozen men o’ bones. It was hard to tell how many, but the veteran had clearly fought like a manticore before falling. Indigio Roth, the Mapwright of Tilea – once an intellectual giant, now sad and sunken in death.

Roth picked his way over to the mortal remains of the man who had once been his whole world. The body was still warm and the blood saturating his clothes had not yet clotted. The mapwright was slumped across a sepia-tinged turtle shell propped against the wall, the very same shell in which his father had bathed him as a baby. Memories of laughter and fireside stories came flooding back. Roth sobbed heavily and collapsed to the floor as his old life burned around him.

The snap-crack of hot sap brought him back to his senses. If he died too, the whole Roth bloodline would be turned to ash, without blessing from Morr or Manann. He was too late to save his family, but the least he could do was give them the rites of the dead. Burial at sea was out of the question, so the loam of the coast would have to do.

Roth cradled his father’s body in a last embrace. Careless with his grief, he knocked over the burnished turtle shell that his father had died to protect. Underneath it were two metallic artefacts. One was a spyglass the length of his arm, its golden rim glinting in the firelight as it protruded from a leather map-case. Next to the spyglass was a clockwork moondial of exceptional craftsmanship. Roth frowned, for he did not recognise either of the strange treasures, and he had thought he knew every last trinket in this place. Still, there was no time to study them. On impulse, he quickly slung the map-case across his shoulder and clipped the moondial’s case onto his belt.

Roth glanced down, noticing a cracked parchment pinned to the underside of the turtle shell. It was all whorls, spirals, and strange nautical horrors, much like the paintings the mapwright used to make after his fateful last journey. Garbled text and elaborate scrollwork floated across the map, and curling gibberish wound into a gnashing vortex on its right hand side.

The captain shook his head in sad bewilderment. Yet another depiction of the Galleon’s Graveyard, no doubt. Still, the old man had died to protect it. Roth pushed it into the map case slung over his shoulder.

Smoke was billowing under the door. Roth knew that there was no way he could fight his way back through the heart of the galleon. It belonged to the flames now. Taking a deep breath, he stamped back through the bone-strewn study and burst into the antechamber behind, into the dining quarters. He carefully hoisted the body of his son over his shoulder and strode back into the study, snatching up a handful of fat-barrelled Cathayan firesticks and a thrice-pistol as he went.

Forcing down his despair, the captain leant the corpses of his three closest relatives against the far wall. He could not bring himself to look at them, so instead he hurriedly stacked the firesticks against the nearest porthole to the door. Roth made the sign of the trident, and then that of the twin-tailed comet, just to be on the safe side. He took the thrice-pistol, primed and ready as he knew it would be, and shielded himself with the lacquered turtle shell before firing off a single shot.

The firesticks exploded with a tremendous boom, bowling Roth over and filling the room with dust and flying splinters. When he blinked his vision back, the porthole had been blown outward, along with a large chunk of the study wall. His ears ringing, Roth dropped the bodies of his family from the smoking hole. Tears fell from his cheeks at the ignominy of throwing his loved ones onto the street below.

Count Noctilus was going to pay.

The red sun rose upon a soot-blackened, blood-streaked figure digging a deep hole in the sandy earth just above the beachline of Skeeter Bay.

Hours before, far out to sea, there had been the crack-boom of cannon fire and the flash of explosions. Taking a brief respite from his labours, Roth had used his father’s spyglass to watch the battle unfold. The device had given the captain an uncannily perfect view of the battle as it unfolded, but he was too exhausted to dwell on it.

To their credit, the Sartosan warships that had made it out to sea had attempted to intercept the Dreadfleet, but they achieved little more than losing five of their warships against a clearly superior foe. The battle had ended abruptly when the Dreadfleet faded into the fog.

His face set in an expression of cold determination, Roth had continued to dig. His crew, having tracked down their captain since the invading army’s unaccountable withdrawal, stood a respectful distance away. Some passed round a bottle of spirits, others lit pipes or slouched onto the sand of the beach.

As the skies burned pink and orange above the waters, the captain placed pennies upon the eyelids of the bodies in the grave-pit and began to shovel a thick blanket of sandy earth atop them. Exhaustion etched his features but his movements grew more and more certain with every shovelful.

‘I promise you, blood of my blood,’ he said, ‘I will be a good father to you now, even though it is too late. I give my oath to you, Lisabet my love, that I will cherish your memory and not run from my duty again. I swear to you, my father, that I will make you proud of me, and banish the devils that haunted you.’

Behind him, his crew shared worried glances. Some began to drift back to the Nightwatch. Roth’s first mate, the balding giant the men called Salt Pietr, began to sing a dirge for the safe passage of the dead. One by one, the remaining crew took up the tune, mournful and slow.

Oblivious, Roth raged on through gritted teeth.

‘By my troth, I will do it. In the name of the Seafather, I swear to you that I will rid the world of the evils that took you. I will persecute and destroy that which keeps you from Manann’s holy embrace.’

Roth’s words grew louder, his anger pushing aside the guilt and the sadness that had haunted him before the dawn. ‘I know the beast’s name. I know his ship. I know the vessels of his allies, ghosts and daemons though they be. I shall gather allies of my own, and an army of murderers, and I shall hunt that black beast to the very bottom of the sea. This I swear!’

His voice caught with emotion as he drew his father’s sword and thrust it high, its blade catching the first rays of the new dawn.

‘This I vow upon the bodies of my kin. This I swear to Manann, to Morr, to Sigmar, to Myrmidia; to all the gods of the world!’

Roth strode waist-deep into the water, his father’s sword held high. Tear-streaked face caked with soot and filth, he splashed and reeled as if drunk on anger and madness.

‘Count Noctilus, hear me!’ he screamed, shaking the shining blade at the new dawn. ‘I will find you, beast! I will find you and I will see you burn!’

CHAPTER FOUR

The Reikstemple, Altdorf docks

1st Day of Jahrdrung, 2522

The Nightwatch lay at anchor, nestled among hundreds of Imperial vessels that were moored along the mile-wide stretch of the River Reik. The sleek galleon’s pirate colours were hidden below decks. In their stead flew the flags of a merchantman, and the Sartosans that teemed upon its decks were clad in tunics and tabards that had, not so long ago, belonged to the crew of the Little Madam, a prosperous trader out of Marienburg.

No more than two hundred yards ahead of the Nightwatch loomed the legendary Sigmarite galleon Heldenhammer. Shining in the sun, the flagship was an insane display of grandeur, for she was the command vessel of the Grand Theogonist himself. The sheer ambition of her construction was astonishing.

Captain Roth strode along the riverside dock toward the vast warship, doing his best not to gawp like a yokel. He couldn’t help but crane his neck to take in the sheer size of the thing. The cliff face of the Heldenhammer’s aftquarters rose above even the house of worship upon which she had been styled, and the midday sunshine reflected with blinding intensity from row upon row of stained glass portholes, each depicting a scene from the saga of Sigmar. Four square steeples bracketed the warship’s Grand Templus, pierced with arrow slits and bisected with exterior stairways. Between them, seabirds whirled above a slate-grey roof that rose giddily above triumphal friezes showing the victories of man.

The pale stone of the Templus itself was lined with dozens of alcoves, each housing a towering golden relief that immortalised one of the previous Grand Theogonists – the current incumbent, Volkmar the Grim, at their head. Eagle-headed gargoyles and twin-tailed triton-kings crested every corner.

Her great barrel chest supported a profusion of great cannons spread across four decks. Roth did a quick mental calculation: she boasted at least one hundred and eighty guns. And no ordinary cannons, either; the least of them was twice as large as the Nightwatch’s thirty-four pounders. The captain gave a low whistle under his breath. Each gun was mounted within its own peaked alcove, rendering the whole edifice like a great row of terraces built to house cannons instead of people.

Yet as Roth neared the front of the flagship, all thoughts of temples and Imperial great cannons were left behind. Sigmar’s Wrath was the Heldenhammer’s signature weapon and its symbol all in one – a bronze statue rivalling the Altdorf Colossus, bearded and crowned in the likeness of the Empire’s warrior god. In the statue’s hands was a titanic replica of Ghal-Maraz, the Skull-Splitter, most potent of warhammers and symbol of the Empire ascendant.

The statue was held upright by great chains that led into a massive steam engine in the galleon’s forecastle. The stories had it that as the Heldenhammer rammed an enemy warship it would disengage the steam clamps that held Sigmar’s Wrath upright, and a hundred tons of thrice-blessed bronze would arc down from the galleon’s prow, bringing the statue’s titanic warhammer crashing down through its victim’s deck.

It was with this mighty warship that Captain Roth intended to smash the Bloody Reaver apart.

He just needed to convince the Grand Theogonist to let him take it first.

The interior of the Reikstemple was oppressively thick with incense. As far as Roth was concerned, everything about the great building was oppressive – the soaring colonnades, the gloomy candlelight, the dolorous harmonies of Sierck’s Unberogen sung by devout sisters hidden in the naves.

Around the insides of the temple’s main dome stood twelve massive statues that held up the roof, each one an idealised representation of one of Sigmar’s chieftains. The candlelight was so dim, and the temple so large, that Roth could barely see beyond their knees. Whispered conversations rustled in the galleries ranged about the stained-glass viewing slits above. Maybe, thought Roth, they should have spent some of the Empire’s endless wealth on putting in some proper windows.

At the feet of each statue stood a warrior priest of Sigmar, bowed in reverence, a warhammer clasped to his chest. Men of action forced into pomp and formal ceremony. What a waste. It made Roth feel slightly uncomfortable even to watch.

Sitting in a throne at the heart of the wide chamber was Grand Theogonist Volkmar himself, a great bald patriarch of a man with eyes like hard coals. His throne was flanked by two rearing griffons of jade and gold, lit from the inside by carefully placed candles. Complex shadows flickered across the Theogonist’s humourless face.

A kneeling man in front of Volkmar was begging him for some favour or other, his demeanour that of a mendicant, though his clothes were those of a prince. Volkmar’s expression suggested that he had been proffered walrus droppings instead of asked for a boon. With a quick, hard gesture, he dismissed the unfortunate supplicant, who was led away roughly by a pair of robed attendants who looked like they could go three rounds with Salt Pietr and come out smiling. That was something Roth could admire about the Cult of Sigmar, at any rate – its preachers looked more like dockside pugilists than weedy clergymen. Seven out of the twelve warrior priests had a broken nose, and two were badly burnt. Roth nodded slowly to himself. Perhaps there was a chance that they would aid him after all.

The Grand Theogonist slammed a gauntleted hand onto the arm of his throne, the thunderclap sound echoing down the naves as he stared straight at Roth.

‘Next!’

The captain removed his feathered hat and strode straight into the heart of the central chamber. It felt as if he were stepping into a gladiatorial arena. The Sigmarite priests ranged about the circle shuffled and stood forward, gripping their warhammers in earnest. Roth snorted. Anyone would think that sickle-handed pirate lords were unusual visitors to his holiness’s inner sanctum.

‘Make it quick, I’ve a war to win,’ said Volkmar. His voice had the tone of one born to command.

‘I am Captain Jaego Roth, son of Indigio Roth, the Mapwright of Tilea. I have come to request your aid against the forces of undeath.’

‘Is that so?’ replied the Theogonist. ‘I met your father, once. I have several of his works in my sanctum. A great man. Certainly a man of honour.’ The Grand Theogonist paused, meaningfully. ‘Though that is not what they say about his son. And you would do well to address me as befits my position, Captain.’

Roth’s blood ran hot. The slumped corpse of his dead father flashed across his vision.

‘Blast your etiquette and your games,’ spat Roth, colour rushing to his face. ‘My father is dead, and half of Sartosa with him. It’s the same story up and down the coast of Tilea. Your precious Empire will be next, mark me. There’s an unholy terror out there upon the waters of the world, a blight upon the ocean, and I intend to do something about it!’

There was a long and deadly silence. Dust motes danced in what little light bled in from the stained glass above.

‘I see,’ said Volkmar, leaning forward upon his steel gauntlets. Amusement flickered in his eyes, all but hidden among the shadows. ‘Speak on, Captain Roth.’

‘The Sea-Curse,’ continued Roth, somewhat surprised that he had not been struck by divine lightning after his outburst. ‘You Sigmarites must know of it. It takes the dead. It takes whatever dies at sea and it brings them back to life as something foul. Mergheists, men o’ bones, call ’em what you will. They used to be men. Men that deserved to go to their gods, not to be trapped in a land of ghosts.’

The flecks of spittle that came from the captain’s mouth glinted golden in the candlelight.

‘The way I hear it, you lot know how to kill those who can cheat death. You’ve the right weapons to do it. Weapons enough to kill the worst of them, Noctilus they call him. And to sink his hellspawned warship to boot.’

The Grand Theogonist remained as still as stone, staring hard at Roth. The captain’s gaze didn’t flinch for a moment.

‘A single crew won’t do it. I need men,’ he said, his voice low and urgent. ‘I need an army of battle-hardened and fearless men. I need gold, and lots of it. But what I need most of all, your holiness, is a way to kill the dead.

‘It’s not just the Bloody Reaver I’ll put down,’ Roth went on. ‘I’ll sink his fleet too. I’ve seen his allies first-hand. A ghost-galleon that sails on the wind and a mechanical daemon from the deep, all tentacles and cold fury. That’s why I’m here.’

Roth took a deep breath before continuing.

‘They say that the weapons of the faithful can put down even the spirits of the damned. I’m going to hunt them down and kill the lot of them, and I’m going to see the one that controls them burn in front of me. And you’re going to help.’

There was another leaden pause, and a profound silence. Even the madrigal singers had gathered up their hymnal sheets and left.

‘Am I indeed?’

The Grand Theogonist’s eyes narrowed. His words stabbed at Roth like icicles.

‘Am I indeed, Jaego Roth? Despite the fact that barbarian tribes push through Kislev into Ostermark and beyond? Despite the fact that the navy of our beloved Emperor needs every vessel it can muster to hunt their damned wolf-ships? Despite the future of the realm being at stake, and despite army after army dying in a never-ending war that threatens to snuff out the civilised world and replace it with Chaos?’

The last word raced around the temple like a living wind, candles fluttering in its wake.

The Grand Theogonist stood from his throne, his face contorted into a snarl, and strode forward until his face was a fraction of an inch from Roth’s own. His eyes were blazing, terrible things. They had seen sights that would drive a man to madness.

The captain looked away.

‘Now you listen to me, Jaego, son of Indigio,’ hissed Volkmar. ‘I know your kind, and I care not that you have suffered at this fiend’s hands. I know of the Sea-Curse. I know of the Galleon’s Graveyard, amazing as that may seem to you. The true name of your foe is Count Nyklaus von Carstein, and he is a prodigal of the vampiric aristocracy. I have known good men who languish in his clutches to this day. But I would rather save the souls of the living than avenge the dead.’

Volkmar stepped back, his chin held high.

‘I will give you nothing save your true title, pirate. You will take your poison from this most holy of places, and you will never return. That is the only condition upon which I will let you live.’

Roth gaped, stunned into silence. The Theogonist stalked back to his throne before continuing.

‘This, and this alone, I offer you. Leave now, fool, or it will go the worse for you.’

The circle of Sigmarite priests had closed in without Roth realising it. They stood around him in a ring of steel and iron resolve, warhammers held ready.

Fury boiling behind his eyes, Roth turned on his heel and strode past them out of the Reikstemple.

That night, the Heldenhammer set sail.

An hour before midnight, dozens of oar-ships, jolly-boats and cogs gathered in the shadow of the Nightwatch. Roth had spent every last crown of his fortune on recruitment before setting sail and when his ship had entered the Reik earlier that day, its bilges had already been replete with hidden killers. The most hardened murderers the taverns of Sartosa could provide were quickly and silently lowering themselves into the auxiliaries from ropes slung over the galleon’s gunwales.

Loaded to capacity with a small army of cutthroats, the flotilla of small vessels had wound their way downriver. Under the cover of a moonless night, no single ship was large enough to cause alarm. On they came, slow as driftwood, weaving their way between warships and using warehouses and galleons as cover. One by one they amassed in the shadow of the Heldenhammer’s wallowing girth.

None of the single-masted ships were tall enough to be spotted by the sentries stationed in the cannon houses that jutted out above them. On the banks of the Reik, the night watchmen who would normally have reported such a strange gathering of vessels were either mysteriously absent from their posts or slumped unconscious next to a bottle of Sartosan grog.

As soon as this miniature armada had assembled, row upon row of grappling hooks were flung upwards from each vessel. Hundreds of black-clad pirates swarmed up the ropes. Some leapt deftly from cannon house to ridge before spilling over onto the great warship’s deck, rushing into shadow and melting away under rigging and sailcloth. Whenever a sentry passed by, tattooed mariners would slink from their hiding places and slit their throats without a sound, swiftly dragging their bodies back into the darkness and stashing them behind barrels and crates.

By the time Roth climbed aboard, the deck of the temple-ship was already his. Tonight was the Sigmarite festival known as the Feast of the Comet, and the majority of the warship’s devout crew were at prayer in the Reikstemple. No doubt there remained a cadre of Sigmarites within the Grand Templus, but once Roth’s men had barred the doors shut with a pair of stout planks it was a simple matter to pick off the remaining sentries one by one. The captain chuckled darkly to himself. This would teach that pompous prick Volkmar to underestimate the Sartosans.

The Nipponese assassins that Roth had enlisted in the Beggar’s Bowl climbed down the rigging towards him, long since having ensured that the men stationed in the sentinel’s nests were silenced. They gave a series of curt bows as they passed before disappearing below decks. Seven black-bandaged forms blended into the darkness with sinister ease.

Roth smiled as he paced along the deck of his new warship and looked over the side. Below him, the ramshackle flotilla that had loitered at the Heldenhammer’s waterline was drifting away downriver. By the time the crewless auxiliaries were spotted, it would be far too late.

The captain nodded approvingly as his teeming army of pirates went about their work. The most bloodthirsty of their number had followed the Nipponese assassins below decks to continue the killing whilst his gun-teams marvelled at the size and number of the cannons at their disposal.

‘Get the measure of her as quick as you can, lads, and cast off,’ said Roth, motioning to the rigging teams above to unfurl the sails. ‘Steady as she goes, mind, we’re not through the storm yet. Burke,’ he said to the master gunner, ‘I want these guns primed and ready, but tell your boys to keep their tapers stowed. I’ll personally gut any man who opens fire without my say-so. You’ll get your chance soon enough.’

A hunched figure slid from the shadows behind Roth, his fishtailed dagger dripping blood. Will o’ the Waves, as weasel-faced a killer as ever plied the ocean.

‘But captain…’ he wheedled, ‘them Sigmarites’ll rumble us soon as sight us, won’t they? Look there, half a dozen other god-lovin’ fishes that’ll come after this old whale, eh? Six by my count.’ He leered, exposing teeth filed to sharp points. ‘That’s a lot, isn’t it, captain?’

‘Shut your hole, Bill, or I’ll put my sickle in it. Salty’s got us covered.’

There was a series of low snaps from above, and acre upon acre of rich red sailcloth began to flow downward from the Heldenhammer’s three great masts. As the sails unfurled they revealed the vast heraldic devices emblazoned upon them: a giant glowering sun with the face of a lion, a pair of skull-headed mergryphons, and a twin-tailed comet that soared above a hammer-wielding skeleton. Roth had heard that the masts were Drakwald ironoaks taken from the monster-haunted forest at a great cost in lives. Each bore a pair of octagonal sentinel’s nests the size of a shrinehouse, one at half-mast and one right at the dizzying top.

As the crew below trimmed the sails to make the most of the prevailing wind, the swathes of crimson cloth bellied out and filled with air. Ever so slowly, the Heldenhammer began to move away from the dockside, the thick cables that had secured her coiled in with practiced ease.

Before the galleon had got thirty yards from the harbourside, a clamour of warning bells rang from the lector-houses ranged around the Reikstemple. The din was tremendous. The faithful poured out from their feast, incoherent with rage and brandishing maces and glowing warhammers as they sprinted toward the warships that formed the rest of the Sigmarite fleet.

As the Heldenhammer carved out into the heart of the River Reik, the smaller, swifter vessels of the Sigmarite fleet began to cast off and head after them in pursuit. Six abreast they came, gathering speed with every passing minute. Roth rolled his eyes in contempt. They were faster than the Heldenhammer, true, but as wide as the river was, there was no way so many vessels could fight effectively in such close confines. Their line of approach had landlubber written all over it. Bloody god-baiters, they were the same the world over: all fire and no finesse.

The captain slid his father’s spying-glass from the map case and surveyed the Sigmarite warships. The command deck of the leading vessel sprang into focus as if it were only yards away. The decks were thronged with self-flagellating madmen intent upon his demise, even if it meant hastening their own. On that count at least, Roth would be happy to oblige.

The captain refocused the seeing-lenses of his spyglass so that he could see into the dockyards behind the pursuing warships. Sure enough, the Nightwatch was slinking out from its hiding place amongst the merchantmen and schooners clustering the wharf. It came about with murderous grace, following the Sigmarite fleet like a lion stalking a pack of wolves.

‘Good old Salt,’ muttered Roth, ‘Faithful to the last.’

The captain felt a pulse of guilt, suddenly anxious that he had sent the outsized mariner to his death. And his beloved Nightwatch too, come to that. Will o’ the Waves was right: six warships were not easily shrugged off, regardless of their competence. The thought did not sit well. Still, thought Roth, casting his gaze across the temple-ship’s incredible architecture, it would be worth it. Woe betide the warship that tried to bar their passage out to sea. Not even the Bloody Reaver could stand a direct hit from the godhammer upon the temple-ship’s prow.

Roth gave an involuntary shudder of anticipation as he looked back at the vessels closing in upon them. The warships were at full sail and had already approached well within range of the chasing cannons on the rear of the Grand Templus, but Roth wanted them even closer before he gave the order to fire.

Puffs of white smoke came from three of the pursuing ships, and a deep boom echoed across the water as a volley of cannonballs hurtled towards them. One punched a smoking hole in the lateen sail above the Templus, and another took a chunk from the aft mast in a shower of splinters.

‘Sail-shots,’ said Roth. ‘Interesting. I’ll bet they’ve been told to leave us drifting, and to take back Volkmar’s precious warship the hard way. Blade to blade.’

‘Like as not, sir,’ said Ghow Southman, appearing at Roth’s side. For such a thick-set man, the islander moved with disconcerting speed. His obscene tattoos and extensive piercings were not well suited for polite company, but he was dutiful in his own way, and his habit of always being there when Roth needed him was invaluable. ‘We wetting the swords today, are we sir?’

‘Not today, Ghow, no. Salty and I have other plans.’

‘Salty this, Salty that,’ muttered Ghow, but Roth had already strode over to the mizzenmast. ‘Pennants up!’ he shouted, hand cupped around his mouth.

A trio of black flags bearing the crossed cutlasses and the skull-and-mauls fluttered up to the tip of each topmast, the colours of Sartosa plain for all to see.

‘Now hard-a-port!’ shouted Roth. ‘Hard-a-port, trim the sails and bring her round!’

The Heldenhammer began to turn with a slow but unstoppable momentum. The temple-ship’s stern swung around until it was perpendicular with the Sigmarite fleet’s advance, blocking the middle of the river. In the middle distance, the Nightwatch responded to Roth’s signal pennants by mirroring this manoeuvre, using the river’s current to turn hard-a-starboard with exceptional precision.

In less than a minute the two warships had bracketed the Sigmarite fleet fore and aft like slaughterhouse doors closing upon a flock of sheep. Ten dozen cannons were brought to bear upon the Sigmarite vessels, perfectly poised for raking fire along the length of the pursuing craft. The enemy, clearly expecting their prey to flee and little else, were far too tightly packed for evasive manoeuvres.

‘Master Burke,’ shouted Roth. ‘Show these amateurs a proper broadside, if you would be so kind.’

‘Aye, captain,’ shouted Burke, grinning fiercely as he turned to his men. ‘Open fire!’

The deck of the Heldenhammer lurched beneath Roth’s feet as a monstrous fusillade of cannonballs hurtled across the Reik. The unexpected force of the broadside nearly knocked the captain over, ears ringing with the deafening crack of the guns. Steadying himself, Roth cackled madly and rushed to the port gunwale.

Two of the Sigmarite vessels were belching smoke, great gouges torn in their hulls. Another was listing badly, the fires on its deck burning bright in the darkness. Roth watched jubilantly as the aftmasts of two of the centremost galleons slowly toppled into the rigging of the warships next to them, tangling their sails hopelessly. Clearly the Nightwatch’s broadside had also taken a heavy toll.

‘Good work, Salt!’ shouted Roth, raising his sickle in salute.

The Sigmarite vessels in the heart of the Reik were slewing around in confusion. The drifting cloud from the Heldenhammer’s broadside obscured their vision as they frantically tried to bring their cannons to bear. Prows clashed and timbers splintered as the flaming vessel veered into the galleon next to it. On either end of the fleet, the two undamaged vessels slackened their sails and hung back, waiting for the Nightwatch to drift into the crossfire of their guns. Perhaps some of them could sail after all. Roth heard the sound of distant cannon fire as the Sigmarite warships took their frustrations out on the Nightwatch, but there was little he could do about it now. Salt Pietr had bought them the time to escape. Roth fought down the hot feeling in his throat, telling himself there was no way Pietr would have wanted him to squander his best chance of escaping with the Heldenhammer.

‘Come about,’ shouted Roth, irritably. ‘Come about and full sail.’

The Heldenhammer began to turn back into the current, its sails snapping full as it began to outpace its tangled pursuers.

‘Oh, surely not sir?’ pleaded Ghow Southman, grinning like a loon as he paced over to join Roth at the gunwale, ‘Only one broadside? We’ve got ’em stuck like pigs on a spit.’

‘Save the powder for the real enemy, Ghow,’ said Roth. ‘Surely a first mate should know that.’

The islander laughed, sketching a mock salute. ‘Aye, sir, he should at that. Where to then? Sartosa is it?’

‘Zandri, believe it or not.’

‘Zandri… Zandri, captain?’ said Ghow, plucking at the piercings in his ear. ‘You’re having me on, right?’

Roth just shook his head, lips pursed as he stared grimly down the Reik towards the sea.

‘But that’s on the Nehekharan coast! It’s a desert full o’ the walking dead, isn’t it? Haven’t we got enough of them to worry about?’

‘We need gold, Ghow! Untold amounts of it. Nehekhara’s awash with the stuff, everybody knows that. The way I hear it, even a beggar’s pyramid contains more coin than you and I would ever see in a lifetime of grubbing about in Sartosa. We get in, we steal as much as we can carry, we get out. Unless you fancy heading back to Lustria, of course?’

Ghow looked back at the disappearing Sigmarite fleet, his expression cold. ‘Right you are, sir.’

‘From Zandri, we sail due west to El Khabbath. An old acquaintance of mine is fond of the place, and we could use his skills in matters arcane. You might remember him, Ghow. He’s the cove responsible for my glass eye, and for replacing my hand with… this.’

Roth raised his steam-sickle, the blade clicking round so it gleamed in the sunlight.

Ghow’s tattooed brows met like caterpillars in mating season. ‘Really, sir? You want to bring that fat bastard into this?’

‘Oh for Manann’s sake, Ghow,’ moaned Roth, despairingly. ‘Have some faith. You didn’t think I could steal the Heldenhammer, now you don’t think I can pull off a simple raid, or sweet-talk the most arrogant man in Araby.’

Roth turned around to face his first mate, his eyes sparkling with the fire of the old days. He looked younger than the islander had seen him in years.

‘Tell me, Ghow, do you ever get tired of being proved wrong?’

CHAPTER FIVE

El Khabbath, the Pirate Coast, Araby

10th Day of Pflugheit, 2522

Captain Roth brushed aside the pennants hiding the koffe tent’s interior from the bustling marketplace and ventured inside.

The City-port of the Eight Winds, they called it, but Roth knew of only one – the stinging sirocco that blew in great whirling sand devils from Araby’s endless desert. The Heldenhammer had only been docked for half a day, but Roth was already thoroughly sick of this place. There was sand in his beard, in his collar, in his mouth, between the delicate mechanisms of his eye lenses, clogging the cogs of his sickle, even in the crack of his arse. It almost made him long for the lifeless crystal waters of Nehekhara.

Uncomfortably vivid memories of lightless pyramidal tombs, bloodstained sand and the relentless pursuit of Zandrian war galleys rose unbidden in Roth’s mind.

Well, perhaps not.

