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Galene of Ulgu – Timandra Whitecastle

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Warcry’

A Black Library Publication

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Galene of Ulgu

by Timandra Whitecastle

I was born in the Realm of Shadows, and for a long time, I thought I’d die there.

It is, of course, so incredibly easy to die in Ulgu. Death and terror are everywhere, not only close to the Shyish Realmgates, but in the shadows, the mists and the shifting, twisting darkness that spawns all the monsters and daemons that are found in a young one’s nightmares.

As a child I was lost to the shadows, lost to a fear of dying. But then I was found – taken in by the Daughters of Khaine. In his temples I found a straight path, a solid bedrock of faith. Along with my war coven, the Draichi Ganeth, I was sent beyond Ulgu and came to live and fight in Ghyran.

Our shrine was small, a foothold only, a shadow of our great Blood Temple. Yet our blades and our battle prowess would bring great glory to Khaine in this so-called Realm of Life – the dismal, mist-covered stretch of swampland just outside the city the humans called Greywater Fastness. Sometimes, when the mists curled around the shattered trees, it almost felt like home.

By the will of Khaine, I would bathe in the blood of my enemies: the hosts of Slaanesh, skaven and maggotkin. And for a long time – longer indeed than the lifespan of our human allies – I did.

The blood must flow. The legions of Nagash had risen and were marching on the Fastness, slaughtering whomever they found in the nearby villages and farmsteads and thus growing their ranks. While the Dispossessed duardin held the walls, our shrine had sent out two proud war covens of witch-aelves to make a stand alongside the Greycaps and other Freeguild men. A shadow of the Grand Alliance that would allow the otherwise doomed villagers to run for the safety of the city.

I shuddered when we first strode through this damp, forsaken place – a nameless human village full of ramshackle cottages broken down by moulds and wet with rot. I thirsted for the smoky hagbrew of our shrine’s hag queen to obliterate the residue every breath of the stale air seemed to leave in my lungs, at the back of my throat and on my palate.

I hate fighting against the dead. I hate it nearly as much as I hated the stinking bog we found ourselves in. Skeletons and bloated bog corpses do not bleed out their lives no matter how you cut and slash, no matter how thirsty your blades are. The dead are dry husks, already unmade and unable to bleed, yet still they walk the realms. They are an abomination. Nagash is an abomination. One cannot slay his minions, cannot execute them for the glory of Khaine. One can only unmake them anew.

I roared at the clatter of bones coming towards me. I rent through bone and marrow, slashing across where the thing’s throat once was. Its skull fell to my feet, teeth chattering. I stomped it to dust to silence it. Another wave came at us, and then another. Relentless. Unfeeling. Though my sciansá rose and fell with wicked precision, my forearms weren’t wet with red, nor were the weapons slick in my hands. It did not matter how furiously I fought, how frenzied my faithful slaughter was – we were soon overrun by the endless horde of undead that surrounded the hag queen’s Cauldron.

It was unnatural. The blood must flow.

My blood flowed. It ran in crimson rivulets from a dozen or so wounds.

Pain lets you know you’re alive.

Rissa, my coven sister, screeched a curse beside me, her blades raised high. But by the unholy power of Nagash, another of our sisters rose to fight against us. She tore out Rissa’s throat, her scream breaking into a gargle, blood spraying out of the ragged wound. She stood a moment longer, eyes wide open and staring into the distance as though holding a vigil, watching for Khaine to march across the battleground and sweep her up alongside him. Then she fell, her body crumpled beneath the onslaught of the dead. By the time she hit the ground, she was gone.

‘Fall back!’ a man’s voice shouted. ‘There are too many. Fall back!’

I staggered back over Rissa’s prostrate form, dealing a flurry of blows against bones and joints, against skulls and rusty swords, against skeletons and mindless deadwalkers.

One of the dead came at me – a man, his body still fresh and warm enough for me to get excited about the kill. His lips were tinged with purple as though bruised, and I could see his veins like lines of black ink beneath his skin. A grey cap hung off his head and he wore a Freeguild coat, tattered and stained with his blood. I swung at his throat, my blade cutting deep through soft tissue and cartilage, cracking across his vertebrae. His head toppled to his shoulder, still attached by a ribbon of flesh. I elbowed him in the chest and his lolling head bounced on the ground. Only then did he fall.

I hissed at him. A necromancer’s piece of work.

The other problem with fighting the dead – apart from being an affront to Khaine – is that necromancers have a tendency to raise those fallen to join their ranks against you.

It was inevitable. We had known this bitter truth as we made our stand, and I felt the futility of continuing this fight. But our hag queen had not yet signalled a retreat, and so I fought on.

Rissa’s corpse rose, her ripped jugular still dripping red. She lifted her blades against mine, her movements stiff and puppet-like.

I spun and caught her attack with my blades, deflecting her blow. I took her arm. She didn’t even flinch, not even when I gutted her. I wailed as I fought her undead body. Rissa and I had fought each other ritually many times. I knew her grace and strength, her supple feints and savage blows, but all that skill was now lost. Howling with fury, I crossed my blades and chopped off her head in one sweep.

The blood must flow.

I gasped for breath and scanned the battleground. I was one of the last of my sisters still standing, still fighting.

The Cauldron shook. The hag queen’s spell felt like a high-pitched note reverberating in my head. I screamed my defiance. I would not be cowed. I would not flee like those humans, those menfolk with their sulphurous gun smoke, who had run at the horror of their end. I tried to blink away the blood – my blood – running into my eye. I wanted to look fearlessly at Death.

But instead of Death, I saw Carthum Malicius – the necromancer. Once he had been an Amethyst wizard, but he had been seduced by the hollow promises of Nagash. Tried and exiled by the Collegiate Arcane, he had now returned as a servant of the Lord of Death with a horde of corpses at his beck and call. A tall, hooded figure, Malicius strode towards the thick of the fighting, his crimson cloak billowing about his heels. His eyes were sunken deep in his maggot-white flesh. They gleamed scarlet as he flicked his staff in my direction, his receding lips chanting a spell.

Rissa rose once more, headless. Alongside her stood Suji, Elara, Vee and Jekorra. Each of them my sisters. Each of them dead. Abominations.

Blades at my side, I backed up against the Cauldron. I would take them down. They would end by my hand – their sister’s hand – and perhaps Khaine would reap their souls.

Everything moved quickly: feints, parries, clashes. The hag queen died, her song screeching to a halt in my head, making me wince. I staggered, clutching at the thing that had once been Elara to keep myself upright.

With the death of the hag queen, the Cauldron toppled, its contents pouring over my feet. It cracked apart as it hit the ground and I averted my eyes from the sight. It felt like blasphemy to look upon its broken remains.

I tried to scream, but my voice broke into a hoarse whisper.

‘Not like this.’

I tripped over a severed arm still grasping a sciansá. I fell to my knees and then launched myself at Suji, slashing at her middle. I whirled around and took her head off with both blades. But then Elara was on top of me. Blood spattered onto the stones. A flare of bright-red pain tore through my shoulder. I struggled to get back to my feet, concentrating on deflecting their blows, watching for openings to behead them swiftly. Then the hag queen rose – a husk filled with the abominable power of Malicius – followed by more of my sisters. Two full war covens had fallen here. What strength they had had in life was gone now, extinguished. By the will of Khaine, I alone remained, bathed in blood.

I spun, searching for an opening, a space to better wield my blades. As I whirled and slashed and cut, more ragged undead silhouettes crept towards me. I saw the nighthaunt swoop in behind Malicius, shadows advancing from every side, and for a moment, I faltered, the straight path of faith twisting beneath me.

One of my sister’s blades punched a hole beneath my ribs. I gasped in shock and turned, but behind me stood the hag queen. I saw her raise her weapon, but I couldn’t back away, trapped in a press of bodies. A faint susurrus hung in the air, perhaps emanating from the nighthaunt bound to Malicius.

It took a tremendous effort to raise my blades – it was as though their tips were weighted – but with a grunt, I took my hag queen’s head off with one desperate slash.

I stumbled backwards and dropped to my knees. Blood poured out of the wound on my side, sticky and itchy on my skin. It pooled around me. Was this death? I twitched and shuddered in hot agony as it flooded through my body, blinding me. Nothing penetrated the heavy fog pressing down on me, stealing my breath. My head felt as if it were filled with the buzz of one of Alarielle’s spiteswarms; I could just barely hear a series of scattered gunshots.

