Warhammer [Ignorant Armies] (19 page)

"Slann," said Cotza. "Just like a modern skull - perhaps a little larger, a little finer. No doubt we've coarsened since our fall. I think that was a sailor, Erik. A Slann who took this boat to the stars, and who died when the boat ploughed into the ice," Cotza dangled his flippered feet into the hole and dropped through.

Erik raised the lantern and began to explore. They were in a sharp-edged box about as large as the turtle. Erik looked close but could see no joints between the wall plates.

Another skeleton, intact, sat before a table. The table was encrusted with buttons and slivers of glass. The chair held a pool of dust - perhaps the residue of the Slann's flesh. Shreds of some ancient material clung to the wide rib cage.

A spindle the size of Erik's fist hung in the air above the table. Erik looked for wires suspending it, but could see none. "Look at this," he said. "It's like... a toy version of the boat. A model."

Cotza peered, poked with a tentative thumb. There was a spark where he touched, a crack like a gunpowder cap. The Slann leapt back. The little model rocked in the air... and the star boat groaned and shifted around them, like a bear stirring in its sleep. Cotza looked about fearfully; Erik heard himself growl.

The model came to rest. The groaning ceased. Cotza looked at Erik. "You know what this is, don't you?"

"What?"

"It's for controlling the boat. It's like... a rudder. Yes, a rudder. Move the toy and you move the boat. See? Some races have spells which work on the same principle."

Erik peered doubtfully at the model. "Well, it's like no rudder I've ever seen..."

Now Cotza approached one wall. It was coated with panels of dark glass. Below each panel was a plate covered with a close, unrecognizable script. "Obviously this room is only a small part of the boat," murmured the Slann.

"So what's in the rest?"

Cotza shrugged. "Maybe the sails - or whatever it was they used to drive this boat." He pushed his broad muzzle close to the black glass. "This stuff is obsidian. Come and look..."

There was a picture in the obsidian plate. Erik saw stars. And something round and shining. The world? The Slann said, "I think we're seeing what the sailors saw on this boat's last voyage. Erik, it's true. This boat really did travel between worlds."

"So maybe this cabin is a kind of observation post," Erik mused. "Like a look-out posted in the rigging of a longboat."

The Slann nodded absently. His black tongue shot out and licked wide lips. "I believe there's more obsidian in this single room than in the whole of Lustria."

He reached up his right hand.

"Cotza, don't touch anything. Remember the rudder thing. There might be some kind of protection."

"I'm a Slann, Norseman," Cotza said haughtily. "This is my heritage. If we can get this obsidian loose, it alone will make me richer than I could have dreamed. And who knows what else we'll find..."

The Slann peeled off his right glove and spread webbed fingers.

"Cotza! Don't - "

Cotza touched obsidian. The cabin filled with fire and thunder.

Erik was hurled against a bulkhead. He felt the skin of his face blister in the sudden heat. His nostrils filled with the scent of scorching - his hair, beard, clothes.

The red glare faded; the noise echoed to stillness. Coughing, wiping tears from dazzled eyes, Erik struggled to his feet.

His weapons were in his hands. Good. He looked around quickly. The grease lamp had blown out, but blood-coloured light leaked from the plate Cotza had touched. Above Erik's head he could see the hole leading out into the turtle. And, beyond that, he could see stars.

So the explosion had breached the mithril. They were naked to Chaos. Despair closed around his heart. He shook his head. One thing at a time. He looked for Cotza.

The Slann was crumpled into one corner like a wad of rag. He was staring in disbelief at his right arm. It ended in a stump, a few inches below the elbow. Thick blood pumped like a dismal fountain.

Erik had seen such injuries before. He had seconds to save the Slann. He grabbed the edge of the Slann's robe and tore away a strip. He wrapped the strip around the stump and twisted until he felt the cloth bite to bone. The blood flow slowed, stopped.

Then Erik got to his feet and picked up the Slann, boosted him through the roof and back into the turtle. It was like lifting a child.

Erik jumped, grabbed the lip of the hole with his fingertips, and hauled himself up. The Slann lay limp on the floor, groaning softly. Erik ignored him, looked quickly around the turtle, weapons to hand.

The horses whinnied and stamped. The air in the turtle was cold, damp. A wind like a fist slammed through the breached roof. Erik reached up with one hand and felt around the breach until his fingers closed around a dislodged mithril plate.

