IN HRONDIR’S TOMB

Mark Clapham

It was the smell he registered first, before the sight or the sound. It was a hot scent, hotter than the sparks coming off his chainblade as it cut through armour, or the warmth of the Tau commander’s blood as the blade dug through the battlesuit and into his flesh.

It was a static smell of air being agitated, of a very heavy weapon powering up, somewhere nearby. A mortal human, or even a Space Marine of a different Chapter, might not have picked the scent out from the many smells of battle.

Anvindr Godrichsson was a wolf brother, and his senses were more finely attuned. His nostrils twitched at the tang of it, catching the scent over the foul aroma of alien gore before him.

He glanced up, for little more than half a second. The sky was a grey blur of falling rain and rising smoke, but Anvindr could see a great, dark shape moving between buildings, a solid ring of light glowing through the mist.

A Tau gunship, its railgun powering up.

‘To shelter,’ Anvindr called to his squad, his voice ringing out through the ruins. He extracted his blood-slicked chainblade from the chest plate of the fallen commander, and dropped to the ground from his position astride the chest of the alien’s battlesuit.

A Space Wolf feared nothing; the Adeptus Astartes fled from no enemy, but there was no glory or honour in meekly allowing a weapon like that to reduce you to a paste. The Tau were notorious for their desire to kill from a distance rather than engage in close combat, and Anvindr would be damned if they would succeed with his pack.

Anvindr’s pack responded to his call without question, although Tormodr approached with bad grace as usual, a scowl across his face and a desultory huff of fire spurting from his flamer. Tormodr moved as fast as any of them, the heavy boots of his armour barely glancing off the rubble as he sprung over an incline into Anvindr’s field of vision, yet he still managed to seem like he was dragging his feet.

Then the rest, all Grey Hunters of the Fourth Company of the Vlka Fenryka, known commonly as Space Wolves: Sindri, eyes gleaming with youth in spite of all his decades, his hair a shock of blond curls, unusual for a Fenrisian; Liulfr, heavy even for a Space Marine, as much immovable object as unstoppable force; and finally Gulbrandr, his skin pale but his hair and beard raven black. They all wore the colours of their Chapter, blue-grey power armour edged with gold, augmented with honour markings and the fur of significant kills.

Although all of them had their eyes out for a safe place of cover, it was Gulbrandr, sharp-eyed as ever, who let out a high whistle, pointing ahead.

They ran as the railgun fired its first shots, the blasts tearing into a city that had already been devastated by ground-level warfare. As the large railgun fired upon the retreating Wolves, buildings already gutted by fire and ordnance were shook to their foundations, and began to crumble altogether.

The Wolves ran through a city that threatened to bury them alive.

Then, following Gulbrandr’s lead, they were on a steep, gravel strewn slope at an angle to the city streets, sliding down towards a weathered stone archway some distance below ground level. Anvindr dug in his heels, controlling his descent as the weight of his armoured body dragged him downwards, throwing up scree in his wake.

Surrounding the archway were a few squat industrial vehicles and stacks of crates, as well as a series of crude arc lights, dull in the afternoon haze.

As the Wolves reached level ground, moving from a controlled slide to a run without a stumble or pause, a blast from the railgun impacted nearby, throwing Anvindr forward. Without his power armour he would have fallen. He wore no helmet, and so closed his eyes against the blazing light and heat that scorched his skin.

Still running he opened his eyes, ears ringing, just in time to see another blast consume the archway they were running under. As they ran under the archway they did so through a rain of rubble; the archway itself collapsed over them, shaken to pieces by the hammering detonations.

The falling wall of shattered rock consumed them in darkness.

His ears still filled with the roar of the explosion, his field of vision obscured by rock dust, Anvindr found himself falling forward, struck in the right pauldron by some unseen chunk of rock. He controlled his fall enough to drop to one knee, steadying himself. He braced himself for further blows, but none came, just a gentle rain of fragments.

Then there was silence, or something like it. The rock fall had totally blocked the way they had come in, cutting off any noise from the surface, although Anvindr could still feel the periodic vibration from explosions above ground.

Anvindr checked himself. One pauldron dented, but otherwise just scrapes to his power armour, and light burns and scratches over his exposed face. He pulled himself to his feet, dust and small pieces of rock falling from his armour as he did so.

As the dust settled, he could make out a large chamber lit by a string of arc lights. The walls were polished stone, but featureless. Around Anvindr, his brothers were recovering themselves. Gulbrandr stood in front, entirely unscathed, and was looking ahead to the chamber’s one exit, a corridor leading downwards. Anvindr ignored him, and turned to see Tormodr rising from the ground, shaking chunks of rock from his pelts while brushing aside a mocking hand of assistance from Sindri. Both seemed battered but intact, although Tormodr’s arm hung limp at his side.

Of Liulfr, there was initially no sign. Where once the chamber led out to the daylight, a sloped wall of broken rock now blocked the way. There was no trace of Liulfr at all, just that wall of rock.

Anvindr approached the rockslide, ears and nose pricked, searching for the slightest sign. Within seconds he was on his knees, rolling away a stone as tall as himself. Sindri and Tormodr aided him in the work, while Gulbrandr hung back, keeping watch.

All this, they did wordlessly, united in a common objective. They uncovered a gloved hand, the fingers twitching at the air as the rocks holding it down were removed, then the rest of an armoured arm, and Liulfr’s head and shoulders. Liulfr’s helmet had buckled and split down one side of his face, and he blinked away dust and took a ragged breath as his face was exposed. His cheek was broken and his face bloodied, but he was alive.

‘Real darkness,’ said Liulfr with a cough of blood. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like. Shame to have it broken by faces such as yours.’ He laughed to himself, coughing blood again, then grunted.

‘We’d have left you in peace if those furs didn’t smell so much,’ said Anvindr, nodding at the torn strips of pelt around the shoulders of Liulfr’s battered armour. ‘A noseless hive dweller could catch the scent of those, rockslide or not.’

During this exchange, Anvindr had been looking at his fellow Wolf closely, and this last insult was delivered with relief. Liulfr was pinned, a giant slab of rock having crushed his lower body. Anvindr knew the look of a brother whose thread was at its end, and Liulfr did not have that look. He would live.

He would not, however, be moving anywhere, as the Wolves discovered when they cleared a space around Liulfr. The rock slab that held him down was huge, taller than the chamber they were in and half as wide. Even the collective strength of the four other Wolves would not be enough to shift it.

Anvindr’s mind was just teasing towards what exactly they might need to aid Liulfr when he heard the sound of someone approaching. The others had heard it too: Anvindr turned to see Gulbrandr already taking a firing position, his boltgun aimed down the tunnel. As footsteps drew closer, Anvindr saw Gulbrandr relax his grip and give a barely perceptible nod: friend, not foe.

The man who emerged up the incline of the tunnel was an Imperial Guardsman, wearing the uniform of the Lacusian Guard, dark green with silver trim. As he approached he looked first at Gulbrandr, towering over him, then at the rest of the Wolves, then at the collapsed archway.

‘My lords,’ said the Lacusian formally. He looked past the Wolves to see the extent of the rockslide that had sealed the entrance.

‘Who are you?’ asked Anvindr.

‘Could you come with me, lords?’ asked the Lacusian, having finished his inspection.

Anvindr bristled at the evasion. He had expected a straight answer. In his experience most Guardsmen, even the sternest veterans, were intimidated by the presence of the Adeptus Astartes, as well they should. Was this man not afraid to defy a Space Marine?

No, Anvindr thought, looking at the Guardsman before him. It wasn’t that the man wasn’t intimidated by Anvindr. It was that there was someone or something else that intimidated him more.

‘Very well,’ grunted Anvindr, nodding for the Lacusian to lead the way.

Leaving Liulfr, the Wolves followed their mortal guide further down the tunnel, which remained broad enough for two Space Marines to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. The Lacusian walked with a slight limp, the sound of grinding gears as his right foot touched the ground indicating an augmetic leg.

Curved corridors broke off from the tunnel as it levelled out, but the Guardsman led them straight ahead. As they passed these corridors, Anvindr could see hollows in the curved stone walls, facing inwards towards their destination. Some of the alcoves were lit with lamps or small fires, and he could hear and smell human life nearby. People were living down here. The war on Beltrasse had raged for months before the Wolves arrived to drive back the Tau, and these were the refugees.

They were led into a wide octagonal chamber, the ceiling of which rose to a high dome. Lights strung around the chamber all pointed to the centre, where a huge stone cube sat on a raised dais. Machinery of a kind Anvindr did not recognise was scattered around the chamber, connected by bundles of cable.

The Lacusian who led them there stepped aside as they entered, and Anvindr climbed the steps of the dais. Carved into one side of the cube was a representation, crude but instantly recognisable, of a Space Marine in Terminator power armour, seated with his hands resting on his knees.

The rest of the chamber was as unadorned as the tunnel that had led them there, the polished stone unmarked by any text. However, one word was carved beneath the engraving of the Space Marine:

HRONDIR

Anvindr looked back at the carving. The markings on one shoulder could have been part of a horned skull motif, seen from the side.

‘His name was Hrondir, of the Exorcists Chapter of loyal Adeptus Astartes,’ pronounced a smooth, clipped voice, as a newcomer entered the chamber. It was a supremely confident voice and the appearance matched: the man who entered was tall, taller than virtually any mortal, but shorter than a Space Marine. He was dark-skinned with chiselled, sharp cheeked features and piercing eyes, beneath one of which was a tattoo of a stylised letter ‘I’ that glowed slightly in the firelight. He wore a plain black robe thrown back over the shoulders of heavy gold armour, the plates of which were inscribed with curved lettering and ornate patterns. A long-handled hammer hung from his belt.

Anvindr recognised the man for what he was: an inquisitor. To Anvindr, it was obvious from his armour, but knowledge of the Inquisition’s existence was privileged information, and few would recognise an inquisitor by sight.

The inquisitor was accompanied by another man, wearing black robes trimmed with silver. The second mortal was shorter, paler and seemed to almost disappear when stood beside his grandiosely clothed companion. He didn’t speak, but instead carried a data-slate which he periodically glanced at.

‘I am Montiyf, and this is Hrondir’s tomb,’ said the inquisitor, making a sweeping gesture. ‘He fell here some three centuries ago, in a battle to save Beltrasse, and the people built this tomb in his honour. As the decades wore on, the catacombs of the tomb were expanded to house the other dead from that battle, so that they might be closer to where Hrondir sits within his sarcophagus, as is the local tradition.’

‘Three centuries,’ repeated Anvindr, still examining the carving on the great cube, Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Had it been that long?

‘Yes,’ said the inquisitor redundantly, scrutinising Anvindr for a few seconds. He then turned to the Guardsman who had led the Wolves into Hrondir’s tomb. ‘Galvern, what is your report?’

‘My lord,’ the Lacusian nodded crisply, and Anvindr could see the hold that the inquisitor had over him. ‘The entrance has been completely sealed by a rockslide, but otherwise the integrity of the tomb is intact.’

‘Heavy fire from a Tau gunship brought down the archway,’ added Anvindr. ‘My brothers and I sought temporary shelter here. We will return to the surface once the threat has passed.’

‘If the entrance is blocked then that will not be possible,’ said the inquisitor. ‘This is a tomb, there is only one entrance, captain. Fortunately it is a very well built and deep tomb, and is unlikely to suffer any further damage from the Tau.’

Anvindr shrugged off the inquisitor’s acknowledgement of his rank, as it wasn’t difficult to read his shoulder markings.

‘If this is a tomb, why are you down here, inquisitor…?’ asked Anvindr.

‘Inquisitor Montiyf of the Ordo Malleus,’ finished the man, gesturing to his companion. ‘This is Interrogator Pranix, and we are here to learn what we can from Hrondir’s victory, to study the enemies he defeated here. As battle-brothers of the honoured Sixth Chapter, you will of course understand the need to learn from a defeated enemy.’

Anvindr did not understand how Montiyf expected to discover anything about a long-dead enemy by skulking around a featureless tomb, but presumably the banks of equipment served some purpose in this respect. It was none of Anvindr’s concern, regardless.

‘We are of Fourth Company, here to fight the Tau,’ said Anvindr. ‘Is there no way back to the surface?’

It would, he thought, be intolerable to rot away down in such a hole, immortal life steadily slipping away in the dark. A perilously dull end to a long life of glorious battle.

‘You will get to fight the xenos again soon enough,’ said Montiyf. ‘My retinue are following another lead, but they know our position and are due to liaise with me in nine days. Once they find the entrance has collapsed they will requisition whatever is needed to dig us out. Until then, the labyrinth of tunnels surrounding the main tomb is large, and there have been over a hundred civilians sheltering down here. They have water, air and food supplies, it should not be difficult to requisition whatever you need.’

Anvindr grunted again. He turned his attention back to the carving of Hrondir.

‘I knew him,’ said Anvindr.

‘You knew Captain Hrondir?’ asked Montiyf. The inquisitor, for all his pomp and threat, could not help but appear surprised.

Anvindr nodded. Although he was no skjald, he could tell what was expected of him, and cleared his throat to tell the tale.

They had fought side by side in the sinking city of Majohah, slaughtering heretic after heretic through flooded streets. Anvindr was a Blood Claw then, he and his young brothers meeting the fanatical savagery of the cultists with a youthful bloodlust of their own.

As the rising waters broke through crumbling walls in polluted torrents, so wave after wave of men and women, their souls bargained away to unspeakable forces, would burst out of buildings or from beneath the waters to assault the Wolves.

The Wolves cut their threads by the hundreds, and Anvindr was at the heart of it, slicing his chainblade back and forth through hordes of fanatics, slicing through corrupted flesh and chopping away at mutated limbs.

For Anvindr and the Wolves, Majohah was a slow, bloody matter of week after week of slaughtering a blighted population. Whether the Wolves hunted down their enemy, or the enemy attacked them, made no difference.

The Exorcists arrived with a different mission. While Fourth Company were spread across the city, killing heretics wherever they were found, the red-armoured Exorcists cut through it in a straight line, moving in on the Great Cathedra at the heart of Majohah.

Anvindr was one of the Wolves drawn into the Exorcists’ assault on the Cathedra. They besieged the desecrated temple for three days, and it was there that Anvindr met Hrondir and the other Terminators of his squad.

The Exorcists were secretive and, compared to the hot-tempered Blood Claws, reserved in their mood, but Anvindr had found them to be determined and relentless warriors. Between his slow, incomprehensible chants and other rituals, Hrondir, looming over Anvindr in his Terminator armour, had spoken a little of his home world of Banish.

When one wall of the Cathedra fell, and the defences scattered, the Exorcists insisted on going in alone, leaving the Wolves to return to their primary mission. Anvindr watched Hrondir and the others cross the flooded square and charge through the breach, but within minutes Anvindr had an enemy by the throat and was preoccupied.

However, in the hours that followed the Exorcists entering the Cathedra, the air above that part of the city was disturbed, storm clouds turning in on themselves unnaturally. The Wolves, out in the streets, sniffed the air and knew something pivotal was going on at the city’s heart.

Then it was done. The sky settled. Their mission complete, the Exorcists departed.

The Wolves fought on, but without the presence of whatever the Exorcists had confronted in the Cathedra, the enemy’s will to fight was gone. The Wolves showed them no mercy, and the heretics fought for their lives as best they could, but within days they were all dead.

The city’s descent halted, the floodwaters left to grow stagnant without further replenishment. The Wolves left Majohah in peace of a sort, a part-flooded ruin devoid of life, its streets clogged with the bloated, tainted bodies of its former residents.

Anvindr left out some details: the chants, the lights in the sky. The mortal, Galvern, was still in earshot, and Anvindr had no desire to see him purged for hearing of matters the Inquisition would rather he did not know. But he kept much of the story intact, the valour of Hrondir and that the battle turned the tide.

As Anvindr had told his story, more mortals had entered the chamber, cautiously keeping their distance from both the inquisitor and the Wolves. By the time the retelling was complete, he had an audience; a few more Guardsmen, standing respectfully to attention in his presence, but mainly civilians, hovering nervously at the edge of the room, rapt to his speech.

‘To these people, Hrondir is a myth,’ explained Montiyf. ‘No official account was ever written down, and even this tomb was lost for over a hundred years. Hrondir’s name has been passed down by word of mouth, little more than a folk tale, and now you are here, talking of meeting Hrondir in your own lifetime. To them, you have stepped out of a legend.’

In the tomb, time passed painfully slowly for the Wolves. Unable to hunt or fight, without even space to properly train, they instead searched every inch of the catacombs to find something that might aid their escape, or help free Liulfr. The web of tunnels sprawling out from the central chamber where Hrondir lay at rest led to dozens of small chambers, and the Wolves searched every one.

Many were occupied by civilians who had descended into the tomb to shelter from the war above. Others had been turned into makeshift supply rooms, or housed water recycling equipment or generators. Some had been left as they had been found, containing nothing but funerary relics. The Beltrassens did not entomb their dead lying down, instead burying them seated, so that they might face the afterlife with dignity, and many of the rooms had square stone sarcophagi set into alcoves.

The Wolves found little of use. They found cracks or pores in the stone that allowed air or a trickle of water into the tomb, but no hidden tunnels, nor any heavy equipment that could help free Liulfr. In spite of this, they continued to prowl the corridors, searching for an advantage.

Even this endless pacing was impeded by the presence of so many mortals. The Wolves could see perfectly well in the low light of the darker tunnels, so carried no light source with them.

When a mortal came walking from the opposite direction, that mortal would walk straight into the towering Space Marines, if not given due warning. Most of the Wolves adopted a terse ‘make way’ to scatter any mortals in their path, with the exception of Sindri, who found it amusing to stay silent and watch the coming mortal bounce off his heavy armour.

For all his sport, even Sindri was not cruel, and he would catch any mortal who fell before they hurt themselves, his reflexes responding before the mortal had any real idea of what had happened.

While the Guardsmen at least had some military training and physical aptitude, the fragility and clumsiness of the civilian mortals retained a fascination for Anvindr. Even in the distant days of his childhood, before the Sky Warriors had made him one of their own, Anvindr had been made of stronger stuff than these city dwellers. Fenrisian young learned survival fast, and Anvindr had been a hunter from virtually the moment he took his first steps.

As a Grey Hunter, so far removed from those beginnings, these mortals with their fast breaths and heartbeats, so involved in the transient concerns of their short lives, were a mystery to him. They fluttered around him like moths, and he tried not to break them.

Blood and scraps of bone.

The chamber was one of many similar rooms, featureless except for three small podiums, each of which held a smooth-surfaced reliquary box. Two were in place, while one had been knocked to the floor. It remained intact, whatever bones or other remains it contained kept safely inside.

The mortals who had rested in this chamber were not so lucky. Blood splattered the walls and floor, and within the streaks of dried blood were scraps of bone, cloth and other, thicker, matter, the shredded remains of skin and organs.

The room was small, at least to Anvindr, and while the mortals walked in and out with ease, he had to duck to enter. Montiyf was standing, arms folded so that Anvindr could see the ruby-eyed skulls engraved on his gauntlets, while Pranix squatted closer to the floor, examining a streak of gore and tapping his data-slate.

‘I am not yours to summon,’ Anvindr growled to Montiyf. It had been three days since the Wolves had entered the tomb, and Montiyf had sent one of the Lacusians to request Anvindr’s presence.

Anvindr didn’t expect any response to this from the inquisitor, any acknowledgement that the Wolves were not a resource at the inquisitor’s disposal, and he didn’t get any beyond an impassive glare.

‘What happened here?’ Anvindr asked.

‘We do not know,’ said Montiyf. ‘Five people were in this room. This is all that is left of them.’

‘You are sure all five?’ asked Anvindr. ‘One didn’t turn on the others?’ Mortal men killed each other for foolish reasons, Anvindr knew this.

‘We have checked the entire tomb, lord,’ said Pranix, with soft formality. He had attached a brass rod to his data-slate with a line of copper wire, and embedded one end in a smear of gore on the ground. ‘This is all that remains of any of them.’

‘Then someone else?’ asked Anvindr, frustrated. ‘Grief, these petty crimes are no concern of mine, and I don’t see why the Inquisition cares either.’

‘If this were a normal crime,’ said Montiyf, running one gloved finger down the tattoo beneath his eye. ‘But look at the remains. Does this strike you as something a normal human could do? Fast enough that no one even heard a scream?’

Anvindr gave a non-committal grunt. There were plenty of things that could kill this fast, beasts and xenos that could rend flesh in a flurry of claws or weapons. Anvindr had seen it happen.

In the heat of battle, he had been that killer himself.

‘There are fears that some savage beast did this, although there is nowhere for such an animal to hide,’ said Montiyf. Anvindr could feel the inquisitor’s gaze on him. ‘Unless that beast lurked beneath a human skin, a hidden animal rage.’

‘You can reassure the mortals, this was not one of us,’ said Anvindr, not rising to the inquisitor’s coy insinuations. ‘We are not animals.’

Anvindr crossed the room, looked more closely at a streak of blood on the wall and opened up his senses. He could smell human blood and a touch of bile, but those fluids didn’t smell fresh, nor did they have the dead scent of stale, dried blood. He rubbed at one of the blood stains with his fingers. His fingers came away stained with powder, the dust leaving a hint of something in the air.

‘This blood was hot as it spilled,’ Anvindr said. ‘Very hot; these stains are burnt.’

‘We must be alert,’ said Inquisitor Montiyf, and with that he left the room. Pranix remained, and Anvindr lingered, thinking of the ways to kill a man, and what might cause such damage, shredding flesh and leaving blood stains burnt into the walls.

A weapon? Someone would have heard.

A psyker? Anvindr had seen mental powers tear an enemy to pieces, or burn them from the inside out. The Inquisition were known for their psychic powers.

Deep in thought, Anvindr picked up the fallen reliquary from the floor. It rattled slightly, the sound of bone fragments moving within. The box seemed tiny in Anvindr’s giant hand, the remains of a mortal life in his palm. He placed the featureless box back on its featureless podium.

‘No names,’ he said, largely to himself.

Pranix looked up from his data-slate. ‘Lord?’

‘There are no names, apart from Hrondir’s,’ said Anvindr. ‘The people who built this tomb made all this effort to lay their dead here, all these boxes and chambers, yet they didn’t mark down the names of the dead?’

Pranix didn’t say anything, but continued to watch Anvindr as he walked away.

‘He insults us!’ complained Gulbrandr, after Anvindr reported the deaths, and his conversation with the inquisitor. ‘As if we were beasts who needed to chew down on these tiny mortals.’

The four Wolves had taken one of the larger chambers in the tomb for themselves, a long room with a long stone altar in the centre. Gulbrandr prowled the room, whilst Tormodr sat in one corner and Sindri leaned nonchalantly against a wall.

‘He did not say he believed this,’ said Anvindr. ‘But I am sure some of the mortals do.’

‘Let them run scared of us,’ said Sindri. ‘Weak little things. Why should we care if a few of them die? This whole world is in ruins.’

‘That depends what killed them,’ said Anvindr. ‘And how we can kill it.’

‘If there is something worth hunting down here after all, then that changes everything,’ said Sindri, grinning widely.

A day later, another mortal died. This time, screams were heard, but by the time any witness arrived, the room from which the scream came was empty.