Good, I thought, dazed. At least someone is still fighting.

Then the world toppled sideways. The blood-slicked paving stones rose to meet me, slamming what little air I had left from my lungs.

I did not fear death, especially if it came during an act of worship to my god. I would have welcomed my unmaking if I were to die in the glory of Khaine.

I’m not sure what I had been expecting my ending would feel like, but I was reasonably certain it wasn’t supposed to be this painful. Suffering, even agony, so the Scáthborn taught us at the shrine, were signs of being alive.

I thought of Morathi crawling out of Slaanesh’s throat. Of my entire childhood in the terrors of the ever-shifting landscapes of Ulgu. Pain meant you were still among the living, so then death must be an absence of pain. If that was the truth, this death felt absolutely wrong.

Noise exploded around me. A shower of blood sprayed onto my face. I flinched, then groaned. I tore out some of my eyelashes as I opened an eye glued shut with blood and spilled hagbrew. The world was dark and blurry. I saw the outlines of the shattered Cauldron and the shadowy figures of my dead sisters as they turned away from me. They shambled towards a human man striding into their midst, pointing what looked like a long stick at the storm-clouded sky. No, not a stick, I realised. The human had a gun and was taking aim at the back of a retreating nighthaunt.

But why would they retreat before a mere human?

An ungodly loud bang erupted from the gun and a flash lit up the human’s face for a moment. My ears rang from the closeness of the shot. I struggled to get up on my elbows to see better, but everything was fading to black.

The last thing I remember was watching the faint silhouette of a human cutting a path through my undead sisters. A falchion flashing silver. I closed my eyes as the scene spun before me.

And then – blessed Khaine – I saw and heard no more.

I woke from a deep sleep, feeling cheated.

Most mortals look upon the cult of the Draichi Ganeth and only see the slaughter, the unmaking. They think that we love death and killing, and it is true, we do revel in it, but only for the glory of Khaine. There is a significant difference.

In Ghyran they worship life and sneer at the culling of it, but they lie to themselves. Death comes to all. None of us are granted immortality, not even our gods. Even the Stormcast Eternals die, and only by the grace of Sigmar are they returned to life in Azyrheim. Death is a constant even the storm god must work around.

But Khaine… Ah, Khaine! My lord is different. No other god understands death better, not even Nagash. Because death is the only constant, Khaine offers the gift of purpose. One man’s life might be wasted in meaninglessness, but to give one’s death purpose in sacrifice to Khaine… Such an end is a thing of beauty.

But my god, it seemed, had rejected my death.

I opened my eyes and a grey light spilled from a hole in the roof above me. Raindrops ran from a broken wooden beam and made a puddle to my left. The air tasted brackish and I realised that I must still be in that Khaine-forsaken village.

I was still alive. I knew it because every muscle ached. My abdomen hurt – a dull ache pulsed sluggishly within. Someone had thrown a thick, woollen coat over me and had bound up my wound. I sat up and picked the flakes of dried blood off my skin.

I had awoken in what seemed to be a ramshackle cottage. The whole place was saturated with the harsh odour of mould and mildew. Piles of rotten rushes lined the crumbled wall. I heard a rustling and a small splash as a creature darted away and escaped into the swamp through a hole in the wall.

A human sat by the entrance, sleeping. His back was propped against a warped wooden beam and his mouth hung slightly open. A gun lay across his lap, his hands curled around it. A falchion hung at his side.

I stared at him. He had saved my life. A human! Impossible!

I remembered the flash of his sword and recalled the same silver sheen on Rissa’s blade, on Elara’s, Suji’s and Vee’s. They were all dead. The hag queen was dead, the Cauldron toppled. My war coven had been wiped out and I alone remained to tell the tale. I alone remained to redeem their souls for Khaine. For a moment, I envisioned myself delivering the killing blow to each of them, setting them free from the humiliation they suffered. Death sometimes came as a gift of mercy.

But, no. It was not my sisters I needed to kill in order to redeem them. It was the necromancer behind their wretched resurrection. Kill Malicius and I’d set an entire army free of their bondage to Nagash.

That would indeed bring great glory and honour to Khaine’s name.

I grasped the hilts of my sciansá tightly as fury swept through me. My path was simple and laid out before me. All I had to do was walk it faithfully in the name of my god.

I rose and walked over to where the man dozed. His clothes were bloodstained and grimy, but from their make I could tell he must be one of the Freeguild’s men. And his gun – what was that monstrosity? It looked similar to the handguns some of the Greycaps had fired during the battle on the main road, but this was longer. It seemed a very impractical weapon to lug around in a fast fight, unlike my blades. His face was all sharp angles: cheekbones, jaw, nose, but his eyelashes curled gently, and there were lines in the corners of his eyes.

Humans. So vulnerable, so soft, so easy to kill. But this one had saved my life, so instead of killing him for the impertinence of laying a hand on me, I simply held my blade against the flesh of his cheek and drew it over his skin.

He jerked awake with a gasp and a curse, bringing the gun up to my face. I stood staring down the barrel, which was shaped like the muzzle of a godbeast – Dracothion perhaps, Sigmar’s friend who shed blazing silver stars as tears.

‘What the… What are you doing?’ the man asked quietly. His grip on the gun was steady. I watched the blood pearl on his skin.

‘A blood offering to Khaine,’ I answered, angling the blade to show him the thin line of his blood on it, ‘that he may grant my prayer.’

The man shuddered. He rubbed the back of his hand over his cheek and smudged away the red. He looked at the stain on his fingers with an expression I couldn’t read. ‘What did you pray for?’

I stared at the man, but he did not seem ashamed to ask such a question. His gaze met mine as though he had some right to look at my face, to seek to know what lay beyond the surface.

‘My prayers are between me and my god.’

I righted the steel tiara that held back my long black mane, and raised my chin ever so slightly as I made to leave the hut through the hole beside him.

‘Wait,’ he said, and reached out as if to catch my arm. I flicked my wrist to point my blade at his face. He held up both hands. ‘Listen. My company is dead and have risen as servants of Malicius, same as your coven. I saw you were left standing and couldn’t let you die. But you fell and I thought–’

‘Don’t think,’ I hissed at him. ‘I am Galene of Ulgu of the Draichi Ganeth, a witch-aelf of the Sisterhood of Blood, and as my god is alive, I am alive. I will end you here and feed your corpse to the swamp creatures as one last act of mercy if you don’t tell me right now why you dared to rip me from the embrace of my god.’

‘I dragged you out of there because I didn’t want Malicius to raise more of your kind to hurl against my city.’ His eyes were narrowed and he licked his lips. ‘I did it because I knew I’d need all the help I could get if I wanted to sound a warning to the gates of Greywater before Malicius and his army arrive there. I can’t do it alone.’

‘So you were looking for safety?’ I scoffed. ‘I will keep you safe, then. Follow me.’

I made to step through the hole in the wall and stopped when the human thrust out his right hand in aid. I stared at it for a moment and thought to kill him for having the audacity to imply I needed his help.

‘I’m hardier than you, human,’ I spat.

He frowned. ‘The name’s Captain–’

‘Did I ask for your name?’ I inched closer to him.

He withdrew his hand.

‘You want to reach Greywater Fastness, as do I,’ I said, ‘but first you will assist me in bringing down the necromancer.’

‘Listen.’ He rose with a grunt. Pain flickered across his face for an instant, then he slung the gun over his shoulder and walked towards me. ‘We’re allies, but you and me going up against the necromancer? We’re only two people, and Malicius has got an army around him. That’s madness.’

‘We will succeed where others did not.’

‘What, on faith alone?’

‘Perhaps a little more faith is what’s needed,’ I retorted. ‘I believe Khaine has a purpose for me yet. Follow me.’

The human muttered something as we stepped out of the hovel and scurried over the dirt road to a low wall.

‘You said something?’

‘I said fine. But if we’re really going to try and bring down Malicius, I’m going to need some ammo and not just fanatic faith.’

‘“Ammo”?’

‘Ammunition. For my rifle.’ He unslung his gun and aimed as if to shoot at the dead tree lost in the gathering mists over the swamp. He lowered it again. ‘My men had a small stash of it hidden.’ He pointed out a decrepit building some yards away that might have once been an inn. It had no sign left and part of it had sunk into the morass. Its roof had no holes, but was overgrown with reeds, green moss and marsh grass.

