Contents

Cover

Sacrifice - Danie Ware

Salvation's Crucible - Denny Flowers

Death by a Thousand Gnaw-Bites - David Guymer

Tower of Secrets - Graeme Lyon

Imperator Gladio - Richard Strachan

Bone Cutter - Darius Hinks

About the Author

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

SACRIFICE

DANIE WARE

The detonation hit the Aquila like the fist of a Titan.

The lander bucked and shuddered with the force of the strike. Alarms blared, lights flashed, but there was no need for the warnings…

One of the vehicle’s engines coughed, guttered and died.

The pilot cried, ‘We’re hit!’

And then they were slewing sideways, broken, tumbling from the sky. Never one for heights, Augusta felt her stomach slam hard into the back of her throat.

Throne!

Caught, helpless, the Sister Superior controlled both nausea and outburst. She barked the order ‘Helmets on!’ and braced herself in her seat, praying for the pilot’s courage, and for the little machine-spirit that was guiding them down to the chem-hell below. Her squad were in full armour, and should survive a crash – but their charge, the Hospitaller Cerene, was not.

In the ruddy flash of the lights, however, the woman’s round, tanned face was completely calm. She held her bolter and case in her lap, and she too prayed, her faith in the God-Emperor complete.

Thankful for the Hospitaller’s composure, Augusta breathed the Litany over the vox.

‘From the lightning and the tempest…’

Around her, her Sisters took up the prayer.

‘Our Emperor, deliver us!’

And they plunged.

Wind screamed. Something struck the shuttle’s hull, clattering backwards along its body. A burst of turbulence caught at them, making them lurch and bounce. And then they were smashing, nose down, through a series of obstacles – roofs, fences, pipes, chimneys, they had no way of knowing. A long rent tore in one side, and air and dust were sucked out through the gap. Cargo banged, rattled, fell. Still praying, the Sisters clung to their seats as the shuttle picked up speed, careering downwards, wild and lopsided.

Its remaining engine screeched in protest.

The pilot’s voice came through the vox, cursing viciously. ‘Hold on!’ he said. ‘We’re going… shit!’

Something struck them, head-on, throwing them forwards in their seats.

Augusta continued to pray, striving to ignore the sickness, the knot in her throat. They were slowing now, and they bounced, twisted, rocked, skidded. The pilot was still swearing.

For a split second of pure tension, the injured Aquila seemed to stop, to hang in mid-air…

Domine libra nos!

And then it crashed, broken and belly down, dropping like a dead thing upon the planet’s surface.

Around the Sister Superior, there was stillness.

No alarms, no lights.

Smoke billowed, thick and black and full of grit. From somewhere, spark-flashes spasmed, tiny fragments of fire that lit crumpled steel, bent supports, fallen cargo…

But, by His grace and mercy, they were alive. They had landed safely.

A prayer under her breath, Augusta was already moving, reaching for her bolter with one hand, her seat-harness with the other. ‘Sisters,’ she said. ‘Roll call.’

Four voices answered her: Jatoya, Melia, Caia, Kimura. Her squad, all of them responsive. A moment later, Melia said, ‘Cerene is alive, Sister Superior. She’s injured, and has lost consciousness.’

‘Rouse her,’ Augusta said. ‘Then lower the crew compartment and deploy a full perimeter defence. Caia, check the fuselage – a pool of spilled promethium could send all of us to the Golden Throne. Pilot, can you hear me?’

The vox crackled and spat. ‘Yes, Sister, I hear you. I… I fear I can’t move.’

As Augusta got to her feet, the squad reached for their weapons, checking their gear. In the soup-thick smoke, they were glints of smooth, glistening scarlet, their armour faceless and efficient, their black-and-white robes bearing the Bloody Rose like a badge of defiance. In their midst, the Hospitaller was a ghost-white apparition, her face and garments streaked with filth.

There was a jagged cut across her forehead, but she was coughing, conscious.

‘Thank you, Melia,’ she said. ‘Your time with the Order of Serenity taught you much, I see.’

‘Compartment lowering,’ Jatoya said. ‘Kimura!’

‘Aye!’ The cocking of the heavy bolter was unmistakeable.

There was a hiss, the whine of hydraulics. The smoke eddied and swirled, but no fresh air came into the hold.

It was thicker and fouler than the air in the shuttle.

Leaving the outside to her Sisters’ competence, Augusta forced her way past the wreckage and up to the cockpit.

‘Pilot?’

‘Here!’ His voice was strained with pain. ‘I’m sorry, Sister. I did my best.’

‘You did well,’ she told him.

And he had. The shuttle’s armourglass viewport had been completely shattered, its control panel was cracked clean through, and the hololith projector was as black as the sky outside.

As Augusta reached the man, he didn’t look up. Instead, he stared at his thigh, at the thick red gore that oozed through his clenched fingers, at the piece of broken armourglass that stuck, glittering, from the wound.

‘Our Sister Hospitaller will see to your injury.’

He nodded, sweat beading his temples.

‘What happened?’

‘We took fire,’ he said. ‘Something on the surface, a missile–’

‘Jatoya! Full vigilance. There will be hostile activity.’

‘I hear you.’

‘Cerene, I need you up here.’

‘Sister Superior.’

From somewhere, sparks flared again, flashing like threats. They had to get clear of the vehicle – whatever had brought this lander down would be incoming on their location.

Augusta’s contemplation was interrupted as Cerene entered the cockpit and knelt carefully by the pilot’s side.

‘His femoral artery is damaged,’ the Hospitaller said, after a moment. ‘I can preserve his life, but he will need more care than I bear with me. He cannot be moved.’

The pilot’s face contorted. ‘Sister, I… I can walk if I must.’ His voice sounded like a plea, as if he thought they might abandon him – punishment for his failure.

‘You will stay where you are,’ Augusta told him.

Across a tight-beam vox-channel, the Hospitaller said, ‘I can grant him the Emperor’s peace, if that is your wish. It will be a gentler end than awaiting this planet’s denizens.’

Augusta responded, with some feeling, ‘Let us take stock of our surroundings. Whatever is down here, it means us ill.’

Outside the broken shuttle, the thick black fog of a hellscape awaited them.

Adrion.

A chem-planet, a planet of darkness. These were the filthiest of worlds, the Imperium’s oubliettes, places choked by their own fumes, where the waste of billions was discarded.

Both industrial and human.

Augusta, bolter and chainsword in hand, tuned her preysight and took a long, careful scan.

Lines of belching chimney stacks rose into the low, smog-
clouded sky above them, their heat shimmering the air. Between them were tessellated factoria, huge and grey, all flickering with tiny points of light. The ground below them was lined with ferrocrete ditches, thick with still-warm putrescence. Walkways stretched from building to building, like some vast web. Vox-antennae jagged at the sky, and everything was choked with filth. The Sisters’ helms were sealed, and both Cerene and the pilot had respirators, but still, the place was deeply unpleasant.

Again, Augusta stopped herself cursing. They had been returning from liberating a nearby Chaos stronghold, ready to deliver Sister Cerene safely back to the Convent Sanctorum, where they would pick up their newest squad member and be assigned a fresh task. And that was all.

Beside her, a purity seal clattered loudly to the ground. It read Quaecumque est religio.

Every mission is a sacred duty.

And thus, Augusta thought, does the Emperor chastise me for my arrogance. She picked it up and offered a prayer in penitence.

Beside her, Melia said, ‘I’ve never seen such a terrible place.’

‘This too,’ Augusta told her, ‘is a part of the Emperor’s design. It is necessary, and must be preserved. Why else do we come here?’

‘Yes, Sister Superior.’ Melia accepted the rebuke and fell silent.

‘Caia, I need a full scan. What do we face? Do we have hostiles?’

‘I see no movement,’ Caia answered. ‘But we are fully exposed, surrounded by sniper positions and servitor walkways. I fear it will not be long.’

Augusta thought for a moment, made her decision. ‘Very well. Cerene, you will hold a fallback position within the lander, and ensure the safety of vehicle and pilot both. Let none approach. The rest of you, compass defence. Kimura, take the nose. Caia, on lookout. Jatoya, Melia, left and right. I will contact command. We must defend this location at all costs.’

Melia offered a salute and took cover within the shuttle’s doorway; the rest of the squad moved into tight formation, bolters bristling.

Because, out there, something was waiting for them.

The ambush came swiftly.

Caia saw them first, a dozen blips, more, crossing the walkways and skirting the edges of the grimly towering factoria. The air was thick with pollution, and the Sisters’ visibility was poor – even their preysight was rendered hazy by the heat of the ditches below.

The lander had come to rest upon a single, huge platform, a wide space precariously suspended between six separate exits, and with a glinting array of antennae at its centre. Even as Augusta was checking their surroundings, boots thumped on steel, and the movement was all round them.

‘Hold your defence!’ Jatoya barked. ‘Wait for the order!’

‘Aye!’

Below them, a hunkering of shapes rose from the filthy ditches. More figures lurked on the rooftops, or waited like spiders upon the walkways above.

They loomed, their hooded forms predatory in the heavy black fog.

‘Come no closer,’ Augusta told them. ‘We are the Adepta Sororitas, and we will return any hostility, in the Emperor’s name.’

But the mob did not care. They were still coming forwards, as silent as an unmarked death.

‘Sister Superior!’ Kimura was waiting for the order to fire.

‘Wait.’

Bolter in hand, Augusta struggled to see. The figures were cloaked and swaddled, their garments ragged and rancid. Some bore pieces of armour, or odd augmetics; others seemed to be only flesh. Still more bore tools or weapons, rough extensions of their arms or elbows, or had faces that were sloughing into ripples like sliding mud.

Mutants.

Perhaps Adrion’s workers, perhaps its outcast and defiled. Whatever they were, there were dozens of them – and they were still coming.

She barked the order, ‘Heavy bolter – fire!’, and the weapon voiced its thunder-roar of death.

From the curse…!

Leaning back, the weapon braced against her armoured hip, Kimura muttered the Litany through gritted teeth – the words like pure, cold determination. Metal spanged, gore and fluids spattered. Bodies reeled and fell, tumbling to the walkways below.

But the mutants did not care. Still utterly silent, unworried by their own dead, they came forwards, closer and closer, their twisted hands outstretched.

Fearing some curse of Nurgle, Augusta gave more orders. ‘Sisters! Controlled bursts! And fire!’

Bolters sang. In the midst of their music, the roar of flame was Jatoya, her deep voice calling the Litany, and her weapon spitting and flaring like a holy purge.

Burning, semi-human figures staggered and reeled. One, its arms a-flail, tumbled from the platform down towards the ditch. And then the waste itself was in flames, bright and green and blue and fierce. Chemical fire blazed hungrily upwards, reflected in the Sisters’ visors. It devoured yet more of the oncoming force, but still they made no
sound.

Melia, closest to the lander, took careful, single shots. Caia kept her auspex in one hand, her bolter in the other. She, too, cut the mutants down, shot after shot to the head or the chest.

But there seemed no end to them – there were more, and yet more. The platform was piling with the dead and the dying; they had too many limbs, or too few, or mandibles, or tentacles, or eyes in all the wrong places. And they were…

What?

For a moment, Augusta thought she was imagining it, some apparition conjured by the chemical flames, but no, she could hear them, now – a murmur, like the steady thrum of an engine. It flowed between the figures as if they chanted.

Were they… were they trying to say something?

By the Light!

Cultists? The Sister Superior’s flesh crawled. She aimed her bolter at the closest one, tall and shambling. It had two faces on its head. A single round, and both of them vanished in a haze of gore.

She shot another, and another, tumbling them to the raging flame below. Her other hand closed on her chainsword, but she did not start the mechanism.

Not yet.

Beside her, Caia muttered, ‘Dominica’s eyes! Is there no end to them?’ With a split-second look, the Sister Superior saw that Caia’s auspex was still swarming with incoming green lights, more and more of them. Not just dozens. Hundreds.

And the Sisters were completely exposed; there were far too many angles from which the mutants could reach them. They could have fought their way out of a smaller ambush, but hundreds? This was madness – they couldn’t stay here, they were far too vulnerable.

Across the vox, Sister Cerene said, ‘Sister Superior, I do not like this. This behaviour is not normal.’

Augusta closed her teeth on a biting response, and kept firing. ‘Sister Hospitaller?’

‘I have seen mutants before, Sister,’ Cerene said. ‘And these are accursed indeed. But why do they not shoot back? They must have weapons – firearms, perhaps chemicals. Why do they throw themselves thus, into a pointless death?’

‘Perhaps they seek the mercy of the Throne,’ Augusta told her, the words short as she kept firing.

‘Pardon my blasphemy, Sister, but I do not think so.’

There were more and more of them, everywhere Augusta looked – they lined every rooftop, every walkway. The squad shot, and shot again, but they could not stop them all.

How long before they ran out of ammunition?

‘What are you suggesting, Sister? Make this quick, we do not have time to tarry.’

‘I do not know,’ Cerene answered her. ‘Not yet. Truly, I will pray for both insight and wisdom.’

‘Then pray swiftly, Sister.’

The thrum grew louder, a sinister hum that rose to the belly-down clouds. Rising through its menace, the Hospitaller’s prayer came over the vox – words asking not for mercy, but for illumination.

Amazed that the woman could be so utterly tranquil in the middle of the yammering, flaming madness of the battle, Augusta controlled a flare of impatience. She shot another, another, two more. Beside her, the muzzle of Caia’s bolter flashed. The flamer gouted again, its red fire melding with the green flames of the ditch. The mutants had no armour, no defences; they made no effort to get out of the way. They died in scores, but still they kept coming. As their dead blocked the platform, they retained enough sense to use the corpses as cover, but that was all.

And their chant still rose, a tone like contrition.

‘Help us… help us… help us…!’

Augusta gave a deep, visceral shudder – she knew of only one way to help such as these. But the Hospitaller was still praying.

‘Levis est mihi!’

Show me the Light!

And He answered.

From the seethe and roil of the sky, vivid yellow lightning jagged like pure wrath. Startled, the Sister Superior swore aloud, and a moment later, a thick grey rain came hissing out of the heavy clouds. Thunder rumbled, threat and rage.

A chill went up the Sister Superior’s spine – truly, He was watching them.

And then, at the lander’s nose, the heavy bolter clunked to a stop. Moving with pure reflex, Kimura ejected the spent magazine and pulled a second from her belt, slamming it into place…

But the pause was enough.

The nearest pile of dead toppled over – there were things in there, still moving – and a surge of mutants came forwards in a wave, the grey water sheeting from their warped bodies.

And then stopped.

Augusta snapped her bolter back on her belt, started the chainsword with its distinctive, mechanical scream. She saw its teeth glitter; saw that gleam reflected in the eyes and augmetics of the things that stood there, waiting for them.

They were close enough, now, for her to see them clearly, despite the rain that ran in rivulets over her visor.

These were not cultists, not that she could see.

They looked like workers, some of them augmented, many of them still in the tattered uniforms of the factoria. Some were missing limbs, or bore festering injuries, or were badly corroding where metal met flesh. Their skin was white and suppurating, or festering purple as though it was bruised. Their eyes were black and empty, or sealed over by the bulbous growths of their faces. Appendages twitched under their garments as they stretched out hands and claws. All of them had been warped, twisted by this chemical hell into things no longer human.

Uncaring, Kimura’s bolter echoed the thundering sky.

On the vox, Cerene’s soft voice said, ‘Sisters! I beg of you, wait! Hold your fire!’

Augusta blinked. The chainsword was running in her hand, eager and snarling. The vibration spread up her arm like warmth.

‘Do as she says.’ The order was guarded, but was Cerene too not a Daughter of the Emperor?

‘Do you not hear them?’ Cerene said. ‘They plead for pity.’

Tightening her grip on the blade Augusta said, ‘There is no pity for such as these.’

The whine of hydraulics heralded the lowering of the lander’s compartment, and then Cerene was pushing between Augusta and Caia, coming to the front of the compass formation. She looked like a saviour, but the Sister Superior noticed that she still carried her bolter.

Cerene said, ‘Is there one among your number who will speak to me?’

Over a tight-beam channel, Jatoya muttered, ‘What’s she doing? This is madness.’

‘She’s right,’ Augusta said quietly. She shut down the chainsword, though she did not let it go. ‘There is something strange here. The Emperor has seen fit to grant her His illumination – perhaps we should find out what she intends.’

The wave of creatures waited, poised.

And then it shifted, and a figure came to the forefront.

Augusta stared.

It was – had been – a woman, possibly in middle age. She was full-fleshed, but that flesh was red and raw and spotted, like some vast infection. A white cataract covered one eye, her nose was missing – just two holes in her face – and there was something growing out of her chest, hidden by the remnant of a supervisor’s uniform.

The chant tumbled from the air, leaving stillness.

A second jag of lightning cracked across the sky.

‘I will speak,’ the woman said. ‘If you will listen.’

Over the vox, Cerene said, ‘These are the Emperor’s workers, Sister, not the denizens of Chaos.’

The squad had moved to the lee side of the lander, where its cold and twisted fuselage offered shelter. Overhead, the storm still raged, spitting coloured lightning and harsh, chemical rain; the Hospitaller’s hood and hair were plastered to her skin. In places, the tan of her cheeks was marked with burns, but she made no complaint.

‘You understand what they want, Sister Superior?’ Cerene continued. ‘They did this for a reason.’

‘They shot us from the sky.’ Augusta had not released her weapons – or her anger. ‘They have endangered our lives–’

‘Yes.’ Cerene’s voice was still absolutely calm, and it was getting on Augusta’s nerves. ‘I realise that you are angry, Sister Superior, but sometimes the Emperor moves in ways we cannot understand. These people need help, they need treatment, they need the mercy of the Sisters Hospitaller and the Order of Serenity. Did you not say yourself that this chem-hell, too, has a part in His design?’

‘They’re mutants,’ Augusta said. ‘We return them to His grace.’

‘The planet needs workers, Sister.’ The Hospitaller’s logic was flawless. ‘If you slay these people, there will be more. And more. Will you return, with your bolters and your swords, and slay the next ones? And the next?’

The lightning spasmed again, bands of sick colour flashing under the clouds. There was a long, silent pause before the thunder rumbled in its wake – the storm was moving away.

In the rain, the mutants waited silently, their twisted bodies, their rotting uniforms, all now blackened by the downpour.

Cerene’s robes, too, had completely changed colour – from the pure white of her order to a mucky, filthy grey.

But Augusta was still standing, her chainsword in her hand. ‘Do not play word games with me, Sister Hospitaller. The Litany is clear, and our path righteous. These…’ a nod of her helm indicated the waiting figures, ‘…cannot be suffered to live. They have betrayed us, opened fire upon our shuttle–’

‘Yet they have not shot at us, Sister, despite the fact that we have slain them in their scores. They have thrown themselves at our guns, welcoming death. Do you not think that they deserve an end to their pain?’

‘We brought you here to help us.’ The spokeswoman came forwards, her hands outstretched. ‘We have weapons – phosphex. It’s old, but effective.’ Her mutated face was carved in stone, determined and ice cold. ‘If you refuse, we will detonate it. You cannot leave this world.’

Distantly, the thunder grumbled again.

Through the vox, Kimura spoke, her voice low and lethal. ‘They threaten the Adepta Sororitas? We should kill them all. And if we perish, then we will at least die with our honour intact.’

‘I hear you,’ Augusta said. Then, to Cerene, ‘This is blasphemy, Sister. We will not tolerate this… manipulation. It is the schola’s first lesson – be you novice, warrior, Hospitaller or Saint Mina herself.’

The lightning jagged again, red as blood.

Cerene paused, looking from Augusta’s scarlet-armoured frame to the sick body of the mutants’ spokeswoman. And then, over a personal vox-channel, she said, ‘Sister Superior, you misunderstand. Perhaps I can have a word in private?’

The conversation was brief, and backed by the retreating grumble of the storm. As it came to an end, Augusta fastened the chainsword back to her belt. ‘Very well, then,’ she said. ‘We are agreed.’ She turned to the mutant woman. ‘You have your wish. The Hospitaller will stay.’

Kimura and Caia both turned, their faceless, water-streaked helms pointed at the Sister Superior. Kimura’s voice was all cold rage. ‘What? Sister Superior, if I may–’

‘You may not.’ Augusta’s words were a direct order, and Kimura fell back. She and Caia exchanged a glance.

Jatoya had not moved. The squad’s second was looking from the mutant woman to the Sister Superior and back, and then at the serenely regal Hospitaller. Whatever she was thinking, she kept it to herself.

‘This is what will happen,’ Augusta said. ‘We are awaiting a response for aid. Cerene will wait with us. If you,’ she looked at the mutant woman, ‘or any of your people assault us in any way, the Hospitaller dies. If you do not control your forces, the Hospitaller dies. If anything happens to interrupt us, the Hospitaller dies. Do you understand me?’

‘I…’ The woman seemed taken aback, she stumbled over her words. ‘You would grant us this… this clemency?’

Cerene said, ‘The Sister Superior has great compassion. I have explained things to her, and she understands. He walks here, as He does upon all worlds, and He watches. Even you.’

The thunder muttered, distantly now. The grey rain was starting to slacken.

Almost sobbing, the mutant woman fell to her knees. ‘Thank you. Thank you, Sisters, thank you. Many of us… we didn’t used to be like this. We have come here from many places, and we work until we can work no longer. And then… we come out here. We do… do not usually last very
long.’

‘Very well.’ Augusta’s voice caught in her throat, and she coughed. ‘Let us end this.’

The wait was a short one. Cerene stood at Augusta’s side, the Sister Superior’s raised bolter pressed hard to her ear. They did not speak.

There was no need.

