Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden Read online

  Before he could reply, Gardus held up a hand. ‘That was in poor spirit, Cadoc.’ He looked at Tornus. ‘I would not ask you to come, Tornus. Further proof of your worthiness is not required, brother.’

  ‘You do not have to be asking,’ Tornus said, haltingly. He gazed at the slick surface of the water beyond the Lord-Celestant, and felt something inside him twist painfully. But he met Gardus’ eyes and nodded. ‘Two bows are being better than one. And you are putting this one in my responsibility.’ He gestured to Gatrog, who still knelt in silence. ‘Someone is having to be watching him, yes?’

  Gardus smiled. ‘Yes. And I am glad to have you.’ He extended his hand, and Tornus caught it firmly. He felt Cadoc’s eyes burning into him, but ignored the Knight-Azyros.

  ‘As touching as this is, the likelihood of any of you returning is slim,’ Morbus said. ‘If we die on the other side of that realmgate, we will not return to the forges of Azyr. We will be lost, or worse.’

  Gardus looked at him. ‘Perhaps you should stay. The chamber still needs a commander.’

  ‘It has two,’ Morbus said, gesturing to Angstun and Kurunta. Both began to protest, but he silenced them with a glare. ‘Kurunta must stay, in order to seal this chamber, should the worst happen. And Angstun must stay, to obliterate this citadel and everything in it, in the event Kurunta fails.’

  The Lord-Relictor looked at them. ‘Do you understand? If we fail, you will know, for every rot-bellied daemon in that realm will attempt to repay our insult a hundredfold. They will not stop.’ He thumped the ground with his reliquary staff. ‘With the fall of the Genesis Gate, Nurgle’s grasp on this realm has been weakened. This portal, if left unchecked, would see him in control once more. It must be destroyed.’

  ‘But not by you,’ Gardus said. Morbus looked at him.

  ‘My first duty is to safeguard the souls of every warrior in this chamber. And I will do so, even if they are intent on walking into the maw of Chaos itself.’ He straightened, his skull-helm gleaming eerily in the watery light of the realmgate.

  ‘May Sigmar preserve us, faithful and fools alike.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ABOARD

  THE BLACK GALLEY

  The black galley pushed through the dull waters with relentless pace. Neither fast nor slow, it moved steadily, a hundred oars rising and falling to a monotonous drumbeat. Its porous hull, crafted from black blightwood and slathered in pitch, cut the scummy waters like a knife. The masts creaked in sympathy with the drum, and the sails were sewn from fungus-riddled skins, which wept blood and pus with every foul gust of wind.

  It was a ship with a thousand brothers, all plying the feculent swamps of Nurgle’s realm. Lost souls wandered in the dark, drawn into the garden, but not yet a part of it. The masters of the galleys sought them out and brought them into the light of despair.

  ‘Or so those with ideas above their station like to claim,’ Gutrot Spume said. ‘In reality, it’s because the work must be done. A garden must be tended, and loose souls, such as yours, are things that need gathering.’ He sat on a barrel of maggoty meat, boots crossed over the scarred back of a galley slave. The mortal trembled in silence, head and hands pressed tight to the deck. ‘Happenstance and coincidence are the tides of the divine sea,’ Spume continued, as he slurped noisily from a leaky goblet. ‘They cast a soul where the gods wish it to go, don’t you agree?’

  Grymn stared at Spume, willing his death. The Lord-Castellant hung from rusty chains draped along the interior of the galley’s hull, the weight of his war-plate dragging him down. His arms had pulled to their fullest extension, at the very point of dislocation, and he’d lost most of the feeling in them. Filthy water dripped onto his head and shoulders, leaving black streaks across the begrimed silver. Hanging as he was, it was hard to breathe, and the extension of his arms prevented him from simply bursting his fetters, freeing himself and smashing in the bloated creature’s skull with his chains.

  Spume chuckled, as if he knew what his captive was thinking, and leaned forward to dip his goblet into the open cask sitting beside him. ‘Silence is the same as agreement, aye.’ He extended the goblet. ‘Care for a drink? Captain’s prerogative.’

  Grymn spat on the deck.