‘My ammo stash is in there.’

‘So let’s go.’ I rose, impatient to move along. Whenever I stopped for too long, I felt stiffness spread throughout my limbs.

He grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down.

‘Can’t,’ he breathed. ‘It’s being watched.’

‘So, first we kill the necromancer, then we get this “ammo”.’

‘No. If I have to die alongside a murderous she-aelf, then by Alarielle so be it. But I want to take a few of those nighthaunt down with me as I go, and for that I need the ammo.’

I must have made an approving noise, since he turned back and gave me a questioning look.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘I simply appreciate the dedication you’re showing to give your life and death true purpose,’ I said. ‘You will do Khaine proud and bring him glory.’

‘My people pay homage to Alarielle.’

‘Everything that bleeds pays homage to Khaine.’

He gave me an icy blue stare.

After a moment he motioned me to follow him as he tracked back around the hovel we had left and skirted a ditch filled with earthy bog water. He put his fingers to his lips, then pointed into the foggy mists crawling around a large, dead oak tree in the village centre.

The tree’s blackened limbs cast deep, dappled shadows in the dark of night. Clouds covered the weak sickle of the moon while the mists swallowed even more visibility.

Even so, I saw the pale gleam of bone amidst the gloom. Three skeleton sentries stood watchful, ever vigilant beneath the oak, the blue, unflickering ghostlight filling the pools of nothingness where their eyes once were.

I sneered. I could take on three skeletons on my own, even in my weakened state, and relished this opportunity to fight.

‘Hail Khaine,’ I whispered in prayer. ‘Your Daughter comes to meet you. Guide my blades and let my enemies bleed for you.’

‘Wait! Galene! No!’

I started sprinting towards them, blades ready at my sides, a hiss rolling on my tongue.

The skeletons turned towards me and I leapt into the fray.

Have I spoken of my hatred of fighting the dead? Those dusty old bones. Those rotting corpses. Those dried-up husks powered by an unholy divinity, stripped of their flesh, their lives and their very essence. One could almost pity them.

I leapt at the first one and landed on his empty ribcage, crushing it beneath my feet, grinding the bone against the cobblestone. With a deft swing of both blades, I opened up its skull and the shards clattered to the ground. The light in the creature’s eyes went out.

The other two attempted to flank me. Both wielded short swords pockmarked with dents and rust. Pitiful. I swung around with a dancer’s grace and decapitated the one on my right with a single swipe. It remained standing, swaying uncertainly, before it crumpled into a heap.

I felt empty. Annoyed, even. Then I felt a mild buzz in my head and a nauseous ache biting at my stomach. The pain in my side. That was all.

The last skeleton managed to lunge at me with its sword, but I ducked away from it with ease, pirouetting and coming to a stop behind it. I attacked, pulling it backwards in a choke hold. My left blade plunged deep into its eye socket, scraping against the inside of the skull. One sharp yank and the skeleton’s neck vertebrae snapped.

I held the skull in the crook of my arm for a moment as its body continued its attack against an enemy who was no longer in front of it. Then the body faltered and ended up in another heap.

Another reason I hate fighting against the dead: one needs little skill to get the job done. I missed fighting a true opponent, one alive and ready to bleed. I missed glorious outpourings of blood. I missed the taste of hagbrew burning at the back of my throat – a thirst that made my hands tremble. I missed my sisters’ gory deeds spurring me on to battle-fury, the burning fervour of righteous zeal for Khaine. I felt cold and lost. Alone.

And I was a young aelf maiden once more, trying to make sense of the shifting mists and terrors of Ulgu. Fear nearly choked me, but I fought off its stranglehold. That was then, and this was now.

I looked back to where I had left the human, yearning to see someone, anyone, even if it was just the Greycap. Instead of staying hidden, he was now running into the former inn as though his life depended on it.

A wave of cold rolled over the ground, sending shivers up and down my spine.

The bones at my feet shook gently and a surging black tide erupted from the shadowy mists by the oak tree. Blindfolded with strips of shroud and wreathed in shadow, three nighthaunt moved towards me with jerking motions, fanning out to surround their prey. Grimghast Reapers. Merciless and untiring. I scowled as they slashed their scythes at me, barely managing to dodge. I flung myself to the side, rolling over a heap of reassembling bones and just avoiding another scythe.

The Reapers emanated an eerie sound, like thousands of people weeping silently in gasps and gulps, unified in their terror of knowing their demise. The magic of Nagash fuels these vile creatures, making them formidable foes. Though their movements are convulsive, they are supernaturally fast and cannot be wounded by blades. My sciansá passed through their black veils, but the mists swirled and the rent was closed as though it had never been there.

I struck through one of the Reaper’s torsos, cutting through its ghostly arms. Again and again I tried, to no avail. They simply shifted shape, healing any tear I dealt to their aethereal robes. One of them disappeared when I lunged at it, only to reappear behind me.

I fought this thing of darkness on my own – a terror sprung from the spiralling mists of my childhood where the only weapons I had against the twisted corruptions of the shadow realm were my wits and my speed. And while I evaded their killing blows, I knew it was only a matter of seconds before I slipped or made a mistake.

The thought terrified me. I had not yet killed Malicius.

The fear spurred me to fight back harder, to jump farther, to strike higher, faster and deeper. But my strength was bleeding out of the wound under my ribcage as it had opened up once more.

I caught the scythe on both blades and grappled with one of them, but I had to break away, unable to stand against it. One of my sciansá clattered to the ground.

I skirted the second nighthaunt and feigned an attack on its left side, only to roll to the right, towards my fallen dagger. But another was already there. The scythe lashed across my back as I reached out to grab my weapon, and I cried out in pain.

Blood splashed onto the dark stones.

The blood. It must flow.

I waited for Khaine. I waited to be filled with that divine spark of battle frenzy. But I couldn’t even scream defiance. My legs felt as though they were tree trunks, solidly rooted. A black iron ball of fear fell into my stomach, weighing me down. My arms were on fire from strain.

Where was the devotion?

My knees faltered and I slammed against the cobblestones. The coiling, writhing robes of one of the nighthaunt reached out under my chin and raised my head. Its scythe would come down any second now and claim my life. I took a deep breath and howled with frustration.

This was not how my death was supposed to be. I had survived the first attack when so many others hadn’t. For what? To die in this fight? All alone, forsaken by my god and sisters in this swamp?

‘Galene!’

I turned my head at my name and caught a glimpse of the human. Then all was drowned out by the loud bellow of his gun.

Ravens flew, startled from their resting nooks on the branches of the dead oak. Their indignant caws broke the silence on the village square.

A black flower blossomed in the robes of the nighthaunt closest to me. Its head snapped up, the shroud over its face billowing in surprise, maybe even pain.

I slashed at the black grasp around my jaw and it shrivelled away from my blade.

Another shot rang out and I scrabbled backwards as the nighthaunt’s shrouded head exploded. The creature started unravelling before my eyes.

The Greycap captain was marching now, loading his long gun with another two bullets. His face was pale. Sweat ran from his brow in a trickle and yet his jaw was set, his eyes intense and locked on to the second nighthaunt.

The third, fourth and fifth shots tore the three of them apart, and the whispered weeping of a thousand voices crescendoed into a united high-pitched shriek as each seemed to be sucked into a vortex emerging from their own chests.

And then they were gone.

‘Come on.’ The man came to a stop by my side and offered his hand to help me up. ‘There’ll be more. Let’s not be here when they drop in.’

I refused his hand and instead crouched next to the empty metal shells that had fallen to the ground with a faint tinkling sound. I examined them cautiously. The burned metal gave off a slight whiff of copper and everything reeked of sulphur, but underneath I thought I could detect a hopeful green scent, like parched ground after a rainpour.

‘What is this magic? I have never seen anything like it before.’

‘Of course not. Those bullets are prototypes. Like the gun.’

‘You made these? But you’re just a man.’

‘I didn’t do it alone. A friend of mine is a gunmaker for the Ironweld Arsenal and we worked in collaboration with the city’s Jade wizards,’ he explained as we made our way through the abandoned village, always on the lookout for more skeletal patrols or watchers or nighthaunt.

‘A fine killing weapon against that nighthaunt,’ I said, ‘despite being loud and smelly.’

‘Loud and smelly. Just like humans, eh?’ He grinned.

‘Yes.’

‘I meant that as a joke.’