Soft fingers brushed his wrist. He ground his teeth and hauled the plate over the hole. The wind died to a whisper. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do.

He kicked something in the debris. It was the spindle, the rudder-toy from the star boat; it must have been blown clear in the explosion. He poked it tentatively. There was no reaction. Impulsively he tucked the little model into his shirt.

Now, the Slann. Cotza could still die if the wound wasn't treated. And Erik was determined that he would stay alive until he provided some answers. He reached for a handful of grease and slapped it over the nearest lamp. A small fire roared up. Then he knelt and pulled the shattered right arm out from under the amphibian's body. Cotza groaned, stared up at Erik with empty eyes.

Erik thrust the damaged arm into the fire. The Slann's scream was unearthly. He struggled feebly. Erik held the arm fast until he could see that all the blood vessels had shrivelled closed. He lifted the Slann, who was unconscious at last, into his metal bath, and lit the warming fire beneath it.

Cotza slept for hours. Erik waited until the watery eyes fluttered open once more. Loops of slime clung to the Slann's eyelids. He turned his head, looking dimly around the turtle. Then his eyes met Erik's.

"You're no Slann," said Erik quietly. "I suspected when you had no magic to ward off the air elemental. Then there's your character. Your greed. Your ambition. Like no Slann. And you're a coward; you could never have been an Eagle Warrior. Now I have proof. That obsidian plate would not have harmed a true Slann. It's time for the truth. What are you, Cotza?"

Cotza dipped his head into the murky water, rubbed at slimy nostrils. Then he said: "I'm human."

Cotza told Erik that he had been born of a peasant family in northern Bretonnia. He grew to awareness in filth and squalor. Strutting Breton lords ruled the villages with a severity matched only by their corruption and incompetence.

Cotza was a weasel-like boy, weak and resentful, despised by his fellows. His only consolation was the tales of the old men of his village. They would recount fantastic legends of lands and times far distant, and Cotza would sit open-mouthed at the edge of their ruminative circles.

And most of all he loved the tales of the old Slann, with their wonderful machines which could spit fire and fly through the air. In his dreams Cotza was a God-Emperor, studying through obsidian his boundless dominions...

Cotza had reached a bitter manhood when, one overcast day, the sergeants of the army of King Charles rode into the local market square. The colours of their helmets' plumage shone out against drab mud walls.

The sergeants drew their dandified pistols and gathered the young men, Cotza among them, into a rough platoon. The King, the sergeants said, intended a plundering raid over the border into Estalia. They needed volunteers.

Two men were shot to encourage the rest. Then the peasants were marched away, hands clasped on their heads.

So Cotza found himself recruited into the fyrd - the peasant backup to Charles' professional troops. He was given a crude heraldic design to sew onto his brown shirt, was supplied with a stubby sword and an axe. He found life in the army of the King brutal and unrewarding. He watched officers strut around the battlefields intriguing against each other and showing off their dazzling standards.

Meanwhile the fyrd was thrust into battle in great disorganized mobs. Peasants died en masse. Cotza was a coward. He hid, ran, earned the contempt of his fellows. But he survived.

There was magic on the battlefield, Cotza learned. While peasants bludgeoned each other in the mud, he watched knights in their enchanted armour ride out and join in battle under magic standards.

He saw strange things. A man suffered grievous wounds to the head, yet fought on. For a few seconds a knight split mysteriously into two copies, baffling his opponents. Massive warriors would inexplicably turn, drop their weapons, and run howling from the field.

And at the centre of it all was a strange figure, a frail-looking old man who could nevertheless walk through a crowded field and have the burliest warrior step aside for him. This was Rufus, a powerful Wizard in the pay of the King. His bony face was masked by a florid beard and he wore a cloak that was stiff with sewn-in runes, shards of bones, bits of shattered blades; habitually he carried faded spell-scrolls stuffed under his arms.

Once he dropped a scroll. It steamed as it lay in the mud. None dared to pick it up for him. Rufus seemed to shimmer as he walked. The aura of power around him was almost tangible. It hurt Cotza to stare too long.

King Charles' campaign drew to a muddy close. The ragtaggle army headed back over the Breton border. Cotza thought about returning to the village, to a life of poverty and dirt...