The koffe tent was thick with narcotic smoke. Lounging upon fat cushions of silk and leather were indolent gourmets drawing upon elaborate wyrdroot hookahs. The gurgle of their tainted smokewater ebbed and flowed under a babble of lazy conversation. Above Roth’s head, the tent’s thick canvas ceiling was artfully folded to allow light to fall through patches of gauze whilst keeping the sand-devils out. Veiled dancing girls wound their rounded hips to the lilting flow of ethereal pipe music, their luscious bodies passing in and out of shafts of light with hypnotic slowness. A pair of blue, three-eyed cobras danced upright with them, lathing the air to taste Roth’s sweat. Behind them, a gibbon in a tiny suit of spiked armour tapped out a complex rhythm on a tambour fashioned from an elephant’s skull. The wiry simian caught Roth’s gaze and smiled at him, exposing rows of sharp gold teeth.

Without warning, a tall man with a wrestler’s physique and remarkable earlobes appeared by the captain’s side. Roth’s dagger was out in an instant, but the man just smiled broadly.

‘Go ahead, sea-sword,’ said the newcomer in a thin, girlish voice. ‘I’ve nothing to lose. Alternatively, come this way, if you’d prefer to live till sunset.’

Earlobes raised a pierced eyebrow and padded toward the rear of the tent. He stepped deftly between the lounging figures scattered across the floor and disappeared into the narcotic smoke. Light-headed and blinking, Roth followed as best he could. Lolling merchants and princelings giggled at his discomfort as Roth picked his way through them. One of the dusky-skinned dancers brushed his neck with a languid hand as he walked past, pursing her full red lips in an exaggerated kiss.

Roth gave her a wink. ‘Next time, perhaps.’

The captain followed the guard into a canvas-walled antechamber. The heavy flap behind Roth fell into place, plunging them into darkness. A strange sensation of movement disoriented Roth for a second, making his stomach lurch. Light flooded back into the antechamber as the guard pushed open a thick velvet curtain that led into a large circular chamber.

Roth emerged into a large vaulted room that was twice the size of the koffe house he had entered. Its walls were hung with priceless silken prints depicting the monarchs of the elements ascendant. Every inch of the floor was awash with cushions, each different from the next. Roth gagged on the bittersweet air. It tasted like burnt sugar cane mixed with spice and fresh sweat.

Directly ahead of Roth was a generously built man swathed in half an acre of pearlescent silk. His arms and legs were flung wide as he lounged against a cushion that could have consumed an ogre. Hookah smoke plumed above his curling black moustache, momentarily forming a pair of curvaceous women locked in a lover’s embrace before dissipating in the silken folds of the tent. His skin glittered as gold as the serried rings jammed onto his thick fingers and though one of his eyes was hidden behind a stylised eyepatch, the other stared out with frightening intensity.

Entwined around him were five harem girls, each tattooed with exotic serpents and fire-symbols, their languid limbs snaking over each other. The man wound a tiny clockwork dancer in his right hand, releasing it onto the koffe tray beside him so that it spun with a metallic purr.

The Golden Magus, as proud and strange as ever.

‘Captain Roth. You could at least show us the courtesy of removing those awful boots, my filthy old friend. Those cushions are Ulthuan silk.’

The harem girls tittered and pawed at the Magus appreciatively while he adjusted his crotch with a contented smile.

‘Magus. May the desert winds bless you,’ said Roth through a forced smile. ‘Though I have a feeling you’ve still got enough hot air to go round.’

‘O-ho, very good! A pun, and a topical one, no less! Very good, Jaego. The years have not dulled your cudgel-like wit. Instead it appears they have concentrated their efforts upon your face, and not without a considerable measure of success, it has to be said.’

Roth scowled. ‘Perhaps my demeanour suffered with the recent death of my family.’

‘Ah. Most… unfortunate,’ said the Magus with a heavy sigh. ‘I am truly sorry to hear that. A great loss. Your father was a good man and your wife had marvellous thighs.’

A muscle twitched under Roth’s eyelid.

‘Yes. A loss I intend to avenge.’

The sorcerer steepled a pair of heavily-ringed fingers in front of his lips before shooing his harem girls away. ‘Move, move. The Magus must speak now of matters grim. Leave us, and keep those pretty heads unsullied by talk of violence and revenge.’

The harem girls made a great show of dismay, cooing and moaning, but nonetheless melted away into the dark antechamber behind Roth.

The Magus hefted his great bulk from the silken cushions and padded over to a boiling glass urn at the back of the room. A long sword with a curved blade and astonishingly complex workmanship was sheathed within the glass chamber, twitching and jerking as bubbles flew madly from its red-tinged blade. The Golden Magus turned a tap at the bottom of the urn, filling what looked like a bronze lamp from its ornate fish-headed spout. The thick aroma of Lustrian koffebeans mingled with the omnipresent sugar-cane stench. It was not entirely unpleasant.

‘Something to drink? If I remember correctly, the charms of koffe are wasted upon you, but I believe I have some strong Estalian brandy around here somewhere…’ The Magus made a show of turning over at least three cushions before growing bored and daintily filling a tiny porcelain cup from the bronze koffe lamp.

‘With all respect, old friend, I did not come here to drink.’

‘Of course. You came here to engage my services upon a vengeful crusade.’

‘You are a perceptive man, Magus.’

‘That I am. And might I ask who, or what, is the target of this little adventure?’

‘Count Noctilus, and the captains of the Dreadfleet.’

‘O-ho-ho!’ The Magus slapped his legs in delight. ‘Oh, jest without price! You sly old jackal, you had me like a mackerel on a hook. Ha! I’m glad my girls did not see that one, they’d never have let me live it down. Oh, how I have missed you, Jaego, old friend, old knave, old scoundrel. Ah, me. Such fun.’

The Magus wiped a tear from his eye, leaving a thin smear of kohl across his cheek.

The mirth fell from his face as he saw Roth’s thunderous expression.

‘Ah. You do not jest at all.’

The Golden Magus took a long slurp from his koffe, catching his clockwork dancer just as it began to wobble. He wound its spring back up, a pensive expression on his face.

‘And I presume you have brought me the crown jewels of not only Karl Franz but also the entire line of the Griffon Emperors in return for my assistance on this – shall we be kind and say brave little foray – that you propose?’

‘Lead me to the Flaming Scimitar,’ said Roth, quietly, ‘and I will show you.’

‘Ah!’ cried the Magus, almost spilling his koffe. “The Flaming Scimitar, he says.’ The Magus pointed an immaculate fingernail at the curved blade inside the boiling urn. ‘That is the Flaming Scimitar, my dear fellow. My humble and frequently waterborne palace merely happens to be named after it. And now you play upon my curiosity, knowing that I am a sphinx at heart! Truly, you are a virtuoso of the conversational art, Jaego, to goad me so with implications of wealth unimaginable by a mere merchant prince such as I.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ said Roth. ‘Now are we going to your bloody warship or not?’

‘Well, so be it, so be it,’ huffed the Magus, making a wounded face. ‘No need to be rude about it. Let us visit the Scimitar. In fact, Jaego, on that account I rather think I am one step ahead of you. Walk this way, and do try not to befoul the cushions.’

The Magus drifted imperiously past Roth into the pitch-black antechamber behind him. The captain followed, secretly hoping to catch the eye of the dancing girl from his earlier encounter. The light was blotted out for a second, and Roth’s stomach lurched once more.

The captain nearly choked when he emerged into bright sunshine and inhaled a lungful of fresh sea air.

Instead of passing back into the cramped confines of the koffe house, Roth had emerged onto the deck of a massive pleasure barge. The golden-brown palmwood of its construction was so spotless that it practically glowed. Directly ahead of him were two purple-walled minarets the size of castle keeps, one tall, one broad, their elaborately swirled roofs lustrous in the evening sun.

Roth spun round in confusion, expecting to find the large canvas tent behind him. Instead he was confronted by a burnished banqueting hall. Its metal walls were pierced with tessellating designs in the style of the Arabyan courts. Above it flew two vast triangular sails of enchanted silk, their edges rippling with stylised flames that fluttered in the breeze. At the pleasure barge’s prow was a golden statue that was almost as large as Sigmar’s Wrath, a gilded djinn in a posture of attention, the blade of its downward-pointing falchion forming the prow of the ship. Roth blinked, completely nonplussed by what had just happened.

The Flaming Scimitar, inexplicably, had come to him.

Recovering his composure, Roth strode to the gunwales and looked down on El Khabbath’s dockside. Sure enough, his men were waiting there, canvas sheets covering the sea-chests filled with Nehekharan treasure. The Golden Magus’s crew had already extended a boarding ramp towards the dock and the sorcerer was striding towards Roth’s men, flanked by bald, bare-chested ogres with more piercings than a Stirlander’s dartboard. His arms were flung wide in a gesture of magnanimous welcome. Roth whistled hard and sharp, attracting the gaze of Ghow Southman and Old Ruger, and motioned them to bring the sea-chests aboard.

Five minutes later, the sea-chests had been lugged on board the top deck of Flaming Scimitar. The Magus was just about managing not to jump up and down with excitement as Roth’s men jimmied open the outer casings.

‘It’s Lustrian gold, is it not? Lustrian? It’s heavy enough. We all know you have been there, Jaego. They say the lizards value gold less than pig iron, but they will kill a whole nation just to retrieve a stone plaque. There are not any stone plaques in there, are there, Jaego? Just gold, eh? Ha ha! Ah, and so very much of it, by the look of things. I count fourteen… no, sixteen chests. Oh, Jaego, this better not be one of our little jests, or it will be the plank for you. O-ho, the plank for a prank. Ha ha!’

Ghow Southman shook his head in barely concealed scorn, piercings jangling, and ordered his men to open the sea-chests. They did indeed contain crown jewels. They also contained more gold than any of the crew had seen in their lifetime.

‘Nehekharan, actually,’ said Roth, staring out at the horizon. ‘Zandrian, to be precise. I lost two hundred and twenty men securing it. I don’t think the King of Zandri was very happy about it. He sent half a legion to get it back.’

For once, the Magus was lost for words.

‘Thank Manann we outdistanced them,’ continued Roth. ‘The dead tend to be rather possessive, after all, especially those Nehekharan kings. Mad as scarabs, the lot of them. They’ll hunt a man to the ends of the earth just for looking at their grave-treasures, let alone harbouring them on a ship.’

Beneath his golden body paint, the Magus paled. He plucked nervously at his rings, pulling them off and putting them back on again one after the other.

‘Zandrian gold. Zandrian gold eh? Fresh from Zandri, no less. Here on my lovely floating palace.’ He clasped his fat fingers together and did a strange little dance. ‘Amanhotep’s hoard, then, it must be. King Amenhotep the Intolerant; let us give the desiccated old prune his proper title. I’m not afraid to name him, as profound a miser in death as he was in life.’ The fact that the Magus’s jowls were shaking put the lie to his words.

‘Well I never, this is an interesting turn of events,’ said the sorcerer. ‘That makes my decision a good deal simpler, eh? I’m in this to the bitter end, am I not?’ The Magus frowned, then grimaced, then smiled like a crocodile. ‘Like it or not. Kill or be killed. Clever, Jaego. Very clever indeed.’

CHAPTER SIX

‘So talk on then, Jaego. I assume it is not just us two old men a-hunting on the high seas?’

The Golden Magus had rallied remarkably well from his initial shock at the provenance of Roth’s stolen treasure. The sorcerer had spent several hours tucked away in the maze-like interior of his twin minarets, but had eventually emerged with a beaming smile, clad in crimson finery and eager to show Roth the hidden wonders of his pleasure barge. No doubt his harem girls had helped console him.

‘Far from it. The most dangerous men in Sartosa are sailing with us. We’ve over a thousand at the moment, but there’s room for almost twice that number. Those Sigmarites know how to build a ship, I’ll give them that.’

‘Aha, yes, quite. That is not what I meant, Jaego. Your acquisition is very impressive, there is no denying it. A little on the vulgar side, but you could not have picked a more perfect warship for the job and, though Volkmar and his majesty Karl Franz are no doubt already moving against you, it is a wide enough ocean to evade their attentions. No, what I wish to ascertain is how many other galleons you intend to take with you. Manann knows you are going to need them if you intend to go a-hunting the Dreadfleet. Who, pray tell, are the rugged and no doubt hirsute captains you’ve sworn to your side?’

‘I’m still working on that.’

‘Excellent,’ the Magus said sullenly. ‘Truly excellent. I do not know whether to be flattered or horrified. You have not changed much, have you? Act first, act fast, and Morr take the consequences.’

‘Well, there’s Saltspite. She’ll have her price – she always does – but this time I can meet it. I just have no idea how to find her. She fled Sartosa as soon as Noctilus showed up.’

‘The Queen of Tides, eh? If you think you can bring that little minx under your flag, you must have something truly special tucked away in those roguishly bloodstained breeches, oh yes. But then you know her so much better than I, do you not, Jaego? If the wagging tongues of the dockside are to be believed, that is. You have heard what they say about her, I take it?’

‘Yes, yes. My crew delight in telling me. She’s got the sea in her blood, so to speak.’

‘It would explain a lot. There may be truth to it, for all you know, stranger things have happened.’

‘Like as not we could just follow a shark’s fin,’ said the captain, his face sour. ‘I’m sure it’d lead us to the bloodthirsty bitch sooner or later.’

‘Ah, the blessed labyrinth of love. If it is true, you might not be too far from the mark. She would indeed be a valuable ally. A warship as formidable as the Swordfysh might be able to weather the hellstorm you seem intent on conjuring.’

Roth nodded distractedly, his thoughts elsewhere.

‘Guth, attend me!’ shouted the Magus, beckoning over one of his ogre bodyguards to his side.

The largest of the walking meat-mountains lumbered over.

‘Assuming you are not too busy killing time, Guth, perhaps you would care to accompany me in order to fetch a little something from within my sanctums?’

The pantalooned monster frowned in puzzlement, absent-mindedly scratching his craggy behind. Roth would have laughed if there hadn’t been a serious risk of his head being twisted off.

‘Do wot?’ said Guth. ‘Killin’ time, is it?’ The ogre unsheathed a gleaming falchion that even Salt would have struggled to lift and hefted it into the air.

Roth jumped back, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

‘No, Guth, no…’ said the Magus wearily, motioning for the brute to put his great blade away. ‘Look, just… just follow me, please.’

He turned to Jaego with an exaggerated sigh. ‘My own fault, really. Without going through certain procedures, my minarets can be rather lethal. Good luck to the pirate that tries to plunder those most convoluted of puzzles. He might very well lose his head in the process, a-ha! Take a few minutes to appreciate the peace whilst I retrieve something, Jaego, it may be your last chance for a while.’

The Magus headed off towards the larger of the two minarets, his ogre bodyguard lumbering after him.

‘And do keep an eye out for Nehekharan galleys, old friend?’

True to his word, the Magus returned after a short while. His ogre bodyguard was hefting an overlarge ceramic urn the colour of the ocean in bright sunlight. Strange inscriptions and stylised waves ran around it in overlapping patterns. The Magus sauntered up to Roth, a smirk on his broad face.

‘Of course I would love to show you my latest dalliances in the field of clockwork, Jaego, were time not one of your many, many enemies. I have come rather a long way since I designed your eyepiece and your new hand, I do not mind telling you. But you strike me as a man who prefers his vengeance served lukewarm at the very least.’

The Magus motioned for Guth to place the painted urn against the polished wall of the barge, standing on his toes in order to better examine a minute chip on the rim.

‘Conjuration is rather old hat for me these days, to be honest. My tastes have drifted into more… esoteric areas. Ah, change! The only true constant in the world, or beyond it, come to that. Still, I have plenty of these urns tucked away, of varying sizes and degrees of antiquity. I am sure I can spare one, for old time’s sake.’ He smiled wickedly, as if sharing a private joke with Roth. ‘Oh yes, some real treasures hidden away, just waiting for their moment. Guth, please fetch my sword from the smoking room.’

The ogre returned within minutes, carrying a large and exotically crafted scimitar, its blade ablaze with leaping white flames. Guth held the burning artefact by the hilt as if it were a live asp.

Roth shielded his eyes from the sword’s brilliance, tinting his lenses to shut out the worst of the light.

‘Impressive,’ said Roth. ‘I take it you’ve enough boiling water for the time being, then.’

‘O-ho, yes, very good, very good,’ said the Magus, pulling on a glove of heavy chainmail and leather. ‘This, my dear Jaego, is the Flaming Scimitar, sword of a hundred fiery curses, the blade that burns with the flames of outrage! We have some pretty good curses in Araby, as you can see. One should not really drink that water, but it does give a certain kick to the koffe and it is about the only way I can find to sheathe the bloody thing.’

The Magus stepped over to his ogre bodyguard.

‘Guth, hand me the sword now please, no by the hilt! By the hilt, Guth, that’s the blunt part… good… that’s better… careful now… there we are. Thank you so much.’

Holding the white-hot artefact out wide, the Magus took a little bow and shooed the ogre away.

He turned to Roth and pulled an apologetic face. ‘Spirits appreciate a bit of theatre. Have to show willing.’

With that, the Magus violently kicked the sea-blue urn against the gunwale, shattering it into a hundred pieces and sending the water inside gushing everywhere.

‘Rise, daughter of the deep! Rise, sea-nymph, for soon you shall be released!’

To Roth’s mounting amazement, the urn-water flowed upwards instead of outwards. It was like watching an amphora being poured out in reverse. There seemed to be far, far more water than could ever have fitted in the ceramic container. Brine, too, by the sea-salt smell of it, gathering higher and higher in a glittering pillar. As Roth watched in fascination, the upwards cascade of sparkling water grew larger than the Magus, then Guth, then larger still.

The elemental spirit was taking the rough form of a human female, and a shapely one at that. A rippling meniscus kept the humanoid column from collapsing, and when the spirit bowed towards the Magus in greeting, droplets of seawater flicked outwards from hair-tendrils that swirled around her featureless head.

‘A salt-devil,’ murmured Roth. ‘Is this not folly? If she decides to take us under…’

‘Do hush, Jaego,’ said the Magus out of the corner of his mouth. ‘I know what I am doing.’

The Magus carved a strange sigil in the air with the burning sword, his conjurer’s cloak billowing in the invisible energies that whirled around him. The sea-nymph recoiled from his fiercely glowing blade until her sinuous body described a perfect crescent.

‘Hark, mighty princess of the waves!’ shouted the Magus as he raised his arms high. ‘I raise my command unto you! Guide us to the one men call the Queen of Tides, wherever she may be! Do this I bid you, and be free!’

As soon as the Magus had finished his speech the towering sea-nymph twisted around and dived over the gunwale, leaving a rainbow spray of droplets in her wake.

‘Oh, ho, ho! Best cast off, eh Jaego? It seems the Magus still has a way with the ladies after all!’

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Rat-Coves, Tilea

13th Day of Pflugzeit, 2522

‘Sail ho!’ came the shout, relayed from the topmost sentinel’s nest to the decks below. ‘Sail ho, captain. The Swordfysh, away to starboard.’

The Heldenhammer thundered along the Tilean coastline, her full sails straining as great fans of spume roared up on either side of her broad stern. A few hundred metres ahead, the Flaming Scimitar cut smoothly through the water. Just ahead of the pleasure palace’s bow was a jutting wave capped by the torso and head of the Magus’s salt-devil, curving left and right like a sea snake as it led the two great vessels to their quarry.

True enough, the Swordfysh could be seen tucked into one of the gaping coves that ranged the coast. Black as the void and twice as nasty, her ribbed sails were emblazoned with the skeletons of strange sea monsters, and the crack-snap of her stylised seaweed pennants echoed across the waves. Along her flanks were ranks of well-used cannons interspersed with carvings of razorshells and tritons. The ivory teeth of slain megalodons formed a rough crenellation along her gunwales.

The prow of the pirate warship sported a great jag-toothed blade that had broken open many a victim vessel’s hull over the years. Her bowsprit was fashioned from the horn of a unicorn whale topped with the skull of a sea giant, the spiral horn jutting from its forehead lending it the appearance of a hybrid mythical beast. Glimmering in each of the enormous skull’s eye sockets was a jewel the size of a powder barrel.

The Swordfysh’s exploits were legend, yet the stories that surrounded it were as nothing compared to the tales told about its mistress.

‘I heard she has brine in her veins, sir,’ said Ghow, leaning over to his captain. ‘Brine instead o’ blood.’

Roth smiled ruefully.

‘Yes, thank you, Ghow, for that pearl of insight.’ He shielded his eyes from the sun, scanning the horizon. ‘You might be right, apparently. I’ve never seen her bleed, anyway. She’s too mean for it.’

Burke, the master gunner, leant in conspiratorially. ‘Mate o’ mine,’ he said. ‘He got lured into her bedchambers by them big blue eyes. Last mistake he ever made. Eats her lovers raw, that one, raw as fish. Any cove worth their jerky knows she’s half-shark, or used to be before she cut the tail off herself. I’ll wager them stumps ain’t from no battle.’

‘Back to your guns, Burke,’ said Roth, shaking his head. ‘Unless you’d prefer to swim over there and ask her yourself.’

Saltspite’s galleon was too large to easily hide, but the captain had to admit she’d done a pretty good job. Something told him she would not be glad to have uninvited guests.

‘Close in, lads,’ ordered Roth. ‘But not too close, mind. There are hidden rocks about this part of the coast, and I’ll not have the Heldenhammer run aground. I want that ugly great auxiliary out of the hold and into the water, quick as you can.’

The captain strode over towards Dallard, who was idly sighting down the barrel of one of his beloved pistols. ‘Dallard, look lively. Signal the lads up on the Templus battlements, we’ll need those cable-pulleys on the gargoyles working hard. Ghow, rustle up the big sea-chest with all the whalebone and get a sally of your strongest oarsmen ready for five bells.’

The first mate nodded his assent before heading below decks.

‘And wear your best hat,’ Roth called after him. ‘We’ve a lady to impress!’

Dallard snorted derisively. His men were already hard at work, eager to haul open the Heldenhammer’s hinged decks and lift the curious vessel underneath into the water.

The temple-ship’s subsidiary craft, the Alaric, was as heavily built as its parent warship. It took sixty men, using a complex system of pulleys hung from the jutting beaks of the Templus gargoyles, to haul the stout cog out from its housing. A great deal of sweat and fury was expended in order to manoeuvre the Alaric overboard without capsizing the damned thing. Impressive, perhaps, but impractically large, mused Roth. Much like the Heldenhammer. Across the water, the Flaming Scimitar was deploying its own auxiliary craft.

Roth only hoped that the Queen of Tides wasn’t in one of her legendarily foul moods. If she didn’t notice the Sartosan heraldry upon the Alaric’s fluttering pennants, they ran a serious risk of being blown to pieces before they’d even reached her warship.

Half an hour of hard oarsmanship later, the auxiliaries of both the Heldenhammer and the Flaming Scimitar came alongside the Swordfysh’s black-tarred hull. Roth’s lip curled as he saw that the cove was thick with black-furred rats, some of which were as large as pigs. There was a living curtain of the scabrous things pouring down the cliffs at the back of the cove, flooding out of a dank black tunnel that led to who knew where.

The great pirate ship’s guns remained silent as they approached, much to Roth’s relief. Not so its captain.

‘What in the name of Manann do you think you’re playing at, Roth, you senile old ape?’

Aranessa Saltspite leaned from the Swordfysh’s aftcastle, flushed and furious.

‘You lot conspicuous enough, do you think? Some of us are trying to avoid attention, not go trumpeting around the high seas looking for trouble, you bloody moron!’

‘Oh, joy,’ muttered Roth. ‘Off to a good start, then.’

‘You scrag-ended, one-eyed, dog-faced cur! I should have blown you and your mate out of the water when I had the chance.’

‘Mother of pearl, sir, she’s not happy,’ whispered Ghow.

‘Well spotted, Ghow,’ said Roth. ‘There’s one way, and one way alone, to get out of this. Open the sea-chest and show it to her. And for Manann’s sake, do it quickly.’

The tattooed islander unchained the whalebone sea-chest at Roth’s side and opened the lid wide. On the deck above, Aranessa’s ice-blue eyes widened in response.

‘All right, Roth, you old soak. I’m interested. But you’d better bring that box up here right now, or you’re all food for the rats.’

Roth and Ghow Southman manhandled the bone-inlaid sea-chest on to the Swordfysh’s top deck, the Golden Magus huffing and panting as he climbed up behind them. As soon as they stepped aboard, the three ambassadors were surrounded by a half-circle of black-toothed murderers, each one more weatherbeaten and stinking than the last. Roth cast around for a face he recognised, but found nothing but pointed steel and contempt.

Aranessa Saltspite leapt down from the raised stairway behind them, landing on her sawfish legs with a percussive thunk. She held her asymmetrical trident at eye-height, the jagged prongs weaving back and forth between Roth and the Magus.

‘Well, well. And here I was thinking all the vermin in this little hidey-hole had tails.’

‘Oh ho,’ said the Golden Magus, ‘She is a live one all right. My lady, an utmost pleasure to make your–’

‘Shut it, fatness,’ interrupted Aranessa, whipping her trident around so that it was an inch from the sorcerer’s eye. ‘You’re on my ship now, and you’ll speak when spoken to.’

She turned to Roth, her trident still held unwavering in the Magus’s flabbergasted face.

‘First, you can tell me who this gilded futtock thinks he is and what the hell he’s doing on my ship. Second, you can tell me all about this little present you’ve brought me. Third, you can explain to me why you’re so keen on getting me killed.’

She looked out to sea.

‘There’s some bloody horrible monster out there, looks like a leviathan ate a shipwreck and it didn’t work out well for either of ’em. Don’t know what it is, before you ask, but it’s ugly as all sin, it makes this terrible noise, and it fires lightning instead of shot.’

Aranessa’s gaze didn’t waver and she gnawed at her lip in worry.

‘It’s been hunting me since late last night. It’d have to be blind as well as dead not to have spotted those fancy great ships of yours, which means it’ll almost certainly be on its way here right now.’

Frowning, Roth opened his mouth to ask her what the hell she was talking about, but closed it again when he saw the look in her eye.

Aranessa pulled a spyglass from the leather pouches hung at her waist and leant over the gunwale between two barnacle-patterned cannons. ‘Oh no, not already, no, no,’ she whispered. ‘Here it comes again. It’s found me.’

Roth gulped. He had never seen Aranessa like this.

‘Manann’s balls, that thing’s big,’ she said, narrowing her eyes as she turned back to face Roth and the Magus. ‘You two, start talking, right now. Make it good and I might just let you die fighting instead of squealing in the water while the rats eat you alive.’

‘Very well. There’s little time for it, so I’ll make this quick,’ said Roth, taking a sharp breath. ‘This is the Golden Magus, he’s helping me hunt down and destroy the Dreadfleet. I reckoned the Heldenhammer was the ship for the job, so I stole it. I’m making enemies port and starboard but I’ve enough to buy myself a few friends too.’ Roth hoisted the whalebone sea-chest up onto a barrel of Tilean rum and opened the lid. ‘This particular part of the haul, for instance,’ he said. ‘This is for you.’

The contents of the chest reflected on their faces with a soft blue light. Three dozen glittering and perfectly cut sapphires, each the size of a fist.

Aranessa smiled. Just for a second, the priceless jewels were completely outshone.

‘Well, well,’ said Aranessa, ‘You remembered. I always liked the blue ones best. I get the whole lot of ’em, do I, if we survive this fool’s errand?’ She looked haunted for a few seconds, staring out to sea, biting her swollen lip and playing with one of the bird skulls that hung from her braids. ‘Reckon I’ll be remembered too, if we pull this off. But we have to be quick.’

Roth looked sideways at the Magus, who raised an eyebrow. The moment was shattered by a crackling roar as a bolt of green-black lightning slammed into the cliff face above. All three of them ducked as a curtain of rubble cascaded into the water metres from the Swordfysh’s prow.

‘What did you say it was that is firing lightning at us?’ asked the Magus, a note of panic in his voice. ‘Some kind of sea monster?’

‘Time’s running out, Nessa,’ said Roth. ‘Are you in or out?’

The Queen of Tides raised her spyglass and leant out once more.

‘All right, Jaego, all right. I’m in. But we have to leave, right now.’

‘Splendid,’ said the Golden Magus, jubilantly clapping his hands. Roth and Aranessa both shot him a look and he deflated like a spent bladder.

Another bolt of dark lightning shot towards them, exploding with shocking force against the mouth of the cove and sending barnacle-encrusted rock flying in all directions. There was a distant roar as the Heldenhammer returned fire.

‘The problem is,’ said Aranessa, ‘we’ve got to get through that first.’

‘If I might be permitted to speak, your wondrous majesty,’ said the Golden Magus, sketching a mocking curtsey. ‘That is one problem I believe I can solve.’

The Alaric sped through the waves, pulled bodily towards the Flaming Scimitar by the Magus’s water-spirit. The sorcerer’s own craft was close behind. As Roth’s cog rounded the cliff of the rat-coves, he saw the creature Aranessa had described in the clear light of day.