‘I know.’

He winced as though in pain, then wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘The bullets are imbued with the essence of Ghyran. Figured it might work a treat against Nagash’s hordes and would be worth a shot. Or two.’ He grinned again. ‘Are you impressed?’

‘Perhaps,’ I replied, my lips twitching. ‘I thought you had run to save your life.’

‘Not me. I’m too single-minded for that. I told you, I need that ammo.’

‘You do. How much do you have left?’

‘We didn’t make many, and I already used some for the battle earlier. I have seven left. I grabbed a handful of regular shot too, though.’ He patted two reams of bullet cases that were crossed over his chest. One sported seven bullets, the other a lot more.

I couldn’t tell the difference between the regular bullets and the special nighthaunt-destroying ones, but I suppose I didn’t need to.

We marched along the main road all that day, but the Greycap was incredibly slow. He struggled to keep up with me, limping along, his face covered with cold sweat.

‘There’s another village ahead,’ he wheezed, just before dusk. ‘A larger one. The necromancer will have raised more dead, enlarging his fighting forces.’ He rubbed a hand over his leg and pulled a face.

‘What is the matter with you, human?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’ He flashed a lopsided grin. The lines around his eyes wrinkled briefly. ‘Aelves are simply hardier than humans, remember? I’m fine. Just tired. Let’s keep going.’

A few steps on, he stumbled and I caught him by the elbow.

‘Thanks,’ he panted, leaning in.

‘It was nothing,’ I replied and released his arm abruptly. ‘Did you hear that?’

He sighed. ‘Hear what?’

‘Wait here,’ I ordered, and slunk deeper into the bushes by the road. I thought I had heard a whimpering noise and whispers from a small copse of trees ahead. I stalked silently through the high marsh grass, blades in my hands.

It wasn’t a nighthaunt among the trees. For one thing they moved with eerie silence, and for another, they didn’t reek of human fear.

I crept up on a huddle of people – a few bedraggled women and children among men in the familiar grey headgear. I sighed inwardly, and for a moment thought of simply marching past them, leaving them be in order to reach Malicius’ army. The Greycap would want to talk to them. Humans talked a lot, I had noticed.

I hesitated to simply appear amongst them and order them to assist me on my quest. Humans are wary of the Daughters of Khaine. Most of our allies are, to be honest. This is good and proper. We are holy children of Khaine, separate from the world of men, other aelves and Sylvaneth. Among Sigmar’s Stormcast Eternals, only the Knights Excelsior gladly accept us. Humans especially flock together, though, and so I waved my Greycap forward to approach them first.

He was greeted enthusiastically and, like a flock, they drew close around him. I saw admiration, respect and intense relief on their faces. They touched their hands to their brows or doffed their caps to him when he walked by. The women gave him looks I couldn’t quite decipher. They gave me looks of fear. Wherever I went, the humans cleared a space around me.

Humans are strange. This captain, for example. All he had done was his duty: fight and survive. Granted, he had also slain a few nighthaunt, which spoke to some level of skill, I could respect that. But he was nothing. His mortal life, such as it was, would amount to no more than a brief exhalation in comparison to mine. The way his people acted around him, one would think he had performed some great act of bravery.

‘I saw you fall, sir,’ said one human sporting a huge walrus moustache. He grabbed hold of his captain’s shoulder, his face lined with distress. ‘Captain, we would have never left you behind if we thought– ’

‘I know, sergeant. Just tell me what you know.’

I guessed it wouldn’t be much, but the sergeant spoke at great length anyway and painted a bleak picture.

After the rout in the swamp village, the army of the dead had rolled over the road to Greywater Fastness. The cowards who had fled before their wave of terror had barely managed to warn the next village to evacuate before the dead had come upon them.

‘Any other survivors hidden around here?’ the captain asked.

The older man shook his head. ‘None that I know of, sir. Those of us who grew up here, we know the safe pathways through the marshes. But the land here is always shifting and treacherous. Maybe some got out like us, but not many.’ He leaned closer. ‘The dead are still in the village. The necromancer is having them dig up the gravesite, sir. One of the boys witnessed it with his own eyes. We won’t be able to circle around them, what with the townsfolk. Your orders, sir?’

‘Stay put,’ I said before the captain could answer. ‘Malicius and his army stand between you and Greywater Fastness. Not all of you will make it in time to reach the safety of its walls, and those who fall will join the ranks of the undead.’

The man looked at me aghast, then at his captain.

‘She’s right,’ my Greycap said, shooting me a look, as though beseeching me not to be insulted at his man’s impertinence. ‘You’re better off staying on the hidden pathways. If you can, try to march towards Dhoshgar Fyrelodge. The women and children should be safe among the Fyreslayers. Perhaps you can return to Greywater with a company or two of reinforcements for which the Grand Conclave would likely pay.’

The sergeant looked doubtful. ‘What about you, sir?’

‘Galene and I will proceed together. We’ll try to overtake the enemy and reach Greywater Fastness in time to sound a warning. The two of us might slip through unnoticed.’

‘Might? Sigmar’s teeth, sir. That’s a suicide mission.’

The captain talked on. He was a talker. I knew that already, of course, but it still took him a long time to converse with what felt like every soul present. I stood to one side and waited for him to finish his rounds. All through the night and into the grey morning hours, he gave quiet orders to those who had weapons. Though I had seen female warriors among the Freeguilds before, none of the women present were warriors, nor were they armed. To be so dependent on the males seemed unnatural to me. Instead, the women, young and old, kept finding excuses to touch the captain.

One of them fussed him to sit down and made him take off his boots. It seemed as though it caused him a lot of pain. He bared his teeth in a grimace, and when she pulled back the leather from his ankle, blood sloshed to the muddy ground. It had pooled in his boot from a deep cut in his right calf. That made the women fuss even more.

I watched, annoyed.

I didn’t care that he was in pain. He had been limping and I had noticed it. I only cared that he hadn’t told me that was why he was so excruciatingly slow on foot. If I had known he was wounded I would have commanded him to stay in that hut instead of accompanying me. In this state he was a liability.

Why had he not told me?

A young maiden walked up to me, staring mutely at my steel crown for a while.

‘Are you one of them executioners?’ she asked bluntly.

‘I am a witch-aelf, a Daughter of Khaine of the Draichi Ganeth.’

‘So you kill people?’

‘I do.’

‘Lots?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you like it?’

I opened my mouth to tell her of the beauty in the slaughter, the ecstasy in the devotion to my god.

But I closed my mouth again and remained silent. My sisters were gone, taken by the evil of the necromancer. The memory of the shattered Cauldron left me feeling an unfamiliar unease, as though something had been knocked out of place within me. Perhaps – I told myself – it was this last day spent alongside the human that made me hesitate to answer the maiden’s question.

I hated that hesitation. It felt too similar to weakness.

‘Why are you naked?’ the maiden then asked.

I frowned at her in displeasure. ‘I am not naked. I’m wearing a breastplate and a war-dress. Look.’

She cocked her head, looking me up and down. ‘I saw dead people dressed like you when we ran from our village.’

‘Really?’ This was interesting. Perhaps she had seen my undead sisters? Perhaps the shrine had sent out another war coven? ‘How many?’

The girl pondered this. ‘A few. Are you here to kill the enemy in our village?’

‘I will kill the necromancer Carthum Malicius.’

‘Good.’ She turned away and scampered back to her mother. With alarm, she looked over to where I stood and scolded her child for talking to me.

What was I doing here, anyway? I was a Daughter of Khaine. We do not wait on men. We do not talk or scheme or plan. We do. We kill. It was no wonder I felt uneasy. This was not my place, nor were these my people. Humans know nothing of Khaine.

I gave my Greycap one last look and considered commanding him to accompany me. With that gun of his I could cut through the nighthaunt and exact my revenge. I could drink of the power that came after a kill and carve out for myself a death worthy of remembrance among the Scáthborn of the shrine at Greywater.

A good death. There was little other certainty to be found.

I lingered for one more moment, undecided, and watched a woman carefully, tenderly wrap the captain’s ankle with clean strips of linen. I still didn’t know his name.

It wasn’t important, of course. But perhaps this human would be better off here among his own kind, among those to whom his name meant something.

My name was Galene of Ulgu. I had walked the Shadow Realm and lived. I had fought in thousands of pit fights and lived. And now, I would walk into that village, destroy the necromancer who had enslaved my sisters and – Khaine willing – live through that too.