They crossed an old battlefield. The rotting bodies of friend and foe filled the air with a fetid stench. The army made camp; Cotza, exhausted, spread his threadbare blanket across the ground, lay down and closed his eyes. But sleep would not come. He wriggled on the hard ground, suffering the curses of his comrades. There was something wrong. The ground was warm beneath him.

Warm?

He waited until the dead of night and then, by starlight, lifted the blanket and scraped aside the mud. Then he sat back and stared, breathing hard. He had found a spell-scroll, dropped and trampled into the dirt, glowing softly like coal burning from within.

Someone groaned in their sleep. Cotza hastily packed the earth back over the scroll and lay down again, heart pounding. This was his chance.

The next morning he made his way to the ornate tent of Rufus, and waited at its entrance until the Wizard emerged. Rufus scowled like thunder. The bits of shattered weapons sewn into his cloak glinted at Cotza like hard eyes. Cotza quailed... but he stood his ground. He told Rufus about the scroll. The Wizard asked him to describe it, and as Cotza did so Rufus' eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he asked where the scroll was.

Blood pounding, Cotza proposed a deal.

The Wizard mocked his bargaining, eyes burning. But Cotza got his deal. He led Rufus to the scroll. The Wizard lifted it reverently from the ground and returned to his tent, nodding slowly at Cotza as he passed.

It took the Wizard some days to complete his preparations. Then he sent a messenger to summon Cotza to his tent.

Now that the moment was here fear nearly overwhelmed Cotza; but he pushed himself to his feet and followed the messenger, ignoring the curious stares of his fellow peasants. He entered the gloomy interior of the Wizard's tent. The Wizard was a vague form in the shadows. On a wooden table lay the stinking corpse of a Slann.

Cotza whimpered and almost fell; he felt a shaming warmth spread damply down his legs. But, under Rufus' directions, he climbed onto the table beside the corpse.

It took three days. The pain was more than Cotza could bear... almost. Then, on the fourth day, he opened new eyes. The world was stained pus-yellow. The Wizard held up a mirror.

A Slann face stared back at Cotza.

"You see, soldiers - even peasant soldiers - share stories, legends, from all over the world," Cotza told Erik. "I listened to the tales of Elves and Dwarfs, sifted through the rubbish, searched for grains of truth, sought opportunity..."

"I remembered those boyhood tales. I learned that the Slann are the oldest race on the planet. Their powers, though lost, were once the greatest. Then I heard the legend of the star boat. I decided this was my chance. In return for the scroll the Wizard gave me gold... And I asked him to make me a Slann. I would seek out the star boat, take its treasure and power."

Erik studied the broken amphibian body without pity. "You were so stupid as to desire... this? To be a Slann?"

"It was my childhood dream," whispered Cotza. "A chance to reach the machines of the ancient Slann. It was a gamble. For the highest stakes - for the chance of power such as no mortal has wielded for five thousand years. Perhaps the power never to die."

"But you've lost," Erik snapped. "You fooled me, but you couldn't fool the Slann machinery. Could you?"

Cotza hung his head, nursing his ruined arm. Erik left him. There was no more to be said.

The turtle crawled over the ice like an injured slug. Erik had tightened the horses' harnesses, goaded them into turning their armoured belts once more. The horses stamped and complained. They were less willing to work together and progress was slow.

The belts moved with a grind. At least one of the wooden rollers was cracked, Erik decided. He tried to fix the loose mithril plates in the roof and floor. But they rattled and slid, and Erik grimly sensed invisible limbs probing into the breached machine.

For the first few days Cotza guided their way with his map and obsidian, but he grew duller and more apathetic. At last he crawled into a pile of furs, dangling his stump of an arm.

The air grew colder. At last frost began to rime the furs suspended over the metal walls. Erik rested with his back to the mithril. Behind the wall he could hear gloating laughter. His own body was a battleground. In his dreams his hands turned to wolf paws which tore into his human face. He awoke sweating despite the cold, the fur on his cheeks and hands erect and itching.

The grease lamps leaked dim patches of light. The turtle became a place of shadows, sinister and huge, no longer a sanctuary. He approached the horses, thinking to feed them. They reared at him, shouting like huge cats, a menacing mass of hooves and ragged manes. Erik stumbled back.