Something dropped from the airship’s flank. She followed it as it plummeted through the smoke and ash, a black sphere, seemingly innocuous amidst the devastation surrounding it. She lost it as it disappeared among the remains of the burning marketplace. Fire flared, silhouetting the intervening wagons, and the thunderclap of another detonation rolled out across the desert, bringing realisation with it.
The arkanaut frigate was attacking Khaled-Tush. They were dropping incendiary grudge-bombs over the side, onto the helpless caravans below. It was their fire that had first ignited the black top, and toppled the stage. Now the entire outpost was ablaze.
Maleneth’s view of the Kharadron skyship was obscured by a shadow. She blinked, and realised that Gotrek was standing over her. It took her a moment to realise that he was offering her his hand. She took it, her slender fingers encased by the duardin’s scarred, stone-hard fist. She allowed herself to be drawn up onto her feet, and glanced back at the pavilion. It had almost wholly collapsed into the flames consuming it, and the space around it was a heaving mass of people, trying to push and shove their way out of the reach of the fires as they spread to the nearby trees and the undergrowth that carpeted the banks of the oasis. It was chaos, and amidst it all no one seemed to have noticed the skyship. It was turning, banking around through the smoke and heading back in their direction.
‘Dwarfs?’ Gotrek said, following Maleneth’s gaze.
‘Not as you know them.’
‘Apparently not,’ Gotrek growled. ‘The only dawi that take to the sky are brain-addled. Just like everything else in this place.’
The skyship was losing altitude. Some of those on the edge of the crowd, stricken with fear and confusion, had started to flock towards it, not realising that it was responsible for the devastation reigning around them.
She pulled her knives from her belt once more.
‘I pray the idea of kinslaying does not disturb you, duardin,’ she said darkly.
Gotrek’s expression, usually stony, hardened further in the flickering firelight.
‘Not any more, aelf. Not for a long time.’
Chapter Four
Durbarak’s steel-shod boots hit the earth with a satisfying thump. He let go of the grav-ladder’s rappel line, steadying himself. Around him, his crew were clustering, the fires of destruction unleashed by their skyship gleaming from armour plates, cutlasses, ancestor masks and pistols. He paused to assess the two dozen Kharadron reivers, and the inferno taking hold around them.
Khaled-Tush was no more. The incendiary grudge-bombs dropped by the arkanaut frigate and the heated shot of its cannons had set fire to the trading post’s few permanent structures, and to hundreds of the wagons and carts that had been clustered around the oasis. They now presented a wall of flame, against which were silhouetted hundreds of individual figures – those who had survived the aerial bombardment and were now attempting to flee out into the desert night with whatever they’d been able to snatch before the flames took hold.
The crew would need to be quick, before their quarry escaped with them. Assuming, of course, that the inferno hadn’t taken the target already. The thought of so many perishing in the flames brought a grim smile to Durbarak’s lips. Sometimes, he doubted his life choices. He doubted breaking the Kharadron code, and turning his holdings to nothing but reiving and murder. But at times like these, all those doubts were burned away. Even the fear of losing the incredible bounty the Slayer represented could not penetrate the thrill of witnessing unchecked devastation on a scale such as this.
‘Throm, Dregg, take six and scout towards the marketplace. Borin, another three and circle east – cut off anyone fleeing down the main trail. Set more fires if you need to. The rest of you, with me.’
The Kharadrons moved off into the fire-lit darkness, weapons drawn. Durbarak led his group towards the waters of the oasis, shimmering through the flames and heat haze. He could see hundreds of people spilling from a large tent, its burning canvas almost wholly consumed by the skyship’s ponderous bombing run. Some were throwing themselves into the oasis itself, others were stumbling towards the fires consuming the marketplace, overcome by confusion and the black smoke hanging heavy over the outpost. Like the rest of the Kharadrons, Durbarak had bound a wetted rag around his mouth and nose before donning his ancestor mask, knowing he would need it to breathe amidst the inferno their attack had ignited. He could feel the heat even through the rubberised insulation of his sky-suit, slicking his body with sweat and making every movement chafing and uncomfortable.
‘Please, sellah, help us,’ shouted a man in a torn headscarf, stumbling from the direction of the burning pavilion. Durbarak shot him, relishing the brute kick of his aetherlock pistol. The heavy ball flung the man down as though he’d been poleaxed, a chunk of his torso blown away. The Kharadrons continued over the corpse. More gunshots rang through the night as they fired indiscriminately into the fleeing crowd. Few seemed to have realised that the fires were no accident, and that the outpost was under attack.
‘Keep a clear watch,’ Durbarak bellowed, gesturing at his landing party to spread out further. When they’d first passed over the outpost, the ship’s navigator, Zeggi, had been monitoring it with half a dozen enhanced vision scopes, linked to various parts of the frigate’s underbelly. He’d been unable to discern their quarry amidst the sudden blossoms of flame or the panicked crowds, however, so they were doing it the old fashioned way – a ground raid, pistols and cutlasses drawn. In truth, Durbarak wasn’t complaining. It always did him good to see the carnage they sowed up close.
‘Watch the starboard side,’ growled his midshipman, Threg. A trio of men came running from the crowd, scimitars raised, the nearby conflagration reflecting like liquid fire from the curved steel. Durbarak raised his second pistol, but before he could fire, the duardin nearest the attackers – Lorik, Stromm and Gurbad – had already put them down with a hail of shots.
‘Keep going,’ Durbarak ordered. He heard more firing coming from the direction of the caravans as the other Kharadron landing parties began to move in among the survivors there. Those directly ahead had finally realised that the duardin had not come with friendly intentions. They were screaming and pushing at one another, forced forward by the pressure of those behind still desperate to get away from the burning pavilion. More went down to the renegade Kharadron’s gunfire.
For a moment, Durbarak entertained the fear that their quarry had already escaped. He doubted it though. From what he had heard, running away from innocents while they were being cut down by ruthless attackers was the opposite of what the target would do. He was counting on it.
The remains of the pavilion collapsed, fire and sparks billowing into the air. The last of the crowd ahead of them were beginning to disintegrate and scatter. There was a noise like a thunderclap from behind Durbarak, and he realised the skeleton crew left aboard the frigate, the Draz Karr, had probably fired one of the cannons to keep those fleeing the fires from mobbing the landing area.
They were running out of time.
Perhaps the one they sought was already dead. Perhaps the target’s bones were currently snapping and crackling in the white heat at the heart of the settlement, or in the remains of the pavilion ahead. Perhaps the job he’d been hired to do had already been done. He hoped not. Despite orders, he had no intention of killing the target, or its accomplices.
‘I can see something up there,’ Stromm shouted. For a moment Durbarak had no idea what the ship’s mate was talking about. Then he caught it, through the dark figures milling about before the pavilion’s flames, trapped between the fire and the advancing Kharadrons.