I made my way to the village, staying hidden but parallel to the main road, blades in my hands, a prayer on my lips.

It was nominally daytime, still an early morning, though the heavens were so overcast it could just as well have been late evening. Drizzle set in, cold and slanted.

I ached all over. My head felt like it was filled with fog. The whole world seemed muted. My kind are hardier than humans, but my eyes burned from lack of sleep and the wound under my ribs still leaked a faint trickle with every step I took.

This village was slightly less run-down due to its proximity to Greywater Fastness. It was a place for chicken farmers, fowlers and toad eaters, no doubt. A place to call home after selling the peat from the nearest bog as fuel for the ever-hungry forges of Greywater.

It had no walls or gates to protect it, though I saw a few houses with fences around their gardens.

I marched along the main road, straight at the cluster of skeletons who milled around between the mud huts, awaiting new orders from their puppetmaster. The rearguard. Surely Malicius would linger in the village centre, his main forces sent out towards Greywater Fastness.

I saw no nighthaunt.

My plan was simple: I would cut through the skeletons and undead to get to Malicius, taking down as many enemies as I could undetected.

The mindless dead hadn’t even noticed my approach yet, so I picked up the pace and started to jog.

I brought both blades to my lips and kissed the steel.

‘Hail Khaine,’ I prayed. ‘Your daughter comes to meet you. Guide my blades, lord, and let my enemies bleed for you.’

I was Galene of Ulgu, born deep in the Realm of Shadows, and for a long time I thought I’d die there.

But it seemed I’d die here instead. A glorious death.

I sprinted towards it.

The first of the skeletons turned, but I was already barrelling into them, swinging my blades. Skulls shattered. Dust flew.

The blood did not flow, but I fought on anyway, slicing and ripping, twirling and leaping in a dance among the bones. I pushed onwards. With luck and the blessing of Khaine, I would be fast enough to reach Malicius before he even realised the undead of his rearguard had been snuffed out and needed to be reanimated.

The road branched into a crossing ahead with a few fresh undead milling around, awaiting orders.

The grip of my sciansá jolted in my fist as I slammed into the back of a reanimated Greycap. A sword was thrust at me, but I deflected it and punched one of my daggers through his skull. On the backswing, I slashed another rotten corpse’s chest and its viscera fell to the floor in a sludge.

It felt like yesterday’s battle all over again. I grit my teeth. Onwards and onwards, one long, weary fight against a flood. I jabbed an elbow into the jaw of a skeleton, smashing out its teeth. I leapt at the leader skeleton, knocking off his helmet along with his head. Both fell in a clatter onto the street. I laid waste to whichever of the creatures came too close and made a glorious ruin.

A bell started to ring – a deep, reverberating knell. The air was thick with the reek of death and dirt from freshly opened graves. Following the sound, I ran down a narrow alley to my right that opened up onto a broad street. Just ahead I saw a corpse cart, its bell still ringing with a low hum that I could feel rather than hear.

On top of the cart pulled by the dead stood Carthum Malicius, robed in his scarlet garb, dark swirls of energy spilling from his raised hands. Nighthaunt accompanied him on every side.

‘Malicius!’ I cried. ‘Prepare to meet your end!’

He twisted his neck around to stare at me and a wide, feral grin split his face.

‘Another soul to be flayed and fed to Nagash,’ he crowed. ‘How considerate of Khaine to lend me the aid of so many of his Daughters. Kill her!’

The deadwalkers turned and heeded their master’s command. So many dead. Some were mere brittle bone, but others were fresh from yesterday’s battle. I saw a handful of coven sisters among them. They launched themselves at me with furious howls and clatter. Remaining on the broad street out in the open was an invitation to be surrounded and drowned in dead. I backtracked to the narrow alley but they piled in, a tide of rotting flesh. They were many and I was alone, mired in a heap of reanimated corpses at least five-rows deep. Elbowing my way through the dense press, I screamed at the deadwalkers in vain, howled in frustration. But I had caught Malicius’ attention, at least, and so I fought like fury unleashed to get back to his cart.

A nighthaunt swooped down.

And then another.

I was bleeding from a dozen or more injuries and had carved myself a small breathing space among the bones, but then the two nighthaunt swept into that opening. Their robes fluttered and contorted in the air just before me, but just like before, my blades passed through their ghostly bodies without connecting. Their scythes, on the other hand, struck flesh and were blisteringly sharp. Every blow I failed to dodge opened a cut on my skin with searing pain. Sweat stung my eyes. My thirst for the hagbrew was terrible and my throat was raw from screaming. Whatever success I’d had against the undead, I knew I had only a few more seconds left against the nighthaunt. I had to make a run towards Malicius before it was too late. Then I heard two shots fly over my head, straight at the nighthaunt, and relief washed through me.

I wasn’t alone – the Greycap captain had returned. The nighthaunt unravelled around me and I found my footing once more.

I ran ahead as I counted the shots. Two. Three. Four. Another cohort of dead stood between me and the necromancer.

‘I’ve said it before,’ the Greycap shouted in my direction as he ran alongside me, ‘but this is madness.’

‘And I’ve said it before – have a little more faith.’

He seemed angry with me, yet his eyes never left the fight around us. ‘I thought we had a deal? You said you’d protect me on my way to Greywater.’

I laughed wildly. ‘You said you couldn’t let me die,’ I shouted back. ‘Keep that promise now, human, and I will escort you back home safely.’

Together, we launched ourselves at the skeletons and deadwalkers. He was at my back, gun raised towards the skies, waiting for more nighthaunt to show themselves.

I felt his shoulders move as he took aim before swinging the gun round and smashing the butt into a skeleton’s face. His weapon might be good at long range, but it was terrible in the middle of the crush. Beyond the press of the dead that surrounded us, I could see more running in our direction. They moved in frantic, jerking motions. Men were among them, dressed in Freeguild fighting gear. I could also make out two of my former sisters, all graceful fluidity lost in death. But I saw others among the dead: women, children, the elderly. All of them were in various stages of decay, wrapped in shrouds. The graveyards had been emptied already.

‘We need to get to Malicius’ corpse cart,’ I called out to the captain. ‘If we can take him down, we won’t have to bother with these mindless deadwalkers.’

‘Agreed.’ He sighted along his gun. ‘We can’t fight them off here. There are simply too many. We need a better vantage point.’

We fought together, back to back, hacking and slashing. We were ringed in by the dead who closed in for the attack. A jawless human warrior swiped his broken sword at the Greycap. I deflected the blow easily enough, while the captain slung his gun back over his shoulder and unsheathed his falchion. He cleaved through the arm of another undead enemy, but the dead kept coming. My undead sisters approached, oblivious to the clotted blood dribbling out of their greying flesh.

‘Over there!’ The captain pointed at a house to my left. ‘Climb onto the roof.’

I waited for a small gap in the incoming wave, an opportunity to dash over to the mud-brick house.

‘Follow me,’ I ordered him, and ran towards the house.

A wooden window frame provided a firm foothold and, muscles protesting, I pulled myself up by the ledge of the one above it, hauling myself onto the roof. I crouched down to help the captain up, the wooden shingles slippery with rain. More and more dead were gathering around the house, straining up to reach us, but their stiff joints couldn’t make the leap. Death had stolen much of their dexterity. Unable to follow us, they simply piled on top of each other, the dead burying the dead.

I looked down into the streets to the village green with its defiled shrine to Alarielle.

And there, like a billowing crimson cloud, stood the necromancer. He was chanting a raspy prayer as dark wisps rippled off his fingers. The corpse cart shuddered to a halt, and for a moment we locked eyes. The bell rang out once more. Malicius began to laugh. At first it was a low wheeze like a cough, but then his peals of malevolent laughter rose to shrieks of delight.

‘You again!’ he cackled. ‘Still alive! Daughter! Come join your sisters in eternal slavery.’

‘Galene, wait!’ called the captain.

But I was done with waiting. I wanted this to end.

Here.

Now.

I ran along the rooftop, judging the distance from this house to the next, and leapt. I made it, but the shingles slid underneath my feet and I briefly lost my balance, skidding precariously close to the edge. More shingles loosened and fell to the street below, shattering upon the heads of the undead scrabbling their skeletal hands at me.

