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The Fist of an Angry God – William King

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Hallowed Knights: Black Pyramid’

A Black Library Publication

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The Fist of an Angry God

William King

All around, the buildings pulsed. Tall crystal towers flickered from pink to orange to lime, then for an eye-deceiving moment looked like ordinary stone before beginning their kaleidoscopic shimmering once more. Their ever-changing radiance transformed the underbelly of the red storm clouds of Aqshy into something far more sinister.

Balthus had a moment to notice this after he dispatched the blue horror with his blade. The thing burst asunder in a shower of magical sparks, the last of its foul kind to fall in this skirmish. A sense of relief filled him. No matter how many times he faced these creatures of Chaos, he always feared the things might go on splitting and replicating forever.

He wondered whether the city’s unnatural light served any purpose other than to confuse the eye and make the mind wander, then realised that as far as the worshippers of Tzeentch were concerned that was probably enough.

Thunder boomed. Lightning slashed the sky then struck the nearest tower. At the point of impact, the shimmering lights went out, their colours frozen at the instant when Sigmar’s wrath descended. On the rooftops and battlements, the lightning coalesced into the massive armoured forms of Balthus’ fellow Stormcast Eternals. A Judicator unit seemed born of the storm, crackling missiles pouring from their shockbolt bows, raking the oncoming wave of acolytes from above and to the flank, smiting them with the chained lightning of Sigmar.

The Chaos worshippers fell, only to be replaced by tzaangors – horned and beaked beastmen who howled and shrieked as they advanced, brandishing their massive blades in challenge. Still, fewer of them were sallying forth to face the wrath of the Stormcasts. Was it possible that their reserves were finally running out?

Balthus gestured for his men to follow, sweeping his sword downwards and pointing with its lightning-lit tip to where the strongest enemy loomed. Just for a moment, he felt a sense of deja vu. He had made the gesture a score of times since his reforging, but it always felt like the thousandth time, as if he were repeating something from a previous life.

He raced forward, broken shards of crystal turning to powder beneath his armoured feet, releasing the smell of incense, lovely at first but with a sickly aftertaint – a smell he had come to associate with the cultists of the Changer of Ways and their sorcerous rituals.

‘Onwards, brothers! We’re almost there. Just one last push!’

The Liberators responded to their Prime’s shout, their war cries torn from their throats: ‘For Sigmar! For the storm eternal!’ They raced towards the daemonic horde, determined to take revenge for the enslavement of their realms and the killing of their kin.

It would be soon now. This was the last of the nine great fortresses of Azumbard. Over the past eight months, the others had fallen one by one to the fury of Sigmar’s faithful, their sorcerous defences cracked, their fanatical occupants slain, and their souls sent tumbling to eternal damnation. Now the last citadel loomed. It had held out longest, its approaches trapped, its walls seemingly insuperable, protected by the mighty magics bound into every stone.

There had been times when Balthus had almost despaired. Almost. They had fought for every stride of their advance. Slowly, pace by pace, they had taken the surrounding territory. It seemed at last that victory was within their grasp. This area would be cleansed, purified and freed from the taint of Chaos.

He lengthened his stride, determined not to let any warrior of his chamber plunge into the melee before him. He leapt a low crystal wall and aimed a blow at the twisted, bird-beaked features of a tzaangor, his blade arcing down, splitting its skull and splattering brain stuff in the faces of the surrounding cultists.

He stormed through the ranks of the Arcanites, killing a score, their weapons bouncing off his armour, each blade making the heavy sigmarite ring.

He fought his way into an open square, flanked by defensive towers. Once again, he was struck by the resemblance of the place to somewhere he had once known. There was a sense of having been here before, but he could not say why.

Perhaps it was the resonance of the incomprehensible sorcery of the Tzeentchians. They often worked strange spells, the purpose of which no sane mind could understand. Over the long months of fighting, there had been moments when Balthus had seen the shouts of his foes and felt the sounds of their battle cries in his bones. Of course, Sigmar protected him, and such lapses were soon overcome. Perhaps this was just another effect like those.

His Liberators smashed their way to Balthus’ side, moving into tight formation around him.

‘We have them on the run now, Liberator-Prime!’ Tulius’ bellow carried across the din of battle. Balthus heard the confidence in his voice and the sense of inevitable victory. Today, they would win! Today this accursed place would finally fall!

Balthus pushed the thought to one side. Victory was never certain until the last foe had fallen or fled the field. Nothing could be taken for granted, particularly not here and now. The warlord who held the tower had proven the most cunning of foes, the most tenacious of defenders. Too often in the past month, they had lost comrades when victory seemed assured. Traps had sprung. Ambushes had enveloped them. Destructive spells had torn defeat from the jaws of victory.

‘Perhaps they have finally run out of reinforcements,’ Pindar said, descending from above on golden wings to join his friends in the eye of this storm of sigmarite. The Prosecutor sounded cool and calm, as if he had spent the past hour soaring above quiet farmlands instead of the killing grounds outside a citadel of humanity’s greatest foes. The stormcall javelin in his hand showed his readiness for combat.

‘I would not count on that,’ Balthus said. ‘They always seem to be able to summon more.’

‘No sorcerer possesses inexhaustible reserves of energy, no citadel holds an infinite number of guardians,’ said Tulius.

‘It feels like this one does,’ said Balthus, wondering at the despondency he felt. Perhaps there was sorcery in the air, subtle and demoralising. He should not feel this way when the light of victory glowed in his comrades’ faces.

‘Look, the Towerbreaker comes. Its day has finally arrived,’ Tulius proclaimed. Balthus glanced back and saw the great battering ram carried forward by a hundred Stormcasts. Lightning glittered around its tip. ‘Let’s clear the way. No Hallowed Knight is going to beat the Knights Excelsior through the Final Gate of Azumbard!’

They charged forward before the arcane siege engine, hewing through the last of the beastmen and clearing a red road of ruin to the pulsing gate of the citadel. A one-eyed symbol of Tzeentch blazed like the sun on its crystal frame. The heavy, regular tread of the ram bearers announced their arrival. Balthus looked up, fearing hot oil or crystal lava or noxious spells, but he saw only a scant few defenders, lobbing missiles desperately.

‘Heave,’ shouted Sacristan Engineer Sextus, positioned at the head of the ram. The Towerbreaker swung forward and hit the gate. The lightning stroke of impact blinded Balthus. When his vision cleared, he saw that the gate still stood. The air stank of ozone and incense.

‘Heave,’ shouted Sextus. Once more the Towerbreaker crashed into the portal. The lightning was so bright this time that Balthus feared more than temporary blindness. It took longer for his sight to return, but when it did he saw that the gate had buckled, the crystal had fractured, lines of fire spreading through a web of cracks.

