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

~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

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

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

LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR
Various authors

HALLOWED KNIGHTS: PLAGUE GARDEN
An Age of Sigmar novel

HALLOWED KNIGHTS: BLACK PYRAMID
An Age of Sigmar novel

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
An Age of Sigmar novel

OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner

NAGASH: THE UNDYING KING
Josh Reynolds

NEFERATA: MORTARCH OF BLOOD
David Annandale

SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds

CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth

THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds

BLACKTALON: FIRST MARK
Andy Clark

THE RED HOURS
Evan Dicken

HEART OF WINTER
Nick Horth

WARQUEEN
Darius Hinks

THE BONE DESERT
Robbie MacNiven

~ LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

CITY OF SECRETS
An Age of Sigmar novel

FYRESLAYERS
An Age of Sigmar novel

SKAVEN PESTILENS
An Age of Sigmar novel

BLACK RIFT
An Age of Sigmar novel

SYLVANETH
An Age of Sigmar novel

~ AUDIO DRAMAS ~

THE PRISONER OF THE BLACK SUN
Josh Reynolds

SANDS OF BLOOD
Josh Reynolds

THE LORDS OF HELSTONE
Josh Reynolds

THE BRIDGE OF SEVEN SORROWS
Josh Reynolds

THE BEASTS OF CARTHA
David Guymer

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: WAR-CLAW
Josh Reynolds

FIST OF MORK, FIST OF GORK
David Guymer

GREAT RED
David Guymer

ONLY THE FAITHFUL
David Guymer

SHADESPIRE: THE DARKNESS IN THE GLASS
Various authors

REALMSLAYER
David Guymer

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

FORCE OF PERSONALITY

PILGRIM’S TRIAL

THE DANCE OF THE SKULLS

ORDER OF THE FLY: TOURNEY OF FATE

THE HARDEST WORD

AUCTION OF BLOOD

PANTHEON

VAULT OF SOULS

THE ROAD OF BLADES

BEAR EATER

GRAVESEND GOLD

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: THE TAINTED AXE

THE WITCH TAKERS

CALLIS & TOLL: THE OLD WAYS

THE LIBRARY OF FORGOTTEN MOMENTS

GODS’ GIFT

OBSIDIAN

BLACKTALON: HUNTING SHADOWS

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

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

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

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

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

The Age of Sigmar had begun.

FORCE OF PERSONALITY

David Guymer

The first forged of the Stormcast Eternals are in many ways more human than those who came after. We can laugh, enjoy mortal company, recall bits and pieces of our former lives. Perhaps this is something that the God-King would rather I not share, but I tell you here because, with that knowledge in mind, events in Nemisuvik might be taken as further evidence of my place in Azyr’s firmament of heroes. I was still human enough to know fear…

I stood bestride the algae-coated gabion wall of Nemisuvik, proud as you like, getting battered by the elements of the Ghurite Stormwilds as though I were the amethyst-and-gold figurehead of an implausibly massive sail ship. Saltwater steam and brimstone ash stuck my hair to my face and made my tattoos glisten. A cloak of bearskin clung to my shoulders like a man half drowned as I shook my halberd defiantly at the sky. A skull the size of a chariot dropped out of it, horned and baleful. It screamed with the passage of wind through its gaping eye sockets and mouth, and smacked into the ocean about twenty feet out, dousing its fiery cargo and spraying me with sulphurous brine.

‘How do you keep on missing?’ I bellowed across the steaming ocean as the missile sank. ‘What can I do to make it easier? Should I light a fire? Wave a flag?’

More skulls wailed overhead like comets, invisible but for the daemonic glow of eyes and grins that burned through the occluding mists of the pontoon city. Fire mushroomed in the wet haze.

‘You couldn’t hit Azyrheim from the top of the Celestial Stair!’

Let us just say that we don’t all deal with fear in the same way.

Artillery.

Does it invoke the same dread in you that it does in me? Even thinking back on it now I can feel my heart beat faster. No? Let me say it again.

Artillery.

It was not war as I had been raised to. I didn’t know my past as fully then as I do now, but any fool could intuit that I had been a simple man. I was a child of the Eternal Winterlands of Azyr. On its frozen battlefields, we hit one another with rocks. If we were feeling spectacularly creative we would throw the rocks. A man there rose and fell by his own stamina and courage. Luck played a part, I suppose, as it always must. But a warrior earned his luck as he did the favour of his gods, with recklessness in battle and wantonness off it. Heroes were not splattered by faceless engineers from a mile away.

Perhaps dread was too timid a word for what I felt as I watched hellish artillery rain down.

It was a tension that would not pass. It was the feeling of endlessly filling your mouth with ale, but never being able to swallow – my guts were knotted, my mind galloping wild, and my beard was wet. The instincts I had honed on those simpler battlefields against the axe-throw, the spear-thrust, the frost-sabre cat, were of no use here.

I drew a deep breath, steadying myself internally.

‘What are you, an acolyte of Tzeentch?’ I bawled. ‘No, say what you like about the followers of the Twisting Path but they can aim! Anchor a little nearer next time, and maybe you’ll have half a chance of hitting something.’

The siege of Nemisuvik was one of the first of its kind in the Realmgate Wars. The reason for that was simple – when Sigmar’s storm broke over the Age of Blood, those of us in the vanguard found precious little left worth defending. That’s what a few hundred years under the dominion of Khorne will do to a place. In later days, it came to be known as the Thousand Day Siege. Whether it really lasted as long as that I never did know. I hadn’t been there for the start. The city’s own siege engines and the wild beasts of the Stormwilds had been enough to hold the foe at bay. It was only when the enemy’s catapults had managed to start hitting the walls from beyond the Nemesians’ range that Sigmar had heard the city’s prayers and cast me down to shore up its defences. It hadn’t quite worked out the way either of us had expected. The enemy never showed any interest in taking the city by strength of arms, intent instead on demolishing it from afar.

Two months I spent, waiting for that invasion, and in that time I never once laid eyes on my opponent.

Blackjaw was his name, a bloodreaver of whom I knew surprisingly little. Normally, champions of the Blood God tended towards bombastic displays and strutting about as though they had personally invented war. But Blackjaw was different. He had instead raised himself a daemon fleet and obliterated places like Nemisuvik without ever showing his no-doubt-ugly face.

It is said that in the underworlds of Shyish there exists a hell for every culture in the Mortal Realms. This one, I was starting to feel, was mine.

‘I am Hamilcar Bear-Eater! Do you–’

Then something hit me from behind. It turned out to be the head of a small, lightly braised fish, but I had wound myself into such a state of tension that I spun around with a roar, my halberd raised.

Akbu grinned at me from behind a mask of rubbing fat, his dark face hemmed in by a leather helmet and a hugely thick leather coat. He was flicking fish scales from his hands, graciously nodding to his warrior band as they handed him coin.

‘What…?’ I forced my arm to relax enough to lower my halberd. Akbu’s expression did not alter in the least.

‘I bet that I could make you turn around.’

‘You do not bait the Bear-Eater, friend. You are likely to lose an arm.’

‘Then I would be the one out of pocket. And your face would be very red, I think.’

Now, I have fought alongside Stormcast Eternals of every Striking. I have fought with duardin, greenskins, even the undead, but I have never stood on a wall with warriors as cheerfully stoic as the maorai, the professional warrior class of Nemisuvik. Give them a duty that would force them to forsake a meal or cheat them at dice and they would scream and rage as though you had sold their firstborn to a Verminlord. But ask them to stand on a sea wall while the sky falls in, week after week, and no masque of Slaanesh could have ever looked happier. They were irreverent, turned up on the wall as it suited them, and fought in iconoclastic formations based on the skins they wore and the beasts whose horns and fangs made their weapons. They didn’t give these groupings names. They probably would have been bemused by the idea, and in truth they functioned more like fractious extended kin-groups than the Freeguild regiments we know and love today. To me, though, they were the Allopex Knife-Throwers, the Eviscerark Spears, the Razorclam Half-Swords. Their insouciance under pressure almost made me ashamed of my increasingly manic acts of bravado.

‘Moha bet five shells that you would fall in,’ said Akbu, conversationally, as another skull screamed over our heads, smashing into the built-up areas of the pontoons in a gout of flame. The maorai craned his neck to pick out a woman with a face like a salted chop and leaning on a pole arm of sharpened coral. ‘You are an imp squid, Moha, always squirting your coin into the ocean. The Castle Lord Hamilcar,’ I had long given up trying to make the Nemesians say Lord-Castellant, and here Akbu bent stiffly to slap his thigh, ‘he has legs like limpet stalks.’

I was assuming this was a higher compliment than it sounded.

I looked back over my shoulder to where the waves crashed against the gabion blocks. Rocks and shells had been stuffed into iron baskets, red with rust and seaweed, built into a perimeter wall on a colossal scale. Kelp fronds and accumulated driftwood bobbed with the waves. It was curiously inviting. I sighed, and for a moment the shrieks of the artillery ships, the crackle of the burning city, the endless jibes of the maorai were all sucked into the lap of the waves.

I could just hurl myself in and swim out to Blackjaw’s flagship, or die in the attempt. That, at least, would be an end that the Nemesians would speak about for a hundred years.

Had I been entirely myself then I probably would have done it, too. At the very least I would have loudly made the suggestion, and then laughed it off as the maorai talked me down, but my heart wasn’t in it. For all the soaring bellicosity of my highs, I was as prone to crushing lows from which even Korghos Khul with a ribbon around his neck would struggle to rouse me. These bouts were rare, thank Sigmar, and tended to pass swiftly.

I could feel one tightening around my skull as we spoke.

I jumped down from the battlements and onto the walkway. ‘I’m going to get some sleep.’

That a warrior, even a nominal commander such as myself, should just decide to leave his post for an hour or two struck no one as grounds for complaint. They were maorai. They took orders from no one and did as they pleased.

‘Good idea,’ said Akbu. ‘If anything will make Blackjaw properly attack the wall then it will be the sight of your back.’

I smiled, not entirely faking it. ‘I’d show him my arse if I thought it would help.’

Akbu and his warrior band burst with sudden laughter, for nothing tickles the outrageously well-wrapped Nemesians like an exposed body part.

With that, I left them to it. I tried not to feel too bad about it. I was just as capable of being blown to pieces by artillery fire from the pontoons as I was on the gabion-walls.

To see Nemisuvik now is to see a provincial backstop that the new Age has largely left behind. Caught within the abyssal currents of the Stormwilds, there are few places in existence that are harder to get to or more pointless to fight over. To see it as it was at the outbreak of the Realmgate Wars was to see a city whose isolation had given it licence to prosper. At the time, it was one of the greatest unconquered cities in the realms, rivalled only by Azyrheim, Nulahmia and perhaps a handful of others.

The city was spread across fifteen blubbery pontoons, each big enough to float several hundred homes. To walk its bridges and ropeways was to meander through the madness of the ocean bestiarist or the taxidermist. You were as likely to be presented with a lurkinarth carcass as a driftwood shack. The gigantic rotunda built from leviadon shells and deepwater beasts towered over those lesser dwellings, encrusted with turrets and minarets of caulked wood, silhouetted by fire. For the first few days after my arrival, there had been screams. Not now. No one screamed any more unless they were actually on fire.

It really was quite the liberation that Sigmar had brought to Nemisuvik.

You would be forgiven for thinking that the locals must have resented him, and me by extension, for all of this. But that would be to completely misread the Nemesian character. I was but one Stormcast Eternal in a city of thousands of mortals, but they did not see the thousands of warriors who had not come. They saw it through the lens of their own traditions.