  Spume gave a gurgling laugh. ‘Oh, it’s a hard one, ye are. Tough as rusty nails. But even nails bend.’ He leaned back, shifting his weight. The barrel beneath him creaked, and the galley slave whimpered. ‘Did ye think me dead, then, after the dirgehorn blew its last note?’ Grymn said nothing. Spume nodded as if he had. ‘Almost was. But I’m made of sterner stuff than that. Blessed of Nurgle, I am.’ His tentacles undulated in the watery light of the balefire lanterns strung about the hold. ‘And more blessed will I be, once I rip your secrets from ye and offer up your carcass to Grandfather.’

  Still, Grymn did not reply. He was determined not to indulge the creature.

  Spume grunted and refilled his goblet. ‘I’ve thought much on our last encounter,’ he said. ‘It tasks me. I’ve never met a warrior I couldn’t grind into mulch. Yet, here ye are, bold as buboes.’ A tentacle stiffened, as if pointing. ‘And I want to know why.’

  ‘Faith,’ Grymn said. He hadn’t meant to speak. The word hung on the air.

  Spume emptied his goblet. ‘Maybe so.’ He shook his head. ‘Or maybe there’s some trick to it. There’s always a trick to it, I’ve found.’

  ‘No trick, monster. Only faith.’

  Spume dipped his goblet and held it up, swirling it gently. Then he booted the slave aside and heaved himself to his feet. A tentacle shot out and wrapped tight about Grymn’s throat. Sigmarite creaked in the monstrous appendage’s grip. Spume leaned close. He stank of bilgewater and rotten sargassum. ‘Have a drink. I insist.’ He emptied the goblet over Grymn’s face-plate. The sour liquid stung his eyes and mouth, and he thrashed in his chains. Spume laughed. ‘Want another?’

  ‘I’d rather die of thirst,’ Grymn croaked, glaring at the Rotbringer. That only made Spume laugh all the harder. He flung the goblet aside. The galley slave scrambled towards it, and Grymn frowned in disgust as the mortal desperately licked at the dregs as they seeped into the deck. Spume ignored the whimpering slave.

  ‘You won’t. Your sort don’t die easily.’ Spume poked a blunt finger against Grymn’s chest-plate. ‘And you come back. Life without living. Grandfather has a special pity for you, shiny-skin. You’re like a field left fallow, or unfished waters.’

  ‘Pure, you mean,’ Grymn said.

  ‘If you like.’ Spume shrugged his single shoulder. ‘Not for much longer, though. Ye’ll be writhing in worms, soon enough. I can smell them, percolating in your gut.’ The finger trailed down and stabbed against Grymn’s abdomen. ‘Something got into you, out in the mire. And now it’s eating you hollow, though ye don’t feel it yet.’

  Earlier than that, I confess.

  Grymn stiffened, causing his chains to rattle. Spume stepped back, his gaze sharpening. ‘Hunh. I hear something. Like flies buzzing about my head. Is someone in there with you, shiny-skin?’

  ‘No,’ Grymn said, through clenched teeth.

  Fie, sir. I am no delusion. I yet live.

  Spume chuckled. His fingers curled into a fist and he drove a piston-like blow into Grymn’s abdomen, slamming him back against the hull painfully. ‘Two for the price of one, is it? Well, I’ll not have some grubby soul pilfer my hard-bought plunder.’ He caught hold of Grymn’s head again and leaned forward, sour breath issuing from the holes in his helmet. ‘I shall go a-grubbing, little worm. And ye’ll scream as mightily as the shiny-skin.’ He slammed Grymn’s head back, causing the sigmarite to ring.

  Spume caught the slave by the scruff of the neck and jerked him to his feet. ‘Up, dog. Back to your bench. We have leagues to go, and every man at his oar.’ He tromped back above decks, leaving Grymn hanging alone in the weak light.

  No, not alone.


  ‘Who are you?’ Grymn said, softly. If Spume had heard the voice then he wasn’t going mad, which came as little relief. If he wasn’t mad, then something was inside him. Something unspeakable.

  You know me. We traded blows, you and I. Am I so easily forgotten?

  It squirmed in his gut, and he grimaced. ‘The pox-knight,’ he said. ‘Bubonicus.’

  Aye, you know me. You killed me, and I will be reborn in you. A fair exchange, don’t you agree? Bubonicus’ voice echoed through him.

  ‘No,’ Grymn said.

  No, they rarely do. A shame. It is a high honour, I assure you. I choose only worthy souls to make my home in. It is not happenstance.

