CRUSADE & OTHER STORIES
A Getting Started collection by various authors

• DARK IMPERIUM •
Guy Haley
Book one: DARK IMPERIUM
Book two: PLAGUE WAR

WATCHERS OF THE THRONE: THE EMPEROR’S LEGION
Chris Wraight

• THE HORUSIAN WARS •
John French
Book one: RESURRECTION
Book two: INCARNATION

VAULTS OF TERRA: THE CARRION THRONE
Chris Wraight

• RISE OF THE YNNARI •
Gav Thorpe
Book one: GHOST WARRIOR
Book two: WILD RIDER

• BLACK LEGION •
Aaron Dembski-Bowden
Book one: THE TALON OF HORUS
Book two: BLACK LEGION

BLACKSTONE FORTRESS
Darius Hinks

SACROSANCT & OTHER STORIES
A Getting Started collection by various authors

NAGASH: THE UNDYING KING
Josh Reynolds

• HALLOWED KNIGHTS •
Josh Reynolds
Book one: PLAGUE GARDEN
Book two: BLACK PYRAMID

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
Josh Reynolds

OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner

SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds

CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth

THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds

BLACKTALON: FIRST MARK
Andy Clark

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1
An omnibus containing stories by various authors

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 2
An omnibus containing stories by various authors

KAL JERICO: THE OMNIBUS
Will McDermott and Gordon Rennie
Contains the novels Blood Royal, Cardinal Crimson
and Lasgun Wedding

WANTED: DEAD
Mike Brooks

• THE LEGEND OF SIGMAR •
Graham McNeill
Book one: HELDENHAMMER
Book two: EMPIRE
Book three: GOD KING

• THE RISE OF NAGASH •
Mike Lee
Book one: NAGASH THE SORCERER
Book two: NAGASH THE UNBROKEN
Book three: NAGASH IMMORTAL

• VAMPIRE WARS: THE VON CARSTEIN TRILOGY •
Steven Savile
Book one: INHERITANCE
Book two: DOMINION
Book three: RETRIBUTION

• THE SUNDERING •
Gav Thorpe
Book one: MALEKITH
Book two: SHADOW KING
Book three: CALEDOR

• CHAMPIONS OF CHAOS •
Darius Hinks, S P Cawkwell & Ben Counter
Book one: SIGVALD
Book two: VALKIA THE BLOODY
Book three: VAN HORSTMANN

• THE WAR OF VENGEANCE •
Nick Kyme, Chris Wraight & C L Werner
Book one: THE GREAT BETRAYAL
Book two: MASTER OF DRAGONS
Book three: THE CURSE OF THE PHOENIX CROWN

• MATHIAS THULMANN: WITCH HUNTER •
C L Werner
Book one: WITCH HUNTER
Book two: WITCH FINDER
Book three: WITCH KILLER

• ULRIKA THE VAMPIRE •
Nathan Long
Book one: BLOODBORN
Book two: BLOODFORGED
Book three: BLOODSWORN

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Introduction

THE SPIRIT OF COGS

AT THE SIGN OF THE BRAZEN CLAW: PART 3

CITY OF BLOOD

DISMEMBER THE TITANS

THE UNLAMENTED ARCHPUSTULENT OF CLAN MORBIDUS

IN THE MISTS OF CHAOS

THE BOOK OF TRANSFORMATIONS

Prologue

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

THE WEIGHT OF SILVER

BONEGRINDER

EMPRA

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

THE EMPEROR’S LIGHT

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

INTRODUCTION

Welcome, adept!

Upon reading this tome you have begun your initiation into the third sphere of forbidden knowledge. Praise the Omnissiah! Now your quest for knowledge finds you in enviably unexplored lands.

Inferno! Volume 3 is the largest anthology to date, bursting with secrets and hidden truths across a vast array of stories. Whether it’s the darkest denizens of the Underhive or the wanton violence of the Blood Bowl field that catches your eye, Inferno! Volume 3 is indispensable.

But heed my warning: this collection is not for the weak-willed.

Indeed, the keen-eyed reader will spot that this volume oozes mystery and suspense, and no story espouses these themes more than the lead title, ‘Spirit of the Cogs’ by John French.

But he is not alone. A host of authors stand shoulder to shoulder with John, many of whom – such as Josh Reynolds, Nate Crowley and Steven B Fischer – return to Inferno! with brand new stories. Meanwhile, Matt Smith and Rik Hoskin are making their Inferno! debut, furnishing us with their takes on the Warhammer settings.

For years, it has been Black Library’s privilege, alongside some astounding talent, to explore and expand upon what makes the Warhammer universes so unique and distinct. We intend to keep pushing the boundaries of our settings with anthologies like the one you now hold.

It’s barely believable that this is already the third volume of Inferno!, but fear not, this is no mere trilogy. The overwhelmingly positive response to the reinstalment of Inferno! has cemented our resolve to bring you ever more stories. In fact, our cogitator banks are brimming with data waiting to be released to the faithful for analysis.

So check your power supply, prepare some recaff and praise the motive force. We’re only just getting started.

Until next time.

Jacob Youngs

Commissioning Editor, October 2018.

THE SPIRIT OF COGS

John French

John French makes his Inferno! debut with this issue’s lead story. John has been writing for Black Library since 2011 when he wrote ‘Hunted’ in the fourth volume of Hammer and Bolter. Now a household name, and a Siege of Terra writer, John brings his inexhaustible knowledge of Warhammer 40,000 to the Mechanicus, posing an age-old question: are there ghosts in the machine? Be sure to expect a thrilling mystery from the master of the Inquisition.

‘What dreams sleep in iron that by the turning wheel mankind has brought to waking?’

– from the Smith’s Address as spoken
in the Penitent Cycles of Terra

‘There are ghosts in machines.’ Glavius-4-Rho looked up from the mirror of the blade in his hands as he spoke.

The former Sister of Battle sat on the floor of the armourium, legs crossed, armour replaced by a grey hessian smock. She had been sat there ever since she had brought him the sword. It was damaged, the edge notched and a tine sheared from the cross-guard. He had taken it from her and begun the repairs as soon as she had shown it to him. He had not grieved for the damage done to the sword – some things were created to be damaged.

‘Ghosts?’ said Severita at last. ‘Machines have spirits – that is what all of your priesthood say, isn’t it?’

He felt the servos in his frame twitch as a plasma flame lit on his workbench. Part of him wondered if starting this exchange had been wise. He was a magos after all, a high guardian of the truths and mysteries of the most sacred Machine-God…

No… he was not. That was factually incorrect. He had failed. He had lost the machines and knowledge entrusted to his care. He was a penitent, grey-robed, where once he had been clad in red. Without rank where once he had been most high. He served Inquisitor Covenant now – that was his function.

He looked again at Severita. Like him, she was an outcast from her own kind. She had been a warrior of the Adepta Sororitas but some transgression had seen her cast from her order, service to Covenant replacing the bonds to her sisters. He liked her, and she had made a habit of talking to him. She asked him questions, questions not about the function of things but about him, about what he had experienced, about what he believed. He did not understand why. A non-logical part of his mind thought that she was trying to redeem him.

He focused his attention on the sword for fifteen seconds, his servo-arms holding it steady as he dipped its blade into the plasma flame on his workbench. Blue fire washed over its edge and sent light fizzing from its mirror finish. The beam cut off and he held the blade as it cooled.

Severita was still looking at him, head cocked, waiting for a reply to her question.

Glavius-4-Rho selected a mode of expression that he thought was correct. ‘All machines possess spirits. That is a fact and truth. I did not speak of spirits. I spoke of ghosts.’

The skin around Severita’s eyes creased further. Glavius-4-Rho turned back to the blade and focused the plasma flame to a narrow knife of fire.

‘There are no such things as ghosts,’ Severita said. ‘Daemons, yes, but not ghosts.’

‘Are you certain you wish to understand what I mean?’ he asked, staring down at the blade as it began to glow with heat.

‘I would have an answer if you would give it.’

He felt the seconds pass and the cogs in his chest tick over.

‘As you command,’ he said, and began to speak.

It was 401 days after my ascendancy to the rank of magos when I went to waken the machine in the underworld of Zhao-Arkkad.

Not all of those who serve the machine are made in the sight of its great forges. I was one such. My biological self began its life cycle on Mithras. The techno-clans of the second conurbation were my originators. I cannot remember my direct biological forebears. The first level of mental augmentation removed those memories when I was fourteen years. I do not miss them. I cannot remember what to miss.

I survived the early years of un-augmented life. I showed aptitude in assembly and logic application. I have memory residue from those times: a mental image of a drop of blood on fingers, geometric blocks of bronze alloy tumbling from their grasp, shouts of admonition, the flash of an electro-whip. I hear cries sometimes. I don’t know whose cries they are.

The representatives of the priesthood had already marked me as a potential subject for induction into their ranks. I was inducted into the orders of artisans. I assimilated the first levels of sacred maintenance and construction processes. I manifested the ability to replicate and memorise without error. I was blessed with machine creations to replace my hands.

At the passing of 21.233 years I was taken within the embrace of the Omnissiah. My sponsors were the Demi-flux Governors, a sanctioned branch concerned with the transference of electro-power and field parameters. There were other sects and branches who had marked me for their ranks. The high induction engines, though, calculated my characteristics being of most use to the Demi-flux Governors. If I had a preference on my path into the priesthood, I no longer store it in my memory – it was and is irrelevant.

I progressed through the levels of flux-savants. Further augmentation was made to my physical and mental architecture. At the point when I was raised to the rank of magos my physical self was 43.56% of the machine. My cognition functioned between 35.45% and 37.23% purity. In form my face was the blank mask of an aspirant, the nerves beneath the skin severed and expressive muscles paralysed. My hands and forearms were plasteel and black carbon. My primary organs had just been replaced, though my torso was still blood and bone. I recall that I was still adjusting to the rhythm of my new heart when I made my journey to Zhao-Arkkad.

Zhao-Arkkad was the first true forge world I had ever seen, and it was like nothing that I had expected. That may seem inconstant to you, but the sacred worlds of Omnissiah are few; our empire exists beside that of the Imperium, entwined with it, and my training had been in the priesthood’s enclaves on Mithras, Glaucon, and in the void forges of Jeddev. Zhao-Arkkad was not an enclave world – it was a world given body and soul to iron, to the furnace and turning wheel, to the song of the blessed electro. But this soul hid beneath a skin of forests. It was a wonder and a paradox.

The fumes of engines were the clouds, and the rains that fell onto the green canopy were rich with radiation and minerals. Predator fauna thrived amongst the equally lethal flora. The Primary Forge-Fane Complexes were buried beneath the ground, connected by tunnels and sealed against life on the surface. In these underground realms, the machine fanes and anvil districts stretched to the limits of the stone walls. Spires of data temples and the chimneys of fume vents rose to the stone ceilings and the thunder of forge hammers blended with the crackle of static leaping from wall to wall and spire to spire. Seeing that, hearing that, feeling that, was one of the most sacred experiences I have ever had.

That moment was brief.

I had thought that I would be installed in one of the electro-fanes; the divine flow of plasma and reactor rituals had been my calling since I had been raised to the cog. Instead I found that I was to be diverted to an isolated facility on the southern continent. No one could give me specific data on the purpose I was to fulfil there or even the name of the facility. I was to travel there by air, departing from an obscure landing pad set in a crater on the surface above the forge complex.

When I arrived at the landing pad, a shuttle was waiting. It bore no marks. That was an anomaly; everything I had seen since my arrival was stamped and marked with code and function. It took off as soon as I arrived.

There were two others with me. The first was a male of largely biological make up, uniformed in the style of the Collegia Titanica, but without markings of Legion or rank. All of his noospheric data was also absent. He was a non-presence. A ghost. He offered me a curt sign of respect, but no further data.

‘What is your allocated personal identifier?’ I asked.

‘Zavius,’ he answered.

‘And your designated rank and organisational placement?’

He did not answer. Not even with a negative.

<He will not comply with any other query,> linked the other individual in the shuttle. She was called Ishta-1-Gamma. She had greeted me formally when I had arrived and made a full data exchange. She was a hermetrix – an initiate into the higher mysteries of data transference, neural linking and communication interface. If information is to the machine as blood is to the biologic, then she was to the machine what a blood doctor is to a living being. Her robes of office were orange, woven with graphite thread. Her noospheric aura was multi-sphered, coloured and patterned with the canticles of data fidelity. Her data transmission was 99.999% flawless. I had to acknowledge that I was impressed.

<He bears the signs of the Collegia Titanica,> I replied. Outside the grey-blue clouds were dragging past the shuttle’s portholes.

<He is a princeps,> sent Ishta-1-Gamma. The pause in my data reply must have communicated a query, because she continued. <He has mind-interface plugs and neural augmentation that are only gifted to those of that rank and position. He has refused all my greetings in all formats. Correction – his data links are shut down and he ignores audio greetings. Strange.>

<Strange?>

<Strange. Unusual or surprising. Difficult to understand or explain.>

<I apologise – I am aware of the word’s meaning. I did not follow your line of reasoning.>

Ishta-1-Gamma’s data aura rippled with symbol sets that denoted amusement in a number of language systems. <It was less of a deduction and more of a non-vital conversational opening,> she sent.

<Oh.>

I paused to parse that for several seconds.

The shuttle was gaining speed towards the southern continents now, weaving between columns of storm cloud. Its engines were singing at optimal output. I could feel the contentment of its spirit in the vibration of its skin. Through the portholes, I could see the waste rivers from the forge complexes’ outflows, a rainbow of reds, blues and oranges draining into green land.

<It is strange…> I transmitted to Ishta-1-Gamma, and looked at her. Her face was an ellipsoid of red ceramic. A quartet of teal eye lenses sat in a band across the top half. A vertical slot sat in the location of a mouth. There were no other features. <Do you have data on where we are going, or our purpose when we arrive?> I asked.

<I do not have that data…> She paused, but the transmission did not close. <But I have some theories based on dispersed logic.>

<You mean what the unblessed would call guesses?>

<Correct.>

A moment of silence on the data link. The wheels in my newly installed cognition implants clicked over. I glanced at Zavius, but the princeps showed no sign of having heard what we were transmitting.

<There is no possibility of the princeps intercepting this exchange,> Ishta-1-Gamma noted.

<Why are you concerned by that?>

<For the same reason you are,> she replied, <because the absence of data is disturbing.>

<Conceded. What are your… guesses as to what is occurring?>

<Facts first – I am a devotee of the divine spark of data and transmission. You are a magos of dataetherica. Neither of us are from this forge world. You arrived 2.45 days ago. I arrived 3.34 days ago. We are outsiders to the structures of this world.>

<The high magi of Zhao-Arkkad may not have available resources in those specialities,> I replied. I could see the possible branches of inference forming from her assembly of facts. Negative emotions were building up in my mental buffers.

<Or they do and the need is for individuals whose absence will not be noted and who have no connections through which to share data with the wider priesthood on this world.>

<There are other possible reasons. Those you have outlined have no greater logical weighting than any other.>

<True.>

Another silence.

The cogs turned in my cranium and the shuttle flew on. The nearest entrance to a forge complex was now far behind us. This was the Nul Zone, a reach of Zhao-Arkkad that hid no machine-filled caverns beneath its green shroud, just a vast area of hostile bio-fauna feeding grounds. Grey and black clouds passed us, and rain began to spatter the window ports and front canopy. Needle-like crags of black rock rose from the ground. Streams of water poured down their sides, bright green or blue with minerals leached from the ground.

I admit that a disturbance had entered my thoughts. Perhaps it was Ishta-1-Gamma’s guesses. Perhaps it was something in the green desolation of the land before us, bare of the shapes of machines and buildings. Perhaps it was because, for the first time in my life, I felt a long way from the familiar.

<Landing approach protocols initiated,> transmitted the shuttle’s servitor pilot. A second later I detected a shift in the air pressure. I looked out of the portholes, expecting to see a landing pad rising from the jungle canopy, but there was nothing except a range of mountains. The light was fading.

The shuttle continued to lose altitude. I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma, but her noospheric aura was repeating a pattern of blank data values. I looked out again. The sides of the mountains were close enough now that they filled the view; a black-grey wall stretched before us. The shuttle began to shake.

Zavius was on his feet, face showing no emotional markers. He moved to the back of the crew space, balancing effortlessly with the vibration of the craft. I felt high-power auspex reach out and burrow into the shuttle.

<Submitting clearance codes,> the pilot servitor broadcast. <Standing by…>

Seconds decremented. The shuttle flew on towards the mountainside.

<Clearance granted. Landing protocol initiated. All praise to the vigilance of the machine.>

The whine of the shuttle’s engines was a scream. The mountainside was so close I could see the canopy lights reflecting off the wet rock. I felt a cold shutter fall across my thoughts as my emotional buffers activated.

Thrusters fired. The shuttle spun around and dropped vertically. The fading light vanished. My eyes captured a brief image of the external view. We were plunging down a vertical shaft…

Melta-bored walls…

Diameter: 33.43 metres…

Gun platforms mounted at 50-metre intervals.

Multi-laser and plasma cannons…

Cabin temperature dropping at 1 degree per 50 metres…

The shuttle’s thrusters fired to the edge of tolerance. We settled to stillness, moisture running off the fuselage. Zavius still stood in front of the rear access ramp. Beyond the canopy I could see guide lights flashing in the dark. We rocked in place for a second, suspended in the freezing air, surrounded by the fog from our thruster jets. Then we settled onto the landing platform. The shuttle’s engines cycled down as the ramp at the back opened.

‘You will follow,’ said Zavius, looking back at us before stalking down the ramp himself. I glanced at Ishta-1-Gamma.

<He appears to have discarded his etiquette protocols…> I transmitted.

‘You will follow,’ came the repeated imperative from beyond the hatch.

<And he is determined to put that freedom to use,> she sent, standing and moving towards the ramp. I noticed that his noospheric halo had shrunk and become a monochrome sphere of basic identification data. The equivalent in flesh might be to see an expressive face become still and set.

<You are concerned about the current situation?> I queried, as I followed.

<You are not?> she replied.

Guns rotated on wall mounts to greet us, tracking our steps as we descended to the landing platform. Multi-spectrum targeting and scanning systems locked on to us. An iris hatch had closed off the shaft above us. As we reached the bottom of the ramp, the guide lights shut down across the landing platform. My sight shifted into the infra-red portion of the spectrum. The air was 8.72 degrees below zero. The heat from the engines was already dissipating. Above ground it was an average of 34 degrees above freezing, but here the moisture in the air, vented from the shuttle’s cabin, fell as frost.

A tall figure, wrapped in a cloak of graphite and carbon thread, waited for us. It had four upper limbs. Each one rested its digits on the top of a chrome cane. Its head sat high on its hunched shoulders. The portion of its anatomy that would be a face on an unblessed human was an arrangement of turning cogs. A single violet eye lens sat on the left of its face. From these augmentations alone I assessed this to be a senior member of the machine priesthood. That being the case, I should have offered supplication, made formal greeting. I did not. Like Zavius this magos gave out no noospheric data and offered no connection hail. Still, I might have bowed anyway, but Ishta-1-Gamma had remained unmoved and so I did the same.

‘Ishta-1-Gamma…’ the waiting figure intoned. It breathed and hissed from its voice speaker. ‘Glavius-4-Rho… You will both submit to the rites of data assessment. Failure to grant access to your data reservoirs and instrumentation will result in immediate life termination and reclamation of the blessed machine components of your forms.’

‘You have not identified yourself,’ said Ishta-1-Gamma. Her physical voice echoed loud in the cold dark. The hunched magos rotated its head to look at Zavius and then back to us.

‘My identification is not required,’ it said. ‘You shall comply or the stated consequences will occur.’

‘But after we comply,’ she said, ‘you shall tell us who you are.’

A pause. Seconds counted down in the edge of my sight. I was aware of the wall-mounted weapons trained on me. I could feel the tingle of the power held in their charge coils.

‘Your compliance,’ said the hunched magos. ‘Now.’

<I think I have pushed the parameters of this exchange as far as is wise,> transmitted Ishta-1-Gamma, and then spoke aloud. ‘Compliance.’

Her noospheric aura unfolded, and 0.67 seconds later I felt data-interrogators push into my own systems. It took only 0.33 seconds but left me with a sensation of needles and sharp edges.

‘All is as designated,’ said the grey magos and began to move away across the platform. I could see the flash of hundreds of bladed feet moving beneath the hem of its robes as it glided away from us. Lights outlined a door set into the wall, and a section of rock slid back to reveal a passage beyond. I began to follow, but Ishta-1-Gamma still had not moved.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. The hunched magos paused, and rotated its head backwards without turning around.

‘You may use the designation Atropos,’ said the magos, then continued to glide towards the waiting door.

I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma. She transmitted an unresolvable code blurt that would be interpreted organically as a shrug, and we followed Atropos through the door.

It was another 3.67 hours until we saw the reason for our being brought to the underworld of Zhao-Arkkad. I use the term underworld advisedly and in full knowledge of its non-literal meaning and symbolic resonance. The caverns beneath the mountains were a world apart. Silence filled their spaces and unseen watchfulness crowded their shadows. We met few other initiates of the priesthood. Those that we did see offered no greeting and passed without pause. The servitors that we saw moved in their own locked rhythms, their joints so maintained and blessed by oil that they made no sound. I observed signal and interface code locks on every device; there would be no communing with their machine-spirits or workings without the keys to unlock them.

<There is no wider noospheric network to access,> noted Ishta-1-Gamma after we had been walking for an hour.

<Perhaps it is shielded from our awareness,> I ventured.

<Negatory,> she responded. <I am initiated to the fifteenth turning of the mysteries of transmission – I would be able to detect a noosphere presence even if it was obscured. There is nothing. Every mechanism in this place is closed and locked to itself.>

<Apart from us two,> I noted.

<For now,> she replied, and then lapsed into silence. This did little to reduce the disturbance building up in my emotional buffers.

The light in all the passages we passed through was increasingly dim the further we went. The lumen globes and strips faded from clear white blue to stuttering dimness. It became colder. My sensors detected that it was not only heat that was leaching from the air – so was radiation of a number of other types. Power was slowly decrementing from my capacitors. It was as though something beyond the passage walls was drawing in every scrap of energy, a mouth breathing in warmth and light.

We passed many doors, some wide enough for large vehicles or machinery, some so small that only servo skulls or scuttle servitors could have passed through. None of the doors were open, and neither Magos Atropos or Princeps Zavius paused next to any of them.

‘What is to be our purpose here?’ I asked as we passed the latest locked opening. I had asked the same question in five different ways since our arrival, and received no reply. I experienced surprise when Atropos spoke.

‘You are here to wake a machine that has lain long asleep,’ it said.

‘What variety of machine?’ I asked.

‘I cannot tell you,’ said Atropos.

‘To withhold data is to inhibit the probability of success.’ I detected a sharpness in my reply. My emotional disturbance was bleeding out of its containment.

Atropos halted in front of a circular door set into the passage wall. Slowly the magos extended one of its canes and tapped the surface of the door. Bolts withdrew around its edge. Leaves of metal folded into the rock surround.

‘I cannot tell you,’ said Atropos, as the last portion of the door slid aside. Distant lights glimmered in the vast space beyond. ‘I can only show you.’

I confess that I did not want to pass through the door. I confess that I also wanted to see what lay at the heart of this underworld. We are made to seek knowledge, to revere it, and for all of the Martian priesthood’s traditions and reverence of the known, we crave the unknown far more.

The space beyond the door was not a chamber – it was a cavern. A platform extended into space, secured to a cliff wall that I could only estimate as being as high as the mountain peaks above. Darkness ran off in every other direction. I walked across the platform to its edge, dimly aware of Ishta-1-Gamma at my side, and Atropos and Zavius following a step behind. The air was cold, so cold that warnings lit the bio-monitors linked to my remaining flesh. There were lights shining on the cavern floor far beneath us. I stepped closer to the edge, my eye lenses adjusting to focus.

‘Be careful,’ said Zavius, his breath powdering to crystal in the air. His flesh suddenly seemed stiff and pale, like a mask pulled over something that was not as pure as a machine, or as kind as flesh. ‘It can unsettle the mind at first sight.’

I did not reply, but took the last step and looked down.

<Sacred oils of the turning wheel…> For a fraction of a second I thought the words might have been mine. Then I noticed Ishta-1-Gamma standing on the edge beside me. <The machine is god…>

Beneath us, half buried in the floor of the cavern, was a Titan. It lay like a fallen monarch found in its grave. Rubble had been cleared away around its sides. Ladders extended down to it from a web of gantries and platforms suspended above it. Stab lights lit its form, pouring brilliance into its crevasses and across its armour plates. If it had stood, its head would have been on a level with our platform, and the guns on its back would have loomed far above us. Figures moved on the gantries. I saw huge power lines and machines whose functions I knew in theory though I had never seen in practice: galvanic wave compressors, gain-output macro regulators, trans-uranic adjusters.

‘How did it get down here…?’ breathed Ishta-1-Gamma.

‘You are attempting to…’ I stated, and turned to look at Zavius and Atropos. ‘You mean to wake it.’

‘Correct,’ said Atropos.

I looked back at the dead god-machine. There was something about it that made me not want to look away from it. As though it might have moved while unobserved.

‘But you mean to wake it in secret…’ said Ishta-1-Gamma. She was still looking down at the great machine. Her noospheric halo had faded, its loops of data patterns fraying. ‘This is a machine of majesty, a relic from times now long lost. That it remains here is a marvel – that it might walk again a miracle. Yet you hide it from sight.’

Did I detect a flicker of movement in Zavius’ eyes and a microscopic shift in Atropos’ posture?

‘You are here to perform a function,’ said Atropos. ‘No further clarification is needed.’ It turned and began to move away. ‘Zavius will supply the data relevant to your task. Review it. You will be integrated into the endeavour in five hours.’

‘And that endeavour is to waken the spirit of this machine?’ I asked, inferences and uncertainties still spinning at the edge of my thoughts.

Atropos did not stop, but called in a voice that echoed flatly in the vast space, ‘It shall wake. It shall walk.’

They called the first Titan Artefact-ZA01. That was not its name, of course. The names of machines are impressed upon their form and spirit when they are made. They are not designators. They are specific. They are a form of truth. The Titan had a name; we just didn’t know what it was.

We went down to see it after five hours of preliminary data in-load. A platform hoist lowered us down to the gantry web. I had assimilated all of the data supplied by Zavius. It was sizeable, and had required multiple overrides of fatigue to parse fully. I knew now that Artefact-ZA01 was a Battle Titan, but that variations in its system configuration conformed to no recorded class or pattern. Preliminary investigations had been made into its interior systems, and its reactor and energy transmission systems conformed to those of other Titan engines. At least they did superficially.

There was more, reams and reams of data and analysis, but, for all that, there was much that was screamed by its absence. There was no mention of any propitiatory rites being attempted, no identification codes for the adepts who had made the assessments. It was as though there was no history of the endeavour before this moment, as though the past did not exist.

Again a sensation of unfamiliar emotion filled me as I stepped onto the gantry and looked down at Artefact-ZA01. Burnished metal gleamed beneath the layer of dust that clung to its armour plates. I identified amaranth colouration, what is designated as regal purple by some, gold edging and patches of bone-white lacquer. There was no damage though, no marks of battle that had laid this god low. This cavern was not a grave, it was something else.

‘You will need to get moving,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned to see a figure in the robes of an enginseer limp along the walkway behind us, red robes and augmentation in line with the biological human form. The figure stopped, then cocked its head and gave a stuttering bow that spoke of poorly meshing gears and malfunctioning servos. ‘My apologies, honoured magos, I have still not adjusted to the absence of noospheric connection. I have been here for six months, two days, seventeen hours, five minutes and two seconds and I am still sending data hails that no one receives. Personal introduction – I am enginseer designate Thamus-91.’

‘I am Magos Glavius-4-Rho,’ I replied. I was aware that an enginseer designated Thamus-91 was the overseer of primary operations at the excavation; it had been in the data supplied by Princeps Zavius. ‘I have requested a close inspection of Artefact-ZA01.’

‘I know,’ said Thamus-91. ‘I was made aware of your arrival and have already conversed with Magos Ishta-1-Gamma.’

Thamus-91 straightened, juddering as she moved.

‘Are your movement systems not functioning as ordained?’ I asked.

She shook her head. Patches of black frostbite mottled the skin of her face above her breath mask.

‘I have stayed close to it for too long,’ she replied. ‘I should have withdrawn, purged and charged, but I was informed that you were coming. I waited. We should move. It is worse if you stay in one place for a prolonged time.’

‘What are you referring to, enginseer?’

‘The drain – you must have noticed.’

‘The power drop-off?’ I queried.

‘Not only power, but energetic potential across multiple forms and spectra – all of it vanishes. It takes time but the closer you are to it–’

‘You are referring to Artefact-ZA01?’

Thamus-91 twitched and I formed an impression that she was suddenly exerting a great deal of control not to look down, not to look at the Titan lying beneath us.

‘Yes,’ she said, and gestured at the unlit candles of appeasement and devotion set along the sides of the gantry. A pair of servitors were moving along them, lighting each with a stuttering blast of flame from nozzle-tipped fingers. The flames began to fade as soon as they flared. ‘You see? Even the sacred flames gutter.’

‘That cannot be an effect related to the artefact,’ I said. ‘I have reviewed the data, and it is clear that none of the Titan’s systems are active, and further it is clear that all attempts to waken them and kindle its energies have failed. Added to which there is no system within the bounds of the blessed incandescence and transference of energy that I am aware of that could produce such an effect.’

Thamus-91 gave a creaking nod. ‘Just so…’ she said, and extended an iron finger to point at a candle flame. ‘And yet…’ The flame shrank as we observed it, and then guttered. I had detected no movement in the cavern’s air.

‘Why is there no record of this phenomena in the data I was supplied?’ I asked. Thamus-91 was still pointing and looking at a wisp of smoke rising from the extinguished candle. She made no move to acknowledge my query. ‘Enginseer Thamus-91?’ I queried. She twitched and turned her head back to me.

‘You are Magos Glavius-4-Rho,’ she said. ‘Please accept my greetings. I was made aware of your arrival and have already conversed with Magos Ishta-1-Gamma. She has requested a close inspection of the… of Artefact-ZA01. If you wish to accompany her, we should join her now.’

For a second I tried to process what had just occurred. The logic trees branched but offered no clear solution. I moved the unresolved calculations out of my immediate focus.

‘We will proceed with the inspection,’ I said.

Thamus-91 bobbed her head. I noticed her fingers judder open and then closed. She gave no sign of being aware of the movement.

‘As you will it,’ she said. ‘We should get moving.’

Darkness. Darkness that I have never known before or since. Our primary source of illumination failed as soon as we were inside the Titan. Lights simply blinked out, and power sources wound down to nothing. Red capacitor warnings lit my visual display as it began to fog with distortion. The thread of noospheric connection between me and Ishta-1-Gamma vanished. We were in a conduit space accessed by a panel that was normally riveted shut. Before the lights had cut out I had captured an image of a cable-lined wall, clean of dust and corrosion. A hatch into the main engineering compartment lay 2.63 metres below us.

‘I would advise linking with the reservoir power-umbilical,’ said Thamus-91. ‘You may wish to divert available power to tactile sensors – they appear to be more reliable than visual.’

An insulated cable linked all of us to an external plasma generator. I had questioned the need for this contingency. At peak function the generator would have been able to power an entire facility and maintain the equivalent output of three Baneblade tanks, a surfeit of power for our augmetics. Now, standing in the total dark and watching my power reserves fall to zero, I had to acknowledge that I had been wrong.

I opened the umbilical power connection. My systems activated, but the power was flowing in only slightly faster than it was vanishing. I flicked my sight to an augmented infra-vision and the grey snow became a multi-coloured image of heat and energy blooms. Thamus-91 and Ishta-1-Gamma became glowing outlines of orange and red. The power-umbilicals glowed white with radiation bleed. Everything else was a perfect, cold black.

‘We should proceed,’ said Thamus-91. ‘Based on previous explorations we have approximately 15 minutes 21 seconds before our power status becomes non-viable.’ She began to move towards the hatch at the end of the conduit space. She braced herself against the walls with all four limbs, moving with care, pausing at irregular intervals as a twitch ran through her frame.

I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma. Without her noospheric halo she seemed diminished, a shadow with the same shape. She returned my look and then followed the enginseer.

Thamus-91 reached the hatch and pulled it open. The void beyond was a black circle. For an instant I had the impression that the static in my eyes had begun to spin around it, like iron dust pulled by a magnetic field.

<The machine is god…>

I snapped my head around to Ishta-1-Gamma.

‘What did you say?’ I asked.

She tilted her head in puzzlement. ‘I am sorry, I do not follow.’

‘You made a noospheric transmission–’

‘I am afraid you are mistaken,’ she said, and I formed a non-logical impression of her displeasure at my assertion. ‘I have been trying to activate noospheric connection since we entered the artefact, and have not succeeded.’

‘I would not try to do that,’ said Thamus-91 from by the hatch. She glanced back at us, twitched. ‘I mean, I would not attempt to access the noosphere in here.’

‘Why?’ asked Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘There was no standing prohibition against it in the site protocols.’

Thamus-91 twitched her shoulders in a deeply biological gesture that I assessed as a shrug.

‘It is best not to,’ was her reply. ‘Follow,’ she said and dropped through the hatch. I looked at Ishta-1-Gamma, and then complied.

The void beyond the hatch was black, unlit and without any form of radiation for my eyes to pick up. There were only the beams from stab lights attached to us, cutting into the blackness for the brief moment of our fall. I landed on the rear wall of the enginarium compartment. My legs mag-locked to the metal. I froze for a second. A cold, yes, a cold sensation slid through my machine limbs from the point of contact. The air temperature had dropped further, but this… feeling was something else. A chill, a… touch.

‘I estimate that we have twelve minutes twenty-one seconds until we lose umbilical power,’ said Thamus-91. We will need to begin to withdraw in nine minutes. I tender humble advice that the exalted magi begin their assays of the relic’s systems.’

‘Let us begin, then,’ said Ishta-1-Gamma.

I had never been in the sacred inner spaces of a god-machine before. I had been privileged to review schematics and system rituals, but this was the first time I had perceived the wonder of such sacred knowledge made real. I must confess that for sixty-seven seconds I did nothing other than take in our surroundings.

Curved girders ran down the walls of the compartment, each one a single, metallic crystal. Bundles of cables and loops of insulated piping snaked beneath grates and curved out through openings in the metal skin of the walls and ceiling. Hatches marked with runes and yellow and black chevrons led off to either side, to the servitor niches that controlled the arms. A wider set of doors yawned open at the far end, the darkness beyond leading to the head of the god-machine and the throne of its command. I could see the marks where piston claws had pried the doors open – each scrape was marked by a taper of parchment held by a wax seal, the code lines printed on each a prayer to soothe the soul of the machine for the harm done to it.

I found myself moving towards the black space between the open doors. There was something vibrating in the dark beyond…

Blurred haze…

Night beyond night…

Ishta-1-Gamma brushed past me as she made for the open doors. I stopped. Power was still draining from my reserves and the umbilical.

The reactor. I was here to examine the reactor.

I turned my awareness to the reinforced hatch in the floor that should lead to the plasma reactor. The hatch’s seals had already been disengaged, and the plasma chamber was utterly inactive, but I still proceeded with caution as I climbed down into the space beneath. The rewards for recklessness are death and suffering, it is told, and I have never observed it to be otherwise.

I began with augurs of the 1st order and cycled through the Aclaan diagnostic sequence. I also began cataclysms of appeasement for any spirit of power or charge still lingering in the reactor systems. I soon halted this litany. There was nothing. No returns. No energetic signatures of any kind. It was dead and cold, as though plasma and electrostatic convergence had never sung in its heart.

I was about to begin an integrity examination of the plasma ignition array when an alert in my visual analysis systems made me halt. There were conduits bonded and integrated into the system in addition to those that I would have expected – pipes and heavily insulated cables snaked and wormed beside those that the schematics had ordained to be there. I had not noticed them at first, in part because I was not expecting them to be there, and partly because they were not made of standard material. It had to be an error but the close augur returns read them as being made of rock or crystal.

<The machine is god… All is known in the machine…>

I hesitated and then stepped forward, extending a blade from a finger to peel the black insulation from one of the conduits.

‘Magos Glavius-4-Rho!’ The call came from the enginarium. It was Ishta-1-Gamma, her voice loud and sharpened with indications of alarm.

‘Is there something awry?’ I called, blade finger hovering above the insulation. I had a strong inclination not to leave, to look at what strange devices had lived in this walking god’s core.

‘Attend immediately!’ she replied. I let my hand drop and climbed back up into the enginarium compartment and then into the bridge in the Titan’s head.

Ishta-1-Gamma was there. As was what remained of Thamus-91. The enginseer had linked to a mind-interface unit set behind the princeps’ throne. Her remains hung from the interface cable, a slack tangle of metal and desiccated flesh. Frost covered her, the crystals growing even as we watched.

‘I went back into the enginarium for twenty seconds…’ said Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘She must have been waiting for the chance to be alone…’

I thought of the cables of crystal and stone threading though the reactor spaces, of the whisper on the noosphere channels and the power and heat draining from the world around this… tomb.

‘We must go,’ I said, and was already lifting Thamus-91’s remains and moving for the hatch out to the world above. Ishta-1-Gamma followed. As we climbed back up to the outer skin of the god, I looked back and thought for a second I saw a face looking up at me from the black circle of the hatchway. I began to climb faster and did not look down again.

<It was not my intention to disturb your rest.> Ishta-1-Gamma’s noosphere halo turned slowly as she entered my workshop.

<I was processing the latest ritual read-outs – there was no rest for you to disturb.>

She advanced from the door as it sealed behind her. I watched her as I parsed the symbols walking across the parchment spooling from the data-font. I saw her reach out and take an inert plasma coil-disk from my tertiary workbench. She did not look at it, but rolled it between her hands. The gesture had no purpose to it. It was enough to make me halt all my activity. You must understand, nothing in the Priesthood of Mars is without purpose; everything is of the machine and no part of the machine lacks purpose.

I watched her as the data-font clattered and the buzz of cogitator and power transfers dimmed from a cackle to a hum. She seemed to realise what she had done after three seconds. Her noospheric halo flashed through static as she replaced the coil-disk on the workbench, blurting the canticle input of harmony across all primary frequencies.

<Your pardon,> she said. <I am…>

<Pardon granted,> I replied. She shifted, looking around the workspace at the test components lying under their seals, and parchments of quieting.

I waited.

She had not been the same since that first excursion into the Artefact-ZA01. We had made a full report to Atropos about the demise of Thamus-91. The senior magos had accepted the data, but had requested no clarification or further analysis. I could not help but form a list of possible ideas as to why: the senior magos was uninterested in what had happened, the data that we supplied needed no further clarification or the incident held no new data. This last possibility clung to me. Atropos did not ask for further data because the magos knew what had happened. It had happened before.

Ishta-1-Gamma had demanded more data access. The reply from Atropos had been simple. If we wanted answers, wake the machine. If we wanted knowledge, wake the machine. If we wanted to perform our duty to Omnissiah and knowledge, wake the machine.

We protested, but neither of us had demanded to leave. We had remained, and begun work to do just what Atropos had said. We had worked to wake the machine.

Why? Even now I am not certain as to the answer, or rather, I am not certain there is an answer that would satisfy logic. We like to think that choices are rational, like the turning of cogs, that we leave the weakness of the irrational behind as we shed the weakness of flesh. But the question that does not arise in all the coda of the Omnissiah is whether the irrational fears that pulse in our blood and beat in our chests when we wake in the night are not weakness, but warnings left on the edge of the darkness.

We were priests of the machine. Knowledge is sacred, and there is nothing higher than knowledge lost to the past. The artefact… the Titan in that tomb… there was knowledge in it, great and terrible knowledge waiting just out of sight yet close enough to grasp. You cannot understand, perhaps, what that means, what that demands of us. It calls to the truth of all we are. And so we worked to wake the machine – I to kindle energy in its metal, Ishta-1-Gamma to allow a human to interface with its systems. She worked with a focus and diligence that I have never seen.

We assayed the artefact further, accessed rituals from the Collegia Titanica archives granted us by Zavius and created test rituals that grew sacred theory into a harmony and order. Weeks, weeks and weeks with the cold and silence, weeks of perhaps the finest work I have ever been a part of. All of it bringing us to a threshold.

<May I tender a question?> Ishta-1-Gamma asked after twenty-four seconds of silence.

<That linguistic formation is itself a question, and so the answer is presented by your ability to ask it.>

Her aura expanded for a second, flashed with bright and subtle formulae. <Was that an attempt at humour, magos?>

<An attempt implies that it was a failure, and so I shall choose to say not.>

A brighter flash, a spiral of calculations in the data link. <Was that a second attempt?>

<No.>

<You are lying.>

<That implies a degree of empathy and social judgement I am not sure I possess.> I moved to the tertiary workbench she had stopped by and moved the plasma coil-disk she had handled the 1.4 mm required for it to be resting in the correct position. <There is something you wish to discuss,> I stated. <About the endeavour.>

<Are there limits to what is divine?> she asked.

<I do not understand your frame of reference.>

<The nature of the machine reveals its divinity to us.>

<That is a primary truth.>

<Is there an exception to it?>

<I still do not follow the logic chain of your questions,> I replied.

<Artefact-ZA01, the Titan, is it divine, or–>

<It is a machine of unknown power and pattern from ages long past, how can it be otherwise than divine?> I asked.

<The demise of Thamus-91 implies–>

<The spirits of great machines are not kind.>

<The lack of data from investigations that have already taken place, the anomalies – those do not indicate to you that this might not be something that is divine but unclean?>

In truth, the same possibilities and questions had been rising unbidden in my mind with regular frequency since the first expedition into Artefact-ZA01. But I could not form a full and logical chain of inference from them.

<The demands of knowledge are proof.>

She reached her hand inside her robes and removed a data-cylinder of milled brass – 0.75 cm in diameter, 6.6 cm in length. She placed it on the workbench. I looked at it.

<What does it contain?> I asked.

<As part of my preparations to re-enable the neural interface with the ZA01, I have been able to access a number of data transfer systems in this… whatever this place is. That is the raw output of what I have found.>

<All the systems I have been granted access to are limited to current data directly relevant to the endeavour,> I said, looking at, but not touching, the cylinder. <No wider data has been present.>

<Truth, but there are fragments and trace impressions in the transfer filters and noospheric buffers. The data-djinns loosed to clear the information were thorough, but you cannot remove the past. Ghosts remain.>

I looked back at the data-cylinder, then picked it up. <What does the data indicate?>

Ishta-1-Gamma transmitted a negation. <I do not know, not completely.>

<Then why–>

<I thought I wanted to know the truth,> she transmitted. <But now I am not sure. I don’t know. I have an emotion-based intuition that if I look at what has tried to be hidden from us, then I won’t be able to carry on with the endeavour.>

<Surely the only way to determine the accuracy of that is to examine this data,> I replied.

<Truth. But until it is examined I can choose to ignore it. Once I have examined it…>

<If I may extend an observation – that is not in keeping with the level of protest and suspicion of this operation you have manifested since we met.>

<I know,> she transmitted, and paused. Data silence filled the link. <But you were there. This machine, this god-machine, it is not like anything else. It is a mystery of technology. It is terrifying. And I am afraid to go forwards. And I am afraid that part of me, the part that has a spirit of flesh, is looking for reasons to turn back.>

I considered what she had said for three full cycles of thought. I admit, she spoke fears that had followed me too.

I held the data-cylinder up between us and crushed it between my digits.

<All knowledge is divine,> I transmitted. <And all knowledge comes from the unknown.>

<Thank you,> she sent, then turned and left me to the silence of my work.

‘Initiate the second incarnation of power transfer,’ I said, and the body of the god-machine shook. Plasma cylinders slid out of their magnetic sheaths and slammed into the fuel conduits around the Titan’s reactor core. I watched through a visual feed piped from sensors in the reactor wall. Some of my kind see no value in such direct observation – all can be seen in data, they claim. The eye is merely an imperfect sensor and its output is of no value. But, to me, to watch such a moment, imperfect though that perception may be, is to look on the face of god.

Glowing primary plasma flooded though flow coils and poured into the reactor core. Magnetic fields caught it, spun it, moulded it into a roiling globe of blinding light. Output data danced in my sight. Energy was draining from the Titan’s reactor core, but I had anticipated this. In an instant I had flooded the core with eight times the fuel needed for ignition, more than could drain before we could complete the ritual.

I stood in the centre of Artefact-ZA01’s enginarium compartment. Stuttering blue light filled the space as relay-linked lumen globes lit and died one after another.

Atropos had not joined us in person but watched from a haze of distorting holo-light. Choirs of servitors crowded the space, each sheathed in layers of thermal and energy insulation.

The 441 mm-thick trunk of cables passing power from the reactors outside the Titan buzzed and oozed heat into the freezing air. I had set six Solex grade reactors to work in sequence; like the lumen globes in the compartment they lit as the power drained from the others. From these, we were consuming enough raw power energy per second to power a manufactory for a month.

Through the open doors at the end of the space, Ishta-1-Gamma and her own cohort of servitors filled the bridge. Zavius sat on the princeps’ throne, sheathed in a black body-glove and coiled with interface cables. The neural connection spike that would link his mind and body to the Titan sat poised just behind the socket in the base of his skull. Ishta-1-Gamma’s hand rested on the lever that would close the connection once primary systems had power.

‘Standing by for primary neural interface,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma.

‘Plasma in reactor core reaching saturation,’ droned one of the servitors wired into the flux monitors. ‘Primary ignition yield will be achieved in three… two… one…’

‘By the soul of this machine and the truth of iron, ignite!’ I said.

‘Compliance,’ droned a servitor.

A spear of lightning stabbed down into the roiling ball of plasma held at the reactor’s core. I saw it strike, saw the light pour out, blinding even to machine eyes. The body of the Titan shivered. Every light in the compartment blew out. Static poured out of every speaker grille in the chamber. The holo-image of Atropos vanished.

Then silence.

I waited in darkness.

Then I felt it. A low vibration pulsing through the floor, an electro-song on the edge of hearing. Indicator lights lit on access panels. The optical feed to the reactor cleared.

‘Light is brought to dark,’ I intoned. ‘Fire kindled in the forge. The wheel turns.’

‘All praise to the machine!’ echoed the servitors.

The power drain was slowing, dropping as the reactor output grew.

<It hungers no more, but still it thirsts…>

The noospheric words flashed into my mind. I flinched.

‘What?’ I blurted.

‘Standing by for first phase neural connection,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma. Princeps Zavius had closed his eyes.

‘Take this fire to your soul and be illuminated,’ I intoned, counting the sacred five seconds and holding down the switches on the power governor console. Plasma was pulled from the reactor core into conduits. Heat and power flowed into cold metal and cable. And, for a moment, through the touch of my hand on its heart, I felt the god-machine’s spirit wake.

Hollowness.

The ache and hunger of aeons.

The sound of a scream that never ends caught in metal.

My consciousness almost failed at the vastness of it, but it was partial, incomplete, a half soul of iron. And behind that presence, like a shadow gathered at a god’s back, was a waiting dark. I saw it then. By my oath to cog and data, I saw what had been. The ghosts flowed through my sensors and data connections, and perhaps through the cells of my flesh. I saw them moving in the spaces in which I stood. I heard their voices speak from long ago. They were there – figures in robes of emerald and fire-orange, and they spoke in tongues that were not the tongues of machines or men. And for a moment, a long black terrible moment, I saw what they had done.

I saw their dream, the dream of not just connecting man and machine, but of the machine as a sepulchre for the souls of those it consumed. I saw the devices they had wrought and bound into the heart of these machines. I saw the machines walk, and the dead scream in the minds of those who guided them to war. I saw the core of black iron nested at the root of the machine, sealed beyond sight, and the threads of crystal and stone branching from it through every limb and fibre of the walking god. And I saw the moments and thoughts and dreams held in that black heart, frozen for millennia, sent down to sleep and dream without end at the root of mountains.

And then the vision passed.

‘Initiating first phase neural connection,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘All is known in the machine.’

I tried to shout, to warn her. Cold static poured from me. I could not move, but only watch as Ishta-1-Gamma pulled the lever that sent the neural connection spike into the socket at the base of Zavius’ skull.

I think I was moving across the compartment. I think I was reaching for the lever to break the connection. I think that is what I was doing… I am not certain, though, because at that moment Zavius opened his eyes.

Everything stopped. Nothing was moving. Not power, not the sparks running up the power cables, not the flicker of lights on consoles. Everyone else was gone. Ishta-1-Gamma, the servitors, Zavius, all of them.

<Where?> The voice arrived in my connections with power enough to make me fall… then I was not falling, just standing as I had been. A figure in a body-glove of emerald and orange stood in front of me. Gold symbols flowed over her form as she took a step closer to me. Her skin was pale. There was frost, I realised. Frost on the floor and walls. Frost spreading up my legs and robe. <Where?> repeated the woman. I began to form a clarifying question. She froze and began to judder, form and image blurring, face and body melting through shapes like the merged and corrupted output of a pict feed. <Where? Where? Where? Where? Where?>

The words were rolls of data thunder, crushing me down to the deck. I raised my hand to catch myself. An invisible force bent it around. Servos and hinges snapped. Cogs fell to gathering ice as they tumbled.

<Target return negative…>

<When…?>

<I walk, I walk…>

<Where…?>

<Fire and night and the song of inferno, oh the song, listen and hear…>

Black iron, cold iron and shadow and a hole at the centre of all…

<Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul. Input-nul…>

And I was screaming, and the blurred figure was stepping closer as the image of the inside of the Titan faded and folded into a static blizzard and blackness. I could feel something pulling me, something that felt like a hand.

‘Help! Glavius, help us! Help him!’

And the figure was gone and I was standing as blue cords of power wormed over the walls. Zavius was convulsing on his throne. His eyes were red, pupils swallowed by haemorrhages. His mouth was a bloody pit. Pieces of teeth and tongue spilled from his lips as he screamed. Smoke rose from the neural connection. The skin of his skull was charring and peeling, the bone beneath already black. His brain was cooking inside his skull. Ishta-1-Gamma was trying to pull the cable free from his head. I could see the metal of her fingers glowing and distorting with heat as she struggled.

‘Shut down the power!’ she shouted. I pivoted and lunged at the reactor governor controls. I could still see into the reactor core through the remote pict feeds. The spinning ball of energy was distorting, burning bright and flowing with black veins. I began the emergency shutdown ritual, slamming levers down.

Crimson warning indicators lit.

‘It will not comply!’ I shouted. The reactor output spiked. Power lashed out of the console and through my hands. I flew backwards and slammed into the compartment wall. Damage and system errors screamed through my awareness. Frost was spreading over Zavius’ face. Ishta-1-Gamma flinched back, her hands smoking and glowing with heat. Zavius’ body convulsed again. The bones of the Titan creaked and shook around us.

‘The neural connection is overriding all control,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘It has to be shut down from within.’ She was trying to lift one of the back-up mind-interface cables, her damaged hands slipping. Smoke was rising from Zavius, coiling in the air. Ishta-1-Gamma gripped the interface cable. Her hood fell away from her head, and I saw that it was a pure construction of polished brass and chrome. Socket plugs marched in a line from the base of her skull to her forehead. She paused for an instant, the cable held level with her face. I understood in that moment what she was going to do.

‘No!’ I shouted, and tried to rise, reaching for her as the frame of the Titan lurched and Zavius’ back arched on his throne. Its metal was glowing with heat under an impossible covering of frost. ‘No!’

But Ishta-1-Gamma plunged the cable into the socket on her forehead. For a second she was still, frozen.

Light exploded through her. Metal became liquid. Ceramic became dust. And her form became a shadow suspended in the flash of her disintegrations.

Then Artefact-ZA01, the Titan that had slept silent in darkness for millennia, screamed.

War horns boomed. A rolling cry broke from every speaker grille. Steam poured from coolant vents in a rush. I felt the chamber pitch as the god began to rise. Then, with a sound like an avalanche of gears, it collapsed back. The lights on the consoles dimmed. Then the impact shockwave of the Titan falling back to the ground slammed me back into a girder. My consciousness failed and blackness filled me.

‘It was a failure,’ I said. ‘It cannot wake. It should never wake.’

Atropos tilted its head beneath its graphite-weave cowl. Lenses flicked from green to cold blue. No reply was given.

I had woken in a chamber bare of machines and blessed only with the light of caged lumen spheres. The damage to my physical components had been repaired. My chronometric measures indicted that I had been unconscious for 105 hours. Atropos had been there when I regained consciousness.

‘You know what they are,’ I stated. ‘Ishta-1-Gamma found the remnants of the records you had imperfectly expunged from the cogitator-sifts.’ I held up the crushed data capsule that I had carried in my robes. ‘She wanted to believe that there was a purpose to what you… in what we were doing here. A higher illumination that was guiding our actions… She linked to the machine to prevent it waking fully. It was the only way. If we had known, if she had known…’

‘Your contributions to the endeavour are no longer required,’ said Atropos. ‘Your efforts and diligence up until this point mean that no censure will follow you. You will submit to a total data purge before you depart.’

Atropos turned and glided away.

‘I will remember, though,’ I called and even now I am struck by the emotion in my words, the humanity, you might say.

Atropos half turned. ‘Ghosts caught in flesh are not truth. Data is truth. And only truth will be heard. You may keep your memories, Glavius-4-Rho.’

I left the facility four hours and forty-five seconds later. The rites that purged my data reservoirs and sensor captures were thrice performed. I left with nothing. The shuttle did not take me back to one of the forge-fanes but up to a ship in orbit and a summons to attend the forges of Kelio 4 as Magos-Maxima. I never spoke again of what I had seen.

‘Did you ever find out what happened to them, to the Titans, to the facility?’ asked Severita.

Glavius-4-Rho adjusted a dial on a control panel. An armature of chrome unfolded from the top of the workbench. He lowered a tiny cog of grey polished metal into it.

‘What prompts you to enquire?’ he said.

Severita looked at him, unblinking. ‘I believe that I know when a story has not been fully told,’ she said.

He did not answer, but keyed a control and watched the fingers of the armature close on the cog. A hair-fine laser beam extended to the cog from a projector. A tiny wisp of smoke rose as the beam began to cut.

‘Truth is data,’ he said without turning from his work. ‘Do not stories need to be truth, also?’

‘There is more to truth than data,’ said Severita, ‘and more to stories than truth.’

He released the armature, removed the cog and turned to the sword that lay on the metal slab of the workbench. Its disassembled parts lay in gleaming rows beside the repaired blade.

‘I do not know what happened to the facility,’ he said at last. ‘But…’ he hesitated, and then pressed on. ‘There is the dream… I have not dreamed since I ascended to the priesthood. I do not believe my cognitive augmentation allows for it. But before I left, and sometimes since, I have had a dream… In that dream I am standing on the platform in the cavern beneath the mountain on Zhao-Arkkad. I am alone. The cavern is dark except for the lumen spheres on the platform. Beyond its edge the dark goes on beyond sight. I step to the platform edge, and look down…

‘And something moves. Something vast rises up, unfolding through the dark. I cannot move. I hear nothing. Silence swallows any cry. A vast head of metal lifts to become level with the platform. Dust falls from it. Its eyes are cold fire. I look into them, and I hear a voice. Her voice, Ishta-1-Gamma, echoing through me.

<The machine is eternity,> it says. Then the head and the body beneath it turn away, and the light of its eyes shine through the dark, and I see what lies in the cavern beyond my sight… Vast figures of metal, half buried by rubble and grey dust… eleven… fifteen… eighteen…twenty-seven… thirty-three… and more. A Legion sleeping in the dark. <The machine that dreams shall wake,> says the voice, and then the dream goes, but when it returns I always think I can see another metal god stir from its sleep.’

‘And you hear her voice?’ asked Severita. ‘The other magos, it is always her?’

‘Always,’ said Glavius-4-Rho.

He turned to Severita, holding out her sword. It was fully assembled. The blade shone blue and silver in the light of the plasma torch burning on the workbench. All notches and blemishes had gone. The power field generator at the base of the blade gleamed with sacred oils.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘It is perfect again.’

She took it and muttered a prayer before sheathing it.

‘My thanks.’ She began to turn, hesitated. ‘For this and for your tale.’

Glavius-4-Rho was still for a moment, and then bowed his head and turned back to his machines.

THE HORUSIAN WARS: RESURRECTION
Book 1 in the Horusian Wars series
John French

Summoned to an inquisitorial conclave, Inquisitor Covenant believes he has uncovered an agent of Chaos and prepares to denounce the heretic Talicto before his fellows…

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

AT THE SIGN OF THE BRAZEN CLAW: PART 3

Guy Haley

Forging ahead with the saga of Prince Maesa, the intrepid Guy Haley pens the third instalment of his quest narrative.

A Black Library veteran, Guy’s vast portfolio ranges from the depths of the Mirrored City to the 41st millennium. Focused on how the enigmatic Prince Maesa and the spite Shattercap met among the deadly forests of Ghyran, Guy’s mastery of the intricacies of the aelven mind produces a nuanced story that is a joy to read.

Prince Maesa and Shattercap have come to the hinterlands of Shyish in order to catch a Kharadron packet ship through the Argent Gate to Ghur. Delayed by stormy weather, they sit out the night at the inn of the Sign of the Brazen Claw. As they wait, the travellers swap their stories. The first to speak was the innkeeper, Horrin, who told how he came into his career. Then Stonbrak, the duardin, told how his brother lost his life because of a hasty contract. As the night wears on, Prince Maesa takes his turn to tell a story…

THE PRINCE’S TALE

‘Our duardin friend Stonbrak wishes to know how I came to be associated with the spite, so I shall tell you,’ said Prince Maesa.

Shattercap grinned slyly.

‘This is the best story!’ the spite crowed.

‘That it may be,’ said Pludu Quasque. He was the quietest in the company – the raging storm frightened him to an unusual degree – but the promise of Prince Maesa’s tale woke a little of his curiosity, and he peered at the spite. ‘I have some experience with arcane creatures.’

‘My name is Shattercap!’ said Shattercap indignantly. ‘Not creature!’

‘It is a forest daemon,’ said Stonbrak. ‘No good can come from having it around.’

‘Then why do you wish to know where he comes from?’ asked Horrin.

‘For protection’s sake,’ said the duardin sternly. ‘Stories have a power of their own. Useful magic, when dealing with things like that.’

Quasque spoke up. ‘He is not a daemon, sir duardin.’

‘He is not,’ agreed Maesa. ‘You are familiar with the breed?’

‘Book learning only,’ said Quasque bashfully.

The wind was dropping outside as the eye of the storm circled around the Brazen Claw. Each dying roar drew out a shudder from Quasque, but his fear was lessening as the wind dropped, and his spine uncurled a little, so that he looked less hunted.

‘I would be…’ Quasque said. Thunder clashed. He cringed. ‘I–’ His voice rose, as if he were stifling a shriek. He swallowed and composed himself. ‘I would be grateful for any information you could provide. I am, ah…’ He licked his lips. His eyes darted to his fellow travellers. ‘A minor student of the esoteric arts.’

More thunder. Silence fell.

Maesa motioned for his glass to be refilled. Horrin leaned over to pour from the bottle.

‘While you’re at it,’ said Stonbrak loudly, ‘you can get me another drink.’

‘Of course, Master Stonbrak,’ said Horrin, and bustled off.

‘And bring the whole cask this time!’ Stonbrak shouted. He set his pint pot down hard and grumbled at it like its emptiness was responsible for the majority of the world’s ills. ‘Manling measures,’ he complained.

‘The spites are creatures of magic and spirit,’ Maesa ventured, again.

‘So a daemon,’ said Stonbrak. He peered into his pot in case any beer had escaped his attention.

‘Though inclined to mischief, spites are not things of Chaos. They are free of will, or else how would I be able to teach Shattercap here how to be good?’ said Maesa, refusing the duardin’s attempts to irritate him.

Shattercap burped and grinned from ear to ear.

Maesa stroked the tiny spite’s back. ‘To change, one must have the power of self-determination. A daemon is a product of its monstrous patron, and can make no choice that would lead it away from its master’s essential character. Spites are born of the woods and trees. They are the will of moss manifest. They are the dreams of branches. They are the thoughts of ferns, and the musings of grass.’

‘A plant daemon then,’ said Stonbrak. He refilled his pipe. Quasque produced a small brass pipe of his own from an inner pocket, held it forth, and gave the duardin a hopeful look. Stonbrak rolled his eyes. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But this is duardin smokeweed. I warrant it’ll choke a strip of crackling like you dead.’ He tossed his tobacco pouch over the table. Quasque took it up gratefully, and filled his pipe bowl to the very brim, to Stonbrak’s scowling annoyance.

‘Like all things of free will,’ continued Maesa, ‘a spite may make the wrong choice. They can be enslaved, or dominated by those of greater will. They can be evil of their own accord. So although he is most assuredly not a daemon, Idenkor Stonbrak, he is dangerous, as you have asserted.’

Horrin came back with a small keg under one arm and the other hand supporting a tray crammed with drinks balanced in that almost magical way common to barkeeps everywhere. He set the keg down before the duardin with a thump. Stonbrak licked his lips greedily.

‘That is more like it!’ Stonbrak declared.

Horrin passed out drinks to the others, explaining that he thought it better to make sure everyone was well supplied, then Stonbrak said he was hungry, and Quasque enquired after the location of the privy. Barnabus was falling asleep in his foster mother’s arms, and she nudged him towards his spot by the fire. He came awake and loudly refused to go. Their argument over his bedtime started a flurry of activity. The travellers toileted, Horrin fetched food. Barnabus won a reprieve from his bed. For a brief while the inn was all a clatter, evoking a sense of busier nights, and battling back the dying noises of the wind, so that a sense of safe conviviality outdid the unease the storm brought.