It was a sea monster all right, but one that had clearly been dead for a very long time. An orb leviathan, by the look of it, somewhere between a spined whale and one of the lantern-jawed terrors that sometimes floated up from the deep, dark ocean. Waves crashed upon its snaggletoothed maw as it churned through the sea towards them. Its pallid white flanks had sagged and sloughed from its ribcage, exposing masses of scaffolding and strange metallic cannons that crackled with green-black energy. Jutting forward from its sloping forehead was an enormous spar of hardwood, a glowing green bell of enormous size dangling where a lantern-fish would have its lure.

A terrible ringing clangour drifted across the waves, and Roth’s head pulsed with pain. He felt liquid on his moustache and neck, and reached up to touch it, looking at his fingers. Blood was running out of his nose and ears.

‘We’re leaving, lads, even if it’s on the Scimitar!’ shouted Roth. ‘I don’t like the look of that thing any more than you do!’

The monstrous craft convulsed, and bolts of unnatural lightning crackled out across the bay. Two of them punched through the Heldenhammer’s flank, bursting out the other side as if it was parchment instead of stout Drakwald oak. The temple-ship returned fire, smashing the spines from the monster’s exposed back in an explosion of rotting bone.

Still it came on, its eldritch bell clanging madly. Roth felt as if his head was going to split apart. There were hundreds of rats scrabbling inside his skull and they were all desperate to get out. A single word swam to the forefront of his tortured mind, a rumour from the gutters of Sartosa.

Skaven. Few men had heard of such creatures. Most of those that had refused to believe that they existed at all, rats that walked on two legs like men.

‘Grapples,’ shouted Roth at the top of his voice, hands pressed over his ears. ‘Grapples to the Scimitar!’

Those of Ghow’s men who still had their wits about them leapt to obey, hurling their grappling hooks onto the gunwales of the Scimitar and pulling them taut. The captain turned, searching for the Golden Magus. The Scimitar’s auxiliary was docking, its master borne up towards his palace by a glittering pillar of living ice.

The chittering inside Roth’s head was growing unbearable. He shook his head and banged it against the mast in agony, but to no avail; the verminous voices were still there. He could no longer tell what was real and what was his imagination. The men around him were shimmering and twitching uncontrollably, their noses extending into long snouts, whiskers sprouting from their cheeks.

Salvation, when it came, did so in an unlikely form.

A trio of tornados came whirling out from the gold-capped minarets of the Arabyan craft above them, spiralling and spinning as they grew larger and larger. The waters around the Alaric were whipped into a white frenzy as the living winds swelled and bulged. To Roth’s tortured senses it looked as if the tornados were taking the forms of three fat-bellied giants, thickly muscled arms stretching out as if they had been kept in cramped conditions for far too long.

The air-devils were parting, now, swirling round in wide arcs and taking up positions behind the Heldenhammer, Swordfysh and Scimitar. One by one, they drew in huge breaths before exhaling great cones of ice-cold air.

Slowly at first, then with alarming speed, the vessels were turned about until they faced out to sea. Their sails snapped full with a series of muffled cracks, bellying out as they harnessed the winds blowing along the coast. The air-devils swirled around again until they were astern of each warship, funnelling their tempestuous breath into the sails.

Another crackling blast of lightning ripped out of the leviathan’s flanks, punching through the hull of the Swordfysh in a spray of timber and flailing limbs. She reeled, but rode it out, returning fire with an eighty-cannon broadside of her own as her protesting sails strained under the tremendous winds poured into them.

Propelled by the gale force breath of the wind-daemons, the warships carved into the open seas at great speed. The monstrous vessel was left behind, receding into the distance until it was no more than a pale stain against the horizon.

Roth dropped to his knees in the flooded bilges of the Alaric and gave fervent thanks to the gods, his head finally clear of the terrible cacophony. His men followed his example, every one of them a true believer after their narrow escape. They were exhausted and scared, but – to Roth’s immense relief – they were most definitely human.

This is madness, thought Roth. That ghastly monstrosity had to have been one of Noctilus’s fleet; no one else had the power to raise something that large from the dead. There was no way he could fight such terrors with conventional means and they couldn’t afford to go blundering blindly into the darkness any more. Roth cursed himself for his haste. In his rage he had wanted to begin the hunt as soon as possible. But it had become painfully clear that he needed to know his enemy, know where they came from and how to protect himself against them.

There was only one place he could think of to find the answers – with his father’s old crew, if any of them were left alive. And if they were, Roth knew exactly where to find them.

In the lowest, cheapest dives of wretched Sartosa.

Though it galled him, he had to go back.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Murderine’s Hilt, Smuggler’s Dock, Sartosa

3rd Day of Sigmarzeit, 2522

Since the fire, Sartosa had become a blackened slum. The cobbled streets of Smuggler’s Dock were dark and stinking, jagged spars of burnt wood jutting up from the vermin-infested remains of collapsed buildings. Roth splashed through a slick of blood-flecked vomit as he accompanied Aranessa towards the eighteenth tavern of the evening. Rain pelted down, dribbling from awnings and pattering from the brims of their bicorn hats.

The Magus had politely declined to accompany them on his search for Roth’s father’s old crew, insisting that he had been inspired to create a gift for Aranessa. He was probably more concerned about getting his robes wet, but after their narrow escape at the rat-coves Roth didn’t press it. The lying old toad was still as full of bilge as ever. He was probably frolicking with his harem girls in a sea of silk cushions at this very moment, laughing as Roth traipsed through the black muck.

Roth muttered to himself irritably. Aranessa picked her way through the streets by his side, also looking thoroughly unimpressed.

‘What makes you think this rut-hole’s going to be any different from the last dozen? Recruiting’s all well and good, but we’ve still got no answers. Even you’ll run out o’ coin at this rate.’

Roth stopped and looked exasperatedly at his companion.

‘Loose Jessi said one of the old guard runs the Murderine’s Hilt, and she’s too stupid to lie. I’m not going after Noctilus without learning everything I can about how to kill him. You know the stories. You can put one of those bloodsuckers down, but it won’t stay down for long. I want to make sure that when I burn the bastard, he stays down for good.’

‘Fine, fine. But you’re buying.’

The Murderine’s Hilt was mostly intact, though its mould-covered roof was badly bowed and holed in dozens of places. The windows were covered by strings of empty bottles and partially-gnawed bones that hung dripping from shattered spars. Even through the rain, Roth could smell the heady stench of wyrdroot and black tobacco.

A monstrous set of moonshark jaws served as the tavern’s entrance, hung with an assortment of fishbones, broken blades and mouldering driftwood. Roth pushed his way past the talismans and ventured inside, Aranessa close behind him.

The Hilt was filled with drunken and downhearted men, lost in a fug of rum and pipe smoke. The low hubbub of gossip was punctuated by the plip-plip-plip of a leaky roof dripping into an assortment of copper kettles and tureens, and the tavern’s customers were so intent on their own misery that barely anyone stirred at Roth’s entrance. A few heads turned as Aranessa strode past and a grubby hand snaked out from under a table to grab at her rump, but she scowled at the letch and the hand quickly disappeared.

Heading for the far side of the tavern, Roth leant both elbows on the stacked coffins that formed the tavern’s bar. The barkeep was a squat, pugnacious brick of a man with a gut that overhung his sword belt by almost a foot. He had his back to them, but Roth recognised the dragon tattoos across his back and shoulders. Lucas Arcbright, ex-captain of the Rascal and, before that, one of his father’s crew.

‘At last,’ breathed Roth.

The barkeep turned, still filling a pipe with something that looked like shoe leather.

‘You what, mate?’

‘Arcbright, right? It’s me, Jaego Roth. Remember? Indigio’s son?’

‘Indigio’s lad? Nah, he buggered off ages ago, back when I was a midshipman. Did for his dad, that, or what was left of him.’

The barkeep lit his pipe with a battered tinderbox and took a long, foul-smelling draw.

‘There’s nothing left of him at all, now,’ said Roth. ‘Nor the Enlightenment, come to that. Nor Lisabet, nor Armando.’

‘Blind me dead, it is you! Jaego, eh? Has it been that long? You must be what, two score an’ ten?’

‘Something like that, yes.’

‘And you must be Captain Saltspite, judgin’ by the legs.’

Aranessa inclined her head, smiling thinly.

‘We thought you went off with the Nightwatch, never to return.’

‘This place always brings you back. You should know that. We’re thirsty. Two brandies, clean.’

The barkeep lifted the lid of the coffin behind him and pulled out a dull black bottle wrapped in hessian. With a practiced flourish, Arcbright thumped the soot-encrusted vessel onto the wooden bar top.

‘Not much call for this stuff. The bottle’s yours for a twin-piece.’

Snatching the bottle from the bar top, Roth uncorked it with his teeth and took a long, heavy swig. He flicked a double coin in Arcbright’s direction. It hit the barkeep’s open palm with a meaty slap.

‘Nightwatch was scuppered on the Reik, last I heard. Went down with all hands,’ said the barman, pocketing the two-piece.

Roth passed the half-empty bottle to Aranessa, who took a long swig of her own before handing it back.

‘Is that right?’ said Roth. ‘Shame. Not much in the way of rebuilding since the fire, I see.’

‘Ha! Little point. That lot are still out there by all accounts.’

‘You mean the Dreadfleet?’ asked Roth, lowering his voice.

‘Yep. Working their way round the coast, last I heard.’ The barman looked troubled. ‘I know why, and all. He don’t take too kindly to trespassers.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, word has it that after they hit Sartosa, they went back to raiding the mainland coast. About the only place they ain’t touched yet is Luccini.’

‘Luccini, eh?’ said Roth, raising his eyebrows. He looked over to Aranessa, but she was busy tracing spirals in a puddle of rum. ‘The same ships attacking each time?’

‘Yep. The Bloody Reaver, there’s no mistaking it. Had that tentacled bastard with him too, the Black Kraken they call it. And the ghost that did for the Castilla, of course.’

The barkeep shuddered and made the sign of Manann. He uncorked a clay flagon and poured himself a glass of thick, black liquid, choking it down with a shudder.

‘It’s not just them lot out there, neither. Word is there are other vessels fighting with ’em, now. Some say one’s a war barge, a sand-ship from the desert coast. Others swear there’s a whale that shoots lightning, would you credit it? No doubt it farts fireballs an’ all.’

‘It’s real all right,’ put in Aranessa, her face deadly serious. ‘Two days ago, it blew a hole right through my ship.’

‘Huh. Well, it’s no stranger than a steel kraken, true enough. Frankly, I’m just glad I was on the Rascal when your old man took his penchant for exploration a little too far. Everyone that went on that voyage is either mad or dead.’

Arcbright put a meaty hand down the front of his ill-fitting breeches and had a good scratch, pouring himself another shot of greasy black liquor before continuing.

‘You hear all sorts, in my job. One-tooth Uther over there said he strangled Noctilus with a twist-rope. The only bloodsucker that feeble old bastard ever killed was a ’skeeter, and that were in his prime.’

The barkeep spat out an ugly, mean laugh, exposing a yellowed tongue. Roth stared at him evenly until he had finished.

‘I need to find someone who was on that last voyage,’ said Roth urgently. ‘I don’t care how mad they are, just so long as they can talk.’

‘That’ll cost you more than a twin-piece, friend. They’re a dying breed, them lot. Noctilus has got the lot of ’em, just about.’

Roth silently produced a broad coin of solid silver and clicked it meaningfully onto the beer-stained wood of the coffin bar top. It disappeared swiftly into the barkeep’s apron.

‘Red Hager? Bozetti? Better-than-Thou, Jan the Knife, Inky Schultze? Seen any of that lot?’

Arcbright just shook his head, lips pursed.

‘All long gone, mate.’

Roth continued, clicking another silver coin on the bar.

‘Dividio? Black Nils? Orinoco? Fredricksen? Long Morgan?’

‘You know Fredricksen, do you? Well shoot me down dead. No one calls him that no more. They call him Black Socket nowadays.’

The barman gestured to a trapdoor at the end of the bar.

‘You might even get some sense out of him, if he remembers you. Grubby little bugger’s below decks. These last few weeks he’s been eating rats raw and stealing my grog to wash ’em down, but you’ve covered his board for a while, I reckon. He’s been skulking in my basement ever since the raid. Won’t come out, not even for rum. Says the drowned’ll get him.’

The barkeep’s expression darkened.

‘I ain’t too sure he’s wrong, neither.’

Roth sighed heavily and slid a broad gold coin across the bar.

‘So are you going to let me see him or not?’

‘I certainly am, with manners like that,’ said Arcbright, snatching up the coin and biting its edge. ‘He won’t see you, though. Not any more.’

The barkeep slid a rusted iron key across the bar. Picking it up, Roth followed the barkeep’s nod towards the basement trapdoor. Behind him, Arcbright examined the gold coin by the light of a storm lantern before pocketing it and handing the lamp to Aranessa.

‘You ask me,’ said the barman, ‘the mad old boot needs putting out of his misery.’

Roth yanked open the trapdoor into the basement of the Murderine’s Hilt, coughing as dust and mildew gusted up from the stairway below. He fanned the worst of it away with his hat, peering into the darkness. Aranessa leant forwards, her storm lantern illuminating a rickety staircase that led into a well-stocked cavern filled with barrels, crates and sea-chests.

Something moved at the back, tucked away in a strange little nest in the corner. Roth and Aranessa approached cautiously, the light of the storm lantern held back so as not to alarm their quarry.

‘Fredricksen, is that you? Heindal Fredricksen?’ asked Roth. ‘It’s Indigio’s boy, Jaego. You remember me, don’t you? We caught a white marlin once, remember?’

There was a rat-like scurrying in the corner, but no reply.

‘Fredricksen?’

The thing that burst into the lamplight looked barely human. Sparse white hair clung to a wrinkled mask of pain and old age. Two eye sockets gaped in the darkness. A feeble mouth of infected gums opened and closed in the manner of a suffocating fish.

‘Jaego was a boy!’ he shrieked. ‘A little boy!’

Aranessa and Roth shared a look. She shook her head, sadly, and jerked her thumb back at the stairs, but Roth pressed on.

‘Once, long ago,’ said Roth. ‘But the years change us all, old friend.’

‘Have the drowned got in?’

It was hard to make out what the old man was saying. His voice was so reed-thin and gummed with saliva that it was little more than a wet whisper.

‘No, no. They’re long gone.’

‘Did… did they get Indigio?’

A moment of silence passed in the darkness.

‘Yes. They got Indigio. And I want to get revenge.’

‘No, no!’ cried Black Socket, scrabbling forwards on his knees and pawing the straw at Roth’s feet. ‘You’ll make it worse, boy, don’t you see? He’ll come after you. He’ll find you out. It sucks you in, boy. The spiral. You can flee, you can hide, but it sucks you in…’

Black Socket rocked back and forth in the gloom, clutching his bony knees.

‘I need to know more, Fredricksen. What is the spiral?’

‘The spiral of skulls,’ said Aranessa. ‘It’s alive, right?’

‘Yes, yes. She’s right, boy. You should listen to her.’

‘What? I…’ said Roth, turning quizzically to Aranessa.

‘Dreams,’ she said, shrugging.

‘Your father never listened,’ said Black Socket, bitterly. ‘Should have listened to your mother, he should have. Mother knows best. Mother knows best.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Roth. ‘Try to stay with us, Fredricksen. Try and help.’

Roth opened the map case at his waist and went to pull out his father’s strange map before remembering that the old man had no way to see it.

‘This spiral. Is it something to do with the curse?’

‘It is the curse, boy! The maelstrom. The maw. It eats the dead, draws them in, steals them from the deep. Ship, sailor, vessel, vassal, it draws them all in. Sucks them all in, the sickness. The ocean’s wound. The grave-wound!’

‘The… the Galleon’s Graveyard, do you mean?’

‘Aye, aye, that was what he used to call it. Not just dead galleons there, boy. It got him in the end. It’ll get me, too, and you, and her. Her too, yes, despite her blood. You’ll not smell so pretty as a corpse, salt-girl, dancing like a puppet to a dead man’s tune.’

Aranessa stepped forwards, and Roth heard the sound of a blade being unsheathed. He reached out a hand and gently steered Aranessa’s sword-arm back to her side. Black Socket whined like a beaten dog and scratched hard at the places where his eyes used to be.

‘And this is where the Dreadfleet is coming from? The graveyard?’

The reed-thin old man gave a whispering laugh that ran Roth’s nerves ragged.

‘Yes, yes, the Leech’s lair. Castles and cadavers and corpse-coral. They come through the storm. It’s the only way in. Can’t kill what’s already dead though, boy, and he’ll come after you if you try. He’ll come looking, out of the mist and the madness…’ The old man trailed off, muttering and whimpering to himself.

‘Fredricksen, listen. You have to tell me how to get there,’ pressed Roth. ‘You have to give me a chance.’

‘The moondial, boy. Your father had it. The moon’s the key, time and place. But you can’t kill ghosts, boy. Can’t kill ’em. Hawthorn, silver, cloven moon, cut off the head, spike the heart. No chance. You’ll only give yourself to him, one more bloated corpse. Please, leave it be. Please… You’ll just make it worse…’

Fredricksen’s dismal utterances tailed off altogether. He started to cry, curling up into a ball and pulling pieces of straw over his scrawny body as if to keep out the cold.

‘Jaego, this isn’t right,’ said Aranessa. ‘Let’s go.’

Roth sighed heavily, eyes closed. Shucking off his greatcoat, he covered Black Socket as best he could, and left a hip flask of potent Estalian liquor within arm’s reach.

‘I’m sorry, Fredricksen. I’ll do what I can.’

There was no response save a frightened, incoherent whimper. Two empty eye sockets turned towards him in the gloom.

‘Please… please kill me. I don’t want to go back there. Make it quick.’

Aranessa advanced again, jaw set.

‘Nessa, don’t.’

She turned to Roth, her frown lit from below by the lantern’s light.

‘It should be me,’ said Roth.

Shaking his head sadly, the captain pulled out his thrice-pistol and shot the old man in the heart.

CHAPTER NINE

The Vigils, Luccini

21st Day of Sigmarzeit, 2522

At midnight on the eighteenth day of lying in wait, the clamour of warning bells rang out across the decks of the Heldenhammer.

Roth dropped the table leg he had been whittling and slammed open the door of his quarters, hurriedly pulling on his jacket as he ran through the ship. He barged onto the topdeck and leapt up the stairs.

Out to sea, jags of vivid purple lit the skies. Flashes of magenta light burst through the waters towards them.

Clambering up the steep stairs that led to the observation deck behind Sigmar’s Wrath, the captain brought his father’s spyglass to his good eye. The epicentre of the distant tempest sprang suddenly into perfect focus. Ragged sails blighted the skyline, and strange silhouettes were cast against the sky whenever the lightning burst above.

‘It looks like we finally have company,’ said Roth, stowing the spyglass and marching up to his first mate.

‘Aye, sir. Not before time, the Heldenhammer’s shipshape again and the men are itching to kill something.’

‘They’re about to get their chance. It’s the Dreadfleet all right. They’re heading for Luccini. There must be one of the mapwright’s crew holed up there,’ said Roth. ‘Look lively, Ghow. Get the war colours up the mainmast and the sally-bells rung, double quick. We’ll head out from the Vigils on the starboard side, and straight into whatever comes out of the storm. Get Burke to prime the cannons, too.’

‘Aye, captain. It’s time to test the figurehead at last, is it?’

‘I fervently hope so. Get the lads up there immediately. This is the best chance we’re going to get to sink him.’

‘It can be sunk then, can it sir? The Reaver?’ said Ghow, fiddling with his facial piercings.

‘I’ve close on four hundred cannons and a sacred hammer the size of a building that says so, yes. Besides,’ Roth said with a sly smile, ‘we’ve got the gods on our side, remember?’

As the crew ran to their positions, the Heldenhammer left the shelter of the Vigils. She sailed at full speed towards the Dreadfleet, flanked by the Flaming Scimitar and the Swordfysh. The oncoming galleons grew larger with every passing minute, their tattered sails bathed in the pallid moonlight. A strange bank of mist rolled out before them, purple tendrils of light writhing within it.

The Bloody Reaver led a wedge of three warships that was heading straight for them. To starboard rode the Shadewraith, held aloft upon a cloud of green-grey fog. To port was a gigantic Nehekharan war galley, its flanks lined with four huge statues of jade, obsidian and gold. The galley’s deck was crested with a great pyramid and its stern was curled like the tail of a scorpion. An intense white light burned away the mist at the stern’s tip.

Memories of Zandri burned like the desert sun in Roth’s mind.

On the decks below, hundreds of men hurried to their positions. The Heldenhammer was a frenzy of activity from prow to stern. Sails were trimmed, boarding parties mustered and orders relayed to massed gun crews. Steam engines wheezed and chugged to life in the engine rooms that powered Sigmar’s Wrath.

Directly ahead of Roth’s fleet, the Bloody Reaver crashed towards the Tilean coastline, its winged prow sending up walls of spume every time it forced itself through a wave. The castle keep that sat upon the Reaver’s crag was just visible behind its sails, silhouetted against the moonlit mists of the Dreadfleet’s approach.

Roth watched his charging prey from the bridge. The Reaver had not altered its line of attack one degree since his warships had moved to intercept. It was as if Roth’s fleet was no more than a mirage, or a cloud of inconsequential insects to be swatted aside.

‘Arrogance,’ said Roth, turning to his first mate. ‘He may have the wind behind him, but he’s a fool if he thinks he can just smash straight through us. Our large bronze friend here will tip the balance.’

Ghow did not reply, but instead fiddled with the bull-ring in his nose.

Up ahead, the enemy warships were spreading out. The Shadewraith and the Nehekharan galley were going out wide, no doubt trying to outmanoeuvre Roth’s fleet and rake them into the bargain.

Sure enough, a set of distant crack-booms could be heard and a fusillade of shot streaked from the Shadewraith’s gun decks. Most of the volley fell short, sending up great plumes of seawater, but two cannonballs smashed into the prow of Flaming Scimitar, shattering the figurehead and sending a burst of flame leaping along the archways lining its hull.

‘Sails trimmed port side. Tack and bear down,’ bellowed Roth, desperately trying to match the Reaver’s speed as the monstrosity came onward. ‘Intercept course. Ready the Wrath!’

Roth’s lips curled as he imagined the gigantic steam-powered figurehead cast into the image of his wife, then his son, then his father. Vengeance was moments away.

To the left of the Heldenhammer, the Swordfysh was turning hard-a-port, attempting to intercept the Shadewraith as it swung out wide. As the black-sailed galleon stitched a path towards the ghostly warship, Aranessa’s cannons opened up, firing across the Heldenhammer’s bow at the distant Nehekharan galley moving towards Flaming Scimitar. The fusillade smashed hard into the flank of the statue-lined vessel, sending a dozen of the long oars that propelled it cartwheeling into the air.

‘Good shot, girl,’ said Roth under his breath.

Less than five hundred yards remained between the Bloody Reaver and the Heldenhammer. Through his spyglass, Roth could clearly make out the strange tongue-like promontory that extended from the giant skull at the front of its craggy central mass. Jutting from the cave that formed the eye of the skull was an artillery piece so large that a sea-troll could have made its lair inside it. It was a cannon Roth recognised as the scourge of the Lustrian coastline – the legendary Queen Bess herself.

He was staring right down her throat.

Roth’s view of the oncoming Reaver was suddenly obscured by a great pall of smoke. A split second later, a low boom could be heard, followed by a deafening crack as a boulder-sized cannonball smashed straight through the mast above his head. With a terrible, heart-rending creak, the Heldenhammer’s foremast toppled over, ripping and splintering and tearing the rigging as the great oaken pillar came crashing down. A rain of shrieking, helpless pirates fell from the sentinel’s nest, hammering onto the deck with a series of wet thumps. Roth didn’t even look round, grinding his teeth as he braced for the inevitable collision.

The castle-ship’s sheer size beggared belief. Roth was dimly aware of cannon fire to either flank, flames flickering in his peripheral vision. His gaze stayed fixed on the unholy bulk of Noctilus’s flagship as it thundered toward him.

Suddenly, a trio of metal tentacles shot towards the Heldenhammer’s prow in an explosion of seawater. Roth barely had time to shout in alarm before three more tentacles burst out of the sea, slamming down into the forecastle of his temple-ship and wrapping themselves around the figurehead. Roth dived behind the foremast, rolling into a crouch as a giant metal limb whipped overhead and smashed its remains into splinters. The screams of dying men filled the night air as Roth’s crew were impaled by flying spars of hardwood.

The Bloody Reaver turned hard, narrowly avoiding the Black Kraken as it rose up on the temple-ship’s port side. The Reaver’s vast stone hull ground into the Heldenhammer’s flank, ripping out great chunks of hardened Drakwald oak with a horrible wrenching sound. Roth was jolted off his feet, smashing his head on the giant metal chain-links that held Sigmar’s Wrath upright.

‘Fire!’ shouted Roth in a strangled voice. Curling black limbs drizzled oily muck onto him from above. ‘In the name of the Seafather, fire!’

Four decks of Imperial great cannons spat tongues of flame, hammering the flank of the Reaver and punching gaping holes in its composite hull. Rubble cascaded down the castle-ship’s flank as the two great warships ground past each other with a deafening crunch. In reply, a bone-shattering broadside blasted out from the scattered cannons of the Bloody Reaver’s flank. Scores of men and dozens of cannons were hurled backwards in a storm of shrapnel and shattered timber.

The Heldenhammer’s figurehead was still wrapped in the constricting tendrils of the Black Kraken. Roth’s face split into a manic grin; despite the Kraken’s efforts the blessed weapon remained intact. He staggered back to his feet, nostrils filled with the sulphurous stench of burning powder and the blood of dying men. A man o’ bones was rushing towards him, blade drawn. The captain yanked out his thrice-pistol and fired point-blank into the creature’s face. The shot burst its skull apart and sent the rest of it collapsing onto the deck in a clatter of bone.

Reloading, Roth looked around at the raging battle. Gunners writhed in pools of their own blood amidst shattered piles of debris. Loose groups of swordsmen fought like daemons to repel the men o’ bones who had spilled onto the Heldenhammer’s deck from the Reaver’s crags, cracking skulls and kicking through ribcages as they pushed the invaders back.

To starboard, the Flaming Scimitar was giving the Nehekharan war galley a wide berth. A clutch of cannonballs thundered from the pleasure barge’s hidden guns and tore into the statue-lined galley’s stern, just as a giant of living fire burst out from the Golden Magus’s minarets towards the enemy warship. It bore down on the Nehekharan ship, a burning sword in either hand.

Just as the fire djinn swooped down to incinerate the war galley’s skeletal crew, the beast-headed statuary ranged alongside the galley’s flanks jerked into life. The foremost amongst them, a jackal-headed giant of green marble, raised its gigantic blade, slashing at the flaming djinn as it passed overhead. The spirit burst apart in a fireball the size of the Grand Templus, incinerating dozens of skeletal figures on the decks below.

The Bloody Reaver continued to grind its way along the length of the Heldenhammer, opening a series of terrible wounds along the temple-ship’s flank. Roth saw a figure in a red bicorn staring down at him from atop the craggy mass of the Reaver’s stone heart. He raised his thrice-pistol and loosed off a shot, a triple puff of smoke impacting on the cliff where Noctilus had been standing.

‘Die, bastard! Shoot the sorcerers, men. Kill anything that talks.’

Marksmen high up in the fighting citadels of the Grand Templus took shots at chanting figures in the shadowed arches of the Reaver’s central cliffs. Several robed figures plummeted down the castle-ship’s sides to be ground to a paste by the crunching hulls of the two mighty warships.

‘Templus guns,’ bawled Roth, frantically waving at the galleon’s rear as the Reaver ground onwards.

The gun decks mounted in the Heldenhammer’s aftcastle sounded their fury, blasting a massive breach in the Reaver’s keep and causing a landslide of masonry to crash down onto the teeming figures below. In return, the Reaver fired point-blank into the Templus, smashing apart stone-faced Grand Theogonists and sending griffon-headed gargoyles tumbling into the waves.

Roth grimaced, spitting oaths as he sprinted down the length of the deck towards the fight. With the Heldenhammer locked in battle with the Black Kraken, the Reaver would be free to come about his stern and pound their aftcastle until it was little more than sanctified rubble.

Though he hated to admit it, Noctilus had completely outclassed him.

‘Hold fast, men,’ shouted Roth, frantically trying to regain control. ‘Chasing cannons, she’s coming about. Blast her to pieces!’

Casting about for a shred of hope, Roth spied something heading towards them from the mainland. Seven sets of sails, the yellow and red of their livery shining like gold in the dawn light. The Tilean fleet. Thank the Seafather, the Tilean fleet was coming.

Roth plunged down the stairs leading from the forecastle, slipping and falling and righting himself, bundling into an oncoming man o’ bones with a splintering crunch and stumbling onto the deck to join the battle. With the arrival of the Tilean warships the tide of the battle was certain to turn.

‘Rally to me. Rally to me. Hold positions, the Tileans are coming. The Tileans are coming!’