It was rapidly established that a young woman had gone missing, and a search was organised.

It was Gulbrandr who found the body, collapsed in an alcove on the opposite end of the catacombs. Skinned and gutted, an unnatural heat rose from the corpse.

Of the killer, they could find no sign.

‘He’s gone,’ said Sindri.

It was now four days since they had entered the tomb.

Liulfr would not be able to heal fully until his legs were freed, but his condition was stable, and he certainly didn’t need monitoring, his own remarkable physiology keeping him healthy and in minimal pain even while pinned.

Nonetheless, the Wolves chose to visit Liulfr regularly, recounting old war stories while making futile attempts to discover a way of freeing Liulfr without causing a larger rockslide.

It had been Sindri’s turn to visit Liulfr, but he returned within minutes of departing.

‘If this is one of your jests…’ Anvindr began, but he could see from Sindri’s expression that he wasn’t joking.

‘I must see this for myself,’ said Anvindr.

Liulfr was indeed gone, almost without a trace. Scree had rolled down to fill the gap where Liulfr had been pinned under the stone column, and in spite of digging through the gravel Anvindr couldn’t find even a fragment of ceramite. If Liulfr had somehow been dragged away, there would at least be some part of him left behind.

Instead, there was nothing to mark where Liulfr had been, except a scattering of blackened stones, scarred from exposure to a great and sudden heat.

‘Perhaps he freed himself,’ said Montiyf, when told the news of Liulfr’s disappearance. ‘The explosions above may have shaken the rock above him, allowing your brother to manoeuvre himself free.’

‘And walk away on broken legs?’ scoffed Anvindr. ‘Why even try to drag himself away, when Liulfr knew we would come to him in good time? No, if Liulfr had dragged himself loose, he would have waited for one of his pack to find him.’

‘Then what would you suggest happened?’ asked Montiyf.

The inquisitor and the Wolf circled each other slowly, stood before Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Montiyf’s hammer and Anvindr’s chainblade stayed hanging from their respective belts, but each had a hand free, ready to defend themselves.

‘There are ways to move flesh through walls, to pull that which is solid through matter,’ said Anvindr.

‘A sorcerer?’ asked Montiyf, an eyebrow raised. Matters of daemonic heresy were the business of the Ordo Malleus, and Anvindr was pushing into Montiyf’s territory by even discussing them.

‘Or a psyker,’ said Anvindr. ‘Such power can leave a tang in the air, and create a great excess of heat.’

Anvindr raised one hand in a closed fist, and then opened it to reveal blackened stones in his palm.

It was an accusation, albeit an indirect one. Many inquisitors were psykers, and those abilities could stretch from the reading of mortal minds to the manipulation of objects, and even greater distortions of reality. And the greater those powers, the more likely the psyker would succumb to the dark forces drawn to his unnatural talents.

Tension hung in the air between the two. They were not alone – while the chamber had been cleared so that Anvindr could speak about matters that the inquisitor would execute most subjects of the Imperium for even knowing about, the rest of Anvindr’s pack were present, as was Pranix. While the Wolves outnumbered the representatives of the Inquisition, and their Chapter was known for its defiance, to attack an inquisitor was nonetheless almost unthinkable, treasonous.

Unless that inquisitor had been corrupted by the very forces he was sworn to destroy.

Montiyf was about to speak when a mortal cry echoed from a nearby corridor. There was a momentary exchange of glances between Anvindr and Montiyf, then a nodding agreement to temporarily postpone their conversation.

As the Wolves ran from the chamber, the inquisitor and his interrogator close behind, there was no one to see an icy film develop on the surface of Hrondir’s sarcophagus, then evaporate into the air as quickly as it had formed.

The man whose cry they heard stood, back pressed into the stone wall, shuddering in horror, his eyes locked on the smouldering mass on the floor before him.

‘It just appeared,’ the man said, then proceeded to repeat those three words again and again, staring at the bloody, burning mass. Steam filled the air, and in the dimly lit corridor it was hard to see what was actually there.

Anvindr had his bolter drawn as he approached the twitching shape on the ground, ready to confront whatever horror had materialised, but rapidly lowered his weapon.

‘Liulfr,’ he said. ‘It’s Liulfr.’

The Wolves gathered around their fallen comrade. His armour had been battered and burnt, and was still hot to the touch, dented all over and even cracked in places. The livery of his ceramite plate was blackened beyond recognition, and the pelts he wore around his shoulders were little more than crisped wisps of ashen matter.

From the waist down Liulfr’s legs were indeed crushed, mangled within flattened armour, and where the armour was most cracked burnt flesh was visible beneath.

Liulfr’s head was a scorched-red mass of bruised and burnt flesh, the hair entirely gone and the eyes and mouth reduced to crumpled slits.

As Anvindr leaned over to check Liulfr’s breathing, his mouth and eyes snapped open. His eyes were bloodshot but intact, and a bruised tongue wet burnt-dry lips.

‘Fought it,’ he said, with considerable effort. ‘It dragged me into the dark, but I fought it every step. I wouldn’t let it take me, tried to free him.’

This message delivered, Liulfr slumped back, eyes staring blankly.

Liulfr was dead.

The Wolves carried Liulfr to their chamber, and laid him out on the altar.

‘Tried to free who?’ asked Sindri, breaking the mournful silence that had fallen across them all. ‘He makes no sense.’

‘He was taken somewhere,’ said Anvindr. ‘Pulled away by magic to somewhere dark, then returned.’

‘This is work for a rune priest, not for us,’ rumbled Tormodr.

‘Well, there are no priests here,’ said Anvindr. ‘So it falls to us whether it pleases us or not.’

Anvindr was no inquisitor, nor one of the Adeptus Arbites: he did not sift for truth or search out secrets.

He was a Sky Warrior, a hunter, one of the Vlka Fenryka. His earliest memories were of the hunt, of the endless icy wastes of Fenris, tracking the distant shape of an animal as the cold winds tore through layers of furs. He knew how to seek out prey, to kill, to be aware of a predator’s eyes on you, and strike at them first.

As a young man he had become aware of being observed, and when he sought out his observers they took him away to the Aett, where he was elevated to the ranks of the Sky Warriors.

He had hunted and fought and killed ever since, it was his nature from birth and it would be with him until his death; an endless cycle.

The enemy he faced now seemed to break that simple cycle of his existence, to defy face-to-face confrontation, to leave no trail to follow. It was a riddle, and Anvindr had no use for riddles. It was for Montiyf to unpick such things, and Montiyf showed no sign of understanding any more than Anvindr.

Unless Anvindr was wrong to consider this different to any other threat. There was an enemy, one which ventured from its lair. If it could not be caught while it hunted, then it would need to be found in its den and struck at there.

Perhaps it was all that simple, and there was no mystery, just the hunt.

And if there was no mystery, perhaps there were no riddles to be resolved, and the one person who should have known what was happening, who had been strangely idle, had the knowledge that was expected of them. Perhaps everything was exactly as it should be, and all Anvindr needed to do was resolve the problem in the best way he knew.

‘Hrondir is at the heart of this,’ Anvindr called out to Montiyf as he entered the central chamber of the tomb. The inquisitor and his interrogator were alone, poring over readings on their equipment. ‘We have been looking for enemies in the shadows, but this place is no mystery, it is devoted to the memory of one man alone. Whatever is attacking us, it relates to Hrondir. I don’t know how, but I think you do.’

‘I do?’ asked Montiyf.

‘Why else would you be here?’ said Anvindr. ‘Research on a dead enemy, in the middle of a Tau invasion? No, the Exorcists have always been close to the Inquisition. If your Ordo didn’t send Hrondir here then they at least knew what he faced, and knew enough to come here the moment this tomb was uncovered.’

‘These are matters for the Inqui–’ Montiyf began.

‘Enough,’ Anvindr barked. ‘Keep your secrets from these mortals, but whatever stalks these halls cut the thread of Liulfr, a brother of the Vlka Fenryka. I will not waste time on protocol while a threat like that exists. So speak, so that we may kill this thing and be done with it.’

There was a long silence. Anvindr’s pack had followed him into the chamber, and stood quietly nearby.

Then Montiyf spoke, evenly and surely, as if Anvindr hadn’t needed to wring the truth out of him.

‘Hrondir came here alone,’ said Montiyf. ‘The forces of Chaos sought to break into this sector, and the Exorcists and my ordo were spread thin striking at the gravest heresies wherever they erupted. Hrondir was the last of his squad. By what accounts we have left from that time, he responded to reports of some daemonic emergence here on Beltrasse.’

Montiyf circled the dais at the centre of the room, and the great stone sarcophagus that dominated the chamber.

‘It took three decades to purify this sector, but we were thorough,’ Montiyf continued. ‘No report was left unchecked, no matter how long it took, so decades after Hrondir was sent to Beltrasse the planet was revisited, to see what became of him. This world was clean of heresy, and all that could be gleaned were stories of a single Space Marine destroying a great evil.’

Montiyf gestured to the chamber they were in. ‘This tomb was already buried and forgotten by then, so there was little to be done to follow up the stories. But concerns lingered still, that Beltrasse had too neatly forgotten what occurred here. So when the tomb was uncovered in a Tau attack, we returned. And the events of recent days show that we were right to do so.’

‘Hrondir’s mission remains incomplete,’ said Anvindr. ‘The daemon still lives.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Montiyf. ‘Hrondir may have dealt with the enemy as best he could. If the evil could not be killed, there are other ways to win such battles.’

‘Witchcraft,’ Anvindr said.

‘There are rituals,’ said Montiyf. ‘But these are many, and we do not know which one. But I am certain that whatever lives here in the tomb, it is not fully manifest. It is restrained, or else it would have killed us all days ago and unleashed itself upon the world above.’

Restrained. Something about the word itched at Anvindr’s brain. What had Liulfr said, about being trapped in the darkness? As if the daemon had been drawn back to some cell, and took its victims there with it before reaching out once more to deposit the remains back where it found them. Only Liulfr had fought, and been released with a last breath left in him.

‘There are no hidden rooms or spaces here?’ asked Anvindr, already knowing the answer.

It was Interrogator Pranix who answered, rather than his master.

‘None,’ said Pranix. ‘We have scanned every bit of wall, floor and ceiling. This tomb is buried deep in stony ground.’

‘Then where could this beast be hiding… except in there?’ Anvindr pointed to the sarcophagus. ‘Why else would you be watching that box so closely if the daemon were not in there? The Beltrassens must have known the daemon lay with Hrondir, that’s why this tomb bears not a single word or image or name apart from his, so that the daemon could take no hold of them. So why haven’t you opened the sarcophagus yet?’

‘Because we do not know enough. We have not gathered enough information on this creature,’ said Montiyf. ‘To act prematurely would be foolhardy.’

‘Is that why you have been scouring the scene after every attack, so that you can gather more data while this thing wreaks havoc?’ said Anvindr, turning to Pranix.

‘An unfortunate necessity,’ said Pranix. He barely raised his voice but there was steel behind his words, an absolute self-possession. ‘We could not afford to act prematurely, until we knew exactly–’

‘So you kept your silence while one of us died?’ snarled Anvindr in exasperation, his rage barely contained.

Pranix didn’t respond, but neither did he flinch in the face of Anvindr’s anger.

Anvindr looked between inquisitor and interrogator, both absolutely certain in their authority. He ground his teeth, fangs digging into the inside of his mouth. Then, with a snarl of released anger, he turned to his pack.

‘Well, if caution is the word of the day,’ said Anvindr. ‘We know what we must do, brothers?’

Montiyf and Pranix made no move to stop the Wolves as they surrounded the stone sarcophagus and searched for a way to open it, instead stepping back and preparing themselves for whatever came next. In his peripheral vision Anvindr could see Montiyf detaching the gold hammer from where it hung from his belt, adjusting his grip on its ornate handle.

It was Sindri who found that the front panel of the sarcophagus, the one bearing Hrondir’s likeness and name, could be slowly eased out. Tormodr and Gulbrandr did the heavy lifting, while Anvindr and Sindri stepped back, weapons raised.

Tormodr and Gulbrandr moved the slab aside, resting it against the side of the sarcophagus. Dead air seeped out of the interior, a musty smell but with something else, a more recent stink of burnt flesh and hot blood.

There was a moment of absolute stillness, as the Wolves waited for something to emerge. But nothing did.

Anvindr approached the sarcophagus, bolter raised.

As opposed to the spartan stone of the rest of the tomb, the interior of the sarcophagus was covered with writing, some in languages Anvindr didn’t understand, scratched on every surface. The text was accompanied by arcane signs and symbols, many of which Anvindr did recognise, as marks of warding to hold back evil.

Hold back, or hold in?

The stone interior was blackened by scorch marks, but the set of Terminator armour that occupied the sarcophagus still bore its fierce red livery, the horned skull still displayed on one shoulder.

Matching the engraving on the front of the sarcophagus, Hrondir had been laid to rest seated, his fully armoured body sat on a stone throne strong enough to hold the armour’s vast weight. The helmet was down over Hrondir’s face, and his hands rested, palms down, in his lap.

‘Stay back,’ said Anvindr, stepping towards Hrondir. He reached around the armour’s helmet, finding the release clasps. There was a hiss of released air as the helmet lifted away.

The exposed head was well-preserved. Pallid, dried skin had shrunk over the skull, the eyelids sunken. The emaciated features were recognisably Hrondir’s, and even in death his wide jaw was set in a caricature of stoic determination.

Anvindr’s eyes narrowed, his ears pricked, checking for any sign of life. There was not the murmur of even the slowest heartbeat or breath, no movement at all, but there was still something there. Hrondir was not alive, but neither was he quite dead, in a way that Anvindr could not understand.

‘He is dead… but not dead?’ said Anvindr, realising how absurd this was while standing in Hrondir’s tomb.

‘A tiny spark of his life essence still holds on,’ said Montiyf. ‘His body is long dead, but some part of his soul lingers.’

As Anvindr stepped away from Hrondir’s body, determined to ask Montiyf to explain himself, his heavy boot knocked something aside, a chip of hard material that bounced off the interior wall of the sarcophagus and spun at Anvindr’s feet.

He looked down to see it was a chip of ceramite spinning to a halt. A curved piece of armour plate, painted in the colour of his own Chapter.

A piece of Liulfr’s armour.

And then Anvindr was hit by an incredible rush of force, a surge of heat and violence in the air strong enough to throw even a fully armoured Space Marine off his feet and across the chamber.

Anvindr hit the wall hard, falling to the floor in a shower of stone fragments. He landed on his feet, bolter already raised.

He could see it now, a blur in the air coalescing before the body of Hrondir. It made his eyes itch to look at it, an amorphous blob of fiery, semi-transparent matter, straining to pull itself into existence, the shadows of teeth and claws slashing the air around it.

‘For Russ!’ shouted Anvindr, squeezing the trigger of his bolter to unleash a storm of explosive bolts. Sindri and Gulbrandr fired too, and the daemonic presence squirmed under fire.

Then, it was gone.

‘Too easy?’ asked Sindri, keeping his bolter raised.

‘Far too easy,’ agreed Anvindr. ‘Inquisitor?’

‘Agreed,’ said Montiyf. ‘It will return.’

‘It’s anchored,’ said Pranix.

‘Speak sense,’ snapped Anvindr.

‘The inquisitor said some of Hrondir’s soul remained,’ said Pranix. ‘Hrondir must have been unable to kill the daemon outright, so instead he bound it to his own soul. Even in death that bond still holds, Hrondir’s soul bound to his body, pulling the daemon back to its cell.’

The inquisitor pointed to Hrondir’s body. ‘You can see it, the force holding it here.’

Anvindr looked. Hrondir’s armour seemed lit with a light blue, flickering glow, traces of psychic energy rippling across the surfaces of the ancient armour. The light crackled, as if responding to some opposing force.

‘Pranix is right,’ said Montiyf. ‘That’s the daemon’s anchor.’

The blue light burst forth with a wave of cold air, a brief frost forming around the edges of the sarcophagus, and the daemonic presence reappeared. It was not alone: Anvindr could see Galvern, the first Guardsman they had encountered in the tomb, twisting in the air before Hrondir’s seated figure. Galvern was in agony, his body covered in flames, cuts appearing on his skin as the very air around him attacked with daemonic force.

Anvindr felt rising anger. This must have been what happened to Liulfr and the others, warped to the inside of Hrondir’s sarcophagus to be mauled by this daemon, the remains then returned to where they had come from once its foul work was done.

Anvindr had had enough.

‘Gulbrandr,’ he called to the best shot in the pack. ‘Mercy kill.’

Gulbrandr nodded, fired his bolter once and Galvern’s head exploded. Galvern’s body went limp, and there was a high screech as the daemon tore the body limb from limb, frustrated at having its game cut short.

The daemon itself seemed unaffected by the bolt having penetrated its body to reach Galvern. Instead it dropped to the floor, and disappeared once again, only to emerge at Gulbrandr’s feet, consuming him in a wave of heat.

Gulbrandr struggled against the semi-visible creature that clawed at him with burning, translucent limbs, but it was like wrestling a liquid. Tormodr and Sindri rushed to help, the latter revving his chainblade, which he brought down on to the creature.

Sindri swore as the creature flowed around the blade and it bounced off the chest plate of Gulbrandr’s armour.

‘Great Russ,’ said Sindri. ‘We’re more likely to kill him than it.’

‘Stand back,’ shouted Montiyf, stepping forward. His eyes were faintly glowing with energy, which crackled around the hammer in his grip. He swung the hammer just short of Gulbrandr so that it swept through the creature’s mass without hitting the Space Marine, and the creature recoiled from the psychic charge, disappearing into the floor once again.

It reappeared back in Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Gulbrandr dropped to one knee, his flesh steaming from contact with the thing, his face a mass of bloody cuts.

‘It doesn’t seem scratched,’ said Anvindr bitterly. ‘How do we even hurt this thing?’

‘We need to cut it loose,’ said Pranix. Anvindr registered that he, too, had a flicker of psychic energy running through him. ‘Destroy the anchor, release Hrondir’s spirit and the daemon will manifest fully in our world. The body is untouched, so the daemon must have been unable to set itself free, but that rite won’t prevent anyone else from doing it. Once unleashed, the creature will be far more dangerous than it is now, but it will be vulnerable to attack. Together, we may be able to defeat it.’

It was Anvindr’s turn to swear, uttering under his breath a very old, very obscure Fenrisian curse from his youth about bearing the children from a rival tribe. Montiyf and Pranix had let Liulfr die while they kept their secrets, but the Ordo Malleus knew more about fighting daemons than anyone. The Wolves would need them to destroy the monster that killed Liulfr.

‘Very well,’ said Anvindr. ‘Tormodr, I want you to give my old friend Hrondir a long overdue cremation. The rest of you, draw that thing out.’

Anvindr, Gulbrandr and Sindri opened fire on the creature, which flowed away from the sarcophagus to avoid their shots, slipping in and out of existence as it rolled around the chamber. The Wolves maintained fire, driving it back.

With the creature distracted, Tormodr ran up the steps into the sarcophagus. Hrondir’s helmet sat loosely on his shoulders, as Anvindr hadn’t locked it back into place, so it came off easily as Tormodr pulled it away, revealing the Exorcist’s withered head.

‘Apologies, brother,’ said Tormodr, aiming his flamer and letting loose a gout of flame that consumed Hrondir’s head. The ancient flesh was dry as paper, and the fire not only burned away the skin from his head, but descended down the collar into the armour, burning away the rest of his body.

The Terminator armour fell forward, thick black smoke pouring out of the neck. It crashed to the ground spilling dark cindered fragments across the floor. Anvindr thought he saw a mist of blue energy rise from the ashes, and then dissipate altogether.

The daemon roared, and what had been a ghostly shape in the air began to coalesce into something solid but unstable, a rippling mass of horribly real, pustulant flesh. Pores expanded on the repellent flesh, exhaling foetid air as tubular masses became limbs, razor-edged tips scratching the stone floor as it found purpose. Other limbs expanded and thrashed, while a mass of glassy eyes burst from the centre of the daemon’s body like pustules.

The daemon’s eyes held Anvindr’s gaze and he felt a hot sensation behind his eyes, the touch of Chaos trying to find purchase on his mind.

It would take no hold of him.

‘Now!’ bellowed Anvindr, opening fire on the thing, the cacophony of gunfire rising as the rest of the pack opened fire too.

Anvindr concentrated his fire on that mass of eyes, and boiling ichor sprayed from the wounds as the foul eyeballs were destroyed. However the creature was still in flux, still expanding, and other eyes opened up over its body just as extra limbs flailed around the chamber. Each limb rippled with spines and teeth, the flesh flowing like liquid, so it was hard to tell where the flesh ended and the slime that dripped from it began.

One such limb slashed at Gulbrandr, and a razor-edged claw scythed through the ceramite of his chest plate as if it were old vellum, drawing blood and throwing him backwards. Where the daemon’s claw had cut flesh, the edge of the wound began to blacken with decay.

The creature shifted forward, its flailing limbs dragging it across the chamber at terrifying speed in spite of its bulk, raising a mass of claws to deliver a killing blow to Gulbrandr. The daemon seemed unperturbed by the bolts still exploding all over its body, but was driven back as Montiyf and Pranix stepped into the fray, unleashing a blast of psychic energy that drove back the monster.

The daemon swerved to find another victim to satiate its bloodlust, but found Tormodr and his flamer instead. While previously the creature had coursed with the unnatural heat of its incursion upon reality, now it was a thing of vulnerable flesh, and it howled as Tormodr set it alight.

Anvindr seized Gulbrandr’s arm to prevent him from falling. Steam was rising from his infected wound, and there was a lost, unfocussed look in his eyes.

‘Look at me, brother,’ Anvindr said, and Gulbrandr’s eyes locked on to his. ‘Do not let it take a hold of you, fight it.’

Gulbrandr nodded, focus returning to his eyes, and shook off Anvindr’s supporting arm, raising his bolter to open fire once more.

The daemon was still trying to expand its mass, but the hail of bolter fire was tearing its flesh apart as it did so. The Wolves, along with the inquisitor, attacked the daemon while evading its thrashing limbs, but they were merely holding it in check, not destroying it.

‘We must take it apart,’ said Montiyf, raising his hammer. Anvindr nodded, raising his own chainblade in reply, and they moved in on the creature.

The creature lashed out at them as they closed, but Anvindr jumped over a low-swiping limb to land close to the creature’s torso, while Montiyf smacked aside a claw with his hammer. Anvindr drove his chainblade into the creature’s eyes while Montiyf brought his hammer down on the creature’s head, each blow accompanied by a release of psychic power.

Pranix moved in with a psychic blast of his own, while Tormodr had his own chainblade free, and even Gulbrandr staggered over with a long knife drawn, his other arm held across his bleeding chest.

As Sindri approached a flailing claw caught him behind the knee, a claw that shifted into a tendril and dragged him to the floor, pulling him towards a mouth that opened up in the daemon’s side. As he was dragged towards the daemon, Sindri kept his bolter level, firing ahead as the tendril crushed the power armour and began to dig into his flesh.

Anvindr could feel the malign presence as his chainsword rose and fell, hacking and smashing at vile flesh. Doubts and heresies began to sprout in his mind, bursting forth like an infection. That Hrondir had sold his soul to this daemon to sustain it, that it was a god, the only true god, that it was life, that it could not die.