Finally, relieved, refreshed and with plates of bread and cheese in front of them, they were ready to continue. Horrin was the last to sit. Before he did, he ostentatiously noted down the fare consumed upon a slate, peering at each traveller and counting the provisions they had consumed not quite aloud but in such a way the travellers saw, in case any of them assumed Horrin had greater generosity than he actually possessed, and attempted to duck the bill.

Throughout all this, Maesa watched, his slanted, amber eyes staring off into far places, his fingers idly massaging Shattercap, who trilled and purred under the attention.

‘I think we’re all ready,’ said Horrin.

‘Then I shall begin,’ said Prince Maesa.

The Prince’s Tale

‘I am a wanderer among wanderers,’ Maesa began. ‘It is many long years since I fell in love with a human woman against the customs of my kind, and so my people and I parted on bitter terms, but the sorrow I felt for the sundering could never compete with the happiness Ellamar brought me, and we lived decades in bliss. They were gone too quickly. I am an aelf – a human life is brief as a spring afternoon to us. A moment’s joy, then centuries of sadness.’ Maesa’s perfect face transformed into a vision of sorrow so exquisite the others dabbed their eyes. Even Stonbrak tugged his beard and coughed uncomfortably.

‘So sad,’ said Shattercap, and patted the prince’s hand.

Maesa smiled. ‘I would not have had it any other way. So it was I found myself alone. I left our home to fall into the embrace of forest thorns, and set out to journey. I knew not where I was going, but following whatever path I found my feet upon, I passed through many realms. Weighed down by grief, I shunned company, that of other aelves especially. I turned aside from the secret ways of my folk, but walked the realms like any mortal man, passing through the throngs of humanity where they still persisted. At other times, I wandered the wastes made by the Dark Gods, or wildlands protected by the profound magics of the elder ages. While my body walked, my soul traversed endless cold voids of grief.

‘After a time, I passed far from all the throngs of people, good or evil. For years I did not speak a single word of the languages of man, aelf or duardin, immersing myself in the silent speech of far deserts and deep green places beyond the touch of Chaos and civilisation both. Repeatedly, death tried to claim me, from thirst, or exposure, or broken-heartedness. I welcomed it, encouraged it, but every time death came near, something in me awoke, and pushed me towards life, forcing me to drink, or to eat when my pulse faded, or to fight when I was threatened. These years went on for so long I cannot remember them all, nor all the places that I went, nor how many times I called to death then shunned it.

‘Nothing lasts, not nations or stars or even grief. Eventually my isolation came to an end, although as the day dawned I had no inkling of its significance.

‘I had returned to Ghyran, scarcely aware that I was once more in the realm of my birth. I recall the morning. A veil was lifting from my eyes, and I saw more than I had for some time. I walked a road much overgrown by blind oak and goldenbough. Old roots had heaved up the surface in the slow ploughing ways of trees. Once it had been a thoroughfare, and although there was little of Chaos in the land thereabouts, the populace was long gone. Patterns in the trees hinted at lost fields, and undergrowth tangled on levelled settlements, made verdant by the ash of ancient conquest.’

‘So poetic, is my master,’ said Shattercap wistfully. ‘Such beauty in his words!’

‘A little overly ornate for my tastes,’ harrumphed Stonbrak.

‘Please now, master duardin,’ said Ninian, who was quite entranced with the prince in a way that made Horrin frown.

Maesa sipped his wine. The wind had dropped to a few silent, furtive draughts that dared the gaps in the walls, but their potency was diminished, and the candles barely flickered. The rain too had lost its fury, the war drums of the downpour drawn down to an insistent pattering that was almost soothing.

‘Presently I came to a high wall surrounding the ruins of a great city,’ said Maesa. ‘Breaches from the city’s sack put out mossy ramps of tumbled stone. Trees grew from cracks in the facings, wrecking the masonry more thoroughly than any war engine could. The marble had greened, and the statues were broken and thrown down from the parapet. Nevertheless, the wall remained impressive, and in its artfulness I saw the works of men, duardin and aelf combined. This was a city of the Age of Myth. Looking upon it, I was saddened by the thought of higher eras when peace was the norm. Remarkably, it was the first time I had considered anything other than my own pain since Ellamar died, although the significance was lost on me at the time, so brief the thought was.’

‘I have been to this place,’ said Shattercap quietly. ‘Sad, and silent.’

‘The road led through a gateway whose arch had collapsed, mounding the cobbles with ivy-gripped stones,’ said Maesa. ‘Within the walls was much as outside, a verdancy grown thick on the wreck of lives, trees’ high canopies raised over shattered houses and public buildings. So much of what I saw was covered over by green that it was hard to gain an impression of who had dwelled there, but in open parts I saw fragments of statuary that had miraculously escaped time’s ravages, and they suggested a sophisticated people. Perhaps I might have explored under other circumstances, but I had the urge to leave the place. Its desolation reminded me of my own sorrow, and I quickened my pace.

‘The city was vast, mile after mile of broken streets. I became wary. There are many strange places in the realms, and it is easy to become trapped within them. The calls of daytime creatures gave way to the impatient cries of hunters awaiting the dark. I realised I could not cross the city before nightfall and searched for somewhere to sleep. No roofs remained upon the buildings – all were fallen into deep forest mulch. Besides the hollow ruins, nothing remained to testify that people had existed there at all, until I found the track.

‘A simple road overlaid one of higher artistry, cartwheel ruts carved through centuries of leaf mould down to the stone beneath and, alongside, a footpath compacted to smooth hardness. I was amazed – people lived there yet. I touched the ground, feeling the warmth of passers-by who I judged not ten minutes gone. I could have turned away – ordinarily I would – but discovering signs of life in the green tomb of the city, and feeling loneliness more keenly than grief for the first time in ages, I found myself following the track.

‘Shortly after I saw three people. Humans, of unremarkable appearance – two men with wary eyes and a girl nearing womanhood. I followed them. They were canny in their woodcraft, but they did not see me. They could not. A wanderer is invisible among the trees if he chooses to be.’

‘’Tis hard even for I to see him,’ said Shattercap, nodding enthusiastically.

‘Soon I heard noises ahead, and spied a wooden wall,’ Maesa continued, indulgent of his companion’s interruptions. ‘A village was built within an open space in the city. A dozen families, no more, their simple homes of wood and scavenged brick built upon the broken accomplishments of their forebears. In those times it was rare to see people living free, and I marvelled. I wished for a closer look, so sprang noiselessly up a tree, running across the branches, leaping from one bough to the next, until I was at the edge of the clearing, and close enough to the palisade to see within.

‘The fortifications were disguised by carpets of ferns encouraged to grow upon them. So strong was life’s magic there that the planks of wood sprouted, giving the wall a screen of leaves. It was not enough to hide their home from my eyes, but others might pass it by without notice. The houses within were similarly camouflaged, but in spots bright yellows and blues flashed boldly, and fine wooden carvings guarded the beam ends. The village bore few signs of war or suffering. The people were well fed, free of disease and other signs of poverty. And yet they were quiet and watchful.

‘It was no more than a hamlet, but to I, who had dwelled in wild silences for so long, their quiet work seemed monstrously loud. Affected by misgiving, I retreated into the leaves. Watchful people can be unkind to strangers. I decided to sleep where I was, close by their dwellings, and be away early in the morning. I had nothing to fear. I would not be seen if I did not wish to be, so fell into my sleep easily.

‘I was woken from dreams of Ellamar by weeping coming from the village. The night calls of insects and the screeches of owls could not mask it. The misery of the crying stirred sympathy in me, for the sound was the sound of my own grief, and I yearned to go near it, and see sorrow outside of myself the better to cope with my own. Foolishly, perhaps, I dropped from the tree, clambered over the wall and silently crossed the village.

‘Some way inside the walls was a small shrine. A woman knelt there before a pile of children’s things – clothes, toys and tools made for immature hands. I could guess the reason for her anguish well enough. Soundlessly I approached. None saw me. I watched awhile. I could have left without her noticing me at all, or struck her down. I did neither, but to my own surprise, I spoke.

‘“You have lost a child,” I said. The words sounded strange. I had not heard my own voice for such a long time.

‘She was on her feet in an instant. To her credit, she did not scream, but stared at me, her eyes luminous in the dark.

‘“Do not be afraid,” I said. “I am a friend. I mean you no harm.”

‘“An… an aelf…” she said, in quiet wonder. Quickly she wiped the tears from her face.

‘“That I am,” I replied. “Do not cry out. I heard your weeping, and could not keep away. Your sorrow called out to mine.”

‘“Who are you?” she said.

‘“I am a traveller who has lost the one he loved,” I replied.

‘“Are you a warrior?” she asked.

‘“When the time demands, I am,” I told her. “In this moment, I am a fellow griever.”

‘She looked back to the pile of belongings, little more than rags and wooden dross, but each fragment infused with pain.

‘“Why do you weep?” I asked.

‘“My sister’s child is gone, along with others,” she said.

‘“Where?” I asked.

‘“The forest takes them,” she replied.’

Barnabus shuddered. Ninian pulled him close. Stonbrak took a long pull on his beer, and respectively set the mug down to avoid breaking the atmosphere.

Maesa sipped his wine thoughtfully. ‘I expected she meant beastmen, or other fell beings who taint the forests with their presence. It was not so.

‘“It is the trees,” she ventured. “The trees take them.” She took a step closer towards me. “You are a creature of the woods,” she said. “Perhaps… perhaps you can help us.” Her eyes sparked with fresh notions, and before I could stop her, she called out.

‘They were quick, I freely admit. I was surrounded in moments by a circle of spears. My hand flew to the hilt of my sword. I could have killed every last one of them, but I did not wish to.

‘“We will take you to Gurd,” she said. “Our leader.” She was calm. The others were suspicious. I could feel their urge to slay me.

‘“What if it’s a trick? What if he’s shifted shape?” one of the men asked. “What if he is an agent of darkness come to trick us and worsen our misery?”

‘“Are you a shapeshifter in the guise of an aelf?” the woman asked me.

‘“I am a wanderer, as you see,” I replied. “Nothing more.”

‘“If that is so, you will not be harmed,” she said.

‘“Then I will not harm you either,” I said.

‘“You could try,” said the man.

‘“I would succeed,” I said to him.

‘I allowed them to take me to their chief. The woman was as good as her word. The men were nervous. Their spears shook with their fear and the desire to kill, but not one attempted to hurt me.

‘“An aelf,” said their aged leader, the one called Gurd, once he had been roused from his bed. I smelled the death waiting for him, a few brief years away. His mouth was caved in with a lack of teeth, his cheeks crumpled as dropped cloth, yet his eyes were sharp. “Well,” he said. He sat heavily on a rough stool, and poured out mead from a jug into a horned cup. “Sit,” he said. “Will you drink with me?”

‘“I will,” I said. He poured a second cup for me, and pushed it across the boards. It was sweet-smelling, not refined as aelfish wines, but not without savour. I drank it gladly.

‘“I am Gurd,” he said.

‘“This woman told me,” I said. She had come into the chieftain’s house, a hut no bigger than any of the others. The men waited outside. “She did not introduce herself.”

‘The old man snorted. “Kelloway,” he said. “That’s her name. She’s sly, probably worried about enchantment, giving up her name to you.”

‘“I am no mage.”

‘“A pity,” he said, and I could see he meant it. “A mage would be useful.” He shrugged. “I have not seen an aelf for decades. They are long gone from these parts, as are most men. We are the few that remain, untouched by Chaos’ evil.”

‘“I am as surprised to find you as you are me,” I said. I spoke honestly. I sensed no wickedness in this Gurd.

‘He looked at me with calculation. “You are of high birth, though, I can see that.”

‘I did not deny it, for no prince should hide his lineage.’ Gurd drained his cup and slammed it onto the table.

‘“For generations this forest has sheltered us from the Dark Gods,” he said. “We honoured the spirits that linger here. They protected us, we protected them. But of late, they grow greedy, vengeful. They take things they have no right to.”

‘“Your children,” I said.

‘The old man nodded. “Seven now, over the course of a year. We keep the windows and doors barred, and the young ones under watch at all times, but somehow they steal into our homes and take them – it’s always the youngest, the suckling babes. A birth is a cause for mourning now.” He became grave. “We cannot leave this city of our ancestors. Beyond the boundaries of the forest, the hordes of Lord Fangmaw hold sway. We do not know what to do. Perhaps if we had a better understanding of why the spirits turned against us, we could placate them, and reforge our alliance.” He looked at me. “Your kin has an ancient association with the sylvaneth. Could I convince you to go to them, and speak with them as our ambassador?”

‘“You have sent an embassy before, I assume?” I asked.

‘“Of course,” Gurd said. He pulled a sour face. “That is how we know who is responsible. We found our wise woman’s bones tangled in vines thirty-three days after she departed, along with her guardians, not far from the walls. In the past it was our enemies left out this way for us to see – now we find we are the victims.” He leaned forward, and spoke urgently. “Kelloway’s niece went missing only a day ago. There might still be time for her, if you hurry.”’

‘Babies are so tasty,’ said Shattercap. ‘But eating them is bad!’ he added hurriedly, clapping his hands over his mouth.

Stonbrak curled his lip and shook his head.

‘I sipped at my mead as I sip this wine now,’ Maesa went on. ‘I had no real desire to venture into the deep forest and seek out the children of Alarielle, for they can be vicious, and the ancient compact between my kind and theirs is void. But I thought of the sorrow of the woman Kelloway for her missing niece, and how it had touched my own. Something in me had awoken after a long slumber. A change like that does not occur by chance. This was meant to be.

‘“Where is the child’s mother?” I asked.

‘“Where do you think?” said Gurd. “Beside herself with grief.”

‘That made little difference to me, for I had not tasted her pain. It was an abstract, but I realised I wanted to go. I was recovering from my loss. Later, after the adventure was done with, I looked back and felt a new pain, for I realised my grief was fading, and that meant I was letting my beloved Ellamar go.

‘“Very well,” I said. “I shall visit the forest born, and return the child, if I can.”

‘And so it was agreed. I set out at dawn.’

‘Gurd’s people directed me edgeward where, according to their tradition, the creatures of the forest dwelled. They met rarely, and none had seen a dryad for some time. I detected none of their presence, even as the woods got thicker. Giant trees stretched limbs towards the sky, their leaves casting shadows that flooded the forest floor with an inky gloom few plants could survive. Soon I was in near darkness, interrupted by scattered coins of sunlight, rare wealth indeed. The air was unmoving.

‘I have known all manner of forest, yet none daunted me so much as that stifling place. A wood watched over by the sylvaneth is a place of fecundity, but this land was dying. The trees were sinister and their hearts black with spite.’

Maesa set his wine glass down. Like everything else he did, the move was accomplished gracefully, and without sound.

‘Shortly after, I found the sylvaneth. I entered a burnt patch of the forest, where blackened earth showed through leaves turned to white ash. The trees were charred some way up their trunks, weeping amber tears of sap from their deepest burns, and their spirits cried out in silent pain. In the middle of the devastation was a tangle of charcoaled branches that could be mistaken for tree limbs, but were, sadly, the fire-slain bodies of dryads.

‘I skirted the burnt ground, not willing to defile it with my tread. The bodies were much reduced, and so it was hard to see how many lay there. Were the sylvaneth dead, supplanted by wicked powers? I saw no beast sign, or the works of corrupted men. Disquieted, I passed further on.

‘The land rose, slowly at first, then quickly. The trees thinned, allowing a wind to refresh me. Green showed upon the forest floor once more. I smelled the icy breath of a mountain ahead. Broad-leaved giants dwindled, replaced by smaller, hardier breeds with knuckled roots that gripped rock into splintered submission, then they too failed, and straight-bodied pines who aimed themselves at the sky like arrows took their place. When I turned back, I could see for league after league across that part of Ghyran. The forest stretched on towards the realm’s centre. Hysh-ward, the way I had come, I saw the ancient kingdom hidden beneath its cloak – the lines of roads and the blocks of cities, the stumps of towers and citadels, reservoirs choked with reeds. Hysh-away was another story. There the forest abruptly ended in a black plain riven by chasms of molten rock. Hundreds of thousands of dead trees formed the border of the two landscapes, all scorched as spent matches. The might of Chaos drew near, and I wondered why this forest had held so long, with its frightened, remnant folk, and why it was only now beginning to fail.

‘Ahead the mountain soared to touch the sky. Great beasts wheeled around its snowy peak, and the light of glorious Hysh burned most brightly over it. Up there, I was sure, I would find my answers.’

‘Beautiful, beautiful,’ said Shattercap mournfully. ‘I wish one day to go home.’

‘Perhaps you will,’ said Maesa, before continuing his tale. ‘Sure enough, as the trees dwindled to isolated shrubs, and meadow took their place, I found tracks in the earth. Small tracks, less than a day old, and less evident than the signs of the burden they dragged up the slope.’

‘Spites?’ asked Barnabus, quietly.

‘Spites!’ shouted Shattercap.

Maesa nodded. ‘A dozen of them, or so I judged. With no more trees to scamper through, they had been forced to go upon the ground. Now I had their trail, I made swift time. As the meadows gave way to slopes of scree, I found a dell scooped from the mountain’s side, and there, set back in permanent gloom, was a castle of living trees and huge boulders bound fast by roots.’

Barnabus’ eyes widened. ‘Alive?’ he said. His face dropped. ‘I have never seen anything like that, and I suppose I never will.’

‘You are of the realm of Shyish,’ said Maesa. ‘What is mundane to you would be wondrous to someone of Ghyran, to whom a living fortress is the most ordinary of castles.’ He leaned in a little closer to the boy. ‘Look around you with new eyes, young human. You dwell in an inn cupped in the palm of a slumbering demigod. Is that not marvellous enough?’

Ninian ruffled Barnabus’ hair. The boy frowned thoughtfully.

‘Not knowing what welcome I would find in the fort, I strung my bow before scaling the walls. There was no one within. The walls were dying, the roots were dry and losing bark, while soft mountain winds rattled withered leaves on the tower trees. A beast cried in the sky – otherwise there was naught but silence. Stealthily, I headed deeper into the castle.’

All the company were enraptured now, even Stonbrak, whose dark glances towards the spite had all but ceased.

‘Beyond the walls was a grotto burrowed into the mountainside by roots as thick as a man, and gated with a screen of vines. They were also dead, and falling apart. I wondered if I would find anything alive in there at all, then I heard voices – high, whispery, restless twigs scratching one another, but voices nonetheless. I nocked an arrow to my string, and stepped through the crumbling vines into a cave a thousand strides across and filled by a lake.

‘A giant black trunk climbed from an island at the centre. The tree was immense, and its branches braced the cave roof. Light fell through holes in the rock and shone upon the tree, and reflected from the water. Like the wall trees, it too was dying.

‘I finally spied my quarry. The spites struggled down a path to the lake shore, dragging a bundle behind them that was most burdensome to their feeble strength, though it was but a swaddled human baby deep in enchanted sleep. For all the effort it took them, the spites moved quickly, rolling the slumbering child into a small boat made of a single curved leaf. Their leader leaned over the side and with huge, webbed hands paddled the boat, spites, baby and all, across the water to the island. Following the boat along the shore, the source of all this misery became apparent to me.

‘A seat was grown into the wood of the mighty tree, and in it a great tree lord enthroned. Tree lords are mighty creatures, wise, powerful and quick to wrathfulness against the enemies of order, but this one was injured grievously.

‘Fire had consumed his left side. His bark skin was peeled back to the fleshy wood, which was pale with illness, and wept a foul reeking sap. His face was likewise blackened, one eye burned out, his crown of leaves scorched away. He sat crooked, leaning away from his wounds. His mouth worked with pain. The whorls in his skin, which should shine true with the light of jade magic, pulsed an angry redness. In desperation, he had sought a terrible cure. All around his throne were heaped the remains of hundreds of creatures. I saw the bones of orruks and humans mingled with those of simple beasts of the wood. All of them were deathly white, drained of life completely, awaiting but a single touch to knock them into dust. What flesh was upon them was desiccated to powder. The tree lord’s feet were rooted firmly in the depths of this horror – from the dead he drew new life. Around his neck he wore a necklace of lambent seeds, and by this adornment especially I knew the tree lord had lost his senses, and descended into madness. A terrible fate awaited the child.

‘The leaf-boat reached the far shore. The spites sang high-pitched work songs as they struggled to move the sleeping babe from the boat and towards the pile of bones. I could have walked away, and left the child of men to its fate. Many aelves would have done so. I could not. I looked at the baby and thought only of the child my darling Ellamar desired, but which we could never have. I drew my bow. The creak of it roused the tree lord from his pain. He opened his one remaining eye and looked at me.

‘“An aelf, and a wanderer at that,” he said in the language of creaking boughs. His voice was the grinding of roots breaking bedrock, slow and deep and powerful. At his speaking, the cracks of the great tree’s bark around his throne shone with a hundred eyes, and more spites crawled out – the court of this wounded king.

‘“As life made me so, I am Maesa, exile prince,” I said, using the formal words that were part of our people’s common bond long, long ago. They could not be denied, and the tree lord was forced to respond in kind.

‘“And as life made me, I am Svarkelbud, whom some call the Black,” he said, naming his own evil. He did not wish to give his name, and he spat the words unwillingly. “I do not care for aelves. I have not seen your kind since you betrayed Alarielle, and left Ghyran to its fate.”

‘“That was long ago,” said I. “Long before I was born.”

‘“You cannot escape blame. The guilt is yours,” said the tree lord firmly. He clenched his good hand into a thicket fist. “You have no right to be here, nor to call upon our ancient alliance. Begone, you are not welcome.”

‘“I will gladly go, with the child,” I said.

‘The tree lord laughed. “Now we come to it. An aelf at the beck and call of savages. How noble. That is impossible. I must heal. The forest must persist. The child’s soul is ripe with life’s potential. By consuming it shall I grow strong, and the slaves of the dark gods will feel my wrath again!” His cry turned into a pained, splintering cough. He clutched his wounds. Sap ran through his fingers. “I will not allow you to take it,” he said, his voice hazed with pain. “I require its essence.”

‘“Where are your dryads?” I asked. “I will speak with them. Perhaps we can come to another arrangement that will bring you back to health.”

‘Once more he laughed. “Traitors! They are dead. After I was wounded by the slaves of the blood god, they entreated me to leave this place and head to the jade wellsprings where I could be remade. The journey is too far, the process too long. I would have been rooted there for many generations, and my forest at risk all the while. They did not approve of my alternative.” He laboured to speak through the pain of his wounds. Time was running short. The spites had the sleeping child upon the shore, and were moving it to the pile of bones at the tree lord’s feet.

‘“By fire I was wounded, by fire they perished. By my hand!” roared the tree lord. “They opposed me, so they died, and became acquainted with my agony.” His voice lost a little power. He hunched over himself.

‘“You wear their soulpods,” I said.

‘“They were unfaithful!” he said, as if this blasphemy were normal.

‘“Now you hunt the people who are your allies.”

‘“Where were they when Lord Fangmaw burned me with alchemical flames? Hiding in their hovels! For too long they have intruded upon my realm,” insisted Svarkelbud. “They have earned their fate.”

‘“Their city is swallowed by your trees. I would say you intrude upon their realm,” I said. “You go against the teachings of the goddess of life. Let me help you. End this madness.”

‘“Alarielle is gone! Driven away. What loyalty do I owe her? I am king in this domain!”

‘The spites chittered and screeched at me from the trunk of the underworld tree, more mischief in the gathering than in a troop of apes. Their cohorts raised the child above their heads and bore it to the mound of bones. I had my arrow aimed at the tree lord through the conversation, but switched it now, sending it at the foremost spite bearing the child – a sinuous thing wearing the form of a glowing, four-armed snake – and striking it dead. Already I was moving forward, pulling a second arrow from my quiver and letting it fly. It buried itself, fletch-deep, in the chest of a waddling thing fat as a barrel. I made the shore of the lake, slaying more of the spites before my feet were wetted. Cold, subterranean waters beckoned, who knows how deep, but though I am no battle wizard, I have my magic. Murmuring certain words, I sprang onto the water, and sprinted across the surface, loosing arrows all the while.

‘Their numbers diminished, the spites struggled with their load, half dropping the slumbering infant; so jolted it awoke, and began to cry.

‘“Cease your meddling!” roared Svarkelbud. He heaved himself to his feet, sheets of hardened resin cracking from his wounds and letting flow the sap-blood they staunched. Screaming with pain and rage, he thrust his roots deeper into the ground. They burrowed through stone quick as my arrows, and erupted in a spray of water from the lake. Tips of iron-hard wood speared upward, but I was gone. Swift as the wind am I, too fast for the sylvaneth. He called to his court of mischiefs. Spites crawled headfirst down the tree, carpeting the shore, brandishing thorns of wood and splinters of bone. The babe was but fifty paces from me. Perchance I was already too late.’

Maesa paused and looked at Shattercap. ‘A spite of medium size, grey-green of skin with leaves quivering on his shoulders, stood upon the squalling infant’s chest. In his hand he held a sharp dagger of bone raised to puncture the child’s throat, and steal its life away.’

‘Me!’ exclaimed Shattercap. He clapped his hands.

‘You,’ said Maesa. ‘In desperation I called out, “Do not harm the child!” Although he most certainly had harmed others, the spite looked at me, and for the briefest instant, his face lost its ferocity, and he looked upon the child with something approaching tenderness. It was enough for me to spare his life. I drew my sword.’ He patted the hilt of his strange blade. ‘Not the one I bear now or my task would have been considerably easier. When I reached the child, I struck with the flat of my weapon, knocking this creature, this Shattercap, unconscious. I severed the life threads of a dozen more spites to clear myself a little more space. I needed but an instant, for my kind is swift-limbed, and I am reckoned among the very fastest. That day, I moved as quickly as I ever have. I nocked my final arrow, whispered fires upon its tip, and sent it winging towards Svarkelbud. The tree lord saw the shot, but could not prevent its striking. It was the last thing he saw in this life.

‘The arrow plunged into his remaining eye and burst into flames. His roaring was so terrible that his other spites scattered, leaving me free to snatch up the puling babe.’

Again, Maesa paused and looked upon his companion.

‘On a whim, I took the spite also, stuffing him into one of my pouches and tying him fast within. Svarkelbud lashed out in every direction with his good arm and roots. His hand swept down, and I leapt upon it, and jumped again, swinging my sword to cut free the string of soulpods about his neck. I caught it as it fell, and landed upon the dry, dry bones. Then I was away, down the shore, over the lake, as his roots and wrath burst stone, water and bone all around us.

‘Soon enough I was clear. Svarkelbud’s head was ablaze. Sylvaneth fear the flames. They fear the smell, and the heat, for in their hearts they remember the screams of trees consumed by forest blazes, and they dread the same death for themselves. It was worse for Svarkelbud the twice-burned. In his madness and his panic, he forgot the water all around him, but blundered about, beating at his burning head with his hand and wailing, “Treachery! Treachery!” He banged into the underworld tree, and fire leapt from his head into its dry, dying leaves, setting them alight. At that moment I fled.

‘From a safe distance we watched the castle burn. The reign of Svarkelbud was done. For a single aelf to slay a tree lord is a deed of legend, yet nevertheless I am ashamed of it.’

‘The forest,’ said Horrin, his drink forgotten and mouth dry.

‘I do not know what happened to it,’ said Maesa. ‘I hope it remained until Sigmar’s storm swept down from high Azyr, and grows there still. I did what I could to ensure that. I found a grove, by a spring, and there I planted the soulpods of the dryads slain by their own king. Given time, they would sprout and take up the guardianship of the forest, and the hidden tribe of men who sheltered within. I hope that is what occurred.’

‘What happened to the baby?’ asked Ninian, who was clutching her foster son tightly.

‘Returned to the mother in the dead of night. I did not speak with the villagers again, but left a token so they would know it was I who had brought the child back, and that she was not some changeling. Then I left the woods, and headed into the wastes beyond, my eyes shedding the scales of grief. After so long, I had something of a purpose – the rehabilitation of my new companion.’

‘Why did you not kill him?’ said Stonbrak in tones of outrage. ‘You said yourself these things are dangerous, and witnessed them at their worst.’

‘Nasty duardin, full of meanness and beard,’ said Shattercap. ‘I’ll be dangerous to you if you not be nicer.’

Stonbrak rolled his eyes. ‘You could attempt it, plant daemon. My axe splits wood as well as flesh.’

Shattercap cringed and hid behind the prince’s arm.

Maesa smiled sadly. ‘Spites are things of magic. Those in the castle were enthralled to Svarkelbud. But Shattercap shied from murder despite that. There is a seed of goodness in his heart, and I have been carefully nurturing it.’

Prince Maesa sat back in his chair. Shattercap grinned a horrible smile of teeth, pointed and hooked for the catching of frogs, slithering things and children’s fingers.

‘If I cannot see good in him, what chance is there for myself?’ Prince Maesa asked. ‘I have done many terrible deeds, and am fated to do more.’

The company fell silent. Soft rain drummed on the roof. Wind caressed the eaves. Thunder rumbled a long way away.

‘We are now in the eye of the storm,’ whispered Horrin.

Unexpectedly, Pludu Quasque blundered to his feet, knocking over his goblet. Stonbrak swore and flicked wine from his hand. The rest dripped to the floor, slow and thick as blood.

‘I’ll go next!’ said Quasque with wild eyes. ‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘I’ll get it out of the way, while I still have the time…’

SACROSANCT & OTHER STORIES
A Warhammer Age of Sigmar Anthology
Various authors

Enjoy a collection of tales from the Mortal Realms, covering a host of races and factions and providing a taste of the flavour of the Age of Sigmar – including a brand new novella by C L Werner.

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

CITY OF BLOOD

Matt Smith

Matt Smith makes his first foray into Inferno! as no stranger to the dark parts of the Underhive. Matt’s enviable ability to create a richly detailed backdrop to his stories combines with his fast-flowing action and produces a tale of a mysterious outbreak that will have you on the edge of your seat.

The barmaid just took a shotgun to a man’s guts. The smell of blood soon mixed with the damp in the air. The bar’s patrons jumped and turned to check that no one was pointing a weapon at them then went back to their drinks. They had been startled, but not surprised. The victim’s friends drew weapons of their own but were swiftly set upon by a pair of gene-bulked bouncers who had rushed in from the entrance and beat them to the ground.

Jesca watched all this through the half-light of flickering lumen globes hanging from the low ceiling. She sat in the darkness at the back of the room drinking something that tasted like dirty water and fermented cado root. More bodies, drunks and mutants, piled into the brawl and isolated fights broke out seemingly spontaneously around her as more patrons took the opportunity to settle their own petty grievances. The room was soon filled with a cacophony of shouts and the dull thudding of fists against flesh. Jesca pressed herself back into the shadows and willed herself to be invisible but it was already too late for that.

There was a man at the bar. He was tall, broad-shouldered, healthy. No average underhiver for sure. He wore leather armour and carried mismatched autopistols holstered on each thigh. A mercenary maybe, Jesca thought, but something didn’t fit. He sat too straight and his hair was shaved too neatly, short at the sides and flat on top – a military cut. He’d seen her too. He tried to be subtle about it but she had noticed. His eyes flicked all around the room but always back to her. Who was he? Did he live here? She hadn’t seen him here before, and was that sunburn on the end of his nose? That was wrong, very wrong. Definitely an outsider, but then who had sent him?

Should she run? No, she had been down here too long to get sloppy now. How long had it even been? Too long already, and if she wanted to get out she had to stick to the plan. Wait for the signal.

‘Here you are, lady,’ the barmaid appeared through the crowd, shotgun casually resting against her shoulder, and set down a glass of murky red-brown liquid.

‘What is this?’ Jesca asked. She sneered as she held the glass up to inspect it.

‘We call it a slick shiv. Seems you have an admirer. Enjoy.’

This was the signal and not a moment too soon. Shiv was a code word she had agreed with her contact. It confirmed the location of their meeting. She looked back towards the suspicious man but he had moved. Jesca’s eyes flicked through the crowd until they caught sight of him again.

A part of her had known this would happen but she had hoped that part was wrong. She couldn’t hide. Now was the time to run. She could try to slip out before he reached her. That way she’d get out of the bar but he would soon realise she was gone and pursue her. If she wanted to get away cleanly she would have to confront him. She watched as he approached. He prowled like a hunting cat, taking an indirect route towards her. Jesca gulped down her newly acquired drink and watched him in her periphery. The outsider slipped through the crowd until he emerged beside her, pistol drawn.

‘Come with me,’ he said as he closed in.

Jesca finished the last sip of her drink then threw the glass into the side of his face. He fired blindly but Jesca was moving. As she stood up the solid slugs sent her stool skittering across the floor. She rolled, closing the distance, drawing her laspistol. She came up as her attacker recovered. He grabbed her wrist and sent her first shot through the ceiling. He adjusted his aim but Jesca stepped close, wrapping his arm under hers, and drove her knee into his groin. The attacker wheezed and doubled over. Jesca wrenched her hand free and placed her pistol against his temple. She fired. The outsider slumped to the ground. Jesca put two more shots in his chest to be sure. She kept the weapon in hand as she made her exit.

Obergard Secundus had been built on top of an ancient subterranean transit network. It had long since fallen out of use and had become home to the lowest of society. Jesca had been hiding out in Scavtown, a large shanty town of plyboard and corrugated metal that had grown up around an old maintenance depot. In the claustrophobic maze of uneven corridors it would be easy to get lost, but Jesca had used her time trapped here well. She knew where she was going. She turned right and set off at a brisk walk, holstering her laspistol. The air was humid and oppressive and the ground was slick. Water that had fallen from the sky hundreds of years ago found its way down here eventually and seeped into the structures, riddling them with black mould and rust. She turned right at a junction and passed a vendor with a rotting wooden stall, selling charred vermin on sticks. The scent of burnt meat stuck in her throat and she spat, trying to clear it. She turned and climbed a ramp that creaked beneath her. She had to go north and up several levels to reach the meeting point. It was a long way and she had to avoid the prowling gangs if she was going to get there on time. This route was quiet – the sounds of bustling crowds, gunfire and screaming were muffled and distant below. She pushed on, ducking into the shadows at the sound of footsteps ahead, but it was just a pair of drunk gang serfs. Jesca let them pass.

She found a ladder up to another level. At the top she went left then turned right and stopped. Someone was waiting for her. He had the look of the man in the bar, the same strong posture and haircut, but he was taller and broader across the chest. In addition to his leathers he wore a flak armour chest piece and carried a lasgun across his body.

‘Damn,’ she cursed and started to backtrack. The man followed.

‘Escape and evade,’ she mumbled to herself. A mantra she lived by. She turned away and sped up as she rounded the corner. Another outsider was ahead, a woman this time, clad like the men, lascarbine in hand. Jesca’s heart began to hammer – she was exposed. She turned back and tried to discern a new route, mind racing. There was still a way through. She passed the ladder and cut left again. Her heart sank. It was blocked. A piece of scaffolding had bent, dragging the wall in and blocking her path. She had come this way to the bar not an hour earlier. It had not been this way then. She turned back again but the outsiders stood barring her way. Jesca heard footsteps approaching from behind them. Something growled. The outsiders pressed their backs to the wall, allowing Jesca to see beyond. Deep red eyes stared back at her. A quadruped with a hide of burnished silver, a cyber mastiff. It prowled towards her, head held low, teeth bared. A step behind the mastiff was its master.

He was tall and gaunt. He wore a long black stormcoat, riding boots and a brass breastplate embossed with the Imperial aquila. His right eye was gone, the socket sealed shut by an ugly scar he made no attempt to hide, and the right sleeve of his jacket was pinned up at the shoulder. His hair was white and his remaining eye was a steel blue. He walked with a pronounced limp to his right leg and on his belt were a string of grenades, of both conventional and esoteric designs.

‘Private Veil,’ the newcomer said, his voice filled with righteous authority and no small amount of threat. ‘I am–’

Jesca interrupted. ‘I know who you are, Timur.’ She also knew what him being here meant. She wasn’t going to be able to talk her way out of this. She’d have to improvise. She took a deep calming breath and stood up straight, proud, fearless.

‘That’s Commissar Iovac to you, deserter.’

‘Right, right – hero of the Cecillian Crusade under whose gaze no assault ever wavered and for whom each man would fight with the strength of ten,’ Jesca said with mocking gravitas.

‘You ought to be showing more respect,’ a female outsider spat, taking a step forward and jabbing her weapon towards Jesca.

Oh, this one has a temper, Jesca thought.

The commissar held up a hand for quiet. ‘If you know who I am then–’

‘Speaking of gaze, is that why you spend your days rounding up strays now? Did one side of your assaults start becoming wildly unreliable?’ Jesca said, gesturing to the area the commissar’s right eye had once filled. Iovac didn’t rise to the bait but Jesca took pleasure in the subtle tightening of his jaw. Iovac stepped closer so he could look down on her. When he spoke his voice was calm and clinical.

‘I capture and execute deserters because I am good at it. I have spent my entire life watching for the signs of cowardice in fighting men. I can see into a man’s soul. I know what he will do. I know where he will run. That is how you have come to be trapped here and why I have let none escape the Emperor’s justice.’

Jesca paused and considered his words. ‘Did you know I was going to kill your man in the bar?’ she asked. ‘It wasn’t even difficult. Who are these whelps?’

The woman took another step towards Jesca. ‘101st Kothek Fusiliers, designated S Company.’

‘Kothek?’ Jesca said. ‘Aren’t you the ones who fled from the archenemy on Delvin’s World?’

The female guardsman snarled and took another step forward. She was close now. She made to open her mouth but Iovac cut her off.

‘I am done listening. If you know who I am then you know that this is over.’

‘Do it then, or will you have your thugs kill me for you?’

‘I take pride in sending cowards to the Emperor’s judgement personally.’ He paused. ‘However, it need not come to that yet. You may still come with me quietly and return to the crusade.’

‘Don’t play me for a fool. You’re not going to let me live.’

‘Of course not. You are a deserter. The only future left to you is death and damnation. But I would much prefer a court martial and a public execution over an anonymous death in this hole. It is much better for morale.’

‘And why would I do what you would prefer?’

Iovac bowed forward, bringing his eyes in line with hers. ‘If you surrender yourself to my custody I will see that your body is burned to ash. If you do not, I will take your head as proof of my work and leave the rest of you here for the vermin and the cannibals.’

Jesca looked down and let her body sag, allowing herself to appear broken, defeated. When she looked up, she forced a smile. ‘How can I refuse?’

Iovac straightened up. ‘Good, now hand me your weapon.’

Jesca reached for her laspistol and both soldiers trained their weapons on her. She removed the pistol slowly between her thumb and index finger and handed it to Iovac.

‘Good,’ Iovac said and turned away. ‘Restrain her.’

The male trooper stepped forward, withdrawing a pair of manacles. He grabbed her wrist roughly and pulled it behind her back.

Jesca looked the other in the eye. ‘Your comrade, the one I killed. What was his name?’

‘Shut your mouth,’ she spat.

‘You disdain me for cowardice. He would have disappointed you. Before I pulled the trigger, he begged for his life,’ Jesca lied.

‘I said shut your mouth,’ the soldier said and stepped forward, aiming her carbine at Jesca’s head.

Close enough, Jesca thought, and attacked. She threw her head back. Her skull collided with the man’s mouth behind her. Simultaneously her foot came up and kicked the carbine from the female soldier’s hands. The restraining soldier still held her wrist. Jesca used her free arm to elbow him in the temple and he staggered against the wall. The mastiff was barking.

‘Restrain her!’ Iovac ordered again. The female soldier made to tackle her but Jesca threw her aside, sending her barrelling into her fellow as he tried to recover. She made for Iovac but the mastiff stepped between them, steel teeth bared. Jesca dived over it as it lunged at her. As she rolled to her feet she threw herself at Iovac. They fell back against the wall, which buckled under the impact. Jesca grabbed one of the grenades from his belt then shoved herself away and ran. Behind her the commissar spoke two words.

‘Hound. Retrieve.’

She heard its footsteps first, the rapid cadence of a quadruped. Its bark filled the air, artificial and malicious. Jesca was fast. She was yet to meet a human she could not outrun, but even with the adrenaline coursing through her she knew she could never outrun the mastiff. She couldn’t fight it either, not unarmed. She looked at the grenade she had taken from Iovac. It was translucent silver and sparked inside with crackling blue energy. She could use it now, but such a thing was valuable and may better serve her later. She strapped it to her own belt. She may yet escape on her strengths alone. She thought of hiding, but even in the darkness she knew the mastiff could see her clear as day, hear her breath, smell the sweat on her skin. Its footsteps grew louder. Its bark grew closer. Her heart pounded in her chest. She needed a plan. She scanned her mental map of the area. There was a chance. She just had to get there. A whole tower had collapsed recently during the escalation of hostilities between the Bone Grinders and the Reaping Dragons, leaving a jagged hole running through Scavtown’s structure like a badly cored fruit. Jesca would be able to navigate it in a way the mastiff could not. That was her way out. Breaking left, she dropped down through a rust-eaten hole in the floor. She listened for the clang of pursuit. It came four seconds later as the mastiff dropped behind her. Too close. Snapping could be heard now too – its jaws biting at the air in anticipation. She cut right. Nearly there. She could hear the servos in its legs whirring. Its jaws snapped shut around a loose strap on her empty holster. Mercifully, it tore free. She cut right. Here.

The narrow walkways opened up into a wide clearing. It was a mess of bent and broken piping where the structural supports had given way. Large rough-edged metal sheets had fallen and got jammed at awkward angles. The whole area was pockmarked with las-burns and bullet holes. She only had a second to assess it but she saw what she needed. A thick strut jammed into both sides of the hole. She could reach it, just.

‘Emperor grant me strength,’ she prayed, willing life into her tiring legs. She hit the edge of the opening and jumped. Her hands wrapped around the beam and her momentum carried her forward. She swung her hips and let go, sailing through the air. She hit the far side between levels, the impact knocking the wind out of her. She started to slide back. She scrambled for purchase but found none. She looked down at the jagged shards below and saw the mastiff leap after her. It ignored the fallen scaffolding. It ignored the deadly drop below. It leapt at her fearlessly, its powerful hind legs launching it towards its quarry. Jesca felt something rip and she stopped. The sleeve of her bodyglove had snagged on the sheared edge of the floor. The mastiff was almost on her, teeth bared. She could have laughed at her fate – to be saved from falling only to be killed by the beast.

A shot rang out. It was painfully loud and reverberated around her. Sparks burst from the mastiff’s hide and it lost its momentum. It fell away, mouth snapping at her, short by inches. Jesca watched it drop and exhaled but she wasn’t safe yet. She looked up to begin climbing and saw him.

Standing over her was a giant. At first, Jesca thought it was an ogryn but the figure wasn’t quite that big. Although far from handsome, his bald head showed none of the abhumans’ deformity, except that the left side of his face had at some point been severely burned.

‘You were supposed to be the one finding me,’ the giant said.

Jesca frowned, then realisation dawned on her. ‘Heizer?’

The giant nodded. ‘Veil. You gonna get yourself up here or do I have to?’

Jesca growled. With a groan of exertion she regained her grip on the ledge and pulled herself up. At the top she got to her feet and eyed the giant. He was wearing a black fatigue jacket, though the stitching looked strange, like it was being worn inside out, and its arms had been torn off. She could see that burns covered his left arm too. She also noted the heavy revolver, cross-holstered at his left hip, and wondered how anyone could fire such a thing without blowing their own arm off.

‘How’d you like the drink?’ he asked.

‘The underhive sunrise?’

‘Don’t play games with me. The slick shiv.’

‘It was disgusting.’

The brute laughed. ‘Yeah, I like tricking people into drinking those.’

‘Well, thank you. I must say, you’re not quite what I was expecting.’

‘I get that a lot. No time to talk now though – those off-worlders are still following you.’

‘How did you–’

‘Nothing happens down here that I don’t know about. Ain’t that why you sought me out?’

‘I sought you out because I need to get off this planet. Can you make that happen?’

Heizer nodded. ‘Yeah. Plan’s already in place but it’s time-sensitive so let’s move.’

He led them away in silence. Jesca stayed a step behind, watching him. He walked with a hunched back and a heavy stride. His breathing was laboured and he kept scratching the burns on his cheek and neck. He led them east. Progress was slow and cautious.

‘Where are we going?’ Jesca asked.

‘Quiet. We’re not safe yet.’

The further Heizer led her the more uncomfortable Jesca became. She had formed her own backup plans in case this deal didn’t pan out. Heizer’s scheme may have worked but she couldn’t leave it to chance. That was why she had tracked down the smuggler. With every turn they made Jesca tried to discern his plan but nothing she could think of made sense. She didn’t work well with others. She liked to be alone and independent. Ceding control to anyone, especially a stranger, made her uneasy. He led them up through level after level until Jesca could start to make out stalactites above them through holes in the roof of the shanty structure. Eventually they came out on a rooftop, tucked away where the rest of the slum still rose around it. They were close to the cave wall, north of the main transit tunnel. Extending out from the stone was a pipe large enough to walk through. Heizer stopped and turned to her.

‘We should be clear now. So, you got what we agreed?’

‘You want to do this now?’

‘We ain’t going any further without it.’

Jesca reached back and removed a small case that was strapped to the small of her back.

‘Of course,’ she said and placed her thumb on a small silver panel. The case flipped open and Jesca turned it in her hand so Heizer could see its contents – a small brass sphere. ‘You can place this into a decent cogitator and it will grant access to major shipping accounts belonging to the Draycons, the Obergards, and the Tuls. If you’re smart you can skim credits off them forever without ever being noticed. Or you could just sell it.’

Heizer snarled. ‘You said three houses. The Tuls are nobodies. No deal,’ he said.

‘What I’m offering you, even for a single house, is a fortune. Are you really going to let this kind of information on the Draycons and Obergards slip by because you’re not interested in the Tuls?’

Heizer paused for a second. ‘Fine, but this had better not set the tone for our business relationship. I don’t like being played,’ he grunted. ‘Hand it over.’

Jesca snapped the case closed. ‘Neither do I. This seal is bonded to my life signs. I die, it stays closed. It’ll be yours once I am safely on my way off-world.’

‘How do I know you’re not lying?’

Jesca met his eyes and shrugged. ‘You don’t.’

Heizer snorted. ‘Not good enough. You need me, I don’t need you.’

‘I think you do. I know your kind. You think you’re three steps ahead of everyone, always looking to the next score. You do well but you still need investors. You owe people, inpatient people, and I’m paying too well for you to let it slip by. Opportunities like this don’t arise every day. Why else would you come looking for me?’

Heizer scratched his neck. He reached into a pocket in his trousers, then to his mouth. Jesca saw a speck of something white, a pill of some kind.

‘Well, ain’t you smart,’ Heizer said begrudgingly. ‘Come on. This way.’ He turned.

‘Not yet. I want to know your plan.’

‘Fine,’ Heizer said and turned back. Jesca glared at him until he continued. ‘We’re going to walk out along Access Road Alpha Forty-Seven.’

Jesca’s jaw almost dropped and she rolled her eyes. ‘Are you insane? Alpha Forty-Seven is sealed, caved in.’

Heizer stomped back to her. ‘Do you think I’m stupid, girl?’ he spat, his face inches from hers.

‘If you think intimidating me is going to work, well, I’m waiting for you to change my mind.’

Heizer growled and took a step back. ‘They’ve been clearing the blockage for weeks. An hour ago they got through.’

‘Then what am I paying you for?’ She laughed. ‘I’ll walk myself out.’ She turned to walk away.

‘Not so fast.’

A hand engulfed her forearm. Her eyes traced the scarred tree-trunk arm until they met Heizer’s. ‘Let. Go,’ she said, sternly enunciating each word. Heizer didn’t respond immediately. Jesca could tell he wanted to oppose her. Her glare dared him to do so. Then his grip relaxed and his arm fell to his side.

‘It’s not that easy. You even know why they were clearing it?’

A memory flashed through Jesca’s mind that sent a chill down her spine. ‘I have an idea,’ she replied.

‘Does it involve flesh-eating monsters?’

‘They’re calling them the Afflicted.’

Heizer laughed. ‘No such thing. Some snot-nosed spire-born and his friends come down here thinking they’re gonna hunt underhivers for sport. Run into someone they can’t handle. Probably one of the House Sang gangs. Whoever it was made an example outta them. When the kids don’t come back the families send the enforcers down here to find ’em. All they find are ragged bones. One story leads to another and suddenly there’s flesh-eating monsters down here.’

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘I believe what I see and I see everything, but I ain’t seen no cannibal monsters. Now though, the roads are open, so the Obergard Militia can move in. Governor Elspin’s been pressuring Lord Obergard to get the situation dealt with so Obergard’s ordered a purge. They’re going to sweep through this whole place and wipe the so-called Afflicted out. That’s their plan anyway.’

‘You don’t think it’s going to work,’ she said.

‘No. If Obergard thinks he can roll troops through here and clear the place out he’s as moronic as he is obese. They’re not gonna find any monsters and the gangs are going to get riled up. Trust me, soon this whole place is going to become a war zone. Besides, Alpha Forty-Seven leads out of Amstar and because you got yourself tailed we’re running late. The militia have already taken the main accessways. That’s why we’re here.’

‘Where is here anyway?’ Jesca asked.

‘An old maintenance tunnel, I think,’ said Heizer as they walked in. Jesca followed.

Heizer started to scramble over the ledge into the tunnel. Jesca gracefully hopped up in a single movement and waited.

‘When we get inside let me do the talking,’ Heizer said as he got to his feet. ‘These maintenance ways belong to the Tunnel Runners.’

‘And?’ Jesca asked.

‘And we’re not getting along right now.’

‘Maybe I should do the talking then.’

Heizer shook his head. ‘They may be mad at me but at least they know me. They really don’t like strangers.’

‘Alright then. So what did you do anyway?’

‘Why do you think I did anything?’

‘I’ve known you almost an hour now and you’ve pissed me off twice already. I expect it’s an effect you have on people.’

‘Well, it ain’t your business, but what I’ve learned about you is we’re not gonna get anything done if I don’t spell everything out for you so here goes. The Tunnel Runners help me move product, out of sight of the big gangs. They’re not house affiliated so they just take a cut of the profits. Everyone’s happy.’

‘Except they’re not.’

‘Last job didn’t go well. The Runners got a bunch of my stock stolen. They seemed to think I’d pay ’em for what they didn’t lose. I said what they lost was their cut. Things were said. People got shot. They’ve been real quiet ever since.’

‘Maybe we should go through without them seeing us.’

‘Nuh-uh.’ Heizer shook his head. ‘They know every inch of their turf. They’ll find us one way or another and if we look like we’re hiding that’ll just piss ’em off.’

‘So what happens when they find us?’

‘If we’re lucky they’re open to patching things up.’

‘And what really happens?’ Jesca asked sarcastically.

‘They’re not.’

Scavtown faded behind them. The tunnel rose steadily, occasionally flattening out and regularly turning back on itself. It got too dark for even Jesca’s well-adjusted eyes to see. A light reached out from beside her. Heizer was holding what looked like an Astra Militarum lamp pack. Its light was weak and flickering, but it was enough to see what they were doing. Occasionally they passed narrow side burrows or ladders leading to other levels that they had to step around. Heizer stopped and placed a hand on Jesca’s shoulder. She shrugged him off but stopped nonetheless.

‘Here we go,’ said Heizer. He shone the lamp pack further ahead and Jesca could make out mounds of stacked rubble.

‘Hey!’ Heizer called out. ‘Anyone up there? Skeech? Parrow? It’s Heizer, I’m here to talk. Don’t shoot me.’ He looked down at Jesca. ‘Or my friend,’ he added.

There was no reply. Heizer went on anyway. Jesca followed. The lamp pack flicked off for three long seconds before the light returned. Heizer shook it with frustration, sending the light dancing around the walls. Everything was coated in a thin layer of pale rubble-dust.

‘Piece of junk,’ Heizer growled. They reached the mounds. Jesca expected to be staring down the barrel of a gun. She wasn’t. In fact, she couldn’t see anyone, or even hear them. Heizer was expecting people, so where were they? She listened and heard nothing but there was a smell, a familiar one. Her heartbeat quickened. Her head darted around. She saw a flash of something dark streak through the pale dust. The light went out again. All she could hear was Heizer pounding the lamp pack into his palm.

‘Lousy piece of–’

She heard glass break. Heizer was stomping around, his heavy footfalls even louder in the enclosed space.

‘Shhh,’ Jesca hissed.

‘Gimme a second.’

‘I saw something.’

‘Well, ya ain’t gonna see it again ’til we get some light so gimme a second.’ There was a burst of static that set Jesca’s teeth on edge.

‘What was that?’ Jesca asked tersely. The smell had her on edge. She wished she still had a weapon.

‘Some device I bought off a tech-scav. It says stuff in machine speak. It’s supposed to activate the old Mechanicus emergency lighting. Doesn’t do a damn thing though.’

Jesca noticed her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘Well, it does something. It may be the lighting that’s not working. Let me see.’

‘Sure. Over here.’

Jesca followed Heizer’s voice in the darkness until she could feel his body heat beside her. His hand grasped her forearm and she flinched.

‘Relax, I’m just showing you where it is.’ He took her arm again and directed it to a point on the wall in front of her then let go. She felt something smooth and solid. It was covered in the same rubble-dust as everything else. Her hand moved down and felt cold metal. The object narrowed near the bottom. Her hands painted a picture in her mind. It was a servo-skull. She tried to lift it but it was stuck.

‘Got a knife?’ she asked.

A moment later she felt the flat of a blade touch her arm. She flinched again. She heard Heizer chuckle and fought the urge to punch him in the throat.

‘What’s got you so jumpy?’

‘I told you, I saw something,’ she said irritably, taking the knife and turning it in her hand. She prised the skull from where it had corroded into its housing.

‘I’m sure it’s nothing. Only thing in these tunnels are lousy gun smugglers and even they ain’t showing themselves.’

Jesca returned the knife and inspected the skull with her fingertips. ‘It doesn’t feel damaged. Maybe its power source has simply expired. Hold this,’ Jesca said and thrust the skull into Heizer’s sternum a little harder than necessary. She reached in and pulled a lifeless crystal from what had once been a man’s neck. It trailed a bundle of wiring that she carefully removed. The crystal came free and Jesca unceremoniously discarded the failed energy source into the darkness. She then removed a power pack for her laspistol from a pouch on her belt. It would have been fiddly work even in the light but eventually she had wired the pack into the skull.

‘It’s not ideal but let’s give it a try,’ she said.

There was another burst of static that made Jesca wince. Nothing happened.

‘So much for that,’ said Heizer.

‘Give it a moment.’

The servo-skull started to hum, its repulsion plate lighting up. It hovered up out of Heizer’s hand. A dull white light speared from its left eye socket. It was weak and narrow but in the new light Jesca could see what had caught her eye. The dusty stone walls were streaked deep red. That familiar smell – blood.

‘Look at this,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Heizer replied.

‘Heizer, it’s blood.’

‘So the Tunnel Runners got in a fight. Explains why they’re not here. We should go.’

For the first time Jesca heard something in his voice. Something like fear. She looked round to see Heizer walking away, silhouetted by the servo-skull’s dull light. She jogged to catch up with him. The tunnel wound on. They passed another area that looked like it had once been inhabited, mouldy sheets and empty food cans strewn around. More streaked blood. Heizer kept his eyes forward, never looking around or breaking stride. Jesca’s heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest. Every muscle was tense. She fought constantly to control her breathing. The effort was starting to wear on her. Then the scratching started.

It was quiet and irregular but seemed to come from all around. Jesca’s head darted about impulsively but all she could see in any direction was Heizer’s impassive face.

‘Do you hear that?’ she asked him.

‘Yeah,’ he replied, still looking forward.

Jesca paused, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t she pushed the matter. ‘Well? What is it?’

‘Nothing, maybe rats.’

‘That doesn’t sound like any rats I’ve heard. You must have big rats down here.’

‘Yeah, but that’s not it. The acoustics down here are strange. Whatever is making that noise is further away than it sounds.’

Jesca wasn’t convinced. She trusted her own senses far more than she did this smuggler’s. She had no reason yet to trust him any further than she knew her payment would take her. Just because he wasn’t going to shoot her himself didn’t mean he wouldn’t get her killed through incompetence. Jesca had long since learned to be wary of men who believed themselves infallible. The scratching rose and fell as they went. At times, it was punctuated by hisses and snarls or whimpers of pain. Jesca started at each new sound but Heizer just kept looking ahead. The scratching grew louder. Jesca waited for it to quieten again but it grew louder still. A new sound joined the confusing cacophony. A rapid tapping.

‘It’s just our feet echoing,’ said Heizer.

‘No, it’s faster and if it was us why are we only hearing it now?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Heizer insisted, his voice betraying his growing aggravation.

‘It’s something, Heizer, not rats, not us. What are you not telling me?’

The sounds shifted. They were no longer coming from everywhere. They were behind them. Jesca knew what the sounds were. Part of her had known the entire time. She suspected Heizer had too. It was what had brought fear to his voice, such fear that he had gone into denial. Jesca snatched the servo-skull from the air and turned it to face behind them. She didn’t want to see what was there but she knew she had to.

Two creatures were running towards them. In form they were human, clad in mismatched armour over ragged clothing. Their foreheads were distended and swollen. Blood coated their faces. Crimson streams had dried below their ears and painfully bloodshot eyes. Their flesh was pale and thin, displaying intricate webs of purple and black. Where the veins clustered most densely the skin was marked with sore dry growths. Their hands and mouths were wet and glistening. They were fast. By the time Jesca could brace for a fight the first had hit her and barrelled her to the ground. Her back and shoulders scraped against the floor.

‘Throne,’ she cried out involuntarily.

Lashing out into the darkness, Jesca grabbed the monster by the throat. She held its snapping jaws back inches from her face. It sprayed her with bloody spittle. Its breath smelled of death. She spared a look at Heizer but saw nothing. The servo-skull hovered between them. Unable to illuminate them both at once it snapped back and forth in its attempts to compensate but only served to surround them with a disorienting strobe effect. Jesca elbowed her attacker in the head over and over. She felt its eye socket shatter but it paid no heed, still desperately pressing down on her, teeth snapping for her face. It lashed at her with a sharp-nailed hand. Jesca caught the arm and pulled as she pushed away with the other hand around the creature’s throat. It lost its balance and fell beside her. It scrambled and swiped at her but Jesca was quicker. She got back to her feet and stepped away, the swing passing in front of her. It lunged again. This time she was ready. She sidestepped and kicked its legs out from under it. It fell into the tunnel wall. It cried out angrily and tried to reach back but Jesca grabbed its head. She drew it back and smashed it against the wall, again and again. With each blow its body grew more limp and slid down. Jesca continued until she was driving its face into the ground and didn’t stop until it stopped thrashing.

She caught flashes of Heizer. The second creature was on his back and he shook desperately to dislodge it. It had an arm around his neck and its teeth were trying to bite through the collar of his jacket. Jesca darted towards him. As she got close, the strobe lighting became solid once more, the servo-skull’s quandary resolved. Jesca reached up over the creature’s head and dug her fingers into its eyes. It yelped and blindly clawed at its own face. She wrenched back. It fell to the ground before her and scrambled back up to turn on her. She kicked it in the chest and it stumbled back, right into Heizer’s massive hands. He clamped them around its head like a vice and squeezed until it gave way. The body slumped heavily to the ground.

Jesca and Heizer stood staring at each other as they tried to catch their breath.

‘Those are–’ Heizer began.

‘The Afflicted,’ Jesca finished.

Heizer looked stunned. ‘I-I can’t believe they’re real. How did I not know?’ he said. He started to scratch and hurriedly reached into his pocket again, putting a pair of pills into his mouth. ‘We should go, before any more find us.’

The scratching was still there though, the hissing, the snarling, the footsteps, close and closing.

‘They’re already here,’ Jesca said, looking back. ‘Run!’ She set off as fast as she could, sparing only a brief glance to check Heizer was following. He was fast for his size, but not as fast as her and not nearly as fast as the Afflicted. The servo-skull’s grav plates refused to carry it faster than a slow walk and it was left behind. Moments later there was a crunch of splintering bone and its light went out. Shots boomed behind Jesca, deafeningly loud. She looked back again to see Heizer firing his revolver into the darkness. The muzzle flare lent snapshots of the horrors behind. There was no telling how many were there now. They filled the width of the tunnel many times over. In the darkness, they tripped and fell and were trampled to death by those coming behind. Jesca looked ahead again. Her legs were burning. Her breath came in ragged gasps from exhaustion and fear.

‘Emperor preserve me,’ she prayed.

She saw light. The tunnel curved and a world beyond came into view. Jesca could see the sides of white-painted prefab buildings marked ‘Adeptus Mechanicus Station Tetra-Alpha-Rho, Amstar’. Looking over her shoulder she could see Heizer and the horde. They were almost on him. He wasn’t going to make it. She thought of the grenade she had taken from Iovac and was thankful she hadn’t used it earlier. She detached it from her belt and thumbed the activation rune. The arming light turned from red to green and she tossed it back. The tunnel flashed and crackled with gravitic energy. She felt herself being pulled backwards and fought against it.

‘What did you do?’ Heizer yelled.

The majority of the pursuing horde had been caught in the stasis grenade’s field. Their malnourished bodies were dragged to the ground. They crawled, reaching out and snarling with enraged incomprehension. One broke through and charged Heizer as he tried to reload. It was bigger than the others, stronger. Heizer raised his weapon but froze.

‘Skeech?’ he said.

