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The Warden in the Mountain – Eric Gregory

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Beastgrave’

A Black Library Publication

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The Warden in the Mountain

by Eric Gregory

They made the climb in silence. For hours, the night was only the heavy breathing of the other aspirants, the flapping of their green cloaks in the highland winds, and the tap-tap-tap of a staff on dirt and rock. The way was steep and overgrown, but the five aspirants kept pace with one another and followed the steps of their warden. There was a rhythm to the ascent, a steadiness, and by focusing on the rhythm, Maethys was nearly able to quiet the fear.

A keening broke the silence. An animal cry, but shrill, as if from a rusted tongue in a stone throat. It seemed close. Maethys started, but kept quiet. He wasn’t too proud to let the fear show, but Greatwarden Tythrae had commanded silence, and he didn’t want to give her another reason to frown at him. No small part of his fear was reserved for her.

Ahead, the greatwarden raised a bony hand in the moonlight. The aspirants halted. A few gripped their draichs. Laeren took his hand and pressed the fingertip-cant into his palms.

Look, she said.

But where to look? The vastness of the mountain ahead of them was darker than the starfield above, an immense topography that consumed half the ground and sky, impossible to hold in the eye or mind all at once.

It was hardly any wonder that many in the hollows – even in the cities to the south – believed the mountain was a god. Allpeak, some called it, Height-of-Heights, or Beastgrave, an implacable end of all things that consumed even the god-beasts of Ghur. Others, like Tythrae, said the impossible mountain was a god-beast, the measureless corpse of the first and greatest of titans, fallen from the heavens at the beginning of time.

In Maethys’ family it was only ever ‘the mountain’. His brother said it was too vast a thing for naming.

Maethys followed the line of Laeren’s finger to a massive jut of rock above. Lit by the stars, a family of hale-moths gripped the underside of the crag, long necks twisted to regard the aspirants. Their eyes gleamed in the dark and Maethys shivered. The largest of the animals unhinged its jaw and released another keening, and then the beasts fluttered into the shadows of the crag.

Did you see them? Laeren pressed in his palm. The set of her mouth was serious, but Maethys thought there was a smile in the play of her fingers. He savoured the feeling of her skin on his.

I saw, he answered. He hoped he didn’t look as scared as he felt.

‘This is the place,’ said Greatwarden Tythrae softly. The rasp of her voice was as startling as the hale-moths’ keening. She led the aspirants up a slope that steepened until they had to find handholds in the chalky rock, scraping up little clouds of white dust. They heaved themselves over a ledge and onto a kind of plateau that overlooked the valleys and hollows below. Above the travellers towered the shadowy jut, one among a thousand peaks of the god-mountain. And ahead of them, the jagged mouth of a cave.

‘Horn and mouth,’ said Tythrae. ‘The place of proving.’

The mountain, she taught, was mother to monstrosity. The First Beast was a creature of ruin, and its vast, ancient corpse cast a malign pall over the land. It spoke in the dark of the night, and its voice was your voice, and it called corruption to aelf and human and animal alike.

This peak here, this place of proving, she named the Ruinhorn.

When the half-dozen aspirants had assembled on the plateau, Tythrae spoke again. ‘For generations,’ she murmured, just audible above the wind, ‘all who would be wardens have commenced their service by enduring the voice of the Ruinhorn for a night. If you would have me ordain you as warden, you will do the same. If you wish to leave, you may leave with Baran.’

She gestured to Baran, her retainer. He was a perpetually silent human, one of the only humans in the order, and hardly any younger than Tythrae by the look of him, though Maethys struggled to mark human ages.

Tythrae allowed a long moment for second thoughts. No one left. The Order of Wardens-in-the-Wild was a thankless calling; few entered it lightly, and the least committed – the whimsical or uncertain, or pretenders – had all been culled already.

All except me, thought Maethys. He glanced at Laeren. Not everyone joined the Wardens in a spirit of noble service.

Tythrae nodded at her aspirants. ‘I see. Sit, then, and listen.’

Maethys closed his eyes and assumed the position of solicitude, his legs folded underneath him, his hands clasped at his chest and his head bowed to the dirt. Around him, the others did the same. Tythrae and Baran paced among them, and here and there the greatwarden corrected postures. Maethys held his breath as Tythrae passed him, and exhaled with relief when she passed without comment. She didn’t need an excuse to criticise him, but he preferred not to give her one, if he could help it.

When the crunch of Tythrae’s boots against dirt had quieted, Maethys snuck a glance at the aspirants on either side of him.

To his left, Laeren. She had the same seriousness of purpose as the greatwarden, her grandmother; she squeezed her eyes shut and frowned. She had the wild blood – the graceful horns and hooves that one found in some aelves of the hollows, and which Maethys found inexpressibly beautiful in Laeren.

To his right, the boy Weheol. He had lost the sight of his eyes to coldbone plague, but he persisted in the proving. With a touch of guilt, Maethys had never much liked him; there was a self-seriousness in the boy that bordered on zealotry, and he seemed to follow Tythrae in doubting Maethys’ commitment to the Order. Weheol’s eyes were open, unseeing, and he mouthed some prayer to the dead gods in silence.

Maethys closed his eyes again. He was listening, like Tythrae said, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to hear. The night wind whistled and batted at his cloak. Already, the muscles of his legs burned and complained. He heard the shifting of knees in the dirt and rock around him, the breathing of the other aspirants, the flutter of the hale-moths.

You are unwanted here, he thought, and it was true. Tythrae was no fool. She saw him, and knew his mind, and did not want him among the aspirants.

You are unwanted here. You and your family and your people – you are unwanted.

He shifted uncomfortably. He thought of his mother, who had been hounded from the free cities by humans–

You are a broken race. Your gods are dead and your home will fall and you have no place in the future.

Maethys’ eyes jerked open. He was sweating and breathing heavily. The voice that spoke in his head was his own, but the words were not his.

Someone, he realised, was screaming. Was it him? No, no – the scream was further from him. At his side, Weheol was panting into the dirt, tears streaming down his cheeks.

‘Breathe,’ hissed Tythrae, ‘hold your posture. Set your mind to salt.’

Set your mind to salt. Yes, he knew how to do that. Tythrae had taught him, whether she had liked it or not. Accept it all, accept everything wretched and ruinous about this moment and these realms and… set it aside. Like salting meat to preserve it for a time of need: suspend judgement, reserve response until necessary. Wait.

Wait.

The hale-moths trilled in the night and the voices in his head – the voices of the mountain – recited their litanies of annihilation. Your gods are dead and your people are dead and you have no place in the future.

Tythrae circled and whispered, ‘Calm and salt, calm and salt.’ An aspirant was screaming, and all around him the breathing was heavy.

Someone broke. A sharp intake of breath, boots against the dirt. Maethys opened his eyes. It was one of the older aspirants, Aelyth; she stood up and ran for the ledge.

Tythrae moved more quickly than he had ever seen her move. Aelyth’s cloak whipped in the wind and her feet left the ground and she walked into empty night. The greatwarden leapt over the backs of the prostrate aspirants, caught Aelyth’s arm and wrenched her back over the ledge from the sheer drop onto a rocky escarpment.

