Malus considered this. “Then, in truth, anyone can wield the blade.”
“Anyone? Hardly.”
“Obviously it isn’t meant solely for the Scourge of Khaine, which means that I have no more a tie to the damned thing than anyone else.”
“No, but I do,” the daemon said. “I have felt its bite and it remembers the taste.”
The highborn’s eyes widened. “Then you knew that the sword in Urial’s hand was a fake.”
“Of course I knew it from the moment he stabbed you.”
“And it never occurred to you to tell me?”
“Certainly it did,” the daemon purred, “but where would be the fun in that?”
Malus bared his teeth at the daemon’s gleeful laughter, huddling against the stone tomb of the ironmaster as he felt another of the tremors begin.
He was dozing fitfully when Arleth Vann finally returned.
Malus awakened to a gentle tapping on his boot. The highborn opened his eyes to find the assassin crouching a polite distance away. Arleth Vann’s pale face was smudged by soot and molded with spots of dried blood.
“Where have you been?” the highborn asked, trying to rub the exhaustion from his face.
“In the city, of course,” the assassin replied wearily. “Things have taken a turn for the worse.”
“Worse for us, or for them?” Malus winced. “Never mind, the answer’s obvious.” He tried to stand. “Help me up.”
Arleth Vann pulled him upright, a worried frown creasing his face. “Is it the old wound?”
“That and more, but I will survive,” the highborn said. “Now tell me what’s happened.”
The assassin nodded and headed for the doorway with Malus following close behind. “Sometime this morning — most likely just after dawn — the temple warriors abandoned their holdouts and tried to fight their way out of the encirclements Urial threw around them.”
The highborn shook his head, bemused. “Why now, of all times?”
Arleth Vann shrugged as they passed through the first of the burial chambers. The two temple loyalists resting there saw Malus on the move and rose to their feet, picking up cloth bags containing their supplies and falling into step behind the highborn.
“There are rumours on the street. Most people think that the holdouts ran out of food several days ago, so they had the choice of breaking out or starving to death. Others say that penny oracles in the merchants’ district have had visions of a terrible army bearing down on Har Ganeth from the west.”
Malus hissed thoughtfully. Could the Witch King already be on the move, he wondered? “Anything’s possible,” he admitted. “Were the breakouts successful?”
“Eventually,” Arleth Vann said. “The fighting lasted all day, and there are rumours that hundreds of warriors and witches were slain. What little of the warehouse district hadn’t burned before was put to the torch, it seems. Over the course of the day the isolated warbands managed to link up and fight their way to the city gate.”
The highborn stopped in his tracks. The city gate? Not the fortress gate?”
Arleth Vann nodded. “They retreated about half a mile up the Slavers’ Road to the west and they’re building a camp by the shore.”
“Those fools,” Malus spat. “Urial controls the entire damned city! It will be a hundred times harder to dislodge him now. Unless…”
“Unless perhaps those penny oracles were right and the temple witches have foreseen that Malekith is on the way.”
“Damnation,” Malus said. “If it’s true then we’re nearly out of time. If Urial is still in control of the city when the Witch King arrives, the die will be cast and there will be no stopping the war that will follow” With a muted growl he leapt back into motion, speeding though the succession of chambers with long, impatient strides.
“Honestly, my lord, I’m surprised you care,” Arleth Vann said, moving swiftly to keep pace. “Would a holy war not serve Khaine’s purposes?”
The highborn gave his retainer a hard look. “Under the circumstances, I believe that’s for me to decide.”
“Of course, my lord.”
Malus continued on, rushing through the last of the crypts and coming to the open doorway of the lodge’s antechamber. A familiar, acrid reek filled his nostrils, and he heard one of the accompanying loyalists let out a surprised curse at the smell. A sharp, drawn-out hiss sounded from within the antechamber, like steam whistling from a cracked kettle.
Though small for its breed, Spite took up nearly a third of the large, rectangular antechamber. Arleth Vann had left it resting on his haunches just inside the lodge’s main doors, and even with its powerful tail tucked along his side, the nauglir was long enough to brush the ends of the long tables on either side of the room.