A man o’ bones darted towards him, but Roth smashed aside its rusted cutlass with his sword, punching it so hard with his sickle-hand that its head snapped back and it went over in a clattering pile. His eyes fixed on the Bloody Reaver, Roth ran across the deck, anger rising. Let Noctilus do his worst. He would climb to the steeples of the Templus, swing onto the Reaver from a rope, and throttle the undead scum himself.

Without warning, a blazing beam of light speared out from the Nehekharan war galley’s bejewelled stern, searing across the waves into the silken sails of the Flaming Scimitar. The embroidered sails burst into flame and the tempest djinn that had been filling them dissipated with a low howl.

The Nehekharan ship turned in a tight arc, heading back out to sea, and the Bloody Reaver came about to the match the same heading. Out to port, the Shadewraith disengaged from the Swordfysh, drifting sideways through the mists and leaving Aranessa’s warship hopelessly out of position.

‘No!’ shouted Roth, spinning around to the forecastle. The oily tentacles of the Black Kraken were unwinding from the masts and releasing their stranglehold upon Sigmar’s Wrath before clanking back into the sea. The Dreadfleet was retreating, just as the tide looked set to turn.

‘Cowards,’ screamed Roth, hoarse with anger and frustration. ‘Craven, yellow-bellied bastards!’

The captain rushed to the gunwale, climbing up onto a great cannon’s wooden framework to get a better view. Sure enough, the Bloody Reaver was wrapping the mists about itself like a shroud. Something was bobbing in its wake, something that looked like a broken circle of white orbs. Roth squinted. No, not orbs. They were skulls, without a doubt, describing a loose spiral.

The tang of magic crackled in the air. Roth felt a trickle of blood seep from his nose as a powerful wave of pressure broke over him.

By the time Roth had his spyglass fixed on the Reaver again, the Dreadfleet had disappeared into the mists.

CHAPTER TEN

The Great Ocean

22nd Day of Sigmarzeit, 2522

With the retreat of the Dreadfleet, Roth and his allies limped out to sea as best they could. The three once-mighty warships were ragged shadows of their former glory. Sails flapped loose, trailing broken spars and tangled rigging. The Swordfysh was taking on water, her hull holed by a direct hit from the Shadewraith. The walls of the Grand Templus had been breached in a dozen places and countless crew had been wounded or killed. Even now, the dead were being burned on great metal pyres raised up between the mortar emplacements in the centre of the top deck. For its part, the Flaming Scimitar had almost nothing left of its once-beautiful triangular sails. The Golden Magus was relying on the strength of his salt-devils for propulsion as his once-magnificent palace slunk out to open waters.

As dawn broke, Roth hoist the flag of parley. Before the sun had fully risen, the three warships came alongside one other, made clumsy by the damage they had suffered. Rowboats were lowered from the Swordfysh and the Flaming Scimitar, and their captains made their way to the aftquarters of the Heldenhammer. The detritus of battle was scattered all about, and the mood was grim.

The temple-ship’s war room was illuminated by flickering candles and gently swinging storm-lanterns. Amber sunbeams fell onto the oaken chart table through stained-glass portholes ranged about the roof. Roth, Aranessa and the Golden Magus sat on tall-backed chairs carved from wyvernbone.

Roth sat in silence, his good eye burning under a furrowed brow.

‘Am I the only one thinking that didn’t quite go according to plan?’ said Aranessa, crystal-blue eyes looking out from behind a curtain of plaited locks. She slouched, listless and defeated, her sawfish legs jutting out from under the table.

The Magus was deep in thought, absently fiddling with his little clockwork dancer and setting the complex toy onto the chart table so she spun in perfect little pirouettes. ‘We survived,’ he said. ‘And we learnt more about our enemies.’

‘Easy for you to say, fathead. You lost, what, a few dozen slaves, a couple of your pretty sails? And your rope-monkeys are rigging up spares as we speak. I lost almost a hundred men, blown to pieces by cannons or cut down by the blades of ghosts. Ghosts we couldn’t cut down in return.’

She glowered fiercely at the Magus, who showed his teeth to her in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

‘Roth lost several times as many,’ continued Aranessa, ‘and got this ugly great beast all but scuppered into the bargain. They made us look like a pack o’ land-lubbers. And I can’t help but notice they don’t tend to stick around long enough to get hit back.’

‘That’s the bloody problem,’ shouted Roth, slamming his fist down onto the chart table so hard the lacquer cracked. ‘This is no way to fight a war. They come on hard, and fast, but every time any amount of resistance is marshalled against them they just melt away into the mists. Tell me, how am I supposed to kill the fiend now? We squandered our best chance, damn it!’

There was an uncomfortable silence. Motes of dust danced in the shafts of amber light.

‘I think we all know how, do we not?’ said the Golden Magus, slowly and deliberately as if speaking to dim-witted children. ‘Though, perhaps understandably, none of us are keen to be the first to say it.’

Roth gave a shuddering sigh, and shook his head for a moment before getting to his feet.

‘You’re right, Magus. There is one option left. I’ve been meaning to show you something. Some things, rather, that my father left to me.’

Heading over to the baleen-fronted cabinet in the corner, Roth pulled out his map-case and unfurled his father’s parchment in the centre of the table, carefully placing the exotic moondial atop it to stop the sides from rolling up.

Aranessa raised an eyebrow, but the Magus’s eyes practically bulged out of their sockets. Composing himself, the sorcerer wound up his clockwork toy and set it spinning on the table in order to weigh down the opposite corner of the map.

‘A map of the Galleon’s Graveyard,’ said the Magus, affecting an air of nonchalance. ‘How unusual.’

Roth nodded sombrely. ‘Something close to it, at least. The inside of my old homestead was covered in this sort of thing. My father was never the same after that voyage, the one that took him into this place. Believe it or not, this is his most cogent rendition. And this,’ he said, gesturing to the moondial, ‘this is the key to getting us in.’

Aranessa looked dubious, though her eyes still flicked back to the map and the moondial.

‘Looks like the scratchings of a madman to me.’

‘It’s more than that, I think. Nessa, what was it you said down in the Burke’s basement?’ asked Roth. ‘About the spiral? Well, that’s exactly what I saw in Noctilus’s wake. A spiral of skulls. It was the spoor of the maelstrom – this one, right here.’

Roth tapped at the whirlpool of teeth and gibberish that dominated the right half of the map.

‘This whirlpool is what’s drawing in those who die at sea. This is the source of the Sea-Curse.’

The Magus was already poring over the parchment’s crazily winding text, an expression of extreme concentration on his face.

‘Not only that,’ he said, ‘but by the looks of it, that “whirlpool”, as the captain rather charmingly puts it, is the source of Noctilus’s power. It is a vortex of magic just as much as it is of brine.’

The Golden Magus got up from his seat and moved around the chart-table, following spirals of text with his finger before continuing.

‘The master of the maelstrom is able to use its power to shift from one side of the veil to the other, moving between worlds at a whim,’ he looked up at Roth. ‘Or so your father believed, at least.’

‘And you want to do something about it, right, Magus?’ said Aranessa. ‘What’s in it for you?’

‘All I want is to see Noctilus burn,’ interrupted Roth, staring coldly at her. ‘It doesn’t matter how. There was the small matter of a chest full of sapphires that changed hands to impress that fact upon you.’

She clicked her tongue in irritation, leaning over the map. ‘It looks to me like that particular deal gets worse every day. You didn’t tell me I would have to sail into the realm of the dead, navigate a landscape of… are those volcanoes? And lots and lots of shipwrecks – and look, there’s a giant fish-monster vomiting up crabs…’

Another awkward silence held sway. Roth’s face was grey with anger and frustration.

Aranessa glanced up at him, and her expression softened a little. She sat back heavily in her chair.

‘Look, Jaego, I don’t like the Sea-Curse any more than you do, and if killing Noctilus is the way to end it, then you can count me in. I’d love to see this spiral gone from the world, I really would. Manann knows I see enough of the damned thing every night. But we can’t just charge in there without a plan and hope for the best.’

‘She has a point,’ said the Magus, winding up his clockwork toy to set it dancing again. ‘The magnitude of this phenomenon is such that it cannot be fought, not truly, and certainly not by the weapons of the material world. I merely propose that we imbalance it.’

‘Imbalance it?’ said Aranessa. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

The Magus grinned like a hyena. ‘Observe.’

The sorcerer leant down and blew softly onto the spinning dancer. The exhalation sent it wobbling, then spinning out of control, skittering onto the map before it slewed to a stop over the depiction of the toothed whirlpool.

The Magus sat back, pleased with his little piece of theatre.

‘Just as a well-placed puff of air will send a spinning top skidding to an eventual halt. I believe that if we are to disturb the maelstrom’s momentum with the correct application of magical force, it will unravel and Noctilus’s power will be undone. The curse will end, and the oceans will no longer be polluted by its taint.’

‘Is that right?’ said Aranessa dubiously.

‘It is indeed,’ said the Magus, spreading his hands and smiling widely. ‘Trust me, my dear. I have studied such things for, oh, rather a long time. Let’s say decades.’

‘And you’re going to be the one that stops this thing, are you?’

‘Not exactly,’ said the Magus. ‘Though I do believe I have some artefacts in my possession that may aid us in our most noble quest. Three grand urns that I have collected over the years, each sealed by a far greater sorcerer than I. The greatest, in fact, to have ever lived.’

He preened, his kohl-rimmed eyes wide for dramatic effect, but neither Roth nor Saltspite took the bait.

‘I would prefer it if you didn’t ask me to mention his name,’ the Magus continued, waving away the question despite the fact that no one had asked it. ‘It is bad luck to do so. Suffice to say, he makes Noctilus look like an apprentice by comparison. That which resides inside these urns is… of regal potency, shall we say? Oh yes. And yet I fear that one urn’s contents alone would not be powerful enough to tip the balance.’

He wound up the spring of his clockwork dancer, this time placing it at the centre of the toothed spiral on the parchment. It whirred round and round, purring as it went.

‘According to your father’s notes, Jaego, the maelstrom is not just powerful – it is power, raw magical energy made manifest. If the contents of all three of my urns were set free within it, however, they might just tip it into dissolution. We would have to break them at the right time, in the right place, of course.’ He directed a pudgy finger at his spinning dancer. ‘Right here, in point of fact.’

He picked up his little clockwork toy as it wound down and kissed it delicately on the head before tucking it away in the voluminous folds of his golden robes.

‘How do you know all of this?’ asked Aranessa, shaking her head in puzzlement.

‘I do not, my dear. It is merely a theory of mine, and quite a new one at that. Nonetheless, sometimes one just has to fight with whatever tools one has available – in this particular case, my royal urns. Jaego understands, I believe, being a man of action. Which is fortunate, because it is Jaego that is going to unleash them.’

‘He is?’ said Aranessa, looking at Roth.

‘I am?’ said Roth, looking at the Magus.

‘Yes indeed,’ said the sorcerer. ‘I am far too old and fat for dashing heroics.’

‘But how do we even get to the bastard thing in the first place?’ said Aranessa.

The Magus looked expectantly at Roth. ‘Jaego, old fellow? Would you care to elucidate your own theories to your impeccably mannered paramour?’

Roth held up the complex moondial, glaring at the Magus as he held its glinting apertures and fascias up to the light.

‘My father’s last act was to preserve this map, this moondial and this spyglass. Pretty much everything else he ever owned was burnt to ash, priceless artefacts I know for a fact were close to his heart. And yet these three items, items I’ve never seen or heard of before, he saw fit to protect above all else.’

Roth rubbed his eye for a moment and adjusted his lens before continuing.

‘I think he left them for me. He saved them so that if I ever found his body I could avenge his death. This thing,’ he said, proffering the complex machine to Aranessa, ‘this will show us how and where to get in. I’ve been studying it for the best part of two weeks. The phases of the moons, represented here… the various sections coincide, overlap at certain times. I think if we wait at the right latitude and longitude at the right time, just as Mannslieb is completely obscured by Morrslieb, then we can sail straight through the veil into the world beyond.’

Aranessa blinked hard. ‘Go on,’ she said.

‘We might have to ride out that storm we saw to do it, but I think that’s how my father crossed into Noctilus’s lair all those years ago. That’s what Black Socket said, at least. It’s in Morrslieb, the magic to get us across. That’s what this thing does. It tracks the phases of the Chaos moon.’

‘Well done indeed!’ said the Magus, clapping his ring-encrusted hands together with a bright chime. ‘Quite so, Jaego, quite so. I feel sure that together we can work out how to use it. I have no little expertise in such matters, as you know, and what may seem complex to you is child’s play to a man of learning such as myself.’

‘The problem is,’ said Aranessa, slowly. ‘The problem is that the Dreadfleet just ran rings around us, and that was in our territory, not theirs. We need repairs, at the very least.’

Roth slumped back into his chair. ‘Sadly, we’ve outstayed our welcome in Tilea, and I don’t think we have time to refit ships of this size in Sartosa.’

‘I hate to be the one to say it, Jaego,’ said the Magus, ‘but even if we did have time on our side, I am not entirely sure I would trust a burnt-out den of thieves to repair your ship, let alone mine.’ He picked up Roth’s moondial and examined it, nodding his head sagely. ‘Besides, if my readings are correct, which of course they are, then the appropriate conjunction is due in less than eight days. We would do well to be in place.’

The clanging of a relay bells echoed from the corridors outside, summoning the captains to the bridge.

‘Right,’ said Roth, ‘decision time. By my calculations, it’ll take at least half a week to get under the stars as they’re shown on that thing. I say we head for the site of the conjunction and catch Noctilus in his lair before he crosses the veil again. We can study this little lot as we go. Nessa, are you in?’

Aranessa opened her sapphire eyes wide, blowing out a long breath through pursed lips.

‘All right, yes. Let’s do it. I was going to end up in that bloody graveyard sooner or later. I might as well arrive in style.’

The Heldenhammer sailed through the open seas, the Swordfysh and the Flaming Scimitar in its wake. Word had already spread by the time the captains had returned to their posts. Another sighting – not a sail this time, nor a storm, but smoke.

Roth emerged from his quarters and shook out his spyglass as he climbed the long stairs onto the topdeck. Scarcely ten miles distant, a plume of smoke could indeed be made out drifting upon the horizon. It mingled with the underlit clouds of the sunrise, trailing upwards lazily until the winds teased it into nothingness.

‘Ghow,’ shouted Roth, but the islander was already at the helm. Roth stormed along the deck towards his first mate.

‘Ghow, we are absolutely nowhere near any land mass, correct?’

‘Aye sir, that’s a mystery out there, so it is. Must be a steam-ship. Must be. But even them lot don’t make that much smoke.’

‘It’s the Black Kraken, that’s my guess,’ said Roth. ‘It must be badly damaged to give out that much smoke. Has to be good news for us. Then again,’ said Roth, looking eastward with a thoughtful expression, ‘Barak Varr’s not too far from here. All right, Ghow. Hard-a-starboard with all speed.’

The Heldenhammer’s prow eased its way through a mile-wide slick of oil, the ocean’s rainbow skin reflecting the dawn light in a hypnotic display of colour. At the slick’s shimmering centre jutted a series of giant metal shapes. The forms were unrecognisable at first, but as the Heldenhammer drew nearer he saw that it was the remains of an armoured war vessel of colossal size. It looked like it had been mangled beyond recognition by the hands of the sea god himself. Though the last sections of the wreck were slowly sinking under the water, the uppermost parts of the hull were still on fire. Columns of greasy smoke billowed from the machinery that could just be glimpsed inside.

Through his spyglass, Roth saw great furrows where the metallic tentacles had tightened their grip upon the beleaguered steamship.

‘It’s a dwarf ironclad, or used to be, at any rate. Out of Barak Varr, by the crest on the tailpiece. A victim of the Kraken, I’ll wager.’

‘Mother of pearl,’ murmured Ghow, looking down at the wrecked ironclad and then up at Sigmar’s Wrath, scratched and gouged but still largely intact. ‘We got off lightly, then.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Roth, brow furrowed.

There was a distant shout, right on the cusp of hearing. The first mate turned to Roth, puzzlement on his blunt features.

‘Sir?’ said Ghow.

‘Aye,’ said Roth. ‘I heard it. Hoy, I can see them. There, down by the propellers. Survivors, by the looks of it, and quite a few of them. Excellent. If we play this right, Ghow, we might get our second wind after all.’

‘How so, captain? I mean… even if they’re dwarfs, there’s only a dozen of the little grumblers at most. Maybe less. Even if they all join us…’

‘Think, man,’ cried Roth, loud enough that the rest of the crew on the forecastle could hear. ‘Barak Varr is little more than a day’s sail away from here, and if we fish out this lot we’ll have a way in. Dwarf naval engineers, Ghow. You know what they say about that lot. Humourless swine, the lot of them, but they can build ships like no one else.’

Roth lowered his voice so that only Ghow could hear him.

‘They absolutely cannot stand being in debt, especially to outsiders, and by all accounts their liquor can keep a man hearty even as he sails into the jaws of death. With a fair wind I’ll have us back in the fight in no time.’

Roth jumped up onto the capstan with the agility of a man half his age.

‘Hark, lads! Deploy the Alaric and get those beard-lovers out of the water as quick as you can. It’s dwarf beer for us tonight!’

Dripping wet and fuming, the stocky dwarf captain of the destroyed steamship stomped towards Roth. Ghow Southman ran out ahead, eyes wide as if he feared an axe might be planted in his spine at any moment.

‘Oi!’ shouted the irate dwarf behind him, red of hair and even ruddier of face. He wrung his apron of a beard onto the deck, combing it with his fingers so that it was more or less straight. ‘You there with the feathery hat. I take it you call yourself the captain of this ridiculous great contraption?’

In one smooth motion, Roth pulled out his thrice-pistol, cocked it and aimed it squarely at the dwarf’s groin.

‘I do indeed, and unless you want to bellow your next question in a voice a good sight higher I suggest you address me with a little more respect.’

The two captains glared at each other for an uncomfortably long time, their men gathering behind them. After a minute, Roth’s arm began to tire from aiming the antique pistol, but he’d die before he showed weakness, especially to an arrogant cur like this one.

Eventually, the dwarf’s thunderous expression eased.

‘Aye, lad. I suppose I’d ask some courtesy of you, had I just fished you out of the brine.’

The dwarf looked mournfully out to sea as the last of his wrecked ironclad sank beneath the waves.

Anger burned under the dwarf’s bushy brows. ‘We were attacked unseen from below,’ he said. ‘Not much we could do about it. Dirty, underhand tactic, attacking unseen from below. Sort of thing you’d expect from a damned grobi.’

He hawked and spat over the gunwale in disgust, which Roth thought was quite some feat given that it was thirty feet away.

‘Grimnir’s bloody axe,’ muttered the dwarf, bitterly. ‘It has not been a good night.’

‘I can sympathise. My name is Captain Jaego Roth. This ridiculous great contraption is called the Heldenhammer. Welcome aboard.’

‘Huh. You don’t look the religious type. You’re a pirate, I can smell it on you, despite all your fancy trimmings. I’ve no quarrel with pirates, lad, don’t get me wrong. Your honour is your own affair. Besides, many of my own folk see me as much the same. You heard of Red Brokk?’

‘I have indeed,’ lied Roth. ‘You’re out of Barak Varr, aren’t you?’

‘That I am, lad. Brokk Gunnarsson.’

‘Gunnarsson, that’s right,’ said Roth, without missing a beat. ‘They say you forge marvels. In fact, I heard they call you the Engine Master back in Tilea.’

Ghow rolled his eyes upwards, but Roth’s face was as serious as the grave.

Gunnarsson straightened up somewhat, his barrel chest swelling.

‘Huh. Engine Master, is it? Hear that, lads?’

The dwarf turned to his fellow crewmen, eyes creased in a smile. A few of the sodden dwarfs just shook their heads, muttering in khazalid, and one tried to light a long-necked pipe.

‘Marvels to you manlings, perhaps,’ Gunnarsson continued. ‘But not marvellous enough. I just lost three-score good hands, not to mention the Forge, the first ironclad to run quiet as a mouse. Lost ’em to that traitorous, honourless dog at the helm of the Gulgraz Krannak, may he forever suffocate in flame.’

Roth nodded sombrely as if he understood completely.

‘I just led several hundred men to their deaths in an attempt to kill the Bloody Reaver,’ said Roth. ‘The fiend at the helm killed my family, and I’ll destroy him or die in the attempt.’

‘Aye? The Reaver, eh?’ said the dwarf, taken aback. He cocked his comprehensively hirsute head to one side, looking Roth up and down as if he were examining a piece of machinery.

Roth saw the opening and sailed towards it at full speed.

‘We’re in bad shape. We need repairs, but there’s no port near here that can deal with warships of this size.’

‘You humans,’ said the dwarf, snorting.

Roth took it as a cue to continue.

‘That floating palace over to port is Flaming Scimitar. Don’t underestimate her, she’s a great deal more dangerous than she looks. That’s the Swordfysh away to starboard, one of Sartosa’s finest, and with a she-devil at the helm. But even with three of the most powerful sailing ships on the high seas, we couldn’t take down our quarry. The master of the enemy fleet, Count Noctilus, has ghosts and krakens at his command. And then there’s the Reaver itself.’

The dwarf’s eyebrows shot up at the mention of krakens and he scratched his broad chin beneath his magnificent russet beard. Metal tools and strange devices bound into the thick facial hair clinked and jingled under his stout chain gauntlets.

‘Krakens, eh? That’s what you manlings call the Krannak, isn’t it?

‘My khazalid isn’t up to much,’ said Roth. ‘Care to explain?’

‘Would it happen to be a giant submersible in the likeness of a deep-sea beast? Gromril tentacles strong enough to crush an ironclad? Inefficient engine distribution?’

‘That’s the one. It was tearing chunks out of the front of my ship not less than twelve hours ago,’ Roth pointed to the ravaged wood of the bow, ‘though it looks like it saved its strength for tackling yours.’

Roth casually pointed his thrice-pistol out to sea, checking the sights as he talked. ‘I’m going to blow the thing to pieces, as soon as I sink the Reaver. I’ll hunt them to their lair if that’s what it takes. Though after the last two battles I feel like I’m walking blindfold into a den of trolls.’

‘Blow it to pieces, eh?’ said the dwarf. ‘You concentrate on the Reaver, lad, that’s your duty. Let me worry about the Krannak. I’ve my own scores to settle.’ He nodded, slowly, his broad chin stuck out. ‘Reckon you’re the kind of man who’d understand that.’

The dwarf stared at the captain once more, his eyes not moving from Roth’s for another long minute.

‘Long time back,’ said Gunnarsson, eventually, ‘I worked in the same forge as the wretch at the Krannak’s helm. I tell you now, Roth, he don’t fight fair. Hackhart’s his name, may he drown in the filth of his own lies. Calls himself the master of the submersible. Ha! The only thing he’s mastered is how to cheat and steal and sell his damned soul for a scrap of glory.’

The dwarf rubbed the rivets that stitched across his face with his thumb, his cheeks flushed as red as his masterpiece of a beard.

‘That thing don’t work like a normal steam-ship, Roth, I’ll tell you that. A dark power lies within. Some foul pact has been made since he and his machine were booted out of the Engineers’ Guild. I’m going to kill that damned thing, and the yellow-bellied grobi at the helm, too, grudge be done.’

Gunnarsson scowled at Roth for a moment before sharing a brief conversation in khazalid with the bedraggled group of his fellow survivors, then he turned his attention back to Roth.

‘Listen well, Captain Jaego Roth of the Heldenhammer. You and your men here would do well to see us back to Barak Varr. You won’t regret it, and you got my word on that, strong as gromril. We’re not much for wood or cloth, too flimsy by half, but we’ll have your wind-runners watertight inside a day. Armoured better than before, too.’

The dwarf smiled, his white teeth glinting in the russet forest of his beard.

‘Then you’re going back on the hunt, lad.’

Red Brokk pulled off his heavy chainmail gauntlets and unscrewed a long rune-engraved liquor-tube from his great plaited shrub of facial hair. He poured a little of the steaming alcohol onto his palm, spat onto it and extended a stubby, calloused hand in what Roth assumed was a gesture of friendship.

‘And this time, manling,’ said the dwarf, ‘I’m coming with you.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Great Ocean

Geheimnisnacht, 2522

A galaxy of scattered stars reflected in the equatorial waters around Roth’s pirate fleet.

Churning past them was Red Brokk’s experimental ironclad Grimnir’s Thunder, a giant steam ship as long as the Swordfysh and twice as broad. High above, a silver-prowed war dirigible chugged through the night air in lazy circles, ready to return to the Thunder’s launch dock at the first sign of trouble.

Roth was still counting his blessings in winning the dwarf captain to his cause. The master engineer had lived up to his promise, taking them to Barak Varr and repairing their vessels, before agreeing to follow Roth into the Dreadfleet’s lair, believing Roth that they would find the Black Kraken at Noctilus’s side. Perhaps it was true what they said – that dwarfs were afraid of nothing and they would go the ends of the earth in the name of revenge.

The Golden Magus’s studies of the moondial had confirmed Roth’s coordinates, leading them to an unremarkable stretch of the Great Ocean. The constellations above them were exactly as they appeared on the moon-dial’s face. Roth knew in his heart they were in the right place. He could taste it in the air, come to that, an ever so slight hint of decay, carried on the sea breeze. A green signal flag fluttered from the Flaming Scimitar’s foremast. All was well, for the time being at least. As night drew in, the moons that loomed in the skies above grew closer and closer to full eclipse.

Midnight crept ever nearer. Roth’s reveries of self-loading dwarf gun batteries and turret-mounted flame cannons were brought to an abrupt halt by a sonorous horn blast that sounded high above. Red Brokk’s war dirigible was floating steadily down towards the Thunder, a ruby-red rune burning underneath its prow. The captain wouldn’t know one dwarf symbol from another, but the hairs on the back of his neck and arms were standing up. Tension crackled in the air.

Sure enough, Roth saw something on the horizon, a shimmering heat haze shot through with thin veins of magenta lightning. It grew larger and more pronounced and the skies above it were filling with menacing black clouds. Roth looked up, holding his hat to his head. Morrslieb hung low and sickly in the sky, but the seafarer’s moon of Mannslieb was nowhere to be seen.

‘Hoy!’ shouted Dallard, standing high on a great cannon chassis and peering down into the water. ‘Come look at this, lads, and bring a net if you’re feelin’ peckish.’

A throng of pirates quickly surrounded Dallard and leaned over the gunwale. Roth shouldered his way through the smelly mass and climbed onto the sally-ridge to see what was causing the commotion.

An uneasy feeling crept into the captain’s gut as soon as he looked down into the water. The surface of the ocean was awash with dead marine life. Everything from sprats to salt-sharks to bloatwhales floated belly-up and glassy-eyed in a gruesome tableau. Human skulls bobbed to the surface, and Roth’s scalp crawled as he realised that every one of them was leering in his direction.

Away on the horizon, the strange electrical storm grew fiercer, gathering momentum as it rolled towards them.

The morass of dead fish started to move. Slowly at first, but then with gathering speed, they swirled around in a great arc, drawn around and around by a spiralling current emanating from the oncoming tempest.

The fluttering signal flag on the Flaming Scimitar’s foremast snapped out in a sudden wind. It was the bright red of fresh blood.

‘Here we go, lads!’ bellowed Roth, his every nerve alight with anticipation. ‘Look lively, this is it. Revenge for Sartosa! Revenge for the Vigils!’

He ran up to the forecastle, spotting Ghow at the gunwale.

‘Third-sail from each mast, please, Mr. Southman, we’re going in,’ he shouted. ‘Steady as she goes. Burke, get the gunners primed and ready.’

The crew of the Heldenhammer set about Roth’s orders with gusto. Slowly, steadily, the great temple-ship came about and tacked towards the oncoming storm. Behind her, the Swordfysh, Grimnir’s Thunder and Flaming Scimitar followed suit.

Up ahead, the bursts of lightning crackling within the storm front became more frequent, blending into a pyrotechnic display of searing intensity. Roth tasted blood in his mouth. Waves crashed and boomed, blood-warm rain pelting from the sky in sudden squalls.

Undaunted, the galleons pressed onwards into the tempest. The Heldenhammer pitched and rolled, becoming more and more embattled with every passing minute until Roth was forced to hold onto the railing just to stay on his feet. White-capped waves the height of the Reikstemple loomed in the distance, crashing towards them as thunder rolled and grumbled overhead. Laughter resounded in the tempest, deep and cruel.

The rain intensified. What pelted from the skies was no longer water but a dark and greasy fluid that stank of sea-rot. Roth bellowed for his men to hold fast, wiping the black muck from his eyes as best he could. The warships of his allies were nowhere to be seen.

With a crack, part of the rigging came loose in the violence of the hurricane winds. A thickly tarred rope lashed across the deck and took a cowering mariner in the neck, hurling him overboard.

The Heldenhammer pitched and rolled as it crashed through waves higher than her topmast. The terrified shouts and cries of her crew were drowned out by the thunder of the storm. Squalls of broken bone fell like daggers, skewering dozens of mariners trapped above deck.