‘No,’ Tythrae commanded, and it was enough. Aelyth gasped and sobbed, but was still. Tythrae ordered Baran to escort the aelf back down the mountain and resumed her rounds. Maethys strained to keep his mind unresponsive to the voices.

Weheol, beside him, was next to break – or nearly. His tears turned into a howling, and he jerked and pounded his face into the earth. Maethys peered sideways; he thought he heard a crack of bone. Still kneeling, the pious boy Weheol bashed his head into the dirt and rock.

‘No, child,’ Tythrae said, and grasped his shoulders, holding him in place. ‘It is only the mountain. It is only the Beast. Set it to salt.’

Maethys glanced to his left. Sweat dripped from Laeren’s face, but she frowned and kept still.

On the other side of Laeren, the third aspirant broke. A farmhand called Hessiat, who was only too happy to tell anyone who asked that his family had given him to the Order to rid themselves of a hungry stomach. He simply stood and ran as quickly as he could into the mouth of the cave.

Maethys startled upright. Tythrae withdrew her hands from Weheol’s shoulders and made for the cave-mouth, but this time she was too slow. Hessiat of the hungry stomach was gone into the dark.

Greatwarden Tythrae turned back to her aspirants who remained, all three on their knees and uncertain.

‘You stay here,’ she said fiercely. ‘You kneel and you set your minds to salt. Keep faith and show me that you are wardens.’

And then she was gone too, into the dark of the impossible mountain.

It felt like a joke of the gods: Maethys was good at faith. Not the belief, perhaps, but the practice. The waiting and the stillness of mind. He’d never meant to be a warden, never cared about the dead pantheons or meant to serve them and stand against Ruin. Yet here he was.

He glanced aside at Laeren. She was frowning but in meditation as commanded. On his other side, Weheol shook slightly but no longer wept. The three of them were the only ones left, and Maethys couldn’t help thinking he didn’t belong here.

Two watches of the night passed, and still the greatwarden did not return. Neither did the retainer Baran, nor the lost and broken aspirants. The hale-moths trilled, and the voices of the mountain whispered their doom.

Your gods are eaten, they said. Your past is eaten. Your future is eaten.

Yet even through the watches of the night, Maethys maintained his stillness. He set the voices to salt and mastered the ache in his thighs and kept faith. He imagined (though it was not an exercise prescribed by the greatwarden) that the cloak draped around him was the walls of some ancient sanctum, built in the Time Before Times and consecrated to one of the forgotten gods. He could see it so clearly, feel it so clearly – the warmth of a hearth, the light of another sun through sacred glassworks, the name of a lost god nearly on his tongue…

You do not belong here, Maethys thought. He opened his eyes, blinked against the breeze and sat up. His legs were numb, and the hue of the night around them had changed.

‘What should we do?’ he asked.

Slowly, the others rose from their kneeling. Laeren was still frowning. Weheol’s eyes were wide, and his dark skin was a shade paler than usual.

‘We should go in after them,’ Weheol said quietly.

‘You wish to go inside?’ Laeren asked. She sounded as surprised as Maethys was. ‘She said to stay here. She said to keep faith.’

Weheol shook his head. ‘She serves the hollows. She protects. When the coldbone plague came to my holdfast, when I lost…’ he gestured to his eyes, ‘she cared for me and the people of my hollow. She wants to protect us, too. But she is more important. I would follow her example rather than her words.’

‘It might be a trial,’ Laeren said.

‘So it might,’ said Weheol. ‘And what is the right answer?’

The pair of them looked to Maethys.

His stomach turned. He had asked the question of what they should do, but he didn’t mean to answer it.

He didn’t particularly like Weheol, who condescended to him as impious and unserious. More than anything, he wanted to side with Laeren, but he couldn’t. Tythrae and the farmhand might have run afoul of the beasts of the mountain, or the voices, or some fall in the dark. They might have met brigands or the Silent People of whispered myth. If the greatwarden was well, then she would be angry, yes – but if she was in danger, wasn’t it right to try to serve? Selfless and of service: those were the Wardens’ words.

‘We should try to help them,’ he said.

Weheol turned towards him with a mix of surprise and approval on his face, as if he were appraising Maethys anew. He stood, and Maethys stood too. He didn’t want to look at Laeren, didn’t want to see the disappointment on her face, but he couldn’t stop himself. Resigned, she sighed and rose to her feet.

‘We’ll be safer together,’ she said.

In turn, the aspirants each drew their training draichs and stepped forward into the mouth of Beastgrave.

Your gods are dead and your people are dead and you have no place in the future.

As the path steepened, the voices grew more numerous, more urgent. It was Maethys’ own voice, still, layered over itself, like a chorus of dead generations.

You have no place in the future.

There was a terrible fascination in the voices, like the draw of a precipitous ledge at a great height. Some part of him wanted to hear them, wanted to listen more closely, wanted to hear each word.

Your songs are eaten and your children are eaten and your laughter is eaten.

Laeren led the way, a few steps ahead, holding a little foraged spore-light in her palm. The cave passage was narrow, and they each had to crouch to move through. Amidst the deposits of amber on the cavern walls were crude scrawlings: crowns and stagwyrms, knives and hale-moths and unknown beasts of unsettling proportions. The images might have been scratched out days ago, or centuries. No one spoke.

Maethys found setting his mind to salt more difficult, the farther they walked. He watched Laeren’s back, a corona of blue spore-light around her head, and he tried to imagine a future with her, any future. And he couldn’t. He tried to imagine a life with her and simply couldn’t see it – he couldn’t see himself there, or anywhere. It was as though something had slipped in his head; he couldn’t imagine himself as part of the hollows, part of Ghur, any part of the realms. Only an empty space where he should have been.

His breath caught in his chest, and his head felt tight. What was wrong with him?

He was going to be a Warden-in-the-Wild. He knew his path; he knew what was supposed to lie before him.

So why couldn’t he imagine a future?

They travelled down and into the depths for what felt like a watch of the night. The cave-path broadened into a kind of antechamber. Somewhere in the dark, an underground waterfall roared, violent and unseen. Here and there, steep ledges gave way to vast, empty nothing. Maethys kept a steadying hand close to Weheol, but the boy found his way forward steadily, his staff tap-tap-tapping along the rock. Slowly, a stench thickened in Maethys’ nostrils, sour and organic.

Laeren and her light paused. ‘Look,’ she said.

He followed Laeren’s finger to a pile of shoulderbags and oilskins and climbers’ hooks. Swords and helms, bracers and blankets. It was as though some expedition had laid down all their burdens in a haphazard circle and forgotten about them.

‘Travellers’ packs,’ Maethys whispered for Weheol’s sake. ‘Dozens of them, packs and cloaks and weapons. Someone else is here.’

Laeren shook her head. ‘No. They’re all different makes and ages. This sheath is aelven, from the hollows. This cloak is skaven, I think – this one human, but old. You see the heraldry of the free city of Esthu’dor? It burned to nothing two hundred years ago.’

Her spore-light flickered. Maethys felt cold.