They saw the one warrior who had.

I made my way across the interconnecting bridges towards the central pontoon, known as Katuunak to the locals. The buildings there were taller and finer, or at least as tall and fine as you can get when your principal building materials are dead animals and the bits that have fallen off other people’s ships. They had been decorated with shells and nacre, painted with the pigments of the ocean. Several had been destroyed by Blackjaw’s war machines, and the weight imbalance had caused the pontoon to list noticeably. The northern rim rode a good three feet above the water, whereas the southern was submerged, and I had to walk against an incline to reach the rail that surrounded the saltwater lake at Katuunak’s centre. My intention had been to stand and watch the still water for an hour or two before returning to the gabion-wall. The bombardment caused it to tremble like a puddle with the approach of a Dracoth, but I found its stillness otherwise to be soothing.

I had barely caught a glimpse of the water after crossing from the outer promenade to the inner, when I found myself in the unlikely scene of a riot.

Now in any other city after so many years under siege, a little rioting would have been entirely expected. But when you consider that the single most exciting day of this war – when the lightning bolt delivering me from Azyr had burned down half of the Igulik pontoon – had been greeted with a sigh and another cup of broth, it was frankly surreal. A scrum had formed, comprising about fifty men and women. The two were largely interchangeable in their thick blubber coats as they pushed against a handful of warriors.

From where I was standing, it looked as though something had inflamed the folk of Katuunak to such an extent that they were looking to throw themselves into the lake. The pontoon guards were all huge men, and they were holding the crowd back, but more seemed to be turning up to pile on all the time.

I felt my heart begin to race.

With hindsight, my first instinct – that Blackjaw had somehow evaded the nets, the sea monsters, the rock armour and ballista boxes to come under the city and land on Katuunak pontoon – was foolish. It was really just wishful thinking on my part. I was spoiling for a fight and would have gladly squared up to Khorne himself if the challenge had been offered. At least I was thinking clearly enough to slide my halberd into its bracket across my backplate before striding into the melee.

‘What’s happening here?’ I bellowed.

Someone stupidly threw a punch at me. I parried it on my wrist, turned it across me, opening up the unwise pugilist’s belly into which I obligingly planted a fist of my own. The man folded over before flying backwards into the scrum like a cannon ball.

‘Castle Lord!’ one of the guards cried out over the distant rumble of artillery, fending off three men with his spear held horizontal, an elbow in his face. ‘Help us!’

‘No!’ From the hubbub of voices in the crowd.

‘Feed Angujakkak!’

‘Feed the Grey King!’

‘It has been long enough…’

‘It is time to strike back…’

There was more, but something in my mind between ears and brain snapped at the words ‘strike back’.

The maorai might have been perfectly content to let the bloodreavers carry on breaking their knuckles on their faces, but I wasn’t. I’m a simple man, you see. A man should kill, and get killed, according to the strength and reach of his arm. A strong man could throw a spear further, but that strength was earned. As far as I was concerned, Blackjaw sought to cheat me of my hard-earned advantage. He had resorted to ‘mathematics’ and other unholy wizardries to make parity with a chosen of Sigmar.

It was unnatural, and I refused to stand for it. I wanted to strike back, and if the Nemesians were sitting on a way for me to do that, then by Sigmar I wanted to know about it.

I turned to the guard who had called out to me. Something thunderous in my expression made him blanch. He took a step back, his foot splashing into water where the platform’s tilt had caused the lake to spill onto the promenade.

‘What are they talking about?’

‘I… don’t understand, Castle Lord.’

He actually seemed to be serious, which only annoyed me further. ‘The Grey King?’

‘It is sacred.’

‘So is lightning. I still throw it at my enemies.’

As if to affirm my point, a small tendril of Azyrite energy snapped from my clenched knuckles. I like to consider myself a man of the common folk, and generally do a better job of keeping the overt signs of my essential divinity in check. That it escaped me then only serves to demonstrate the kind of pressure I was under. The guardsman nearest to me lowered his spear with a cry, and while his comrades stared at me in astonishment one of the rioters succeeded in pushing through the cordon to make a break for the water.

‘Feed the King!’ she yelled, and hurled herself bodily into the lake. The splash of her landing broke my hold over the guards. They spun around as one.

‘Sigmar,’ one of them cursed.

‘Get her out of there.’

‘I’m not going in after her.’

‘Khunas, quickly. Fetch a net.’

While the guardsmen argued and one of them, Khunas presumably, ran off towards one of the gaily painted promenade-side buildings, the swimmer splashed towards the middle of the lake. For someone born on the ocean, her technique was appalling. I probably could have done it better in full armour, and I’d lived my entire mortal life on a mountain. I hadn’t seen running water until after my Reforging on the Anvil of the Apotheosis. It was quite the marvel, let me tell you. This woman, though, moved through the water as though through a fight – rolling around, hitting it with balled fists, slapping at it with her feet.

I noticed then that the entire promenade had fallen quiet. Citizens and guardsmen that had previously been trying to shove one another into the lake or onto their backsides stood shoulder to shoulder, just watching, completely ignoring the thunderous rumble of Blackjaw’s barrage.

I felt the intensity of their attention pull on mine.

The swimmer groped clumsily towards the middle. ‘Feed,’ she gasped, between dunkings, repeating the mantra even as she coughed up sea water. ‘Swim free. Fee–’

I like to think myself largely unshockable, I have seen enough in my day, but the suddenness of what came next drew a gasp out of me.

A huge grey tentacle burst from the water and whipped about, drenching the swimmer under a torrent of salty rain, drowning her fevered prayers. The water around her seethed, as though the ocean were being drained from under her, and a truly gargantuan body broke its surface. To this day, I don’t know what it was that I saw. I have seen lurkinarth and kharybdiss, leviadon and murkraken, and none have come anywhere close either in scale or in the foulness of their appearance. The best that I can describe it is as some nightmarish cross-breeding of mega-squid and trench-dwelling troggoth, ridged with armour and folded with fat, pit-black eyes sunk deep into a central body surrounded by a nest of tentacles. Seawater streamed from albino scales. Its body was partially transparent. I could see the burrowing purple lines of veins, organs of unholy scale throbbing against the other side of its pearlescent skin.

The swimmer, I belatedly realised, had not stopped shouting: she had simply become mute under the waterfalls cascading from the monster’s tentacles.

A suckered tendril wrapped around the woman and dragged her from the water. It looked as though each tentacle was in it for themselves as several converged to try to pry the woman away from the first as she was drawn inexorably towards the monster’s head. A mouth split the jellied mass in half. Row upon row of primitive white teeth glistened, and I grimaced as the tentacle unrolled to propel the woman inside.

‘Feed. Swim fre–’

The mouth slammed shut.

To my horror I discovered that I could still see the woman through the monster’s translucent scales. Like a chewing ruminant, it worked its teeth. Blood burst against the walls of the creature’s mouth cavity, bones grinding, before draining away into the body of the monster as it swallowed.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me to draw my halberd and dive in after that woman. I was a Lord-Castellant, after all, and had been spoiling for any kind of a fight mere moments before, and yet my courage deserted me then. I think it was the stillness of the crowd that had made me a part of it, the reverential aspect to their observance. No one screamed in terror from the promenade the way they should have. And then, like a fish that had bobbed its mouth above water to capture a fly, the monster sank, body first, then head, leaving a handful of whipping tentacles that disappeared without a ripple. An artillery strike to a nearby pontoon made the surface water tremble, the fire reflecting in broken orange and red, and then the beast was gone.

‘What on Sigendil’s radiant glow was that?’ I said.

‘I don’t follow,’ said one of the guardsmen, as though I had just asked him to explain to me the meta-cosmology of Ulgu and its relationship with Hyish.

I looked at him, incredulous.

He shuffled back. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘There is a monster under your city that could accidentally swallow a Stardrake in its sleep,’ I explained, deliberately. ‘These people seem to think that it can help you against Blackjaw, and I’m inclined to agree with them.’

‘No, Castle Lord.’

‘No, what?’

‘It’s forbidden.’

I glared at the guardsman, and then, because it wasn’t as if this idiot was ever going to go to Azyr and find me out for a liar, said, ‘There can be no secrets from those touched by the heavens.’

‘Secrets, Castle Lord?’ He shook his head vigorously. The others joined in. ‘I don’t understand.’

I swear that if I heard that one more time, then people were going to start dying. Fortunately for their skin – and my honour – it didn’t come to that.

‘Castle Lord Hamilcar,’ came a voice from behind me. ‘What is going on here?’

‘I wish I knew.’

I turned as a heavy-set older figure shuffled onto the promontory, escorted by a pair of pontoon guards that looked about as threatening as one of those little blue daemons of Tzeentch. He was clad in a slightly finer variation of the whale fat and seagull feather ensemble sported by all the Nemesians I had encountered thus far. Fishbone pins secured his collar and his sleeves, and a complicated necklace-cum-dreamcatcher rested against his broad chest. I knew him. His name was Nanook, elder chief of the Killiniq Pontoon, one of the council of fifteen that governed this place.

Now, ordinarily, I have precious little time or patience for temporal authority. I prefer to seize command myself where I can, or work further down the chain and act as though higher authority were not there if I cannot. The elder chiefs of Nemisuvik, however, took their duties commendably casually. Their ceremonial meeting place was a hut right there in the Katuunak pontoon, but they tended to convene wherever was warmest and driest, and happened to be offering food.

As the siege had drawn on however, I had seen them more often standing vigil on the gabion-walls with the maorai than sitting on a blanket humming to the ocean for guidance. I had been greatly impressed by them, truth be told, and naturally they had been impressed by me.

I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder. ‘I just saw a monster that would give a Dracoth nightmares eat a woman. You didn’t think to mention it when I arrived?’

With a reluctant sigh, Nanook gestured back with his head. ‘Come with me, Castle Lord.’

With that, the elder chief turned and shuffled off with his guards. With an impatient frown, I went after him. While I wanted to press him on the monster right away, I had a finely honed sense for an old man being bloody mysterious, and held my silence.

In any case, he didn’t take me far.

Our destination was a modest timber-framed building, waterproofed in stretched grey hide that looked as though it had been flayed from the allopex at about the same time that Dracothion was plucking Sigmar from the ruins of Mallus. Smoke puffed from the gill-windows, but it was of the ‘there’s something on the hearth’ kind rather than the ‘your house has been hit by a burning skull’ kind, so I stood by as Nanook pushed in the flap and entered.

As was customary in Nemesian dwellings, regardless of size, there was a single room. Furnishings were sparse, limited to blubbery skins on the floor and some twinkly things dangling from the ceiling, turning idly in the smoke from the hearthpot. For a people who made their homes in the coldest, wettest place in the Mortal Realms, they overcompensated enormously when it came to their homes.

Even I swooned slightly.

Two old mortals were already bent around the stewing hearthpot, but because no gathering of the elder chiefs would be complete without some humming and muttering, a third observed the ritual formalities from a mat in the corner. The first two supped contentedly at bowls of fish broth, as if the bloodreavers of Khorne were not knocking their city down around their heads. It made me want to shake someone. Instead, I took the bowl that was offered me, as Nanook took that offered him.

The Nemesians set great store in perseverance, and in generosity, and Hamilcar Bear-Eater never turns down free food.

