As if directed by one mind, both of the winged devils dived in at once, catching the eagle and holding it fast in mid-air. The floating reliquary came in close, the ruddy pulse of its raw power washing over the tableau.
The eagle seemed to age, shrinking in on itself, flesh and feather mouldering away as it became thinner and thinner. The great bird shrieked, cawed a coarse bark, then fell silent. The vargheists released it from their grip. It fluttered downwards for a moment, fleshless and strange, before dissolving into a scattering of desiccated bone.
A single long feather of white and gold wound its way down through the air towards the captives, passing straight through the topmost spars of the bone prison and settling just out of reach on the mound of disembodied limbs inside.
Mordecaul felt tears pricking his eyes as the elven princess gave a long, mournful keen of pure sorrow.
‘Ranald take these infernal… Just… Elspeth, push against that… Yes…’
Across from Mordecaul, Sindt gave a toothy hiss of triumph. With the healer Elspeth Farrier’s help, the trickster-priest had finally managed to get his manacled foot free from his tightly-strapped longboot. Mordecaul’s stomach growled; he was so hungry he considered hooking the boot over with his own foot and chewing its leather for whatever meagre sustenance it could provide. It was a cruel irony that they were passing through Hunger Wood, with its reputation for forbidden feasts. Even the trees looked like old flesh clad in wrinkled skin, the branches like dried and elongated fingers. So much meat to hand, rotten and rancid but surely better than nothing, was right there in the corpse-bed beneath them. All going spare for one with the courage to claim it…
The young priest shivered and pulled his attention back to what his fellow captives were doing. With his leg fully extended, Sindt was wiggling his toes through the holes in his stocking. Once the largest two were sticking out, he lowered his foot delicately towards the feather. He strained and grimaced, but was still a few inches short. Mordecaul watched from under hooded eyes, silently hoping the Ranaldite priest would dislocate something in his febrile attempts to snatch his trophy. Sindt stretched again, his face a rictus of effort.
Lupio Blaze puffed out his cheeks and blew a burst of air at the feather, his moustache quivering on either side of his mouth. At first, nothing happened. Then Elspeth caught on and joined in, both of them huffing and blowing like short-changed halflings.
Finally their combined efforts managed to ruffle the feather a few more inches towards Sindt. The trickster-priest grabbed it between his toes and retracted his leg as if he had been stung, quickly curling crosslegged and hiding the feather from sight completely. The vargheist with the red skull for a face swept by overhead, but did not come close enough to notice.
‘You can’t summon more eagles with just that,’ whispered the nature-priest.
‘Shut up and watch, Rube,’ replied Sindt.
‘I’m not Rube,’ said the nature-priest. ‘I’m Russet.’
Sindt ignored him, hiding the feather in his armpit so that the hollow tip stuck towards his mouth. He bit down into the quill-end with an expression of utmost concentration, nibbling a little here, spitting out a piece there, all the while giving the impression his head was merely nodding with the motion of the bone prison.
‘And…’ mouthed Sindt, stretching out the word as he finished his work, ‘Ranald’s your mother’s lover.’
The trickster-thief showed the feather’s dented tip against his palm for a second, reminding Mordecaul of an Altdorf street sharp showing a Stirland farmer his chosen card.
‘Great,’ he muttered. ‘Now we can write Karl Franz a few strongly-worded letters.’
‘No, death priest,’ said Lupio Blaze quietly, shaking his head and holding out an admonishing finger. ‘You wait.’
As soon as they passed under a canopy thick enough to hide the moonlight completely, Mordecaul heard a faint ‘click’ of metal, then another. When the moonlight fell on Sindt once more, he sat exactly as he was before, but for the hint of a smug smile on his face.
‘So we have a chance, then,’ muttered Elspeth. ‘If we can get these manacles off… With Shallya’s grace, we still have a chance.’
‘Not without weapons, we don’t,’ snorted Olf gruffly. ‘They’re vampires, woman. There’s no way we can take them. And that… that thing in the clouds… What’s inside it is worse than even the von Carsteins.’
‘Just call it what it is, you fat coward,’ sneered Sindt. ‘You heard the vampire say it, just like the rest of us. It’s the Hand of Nagash.’
The woods fell silent. Even the buzzing of insects and rustling of leaves stopped.
The Sigmarite priest in Elspeth’s lap stirred in his unconsciousness, crying out. His voice sounded like it came from a great distance away.
‘The Hand…’ he mumbled. ‘It begins… It will bind…the sands… the triplets… the moon… blood and fire… dead gods…’
‘Hush, now,’ murmured Sister Elspeth, shooting a fierce glance at Sindt as she laid a hand on the old man’s brow. ‘Try not to move. Be at peace.’
A cackling scream echoed through the forest. Mordecaul felt sweat break out on his forehead. It had not sounded like it had come from a human throat.
His stomach rumbled again. This time he punched it in frustration, but the gnawing sensation was still there.
As the bone prison bumped its way through the twisting paths of the wood, Mordecaul watched in grudging admiration as Sindt went to work. The trickster-priest slumped in feigned sleep over first Olf, then Russet, the odd clink of metal lost under the trundling clank of the carriage’s wheels. Russet’s face lit up when he realised his manacles had been undone by Sindt’s clever hands, and it took four sets of glaring eyes to convince him not to spring up and attempt escape straight away. Sindt whispered something into the nature-priest’s ear, and a slow, guileless smile spread across Russet’s battered features.
Sindt wasn’t done there. Placing the feather in between his toes once more, he extended his leg to its fullest extent and inserted its nib into the lock on the manacles around Blaze’s ankles. The trickster-priest’s tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth as he waggled his toes back and forth. Mordecaul found himself hoping that, this time, the Ranaldine thief would succeed.
He was not disappointed. Though Sindt was sweating and gritting his teeth by the end of it, his efforts were rewarded with a soft click.
‘It won’t make any difference, you know,’ said the Bretonnian lady at the rear of the carriage. ‘We’re all dead already.’
‘Nonsense. We’ll see you out of here, alive and well,’ said Olf.
‘Oh no you won’t,’ she laughed softly, her voice like knives on silk.
Mordecaul hoped against hope for the dawn, even for a single shaft of sunlight to give them hope.
In his heart, he knew it would never come.
The woods around the path were getting denser by the hour. The only illumination within the prison was the occasional shaft of light from Morrslieb, and a soft lambent glow that surrounded the elf princess. Other than the occasional despairing moan and the old man’s occasional mutterings from Elspeth’s lap, the company had fallen silent. Some of their number were pale with loss of blood, and Mordecaul could smell that some of their wounds were turning rotten.