The vertically descending Valkyrie came swiftly – a gleam of lights through the smoke, a roar of noise and wind and heat. The squad remained upright as the thick fog blew around them. Augusta supported the unarmoured Cerene; the planet’s mutants staggered and stared.

The new pilot’s voice came over the vox. ‘Sisters? We have come on the captain’s orders. What do you need?’

‘There is no need to deploy your troops, or to shut down your engines,’ Augusta said shortly. ‘You will simply land, and let us board.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

With surprising elegance the Valkyrie touched down.

The Sister Superior turned to the Hospitaller. ‘You are resolved upon this course of action?’

‘Yes, Sister.’ Cerene’s calm remained unruffled.

‘Then I commend your courage, and I will take that commendation back to the Convent Sanctorum on Ophelia VII. Your canoness will know of this.’

The mutant woman was watching the vehicle, her eyes, one blind and one blue, huge. Her throngs of followers had come after her, and they all stared, transfixed.

‘I have heard of these,’ she said softly. There was a longing in her voice, a desire for the freedom that the Valkyrie offered, the need to go back to the stars. Back to her home, wherever that had been. ‘I wish…’ She let it go, unable to voice it aloud.

‘Melia, retrieve our injured pilot. We must embark swiftly, Sisters,’ Augusta said. ‘I will explain once we are aboard.’

‘Sister Superior.’ Kimura had planted both boots, and the butt of the heavy bolter, firmly on the ground. ‘This cannot be accepted. We cannot leave Cerene here. We do not show this leniency – this weakness – to such as these!’

‘I gave you an order, Sister Kimura.’

‘Sister Superior–’

‘I gave you an order!’ The word was a snap, and Kimura visibly flinched.

Her deep voice quiet, Jatoya said, ‘Board the Valkyrie, Sister, and do not cause further trouble.’

Kimura paused, thinking about it, then picked up the heavy bolter and slung it on her shoulder. She followed Caia into the vehicle. Jatoya gave the Sister Superior a long look, then went after her. Melia came from the Aquila, carrying the injured and semi-conscious pilot in her arms.

Augusta and Cerene stood together, surrounded by the thickly billowing smoke and the crowd of mutants.

The Valkyrie’s engines were still in full roar. The noise was incredible, drowning out the last of the storm; the air shimmered with warmth and promethium fumes.

Over the vox, Augusta said, ‘Ave Imperator, Sister.’

Still poised and completely calm, Cerene offered her the sign of the aquila. ‘Ave Imperator. May this be swift.’

‘It will be.’

The mutant woman was still watching the vehicle, her rotted face filled with wonder.

Augusta ducked into the vehicle, the hem of her robe snapping in the wind. From the cockpit, the pilot said, ‘Sister?’

‘Hover at a height of ten feet,’ said Augusta.

‘Aye.’

The Valkyrie shifted, leaving the ground.

‘Change heading, forty-five degrees.’

It turned, its nose now facing Cerene, the mutant woman and her followers. Augusta could not see them, but their faces were fixed in her mind.

She took a breath, let it out, said, ‘Aim lascannon.’

‘Sister?’

‘Follow your orders, pilot.’

In the back of the vehicle, the others stared at her, their helms now off. She unclipped her own, heard the vacuum seal hiss. In her mind, she repeated the words of the Litany, the words that were the rules of all she was, all she had striven to be.

That thou wouldst bring them only death,

That thou shouldst spare none,

That thou shouldst pardon none,

We beseech thee, destroy them.

Her Sister Hospitaller may not be a warrior, but she understood honour, and she understood compassion – not just the compassion of the nursemaid, but as a soldier would comprehend the word.

And the Emperor had shown her His solution.

There would be no compromise.

Laying her helmet in her lap, Augusta gave the mission’s final command.

‘Fire.’

SALVATION'S CRUCIBLE

DENNY FLOWERS

The Pyromantic Conclave's herald was light itself.

Long-dead lumens spluttered into life at its approach and furnaces roared in appreciation as the conclave drew close. Settlements would hum as the procession passed by, its presence bestowing warmth and illumination to the darkness of the underhive.

Yet few dared to let their eyes linger on the crimson-robed figures of the Guild of Fire. Those that did would soon rouse the attention of the pack of hive scum hired to guard the conclave. Any who risked a glance beheld a lavish palanquin propelled by jets of searing blue flame. Beside it strode the pyromagir attendants and cynder guards, their faces sealed behind welding masks, their eyeless gaze ever seeking any threat or resistance to their master's cause.

Lord Silas Pureburn's gaze never wavered either. He stood at the dais at the palanquin's fore. Before him lay the path to the wastes known as Salvation, the final entry point to the settlement of Under Pipe. Behind him, mounted on an ornate plasteel chamber the height of a man, was a crucible of polished bronze. Within the crucible flickered an iridescent flame, burning without a hint of smoke or ash.

Corbin checked his stubber, confirming for the sixth time that he had indeed remembered to load the chambers. He was sweating. There was something unpleasant in the air, like the clamminess before a grid-storm. He glanced to the other gangers slumped about him, seeking validation that at least one of them shared his discomfort. But all he saw in their eyes was boredom underscored by a yearning for violence.

All but Mandrex Sawblade.

He stood proudly, an unlit lho-stick dangling from the corner of his mouth, his magnoculars trained on the tar dunes of Salvation. When Corbin was young he'd heard stories from before the Big Burn, when the dome now known as Salvation was a hazardous storage unit for a factorum uphive. But the Plague of the Undying had come to Under Pipe, and the only way to vanquish the horde was luring them into the chemical pit and igniting it. The inferno had swept the lower levels, only the warren of gantries and walkways surviving unscathed.

Corbin remembered how Mandrex had dismissed the story, just another tall tale, but even he would not deny the value of Salvation as an ambush site. Gunther and two of the gang's snipers had already taken position on the gantries overheard. The rest of the gang would use the dunes to surround the guilders.

Corbin had never seen a Pyromantic Conclave. As a child he'd worked in the boiler room of the orphanarium-fane, and had on occasion caught sight of one of the Fire Guild's intermediaries accompanying the promethium shipments. But these were minor figures, merely the bearers of the fuel.

The boilerman spoke in hushed worth of the Eternal Flame carried by each conclave, the divine spark that brought light to the dark places. Then again, the man was House Cawdor. He'd taught Corbin how to strip scrap and say his prayers. He'd been setting him up for a life as a beggar.

But Mandrex had found him, brought him up from the sump-gutter. Corbin was proud to be his follower, proud to be third-in-command of the Waylanders, the true rulers of Under Pipe. It was a meteoric rise, his rapid promotion in part due to his predecessors' habit of dying with alarming regularity.

'They're taking their time,' Mandrex murmured.

Corbin blinked, glancing to the gang leader. He was still intent on the tar plains.

'Perhaps they have taken another path?' Corbin said. He knew of at least a dozen routes that led to Under Pipe. All were safer than passing through Salvation.

'Oh, I'm sure they'd like to,' Mandrex grinned, lowering the magnoculars. 'But I've had a few reports on this Lord Pureburn. You think he wants to slum it down here with us for long? He wants to float through, be seen by as many people as possible, then float back uphive. This is the quickest way that takes him straight through the centre of town.'

He winked at Corbin before resuming his vigil. He never seemed bothered by such questions. Corbin had once considered this testament to Mandrex's good temperament. But he was beginning to suspect that the man simply enjoyed it when others appeared foolish.

Corbin watched as Mandrex flicked on his comms, 'Gunther? You in position?' he said. The response was inaudible. 'Remember, controlled bursts,' he continued. 'I don't want you burning through your reserves again and leaving us exposed. Just lock 'em down. I'll finish the job.'

The comms felt silent. Mandrex stared across the plain. For just a moment a sliver of doubt pierced his steely veneer.

'Come on, Ubel,' Corbin heard him whisper. 'Take the bait.'

Ubel was struggling to appear calm.

'We cannot just walk into Salvation,' he said. 'Not until we've scouted the area.'

'I appreciate your concern,' Lord Pureburn replied evenly. 'But I am afraid we have a schedule. I swore by the God- Emperor that I would bring light to the good people of Under Pipe three days hence. It is an oath I have every intention of keeping.'

He smiled, spreading his hands helplessly. It made Ubel want to stab him.

They had been travelling for two days and the pyrocaen had yet to raise his voice or utter a word in anger. He responded to each of Ubel's entreaties and warnings with unwavering civility, and never took the slightest notice. He never stepped off that damn dais either, which hovered just a little bit higher than was comfortable. Just holding a conversation with him gave Ubel a pain in the neck.

He sighed.

'Listen, I know this territory. I used to run it. A regiment could conceal itself amidst those tar dunes, and the upper gantries are a sniper's haven. We need to sweep down from the dome above, drive any snipers to the tar plains. Even then, if Mandrex puts up the slightest resistance we could be pinned down.'

Lord Pureburn considered his words. Or at least gave the appearance of it.

'If this Mandrex tries to obstruct our mission he will face the fire of my judgement.'

Ubel resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

'With respect,' he said, 'all the flame weapons in the world will count for little if we're being shot at from half a dome away.'

'Ah. You misunderstand,' the pyrocaen replied. 'I speak not of our armaments, but the strength of our faith.'

Lord Pureblood turned his head, and Ubel followed his gaze to the chamber mounted at the rear of the palanquin, and the bronze crucible mounted on its roof. Within its confines the Eternal Flame blazed like a humbled star. Ubel had come to loath that light. It was difficult to sleep with the flame constantly blazing beside him. Even when he closed his eyes he could not escape the image of the fire.

He knew better than to say as much.

'Lord Pureburn,' he tried, 'I respect the—'

The pyrocaen held up his hand.

'My trade-brothers are good and righteous men, but most of them are merchants at heart,' the pyrocaen said, his gaze returning to the path ahead. 'But the Pureburns are custodians to something more valuable than currency. The flame we carry is older than the guilds themselves. Our legends tell us it was once an ember from the God-Emperor's own blade, a flicker of the flame He used to drive the darkness from the galaxy. We have tended it ever since, and it is now our duty to bring His light to the dark places.'

The older man glanced at Ubel, the shadow of a smile playing on his lips, his eyes as sharp as rock-glass.

'The God-Emperor's light preserves us,' the guilder whispered. 'If necessary, it will scour Salvation clean of the unworthy.'

* * *

'All right, scum-suckers, this will be a big one,' Mandrex grinned, his gold tooth gleaming like a hidden blade. 'I don't need to tell you what's at stake or what they are trying to take from us. Not just our lives, but our livelihood.'

The Waylanders nodded. They shared little history or culture; few of them could even claim lineage from one of the Great Houses. But under Mandrex's leadership they had taken hold of Under Pipe. They would not surrender it easily.

'Those Fire Peddlers,' Mandrex continued, his finger stabbing towards the entryway. 'They saunter down here with all the pomp and circumstance, like a bunch of brats from up-hive. They cradle a candle like it's a newborn and expect the good people of Under Pipe to pay them for the privilege of lighting their burners from it. They want to muscle in on a service we already provide but for a token fee.'

He shook his head, as though in disbelief at the very thought. Corbin had to concede it was a well-run operation. The settlement had been long resigned to paying a toll for the power tap. The Waylanders might not have established the operation, but they knew how to exploit it.

Mandrex's head was still bowed as he turned, gesturing to the tar plain.

'Those bastards think they own light itself. They think that we don't have the right to tap the power lines that run freely across our lands. Maybe that would work if we were uphivers, used to doing what folk tell us, or the sort of inbred idiots that live in Under Pipe and don't know no better. Maybe then they could scare us with their magic flame.'

He grinned. There were a couple of sniggers from the group.

'But we are the Waylanders,' he said, unsheathing his chainsabre and gesturing across the tar plains. 'When their little procession emerges from the main valve we will be ready. We'll slip through the dunes, get nice and close. Then Gunter and his lads will open fire. Once they are pinned down we move in, dispose of Ubel's little gaggle, smash their magic flame and drive them out.'

'That's it?' asked Terrex One-eye, a frown forming amid the mess of scar tissue that constituted his face.

'That's it,' Mandrex shrugged. 'They claim their flame is something special. Without that they're nothing - just another bunch of grifters trying to make some easy creds.'

'Are they armed?' Corbin asked.

'With flashy stuff. Flamers and that,' Mandrex said. 'Won't be much use when they are pinned down by stubber rounds.'

'Yeah,' Terrex grinned. 'We'll cut them all down easy enough.'

Mandrex shook his head. 'Nobody kill the guilder unless you have to - no point making this more high profile than it has to be. Let him lick his wounds.'

'And Ubel's lads?'

Mandrex's smile disappeared.

'You know our history,' he said. 'If he'd had his way, I'd have bled out in some badzone brawl long ago. Do as you like with the rest of the gang. But you save Ubel for me. We have a little score to settle.'

'I say we run.'

Ubel cuffed the juve round the head absently. Not so much for his suggestion, which was not unreasonable, but more the fact that he'd opened his mouth.

'We run and they burn us,' Rath murmured, glancing towards the palanquin. The pyromagir attendants were checking their weapons and did not appear to be paying the hive scum much attention. Then again, it was hard to tell with their faces concealed by boilerplate welding masks.

'They can't bum all of us,' the juve said, rubbing his head.

'You volunteering to be the first?' Rath said. 'Because I ain't.'

'Nobody is getting burned,' Ubel said. 'We took a contract to escort them to Under Pipe and that is what we are going to do. Nobody is running out on it before we even enter Salvation.'

Rath glared at him. 'You want to explain again why we are giving up our old turf to this bunch of bankers? Salvation was ours.'

'Because they are going to burn anyone involved in Mandrex's syphoning operation,' Ubel replied. 'The guild is here now - the days of the free market are over.'

'It used to be our operation.'

'Then we were damn lucky to have lost it when we did,' Ubel hissed, glancing over his shoulder. 'If we still controlled the power tap then it would be Mandrex escorting the guilders to take care of us. We have nothing to do with that operation and never have, understood?'

Rath stared at him a moment.

'Yeah, we was really lucky to lose that gig,' he said at last, leaning in just a little too close. 'Good work there, boss.'

There was an edge to his voice. The gang might have been known as Ubel's Killers, but this was not a mark of respect or affection. The pack would follow whoever got them paid. They would just as soon be Rath's Killers if that was more profitable.

Ubel smiled, hoping it appeared at least a little sincere.

'My point is we are being paid well to protect our esteemed merchants. We should do everything we can to earn that pay… providing they remain in a position to settle up.'

Rath cocked his head.

'Meaning?' he growled.

'Meaning that we can guard them. Perhaps between us we can finally put an end to the Waylanders. And if not… Welt if the time comes for a strategic withdrawal then we can let Mandrex and Lord Pureburn settle the matter between them. Then approach the victor to discuss terms.'

Rath thought for a moment, then nodded, his gaze fixed on Ubel's.

'Yeah,' he nodded. 'Good plan. Once the fighting starts all sorts of things might happen.'

He smiled. It was not reassuring.

Corbin was first to spot the conclave.

Mandrex had grown bored, delegating lookout duties to his subordinate whilst the rest of the gang gambled at dice. Through the magnoculars Corbin could see the guilders emerging from Salvation's Gate. It was slow going, the undulating terrain impeding the palanquin's propulsion system. Atop the hover-carriage he could see a bronze dish in which the Guild's Eternal Flame blazed. Somehow, he'd expected it to be bigger.

Corbin glanced to Mandrex, nodding to the entrance.

'They are coming,' he said.

Mandrex's head snapped up. 'Is Ubel leading them?'

'…Yeah,' Corbin nodded. 'I can see him bringing up the rear.'

'I knew it,' Mandrex said with a joyless grin. 'I knew he ratted us out. Couldn't win the battle on his own so he brought in the big guns to end the game altogether. Little scav.'

He shrugged, unsheathing his blade.

'All right, lads,' he said. 'Keep low and hold your positions. Nobody opens fire until I say so. Corbin - keep watching them and keep your comms open. If they start moving in a different direction, I want an update.'

The Waylanders departed, flowing with practised ease through the tar dunes. This was their turf, and they knew every ridge and crevice. Ubel's gang might have done likewise, except they were restricted by the ponderous palanquin. Corbin watched as the gang fanned out into a half-circle; taking firing positions amidst the dunes.

'Anything?' Mandrex asked.

'Still heading straight, maybe twenty yards from the entrance. They don't seem in a hurry'

'Copy that. Gunther, wait for my signal.'

Corbin watched as the Waylanders drew closer. Ubel's boys were still inching forward, scanning the upper gantries. They were no idiots; they must have known what was coming.

A single shot broke the silence, a sniper round from the upper gantry. Corbin watched as one of the hive scum was punched from his feet. Mandrex swore over the vox as the rest of Ubel's boys dived for cover, the palanquin grinding to halt

'Damn it, Gunter!' Mandrex bellowed. 'I said wait for my order.'

'The lads got jumpy. Should we hold off?'

'There's no point now! Open fire and pin them down. We can't give them a chance to use those flamers.'

The dome hummed to the crack of the heavy stubber, punctuated by the occasional burst of autogun fire. But Ubel's boys were dug in like ticks amidst the dunes. Only the palanquin was exposed, and it appeared to be struggling. Wreaths of smoke were billowing from the propulsion system. The Waylanders were still advancing, albeit cautiously.

'They're keeping low,' Corbin hissed.

'Don't matter,' Mandrex replied. 'We're almost on them, Don't let up, Gunter.'

He was right. The Waylanders had now encircled the conclave, though it was getting harder to pick out Ubel's gang, the smoke from the palanquin was getting thicker.

Too thick in fact.

'Mandrex…' Corbin said. 'I think the guilders are using some sort of smoke screen.'

As he spoke the stubber fire fell silent.

'What now?' Mandrex barked over the comm. 'Keep firing!'

'Barrels've overheated,' came the crackled response.

'What, all of them?'

'Mine and Crank's. The feeds keep jamming.'

'Idiots,' Mandrex spat. 'Well if you're not providing covering fire then get down here. And if each of you hasn't skragged at least one of these scum suckers before the day ends I'll cut you down myself. Corbin, are they still straight ahead?'

'I can't see any more,' Corbin replied. 'There's too much smoke.'

Salvation was wreathed in fog. The occasional flash of gunfire burst through the smoke, but the only persisting light was emanating from the palanquin's Eternal Flame.

'Damn it. You get in here too. I can't see a blasted thing.'

As Corbin lowered the magnoculars he heard the roar of the first flamer.

Ubel could barely see through the smoke.

He had decided that Pureburn was not just a fanatic but also an idiot. In the darkness the flamers he'd so generously given to Ubel's men were as much a liability as a boon. His gang had no doubt already stumbled upon ingenious ways of setting themselves on fire. He did not know where to run.

The Waylanders were a threat of course, but given how badly things were going it was just as likely that Rath or one of the others would take advantage of the confusion, especially if he seemed to be fleeing the battlefield.

Where was safe?

He peered through the smoke, ignoring the din of battle. A jet of flame pierced the gloom for just a moment, but beyond it he could make something out - a candle holding back the darkness. He crept towards it, keeping low. The glow grew stronger, the darkness recoiling at its touch.

It was the Eternal Flame.

Smoke was still billowing from the palanquin's jet housing, flooding the dunes in darkness, but the platform itself was untouched by the shadows. Lord Pureburn was still stationed at the dais, staring down at the figure beneath him, who had a chainsabre resting across his shoulders and a bolt pistol in his hand. The man had his back to Ubel, but Ubel knew him from the greasy locks clinging to his shoulders.

Mandrex had reached the Pyrocaen.

Ubel remained still, hand inching towards his stubber, hoping to plug his rival in the back. But Lord Pureburn failed him once again, his gaze locking on Ubel.

'Ah, Mr Ubel,' he said with a warm smile. 'Your timing is impeccable.'

Mandrex turned, an evil grin carved across his face.

'Well, if it isn't little Ubel,' he said. 'So, you finally accepted that you lost our little war and decided to sell out to these bankers?'

'I just made a business choice,' Ubel replied. His mouth was dry Mandrex's pistol was still levelled at the guilder, but the man had the reflexes of a phyrr cat. Ubel doubted he could outdraw him on a good day; with a weapon to hand it was impossible.

'Business,' Mandrex sighed. 'That's all this is to you, isn't it? Fighting over money. It ain't just business for me - this place belongs to my family. It's my inheritance, and no one is taking it.'

'It was mine before it was yours!' Ubel snarled.

'Yeah?' Mandrex said. 'That why you ran uphive like a coward?'

'Ran? You drove me out!'

'Like you were going to do to me!' Mandrex bellowed. 'I just made the first move.'

They exchanged glances.

'So, how do we play this?' Ubel said.

'Seems like I have the draw on you,' Mandrex grinned, revving his chainsabre. 'How about we set the guns down and settle this like proper gentlemen. You got a knife, right?'

Corbin was struggling through oily clouds of smoke, broken only by bursts of gunfire and the screams of the dying. He'd already stumbled over Gunter's body, his chest a mess of las-rounds, the heavy stubber lying beside him. Corbin had briefly checked the weapon. Gunter was right; it had overheated and seized up. The barrel was warped, like the, weapon had been exposed to a blast furnace.

Corbin peered through the smoke. He could still see the Eternal Flame. Somehow, no matter how thick the smoke, it was still visible. Always burning.

A figure suddenly lunged from the shadows, an axe swinging in a clumsy arc towards his head. Corbin lurched aside, raising his pistol. In the flash from the shot he caught sight of a boilerplate mask. It shattered under the impact of the rounds, and the body fell. Corbin kept running, sweat dripping from his brow. He could now make out the roar of Mandrex's chainsabre.