‘Galene!’ I heard the captain shout, and glanced back to see him attempting the same manoeuvre but not quite making the jump with as much ease as I had. His long gun lay in front of him as he tried desperately to hitch one leg onto the roof and pull himself up. ‘Nighthaunt!’

I ducked as two of the black-clad terrors glided up through the roof, saved only by the movement of the rooftop’s shingles, which took me closer to the edge. I heard their faint, eerie cry as a whistle of air whipped past my cheek.

I hopped to the side to gain a foothold on a more stable part of the roof, and crouched low, clutching my blades tightly. Everything hurt now. I was coated in my own blood – an outpouring for Khaine.

I made towards the Greycap to drag him onto the roof, but stopped short. The Reapers were between us, but I couldn’t hurt them with my daggers. I could hurt the necromancer, though. I could finish him. If I took him down, his minions would drop. If I took him down, my undead sisters would be freed of their bondage.

I decided the captain with his gun had more chance with the nighthaunt than I did, so I turned and ran towards the edge of the roof and hurled myself off.

For the duration of one deep breath, I hung in the air, both sciansá raised.

From my vantage point, I could see into the grey of the building storm clouds. I could see across the marshlands between this village and even glimpsed the high walls of Greywater Fastness. It seemed to me that the gates were open and warriors were streaming towards this village – Freeguild men and witch-aelf covens. A flash of lightning in the distance may have even heralded the arrival of Sigmar’s blessed Eternals.

I saw Carthum Malicius’ pallid face and rejoiced, for he looked worried. Very worried. His brow was furrowed in concentration and he murmured an incantation under his breath.

There was nothing but a straight line between us. I had found my purpose at last.

I hit the ground, rolled elegantly and was up and running, my goal only a few yards in front of me.

Redemption.

Release.

Revenge.

Almighty Khaine, let my blades drink deeply of the blood of Carthum Malicius.

A nighthaunt erupted before the necromancer as I clambered onto the corpse cart. I made to slash Malicius’ throat, but was forced to swerve away from the black tendrils of the creature’s ragged shroud. A grey arm from one of the corpses grabbed at my ankle as I sidestepped the nighthaunt. I struck down and cleaved off the undead’s limb, screaming in anger, but now I was free and so close. Malicius was but an arm’s length away. He was gathering dark energy for a spell, his fingers weaving sigils, eyes fixed on me.

Bang.

A whip of a bullet tore open my cheek. Furious, I looked towards the rooftop from where the captain had undoubtedly shot, a curse on my lips. Malicius followed my gaze. He grinned, thrust out one bloodied hand in that direction and muttered an incantation that sparked green flame from his fingers.

I leapt at him and rammed both blades into his chest.

‘Bleed for Khaine,’ I whispered in fury, wrenching the daggers apart.

Blood, gloriously red, spilled over my feet, anointing them. It splashed from the necromancer’s heart as a blessing from my god. And as Malicius fell, a surge of power flowed through my veins and all the dead crumbled to ash.

Victory.

I was still alive.

I placed a hand on my chest and I could feel every pant for air, every pound of my heart. I staggered over the green, eyes raking across the rooftops, searching, but saw no one standing up there.

A body lay face down a few yards away and I walked towards it. Blood ran from a cut in the man’s boot. The muzzle of a long gun lay half buried beneath him. I rolled the body over and confirmed that it was the Greycap captain. His blue eyes were open and locked on to the skies above, unseeing. A deep green scar steamed across his chest, tendrils of smoke curling upwards over his throat, his jaw, his brow, shrouding him.

‘No,’ I gasped, and moved away.

Malicius’ last incantation was at work though he himself was gone. The Greycap’s body lifted listlessly from the ground, some dark spell drawing strength from the shadow below him. The air grew chill around me. Frost appeared over the black metal of his gun. The darkness seemed to be tearing his life force from him, congealing it, remaking him into something new: a wraith, a cursed creature of Nagash.

I had been cheated in my moment of victory.

‘No!’ I screamed, as this newly born phantom drifted into the air. ‘Come back here! Do you hear me, captain? Or I swear, as Khaine is alive, I will destroy you!’ The nighthaunt halted in mid-air and glanced over its shoulder. Though the black coils surrounded it in a cowl, I could still make out the ice-blue eyes buried in the depths of the hood.

I snatched the long gun, aimed like I had seen the captain do, and pulled the trigger. The shot went wide and I found myself flat on my back, my shoulder shrieking with pain. I groaned. This gun was not for me. Clunky. Inelegant. A thoroughly human weapon.

I sat up, shaking, and tried to raise the gun once more with numb fingers, but it kept slipping from my grasp. I stared into the overcast sky and saw the tattered robes blending with the dark clouds.

I had counted every shot. I only had one bullet left.

But I couldn’t be sure I’d hit the wraith, its outline fading against the gathering storm. Even if I could work the gun correctly, I didn’t know how far it could shoot.

I lowered the gun and screamed with rage.

A handful of my sisters were the first to greet me, drunk with hagbrew and looking for a fight. But they found none. Malicius was gone, and his army was gone with him.

I recognised their faces. A few I had fought before in ritual. They slowed before me. The power of the kill still pulsed inside and I could hear the rush of my own blood flowing through my veins. A powerful heartbeat pounded in my chest as I looked over their faces, which seemed changed. No, I was the one who had changed. Yesterday, I had been one of them. Now, by the blessing of Khaine, by accomplishing my purpose and killing Carthum Malicius, I was something more.

‘Sister,’ one of them said, approaching carefully. Her sciansá were drawn but unbloodied. ‘You are alone? What happened here?’

I slung the human’s long gun over my shoulder and quickly told them my tale. How the undead had swarmed us. How my coven had died. How I had found my purpose in revenge. They seemed puzzled, but felt the afterglow of great glory emanating from me and did not doubt my words.

‘Come with us,’ the foremost of them told me. ‘Come, tell the Scáthborn of your deeds. You will surely receive great honour from the Handmaiden, perhaps even from Morathi herself!’

My sisters were right, of course. I had pleased my god greatly with this death. I would be received with honour. But still, I hesitated.

I am Galene of Ulgu. I was born in the Realm of Shadows and for a long time, I thought I’d die there.

But I didn’t.

By the will of Khaine, I am still alive. My life had been saved by the human captain, and I had vowed to see him brought home safely.

He had kept his promise to aid me. I had failed to keep mine.

I could not fully bask in Khaine’s favour with the knowledge of failure haunting me. I grasped the gun tighter. My sisters, the melusai priestess at the shrine – they wouldn’t understand.

‘Sister?’

‘I cannot go back with you,’ I told her. ‘I defeated Malicius, yes, but his last spell transformed a man into a nighthaunt because of me. First I must rid the realms of this newly born evil. This is the path I must walk and, Khaine willing, when I have accomplished it, I shall return.’

The sister traded a confused look with the others. I turned my back on them and walked away in the direction I had last seen the captain’s wraith.

‘Sister!’

I ignored her.

She called out once more, but none of them came to stop me.

And so, I have a gun and a promise to keep. I cannot bring the captain home to Greywater Fastness, but I will learn to use his weapon. I will find him. And I will use the final bullet to grant him his final rest.

About the Author

Author of The Living Blade Trilogy, Timandra Whitecastle enjoys writing dark, character-driven Heroic Fantasy. Timandra’s short story ‘This War of Ours’ in the Art of War charity fantasy anthology was nominated by the BSFA for best Short Fiction 2018. ‘Galene of Ulgu’ is her first story for Black Library.

An extract from Warcry.

It was the same set of memories that came most often, and most forcefully. Memories of blood, of triumph and of purpose. Memories whose strength she needed.

Memories from before the Bloodwind Spoil. From before her ascension to the blessed state of Blissful One too, though her transformation and the journey she was called to were deeply entwined.

Memories of Shyish, and of the island of Tzlid. The island of loss and grief, and the island blessed by the Gods with the gift of pain.

The memories began with a hunt. Gravskein was still an Awakened One. She had sliced off her face, but she still had all of her limbs. She knew, though, that more change was coming, and soon. Her waking dreams were filled with whirling motion, a dance of murder and blades. The visions faded to shards when she returned to full awareness. They left her with impressions of herself suspended above the ground, filled with the light of agony and drenched in the blood of butchered enemies. And there was more. Looming over the hints of transformation, a lodestone at the centre of all her visions, calling to her, shackling her soul, was the tower.

