I can’t hide my shock. ‘This is the sixth drake you’ve killed?’
She nods. ‘If you only count the winged ones.’
I stare at the duardin. ‘What is he?’
‘Gotrek, son of Gurni. Apparently he was born in somewhere called the Everpeak and, if you believe what he says, he belongs to an earlier age than this – and another world, for that matter.’
I raise an eyebrow.
She still has that warning look in her eye. ‘He’s unlike any duardin I’ve ever met. He calls himself a Slayer, but he hates fyreslayers as much as anything else we’ve encountered. They said he’s one of their gods, sent to help them, but that made him even angrier.’ She looks over at him. ‘He’s not keen on gods.’
She scowls at me. ‘Look, I want nothing more than to be rid of him, but that’s the Master Rune of Blackhammer he’s got jammed in his ribs. It’s more powerful than you realise. I’m sworn to return it to Azyr.’
‘To Azyr?’ My pulse quickens. An idea starts to form.
She nods. ‘But Gotrek has other ideas.’
‘Then kill him. If the rune is needed in Azyr, why have you left it in the possession of a lunatic?’
‘Did you see what he did to that drake?’
‘I know your kind, assassin. Brute strength is no protection against you. You could scratch him in his sleep and he’d never wake.’
‘He never sleeps,’ she snaps, but she looks away, suddenly unwilling to meet my gaze. There’s more to their relationship than she will admit.
‘You like him.’
Her face darkens and she tightens her grip on her knives. ‘He’s a fool.’
‘But?’
She glares at me, her eyes full of vitriol. I can’t tell if she’s angry with me or herself. ‘It’s not just the rune. There’s something strange about him.’
I keep looking at her.
She spits, her rage palpable. ‘I can’t explain it. He says there’s a doom hanging over him and, after spending all this time with him, I’m starting to understand what he means. He’s unstoppable. Something wants him to succeed. Or someone.’
I nod. I’ve seen such things before. Primitive savages, sure of their destiny, oblivious to the facts, tumbling headlong through life, gathering doe-eyed disciples until they finally crash, taking everyone else with them. The aelf is beguiled by him. She mistakes his wild momentum for destiny. She’s in thrall to his fearlessness, not seeing that it’s only born of stupidity.
Gotrek laughs as he snaps the drake’s shoulder bones apart, filling the air with a black fountain.
‘You said you’re killing these beasts because you’re trying to find somewhere.’
She nods. ‘The Neverspike.’
The name gives me pause. I’ve heard it before, but can’t place it for a moment. ‘Why?’
‘Because of some drunk in Axantis. He told Gotrek that there’s an immortal there – someone who has been bound to the rocks by Nagash. The drunk called him the Amethyst Prince. And now Gotrek’s got in his head that, if this prince is an immortal, he must be from the same world he’s from.’
My blood cools. ‘I’ve heard of the Neverspike. Your drunk friend was right about the prince but the Neverspike is dangerous. It’s a fragment of the underworld.’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘Gotrek doesn’t go anywhere unless it’s dangerous.’
There’s a thunderous slap as Gotrek rips the drake’s stomach open and spills innards across the rocks.
‘Aelf!’ he cries, backing away from the wound, his arms drenched in blood and triumph flashing in his eye. ‘What do you see?’
She hesitates. Still looking at me. Weighing me up. She wants me to leave. She’s worried about what I might do to the Slayer. She’s protective of him for some reason. It’s the rune, I realise. She’s worried I’ll snatch the rune from under her nose. Then she’d have endured this boorish duardin for nothing. I smile as I follow her over to the mound of innards, my idea crystallising in my head. If the aelf can’t take the rune to Azyr, I’ll do it for her. No one could question my logic. What more important reason could I have for returning home? And then, in Azyr, I will rid myself of all these troubling memories and doubts. I will be renewed.
‘You’re doing it wrong,’ I say after a few minutes of watching her poke at the sloppy mess, drawing bloody sigils and whispering pointless curses.
‘What?’ She looks up, her eyes flashing.
I take an aetherlabe from my belt and tighten the brass coil at its centre. Slender hoops whiz and click, orbiting its crystal dome until the gemstone inside starts to glow. I hold the device over the steaming intestines. Flies are already starting to gather but the mechanism is unaffected, picking up the aethionic currents with ease, whirring and clicking as its cogs fall into place.
The aelf’s eyes widen. ‘You’re an ordinator.’
I ignore her, adjusting the device, closing in on the current.
Even the Slayer is intrigued. Some of the savagery fades from his face and I see a cunning I had not previously noticed.
‘You’re an engineer?’ he says.
I say nothing.
He looks at me closely, then studies the various measuring instruments attached to my armour. There is a look of recognition in his eye and he mouths a few crude engineering terms.
I use my boot to move some of the intestines as the aetherlabe’s teeth click into place.
I nod to a narrow ravine that leads from the hollow. ‘The Neverspike is that way. You’re only two days away.’
Gotrek laughs and slaps me on the shoulder, causing me to stagger. ‘Finally! Someone with at least half a brain. What did I tell you, witch? We’re almost there.’
He storms down the gulley, humming cheerfully to himself. His mood has changed in a moment from dour and fractious to eager and happy.
Maleneth is still kneeling in the drake’s stomach, covered in blood. She looks at me in disbelief, then shakes her head and hurries after Gotrek, wiping the gore from her face.
‘And this one?’ says Gotrek, prodding another of my instruments with a stubby, spade-like finger.
We’re hunkered in the lee of a scorched tree skeleton. Gotrek was keen to march through the night, but the aelf insisted we stop. The Slain Peak is even more dangerous in the dark than in daylight and the Slayer grudgingly agreed, still buoyed by the news we were close to the Neverspike.
‘It looks like a connecting rod on a turbine,’ he says.
He seems oddly knowledgeable about engineering. All his guesses are wrong, because he understands nothing about aetheric transference, but they are still educated guesses, based on a sound understanding of mechanics. I have never seen a savage so well-versed in science.
‘It’s an adylusscope,’ I explain. ‘A kind of orrery. It tracks the cycles of the realms and all the other heavenly bodies.’ I would not usually be so open with a stranger, but the duardin will be dead in a few hours, so I allow myself a little pride, describing the power of my cosmolabes and other surveying equipment.
‘And this?’ His eye narrows as he looks at the inverussphere.
‘It reverses aetheric polarity,’ I explain, knowing he won’t have any idea what I’m talking about. I baffle him with descriptions of all my instruments, going through them one by one, amused by the disdain on his face. He tuts and shakes his head, muttering something about shoddy work, even though he could never conceive of the machines’ complexity.
The Slayer has a sack filled with skins of ale and we’ve been drinking for over an hour.
‘Not bad for a manling,’ he grunts as I empty another skin.