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Discover more stories set in the Age of Sigmar from Black Library

~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1
Various authors
Contains the novels The Gates of Azyr, War Storm, Ghal Maraz, Hammers of Sigmar, Wardens of the Everqueen and Black Rift

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 2
Various authors
Contains the novels Call of Archaon, Warbeast, Fury of Gork, Bladestorm, Mortarch of Night and Lord of Undeath

CITY OF SECRETS
An Age of Sigmar novel

LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR
Various authors

HALLOWED KNIGHTS: PLAGUE GARDEN
Josh Reynolds

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
Josh Reynolds

OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner

NAGASH: THE UNDYING KING
Josh Reynolds

NEFERATA: MORTARCH OF BLOOD
David Annandale

SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds

CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth

THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds

BLACKTALON: FIRST MARK
Andy Clark

THE RED HOURS
Evan Dicken

THE BONE DESERT
Robbie MacNiven

~ LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

FYRESLAYERS
An Age of Sigmar novel

SKAVEN PESTILENS
An Age of Sigmar novel

BLACK RIFT
An Age of Sigmar novel

SYLVANETH
An Age of Sigmar novel

~ AUDIO DRAMAS ~

THE PRISONER OF THE BLACK SUN
Josh Reynolds

SANDS OF BLOOD
Josh Reynolds

THE LORDS OF HELSTONE
Josh Reynolds

THE BRIDGE OF SEVEN SORROWS
Josh Reynolds

THE BEASTS OF CARTHA
David Guymer

FIST OF MORK, FIST OF GORK
David Guymer

GREAT RED
David Guymer

ONLY THE FAITHFUL
David Guymer

SHADESPIRE: THE DARKNESS IN THE GLASS
Various authors

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Bone Desert’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

From the maelstrom of a sundered world, the Eight Realms were born. The formless and the divine exploded into life.

Strange, new worlds appeared in the firmament, each one gilded with spirits, gods and men. Noblest of the gods was Sigmar. For years beyond reckoning he illuminated the realms, wreathed in light and majesty as he carved out his reign. His strength was the power of thunder. His wisdom was infinite. Mortal and immortal alike kneeled before his lofty throne. Great empires rose and, for a while, treachery was banished. Sigmar claimed the land and sky as his own and ruled over a glorious age of myth.

But cruelty is tenacious. As had been foreseen, the great alliance of gods and men tore itself apart. Myth and legend crumbled into Chaos. Darkness flooded the realms. Torture, slavery and fear replaced the glory that came before. Sigmar turned his back on the mortal kingdoms, disgusted by their fate. He fixed his gaze instead on the remains of the world he had lost long ago, brooding over its charred core, searching endlessly for a sign of hope. And then, in the dark heat of his rage, he caught a glimpse of something magnificent. He pictured a weapon born of the heavens. A beacon powerful enough to pierce the endless night. An army hewn from everything he had lost.

Sigmar set his artisans to work and for long ages they toiled, striving to harness the power of the stars. As Sigmar’s great work neared completion, he turned back to the realms and saw that the dominion of Chaos was almost complete. The hour for vengeance had come. Finally, with lightning blazing across his brow, he stepped forth to unleash his creations.

The Age of Sigmar had begun.

Chapter One

The seas were cold. Deathly cold. The wind was the breath of an ice dragon, sweeping down from the polar mountains with a rushing roar, cutting through fabric and bare skin to chill the bones and steal air from the lungs.

Arika Zenthe stood on the prow of a stolen ship, staring out across a desert of sparkling white. The aelf was thickly wrapped in furs and wore a gambeson of borean sharkhide that offered a modicum of protection against the savage winds, but still her teeth chattered and her hands were numb and raw. But she ignored the pain. She had other things on her mind.

A crunch of footsteps across the frozen deck caused her to glance behind. Oscus, her first mate, came to her side. He wore only a light tunic that exposed his well-muscled arms, every inch of coal-black skin marked with scars and inkwork.

‘We risk much straying into these waters,’ Oscus said. ‘This vessel is cumbersome and heavy-hulled, even with her cannons stripped.’

He spat over the rail, scowling in disgust. ‘Shoddy human craftsmanship. Built to swell its owner’s pride, not for anything practical. It takes a season just to turn her prow a few notches larboard. We should have waited until the Thrice Lucky was repaired.’

Zenthe’s ice-blue eyes flicked towards her second in command.

‘You reek,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘Ghyreshark blubber might not have the most fragrant smell in the realms, but it’ll keep you warm even in this cold. We’ve plenty of it stored below, fleetmaster.’

‘Not necessary. I’ve known cold worse than this,’ she replied. ‘And the Blood Drake will serve for now. There was no time to wait, in any case. My father rarely stays in one place for long.’

They stood in silence for a while. The Blood Drake yawed to the left, the helmsman taking a parallel course alongside a row of towering ice floes. Atop their frosted parapets perched a flock of razor-toothed birds, eyeing the passing ship with lazy curiosity.

Zenthe could feel her first mate’s gaze upon her.

‘I know what you wish to ask,’ she said. ‘Why do I despise my own kin so gravely that I’d risk everything to see him dead?’

Oscus said nothing. He’d never pried into her past, nor questioned her business. His phlegmatic nature was one of the main reasons she’d kept him around so long.

‘Zarkand Zenthe taught me everything I know,’ she said. ‘And for that I swore I’d watch him drown in his own blood.’

Oscus’ eyes narrowed, but he was not looking at her. They had traversed the wall of pack ice, and once more faced across the open sea. Far in the distance, nestled amidst a crescent of shifting ice floes, a wall rose out of the waves, black and foreboding. It was angular and dotted with dagger-shaped towers, many of which blazed with purple flames, bathing the night sky in violet light. This was no vessel at all, but a black ark. A fortress of the seas, a citadel afloat that rare few fleetmasters were powerful or influential enough to rule over.

‘The Eternity of Torment,’ Arika Zenthe said, and her voice was a cold whisper. ‘My father’s flagship.’

Turning to the watching crew, she barked an order.

‘Loose the mooring claws.’

They moored the Blood Drake by digging the larboard reaper bolt throwers deep into a drift of ice. The bulk of the ship was masked by the obstacle, but they could draw no closer without being spotted by the black ark’s watchtowers. Then they waited.

‘Patience,’ said Zenthe, as Oscus glanced at her. ‘There’s a reason why my father’s hidden in the Razor Flow. Out here a storm can brew up in a moment, or a freezing mist so thick you can’t see your hand in front of your face. This place has claimed more souls than the White Reaper.’

Sure enough, after several hours, a pall of sea smoke gradually began to settle in across the bay. The light fog would never mask the bulk of the Blood Drake, but it might just hide the pinnaces from wary eyes.

Zenthe picked out a dozen of her best fighters, armed variously with cutlass blades, flensing hooks and repeater crossbows. Oscus knelt beside her, a bandolier of throwing knives across his chest and a sabre dangling from his belt.

‘Laesha help us if those towers spot our boats,’ he muttered.

‘If they mark us, we’ll know about it soon enough,’ said Zenthe. ‘Each of those towers has a dozen bolt throwers with the range to blast us out of the water in a single volley.’

The walls of the floating fortress flickered with violet fire, and she could see the silhouettes of figures passing along the barbed parapet. It seemed as though they must surely see the profile of the light ships cutting through the brittle ice towards them, but Zenthe reminded herself that the fog was hanging low over the water, offering the perfect cover for their approach.

The scale of the black ark became apparent as they drifted closer. The perimeter wall towered over them, disappearing off into the mists on both sides. Its surface was black iron, harsh and marked with a patina of scarring from heavy waves and cannon shot. Beyond those walls was a place from the darkest of nightmares, a citadel of torture and debasement and a monument to cold-hearted avarice and mendacious cruelty. Where the Eternity of Torment sailed, the seas churned red with blood.

‘I am home,’ Arika Zenthe whispered.

She had not seen these walls for five hundred years or more. In that time her name had become feared across the realm. She had forged a legacy of brutally efficient privateering. Though she sailed under the auspices of the God-King’s free cities, all knew that Arika Zenthe answered to no one but herself. She sailed and reaved as she pleased, and none crossed her and lived. All her rivals were dead, corpses rotting at the bottom of the ocean. Every corsair that passed through the docks of Excelsis owed her fealty.

And yet now, looking once more upon the walls of the fortress in which she had been raised, she felt like nothing more than an errant child, returning, afraid, to face her father’s judgement. The weakness, the fear she felt, revolted her.

‘No,’ she whispered, forcing down her unease and allowing cold hatred to replace it. ‘I am a child no longer. I made a promise, father, and tonight I keep it.’

‘Captain?’ said Oscus, staring at her with an unreadable expression upon his face.

She waved him away.

They were perhaps five hundred paces from the facing wall when the water ahead exploded into action. An enormous tentacle as large as a sailing ship rose out of the water below the Eternity of Torment, rising into the air and unfurling to its full and horrifying length. The pinnace rocked at the sudden violent motion, tipping dangerously to one side. The lashing limb was followed by another, and a third. Zenthe’s corsairs gasped and dropped their oars, which clattered in their chains. Hands went to weapons reflexively, though the very thought that anything they wielded could be of use against such a monster was patently absurd.

‘Stow your blades, fools,’ hissed Zenthe, knocking aside the repeater bow that her coxswain Dherva held aimed and ready to loose. ‘Be still, and wait!’

The tentacles, covered in boulder-sized barnacles and glistening in the light of the stars, coiled and whipped back and forth as if tasting the air. Then they fell, slamming into the surface of the ocean and sending up a great wave that crashed down upon the pinnaces, drenching them all in ice-cold water. Zenthe gasped at the sudden shock and stared up at the wall looming above, almost certain she would see half a dozen guards staring down at them, crossbows aimed.

Nothing. Their luck held yet.

‘What in Khaine’s black heart was that?’ muttered Garsh, one of Zenthe’s cutthroats. He was burly for an aelf, with his hair shorn close to his heavily scarred scalp and a torn lip that turned his face into a permanent scowl.

‘That was the ghorvorasc,’ said Zenthe. ‘A titan of the deep seas. The Eternity of Torment is built into its living flesh – they are one and the same, the black ark and the monster that bears it. It is as foul-tempered as my father, and with a similar taste for blood. I’ve seen it crush an armada to kindling in moments. So don’t shoot the godsdamned thing.’

‘You want us to scale these walls with that… thing lurking down there?’ Garsh said, eyes wide with disbelief.

‘Of course not,’ Zenthe said. ‘We’re not going over the wall.’

There were a few shared sighs and looks of relief.

‘We’re going to swim underneath.’

Chapter Two

Arika Zenthe watched as Oscus dragged forward the chest, a glass-fronted lockbox filled with murky, sea-green liquid. Carefully, the first mate opened the lid, and suddenly the watery contents began to surge and boil with movement. Oscus thrust his hand into the case and brought forth a bizarre-looking creature. It had a bulbous, hoof-shaped body that was almost transparent, aside from a thin exoskeleton that tapered to a barbed tail. The tail whipped back and forth as the first mate held the thing in one hand.

Carefully, Oscus lowered the creature onto his face. It locked on to his skull, latching prehensile pseudopods around his jaw and temples, and the tail coiled around his throat, tightly but not with the force to choke. After a moment’s twitching, the creature became still. It looked as though Oscus wore a translucent mask tight against his skin.

‘These hrascas didn’t come cheap,’ said Zenthe. ‘So handle them carefully. They’ll let you breathe underwater for a time and stop your eyeballs from freezing solid. You all stick close and follow me. I know every inch of this place, and I know how to get us inside without anyone laying eyes on us.’

With some hesitation, her crew began to grab their own hrascas. Zenthe dipped a hand in the chest, felt a slight shock as one of the creatures’ lashing tails sliced her finger. Growling, she tore the creature free and laid it over her face. There was a second of pain as the gelid flesh met her skin, a tingling shock that stabbed into her brain. The thing’s tail wrapped around her throat, tight enough to hurt. She took a breath. It was a deeply strange sensation as the air rushed into the creature’s bulbous body and back into her lungs, slightly stale and acrid-tasting but still breathable. Her vision was obscured by the hrasca’s semi-translucent flesh, but she could still see well enough. She checked her blades and made sure her handbow was tucked into the front of her gambeson.

Then she stepped up to the prow of the pinnace and leapt into the waves.

The shock of the icy water was akin to a hammer blow, but Arika Zenthe had spent all her life at sea, and she gritted her teeth and banished the instinctive desire to splutter and gasp – and in doing so took in a lungful of freezing liquid. The shock passed quickly. She had relented and applied the foul-smelling ghyreshark blubber to her flesh. Without it she was fairly sure these waters would have stolen the life from her in mere moments. As it was, her body trembled but she was able to focus her mind and gain control of her breathing.

The water was crystal clear. Below, she could see a vast expanse of turquoise, stretching away into pitch darkness. She thought she saw a flash of movement, something sleek and large. No surprise. Predators swam alongside the black ark in great numbers, for there was always a feast of corpses to be had in its wake. They had to move fast.

Ahead rose the shadow of the great wall, and below that a writhing mass of enormous tentacles, each as big as a war galleon, attached to the structure of the Eternity of Torment by a fusion of bone and iron. The ghorvorasc. The scale of the creature’s huge body was terrifying. It was roughly cephalopodic in form, though there were armoured scales running the length of its immense shape and two spade-shaped fins the size of castle towers, which currently sat immobile. When the Eternity of Torment sailed, those great fins would propel it forward with fearsome speed. A black ark could outrun smaller vessels despite its size, bearing down upon them and crushing them into kindling like some pelagic behemoth.

Kicking forward, Zenthe dived towards the closest of the fins. The bed of tentacles roiled and writhed, but they did not sense her movement. She was nothing to this creature, a mere minnow in its shadow. Spears of starlight lanced past her, momentarily illuminating the ominous darkness.

She passed under the coil of an immense tendril, large enough to crush her into bloody paste with a single careless motion. Its surface was torn and scarred by centuries of battle. Small, many-legged creatures skittered across its surface, feasting upon stretches of rotten flesh. Zenthe glanced around and saw her dozen blades close behind her, their faces weirdly distorted by their living masks. She pressed on, diving further, the gloom rising to meet her.

She still drew air easily enough, but each breath was growing perceptibly shallower. The hrasca would allow her to dive for longer, but not indefinitely. Unease began to grip her; it had been so long since she had escaped this damned vessel, perhaps the breach through which she had crawled had been filled? Perhaps the ghorvorasc’s flesh had healed, masking the opening? If that were so, this mission was doomed before it could begin.

She kicked harder, propelling herself forward and scanning the darkness with growing desperation. There, just between the keel fins. A zig-zagging scar hacked into the meat of the ghorvorasc, reaching up to the ridge of armour where the creature’s bulk met the heavy metal of the black ark’s outer shell. It had not changed in more than a hundred years, though of course the last time she had passed through the breach she had been fleeing in the opposite direction.

She waved out an arm, beckoning her crewmates onwards, and kicked towards the spot, drifting underneath a row of tentacles that stretched down into darkness. As she drew closer she allowed herself a triumphant grin, ignoring the way the hrasca painfully stretched her skin. There was the crack, no more than a foot across. Careless of her father, she thought. Had he not always taught her that a fleetmaster must know every inch of their vessel, every scar and weathered board?

The skin around it had hardened and blackened, and there was still the sheen of a burn mark where the duardin steam-torpedo had struck. That had been a close-fought battle, she recalled, and it had left her with a grudging admiration for the bearded ones’ ugly little submersibles.

Oscus drifted past, coming to rest on the creature’s thick hide. He peered into the tiny gap and turned to flash her a look. It was hard to tell with the gelatinous mass wrapped around his face, but she thought she saw a flicker of incredulity on his face.

She shrugged and reached into a pouch on her belt, pulling out a small rock that pulsed with a soft, blue light. Lumencoral, sometimes called corpse-light by sailorfolk for the eerie glow it gave off from beneath the waves. Holding the makeshift torch in her left hand, she peered into the opening. It narrowed into pitch-black darkness, angling upwards into the ghorvorasc’s flesh. The duardin-forged torpedo that had caused the wound had carried a corkscrew-shaped warhead, designed to bore into armour before detonating. This one had ricocheted between two of the monstrous creature’s armour plates, gouging a tunnel through its hide. She entered the opening, gesturing for the others to follow her.

It was a tight squeeze, even for her slender form. She had to shift upright, wedging herself sideways through the two shelves of armour plating. Every few moments they shifted – just slightly, but enough to press her worryingly tightly against the opposite wall.

The shaft rose and she shuffled her way along with it. Her fingers snagged on shards of rusted metal, shrapnel from the duardin warhead still embedded deep. Beside her, Oscus was struggling along. He was heavier than her. Not by much, but enough to make his passage even more difficult. She hoped his struggling didn’t catch the ghorvorasc’s attention. She had no idea if it could contract these armour ridges, and she had no great desire to find out. Getting crushed to death in here would be an exceptionally stupid way to go.

It was getting tighter, and harder to breathe. She felt light-headed. They’d been beneath the surface for perhaps fifteen minutes, and the hrascas would give them at most five more.

Now she was climbing, dragging herself upwards using the rough surface of the beast’s flesh as purchase. They were close, she was certain. She craned her head upwards, straining to see through the filmy mask covering her face.

There, above. She could see a larger chamber, a jagged rent in the plating big enough for three to stand abreast. Here was where the duardin torpedo had finally detonated, flush against the inorganic wall of the Eternity of Torment. She hauled herself up into the opening and found herself facing a span of black iron, the same material from which the black ark’s formidable watchtowers had been fashioned. And there was the gap that the warhead had opened, their entrance into the heart of the ship. It was a star-shaped blast hole, overgrown with algae and luminescent coral, several feet wide and almost as deep.

Zenthe ducked low to slip through the opening.

Something surged out of the darkness. Instinctively, Zenthe kicked backwards, thrashing her arms. The thing’s head was shaped like a flower, though each petal was a bed of fangs, curved and razor-sharp. She could see no eyes, but it struck at her again with fearsome speed and precision, lashing at her face. She felt a searing pain across her cheek. The hrasca was torn from her face, its cloudy blood spilling into the water.

The sudden shock caused Zenthe to gasp and release a cloud of fizzing air bubbles, but somehow she managed not to swallow a lungful of water. The creature coiled around its prize, clamping down with that awful maw to devour the hrasca whole. It was serpentine, its muscular body bright yellow and turquoise, stretching away into darkness.

Momentary fear was replaced with anger. Zenthe grabbed her sword just as the creature turned towards her once again, its mouth rippling open to reveal those hideous teeth. It darted forward, but she got her blade up in time and stabbed out viciously. The blade tip sunk into one of the creature’s jaw segments, and purple ichor spilled out. The creature thrashed in pain and withdrew, disappearing into the clouded water. Zenthe felt a hand on her shoulder and spun, sword leading. She almost took out the throat of her first mate. Oscus’ eyes opened wide as he saw that her hrasca was gone. There was no time to waste. She turned back to the tunnel, hoping that her strike had caused the fanged eel to think better of attacking her. Zenthe kicked forward, her lungs burning, desperate for a mouthful of air. Bubbles spilled from her mouth as she swam through the darkness, one hand feeling out her path. She struck something hard and unyielding, and knew she had reached the end of the channel. She had to climb.

The cold fire inside her chest burned with agonising insistence, but she could not stop. She kicked off, up and up into darkness. Ahead, finally, she saw a glimmer of light, and that hope lent her a burst of speed. Her vision was blurring, but still she forced herself onwards.

Just as she thought she could bear it no more, her head broke the surface, and she was met with a blast of precious air. She gulped it down greedily, coughing and retching.

That was too close.

Moments later, Oscus surfaced. He peeled the hrasca from his face and tossed it aside with a grimace.

‘Captain?’ he asked, looking at her with concern.

She waved him off.

‘I’m fine. Bastard nearly got me, but I’m fine. We’re through.’

‘Through where, exactly?’ said her first mate, wrinkling his nose.

The stench was almost overwhelming. It stank of carrion, of rot and waste. They were in a cramped pool at the foot of a large channel, angled at a steep incline. A stream of grey sludge trickled down, spattering across their heads. Above, just a few feet overhead, was a rusted grate, clotted with slime. Beyond that they could see a tunnel leading off into the distance, its walls slick and shining.

‘We’re in the sewer runoffs,’ Zenthe explained. ‘They bleed through the lower levels, spilling out into the ocean through channels in the ghorvorasc’s hide. Here’s where they dispose of all the rot and filth aboard the Torment. As well as worn-out slaves no longer fit for purpose.’

The walls were slick with brine-slugs and dangling corpse-crawlers, and there was a film of grease across the surface of the water that stuck obscenely to their skin. Something bobbed up next to Oscus, and he tossed it away in disgust. A severed arm, most of the flesh chewed away by a thousand verminous bites.

They waited for the rest of the crew to appear. One by one they emerged, tearing the pallid creatures from their faces and dragging in lungfuls of air. They had lost no one thus far.

‘Get that grate open,’ she ordered Garsh.

Chapter Three

Malvo L’Polche Guinmark, third of his name, suppressed the urge to vomit. He stared at the bounteous feast before him – three pale, wriggling centipedes he had managed to scrape from the underside of a skinning table and smuggle back to the slave quarters.

‘Give us one,’ whined the fellow crammed into the lightless chamber next to him, an anaemic-looking human whose stench somehow managed to stand out even in this churning mass of unwashed flesh. Someone was whimpering at the other end of the chamber, their ragged sobs echoing in the darkness. Unwise, Guinmark thought. The aelves always came for the frightened, weak ones first. They made the best sport.

Guinmark flashed his neighbour a sympathetic smile.

‘Alas, my friend,’ he sighed, ‘I fear I only have enough for myself. One must keep one’s strength up, you understand. You can never accurately predict from whence the next opportunity might arise.’

The other gave a short gasp of disbelieving laughter, and then his eyes flicked towards the bars of the cell wall, hoping that his outburst had gone unnoticed by the guards. Fortunately for the both of them, it had. They could see through the tightly spaced iron bars, all the way across the expanse of the holding pits. There were hundreds of cages just like theirs arrayed across the cavernous space of the chamber, stuffed with dead or dying slaves unlucky enough to fall into the hands of the Scourge. Stairways wound down in spiral patterns, and every now and then the patrols came and snatched away a few poor, screaming souls. Meat for the arena. Or, perhaps worse, the flesh palaces of the city proper.

‘We ain’t gettin’ out of here, fool,’ the man hissed through rotten, chipped teeth. ‘We’re here until we’re dead, whether they work us to the bone, or else…’

The man shuddered.

Despite himself, Guinmark shivered too. The screams of those unfortunates dragged off by their aelf captors had ceased for now, but they never quieted for long. Exactly what manner of excruciation lay in store for the unlucky chosen he did not care to picture. He had heard tales of the sweet torments enacted by the Scourge corsairs, and he had been trapped here long enough to know that they were no exaggerations.