Bulsurrus was leading the hunting party. He moved swiftly, leaping over obstacles with such grace that he seemed on the verge of taking flight. He and Gravskein had undergone their ritual flaying the same night, but he had rushed more swiftly towards transcendence. He was a Joyous One. Razor-edged chains hung from his shoulders, swaying viciously with every step. His arms were swords. He ran with them spread wide, eager to meet the world with his slashing embrace.

He took the patrol through the White Forest. The trees in this region of Tzlid were their own form of undeath. They were skeletons, the bark having long ago fallen away to reveal bones. The trunks were massive femurs, the largest looking as if they had come from the corpse of a dragon. The branches were strange clusters of arms, dozens of articulations sprouting smaller limbs until they ended in grey claws instead of leaves. They were dead, yet they grew ever larger. In the wind, they rattled like chattering teeth. Their claws drew blood from whatever brushed against them. The Unmade felt kinship with the trees, and Bulsurrus did not hesitate to burst through drooping tangles of branches, shredding his face with new wounds. The others followed his example. Blood flowed freely down Gravskein’s forehead and her arms, cooling quickly in the cold keening of the wind.

She kept up with Bulsurrus easily. They were drawing close to a Realmgate on the island’s southern shore, and her excitement was growing. A glow of presentiment spread like fire through her veins.

Bulsurrus must have seen the shine in her eyes. ‘You saw something during the night,’ he guessed.

Gravskein smiled, her fleshless remains of lips drawing back over her teeth.

‘What are we going to find?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Perhaps the quest has at last been fulfilled.’

‘No.’ Of this, she was sure. They would not find their comrades returning in triumph from the Eightpoints.

‘How do you know?’

‘They have not found the tower.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because their faith was not strong enough.’ It could not have been. If the latest band sent to find the Tower of Revels had been successful, the visions would not still be calling to her.

‘You still think you will be the one to find it,’ said Bulsurrus.

‘I know I will be.’

The Tower of Revels loomed large in the tales the Unmade told each other of the Flayed King. He who had once been King Vourneste had been changed along with his warriors in the realm beyond the gateway in the woods. He had returned with the gift of pain, and had transformed his people. He was long gone, though the hope that he would return one day and prove he had not been killed by Neferata lived on. And the stories of his deeds beyond the gateway were legion. They had grown in importance since the Unmade had learned of the Everchosen. The Flayed King had not returned, but there was another ruler out there, blessed by the Gods to command all the loyal subjects of Ruin.

It fell to the Unmade to prove their worth to the Everchosen. A sign that they must do so had come with the dreams of the Tower of Revels. In the tales, the Flayed King had found the tower in the realm beyond the gateway. The precise nature of the tower was vague. What was told was that it was a site of power, power so great and so attuned to the nature of the Unmade that the Gods could only have intended it for them. The Flayed King was going to lead his people back to the tower, so they might receive it as their gift from the Gods. But he had fallen before he could do so. Gravskein believed that it was treachery that had taken the Flayed King from the Unmade on that battlefield. She did not believe he could have failed. But he was gone, and so the Tower of Revels had become another chapter in the tragedy of her people. It was another kind of loss, another among so many. The Unmade embraced what they had become, yet what they had been lingered at the edges of their thoughts, transmuted into a remembrance of grief as ill-defined as it was sharp. The tower called to the Unmade through visions and lore with the force of that rarest of things – a promise. It was a gift that must be found, and its discovery was not an end in itself. It would be a proof of worthiness.

Gravskein would find it. She could accept no other purpose to her visions. It called, and she would answer. She would not die trying, as so many had before her. She would come to the tower. No other destiny was possible.

‘Have your visions told you what we will find today?’ Bulsurrus asked. They had fought side by side for years, and were held close by bonds of shared combat and shared pain. He did not experience visions, though. He treated Gravskein’s glimpses of fate with a mix of jealousy and scepticism.

Gravskein shook her head, refusing to be baited. She did not believe Bulsurrus was foolish enough to think the Gods spoke to her so directly, or about matters so beneath them. If the Unmade could not defend the gate without the intervention of the Gods, then they did not deserve ever to find the tower.

Gravskein heard the enemy force before she saw it. She heard the beat of horses’ hooves, and the tread of marching feet. Bulsurrus forged straight ahead, silent now, his flayed features set into a predatory snarl. Soon, the hunting party arrived at a vantage point overlooking the Realmgate. The terrain was hilly, and the gate stood at the foot of a slope, facing the end of a broken road that led out of the White Forest towards the western shore of Tzlid, and the channel that separated the island from the Screaming Wastes. Finger bones grew between the cracked, disintegrating paving stones. Most of the road had vanished beneath the soil, another fading memory of a dead civilisation. The path was still quite wide, and marked a clear way through the forest for mounted troops.

At the head of the foe, a vampire in resplendent crimson armour rode an obsidian stallion. Long, golden hair streamed from his head. His flesh was more pale than the trees. His features seemed carved from alabaster, their perfect symmetry and sharp lines making him, in Gravskein’s eyes, a living incarnation of pride.

Beside her, crouching behind the trunk of an undead tree, Skarask said, ‘He has never known enlightenment.’ Spittle dripped between his teeth. He was as eager as the rest of the band to visit revelation upon the blood knight’s face.

Behind the vampire marched an infantry composed of skeletons and corpses. Whether they had been summoned by this vampire or dispatched by a more powerful lord, Gravskein did not know. What was clear was their unthinking obedience. All were armoured, and though their plate was not as resplendent as the knight’s, it looked rich to Gravskein. Their shields and cuirasses were all engraved with the same insignia as the knight’s, depicting a fanged skull radiating rays of light.

A huge dire wolf paced alongside the stallion. Rotting flesh hung from its frame. Rib bones were exposed, yet its musculature, viscous and grey, was still powerfully corded. Its head swayed heavily from side to side as it sought the scent of prey. The Unmade were downwind of the beast.

‘They do not see us yet,’ Bulsurrus whispered.

‘There are many,’ said Skarask. There were three times as many undead as there were Unmade.

‘Does that trouble you?’ Gravskein asked.

‘Only that there are so few living to teach.’

Gravskein nodded. The dead that marched had left pain behind. They had forever lost their chance to know the true glory of the gift. ‘But there is still one,’ she said. The blood knight was not beyond pain. He was not beyond scarring.

Gravskein looked to Bulsurrus, awaiting his signal. He was the most transformed, and so the most enlightened, of the hunting party. He waited as the blood knight reached the dais of the Realmgate. The vampire turned his horse around slowly, scanning the wooded hills that embraced the gate on three sides.

He will see us, Gravskein realised. The vampire was gazing at his surroundings with something greater than mere sight. She looked again at Bulsurrus, and he nodded. He saw the danger too.

With the nod, the Unmade rushed out of concealment and charged, howling, down the hillside.

There was little art to their attack. Once, in the lost time, there would have been. Now, there was only the direct charge, the straight line to the prey and to the evangelism of pain.

The hunting party came down on the left flank of the undead, midway between the rear of the skeletons and corpses and zombies and the Realmgate. The blood knight saw them at once. He shouted, and with a thrust of his sword he commanded his troops to meet their attackers. The infantry ran forward, and they met the Unmade just before the base of the slope. Gravskein’s comrades had the advantage of speed and momentum, and they slashed into the blood knight’s troops.

Bulsurrus whirled once, his arms outstretched, decapitating the skeletons closing with him, and then he turned, flying over the ground in his ecstatic sprint to reach the vampire. Gravskein followed. She had a flail-headed chain in one hand, a sword in the other, and she whipped the chain into the corpses. She moved swiftly, only a few paces behind Bulsurrus. She had little interest in the things without pain. She would fight to hold them off, but they were not important.

Behind her, the rest of the band was not as fast, and plunged deeply into the struggle. Skeletons and zombies fell without a sound. Screams of rage and shouts of joyful agony reached her ears, though. Her comrades were dying too, but not without a final burst of blessed pain.

The blood knight charged, the dire wolf at his side. He made for Bulsurrus. The Joyous One leapt high to meet the vampire, attacking with the swiftness of the wind, but the vampire was faster. He batted Bulsurrus’ blades aside with a contemptuous blow of his sword, smashing the Unmade away. Bulsurrus landed hard, one leg twisting badly beneath him.