Algae-slicked skulls hammered down from the jade thunderheads, chattering and cackling as they bounced from the hard oak of the Heldenhammer’s topdeck. One skull cracked hard into the back of Old Ruger’s head, knocking him out cold as he smacked into the capstan. Another bounced off Roth’s shoulder. Its jaw worked mechanically as it span in a puddle of black sludge next to his boot. Its empty sockets stared up in mocking challenge until Roth stamped it into splinters.

The Chaos moon loomed so large it almost filled the sky. The soaring waves around the Heldenhammer rose higher and higher.

Roth’s entire world was a chaotic swirl of tainted water that boiled like the blood of daemons, blinding him and forcing itself down his throat. He could just make out his men lying scattered across the deck, a carpet of bodies fit to grace any battlefield.

Gritting his teeth, Roth clung to consciousness out of sheer bloody-mindedness, but even he couldn’t hold out forever.

As laughter shrieked across the skies and living beasts of purple lightning danced across the Heldenhammer’s deck, Captain Roth blacked out.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Roth awoke to distant screams.

The captain sat bolt upright, his good eye gummed with some nameless residue. Beneath him, the warship was barely moving. The creak and luff of the sails was all but masked by a strange wailing that came from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Roth cautiously took a lungful of air. The stink of dead fish, mildewed timber and rotting corpses hung all around. His nose creased in disgust. The captain peeled his sickle-hand from the deck. A faint pinkish film, marbled with white streaks, stretched from the arm of his coat to the planks below. The strange residue was shrinking away as Roth watched, melting into the wet mist above.

All across the warship’s deck, Roth’s men were regaining consciousness. Some cried out or drew their weapons. Most simply clambered to their feet, too stunned to say a thing.

The sky roiled sickeningly and the mist stretched into screaming faces as it rose upwards, dull silver one minute and bile green the next. A growl of thunder receded in the distance and magenta lightning flickered and danced on the horizon away to stern.

Roth shook his head clear and barked the order for attention, summoning a swelling crowd of men to his side. He clanged the solid curve of his sickle-hand against the barrel of a nearby cannon over and over again, a harsh but familiar sound that brought men out from below decks and from every corner of the ship. The deck was soon crowded with hundreds of unwashed sailors, every one of them bewildered, frightened or angry.

‘We’re here,’ called out Roth, scaling the stairs to the forecastle so that his men could see him. ‘Look around you. This is the work of Noctilus, all of it. We’re in the beast’s lair, lads. We made it through.’

‘Aye, but how do we make it back?’ shouted Dallard, flinging his arms outward. ‘We’re in the Graveyard a’right, a blind man could see that. But where are the others? Are they still alive? Are we still alive?’

‘Aye, where are the others?’ echoed Will o’ the Waves, always the sycophant where Dallard was concerned.

Roth made his way further up the stairs at the side of the gun deck and looked out at the vista before him. Mounds of twisted bone jutted from the dirty blue-grey water, thousands of skeletons fused together into scattered peaks that crested the surface all around, forced together by some alchemy of the afterlife into a grotesque coral reef.

Of sails and warships, however, there was no sign.

‘I don’t know,’ said Roth.

A great commotion went up from the decks as his men harangued and protested and yelled.

‘You’re a chip off the old block, I swear!’ shouted Oath, the second mate.

‘Where’s the wind?’ protested Freier, the rigsman. ‘If there’s no wind, and no steamboat, we’ll be stuck here! We’re sitting ducks!’

‘What about the Swordfysh, sir?’ said Ghow, fear etched on his face.

‘Yes, where’s the Swordfysh?’ called Burke. ‘Don’t tell us we’re the only ones made it through!’

Dallard pushed forward to the front of the crowd.

‘You senile old fool,’ he shouted, face contorted with rage. ‘You’ve doomed us all!’

The pistolier marched up the stairs towards the captain. The men shouted in support, surging forwards with malice in their eyes. Dallard’s hand disappeared inside his greatcoat, and Roth heard the tiny ‘click’ of a flintlock.

Before Dallard’s pistol could clear its holster, Roth whipped out his own weapon and shot the man in the face, spraying blood and brain matter across those at the foot of the stairs. Before the body could fall the captain lunged forwards, caught it with his sickle and flung it bodily over the side of the warship. A sudden wind whipped up and the sails above him cracked full with a low boom. Roth stared down imperiously at his men, coat billowing.

‘Listen to me, all of you,’ he shouted. ‘We’ve come this far, and by Manann’s teeth we will see this through to the end. Revenge, remember? We came here to punish that bastard Noctilus in the name of our friends. Our families. The scum-raddled dives we drink in. Would you rather we killed each other and ended up like that?’

He pointed towards the nearest reef. Dallard’s headless body had hauled itself out of the water and climbed onto the protrusion. His flesh falling away, his body began to fuse with skeletons that studded its sides, hands turning into claws as the muscle sloughed off them. Beside him, a hundred bony arms waved and clawed at the sky.

‘Nah,’ said Will o’ the Waves, sullenly. ‘We just want to kill you.’

Roth met his gaze with a burning scowl and after a second the weasel-faced mariner looked away.

‘I’m your best hope of getting out of here,’ hissed Roth. ‘You all know it in your hearts. We need to find the others, do what we came to do, and get the Magus to work his magic. Then we’ll loot the largest galleons we find and head back for open seas, richer than Greasus. This haul will make Zandri look like pocket scrapings. You’ll see.’

At the mention of loot, the mood changed. Hushed conversations broke out in the crowd. Roth’s raids had always held a reputation for being dangerous, but extremely profitable. For the survivors, at least.

The tension was suddenly torn by a series of distant booms. A volley of cannonballs whooshed overhead, one missing Roth by less than a yard. Starting back in alarm, Roth caught sight of a familiar castle-crested silhouette drifting through the mists on the far side of the corpse-coral reef. He snarled and jabbed the three-fingered sign of the trident in its direction.

‘Hah!’ exulted Roth. ‘The ugly bastard’s shown himself. Look lively, men.’

He clanged his sickle-hand on the cannon beneath him, its edge still wet with Dallard’s blood. Far above, the sally-bells in the Grand Templus took up the battle rhythm.

‘Lads, look sharp. Ghow, get your crowsmen up into the sentinel houses, wipe the muck out of your eyes and shout up for sails. The rest of you, to your posts. Master gunners, a hundred doubloons to the first whose team hits that thing amidships. Let’s sink the fiend and be done.’

The throng of pirates upon the decks scattered like rats in torchlight as they hurried to earn Roth’s reward.

The captain strode back to the helm, a grim smile on his face.

Noctilus was in for a surprise.

Leaning over the forecastle, Roth grimaced, sucking air through his teeth. The mist had thickened with unnatural speed, a cloying fog thick with corpse-gas that hid the deadly promontories of the reef from sight. One wrong decision and the great temple-ship would founder on the rocks, a wallowing target ripe for the Reaver’s cannons. The captain prayed to Sigmar that the callers in the sentinel’s nests were sober.

The Heldenhammer heaved its great bulk around, narrowly avoiding a rocky spar clustered with the detritus of the drowned. Somewhere on the other side of the reef was the Bloody Reaver, a predatory beast waiting in the fog. Roth lifted his spyglass speculatively. The jagged shape of the monstrous warship sprang into focus, faded, and then appeared closer than ever before. Men o’ bones clambered from crypts and alcoves across its rocky core.

‘To port, now,’ came a tight-throated shout from the mainmast’s upper nest. ‘Two degrees, no more.’

The Heldenhammer changed tack, its hull scraping hard against a bone reef with a sickening crunch.

‘Steady as she goes,’ cried the steersman. ‘Now three degrees starboard!’

‘Manann’s scaly arse, she handles like a pregnant whale,’ muttered Roth. ‘This is not going to be easy.’

‘Five degrees port,’ came the shout from above. ‘No more! Then straighten her up!’

Another crack-boom came from across the mists, and a volley of cannonballs tore into the corpse coral, sending a great spray of bone and seaweed toward the temple-ship’s deck. Only one cannonball made it through, smashing into the side of the Grand Templus and toppling a noseless statue of Grand Theogonist Esmer headfirst into the sea.

The mariners on the deck next to Roth flinched, clutching gullfoot talismans and fingerbones. Handgunners lined the decks, staring intently through the fog for any sign of the Reaver.

Roth’s eyes widened suddenly and he ran to the stairs. There was no clear shot to the enemy, but with so many guns at his disposal, there didn’t need to be.

‘Starboard demi-cannons, blast the coral,’ he called down to the decks below. ‘Burke, great cannons to fire through the gap. Mortar batteries, maximum elevation, full charge. We know he’s on the other side, fog be damned. Get to it!’

As soon as Roth reached the deck, the demi-cannons at the base of the Grand Templus let fly. Cannonballs punched into the reef with every volley, blasting great chunks of rock and bone from it one after another. Slowly, impact by impact, a gaping hole was torn in the bone-strewn reef that stood between the Heldenhammer and the Reaver.

‘Burke, what are you waiting for? Fire, staggered decks.’

The boards under Roth’s feet shook as the starboard flank of the Heldenhammer split the air, deck after deck of great cannons rocking the warship in the water with shockwaves of percussive force. The first volley finished what the Reaver had started, smashing the entire protrusion of calcified bone into powder. The second and third batteries of guns hammered their cannonballs straight through the gap in the reef, hurtling into the Reaver as it prowled behind.

One of the dread warship’s castle walls came down in a silent landslide, the grand sail at its mizzenmast flapping loose.

‘Yes,’ cried Roth. ‘Have that, beast!’

The crump of distant mortar detonations prompted Roth to pan his spyglass across the castle-ship’s hull. Sure enough, puffs of white smoke blossomed across the length of its stony prow. Undead bodies were flung in all directions wherever the mortar shells struck.

The Bloody Reaver turned away from the Heldenhammer and its deadly guns.

‘That’s right, run, you bastard!’ Roth ran from gunner to gunner, shaking hands and patting backs.

‘Well done, lads, good shooting. Double brandy each. Second and third starboard battery, split the gold with the mortar crews. No, belay that order – a hundred doubloons to each team.’

A great cheer went up from the Sartosan crew, all thoughts of mutiny buried by the thrill of battle and the lure of gold.

Roth’s heart sang. He was stranded in the realm of the damned, but he hadn’t felt this alive in years.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Roth stood rigid at his warship’s helm, his every nerve alight with frustration. Hours had passed since their duel in the fog, and the trail was growing colder by the minute. Roth had ordered complete silence on deck in case a stray shout interrupted a vital command from the sentinel’s nests. Tensions were high and the crew’s euphoria at getting the better of the Reaver had evaporated.

Every so often, Ghow would call down a course correction from his vantage point in the sentinel’s nest. The fatigue in his voice was painfully obvious.

It struck Roth that the reef formed a kind of inverse moat surrounding the Galleon’s Graveyard, a guardian barrier that could sink an unwary vessel surer than any cannon. No natural reef formed in so dense an arc as this, not on any map Roth had ever seen. The whole thing had to have been fashioned by necromantic ritual. Noctilus was no doubt using that same strange magic even now to rebuild his galleon’s damaged flank.

Roth looked up at Sigmar’s Wrath. Its face was as stern and impassive as ever.

‘Next time, we must press home the attack,’ said the captain. ‘Preferably when the Reaver’s escape is cut off completely.’

‘Sail ho,’ came an exultant cry from the topnest. ‘Sail ho.’

Roth started from his reverie, rushing to the foremost point of the bow. Above him, other sentry-men picked up the cry until all five of the galleon’s sentinel nests sang out in jubilation.

‘Speak on,’ Roth shouted up to them. ‘What sail?’

‘It’s the Swordfysh, sir,’ Ghow shouted from the sentinel’s nest above the mortar batteries. ‘Dead ahead. She’s in the lee o’ some castle.’

Sure enough, the Swordfysh lay up ahead. Roth laughed, firing his thrice-pistol in the air in celebration.

‘I knew she’d make it through. Too tough to die, that one.’

Aranessa’s vessel had run aground upon a large island plateau, all sheer sides and jagged rocks, and her ribbed sails were tilted towards a rocky cliff stained black with age. Its steep sides had been carved into leering death’s heads. A crenellated fortress wall ran around its summit, built in much the same style as the Sylvanian keep atop the Bloody Reaver. A crude stairway had been hewn into the cliff, wending its way up past the Swordfysh’s impromptu berth to what looked like a castle gate above. The citadel beyond the walls jutted high, its jagged spires piercing the sky.

The place was disturbingly familiar to Roth. The island, the castle atop it and the citadel inside had all featured prominently in the oil paintings daubed across the walls and ceilings of the Enlightenment. Roth had always thought of it as the forbidden citadel, back when he thought it was make-believe.

And here it was, as real as the planks under his feet.

‘What the hell is she up to?’ asked Roth, his joy turning to unease at the stillness of the scene. ‘It’d be just like the wench to send in a landing party, regardless of the danger. Drag us all down while she’s about it.’

A thin, haunting scream pierced the air.

‘Damn it! We can’t just sit here. For all we know she may already lie at the feet of some undead monster. We’re going in, hammer first.’

‘But captain, we’re not out of the reef yet!’ protested Ghow, ‘We can’t just barge in and hope for the best!’

‘Actually,’ grinned Roth, ‘that’s exactly what we’re going to do. You’re as anxious to see our friend Sigmar here in action as I am. She’s alive in there, I can feel it, and we’re going get her out, if only so I can wring the bitch’s neck myself.’

The great heraldic sails of the Heldenhammer snapped outwards and the temple-ship picked up speed as it curved around towards the island. Roth stood at the foremost point of his warship, teeth bared and leaning over the rail as if to increase the galleon’s speed through sheer force of will.

‘Tack in,’ he shouted, ‘Ready the–’

A resounding boom cut off Roth’s order as artillery mounted upon the citadel’s crenellations fired upon them. Three cannonballs punched straight through the lion-faced sun upon the Heldenhammer’s foresail, ripping through one of the skull-headed mergryphons rearing up behind it and smashing into the frontis of the Grand Templus in a spray of rubble. The holes where the cannonballs had punched through the sails smouldered and smoked as green flames began to lick upwards from their edges. Roth cursed in frustration as the scent of magical fire filtered down towards him.

‘Fighting tops, get that quenched,’ shouted Roth. ‘Hoist some barrels up there and pour beer on it if you have to.’

In truth, Roth had no patience for defence. The Heldenhammer was bearing down upon the island with an unstoppable momentum, crunching aside skeletal protrusions that clawed feebly at the hull as it passed. The temple-ship was so large that the gigantic figurehead’s hammer came level with the fortress walls of the island ahead.

‘Now,’ shouted the captain, thumping the gunwale. ‘Release the Wrath!’

The prow of the warship shuddered as its keel ground into the corpse-coral at the base of the island. To either side of Roth, the clanking of two metre-thick chains filled the air as the steam winches holding the gigantic figurehead in place were released.

With a metallic shriek, the massive bronze sculpture of Sigmar swung downwards on its pivot, accelerating with a giddying burst of speed. Its hammer thundered into the fortress wall with the force of a meteor, crushing an entire section of the citadel walls to dust and leaving a rubble-strewn gap the size of a town hall.

Hundreds of bloated corpses spilled out of the breach like maggots from a festering wound. Flailing and clawing, they flung themselves upon the great figurehead as it lay embedded in the rubble of the castle wall. The corpse-things below grasped and moaned, clambering over the simulacrum of Ghal Maraz towards them.

‘Hoist back,’ shouted Roth, waving urgently at the forecastle. ‘Hoist back and go in again.’

Tucking his father’s sword behind him, the captain swung over the balustrade onto the fat steam piston at the rear of the statue. He ran deftly over it and leapt onto the bronze effigy’s back. Cannon fire boomed from the citadel above Roth’s head, but he paid it no mind. He sprinted between the massive chains affixed to the statue’s shoulder blades, crashing bodily into the swollen corpses that were clambering onto its crowned pate.

Bellowing like a charging ox, Roth drew his Cathayan blade and lashed out wildly, slicing off limbs with each stroke. A foul tide of dead flesh climbed up towards him, using each other for purchase. Black-nailed hands tugged at his coat and distended torsos sprayed rotting bile on his boots as he slashed and stamped. On they came, unrelenting. Roth’s sword arm began to tire, and his chest filled with the acid of exertion. One of the creatures grabbed his legs. Another gnawed at his boot. Roth stabbed the first through the head and kicked it away, pulling out his pistol and blasting the second in the face. The dead thing’s headless body tumbled end over end to burst with a wet smack on the jagged rocks below.

The statue underneath his feet lurched and began to rise backwards. The clanking of the great winches in the forecastle filled Roth with panic and hope at the same time. Stepping forward onto the statue’s great mane of hair, he kicked the last of the drowned from their perches and rammed the tip of his sickle-hand into the seam at the top the warrior-god’s head, riding the effigy’s ascent until he was high above the crenellated wall of the fortress. Hundreds more of the drowned spilled through the breach, moaning and clawing impotently at Roth on his lofty perch. Making certain of his grip, Roth braced his feet on the statue’s circlet crown.

‘That’s it, you scum,’ said Roth. ‘Pack yourselves in nice and tight.’

With a protesting creak, the gigantic hammer came thundering down.

Roth’s shoulder was almost wrenched out of its socket as scores of the drowned were pulverised by the giant bronze hammer. He barely felt the pain, his heart was beating so hard. Blood thundered through his veins as he twisted his sickle-hand free from the statue’s head and steadied himself.

‘Sorry about that, Sigmar, old man,’ said Roth, leaning against the statue as he hurriedly reloaded his pistol, ‘but you would have done the same.’

A harsh curse came from the battlements above, and Roth’s eyes widened as he saw flailing bodies tumble over the battlements onto the cliffs below. Silhouetted against the bruised green skies was an unmistakeably female figure, her plaits whipping around her head as she stabbed and slashed with a bladed trident. She was covered head to toe in crimson-black blood, but there was no mistaking Aranessa Saltspite. No one else could swear like that.

The trident stabbed and yanked, thudding into those of the drowned that came too close and pitching them over the battlements. Dozens more stumbled towards her, and though she was in control for the moment, Roth could see that she was tiring fast.

Roth pulled a long coil of fine Cathayan rope from his belt and willed his fingers not to shake as he fed it through the mechanism of his sickle-hand.

‘This had better still work, Magus,’ he said, folding out a bronze lever from the back of his sickle-hand and cranking it for all he was worth.

Pointing the contraption at the walls of the citadel, Roth depressed the release lever. With a loud pop, the sickle shot from its bronze housing and sailed through the air, trailing the rope behind it as it unspooled from Roth’s wrist. The sickle smacked into one of the drowned as it lumbered towards Aranessa, pitching it into the courtyard below.

‘Get out of there, Nessa!’ shouted Roth, gesturing frantically at the rope dangling only a few feet away from her.

She was too busy fighting for her life, fending off a grasping pair of the drowned using both ends of her trident. Still more were pressing in.

A sharpshooter from the fighting top of the Swordfysh bullseyed one of the pallid creatures, blasting it from the walls just as Aranessa punched her sea-spear through the chest of another. Twisting backwards, she grabbed Roth’s rope, swiftly hauling up the sickle on the other end and whirling it around her head. Dozens more of the drowned staggered towards her, arms outstretched.

Roth’s heart lurched violently as Aranessa pitched herself from the ramparts with a great leap, hurling the sickle like a grappling hook as she did so. Dead hands flailed after her, the drowned spilling over the battlements in their eagerness to sink their fingers into her flesh.

The sickle-hand sailed through the air and caught on the Swordfysh’s topmast where it met the crow’s nest. Aranessa’s headlong dive towards the cruel rocks quickly turned into a graceful arc as the rope pulled taut. She swung round the bow of the Swordfysh in a sweeping parabola, dropping down at the perfect moment so that the twin saws of her legs speared the forecastle deck with a wooden thunk. Roth shook his head in wonder. That impact would have broken both his ankles. He heard Aranessa’s jubilant cry of thanks over the crash of the waves below, and threw an exaggerated salute in her direction as the Heldenhammer’s figurehead was winched back from the breach.

Roth’s joy caught in his throat as the statue raised him higher. The Bloody Reaver loomed around the far side of the island, shockingly close. Far off to port, a great curved blade was pushing through the mists. The Nehekharan war galley they had fought at the battle of the Vigils was cutting off the Swordfysh’s escape.

‘Cast off. Take poles and cast off,’ shouted Roth, leaping back onto the steam piston behind Sigmar’s back as it pulled the statue fully upright.

In his heart he knew such an evasive manoevure was all but impossible in these conditions. He had run the Heldenhammer aground in his haste to rescue Aranessa. There was no way they could gain the sea while under fire from the citadel, and certainly not with the Bloody Reaver bearing down on them. Roth had doomed them all to an ignominious death.

His eyes wide, the captain scrabbled across the slate roofs to the forecastle’s nearest cannon house and wriggled his way through one of the gun ports. No easy feat with one of his hands missing, but he managed it.

‘As you were, lads,’ said Roth, struggling past the cannon’s massive bulk. Soot-stained powder monkeys blinked in surprise as he sprinted up the stairs.

The captain burst out onto the forecastle behind Sigmar’s Wrath. A cry of dismay escaped him as the Bloody Reaver took up position outside of the Heldenhammer’s field of fire, cannons poised.

Distant booms echoed from the corpse-coral as the Reaver’s guns opened up, shot after shot thundering into the temple-ship’s prow. One of the crenellated fighting tops was blown to smithereens, pitching over into the sea in a confusion of brick and tumbling bodies. More cannonballs ploughed into the decks below Roth’s feet and explosions rocked the forecastle as barrels of black powder detonated below. The gunners Roth had just squeezed past on his way back into the warship would have likely been killed in the blast, or close enough not to matter.

‘Mortars,’ shouted Roth, his face a livid red. ‘Maximum forward elevation and give that thing a taste of our fire.’

Despite his anger, he knew it was futile. As formidable as they were, the Heldenhammer’s mortar batteries could not hope to suppress an entire galleon, especially one the size of Noctilus’s flagship. Another few broadsides like the last one and they would be scuppered.

Despite it all, the Reaver had them in its teeth.

Roth ran over to the gunwale and looked out to the Swordfysh. All along its length, men with long stout poles were trying to push the warship away from the rocky cliffs. They were having no more success than Roth’s crew.

The Nehekharan galley was closing in slowly from the other side of the island, its approach as inexorable as death. Oars rose and fell in perfect unison as hundreds of skeletal slaves drove it through the crashing waves. With a crackling snap, a thick bolt of blinding light arced up from the pyramid at the war galley’s heart and into the enormous jewel held within its curving stern. The searing beam lanced out from the giant gemstone and raked across the deck of the Swordfysh with the intensity of dragonfire, leaving dozens of crewmen burned to ashes in its wake.

Roth could just make out Aranessa kneeling on the deck, head bowed and hands clasped together. The blackened corpses of her men lay all around her.

‘What the hell are you doing, woman?’ bawled Roth. ‘Move!’

Just when Roth thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, the waters far out to port boiled upwards. Three titanic blades burst from the waves, each large enough to spear Morrslieb itself. Pitted and ancient, they ground upwards with thunderous slowness. Water cascaded from the blades as they pushed up into the skies like the spires of an ancient civilisation rising from the deep.

Tidal waves heaved outwards from the riding blades, their sudden force hammering the decks of the Nehekharan galley and the Bloody Reaver and carrying them away from the island in the process. Roth watched in amazement as the Reaver heaved its prow around with a snap of its mainsail, riding the momentum of the tidal eruption and escaping into the distant mist at speed.

Moments later, tremendous waves bore down on the Heldenhammer and the Swordfysh.

‘Brace, men!’ shouted Roth. ‘For the love of Sigmar, brace!’

Hundreds of tons of water slammed into them with terrible force. Both the temple-ship and the pirate galleon were hurled back from the island plateau. Dozens of men were swept overboard as a deluge cascaded over the deck.

As the power of the waves abated, the captain was amazed to realise that he was still alive and that his warship was still afloat. Better yet, both the Heldenhammer and the Swordfysh were freed from the island’s craggy grip and the enemy was nowhere to be seen.

Roth didn’t fully understand what had just happened, but neither did he really care. They were alive, and that was all that mattered.

‘On your feet, lads!’ shouted Roth, pulling himself upright, ‘Look sharp! Best not waste our luck, eh!’

The captain went to clang the back of his sickle-hand on the nearest cannon before realising it was missing. And his best hat, come to that.

‘Damn it,’ laughed Roth, shaking his head as relief flooded through his body. He had a growing feeling that he was way out of his depth, not that he would admit it while he still drew breath. He’d make sure Noctilus died first, too; that much was for sure.

‘Full sail, please, Ghow, eyes out for sails,’ said Roth, striding confidently past Will o’ the Waves as if vast tridents burst from the waters every week. ‘Billy-o, do something worthwhile for once in your life and get the surgeons up here. The rest of you back to your posts.’

Roth turned to his first mate and threw him a lopsided smile across the bustling deck.

‘Haven’t you heard? We’ve a war to win!’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Within the hour, Roth’s lookouts had spied the Flaming Scimitar threading its way through a volcanic island chain to the north. As the Heldenhammer changed course towards it, the lookouts in the top nests saw that the twin plumes they had thought were coming from a stricken Scimitar were instead coming from the engines of Grimnir’s Thunder. The news that the dwarf warship was chugging alongside the Magus’s barge came as a great relief. Soon Roth’s fleet would be reunited, battered but unbowed.

The captain’s elation at locating the rest of his fleet was tempered by the fact that the Dreadfleet was long gone. Even in his own lair, Noctilus had been careful not to overreach himself.

‘No wonder he’s survived for decades,’ said Roth, ruefully looking up at Sigmar’s Wrath. ‘He’s as slippery as a greased eel. He’s playing the long game, he must be. Exchanging fire, melting away. Coming back again once he’s recovered his strength.’

‘What say, captain?’ said Old Ruger, his wrinkled face riddled with anxiety.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ said Roth. ‘Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. We want speed, not a holed hull. We’ve taken far too much damage as it is.’

Up ahead, Grimnir’s Thunder and the Flaming Scimitar had converged. The sounds of carpentry came from the Magus’s warship and a bright blue flag of parley fluttered from the pleasure barge’s mainmast. The Swordfysh lay at anchor, not too far from an atoll formed by the caldera of some long-extinct volcano.

Above them, the dwarf airship slowly began to manoeuvre itself toward the Thunder’s dirigible dock, the sound of its cargo chains clanking away on the cusp of hearing. Just as Roth turned away, a red rune flickered at the airship’s prow.

‘All right, Ghow,’ said Roth. ‘I reckon we’re about due a parley. Noctilus has made himself scarce and we need a plan of action before he shows up again. Some way to corner him so he can’t escape, that’s what we need.’

Ghow’s reply was cut off by the sound of distant cannon fire. Roth span round, racing to the gunwale. A needle of flame burst into life in the mists ahead.

The captain cast his gaze around, but all of his allies were close by.

‘Everyone’s here,’ said Roth. ‘So who’s firing?’

‘Couldn’t say,’ said Ghow, shrugging as he rubbed the gull’s foot pushed through his earlobe. ‘Hope whoever it is gives them a bloody nose before they’re scuppered.’

Another thin stab of fire lit up the mists in the distance. Shadows shifted in the fog and the boom of a far-off broadside echoed dully.

‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ said Roth, his jaw set firm. ‘Forget the parley, this is too good a chance to pass up. Let’s help our new comrade send these dogs to the bottom of the sea.’

‘Sally bells!’ shouted Roth, waving to the men up on the Templus before turning back to his first mate. Ghow’s scowl spoke volumes.

‘With every hour that passes in this place, Ghow, Noctilus gets stronger and we get weaker. Any chance I’ve got to send the Reaver to the bottom of the ocean is a chance I intend to seize. You can understand that, surely?’

‘Right you are, sir,’ said Ghow, though his tone of voice suggested that he thought rather differently.

Sails full, the Heldenhammer carved through the waves between the Thunder and the Swordfysh, its bells ringing out across the water. Roth could just about make out Aranessa making obscene gestures and shouting curses in his direction.

Far off to port, the Flaming Scimitar had begun to fall in behind the Heldenhammer. Roth was certain that Aranessa would follow, despite her protestations. There was safety in numbers, after all.

Only a madman would brave the Galleon’s Graveyard on his own.

The mists thinned as Roth and his allies pushed on towards the sounds of battle. Sure enough, there was a foreign vessel in the distance, its elegant lateen sails a vivid blue against the deep crimson of the water around the volcanic isles. The graceful curve of the warship’s ivory prow and the spindle towers that graced its aftquarters were unmistakeable to a veteran mariner such as Roth.

He turned to his first mate, eyes gleaming.