Nanook sipped gingerly, while I took my bowl of broth in a single outsized hand to down it in one slug, fishy lumps and all. Wiping my mouth on the back of my gauntlet, I tossed the bowl back to the elder who had passed it to me. He caught it deftly, belying his years, for I swear that the Nemesians do not age like other men. The Stormwilds batter them until they are dried out, preserving them like some kind of brown cheese until they consent to up and die. His name was Pak, of the Taloyak Pontoon. The other seated beside the hearthpot was Hitta. Unless my ears deceived me, the woman muttering in the corner was Jissipa.

‘Is anyone going to tell me what I just saw?’ I said, as Pak and Nanook took seats by the hearthpot. ‘I am a Lord-Castellant of the Astral Templars, and I would know every inch of the fortress I am tasked to defend.’ The better to argue for conducting the fight outside of it, usually. As far as I’m concerned walls are good for nothing but impeding a real man’s swing. Of course, that had never been an option in Nemisuvik, so in truth I had not pressed my responsibilities in that regard too closely.

The gathered chiefs looked at Nanook.

‘He saw Angujakkak,’ he explained.

‘The Grey King surfaced?’ said Hitta. Her voice was like an old rope, crusty with salt and smoke.

The others’ eyes brightened momentarily, and not with the fire.

‘He has not lain yet,’ said Nanook. ‘There was a fight on the promenade. A crowd rushed the guards to entreat the King. One woman made it.’

The elders muttered into their soup. I couldn’t tell if it was a prayer for the deceased woman, or just elderly harrumphing.

‘People,’ said Pak, with the same tone of voice that you might say idiots. ‘They can be stupid as slugfish.’

‘They are desperate,’ said Nanook.

‘No excuse,’ said Hitta.

I snapped my fingers, releasing a tiny spark of Azyr into the drowsily lit hut. ‘I’m waiting.’

‘Forgive us, Castle Lord,’ said Nanook. ‘We never have visitors. It is not something we know how to explain, because it never needs to be said. Angujakkak pulled the first men here, so our legends tell us, to where the currents of the Stormwilds shelter and provide. You have seen that we have no boats of our own.’

I had noticed.

Had I spotted one then I would have been on it and paddling towards Blackjaw’s flagship quicker than you could recite the names of the Six Smiths. After the first few days of my stay I had actually tried to build one. Nemisuvik possessed no shortage of materials, or things that float, but it turns out that boatbuilding is harder than it looks.

‘The beast looks hearty for a thousand years or more,’ I said.

The elder chiefs shook their heads.

‘No, Castle Lord,’ said Nanook. ‘He is the fourth. Every few hundred years, the King will grow large enough to break the nets that hold him.’

‘You mean it will get bigger?’

Nanook shrugged. ‘When he breaks the nets he will be big enough, and then leave.’

‘But not before laying the egg,’ said Pak.

‘And a new cycle begins,’ Hitta finished.

‘Well, he’s more than big enough to smash a hole in Blackjaw’s fleet.’ I shook my head. ‘Any bigger and he’d be entering into Godbeast territory.’

Godbeasts, or Zodiacal Monsters, depending on the pretentiousness of the scholar you’re speaking to, are monstrous constellations of the Mortal Realms. Think of them like realmstone, the way that celestium, gravesand or warpstone soaks up the properties of their respective realms. Still with me? Good. Godbeasts are the same. Vulcatrix who slew Grimnir, Drakatoa who trapped Gorkamorka for hundreds of years, and of course the great Dracothion himself – all of these are Zodiacal Godbeasts, mighty enough to defy gods, and many of them even sat in the Highheim with Sigmar’s divine pantheon in the good old days. I didn’t know for certain if Nemisuvik’s Grey King was quite in that class, but it was close enough for me.

‘He and his ancestors have been our guardians for two thousand years,’ said Nanook. ‘He protects us from the predators of the Stormwilds even as he draws them to defend our walls, but he is still a wild monster, Castle Lord. He will not be bidden by us, or by you.’

‘You didn’t see him on the promenade,’ I said. ‘Trapped, surrounded by armed men and women. A wild beast would have run amok. Trust me, Nanook. I’m an Astral Templar, and I know beasts. It should have been a slaughter. The monster has bonded to you somehow, to this city. I can smell it.’

The old man frowned, thoughtfully. ‘Still, it cannot be.’

‘There has been no laying,’ said Hitta, leaning closer to underlight her wizened, fat-smeared features. ‘If Angujakkak leaves without first laying, then it will be the doom of Nemisuvik.’

I pointed angrily. At what, I don’t recall, but since we were surrounded it probably doesn’t matter. ‘The bloodreavers are going to be the doom of Nemisuvik!’

‘Perhaps,’ said Nanook, equanimously.

I let my head sink into my hands and growled under my breath. Perseverance and bloody equanimity. I wish I knew how they did it. Could they not be furious or frustrated like me, terrified like an ordinary human being?

‘The woman who dived into the lake,’ I said, drawing my fingers down my face and looking up. ‘What was she hoping to achieve?’

‘I do not know,’ said Nanook.

‘I know how well I play the part, but don’t mistake me for a genuine fool. And don’t think I can’t spot another fraud quicker than a Judicator can glean the taint of Chaos.’

The elders exchanged glances.

Nanook sighed and set down his soup, his appetite apparently gone. ‘To goad him on blood, Castle Lord. To make him hunger, enough that he will break his nets and swim in search of meat amongst the bloodreavers.’

‘That sounds like a fine plan,’ I declared. ‘A classic. Just the way they teach it at the castellan temples in Sigmaron. The only drawback I see to it is that it’s taken you over a month to bring it to me.’ The elder chiefs shrank from the thunder in my voice. The feathers in their attire prickled as the air in the hut became charged. I eyed the steaming hearthpot. ‘Let’s feed the Grey King.’

‘No,’ said Nanook, mildly, but firmly.

‘Try and stop me, old man.’ I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth, but I was angry. The long, cold fear had made me so. I saw a way out of this purgatory and it made me go in with both feet. I never had been one to think of consequences. ‘I’ll jump in with the monster myself if I have to.’

The elder chiefs looked at each other, astonished, never once considering that I was an immortal barbarian who would far rather be eaten by a hell-squid in pursuit of victory than endure another day under Blackjaw’s siege ships.

‘Please, Castle Lord.’ Nanook cupped his hands in the Nemesian gesture of supplication. ‘The people take great inspiration from seeing you among them. The maorai, they look up to you – they see you on the wall day after day, night after night, railing against the bloodreavers without fear.’

I coughed into my hand.

Even I, it seems, have some shame.

‘Hamilcar Bear-Eater fears no enemy,’ I mumbled.

‘Do not let them think less of you by acting rashly now,’ he said.

I grimaced. He had me by the short ones there, so much so that I couldn’t believe he hadn’t gone there on purpose. Nothing, no personal challenge or mortal dread, no commandment of the gods or bastion of Greater Azyr, could compel me like concern for my reputation amongst the free peoples of the Mortal Realms.

‘Perseverance and generosity,’ Hitta smiled.

I could have beheaded her with her own soup bowl.

I gave it thought.

‘We need only hold,’ said Nanook. ‘Angujakkak will lay and will break free on his own.’ He shrugged. ‘We need only hold.’

I frowned at them all, Jissipa in the corner included, these old mortals who had far more right to be impatient than I. The last thing I wanted was to lose face with the maorai, but now I knew there was a way out there was no way I was going to spend another night in Nemisuvik waiting for a sacred whale to lay an egg. I just needed to be subtle about it.

It was, in hindsight, a symptom of my mental state that I considered this within the realm of my abilities.

‘Perseverance and generosity,’ I said through gritted teeth, assuming a place by the hearthpot. I would have one more bowl of broth, and then I would sleep on it.

I woke to a string of calamitous booms, sky-splitting, shivering the cut-out canoe-cots of the maorai hall in which I slept, rattling spare weapons in their racks. I would say that it sounded like thunder, except that I know thunder, and hold it in too high esteem. It sounded as though a mob of Ironjaw warchanters with steel drums were being dropped over the Nemesian pontoons by airship.

I should have been so lucky.

I sat up sharply, banging my head on the bunk above mine. This was well before the days of Stormholds, or even Freeguilder barracks in every settlement, and the berth I alternated with a burly maorai of the Arkorapter Double-Axes was a foot too low for me and three too short.

I was raised in a cave, though. I’ve slept on worse.

Shifting myself awkwardly out of bed, I looked around the huge hollowed-out leviadon shell of the hall.

All the cots were empty.

There is a school of thought that whatever a commander’s warriors are asked to suffer, he must suffer it first, and hardest. He must eat the same rations as they do, be first over every bridge and to the top of every hill, put his shoulder to the same labours. He must also be abed an hour after the most anxious warrior has fallen sound and rise an hour again before the dawn watch. Ordinarily, I am the exemplar of this school, but with nothing in Nemisuvik to actually fight I had slipped into the habit of grumbling awake around eleven with lunch. The maorai seemed to find my morning lie-ins cheering, as though nothing I could sleep through could possibly harm them, and after a time I managed to convince myself it was a deliberate act of brilliance on my part.

I looked up, gripping one of the wooden crossbars from which the rocking cot beds were suspended as a new impact shook through the ceiling.

I tried to guess how close it must have been. In the Nemesian fashion, the maorai hall had no windows by which heat might escape or damp gain entry. Another strike followed almost immediately, the sound of shattering shell followed by the muted wumpf of a fireball, and my cot swayed fitfully of its own volition. I had grown accustomed to onslaughts at all times, to falling asleep with my jaw clenched, but nothing as concerted as this was shaping up to be.

I could think of two possibilities – either my efforts here had allowed Broudiccan and my brothers to win the war for the mainland, forcing Blackjaw to launch an attack, or the bloodreavers had finally become as sick of this as I was.

I gritted my teeth and rose, hoping for the latter. I wasn’t going to have Broudiccan Stonebow and the Astral Templars coming to my rescue, not after I’d endured hell for a month.

It didn’t take long to ready myself. After that length of time without serfs or armsmen, I’d become accustomed to living in my armour, a decision to go defiantly unwashed that was facilitated by Nemisuvik’s overwhelming odour of fish. I reached under my cot to collect my halberd, picked up my warding lantern from the wall hook I had claimed for it, then strode outside.

It was night. The sky had become smoke, lit by constellations of burning skulls and the embers of fires. House fires boiled against the suffocating gloom, squat and broad and weirdly horned, like daemons of the Brass Citadel come fresh to Nemisuvik.

Again, I should have been so lucky.

I charged through streets that had become clotted with fumes. People huddled together in milling groups, looking at the sky in confusion. They had become accustomed to the incessant bombardment, as I had in my own way, but the unusual ferocity had reminded them of their fear of it. It reassured me to see that they had been as terrified as me all along, that they had simply wrapped it up in their lives and hidden it better.

I reached my preferred spot on the gabion-wall to be greeted by Akbu and his maorai band. They cheered me as I ascended the steps.

‘See this man!’ Akbu indicated me with an open hand. With the other, he held a pole arm ready. ‘Who else could sleep almost to morning through this?’

‘Hamilcar!’ his warriors roared. Some pumped their weapons in the air, others banged them on the parapet.

Typical maorai, they couldn’t even agree on that.

‘You should have woken me,’ I snapped. ‘Can’t you see this is a prelude to an assault?’

Akbu shrugged, then turned to yell, ‘Moha! Hand over your shells, you fool-squid. When will you learn to not make bets?’ He turned back to me and grinned. ‘She thought you would sleep through and complain of the broth being cold.’