The smoke was thinning ahead, banished by the light. Suddenly the palanquin was before him, Mandrex and Ubel circling beneath the dais. The former wore a manic smile that filled Corbin with dread. He was in no hurry, the blade whirling about him in a competent display of swordsmanship, the blade's teeth revving in anticipation of spilling blood. Ubel was keeping his distance, armed only with a rather battered combat knife. It had no doubt slit its share of throats, but the weapon was near worthless against the chainsabre.

Mandrex beckoned his opponent forward, the unlit lho-stick still hanging from the corner of his mouth.

'Come then, young Ubel,' he said. 'Serve your master. Earn your coin. Unless, of course, you think you can outdraw me?'

Ubel snarled but kept back. He had a stubber bolstered in his belt, but Mandrex must know that and was no doubt faster. Still, Ubel seemed to be playing for time. Corbin could not figure out why.

Then he saw it: a figure creeping silently towards Mandrex's exposed back.

'Look out!' Corbin screamed. At his cry, Ubel went for his gun but Mandrex was faster, sweeping forward and dashing the weapon aside with his sabre. But he was left open and Ubel darted forward, knife poised to plunge into his throat. Mandrex seized the knife arm with his free hand smashing his forehead into his rival's face. Ubel stumbled and fell, dazed.

The figure had emerged from the shadows. It was one of the guilder's entourage, its once human form twisted to its master's needs, its left arm forged into a burning brazier, its face hidden by an iron mask.

Mandrex turned, too slow, as it brought its weapon upwards, ready to engulf him in a blast of promethium.

'No!' screamed Corbin, firing his stubber. He was still running and the shots were wild; most missed but one glanced from the pyromagir's shoulder, throwing it off balance.

Mandrex did the rest.

He stepped into his opponent's guard, the flame passing inches from his head, and hammered his elbow into its midriff. As it staggered back, doubling over as it struggled for breath, Mandrex brought his weapon down in a savage blow, separating its head from its shoulders.

He turned to face Corbin as the body fell, grinning. Smoke trailed from his now-lit lho-stick.

'Anyone else?' he said. 'No? Just the old man then.'

The pyrocaen had not moved from his dais. Mandrex levelled his bolt pistol at the guilder.

'Hello again,' he said. 'Now, ideally I'd rather not kill you and turn this little skirmish into a full-on war. Then again, I really don't like bankers. So, let's not give me a reason to put pleasure before business.'

The pyrocaen smiled. 'I find the two to be one and the same.'

'How very interesting,' Mandrex said, cocking his pistol. 'I would love to hear more, but first, how about you switch off that light of yours?'

'I am afraid I cannot do that.'

'Well, I can,' said Mandrex, raising his pistol and firing at the crucible that housed the Eternal Flame. The shot burst in the air inches from the metal - a flash of light followed by wisps of smoke.

'Refractor field?' Mandrex frowned, glancing at the guilder. 'For a big candle? You really do have more coin than sense.'

'The Eternal Flame is more than a light.' The pyrocaen smiled, seemingly untroubled. 'It is a spark of the God- Emperor's power.'

'Well, if you don't switch it off it's going to be your funeral pyre,' Mandrex snarled.

'As I said, I cannot,' the pyrocaen sighed. 'Not without opening the chamber.'

'Then how about we just do that?' Mandrex said. 'Sharpish, because otherwise I will shoot you in the face.'

The old man shrugged his shoulders, turning to the chamber and passing his hand across a hidden panel. There was a faint click. The chamber doors lurched open.

Corbin was not sure what he had expected to see inside Perhaps some vast fuel reserve, or a more exotic mechanism beyond his understanding. But the chamber was stark, the plasteel walls offering neither control or fuel source. They were entirely empty.

Except for the girl.

She sat cross-legged on a bench of refined plasteel, clad only in a plain white robe. She could have been twenty cycles but was hairless, her face lacking even brows or lashes - and her skin glowed, radiant with youth.

'Behold, the Keeper of the Eternal Flame,' Pureburn said sadly, stepping away from the open chamber.

Mandrex frowned, his bolt pistol now trained on the girl. She stared back at him, serene, the reflected light of the Eternal Flame dancing in her eyes.

'What is this?' he said, stubbing out the half-smoked lho-stick and lucking it behind his ear. 'Where's the power source?'

Lord Pureburn shook his head. 'I warned you,' he said. 'We are the power.'

Mandrex swung his arm around, his pistol now aimed at the pyrocaen.

'I think I've had enough of you,' he said, his finger tightening on the trigger.

The lho-stick tucked behind his ear began to smoulder.

Then it burst into flames.

Mandrex swore as his hair caught, the greasy curls consumed by the flames. He collapsed, trying to bat out the fire with his hands. Corbin was already running forward, tearing the coat from his shoulders and throwing it over Mandrex, smothering the blaze.

'Bastard!' Mandrex roared, raising his weapon and pulling the trigger.

The shell travelled barely a foot before it detonated, the blast jarring the bolt pistol from his hand.

Lord Pureburn spread his hands apologetically, before turning to the girl. She was still intent on Mandrex. But it was more than a spark that danced in her eyes.

'Keeper,' Lord Pureburn said, addressing the girl. 'Deliver unto them the God-Emperor's light.'

Corbin felt the rush of heat as the air began to shimmer. It was just like the boiler room at the orphanarium-fane, the ambient heat destroying his vision.

Mandrex lunged for his pistol, screaming as he touched the metal. It was red hot.

Corbin could not see now, the air but a haze.

All but her eyes. They still burned.

The tar felt warm against his face.

Ubel frowned, struggling to raise his head. His nose felt broken. He was surprised to still be breathing.

It was then he heard the screams.

The smoke was thinning now, diffused by the dome's extractor fans. Figures were visible in the haze, from both Mandrex's gang and Ubel's. But they were no longer fighting

All eyes were fixed on the palanquin. Even through the receding smoke it shone like a beacon, the plasteel gleaming. The chamber was open somehow, the light spilling from within too bright to look upon. Ubel had never seen anything so pure, scourged of any hint of dirt or grime.

All except the pile of ash that lay at the foot of the dais.

Through the smoke Lord Pureburn stared down from the pulpit, surveying the carnage. He picked out the bodies of his fallen guards before finally meeting Ubel's gaze. The pyrocaen gave a sad smile.

'I am sorry it has come to this,' he said, addressing the fallen fighters. Behind him a figure was stepping from the central chamber, her white robes shining brighter even than the plasteel.

Lord Pureburn turned, bowing his head to her and offering up the pulpit. As she ascended he retreated towards the chamber. Someone took a shot at him; Ubel heard the distinct thump of the stub-rounds. But the bullets never touched him, evaporating in wisps of smoke. He entered the chamber, the plasteel frame sealing around him.

The girl stood at the pulpit.

Rath surged forward, his chainaxe held two-handed. Ubel could not tell if his blow was intended for the girl or the palanquin itself. It did not matter; the ganger exploded in a searing blast of light. Ubel did not wait to see who was next. He turned, running, his gait hampered by the tar sucking at his feet. He heard shots from behind him, followed quickly by more screams.

A blast of light lit the scene, searing the back of his neck and throwing his shadow across the dunes, but he did not look back. The ground felt a little more solid now and he broke into a sprint, his heart pounding in his chest, sweat dripping from his brow. He was always quickest on the uptake. Now he just had to run the fastest. The others would slow her down. He just had to get away.

But the heat was rising, sapping the strength from his limbs. He felt himself slow, gasping for air and choking on tar fumes. He ignored the light blazing behind him, even as the skin on his back began to blister…

DEATH BY A THOUSAND GNAW-BITES

DAVID GUYMER

I

Muskretch was the kind of minion that even a sage and erudite things-master like Krowl did not fully appreciate until they were gone.

Muskretch had known his skavenbrews: give him teeth and some claw shavings, and with nothing more than a pestle and mortar he could feed a vermintrain until the next Withering. He had learned the thirteen formulations of skalm, without ever needing to pester his betters. He had considered himself learned in the many ailments of the flesh market and the breeding pen and, indeed, had been so. His fascination with opiate salves had always been somewhat dubious, but had, in hindsight, saved Clan Grench a fortune in wasted flesh. He had, of course, continued to self-administer those salves long after their worth had been proven to all but the most sceptical of packmasters. 'Tweaking,' he would say, generally with slurred vowels and eyes half-lidded. He was bright then. But not too bright.

A surfeit of intellect was seldom a desirable quality in an underling.

He had occasionally been overheard to describe himself as an artist, the Writhing Broodsire his patron and the meat and bone of his subjects his clay. If nothing else this was further proof of the potency of his salve, for Krowl recalled him as being typically sullen and monosyllabic, and appropriately fearful in their dealings. The under-moulders had respected him. Or existed in sufficient terror of him to feign it convincingly. The slaves lived in dread of him. The clan's menagerie had almost eaten out of his paw.

More proof as to the power of his salves.

Muskretch was not yet entirely gone, of course.

It was a long way still to the Cadivaris Mons and the new start they promised.

Krowl was saving some of him for later.

II

The sun drew itself a claw's width above the horizon's teeth. A tattered cloak of glowing cloud muted its already meagre light, casting the endless deserts of the Necros underworld beneath a thin, bruise-coloured shroud.

Krowl gnawed vexedly on a scruff of tail as he took in the sunrise.

The skaven were temperamentally unsuited to any kind of collaborative effort. They were pathologically selfish, even when their own wretched lives depended on the survival of the clan. To watch them break camp, as he was regrettably forced to do now, was to watch the early throes of a civil war. Individuals wandered off in search of food or forage, abandoning the hard labour of dismantling the manskin shelters and beast pens to skavenslaves that had been eaten days ago. The slaves had been less valuable than the clan's surviving breedstock and were considerably more appetising. When a packmaster of sufficient wit and presence did manage to get a group moving in a set direction then it was in clumps rather than the neat marching files of the dead-things - ragged worm-tails of ratfolk and their pack beasts.

Krowl itched to be among them. He would make the indolent vermin move. But in his darkest heart he knew that it would be pointless. The clan's vermintrain had become such a chaotic sprawl, spanning several thousand tail-lengths of desert pan and disintegrating further each day that even he could not think to cajole them all. For all the mutant vitality of which he was rightly and properly proud, and for which the Fleshgifter had once shown him great affection, Krowl realised the need to pick his battles.

The Necros underworld was a cold and bloodless landscape, as dark as the skaven soul and as merciless. It was a place that hated life. Simply standing on its white sand and breathing its dead air was exhausting. What made it truly deadly, however, was the wind. It howled across the endless deserts from the broken spine of the Cadivaris to the south-east, blasting with the legion screams of the dead-things that swirled like a carrion aurora above its hunched peaks. It did not kill. It nibbled a rat, piecemeal. It sapped the will, even the most basic and vicious of wills - the skaven will to live - until not even the whip of the most brutal packmaster would make them walk. Krowl had done everything in his power to keep his hyper-metabolism burning, but even a skaven of his obscene vigour was not immune. When he moved his joints ached. When he ate his gums bled. His fur was no longer black but the squalid grey of ghoul-meat.

The Azghor of far-Gothizzar, secure in their brass citadels across the Straits of Odt, had a name for it: the nearest that the envoys of Clan Grench had come to a translation was 'Death by a Thousand Gnaw-Bites'.

Were a skaven to be forced, by necessity or peril, to venture into its teeth then he did so slathered in regenerative skalms, and encased in as many layers of protective gear as his supply of warptokens and his clan's alliances with the Clans Skryre could tender. Of course, those who could afford such due diligence did not venture abroad at all. They burrowed deep, prospered and propagated in the manner demanded of them by the Great Horned Rat, and forsook all but the most destitute and desperate to seek their fortunes in that hell.

Krowl raised his snout to the air, the wind pulling on whiskers that had become brittle and white.

'They move too slowly, Skraditch.' He turned from the sunrise to where the packmaster, who had thought he was moving stealthily, stood in a half-hunch between deference and surprise. Krowl gave a breathy titter, head cocked to indicate the quietly chittering sea of rats that trailed the things-master like his ever-hungry shadow. Their eyes glittered in the feeble light of the new day, the howls of the Thousand Gnaw-bites brushing furrows through their fur. 'They chitter when they are hungry.' He straightened, eyeing his chief packmaster with one lip curled over chipped fangs. 'They are quiet only when they sniff-scent meat.'

Skraditch took a step back.

Krowl's grin lingered a moment longer until the weight of it seemed too much to sustain.

'Make them hurry-scurry.'

'They would move better by night, things-master.'

'So do the dead.'

The packmaster lowered his snout in agreement, but made no move to go and do as he had been told. Skraditch was a close mouthed and brutish thing, which, as a packmaster of the Clans Moulder, marked him as entirely unexceptional. His scraggy, muscle-bound hide was riddled with scratches and bites, but then they had all resorted to chewing on their own tumours over the course of this march. He had never, even under the influence of potent soporifics, described himself as an artist, and no one of sane mind would ever say it of him. But there was a bite to his snarl that Krowl found amusing, the glint of a glare in a carefully averted gaze which said that while Skraditch was not killing anyone right now, he was thinking about killing something later.

Clan Grench did not need any artists now.

'You malinger, Skraditch.'

'Runscurriers and outsniffers return with the dawn.'

'And I hear of this now?'

'Clan is spread wide, O hulking one. It took them the full claw just to find me.'

'Some scent-sniff scouts they are.'

The packmaster opined nothing.

'Squeak then, Skraditch. What news do their noses bring?'

'Foothills of Cadivaris mountain-place are in their smelling. Less than a day's hurry-scurry, they say.'

'A day?'

'They say.'

Krowl turned east. It looked farther, the mountains little more than an ethereal-cloaked haze, but then skaven eyesight was poor, better suited to the cramped dinge of buried tunnels than the limitless, empty plains of the Necros underworld. He sniffed again, but caught no trace of the mountains.

'Did anyone catch their scent?'

Skraditch shrugged.

'We must assume that they were noticed. Clan Fetter has lairs in the mountain places, and they have more keen ears and trembling whiskers than you have brain-meat.' Lips peeling, Krowl wheezed at his jest. Skraditch stood with the same idiot placidity - eyes glazed, one lip turned out - that he always bore. Amusement slackened into a snarl. 'Fetch-find your fastest message rat. I hope-hope you have not yet eaten all of Muskretch's things.'

Skraditch shook his head. 'With what message will it scurry?'

Krowl bit his lip. He turned towards the sunrise, swallowing the blood that slowly welled in his mouth. If he had only been able to salvage just two rat ogors…

'Tell them that Clan Grench comes to prostrate itself upon their mercy.'

III

Clans Grench and Fetter had been neighbours for hundreds of generations. More centuries than the skaven mind had the patience to count, and so to all intents and purposes forever. The re-emergence of Nagash after the Age of Blood and the vengeance he then wrought on the traitorous minions of the Great (so-called) Four had left ample room for Chaos' more furtive, opportunistic offspring to settle and multiply. Clan Grench had burrowed its dominion from the desert underworld. Clan Fetter had chosen to build high.

Their tunnels bored through the rag-and-bone crags of the Cadivaris, each a pocket clandom stitched together by rickety bridges and the strength of Over-Clawlord Gribberweal's numberless stormvermin hordes. Bone-frame gibbets in the form of the Horned Rat's unholy sigil, the one common emblem upon which the fractious masses of skaven could agree, dotted the range to mark out its borders. Every so often some ambitious clawlord would move those posts a few tail-lengths forward. Just as frequently, the same clawlord would resolve to dispatch black-cloaked agents to move the markers surreptitiously back. Cylindrical chimes cast from a foul alloy of warpstone and brass and looking, from afar, like the bodies of hanging ratmen, swung from the emblems' horizontal spurs. It was no natural wind that moved them, because these were the Cadivaris and there was no natural wind. Rather, it was the touch and movement of the dead, and so they sang always, for dead-things were lower even than the rats, and even rats would eventually learn to fear the whip and avoid it. But not the dead.

Grench and Fetter had been the closest of allies.

Grench and Fetter had been the bitterest of blood enemies.

Always they had schemed for eminence, and always had both sides seen this as good and right, for they were all Children of the Horned Rat and it could have been no other way.

Krowl knew the character of Clan Fetter well, as well as he knew that of his own. Better perhaps, because not even the cleverest of skaven could be trusted as a proper judge of his own.

Their wealth was in minerals and in metals, as well as slaves, the trade in which had continued to fill Clan Grench's labour mills and feeding vats even during their flurries of open warfare. Their clawleaders took titles like pickmaster, tunnelseer and underscrabbler, and knew the Great Horned Rat as 'He Who Burrows Between the Worlds'. Their anarchic traditions imbued the act of moving earth from place to place with a degree of seriousness that would have been amusing were they not themselves so menacingly severe. Where other skaven acted out of impulse, they were shrewd. Where others bit or snapped at a passing rat that aggrieved them, they clutched their resentments tight and to all appearances delighted in their possession. Most skaven, with the noted exception of the muskless Eshinclan, were simple to read, but the skaven of Clan Fetter were a stolid lot. They did not squeak unless squeaked to, showed excitement only when discussing the finer details of digging, and could be amused only by the suffering or ignominy of others.

At that moment, Under-Clawlord Thiskrule of Clan Fetter was grinning so broadly that Krowl thought his fangs might come loose from his gums.

'Hehehehe. I like this story, things-master. I knew that it was clever-smart to not kill-flay your farscurriers as soon as they set paw in my lair-place. Hehehehehe, now I know why.' His stormvermin, black-furred goons in steel plate, tittered loyally. 'Squeak-tell again how the Skryreclan drove you from your burrows. Hehehehehe.'

'Claw-dig the mud from your good ear,' Krowl hissed. 'You heard well enough the first time.'

The under-clawlord stamped his foot paw, and as though he had just dropped a stack of fine crockery all of his lackeys abruptly stopped laughing.

As one master looking on the work of another, Krowl could not help but be impressed by their obedience.

'I would hear it again. If you want-seek the mercy of my clan, the warm musk of your beloved brother skaven, then you will tell it as I squeak-say.' He waited then, expectant before exploding into gleeful titters. The stormvermin joined in, hesitantly at first, lest he stop as abruptly as he had the last time, elbowing their more slow-witted comrades into showing willing.

He shuffled towards Krowl until he was a tail-length away, the accepted distance for dealings between allies unless one meant to plunge a weapon into the chest of the other. Clearly, Thiskrule was as yet undecided whether or not that was what he meant to do. Claws chipped from burrowing wriggled like headless worms over the short handle of the war-pick that hung by a loop of leather from his greaves. Amusement at Krowl's plight had, at least, bought the things-master a fair hearing.

Krowl lowered his snout from the submissive, bared-throat posture of the supplicant and sniffed. The under-clawlord smelled of coal. Of dead-things waiting to be burned. They all did. The skaven of Clan Fetter were in the habit of rubbing their bodies with it, believing that the black colouration would cause the gaze of Nagash to miss them against the dourness of his realm. Even the naturally black-furred stormvermin were fastidious about rubbing down the pink flesh of paws, snouts and tails. It might very well help the God of Death to overlook them, but the reek of it stung the flesh from Krowl's nostrils.

'I tell you again, Thiskrule. If that is what it takes. I tell you once more.' He took a deep breath, glaring at the rats that slunk over the surrounding plinths of rock, fur bristling in the deathly breath of the Thousand Gnaw-bites. 'The vilest of treacheries it was. The blackest of outrages. An act of cowardice not seen since Maelish the Nine-Faced turned on our forebears in the Age of Blood.'

Although they had listened through this tale once now already, the stormvermin nevertheless nodded, for unprovoked attacks and stabbings in the back were regarded most favourably by the Great Horned Rat. As evidenced by the fact that the rat doing the stabbing tended to be the one who scurried away afterwards.

'From afar they shot dead my sentry rats, set warpfires to foul my warriors' noses, released poison wind into my tunnels, and then sent black-fur warriors in metal armour and breathing masks to kill-slay those who still lived.' His voice lowered, emerging now through gritted fangs. 'Seeing all was lost I threw open the cages. I filled the warrens of the Deathspittle with crazed rat ogors and mutant spawnflesh.' His lips twitched, the memory of that unholy carnage - the briefest of sniffs of the Fleshgifter's verminable apocalypse - giving him a moment of pleasure. 'But poison wind claimed them. And warpfire. And ratling guns. And warp lightning. While they died, we run-scurried.' He turned, not taking his eyes from Thiskrule and his henchrats for a second, and gestured at the motley bag of semi-upright, fur-wearing cadavers that had made it across the desert to the dubious sanctuary of Clan Fetter. 'All that is left of Clan Grench is here.'

'It pleases me that in your most desperate hour you think of me, things-master. Even in your plight you would bring all these slaves to me.' Thiskrule lifted his snout, raised one claw, and performed a theatrical tail-count of the ragtag claw-packs behind Krowl. 'But they do not smell healthy to me, friend-meat. The Thousand Gnaw-bites have been at them. How many nights in my mines will they last, do you think?'

'I am not here to sell my clan. I am here for your claw-help.'

'Why would I fight-scratch with your enemies?'

'Because I did not think you were stupid.'

Thiskrule preened, apparently under the impression he had been complimented, and waved a claw for Krowl to continue.

'Clan Grench and the Deathspittle is the beginning. You know this, Thiskrule. The over-clawlord knows this. The favour of the Clans Skryre rise as those of Moulder and Verminus fall. They scurry high on our backs, and they will scurry higher until together we reach up and pull them back down.'

'Clan Fetter is strong.'

'Clan Grench was strong.'

The under-clawlord snorted, but did not dispute it. His was the clan, after all, that had warred off and on against Clan Grench since before the great march of the dead. Clan Zappitch had conquered them in a single night of warpfire.