‘Heave, brothers!’ The thunder was so loud it was deafening, the lightning so intense it felt like the end of the world. The earth trembled and the towers shook. There was a shattering sound, and the echo of a thousand tinkling bells. When Balthus opened his eyes, the gateway was gone as if it had never been.

‘I told you it would be so,’ said Tulius.

Pindar was already soaring forward into the tunnel. Balthus raced after him, eyes scanning left and right, looking for murder holes, or trap runes, or arches through which their foes might pour. They encountered no resistance and emerged into a vast courtyard, and an eerie silence.

Ahead, another archway pierced a great gatehouse, but this one had no door. It yawned before them like the gateway to Death’s realm. Balthus liked the feel of this less and less.

He strode forward and the warriors of his chamber surged around him, racing towards the gaping entrance. Behind, he heard the feet of the Towerbreaker’s bearers as they advanced in unison, even though there seemed no gateway ahead for them to shatter.

He wanted to shout at his companions to wait. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, but they all seemed caught up in the exaltation of victory, of achieving their long-awaited goal of invading the final citadel. They rushed forward headlong, seeking foes to slay.

Were they right to? Had the cultist attack been merely a last, suicidal sally – an attempt to drag their foes down to death with them? Balthus thought it unlikely. Their foes had shown nothing but cool cunning and determination previously. He could not believe that they had transformed into mindless berserkers in their final hours.

Why not? part of his brain whispered. Tzeentch is the master of change. He wondered whether that thought was his, or if it had entered his brain wafted by the perfumed breeze and the sparkling air.

Perfumed breeze? Sparkling air? His troops glanced around bewildered. Were they also victims of subtle sorcery? He clutched the amulet on his chest and the confusion receded from his mind, as the cool, clean power of Sigmar flowed into him.

Behind him he heard the tinkling of bells, and something else, something that sounded like a portcullis dropping. He saw that the doorway, so recently shattered by the Towerbreaker, had reformed. The way out was blocked. Thin horns sounded. Colours swirled, forming mandalas in the air from which capering daemons spewed. From the towers around the courtyard, hordes of acolytes emerged.

‘Form up on me,’ Balthus shouted, rallying his men into a shield wall against which the Chaos horde would break. He knew that it would not be enough. There were too many foes and they were cut off from their own allies. For every cultist who fell, another charged forward. When a Stormcast died, they discorporated in a flash of lightning, returning to Sigmar and the storm.

Balthus fought on till he stood atop a pile of cultist corpses. In the distance, he heard a woman’s voice cry, ‘Do not kill them all. I want one alive, for my experiments.’

Something slammed into his head. Sparks flickered across Balthus’ field of vision. He twisted to strike at his attacker and another blow crashed into the back of his skull. He tumbled forward into darkness.

Consciousness returned slowly. As always, fragments of dark dreams drifted up with it. He fought against a pack of daemons inside an oddly familiar palace. A shrine was defiled by the hordes of Chaos. Friends and family fell, and finally he died in a blaze of lightning. The nightmare was always the same, and he knew it was significant. He shook it off and tried to rise.

Something restrained him. Looking down he saw he was shackled by chains that bore the sign of Tzeentch. They glowed with magical energy. The bars of the cage that surrounded him did the same. Overhead, trapped lightning crackled in a gigantic crystal sphere. On all sides mirrors echoed his motion endlessly. A look of horror flashed across his thousand faces for a moment, to be replaced by a mask of stoic calm.

Rage rose within him, banishing the last fragment of nightmare. He remembered the trap and the strange sorcery that sprang it. He remembered his fallen comrades, returned to the storm, borne by the lightning. He threw himself forward, tugging against the chains with all his superhuman strength. They grew tight, resisted, and he tugged harder.

‘By all means strain against the shackles,’ said the female voice he had heard before. Its tone was cool and amused. ‘Show me how strong you really are.’

Balthus glared around, seeking the source of the mockery. He found it below him. She looked little more than a teenager. A mass of black curls covered her head, the hair so lush and thick that it almost concealed the tips of the small horns that peeked through. Her diaphanous gown barely concealed her slim figure. A silk slipper covered one foot. Her other leg ended in a hoof that was shod in silver and marked with runes.

She was inspecting a device of brass and gold, marked by massive gauges. As he threw himself forward, needles moved across their faces, and when he ceased to strain, they dropped back to their resting position. The woman looked at them, marked something on a wax tablet and gave her attention back to him.

She laughed as if delighted. ‘Far stronger than a mortal man, less strong than some daemons.’

‘Go back to the hells that spawned you,’ Balthus cursed, his rage turning his voice to a growl. She smiled up at him winningly. He saw that her canine teeth were long and sharp. Her cheekbones were high, and her violet eyes very large.

‘I am not what you think I am,’ she said. ‘And I suspect you are not what you think you are either.’

Her words did not make much sense. Perhaps she was trying to confuse him. Yet so far she had not attacked him, and she had made no effort to ensorcel him that he could detect.

Be careful, he told himself, just because you cannot see it, does not mean it is not happening. This was the lair of the spawn of Tzeentch. It would be filled with cunning traps, not all of them physical.

‘I am Aesha,’ she said, and paused as if she expected him to recognise the name. He did not give her the satisfaction. ‘And you are Balthus.’

She smiled when she saw his frown. Clearly, she understood the thoughts passing through his mind. ‘Your companions shouted your name in battle.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I would not be much of a sorceress if I could not watch my troops in the field. Not much of a commander either.’

‘A sorceress?’ Balthus glanced at the amulets and sigils spangling the chains on her neck. ‘In the service of the Lord of Lies by the looks of you.’

‘That too,’ she agreed. She studied the machinery again as he strained against the chains.

‘Keep it up,’ she said. ‘I would like to test your endurance over the long term as well.’

There was a thundercrack, and the lights guttered and died for a moment. The sorceress looked up and said, ‘The lightning eats away at my wards. Soon, they will collapse.’

She did not sound too troubled by the prospect. She seemed rather to be amused by it.

Balthus said, ‘You might have captured me but Sigmar will prevail. Your tower will fall.’

‘Most likely. In the meantime, you will continue to help me with my experiments.’

‘I will never help you,’ he replied, although he felt certain he knew what her response was going to be before she even spoke.

‘You already have.’ She uttered a word of power and a glowing disc flickered into being beneath her. Slowly it raised her into the air, until she was level with him. She was a small woman, even by the standards of mortal men. Compared to his massive altered form, she looked tiny. Despite that, she did not seem intimidated. ‘It’s quite fascinating really.’