Malus raised a warning hand. “Wait here,” he said to Arleth Vann and the loyalists. Spite, hearing his voice, rose onto its clawed feet and turned its huge, blocky snout in his direction. Nostrils flared wide as Spite tasted his master’s scent.
The highborn slowly crossed the room, studying the cold one carefully for signs of danger. Before he’d sent Arleth Vann into the city to fetch Spite he’d applied a fresh coat of vrahsha to both his and his retainer’s skin from a small vial tucked into his robes. The salve disguised a druchii’s scent, but not the daemonic corruption that Malus knew was spreading through his body.
Spite’s nostrils flared as it tasted Malus’ scent. A low grumble rose from its chest.
“It’s all right, you great, dumb beast,” Malus said lightly, “it’s me.”
The cold one lowered its head slightly. Venomous drool fell in long, ropy strands from its huge jaws. Spite growled threateningly as the highborn took another step forwards. Scales grated over stone as the nauglir uncurled its tail. The powerful, cable thick muscle brushed the room’s centre table in passing and smashed one of the corners into powder with a sharp crack.
Malus stopped where he was, suddenly wary of getting within the cold one’s reach. “Where did you find him?” he asked.
“In the stables where Tyran’s men left him,” the assassin replied. “He’d broken out of the pen days ago and just seemed to be settling there.”
The highborn looked the nauglir over and noticed a number of recent wounds on the warbeast’s armoured hide. None looked remotely life threatening. To his great relief, the saddle and bags on the cold one’s back still looked intact. “Has Spite been fed?”
“Oh, it’s eaten well,” the retainer assured him. “There were bits of flesh and pieces of broken bone all over the pen. It probably ate the attendants first, and then started hunting the locals over the last few days.”
Malus nodded. If Spite was well fed, this was as safe a time to approach the beast as any. Taking a deep breath, he took another step forwards.
The cold one settled slightly onto its haunches, assuming a defensive stance, another bad sign.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Malus said to the warbeast. “It’s me, and I don’t have time for your nonsense. There’s hard riding to be done.”
He took another step forwards. Spite’s jaws began to open, one slow inch at a time.
The highborn realised that Spite was getting ready to attack, and felt an overpowering rush of frustration. “Now you listen here, you great lump of scales,” Malus snapped, levelling an angry finger at the one ton warbeast, “I didn’t come all this way to get made a meal of by my own mount. Now stand, and let me look at you!”
Malus’ commanding shout rang from the chamber walls, startling the cold one. Spite jerked back nostrils flaring and snapped at the air with a bone-jarring crunch of dagger-length fangs. For an instant the highborn feared that the warbeast would turn and dart out of the antechamber into the tunnel beyond, but then it paused, blew steam from its nostrils and settled obediently onto its haunches.
Inwardly the highborn breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s better,” he said, and walked up to the nauglir. He circled the cold one and looked him o
ver, checking talons, teeth, eyes, flanks and tail. Once he was convinced that the beast was essentially unhurt, he moved to check his possessions. “Help me with this armour,” he called out to Arleth Vann.
Moving warily, the retainer joined Malus at Spite’s side and helped remove the leather bags containing the highborn’s plate harness. Arleth Vann worked quickly and efficiently, unwrapping the armour plates from their oiled cloths and then helping Malus into his old kheitan. Within minutes the highborn was buckling his sword belt over his mail fauld and almost feeling like his old self again.
“You said that fighting in the city lasted until around sunset,” Malus said, pulling on his armoured gauntlets, “what time is it now?”
“About two hours past sunset, my lord,” the assassin replied.
Malus grimaced. The first light of false dawn had been paling the sky over the fortress when he, the assassin and Niryal had escaped the Citadel of Bone. “We’ve lost a great deal of time,” he said. The highborn glanced at the lodge’s main doors. “Where’s Niryal? She and one of the other loyalists were standing watch.”
Arleth Vann frowned. “I didn’t see anyone when I came in, my lord.”