  Grymn ignored the voice and began to test his chains. His legs were bound tight at the ankles, but his knees were free. He set his feet against the hull and dragged them up through the mould. A few moments later they slipped down. His chains jerked taut, and he groaned as new pain flashed through his shoulders.

  A valiant effort.

  ‘Shut up,’ Grymn snapped. He looked around. The hold was larger than it ought to have been, given the size of the galley. It was packed with supplies, all rotting and stinking. Broken bodies were stacked like cordwood at the far end, their suppurating flesh crawling with maggots and rot flies. Coils of mouldering rope and rusty chain lay slumped beneath folds of moth-eaten sail.

  A moan drew his attention down. An iron crosshatch was set in the deck. Pale fingers reached up through it. More slaves. Broken souls, bound for unknown torments.

  Harsh words, from the ignorant.

  ‘I thought I told you to shut up,’ Grymn growled.

  These souls are in captivity now, aye, but they are meant for better things. They will know the freedom of despair, and be freed from the chains of hope and want. Is that not a better fate than what might have awaited them otherwise?

  ‘That is not up to creatures such as you to decide,’ Grymn said. He studied the hold, trying to find something, anything he could use to free himself. ‘Why am I even arguing with you? You’re nothing. The voice of a dead thing.’

  Dead? No. I cannot die… Lorrus. That is your name, isn’t it? Lorrus. Grymn.

  The sound of his own name rang through Grymn’s head like the trump of doom. Words of defiance died unspoken on his lips. He felt as if something cold had crawled inside him and was now seeking to make room.

  We have much to talk about, in the time left to us, Lorrus Grymn…

  Gutrot Spume stood on the foredeck of his galley. He leaned on the head of his axe and watched the waters part before the prow of his vessel. The galley was a poor sort of ship, compared to others he’d captained, but fast. He closed his eyes and listened to the hiss-crack of the whips, as his crew encouraged the rowers to greater efforts. The sooner the slaves learned what was expected of them, the sooner they would be fit to crew a proper ship. One that sailed fiercer seas than these moribund waters.

  Grandfather’s garden was a pleasant place, and no denying it. Its storms were swift, like Grandfather’s wrath, and its waters gentle. Idly, Spume scraped a tentacle’s worth of sputum from the rail and cast it into the wet air. The mass swirled and congealed, taking the shape of an inverted pyramid, or of a spreading plume of smoke. The current shape of the garden, though that could change at any moment. It split into seven flat planes, dwindling to the reverse apex. Grandfather’s manse sat there, holding up the garden on its creaking foundations. The mass dripped back to the rail.

  Spume chuckled, thinking of the first time he’d sailed into the garden, quite by accident. He’d been harrying an Abak treasure ship bound for Sartos. Only it hadn’t been treasure they’d been carrying – at least, not the kind he’d been hoping for. And when he’d boarded them at last, their captain had proven to be more capable than he seemed. Spume had killed the poxy harem-born princeling regardless, but by then it had been too late.

  His chuckles faded as those final moments came back to him, as strong as ever. Bad, black moments, etched forever on what was left of his worm-eaten soul. The waters rushing suddenly and swiftly in the wrong direction; the wind, screaming and stinking of offal; and those rotting hands, leagues across and so big as to blot out the sun and stars, reaching up out of the maelstrom and pushing aside the waters as if they were sand. Reaching up to draw the spinning vessels down into the vast deep.

  There had been things down there, in the dark. Shapes greater than any leviathan, and hungry. Men had been plucked screaming from the decks as the ships sank, drawn upwards into the crashing curtain of displaced water. But not Spume. He’d ridden the carcass of his ship into the garden and, when they’d surfaced, he’d set about exploring.

  He ran a wide thumb along the edge of his axe. He’d almost worn the blade to splinters in those first few months on the plague-yellow seas. His crew had died around him, their bodies fruiting and spoiling in the sickly glare of the sun. But he’d only grown stronger, determined to conquer these new, squirming waters as he’d conquered the Wolftooth Fjords and the Breakwater. He’d swelled, basking in Grandfather’s attention, though he’d known it not. And when he’d at last reached the headwaters of the garden, he’d knelt at Nurgle’s feet, as if that was what he’d been born to do.