Lies and heresies from a desperate entity. Anvindr drove his chainsword deeper into the amorphous flesh, and a howl rang out. Beside him, Montiyf brought his hammer down again with another psychic flash. The vile flesh of the thing began to bubble and disintegrate, mouths forming to let out a piteous, monstrous whine.

The creature’s screams rang out through the catacombs. In the sub-chambers of the tomb, mortals sat in the darkness, trickles of blood dripping from their ears at the sound of a daemon being dispatched back to hell.

Anvindr and his pack barely spoke to Montiyf and Pranix in the days that followed, nor when the blockade of the tomb entrance was cleared and they stepped out into the light. While they had come together to destroy the daemon, Anvindr knew that Pranix could have done more to confront the creature earlier, rather than allowing Liulfr to die as part of his strategy.

Anvindr and Tormodr would rejoin the battle against the Tau immediately, but Gulbrandr and Sindri would be out of action for a while. It left a bad taste in Anvindr’s mouth, but he held his tongue. The Inquisition was a dangerous enemy to make, and Anvindr had a war of his own to fight. He decided to redirect his anger at the Tau.

Before they left the tomb, Anvindr removed the pieces of Hrondir’s armour from his sarcophagus. He did not know how, but he would find a way to return them to Banish, so that they might be worn once more by a brother of the Exorcists Chapter.

‘They resent us,’ said Pranix, watching the Wolves walk away. ‘They believe we could have acted sooner, and that our reticence let their brother die.’

Montiyf raised an eyebrow.

‘You were right to counsel caution,’ he said. ‘An excellent strategy, Pranix, and your suggestion to destroy the anchor turned the course of battle. I fear you will be leaving my retinue soon.’

‘Leaving?’ asked Interrogator Pranix.

‘Of course,’ replied Montiyf. ‘I will be recommending your raising to the role of inquisitor, Pranix. You have demonstrated the correct qualities.’

‘Thank you,’ said Pranix. He didn’t meet Montiyf’s eye.

Inquisitor Montiyf felt a slight sense of disquiet at the coolness of his interrogator’s thanks, the slight suspicion that he expected no less than to be raised to the Inquisition. That this was Pranix’s decision, not Montiyf’s.

Then he dismissed the thought. He could hear Tau heavy ordnance not far away. The daemon was dead and it was time for them to withdraw.

Soon, they would depart the planet altogether, and leave Beltrasse to the Wolves.

Gilead’s Curse

Chapter 7

Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

Don’t clamour so. I promised to finish my story and finish it I shall. Then I can end this sorry existence and join that great brigade of storytellers that shines so brightly in my memory. I am rested and eager to continue, if you could just remind me where I left the story off. It seems like years since Gilead’s name passed my withered lips, and yet I know it was mere hours ago.

The skaven had congregated beneath the ground in the great hall with its crystallised vaults and buttresses and its great, arching black ceiling above. None remained but the youthful and exuberant. All the chaff had been separated; all the old and infirm, and the cowardly, were dead and gone, mostly into the stomachs of the survivors.

All that a skaven had to do to survive was to kill and maim and incapacitate his brothers and cousins, his father and uncles and grandfathers, if he knew who they were. The ratmen were all of one cruel and vicious kind, and gave no thought to the complex biological relationships that might otherwise have tied them to allegiances they hadn’t the capacity to understand.

The only skaven of any age among them was their king. He had been their master for as long as any of them had lived, and for longer than any of them could remember. There were no legends extant of any other ruler. He was all and everything to them. Their stories were short and brutal, their myths bloody, and all contained but one name, and his name was ‘King’.

Gilead stood and flexed as the Rat King entered the room. He had sloughed off the ties that bound him, body and mind, and was refreshed and whole again. His senses were alert, and he was ready to do battle.

The Rat King raised one whiskered brow; his jaw moved quickly back and forth, and around and around, but without making any words.

‘I have come,’ said Gilead.

‘So you have,’ said the Rat King.

Gilead expected more. He expected the ratman to twitch and fidget, and to trip over its words, but it did not. Even its jaw had settled and was still, its whiskers unmoving.

The Rat King took a long, deep breath, and then looked from side to side, as if suspicious of what was happening to him. His eyes swung from left to right, rather than darted, and then they fixed, unblinking, on the Fell One.

‘You are not what you expected to be,’ said Gilead.

The Rat King felt his mind homing in on Gilead in a way that it had never managed before. He found that he was concentrating, taking in the tall, lean figure of the elf, scrutinising his prisoner’s features and stance, and trying to work out what was in his head.

The Rat King shook his head slowly and blinked hard.

‘I have come,’ said Gilead again.

‘So you have,’ said the Rat King, looking startled at the sound of his own lowering voice, his words annunciated more roundly and not repeated.

‘And?’ asked Gilead.

The Rat King sat in the strange throne of weapon blades and handles, staring at Gilead.

‘And I shall live forever,’ said the Rat King.

He had stopped chewing out the words between jaws that twitched and gnawed at an alarming rate. He had stopped blinking so much and so often. Images came to him whole, not broken and strobed by the constant flickering of his eyelids.

The Rat King grasped the arms of his throne with his clawed paws and breathed deeply once more, unused to the flow of air through his lungs and the rush of oxygen into his bloodstream.

The Rat King swallowed. The pink rims of his eyes, the red of his gums and the puce flesh of his tail paled visibly before Gilead’s eyes.

One side of the elf’s mouth curled in a wry smile.

‘Are you quite well, sir?’ Gilead asked the Rat King. ‘You look rather pale.’

‘I shall live forever,’ said the Rat King. His voice was deeper even than it had been moments before and he spoke more slowly, with greater purpose, as if, for the first time, he was formulating words and listening to what he was saying. He had stopped repeating himself over and over, ad infinitum.

‘Is this what it feels like?’ asked the Rat King, turning his paws over in front of his face, examining them as if he had never seen them before. ‘Is this what being immortal feels like?’

‘I am not immortal,’ said Gilead. ‘I will live only as long as any other of my kind, if I am allowed to expire of old age. You plan to kill me, and, if you succeed, I shall prove very mortal, very quickly.’

‘You have come,’ said the Rat King, looking hard at Gilead, who stood over him.

‘Yes,’ said Gilead, ‘I have come.’

Fithvael and Laban dropped into their knees and strode down corridors, tunnels and burrows, following the rumble of thousands of bickering jaws and the vibrations of as many twitching, fidgeting bodies. The Vampire Count was slower and clumsier, his armour making his body bulky and awkward. Fithvael was cautious of their new ally, happy that the Count struggled to keep pace.

‘How could we have mistaken such a beast for our fine cousin?’ Laban asked Fithvael as the two forged ahead.

‘Do not underestimate the Count,’ said Fithvael. ‘He is our ally for now, but, soon, he will be our enemy once more. He is a fine exponent of the blade arts, and it is incumbent upon you not to forget it, lad.’

‘I meant no disrespect,’ said Laban, colouring slightly as he turned to his teacher, and promptly tripped over an exposed root under his left foot.

‘We are all capable of being clumsy,’ said Fithvael, stifling his mirth.

Fithvael and Laban stopped in their tracks, and the Count blundered towards the elves as a great wall of sound came up around them. They had never heard the like of it before, as it boomed and echoed down the tunnels of the underground warren, coming at them from any number of impossible angles. It was rhythmic and shrill with a hard bass note of thousands of stamping paws as they pounded into the hard, earth floor of the great chamber.

‘Come we close?’ asked the Vampire Count, breathing hard onto the back of Fithvael’s neck in the darkness of the tunnel.

Fithvael placed a hand on the wall beside him, although he could feel the vibrations so strongly through his booted feet that there was no doubt in his mind what awaited them if they continued on into the great vaulted space at the centre of the warren.

They had passed no live skaven on their journey into the depths of the earth. The weak and dying had been taken or devoured, and every last remaining ratman had gathered in one place; the one place to which the three unlikely companions were heading.

‘What do we do when we get there?’ asked Laban. ‘We should have a plan.’

‘We have come to attempt to rescue our friend,’ said Fithvael. ‘I have no sense of him in the turmoil that the ratmen are creating.’

‘The Old One resides in these stricken realms,’ said the Vampire Count. ‘He resides at their centre. I know not how I know it, but know it I do.’

‘That still isn’t a plan,’ said Laban, who appeared to have shrunk as the noise around them grew louder. ‘We cannot simply walk into the gathered hosts of skaven. We will surely die.’

‘There is much cunning in their characters,’ said the Vampire Count, ‘and guile aplenty, yet they greatly lack real intelligence, and are frantic and graceless in battle.’

Fithvael turned to the Count.

‘We can kill them?’ he asked.

‘We three can kill and maim their host in great numbers,’ said the Count, drawing his blades.

‘Great numbers, perhaps,’ said Laban, ‘but hordes?’

The Rat King sank back into his throne and did not move for some time. Then, he pushed one paw down inside his clothes and pulled out a long ribbon of plaited hair with a jewel hanging from it. He held it up before his face and watched it, unblinking, for several seconds.

‘Nothing,’ said the Rat King.

‘What did you expect?’ asked Gilead.

‘Something,’ said the King, looking up at the elf. ‘I expected to know something. Now that I stop to think about it… There is nothing to think about.’

‘What did you expect?’ asked Gilead again.

‘Something,’ said the Rat King again.

‘You were going to live forever,’ said Gilead.

‘Not just for now,’ said the Rat King, looking from Gilead’s face to the gem as it turned slowly on its hair ribbon.

‘‘You are not what you expected to be,’ said Gilead.

‘It’s made of hair,’ said the Rat King, peering at the curving locks of the ribbon. He looked sharply up at Gilead again. ‘Whose hair?’

‘I know not,’ said Gilead. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Whose hair was woven into this ribbon?’ asked the Rat King. ‘Why? Is it just any hair? Or is it the hair of someone who matters… or who mattered once?’

‘I know not,’ said Gilead, watching the Rat King carefully.

The Rat King brought the ribbon up to his nose and sniffed at it.

‘It is the hair of my brethren,’ said the Rat King. ‘Of my kind… But whose? Who gave this hair to make this ribbon? Is he dead? Did I belong to him? Was the hair given freely, or taken? Does it matter?’

Gilead did not mean to answer the questions, thinking them rhetorical, but the Rat King looked up at him, sad longing in his eyes, and asked again, ‘Does it matter?’

‘Does it matter to you?’ asked Gilead.

Gilead had never feared for his life, and he did not fear for it now. He took his mortality entirely for granted. He knew that he would die, one day, soon perhaps, and it couldn’t matter less. That he was mortal was a blessing to Gilead, for only in death could he overcome the enduring sadness of too much life lived and too much loss lived through. He thought of Tor Anrok of his family, and of his twin, Galeth, dead these many years. He thought of Fithvael and the agonies they had endured in each others’ company. He remembered Benath and the funeral rites of his dear cousin and honoured friend. He thought of the oldest of his kind and of the youngest of his kin, and he remembered. He knew that with remembrance came knowledge and with knowledge remembrance.

Gilead understood what had befallen the great Rat King, the beast who had dared to live forever, at any cost to himself, at any cost to his kind. He knew that the changes creeping into the Rat King’s consciousness were irreversible, that his skaven adversary would never be the same again. He could not know what effect that would have on the Rat King or on his own mortality.

Gilead looked down into the Rat King’s unblinking eyes as great pools of water gathered in their lower lids. The water brimmed, and yet the Rat King still did not blink. When the tears fell, they fell fat and heavy, and ran off the greasy hair that clung to his thin cheeks, or caught in the great whiskers, riding their lengths and falling, pregnant, from their tapering ends.

The Rat King was crying.

Gilead had not known that was even possible.

The Rat King unwound the hair ribbon from around his neck, and patiently unwove the strands of hair so that the loop became one long plait from which the Rat King removed the gem at its centre. Then he dropped the gem to the floor and began to wrap the plait carefully around his wrist, as if it were the most precious thing in all the world.

‘They are dead,’ said the Rat King. ‘The skaven that gave their hair for this ribbon are dead and gone, long gone, or not so long, they live such short and hectic lives.’

The words seemed incongruous in the skaven’s maw, misplaced and formal, and his tone seemed alien, as if some human was hiding behind the Rat King’s throne, speaking for him in some grotesque joke.

‘You must help me,’ said the skaven, standing suddenly from the throne. He grabbed Gilead by the front of his shirt, looked up into the elf’s eyes, and shook him. ‘You must help me to help them.’

Gilead covered the Rat King’s hands with his own and pried them away from their hold on his clothing. Then he placed the paws together in front of the ratman and let them go. The Rat King held his hands before him, where Gilead had left them, and did not move.

‘Help you?’ asked Gilead, his words dripping scorn upon the Rat King. ‘Nothing and no one can help you, now.’

‘We must know one another, of course,’ said the Rat King, looking beseechingly up at Gilead. ‘We must know ourselves and our brothers and cousins. We must know one another.’

Then the ratman sat suddenly down on his throne. He would have fallen, had not the throne been directly behind him. It was as if he’d had a sudden shock and needed a moment to recover.

The moment came and went as Gilead looked from the Rat King to the gem that lay between its hind paws. The Rat King looked at its wrist and then covered the plaited ribbon tied their, with its other paw, and groaned. The rims of its eyes and the pads of its paws grew whiter than ever, and then it closed its eyes and sat very still.

Gilead watched as the hairs on the Rat King, every last one of them, stood on end. Its whiskers did not arch from its snout, but stood straight out like needles. It bristled all over as if gooseflesh was keeping the follicles taut, causing the hairs to stand proud, making the ratman an inch bigger in every direction. The effect was freakish, and Gilead wanted to look away, but found that he could not. Then, every single hair in the Rat King’s body blanched white from the root to the tip, before Gilead’s very eyes.

The elf could not tell what had caused the change. Whether it was just another side effect of the amulet that seemed to be ruling the Rat King’s thinking, or whether this was happening as a direct result of the ratman’s constitution.

The Rat King opened his eyes and looked once more at Gilead, with wonder and longing, rather than with the empty expressionless eyes that the elf had become used to. This new animation was disconcerting.

‘Are you quite well, sir?’ asked Gilead, the smile returning to his lips; the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on the elf.

He bent at the waist, ostensibly to be on a level with the seated Rat King, but also so that he could retrieve the gem from the floor at his feet.

‘I must know,’ said the Rat King, a vision of pure, ethereal white. ‘I must know it all. I must know who I am and whence I came. I must know all that has gone before me, and all that I can expect from the future.’

‘I have come,’ said Gilead.

‘But can you tell me everything?’ asked the Rat King.

‘There is nothing to tell,’ said Gilead.

‘If we can hear nothing but their shouting and stamping, they can’t hear us at all,’ said Fithvael, striding off down the corridor that gleamed with a faint, greenish light from the far end.

‘But how will we defend ourselves against so many?’ asked Laban.

‘We won’t need to,’ said Fithvael. ‘You’ll see, lad.’

‘If we are to find my cousin, Gilead, what makes you think he’s down among them?’ asked Laban.

‘I don’t think it,’ said Fithvael, turning and staring hard at the boy. ‘I know it, and so does he.’ Fithvael gestured beyond Laban to the Vampire Count who stood several yards distant.

‘Your cousin is among them,’ said the Count. ‘Had he died at their hands, there would be a riot of celebration.’

Fithvael gestured, waving his hand before them.

‘That is not celebration,’ he said. ‘That is blood lust.’

‘And yet you urge me to walk into it,’ said Laban, standing his ground.

‘It’s not your blood they’re baying for,’ said Fithvael.

‘You’re not nearly as important as your fine cousin,’ said the Count, coming up behind Laban, and patting him heavily on the shoulder.

Laban turned to look at where the gauntleted hand had touched him, and tried to hide the shudder of revulsion that passed through him. By the time he turned back, Fithvael was a dozen yards farther down the corridor, his back resolutely turned on his companions.

Laban felt something trickle down the back of his shirt, and raised his hand above his head. At first, he thought that water, or condensation, had gathered and was falling on him. Many of the underground tunnels were wet and muddy, and once or twice, he’d heard a drop of water fall into a puddle below, the sound echoing through the tunnels. Even standing directly below the drip, Laban could hear nothing but the roar and shriek of the skaven horde.

There was no drip. Laban pushed his fingers below his collar at the nape of his neck and felt slightly moist grains of sandy earth. Then, before him, against the greenish gleam at the end of the tunnel, he saw a fall of gritty particles. The young elf touched the arching ceiling of the tunnel and felt a fissure opening in it as the whole structure vibrated with the pulsing throb of the restless crowd.

There was no point calling out, for Fithvael would not hear him, so Laban te Tuin darted the length of the corridor and touched his teacher’s arm. By the time that Fithvael had turned, there was no need for Laban to point; they could both see the Vampire Count stepping through a moving curtain of dust and grit.

There was a booming thud, and the Count was enveloped in a great sooty cataract of dark, moist dust and particulates as the tunnel directly behind him collapsed under the pressure of the skaven vibrations. The Count stepped through the cloud, his armour dulled and marred by the shower, looking more sinister than ever.

‘Well, there’s no turning back, now,’ said Fithvael, drawing the shorter of his blades.

‘Onward!’ exclaimed the Vampire Count raising his sword in salute to his companions.

‘What is our aim?’ asked Laban.

‘The same as it ever was,’ said Fithvael, ‘to find Gilead and to ensure his safety.’

‘How do we do that?’ asked Laban.

He need not have asked. The Vampire Count had skirted the two elves, standing side-by-side in the broad entrance to the great chamber, and had begun cutting down the ratmen that stood in his path. They fell one after another, one on top of another, as the Count carved a path through the throng.

Many of the skaven were not aware of the Count cutting through them until it was too late. They were facing the mound where they expected their great King to emerge, to lead them on to greater battles against wondrous foes. They expected to attack, not to be attacked.

Fithvael and Laban had no choice but to follow in the Count’s footsteps, bringing up his rear, and defending it so that he could not be attacked from behind and have his efforts wasted.

The ratmen were almost too easy to kill. Their attacks, though frantic and unpredictable, were generally poorly aimed and haphazard; as many strikes missed as hit, and when they were on target they tended to be wide of the desired mark, so that Fithvael and Laban defended more attacks to their limbs than to their torsos or heads. The ratmen were also just as likely to attack each other as the elves, either by accident or by design, and fights soon broke out among the skaven closest to the Vampire Count. A wide ‘V’ of bodies was scattered on the floor behind him, like the wake of some great sea-going vessel.

Of the skaven who saw their attacker, many fell dead before they were touched, their blood organs giving out under the pressure of fear and panic. An increasing number of the beasts rendered insane by the power of the rhythm stamped out by their kin, and by the ululating and shrieking of voices, sat among the corpses gorging themselves. The sight sickened Laban, who took considerable pleasure in smiting the cannibals, adding more carrion to the feast.

Several long minutes passed as the Count made progress towards the great mound where the Rat King would appear to address his host. He cut and thrust, and swept through dozens of ratmen; blood ran from his sword and sprays of it clung to the filth on his sullied armour, yet he made little impact on the horde as a whole. The damage he could do, even with Fithvael and Laban at his back, was limited to an insignificant area, to one small section of the crowd.

It would take one Vampire Count and two elves days or weeks to plough through the entire skaven horde. The task was impossible, but there was no sign that the Vampire Count would stop fighting until all of the ratmen were destroyed. There was no subtlety to his craft; he was a killing machine, an automaton, merciless and unmoved by the destruction that surrounded him. He had nothing but contempt for these pitiful creatures, and would gladly kill a thousand of them, or more, for the opportunity to stand opposite the great elf in combat.

‘Your people await,’ said Gilead.

‘Me?’ asked the Rat King, turning the plaited hair ribbon slowly around his narrow wrist. ‘Perhaps they can tell me.’

Gilead handed the Rat King his staff, which had been propped up, forgotten, against the back of the throne. The King grasped it firmly in his hand, and hoisted himself up. His old body was not suited to the slow, ponderous movements of a beast deep in thought, and he seemed not to be aware of the patterns of vibration in the antechamber, which Gilead feared might crumble to dust under the waves of pressure that were bombarding it.

The elf withdrew his sword from its place in the tangle of broken and discarded tools and weapons that comprised the skaven throne, and sheathed it. The Rat King arranged his robes around his body and slowly gathered his newfound wits. He did not see that Gilead was newly armed.

Gilead watched a drizzle of grit fall from somewhere in the ceiling and land on the Rat King’s shoulders. Then he heard the whump of collapsing earth, and a light in the antechamber was extinguished as the first of the niches, high in the chamber wall, collapsed under the weight of vibrations that were thrumming through the underground structures.

The Rat King left the chamber ahead of the elf, climbing the steps and walking out onto the mound. As the skaven host saw their King emerge, the ratmen nearest the mound redoubled their efforts to stamp and wail. The wave of sound rippled through the host, and soon the noise was beyond anything that Gilead had ever encountered. He looked out over the Rat King’s head, across the tightly packed crowd, and watched as gaps began to appear between the ratmens’ heads. Hundreds of the skaven died on their feet, crumbling to the ground to be trampled underfoot. The noise and wonder, the heat of so many bodies, and fear of anything and everything, killed them by the score.

Gilead’s eye was drawn further and further into the crowd as the wave of death spread outwards from the epicentre that was the mound and the royal rat that stood on top of it.

Then, slowly, a kind of hush began to fall.

The Rat King did nothing. He did not twitch or sniff; he did not fidget or shuffle. He did not blink, and he did not speak. The blood organ in his chest was beating remarkably slowly, and he wondered that everyone around him could not hear it thump incessantly, instead of flickering like the buzzing wings of some carrion-eating insect. He did not know if he could stand the beat of his own heart. The quantity of blood reaching his brain was too much. He had too many thoughts, too many questions, and there was no one to answer them. He looked out at the snouts raised before him, but could not find a single pair of eyes that would stay open for long enough for him to focus on a single face, and talk to a single one of his followers.

The skaven were filled with such unfocused expectation, that they were lost in a miasma of frenzy. They were born for destruction, and without a leader, any leader, they would destroy indiscriminately.

They did not recognise their Rat King as he stood before him. He did not look like one of them at all. He should have been a blur of bristling fur and blinking eyes, of gyrating maw and hopping hind paws. He should have been spilling words out at them, over and over, feeding their bloodlust, rallying them to vicious acts of wanton death and destruction, even if it was only their own.

The Rat King turned to look at Gilead, who slowly dropped his head in a deliberate nod, keeping his eyes fixed on the ratman. This seemed to fill the Rat King with more confusion and fear, and he tore his eyes away from the elf’s lean, perfect face and cast them up into the vaulted ceiling. The glossy crystalline surface far above their heads sparkled and scintillated, reflecting every speck of light back into the chamber. The Rat King lost himself in those sparkles for several long moments, composing himself. He wished for the hundredth time that his temples would stop throbbing and his heart would stop beating so heavily.

When he dropped his eyes back to the crowd, the Rat King finally found something that he could focus on. At the distant reaches of the great space, he saw a pair of glowing, red lights at the head of a deep ‘V’ of fallen bodies, bathed in a bloody sheen.