‘Some of it is recent, too,’ he said. ‘Look at the mould on those cloaks. But this shoulderbag is clean. As though it was just set down.’

‘The smell,’ Weheol said.

‘It is high-wretched,’ Maethys agreed. ‘I can hardly breathe.’

‘No,’ said Weheol. ‘It is death.’

Laeren frowned back at him and then released her spore-light; it fluttered birdlike through the air and lit the chamber before them.

Not twenty paces ahead, a small group of corpses sat upright, arranged in a circle. As if they were sitting at a campfire.

You have no place in the future, the voice in the mountain whispered.

Maethys gripped his draich. With his free hand he took Weheol’s wrist and pressed, Bodies set upright. Careful.

He forced himself to move forward. Laeren’s light hovered over the little council of corpses; as he drew closer, Maethys could see that none of the dead were Tythrae or Hessiat. They were aelf and human and beastman, hulking and slight, but they had all suffered decomposition reckoned in months or years, some much longer. One of the corpses kneeled in the posture of a warden in meditation.

They have no place in the future. And neither do you.

‘I was wrong,’ Maethys said. ‘This is a bad place. We shouldn’t be here. We ought to leave.’

‘Of course it’s a bad place,’ said Weheol quietly. ‘We are in the horn of the First Beast fallen. Keep faith.’

The boy’s smug piety, his of course, was more than Maethys could bear just then.

‘Keep faith? Who was it that wept in the dirt outside? Who was it that distracted the greatwarden with his tears?’

The boy was silent. Immediately, Maethys regretted the words.

‘There are three of us here alive,’ he said.

‘The greatwarden is worth more than all of us,’ Weheol answered, ‘myself included. She has saved thousands and will save thousands more.’

Laeren opened her mouth to respond, but Maethys never learned what she was going to say.

Laeren’s light extinguished. She cried out.

There was a sound of blade against stone. A grunt of exertion. Maethys released Weheol’s wrist and fumbled in his cloak for his own spore-light. But he was weak in the magics of forage, and the light sputtered.

He caught a glimpse of Laeren struggling with… gods, what was it?

A mound of limbs, a hunched and pallid thing. Arms dangled from its back like a mane of hair; knives gleamed like teeth in the jerky spore-light.

You have no place in the future you have no place in the future–

The light went out, flashed blue and bright again. Laeren slashed the beast with her draich and ducked under its own swing. But she was drenched in her own blood already. Her hooves clapped the stone, and though she kept pace with the monster, her breath came heavy.

‘Run!’ she screamed. He had never heard her scream before. ‘Run!’

The creature’s knives fell on Laeren again; her parries flagged, and she nearly slipped in her own blood. Weheol was gone somewhere into the dark, obeying the command to flee.

Laeren had wanted to obey the greatwarden’s order. She hadn’t wanted to be here. Now she was bleeding inside the Ruinhorn. She was sad-eyed and brilliant and she was dying.

Maethys raised his draich and rushed towards the beast of limbs and knives. ‘Die!’ someone was screaming over and over, and he realised it was his own voice – not in his head, this time. The creature was ineffably fast; it seemed to be in a hundred places at once, to move more swiftly than the eye could follow.

The beast knocked the draich from his hands and slashed at his throat. But his momentum carried him into the monster’s body and still forward, forward and forward and into the dark, over a ledge and into the long, impossible dark – and then they were falling, and falling…

He felt his bones break on impact. Everything was dark, and he didn’t know if it was the lightlessness of Beastgrave or the nothing swelling all around him, thickening and choking. Your gods are dead and your people are dead and you are dead, said the mountain, but the voices were far away now and his head felt clearer than he could remember it being in a long time.

Maethys set his mind to salt. He accepted it all, accepted everything wretched and ruinous about this moment and these realms, and set it aside. He suspended judgement and he waited. He found he could imagine a future for himself again, a future with Laeren; they would serve the hollows and keep a gentle love for one another. It was a good life, and he waited for it.

He bled out in the salt-calm, his body broken in something like the posture of meditation.

Laeren could feel her blood trickling like rain down her arms and legs. She wanted to drop her draich, drop to her knees and close her eyes, but she was certain she would never open them again. So she focused on staying upright and holding a little light in her hands. Her vision threatened to collapse into a single point, but she fought back the darkness, focused on the light in her palm.

Underground waters rushed somewhere in the caverns. Weheol’s staff tap-tap-tapped along the rock, distantly at first, and then nearer.

She strained to listen for Maethys’ voice. Nothing.

‘It is only me,’ Weheol said as he approached. His hands found her and gingerly felt for her wounds. ‘Can you hear me? Can you speak?’

‘Yes,’ she said faintly.

‘Did you see the beast? Was it alone? Do you know what it was?’

The thing wouldn’t fix in her memory. It was all limbs and knives, and she thought it had a face, but its features swam. It might have been skaven, or one of the lost, ancient Silent People, or some unholy creature of the Ruinous Powers.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It was just the one, I think. Can you… can you hear Maethys?’

She could still see him: barrelling into the beast, toppling into the dark.

‘No,’ Weheol said. ‘He is gone.’

Anger clarified her thoughts. ‘How do you know?’

‘You heard him fall.’

Since arriving on the Ruinhorn, she had struggled to smother a wordless seething in her head, a rage that resounded in the same timbre as her own. It wasn’t her own fury, not entirely; it was some spiritual malignancy in the mountain, like her grandmother said. But it was sly, and it spoke the language of her resentments, and it was a relief to let it well up inside her, obscuring the grief that would have been too hard to grasp, just then.

The fool boy loved you, and you allowed him to love you though you knew it could never be–

‘You ran away,’ she spat at Weheol. ‘Twice you argued us deeper into the mountain, and you ran away.’

Gently, Weheol removed a poultice of foxmoss from his bag and applied it to the severest of her wounds. The touch was agony at first, and then a sting, and then an itch.

‘You told me to run,’ he said. ‘It was a wise order.’

‘You’re very fine at following orders.’

It was no wonder her grandmother had warmed to the boy. She liked when people were useful to her, when they did as she said without question. And anyway, Tythrae and Weheol were the same sort – somehow severe in their selflessness, as if they had whittled themselves down until there was nothing left but a doctrine of service.

Tythrae, her family, the aelves of the hollows – they were all looking to Laeren to assume the mantle of greatwarden when Tythrae finally passed. But the thought of becoming her grandmother left a crawling despair in her stomach. Why had everyone decided that it must be her? She would do what she must, but she had no desire to be a selfless servant with draich in hand; she wanted the freedom of the nomad’s life, with responsibility to no one, or perhaps only one…

Her skin burned and itched as flesh knitted itself back together under the touch of Weheol’s poultice.

‘Maethys was right,’ she said. ‘We should leave.’

Weheol was silent for a moment. ‘Wardens must be selfless and of service. The hollows rely on the Wardens-in-the-Wild, and the Order relies on Tythrae. That’s why I ran when you said to run – so I might survive to find the greatwarden.’

‘And what if my grandmother is already dead? The hollows will rely on us to report her passing and carry the Order forward.’

She didn’t wait for the boy to answer, but pushed his poultice away and began to walk in the direction that she believed led out of the mountain, bearing her flickering spore-light before her. After a moment, she heard Weheol’s footsteps follow behind her own.