The balance of power in skavendom teetered on the back of a wheel. All knew this. It turned. Fortunes rose. Fortunes fell. Mere skaven existed to be crushed under its turning, meal for the trillions of hungry maws of He Who Is Without Number. But the wheel was ramshackle. It did not always turn fairly. Sometimes it got stuck. Sometimes it broke. Now, the Skryre and Pestilens clans vied with one another for outright supremacy of the Council of Thirteen. Their struggles had wiped out entire clans and forced countless more into submission. Some chittered that the two dominant clans now possessed more than two-thirds of the seats in the Masterburrow between them, enough to drive all skavendom into a second Great Civil War if the three weaker clans did not unite against them.

'They will come for you, Thiskrule. They take my workshops, my mills, my cages. Soon enough they will want too your metals and your precious stones. They will want your mines, and your warriors as slaves to work them. You know this.'

Thiskrule glanced over his shoulder at the now stolidly attentive stormvermin. Krowl guessed that the under-clawlord knew full well that this was a fight he was going to have to have sooner or later, but that it was also one he did not want to be seen having sooner unless it was on his own terms.

'Of course,' said Krowl, 'mighty Clan Grench does not come to you as beggars. We do not ask after the famous warmth of your giving and brotherly hearts. A trade, we propose. We take. You take. All take.'

Thiskrule brightened slightly.

'A trade?'

'The wealth of the Clans Moulder is not in land or things.' Krowl tapped on the side of his head with a claw. 'It is in here. But…' He gestured back to the scruffy pack of clanrats and packmasters strewn, exhausted over the mountainside. 'All my best and most big creatures are gone. I must restock, and then I can rebuild. Far from here or near, it does not matter. Tell me where to go and I will go there. I will not care. In exchange for your help I offer exclusive contract with Clan Fetter. No. With you. The first ten rat ogors go to you, and every tenth thereafter. The first hundred giant rats go to you, and twenty of every hundred after.'

Thiskrule frowned in thought. It was a generous offer. So generous in fact that Thiskrule was probably thinking the same thing that Krowl was thinking: that the things-master would very quickly come to rue it and be forced to find some excuse to wriggle out of it. But that was a problem for much further down the tunnel. It was far too generous an offer to reject out of paw.

'What do you want-need from me?' he said.

Krowl bobbed his head. 'Yes, Thiskrule. Yes. You are clever-smart. Giant rats, I can breed. Easy-meat. And mutant spawn too are easy.' Ask any experienced packmaster and they would likely shiver and say too easy. 'But rat ogors are what everyone craves. Even an Eshinclan deathmaster will pay his own rat-weight in warptokens for an impressive rat ogor to command. But rat ogors are difficult. They need…' He cocked his head and spread his paws, as if in apology. 'Rare ingredients. One in particular is especially dangerous to obtain.'

'What is this ingredient?'

'Ogors.'

Thiskrule blinked, looking around as though this might be a joke that Krowl had been put up to by his lumpishly nonplussed minions.

'Ogors?'

'Where do you think rat ogors come from?'

'From… rat ogors?'

'Yes-yes! Clever Thiskrule.'

The under-clawlord's lips twitched in an uncertain smile.

'But I have no rat ogors. I must make more. To create new broodlines from scratch is great task. It takes time. Lots-lots work, and lots-many subjects. Most will not survive the fusion with the rat, or the cocktails that make it possible.'

To most outsiders, a rat ogor was a rat ogor, a giant rat was a giant rat. But every Moulder clan defined itself by, and was fiercely protective of, its signature breeds. Those belonging to old and powerful clans like Clan Dregg were thousands of years old, while innumerable offshoot clans had borrowed and pilfered and bred in as many innovations and variations as there were body parts to the Writhing Broodsire. The clans cherished their champion breeders, afforded them every comfort, treated them like visiting Masterclan (or better, in fact, as the spiking of their feedstuffs only ever accidentally resulted in death), and held their precious stocks in lead cages, in locked burrows deep within the most secret bowels of their innermost holdings. This, more than any loss of pride or territory, was what wounded Krowl the deepest. At the same time however, there was a flutter of excitement in his belly that had not departed since he had left the Thousand Gnaw-bites behind him. A chance to start again from nothing, to craft something freakish and obscene, some wondrous abnormality of nature that would be as new to the taste buds of the Great Horned Rat as it was to the imaginings of Things-Master Krowl.

Yes. He did like that.

'You want me to bring you ogors?' Thiskrule said again.

'Many firebelly tribes cross the Cadivaris through your mines. I know this. They are the only hot places in all this underworld. I want-need only two. A breeding pair. The rest I can make after for myself.'

Thiskrule fidgeted. He muttered into his whiskers.

'What was that? Squeak louder.'

'I said that my warriors are no longer allowed to enter my mine-holdings. Over-Clawlord Gribberweal, in his great wisdom, leases my mines and my slaveworkers to Clan Zappitch.'

'What?'

'You are right. I am not stupid-meat. I see how Clan Zappitch strips my wealth and weakens my clan. But nor is the over-clawlord.' This he declared loudly, in case any disloyal ears should be listening. 'He seeks only to appease the Skryreclan until we are strong enough to fight them.'

'Until they finish picking through the ashes of Deathspittle and bring all their warriors here.'

'My paws are tied. I cannot cast out Clan Zappitch without support of other under-clawlords, and there is no tunnel to the firebelly tribes that does not now go through the Skryreclan.'

Krowl frowned, thinking.

'There cannot be many here, not with the force sent against Clan Grench.'

'There is not,' said Thiskrule. 'A pawful of slavemasters and engineers. The workers are still those they barter from.'

'Then what if some manner of… mining accident were to befall them?'

'What kind of accident?'

Krowl grinned. 'The unfortunate kind.'

IV

Despite their reputation as great burrowers, Clan Fetter's mine workings were predominantly open-cast, great pits opened up with the liberal employment of high explosives, the claws of their slaveworkers relegated to the afterwork of sifting through what little was left. Secondary explosions were commonplace occurrences. Sometimes these were planned. Sometimes they weren't. To the thousands of ratmen who toiled night after night in those pits there was no obvious way to tell which was which. Thiskrule had assured Krowl repeatedly that there were to be no blastings in this section of pit today, but when unexploded charges littered the entire warren, about as common as scrap metal, then Krowl felt prudence to be more than justified, and was content to be well back just the same.

The spot he had chosen was well removed from the body pit, behind the upper lip where excavation spoil had been mounded up into heaps, providing both an unimpeded view and protection against any unfortunate explosions. A handful of larger rats roamed more brazenly than their upright cousins, digging amidst the scree, occasionally pulling up an old bone, a bit of discarded leather or ancient wood to gnaw on. Their chittering echoed around the great bowl of the pit. Krowl considered silencing them before deciding that he would not be able to even if he could be bothered to try. And besides, the rats were the blessings of the Fleshgifter: who was he to tell them where and how they were to breed and devour in his unwholesome name?

If all things went to plan then a little noise here would not matter either way.

'It is hot in here,' Skraditch complained, the first words he had committed since sunset.

It was full night now, a sickle moon gleaming behind a rack of clouds. Within the well-defended holdings of Clan Fetter they were safe from the dead, at least, the distant clangour of the chimes reminding them always of the starveling revenants at their borders. But warmth in Necros bore little relation to the presence or otherwise of Shyish's corpse-sun. Heat oozed from the rocks like a wound that wouldn't staunch. Fever hot. Raving its death-madness hot. The air had soaked in it. Every breath was a mouthful that had to be swallowed whole, a rank-tasting swill of atmosphere that had festered too long in the odours of brimstone and blood.

Skraditch was right then. It was hot. The firebellies roamed through a hundred pits just like this one, all of them hot going more-or-less unmolested as they migrated in relatively predictable patterns that followed the sources of food and heat. The old, the lame and the terrifically stupid might occasionally become prey for a sufficiently hungry pack of skaven slaveworkers, but otherwise they were considered a natural hazard best avoided, no different to the rockslides, cave-ins, zealous mineseers and accidental detonations that were endemic to their miserable existences. It would need to get a lot hotter if they were going to lure enough of the firebellies here to make Krowl's plan work.

The plan then was this.

Thiskrule had exploited what was left of his authority amongst the slaveworkers, blastmasters and mineseers of these mines to select a pit that was central enough to be worth the exercise, but out of the way enough for it to plausibly go unworked for an hour or two. Thiskrule had promised that this would be so, and in that at least the under-clawlord seemed to have been as good as his word. Krowl had yet to see anyone but his own warriors. Thiskrule's own engineers had then entered. Skulking through the rusted spiders of machinery as though feeling the watching Moulder clan's hungry eyes on their shoulders, they had buried an impressively large cache of explosives. They had supposedly hidden it afterwards. Krowl said supposedly because he was not prepared to call haphazardly stacking a few boards over the top hiding. But the things-master was too jittery to quibble, and the engineers' desire to leave was perhaps wholly understandable when viewed in the context of their comrades liberally dousing the entire area with rat grease.

Krowl had watched them do it.

So far, so trustworthy.

When those charges went off it would be with a blast that would be sure to lure in every firebelly in Clan Fetter's dominion, and woe betide the warlock engineer who got in their way. And while the firebellies ate themselves silly, Krowl and his more trustworthy packmasters would be there to take their pick of the stragglers.

Skraditch had the detonator. It was a bronze tube about the size of a sword's grip. A bunch of chewed-out copper wiring splayed from one end like the pulled roots of a weed. At the other end was a ball-handled lever. The mechanism of its operation was simple enough to figure out. Even a simpleton like Skraditch seemed to have got it. The packmaster gripped the device with altogether too demented a glee for Krowl's comfort. The things-master would have taken it off him by now, but he honestly feared what might happen if he tried to pry it out of Skraditch's claws.

That was a worry, but it was far from the only one. The faith that this plan required him to place in Thiskrule's loyalties was another. He would have preferred to keep the under-clawlord firmly between his whiskers, but it could not be helped. Thiskrule's clanrats were occupied encircling the warren, requiring his direct oversight lest lazy warriors become careless ones, ready to move should any of Clan Zappitch's warriors attempt to flee rather than be trampled by a stampede of ogor firebellies. No Clans Verminus host in the Mortal Realms was small enough to move unnoticed, Krowl would just have to do his best to like it.

A loose, metallic rattle sounded from one of the access tunnels and Krowl ducked behind the spoil heap. He sniffed the air. It sounded like one, no, two of Clan Fetter's mine carts being driven in on their rusty, ill-set iron rails. He stayed down.

'Someone comes.'

'Smells like slave-meat,' said Skraditch, chewing on something that Krowl took to be one of Thiskrule's slaves: a down payment on future arrangements.

'This pit is meant to be unworked. Thiskrule promised.'

'Maybe he lied. Maybe he incompetent.'

'Maybe both. Or maybe the mineseer had a dream from the Horned Rat that he would find gravesand if he digs in this pit today.'

Krowl listened, a gaggle of skavenslaves emerged from the tunnel pushing the ramshackle little carts with their iron heels. He risked a look, peeking over the rubble. He numbered them at about thirty or forty, but it was difficult to be certain over this distance, and almost impossible to perform an accurate tail-count by smell and sound alone. He saw the carts. They were full, bulging, presumably with mining equipment, but their contents were covered by a pair of manskin sheets.

'Do I throw the switch?' said Skraditch.

'We were to wait for dawn. Thiskrule's warriors will not yet be in place.'

'If I do not push now then some fool-meat mine-slave will discover the bombs.'

Krowl ground his fangs.

'Throw the switch.'

The packmaster looked giddy. Licking his lips, he gripped the bronze cylinder tightly and pulled the detonator lever.

He looked up, excitedly.

They all did.

Skraditch shook the detonator. He turned it upside down, then back again, then pulled the lever each way twice more. Nothing happened.

Krowl watched, meanwhile, with increasing concern as the slaves below drew the sheets from the mine carts and began setting up some kind of machinery. Something long and straight, a miniature pumpjack perhaps, but held across the shoulders of two skavenslaves. They were setting up a lot of them. He clambered a little higher up the spoil heap until his head was fully exposed in order to get a better look. He squinted down.

'I can't quite—'

The shell missed him by a whisker, exploding in the rock pile and peppering his undersnout and chest with shrapnel. He closed his eyes and averted his sensitive nose with a snarl.

'Warplock jezzails!' yelled Skraditch.

Krowl unlooped his herding whip and drew his off-paw weapon, a heavy warpstone-studded bone club designed for breaking rat ogors' skulls.

'We are betrayed,' Skraditch hissed, head down as shells hammered the other side of the spoil heap. 'We should run, while we still have a clan to run behind us.'

But Krowl wasn't listening. His mad charge had already carried him too far down the pit wall for him to hear.

V

His heels kicked up a cloud of gravel and scree from the slope, surfing down the pit wall on the back of a rockslide as whip-crack shots burst around him. The long-barrelled, two-rat jezzails were all heavily modified with telescopic sights and targeting scopes, complicated arrays of dials and lenses, everything that the feverish invention of the skaven mind could come up with to throw at the problem of their sharpshooters' congenital myopia. But the dust thrown up by his descent spoiled all of it. The sharpest eye in all of skavendom could not have drawn a bead on a rat ogor charging down that slope.

A buzzing green shell the size of a corn kernel whizzed over his shoulder and exploded behind him as he and half a ton of rock slid to the pit floor, a chalk-white pall rolling in behind him like an out-of-control doomwheel. He coughed, tracking his attacker by the emerald glare of his shooter's goggles, and then cracked his whip across the half-hidden ratman's face. The sniper went down. Krowl rounded on the gunner's partner. The ratman was crouched in front of where the gunner had been standing, wielding a huge wooden pavise. He squealed in terror as Krowl's cudgel smashed through the thick but lousy wood. The things-master's muscles bulged as he wrenched the weapon free. The rest of the shield crumbled away, the skaven behind left clinging on to leather straps and a fast-diminishing hope in the Great Horned Rat as his personal saviour. A powerful uppercut demolished the skaven's jaw and prematurely ended his prayers.

Panting with the insane rush of the charge, Krowl forced himself to stop and sniff around.

Clanrats and packmasters in the sour brown hues of Clan Grench surged downslope, braying like beastmen, falling on the Skryreclan warriors like animals consumed by the Black Hunger. He could see none of it. White dust and chemical fog obscured everything. It was all movement and noise. A muffled squeak. An abortive clang. A flicker of warp lightning. A shriek of terror abruptly curtailed by the crack of a whip.

Whatever the Skryreclan had been told regarding this ambush, it was obvious they had been expecting easier meat or they would have brought more warriors and bigger guns. Thiskrule's doing, he was sure. Underplaying Clan Grench's numbers in order to get the warlocks to bite, just as he had downplayed Clan Zappitch's strength to him.

A hissing canister dropped out of the pall and landed at Krowl's footpaws. It skittered around on the ground like a rat denied a lick of warpstone. He kicked it back into the murk whereupon it exploded half a second later, hurling a pair of packmasters high into the air. A pattering of hot debris rained out. A piece of it landed on Krowl's nose and ignited the fur. He patted it down and hissed. The pit was a veritable powder keg, so thoroughly doused in oil that all it would take to blow them all to the belly of the Great Horned Rat was one wayward spark. Undesirable, definitely, but did he not feel a quiver of excitement at the prospect just the same? To become meat for the chittering rapture of the vermintide: could any skaven wish for an ending more gloriously profane than that?

A pair of infernal, green-lensed eyes burned through the murk, the shadow outline of a metal helmet forming subsequently around it. Beneath, lit from above by its own glowing eyes, was a hunched skaven body, swaddled in heavy fire-retardant rags. With a snarl, the warlock bombardier allowed the mortar-like weapon he had been holding to drop into the leather carry-strap about his neck. With the now-free paw, he drew a black pole from a sleeve on his back. A cord dangled from the tip. The warlock twizzled the pole through a display no doubt intended to cow and impress, embellishing and ad-libbing as his excitement grew, switching from paw to paw, and giggling maniacally as he finally pulled on the cord. A claw-length blade of green-tinged flame burst from the tip of the pole, the colours melting across his dully reflective harness and for the first time illuminating the vulturine figure fully.

Krowl cracked his whip across the warlock's snout. The ratman's head snapped back, though his helmet protected him from all but the shock of it. With a flick of the wrist the things-master recalled the whip, snapping the trailing fall around the warlock's fire pole and yanking it from his paws. Krowl caught the stick as it flew towards him. He sniffed at it. Its fire tip was still lit. Insofar as he could smell there was no way to switch it off.

'Put down the fire-stick, things-master.'

Thiskrule stalked from the pall, pick in paw, helmeted and clad in steel plate, plastered from nose to tail in white dust. Two of his biggest stormvermin flanked him.

'You are a fool to cast in your lot with the Skryreclan,' said Krowl.

'I am not stupid-meat. I see which way the rat is running.'

'It runs to the doom of all.'

'You are surrounded, Moulder-thing. Your clan is dead-meat. Surrender now and I will find use for you somewhere other than the mines.'

Krowl snarled. He turned to look at the furious warlock. He looked down at the sputtering fire-stick in his paw. Then he turned, as if by the goads of the Writhing Broodsire, towards the spot in the not-so-distant murk where a haphazard stack of wooden planking concealed a shallow hole in the ground.

He had watched Thiskrule's engineers fill it.

'So far, so trustworthy.'

'What?' said Thiskrule.

'Your fur is white now.' Thiskrule looked down his snout at his dust-coated breastplate. 'The Death God sees you.' The under-clawlord looked up again, his expression baffled. 'He can fight the Broodsire for his meat.'

And he threw the fire-stick.

VI

He could hear a ringing. Krowl's first thought was that it was coming from inside his head, but then he recognised the dolorous cadence of Clan Fetter's boundary chimes, a fearsome migraine writ in corrupted brass as they repelled a sudden onslaught of the furious dead. But something near to him was breathing. Krowl could hear it. A slurping of air, as though it were being drawn through a straw of meat. It was followed by a crunch, bone and uncooked flesh being ground between flat, omnivorous teeth. Without otherwise shifting his crisped, flame-stricken body, Krowl painfully peeled open one eye.

The ogor that bent over him was twice his height and fully ten times his weight. The monster's gut sagged over its solitary article of clothing, a ragged loincloth which Krowl noticed had been stitched together from several skaven hides. As he watched, it stuffed what looked like the upper body of a warlock bombardier into its jowly face, simplistic flame-pattern tattoos swirling up and down as it chewed. The warlock's protective clothing was still merrily ablaze, and remained so even as the firebelly chewed the dead ratman down. Warpfire clung to the brute's fingers. It licked the fire off, the way Krowl would lick blood and grease from his paws, and then belched a gout of rancid-smelling flame. Patting its hugely muscled belly, the ogor then barked something triumphant in brutish pidgin.

This monster, Krowl gathered, had consumed the fieriest substance today: by such crude acts of devotion did the firebellies determine status.

Although his lips were so severely burned that he could not move them without bits of them flaking away, Krowl grinned with a triumph of his own. The Fleshgifter had seen his sacrifice and feasted well on it. This ogor was plainly strong amongst its kind. It would sire mighty offspring, imbued with the blind rage of Aqshy, ready to be moulded by the twisting hand of Ruin. What ferocious rat ogors he would make!

As brittle as a skeleton stirring itself from the ash of its own funerary pyre, he slowly crawled out from under the gaze of the gorging firebelly. Every movement was a special and delicate source of torture. His body's feverish, warpstone-fuelled metabolism worked to knit him back together, to lay down new muscle and to cover burnt skin, even as he painfully undid it all in his haste. The ogor emitted a string of bestial grunts and Krowl froze, one arm tensed beneath him, the other outstretched, both simmering in agony. His belly grumbled, and then so too did the ogor's, coming so briefly apart that Krowl could not believe they were not somehow aware of each other's presence. Urgent barks and the meat-thud reports of brawling echoed from deeper into the pit and with the awful sound of a physique both morbidly obese and hard with muscle, the firebelly turned that way. The brute yelled something obscene, and then stomped towards the distant sounds.

Krowl almost giggled in relief as the imminent danger moved away. Swivelling his ears to keep the ogor fixed in his hearing lest it return, he crawled at a redoubled pace. The shaft of some manner of pole weapon lay on the ground. He brushed away the grit that covered it. A thing-catcher. Perfect. Of his own weaponry, Krowl could only assume it had gone the way of his armour and clothing, blasted out of his paws by the proximity of the explosion, or else cooked into his skin, toughening his hide even now as regenerating flesh grew through iron and leather. He reached out for the pole and pulled. It refused to come. He pulled again, a bared-snarl tug that moved enough of the char-heap around the weapon to unearth the paw that still gripped it. Krowl yelped as it pulled back. He clamped his jaw shut and pulled harder, slowly drawing an arm, then a shoulder, then a packmaster's snarling muzzle from the heap.

'Skraditch?'

'Let go,' the packmaster hissed.

His eyes were seared white with blindness, his whiskers burnt from his snout, the flesh of which had set in a discomforting whorl. He gave no sign that he recognised the skaven he spoke to, or even that he knew where he was at all.

'You let go.'

'I hear the bells toll, things-master. Everyone is dead!'

'I still live-breathe.'

Krowl crawled forwards until he and the half-buried packmaster were belly to belly. They struggled over the thing-catcher.

'Mine!' Skraditch squealed.

'Shhhhh. You will draw the firebellies.'

'We could have endured if we had just fled. Run and hid. But you bled us. And bled us. Clan Zappitch did not kill us. You did! Now there is nothing but blood and rags.'

Slowly, inexorably, his muscles thickening and hardening even as the strength of Skraditch's burnt limbs failed him, Krowl gained the upper hand. Withdrawing one paw from the thing-catcher, Krowl pushed back Skraditch's muzzle, forcing the packmaster's head away and squeezing his jaws closed. He bit through Skraditch's forearm, just above the wrist, stifling the packmaster's howls, and then snapped his neck with a sharp twist of the wrist.