Malus froze. A cold knot of dread tightened in his guts.
Suddenly, Spite turned, pointing his snout towards the tunnel outside and growling threateningly. At once, a chorus of gibbering howls answered.
Chapter Twenty
BLOOD AND SOULS
“Bar the door!” Malus shouted, grabbing Spite’s reins and leading the cold one deeper into the room. Arleth Vann and the loyalists leapt to obey, giving the hissing nauglir as wide a berth as possible. The three druchii reached the doors and pushed them shut. Then they picked up wedge-shaped pieces of stone they’d broken from the dwarf crypts and began jamming them as tightly as they could into the narrow space beneath the stone panels.
“What did you see?” the highborn asked his retainer as he guided Spite around the far end of the room’s central table.
“I saw at least one of the hunting beasts,” the assassin replied, using a hammer looted from one of the tombs to drive the wedges home. Flecks of stone flew with every sharp blow. “Worse, I saw witchlights.”
“How many?”
“At least a dozen,” Arleth Vann said grimly.
“Mother of Night,” Malus whispered. That many lights could mean fifty men or more. “Any sign of Niryal or the other sentry?”
The retainer shook his head. “If the assassins finally decided to join Urial they could have taken both of them and left no one the wiser. They probably let me through because I had Spite with me.”
“And they know we’re trapped,” the highborn said grimly.
Something heavy smashed against the doors with a thunderous crash, causing even Spite to jump. Stone dust puffed through the doorjamb, and a gibbering howl echoed outside. Malus heard the scrape of thorny tentacles lashing against the stone.
“Get back,” Malus ordered, drawing his sword. Arleth Vann and the two loyalists retreated behind Spite. The nauglir was back in a defensive pose, growling ominously, its long tail extended. The highborn patted the cold one’s neck as his companions drew their weapons and formed a small semicircle behind him.
They heard another fearsome crash, and a sharp crack of breaking stone.
“That won’t hold for long,” Arleth Vann muttered.
“I don’t suppose there’s a secret passage out of here that you haven’t told me about?” Malus asked.
“If there was, don’t you think the dwarfs would have taken it?”
“Good point.”
Another blow struck the doors, and this time the druchii could see a pair of cracks spreading upwards and downwards from the centre of the leftmost panel.
Malus tried to think past the frantic sound of his pulse pounding in his ears. “Perhaps we could hide in the tombs? Pretend we’re dwarfs?”
Arleth Vann shook his head. “It wouldn’t work, my lord, Spite’s too tall for a dwarf.”
“There is that,” Malus deadpanned. “I suppose we’ll just have to find a way to kill the bastards then.”
With a thunderous crack, the leftmost door exploded in a shower of dust and fragments, and the lean form of one of the Chaos beasts came tumbling into the chamber. Dust caked its damp, gelatinous hide, and its claws raked across the stone as it skidded to a halt. Tentacles lashed the air hungrily and one of the beast’s fist sized eyes focused on the highborn, only a few yards away.
Spreading its fearsome, barbed whips and hissing through its glossy beak, the hunter gathered itself to leap. Malus slapped his hand against the nauglir’s neck and shouted “Hunt, Spite! Hunt!” just as the creature pounced.
The Chaos beast was swift as a hunting cat, but the nauglir let out a bellow that shook dust from the ceiling and met the fearsome creature mid-leap. The hunter was huge, but Spite’s body was a third again larger and much more massive. The two creatures crashed together and the hunter was propelled backwards, its tentacles lashing furiously at Spite’s armoured hide as the cold one dug its claws in and tore at the beast’s throat. They landed with an earth shaking crash, smashing two of the side-tables to pieces just as a wave of screaming druchii charged through the broken doorway.
They were a mismatched band, armed with an apparently random mix of weapons and armour. Black-robed temple servants brandished short swords and heavy axes next to knife wielding druchii in plain robes. One woman with the leather jerkin of a butcher hefted a gore-crusted cleaver beside a highborn wearing full armour and wielding paired swords. The only thing the mob had in common was the sign of the Blood God branded on their foreheads and the mindless look of bloodlust that burned in their dark eyes.