The passages that wound through Beastgrave constricted and then opened again: capillaries of stone gave way to arteries that opened into vast aortal chambers. The way steepened into a near-vertical climb, and then switched back into a crawl or unsteady crossing of a narrow bridge of rock. The farther they walked, the less Laeren could remember the way they had come – had they scaled this incline before, passed this stalagmite? After a time, they walked side by side and hand in hand, Weheol’s staff pointing the way. He was the master pathfinder of the cohort, preternatural in his recall of turns and steps.

They passed over a honeycomb of neat circular cells, each filled with amber that preserved crouched, variform skeletons. Here the skeletons were horned and many-jointed, there slight and winged, and there again brutish, spiked and bone-armoured. Here there were human shapes, there orruks or skaven or unfamiliar frames. The fog in her head was thickening again; her wounds ached, especially where the poultice had coaxed flesh to mend. The spore-light in her palm guttered, and the seething below her thoughts tried to shape itself into words.

‘We haven’t been here,’ Laeren said. ‘I know we haven’t been here.’

‘No, this is the way we came.’ Weheol hesitated. ‘The mountain troubles the mind. Perhaps it troubles your sight. I wouldn’t be so fooled.’

She stared at the crouched forms in their amber. ‘The mountain might trouble your memory, too.’

The well of rage under her thoughts reminded her of a blood-mad brayherd she had tracked once, from afar – the stained maws of bestigors loosing inchoate howls into the wind. The rage had racked them like a parasite they couldn’t wrench or scream from their bodies.

You are being used, the voice in her head said, and it was true. Her mother had given her over to Tythrae as a sort of debt of guilt, an apology for never joining the Order herself. And she was only ever an instrument to the greatwarden – a legacy, a competency.

You have been used all your life, you are being used now, and you will never be left alone to live.

‘Would you want to be greatwarden?’ Laeren asked Weheol. She didn’t bother to lower her voice, and the words echoed. The tap of the boy’s staff, the soft clap of her own hooves – anyone who meant to hear them would hear them, whether they took care or no.

Weheol hesitated. ‘It is understood that Tythrae is grooming you for the role.’

‘But would you want it? The responsibility.’

‘You are a fine warden-aspirant. I envy your aptitudes and I believe in time you will make a fine–’

She stopped walking. They stood along the bank of an underground river. Somewhere nearby a waterfall roared. Angry tears filled her eyes. She wanted to talk to Maethys. Why did it have to be sweet, foolish Maethys who fell?

‘That is not my question,’ she pressed. ‘Would you want to be greatwarden?’

‘I… have never thought it likely. I do not know.’ He paused. ‘When the plague struck my hollow, the elders sent and signalled for Tythrae desperately, warning one another off making any decisions until she arrived. And while we waited, many of us grew sicker, or carried the illness to others. When the greatwarden arrived, she carried life and death on her back. Her word separated the sick – declared some doomed, others fit for care and hope. She chose my mother to die, and she chose me to live. She chose my brother to die, and she chose me to live. We all wondered at her decisiveness, her knowledge, but… I know now that she never had perfect knowledge of the plague. She assumed the weight of the choice, made her decisions with the understanding she had, and we lived or died as a consequence. I lived, as a consequence.’

Laeren frowned. All at once she felt ill at ease in her anger.

‘I would like to feel that my life was of worth and purpose,’ said Weheol. ‘I would like to follow Tythrae, and I will make hard choices when I must. But I do not know that I could bear all the weight of the last word in life and death. I want to follow…’

He trailed off. Laeren reached out to place her illuminated hand on his arm.

‘I understand. I didn’t know about your family. I’m sorry–’

The hilt of a knife appeared in Weheol’s shoulder, and he hissed in pain. By the spore-light of her hand, she saw the shadowy limbs of the monster over the boy’s shoulder.

Laeren seized his wrist and flung him aside, out of the path of the creature. It loomed over her, pallid and long-legged, wearing a cloak crudely woven of the limbs of beasts and mortals. The motions of its limbs were too swift to follow. A knife lodged in her stomach. Another found her thigh.

Laeren was bleeding from the old wounds and the new. Her spore-light was unsteady. The voice of the mountain seethed in her head, but it wasn’t her voice, and she set it aside.

‘Look,’ a voice shouted over the roar of the river.

Not a spear’s-length away, Weheol rose from the ground with his draich in hand. Even as the monster’s knives danced through the air between them with wicked grace, she saw its attention shift, ever so slightly.

Selfless and of service, she thought sadly. Laeren summoned her last strength and twisted through the air and swung, hitting Weheol with the flat of her blade and sending him sprawling into the river. He tumbled into the current and was borne away.

Another knife. Another. How many knives, she wondered distantly, did this thing carry? Light-headed, shivering, Laeren brightened her spore-light. Perhaps she could distract the creature from Weheol, or even blind it for just a moment…

But there was no blinding this monster.

In her last moments, Laeren could see the thing plain enough to fix its features in her mind. Every vein, every scar, every fleck of blood.

It had no eyes.

Its face – pale and twisted and aelven – was expressionless.

As it cut the life from her, its dry lips pursed in disappointment.

Weheol toppled through current and crashing water, end over end until gravity gave way, and he was falling.

He twisted in empty air, and fell, and fell – then struck water again. Water, or rock; he couldn’t tell at first. Was he dead? Could death hurt like this? His back was raw, and he was bleeding from his shoulder, and now he was submerged again, airless, thrashing for purchase. He couldn’t breathe…

Strong, thin-fingered hands found him and hauled him into the cool air. The waterfall crashed around him; everything was confusion.

The monster, he thought. I should fight. He should have fought earlier, when Laeren fought, when Maethys fought. The hands grasped him and fought the water from his lungs.

Calm and salt, the fingers pressed into his arm. Quiet.

His own fingers were cold and shaking, but they shaped an answer.

Greatwarden?

I am sorry I brought you here. I am sorry I brought Laeren here. It is a damned place.

You wanted us to be ready, he answered uncertainly. And he believed it, though he was not certain what he was meant to be prepared for. The shadow of this place, perhaps, the shadow of a primal ruin.

No one is ever ready.

The waterfall roared its undying roar around them. The spray brushed Weheol’s cheeks; they were beside the falls, or behind them.

Laeren, he started.

I know.

There were subtleties of tone to the language of fingertips; Tythrae’s hands were blunt.

What of Hessiat? he asked.

Dead. By the creature. He fought briefly. He died in service.

Weheol shivered and listened to the crash of the falls.

When Tythrae’s fingers moved again, there was an urgency in the play of her hands.

Child. I do not know the way out. You are among my finest pathfinders. A finer pathfinder than me. Do you remember the steps and turns you took on your way into Beastgrave?

Guilt curled in his stomach. He remembered every step, until Laeren knocked him into the river. He remembered the way in, and he remembered all the wrong paths he had allowed her to take as she searched for a way out. He had used her – used her eyes and draich to find Tythrae. By the time he came to regret it, she was bleeding to death and it was too late.

Laeren was dead, and Maethys was dead, and it was all on his head.