While the maorai teased one another with squirting ink noises, I gripped the parapet and glared out into firestorm and fog.

‘Cursed Striking,’ I swore.

‘It could be harder, yes?’ said Akbu, merrily.

‘I still can’t see any of their ships.’

‘See this man!’ cried Akbu as though he were about to launch into a ballad. He jabbed furiously at my backplate with his fingers. ‘The bombardment is not enough for him. He wants Blackjaw himself!’

Didn’t Sigmar know it.

‘Hamilcar!’

I have to admit, the acclaim was starting to grate on my nerves almost as much as the bombardment. For the first time in my life, I felt as though I had done nothing to earn it. Before I knew what I was doing, I was twisting off my left gauntlet and throwing it aside.

‘What are you doing, Castle Lord?’ said Akbu.

Off went the right. I bent down and started tugging on my boot. ‘I’m going in.’

‘In?’

‘In there.’ The boot came loose, and to make a point I hurled it over the parapet for the waves.

‘Good plan!’ said Akbu.

‘What?’

Akbu turned and cleared his throat. ‘We follow Castle Lord, Hamilcar. We swim for the ships!’

The maorai cheered like loons.

‘That is not what I–’

‘Do you hear that?’ someone said, interrupting me.

We all looked up to the horrific wailing, but the sky was so murky and shot through with flame that there was nothing to be seen.

‘A close one,’ said Akbu, quietly.

‘I bet it doesn’t land within two hundred tarfins of here,’ said Moha.

The entire warrior band blanched, and then the moment I had been living in terror of for over a month hit me.

It didn’t disappoint.

The entire event was practically instantaneous, and yet I can remember every moment of it vividly.

The skull materialised from the smouldering veil of grey fog, a baleful grin sketched out for me in flames. It smashed into the parapet ten good strides from me. The impact twisted iron, pulverised rock flying free. Two maorai immediately beneath the skull simply disappeared. Gone. Like that. Then flames ripped outwards. Another half score of Akbu’s warriors were incinerated on the spot. I didn’t get a chance to see who they were. They were probably the lucky ones. I saw a female maorai just outside the blast catch light as she was flung clear over the parapet. She struck the ocean in a hissing cloud of steam.

I heard the first screams then, as the impact rippled out – through rock, through air, swiftly outpacing the bony shrapnel that raced behind it. I felt it grab me, my breastplate buckling as if in the jaws of some Chamonite dragon. It turned me round, propelled me over the wall. Fangs of rock and bone rattled against my backplate, shredded the hair and the skin from the back of my head. I maintain that helmets are for cowards and Hallowed Knights, and in any case the explosion was already throwing me well ahead of the damage.

I saw waves. Lapping beneath me.

From impact to impact, it probably took about a second. I performed a double somersault and smacked into the water on my back. It felt as though I had been coshed on the back of the head, then dark waves closed over me.

Saltwater stung my eyes. I couldn’t see. I was still tumbling, and for a brief moment of panic I wasn’t sure which way was up and which was down. Then I noticed the bubbles streaming from my mouth and turned to follow them, seeing the wave-chopped orange smear of what could only have been a fireball. I kicked towards it. I was never the most elegant of swimmers, but as with all tasks in which I am less than proficient I make up for any weakness in technique with determination and raw strength. However, even I couldn’t overpower the drag of a near-full suit of armour, one boot still on, and despite my efforts I began to sink.

A hard pressure closed around my throat, over my chest. The saltwater sting in the cuts to the back of my head grew dim.

I looked up.

I don’t know why, exactly: a desire to look on Sigendil one last time before I was blasted back to her, perhaps, or maybe just an old barbarian’s instinct for battle. The woman that had been thrown into the water moments before me paddled above. Unlike me there was not a scrap of metal on her, and her blubber armour was naturally buoyant as well as waterproof. It could have been the dark shape silhouetted on the surface, or possibly the abiding smell of fish, but the creatures with whom we now shared an ocean went for her first.

Instinctively, I bellowed a challenge, precious bubbles of air exploding from my mouth as a twenty-foot-long fish with amber pectoral fins and spines running down its back took a bite out of her. The water around her turned browny-red and cloudy, and the giant fish twisted its body away, clutching something in its jaws that looked horribly like a leg. Even with all that, the maorai knew better than to waste air on screaming. Never have I been more in awe of a mortal warrior than I was then. With a powerful stroke of its tail, the fish swam off with its prize, fanning the blood cloud into the water and leaving a trail behind it.

I soon understood why it was in such a hurry to be out of the way.

Twinkling eyes, glinting teeth – barge-like shapes converging that made that first twenty-footer look like a minnow. I gripped my halberd tightly, grinning fiercely even as I continued to sink further beneath the maorai woman. I thrust my halberd into a mouth that yawned wider than the archway doors of the Astral Templars’ Winter Fortress. The halberd didn’t go deep, stabbing into the roof of its mouth so that the monster effectively pushed me back on its own palate. The snap shut of its jaws was like an underwater explosion. Nothing less than solid sigmarite stood a chance against it, and the behemoth’s front teeth duly shattered against the halberd’s shaft. I ripped the weapon clear, then backhanded it across the monster’s snout.

The water robbed my blow of speed. My halberd carved a gouge through the monster’s nose, blood welling up from the wound to thicken the water, but failing to do it lasting harm. I pushed back against the monster’s lower lip. I stabbed it again. This time through the cheek. Like hooking a fish. It yanked its head away, brushed me off, and I belatedly appreciated that I was more fly than hook.

I grunted from behind tightened lips as something clamped on to my shin. I looked down.

A massively fat fish twice the length of my leg had locked its jaws over my knee. Its throat rippled with colours as it suckled on my unbooted foot. Some people think Chaos is vile, but it has nothing on the infinite vicissitudes of the deep places of Ghur. My entire body crawled with disgust. A rope-like eel brushed across my armour, looking for flesh to bite. I swung out my arm, caught it by the neck and drew its head to my breastplate. Bubbles squirmed from my lips as I throttled it, cartilaginous bone softening and crunching. With my still-armoured foot, I kicked down at the suckling fish that had fastened to my leg. I broke its eye, tore its gills, bloodied its face.

I was already dead and knew it. It was about how: how I bowed out, how much blood rode back with me to the celestine vaults.

I hadn’t been happier in weeks.

The eel fell limp in my grip and I let go, stabbing once more at the deepwater behemoth and scaling a line down its underbelly as it swept across me. My chest felt like a bomb about to go off, my face as though it were set to implode. I couldn’t see for blood. The water was thick with it and I was still sinking. It sank with me, both of us heavier than water. The maorai woman was gone now, dead for all I knew, as I was about to be. My enemies I tracked by their movements through the cloud. My throat was burning. It wanted to cry out, desperate to breathe. I could feel my chest shaking, the muscles – no, the inhuman determination that was holding my throat shut – weakening. Everything felt ready to surrender when a monstrous grey tentacle snaked around my chest and pulled taut.

I looked down at it.

‘What in Sigendarrrrgh!’

The last bit of breath burst from me, and suddenly I was moving, yanked out of the cloud, free of the school of predators, dragged through the water as though I were holding on to a speeding allopex by the tailfin.

Then I was away. Clear. Everything about me was seethe and churn, raining out, vistas chopping between burning sky, boiling ocean, and vice versa. I gasped like a newborn – more seawater in it than air, but like ambrosia to me, let me tell you. I gave my head a brutal shake, water sliding off the suckered mass of translucent grey that held me above the frothing, bloody water.

‘Oh gods, no.’

The Grey King of Nemisuvik filled the visible ocean like a fractured iceberg, tentacles spread out over what must have been miles. I saw the ungodly behemoth that had come a halberd’s length from taking me whole, flapping helplessly between two coiled tentacles, trapped about fifty feet above the waves. Gasping creatures twitched and struggled in a hundred separate grips. It was as if the ocean had been dredged of all life. The only reason I wasn’t a meal already was that the King had an enviable glut from which to choose. As I watched, a struggling fish with the same stocky build and phenomenal upper body musculature of a celestial Dracoth went into the King’s mouth with a slippery crunch. Blood stained his ghastly, chewing jaws, bearded with pseudotentacles and ropes of blubbery tissue.

It had hardly been deliberate, but I had goaded him on blood all right.

I’d given him an ocean.

Looking furiously around, I spotted one of Blackjaw’s hellish vessels. It was black-hulled, with a single square sail bearing the emblem of a black-bearded skull. Its oars had been splintered down one side, its rudder hoisted high in the air as its prow sank under the massive weight of the tentacle draped across it. The tentacle had crushed the daemonic figurehead that had been there, carved from red wood and living skin, and the infernal siege cannon that had been situated above it.

Frenzied bloodreavers attacked the tentacle that was slowly sinking their ship with axes and with fire. They might as well have been trying to chew through marble with their teeth for all the effect they were having. I watched them, all corded muscle and heathenish tattoos, swollen with daemonic fervour and unholy strength.

I can’t tell you how energising it was to finally lay eyes on my enemy.

With a long-frustrated howl of aggression, I struck my halberd through the tentacle that held me. Where the bloodreavers hacked ineffectually, my blade was blessed sigmarite, starforged under the Auroral Tempest by the first of the Six Smiths, and it sheared through scale, cartilage and sinew in one clean slice.

Blood gushed from the stricken limb. For a bizarre moment, I was weightless, watching the monster’s blood cascade away and his limbs uncoil while I hung there, motionless.

And then, with a joyous bellow, I fell.

I had timed my blow for the moment that the whipping tentacle put the bloodreavers’ vessel beneath me. It had been my intention to land on the weather deck, then butcher as many of the savages as I could before succumbing to their numbers. But once again, my thoughts were lagging well behind my actions.

I hit the weather deck more or less as planned, only to punch straight through the blood-drenched timbers, landing hard across the back of a cannon. A lesser warrior than I would have permitted his spine to break with such a steep fall and unfortunate landing, but I’m made of sterner stuff. I grunted, dazed, sore, shaking off the woody haze that seemed to drift over me like a curtain in the breeze.

A roar like an almighty brass gong being struck right above my ear snapped me right out of it.

A hammer came down.

I rolled aside.

The cannon exploded into a million pieces. I looked up into the stretched, gloriously overmuscled features of a slaughterpriest, the sort of figure that might tempt men less confident in their own god-wrought physique to the worship of Khorne. The low roof of the gun deck forced him to hunch, a bunching of muscle and sinew that only served to overplay his ridiculous stature.

‘I am Aaksor of the Eight-Times-Bloodied Path,’ he drawled, drunk on murder, his smile distended by the weights piercing the muscle of his face. ‘Ordained in desecration and dismay.’

I felt all of the tension run right out of me. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

He looked momentarily puzzled.

‘This is how a fight between champions should go.’

With an outraged roar he swung his hammer overhead, a downward arc for my chest. My halberd nipped out neatly, catching Aaksor’s descending hammerhead and sending both weapons crashing to the deckboards with the wreckage of the cannon. I kicked up, drove my boot heel through his loincloth. He staggered back, which frankly was the very least he could do under the circumstances. I rolled up onto my knee, throwing a flurry of quick punches into his gut. The muscle there was slabbed on like armour. He dragged back on his hammer. I caught the inside of his wrist, dug in with my fingernails until blood flowed. He gasped like a Slaaneshi. Then I grabbed him between the legs with my free hand and, with a shout that put his kind to shame, I lifted him off the deck, rose to standing and threw him through the gun port behind me.