The phalanx of bodyguards standing in a broad circle on the slopes of the mound were facing outwards, into the crowd. They remained tense and fidgeting, their whiskers and tails twitching, their paws jerking and flexing the weapons that they carried, ready to attack. They hissed and snickered, and blinked hard and often, as the skaven before them stopped stamping and wailing, and shuffled and sniffed and became agitated instead. Scores of the ratmen in the first dozen, tightly packed rows began to point and chatter, and elbow one another. Several tried to scale the mound, but were cut down by the strongest and meanest of the bodyguards.

Gilead unsheathed his weapons. He knew what was to come, and he knew his part in it.

The Rat King stood rigid in front of the elf, his snout pointing a little to the left in the direction of his fixed gaze. Gilead followed the Rat King’s line of sight, and then wondered why he had not seen it before. Someone was carving a path to the mound, someone was decimating the skaven horde, killing and maiming his way to… To whom? To the Rat King, in order to destroy him? Or to the elf?

Then Gilead saw the edge of a long, narrow blade as the green lantern-light slid off its surface. He knew the blade, and he knew whom it belonged. He watched for another moment, tracing the arc of the weapon, and knowing that his old friend yet wielded it. Fithvael was in the great chamber, fighting his way towards Gilead.

The moment was lost as Gilead lunged to his left, driving his sword through the torso of the skaven bodyguard pounding towards him. The ratman had turned to see what the hordes were fussing about, and he’d seen what they had seen. Gilead got between the Rat King and his bodyguard-turned enemy.

The Rat King would have to suffer a little more, a little longer, before he was put out of his misery. In the meantime, there was a battle to be joined.

There was much confusion on the mound, but, at its epicentre, the Rat King stood absolutely still, his eyes fixed on the Vampire Count. The only being in the room who didn’t need to blink.

The skaven host had been of one mind. Their leader had made them strong, and they were granted their powers by him. As individuals, the ratmen had no minds of their own, but were drawn to their King, eager for a taste of his power, instinctively knowing that there was no other course for them. They lived only to do his bidding. All the time that the Rat King rallied his host, whipping it into a frenzy with one mind and one body, nothing could defeat his course.

As the skaven looked up at their King, covered in the white hair of the weak and old and infirm, as they took in his immobility and his silence, some knew that his time was at an end. For every ratman with the instinct to attack the old and weak and feeble, their King became just another target.

At the foot of the mound, jostling and bustling turned to nipping and clawing; then to all out fighting, resulting in mass skirmishes between the ratmen. The pounding and stamping and wailing continued throughout a large portion of the great chamber further from the mound, and the whole room shook with the impact of thousands of paws and the waves of sound that battered every surface.

Gilead looked up to see that the lanterns lighting the space were jumping and jiggling as if even the great, dwarf-hewn ceiling above was heaving and flexing to the beat of the skaven paws.

Then, in the far right-hand corner of the chamber, ratmen began to surge into the backs of their kin, and a wave of bodies tightened its formation, heaving a more solid mass of ratmen towards the mound.

Between cutting and thrusting his blades through the bodies of all and any who would take him on, Gilead glanced across the chamber as the air in the room flexed with a great whump. Dust and debris was thrust into the chamber from the pressure of another tunnel collapsing. There were many entrances into and exits from the great chamber, but, one by one, they were collapsing. One by one the underground corridors, the burrows and warrens, the labyrinth of connected passageways, all were succumbing to the vibrations caused by the massed skaven. The pounding and stamping, and the shrieking and screeching, had hit the perfect frequency to resonate through the earth, shifting and vibrating stone and bricks and earth. Moving the dirt and rocks that supported the tunnels, rendering them weak and feeble, and drilling away at their capacity to keep the rooms and chambers and the corridors and passageways open.

The great, vaulted chamber was a remarkable feat of engineering, dwarf-built, hewn from rock to withstand the massive tonnage of earth and buildings above. Yet the crystals in the ceiling shifted and sparkled, scintillating with the micro-movements that were being felt even in this underground fortress.

Through dint of greater fighting prowess, luck and lunacy, any one of the ratmen might come to lead the skaven; instinctively many of them knew it.

There was more than one battle to be fought. Any being who was not a skaven must be a foe, so that Gilead, Fithvael, Laban and the Vampire Count were all under attack as chaos spread throughout the chamber. The skaven no longer had one single purpose, to follow their King, but each had his own purpose, to survive against all-comers. Any ratman with the instinct for ambition or the lust for power must find a foe in every other ratman. Then there was the Rat King. The horde was divided. Many knew only one King and did not question his supremacy; they would fight and die for their leader. The rest thought nothing of renouncing their King for being old and still and alien to them. Skaven was set against skaven.

The mood changed in the chamber.

Gilead fought on the mound, taking on any and all. He sliced through arteries in necks and groins, cut weapon-wielding paws from limbs, plunged his blades into torsos and cut down the bodyguard one at a time, one after another, and the swarming masses that began to rush the mound in twos and threes. Every stroke met its target and no energy was wasted in dispatching the skaven beasts. As the bodies piled up, the elf wove a path across the mound, keeping the Rat King in the corner of his vision, conscious, even in the heaving throng of bodies that one body was singularly still.

Gilead knew not why he was keeping the skaven leader alive, other than to have the pleasure of dispatching the evil ratman when the time came. In the meantime, every ratman that tried to get close to his King, to assassinate his erstwhile leader, was met with the controlled white-heat of Gilead’s intent.

Halfway across the chamber, and making faster progress as the skaven turned on each other, the Vampire Count continued to plunge onward. He was no longer simply cutting down bodies, for some of the ratmen, no longer in thrall to their King, were turning to fight back. The Count was in no danger.

He stood tall and proud in his filthy armour. The damp earth and grit that had marked his armour, covering it in a layer of dust, was caught in every joint and seam of the burnished metal; grinding and marking the armour with a myriad of tiny scratches that would take a week of careful rubbing, and a tub of good lapping powder, to polish out.

Every time the Vampire Count raised his blade to the foe, it came back bloodied. Every time skaven blood gouted from the hundreds of wounds he inflicted, it arced through the air, coming to rest in splashes and droplets all over the armour, smearing the dirt that was already there. He was a gruesome sight to behold. He strode on, hacking and driving through the crowd, one after another of the skaven horde falling to his sword, many before they had a chance to defend themselves.

One at a time, or even in skirmishing groups, there was no hope of the skaven doing the Vampire Count any lasting damage. He took a jolt to a greave from the studded end of a spear haft, and a dink to a rerebrace from a poorly judged swing of a mace, but none of the ratmen came close enough to do any real or lasting damage. If he’d had living flesh beneath the armour, he would have hardly suffered a bruise, and certainly no broken bones.

Other hearts and blood organs beat at their own rates: for the skaven, fast enough to kill the creatures that owned them, for the elves, in the calm, measured manner that allowed them to fight on through the long minutes, balancing the rhythms of their bodies with the swing, thrust and slice of their bladed weapons. The Vampire Count had no heart to rely on, and yet, he too fought to some internal beat, some rhythm of his own.

‘How long must we do battle?’ asked Laban, swinging wildly, and taking down two more skaven.

‘For as long as it takes,’ said Fithvael, inhaling as he withdrew his sword from the side of the skaven that was convulsing on its short fall to the floor of the chamber.

‘There are so many of them,’ said Laban, ‘and they are so easy to kill.’

‘Pathos,’ said Fithvael, ‘can occur on a battlefield. Feel it when we are done with this. Do not succumb to it here, nor now.’

‘They are so wretched,’ said Laban as the figure he was lunging at fell hard on its back, clutching its chest; it avoided being skewered, only in the act of dying. Dying on the edge of an elf blade would have been an honourable end, if the skaven had cared anything for honour.

‘And he frightens me,’ said the young elf, breathing as he spoke, not entirely effortlessly, for he had a blade in each hand, and, though his lower body was moving only a small pace at a time towards the mound, his shoulders, back and arms had built up a fast-paced rhythm. The skaven were coming to him, but there attacks were so ineffectual that they might as well have been throwing themselves on the elfs’ blades.

‘Gilead?’ asked Fithvael, driving his short blade into the skaven scrabbling at his boots, trying to pull himself upright without thought to how he would survive standing before a well-armed elf without a weapon in his paw.

‘The Count,’ said Laban, thrusting his sword across the old elf, and turning his wrist, disarming the skaven on the old elf’s blind side.

‘You should be afraid of him,’ said Fithvael, stepping back to give the young elf room to complete his manoeuvre.

‘What will happen?’ asked Laban, side-stepping away from Fithvael and making a quarter turn to stop three more skaven in their attack, disabling the first before killing the second with a slash to the jugular and the third by disembowelling, the blade flashing across the rounded, grey-furred belly of the old ratman.

‘We finish this, and then we’ll see,’ said Fithvael, quickly taking two steps backwards as the space between him and the Count opened up. ‘The Count is cutting a swathe; keep up, lad.’

Laban noted the glimmer of a mocking smile cross Fithvael’s lips, and realised that the old man was enjoying himself.

The Count glanced unblinking, up at the mound, and locked eyes for a moment with the Rat King. He knew instinctively what the creature was, but felt nothing more than idle loathing for it. The skaven could not, did not, defend themselves against his sword and blade, and he did not need a shield at all. They fell away to left and right, yet more climbed over their kin to fall at the Count’s hand. There was an array of dozens, scores, hundreds of dead behind him in a great wake, but bodies were falling harder and faster, so that they were beginning to fall one on top of another until they were two, three or four deep in places. The Vampire Count was literally up to his waist in bloody bodies.

The Vampire Count did not relish the exercise of slaughter, nor did he care who he killed, or how, or how many. He had but one objective, to face the warrior elf, to kill him or die at his hand. There was almost nothing left of the great knight that he had once been, but there was just enough to drive him onward. His one ambition to die, his one hope to meet his match, to meet Gilead and battle to the death.

The mound was being assaulted from all sides, but the ground was shifting, and part of the dais fell away, taking a score of skaven with it. A fissure opened in the ground, wide enough for clumsy, skittering ratmen to fall foul of its edge and find themselves swallowed into the earth beneath.

Gilead felt the movement in the earth and took his fight to the slope furthest from the Rat King’s antechamber. He remembered the silty earth trickling from the ceiling and saw, in his mind’s eye, the niche in the wall collapsing under the pressure of the vibrations. There was no stamping now, no wall of sound, but the worst of the damage was already done and Gilead knew how fragile the underground structures had become.

As he dropped his shoulder and brought his sword-hand up from his knee, through flesh and air and out above his head, raking through a ratman diagonally from hip to shoulder, Gilead caught the flash of light bouncing off his blade and up into the vaulted ceiling above. The crystal forms scintillated back at him, and the elf was reminded of the gem that the Rat King had worn as an amulet, from which he had cast the magic that had altered the structure of the underground chamber. He remembered the niches and the things they contained, and he knew all and everything that the Rat King had done to preserve his life-force indefinitely.

Gilead planted his feet squarely as he turned his body, swinging his sword at waist-height, carving the blade through the spines of two more ratmen. So much had been lost to the Rat King’s ambition, ambition that Gilead knew could never be realised. The Rat King was not capable of sustaining a long life with all that entailed. It was not a matter of a body outliving its usefulness, it was a matter of the mind. The Rat King had not the mental capacity to learn or to understand. The creature could not stand the beat of its own heart, or the blood-flow to its brain, an organ it had never used for anything more complex than a reaction, an instinct.

Gilead could never forgive such a monster. He could not forgive him for ravaging human history, for unravelling magical nature, for sullying ancient races and their achievements; but most of all, he could not forgive him for crumbling under the weight of his stolen longevity. Time had been a curse to Gilead for much of his long life, but whether it felt like a curse or not, it was always a responsibility, a responsibility that those who understood it took seriously.

Gilead turned and wove in a dance around the Rat King, making smaller and smaller circles around the great bulk of the stationary figure, clad in its coat of white hair, staring, catatonic into the crowd.

At every completion of the circle, Gilead cast his gaze once more out over the heads of the remaining skaven, looking for Fithvael, looking for the Count. With every turn of the circle the elf locked eyes with the Vampire Count, for the merest moment. Gilead knew that the Count understood. He understood a term of years, the sentence of a long life spent alone with thoughts raked up and processed over a millennium or even longer. There was sorrow in his heart for the undead monster, sorrow and sympathy.

As Gilead let his eyes return to the battle, to the next skaven sacrifice and the next, and the one after that, the mound shook once more and the earth began to slip from its sides, reducing its height dramatically. Then came another great crash, not the sound of falling earth but the rumble of masonry dislodged, an avalanche of dressed stone and old brick that burst into the chamber from Gilead’s right, cutting off another exit, filling the chamber with more of everything, more dust, more sound, more debris, and more dead bodies.

Fewer than one in three of the skaven still lived. They were the weakest and the most cowardly. They had kept to the edges of the crowd, their eyes and ears closed as much as possible. They had moved when the crowds moved them, but ducked under arms and crawled between legs so as not to come face to face with any adversary, even their own kind.

They were running now, searching out the few remaining exits, trying not to encounter each other at close quarters, running and squealing. They emerged from under bodies where they had twitched and sniffled, hoping beyond hope not to be noticed. They were desperate now and climbed on each other’s backs to find routes out of the chamber. Another tunnel collapsed, and another; the vaulted ceiling seemed to shimmy and then spread, lowering the surface. Fault lines began to appear in the sparkling black surface. The air shifted in the chamber once more as the steps to the antechamber collapsed, sucking air and dirt and bodies into a hole in the ground that was several yards across. The turbulence made the lanterns swing, then blew them out in a stinking miasma of some combination of gases that was barely breathable.

Gilead tore a rag from his sleeve and wrapped it around the lower part of his face.

Somehow, the elf knew not how, the Rat King was still standing. His kin had given up attacking him. There was nothing left to fight for if they were going to have to dig themselves out, one at a time, over hours or days, simply to survive.

Fithvael and Laban ran through the last of the skaven, the few remaining who, finally understanding their plight, turned to the Fell Ones for their salvation. Fithvael tried not to pity them as he ran them through, but Laban could not countenance killing the ragged, sorry creatures at all, and it was Fithvael and the Vampire Count who finished the last of them, humanely with single killing strokes.

The Vampire Count shifted slightly in his armour and began to stride the last few yards to where the mound had once stood, with Gilead upon it.

‘What’s he doing?’ asked Laban.

‘He plans to challenge Gilead, of course,’ said Fithvael, matter-of-fact.

Laban shrugged, speechless.

‘After all we have been through?’ he asked. ‘After all the killing?’

‘The death of the many means nothing to a warrior such as our beleaguered knight,’ said Fithvael. ‘The death of the one is all that will satisfy him.’

‘He must die,’ said Laban, slowly. ‘He must die, and Gilead must kill him.’

Fithvael looked up, as if at the heavens, but the black firmament with almost no light in it felt oppressively close to their heads, despite what little light there was still sparking off the diamond crystals.

‘We shall all die,’ he said, ‘if we don’t get out of here.’

Gilead stepped between the Rat King and the Vampire Count. He stepped close to the ratman, so close that the skaven could do nothing but blink long and hard, and then look into the elf’s eyes.

‘You have come,’ said the skaven.

‘I have come,’ said Gilead.

‘I cannot live forever,’ said the skaven.

‘No,’ said Gilead.

Gilead drew his sword and looked hard along the length of the blade. It was in imperfect condition, having been well-used over the last few hours, and for the many hours before that, it had been left to rot, thrust into the haphazard web of weapons that made up the skaven throne. This king would not sit on that throne again.

The Rat King watched as Gilead pulled his blade through a strip of cloth and looked at it once more. It looked clean to the Rat King, he wondered at its cleanliness. He wondered how anything might be kept clean. He wondered how he might keep himself clean. Then he saw the blade coming towards him. He had nothing but time. He had the time to step away from the blade as it sliced through the air towards him, but he did not use the time to take a step. He used the time to wonder why he had wanted to live forever. He used the time that Gilead took to arc his blade through the air, horizontally, on its path towards the Rat King’s throat… towards his own, white-furred throat… He used the time to wonder that he knew nothing, and that it was right that he should never know anything.

The blade of Gilead’s sword connected with the fur of the Rat King’s neck a mere inch or two below his snout, for he had no chin to speak of. The blade cut through the fur and shards of the stuff, less than half an inch long fell to the floor, drifting through the air, heavier than feathers, but not so heavy as to fall quite vertically. Then the blade touched flesh and cleaved a path through skin, parting the layers of the dermis, almost bloodlessly. Still the Rat King did not flinch. He knew that the skin of his neck was being parted by the blade, not because he felt it, because he felt nothing, but only because he knew it must be so.

The first and last thing that the Rat King felt was the blade cutting the artery in his neck. He felt the cold of the elf-folded steel, and the heat of his skaven blood. He thought that his blood smelled somehow unclean, but he did not know why.

The Vampire Count stopped two or three yards from Gilead, who had his back turned to him. The Count could see the Rat King’s eyes, but they were no longer staring at him. He had never been the Rat King’s foe, not as the Fell One had been. He would not interfere. He knew the outcome of this encounter. He knew that this was an execution, and, as much as he could relish anything, the Vampire Count relished the thought that the elf was capable of executing the rat-monster; for if he could execute one beast, he could surely execute another.

The Vampire Count waited for the Rat King’s head and body to fall. They fell separately, the head to his left, bouncing and rolling several yards from his foot. The body fell hard and suddenly to the right. It did not bounce or roll, but landed with a thud, throwing up a low cloud of dust.

Gilead nodded to Fithvael and cocked a questioning head at Laban. Then he looked directly at the Vampire Count, and sheathed his sword.

‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

Fithvael and Laban looked at each other and then back at Gilead, who had crouched and placed his hand flat on the floor. He stayed there for a moment or two and then darted a look towards the collapsed antechamber. He stood and pointed.

‘We must leave,’ he said. ‘This way.’

The Talon of Khorne

Frank Cavallo

Fog drifted through the fjord, the sickly mist swallowing the Norscan shore in the first rays of dawn and shrouding the jetties and the little boats moored among the rocky inlets. Haze crept up over craggy scrublands, spreading ghostly fingers through the dying forest of bare pines that hugged the coastline.

A scattering of hardscrabble dwellings clung to the rough terrain, overlooking the harbour. Dozens of stone huts topped with weak thatch huddled in the lee of the hillside, dominated by a long-house of roughly-hewn granite blocks and moss-stained oak.

The village of Volfskul roused from its slumber in slow, halting steps. Grey-bearded fishermen emerged first; half-starved old men who’d weathered the night upon the wind-scoured rocks along the coast, guarding their nearly-empty hardfiskur racks from prowling, mangy wolf packs or the scavenging of scrawny sea-birds.

Maidens in tattered, flea-infested shrouds doused the thin torches while older women beat the soot from mammoth-hide blankets, stained with dark patches by generations of household midwifery. Looking out from their doorways, watching the unforgiving hills vanish under the grey, they were the first to notice when the Norscan morning turned foul.

It began with the wind.

A gust rippled through the fog, cascading down from the icy peaks that towered above the village. But it was not a frozen gale. The air smouldered, crackling with cinders.

Another fitful blast followed, and then a third, each howling more loudly than the last.

The villagers abandoned their chores at the first sign of trouble, whispering prayers to the dark gods. But they had little chance to steel themselves against the rising tide.

The morning mist churned, congealing into filthy, dark smog. Brimstone fumes thickened into a rank stench that choked every hint of nature from the air. Lightning tore across the suddenly-roiling sky in blood-red streaks, the crimson flashes casting eerie shadows upon the rocks; shades that seemed to slink and slither of their own accord.

Thunder shook the heavens above and the ground underfoot. It soon gave way to a heavier rumble, a quaking of the earth: the clatter of iron on stone, the din of hooves stomping forwards like a living storm.

Tugging on his mother’s mammoth-hide cloak, a young boy cried out in fear, his innocent voice signalling the arrival of their doom. All eyes followed the boy’s call, turning to the hill pass that wound down from the crags of Broken-Axe Peak, to see a phalanx of faceless, armoured horsemen galloping out from the swirling haze.

At its head there rode a giant among giants, the Chaos warrior that legend knew as Ruaddon. Man and steed alike thundered forth in a nightmarish cacophony that announced him as no herald could ever have.

Like his men, mounted on thick-necked warhorses adorned in iron-studded armour, he betrayed little hint of mortal weakness. His pauldrons and gauntlets boasted wicked rows of iron spikes, and brass and gold engravings were splashed across his hell-forged cuirass with ruinous scrawls, some obscured by the dents and slashes of old battles. A helm crowned with twisted daemon horns and a ghostly circlet of bleached human skulls announced his profane intent.

Behind him the lances and raised battleaxes of his men mixed with wooden pikes bearing tusk-framed battle flags, towering above them in a moving forest of ivory and sharpened steel.

Ruaddon slowed his pace as the black cadre fell into a double column, two-score strong; a malevolent parade that drew the attention of everyone in the village.

Lifting his crimson visor to reveal a face twisted with scars and permanent stitches, Ruaddon looked out upon the townsfolk, who now assembled as if in silent welcome… or protest. Though a bane to any land upon whose soil they trod, the black riders did not provoke so much as a flinch from the steely-eyed villagers of Volfskul. The Norscans held their ground even as more dark warriors streamed down from the hill pass to fill the centre of the village, their mounts growling and belching vile odours as they followed Ruaddon’s lead.

They did not flee, or seek cover. Instead they stood outside the doorways of every humble structure. Some clenched bone totems to their hearts. Others scrawled runes in charcoal and blood upon their pale flesh. A scattering of men, some limping or hobbling on gnarled canes, intermingled with them.

Aside from those few weakened elders, there was not a man between fifteen and fifty summers among them.

Frost-blue eyes met Ruaddon’s gaze at every turn, looking back at him with a fearless resolve. Even the children returned his soulless stare, silent and defiant. For a long moment everything fell still.

Once he had scanned the place, Ruaddon raised his arm – as if in response, a final gust of hot, volcanic wind broke the momentary respite. It came with a deeper howling, a predator’s roar.

It was only as the feral echo died away that a final rider emerged out of the reeking black fog. The other horsemen moved aside as he rode forth, clearing a path for their master: the Chaos lord Vhorgath, Bane of the North.

Seated high upon a snarling black battle-stallion, he wore armour forged in the most ghastly baroque fashion – daemonic skulls glowered from his every joint, and bronze barbs sparkled along the edge of his steel plate. Like Ruaddon, his face was bared to the cold Norscan dawn, but his was a cadaverous complexion of bloodless skin, as white as whalebone. He grew neither hair nor whiskers and his deep-set eyes burned violet under a heavy brow. The flesh of his throat seemed fused to the steel of his gorget; man and armour merged into one.

He declared himself in a peculiar baritone, every word echoing as though chanted by the whispers of a phantom chorus.

‘I am Vhorgath.’

When the mere sound of his name produced no reply, no reaction at all from the townsfolk, he studied them more closely, and like his lieutenant he soon noted the absence of any healthy men.

‘We have come under the banners of the dark gods, not to bring sword and flame to this place, but glory,’ he continued. ‘A new army is forming, a horde that will spread the shadow of the daemon-lords upon the world once more. The name of your tribe has long been a scourge to the weaklings of the southlands. For centuries the deeds of the sons of Ironpelt have been sung by the light of bonfires in halls across the north.