The Afflicted hit him, knocking the revolver from his grip. Heizer was holding it back by the shoulders while the creature tore at his arms. Heizer was grunting with pain but not fighting back. Jesca ran to them. She jumped and kicked the Afflicted. It stumbled back but recovered quickly and came at her. Heizer didn’t move. Jesca grabbed his knife from its sheath. She turned back as the Afflicted lunged again and she drove the blade up under its chin. It sprayed dark blood as she withdrew it and the monster fell forward. Heizer was staring at the dead creature.

‘That was Skeech. How–’

‘I can’t explain now. They’re not going to be held back forever. We need to keep going,’ she said. She cleaned the knife on Heizer’s jacket and handed it back to him. ‘You’re welcome,’ she added.

Heizer recovered his revolver and they started running. The end of the tunnel swiftly grew as they ran. Jesca could hear footsteps chasing them again.

‘How far is the drop at the end?’ Jesca asked.

‘About three storeys.’

‘How much ammunition do you have left?’

‘Not enough.’

‘Then jump.’ Jesca reached the tunnel mouth and leapt, only realising her mistake as she began to fall. She hit the ground hard, letting her momentum carry her down into a roll. She heard Heizer land heavily behind her.

‘Emperor’s chafing–’ The last word was cut off by a grunt of pain.

‘Heizer. Now would be a bad time to be blaspheming.’

‘What?’ he said. ‘Oh.’

She knew he’d seen what she had, what she was still looking at. The barrels of twenty Obergard Militia lasguns.

They were clad in grey camouflage fatigues and flak armour. Their faces were hidden behind rebreather masks. Behind the lines of guardsmen were a pair of Chimeras. An officer stood up out of the turret of the one to Jesca’s right. In one hand he held a laspistol, in the other a bullhorn.

‘Hive scum. By the authority of Lord Obergard and Governor Elspin, you are in violation of edict 6172785.2 addendum 586, obstruction of Hive Militia forces during a sanctioned purging operation. Hand over your weapons and surrender yourselves.’

Jesca held up her hands. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Up there, in that tunnel. There are Afflicted coming through.’

The officer glanced up then back at her. ‘Nonsense. Our intelligence indicates the Afflicted are only active in the lower levels. Levels you are obstructing us from reaching. Now I repeat, you are in violation of edict–’

‘We surrender,’ Jesca said.

‘Veil?’ Heizer hissed.

‘Do it,’ she snapped back.

‘Good,’ the officer said smugly. ‘Corporal, take care of them.’

The nearest trooper stepped forward, weapon still raised. ‘Place your hands on your heads and get down over there,’ he said, pointing behind the Chimeras. ‘Trooper Selvin, take their weapons and watch them.’ The corporal gestured to the two of them with the barrel of his lasgun and they followed his directions. Another trooper separated from the patrol and followed.

‘Hand me your weapons and get on your knees,’ the following trooper ordered as they came to a halt. Even through the rebreather he sounded young and lacked authority. Heizer puffed out his chest and straightened to his full height. Jesca could tell he was thinking of something that would get them both killed. She kicked him in the shin. His head snapped down to her with a look of barely restrained anger.

‘Do as he says,’ Jesca said, meeting his gaze.

Reluctantly, Heizer complied, handing his revolver to the trooper who almost dropped it, surprised by its weight.

‘You’re all gonna die, you know,’ Heizer said as he got down onto his knees. He was squirming, rubbing the side of his neck against the collar of his jacket.

The trooper scoffed. ‘We are the Second Obergard Hive Militia, the Unyielding. We can handle whatever mutant wretches you have down here.’

Jesca could still see the tunnel mouth. It was sparking blue. Then it stopped. She listened, trying to ignore the rumble of the Chimeras’ engines. She heard rushing steps and spitting mouths. The sounds echoed from the tunnel as if it were a serpent of nightmares.

‘Here they come,’ she said quietly.

The first fell from the opening and landed flat in front of the troopers. Their weapons snapped round. The Afflicted got to its feet and lunged at the nearest soldier. It was shredded by lasfire before it could reach him. More came behind it.

‘Get weapons on that opening!’ the officer in the Chimera ordered. The next Afflicted ran straight into a hail of fire and spilled out dead. Trooper Selvin spared nervous glances away to see how his unit fared. He laughed as he turned back.

‘See. The Emperor guides our hand.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Jesca.

She too was watching the fighting. What she saw almost made her heart stop.

They rushed from the tunnel mouth like water streaming through a broken dam. Their momentum carried them out, legs still pumping. Most fell, others stumbled, some hit the ground running and were on the militia before they could be brought down. From where she was knelt she saw a trooper with a flamer pour fire into the horde, but the Afflicted kept coming, clothes burning, skin melting, and fell upon him. He disappeared screaming. Jesca heard his flesh tear. The militia drew back, closing ranks. Disciplined volleys had given way to desperate bursts on full auto. The enemy was so densely packed it was impossible to miss, but the Afflicted shrugged off all but the most grievous damage. The militia couldn’t hold them back.

Heizer was still itching and groaned in discomfort. He took his hands off his head, using one to scratch his neck – the other reached inside his jacket.

‘Hands where I can see them!’ Selvin barked.

If Heizer heard him he showed no sign and kept scratching and squirming, growing ever more agitated.

Selvin turned to Jesca. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is he turning into one of them? Is this how it starts?’ Selvin asked, growing frantic.

‘No, I–’

‘That’s it.’ Selvin raised his weapon to his shoulder.

Jesca leapt to her feet. Selvin turned his lasgun on her but Jesca was already too close. She grabbed him around the waist and threw him. He hit the ground with a lung-emptying thud and Jesca struck him in the solar plexus as she yanked the lasgun from his grip. The young soldier let out a mewling whine and huddled into a foetal position.

The battle raged. All form of order was gone. What had begun as a defensive line had become a dozen individual battles for survival. The Afflicted clambered onto the transports. Jesca watched as the officer on top tried to retreat inside but he was too slow and was torn kicking and screaming from the hatch. The Afflicted shredded him on top of his vehicle. More swarmed over the second Chimera. A fuel line was torn free and Jesca caught the stink of promethium. It was ignited by a spark from the Chimera’s heavy bolter and engulfed the front of the vehicle in flames. More still ran from the tunnel mouth, disappearing in all directions.

‘Get up, Heizer, we have to go,’ Jesca said urgently, and she reclaimed Heizer’s gun. He didn’t respond. He had fallen onto his side and was writhing in pain – his eyes were closed and his teeth gritted. Jesca reached out and grabbed his arm. She started to pull but he was far too heavy to move. Something reached him though. His eyes flared open and he rolled to his knees. As he pushed to his feet he snatched his weapon from Jesca’s hand and shoved her to the ground. Then he ran, still squirming, away down the street, not looking back.

‘Emperor damn you, you ugly whoreson!’ she shouted after him. She got to her feet and tried to follow but she felt something around her ankle. She kicked it away then looked down. Trooper Selvin was still huddled on the ground.

‘Please, help me,’ he pleaded.

Behind him the last of his unit were dead. The Afflicted poured through the flames of the burning Chimeras towards them.

‘Are you not unyielding?’ Jesca replied and turned away. She just had to reach the access road. Looking ahead though she saw this was no simple task.

Enforcer patrols and gangers spilled out of prefab structures and re-purposed haulage towers on either side of the street. They carried the horrifically wounded and fired behind themselves. Jesca saw terror in their eyes. More Afflicted followed, tearing down fighters as they attempted to flee. With every passing moment the battle turned closer to a massacre, the Afflicted feeding gluttonously all around. She had almost lost sight of Heizer. She ran into the madness, firing controlled bursts from her lasgun. Her eyes scanned ahead for every opening in the crowd. She slipped past desperate duels between enforcers and gangers and stepped over half-eaten corpses. She was a wraith, a ghost on the battlefield, but the openings grew fewer and tighter. She finally lost sight of Heizer. An Afflicted burst from beneath a pile of fallen bodies and grabbed her leg. She bludgeoned it with the butt of her rifle until its skull gave way. Another grabbed her from her left. She stuffed the lasgun in its mouth to keep it from biting into her shoulder. She staggered back and tripped, the monster falling on top of her. She could see more coming towards her, sensing an easy meal. She could not stop them all. She was going to die. She was going to fail.

‘Emperor forgive me,’ she breathed.

Heavy weapon fire boomed over the sounds of slaughter. The horde began to fall away. Spaces formed – between them Jesca could see her saviours, a trio of sentinels, autocannons flaring. For a fleeting moment she felt relief, then she looked down at their feet and it was dashed.

‘Jesca Veil!’

Leading the sentinels was the unmistakeable figure of Commissar Iovac. He had shed his stormcoat. In his left hand was a bolt pistol. Fixed to the stump of his right arm was a clenched power fist. He was coming straight for her, flanked by his retinue.

‘You have had your chance, Veil!’ Iovac barked. An Afflicted charged him from his left. He shot it in the chest and head in quick succession, without breaking stride. ‘You have abandoned your duty as a servant of the Holy Emperor. You have deserted his blessed crusade. You assaulted an officer of the Officio Prefectus. These are crimes for which there can be no forgiveness.’

A group of gangers, led by a brute with a large industrial hammer, charged at him. While the guardsmen gunned most down in short order, Iovac struck the leader with his power fist. The ganger’s torso liquefied, his limbs splattering noisily to the ground.

‘You understand that I cannot allow you to leave. All must face justice for their crimes. As the Emperor’s voice in this darkness, I sentence you to death. May you burn for eternity, never granted His holy benediction.’ He levelled his pistol at her and fired.

Jesca was already moving. She threw one of the Afflicted aside and shot it as she scrambled back to her feet. She took in her shifting surroundings. The Afflicted had been thinned but not stopped and the battle was drawing more of them into the street. Gangers were fighting both sides. Alpha Forty-Seven was ahead, beyond Iovac. There was no avoiding it – she had to get past him. She ran right, making for the shadows of the pre-fab towers. Bolt rounds slashed past her, their propulsion burners distinct and terrifying. A shot buried itself in a wall as she passed and detonated, spraying shards of stone into her face. She shot an Afflicted as it charged out of a tower and then something grabbed her. She twisted and rolled under the arm, bringing her lasgun up.

It was Iovac’s female bodyguard. Jesca pulled the trigger but the rifle was knocked from her grip. A blade rose up towards her abdomen. She turned it aside but was immediately struck in the jaw, and her head snapped around. She turned back in time to see the knife slashing towards her throat. She let it come, struck the woman’s arm above the elbow and pulled on her wrist. The joint broke. The guardswoman cried out and dropped the knife. Jesca caught it before it could hit the ground and drove it up through her enemy’s throat. The Kothek woman coughed blood and fell back, the knife still embedded. An Afflicted fell on the bleeding body but slumped dead a second later, two great craters blown in its back. Iovac stood mere feet behind it.

Jesca fled. Everywhere she looked people were running in all directions. It was so loud she couldn’t make sense of anything. The air reeked of blood and promethium. Jesca shoved and elbowed her way through the crowds. She stumbled over bodies, struggling to keep her footing. Every time she dared look back, Iovac was there, smashing monsters and gangers aside with his power fist, unstoppable, implacable.

‘This is your fault, Veil,’ he called. ‘You have angered the Emperor so grievously that His rage has affected these people. Only with your death will He be appeased. Only with your death will their suffering end.’

Jesca kicked a ganger aside only for her path to be blocked by a pair of Hive Militia. They held their lasguns like quarterstaves before themselves. The first swung for her with the butt of the rifle. Jesca swayed back and raised her foot into his crotch then rammed his rifle back into his face. He fell back, relinquishing his weapon. The second adjusted his grip to fire but Jesca swung the lasgun in her hands like a club and knocked the barrel away. She stepped into a reverse swing that snapped the guard’s head around and he crumpled into a heap. She felt a wave of concussive energy blindside her. She was thrown forward, losing her grip on the lasgun, and landed on top of a dead ganger whose entrails were spilling from his torn stomach.

Iovac, he was right there behind her while she was flat on her face and unarmed. She was dead. Then she saw it. The ganger had died with a stubber in his hand. Jesca crawled over the body, shielding the weapon, and prised it from the ganger’s fingers.

‘Do not feign death, Veil. Meet your end with a little dignity at least,’ Iovac said. ‘Face me.’

There was no time to check the clip. ‘Emperor save me,’ Jesca whispered as she rolled. She brought the stubber up and fired. The first shot hit Iovac in the hip. The second glanced off his armour. The third dug into his shoulder. The fourth only dented his breastplate but the fifth broke through. Iovac’s eyes went wide with shock. ‘No,’ he gasped as he fell.

The stubber was empty and Jesca tossed it aside. She pushed to her feet. Everything ached and she was slick with blood from her cheek to her knees. She looked down at Iovac. He still stared in disbelief up into the cavern ceiling. Jesca felt dizzy and her head hurt. She raised her hand to it and it came away bloody. Was it hers? She tried to focus. She had to get to Alpha Forty-Seven. What was she going to do when she got there? Damn that coward Heizer and his half-cocked plan.

Something was coming. She could hear bodies being bludgeoned and trampled. She squinted and made out a green-bodied Cargo-6, its rear covered in a dirty white canopy. It was rushing towards her. She saw an Afflicted roll over its engine house and crack the windscreen before it fell aside. She tried to move but her legs wouldn’t react.

Before it hit her the truck slewed sideways and came to a halt. The door swung open. ‘Get in.’

It was Heizer.

He had turned his jacket the right way to reveal camouflage matching the Hive Militia. He had a white armband stretched around his bicep, marked with the symbol of a corpsman.

‘What’re you waiting for?’

Jesca staggered towards the open door when a shot erupted behind her. It ricocheted off the cab and detonated, blowing a burning hole in the canopy. Jesca glanced over her shoulder. Iovac was on his feet. He was unbalanced and his arm shook – he was struggling to hold his pistol aloft.

‘The Emperor protects me, Jesca Veil. He will not allow me to die while you still live.’

He screamed. An Afflicted with no legs had bitten into Iovac’s calf. He fell to one knee. He pressed the bolt pistol against the Afflicted’s head and blew its skull open. Another creature ran at him from behind. Its momentum bore them both to the ground as its teeth bit into the back of his neck. Another crawled out from under a pile of bodies and bit his arm. Jesca watched, frozen with horror, as he was devoured.

‘Veil! Now!’

Heizer’s voice snapped her back to reality and she turned back to board the truck. They were moving before she had shut the door. Lasfire whined past them. Jesca looked back to see the last of Iovac’s guardsmen. He was chasing them, covered in blood, and roared with fury as he fired until he was lost to the crowd.

‘Put that on,’ Heizer said, gesturing to a militia uniform jacket bundled in the footwell. He had regained his composure. The cab was strewn with medical supplies. It looked like it had been ransacked.

‘I thought you’d gone.’

‘Shut up and put it on. This is the plan. Any of that blood yours?’ Heizer asked.

Jesca put the evidence together in her mind. Heizer was an addict. What exactly he was taking she didn’t know but he couldn’t exist long without it. That made him a liability.

‘A little maybe.’

‘Well, pretend it is. Look,’ Heizer pointed ahead. Jesca peered through the cracks in the windscreen.

Access Road Alpha Forty-Seven was a long steep slope, reaching up out of the underhive into the smog-filtered light of the lower city. It had once been wide enough to accommodate heavy drilling equipment but was now strewn with heavy boulders and rubble. A space wide enough to allow trucks and Chimeras access had been cleared by enormous cranes. At the foot of the road was a platoon of Hive Militia dug into a sandbagged checkpoint. Heizer drove straight for them.

‘No, Heizer, this isn’t a plan.’

The truck came to a screeching halt.

‘What’re you doing, trooper?’ she heard someone say, but Heizer’s bulk was blocking her view.

‘What does it look like? I’m getting injured outta here.’ He pointed back at Jesca. She could see the soldier now. The pins on his collar marked him as a sergeant. ‘Do you know who that is?’ Heizer growled.

‘N-no.’

‘Idiot. That there is Major Carovenko, one of the favourite students of General Astor Sang, and if she doesn’t get to Aegis Outpost in thirty minutes she’s going to bleed to death here in my truck.’

‘Trooper–’

‘Corpsman,’ Heizer corrected him.

‘I am your superior officer, corpsman. No one hurt by the Afflicted is to leave the underhive. Now turn around. That’s an order.’

‘She didn’t get hurt by the Afflicted. Some gang scum jumped her. Now do you want to be the one to explain to General Sang that one of his best died because you stopped her getting the help she needed or should I?’

The pair locked eyes.

‘Let them through!’ the sergeant yelled,

Heizer floored it and they left the raging battle behind.

Minutes later they emerged. The lower city was dank and grey but compared to the underhive it was blinding. Jesca didn’t like it. She felt exposed and pushed herself back into her seat. Troop transports and Munitorum cargo movers rolled past them. Jesca held her breath but none of them paid the medicae truck any notice. They came up on the outskirts of the hive, a few miles from the outer walls, in a complex of tall water-processing plants. The road led into the centre of the city, further than Jesca could see. Heizer pulled them off a slip road and onto the narrow streets that wove between the plants. Jesca was looking for something to start cleaning herself with when something hit her. It smacked her head back against the seat. It took her a moment to register it as Heizer’s fist. When she snapped forward, the edge of a blade was against her throat. Heizer was still driving, only glancing over at her sparingly. She chastised herself for letting her guard down. He didn’t want her dead though, or else he wouldn’t have come back for her.

‘What do you want?’ she growled.

‘Who are you?’ said Heizer.

Jesca sighed. ‘Private Jesca Veil, former 151st Hadran Rifles. Deserter.’

‘You’re lying. The way you move. Your skills. Whatever that thing was you dropped in the tunnel. You’re no rifleman.’

‘I was a scout, recon division.’

‘Stop. You’re a bad liar and it hurts to listen to ya.’

Jesca flinched at his words. If there was one thing she prided herself on it was her ability to lie. For a moment her ego demanded she prove him wrong and she began to craft a new falsehood. Then reason took over. Trying to fight her way out was too great a risk. Getting off-world was all that mattered. The truth would serve her better than any lie now.

‘Okay, I’ll do you a deal.’

‘You’re in no position to negotiate.’

‘If I tell you the truth you’ll become a target. People will come for you.’

‘People try to kill me every day.’

‘Not like this. Make the deal and I’ll do what I can to keep them away from you,’ said Jesca.

‘I ain’t scared.’

‘Yes, you are. I saw you in the tunnel. The Afflicted terrify you and who comes for you will be worse.’

The knife moved away from her throat. ‘What’s the deal?’

‘Simple. A truth for a truth. You first.’

The truck came to a halt. Heizer turned as far as the cabin’s confines would allow.

‘What’re you taking?’ Jesca asked. ‘You’re addicted to whatever it is.’

Heizer scoffed. ‘An addict? That’s what you think? Well sure, if you call not wanting to feel like I need to rip my own skin off being addicted, then I guess that’s what I am. I take this morphodone stuff. It keeps the pain away but I’m out, that’s why I needed to get up here so bad.’ He leaned towards her, his face stern. ‘Your turn.’

Jesca sighed. ‘Jesca Veil. Servant of the Holy Ordos.’

Heizer’s jaw dropped.

‘That you believe?’ said Jesca.

‘Now you’re not lying. You’re an inquisitor?’

‘No,’ said Jesca, ‘just a servant, a spy, my master’s eyes where he is not.’

‘The Afflicted, you knew about them. You need to get off-world to report to your master but why not just use an astropath?’

Jesca shook her head. ‘I can’t trust them with this. The affliction, it’s not natural. It was created by men.’

‘Who could create those things?’

‘Heretics. They are a weapon and this city is a testing ground. I found the perpetrators but they found me too. I managed to escape so they sent Iovac to kill me.’

Heizer shook his head, struggling to take it all in. ‘Get out,’ he said as he exited the truck. Jesca did so cautiously. Heizer went through a hole in a wire fence then climbed a spiral staircase running up the side of a vast water tank. Jesca followed. They crossed the top then climbed again to the top of a tall processing building. Around the sides were a network of thick pipes. Jesca could hear water rushing as she slid between them. In the centre was open space. Heizer turned to face her. He held out his hand.

‘Sphere,’ he said bluntly.

‘When I’m clear,’ Jesca replied.

Heizer withdrew a small device from the pocket of his trousers – it was a rectangle with a short antenna and a blinking white light. ‘I got you passage on a rogue trader’s vessel out of the system. When I press this button it’ll send a signal and he’ll send down a transport. Now pay up.’

Jesca eyed him warily as she detached the case and opened it. She offered it to Heizer. He took the sphere and weighed it in the palm of his hand. With the other hand he pressed a button on the transceiver. The blinking light became still.

‘It’s done,’ he said.

They stood in silence until a shape descended out of the smog. It was sharp and angular with narrow swept-back wings. It came in low between the buildings. Jesca and Heizer stepped back as it set down. A hatch on the side popped open.

‘It’s for you,’ said Heizer.

Jesca looked up at him then over to the lander. Without a word, she walked away. As she reached the hatch, Heizer spoke up.

‘Jesca.’

She paused and looked back to him but said nothing.

‘If you ever come back here, leave me out of it.’

Jesca stepped inside. She hoped she would never have to see this world again.

HONOURBOUND
An Astra Militarum novel
Rachel Harrison

Commissar Severina Raine and the 11th Antari Rifles fight to subdue the spreading threat of Chaos burning across the Bale Stars. Little does Raine realise the key to victory lies in her own past, and in the ghosts that she carries with her.

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

DISMEMBER THE TITANS

Graeme Lyon

Blood Bowl is back and it’s in Graeme Lyon’s safe hands. Well versed in the nature of the gridiron, Graeme’s sure-footed blend of dark humour and brilliant characterisation effortlessly captures the nefariousness of the professional scene. Get ready, sports fans, this is one hit you won’t want to miss.

Blood soaked the astrogranite of the Light’s Hope Stadium.

This in itself wasn’t unusual. Nuffle knows I’ve spilled plenty myself in the course of countless Blood Bowl matches – both mine and various opponents’. But this was a little different. For a start, it wasn’t match day. The stadium wasn’t filled with the noise (and smell) of cheering fans, and I wasn’t wearing my crimson and white Talabheim Titans kit and facing off against whoever hoped to take the team down a peg or two this week.

And usually, when Blood Bowl players were left with missing limbs, it was obvious why, and who had torn the offending extremity off.

The corpse of Hans Kniezehen had been carefully laid on the field in the spot he usually occupied at the start of a game. It was deliberate and provocative. And in the case of Johann Walsh, star Catcher and my best friend, what it provoked was a seemingly never-ending stream of vomit. Though, to be fair, that was probably because of the missing limbs and the fact that most of Hans’ innards were spread in a six-feet radius around him.

The stench was terrible – the rich copper tang of blood mixed with the unmistakable smell of voided bowels. It was like being downwind of a beastman just before laundry day. Most of the team, and our head coach Gerritt Vanderwald, were staying as far away as possible from the scene of the crime.

At least, I assumed it was a crime, because it seemed quite unlikely that Hans had accidentally disembowelled himself and removed his own arms and legs.

Ghurg the ogre was standing protectively over Johann as he emptied his stomach onto the pitch, and Gerhardt, the team’s water boy and unofficial mascot, had been sent to the nearest watchhouse to get someone to come and look at the scene.

I wasn’t holding out much hope that they would come. They hadn’t for the previous two disturbingly similar deaths. The murder of relatively wealthy Blood Bowl players didn’t tend to bother the watch much, and it really didn’t help that the local watch commander was a diehard fan of our local rivals, the Talabec Taleutens. After the last death, I’d had a blazing row with him when he shrugged and said it would just make the next Titans–Taleutens game an easier win for his boys. If Ghurg hadn’t picked me up and carried me away, I’d have committed murder myself. Bet that one would have led to an arrest.

I was as near to the corpse as I could bear to go, a handkerchief over my nose and mouth in a vain attempt to smother the smell.

‘Find anything, Juliana?’ I turned to see a chalk-white Johann walking towards me, Ghurg behind him like a huge and imposing bodyguard. A diminutive goblin sat atop the ogre’s shoulders. How we’d adopted the goblin was a long story, but he was useful on occasion. Just now he was leaning down to rub Johann’s shoulders. It would have made me laugh if I hadn’t been standing almost in the guts of a fellow player.

‘Looks the same as the others to me. Arms and legs missing, intestines…’ I trailed off as I saw Johann gag. ‘Well, you know. Nothing obviously different. Nothing that hints who it might be.’

‘Three,’ Johann said, pain in his voice. ‘Three of our friends dead, and we have no idea who’s doing it or why. Who could be this cruel?’

I considered reeling off a list, starting with at least a dozen Blood Bowl players I could think of, some of them standing not thirty feet away, but I bit my tongue. This went beyond the usual casual violence of the game. There was something almost ritual and occult about it. Something disturbing.

‘Someone who hates us, I would guess,’ I said. ‘Someone who knows their way around a knife. Someone with a strong stomach as well.’

I sighed in frustration. ‘We still don’t even know why the killer chose those three, how he found them, how he incapacitated them… It’s not like any of them are pushovers.’

I gestured over to a pair of the team’s cleaning crew who’d been hanging around since they found the body. They both seemed fine – but then, our cleaners had to have strong stomachs, especially for cleaning out the privy when we hosted a dwarf team. All that ale did funny things to their bodies.

‘There’s not much point in waiting,’ I told them. ‘Get the body down to the infirmary.’

They started loading the corpse onto a stretcher, trying hard not to step in the spread innards and fluids, and failing miserably. After a minute or two, they were joined by a stooped, gaunt man in a white coat, who kept glancing over at us as he issued them with commands.

‘We do have one small advantage on our side this time,’ I said with false cheer.

‘What’s that?’ asked Johann miserably, trying not to look in the direction of the corpse.

‘Our new team apothecary,’ I said, pointing over at the white-coated figure. ‘I think he used to work in a morgue somewhere down south. Maybe he can find some clues on the body.’

Johann looked at me warily. ‘Please tell me you don’t want to be there while he… does whatever he does with it.’

‘You know me, Johann,’ I replied. ‘I never turn down a chance to watch an expert at work.’

Johann did know me, better than anyone, just as I knew him. That had been the case for nearly two years, ever since the body-swapping incident. I’d been a cheerleader then, dreaming of being on the pitch tackling orcs rather than by the side shouting vapid slogans and being leered at by half the crowd.

I’d had my chance when an incompetent wizard had cast a spell that swapped my mind into Johann’s body and vice versa. I’d scored a winning touchdown and once the mess had been sorted out and I was back in my own skin, I was quickly signed up by an Amazon coach who’d been watching the game.

I spent a season over the sea in the Lustria League learning how to be a blitzer from some of the best in the business, but the warm climate didn’t agree with me and I returned to Talabheim, where Johann convinced the Titans’ owners to take a risk on a female player – one of the very few in the Old World. I still didn’t know quite what he’d done to get me on the team – he’d never told me, no matter how many times I’d asked – but I remained grateful.

The owners were grateful now too – the combination of my blitzing ability (and the surprise a lot of players felt seeing a small human woman barrelling towards them) and Johann’s well-honed catching skills had made us a formidable pair. The fact that we could often get a sense of what the other was thinking helped a lot. Commentators had started referring to us as a pair more often than not, and we’d even had a few sponsorship deals as a double act – though the number of McMurty’s spamburgers we’d had to eat for a Cabalvision advert had put us both off endorsements for a while.

That aside, we worked well together and with us leading the squad, the Titans were in serious danger of becoming a team people outside Talabheim paid attention to. Another season like this one and we might even make a dent in one of the major tournaments.

If we had any players left, that was. With three dead in two weeks – and none of them on the gridiron – things were looking distinctly shaky.

The infirmary was in the basement beneath the stadium, through a winding series of service corridors. It sat directly below the home team dugout, with a trapdoor and elevator that could be used to lower injured players for treatment. When they were beyond help, or if the player was particularly unpopular with the rest of the team, the elevator stayed at the bottom and the body was just pushed down through the trapdoor.

‘I hate it down here,’ muttered Johann. ‘It twists and turns so much you could play Dungeonbowl in it.’

‘That’s not a bad idea, actually,’ I said. ‘It would be something a bit different for the fans. Maybe a bit tight for the camra wizards though. They’d be right in the thick of the action, and you know how they hate getting their robes dirty.’

‘That was one time,’ said Johann. ‘And I paid for a new set when the blood wouldn’t wash out.’

I glanced at him and saw a thin, slightly pained smile on his face. I knew he appreciated my attempts to keep the mood light even in the face of tragedy.

We reached the open door of the infirmary and I stopped, giving a tentative knock on the frame. Inside, a thin, reedy voice said, ‘Come in.’ I glanced back at Johann, and he nodded and stepped inside.

The smell of the open corpse on the metal table in the room’s centre was almost masked by the exotic scent emanating from a dozen or so censers that had been strung around the walls. Each had a burning candle hanging beneath it, and was stuffed with herbs. I moved to the closest and sniffed it curiously. I couldn’t place the smell.

‘Ah, interested in my counter-microbials, are you? Trade secret recipe, I’m afraid. The Guild of Morticians would be most upset if I gave that away.’

I turned to face the new apothecary. Close up, he seemed quite short, possibly because he walked with a hunch, and he was very slender, to the point of being gaunt. His pinched, pointed face gave him a vaguely sinister look, and though he was well-dressed in clothes that were clearly very expensive given their cut, there was something about him that gave me the strangest sense of shabbiness.

‘I am Doctor Werner von Blaustein,’ he said, bowing slightly. ‘And you need no introductions, of course. Johann Walsh and Juliana Tainer. “Beauty and the Beast”, Spike! Magazine calls you, I believe.’

‘Only because Johann’s so pretty,’ I said.

‘And because of the way you broke their reporter’s wrist when he grabbed your bum,’ Johann added.

‘I gave him a warning first. He chose not to listen.’

The apothecary laughed hollowly. ‘I see your reputation as a double act off the field as well as on is well earned. I don’t want to appear prurient, but tell me, is there more than mere friendship here, hmm?’

‘Yes,’ said Johann sharply. ‘Juliana is like my sister.’ He emphasised the last word strongly. We were both sick of getting that question from, well, pretty much everyone. Not to mention being splashed on the sports pages whenever we were out in public together, as if that was at all relevant to the game.

Von Blaustein got the hint. He coughed. ‘I used to have a sister,’ he said, then, as an awkward silence fell, he moved on to business. ‘I’ve had a preliminary look at the body of your erstwhile comrade,’ he said. ‘I’d say he’s been dead for about six hours, and that he died from exsanguination as a result of the dissection of his torso and removal of his limbs.’

It took me a moment to translate the medical terms – I’d never been much for biology – and I’m sure my face must have mirrored Johann’s as he did the same and paled.

‘You mean he was alive when he was cut up?’ I asked in horror.

‘Oh, absolutely,’ said the apothecary.

‘What kind of person could do that?’ asked Johann.

Von Blaustein answered the rhetorical question as he bent over the body and examined it more closely. I saw Johann turn away and study the wall. ‘One with training and some considerable skill. The cuts are clean and made in strategic places, such as they would be in a limb for transplant. The removal of the intestines was performed by a practised hand. All in all, I’d say that you’re looking for a surgeon. In fact, looking more closely, I would say…’

He paused, raised a finger and stepped over to a door on the other side of the infirmary that I recalled led to his office. He emerged a moment later carrying a large wooden box. ‘What do you know of surgical knives?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ I answered.

He nodded. ‘Anyone who practices surgery, on the living or dead, will have a highly prized set of knives and scalpels. These are mine.’ He opened the box and I peered inside at a set of a dozen pristine blades of various shapes and sizes, some of them frankly terrifying. He pulled a couple out and bent over the corpse again. He seemed to be comparing the blades to the cuts on the torso and where arms and legs had once been.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Applying scientific method,’ he said. ‘I have a theory, and I’m gathering evidence. And I’m pleased – or perhaps that’s not quite the right word – to say that I am quite certain the cuts were applied with blades very much like these. In fact, they may have been exactly these blades. I don’t suppose my predecessor had a grudge against the team at all?’

I laughed. ‘He didn’t last here long enough. The last three have all upped sticks and gone within a few weeks of starting. No idea where. They just cleared their desks and vanished in the middle of the night.’

Von Blaustein raised a narrow eyebrow. ‘How intriguing. I hope I last a little longer than them.’ He looked thoughtful for a second. ‘You intend to investigate these crimes?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘In that case, I’d look at people who have reason to hate the Talabheim Titans. I assume your security team keeps any threatening letters the team has received, hmm?’

Going through the hate mail was a worryingly long and tedious task. We drafted in Gerhardt to help, and Doctor von Blaustein hung around as well after he’d finished whatever he was doing with Hans’ body. It turned out that for every fan who loved the Titans there was another who would happily stab half the team to death for extremely spurious reasons. We’d been there for hours before we had any sort of a breakthrough.

‘Here’s one for Hans,’ said Johann, waving a piece of parchment. ‘Says he should die because he missed with that pass in the Nuln Oilers game a few months back and bruised Karolina’s face with the ball. I guess this guy is a big fan of hers.’

I glanced at the signature and rolled my eyes. ‘Yeah, I know that one. He’s gone through an obsession with every cheerleader on the squad, myself included. He’s harmless though. Also definitely doesn’t have the skills we’re looking for. He can barely dress himself.’

‘What about this one?’ piped up Gerhardt from the corner of the room, where he was cross-legged on the floor surrounded by parchment next to the apothecary, who seemed sound asleep. ‘I know the name. He’s a barber in the old town who also does surgery. He took out my uncle’s tooth a year or two back. Took half his jaw with it too.’

Johann leaned over and grabbed the parchment from Gerhardt’s hand. He gave it a scan and nodded. ‘Looks promising,’ he said. ‘Some very… vivid imagery in here. Including disembowelling. One to check out, I think.’

‘Does he threaten anyone in particular?’ I asked.

‘The whole team in general. Seems to think we’re responsible for a reduction in his business for reasons he doesn’t really make clear. Seems a bit mad, to be honest.’

‘Old town, you say?’ I asked Gerhardt. The boy nodded.

‘Yeah. Down by the big warehouses. He converted one into his shop and surgery.’

‘Should we pay him a visit?’ I asked Johann. He thought for a moment and shook his head.

‘Could be dangerous. I think we need to keep an eye on him instead. Watch his shop and see if we can catch him leaving and follow him.’

I’m not entirely sure what I expected from a stakeout. The word conjured scenes of sitting in a coach – borrowed from the stadium for the night, with a quick covering of mud obscuring the team logo on the side and the horse sent back with Gerhardt so it wouldn’t draw attention – trading wisecracks with Johann and keeping an eagle eye for anything going on in the barber’s shop. Johann wasn’t convinced it would be quite as exciting.

‘I think you’ve been watching too much of Zavant Konniger’s Mystery Hour on Cabalvision,’ he grumbled.

He was right.

The first hour was reasonably good fun. Johann brought snacks, and it was a bit like a two-person party in a cramped and smelly carriage. We peered out the windows through the rain towards the dark barber shop and gossiped about the latest ridiculous rumours we’d heard. The novelty soon wore off though. Perching on the uncomfortable bench in the back to see out the window put my leg to sleep.

We spent a while working out a new way of communicating on the field – a system of taps on our armour that the other could see, with different plays and suggestions for different combinations of taps. That took up a good while, but as the hours wore on, my eyes started to close – but I couldn’t let myself drift off, not least because Johann was already out for the count, having fallen asleep shortly after we came up with the tap for buying the other time for a risky play.

At some point, sleep overcame me. I woke to find light piercing the clouds. The rain had stopped during the night, and the grimy old district of the city looked almost pretty in the morning sunshine. My head was also cloudy, so it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why I was in a carriage on the street with Johann snoring beside me. When it hit me, I sat bolt upright, hitting my head on the carriage ceiling, which made me swear loudly.

‘Not the pliers!’ shouted Johann as he was shocked from his slumber. He shook his head and looked around. ‘Juliana? What are we– oh! The stakeout. What time is it?’

I wasn’t quite sure, but one thing seemed certain – it was late enough that the barber shop should have opened, but it was still dark inside. I swore again and opened the doors of the coach, hopping out. Johann followed, blinking blearily up at the sun.

I marched over to the door of the barber shop, the expression on my face obviously enough to stop the people on the street from getting in my way. I banged hard on the door, which yawned open. Inside was a small room with a couple of chairs in front of mirrors, and a door at the back. I moved cautiously towards that, and tentatively pushed it open. A smell hit me, a rich metallic stench that was becoming all too familiar, with another undercurrent that I couldn’t quite place. It was almost like spoiled fruit.

Cautiously, I stepped inside, Johann following behind. ‘Not another one,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Who do you think it is this time?’

I didn’t answer. The inside of the back room was large and wreathed in shadows. In the light from the door, I could see a dentist’s chair with its back to us. Blood soaked the ground around it, and I thought I could see intestines snaking down from the seat. I pulled up my top, over my mouth and nose, moved towards the chair and slowly turned it around, bracing myself for the sight of another one of my teammates with his insides in the wrong place.

I got half of what I expected.

In front of me was another eviscerated corpse, with arms and legs missing, but it neither wore the crimson and white of the Talabheim Titans, nor did it have a face I recognised. It was a heavy-set man, past the prime of his life (well, obviously, but even before he died, he was getting on a bit) with a full greying beard and shaved head. He’d clearly been well muscled once, but it had gone to fat.

‘Who is that?’ asked Johann, the mystery obviously overwhelming his usual physical reaction.

‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘that it’s our suspect.’

‘Ah. That’s awkward. Unless you think he cut himself open.’

‘I’ve seen stranger things,’ I mused. ‘But I think we can probably rule that out, unless he somehow hid his arms and legs before he bled to death.’ I looked back into the shop and saw an oil lantern sitting on a low bench beneath the window, and pointed to it. ‘Light that, will you? I want a closer look at this.’

‘Why do you always want a closer look?’ he asked, as he grabbed the lamp and a long match from the box next to it, and lit it with shaky hands. He held it up and the light illuminated more of the shop… including something in the now receding shadows. Something that moved.

I jumped, and bumped the chair. The remnants of the corpse fell forward and slumped to the ground. Innards scattered over the floor, blood and other bodily fluids sloshing onto – and into – my shoes. A pair of expensive Orcidas, limited edition, ruined. And whatever was in the shadows started to come towards us.

A low moan echoed through the space, and a figure emerged, arms outstretched. It was followed by another, and then more. They were slow and shambling. I suddenly realised what that other scent was that I’d been unable to place: the sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh that I’d experienced playing Blood Bowl against undead teams. The figures were zombies.

As they came closer to the light, I saw that they were unlike the zombies I’d seen on the field. Those had clearly been humans who had died and been resurrected through dark magic. Flesh sloughing from bone and rotting teeth peering from behind peeled-back lips had been hideous enough, but what was in front of us now was an order of magnitude worse.

Each of these creatures seemed to have been constructed – there was no other word for it – from a variety of different corpses. Mismatched limbs had been neatly stitched to torsos in a fusion of magic and mad science that I’d only witnessed before in some of the creations that unscrupulous skaven teams tried to sneak onto the pitch.

Horror froze me in place, and I guessed it was the same for Johann – even the shaking of the lantern light had stopped. The exit was behind us, but we couldn’t just leave and let the stitched-together zombies escape onto the street. There would be carnage. As I tried to formulate a plan, instinct took over. This was just like a game of Blood Bowl, and we could win it, Johann and I.

‘Johann, long pass!’ I yelled before barrelling forward. I don’t think I took the zombies by surprise, exactly – that feeling was probably beyond them now – but they certainly didn’t have a chance to grab me as I pushed them aside. One grasping arm came close, and I noted a faded word emblazoned on it that seemed familiar, but that thought could wait. When I reached the far wall, I turned and shouted, ‘Now!’

Johann was a Catcher, not a Thrower, but he made the pass of his life with that lantern. It arced over the heads of the zombies, trailing sparks, and I caught it out of the air by the handle, and swung it into the body of the nearest creature. It smashed and splashed the zombie with burning oil. The patchwork undead monster went up in flames like dry tinder. The fire spread quickly, and I went low, dodging between their legs and grabbing Johann as I passed him. We sprinted through the door and Johann slammed it shut behind us. We quickly exited the shop, watching through the dirty window as the zombies burst through the back door, setting the fixtures and fittings aflame. In short order, the entire building was ablaze, and it looked like the fire might spread to adjacent structures.

I looked at Johann, who tore his eyes away from the conflagration and fixed them on mine.

‘After my job, are you?’ he asked. ‘That was a hell of a catch.’

I smiled, but only briefly. ‘We should get out of here before we’re blamed for this fire,’ I said, and headed away from the scene. We were being ignored for now as people ran for water, ran for help or just ran around in a panic, but that wouldn’t last. The very last thing we needed just now was another mention in the gossip columns. We left the carriage. Without the horse, we had no way to get it back, and it would just draw attention.

As we walked back in the direction of the stadium, the adrenaline high subsided and I remembered what I’d seen on the arm of one of the zombies.

‘Johann?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Hans had a tattoo on his arm, didn’t he?’

Johann let out a little laugh. ‘Yeah. He got it on a drunken night out after we beat the Barak Varr Pirates. He asked for “Mother”, but he was slurring, and he’d lost some teeth during the game when a Trollslayer hit him, so the tattooist didn’t understand what he was saying.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ I said.

‘Why do you ask?’

I paused for a moment before I answered. ‘Because I really don’t think there’s likely to be more than one arm in Talabheim with “Muffer” tattooed on it.’

‘You’re sure it was that tattoo?’ Johann asked for roughly the hundredth time as we entered the Light’s Hope Stadium and started navigating the corridors towards the Titans’ dugout.

‘Unmistakably, and if you ask me again, you’ll be getting a broken kneecap,’ I said firmly.

‘What’s that about a broken kneecap?’ Doctor von Blaustein asked, emerging from a corner in front of us. I thought I saw him quickly stuff something into his pocket, but I paid it no mind.

‘Just a hypothetical break,’ Johann told him as we continued walking and he fell into step with us.

Von Blaustein smiled a thin-lipped smile. ‘Not much I can do about hypothetical injuries, I suppose. How did your surveillance go?’

I shook my head. ‘Not well. The barber wasn’t the killer.’

‘Oh, and how do you know?’

‘He was dead and missing–’

The last words were knocked from me as we came up through the dugout and stepped onto the field… where another Titans player was dead.

‘He looked a lot like that, actually,’ said Johann, his voice devoid of any humour whatsoever.

Von Blaustein ordered us down to his office while he arranged for the body to be brought to what I could only think of now as the morgue. He arrived a short while later and bustled around the small space making tea. I peered at the walls, which were filled with hand-drawn anatomical diagrams, many of them painted with delicate watercolours. The apothecary must have seen my interest.

‘I did those myself during my studies,’ he said. ‘The human body is a fascinating thing, and the bodies of other races even more so.’ He pointed to the wall behind me, where cross-sections of an orc, a skaven and a beastman were displayed. ‘Never been able to get permission to autopsy an elf or dwarf,’ he mused. ‘And I’d love to see what a lizardman is like inside.’

‘Mushy, in my experience,’ I said absent-mindedly, thinking back to my time in the Lustria League.

‘It’s astonishing how many similarities there are between the various species under the skin,’ von Blaustein said, handing me a large mug of steaming tea, and then passing another to Johann. ‘It’s curious, isn’t it, that despite the similarities only humans seem to take to being raised as undead?’

‘Undead?’ Johann asked, glancing at me. What had brought on this abrupt turn in the conversation?

‘Yes,’ the apothecary said. ‘You only ever see human zombies and skeletons in Blood Bowl teams, don’t you? And have you ever met a dwarf vampire or orc werewolf?’

I relaxed and took a long sip of my tea. It was much sweeter than I liked, and had a herbal flavour I didn’t recognise, but I was hardly a tea connoisseur. I sat back and looked at Johann as he swallowed half his mug of tea in one long gulp, only half listening as von Blaustein continued.

‘I’d imagine all the patchwork zombies you encountered in that barber shop were made entirely with human parts as well, weren’t they?’

It took a minute for what he’d said to filter through. Johann was quicker than me. He sat up sharply, spilling some of the remnants of his tea and wincing as it scalded his hand. ‘How do you know there were zombies?’ he asked cautiously, setting the mug on the desk.

‘I heard you mention them when we met in the corridors,’ the apothecary said. I thought back. It was possible – it had been a long morning so far, and my memory of exactly what had been said was hazy. But Johann was staring at von Blaustein now.

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘We haven’t used the word “zombie” anywhere near you. And we certainly never mentioned that they were made up of different parts.’

Von Blaustein smiled again, though he seemed very far away now, as if I were watching him through a long, dark tunnel. He straightened himself up, and I realised for the first time that he was quite tall when he wasn’t hunching over.

‘Hunching is a funny word,’ I slurred, though I wasn’t sure why.

Johann looked at me in alarm. ‘Juliana, what’s wrong?’

‘I think I’m drunked,’ I grinned at him. ‘Nonono. Not drunked. Drugged.’

I felt like I needed a little sleep now, and my body seemed to agree, because I was lying on the floor, and I didn’t remember telling it to go there. I looked up at Johann, who had launched himself out of his chair, but he seemed to be falling like a treeman after a hard block, verrrrrrrrrrrrrry slowly and at a funny angle. Or maybe I was at a funny angle. It was hard to tell, and then Johann had fallen on top of me and his body was warm and everything went dark.

I opened my eyes, and it was still dark.

I blinked several times, and my eyes started to adjust to the gloom. My brain took longer to get into gear. I felt fuzzy. How much had I had to drink? I couldn’t even remember being anywhere near an inn, let alone drinking anything with a little umbrella in it. I remembered… a cup of sweet tea. In an office. With… a serial killer. I swore loudly and repeatedly and tried to sit up, but realised that something was holding my wrists and ankles tightly. Something cold, dry and papery. Something that smelled dangerously familiar. I blinked again and looked around. And screamed.

I was lying on a long stone table, and my arms and legs were being held in literal death grips – by patchwork zombies.

‘You’re awake then,’ came Johann’s voice from nearby. Relief flooded through me.

‘Johann, where are we?’ I asked.

‘Best I can tell, Doctor von Blaustein’s murder den. He’s been in and out, muttering to himself.’

‘Do you have a plan to get out?’

‘Maybe. I–’

The banging of a door somewhere above us cut Johann off, and I looked up to see the light of a lantern, a hooded figure carrying it. I heard booted footsteps banging down rickety wooden stairs, and a moment later the traitorous apothecary stood before us, bathed in the lantern light. He had swapped his white coat for a long black robe, and with his gaunt features and stooped gait, he looked every inch the necromancer I now knew him to be.

‘I thought I heard you talking,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.’

‘If you’re sorry, you can let us go,’ snapped Johann.

‘Not that sorry, dear boy,’ he laughed. ‘I’m afraid you’ll both have to die tonight. On the plus side, you’ll both provide excellent parts for my players.’

‘Your players?’ I asked. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Allow me to explain,’ he said. ‘It all began some twenty years ago, right here in Talabheim. I grew up in the city, you see – in this very house, in fact. The middle child and youngest son of the venerable von Blaustein family. And I was immensely talented. My tutors couldn’t keep up with me, I outclassed great thinkers at my family’s banquets. I was, even if I say so myself, a prodigy. But I wanted only one thing. Can you guess what, hmm?’

‘To be a murdering psychopath?’ Johann growled.

‘I’m no psychopath, young Johann. I kill only in service to my greater goal. That I enjoy it is just an added bonus. No, I wanted only to play Blood Bowl for my favourite team. The mighty Talabheim Titans. This was back in the glory days of the NAF, you understand, when the Titans were a truly world-class team. Not the rabble we have now.’

I bristled at the insult and tried to pull my arms away from their restraints, but the gripping hands were too firm.

‘I had every piece of merchandise the team sold. I attended every game, home and away. I donated huge amounts of my father’s money to the team’s coffers. So when open tryouts came up, I was sure that my contributions would be enough to get my foot in the door. I went along, in the finest gear money could buy…’

He trailed off and went silent. I had a funny feeling that I knew what was coming next.

‘And you were totally humiliated, weren’t you? Failed miserably, I’m guessing?’

Von Blaustein slammed his fist down on the stone slab I was held against. ‘My name should have been enough. My money. But I was told none of that mattered. Only skill! I could have learned the skills. I just needed the opportunity, and I should have been given it! Instead I was laughed off the pitch. It was clear what I needed to do.’

‘Practise and become a better player?’ said Johann.

‘After such a humiliation? No,’ spat the necromancer. ‘I had to get my revenge. No one could be allowed to get away with treating me like that. No one. So I planned. I planned so carefully. I would bring the Titans down and replace them with my own team – made up of parts of their players. The ultimate vengeance!’

Silence fell. I was too stunned to know what to say. He continued: ‘So I went away and studied medicine, learning all the intricacies of the human body so that when the time came, I could take them apart and put them back together again. And then I turned my attentions to a darker art. You may have heard that I studied and worked in the south, hmm? But perhaps not exactly where…’

‘Stirland, I heard,’ I said.

‘Technically, yes. After all, Sylvania is nominally a province of Stirland.’

Sylvania – realm of the undead. Ruled by the vampire counts, it was renowned as a mist-shrouded land where horror lurked in every shadow. Clearly von Blaustein had learned the dark arts there.

‘I returned to Talabheim and decided the best way to get my hands on Titans players was to join the team as its apothecary. I got rid of the last few until I was the best person left for the job. And in the meantime, I started working on the players. The first I followed to an alehouse and drugged his drink, just enough that he’d fall unconscious when he got home. The second…’

I ignored his droning explanation and focused on another sound in the basement. Beside me, Johann was tapping his fingers against his stone slab, in a pattern that it took me a moment to recognise – it was the system we’d worked out in the carriage what seemed like months ago, but was only the previous evening. Johann was asking me to buy time for him to enact a risky play. I had no idea what he was planning, but it was going to be our only chance. I tried to grab and keep von Blaustein’s attention.

‘You said you grew up in this house?’ I asked him. ‘Where are your family? Your servants? I assume there are servants. Rich types like you always have them.’

‘They’re around you,’ he said. ‘Some of my first experiments when I returned home after learning how to raise the dead. Oh, I learned so much, but I took it further. Fusing magic and medical science – just like with the censers in my infirmary – which helped keep bodies fresh for me to work with. The wonders I’ll be able to perform when I can start working on other races. I will truly push the boundaries of necromancy!’

‘I would ask if you’re insane, but I think that’s blatantly obvious at this point,’ I said.

‘Insane? Dear me, no,’ he laughed. ‘If I were insane, I’d never have been able to make such a daring plan work. But work it has. With you two out of the way, there will be no more real threats from your fellow players. I’ll be able to kill them all one by one and replace them with my perfect creations, my very own Talabheim Titans! But first I have to kill you. And I’m afraid it’s going to be a long, slow process. I am, you see, a very, very good apothecary, and I can keep you alive through the entire process. It makes it easier to reattach your parts to other bodies. It will hurt rather a lot though.’

He had moved closer as he spoke and was now much nearer to me than I was comfortable with, and had one of his very sharp knives in his hand. I breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped away again and set the lantern down, but that relief vanished when I saw the spark of a match being lit. Von Blaustein, eerily illuminated by the flickering glow, used it to light some sort of burner on a workbench that ran across one wall beneath racks of what looked like body parts suspended in liquid.

The burner hissed as gas escaped it, and the match found the gas and erupted into a spear of flame. The apothecary held the knife into the fire.

‘Heating the scalpel leads to cleaner cuts that cauterise to slow blood loss,’ he said. ‘It hurts more as well, I understand.’

I hoped that whatever Johann was going to do was going to happen soon.

Even as I had the thought, Johann snapped into action. There was a loud cracking sound from my left, and somehow, amazingly, he was moving. I craned my neck to see and watched him punch the patchwork zombie holding his left arm, somehow having freed his right. It reeled back, and Johann pushed himself forward, kicking the two creatures gripping his legs to the ground. Then he was free and attacking the zombies holding me.

The pressure on my left arm lifted and I reached up to see the necromancer above me. I grabbed his wrist as he brought the knife down. He pushed harder, but he was no match for my Blood Bowl-honed muscles.

‘You really should have just worked on your physical skills and tried again to join the team,’ I told him. ‘Brains are all very well, but you can’t beat a bit of strength in Blood Bowl.’

I pushed his arm to the side and the blade cut into the zombie holding my other arm – it reeled back with a distressingly human-sounding scream.

Johann quickly freed my legs and I swung around and kicked von Blaustein in the chest. He fell into the workbench, where the burner was still blasting out flaming gas. The necromancer screamed and flailed, hitting the shelves. Several jars shattered, spilling thick liquid onto him and the floor around him. The fluid accelerated the fire as it doused von Blaustein.

I glanced at Johann, then up at the stairs, which were in serious danger of being set alight. He nodded, and without a word, we ran for it.

We made it up through the sprawling mansion and outside. We collapsed onto the lawn and watched as the flames spread and consumed the ancient building.

‘We really need to stop setting fire to things,’ Johann said at length.

‘I’ll get right on that as soon as people stop attacking us with flammable undead things,’ I replied.

‘Fair point.’

‘How did you break free back there?’ I asked.

‘One of the things holding me had Hans’ other arm. I recognised it from that other tattoo he had. The one that was even worse than “Muffer”. He broke that wrist in a training accident a few years ago, and it’s been weak ever since. I used that to my advantage.’

‘Good old Hans. A solid team player, even in death.’

We lapsed into silence and watched the mansion burn until it collapsed in on itself.

‘You know,’ I said eventually, ‘we’re going to need to recruit some new talent. I wonder if the coach will go for open tryouts…’

The look Johann gave me was indescribable, and utterly priceless.

DEATH ON THE PITCH
A Blood Bowl anthology
Various authors

Return to the astrogranite with twelve tales of adventure, excitement and blatant cheating from the Blood Bowl field. From mystery pies to incompetent wizards, and from on-pitch action to off-field intrigue, this anthology has it all!

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

THE UNLAMENTED ARCHPUSTULENT OF CLAN MORBIDUS

David Guymer

Author of the bestselling audio drama Realmslayer and mastermind behind Hamilcar Bear-Eater, David Guymer contributes his first story to Inferno!.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the skaven were in charge of the Vatican? Me neither. But, luckily for us, David Guymer has. This unfeasibly titled story takes David back to his ratty roots in Age of Sigmar, exploring the internecine politics of Blight City with his characteristic command of the absurdity of the Mortal Realms.

‘Graunch Festerbule is with us.’

Rattagan Borkris listened with an idle ear as a pair of skavenslaves fussed over his cassock. His assistant, Underdeacon Makulitt Pus of the Presbyopic Wilt, was an unctuous rodent with teeth the colour of gold pried from Shyishan soil, black gums and a muzzle with one side drooping lower than the other, bestowing a permanent frown as though he were assessing the value of another skaven’s organs. He was, as Borkris’ keen sense of smell could confirm, much beloved of the Horned Rat. He stood with only a slight hunch, garbed in a long-sleeved black cassock with varicose piping. The rat servants busied themselves about their master.

Rattagan Borkris.

Malfeasant Superior of the Church of Gnawing Ruin.

Spiritual overseer to a million unworthy souls, twoscore lairs spread like a necrotic rash across the Realms of Metal and Death.

His robes were vestal white, as befit the lord of a great diocese of ruin, the emblems of the Great Corruptor and the one hundred and sixty-nine Verminlords that served that aspect of the skaven’s schizophrenic deity covering the garment with gold stitching. Even the gnawholes around the trailing hem had been re-stitched with thread of so close a colour match that only the keenest of eyes amidst his dim-sighted race could have spotted the difference. It was raiment to bankrupt a warlord clan and make the eyes of a lesser priest water. It announced him as the unholiest of unholies, a high priest and lector of Clan Morbidus, and a skaven who commanded the ear and whiskers of the Horned Rat himself.

He stared through the warpstained windows of his high tower as a slave threw a tatty white cloak over his shoulders. Rain scratched at the glass. Green lightning and machine fire lit the horned belfries and gnawing spires of Blight City.

‘Sequeous Rank is bought and bribed for,’ said Makulitt. ‘Milketan, Sithilis, Verukik – all have taken-snatched your offer. Ureik is under Festerbule’s claw and will scratch as he does. Perish and Wastrett are loyal to you.’

Borkris squeaked, unimpressed, as the ratservant moved in front of him to affix the collar buckle.

Loyalty, even amongst the pestilential ranks of the faithful, was not the same thing to the skaven that it was to other races. It meant that Rank, Perish, Wastrett and the rest had been bribed, threatened and cajoled for so long that they could no longer smell the distinction between their own self-interest and that of Borkris’ coin purse. Their churches espoused a variation of the Withered Word that was no more at odds with his own than that extolled by the more excitable zealots in the farthest flung parishes of the Gnawing Ruin. But if he had a warp-token for every skaven that had snatched with both paws, tail crossed behind their back, then he would be rich enough to buy the high throne of Azyr, never mind the archpustulency of Clan Morbidus.

A second slave forced a jewelled mitre over his ears. He wriggled his brow until it sat properly.

‘Go on.’ Borkris’ voice was a cultured squeak, blessed with a bubbling hoarseness that spoke of his high favour. He waited.

Makulitt remained painfully silent.

‘Is that all?’

‘Eight scratch-votes, your unholiness,’ said Makulitt. ‘Nine if you add-count your own.’

Borkris resisted the urge to turn and cuff him. To do so would have unsettled the teetering armature of arm rings and signets so painstakingly arrayed and forced the slaves to begin again. He was not one to fret over his property’s inconvenience, but tardiness he would not tolerate. ‘The Lyceum of Lectors numbers twenty-one. Fool-fool! A majority of twenty-one is eleven. With all my wealth you cannot bribe-buy two more scratch-votes?’

‘Two times the backing of Hascrible, or of Dengue Cruor, your unholiness. Persuade one of them and the archpustulency is yours.’

The slave working on Borkris’ collar nicked a dark red bubo on the underside of his muzzle with a claw. The slave gagged, swiping at the emitted flatus with his paw before going stiff and dropping dead at Borkris’ footpaws.

Borkris sighed and fastened his own collar. He chose to take it as a positive omen. The Horned Rat scurried in nefarious ways.

As archpustulent he would be a claw’s length from the primacy of Clan Morbidus. In time, perhaps, even a seat on the Council of Thirteen. A touch on the Black Pillar. A sup of the life-elixir. He preened as staccato lightning brought the warpstained glass to life, a chiaroscuro of light green and dark, scenes from the First Withering as retold through the Withered Word. And after that? He would see out the Final Withering with his own half-blind eyes.

The thought of Dengue Cruor or, better yet, that bell-waving fanatic, Hascrible, elevating him to so lofty a standing at the Corruptor’s right paw was a pleasing one.

‘Is it yet known how Archpustulent Heerak Gungespittle died?’

‘Not yet. Not yet,’ said Makulitt. ‘The sextons still try to determine which of the archpustulent’s wounds was fatal. I do wonder why so many would want-crave so lofty and… exposed a position.’

Borkris gnawed thoughtfully on his tail before answering. ‘Slave-thing.’

The second skavenslave scuttled around. His muzzle was inclined so far that, if not for the curvature of his spine and pronounced skaven hunch, he would almost have been looking backwards. He was naked apart from a grubby loincloth and a leather collar, his pelt lice-ridden and mangy, and pockmarked with scabs. Borkris closed his paw around the slave’s bare throat. The creature’s breath hiked, but he made no effort to resist. The abject’s fear-musk brought saliva trickling through Borkris’ fangs.

‘This is why,’ he said, and then he pushed.

The warpstained glass behind the slave shattered, the sound of raining shards immediately gobbled whole by the tumult and the hunger of Blight City’s insane machinery. The capital of skavendom in the realms was a teeming metropolis of a billion souls, the true Eternal City, gnawing on the roots of Order from a cosmic plane neither truly within the Realms of Chaos nor a part of the great hierarchy of the Mortal Realms. The ungodly engines that had dragged the city to that limbic nether-realm continued to rumble on, belching waste magic into the air, triggering city-wide quakes and only very rarely causing the first and last of the realms’ great cities to sink deeper into the dark strata of the universe. Over all that, Borkris still thought he could hear a faint squeal of terror falling further and further away before ending in a pathetic, hopelessly distant smack. Then again, it might just have been one of the Skrye clan assembly lines stalling.

‘As archpustulent I get to push-shove whoever I want through whatever I like.’

‘Who here can squeak-say of the Withered Word?’ Hascrible, the First Claw Broken of the Scratching Ruin, sprayed the table that was his pulpit with spittle. ‘There are those in this unwholesome covenant who do not know-smell the Word. I see the opulence and idolatry that abounds me!’

He was speaking rhetorically, of course, as the Corruptor spake unto Grey Seer Salasqueek.

Id est – he was lying.

Hascrible was blind.

He had not been born to the Clan Pestilens, littered instead to a warlord clan of no significance, but the fever that had burned through his body and taken his sight had cracked his brain open for the Word of the Corruptor. That plague had been the prelude to an attack by Clan Morbidus and he, half dead though he was, had been taken by the plague monks and enslaved. In the spore mines of Sour Pit he had preached. To himself. To the breath ghost he left hanging in the cold air. To the clang his pick made on the rock. And then – because what else was there for a slave to do but listen? – to his fellow chattels. Hascrible had killed the slavemaster that had sought to silence the Word and had eaten him. After that his following in the mines had grown large enough to be considered a Congregation of Filth within the internecine hierarchies of the great clan.

It was not, though, recognition that he sought. No. Nor the validation of his former slavemasters. No! The crackling in his chest and the fiery maledictions of his joints were all the acclaim he required, for they were the gift of the Corruptor. He had no ambition of his own, but if his god wished for him the archpustulency – which he surely did, for why else would he bid this avatar of his will to pursue it? – then it would surely be done.