There was a splash, and then a moment later I saw him again, swinging uselessly about at the end of a milky grey tentacle.

He rose out of view.

The ship gave a lurch, growling like a she-bear about to give birth, as I shook myself off and hurried back up the steps to the upper decks.

The ship was going down. Even I could see that. The angle of its bowsprit was more reminiscent of an arrow sticking out of the ground than a ship at sail. Howling bloodreavers hacked away at the tentacle draped across their prow with increasing desperation. Waves crashed into them, foam spraying over the gunwales to slick the heaving deck. And that was before the second tentacle slid out of the water to encircle the ship’s midline and squeezed, making the already suffering vessel creak.

I had no sympathy for it.

Looking around from the vantage of the dying ship’s weather deck, I could see several others just like it. A fleet of them. Twenty, maybe. They were caught like the one I was on, some hoisted right out of the water, bloody brine draining from their bilges, others dragged under, crushed like so much cheap Ghyranite tat. The catapults, I noticed with enormous satisfaction, had fallen silent.

I had done this.

In freeing the Grey King, however unintentionally, I had turned this battle. Now all I had to do was ensure I received the proper glory for it.

In the midst of that spume and feeding frenzy, I marked a particularly large warship, three-masted, bronze-clad, blistered with infernal engines of war and swarming with crimson-armoured Blood Warriors. Her square sails were black, rippling under the tug of the wind when they should have been taut. Like a liquid. It sailed slowly through the carnage, coming about, extending oars, looking to pull away, its gunnery accursed and powerful enough to hold the tentacles of the Grey King at bay, at least so long as there was a fleet to occupy his hunger.

Blackjaw’s ship. It had to be.

And he was trying to run, the swine.

I looked desperately about the seething mass of tentacles and breaking ships, trying to figure a way to reach my enemy before he was completely beyond my reach. If recent experience had taught me anything, and never let it be said that Hamilcar Bear-Eater does not learn from his mistakes, it was that swimming was not an option.

My attention returned to the ship I was unfortunately still standing on with a snap as the Grey King’s constricting tentacle broke the vessel across the middle.

Just as I was starting to expedite my thoughts on alternative places to be, the bloodreavers that had previously been occupied forward spun to see what had just happened, and saw me. There was an instant’s confusion, then a roar as the whole lot of them charged up the rapidly upending deck towards me.

I suspect that a few of them had made their peace with an imminent return to their god and fancied the idea of making the trip with a little something to offer – I imagine that the skull of Hamilcar Bear-Eater would be just the thing to return a warrior to Khorne’s good side.

If he has a good side.

With a laugh that was as much at his expense as theirs, I caught hold of the tentacle just as it slid back over the side, leaving the bloodreavers to splash and curse after me as their increasingly vertical half of the ship slid them back towards the now-submerged prow.

Using the tentacle’s suckers as handholds, I climbed onto the smooth scales of its back. It swung about, twisting in on itself in a mad effort to grab me. I grinned and held on, rising slowly to my feet with my arms held out for balance and my feet wedged in tight. It was just like walking across a rope bridge, I told myself. A slippery, wet, constantly undulating rope bridge that was trying to kill me. The solitary boot on my foot gave me a ridiculous gait that made the task of running along that tentacle infinitely more difficult than it had to be, but there was no way I was getting it off now, so I manned up and ran.

As I drew within shouting distance of the King’s almighty head, my impromptu bridge became ever more precipitously sloped and I found that I couldn’t hold on any longer. From there, I mostly fell, but since you are here and this is my tale, let’s say that there was some element of jump involved as well.

Let’s say that.

The King’s head was harder than it looked. Even the buoyancy bladders and fatty sacs were covered in an armour of translucent scales. I hit with a heavy clang of sigmarite and a curse or two, but he didn’t seem to notice my presence on his brow at all. All his attention was devoted to the steady demolition of a mid-sized warship in his jaws. If he knew the difference between wood and flesh then he didn’t appear to care for it.

I too can get that way, if left too long between meals.

I realised that I had a moment or two to get my bearings, and took them both. The ocean had been transformed into a mat of writhing tentacles and floating debris. Timbers. Canvas. Bloodreavers splashing about, battling with the predators that had dared the Grey King’s hunger to pick at his leavings. It was a cauldron in which every impure ingredient had been smashed together and had come out red. I picked out the black ship, shrouded in the hellish smoke of her cannons and rowing hard.

I frowned, judging the writhe of the tentacles between me and it, and then jumped.

There was no uncertain initial embrace this time, no tottering, no stalling, no prayers to the God-King. This time I sprinted down that flexing limb, my warding lantern banging against my thigh, as though the rug were about to be pulled from under me.

I have it on sound authority that a ship at full sail, even an encumbered warship, can run many times swifter than a man. Even a Stormcast Eternal. But the embattled black ship was not doing anything close to full tilt. The currents plied against her. Her sails fluttered, limp, the winds chopped and gusting around the extensive and ever-shifting bulk of the Grey King.

I caught up to her before the tentacle could throw me off, running parallel for a few strides before the limb twitched close enough for me to jump.

I jumped.

This time I managed to catch hold of the rigging, my fingers tearing the black mizzensail like a scab as I went down it. The bottom of the sail was about twelve feet off the poop deck. I fell the rest of the way with a lot of flailing limbs and shouting. I banged onto the deck, bruised but ebullient, and quickly rolled onto my chest to get a knee beneath me. Gasping for breath, I looked about.

The crew of the poop deck were huge warriors in spiked leather cuirass and snarling buckles, bucklers strapped to forearms and knees, missing limbs replaced with maces, axes and – in one fiendishly impractical instance – an eight-tailed flail. They were all looking up in fury at the torn sail, as tentacles snaked up from the water for the floundering warship.

‘To the guns,’ someone roared with a voice like lava. ‘We blast our way into the Blood God’s graces.’

At last I saw him. The man himself.

Blackjaw.

He turned from the ship’s wheel to confront me, a powerful man in a mouldy coat decorated with bronzed frogging and bars. He was at least as tall as me. His chest was broad, his arms thick. He wore a tricorne hat bedecked in human skulls, and a beard of clotted blood clung to his face like a leech to dying prey, quivering occasionally as though anticipating a violent feast. Lit tapers stuck from the daemonic parasite, giving off a brimstone stench that inflamed and enraged me. I don’t think there was any particular power to it, beyond the foul gifts of alchemy I so deplored.

‘Hamilcar Bear-Eater,’ he spat, and I confess the acknowledgement that the infamous Blackjaw knew my name made the whole torrid adventure seem worthwhile. ‘For five hundred years I have ruled these waves. I burned the dragon ships that the sea aelves of Tarvain sent to defy me. I flattened the granite underspires of the Como duardin. I ended the defiance of Indomus where a dozen like me had tried and failed. It was I whose devotion Khorne blessed with the daemon engines to destroy Nemisuvik.’

I yawned.

This only seemed to infuriate him further.

‘The Stormwilds are my monument to the Blood God, my ocean of skulls.’ He turned his snarl upwards as a tentacle came crashing into the water, just off his bow. The waves of its impact battered his heavy ship. ‘I know not how you have achieved this, but if I am to sink to the Brass Citadel this day then it will be as the anchor about your neck, Bear-Eater.’

I’ve been to the Brass Citadel.

It’s not so bad, provided you have a fondness for skulls.

I must have been distracted, thinking of the fortress of Khorne, because I didn’t even see his hands coming away from his belt with a brace of pistols. They were stocked and muzzled in black wood, the same as the hull of his ship, and chased in brass, unwholesome sigils steaming where they had been stamped through the wood and the metal.

He cocked them with his thumbs, and fired.

Now I know what you are all thinking.

Where is the warding lantern you picked up in the sleeping hall? Well, I still had it. Truth be told, I’d made the decision not to use it. I’d been fully expecting to die, after all; had been waiting for it, even. What use has such a man for a blessing like that? But now I had won. This was just the first few hundred yards of my victory lap. All that was left of the battle now were the parts that matter: lording it over the victory feasts from the top table, accepting the praises as Sigmar’s regent, and ensuring that all the bards and heralds knew how to pronounce ‘Hamilcar’.

You think it is warriors that win wars?

They win battles. Heroes win wars.

You think heroes just make themselves?

I went for my lantern then, pulling it from my belt even as Blackjaw’s pistols coughed up black smoke and fire. I didn’t have the time to open it. I knew that. Even I’m not quicker than a bullet.

I threw it.

The lantern smashed into Blackjaw’s chin, his beard erupting in sparks at the exact same moment that two brazen slugs punched through my greaves, just where the fish that had been chewing on my leg had weakened them.

I stumbled onto the other leg, my mouth a silent ‘O’ of surprise. ‘God-King. That hurts.’

‘I pray that this hurts twice as much.’

Discarding his spent weapons, Blackjaw threw open his coat to reveal a bare torso of corded muscle and pale white scars. A bandolier crisscrossed his chest, and from it he drew another brace of pistols. That even now, barely an arm’s length from my face, he would resort to guns disgusted me.

‘What kind of champion of the Blood God are you?’ I said, adding a slur to my words, for feigning injury is not a ruse I consider myself above. In fact, if you can conceive of a ruse that I am above, then you have a darker mind than mine, my friend.

‘Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows,’ he snarled, cocking his pistol, black eyes locked on mine.

My halberd cleaving his right hand from his wrist then came as quite the surprise.

He howled in pain and outrage, firing the pistol that was still in his left hand. The bullet glanced off my rerebrace and splintered the oak of the gunwale behind me.

‘Careful, Castle Lord.’

At the sound of that unexpectedly cheery voice, I turned my head to see Akbu, exhausted and dripping, but dragging himself and his pole arm up over the side of the ship. A similarly bedraggled band of maorai, reduced in number to about half a dozen, clambered up the netting behind him. They had swum all this way, just to follow me.

My heart swelled.

I felt as though someone had set a warding lantern in my breast.

‘This man…’ Akbu panted, trying to gesture to me but lacking the strength.

I got the gist of it.

I turned to Blackjaw, swollen with pride and bristling with Azyrite intensity. He backed away, awkwardly drawing a cutlass. It looked as though he had not needed to wield one in centuries.

I grinned, and for the first time in a long while it felt like a fit for my face.

‘Let the glory begin.’

So yes, maybe I did release the Grey King prematurely, and maybe that did have something to do with Nemisuvik’s diminished status in later years. It had lost the monster’s protection, but it had gained Sigmar’s, which had to be better, even if he was less hands-on about discouraging the ever-hungry beasts of the Stormwilds from the pontoons.

The battle had been won, and that was what mattered. Many were the sacrifices that mortal folk were asked to make in those days, and they were invariably offered more gladly when it was me who asked it of them. Thanks in no small part to my efforts in holding Blackjaw at bay for so long, the greater war for the territories of the mainland had been a triumph, my name ever-present there also alongside Broudiccan and Frankos and the champions of the Bear-Eaters. And when the victorious folk of Nemisuvik were forced to abandon the outer pontoons to the beasts, when they rediscovered the boatmaker’s craft and found themselves new homes elsewhere across the Ghurlands, they took the name of their hero with them.

That sounds like a great victory to me.

PILGRIM’S TRIAL

Robbie MacNiven

‘Hold her.’

Vanik drew his Azgorh-forged broadsword, Serpent’s Fang. His chief retainer, Modred, flinched at the sight of the heavy, serrated blade.