‘But among you I see no warriors, no men to wield the axes and hammers of Chaos that so many legends recall. For months we have scoured these forsaken lands, where snow falls even in summer, yet no sign of such greatness has revealed itself to us.’

Again, he was met with stony silence. Nothing but the relentless stares of a hundred gaunt women and their emaciated young, steady and seemingly without hint of fear.

He motioned to Ruaddon, who had taken up his usual place beside the great warlord.

‘Choose one,’ he said.

The hulking warrior grinned to himself, and wasted no time. Ruaddon scanned the gathered masses and settled upon the nearest thing to an able-bodied man he could find – an aged but barrel-chested individual whose beard still clung to reddish strands among the grey. Spurring his steed onwards, Ruaddon sidled up to the man, reached down and clamped his fist around his throat.

Again he faced no resistance, as he lifted the man and brought him before Vhorgath.

The Chaos lord smiled cruelly as he looked over the old man. Though his face swelled and flushed as Ruaddon held him, he stared back with no less tenacity. Vhorgath addressed him directly, his voice even more threatening in a whisper than in a shout.

‘Your lands are empty, Norscan – all of the other settlements have been abandoned. Tell me where your legendary Ironpelt warriors are. Now.’

The old man struggled to breathe, summoning every ounce of strength he could muster before responding.

‘If it is warriors you seek then there is… nothing for you here,’ he choked. ‘All of our men have… taken to the long-ships to raid the… southern kingdoms.’

‘So it appears,’ Vhorgath replied. ‘What I want to know is… why?’

‘Why?’ the man wheezed.

‘I’m no fool. This is not the raiding season. Tribes across Norsca are already preparing for the winter. The long-ships are back in port, the menfolk fill their beds beside their wives. But not in your lands.’

The man nodded, as best he could with Ruaddon’s fist clenched around his throat.

‘The… plague…’ he managed, just as the light faded from his eyes.

Vhorgath nodded to Ruaddon, who let go of the unconscious old man. His limp body fell into the dirt, and a woman scrambled to tend to him, kneeling beside his head.

She looked up to the towering figures of Vhorgath and his lieutenant, her face twisted with anger.

‘He spoke the truth,’ she said. ‘It came with the last spring thaw. A fever that spread through our entire tribe in one cycle of the whitemoon. All of our lands suffered. Offerings to Neiglen did nothing to stop it.’

Vhorgath narrowed his eyes. ‘But something must have, unless I converse here with a village of ghosts,’ he growled.

‘As the summer faded a great sacrifice was made, a terrible rite that gave the Plague-Lord the best of our tribe, maidens and warriors alike. Only then did the fever leave us. Now we are few. Our herds are nearly gone, our people are weak. Our men did no raiding all summer, and it was only in these last few days, when they should have been returning to us, that those who remain sailed away. Our survival depends on what they can bring back to us.’

‘So the great tribe of Ironpelt dies with the whimper of pox and not the clamour of battle,’ said Ruaddon, some of the nearby warriors laughing mockingly. ‘A pity.’

‘We have nothing for you,’ she wailed, still cradling the old man in her lap. ‘Fight your war without us.’

Vhorgath stared down at her, saying nothing.

‘Do you fail to understand me, or do you still disbelieve what your own cursed eyes see?’ she demanded.

The Chaos lord looked away as if in frustration, or merely boredom. ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘I believe every word.’

‘Then begone. Take your foul beasts and go back the way you came. Leave these lands forever,’ she said.

Vhorgath turned back, his eyes flashing like a hawk.

‘That sounds like a command,’ he said. ‘Perhaps my senses do fail me, so long have we been in this forsaken land.’

He turned to his second. ‘Ruaddon, did it not sound to you as though this wench commanded me?’

The armoured giant looked to his master. He’d seen that gaze before. It always heralded violence, and pain. ‘That it did, my lord,’ he said.

‘How amusing.’

Vhorgath turned away from the rebellious woman, addressing all the gathered folk of Volfskul. ‘Since you do not possess the resource we seek, you are worthless to me. And so we will indeed leave you.’

The villagers looked to one another, uncertainly. Vhorgath looked once more to Ruaddon.

‘Knights, scour the village,’ he said, loud enough for all to hear. ‘Take whatever you wish, whatever you can find. Tear down every wall if you must but take anything of value left in this pathetic place. We will leave them whatever remains.’

Vhorgath sneered at the woman, turning away as he left Ruaddon to carry out his orders. He looked out towards the open seas for a moment, before spurring his mount.

A cry of defiance halted him.

It came from behind, the angry yelp of a woman. Another followed, and another. As Vhorgath turned, Ruaddon saw an arrow whistle past his head, so close that the feather fletching cut across his master’s bare cheek.

In an instant the once-passive Norscans had sprung into action. Leaping from every direction, they pounced like a wolf pack. Armed with whatever they could grab – wood-axes, pitchforks and scythes – screeching women and grim-faced old men leapt upon the black riders from all sides. Even maidens and young boys came at them, hurling rocks and striking at the horses’ legs.

‘So, the spirit of Ironpelt is not quite dead after all,’ Ruaddon shouted. ‘Though it soon will be!’

Scores of villagers came at the Chaos warriors, jumping from behind shuttered doors, and leaping out from bales of damp straw. The townsfolk outnumbered them, but Vhorgath rose up in his saddle at the scent of blood on the wind.

‘Feast upon these barbarians, brothers! Bring your swords to bear! Let them quench their thirst with weak Norscan blood!’

The men did not need to be told. The black warriors responded with vigour, setting about them with blade and burning torch.

Ruaddon managed to fall in next to his master as the Norscans raged in a frenzy of blades and screams. Safe for the moment behind the iron wall of his warriors’ defensive circle, he reared on his mount to survey the scene.

The Norscans surged, women and children tearing and slashing at the Chaos warriors with the kind of feral ardor known only among the half-savage tribes of the North. The peasants tore at horses and shields, clawing with their bare hands as the village around them erupted in flames.

Ruaddon howled as he rode out into the heart of the swarm, slashing with his great two-handed sword. Blood and entrails and broken limbs rained down as villagers fell at his every stroke. He bounded through the thick of the fray, killing anew with each step.

Still the crowd swarmed about them, defiant.

Old men, drooling and frothing like rabid dogs, seized his saddle and stirrups, their grip as tenacious as the cold stare in their eyes. He saw one of his comrades pulled from his horse, dragged beneath the press of bodies, sucked into a living riptide. To Ruaddon’s horror, the Norscans tore the screaming warrior apart.

Ruaddon rallied his men. Calling them into formation around him, he led the black riders forth in a merciless counter-attack. Fanning out across the entire expanse of Volfskul, they stomped in lumbering, monstrous strides atop their armoured beasts, hoping to split the mob and drive them across the blood-soaked tundra like rats before a flood. Even so, the Norscans held their ground for as long as they were able to stand, fighting back with boundless, wild aggression.

But the rampaging Chaos warriors cut them down. Severed heads fell among mangled corpses. Bones shattered. Sharpened steel carved flesh in vicious strokes, one after another. Wails of agony eclipsed the whirl of axes. Those few souls not fortunate enough to die by the blade were thrown down into the muck, the life crushed from their bodies by iron-shod hooves as the behemoth warhorses trampled over fields of ruin.

Volfskul was a village no more. It was a field of butchery. More than an hour after the last war-cry had been silenced, the armoured warriors moved between smouldering ruins and crumbling huts slowly, mindful of any survivors lurking in the debris with murder on their minds.

Ruaddon still sat atop his steed, though others were dismounted and tending to the grisly task Vhorgath had set them. He always ordered, at the close of battle, the sign for which he was known – and loathed – all across the frozen northern realms.

As they had done a hundred times before, the warriors used their blades to sharpen the ends of charred timbers, this time the remains of the village long-house. Having readied the pikes, they rammed them through decapitated corpses, throat first. Then they lifted the gruesome poles, jammed the severed heads atop them and drove the opposite ends into the ground, elevating a horrific parody of the human form: beaten, broken cadavers suspended upside-down, their displaced heads crowning their final disgrace.

They would remain there, to rot and feed the scavenger birds until their bones fell away. Until then, any who came upon the savagery would see the dreadful signature of Vhorgath, etched into the landscape in blood and ravaged flesh.

Stalking the far side of the ruins for yet more bodies for his men to defile, Ruaddon caught a glimmer of movement beneath a pile of rubble. The jumble of crumbled stone and burnt wood was heaped beside a half-standing wall, deep enough to hide a person…

As he approached, a hand pushed through the wreckage. A figure followed – cloaked and slight of build, it crawled from the ruins as though hatching from an egg.

‘Hold, Norscan rat!’ Ruaddon called out.

The command went unheeded. Instead the small figure jumped from the rubble and darted across a smoke-filtered alley.

Giving chase, Ruaddon cornered the refugee at the edge of what had once been the main square. The place lay in ruin just as the remainder of the village, the long-house collapsed into a smoking mess of beams and rubble, flanked by a blood-stained scree slope piled up with the bodies that had not yet been impaled.

Bearing down, Ruaddon called out again. ‘Hold!’

The other riders filed in behind him. With his prey trapped in the corner between a sheer face of stone and a pair of broken pillars, Ruaddon reined his mount back. He moved closer, his sword pointed at the lone survivor.

The figure was cornered, but not subdued. Trying to escape through the space between the two columns, its hood fell away, and to Ruaddon’s surprise, he found himself facing a young woman. Though she was backed against the crumbling wall, her eyes seethed with a familiar, defiant fury.

The Chaos warrior approached her, now flanked by two riders with their axes still dripping red. An eerie quiet had descended.

‘Archers, draw.’

‘Ruaddon! Halt your bowmen!’ Vhorgath shouted from across the desolation.

The lieutenant turned to see his master approaching. ‘My lord, she is the last of them. Should we not finish what we have begun?’ he replied.

Vhorgath steered his stallion over and dismounted. He stepped between the hulking warrior and the cowering village girl. Ruaddon supposed he’d seen something that interested him.

‘Not yet,’ Vhorgath said, pointing to the girl. ‘Look at her. She shows no marks of battle. No blood, no sign of wounds endured or inflicted. This one alone among all of her fellow villagers did not join in the fight against us.’

‘Then she is either the smartest of her tribe, or the most cowardly,’ Ruaddon sneered.

Vhorgath lifted his sword, using the point of it to probe at the girl, drawing the flat of his massive steel blade along the length of her arm and then pointing it only inches away from her face. She did not flinch.

‘It appears she is no coward,’ he whispered.

She was ragged and shivering. Her lank blonde hair fell all around the soft features of her face. She was no more than a teenager, but despite Vhorgath’s malevolent appearance, the waif did not quail at the sight of him.

‘Who are you, girl?’ Vhorgath asked.

‘Freya is my name, daughter of the Ironpelt skald Ragnar,’ she said.

‘The child of a poet? Why don’t you fear me, little one?’

She stared back at the sinister knight with a gaze as cold as his own.

‘I fear no man, for my eyes have looked upon the greatest warrior of the Ironpelt tribe. The most fearsome killer ever to sail the seas of the north,’ she said.

‘Have they now?’ he said. ‘We have ridden across all of the Ironpelt lands, and found not a single man worthy of bearing a sword. Who is this warrior you speak of?’

Freya stared back with a kind of daring pride.

‘The Talon of Khorne himself: Scyla Anfingrimm.’

The words brought a pause to Vhorgath and his warriors; a hush of awe among men who had seen the fires of hell itself. For a long moment, no one made a sound. Ruaddon looked to his master, then back at Freya.

‘Scyla Anfingrimm?’ he finally said, breaking the brief silence. ‘The ruthless murderer of Black Gulch? The renowned dwarf-slayer?’

‘The very same. We know that his name is a curse across the southling lands,’ Freya replied.

‘Tell us, little girl, where have you seen this most savage of all Norscans?’ Vhorgath asked.

‘He dwells up in the mountains, on the far side of Broken-Axe Peak, not more than a single day’s journey from here. This village was once his own.’

Ruaddon scoffed, despite the uneasy silence that had fallen over his comrades, but Vhorgath shot him an angry glare.

‘You mock the name of Scyla?’ he said. ‘If any man has laid more skulls at the foot of the Blood God’s throne, I have not heard the tale.’

Ruaddon’s incredulity melted, drifting towards annoyance. ‘Scyla Anfingrimm has not been seen since the slaughter of the gorgers at Undermountain, many years ago,’ he answered. ‘No one knows for certain what became of him.’

‘That was some time ago, this much is true,’ Vhorgath muttered.

‘He could be a broken old man by now, if he still draws breath at all,’ Ruaddon said. ‘And what reason do we have to believe her? Poets are nothing more than liars with silver tongues.’

Vhorgath looked back at Freya.

‘My lieutenant is right, little one. Why should we believe you? Why shouldn’t I just kill you and mount you on a pike for the ravens like the rest of your people?’

‘You don’t have to believe my words alone. I can take you to him,’ she replied. ‘I promise you, the favour of the Blood God has made him more fearsome now than he has ever been.’

‘Intriguing,’ Vhorgath said. ‘Finally, a prize worthy of our time spent in this barren land.’

Ruaddon prickled at his side. ‘You’re taking this girl at her word?’ he protested.

‘She speaks the truth in at least one regard,’ said Vhorgath. ‘Scyla Anfingrimm is said to have been a raider without equal among the Norscans, as merciless and cruel as he was powerful. Though I do not know why he no longer raises his axe with the rest of his tribe, I can think of no better addition to our horde.’

‘And if she’s lying?’

Vhorgath considered this, and placed a hand upon Ruaddon’s skull-faced pauldron. He directed his answer to Freya.

‘If you’re lying, little girl, I’ll give you to Ruaddon. Can you guess what he likes to do to little girls who lie?’

She shook her head.

‘You won’t like it.’ Ruaddon grinned. ‘Only after you’ve begged for death, pleading for hours, will I consider cutting your throat.’

Freya stared back at Ruaddon with an insolent glare. Then she turned her icy-blue eyes to Vhorgath, and pointed to the rocky mountain path.

‘The trail begins there,’ she said.

Vhorgath, Ruaddon and three of their chosen riders formed the delegation which would ride out to meet with Scyla, and in short order Freya led them away from the coastal plains, up to the higher ground beyond the ruins of Volfskul. The rest of the Chaos warriors remained behind to finish the grisly monument to their master’s brutality.

The cold sun climbed in the sky as she ushered them into the skeletal remains of the pine forests. The trees were mostly bare, scattered clumps of brown needles clinging to desiccated branches and winter-ravaged trunks. As promised, the winding trail stretched through the dead woods, bristling on every side with sharp, dry brambles.

After more than an hour the trees began to thin out as the trail took them to an even higher elevation. Rocky, open ground soon prevailed, dotted with patches of yellow grass and thorny brush. Above them they could see the serried peaks of Broken Axe flirting with the clouds, tiers of frozen crags and wind-scourged hills that seemed to vanish in the mist.

Ruaddon held Freya in front of him in his iron saddle, while Vhorgath rode in silence behind them. After some time, as the cold winds eased, the Chaos lord rode up beside them.

‘We have followed your directions for hours now,’ he said. ‘How much further is it to Scyla’s haven?’

‘Still a while,’ she replied.

Ruaddon groaned. He knew that his master grew impatient, but had not yet been brought to ire.

‘There are many tales of Scyla’s deeds, sagas my father told to me as soon as I was old enough to understand them,’ she offered. ‘As our journey is long, might you care to hear one?’

Ruaddon clamped a hand on her shoulder, sending a shudder through her slender frame.

‘Hold your tongue, girl,’ he said. Then he lowered his voice and spoke directly into her ear. ‘Lest I tear it from your mouth.’

Vhorgath laughed. ‘Ruaddon likes people to fear him. It’s one of his better qualities, in fact. And while I admit I enjoy the smell of fear as much as he does, I think in this moment anything you can tell us of Scyla Anfingrimm is worth more than the thrill of watching you beg Ruaddon for mercy.’

Freya looked back at him with an uncertain face. Vhorgath answered her with a call to his men.

‘Pin back your ears, you motherless wretches,’ he said, ‘and hear of the triumphs of Scyla.’

Freya gathered her grimy robes about her, breathing deep as she readied herself to spin the tale. As ordered, the dark riders listened.

‘Back many years, in the waning days of the seventh summer since the Graeling Jarl Grundval Fang-Scar slew his uncle, the usurper Bjarn Baerrok,’ she began, ‘a curse fell upon the folk of the Bay of Blades, and they soon knew a suffering greater than the bane of war or pestil–’

‘Oh, do get to the point, girl,’ Ruaddon bawled, his patience wearing thin. ‘I already strain to hear you over the whistling of this damnable wind.’

Freya continued, ignoring him. ‘For a month, no long-ships put into port. The Graeling raiders, ever the scourge of Bretonnia, did not return with the frost-winds of winter, as they had for as many generations as the tribe had dwelt beneath Stoneclaw Mountain. No ships laden with gold sailed in from the cool mists; no dragon-boats carrying slaves in fetters, barrels of mead and bushels of barley to sustain them through the coming storms.

‘As fear began to spread like a plague, Grundval sent forth three of his own boats. None returned. So again he dispatched his ships – a half-dozen this time, with his own son Kjarval in command of the greatest of the fleet. But they too vanished, sending back no word even after weeks at sea.’

‘What took them?’ Ruaddon demanded, keen to know the point of the story.

‘It was only as the first blizzards swept over the coast that any sign appeared,’ she replied. ‘A single Graeling sea-wolf warrior washed ashore in the storm, clinging to a raft of shattered hull-timbers.

‘Shivering and half-drained from a dozen wounds, he clung to life only long enough to recall the fate of his brothers. They had been ravaged by a beast from the depths, he claimed, or maybe ten beasts, for the tentacles and the claws and the thunderous roars were such that the men of the sea had never seen so fierce a monster. It was said that his eyes widened in a blank, haunted stare as he wheezed his last few breaths, tortured in his final moments by some nightmare memory.

‘Now the Graelings knew why their coffers were empty, why their men had not returned: a leviathan menaced the tempest-addled waters of the bay, devouring anything that dared venture across the green waves.’

‘A curse from the gods?’ Vhorgath said. Ruaddon was perturbed by the concern in his voice.

‘They thought so,’ Freya said. ‘Such a horror was worse than any pox the Plague-Lord might send, and no pleas to any of the dark gods could dispel it. The people begged them to withdraw their curse, to send an invading army in its place, so that even the women of Three-Spear Fjord might meet the anger of the shadows in open battle.

‘But it was not to be. With all his warriors gone, and the gods refusing to hear his calls, Grundval begged the shaman Ulfthras to employ any rite, even the vilest and most corrupt of the old invocations. Thus did the shaman venture out into the tundra, his white beard soaked in the blood of the thirteen finest Graeling maidens and his lungs swollen with the smoke of ogre bones and ghost-root. There, in the daemon-haunted mist, the shaman communed with the will of Khorne himself, and he returned with the black words of the Blood God. And, indeed, with something more.

‘Khorne demanded a champion, a mortal capable of the raw strength and savage heart to slay so fell a beast. And to that dark end, the daemon slaves of the wolf-headed god offered a token – an obsidian tusk on a barbed silver chain. Forged in the fires of Khorne’s own fury and cooled in the bloody sea beneath the Throne of Skulls itself, it would be bestowed upon any man who could slay the leviathan, who would then know the favour of the dark god forevermore.’

Ruaddon groaned just then, grumbling under his breath, loud enough to interrupt Freya’s mellifluous verses once more. For a moment all eyes settled instead upon him where he sat behind her. He placed no credence in the girl’s words, and he cared not who knew it.

‘All of their men were gone, and their lands were cut off from the sea,’ he growled. ‘How then did anyone beyond their villages learn of this challenge?’

Vhorgath turned a curious eye to Freya. Her delicate features remained as serene under inquiry as they had in the face of his threats of brutality – Ruaddon’s annoyed query seemed not to trouble her in the least.

‘It was exactly because the Graeling settlements were so far removed from other tribes that they were able to do so,’ Freya answered. ‘Grundval’s folk had long cultivated a host of crows, trained from hatchlings to carry messages to the furthest lands of Norsca. These black-winged fliers were dispatched in every direction, spreading word of Khorne’s decree.’

Laughter came from further back in the group at the clever explanation. Ruaddon only grunted. Freya clearly took it as permission to continue.

‘Even then, many months passed and the flame of hope continued to fade,’ she said. ‘Riders soon appeared from all over the north realms, and even some from beyond the Norscan barrens answered the call. But all who sailed out to face the beast suffered the same fate. Like every other man who had gone before, none of them were ever seen again.

‘Then came Scyla Anfingrimm, son of Thurrik, warlord of the Ironpelt tribe. Though he had not yet seen twenty-five winters, his name and his sword were already known across the Sea of Claws. Indeed, word came late to his ears of the Blood God’s offering, for that was the summer his dragon-ship raided the undead lands of Khemri. It was said that his attacks were so swift and fierce that the mere sight of his sails struck fear even into the undead hearts of that ghostly kingdom.

‘Though Grundval warned him of the dangers, Scyla is said to have laughed at the starving Graeling chieftain. Having made even the men without souls shiver in terror, Scyla boasted that no power short of the gods could strike fear into his heart. He took the only ship left in Grundval’s harbour, a rickety old sloop, and set off alone to face the horror of the seas.’

‘He sailed into the bay alone,’ Vhorgath said, his voice raised for all to hear. ‘Either quite brave or exceptionally foolish. Much like you, little one.’

Ruaddon laughed then and tugged on Freya’s hair as if to punctuate his master’s words, drawing a gasp from her lips.

‘It has long been the highest of praise among the Norscans to say that a raider was so fierce, he would be unafraid to lead his men into the depths of the underworld,’ she said, ignoring his touch.

‘I have heard that,’ Vhorgath replied.

‘But they say Scyla was unafraid to sail into the underworld by himself.’

The warriors fell silent once more. Vhorgath waved at her to go on.

‘For several days he sailed straight into the fog, and found only empty waves beyond it,’ Freya continued. ‘When the winds died, he rowed on, but still there was nothing but glaciers and brine. Ever fearless, even of the powers behind the shadows, he finally stood in the rickety boat and mocked the gods of Chaos and laughed at their challenge. Silence was his answer, but only for a moment… and then the waters began to churn.’

Abruptly, Freya stopped.

The trail they followed came to an end only a short way ahead, and beyond that there rose a steep climb, a serpentine path leading up into the mist-bathed mountains.

‘What is the delay?’ Ruaddon asked, his anger piqued once more. ‘Have you forgotten the rest of the tale or do you require a few moments to invent yet more wild details?’

She pointed at the precipitous slopes ahead. ‘The remainder of the journey to Scyla’s haven is a perilous climb,’ she said, directing her words to Vhorgath. ‘The horses will be of no use to us. We must continue on foot. Perhaps it is better if I speak no more for now – I do not wish to distract your men while they struggle with the ascent.’

Vhorgath shook his head.