‘You!’ He pointed into the congregation at random. ‘Squeak to me of the Withered Word!’ The rat so chosen hesitated, and Hascrible stabbed his claw elsewhere before he could find his voice. ‘What of you? You! You!’

He could not see them, but he could smell them. He could taste their zeal. Their hunger for the Final Withering. It was a tingle as of dark magic on his whiskers. He felt as they did, smelled as they did – a simple monk in a pestiferous habit and tattered cowl, crusted slavemarks and spreading cankers there on the sloughing flesh of his muzzle for all to see and judge his piety.

‘The Word is fever! The Word is madness! The Word is poison and lies, for the lesser pieces of the Horned Rat are jealous of the Corruptor, and so he plant-seeds lots-many falsehoods in the minds of his faithful. But not to me. Not Hascrible!’

He raised his staff, the horned bell housed at the top with a bronze emblem of the Splintered Temple clanging. The creaking protestations of his spine were, most assuredly, the manifested impatience of the Corruptor.

‘Your leaders have lost scent of the foetid path. Their noses are filled instead with gold and realmstone and earthly treasures. They have become numb to the blessed reek of his foulness.’

A sea of angry chittering surrounded Hascrible.

‘Anoint one of these false prophets in the unctures of the archpustulency and Clan Morbidus will be surpassed by Clans Septik and Feesik within the year!’ The outrage of the congregation grew more shrill. Hascrible’s screech rose to match it. The acid taste in the back of his mouth was, without doubt, the fetor of the Corruptor, eager to be sprayed across the Mortal Realms. ‘We will be ejected from the Council of Thirteen, become a shadow of those messiahs of ruin that brought the germ-spore of Clan Morbidus from the world-that-was, left to scavenge over the scraps of our lessers. Such will be the Corruptor’s punishment of your masters’ failure!’

Hascrible’s sermons had never been for the mighty. Partly this was practical. The mighty seldom wanted for anything he could give them. But there was strength in numbers too, power and a certain thrill in exerting the true will of the Horned Rat through the furry masses of the laiety.

‘Whisper in the ears of your fellow monks. Squeak to the clanservants. And your slaves. Squeak the truth to your priests and your abbots. Let them know-smell in your gathering the mind of the Horned Rat, for you are many-many and they are few. Hascrible of the Scratching Ruin! Archpustulent Hascrible!’

Delirious squeals and the discordant choir of bells and chimes broke out across the eating hole, but Hascrible’s sensitive ears alerted him to the sounds of a fracas at the back of the crowd. While fighting was technically forbidden within the walls of the Morbidus clan stronghold during conclave, there were any number of loopholes relating to blasphemous squeaking and apostasy that the inventive skaven mind could contrive. Most therefore resorted to scratching and hissing, only accidentally misplacing a knife in someone’s chest when they thought they could get away with it.

He cocked his head towards the sound.

‘Ruin gnaws!’ one rat snarled.

‘Ruin scratches!’ another chittered.

Hascrible sniffed at a wafting scent, the inside of his nostrils shrinking from it like blasphemous parchment from a naked flame. He sniffed again. Wightrot. He knew it well, though it was only a smell. An incense so potent it was said to be capable of inflicting ague and shivers on the dead. Cut from the ethereal bark of dead forests, it was fabulously rare and fabulously expensive. The ignorant and the vain saw a censer of wightrot as a mark of prestige, and the Horned Rat knew that there was no dearth of ignorance or vanity in the upper echelons of Clan Morbidus.

‘Rattagan Borkris!’ he guessed. Or perhaps not, for it was not coincidence that had caused the rotgrubs in his brain to wriggle and bite until he had taken this particular eating hole between Borkris’ lairs and the Lyceum chambers for his church. ‘Come-stay. You and your priests. Listen-hear the true Word of the Corruptor and side with me!’

Borkris’ disdain squeaked from across the eating hole. ‘You will be exiled, Hascrible, not elevated. If you are not made archpustulent here then you and your church are soon to be purged. You know this. If you were not as mad-cracked as you are then you would know that you will never be made archpustulent.’

Biting and pushing, the malfeasant superior’s guard made a path for him through the congregation.

‘Never say never,’ Hascrible hissed. He held out crooked arms for a pair of burly monks to lift him from the table and onto their shoulders. He pointed after his departed rival. ‘To the Lyceum.’

The eating hall erupted with the sounds of squeals and furniture breaking the moment that Hascrible was out of sight.

‘Pustiss Ventik. Lord-Brewer of the Shrivelling Pox.’

The Lyceum burrows were a temple to the Great Corruptor, gouged from the sub-basement dinge of the Splintered Temple, the Blight City acropolis of the Morbidus clan. Bits of broken claws stuck out of the walls, and there were smears of diseased blood on the panels and triptychs where the slaves had continued digging with their fingers.

‘Gastrule Skabes. Provost-Warden of the Excremental Feast.’

The cornices and clerestory were celebrations of tarnish, mould, and verdegris, lesser decorations lurking amidst the gilt like rats, unaware of the awful majesty that loomed colossal overhead.

The ceiling fresco was the last masterpiece of the visionary, Glotto. Visions of the Final Withering, as it was known, had been the work of his disciples, painted after the skaven artist’s death using the fluids of his own diseased organs. Sigmar dissolved in lightning. Nagash succumbed to decay. Alarielle withered within a dead forest. Grungni drowned in the molten metals of his own forge. In a band of painted marble around the lower tier of the dome, the nine gods of Order succumbed in hideous and inventive ways to the divine malfeasance of the great four in the band above, while above them all, filling the dome’s apex, the Horned Rat gnawed at the stuff of the Mortal Realms in glee.

A dark-veined slab of marble, shaped by the devotion of skaven teeth and claws and installed with the strength of the faithful, sat beneath a mottled ciborium. A mildewed altar cerecloth lay across it, the grey material speckled black with dead insects and eggs. Behind it, an elaborate triptych of gold and mica, burnt sienna and skaven faeces showed the Great Corruptor ascendant over the lesser personalities of the Horned Rat.

To either side of the altarpiece, a plague furnace was tended by a hooded mutant. Standing somewhere in stature between a monk and a rat-ogre, the mutants were the results of the Morbidus priesthood’s spectacularly unsuccessful attempts to use disease and arcane alchemy to siphon some of the wealth generated by the Moulder clans’ breeding program. The hulking creatures tended their fires with a rare single-mindedness, and resilience to disease. When the Lyceum of Lectors came to its decision and the doors of the Splintered Temple were again unbarred, then the sexton-general would squeak for the furnaces to be fed with greenvile and with cankerwood, and with the new archpustulent’s own befouled robes, so that the pilgrims in the burrow-plazas beyond the stronghold’s walls might be flooded with toxic smog. Any skaven lacking in their tolerance to disease would, of course, die in horrific agony, but the faithful would know that a new archpustulent had risen to lord over them.

‘Graunch Festerbule. Most High Supreme Patriarch of the Carrion Blights.’

A heavily built skaven in a steel cuirass and a helmet with a crown read from an enormous ledger, spread across the hunched backs of two kneeling slaves. Sexton-General Crassus was a brute of a rodent, a lay-member of Clan Morbidus and so beneath the labyrinthine hierarchies of priests, but charged with the maintenance and defence of the Splintered Temple and thus of supreme eminence within its walls. At the sexton-general’s call a priest in a dust-grey cassock with venous piping and an elaborate bone-effect mitre and crosier raised his paw. Crassus gnawed on the tip of his quill and dutifully scratched Graunch’s name into the ledger.

The roll call went on.

Borkris watched, arms crossed over his wiry chest, paws burrowed into the voluminous sleeves of his cassock, as rivals, flunkeys and nobodies alike declared themselves. Underdeacon Makulitt had assured him of the votes of eight of them, and it would be his underling’s spleen if they failed to deliver.

‘Priestmonk Hascrible of the Scratching Ruin.’

Hascrible raised one crooked paw. Crassus squinted down his long snout as he scratched down the lector’s name. Borkris’ lips pulled back into a sneer. Hascrible looked as though he had snuck inside to scrub a fresh layer of filth onto flagstones before anyone important recognised his presence. As pathetic as the monk’s devout zeal was, it did seem to endear him to the masses. It was commonly remembered by beggars and slaves like Hascrible that the gullet of the Horned Rat awaited all, but the Word also spoke of the amusement he drew from those whose strength and cunning saw them climb over the backs of their litter-brothers. A frothing lunatic the monk most clearly was, but ignorant of the lies and hypocrisies of the Withered Word he could not be.

No one clambered over the bodies of so many rivals by being stupid.

For that reason Borkris had always assumed the bell waving and the frothing at the mouth to be elaborate theatre to enthuse his congregation, but his probity had, in recent days, proven frustratingly genuine.

‘Dengue Cruor. Bilious Sage of the Extirpated Way.’

Crassus looked up from his ledger.

The priests shuffled amongst themselves as if to shake the elderly plague priest like dandruff from their ranks.

The sexton-general drew back enough lip to expose a yellowed fang. ‘Dengue Cruor?’

‘He is not here,’ someone squeaked.

‘I have not seen-smelled him since first bell prayers.’ Another.

Wastrett Spleenrot, Pox-Abbot of the Ghurish Spreading, tittered, hacking up something corrosive and spitting it onto the flagstones. ‘The old-thing probably died in the night.’ He smeared the gobbet under his footpaw. ‘At long last.’

‘And where is Bilemaster Drassik?’ said Hascrible.

Everyone looked to the priest beside him.

Drassik, Bilemaster of the Church of the Scales of Pungeance, belonged to the small group of priests mad enough and poor enough to scratch their vote for a maniac that would be the doom of them all. And with Borkris’ only other genuine rival for the archpustulency, Dengue Cruor, similarly absent, the supporters of the Bilious Sage might not be so unwavering in their support.

Borkris preened. The Corruptor bared his throat to him this day. ‘They are late, and we all have other duties to attend to in our own realms,’ he said. ‘We should vote-scratch without them.’

Dengue Cruor, also known as the Verminable Cruor, or the Bilious Sage of the Extirpated Way, was in his burrow-hole in the meridional wing of the lower dinges. Drassik was there also, although, unlike the aged verminable, he was strapped to a table.

‘The Church of the Scales of Pungeance will make sourblight from your flesh and pudding meal from your bones, old-thing!’ The table legs rattled against the floor as the priest again decided to waste effort on breaking the leather belts holding him down. The priest’s diatribe had veered between fulminating threats and promises of hellish vengeance, but he reached for an inarticulate squeal as Cruor picked up an enormous pair of metal cutters. ‘Verminable! Maker of plagues! Whatever you want-wish is yours! Warptokens? Slave-meat? My scratch-vote? It is yours. All of it. Take it. Take-take!’

Cruor struggled to open the cutters. Despite the care he devoted to all of his tools, it had rusted. It was the price one paid for lairing in Blight City, for entropy was to the Realm of Ruin as heat was to Aqshy or darkness to Ulgu. It had not always caused him such difficulty, however. He was getting old. That was the real problem. Invigorating diseases and elixirs of his own concoction had strengthened and sustained him for many centuries, but age was finally starting to wear him down. Finally, he managed to wrench the cutters apart, wobbling the heavy tool towards Drassik’s snout.

‘No! No! No-no!’

The priest thrashed like a cocooned slug.

Snick.

‘Arrrrrgh!’

A single whisker dropped from between the scissoring blades.

Cruor plucked the hair from Drassik’s chest with the claws of his forefinger and thumb. Drassik panted something nonsensical. He stared at the severed whisker with an idiotic blend of incredulity and relief. Ignoring the priest, Cruor twisted around on his stool, his tail slithering around its legs.

A brass alembic had been spread across a pair of tables, several stools and one precarious stack of books. The pot bubbled over a blue alchemical flame, filling the burrow-hole with fumes. Cruor removed the glass lid and dropped the whisker into the pot. It dissolved instantly into the liquid within. His assistant, a bronze-furred whelp called Gagrik, stirred the contents with a huge glass paddle. Despite his self-conferred title of poxmixer augustus, Gagrik was dressed not in the priestly cassock that was his due, but in an apron, mask and a pair of thick leather gloves. He hunched over the bubbling pot atop a platform of nailed-together stools and lengths of shelving.

‘One whisker of plague priest,’ Cruor muttered under his breath. ‘Taken…’ Cruor turned his attention back to the priest, foraging with one paw amongst the assorted implements strewn across his workbenches.

He found a paper knife.

‘That is it. Yes? You will let me go now. Yes? Most verminable sage. Most blessed of the Horned R–’

Cruor ran the knife across the priest’s throat. A bloody froth gurgled up from the neat wound, the priest jerking once more in his restraints. As if freedom would come as any kind of relief to him now. His jaw hovered open and shut before falling open for the final time. Blood continued to squirt from the priest’s neck, but it was slowing. His red eyes began to turn pink. Cruor frowned over him. He poked the priest with the knife. Drassik did not respond. Cruor pounded on the priest’s chest, bringing a splutter of blood and a damp gargle from the priest’s lips.

The verminable nodded to himself, satisfied.

‘Taken exactly thirteen breaths before death.’

He turned away from the corpse to study the bubbling alembic, adjusting the formulations in his head as he watched the evaporated fumes rising into the condenser.

Unlike his fellow lectors, Cruor had no church. He commanded no armies and had conquered no lands. Despite all of this he knew that he had personally delivered more apostates, both skaven and not, to the belly of the Corruptor than the other twenty members of the Lyceum combined. This he knew. He knew that they knew it too. And it was not because, at over five hundred years of age, he was older than the other twenty members of the Lyceum combined. His mastery of alchemy and pox-magic was unrivalled in Clan Morbidus, and over the centuries the increasingly deadly potions of his genius had been the death of millions.

He was one of very few skaven still alive who had experienced the Age of Blood, when the triumphant legions of Chaos had turned on their erstwhile skaven allies. He had seen plague lords and lectors who had sought to ingratiate themselves with champions of Tzeentch and Nurgle, only to be thrown onto the proverbial sword. But Cruor had survived. He had hidden, he had brewed his poisons and he had prospered.

Sigmar’s warstorm had been the best thing to have befallen the skaven race since the days of the First Withering. Suddenly the other gods – traitorous, savage Khorne in particular – were weak and the Horned Rat again had shadows in which to lurk and scheme. Such was the Corruptor’s way. To take advantage of other’s vicissitudes, to exploit unwitting catspaws like mighty Sigmar in securing the future dominion of the skaven race.

Such was also Dengue Cruor’s way.

He just needed to live long enough to see it.

‘Grated horn of a Great Unclean One,’ he muttered, sprinkling a claw-pinch of the exotic powder into the alembic.

The mixture in the crucible turned a sour yellow. Bubbles broke the surface with increasing vehemence, and the brass vessel began to rattle against the table. Cruor turned one side of his long face to the glass to study the reaction more closely.

‘Forgive this unworthy interruption, master.’ Gagrik swayed on his footpaws, dutifully stirring the mixture in spite of the bubbling pot banging against the frame of his platform. ‘But should you not quick-soon be joining the Lyceum?’

‘Do not speak-squeak. Fool-fool!’ Cruor glanced up, another claw-pinch of ground plague daemon horn at the ready. ‘The Lyceum does not meet for three bells yet.’ He sprinkled the second titrant into the mix. The brass plating around the alembic began to bloat, a sickly foam frothing through the imperfect rubber seals. He touched his soft nose to the froth and blinked at the giddy spike of acridity it drove up his snout and into the back of his brain. He shook his muzzle. ‘Pleasantly caustic.’ He reached again for the powder jar.

‘Forgive me, oh verminable one. But it is now.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, master.’

Cruor pondered. Could he really have allowed so much time to scamper away, unnoticed? Age slowed even the nimblest of minds in the end, oh yes, it did. He would need to remember to wind the pocket bell-chime that he kept in one of these drawers. Perhaps he should take on a second assistant to tidy up and keep time for him…

‘I am too busy to spare myself now anyway. You know I hate-loathe the fuss of liturgical matters.’

‘Yes, master.’ The hint of a sigh in his underling’s voice. Cruor decided to be gracious and overlook it. Taking on one new assistant would be onerous enough.

‘These things are never done-settled at the first assembly. By the time they have argued the first vote and Hascrible has demanded a recount we will be done-finished. I will be robed-ready to rejoin them when they return from recess.’ He snickered. ‘Yes-yes, I will be ready.’

‘But what if–’

‘Even I cannot be in two places at once.’ As he spoke, he rummaged through the clutter of his workbenches, finally spotting what he was looking for and reaching over Drassik’s body to snatch it up. It was a glass potion bottle with a metal screw-cap lid. In it was a roundworm the size of Cruor’s middle claw. It was curled up, apparently sleeping. Cruor shook the jar and it uncoiled like a spring trap. Cruor tittered as a suckered mouth squealed down the side of the bottle where Cruor’s eye was, its segmented body bristling with spines. ‘Or can I not?’ He unscrewed the bottle, picked the roundworm up in his claws and dropped it into his mouth. The worm splattered under his blunted teeth, the texture meaty and the taste pleasantly vile.

As he chewed, he picked up a bronze-bottomed pan that he used for the cooking of poisons and spat into it.

He squeaked a word from the one hundred and sixty-nine phrases of power, then carved a rune into the brown splatter in the base of the pan. Then he spat out what was still in his mouth, along with an unhealthy gobbet of saliva, and smeared the lot over the bronze surface, obliterating the rune. What remained in its place was a mucoid smear-pattern that slowly ran into an image. Priests in jumbled gilt and jaded finery stand beneath the great clerestory of the Lyceum burrows. The gungy fluid continued to run. The image moved. A pair of rat-men in sexton robes move amongst them. One carries scratch-quills. The other parchment scraps. A third stands by the altar with a bucket. The priests stick together, like clanrats on a battlefield, as the sextons pass their consignments around. All except one.

Borkris.

The whelp.

The malfeasant superior of the Gnawing Ruin looked more than usually smug. Cruor snorted. As if all the wealth in the Realms of Chaos could make a golden bolus thick enough to save his soul from the belly acids of the Horned Rat come his time.

He would have liked to hear what the priests were saying or, better yet, to smell the tell-tale emanations of their musk-glands, but he saw through the eye of Gastrule Skabes. The identical twin of the worm he had just consumed had burrowed into the provost-warden’s eye and curled up there to feed off his optic juices and lay its eggs, a procedure so excruciatingly painful that the plague priest probably did not even recall it being inflicted upon him.

With half an eye on the silently moving image, Cruor watched the first drop of virulent yellow-green liquid swell from the dripper of the alembic. He snapped his claws for a vial and, when it was handed to him, bent to hold it patiently under the growing drop.

Oh yes. Soon, the life-elixir of the Council would be within his grasp. Soon, he would be ready.

What was the old verminable’s scheme?

Hascrible scratched at a particularly ripe gift from the Corruptor, nestled on the lobe of his right ear, as the Prater of the Foulsome Crucible made his claw-scratch. The priest glanced over both shoulders before scrunching up the parchment roll and tossing it into the bucket. And then, under the sextons’ unwavering gaze, he ate the scratch-quill. Hascrible heard the bones crunch as they went down.

Cruor was testing the loyalty of those who had pledged him their votes. Yes. That had to be it. His absence would tease out those who would remain loyal, even without the old rat’s breath on their necks, from those tempted to chase after their own ambitions. But how? How! How could he know? Each priest scratched the name he favoured on a strip of parchment, which would then by bundled into a ball and mixed with the others by the sextons. Even the quill would then be destroyed.

Hascrible was young for one so riddled with ailments and plague, but he had seen two elections in his time as a high priest of contagion.

He had seen a priest attempt to cheat by scratching a rune onto his own parchment that had changed every other scratch-mark on parchment that touched his own. Unfortunately for the unanimously elected priest, the one mark that had not been altered was the rune itself. The priest had, of course, protested his innocence, and the sexton-general had acknowledged that such a ploy would indeed be an ingenious way for another priest to rid himself of a rival. Crassus had therefore executed a third of the Lyceum at random and ordered a recount.

A rather surprised Heerak Gungespittle had been elected archpustulent from a thinned field of candidates immediately thereafter.

Hascrible gave his ear one last devotional scratching. He did not need to resort to such risky deceptions. His faith and energies went instead to the dark claws of the Horned Rat. He would guide the minds and the paws of his children, and he would ensure that Hascrible’s mark was made on their parchment, even if they were misguided enough to wish another there in its place. Yes, he would.

All praise the Great Corruptor!

Graunch Festerbule prodded him in the back with the butt-end of his crosier. Bone chaplets and pale torques jangled against the morbid obesity of the priest’s cassock.

‘You were squeaking to yourself,’ he said.

‘I was not.’

‘It sounded like you were chanting.’

‘I was not.’

‘He was chanting!’

Hascrible sensed the spreading of an anxious quiet as the sextons glanced his way. ‘I was praying, you gas-bloated oaf-thing. Because the Horned Rat does not listen-heed to your chitterings does not stop a true child from begging his ear.’

Festerbule bristled. ‘Infecund whelp. When you nurture your pet blights in the nighthaunt kingdoms of the glass veldts or the unfeeling lands, you come-scurry to me and squeak-tell of your favour. Until then, you may lick the pus from my claws.’ The priest’s arm swung back.

Someone grabbed his wrist before he could rake his claws across Hascrible’s snout.

Hascrible sniffed, but he could not make out who it was. The sexton-general, if he was lucky. If the Horned Rat favoured him, he corrected himself, preening in the warm glow of his piety.

‘The Most High Supreme Patriarch of the Carrion Blights apologises for his outburst,’ said Borkris. ‘These auspicious surrounds, the excitement of the occasion – it is all too much-much for one accustomed to the Realm of Death. Perhaps you and he can chitter-pray together when this session is concluded.’

Hascrible bobbed his head.

The sextons seemed to relax, withdrawing themselves to the clerestory walls. The fear-scent in the chamber thinned.

‘There is nothing to forgive,’ he said. ‘The Horned Rat is a permissive and uncaring god. So should we be.’

Crassus took the bucket of scratch strips from his underling. He started to pick out names, his muzzle moving up and down as he read the marks to himself, then again as he scratched them into his ledger. Hascrible could hear the scarred rat’s teeth clacking together. He shuffled from footpaw to footpaw, muttering homilies of corruption under his breath. What would he not have given for the chance to read the sexton-general’s lips? Why, oh why, had the Horned Rat needed to take his sight? Could he not have claimed his bitter taste instead, his sense of cold, the prickling in the nape of the neck when another skaven lurks in the dark? Not that he would ever question who or what the Horned Rat took to devour. No. Of course not. Never! He turned his nose to sniff the priests to either side of him. Their musk was as tense and as fearful as his own must have seemed to their noses. Not that he was at all anxious, of course. The Corruptor favoured only one rat, and his name was Priestmonk Hascrible, of the Scratching Ruin!

‘The first scratch-votes are counted,’ said Crassus, managing to make his voice snarl as though the consummation of that sacred duty had caused him to crack a tooth. ‘Rattagan Borkris has nine marks.’

A chittering of consternation and surprise broke out amongst the gathered priests. Borkris himself gnashed his fangs in frustration at falling short by a whisker’s margin. With Cruor and Drakksik absent that left nineteen voting lectors, and ten a winning count. Hascrible wriggled on the spot, closed his blind eyes, another prayer scuttling its way towards the pricked ears of the Horned Rat.

‘Dengue Cruor has four marks.’

‘What?’

Hascrible stamped his footpaw on the ground and lashed his tail. The crunching of bones and the arthritic flare in his ankle was, most definitely, the choler of the Corruptor himself. How could a high temple full of so-called priests be so deaf to the squealings of their god?

Crassus ignored him. He squinted down his snout at his ledger. ‘Hascrible has three marks.’

‘This is a travesty!’ Hascrible squeaked. ‘An outrage!’

‘Silence-close your muzzle, Hascrible.’

‘Who said that?’ Hascrible sniffed the air and turned his ears, but whoever it was, was staying wisely quiet now.

‘Salvik Rakititch has two marks,’ said Crassus.

The rust-furred priest from Aqshy seemed as startled as everyone else.

‘No one else has any marks. You have not elected an archpustulent.’ The sexton-general made it sound like an accusation as he closed his ledger.

Hascrible’s fury – incubated in his breast on behalf of the Great Horned Rat, naturally – bubbled over. ‘I demand a recount!’

The priests groaned – the only collective action the Lyceum would ever knowingly undertake.

‘Every time,’ said one.

‘Never sniff-smelled a sorer loser.’ Another.

‘Bad enough an archpustulent has to fail-die every few years to make us do this again.’

‘Agreed.’ Borkris. ‘We all have our diocese to attend. The Corruptor’s designs for the Mortal Realms suffers for want of our guidance.’

A dozen priests nodded in agreement.

‘This is as much a part of the Corruptor’s scheme as the wars for the realms,’ Hascrible protested. ‘I say count-tally the marks again. Crassus made a mistake. Either he cannot read or he cannot count!’

From being closely jostled by half a dozen priests, Hascrible suddenly found himself alone in an empty space in the middle of the burrow-hall. He gulped. The watery feeling in his bowels was, quite understandably, the ire of the Horned Rat at his doubting the indestructibility of the true of faith.

The sexton-general was silent a long time.

Then he reopened the ledger with a snarl.

‘Very well. One recount.’

Elaborately frocked plague priests spilled from the Lyceum’s burrow-doors like birds released into a mine. Some flew straight into the waiting cages of their guards, others fluttering off together to darkened burrows to plot and scheme and to decide how best to extract personal advantage from the coming rounds of voting. Borkris hoped that his demonstration of support would be enough to persuade a few more waverers. Assuming Cruor and Drassik remained absent, then all that stood between him and the archpustulency was one scratch-mark more.

He watched Salvik Rakititch disappear into a pocket of burly plaguevermin before departing through an upward sloping tunnel. The lay warriors were clad in rusted half-plates patched over with scraps of cloth. Their heads were tonsured and they carried heavy maces in baldrics, shields bearing the device of the Flame that Withers.

One more scratch-mark.

One.

Borkris summoned Makulitt with a curt snap of the tail. The underdeacon had been waiting outside the Lyceum with Borkris’ own gaggle of priests, guards and paid cronies, and scuttled in behind his master as he swept after Rakititch.

At first, Borkris assumed that the priest was returning to his own burrows. Each of the twenty-one lectors had their own grace and favour burrows within the Splintered Temple. Those who lacked the ambition to assume the mantle of archpustulent for themselves, and preferred to avoid the skulduggery that occurred between votes, would often bolt themselves inside until the decision was made. It would have surprised Borkris to discover that the Aqshyan was such a rodent. His reputation for violent conversion said otherwise, and anyone who would dare vote for themselves, never mind command the support of another, was surely not one to cringe and squirt the musk of fear when destiny reared its horns. That had seemed to be the priest’s destination, however, until his entourage had scurried him onto a branch to the left and started ascending again.

The tunnel opened up, after a few minutes, to what looked like a wine store. Huge metal vats stood off the ground on spindly wooden legs, like pregnant beetles armoured in brass. The air was rancid with the taste. Corrosion leaked from the ancient drums. Every so often, one of them issued a tortured groan. Another tunnel led off from the chamber but, unlike the way in, this one had a door across it. That door was locked, and guarded by a pair of sextons. They were heavily armed with helmets and metal shields, their mail covered by frayed surplices. One carried a halberd, the other a wicked-looking morningstar. The door must have led to one of the outer warrens, for the import of wine. The warrens of the Splintered Temple were as interconnected with those of Blight City below ground as they were above.

Rakititch turned as Borkris and his company entered behind him, a hulking plaguevermin to either side. Borkris frowned at that. He was certain that Rakititch’s entourage had numbered almost a dozen when he had walked into the storeroom.

With a threatening squeak, the other ten plaguevermin stepped out from behind the wine drums. The warriors stood with their shields raised, paws near to where their maces lay in their baldrics – although, a beady eye apiece on the phlegmatic sextons at the chamber’s far end, none of them had yet drawn. Makulitt squeaked in alarm. The underdeacon and his subordinates huddled into a tighter knot of bodies, glancing nervously between the well-armed plaguevermin and their master.

Borkris reluctantly tilted his muzzle, giving Rakititch a flash of throat.

‘Are you so afraid-scared of what I have to say that you run-scurry to the sextons?’

The Aqshyan priest shrugged. His fur was the colour of rust, or dark sand, swaddled in umber robes and yellow piping. An incense burner nestled against his chest on a neckchain. It made him resemble a miniature plague furnace, his head wreathed in smoke.

‘He who fights and runs away…’ began the priest.

‘Lives to flee another day.’ Every littered runt knew that old rhyme. It descended from those who first fled the world-that-was, or so the litter-mothers said. ‘I am not here to fight-kill.’

‘Good-good.’ Rakititch lifted his muzzle towards Borkris’ underlings. ‘Then they have nothing to squirt the musk over.’ Borkris waited for the Aqshyan to order his plaguevermin to back off, but he did not. He just stood there, waiting, back hunched, arms folded in his cassock sleeves, slowly disappearing in a thickening red cloud of incense smog. ‘If you have come to persuade me you are the Horned Rat’s favourite rat then do not waste your time-breath.’

‘You think the Corruptor favours another?’

‘I think he does not take favourites.’

Borkris tittered. ‘Of course he does. A slavemaster has favourites. Or a breeder of rat-meat will become fond of the rat cunning enough to avoid the block. But his mind is vast, his attention span short. He leaves us to pick our own favourites and expects to be pleased with our choices when his gaze again returns.’

‘Your reputation for usury and perfidiousness precedes you even into Aqshy, Borkris.’ Rakititch cocked his head. ‘I see-smell it is all true. If it were not then the gossips would have surely squeak-talked instead of your… agility with the Withered Word.’

‘To use a thing properly you need to understand the thing. Creatures like Hascrible do not see. Even the Eshin clan killer learns first how a body works.’

Rakititch snorted, conceding. ‘What do you want, Borkris?’

‘Your scratch-mark, of course. And I want to know-smell the other who voted for you. With you I have ten. With both I have eleven, and a majority of the Lyceum even if Cruor and Drassik return.’

‘I know not. It was a surprise, even to me.’

Borkris gnashed his teeth. Annoying, but not unexpected. ‘Then squeak your support of me before the next vote, and whoever it was may follow.’

‘Why would I?’

‘You know you cannot win for yourself. Not with two scratch-marks. Better to back the winner. Is it minerals or jewels from Chamon you want?’

The priest pulled a face.

‘Rare spores from the deserts of Shyish?’

‘You insult me, Borkris.’

‘A virulent crusade in the Realm of Fire, then! Yes-yes! With you, Salvik Rakititch at its head. As archpustulent I could command it. All the land it covers would be yours to despoil. All the glory would be yours to bargain with the Horned Rat for the fate of your soul come the Final Withering.’

Rakititch paused in thought.

He was still thinking when the head of one of his plaguevermin exploded.

Everyone turned as the armoured warrior sank to his knees, a fuming metal ball lodged in the ruin of his neck. A monk in vomit-brown robes dragged the flail back on a heavy chain. His nose was dripping, smearing his habit and his paws with copious quantities of virulent snot. Foam flecked the tattered edges of his hood, red madness gleaming from its depths. The nearby warriors were already starting to choke and die.

‘Plague censer!’ Borkris shrieked.

The censer bearer opened his toothless mouth and squealed, monks and warriors boiling up from the plague cloud that filled the tunnel behind him.

Hascrible screeched a challenge as he scrambled after his warriors. It was not cowardice that made him last into the storeroom, oh no, for he was a favourite of the Horned Rat and feared neither decrepitude nor death. His wizened muscles and arthritic joints were, quite obviously, the Horned One’s way of ensuring he entered the fray at exactly the time that he was supposed to. He felt a glow lurking in the mucous-filled caverns of his chest, a choke-response that, he was almost certain, had nothing to do with the nurglitch vapours currently circling through his respiratory system and devouring the plaques blocking off the inside of his lungs. It was destiny! The focused intensity of the Corruptor’s interest in him and him alone, nurturing and curating the many ailments of his life, much as the jovial grandfather was said to do with his own favoured creatures. Providence had brought him here. Yes, that was it. Providence!

He scuttled into the melee, crouched low, hidden by the incense pall, his normally keen senses of smell and sound confused by the anarchy of combat, questing the path ahead with his bell-staff.

He found a body.

His tail padded it down while he sniffed at the air. Robed. Hooded. A staff. A priest. One of Borkris’, judging by the finery. He was spread-eagled, face down, blood still oozing from the eyes and nose. That and the occasional rattle of breath told Hascrible that the priest was still alive. Hascrible’s tail coiled around the dagger in his cincture, then stabbed it into the priest’s brain through the soft meat of his throat. Hascrible felt only joy, for the priest’s final jerk was, as plain as the scent of blood, the last futile effort of his soul to evade the damnation of the Horned Rat’s jaws. This was, after all, the Corruptor’s work he did here. Rattagan Borkris had schemed to pervert the Horned One’s great will. It was a wrong that the faithful would see righted. Crassus would understand, he was sure, once Borkris was dead and unable to answer Hascrible’s charges of blasphemy.

An armoured warrior ran at him.

In the chaos of sounds and smells, vibrations and tastes, the first he knew of it was the scrabble of claws on stone. Then the hiss of breath as a weapon was drawn back. A lesser rat would have frozen, panicked by his blindness in such a sensory din, but not he. Not Hascrible. His blindness was the great paw of the Horned Rat upon his brow.

Hascrible raised a claw and pointed it towards the sound. He chittered a word that brought a cluster of rancid blisters to the tip of his tongue, and a beam of withering energy stabbed from his claw. The charging rat-warrior was vaporised. A mace-head and some rust flakes clattered to the ground, the sound of their falling muffled by the robes he had been wearing. Hascrible sniffed. He wished that he could have seen that. But such were the sacrifices demanded of the faithful.

With a sigh he lowered his still-tingling claw, squeaked another challenge and scurried off in search of Borkris.

A plague-shrivelled wretch from the stronghold’s slave stocks stabbed at Borkris with a spear. The thrust was weak, the paws that guided it malnourished and barely strong enough to keep a grip on the shaft, much less drive the point through skaven flesh. Borkris twitched aside, catching the spear as it slid across his shoulder, and then yanked it from the slave’s paw as he rammed a fist into the prominent lump of bone between stomach and chest. The slave doubled over, spraying Borkris’ cassock with spittle, and Borkris broke the spear over his head.

Raising his paws in line with his snout, Borkris snarled.

The altercation had knocked his armlets askew.

Sliding his right arm into his cassock’s left sleeve, he drew out a long, curve-bladed shamshir. This was why lectors so often lingered with their arms folded into their sleeves. For the comfort of a concealed blade. He was tempted to reach into his right sleeve as well, but decided that, in such an enclosed space, that would be unwise.

His hired thugs and Rakititch’s plaguevermin were fighting back hard against Hascrible’s followers, but the waves of foaming zealots had forced them back into the storeroom.

The priestmonk’s entourage, as with everyone else’s, had been restricted to a dozen. Twelve plus one amounted to the unholy numeral of the Horned Rat, but the true objective was to create a field even enough to discourage overt treachery. But Borkris had seen for himself how Hascrible had been spreading his message amongst the clanservants and slaves of the Splintered Temple, and there were even a pawful of monks in the habits of other lectors amongst his fighters. They outnumbered his and Rakititch’s guards several-fold, and they were the kind of odds that would lend spine to even the most enfeebled of slave warriors.

The plague censer bearer, however, was down, coughing up an orange froth in the midst of a ring of rapidly bloating skaven corpses.

Borkris would take the fanatic’s death over the alternative, but he suspected that Hascrible’s task for him had already been accomplished. Half of Rakititch’s warriors were in that pile, and most of the rest were coughing up their insides even as they fought off three, four, five times their number of foes.

And they were odds to make even the proudest of the Corruptor’s crusader-knights waver in his certainties.

Borkris spied a priest of the Gnawing Ruin scrambling up the wooden legs of one of the wine drums. The priest launched himself upward, grabbing hold of a rivet, claws digging into the metal, while a pair of spear-armed slaves stabbed at his whipping tail. A monk wearing Hascrible’s filthy brown threw away his sword to climb after him. Muttering a loathsome incantation, Borkris claw-scratched a rune of decay into the air and blew it towards the drum. The rivet the lackey had been clinging to burst, firing the screaming plague priest across the burrow-hall on a sour jet and slamming him against the vat on the opposite side of the chamber. Corrosion spread from the broken rivet and into the surrounding metal. It thinned, flaked.

It turned black.

Acrid wine gushed through the sickened metal, sweeping away the monk that had been clambering up the vat’s wooden legs, and crashing over Hascrible’s slaves. The flood flattened the followers of the Scratching Ruin, slicking the flagstones with communion foulness and imposing enough of a lull for his cronies, under Makulitt’s urgent squeakings, to pull back and regroup.

Watching Hascrible’s minions slip over the wet stones brought Borkris a brief gnawing of amusement before the sounds of an entirely separate battle drew his attention.

The sextons had entered the fray.

The temple warriors butchered whatever happened to fall in their path, entirely without consideration for allegiance. As Hascrible’s monks and slaves greatly outnumbered everyone else, for the time being that predominantly meant them. They swamped the two sextons in fur and froth, but the warriors fought as a genuine pair. Another skaven might – on the very horns of the Corruptor – swear to do such a thing, only to shrink from it or conveniently forget in the heat of battle. Not these two. They watched each other’s backs, without even the momentary hesitation of whether to stick a knife in there. They defended each other, killed together, while every other rat in the burrow-hall was busily fighting for its own hide. They were, in effect, unstoppable. And they were coming directly at Borkris. He doubted it was for his own protection.

He still remembered the election of Gungespittle.

He turned towards the entrance.

The emptying wine drum had pushed back the censer-bearers’ lingering fumes to reveal Priestmonk Hascrible’s dripping host in all its foulness. The zealot himself was towards the rear, hunched over and sodden through, his off-brown robes stained purple. He was shaking his muzzle, banging his ear as if to force wine through to the opposite side, pausing every so often to sniff at the air. The wine fumes seemed to have confused his nose.

Borkris bared his teeth.

He had not started this fight. Assuming he could evade the sextons, then he could prostrate himself before Crassus and claim self-defence. Kill Hascrible and victory was as good as his.

Rakititch breathed in his ear.

‘Who says I cannot win the archpustulency on my own?’ he hissed, and then punched a previously concealed sword of his own through Borkris’ back.

Hascrible pulled his claw out from his ear. He was certain he recognised that scream. A grin peeled his lips back as it came again. Borkris. His ears pivoted and he cackled at the brief snatch of conversation he managed to pick up over the melee. Borkris and Rakititch were fighting each other. The Horned Rat bless skaven perfidy! He was about to order his warriors to withdraw – those of them sane enough to heed a simple command at any rate – and let the two plague priests kill one another, when a crazed screech split the air. He sniffed, but all he got was wine vapour. He could hear squealing, dying, fighting getting closer. He snarled, scratching at a wart between his blind eyes.

‘What is happening?’

‘Underdeacon Makulitt!’

And suddenly Hascrible saw. He didn’t see, of course, Corruptor be praised, but he saw. Caught between Hascrible’s rotten host and the sextons, Borkris’ minions were fighting the way only trapped rats could.

Hascrible turned in the direction of the voice that had answered. He could neither see the monk, nor smell him over the pungent wine, but was confident enough when he reached out that he would find a pawful of habit with which to drag the underling into the path of the frenzied underdeacon’s charge.

The monk shrieked as Borkris’ frantic underlings ripped him to shreds.

The Horned Rat’s will had been done.

All praise to the Great Horned Rat!

Snorting wine from his nose and banging on his clogged ear, he turned tail and fled.

Borkris fell to the ground as Rakititch pulled his sword out of his back. The flagstones took a tooth. He snarled. If there had been a single nerve in his body not sick with plague or encrusted with scabs then both the impalement and subsequent blow to the muzzle would undoubtedly have been extraordinarily painful. But the Corruptor’s priesthood were a tough breed. Even those of Borkris’ ilk, who preferred to hold their paws above the day-to-day business of the death of all creation. He crawled along the ground from the Aqshyan priest, his breathing sucking in through one lung. He could hear it hissing out from the other, gurgling through the blood that was ineffectually plugging the hole in his back.

Rakititch pounced with a snigger and rammed the sword through his shoulder, hard enough to crack the metal but not before enough of it had penetrated the stone to pin Borkris to the floor. Borkris shrieked. That broke enough of him to hurt. He turned to look over his ruined shoulder, some morbid need inbred into the Clans Pestilens to sniff every blessing and pick at every scab.

It was not a sword at all, but a leather gauntlet with a quarter-tail-length fist spike. Rakititch wriggled his fingers out of the glove, causing the wound to stretch and tear. Borkris chittered in annoyance, but the diseases that had been calcified into the bone were already in his bloodstream, busily killing anything that might have caused him further agony. Smoke from the Aqshyan’s incense burner wreathed his muzzle, eddy patterns snaking about his snout and muzzle so that he no longer resembled a plague furnace so much as a bale taurus of the azghor duardin. Or perhaps that was just the necrotising infections that Borkris’ injuries had flushed into his brain, making him see the hated foe that he had crossed so often on the battlefields of Chamon and in the consular burrows of Blight City.

‘You squeak-say I cannot be archpustulent alone,’ Rakititch hissed. ‘But when word spreads that I killed you, your followers will quick-soon become mine.’

Borkris snarled. The pain was already dulling, and the degradation of his brain from within was proving a rhapsodic experience. ‘You think Hascrible is not already telling everyone that he killed us both?’

‘But I am not dead-dead.’

‘Not yet.’

With one eye, Borkris glanced towards the sextons. Just a pawful of panicking slaves left between them now. Rakititch turned rigid. His mouth opened to squeak a protest, even as his eyes roved the burrow-hall for a way out.

‘Deliver this morsel to the Corruptor,’ said Borkris. His neck swelled, his jaw broke, and a torrent of corrosive gases rushed from his distended mouth. Rakititch had been crouched over him. The bilious flood dissolved his sword arm and the rest of his body from the chest down.

Everything above that took a little longer to die.

‘May he be… sated… when I arrive.’ Borkris spat out a gobbet of acerbic phlegm, cackling, gasping for breath even as the butt of a sexton’s halberd cracked his temple and knocked the consciousness out of him.

The atmosphere in the Lyceum was quietly resentful, the echoes of the occasional muffled squeak gobbled up by the rotunda’s nightmarish frescoes. Wastrett Spleenrot was missing part of an ear, Verukik a paw-shaped patch of fur along his snout. Almost all had rips to their robes, cuts and plague blisters they had not possessed before. Borkris glared at them, one-eyed. The other was swollen shut. His head and body was a bundle of pointed sticks glued together with pain and a liberal slathering of skalm. His whole body rattled when he breathed. None of his former supporters risked standing too close. It might have been wariness of the heavy eucalyptus reek of the skalm, but he did not think so. None of them would even catch his eye. They gathered around Hascrible like flies late to the midden.

Having claimed responsibility for the killing of Rakititch, the maiming of Borkris and the disappearance of Drassik for good measure, the priestmonk looked outrageously pleased with himself.

Borkris did not care anymore.

A maniac like Hascrible would last five years at most. Borkris did not think he would survive even as long as that. He would generously give him three months before a senior cleric of good sense pushed him off a building. They would all be back here again in no time. He could wait.

He glanced to the old priest at his right.

Verminable Cruor was the only rat in the chamber, the sexton-general and his warriors excluded, who did not look the worse for wear. And perhaps that had been the full extent of the old rat’s ploy after all, for compared to his bedraggled and exhausted kith-rats he looked resplendent in a blood-red cassock, gold fascia, chaplets and a horned mitre. He carried as well an ornate stave, and small censers breathed out puffs of yellow-green fumes as he scurried. Where the other lectors were too mired in smugness or self-pity to do much beyond twitch and chitter, he seemed too anxious, or perhaps excited, to keep still, skittering hither and thither and wafting a trail of caustic vapours all around him.

He had every right to be agitated.

With Hascrible about to be elected archpustulent he was set to find himself in the same unpleasant hole as Borkris. Perhaps the old poxmaker would be nervous enough to consider an alliance. Borkris preened stiffly. Yes. Perhaps this need not be considered a defeat after all. A delay in his ambitions at best.

Before he could consider the matter further, Crassus cleared his throat.

The sexton-general stood before the altar, framed by the blotched pergola of the ciborium. A heavy sword hung at his hip. His claws drummed on the cracked device of the pommel. ‘You will now vote-scratch again.’ An over-the-shoulder snarl sent sextons scurrying towards the lectors, parchment, buckets and quills in paw. ‘Will anyone squeak-talk to the Lyceum before the scratch-count is made?’

A few eyes flicked towards Borkris. Guilty, some. Fearful, almost all.

He was weak now, they knew, but he would not always be so.

He shook his head.

Hascrible bared his teeth. ‘Nor I. Let us vote-scratch.’

‘I would squeak before we vote.’

There was a rustling of cassocks and a popping of joints as everyone turned from the altar towards Dengue Cruor.

Crassus thrashed his tail. ‘Speak-squeak.’

‘You all should vote for me,’ said Cruor.

Hascrible snickered. ‘You, old-thing? Why?’

Cruor sighed. ‘How I despise the intrigue of this burrow-place.’ At least one lector rolled his eyes. ‘So I will be simple-quick. You should vote-scratch for me because all in this chamber have been infected with splintergut. With a little help from Drassik, of course.’ He flicked one of his belt censers with a claw and tittered as the closest priest scuttled back from him in alarm. ‘A most virulent plague.’

Borkris felt a ringing in his ears.

Everybody else was quiet.

‘Onset is fast-quick and death quite painful,’ said Cruor. ‘So painful it will follow your soul to its afterlife.’ He withdrew what appeared to be a pocket bell-chime from beneath his fascia and studied it, counting under his breath. ‘I suggest you vote quick-quick.’

‘This is outrageous,’ Borkris hissed.

He looked to Crassus, but the sexton-general appeared to be at a loss for how to respond.

‘I submit gladly to the Corruptor’s plagues!’ Hascrible squeaked, straightening to his full, hunch-backed height. ‘I survived the blistering scalepox before even hearing of the Withered Word. Do your worst, verminable, I say.’ The priests started to shuffle away as though the priestmonk was personally contagious. ‘Vote-scratch for me. All who scurry in the Corruptor’s shadow will be spared!’

Borkris’ eyes narrowed.

Hascrible had to know something that the others in the Lyceum did not.

No one was really that zealous.

Yes. He saw it now. Hascrible and Cruor were in league. He could not believe he had not sniffed it before. Cruor’s absence from the first vote had allowed Hascrible to scare off Borkris’ supporters, allowing Cruor to re-enter, unsullied, and steal the archpustulency with this farcical deceit. He wondered what the priestmonk had been promised. The life-sustaining secrets of his alchemical concoctions? The recipe for plagues that had ravaged the first nations of the Mortal Realms before the awakening of the gods, known now only to a scholarly few? Yes. That had to be it. How else would he have bribed a fanatic that cared not for Borkris’ wealth? Borkris cursed his fixation on his own prize and that he had not deduced all of this for himself already. This was a trick. There was no plague. Splintergut indeed. Whiskers of a plague priest? Horn of a Great Unclean One? Extract of nighthaunt and an unshed raindrop from the high clouds of Azyr? Preposterous!

‘Only a rat cunning enough to smell through such a blatant deception is fit to lead Clan Morbidus.’

He drew the shamshir from his left sleeve, and with the same left-right arc, struck Cruor’s head from his shoulders. Blood sprayed towards the ceiling, as though its final act was to strain towards the Horned Rat at the apex of the dome, as the verminable’s body collapsed.

The lectors squealed in terror as Borkris lowered the blade.

He regarded them smugly.

‘What did you do?’ squeaked Festerbule.

‘You have killed us all!’ said Rank.

‘There is no plague,’ said Borkris, as though explaining the Withered Word to a fool. He pointed a claw at Hascrible, but the accusation he had been about to level disappeared in a tirade of increasingly painful coughs.

A muscle in his stomach that he did not know he had clenched. Something semi-liquid and foul-smelling trickled down the inside of his thigh as he doubled over with a squeal.

Onset is fast-quick and death quite painful.

‘Great Corruptor,’ he moaned, as groaning lectors began to crumple to the ground. ‘No-no…’

‘What is happening in there?’ Gagrik hissed.

‘I do not know.’ Makulitt pressed his ear to the door. ‘I cannot hear anything.’

‘They have been in there a long time.’

‘Maybe they are praying,’ Makulitt said hopefully.

‘I heard something hit the floor.’

‘I am sure they are fine.’

‘We should check.’

‘And interrupt the unholy ruminations of the Lyceum of Lectors?’

Gagrik hesitated. The poxmixer augustus was clad in robes that were almost laughably plain. Half his whiskers had been singed off and one eye drifted lazily, constantly weeping from too much time staring into his master’s concoctions. ‘A sniff then. Just to be certain.’

‘The door is bolted from the inside by the sextons.’

‘Just try it.’

‘You try it.’

Makulitt looked over his shoulder. The lackeys and lieutenants of Perish and Skabes and Festerbule and all of the other high priests milled behind them. It was quite clear that they were happy for Makulitt and Gagrik to settle this amongst themselves. Makulitt cursed his misfortune. If not for his injuries in the battle against Hascrible’s zealots then he would never have allowed himself to be manoeuvred into so exposed a position.

‘Fine then,’ he hissed. ‘We do it together. On three. One… Two…’

Gagrik and Makulitt pushed together. To their surprise, the door opened. Something on the other side resisted, but nothing so unyielding as a bar across it.

Makulitt pushed harder.

The door opened fully.

The body of the sexton that had been slumped against it slid onto the floor.

He was still holding the locking bar in both paws, but had apparently died before he had been able to open the door. And he was dead. The pale glaze over his eyes and the coolness of his fur was confirmation enough for Makulitt, his lack of breath another, but there was a very living pain in those eyes still. It was subtle, slow, but, moreover, Makulitt realised that the corpse was actually still writhing in pain. He raised his snout to take in the rest of the burrow-hall. Heavily robed bodies lay slumped over the ornature. The sexton-general was draped across the altar, covered by his mangy scrap of cloak. Even the mutants that had tended the plague furnaces were dead, the fires nibbling away at their skin, burning darkly on the voided contents of their vast, corrupted bowels.

The underdeacon squeaked in alarm, covering his snout with his cassock sleeve as the diarrheal stench reached him.

He was a priest of plague, an acolyte of the Corruptor and proselyte of the Final Withering, but the malady at work was something horrifying that he knew instinctively he wanted nowhere near him. Here was a plague straight from the codicils of the Libers Pestilent, certain martyrdom to any but the most malefic priest or champion of Nurgle.

‘So… who does that make archpustulent of Clan Morbidus?’

The gaggle of underlings in the corridor behind him quickly shuffled back.

‘I vote-squeak for Underdeacon Makulitt!’ Gagrik squealed.

HAMILCAR: CHAMPION OF THE GODS
A Warhammer Age of Sigmar novel
David Guymer

There are few heroes so mighty as Hamilcar Bear-Eater – but when an ancient skaven warlock with a thirst for godhood seeks Hamilcar’s immortal soul, will his martial prowess and uncanny skill be enough to ensure survival?

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

IN THE MISTS OF CHAOS

Rik Hoskin

Award-winning fantasy writer Rik Hoskin joins the roster of Inferno!. In his first outing for Black Library, Rik provides a captivating story where nothing is as it seems. Delving into what life as an ordinary mortal can be like, Rik shows us how quickly one’s fortunes can turn in the Mortal Realms.

The sounds of new swords being forged echoed across the settlement of the Ironvale with the familiar clanging of hammers on metal as they were beaten into shape. Uffo Weisz winced as he crossed his arms across his broad chest and surveyed the settlement. His arms, like the Ironvale, were scored with scars, evidence of how both man and village had barely survived its recent encounter with the forces of Chaos. The mining settlement was in the process of being rebuilt, locals toiling to bolster the damaged walls that had been ruined by projectiles and flames. Walls could be repaired, but his scars would be permanent, their thick white lines like medals scored into his flesh, proud evidence of the valour he had showed here two months prior. Weisz’s scars stung when the temperature dropped, but his brother’s wounds had been far worse.

Weisz and his younger brother Moryn had been central in protecting this settlement from the deranged hordes of Chaos, then saved it with the thrust of swords and blasts of shots, until they had forced back the adherents of madness who wanted to seize control of the Realmgate that waited beyond the pass. Moryn had almost lost his leg during that cruel, final push, the swipe of an enemy’s axe cleaving a great hunk of flesh from his thigh, and dropping the lad to the ground with a blood-curdling scream.

‘We won, brother,’ Weisz murmured. They had saved the village, with its mine that scooped the metal from under the ground to forge the swords and shields that Weisz and other brave Freeguilders like him relied upon – but the cost had been colossal. Soldiers had been lost, and there had been the loss of his brother’s wellbeing. That the boy lived, crippled and in constant pain, was no consolation. Death would have been a relief.

Weisz was a large man, made larger by the story that had grown up around him since that frantic battle. In the eyes of his Freeguild colleagues, he was a legend. Their stories nurtured that legend with each retelling, clung to it the way they would a shield, as if it could protect them from the horrors that lurked here in the burning realm of Aqshy. Sometimes they would add details from their own imaginations as to why Weisz had been promoted from guardsman to general on that day. In the stories they told, he had fought a thousand beasts of Chaos, had arm-wrestled an Arcanite of the Dark Gods with such determination that the sorcerer’s arm had been pulled clean from its socket and had beaten back the last of the ravening hordes with that bloody limb until all that was left was fleshless bone. Weisz enjoyed hearing the tales, and would even correct them sometimes, adding his own parts to the legend, layer upon layer of hyperbole, each new addition giving the people around him hope.

The truth was less sensational. It was, however, enough to cause Weisz to awaken at three in the morning, struggling to catch his breath as the panic set in – seeing his sword cleave through the tattooed forearm of a sorcerer calling himself Ty’Gzar, to stop his weaving of the spell that would have razed the village. Weisz had made an impossible choice to stop the sorcerer instead of saving his brother from the swing of an axe, a choice he would have to live with forever, a choice that had made him a hero.

The mining village called the Ironvale was located between two towering walls of rock that hid it from the sun for most of the day. Inhospitable as the location seemed, one hundred and thirty-seven people still called it home. The rock walls towered fifty feet above the fortress village, gleaming with thick seams of iron and copper and tin, spikes and cicatrices of metal lurking in those walls like fossils. Those exposed metal seams were baked hot by the relentless sun until they became scalding to the touch by midday.

The buildings were humble, the families young, and like all places where hardship ruled, the community was close-knit. Everyone here was involved in the local mining, either as miners or metalworkers or weapon smiths. And they all knew Weisz – knew his legend, at least, repeating it over homebrewed ale as the harsh red sun set, painting the walls as red as the blood Weisz had spilled to protect them all.

Weisz watched from the Ironvale’s lone watchtower as his colleague, Mannetje, came hurrying along the path to the village walls. Mannetje was a small man, stumpy but all muscle, with shoulders as wide as a doorway and a moustache whose ends trailed down past his chin. He looked at Weisz with a combination of awe and reverence, believing the legend more than the man.

‘Sightings of movement out in the west,’ Mannetje said, his face grim as he looked up at Weisz.

‘How close?’ Weisz asked. He automatically shifted his gaze to the path that led between the towering bluffs, from where Mannetje had run. A tiny sliver of sky could be seen above those rock walls, silver clouds lit orange from the glow of the distant volcano.

‘About three miles out,’ Mannetje said, turning the spyglass in his hands around nervously, as if he was wrestling with a snake. ‘Three miles and closing.’

Weisz closed his eyes, secretly thrilled by the prospect of getting revenge on the foul sorcerer who had stolen his brother’s independence. ‘They don’t want us,’ he said slowly. ‘They want the gate. They just think we’re close enough to be in their way.’

‘That’s what Bren figures, too,’ Mannetje agreed. ‘That damned Realmgate. I don’t care for it, puts everything off balance.’

Weisz nodded.

The Realmgate was called Brimfire, a hidden path fabled to open onto another of the Eight Realms, the control of which could end a war or start one. Hidden centuries ago, its only access had neither been marked or mapped, and its mystical properties had been masked by runes of duardin warding. That the Ironvale was located near to one of the suspected entryways was happenstance and nothing else. Weisz and his men were here to protect the mine and its valuable resources, not a Realmgate. That was something better left to soldiers whose nature was closer to almighty Sigmar’s. But even the Stormcasts could not be everywhere, and sometimes a man became a legend by standing his ground when his other option was to die like a dog. Legends never gave up for even so much as a breath.

Humanity followed the lead of Sigmar himself, who had strived against all obstacles to push back the dark forces of Chaos. Weisz knew in his heart that it was his duty to do the same, to strive against all obstacles and stand firm against the darkness. Just like Sigmar’s personally chosen warriors in their fearsome armour that gleamed like the sun.

‘Amass the men,’ Weisz said, donning his battle helm as he spoke to Mannetje. ‘Today we show this black-hearted spawn what it means to face good men and women on the battlefield.’

Uffo Weisz took a few minutes to visit his brother Moryn in their shared dwelling close to the south wall. Moryn had the sweats, the same as he had for the last two months, and his leg was wrapped like something from a butcher’s stand.

‘We must push back this sorcerer and his army once and for all, or they shall keep coming over and over,’ Weisz said as he checked on Moryn’s leg. The wound was scabbed over and it was slick with weeping pus, but it looked better than before.

‘I’ll come with you–’ Moryn began.

But Weisz was shaking his head as he dampened a cloth. ‘You’re in no state for that, Mor,’ he said.

Moryn nodded solemnly. ‘You did it once, brother,’ he said, wincing while Weisz efficiently cleaned the wound.

‘So the ballad singers tell me,’ Weisz said with a smile. ‘My duty was clear – to drive Ty’Gzar’s unholy army back.’

‘When you took the sorcerer’s hand,’ Moryn reminded him. ‘Don’t forget that.’

‘I won’t,’ Weisz said, replacing his brother’s dressings. ‘But I doubt that Ty’Gzar has either.’

Two miles out from the Ironvale, the fog was rising. Weisz led his troop of three dozen Freeguild soldiers into the west, following the pathway between the towering bluffs until it narrowed to a point where barely five grown men could walk abreast. The shadows were thick here – the sun’s rays never reached between the towering crags of rock. Illumination came instead from the sunlight’s flickering reflections on the seams of raw metal, playing across the walls and ground like ripples on a pond.

‘You smell that?’ Mannetje whispered, his nostrils widening as he took a deep breath of air, turned bitter with the tang of sulphur. ‘Reeks of something… twisted.’

Beside him, Weisz and several others took a breath, and cursed as they scented the awful reek of Chaos that carried on the warm air along with the rising mist. Down the line, Hobbs, a young recruit who lacked experience, began to vomit, a slick smear of saliva and bile drooling down his chin as he doubled over.

‘Someone hold him,’ Weisz said, indicating Hobbs. ‘Make sure he doesn’t choke.’

A woman called Berta grabbed Hobbs and held his head. ‘Take a breath, soldier,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t lose it now.’

Berta was tough. She wore her hair short and had a burn scar running the length of her face from the platoon’s last skirmish. Before the scar she had worn her hair longer, until a Chaos cultist had set light to it. She was here as much for revenge as Weisz himself.

‘Stand firm,’ Weisz told the others, feeling the air pressure change. It was pressure that seemed to be almost internal somehow, like the never-abating fear for his brother’s health. His allies steadied themselves, hands on sheathed swords, a few pistoliers reaching for their guns.

Weisz wished his brother was here. Moryn fought like he was born to it, he moved like poetry. Weisz was a brute compared to him, a lumbering thing where Moryn had been a specialist. Or maybe it was just the companionship he missed. Maybe the trust that only brothers shared when they put their lives on the line together. This time he would fight for his brother, rather than with him.

At that moment, figures began to emerge from the grey fog, moving together but still ramshackle in their way, as if they had tried and failed to coordinate their movements. Some looked human, or nearly so, their faces hidden behind grotesque masks in iridescent yellows and the blue of corpses that elongated or squashed their profiles. Others seemed closer to animals, walking on all fours like hounds, some held tightly on leashes. Weisz counted thirty-eight in total, presumably all that was left of the sorcerer’s cult after their previous clash with his Freeguilders. It was a small group to strive for the Realmgate, but enough for the enclosed terrain.

‘Form up,’ Weisz commanded his troops, never taking his eyes from the forms proceeding from the mist. ‘No one moves until my command.’

Behind him, Weisz heard his faithful soldiers step forward, readying themselves. They were edgy, he sensed. Many had seen their comrades cut down by these worthless cultists before, and some of them understandably wanted blood. But they needed to remain together, Weisz knew. The numbers were too close, the combatants too well matched to do it any other way. Large weapons and massed armies could do nothing within a tight passage like this – it was a place where only close combat could prevail, for there was not the space for anything grander.

‘There!’ a Freeguild soldier called Bren said, pointing to the figures of Chaos emerging from the tendrils of thick, grey mist.

Weisz saw, and a jolt of anticipation ran through him. Standing a little way back from the head of the troops stood Ty’Gzar, dressed in robes of midnight blue, a staff in his one remaining hand almost as tall as he was, with a warpfire gemstone embedded within its apex. The man’s right arm was missing from just below the elbow, where Weisz had hacked clean through the bone two months prior, when he had held this same pass against the onrush of enemies. Ty’Gzar’s forces had been almost wiped out then, and now he was running out of troops. He was a fool to attack the same spot again, but Chaos did strange things to a man’s mind, addling him to believe in his own invulnerability. He would learn, Weisz thought grimly.

Using the uneven walls and the shadows for protection, the Freeguild soldiers looked to Weisz for their next move. Fearless as his legend, Weisz strode purposefully to a point midway between his own men and those devoted to the trickery of Chaos.

