The Sea Taketh – David Guymer Page 4
‘A leviadon,’ Jonsson breathed.
‘Turn! Turn!’ Vorgaard grabbed the wheel from him and bellowed into the speaker-horn. ‘Port broadside. Aethershot carbine, fire. Skilli, why am I not currently deafened by drill cannon-fire?’
The dirigible shook to a pair of tremendous booms, falling close enough together to be heard as one. The aethershot sailed into the diffraction cloud and to all obvious purposes disappeared. The detonation drill from the bow-chaser was not so easily waylaid. It burst in the vicinity, faceted loops of explosion rippling around the leviadon as if seen from the other side of an armoured window. A couple of fangmora knights dropped out of the sky, or sank, Jonsson was not sure, becoming increasingly visible as they fell away from the leviadon’s protective field.
‘Brace!’ Jonsson yelled as something twinkled back in return.
A razorshell harpoon as long as Jonsson was tall crunched into the rigging, perilously close to the endrin housing. The impact lurched the dirigible to starboard, smashed Jonsson’s face into the wheel, and sent him sprawling back to the aftcastle deck. He groaned. Voices fought for attention in his skull.
‘Endrinmaster. Wakaz! To your post.’
‘Fire! Fire!’
‘Boarders aft.’
‘Stand and repel.’
‘All hands to the hold.’
The clash and clamour of steel brought him back around, the scuff of armoured boots on metal planking. He jerked upright, reaching for his pistol. The repellent stench of something dank and rancid hit him halfway.
He blinked, looking up into the flat, noseless features of a nightmare with no right to exist beyond the blackest deep sea trench. Its skin was rubbery and white, bristling with spined frills and venomous-looking barbs. It floated sinuously up and down, as if riding ocean currents that Jonsson, in his landlocked insensibility, was numb to. Its clawed fins raked Jonsson’s beard with every down-movement, its triplet of tails coiling and unbunching on the deck.
An aelf woman sat bestride its back. Every part of her body, apart from her head, was encapsulated like a pearl within a shell of perfectly shaped black metal. Her skin was so gaunt and so pale that Jonsson could see the veins that webbed her face, and even make out the dark green of her eyes when she blinked. Her skin, her armour, and her weapons all glistened with wetness, her voluminous dark hair billowing with unnatural buoyancy around the clamshell plates of her shoulders.
He could hear his crew fighting. Vorgaard, probably. Skilli in the turret. He grabbed up his pistol and swung it around. The aelf cut the barrel in half with a curt downstroke of her sword. It clicked as he pulled on the trigger.
‘Boka–’
The aelf impaled him through the shoulder with the lance in her left hand, driving it through hard enough to pierce the metal of the deck, skewering him in place. The deepmare she rode opened its hideously alien mouth, but made no sound.
‘Who… are you?’ he said.
‘Pétra. Queen of those from whom you stole.’
Jonsson shook his head vigorously, wincing as he pulled against the lance in his shoulder. ‘I stole nothing. I found it. The city was abandoned. I claimed galkhron in accordance with Artycle Two, Point One of the– aaaarrgh!’
Pétra released the butt of the lance and let it stand slack again.
‘A thief’s notion. To assert that a thing is unclaimed simply because it is untended.’
‘My queen, here.’
Jonsson turned his head to look sideways along the deck. Vorgaard was sat up against the aftcastle wall, eyes closed, breathing shallowly as though asleep. His armour was unscratched. A tall aelf with a shining coat of armour scales and a helm that enclosed his entire face but for an expressionless mouth stood over him. He was the one who had spoken. He shook out the contents of Jonsson’s satchel and held up the coral to his blank, eyeless mask. He appeared to sigh, a strange gesture when unaccompanied by any obvious outward sign of emotion.
‘What have you done to my bosun?’ Jonsson gasped.
The aelf ignored him.
‘The lost shards of the chorrileum of Aighmar. I can feel the souls bound within.’ His lips stiffened. ‘I hear them wail.’
Pétra nodded, as though satisfied.
‘The rest is in the township,’ said Jonsson, pain making him gabble. ‘I can show you who has them and where, in exchange for my life and my ship.’
The aelf queen regarded him with inexpressive eyes, a picture of untouchable beauty painted on a rock.
‘I care not for the trinkets. Things can be replaced. Souls devoured by the Thirsting Prince are forever lost.’
Jonsson did not know what to say. How did you treat with a creature so alien in their values as the Deepkin aelves?
‘Then… what do you want?’
‘How did you learn about Aighmar?’ she said.
‘The city?’ Quickly, Jonsson explained everything that he had previously related to Murrag, about the Barak-Zon skycutter, the skaven ruinship, everything.
‘Then it is done,’ said the helmeted aelf. ‘We can return to the sweet annihilation of the senses and feel no more.’ He lowered his scythe-like weapon, the light-globe swinging from its head emitting a curious pull on Jonsson’s attention.
‘No,’ said Jonsson, trying to pull away, but for reasons other than the obvious one sticking through his shoulder, he could not. ‘No.’
‘You duardin are long-lived,’ said Pétra coldly, hidden within the totality of the lure-light. ‘Your soul will be highly prized. It will bring joy, of a kind, to the parent of a namarti who will otherwise wither in childhood and perish.’
‘There’s a whole city down there,’ he protested. ‘Thousands. You can’t take them all. There will be those that remember you.’
Jonsson closed his eyes, but somehow he could see the scythe-wielding aelf’s blank expression through the light. Pity. Sorrow.
And then there was nothing but the light.
Thalia hugged her knees to her chin and watched the waves break against the rocks. They were bodies, woollen and black, tumbling, ripping open, spilling their frothing white guts over the beach. She shivered, cold. She did not know what she was doing here, could not remember, only that she was alone. Her da had been taken by the sea, as her ma had been, long ago. The memory of the more recent event slurped and gurgled from her grasp, like wet sand from between her toes as the waves dragged it away to where her recollections of the older had long been submerged.
‘And when they grow old and grandchildren forget, That will be the day when the fishing folk come.’
She looked back, along the deserted shoreline. To the inland road.
Because they were not the fishing folk.
They were the fish.
About the Author
David Guymer wrote the Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa, and for Warhammer 40,000 The Eye of Medusa, Voice of Mars and the two The Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he wrote the audio dramas The Beasts of Cartha, Fist of Mork, Fist of Gork, Great Red and Only the Faithful. He is also the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Awards for his novel Headtaker.
For an age, the Realm of Life has languished in the grip of Nurgle, the god of pestilence and decay. Now, the Queen of the Radiant Wood has awoken in her war aspect, and the sylvaneth heed her call to reclaim their forest kingdoms in all the Mortal Realms. Now is the season of vengeance.
A Black Library Publication
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library,
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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Catherine O’
Connor.
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ISBN: 978-1-78030-958-3
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