‘Little one, my warriors have trampled fields lost beneath the permanent shadow of Chaos, lands so dangerous that every step would kill a feeble child like you. There is nothing you can show or tell me that would bring them to such caution.’

The armoured giants dismounted, Ruaddon pulling Freya roughly from the saddle and bidding her to move ahead of him. They tethered the horses among the dead trees, and she led them onwards, resuming her tale.

‘So it was, that at first a scaly tentacle reached up from the murk, wrapping itself around mighty Scyla’s leg. He slashed it to pieces with his greatsword, spilling black blood into the sea. For a moment, he was alone upon the waves once more, standing in victory.

‘But only for a moment. From behind him, a second tentacle appeared, and then a third and then more than he could count. His boat creaked and strained under the strangling hold, as he himself fought to remain free of their terrible, deadly grip.

‘In the battle he stole a glimpse of the beast, and what he faced was a fearsome monster indeed: a kraken, as in the legends of old, thrashing across the waves with countless thick tentacles tipped with razor-edged claws.

‘Though Scyla ripped into it, tearing pieces from its scaly hide with every swing of his blade, the kraken did not slow. In a few moments of blood and howls, the fell beast crushed the boat, dumping Scyla into the cold waves in a wash of splinters and broken timber.’

Vhorgath’s warriors muttered and grunted their amusement as they struggled up the incline, but Ruaddon only frowned. Surely they had not been taken in by this girl’s idiotic fiction? She looked back to them, pausing only briefly in the telling.

‘But still Scyla battled. He fought the monster from every piece of flotsam and jetsam upon which he could gain a foothold, swinging his sword left and right… but to no avail.

‘Exhausted, his muscles screaming for rest as the waves threatened to drown him before the tentacles could strangle him, Scyla grabbed hold of a rusted hook from his broken vessel. Tied to a frayed length of rope, he slung it across the water and by the favour of the gods he managed to lodge it between the beast’s chitin-armour plates.

‘Then he dived beneath the waves. For a long while he held his breath, struggling to stay hidden under the cold sea. Soon, as he had hoped, the mindless creature gave up searching for him, and it began to glide back through the depths. Quiet, steady and still, Scyla let the creature drag him through the frosty brine all night.

‘And in time, the beast rewarded his iron stamina. As dawn broke over the Norscan barrens, it hauled itself into a rocky, sheltered cove and clambered up from the depths, and Scyla saw the kraken in all its foul glory. When he–’

Ruaddon yanked her tattered cloak from behind, tightening it around her throat and cutting off her words with a choking gasp. The hulking warrior made as if to strike her, but instead let her fall to the icy ground in a breathless tumble.

He sneered and spat at her, and turned away only to find himself face to face with his master, Vhorgath’s eyes burning a sickly violet as he glared at Ruaddon.

Freya lay sprawled in the dirt, stifling sobs and still rubbing her reddened, bare throat. She did not appear inclined to continue her saga any time soon.

‘What is the problem, lieutenant?’ Vhorgath asked, with a particularly threatening emphasis on his final word.

Ruaddon held his head high. His battle-scarred face was warped with anger.

‘I refuse to listen to this drivel any longer,’ he said. ‘No man, no matter how favoured by the gods of Chaos, could do the things she speaks of. Every word of this tale is a lie.’

‘It’s not a lie, this is the greatest tale of–’ Freya protested, before Ruaddon yanked on her cloak again. This time he held even tighter, cutting off her breath entirely. He did not let go.

‘I will keep my own counsel, on what is truth and what is a lie,’ Vhorgath hissed. ‘Release the girl. She dies only when I order it, and not a moment before.’

Ruaddon growled in frustration. He did not comply. Freya’s cheeks began to turn purple as she flailed her arms behind her, desperate to break Ruaddon’s iron grip.

Vhorgath raised his voice. ‘You defy me.’

Still, Ruaddon did not obey.

Freya struggled to turn her head. A blood vessel burst in the white of her left eye, and she held out her hands in a silent, choked plea.

Vhorgath’s hand closed around the dragon-head pommel of his scimitar. Ruaddon clenched his fists in expectation of combat, but he listened to his master’s words.

‘We have been through the wastes of perdition together, old friend. But if I have to raise my blade to you, I will take your head from your neck and make a trophy of your skull,’ he seethed.

Still Ruaddon did not relent.

‘She’s leading us on a fool’s errand,’ he replied, ‘of that I am certain. The only thing I do not yet know is why.’

‘That is my concern,’ Vhorgath said. The Chaos lord began to draw his blade, with a slow, inexorable motion.

At the sound of the steel breaking free from the top of the scabbard, Ruaddon finally let Freya loose. She collapsed to the frozen ground, wheezing and quivering as she took laboured lungfuls of the cold mountain air.

‘She leads us astray in this barren wilderness!’ he said. ‘Do you not care?’

Vhorgath let his sword slip back into the sheath. Though the pitiful girl looked up to him for aid, he did not offer a hand.

‘There is nothing in these hills that can do us harm, nothing in all of Norsca that can threaten us, least of all a girl telling tales,’ he said. ‘As I promised, if Scyla is not where she says, you will have your way with her. After I’ve had mine, of course.’

Vhorgath then turned his attentions back to Freya, still on her knees.

‘How much further?’ he asked. ‘Do not test me.’

‘Just… ahead… trail leads into a pass… between two peaks,’ she said, her voice reduced to a hoarse rasp. ‘The pass is… narrow. There is room for no more than… two men to walk abreast, perhaps less.’

Vhorgath pointed ahead. Freya evidently understood his meaning, coming to her feet unsteadily and lurching forwards with halting steps.

Taking the lead from his lieutenant, Vhorgath walked beside Freya until they reached the peak of a rocky outcropping. The mountains spread out before them – beyond lay exactly the formation Freya had described.

‘This mountain pass is the final gateway,’ she said. ‘Through here you will find Scyla’s hidden refuge.’

‘Very well,’ Vhorgath said. ‘Then finish your tale. If the man we seek is not beyond these cliffs, then it will be your last.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, still trying to catch her breath. ‘I don’t remember…’

Vhorgath just stared back at her. Ruaddon unexpectedly offered a reply.

‘Scyla looked at the monster by daylight. Let’s have an end to this.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Of course. Well, as he let go of his lifeline and huddled in the surf,’ she said, ‘indeed, what he saw astonished him. There was something familiar about the kraken, a glimmer in the eyes of the thing that was not purely wild. It was not entirely a beast. There was something conscious about it, maybe no more than a remnant of its former life.’

‘The beast had once been a man?’ Vhorgath muttered, as they stepped into the shadows of the pass.

‘So it is said,’ Freya answered. ‘The humanity of even the greatest men can break under the weight of Chaos, and they fall into ruin. As you are no doubt aware.’

The hulking warrior narrowed his eyes, but said nothing more.

‘Soon the monster vanished, hauling itself into the caverns at the edge of the sea, but now Scyla had a trail to follow,’ Freya continued. ‘He tracked the wake of bones, skulls and blood that it left behind like a daemon-slug, deep into the winding caves. Hiding in the cold shadows, Scyla followed the spawn, stalking it, watching as it settled back into its foul nest at the heart of a black hollow.

‘Then, once the beast had rested, it moved out to hunt yet again.’

‘And then Scyla brought his blade to bear?’ Ruaddon asked, impatiently.

‘No, Scyla did not attack,’ Freya replied. ‘Instead he let the monster pass, and while it was gone he secreted himself within its foetid nest, hidden beneath the slimy mass of bones and human detritus. Again he waited.

‘This time, when the spawn returned, he let it come to rest. Then he struck. He impaled the monster from below, piercing its foul heart and letting the cold, black blood wash over him.’

‘As clever as he was deadly,’ Vhorgath said, grinning and flashing his sharpened teeth. ‘I must meet this man.’

‘Soon enough,’ Freya replied. ‘Scyla thus returned in triumph to the Graeling mead hall, carrying the creature’s largest eye on a bone-spear pike. Grateful to him for breaking the foul beast’s grip upon their lands, the Graeling shaman draped the black tusk pendant over his mighty shoulders. From that day forward, he walked the path of a favoured warrior of Khorne.’

Freya’s saga came to a close just as they passed under a natural arch of basalt, striding out into the mountain sun. Beyond, the pass opened into a wide clearing. Ruaddon stepped up, as his men began to file out from the narrow bottleneck.

‘What is this?’ he demanded, turning to the girl.

There was no keep, no stronghold, no place fit for any man. Though the clearing was broad, nothing lay beyond it. On every side the ground dropped off at the edge of a steep precipice, overlooking a chasm. Scattered across the dirt in every direction was a grisly collection of human debris: the broken blades of swords, axes and spears lay jumbled about beside pieces of armour, smashed and rusting, half-buried in the dust. Fragments of bones, some nothing more than splintered shards, lay scattered in haphazard piles, the meat picked clean as though by vultures.

Freya edged back under the stone arch as Vhorgath and his warriors inspected the desolate scene, growing more impatient with every passing moment. Ruaddon drew his sword and called out to her, alerting the rest of the men with his shout.

‘I knew you were lying! There is no champion here!’ He turned to his master, pointing with his notched blade. ‘My lord, let me take her. This has gone on long enough.’

Vhorgath did not answer. Something else stole his attention.

A growl like the deep rumble of a cave bear thundered in the clearing, followed by the dull scrape of claws across dry rock. The Chaos warriors looked all around them, on every side of the chasm walls, but saw nothing. It was Freya who pointed them in the right direction.

Upwards.

Climbing down from the craggy heights above the pass was a stinking, yammering creature. It crept along on reptilian haunches, but the foul beast was no lizard. It was an abomination, a jumble of flayed muscle and scorpion pincers, with a tail ending in a hissing, fang-mouthed asp. The beast’s body was covered in thorny chitin, and around its neck a spiked brass collar glimmered in the weak sunlight. Predatory, feline eyes pulsed with a blood-red fury, glowering from a ruined face.

‘What manner of creature is this?’ Vhorgath demanded, drawing his scimitar.

It was Ruaddon’s keen eye that spied the answer. Dangling from the monster’s throbbing neck, nearly lost in the forest of wet, bristle-like fur upon its chest, was a barbed silver chain. At the end there hung a long black tusk.

‘Scyla,’ he whispered.

Freya smirked, taunting them just beyond their reach as the beast Scyla climbed down next to her, blocking the pass, and the only way in or out of the clearing.

‘Not one word that passed my lips was a lie,’ she said, clearly unafraid of the monster even as it opened its slobbering jaws beside her, revealing a maw lined with dagger-like fangs, scraps of rotten flesh still wedged between them. ‘Can you not see my beloved Scyla is even more fearsome now than ever he was before?’

‘But what…’ Vhorgath began. ‘How did he…?’

Freya ran her hand over Scyla’s gorilla-like shoulders, but the beast never broke its predatory stare.

‘Scyla’s passion for the favour of Khorne brought him many gifts from the Blood God. So many indeed that in the wake of his victory at Undermountain…’

‘He descended into this,’ Ruaddon said.

‘That is the reason for his seclusion, the reason none but his own kinsmen have seen him over the years since. He has been warped by the Ruinous Powers into a far more dangerous beast than those he once hunted,’ she said.

She stroked Scyla along his haunches. Somehow, whether by sight or by scent, he seemed to recognise her, and nuzzled his immense bulk against her slender form.

‘The village you ravaged, my home – it was the last of the Ironpelt tribal lands. Only we have cared for him in the years since.’

‘You cared for this?’ Ruaddon shrieked.

‘Of course. His raids once brought my people honour and riches beyond measure. So now we bring him what he most desires.’

‘And what is that?’ Vhorgath hissed.

Freya smiled, even as she drew further behind the hulking, salivating creature.

‘Stop her! I will hav–’

Scyla roared. His serpent-tail whipped around, striking the first warrior like a viper, tearing the man’s throat out in a mess of bloody cartilage. Just as quickly, he snatched up another with his massive pincers, the man’s armour squealing under the strength of his grip.

Before the third could level a blow, the beast snapped his companion cleanly in half, hurling the bisected body over the precipice and leaping forwards with blinding speed. His jaws snapped open and he sank his great fangs into the warrior’s skull.

Ruaddon stared, wide-eyed, as Scyla effortlessly tore the man’s head away from his shoulders in a fountain of gore.

Dropping the mangled corpse, he turned to face Vhorgath and Ruaddon, a sluice of blood and bone fragments drooling from his hairy chin.

‘Scyla hungers,’ Freya finally said. ‘He always hungers.’

Ruaddon gripped his sword tightly. ‘Damn you,’ he whispered to his master. ‘You’ve doomed us both!’

Vhorgath was speechless beside him.

Freya turned her back, not sparing the two men so much as a glance as she walked away. The clamour of desperate battle and the dying screams of Vhorgath and Ruaddon echoed through the mountain pass after her, blending with the feral roars of the beast that was Scyla Anfingrimm.

LORDS OF THE MARSH

Josh Reynolds

‘I was drunk,’ Erkhart Dubnitz said, stepping back to avoid the rapier’s tip. The deck of the rolled beneath his feet and the rail of the river-barge connected with his hips. He held up his big hands, palm out, trying to look simultaneously innocent and contrite. As a true son of the Most Holy Templar Order of Manann, Dubnitz was equally bad at both, and his expression slid more easily into one of slightly panicked guilt. He wasn’t frightened, but he was worried. It had been miscalculation on his part. It had been enjoyable, but, in retrospect, unwise.

‘That’s no excuse for despoiling my sister, you-you lout!’ Sternhope Sark barked. The Averlander wore what passed for finery in Averheim, but his rapier was real enough and sharp. The tip of the blade scratched across the enamelled sea-green surface of Dubnitz’s cuirass, marring Manann’s face with a thin scar. Dubnitz’s gauntleted hand snapped shut on the blade and jerked it and Sark’s arm forward. The rapier’s tip bit into the rail and Dubnitz’s other fist came down on the flat of the blade where it met the crosspiece, snapping the thin metal.

‘Whoops,’ Dubnitz said, flinging the broken blade into the Reik. There was a heavy mist on the river, and it seemed to reach up and clutch for the rail as Dubnitz turned back to Sark. ‘How clumsy of me, I do apologise.’ There was a murmur of laughter from the nearby crew, and they gathered to watch. There was little to do on a barge, and any entertainment was good entertainment.

Sark gawped at him for a moment. Then, with a hiss, he struck at Dubnitz’s face with the broken end of the blade. Dubnitz grabbed Sark’s wrists and wrestled him around, trapping the smaller man between him and the rail. Dubnitz’s forehead connected briefly with Sark’s and the latter’s limbs went noodle-limp. Dubnitz grunted as a thin trickle of blood ran down from his brow, across his cheek and into his beard. Averlanders were a prickly lot when they were sober, in his experience. They were worse than Reiklanders, in their way, but he couldn’t fault the young man’s determination.

‘And I’d hardly call what I did despoliation,’ Dubnitz said, grabbing the young man’s coat to keep him on his feet. ‘It was more a peaceful transfer of military aid, if anything.’

‘Are all Marienburgers so bad at euphemisms, Erkhart?’

Dubnitz turned and glanced at the woman who had pushed through the throng of sailors who had gathered to watch the confrontation. There was a resemblance about the cheeks to the young man he held, which, given that they were siblings, was no surprise. Sascha Sark was dressed in the latest Nuln had to offer for the upper-class out-of-doors woman, with an exquisitely carved iron and wood hunting crossbow held braced against the ample swell of her hip. She was flanked by two bodyguards, the best money could buy.

‘We’re a simple folk, Sascha. Unsophisticated, even,’ Dubnitz said. ‘Granted, we also manage to keep our private affairs private.’ The light cast over the deck by the lanterns mounted on the mast and swoop of the rail was becoming muted by the evening mist rising from the river. The mist crept across the deck sliding between the feet of those gathered. Something about it pricked at his instincts, but he dismissed it, being more concerned with the matter at hand.

‘We’re on a boat, Erkhart,’ Sascha said glibly.

‘We weren’t on a boat in Nuln, Sascha. In fact, I seem to recall a very soft bed and–’ Dubnitz began, momentarily lost in a bouquet of pleasurable memories. It hadn’t been his idea, but then, he’d never been one to say ‘no’ to a lady.

‘Fiend,’ Sark mumbled, grabbing at Dubnitz. The mist was creeping up his slumped form and Dubnitz waved it away. It had the smell of the Reik on it, which was unpleasant enough, but there was something else just beneath it… the stink of standing water or old stone perhaps.

‘Knight,’ Dubnitz corrected, still looking at Sascha. ‘Why did you tell him?’

‘Why did you bed me?’ she countered.

Dubnitz snorted. ‘Fine, but you could have waited, perhaps, until after the order’s business with your family was concluded.’ The business in question was trained warhorses, specifically the Order of Manann’s lack of them and the Sark family’s possession of some of the finest horseflesh in the Old World. Dubnitz had been sent by Grandmaster Ogg to sweet-talk the horse merchants into opening up a business relationship with the order, which he’d done. ‘More or less,’ he muttered. The mist reared up before him and he had a momentary impression of a striking serpent. He blew the tendril into swirling threads. It was thicker than normal for this time of year.

‘What was that?’ Sascha said.

‘Nothing, my lady,’ Dubnitz said, beaming. ‘I trust that this won’t sour our burgeoning relationship.’ The Sarks had insisted on sending representatives to Marienburg to meet with Ogg and the Masters of the Order. Of those representatives, he found Sascha to be the most convivial for obvious reasons. Her brother, he thought, was mostly along to glower at the proper points during the negotiations.

Sascha laughed. It wasn’t a polite laugh, or a girlish laugh. It was crude and bursting with innuendo. Dubnitz suddenly recalled that it had been that laugh that had led him to his current predicament. ‘I meant in regards to the horses my humble and pious order requires if we are to serve the good folk as Manann, in all of his foamy wisdom, intended.’

‘You’re thugs in armour, Erkhart, nothing more.’ Which was true, as far as it went; the order was a work-in-progress, as Ogg liked to state. It was a halfway professional fighting force, composed of the best of the worst, and dedicated, roughly, to spreading the word of the god of the seas. ‘Nonetheless, we are happy enough to sell you horses, should my brother agree.’ Sascha gestured to her brother, smiling prettily.

Dubnitz looked down at the semi-conscious young man and sighed. ‘Wonderful.’

Sascha was a cunning one. After several weeks in her close company, Dubnitz had become grudgingly aware that there was a very good reason that it was she who had been sent. He wasn’t afraid to admit that she had had him wrapped around her finger within an hour of their first meeting. In Nuln, he had done his level best to abuse his hosts’ hospitality in several tried and true methods, and one or two that he hadn’t even considered, before Sascha had suggested them. It was a game that Dubnitz knew how to play. However, it was disconcerting to discover that his opponent was even better at playing it than he was.

Ogg should really have sent someone else, someone more… pious.

‘I don’t suppose I could convince you to tell him that he slipped?’ he said hopefully.

Before Sascha could reply, there was a crunch. It was a loud sound, and the faces of the sailors turned ashen as the boat shuddered. Dubnitz knew that sound. The bottom of the river boat had struck something. An alarm bell began to ring, the sound of it muffled by the thick blanket of mist that had settled on the boat.

‘What was that?’ Sascha said.

‘It sounds like we’ve run afoul of something,’ Dubnitz said. He peered over the rail. Something splashed, out past the rail. Then something else, there were more splashes and a number of thumps. The mist boiled up over the rail like a billowing curtain. He squinted, thinking he’d seen lights flickering in the mist. Suddenly wary, Dubnitz reached for the sword sheathed on his hip. Sark struggled in his grip and he released the merchant, shoving him towards his sister. ‘Sascha, get your brother back to your cabin and stay there.’

‘What is it?’ Sascha said. Her bodyguards tensed, looking around. Like him, they had sensed something wrong. Both men were veterans of Nuln’s infamous Blacklegs regiment, and as swordsmen, only Dubnitz was their equal. They had enough battlefield experience to know when something went wrong.

‘Maybe nothing,’ Dubnitz said, trying to see through the mist. He could barely make out a shape near the waterline. They had struck something. He saw skeletal trees looming through the mist and the shore was covered in the thick grasses that marked the Cursed Marshes. The Reik was separated from the darker waters of the marsh only by the thickly clustered hummocks and boils of earth and soggy stretches of semi-dry land that the marshes consisted of.

As always, whenever he passed through these narrow waterways, his mind conjured any number of ways in which the trip could go wrong. Now the worst had apparently happened. But not as the result of random happenstance, he suspected. He loosened his sword in its sheath. There were so many stories about the Cursed Marshes that it was hard to know what to be afraid of. It was the haunt of mutants, Chaos-worshippers, goblins and less physical threats. Ghosts clung to forgotten structures and swamp-goblins ambushed Marsh-Watch patrols every full moon.

But this was something different.

‘Erkhart, what is it?’ Sascha said again. The mist seemed to swallow the sound of her voice.

‘Stay back,’ Dubnitz began. His eyes narrowed and then widened.

‘Lady Sark, you should go back to your cabin,’ one of the bodyguards said, grabbing for her arm. She cast a hot glare at him and he sighed and stepped back.

‘Sarks do no cower in cabins, Helmut,’ she snapped.

‘What is it? What do you see?’ Sark demanded, throwing his own glare at Dubnitz. His previous ire had been washed aside by concern. Hot-headed the boy might be, but Averlanders were a practical lot at the bone.

‘Nothing, but that doesn’t mean…’ Dubnitz trailed off. His eyes were tearing up from the strain of trying to see through the mist, and he blinked. Something was moving out there. All he saw were hints and vague bubbles of movement, swelling in the mist. He heard thumps and scrapes and his gaze travelled down, where the soup of the mist clutched at the hull.

Something rose to the surface. Sharp and stiff, it cut into the wood with a dull noise. Dubnitz blinked. Was that–?

More sharp things stabbed the hull. Something metal swooped past him and chopped into the rail – a grappling hook. Dubnitz stepped back with an oath.

‘What is it?’ Sascha said, her voice rising.

‘Get back!’ Dubnitz snapped.

Faces pierced the mist, grinning like wolves. Sabres, cutlasses, spears and axes followed as their attackers gave vent to blood-curdling cries. Dubnitz jerked back as a spear skidded off his pauldron and danced across his earlobe, sending a rush of warmth down the inside of his gorget. He cursed and chopped down, splitting the spear. Its wielder stumbled, off balance, and Dubnitz opened his throat to the bone.

But even as the one fell, more replaced him. Dubnitz was forced back from the rail. ‘Pirates,’ someone yelled. ‘’Ware, pirates,’ the cry bounced from crewman to crewman. In these parts, piracy wasn’t confined to the open ocean. Much trade was moved along the Reik, and where there were valuables there were men who would look to take such for themselves. Still, for pirates to have gotten this close to a fully-crewed barge was astonishing. The river-jackals were normally more cautious, laying breakwater chains and playing wrecker on rougher waters. Perhaps the mist had made them ambitious.

‘Take the big one first!’ a pirate barked, swinging a club towards Dubnitz’s head. Dubnitz caught the blow on his vambrace and the club cracked. As the pirate gawped, Dubnitz split his skull, crown to chin. He kicked the dead man in the midsection and jerked his sword free. More blades and clubs and spears sought him and he grabbed the dying man and flung him into a knot of his attackers. ‘Manann,’ he bellowed, lashing out with his sword.