She gestured around her, and he saw his reflection spring into being in many sorcerous mirrors. They did not all show his heavily armoured body. One showed his skeleton with its reinforced bones so different from a normal man’s. Another showed his form as it would be stripped of skin, just muscle and vein and sinew. A third showed an outline that seemed to be made of light, and he knew without having to be told that this was his soul, and the flows of energy within revealed the magic bound in his body.

‘So like a normal man and yet so unlike. So much alteration to tissue. So much magic compressed so effortlessly into one form. Spells of amazing complexity and power. Nothing less than I would expect from a god.’

She sounded sincerely impressed as well as curious. He studied her again. Her face was guileless and fair, and in that moment he felt certain he was being deceived. The wiles of the followers of Tzeentch were famous, and this one ranked high among the Changer of Ways’ servants. He knew he must be wary, and that he must escape soon lest he be ensnared.

She looked directly into his eyes. ‘It has taken me a long time to begin to understand what was done to you and your brethren. There is something beautiful about it. Something awful too.’

‘It will take more than a few parlour tricks done with mirrors to impress me.’

She shrugged. ‘These mirrors took years of work and countless souls. Many had to make sacrifices to complete them. They are works of art in their way. They will reveal all there is to know about your physical form, your spirit and the magic that was used to create you. Or perhaps I should say recreate you.’

‘What would you know of such things? Of the work of a true god?’

‘More than you might think. I have studied your Sigmar and all his works for an age. I have interrogated daemons and the spirits of the dead. I have learned all I can from the lore that survived the wreck of the World Before Time. Centuries turned to millennia while I did my research, and you, my friend, you represent another piece of the puzzle I have been trying to solve.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How do you become a god?’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘How would I know?’

‘Your Sigmar started off as a mortal. Many of the gods did – Tyrion, Teclis, Alarielle, even Nagash. In the World Before Time, they were mere mortals. Somehow, they were transformed, or they transformed themselves.’

Understanding struck him. ‘You seek the key to how they did it – so that you might become one yourself.’

‘Yes.’

‘You are insane.’

‘I am ancient, and I am a sorcerer. These things give you a different perspective on what most call sanity.’

‘And you really think that by studying his magic you can learn to do what Sigmar can?’

‘He did. He must have. No mortal is born with such knowledge.’

His lips twisted into a sneer. ‘Your master will object.’

‘Perhaps. If he finds out. That is why we are alone in this warded place. Neither he nor my rivals can see us here.’ Her smile was peculiar.

He threw himself forward against the chains once more, drawing them tight. As he brought his strength to bear, they pulled back against him. She watched, fascinated, the glowing disc carrying her in a circle around the hanging cage so she could view him from every angle. No matter where she moved, her reflection did not appear in the mirrors.

‘The more you struggle, the more you are bound. It is part of the spell on your shackles. Whatever force you apply they absorb. They feed on it.’

Something told him that in this at least she spoke the truth. The chains did grow tighter when he pulled on them. He wondered if this was some form of subtle torture, and whether if he kept pulling, they would become so tight they would lop off his hands and his feet, and turn his limbs to bloody stumps. Even the sigmarite of his armour was starting to groan under the pressure.

It came to him that there was a way out of this trap. One that she seemed not to have realised. It would mean his death, but it would not matter. His spirit would be freed on the passing of this body, and he would be reforged to fight another day in a new one. He smiled and threw all his strength at the chains. They tightened and the sigmarite halter creaked with the force. He spoke a curse upon her.

She looked at him for a moment, saw what he was doing. Her violet eyes widened, and she raised a hand and incanted a spell. A wave of pain and power flowed through the chains, and he tumbled forward into what he hoped was oblivion.

‘Now, let us see what is revealed by this one’s dreams,’ were the last words he heard her utter.

All around him the palace burned. The halls echoed with the screams of the dying and the shouts of triumph of the cultists who charged through the corridors, their hands stained red with noble blood.

As he raced through the Via Sacra, clutching his blade, Lightning, tighter in his fist, he came face-to-face with a massive beak-faced beastman. It capered along the corridor drunk on victory, an ancient tapestry wrapped round its shoulders like a cloak and the severed head of an old man dangling by the hair from its left hand.

The beastman raised the head high and drank the blood dripping from its severed neck. The gore formed a red froth around its mouth. The creature of Chaos saw him and tossed the head at him, sending it tumbling through the air, crimson drops splattering the walls. It bounced off his breastplate and rolled away across the floor. To his horror, he recognised it as belonging to Theobald, his father’s chancellor.

Interesting, said a female voice he knew he should recognise. He did not dare risk seeking its source with the monster thundering towards him. There’s something wrong here, he thought, but he could not tell what. It was probably the horror of having the hordes of Chaos swarm over the city walls and pass through the gates the traitors had thrown open. Now they were here in the palace, and the trail of dead bodies led him to believe that treachery had opened his father’s stronghold to them as well.

He raised his sword on high. It shimmered with the chained lightning from which it took its name. He smote the beastman with it. Electricity crackled as he struck the monster. Its muscles spasmed and dung sprayed as the thunderbolt ripped through its body. It was dead before it hit the floor.

‘Theobald, you are avenged,’ he shouted, not caring who heard or what it might summon. The time for stealth was over. The city had fallen, his home burned, and the forces of evil strode victorious through the rubble.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard a voice shouting, ‘For Asqualon and King Aldred!’

A response came, ‘For Sigmar! Fall back and regroup in the Temple of the Storm!’

He recognised the voice of his father. He would have known it anywhere.

Aldred! There’s a name I have not heard in a long age, said the female voice. I had thought him long forgotten.

He glanced around and saw no one. Was he going mad? Was this some spell? He had vague memories of it from some other place, where a city burned, and war raged through its streets. This is a dream, part of his mind whispered.

But such a powerful one, said the woman’s mocking voice. And surprising too.

He had no time for this madness. He must get to the Temple of the Storm and guard his father. As the son and heir, it was his duty. He had sworn an oath he could not break. He charged through the palace, slaying beastmen as he went, leaving bloody footprints on the glorious tilework, racing past the corpses of friends and companions and servants.

So many dead. Even if by some miracle they threw back the cultists, life would never be the same. And he knew that today, there would be no miracles. Their foes had proven too strong and too treacherous. They had taken advantage of the civil war and the insurrection to overthrow the old order and raise the banners of their daemon gods.

