CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Outside, the light was fading. A brisk edgeward breeze rustled Drekki’s beard and called up goosebumps on his neck. A bell tolled somewhere far off.
‘That is a bell rung by no living thing.’ Duzrekar hunted about the sky, a troubled look on his face. His ape cowered into his legs. ‘They are coming.’
‘This will see to them. Runestruck pellets, send them back to Nagash by the swathe.’ Kedren patted his blunderbuss.
‘That won’t help, no matter how many you get rid of,’ said Duzrekar.
‘Then we’d best get back to the ship, put some space between us and them,’ said Drekki. ‘They’ll be gone by dawn, yes? We can wait them out. Come with us, my friend, you need stay here no more. You can bring your monkey, if you like.’
Arkarugen bared his teeth.
Duzrekar looked at Drekki as if he had lost his mind. ‘There’s no time!’ said Duzrekar. ‘The only safe place is down by the endrins. A combination of the aetherical overspill and the baffles round the reactors keeps them away.’
‘Because it’s magic,’ said Kedren to himself.
Duzrekar had that wild glint in his eye again. ‘We found out too late that it kept them away. Too late! A few weeks, that’s how long the others lasted. Then they were all gone and I was alone.’
‘I have to warn my crew at least,’ said Drekki.
Duzrekar poked Drekki hard in the chest. ‘You’ll die if you go back,’ he said. ‘You’ll join the dead on their nightly processions. No matter how fast you run, you’ll not make it.’ Duzrekar gestured Hyshaway, where the light was turning pale and brassy, doing little more than outlining the huge landscapes of the Spiral Crux far, far away.
‘I’m not talking about running.’ Drekki took out his silver whistle from his pocket, and lifted it to his lips. He blew, and it let out a piercing note almost inaudible to duardin ears.
The sky was already tending to black out edgewards. There were no stars, no sign of the celestial lights of Azyr or the luminous coils of the godbeasts, none of the things you’d expect in a normal night, just a pitchy black.
There were, however, other lights. Pale, luminous glows formed around the wrecks and rocks of the Dead Air. They drifted without purpose, coalescing, growing brighter, fading, coming back into being, each time a little more solid than before. There were figures in some of the glows, visible briefly, gone so fast as to convince a duardin they’d not been there at all.
‘They’re waking! They’ll be on us, mark my words,’ Duzrekar said, his eyes flicking between the sickly phantasmal lights.
‘One moment.’ Drekki lifted his whistle to blow once more, but before he could there was a silvery chime of metal wings, and Trokwi came out of the dark.
‘Trokwi!’ The little mechanical bird landed on his arm. ‘Listen to me. Find Otherek, tell him to get back to the ship.’
‘Give them up for dead, they’ll never make it on foot,’ said Duzrekar.
‘They’re closer than we are,’ said Drekki. ‘Otherek has to get the Aelsling moving, get away from the city, to the edge of the Dead Air.’
‘It won’t be enough,’ said Duzrekar. ‘They need to get inside here, where it’s safe.’
‘I’ll not leave my ship unmanned, nor put my crew in peril,’ said Drekki. ‘They’ll be out of the Dead Air in half an hour. Tell them to come back here at first light, Trokwi.’
Trokwi burbled, and hurtled into the night.
‘I hope he’s fast,’ said Duzrekar.
‘He is, and so is the Aelsling,’ said Drekki.
‘Aye, well, you’d better be fast, too,’ said Duzrekar.
They ran. Ghostly forms shivered into being everywhere they looked.
‘Follow the monkey!’ Duzrekar shouted.
Arkarugen was knuckling ahead, his simian eyes so wide with fear the whites gleamed. He swerved into an open stairhead. The duardin followed, clattering down into the inner spaces of the port.
A string of salvaged aetherlamps lit the way. The stairs headed down in a square spiral, with angles that were hard to negotiate at speed. Ghostly music joined the bell tolling loudly above.
‘Quickly!’ Duzrekar said. When he turned back, he looked more than a little crazed.
They went into a long service corridor, also lit by aetherlamps, leading them towards the endrin decks. Gaps in the wall where the endrins had blown showed a night alive with luminous horrors.
In fear, Uzki tried to pull ahead. Without warning, Duzrekar tripped him. The beardling hit the deck hard, ripping his suit on the deck plating. Duzrekar planted a foot on his back to stop him getting up.
‘Hey!’ Drekki said.
‘Keep quiet!’ Duzrekar hissed. He pointed with a shaking hand out of a rip in the hull. Arkarugen shrank into a corner.
There was a sickly glow in the night. A shrouded, skull-faced figure floated past, and stared into the passage, making Uzki gasp.