‘Mark these words, my foul-breathed friend,’ he said. ‘I am going to escape this wretched place, and then I am going to take a cruel blade to the motherless hounds that sent me here. But first… dinner.’

He cupped his hands and tipped his precious centipedes into his mouth, grimacing as he bit into their wriggling bodies. An acrid taste like rotting fish filled his mouth, and he very nearly spewed the contents of his stomach across his cellmate. Yet Malvo L’Polche Guinmark had a firm constitution. As a lowly cutpurse plying his trade in the mead halls and bawdy-houses of Izalend, he’d somehow managed to eat far worse. Of course, that had been some thirty years past. In that time, he had risen to control the Brotherhood of Larcenists, the foremost thieves’ guild in the city, and he had thought his days of fighting alley dogs for scraps of bone were long past.

And now he was chewing a mouthful of centipedes.

Guinmark reflected on the sheer, horrifying unpredictability of life as he gulped down his supper.

Footsteps echoed down the dungeon’s hallway. Instantly Guinmark and his acquaintance fell silent and hunkered into the shadows. They knew better than to say a word when their captors were in earshot.

Shadows flickered across the dimly lit cell. A voice barked out a command in the harsh language of the aelves, a sound like knives scraping across stone. Then, to Guinmark’s horror, the cell door was thrown open with a clatter. Scrawny figures scrambled into the far corners of the cell, moaning in terror, some prostrating themselves in utter despair.

The aelves entered. Six of them, lithe and muscular, clad in leather and spiked scale armour that did not seem to impede their easy grace at all. Guinmark recognised the slavemaster, whose name he thought was Krask or something similar. He was a bald, scarred creature, who favoured a whip lined with razor-sharp teeth. Guinmark had seen that weapon strip the flesh from a man’s back in moments, and its wielder was not sparing in employing it. The others wore half-face helms and purple sashes and they carried serrated cutlasses. These were the same corsairs that had pulled Guinmark from the ocean, beaten him senseless and hurled his battered body into the hold of their reaver-ship.

The slavemaster gestured at two of the nearest captives, broad-shouldered Sayronites who had not yet been worn to nothing by lack of food and the tender mercies of their captors. The unfortunate men struggled bravely – foolishly, in Guinmark’s humble opinion – and were rewarded with a flurry of vicious blows. Battered until they were bloody, they were dragged from the cell whimpering.

The slavemaster peered around, his cruel eyes gleaming in the darkness.

Please not me, prayed Guinmark to any gods that might happen to be listening. Please, anyone else but me. I want to live.

The aelf’s eyes came to rest on Malvo L’Polche Guinmark, who felt the strength drain from his limbs. He tried to crawl away into the shadows, but strong hands grabbed him around the shoulders and hauled him upright. He looked into the slavemaster’s eyes and saw only cruel amusement. The aelf slugged him in the gut, driving the air from his lungs, and he finally released the contents of his stomach. That earned him a clubbing blow to the temple, which sent black stars shooting across his vision. Through the haze of pain, he was dimly aware of being hurled out of the cell and dragged over the floor, towards the rising spiral of the central stairway.

Where they were being taken, Guinmark had no idea. All he was certain of was that an agonising, humiliating death awaited him.

Zenthe hauled herself out of the grille, as silently as she could manage. Clambering to her feet, she looked around. She found herself in a cramped, circular chamber with a sluice running towards the opening from which she had emerged. The floor was stained a reddish-brown, and there was an all but unbearable stench of death and decay. Propped up in the corner of the chamber were several emaciated corpses, writhing with fat-bodied maggots.

‘We’re below the slave pits,’ Zenthe said, as the others began to heave themselves out of the charnel sluice. ‘This is where they dispose of the dead, once they’ve had their fun.’

She wondered if Vhorskaya still oversaw the blood games. The one-eyed witch aelf had always been one of Zarkand Zenthe’s favourite killers, as sadistic as she was appallingly inventive.

They followed the gore-encrusted channel down a short tunnel with a shallow incline and emerged in a larger room that was lined with empty cages and spiked shackles. From there, a gentle slope led to a pair of double doors. The others stacked up behind Zenthe as she eased them open. They revealed a high, narrow passage, lit by smouldering braziers.

‘We’re in the heart of the ark,’ said Zenthe. ‘There will be guards. Many of them. Kill only on my mark. The fewer bodies we leave behind us, the better.’

They moved on, swift and silent as shadows. They entered an enormous, wide-open cavern. Far below lay a lake of placid darkness, circled by docks and facing a great wall of battered chitin secured by a gigantic chain. When battle called, that armoured plate would yawn open, spilling reaver-ships out into the ocean like hornets swarming from a nest. Now, the ships nestled along the shore, moored by heavy ropes. Beyond the harbour wall lay a cluster of ramshackle buildings, rising in a series of concentric levels towards the roof of the cavern. There was a shimmering luminescence to both the rocky surface of the chamber shell and the rough stone of the architecture that gave the illusion of early morning light. Zenthe could see flickering torches in the distance and hear the clatter of marching boots.

‘Walk openly here,’ she said. ‘We’re just another band of cutthroats about our business. We avoid the patrols, and we walk swiftly.’

Guinmark soon realised that his fate was going to be substantially more unpleasant than he had first feared. Passing out of the slave pits into the winding channels of the outer districts, a maze of warrens and drinking pits favoured by off-duty corsairs, their captors took a right-hand turn and made their way along a wide thoroughfare. Here the stone cobbles were smeared with reddish-brown stains, and the sounds of raucous laughter and singing faded into ominous silence.

Ahead, rising above the cramped city streets like an enormous metal spider, was Khrel Nazath – the temple-arena of High Priestess Vhorskaya and her bloody sisterhood.

‘Oh, Sigmar,’ he whimpered, and received a kick to the back for his troubles.

‘Yes, you worthless piece of rhagrath,’ laughed the slavemaster, twirling his bladed whip in one dexterous hand. ‘The Mistress of Blades desires fresh meat for the fighting pits. Give her good sport, wretches, or else your death will not be swift or pleasant.’

His companions chortled to themselves, and Guinmark’s fellow slaves visibly paled in terror. The tales of the ritual slaughter that took place in the depths of Khrel Nazath were the stuff of nightmares. It was a rare night indeed that the screams of tormented victims echoing out across the city did not serenade the slaves of the Eternity of Torment to a troubled sleep.

The aelves drove them on with lashes. Finally, they reached a soaring gate of black iron, guarded by ten warriors in fine scale armour, wielding barbed tridents. They conversed with the slavemaster in a flurry of heavily accented aelvish that Guinmark could not quite make out, and then the leader of the guard – a tall fellow with a single plume of violet protruding from his silver helm – shouted an unintelligible command.

The gate creaked open, and the slavers ushered Guinmark and the others through. Beyond was a long hallway wreathed in shadow, lit only by a few smouldering braziers. Even the guards fell silent now. As they passed along the corridor, Guinmark could hear the thump of war-drums and a chorus of chanting in high and frenzied tones that turned his blood to ice.

As they reached the end of the corridor, figures swayed from the shadows. Several lithe females, their faces covered by leering war-masks. They wore little more than scraps of armour, their exposed flesh pale and flecked with old scars. They circled Guinmark and his fellow prisoners slowly, then one came forward and grasped one of the Sayronite brothers around the throat. Despite the witch aelf’s smaller size, she yanked the human upright with barely an effort, cocking her head as she peered into his eyes.

‘Fresh?’ she hissed, and her voice was the sound of a blade scraping across stone.

‘The strongest we have left,’ replied the slavemaster. There was the slightest tremor in his voice. ‘They’ve fed, and the retching sickness hasn’t touched them yet. They’ll serve well enough.’

The masked aelf snarled, and the slaver tensed noticeably.

‘Do not presume,’ she said. ‘The High Priestess will decide. And if these are not worthy of the blade, perhaps she will require another sacrifice to please the Bloody-Handed One. Perhaps she will cut your worthless heart out and burn it.’

The slavemaster bowed his head.

‘Forgive me, mistress,’ he said.

For a moment, the masked aelf stared at him and Guinmark thought she would leap across and drive her daggers into his heart. Instead, she let the human fall from her grip and gestured along the hallway.

‘Bring them to the blood-pit cages,’ she said. ‘Lock them up, then leave. Unless you wish to be part of the dance of blades?’

The slavers hurried on. Guinmark could feel the masked figures staring at them hungrily until they passed out of sight around a curve in the tunnel. Even his masters breathed a sigh of relief.

They walked on for several more minutes, heading deeper into the structure, down winding staircases. As they descended, an awful stench rose to meet their nostrils. The reek of sour sweat and dried blood. Of rot and fear. They entered a dank, low-ceilinged chamber, rusted iron bars on each side. Guinmark saw slumped shapes in the darkness and the glimmer of verminous eyes.

‘Through there,’ said the slavemaster, pointing to a heavy door at the end of the room. ‘Let’s be rid of them and out of here, before the Sisters of Slaughter decide to play their blood games with us.’

One of the corsairs grabbed Guinmark around the neck and dragged him forward, reaching for the rusted iron handle. With a grunt, the aelf hauled the door open.

And came face to face with an aelven woman in a sodden overcoat, smeared with blood and grime. The briefest flicker of surprise flashed across the woman’s statuesque face, and then she thrust her sword into the corsair’s ribcage.

The guard’s eyebrows furrowed as he looked down at the blade hilt protruding from his chest. His eyes rolled back in his head, and Arika Zenthe twisted the blade, dropping him to the floor. The dead aelf’s companions staggered backwards in shock, scrabbling for their blades.

The leftmost guard gave a soft gurgle as a crossbow bolt grew out of his chest. He slumped against the wall, blood spurting from the wound in a crimson arc. Oscus and Dherva leapt forward, and the battle was joined.

Zarkand’s corsairs were good. They closed ranks, falling back and filling the width of the corridor, giving their opponents no chance to flank them. The rearmost guard turned to run while the others held the way, already shouting at the top of his lungs. Another crossbow bolt whipped along the corridor and struck the fleeing aelf between the shoulder blades. He tumbled and slid along the stones.

Zenthe found herself facing a bald, scar-faced warrior with barbed whip in one hand and a dagger in the other. He whirled the many-headed lash about him like a gladiator’s weighted net, searching for an opening with the shorter blade.

She worked her left sword in a wide arc, fending off the biting whip. Its leather thongs were lined with curved teeth, each thumb-sized and gleaming sharp. Despite the close quarters the aelf wielded the strange weapon with easy grace, twirling it in an attempt to entangle her arm, then whipping it low at her feet. She jumped, kicking off the left wall and snapping her heel out to strike the whip-wielder across the temple. He staggered, and she landed and drove her blade through his thigh.

Her opponent gasped and lashed out with the whip again, scoring a jagged line across her forearm, easily tearing through the thick leather of her coat. The barbs dug in, shredding flesh and entangling her blade. Cursing, she dropped the sword and took hold of the whip, tugging it sharply and sending the aelf stumbling to the floor. She reversed the grip of her blade and sank it into the downed warrior’s back. He spluttered and fell still.

Zenthe looked up. Gritting her teeth, she tugged the barbed teeth free from her arm. Oscus had dispatched his own foe and was flicking blood from his cutlass. The last aelf drove back Dherva with a combination of thrusts and kicks and turned to run. He made it only a few feet before one of the two burly human slaves tackled him to the floor. The big human leapt upon the fallen aelf’s back and wrapped his arms around his throat, clinging on stubbornly even as the aelf slammed a dagger into his ribs, over and over. Zenthe rushed forward and slammed her boot into the prone warrior’s groin. He crumpled with an agonised groan, and the other human – who looked so similar to the first that they could only be brothers – scrabbled and dug a blade out of the aelf’s boot. Before Zenthe could haul him free, the slave had opened the aelf’s throat wide, and blood seeped across the stones.

She grabbed the human’s wrist and twisted, slapping the blade from his grip. He let it fall without care, and let out a choked cry as he leapt for his stricken sibling. The unlucky soul was clearly on the precipice of death, clutching at the meat spilling out of his torn chest. The big man shook with racking sobs as his brother gave a last, rattling breath and lay still.

Zenthe heard a shuffle of footsteps behind her and spun, sword leading. She rounded upon a filthy little human with sharp eyes and a crown of greasy, grey-brown hair.

He cowered, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

‘Oh, Sigmar bless you, my lady,’ he gasped through yellow, broken teeth. ‘I am in your eternal debt.’

He was an ugly one, she thought. Balding and pockmarked, with watery eyes and a narrow chin. Yet his voice suited him ill. It was oddly melodic.

‘Shut up,’ she said, pushing him down and placing her boot on his chest. He instantly fell silent.

They listened for a sign that the alarm had been raised but heard no raised voices or boots clattering on stone. Still, the sounds of chanting and distant screams split the air. The witch aelves’ macabre ceremonies were masking their own assault most efficiently. The big man still rocked back and forth, cradling his dead sibling.

‘We cannot leave stray slaves walking the halls,’ said Oscus, staring down upon him.

‘Wait!’ the smaller human gasped. ‘Stay your blades, I implore you. I intuit from all this bloodshed that you have something of a disagreement with the crew of this dread vessel?’

‘You are a sharp one,’ muttered Zenthe.

The ugly man flashed her a winning smile.

‘Furthermore, it seems likely that you are attempting to accomplish your mission with, ah… a certain amount of delicacy, no? Well, let me humbly introduce myself. Malvo L’Polche Guinmark. Actor, raconteur and man of action. Your guide through the labyrinth of the Eternity of Torment.’

He dipped into a ludicrous bow, exposing a rash-covered bald patch.

‘I was born and raised on this vessel,’ said Zenthe. ‘My father rules the Eternity of Torment, and I know every tunnel and chamber like the back of my hand. So really, your alleged expertise is currently as useful to me as a hold full of bilge rats.’

‘Ah,’ said Malvo, licking his lips nervously.

His eyes flickered to the pile of corpses nearby.

‘Shall I kill him or not?’ asked Oscus with a long-suffering air.

‘Wait!’ Malvo said again. ‘A further question. How long has it been since you have walked these halls?’

Zenthe held up a hand.

‘Speak,’ she said.

‘My internment upon this damned ship has lasted seven celestial cycles, as near as I can tell,’ the man continued. ‘And in that time I have observed every patrol route and change of guards from here to the Dreadspire.’

He raised his shirt, uncovering a thin ribcage marked with scars and bruises. Across his chest, Zenthe saw a series of other marks. Notches of rough tissue, like the ritual scars she had seen on the flesh of nomadic seafaring tribes.

‘A code of my own devising,’ Guinmark explained, patting his chest. ‘I may be the foremost thespian in Izalend, but to my shame I have occasionally indulged in less… legally acceptable activities. I have marked upon my flesh the movements and activities of the guard patrols, in preparation for my own inevitable abscondment.’

Oscus raised an eyebrow at Zenthe, and she shrugged.

‘It’s true, I’ve not seen the Eternity of Torment in more than a century. He might prove useful. And if not, we can cut his throat and leave his corpse to rot.’

Guinmark offered a wan smile.

‘Excellent. I live and die in your service, my lady. Would you allow me one final boon?’

With that, the slave strode across to the dead warrior who had carried the saw-toothed lash. Noisy and enthusiastically clearing his throat, Malvo L’Polche Guinmark launched a thick blob of greenish slime into the dead aelf’s face.

‘Now,’ he said, turning back to his saviours. ‘Shall we be about our business?’

‘What about this one?’ said Oscus, nodding at the big man.

‘He’s a Sayronite,’ said Guinmark. ‘Ex-Freeguild, judging by his tattoos. Dragged in with his brother perhaps a week past. Maybe more. Those jungle dwellers are hardy folk, good in a fight. He might just be useful.’

Rather perceptive for a humble theatre performer, Zenthe thought, but she could not disagree with the sentiment. Sayronites were passable sailors and tough as Excelsian steel. Many of them found work as hired thugs and privateers along the Coast of Tusks.

Zenthe approached the man. His bald scalp was covered in bruises and scratches, but clearly he was a new acquisition – not yet broken down by months of merciless servitude. His long beard was smeared with gore and his eyes were raw with tears as he looked upon his dead brother. Zenthe’s blade hovered an inch from the man’s neck.

It would be easier to kill him. He was only a human thug, of no great value to her. He would only attract suspicion and make her task more difficult. Zarkand Zenthe would have slit the Sayronite’s throat in an instant.

Perhaps it was that thought that stayed her hand. Perhaps it was the memory of standing over her own brother’s corpse, hearing her father’s mocking laughter in her ears. She knelt and spoke to the man in the common Sigmarite tongue.

‘Your brother is dead,’ she said. ‘You will be too if you stay. But I can offer you a chance to revenge yourself upon the ones that chained him.’

The big man’s bleary eyes focused on hers. Burning away the grief was rage and hatred. The Sayronite went to grab the dead corsair’s cutlass, but she kicked it away.

‘No,’ she said. ‘If you want your revenge, you do as I tell you. You don’t go charging into the Eternity of Torment with a raised blade, or you’ll end up back in a cell wishing you’d shared your brother’s fate. Patience.’

The Sayronite’s eyes narrowed, but then he nodded. The man had the look of a common brute, but she saw a spark of intelligence in those brown eyes. He grasped the dagger that had been driven into his brother’s chest and wiped it clean on the dead aelf. He pocketed it, tucking it into the front of his ragged tunic. Then he leaned down, closed his brother’s eyes and planted a soft kiss upon the dead man’s forehead.

‘We should leave the humans,’ said Garsh, and Zenthe could see that the rest of her crew agreed with the corsair’s words. ‘They’ll slow us down.’

‘If they do, we leave them for dead,’ said Zenthe. ‘But until then, I say they might be of value. Enough talk. Let us go.’

Chapter Four

They retraced the path that the slavers had taken, moving swiftly and silently along the gloomy halls. Guinmark hurried to keep up with the aelves and the loping Sayronite, who set a fierce pace. Soon his chest was tight with pain. He had never been an athletic man, and the long months of captivity had taken their toll. Nonetheless, he ignored the pain and staggered onwards. Surely these invaders were doomed, but he might yet spy a chance to break free and make a run for it. Let them continue on their failed mission, whatever it was. If he could slip aboard one of the reaver-ships, perhaps, then wait until they embarked upon one of their raiding missions…

Not much of a plan. It might get him off this hellish floating city, but he’d still be lost in the ice-wastes with only a shipful of murderous corsairs for company. They would find him and drag him back here, and then they would flay the skin from his bones. Publicly. He had seen the cruelties reserved for deserters and troublemakers.

No, he would have to be patient. For now, this Captain Zenthe and her crew were his best chance. Besides, the bald female behind him had her repeater bow aimed squarely at his back, and he didn’t care to test her aim.

They entered the entrance chamber, where the masked aelves had stood. There was no sign of movement but the flickering of sconces upon the wall. Ahead was the gate to the courtyard, but the hall was empty.

‘They were here,’ muttered Guinmark, his face knotted in confusion. ‘The masked ones.’

‘Vhorskaya’s pets,’ nodded Zenthe. ‘Likely they’ve gone below, to join in with the fun.’

An appropriately timed chorus of screams drifted down the corridor, followed by a faint echo of mocking laughter. Guinmark winced. Of all the fates the slaves aboard the Eternity of Torment had to look forward to, the prospect of being handed over to the High Priestess and her bloodthirsty warrior-aelves was perhaps the most terrifying. Their slavemasters had delighted in taunting them with tales of Vhorskaya’s tender mercies, a carnival of torture and terror culminating in the removal of one’s still-beating heart.

‘Come on,’ said Zenthe.

They made their way to the end of the corridor and to the great iron door leading out of the arena. Oscus went to ease it open, but Guinmark laid a hand upon his arm. Reflexively, the first mate snarled and pushed him against the wall, locking a forearm against his throat.

‘Wait,’ rasped Guinmark, scrabbling ineffectively at the aelf’s arm. ‘Outside… more guards. Seven… across the courtyard.’

‘I told you he’d be useful,’ said Zenthe. ‘Let the poor wretch breathe.’

Oscus withdrew, and Guinmark collapsed to the floor, clutching his bruised neck.

‘You do the talking,’ the fleetmaster continued, pulling a silken handkerchief from her coat pocket and winding it around her face. She pulled up the hood of her coat, securing her pale blonde hair. ‘Been a long time since I walked these halls, so I doubt they would recognise me, but let’s not take any foolish risks. If they ask, we’re taking this one back to the cells.’ She indicated towards Guinmark. ‘He’s too weak to make good sport for Khaine’s daughters.’

Oscus nodded. The others stowed their weapons, sliding knives and stilettos into their robes ready for a quick draw. Guinmark scrabbled to his feet, and Oscus grabbed him none too gently and twisted his arm behind his back. The Sayronite bowed his head and let Garsh do the same.

‘Watch your tongues,’ the first mate growled. ‘Or you die first.’

The aelf shoved open the door and the group strode out in the gloom. The hour was late. Overhead, the great stalactites that hung from the ceiling had begun to shimmer with a soft, violet light that flooded the cavern-city. They made their way across the courtyard to the wrought-iron gate. The guards visibly tensed as their group approached, dropping their ornate tridents into a ready position. The captain of the guard took a step forward, his hand on the hilt of his sabre.

‘What’s this?’ he said, gesturing at Guinmark, who turned his eyes to the floor and started to whimper. It didn’t require much acting, if he was honest.

‘Weak blood, so they said,’ replied Oscus. ‘Not worth the honour of their blades. We’re to drag him back to his cell.’

The guard captain’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why didn’t they just snap his neck and toss his body down the charnel pit? And why this one? He’s big, strong and stupid. Just as they like.’

He nodded at the Sayronite, who stared ahead unblinkingly.

Oscus shrugged. ‘I didn’t ask. Do you ever second-guess the High Priestess?’

The guard captain took a step forward, and his warriors followed suit. Twelve trident heads dropped into a loosely braced position. Every muscle in Guinmark’s body tensed, ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. He desperately scanned the courtyard for a means of escape, but saw only sheer, spiked walls of iron.

‘When did you come in?’ said the guard captain. ‘I don’t recall opening these gates to a bunch of slavetakers. To whose flag did you swear your oaths?’

‘Fleetmaster Kraggua of the Seven Whispers,’ said Zenthe. She inflected her words with a harsh accent, emphasising the hard edges of each word. ‘We’ve been down in the charnel pits for a month or more, clearing out claw-scuttlers and thorveks. Our punishment for killing one slave too many. You know how Kraggua is. Gets the blood-madness in her over a single coin.’

She pointed to their stained and blood-smeared clothes, and the filthy sheen of grime that covered their faces.

The guard captain sneered in distaste. ‘Good luck getting rid of that scent, slavetaker.’

Zenthe sighed. ‘We’re free, at least. Heading to the Flayed Seer after we make an example of this one to his cellmates for wasting the witch aelves’ time.’