He heard fighting close by. The symbols carved above the doorway let him know he was nearing the king’s entrance to the temple, the private archway through which only the royal family and their most trusted retainers could pass. Beside it two soldiers lay in pools of their own blood. One sprawled on his back, his chest still rising and falling faintly. He had no time to help the dying man. Ahead, his father fought and might even now be dying. Why had he allowed Lady Dalia to distract him, this night of all nights? She had sought one last evening of love before the end. They had both known it, although neither spoke of it.

Beyond the archway a horde of savage cultists bellowed and screamed. The king stood near the altar of Sigmar, surrounded by his bodyguards. He met his father’s gaze.

‘Son,’ the king said, and stretched out his arm imploringly. Even as he did so his eyes widened, and a glittering shard smashed into his chest, driving through the robes right into his heart. A pulse of magic flickered through the king. He writhed in torment as his skin transformed into a layer of translucent crystal through which muscle and bone could be seen.

A sorcerer, he thought, and glanced up at the gallery above. A woman stood there, the cowl of her cloak thrown back, a strange polychromatic aura glistening around her left hand. She had a narrow, high-cheekboned face, and her lustrous black curls formed a dark halo around her head. Somehow, he knew her eyes would be violet. He had seen that face before.

Yes, I was there, said the woman’s voice, though her lips did not move, and the sound seemed to be inside his head. And it appears you were too. How strange.

There was no way to reach her and no time. Something massive was pushing its way through the cultists. Awful energies flowed around it. Huge wings rose from its back. Twin avian heads perched atop long serpentine necks that writhed horribly as their eyes sought prey.

Halgar, the captain of his father’s guard, knelt before him. ‘King Leoric,’ he said. ‘Command us.’

No, not his father’s guard – his. He was the king of Asqualon now, for however many heartbeats he had left.

‘Rise, man, and fight!’ he shouted, and then there was time for nothing more. The daemon tore through the elite guards as if they were children with wooden swords. Its monstrous claws shredded armour like it was paper. The swirling energy surrounding it transformed its attackers into puddles of boiling protoplasm. It loomed over him, looking down with glowing eyes that held only mockery, then emitted a long screech that somehow suggested terrible laughter. He smelled its scented breath, driven towards him by the faint movements of its wings.

One of the heads glared at him. As he met the daemon’s gaze a voice sounded within his head, so loud it almost drowned out all thought. Abase yourself before me, boy! Put down that pitiful little blade and I will let you live so that in time you will come to worship me.

‘Never,’ he said. ‘I will die first.’

There was nothing else to do but attack. His guards were all fallen. He was surrounded by cultists. The most sacred shrine of Sigmar in all the land would be corrupted. He lashed out with his blade and it bit into the daemon’s flesh. The lightning sparked and was absorbed.

The daemon reached out with one claw and grabbed him by the throat. He felt the unholy strength of the thing and knew it had only to close its fist and its dagger-long talons would end his life. He stabbed at it again and the blade pierced its flesh. The daemon flinched but ignored his stroke. The booming voice filled his mind.

You will be a fitting sacrifice when I consecrate this altar to myself. I will tear out your heart, devour it and spit the pulp on Sigmar’s most holy shrine. Your god’s time is over, boy. The Age of Chaos is here.

The daemon dragged him, blood dripping from his neck, towards the altar of Sigmar. The cultists howled their adoration and chanted its praises. He saw one face, watching him from the balcony. A mocking smile hovered on her lips, her violet eyes expressed satisfaction and anticipation.

Yes. That is how it was.

Somehow, despite the pain, he managed to maintain his grip on his sword. He knew he was going to die, but he was going to do so with defiance on his lips and his blade in his hand. ‘Sigmar!’ he shouted. ‘Give me strength and give me vengeance!’

Something answered. Overhead, thunder boomed. A lightning bolt smashed down, crashing through the temple roof and striking the point of his upraised blade. The weapon seethed with colossal godlike energies, far too much for any mortal frame to wield. He knew he had only a moment to do what needed to be done.

Both daemon heads turned to look at him, the thing’s posture expressing something like surprise. What… is this? The thought echoed through his mind like thunder rolling through a cavern.

He drove the lightning-engorged blade right through the daemon’s armour, pinning it to the altar. The daemon screamed and discorporated, leaving only its hell-metal shell.

It was the last thing he saw before oblivion took him.

Balthus’ eyes opened. He was still in the cage. Still bound by chains. The sorceress sat cross-legged on her floating disc, a grimoire open on her lap before her. Her expression was strange.

‘What did you do?’ he asked. The confusion he always felt on waking was there, but it was mingled with rage and something else he barely understood.

‘I showed you that which was hidden. I looked into your dreams.’ Her tone was odd. If he had not known better, he would have said there was sadness in it, and regret and bitter knowledge. ‘It’s always the same, isn’t it?’

He surprised himself by saying, ‘Yes. I always dream of that place.’

‘I meant all you Stormcasts are the same. This is always what you remember. If I killed you and you were reforged, you would lose another piece of yourself, but some part of your final moments would always remain. That battle will be the last thing you remember even if you remember nothing else. Even if another age passed.’

Balthus clamped his mouth shut, not willing to give away more to the enemy.

‘There’s no need to look so sullenly determined,’ she said. ‘I have already performed the divinations.’

‘On me?’

‘No. Your companions. You are not the first Stormcast Eternal to be a guest in this fortress.’ She gestured at the mirror and an image appeared. He saw a different Stormcast in the armour of a Hallowed Knight, trapped in this cage and slain with a spell. He saw the body discorporate into lightning and the lightning trapped in the great crystal sphere overhead.

‘Murderer,’ he said.

‘This is war. You would not hesitate to kill me. Why would I not do the same?’

‘That’s the question, isn’t it,’ he snarled, ‘why have you not killed me?’

‘Because I am learning from you, and now, I suppose, because we have something in common.’

‘We have nothing in common.’

‘We both remember Asqualon as it was,’ she said.

‘Asqualon?’ he said.

‘The city in your dream. I was born there. As were you, it seems. Prince Leoric was your name. I saw you ride past during your celebration parade for the victory at the Fields of Sarel. You had Lightning scabbarded at your side. The air smelled of ozone and storm winds as you passed.’

All this sounded familiar, suggested memories just out of reach. ‘You lie,’ he said desperately, but his curiosity was piqued.

‘I can assure you, I do not. My master has far more accomplished deceivers than I. My chosen weapon is the truth. It will set us free. Eventually.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘Believe it or not as you choose, but we both know that you were once Prince Leoric of Asqualon.’

‘You could have picked that up from my dream.’

‘I could and did, but that in no way alters the strangeness of the fact I already knew. I suspect my master is playing games with me once again.’

‘With you?’