‘I said keep her steady,’ the Black Pilgrim reiterated, baring his fangs in annoyance. Modred gripped the mare’s bridle more tightly, his face pale. The dozen Chaos knights surrounding them watched on in silence from the backs of their own great steeds, impassive in their black, spiked armour and rough pelts.

For a few seconds, Vanik looked at the bay mare being held by his retainer. He had owned many warhorses since he started on the Path to Glory. He still remembered his first, given to him during his seventeenth summer by Golgeth Eightpoint. It had been a heavy-set grey stallion, reared on the Red Steppes like the mounts of most of Lord Golgeth’s cavalry, hardy and ill-tempered. She had fallen at Herrendorf, half a dozen musket balls in her breast, her death avenged by Serpent’s Fang. Others had followed – Winteroath, the white stallion that had trampled the captain of a Freeguild company at the battle of New Marsh, and Krux, the red-eyed brute he had stolen from Lord Jarqo’s stables in the dreadhold Sunderfall.

In that regard, his latest mount, Fellwind, had a long and proud legacy. Vanik had won her off the master of his own cavalry, Lo Faug. She was a Red Steppe mare, like his first. He supposed there was a sweet symmetry in that. The true, wicked gods loved their ironies.

‘Forgive me,’ Vanik murmured to the mare. ‘You must meet your end amidst smoke and ash. My destiny lies within the Cinderwood, and your blood will guide me to it.’

Modred cast a nervous glance at the ash and smoke swirling around them. What it hid, Vanik did not know, but he doubted it would be cheerier than what he could already see – the low ridgeline they had clambered to the crest of was littered with blackened bones and charred corpses. The stench of burning and the cloying smog that shrouded them seemed perpetual, and just where it was rising from remained hidden. Vanik intended to be gone before he found out.

Aqshy was the Realm of Fire, and it rarely accepted visitors without burning them.

The Black Pilgrim followed his retainer’s glance, turning his eyes briefly to the smoke. There was something out there, he was sure of it. Something drawing closer. He could only hope it was what he had come here looking for.

Jaw set, Vanik raised Serpent’s Fang, and swung down with all his Four-blessed strength.

Fellwind screamed. Vanik grimaced and swung again, arterial blood spraying both him and Modred. Butchering a horse was never a simple matter.

His steed went down on her front legs. Vanik swung a third and final time. The sounds of the slaughter echoed back weirdly from the smoke shrouding them. He had to be fast, before the blood and shrieks drew any more unwanted attention.

Finally, Fellwind lay still. Vanik stood over her, panting, blood running thick and slow from his sword and armour. Modred crouched beside the fallen steed, looking up at his master fearfully.

‘It is done,’ Vanik said, turning to survey his retinue. The dozen knights of the Iron Brotherhood continued to look on in silence. They had followed him faithfully since he had first declared his intention to embark upon the Black Pilgrimage and seek entry into the ranks of the Varanguard. In the many quests since then, none had ever strayed from his side. Now, he would give them no choice.

‘I must go,’ he said to his retinue. ‘This quest can only be undertaken alone. Wait out the night. If I have not returned by the time this smoke lightens or lifts, depart. Find my sister, Warqueen Jevcha, with the Darkoath, and tell her of my death.’

‘May the Eightstar guide you, sire,’ Modred said, cuffing his cap from his head and using it to wipe the blood from his youthful face. He made the sign of the eight-pointed Star of Chaos, four fingers from each hand interlocked.

‘And you, boy,’ Vanik responded tersely. He clapped his heavy warpsteel shield across his back and moved off down the slope, sheathing Serpent’s Fang as he went. He didn’t bother to clean its edge of Fellwind’s blood. It would be wet again soon enough, of that he was certain.

In the decades since Vanik had first set foot upon the Path to Glory, fear had become a stranger to him. Even when he had been young, the threat of blood and battle had served only to set his spirits soaring, as it did with any lodge-son of the Splintered Coast. The shattered ice-crags and long winters of that harsh corner of Ghur bred a warrior people well suited to the service of the four True Gods. Fear was a luxury no hearthguard or dragonship oarsman could afford. Here, however, the sensation stirring in his gut felt different entirely.

To fight what was seen was simple. To do so against something that was unseen was altogether less so. It created a creeping, slithering unknown that set the nerves on edge and honed the senses to a painful edge. The uncertainty of stepping out into the choking pall of ash and smoke made Vanik grimace. Still, it was to the Cinderwood that his Black Pilgrimage had brought him, and he would not depart until this latest quest was completed. He would become a Knight of Ruin, one of Archaon’s chosen, a warrior of the Varanguard. If not, his soul was already forfeit.

He progressed over the broken and burned corpses littering the plain, his boots crunching through brittle bone and blackened flesh. The smoke around him shifted and twisted, and more than once he thought he caught shapes darting around him, or features leering from the constantly falling ash. Whether they were signs from the True Gods or something more malevolent, he could not tell, but he kept one gauntlet on the hilt of Serpent’s Fang as he walked.

‘Eightfold Path guide me,’ he murmured, forging on deeper into the malevolent smog.

It wasn’t long before he lost the outline of the ridge behind him. That in itself was no concern. He had come here to lose himself. That was the only chance he had of finding what he sought. He was in the hands of the True Gods now.

He realised there were shapes ahead, more permanent than the phantoms haunting him. For a moment, he tensed, hand tight around his sword’s hilt. A few more steps, however, revealed that the looming shades were the beginnings of a forest, swathed in the smoke that seemed to perpetually cloud this part of Aqshy. It was the Cinderwood, he realised. The thrice-cursed place he’d been searching for. He moved in among the boughs, treading carefully, his fangs bared and yellow eyes straining in the gloom.

The woodland was quite dead. An expanse of burned trunks and skeletal branches, it closed in around Vanik, a thicket of scorched and blackened timber that looked as though it had only just fallen victim to the most ferocious of forest fires. Crisped undergrowth cracked and snapped beneath his boots, and more ash rose up with every step. He continued to battle the urge to draw his sword. He was being watched, he was sure of it.

He moved a bough aside, the ancient tree groaning like a soul weary of torment. Something dark and heavy shifted in the branches above, and tumbled down towards him. Serpent’s Fang was free in an instant, a dash of silvered steel in the singed landscape.

The blade stopped inches from the thing that had almost hit him. He found himself face-to-face with a withered skull, its sockets glaring at him, leathery flesh clinging to the rictus grin of its jaw. The thing swayed as he stepped back, and he realised the corpse was hanging from a length of knotted ashvine, the blackened cords wrapped tight around its throat from the branches overhead. The body dangled like a mad child’s mannequin, head bowed, shrivelled and shrunken by the heat. For the first time, Vanik noticed more hanging from the boughs round about, unmoving in the still air, their rotted sockets staring blindly into the smoky woodland where they’d choked and burned.

Vanik thrust the hanging body aside and strode on, his anger flaring. He had not come here to skulk around a charred, corpse-draped forest. His quest would not allow him to leave until he’d found what he sought – nothing else mattered, and if anything sought to impede him, it would die, and die a second death if necessary. He kept Serpent’s Fang’s bloody blade drawn and pressed on, deeper into the Cinderwood.

She watched the mortal pass on into the crackling, blistered shadows beneath the boughs, his tread growing firmer as his soul flared with blessed anger, hot like the smouldering remains of the woodland that surrounded him. She had been aware of him almost since he had stepped foot into Aqshy, his quest drawing her wandering, hungry soul. Like all of her kind, she sought companionship almost as greedily as she reviled authority. This one was touched by the will of the high powers, though. Such an opportunity did not present itself often. He was worthy of her attentions.

He could also prove to be a most favourable source of fresh meat.

How long had it been since she had last enjoyed the primal pleasures of flesh and blood? She was clad in it now, the Pilgrim’s presence sufficient to draw her soul into corporeal form, little by little. She passed through the woodland after the mortal champion, relishing the new reality she found herself in. The hot ash underfoot, the rough boughs that nicked and scraped against her spiked hide, the overpowering scents of burned wood and charred meat. She bared her fangs, newly formed. The shadows avoided her, the forest not yet comprehending her presence. She kept her own distance from the mortal ahead of her. There were others coming, some drawn by the flare of angry emotion, others simply because the knight was trespassing. All would test him.

If he bested them, she would be waiting.

Vanik stopped. Something had moved in the smoke ahead, a shadow within the shadows, darting between the brittle trunks.

He could hear it, too: a low crackling noise, the snapping of crisped leaves and twigs.

The sensation of being hunted was another one Vanik was unaccustomed to. It made his heart race and his sword-arm ache. The urge to lash out was confounded by the lack of an enemy before him. It was nothing short of infuriating.

He turned in a half-circle, sensing more movement to his right. There was more than one, and they were surrounding him. The longer he stayed still, the more time he gave them to pick their moment.

He advanced, broadsword still drawn. The creature ahead kept well back, its form shrouded by the ash and smoke that seemed to reign perpetually in the burned forest. The bodies dangling around him seemed to grin wider, white teeth in blackened, shrivelled skin. Vanik snarled, his anger rising.

A screech came from his right. He heard the crack of more branches snapping as something thrust its weight between the trees. The smoke that had been coiling around him seemed to recede, and he just had time to unfasten his warpsteel shield from his back before a heavy-set shape reared up before him.

It was a beast of the shadow realms, made manifest by the will of the True Gods. Vanik caught only an impression of a snapping maw and predatory green frills as the thing lunged. It crashed against his shield, the brute force driving him back and grinding his boots into the thick bed of ash underfoot. Claws and jaws scraped, and he was forced to lash out with Serpent’s Fang as a muscular limb snapped around the edge of his shield, seeking yielding flesh and blood amidst the black steel plate of the Chaos knight.

The broadsword bit, and the limb retracted with a guttural yelp. Vanik lowered his shield a fraction, panting, and got his first good look at the creature.

It resembled a warhound, if such a beast had been bred from the nightmares of daemons. It was huge and muscular, its furless flesh a bloody crimson hue, mottled with darker spots. Around its thick skull and slavering maw were frills of membranous green skin, raised in a display of hunger and rage. Its small eyes burned in the forest’s charred smoke, like smouldering coals fresh from the daemon forges of the Varanspire.

Vanik knew its name instinctively. His own presence had drawn it here and bound it, both a test and an opportunity.

‘Korhel,’ he said aloud, speaking the name slowly. ‘Hound of the Wrath.’

The beast snarled, and lunged.

This time Vanik met it squarely, taking the impact against his shield and holding his ground. The beast was fast, lunging under and then over the warpsteel. Its sharp talons scraped sparks from pauldron and greave, bright in the smoke, and Vanik grunted as he felt it draw blood. He struck back, his anger brighter, snarling in the beast’s face as he forced one of its forelegs to one side and rammed Serpent’s Fang into its flank. Dark ichor gouged over the wicked steel, and he twisted it, batting aside the beast’s scrambling talons and maw with his other arm.

Korhel made a barking sound and dragged itself away, Vanik’s broadsword hauled free of its muscled body. There was more anger than pain in its smouldering gaze as it rounded on him, fangs bared in a snarl to match that of the Black Pilgrim.

‘Submit to me,’ Vanik demanded.

The bloodhound had struck, as she had known it would. It was a lowly creature, a base predator, unaware of the other hunters already prowling the forest. It would pay dearly for its lack of perception.