Yes, he said simply.

He had only wanted to choose the greatest good. Tythrae protected the hollows, and she made the choices that others shrunk from in order to do so. She slew brigands to protect the roads; she hunted the strange, Ruin-wracked animals that preyed on aelves in the highlands. When she was called on to care for the sick, she divided the dying from those who might live in the service of the broader good. To be selfless and in service meant making painful, terrible choices, choices that one would rather not have to make.

Weheol thought of his mother, his brother, thin-faced and in agony with the coldbone plague. Some of the last things he saw before the sickness took his sight entirely. A voice in his head said, You will be the death of them all.

Tythrae gripped his arm.

I can lead you to the bank of the river where you fell, she said. If you can remember the way back from there. We will have to pass through a stagwyrm pit. But I will take you to the river if you can carry us from there…

She was looking to him. She was, he understood, scared. The greatwarden had always been a purpose and protector for Weheol. She had given him his life back when he was sick, given him a place and a code. Tythrae was more than a mother could be, more than a queen could be – she was the one who chose, the one who made the world work when others didn’t want to see what was needful. Now she was looking to him, and she was scared.

How do you choose what is right? he asked. When you do not know the way, and the gods do not speak, and you do not know what they would ask of you.

I choose what sickens me least, she answered.

When Tythrae decided that the way was safe, the pair journeyed out from under the waterfall. They travelled hand in hand, in the careful silence of Wardens-in-the-Wild. Weheol listened for footsteps, but found only the small flaps and screeches of bats and the receding roar of waters. They scaled what felt like a massive stalagmite until exhaustion threatened to dull his mind and make his steps rote; he bit his tongue to wake himself, focused on counting the steps and tracking the turns. For the greatwarden, he chided himself. Selfless and of service.

Still, they walked. Tythrae pressed notices into his palm and they flattened themselves in order to pass through narrow folds in the rock, ducked through cramped apertures and traced fingers along moist stone and amber deposits. There was a rhythm to the burning in his legs, and hunger gnawed his stomach, but he set it all to salt until they came to the stagwyrm pit.

There are sleeping young coiled in the ground and walls, Tythrae pressed. Quiet. Careful.

Perhaps it was only the knowledge that the wyrms surrounded him, but Weheol thought he sensed a weight of dormant life around them – the breath of waiting lungs, the pumping of vast arteries. He had never been near a living stagwyrm – never seen one, when he had his sight. The horns and iridescent crest-feathers of the beasts were prized in the free cities, and could sometimes be scavenged from wyrm corpses in the creeks of the hollows. Such remains were rare, though; stagwyrms were known for eating their own dead, and especially for gorging on the weakest of the young before giving birth anew.

Tythrae led him by the hand through the pit.

Nearly there, she pressed. Nearly–

The greatwarden stopped.

He is here, she said. Be wary.

He? Weheol gripped his staff. Tythrae had given it to him when she first took him as an aspirant – it was sharp on one end and carved, she said, by sylvaneth artisans.

Ahead, there was the sound of footsteps. Easy, unhurried strides. The walk of the creature that killed Maethys and Laeren and Hessiat.

The monster spoke.

‘You needn’t fear the wyrms,’ the monster said quietly, in the Wanderers’ tongue. The accent was heavy and unfamiliar, but Weheol could make out the words. ‘They are patient. They are only listening.’

Around them, Weheol heard the vast slithering of serpentine forms in the rock.

‘I talk to them sometimes,’ said the monster, ‘and they listen. I am Warden of the Wyrms, now. A warden after all.’

The creature’s voice was soft, sombre.

‘Child,’ it said, and Weheol realised it was talking to him. ‘She has told you about me? Lost Ossifal?’

Weheol said nothing. He had never heard the name before.

‘Ossifal,’ Tythrae said slowly. ‘I did not know you were here. I did not know you were alive. It has been… a very long time.’

The creature – Ossifal – ignored her.

‘I am ashamed to tell you that I failed the trial of the Ruinhorn. I couldn’t shut out the voice of the mountain. I couldn’t set my mind to salt. Do you know she used to take the aspirants inside? Just inside the cave-mouth, and she would have us set down our bags and gather in a circle and set our minds to salt.’

He seemed to want some response, but Tythrae was silent. Weheol didn’t dare speak.

‘I was an orphan from Esthu’dor, when she found me. I was so grateful to have a purpose, to have a place with the Wardens. When I failed the trial of the Ruinhorn, I lost… the life I thought I would have, my home. Perhaps you know the feeling. The finest aspirants do.’

‘We found your eyes and your arms, Ossifal,’ Tythrae said softly. ‘We thought you were dead.’

‘At night I heard the mountain calling me,’ he said, ‘and I followed it inside. I followed it so deep inside I couldn’t leave again. You can hear it now, too, can’t you?’

Tythrae took a hesitant step forward. ‘Ossifal,’ she said, ‘let me help you.’

Still the Warden of the Wyrms ignored her.

‘When Beastgrave speaks to you, it always tells the truth. It told me that the mountain was home. It told me that I could be of service by eating the young, by culling the failures. I think you must understand this. The Order must be strong if it is to protect the weak.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Please step aside, greatwarden.’

‘I will not,’ said Tythrae.

‘It is the boy’s trial. Not yours.’

‘I will not step aside.’ Her blade sang as she unsheathed her draich.

‘Then perhaps it is time for you to have a trial, too.’

There was a keening, then – it must have come from Ossifal’s throat. Then everything was chaos. The cavern chamber shook as, all around them, beasts uncoiled from the walls. Scales scraped against stone and then, abruptly, the dark shook as immense musculature lashed against the ground, or walls, or Tythrae.

Weheol tried to track what was happening by the sound, but it was all confusion. He kneeled and covered his head, in something like the posture of meditation. Blades scraped against carapace, something aelven or beastly screamed, and vast bodies thrashed. Weheol was knocked on his side and fought to flatten himself against the ground.

And then the crash of violence subsided.

A hand took Weheol’s. The fingers tapped a message into his palm.

We are almost to the river. Run.

Tythrae and Weheol ran, hand in hand.

‘You are supposed to be guardians,’ Ossifal called behind them, his voice newly ragged. ‘You are supposed to be strong! You must be prepared to do what others will not!’

Keep on this way, Tythrae tapped in Weheol’s hand, until you find the river. Don’t stop. Listen to me, this time. Don’t stop.

She released his hand. He was alone again, standing in the dark. And he understood what she meant to do.

‘You’re more important than me,’ he called. ‘You’ve done so much. You will do so much. For the good of the hollows.’

‘It’s not for the good,’ Tythrae said. ‘It’s for you.’ Then her blade whistled in the air and crashed against Ossifal’s knives, and the sound of clanging metal echoed down the walls of the cavern.

He could fight. He could fight, as he’d failed to fight with Laeren or Maethys. Slowly at first, and then more swiftly, Weheol made his way forward, using his staff to feel along the cavern floor for drop-offs, listening for the sound of rushing water. The drumbeat of metal echoed along the walls, growing dimmer and dimmer.

Listen to me, this time. Don’t stop.