‘Why else would the last two survivors of Asqualon meet after long millennia have passed? One can never discount coincidence, of course, but I mistrust it. The schemes of gods often bear a strange resemblance to coincidence. Fates can be woven by those who know how.’

‘You expect me to believe you were there when Asqualon fell?’ He forced doubt into his voice, but he remembered the figure on the balcony in his dream.

‘Why not? You were, albeit in a different body.’

‘I doubt you were the same either,’ he said, looking at her hoof.

‘One gift of the Changer of Ways. Another is a great extension of the years available to me.’

‘He is the Prince of Lies.’

‘Few know it better than I, but that does not change the truth of some things.’

‘If you were really there, then you know the destruction he wrought.’

‘I welcomed it.’ Even knowing what she was, the pure malice of her smile was still shocking.

‘Then you are every bit as evil as your master.’

‘No doubt. But why do you think I helped summon his daemons that night?’

‘Because you sought power.’

‘No, because I sought justice, and he gave it to me.’

‘Justice? You call murder and destruction, justice?’

She laughed at him. ‘Your father killed my father and thousands like him. My father’s crime was to steal to feed his starving daughters. Was that justice?’

‘Your father was a criminal.’

She spat her words out contemptuously. ‘My father was poor. Like tens of thousands of others in Asqualon. He dwelled in a hovel and ate dry bread when he could steal it, while your family lived in a palace and dined on luxuries. Your father fought wars that beggared the kingdom. Kill a starving peasant for stealing a loaf and you call it justice. Kill a nobleman who has stolen the lives of a thousand others, and you call it insurrection.’

Balthus looked down at the floor of the cage. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘I do.’ He heard the utter certainty in her voice, and the controlled anger.

‘And so you helped the Changer of Ways overthrow all that was good.’

‘It was good for you. Not for me. And there were a lot more like me than you. You believed your world was paradise. I believed your world was hell.’

‘And now our roles are reversed.’

‘No. Now you believe this world is hell and I do too. The difference is that I have always lived here.’

‘Sigmar will change the world. Order will be restored. The Dark Gods will be overthrown. The realms will be made whole again.’

‘Perhaps. For a time. And then what? Sigmar lost it all once. Even if he wins, he will lose it again. For a time, there will be peace but then the injustices will start, and the proud nobles will find reasons to scheme against their rivals and covet their lands. And the people will plot…’

‘You are deluded.’

‘Perhaps we both are, but it’s too late for that knowledge to do either of us much good.’

‘I fight for right and the vengeance of those enslaved by your masters.’

Her laughter was like the tinkling of temple bells. ‘What do you think you are? A hero? A champion of all that is righteous? You are the mailed fist of an angry god, one driven by petty spite over what he has lost. That is what he has made you. That is why you remember only what he wishes you to remember. Your reason to hate and to fight his foes.’

‘You lie!’

She shook her head. ‘Believe me, I know far more than you about the scheming of gods. I have had millennia to contemplate it. You think it’s an accident that all you remember is the thing that motivates you to kill in Sigmar’s name. If I were to slay you now, and you were to be reforged, do you think you would remember this conversation or anything else that would give you reason to doubt? No. You would be a slate wiped clean, knowing only your desire for vengeance and your hatred of the foe. You would never remember your doubts. It is beautiful in its ruthless simplicity. The greatest servants of Order have rebelled in other places and other times. It seems unlikely that you Stormcasts ever will.’

He studied her for a moment and looked at the crystal sphere overhead, and he remembered her words and his dream. ‘Were you really there in the Temple of the Storm? Did you really kill my father?’

She considered this for a moment. ‘Yes, I was and, yes, I did. And I saw you drive your blade into Arkatryx’s chest and pin him to the altar. You drove it so deep that no one could draw it out afterwards. With it I began my study of your god and his magic.’

‘You wanted its power!’

‘I wanted to change the world. I thought I could make Asqualon a paradise for the people.’

It was his turn to laugh. ‘You thought you could create paradise by summoning daemons.’

‘I almost did once. I would have succeeded, had it not been for the treachery of my rivals. I might yet do so again. If I can learn the secrets of your god.’

The tower shook and the lights guttered. The trapped lightning in the crystal sphere above provided the only illumination. Balthus felt his chains go slack and he threw himself forward, only to feel them stiffen as the sorcerous spells came back.

‘It seems your comrades are getting closer to breaking into my tower. I will have to prepare a proper reception for them,’ Aesha said.

Thunder boomed again. All went dark once more. The chained lightning in the globe flared fitfully and Balthus remembered his dream. He remembered who had killed his father. ‘You said the schemes of gods often bear a resemblance to coincidence – did it occur to you that this coincidence might have been engineered by my god and not yours?’

Understanding passed across her face, then he shouted, ‘Sigmar! Give me strength and give me vengeance!’

The lightning in the crystal sphere leapt from its prison, smashing down on the cage. Its power would have fried anyone but a Stormcast; it gave Balthus strength. The bolt shattered the chain and sent the cage plunging to the floor, cracking the tiles as it split open. Balthus came upright, grabbed a piece of shattered stonework and threw it at Aesha with all his strength. It clipped her side and sent her reeling. The sorcerous disc flickered out and she too tumbled to the floor, landing poorly.

She picked herself up and gestured. Power gathered round her fingers and leapt towards him. He dived behind one of the strange measuring machines as the ravening bolt of energy tore up the ground where he had stood.

He grasped one of the heavy gauges protruding from the spell engine and tore it free from its mounting. Sparks fizzled around him and the scent of lilac and sorcery filled his nostrils. He lifted the gauge like a spear but saw that Aesha was already gone, hobbling towards the great arch of the doorway. He raced after her, closing the distance, wondering why she had not summoned her flying disc or stood to face him. Perhaps she was hurt worse than it had first looked. Perhaps she had gone to find help. It did not matter.

The thunder rumbled once more. The spell-powered lighting dimmed, but the flash of the levin bolts themselves provided fitful illumination. He sensed Sigmar’s power flowing around him. Each of those thunderbolts represented the arrival of Sigmar’s chosen. It seemed the wards around the citadel had finally broken. If he could hold out long enough, he might yet survive this.

Even as that hope flared in his heart, he heard beastmen approaching. Aesha’s guards were here at last, a mass of mutated monsters swarming towards him. He wielded the brass instrument like a hammer, smashing through the flesh of the Tzeentchians. He remembered the sorceress’ mocking words. Now she would see the fist of an angry god.