‘Stromfels,’ someone shouted in reply, invoking the god of pirates and storms. The mist cleared and a broad shape stepped forward, sword extended, gold teeth glinting in the torchlight. He was around Dubnitz’s size, though rangier, with years of hard-living stamped on his face. At his gesture, the pirates retreated.

Dubnitz stiffened, his eyes narrowing in recognition of both the face and the voice. ‘Fulmeyer,’ he growled. ‘I heard that the Reiklanders had stretched your neck.’

‘If it isn’t my old friend Dubnitz,’ the pirate said. ‘Still stringing up honest river-men?’

‘Who is this devil?’ Sark demanded, his hands clutching emptily for the rapier Dubnitz had broken. The two groups faced each other tensely, the pirates on one side, the crew on the other and only the mist separating them, like a thin curtain caught in a breeze.

‘A dead man,’ Dubnitz said tersely.

‘Quintus Fulmeyer, at your service,’ Fulmeyer said, spreading his arms. ‘Some call me the Marsh-Hound, but none do it twice.’ His dark eyes narrowed. ‘Dubnitz here tried to have me hung.’

‘Several times,’ Dubnitz said, tightening his grip on his sword. ‘I should have just done it myself.’

Fulmeyer laughed. ‘Maybe you should have at that. Fancy running into you here,’ he said. ‘The gods truly are kind.’ Fulmeyer was one of those thorns that you never realised was in your side until it began to hurt. He was a pirate’s pirate, and Dubnitz dearly hated pirates, especially ones with the temerity to avoid Manann’s justice on three separate occasions.

‘They are indeed,’ Dubnitz said, starting forward. Fulmeyer stepped back and raised his blade.

‘I have more than twenty men, Dubnitz. And you’ve no troop of mounted knights to aid you this time. Just some poxy sailors and a handful of toffs,’ Fulmeyer said. ‘Surrender, as we’d rather not kill any we don’t have to. We have you fair and square,’ the pirate barked. ‘No need for this to turn bloody.’

Dubnitz was about to comment, but before he could so much as open his mouth, a crossbow suddenly went tung and a bolt spiralled through the mist towards Fulmeyer, who squawked and fell back. The bolt narrowly missed his hunched form. Dubnitz glanced back at Sascha, who was already reloading her crossbow. ‘What was that?’ he said incredulously.

‘You Marienburgers talk too much,’ Sascha said, lifting her reloaded crossbow. Before Dubnitz could reply, the pirates surged forward with a full-throated roar. The fight was brutal, and swift. The had a small crew, and the pirates outnumbered them two to one. Nonetheless, the former fought like born brawlers. Sascha’s bodyguards took a terrible toll also.

But the pirates had other, unnatural advantages on their side. Dubnitz’s skin crawled as the mist seemed to thicken and grip at him, as if to aid the pirates. Coils of wet air snagged his sword-arm, slowing his blows and causing him to stumble. Too, the dank smell of it invaded his head, causing his vision to blur and his lungs to seize. Was it sorcery, he wondered. It wouldn’t be the first time he had faced a daemon-spawned mist, after all.

Thoughts of that brought a longing for absent companions. He wished Goodweather were here with him. The priestess of Manann’s prayers could easily have dispersed the mist, which seemed possessed of an almost malign will. And that will was bent towards hampering the increasingly desperate efforts of the defenders of the river boat. Fulmeyer had never displayed any mystical acumen in their previous encounters, however. This was something new… something dangerous. Perhaps the pirate had hired a hedge-mage or some grave-robbing necromancer to help him. Such criminal activities were well within the Marsh-Hound’s purview.

Dubnitz cursed as he saw one of Sascha’s bodyguards stumble, as if something had pulled on his ankle. A moment later, Fulmeyer brained him with his sword, dropping the ex-soldier to the deck, blood running from his eyes and ears. The other bodyguard gave a coughing roar and swooped to the attack, but Fulmeyer merely stepped back into the mist, avoiding the wild blow.

In his place, a quintet of spears shot from all sides, impaling the hapless warrior. The mist cleared slightly as the pirates jerked their weapons free. Dubnitz was on them a moment later, charging across the blood-slick deck with an agility born of experience. Two of the five fell before the others retreated, leaving Dubnitz surrounded by a muffling wall of mist.

‘Sascha,’ he called out. ‘Sark,’ he tried. No answer from either. The alarm bell had fallen silent. The sounds of combat had faded. Dubnitz’s skin crawled. There was a hint of distant noise, like heavy bodies moving through the water.

‘It’s over, Dubnitz,’ Fulmeyer’s voice said, from close by. ‘Drop your sword.’

‘Or what, you’ll kill me?’ Dubnitz said, his eyes scanning the mist. Were the Sarks still alive? If not, Ogg would kill him.

‘We’ll do that anyway, it’s more a question of the way of it,’ Fulmeyer said.

Dubnitz licked his lips, and tried to pierce the swirling mist. He didn’t like the sound of that. He cleared his throat. ‘If you want my sword, Marsh-Hound… come and take it.’

Feet scraped on the deck. A cutlass chopped into the back of his cuirass, shredding a strap and sending a flare of pain shooting through his back and chest. Dubnitz stumbled forward, his chest striking the rail. He pushed himself around and his sword slashed through the curling mist, releasing a spray of red. A scream faded to a gurgle.

‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ Dubnitz said, breathing heavily.

Two men emerged from the mist with twin yells. Dubnitz’s sword cut the head from one’s hand-axe and finished its arc buried in the second man’s side. Dubnitz jerked the dying man around and threw him into his fellow. The moment’s distraction enabled him to deal with the survivor.

Boathooks burst past the falling body of the second man, thumping into his chest. His armour was thick enough that the hooks did little damage. But the rail wasn’t as sturdy. Wood cracked and then Dubnitz was falling backwards. His vision lurched as vertigo conquered his thoughts for several terrified moments and then the mist swallowed him. A moment later, the Reik did the same.

The water was cold as he sank into its embrace. He could taste mud and foulness as he clawed vainly for the surface. His body felt as if it were being crushed in a giant’s fist. His vision blurred as the dark water burned his eyes and seared his sinuses as it sought out his nostrils, ear canals and mouth.

Knights of the order learned early on how to swim in armour. It was a survival skill, when most of your business was done on the decks of ships. But the river had its own ideas. He felt the bottom of the Reik beneath his feet, and mud billowed up around him. His lungs began to burn. He couldn’t see.

Men who were unarmoured and excellent swimmers had drowned in the shallowest areas of the Reik. It was murderous, as bodies of water went. Part of him thought that maybe, just maybe, he should simply acquiesce to fate. Nonetheless, he began to walk. His body throbbed with weakness, but he pushed on, until he saw a ripple of orange light above and he shoved himself upwards, reaching. His face split the surface of the water and he swallowed a gulp of air even as the weight of his armour pulled him back down.

He shoved his panic aside. The river bank wasn’t far, not if the boat had run aground, and surely Manann, bless his scaly nethers, wouldn’t let one of his chosen warriors drown. As the claws of oxygen deprivation squeezed his mind into an ever-shrinking black ball, Dubnitz forced himself forward, fighting against weight and the current’s pull, using his sword as an anchor against the latter.

Something dark spread above him agonising moments later, and things like bony fingers scratched his face and armour and he grabbed at them. The soft solidity of waterlogged wood met his palm and he reached out with sudden hope. His thoughts were sputtering like a candle flame in a wind as he heaved himself up out of the water with the help of the tangled roots of the fallen tree. The tree rested in a bend in the river and it had been newly felled. The boat had struck it, and torn out its hull.

As his vision cleared, Dubnitz saw that the source of light he’d seen from below was the . It had been set ablaze, likely after being picked clean. His heart sank. But just as quickly as it had come, the black mood was swept away by adrenaline. Several shapes moved on the shore, searching through what could only be the ’s cargo. The pirates had dumped it on shore, by the looks of it.

A born pragmatist, Dubnitz reviewed his choices as he clung to the tree. He could attempt to make his way back to Marienburg and return with a force of knights or even Ambrosius’s Marsh-Watch. Granted, if he returned to Marienburg without the Sarks, Ogg would gut him like a fish and Ogg was more frightening than any mist-borne daemon or savage pirate.

There was little for it. Once more, Erkhart Dubnitz was forced by circumstance to play hero. It was not a role he relished, but it beat the alternative.

Carefully, and as quietly as he could, Dubnitz eased himself along the roots, pulling himself towards the dubious safety of shore. The Cursed Marshes weren’t dry land by any stretch of the imagination, being more akin to a scum of slime mould atop the water, but it was safer to be above the mould than below it. Water dripped in runnels down his sea-green armour as he pulled himself up into the light of the burning boat. No one had spotted him yet.

The main body of the pirates were nowhere in sight, leaving only the three scavengers he saw. Stragglers, then, Dubnitz decided. He squinted. The mist was gone as well. There was no sign of the surviving crew or the Sarks, though they could still be aboard the boat. The stink of burning flesh was heavy on the air, weighing it down. He looked at the fire, a swell of mingled emotions rolling through him.

‘Roll it towards the fire,’ one of the pirates said, kicking a crate and interrupting Dubnitz’s ruminations. He was big and bearded, with eyes like ugly coals. ‘Fulmeyer wants what’s left burned while they take the prisoners to the stones.’ There was a certain shuddering emphasis placed on that last word that piqued Dubnitz’s curiosity. Even more importantly, the Sarks were likely still alive. Fulmeyer had an eye for prisoners. Ransoms had been his game early and often.

‘Seems a shame,’ another said, fondling a bolt of Cathayan silk. ‘Was a time when we’d have taken the boat and everything with it,’ he added.

‘Better times,’ added the third.

‘Shut your mouths,’ said the first. ‘We’ve made our bargain now, and it was a good one.’

‘Fulmeyer made the bargain, not us,’ the third pirate said, frowning. ‘We can leave.’

‘And see that mist creeping in my wake? You don’t play foul with the lords of the marsh and get away with it,’ the first retorted, shaking his head.

‘So you say.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ the pirate snapped, reaching for the dagger sheathed on his hip.

Dubnitz didn’t allow the other to reply. He rose to his feet, shedding water, and swept his sword out, chopping through the third pirate’s neck. The man gurgled and slumped. Before the second could do more than gape, Dubnitz ripped the sword free and plunged it into his chest, where it became lodged in bone. The first man howled and leapt, his dagger seeking Dubnitz’s guts.

The knight grabbed the man about the middle and flung him over his hip, into the water. Dropping to his knees in the shallows, Dubnitz held the struggling pirate under the water for a moment. Then he dragged him up.

‘Where are the others?’ he asked the sputtering, gasping man casually.

‘G-go t-to-’ the pirate croaked.

‘Wrong answer,’ Dubnitz said cheerfully. He forced the struggling pirate back under water. Fingers clawed at his pauldrons and cuirass. As the bubbles began to lessen, Dubnitz pulled him back up. ‘Where did they go?’

‘I-into the m-marshes,’ the pirate wheezed.

‘Can you show me where?’

‘No!’

‘Pity,’ Dubnitz said, making to press the man back under the water.

‘No! Wait!’ the pirate gasped.

‘Friend, I’ll be honest, I’m in a foul mood, and I’m all for consigning your soul to Manann’s realm. Play silly beggars with me, and I’ll do just that.’ Dubnitz stood, pulling the pirate up with him. ‘But you help me find Fulmeyer, and maybe you live to do the yardarm jig.’

‘Not much of a choice,’ the pirate rasped.

‘Better than you deserve.’ Dubnitz shook him slightly. The Order of Manann had a special hatred of pirates, worshipping, as they did, a god of the seas and rivers. Dubnitz had hung more than his fair share, and it was one of the few of the order’s activities that he had anything approaching a professional interest in.

‘I’ll lead you to them,’ the pirate said, his eyes closing.

His name was Schafer, and he was a Stirlander by birth but a water-man by choice. He’d been a crewman on a trade skiff for a number of years before he’d grown bored, slit the mate’s throat and taken off with the pay chest. Once he’d drunk the contents of the chest away, he’d signed on with Fulmeyer.

All of this he related unasked and slightly defensively. Dubnitz could have told him that he’d heard worse, but didn’t feel like wasting the breath to reassure a man he fully intended to hang. Instead, he tried to steer the conversation into more productive waters as they made their way through the marsh. ‘What stones were you referring to earlier?’ Dubnitz said.

Schafer looked back at him. The pirate was bound tight by a set of thin chains that Dubnitz had scavenged from what was left of the ’s cargo. ‘What?’

‘The stones, the ones you said Fulmeyer was taking the prisoners to.’

Schafer frowned. ‘They’re just stones. There are lots of stones in the marshes.’

Dubnitz fell silent. That was true, as far as it went. There were stones aplenty in the marshes, piled higher than nature intended. The Cursed Marshes had an ancient history, pre-dating men by a margin that was wider than Dubnitz was comfortable with. He looked around. The trees had thinned as they left the river behind. The ground was spongy beneath their feet, and water filled their tracks as they walked. The air was thick with damp and the sun was hidden behind a grey miasmic curtain.

The water was high here, spilling over the roots of crooked trees and boles of sagging earth. Schafer had said that the pirates used skiffs to manoeuvre through the swamp. Dubnitz wished he had one, but he’d have to settle for foot pursuit.

He blinked stinging beads of sweat out of his eyes. The heat was always surprising. Even in winter, the dark waters of the marsh held in the heat of rot and decay. But edging towards summer as it was now, it was nigh unbearable. Sweat rolled down, causing his skin to itch beneath his armour, which was caked in filth and rusting already. Schafer seemed hardly bothered, but then the pirate was probably used to the heat.

They travelled in silence for a time, Dubnitz moving as quickly as he could in his armour.

‘What do you do with prisoners?’ Dubnitz asked. ‘Is it ransom?’

Schafer was silent. His heavy shoulders hunched forward as if he were thinking of something unpleasant. His jerkin was stained with sweat. Dubnitz narrowed his eyes and jerked the chain, nearly pulling Schafer off of his feet. ‘I asked you a question.’

Schafer glared up at him, but behind the anger, there was fear. Not of him, Dubnitz knew. His eyes widened slightly, and Dubnitz spun, hand on his sword hilt. A low fog clung to the path behind, caressing the trees and sliding across the ground. He caught a hint of movement, but heard nothing and saw no shape. He tensed, filled with a sudden, unreasoning fear.

‘What was that?’ he said, turning back to Schafer.

The pirate licked his lips, but didn’t answer. Dubnitz considered striking him. Instead, he shoved him forward. ‘Keep going, friend; and you’d better not be leading me into a trap.’

Schafer stubbornly refused to answer any more of Dubnitz’s questions as they made their way deeper into the marshes. But his manner became more furtive as they went. Finally Dubnitz jerked him to a halt and said, ‘If you find this place so frightening, why in Manann’s name would Fulmeyer seek sanctuary here?’

Schafer stared at him. ‘No one said anything about sanctuary,’ he said softly.

‘Then where are they going?’ Dubnitz demanded, drawing his sword. He pressed the tip to the pirate’s throat.

Schafer spat. He looked away. ‘They’re paying the toll.’

‘What toll?’ Dubnitz said. He pressed on the sword. A bead of blood spilled down Schafer’s unshaven throat. ‘What are you talking about?’ A sudden thought bobbed to the surface of Dubnitz’s mind. ‘Who are the lords of the marsh?’ he said, recalling Schafer’s earlier words.

‘You’ll see soon enough,’ Schafer spat. ‘They’re watching us now. We ain’t safe here. Nobody’s safe, except Fulmeyer, and those with Fulmeyer. And even they ain’t as safe as they like to pretend, damn him.’ Schafer made a sound that was half whine and half growl. ‘Damn him!’ he said again.

‘Who’s watching us? More pirates, perhaps? Is Fulmeyer working for someone?’

Schafer laughed harshly, but didn’t answer. It was getting dark, and the evening mist was rising from the water. Beneath the surface of the water, faint lights shimmered, and Dubnitz shivered slightly. The brightest minds of the best universities stated that the ghost-lights of the Cursed Marsh were nothing more than trapped gases. This close, however, Dubnitz lacked such certainties.

He had scavenged a lantern and wicks from the cargo, as well as the chain that bound Schafer, and he lit it as the darkness closed in. Schafer seemed content to stay close, and the pirate’s eyes darted back and forth like those of a frightened rabbit. ‘We should stop,’ he said. ‘We should stay here until morning.’

‘No,’ Dubnitz said. ‘We go on.’

‘I can’t find my way in the dark,’ Schafer protested.

‘You had better figure it out,’ Dubnitz said, tapping his sword.

‘You’re mad. If you knew–’ he stopped himself abruptly.

‘If I knew what, more about these lords you seem so afraid of?’ Dubnitz said. The mist was rolling across the ground. Something splashed in the water. Schafer started. Dubnitz held the lantern higher, but the mist swallowed the light. ‘What are they? Not men, by the way you’re acting…’

Schafer laughed shrilly. ‘No, not men, but you can ask them what they are yourself!’

Large shapes moved in the mist. The soggy soil squashed under heavy treads. Dubnitz swung the lantern about, but he could see nothing. There were sounds just past the edge of the lantern’s light and he caught a glance at what might have been scaly skin.

‘Here he is!’ Schafer was yelling. ‘Take him! Take him, not me!’

‘Quiet,’ Dubnitz growled. He could feel something watching them. Lights that might have been eyes or marsh gas blinked in and out of sight in the mist. He had his sword half-drawn. The shapes he saw did not evoke familiarity on any level. They were not men or beasts or trees. He could not say what they were.

Abruptly, Schafer lurched forward with a despairing wail. He crashed into Dubnitz, knocking him off balance. Dubnitz stumbled forward, and crashed into something solid. Pain burst through him and he dropped the lantern. Luckily, it didn’t burst. Hastily, he staggered to his feet and snatched it up, catching sight of what he’d run into.

The stone had been shaped at some point and time in the past. Not by human hands, or even those of a member of the elder races, but by something else. Dubnitz examined it as the mist congealed around him. Strange shapes had been carved into the stone, prompting faint memories of the crude trinkets he’d seen in the possession of one of his brother-knights who’d visited a wet little fog-shrouded island to the west. The shapes were man-like in their proportions, but they hinted at something far larger, and more horrible. He saw what might have been representations of standing stones, and what could only have been bodies dangling from them, like some prehistoric gallows.

Whatever the symbols represented, they provoked a feeling of disgust in Dubnitz, and he rose slowly to his feet, his sword out. Schafer had vanished. Dubnitz cursed and raised the lantern. The pirate couldn’t have gotten far, not with the chains on him. As the mist swirled, he saw more stones. Moving towards them, he again heard the sound of distant splashing, as if something were moving with him.

Schafer screamed.

Dubnitz charged into the mist. The pirate’s body laid a-sprawl at the foot of a large example of one of the stones. A dark blotch marked where the pirate had seemingly run headlong into the stone. It was only when he drew closer that Dubnitz realised that the blotch was far too high up on the stone for that to have occurred. Schafer was dead regardless, his skull crushed like an eggshell.

Dubnitz froze, listening. Through the blanket of the mist, he heard the slap of wood on water. The skiffs! Forgetting Schafer, he started forward, splashing into the water. It sucked at his legs and for a moment, he regretted his decision to not wait until morning. There was no telling what he would stumble on in the darkness, even with the lantern.

Forcing himself to be cautious, he slowed. The trees clustered thickly, their mossy branches scraping gently on his armour and across his scalp as he moved. As he walked, he had the impression of large things keeping pace. The lantern’s light flickered and sputtered, as if the wick had grown wet. Dubnitz shook it, but it gave a despairing poof and went out, plunging him into darkness. But only for a moment, as the night was pierced by dancing motes of ghost-green light, that swept almost playfully across his path.

Discarding the useless lantern, he followed the motes and soon learned that they were sparks, rising from the strange flames, the colour of emeralds, which crawled up a number of stones, casting weird shadows across the mist-covered water. Dubnitz hesitated. He knew magic when he saw it, and the tales of popular bards to the contrary, there was little a man, no matter how pure of heart or strong of arm, could do against magic.

The trees had thinned, leaving the water to the stones and the strange grasses which grew around them. There was no moon, but the scene was illuminated well enough by the bale-fires burning on the stones and the mist seemed to absorb and amplify those weird lights. It was almost as bright as day, though not nearly as comforting.

There were a trio of low-hulled skiffs ahead, bobbing gently in the water. There were more than a dozen armed men spread among them and a huddled group Dubnitz took to be the prisoners. On the lead skiff, the steersman stood and let his pole rise. Fulmeyer rose to his feet and stood on the prow. He pulled a strange object from his belt and raised it to his lips. The other two skiffs stopped as Fulmeyer stood.

The horn was small, as horns went. It was curled tight on itself, like a ram’s horn, and bore no decoration save for certain familiar markings. Fulmeyer blew a single, bleating note and the flames on the stones seemed to blaze more brightly. He blew another, and the mist began to thicken and rise. Dubnitz, in his hiding spot, froze. Fear slithered through him; it was an ancient fear, bred into his bones and mixed into his blood. Childhood nightmares bristled in the caves of his mind. ‘The lords of the marsh,’ he murmured. Who, or what, held that title?

‘Where have you brought us?’ Sascha snapped, her voice carrying across the oppressive silence of the marsh. ‘My father will hear of this! He is a personal friend of the Elector of Averland!’

‘Is he now?’ Fulmeyer didn’t sound impressed. Dubnitz restrained a chuckle.

‘He will have you fed to bears!’

‘That’s a new one by me. Remind me to stay away from Averland,’ Fulmeyer said, and several of his men chortled appreciatively. ‘You’re in no position to demand anything,’ he added, grinning, his gold teeth glinting in the light of the bale-fire as he grabbed Sascha’s chin and tilted her head up. She spat in his face and Fulmeyer slapped her, an oath escaping his lips.

Sark shot to his feet and lunged for the pirate. The others fell on him, beating him down as Fulmeyer chuckled. Dubnitz grimaced and looked away.

Across the water, the mist rose and spread like an ocean wave, cresting over the trees and then just as quickly falling to reveal – what? They were stones, but not solitary ones. Instead, they were towers of heaped stone, rising from solid islets in the mere like the grave markers of giants.

They looked flimsy and ill-stacked, but somehow more solid than even the best-built manor house of Marienburg’s aristocracy. Moss and mould grew on them, coating the dull black and brown and grey in sheaths of green and yellow, and on them, and in them and between them, dim shapes moved, as if summoned by Fulmeyer’s horn.

On the skiff, Sark was struggling as Fulmeyer jerked Sascha to her feet and shoved her into the prow. Fulmeyer jerked her head back by her hair and shouted something that the mist swallowed. As he called out, several pirates climbed down from the skiffs, dragging the prisoners with them.

‘They’re paying the toll.’ That was what Schafer had said. But paying it to what? Dubnitz hesitated. The mist was coalescing like a thing alive, and vague, titan shapes seemed to move within it as the echoes of the horn faded. It looked as if he were going to get the answer to his question. The mist was dispersing. He could see the heaps of stone more clearly, noting the profusion of strange dark stains which marred the rocks at the upper levels.