Each step was agony. He heard every parry and exhalation. The mountain murmured in his head.

You will be the death of them all.

Abruptly, the clash of metal stopped.

There were grunts across the chamber, followed by the thump of a collapsing body. Weheol listened for voices, sounds of movement. There was only silence, at first. Then heavy footsteps, aelven and wounded.

‘She was better than you,’ breathed the Warden of the Wyrms. ‘You had the right of it, but lacked the will. You are broken and you are no one, unfit to serve in the wild. Now she is dead, and I am dead. It ought to have been you to fall.’

He was right, Weheol thought. It ought to have been him to fall many times over; before Maethys, before Laeren. He had only wanted to be of service, and now he was sick with guilt and grief, and he did not really believe that he ought to live.

Ossifal staggered towards him. The ancient aspirant was slow and wounded – perhaps mortally – but moved implacably forward.

Weheol remained still as Ossifal approached. It was so easy, he found, to be still and to wait – so much easier than he would have thought, setting himself to salt. He listened as Ossifal stepped closer and closer.

‘Hold out your spear,’ said Ossifal. The stench of him was thick and immediate. Weheol heard the monstrous aelf’s heartbeat. He heard the drip of blood on stone. He heard the voice of the mountain saying, You will be the death of them all, and it mixed with the rasping gurgle of Lost Ossifal insisting, ‘Hold out your spear.’

Weheol raised the sharp point of his staff. The weapon vibrated as Ossifal grasped the point, but his footsteps stopped.

‘You are… a failed servant,’ Ossifal said. ‘You failed your greatwarden, failed…’ he hissed against some pain, ‘failed your sisters – and brothers – of the Order.’

The point of Weheol’s staff found some resistance, and then pierced flesh. The stench and sound of the old aspirant drew closer, until Weheol could feel breath against his face, and hot blood dripped down his leg.

‘You are a failure,’ Ossifal said, ‘and I am a failure, but you may still serve in the dark. You will be the death of them all.’

Thin fingers, slick with cool sweat, grasped at his hands, his forearms, his shoulders. There were too many joints in too many fingers, and they grazed him like cilia as the cloak of limbs passed across the staff to embrace him. You will be the death of them all, repeated an ageless tongue, but it was not Ossifal because he was slumped lifeless on the staff’s spear-end. The cloak of skin and fingers clasped cold and damp around his neck. It was weightless, but heavy, he thought in a kind of delirium. Like wearing a tear in the world on your back.

The cloak spoke to him, the fingers pressing truths into his flesh. He could feel the paths that lay before him so clearly. He could return to the hollows and take the mantle of greatwarden, and he could take on all the weight of the responsibilities he had never wanted, and he would fail for an interminable lifetime. He would set poultices to wounds that would fester nonetheless, and he would keep watch over holdfasts that would fall to human torches in a few short decades, and he would train aspirants who would fail and die in their turn.

Or he could set himself to salt and let it all be done. He had failed Maethys and Laeren and Tythrae; he had failed the hollows. But he could stay here and be an instrument of culling, as Ossifal had been. Weheol’s blades would save so many souls from ruin, and wouldn’t that be a service? Wouldn’t that be a selflessness? He would remain here in the dark and wait for those who could not resist the voice of Beastgrave, those who were weak. For a very long time, he would live here wrapped in his cloak of limbs, and he would slay so many hundreds of the ruin-urged: cultists and obsessed explorers, relic hunters and would-be wardens…

It’s not for the good, Tythrae had said. It’s for you.

Weheol tore at the clasp of the cloak, but the limbs held him in a corpse-tight grip. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘I refuse!’

Fumbling in his belt, he found his foxmoss. The poultice was agony, at first, before it knitted flesh back together. He pressed the foxmoss against the skin of the living cloak, and it spasmed, loosened…

Weheol wriggled out from under the thing on his back, wrenched his staff from Ossifal’s corpse, and plunged the spear-end into the cloak of limbs, again and again and again. The many-jointed arms slapped stone and writhed and finally were still. The dying echoed, but in the wake of the echoes there was a deep silence. Even the murmurs of Beastgrave were silent.

There was only the sound of rushing water. The underground river.

Weheol’s breaths came heavy, and his heart raced. He was drenched in sweat and blood, dizzy with exhaustion, but he was certain that he could find his way out of Beastgrave. From the bank of the river, he would follow every step he had taken into the mountain with Maethys and Laeren – every winding turn, every handhold and narrow crawl.

The ruin-cloak had told him what would happen, and however monstrous the thing was, he did not think that it lied. He would find his way out. He would return to the hollows, and he would take the mantle of greatwarden, and he would fail over and over again, making a life out of failure.

He began to walk again, feeling his way forward.

About the Author

Eric Gregory’s fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Lightspeed, Interzone, Strange Horizons, Nowa Fantastyka, and others. He lives and works in Carrboro, North Carolina. ‘Bossgrot’ is Eric’s first story for Black Library.

An extract from Beastgrave.

The stink of burning flesh slammed against Ludvik’s senses and drove the last wisps of sleep from his head. He was roused from exhausted slumber by the blaring of the watchtower’s trumpet, and the foul stench was enough to snap him into full awareness. No mistake, no idiot’s jest. Calamity had befallen Locmalo, and every inhabitant of the town was being called to action.

As he rushed from the earthen barracks he shared with twenty other men, Ludvik saw flames leaping up into the night. They threw eerie shadows across the clustered timber buildings. Several of the structures were alight, with fire flashing from their windows and doorways. Plumes of smoke rushed up from beneath crumbling sod roofs – long grey fingers that spilled upwards into the sky.

More than the roar of the flames and the blare of the trumpet assailed Ludvik’s ears. Screams rang out from the burning homes. He saw a ragged figure emerge from Marek the cooper’s house. The fire-wrapt shape took a few stumbling steps and collapsed in the muddy street. Steam sizzled off the dying frontiersman’s smouldering clothes.

Ludvik’s first instinct was to run for the nearest well and seize one of the buckets laid there against the threat of fire. As he turned to do so, another sound impressed itself on his awareness. A sound more frightful than the shrieks of people trapped in burning houses. Inhuman howls and bestial war-whoops rose from beyond the log palisade that encircled Locmalo. Ludvik felt cold horror rush through him. He knew the sort of creatures that made that savage din, just as he knew the doom that now reached out for the settlement. A doom the humans had long thought to defy.

The children of the forest had come. Come to punish this invasion into their domain. Come to sweep away the creep of civilisation into the wild places and stamp out the human trespassers.

Ludvik’s hand fell to the long-bladed hunter’s knife that was always strapped to his arm. The frontiersmen had learned to their cost to never be without some means of protection, even when in the safety of their own beds. He had seen Udalrich’s body. He had been murdered in the night by a stealthy prowler. The inhuman killer had cut him open to eat his liver, all without waking the other dozen men in the barracks.

‘They have broken through the outer wall!’ The shout carried down from the frantic sentinel up in the watchtower between blasts on the trumpet. The reaction of the men around Ludvik was a mixture of despair and anger. For himself, he felt only a kind of sickness in his belly, a sour churning of the soup he had for supper.