Charged with Sigmar’s holy lightning, driven by his fury for vengeance, he ploughed through the beastmen, leaving a wake of broken and bloody bodies behind him. From ahead he heard the sorceress chanting and saw a polychromatic glow. She was once again summoning magic. Who knew what daemons would soon arrive or what new trap she might spring? He smashed his way forward, determined not to allow another of his brethren to fall because of her.

He entered a vast, high-ceilinged, cathedral-like space, breaking the bones of a massive tzaangor and plunging the brass spike of the broken gauge into its chest. It was dark save for the glow of the sorceress’ spell. Behind her a massive object loomed, a huge shadow in the gloom.

He raced towards her, wondering what new devilry she planned, and saw that she was already starting to shimmer.

Her chanting continued, and the glow intensified, seemingly drawing all the light from the chamber. He towered over her and raised his improvised weapon high.

‘Vengeance!’ he roared.

She smiled up at him. Sadly, he thought. ‘You don’t even recognise this place, do you?’

The lightning flickered and he saw. He stood within what once had been the Temple of the Storm. The plinth of the strange statue was what remained of an altar, a massive suit of misshapen armour pinned to it by an ancient rune-marked blade. He recognised the hammer sigil on the hilt.

He remembered her words about how his final blow had driven Lightning into the stone so deep it could not be pulled out. He looked up, searching for the gallery where the sorceress had stood in his dream, and saw it was there. ‘This is Asqualon,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Aesha replied, ‘Enjoy your birthright while you can remember it. I doubt you will when we meet again.’

She was already starting to fade, as whatever spell of translocation she had cast took hold. Cultists and tzaangors poured in through every doorway. He needed a better weapon than the bent gauge. He sprang onto the altar and gripped the hilt of the sword that only the royal blood of Asqualon could draw. It slid free from the stonework easily. Lightning blazed along its length, coils of power encircling the blade.

He raised it above his head, and lightning danced all around him. The power of the storm filled him. He charged to meet his enemies. ‘For Sigmar and vengeance!’

In the aftermath of the battle, as the Stormcasts scoured the ruins for the enemy leader, who had eluded Sigmar’s vengeance, they found Balthus surrounded by a mountain of dead beastmen. The corpses of his foes looked as if they had been scorched by lightning. His armour was dented and broken in a thousand places. He lay like one dead, and they wondered if somehow the power of Sigmar had failed and he had not returned to the storm. Then his eyes opened and he struggled to speak.

‘What is it, brother?’ the Stormcasts around him asked.

Balthus raised the sword aloft and studied the way small lightning bolts danced along the length of the blade. ‘I still remember Asqualon,’ he said. ‘And I will the next time we meet.’

They could get no more from him than that, even as they bore him aloft on their shoulders and carried him in triumph through the wreckage of the strange machinery destroyed by Sigmar’s wrath.

About the Author

William King is the author of the Tyrion and Teclis saga and the Macharian Crusade trilogy, as well as the much-loved Gotrek & Felix series and the Space Wolf novels. His short stories have appeared in many magazines and compilations, including White Dwarf and Inferno!. Bill was born in Stranraer, Scotland, in 1959 and currently lives in Prague.

An extract from Hallowed Knights: Black Pyramid.

The dust-barques of Caddow traders were well known in Shadespire, and even the ports of the Bitter Sea…

Tuman Wey
The Shadow-Routes: Trade in Eastern Shyish

Shyish was a place of bitter endings and silent decay.

Graveyards that had once been cities dotted a landscape broken by war, their streets lost to shadows and dust. Carrion birds circled the high places, and jackals haunted the low. And everywhere was dusty silence.

The city of Caddow was no different. It sprawled across the Sea of Dust like a broken corpse. Its once-mighty eyries were reduced to jagged ruin, and the stones of its high walls had fallen and lay scattered for leagues. Dust-barques that had once carried holds of spices and damask lay forgotten in dune-swallowed docklands, and the palaces of the mighty were home now only to night-birds and hoofed beasts. A forest of stone rose where once a city had thrived. Silent and forgotten.

‘Uzkul-ha!’

As the cry echoed over the broken city, the night erupted in fire. Long dragon-tongues of red-and-orange flame licked out, scoring the darkness. Startled flocks of carrion birds rose skyward.

‘Uzkul-ha!’

Another crash of voices, another ripple of fire. Broken, twisted shapes slumped or were thrown back into the dust, their unnatural flesh steaming. Nightmarish creatures, part man, part animal, clad in rotting damask and tarnished gold, fell back from the high, steep steps of the black pyramid. They howled and gibbered as they retreated, sounding much like the beasts they resembled.

‘Gazul-akit-ha!’ A single voice bellowed, as the echoes of fire faded.

‘Uzkul! Uzkul! Uzkul!’ came the shouted response, echoing out over the shattered grandeur of the city. Fifty duardin voices, raised in defiance. Raised in prayer. The constant thump of a pommel stone against the inner rim of a shield accompanied the words. Funerary bells began to ring, slow and dolorous. Iron-shod feet stamped in a mournful rhythm.

The Gazul-Zagaz began to sing. A dirge of mourning, for the dead yet to be. Singing their souls to the deep caverns of Gazul, the Lord of Underearth, who was dead himself. All things died and walked in the deep, even gods. That was the way of it. But what was death to a god? ‘Dust, and less than dust,’ Gnol-Tul said softly, as he stroked the thick spade of salt-and-pepper beard that spilled down over his barrel chest.

Like all duardin, he was built like a cask of ale, with thick arms and legs. Age had not dimmed his vigour, though he’d seen more centuries than he had fingers. He looked on in satisfaction as his kinband shouted their song into the teeth of the enemy. Though there were only fifty of the Pyredrakes, they were worth three times that.

Clad in coats and cowls of burnished gromril, each of his warriors wore a steel war-mask wrought in the shape of a skull, and carried a baroque drakegun. Besides the hand cannons, each duardin was armed with a square pavise shield, which doubled as both bulwark and firing stand, and a heavy, flat blade, suitable for butchery and little else.

At that moment, the shield wall stretched across the southern tier of the ziggurat, protecting two lines of Pyredrakes. The first line would fire then step back to reload, allowing the second rank to take their place. A hoary strategy, but effective. Tul thought the old ways of war were often the best, and served against the disorganised rabble below well enough. Beastkin had little in the way of tactical acumen. They were savage and strong, but strength alone was as dust against iron and fire.

So had it always been, so would it always be.

Tul and his bier, his chosen companions, stood behind the firing lines. Armed with round shields, wrought in the shape of a scowling countenance, and carrying heavy runeblades, his bier was composed of proven warriors, those who had already sung their death-song and consigned their souls to the Underearth. Unlike the Pyredrakes, they wore white robes, and their masks were of silver rather than iron.

