Maleneth felt herself uniquely qualified to judge – a shadowblade of Khaine, now an agent of the Order of Azyr. Or at least she had been. Her failure to return to the Order with the master rune would have done little to ease her superior’s understandable distrust.
The second figure was more difficult to make out in detail. She kept to the darkest parts of the yard, as if out of habit. Her hood was drawn tight against the cold, not a single strand of hair falling free. Her cloak was made from woven leaves, and real ones, not the steel likenesses worn by the warrior-priest. They changed colour with the light, turning from black to autumnal red with the streaking of the clouds across the moons. Despite that exotic quality the garment was well worn, stained by sweat, soil and beer, and had probably never been anything but functional to begin with. The only thing to distinguish the woman from another common footpad or down-on-her-luck highwayman was a string of campaign badges on her collar. They marked her as ex-Freeguild. Perhaps even one of the Living City Rangers, judging by the raiment, well known throughout Ghyran as the best scouts and trackers in the Mortal Realms. Maleneth recognised some of the battles. The most recent had been fought about fifteen years ago.
‘What’s going on over there?’ said Gotrek.
‘Nothing.’
‘Really? Because it sounds as if someone’s mislaid a child.’
‘As I said,’ said Maleneth. ‘Nothing.’ But the Slayer was already stomping towards the armed gathering. Maleneth swore. Talk about something that he actually wanted to hear and Gotrek’s ears were as keen as any darkling aelf’s.
‘You were supposed to be watching them while I visited the night market, Junas,’ the distraught woman yelled as Gotrek walked over.
‘It was a rough-looking crowd tonight, Madga,’ said the big man, Junas, defensively. ‘Helmlan wanted more help on the door. What was I supposed to say?’
‘Speaking of rough-looking crowds,’ muttered the warrior-priest, his eyes widening at the sight of Gotrek’s sagging crest. He shuffled smartly out of the Slayer’s way.
‘I hear that someone has lost a child,’ said Gotrek, in a tired voice that sounded like a slab of granite dropped into a conversation.
‘What’s it to you?’ said Junas. ‘I don’t know who you are.’
Madga slapped him. Maleneth saw the brawler’s biceps tense. Her hand strayed to her knife belt, but whatever anger he was containing he found room for a little more.
‘I know you,’ said the ex-Freeguilder, slowly. ‘You’re the fyreslayer that slept the night on Helmlan’s table.’
A glitter of malice in Gotrek’s one eye made the old veteran step back.
‘I am no fyreslayer, woman.’
‘My mistake, master duardin.’ The ranger bowed.
‘Aye. It was.’
‘My name is Madga,’ said the young woman, wiping the tears from her face on the sleeve of her nightdress as though to make herself presentable for the permanently dishevelled Slayer. ‘This is my husband, Junas.’ The tavern brawler crossed his arms over his chest. Maleneth recognised a display of threatened masculinity when she saw one. All bulging neck muscles and scowls. Like a feral alley starwyrm. ‘The priest is Alanaer.’ The older man painstakingly put together a drunken bow, leafmail twinkling under the light of the moons. ‘The Freeguild ranger is called Halik.’ The woman so named nodded curtly. ‘Anyone who drinks often enough in the Missed Striking to be on first-name terms with my husband isn’t the sort I’d want to trust my family to, but anyone who’d drop it all in the dead of night to go looking for a boy can’t be all bad, can they?’
Maleneth did not think that the girl had intended it as a question, but the hopeful inflection she gave it made it sound like one. The priest, Alanaer, smiled faintly, as if remembering the last time he had been spoken of so highly.
‘Do you have children?’ Madga asked.
Gotrek scoffed. ‘Take another look, girl. If this one ever got her claws on a child, she would probably skin it alive. And eat it.’
Maleneth nodded.
The young woman blanched. ‘I… I actually meant you, master duardin.’
Gotrek grimaced, as though pained by an old tooth. He grumbled something in his own archaic form of the Dispossessed tongue, his breath misting the midnight air. He stamped his boots on the cobblestones, taking small but obvious comfort in crushing the small flowers that sprouted between them.
‘It is quite the collection of arms you carry for a missing child,’ said Maleneth.
‘Someone saw the boy heading towards one of the catacomb entrances,’ said Halik.
Gotrek raised an eyebrow, and turned to Junas. He shook his head slowly. ‘You live a stone’s throw from the entrance to such a place and you would leave your child untended?’
The big man coloured. ‘The entrances are all locked,’ he protested. ‘And patrolled by the watch.’
‘It was the ghost of Hanberra!’ Madga wailed. ‘He’s taken my Tambrin.’
Some of the gloom lifted from Gotrek’s complexion.
Trust the Slayer to be revived by talk of spirits and monsters, Maleneth thought. ‘Ghost?’ she asked, casting a furtive look over her shoulder.
There was not much in this world that she truly feared. It was coldness, she often supposed, rather than genuine courage. But as a devotee of the God of Murder, the undead stirred a peculiar revulsion in her which, on a night as dark as this one, might have been mistaken for fear.
Alanaer shook his head. ‘A folk myth, pedalled by some of the Sigmarites.’
‘It’s true though,’ Junas murmured. He touched the small hammer he wore around his neck. ‘Hanberra was a hero of the old city. The one that stood here before Hammerhal. Before the War Storm. He fell defending it from Chaos. Sigmar tried to take him, for his Stormhosts, but he refused, because there were still folk in the city he could save.’
‘His children,’ cried Madga. ‘He defied the lightning to go back for his children. And he looks for them still.’
‘It’s just an old tale,’ said Alanaer. ‘One the Azyrheimers have latched on to, to warn about what happens to those who turn their backs on Sigmar.’
Halik, Maleneth noticed, looked unconvinced, but she nodded. ‘True or not, Tambrin was seen alone. Heading towards the Downs.’
Madga started to sob.
‘I’m going to bring him back, Madga,’ said Junas.
Halik and Alanaer both grunted their agreement.
‘Please, master duardin,’ Madga sniffed. ‘Will you help? Please?’
Gotrek scowled, but nodded. ‘Aye. I’ll help find your boy.’
Maleneth sighed.
With any luck, a little light exertion would be just what the various poisons in the duardin’s body needed to do their work. And failing that, there was every chance that the monsters of the catacombs or the ghost of Hanberra could do what she had been unable to.
Kill Gotrek Gurnisson.
The stairs into the catacombs went down forever. It seemed that way to Maleneth, at least, after a second hour had elapsed with no end in sight.
Maleneth wondered if Madga was still up there, waiting. Probably. For a moment it had looked as though the peasant woman would come with them, and it had only been a word from Alanaer that had dissuaded her.