Two palisades defended Locmalo – an outer and an inner fence of sharpened logs. Between these was a cleared pasture where the people grazed their herds. Ludvik himself had two cows out there, animals he had purchased with the pelts he had captured through the autumn. It was his first step towards becoming independent, establishing himself so he would not have to brave the forest and the beasts that yet lurked beneath its boughs.

Ludvik heard the agonised wailing of the cattle. The attackers were in the pasture and slaughtering the livestock. For a moment, all he could think of was his own loss. Then a cold chill swept through him. If the attackers found a way through or over the inner wall, it would be men not kine that would be massacred.

Ludvik ran towards the walls. He saw the beadle with a cartload of spears handing weapons to anyone who came near him. Men and women, old and young, anyone with the strength and heart to carry a bow or swing an axe, were hurrying to the palisade to take up the fight. Ludvik hurried to the beadle and snatched a spear from the cart. He took only a heartbeat to judge its quality before he was moving again. The muddy streets of Locmalo were a bedlam of fright and confusion. As the defenders ran towards the walls, fiery objects came hurtling down into the settlement. Ludvik saw one of them splash in a puddle of mud. It was an old skull stuffed with dried dung and sealed with pitch. He saw the crude glyphs daubed on the skull in streaks of blood. He trembled. Their enemies had called upon witchcraft to aid the attack.

More of the skulls came flying over the wall. They burned with an ugly orange glow as they sailed through the air. One of them struck the roof of the tannery. It shattered like an eggshell and splashed its contents across the roof and the nearby walls. Timbers were instantly set alight. Ludvik felt there was an unholiness about the way the flames spread. The fire’s hunger was more than natural.

‘To the wall! To the wall!’ The command was shouted by Squire Dytryk himself. He stood near the main gate, Locmalo’s five militiamen arrayed around him in a compact bloc. Only one of the soldiers wore his armour. The others had been stirred from their sleep with barely enough time to grab helmets and shields. The squire himself only had a bearskin robe on, though he’d picked up his sword before dashing out into the street.

‘To the wall!’

The cry was taken up. The direction gave the defenders focus, something to fixate upon before fear and confusion could break their resolve. Ludvik joined the line of spears that formed about the base of the wall. He jabbed upwards at the dark shapes trying to climb the palisade. He felt grim satisfaction when a horned figure fell back into the shadows and a thin rivulet of blood trickled down the shaft of his spear.

A few hunters with bows moved among the spearmen, adding their arrows into the mix. Ludvik wished he had gone back for his own bow as he watched his comrades ply their deadly skill. Whenever an enemy presented itself, an arrow would speed towards it. Even when they missed, the threat from the archers was enough to make the attacker drop back.

Behind the line of spears, those settlers with axes and swords clutched their weapons with anxious fingers. As much as Ludvik envied the hunters with their bows, he was thankful he had at least a spear to drive the attackers back. If all he had was an axe or his knife, he’d be forced to stand idle with the others. Watching and waiting. Dreading the moment when he would be called into the fight. The moment the beastkin forced their way into Locmalo.

Ghroth watched the fires rise, their glow illuminating the inner palisade. The herdchief wiped the string of saliva that dripped from his fangs. The smell of cooking human was almost intoxicating, far more than the scent of slaughtered cattle. It did not take much to goad the brays and ungors of his warherd into charging the wall. The real test of his authority was getting the larger gors to restrain themselves. Few beastkin understood patience or had the discipline to plan for the future, however immediate it might be.

Ghroth was one of those few. His craftiness and his ability to delay gratification, were what set him apart. It was why he had supplanted the old herdchief, waiting until after a vicious fight with the tree-fiends of Thornwyld before challenging him for his position. He wore the horns of his rival, bound around his left hand like a spiked gauntlet. It was a reminder to the rest of the beastkin of his strength. When the warren of humans was crushed under his hooves, that too would serve as a reminder to the warherd. It would be a display of his wisdom. An example of his power.

The ungors and brays threw themselves at the walls. Smaller and slighter than the more bestial gors like Ghroth, their lack of bulk was something of a benefit to them as they tried to clamber up the logs. Covered in fur, with hoofed feet and nubby horns, these beastkin were closer to humans in appearance than others in the warherd. The brays in particular had manlike faces and builds – Ghroth even employed them to decoy humans in the forest by making them think the brays were men like themselves.

With their present task, there was no question of the brays being mistaken for humans. The frontiersmen were attacking anything that tried to get over the walls. At the edge of panic, their desperate efforts were fending off the beastmen. Many of the ungors fell into the pasture with ugly gashes and cuts. A few of the brays collapsed with arrows through their chests.

‘Small horns never get in.’ The comment came as a sullen growl from the armoured brute that stood beside Ghroth. A full head taller than the herdchief, Kruksh had adorned his black-furred girth with metal plate looted from dead humans and orruks. Even his goat-like face was banded with strips of mail. The grotesque greenskin cleaver he carried would have been impossible for most gors to wield.

Ghroth glared into the bestigor’s beady yellow eyes. Kruksh grunted in contempt. There was no cunning in his gaze, only the impertinent confidence of a creature that relied solely upon his brawn. ‘Small horns not need get in,’ Ghroth stated. He gestured at the injured ungors and at the tips of the spears that could be seen waving behind the wall. ‘Small horns fight. Show where manflesh fight. See where manflesh strong.’ He gave Kruksh a piercing look, trying to find some awareness there. ‘See where manflesh strong, see where manflesh weak.’

Kruksh slapped his chest and snorted. ‘All manflesh weak,’ he asserted.

Ghroth bared his fangs at the implied insult. He raised his arm, ensuring Kruksh could see the sharpened horns of the old herdchief. The bestigor lowered his head and averted his eyes. There was no challenge there. At least not yet. Ghroth resisted the impulse to tear out Kruksh’s throat. Right now killing the humans was more important. Besides, it was more practical to kill a rival in front of the entire warherd. That way all of the beastkin would know their place.

The sharp tang of smouldering dung made Ghroth turn. He watched a pair of ungors run towards the palisade with smoking skulls in their hands. Loops of dried gut were wound about the skulls and, as the beastmen drew close to the wall, they swung the weird missiles in an arc. When the arc reached the right speed, the ungors let go and sent the skulls flying over the wall. A moment later there was a loud whoosh and flames erupted from the settlement.

Ghroth stalked over to where the ungors had received their macabre weapons. His nostrils flared in revulsion at the unnatural scent of the creature crouched beside a stack of skulls. Useful as magic might be to the warherd, none of the beastkin liked to be near something as steeped in the arcane reek as the shaman Sorgaas. The cloaked mystic was daubing glyphs on the skulls with the severed head of a serpent. He dipped the reptile’s blunt nose into a bowl of blood and painted the sorcerous signs on the bones. Normally the smell of blood would excite Ghroth, but the shaman’s activity had corrupted the scent, made it somehow rancid.

‘More flame for manflesh,’ Ghroth growled, trying to make the words more of a command than a question. He was chief of his warherd – even the giant bullgors obeyed him – but he still felt a tremor of fear when the smell of Sorgaas was in his nose.