‘You’ve taken a wrong turn, Stumpy,’ Weisz taunted, his voice echoing back along the tight passage between the cliffs.

The things of Chaos halted, looking to their own leader for instruction on what to do next.

Weisz spoke again. ‘Surrender,’ he boomed. ‘Lest you prefer to see how far and how fast you can run from me and my men. For, if you force us, we will cut you down, you can be assured of that.’

A dozen steps back from the head of his small army, Ty’Gzar sneered, his yellow teeth seeming yellower still where reflected light was cast through the gem in his staff and onto his face. ‘You’re outnumbered,’ he said, his voice shrill as a crow’s caw.

‘In numbers, perhaps, but numbers alone do not make an army superior,’ Weisz replied with a confident laugh. ‘Any blood shed this day will be that of your men and yourself, just as it was before.’

Ty’Gzar turned back for a moment, tapping the blunt end of his staff against the ground thrice in a steady beat as he looked into the low-hanging mist at his back. ‘You have miscalculated our numbers,’ he said, as the echo of the staff’s beat rang through the pass. ‘Gravely so.’

As the sorcerer spoke, Weisz saw more figures moving in the mist, an army of humanlike things come to wage war on the small company of warriors whose only task was to protect the mining village.

Weisz gestured, one hand moving rapidly behind his back. An instant later, his troops moved in unison to join him, their synchronised footfalls loud against the baking metal of the ground, step by ominous step.

‘Together,’ Weisz advised, assessing the men and women under his command with a firm nod. ‘Hold the line. No one crosses this point. Sigmar is with us, at every step. He watches over this battle, he sees the bravery within us and he feeds it with his own. We are unstoppable.’ Like my brother was, until this evil struck him down, Weisz thought.

Weisz’s troops girded themselves, moving to defend the pass at this, its narrowest point, readying themselves for his next command.

‘Charge!’ Weisz hollered as the figures in the mist hurried forward, lolloping and leaping, teeth gnashing and limbs swaying. At Weisz’s back, twelve loyal troops stormed towards the approaching army, weapons drawn, loudly affirming their fidelity to Sigmar. They were all he would need. Behind them, a second wave of Freeguilders launched the fort’s lone catapult, dragged behind them as the lead troops proceeded ahead. The catapult was filled with a wad of burning shot. And behind them, more troops moved into position, shoring up the defensive line so that none should pass.

The noble Freeguild men and the loathsome Kairic acolytes met with a clash of metal on metal, as blade struck against shield and armour and flaming projectiles rained down. Weisz watched derisively as an acolyte met his sword blade with his hideous mask, splitting the mask in twain so that it dropped away to reveal an even more hideous mockery of a face beneath. Weisz raised his sword again and swung it down, splitting the acolyte’s skull as the man tried and failed to stab him with his blade.

All around him, Weisz was aware of his comrades doing similarly, meeting this wretched army with fearlessness. They were fighting not only for their lives but for their very way of life, and all to the honour of Sigmar. And they were winning. Acolytes fell to their blows, men whose senses had been twisted to Chaos. Then the grey mist rose around them, and dark horrors shuffled in its depths, bounding forward to join the battle like hunting dogs catching a scent.

Weisz saw the face of the first emerge from the fog and he recoiled in disgust. Its features were human but malformed, the eye sockets too large, the mouth too wide and with teeth like a shark’s. The thing screamed as it bounded across the ground towards Weisz, and he drew back his sword in a two-handed grip. Then, Weisz swung the heavy blade and its arc met the vaulting monstrosity at the precise moment that it came into reach, striking with a bone-crunching clatter.

The creature went down with a ghastly shriek, the cry like stone grinding against glass.

The mists seemed to rise as the monstrosity fell, immersing Weisz and his colleagues deeper within their foul-smelling depths, visibility reduced to almost nothing in an instant. Weisz’s colleagues became shadows, moving shapes in the gloom. The Freeguildman was aware of things all around him, the cackling of Ty’Gzar in contrast to the battle cries of Weisz’s fellow defenders.

Where did this cursed sorcerer find such allies? Weisz wondered. When they had met before, Ty’Gzar had employed only human acolytes to wage his campaign, but now he had these things that defied logic, each more nightmarish than the one before.

Another monstrosity appeared from the gloom, a sickening thing that Weisz could hardly bear to look at. It was taller than Weisz, with a second face leering above its armoured head, the expression twisted in agony. It was not one being then, but two – a host and a rider. It smelled awful, like it hadn’t washed in… well, a lifetime, perhaps. Weisz thought he would be sick, his stomach spasming as the thing approached.

Weisz evaded the thing’s broadsword as it swept the ground towards him. ‘In the name of Sigmar!’ he cursed, as sparks were kicked up from the ferrous content of the rock beneath their feet.

Above the main body, the second creature was weaving a spell, its hands aglow with eldritch magic as they gestured towards him. On some instinctive level, Weisz realised what it was in that moment – a combination creature, with the combat prowess of a warrior and the dark knowledge of a sorcerer. Weisz sidestepped, sweeping his blade around with the movement and hacking at the horror’s legs with the same gusto he would attack the trunk of a tree. The conjoined beast wailed as the blade hacked into its host body, and its spell went awry. A bolt of Chaos energy shot out into the sky, momentarily painting the mist in a multitude of blues and greens before it hurtled away.

Weisz hacked at the right leg again, smiling grimly as the twinned creature began to sag, its leg giving way.

Another sweep, another strike, and the creature finally dropped, sagging sideward where the kneecap burst and the shinbone gave way. The homunculus on its back continued to weave its spells, eyes dark pits in the withered remains of a once-human face.

The monster’s head split from its neck in a single, brutal strike, spraying gore across Weisz, ruined flesh hitting the ground with wet thumps. For a moment its emaciated body continued to waver, hands still knitting the air as it tried to conjure whatever spell of abomination the dread thing had planned. And then, abruptly, it fell still, the life draining from the rider’s body instantaneously, like the last embers of a dying fire.

Below, the mount body, the one that had lost its mind in this cruel bargain, swayed where it kneeled on one ruined leg.

‘Die,’ Weisz snarled, panting for breath as he drew back his sword and struck the final killing blow. ‘And stay dead.’

Around Weisz, the cries of his colleagues echoed through the pass, distant voices in the gloom of the risen mist. Every man and woman had joined the fight now, while the Freeguilders’ catapult had fallen silent, out of ammunition, lost somewhere in the haze. They sounded fearful, desperate, but they remained strong – like all men of righteousness, they had more to fight for than any acolyte of Chaos.

‘Roll call!’ Weisz hollered as he spun around in the billowing fog.

The voices of his troops wended back from the depthless mists:

‘Bren!’

‘Falke!’

‘Mannetje!’

Eighteen men and women yet lived, all told – eighteen against the amassing forces of Chaos. Each man was most likely fighting alone now, Weisz realised, against enemies unseen, who materialised just feet from their faces as they revealed themselves from the blanket of thickening fog.

Weisz turned in place, eyes narrowed as he scoured the murk, trying to discern his enemies. A figure came spinning out of the gloom, arms flailing about it like a spinning top, face a tightening of muscles and flesh as it displayed a rictus grin. It was a creature from the sadistic depths of Chaos, with blue skin the colour of a bruise and eyes that glowed like weeping sores, accompanied by the foul aroma of sulphur. With its impossibly wide mouth and abruptly shortened body, it was no more human than the sword that Weisz wielded.

The beast leapt at him with a hiss, and Weisz was repelled by the stench of the thing’s breath. Wincing, he swung blindly, the noxious scent raising bile at the back of his throat, and felt the hard thud as his sword blade struck the beast. The ghastly thing cried out, a very human sound, and dropped back with a loud, fleshy slap against the ground.

Weisz stepped over the fallen beast, his nose wrinkling as he smelled the sour tang of spilled stomach acid where the thing had been gutted.

But there was no time to stop. Already another enemy was moving in from behind, another of the human cultists who made up the majority of Ty’Gzar’s forces. This one wore blue armour and a mask with a hideously hooked nose, red eyes burning from within the mask’s sockets. The eyes reminded Weisz of the tattoo that had been grafted to Ty’Gzar’s forearm – the one he had hewn free in their prior encounter. That pulsing eye was what came back to Weisz in the middle of the night, staring at him from the depths of his dreams, stabbing through his thoughts like a hot dagger. The eye had twisted in such a way that it had seemed infinite somehow, one edge looping back to the other. The eye had been coloured a vivid blood red with blue at its corners, and even after the flesh had cooled, still the eye seemed to move and pulse, as if the tattoo was somehow alive.

A strained cry snapped Weisz’s thoughts back to the present. His brother had almost lost his leg through a momentary slip of concentration; Weisz needed to stay alert to stay alive. The acolyte was shouting something shrill and incomprehensible at Weisz, the words ‘Chaos’ and ‘beware’ bubbling muddled from beneath the mask as he hefted a sword that glinted silver in the gloom.

‘Beware yourself!’ Weisz snarled, meeting the blade with the length of his own in a shower of brilliant sparks, shoving it aside even as his own legs threatened to buckle with the impact. With a grunt, Weisz stood his ground, waiting as the cultist tried to get his bearings to renew his attack.

Emboldened, the acolyte came at him in an obvious attack, almost as though he thought Weisz posed no threat to him, and Weisz brought his sword up in a brutal swing that met with the man’s side.

Then another came at Weisz – had the first been sent as a distraction? – even as his sword struck the first acolyte in his flank, embedding itself there. For a moment it seemed that Weisz was defenceless against the second man. This one too wore a mask, a hideous inhuman thing that looked like a mockery of a woman’s face.

Weisz let go of the sword and stepped back, allowing the second acolyte’s sword blade to jab past him by a matter of inches. Drawing back his bunched fist, Weisz stepped forward until he was within the outer arc of that swinging sword, and punched the cultist hard in the face, breaking his mask and his human nose beneath.

The acolyte staggered back with a shriek of pain, and for just a moment his words came out as a plea: ‘Look at what you’re–’

Weisz punched again, driving his mailed fist hard into his enemy’s jaw, feeling the satisfying crunch of breaking bone. He followed through with a knee to the man’s groin, delivered with such force that the masked acolyte left the ground momentarily before crashing back into the sheer wall of the bluff.

But there was no time for Weisz to catch his breath. Already the first man he had felled was rising once more, the sword no longer in his side, the blue glyphs painted on his body seeming alive in the swirling mist. Weisz dropped down as the Chaos disciple lunged at him, and plucked his sword from where it had fallen.

A feint, ducking another attack, and then Weisz was upright, using his superior strength to bring the sword down on the acolyte’s head. The sword landed with a sickening, wet thud. The acolyte sank to his knees, dropping his weapon as his hands reached up for his ruined face, and Weisz swung the sword once more.

As his blade cut through the acolyte’s belly, Weisz heard the pained shout of Mannetje close by, in the unmistakable gasp of a man’s final breath. It made Weisz’s momentary victory bittersweet, hearing his friend’s final gasp even as the Chaos man’s limp body slipped to the ground from his blade.

Weisz looked around in the swirling mist, but he could not see Mannetje. Still, he knew – knew the sound of a man dying, knew the noises a man made when he had reached the end of his life.

‘Mannetje?’ Weisz shouted into the fog, still searching around. But there came no response.

The realisation made Weisz more determined. Weisz knew Mannetje to be a good man, a good soldier. And, by the Stormhosts, he would not have given his life in vain. No soldier under his command would – Weisz swore it. These spawn of Chaos would be routed.

‘Drive them back!’ Weisz yelled into the mists, trusting his unseen allies to hear him. ‘In Sigmar’s righteous name, drive them back!’

The battle cries of brave men and women echoed back, muffled by the mists that swirled and danced across the scarred ground, allies reduced to shadows projected upon its moving surface.

Weisz raised his blood-slicked sword once more and charged with a booming holler: ‘Let the routing begin!’

They came at Weisz from all sides then, things that slithered and things that hopped, things that smelled like the grave and things that smelled of a sweetness so strong that it addled the senses. They wore expressions that defied comprehension, sometimes in places where faces should not be. And each of them wielded swords and knives and axes, with shields and armour to protect their deformed, reformed, malformed bodies. Torsos were hewn in two by Weisz, heads parted from shoulders and limbs mangled under the onslaught of his defence. If any had doubted his legend before, by Sigmar’s blade, he was proving it now, with every cut and thrust, every hacked limb and broken bone.

But the Chaos things seemed endless.

First they came in ones and twos, acolytes wearing fright masks to unsettle a foe as they stepped from the swirling mist, but human all the same.

Then came things that seemed to be made from the elements themselves – headless beasts covered in a fire that burned blue with the brilliance of the oxygen that fed it, long arms that ended in cruelly toothed claws. Shimmering like flames on a candle’s wick, the creatures turned the ground red-hot beneath their tread, steam hissing from the surface, and lunged for Weisz with those clawed appendages amid the confusing blur of their self-generated heat haze. Azure flames leapt at Weisz’s body and face, turning him around as he avoided their burning lunges, fingers of flame playing across the ground before him as he strived to force them back. He cut furrows with his blade, blow after blow as he backed away from the creatures, until they could come no further down the narrow pathway of the pass, no closer to the Ironvale.

The flames sparkled in the fog like stars in the night sky, until Weisz had backed away sufficiently that they dwindled to nothing, absorbed by the grey.

But the surge of Chaos was relentless. There came things that were too big to comprehend, lunging out of the mist on knees that had been reversed, causing them to totter like toddlers as they made their approach. Weisz took these on too, his sword a blur of movement in the clouding fog. The feel of his sword making contact in the murk was enough to let Weisz know that the fight could still be won, and that he still had the strength to win it. Each wound he endured was worn like a fresh medal, each bruise a mark of victory. His brother had almost given his leg to an assault like this, and he still had faith in Sigmar’s righteousness. Moryn had never given up. Weisz took it upon himself to be Moryn’s fury on the battlefield, to stand firm against the creep of Chaos. And creep it did.

A blue-fleshed creature fell to Weisz’s sword, breaking apart only for its dismembered limbs to reach for him where they had fallen, its disembodied mouth snapping at his ankles until he killed it a second time.

He did not notice when his allies dropped out of the fight. He called for them, instructing them to sound off and getting just two responses, but the next time he cried out, minutes – or was it hours? – later, no one shouted back. They were dead then, most likely, taken by Ty’Gzar’s forces, and all that Weisz could hope for was that their demise had been swift and as painless as it could be in the circumstances, and not drawn out and cruel in that manner Chaos preferred. They had trained together, eaten together, lived together. They had been as familiar and trusted as his own sword. But now was not the time for grieving. Weisz would lament them later, honour them as they deserved.

Weisz’s breathing was coming hard when the last of the Chaos things fell. He stood, hunched over, his shoulders sagging as if he carried a heavy weight, the ache in his muscles burning like fire. Around him, the corpses of those cultists loyal to Chaos were piled, blood wetting the ground, turning the flickering seams of iron to scarlet where it washed.

Weisz stood, strength leaving him as his fury passed, and he heard laughter, cruel and mocking. Weisz looked up, saw the fog slowly part, its tendrils like slippery grey fingers pulling gradually away from his eyes, revealing what lay beyond, just feet away. There, arrayed before him were not the bodies of the dead cultists at all – no, they were his colleagues, revealed one by one, and beside them the miners from the village. Every last one of them had been butchered. Weisz stood in the centre of the Ironvale, surrounded by the corpses of his allies, his friends. No one lived. No one but him.

‘I… must have got… turned around,’ Weisz muttered as he realised where he was, the stench of death assaulting his nostrils. The mist had played cruel tricks on his senses, and he had travelled here as he fought – each time he had spun around in the heat of battle must have brought him closer.

But the bodies. How could he explain the bodies? His colleagues lying here where it should have been those wretched beasts of Chaos, those bent-limbed, flame-faced, sick-smelling things who had accompanied Ty’Gzar?

Weisz looked up as he heard that mocking laughter once more, reverberating from the high walls of the canyon and the buildings of his village. Ty’Gzar was striding towards him, yellow teeth on show, chuckling with spite. As Ty’Gzar approached, flanked by his remaining acolytes, the last of the mists departed, swirling away to nothingness.

‘You’ve done a masterful job,’ Ty’Gzar said, sweeping his staff casually through the last of the fog, his voice that familiar, grating crow’s caw. ‘More than I could have done.’

Weisz looked around, absorbing the details of the scene before him. There was Mannetje, guts strewn before him like the tangled roots of a tree that had been upended by lightning. And there, his ally Bren, who had first spotted the attackers and Berta, who had suffered such terrible burns in their previous encounter with Chaos, dead now with her face caked in blood where it had been caved in by a savage blow. And other Freeguilders, even civilians – the blacksmith who worked swords for the armies of man in the hut at the west of the village, the horseshoe worker whose knack with animals was a thing of wonder to observe.

And then Weisz’s heart seemed to stab at him as he spotted the other figure, the one he had really been looking for all along – the body of Moryn, his own brother. The dressing on his mangled leg was dark with blood, his body was twisted where it had been struck with something heavy. Moryn’s eyes stared up into nothingness, as if waiting for the heavenly Stormhosts of Sigmar to come down and claim his spirit, his last breath already departed.

‘I… did this?’ Weisz asked, the words stinging in his throat.

Ty’Gzar watched him, a cruel sneer on his twisted face. ‘You were merciless,’ the Arcanite revealed. ‘It was the stuff of legend, a thing to behold.’ Around him, guttural voices chuckled, from throats that had given up their own humanity in their pursuit of power.

Weisz felt his knees give way then, and he crashed to the ground like a felled oak tree, a legend rendered just a man after all. He had not just killed his brother, he had taken away his right to prove himself worthy of ascension to become a Stormcast Eternal. Everything had been taken away with the blind thrust of a sword.

‘How…?’ Weisz asked, the words little more than a whisper.

Ty’Gzar moved his stump of a right arm, gesturing to the narrow confines of the pass. ‘It can be so easy to become confused in the fog,’ he said vaguely, the yellow smile never leaving his face. ‘Tragically easy.’

Weisz saw it all then, piecing the whole terrible sequence together in his mind’s eye. He and his men had gone into battle against Ty’Gzar’s meagre forces only to be drawn into the unnatural fog that had followed them. The fog was a spell, Weisz realised with a hollow sense of horror. A way to muddle a man’s mind and confuse him until he saw things that were not there. In Uffo Weisz’s case, he had seen the awful multitudes of Chaos, swarming upon him in wave after wave, beast after beast, thing after thing. His colleagues likely had seen the same, their senses tricked, never aware that they were fighting one another, killing their allies until there was no one left but Weisz himself. And in all the confusion, Weisz and his men had been funnelled back to their safely walled village, proving it not to be safe at all.

‘Why didn’t they cry out?’ Weisz asked, staring at the ground before him, the bloody hilt of the sword slick and warm in his hand.

‘Oh, they did,’ Ty’Gzar said, striding closer as his men parted to let him through, handing one of them his gem-topped staff. ‘“No, Uffo!” “What are you doing?” “Keep back, keep back!”’ – the words came from Ty’Gzar’s mouth but the voices were familiar, captured by his magic, the pleas of the dying before Weisz had killed them.

Weisz’s eyes were focused on the haft of the weapon in his hand, where a droplet of blood was slowly wending its way down its length to join a scarlet puddle on the blood-soaked ground. ‘Why… didn’t… why couldn’t I hear them?’ he asked the ground, barely whispering now.

‘Because you took my hand,’ the Chaos sorcerer replied, his words a cruel hiss. ‘My hand! I would have let you live, if you’d just stepped aside those months before, but no – you had to fight, and so you brought all of this upon yourself.’

The words of the masked acolyte with the hook-nosed mask came back to Weisz then, the one he had ultimately gutted with his sword. Only now Weisz recognised the voice despite the way the fog had dulled the sound. It had been Mannetje. ‘Chaos’, Mannetje had said, and ‘beware’, the rest of the words lost…

We’re being deceived by Chaos, Uffo, beware before you kill us all.

The words were suddenly clear, the gaps filled in by memory or conscience, spoken by a man whom Weisz could neither see nor hear at the time when they were said, a man who had died on the sharp edge of his blade, his head cleaved, his belly ripped open.

And the other, the ‘acolyte’ who had accompanied Mannetje. He had begged for Weisz to see, shrieking out his last pleas as he sank to his knees – ‘Look at what you’re–!’ The voice had been familiar. The voice of Falke.

They had seen him, then – his allies – as he had raged and rampaged his way through them, killing every single man who had placed his trust in Weisz and in the legend that had blossomed around him. They had not all been fooled, not entirely. No, they had known full well what he was doing. He had killed them all.

Weisz felt the void opening inside him, the utter emptiness of defeat and of loss, the wide expanse of a grief so absolute that it seemed, in that moment, to have no limits. He had lost his allies, his friends, his family, and they had been killed at the end of his blade, either killed by him or by his colleagues as they fought in that awful, mind-altering mist. Whether Weisz had killed his brother or it had been one of his colleagues, it did not really matter. Moryn was dead. Because of him. Because of his intervention. Because he had stood up to Chaos and taken the hand of a sorcerer whose only desire was power.

As the dying words of his allies came back to him, replaying over and over in his mind, Weisz heard other words too. They were the taunting words of Ty’Gzar from just a few moments earlier: ‘I would have let you live, if you’d just stepped aside…’

‘You’re wrong,’ Weisz muttered, the words so quiet that only he could hear them. ‘You lie. You would never have let me live.’

As Weisz spoke, he saw Ty’Gzar’s shadow cross over the ground before him, its dark shape playing over the blood-soaked hilt of the sword he held there. Above Weisz, his victory complete, the Arcanite was voicing the slithering words of another tongue, words of magic to draw this conflict to a close. The words of Chaos burned into Weisz’s skull, pounding into his brain like hammer blows, each one raising the pressure there until Weisz could barely think at all. Ty’Gzar’s remaining hand twisted in the air, forming the eldritch shapes that would bring his spell to fruition.

‘No!’ Weisz spat, swinging his sword blindly up at the shadow that loomed before him. The sword struck, with the solid thud of chopping wood, driving through the sorcerer’s remaining arm instantaneously.

Ty’Gzar looked bewildered as his hand was replaced by a geyser of spurting blood where Weisz’s sword had opened an artery, the limb itself dropping to the ground with a heavy thud like a hunk of discarded meat.

Weisz rose to his full height once more, his gaze meeting Ty’Gzar’s as the Arcanite struggled to process what had just happened. Weisz could see it in the sorcerer’s expression, a look of disbelief across his Chaos-warped face. It was clear to Weisz, in that bloodied, scarlet moment, that the Arcanite had mistakenly believed him to be utterly broken by what had been done to him, driven to madness, with all hope and all thoughts of resistance gone. But he was wrong.

Ty’Gzar sank to his knees like wet cloth, all colour draining from his face. ‘How…?’ Ty’Gzar asked, the word a squawk from a strained throat.

‘You look like you’re struggling,’ Weisz said, a sneer curling his lip. ‘The way my brother struggled to fend off your depraved fanatics two months ago, the way he has struggled ever since, because of you.’

Behind Ty’Gzar, the remaining masked acolytes of Chaos charged, swarming towards Weisz as he stood before them in the ruined village of the Ironvale.

Let them come, thought Weisz. He had nothing left to lose.

Weisz drew back his sword and entered the fray once more, smiling with grim glee as he batted aside the first of the cultists. For a man with nothing left to lose has nothing left to fear.

KHORGOS KHUL: THE RED FEAST
Book One of The Khul
Gav Thorpe

On the Flamescar Plateau, a time of peace and prosperity is threatened by a distant sorcerous power. Can Athol Khul bring the tribes together to keep the peace, or will war claim them all – and destroy their future?

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

THE BOOK OF TRANSFORMATIONS

Matt Keefe

Matt Keefe is best known for his contributions to Necromunda, but in his return to Black Library Matt has turned his hand to Age of Sigmar. This Frankenstein-esque tale of a brilliant apothecary dismissed by his peers for his radical methods showcases Matt’s lyrical writing style, dovetailing with his grasp of strange and unusual characters to create an enthralling story.

PROLOGUE

THE GAZE OF STONE

The door to the old alchemist’s place was made of heavy oak and surrounded by neat stone blocks set directly into the cliff. A dozen windows looked out haphazardly from the rocky face, with no obvious indication of sense to the rooms and the floors behind them. Between those windows ran veins of metal and seams of minerals. They grew where the alchemist’s work had suffused the rock of the cliff-face and climbed up it like vines, his magicks bringing to the surface the latent energies of Chamon.

The boy had passed this sight perhaps half a dozen times, but he had never been inside. Everyone called it a shop, but it didn’t look like one, and the boy was full of trepidation. Whatever the alchemist’s own esoteric pursuits, most knew him as the city’s most reliable purveyor of all manner of substances, mundane and otherwise.

Though the door was ajar, its size and sturdiness had the boy imagining frightful things, like this great oak door was in place not to keep the world out, but to keep something terrible in. He raised his hand in a fist and knocked, three times, though the first was so timid and faint that the sound was that of only two.

Nothing.

He waited but knew he would have to go in, so he pushed. The great heavy door opened smoothly and easily – but so nervous was he that he pushed it only enough to open it by about a foot or so. He slipped inside, as if somehow imagining that going unseen, even as he entered, would quieten his own fears.

Three stone steps, hemmed in by shelves packed with stone jars, leather flasks and small wooden boxes, led down from the doorway. As far as the boy could tell there was just a single room in front of him, but its space was so packed with shelves and stacks of wooden cases that they created a narrow passageway that turned off to the right ahead of him.

The boy stopped and peered into the jars closest to him. Fat black leeches writhed over a lump of stone – nothing more than a dull rock, and yet their writhing, slug-like bodies left threads of silver across the glass. Beside them sat a jar of liquid – metal, seemingly, like mercury, but vivid blue in colour.

The boy peered around the corner into the room up ahead. Green flames flickered in lamps on the wall, but the room was still dim and for a moment the boy could make out little around him. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he realised with a fright that there was a man standing right in front of him.

Shinguren, the alchemist.

The boy gasped and stepped back. He tripped and sent the lid of a great cauldron tumbling to the ground with a clang. The alchemist didn’t say a thing, even sterner and more terrifying than the boy had imagined. The boy stuttered an apology and clumsily returned the lid to the cauldron, never taking his eyes from the man.

The alchemist was not tall but seemed particularly rigid and imposing. His clothes were drab, his hair and beard grey and his face oddly colourless, an effect compounded by the gloom, and one that had made him hard to pick out amidst the jumble of shelves, cases, bottles and jars.

‘You’re the alchemist, sir?’ said the boy.

But the alchemist did not answer.

The boy stepped a little closer, pulling his cloth cap from his head and swallowing hard.

‘Excuse me, sir. I’m Mehrigus. I’ve been sent by my father to–’

‘I doubt he sent you to speak to that thing, boy.’

The boy jumped as a voice came unexpectedly from behind him. He turned to see a second man standing there, taller, somewhat older, his beard much longer and his robes much heavier and shabbier. And he was moving rather more than the first man. The boy looked from one to the other.

‘A statue?’ he said, his heart racing in a mixture of surprise and fear as he realised the first figure was entirely motionless.

‘Not quite, boy,’ said the real alchemist, taking another step into the room from the shelf-lined passageway behind him. ‘That is a petrulus.’

‘A what, sir?’ said the boy.

‘A petrulus. A living thing turned to stone.’

The boy was already open-mouthed, and hearing this he quite forgot to breathe, gasping and spluttering a moment later as he looked around him – for something to say, or for simple escape, he wasn’t sure which. In the end, he couldn’t help but turn his attention back to the statue – to the petrulus – reaching out to touch it but stopping himself before he did.

‘Did… did you do this?’ he said, immediately wishing he hadn’t, and rushing in with the second-most terrifying of the thoughts running through his head as if to disguise the first. ‘I mean, if I touch it, what will happen? Will I turn to stone, too?’

The alchemist burst into uproarious laughter.

‘No, boy. I didn’t. And you won’t. This is the work of a cockatrice.’ The alchemist took a couple more steps into the room, standing just beside the boy as he looked up at the petrulus. The boy hesitated a moment, but then reached out, running his hand over the face of the ‘man’ he had first seen on making his way into the stuffy little room. He could feel nothing but cold stone.

‘This was… a person? A man?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said the apothecary. ‘One with the unhappy distinction of having met the gaze of a cockatrice.’

‘What are you going to do with him?’ said the boy.

‘What do you mean, child?’ said the apothecary.

‘Are you going to… change him back?’

There was more laughter from the gruff old alchemist.

‘Oh, no, boy,’ he said. ‘Nothing will ever change this wretched fellow back again.’

The boy swallowed hard; the thought of what had become of this man had been terrifying enough when he’d imagined it to be some kind of trick or curse that might be undone, in time. He trembled to think that this was a living person turned forever to stone.

‘Then… what are you going to do with him?’ he said, the fear and trepidation in his young voice obvious.

The alchemist smiled unsettlingly.

‘You’re a curious one, aren’t you, boy?’

I

A BAETYLUS OF HEAVENS

Mehrigus looked up from the bench as he became aware of Ngja chittering below – a moment later, the lizard appeared, settling on the wall over the open doorway leading to the stairs beyond. Ngja lurked most of the time on the jambs of the front door. He had turned up of his own accord one day and had stayed more or less ever since. Mehrigus fed him on scraps of all kinds of things. Ngja would eat anything and, whatever kind of creature he was exactly, it seemed his behaviour would change, echoing whatever magical essence he was able to extract from these scraps and morsels. Mehrigus had once fed him the leftovers from a spagyric of magmatic sulfur he had been making, and for the next three nights Ngja’s belly had glowed like a lantern. In return for this nourishment, Ngja would announce the arrival of visitors if Mehrigus wasn’t downstairs to hear them. When Mehrigus was too deep in his work to notice the chittering, as he was today, Ngja would flap lazily up into the chambers above to find him.

As Mehrigus arose from his chair and headed for the winding staircase, Ngja took to his shimmering, dragonfly wings and followed him, hovering close by his master’s head.

Downstairs in the shop a boy stood quivering in front of the counter. He was barely tall enough to see over it, but he was turning his head frantically from side to side, clearly looking for Mehrigus. The place had little changed from when Mehrigus himself had stood there, timid and afraid, in front of that very counter.

‘Are you the apothecary, master?’ said the boy as soon as he saw him.

‘Yes,’ said Mehrigus calmly. ‘I am. What do you need?’

‘They told me to ask you to come, master,’ the boy said. ‘A man’s been injured.’ The boy trembled as he spoke. But it wasn’t from fright, it was from terrible, terrible alarm. ‘My father,’ he said.

Mehrigus turned and took his heavy, dark outer robe from where it hung on the wall and donned it hurriedly, before reaching out for a satchel and two small pouches, throwing them about himself with equal haste.

‘Come, then!’ he said. ‘Show me where.’

Mehrigus was right behind the boy, his hands on his shoulders, as the pair hurried out of the door. Behind them, Ngja settled back down onto the doorframe and shot out his tongue to lock the door.

Up on Mandringatte, the boy led Mehrigus into one of the small houses lining the road where it began to slope up towards the city’s eastern gate. Up a flight of wooden stairs, Mehrigus found the injured man in a crowded room on the first floor. There were three members of the city’s watch, unkempt, bloodied and anxious – the man’s comrades – plus two women and the boy, who Mehrigus presumed to be the man’s family.

The man lay on a straw-stuffed mattress on the floor. He was still in the breeches of his uniform but shirtless, his open jerkin underneath him. A wound on his left-hand side had been hastily bandaged, a dark mass of seeping blood showing through them, but there was clearly more to his condition than this mere wound. The man’s skin was sallow, and his eyes clouded. He moved his head as Mehrigus and the boy entered but seemed almost to be looking through or past the figures in the room.

‘He’s been wounded,’ said one of the watchmen, a slender man of average height, grey-haired and bearded. He crouched down beside the mattress to point at the all too obvious wound. ‘Some outcasts – real dregs – down in the tunnels. It was a wicked, rusted old thing they stabbed him with,’ he said. ‘The blade broke off but we left it for fear of bleeding. We brought him back here to get it out of him but…’

The man hesitated and one of the women took over.

‘It wasn’t right. It had rusted to nothing, that thing,’ she said.

‘Worse than rust, I fear,’ said Mehrigus, kneeling down beside the man. The others in the room glanced from one to another, as if Mehrigus had just said the very thing they had all feared.

‘The remains of it are in there?’ said Mehrigus, peering into a bucket pushed against the wall, where flecks of sickly white scum floated on top of blood and water.

‘Aye,’ said the watchman beside him. ‘We dropped it in there, but I doubt there’s anything left of it. It was falling apart even as we pulled it out of him.’

Mehrigus watched the scum seeming to expand across the surface, creating ripples in the still water. There was an unsettling life to it. He began to peel back the man’s bandages and, much as he feared, saw at once little white spores around the wound.

He reached for one of the pouches he’d brought with him, and from his satchel drew a phial of water. He took the cork from it and then, taking a flat metal rod from his satchel, added a little powder from the pouch.

The other woman knelt by the bed, hands clenched in front of her, elbows on the sheets, offering a prayer to Sigmar. Her words were inaudible, hurried, but she finished the prayer before looking up to see Mehrigus standing beside her. She stood up and stepped aside to allow him to move closer to the wounded man.

‘You’ve a cure for it?’ she said, lingering beside him.

‘Of sorts,’ said Mehrigus, stirring the mixture. He reached out towards the bucket, and carefully tipped the phial until just a few drops of the liquid fell from it. Where they landed, steam rose and water hissed, and the sickly white scum died away.

‘It’s poison,’ he said. ‘But you mustn’t be alarmed. There are times when you have to kill to cure.’ Mehrigus dipped the metal rod into the phial of liquid. He took one last look around the room – at every one of them, silent and still, pale with fear – and began to drip the poison sparingly around the wound.

The wounded man snarled as his flesh began to hiss. He turned his head to Mehrigus, staring at him. Mehrigus could sense the man himself now. His eyes were still alert, fixed on Mehrigus, not staring past him at all, but they were hidden behind the sickly white sheen forming over them. The man’s breathing began to slow. He seemed calmer, as if he understood Mehrigus was trying to help him, and he laid his head back on the mattress.

Mehrigus rummaged through his satchel again. He drew out what looked like a rough, pitted stone, the size of an orange.

‘It’s a baetylus,’ he said. ‘Of the heavens.’

It had the smell of petrichor, even though it was bone dry and had been stored safely indoors for months. It was carved with sigmarite runes connected by lines whose geometries made the rough orb into a careful approximation of the heavens. It appeared as dull stone, but where Mehrigus ran his hands over the runes and incanted, the dullness of the stone gave way to glimmering light, as if revealing precious metals beneath. And unlike the other ‘baetyluses’ in Mehrigus’ collection, this one really was a meteorite – or a fragment of one – hurled down from Azyr in the wake of one of Sigmar’s Stormhosts and possessed of much celestial magic.

Mehrigus took the man’s hands and wrapped them around the baetylus, covering them with his own, and using his fingers to guide the man’s thumbs around the glowing edges of the runes.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘Incant as I do.’

‘He’s too weak,’ said one of the women.

‘I know,’ said Mehrigus. ‘I’m talking to the rest of you. What this man has been touched by is a taint… Pray it spreads no further.’

II

A LIKENESS IN MIND

Three weeks later, the man was well enough that Mehrigus was able to tell him and his family that he would not need to visit them again. The man was blind and afflicted with great pain when moving his left arm, the latter caused, it seemed, by the spot on his side where Mehrigus had scarred his flesh with poison. But he was alive, and seemingly free of the wicked taint the weapon had been infected with. There’d been more reports of diseased dregs lurking in the city’s caves and tunnels. Some said these outcasts were victims of a plague rumoured to be raging in a number of nearby towns, driven from their homes by their terrified neighbours, but others pointed out these bands seemed to be armed, and more than willing to attack any who chanced upon them. Many, Mehrigus included, began to wonder if something more sinister was afoot.

As he made his way home after his last visit with the man, Mehrigus fumed inside. He hated that these were the methods he was forced to use – to have to poison a man and scar him to let him live. He knew there was another way. He burned all the more to find it.

Several more days passed, and it continued to play on Mehrigus’ mind, feeding and reinvigorating what had long been his obsession: transformation as cure. The only true cure. To Mehrigus, the apothecary’s fledgling art – let alone the chirurgeon’s dull butchery – was nothing more than the savage preservation of life, however desperate for that savage preservation benighted and afflicted souls might be. It was little of an art at all. But he had glimpsed how close something better must be. His journals were full of these glimpses, meticulous in their reasoning, of life, sickness, age – nigh on all of existence, in fact – as simple processes of change and transformation, whose course needed only to be guided to do away with all the harms they might otherwise bring. The apothecary’s simple physic, with most of its potions no better than poison, was lacking. For Mehrigus, what the apothecary knew of the body would have to be melded with the alchemist’s art and the mage’s lore. And this – this – was his obsession.

Freshly determined, he pored over his journals. The man’s case he added, as he always did, while taking what he had seen there and looking back across pages filled over years with his observations, his reasonings, the results of his experimentations, and looking for what would unite and illuminate them from what was new.

Around noon one day, as he paced to and fro behind the desk on which lay open the most recent of his journals, Mehrigus was filled with a curious sense that someone was waiting for him. He descended the stairs, down into his little apothecary’s shop. Sure enough, an elderly man, perhaps twice Mehrigus’ own age, stood peering into the jars Mehrigus kept on the shelves closest to the door.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mehrigus, emerging behind the counter. He glanced up at the door. Ngja was there as ever but gave no sign of having noticed the man at all. Peculiar. Mehrigus tried to recall what he had fed him last.

The man turned and smiled.

‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘Mehrigus? The apothecary?’

Mehrigus smiled, amused as much as he was surprised. He was seldom greeted by name on a first meeting.

‘I am,’ he said. ‘Mehrigus, I am. May I be of help?’

‘Perhaps,’ said the old man, shuffling forward. Mehrigus noted the difficulty with which the old man moved and came out from behind the counter, dragging a stool to offer to him. ‘Or perhaps I can be of help to you,’ said the man, accepting the seat without a word about it passing between them. ‘Or perhaps this will prove to be nothing more than a meeting of two men of a like mind.’

‘You’re an apothecary?’ said Mehrigus.

‘I was,’ said the man. ‘You might say I’ve retired, but for one or two little interests.’ He smiled, one hand resting on the counter as he leaned forward on the stool. ‘Call me Trimegast,’ he said.

‘Trimegast. Welcome, sir,’ said Mehrigus, idly wondering if he ought to be deferential, his pondering making him seem quizzical instead as he spoke. ‘And how did you come to hear of me, Trimegast, may I ask?’

‘Well, you see,’ said Trimegast, ‘I had heard that you treated a man known to me, a neighbour–’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. In fact, a few folks hereabouts mentioned it to me. Some were quite amazed, some were quite troubled. It’s always the way, Mehrigus. Don’t worry, that isn’t why it intrigued me,’ he went on. ‘You see, once they described you and one of them mentioned your name, it came to me that I had heard your name before, Mehrigus. I recalled that I think I had perhaps once heard you speak…’

‘Ah,’ said Mehrigus.

‘…on transformation as cure.’

Mehrigus felt an involuntary cringe run through him; he hated that he felt this way about his life’s obsession, but it was a reaction long cultivated by the responses his ideas drew from those who claimed to know well the arts of healing and magic.

‘The Collegiate Arcane,’ he replied. Mehrigus had spoken there, three years prior, when he was certain his ideas were ready to be shared. He was wrong. Not on account of his own ideas, perhaps, as Mehrigus saw it, but in his own simple naivety. He had not before that day quite realised that for knowledge to be shared required also an audience willing to receive it. He had discovered in humiliating fashion that day that his did not yet exist.

‘Yes!’ said the old man, animatedly. ‘And then I wondered, whatever happened to this work of transformation as cure…’

‘It goes on,’ said Mehrigus, slinking back behind the counter, as if he felt the need of physical protection if he were to find the will to go on with the conversation. ‘But it won’t be transforming the minds of the Collegiate Arcane any time soon, I’m sure.’

Trimegast seemed to sense Mehrigus’ reticence and fell silent for a few moments, turning on the stool to gaze around the shop.

‘Tell me,’ he said at last, ‘are people surprised to find this is an apothecary’s shop?’

‘Yes,’ said Mehrigus, at least a little intrigued by Trimegast’s perceptiveness.

‘I can see why,’ said Trimegast.

‘My master was an alchemist,’ said Mehrigus. ‘I was apprenticed to him as a boy. He dabbled in spagyry, too. I thought myself an alchemist for some time. I suppose he thought he knew something of the apothecary’s physic, too. But in one regard I always knew he was mistaken – limiting his arts of transformation to the inanimate.’ He stepped back out from behind the counter, pacing slowly around the shop, seeming not to fear a trap from the old man any longer.

‘We have mastered the transformation of the inanimate,’ said Mehrigus. ‘No one thinks anything of it. Ice to water, water to mist to water again. Stone to magma, magma to rock. It is the way of things, and we have mastered it for ourselves, we alchemists, centuries since. Why shouldn’t the living substance be the same way?

‘It is, you see,’ he said, confident now. ‘Life, growth, age – just change, transformation, but we have not yet mastered it. Why, it’s as if we believe we can’t. But it’s so obvious. If an infection can rot the flesh, it is but change – deleterious change. And if a tumour can grow, it is the same. Why can we not harness this transformation, grow back the living flesh, the youthful flesh, healthy and new? The flesh is as ready for change as the simple metals and realmstones we can craft into a thousand forms.’

Trimegast smiled. ‘I don’t doubt it, Mehrigus. But, tell me, do you believe you are the first to think it?’

‘Of course not,’ said Mehrigus. ‘It’s obvious. Doesn’t the God-King himself show us the power of transformation in his Stormcast Eternals? And the flesh can be no different from the inanimate,’ said Mehrigus, almost manic now. ‘I know it. I’ve always known it.’ He swept across the floor of the shop, to the far wall, where an object stood under a heavy, deep-blue cloth.

‘How can the animate be any different from the inanimate,’ he said, whipping back the cloth to reveal the petrulus beneath, ‘when the animate can become the inanimate?’

Trimegast grinned. ‘A masterful observation,’ he said, rising from his stool and walking gingerly across the room to the petrulus – the motionless stone that had so terrified, then so intrigued, then so inspired the young Mehrigus, and which he had inherited from his long-deceased master.

‘So if there is a gaze to turn a man to stone, there is something – something – to turn him back to flesh and bone,’ said Mehrigus.

Trimegast smiled. He slipped a shaking, aged hand inside his heavy cloak, creating the sound of rustling paper as he tugged at something inside a deep pocket.

‘You are not the first to think it, Mehrigus, as I have told you. I believe once much was known of this. Much indeed. But it was lost.’ Trimegast pulled a sheaf of papers from his cloak. He offered them to Mehrigus.

Mehrigus took the sheaf of papers, aghast that at last someone had come to him of a like mind, and even more aghast that he seemed already to know of much which Mehrigus did not. The papers were ancient and tattered. The script and the symbols on them were unknown to him, but over perhaps a third of each page, at a glance, there were translations in a modern hand, which Mehrigus took to be Trimegast’s.

‘Do not misunderstand me. By no means is all of this plain to me, Mehrigus,’ said the old man. ‘It has been a life’s work, collecting these pages and deciphering what I have, and there is much missing. There is much that I cannot decode. But it is there. And it is obvious enough that the secrets you seek – the secrets I have been seeking for a lifetime – were once known, Mehrigus. They are written in those pages you hold. That is the Book of Transformations. I will entrust it to you a little while, Mehrigus, if you’ll agree to let me share in whatever discoveries might follow.’

Mehrigus took two stumbling strides and sat himself down on the stool he had earlier set out for the old man, such was his great surprise at what had come to him. Trimegast seemed almost amused by Mehrigus’ overawed delight. He continued to inspect the petrulus.

‘There must be great potency in a stone like this,’ he said, with a grin.

III

A DREAM OF SIGHT

For three days, Mehrigus did not sleep. The door to the shop remained barred and Ngja found himself having to venture several times a day up to the study above to plead with his master to feed him. Mehrigus was absorbed in the Book of Transformations. His own journals – the work of years – lay around him but so dismayed was he now with the blindness of his own earlier reasoning that he tore whole pages from them and fed them to the demanding lizard.

There was much that was indecipherable but Mehrigus could already see from the old man’s diligent work that he had missed a very obvious truth. Mehrigus himself had long lambasted (privately, for the most part) the short-sightedness of those who confined themselves to alchemy or physic or magic alone, but he realised now that his own methods had too long been lacking some vital part of each. Essence, substance, enchantment – transformation required each of these. Mehrigus’ own perfunctory blending of mystical arts had been too haphazard; it was so obvious to him now. He rolled the baetylus between his palms, one to the other, as he pondered it, mulling over the runes and their power and wondering how he might harness the same from the strange symbols on the pages of the Book of Transformations.

At last, in exhaustion, he abandoned his desk and his study for his bedchamber and collapsed into sleep and fevered dreams.

The eyes were flicking frantically from side to side, pupils wide in terror at their imprisonment – seeming, in fact, even more horrified for the unblinking, stone eyelids frozen open around them.

Mehrigus awoke, sitting up sharply in bed. No light fell from the gaps in the rickety old shutters – it was the middle of the night. Perhaps he had slept for a day or more. He sat panting, letting his thoughts gather for a few moments. It was a dream, but it was quickly turning into an irresistible question in his mind.

Mehrigus pushed the thin quilt aside and hurried barefoot across the bedchamber and headed for the cramped, winding stairs to the shop below. He snatched at the lantern that hung always at the head of the stairs and whispered to it, bringing to life its faithful orange glow. Down he went. As he entered from the back of the room, he dropped to his knees beside a large wooden box standing against the wall. He swept aside the clutter of empty jars, bottles and smaller boxes on top of it and pulled off the lid.

Inside was a mess of tools, some inherited, some found, some opportunistically collected, few with any particular reason for being there. Mehrigus rummaged excitedly through the jumble of them, looking for an implement. He knew what he needed it to do, but not yet what it would look like. He pulled out a small pick, used for chipping mineral deposits free from their rocky birthplaces. Too destructive, he thought, but set it down on the floor beside him all the same and continued to rummage. He pushed a small, square-ended hammer aside – too clumsy – then stopped, turning back to it, scrabbling for its handle through the mess of tools pushed on top of it and pulling it out. The hammer was too clumsy, true enough, but at the sight of it Mehrigus realised what he needed. Impatient, he hauled the box towards him, spilling its contents across the floor. Sharp edges cut his bare feet as the mass of tools slid across the stone but he didn’t care. He snatched up what he was looking for. A stonemason’s chisel. He grabbed the pick and the hammer too before hurrying through to the front of the shop.

The petrulus was where it had always been, its eyes as unmoving and as petrified as ever. Mehrigus stopped, panting – in fear, in anticipation, in mad, senseless curiosity – and stared at the floor beside the statue. The excitement he felt was like that of someone knowing they are about to do wrong, and he asked himself why he felt it, if that was what he really believed. He looked at the petrulus, wondering if something within it or beyond it still existed to judge him. But he could gain no such sense and, calming his thoughts, he could see no reason to judge himself either. He raised the chisel and put the blade to the petrulus’ lifeless eyes, carefully positioning just one corner in the little gully between the eye and its lower lid.

He lifted his right hand, his grip tight around the handle of the hammer. But then he relaxed his arm, and instead ran the corner of the chisel’s blade slowly and carefully along that little gully, without striking the chisel once. A trail of dust, like sand, fell from the corner of the petrulus’ eye, like tears. Beneath the stone was whiter and the dream of those eyes – brilliant whites, pupils wide – came back vividly.

Mehrigus lifted the hammer and struck. The trickle of sandy tears became a stream, flecks of white stone falling down the petrulus’ cheek, over his stiff, stone robes and onto the floor. But the chisel was now perhaps a blade’s thickness further in, and the white that shone from the gouge Mehrigus had made was still just stone. Cold, lifeless stone.

So, it was just a dream. Mehrigus could be sure of that, at least. This stony surface was not some eggshell waiting to be shattered to reveal a still-living eye beneath. Mehrigus breathed a great sigh – of relief that he had not made some horrendous mistake or discovered something truly terrible, but equally of disappointment that he had not yet uncovered any of the secrets he was sure the unfortunate thing held.

But the question of whether or not some living thing still dwelt beneath was not really the one that Mehrigus had come to answer. This was not the source of that nervous, guilty excitement that had brought him rushing from his bed. That same excitement returned now as – having answered his dreaming mind’s darkest doubts and being free to ask the question that gripped his waking mind – he set down the chisel and dropped the hammer to the floor beside him.

He lifted the pick.

And slammed its tip straight into the corner of the petrulus’ agog, still-staring eye.

IV

A SPAGYRIC OF LIGHT

‘It’s a tincture,’ said Mehrigus, drawing out the little phial. He was speaking to Dormian, the watchman, but the man’s family clustered around him. ‘Just a powder, dissolved in alcohol and set beneath lenses shaped to capture celestial light.’

He didn’t tell them what the powder was made from.

‘A few drops, into each eye, morning and night. Do you understand?’ he said, turning to the man’s son.

The boy nodded.

‘I will return in a week.’

‘Funny thing, you coming by here unexpected,’ said the watchman from his chair as Mehrigus was turning to leave.

‘A fortuitous thing, I hope we shall soon see,’ said Mehrigus.

‘Yes, perhaps,’ said the man. ‘Though I shouldn’t like to get my hopes up. And, in any case, I was starting to think I was lucky, being wounded already.’

‘What do you mean by that, Dormian?’ said Mehrigus.

Dormian leaned forward in his chair. ‘The rot’s come,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Three days ago, there was an attack, a little way from here. More of the dregs, trying to force their way in through the east gate.’

‘What happened?’ said Mehrigus. He looked from Dormian to the woman sat beside him, to the boy. All were pale with fright.

‘The watch got up a militia and beat them off, but a lot of men were injured, and others are sick. They’ve tried to confine them, like,’ said Dormian, ‘but Brennia told me she heard it’s spreading.’ Dormian nodded his head. Mehrigus turned to the second woman.

‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘People are taking sick all over the place. They’re saying it’s the rot. And now people are hiding them for fear of what might happen to them otherwise, so there’s no one with any idea of how to help them…’

Mehrigus pulled his robes tight about his face as he hurried through the streets. He was hopeful, he was curious, but he had no wish to be his own patient.

So the rot had come. A plague was upon the town and people feared it heralded worse to come. By all accounts, so afflicted were those dregs who had assaulted the city that they should have succumbed long ago. No one could really believe this was some mere mortal malady.

As Mehrigus approached the east gate barracks, two men emerged from the sides of the road, barring his way. Watchmen.

‘Turn back,’ said the man on the left. ‘No one’s to go any further.’ He put his hand to the hilt of his sword where it hung by his side to reinforce his point – his mate held a cudgel, though both looked terrified.

Mehrigus calmly raised a hand as he approached.

‘I know the danger,’ he said. ‘If you won’t let me pass, please, go and tell your captain that Mehrigus the apothecary is here.’

The man with the sword kept his eyes fixed on Mehrigus. The man with the cudgel looked from Mehrigus to his fellow watchman and back again. Seeing that his comrade was unsure of what to do, he stepped closer, whispering, though he couldn’t prevent himself being heard.

‘Mehrigus. He’s the apothecary that saved Dormian,’ he said.

The man with the sword looked Mehrigus over again, as if weighing up the man when he was really weighing up the situation – he didn’t actually have any good idea of how to do either.

‘Alright,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll let you through, but understand this – I can’t be letting you back out without the captain’s say so. Go on, if you choose…’

Mehrigus offered a solemn nod, the collar of his inner robes still pulled up over the lower half of his face, and carried on towards the barracks.

Mehrigus watched the leeches writhing in the jars on his desk. Three generations, left to right. The first were grossly afflicted – they were the same leeches he’d placed on the confined victims in the barracks, allowing him to capture samples of the rot. He popped the lid from the jar and reached for his tongs. He lifted one of the rotten leeches from the jar, and dropped it into the next one.

This second generation of leeches were a slick, oily blue-black colour. They swarmed over the afflicted leech, their mouth parts rending chunks from it. The rot spread, appearing in buboes and boils on their skin, but died away almost as quickly. The leeches, at least, Mehrigus could make strong against the rot.

He collected another of the afflicted specimens from the first jar, and dropped it into the third jar, the one on the right. The leeches in this jar shimmered with purples and blues. As they feasted on the infected leech, buboes, boils and welts appeared across their flesh, sickly grey, green and yellow erupting on their shimmering, periwinkle flesh. But these marks of the disease didn’t merely die away. Where they erupted, they soon burst, birthing new leeches, oily and purple-skinned, free of the taint, which even then died away on their parent.

This was another step forward for Mehrigus – taking the disease’s vitality and turning its energies against it, binding them to the leeches’ own essence. But it was not enough. The leeches might feed on diseased flesh, but they could cleanse the rot only by stripping it away. Its victims would be stripped, scarred, mutilated. Saved, perhaps, but half-ruined by the leeches, killed by them if the rot went deep enough. It was more poison. Mehrigus would need more potency than this if he was to truly heal.

He returned the lid to the jar of infected leeches and turned back to the pages of the Book of Transformations.

V

A BALM OF ICHOR

Ngja appeared above the door. Mehrigus looked up but didn’t move, as if waiting for a more definite sign from his pet. This had become the norm, as if he had become loathe to imagine there should be any tedious mere apothecary’s business to distract him now. The lizard threw back his head, unimpressed, and chittered again, but there was no need.

‘Mehrigus!’ came a booming voice from below. ‘I’ve gots your guts and I’m here for mi’ gold!’

Mehrigus set the baetylus and the engraving tool down on his desk, atop the pages of the book, and hurried down the stairs.

‘’Ere it is,’ said the surly duardin, Grimendahl, not seeming to care much whether Mehrigus had arrived to hear him or not.

He slapped a heavy, and rather bloody, cloth sack down on the counter as Mehrigus entered.

‘What’s that?’ the Apothecary asked, peering down at the grizzled adventurer and his comrades.

‘You know what it is!’ said Grimendahl. ‘You asked for it!’

Mehrigus picked up an iron rod from beneath the counter and opened the mouth of the sack. ‘It’s the head. That’s not what I asked for, Grimendahl.’

‘It is,’ said the duardin, turning red. ‘Hydra’s blood, you said. That thing’s full of it!’

Mehrigus sighed. ‘I thought I’d been quite clear. Blood from the body, not the head. It doesn’t grow back from the head, does it? It grows back from the body. The head is the part that dies.’

‘Guts, ’eads, legs, can’t tell ’em apart with them hydras. Can’t tell its ’eads from its tails or any of ’em from its–’

‘Ignore our friend here,’ said Ostion, Grimendahl’s human companion, and a man who spoke curiously well for someone who’d fallen in with a disgraced duardin, an alcoholic priestess and a seasick pirate. ‘He’s obsessed with the heads. And he’s playing with you. We have what you need, Mehrigus. And it will be worth every single gold coin… but I’m sure we would all like to see them first.’

Mehrigus disappeared from sight and returned dragging a heavy wooden chest. He hauled it in front of the counter and nodded at it. Ostion did the same to Grimendahl who kicked it, then, cursing that it hadn’t magically opened when he did so, stooped and lifted the lid. The odd band, all four of them, seemed pleased enough with what they saw. Ostion nodded to another of the duardin, Kaliqar, who then stooped to reach into the sack at his feet. He brought out a large, earthen jar and set it on the counter. Mehrigus reached out to remove its lid.

‘Take care with that…’ said Ostion. He and the rest of his party were already shuffling away, dragging the chest behind them.

‘Thank you, all,’ said Mehrigus, unconcerned with their presence now he had what he wanted. ‘I will be quite careful with it.’

He removed the lid. Inside, just large enough to be visible above the surface of the pool of blackened blood that surrounded it in the jar, was the heart of a hydra.

Mehrigus followed Dormian across the courtyard and into the small basement where the wounded man lay feverish on the hay.

‘Paluris, I’ve brought an apothecary to see you,’ Dormian said, but the man was feverish and insensible. ‘I told you, he’s the one who fixed my eyes.’ Another moment went by without reply, and Dormian simply gestured towards the prone man. Mehrigus nodded and stepped closer. A woman, the wife of one of the other watchmen, Mehrigus was told, sat on a small stool beside the man, periodically checking his fever and mopping his brow.

‘They cut off his leg?’ said Mehrigus, crouching down beside him.

‘As soon as that chirurgeon saw a sign of the rot,’ said Dormian. ‘See what I mean about starting to think I was lucky?’ Dormian offered a grim chuckle. ‘But they saved him doing that, didn’t they?’ He seemed earnest.

‘Perhaps,’ said Mehrigus. He doubted it. This was simple butchery to him now. And the rot, well, Mehrigus couldn’t for a moment say it aloud, but the rot was growth, life, change, in its own way. Its fecundity might even have been turned to healing the man’s other wounds if Mehrigus had been brought here sooner. Still, Mehrigus had no need of such extra potence. Not anymore.

Mehrigus pulled a brass pot from his satchel. It had no lid, for the ichor inside was set solid, like black wax. Mehrigus took a knife from his robes and carved out some of the ichor from the centre of the pot, making a small well.

‘Leave me, please,’ he said to the others in the room. Dormian and the woman looked from one another to Mehrigus and the wounded man, Dormian shrugging to show that he saw no reason not to do as the apothecary asked. His clear, seeing eyes were evidence of his ability. They left.

Mehrigus set the pot down in the hay between the man’s legs. He took a tourniquet from his robes and bound it around the thigh of the man’s surviving whole leg. He breathed deeply as he prepared to test what would be this near-ultimate transformation as cure, then he put the point of the blade to the man’s leg, below the tourniquet. Quickly, he snatched up the pot to catch the blood that came streaming forth.

Mehrigus let the pot fill and flow over, then set it down again in the hay. He stitched and bandaged the cut he had made, then took the same knife and began to stir the blood and ichor, incanting the words he had gleaned from the Book of Transformations.

Essence, substance, enchantment.

The balm writhed and lashed, momentary shapes, waiting to be flesh…

VI

A COURSE OF LEECHES

Mehrigus sensed another presence in the room. He looked up, calmly, from his desk. He had been without fear for days. He had been transformed by certainty.

Trimegast stood in the doorway, at the head of the stairs. Ngja was nowhere to be seen. Mehrigus smiled.

‘You heard,’ he said.

‘I wondered,’ Trimegast replied. ‘It goes well, I think.’

Mehrigus smiled. ‘Perfectly, I think. I’ve deciphered more of the book and–’

Trimegast stepped into the room. Mehrigus paused, struck for a moment by the man’s seemingly greater stature. The infirmity he had seen before was gone.

‘Hmm?’ said Trimegast.

‘Oh, yes, I’ve deciphered more of the book and I have the proof I need. Of transformation as a cure.’ Mehrigus couldn’t help himself. He grinned.

‘You seem pleased,’ said Trimegast.

‘I am ready to show them all how mistaken they have been.’

Trimegast frowned. ‘You think the mistaken are willing to see it?’

‘Yes,’ said Mehrigus. ‘When I–’ Something about Trimegast’s stern gaze silenced him. The old man stepped closer. He peered at something on Mehrigus’ desk. The baetylus. Mehrigus watched him as he took it carefully in his hand, long fingernails tracing its geometries as he examined it. He smiled, pleased, and set it back down.

‘Perhaps… perhaps I will attempt one more proof before I show them,’ said Mehrigus, coy now.

‘Perhaps,’ said Trimegast, turning and descending the stairs. Mehrigus did not follow.

Mehrigus woke with a start. This had been happening more and more lately. He sat there, dazed. He couldn’t remember going to sleep, or what he had been doing before that. He didn’t know why he’d awoken as he had.

Then the banging started again.

He rolled out of bed, running a hand over his face as if to lure himself into consciousness. Ngja was on the wall beside the door, chittering furiously. Mehrigus seized up his robe from the floor and shot down the stairs.

‘Help! Help!’ came the voice, half drowning itself out with the frantic banging on the door. At least, Mehrigus assumed the banging and the voice were one and the same.

He opened the door.

A man fell into the shop, stumbling down the shallow steps behind the door. He collapsed on the floor at their feet, legs splayed, just about propping himself up on his hands as he coughed and wheezed. Mehrigus stepped slowly around him, willing only to nudge a little wooden stool towards the man with his foot. He was dressed in rags that were worse than tattered, matted hair poking through holes in a torn hood, sores and pustules covering his arms and legs.

‘I need… an… apothecary,’ he hacked. ‘I need… Mehrigus.’ The voice was a spiteful hiss.

‘Well, which one is it?’ said Mehrigus. ‘Mehrigus or an apothecary?’ It was a strange sort of vanity that seized him – he’d been ridiculed for so long while hoping for acceptance that it filled him with an odd sense of satisfaction now to think of himself as something more than a mere apothecary.

The man raised his head, glaring at Mehrigus with one good eye. It was clear he was desperate and had no time for this game. He hauled himself up onto the stool, panting and heaving.

‘I need the apothecary… Mehrigus… The rot… The rot…’ A drip-drip-dripping sound joined the noise of the man’s sputtering breath, and droplets of something began to patter onto the floor around the little stool. The man was horrifically afflicted. Mehrigus couldn’t quite believe he had made it here. In desperation, he supposed.

‘I don’t know if I can help you,’ said Mehrigus.

The man laughed. A wicked, snickering laugh. The hissing of his breathing could have been coming from anywhere – his mouth, his neck, his open wounds – as he did so. His hand shot out from his stinking robes and grabbed Mehrigus by the wrist. Mehrigus’ skin burned where the man touched it.