She cuffed the Sayronite about the head, hard. The ring on her forefinger sliced the big man’s head open, but he did not even seem to flinch.

After a few tense moments, the guard captain glanced at his warriors then waved a dismissive hand. They stepped back into position, and two of them went to unlock the gate and swing it open.

‘Get you gone,’ he said, gesturing them through. ‘I can stand your stench no longer.’

Zenthe led them from the shadows of the arena and out into the city streets. The sun was down, and the corsairs and slave traders had retired from their business to indulge their passions. Enticing smells and sounds emanated from each doorway, and lurid depictions of every imaginable vice were painted across walls and dangling signs. As they wound deeper into the Eternity of Torment, the aura of debauchery only became more intoxicating. There was a fug of incense that enveloped everything, seeping into the lungs and addling the brain. Androgynous, painted figures wound themselves seductively around gleaming pillars, beckoning passing corsairs into the depths of pleasure houses and smoking halls. Screams of pain and ecstasy melded together into a chorus of pure sensation.

‘I could get used to this place,’ said Dherva, hunger in her eyes as she took in the thrilling decadence on display.

‘You’d drown in it,’ said Zenthe, shouldering aside a pair of male aelves dressed in sheets of gossamer-thin silk who were dabbing their tongues with vials of gleaming metal. ‘Believe me.’

She couldn’t deny that, even after all she knew about this place, the Pleasure Quarter still excited her with its illicit dangers and endless ecstasies. Yet behind all of the shimmering temptation, it was only another of her father’s traps. Nothing occurred within these streets that Zarkand Zenthe did not hear of. His spies and assassins stalked these halls at will, pruning potential enemies and extracting secrets to feed back to their master. And yet, the fleetmasters and corsair nobles that flocked to the black ark could not help but indulge themselves, for here they believed themselves truly free. Out there, on the fringes of Sigmar’s rising empire, they were forced to exist under the commandments of the God-King. Certainly the Scourge cartels and black market privateers twisted and even broke those rules in accordance with their needs – Zenthe herself would have been strung up above Excelsis’ Square of Judgement years ago if the Freeguild could trace half of her money-making enterprises back to the Thrice Lucky. Slavery, piracy, the trade of illicit artefacts – these practices still took place, but the Scourge was not foolish enough to openly invite the wrath of Sigmar’s Stormhosts. Not yet, anyhow.

That submission was anathema to the masters of the waves, descendants of the corsair empires that had thrived and prospered during the Age of Myth. It itched at them like an old wound. For all her father’s cunning and skill at war, it was his understanding of the Scourge fleetmasters’ bitterness and boundless ambition that had always been his greatest weapon. Here he had created a world of uninhibited abandon, a message to every shipmaster that docked here: we lived like this once and we can do so again.

Shackled and painted slaves of all races lined the streets, guarded by elaborately masked guards with whips and spiked clubs. They gazed into nothing as the riotous carnival swirled around them. Already broken.

Ahead, the cavern opened up and starlight beamed down across the city. Beyond the pleasure houses rose the grand spires of the fleetmasters’ residences, six towers of twisting iron reaching up towards the open sky like the arms of some pelagic monstrosity, banners fluttering from their clawed parapets. At the centre of this cluster was a central column of black stone, a thick-walled keep at the very heart of the Eternity of Torment. Its sheer walls were connected to the six surrounding steeples by dozens of curving bridges and walkways. At the apex of the tower was a statue of an armoured aelf resting upon a throne of screaming flesh, the subjugated races of the Mortal Realms helpless beneath his iron boots.

‘Kar Narakath,’ said Zenthe. ‘The Tyrant’s Rise. The house of my father.’

They climbed a stair and found themselves on a raised plaza overlooking the palatial district. There was a perimeter wall of stone rising some ninety feet into the air, cutting the lower city off from the highborn grounds.

Garsh cursed as he craned his neck to peer at the highest reaches of the great fortress, occluded by a swirl of sea mists drifting in over the black ark’s walls.

‘By the deep,’ he muttered, scratching at his scarred cheek. ‘There’s no breaching that. Not with just the few of us.’

Dozens of guards patrolled the perimeter wall, and they could see more marching in lockstep across the grounds of the great spires. There was no cover to be had beneath the eyes of Kar Narakath, only an enormous square of polished stone.

‘There is,’ said Zenthe with a feral smile. ‘We climb.’

Chapter Five

Every gouged-out handhold in the cavern wall sent a rush of memories flooding back to Arika Zenthe. It was her and Levrid who had first found this secret route out of Tyrant’s Rise. They had every stretch of the upper levels etched in their minds, every patrol route and shadowed corner. They both knew that their father’s health was failing again, and soon he would take one of them. They were the last of Zarkand Zenthe’s heirs, and the old wretch would sire no more. Their fate was marked.

She had borne no great love for Levrid. He was too much like his father, devious and cruel. But he was kin. And so, together, they had plotted to escape Zarkand’s reach, waiting for the right moment to put their plan into action.

Waiting too long, as it turned out.

No, she had never liked Levrid, but the sounds he made as his heart was torn from his body would never leave her. So she would kill her father to avenge him. And for the others, the doomed bloodline of Zenthe.

Working her fingers into a gouge in the rock side, she glanced down. They were making good progress. They were several hundred feet above the main courtyard, perhaps halfway to the highest levels of Tyrant’s Rise. The city fell away beneath them, the sprawl of brothels, fighting pits and taverns lit by the violet glow of the stalactites. The palace guard were little more than specks.

Below her, she could see the Sayronite. He was no graceful climber, but he clung on determinedly, knife between his teeth and hands scrabbling for purchase on the slick stone. He looked up and met her gaze, and she saw fierce resolve. Death no longer meant anything to that one. Only revenge.

Perhaps more surprising still was the other human, the one called Guinmark. He moved with agile grace despite his diminutive size, easily shifting from handhold to handhold, seemingly unconcerned about the yawning drop beneath him.

‘How much further?’ Guinmark asked her, levering his body to the side so he could glance up at the ascent ahead.

‘We’re close,’ she said, and hauled herself up onto the next ledge. A flock of shadowbats objected to her presence, launching themselves into the air in a squawking cloud. With enough space to press her body in and face the rising towers, she looked up. Ahead, perhaps another two hundred feet above them, a thin, stone bridge reached out from the nearest tower into the cliff face. The swirling cloud of bats spiralled up into the night sky, still screeching in irritation.

Guinmark hauled himself up beside her.

‘So what are you?’ she said, studying his ugly little face.

‘Merely a humble actor, my lady,’ he said, and shot her a grin.

‘That’s a contradiction in terms, in my experience.’

He chuckled and rubbed his hands together in a frantic gesture that made him look almost exactly like a bilge rat.

‘While the stage is my true passion, I have developed a number of other skills over the years. One must keep oneself fed and clothed, you understand?’

‘So you’re a thief?’

He winced. ‘To me that term implies a level of amateurism I’m not entirely comfortable with. I am – or I was – a liberator of treasures. A larcenist. And a rather exceptional one.’

‘Who knows, you might come in useful after all.’

With that, Zenthe reached up to search for another handhold, set her boots upon the cliff face and hauled herself up. By now they were high enough that the sea air drifting in over the black ark’s wall wetted their clothes and seeped into their eyes. Each grip became treacherous, and their feet skidded across the slick surface of the cavern wall.

More than once Zenthe felt a thrill of fear as she scrabbled for a grip and felt her fingers slip across wet rock. Yet she clung on grimly, and with every passing moment the stone bridge loomed closer.

As she finally reached the base of the walkway, she heard the sound of iron boots approaching. Tucking herself into the shadows of the archway, Zenthe listened to a patrol of perhaps six or seven guards pass across the bridge towards the nearest tower. She waited several moments, precariously perched, her muscles screaming with pain as she held her position.

Then she reached up to wrap her fingers around a fiendish gargoyle carved into the base of the stone bridge, and pulled herself up. Her entire body ached terribly, and her fingers were raw and bleeding. But they had made it. She crouched, turning to peer into the tunnel leading into the cliff face. It was smooth and polished, lit by luminescent stonework. Beyond, she could hear the crashing of waves, and a chill wind whistled through the winding channel.

Guinmark emerged next, followed by Oscus. The first mate drew his sword and glanced down the tunnel. He looked at Zenthe, questioningly.

‘It leads to the sea wall, and the reaper bolt towers,’ she explained. ‘My father’s lair is that way.’

She gestured across the bridge. There was the grasping claw of one of the ancillary towers, reaching up to curl around Kar Narakath. The highest reaches of the great fortress were only a hundred feet or so above them, connected by another walkway, this one seemingly carved from lengths of bleached bone.

They waited for the others to emerge, then reached down to grab them and pull them up one by one. Zenthe counted them off. Still the full dozen warriors. Though their long ascent had clearly taken its toll, they were all in fighting shape.

‘From here on in you kill anyone who looks our way,’ she said, drawing her blades. ‘Move swiftly and show no mercy. There’s only one way this ends now. Once I’ve taken my father’s head, this place is ours.’

They nodded, hunger in their eyes. The Eternity of Torment was a prize worthy of legend, and they all wanted a piece of it. Zenthe grinned fiercely.

‘Let us go and slaughter an old man.’

They passed across the bridge of stone and entered the tower. A winding stairway lit by smouldering braziers led up. Zenthe heard the sound of descending boots and raised a hand to signal the others. Dherva knelt, aiming her repeater crossbow.

Two guards emerged, plumed helmets fashioned in the image of a kraken’s tentacles. Dherva’s first shot took the leading aelf in the face, and slammed him back against the wall. He crashed into his companion, who tumbled with a yell of surprise. Dherva stood, calmly, and fired another two bolts into him as he tried to struggle upright.

Zenthe was already moving, taking the stairs two at a time. She turned the corner and found herself face to face with another masked guard. Her left-hand blade smashed away the aelf’s spear, and her right sank into his chest. He gurgled and spat blood, slumping to the floor.

Finally, they emerged into starlight.

The bridge of bone swayed and creaked ahead of them. Beyond was a crown of spiked iron, and above, the statue of the tyrant glared down at them from his throne of tortured victims. Gouges in the sheer face of Kar Narakath bled soft, orange light into the early morning gloom. Her father’s chambers were occupied. Zenthe’s hands trembled with anticipation. Soon, it would all be over. No longer would she fear her father’s shadow. No longer would she hear the screams of Levrid as his flesh parted and his soul was flayed from his body.

‘Now it ends,’ she said.

She strode across the bridge of carved bones. Mounted on pikes along the walkway were mouldering aelven skulls. Those foolish enough to contest the will of Zarkand Zenthe.

At the far end of the bridge was a door of wrought iron, marked with her father’s sigil: a kraken rising from the sea, its immense tentacles encircling a doomed city. She pushed the door open and entered the room beyond, her crew hard on her heels.

Seven figures sat around a circular table of carved stone. Her father reclined at the head of the table upon a throne bound in tanned skins – human, duardin and aelven, the flesh of his enemies. He raised a glass of amber spirit as she entered, and his voice rang out across the hall.

‘Ah, there you are, Arika. So good of you to join us.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Zenthe saw figures rise up on a balcony above the dining chamber, crossbows in their hands, and she opened her mouth to shout a warning. She didn’t even see the strike coming. Something hit her in the side of the neck, numbing her muscles and sending her staggering to the floor. She heard the snap-click of crossbow levers, and a piercing scream cut short moments later.

Vision blurred and swaying, Zenthe saw her crew surrounded by armed guards. Phalen and Krossk were down, riddled with crossbow bolts. The Sayronite was slumped, pierced through the forearm by a black-feathered arrow. Oscus had a spear tip at his throat. He met her eyes and shook his head.

A tall, pale figure circled Zenthe like a vharnskor waiting for its prey to bleed out. An aelf, her hair slick with gore and pulled up into a severe top-knot on her angular skull.

‘You should have stayed far away from here, girl,’ said High Priestess Vhorskaya.

Zenthe struck out with her leading blade, but her movement was sluggish, her shoulder aching from the opening strike. The aelf swatted her forearm aside contemptuously, caught her wrist and twisted. Pain shot up Zenthe’s arm, and she lost her grip on the weapon. A fist lashed in and flattened her nose. She tasted blood. A sickening flurry of blows followed, rattling across her ribs and driving the air from her lungs.

Snarling through the pain, Zenthe snapped out a leg and her boot struck soft flesh. There was a hiss, more of annoyance than pain, as her opponent stumbled just slightly. Though the witch aelf was little more than a white blur, Zenthe charged forward with a yell and shoulder-barged her opponent to the floor. Vhorskaya’s cruel face swam into vision, and Zenthe aimed a punch. Too slow. Slippery as an eel and terribly strong, the witch aelf rolled her body under Zenthe’s, locking a leg around the fleetmaster’s neck and slamming her head into the carpeted floor.

Something sharp slid into Zenthe’s side, lighting an agonising fire in her belly. The pain was indescribable. More than a knife wound. It felt as if a thousand flensing knives were stripping the skin from her body. Slowly, blessedly, the terrible sensation receded, and she was left crumpled and dazed upon the floor. Vhorskaya’s face loomed over her. The witch aelf’s perfect nose was flattened against her cheek, and her black eyes shone with a killing light. Her daggers were in her hands now, twinkling in the firelight.

‘Not so pretty now, eh, priestess?’ Zenthe said, and gave a cackle of laughter that earned her a vicious kick in the ribs.

‘Filthy cur,’ hissed Vhorskaya, holding the tip of her blade a hair’s breadth from Zenthe’s eye.

‘Enough,’ came Zarkand Zenthe’s voice. Even with the ringing in her head, Arika thought it sounded strange. Thin and rasping, like the voice of a man denied water for too many days. ‘Get her up.’

Vhorskaya leaned down and hauled the fleetmaster to her feet. Arika stared into the face of her father.

He looked like death. Though his eyes were the piercing orbs of silver she remembered, his once handsome face was now sallow and stretched, like that of a week-old corpse. Purple-black veins stood out along his neck and crept up to his temples, and his long hair – once raven black – was now a sheet of white hanging lifelessly over his shoulders. He wore a crimson tunic with a long robe of sable, and somehow the rich fabric made him look even more like a dead thing; a corpse draped in finery, risen from its tomb to haunt the living.

‘Father,’ she said, ignoring the pain that knifed through her at every word. ‘You look like dreck.’

Zarkand Zenthe smiled, an expression that did not reach his eyes.

‘It has been so long. I have missed your sharp tongue very much, my daughter.’

Zenthe spat blood onto the floor and stared at the man she had sworn to kill. If her life ended here, she vowed she would give the old wretch no satisfaction. No screams, no pleading for mercy. Only contempt.

Zarkand sighed. He gestured to Vhorskaya and the witch aelf, none too gently, shoved Arika into the only empty chair at the table.

For the first time, she took in the seven figures sitting alongside her. To her surprise, she recognised some of them. To her left, was Dreiloch Nar, Ravager-Queen of the Molten Spoil who hailed from the quicksilver oceans of Chamon. Opposite was the leering, one-eyed visage of Sawfang Sakur, a Ghurrite corsair that Zenthe had dealt with on several fraught occasions. His face was a melted nightmare of scars and burns, the legacy of a life spent hunting the rarest and most lethal monsters of the realmseas. To the right, twirling a goblet and wearing an amused grin, was Vizrin Kyre of Hammerhal. He offered her a nod as she glanced at him. Another one of her acquaintances, as trustworthy as a hungry bloodfish, and twice as deadly. The others she did not recognise, though they were all undoubtedly members of the Scourge.

‘I regret the circumstances of your arrival,’ said Zarkand, once more taking his seat at the head of the table. ‘But nonetheless, I welcome you to the Twilight Cabal. Our gathering of like-minded shipmasters, here to discuss the advancement of our business and our way of life.’

The pain still throbbed in Zenthe’s belly, but the wound was shallow. Her head was beginning to clear, though she expected to have several painful bruises by the morning. If she managed to live that long.

‘You knew I was coming.’ It was not a question.

Zarkand sighed. ‘You are disappointingly predictable, daughter. I merely had to seed word of my presence in the right places, and here you are. You still wish me dead after so many years, Arika?’

She leaned forward and fixed him with an even stare.

‘Yes.’

Her father laughed, a horrible sound like crushed glass. ‘Well, perhaps someday you will get your wish. But not today, I fear. No, instead you will sit and you will listen to what I have to say.’

He stood, placed his hands upon the stone surface of the table, and met her eyes.

‘Once our kind ruled the waves. Not just in this once benighted corner of the realms, but across the infinite expanse of reality. We bowed to no one. We answered to neither gods nor kings. We took what we wanted – flesh, treasure and coin. When any rose up to challenge the Scourge, they were butchered, their lands despoiled. Their children carried off into bondage. They feared us, those weaklings who huddle in their cities, praying to an uncaring god. They saw us in their darkest nightmares, and they paid tribute or felt our wrath.’

Zarkand’s voice had risen to a crescendo. His pallid skin was momentarily flushed with colour. He held a clenched fist high, and slammed it down upon the table.

‘Even Sigmar knew he could not contain our fury. Our empires rose across the realms.’

‘Rose and fell,’ said Zenthe, leaning back in her chair and placing a filth-encrusted boot on the edge of the table. ‘No matter how many grand speeches you give, it doesn’t change the truth of things. Those times are over.’

Sawfang Sakur, seated across from her and to her father’s right, snorted in disgust. His many piercings rattled as he shook his hideously scarred head.

‘You’re wasting your time, Zarkand,’ he said, leaning forward and exposing a row of white teeth filed to razor-sharp points. ‘Her soul has been tamed. Too much time in the company of the God-King’s whelps. Were she my kin, I would have her flayed and thrown to the ghyresharks.’

‘Still sore about those lost shipments, Sakur?’ said Zenthe, flashing the savage corsair a smile of her own. ‘Those lassitor hides earned me a fine reward on the black market. So careless of you to blunder into my waters, Sawfang.’

The scar-faced aelf snarled in outrage and made to draw his saw-toothed blade from its sharkhide scabbard.

‘Our moment has come,’ snapped her father, fixing Sakur with a piercing stare. Reluctantly the corsair captain retook his seat. ‘And it will begin here, in this very room. The city of Izalend lies to the south, no more than five days sailing. We will take it in one strike and make of it a stronghold in these seas. The first conquest of a new empire.’

Zenthe laughed. ‘I always knew you were insane, father, but this is a fine new delusion. You think your fleets can pass the Everflame that guards Izalend?’ She snorted. ‘A wall of hungry fire that encircles the entire city? Even the Eternity of Torment would burn to ashes before it ever reached Izalend’s harbour.’

Zarkand smiled. The expression stretched the skin of his face hideously, pulling the corner of his eyelids back to reveal bloodshot orbs. He stood and strode across to where Zenthe’s crewmates were slumped, surrounded by trident-wielding guards. He ignored Oscus and the other aelves, instead looking to the two human slaves. Guinmark was prostrate, his face bowed to the floor in supplication. The Sayronite stared back at Zarkand Zenthe with hate in his eyes.

‘You have grown too comfortable in the presence of these creatures,’ said the lord of the black ark. ‘These crude apes. You have even allowed some of them passage upon your vessel, so I am told. A witch hunter, no less. Long has the Order of Azyr sought to keep the Scourge chained to the God-King’s will.’

He leaned down, his face only a few inches from the Sayronite. There was utter contempt upon his face, as if he were staring at sewer vermin.

‘Your friend here knows his place,’ he said to the burly human. ‘On the ground beneath our feet. That is where your kind belong.’

The Sayronite burst into motion, tearing the arrow from his forearm and screaming as he thrust it at Zarkand Zenthe’s face.

The lord of the black ark’s hand shot out and caught the human’s meaty fist. The Sayronite was nearly twice the size of his opponent, but veins popped out on his neck as he tried to force back Zarkand’s arm, to no avail. Zenthe’s father twisted the Sayronite’s hand until there was a loud, wet snap. The human howled but still continued to struggle, trying to wrap his good arm around the aelf’s throat.

‘Pathetic,’ said Zarkand Zenthe.

He took hold of the Sayronite’s neck and wrenched viciously. There was another crunching sound, and the man’s head was twisted almost fully around. His lifeless body toppled to the floor.

Zarkand returned to the table, wiping his hand distastefully upon his robes.

‘No longer will I stand to take orders from humans. That is why I have invited you to our little gathering, my dear daughter. I know how to quench the fires of the Everflame. How to render Izalend as helpless as a newborn. And you are going to help me do it.’

There it was. That tone of arrogant certainty that had always filled her with bile. Like he was giving orders to a lowly slave. It had been centuries since she had allowed anyone to speak to her with such disdain, and the urge to scale the table and launch herself at him was almost irresistible. She took a breath and banished the thought. Not here. Not yet.

‘Why would I help you do anything?’ she said.

‘Because within the week, that poison coursing through your veins will dissolve you from the inside out unless I grant you the antidote. Which I have in my possession.’

His smile faded. ‘You will travel to the Druichan, the forest that lies beyond the borders of Izalend. Within lies an artefact of rare value – the Heart of Winter. It is an ancient relic of the forest folk, imbued by the Everqueen herself with the breath of the coldest seasons. Old magic to rival that which powers the Everflame. You will bring this item to me, and then – perhaps – I might allow you to live. Even serve as one of my own High Fleetmasters, in the new order that will rise by my hand.’

‘Even if you somehow manage to take Izalend, the God-King will–’

‘We do not serve,’ hissed Zarkand, and there was the light of madness in his eyes. ‘We do not bow our heads like beaten hounds and scurry at Sigmar’s heels. Our birthright is dominion. Our legacy is conquest. These realms are ours for the taking, daughter, if only we have the nerve to reach out and seize them.’

‘You dream of another world,’ said Zenthe. ‘I live in this one. You think the Stormcasts will ignore our sedition? You think the God-King will not send a thousand armies to see your fledgling empire burned to ashes?’

‘You know well enough how the war against the Dark Gods goes. The wolves are slavering at the door, and the Azyrites can barely muster enough forces to hold on to their petty gains. Izalend will fall. We shall have our stronghold in the north, and fleetmasters from every corner of the realms will flock to our banners. This fortress is not the only black ark that stalks the realmseas, Arika. With only the Eternity of Torment I could hold these waters for months against any fleet the Azyrites might send. Let them come, if they can scrape together the numbers. Let them brave these waters when I have a thousand sails at my command, with a dozen black arks united in one cause. I would bleed them pale before they ever came in sight of Izalend.’

Another convulsion wracked Zenthe’s body. She coughed, and when she wiped her mouth the back of her hand was smeared with scarlet. Her father sat back in his throne and took another sip from his goblet.

‘The pain will pass,’ he said. ‘Eventually.’

‘Pain is nothing to the focused mind. You taught me that.’

‘Other than that, you should be unimpaired. For the next ten days at least. After that, well. Things will begin to get very unpleasant. I shall spare you the details, Arika.’

‘You’re too kind, father. I only wish that someday I have the chance to repay you.’