‘Shh! Don’t make a sound!’ Duzrekar whispered.
The gheist had the form of a cowled skeleton trailing a dark robe that faded out around the knees, becoming a shapeless swirl of aethereal vapour. It held out its hands ahead of itself, as if it were ashamed of them. Chains dangled from manacled wrists and from a rusty iron collar peeping out of the hood. A chainrasp, a lesser soul enslaved in the service of Nagash. It radiated a sense of supernatural cold that attacked the bones before the flesh, the terrible cold of the grave. As the light from the gheist passed over Drekki, it was as if Nagash himself trailed his claws through the duardin’s soul, and the breath caught in his throat. The chainrasp stared at him with its empty eye sockets, until it passed close to the edge of the gap, and its awful face turned slowly back out to face the night.
Adrimm let out a whoosh of breath. ‘Grimnir!’
‘We were lucky,’ said Duzrekar. ‘Before the processions form, they’re less dangerous. Get up, lad.’ He extended a hand to Uzki. ‘Sorry I had to trip you.’
Uzki nodded, took Duzrekar’s hand, and got up.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
Duzrekar led them into a massive machine hall. Signs of fire and damage were everywhere. More Nighthaunt appeared, sinking through the floors of the port, faces peering from the walls, floating off to join the huge clouds gathering outside.
‘In here, quick!’ Duzrekar led them to the upper surface of an enormous endrin globe, easily twenty times the size of the Aelsling’s biggest. He went to the door and spun the lock wheel.
‘That’s not active, is it?’ asked Adrimm. ‘The aether effusion from an endrin of that size will broil us in moments.’
‘Millikhar[59] count is way down,’ grunted the endrineer as he spun the wheel. ‘It has been since the beginning, because I turned it down. Most of the fuel rods are out and there’s only residual activity from this endrin. It’s safe enough for us, but it’s still high enough to keep the dead at bay. It disrupts their forms. When they try to approach, they disintegrate.’
He heaved on the door. It opened with a long, mournful moan. The soft glow of active aether shone from inside.
‘Come on!’ Duzrekar beckoned. ‘Safer in than out.’
‘You first,’ said Drekki.
‘Don’t you trust me? As you wish,’ said Duzrekar angrily. He went inside. Kedren, Drekki and Adrimm followed. Uzki hesitated on the threshold.
‘You too, beardling.’ Duzrekar leaned out to pull him inside, then heaved on the inner lock wheel and the door swung closed with a boom. He spun the wheel quickly. When the bolts were snug in their brackets, he heaved a sigh of relief and leaned against the metal.
‘Nearly a goner there!’ he said, suddenly joyful. ‘I shouldn’t have let you keep me talking so long. Whew!’ He laughed. Arkarugen gave him a troubled look.
‘I’ve had narrower escapes,’ said Drekki quietly. He looked about the globe. The workings of the endrin were in the middle of the room, a sphere within a sphere. A catwalk circled the exact midpoint of the room.
The hemisphere of the endrin towered over him. Drekki paused at the core loading door, a massively thick, curved piece of silver-shot steel with a viewport of even thicker glass set into it. On the other side was a tall, rotating round, with dozens of holes to take aether-gold fuel rods in its exposed edge. Above that would be a loading machine, designed to spin the core and automatically insert new rods. This was the kind of huge, heavy-duty endrin used to keep sky-ports in the air, but it worked the same as the ones on the Aelsling, taking the solid gold as its power source, turning it back to gas to release its innate power. Drekki would not look into the window. Even though the light was far less intense than it would have been if the endrin had been working at full capacity, it would damage his eyes. Ordinarily, only specialist endrineers in full protective endrinsuits would have gone into an endrin core, and then only if malfunction demanded it.
‘Aether activity is very low.’
‘Don’t worry. Enough of the endrins are working that we’re not going to fall out of the sky, not tonight. You’re safe, though I can’t speak for your crew.’
They could still hear the tolling of bells beyond the endrin walls.
‘I’ve an aether-khemist,’ said Drekki. ‘He can keep a few ghosts at bay.’
‘It’s not a few!’ said Duzrekar. ‘It’s thousands! Every soul ever caught in the Dead Air.’ He looked out of a huge, bulbous endrin-port. ‘Your crew are goners. They are not getting out and they’re not coming back.’ He hit the side of the globe. ‘Then in four days, it’s all over. We’ll be outside the realmsphere.’ He laughed wildly. ‘The gods are bozdoks, giving me hope, then snatching it away. At least I won’t die alone.’
‘That won’t happen, because I’m Drekki Flynt,’ said Drekki. ‘You’re as good as rescued already.’