Exhausted, ravenous, breathing heavily from the exertions of the day, Krowl stood, hefting the heavy thing-catcher across both paws. He triggered the activation mechanism, testing that the spring-locks would deploy as they were supposed to.

They did.

With a stiff grin, Krowl wobbled towards the raucous commotion of the feasting firebellies.

He bad everything he had ever needed right here in his paws.

TOWER OF SECRETS

GRAEME LYON

'The master will see you now.'

Jaqlyn Kouslo stood and stretched. She had been sitting in an uncomfortable chair for too long. She took one last look around the small parlour in which they had waited, taking in the overstuffed chairs, the ornately decorated tables covered with arcane contraptions, and the esoteric runes that were carved into the walls in subtle, snaking patterns. It reminded her of home, in a way.

She looked to her companion, and he nodded for her to take the lead. Thorri was always uncomfortable in such surroundings, drawn more towards functional stone and metal. He had barely stayed still for the hour or more they had been kept waiting, instead pacing the room, examining the instruments and taking notes in one of the many small journals he carried with him.

'He doesn't like to be kept waiting,' said the tall woman in the doorway. Thorri spluttered, and Jaqlyn replied before the duardin could say something impolite about the irony.

'Our apologies. Please lead the way.'

The woman, clad in ornately decorated armour of blue and purple, inclined her head and strode away. Jaqlyn followed, casting a reproachful look at Thorri, who shrugged.

The woman led them from the parlour back into an expansive entrance hall and up a marble staircase, the banisters decorated with stylised renditions of the zodiacal godbeasts from the legends of Ghur and the other realms. At the top, they passed through a door and down a series of wide corridors decorated in rich colours with tapestries on the walls showing scenes of ancient heroes performing great deeds.

'Your master enjoys the myths of the realms?' Jaqlyn asked.

'It is one of his areas of interest,' the woman replied, stopping and pushing on a section of wall, which slid aside silently to reveal a hidden door. 'He believes that in the tales of the past we can find the truths of the future.'

'Good duardin thinking, that,' muttered Thorri. 'Learn from your ancestors.'

'Precisely, Thorri Steelfist,' said a thin, reedy voice from beyond the doorway. 'Your people preserve their past in a way that many other civilisations have failed to. I have never had the pleasure of visiting one of the fabled Dispossessed holds in Azyr. I imagine I could learn much from them.'

Thorri said nothing. Jaqlyn knew little about his past and where he came from, but she'd learned enough in the months of their partnership that she didn't think he hailed from the Celestial Realm. In fact, she'd come to suspect that, like her he originally came from Chamon, and that his people were the famed Kharadron Overlords, though she'd never dared ask him.

'Come in, my friends. My, my, Jaqlyn Kouslo and Thorri Steelfist in the flesh. What an honour. Your reputation precedes you.'

'And what reputation is that?' Jaqlyn asked, stepping into a chamber that set her magical senses tingling. A long table stood before her, littered with half-burned candles that dripped wax onto piles of books and scrolls. Beyond the light from the candles, the room was dark, but she could just make out a figure. 'Your… associate here was vague on what you want of us.'

'Ah, yes, I asked Karemma to be discreet. The nature of the task I wish you to undertake must remain secret, for reasons that shall be obvious soon.'

Thorri followed Jaqlyn through the doorway, and a device tied to his belt with a frayed rope began to clang. He slammed it against his leg until it stopped.

'Sorry,' he said. 'It goes off in the presence of concentrated magic.'

'A useful warning tool,' said Karemma's master. Jaqlyn squinted to try and make him out, but he remained swathed in shadow. 'But you have nothing to fear from me. I doubt I could hurt you if I tried. To answer your question, Magister Kouslo, your reputation is that of those experienced with the mystical and able to deal with threats of a, shall we say, less-than-living nature.'

'You've got an undead problem?' asked Thorri bluntly.

'To get to the point, yes,' the figure replied.

'Point us at them,' Thorri said, grinning.

'They are not here, friend duardin. Which is why I am. As I'm sure you are aware, some time ago there was a significant magical disturbance across the realms, centred on Shyish.'

'The Necroquake,' Jaqlyn said. Memories flashed through her mind of that night, of Tantalum ablaze, the dead all around…

'That is not a name I'd heard, but yes, appropriate,' the figure said, drawing Jaqlyn back from the dark memories. 'On the night it happened, I was in my tower, out on the Plains of Thirio. The wave of magic shattered the wards, and before I knew it, an army of the dead were inside. Were it not for Karemma, I would be dead. As it is, I was badly injured, and left behind something very important to me.'

The shrouded figure stepped forward. He was slight in stature and hunched with age. A stout cane was clutched in one gnarled hand. Jaqlyn suppressed a gasp as his face came into the flickering candlelight.

'By Grungni's beard,' Thorri breathed. 'What happened to you?'

Jaqlyn cursed the duardin's lack of tact, but the figure answered matter-of-factly.

'In the escape from the tower, I was touched by one of the spectral beings that invaded my sanctum,' he said. 'As you can see, it has left a mark upon me.'

The left side of the man's face was marked with a livid handprint, the flesh even more withered and shrunken than the rest of him.

'The bitter irony is that had I taken the artefact I need you to retrieve, the phantom could never have touched my flesh. It is a crown, you see, one imbued with certain properties that bring me greater power and vigour. Without it my strength is slowly ebbing away, and my magical abilities are weakened. Without it, I am diminished, and more than that, I miss it. I need your help.'

'One question,' Thorri said, and their would-be employer nodded. 'How much are ye paying?'

The proffered fee was more than satisfactory, and so Jaqlyn and Thorri agreed to the job. The wizard - whose name they discovered, was Malgorius - sent Karemma, his warrior servant, with them. Her task was to lead them to his tower in the expansive Thirion plains, and to provide support of a more physical nature. She was an expert swordswoman, experienced in fighting the dead, he said, and could deal with creatures such as skeletons and deadwalkers while Jaqlyn and Thorri used their talents to defeat spectral enemies and overrule any of the towers remaining magical traps.

The journey took slightly more than a week, the small party crossing the empty plains by day when the beasts of Ghur rested in their lairs. By night, Jaqlyn cast subtle enchantments to protect them, and Karemma was ever watchful, twin blades at the ready. And so, as night fell on the ninth day of their travels, they approached what Karemma called the Tùr Dìomhaireachd, which apparently translated as the 'Tower of Secrets'.

'Bit of a pretentious name,' Thorri grumbled to Jaqlyn as they gazed at the tower, silhouetted against the dying amber light of Ghur's sun.

'Well, that's us wizards for you,' Jaqlyn said distractedly. 'Back in Tantalum, the magisters named their towers all sorts of things you'd no doubt laugh at.' She was studying the structure, trying to match it up with the description of the interior Karemma had given them during the journey. The swordswoman had gone ahead to check the perimeter for enemies. At length, she returned, gesturing to Jaqlyn and Thorri to join her.

As they moved forward, Jaqlyn felt a change in the magical energies surrounding her, as though she had crossed an invisible barrier.

'Do ye hear that?' muttered Thorri.

She did. Where just moments before there had been nothing but the ambient sounds of the plains at night, now there was… nothing. Just an eerie silence. No birds sang their last serenades of the day. No beasts gave warning that as darkness fell their hunts would begin. No wind howled. All was still. As quiet as the grave.

The trio approached the simple wooden doorway that served as the tower's entrance. Jaqlyn held her hand to the stone around it, probing the structure for magical traps. 'This is curious,' she said.

'What's that?' Thorri asked.

She opened herself up more to the magic of the tower, visualising it as a great weave of threads. This was her unique perception of the magical energies that infused the Mortal Realms. She had never encountered another wizard who saw it the same way.

'I'm finding more of a barrier than I'd expect given the way the wards broke,' she replied. 'It's not quite intact, but the threads are not as tattered as they should be.'

'What does that mean?'

Thorri's understanding of magic was very different from Jaqlyn's. He had no natural perception of it, instead relying on duardin runic ingenuity and mechanical devices to gain a view of the aetheric world.

'Imagine a wall,' Jaqlyn said.

'Not hard,' Thorri said sourly, rapping the knuckles of his artificial metal arm against the tower.

'Imagine that the magic is the mortar holding the stones together and that the power of the Necroquake loosened that mortar.'

'Stones would fall and the whole thing would become unstable.'

'Exactly. And that has happened. But not as much as I'd expected. Not enough to make it topple.'

'What does that mean for what we shall find in there?'

Jaqlyn turned to see Karemma staring at her curiously, hand on the pommel of one of the long, curved swords she wore at her waist.

'I don't know,' Jaqlyn said. 'If the wards had broken as badly as I thought, I'd expect to find the tower heavily occupied, with the dead leeching off the magic to sustain them. Like this… they should be enough that the worst of it was kept out.'

'Then let's get in there and get the master's crown,' Karemma said, striding past Jaqlyn and pulling open the door, which squealed on unoiled hinges, breaking the silence. Thorri cursed at the sound, and Jaqlyn gave him a sympathetic look. He was clearly on edge, as was she. She didn't share the swordswoman's nonchalance. They were about to walk into darkness and danger, and the thought of the horrors they might find inside chilled her blood. With a heavy heart, Jaqlyn eased her sword from its scabbard and followed the warrior into the darkness. Behind her, Thorri pulled two pistols from their holsters and did likewise.

Inside the tower was as still and quiet as outside. A foul stench filled Jaqlyn's nose and throat as Karemma led them through the ground floor and onto the first level above. It smelled like death, old and rank. It was the smell Jaqlyn associated with tombs. Their surroundings were unsettling. Torn tapestries and bloodstained paintings on the walls depicted grotesque scenes of slaughter.

'What d'you think was on those pedestals?' Jaqlyn asked, pointing to a series of empty plinths along the wall of a dust-shrouded corridor.

'This is a dark place, Jaqlyn,' Thorri said after a moment. 'Whatever Malgorius was doing here, I don't think it was pleasant. And I think those are meant to display something unpleasant. I don't like it here at all. I can't sense magic like you, but I can feel the evil of this tower.'

Jaqlyn couldn't help but agree.

They moved up the tower with slow precision, cautious not to trigger any of the magical traps Malgorius had described to them. Along the way, the scenes in the artwork became even more disturbing, depicting acts that turned Jaqlyn's stomach. She took the lead to move past them as quickly as possible; opening herself up to the weave of magic, searching for any loose threads that might signal danger.

She climbed the stairway onto the third level and pushed the thick oak door at the top, which creaked slowly open. She stepped through, the effort of dividing her attention between her physical surroundings and the magical atmosphere giving her the beginnings of a headache. She stopped for a moment to focus herself, and in that instant, a figure reached for her. It was a deadwalker, its flesh desiccated by the dry atmosphere in the tower. Behind it were more of its kind. The creature emitted a low moan, and lunged, black teeth gnashing in dried gums and coming close to damping on to her neck. One of its eyes rolled in its socket, the other hanging against a hollow cheek by a thread of sinew. She smelled the sickly-sweet rot of its flesh, and the sour, dry stench from its jaws. Instinctively, she jerked back and quickly channelled power into an inchoate blast of energy which shoved the deadwalker back into the mass of undead approaching behind it.

Karemma barged past Jaqlyn, shoving her against the wall as the swordswoman lashed out with her blade. The blow was almost too fast to see, and cleaved through dry flesh and dusty bone, sending the deadwalker to the ground. The warrior followed up with a kick that took the undead creature's head from its neck and sent it to shatter against the opposite wall. Its body spasmed and was still.

The other undead monsters pushed forward. There were more than a dozen of them, with more emerging from shadowed corners and open doorways in the small chamber beyond the door.

Two loud gunshots sounded, and two of the deadwalkers fell, bullets emerging from the backs of their heads in sprays of bone fragments and brain matter that coated the dusty paintings on the walls. Two others went down in a heartbeat as Karemma leapt forward and separated their heads from their bodies with a pair of graceful cuts. But there were plenty more.

Jaqlyn opened her aetheric senses once more and started to gather energy. The prevailing magic here was the amber of Ghur, threaded through with the amethyst power of Shyish - she quickly drew some of these threads together and knitted them into an attack that she unleashed at a knot of deadwalkers emerging from a door across the chamber. What manifested had the form of an amber lion with a leering death's head where a proud snout and jaw should have been. Jaqlyn shivered to see it. Ever since the Necroquake, it had become more and more difficult to cast spells untainted by the magic of Death.

The apparition roared like a wild beast and loped into the deadwalkers, its skeletal jaws tearing through flesh and bone, and great clawed paws collapsing ribcages. Its might swiftly overpowered that of the creatures of Shyish.

When the undead had been dealt with, Jaqlyn gestured and the spell disintegrated back into spiralling threads of magic in amber and purple that slowly rejoined the great weave around them. She looked around to see Karemma driving her blade through the skull of one last deadwalker. The rest were still. Jaqlyn waited a moment, listening for the shuffle of dead feet or low moans issuing impossibly from rotted throats, but there was no sound save the breathing of the living.

She lowered her guard, and her companions followed suit, Thorri reloading his pistols and Karemma sheathing her sword before turning angrily to Jaqlyn.

'This is why I should go first,' she said. 'If I'd been just a little slower, that abomination could have killed you.'

'I appreciate the concern,' Jaqlyn said, 'but you need us here to deal with the magic. If you walk into a trap that you can't see, it'll go much worse for you than an attack by a zombie.'

Karemma inclined her head. 'I can accept that.' She grinned. 'But take care.'

Jaqlyn smiled in return. 'Keep watching my back.'

Besides the undead, the third level was deserted. As they passed up the stairway to the fourth, Jaqlyn felt a magical pressure on her, further increasing the pain in her head.

'Are ye okay?' Thorri asked.

She shook her head. 'There's something here, some power. It's… pressing on me.'

The duardin frowned and checked some of his instruments. 'Aye,' he said, 'there's strong magic here. A ward to stop the undead climbing higher, I'd wager.'

'It'll pass,' Jaqlyn said, her head pounding.

They climbed to the fourth level, which was devoid of foes, and of the hideous artwork from the lower levels. Instead, it seemed to be a large dissection chamber. Stone slabs, stained with blood, dotted the floor, and a collection of grisly blades and other instruments lined the walls. Karemma lingered over these, gazing at them with an expression Jaqlyn couldn't read.

As she gazed around, Jaqlyn heard a sound, a distant howl.

From the plains below, she supposed.

Thorri, as disgusted with the chamber as Jaqlyn, urged them on to the fifth floor. They advanced, and he joined Jaqlyn as she moved slowly along a dark corridor. Sconces along the walls held half-burned candles, which Jaqlyn lit with a light touch of magic, channelling threads of Aqshian energy to kindle the flames. The flickering lights revealed streaks of dried blood along the walls and floor, as if something had been dragged along the corridor towards the door at the end.

'Are you sure she shouldn't go first?' he asked in a whisper. 'That deadwalker could have killed you, and I don't want to see you die.'

'I'd much prefer that none of us die, Thorri,' Jaqlyn said. 'Besides, the magic here isn't right. The wards are still active… Weaker than they once were, I'd reckon, but definitely not as broken as Malgorius told us. They're dangerous, and need to be disarmed as we go along. She can't do that.'

Thorri grumbled something inaudible and pulled a device from his belt. Jaqlyn recognised it as what he called his 'aetheric scanner'. He used it in much the same way as she used her second sight, to see and analyse the magic around them. He flicked a switch on it and watched the dials.

'There's something here,' he said. 'A spike of magic. Can you see it?'

Jaqlyn closed her eyes and reached out with her aether-senses. The weave of magic in the atmosphere around her was being drawn towards a point about thirty feet in front of them. The glimmering multicoloured threads were pulled tight filled with tension. She focused on where they led, a tangle of thread like a badly tied knot, pulsating with power in all the hues of the magical rainbow. It was tempting to try to unpick it, but she sensed danger. She opened her eyes again.

'Yes, the magic is converging at one point. I don't know what it is, but it's messy. Like something that's been cast quickly and left. I could try and untangle it, but it would take time, and I feel there's more to it. It's focused on that door.'

'I should have something here…' Thorri said, patting the pouches on the twin bandoliers he had across his stout torso. As he did, Karemma stepped forward, a sword drawn, and advanced on the door. Before Jaqlyn could warn her, she reached out the blade and touched the door. She gave a shout of pain, and for a moment her outline blurred. Jaqlyn blinked and it was gone. Karemma reared backwards, the tip of her sword sparking, a curse on her lips. She fell, and Jaqlyn ran to her.

'Karemma, are you all right?'

The woman glared at her. 'You're supposed to be disabling those wards,' she snapped.

'That's what I was saying. There's greater power in them still than there should be. But it's not quite right. As if it's been hurriedly rebuilt.'

Karemma looked at her. 'Not good enough. That could have killed me.'

'Then you shouldn't have barged ahead,' Jaqlyn said.

Karemma's expression was venomous, and for a brief moment fear surged through Jaqlyn. Then it passed, and the swordswoman nodded and slumped back. Jaqlyn turned to Thorri, who had pulled several items from his pouches and was assembling them into something that looked like a compact pistol.

'Are you going to shoot it?' Jaqlyn asked, allowing doubt to creep into her tone.

'Something like that,' Thorri said. 'You said it's tangled, aye?'

'That's how I perceive it, yes. Like a badly tied knot.'

'Then we do what you do with rope when you need through it in a hurry.'

'Cut it?'

'Exactly. Karemma there had the right idea, just not the right tools. Basically, she didn't have this.' Thorri brandished his completed device. 'I don't have a name for it yet, because I just came up with it. Let's see if it works…'

Jaqlyn had seen Thorri's ingenuity at work many times. Often it was genius, and exactly what was needed in any given situation. Sometimes, though, it caused as many problems as it solved. Usually with explosions.

'Karemma,' she called, 'we should get behind something while Thorri tries his… key.'

'It's perfectly safe,' the duardin said, sounding slightly upset. 'Probably.'

Jaqlyn and Karemma retreated several paces behind Thorri, who looked as though he were having second thoughts about firing his device at the door.

'Well, here goes,' he muttered, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened - at least to mortal eyes. Jaqlyn's aether-senses were immediately overwhelmed by a flare of energy. She felt the flow of magical power channelled through Thorri's device strike the snarled magic at the door, and cut through it like a sword through flesh. The energies tied into the tangle were unleashed, the tension she had noted in the magical threads releasing. The effect was like a whipcrack. Jaqlyn staggered back, overwhelmed by pain. She closed her inner eye, cutting herself off from the magic, and the pain receded. She opened her eyes to see Thorri looking down at her, thoughtful concern on his face.

'Are ye all right, Jaqlyn?' he said. 'You fell back like you'd been hit.'

'I'm fine, I think,' she said, pulling herself up. After a moment's hesitation, she opened her magical senses again, reaching out to the door. Where the tangle had been, there was now just the background magic that infused the entire tower. 'That worked, I think,' she said. 'We can move on, I don't sense anything else ahead on this level.'

'I'll go first then,' said Karemma harshly, 'if you've actually done what you're here for and there isn't going to be anything else likely to kill me.' The warrior barged forward, kicking open the door. She passed through it and Jaqlyn went to follow, but Thorri stopped her.

'What happened to you there?' he asked in a low voice

'The magic exploded, in a way. It hit me, and I couldn't block out the sensation in time.'

'I didn't feel anything,' he mused. 'But a couple of my instruments overheated. So it only affected the magically attuned?'

'Probably,' Jaqlyn said.

'Then why,' Thorri asked slowly, 'did Karemma react like she'd been hit as well?'

Jaqlyn's senses proved correct. The fifth floor held no more dangers for the trio, and no sign of whatever had been dragged bleeding through the corridor. That was a mystery Jaqlyn hoped never to solve. This level seemed to be filled with cells, each with a sturdy lockable door. Many had dried blood on the floor and up the walls, and Jaqlyn wondered once more just what Malgorius had been studying here. The sixth beckoned, and as she climbed the spiral staircase, Jaqlyn heard the eerie howl once more, louder this time. Had the creature come closer to the tower, sensing life inside? Was this something they'd have to face when they emerged back into Ghur's night? Thorri had insisted on leading, with a device in his hand checking the magic ahead. Briefly freed from focusing on the weave, and with her headache receding, Jaqlyn's thoughts turned to the woman who was behind her. Was she magically attuned? It would be a useful trait a in a wizard's bodyguard, to be sure, though generally those with the ability to perceive the elemental energy of the Mortal Realms were also able to shape it, and use it. And if that were the case, why did Malgorius need Jaqlyn? There was something here they hadn't been told.

The stairs ended, and a corridor spiralled ahead of them, archway set into the left wall led into a gallery. More paintings lined the walls, below high windows that lit the chamber with bright moonlight. Each painting showed a landscape from across the Mortal Realms. Jaqlyn was relieved that they weren't grisly scenes like the ones on the lower levels, until she thought she saw something move in one of them. She drew closer and saw that inside the painting, a duardin warrior stood on a fire-wreathed plane, an axe in each hand. As she watched, a horde of brutish orruks entered the frame from each side, barrelling towards the duardin, who met them with steel and fury. She looked away.

The unearthly howl sounded again, even closer than before.

'Did ye hear that?' Thorri whispered.

'It must be from outside,' Jaqlyn said.

Thorri's answer was drowned out by the howl, this time much closer. Too close. Jaqlyn turned to see something emerge from one of the paintings. It was the spectral figure of a woman draped in a long dress and swathed with robes that covered her head, but left the impression of a screaming skull.

'Thorri!' Jaqlyn shouted, as the monster advanced on the duardin, and slashed a ghostly claw at him. He screamed and fell, and the spectre howled.