‘Ghow, look. An elf warship. A flagship of the Ulthuan navy, no less,’ said Roth, leaning over the edge of the forecastle. ‘I haven’t seen one of them in fifteen years.’

The chalk-white vessel had taken refuge in one of the large calderas that dotted this stretch of waters, the warships of the Dreadfleet circling it. To Roth’s eye, it looked as if the elf ship’s captain was using the caldera as an improvised castle wall against the enemy, but it was still vulnerable to accurate fire.

As Roth watched, one of the elven vessel’s topmasts was blown apart by a volley from the Reaver, taking one of its nine triangular sails with it. Behind the Ulthuan vessel, the skaven leviathan from the rat-coves crackled with baleful energy, ready to discharge a storm of black lightning as soon as it had a clear shot.

Just as the leviathan moved into position, an ivory-scaled dragon the size of a brigantine swooped out of the mists, a burning lance of flame shooting from its maw. Even as the dragon glided past, it twisted in the air so that its flaming breath was concentrated upon one of the brass spheres bulging out from the whale-ship’s flank.

An explosion echoed across the waters as the sphere detonated, ripping a great wound in the undead monster’s flank. Roth clutched the gunwale tight as a dragon the colour of an autumn sunset dived down from the bruised clouds above the caldera. Breathing a great gout of fire, it drove back the Nehekharan galley attempting to force its way through the gaps in the atoll wall.

‘The elf has some help of his own, looks like,’ laughed Roth. ‘I’ll wager he won’t be fending Noctilus off for long, though, even with the help of his pets. We need to make our presence felt, maybe draw some of the Dreadfleet toward us if we can.’

‘Hard-a-port,’ ordered Roth, striding over to the stairs. ‘Hard-a-port and prepare starboard guns.’

Slowly at first but with gathering speed, the Heldenhammer slewed around in the crimson water, presenting her flank to the Dreadfleet as the sails were artfully trimmed to take maximum advantage of the strong winds.

‘Burke, fire at will,’ snarled Roth, a fierce satisfaction in his voice.

The temple-ship shook as scores of great cannons spat plumes of flame from its flank. On either side of the Heldenhammer, the Swordfysh and the Flaming Scimitar followed Roth’s example, adding their firepower to the long-range fusillade.

The broad spread of shot smashed into the Bloody Reaver’s craggy central mass, sending algae-stained rock tumbling into the sea and laying open a honeycomb of sepulchres and crypts. The Swordfysh’s volley crashed home into the Nehekharan galley, buckling the curved golden blade that jutted from its prow and tearing the arm from the scorpion-clawed figurehead that rose above it.

As Roth took stock of the situation through his spyglass, the Dreadfleet reacted to their presence, peeling off from their persecution of the wounded elf vessel in order to avoid being outmanoeuvred by the oncoming foe. The Black Kraken abandoned its attempts to grapple the elf warship and sank bubbling under the crimson waters, whilst the skaven leviathan-ship and the Nehekharan war galley ranged out wide.

The elf vessel made use of the reprieve, all eight of its remaining lateen sails turning in perfect unison to capture the wind. It carved through a gap in the sunken caldera that Roth could never have hoped to negotiate, not even in the Nightwatch. By Roth’s reckoning the space between the warship’s alabaster hull and the jagged rocks on either side was barely wider than a man’s torso.

‘Those elves know how to handle a warship all right,’ said Roth. ‘I doubt even the Stiletto could have pulled that little manoeuvre off, eh Ghow?’

The first mate nodded his tattooed head. ‘Aye, very clever, sir. Must be a regular Red Henri to get himself surrounded like that.’

Leaning out, the captain shouted over the balustrade at the gunners hurrying on the decks below.

‘Mortars, suppressing fire. Buy our new friends some time.’

From his vantage point on the forecastle, Roth could see the waters boil within the craters that dotted the landscape. Something was causing the underwater volcanoes that punctuated this stretch of water to erupt. Geysers of blood-red fluid shot high into the air, some of them perilously close to the allied warships.

‘Make it quick, lads!’ shouted Roth, an edge of threat in his voice.

Up ahead, the Flaming Scimitar’s sails filled near to breaking point as a tempest djinn billowed out of the larger minaret and propelled the pleasure barge away from the boiling waters with its hurricane breath.

The warship’s surge of speed came to a sudden halt as thick mechanical tentacles burst out of the waters and lashed into its stern in a spray of ruddy water. The metal limbs thrashed across the deck of the Scimitar, killing dozens of silk-clad warriors in the space of a heartbeat. The tempest djinn above them exploded into vapour as the Kraken slashed out at it with a barbed tentacle. Two more mechanical limbs curled around the minarets as the kraken-ship hauled itself out of the water, almost capsizing the pleasure barge with its sheer weight.

The oily tentacles tightened their hold upon the Magus’s treasure houses. Painted timbers splintered and groaned as the minarets began to give way. Roth cried out, helpless to do anything but watch as his only hope of breaking Noctilus’s curse was crushed by the foul contraption.

As the Kraken’s grip constricted, several of the urns strapped to the minaret walls shattered, releasing a burst of glittering water. Roth could just make out the rotund form of the Golden Magus lurching along the tilted topdeck towards the magical waves. The thin curve of the sorcerer’s burning sword left strange sigils hanging in the air behind him.

Abruptly, the waters pouring across the deck of the Scimitar reversed their flow, cascading upwards and crystallising into the form of a gigantic sea-devil that towered over the minarets. No lissom nymph this time, but a ruggedly-built warrior maiden of rock-hard ice. The looming water-spirit grasped the clanking tentacles in her heavy hands and, with the patient strength of a glacier, slowly pulled them away from the minarets. Thrashing its limbs, the Kraken began to slide backward into the sea, forced away from the Scimitar’s deck by the sea-spirit’s frozen bulk.

A flicker of hope flared in Roth’s chest as the Kraken changed tack, whipping its remaining tentacles free from the Scimitar and wrapping them around the glacial maiden. Landslides of shattered ice cascaded from the warrior-woman’s broad shoulders and arms, but still she fought on. With a sudden jerk of her iceberg fist, she wrenched one of the tentacles clean out of the Kraken’s foresection, holding the wriggling thing high in the air as if it were a trophy.

A thin, unnatural shriek echoed across the waters, piercing the turmoil of battle. Roth cried out in encouragement, thrusting his father’s blade aloft.

The Flaming Scimitar, no longer held in place by the Kraken’s metallic bulk, shot forward like a crossbow bolt. The Black Kraken crashed into the water in its wake, still wrestling with the Magus’s warrior spirit. Immersed in the boiling spume, the glacial maiden stood little chance against the submersible’s full might. She dissolved with a low moan, crushed into shards and then melted away into nothingness by the boiling waters.

As the Flaming Scimitar escaped from the submersible craft, the elf warship made all speed away from the rest of the Dreadfleet. The broadsides from the allied warships had broken the stranglehold upon the slender Ulthuan vessel, but it was still in serious trouble.

Cutting in from starboard, the Nehekharan war galley was carving back around on an intercept course, oars rising and falling with a speed and precision that no human galley could hope to match. Eight-foot bolts of sharpened bone shot out from the triangular portholes arrayed at its sides, volley after murderous volley slashing across the deck of the escaping warship. Massive bone catapults lined along the pyramid-ship’s top deck sent flaming projectiles arcing through the air to rain down upon the Ulthuan warship, punching holes in the sails and obliterating entire ranks of elven crew in storms of enchanted fire. Roth hissed as the tip of the galley’s stern began to glow painfully bright, the great jewel that formed its sting crackling white with raw magical energy.

The elven warship slewed round in the water once, twice, three times in quick succession, tacking in an evasive manoeuvre that left Roth blinking with admiration. A thick beam of destructive energy lanced from the pyramid-ship’s stern towards where the vessel should have been, but it did nothing more than gouge a hissing furrow into the bubbling waters.

The Nehekharan galley was ploughing through the waves towards the Heldenhammer. The Reaver was peeling off in its wake, preparing to fire a full broadside at the oncoming allies.

‘Fire hard to starboard, lads,’ shouted Roth. ‘The Nehekharan’s back for his gold. Give that miserly old jackal everything you’ve got!’

Galvanised by the thought of losing their hard-won bounty, the Heldenhammer’s gunners leapt into action, pivoting their cannons towards the enemy warship. Barely a hundred yards from them, Grimnir’s Thunder changed tack so that its gun batteries were pointed straight at the oncoming war galley.

The allied warships fired in unison, catching the Nehekharan galley in a devastating crossfire that smashed two of the giant statues rising from its flanks into powder. Several of the catapults upon its deck burst into so much splintered bone as the Thunder’s self-loading cannon pounded volley after volley onto the deck.

Red Brokk was not done yet. The turret mounted atop the ironclad swivelled around, its thick-barrelled flame cannon hurling out a blinding plume of flame. A sustained inferno swept the Nehekharan galley’s deck, reducing the skeletal warriors clustered there to blackened clouds of ash. Too late, the galley came about, foul black smoke pouring from its decks.

The elf warship carved through the boiling waters at incredible speed, waves of reddish spume rising in its wake. Behind it, the dragons took turns to harry the gun crews of the skaven leviathan and the Bloody Reaver. As fearless as they were graceful, the great drakes swooped over and around the enemy warships, spitting fire from their jaws.

The ivory-hued dragon drew in close to the Reaver and as it passed, a tornado of crimson whirled out from the vampire ship’s battlements. Roth watched in horror as thousands of winged eater-fish swathed the majestic beast in a whirling cloud. They were devouring it alive, latching on to it and ripping off chunks of scaled flesh with frenzied speed.

The dragon screeched, bones exposed to the humid air. It tumbled through the skies uncontrollably, dashing itself upon the rocks of the distant caldera in a halo of dark blood.

The sleek white warship carved past the Heldenhammer in a graceful arc, interposing the temple-ship’s bulk between itself and the Bloody Reaver. To its stern, the vampire ship’s cannons roared, but only a single cannonball punched through the solid oak of the Heldenhammer’s hull.

‘Is that the best you can do?’ crowed Roth, jabbing two fingers upward in the sign of the twin-tailed comet.

It would take the Reaver a while to reload, and in the meantime the allies had the burning Zandrian galley at their mercy. Roth rushed over to the portside gunwale. The Thunder was in hot pursuit of the limping Nehekharan warship, its flame cannon gouting.

‘After it,’ shouted Roth. ‘Kill it. Come about to starboard and full sail. I want it put that one down once and for all.’

Aranessa evidently had the same idea. The Swordfysh had altered its course to cut off the Zandrian vessel’s escape. The pirate galleon’s cannons boomed as she came about. A good half of the oblique broadside smashed into the distant Skaven leviathan, sending an entire gun deck of crackling energy-cannons tumbling into the sea and forcing the revolting thing back behind the caldera. Bereft of support, the Nehekharan galley had no choice but to limp further into the island chain.

Roth chuckled evilly. ‘Full speed please, Ghow. It looks like Aranessa’s on the hunt as well. The spear of Manann – Aranessa as the port blade and us as the starboard. We’ll soon run the bastard down.’

‘Aye, sir, I think we might at that,’ said Ghow, nodding over to port. ‘Looks like your pointy-eared mate’s decided to join us too, now the battle’s all but won.’

Roth was in too good a mood to rise to Ghow’s bait. The wind was with them – perhaps because of some artifice of the Golden Magus, perhaps purely through good fortune. Roth cared little either way. They finally had one of the Dreadfleet cut off from its fellows, and with Noctilus and his cronies caught in irons they could deal a decisive blow to the Reaver’s fleet.

The Swordfysh swung out wide to port, accompanied by the Flaming Scimitar, while Roth came in from starboard. They were gaining on the burning war galley as it limped into a loose scattering of islands.

Roth extended his spyglass and turned it upon the smoke-wreathed deck of the Nehekharan warship. Through the lenses, Roth could see a tall, regal figure standing at the side of the burning vessel, its skeletal crewmen stalking to and fro behind it.

The figure was clad in the raiment of an ancient king, though its features were those of a corpse. Its jaw was working in a mockery of speech as it gestured towards the skies with one hand, the other tipping a pile of glittering sand over the side of the warship. The fine powder left a trail of light as it dusted the waves below.

Roth’s brow furrowed.

‘I don’t like the look of that,’ he said, under his breath. ‘We might have some magic to deal with, Ghow,’ he said, his tone leaden.

There was a thin cry from above. ‘Port! Hard-a-port, captain, now, or we run aground.’

‘Port, tiller. Full turn,’ shouted Roth, glancing at the sentinel houses above as the Heldenhammer altered its course.

‘This had better be good,’ he called up through cupped hands.

‘There’s rocks rising everywhere,’ came the reply.

‘What?’ shouted Roth, shoving his way past his men to the prow of the warship. ‘What in Sigmar’s name are you talking about?’

Sure enough, the islets scattered throughout this stretch of water had become peaks, their sides glistening with red-hued slime. Several more jags of rock broke the surface of the water as Roth watched in alarm. The keel of the Heldenhammer juddered and the captain was forced to grab on to the balustrade lest he pitch over into the ruddy waters below.

It came to him with a jolt. The peaks were not rising at all, but instead the waters were receding, draining away at an alarming rate to expose deadly teeth of rock beneath.

‘Trim the sails. Brace and pull her in,’ shouted Roth, his face white with alarm and frustration.

‘But sir, the pursuit?’ called Ghow. ‘If we slow now he’ll lead us a right merry dance. We’re so close to sinking one.’

‘Just do it, Ghow!’ bellowed Roth. ‘I’ll not run us aground again. He’s led us into a trap, damn it all, he wants us to pursue.’

Leaning awkwardly to one side, then the other, the Heldenhammer came to a halt, its hull scraping hard upon the peaks of rock beneath. Away to port, the Swordfysh fired a broadside after the retreating war galley, but most of the cannonballs smashed into the promontories jutting high into the air all around.

What had been largely open water was now a mountainous network of peaks and troughs with barely enough seawater running between them to keep the allied warships afloat. It would have meant certain disaster for such a deep-keeled galleon as the Heldenhammer to pursue under these conditions.

Roth swore a blue streak, slamming his fist into the balustrade.

‘Damn your husk of a corpse to the End Times and back! You’ll get what’s coming to you.’

After the tempest of colourful invective had passed, Ghow finally summoned the courage to sidle up to Roth.

‘Your orders, sir?’

‘Blast it all, Ghow, we’re stuck here like fools – stuck here ‘til the tides return. Fly the flag o’ parley, we may as well make use of the wait. Get the others over here, moor their auxiliaries to us and gather the captains in the Sanctum Templus.’

Ghow raised a heavily-pierced eyebrow with a soft ching.

‘Yes, even the elf,’ said Roth. ‘This is far from over. By the blood of my kin, this isn’t over yet.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The ghost of Sigmarite prayer-incense still lingered in the inner sanctum of the Heldenhammer’s Grand Templus. Roth sat bolt upright in the Theogonist’s command throne, the largest of twelve high-backed wooden seats arranged around a long table made from polished jade. In the vaulted dome high above him were the broken remains of twelve stained glass windows, all bar one of which had been shattered by the fury of battle. Jagged shards crunched underfoot and fragments of priceless iconography lay scattered across the table and the floor. Only one window remained intact: a stained-glass scene that depicted Sigmar’s victory over the Great Necromancer.

Lounging in the throne-chair to Roth’s left was Aranessa Saltspite, paler than ever in the sanctum’s candlelight. A soot-blackened strip of cloth was wound tightly about her neck. She had kissed Roth passionately when she had come aboard, but she had barely said a word to him since. Her contradictory behaviour had done nothing to improve Roth’s foul mood.

By contrast, the Golden Magus was practically bouncing up and down in his seat.

‘I tell you, Jaego old boy, there is nothing like staring over the brink of death to make a man feel truly alive, eh? That most golden of Magi was seconds away from being wrenched below. But of course you would consider such a thing trivial, a die-hard buckler of swash such as yourself. Ah, noble adventure. The tang of victory. Can you taste it, my brave sculptors of fortune? A sea-change is coming, no less. Surely we are only a few hours from immortality. Figuratively speaking, of course.’

Aranessa scowled and opened her mouth to make a barbed comment, but she was interrupted by the sanctum’s thick oaken door slamming open, rebounding with a judder from the empty bookcases lined around the walls.

A shockingly tall and slender elf stood in the vaulted archway. His mane of silver-red hair gleamed in the candlelight, and fires danced in his slanted black eyes.

Ghow Southman peered around the elf’s stylised shoulder guards with an apologetic grimace, his pierced slab of a face in stark contrast to the newcomer’s fine features.

The elf stared unblinking around the glass-strewn sanctum. His uncomfortably intense gaze fell on each of the pirate captains in turn. Red Brokk bristled under the Ulthuan commander’s scrutiny. He had refused to take a chair when he heard that an elf was coming aboard, muttering that he preferred to stand in case of elven treachery.

‘Well met, given the circumstances,’ said the elf, raising his chin. ‘A brief respite in which to share counsel. To whom does this remarkable vessel belong?’

Roth stood up and leaned forward, fixing the strange newcomer with an unflinching stare of his own.

‘Well met. It belongs to Grand Theogonist Volkmar,’ said Roth, motioning for Ghow to leave, ‘but it’s me at the helm. Let’s dispense with the formalities. This isn’t the Phoenix Court.’

‘No indeed,’ said the elf, a slight sneer upon his cupid’s bow lips. He slid fluidly into the seat furthest away from the dwarf and inclined his head towards Roth. The captain was reminded of an eagle choosing its moment to swoop claws-first upon its unsuspecting prey.

‘Continue, please,’ he said in his musical voice. ‘Some introductions are in order, I believe.’

‘My name is Captain Jaego Roth,’ answered the captain. ‘This is the Golden Magus, an old friend of mine from El Khabbath. The captain to my left is Aranessa Saltspite, known to men as the Queen of Tides, and the doughty gentleman standing across from you is Brokk Gunnarsson, a master engineer out of Barak Varr.’

‘Quite a gathering,’ breathed the elf. ‘I know all of you by reputation, save the dwarf of course. My lady,’ said the elf, bowing his head to Aranessa, ‘it is an honour. Your father has been good to me over the years.’

Roth and the Golden Magus shared a brief glance as the elf continued his introduction.

‘My name is Prince Yrellian, the first-born son of Phoenix King Finubar. My origins are of little importance here in the Uluthain, truth be told. Hence I will respect the good captain’s wishes and aim for the heart of the matter.’

‘Suits me,’ grumbled the dwarf, eyes narrowed. ‘I always aim for the heart where elves are concerned.’

‘It would appear that we share a common cause,’ continued the elf, ignoring the master engineer’s thinly-veiled threat. ‘The banishment of the evil that claims our lost kin.’

‘I’m here to cut off Noctilus’s head and spit into the hole when I carve out his heart,’ said Roth. ‘But yes, I suppose they amount to the same thing.’

‘Not quite, Jaego, not quite,’ interjected the Golden Magus, waggling a beringed finger. The elf looked at the sorcerer for a long moment before continuing.

‘It is the fate of my kind to sacrifice ourselves for the good of the world. Aenarion and Caledor taught us this. But martyrdom is wasted without consequence.’ The elf bowed his head once more. ‘So I thank you all. I fear that without your timely intervention, all would be lost.’

Aranessa shut her eyes hard, rubbing the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger.

‘Look, you clearly know your way around a warship,’ she said, ‘and frankly we need all the help we can get. You’re alive, too, which is a good start in this place. But you’re not going to impress us with pretty words and suspiciously clean hair. We’re here to kill.’

She stabbed a long-nailed finger at him like a knife. ‘Just tell us the truth. If you were here with old man Finubar’s navy, there’d be a lot more of you pointy-ears around, wouldn’t there?’

Red Brokk chuckled fondly into his beard and leant over towards Roth.

‘I see why you like her so much, Jaego,’ he whispered loudly.

The elf looked thunderstruck at Aranessa’s interjection. Emotions flowed across his fine features like clouds across the sun – first indignation, then bitter grief, and then a guilt so profound that it was difficult to behold. He took a deep breath and hung his head.

‘I am, as you surmise, here without the Phoenix King’s consent. I have, in truth, been absent from his court for over a dozen moons.’

‘So what are you doing in here?’ asked Aranessa. ‘Trying to take down Noctilus and his puppets with what, a single warship and a couple of giant lizards? Don’t you realise what you’re up against?’

‘It is a matter of honour. I must redeem myself.’

At this, Red Brokk’s head slowly rose up. Stowing the oily marlinspike he was using to pick his teeth, he pulled up a chair. His eyes never left the elf as he joined the captains at the table.

‘My brother’s soul is in here, somewhere,’ continued the elf prince, his face a mask of pain. ‘He is stranded in this dismal realm. Bel-Alhor the Golden, youth and hope incarnate. Taken by a leech wyrm some fourteen moons ago.’

There was a respectful silence. The elf closed his almond eyes.

‘The fault was mine,’ he whispered.

The admission hung in the air. The tallow candles above the table flickered and spat. The dwarf stared at the elf, a strange expression on his rivet-studded face.

Composing himself, Yrellian continued, eyes still screwed shut.

‘I had hoped to find him here. I thought that I could pluck him from the vampire’s grasp and, in bringing him back to Ulthuan, find absolution. I commanded the Seadrake, jewel of my fleet, and with me flew the bond-dragons Symiel and Aragnir. How could I fail?’ he said bitterly.

His voice hardened into a determined monotone. ‘I now realise that it is not even close to enough. This place has claimed a thousand times a thousand spirits, lost souls that have become little more than mist. Mighty Symiel lies broken upon the rocks, another of my brothers lost to little more than pride.’

The elf opened his eyes. ‘I have learned my lesson, though the cost has been dear. Now I seek a different path: to end the curse of the Uluthain itself.’

‘Speak plain, elf,’ said Gunnarsson, gruffly. ‘Like the sea-maid said.’

‘Less of that, Brokk,’ said Aranessa, a slipknife appearing between her fingers in place of her middle digit. ‘I’m every bit as mortal as you are.’

‘He means the Galleon’s Graveyard,’ said Roth, gesturing for Aranessa to put the blade away. ‘The elves call it the Uluthain. Go on, friend Yrellian.’

‘This realm into which we have ventured,’ continued the elf prince, ‘is not of the mortal plane. Rather, it exists upon the threshold of pure Chaos. It is so saturated with magic that all the seas of the world are held in its sway. He who controls it has an almost limitless reservoir of energy at his disposal.’

The elf paused for a second, letting the gravity of his statement sink in before continuing.

‘Using the ancient rituals of the Great Necromancer, the one you call Noctilus has translocated his castle to this place, far from the power struggles of his vampiric brethren. He has forged a vision of undeath to rival Nagash himself. As the master of this realm, he is able to pass from here into the oceans of our world and back again.’

‘But how do we kill him?’ said Roth.

‘He cannot truly be killed, not in the mortal realm at least. All those who die at sea are pulled into the Uluthain to rise again as the living dead. Should the creature that was once Nyklaus von Carstein die, he would swiftly be drawn back here and given unlife once more by the magic of this place.’

‘So how can it be done?’ spat Roth. ‘Every time I have him under my guns he just melts away!’

The elf opened his hands palm upwards, as if revealing a rare petal of truth.

‘We must end the curse that blights these waters and spills out into the oceans we love. That alone will prevent his rebirth. He must be drawn out of his castle, for a tyrant will risk his crown only when someone moves to take it from him. If he were to be slain within this realm and the curse lifted, then Nyklaus would meet his final death.’

The Golden Magus leaned forward, his dark eyes peering over a steeple of ringed fingers. ‘The urns, Jaego.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Roth, distractedly. ‘Have them brought here immediately.’

The sorcerer sat back in his throne once more. ‘It is already done.’

‘So, this curse,’ said Aranessa. ‘It’s the maelstrom, right? The spiral?’

‘Yes,’ said the elf, nodding slowly. ‘That is the blight.’

‘It draws in the dead.’

‘It does, just as its counterpart west of Cathay draws in life.’

The Magus nodded knowingly as this last comment, but for once he kept quiet.

‘All right,’ said Aranessa. ‘All right. That tallies with of a lot of things, for me at least. I believe you, Prince Yrellian. Remind me, Magus, how are we supposed to kill this thing again?’

The elf’s attention was suddenly and completely transferred to the sorcerer, who paled visibly.

‘Well, I have no small ability in the mystic arts,’ said the Magus. ‘That is to say, I have bound into my service those who have the power to disrupt, if not to actually destroy, the maelstrom.’ He grinned nervously before continuing. ‘Though my studies indicate that a critical disruption would be enough, for as Al Razhed taught us, a vortex that is denied its circular momentum will dissipate under the force of its own energies.’

Ignoring the expressions on the faces of his fellows, the Magus plunged on.

‘I long ago acquired the means to effect such a change, and I have taken the liberty of transferring the artefacts in question to the deck outside. Under armed guard, of course.’

For Yrellian’s eyebrows to have climbed any higher they would have had to joined forces with his impeccable mane of hair.

‘They contain a great spell of some kind, I take it?’

‘Aha,’ said the Magus. ‘You ask for the keys to my closest secret, though your guess is not too far from the mark. The solution I have in mind is elemental in nature, not merely Chaotic. Very much elemental, in fact. Surely you saw how I dispatched the Kraken before we were forced into our little impasse?’

‘Dispatched it?’ harrumphed Red Brokk. ‘It’ll take a lot more than some watery bint wrestling away at a tentacle to dispatch the Gulgraz Krannak. The dwarf bared his teeth in anger. ‘Tordrek Hackhart, damn his black soul. Must have taken a leaf out of Noctilus’s book, the traitorous trickle-legged coward; he won’t stay put long enough to get hit. But I have to end his worthless life somehow. A dwarf that tries to kill his own brothers needs to die, simple as that.’

‘Betrayed by your own kind, eh?’ grumbled Aranessa. ‘I know what that feels like. At least you weren’t thrown off a cliff as a child, just for being different.’

‘Perhaps, my dwarf friend,’ said Prince Yrellian, ‘just as with the vampire, one must stray into the beast’s domain in order to kill it. Striking the sword does not slay the wielder.’

‘Yes, yes, I know that,’ said Red Brokk impatiently. ‘The Thunder is the most revolutionary ironclad Barak Varr’s ever seen, but I built her to stay above the water, for Grimnir’s sake, not below. And as dwarfs cannot actually breathe brine, attacking the Krannak’s tentacles is about the only way I have of hurting it.’

‘That reminds me, Aranessa dear,’ said the Golden Magus, leaning over towards the female captain. ‘I finished my little project. There’s a present awaiting you in a crate upon your forecastle; something to restore you to your former glory.’

‘You… you made something for me?’ said Aranessa, looking stunned. ‘Really?’

‘I hope you don’t think me too forward, it is just there is a distinct possibility that you might find it rather useful. You never know, after all the fates can be so very fickle. Especially if–’

Roth slammed his sickle-hand down sharply on the table with a loud bang. Nessa had brought it to him when she came aboard, cleaned of blood and good as new.

‘Enough, Magus! We don’t have time for platitudes and prattle! We’re here to destroy Noctilus, remember? We need to draw him out. That means getting close to the centre of the maelstrom whilst keeping ourselves from going in.’

Roth pulled out his father’s depiction of the Galleon’s Graveyard, spread it across the table and weighted its curling ends with the two halves of the map case.

‘We’re here, by my reckoning, just the other side of the volcanic belt,’ said Roth, picking at the centre of the map with the point of his sickle. ‘When the tides rise again, we can push through this field of shipwrecks and emerge out of the other side. Then it’s through this tight circle of islands to the maelstrom beyond. It’s dense, but we’ll find a way through, even if we have to pass through Sculler’s Gate.’

‘Sculler’s Gate?’ said Red Brokk.

‘It’s as far as my father ever got before turning back into the storm, the gatehouse to Noctilus’s inner keep. He always depicted it as a pair of giant skulls with gnashing teeth. I can’t blame him for not pressing on if the maelstrom lies beyond that wall.’

‘And you think the vampire’ll come out in order to stop us from getting in?’ said Aranessa.

‘I believe so, at least,’ said Roth, meeting Yrellian’s gaze. ‘We threaten the seat of his power, and he’ll do everything he can to ensure that we go no further. Once he commits to the fight…’

Roth smiled without humour, clapping the back of his sickle-hand into the palm of the other with a sharp slap.

‘I doubt we’ll find it that easy,’ said Aranessa cautiously. ‘Have you ever seen one of those things fight? I saw Luthor Harkon take out a Bretonnian galleon once, east of Lustria. Didn’t sleep for a week.’

‘Just get me a clear path to the Reaver,’ said Roth. ‘That’s all.’

‘Easy to say,’ she persisted, ‘but, what with the rest of ’em clinging to Noctilus like a barnacle to a whale’s backside, not so easy to pull off. We’ll do our best to keep them away from you, though. Shame we didn’t finish off that Zandrian monster when we had the chance.’