‘You can!’ hissed the rotten man, what seemed a terrible roar giving way to the most perverse laughter.

Mehrigus ground his teeth. His hand shot to the baetylus hanging around his neck. He clenched it in his left hand, even as his right hand burned, still clutching his staff. His fingers searched out its geometries, running over them to draw out the shapes of those most powerful symbols – the symbols of transformation – and the rotten man shrieked as the baetylus’ power lashed out at him. The burning receded and the afflicted hand recoiled.

The man screamed in pain.

‘Listen,’ said Mehrigus, angry now, but determined to take the opportunity fate had presented him. ‘You are terribly afflicted. That rot does more to you than you know. Your soul is in a worse state already than this miserable body of yours. But I will try.’

Mehrigus stood and paced across the room. He bolted the door and led the man into the secluded back room of the shop.

The man lay on the layer of thin sack cloth Mehrigus had rolled out on the floor. Fumescences filled the room, their smoke drifting from braziers around the walls. Mehrigus set the heavy glass jar down on the little table beside the man. He removed its broad lid slowly with both hands, setting it down carefully on the table beside the jar before reaching for his tongs, and picking out a huge, two-headed leech, grown fat on hydra’s blood and worse.

Mehrigus lowered it towards the man’s face, towards the gaping, horrific wound on his cheek. He set the leech to the diseased canker and carefully loosed his tongs. The huge leech quivered, slapping its tail against the man as it rolled its body over to bring its mouthparts to the diseased flesh of the open wound, latching on at once. The leech fed with one mouth, tearing at the rotten flesh, and the rot spread down its own body as it did. The leech’s flesh boiled with pustules and boils, but as it changed it came to match the man’s own diseased flesh and then, as the rot died away on the leech’s writhing skin, it came to take on the appearance of something else – healthier, human flesh. The leech’s second head bit on now, spewing out a black ichor from around its mouthparts, but it did not rend. Instead, the transformation that he’d begun in the leech’s flesh spread to the man, the rot dying away around the parasite’s bite, ichor spilling and changing, turning into fresh, pink, healthy human flesh. The leech itself was consumed by this transformation, its fat body thrashing away to nothingness as it gave up its substance to restore to the afflicted man what the rot had taken.

But the man howled in agony. Mehrigus knew well that the cause of this rot was dark and terrible, and it would not be easily undone by the physics and magics of a mere man. Great buboes grew on the man’s body, bursting as they swelled and casting blobs of pus and angry, red, bloodstained spores into the air. Mehrigus reached with his tongs for another leech. He pulled back the man’s tattered robes and dropped the fat, quivering thing into the worst of the wounds he could see on the man’s side, but the rot still attacked him and the man kicked and thrashed.

Mehrigus could not wait. He picked up the glass jar and shook it, hurling a rain of bloated, two-headed leeches over the man.

It was a feast. The leeches attacked the rot, here and there even fighting their brothers and sisters for the taste. Their potency was great, perhaps even greater than Mehrigus had hoped, and in their frenzy, many split, one gnashing head pulling free from the other, a second bursting from each as the leeches multiplied, tearing at flesh and vomiting forth black ichor.

The man screamed and wailed, thrashing his legs, ragged fingers tearing at his own flesh where the leeches worked. Their bulbous bodies quivered, the transformation rife, but it was too much. No longer did the writhing leeches take on the shade of healthy, living flesh, but as they thrashed instead their tails grew into a mass of lashing tentacles of vivid pink and blue, melting into the man’s flesh and spreading their lurid colour across his body. Where the leeches stripped away the rot on the man’s face, they exposed for a moment the bone and cartilage of his jaw, his nose and his cheeks, and feasted on it the same way. Their flesh grew hard, and as the transformation spread grew into a great bony protrusion, like a beak, where they had eaten away the man’s face. The man’s screams were transformed, too, turning from gurgling howls into manic screeching.

Bile rose suddenly in Mehrigus’ throat. He grabbed an ancient sword from the wall and hoisted it above his head. He stared at the transformed figure writhing in frenzied agony on the floor, and brought the blade crashing down, severing the man’s – the beast’s – head clean from his shoulders.

VII

A GIFT OF CHANGE

Mehrigus’ skin ran with cold sweat. He sat on the floor of the shop, in the corner, his back to two cold stone walls.

There was a silver bowl full of water beside him. He cupped a handful of it and threw it on his face. His carefully prepared crop of leeches, sat in dozens of glass jars in crates in front of him, just waiting to be carried to the street and put onto carts to take Mehrigus’ ‘cure’ to the city. But now Mehrigus had seen the effects of his cure and had fallen into a stupor, a fog of clouded thoughts. He felt stretched by exhaustion, anticipation and now cold fear.

He hauled himself to his feet and staggered across the room. He clambered up the shallow steps and yanked the door open, stepping out into the street outside. He would find Dormian and Paluris. Mehrigus would need more proof – though he dreaded finding it – if he were to really admit he had failed. He wanted to see, again, his transformation as a cure. He wanted desperately to believe that the rotten man’s fate was down to his own sorry condition.

He headed across Mandringatte and west through the small streets, to the courtyard where Dormian had taken him weeks before.

The little basement was empty. The matted pile of straw still lay at one end but it didn’t look like anyone had been here for days. Mehrigus turned back the way he had come, up the stairs to the passageway between houses. As he emerged into the courtyard, a window opened above him. A man leaned out, yelling, bawling, sobbing. ‘What have you done?!’ It was Paluris. ‘What have you done?!’

Mehrigus stood dumbfounded. Paluris disappeared from the window and up ahead, where stone steps ran from the end of the passageway up to the floor above, the crashing of bolts could be heard. Paluris appeared again, in the open doorway, howling in rage. He stood there, whole again, in a way – one bird-footed leg gripping the stone of the threshold.

Mehrigus turned and fled through the courtyard and down the narrow streets.

Sweat was pouring from Mehrigus’ brow by the time he crashed through the front door of Dormian’s house and charged up the stairs. He burst into the little room Dormian and his family used as a sitting room. He couldn’t wait – he couldn’t risk being refused entry. He needed to see for himself.

Dormian was slumped in the corner, hands to his face, scratching at his eyes. The boy and the two women stood over him.

‘Horrors! Horrors!’ he yelled. ‘I’m surrounded by daemons!’ Dormian turned his head. Swirls of purple and blue clouded his eyes, the pupils barely visible beneath them – not blind, but all too seeing. Mehrigus could feel him fix his corrupted sight on him as he entered the room. Dormian howled all the louder. Mehrigus turned and fled once more.

Mehrigus left Mandringatte, hurriedly descending the steps down to the little lane outside his shop. He turned the corner onto that narrow street to be confronted by a mob, Paluris at their head, hobbling on his mismatched legs, waving a sword and screaming. Around him a crowd was yelling, carrying cudgels, swords, small axes, blacksmith tools – seemingly anything they could lay their hands on. They battered at the door to Mehrigus’ shop.

‘I didn’t mean any of this…’ Mehrigus murmured, weeping as he took an almost automatic set of steps forward. Something inside him was driving him to give himself up to the crowd.

But they hadn’t seen him. Not yet. Up ahead, the mob smashed the door from its charges and in they swept.

Mehrigus hesitated. He reached for the baetylus around his neck. He searched for the words to a prayer to Sigmar – they did not come. The baetylus felt heavier. He turned it over in his fingers, frozen in indecision. Over the weeks and months since Trimegast had gifted him the Book of Transformations, Mehrigus had carved it with new geometries. The runes were meaningless now – lost, all but erased by the lattice of lines that allowed Mehrigus to trace out any of the symbols of transformation and transfiguration he so chose. But it was changed beyond even that now – perhaps it had been for some time. As Mehrigus turned the baetylus in his hands, he followed the oldest of the lines he could find, but no matter how he turned it, he could not follow it back to where it began. The lines ran ever onwards but never returned – it was impossible. It was changed.

Mehrigus felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned, gasping.

It was Trimegast.

‘Those who are mistaken will never be willing to see it,’ Trimegast said, beaming almost beatifically. ‘Come with me.’

Trimegast pushed back his robes, sheathing the sword he held in his hand. He was a foot taller than Mehrigus. He was younger, sturdier, more imposing than Mehrigus had even seen him before. He was changed.

‘They will not see,’ he said. ‘You see, Mehrigus. You see. Now it is time to leave.’

‘No,’ said Mehrigus. ‘They don’t understand… but it’s a mistake. The hydra… the leeches… the cure… It didn’t work… It will… I’ll… I will make it work. I will make it change.’

‘It is enough, my young apprentice,’ said Trimegast, pulling at Mehrigus’ shoulder. ‘You have shown them the power of change. A war is raging, but it is not between mortals and this trifling rot. It is a great game, a war between the gods. And you have shown you command the power to play your part in it, Mehrigus. Nurgle has sent his minions and you have mastered the gifts of change well enough to defeat them. For now. Our master is pleased. But these others, Mehrigus, they do not see…’

Ahead, down the way, the haphazard windows of the old shop erupted outwards into the street one by one, staves, axes and spears bursting through them. A few moments later, smoke followed, billowing.

‘One day it might be revealed to them, perhaps,’ said Trimegast. ‘One day. But for now, you must not be seen, my apprentice. Not like this.’

Up ahead, the mob began to emerge from the shop. They were led by the watch captain. He recognised Mehrigus at once.

‘They’ll hunt me. They’ll find me,’ he said, turning to Trimegast, pale with fear.

‘No,’ said Trimegast. ‘You have been given the gift of change.’

Mehrigus reached a hand into his robes, even as the mob dashed towards him. He fingered the edges of the sheaf of papers. The Book of Transformations. He looked up, panting.

Trimegast stepped across, swinging his huge, twisting staff in a great arc in front of him. Bolts of light shot forth from the gleaming arc, launching into the mob like arrows. Men howled when they struck them and Trimegast turned, grabbing Mehrigus by the collar and hauling him back down the street. Unthinking now, Mehrigus ran with him.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

Trimegast turned a corner – into a little alley between shops leading back to Mandringatte. But up ahead came a watchman. Trimegast leapt forward, striking the watchman down with his staff. He seemed untroubled by the effort.

‘I am Trimegastraxi’attar-i-qash, magister now to you, my apprentice,’ he said. ‘And you are right. They will hunt you. It is time to take the gift of change, Mehrigus…’

Trimegast reached out a hand, running pointed claws over the baetylus hanging around Mehrigus’ neck.

‘Take it, my apprentice. Take the gift of change…’

Mehrigus reached for the book inside his robes. He drew it out slowly, even as he heard the noise of the mob approaching. He ran his hands over it. He was drawn to a part he had never fathomed before. He knew what he needed to do. He could never allow himself to be seen again. Not like this. With the tip of a finger, he instinctively drew a strange sigil he had never seen before.

Trimegast beamed. ‘The Mark of Tzeentch.’

Mehrigus cast off his robes. He stooped and pulled the breeches and jerkin from the slain watchman at his feet, even as the mob approached. There was a puddle in the road beside him, and in the reflection Mehrigus saw, though he already knew, that his appearance was changed. He was taller, younger, his skin darker, his eyes changed from brown to green, his hair from straight and neat to shaggy and thick.

He placed the book on top of his discarded robes and conjured a blue flame around them – he needed those pages no longer. He turned and ran back to the head of the alleyway. The mob was approaching.

‘Where is he?’ yelled the watch captain. Paluris stumbled along behind him, and thirty or forty men after them.

‘He’s not here,’ said Mehrigus. ‘He must’ve gone that way,’ he added, gesturing on down the street towards the north gate. The mob hurried past and Mehrigus made to follow them before letting himself fall behind. He turned, his heart pounding, and slinked back into the shadows where Trimegast waited for him.

This, it seemed, was his fate. He could change it no longer.

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
A Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire novel
Josh Reynolds

Amidst the ruins of the once-great Mirrored City, cursed by Nagash himself, ex-freeguild soldier Seguin Rayner and his allies seek secrets – but even if they retrieve them, can they ever escape Shadespire?

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

THE WEIGHT OF SILVER

Steven B Fischer

We liked Steven B Fischer so much that we invited him back to Inferno!. In this volume, Steven provides an emotional story that revolves around a platoon of survivors of the Cadian catastrophe. Showing us what it’s like for a new commander to lead these insular veterans, Steven’s descriptive writing and immersive atmosphere create a sense of consequence to every moment.

The body lying still in the dirt may have once been human, but there was little left to mark it as such, aside from the mangled remnants of a man’s face, sun-darkened and wrinkled and now caked in blood.

Lieutenant Glavia Aerand stood over the corpse, eyes tracing the tattered remains of its heavy, brown tunic to the broken limbs and gouged torso beneath. Her helmet’s lumen flooded the pool of blood beside the body, already grown thick and dark in the chill mountain night, and something flickered in what was left of the man’s calloused hand.

Aerand knelt as dark forms circled around her, the deep-green flak armour of her platoon a ring of ghosts in the night. As she reached down and lifted the small piece of metal, a gruff voice echoed behind her.

‘It’s silver,’ Sergeant Roderick Olemark whispered, his violet eyes flickering above the hoarfrost in his beard. ‘The locals believe silver can ward off cultists and the warp-taint they carry.’

Olemark was one of the few in their formation familiar with the planet. He’d come to Ourea nearly three years ago with the Cadian 873rd – before the slow bleed of counterinsurgency and desertion cost the unit nearly all of its soldiers and the 900th absorbed the remainder when they landed a few days ago.

Aerand rose awkwardly in her dark, heavy armour, trying to hide the difficulty of the gesture. She was still adjusting to the mountain world’s harsh gravity, but she’d be damned if anyone knew how much her legs burned after only a short patrol.

She dropped the metal trinket into her palm, its design crude but unmistakable – an armoured figure, wreathed in blistering sunlight. The Emperor of Mankind sat glorified on Holy Terra hundreds of light years away, but even here His hymns and prayers were sung. Even here He shielded human minds from the warp.

‘You don’t seem to share their confidence,’ Aerand replied, returning the effigy to the corpse’s hand.

Olemark chuckled, then patted his lasgun. ‘This is the only metal I trust to stop a heretic.’

There was a subtle condescension in his voice that grated on Aerand like the new, stiff boots tearing her feet apart. At first she had thought it was Olemark alone, or that his patronizing was directed only at her. Maybe because she was young. Maybe because this was her first command. Maybe because most people who heard her name assumed she’d gotten where she was on the coattails of her father.

But it wasn’t any of those things. There was a sense of superiority among all the veterans, and truth be told, she couldn’t fault them for it. Olemark and his men knew more about this planet than she ever would – knowledge they’d earned through misery and bloodshed. To make an issue of their arrogance would only sow dissention and alienate the few experts she badly needed.

Aerand motioned for the platoon to advance, and forty sparks of light drifted forward through the trees.

Corwyn, Delaver, Maltia, Artus. She knew the names and stories of every trooper around her. She’d made certain of that on the voyage to Ourea, because if her father had taught her any lesson, it was this: her soldiers were willing to fight for the Emperor, but few would die for anyone other than their comrades. But she didn’t know Olemark and his grizzled veterans, and that unsettled her nearly as much as the steep ridgelines around her or the dim glow of firelight in the valley below.

Up ahead, between the silhouettes of jagged, titanic mountains, a cluster of buildings was burning. Aerand motioned for the platoon to halt, and unfurled a crude, bulky map from the case across her shoulders.

‘Haggerty Homestead,’ Olemark mumbled as he strode past, the orange glow of the flames bathing his scar-crossed face. ‘Save you the time searching around on the map.’

Aerand bit her tongue and made a point of locating the small complex anyway. No other settlements nearby. No known cultist hideouts for miles. She turned to the young trooper beside her and pointed to the vox-caster strapped to his back. ‘Let headquarters know we’re investigating, Maresh. I’ll report back once we find something.’

Dead foliage and loose stones ground beneath Aerand’s feet as she descended the steep incline, squads fanning out in a crescent around her. This was a standard cordon manoeuvre – one she’d forced her platoon to rehearse hundreds of times – but even so, she felt her breath grow rapid. She was no Whiteshield anymore, and this was her first chance to prove it.

The complex had been built from wood and stone, a carryover from the time before Imperial voidcraft brought rockrete and machines to this world. In the centre of the valley, a large building was burning, smaller cottages already reduced to ash. No simple accident could have caused such a blaze, and there would be no survivors, she was certain of that.

A beam in the main building settled with a crash as her platoon strode past like smoke-shrouded shadows. In the light of the sparks it threw into the air, Aerand spotted a cluster of charred bodies ahead.

Fifteen, maybe twenty, mangled and marred like the man in the forest. As she neared, a strange apprehension grew inside her, the skin along her back prickling with unease. Aerand paused and surveyed the macabre scene as her soldiers pushed forward to clear the complex.

It was clear once she’d drawn closer that the bodies hadn’t been randomly scattered – they were arranged in a deliberate pattern. Eight gory rays extended from a central circle, a single naked body at its centre, less mutilated, but more disturbing than the rest.

‘Terra save us,’ Corwyn muttered as he led his squad past, crossing his arms in the sign of the aquila amid unsettled glances from his soldiers.

Aerand knelt in the wavering firelight and stared at the young woman. Across her chest and stomach, a symbol had been etched into the woman’s pale flesh – a twisting teardrop like a tongue of flame.

As Aerand stared at the pattern, an inexplicable horror washed over her. She’d seen her share of corpses, many mutilated far beyond this, but there was something obscene in the mark itself, even ignoring the way it had been fashioned. The scent of burning metal and rotting flesh replaced the odour of smoke in the air, and the taste of bile and blood rose in her throat. When she reached to cover the corpse with the torn cloak beside it, the young woman’s eyes snapped open and the sound of gunfire rang out from the ridge.

The roar of weapons and shouting voices split the night like a peal of thunder, and bursts of lasfire rained down towards her platoon. Aerand tried to tear herself away from the body, but found she could not look away from its empty, black eyes.

A rough hand shook her shoulder, Olemark’s voice towering over the sea of hushed whispers that had suddenly filled her mind.

‘Lieutenant!’ the sergeant shouted, shouldering his lasgun and laying into the trigger. ‘How do you want us to engage?’

Aerand stared at his face and the flashes of lasfire from his weapon. Beside him, Corwyn and Delaver crouched, pouring rounds into the dark trees.

Lieutenant,’ Corwyn shouted, the gold chevrons on his shoulder gleaming red in the firelight. ‘Fix and flank?’

Aerand opened her mouth to reply but couldn’t form the words. She looked back at the corpse, its black eyes fully open, the symbol on its chest reaching out through the night.

‘Throne,’ Olemark grumbled. ‘She’s shell-shocked already.’ He turned to the soldiers beside him, as Aerand struggled against the shackles on her voice. ‘Can’t be more than half a dozen up there. Keep your squads behind what’s left of the buildings and lay down suppressive fire. My troopers will flank up the draw.’

His troopers, not hers.

‘And someone send a medicae to grab the lieutenant! If she gets herself shot, you know they’ll blame it on us.’

Desperation rose in Aerand’s mind as her platoon streamed out into the night. She should be with them. She should be leading them. But for some terrible reason, her body wouldn’t listen. Instead, her eyes darted between the woman in the dirt and the ridgeline above, the same dark repulsion tethering her to both.

Aerand blinked as two medicaes rushed up beside her.

‘Lieutenant,’ Artus whispered, pulling a bioscanner from his pack and running it across her body. ‘We need to get you out of here.’ He shook his head as the readout came back blank.

In the darkness of the forest, the lumens of Olemark’s squad flashed like shooting stars, streaking up towards the sound of weapons fire on the ridgeline. The taste of rust grew stronger in Aerand’s mouth, the prickling of her skin now a veritable frenzy. ‘Fifth squad engaging,’ Olemark growled over the vox.

A moment later, the ridgeline flashed bright with lasfire and the explosions of well-placed frag grenades. The roar of rifle reports swelled like a wave, then drifted slowly away until only the crackling of flames echoed through the valley.

‘The heretics are dead,’ Olemark called, then continued in a sullen whisper, ‘As are two of ours.’

Aerand’s breath fell from her lungs. Two of her soldiers, dead, against a force they outnumbered nearly ten to one. The ringing in her ears began to fade, and the taste in her mouth slowly evaporated, replaced by a horrible weight in her chest.

‘Who?’ she asked, blinking and staring at the body beside her.

Olemark spoke the names of the dead troopers over the vox, but Aerand was too numb to understand anything but the anger in his voice. She reached down and grasped the tunic from the dirt, throwing it over the woman and the sigil on her chest.

The woman’s eyes were not black. The woman’s eyes were not open. They had never been.

Hours later, Aerand struggled to shake that moment from her mind as she marched beside her soldiers along a narrow mountain path. Apex Inruptus loomed tall on the mountainside ahead, the dark, jagged towers of the ancient fortress climbing like knives into the bleeding horizon, casting their shadows over the high mountain pass. For centuries this valley had been one of Ourea’s vital arteries, allowing caravans of livestock, then hulking, smoke-laden machines to bear timber and stone through the treacherous mountains. For the past decade that flow had been choked to a trickle, replaced by endless Astra Militarum convoys shuttling fuel and ammunition from one harried encampment to another.

Her platoon stretched beside her like a twisting, black river, Olemark’s veteran squad at the fore, bearing the bodies of Karletti and Vaughn on salvaged boards from the homestead. Aerand had hardly known either trooper, but they had been her soldiers, if only for a few days. And now they were dead because of her.

Her eyes met Olemark’s as she walked beside the formation – his expression was pure ice. His doubts had been muffled before, but she could scarcely imagine how his veterans must feel now that she had confirmed them. How her own soldiers must feel to know their leader had failed them in their first real trial.

For the first time in her life, she was glad her father was no longer alive. Glad he wouldn’t have to know how badly she had let him down. She’d been only a child when he died beside his regiment, holding Kasr Kraf as Cadia fell, all so that a few more transports could reach the evacuation zone. All so that she could reach the evacuation zone. It would break his heart to know this was how she’d repaid him.

Aerand trudged up the slope, the burning in her feet long since faded into numbness, dwarfed by the guilt that gripped her chest and stole her breath. The feeling only grew as she crossed the narrow bridge to Apex’s western gate, hardly noticing the mind-numbing chasm below. The thick, stone doors ground slowly apart, opening to a courtyard blanketed in thin snow.

Colonel Yarin waited within, her face drawn into a steely grimace as she stared at the pair of corpses leading Aerand’s platoon. Behind her, a field chirurgeon took one look at the ice on Vaughn and Karletti’s pale skin and packed his instruments back into a row of blood-stained crates.

‘Colonel,’ Aerand began, as Olemark’s squad laid their morbid cargo down onto the cold stone. ‘Let me–’

‘Stop,’ Yarin replied, her short, greying hair fluttering in the stiff, mountain wind. ‘See to your dead first, then meet me in my quarters. You can explain then.’

Aerand nodded and turned back to her platoon. In the centre of the courtyard, Olemark knelt beside Karletti and Vaughn, pulling an old, faded flag from deep within his pack. Cadia’s golden pillars glimmered on a crimson sea, the original standard of the 873rd. Slowly, he tore two strips from the fraying fabric and laid them over the corpses’ eyes.

This wasn’t the same ritual the 900th practiced, but Aerand recognized its significance well enough. She had been born on Cadia. She had stared into the Eye of Terror and felt its heavy gaze staring back. Karletti and Vaughn had spent most of their lives looking into that madness, and now in death, they were finally free.

Olemark’s squad gathered around him and lifted the two bodies from the snow, bearing them back towards Apex’s gate.

‘They’ve carried that weight far enough, alone,’ Corwyn said, stepping up beside Aerand. ‘The least we can do is help.’

She shook her head. ‘I think our help is the last thing they want right now. Take the platoon back to the barracks and give them some rest.’

As Olemark’s squad carried the bodies through the gate, Aerand followed. She had seen men and women die before. Throne, she’d killed her fair share during her years as a Whiteshield. But this was the first time she’d stared at her comrades’ corpses and known their deaths rested on her. Her troopers’ lives were her single greatest weapon, and she had just squandered two of them.

Aerand stood at a distance on the narrow stone bridge as Olemark and his squad lifted their comrades, then dropped them over the ledge. Bitter wind whipped up from the chasm as the corpses fell, vanishing into the shadow of the mountain fortress. In months, they would be nothing but bone. In years, nothing but dust. In centuries that dust would become one with the mountain and the fortress both men had died to defend.

Aerand nodded as Olemark returned to the fortress ahead of his squad. He brushed hard against her shoulder.

‘Why don’t you step aside, lieutenant? Before anyone else gets killed.’

Aerand opened her mouth to reply, before her voice was drowned out by the sound of the wind.

‘I don’t know what it was, sir,’ Aerand confessed, as Yarin paced behind her crude desk. The colonel’s office had been an ammo depot only two days before, and a servo-skull twittered over a stack of papers atop the crates and shell boxes clustered at the centre of the room. Yarin’s face was drawn up into its customary scowl, the look somehow even more rigid than usual.

‘I’ve been through dozens of battles. Nothing like this has ever happened before.’

‘And you’ve never been in command during a single one,’ Yarin replied. ‘It’s different when you’re making the decisions. When there are others’ lives resting in your hands.’

Aerand couldn’t deny that, but it hadn’t felt like fear or panic – she’d learned to master those sins when she was just a child.

Yarin leaned against a thin, slit window, staring into the snow falling on Apex’s battlements. ‘Frankly, I don’t care what it was. I care that it crippled you in the middle of combat and forced your senior sergeant to take over command.’

‘It won’t happen again, sir.’

‘No. It certainly won’t.’

As she uttered the words, a shadow crept over the room, and Aerand turned to see a massive form in the doorway. Her father had fought with the Adeptus Astartes on Cadia, and he’d told her stories of the Emperor’s Angels when she was young, but seeing one in person was another thing entirely.

Slowly, the behemoth stepped into the room, his steps nearly silent, despite the fact his dark-grey power armour dwarfed both Aerand and the colonel. On his chestplate, the aquila shone in blood-red, mirrored on his shoulder by a crimson skull bearing lightning wings.

‘Colonel.’

The voice that spilled from the Space Marine’s dark helmet seemed not entirely human, its cold, rocky tenor as unyielding as the mountains outside. Aerand wondered how long the Space Marine had stood there, and how much of her stumbling conversation he’d heard.

Even Yarin seemed shaken by his presence, her confident demeanour shifting to something more guarded.

‘My lord,’ she replied, before turning to Aerand. ‘The Storm Wings have come to lead the push to retake Ourea. Across the planet, they will be leading key assaults against the cultists and traitors.’

The red slits of the Space Marine’s eyes fell across Aerand. ‘Indeed.’

‘Scouting patrols from Guard convoys have reported a group of cultists not far from here,’ Yarin continued. ‘Amassing in numbers we’ve not seen before, and converging on the spaceport at Noravis Opum. I don’t need to tell you how crippling it would be to lose one of the largest loyal settlements in the region.’

‘At nightfall, Lord Tarvarius will lead the 900th in a counter-attack to destroy this army, crushing the cultist threat in the region. You and your platoon will stay behind to secure Apex Inruptus against any retaliation.’

Aerand’s shoulders fell as her breath escaped her. Relegated to nothing but glorified guard duty. This was the single most important operation of the war and her platoon was going to be left behind. She had made a mistake. She had lost the colonel’s confidence. She could accept that. But her platoon was one of the best in the regiment, and there was no reason to punish her soldiers for her failings. She nearly began to protest before Yarin continued.

‘Commissar Burdain will accompany the main regiment on the mission, but when she returns there will be a full investigation into last night’s ambush.’

Aerand’s mind spun, as if she could suddenly feel the weight of the mountain above her head pushing down onto her shoulders.

‘Do you know why I chose you for command, lieutenant?’ Yarin asked. ‘Why, of all the young recruits, I selected you?’

Of course Aerand knew. It was the same reason she’d been chosen for anything in her life.

Colonel Regus Aerand had been a hero – it stood to reason his daughter must be, too. ‘Because of my father.’

For a moment, the colonel seemed to forget the titan standing beside her, because her expression almost crept into a smile. ‘In spite of him. I served with your father on Cadia and Rusk. He was a brave man and his soldiers loved him deeply, but he was arrogant and rash. I chose you because you seemed to be neither, and I hope I did not make a mistake.’

Aerand knelt on the dusty chapel floor, staring up at the statue at the front of the nave and mouthing the words of a whispered prayer.

‘My Emperor, forgive me, for I have failed you. My Emperor, forgive me, for I have failed myself. I have forgotten your light and wavered before the darkness. I have forgotten your strength and stumbled on your path. I ask not for mercy, but only redemption, that I may prove myself true in the battles to come.’

Dim light streamed through the building’s stained windows, bathing the image of the Emperor in a multi-hued glow. He always appeared fearless. An image that demanded obedience and respect. Aerand stared at her own hands, knotted in prayer, and wondered if He had ever felt the same doubt she felt now.

Olemark’s words rang like knives in her ears, spat so bitterly over the bodies of her dead soldiers. She could not step down, but maybe she should step aside. Olemark and his veterans had been on this planet for years. They knew its people, and their enemy, better than anyone else. And what did she know? How to lock up during battle and get her troopers killed.

Aerand sighed, and across the room a massive form emerged from the shadow of a soaring pillar.

‘There is desperation in your prayers,’ Tarvarius remarked. ‘That is good. We should all be desperate for deliverance from the evil that stalks this galaxy.’

The Space Marine was still adorned in his grey ceramite armour, but he cradled his helmet in one massive arm. His eyes, the colour of ink, watched her with careful determination, two black pools set against ghost-pale skin like dark stones rising from the snow-capped mountains outside. Aerand nodded. But it wasn’t just desperation she felt, it was guilt, and fear, and doubt, as well.

The Adeptus Astartes dropped to his knees beside her in a motion that made the chapel tremble. As he knelt, his eyes fell onto the image of the Emperor, and his lips mumbled a silent phrase.

‘I thought you didn’t worship Him, my lord?’ Aerand asked softly, pausing for a moment as she remembered who it was that knelt beside her. ‘At least not the same way we do.’

Tarvarius nodded slowly, surveying the arches and altar around him. ‘I do not need to believe He is a god in order to find comfort in the ritual of prayer, or to find peace and guidance in His holy places.’ He was silent for some time, then continued, ‘You saw something out there. Something that shook you more deeply than the others.’

Aerand pursed her lips, regretting opening her mouth, but unable to stop now. ‘And two of my soldiers are dead because of it.’

A muffled sound escaped Tarvarius, what she might have believed was a chuckle if produced by anyone else. ‘You say that as if it is some great evil.’

He motioned with a coal-grey gauntlet to the panes of stained glass surrounding the chapel, cluttered with bleeding bodies and wounded heroes.

‘Soldiers die,’ he said. ‘That is why we exist. It is our greatest service to the Emperor, and the greatest honour for one of his servants. If I led your entire regiment to death tonight, I would consider it no great loss in the grand weight of his galaxy.’

Aerand shifted uneasily. She had heard these words before, or words close enough to them from the mouth of her father. Your soldiers’ lives are your most valuable weapons. You cannot be afraid to use them.

‘But they didn’t have to die,’ she replied. ‘They died because I made a mistake. They died because of me.’

Tarvarius nodded, reaching his gauntleted hands around his neck and pulling out a chain of thick, dark iron links. He held the chain before him, then set it gently in Aerand’s hands.

Her arms nearly buckled with the weight of the metal, but holding it closer, she saw that each link had been crafted in the shape of two interlocking talons, like birds of prey bound in combat. Aerand winced as one link dug into her palm, the razor talon drawing a thin streak of blood. Only then did she notice the row of pale scars lining the Adeptus Astartes’ neck.

‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked, his voice quiet but dangerous, like a storm about to break.

Aerand shook her head.

‘This is a record of my Chapter’s failures, forged on our home world of Eyrie.’ Tarvarius took the chain from her shaking hands, running his fingers across each time-worn link. ‘One link for every battle we have lost. One for every mission we have failed to accomplish.’

The Space Marine paused upon a single, ancient ring, time-eaten and tarnished, but larger than all the rest. ‘When our primarch Corvus Corax led the Raven Guard against the heretic Horus, he stumbled into a trap that killed nearly all of our brothers. We were almost purged from the galaxy, and Corax fled in disgrace. It was millennia before the Raven Guard and their successors recovered from his departure. Centuries more before we learned to embrace our failings as strength rather than weakness.’

Tarvarius replaced the chain onto his broad, scarred shoulders. ‘Your past is either a shackle or an inspiration. You will make mistakes. And your soldiers will die for them.’

He pointed a massive finger towards the gleaming silver bar inlaid on her shoulder guard. ‘But that is the weight of the silver on your shoulders. That is the weight of the iron on mine. The Emperor has no perfect servants, and so he must make do with broken ones like us.’

Slowly, with unexpected grace, the living war machine rose and strode towards the door. ‘Say your prayers, lieutenant, but do not linger on your knees. Your Emperor needs your leadership more than your repentance.’

Olemark’s glaring eyes flashed in Aerand’s vision. ‘What if I lead and they don’t follow, my lord?’

‘Then move alone,’ the Space Marine replied.

From the portico along the citadel’s western wall, Aerand watched a storm roll into the valley. Somewhere beyond the black clouds and peals of thunder, the Cadian 900th was closing in on its target. She should have been with them – her soldiers should have been with them – but instead, they lingered here.

Aerand reached her hand out from beneath the ancient shelter, drops of half-frozen rain splattering into her palm. She shivered slightly as she surveyed the fortress before her. Apex Inruptus had stood for a thousand years, built in the dark ages before the Imperium returned to Ourea in order to secure one of the few passable routes through the titanic summits that blanketed the planet. As she studied its pinnacled, razor walls, nestled into the mountain like just one more peak, she knew it would stand for a thousand more, regardless if anyone remained inside to defend it.

In the three soaring towers along Apex’s outer wall, squads held vigil beneath needle-like spires, pairs of soldiers manning the autoguns mounted within. Twelve troopers to watch the narrow mountain pass, while the rest of her platoon took shelter inside.

As she stared into the approaching storm, a flash of lightning struck a high peak nearby, toppling snow and stone into the valley below. When the light faded, Aerand felt the hair on her neck rise, her skin prickling just as it had the night before.

She took a deep breath and willed her racing heart to slow. Had she become so fragile that even a simple storm could leave her on the brink of terror?

Aerand sighed and turned back towards the barracks, but as she passed beneath the portico, two dark forms hurried down the corridor towards her.

‘Lieutenant,’ Corwyn said, ‘Lord Tarvarius is calling with word from the regiment.’ Beside him, Maresh held out the receiver attached to the vox-caster on his back.

Aerand nodded. If Tarvarius was reporting back, that meant the battle was already won. She should have been relieved, but instead, a wave of trepidation washed over her.

‘They are gone,’ Tarvarius said the moment she lifted the receiver.

‘Praise the Throne,’ Aerand replied, feeling anything but joyful.

‘You mishear,’ said Tarvarius, the first hint of something other than confidence in his tone. ‘Your intelligence was deceived. We have scoured the sector and there are no cultists here. What is your status?’

As he spoke, the prickling along Aerand’s neck grew, memories of the night before washing over her like a wave. Her mind spun with a sudden imbalance, and the taste of bile rose in her throat. Suddenly, the air smelled of smoke, and her arms grew heavy as she raised the transmitter to her lips.

‘Fine,’ she whispered.

But they were not fine – she was suddenly confident of that. The cultist army had not simply vanished; if they’d abandoned Noravis Opum, it was for some other target. A target like the fortress she currently held.

Tarvarius broke back through the static. ‘Are you certain?’

Aerand heard her breath begin to race, shallow and rapid like the night before. Her armour settled heavy on her shoulders as Corwyn stared at her, confused, untouched by the terror that burned through her bones.

But it wasn’t just terror she felt anymore. Something even stronger grew beside her fear. She was angry and determined. Whatever was coming, she would meet it this time.

‘No,’ Aerand replied. ‘But it will be.’

‘You feel it,’ Tarvarius said. Not a question, but a statement. ‘The same presence as during the ambush.’

She paused. If she said yes and was wrong, she’d be a fool once again. If she said yes and was right, that could mean something even worse.

‘I do,’ she replied, staring at the soaring citadel above her head. Apex Inruptus had not fallen in a thousand years, and she would not let it tonight.

There was silence, then a muttered curse over the vox as Colonel Yarin shouted orders in the background.

‘We are coming,’ Tarvarius replied. ‘Hold the fortress.’

The door slammed open before Aerand, Corwyn and Maresh stumbling in at her heels. Soldiers lingered throughout the barracks, most lying on bed rolls cleaning dusty lasguns or checking power packs before it was their turn to hold watch.

It was obvious, now that she could see it. Noravis Opum had never been the cultists’ true goal. The settlement was exposed, practically indefensible, vulnerable from both the ground and the air. Even if the cultists had captured the spaceport, they never could have held it. But if their feint allowed them to take Apex Inruptus, they could cut off reinforcements and resupply from Noravis to a dozen other settlements, then take any they wished after starving them to the bone.

‘All bodies on the wall in five minutes,’ she called. ‘Full battle gear and loadouts, ready to fight.’

As Aerand stormed into the room, they should have risen to attention. Instead, the few closest to the door stood slowly and leaned up against the wall while the rest continued their business, unbothered. In the back of the room, circled around steaming rations, Olemark and his veterans stared at her, unimpressed.

‘The sky is falling out there,’ Olemark replied, turning back to polish his lasgun’s barrel. ‘If you wanted to get the rest of us killed, you could find a faster way to do it than making us catch rot.’

Aerand bristled at the contempt in his voice. She could make a show of force. She could shout or fire her laspistol into the ceiling. Throne, she could drag those still sitting onto their feet and demand at gunpoint they show her the respect her rank merited. But what good would that do? She had lost their trust, though she desperately needed it now, and no amount of anger could bring that back.

‘I made a mistake,’ Aerand said, her voice cool and level. Her father may have been brash, but he understood his soldiers, and for those who were accustomed to screams and berating, a quiet tone was often harder to ignore.

Never let a failure hide, because they have a way of growing in the shadows, and if you let a mistake fester long enough, you may find it has rooted too deep to correct.

‘I made a mistake last night and two of us are dead because of it.’

Throughout the room, all eyes turned towards her, the exhausted, dirty faces of her soldiers awash with frustration and lingering hope.

‘I don’t have an excuse for that, but I do have a reason.’ Aerand motioned to the open door behind her, where rain and lightning poured down in a deluge, out on the saw-toothed peaks and plummeting valleys rising and falling like the teeth of some unholy maw.

‘I felt something last night – something I’ve never felt before, not on a dozen missions on half as many worlds. I’m not certain what it was, or why I alone felt it, but I feel it again tonight.’

Olemark scoffed. ‘What you felt was fear.’

Aerand’s fingers drifted slowly towards her laspistol. He was bordering on insubordination. She could kill him for that, and Throne, she wanted to.

But she needed Olemark. She needed his veterans. She needed every soldier in this room with their eyes locked on her every movement.

Violence can never ensure discipline. Executions do not inspire loyalty.

‘A storm is coming,’ she said resolutely. ‘Who will stand with me against it?’

One by one her soldiers’ gazes drifted away, and not a foot budged from their positions.

‘Very well,’ she muttered and stepped out into the night.

Aerand climbed the steep steps alone, rain drumming across her helmet and armour, seeping through to her skin and chilling her bones.

Her legs burned as the stairs fell away behind her, the yawning abyss at the base of Apex’s walls a constant reminder to watch where she stepped. Flashes of lightning bathed the craggy pass in light. The doubt she felt in the barracks evaporated like smoke as she inspected the dozen tired soldiers on her wall. Twelve troopers to hold the most important fortress on the planet. If the rest would not stand with her, then these would have to do.

As she stared out into the shadow-strewn valleys, the slow stomping of bootfalls reached her ears. She turned to see a group of green-clad figures, the dull sheen of their helmets glimmering in the rain as they ascended the dark stone stairs behind her.

Corwyn reached the tower first, an embarrassed smile stretching across his sun-darkened face. ‘We couldn’t let you freeze to death out here alone,’ he mumbled, then pointed to the group of soldiers behind him. ‘First squad will man the northern wall.’

As they passed, twelve fresh bodies took their place, Artus grasping her arm with a slight bow. ‘If you say you sense something, then we sense it, too.’

In piecemeal fashion, the rest of her soldiers trickled out of the barracks and took up positions along the walls, until only Olemark’s veterans remained inside. Finally, their dented, cracked armour ambled up the staircase with more grace and speed than any of the others.

Olemark paused before her, his eyes still sharp. There was no apology, no admission of guilt, merely the slightest of nods and a stiff salute. ‘Where do you want us?’ he asked, unflinching in the rain.

‘West wall,’ Aerand replied, too certain of the coming evil to make issue of his prior disrespect. Beneath her armour, her skin burned like fire, each breath laden with the scent of charred air. ‘Hold the gate and the bridge however you must.’

The sergeant nodded, then marched off along the rampart, rain beading silver on his helm like the stars above.

‘Sergeant,’ she called, staring out at the storm. ‘I think you should hurry.’

As she spoke, a bolt of lightning lit the canyon, arcing between dark clouds before striking the citadel’s spire. As the valley burned blue, dark forms burst from the mist, and a hail of lasfire tore through the night towards the fortress.

‘Incoming!’ Aerand shouted, dropping below the crenulations. The blistering volley crashed against Apex’s walls as her troopers dropped with her, some not rising again.

‘Return fire!’ Aerand rose to a knee and aimed her lasgun over the wall, pulling hard on the trigger.

Far below, a wave of bodies rushed towards the fortress, shrouded in the smoke of roaring weapons, but even at this distance she could see their enemy was well-armed and determined.

Beside scores of cultists, rows of silver-armoured Ourean guards marched with traitors in Imperial armour. At their head rolled three Eradicator battle tanks, patched and precarious, but functioning well enough to heave shells straight at the western gate.

‘Vox-caster, on me!’ Aerand bellowed over the din of the firefight, sprinting along the slick rampart and scanning the silhouettes of her soldiers for Maresh.

‘Corwyn,’ she roared, sliding into place beside the sergeant and pulling him back from his post by the shoulder. In the tower above them, a turret lay empty, a heavy stubber jammed between the rampart and a charred body, firing aimlessly into the valley below. ‘Get that weapon back in service.’

‘On it, sir,’ he called, pulling two troopers in his wake. ‘Looks like we’ll be in the fight, after all.’

‘Indeed,’ she replied grimly, as a salvo from the Eradicators burst against the northern wall. As she sprinted along the rampart, she spotted the chevrons of Delaver’s armour lying still on the stone in a puddle of rain. Beside him, a section of the wall had crumbled, casualties of the Eradicators’ ordnance.

Next to the rift, troopers poured fire at the approaching force, one bearing a corporal’s insignia on her shoulder. Their las-rounds streaked red and brilliant through the rain.

‘Maltia,’ Aerand shouted, crouching beside the corporal. ‘Where the hell is the rest of second squad?’

‘You’re looking at it.’ Maltia pointed her weapon over the precarious ledge. A cluster of bodies lay broken on the rocks in the valley below, Maresh’s vox shattered beneath his still form.

‘Throne,’ Aerand swore.

The oncoming swarm was now close enough to see clearly, but far too large to count. A group of scarcely clad men and women surged forward ahead of the main assault, crude weapons in their hands and madness in their eyes.

From the turret above, Corwyn’s stubber dropped dozens in seconds, but the rest did not slow. It was only then that Aerand noticed the symbol carved across one man’s chest. The same flame and eye she’d seen at the homestead.

An image of the dead woman’s open, black eyes flashed into her mind, that same weight returning to her limbs. Maltia stared in confusion while her soldiers’ weapons roared out into the night.

‘Any orders, sir?’

Aerand’s mind raced with a sudden terror. Not again. Not now. Not when they needed her more than any moment in her life.

She froze and stared down at the weapon in her hands. A thin streak of blood rolled down the handle of her lasgun, from the spot on her palm where Tarvarius’ chain had bled her.

The Emperor has no perfect servants. So he must make do with broken ones like us.

Aerand breathed deeply and snapped her eyes back to Maltia. ‘Aye,’ she replied. ‘Hold this damned wall, and make those heretics sorry they came here tonight.’

‘Will do, sir,’ Maltia replied with a grin.

Aerand darted towards the north gate as two missiles blazed from the tanks along the path, crashing into the gatehouse, and shaking its massive stone doors. Atop the building, Olemark ran between his soldiers – lasfire was pouring from their weapons towards the horde gathered below.

All along the wall, her soldiers were fighting bravely but dying fast. Attack groups closed on all three gates, and her platoon was barely slowing them down.

The army outside was far too large. Far too many for a simple cultist uprising. Bolstered by Astra Militarum deserters and the forces of at least one traitor feudal lord, it was only a matter of time before the approaching darkness overwhelmed them. Their only hope was to hold until the regiment returned.

Aerand clambered down a set of shattered stairs, careening over rubble and dancing beside the mind-numbing precipice. Apex hung on the wall of the mountain, and three bridges were all that connected the fortress to the world outside. Perhaps her soldiers could not stop the approaching army, but without a way to cross, they’d have no way to take the fortress.

The roar of krak missiles tore past Aerand’s face as two bright streaks of metal darted down from Corwyn’s tower towards the Eradicators below. The first tank crumbled into a cloud of smoke and glowing metal, while the second missile detonated along the valley wall, dropping a heap of stone onto a platoon of Ourean guards.

Up ahead, Olemark’s men were following suit, a pair of troopers loading a krak missile into its launcher and positioning themselves at the edge of the gatehouse. Aerand leapt the rest of the way down the steps, sprinting across a small stretch of open ramparts, lasfire and bolt rounds soaring past her head. She dropped to her knees beside Olemark just as he raised the missile launcher.

‘Wait!’ she shouted, lungs heaving with each beat of her heart.

Olemark turned in surprise.

‘The bridges,’ she panted, pointing over the ledge.

Only a few hundred yards from the edge of the wall, the vanguard of cultists streaked towards the gate, the two remaining Eradicators loosing another salvo. Beneath them, the gatehouse shuddered, and with a horrible crash, one of its stone doors toppled open.

‘Blow the bridges,’ Aerand ordered, lifting her lasgun slowly, uncertain if she’d be firing over the wall, or at a target much closer.

Olemark stared, then nodded in understanding. ‘It’d be my pleasure, sir,’ he replied, and a streak of flame darted over the wall.

As the missile found its mark, a promethean crack pierced the night, and the northern bridge toppled into the chasm. Moments later, two matching explosions echoed across the courtyard as Corwyn and Maltia directed their soldiers to follow suit. Aerand smiled and breathed a sigh. Only then did she notice the searing pain in her leg and the blood oozing from the hole through her thigh.

Nearly an hour later, and the fortress still stood. Blowing the bridges had stalled the assault, and the fever pitch of the initial battle had faded into a steady siege. Corwyn, Olemark, and Aerand huddled in the courtyard, Apex’s scorched, splintered citadel overshadowing the trio as they stooped over Aerand’s map.

‘Noravis Opum is nearly two hours away,’ Olemark said. ‘Even if they left the moment you voxed Lord Tarvarius, we’d still have the better part of an hour before they return.’

Corwyn nodded. ‘Then we hold the wall for another hour.’

Aerand shook her head and surveyed the heap of stone beside them, leaning up against a crumbling staircase to hold the weight off her injured leg.

Toppling the bridges had stalled the cultists and forced the Eradicators to stay out of krak missile range. But even at a distance, they’d nearly razed Apex’s walls and had taken another dozen of her soldiers. Now, without towers or autoguns and only a handful of troopers, her platoon was doing all it could to keep the army from finding a way across the chasm.

‘We fall back,’ Aerand muttered, staring at the hulking stone spire behind her.

‘And give them the outer wall and the courtyard?’ Corwyn asked.

‘They have it already.’ Aerand grimaced as she twisted to motion to the toppled wall, and a bolt of pain shot up from her thigh. ‘It will take them time to devise a way across the chasm, and with any luck, the regiment will be here before they do.’

Olemark nodded, condescension long absent from his voice. ‘It’s a good plan. It’s the only good plan.’

‘Then make it happen.’

Aerand limped across the courtyard as Olemark and Corwyn retrieved their soldiers from their posts. As she forced her way towards the shadow of Apex’s citadel, lazy bursts of enemy lasgun fire arced over her head, splattering harmlessly against the bastion walls. She scarcely noticed the sound after nearly an hour of it, simply one more voice in the chorus of battle, along with the rain and the constant, rolling thunder.

She pulled to a stop as a streak of lightning lit the valley, silhouetting a figure atop the peak above Apex’s walls. It was impossible that any human could have scaled the sheer ridgeline from outside the fortress, and yet there someone stood. Her lasgun was already on her shoulder when the shadow dropped from the mind-numbing peak and landed before her with little more than the sound of stirring air.

‘I am pleased to find you are not dead yet.’

Tarvarius surveyed the decimated outer wall and the small group of soldiers withdrawing towards him. ‘Although I had hoped to find more of your platoon still standing.’

Despite the grim setting and the fire in her leg, Aerand found herself on the brink of smiling. ‘As had I,’ she replied, limping towards the Adeptus Astartes. One Space Marine was not a regiment, but perhaps he was even better.

‘The rest of the 900th?’ she asked, hope lacing her voice.

Tarvarius motioned towards the north. Outside the wall, the sound of lasfire picked up, followed by a series of heavy explosions. ‘Yarin pushed them hard.’

Aerand limped towards a gap in the wall, where Olemark stood staring.

‘It seems we may have to share some of the action, sir,’ he remarked, a tired smile creeping across his face.

Through the rain and over the scorched battlefield, the Cadian 900th approached, pouring withering fire into the cultists from behind. Already, their assailants were falling back, unable to stand up to the dauntless assault, and charging instead towards the fortress and the waiting, gaping chasm.

Aerand lifted her lasgun, prepared to open fire, when a sudden weight dropped her to her knees. The taste of blood and burnt flesh assailed her again, stronger than before. She retched onto the dark, slick stone, feeling her mind spin and her skin spark with fire. Slowly, she raised her head, expecting the stares of her confused soldiers, but they were all in a similar state. Even Tarvarius leaned against the wall awkwardly, scanning the night.

A creeping horror built within Aerand. Whatever had crippled her on the ridgeline was here in their midst. Whatever evil she had felt when the cultists approached had waited until now to show itself fully. As she stared out at the oncoming army, she suddenly understood her mistake.

They were not retreating, they were charging towards the gate, where a cloud of massive boulders were rising from the chasm, wreathed in flickering blue firelight, forming themselves into a bridge.

‘Witch,’ Aerand muttered, her voice hoarse and weak. A sudden desperation filled her as she stared through the gate. She had held the fortress against an army with only a few dozen soldiers – if the horde outside was allowed to enter, not even the entire 900th regiment could dislodge them. She forced her leaden limbs to move, stumbling towards Tarvarius and laying a hand on his colossal armour.

‘What?’ The Space Marine blinked, then shook his head slightly as if trying to rid himself of an invisible pest. A moment later, his confident posture returned and he fixed his gaze on Aerand. ‘They have a witch.’

No sooner had he spoken the words than that same blue glow lit the peak of the citadel’s tower. Aerand looked on in horror as a form emerged onto the high terrace, fire dancing around its twisted body, streaking out over the battlefield towards the approaching Cadian regiment.

Beside her, Olemark struggled to his feet, his shoulders bent by an invisible burden. The cultists had nearly reached the bridge, the fire of their weapons becoming dangerously accurate.

‘By the Throne,’ Olemark mumbled, turning to help one of his troopers rise. ‘He’ll lay the entire regiment to waste.’

‘No, he won’t,’ Aerand replied, limping towards the base of the citadel. ‘We’re going to kill him first.’

Aerand stumbled onto the high terrace, legs burning and mind swimming, while Olemark, Corwyn, and her few remaining troopers lumbered up the final few stairs. In the shadows of the pillars and stonework beside them, Tarvarius moved like a patient ghost.

The sorcerer stood at the centre of the platform, bathed in the horrible blue light of witch fire, bright streaks pouring from his body like vines, arcing down towards the raging battle below. Behind the darting, swirling inferno, the sorcerer himself was harder to discern, a thin, emaciated form buried beneath thick, dark smoke. If not for the fire pouring from him, Aerand might have thought the man on the brink of death, weak and haggard, as if the forces he channelled had taken not only his soul but his life.

Eight bodies knelt prostrate on the ground around the witch, hands clawing at writhing, moaning skulls. A thin tendril of flame connected each to the sorcerer, their naked bodies covered in tattoos and deep scars, each bearing at least one variation of that sinister flame and eye.

There was something terrible in that sigil, made even more awful in the witch’s unnatural glow. For a moment, Aerand felt she was a child again, staring up into the sky on a planet she hardly knew, a twisting wheel of fire marring the blue canopy above her.

‘You come at last.’

The sorcerer’s words spilled out from the flames like the falling of night as the sun disappeared, dozens of voices layered to form one. As he turned, a glimpse of the sorcerer’s empty, black eyes held Aerand firmly in place, and she was struck by the sense he was speaking directly to her.

The same black eyes she’d seen at the homestead. But instead of fear, they now filled her only with hatred.

‘Kill him,’ Aerand ordered, lifting her weapon and pulling the trigger.

A wall of lasfire streaked towards the sorcerer, lighting the balcony in a blinding display. For a moment, the flame around the witch seemed to dim, before it swelled again and the volley split harmlessly around him.

As the witch raised his hand, Tarvarius rushed forward, his chainsword roaring to life. Whatever share of the weight that crowded Aerand’s mind and limbs the Space Marine might have felt before was gone, for he moved like a raptor striking on the wind. As his weapon dropped towards the sorcerer’s head, a streak of fire split from the witch’s inferno and rose up to meet it, halting the chainsword while Tarvarius continued forward, leaping over the stalled weapon and skidding to a stop as his legs met the terrace’s ancient railing. The row of dark stone posts cracked but held, debris careening over the ledge into the smoke of the firefight below as Tarvarius turned and reengaged.

The witch’s fire rose up to meet him once again, streaks of flame and lasfire darting from the pair as they danced across the terrace with blinding speed.

Aerand dove to the side as they careened towards her, landing beside one of the cowering cultists, as a streak of blue light shot out from the sorcerer in her direction. The tether of flame between the woman and the witch seemed to swell as Aerand’s soldiers poured fire towards him, as if the witch’s magic was feeding off the bodies around him.

Aerand rose to a knee and stared at the woman. Beneath clawing fingers and a face contorted in pain, she could see the woman’s lips moving slowly, mumbling something incomprehensible.

As a fresh salvo of lasfire arced towards the sorcerer, the woman’s face calmed slightly and her eyes flashed open. She stared at Aerand with a terrible sincerity, then reached out and grasped her by the wrist.

‘Kill me,’ the woman whispered, voice laden with desperation. ‘Please. They didn’t tell me it would be like this.’

As the lasfire crashed into the sorcerer again, and the tendril connecting him to the woman swelled, her eyes snapped shut and she let out a scream. Aerand lifted her weapon and granted her wish.

The woman fell to the ground, and the thread connecting her to the sorcerer vanished. The witch’s black eyes turned towards Aerand in anger.

‘The bodies!’ Aerand shouted as a wall of flame rushed towards her, and she dived behind an ancient stone pillar. ‘Kill the bodies! He’s drawing power from them!’

The sorcerer’s attack abated for a moment, and Aerand spun to fire at the creature’s back. As she did, Olemark and Corwyn dropped two of the cultists, and Tarvarius lunged forward, gripping a pair of cowering, flame-wreathed bodies and tossing them over the precipice like refuse.

As the cultists shattered on the bulwark below, a sound like rushing water burst from the sorcerer – myriad voices crying out with rage. The sphere of fire around him grew bright as a star, until Aerand dropped to her knees from the sheer brilliance of him. She shivered to think of the terrible darkness that supplied that power, if it could afford to funnel so much strength into a single one of its servants. The flames swelled and tightened, then burst outward like a breaking wave, throwing her through the air.

Something struck Aerand’s shoulder with a sickening crunch, then her chest collided with unmoving stone. When her vision cleared, she stared over the edge of the high terrace, saved from falling only by the railing pillars that had broken her shoulder and ribs.

Beside her, Olemark grasped the shattered remnants of a pillar, body dangling over the towering precipice. Below him, several green-armoured bodies clattered against black stone, the darting glow of lasfire bursting around them from the battle below. Across the platform Tarvarius rose to his feet, tossing aside the debris of a shattered statue after bearing the worst of the sorcerer’s assault.

As Aerand dragged herself towards Olemark, shoulder and sides screaming in protest, the dark shadow of the sorcerer moved towards them. The light around him had faded into a dull flicker, his three remaining disciples reduced to nothing more than scorched husks.

‘No,’ Aerand whispered, as the witch’s eyes locked on Olemark. She reached out towards the sergeant, praying she had the strength to pull him up over the ledge. But instead of taking her grip, Olemark reached one hand over his shoulder, slipping dangerously as he pulled a weapon off his back.

‘Take the shot, sir,’ he said, dropping a missile launcher on the ledge beside her, then glancing up at the tower above them. The citadel’s pinnacle arced overhead like an executioner’s blade, the damaged, worn pillars lining the balcony barely supporting its weight. ‘He can’t hold the whole mountain up,’ Olemark muttered, then his hand slipped, and he dropped over the ledge.

As Aerand snatched the launcher from the ground, the sorcerer extended a shadowy hand towards her, a thin blue flame dancing across his fingers. She felt the launcher kick as a missile tore from its barrel, streaking towards the pillar beside them and shattering the stone into a cloud of dust.

For a moment, the tower above them hung steady, as if after standing for so many centuries, it did not remember it was able to fall. Then a single block dropped loose from the pinnacle, followed by another, then a horrible crash, as the tower slid from its bearings and toppled towards them.

The sorcerer cast both his hands over his head, the fire around him streaking towards the collapsing wall. At first, the stone held, shaking in place as a sinister blue glow swelled around it, but the witch himself was laid horribly bare.

Aerand reached down to her waist, snatching her laspistol from its holster and aiming towards the heretic’s dark, withered form. She pulled the trigger, and a bolt of light streaked towards him, this time unhindered as it pierced his skull. Instantly, the flame above him extinguished, and the stone over her head came crashing down.

Aerand felt her leg shatter first, then her ankle gave way as the air around her filled with dust and the sound of stones crashing like water.

‘I offer my life to the Emperor,’ she whispered. ‘I pray He accepts it.’

A weight descended on her chest, stifling her prayer. But moments later, when she found herself still breathing and the air had grown quiet, she heard her words echoed back on stern, iron lips.

‘I offer my strength to the Emperor. I pray He redresses it.’

Slowly, Aerand opened her eyes, staring into the dark-grey form of Tarvarius’ helmet. The Space Marine raised himself slowly, casting aside the avalanche of stone that had toppled onto them.

‘There will be enough time for prayer later,’ Tarvarius muttered, a flash of lightning gleaming off his dented, rent armour. ‘Right now we have a battle to win.’

Behind him, over the edge of the balcony, green Cadian bodies swarmed over the walls and back into the heart of Apex Inruptus.

‘Tell me once more what you experienced that night.’ Commissar Burdain’s voice rang out in clear, metered staccato, her arms and shoulders rigid beneath a flawless uniform.

‘Of course, sir,’ Aerand replied. In contrast to the commissar’s perfection, she was externally a mess. Her right arm was bound in a heavy sling, her left leg braced by crude metal bars burrowing into the bone beneath her skin. She leaned heavily on the desk beside her, ribs screaming with every breath, as Colonel Yarin watched in silence from the back of her chamber. A week ago, the commissar’s severe demeanour would have shaken Aerand, but now, after staring into the sorcerer’s black, warp-swallowed eyes, Burdain’s grey ones held little sway.

‘It’s difficult to describe the sensation I felt, other than to say it was deeply, horribly… wrong. The other soldiers of my platoon all describe similar feelings on the night of the Apex assault.’

‘But not on the night of the ambush,’ Burdain replied. ‘That night you were the only one who felt anything.’

And saw it. Aerand hadn’t lied to the commissar, but she hadn’t told anyone about the vision of the dead woman’s eyes. ‘That’s correct, sir.’

Burdain’s mouth drew into a stern line. ‘And on the night of the assault, you felt it first.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Aerand knew where this was headed – knew what question would come next – because she’d asked herself the same thing for the past three days while her body slowly stitched itself back together.

‘Why do you think you alone felt these things?’

She’d considered every possibility. Perhaps, as an officer, the sorcerer’s presence had been directed more strongly at her. Perhaps her proximity to the ritual had simply caused the sensation to be more intense. Maybe she’d just been more exhausted, or more anxious. Maybe her fear of failing had given the darkness a foothold to exploit.

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Aerand replied, and that was honest. Burdain began to pace slowly, certainty growing in Aerand with each of her steps. She’d be removed from her position if she was fortunate. Executed if she was not.

Somehow, though, that thought didn’t bother her. She had done her duty – let the consequences be what they may.

After some time, the commissar paused and looked as if she was about to speak, but before she could, a quiet knock rang in the doorway, and a green-armoured figure limped slowly inside.

Corwyn had not escaped the citadel unscathed, and he walked clumsily on a gleaming prosthetic leg.

‘My apologies, sirs,’ he said quietly, unable to conceal a small grin as he stepped past Aerand bearing a piece of parchment. ‘I’ve been sent to deliver an urgent dispatch.’

As Corwyn handed the scroll to Commissar Burdain, Aerand caught a glimpse of its seal and felt her heart begin to race. Pressed into dark-grey wax was the wing-wreathed skull of the Storm Wings Space Marines.