She felt the sound pierce her soul, and suddenly she remembered the worst day of her life, Tantalum burning around her, the magic she had unleashed out of control and adding to the devastation. She was back there again, smelling the burning corpses, feeling the horror as she watched a giant creature of shadow shaped like a bull charge through the streets…

…and then she was back in the tower, lying next to Thorri. He seemed to be saying something, but she couldn't hear. She reached for her ear, and felt blood dribbling from it. She looked at the duardin, and saw that the banshee's claws had carved through the light armour he wore and drawn blood.

'Where is it?' she said, sure she was shouting, but unable to hear herself and not caring. She looked around and saw the phantom. It was advancing on Karemma, who was standing with swords drawn, facing it with a hideous sneer on her face. She turned back to Thorri, who was scrabbling at his belt, his expression a mix of determination and agony. He pulled something small and round from a pouch and rolled it towards Jaqlyn before collapsing back, blood flowing freely from his wounds.

She pulled herself up and grabbed the sphere Thorri had sent her way. It was one of the bombs she had helped him construct, weaving magic into the explosive core to make it effective against enemies of an aethereal nature. She fumbled with the fuse, trying to remember Thorri's instructions on how to prime it and make it work. She needed a flame. She tried to grasp a thread of Aqshy from the magical weave, but her head throbbed and she couldn't focus. She looked up again, to see Karemma backing away from the banshee, swords swinging. They seemed to be making contact with it rather than passing through - magical blades, she guessed - but it was unhurt.

She saw the ghostly creature pull back and howl again. She didn't hear it this time, but felt its effects once more, like a distant echo of her past crashing back to the present - a forest clearing, the monstrous flaming bull killing the men who'd followed her from Tantalum's ruins. She shook it off and crawled over to Thorri, searching the pouches on his belt for one of the thick, long-stemmed matches she knew he carried. She found one, and with shaking hands used it to light the fuse on the bomb. She rolled it towards where the banshee and Karemma clashed, hoping the swordswoman would notice and get out of the way.

She grabbed Thorri and began to drag him towards the chamber's other exit, using strength she didn't know she had. Unable to hear, she had no idea what was going on behind her, the experience surreal and terrifying. After an eternity, she reached the door, wrenched it open and hauled the heavy duardin through, before slamming it shut.

She couldn't hear the explosion of the bomb, but she felt its force vibrate physically through the stone, and aethereally through the weave of magic around her.

For a long time, she lay there in the dark, chest heaving.

Gradually, she realised that she could hear herself breathing again, and Thorri too. She sat up.

'Thorri,' she said, her voice sounding strange to her slowly returning hearing. 'Thorri, wake up.'

'S'not morning,' the duardin slurred. 'Still dark.'

'Come on,' she insisted. 'Sit up.'

'Jaqlyn,' he mumbled, pulling himself up against a wall. 'What happened?'

'A banshee. It attacked you… Oh, we need to do something about that wound.' The gashes on Thorri's shoulder were still bleeding. He felt them gingerly, and grunted.

'Don't worry, lass. I've given myself worse. The bomb, did you…?'

She nodded. 'I don't know if I got it. Or what happened to Karemma.'

Thorri pulled himself to his feet, swaying unsteadily 'It doesn't matter. We're nearly at the top. Let's see what's up there and find out what's really going on in this benighted tower.'

Jaqlyn stood too, grasping the wall for support. 'Can you feel the power above us? No, sorry, of course you can't. It's… massive. And focused. It's designed to keep something out. And I want to know what.'

The ascent to the seventh and highest level of the tower was steep. Spiralling stairs led upwards, and as she ascended, the oppressive power of the ward Jaqlyn had sensed grew. Each step became more difficult. Thorri, curiously, seemed unaffected. Finally, she had to stop.

'It's stopping anything magical,' she told the duardin. 'It's crude, but it would work against the dead, since they're animated by magic. A good way to keep them out. It's also affecting me. I need to break it. It'll take a few minutes.'

Thorri slumped on the step beside her, back to the wall, and Jaqlyn focused on the magical barrier. The magical threads pulsed strongly with power, but with magic so crudely woven, breaking it apart without care could be catastrophic. Slowly, she picked at the tapestry of energy, finding errant threads and teasing them loose, pulling on them and slowly unpicking the structure of the spell. She pulled at one last thread and the remaining magic broke. At once, she felt a rush of release as the oppressive power around her collapsed. She gasped aloud.

'Are you all right?' Thorri looked concerned.

'Yes. It's done. We can go up.'

The duardin stood, and smiled grimly. 'All right then. Let's finish this.'

The spiralling staircase ended in the centre of a chamber that spanned the entire floor. It was lit by hundreds of candles on floating platforms. They illuminated packed bookshelves, and a plethora of delicate silver and brass instruments that made Thorri's eyes light up. Workbenches dotted the room, many of them scattered with books and scrawled notes, others bearing beakers, test tubes and more complicated contraptions of glass that contained fluids in dozens of different colours.

Along one curved stretch of wall were a series of tables on which lay figures - an orruk, a skaven, a hulking ogor and more. Each had been partially dissected, flesh flayed back from muscle, bones exposed, organs removed. Jaqlyn suppressed the urge to vomit as her eyes passed along the row and she saw a young human, his chest spread open and heart missing.

'What was he doing here?' Thorri said, his voice half full of wonder, half outrage.

'Exactly the question I should be asking you,' said a voice from behind them. A thin, reedy voice that Jaqlyn recognised instantly. She turned to see Malgorius standing before them. He seemed less frail than when they had seen him last, standing erect, draped in robes of sea green. He wore a spiked crown of dark metal, inset with runes that blazed with the amethyst magic of Shyish to Jaqlyn's aethereal senses.

'Who are you?' the wizard demanded.

'What do ye mean, "who are we"?' Thorri shouted. 'You hired us to come here and get that gaudy hat you're wearing. How did you get here first?'

'I assure you, duardin, that I did no such thing. Now tell me who you are, and why you're here, before I am forced to destroy you.'

Jaqlyn felt a build-up of power from the wizard, and lifted her hands to show she was no threat. 'We have no wish to hurt you,' she said. 'We've been tricked here, somehow. We were told a story about the night the Death magic hit, and what happened here. Tell us what really took place.'

'Power, great power, shook my tower, and broke the wards I had built to keep out my enemy,' Malgorius said after a moment. 'After it came undead horrors. Skeletons, ghosts and worse. I managed to hold them off, confine them to the floors below. And I rebuilt the wards, though it cost me dearly to do so. I had to use magic of a most terrible sort.'

The wizard stepped past them and moved over to the young man whose corpse lay on one of the dissection tables. He looked down at the figure, and his expression was one of regret and self-loathing.

'Blood magic,' Jaqlyn said. 'You sacrificed him to power the spell and keep the wards intact. That's why they're… wrong. The power came from something dark.'

'Yes,' Malgorius said. 'Since then, I've been studying what happened and trying to find a way to restore the wards fully and drive out the creatures that lurk below. So I assure you, I have had no opportunity to meet you, let alone hire you to retrieve something I have in my possession! So please drop your flimsy pretence and tell me who you are and why you arc really here.'

'Who they are doesn't matter, Malgorius,' said a voice from behind them. The wizard turned, horror etched on his face.

'You brought that creature here? Into my tower? She's what the wards were designed to keep out!'

'Don't think too badly of them,' said Karemma smoothly. 'They were deceived as thoroughly as you once were. They thought they met you in an opulent mansion. In fact, they were stumbling through a ruin talking to shadows. Mortals are so easy to fool with simple glamours.'

As she said this, it was as though a veil lifted from Jaqlyn's eyes, and she saw Karemma clearly for the first time. Her form was humanoid, but every detail was wrong. Her limbs were jointed in the wrong direction; her legs ended in hooves, and her arms in long, slender claws. Worst of all was the face. It was utterly inhuman, with large black eyes surmounting a slit where a nose should be and a wide, fanged maw.

'What are you?' Jaqlyn stammered.

'I am the future,' Karemma said, stepping forward and raising a claw.

'Not another step, daemon!' yelled Thorri, moving in front of Jaqlyn and firing one of his pistols at Karemma. Lightning-fast, she stepped aside and, impossibly, grabbed the bullet from the air with one claw. She examined it carefully before throwing it aside.

'Careful, duardin. These runic bullets of yours could actually hurt me. And if they did, you would regret it for a long, long time. You have been useful to me, you and dear Jaqlyn, and will be again. I've seen it in the shadows of the future. You will be crucial to my apotheosis. Alas, Malgorius, the same cannot be said for you.'

She swept forward, and before Jaqlyn could react, she had slid one claw into Malgorius' gut, lifting him from the ground. With the other, she reached up and gently pulled the crown from the wizard's head, before throwing his lifeless body to the ground with a casual flick of her arm. Thorri rushed to his side.

'Why did you go to all this trouble?' Jaqlyn asked, shaking with rage. 'Why the deceit? Why not just come in here yourself and do this?'

The daemon laughed, a sound that hurt Jaqlyn's ears.

'Malgorius and I have a history. He once sought power from any source that would provide it. It amused me to aid him, for my own purposes. But he was treacherous, and cunning for a mortal. He betrayed me, took the power I offered and moved on to the next source. The wards on this tower were very clever, and designed to prevent me from entering or progressing. I thought the Necroquake would have broken them, but he was able to keep them strong enough to hold me out. I needed skilled souls to help. And you were so accommodating, and easy to manipulate. "This is why I should go first!"' She laughed again. 'Mortals. So simple.'

Jaqlyn's eye was drawn to Thorri, still bent over the wizard's corpse. He had moved round the body to face Jaqlyn and had something in his hand. Jaqlyn recognised it as one of his magical bombs. Designed to unknit magic itself, it had proven its worth against the undead below, and should be effective against daemons as well. She looked back to Karemma, who was gazing lovingly at the dark crown in her claw.

'What is that?' Jaqlyn asked. 'Why do you want it so badly?'

'You couldn't come close to understanding,' Karemma said absently. 'This crown of sorcery is one of many crafted for the generals of Nagash's armies. It symbolises the God of Death, and it is the first of many that I will use to become a god myself.'

'A god? That's insane!'

'There is an absence in the pantheon of true gods. A gap that must be filled. I will—' She stopped abruptly, turned and shook her head. 'Foolish duardin. You think your toy will stop me?'

Snake-fast, she was on Thorri, blade-limb slicing out. He took it on his artificial arm, and grunted - in annoyance rather than pain, Jaqlyn was sure - as the claw cut through the metal. One of the arcane gadgets Thorri had hidden in the arm activated, and the claw began to vibrate; then its end shattered. Karemma pulled back, screaming in pain, and Thorri took advantage of the momentary respite to throw the bomb at her. Jaqlyn jumped behind an overturned table.

The explosion was as vivid to her magical senses as her physical ones. She screwed her eyes shut against the light, and experienced the blast through her second sight. The sound of the detonation was deafening, and echoed oddly through her head. She felt another flare of magic, and opened her eyes to look over the edge of the table. Thorri was picking himself up, his armour and leathers scorched and blackened. His artificial arm was scored and broken, and he looked at it ruefully.

'That's going to take a while to fix back up.'

'What happened to the daemon?' Jaqlyn asked.

'Gone. Dodged the bomb, opened up some sort of rift or portal and vanished into It. Took that crown too.' He paused, looking thoughtful. 'What d'you reckon she meant about becoming a god?'

'I don't know,' jaqlyn said. 'But whatever she really plans, I intend to stop her.'

'How?'

'She said there were more artefacts. We find them first. Stop her getting them. And if we cross paths again, we kill her.'

'Easy job, then,' Thorri grumbled. 'Where do we start?'

Jaqlyn looked at the remaining bookshelves in the tower, and around at the dissected corpses. This place could be useful, with some changes to the decor.

'A magical library seems as good a place as any, Thorri. Let's get reading.'

IMPERATOR GLADIO

RICHARD STRACHAN

The night had been cold, and the smell of the salt marshes was still dormant as the twin suns rose, one casting a pale corona to wreathe the first with fire. In the distance came the sound of a desultory cannonade from the Basilisk batteries, and from the other side of the motor pool the battered tank platoons were turning over their engines, preparing the retreat. Captain Becherovka stowed the data-slate in the thigh pocket of his fatigues as he cut through churned and oily mud. Dread was coiled deep in his stomach. It was an old friend now, much missed when it wasn’t there.

He held out a trembling hand and gripped it with the other. Then, as he skirted a line of Chimeras, out of the mist it loomed, monolithic, the salt marshes fanning away behind it. Like an outcrop of rock, he thought, or stacked basalt slabs cooling on a volcanic plain. The camouflage paint had flecked away to reveal the brooding black metal underneath. He held his breath as he approached it, reverent, afraid.

Imperator Gladio… It was as if he were approaching a temple, a primitive homage to some appalling, vengeful god.

The main gun stretched out like a brandished sword, the squat muzzle of the Demolisher cannon beneath it glazed with afterburn. The Baneblade bristled with secondary weapons: lascannons, heavy bolters, heavy flamers, heavy stubbers. Nothing about it was light, or geared for anything other than total destruction. It was the most powerful weapon available to the Zentrale 77th Armoured Dragoons, but as Becherovka came near he felt only the wild stirrings of that dread in his stomach, the sense of fate lying heavily against him.

The Gladio… There wasn’t a super-heavy crewman in the regiment who didn’t fear that name.

‘We need to be certain that you’re up to the job,’ Colonel Radetzky had said to him the night before.

‘What he means,’ the lord commissar had drawled, ‘is will you break? The nightmares, the trauma – can we rely on you, captain?’

The command tent had been musty and close, the light stark from the lumen-globe that stuttered above the map table. Much revised, the map showed a front on the verge of collapse – troops’ positions overrun by suicidal cultist assaults, counter-attacking armoured spearheads shattered against impregnable defences. The Archenemy was rolling up the advance everywhere. The whole campaign was on the brink.

‘Yes,’ he’d said, with as much certainty as he could muster.

‘A recon team found it four days ago,’ Radetzky said. ‘It was recovered last night, refitted, rearmed. It’s in good working order, as far as we can tell. Throne knows we need every advantage we can get.’

‘The mission schematics will be cast to your slate,’ the commissar informed him. ‘Relieve, reinforce, resist. No retreat.’

‘I know the drill,’ Becherovka said, and inside he thought, Suicide mission. And the Gladio of all things. Well, it was going to come at some point. It may as well be now, when all else seems lost. A strange recklessness gripped him, and he said, ‘The Gladio. A cursed tank, for a cursed man.’

Six times the Baneblade had been dispatched in the campaign to pacify the Valgaast front. Each time it had returned with new rumours and legends accruing to it, like barnacles to a ship’s hull. Some said the first honoured lieutenant to lead it into combat had died in the command chair from an unexplained seizure; it was only when the mission was complete that the rest of the crew realised he had been dead for hours, even though he’d been speaking to them over the vox the whole time… Supposedly a reactor leak had killed the crew with rad-poisoning on its third mission, and there was a rumour that during one expedition the Gladio’s machine-spirit had turned on a supporting Leman Russ platoon and wiped them out, the gunners powerless to stop it. It was a cursed tank indeed.

‘Superstitious nonsense,’ Radetzky told him. ‘We’ve had men shot for less. The only curse is our dearth of reliable parts for repairs.’

‘Be careful, captain,’ the commissar hissed. ‘You tread on dangerous ground here.’

Becherovka strapped on his helmet and saluted. ‘Hadn’t you heard, lord commissar? I’m an expert in dangerous ground.’

He was aware of the figure he must cut as he approached the crew – diminished, faded, about a stone underweight and with a nervous tic in his eye. Lieutenant Kovar, the second-in-command and primary gunner, looked up and nodded. Stijn, the driver, her face permanently marked by the black frames of her goggles, gave a lazy salute. ‘Come to join us then, captain?’ she said. ‘The voyage of the damned…’

They all felt it, this accursed place, clawing at their minds – the endless wilds of marshland and dead mists and desolate fog. They tried to hide it with a soldier’s gallows humour, but they hated this front as much as he did.

They were a scratch team, about four short of what the Baneblade demanded. They lounged just outside its shadow, some playing knucklebones, others chaining lho-sticks and arguing the finer points of bootleg amasec stills. Kovar and Stijn he knew already; the engineer, Palivo, came recommended. The others were unknown to him, but the data-slate had given him their names: Zaj and Musil, wiry twins who would man the sponsons; Jezek, built like an ogryn and pulling double duty to load and fire the Demolisher. Becherovka himself would man the autocannon and the heavy stubber. It was a mess – it was worse than a mess – but it was what they had.

And every one of them would know him by reputation: Captain Halidar Becherovka, who’d spent four days at the bottom of the salt marshes breathing a pocket of stale air while his Stormsword’s crew drowned in the mud around him.

Under his breath he muttered the first words of the Dragoons’ battle prayer. ‘Facta non verba… Deeds, not words…’ Only deeds would kill his fear. And then he said, ‘Mount up!’

Sitting with their blank grins in the ossuary niche by the wall of honour were the seventy-three skulls of the men and women who had crewed Imperator Gladio before them – at least, the ones they’d been able to find. Becherovka touched his hand to the oldest skulls, the bone blackened with age, silty with a crust of engine exhaust. He primed the terminal by the command seat and scanned the uploaded schematics. The multi-fuel engines were brewing hard, the reactor cooking up a full-throated growl that rattled his teeth. Jezek, already shirtless, his muscled chest as thick as a flak jacket, was sweating as he settled himself by the munitions sconce on the lower gunnery deck. Zaj and Musil checked in from the sponsons; repairs had been hurried, and what was normally automated would require crewed input. Palivo confirmed the power plant was turning over smoothly, or as well as could be expected.

‘We have no tech-priest?’ he voxed. ‘No adept either?’ The network crackled, and his words were framed by a weird glissando. Becherovka squeezed the bud deeper into his ear, boosting the vox-suite on the command terminal. He glanced down the gangway from the gunnery deck to the engine room. Palivo raised a hand.

‘No,’ he confirmed. ‘Something went wrong, a neural burn-out when he tried to interface last night. The machine-spirit is truculent in this one.’

‘So they say… Well, we’ll make do,’ Palivo replied, uneasily. ‘It’s bad luck all the same.’

‘There’s no such thing as luck.’ Yes there is. ‘This is a venerable machine we have the privilege to command, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t have its… its issues.’

Stijn cheerily chipped in from the driver’s cell. ‘How many times has it been recovered now?’

‘Six,’ Becherovka said. ‘This is the seventh mission this deployment.’

‘My lucky number!’ she whooped as she gunned the engines. Then they all felt it; the implacable advance of the Gladio lurching forward. ‘At least we’ll get to find out what really happened to the other guys!’

‘That’s enough,’ Becherovka said. He measured the shake out of his voice. ‘Look, I don’t know any of you well, and some of you I don’t know at all. But we all have a job to do and I know we can do it. Trust in your guns, soldiers, and fear the Emperor’s grace. Facta non verba.’

He looked through the viewing cupolas and saw the mist curl across clean air, the cobalt sky surrendering to the cloud.

Not water, not mud, he prayed. Give me fire and thunder, but please, Emperor, don’t let me die like that again.

They moved for an hour, grinding steadily over the rough ground on the edge of the salt marshes until they came to the first ridges of the Switchbacks. Skirting them wide on the east flank, they entered the low foothills where light from the twin suns dazzled in the golden grass, making the hidden meadows seem like great reflective plates of melted sand. Bars of mist rolled down from the Switchbacks’ higher peaks and settled in the troughs and valleys. Every few minutes the crew checked in, reporting sensor readings or cogitation data from the auto-scribes in the rear hull. Becherovka moved from the main deck to the observation cupola in the turret, where he could sit in the secondary command chair. That feeling of enclosure, of being buried deep inside the tank, had been more than he could bear. At least here, with the primary hatch just above his head, it felt as if escape was only a moment away. The marshland beyond the Switchbacks was a brooding morass, chill and drear.

He tracked ghost signs on the augur screens, but they sputtered out into nothing when he switched to thermals. Although they were heading straight for it, the front seemed very far away.

‘Cold,’ Stijn voxed after a while. ‘Anyone else notice it? Feels like we dropped ten degrees here.’

Below, Jezek rummaged in his locker and pulled out his shirt. ‘Damn cold,’ he said.

‘Palivo, you hearing this?’ Becherovka said. ‘Is there something wrong with the heating system?’ The vox sputtered and crackled. ‘Can any of you hear me? This Throne-damned thing…’ he muttered.

There was a piercing shriek over the network and all of them wrenched the looped vox-buds from their ears with a curse. Becherovka dropped his as if it were burning.

Jezek’s ear was bleeding, and Palivo shouted something unintelligible from the rear hull compartment. Becherovka climbed the short steps from the turret onto the gunnery deck and looked through the gangway. The engineer stood there, top half framed in the hatchway, gesticulating over the Baneblade’s titanic roar. The adamantium tracks squealed and groaned as they crushed their way over rock and earth alike. Becherovka checked the passive auspex net, but nothing popped on the viewscreen. Just shades, ghosts, fluttered readings that smoothed out to nil. Where was the front? Where were all the things that by rights should be trying to kill them?

‘Jezek, how’s the ear?’ he bellowed down. Whether deafened by the vox-burn or by the engine’s unholy racket, the big man by the loading rack didn’t notice. Becherovka crouched to tap him on the shoulder and switched to combat-sign. Load the rack, his fingers said. Jezek nodded. Through the hatchway he waved to catch Palivo’s attention and signed for half-speed. Palivo nodded, but before he could do anything the engines cut out, and Imperator Gladio lurched to a halt.

‘Palivo?’ he said. ‘Talk to me, what’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know, sir, it’s not responding, it’s… They just died on me.’