‘Magic. There’s not much you can do about it,’ muttered Roth. ‘At least we have some of our own. That structure atop its deck, it’s the same pyramid I looted in Nehekhara, rebuilt stone for stone. The whole warship’s a curse, a curse on me and mine in particular.’

‘Aye, well, cursed or not, the bloody thing can burn,’ said Brokk.

‘So burn it,’ said Roth.

‘At least we know we can hurt it,’ said Aranessa, ‘When I rammed the Shadewraith back at the Vigils it was more mist than timber.’

‘We haven’t seen it since Tilea.’ said Roth.

‘That doesn’t mean it’s not out there. You said Noctilus will throw everything he can at us if we threaten the source of his power. The idea of a broadside battle against something we can’t hurt doesn’t appeal.’

‘Only magic can slay that which exists between worlds,’ said Prince Yrellian.

The temple-ship shifted and the two halves of the map case slid off the edge of the table. Prince Yrellian caught them both before they hit the floor and handed them back to Roth with a bow. The Heldenhammer righted itself, and the groan of timbers filtered through from the hull outside.

‘Thank you,’ said Roth, looking up at the swinging candelabra above them. ‘Looks like the tide is turning.’

‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight,’ said Aranessa. ‘We fight our way through to the heart of the vampire’s lair and buy Roth the time he needs to push into the maelstrom. Once there, he and the Magus will use magic to break the spiral. If Noctilus is killed in the process, then so much the better. Is that right, gentlemen?’

‘That’s right,’ agreed Roth, ‘and woe betide anything that stands in my way.’

‘Same old Jaego,’ said the Golden Magus, smiling widely. ‘Though this time you have the semblance of a plan. You must be getting old.’

Quiet laughter rippled round the table. Even Roth chuckled.

‘We have a good plan,’ said Gunnarsson, ‘and a grand alliance with which to enact it.’

‘The Grand Alliance,’ said Roth, proudly. ‘I like the sound of that. Five of us now. That’s more like a fleet. It should be enough.’

‘I hope so, Jaego my love,’ said Aranessa, smiling sadly. ‘I really do.’

‘To the ships, then?’ said Yrellian.

‘Aye, to the ships,’ agreed Gunnarsson. ‘It’s time we finished this.’

The captains rose from their chairs and filed out of the sanctum. The last to leave, Roth glanced up at the lone stained glass window above him. He held the sign of the comet over his heart for a second, and shut the heavy oak door behind him with a thud.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Grand Alliance pressed onwards through the mists, no helmsman daring to push his warship faster than a few knots. All around them were the scattered cadavers of broken galleons, their rotted superstructures jutting from the rock-strewn water like the ribcages of titanic sea monsters. Through the stale air came banshee shrieks and menacing groans, an intermittent and confusing barrage that meant orders had to be transferred man to man. The allied warships were making slow progress as they wound and snaked in single file through the labyrinth. To say they were vulnerable to an ambush would be a gross understatement, but it was the only way they could progress through the deathly white mist.

The Heldenhammer led the way, Roth standing rigid at the prow. Despite the thick fog winding all about them, the view through the captain’s spyglass was completely clear, enabling him to chart a path through the maze of rotten vessels without running aground. They saw a crumbling citadel away to port, its forbidding black silhouette tallying with his father’s map and reassuring Roth that they were on the right track, but it was hard going. The detritus of a thousand shipwrecks lay scattered around and about, each reduced to little more than its own headstone. Roth was sure he recognised several of them. A couple of them he had even sunk himself.

Roth risked surveying the waters behind him for a moment. Sure enough, the vessels of the Grand Alliance were there, following him through the mists. Thinking of the elf’s words back in the Sanctum Templus, Roth gave an involuntary shudder. Each wisp of fog was a bodiless soul trapped in limbo, its mortal remains bound to Noctilus’s realm. Should things go wrong, it was very likely their own immortal souls would suffer the same fate.

Roth’s breath started to frost in the air. Shivering, the captain turned his gaze upwards. A thin white rime was creeping across the battered and holed sails that rose high into the mists above Roth’s vantage point on the forecastle.

Sails that were no longer filled with wind.

‘Beware front, captain,’ came a shout from above. ‘We’ve got–’

The booming roar of a broadside split the air as a volley of cannonballs hammered through the fog. Several smashed into the Heldenhammer’s prow, blasting holes in the thick oak panelling and thundering through the gun decks below.

Roth was shaken from his feet as a series of explosions rumbled within the temple-ship’s belly. The bodies of unlucky watchmen tumbled down from the fighting tower to land hard upon the topdeck.

Roth picked himself up, blood seeping where a splinter of wood had gashed his cheek.

Just for a second the mist parted up ahead, revealing the softly-glowing skeleton of a warship that drifted past as if suspended in thin air. Underneath its spine-carved keel trailed a morass of rusted chain and rotting vegetation. Aranessa had been right. The Shadewraith, as patient
as death, had waited until they were at their most vulnerable.

Without the wind in its sails, the Heldenhammer was slowing to a halt. The Swordfysh and the Flaming Scimitar were attempting to use their momentum to carve around its flanks, but without wind they were as stranded as the temple-ship. They merely succeeded in presenting their sterns toward the Shadewraith, vulnerable to the same raking fire that had ploughed into the Heldenhammer. Behind them, Grimnir’s Thunder was changing tack, but it was hemmed in between the sail warships up ahead and the shipwrecks clustered all around it. They were sitting ducks.

Up ahead, the ghastly glow of the Shadewraith ebbed away, only to light the mists once more as it came about.

‘Brace!’ shouted Roth, but his voice was drowned out by the mocking howls of the spirits that wound and circled about his masts. ‘Dead,’ they shrieked, every time Roth opened his mouth to bellow an order. ‘Dead, dead.’

An ear-splitting boom rent the air as more cannonballs ploughed through the spirit-fog towards them. Half of the flying galleon’s fusillade tore great gouges in the white timber hull of the Seadrake. The elven ship listed to one side, its proud azure sails hanging limp as the wind ebbed away completely.

The other half of the broadside smashed into the engine rooms of Sigmar’s Wrath with a deafening metallic clang. A massive brass cog burst from the rear of the forecastle, crashing down into the topdeck and grinding across it like a rolling millstone before spinning crazily to a halt.

Above Roth, the Heldenhammer’s stab-cannons fired upon the Shadewraith from the fighting tops, but their shots did little more than tear a few wisps of smoke from the skeletal ribs of the ghostly galleon.

Roth watched aghast as the enemy warship carved gracefully through the mists away from them. By the glow of its passage, it was turning back round in order to give them another volley from its port side. At this rate they would be taken apart in a matter of minutes.

Something barrelled through the mists towards the enemy warship, a red streak of scales and muscle followed by a fat-bellied tempest djinn. The spirit’s lower half billowed out behind it in a column of air, a spiral of souls left in its wake.

Prince Yrellian’s dragon was swooping down upon the distant Shadewraith, pulling up short at the last minute to breathe a gout of flame across the ghost ship’s decks. The fire billowed over and through the Shadewraith’s ribbed hull, but the fires did not catch. The ghost galleon was impervious to flame too. Roth snarled in frustration and smashed his fist on the timbers. He could feel his destiny slipping away, second by torturous second.

The tempest djinn, having curved around to the far side of the Shadewraith during the dragon’s attack, inhaled so much of the spirit-fog that wreathed the ghost ship that the haunting cries ebbed away. Ahead, the glowing galleon was left naked and exposed as the djinn exhaled with hurricane force.

The Shadewraith was propelled towards the Heldenhammer at great speed, borne upon gale-force winds by the djinn’s mighty breath. Insubstantial as the mist, the ghostly galleon had no way of halting its progress. Roth cried out in jubilation as he realised that the glowing warship was heading flank-on towards Sigmar’s Wrath.

‘Release the winches!’ screamed Roth over the moaning in the mists. ‘Release the Wrath! Hit that thing and hit it hard!’

‘Aye, sir!’ came the cry from the forecastle engine rooms. The Shadewraith was so close they could almost touch it, filling Roth’s vision with a wall of glowing white timbers and the miasma of rotten souls trapped within.

There came a great clunking from the engine rooms, followed by a dull and final thud. Sigmar’s Wrath descended a few yards, warhammer poised, before lurching to a complete halt.

His eyes stinging with tears of frustration, the captain sprinted up the spiral staircases that led to the fighting tops. Emerging in the upper lofts where the two remaining stab-cannons were being reloaded, Roth struggled to catch his breath. He could hear the cries of the damned issuing from inside the Shadewraith as its cannons were brought to bear for a devastating close-range volley. The engine rooms would not survive another direct hit.

Roth dived over to the first of the stab-cannons, screaming to make himself heard. The crew just shook their heads, dumbfounded and shivering as rime formed across their beards and eyelashes. With a great effort, the captain heaved the stab-cannon around and pointed it down at the Heldenhammer’s forecastle. His men gibbered and wailed, but all that came out of their mouths were the harsh cries of the spirits above.

‘Dead! Dead!’

Roth grabbed the taper from the lightsman at the rear of the first cannon and shoved it hard into the vent. He was rewarded with a blinding flash, and with an ear-splitting boom the fighting top filled with black smoke. One of the chainlinks holding Sigmar’s Wrath upright shattered in two as a cannonball ploughed into it.

A crewman grabbed hold of Roth, thinking that he had gone berserk. Roth elbowed him so hard in the chin that he was knocked out cold and shoved his way past the others with his teeth bared. Still holding the burning taper, Roth lurched over to the other gun and slammed into its barrel, wrestling it around and down. He pushed the taper hard into the priming powder around the vent.

The stab-cannon jerked backwards as the charge caught, sending a cannonball ploughing into the other chain holding Sigmar’s Wrath upright. The links fractured with a dull crack as the shot slammed onwards into the forecastle, causing yet more damage to the battered temple-ship’s prow. Ears ringing and face black with soot, Roth muttered a prayer and leaned out from the gunport.

With a ringing crack, the chains holding Sigmar’s Wrath in place gave way, and the gigantic statue swung downwards with the unstoppable force of a falling building. The holy warhammer held in its grasp thundered down into the Shadewraith’s midsection with devastating results. It ploughed through the ghostly galleon in a storm of golden light, shattering its gun decks, crushing its ribcage hull and breaking its keel in half.

With a despairing howl, the Shadewraith dissipated into a thousand swirling wisps of light. The tempest djinn billowing behind it inhaled, sucking the ectoplasm of the banished ship deep into itself. It breathed deeper, its chest and belly expanding until it ceased to be humanoid altogether and instead became a perfect glowing sphere. The ball of light span frantically, burning away the mists around it before diminishing in size and zipping through the air toward the deck of Flaming Scimitar.

Fascinated, Roth leaned out of the murder-hole at the back of the fighting top. Now that the mists were dispersed it was simple enough to follow the glowing sphere as it wound around and down towards a tiny figure standing on the pleasure barge’s foredeck with his arms raised.

Roth rested his spyglass on the sill, and it sprang instantly into focus just in time to show the Golden Magus open an ornate glass bottle. Shrinking further as it descended, the glowing sphere vanished inside, and the sorcerer deftly corked the bottle with a silver cone. Roth could just make out the tiny glowing galleon trapped inside before the vessel was hidden away in the Magus’s robes.

Despite the distance between them, the sorcerer looked straight at Roth and gave an elaborate little bow. Roth felt the hairs on his arms stand upright. The Golden Magus was smiling, but his eyes were as cold as death.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

With the deadly mists dissipated, the winds picked up and the Grand Alliance made good speed towards Sculler’s Gate. The Heldenhammer led them though the remainder of the shipwreck-strewn reaches, Sigmar’s Wrath hanging crippled at its prow.

Though they had won the battle against the Shadewraith, there was no way to reforge the chains that Captain Roth had broken when he had opened fire upon his own ship. The sagging figurehead had been robbed of its majesty as a result, and the morale of many of the Heldenhammer’s crew had been damaged along with it.

Roth, for his part, was distraught.

‘Mother of pearl, sir, it was your thinking that killed the damned thing!’ protested Ghow Southman as he struggled to keep up with Roth’s constant pacing. ‘If it weren’t for you, the lot of us would be dead in the water by now.’

‘You’re missing the point,’ snarled Roth, eyes locked on the horizon. ‘That weapon was my one chance of putting down the Reaver. Cannonballs just aren’t enough. We know that from bitter experience.’

‘No problem as can’t be solved if you throw enough cannonballs at it,’ said the islander, tugging at the silver rings in his chin. ‘An old cove called Jaego Roth told me that, years back. Real scrapper, that one, you would have liked him. Never gave up.’

The first mate narrowed his eyes. ‘Though he could be a right pig-headed bastard when he set his mind to it. And they say his spine turned to jelly right when it mattered most.’

Roth gave a long sigh. ‘Ghow, you may look simple, but I know that inside that fat head lurks a decent brain. Spare me the parrot act. This is different and you know it.’

The mountainous wall of islands that formed the inner keep of Noctilus’s realm loomed in the distance, a broken spine of black rock with caves like eye sockets dotted along its length. On either side of the break were two great cliffs that faced each other, their teeth a set of jagged rocks jutting up from the water. One cliff was crowned by a henge of standing stones, much like those of old Albion, its face carved into the likeness of a titanic skull. Sculler’s Gate, just as the mapwright had painted it on the walls of the Enlightenment, and barely half a mile distant.

Despite the fact that the wind had diminished to little more than a zephyr, the Heldenhammer was gathering speed.

‘Well, captain, by my reckoning we’re going through that gap whether we like it or not. That’s some current drawing us onward.’

‘It’s nothing compared to the pull it exerts on the dead,’ Roth sighed. He looked over to the three grand urns the Magus had entrusted to his care, each roped tightly to the forecastle.

‘I suppose it’s possible we can still disrupt the maelstrom, even if killing the Reaver’s out of the question.’

‘Sir,’ said Roth. ‘With all due respect; you brought us in here, and like as not we’re not getting back out. If you’re going in through those cliffs with the seeds o’ failure in your heart, then failure you will reap, sure as fish stink in the sun. That dead bastard killed hundreds of us Sartosans already. And you know what, sir? He’s going to kill us too, most like. So let’s make him pay for it, eh?’

Roth nodded, lips pursed.

‘Aye. Aye, Ghow, let’s do that.’

One by one, the ships of the Grand Alliance steered into the pull of the maelstrom. They had little choice but to aim for the gap in between the skull-faced cliffs; any other course would result in their running aground against the jagged rocks that lined the bottom of each peak.

High above, Yrellian’s dragon and the dwarf ironclad’s dirigible patrolled the skies. Roth would have given anything to have advance warning of whatever was behind the gate, but he had learned to trust to his own intuition long ago. His instincts were warning him against sailing between the two leering death’s heads that stood sentinel outside Noctilus’s accursed lair, but it was the only gap in the mountain peaks large enough to accommodate a warship the size of the Heldenhammer.

The dirigible turned about in the air, a red rune that Roth now recognised as the dwarf sign for danger flickering at its prow. Distant horns sounded as the craft floated back to its parent warship. In response, Grimnir’s Thunder belched twin plumes of black smoke and churned forwards with its engines at full power. Murky blue water frothed white in its wake as it gathered pace, outdistancing the sail-powered warships to either side.

‘That’s odd,’ said Roth, extending his spyglass. ‘Dwarfs aren’t given to rushing headlong into battle, unless there’s honour at stake, that is. I’ll wager the Kraken’s the other side of that gap.’

‘Aye, sir,’ said Ghow, looking worried.

‘Still, I’d rather dwarf silversteel takes the brunt of whatever’s waiting there. Sigmar knows we’ve taken enough damage ourselves.’

As the dwarf ironclad moved towards the gap, the cliff faces began to shudder. Purple lightning played about the standing stones atop the leftmost crag, and the air filled with the distinctive tang of magic. Loose boulders fell in a series of small rockslides from their steep sides.

As the Thunder chugged into their shadow, the peaks themselves began to groan as if protesting against the forces shaking them to life. The cliff faces ground and juddered towards each other, the waters crashing against their jagged teeth foaming like the saliva of a rabid dog. Roth’s nails dug into the balustrade as he willed the ironclad to go faster. Smoke belched from the valve-chimneys arranged above the Thunder’s stern as the ironclad accelerated, attempting to run the gauntlet before the crags closed upon its hull.

To Roth’s eye, it looked like it might just make it through. Better yet, in closing upon the dwarf warship, the two craggy peaks had left wide gaps behind them. Gaps wide enough to sail a flagship through.

‘Ha!’ shouted Roth. ‘Hard-a-starboard, and aim for that gap!’ He waved frantically at the opening to his right. ‘The current will take us through there just as well as wind, if not better!’

‘Aye, captain!’ came the call from the tiller capstan. ‘Coming about!’

Just as the Thunder began to emerge from between the two halves of Sculler’s Gate, a flabby, white-fleshed monster appeared on the far side. The skaven leviathan, its open ribs crackling with painfully bright warp-lightning, was cutting across the rapidly closing gate.

Roth cried out as the monstrous thing let fly, thick bolts of diabolical energy leaping out in great arcs that grounded one after another upon the metallic hull of the Thunder. The crippling energies of the chain explosion blasted a great smoking hole in the ironclad’s engine quarters and shook an avalanche of rocks from the cliff faces that ground ever closer on either side. With a groaning cough, the steam paddles of Grimnir’s Thunder fell silent, leaving the ironclad at the mercy of the grinding cliffs.

The two halves of Sculler’s Gate closed upon the ironclad with tectonic force. Shrieks of tortured metal rent the air as Grimnir’s Thunder buckled and distorted, its indomitable hull slowly and fatally crushed between the jaws of the skull-faced cliffs. Roth forced himself to watch as secondary explosions cooked off within the dwarf craft’s gun decks. Above the dying ironclad, the dirigible was doing its best to drive off the monster, twin cannons spitting at the pale-skinned behemoth’s head.

Dwarf engineers were diving into the waters from the vaulted archways that lined the Thunder’s sides, but the skaven leviathan was not done with them yet. The pallid beast writhed and wriggled, bursts of electricity pulsing from the brass globes at its flanks. Around the ironclad’s waterline the blackened bodies of would-be escapees floated and bobbed like dead fish.

As the Heldenhammer and its allies steered their craft toward the two gaps left by the ironclad’s disastrous charge, Roth desperately searched for a glimpse of Red Brokk. The lenses of his spyglass blurred for a moment before flicking into focus on the master engineer, who was hurriedly stripping to the waist. His bright red hair had been moulded up into a great coxcomb that dripped with thick engine grease, and pair of fire axes was locked around his neck like a yoke.

Roth shook his head in dismay. If what he knew about dwarf culture was true, Red Brokk was already dead. A dwarf who had suffered unbearable humiliation would take the Slayer oath and attempt to find a worthy death in battle; a death so glorious it erased the taint of his shame forever. Losing two ships to the Dreadfleet was clearly more than the master engineer could bear.

The dwarf dirigible floated nearer and nearer, its cargo chains dangling down within arm’s reach. A spark of hope flared in Roth’s breast as Red Brokk grabbed hold of a chain and gave it a good hard yank.

The dirigible floated up and away, but instead of escaping the battle Brokk launched himself backwards from the balustrade of the Thunder, swinging in over the docking vault of his crumpling warship and then back out like a pendulum. He released the chain at the apex of its sweeping arc, flying through the air towards the skaven leviathan like a living projectile.

As was to be expected from a master engineer, Gunnarsson had judged his trajectory perfectly. Roth saw the dwarf unlock the fire axes from around his neck in mid-flight, and just as he struck the beast’s fleshy flank he hacked bloody holes into the leviathan’s flaccid and wrinkled flesh. It was an impressive display of fury, but he might as well have been trying to kill a mountain with a pickaxe for all the good he was doing.

‘Go for the engines, Brokk!’ shouted Roth, though he knew he could not be heard over the thunder of battle. ‘Take it apart from the inside!’

The maddened dwarf hacked away, achieving little but to cover himself in rank blood and rotten pus from head to toe. The blubbery flesh of the sea monster was becoming more and more difficult to negotiate, and the dwarf’s tenuous foothold on its flabby folds of skin went from under him more than once.

As Roth watched, a score of elven longbolts, each the size of a spear, thudded into the beast’s blubbery flank. The Seadrake was carving around the face of Sculler’s Gate, its massed bolt throwers adding their pinpoint accuracy to the fight.

‘Nice try, princeling,’ muttered the captain, ‘but it’ll take more than that to kill it.’

It was then that realisation dawned. The bolts were not intended to slay the undead monstrosity, but rather to give the dwarf a last chance at retribution. The spear-like shafts were perfectly positioned as rungs, rungs that led from Red Brokk’s position on the beast’s flank to the open scaffolding that formed its gunnery decks.

Brokk grasped at the gift the elf warship had given him, bodily swinging himself over to the nearest bolt and jumping clumsily to the next one along. Half a dozen undead ratmen skittered out from the scaffolding, leaping across the bolts towards him with their rusted blades held in fleshless jaws.

Another volley of white-shafted bolts shot through the air, perilously close to the coxcombed Slayer. Five of the verminous warriors were transfixed to the side of their monstrous warship, wriggling like stuck insects before falling apart in a confusion of rotten bones. Roaring with bloodlust, Brokk brained the last of them with the edge of his fire axe before clambering along the white rungs sprouting from the monster’s open flank and into the rough scaffolding beyond.

A looming cliff suddenly blocked the dwarf’s one-man crusade from view as the Heldenhammer passed into one of the gaps left by the Thunder’s passage. Willing the dwarf to succeed as he turned back to the warship’s fore, Roth saw something that left him breathless.

A great spiral vortex swept across the horizon, impossibly large, funnelling downwards and around into a bottomless black void. Jagged triangular teeth of white rock whirled within it, reminding the captain of the mouth of a shark. Thousands of tiny white dots infested its depths. Human skulls, thought Roth, his skin prickling.

The growling rumble of the vortex’ guts shook Roth to his bones. His head swam at its sheer magnitude. Squinting, he could just make out ragged purple-black sails drifting towards them through the mist at its edge.

The maelstrom. And all that stood between Roth and its hungry gullet was the lord of the Dreadfleet himself.

A blinding beam of light slammed into the Heldenhammer’s foremast with the force of a thunderbolt. The iron-hard waist of the mast was reduced to cinders in an instant by the searing heat of the bolt. Roth hit the deck as the remnants of the mast toppled over into the water, a tangle of rigging dragging dozens of crewmen screaming to their deaths. The scent of burning wood mingled with the coppery tang of blood.

Roth jumped back to his feet, sprinting over to the side of the warship. The Nehekharan galley was bearing down on them with a terrible inevitability. No mortal oarsman could hope to fight against the current of the maelstrom and win, but the Zandrian warship was propelled by the dead, and its master had his prey firmly in its sights. The Heldenhammer, badly wounded and at the mercy of the currents, would stand little chance against the war galley should its beast-headed statuary take their halberds to its flanks.

Without warning the Swordfysh crashed through the waves at the edge of the titanic whirlpool, curving around the Heldenhammer’s flank and heading on an intercept course. A thick beam of energy leapt out from the giant gem at the war galley’s stern, burning its way across the Swordfysh’s hull. Within moments the entire front half of the warship was covered in coruscating white flame.

As it carved towards its foe, the Swordfysh was raised up high on a crest of a rippling wall of water. The saw-toothed ram at its prow jutted downwards with deadly intent. The warship came crashing down upon the galley’s deck like a hurled spear, its hardened bone ram smashing apart the Nehekharan vessel’s statue-lined flank and juddering through into the hull beneath. Hundreds of skeletal crewmen were washed overboard by the deluge. When the tidal wave subsided, the two mighty warships were locked together by the force of the impact, the Swordfysh’s jag-toothed ram impaled up to its hilt.

‘Yes!’ shouted Roth. ‘Aranessa, you angel!’

Cackling, Roth forced himself to concentrate on the Reaver as it bore down upon them. His old flame had given him the chance he needed, though it was very likely she had doomed herself in the process.

Captain Saltspite span the wheel of the Swordfysh as hard as she could to port, leaning into it so that her full weight pulled the rudder to one side. She almost managed to convince herself it was the rudder that was guiding her headlong plunge towards the war galley below, but in her heart, she knew there was more to it than that.

The black-hulled warship slammed home ram-first into the topdeck of the Nehekharan vessel. The Swordfysh shivered like a frenzied beast as it buried its jagged blade deep in the body of its foe. Aranessa crowed in triumph. That had been better than a sword-kill, better by far.

The two mighty warships floundered in the water, locked together by the barbs of the pirate ship’s ram. A shadow fell across Aranessa’s face for a second, and she leapt backwards as a halberd the size of an ironwood tree crashed through the deck where she had been standing. The crocodile-headed statue that had lined the flank of the war galley was staring right at her. Suddenly being in such close proximity to the Nehekharan vessel didn’t seem such a good idea.

Walking down the shaft of the massive halberd was a robed figure blazing with a strange light. Despite its regal bearing and the shining crown atop its scalp the creature was the ugliest, most wizened thing Aranessa had ever seen. Parchment skin hung in dry folds from a sunken skull, and a gap-toothed jaw worked up and down as guttural syllables spilled out in an ancient tongue. It extended a gnarled claw, and glittering sandstone powder drizzled from between its bony fingers. Where the sand fell, the timbers of the Swordfysh petrified and turned to dust.

King Amanhotep the Intolerant himself, come to avenge the loss of his ship.

Aranessa had always prided herself on knowing when to fight and when to run. Grabbing her trident from its clasp atop the binnacle, she vaulted over a fallen cannon, putting as much distance between herself and the hateful thing as she could. The chant still rang in her ears, even though she couldn’t understand a word.

Slowing, she hobbled to the foredeck, her thoughts clouded with images of dust and sand and death. She clambered backwards as best she could as the thing walked unhurriedly up the stairway towards her, but her limbs felt like they were made of mud. The blades of Aranessa’s lower legs bumped into a long, wide sea-chest of Arabyan wood.

The Magus’s gift.

‘This had better be good, fat man,’ slurred Aranessa, heaving over the sea-chest and hammering it with her fists. It wouldn’t open.

The ancient thing was getting closer, stalking towards her with the malevolent patience of one who knows his prey cannot escape.

On the verge of panic, Aranessa forced her trident into the sea-chest’s lid and prised at it until her fingers were red with blood. The chest’s lock finally gave way with a loud crack, and a contraption of straps, scales and broad crescents of metal spilled onto the deck. Her mouth gaped. It looked very much like a tail, a fishtail made of metal and cogs.

The pain in her fingers cut through the fug of Nehekharan syllables that buzzed through her head like angry scarabs, and she fought hard to keep the rational parts of her mind from being drowned out by the sheer primal fear of the ageless thing stalking towards her across the deck.

Aranessa drew her slipknife and cut away the sawfish blades bound to her leg-stumps, sliding her thighs into the straps of the Magus’s fishtail contraption instead. She fumbled to tighten the awkward thing about her waist and pull herself up to sit on the gunwale at the same time, but the fug in her head was growing thicker with every step the wretched creature took. Sand fanned out through the air towards her, turning the Magus’s sea-chest to dust. A speck of the sparkling stuff landed on her cheek, and a patch of her face sloughed away. Laughing hideously, the ancient king pushed a crippled, wasted claw towards her.

An apocalyptic explosion split the air, and a sheet of cracking black lightning roared across the waves with such force that the Zandrian’s sunken eyes jerked upwards. Aranessa’s head cleared, and her panic gave her strength. She scooped up her trident and pulled herself up onto the gunwale, kicking out with the ends of the Magus’s contraption so that she was perched on the brink. She glimpsed the skaven leviathan-ship immolating in brief silhouette before disintegrating completely in a storm of warp-lightning.

The Tomb King Amanhotep lunged for her throat, but Aranessa let gravity take her backward, falling headfirst into the cold, bitter waters of the Galleon’s Graveyard.

The Heldenhammer was gathering speed, pulled onward by the vast funnel of seawater that roared down into the void at the maelstrom’s heart. An unwholesome rain had begun to pelt down, making the decks of the temple-ship slippery and reducing visibility even further.

Away to port, Flaming Scimitar was riding high on the periphery of the vortex, a clutch of frozen salt-devils holding it back from the whirlpool’s deadly pull with their broad, muscular shoulders. Ahead, the Bloody Reaver came on, actively seeking a collision course now that Sigmar’s Wrath hung useless at the temple-ship’s prow.

Captain Roth stood in the shadow of the fighting top, sword drawn. His death was close, he could taste it. The Bloody Reaver loomed larger and larger, tattered sails flapping as its bat-winged ram ploughed through the spume towards him. The maelstrom was propelling the vampire-ship against the current, Noctilus’s supernatural control over the gnashing whirlpool turning the colossal edifice into a jagged projectile of rock and fossilised timber.