Their savage charge ran headlong into the path of the two wrestling beasts. Spite’s lashing tail smashed three city folk off their feet, hurling their broken bodies back onto their companions. Lashing tentacles cut like saws through the enemy ranks, the barbed hooks ripping off hands, legs and faces with indiscriminate fury. Showers of blood and torn flesh burst among the charging druchii, but the survivors paid the carnage little heed. They saw Malus and his men across the room and scrambled past the thrashing creatures, their faces alight with the prospect of slaughter.
Malus bared his teeth at the oncoming mob. “If they want a battle we’ll give them one,” he said, raising his sword. “Blood and souls!”
“Blood and souls!” the warriors of Khaine shouted, and the slaughter began in earnest.
The attackers were largely unskilled, making mistakes in their frenzy that no experienced soldier would have. Howling zealots raced around to either side of the large, central table that Malus had situated his men behind, thereby breaking the force of their charge, but some were so eager for bloodshed they scrambled atop the table itself. The highborn let them come, ducked low out of the reach of their shorter weapons, and hacked off their legs at the knees. Three city folk died that way spilling huge gouts of blood onto the flat stone as they toppled off onto the heads of their compatriots.
To Malus’ left, Arleth Vann slew every foe that came within reach, blocking with one sword and coolly despatching each opponent with a single thrust or cut from the other. To the highborn’s right, the two surviving loyalists staggered against the frenzied assault of the zealots, but grimly held their ground, lashing at their foes with red stained swords.
With the tabletop clear Malus turned his attention to his right, using the corner of the table to keep the zealots at a distance where their knives and axes couldn’t reach him. It was like slaying cattle. The frenzied city folk rushed at the loyalists, clashing blades, and Malus stabbed them in the throat or chest, dropping them to the ground. Whatever had robbed the attackers of their reason served to blind them to the murderous efficiency of the highborn’s tactics.
The thrashing struggle of the huge beasts continued near the door. Spite’s neck and flanks were crisscrossed with countless furrows from the hunter’s barbed scales, but the nauglir h
ad the Chaos beast by the throat, keeping its fearsome black beak at bay. The two creatures struggled to overbear one another, but Spite’s greater bulk and long tail gave the cold one a powerful advantage. The nauglir found its feet and bore down with its jaws, forcing a strangled screech from the hunter. Its thick skin was more than enough to stave off sword and axe blows, but could not resist the fearsome might of the cold one’s powerful bite. Runnels of clear ichor flowed off Spite’s jaw as the warbeast lifted the hunter off the floor and shook it like a terrier shakes a rat. Tentacles flailed and bones snapped. Then Spite jerked his head and flung the creature across the room. It smashed into another of the long preparation tables, shattering it beneath its weight, and the hunter went limp.
Spite’s bellow of victory shook the antechamber, drowning out even the zealots’ frenzied screams. Barely a handful of attackers were left, out of the score or so who had charged into the room, and Malus felt his spirits lift. If this was the best the zealots had available, then Malus and his followers could easily fight their way out to the gate.
The druchii woman with the two-handed cleaver charged at one of the loyalists with a piercing, bestial shriek, foam flying from her thin lips as she swung her filthy blade at the man’s neck. The loyalist tried to parry the blow, but the heavier weapon knocked his blade aside and deflected into the man’s shoulder. Before the butcher could pull her grisly weapon free Malus leaned in and took off the top of her head with his long sword. Bone and brain sprayed into the air, but the highborn looked on in shock as the frenzied druchii jerkily pulled her weapon free and tried to strike another blow before collapsing to the ground.
There were only two attackers left on Malus’ right. On the left Arleth Vann duelled with the armoured highborn, blocking the noble’s clumsy, frenzied attacks and darting in to strike at unprotected joints or exposed gaps in his plate harness. Leaving the assassin to finish the highborn, Malus edged in beside the wounded loyalist and took the battle to the zealots.