After the apocalyptic roar of the super-heavy’s motors, the sudden silence was absolute, unnerving; cathedral-quiet. Becherovka looked back up to meet Kovar’s eyes and the gunner was mute. Jezek had frozen, crouched down by the munitions sconce.

It was creeping closer, pressing itself to the back of his neck, squeezing his stomach tight. Panic, paralysis. What do I do? he thought. The words flashed in a looped relay through his mind, faster and faster. The water was lapping at his mouth, pooling over his frantic eyes. Water, and mud, and the grasping hands of dead friends. What do I do what do I do what do I–

‘What do I do? Sir?’

Stijn, calling from the driver’s compartment. Her voice came muffled through the aperture. ‘Controls are dead here, captain. What do I do?’

Becherovka’s attention snapped back. ‘Jezek,’ he said. ‘Load the cannon.’ He tried to keep the tremble from his voice, but it made no difference, because right then the big man screamed and the sound flashed like a blade through the silence. He looked down to see the loader on his back, scrambling away from the munitions sconce, desperately trying to kick the door closed.

‘There’s something in there!’ Jezek shouted. ‘Some thing, it– Throne, it looked at me!’ He retched.

Becherovka felt adrenaline stab through his system. Kovar’s face was a mask and his hands were white-knuckled on the cannon’s guiding rail.

‘Captain?’ Palivo shouted through the hatchway. ‘What the hell’s going on in there?’

‘I don’t know, it’s… Jezek, come back to me. What did you see? What’s in there?’

Becherovka drew his laspistol. His hand was shaking again.

The door to the munitions sconce creaked back slowly on its hinge. Jezek flinched away from it. Six feet of tanker, biceps practically as big as Becherovka’s chest, and he looked like he was going to cry. Dropping down another level, Becherovka approached the locker and slowly pushed the door aside with the barrel of his pistol.

‘You see it?’ Jezek whimpered. ‘What is it?’

Becherovka lowered his gun, wiped the beaded sweat from his forehead. All he could see were the rows of shells for the Baneblade cannon, each tipped with the colour of its function. Red for high-explosive, green for armour-piercing.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing there.’

‘I swear, captain, I swear – and then it, it…’

No one said anything. Jezek couldn’t meet his eye – and yet, something had scared him, scared him bad. Becherovka glanced through at the ossuary niche, the stacked skulls brittle with age. What had they seen, in their time?

The silence inside the tank was almost unbearable. Some crewmen, lifers signed up for full service, lost their minds when they weren’t on active duty. They needed the deep percussion of combat, of the super-heavy crushing the land beneath its tracks, to feel even halfway whole. Becherovka wasn’t one of them. That was his secret – although 77th born and bred, he hated tanks. He hated the farmyard stink of soldiers locked in a small space for too long. He hated the feel of the walls closing in on him, the bleeding green light of low-sodium bulbs, the sour taste of recycled air. He hated it, he always had. And the walls were getting closer.

Three hundred tons. Three hundred tons of Stormsword with a great rent in its side from the plasma cannon, lurching off the track and falling into the treacherous ground, belching air as it plummeted downwards, sucking in half the salt marshes; water pouring like a tide over Hjobo and Danniver – their screams choked off, their eyes like black holes, the water lashing against his chest and forcing him like a cork in a bottle to the turret’s jammed hatch… Emperor save me, Emperor protect me!

‘Captain?’ the lieutenant said with quiet alarm.

‘Kovar?’

‘…What’s that noise?’

It started low, a creeping scurry over the side of the tank. There was a soft tap on the top hatch, and then the sense of something pressing against it.

A muffled giggle, a patter of feet, silence.

Becherovka had bitten his lip. He tasted blood. He still had the laspistol in his hand. Jezek looked at it uneasily, and then Becherovka realised he was pointing the gun straight at him. He lowered it slowly.

It started again from the rear compartment, and even on the command deck they could hear it: the faint scrabbling against the outside power vents, whispered voices – through three feet of steel. He watched Palivo follow the sound with his eyes, tracing it from the ceiling of the engine deck to the corner of the exhaust housing. The engineer looked at him, eyes wide, frozen.

‘Stijn?’ Becherovka hissed. ‘Stijn!’

‘Yes, captain?’

Her voice was thick with fear.

‘Close the driver’s hatch,’ he said. ‘Seal us in.’

They were watching him; Kovar and Jezek, Palivo along the walkway. This was command, he thought. Make a decision, even if it’s the wrong one.

He climbed back up to the secondary command chair and checked the cupolas, cycling through thermal, ultraviolet, infrared, bare sight. The glass showed nothing. The land around them was pale with mistfall, bleak with drifting fume. There was no sound of gunfire, no artillery or cannon shot, no massed lasguns. The Archenemy was silent. There was nothing. They were dead in the water.

The outside of the tank looked deserted. The rustling, scurrying, tapping noise had stopped. Maybe whatever it was had given up? It couldn’t crack this nut. It had moved on to easier… what? Targets? Prey?

The silence rang in his ears. Silence had a presence of its own, he thought. It pushed at a man, challenged him, frayed his nerves. Becherovka gave one last look and dropped back down to the main deck. The engines, the power plant – that was the key. Get that up and running again and the choices became clearer. Press on, or go back.

‘Palivo,’ he shouted through the hatchway, ‘we need to vent the plant or reroute the power, or whatever it is you grease monkeys do best. We–’

It stared at him from the other end of the gangway, and its mouth cracked into a grin. It looked like Palivo. It stood there like Palivo, and it had Palivo’s face, but the eyes… They were black as the void, as black as deep, deep water.

Becherovka snapped up the laspistol and emptied the power pack. The hiss-crack of blue beams ionising the foetid air was loud as thunder. His vision was seared with it, but when he blinked his eyes clear, the hatchway was empty. There was a stench of ozone, and lying greasily atop it was the warm stink of cooked meat.

Jezek and Kovar had both thrown themselves to the plate when the shooting started, and he could hear Stijn shouting from the driver’s compartment. Zaj and Musil were battering at the sponson hatches. Becherovka just stood there with his pistol extended, the barrel frosted with afterburn. Through the hatchway, along the short corridor to the engine deck, he could see a spark of flame from a wide shot that had hit the exhaust housing.

‘Fire!’ he screamed, and as one the crew reacted.

Every trainee crewman spent as much of his or her time on fire drills as they did on weapons training. A brewed-up tank with a sealed hatch was a crewman’s nightmare, the story he told around the campfire to frighten new recruits. There was nothing more awful, everyone agreed. Everyone except Becherovka. Water. Water is worse than fire.

Becherovka was first through the hatch, holstering his pistol. The thing that had been Palivo steamed and fizzled on the deck, its face a red mess of scorched meat, a steaming black crater where its chest had been. Drops of superheated blood had sprayed in a greasy tar across the chromium deck. Kovar, following the captain through the walkway, recoiled and fell back, spewing across the maintenance valves. Becherovka ignored him, popped the foam extinguisher from its bracket and sprayed the flames. Mixed with dead meat, charred skin and chemicals was the tangy stink of burnt plastek from the wire housings.

Kovar wiped vomit from his mouth and lunged at the captain, trying to wrestle the pistol from Becherovka’s holster. Jezek stooped low and clambered into the engine deck, and Becherovka could hear Zaj and Musil trying to batter their way out of the sponson chambers.

‘You shot him, you shot him!’ Kovar was screaming. ‘What is wrong with you, are you insane?’

‘You didn’t see it! It wasn’t Palivo, it was something else, I swear it. It was in here with us. You didn’t see its eyes!’

The lieutenant had tight hold of the pistol’s handle and Becherovka couldn’t prise his fingers loose. He let go suddenly and Kovar stumbled backwards with the laspistol in an awkward grip. Before he could bring it up to fire Becherovka knocked it from his hand. He snapped out his forearm to lightly cuff Kovar’s throat, and then the soldier was down, spluttering, fighting for breath. Jezek just stood there, dumbfounded. Becherovka scooped up the gun and reloaded.

‘I’m telling you, that wasn’t Palivo,’ he said, evenly. ‘Look at it, Kovar. Look at it!’ He pointed the pistol at the body. Zaj and Musil were still pounding at their hatches, their voices muffled behind the steel.

‘How can you tell?’ Kovar croaked. ‘You look at him! You shot him in cold blood.’

‘And you attacked a senior officer in a combat zone.’ He pointed the pistol at him. ‘That’s a capital offence, lieutenant, a battlefield execution…’

Kovar looked up at him from his knees, fire in his eyes. ‘It’s true what they say about you, captain. You’ve lost your mind. You died down there in the swamp and you never came back.’

The mud and filth, the stagnant water creeping higher and higher, a tideline that reached his chin and spilled into his mouth. He stretched his neck, toes just barely reaching the turret steps, pressing his face into the shrinking pocket of air. Four days, four days in the rancid dark, bobbing below him the dead bodies of his crew…

Becherovka pressed the barrel of the laspistol to Kovar’s forehead. ‘I did come back,’ he whispered. ‘I’m right here.’

They stood like that for what felt like hours: Becherovka with his gun against the lieutenant’s head, Jezek frozen beside him, the thing that had been Palivo still steaming on the plate at their feet.

It grinned. And it looked at me… Throne, what was it? What is going on?

‘Jezek,’ he said.

‘Sir?’

‘Let Zaj and Musil out.’

But it was only then that Becherovka realised they’d stopped hammering. He looked up and saw why – saw the ropes of blood dribbling through the gaps beneath the doors – and before he could say anything the slaved servo-skull above the auto-scribes started snapping its jaw. The sphygmograph pens rattled in their casings. The parchment roll started to unfurl, and the pens were scribbling madly on the paper. Cogitation data, Becherovka thought. The Gladio’s machine-spirit, finally telling us what’s going on.

‘What does it say?’ he said to Jezek. Kovar was still on his knees. ‘Read it, what does it say?’

The loader turned back from the cogitation bench. His face was white. He looked grief-stricken, defeated.

‘It says… It says, “Murder”.’

The servo-skull cackled at them.

The lights across the engine deck flickered and dimmed, and then shut down completely. The scurrying, tapping noise was back, only this time it was in there with them – mere feet away, snuffling and slobbering.

‘Get into the front hull!’ Becherovka ordered. Jezek, moving fast for a big man, dived through the hatch and clambered into the command deck. Becherovka snapped off two shots with the laspistol and then followed him, and in the strobed glare of the beams he thought he saw something unfurling from the darkness; drear and hungry, and infinitely cold. ‘Kovar! Move yourself, it’s almost on you!’

But Kovar was too slow. He rose from his knees and pulled himself up into the hatchway, but then Becherovka looked back to see him hauled bodily out. His eyes went wide, glassy with fright, mouth stretched to frame a scream that never came. The darkness swallowed him, like a stone dropped into deep water.

Deep water, he thought. Deep, deep water, stinking of death…

‘Stijn!’ he cried. ‘Abandon the tank, get out! Save yourself!’

Jezek had scrambled up into the turret and he was weeping as he tried to unscrew the hatch lock. The muscles popped out on his arms and sweat streamed down his face, but it wouldn’t budge.

‘Just let me out, please please please let me out!’ he whimpered.

Through the hatch the blackness unfurled, pouring like ink, dripping down from the gangway – down to the munitions floor, up to the base of the turret steps. Jezek saw it and screamed, beating the steel now as if he could break his way out with his fists alone. The darkness dripped across his feet and he tried to curl up away from it.

An absurd sight, Becherovka thought. Such a big man, curled up like a child on the command chair. He almost laughed. Then he saw the skulls in the ossuary niche, each looking down at him with black eyes, goat’s eyes, the slotted pupils dancing with black light. Becherovka fired his gun until the power pack was dead, until the ripples of darkness had smothered the steps and drawn Jezek down into them, uncomplaining, a look on his face almost like peace.

Underneath the feed tray for the autocannon was a collection receptacle for the spent casings, and in a niche beside it was a narrow aperture that led into the driver’s deck. He scrambled through, barking his shins on the metal.

‘Stijn! I said to get out, for Throne’s–’

Her severed hands were still holding the escape hatch’s handle. Becherovka dropped down into the rest of her.

There is no way out. There is only a pocket of air, shrinking, and growing staler and staler.

He moved back through to the command deck, but the darkness had swallowed it. The red bulbs of the gangway lamps flickered in their cages, strobing the chamber. Becherovka scurried past the shadow’s edge and rolled down into the munitions store, past the sconce and its creaking door, past the sighing breath of whatever was hiding in there, the glistening eye. On the darkness flowed, slopping into the corrugated channels of the chromium plate floor.

Almost, almost, almost…

He cracked down the breech lever on the Demolisher cannon, skipped back as the recoil mechanism cranked to the side and the breech swung open on its reinforced hinge. The great socket mount yawned to admit him. Peering into it, Becherovka could see a ring of sunlight at the other end, bright and clear. He pulled himself in and shinnied up the tube, the barrel’s rifled interior twisting at his fatigues; gritty and constricted, wreathed in the rotten-egg smell of burnt cordite. But it was going to work. It was actually going to work. His arms were squeezed into his side and his shoulders felt like they were both going to dislocate at once, but if he pressed in with his feet and his elbows, he could wriggle up an inch at a time – agonisingly slowly, infinitely painful. But it was going to work.

‘Nearly there,’ he muttered, grinning at the light above him. ‘Please, Emperor, please shine your grace on your faithful servant and let me live.’

The barrel pressed in on him, ever closer, oily and black. He had scraped his forehead against the rifling and blood ran freely down his face. He tried to move his arms, but they were stuck fast. The muscles in his shoulders screamed with the effort of crawling up another inch, another half-inch. Cramps rippled in his calves. His eyes were blinded by blood and sweat. The walls closed in; the hollow chamber squeezed him, jamming into his back, his knees.

He couldn’t breathe. If he held up his head a chain of fire burned down his spine, but if he rested his chin on the barrel his chest was too constricted to draw a breath. He sipped shallow little gasps of air and he knew, as if sitting outside of himself, that he was starting to panic. He wanted to thrash his arms and legs and scream, but he couldn’t move. The black tunnel was squeezing him tighter and tighter and his breath was dying in his lungs. The roar of madness was in his ears. The water was getting higher and higher, and all light was gone. He could feel it lapping at his ankles, like ice, rising up to freeze his legs and grip his chest in its stagnant embrace. And then the water was surging up the barrel, rising, encircling his neck, a brackish ring that crawled higher and higher, feathering against his chin, his mouth, his nose. He was stretched out on the very edge of sanity and he was gulping to reach the disc of air that lay just above his face, and he was in the Stormsword drifting down, the salt marshes swallowing it up like a stone – like a stone dropped into deep water…

Fire and thunder, he thought. He tried to laugh, but his laughter disappeared in a bubble of air.

A recon crew found Imperator Gladio four days later, high in the Switchbacks. The front had rolled on, the enemy advance grinding to a halt in the face of the 77th’s implacable defence. The Baneblade was untouched by enemy fire. It lay dormant in the earth, the great adamantium tracks clogged with mud, the armour plating dusted with fine silt. Its silent cannon pointed towards the distant fighting. There was no sign of the crew. Deserters, some said. Decent men led astray by a bad command. Captain Becherovka had always been a weak link in the chain, ever since that incident with the Stormsword.

It took two Atlas recovery tanks to haul it down off the ridge, and a week of concerted prayer to get it running again. In the motor pool, tech-priests and mechanics ministered to it body and soul, and before long the Dragoons had one of their most powerful assets restored to them. A crew was always difficult to find, but the regimental officers moved quickly to scotch any rumours. The Gladio was a venerable machine, Colonel Radetzky said, much-storied, a veteran of a thousand campaigns! Who wouldn’t want the honour of crewing such a vessel in the Emperor’s name?

Indeed, the lord commissar agreed. There were eighty skulls in the ossuary niche. Just think – one day yours could be there too.

BONE CUTTER

DARIUS HINKS

‘They will not have you,’ whispered Anava, pressing her face into the bundle of rags at her chest.

It was dawn. It was always dawn. The silver on the horizon never dimmed and never spread. It just waited. A dazzling splinter at the foot of a black, monolithic darkness. Anava turned Coryne to the light, letting it gild her face. She had spent so many hours like this, looking at her daughter’s peaceful features. She never tired of it – watching her sleep and listening to the quiet, rodent snuffle of her breath.

She tightened her grip on the child and continued walking down the transitway. Every step was an act of will. Her boots had collapsed weeks ago and her feet were bloodied and raw, wrapped in so much cloth that they looked as big as her equally swaddled head. The toes inside the wrappings were bruised, frozen and numb. There was nothing she could do about it, so every time she felt a stab of pain, she thought of the horror she was fleeing from. That was enough to keep her walking.

Besides Coryne, she was carrying water skins, a combat knife, a backpack and, slung around her shoulder, an autopistol, prised from the fingers of a frozen corpse. The gun terrified her. She had got this far without using it but she was no fool. She knew her luck could not hold out forever. She had crossed hundreds of miles of earthworks, burnt-out gun emplacements and bunkers, scavenged food from abandoned hab-blocks and cowered in bloodstained snowdrifts. It was only a matter of time before a bone-cutter saw her. And when they did, she would use the gun, however much it scared her. The warm bundle at her chest would leave her no choice. They will not have you.

It took her an hour of slow trudging to reach the top of the next rise and see Valgaast Valley spread out below her. There were fires to the east, just a few miles from where she stood, blinking in the gloom. She crouched, took out her magnoculars and focused on the flames. It was a manufactorum, a big one by the looks of it. It had been set alight from end to end and she could see figures silhouetted by the flames. Bone-cutters. They had to be. No one else would stay out in the open. They were swarming over the snow like rats. There must be over a hundred of them. Her hand fell involuntarily to the blocky weapon at her side, her cold-clumsy fingers brushing its brutal angles. If a group like that saw her what would she do? How many could she stop before they reached her?

She looked the other way. The western end of the valley looked clear. It was a pit of darkness. Even the magnoculars could pick out no trace of heat or movement. The bone-cutters did not always give off heat signals though. As they rotted they became unaware of the cold, not bothering to wear coats or hoods. After a week or two they were usually clad in little more than rags, their bodies as cold as the snow.

She stared through the magnoculars, adjusting the lenses and muttering, unsure what to do. Then she shrugged and realised she had no option. Port Strabo was ten miles to the north. She had to cross the valley. And she would not be going anywhere near those fires.

She shrugged her backpack into a more comfortable position, kissed the rags around Coryne’s head and began climbing down the slope. She had to move at a painfully slow speed. The rocks were coated in ice and the snow was equally treacherous.

Her breath coiled in the air, trailing through the blackness and catching the light.

After three hours she finally reached the valley floor and leant back against the rock face, struggling to catch her breath. Coryne was still asleep, but it would not be long before she woke for a feed. She had to find shelter before then, and ideally some new supplies.

Cut off from the perpetual dawn, the valley was profoundly dark. Anava crept on for a while, feeling her way over the rocks, but every few minutes she stumbled. It was only a matter of time before she fell. She was beyond worrying about pain, but a broken bone would be the end of her. Even a bad sprain might leave her stranded in the snow.

With great care, she took a lumen from her belt and clicked it on, aiming the beam directly at the ground in front of her.

The light was dazzling.

She snapped it off with a curse.

Coryne stirred, wriggling against her.

Not now, thought Anava, shushing the child and humming a gentle tune.

To her relief the baby settled.

She tried walking in the dark again but immediately stubbed her toe, staggering with a sickening lurch and nearly falling.

She shook her head, adjusted the lumen and snapped it on a second time.

The beam was fainter this time, but still bright enough to make her pulse quicken.

Holding the lumen in one hand, she grabbed the magnoculars in the other and looked up the valley at the distant fires.

The building looked unchanged, but there was no sign of the bone-cutters. Every one of them had vanished.

‘Damn it,’ she whispered, scouring the blazing building for signs of movement. ‘Where are you?’

However hard she looked, she could not locate them. With a grimace, she trudged on across the valley floor, making for the opposite slope.

The lumen meant she could move faster but it made her feel like she was calling out to the bone-cutters, announcing her presence.

She was halfway across the valley floor when she saw a pile of bags, scattered across the snow.

She smiled. Her supplies were running dangerously low. This could be just what she needed.

Then she cast the lumen up and down the valley, checking that the bags’ owner was not waiting to attack her.

There was another pile of bags a few feet past the first one, but no sign of any people.

She crept cautiously forwards, still flicking the light back and forth. It seemed to accentuate the darkness either side of the beam, making the night even more threatening. The harder she stared, the more the darkness seemed to roll and drift.

She reached the first pile of bags, reached out to them, then backed away with a groan.

It was a corpse.

It had been so brutally savaged that she had failed to recognise the shape. The limbs had been torn from the torso and the fur-lined coat was black with blood.

‘Sweet Terra,’ she whispered, recognising the remnants of a face. The features were distorted and elongated, as if they had melted. Anava had seen it before. It was the pathetic shape of a body that has been robbed of its bones.

She stumbled on towards the second shape.

Again, it was a corpse. It was the body of a woman. It was lying face down in the snow but it looked to be intact. The bone-cutters must have missed it.

Anava slowed as she approached it, looking for weapons or food.

She dropped to one knee and turned the body over.

The woman groaned and grabbed Anava’s shoulders, pulling her down.

Anava wrenched free, staggered back through the snow and grabbed the autopistol, struggling frantically to snap the safety catch with her bundled hands.

‘Wait!’ gasped the woman. ‘Show some pity.’

Anava finally flicked the safety off and pointed the gun at her face, palsied with nerves and struggling to hold it steady.

The woman stared back at Anava, shaking her head, her mouth working silently.

Anava was so delirious with fear she almost fired. Then, with a gasp of relief, she lowered the gun. Bone-cutters did not beg for mercy. They did not stare in fear.

‘You’re not one of them,’ she whispered.