  But Grandfather was a jolly sort, and profligate with his favour. Spume had soon realised that he was not the only maggot in the meal, nor even the biggest. But that was good. What was life without challenge? Let the flydandies and bilefops mutter about the art of surrender and write odes to sweet despair. Gutrot Spume fought, as he’d always fought. Let the storm close over him, if it would. Hope was a tattered sail, a cracked hull, a shattered rudder. He embraced the misery of it all, and fed on it. Or, at least, he had.

  Spume sighed, thinking of what had been lost. He had been trapped on the wrong side of the Genesis Gate when it had closed, his vessel shattered by Alarielle’s wrath. He could still recall his consternation as those pillar-thick vines had skewered his hull and cracked his masts. His crew had died screaming, even as Spume hacked himself an escape route. He’d fallen into the flowing rotwaters, and been carried by the current into the garden with the rest of the detritus. Separated from what remained of his flotilla. The thought brought him a rare moment of pain, and he cherished it.

  His ships, vast galleons of rotten wood and putrid caulk, which could sail upon the waters and pox-clouds with equal ease, were the pride of Nurgle’s plague-fleets. And none more so than his flagship, Lurska. The titanic rot-kraken was an old friend, and the citadel built upon her back was a mighty thing indeed, studded with black iron cannons and balefire throwers. Her tentacles could uproot elder oaks like saplings, and shatter even the strongest hulls. She was a true companion, a pirate to her noisome core. He missed her dearly, and looked forward to treading her barnacled decks once more.

  No, the garden was not for him. Once he’d secured suitable replacements for his lost crew, he’d find the nearest path back to Ghyran and the Rotwater. Beautiful as they were, the seas here were soft things, gentle, tamed and lacking in true excitement.

  A monstrous, serpentine head broke the gelid surface and arrowed towards him, jaws agape. The poxwyrm’s scales gleamed with an oily hue, and its milky eyes fixed on him with greedy intensity. Spume pivoted, letting his axe rise and fall as he avoided the poxwyrm’s snapping jaws. Its head flopped to the deck, and its long neck reeled away like a fallen tree. As it struck the water, he spotted the threadbare fins of more of the creatures, closing in to feed on their fallen kin.

  Spume ran a tentacle along the notched edge of his blade, wiping it clean of steaming ichors. His tentacle bent and snapped, scattering droplets across the closest bench of rowers. The galley slaves screamed as the poisonous bile stung their afflicted flesh. Whether in pleasure, or in pain, Spume didn’t know, nor did he care. That they reacted was enough. He glanced at Durg, his first mate. ‘They need toughening up. Whip them until their scabs get scabs.�
�� The plaguebearer grinned, displaying erratically spaced teeth.

  ‘Aye, captain,’ the daemon grunted. He snarled phlegmatically, and the crew snapped to, plying their whips with gusto. Spume nodded in satisfaction. Daemons made for poor crew on long journeys. They got bored too quickly to make proper sailors. But, for these shorter jaunts, they served well enough.

  Only the toughest souls were worthy of serving aboard his galleons. Bodies and spirits hardened by drowning and disease, made strong by Grandfather’s blessings. And the strongest souls were those plucked from the soil of the garden. But no soul was quite like the one now languishing in his hold. Tougher than any he’d ever encountered. He needed answers. At the very least, he might be able to use his captive to barter passage back to the Mortal Realms. Decision made, he gestured to his first mate.

  ‘Durg! Bring me a soul.’

  Durg dutifully dragged a whimpering soul up onto the foredeck, depositing the pale thing at Spume’s feet. The soul was an indistinct thing, covered in yellowish barnacles and clumps of fungus. It had been here long enough that its origins, even its gender, had been lost to the mire. It cowered away from Spume, babbling inarticulate prayers to gods whose names it had long since forgotten. They always forgot, eventually. Only one god held sway in these waters, and he weighed heavily on the mind.

  Spume planted his axe in the deck and grasped the soul with his mortal hand. ‘Up,’ he said. ‘I be needing your assistance.’ His tentacles writhed and stiffened, spearing into the soul like daggers. They undulated through the open wounds on the soul’s body, and into its open mouth and eyes. The soul gurgled shrieks, writhing in pain. Spume chuckled, forcing his tendrils deeper into its putty-like form. When he judged that they’d inundated the squirming form thoroughly, he tore it apart in a welter of gore.