Zarkand gave a thin smile. He unfurled one of the scrolls on the desk. It was a crudely drawn map showing the city of Izalend and the surrounding area. The port was settled into a deep bay, the Everflame forming a semicircle of fire across the water. The burning circle continued on to land, and its fires had cleared a small expanse of barren tundra around the city. Beyond that, there was nothing but thick forest.

Zarkand gestured to the swathe of green ink and indicated a frozen ridge that protruded from the forest like the skeleton of a downed dragon.

‘This is where the Heart of Winter lies,’ he said. ‘At the heart of a shattered palace, the remnant of an ancient glade. The forest folk guard it ferociously. Many have sought this treasure at the cost of their lives.’

‘You’ve already sent agents to claim it?’ asked Zenthe.

‘I have. I believe the last was flayed alive and staked outside the forest for all to see. A warning to any who might trespass into sylvaneth land.’

‘Disagreeable creatures, those forest folk,’ said Vizrin Kyre, lounging on the seat to Zenthe’s right. He flashed her a white-toothed smile.

‘And why have you yourself not gone to claim this prize, dear father?’

Zarkand’s eyes flicked to High Priestess Vhorskaya, just momentarily. Zenthe noted that with interest.

‘I have much to occupy my attention here,’ he said. ‘With every passing day more fleetmasters heed my call. Soon, my armada will rival anything the Sigmarites can muster. No, this task is yours, daughter. You will sail at first light. I shall spare the rest of your crew’s life. You will need them, where you are going.’

Zarkand nodded at Vizrin Kyre, who produced a small, square metal lockbox. It was unmarked, devoid of ornamentation, yet when Zenthe looked upon it she had to suppress a wave of nausea.

‘A rarity from my own collection,’ said Kyre. ‘Lined with nullstone. Do you know of the substance, Arika?’

‘I know enough. A substance imbued with the nothingness that dwells in the Great Void. It dampens magic, so I’ve heard.’

Kyre nodded. ‘And it’s rather expensive, my dear, so try not to misplace it. This should keep the power of the sylvaneth artefact smothered, at least long enough to bring it back to the Eternity of Torment.’

Zarkand approached her, resting a hand upon her shoulder. The sickly-sweet smell of perfume could not mask the stench of decay that emanated from her father. His skin was thickly powdered, and his breath smelled like grave dirt.

‘Bring me the Heart of Winter, Arika, and we both shall oversee a new age of glory for our people. Fail me and you will die in agony.’

Chapter Six

They left the Eternity of Torment behind as the first spears of dawn broke through the sea mists. Zenthe’s crew was quiet. Angry. At her, and at the humiliation they had suffered. She kept her hands close to her blades. A fleetmaster quickly learned to read the mood of her crew or else her career was a brief and tragic one. Zenthe’s sea-wolves were loyal as any corsairs could be but they were still creatures of unsentimental opportunity. If she wavered, they would go for her throat.

‘You win again, father,’ she muttered, leaning against the forerail and peering through the pall of fog that swirled about the ship. ‘For now, at least.’

She had spent most of the day nursing her wounds and her savaged pride. The tear in her gut kept up a constant pulse of agony. When she looked at the wound, she saw black tendrils of corruption already creeping across her pale flesh.

‘Ah, bracing sea air!’ said Malvo Guinmark, rubbing his hands together and grinning broadly. He was clad head to toe in clothes scavenged from the hold of the Blood Drake, his thin form swallowed by so many layers of thick fur that he looked more like a bear cub than a human. Only his face was exposed, his thin hair whipping in the wind.

‘You’re in an irritatingly chipper mood,’ said Zenthe.

‘Freedom is a wonderful tonic,’ the man said, tipping her a wink.

She narrowed her eyes, and his grin faltered just slightly.

‘Of course, your own situation is hardly a cause for good humour,’ he added, hurriedly. ‘But rest assured, my lady, Malvo L’Polche Guinmark always settles his debts. You have freed me, and in return I shall do whatever I can to aid you.’

‘Fires on the water,’ shouted the lookout.

At last, thought Zenthe. It had been a hard day’s sailing, through vicious conditions. She had pushed the Blood Drake and its crew hard. Time was a precious resource in her current predicament.

‘The Everflame of Izalend,’ said Malvo, stepping to the forward gunwale. ‘I thought I would never lay eyes upon it again.’

The great wall of fire rose twice the size of a sailing ship, bathing the horizon in amber light. It was connected by several towers that rose out of the water, seemingly impervious to the blazing heat. Smaller motes orbited those golden spires, rising above the water and crackling with arcane energies. The towers encircled Izalend like a warding circle.

Half a league beyond the wall of fire loomed the city itself, the heat of the Everflame causing it to shimmer like a reflection on the surface of a lake. Its walls rose from the water in a series of concentric rings, and at the highest point stood a great fortress, a rugged wedge of white stone dotted with crenellated towers and fluttering banners of silver and gold. It stared imposingly out across the waves.

As they neared the wall of fire, they saw the great Gate of Martyrs, the entranceway to the city of Izalend. It was an archway of gleaming gold that held the flames at bay, wide enough for a dozen ships to pass through. Several balconies jutted from the towers that made up the archway, and gold-plated warriors could be seen lining the parapet of each. These ramparts were lined with cannon and organ guns, their muzzles sweeping the narrow opening.

‘Izalend’s never once been put to siege,’ said Guinmark, and there was a hint of pride in his voice. ‘Oh, many have tried. Orruk junk flotillas drifting down from the Dhazarak Flow. Reaver hordes from the Taloncoast. None have ever passed through the Gate of Martyrs.’

‘I can see why,’ said Zenthe. ‘It’s naught but a deathtrap.’

‘I was a mere stripling when Tar Darag’s armada sailed on the city,’ said Malvo. ‘I remember sitting on the Pauper’s Wall, skinny little legs dangling over the side, watching the reaver-ships burn. They tried to swarm through the gate, but the Hearthguard raised the chains and closed it on them. Then the guns opened up. All night you could hear the screams drift in over the water. We put bets on how many ships would burn, but lost count after the fiftieth. The water ran blood-red for days.’

‘If the flames die, that gateway’s nothing more than an inconvenience,’ said Zenthe. ‘The Eternity of Torment can simply sail around it and beyond the angle of those cannons.’

Guinmark glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

‘We could warn them,’ he said. ‘Alert the Hearthguard.’

‘He would know. My father is bound to have spies in the city. If we do anything foolish, I sign my own death warrant.’ She fixed him with a glare, looking to defuse any foolish notions that might be creeping into the man’s head.

‘And you will keep silent and say nothing to anyone about what you have seen or heard. If you spill even a word of the truth, I will kill you. Very slowly and incredibly painfully. And I will hang your flayed corpse from the mainmast for all to witness. Do you understand me, human?’

‘With the utmost clarity,’ he replied, with a queasy grin. ‘But really, Lady Zenthe, your concern is unwarranted. I said that I would aid you, and I shall.’

‘What do you know of an artefact called the Heart of Winter?’

Guinmark frowned and was silent for a while.

‘It sounds somewhat familiar, but I can’t place it,’ he said at last, with a shrug.

‘It’s some form of relic of the sylvaneth, the folk of the forests. My father believes it lies in the depths of the Druichan. He wants me to find it and take it to him.’

‘Well, I may not be able to tell you much, but I know an aelf who can. No one within a thousand leagues knows more about the wilds of these lands than he. If your Heart of Winter exists, he’ll know of it.’

A steady stream of ships was pulling into the shadow of the great gate. The Blood Drake joined them, drifting in behind a pair of duardin steamcogs that spat torrents of foul-smelling smoke into the air. Izalend’s trade lanes were nowhere near as busy as those of Excelsis, but there was a fair amount of traffic for such a remote city. Smaller ships wove around the hulking forms of galleons and cargo hulks like pilot fish, and Zenthe could see small flotillas of twin-masted whaling smacks drifting off into deeper waters beyond the city, fur-clad sailors hustling across the decks carrying harpoons and coils of thick rope.

The Gate of Martyrs loomed overhead. At the base of the arches, a harbour wall rose out of the sea, forming a narrow canal through which the flow of ships passed in two columns. This was the only entrance to Izalend by sea, and it was heavily defended. Guards strode along this jetty carrying long-barrelled muskets, apparently unbothered by the raging flames mere feet away. They wore conical fur hats with hauberks of silver chain and well-forged breastplates of gold. Some were leaning against long billhooks, gazing with expressions of boredom at the passing traffic.

‘They’re slack,’ muttered Oscus, leaning on the forerail and watching the movement of the troops. ‘Complacent.’

Zenthe nodded. She had never had a high opinion of the Excelsis Freeguild, but the constant attacks that ravaged the City of Secrets had at least fostered in them a level of preparedness and basic discipline. These Hearthguard looked like they hadn’t seen action in years. Indeed, that was likely the case.

‘Safe behind their wall of flames,’ she said. ‘They think no one’s foolish enough to attack Izalend by sea.’

They passed under the archway, and through the wall of fire, which cast a flickering light across the deck.

‘What magic is this?’ asked Oscus, his voice betraying just a flicker of awe.

‘Damned if I know,’ said Malvo. ‘But the towers have stood for thousands of years, it’s said. In the days of myth, the Everflame safeguarded another city, far grander than this one. But when the God-King retreated to Azyr, the fires went out. The city was sacked and burned by sea reavers, daemons and all manner of horrors, and that was that. Until old Sigmar returned to the realms, of course. His wizards rekindled the Everflame with a spark from the Six Smiths’ forge, and Izalend was built over the ruins of what came before.’

They neared the harbour wall, drifting through a forest of ships’ masts, the city of Izalend filling the sky ahead. Steam drifted in off the water, a shroud of sea smoke that curled around the edges of the harbour jetties and gave everything a hazy, dream-like quality. The warmth of the wall of flames did not reach as far as the city’s walls, however. Icicles the length of swords dangled from the underside of the docking berths, and there was a light drift of snow. The harbour was a modest affair compared to the sprawling docks of the great cities, but it thrummed with activity. Lining the wharf were merchants and tradesmen of all description, hollering offers at the sailors filtering by. The smell of smoked fish and spices drifted in across the bay, and Guinmark gave a sigh of satisfaction.

‘A bite to eat and a change of clothes, I think,’ he said cheerily. ‘Then a spot of revenge to cleanse the palate.’

Zenthe laid a finger upon the man’s chest.

‘Remember why you are here, Guinmark,’ she said. ‘I’ve got seven days to return to my father with what he wants.’

‘I can help you, Lady Zenthe,’ said Guinmark. ‘But not while another sits in my place as thiefmaster of this city. You help me with this little problem, and I promise you that I will move the heavens themselves to aid you in return.’

The Blood Drake nestled into a berth at the leftmost corner of the docks, and the corsairs dropped anchor and began lashing mooring lines to the great iron hoops protruding from the jetty. Two of the crew slid the gangplank into place, and Arika Zenthe took her first steps into the city of Izalend. The smell of woodsmoke and fresh fish met her nose, a not entirely unpleasant aroma. Ahead, the docks opened into a main thoroughfare that wound its way up to the first of several concentric levels. Merchant stalls lined the muddy track, which was dusted with a fine layer of snow. The streets were built high and narrow beneath those alabaster fortifications, ramshackle huts of wood and stone crammed on top of each other in typically artless human style.

‘Welcome to the place of my birth,’ said Guinmark, and there again was that note of pride. ‘Port Izalend, the White City. Not a metropolis to rival Sigmar’s greatest creations, perhaps, but she is beautiful enough, is she not?’

‘Awe-inspiring,’ said Zenthe. ‘Now tell me whose throat I have to slit to get what I need.’

Chapter Seven

The servant girl was a pretty one and her hands were soft and supple, but she might as well have been massaging Yhorsk Casran with a lump of wood, for all the good it did. He lay there, oiled and steamed like a hogfish ready for the dinner table, trying to relax his tired muscles and growing increasingly frustrated at his inability to do so.

The life of a master of Izalend’s thieves’ guild was, it turned out, not an entirely soothing one.

Those money-grabbing rogues in the Freeguild were demanding more lucrative bribes, crowing about increased crackdowns on corruption from the office of the High Arbiter. The Oilboys and the Icehearts had kicked off another turf war through simple boredom, and he’d have to get their leaders together and broker some kind of peace before they all killed each other. There was nothing quite so bad for business as a turf war. By the God-King, even the amberglass trade was suffering, with another dozen of his smugglers missing in the last few months, likely snatched away by the forest folk after straying too deep into the Druichan.

He rubbed his sweaty face, and sighed. The girl went to rub the back of his neck, but he slapped her hand away irritably.

‘Bring me wine,’ he snapped. ‘And some of those honeyed goose livers.’

She curtsied awkwardly and hurried off. He sat up, then wandered over to the square pool of ice-cold water in the corner of the steam chamber and slipped in. The shock of the sudden cold was immensely refreshing.

Broukan, his bodyguard, stood impassively nearby with his burly arms crossed over his chest, resting near the handles of his twin axes. The duardin refused to leave his master’s side even when he went to the massage houses. At first, Yhorsk had found the silent killer’s presence somewhat disconcerting, but a number of foiled assassination attempts had changed his mind. Now his guardian followed him everywhere.

‘I don’t know how that old wretch Guinmark managed it,’ he sighed. ‘Ten years, I watched him run this city, and the bastard made it look easy. If I’d known what an arse-ache it would be, I might have never bothered overthrowing him.’

Broukan grunted. He was not a particularly eloquent soul, but then again that was hardly why Yhorsk had hired him.

‘If it’s not the alley gangs slaughtering each other for merriment, it’s the damned politicians and merchants gouging me for coin. I am the master of the thieves’ guild, for Sigmar’s sake. I should be out there robbing these old serpents blind, not paying them chests full of coin.’

He slipped back into the icy water, staring up at the mosaicked ceiling which depicted a bevy of nubile creatures performing illicit acts.

‘I miss the old game,’ he muttered. ‘Second-storey work. Loot jobs and heists. Now it’s all bribery and smuggling. The magic’s gone, I tell you.’

The door opened and the girl came back in, but now she was wearing a thick cloak of purple wrapped around her face. She approached, holding the tray of sweetmeats and a goblet of wine.

‘Is there a reason for the cowl?’ asked Yhorsk. ‘Because I don’t believe I’m paying you to walk around like one of the God-King’s priests.’

Broukan frowned and moved towards the girl. His hand was reaching for his axe.

‘There now,’ the duardin said, his ugly face screwed up in a frown. ‘What hav–’

The girl spun and slammed the tray into the duardin’s face. Wine splashed into Broukan’s eyes, and he grunted in surprise. The servant hit him again, making a sound like a crashing gong. Then she kicked him in the chest, sending him sprawling across the steam room. More figures rushed into the room just as Yhorsk began to scramble out of the ice pool, cursing and scrabbling for his robes hanging on the wall and the dagger he stored in his belt.

The girl shrugged off the veil, and he saw a thin, aelven face wearing an insouciant grin. She grabbed him by the shoulder and twisted him around, then planted a kick into his backside. He tumbled face first into the pool of water once again. Someone pulled him up by his hair. He gasped and spluttered in panic. Then he was thrown at the far wall, tumbling naked and bruised, his head spinning.

‘Do you know who I am?’ he gasped, blinking freezing water from his eyes. The aelf had removed her cloak and stood before him in a long, leather overcoat and breeches, swords hanging from her belt. She studied him with an indifferent gaze, and he did his best to cover his dignity. Broukan was sprawled in the opposite corner. Three wiry aelves stood over him, aiming hand crossbows at his chest.

‘I am the guildmaster of this city, fool,’ he hissed. ‘My men will already be swarming this place. Whoever you are, you’ve just signed your death warrant.’

‘Your men are either dead or otherwise occupied,’ said the aelf. ‘Whatever you’re paying those fools, I’d consider lowering it.’

Never one to stick with a dying cause, Yhorsk ploughed ahead. ‘I could pay you. A fortune. Coin beyond your wildest dreams.’

‘Coin,’ said the aelf with a sniff. ‘How prosaic.’

‘I’m afraid bribery is out of the question, old friend,’ came a cheerful voice, and Yhorsk’s blood ran cold. No, there was simply no way that…

Malvo Guinmark strode into the chamber, hands clasped behind his back and an unsettling grin upon his face. He looked different. Thin, and cruel. There was no mirth to his smile, and his eyes were flecks of pitiless stone.

‘You,’ choked Yhorsk.

‘Me,’ said Guinmark.

‘Malvo, I…’

‘Hush, hush, hush, Yhorsk. I understand, believe me. Betrayal is an inevitable repercussion of our trade. I myself betrayed my own mentor and usurped his place as master of the guild. But you know, old friend, there is a fundamental difference between you and I.’

Malvo Guinmark leaned down and stared into Yhorsk’s eyes.

‘I ensured that my rival was dead,’ he hissed. ‘Whereas you left me trapped in a living nightmare, but very much alive. That was exceedingly foolish of you. I expected far better from the man I was training to replace me.’

‘You were… what?’

‘Yes, you reeking sack of offal!’ Guinmark screeched. ‘You malodorous traitor. I had already made the preparations. I was planning to transfer control of the vaults and the gangs to you when you decided to stage your little coup. I was done. I was out. I was planning to try my hand at a little theatre, perhaps retire to a nice mansion with a few handsome lads to wait on me hand and foot. And then, a day before I deliver my life’s work into your grasping hands like the benevolent soul that I am, you burst into my chambers at early light with your gang of thugs, bundle me into a sack and trade me off to the flesh merchants!’

Guinmark’s face was red and spittle dangled from his mouth. He looked deranged.

‘Oh,’ croaked Yhorsk. ‘Erm… Sorry?’

It felt ridiculous even as he said it. All that plotting. All the blood that had been spilled on the streets of Izalend these last, long months, all for naught. The idea that Guinmark might have been preparing for a peaceful transition of power had never once entered his mind.

‘You will be bloody sorry!’ hissed Guinmark. ‘I am going to personally dedicate the rest of my life to ensuring your slow and agonising destruction.’

Guinmark landed a kick on Yhorsk’s chest, which knocked him on his back. Then he fell upon the guildmaster, his snarling face an inch from Yhorsk’s own.

‘But first, you’re going to help the Lady Zenthe here with a problem of her own. Now get up and put your robes on. We’ve got work to do.’

Broukan cleared his throat. The duardin was propped up on one elbow, wincing as he rubbed his bleeding scalp where the aelf had struck him.

‘Ah, Mister Hammerlung,’ said Guinmark, approaching the mercenary with his hands clasped behind his back. ‘What to do with you? I have heard a great deal about your abilities, though I must admit it irks me to see you working alongside this traitor.’

The duardin shrugged. ‘Job’s a job. He hired me after your little accident, for what it’s worth. Had no part in that.’

‘Indeed. As to the terms of your contract with Yhorsk here – are you a practical soul, I wonder? Or does your word of honour, once given, demand inadvisable loyalty to your employer, even in your current predicament?’

‘Ain’t much point to earning coin if you’re too dead to spend it,’ said Broukan, shrugging. ‘Way I see it, the fight’s done. You won.’

‘Enough talk,’ said Oscus, frowning. ‘We should just cut his throat and be done with it.’

‘Now, now, master aelf,’ said Guinmark. ‘One does not get to become thiefmaster by dint of ruthlessness alone. I find myself short of employees, Mister Hammerlung. There may be a potential position open for a capable bone-breaker such as yourself. After I take back what is rightfully mine.’

The guildhall of the Brotherhood of Larcenists was an unassuming structure hidden amidst the poorhouses propped against the Pauper’s Wall. At first glance it looked much like the other tumbledown shacks and grimy bawdy-houses. Larger, perhaps, but in a similar state of disrepair. Freezing water poured from clogged guttering, and around the stone steps to the front door were clustered several vagrants wrapped in tattered furs.

Zenthe saw through the facade, of course. Those beggars were rather too bulky for souls who had been living off the streets for months, and there was a flicker of movement on the ice-encrusted roof. No doubt watchmen ready to send down a hail of arrows on anyone causing trouble. Yhorsk squirmed at her side, and Zenthe gave his arm a sharp twist, causing him to yelp in pain.

She raised an arm, and a second later several fleet-footed shadows darted across the rooftops. There was no screaming or clashing of blades, but after a second or two she saw Oscus appear behind a crooked smokestack to signal the all clear.

One problem dealt with.

‘Take us in,’ she told Yhorsk, taking a firm hold around his neck. ‘Please, no dramatics. If you try anything, we’ll have to kill everyone in that building. After your good self, of course.’

She gave him a light shove, and he stumbled and skittered across the cobbles. Righting himself, he walked towards the door of the guildhall. Zenthe, Guinmark and six of her corsairs followed on behind, with the duardin Broukan offering little resistance as they ushered him along. In fact, the duardin seemed almost intrigued, observing the aelves’ actions with professional interest. They had taken his weapons for now, but Malvo had advised against killing the mercenary. Guinmark appeared to hold Broukan in rather high esteem.

The false beggars parted as Yhorsk made his way up the steps, though Zenthe caught the subtle shift as they readied daggers upon seeing the unexpected guests.

Yhorsk made a series of deft gestures with his fingers, and the hooded figures stepped back, eyeing Zenthe nervously but allowing her to pass. Even as they backed off, more of Zenthe’s crew appeared, slipping from the shadows with stilettos drawn. They were amongst the thieves in a flash, disarming them of their daggers and alley-bows, holding blades to their throats. It was all done swiftly and bloodlessly, as Zenthe had ordered. The last thing she wanted was a messy bloodbath on the city streets.

Yhorsk visibly paled as he saw his guards dealt with so swiftly. He rapped upon the door with trembling fingers, tapping out a distinct pattern. After a brief moment, the door yawned open.

‘Boss?’ came a guttural voice. Zenthe heard the sound of chains being unwound.

Zenthe stepped up and kicked the door hard. It slammed into something soft, and there was a yelp of pain. Grabbing Yhorsk by the throat and putting his fat body in between her and any potential missiles coming in her direction, Zenthe barged through the doorway. Inside, the grubby facade of the guildhall immediately gave way to gaudy luxury. The floor was tiled with Excelsian mosaics of shimmerstone that gleamed and glittered in the light of flickering sconces. Drapes of multicoloured silk swayed beneath stained-glass windows, and the ceiling was luxuriously gilded with patterns of gold and silver.

Sprawled on the floor, clutching a heavily bleeding nose, was a burly figure draped in robes of black and purple. He tried to scrabble backwards as the fleetmaster entered, but her corsairs were already rushing past, blades drawn. Garsh put his foot on the doorman’s chest, and gave a single shake of his head. Wisely, the supine man decided not to press the issue.

Still using Yhorsk as a human shield, Zenthe strode down the vaulted entranceway and entered a main hall circled by pillars of black marble. A bubbling fountain stood in the centre of the hall, shaped in the image of a set of golden keys.