The woman closed her eyes and sighed with relief, slumping back into the snow. ‘No.’

Anava stood there, still gripping the gun. ‘I can’t help you,’ she said, knowing it was a lie before the words had left her mouth.

If the journey had been slow before, it was agonising now. The woman had shrapnel lodged in her thigh and she struggled to walk. As well as carrying Coryne and the supplies, Anava now had the woman’s arm slung over her shoulder as they trudged through the snow.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked, casting the woman a sideways glance.

‘Medunna,’ she replied. Anava had refastened her coat and shared one of the self-heating ration packs with her. She seemed in reasonable health but, crucially, when she shone the lumen in her face, Anava saw no sign of the plague. It was always easy to spot. Within a few days of a person contracting the rot, their skin changed colour, turning a dirty green. A few weeks after that, growths began to appear: eyes, mouths, even whole limbs, sprouting all over the victim’s discoloured flesh. Medunna looked half-frozen but she was untainted by disease. Since they’d started walking, the woman had remained silent, her eyes glinting deep inside her hood as she scoured the valley for movement. She looked even more terrified than Anava felt. Somehow, the idea made her feel better, braver.

‘How many of you were there?’ asked Anava, gesturing back in the direction of the corpses.

Medunna did not reply for a few seconds, and when she did, her voice was unsteady. ‘Three.’

‘Your family?’

Medunna nodded.

‘Your child?’

Medunna nodded again.

They walked on in silence.

After a while, they reached a wide depression in the snow.

‘Looks like there’s a transitway under here,’ said Anava. She was so used to speaking to herself that Medunna’s reply was quite unexpected.

‘It leads to Strabo.’

The two women glanced at each other.

They managed to pick up a little speed along the even surface of the road and finally started to approach the foothills.

‘Is it a girl?’

Again, Anava was surprised by the sound of Medunna’s voice.

Instinctively, she held Coryne a little tighter. ‘Yes.’

‘I lost my boy,’ said Medunna, her voice so flat it sounded inhuman.

Anava stumbled to a halt, then nodded and carried on.

A dark shape loomed out of the whirling snow clouds.

Anava grabbed her autopistol and pointed at the shadow. ‘More bodies?’

‘No, it’s a building.’

Medunna was right. It was a watchtower. The snow had confused Anava’s sense of distance.

Anava shook her head. ‘Probably empty.’

Medunna nodded, but neither of them moved.

‘I’ve come too far to stop,’ said Anava. ‘Can you walk by yourself for a while?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then wait here. I have a gun. You don’t.’ She took out her combat knife. ‘Here. Take this. In case I don’t…’

Medunna took the knife. ‘You should give me the girl.’

Anava tensed. Then tried to calm herself. The woman was just trying to help. ‘No. I’ll keep her with me.’

Medunna said nothing and looked back at the tower.

Anava hesitated a moment longer, daunted by the ominous shape, then she started walking. Coryne was strapped to her chest and she was free to grip the autopistol in both hands, trying to calm her nerves with the weapon’s pugnacious bulk. She had never even fired it. What if it was damaged? She had oiled it and loaded it in the way she had seen Guardsmen do, but there could be some flaw in the mechanism. It might do nothing. Or it might take her arm off.

She stopped and looked back at Medunna. The woman had dropped into a crouch, trying to shield herself from the wind, but she was still looking her way.

‘I should leave you with her,’ whispered Anava, stroking the rags around Coryne’s head. But she could not do it. The woman had just lost a child. What if she decided to take a new one? Grief could turn to madness. Even she had been accused of losing her mind after Lade fell to the plague. And perhaps it had been true. Who could blame her? She saw the growths on his body, heard the shots that killed him. She knew he had to die. Plague victims left alive would eventually join the ranks of the bone-cutters. Collecting body parts to adorn their mutated flesh. But Lade’s death still felt like a crime. She probably was insane for a while. It had looked as though she might even be impounded. And they were going to take Coryne from her. Then the rot took all of them and the matter became moot. Only she and Coryne had escaped.

Anger at the memory drove her on. She gripped the gun tighter and marched towards the watchtower.

The tower was a brutal slab of ferrocrete, hexagonal in shape and topped by a row of shattered machicolations. There was a single door, which had been blasted open at some point, leaving scorch marks around the frame and a dark, maw-like hole in the wall.

Anava crept towards it, gun held out before her as though she were trying to disassociate herself from the weapon.

She stopped a few feet away and waited, listening.

The wind howled through cracked walls. It sounded like the cry of a wounded animal. It was as though the tower had a voice and was pleading with her.

There were no sounds of movement within, so Anava edged through the doorway.

A little light was spilling through a window and she was just able to make out a small, hexagonal courtyard. The roof was still intact and Anava stepped onto something other than snow for the first time in weeks. The icy flagstones were littered with wreckage. One whole section of the wall had given way, scattering plasteel and ferrocrete in every direction. There were also smashed ammo crates and empty promethium tanks and a pile of broken weapons.

At the far side of the courtyard was a flight of steps. There must be another floor above her head, guessed Anava, recalling the windows she’d seen outside.

Coryne was stirring again. She had to feed her. This was the best shelter she’d find before they reached Port Strabo, but she would not be able to relax without knowing what was over her head.

She crossed to the stairs and began climbing, treading carefully and keeping the gun trained on the opening above her.

The next level was even more of a mess. There were engine parts piled everywhere and pieces of a large, dismantled weapon, some kind of anti-aircraft gun. And on the other side were dozens of rusted cables, stacked in a heap and partially covered by an old tarpaulin.

Anava was about to head back down when she saw a crate that was still intact. It was an old, battered trunk and the lock looked so rusty she thought she might be able to lever it off.

She needed to go and call Medunna in, but it would only take a moment to examine the crate. She walked over to it and began levering the lock. It moved, the screws sliding easily from the crumbling metal. The last corner would not come away, so she looked around the room to check she was still alone, placed the gun down next to the trunk and used both hands to pull at the lock.

It opened with a shrill creak that echoed loudly round the watchtower.

Anava winced, then lifted the lid and peered inside.

The trunk was full of bloody, human bones.

Anava backed away, gasping. There was a skull at the top, covered in scraps of skin, and one of its eyes was still lodged in its socket, staring at her.

Her heart was thudding. Only a bone-cutter would keep such a collection.

Coryne chose that moment to wake up, announcing her hunger with a ferocious scream.

There was a clattering sound behind Anava.

She whirled around to see the cables shrug off the tarpaulin and rise from the floor.

They were not cables. They were rotten growths. They were the mutant limbs of a plague victim. He was so deformed he looked like an enormous arachnid. There was barely anything left of his human form, just a scrawny chest, surrounded by rust-coloured tendrils and his face, staring hungrily at Anava.

The mutant tried to speak as he staggered towards her but all that emerged was bile and flies.

Before the plague, Anava had never seen flies. Despite her terror, they mesmerised her, swarming around the mutant’s head as he lassoed her waist and hauled her across the room, straight into his nest of thrashing limbs.

She screamed and grappled, straining to hold Coryne clear of the dreadful creature. Some of the limbs ended in bone-knives, sharpened hooks stained with blood. They flailed around her and then moved towards her chest, preparing to tear her open.

She tried to grab them with her free hand, but the flesh was moist and slippery.

As she struggled for her life the mutant never said a word, just gargling more flies as he brought his gaping mouth towards her face.

A loud rattling sound filled the room, like a drum roll.

The mutant tensed, loomed over Anava, then fell away, slapping down onto the tarpaulin.

Anava stared in confusion. The mutant’s body had exploded. Gaping wounds had appeared all over its mud-like flesh. Black blood was spraying into the air along with even more flies, columns of the insects that filled the air with a loud grinding sound.

The mutant shivered and then reached up with some of its limbs, grabbing hold of an overhead beam and trying to stand.

There was another loud rattling sound and more holes opened in its head, slamming it back against the wall.

Then it finally lay still, its ruined head lolling down onto its chest with a grunt.

As the flies began to clear, escaping through open windows, Anava saw Medunna standing by the chest, holding the smoking autopistol with a dangerous gleam in her eye.

Anava backed away from her, almost as wary of the woman as she was the still-twitching plague victim.

Medunna watched Anava closely. Then turned the gun around and held it out to her. ‘We should stay together.’

Anava nodded and took the gun.

Medunna nodded to the screaming Coryne. ‘You can feed her while I look for supplies.’

Port Strabo was under siege. Not by an army, but by its own people. As Anava looked down from the transitway she saw thousands of refugees swarming around its walls. There were lines of trenches and razor wire circling the whole starport and more Guardsmen than Anava had ever seen. There must have been hundreds of them, manning the walls and lining the single point of entry, a frozen track that was carrying armoured groundcars and personnel carriers through the baying crowds.

It was a desperate scene. People were holding up money and jewellery, begging to be admitted, but the Guardsmen were deaf to their cries. They were clad in an array of different uniforms and Anava guessed that some of the regiments had come from off-world, but they all had the same hard stare on their faces. As Anava watched, a group of refugees managed to scale the razor wire and reach the track. Three Guardsmen opened fire, killing without hesitation.

Emitters were braying announcements from the battlements. A relief force was on its way. The Imperial world of Jehudiel V was not being abandoned. Once the military were safe in high orbit, they would coordinate the counter-attack; they would cleanse the planet of mutants. No one was listening. The truth leaked months ago: Jehudiel was beyond saving. The plague had spread too fast and too wide. Half the populace had been transformed into bone-cutters. Governor Scirion was pulling his men out and leaving everyone else to die. If the Imperial fleet ever did return to Jehudiel it would not be to save people, it would be to purge them with fire.

‘There’s no way in,’ whispered Anava, horrified by the sight of so many desperate people.

Medunna nodded. ‘The governor is no fool. If even one of those people turns out to be a plague victim, his evacuation will be pointless. If an infected person got onto the Emperor’s Sword, everyone on board it would be dead. And then think what would happen when another ship finds them – the plague could spread across the whole sector.’

She looked down at the battlements. ‘Maybe there’s a way.’

Anava grabbed her arm. ‘How? What do you mean?’

‘I worked here, before the plague. I worked with the ground crews, refuelling and repairing the landers. I know where they load them into the Emperor’s Sword. They might already have been towed into the embarkation decks, but if not…’

‘If not, what? We could stow away?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘But how would we get in?’ Anava waved at the wailing crowds below. ‘They would shoot us before we reached the gates.’

Medunna stood up and started heading off into the banks of snow, waving for Anava to follow. ‘There is more than one way into Strabo.’

Medunna headed back onto the submerged transitway that had led them across the valley, then headed off it at another junction, moving away from the lights of the starport before finally approaching it again half an hour later, from a different direction.

‘This gate is guarded too,’ said Anava as they approached a much smaller entrance. There were no crowds of refugees here, but there was still an impressive scrum of Guardsmen around the doors, watching the surrounding hills carefully as freight-haulers rumbled past them into the port.

‘There’s another way,’ said Medunna, waving her on.

They kept their heads down as they hurried behind snowdrifts, heading even further away from the main gates until Medunna pointed out a finger of rock, jutting out of the whiteness a few hundred feet from the walls of the starport.

‘They built Strabo on the ruins of a native settlement. A temple complex or maybe even just a city that used to be above ground. We used to dare each other to explore it when we were drunk. The Guardsmen know about the larger chambers but not the smaller ones.’

As they reached the spur of rock, Anava saw that it was the remnants of a ruined wall. The architecture was clearly not Imperial. It was too crude and unadorned, devoid of the mythological beasts and ornate pediments that covered the rest of Port Strabo.

Medunna dropped down into a ditch and kicked away the snow until she was able to stamp her boot on something hard and hollow-sounding.

Anava dropped down beside her and gripped her arm. ‘Why are you helping me?’

‘Helping you? I’m helping me. I don’t want to be left here. Why do you think I was trying to reach Strabo?’

‘But you could have come here without me. You could have snuck away and left me at the main gates.’

Medunna looked at Coryne, sleeping in Anava’s arms. ‘Perhaps… perhaps she might have a better life than ours.’

The two women looked at each other in silence, thinking of the things they had lost.

Anava nodded.

Medunna reached for the gun and Anava handed it to her without hesitation.

There was a single, loud report, then Medunna handed the gun back and wrenched a rusty hatch open, revealing a flight of ancient, timeworn steps. She nodded at Anava and then vanished into the darkness.

Anava hesitated, thinking of the mutant in the watchtower. Then she whispered a prayer to the God-Emperor and climbed down the steps.

The Emperor’s Sword was almost ready to depart. Anava knew nothing of space travel or voidships but, as she looked up at the spires and buttresses of the governor’s ship, she could see that their time was almost up. There were columns of smoke and steam rising from its engines and the grand porticos that spurred out from its hull were almost empty, with just a few final crew members making their way into the light that spilled from within. Some of the smaller loading hatches were already slamming shut.

‘They’re not even taking the Guardsmen at the gates,’ she whispered, cowering behind a fuel bowser with Medunna.

Medunna shook her head. ‘Too risky. They spent too long with the refugees. Any one of them might be carrying a mutation.’

Anava felt no outrage at what was happening. She only felt numb.

‘This way,’ hissed Medunna, hobbling off through a doorway into an unlit blockhouse near the wall.

Anava rushed after her and, after closing the door behind her, she flicked on her lumen, lighting up the small room.

It was full of discarded uniforms and equipment, and Medunna handed her a suit of grubby overalls, studded with fittings for oxygen pipes and stitched across the chest with an Imperial eagle.

‘Quickly!’ said Medunna, grabbing another one for herself. ‘That ship is ready to leave. We might only have minutes left.’

Anava carefully placed Coryne down on a pile of clothes, then donned the overalls. They were loose enough that she was still able to fasten them up once she had wrapped Coryne back around her chest. Coryne was still tiny but Anava grabbed an oversized jacket to help disguise the bulge.

Medunna looked her up and down and nodded. ‘You’ll do.’ She looked around the room. ‘No, wait…’ She grabbed a small metal canister with a rubber pipe hung from its nozzle. ‘Now you look the part.’

Medunna limped back to the door, then paused to look at Anava. ‘It’s a long shot. Do you understand?’ She looked at the bulge under Anava’s jacket. ‘I’m going to act like I’m still part of the ground crew and hope they are fooled by my familiar face. But if they don’t know me, or they wonder who you are, we’ll be shot.’ She massaged her scalp. ‘To be honest, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous this whole idea is. If they’re being so thorough at the–’

‘What other chance do we have?’ said Anava. ‘What other chance does my daughter have?’

Medunna nodded. Then she placed a hand on Coryne’s sleeping form.

Anava tensed, but said nothing, aware of how much she owed this woman.

‘We have to try,’ said Medunna. Then she grabbed an empty flight case and left the blockhouse, doing her best to walk straight. ‘Stay right behind me,’ she said as Anava followed her. ‘Our only hope is that they don’t ask us any questions.’

Medunna led the way to one of the smaller loading ramps. There were only two guards watching it and they were clearly distracted, talking into a bulky vox-caster that was at the top of the ramp.

As they neared the Guardsmen, a terrific din rose up from the direction of the main gates. It sounded like gunfire and shouting.

The Guardsmen were speaking frantically into the vox-caster and then, when Anava and Medunna were still several feet away, one of the soldiers rushed down the loading ramp and headed away from the ship, yelling something at the Guardsman who had remained.

‘They’re going!’ whispered Anava, unable to believe her luck.

‘No,’ replied Medunna, coming to a halt. ‘That one is staying put.’ Her tone was grim. ‘And I do not know his face. He will want to see my identification and–’

There was an explosion on the far side of the main gates and a chorus of screams.

‘They’re trying to fight their way in!’ said Medunna.

There was another roaring sound, but rather than coming from the gates this one came from the engines of the Emperor’s Sword. All along its length, crewmen and soldiers began racing inside as hatches and doors clanged shut behind them. Loading vehicles careered across the docks, trying to reach the ramps before they slid from view.

‘Now or never,’ said Anava. ‘They’re leaving.’

‘There’s no way!’ gasped Medunna. ‘I don’t know that man. When he sees we have no ID he’ll shoot us on the spot.’

‘I understand,’ replied Anava, striding off towards the ramp.

The Guardsman saw her coming but most of his attention was still on the commotion at the gates.

Anava was halfway up the ramp when he finally looked at her properly.

‘Throne knows how they think we’d get them all on here,’ he laughed. ‘Even a ship this big can’t hold a whole damned planet.’ His laughter was manic and his eyes were wide.

‘Your papers,’ he said, holding out his hand with a strained smile.

Anava gunned him down.

He slammed against the hull with a shocked expression, half his torso ripped away. Then he fell from the ramp and hit the ground in a heap.

‘What have you done?’ cried Medunna, staggering up the ramp after her.

Anava was staring at the gun, still feeling the reverberations of the shot. ‘I killed him,’ she said, her voice small.

Medunna shook her head, her face pale. Then she gently pushed Anava into the ship. ‘You killed him before he killed you.’

Anava had never left Jehudiel before. As she cowered in the lander Medunna had led them to, she could see a reflection in its viewport – the curve of a world, gradually shrinking as the Emperor’s Sword broke orbit and headed out into the system.

‘They said they would wait in high orbit,’ she said. ‘They said they would coordinate the fight against the plague.’

Medunna frowned. ‘Why are you saying that? You knew they were lying. The governor is never going back down there. He’s going to leave all those people to die. No,’ she corrected herself, ‘it’s worse than that. He’s leaving them all to the plague. They will all mutate and lose their minds. They will become bone-cutters.’

Anava was not listening. Her thoughts were still full of the Guardsman’s expression as he realised she had shot him. She could still hear him hitting the ground. You’re insane. The words came back to haunt her. The words they used when they tried to take Coryne from her. ‘They will not have you,’ she whispered.

Medunna looked at her in confusion but stayed quiet. Then she looked up at the reflection in the viewport, watching Jehudiel shrink into the distance.

They must have been close to the enginarium. The lander was shaking constantly and the heat was becoming unbearable. As it grew hotter in the lander, Anava’s head started to swim and she thought she might faint. ‘Coryne,’ she gasped, remembering that the poor child was still swaddled under her overalls.

She quickly undid the suit and lifted the baby out. Coryne was asleep and, to Anava’s relief, she looked unharmed, her cheeks flushed with colour and her breathing calm.

She loosened the rags and allowed some air to finally reach the infant’s body.

Medunna screamed.

Anava looked up in shock, expecting to see a Guardsman at the door.

There was no Guardsman. Medunna was staring at Coryne, her face drained of colour and hitching screams rocking her body.

‘Plague!’ cried Medunna.

‘What are you talking about?’ As Anava looked at Coryne, she had a dreadful vision. She imagined she could see what Medunna was seeing. She saw that, from the neck down, Coryne was a nest of rust-coloured tentacles, that she had been transformed by the plague. But, as quick as it came, the hallucination vanished, and she saw her beautiful, untainted child again.

‘She’s infected!’ cried Medunna, scrambling at the access hatch that led back into the main ship, looking for the opening mechanism. ‘The ship will be infected!’

Medunna finally managed to find the runepad that opened the door but, before she had managed to press any runes, she slammed against the door in an explosion of crimson, her body torn apart.

Anava lowered the autopistol and stood over Medunna’s corpse with a blank expression. Then she looked back at Coryne.

‘They will not have you.’

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Danie Ware is the author of the novellas The Bloodied Rose, Wreck and Ruin and the short story ‘Mercy’, all featuring the Sisters of Battle. She lives in Carshalton, south London, with her son and two cats and has long-held interests in role-playing, re-enactment, vinyl art toys and personal fitness.

Denny Flowers is the author of the Necromunda short story ‘The Hand of Harrow’ and novella Low Lives, featuring the characters of Caleb and Iktomi. He lives in Kent with his wife and son.

David Guymer’s work for Warhammer Age of Sigmar includes the novels Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods and The Court of the Blind King, the audio dramas The Beasts of Cartha, Fist of Mork, Fist of Gork, Great Red and Only the Faithful. He is also the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned and the Gotrek audio dramas Realmslayer and Realmslayer: Blood of the Old World. For The Horus Heresy he has written the novella Dreadwing, and the Primarchs novels Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa and Lion El’Jonson: Lord of the First. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written The Eye of Medusa, The Voice of Mars and the two Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Awards for his novel Headtaker.

Graeme Lyon is the author of the Age of Sigmar novella Code of the Skies and the Space Marine Battles novella Armour of Faith. He has also written a host of Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer short stories including ‘The Carnac Campaign: Sky Hunter’, ‘Kor’sarro Khan: Huntmaster’, ‘Black Iron’, ‘The Eighth Victory’, ‘The Sacrifice’ and ‘Bride of Khaine’. He hails from East Kilbride in Scotland.

Richard Strachan is a writer and editor who lives with his partner and two children in Edinburgh, UK. Despite his best efforts, both children stubbornly refuse to be interested in tabletop wargaming. His first story for Black Library, ‘The Widow Tide’, appeared in the Warhammer Horror anthology Maledictions.

Darius Hinks is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Blackstone Fortress, Blackstone Fortress: Ascension and the accompanying audio drama The Beast Inside. He also wrote three novels in the Mephiston series: Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius, Mephiston: Revenant Crusade and Mephiston: City of Light, as well as the Space Marine Battles novella Sanctus. His work for Age of Sigmar includes Hammers of Sigmar, Warqueen and the Gotrek Gurnisson novel Ghoulslayer. For Warhammer, he wrote Warrior Priest, which won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best newcomer, as well as the Orion trilogy, Sigvald and several novellas.

A Black Library Publication

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

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Akim Kaliberda.

Black Library Events Anthology 2019/20 © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Black Library Events Anthology 2019/20, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN 13: 978-1-78496-863-2

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