Corwyn took his leave of the room, and the commissar’s face grew sterner still as she read through the message. When she finished, she sighed, then re-rolled the parchment and placed the scroll in Aerand’s hand. Aerand gripped it tightly – there was something firm and heavy inside.

‘The Adeptus Astartes send their regards,’ Burdain said. ‘As well as an endorsement of the lieutenant’s valour. In light of these events, and the… unique… circumstances surrounding the Apex Inruptus assault, I think it is reasonable to sentence Lieutenant Aerand to only minor discipline for her lapse during her platoon’s ambush, administered at Colonel Yarin’s discretion.’

As the commissar walked brusquely from the room, Yarin rose and placed a hand on Aerand’s shoulder, leaning in towards her ear. ‘You must have done something right to get her so upset,’ she whispered, her normally harsh face softening slightly. She looked as if she might say more, then paused and shook her head. ‘I best not keep you too long, lieutenant. You have a platoon to return to.’

As Aerand limped slowly down the dark stone hall, she opened the scroll and read the final few lines. A small token for the commander of the Cadian Storm Guard, from another of the Emperor’s broken servants. May it be the first link in a chain of your own.

A small smile spread across Aerand’s face as she gripped the iron-claw link wrapped inside the parchment.

CADIAN HONOUR
Book 1 of the Cadian series
Justin D Hill

Sent to the capital world of Potence, Sergeant Minka Lesk and the Cadian 101st discover that though Cadia may have fallen, their duty continues.

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

BONEGRINDER

Josh Reynolds

Seasoned Black Library author Josh Reynolds brings his own inimitable style to Necromunda. In a tale of gang rivalries and territory disputes, Josh’s unique brand of humour and flair for action brings the Underhive to life.

The air smelled like hot slag and sour meat.

The stink of the backstreets rose and fell with the cycle of the great circulation fans that loomed over Steelgate like judgemental deities. Molten runoff from the furnaces trickled slowly through ferrocrete canals. It cast up ugly, yellow shrouds of toxic smog, and stained the brickwork of the buildings that leaned into one another like punch-drunk fighters. Every door and window rattled with the crash and clangour of the smelting works.

The sound of industry was the heartbeat of the settlement. A thirty-six-hour cycle, as the thump-pits and furnaces processed raw ore into something valuable. At hour thirty-seven, a rain of coolant fell across the streets, spewed from unseen vents on high, dousing the fires and smothering the molten slag so that it could be scraped out of the canals for reprocessing.

Topek Greel stood atop a gantry on the south side, watching as the coolant fell and calmed the roiling tides of molten material in the canal below. It changed colours as the liquid hit it, and expelled fumes of iridescent smoke. It was almost pretty, in its way, though he’d never say so to anyone. Aesthetic appreciation was not among the cardinal virtues of House Goliath. Only strength mattered. Power.

Beauty was for the weak.

The Steelgate Kings lived by that axiom, much like the settlement for which they were named. It was evident even in the former foundry the gang used as a flophouse – a grey slab of a building, studded with gantries and ore-shafts, barely lit at the best of times. It was always full of noise, thanks to the gambling den that occupied what had once been the foundry floor. Card-slingers, ragmen and doxies filled the place every late-cycle, extracting credits from passing traders and locals alike.

Greel glanced over his shoulder. Music crept out through the crumbling walls behind him, as if to taunt him. He heard the familiar voices of his fellow gangers bellowing in pleasure – or in anger, in the case of Guzzler. Annoyed, he turned back to the canal. He couldn’t sleep when it was like this. Couldn’t do anything. So instead, he came out here, where no one would follow him.

He turned, letting his flat, dark gaze drift across the tin roofs and corrugated chimney pipes of the south side. It was mostly workers here. Bosses and overseers lived to the east, above the stink and heat of the canals. Most of them, anyway. He smirked and spat.

The Steelgate Kings were bosses as well, in all but name. They held turf from the toll-gates to the smelting works. The heart of the settlement was theirs, and they’d made an effort to keep Steelgate firmly under the thumb of House Goliath. That didn’t mean that they didn’t have challengers, however. And not all of them from rival houses.

Gangs grew and splintered. It was part of the ecosystem of the Underhive. The Kings had no less than five by-blows, each looking to be top of the heap.

Greel smiled, rolling the word over in his head. He’d recently added it to the list of words he’d learned. The list was hidden where no one could find it. Korg didn’t like it when his boys wasted time on unimportant things like how to scribe and read.

But Greel knew that knowledge was a type of stimm. It was power, especially down here. The more you knew, the more powerful you were.

For instance, Greel knew that of the five gangs the Kings had spawned, only two were left, and only one was something to worry about. And that one was the Scrap Lords. Instinctively, he looked north, towards the scrapyards and fungus orchards. That was where the Scrap Lords had set their banners. They ruled those canyons of discarded metal and unusable ore, and traded with the midden-pickers of House Cawdor.

But the Scrap Lords wanted more. They wanted to be Kings. He knew that too.

It had started small. The way it always did. A few too many drinks. An argument – a harsh word in the right ear – and then the shooting had started. Just skirmishes so far, but it would get worse before it got better. Or so Greel hoped.

It hadn’t required much in the way of finesse – another good word – to get the Scrap Lords and the Kings at each other’s throats. The confrontation had been brewing for a while. Grinder Jax, the leader of the Lords, had a grudge, and a man with a grudge was as good as a loaded gun. Now, all Greel had to do was wait.

Unfortunately, that was always the hardest part.

A klaxon sounded, somewhere down below, signalling the end of the down-cycle. The rain of coolant slowed to a trickle, dappling the streets. With sections of the ore now cooled, slag-pickers shuffled towards the canal. They wore bulky hazard suits that had been passed down through generations. Each suit was festooned with crude heat sinks and air recyclers, and had been repaired so often that they more resembled primitive armour than anything else. Using long, sharpened scoops, they began to neatly cut away the cooling slag and deposit it into waiting canisters.

Greel admired their precision. It reminded him of when he’d been a valve-jack. Precision was everything up among the high pipes, above the Spew. You had to think, to count and gauge and listen, or you were dead. You had to be precise. Greel liked to think that he still was, even a year off the foundry floor.

A voice spoke up behind him. ‘Nothing goes to waste in Steelgate.’

Greel turned. The tall, heavy shape of Irontooth Korg moved carefully through the hatch and out onto the gantry. It creaked dolefully beneath his weight and Greel tensed instinctively, ready to leap to safety. He’d spent his youth as a valve-jack, and you had to learn how to translate creaks into leaps quickly on the Spew.

‘Thought I’d find you out here.’

‘I was watching the slag-pickers.’

Korg came to stand beside him. ‘I know.’

Greel glanced surreptitiously at Korg. He and his leader were of a similar type. House Goliath bred its sons and daughters for strength and endurance and not much else. Korg was the bigger of the pair, with twenty-five years’ worth of hard living and stimm addiction to make his muscles swell and pop beneath his battered furnace-plates. A single flat strip of hair ran across his scalp, splitting into a profusion of thin plaits that dangled across the back of his thick neck. It was his face that drew most of the attention, however.

Someone – now likely dead – had almost torn Korg’s lower jaw off at some point early in his career. Greel had heard that it had happened the day Korg had taken control of the Steelgate Kings. The augmetic replacement that had been fitted in the missing jaw’s place was a crude, prognathous thing, its sides studded with pneumatics and valves. These mechanisms extended beneath the flesh of his cheeks, and hooked into his auto-rig.

A similar rig hung around Greel’s own neck. The tech-collar regulated the stimms that flowed through his system and kept his body functioning. Every son of House Goliath had one. A leash, given to the hands of their masters. Even Korg had a master, somewhere. It was like a chain with many links. Korg was one, and Greel was another.

Greel ran a calloused palm over his scalp. A single stripe of hair ran down the centre of his skull. He kept it clipped short, rather than growing it up and out, like some of the others. It wasn’t as if he needed the extra height, and it gave an opponent less to grab onto in a fight.

Korg leaned on the gantry rail, causing it to shift alarmingly. Greel watched him carefully. Korg didn’t like him. Korg didn’t like anyone. Korg didn’t trust anyone, except maybe the man who supplied the Kings with crate-beer. And even then he had someone taste his beer first. ‘I like it when it rains,’ Korg said. ‘Cools everything down. When things are cool, stuff gets done. Too hot, machinery breaks down and men with it.’

Greel remained silent.

Korg continued to watch the rain. ‘It’s too hot right now. Too much steel being flashed, for no reason. Men make bad decisions, when it’s too hot. Business suffers.’ Korg’s hands clenched, and the metal railing bent like paper.

Greel hesitated. Then, taking a breath, he said, ‘The Scrap Lords started it.’ They hadn’t – Greel had – but he was fairly certain Korg didn’t know that. If Irontooth had, Greel knew he’d already be dead. The others – Thend, Pasco, even Guzzler – would back him up. They’d been spoiling for a fight, any fight, for months.

‘Don’t matter who started it. The Guilders don’t like it.’ Korg’s voice was even. Calm. Or as calm as it got. Greel recognised the signs. Korg was thinking the problem through. He’d already come to a decision, but now he was doing the work of justifying it to himself. That didn’t explain why he’d come looking for Greel, though.

He wanted to ask why, but didn’t. ‘You going to scrag Jax?’

Korg was silent for a long moment. Greel began to worry that he’d pushed it too far. There was no telling what would set Korg off. Finally, Korg stepped back from the bent rail, his hands flexing idly.

‘Everything has a purpose. We waste nothing here. Neither ore nor blood.’ He looked at Greel. ‘You understand?’

Greel nodded. ‘I do.’

‘Good.’ Korg leaned over the edge of the gantry and spat, before turning away. ‘Scrap Lords want to parlay. You understand that?’

Greel nodded again. ‘I do. We gonna meet them?’

Korg smiled. It was an ugly expression, made worse by the steel sheen of his teeth. ‘Yeah. Already arranged. Got the softlings excited. They expect to see blood.’

‘They think you’re going to thump Jax.’

‘Or that he’s going to thump me.’

Greel decided to push a bit more. ‘Can he?’

Korg paused. His hands – big, ugly scoops of muscle – twitched. He looked at Greel, his gaze hooded. ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’

‘We?’

‘You’re coming with me to the parlay. You’re going to be my second.’ What was left of Korg’s mouth quirked in a ghastly smile. ‘It’s an honour.’

Greel grunted, but didn’t say anything. Gratitude was weakness. Goliaths deserved whatever honours and glories came their way. Korg’s smile widened, and Greel thought he was pleased. Korg gestured as he stepped towards the hatch. ‘Come.’

Greel frowned. ‘Now?’

Korg reached the hatch. ‘Weren’t you listening? It’s cool now. Good time to talk.’ He paused and glanced back. ‘But bring your spud-jacker. Just in case.’

Guzzler and the others were waiting for them downstairs, on the foundry floor. Like Greel, they were all big and young. Guzzler was the tallest, with dozens of stimm-nodes jutting from his flesh and his head bare of everything save tribal tattoos.

Thend and Pasco were shorter, but broader than Guzzler. Pasco was dark, with a heavy crest of crimson hair riding his scalp, and his furnace-plates were covered in notches – one for every skull he’d busted. Thend was pale, and his face had been tattooed to resemble a skull. Similarly, bones had been inked on his bare arms, and a ribcage was carved into the furnace-plates that covered his torso.

Together, the trio made up the gang’s inner circle. They’d been with Korg since before he’d been running things, and had risen with him. They worked together to keep the rest of the gang in line, where possible. And if anyone wanted to challenge Korg, they had to get past those three first. Thend’s expression was almost impossible to read, thanks to his tattoos. ‘Runt,’ he said, amiably.

Greel grinned. He liked Thend.

‘Valve-jack too stupid to get out of the rain,’ Guzzler said. Pasco chortled at this display of wit. Greel’s smile slipped and his hands curled into fists. Korg swiped a hand out, silencing his retort before it left his lips.

‘I like the rain,’ Korg said. He held Guzzler’s eyes for a moment, long enough to make the ganger look away. Then he jerked his head. ‘Tool up. We got a parlay to go to.’

It didn’t take long to decide who was going. In the end, there were eight of them. Korg chose Lorg, Jok and Big Sledge to round things out. Lorg and Jok were nothing special – muscles, looking for a place to flex. Thend called them meat shields, when they were out of earshot. Big Sledge lived up to his name. Too many growth stimms had made him into a mountain of muscle. Or that was the rumour, at any rate. Greel had never asked. A conversation with Big Sledge often required more effort than it was worth.

All of them were geared up in furnace-plates and armed. Pasco had even brought his thumper – a bulky automatic grenade launcher. Greel had his stub pistol holstered at the small of his back, out of sight, and had thrust his spud-jacker through his belt, within easy reach.

Korg never carried a gun. He was content with his renderizer. The big, serrated axe was meant to be wielded with two hands, but Korg swung it easily enough with one. Greel had seen Irontooth split an unlucky scummer nearly in two with one blow.

It was still raining as they made their way to the harbour. The coolant made the air taste strange, and left a slick residue on Greel’s skin. It flattened Pasco’s crest, and dripped from Guzzler’s stimm-nodes. They were watched the entire way, pale faces poking out of shopfronts or from within alleyways. Children from the orphanarium-fane ran around them, murmuring in excitement, or darted ahead, carrying word of their approach. Word got around quick when trouble was in the air.

It didn’t take long to get to the harbour. It straddled the rim of the great reservoir, like industrial spillage. Docks and jetties thrust out over the stagnant waters, where slime-farmers tended their floating patches. Trawlers made circuits of the opposite shore, dragging great mould-nets through the scum that coated the water’s surface.

Occasionally, one of the trawlers would vanish, caught in a whirlpool created by the constant leakage of the reservoir’s bottom. The water level never dipped for too long though. Between the Spew and runoff from the levels above, it was constantly topped up.

Greel didn’t care for the docks. They smelled of mould and damp wood and sheen bird droppings. The biomechanical avians nested in the high places above the settlement, roosting in ancient ductwork or dispersal pipes. At up-cycle, they circled the reservoir, and the air was choked with their static-y screeches.

The representatives of the Scrap Lords were waiting for them when they arrived. Ten of them, strung out along the street. Greel recognised some of them. Two Pistols Lono. Smasher Fosk. The rest were new faces – scraplings, freshly taken from the foundry floors.

‘New meat,’ said Thend.

‘He’s insulting us,’ Guzzler said, flatly.

‘Testing,’ Greel murmured.

Guzzler looked at him. ‘What’d you say, valve-jack?’

‘He’s testing us. Seeing if we came to talk – or to scrap.’

‘Why not both?’ Pasco said. He patted his thumper fondly. ‘Want I should start the ball, Irontooth?’

‘No. We came to parlay. Not to spill blood. He wants to start things – fine. But Irontooth Korg keeps his word.’ Korg spoke loudly, for the benefit of the watching Scrap Lords. ‘Ask anyone – Irontooth Korg doesn’t lie.’

‘Neither do we, Irontooth.’ Smasher Fosk stepped forward, a heavy power hammer in his hands. He held the weapon low, so as not to brandish it. ‘Lies are for the weak. The strong don’t need them.’ He swept his gaze across Greel and the others, stopping on Guzzler. ‘Which one is your second?’

Korg tapped a knuckle against Greel’s furnace-plate. ‘Him.’

Fosk blinked, processing this. ‘You sure?’

‘He’s sure,’ Greel said, letting his hand rest on his spud-jacker.

Fosk grinned, showing busted teeth. ‘Good enough.’ He stepped aside. ‘You two go on. Rest of you stay here.’

‘Who are you to tell us where we can go in our town?’ Guzzler snarled. The other Kings bristled, and the Scrap Lords tensed in reply. To Greel, the air seemed to crackle, and he knew that all it would take was one word – one twitch – to set them at each other’s throats.

It wasn’t that he wanted a war, so much as he wanted the opportunities that inevitably came with one. A man could do a lot with a war. He could rise high, or lose everything. He could make alliances, enemies, fortunes… he could take power from those who had it.

No, Greel didn’t want a war. He just wanted to climb the chain.

But as he wondered whether here was as good a place as any to start, he realised Korg was watching him. Not carefully or closely. Just idly. As if Greel might do something of interest. A chill flickered through him. Not fear. Not exactly. It was the same sort of sensation you got when you thought the pipe beneath your feet was getting ready to burst.

His hand eased away from his spud-jacker. ‘They called the parlay,’ he said. Guzzler rounded on him, a snarl plastered across his face. But before he could speak, Korg dropped a hand on his shoulder.

‘Greel is right. They call parlay, they make the terms. Stay here. Eyes open, fists full.’

Guzzler gave a grudging nod and stepped back. Pasco and the others took up positions facing the Scrap Lords. If it came to a fight, it’d be bloody and quick. No time to run for cover. Just two groups slugging it out until one dropped. Just the way the Goliaths liked it.

Fosk stepped back and swung out an arm, indicating the way was clear. Greel followed Korg onto the docks. The smell of damp grew worse, and the slap of slimy waters against ferrocrete pylons became loud.

Grinder Jax was waiting for them out at the end of a rusted jetty. He sat on the dock, in a chair he’d brought himself. There was a small table, and a second chair waiting for Korg.

Jax was a similar size to Korg. His hair rose in a stiff crest the colour of powdered corpse starch, and his face was a mass of scar tissue and tattoos. Unlike Korg, he wore his wealth – rings on his fingers and a necklace of credits rattling against his furnace-plates. Some of his teeth were gold as well. Rumour had it that if things went poorly at the gambling tables, Jax just punched himself in the face. He gestured. ‘Sit, Irontooth.’

‘I like to stand,’ Korg growled. ‘Man can’t stand on his own two legs, he’s fit for nothing but the slurry.’

Jax snorted. ‘Ain’t no one here but us, Irontooth.’ He glanced at Greel as he said it, and Greel didn’t know whether to be insulted or not. ‘Ain’t no one to impress. Sit or stand, don’t matter none to me.’

Korg grunted and sat. The chair creaked. ‘Good chair,’ he said.

Jax looked out over the harbour. ‘Made it myself.’

‘Always did have a talent for it.’

‘And you always had a talent for recognising talent.’ Jax glanced at Korg. ‘Though you never appreciated it when you found it.’

Korg rolled his eyes. ‘You survived.’

‘No thanks to you.’ Jax indicated Greel. ‘He new?’

‘New enough.’

‘He doesn’t say much.’

‘He’s not supposed to.’ Korg looked around. ‘Where’s yours?’

‘She’s close,’ Jax smiled. Greel tensed. A sniper, perhaps – the Scrap Lords liked their toys. Korg laughed. He didn’t seem concerned.

‘Good enough. You called parlay. Start the ball rolling.’

Jax scratched his chin. ‘Mostly, I just wanted to see what you wanted. Why your boys are squaring up to mine.’

‘Is that right?’

‘You deny it?’ Jax pointed towards the settlement. ‘Nearly had firefights break out on every square block. The Kings are blood-hungry, that’s the word.’

‘And the Scrap Lords aren’t?’

Jax shook his head. ‘Not like this. We didn’t start it.’

Korg’s eyes found Greel and, once more, Greel got the feeling of things slipping the wrong way. He wondered if Korg suspected. But Irontooth merely spat. ‘So you say. Doesn’t matter, really.’ He leaned forward and cracked his knuckles. ‘I want you to back off, Jax. Play king of the scrapyard if you want, but don’t try and muscle in on our turf. Everything from the toll-gates to the smelting works is ours. That’s how it’s always been.’

‘Ain’t how it will always be, though.’ Jax rattled his necklace. ‘Thinking about it, maybe this is the time. We’re up and comers. Scrap is coming in and credits with it.’

‘Spend them somewhere else.’

Greel looked out over the harbour, as the discussion grew heated. The light from the smelting works turned the sump-waters a dull orange. Iron mould spores floated over the water in great, shimmering clouds. A few ancient helio-skimmers hummed over the slow waters, scraping the spores from the air. And something else – just at the edge of hearing. A soft, scratching sort of sound. Like leather rubbing against metal.

He looked down. The jetty had been a gantry, once. He could see down through the metal slats, into the waters below. Something was moving down there. Something big. The jetty shook as something slapped against a pylon.

‘See now, you upset her,’ Jax said.

Korg’s eyes narrowed. ‘And you’ve upset me, Jax. Things was good. Now you’re making trouble, and for what?’

Jax shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s time you learned to share, Korg. Steelgate is big enough for two bosses. Scav, it’s big enough for four or five. But I’m satisfied with two, if you are.’ He sat back. ‘I didn’t start this, and that’s the truth. Maybe it’s just time.’

Korg rose to his feet. ‘Maybe it is. Maybe we start now.’

Jax shot up, and matched him, glare for glare. ‘I’m okay with that. We can go full-tilt boogie right now, Irontooth. Lords versus Kings, winners take all.’

Greel’s hand crept towards his stub pistol. It didn’t matter who threw the first punch. Neither of them would leave the jetty. He’d see to it. It’d be chaos, for a while. Lots of chances to render down the old ore and make something new, as the saying went.

Korg suddenly stepped back, and smiled. ‘That’s a good idea, Jax.’

Jax froze, a look of puzzlement on his face. ‘What?’

Greel paused as well, confused by the sudden easing of tension. He’d been certain that they were about to throw down. He quickly pulled his hand away from his pistol and looked around. Had Korg seen something that he hadn’t?

‘A fight,’ Korg said. ‘Winner takes all. My second, against yours.’

Greel turned. Korg was smiling at him. The feeling of being on a bad pipe was back and worse than before. Korg knew. Somehow, he knew.

A slow grin spread across Jax’s face. ‘Oh, that’s good. And what happens when my girl wins?’

Korg shrugged. ‘We’ll pull back. Let you move in to some territory. Split the settlement between us. And if my boy wins, you stay in your scrapyards. Everybody’s happy, especially the Guilders.’

Jax laughed. ‘Let’s do it, then.’

Greel frowned, but said nothing. He’d been suckered. He saw that now. This was why Korg had chosen him as a second. But that was fine. He could handle it. ‘Guns,’ he said.

‘No,’ Jax said. ‘No guns. Everything else is fine, though. My baby doesn’t do guns. Not her style, you might say.’

Not a sniper, then. Greel relaxed slightly as Jax stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply.

For a moment, there was only the echo of the whistle, and the distant scrape of water. Then, something moved ponderously from below, smashing through part of the jetty and hauling itself out of the water with a coughing roar.

A broad, wedge-shaped snout quested upwards and gaped wide, disgorging a reek of rotting meat and mud. Hundreds of yellowing, splinter-like fangs flashed as heavy claws hooked the metal and dragged the rest of the massive reptilian beast onto the jetty. The structure wobbled perilously as the monster gave a rumble of discontent. Its tail slammed down, and the pylons below creaked and rocked.

‘Say hello to Bonegrinder,’ Jax said. ‘Ain’t she beautiful?’

Bonegrinder grunted, and expelled another gust of foul air from between its jaws. Snout to tail, it was longer than Greel was tall, and came up to his waist. It crouched on four, squat limbs, and its scaly body was as thick as a promethium drum. Six crimson eyes glowered at Greel from sockets set deep within the flat skull.

‘Sumpkrok,’ Greel muttered. This was definitely a bad pipe, but it was already too late to jump. Legend had it that the beasts were the descendants of some long-ago pet, discarded by some rich Spire-born fool and left to fend for itself in the pipes and sewers of the Underhive.

‘Amazing what you find in the scrapyards, ain’t it?’ Jax gave the beast a gentle pat. ‘Old Bonegrinder here is better than any gun or renderizer. A sumpkrok will eat anything if it’s hungry enough. That’s why I keep my girl here good and peckish.’

‘Greel ain’t half bad himself,’ Korg said, mildly. ‘He’s a smart one.’ He looked pointedly at Greel. ‘Ain’t you?’

Greel swallowed and drew his spud-jacker. It felt pitifully small in his hand, and he wondered what it felt like to be eaten by a sumpkrok. He glanced at Korg, but saw no salvation there. This was punishment, plain and simple. So be it. He’d learned how to roll with disaster on the Spew. If a pipe went, there was nothing for it but to jump, and hope you landed somewhere safe. Greel met Korg’s gaze and nodded tersely before turning to his waiting opponent. Jax stepped back and whistled again.

With a roar, Bonegrinder thudded forward. She moved more quickly than Greel had anticipated. Jaws wide, she came snapping, and he was forced to throw himself out of the path of her charge. The gantry pitched drunkenly as the animal whirled, tail nearly knocking Jax over. He and Korg scrambled for safety, leaving Greel alone on the swaying jetty.

The sumpkrok undulated towards him, a low bull-groan echoing from her throat sacs. Greel backed away, fighting to keep his balance. The jetty was going to collapse at this rate. The animal snapped at him again, teeth brushing past his arm. He’d seen what sumpkroks left behind. One bite was all they needed. If she got her teeth into him, he’d be dead. He lashed out with his spud-jacker, and caught her in the side of the head. It was like hitting a piece of furnace-plate.

He was sent sprawling as the animal crashed against him. He scrambled aside as Bonegrinder bit at him, trying to hook a leg or an arm. The gantry buckled. He turned, gripped the spud-jacker in both hands and brought it down hard, between where he thought her shoulder-blades were. The sumpkrok bellowed and her tail whipped around, heavy as a girder. He managed to leap over the scything appendage, but only just. As the soles of his boots touched metal, he felt one of the pylons below finally give way.

The jetty lurched suddenly, nearly pitching him into the slimy waters. He hooked the slats with strong fingers, stopping his fall, and he grunted as his arm was hyperextended past his pain threshold. Sensing his elevated heart rate and surging adrenaline, his auto-rig fired more stimms into his bloodstream. His heartbeat became rapid, and the world went soft and frayed at the edges. The only thing that seemed real was Bonegrinder, as she slipped and scrabbled towards him, red eyes squinting in predatory focus.

He slammed his spud-jacker against the metal, drawing her on. ‘Come on then,’ he snarled. ‘Come on!’ He dragged his legs up, and bent them beneath him, holding himself in place with one hand. As Bonegrinder shuffled close, he sprang, and struck the beast in the snout. The sumpkrok twisted, snapping at him as he scrambled down her back. She rolled instinctively, slamming him into the jetty. The abrupt movement caused another pylon to give way with a screech of buckling metal.

The waters reached up for him, dragging him down into its cold depths. Bonegrinder followed him down as the sinking jetty filled his vision. The water was deeper here than he’d thought. He couldn’t see the bottom. The pylons were bolted to a silt-encrusted chunk of scrap that rose from unlit depths. The sumpkrok arrowed down towards him, no longer awkward but swift and hideously graceful.

There was nowhere to go. He gritted his teeth and rolled as the weight crashed against him. He narrowly avoided her jaws, but her scaly flank drew blood from his side, where his furnace-plates didn’t quite cover him.

He tumbled in a red cloud, and she turned with a sweep of her tail, coming for him again. This time, he was ready. He thrust his spud-jacker out vertically, right into her open jaws. The sumpkrok reflexively shut her mouth, and the tool became lodged in the folds of her maw. He knew it would only take her a moment to work the tool out. He needed a more permanent solution. He cast about, looking for a weapon, an edge, something.

He saw the jetty, sinking slowly in a cloud of rust particles, drifting down in sections. Despite the black spots dancing at the edge of his vision, and the slime burning his eyes and skin, a plan began to form. Goliaths could hold their breath longer than most, but he needed to end this quickly.

As the animal thrashed in fury, Greel clawed at the water, swimming towards the sinking jetty. He fought the drag of the current and his own straining lungs. Stimms pumped false strength through his aching limbs, and cleared the fatigue from his mind. He’d pay for it later, if he survived. But he needed them now. His idea required the precision that only stimms could give him.

He reached out to the jetty, caught hold of its rusty edge and pulled himself into its embrace. He threaded its shattered struts, gashing his shoulders and scalp, but not stopping, pushing himself faster and faster as the blackness swelled up behind his eyes. A few moments more, that was all he needed. Just a bit faster.

Behind him, he felt the vibrations of Bonegrinder following his trail. She sped after him, through the sinking sections of metal, her tail whipping back and forth. The sumpkrok was hungry, and stupid. A bad combination.

The jetty was still descending when he reached the opposite side, and the hole she’d surfaced through in the first place. He shot through it and its edge kissed his thighs and sent a shiver of pain through him. He twisted in a cloud of slime-bubbles, almost breathless.

As he spun, he saw Bonegrinder hit the hole a half-second after him. Not fast enough. Struts slammed down like the jaws of a trap, pinning the sumpkrok in place. A gout of bubbles burst from her jaws as she struggled against the metal caging her. It shifted slightly, but she was caught fast. Just as he’d hoped.

The jetty became wedged amid the remaining pylons, half in, half out of the water. Clouds of silt and rust rose around him like smoke. He caught hold of the metal and prepared to haul himself up, towards the open air. But he stopped. He looked down, meeting the beast’s increasingly panicked gaze. She wouldn’t be able to free herself. Not in time. She would drown down here.

He surrendered to his lungs’ complaints and climbed up, surfacing with a gasp. Clinging to the fallen jetty, he looked up. Korg, Jax and the others were peering down. Korg smirked and patted Jax amiably on the shoulder. ‘Looks like we win,’ he said.

‘Where’s she at?’ Jax said. ‘Where’s my baby?’

Greel looked at him, and then back down. ‘Down there,’ he said. ‘Hold on.’ Before anyone could stop him, he took a breath and plunged beneath the water.

It was a stupid thing to do. Or maybe smart. He hadn’t decided yet. Time would tell. He could barely see, but he felt his way down. On the Spew, you learned to work blind. He followed the vibrations. Bonegrinder was where he’d left her. She began to thrash as he got close, but he ignored it. He caught the edge of the hole that held her pinned, and he braced his feet to either side of her head. Stimms fired, pumping through him as his muscles swelled.

Metal shifted, creaked, groaned – and gave way at last. The sumpkrok lunged forward, knocking him aside. She thrashed for the surface, bleeding from a dozen small wounds. Greel pushed off the metal and followed her. The stimms were bleeding from his system now, leaving him weak and shaky. He barely managed to reach the surface.

Gasping, he dragged himself up the side of the jetty, and reached up towards the hands of his fellow gangers. Thend hauled him up. ‘Smart play, runt,’ he murmured. Greel was too tired to speak. He sank down onto his knees, slimy water running off him in sheets. He looked around. Guzzler, Pasco and the others were all there. At some point, they’d been allowed close to the action – the better to watch Bonegrinder eat him, he assumed. Guzzler was glaring at him, but the others seemed pleased. Or at least entertained.

Down below, Bonegrinder roared and splashed – angry, hungry, confused. A feeling shared by her master. Jax strode over to him, a frown on his face. ‘You saved her. Why?’

Greel looked up at him. He spat water. ‘Good fight,’ he said.

Jax stared at him for a moment, and then laughed. ‘Not that good. She lost.’ He glanced at Korg, standing nearby. ‘I see the Kings come by their reputation honestly.’

‘We always have,’ Korg said.

‘Maybe so.’ Jax sighed and looked out over the water. ‘I would have liked living out here.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe next time.’

Korg shrugged. ‘Maybe. For now, get your sumpkrok out of my reservoir.’

Jax laughed again and walked off, calling out to his boys.

Korg watched him go, and turned to Thend and the others. ‘Go with them. Make sure they leave.’ As they trailed off to shadow the Scrap Lords, he looked down at Greel, a speculative expression on his face.

‘Why’d you save it?’

‘Jax loves that thing. We kill her, he uses it as an excuse to start a fight.’

‘Maybe.’ Korg shook his head. ‘Thought you were clever, didn’t you?’ His voice was pitched low, so that no one else could hear. ‘Thought you’d start a war, see what it got you, huh?’

Greel considered his reply, and then nodded. If Korg already knew, there was no point trying to lie about it.

Korg snorted. ‘Yeah. Real smart.’ He paused. ‘I don’t like smart. Smart is trouble waiting to happen. But it took guts to thump that sumpkrok and then save it. Jax owes us now and he knows it.’

‘Owes me,’ Greel said.

Korg grunted and considered this. ‘Yeah. You got guts and smarts. Maybe too much of both.’ He fixed Greel with a hard stare. ‘We don’t waste anything in Steelgate. Not ore, not blood. Everything’s got a use. Even smarts.’ He set his boot on the back of Greel’s neck, and forced him flat against the ground. ‘But sometimes no matter how useful something is, it still gets broken.’

The weight pressed down on Greel’s neck and spine, and he felt his already abused bones creak alarmingly. A bit more pressure, and they’d snap. Greel clawed at the ground, trying to alleviate the growing pain, but his exertion had stolen his strength. The stimms were fading, and his body felt flaccid and drained.

The pain grew, red bulbs of agony blossoming behind his eyes. But just when Greel thought Korg was planning to grind his neck to dust, the gang leader said, ‘You understand now?’

‘Yeah,’ Greel said, through gritted teeth.

Korg let him go and turned away. ‘Good. On your feet. You’re a King, remember?’

Greel climbed slowly, painfully, to his feet, and rubbed the back of his neck. He watched Korg walk away, and then leaned over and spat into the water below.

‘I remember,’ he said, softly.

KAL JERICO: THE OMNIBUS
A Necromunda Omnibus
Various Authors

Meet Kal Jerico: rogue, bounty hunter and swashbuckler in the towering urban hell of Necromunda. Follow him through three outrageous adventures in this amazing omnibus.

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

EMPRA

Nate Crowley

Nate Crowley is back as our second returning author from Inferno! Volume 1. Nate’s exquisitely descriptive scenes demonstrate the diversity of the Warhammer 40,000 setting, while he flexes his literary muscles to depict a feral tribe attempting to restore glory to a damaged starship.

ONE

Deep among the manhills of the first people, down south out of Shellforge – that’s where I meet the Angel.

I’m after a fivejaw. A big halfmale, slow from a moult, leaving clumps of crimson fur snagged on the thorngrass. Good fur – the kind I know I’ll need for mother’s burial cloak. So when I see it, I decide to hunt it. I’m on the edge of the old city anyway, digging flux for the forges, so when my shift ends at dusk I just follow the red tufts, all the way down into the old crumble.

I know, I know. Stupid Toa, walking the ghostways at night. But I’m a Shellmaker, not one of the Rivetfolk – I don’t believe in ghosts. And besides, what choice do I have? Tough as they are, even fivejaws are giving in to the poison now. I’ll be lucky to sniff another one this year, let alone before mum needs her cloak.

So here I am, picking my way between the old manhills in the dark, and I can’t even see the lights of the Body Above on account of the fog that’s risen. Stinks worse than spoiled blast-dust, that fog. It’ll be thick with poison, so I wrap a wet cloth over my mouth and nose and hope for the best. I might not believe in ghosts, but I’m jumpy. I keep seeing things looming in the murk, and even though it’s just the worn old statues of the first people, they still make me prickle.

Should be watching my feet, not the fog, ’cause not ten shellwidths later, the dead city makes a fool of me. I think I’m walking over leaf litter, but it’s just a thin crust of vitregren, grown out over a pit in the track. I plunge through it like piss through snow. My forge-breeches save my skin from the glassy stems, but don’t save my arse from the rock below. I hit sloping ground and roll, trying to suck air into my winded gut as I bounce on the stone.

I stop at last, and my spear skitters to a halt a few boltswidths away. There’s no air in me, and I heave for a long moment before I check for broken bones. If a leg’s gone I’ll probably die here, but if an arm’s gone I’ll not be able to dig flux or work the ’phaestus, which’ll be worse. I’m fine, though. Elbow’s taken a solid crack, probably chipped the bone. But my feet carry me and my fingers all bend the right way, so I cross my thumbs, clap my palms to my collarbones, and fan out my hands to make the Quilla in thanks. Hail Two-Bird, hail Empra.

I’ve fallen through the manhill’s skin, into one of the big chambers of the first people. The Rivetfolk say these places are the worst of all, as Two-Bird can’t see into them to shoo the ghosts off. We Shellmakers know better; we take the sight of the Two-Bird – of the Body Above, and Empra – wherever we go. I keep my hands spread in the Quilla, and hold them out like a shield as I look around that musty old cave.

Then I see the sigil – a great white mark looming behind my crossed thumbs, just visible in the dark. A skull daubed in thick pale clay, split in two halves inside a ring of teeth. I freeze like a rat before a gastergrieff, neck-hairs stiffening. A skull within a maw – that’s a holy sign, I know it is. A powerful one. But I can’t remember what it means.

Before I can bring it to mind, something hideous uncurls out of the dark. It’s spindly and red, and I take it for the fivejaw until I clock how big it is – larger than a wild grox. It’s a jungle of tendrils and claws and snippers, spreading out under a baggy red membrane, and it’s got one eye, blazing like hot iron.

My mind’s blank, but my body erupts like a coiled spring, glad to have something to do with all that fear. My spear’s flying before I know what I’m looking at, and it would be a boltswidth deep in the thing, only an arm like a vine whips out and grabs it. The thing snaps my spear like a twig, and then it flows towards me, skittering on the stone with its membrane flapping. I only just get my knife out before it’s on me, and I dodge one, two swipes of its talons. But it’s too fast – before I can get a thrust of my own in, I’m flat on the floor, metal-cold tentacles closed round my wrists.

Figuring that’s my time up, I screw up my eyes and throw my head back, so at least it goes for my throat and makes it quick. But I don’t die. The monster just holds me there, its breath stinking of dust and hot oil, and so I open one eye to get a look at it.

Another eye looks back at me. A human face, or at least half of one. The monster’s head is mostly grimy steel and wires and ventwork. Machinery, somehow – the sort that only comes from heaven, full of the Iron Magic. But on its right-hand side, above a brass jaw and a thick mat of scar tissue, there’s the face of a woman. It makes no sense. Is she imprisoned? Is she being eaten up? Or is she the monster?

‘Inteleggiss,’ growls a speaking-pad on the monster’s neck. Its human eye scowls in concentration, and its machine eye flares. ‘Mey inteleggiss.’

More sounds came out, distorted and grunty, but I’m not listening – the monster’s grip on my left hand is loose, and I reckon I can reach my belt, fish out my skinning blade. I brace myself against the stone, ready to twist free and jam my blade into that eye before it even knows I’m loose. But then the monster surprises me again.

With a click and a greasy-sounding whir, its machine eye turns a deep blue, and casts this glowing web onto the stone beside me. Some of the light touches me and I gasp, but it doesn’t hurt. I can’t even feel it, even though it looks solid. I turn my head and try to focus on the light, and I see it makes a sort of picture. A model, maybe, like the ones the camp’s builders make when they’re planning a new metal store, but made of light and fog that wobbles and fizzes at the edges.

‘Mizerrikoardi,’ says the monster in its weird buzz, and like a spell has been cast, I know what I’m looking at. The light is making a small picture of something vast – a shape I know like I know my own body. Because I see this shape in the sky every day. It’s the Body Above, the Body of Empra. It’s my god, and so this monster has to be an Angel.

TWO

After it – she – shows me the picture of the Body, she goes into a sort of seizure, like old Jonus after a gas leak, then goes limp. Whatever she is, she’s in a bad way, and she’s used up whatever strength she had left trying to fend me off. But there’s no question of just leaving her there; she’s a holy creature. And if she is from heaven – if she has touched the Body itself – then her life is way bigger than mine. So I run back to the flux camp, heedless of any ghosts or pitfalls, fetch help from the diggers on the next shift and get her loaded onto a cart bound for Shellforge.

The three who help bring her to the camp are good lads from the hauler’s quarter, the kind with more meat than wits in their heads. They’re curious at first, babbling questions and poking at the Angel’s metal bits. But they know I’m a higher rating than them, so they lay off when they’re told. That’s lucky, as I barely know a thing more than them – all I can tell is the truth: that this Angel’s fallen down from Voyd, and needs healing.

Back home at Shellforge, nothing’s so simple. Because Soft-Voice Kal’s there at the camp gate, checking off the flux carts as they go through and scratching marks on his tally-block. Kal’s alright, as the shamans go – he’s taken on his share of mum’s duties as she’s got sicker, and his faith’s as strong as his good arm. But the man’s obsessed with details, and he can make an hour of fuss from a minute’s error. Two-Bird knows what he’ll make of the Angel, I think, as he catches sight of me and waves the cart over with the blobby spindle of his bad arm.

‘Empratex, Toa.’

‘Empratex, Kal,’ I reply, trying to catch his eye with a cheery smile. But he’s already got his neck craned, trying to look past me into the cart’s bed. He must have heard about it, from someone on one of the other carts.

‘Let’s see it then,’ he says, like I’m five years old and hiding a stolen ration pack behind my back. He levers himself off the gatepost with a huff, and limps over to the side of the cart where the Angel’s laid out under a sheet.

‘It’s a she, Kal, and she’s an Angel from heaven.’

‘We’ll see about that, girl. You wouldn’t be the first to go rooting around in the old city and find some toy of the first people, try to pass it off as Empra’s work. Hmph, an Angel indeed. Let’s take a look at what you’ve rea–’

Kal lifts the sheet with the tip of his bad arm, and his voice cuts off like he’s been brained. He looks that way too: mouth hanging slack, eyes swimming. But then his brow creases and his eyes sharpen up, like he’s recognised something, but he doesn’t know where from.

‘Told you,’ I say sullenly, and put the sheet back before anyone else can wander over for a look.

‘Toa, you need to take her to your mother right now,’ he says, as if that wasn’t my plan already, and I get a little crackle of anger behind my ears. But I don’t answer back, as I’ve barely slept in four shifts, and a fight won’t get the Angel fixed any quicker. ‘Quick as you can,’ he adds, earning himself a look that makes him flinch, before he waves the cart into town.

We pass under the beaten tin Quilla on the gate’s lintel, and head up the main dragway towards the centre of camp, where the sun’s rising behind the bulk of the ’phaestus. It’s a clear morning, so I can pick out all the detail on the side of the giant forge-engine – every vent shimmering in the chill, every gantry crowded with workers coming on shift. Exhausted as I am, I take a moment to thank Empra and Two-Bird for bringing it to us, looking up at the pale bones of the Body Above as I pray. ‘May we work fast, strengthened by the rations,’ I say, ‘and bring your Glory Day soon.’ Then, moving my eyes back down from heaven, I rest a hand guiltily on the Angel’s body, and pray so quietly only it will hear me. ‘Tell me your secrets,’ I whisper. ‘Tell me what life’s like in heaven.’

THREE

After I get the Angel to mother’s yurt, she falls into a fever that lasts thirty shifts. At first she’s downstairs behind a screen, but that doesn’t work out. There’s just no peace to be had. Mother’s crackthroat may be in the final stages – the bloody, burbly, bone-mulching stages – but she’s still chief shaman of the forge. That means home’s where the whole priesthood meets and argues, and where gawking kids sometimes need shoving back into the dragway.

The Angel’s got no need of shamans prodding and poking her. So we make a nest for her upstairs in the great yurt’s loft, where mum spends nights in her chair, and where the holy prints are stored in their racks of tubes.

I stay by the Angel’s side all shifts, tending to her according to mother’s directions, and sleeping on a pile of furs beside hers. When mum lets me, I look after her too. I’m allowed to take my rations from the shamans’ stock, and I’m excused from the ’phaestus until either the Angel comes round or she dies. On the night it finally happens, I’m washing her. And like any good Shellmaker daughter, I’m reciting the creed in my head as I work.

I) Empra is the maker of heaven, and the master of the Iron Magic. His home is Tera, the highest vault of heaven, and there he leads the war against his great Enemy.

I scoop the bitter mash of herbs from the bowl, and squeeze the juice out with my hands. Then I lift the furs covering the Angel, and begin to clean. Her strange red robes – which I had reckoned to be membranes like a Barratur’s wings when I first saw her – are off now, and what’s beneath is way smaller and more human than I’d been expecting.

One of her arms is a mess of branching metal claws and tendrils, and her hips gave way to brass legs like an insect’s, plus there’s the half of her head that’s steel. But beyond that, most of her is pale flesh, and skinny as a starveling. Even after the ration shortage last winter, I’d have outweighed her by a stone or two. Her skin is less discoloured now as her blood heals, but it’s still puckered into puffy red rims around the tubes and cables punched into her ribcage. I soothe the seams between flesh and metal with the balm, even though I’m not sure I need to. It’s hard to know what’s infection, and what’s just her nature. It seems like heaven might just be a painful place to live.

II) Empra made the first people long ago, but they forgot him and they forgot the Iron Magic. We are the City-sens, distant and penitent children of the first people. We became the City-sens when Empra came down from Tera in his great steel Body. He came here to make the world a part of heaven.

As I clean the cuts on her meat arm, her hand clenches round the talisman it grips, even in sleep. It’s a strange hand – her fingers can’t be much more than half the width of mine, and are soft as butter – but the thing held in it is even stranger.

When I returned with the boys from the flux camp to fetch her, she’d dragged herself into the little cave under the white sigil. Inside, she was rummaging through a sort of metal pod, just larger than a person, and shaped like a pegwort seed. It was all charred on the outside, like it’d been through a fire, and had one face cracked open to reveal a mess of blood-stained padding. The pod had been alive with the Iron Magic, but the Angel had acted like it was nothing as she foraged jerkily through the insides. Eventually, she’d pulled out this little ridged grey block, with one small glass plate on it, and passed out. She hasn’t let go of it since.

III) But Empra was attacked. His Enemy cleaved his Spirit from his Body and sent it back to Tera, leaving his Body wounded and sleeping in the lowest vault of heaven called Voyd. While the Body Above is broken in Voyd, Empra’s Spirit is trapped in Tera. We cannot meet Empra, and he cannot make the world a part of heaven, until the Body is healed.

‘How’s she faring, Toa?’ comes a quiet, raspy voice from across the loft. Mother’s awake.

‘Still deep under,’ I reply, turning to glance at her through the medicine-haze that drifts through the loft, ‘but I swear on Quilla the worst’s done.’ Mother grunts, either considering what I’ve said or trying to clear her throat. Her face looks tiny. Maybe it’s the mass of hides and gurrux-foam heaped around her that makes her look small, or the sickly orange light flickering up from the herb-burner, but it’s like she’s shrinking in her chair as I watch. She works her jaw, trying to rub moisture into her lips, and winces before she manages to speak again.

‘No blaspheming, girl. Don’t let up on cleaning her, and be sure to pray over the metal… as well as the flesh.’ Mum breaks off in a wet, sucking cough before finding her voice again. ‘There are ’cantations…’ Then she’s asleep again, or just lost in search of a thought – now the crackthroat’s in her head, it can be hard to tell.

I wonder how many days she’s got left, much as I have done most nights in the last year. She’s not dying quick. Secretly, I reckon she can’t stand the thought of letting the tribe’s Works go on without her supervision. Even though Kal and the rest carry much of her burden now, there’s no question who’s chief shaman. Sitting up here, closer to the Body Above than anyone except the workers on the burning mountainside of the ’phaestus, she’s still in charge.

And maybe all she can do now is sip tea and breathe smoke and squint down at the camp through the loft’s little vent-flap – but who’d begrudge her? If anyone’s earned a rest before they die, it’s mother. She’s worked that colossus of an engine out there for thirty years, longer than many live, and been chief shaman for twenty of those. She’s seen the Shellmaker tribe swell to nearly a third of its size again, and increase output from five score shells a year to nearly eight. Two-Bird favours her with the best rations, and even the Girder-people out west honour her name. And her daughter will miss her, when she’s gone.

IV) This is our purpose: to work, and to make the Body whole again. We dig and we smelt and we forge and we rivet, and we offer our Works to the sky. The Enemy sends the poison to dissuade us from our Works. For every day that we strive, it grows thicker in the air. But we are not disheartened.

Mum’s definitely asleep now, her breath keeping pace with the whoosh and whoomph of the big hammers in the night. I wonder if she’s got one ear out for them, even in her dreams. We both know that one of the shells being forged out there is hers. Deep in the ’phaestus, bathed in sparks, is the one that’s going to take her to heaven, and sit in the Body Above until the Glory Day. She’ll be short a cloak, but she tells me not to feel bad about it. Empra will be happier you saved an Angel, she said when I arrived back that night. I hope she’s right.

V) When our bodies fail, we send them to the Body Above, to wait until the work is done. Then, when Empra’s Spirit returns to his Body, he will know his children at last. He will drink the poison of the world away, and begin the Glory Day, when all that is broken shall be repaired by the Iron Magic, and all who are dead shall return from Voyd.

There’s hundreds of tribes out there, each working on a single part of the Body. And we all have our ways of uniting our fallen with Empra, to wait for Glory with him. The throngs of the Girder-people lower their dead into the molten metal that forms their Works, so their people can be woven into the Body’s very bones. The Bloodbrewers of the tar bogs embalm their lost, and set them afloat in the great tanks where the refined godsblood is stored. The Rivetfolk grease their offerings with the rendered fat of their dead, and we stack them in the shells we make. We don’t know what the shells are for – mum thinks they’re Empra’s teeth, on account of their shape – but behind the caps of blast-dust milled for us by the Powdermen, we always entomb a ring of carcasses. Sometimes just one, in the case of someone important like mother.

I try not to think about mum in the shell as I wash the Angel’s body. About how it’ll feel when she’s gone, or how we’ve never really talked about anything but the forge-work. It’s more important to remember that she’ll be back. This life isn’t for living – it’s for working. We’ll have forever to talk come the Glory Day, and we’ll never have to lift so much as a hammer – that’s Empra’s promise.

VI) We cannot touch the Body of Empra itself, as we are too impure, and the air of Voyd would burn us. But the spirit called Two-Bird, with its many bodies of steel, can fly between our world and the heavens. It is Two-Bird who brought us the ’phaestus forges, who brings us the rations that sustain us, and who comes to collect our Works. Two-Bird is Empra’s guardian, and his champion.

As I get to the sixth verse of the creed, it reminds me the Angel needs to eat – and so do I. So I head to the store-basket and fetch back one of the silver packs of rations, stamped with Quilla, the mark of Two-Bird, and say a short prayer before tearing it open. I count out the contents – the three white blocks, the green square, the two red cubes (my favourites) and the pink water.

Rations aren’t the only food, but they’re the best by far. I’ve had world-food from time to time – barratus meat and tunnel-tubes mostly – but it’s messy and hard to prepare, plus it usually makes you ill, so it’s only really for emergencies and ration shortages. Mum says that when she was little there were places called farms, which made stuff that tasted a bit like green squares, but the poison got too bad for them to work anymore. That’s fine though, because green squares are my least favourite part of rations anyway.

After I crumble one of the white blocks into the pink water for the Angel’s feeding tube, we’re ready to eat, and so I close my eyes and say the seventh verse of the creed – the most important one – aloud.

‘Seven – Two-Bird is an aspect of the Body Above, just as the Body is an aspect of Empra. Together, they are Imperium, the whole of god.’

As I finish I open my eyes, and I nearly jump when I find the Angel staring right at me, wide awake. With a soft crackle, her speaking-pad comes to life.

‘Imperium,’ she says, and gives me a look that makes my fingertips shiver. And that’s when things get interesting.

FOUR

On the surface of it, life’s still normal. The moon comes and goes through another cycle, mum gets sicker somehow, and I return to work. Digging’s done for now in the flux camps, so I’m back working tongs in the ’phaestus, swapping my grazes and coughs for burns and blisters. But it also means I’m in camp, so after shifts I head back to the loft to talk with the Angel.

She sits across from mum in the days, keeping quiet. Healing up, and tinkering with that strange little glass-faced block. From the way she looks at it, I reckon the talisman gives her some way of looking inside herself – but I don’t know what she’s after, or what she’s finding. Now that her red robes are back on, keeping the human parts of her deep in shadow, she’s as hard to read as the flickering glyphs on the talisman itself. She won’t let me wash her anymore, and keeps as much skin covered as possible. It’s like she’s horrified I ever saw underneath the robes; like she’s ashamed of her flesh.

I can see why, maybe. During the fever, she changed. With the robes off, and those red welts between meat and machinery showing, she was starting to seem like a person. Sick and weird, with strange things wired into her. But still a woman, whose skin at least didn’t look much older than mine. Heaven-born she might have been, but she still shat, and she still needed wiping by a forge-rat like me. Now the shroud’s back, and that eye of hers is glowing from under a crimson cowl, she’s an Angel again. An it, not a she – something fierce and faceless and ageless, that you wouldn’t touch unless you wanted to lose a hand.

Still, I can’t quite let go of what I saw underneath. I catch the little scrunch of her eyebrow that shows her annoyance when her tinkering leads to a dead end, and I see the worry in the way she stands when she looks up at the Body Above. Riven through with the Iron Magic though she is, she’s a person. And she’s got problems she doesn’t know how to solve.

In the evenings, between shift-end and sleep, mum and I talk with her. It’s slow going at first, especially with mum losing her voice and blacking out more often. But the Angel learns blazing-fast, and I reckon she’s somehow been listening to us all the time she was out cold. She keeps cagey while she’s picking up our speech, though. Mum and I are forever asking her questions about heaven and the Body – we’ve got the whole tribe asking us, after all, and Kal relentlessly trying to poke his head into the loft. But for now, she tells us only what she wants to, and that ain’t much.

Then comes the day of the Lift. We’re all amazed that mother’s watching this one from the outside of a shell. But there she is – out on the lifting-yard with her ceremonial furs, her forge-staff and her leather cap passed down through forty-two pairs of hands since the first chief shaman. There’s a big autumn storm coming in, and the rain’s the kind that burns your eyes, but she’s sitting in her chair undaunted, tiny jaw set as she looks out over the tribe’s Works. There are seventeen shells arranged on the ’crete – the most we’ve ever forged in one passing of the moon – and each one the height of twenty folk. Between them, they’ll bear eight dozen dead to heaven. The toil of moving them out onto the yard alone is backbreaking, with whole districts pulling in harnesses, and children running ahead to bear the log rollers in their beaten gold casings. But it’s always joyful work, hauling in the cortege, because it’s the holiest work of all. And because of what comes next. What happens now.

Everyone’s gone quiet, but it’s an electric quiet, as they wait in perfect rows for Two-Bird’s descent. A messenger is coming from heaven. The Angel and I watch from an old water tower, just north of the yard. I’d wanted to show the Angel to Two-Bird, but her eye flared at the prospect, and she forbade it. She says I’ll understand soon enough, and her words are barely cool from the fire when the horn sounds.

The horn. Two-Bird’s call. It’s more like weather than sound, like something solid that you can’t see, which shakes your blood as it blasts through you. It comes from far under the clouds, and sure enough, there’s Two-Bird’s shadow growing beneath the boiling grey. ‘Big’ doesn’t even start to describe it. It’s like a mountain in the sky, coming down base first, with lightning flashing off its sides. If it fell, it’d crush half of Shellforge, and yet the creed tells us Two-Bird’s body is only a speck next to the size of the Body Above.

Once Two-Bird’s great belly is poking clear of the clouds, its talons start to descend on thick black chains – chains so heavy they don’t even sway in the wind. Tribesfolk scramble up the brass, ready to attach our offerings to the talons as they descend. It’s lethal work, can get you crushed in a heartbeat. But who wouldn’t risk it, for the chance to touch the metal of Two-Bird itself, still cold from Voyd?

As the climbers abseil down again and the shells are winched up towards heaven, you can see people in the crowd mouthing farewells, and I know that’ll be me soon enough. But the Angel isn’t watching the tribesfolk. She’s staring at the rising shells, like she’s trying to figure something out in that iron skull of hers. The shells lock into racks on Two-Bird’s belly, and there’s another pause. This is it. We all stare upwards, holding our breath. And the hatch opens.

At first it’s a puff of silver, twinkling against the black of the open hatch. But then the individual shapes start to become visible, tumbling in the wind before smacking into the ’crete far below. Ration packs. The scattering becomes a deluge as Two-Bird’s belly empties, and a huge drift starts to build in the yard. A mountain of ration packs, measured out to match the Works we’ve offered. Everyone stays still as statues, eyes fixed on the silver. But then mother twitches her staff, and they bolt for the food.

Two-Bird’s engines come on somewhere up in the clouds. The roar’s almost as loud as the cheering of the tribesfolk as they fill their bags in the yard. But it catches the Angel’s interest, and she speaks at last.

‘What do you call that phenomenon?’ she says with a curious tone, extending a tendril towards the glowing plumes of steam coming down from the engines.

‘It’s the breath of life,’ I say, wondering why she’d be so focused on that, of all things. ‘Two-Bird breathes it out when it goes back to heaven – it keeps the poison at bay.’

There’s a long pause before the Angel replies.

‘We must speak with your mother now, before she expires,’ she says, like she’s finally finished chewing over a problem. ‘All is not well in heaven, and it is time you knew the truth.’

FIVE

The Angel says we’ve been lied to. At first, of course, we don’t really know what she’s trying to say. Even with all the progress we’ve made, there’s just no match in our language for half the words she uses, especially now she’s talking about the business of heaven and all. But after a little fumbling round the edges of meaning, it gets clearer.

The Angel says Empra made heaven, just like we believe. But she says Empra had the help of another god, who’s been hidden from us. This god – the Mawed Skull – gave Empra the Iron Magic to begin with, and knows all of its secrets. The Angels are its servants, woven in heaven from machines and people.

No matter what the Angel claims to be, I get angry with it. Even if you’re a magical being, you can’t just blaspheme like that in someone’s home. But mother stops me raising my voice, says she knows the truth of what the Angel’s saying. She has me fetch one of the holy prints from its tube in the rack, which she unrolls to reveal an enormous plan of the machinery inside the ’phaestus. And there it is. That sign – the one the Angel had painted in clay in its cave, with the split skull in the ring of teeth – stamped all over the holy prints. The sign of the Mawed Skull. Mother says it’s stamped all over the insides of the ’phaestus too. In hidden places that the shamans know, where they go to say secret prayers.

But that’s not all. This god has been hidden from us by Two-Bird. Two-Bird, who’s not the third part of god – not any kind of god at all – but a parasite working for Empra’s Enemy. What we see as Two-Bird – the great creature that comes from heaven to lift our Works into the void – is just a shell, a haw-ler, as the Angel calls it, created long ago as tools of the Mawed Skull. Two-Bird’s spirit animates them, working through a tide of grey-faced people who bear its sigil.

These thralls also infest the Body Above, in numbers we struggle to picture. They fill its holy spaces like featherworms fill a flyblown gurrux, and they’ve even seized the Angels of the Mawed Skull to serve Two-Bird.

‘They hunted down the faithful,’ says the Angel, ‘called us heretek and slaughtered us. Only I escaped, in a pod they did not see.’

‘But… why?’ I ask, feeling like the bottom’s dropping out of my mind.

The Angel takes a long, hissing breath, looks directly at mother, and answers. ‘The miserik – the Body Above, that is – is all but healed. The Body is prepared for… Empra’s spirit to enter, but Two-Bird has taken control and refuses ingress. Empra is trapped as a spirit without a body, while Two-Bird assumes his mantle and says it acts on his will. Imperium, it calls itself – the whole of god.’ The face of the Angel is a steel mask of hate, seething with the reflection of flames from mother’s herb-burner. But those flames also glitter off wetness in the Angel’s human eye. ‘We were attacked for trying to free the Body. It has… a machine in it for holding a spirit, which Two-Bird keeps… suppressed. We wanted to let that machine blossom, open it directly to Empra. But we were cut down, and now I’m all that’s left.’

‘So what happens now?’ asks mother, straightforward as if she’s asking a shaman for a temperature reading. My mind’s still heaving from having the heavens turned upside down, but she’s already thinking about her next step. The Angel hesitates before responding, but aims a level gaze at mother as it speaks.

‘Two-Bird will keep poisoning your world, while telling you that only Two-Bird can keep the poison at bay. And you’ll keep working for Two-Bird, because soon the rations will be all that’s left to eat. And when Two-Bird has taken all you can give, it will steal Empra’s Body and take it away, and you will choke in the dust of its passing.’

I feel the sort of shock you get when something sharp goes right through you, when you see the blood well up a moment before you feel the pain. I can’t see what the Angel’s saying for the size of it. It’s blasphemy – the sort of stuff you’d be furnaced for even joking about. But it’s an Angel from heaven telling us, and mum’s face says she knows the truth of every word. We’re all living and dying for a parasite.

‘What can we do?’ I ask, after a long time goes by. Because you have to start somewhere. The Angel turns to me with a curious look.

‘Before we were massacred, my cadre developed a piece of… skrapkoad. A… magic spell, which, if it could be cast on the Body’s… spirit-machine, could crack its shackles and allow it to draw in the presence of Empra.’

‘Do you still know the spell?’ asks mother, more alert than she’s been in months, and the Angel taps the little box with the glass plate.

‘I managed to save most of the spell before I escaped, and I have been optimising it since. But I have no way to get it to heaven – even if I could get into or-bitt, the servants of Two-Bird would… detect me in moments.’

I’m still struggling to put it all together, when mum comes out with her answer. The sheer speed of her coming to terms with all of this – it’s like she’s not surprised. Like she’s been waiting all her life to have it confirmed, and had a plan spare just in case. And once I take in what she’s saying, the shock already quivering in my arms goes deep cold.

‘Take my place in the shell, Toa,’ she says, in the nearest the crackthroat will let her to a shout. I jump to my feet, head spinning, but she sits me down with the smallest twitch of her hand.

‘But, mum!’ I say. ‘When Glory Day comes, you’ll not–’

‘Glory Day won’t come at all if Two-Bird keeps its talons on the Body. You have to travel to Voyd, to the Body, and within a shell is the only way. Take my place, and carry the spell to heaven.’

The way she speaks, the look on her face, is like she’s solving a mechanical problem. She’s just given up on resurrection – the one promise that makes this life bearable – but you’d think she’d just told someone where to dump a barrow of flux. I’ve never bothered worrying about the fact I don’t really know her, because I know there’ll be time for that when the Works are done. But if I take her place in the shell, we won’t even get that.