The mumble of voices and shuffle of rushing boots filled the air. Black-cloaked figures poured from the upper levels, wielding billy-clubs and daggers, some yanking back the levers on handheld repeater bows. Zenthe’s corsairs tensed for battle, but before the thieves were halfway across the open hall, a hail of bolts whipped down from above. Oscus and his marksmen picked out those armed with ranged weapons, aiming for arms and limbs. Those struck by the missiles convulsed then lost control of their balance, toppling like felled logs, their bodies rigid and painfully contorted.

The remaining thieves hurled themselves behind cover, shouting in confusion.

‘That first volley was laced with spineshell venom,’ said Zenthe, her voice filling the hall. ‘It hurts like hellfire, but all it does is leave you paralysed for a few hours. Consider it a warning. Lay down your blades.’

There was a long silence, and then a voice came from behind the bannisters on the upper level.

‘We ain’t getting out of here alive if we surrender, are we? I know your kind, Scourge-witch. You’ll cut us into ribbons or sell us into slavery.’

Zenthe sighed.

‘Guinmark?’ she said. ‘Speak your piece and talk some sense into these fools, before I’m forced to paint this hall in their blood.’

The small man came forward, dramatically removing his scarf and gesturing like a stage actor awaiting applause.

‘Lay down your weapons, lads,’ he bellowed, a wide grin covering his face. ‘I, Malvo L’Polche Guinmark, have returned to claim my rightful seat as thiefmaster of Izalend.’

There was another long pause, until several cloaked heads peered over the top of the landing.

‘But… you’re dead,’ came another, nasal voice.

‘Evidently not,’ snapped Guinmark. ‘As much as Yhorsk Casran wishes it were so. Your traitorous dog of a thiefmaster betrayed me and sold me into bondage, but I have returned.’

He dragged Yhorsk forward and forced the trembling man to his knees.

‘Do you contest my leadership, Yhorsk?’ Guinmark said, bending an ear theatrically.

‘I yield,’ wheezed the fallen thiefmaster.

Chapter Eight

Guinmark gazed upon his former chambers with distaste. Yhorsk had stripped out all his tasteful Azyrite furnishings and replaced them with gaudy finery. His four-poster bed was gone. In its place lay a quagmire of drapes and pillows. Hookahs, empty bottles and smoke-pipes lay scattered about the room. The room stank of ash and sweat. Two servants stoked the great fire in the hearth of the thiefmaster’s chambers, snatching nervous glances at Arika Zenthe, who lounged in Guinmark’s favourite chair – one of the only pieces of furniture remaining from his collection. The aelf masked her discomfort well, but Guinmark noticed the slightest wince of agony as she laid one hand on her wounded stomach.

‘So, Yhorsk,’ said Guinmark, staring at his betrayer, who was chained and trembling on the lhorfskin rug that covered the floor. ‘We have already established that you have allowed the security of this guildhall to become fatally compromised. Three lookouts? A band of useless gutter-scroungers guarding the door? If I live for a hundred years, I will never understand how the alley gangs didn’t rise up against you.’

‘We paid them off,’ said Broukan, slumped in a chair by the window, puffing on a silver-plated hookah. The duardin mercenary had taken the change of leadership on board with the sort of resigned indifference common to those who offered out their blades for coin.

‘You… paid them?’ Guinmark repeated, horrified. ‘Those jumped-up guttersnipes pay us tribute, not the other way round.’

‘They rose up against us,’ said Yhorsk. ‘The Icehearts and the Oilboys both. Refused to hand over our due, and slaughtered our collectors whenever we tried to force the issue.’

Guinmark cursed and clawed at his temples. It had taken him more than a decade, many, many deaths and an unreasonable amount of plunder to finally corral the gangs of Izalend under his command. It would be even more difficult a second time.

‘Not as easy as I made it look, this business, eh, Yhorsk?’

He sighed and strode over to the window. Wiping away a patch of condensation, he stared out across the Frostwarrens. The snow was falling thicker than ever, and a pack of street youths were engaged in an escalating and brutal conflict using spheres of compacted ice. Snowshoe-wearing hunters traipsed through the slush of the main avenue with razor-seal carcasses on their backs, dripping trails of blood across the sparkling white ground.

‘Take him to the dungeon,’ said Guinmark, gesturing to two of his cutthroats. ‘Make him uncomfortable, but leave him alive. I am yet to think of a sufficient punishment.’

Yhorsk was dragged away, whimpering in protest. As he passed his former bodyguard, he made one last effort to slip from the grasp of his captors.

‘Broukan,’ he gasped, falling to his knees in front of his former bodyguard. ‘Please, I’ll give you anything you want, anything!’

Broukan glanced down at his former employer with an expression of distaste, slapping the man’s hand aside as he desperately grasped at the duardin’s boots.

‘Not enough treasure in the realms to make me fight that battle,’ he said. ‘You made your play, and you failed. I’m a hired axe, Yhorsk, not some damn fool Azyrite knight willin’ to die for his word. Ain’t nothing personal about it.’

With that, the despairing man was dragged away.

‘Your reputation precedes you, Mister Hammerlung,’ said Guinmark. ‘By all accounts you performed an admirable job protecting my traitorous predecessor, despite his best efforts to get himself killed. His current predicament can hardly be blamed upon you. I have work, if you are looking for it.’

Broukan shrugged, and tipped the ash from his pipe into the fire.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘As long as I’m paid, my axe is yours. If you’re headin’ into the Druichan, you’ll need it. No shortage of horrors in that place.’

With that he left the room, his heavy boots scuffing on the polished floors, leaving Guinmark alone with Fleetmaster Zenthe. She sighed, leaning back into Guinmark’s chair, and rested her boots upon his desk.

‘So that’s the murky underworld of Izalend conquered,’ she said. ‘A few hours short of a morning’s work. You’re back where you belong. Now it is time for you to repay my kindness and limitless patience.’

‘Of course,’ Guinmark said, feeling slightly aggrieved at the ease with which his operation had been dismantled. The Scourge had been playing these games for thousands of years, of course, but it was still an unpleasant wake-up call to discover how laughably outmatched the Larcenists had been by the crew of the Blood Drake.

‘I need a guide who knows the Druichan well,’ said Zenthe.

‘I know just the aelf,’ said Guinmark.

‘And I have a task for you, thiefmaster.’

Guinmark winced. He had hardly expected Zenthe to aid him out of the goodness of her heart, but he dreaded what was coming.

‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a woodsman,’ he said. ‘I would only slow you down and–’

‘And get yourself killed. I agree. Don’t worry, Guinmark, I think I can handle the horrors of the Druichan without you. No, I have something else in mind for you.’

A wave of relief washed over him. Then Arika Zenthe explained what she wanted, and it just as quickly evaporated.

‘Your man’s in here?’ said Oscus, staring up at the dilapidated church with a doubtful expression. It was a simple, wooden structure nestled into the back alleys of the dockside district, covered in a blanket of fine snow. The front door was old and mildewed, and the grounds were covered in detritus – broken bottles, old bones and shattered porcelain. The shadow of the Pauper’s Wall loomed overhead, casting the cramped alleyway in darkness even at this early hour.

‘Usually,’ said Guinmark, though even his signature confidence looked slightly shaken. ‘It’s been a while since we last talked. We… ah, didn’t quite see eye to eye on a number of issues.’

‘Another one of your trustworthy acquaintances?’

‘Gallanglaen is a unique individual. But there’s no finer tracker or huntsman in the city. And no one else knows the Druichan half as well. Just… be a little wary.’

Zenthe kicked the door open and shoved Guinmark inside.

The vestibule was empty. Rows of shattered pews were strewn across the vaulted chamber. Tufts of long grass poked up from beneath crumbling flagstones. Above, a ribcage of wooden beams criss-crossed over their heads. The ceiling beyond had fallen to ruin. The white sky shone through cavernous holes, and a steady fall of snow trickled into the hall.

‘Looks like no one’s lived here for years,’ said Oscus, peering around the shadowy structure.

‘Yes, it does seem to have taken a turn for the worse,’ muttered Guinmark.

At the far end of the hall was a shrine, beautifully carved from rich hardwood. Before it was a stone font, still filled with crystal-clear water. The shrine was fashioned in the image of a beautiful forest goddess, her eyes full of anger and sadness. In her hands she clutched a great spear, and around her knelt both aelves and humans, hands clasped together in supplication.

Unlike everything else in the church, the shrine was perfectly maintained. Zenthe ran a finger through the surface of the water, breaking apart a too-thin crust of ice.

‘Someone’s been here recently,’ she said.

Guinmark nodded. ‘Perhaps old Gallanglaen is out on the hunt. We should wait a while. He will return, I am sure of it.’

He sat down upon an upturned pew and began rubbing his hands together, his breath misting in the air.

An arrow whipped down from the shadows and sank into the wood a few inches beneath Guinmark’s groin. With a shriek of surprise, the thiefmaster toppled backwards, sprawling in the snow. Zenthe and Oscus were already spinning behind cover, pressing their backs against the carved pillars that dotted the room.

‘And so you come crawling back after all this time,’ came a drawling voice from high up in the rafters. ‘You little wretch.’

Zenthe risked a glance into the recesses of the roof. There, lying on his back on an arching beam, was a tall, thin figure. He wore a hood that masked his face, and he carried a great longbow almost as tall as he was. Not even bothering to stand upright, the figure bent the bow and loosed another arrow. It whipped across the hall and sank into the pillar a few inches from Zenthe’s head. She cursed and ducked back.

‘Are you drunk, Gallanglaen?’ yelled Guinmark, tucking himself in behind the fallen pew as best as he could manage.

‘Frequently,’ came the slurred voice again. Another arrow thunked into the pew next to Guinmark’s head. ‘Though I’m sober enough to put an oak shaft through your eyeball, you traitorous alley rat.’

‘Traitorous?’ said Guinmark, sounding genuinely hurt. ‘I’ve only ever done you right, aelf, and you know it.’

Thunk. Another arrow struck home, splitting the previous one into splinters.

‘Oh, yes. So you have. So noble of you to take pity upon a disgraced soul such as myself. Such a benevolent man you are, Malvo. For a while, at least, until I’m no longer useful. Then you send your thugs here to threaten me and burn down my home.’

‘That wasn’t me,’ shouted Guinmark. ‘Did you not even notice that I haven’t set foot in Izalend for almost a year? I’ve spent the last few months chained up in a slave pit, imbecile! You wish to see the scars?’

There was a silence, and then an audible belch.

‘And you’ve decided to give your captors a tour of the city?’ said the hooded aelf, at last. ‘My vision may be somewhat blurred by this rather cheap Elphasean wine, but I’d recognise Scourge corsairs anywhere. Honourless knaves, the lot of them.’

‘Well, I have to thank you for introducing me to this drunken fool,’ said Zenthe, glaring at Guinmark. ‘He’s tremendously entertaining. Now would you mind explaining to me why I shouldn’t kill him?’

‘This is Fleetmaster Arika Zenthe, of Excelsis,’ said Guinmark. ‘She helped me escape from my bondage. Now I aim to return the favour. But I need your help. What say you, old friend? I promise you, the rewards will be rich indeed.’

The reclining figure rolled off the edge of the beam, catching the edge with one hand and slipping neatly to the floor, only stumbling slightly upon landing. He pulled back his hood, revealing a thin, grey ridge of hair and a scalp tattooed with lines of flowing script. It was always hard to judge age with aelfkind, but the lines under the archer’s eyes spoke of many long, hard centuries of life. He drained the last of his bottle, winced, and hurled it against the far wall where it shattered into fragments.

‘Go on,’ he said.

Guinmark stood, brushing himself off and glaring at the archer.

‘Fleetmaster Zenthe is searching for something,’ he continued. ‘An artefact named the Heart of Winter, that legend has it lies in the depths of the Druichan.’

Gallanglaen’s eyes narrowed with interest. ‘And what would a corsair wish with such an item, I wonder?’

‘Does it matter?’ Zenthe said, cautiously emerging from behind the pillar with one hand resting on her sword hilt. ‘What do you know of it?’

‘There are many tales of the Ichonneath, the Tear of Season’s End,’ Gallanglaen said. He shrugged. ‘It is said that it dropped from the eyes of the Everqueen herself and gave rise to the endless cold that dominates these lands. As to the truth of that, I cannot say. But the aerchhoi, the forest folk of the Druichan, they guard this relic fiercely.’

‘An item of this power resting so close to the city?’ said Guinmark. ‘I am surprised those avaricious knaves in the Collegiate have not tried to get their hands on it.’

‘Oh, they have. Battle-wizards, Ironweld master-smiths, even the warlords of the Dark Powers. But the Druichan is a place of old magic. Without a guide who knows its ancient paths, few can pass through its depths unharmed. And the aerchhoi are always watching.’

‘You know these forest folk?’ asked Zenthe.

Gallanglaen laughed bitterly. ‘All too well.’

He bared his neck, revealing a gruesome scar. The flesh around it was puckered and withered, like that of a severe burn. Zenthe recognised the signs of frostbite. She had seen many sailors lose fingers and toes to such injuries.

‘The aerchhoi despise my kind even more than they hate humans,’ he said. ‘My descendants were the wanderer kings, those aelfs who fled before the tide of Chaos. The children of the forest suffered greatly during the Dark Times. The Everqueen might preach redemption for my kin’s supposed sins, but her saplings are not all so forgiving.’

‘But you know the paths of the Druichan?’ Zenthe pressed, uninterested in a lesson on mythology. ‘You can take me to the Heart of Winter?’

Gallanglaen shrugged. ‘For the right price. But answer me this. Why do you seek the Heart? What can a Scourge corsair want with such a thing?’

‘You don’t need to worry yourself about that. All you need to know is that if you take me to it, I’ll pay you enough Excelsian glimmerings to keep yourself inebriated from now until the end of all things. Do we have an arrangement?’

For a moment, Gallanglaen stared at her thoughtfully, cocking his head to the side. Then he nodded.

‘We do.’

Chapter Nine

They passed through the northern gate at early morning light. Zenthe chose a score of corsairs, leaving the others to guard the Blood Drake and keep an eye on Guinmark and his territories, just in case the sudden change in leadership of the Izalend underworld gave anyone any funny ideas. There was little traffic this side of the city, save for a few-score of trappers heading out into the ice-wastes.

‘Ain’t too many willing to risk heading into the Druichan these days,’ said Broukan, nodding towards the thin straggle of bodies following the muddy trail out of Izalend. As they passed beyond the shanties that lay outside the city’s stone wall, the ice turned to slush. Ahead, they could see the blazing fire of the Everflame as it circled around behind the White City.

‘Been more and more trouble with the forest folk lately,’ the duardin continued. ‘Abductions, missing caravans and the like. Only last month a tree-felling crew got hacked apart and strung up on the forest’s edge for all to see. Strayed too deep, see. The Freeguild glory boys have been itching for war, but that firepowder keg ain’t been lit just yet.’

As they approached the gap in the burning wall, they saw the treeline beyond.

‘You don’t send an army into terrain like that and expect them to come back out in one piece,’ said Oscus. ‘Not against an enemy that knows every inch of the land. You’d have to be a fool to march in there.’

‘You ever met any humans?’ snorted Broukan. ‘It’ll happen sooner or later. Bloated with arrogance and pride, they won’t stand for defiance like these forest folk offer. Whether the order comes from on high or no, some damned general seeking to make his legend will march on in there and get his idiot self good and killed. Then all manner of hell’s likely to break loose.’

The northern gate was well guarded, but not nearly so much as the sea entrance had been. There were a few ballista towers aiming out into the wilderness between the forest and the city, but not as many as faced seaward. Carts and sleds pulled by great, shaggy-furred quadrupeds rolled through the entrance, the guards giving them little more than a cursory glance as they passed by.

Gallanglaen was waiting by the guard tower, perched upon the gaudily painted roof of a six-wheeled caravan. Two of the big beasts of burden snorted and snuffled on their leashes at the head of the cart. They were ice-white, their beady eyes pits of yellow within enormous, boulder-sized heads. Four horns swept out from the top of their skulls, and another, smaller one ran underneath their jaws. They gazed at Zenthe and the others with disinterest as they approached. Gallanglaen hopped off the roof and landed neatly before them.

‘Last chance to change your mind,’ he said. ‘Before the terror and the screaming starts.’

‘My crew’s sailed the seas of the Taloncoast,’ Zenthe sneered. ‘We’ve hunted and slain beasts of the deep seas that would sear your soul to look upon, waywatcher. So just take us where we need to go. My time is precious.’

Gallanglaen shrugged. ‘As you say. Mount up.’

Zenthe’s corsairs climbed aboard the caravan, squeezing into a cramped cabin that stank of mould and dung. Zenthe joined Gallanglaen on the driving seat. The ranger grasped the reins and gave them a tug. With a reluctant series of grunts, the horned beasts ambled to the left, aiming for the main gate.

They joined the flow of traffic, passing through the great gate and once more beneath the blazing glow of the Everflame. The drove-beasts splashed through a mire of mud and melted snow, following the line of carriages out into the ice-wastes. One by one the carts peeled off, and Zenthe saw workers eyeing them with a mixture of confusion and pity as they pushed on towards the border of the ancient forest. After a few hours of travel, they reached the outskirts.

The mouth of the Druichan loomed ahead, dark and ominous. The trees were ancient things, gnarled like an old man’s fingers, their thick boughs rising high and holding aloft a canopy of packed ice. The snowfall had nestled so thickly atop the roof of the forest that it was almost pitch black below, save for a few errant spears of light.

As they jumped from the wagon, they sank knee-deep in the snow. Gallanglaen landed deftly, spreading his weight and moving as though he were simply brushing through long grass. The others followed rather less dexterously, carving furrows towards the treeline. Gallanglaen unleashed the drove-beasts, who ambled away and found themselves a cluster of small saplings to feast upon.

‘Keep close,’ said the wayfinder. ‘Only follow my footsteps. It’s a day’s travel to the heart of the forest folk’s domain, and everything in this forest, living or otherwise, wants nothing more than to see us dead.’

As they passed beneath the treeline, the snow became shallower, making their progress less tortuous. Yet it was still hard going. There was no man-made path through the thick woodland. The floor was a treacherous tangle of roots masked by snowfall. Each footstep had to be carefully placed, for it would be easy to slip and trap one’s ankle painfully.

They followed Gallanglaen for many hours, tracing the wayfinder’s footsteps and stopping dead at his command whenever he raised a warning hand. Sometimes he would call for a halt, and he would scramble effortlessly up the boughs of a nearby tree to get a better look at the path ahead.

‘I hope this one knows what he’s about,’ said Oscus. ‘I would not wish to be lost within this forest.’

The Druichan was not a pleasant place. A thick, oppressive aura hung over the place, a pall of shadow and threat that raised the hairs of Zenthe’s neck. Every dark corner and twisted grove seemed to harbour unfriendly eyes. They passed crystallised spider webs as large as ships’ sails, writhing with movement. Gallanglaen led them cautiously through thickets of viper gorse that lashed out to ensnare the unwary. One of Zenthe’s corsairs, Varek, strayed too close and lost a fingertip to the predatory vines. They pulsed obscenely as they supped upon the spurting blood, their stems flushing crimson.

Deeper and deeper they travelled. Distant screeches and guttural barks echoed around them, the forest awoken by their unwanted presence. As the light grew dimmer and the trees thicker, Zenthe saw yellow eyes glinting in the darkness, staring unblinkingly at their passage.

‘We will walk on a while longer,’ said Gallanglaen, after what seemed like many hours of travel. ‘Then make camp. There is a grotto nearby that I often use. It will serve.’

‘About time,’ said Broukan. ‘Curse this miserable place, and all who dwell within it.’

The wayfinder smiled, showing his teeth.

‘On that we concur, bearded one.’

Broukan’s bushy eyebrows furrowed.

‘Didn’t expect that from a long-ear,’ he said.

‘My hatred for the spirits that dwell within the Druichan knows no bounds, sellsword. I would see them all burn, if I could.’

The aelf did not elaborate. Instead he moved ahead and out of sight, gracefully skipping across the jumble of roots.

‘He’s a strange one,’ said Broukan.

‘I just hope he’s not still drunk,’ muttered Zenthe.

Chapter Ten

Malvo L’Polche Guinmark sat shivering in the brig of yet another pirate ship and began to seriously consider his life choices. Why, exactly, had he agreed to this insane plan, when he had only barely escaped with his life and sanity intact from a nightmarish existence of toil and torture? Surely you would have to be insane beyond imagining to voluntarily put yourself in such a position again?

Yet here he sat, his teeth chattering, with fear as much as with the cold that seeped into his bones. At least they hadn’t chained him up. That was some comfort. He peered up at the silvery light that seeped in through metal bars at the top of the brig, and sighed.

The cell door snapped open, and he almost jumped out of his skin. He hadn’t even noticed anyone lurking in the shadows. He spun around and found himself staring into a pale, angular face surrounded by a shock of raven hair streaked with white.

‘Well now,’ said Fleetmaster Vizrin Kyre, his soft voice thick with amused curiosity. ‘This is a surprise. Usually I have to raid the coasts for slaves, you know. It’s not often they deliver themselves straight to my ship.’

‘Ah… yes,’ stammered Guinmark, trying to regain his composure. The brig wasn’t especially large, and Kyre stepped in uncomfortably close, his bright eyes staring unblinkingly into the guildmaster’s own. It was rather like being trapped in a cage with a hungry shark, Guinmark thought.

‘I come at the request of Fleetmaster Arika Zenthe,’ he went on, putting a bit of steel into his voice. He had dealt with killers and cutthroats all his life. This was business, and if he showed weakness then he had no doubt that Kyre would tear him to shreds. And not figuratively.

‘She has a proposition for you. One that she believes you will be more than amenable to.’

Kyre smiled, exposing sharp, white teeth. ‘Do go on.’

‘Her father is deluded,’ Guinmark said. ‘Blinded by his need for power. This insane venture will lead only to death and failure.’

‘I learned long ago not to underestimate Zarkand Zenthe,’ said Kyre. ‘I would not have travelled to this miserable realm if I thought his plan had no merit. He speaks truth when he says that the Scourge is destined for more than simply bowing to the God-King’s every whim.’

‘Lady Zenthe agrees,’ replied Guinmark, and he felt a shiver of unease as he said the words. ‘An age will come when the druchii answer to no one. When they rise as one, and the seas run red with the blood of their enemies. But it is not that time, not yet.’

Kyre said nothing, simply folded his arms and waited for Guinmark to continue.

‘Zarkand is an old man,’ the guildmaster went on. ‘He clings to the past. Mistakes vanity for ambition. Perhaps he will indeed take Izalend, but it will not last. The Sigmarites will not suffer such an insult, and whether it takes a year or a century, his reaver kingdom will be burned to ashes.’

‘Arika Zenthe gives the Sigmarites more credit than is their due,’ laughed Kyre. ‘They fight and squabble amongst themselves, each petty lord desperately carving out their own little throne at the expense of their people. I have witnessed the deliberations and infighting of Hammerhal’s Council of Twelve, the personal grudges and point scoring. Even with oblivion staring you in the face, you humans cannot resist your bickering.’