The shaman looked up from his labour, the hood of his cloak drawing back to expose a lupine muzzle covered in blue-black fur. A single horn rose from above his nose, branching out into two sharp points. The entirety of the horn was stained with glyphs, and talismans dangled from its bifurcated tips. Cold eyes, yellow and slitted like those of a serpent, stared up at Ghroth. Sorgaas lifted a hand that was scaly, with black talons at the tip of each finger, utterly unlike the slender gloved member that held the snake’s head.

‘All will burn,’ Sorgaas said. He turned his talons towards the pile of skulls. ‘Magic enough for all of these. This is why I tell you to wait.’ He thrust his claw skyward and pointed at the stars. ‘Now is the time when my magic is strong. Now is when the gods of men are weak.’

Ghroth glowered at the shaman. ‘Ghroth herdchief,’ he stated. ‘Victory mine.’

Sorgaas tapped the snake’s head against the skull he was painting. ‘Yes, and these will bring you victory. You will be a mighty herdlord. If you listen.’ The ophidian eyes strayed from Ghroth and focused on the two ungors who had come creeping back to retrieve more of the fiery skulls.

Ghroth followed the direction of the shaman’s gaze. The ungors cringed away from him. He grunted his satisfaction and motioned for the beastmen to continue. Whatever awe they might feel for their shaman, they did not forget it was their herdchief who ruled.

‘Burn the manflesh,’ Ghroth snarled. ‘They know fire. They know fear.’ He turned and looked at the palisade, drawing the smell of humans from the wind. ‘They know death,’ he declared. ‘Good feast for warherd.’

Ghroth studied the way the ungors and brays were driven back. He fought against the impulse to simply charge the fortification. There had been other attacks against the humans before, attacks that had failed because the beastkin did not restrain their bloodlust. Ghroth would show the warherd. He would show them why he was their leader. This attack would not fail.

The packs of ungors and brays rushed the walls, pressing the defenders to divert fighters to oppose them. The gate itself was only lightly challenged, just enough so that the humans would not become suspicious. If they were too wary they would try to reinforce it, but if they could be gulled into believing the warherd was threatening the whole of the palisade it would cause them to move where the danger was greatest.

After a few moments of study, Ghroth turned to Sorgaas. ‘Give signal,’ he told the shaman.

Sorgaas set down the snake head and rose to his feet. He clasped his mismatched hands together, pressing them tight against his chest. The slithery eyes rolled back, the pupils vanishing beneath the orbits of his skull. An eerie chill gripped Ghroth as dark energies were drawn into the mystic’s body. The dangling talismans clattered against the bifurcated horn as Sorgaas shivered.

‘Urugu,’ Sorgaas suddenly shouted. He thrust both arms into the air and from between his hands a stream of green light flared up into the night.

Ghroth did not need to see the dark shapes that scurried up the side of the watchtower, the slinking spies that had entered the settlement hours before the attack. He could tell they had accomplished their purpose when the blare of the trumpet was silenced. The only men who could have seen far enough into the pasture to warn of what was coming were gone.

‘Gate!’ Ghroth shouted. ‘Bash gate!’ He swung the brutish axe he carried overhead, its jagged blade reflecting the fires of the burning town. Out from the darkness a score of goat-headed gors charged towards the palisade, each helping to bear the weight of an immense log. Tied to the front of the log were half a dozen of Sorgaas’ incendiary skulls. Ghroth pointed his axe at the gate as the gors ran past.

The log slammed into the iron-banded timbers of the gate. The skulls fitted to its front exploded in a dazzling burst of flame. A pillar of fire, forty feet high, licked across the gate and threw smouldering drops into the town beyond. The gors nearest the explosion bleated in agony, their bodies engulfed. The others hastily dropped the log and retreated.

Ghroth could imagine the humans inside the town were even more shocked by the explosion. Some were certain to abandon their places at the wall to defend against an attack on the gate. As they did, they would confuse those who tried to hold the palisade. Fear and confusion – the allies that would bring the warherd victory.

‘Kill!’ Ghroth howled. The vicious cry rose above the crackle of flames and the screams of the dying. It was taken up by dozens of bestial throats, repeated with the savagery of warriors finally set loose upon their foes. Until now only the smaller beastkin had assaulted the walls. The larger gors and bestigors flung themselves into the attack. Driven amok by their pent-up bloodlust, they rushed the walls with berserk fury. Their impetus carried them over the sharpened logs and they plunged down to the confused defenders below.

Ghroth savoured the sight. He enjoyed the shrieks from the humans as his warriors fell upon them. He relished the smell of blood that wafted back to him on the wind. His fingers tightened on the haft of his axe and all restraint left him. He charged towards the wall, froth dripping down his fangs. No longer did he think of victory or maintaining his place as herdchief. He did not think of ploys and tricks or the magic of Sorgaas. There was only room in his mind for hunger and wrath, the scent of blood and the taste of flesh.

It took Ghroth only a few heartbeats to reach the wall. Like a charging tiger, he leapt at the palisade. His axe came flashing down between two of the sharpened logs. Using the weapon for leverage, Ghroth pounced down into the settlement. All around him was bedlam. Humans lay butchered in the mud. Beastkin were spitted on spears. Unchecked fires roared, their flames an orange glow. The stink of smoke assailed his senses, blotting out all other smells. Screams and moans, the desperate cries of men and the murderous growls of beastkin formed a savage medley.

Ghroth rose from the mud and stamped his hooves in eagerness as a spearman lunged at him. He twisted aside as the weapon stabbed at his stomach. A chop of his axe broke the shaft and left the man gaping at him in horror. Before he could flee, Ghroth sprang at him. The sharpened horns tied about his left arm raked across his enemy’s face, turning it into crimson ribbons. He collapsed into the mud, screaming in pain.

Ghroth moved to bring his hoof stamping down on the maimed human, but as he did another defender came charging at him. Like the first foe, this one bore a spear, but unlike his ill-fated comrade he was not so easily disarmed. He avoided the downward sweep of the herdchief’s axe and raked the edge of the spearhead across Ghroth’s ribs. It bit just deep enough to draw blood, slashing through the shaggy hide.

Instead of stamping down, Ghroth brought his leg cracking against the prone man with such force that he was kicked into the path of the spearman. His assailant reeled back to avoid being tripped by the very comrade he had thought to protect. As he did, Ghroth sprang at him. A sideways sweep of the sharpened horns tore the spear from his enemy’s hands.

The foeman stumbled back and drew a long knife from the sheath lashed to his arm. He whipped the blade back and forth, forming a deadly circle between himself and the herdchief. Even with the longer reach of his axe, Ghroth knew he would not be able to penetrate that defence with impunity.

Ghroth glared at his enemy and spat in the human’s face. For an instant the man was blinded. The knife wavered. It was all the advantage the herdchief needed. Lunging forwards, Ghroth brought his axe cleaving down into the man’s chest. It was a killing blow. He was dead even before the axe was ripped free and his body crashed to the muddy street.

Ghroth licked the blood and bone splinters from the edge of his axe. He turned back to finish the screaming wretch the knife fighter had tried to save.

Fear always provided an extra savour to manflesh.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-750-7

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