The dire wolf leapt at Gravskein before she could run to Bulsurrus’ aid. The massive beast flew through the air, a battering ram of fur and muscle. It slammed into her and brought her down, its paws crushing her chest with its weight. It snarled and opened its jaws wide. Hot, foetid breath washed over Gravskein, and she stared into the darkness of its maw and at its curved-dagger teeth. She jabbed up with her sword, and the wolf reared back, evading her blow. Released, she scrambled back, but the beast came at her again, its jaws gaping to tear out her midsection. She kicked at it, jerking its head away once, but the animal was bigger, stronger and faster than she was. She was doing nothing more than delaying its meal by a few seconds.

Then, with joy and exultation, she saw what she must do.

She kicked again, this time aiming for the maw itself. The jaws snapped shut on her leg. The dire wolf’s teeth came together, severing muscle and snapping bone in a single, monstrously powerful bite. The wolf sank its teeth deeper, pulverising her limb. The pain was enormous, consuming, glorious. It was, since the removal of her face, the greatest pain she had experienced.

The greatest gift.

The undead monster gazed at her with baleful triumph as it chewed, breaking more bone. It thought she was helpless, a fallen prey for it to devour as it saw fit. The wolf was mistaken. She was energised, transformed by the gift it had bestowed upon her. It did not understand the truth of its situation. She was not the one in a trap. She had caught the wolf with her leg. She held it with her sacrifice.

Gravskein jerked up, striking with chain and sword. The chain whipped around the wolf’s throat, tearing muscle apart as the flail smashed against the left side of its skull, caving in bone. Gravskein plunged her blade through the wolf’s right eye and into its brain. The beast’s body jerked violently, severing her leg completely below the knee. Frenzied with pain, she yanked the sword free and put out the beast’s other eye. The dire wolf howled, and the necromantic sorcery that held it together began to unravel. Gravskein hauled its head to the side with the chain, cutting deeper, and hacked with the sword until she decapitated the monster and it fell, stilled.

Her blood pumped in cataracts from her stump. The wolf’s fangs were rotten, its saliva poisonous, and the crimson that fell from her was already streaked with thick clots of black. The pain of the injury paled next to the fire, the devouring, putrid fire that coursed through her body. The injury the wolf had inflicted upon her was trying to kill her, but she embraced the agony with such fervour that she held death aside. She would not surrender to darkness while there was still a heartbeat’s worth of pain to experience.

She pushed herself away from the dire wolf and lunged up on her remaining leg. A few yards away, the blood knight was toying with Bulsurrus. The Joyous One was fast, squirming like an insect out of the way of each sword blow, but he could not rise to counter-attack. Gravskein saw the struggle through a haze of red and cracked silver. Her vision was narrowing. Her body was weakening quickly, but the wracking bliss carried her forward. The vampire had his back to her, and she hopped forward, a bleeding, savage grotesque of slaughter. The world grew slippery, falling away from her conscious grasp. The only solid thing in her vision was the blood knight. She lurched towards him, propelled by a vortex of agony. There was no conscious thought. There was action, every movement summoned as if by the dictates of fate. It was as though she were beyond choice, blissfully caught in a dance of death.

She was barely aware that she was raising her blade. She was aware of plunging it down, at the apex of a final lunge. She stabbed the vampire above his gorget, deep into the base of his skull. The blood knight froze mid-blow. A profound, paralysing shudder ran through his body from his spine down, rooting him to the spot.

The world faded still more. Blood poured from Gravskein, soaking her leg, the back of the vampire’s armour and the ground below. Held up by wings of pain, Gravskein clung to the blood knight and sawed with her blade. He moved again, jerking and stumbling in a doomed effort to throw her off. In the darkening world, Bulsurrus rose and thrust his arm-blades into the vampire’s eyes. Gravskein kept sawing, and somewhere in the thick darkness closing in on her, the battle was ending. Skeletons and vampires were falling as she severed their leader’s will. The surviving Unmade rushed around the vampire, bringing him down in a storm of blows.

Gravskein kept sawing even after the blood knight was on the ground. She sawed until his skull rolled free.

Her memories smeared after that. Someone bound her wounds and stopped the bleeding, though she did not know it was Skarask who had helped her until long afterwards. Oblivion tried to claim her, but she clung to her pain. She floated in it, welcoming it as her identity and her salvation, and it kept her alive as her comrades carried her back in triumph to the ruins inhabited by the Unmade.

‘You have done well,’ voices said, cutting through the haze to become part of her fever dreams. ‘You will be honoured.’

‘I am not done,’ she moaned. ‘I must look for the poison.’

She did not know what she meant, but the words burst from her with the force of prophecy.

She was tended to, though she could not remember that either. Her next clear memory came some time later. The pain of the wound was still extreme. The poison’s fever still burned through her. But she could see again, and as she sat up she found herself on an eroded altar stone at the centre of a ring of pillars. Once majestic, the columns were now grey, stained with moss, their tops broken off. They were stumps of fingers stabbing up into the night.

There were many other ruins beyond the ring of pillars. Everywhere, crumbling and half-buried, were the fading dreams of a once great civilisation. There had been majestic cities here. There were the stone ghosts of formal gardens, amphitheatres and palaces of learning. Before King Vourneste had become the Flayed King, Tzlid had been ruled by some of the greatest philosophers Shyish had ever seen. Then had come the final enlightenment. The Unmade had no use for the things that had been, but the vestigial memories of greatness lingered, an ill-defined and resented grief. They clung to the rubble of what was once their kingdom. They could not let go of what had become meaningless. Intimations of lost glory gnawed at their souls like a cancer.

Gravskein knew those griefs and phantasmal regrets as well as any of her fellows. Now, though, they had receded to insignificance. She was conscious only of a present glory, a present honour. She was surrounded by tall, hooded figures. All their limbs were blades. They were the Blissful Ones of Tzlid. They were the most transformed of the Unmade, the ones who had ascended the highest on the mountain of pain. If she was on this slab of pitted marble, at the centre of this group, it could only be for one reason.

The Blissful Ones were silent. Their faces were hidden. Above their heads, the skulls of the enemies who had brought them to this exalted state gazed with dark sockets upon Gravskein. One of the warriors advanced towards her. Between his arm-scythes, he held a new skull. It had been freshly skinned. Traces of blood still dripped from the naked bone.

The skull had sharp fangs. It was the head of the blood knight.

The Blissful One bowed, and set the skull on the end of the slab. Then he stepped back to rejoin the circle, and broke the silence at last. ‘We are the honoured of the Unmade. We are prepared to welcome you to our number. It falls to you to do what must be done. Prove yourself. Embrace the full dominion of pain.’

Gravskein’s sword lay beside her. She picked it up. She looked at her remaining leg, then at the Blissful Ones. ‘Let pain be mine,’ she said. ‘Let me belong to pain.’ She did not hesitate. With a scream of ecstasy, she brought the blade down, cutting deep below the knee. Her blood jetted into her face as she sawed through skin, muscle and veins. Bone shards flew. She raised the sword and brought it down hard again, breaking bones. She half-severed her leg before she passed out from blood loss and pain. She had done enough, though. She had committed herself, and embraced what had been offered. When next she woke, her hands were gone, replaced with the lethal curve of iron, and her temples throbbed with the ache of the bolts fixing the eight-pointed halo to her head.

The circle of the honoured was still around her. As she rose from the altar and stood for the first time, unsteadily at first, and then with growing wonder and certainty, on her new blades, they raised their arms and shouted.

‘Hail to the Flayed King!’ they cried. ‘Hail to the wonder of pain! Welcome, sister! Welcome, Child of Bliss!’

Overcome, ecstatic, she howled her joy. They surrounded her, reaching out with their hooked blades. They linked hers to theirs, and Gravskein passed from one new comrade to the other, until the long line of the Blissful Ones danced, weaving between the rings of the columns.

When the ceremony ended, and the dancers bowed to one another, she said, ‘I am, in the midst of my joy, humbled. I did not dream this honour could be mine.’

‘You earned the right of transformation through your actions at the Realmgate,’ the one who had led the ceremony told her. She recognised his voice now. It was Nazarg. ‘You were a great blade that cut deeply through the enemy. You are Gravskein the Harrower, and a warband is yours to lead.’

Gravskein’s heart swelled with hope. ‘To lead a search?’

Nazarg bowed his head. ‘Find the Tower of Revels, Harrower. The task is yours, now.’

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First published in Great Britain in 2020.
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Cover illustration by Phil Moss.

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