‘Perhaps,’ shrugged Guinmark. ‘Perhaps you could beat them, every army and battle fleet they send to reclaim Izalend. But ask yourself, is it truly worth the risk?’

‘Risk is how we rise to greatness.’

‘And what if Fleetmaster Zenthe could offer you a lesser risk, and a greater reward?’

The fleetmaster tapped the steel of his false leg against the floor of the brig.

‘I’m listening,’ he said.

Zenthe and her companions made camp in a small grotto of rough earth enclosed by a cluster of dark, black trees. It was little more than a hole in the ground, slightly sheltered from the wind and large enough for them all to squeeze in and huddle up for warmth. Outside, the forest was alive with a symphony of sounds: bird cries, the distant screeching of some unknown pack creatures and the tinkling of frozen branches in the trees above. Despite herself, Zenthe felt uneasy. She yearned for the space and freedom of the open ocean, or even the predictable chaos of a great city. She trusted nothing about this fell place. Every flickering shadow seemed to promise new dangers.

Gallanglaen walked the perimeter of the camp, setting up a series of snares using folded lengths of vine and daggers of ice driven into the ground. He placed them at intervals in a circle around their makeshift sleeping quarters as the others retrieved rations and flasks of grog in an attempt to warm their shaking bodies. They had lathered themselves with more ghyreshark fat before entering the Druichan, but the cold seemed to bite right through the added layer of protection. It was a different cold from the chill blast of ocean air. It was a suffocating, all-encompassing chill that wrapped around one like a coat of ice, numbing the limbs and fogging the mind.

‘No fires,’ snapped Gallanglaen, as he entered the den at last to see Zenthe’s corsairs trying to set a light amongst a few scraps of dried wood. Somehow the aelf seemed impervious to the cold, despite wearing little more than thin leathers and a tunic of green cloth.

‘We’ll freeze to death without it, you madman,’ said Broukan through chattering teeth. The duardin was swaddled like a newborn in layers of thick fur, so that only his ugly, red-bearded face was visible.

‘There is nothing the aerchhoi despise more than fire. If they sense it, they will fall upon us and tear us apart.’

‘Two-hour watch,’ said Zenthe. ‘In pairs. Kos and Yherul, you’re up first. Everyone else, try as best you can to get some rest. We’ll rise early, get what we came for and be out of this damn place as soon as we can.’

Gallanglaen made to speak again, but she caught his eye and shook her head. The long trek had taken it out of all of them. This frost snap was nothing natural. It was slowing them down, addling their minds. They needed warmth and as much sleep as they could get, regardless of the risks.

The fire was a pitiful affair, but it washed pleasingly across Zenthe’s face as she huddled into the far corner of the grotto, wrapping her cloak around her. They had brought hides of nharvask skin, which offered another level of defence against the biting cold.

Gallanglaen knelt at the far side of the fire, the flames reflected in his pale eyes.

‘This is aerchhoi land,’ he said. ‘They claim the entire Druichan, of course, but they are few enough that one can risk trespassing along the fringe of the forest. Not so here.’

There was something about the way he spoke that troubled Zenthe.

‘Who did they kill?’ she said. ‘I can see the hate in your eyes.’

He stared at her for a moment, his face cloaked in shadow. Then he turned to face the opening of the grotto, his bow across his lap, and said no more.

Zenthe decided not to press the issue. It mattered not at all to her what the aelf’s reasons for risking his skin were, only that he got them as close as possible to the Heart of Winter.

Sleep would not come for a long time. Her wound ached constantly, and every time she shifted position on the hard earth it sent another tremor of agony through her. She lay beside the slowly sputtering campfire for what felt like hours, staring at the dwindling flames and thinking of her father and his dead eyes, the corpse stench of him. Eventually, her eyelids became too heavy to keep open and darkness enveloped her.

Zenthe woke to the sound of voices. She was on her knees, hands bound tight, her vision blurred and spinning. With a shiver of horror, she realised where she was. Her father’s chambers were dark, lit only by the embers of a dying fire. Levrid was lying next to her, drooling blood onto the fine carpet. Vhorskaya’s blade had nicked a lung. She could hear the awful, rattling sound of each breath.

Her father rose from his chair. A crimson silk gown hung from his thin frame like a flayed skin.

‘You thought to run from me, children?’ he said, and his eyes gleamed as they met Arika’s. She stared back, hypnotised. ‘Foolish. I will always find you. You are my blood, the last of my line. And you will both serve your purpose, eventually.’

He looked at Levrid.

‘One of you sooner than the other.’

‘No,’ said her brother as Vhorskaya’s maidens hauled him to his feet. ‘Take her, father! Take Arika!’

Even at that moment, Arika didn’t think less of him for it. She would have done the same.

Her father ignored his pleas. The witch aelves dragged Levrid forward as he struggled feebly in their sure grip. The High Priestess drew a knife, grabbed his head and forcefully tilted it backwards, exposing his throat.

‘This is the way it must end,’ said Zarkand Zenthe. He stepped forward, into the light, and Arika bit back a gasp of horror. His hair was sloughing from a bald skull, his skin pulled so tight to his bones that she could see the raw flesh around his eyes. His teeth were blackened stumps.

‘Your death delays the curse that rots away my flesh, and earns me another century of life,’ the thing that was her father said. ‘I cannot promise this will be quick, nor painless. But I honour your sacrifice, my son.’

He leaned in close and kissed Levrid’s forehead with rotten lips. Then he nodded to High Priestess Vhorskaya.

The knife fell. Levrid screamed, high and crazed, an animal sound. Arika watched as they cut him apart. She watched as her father ate his beating heart, stringy flesh dripping down his chin.

Someone grabbed her shoulder.

Zenthe awoke and grabbed the figure standing over her by the throat, twisted and slammed them to the ground, her hand dragging forth a dagger from her belt. The blade tip stopped barely a finger’s width from Gallanglaen’s wide, hazel eyes. Zenthe was breathing hard, sweat pouring down her face despite the aching cold. Her heart beat furiously against her ribcage.

‘Easy now, aelf,’ came Broukan’s gruff voice. She looked across and saw the duardin staring at her, his hand poised at the axe that hung from his belt.

She released Gallanglaen, who coughed and staggered to his feet.

‘Bad dreams?’ he said, wincing as he massaged his neck.

She stowed the blade and ground the palm of one gloved hand into her itching eyes.

‘Something like that.’

‘You are not the only one,’ the ranger said. ‘This place, it toys with your mind. Forces you to relive memories you would rather leave in the past.’

‘Then let’s get what we came for and get out of here. I’ve no wish to spend a single moment longer than I have to in this wretched place.’

Gallanglaen nodded. He winced as he rubbed the bruises where she had grabbed him. The others rose and began reaching for their gear. She saw plenty of tired and bloodshot eyes, and though no one spoke there was an unmistakable air of unease. She guessed that she was not the only one who had suffered an uneasy sleep.

Gods, but the wound in her side ached. She pulled aside her shirt and looked at it. The stitches held, but a spiderweb of black tendrils writhed beneath her skin, reaching almost to her chest. She touched a finger to the bruised flesh and hissed as it lit a fire of pain across her gut.

‘Captain?’ asked Oscus, and there was concern in his voice.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, more fiercely than she had intended. She stood, pushed her way through the tangle of branches and out into the gloom of the forest.

‘How much further?’ she asked Gallanglaen, who was checking the string of his longbow and staring off into the mist.

‘We are close,’ he said. He glanced at her from out of the corner of his eye. ‘You spoke a name in your sleep. Levrid.’

‘My brother,’ she said.

‘He is dead?’

‘Long dead.’

‘My apologies.’

‘Save them. I hated him, the slippery little eel.’

‘All the same, family is family, is it not?’ said the ranger. ‘I was never close with my clan. I always preferred solitude, to walk the quiet places of the forest alone. But I grieve for them nonetheless.’

Zenthe had an idea she knew where this was going. ‘The forest folk killed them.’

Gallanglaen nodded. ‘When Izalend was first founded, my clan made the long journey from Azyrheim to seek a home. We thought, perhaps, we had found it in the Druichan. It is an ancient place, much like the sprawling copses of the Jade Kingdoms that my kin once called a haven. We hunted and made shelter within its embrace, living as one with the land.’

A sad smile crossed his features. It made him look old, and tired.

‘For a time, we knew peace. But it is not for my kind to know contentment, I think. There was never a place for us here. The aerchhoi tried to drive us away, with threats and fear at first. In our foolishness, we thought we could parlay with them, for our people were once bonded by worship of the Radiant Queen. But these sylvaneth know only cold and hatred. Something has broken them. Twisted them, beyond salvation. They are of the Dreadwood, and they are reapers of the living and bringers of the eternal winter.’

Gallanglaen’s eyes were wide, and the hand that gripped the haft of his bow trembled.

‘I was away, hunting spirehorns along the far ridges. I returned to find the frozen corpse of my king, strung up from the highest oaks. We had trespassed, and we had paid the price. Perhaps they might have let my blood-kin live, had we not borne the painted ink of the Wanderers. The Lost Ones. The Betrayers. Many of Alarielle’s children might have forgiven our kind at the Everqueen’s behest, but that old hatred still burns fiercely within the aerchhoi.’

‘You stayed close to the city?’ said Zenthe.

The ranger shrugged. ‘I am old, even for our kind. Old and tired. Perhaps in my younger days I might have marched into the depths of the Druichan and slain as many aerchhoi as my arrows could reach. Instead I slunk away and found solace in the bottle. No doubt you think me a coward for not avenging my people.’

‘I am hardly the best person to speak of familial loyalty,’ laughed Zenthe. ‘I am here because I tried and failed to kill my father. A task I plan on finishing, if we ever get out of here alive. Every single one of my kin is dead too, as far as I know. All at my dear father’s hand. I shed no tears for any of them. But I think that when I finally drive a blade into his heart, their spirits might know a brief moment of contentment, and I do not begrudge them that.’

Gallanglaen laughed, to her surprise. He shook his head and stared at her through appraising eyes.

‘You are not exactly how I imagined a privateer of the Scourge.’

‘And you are far from the typical leaf-chewing forest aelf.’

‘Perhaps it is fate that brought us together.’

‘I have no time for fate,’ said Zenthe. ‘But I will help you put the ghosts of your family to rest, if you can aid me in putting an end to the last of mine.’

Chapter Eleven

They pressed deeper into lands long forgotten by mortalkind. There was no path here. They were trusting only to Gallanglaen’s directions, and even the ranger was moving slower now, stopping every few moments to scan the gathering shadows. The canopy overhead was so thick that it seemed as though they were in a cavern, not a forest. Rows of icicles the size of longswords dangled above their heads, threatening to fall and impale them at any moment. Zenthe felt as though she was walking into the jaws of some immense beast.

No longer did the Druichan seem like some vast, impenetrable stretch of wilderness. No, now it had taken on a presence of its own. The forest itself was watching them with hate in its heart. There was no birdsong, nor the hissing and chirping of insects. There was only the plaintive howl of wind whipping through the trees, and that maddening chime of crystalline branches clashing upon each other like drawn blades. Every step upon the frosted ground seemed akin to a gunshot echoing over utter silence. Zenthe had rarely felt so utterly exposed and vulnerable, even on the fiercest seas.

They staggered up a drift of hard-packed snow and entered a narrow creek overlooked on both sides by steep walls of thornbushes dotted with black flowers. Running along the centre of the valley was a frozen stream. Zenthe looked down and saw shapes in the trail of ice.

Corpses. Human, duardin and aelf. She peered closer. Below her boots was the uniformed body of a Hearthguard soldier, his face frozen in an image of utmost horror, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his mouth stretched in an unnatural scream.

The dead man’s eyes moved.

They looked into her own, and she cursed and drew her twin blades, half expecting the dead man to burst free from the ice and fall upon her.

‘Grimnir’s axe!’ said Broukan, and his own weapons were in hand. ‘They’re still alive!’

An awful song filled the air. A song of hatred and madness, atonal and piercing.

The trees on each side of the column moved. They twisted into creatures of branch and flesh. Their lower bodies and limbs were formed from blackened and ancient wood, but from the waist up they had the look of humanoids, though unnaturally thin and with mouths stretched from ear to ear that were filled with icy fangs. Their skin was ice blue, the colour of a frozen corpse. They bared their teeth in howls of delighted rage as they swept down upon the corsairs, reaching out with dagger-like talons.

‘Aerchhoi,’ screamed Gallanglaen, drawing his longbow and loosing an arrow in one smooth motion.

The suddenness of the attack was terrifying, but Zenthe’s crew were not caught helpless. There was a staccato series of snap-click as repeater crossbows were unloaded. The air filled with bluish sap and chips of bark-like flesh as the volley struck home, and several of the hideous creatures toppled.

But then the aerchhoi were amongst them. Zenthe ducked a swipe of trailing talons and cut across with her twin blades, widening the mouth of one of the creatures as she cut the top of its head free. She kicked the corpse backwards into another figure and ran both through with her right-hand blade.

Broukan was a whirlwind of motion. The duardin hacked and battered with his axes, roaring oaths to his warrior-god as he hewed through the nightmarish beings. Gallanglaen danced through the melee, releasing arrow after arrow with the speed of a volley gun. He wielded the longbow with easy grace despite its size, using it as a quarterstaff to fend off the aerchhoi as they closed around him.

The creatures’ sap-like blood pooled around their feet, but it mixed with aelven blood too. The aerchhoi’s spindly claws carved through mail and leather with sickening ease, and their too-wide maws clamped down upon bare flesh, tearing loose chunks of meat with a gory spray. The creatures fell upon the fallen with malicious glee, carving them apart.

And still more figures poured from the trees.

‘Flee!’ yelled Gallanglaen, loosing arrows as he backed up the shallow incline and away from the grotto. ‘The spite-revenants come!’

The tree-things fell upon one of Zenthe’s crew, slashing him to bloody pieces with their long, hooked fingers. They did not make his death slow, but laughed an awful croaking sound as they flayed his skin from his bones.

Crossbow bolts hissed across the clearing and slammed into the creatures, and blood and splinters filled the air. But the tree-things would not fall. On they came, their movements skittering and off-kilter, yet somehow terrifyingly fast. Another corsair was dragged to the ground, screaming in terror.

And more trees were coming to life, more leering, fanged faces appearing from all sides.

‘To me!’ shouted Zenthe. ‘Follow the wayfinder.’

Gallanglaen was already off, sprinting nimbly through the crystal-leafed trees, away from the ambush site. Zenthe ran after him, ducking aside as a swiping claw brushed past her. The screams of the tree-things were both deafening and disorientating, a maddening chorus that would not relent. She had no time to see if the others were close behind. More shapes were bursting from the darkness, shadows flickering around their twisted bodies. She scrabbled up a slope of slashing brambles, almost dropping to the floor as the wound in her gut flared with pain. Every step sent another wave of pain through her body, but she gritted her teeth and pressed on, knowing that to stop for a moment would be to die.

Gallanglaen turned, raised his bow and let fly. The arrow whipped past her head, and something screamed so shrilly in her ear that her head started ringing painfully. The wayfinder did not wait for her, but ran on, bursting through a copse of grey-limbed trees. She followed him, the surviving corsairs on her heels.

They burst out into a huge clearing, as large as a city square, which was lit by the light of the stars. Across the centre of the open ground ran a great crevasse, a zig-zagging rent in the ice that split the clearing in half. On the far side of the sheer drop was an ancient tree of enormous size, as thick and tall as a fortress, surrounded by a tangled mess of thick roots that stretched out to form a makeshift bridge over the abyss. High above, the branches of the tree spread wide and far, as if it alone held the canopy of the Druichan aloft.

There was nowhere else to run. More creatures burst from the treeline behind them, their loping strides carrying them swiftly across the treacherous earth. Zenthe’s lungs burned, but she knew that an agonising death awaited if she slowed for a moment. She thundered across the open ground, through snow that rose to her knees, making for the root-bridge.

The wayfinder was ahead of her, already skipping across the cluster of branches.

She reached the foot of the mass of bark and hauled herself up. Other corsairs scrambled up after her, as did Broukan, his bearded face red with exertion. They ran across the crevasse, scrambling across the uneven pass as swiftly as they could.

Zenthe had almost reached the far side when the broad trunk of the great oak yawned open. A figure emerged from within the crystalline structure. Its skin was ice-blue bark, its eyes chips of white that burned with cold fury. A great headdress of twisted thorns swept back from its angular skull, and it carried a scythe-staff, its blade covered with dagger-like rime frost.

The branchwych’s scream was one of pure outrage; the frenzied keen of a mother bear whose den has been despoiled and her young slaughtered. It raised the scythe-staff high and let it fall.

The root-bridge dropped away beneath Arika Zenthe’s feet. The coils of knotted roots collapsed, and the snow-covered earth cracked apart to reveal the sheer fall below. As she tumbled, Zenthe scrabbled desperately for a handhold, letting one of her blades fall from her hand. She grasped a handful of knotted thorns, ignoring the pain as the inch-long blades dug into her skin, and felt her stomach lurch as the trailing length of wood collapsed into the newly formed crevasse. The swinging vine slammed hard into the wall of the ice cavern, and Zenthe screamed in pain as the impact sent a shockwave of agony through her wounded ribs. Looking down, the fleetmaster saw nothing but blackness. The ice walls of the canyon glowed with luminescent light, its surface as smooth as glass.

She heard screams as several of her crew lost their footing and tumbled away into the darkness, limbs flailing helplessly.

‘Fleetmaster!’ someone shouted from below. She craned her neck and saw Gallanglaen. Somehow the wayfinder was propped against the sheer wall of the cavern. For a moment, she thought he was clinging to the wall like a spider, but then the ice wall glimmered slightly, and she saw that he was leaning from the mouth of a rent in the ice. A stray root of the great oak had grown down into the cold earth, forcing its way through the face of the crevasse wall. The protrusion had opened a gaping hole in the ice, and it was on this precarious ledge that Gallanglaen was perched.

There was a creaking sound, and the vine she was hanging from gave way. She fell another dozen yards before coming to a sudden stop, almost losing her grip on the tangled knot that held her.

‘You have to jump,’ said Gallanglaen. The aelf was now only a few yards below and to her left. He had shouldered his bow and was leaning out over the abyss, his hands outstretched. ‘Swing and jump. I’ll catch you.’

As the vine swung in a pendulum towards the near wall, Arika planted her boots upon the slick surface, feeling the crampons dig into the ice. She ran along the wall as fast as she could manage, using her momentum to draw back the vine before kicking off from the wall and sending the vine soaring around in a tight arc towards the spot where Gallanglaen waited. She waited and waited, trying to judge the perfect moment to leap clear through her pain-addled mind.

Zenthe let go of the vine, and sailed through the air.

She knew instantly she had judged it very badly. She struck the wall above where her companion waited, smashing her elbow and instantly numbing her entire arm. She bounced free, dazed, and her hands windmilled desperately as she scrabbled at the ice wall for a handhold that was not there. Then she was falling free, head over heels.

Something caught her boot. The sudden halt in her momentum snapped her neck back painfully, and she struck her shoulder hard against the wall. She looked up to see Gallanglaen, cords of muscle standing out on his thin neck, his eyes nearly bursting from their skull with the strain of holding her. He had thrust one of his arrows into the ice and was clinging on to the makeshift grip desperately with one arm.

‘Think… of… something,’ he said, through gritted teeth.

Zenthe scrambled at her belt and pulled out a dagger. She thrust it into the ice wall, hard, and felt it sink in deep. Praying to gods she despised, she grabbed hold of the hilt with both hands.

‘Let me go,’ she said, and Gallanglaen immediately did so. Somehow she managed to flip her body around as she fell, holding desperately on to the dagger and clutching at her boot to remove a second blade. Using the two daggers to stab deep into the ice wall, she climbed the few short feet to the ledge and with an enormous effort levered her body up and onto level ground.

She and Gallanglaen sagged, breathing heavily.

‘Please tell me…’ Zenthe gasped, each breath sending a fresh wave of pain through her, ‘that there’s a way off this ledge.’

Gallanglaen nodded towards the opening gouged out by the thick tree root. Around it the ice had splintered, creating a tunnel deeper into the earth. It was narrow and jagged, but perhaps just big enough for them to squeeze through.

‘The rest of our party are likely dead,’ said the aelf. ‘If the fall did not kill them, the forest folk surely will. It is death to stray into their sacred places.’

‘Might be so,’ said Zenthe. ‘But you and I are still alive, and somewhere close by is the Heart of Winter. I know that I still wish to survive long enough to cut out my father’s rotten heart. What about you, ranger? Do you still wish to punish the creatures that murdered your kin?’

Gallanglaen extended a hand and helped her to her feet.

The fissure wound deep into the ice wall, twisting and climbing before widening into a passage large enough to pass through while standing. Sometimes it was so tight that even the slender aelves could barely squeeze their way past the thick root, but eventually the tunnel broke into a wider channel, this one smoother and clearly carved out by mortal hands. Whoever had fashioned this tunnel, however, had allowed it to fall into disrepair. Cracks lined the walls as more branches and roots forced their way down from above, and the ice beneath their feet was marked with smaller fractures. It was so cold in here that Zenthe could already see the signs of ice burn on her exposed flesh. She wrapped her scarf tighter around her mouth and nose and prayed the shark oil on her skin would prevent any permanent damage. She had seen plenty of frostbite wounds in her years of sailing – missing noses, ears, lips. Not a pleasant sight.

They were getting close, she was sure. The very air seemed to crystallise in her lungs, making each breath ragged and painful.

Gallanglaen pressed himself against the wall and motioned for her to stop. She heard the clatter of footsteps beyond the curve of the channel. After a few moments, the ranger risked a look into the chamber beyond.

‘By the Everqueen,’ he said.

She followed Gallanglaen and soon understood the reason for his exclamation.

The fissure opened into a vast intersection. Broad channels ran along the edge of a deep chasm, circling the perimeter of a chamber the size of a city square. They were directly beneath the great frost oak. Immense roots drooped down from above, coming together to form a heart-shaped cage around a gleaming silver light that was painful to look upon. As her eyes adjusted to the sudden flare, Zenthe could see a floating orb of crystal sending cascades of light glittering across the walls.

‘The Ichonneath,’ whispered Gallanglaen in awe.

Beyond the Heart of Winter was a glacier of glittering crystal dropping away into the darkness of the chasm. A waterfall, Zenthe realised, frozen in mid flow. As they entered the chamber, she peered down into the darkness and saw the churning waves of a great underground river, trapped eternally in place by the radiating cold of the artefact.

In the distance they heard the clatter of combat and a scream that was cut off abruptly a moment later.

‘Some of our allies yet live,’ said Gallanglaen.

‘Let us not waste their distraction,’ said Zenthe, starting forward.