‘I’m doomed, so are you,’ Duzrekar said dully. He went to one of the endrin-ports and sat down on a tatty mattress up against the wall, crossed his arms over his knees, and pressed his beard into his arms. ‘I hate those bells,’ he muttered.
The others kept their distance from Duzrekar. Adrimm was making himself comfortable against the curve of the metal. Kedren had reloaded his blunderbuss, and was polishing his axe with an oily rag. Uzki sat a little way off. It was to him Drekki spoke first.
‘I told you to stay on the ship, my lad,’ said Drekki.
‘I wanted to look around,’ Uzki mumbled. ‘I thought I could be useful. I’m good at finding things. I’m good at puzzles. Neither seem to be doing me any good. I keep messing up.’
‘That’s not what Bokko says.’
Uzki shrugged.
‘It’s not what I say either, but what I do say is, when your captain gives you an order, you’re supposed to obey it,’ said Drekki.
‘I can do more than just swab the deck! I just wanted to show you.’
‘You don’t need to. Do you think Adrimm knew even half what you do, when he went to the academy in Mhornar? You know, where he got the second highest grade? You might have heard that. He’s mentioned it once or twice.’
Adrimm shot him a dirty look. ‘I deserved that mark!’
‘You’ll not send me away?’
‘Impetuousness and the beardling tendency to think you’re right all the time aside, you’re doing all right.’ Drekki put his hand on Uzki’s shoulder. ‘We’ll get out of this,’ he said to them all. ‘I always do. Let’s figure it out in the morning. Get some rest, lads.’
‘Aye,’ said Adrimm. ‘I’m blowed.’ He dipped his head into his beard and shut his eyes. In moments he was snoring.
Drekki went over to the other endrin-port. The ports were included to allow endrineers to monitor the endrin glow at a glance; they weren’t really designed to be used as windows. To deaden the effect of active aether, they were large and thick, the convexity of the glass distorting the view outside, but if Drekki stood right in the middle, and looked out of the flattest part of the glass, he could see well enough.
There were phantoms everywhere. They drifted in clouds, coming together in knots, where they danced around each other in slow vortices of gheist light. They moved lethargically, like children who have been forced to go play outside when they do not wish to. The crowds got bigger, the knots thicker. The dancing of the lights picked up their tempo. The tolling of bells grew louder, and the gheists formed themselves into long parades, ghostly ships at intervals along their length. At some unseen signal, the phantoms produced candles in their hands which ignited together with pale flame. The bells continued to ring. The thin, sombre music got louder.
The dead began to march.
Drekki watched, fascinated, as the parades criss-crossed the skies. He leaned closer to the port. Although it was warm in the endrin chamber, cold radiated from the glass, and Drekki’s breath fogged on it.
He could hear them through the massive barrier plating of the endrin, their moaning swelling like waves on a damned sea.
‘They say the Nighthaunt are a punishment.’
‘Funti drukk!’ yelled Drekki, leaping backwards. ‘You almost made my heart stop!’
Kedren pulled an apologetic face. ‘Sorry.’
‘Of all the times to creep up on someone, when they’re watching armies of ghosts parade about the night sky is the very last!’
‘I didn’t creep,’ protested the runesmith.
‘Grimnir’s flaming beard,’ Drekki muttered. ‘What would they be punished for?’
‘Not going to Shyish,’ said Kedren. ‘They’re lingering here, when the Lord of Death would have them all to himself.’
‘I don’t think they’ve got any choice in the matter,’ said Drekki. ‘They’ll be caught up in whatever magic is keeping this place together, making it move. They’re not to blame.’
‘I don’t think Nagash gives a drukk about blame, do you? He’s a vengeful, jealous, bony bozdok,’ said Kedren. ‘Since when have you ever heard a story that puts him in a merciful light? I’d say round about never.’
‘Fair point,’ said Drekki.
The endrin’s core reactor gave out a dull, blue flicker, almost as lifeless and cold as the ghost light outside. A similar glow drew near the window, running around the edge of the lensed glass like water. A procession passed right in front of the porthole, so close that Drekki thought he would be able to reach out and touch the gheists.
Behind them, Adrimm snored softly against the wall, his gun cradled in his lap. Uzki sat staring at the endrinshine, not daring to look out of the window. Drekki bent back a little so he could see past the core to where Duzrekar sat. The endrineer was with his ape, his arm draped around its hairy shoulders. Framed by the eerie glow of the phantasms parading past the endrin window, they leaned into each other.
‘There’s something not right about all this,’ Kedren said.
‘Perhaps,’ said Drekki. ‘Not much we can do about it now. We’ve a busy day tomorrow getting rich, so let’s catch some sleep.’