Something about those stains set his stomach to roiling. They looked far too similar to the splash of Schafer’s blood he’d seen on the marker stone earlier. The fear grew in Dubnitz’s gut. He could slip away now. No one would know. He was no hero, to die of shame. A fight you couldn’t win wasn’t glorious, it was foolish.

‘Then again, I’m already here. Besides, fortune favours the bold,’ he muttered. With a shout, Dubnitz shot to his feet and ran towards the closest of the pirates, drawing his sword as he drew close. The man spun around, his jaw dropping. Dubnitz’s sword sprang from its sheath and cut a furrow through the pirate’s chest and face.

Even as the first pirate fell, Dubnitz waded into the others. Surprise and speed were enormous advantages, if you were audacious enough to take advantage of them. Unfortunately, even the smallest thing could take that advantage away. His sword swept up, chopping into a tattooed chest. He cursed as the blade became lodged in a breastbone. Dubnitz jerked at the sword and planted his foot on the twitching body, trying to jerk it loose.

Despite his predicament, however, the remaining pirates weren’t attacking. Dubnitz gave a grunt and finally freed his sword. Water splashed behind him. ‘Erkhart,’ Sascha screamed, struggling with her captors.

Dubnitz turned. A smell, like old deep, wet places, washed over him. A single cyclopean eye burned into his wide ones, and a leathery beak split in what could only be called a smile, revealing dagger-fangs. It shed the mist like water, and its scaly flesh was stretched over inhuman muscle beneath ancient bronze armour that did little to conceal its contorted shape. The armour was engraved with looping patterns that hurt Dubnitz’s eyes to look at. A stone maul, dripping with filthy water, rose, clutched in the thing’s two large hands.

‘Manann preserve me,’ Dubnitz whispered, as certain stories of his childhood suddenly rose to the fore of his fragmented thoughts, stories of terrible marsh-demons, driven into the mists by Sigmar and Marius the Fenwolf, in a time of legends before Marienburg was anything more than a dream.

The maul rose and fell with a monstrous finality and Dubnitz only just dove aside as the weapon set up a splash of water. He turned and a club-headed tail crashed against his side, driving him to one knee. The thing circled him on bowed legs, its heavy shape sending rough ripples through the water. The leathery snout wrinkled and a sound like water gurgling over rocks escaped from between its teeth.

‘What the devil are you then?’ he hissed.

Things that might have been words dripped from between its tusks, bludgeoning his ears. If it had answered his question, he couldn’t say. Nor did it seem particularly important. Dubnitz shoved himself to his feet using his sword. More creatures had joined the first, the mist clinging to them like some vast, communal cloak. They watched him and the first moved forward, raising its maul. Dubnitz extended his sword and stepped back.

There were dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds. Where had they all come from?

‘The mist,’ Fulmeyer called out, as if reading his mind. ‘They live in the mist. That’s where they went when Sigmar and Marius put them to the sword. A good hiding place, if I do say so myself.’

‘You’d know all about hiding,’ Dubnitz muttered.

‘If you put the blade down, they’ll make it quick. They’re not as bad as some,’ Fulmeyer said. The pirate captain had one foot cocked up on the prow of the skiff, and leaned across his knee, the horn dangling from his hand. Dubnitz glanced over his shoulder.

‘When did you begin worshipping daemons, Fulmeyer? I always thought you were an honest rogue…’ he grated.

Fulmeyer gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’ve always had an eye for opportunity, me, you know that Dubnitz.’ His face fell. ‘Of course, sometimes opportunity finds you, rather than the other way around.’

‘What foul hole did you find this particular opportunity in?’ Dubnitz said. The creatures splashed around him, never drawing too close. He wondered if one of them had done for Schafer.

‘Here, actually,’ Fulmeyer said conversationally. He’d always liked to talk, had the Marsh-Hound and Dubnitz intended to keep him barking away until he could figure out how he was going to salvage the situation. ‘I was looking for sanctuary from the damned Altdorf River Patrol. I found it, and allies with it.’

‘Allies, is it?’ Dubnitz said. ‘I didn’t see them helping you take the .’

‘Didn’t you?’ Fulmeyer said. He waved the horn. ‘Then you’re blind as well as stupid. I said they live in the mist, didn’t I, and it does as they ask. And they do as I ask…’

‘And in return, you give them what – human sacrifices?’

Fulmeyer’s glee dissipated. ‘Better them than us,’ he snarled. ‘Everything has a price!’

‘Ah, the rallying cry of every half-baked cultist,’ Dubnitz said. ‘A match made in darkness, to be sure, Marsh-Hound. You get to loot to your black heart’s content, and all you have to do is turn the innocent over to inhuman monstrosities.’

‘I pay the toll required, Dubnitz. And it’s your bad luck that tonight’s toll is you,’ Fulmeyer said, gesturing. The pirates formed up around the skiff, their weapons prodding at Dubnitz, keeping him from coming too close. They did not look so much triumphant as terrified. They had pulled Sascha and her brother off of the skiff and thrust them into the water. With curses and oaths, they shoved them and the other survivors of the towards Dubnitz.

‘I said it before – drop your sword, Dubnitz. Go quiet like, and they’ll be gentle. As gentle as they get…’ Fulmeyer said. Dubnitz ignored him, checking on the others. There was only a quartet of the ’s crew remaining, and two of them were the worse for wear. Sascha and her brother seemed healthy enough, despite their terror.

‘You’re late, Erkhart,’ Sascha said, her voice tight.

‘A horse would have come in handy,’ Dubnitz said.

‘Get us out of this, and you’ll have more horses than you can stable,’ Sark said, his face pale.

Dubnitz didn’t reply. He glanced at the pirates. There were more than a dozen of them, but they looked ready to bolt. Fulmeyer’s protestations to the contrary, his men weren’t entirely comfortable with their ‘allies’.

‘Everyone stays together,’ Dubnitz said. The creatures appeared to be growing impatient and several were splashing forward, their club-tails lashing.

‘Maybe we should run,’ Sascha said, clutching at his arm.

‘I don’t think we’d make it very far,’ Dubnitz muttered.

As if it had overheard them, one of the creatures gave out a great cry and the others followed suit, slapping the water with their tails and stamping their feet. At the sight, one of the sailors sidled away from the bulk of the group, his face tense and pale with fear.

‘Don’t,’ Dubnitz said. The sailor didn’t listen. He turned and began to splash away, uttering prayers to Taal, Manann, and Sigmar as he ran. The mist seemed to solidify in front of the fleeing man and then the shape of one of the creatures lunged from it, incredibly swift. Talons fastened almost gently about the man’s head, cutting off his scream. The creature lifted the struggling man and the other things set up another howl.

‘Damn it let him go!’ Dubnitz roared, lunging forward. He had little hope of helping the sailor, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try. His sword chopped into the rubbery limb and the thing shrieked, more in surprise than pain. It flung its arm out, knocking Dubnitz off his feet.

The stone maul wielded by the first of the beasts he’d encountered smashed down, spraying him with water and nearly mashing his head to paste. It drove him back, away from the one he’d attacked, swinging its maul out in short and brutal arcs. It didn’t seem to want to kill him so much as prevent him from interfering with whatever its companion was doing.

‘Erkhart, be careful!’ Sascha shouted, her brother holding her back.

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ he yelled back. The maul dropped, nearly crushing his foot. Reacting swiftly, he stepped on the haft and half-threw himself forward, his sword slashing wildly at the glaring, single eye. The creature reared back and the sword barely missed its snout. It jerked the maul out from under him, tumbling him into the water with ease.

A massive three-toed foot slammed down on his chest, pinning him in the water. The creature looked down at him, and there was something that might have been respect in its eye. It gestured with its weapon.

The other creature loped towards the tumble of stone with its captive. It climbed up the stones, displaying none of the awkwardness its ungainly form would imply. As it reached the top, something bent and hidden within thick, sodden animal hides crawled out of the rocks to meet it. Despite the concealing skins, Dubnitz could tell that it was of the same race as the others, though wizened and perhaps crippled. It leaned on a staff and croaked something at the other. The sailor’s screams were muffled by the beast holding him.

The bent beast scooped up what looked like a length of crudely woven rope and set a noose around the writhing, whining sailor’s neck. Then, with a gurgling roar, the first creature sent the sailor tumbling from the stone. The rope pulled taut and the sailor smashed headfirst into the stone, leaving a new stain to join the old ones that Dubnitz had noted earlier.

The creatures howled, clawing at the air or gesticulating with their weapons. The one holding Dubnitz down stepped back, letting him climb slowly to his feet. Rubbing his aching chest, he backed away. The body of the sailor twisted in the muggy breeze, and its heels drummed on the stone.

Behind Dubnitz, Sascha gasped and turned away, leaning against her brother. ‘Stay close, all of you,’ Dubnitz barked as he rejoined the others. He swallowed thickly and put himself between them and the beasts that squatted, waiting.

Why weren’t they attacking? What were they waiting for?

‘Going to fight them all, Dubnitz?’ Fulmeyer called out, half-tauntingly, half-admiringly. ‘That doesn’t work. I know.’

‘Talk your way out of that noose as well, did you?’ Dubnitz shouted back. ‘A trade was it?’

‘And if it was? Is my life – our lives – worth any less than these fine, fancy folk?’ Fulmeyer said.

‘Yes, it is,’ Dubnitz said bluntly. ‘You’re noose-bound, human hangman or otherwise, if I have anything to say about it.’

‘Good thing you don’t, then,’ Fulmeyer said, laughing harshly. ‘The lords of the marsh will do for you!’

As the pirate cackled, the creature that had first confronted Dubnitz gestured with its maul and gave a querulous croak. Fulmeyer stopped laughing. More of the creatures emerged from the mist, appearing on the other side of the pirates’ skiff. Fulmeyer half-lifted the horn, and the creature bellowed. On the high stones, the wizened monster raised its staff and shrieked. The pirate flinched, like a beaten dog. Dubnitz grinned. ‘Will they now? Somehow, I think you spoke too soon, Fulmeyer.’

Dubnitz had seen enough to know that form and ritual were everything where sacrifices were concerned. If the creatures had bothered to bargain with Fulmeyer, they would abide by the rules they had laid down. It seemed that they wanted their sacrifices delivered to them, not just dumped on the doorstep.

Fulmeyer swallowed and hopped off the skiff. He drew his sword as he splashed forward, and gestured with the hand that held the horn. ‘Take them,’ he snarled, and his men moved forward, grimly intent, more than one of them darting a nervous glance at their monstrous allies. Dubnitz realised that he had been wrong earlier. It wasn’t an alliance; the river-pirates were simply hunting dogs and now they were being whipped to the kill.

Fulmeyer and a large, tattooed Nordlander closed on Dubnitz. ‘Don’t kill him,’ Fulmeyer growled. ‘They wouldn’t like that. Just get that sword out of his hand.’ He grinned in a feral fashion. ‘In fact, take the hand as well.’

The Nordlander roared and lunged, his boat-axe swooping down. He was bigger than Dubnitz, and wore a rust-riddled sleeveless suit of mail. Dubnitz lunged forward, and the axe blade skirted down the side of his cuirass at an angle, shaving the metal and creating an ache in Dubnitz’s chest. He smashed the pommel of his sword into the Nordlander’s face, busting teeth. The big man reeled with a moan and Dubnitz cut his leg out from under him. The Nordlander fell with a scream and Dubnitz stepped over him, moving towards Fulmeyer.

More pirates closed in, leaving their captives unattended. Armed and in a foul mood, Dubnitz looked more dangerous than a pack of terrified sailors. Fulmeyer barked orders, trying to regain control of the situation, but to no avail. Dubnitz swept his sword out in a wide arc, spilling red into the water. A pirate screamed and sank, clutching at his ruined hand. The heavy blade in the knight’s hand was little more than a cleaver with a pointed end; Dubnitz had grown to manhood in Marienburg’s tannery district, chopping through the muscle and bone of abattoir animals.

The pirates fell back after a few fraught moments, leaving the dead and dying in their wake. The creatures set up a cry and the mist seemed to vibrate with the frustration inherent in that sound. Fulmeyer’s eyes bulged and he half-lifted the horn.

‘Go on,’ Dubnitz wheezed. Sweat coated his face and his shoulders twitched with strain. His sword blade dipped towards the water. ‘Blow it, Fulmeyer. Send them back. Break your damnable bargain.’

Fulmeyer’s face hardened. ‘It ain’t that simple.’

‘No, it never is,’ Dubnitz said. His armour felt as if it had grown heavier. He looked up. The darkness at the edge of the mist had faded, turning from purple to pink. One of the creatures snarled something unintelligible and pointed a talon at Fulmeyer, who flinched and waved his sword.

‘I’ll do it, damn your eye! Our bargain stands!’ the pirate screamed. He charged awkwardly through the water towards Dubnitz. ‘Take him, you marsh-dogs! Take him or we’re all for having our brains dashed on those cursed stones! Take him before cock-crow!’ His sword rattled off of Dubnitz’s own hastily interposed blade. Several other pirates surged towards them, their obvious panic sharpening their faces to vulpine ferocity.

The creatures seemed to gather close, their heavy shapes moving towards the others. Dubnitz booted Fulmeyer in the belly and spun around. ‘Run!’ he roared. ‘All of you run!’

The sailors needed no prompting. They broke and fled, thrashing towards the skiff, the hale helping the wounded. Sascha, however, snatched up an axe from one of the dead pirates and promptly brained the closest of his still-breathing compatriots. Her brother punched another and jerked the stumbling man’s blade from its sheath. Dubnitz cursed. ‘Get to the boat you fools,’ he snarled, grabbing a pirate’s shirt and jerking the man forward so that their skulls connected.

‘Not without you!’ Sascha said waving her axe as her brother gutted a pirate.

‘I’ll be right behind you,’ Dubnitz said.

‘Then there’s no reason to hurry, is there?’ Sark said, driving a pirate back with a swift slash of his purloined blade.

‘You Averlanders are a stubborn bunch,’ Dubnitz said. The creatures were moving towards the skiff now. Before, they had been content to watch, but now they had been prodded into motion – why? Why the sudden urgency, Dubnitz wondered as he blocked a blow that would have sent him to his knees. Why were the pirates suddenly so desperate? ‘Cock-crow,’ Dubnitz said suddenly.

‘What?’ Sascha said.

‘Morning is coming! That’s why they’re so impatient!’ Dubnitz said. ‘If we can just hold on until morning…’

‘I don’t think they’re going to let us!’ Sark yelped. He staggered back as one of the creatures grabbed for him. Sascha screamed. Dubnitz turned and saw her backpedalling from a scaly shape that loomed over her. Before he could go to her, Fulmeyer stepped between them, his eyes wild. The pirate hacked at him with berserk abandon. Dubnitz was forced back, his arm and shoulder throbbing with fatigue-ache as he blocked the wild blows.

‘I’m not going into the mist!’ Fulmeyer howled. ‘Not me, you hear?’

‘I hear,’ Dubnitz grunted, as he caught another blow. His eyes found the horn, clutched in Fulmeyer’s manic grip. With a twist of his wrist, he sent the pirate’s sword sliding from his grip and rammed his shoulder into the other man’s chest. Fulmeyer staggered, and Dubnitz grabbed the horn, yanking it out of Fulmeyer’s hand.

‘No!’ the pirate screamed.

Dubnitz didn’t waste breath replying. Instead, he put the horn to his lips and blew. The note shivered out and the effect was nigh-immediate. The mist seemed to harden, as if frozen, and then it collapsed like a curtain that has had its straps cut. It sank and retreated, like the tide going out. The strange rock formations wavered like heat mirages and faded as the mist writhed past them. The rising sun glared down, its gaze suddenly no longer obscured by the daemon-sent mist.

As one, the creatures gave out a great cry. There was despair in that sound, and a resigned rage. They began to stagger away, covering their bulbous eyes and heads as well as they could. A foul-smelling smoke rose from those not quick enough to reach the mist and their screams caused every man’s heart to shudder. Only one didn’t retreat – the first, the beast clutching its stone-headed maul like a talisman. It rose over Sascha, reaching for her. It didn’t intend to return to the mists without one sacrifice, at least. She screamed and raised her axe.

‘Ho beast! That’s not the one you want,’ Dubnitz bellowed. Its triangular head whipped around. Dubnitz grabbed Fulmeyer and propelled him into the water near the beast. The pirate screamed and tried to run, but the maul flicked out, and bones turned to splinters and he fell, his legs rendered into ruined sacks. He coughed and whined and splashed as the creature stood over him, considering. Its eye found Dubnitz again.

‘Go on, take him you one-eyed son of a frog,’ Dubnitz said. His limbs trembled from his exertions and he wanted nothing more than to fall down. But he forced himself to stay upright. He extended his sword. ‘Take what you’re given, and go.’

The creature’s eye flashed with something that might have been a look of promise, and then it reached down and grabbed Fulmeyer by his scalp. The pirates who hadn’t fled found themselves in much the same predicament. Scaly, abnormally long arms shot from the retreating mist and grabbed ankles, elbows, heads and arms, jerking the terrified pirates into the mist they had earlier so eagerly sheltered in.

The creature hefted Fulmeyer, whose shrieks had dwindled to moans, and pointed at Dubnitz with its maul. Smoke billowed from its heavy shape as it held his gaze for a moment, and then it turned and stalked after its fellows, its club tail sending waves slopping against the side of the skiff.

Dubnitz watched it go, and when it had vanished and the mist had gone, he raised the horn and brought his sword down on it, shattering it.

‘Erkhart–’ Sascha began.

‘Get on the skiff,’ Dubnitz said hollowly. ‘We need to be far away from here by nightfall.’ Sascha and her brother got aboard the skiff, and Dubnitz followed slowly, looking back warily. The creatures might not come after them, but he couldn’t take that chance. He felt ill and tired. He hadn’t had a choice, and he wouldn’t weep for Fulmeyer and his crew, but it sat badly with him nonetheless. They had earned their ending, but he wished that he hadn’t been the one to deliver it in such a fashion.

Even pirates deserved better than that.

In the fading drifts of mist, Dubnitz thought he could see dim forms struggling, and hear distant screams and the thump of skulls on stone. Then he could hear nothing but the sounds of the Cursed Marshes, and the splash of the pole into the water as the skiff began its journey back towards the clean waters of the Reik.

A MUG OF RECAFF

Sandy Mitchell

If anyone had asked Jurgen, which they never did, he would have said the operation had been a great success. As usual, Commissar Cain had outwitted the heretics they were hunting with ease, leading the squad of Guardsmen assigned to escort him straight to the heart of the coven, while the bulk of the raiding force provided a diversion by attacking the heavily-fortified stronghold of the renegades. After a short, intense firefight, most of the cabal lay dead, the few panicked survivors too intent on fleeing for their lives through the corridors of their leader’s mansion to put up any further resistance.

‘Went rather well, sir,’ he ventured as the commissar sheathed his chainsword while making the odd little twitch of the nose he so often did. As always, Cain had made sure he was in the thick of the action, and must be in dire need of a pick-me-up by now.

Fortunately, Jurgen had noticed a kitchen during their initial assault through the servants’ quarters, and was sure he could find his way back there. As soon as the commissar was engrossed in discussing how best to sweep the building for stray cultists with the sergeant in charge of the escort detail, he slipped quietly away in search of it.

The layout of the rambling house was a little confusing, but he found the object of his quest easily enough by the simple expedient of following the trail of combat damage; the path back to their entry point was marked by las-bolt pocks on the walls, many of which had charred the hanging tapestries or scored the intricate marquetry surfaces of the occasional tables scattered about the place. Most of these had once held ceramics, few of which remained intact, particularly around the scorch marks on the carpet and the widespread cratering of walls and furniture where frag grenades had gone off.

Before long, the opulent furnishings gave way to the starker, more utilitarian environs of the servants’ quarters, although Jurgen didn’t expect to meet any of the staff; most of them had fled screaming as soon as the armed Guardsmen appeared, the ones that hadn’t being cut down in short order alongside the masters whose corruption they’d shared.

Too seasoned a campaigner to take anything for granted, Jurgen remained alert, his lasgun held at the ready. The cultists who’d escaped retribution upstairs were almost certainly long gone, but it was always possible that a few had gone to ground, hoping to slip away quietly once the noise had stopped.

So musing, he caught sight of his objective at last, the light gleaming from neatly-shelved pots and pans visible through a half-open doorway.

He was about to walk through it when he hesitated, listening intently. Someone inside was speaking, the voice rising and falling in the unmistakable cadences of a chant.

‘Heyla, heyla sheyla, heyla sheyla, heyla hoh…’

Jurgen had no idea what it meant, but he didn’t really need to. It sounded like warpcraft to him, which boded badly for the Emperor’s loyal servants still in the building. It might even inconvenience the commissar, redoubtable warrior though he was. Better put a stop to it now, he supposed. Besides, he needed the kitchen; too bad for the heretic currently occupying it.

Readying his lasgun, Jurgen dashed through the door, his eyes flicking left and right in search of a target. He’d been right, someone was practicing warpcraft: a tall, elegant man in expensive-looking robes, and far too much jewellery, was waving his arms about in time to the stream of gibberish gushing from his lips. His eyes seemed to flicker with balefire as he glanced up at the unexpected intrusion, and his mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste, as though Jurgen was something he’d just found on the sole of his shoe.

The guardsman’s finger tightened on the lasgun’s trigger, but before he could squeeze it the air between them ripped, sounding, he thought, like the galaxy’s biggest fart. Smelled like it too. Something consisting mainly of eyes, mouths and teeth stepped through the rent in reality and lashed out at him with half a dozen whip-like tentacles.

‘Finish the scum,’ the sorcerer said, disdain dripping from his words like protomatter from the flesh of the newly-incarnate warp-thing.

‘Works for me,’ Jurgen said, holding down the trigger of his lasgun. The daemonspawn reeled back, keening its distress, as the hail of las-bolts chewed its midsection to pieces. It was far from the first such thing Jurgen had encountered in his years of fighting at the commissar’s side, and in his experience they were never as tough as they were made out to be. Apparently that was something the Emperor had gifted him with; Inquisitor Vail had tried to explain it a couple of times, but she used a lot of long words that made his head hurt, and he didn’t really care anyway. The fact that it worked was enough for him.

After a couple more bursts from the lasgun, the warpspawn suddenly vanished, with a pop of imploding air, driven back to the eldritch realm from which the psyker had torn it, just as Jurgen had known it would be. He turned, taking in the rest of the kitchen in a single, rapid glance.

The psyker was still standing in front of the stove, an expression of stupefied astonishment on his face, muttering another string of arcane syllables. Livid green wychfire flared around his upraised fist, then flickered and died as Jurgen took a step towards him.

‘You can frak off and all,’ Jurgen said, and shot him, wiping the stunned expression off the man’s face with a single las-bolt. He slung the weapon as he stepped over the sorcerer’s spasming corpse, freeing his hands to pick up the kettle, which gurgled as he shook it.

Already full. That was a bit of luck. The commissar would definitely be needing a mug of recaff by now, and Jurgen meant to see that he got it.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Neil Roberts

© Games Workshop Limited, 2012. All rights reserved.

Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2011, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-85787-980-6

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See the Black Library on the internet at

blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at

www.games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.