She hurried across the vast cavern. The cluster of winding roots that descended from above draped across the far wall. The ledge of ice circling the perimeter of the chamber stopped some way short of the roots, but close enough that she thought them possible to reach. If she was wrong, she would tumble away into the abyss and dash herself to pieces upon the frozen river. But if she could make it, the roots curled up and over the Heart of Winter; she could reach it, and cover it with the nullstone box, and hopefully be away before the forest folk could react.

‘I can make it,’ said Gallanglaen. ‘You’re injured.’

‘You have the bow.’

‘You’re injured.’

‘If the forest folk come back, you keep them off me for as long as you can. I can make it,’ Zenthe ordered.

The sounds of battle drew nearer. They could hear the guttural dirge of Broukan’s singing, echoing eerily from the corridors of ice.

‘The duardin survived,’ sighed Gallanglaen. ‘Of course he did.’

Zenthe checked her pack and tucked it under her arm so that she could easily retrieve Kyre’s nullstone box. She strode back several paces, then charged forward and leapt to the first tangle of roots. No sooner had she touched the frost-covered wood than a keening scream split the air, followed in unison by a chorus of fury. They heard the sound of feet scratching across ice, coming closer by the moment. Zenthe scrabbled up handhold by handhold, edging ever closer to the dangling cage above.

At the far end of the chamber, Broukan burst into view. The duardin mercenary was covered from head to toe in gore and bluish sap and was visibly limping from a gouge in his thigh. He was followed by four of Zenthe’s corsairs, equally bloodied. No sooner had they exited the ice tunnel than more of the nightmarish tree-beasts followed after them. Gallanglaen knelt, and an arrow whipped across the length of the chamber and took one of the creatures in its leering mouth, sending it stumbling backwards.

Broukan roared appreciatively and hacked another of the things in half with a twin swipe of his axes.

‘A decent shot, long-ear,’ he shouted. ‘But there’s plenty more where that came from.’

Zenthe climbed higher and higher, ignoring the pain in her hands as the vicious frost tore strips of flesh from her fingers. As she climbed, she noticed dim lights flickering within the cluster of roots. Teardrop shapes, like flower petals, shone in the darkness. Yet their glow was weak, like the fading embers of a dying fire.

There was the sound of beating wings from above. Soaring down came a moth-like creature, its enormous wings rimed with ice and gleaming in the half-light. Mounted upon the flying insect’s back was the branchwych that had sundered the earth and spilt them all into the abyss. The sylvaneth’s eyes burned.

‘Trespasser,’ it hissed, in a voice that sounded like cracking ice. ‘Despoiler.’

Its scythe-staff spat a beam of frost that screeched as it carved through wood and ice alike. Zenthe only narrowly twisted her body out of the way of the lancing energy, and even then, she felt the touch of icy death seep into her bones, almost costing her a grip upon the cluster of roots.

An arrow whipped up and struck the branchwych’s mount, deflecting off the segmented body of the moth creature. It swayed aside, and the sylvaneth was forced to halt its attacks. Gallanglaen loosed again and again, and his arrows tore through the gossamer of the creature’s wings, causing it to screech in pain. The branchwych aimed her weapon at the aelf below, and a cloud of tiny, beetle-like creatures erupted from the tip of the scythe-staff, racing towards the ranger who rolled aside. Even so, some of the tiny missiles struck him and burst into shards of ice. Zenthe heard Gallanglaen gasp.

There was no time to dwell on the fate of her companions. She was beneath the cage of thorns. This close to the Heart of Winter, she could feel the moisture freezing in her eyes and mouth. It was only a few yards away.

The moth swooped down to hover before her. She saw spiral patterns of blue and purple upon the canvas of its wings, beautifully intricate.

‘So few of us left,’ cried the branchwych that sat astride its shining body, ‘and still you seek to drive us from our lands. To destroy the last, frail seeds of the Rimewood. To steal away the tear of Our Lady, all that connects us to the spirit-song. Invader. Murderer. I will entomb you in the frozen waters for a thousand years.’

‘I’ve seen the corpses that line your borders,’ said Zenthe. ‘So don’t speak to me of murder.’

The branchwych hissed.

‘They were despoilers, as are you. Your kind exists only to destroy.’

‘Spare me. I’m taking the Heart of Winter. You can stand aside and live, or die by my blade. I do not care, either way.’

With a scream of rage, the branchwych urged her mount forward. The insectoid’s mouth yawned open, revealing curved fangs that dripped with translucent ichor.

Zenthe leapt, drawing her blade as she soared through the air. She cleared the creature’s bulbous head easily and landed nimbly upon its body. The branchwych swept her scythe-staff across, but the fleetmaster swayed aside and let the ice blade rush past her. Then she reversed her grip on the sword and drove it deep into the moth’s head. The branchwych screamed, but Zenthe was already jumping free, grabbing hold of the lowermost branches of the heart-shaped cage and hauling herself up.

She spared a glance and saw the sylvaneth witch and her dying mount spiralling down into darkness, and she heard the furious howls of the revenant horrors.

The orb of blinding white was suspended before her eyes.

Zenthe gasped in pain, turning aside from the Heart of Winter, unable to face the waves of numbing cold that emanated from it. With trembling fingers, she reached back and grabbed the nullstone box, yanking open the lid. She gasped as the waves of frost bit into her arms, feeling her flesh pucker and burn under the intense cold. Gritting her teeth, she closed the lid of the box around the orb.

The effect was instantaneous. Suddenly the waves of cold ceased, and the sounds of cracking ice filled the cavern. The frost-covered roots she clung to began to creak, spiderwebbing fractures running down their length.

The walls of the cavern groaned. Below, she saw more rents emerge within the carpet of frozen water. Trickles of water poured away into the darkness below. The creatures attacking her companions opened their fang-filled mouths wide and screamed.

Shards of ice the size of boulders rained from the roof of the cavern. The waterfall cracked and started to run free, great fountains of water cascading down into the darkness.

‘Run!’ shouted Gallanglaen. ‘This entire place is collapsing.’

As Broukan and the surviving aelves turned to flee, the ranger looked up at Zenthe, still hanging above the abyss, dangling from the cluster of roots that was coming apart around her.

‘Go,’ she shouted. There was no way back to solid ground from here. She would have to trust to the fates. At least if she dashed her brains out on the rocks and ice below, her father would not get his hands upon the Heart of Winter. That was some small comfort.

Gallanglaen turned and sprinted towards one of the ice tunnels.

The root to which Zenthe clung snapped loose, and she fell away into the abyss.

To her surprise, Zenthe struck not solid ground, but rushing water. The raging surf swallowed her, enveloping her in its icy embrace as the air was dragged from her lungs. She was tossed like a rag doll, spinning over and over, dashing into drifts of ice with stunning force.

Somehow she managed to right herself and drag in a lungful of air. The roof of the cavern narrowed as the underground river rushed away into darkness. It was coming apart as it flowed, no longer held together by the supernatural cold of the Heart of Winter. The frothing waters surged around twisting bends in the channel, and it was all she could do to avoid being shattered against the unyielding stone.

She fell into empty space and landed in a deep pool of ice water. The current still dragged her along, but the sharp descent had robbed it of some of its potency. She kicked her feet, fighting the surging waters. Zenthe was a strong swimmer. She had fought against the tides of the Razormaw Maelstrom, when a barrage of Kharadron aethercannon fire had hurled her over the gunwale of her flagship. Compared to that, this was a placid lake. She felt for the shifting currents as she was swept along. The trick was to move with the flow, not fight it. She eased her body through the cluster of jagged stones. At the last moment, she twisted to the side and kicked out hard, her boots connecting with the slick stone and propelling her out of the current’s grasp. As she broke the surface she saw a shelf of rock nearby, and beyond, a flicker of light.

The strength was draining from her limbs by the second, but somehow she managed to haul herself up and sprawl onto dry land. She found herself in the mouth of a cave. The waterfall of freshly melted ice flowed into a wider channel, disappearing out of view in a series of surging rapids.

Zenthe lay there for some time, panting and exhausted. If any predator or foe strayed upon her, she knew that she was helpless in that moment, but she was too tired to care. The lockbox containing the Heart of Winter was a dead weight around her neck.

She had no idea how long she lay there like a tide-stranded fish, but eventually the cracking thunder of the melting river was replaced by the rush of freely running water. She hauled her aching body upright and staggered from the mouth of the cavern and into the darkness of the Druichan.

The forest seemed a less foreboding place, somehow. Spears of sunlight shone through the thick canopy, and there was only a thin drift of snow gathering at her boots. She walked on, half expecting a horde of vengeful tree-folk to burst from the shadows at any moment. Nothing stirred.

She was shaking badly now. Zenthe knew that if she could not find shelter soon, then she would surely perish from the biting cold.

Voices carried over the shriek of icy winds. Zenthe ducked down behind a cluster of rocks, pressing her back against the mossy surface.

‘She’s dead,’ said a gruff voice. ‘Ain’t no beast nor aelf alive could survive that fall.’

‘We search,’ said another voice. She recognised the harsh drawl of Kyza, one of her corsairs. ‘We come back without the Heart and without Captain Zenthe, we might as well open our own throats and be done with it.’

The tramp of boots on compacted snow sounded from ahead. Zenthe sighed and staggered to her feet.

‘Fear not,’ she said aloud, astonished at how battered and broken she sounded.

As she emerged from her hiding place and stepped into the clearing beyond, she saw Gallanglaen and the others. The ranger had his bow strung and ready to loose, but as he saw her he smirked and lowered it to the ground. Broukan and four others were all that remained of their group.

‘By the Everqueen,’ he laughed. ‘How many lives do you have, Zenthe?’

‘Just the one. And not for much longer, if I don’t get this back to my father. Come, let’s get out of this place. I never want to set foot in it again.’

Chapter Twelve

Guinmark waited on the deck of the Hel’s Claw, rubbing his hands against the chill sea air. Actually, it was strangely temperate today, he thought, glancing up at the clear skies overhead. Kyre leaned against the gunwale at his side, tapping his blade leg against the deck in a manner that Guinmark felt was slightly unnerving.

‘Arika’s time is running out,’ said the fleetmaster. ‘And with it my patience. Seven days, Zarkand gave her. There’s less than half a morning left of that.’

‘She’ll be here,’ said Guinmark, more confidently than he felt.

He felt Kyre’s eyes on him and suppressed a shiver. Zenthe was hardly a warm creature, but the Fleetmaster of Hammerhal Aqsha was something else. Every time his black eyes fell upon the thiefmaster, a shiver ran down his spine and he had to fight an instinctive urge to back away. Guinmark had seen that same look before, in the eyes of killers and madmen. Kyre smiled often, but it was not a pleasant expression, merely the bared teeth of a predator about to fall upon its prey.

Still, a lifetime of dealing with such persons allowed Guinmark to put on an indifferent air. Again, he scanned the throng of figures milling around the docks. He spied a tall figure, thin and wrapped in a cloak of green, winding his way through the crowd towards Kyre’s ship. The figure was followed by several others, all wrapped in heavy cloaks.

As they made their way along the jetty towards the boarding planks of the Hel’s Claw, Guinmark spotted a braided length of silver-white hair protruding from beneath the tall figure’s hood.

‘There they are,’ he said to Fleetmaster Kyre. ‘Did I not tell you?’

‘That’s a far smaller band than the one that entered the Druichan,’ Kyre said.

He was right. There was the familiar, broad-shouldered figure of Broukan the duardin, clearly favouring one leg. Five other figures approached, and Kyre gestured for his crew to step aside and allow them on board. Zenthe approached, her first mate Oscus at her side as usual. This close, Guinmark could see the captain’s familiar violet eyes. She nodded at him.

‘Thiefmaster.’

‘You returned, as I knew you would,’ he said, surprised at how pleased he was to see her and Gallanglaen in one piece. ‘Tell me, did you retrieve what you sought?’

‘Let’s talk. Somewhere quiet,’ she replied, ignoring his question and addressing Fleetmaster Kyre.

‘In my cabin. It would be wise to keep our little arrangement far from prying eyes. Please, follow me.’

With that, the aelf gestured them to the companionway that led down into the hull of the Hel’s Claw. They followed the fleetmaster, whose blade limb hardly seemed to impede his movement. The interior of the reaver-ship stank of rich spices and dried blood. Kyre’s cabin was at the far end of the quarterdeck, at the prow of the ship. It was fashioned from panelled hardwood, inlaid with igneous rock that glowed with a soft orange light. Flower-shaped lamps hung from the low ceiling, releasing a fug of incense. Blades and weapons of every description lined the walls, and a great desk carved from the lacquered skeleton of a whale skull occupied the far corner of the room. Its surface was covered with parchment and curled scrolls.

Zenthe slumped into one of the room’s velvet-lined chairs and retrieved a black stone lockbox from a satchel slung over her shoulder.

‘That is it?’ said Kyre, with keen interest. ‘The Heart of Winter?’

‘That’s what my father sent me to retrieve, yes.’

Zenthe leaned over and pried the lid of the nullstone box open, just a fraction. Instantly the chamber was filled with an aura of intense cold that snuffed out the tallow candles that burned in a glass bowl on Kyre’s desk.

Zenthe snapped the lid shut again.

‘Of course, I have no intention of giving this to Zarkand Zenthe,’ she said. ‘Kyre, with your help we can breach the walls of the Eternity of Torment unseen. This time we won’t strike with a single crew, but with every ship at your command. Before my father even realises he is betrayed, we will have him surrounded.’

‘As long as you hold to our deal, Arika,’ said Kyre. ‘When your father is dead, the Eternity of Torment is mine.’

Zenthe nodded. ‘Believe me, I would rather see that place burn than call it my own. You’re welcome to it.’

‘Zarkand Zenthe is no fool,’ said Oscus. ‘He has not ruled the Eternity of Torment for so many years without constantly expecting betrayal. He will be on the lookout for anything suspicious.’

Kyre shrugged. ‘Of course. There is a chance he will anticipate this. A chance worth taking.’

‘And what of your wound?’ asked Guinmark. ‘If you kill your father, how will you find the antidote for the poison in your blood?’

‘Oh, I’ll keep him alive long enough to pry that secret from his flesh,’ said Arika. ‘And even if I die, it will be worth it just to see his dreams of conquest left in cinders. We set sail tonight.’ She winced as she stood. ‘The Blood Drake stays, along with her crew. Let my father’s spies in the city believe me lost in the Druichan.’

‘I have seven reaver-ships moored out beyond the Everflame,’ said Kyre. ‘And another five already docked within the black ark. My corsairs will be outnumbered, but if we kill Zarkand Zenthe and his pet witch Vhorskaya, the battle is as good as over.’

‘A bold gambit,’ muttered Oscus.

Chapter Thirteen

The Eternity of Torment loomed ahead. Now that the weather had cleared they could see the full and terrifying scale of the fortress vessel. They saw the tentacle limbs of the ghorvorasc propelling the black ark through the water, sending up a fierce bow wave. Black-sailed reaver-ships flew the kraken symbol of Zarkand Zenthe. The corsair king was no longer content to lurk in the deep waters beyond Izalend.

No, he was preparing for open war.

‘Take us in,’ said Kyre. ‘Raise the bloody claw. Let them know the Fleetmaster of Hammerhal Aqsha returns.’

As they neared the portside wall of the black ark, a shelf of armour and iron began to lower like an immense drawbridge. Within, they could see the rows after rows of moored reaver-ships.

Kyre turned to Zenthe and Oscus.

‘You should head below,’ he said. ‘Our attempts at secrecy won’t last very long if someone spies you on deck. I’ll send for you when the coast is clear.’

Several of Kyre’s men led them down into the hold.

‘Can we trust him?’ Oscus muttered.

‘Too late to worry about that,’ said Zenthe. Her wound suddenly flared with pain, and she stumbled forward and leaned against the wall of the ship, gritting her teeth and forcing back the wave of agony that threatened to overwhelm her. She could feel the fire spreading throughout her battered body, the sickness seeping into every corner it could find.

‘It’s getting worse,’ she said. ‘I think it might be too late already for my dear father’s magical cure. If it even exists.’

‘It does,’ said Oscus, sounding strangely certain. ‘Your father does not seem like a wasteful man.’

‘Oh, he is not. Believe me. I am a particularly valuable asset to him, as were the rest of my family. I watched them all die, you know. At his hand. Screaming under the blade as he tore the hearts from their bodies. My mother. All my brothers. I am the last, or so I thought. Once he has consumed me, the curse will devour him. I take some comfort in the fact that even Zarkand Zenthe cannot cheat death.’

‘The curse?’

‘These days my father rarely departs the Eternity of Torment, but it was not always so. Once he terrorised the coast from here to the Shyish Innerlands, raiding and plundering at will. They say he was the deadliest privateer in all the eight realms.’

‘I’ve heard the tales.’

‘None of them come close to capturing what a cold-blooded shark he was. He conquered entire kingdoms and sold their people into slavery. He stained the seas red with blood wherever he sailed. And one day he came to the city of Ghavorka, in the Realm of Death. He came as a friend, offering protection against a plague of vampires that were preying upon the populace. They offered him all their gold if he could drive the undead back into their crypts. He fulfilled his word, and the gates of Ghavorka opened to his fleet, welcoming him as a hero. That was a foolish mistake.’

‘I am sure I know what happened next.’

‘Once he was inside their city, he burned it to the ground, stole everything of value and dragged away the population in chains. The stories tell that the elders of the city cursed him for his betrayal, even as he flayed them alive and hanged them from their ramparts. They damned him to live a life of endless pain, his body rotting away day by day, his flesh sloughing from his bones. Consuming the beating hearts of his own kin fends death off for a time, but when there are no more of his bloodline left to feed on, his end will be slow and torturous.’

She sighed. ‘In retrospect they should have known the creature they were dealing with. Zarkand Zenthe doesn’t give a bilge-rat’s tail about his own kin, so that part of the curse really only affected me and mine.’

Oscus was quiet as he digested her story.

‘The very fact he was willing to risk my life suggests that Zarkand thinks he has found a way to break the curse,’ she continued. ‘Perhaps he has some other children hidden away, just in case. That would not surprise me.’

The ship creaked as it turned broadside, likely lining up with the black ark’s docks.

One of Kyre’s officers, a dark-skinned aelf with a shock of hair dyed flame-red approached. The rest of the fleetmaster’s crew were arming themselves, stowing cutlasses and repeater bows.

‘We will wait until nightfall,’ the red-haired aelf said. ‘Until the flesh palaces open.’

It was a long few hours for Arika Zenthe, spent huddled in the dark clutching the nullstone container and listening to the rumble of distant voices. The pain in her side had only increased. Every step invited a fresh spear of agony to lance through her body. She looked at the wound and saw that the blackened flesh now spread from her hip to below her ribs.

It came as a blessed relief when Vizrin Kyre’s lieutenant finally signalled them to move. Zenthe and Oscus pulled down their hoods and checked their blades before making their way up the companionway to the main deck.

Kyre was waiting, accompanied by a score of warriors clad in sharkskin leathers and wielding cutlasses.

‘Follow me,’ said the fleetmaster, making his way down the gangplank and stepping onto the cobbled streets of the black ark. Moving swiftly, but not so fast that they aroused suspicion, they passed along the main thoroughfare towards Tyrant’s Rise.

‘I can get us through the main gate and into the courtyard,’ said Kyre. ‘I have quarters in the Tower of Norond.’

‘I know it well,’ said Zenthe. ‘It’s where I was raised.’

As they turned the corner they entered one of the pleasure house squares, still lit by a haze of lavender light and draped with silk curtains. Zenthe’s unease grew. There were rabble-rousers and drunken sailors filtering through the streets, but not nearly so many as there should be at this hour. Screams and groans echoed uncomfortably through the unexpectedly quiet streets. Slaves cowered in the doorways, bowing their heads as Zenthe and the others passed.

‘Something’s wrong,’ muttered Kyre.

‘There’s no turning back now,’ said Zenthe. Her wound was pulsing with insistent fury, and each step was like walking a league. She wondered if she could even make it back to Kyre’s ship without succumbing to the pain. ‘We press on.’

Kyre gave her an appraising look, but eventually he nodded and gestured his crew to spread out ahead. They continued on, passing into a series of shadowed backstreets. The balconies and awnings of the pleasure houses provided a dense canopy above. Zenthe thought she saw a flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye and paused to scan the rooftops. She saw nothing, but the feeling of being watched only grew more intense as they continued.

Eventually, the labyrinth of cobbled lanes converged upon a wide square, at the centre of which was a statue of an aelf in barbed armour clutching the severed head of a duardin. Crystal-clear water poured from the stump of the duardin’s neck, flowing into a circular marble bowl.

They entered, filing out into the open ground, sticking to the edges of the buildings without cover to hide behind. No sooner had they reached the centre of the plaza than a sharp cry split the air.

The sound of mail boots thundering across stone met their ears, and she saw the gleam of tridents appear at the far end of the square. Rows of armoured corsairs, their masks carved in the image of a kraken’s grasping limbs. Figures emerged on the rooftops, and she heard the snap of firing levers being readied.

They were trapped.

She turned to Kyre, snarling in fury, already raising her blade ready to cut him down.

‘You back-stabbing dog,’ she snarled. ‘I’ll cut out your lying tongue and stuff it down your throat.’

Then she looked into the aelf’s eyes and saw nothing but confusion. He had his sword and saw-toothed axe in hand, but there was no smirk of triumph on his narrow face.

‘If I wanted you dead, I’d have killed you the second you boarded my ship,’ he said. ‘This is not my betrayal.’

Figures emerged from the shadows of the flesh halls. Witch aelves, prowling forward to surround their party, their eyes gleaming with predatory hunger at the prospect of blood. Arika saw the spiked headdress of High Priestess Vhorskaya and bit out a peal of bitter laughter.

Oscus stepped away from her, drawing his sabre and dropping it to the ground. His face was utterly expressionless as he met her gaze.

‘You,’ she said.

He said nothing.

‘I knew I had a spy amidst my crew. But I thought you loyal, Oscus.’

‘I am loyal. To your father.’

The ache in her chest grew suddenly, overshadowing that of her gut.

‘Oh, don’t blame Oscus,’ said Zarkand Zenthe. Her father strode across the square at Vhorskaya’s side, hands clasped behind his back. ‘I left him little choice. Did you think I could allow you, my last remaining blood relative, to roam out of sight at will, Arika? No, no. You have only ever had exactly as much freedom as I granted you. I let you play out your games at Excelsis for as long as it suited me. But you know what must happen eventually.’

‘I am the last,’ she said. ‘When you’ve finished with me, there are no others, are there, father?’

‘No more. But no curse is unbreakable, Arika. Your sacrifice will grant me another few centuries of life. Enough to see my empire rise in the north. When you get to my age, daughter, you begin to think not of life, but of legacy. If I am to die, I will make sure the God-King’s whelps learn to fear my name as they once did.’

He extended a hand. She moved forward to hand over the nullstone box but collapsed to her knees, coughing and drooling strands of black saliva.