I open my mouth to say so, but I can’t find the words. I want to say I love her, but I can’t face knowing for sure that it doesn’t matter to her. So I look to scripture instead.

‘Even if I did go in the shell,’ I stammer, trying to keep my heart rate down, ‘the air up there… it’d burn me up. We know from the creed we ain’t capable of touching the Body ourselves, right?’

Now the Angel speaks – but it speaks to mother, with the tone of one shaman examining a faulty valve with another. ‘There are materials in my escape pod. It will be tight inside the shell, but we can prepare the space to protect Toa. And inside the body, there is a world with air like this one. The odds of success remain slim, but there is a chance.’

‘How long will it take?’ asks mother.

‘The chamber will be prepared at the exact moment we need it,’ says the Angel. ‘Or very slightly afterwards.’ And although her mouth’s covered in steel and her voice is a monotone buzz, I’ll bet my hands I see a smile in her eye. And in mother’s. If I didn’t know better I’d say they were sharing a joke. Perhaps mother always spoke the Angel’s language after all.

SIX

I hear the sound of the horn just as clearly as always, even from inside the shell. It’s like it comes from inside my bones. Winter’s here, but I’m sweltering – my body’s wrapped in layers of fur and leather, and the wet from my own breath drips back on me from the glass in front of my face. We’ve always built tiny windows into each shell, so the dead can be counted by Empra as they arrive in heaven. Now, that window’s the only thing keeping me from feeling like I’ve been buried alive. There can’t be more than a boltswidth between my body and the metal in any direction, and every bit of space is packed with insulation or air-bags.

Mother died a week before today’s Lift, and this shell – always intended for her – is painted all over with stories from her life, in ochre mixed with Barratur-tallow. I think of everyone out there reading the pictures, all thinking she’s laid to rest underneath them. But instead it’s me, packed in with the mechanical guts of the Angel’s pod, and a big cluster of air-filled gurrux bladders.

Mum’s real funeral was secret, and barely anyone came – just those few shamans who were in the know. Her closest, who she’d called on to help outfit this chamber for me. Kal spoke for her, and slid her into the molten depths of the ’phaestus when it was done.

It was a metal burial, in the way of the Girder-people; mum had asked for it at the end, before she lost the energy to speak. The morning after, Kal had pressed a piece of not-yet-cool steel into my hands, and told me to take it safe to heaven. It’s with me now, still warm against my skin. It might not ensure mum’s resurrection, but it lets me hope for it, and that’s good enough. Hitched to the next loop of my belt is another gift – this one from the Angel. It’ll help me cast the spell when I need to, and it gives me a different sort of hope.

I touch both pieces of steel in turn for luck, and begin running through the plan again. The machinery around me starts to rattle with the presence of Two-Bird above, and I can almost feel its shadow pressing down on me. But I keep calm by visualising the map of light the Angel showed me. Following the little moving arrows from the chamber the Angel called Munishionstoar – where I’ll arrive – right through the guts of the Body to a place called Haadpoint, where the spell must be cast.

I’m about to begin reciting the words of Angel-speech I know – Maygos, mekanikas, heretek, haw-ler, stah-ship – when I hear footsteps clanking up the outside of the shell. Things are moving faster than I expected. There’s a thud – I feel it in my bones as the talons are attached to the shell by one of my tribemates. Then a deep stretchy creak, as the chain takes the weight. A tremor in my stomach tells me I’ve left the ground, and I gasp. From now on, I’m in the realm of heaven.

I can only see dirty sky through the tiny slit of the window, until there’s another rumble, and the shell tips forward to clamp to Two-Bird’s – to the haw-ler’s – body. I know to expect it, but it still yanks on my guts when the view swings downward, and I’m lying on my belly with the world spread out hundreds of shellwidths beneath me.

The tribesfolk out on the ’crete aren’t much more than specks from up here, surrounded by all the soot and the stink of Shellforge. As I rise, the tents begin to look like scales on a tattered hide, darker in the bands of old leather yurts, and lighter out where Two-Bird drops the smaller, newer pre-fabbs. The ’phaestus glowers in the middle of it all, shrouded in its own steam. Then it’s all gone, lost in a bank of thick, bitter brown cloud, and I’m alone with the thunder of the rising metal.

When the cloud finally thins I can see the curve of the horizon, and night creeping across it like thick black godsblood. The whole world looks like old leather – brown and grey and grubby, and thicker with scars than a slag-scraper’s arms. Where the dark pools, the land is angry, blazing with furnaces and glowing with firelit smog. How many tribes are down there? How many do we know, and how many have we never even heard of, burning and working and living and dying?

I feel dizzy, to the point where I think the shock of it all has cooked my head. But right before I black out, I remember the Angel saying something about the air… the air! As we get higher, it’s turning to Voyd! Hurriedly I grab the air-mask and start breathing from the gurrux bladders, and the world beneath shimmers into focus again.

The frost on the edges of the glass deepens, and soon I feel cold to the bone, even under all my layers. It’s so much deeper than the cold of winter. A pounding pain starts up deep in my ears, and I grit my teeth. I’m being lifted through Voyd now, and all I can do is hope – hope, and pray to Empra and the Mawed Skull that the Angel’s seals hold. That the air stays in.

After a while I lose all sense of up and down, and it feels like I’m floating, weightless in my cocoon of hides and heaven-stuff. There’s no wind buffeting the shell anymore, and only the deep growl of the engines underscores the silence. Then home swings away. The battered brown curve falls out of view, and all there is, is black. Black, and things I’ve never seen before – white pinpricks that get brighter the longer I look out into the dark. Are they ghosts? Watching eyes? Or windows through to the highest vault of heaven, where Tera waits? I feel so tiny here, and so fragile – a trespasser, in a place only gods are strong enough to endure.

Then I see god itself. The Body. It’s tipped with a blade that could carve the moon – a great steel cliff that slides out of the abyss, more clean and white than a furnace heart. Gold glistens like frozen clouds on its edges, and letters in the script of heaven tower hundreds of times my height as I drift past. ‘PRINCEPS MISERICORDIAE’, they spell – that strange phrase I first heard from the Angel, one of the secret names of god. The metal speeds past outside my window as Two-Bird ascends towards the Body’s spine, and I think I’ve clocked the scale of it all until I see a tiny, winking light in the distance – a welding torch, like the smallest spark from a spilled ember.

At last I’m lifted all the way up that iron cliff, and find myself looking down the length of the Body along its backbone. It must be thousands upon thousands of shellwidths, like the manhills of the old city, but built on the scale of the world. It’s so big I can’t breathe, and I feel pinned to the wall of the chamber. It’s too big for me to hold in my head all at once. And there, crouched like a thundercloud in the middle of it all, is Two-Bird.

This isn’t one of the haw-lers; this has to be the interloper itself. A titanic metal bird, with wings easily a hundred shellwidths across, perched on the Body’s highest hump. Its double heads scream spite into heaven, and one stares directly at me with eyes like black gold. As soon as I see those eyes I shut mine and hold my breath, praying to Empra that it thinks I’m dead, that it didn’t catch me looking. I’ll be lucky – Two-Bird sees everything. It can even see inside you, mum used to say, to see how much you love Empra.

I keep my breath pent up in my chest for a long time, and my eyes shut even longer. I’m just starting to reckon I might have got away with it when there’s a resounding bang against the walls, and I scream. I’m thrashing around, blood hot with panic, until I remember the Angel’s words. This must be the dokk-klamp, and it means I’m being taken in by the Body. It means I’ve survived Voyd.

It’s dark outside the window, with only the vaguest shapes suggesting the shell’s movement. A row of dim lights slips past in the gloom – metal glints. After a while, there’s a sense of enormous doors silently closing as I pass. I must be inside the Body now. After a long time there’s another, softer thud, and then stillness. A weak breeze moans against the outside of the shell. Air. I lie still for a long while in the cold, just breathing, desperately thankful to Empra for having made it. I’ve got tools to open the hatch behind me, but I decide to wait a while, just in case Two-Bird is watching for tricks.

I must have dozed off, because suddenly there’s a skittering and a clanging outside, and a rattling on the hatch. Bolts being undone. My blood runs thick and cold – this wasn’t in the plan. Before I can work out what to be afraid of, the thick hatch is pried open with a wicked crack, and there’s a hiss of air. I breathe the first lungful of heaven, of the Body, and it smells like piss and turds.

SEVEN

There’s a gaunt face in the hatchway, ruddy with firelight, sniffing like an animal. I open my mouth, stunned, but there’s no time to speak before long arms shoot in to grab me. I’m hauled out like a grub from dead wood, and flopped onto a filthy metal gantry among a forest of scabby grey feet.

There’s at least two dozen of them – dog-thin folk wearing faded leather rags, and decked with strings of little bones. They stink like a latrine, and they’re vile to look at, with sunken eyes and slippery-looking, too-thin grey skin. I get to my feet and they shriek in horror, leaping backwards from me – because of course, they expect me to be dead.

I sway, lightheaded, drawing my knife and tracing drunken circles in the air with it. Keeping them back while I try to make sense of where I am. It’s a bit like the caverns beneath the old city – like the place inside the manhill where I found the Angel – but the ceiling’s so high it may as well be night. I can only see one wall. The others are too far away in the dark. And all around me in every direction are thousands – tens of thousands – of shells. This must be Munishionstoar. Some of the shells are plain and some are painted, with some designs I recognise and others I don’t. Has to be every shell we ever made, and far more besides. Where have they all come from? Are there other Shellmakers?

It’s then I notice that most have their tomb-hatches busted open, and my attention snaps back to the grey people. A few of them are capering around me, keeping away from my blade, but the rest are swarming over the other shells from the Lift, clawing away with crowbars. Pulling bodies out. It all makes sudden, sick sense. Those rags they’re dressed in are the remnants of Shellmaker clothes, and those bones they’re wearing… I fight back vomit as I see they’ve got skinning knives out.

‘Away!’ I roar, barreling one of them aside as I sprint towards the nearest shell. They’ve got the body of a boy I don’t recognise laid out on the metal, but I won’t let them touch him. Despite the layers swaddling me, I move like a steam hammer, and I bellow the striking-cry of my people as I come. But the grey folk are too excited, chattering too loudly to even notice. They’re tearing the clothes off the corpse, and its head is lolling on the grimy mesh, eyes half open.

I don’t even think as I fall on the largest of the people, a gangly man with boils on his skin. The next moments are a mess. His blood shoots out hot and dark where I jam the knife tip into his neck, and all I can think of is how it doesn’t really feel like anything to kill a man. Then there’s three more on me, and I’m hacking at them with the blade, leaving wide, dark wedges in their forearms. The blade gets stuck in the gristle of a woman’s hand, and I have to shove her hard to get free. Blood gets in my eye. They’re smaller than me, and much weaker, so I know I’ll be good so long as I can keep them off me.

But there’s so many of them – too many to keep away. I spin and dodge, but there’s always one behind me, and before I know it there’s dirty fingers scrabbling for my eyes. I throw myself hard to the floor, with one of them beneath me, and there’s a spongy crack that says I’ve busted its ribs. The hands slip off my head, but there’s two more grey faces pouncing at me, and a knife working at the leather over my hip. It punches through, and there’s wet all down my leg. I shield my face, but someone’s kicking at my head. I know I’m going to die, and I’m so much angrier than I expected.

Before the Angel came I wouldn’t have cared about dying – it’s just something that happens, sooner or later. But I can’t die right now. If I die, Empra’s never going to be free of Two-Bird, and Glory Day will never come. I’m suddenly terrified – not of the grisly hands reaching for my throat, but of my own significance. I’m no longer just a forge-rat. I’m responsible for the fate of my whole people. For all people. If I fail, so does everything. I can’t let myself die.

Knowing this gives me a terrible strength. I don’t know whether it’s from Empra, or the Mawed Skull, or just from a girl who’s scared to die. But it’s drastic, bone-deep. I roll, find a place to plant a boot, and launch upwards with my blade, straight into a twitching grey belly. I slice open a neck on the backswing, go to lunge for another, but the surge is already fading. Bellowbreaths later I’m down again, and they’re on me.

Just then, a sharp crack sounds somewhere in the cavern and the grey folk freeze, faces snapping up to stare into the dark. Another crack and they hiss, baring black peg teeth, before turning and scurrying like flies shooed from a wound. They’re off me, loping down the gantry away from the sound and into the night. A few of them try dragging bodies from the shells, but a third crack makes them drop and run.

I try to pursue, but my legs won’t move well. My hand slips on blood as I try to get up, and my vision blurs. There’s voices in the distance, getting closer. They’re talking what sounds like a different language to begin with, but then I realise it’s just my own, pronounced weirdly.

‘Bilgers again,’ growls one, before spitting loudly. ‘Transpired here just afore we.’

‘Pox the skaffers and their hushways. We need to fast up, get here quicker. How many bodies take they, this day round?’ This one sounds like their leader, and the first voice counts under its breath before replying.

‘Noneways, don’t think. Saw ’em fighting just as we came, like. Must’ve kept ’em baffled.’

‘Praise Thee-em-pur. Now have the lads fetch up the worthy-dead for proper burial, while I check the ’nitions. And stack the bilgers for mulching, else their kin’ll be back for nibbles.’

‘Chief,’ cries another voice, much closer, ‘quick now, this one’s alive!’ Then there’s a drumming of boots on metal, and a ring of faces looking down on me. Not Angel faces or ghoul faces, just normal ones, swathed in fur caps against the cold of the cavern. They’re frowning at me like I’m something impossible, but they’ve got no blades out, so I decide to let sleep take me and worry about them later.

EIGHT

I come round in a corrugated metal shed, not much bigger than the thin mattress I’m lying on. Dim firelight flickers through a curtained doorway, and a huddle of children are watching me, so still I don’t even notice them at first. Immediately, my hand flies to my belt in panic – but the gifts are still there. I’m safe, for now.

Looking out past the door-curtain, which is sewn together from sacks bearing Two-Bird’s sigil, I see a sort of street. It’s lit by fires in low braziers, and filled with people shuffling along with handcarts. The ceiling is low, way lower than in Munishionstoar, and it shakes with constant rumbles and chugs. The voices of distant machines, growling to mark their territory. The air’s cold. It smells of sweat, and the spilled godsblood that shimmers in rainbow slicks on the damp road.

Agitated, I scramble to get up. I need to leave, to get to Haadpoint. But there’s a tube in my arm, attached to a grimy bag on a sort of pole on wheels. The tube makes me think of the Angel’s welts and I pull it out on instinct, leaving behind a cold pain and a pool of red. Stumbling slightly, I lunge for the door-curtain, and have it half pulled aside when a man appears with a steaming bowl.

‘No, no,’ says the lumbering figure, and I recognise the voice as the chief of the group from Munishionstoar. ‘You’re safe hereways. No bilgers – we’re all kru. Now drink,’ he says brightly, gesturing at the bowl. ‘It’s meaty – good stuffs!’

The man sits at the end of my thin blanket, and I take the bowl. As I drink, I notice there’s a small crowd peering curiously in at me around the entrance, but I don’t care. I’m famished, and the taste of the broth is the taste of comfort itself – pink water, with a double portion of red cubes crumbled in.

‘Rations,’ I say, as I breathe the steam in and smile.

The man’s eyes go wide, and he laughs. ‘Correctus! Rations! You mean you eating thems in Terrah too?’

‘Tera?’ I ask, wondering if I’ve heard him right.

‘Yeah, Terrah! You know, the greenworld, the destination. That’s where you’re from, no?’

NINE

The man who saved me is called Pipes. He lives with his children Roq and Hal in Batterytown, a warren of tunnel-streets that fill the Body between Munishionstoar and the district he calls port-broadsyde. His people are called the Loaders, and they are part of a wider people called Kru, who Pipes says live all through the Body. They worship Empra just like us, but they call him Thee-em-pur, and they have other gods besides.

The grey people he saved me from are the Bilgers, who live in a terrible catacomb called the belowdex, in the lowest layers of the body. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine a grimmer place than the overcrowded squalor of Batterytown, but Pipes’ face goes hard when he thinks of the belowdex.

I was expecting heaven to be a bright place, sparkling with the Iron Magic. But although the tunnels throng with countless magic lights and screens, they don’t bring much light to this underworld. Truly, life in Two-Bird’s heaven seems grimmer than it is in our world. Even Pipes’ people seem to believe they live here as some kind of punishment, and it takes me until the Briefing to work out why.

It’s my eleventh shift in Batterytown when the Briefing gets called, but I’ve been expecting it, because Pipes has told me how much he’s looking forward to it maybe a dozen times. We’ve repeated a lot of conversations, these last few shifts, as I’ve been healing up on the mattress in his hovel. Even though he sleeps on the floor with Roq and Hal, and splits his rations with me, Pipes just seems so excited to have me under his roof.

His people think the bodies of my people come from Tera itself, and that’s why they protect them from the Bilgers. He thinks we’re holy, that I’m a living miracle. But I reckon he’d look after me even if he knew the truth. He’s a strange, kind figure, and he strikes me as someone who’s been lonely for a while.

When the bell finally rings from the town square to summon us to the Briefing, he’s overjoyed. He fusses over his children, dressing them in almost-clean tunics with real brass buttons, which they keep in a tin wardrobe just for these special days. He dons a matching outfit of his own, and even finds one for me, which clearly hasn’t been worn in some time.

As we join the crowd in the square, Roq and Hal run round us excitedly, hooting at the other children as they weave between their parents’ legs. There’s a festival mood in the air, like the day of a Lift, and everyone’s watching the dais at the square’s centre. There’s a pulpit there, and speaking-boxes, and everything’s decorated with iron skulls. There’s a lot of skulls on things, up in heaven.

Another bell rings, everyone hushes and the Briefing starts. It turns out it’s a play – a bit like our festival of Empra-Mercy – but it happens every twenty-one shifts, rather than once a year. It’s confusing to start with because of the Loaders’ weird language, but Pipes’ occasional whispers help me make sense of it.

It all starts with a brown sphere, held up on a pole by a woman whose face is painted in ash.

‘That’s Theta,’ murmurs Pipes. ‘That’s where we came from. Failed kolony – a poisoned world. But look, hereways come the stah-ship to take us away!’ Right on cue, three Loaders march onstage with a representation of the Body, painted on sheet metal and fixed on more rusty poles.

Another woman appears at the other side of the stage, this time with a green sphere, and the crowd cheers. Pipes elbows me and points, grinning. ‘Lookways, Terrah! Your home!’

The Loaders carrying the Body begin moving from the brown sphere to the green, but they never make it across the stage. Halfway to Tera they begin leering and grimacing at the crowd, and then they turn and start fighting each other.

‘Sinners,’ says Pipes with a sad shake of his head, before booing loudly. As its bearers brawl, the representation of the Body falls to the floor with a clang, and the crowd starts to bellow in agitation. It’s starting to look like a full-fledged riot is going to start, when a flash of blast-dust goes off in the centre of the stage, releasing a pillar of smoke.

When the smoke clears, there’s a steel frame at the centre of the stage, in the shape of a person, dressed in ornate clothes. To its side, up on the pulpit, a man with a loudhailer addresses the crowd.

‘Kru!’ he roars.

‘Captin!’ they shout back – but they’re not talking to the loudhailer man. They’re shouting at the giant rickety person-shape on stage.

‘Kru, listen up!’

‘Yes, Captin!’ the Loaders shout in unison, and I see tears fleck the corners of Pipes’ eyes.

Drums begin to beat, and the loudhailer man begins to speak in a monotone.

‘This is the mission. We are on our way to holy Terrah – to Father! To Thee-em-pur! But we sinned. We betrayed him, and now are we stuckways in the cold of deep-space! But do not fear, for we have a ways to redemption! Thee-em-pur sends cargo from Terrah to fix the ship. He sends bodies in the cargo, as proof of paradise! When the work is done, we go to Terrah! To paradise-ways! The work absolves us! The Captin guides us! Live by the Captin’s word! Thee-em-pur protects!’

The speaker builds their voice into a frenzy, and the crowd cheers louder with each exclamation. By the end, even the loudhailer is drowned by the screaming, and it only stops when a new figure moves onto the dais and raises a hand for silence. This person is almost as tall as the effigy of the captin, and is dressed in an immaculate version of the tunic Pipes wears, with golden buttons and the sigil of Two-Bird on its breast. They have a hard jaw, a nose like the prow of the Body itself, and eyes like black gold beneath the brim of a gleaming cap. Surely, this creature is something more than human?

In a voice like thunder, the giant starts to read off a list of news from a scroll, but none of it means anything to me. It sounds a lot like the production reports mother would receive from the shamans each month, but with more of a sense of veiled threat. When it gets to the last item on the list, however, my ears prick and I break out in a chilly sweat.

‘Crew,’ warns the figure, saying the word strangely, ‘the hereteks may be defeated, but be vigilant. Rumours abound that their corruption persists, and the Mekanikas Maygos suspects infiltration. If you see anything irregular, it is your duty to the Em-per-or to report it! Has anyone seen anything unusual, of late?’

The giant’s hard eyes sweep the crowd, and only too late do I realise – this isn’t a human at all. It’s surely Two-Bird itself, in disguise! And it’s about to spot me. I’m on the verge of sprinting through the crowd, when Pipes speaks up and I freeze.

‘Sir!’ he shouts, smiling and eager. ‘I saw something! But it’s good news, sir! One of the shells from Terrah, it had a living girl in it! A miracle!’

‘And where is this… girl?’ says Two-Bird.

‘Why, sir, she’s right here.’

But I’ve already turned and fled by the time Pipes answers. I’m hobbling as fast as my leg will allow, ducking below the shoulders of the crowd to avoid Two-Bird’s eyes. I feel a sting of betrayal as I round a corner out of the square, but I can’t blame Pipes. How could I expect him to have seen through Two-Bird’s trickery, to resist its magic, when all of my people have been fooled for generations? I’m angry with myself instead – for getting attached to him, and for not running as soon as he’d rescued me.

But I force myself to let go of it. Mum always told me life’s too short for regrets, and I’ve got more important things to concentrate on. As I stumble through the twisting streets, hip still aching from the Bilger’s knife, I know I’ve got barely a head start on Two-Bird’s avatar, and barely any chance of escape. But I’ve still got Kal’s gift, and the Angel’s. And for now at least, the whole of the Body is ahead of me.

The sense of mad freedom powers my legs, and I visualise the Angel’s map as I run. I’ve spent the last few shifts quizzing Pipes, piecing together a route out of Batterytown towards Haadpoint. But if I take that route now, I’ll not make it a hundred shellwidths. My whole plan was based on hiding in plain sight, blending in with Pipes’ people, and that’s not going to happen now. Footsteps slap against metal just around the corner, and I know I need a contingency plan fast.

Of course, I’ve got one, but I don’t like it. It had been the first route I’d come up with in Pipes’ hovel, as it seemed so direct. But when a talk with Pipes gave me an inkling of where it would take me, I’d rejected it outright. Now, I’ve got no other options. Just a few streets over from Pipes’ hovel, at the border of Batterytown’s ration factory, there’s a sluice gate, which Pipes says has a rusty lock. If I can batter it open, I’ll be able to walk through the bowels of the Body, all the way to Haadpoint. Through the belowdex.

TEN

I make it to the ration factory without being spotted, right as a new shift is headed in to work. The bustle of the crew change gives me a crowd to hide me until I can find the gate with the rusty lock. After that, five bellowbreaths’ frantic hammering with a piece of scrap, while standing in knee-deep factory runoff waiting to be spotted by Two-Bird, wins me a way into the dark.

The way down is steep, and slippery, and reeks of mould and rot. Once my eyes get used to the gloom, it almost reminds me of the old city down here. The floor’s got the same pools of stagnant, chemical water, and the echoes are the same. There’s the same worn, rusty decoration on the walls, and stalactites on the ceiling that make me wonder just how old the Body is.

These tunnels clearly haven’t been used by the Kru for lifetimes. But they’re not abandoned, either. The occasional pile of well-gnawed bones litters the track, and at one point I pass what seems to be a sort of nest, full of degraded ration wrappers and scraps of cloth. Bilgers – or worse.

My mind paints all kinds of grey horror into the dark around me, and every noise – every distant rumble, every trickle of water – makes my breath catch. But I don’t slow down, and I don’t cringe in the dark. Ahead, somewhere, is the place where I can free my god and my people. And all I have to do is find it, before my death finds me. I finger the two gifts that hang from my belt, focusing on the hope they offer, and stride on into the black.

Maybe twenty bellowbreaths into the journey, in a wide, low cavern, it nearly happens. All of a sudden, there’s an explosion of feet slapping on stone behind me, and I flinch as something runs out of the dark – but whatever it is, it sprints straight past me. Running from something. As shrieks echo from the tunnel behind me, I dive into a nook behind a collapsed statue, and lie motionless. There’s heavy footpads on the path, and I swear something leans over the pitted stone and sniffs me. But it passes, and I’m alone again.

I walk deeper into the Body’s bowels. As I go, the walls get more deeply caked in grime, and the floor sinks further into sludge. My clothes are filthy from wading through it – even though I avoid the deeper patches after I see something big roll in the slime. The magical lights in the ceiling, dim and infrequent to begin with, are dying entirely now. When they’re gone, I’m guided only by the greasy light of tunnel-wall mould-slicks. The passage expands into a series of wide, musty caves, and I try not to think about what might be watching me from the shadows.

But again, nothing comes for me, and there is no sign of pursuit. Perhaps at last, my faith in Empra has paid off. Perhaps, in surrendering myself to the depths of his Body, I’ve earned his protection. I thank him aloud in the darkness, not caring who hears, and feel glad to be alive.

And then, I reach a pair of huge steel doors in the gloom, marked with the glyphs the Angel taught me – Haadpoint is beyond them, and access to the Body’s spirit-machine. I’ve been expecting Haadpoint to be a glittery citadel or a tower, not buried down here in the dark and forgotten. But then, nothing in heaven has been what I expected.

Using the gestures the Angel taught me, I speak with the doors, and they begin to grind open.

ELEVEN

I’m confused, at first. Thinking the Angel must have been wrong. That I’m in the wrong place after all. This can’t be Haadpoint, because it’s not really anything – it’s just a big, dark, empty cave. Like the inside of a skull, with a single red light hanging somewhere near the ceiling.

Then the light moves. The shadows move with it, and I see there’s something in the room with me. Something living. I’m struggling to put its shape together in my head, when I realise the light is its eye, looking down on me.

It’s like the Angel, but far, far bigger. It can only be the creature she warned me about: the fallen Angel called Mekanikas Maygos, which killed her people. It is monstrous. Where the Angel had at least half of a person’s body, there seems almost nothing human about this Maygos. In the ruddy glow of its eye, all I see is a shifting mass of spindles and cables, shadows and fabric, with no certain form. The only flesh I can see, emerging from a thicket of tubes, is the withered mask of its face. Little more than a dried-hard, leathery scowl, clamped around one magical eye, and one blind, withered human one.

For what feels like ages, the chamber is still. Even the rumbling in the walls is faint, this deep in the Body. The Maygos just hangs there in the dark, and I dare to hope that maybe I mean nothing to it, that I’m like a fly, crawling past on tiny business. But of course, this isn’t true. The monster looms down, robes billowing and whispering, until its face is level with mine. A deep ragged wheezing might be its breath as it studies me with that pulsing red glare. And then, in perfect Shellforge dialect – not even a halfway effort, but as purespoken as Kal – it speaks to me.

‘Your faith… is commendable, savage child. What strange things you must believe, to have been guided here.’

‘Empratex,’ I whisper to myself, hand shooting to the two gifts, as if they’ll keep me safe. This monster can loom as close as it wants, but I won’t take a step back. I’m where I meant to get to, and if I die here, I won’t die running. I look the fallen Angel right in its milky eye as it speaks again.

‘Empratex?’ it muses. ‘Ah. I see. What was it that we told you… back at the start? When it became clear we’d have to make… repairs here. The ship was… Empra’s body, wasn’t it? Which you had to heal?’

I nod, jaw set, and manage to prise my mouth open just long enough to speak. ‘That’s right,’ I squeeze out. ‘I’m Toa. I’m a Shellmaker.’

‘You’re a tool,’ hisses the Angel, tendrils lashing in the dark. ‘You’ve been stowed away and sent here by the heretek, tricked into thinking you are rescuing… your god.’ A deeply unpleasant, atonal laugh echoes around the chamber, and the face slithers closer, until it can only be ten boltswidths away.

‘But for all their… resourcefulness,’ rumbles the Maygos, ‘it seems my erstwhile novishate lacked foresight. I have been waiting here, in anticipation of just such a… plan.’

The Maygos speaks for some time, explaining its out-thinking of the Angel as if pointing out the mistakes in an apprentice’s work. In honesty, I understand little of what it says – there are too many of the words of heaven in its speech. From what I can understand, it removed Haadpoint, suspicious the Angel would return with its magic spell, its skrapkoad. Then, at last, the Maygos says something that means something to me, and sets my hope alight.

‘Even if you have been given a successful iteration of the koad,’ it booms, ‘there’s no tuh-minal to use as… a vector for entry. Did she expect me to leave an… unguarded port, ready for sabotage? No. Access to the spirit flows only through my mind now.’

That confirms it. Through the mind of the Maygos – that’s the way to free the Body’s spirit-machine. That’s where the skrapkoad needs to be cast. And what the Maygos doesn’t know is that this is exactly what the Angel has prepared me for. She knew the fallen Angel would have gutted Haadpoint. She knew it would have removed tuh-minal, and put the access point for the spirit-machine inside itself. And she knew, for sure, that it would come in person to revel in its supposed victory.

So I carry out the plan. I strike almost before I know I’m striking, before the Maygos can notice my reaction to what it has said. I know surprise and speed are the only things going for me in this fight – I’m fighting a fallen Angel, by the bones – and neither are going to last for long. So I jam my skinning knife into the beardlike horror of tubes below the Maygos’ face, yank with everything I’ve got and boost myself up onto its body.

I almost tumble to the ground straight away. The handful of cables I’ve snatched are blisteringly hot, but I have to clench hard, feeling my skin blacken, as the monster thrashes to shake me off. The Maygos roars – a terrible, blatting mess of clashing tones – and I pray to Empra just to give me a few more moments.

‘Upstart feral!’ growls the mountain of wiring beneath me, as the stink of mildew and machine oil fills my nostrils. ‘Who are you, even to touch me?’

‘I’m Toa,’ I shout, through gritted teeth and the pain in my hand. ‘I’m a Shellmaker. And I will bring my people – my world – to Empra’s heaven.’ I mete the words out one by one, using them to fuel my climb up the surging robes. If I let it fling me, it will pluck me out of the air with its tendrils and slice me to ribbons, so I have to hold on with elbows and knees.

‘You already have what you seek, savage!’

I resolve not to listen to the Maygos’ lies, but the words seep in.

‘Before we came, you were nothing but huddled primitives. Rebuilding this ship has made you a planet of workers. An Imperial world, like a million others. The work… the duty, is the Emperor’s blessing. Even if you could unwind it all, as the heretek wants, you would render your people meaningless.’

The last word is screamed so loud it makes the inside of my head hurt, but still I cling on. There’s a cold sort of sense behind the Maygos’ rage that rings true with what I’ve seen – heaven, if anything, seems darker and dirtier and more painful than the world. But I can’t let Two-Bird’s lies cloud my head. Snarling like an animal against the burning in my muscles, I throw out my arm and yank back the monster’s cowl. It falls away to reveal a hump of twitching machinery, and at its crest a grey, puckered patch of scalp. The place of access.

As the Maygos rants, I hold on to its robes with one shaking hand. With the other, I reach at last to unhook the Angel’s gift from my belt. The gift is part of her head – a long, encrusted spike called a shunt – which went into her brain and held some of her thoughts, including the skrapkoad spell. Taking out the shunt killed her, but it also gave me a version of the spell that the Maygos will be weak to – if I can only get it in its head.

That’s where the other gift comes in – the long, thin needle forged with mother’s grave-steel, which Kal pressed into my hands before I left. Gripping the fallen Angel’s neck with my knees, I hurriedly click the two gifts together, and draw back my arm as if aiming a spear. Two people died to make this shot possible, so I can’t afford to miss. As I line up the strike, staring at the patch of skull, the monster speaks one last time. I still don’t think it realises what I’ve got in my hand.

‘Do you even know the purpose of the shells you made?’ it says, with cruel curiosity. ‘The tombs of your ancestors?’

‘Teeth?’ I say, wondering why I’m being asked.

‘Bullets,’ whispers the Maygos. ‘That’s all you are to… Empra. And all you will ever be.’

‘Then we shall be free of him too,’ I say, shrugging, and stab straight through the patch of wizened scalp.

It’s done, just like that. The bone caves in like sponge, the shunt crackles and thumps as it discharges and the Maygos’ head snaps back. Before its eyesocket erupts in a plume of black steam, I could swear it looks surprised. Then it’s dead. One last spasm throws me to the chamber’s floor, where I watch the mass of fabric shudder and collapse like a poorly built tent. Then the guttering red light of the eye cuts out, and all is still. For one last, blissful moment, there’s nothing happening, no work to be done and no problems to solve. Peace.

The floor begins to rumble.

TWELVE

Soft-Voice Kal never knows exactly what is happening inside the Body of his god. He knows he made the needle to the Angel’s specifications, and sent Toa off to heaven with the satisfaction of a job well done. Even so, when the dawn comes early one shift, he is certain of what has happened. Toa has succeeded, and the Glory Day is at hand. He sees a glow at the apex of the heavens, which swells until it’s brighter than the sun, and he gathers his sons to watch with him. All down the street – all over Shellforge – the people are flooding from their tents to watch, as the Body turns in the heavens, and descends on a pillar of light. When it pierces the veil between heaven and the world, thunder drowns out the sound of every furnace. Kal is deafened, but jubilant, for the dead are coming back in the arms of Empra. He raises his sons’ hands in rapture, and cries in thanks. The last thing Kal sees is the immensity of his god, plunging towards him on wings of fire, promising rest at last.

CRUSADE + OTHER STORIES
A Warhammer 40,000 anthology
Various authors

From a battle between the valiant Ultramarines and their plague-ridden Death Guard foes, to tales of alien enemies and the Imperium’s many brave defenders, this anthology brings together a collection of stories perfect for learning about the various factions of the Warhammer 40,000 universe – it’s your ideal first step into the adrenaline-fulled fiction of the 41st Millennium.

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THE EMPEROR’S LIGHT

Robert M Leahy

This final entry in the collection is a somewhat unusual one. Last year, Black Library tragically lost one of its own. Rob Leahy was passionate about books and Black Library. Unbeknownst to many of us here, he was also a passionate writer – and an extremely good one. It is then with a sense of the bittersweet that we present the opening of a short story that Rob wrote but sadly was never able to complete, ‘The Emperor’s Light’.

These opening scenes only suggest the story to come, but stand on their own nicely as well-written vignettes of interesting characters. We hope you enjoy these opening moments and thank you for sharing them with us.

Our sincere thanks go to Rob’s family, particularly his brother Dan, who kindly sent us the story. It is printed herein with their permission.

In memory of our friend and colleague, Rob Leahy.

‘There,’ said Kazikov, pressing a gloved finger against the viewport, ‘can you see it now?’

The plexiglass of the Gravidus lighter’s cockpit was stained and yellowing in places, forcing Silvana to lean forwards and squint as she followed the line of Kazikov’s finger. Ignoring her own reflection in the toughened glass, she searched the shifting gas clouds through which the grizzled starshina was piloting their small craft.

‘I don’t see it.’

Kazikov sighed and, without looking up from his console, jabbed again at the glass with his finger.

‘Use eyes, sestra,’ he said. ‘Look… there.’

Silvana pushed his hand out of the way and peered again into the nebula. The sickly light from the nearby neutron star bled through the miasma of drifting gas that surrounded their ship, causing a slow cascade of colours as the different densities of dust occluded one another. This made it hard to gauge distance, size or even shape, and Silvana was about to speak again when she spotted something.

A shift in the interstellar debris had transfigured a patch of dark crimson dust to a limpid green, and suddenly Silvana could see their destination outlined against the clouds. At this distance it resembled little more than a rock, but she fancied she could discern the sharp angles of its outline that suggested a man-made structure clinging to its surface.

‘So that’s Watch Station Mausolus,’ she said, leaning back from the glass.

Kazikov smirked. ‘Ah, you see it now, yes? I was worried that only me and Durak here still had our eyes.’ He playfully punched the arm of the servitor sat next to him. The ship’s mute co-pilot was little more than an upper torso hardwired to its station, and its eyes had long ago been replaced with ugly bionic optics. ‘Of course, I don’t know where he keeps his…’

‘Don’t distract the real starshina, Kazikov,’ said Silvana, returning to her seat at the rear of the cabin. ‘He might just walk out of here and leave you to pilot this thing on your own.’

Kazikov gave his short bark of a laugh and leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. ‘So, sestra, Mausolus is teeny-tiny station stuck on teeny-tiny rock hidden in big cloud of dust.’ He paused, turning to look back at Silvana. ‘I do not think Deathwatch is wanting visitors, eh?’

She gave him a dry look before turning away to stare through the plexiglass again. ‘They’re not known for their hospitality,’ she said, running a hand over her shaved-smooth head and watching her hollowed-eyed reflection do the same, half its face lost in shadow. ‘How soon will we know if they’ll allow us to dock?’

‘Once we’re in range of their weapons and they choose not to fire.’

Silvana looked back at Kazikov, expecting to see the usual smile on his face, but his expression was carefully neutral.

‘Would such a small watch station really be that well-armed?’ she asked.

‘If inquisitor’s intelligence is correct, Mausolus could turn us into finer dust than nebula.’ Kazikov began counting off weaponry on his fingers. ‘Las-burners, multiple torpedo batteries, three Ardalus-class mega bolters, possibly a small volcano cannon–’

‘I get the idea, Kazikov.’ Silvana shook her head. ‘All that firepower, and they still decided they needed a garrison of the Emperor’s finest waiting for anyone who gets past it… Whatever weapon is locked in Mausolus’ vault, the Deathwatch have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure it stays exactly where it is.’

‘We will have to be asking extra nice, then, eh?’

Silvana sighed. ‘What are we doing here, Kazikov? After everything that has happened, everything we’ve seen, is this really our best course of action?’

Kazikov shrugged. ‘Has inquisitor told you anything about weapon?’

‘No. He… he no longer confides in me.’

Kazikov leaned even further back in his chair, a conspiratorial look on his face. ‘I heard it’s something deadly to psykers,’ he said, his voice lowered. ‘Even locked inside vault, it can burn them up, from inside out. That’s why they have no astropath on watch station, and why we leave Kreutznaer behind. Maybe that is why–’

Abruptly, Kazikov stopped speaking and rocked forwards in his chair.

A moment later, Inquisitor Daevos made his way into the compartment. Encased in his ornately decorated power armour, the broad-shouldered inquisitor filled the cramped cabin space, even having to stoop slightly to avoid scraping his grey hair on the ceiling.

‘Mission status, starshina?’ he asked, ignoring Silvana. He rested his hands atop the backrests of the pilots’ seats, both of which creaked painfully in response to his weight.

‘My lord,’ said Kazikov, busying himself with the console. ‘Yes, we… we have visual on watch station. It’s still not showing on any of ship’s auger arrays.’

‘And I don’t imagine it will, no matter how close we get. I trust we have begun tight-beaming our Ordo credentials to them? I’d rather they did not fire on us without at least knowing who we were.’

‘Yes, er… of course, my lord.’

Daevos turned to Silvana. ‘Your sisters are awake,’ he said brusquely. ‘You should attend to them.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ she replied, forcing herself to hold his gaze for a moment longer than proper deference might deem appropriate. Then she rose from her seat and left the cockpit.

As she made her way back down the spine of the ship, Silvana passed the other two members of the inquisitor’s retinue, each ensconced on the seating that ran down the port side of the hull. Dvorak Stetner was sitting nearest the cabin door, surrounded by parchment scrolls, data-slates and hololithic recorders of every size. The scrivener was engrossed in frantic study, muttering under his breath as he fought against the armies of data with which he had besieged himself.

He spared a brief glance at Silvana as she passed by, momentarily peering up at her with his mismatched, augmented eyes, the larger of the two dilating slightly with an audible whir. Then, with no further acknowledgement, he returned to his work. Were it not for his eidetic memory, Silvana felt sure he would have had no recollection of seeing her, such transitory experience holding little value to him when set against the archival perfection of his blessed data-slates.

Further along from Stetner sat Corporal Rodhem, a half-smoked lho-stick hanging from his lip as he methodically checked the connections on the heavy backpack rig that powered his hellgun. The weapon itself – which, for reasons he had never revealed to Silvana, he had named Emiline – was lying on the seat beside him, its gleaming and scrubbed-clean body in stark contrast to the corporal’s own.

He nodded to Silvana as she passed, before allowing himself a long, slow drag on the lho-stick. Its flaring tip lit up his features, revealing the heavy scarring that marred the right-hand side of his face. Did Rodhem hold Inquisitor Daevos responsible for what had happened to him? He had every cause, but Silvana doubted he harboured any grudge; though his sartorial discipline may have slipped since his regimental days, Corporal Rodhem’s loyalty to the inquisitor remained absolute.

She envied him that conviction.

Silvana left Rodhem to his ministrations and made her way along the gangway, descending via a steep flight of metal steps into the plump belly of the Gravidus lighter. Ahead of her, the entrance to the main cargo bay was still sealed, much to her relief. She had no desire to have any contact with what lay on the other side of those doors.

Instead, she turned to the left and entered one of the smaller holds on the ship’s starboard side. Her sisters were as she had left them, lying strapped to two heavy benches installed in the centre of the hold, from which a confusion of wires, cables and conduit tubing stretched away to the walls. The smell in the small space had ripened during the journey, becoming a queasy mix of human sweat and synthetic chemicals.

Looking at them from the doorway, Silvana was struck once again by the monstrousness of her sisters’ appearance. Their clothing was little more than a mix of rags and thin strips of holy parchment, many of which had been stitched directly to their skin. Both of her sisters had undergone the same brutal surgeries: their lower arms had been removed and replaced with twitching electro-flails, whilst their upper backs were a crowded mess of stimm-filled syringes and arterial cannulae.

She could see that they had woken from their induced sleep, but were still in a subdued state – the pacifier helm each wore saw to that. On each of her sisters, riveted metal encased half the head above the cheekbone, an unblinking bionic lens replacing the delicate eyeball that had been drilled through in order to fix the mask in place. What was left of her sisters’ dark hair had grown long on the unmodified side of their heads, and on each of them the dark tresses framed half a face that eerily resembled Silvana’s own.

For Silvana, that had seemed an unnecessary cruelty. The process of arco-flagellation usually left a heretic’s head fully encased inside the pacifier helm, the Ecclesiarchy allowing penitents the small mercy of being fully robbed of their humanity. However, the Mechanicus-sanctioned magister chirurgiae who had operated on Silvana’s sisters had instead carefully left half the face of each woman untouched, a pitiless reminder of what they had once been.

And, perhaps, a warning to the sister who still remained.

One of her sisters turned her head towards Silvana as she stepped between the benches, her one natural eye gazing up at her elder sister as if she were something angelic. Silvana knew the pacifier helm would be suffusing her mind with soothing images and continuous hymnody, leaving her sister happily adrift in a religious ecstasy until the moment she heard her command word and became a terrifying, screaming weapon.

Silvana gently wiped away the patch of drool that had formed at the corner of her sibling’s mouth. An uncomprehending, beatific smile lit up the half-face of the horrifying killing machine that wore her sister’s shape.

In a moment, Silvana would begin preparing them both, readying them for battle in a grisly echo of Corporal Rodhem prepping his hellgun. She would check the levels of each of the combat-stimm injectors that adorned her sisters’ backs; she would ensure the adrenal pumps grafted to their skin were clear and ready to fill their veins with thrashing rage; she would repeat memorised litanies of tech-prayer over the electro-flails that hung from their arms, so that when the time came her sisters could flay the skin itself from the Emperor’s enemies.

In a moment, she would do all these things. But first, she had her own ritual to observe.

Hanging around her neck were three strings of adamantium prayer beads. They varied in length, but from each string dangled a simple chaplet ecclesiasticus, a small icon in the shape of a stylised column. It was the symbol worn throughout the Imperium by all staunch servants of the Ministorum.

Silvana gripped the three tokens in one hand, half expecting her flesh to burn at their touch, but the metal of each icon was cold and hard against her palm. Though in her heart she feared that there would now be no answer, she nonetheless knelt before her ruined sisters and began her simple prayer.

‘Emperor, forgive them…’

XENOS
Book 1 in the Eisenhorn series
Dan Abnett

Inquisitor Eisenhorn faces a vast interstellar cabal and the dark power of daemons, all racing to recover an arcane text of abominable power - an ancient tome known as the Necroteuch.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

John French is the author of The Solar War, the first in the Siege of Terra series, as well as several Horus Heresy stories including the novels Praetorian of Dorn, Tallarn and Slaves to Darkness, the novella The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Resurrection and Incarnation for The Horusian Wars and two tie-in audio dramas – the Scribe Award-winning Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies and Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams. John has also written the Ahriman series and many short stories.

Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, the Primarchs novels Corax: Lord of Shadows, Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia, and the Warhammer 40,000 novels Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Baneblade, Shadowsword, Valedor and Death of Integrity. He has also written Throneworld and The Beheading for The Beast Arises series. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

Matt Smith is one of Black Library’s newest authors, and the Warhammer 40,000 short story ‘In Service Eternal’ is his first. He is based in Norwich and spends his spare time working on his Raven Guard army and training in martial arts.

Graeme Lyon is the author of the Space Marine Battles novella Armour of Faith and a host of Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer short stories including ‘Mazlocke’s Cantrip of Superior Substitution’, ‘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.

David Guymer wrote the Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa, and for Warhammer 40,000 The Eye of Medusa, The Voice of Mars and the two The Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he wrote the novel Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods, 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 drama Realmslayer. 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.

Rik Hoskin is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning comic book writer and novelist. As a novelist, he has written almost 30 books, many of them under the pen-name ‘James Axler’. He has also written animation scripts for BBC Television, and audio scripts for Graphic Audio. ‘In the Mists of Chaos’ is his first work for Black Library.

Matt Keefe’s Black Library credits include the novel Outlander, set in the dark underhives of Necromunda, and the Warhammer 40,000 short story ‘Fate’s Masters, Destiny’s Servants’, which features the Ultramarines and first appeared in the anthology Tales from the Dark Millennium. He lives in Sheffield, England.

Steven B Fischer is a resident physician living in the US Pacific Northwest. When he’s not too busy cracking open a textbook, he can be found exploring the Cascade Mountains by bike, boat, or boot. Steven’s work for Black Library includes the short story ‘The Emperor’s Wrath’, which featured in Inferno! Volume 1.

Nate Crowley is a writer and compulsive over-imaginer who lives in Walsall with his wife, daughter, and a cat he insists on calling Turkey Boy. He loves going to the zoo, playing video games and cooking hearty meals. ‘Empra’ is Nate’s second story for Black Library, his first being ‘The Enemy of My Enemy’.

Josh Reynolds is the author of the Horus Heresy Primarchs novel Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix, and two audio dramas featuring the Blackshields: The False War and The Red Fief. His Warhammer 40,000 work includes Lukas the Trickster and the Fabius Bile novels Primogenitor and Clonelord. He has written many stories set in the Age of Sigmar, including the novels Shadespire: The Mirrored City, Soul Wars, Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows, the Hallowed Knights novels Plague Garden and Black Pyramid, and Nagash: The Undying King. His tales of the Warhammer old world include The Return of Nagash and The Lord of the End Times, and two Gotrek & Felix novels. He lives and works in Sheffield.

Hailing from the wilds of Derbyshire, Robert M Leahy was an editor, budding author and esteemed Black Library veteran. A lifelong fan of literature, film and the arts, Rob adored sci-fi and fantasy in any medium, however it was his unrivalled passion for books that inspired him to pursue a career in the publishing industry, and led him to pen the Warhammer 40,000 short story ‘The Emperor’s Light.’

An extract from Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker.

‘Wrong side of the line this time, Lyndon. She made a mistake. Dragged you into it. Don’t make it worse. We can help her, but only if you talk to me. The longer you wait, the greater the chance she dies out there.’

The speaker moved in closer. Lyndon could feel hot breath on his face, noted the sharp scent of recaff on it.

‘We already know about the shipments, the fringe-world smugglers, the charters into t’au space. I admire your loyalty, but think, man – no transmissions, no word of her for months. If she weren’t in trouble, why the silence? The ordo can’t just sit on this.’

The pitch-perfect tones of the confidant, all understanding and sympathy and reason. Every sound, every look, every gesture was calculated to convey that this was a fellow on your side, a man with your best interests at heart. All he wanted was a little information. Just a few words, so easy to speak, so unbearably painful to keep to oneself.

Bastogne, he called himself. Not his real name.

He was good, but Lyndon knew the dance. He’d been on the other side of it often enough. Didn’t make it easier. Too much was at stake. Her ladyship had asked for trust. She needed time. Lyndon expected to die here in order to buy her that. It was the best he could realistically hope for now.

Had the abduction team consisted only of this interrogator and his muscled goons, Lyndon’s confidence in his ability to stay silent would have been supreme. But there was a fly in the balm – a man-shaped fly sitting on a wooden stool in the far corner, robed and hooded, tattooed with the marks of both the ordo and the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.

An ordo psyker.

Sartutius, the others had called him. He sat in silence, pensive after his earlier failed attempt to pry information from Lyndon’s mind with his fell sorcery.

The pentagrammic wards tattooed on Lyndon’s flesh and laser-etched into his bones were holding off the psyker’s invasive mind-assaults, but for how long? Sartutius never seemed to blink those useless all-white eyes. He never looked away, no doubt intent on Lyndon’s aura, probing for gaps, eager to exploit any cracks that would let him inside.

Yes, Lyndon’s wards were strong, but given enough time and the right kinds of pressure, an ordo psyker almost always got the answers he or she was looking for.

A bead of sweat rolled down Lyndon’s neck. No respite from the heat in here.

The interior of the crude structure was baking hot. A single room, twelve metres by seven, the walls thick, the floor rockcrete. Solid. Probably soundproofed and scan-shielded, too. The interrogator and his team weren’t sloppy. They’d have prepped the place well.

Oil stains on the rockcrete floor, heavy-duty pulleys attached to the rafters – the place had likely been used for vehicle repair or storage in the past. Metal slats high in the walls were tilted inwards a few degrees. Through them, spears of hot midday sun sliced into the room, muted by the grime on the windows but still bright enough to leave trails when Lyndon closed his eyes.

The windows were high, the glass clouded and milky. No one would be seeing in.

‘Trying to help you here,’ Bastogne continued. ‘The ordo takes care of its own.’

Groxshit, thought Lyndon.

Everyone in the ordo knew the truth – the larger factions within warred constantly for power and control.

He pressed his lips together, felt pain where the lower lip had been split in the scuffle of his kidnap and re-split in the subsequent beatings.

He hurt all over. It got worse every time they dragged him up out of that hole and smacked him awake. And it wasn’t going to get better.

Dust motes danced a slow waltz in the air, moving gracefully on the interplay of warm microcurrents. Time seemed to pass at a crawl in here. Before the beginning of this morning’s round of questions, he had lain with hands and feet bound, a black sack tied over his head. They gave him food and water, just barely enough to keep him functional. Isolated and blindfolded, most hostages quickly lose track of time, Lyndon knew. It was a common technique, all part of breaking them down.

But mental time-keeping had been an early part of Lyndon’s basic training. By his count, they’d been holding him for three days and six hours. And that meant alarm bells were ringing loud and clear elsewhere.

There was a sudden hard yank on his outstretched left arm. A surge of fresh pain followed as rough rope bit into his wrist. The masked thug holding the left rope had adjusted his grip. Now the one on the right, just as powerfully built and identically masked, shifted his grip, and more of Lyndon’s nerves sang out. It was only these ropes and the graft-muscled brutes holding them that kept him upright. He no longer had the energy to do so himself. He suspected several bad fractures in his legs.

Simple-minded thugs. Brute force. No finesse. Had he not been bound and injured, he could have killed both in a matter of seconds.

But here he was, strung to pulleys in the ceiling, stripped to the waist, face bruised and swollen, cuts and contusions all over. He was limp, beaten as badly as he’d ever been.

Clever of them to use that paralytic when they did the snatch. It’s what he would have done.

They had placed a false tail on him at the port, just clumsy enough to be noticed, not clumsy enough to be a clear dupe. While Lyndon had been busy avoiding the more obvious tail, he hadn’t spotted the snatch team. He should have known they’d never trust his capture to just one man.

Sloppy. And now he was paying for it. But he wouldn’t let her ladyship suffer for his mistake.

There had been no time to bite down on the cyanide tooth. The paralytic they’d hit him with had been so fast-acting, so potent. Neurox necarthadrine or some new derivative. He was unconscious before his head hit the street. While he’d been out cold, they’d extracted the tooth. The fact that he was still breathing meant they’d also nullified the tiny cortex bomb in his skull.

No clean, quick death for field agent Urgoss Lyndon. Not while he knew what these men did not.

He felt Bastogne’s breath on his face again, this time close to his ear.

‘We’re trying to help her. I wish you could see that.’

The ordo seal was legitimate. Lyndon would have known a fake. Besides, Bastogne had Inquisition operative written all over him. Despite the heat, he wore a long black grox-leather coat and gloves. Somehow, though everyone else in the room was sweating rivers, he was as cool as ice.

‘You know,’ said Bastogne, stepping back but still facing his captive, ‘I admire your loyalty, your integrity. You’re good. Well trained. I respect that. We’re the same, you and I. Same sense of duty to the ordo, to our handlers. Had mine disappeared, you would be asking the questions right now instead of me, desperate to help an inquisitor who, in all probability, needs urgent aid. I wonder if you’d be quite as patient with me as I am being with you.’

Lyndon had nothing to say to that.

Bastogne turned away for a moment and sighed. He came back in close. Hovering there, he spoke softly in Lyndon’s ear.

‘I would help you, you know, if things were reversed. I’d know that it was the right thing to do. Damn it, man, think of the Imperium. We want the same thing. The enemy is out there, not in here. If you’re helping anyone with your damnable silence, it’s the stinking xenos.’

Lyndon almost managed a snort, but his mouth and nasal passages were bone dry. All that came out was a wheeze. He hung there, breathing hard through those dry, split lips, eyelids fluttering as he teetered on the edge of passing out again.

Bastogne shook his head and gave another sigh, heavier this time, then began slowly walking around Lyndon.

‘What am I to do, then? If you won’t talk to me, how can I help? Doesn’t it bother you? She may be dying out there. The t’au may be cutting into her flesh as we speak, eager to gain whatever she knows. Hear the death clock ticking. A retrieval team sent now, today, might be the only chance she has.’

Lyndon let the words roll off him. His ladyship had been clear:

Nothing and no one must interfere with my plans. You will give your life if you have to, but reveal not a word. I tell you now, the stakes have never been so high.

There was a sudden rush of movement from behind him. Pain exploded in his kidneys. Bastogne had struck him a savage body blow.

Agony became all of his reality. The breath burst from his lungs. He sagged almost to his knees, but the twin thugs yanked him up again, sending more fire through his singing nerves.

Throne and saints, thought Lyndon. Let it end. Let me keep my silence and just die.

Bastogne snarled and spun away in disgust, the tails of his long black coat flaring, his veneer of kindly patience abandoned at last. Behind him, Lyndon coughed wetly.

‘Damn your ancestors,’ Bastogne spat over his shoulder. ‘If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to start enjoying myself. You don’t want that.’

To the others, he barked, ‘Keep him upright.’

The heavies pulled in the slack again. Lyndon was raised almost onto his toes. He hissed in agony.

Bastogne walked over to a plasteel table set flush against the west wall and opened a black case. Looking down at the contents with some distaste, he spoke quietly, as if murmuring to himself.

The tiny I-shaped pin on his collar picked up his words.

‘My lord, I think I’ve taken this as far as I can go with conventional methods. This is ordo conditioning at the highest level. He can’t be broken without extreme measures.’

Another voice – calm and level, but grainy from so much distance – responded via the micro-vox-bead in Bastogne’s left ear.

‘It was to be expected. Time to move this forward. I want Sartutius to try again. After that, use one of the worms, but not before.’

Bastogne frowned. There in the case, in a transparent cylinder of toughened permaglass, several slick purple forms writhed and slithered against each other.

He looked over at the cowled figure in the corner, seated on his wooden stool, hands clasped, exuding the fell atmosphere which clung to all so-called gifted. The psyker’s tall wooden staff rested against the wall beside him.

‘You’re up again, witchblood.’

There was a frustrated mutter from the cowled man, but he took his staff in hand and raised his frail form gently from the stool. With his other hand, he drew back his hood to reveal a face deathly pale and deeply lined. Networks of pale blue veins laced his papery skin, flowing everywhere. The veins were joined by wires that trailed back to a psychic amplifier bolted to the base of his neck. In the centre of his forehead was the stark red tattoo of the schola that had trained him in the marshalling of his foul power, the same schola that had subsequently sanctioned him for ordo use.

As he brushed past Bastogne, the psyker paused briefly. ‘This is pointless, agent. I have told you already. He is too well protected. If it were tattoos alone, we could flay him. But to break the wards on his spine, on his skull… He would die before I could–’

‘Do as his lordship commands,’ snapped Bastogne. His dislike for the psyker was never far from the surface. ‘And do it fast. Or what good are you?’ He gestured down at the worms in the tube. ‘If you can’t, we go to the last resort. The chrono is ticking. We’ll need to move soon.’

Sartutius scowled, but he crossed to stand directly in front of Lyndon and raised his right hand. Spreading his fingers, he pressed the tips to several points on the prisoner’s head. He began to chant, his voice a low, monotonous drone.

Lyndon tried to pull his head away, but he was too weak. The psyker’s fingers held him.

The sunlight in the room seemed to flicker and dim.

A sudden chill pricked the skin of those present.

The walls seemed to withdraw a little as unnatural power tainted the air.

Bastogne watched, back to the wall, as far from Sartutius as space allowed. The masked heavies turned their eyes away. They hated being near the sanctioned psyker, especially while he exercised his unholy gift.

Beads of sweat began to form on Sartutius’ pale, bald head. Bastogne saw the trembling begin, saw the muscles of the psyker’s jaw clench as he exerted more and more ethereal force. Something foul began to prickle the skin of everyone in the room. Sartutius’ body became tense, trembling with effort. Bastogne thought the man’s sparrow-frail ribs might crack any second and his chest collapse. Blood began to seep from the psyker’s nose and the corners of his eyes.

The chanting rose in tone and volume.

Then it stopped.

With a sharp cry, Sartutius reeled backwards, almost tripping on his robe. He stumbled, righted himself with his staff and staggered breathlessly back to his stool. He was breathing hard, soaked to the skin. With his long cotton sleeves, he dabbed at the blood trails on his face and neck. When his breath had returned, he hissed at Bastogne, ‘Damn your eyes, man. I told you there was nothing more I could do. The wards hold!’

Bastogne growled back, ‘If his lordship says you try, you bloody well try.’

But Sartutius had tried, and it was clear that Epsilon’s bone-engraver had done all too good a job on her agent.

There was only one option left.

Bastogne reached in and lifted the cylinder from the case. Somewhat gingerly, he pressed the release on the hinged titanium cap. With his other hand, he took a pair of slim metal tongs, dipped the ends into the top of the cylinder and withdrew one of the squirming creatures.

The worm’s puckered facial orifice immediately rolled back, revealing a cluster of red cilia that began questing in the air, seeking living flesh. At the base of those cilia, Bastogne saw glimpses of the small black bone-cutting beak.

By all the saints, how he hated these things!

He closed the cap and placed the cylinder with its remaining worms back in the case. With the tongs held well away from his body, he crossed back to the centre of the room and the wretched man suspended there.

He stopped a metre in front of Lyndon and raised the worm slowly towards his face. Sensing the proximity of a living host, the worm’s cilia began moving frantically, greedily. The creature writhed, struggling to break free from the grip of the plasteel that held it.

‘You know what this is,’ said Bastogne, voice low, resigned. It was not a question.

The regret was genuine. Truth be told, he didn’t want to do this. Lyndon was forcing him, and for what? The ordo always got what it wanted in the end.

The prisoner raised bloodshot eyes under a bruised and swollen brow and saw the squirming organism just inches in front of him.

He twisted away in panic, feebly yanking on his restraints. The two men holding the ropes tensed, fixing him in place, the muscles of their forearms hardening like lengths of plasteel cable.

Lyndon knew this creature. Seven years ago, he’d had to use one, and for seven years, he’d tried and failed to forget that day.

‘Don’t,’ he breathed. ‘Epsilon still serves the ordo. I serve the ordo. I cannot tell you what you want to know… But have faith. Please. Just… don’t do this.’

The look of reluctance on Bastogne’s face as he brought the creature closer to Lyndon’s nose was no act. ‘I have orders, agent. The ordo needs to know why she went dark. I need her location. Give me reason not to use this before it’s too late.’

How Lyndon wished he could talk. His mind was already busy making the sentences he could speak to avoid this worst of fates. The worm meant more than death – it meant an agonising descent into madness, the dissolution of his mind. Once it was inside him, it could not be stopped. And still, no matter how much he yearned to escape that fate, he would not – could not – betray her ladyship’s trust. Epsilon’s discovery was of greater importance than the life of any man. The chance that Al Rashaq was no mere legend, that it could conceivably be found and exploited… It was worth many more lives than his.

It could change everything.

So Lyndon held his tongue and steeled himself for the mind-destroying agony that was about to become his entire existence.

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