Queen Bess, the massive cannon mounted in the skull-cave at the Reaver’s fore, boomed above the whirlpool’s roar. A gigantic cannonball smashed the front of the Grand Templus to powder, its glorious façade tumbling down into the scattered pirates cringing below. Roth risked a glance backwards. With heartbreaking slowness, the entire temple began to collapse in on itself, masonry cascading across the deck in an avalanche that crushed scores of men in the giant building’s shadow.

Roth roared in fear and anger as the Bloody Reaver’s ram drove towards them, poised to deliver the death blow.

The giant bronze statue at the Heldenhammer’s prow lifted slowly upward, chains dangling at its shoulders. It glowed softly from within, pure white light spilling from the cracks in its bronze casework where the metal had buckled. Roth cried out in exultation and fell to his knees, calling out encouragement to the statue as if it were alive.

The towering edifice rose up to its full height, a shining bronze god of war that sizzled with energy as the thick rain lashed down upon it. Poised majestically for a second, the statue arced back down with shocking speed, hammering into the prow of the oncoming vampire-ship like the fist of an angry god.

Ghal-Maraz crunched into the Reaver’s prow with such force that it smashed the rocky promontory from the central mass of warship, bat-winged prow and all. The vampire-ship bucked in the water as if it had ran into a mountain, the castle at its rear leaning crazily as the titanic shockwave rocked its core. Hundreds of men o’ bones and drowned sailors cascaded from the battlements and ledges into the gnashing seas below.

Still the Reaver was driven onwards by the fell currents below the waters. Up came the Wrath once more, raising its divine hammer with ponderous slowness before descending again. This time the tower-sized weapon struck the jag-ribbed midsection of the vampire-ship. An explosion of light burst outwards from the point of its impact, and the front half of the Reaver fell apart in a confusion of rubble. The aft section of the vampire-ship, no longer balanced by the rocky promontory at its front, began to lean crazily backward. Roth laughed into the storm as it passed the critical angle of recovery. The Reaver was sinking fast.

Aranessa hit the surface of the water as straight as a blade, plunging downward in a stream of bubbles. A spear-fisher for the long and lonely years of her childhood, she instinctively bucked her thighs to and fro, winding her way deeper under the waves with each sinuous motion.

She was rewarded for her efforts when the metallic contraption attached to her lower body jerked into life. The crescent sections fanned out into a wide, fully articulated fin, and the bands of metal around her waist cinched in tight. She could feel the pull of the maelstrom upon her; a great black void that threatened to swallow her whole should she tire. With the artificial strength of the Magus’s creation bolstering her perfect technique, however, she felt she could hold out for long enough.

Grinning fiercely, Aranessa ripped off her headscarf and breathed in a great lungful of cold water through the gills behind her ears. The brine tasted of magic and of death, but she didn’t care. Reborn, she thought; I have been reborn, back into the cool dark womb of the sea. The ease of movement felt amazing after so many crippled years.

It felt so good to have a tail again. She felt a sudden pang of regret that she had cut off her birth-tail all those rum-sodden years ago, by the light of a lonely fire on the beach. She had so wanted to be human back then. Aranessa shuddered at the memory. She would have to thank the Golden Magus for reminding her where she belonged, even if she didn’t know why he’d done it.

First things first, thought Aranessa. There is business to attend to.

Lithe and determined, the captain powered her way towards a faint green glow that filtered through the inky waters. The Black Kraken was under the waves, sinking slowly, its tentacles clutching the shattered remains of Yrellian’s elven galleon as it descended into the depths.

The monstrosity had been stunned into mechanical failure by the lightning pulse of the skaven leviathan’s death throes. What was once a deadly predator had become a helpless great fish, waiting to be speared. The muscles at the back of Aranessa’s head ached with the effort of smiling so hard. This was freedom. The need for human approval was a distant memory. She wouldn’t miss any of the land-monkeys that much, truth be told.

Well, she admitted to herself, perhaps one.

Aranessa darted deftly between the Black Kraken’s tentacles, leaving corkscrew trails of bubbles in her wake. She could hear the thing’s engines whining and choking as they struggled to restart. Beneath her, the lambent glow of the Kraken’s faceted eye-ports was like a beacon drawing her onward. She made her way toward them. To her savage joy, one of the bulging eye-ports had an elven longspear jutting out from it. A spidery network of cracks spread out from the point of impact. Just as well, Aranessa admitted to herself as she levered the longspear back and forth. She could never have shattered it on her own.

With a dull snap, the glass of the Kraken’s eye-port broke apart. Seawater forced its way inside in a gushing torrent. Using the butt of her trident, Aranessa stabbed at the edges of the broken glass until the aperture was wide enough for her to wriggle inside.

As she plunged into the Kraken’s interior the sea-captain felt a jarring impact. Below her was a control room no larger than Roth’s sanctum, lit by an eerie green by row upon row of crackling green orbs. Sitting in the control seat was something that had once been a dwarf. It was grunting guttural oaths as it hurried to reload a fat-barrelled six-pistol. Seawater swilled around its legs as the torrent from the shattered eye-port grew into a raging flood.

The strange figure was disentangling itself from a nest of levers and segmented tendrils that writhed and grasped after it. Sprouting from its chin was a nest of mechanical cables and dangling plugs, a strange echo of Redd Brokk’s metal-capped beard. Several pairs of eyes winked and stared from what had once been a close-fitting helm.

Steam hissed from the creature’s nostrils as it growled a threat in debased dwarfish. Aranessa held her trident out towards the once-dwarf as the water level in the control room gushed ever higher.

‘Hackhart, isn’t it? Tordrek Hackhart? Brokk Gunnarsson sends his regards, you piss-streaked, goblin-fondling excuse for a master engineer.’

With a bestial growl, the Kraken’s captain leapt out of its command throne and splashed into the roiling waters. It churned through the waist-high waters towards her. Aranessa readied her trident for a killing thrust, but a thick metal cable snaked down from above and dealt her a heavy blow to the head. Her vision spun, and she swore she could hear daemonic laughter ringing in her ears.

The hissing once-dwarf barrelled towards Aranessa with hands that clicked and whirred. She whipped her trident round just in time and fixed its butt against the inner wall so that its prongs jabbed hard into Hackhart’s metal-sheathed body. The once-dwarf seemed not to notice, eyes bulging as it grasped for Aranessa’s throat. She kicked out with her metal tail, slamming it hard into her assailant’s kneecap, and was rewarded with a grunt of pain.

Behind her, the seawater gushed in from above, the mounting pressure of the stunned Kraken’s slow descent forcing more and more brine into the command chamber.

Hackhart changed tack, pulling backwards sharply and wrenching Aranessa’s trident from her grip. The creature spun it round deftly and thrust it toward the sea-captain’s chest, but she slid to one side at the last moment, and the sea-spear wedged deep into the network of dials and cables behind Aranessa. Something screamed in her ear, but she blotted it out. Wrapping her arms around the trident’s shaft, she lifted her hips and slammed her tail so hard into the once-dwarf’s head that she knocked it reeling. A thin shriek came from the banks of cables behind her as she struggled to wrench the trident free, but it was stuck fast amongst the dials and pistons.

Aranessa realised with a sick jolt that the infernal machine itself was alive. Sliding out her slipknife, she cut savagely at one of the cable-veins behind her and yanked it out from the nest of its fellows, pointing the cut end towards Hackhart. Just as she had hoped, a spray of superheated ichor gushed out, pouring into the once-dwarf’s face. Blinded, the creature staggered backwards.

Casting around, Aranessa’s eyes fell on something that looked very much like a furnace, though it burned with an unnatural green fire. The water was up to her neck now, so she submerged completely, swimming over to the trident and finally wrestling it free from the wall of cables and dials. Spinning it over her wrist in the water, she used the butt of the sea-spear to batter open the lock on the furnace door and lever it open.

Almost immediately the water around the furnace began to bubble and simmer. The heat level in the waterlogged cabin tripled in the space of a few seconds. The once-dwarf shrieked, churning through the waters towards her with murder in its staring round eyes, but Aranessa was too quick. She darted around him and swam up to the torrent of water gushing into the command centre, hauling herself out with a supreme effort.

Just as she was squeezing herself free the once-dwarf grabbed hold of her tail and pulled with all its strength. Her face contorted in agony, Aranessa hurriedly cut herself free from the straps that held her new tail around her. She wriggled free, leaving her tail wedged firmly in the shattered eye-port and trapping the once-dwarf inside. Risking a glance backwards, Aranessa saw the malevolent creature staring at her from behind the thick glass of its cabled prison. Pink bubbles seethed out of its nose and mouth as it boiled alive like a lobster in a pot.

Exhausted and bereft of her new tail, Aranessa was tugged backwards into the darkness by a slow but irresistible force. She stuck her tongue out as she passed the glass eye of the mechanical monster, jabbing the three-fingered sign of the trident at its dying captain.

As the Queen of Tides drifted backward toward the maelstrom’s gnashing maw, the sickly green lights inside the Black Kraken flickered, ebbed, and died.

Roth’s joy at his victory over the Reaver drained away as a dark cloud floated up from the castle atop the shattered remnants of the crag. It billowed like robes in the wind, floating through the pelting rain towards the Heldenhammer.

As it came closer, Roth made out four robed and skeletal figures, each holding a scythe aloft in its bony fingers. A fell light glimmered in the eye sockets of their fleshless skulls. Strange symbols writhed at the hems of their tattered black garments; symbols that hurt the eye.

The deathly apparitions moved through the air directly towards Roth himself. A sharpshooter up in the rigging sniped one of the creatures, but his bullet passed straight through the spectre’s skull without so much as slowing it.

In the midst of the spectral escorts was a gold-armoured figure in a red bicorn, its deathly features distorted by a pair of long fangs that curved over his lower lip. The creature’s eyes blazed red, leaving trails of fire in the darkness.

Count Noctilus himself.

Roth’s heart hammered as if it knew it only had minutes left to beat. Pulling out the sickle from his artificial hand, Roth folded out the pressure lever and pumped it back and forth frantically until the device groaned fit to burst. He kissed the trident talisman hung around his neck and, rubbing the gannet’s foot beside it with a superstitious fervour that would have done Ghow proud, offered up a silent prayer to Sigmar and to the spirits of his family. The figures were growing close.

‘Lads!’ shouted Roth. ‘I think I’m going to need some help up here!’ There was an edge of panic in his voice.

No response came.

The vampire alighted upon the forecastle of the Heldenhammer with the delicacy of an Estalian fencer stepping into the ring. It drew a long, basket-hilted blade, smiling cruelly at Roth. The pale-skinned creature was a foot taller than the captain, and as it threw a duellist’s salute its movements spoke of martial skill honed over countless years of war. Roth was not fooled by the pretence of honour. He knew from experience that the vampire fought dirty, just like any pirate should.

The captain was ready when the four robed figures came for him from above, scythes raised. He whipped his father’s Cathayan sword around in a bright silver arc that cut right through one of the creatures at the neck.

It whistled right through the spectre as if it were not there.

Off balance, Roth stumbled forward, barely ducking under an evil-looking scythe that almost lopped off the top of his head. Another scythe thudded down into the deck where his boot had been a fraction of a second before.

Roth turned his stumble into a roll, passing beneath one of the spectres and coming up against the front balustrade. The four robed figures came for him, scythes raised. Trapped, the captain jumped over the side of the gunwale and, still holding onto the balustrade, turned his momentum into a full-body swing. He vaulted back over the railing to land behind the robed figures and lashed out with his blade once more, plunging it through the torso of one of the spectres. He felt no resistance at all.

The vampire laughed hollowly, wiping blood from its sword with a silk handkerchief. The decapitated body of Ghow Southman lay at his feet.

Roth cried out in anger, but his lapse of concentration cost him dearly. Silent as death, the spectres had surrounded Roth. Their scythes glinted in the otherworldly light as they closed in for the kill.

The sky above the forecastle flashed autumn red as the scaled belly and long, back-jointed legs of a dragon swooped over the deck. Prince Yrellian leapt down from the creature’s back, slashing downward with the burning scimitar in his gauntleted hand as he landed with feline grace upon the deck. The wraith nearest Roth exploded in a puff of brimstone-smelling flame, a thin scream ebbing away in its wake.

The elf rolled with the momentum of his vertical charge and came up cobra-fast, stabbing the Magus’s fiery blade straight through the wailing skull of another of the apparitions and causing it to burn away like gossamer.

Roth fell backwards, crawling away desperately as the third of the spectres slashed its long-bladed scythe at torso height. Its weapon came down as Roth slipped in the mire, but just as the point was about to pierce his chest the flaming scimitar burst from its neck in an explosion of red-hot fire, exorcising it utterly.

The creature’s death revealed Prince Yrellian standing tall above him, fending off the lightning-quick strikes of Count Noctilus. The exchange of blows was so fast that the clanging blades sounded like the ringing of a sally-bell. The vampire moved with such speed it was barely visible; one moment pressing at Yrellian’s flank, the next cutting under his sweeping curves of flame to stab at the elf’s heart.

The elf’s face was fixed in a mask of concentration as he parried and struck back in riposte, the burning scimitar leaving complex trails in the air.

Scrambling to his feet, Roth moved around to tip the balance, but his passage was blocked by the last of the wraith-creatures. It drove the point of its scythe at Roth’s chest, eye sockets burning with ancient fury. Roth parried the reaper’s blade with his father’s sword, but terror was constricting his throat. The creature’s very presence was sapping the strength from his exhausted body; even keeping upright as the Heldenhammer plunged onwards into the maelstrom’s yawning gullet was proving extremely difficult. This was a fight he could not hope to win. The scythe arced down again and again, battering Roth’s guard down.

A golden rapier lanced out from Roth’s side, ripping away part of the deathly creature’s skull with a pinpoint thrust. The captain didn’t so much as glance at his saviour, instead swinging his sword hard at the blade of his enemy’s scythe and forcing it out wide. The rapier came in again, and this time the glowing golden ghost of a young elf warrior followed it. Roth caught a glimpse of what could have been Yrellian’s double as the swordsman drove his slender blade into the robed spectre with a double lunge that would have done an Ulthuan sword master proud.

The wraith vanished with a despairing shriek. By the time Roth had regained his balance, the elven spirit-warrior was gone.

Atop the Heldenhammer’s figurehead, Count Noctilus and Prince Yrellian were duelling at lightning speed, neither able to get the better of the other in a fair fight. Roth growled as Noctilus sought to win by underhand means, chanting a phrase as old as the desert and deliberately allowing the elf prince to strike him. The Magus’s burning blade lodged in the bad meat of the vampire’s shoulder, but just as Yrellian gave a shout of triumph the vampire grabbed the elf’s wrist with a pallid claw.

Decrepitude raced across the handsome elf’s physique, skin blotching and whitening hair falling away in the wind. The vampire kept his death-grip even as the flesh of its shoulder scorched and crackled, its armour blackening and cracking in the roasting heat of the white-hot blade. The elf aged at a terrible rate, his proud physique bending almost double as he shrunk in his own clothes. Rot took hold, and the elf’s agonised face collapsed in on itself. Within the space of a few seconds, nothing more than a slender skeleton was left holding the burning blade.

The fiend plucked the scimitar from its shoulder and advanced towards Roth, backhanding the elf’s skeleton into the roiling waters below. The gloating cruelty etched upon its face was horrible to behold.

The captain called up the memories of his family’s funeral as the vampire leapt clear over the balustrade to land a dozen yards away from him. The coals of his inner fire flared. He stood up straight, meeting the vampire’s terrible gaze without flinching.

‘I know you, fiend,’ spat Roth, his voice hoarse with tension. ‘You killed my wife, my father, and my only son. You may yet kill me.’

The vampire nodded in assent, slowly coming forward with a sword in each hand. The flaming scimitar was painfully bright in its gloved hand.

‘But by Sigmar, I will drag you and your undead scum screaming to hell with me…’

Roth whipped out his thrice-pistol and fired a tight volley, the bullets blasting open the ash-black cracks in the vampire’s breastplate and leaving a smoking hole of burned meat in its chest. Roth could just about see the vampire’s dead, dry heart within the shattered remains of its ribcage.

Noctilus just laughed, a sound as ancient and hollow as death. The burned flesh began to pucker and heal over, regenerating at an astonishing rate.

The vampire leapt.

Roth fired the table leg he had thrust into the empty socket of his sickle-hand during the elf’s final moments. The improvised stake, whittled from the same spar of hardwood he had taken from the Enlightenment at the scene of his father’s death, plunged into the vampire’s exposed heart with the power of a steam-driven piston. It flung the undead creature back, pinning it against the balustrade with the sheer force of its expulsion. The vampire’s head went back and its mouth opened in a silent scream, but its limbs did no more than twitch impotently.

Roth ran forward and wrenched the flaming scimitar from the vampire’s grip. Great gobbets of flesh sizzled from Roth’s hand as the blade screamed through the air, cutting Noctilus’s head from its neck in a puff of bloody steam. Roth turned the scimitar around so the point was facing downward and thrust it right down the vampire’s open throat.

The smell of cremated flesh was overpowering as the burning blade turned the vampire to ash from the inside out.

Roth staggered backwards, ripping the ruin of his hand free from the flaming scimitar. His nerves screamed black with agony, but he could not allow himself to pass out just yet. There was still work to be done.

The maelstrom roared and whirled, furious at the death of its master. The Heldenhammer span around the inside of its gullet, tossed this way and that by the heaving pressures of the vast whirlpool. Roth staggered across the decks, an explosion of pain bursting behind his eyes every time he reached out to steady himself with his crippled hand. The deck was slick with blood and corpses; men o’ bones and drowned alike had pulled themselves out of the water to assail the crew whilst Roth had been fighting on the forecastle. Barely a dozen of his men were still alive, gibbering in terror and praying to the gods for salvation.

‘Deliver us!’ they cried, arms raised imploringly to the uncaring skies. ‘Manann, deliver us!’

‘Deliver yourselves, you lazy bastards!’ roared Roth over the din of the tempest. ‘Help me unshackle these urns! We have to do this ourselves.’

The men screamed and cried in fear, not listening to a word their captain said.

The captain lurched and hobbled across the wildly bucking deck, blind with pain and exhaustion. The lashing salt of the maelstrom stung his ruined hand, and his ears bled with the pressure of the unholy maw grinding them further into its gullet.

The urns were up ahead, lashed to the base of the forecastle with stout rope.

With a great effort, Roth pushed his body up the incline of the Heldenhammer’s deck. He thrust his arm through the stout cable of rope holding the grand urns in place, anchoring himself for a moment. There was no way he could undo the complex knotwork holding the urns tight with his ruined hand and empty stump.

Desperate, the captain cast about for something with which to sever the rope. He found nothing. Despair seeped through him like poison. Even if he had found something, how would he use it? An axe? A knife? Little use to a man with no hands.

Crippled beyond endurance, the captain gnawed at the thick hemp holding the urns with his teeth. Vomit filled his mouth as the pain became too much, and black spots danced in his eyes.

Roth slumped against the grand urns, his vision dwindling to a point.

A tall, massively built corpse grabbed Roth by his shoulder and forced him upright against the urns, backhanding him across the face so that his head rebounded from the painted ceramic. Roth snarled and shook himself, blood, puke and tears mingling in his beard. He stared with the intensity of a wounded beast at his persecutor, his mind flaring into life once more.

It was Salt Pietr. Dead, rotting, and clad in seaweed, but by the sheer size of the bastard and the tattoos on his bald head it had definitely once been Salt Pietr. No one else Roth knew had a neck thicker than his head, for a start.

The lumbering apparition drew its cutlass and brought it downward in a great arc. Too tired to dodge the blow, Roth almost felt relief that his death was finally at hand.

The cutlass slashed through the stout rope that bound the grand urns to the forecastle, bisecting it with a single strike. Salt Pietr staggered with the effort of catching and holding the rope’s end before the grand urns rolled away into the water. No mortal man could have achieved such a feat, but by the sheer strength of his arm, Roth’s old mate was stopping the urns from tumbling away. Shaking tears from his eyes, Roth saw that they would pass the fang-like rocks at the heart of the vortex with their next revolution around the living tunnel of water.

The captain’s breath caught in his throat. This could still work.

‘Salty, now!’ he shouted, his voice ragged and desperate as he kicked out at the urns, ‘Drop the rope!’

The first mate did as he was told, just like always. The thick cable whipped away, and the grand urns tumbled onto the rocks below. Roth tumbled with them, but Salt Pietr grabbed his arm at the last moment, holding his captain suspended over the void.

The grand urns broke upon the jagged rocks below, and utter chaos broke loose.

Whirling up from the heart of the maelstrom came a trio of elemental spirits so large they made the Magus’s other conjurations look like sprites by comparison. The first urn to break apart released a titanic sea-djinn who loomed into the air amongst a spray of prismatic light, her glacial form so large she could have touched either side of the whirlpool’s gullet by stretching out her massively muscled arms. She forced her blocky shoulder into the whirling waters of the maelstrom and fought against the current, her iceberg head crunching into a frown as she pushed against the flow with the might of a living tsunami.

Roaring out from behind the sea-monarch was a living column of flame as broad as the Reikstemple’s main sanctum, its twin heads screaming with the crackling roar of a forest fire. The Sultan of Flame curved up into the air before plunging itself into the maelstrom’s weakest point, turning a mountain’s worth of brine into foul-smelling steam. The creature seared upwards once more, greatly diminished in size, but in its wake there glittered pure water instead of the dirty cobalt swill of the Graveyard.

A raging tempest in the shape of a god roared into the firmament with a boom of destructive force. It whirled around at tremendous speed contrary to the waters of the whirlpool, whipping itself into a tornado that utterly absorbed the deathly miasma emanating from within the whirlpool’s gullet.

The maelstrom unravelled in an explosion of currents, great plumes of spray reaching up to the heavens. The clean waters of the ocean crashed back into place, filling the tunnel that led to the abyss and erasing it from existence completely.

Slowly, the thundering waves subsided until there remained only a scattering of skulls bobbing where once had reigned a living maelstrom. Sunlight sparkled from the crests of the newborn waves.

Their boons granted, the elemental kings dwindled into spheres of light, free once more after three thousand years of incarceration.

Of the warships, and crew that had fought so hard for their release, there was no sign.

EPILOGUE

The Golden Magus basked in the sunshine of the new dawn, turning a translucent bottle over and over in his hands. He felt content, happy in fact, as he surveyed the horizons of his new realm. It would take some time to refashion what had been a graveyard into a form more pleasant to his delicate sensibilities, but change was the only constant in the universe. There were powers in this world greater than the forces of undeath, after all. Oh yes. Great Tzeentch, the Master Manipulator and Father of Sorcerers, had shown him the light many centuries ago.

The Magus stood up, stretching like a cat in the morning sun. He would allow himself a break from the frenetically entertaining world of men for a while, perhaps, and spend a little time as a king instead of a servant.

The sorcerer padded through the minaret corridors of Flaming Scimitar, whistling a complex tune of his own devising as he wound his way through the crystal-walled labyrinth he called home. Sketching a flaming sigil in the air, he opened a secret door into a plush study, its centrepiece a tangle of blackened vampire-bone fused into a throne.

The study’s walls were almost completely covered with shelves, and each shelf was clustered with bottles of every conceivable shape and colour. The Magus took the bottle he was holding over to the shelves and replaced it amongst those that sat on individual pillows of pale leather made from human skin. Every one of the bottles contained a tiny warship, perfect in every detail.

The Magus’s broad smile distorted in the walls of the bottle as he leered down over his new favourite. Inside the glass prison was a tiny warship, severely damaged in her last battle, but a fascinating sight nonetheless.

Its hammer-wielding figurehead was cast in the image of a warrior god.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Captains McNeill, Kyme and Hinks for expertly wielding the bloody knife, and to Admiral Blanche, for all the treasure.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phil Kelly has been a devotee of myths, monsters and magic for three decades, the last of which has been spent working as a games developer in GW’s Design Studio. Over his the years Phil has made body parts as a sculptor, roamed the roofs of Nottingham as a free runner, played the stages of Glastonbury, dived shipwrecks in Thailand and discovered the time-saving joys of extreme ironing in his home county of Essex. Since meeting his future wife at a Los Angeles beach party, Phil has began to settle down a bit. He now leads a nice normal life writing about fantastical armies, undead pirates and gribblies from outer space.

AN EXTRACT FROM BLOOD OF AENARION
BY WILLIAM KING

The duel was about to begin. All sixty warriors were forming in a circle, presenting their blades, points towards the centre. The duel would take place within a ring of sharp steel. The warriors would strike down any contestant who tried to flee from the battle.

The formalities were already gone through. Larien was not willing to retract the insult. Tyrion felt that honour must be satisfied. The seconds had done their best to make sure the quarrel had been settled amicably. Duty was done. The fight could begin. Both participants stripped to the waist and took up their weapons.

‘I shall kill you slowly and painfully,’ said Larien, as they walked down into the depression and took their places in the flat space below.

‘The way you think,’ said Tyrion and smiled brightly.

Larien looked hard at him.

‘Slowly and painfully,’ Tyrion said, to make sure Larien got the point.

Things were not obviously going the way he expected. Tyrion’s nonchalance had obviously surprised him. He had come expecting to kill a nervous boy. He had found someone more self-possessed than he was. Tyrion decided that in part this fight was to be won in the mind. He suspected that most individual combats were. It was as much about the attitude of the fighters as it was about skill.

‘I am of the Blood of Aenarion,’ said Tyrion, simply, as if he were explaining something to someone slow of mind. It was an attack designed to increase Larien’s unease and make him less sure of himself.

‘I will soon see what that looks like,’ said Larien. ‘I am guessing it is the same colour as anyone else’s.’

It was a good response and Tyrion smiled at it as if hearing a joke he enjoyed particularly.

‘Shall we begin?’ he asked, looking from Korhien to Larien’s chief second. The two of them nodded. They stepped back to take their places on the edge of the ring. They too presented their blades. There was no way out of the circle now. All of the gaps were closed. Anyone trying to get out would be impaled upon a blade.

Larien sprang forward as lithe as a tiger. Tyrion parried easily enough and stepped forward. Blade strokes blurred between the two of them for the moment. Tyrion kept his guard up and made a few ripostes. He was content simply to ride out the fury of the initial attack and take the measure of his opponent.

Larien was quick and he was strong and his technique was excellent.

Tyrion did not need Korhein’s training to know this. Something in his mind was aware of it, in the same way as he was aware of the strength and weakness of a chess position. He doubted Larien had the same quickness of reflex as he himself possessed but he decided not to act on that assumption until he had more proof of it. Larien could, after all, easily be faking it, hoping to make him overconfident.

A few more passes of the blades told him this was not so. The elf’s personality was reflected in his blade work. His swordplay was intricate and deceptive but the deception was in the technique. Larien relied on that and his natural strength to overcome his opponents. He was much better with a sword than most elves ever would be. He smiled at Tyrion, teeth gritted.

‘I see what you mean about killing me slowly,’ said Tyrion as they stepped apart. ‘Are you trying to lull me to sleep?’

‘No,’ said Larien, springing forward. His blade was aimed high. An elf less quick than Tyrion might have had his head split. As it was Tyrion merely stepped backward, parrying as he went, noticing that the rain of blows Larien had unleashed did indeed have a rhythm, and one most likely intended to lull the opponent into parrying the pattern of it.

He found himself falling into the pattern almost automatically, as an elf might sometimes find himself tapping his fingers in time to a drumbeat. He could see the danger of what Iltharis had predicted happening. It came as no surprise when suddenly the blade was not where it should have been according to the pattern of strokes. Tyrion had already predicted where it would be and parried it. He brought his left fist crashing into Larien’s face.

Cartilage broke under the impact. Larien went reeling back, blinded by pain and tears. Tyrion leaned forward to full extension, ramming his sword into Larien’s stomach. He felt the impact all the way up his arm. There was a scraping sensation as his sword hit bone. Larien screamed like an animal being pole-axed. Blood gouted forth, covering Tyrion’s sword and hands, spraying onto his naked chest. Some of it got in his mouth. He caught the coppery taste.

Part of his mind was aware that this should be horrific. It was certainly not beautiful or glorious. There was a stink of blood and entrails, of things that should normally be inside an elf’s body but now were not.

He did not mind it, just as he did not mind the screaming, or the sight of the light dying in another elf’s eyes. The main thing was that, at some point, the sword had left Larien’s hand and was now lying on the ground. His own life was no longer in danger. He had wiped out an insult to his family’s honour and he had forestalled an attack on his clan by their enemies.

He felt a twinge of sympathy for Larien’s pain. Korhien had been right in one way. It was hard to watch another elf die, but that too was a problem easily solved. He struck again, aiming for the heart and silenced Larien’s screams forever. He looked around at the other elves present. They stared at him in wonder and something else; it might have been horror.

‘Unorthodox and inelegant,’ said Iltharis. ‘But effective.’

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Dreadfleet logo by John Blanche

Book and box cover by Alex Boyd

Compass by Nuala Kinrade

Map by David Gallagher, John Blanche & Markus Trenkner

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