She remembered this place now, this realm of fire and scorched souls. She had been bound once before in a place like this, by a great Knight of Change. They had spent an age together, if her memories were still true. Their final battle had been a great one, before a Realmgate of Azyr, locked in battle against the false Lightning God’s golden slaves. They had both fallen, and the gateway had been shattered. Now his soul was in torment, while she returned once more to the Mortal Realms, her soul riven with hunger. She still had the aftertaste of his final damnation on her tongue.

Perhaps this one would be different. She slipped between low, charred boughs, a phantom in the smoke, trailing him like a shadow. Every moment she spent in his questing presence bound more flesh to her bones, making her stronger. She could taste the air now, the ash, the blood pumping through the veins of the mortal knight, lessening the bitter taste of failure. She hungered like never before. Ahead, she saw the bloodhound crash into the bold champion, heard their intertwined roars echo away through the burned woodland. He would not bind that brute.

Whether he survived its fury was another matter.

Korhel snapped at Vanik, its claws raking up the layer of ash underfoot.

‘Submit,’ Vanik repeated as he faced the monstrous creature, levelling Serpent’s Fang. Ichor pattered from the blade. ‘My rage will master yours. There can be no other outcome, beast.’

What came next was not what Vanik expected. The great hound let out a yelp and twisted, turning back on itself. The movement revealed its right flank to him, and the heavy arrow lodged deep within its flesh.

The hound locked its jaws around the projectile and snapped its shaft with a savage twist. It didn’t have time to move again before two more thuds heralded the impact of another pair, just back from the knotted musculature of the beast’s trunk-like neck. It let out a roar that made the very air around Vanik shudder and rattled the bone-dry branches of the surrounding trees. Its only answer was more arrows.

They flew from either side, flickers of movement in the shadows, hissing and whistling between boughs and trunks. Korhel twisted back and forth, driven into a frenzy. There was no respite though, and no sign of its attackers amidst the fire-touched smog.

It could withstand no more. Wounded, its furless hide thick with shafts and slick with ichor, it launched itself between the trees to Vanik’s right, snapping branches and splitting bark.

The knight barely had a chance to draw a lungful of the hot air before the shapes in the gloom, the shadows that had hunted him since he had set foot in the Cinderwood, coalesced around him.

‘Eightstar take you,’ he snapped, and began to run.

His position in the clearing would leave him surrounded, and he wasn’t fool enough to believe he could survive against such creatures with them all around him.

A cracking noise filled the forest as he went, like the splitting of bark in the heat of an inferno. He heard the thud of arrows striking the woodland around him. Breath rasping and eyes stinging in the smoke, he carried on.

The pilgrim fled. She did not detest that, as the great hound would have. She was no fool. The paths to victory were many and changing, and she would not suffer an idiot who fought and died without purpose.

She had known enough of those in the aeons since the dark needs of mortal champions had first dragged her into existence.

She followed him, darting between the trees and the dangling, shrunken bodies. More arrows slashed through the smoke, quivering in dead wood. One almost found its mark, thudding into the mortal’s heavy shield. She snarled. They would slay him, and she would be flung back into the listless nothingness that tormented her whenever she was banished from the Mortal Realms. There was no pain like that of oblivion.

The forest was hunting him. A place like this, though scorched and burned, was not as dead as it first seemed. There were enemies of the True Gods here, long abandoned and forgotten by their own creator, primal, vengeful things riven with the flames of this realm. They had not yet sensed her own, semi-corporeal intrusion, so focused were they on the trespassing of the mortal. His anger had drawn them the way it had drawn the great hound, the kindling spark in this forest of deadwood.

She saw him stumble. He recovered, an arrow clattering from one of the curving ram horns that adorned his helm. The forest was closing in, the flames of its ire rising.

He wouldn’t get much further. He needed a mount.

Vanik stumbled. An arrow struck him in the thigh, the sudden pain making him hiss, but he snapped the shaft and continued. He knew he wouldn’t get far. They were in front of him, behind him. He was surrounded again.

There was little point in carrying on.

He detested running, anyway. The old longhouse saying from the Splintered Coast was true – stand and fight; those who run just die tired.

As he turned, the first of his attackers showed itself, looming from the smoke-shrouded boughs. It was like a tree, had trees been capable of such fiery malice. The bark of its trunk-body and bough-limbs were the same as the rest of the forest, blackened and cracked, the tips of each branch charred like the ends of torches. Fire flickered and smouldered within its core, lighting the splits in its bark and giving a fiery visage to the twisted, knotted timber that constituted its face. In its kindling grasp was a great war bow, the tip of the arrow nocked to its ashvine string, which flickered with fire.

‘Sylvaneth,’ Vanik spat at the smouldering construct, raising Serpent’s Fang once more. Legends long told of the Cinderwood’s guardians, long forgotten by their mistress Alarielle and abandoned in this ever-smouldering corner of Aqshy.

He turned in a half-circle as more timber creaked around him. There were two of them, he realised, two bow-armed Hunters of Kurnoth, hideously burned but still cleaving to the memory of their green glades.

One of the sylvaneth spoke, its voice slow and crackling like the snapping of wood in the fire.

‘This is not your realm, trespasser.’

‘All realms are mine, by the will of the True Gods,’ Vanik snarled. ‘Leave me and live, you deformed, overgrown sapling.’

The sylvaneth answered with a roar like the falling of an oak, and loosed its burning arrow.

Vanik’s shield, already scarred by Korhel’s talons, took the missile. He dropped into a crouch, hearing the deadly whisper of the second hunter’s arrow as it passed overhead. There was no time for finesse. He lunged forwards, shouting incoherently, his body flushed with the familiar, raw frenzy of battle.

The sylvaneth ahead of him swept its bow around in time to parry Serpent’s Fang. Vanik raked the blade down the tough, blackened timber, the bow’s tip clattering ineffectually against his shield while he turned his blow against the sylvaneth’s trunk. The broadsword cut deep into the wood, and fire and sparks licked from the wound.

If the strike had injured the sylvaneth, it showed no discomfort. It spun its bow, so that the stave slammed down in a head-splitting overhead strike. Vanik was too slow to avoid the blow, though he managed to twist his body so it impacted into his shoulder instead of his head. He grunted as it slammed into his pauldron, buckling the black steel. A fierce pain shot down his right arm. Serpent’s Fang dropped from his numb fingers.

Before he could recover, the sylvaneth lashed out with its other bough-arm, cracking into his breastplate and flinging him back. He slammed into the charred remains of the forest floor, a pall of ash covering him instantly. He tried to roll, tried to draw breath to spit a curse at the vengeful tree construct, but it loomed over him, its roots gripping and dragging him towards it. It glared down at him, fire smouldering behind its terrible, twisted visage.

‘Your foul kind will trespass in our sacred glades no more,’ it crackled, nocking another long arrow to its bow. Vanik tensed, scrabbling ineffectively against the roots binding him, but before the hunter could loose something came shrieking through the woodland to the right.

It caught the sylvaneth as it turned, its arrow whistling wide as twin jaws yawned. There was a crunch, and the crack of splitting timber. Burning shards of wood rained down on Vanik as the creature ripped into the upper part of the sylvaneth, splintering it into pieces.

Lying prone, Vanik got his first clear view of his saviour. The creature looked reptilian, larger than a horse, its scales grey and its limbs ending in splayed claws. Its flanks and neck were thick with spiny quills that bristled as it moved. He stared as it twisted amidst the sylvaneth’s broken remains, apparently furious that its jaws had found wood and flame rather than flesh and blood.

The fearsome appearance of the creature’s spiked hide was echoed in its skull – it was long and lean, with two sets of wicked jaws dripping with drool. Its eyes – small, yellow and predatory – fixed on Vanik with something that felt like recognition.

A sylvaneth arrow broke the moment. It thudded into the beast’s shoulder. The creature twisted low, far lither than any horse, and flung itself towards the Kurnoth Hunter who had dared to shoot.

Vanik reacted without thinking. With a grunt, he reached for one of the arrows still lodged in his shield and snapped the shaft, which was almost as thick as a spear. Rising, he flung it underarm.

The length of splintered wood scythed through the air and into the trunk of the hunter bringing its bow to bear, thumping through a crack in its blackened timber. Its own arrow was loosed too soon, slipping past the beast as it lunged. The powerful jaws clamped down over a limb, snapping it like a twig, while the beast’s great foreclaws raked the sylvaneth’s trunk. It toppled slowly backwards with a creak and squeal of tortured wood, the beast bearing it to the ground and savaging it.

Vanik found Serpent’s Fang amidst the undergrowth. A sudden quiet fell upon the cursed woodland as he snatched it up. The beast that had saved him was hunched over, snarling as it ripped and tore at the sylvaneth’s remains, trampling out its flames and pulping its bark-skin. It was hungry, but the hunter could provide it with no sustenance.

The thing seemed to regain its self-control abruptly, sensing his presence. It rounded on him, strings of drool slavering from its maw.

‘Tzatzo,’ Vanik said.

The creature let out a soft trilling sound, and her crest of quills rose at the sound of her name. Vanik knew it, though he did not know how.

‘The Eightfold Path has brought us here,’ he said to the creature. ‘Already our souls are bound, one to the other.’

She snapped at him – whether with agreement or hostility, he could not tell. He noticed that she was standing with one of her hind claws raised up off the ashy undergrowth. The second hunter’s arrow was still lodged there, and black ichor was oozing slowly from around its thick shaft.

‘Remain still,’ Vanik commanded. Tzatzo bared her bristling fangs, but made no move to lunge at Vanik as he moved round to her hindquarters. He sheathed Serpent’s Fang and placed one gauntlet tentatively against the yielding spines of her flank, the other closing around the arrow’s shaft.

‘Do your kind feel pain?’ he wondered aloud.

Tzatzo snarled.

‘If so, we will avenge it together,’ he murmured, then pulled.

The arrow came free amidst a spurt of ichor.

Tzatzo threw her head back and shrieked, the hideous noise echoing through the smoke-shrouded forest. Vanik stood clear, but the beast made no attempt to lunge at him. Instead, as the flow from her wound became a trickle, she turned slowly and lowered her long, wicked muzzle. He cast the arrow aside and placed his mailed hand on the creature’s head.

‘One act of good favour deserves another,’ he said. ‘Your spirit brought me here, as mine brought you. It is the True Gods that will our partnership. Will you serve me, as I seek to serve the Three-Eyed King?’

Tzatzo watched him, as though in contemplation, her hot breath washing over him. Then she knelt, her sinuous body pressing the ground. Vanik grasped the thicker clusters of spines along her back and threw a leg over, mounting her. Despite his weight she rose easily, her scaled body taut with strength. The wound in her flank was already beginning to clot.

‘The work of the Eightfold Path awaits us,’ he said, running the fingers of his gauntlet through her bristling spines. ‘Do you know the way out of this Gods-forsaken forest?’

Without pause the Chaos steed sprung, quick as the falling Eightstar, out between the dead boughs.

There were things moving in the smoke. Modred had tried ignoring them for the first few hours, fixing his eyes on the fires lit by the Iron Brotherhood. Vanik the Black Pilgrim’s retinue had built half a dozen of them from the kindling littering the corpse-covered ridgeline. Night had fallen, but the flames licked bright and hungry, at home in the parched earth of Aqshy.

But the flames had also drawn something else. Shapes were circling them, indistinct in the darkness beyond the campfires. Modred was sure he could hear the creak of timber. He shivered, but didn’t move any closer to the nearest fire. The flames seemed too hungry for his liking.

The thing inside his head let out a little childlike giggle.