‘Vhorskaya,’ said Zarkand Zenthe, his tone urgent. ‘The antidote.’

The High Priestess drew a vial from her belt and emptied a translucent, gelid liquid across the edge of her dagger. She stepped up and drew the blade none too gently across Arika’s forearm, carving open the skin. Immediately, Arika’s body tensed and convulsed, and she vomited again. A warming, pleasant numbness spread from the wound.

‘We cannot have you dying early,’ said her father. ‘In actual fact, I believe you may have lasted several more days, but I do not care for taking chances with someone so precious to me. Now give me the Heart of Winter.’

Bent over with nausea, surrounded on all sides by enemies and traitors, Arika Zenthe began to laugh. A high-pitched, manic sound, even to her ears. Zarkand’s eyes narrowed, and he gestured Vhorskaya forward. The High Priestess of Khaine tore the nullstone box from Arika’s hands as she continued to howl with laughter.

Vhorskaya snapped open the container, and fury flashed across her perfect features.

‘Empty,’ she said.

‘Oh, father,’ said Arika Zenthe, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘You thought you had everything worked out, did you not? But once again you display your greatest weakness. Humans, duardin, free aelves. None of them are worthy of your attention, are they? And so you dismiss them.’

‘What do you speak of?’ hissed Zarkand, and the High Priestess stepped forward with her blade raised.

‘It’s all too funny, truly. To think, you have ruled this black ark for centuries, Zarkand. And now you are going to lose it, all because of a single escaped slave.’

‘Excuse me, gentlemen!’ said Guinmark cheerfully, approaching the trio of corsairs that guarded the tunnel ahead. The aelves turned, levelling their tridents, confusion evident on their cruel faces.

Gallanglaen’s first arrow took the leftmost guard in the throat. His second was already in the air before the first had even struck its target. It pierced the eye of the second figure, who toppled bonelessly to the floor. Broukan’s axe whipped through the air and sank into the chest of the final guard. The duardin approached and tugged the weapon loose with some effort.

‘You know where we are?’ the mercenary asked. ‘Can’t make head nor tail of this labyrinth.’

Guinmark nodded in satisfaction.

‘We are exactly where we need to be. The feeding pit.’

A set of rough-hewn stone steps rose, and the cramped tunnel opened into a vast cavern. On all sides were wet-slick walls of black stone, covered with lichen and luminescent algae. Below, a whirlpool raged. Water flowed from channels set in the walls, pouring down into the churning pool. There was an awful stench upon the air, a miasma of rotten fish and sulphur.

‘What is this place?’ asked Gallanglaen.

‘This is the mouth of the ghorvorasc,’ said Guinmark. ‘Or one of its mouths, at least.’

He gestured to a hole in the ceiling above the swirling water.

‘Such a beast requires a constant supply of food. It is not particular about what it consumes. Sea beasts, livestock. The wreckage of captured ships. Slaves. In my brief time aboard this vessel I saw thousands thrown into this chamber. Living fuel for this organic engine.’

‘By Grimnir’s axe,’ said Broukan, shaking his head and peering down into the maelstrom. As they watched, a circular, lamprey-like set of fangs emerged from the water. Each was large enough to bite clean through the deck of a warship. There were lashing tentacles down there too, lined with razor-sharp barbs.

‘It is hungry,’ said Gallanglaen. ‘Perhaps we should feed it.’

Guinmark stepped to the edge of the shelf of stone and retrieved Kyre’s second nullstone box. This one was not empty. As he opened it, Gallanglaen and Broukan stepped back, holding up their hands to fend off the sudden rush of cold.

Guinmark gritted his teeth and ignored the pain.

‘Hungry, are you?’ he shouted down into the pit. ‘Well, here you go.’

With that, he tipped the box and let the Heart of Winter fall free. The orb spun as it tumbled through the air, and was swallowed whole by the enormous maw.

It was slow, at first. The Heart of Winter sank into the ghorvorasc’s gullet. It took several moments for the pain of sudden and intense cold to travel to the pelagic monster’s brain, at which point the beast instinctively tried to regurgitate the agonising object. But the Ichonneath’s full power had been unleashed, and as it travelled deeper into the heart of the ghorvorasc it froze both blood and water solid. The beast began to thrash and writhe, unable to withstand the pain.

Dozens of ships sailing alongside the beast were crushed to kindling by the crazed flailing of its tentacle limbs. It reared and bellowed in pain, sending devastating tremors throughout the fortress it bore upon its back.

The creature was dying. And it was taking the Eternity of Torment with it.

Chapter Fourteen

The ground shook beneath Zenthe’s feet. A low, rumbling bellow echoed through the streets of the black ark, growing louder and louder. Cracks began to split across the stony ground, and stalactites rained from above, shattering into a thousand shards of stone as they struck the earth.

‘What have you done?’ spat Zarkand Zenthe.

The ground split apart, and seawater spurted up in towering geysers. One burst straight through the centre of a pleasure palace to Zenthe’s left, and the roof exploded under the immense pressure, raining tiles and broken glass across the square.

Screams and panicked cries split the air.

‘I will cut out your eyes, wretch!’ hissed High Priestess Vhorskaya, starting forward. No sooner had she taken a step than the city rocked again, sending her sprawling along with everyone in the square. There was a series of screams and sickening crunches as the crossbowmen lining the roofs were thrown to the street with unspeakable force.

Arika Zenthe hauled herself upright, searching for her father. There he was, fleeing into the backstreets with several witch aelves hard on his heels, as well as the traitor Oscus.

‘Go,’ she shouted to her companions above the deafening sound of the ghorvorasc’s maddened roars. ‘I’m not leaving until I see my father dead.’

‘I won’t wait,’ Kyre shouted back, but she was already moving, sprinting across the splintering ground in pursuit of Zarkand Zenthe.

Panicked slaves and bleary-eyed corsairs poured into the streets, fleeing towards the harbour. Zenthe shouldered her way through the mass of bodies, slicing a path with her sabre when the press became too tight.

Her father turned, and their eyes met across the chaos of the streets. She had never seen such an expression of abhorrence upon his face. It truly warmed her heart. He turned and disappeared around a corner, and she hurtled after him.

As she darted after him, she caught a flash of white out of the corner of her eye. Vhorskaya darted forward, her dagger slashing with blinding speed. Zenthe ducked and rolled aside, and the trailing blade tore through the throat of an unfortunate corsair fleeing in the opposite direction.

‘I should have carved out your heart long ago,’ snarled the High Priestess. ‘You ungrateful child.’

She came on, her feet moving so fast and so gracefully that Zenthe could barely keep up. Instead she ducked, then weaved, avoiding that deadly blade, playing for time. As Vhorskaya stabbed out again, Zenthe grabbed a passing figure and pushed them into the path of the blade.

The High Priestess snarled in frustration as she ripped her weapon free, and Zenthe darted in to slash a bloody furrow across her thigh. The witch aelf seemed not even to notice the wound. She whirled and came on, striking high, then stabbing low, trying to pin Zenthe against the far wall of the street.

Zenthe picked off each strike desperately, but her arm was still numb from the effects of the antidote, and she was growing more sluggish by the moment. A pirouette and a hooking slice from the priestess trapped her blade, and the witch aelf pressed closer, her snarling face only inches from Zenthe’s own.

Zenthe dropped the sword. The sudden shift in momentum surprised Vhorskaya, who stumbled on a blood-slicked patch of the street. Zenthe slammed her head into the woman’s nose and felt it break for the second time. A knee to the midsection drove the priestess back, followed by a straight punch that slammed into her belly. Ducking her head, Zenthe shoulder-charged the staggering aelf, slamming her to the cobbles.

She felt a dagger scrape across her ribs but ignored the pain, kicking her foe hard in the face and sending her rolling across the ground.

‘You caught me by surprise when we last fought,’ said Zenthe, reaching down with her boot and neatly flipping her fallen sword back into her grasp. ‘Not so this time, priestess.’

Vhorskaya spat blood. One of the witch aelf’s eyes was already swelling up.

Another thunderous tremor sounded, and a crack splintered its way along the street. Several fleeing slaves tumbled screaming into the abyss.

The High Priestess came on again, her furious momentum redoubled. Zenthe blocked a swipe at her eyes and ducked back from a backhand slash, but she was too slow to avoid a kick that doubled her over and drove the air from her lungs. She stumbled, trying to get her blade up in time to fend off the next attack, but Vhorskaya was terrifyingly fast. She slipped past Zenthe’s guard and drove an elbow into her ribs, then dropped low to sweep Zenthe’s legs from under her.

Zenthe fell on her back, and Vhorskaya was on her in a moment. Their blades met, and the High Priestess’ face locked in a furious grimace, her teeth bared as she drove her dagger ever closer to Zenthe’s heart.

Another tremor rocked the street. Vhorskaya lost her balance, just slightly. Arika Zenthe tucked a foot against the witch aelf’s stomach and kicked out hard. The witch aelf tumbled backwards, swaying on the edge of the abyss that split the city street in two. She stood on the lip of oblivion for a moment, her arms windmilling for balance.

Zenthe threw her sword like a spear. It sank deep into Vhorskaya’s chest. The priestess’ eyes opened wide, and she uttered a single gasp of disbelief before toppling over the edge.

Cursing, her body aching, Zenthe staggered to her feet. She hobbled along the thoroughfare and turned the corner to face the open harbour. She was too late. Her father stood upon the deck of a crimson-sailed reaver-ship, Oscus at his side. The ship was free of its moorings and making for an opening in the black ark’s hull.

Zarkand Zenthe met her gaze as she stood upon the edge of the dock. For the first time, he no longer looked like the legendary corsair. No, he looked old. Defeated. She smiled a wide smile, and saluted him with her blade.

He had escaped her again, but this time it did not feel like a defeat.

‘Run, father,’ she said. ‘Run and hide, as I once had to. But there’s nowhere you can flee where I won’t find you.’

About the Author

Nick Horth is the author of the Age of Sigmar novella City of Secrets and the novel Callis & Toll: The Silver Shard. Nick works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

An extract from The Bone Desert.

‘How much further?’

Gotrek’s growl ended the last hope Maleneth had of sleeping. She opened one eye to look at her companion, but the sunburned duardin hadn’t been speaking to her. He’d been addressing their guide.

‘A half-day’s journey yet, sellah,’ Aziz replied, glancing back nervously from his perch atop the front of the wagon. The scrawny young merchant had chattered incessantly when their journey had first begun, his words clearly driven by the anxiety he felt at being in the presence of the cantankerous red-crested duardin warrior. Gotrek’s surliness had quickly drained him of words, though.

‘You spat those lies half a day ago, manling,’ Gotrek snarled. Aziz cringed, and Maleneth grimaced. The duardin’s perpetual ill mood was becoming infectious.

‘The temple inscriptions have been there for the better part of an age, Gotrek Gurnisson,’ Maleneth responded over Aziz’s stammered apologies. ‘I doubt one turning of day to night will alter that.’

She closed her eyes again, trying to ignore the incessant rocking motion of the wagon, the sack of meal grinding her back, the infernal heat cooking her tight-bound leathers. She tried to ignore existence itself, but to no avail. Silently, she cursed everything – the heat, the journey, the sleeplessness. Most of all, she cursed Gotrek Gurnisson, the greatest monster-slayer of a dead age and the being – some said demigod – that Maleneth was murder-sworn to protect.

As though the mad red-crested Doomseeker needed protecting.

‘Will there be any dwarfs at our destination?’ she heard him ask. She could tell from the pained silence which followed that Aziz was struggling with the question.

‘Will there be… duardin, at the outpost,’ Gotrek rephrased, pronouncing the name of his own race with painful hesitancy.

‘Duardin at Khaled-Tush, why yes, sellah!’ Aziz said eagerly, grasping on to any perceived good news he could offer his ill-tempered companion. ‘It is the beginning of the Golden Season, when the master smiths of the Great Karagi will ply their wares to the tribes up and down the trails. Some of their retainers will likely already be setting up at Khaled-Tush.’

Gotrek spat on the golden sand. The gobbet sizzled. ‘Then when we arrive, you be sure to keep me and my axe away from them,’ Gotrek said. Aziz lapsed back into silence, clearly unwilling to enquire what dark deed had left the lone duardin estranged from his kindred. Maleneth knew well enough – in the months since Gotrek had hammered the Master Rune into his flesh and bonded with its power, his name had surged from one duardin hold to another. Some warriors of the Fyreslayer lodges believed him Grimnir reforged, their shattered god made whole once again. It hadn’t been long before Gotrek had found the genuflecting too much to bear. He’d sent them all away, made them swear oaths not to follow him. All except Maleneth.

That had surprised her. She had been preparing for the day when Gotrek would demand they part company, rehearsing her own arguments. Speaking in terms that a duardin would understand, she was oathsworn to protect the Master Rune, even if it was currently hammered into a mad Doomseeker’s heart. She could not leave an item so precious to the Order of the Azyr unguarded, and thus she could not leave Gotrek.

But God of Murder, she wished she could.

Focus, Witchblade, whispered the voice of Maleneth’s former mistress, bound to the blood vial she wore around her neck. Now is not the time to let the heat take you.

She opened both eyes to regard the Slayer and the rune on his breast. Forged in the grim likeness of the god Grimnir, it blazed with a deep golden lustre, as though drinking in the heat of the desert. The same could not be said for the rest of Gotrek’s body. His exposed arms and torso were burned red raw from Hysh’s unyielding light, his swirling tattoos almost lost amidst the flaking skin. Yet he showed no discomfort in the heat, even though she was certain she could see blisters forming on his inflamed skin. She had told him to at least don a cloak, had even offered her own, but he’d ignored her. According to the Slayer, fancy cloaks and clothing were for umgi, not dwarfs.

The duardin shifted. He had noticed Maleneth’s attention. His single eye moved from the fyrestorm greataxe slung across his lap, and she found herself dropping her gaze before it met her own. That was a feeling she had rarely experienced since leaving the Murder Temples. There was something about his one remaining eye – more than grim resolve, more than stony determination, a fire that seemed able to burn bare the very thoughts of those it touched. It was the eye of a being that had witnessed a great deal more than it should have. The eye that, for all the private scorn she held for such a view, could well have belonged to a deity not of the Mortal Realms.

‘Drink, aelf.’

It was a statement, not a question. Maleneth realised Gotrek was holding out a water skin. She reached over the meal sacks that separated them in the back of the wagon, and took it.

She hadn’t realised how thirsty she was. Dehydration was just one of the desert’s thousand dangers. To live in such places was to defy the odds. Here in the Bone Desert especially, nothing lived beyond the wagon’s flank, bar the shaven tusker that was dragging it. All was a sea of undulating, bleached yellow dunes, punctuated only by the skeletal remains of vast beasts. Some said those carcasses were what gave the desert its name. Others claimed the sand itself was bone-dust, blown fine as powder from the realm of the slaughter-god on a burning furnace wind.

It didn’t do well to ponder such things. Maleneth had begun the journey with just one hope – that they would use the opportunity to stop at the outpost maintained by the Order of the Azyr deep in the desert’s heart, close to the monument city known as the Eight Pillars. Gotrek had already brushed the suggestion off. His destination was the Pillars themselves, driven by the rumoured presence of an inscription detailing the location of the Axe of Grimnir within the ancient ruins. An axe the duardin claimed was once his while the dead world lived.

‘Finish it,’ she said, tossing the half-empty water skin back to Gotrek. The Slayer let it land in his lap without catching it. Maleneth fought the urge to snap at him.

Aziz had sworn to take them as far as Khaled-Tush, the oasis settlement a day’s journey from the Pillars. They had found him in the market at Barkash, a young tusker pack driver and teamster who shifted trade stock along the desert trails for one of the local merchant cartels. A single gold coin from Gotrek had been more than enough to allay his reservations. Now, three and a half days since Barkash’s fertile river basin had given way to the desolation of the endless sand dunes, Maleneth was beginning to consider riding ahead once they reached Khaled-Tush and bringing the servants of the Order of the Azyr directly to Gotrek. The Master Rune had to be examined and Gotrek’s true abilities assessed. If even half the rumours already spawned about him were true, he was too valuable and too dangerous simply to be wandering the Mortal Realms.

She didn’t relish the thought of telling him that.

You are afraid of the duardin, hissed Maleneth’s mistress, the disembodied echo-voice slipping into her thoughts. No true child of Khaine would hesitate because of that brutish race.

‘I would like nothing more than to see if this Khainite could rip out your heart, mistress,’ she muttered darkly. ‘If only you still had one.’

There was no response from the blood vial around her neck, and she tried to put her mind elsewhere. The wagon lurched uncomfortably. Anywhere that wasn’t coarse and burning hot. The lurch came again, and the tusker hauling the wagon let out a bellow.

‘What is happening?’ she demanded, pulling back her hood and rising onto her knees to look ahead. They had entered a shallow depression between two dunes, following the line of Hysh-bleached wooden stakes that marked out the route in the event of a sandstorm. They trailed away over the next rise directly ahead, but the tusker seemed to be struggling.

‘Esha, esha!’ Aziz was snapping at the beast, poking its stubbly rear with his goad. ‘Maliki esha!’

‘It’s trapped in the sand,’ Maleneth said as the tusker let out another fearful bellow. ‘We are sinking.’

‘But the posts,’ Aziz said. ‘We are still on the correct route, sellah. This cannot be the dragging sands!’

‘Well, clearly this route is the wrong one,’ Maleneth snapped. ‘Gotrek, get up. We must abandon this wagon. Now.’

The duardin had strapped his axe across his back and was leaning over his side of the wagon, peering at the sand around them. The wheels were already half-submerged, and the tusker was now floundering visibly.

‘The dunes must be stable,’ Maleneth said. ‘Grab the water skins, and jump.’

‘We cannot leave the produce!’ Aziz said, scrambling into the back of the wagon with Maleneth and Gotrek and trying to heft the meal sacks. ‘I cannot lose them! They will beat me if I fail to bring them even one less than I am signed for!’

‘You’ll be delivering them straight to Shyish and the God of Death himself if you stay,’ Gotrek snapped, grabbing a pack and the two nearest water skins and tying them around his waist. Even now, it still sounded strange to hear him trying to pronounce the names of the Eight Realms.

‘Gotrek, the boy first,’ Maleneth said.

‘Hold still, manling,’ Gotrek grunted, and grabbed Aziz around his skinny waist. The pack driver struggled, then let out a terrified wail as Gotrek braced himself on the wagon’s side, and flung him. Aziz thumped into the sand on the bottom of the dune to the right of the trail, rolled with surprising dexterity and stared back at the wagon. He didn’t sink.

‘Go, you oaf,’ Maleneth said to Gotrek. The timber around them was beginning to creak and groan at the pressure exerted on it, and the tusker was going wild, lowing and goring the yielding ground beneath it. Gotrek scowled at Maleneth for a moment, then mounted the wagon’s side and, with a bellow of exertion, flung himself. The rune on his chest burned brighter than ever, and he cleared far more ground than Maleneth had expected. He slammed into the sand half a dozen feet short of Aziz.

And began to sink.

‘Khaine’s bloodied blades,’ Maleneth swore. She leapt. Lithe as a feline, she landed in a crouch next to Aziz. Without missing a breath, she turned and slid the belt from around her waist. Gotrek was already half-gone, sinking like a lodestone. He let out a roar that eclipsed even that of the tusker, clawing in vain for firm ground, seemingly more angry than panicked. Maleneth darted forward until she felt the yielding sand begin to drag at her feet. She knelt a pace back, and flung the belt out towards the duardin.

‘Is that all you have?’ Gotrek bellowed as the strip of aelf-cured hide reached him.

Maleneth smiled. ‘Take it or drown. It matters not to me. I can always recover your corpse and dig the Master Rune from you cold flesh.’

Gotrek snatched the end. Maleneth stood, dug her feet into the sand as best she could, wrapped the belt’s end around both fists and began to pull. It was like trying to drag a Khainite sacrificial slab single-handedly.

You should leave him, her mistress hissed. He is a mad fool.

‘Help me,’ Maleneth snarled at Aziz, then realised he was no longer at her side. The teamster was sprinting along the bottom of the dune, headed away from them.

‘I will seek help!’ he yelled back at her.

‘There’s no time, you fool,’ Maleneth barked after him, but to no avail. He kept going.

She cursed the boy’s cowardice, every muscle straining as she leaned back. The belt was taut and quivering, but she was certain it would hold. She had strangled the life from enough people with it to be sure.

Gotrek’s downward motion was arrested and, with agonising slowness, reversed. He began to rise up out of the dragging sands and, with a last roar of effort, dug his fists into the edge of the firm ground and hauled himself from the mire like some primordial earth-god returning to the Mortal Realms. Maleneth collapsed backwards, panting.

Behind them, the tusker was gone. The two stood and watched in silence as the rear of the wagon, upended now, was dragged under inch by slow, creaking inch. Eventually there was a final sucking sound and the whole thing was gone. The sand lay silent and undisturbed, as though the wagon and its tusker had never existed.

‘We must leave, Gotrek, son of Gurni,’ Maleneth said. ‘If we wish to reach Khaled-Tush before nightfall.’

‘What happened to the beardling?’

‘He ran,’ Maleneth replied. ‘He probably thought you were going to eat him for leading you astray.’

‘Better than stabbing him in the back, aelf.’

‘Only in your deranged imagination am I forever murdering those who are trying to help me, Gotrek.’

Gotrek levelled an axe at her. ‘I saw enough of your kind’s treachery in the world before.’

‘The world before is dead,’ Maleneth hissed, rounding on him. ‘And it pains me that you did not die with it.’

He didn’t offer a retort, and she assumed he was struggling to master his anger at having to be saved from so ignominious an end as the dragging sands. When she caught his gaze, though, she realised his focus was elsewhere.

There was a figure atop the dune behind them. It was little more than a silhouette, dark against the cloudless blue of the heavens. She saw it only for a second before it disappeared back beyond the rise, clearly sensing their attention.

‘What was that?’ she asked.

‘I know not, aelf. But they have been following us since we left the city.’

‘Since Barkash?’ Maleneth snarled. ‘Why didn’t you say something, you foolish dolt? Do you not think it’s even slightly relevant that there is someone hunting us?’

Gotrek shrugged. ‘They were keeping well back – we couldn’t have caught them unless we laid up some sort of ambush, and I’m in no mind to linger in this place when I have my axe to find. Besides, they were mounted, meaning they weren’t the Grey Lord’s vermin.’

‘They are not skaven, so you do not think they are relevant?’ Maleneth demanded. ‘And just what if they are being recompensed by him?’

Her words were only an attempt to mask her anger. She hadn’t seen the figure before, and she had never known a duardin to be more attentive to his surroundings than her. Then again, she had never known a duardin like Gotrek Gurnisson.

‘Let us move, as the day is wearing thin,’ she said, then realised Gotrek had already begun to stomp off. She rolled her eyes, bound her belt around her waist and followed.

Click here to buy The Bone Desert.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Akim Kaliberda.

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