Tul himself wore the golden mask of an elder, and beneath it his skin and hair were marked with the sacred ashes of his ancestors. He carried a double-handed runeblade cradled in the crook of his arm. It was an old thing, hungry for death, and nameless, as was proper. To name a thing was to give it a will of its own, and a wilful weapon was one that could not be trusted. There were many named blades in the shadow-vaults of the Gazul-Zagaz, and there they would remain, until Shyish sank into the twilight sea.

Tul and his kinband had fought their way through the ruins and up the steps of the ziggurat over the course of several days, leaving a trail of dead and dying beastkin in their wake. The ruins were full of the creatures – thousands of them, breeding in the dark – and the duardin had roused them all as they advanced deeper into the city. But what were beasts, to the warriors of the Gazul-Zagaz?

‘The gor flee, elder,’ Hok, his tolvan, said. ‘Our fire warms their bones overmuch.’ His subordinate held a heavy stone tablet, upon which the names of the honoured dead would be carved upon victory – or just prior to defeat. Either way, their names would be recorded, and added to the Long Dirge of the Gazul-Zagaz.

‘They will come again and in greater numbers,’ Tul said, tugging on his ash-streaked beard. ‘They are brief things, and determined.’ The warriors of his bier nodded sagely at this. They were all veterans of a thousand similar skirmishes, their birth-swords grown dull on the bones of gor and ik – beastkin and daemons, as the Azyrites called them.

As he thought of their allies, a flash of silver, somewhere out in the dark below, caught his eye. He heard the sound of a hunting horn, and the shriek of one of the Azyrites’ great beasts. Then, cerulean light sparked, and he heard the whipcrack of a boltstorm pistol.

‘The Swiftblade is close,’ Hok said, his disapproval evident.

Tul smiled sourly. Hok was referring to their ally, Lord-Aquilor Sathphren Swiftblade. Tul’s mind tripped over the unfamiliar title. It had too many words, and unnecessary ones at that. Why advertise the swiftness of your blade to the enemy? Surely it was better for such things to be a surprise. Then, there was much about the Stormcasts, and Sathphren in particular, that was confusing.

‘As he promised,’ Tul said. Hok bowed his head, accepting this chastisement with grace. Confusing or not, the Azyrite was an ally. He had helped the Gazul-Zagaz, and so, they would help him. An oath for an oath, a debt for a debt. ‘By sorrow fail, and by sadness bound,’ he murmured, reciting the ancient oath – the first oath and the last – made to the Lord of Underearth by his folk, in the days before the coming of the Undying King.

‘An oath for an oath,’ Hok said, and the others murmured agreement.

‘As it was, as it must be,’ Tul said, finishing the oath. He glanced up towards the pyramid’s summit, where a massive, four-sided archway of carven stone topped the edifice. Shaped to resemble nothing so much as a great flock of birds, rising skywards to a single point, the archway sat atop a circular dais of curious construction, marked by runic sigils unfamiliar to Tul’s eye.

Sathphren had called it the Corvine Gate. Once, the realmgate had linked this part of Shyish to somewhere in Azyr, the Realm of Heavens. Tul let his gaze rise to the stars overhead, where Azyr bled into Shyish, and every other mortal realm besides. The Gates of Azyr had been sealed long ago, as the Ruinous Powers spread their baleful influence through the realms. Now, at last, they were opening once more.

Tul could not say whether that was entirely a good thing or not. But an oath was an oath, and he would pay his folk’s debt, as he must. ‘They’ve caught the gor,’ Hok said, drawing Tul from his contemplation of the stars. Hok leaned over and spat. ‘Will they drive them back to us? It is only fitting.’

Tul shook his head. ‘No. They are selfish and careless, these Azyrites.’ Then, that was often the way of stars – heedless of all that they shone on. One could not expect them to hold to the niceties of civilised folk. ‘Sathphren will take them for himself.’

His warriors grumbled at this, equal parts annoyed and amused. The Azyrites – these Stormcast Eternals, as they called themselves – were powerful allies. And faithful, in their own way, to their own god, Sigmar. The Gazul-Zagaz knew him as the Starlit King, and it was said that he had walked among them often, in days of antiquity. Before Gazul had fallen silent, his temples cast down and his folk scattered.

Powerful, yes, and faithful, to be sure. But like children. Careless and eager. But that was no bad thing, perhaps. For children soon grew up. Then, perhaps, they would truly be allies worthy of the Gazul-Zagaz, in fact as well as in deed.

He squinted, catching sight of more silvery flashes in the dark. Eerie cries echoed up from the ruins. The Swiftblade fancied himself a hunter, Tul knew. Well, he would find plenty of prey this night. He smiled: a hard, merciless expression.

Beast howls filled the night. A tide of filth flowed up the steps of the pyramid, surging forwards on hooves and claws. They made a great noise as they came, almost joyous in its intensity. As if they knew the oblivion that awaited them, and welcomed it.

‘Uzkul-ha,’ he said, softly. He lifted his sheathed blade over his head. ‘Uzkul-ha!’

‘Uzkul,’ came the response from his warriors. Death.

‘Uzkul! Uzkul! Uzkul!’

Ghosteater lurched into the lee of a fallen pillar, his white fur smouldering. He snarled and rubbed at the bloody graze that marked his arm. He brought bloody fingers to his muzzle and sniffed, taking in the stink of fire powder. The stunted ones fought with iron and fire. There was little to be done against that, save die or drown them in bodies.

The only two tactics your kind knows, a voice within him hissed. One of his ghosts. They always felt brave when he bled. He growled softly and hunkered down as slugs of iron and lead whined off the stones around him. He would wait until they had stopped shooting, then see what there was to see.

Yes-yes, clever-clever, another ghost whined. Ghosteater snarled, silencing the chittering spirit. Even dead, it was afraid of him. They were all afraid of him, as they should be. He had eaten them, and they were his, now and forever. When he died, he would drag their souls with him to the scented bowers of the Absent God, and there, in the Glades of Silk, he would devour them again, for an eternity.

But for now, they served him in other ways. Range is the key, a harsh voice said, at his mental prodding. They have it. The steep slope of the ziggurat slows advance, allowing them to deploy multiple volleys in the time it takes your warriors to recover from one.

Another voice chimed in, A mass rush might carry the day. Throw more bodies at them than they have shot for. Then it’s just a matter of butchery. Even beastkin can do that.

Ghosteater shook his head. ‘Not enough warriors,’ he growled. ‘Not yet.’

But soon, perhaps. When a few more ghosts had been bent to his will. When a few more rivals had fallen to his blade and teeth. He glanced down at the sickle-like khopesh he carried. It was an old thing, made from beaten bronze in a time when such weapons had been valuable. He’d found it in the dust, alongside the bones of its owner. There had only been the tatters of a ghost left, clinging to those bones – just enough to teach him how to wield the khopesh with some skill.

Ghosteater studied his reflection in the curved blade. He stood head and shoulders above even the tallest gor, and resembled one of the dust-lions that haunted the deep canyons of the south, with a square head the colour of chalk, surrounded by a shaggy mane of the same hue. Red eyes blazed above a wrinkled muzzle, studded with thick fangs. Six bud-like horns rose through his mane, like a twisted crown of bone – a sure sign that he was blessed by the Absent God.

A daemon’s blessing is nothing more than a curse, a voice said, weakly. Ghosteater ignored it. What did the dead know of blessings and curses? They were beyond such things. He lowered his blade and looked back at the ziggurat.

The stunted ones were chanting again. He heard the howling of the northern tribes in response. He caught sight of hairy shapes loping through nearby streets, bellowing and striking their blades against their wooden shields. He didn’t need the ghosts to tell him that they would have no more luck than his own kin.

If you go, you die. Simple as that, gor. This ghost had a harsh voice, like metal on stone. A duardin, perhaps. Run, like the beast you are. Live for another day.

Ghosteater snarled, silencing the voice. Sometimes, the ghosts forgot who was meat, and who was the eater-of-meat. He watched as the northern tribes scaled the face of the ziggurat and were met by a deluge of fire. More bodies fell, rolling down the steps to join the charnel piles growing below. He felt a pulse of satisfaction at their failure. If his folk could not have victory, then neither should those they had spent years killing.

‘Weak,’ he growled, watching them flee. All the tribes were weak. They had made themselves weak, hiding in this forest of stone. They had been content to war among themselves, rather than seeking out worthy foes. Content to scrabble in the dust and drape themselves in tatters of carrion, rather than hunt living prey.

Ghosteater was not like the others. He was strong. He had fed on a hundred ghosts, and their voices lent him wisdom. That wisdom had let him rise, as surely and as swiftly as one blessed by the Absent God could do. His first ghost had been that of Twistjaw, his littermate, who’d tried to crush his skull in the dust for the offence of being an albino.

He had killed Twistjaw in the traditional fashion, and offered up his corpse to the Absent God after anointing himself with his littermate’s blood. After Twistjaw had come Twisthoof, the tribe’s shaman, who’d been resentful of his blessings. He had bitten through Twisthoof’s skull and eaten his twisted mind, one handful at a time.

Every death after that had added to the sweet chorus in Ghosteater’s head. Not just beastkin, but men as well, and duardin, ratkin and greenskins. The only foes whose ghosts he could not eat were the twice-dead – their souls were already claimed by another. But that didn’t matter to the gor. There were plenty of ghosts to devour without scavenging Nagash’s scraps and risking the ire of the God of Death.

He had taken his tribe and made them strong. They had eaten the other southern tribes, and grown large, adding the survivors to their ranks. He had abased himself before the Blessed Ones, who waited on the city’s outskirts, and joined the fate of his tribe to theirs. Before the stunted ones had arrived, he’d thought to sweep west, and consume the tribes there. In time, the forest of stone would have belonged to him, and all the ghosts within it. And then, he might have turned his gaze south, to where the Blessed Ones lounged…

But no. The Absent God had chosen a different fate for his child. Ghosteater could feel the portents on the air. Twisthoof’s ghost whined within him, showing him the myriad skeins of possibility – of what might be, and what must be. A door was opening, and a silver tide would spill down the sides of the great ziggurat, to flood the forest and drown his folk. Ghosteater shook his shaggy head, trying to clear it of the vision, and Twisthoof’s whimpering. ‘Be silent,’ he snarled, cowing the ghost.

Stones shifted behind him. He turned and saw a group of his followers creeping towards him, shamefaced and muttering. He had been the last to retreat, and they knew it. Many of the beastmen bore wounds, but all of them still held their weapons. That was good. His folk were not cowards, whatever else.

‘You live,’ one growled. He did not sound happy. Wormeye was big, and built thick. A true gor, with high, spiralling horns and a long, goatish muzzle. One eye was covered in a filmy cataract, and many scars covered his tawny hide. He gripped a crude blade, neither spear nor sword, and wore a tattered tabard, stiff with grime.

‘I live.’ Ghosteater bared his fangs in a smile. Wormeye thought he should be chief. He was wrong, but that did not stop him thinking it. Until now, he had not acted on it, but Ghosteater could see him sniffing, tasting blood on the wind. ‘How many?’

Wormeye glanced back, eyes narrowed. More beast-shapes crept close, regrouping among the fallen pillars and shattered walls. It had not taken them much time to regain their courage. Ghosteater was pleased.

‘Enough,’ Wormeye grunted. ‘Many hands, still.’ He twitched his fingers, for emphasis. ‘We go again?’

‘No,’ Ghosteater said. ‘Too much fire.’ He slapped his chest, bloody from a glancing shot. ‘No war-plate. We go, we die, like the rest. Nothing else.’

‘Coward,’ Wormeye snarled. The others murmured and shrank back. The accusation was as good as a challenge. Ghosteater looked at him and licked his chops, pleased by the outburst. Wormeye twitched back, suddenly realising what he’d said. He bared his fangs in what might have been an attempt at apology, but Ghosteater was in no mood for such gestures. Not now that he had an excuse.

He lunged, jaws wide, and bulled Wormeye back against a pillar. His fangs sank into the other beastman’s hairy throat, and with a convulsive jerk of his head, he tore Wormeye’s jugular open. Blood sprayed over him like a fountain as Wormeye gurgled and thrashed.

Ghosteater shoved the twitching body down. ‘Eat. Quick.’ As the others fell greedily on the body, he turned away, back to the ziggurat. Another tribe climbed the blood-slick steps, trying to fight through the fire, and failing. He watched the bodies rain down, and growled softly. What were the stunted ones up to?

They can’t keep it up forever, one of his ghosts murmured. No supply lines, for one thing. No support.

None we can see, another added.

Ghosteater blinked, and growled low and long. Of course. It was a tactic his own folk used, and often. Let the prey fasten its jaws on bait, and pounce on them from behind. He turned, searching. If there were other enemies abroad, when would they strike? Now?

Click here to buy Hallowed Knights: Black Pyramid.

A Black Library Publication

First published in the Age of Sigmar anthology Oaths & Conquests in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Nuala Kinrade (Knight Excelsior helmet) and Roman Tishenin (Lord of Change).

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-839-9

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