None of the Iron Brotherhood were near the fires either. The Chaos knights themselves stood arrayed around the small encampment, looking out into the ever-prowling darkness. Modred couldn’t help but notice their bared blades, or the tension in their stances.

‘How much longer?’ he heard the carnyx player, Aramor, murmur to the standard bearer, Kulthuk. The heavily armoured warrior didn’t respond. Modred realised why. He could hear something over the crackling of the flames, sounds that grew louder with each quickening heartbeat.

It was the noise of combat. Steel clattering, a bellow of rage, a voice raised in anger. Then came a shriek, rising to a painful pitch, a cold, unnatural sound that made Modred shiver all the more. The smoke that seemed to eternally blanket this part of Aqshy caught in his throat, making him cough.

‘Stand ready,’ Kulthuk barked. Modred pulled out the short dagger he carried, feeling pathetic next to the full plate armour and heavy blades carried by the knights surrounding him. His heart raced, and his eyes strained as he tried to discern the movement beyond the edge of the fire’s glow.

The laughter of the thing inside his head deepened.

‘There,’ shouted Aramor, pointing. A shape burst from the swirling smoke, springing fast up the slope. It reared up before Kulthuk, and Modred let out a shriek of terror as he found himself staring into a fanged gullet that loosed the same terrible cry he had heard a moment before. It was a daemon, he was certain, a hunter of the Realm of Shadows loosed on them by the True Gods. What transgression had they committed to warrant such cruel vengeance?

The creature dropped back onto all fours, snapping its dripping jaws at the Chaos knights that were paralysed before it. Only then did Modred realise that the creature, its spines raised, was the mount for an even more terrible and glorious figure.

Vanik the Black Pilgrim had returned. His shield and armour were scarred silver in places and studded with the snapped shafts of arrows. His great sword, Serpent’s Fang, gleamed in the firelight, notched as though it had been hewing timber. The black knight paused before his shocked retinue, glaring down imperiously as his mount’s chilling shriek echoed away into the night.

‘Another trial has been completed,’ he announced, twisting the mount’s head by the scruff of its quills to keep it from snapping at Modred. ‘Another step on the Path to Glory. I now have a steed worthy of a Knight of Ruin.’

Modred fell to his knees. The rest of the retinue followed suit.

‘Sire, the shadows beyond the fire…’ Kulthuk began to say.

‘Are slain,’ Vanik finished. ‘Do not fear, my bannerman. Our time in this accursed place is at an end.’

‘We ride forth once again?’ Modred asked, hope overcoming the terror he felt at the close proximity of his master’s new mount.

‘We do,’ Vanik said. ‘From the Realmgate to the Eightpoints, and then on to Shyish. My next trial awaits.’

‘Another trial, sire?’ Aramor asked, unable to keep the dismay from his voice.

‘A final one, before I stand before the court of Neveroth and the Varanguard,’ Vanik announced. ‘For now I need but one more tool of ruin. My daemonsword.’

THE DANCE OF THE SKULLS

David Annandale

The Mortarch of Blood’s party arrived at the royal palace in Mortannis with the coming of full night. Neferata, her handmaidens and her ladies of court swept up the grand staircase leading to the palace doors. On either side, standing to attention, were the elite guards of two cities: Mortannis to the right, Nachtwache to the left. Walking one step behind Neferata, Lady Mereneth said, ‘I do not trust the nature of this honour.’

‘Nor do they expect us to,’ Neferata told her favoured spy. ‘This will not be the trap. They know the consequences will be too great. What will come will be more subtle, one our enemies can deny.’

Neferata had come to Mortannis to attend a ball arranged explicitly for her visit. The event was formally presented as an act of fealty and peace. She knew, therefore, exactly what it was. She was entering a battlefield.

She would not have it any other way.

Mortannis lay close enough to Nulahmia for it to be a point of concern. Queen Ahalaset had never challenged Neferata directly, and the tensions between the two cities had long been unspoken, subterranean. Close to the borders of Mortannis’ region of influence lay Nachtwache. It was ruled by Lord Nagen and Neferata had kept a close watch on the relations between Mortannis and Nachtwache. As long as there had been friction between the two, friction that she had encouraged, the two powers had kept each other contained. She had even tolerated temporary alliances in the face of the threat from the legions of Chaos. But the armies sworn to the Everchosen were, for the time being, pushed back from this region of Shyish, and it appeared that the cities’ rulers had formed a much more substantial alliance. That would never do.

So she had accepted the joint invitation from Ahalaset and Nagen immediately, after putting on the expected charade of diplomatic negotiations. There was work to be done here, and she knew she was putting her neck into the jaws of a trap. Though she arrived at the palace with only her immediate retinue, she was confident in her assurance to Mereneth. Ahalaset and Nagen would not strike here, with their own guard. Neferata’s army waited outside the gates of Mortannis – legions of vampires, skeletons and wraiths cantoned in the lower reaches of the mountains that surrounded the city. Any move by the forces of Mortannis or Nachtwache would see Mortannis burned to the ground.

These were the realities of the game about to be played. They were known by all. The war would take place at another level. There would be no siege, no scaling of the walls. After all, this was a celebration. The war would be invisible, until a point came when the combatants chose to drop the illusion.

Neferata’s party passed through the high doors of the palace, down the entrance hall and into the grand ballroom. Torchlight shone off the gold leaf of marble caryatids that held up the vaulted ceiling of the ballroom. The ceiling mosaic was a wonder of bronze-covered bones. Hundreds of skeleton arms reached from the edges of the vault towards the centre, where a huge skull composed of other skulls opened its jaws in an ecstasy of death.

The honour guard of the two cities was also present in the ballroom, but more discreetly, keeping to positions against the walls. To the fore, lining the path of the procession to the large dais at the back of the ballroom, was the gathered nobility of Mortannis and Nachtwache. Vampires and mortals bowed as Neferata passed. She acknowledged their greetings with the faintest of nods. She met the eyes of the nobles, all of them, and watched the spasm of fear and admiration take them.

Queen Ahalaset and Lord Nagen stood together on the dais. Though Ahalaset was host, they were side by side, equals at the event. They bowed too, completing the show of respect that had greeted Neferata.

No one was armoured except the guards, and even their plate was ceremonial, adorned with jewels and golden skulls, more resplendent than practical. Neferata, like her opponents on the dais, had prepared for the kind of war about to be waged. She wore a regal black dress of silk so fine it flowed like water. The train of the dress was much lighter than its length would suggest, and it moved behind her over the marble floor like the touch of night. From her shoulders hung a crimson cape. Its leather, so soft it was a mere breath of wind against the fingers, was made from the tanned flesh of fallen enemies.

‘We are honoured, Queen Neferata, that you accepted our invitation,’ said Ahalaset as she rose again. Her cheekbones were high, her eyes proud. Her brilliant green robes shimmered with silver thread, which wove the designs of scores of coats of arms, as if meant to remind Neferata that Ahalaset too had long experience on the battlefield.

At the end of his bow, Nagen began to reach out for Neferata’s hand to kiss. When she did not extend her arm to him, he turned his gesture into a flourish, though the effort was clumsy enough to be obvious, then straightened. He wore a damask coat and a waistcoat inlaid with diamonds. The buttons of the coat were obsidian and shaped into finger bones. Its delicate fringe was human hair. Nagen’s features were narrow and refined, and he consistently let a single fang poke down from beneath his upper lip. ‘It is our greatest wish,’ Nagen said, ‘that you understand our intentions to be peaceful. We want you to know that Nulahmia can trust Mortannis and Nachtwache.’

‘Of course you do,’ Neferata said, and smiled.

Her hosts hesitated for a moment, uncertain how to take her words. Then they returned her smile and descended from the dais. ‘We hope you will enjoy the ball,’ said Ahalaset. She and Nagen led Neferata’s party to join the other nobles. ‘There will be a Dance of the Skulls.’

‘Then my pleasure is assured in advance,’ Neferata said.

Ahalaset clapped her hands. Musicians emerged from side doors at the rear of the ballroom, carrying instruments and chairs. They mounted the dais. Within moments, the orchestra began playing, and the war began.

‘Do they think we do not realise this is a trap?’ Mereneth whispered to Neferata as they watched the first of the dances.

‘Of course they know that we are not fooled,’ said Neferata. ‘They believe they can overcome our wariness, and that is what matters. They will act, have no fear. Our journey will not have been in vain.’

A few dances in, Neferata saw, from the corner of her eye, Lord Nagen turn towards her, about to invite her to the floor. As if she had not noticed, she took a single, graceful step away and began to speak to one of the ladies of Ahalaset’s court. Mereneth remained where she was, and Nagen, already committed to the beginnings of a bow, had no choice but to make his invitation to the spy. Mereneth accepted.

Neferata left her conversation as quickly as she had begun it, but though her departure was abrupt, the other vampire was awed, not offended. With a parting glance, Neferata saw the woman shrink before her, overcome with the knowledge that she had not been destroyed.

Neferata walked slowly along the edge of the dance, watching Mereneth and Nagen. Other nobles parted before her, backing away even when they also sought to greet her. She exchanged brief words with the vampires and mortals she passed, but they did not deflect her attention from the ball.

Mereneth was a skilled, graceful dancer. Nagen had difficulty keeping up with her. Her movements were never such that he stumbled, though. She kept him away from the edge of humiliation, and though Neferata could tell that he was a well-practised dancer himself, and prided himself as such, Mereneth’s control of their turns made him appear even better than he was. He had to focus on his steps, and he was grateful enough for the guidance of Mereneth’s hands that he did not pay attention to what else they might be doing. Neferata kept level with them as they moved up and down the ballroom floor. Twice, at chosen moments, she caught Nagen’s eye and gave him the hint of a smile. The first time, he seemed unsure that she had done so. The second time, his face lit up with certainty, and her unspoken, vague promise was enough. He devoted himself with even greater energy to his performance, as if to say, Look how well we shall dance together.

Neferata allowed her smile to grow a little broader, though she hid her amusement. Are you already forgetting your purpose, Lord Nagen? she thought. For the moment, it seemed he had.

When the dance ended, he and Mereneth joined her. Nagen rushed to speak before Neferata could escape him again. ‘Queen Neferata,’ he said, ‘will you do me the honour of being my partner for the Dance of the Skulls?’

‘It would be my great pleasure,’ she said.

Nagen beamed. Neferata held him before her with her smile. He would, when the necessity pushed him hard enough, remember what he was supposed to be doing. He would remember that his purpose this night was not to secure a dance with the Queen of Nulahmia. But he was not remembering now. And while Neferata transfixed him, he was not looking at Mereneth, and he did not see her slip the ring she had stolen into Neferata’s hand.

‘And now,’ Neferata said, releasing Nagen from her gaze, ‘I have neglected my other host for too long.’ She left Nagen happy and willing to be distracted by Mereneth once again. She doubted he would ever notice the missing ring. The theft was a preliminary step. She had no specific use for the ring as yet. Instead, her possession of it opened up a wider field of action. She would see what possibilities would arise.

Ahalaset was at the feasting table on the other side of the ballroom. She gestured for Neferata to join her. ‘You must tell me what you think of this vintage,’ she said when Neferata drew near. She filled two crystal goblets from a large decanter.

Neferata accepted hers and brought it to her nose. She sniffed a finely crafted blend of blood. ‘Most inviting,’ she said, but did not drink.

Ahalaset smiled. ‘Please accept it,’ she said, and drank first.

Neferata sipped. ‘This is extraordinary,’ she said, and it was. She tasted the innocence of the newborn, the enthusiasm of youth and the wisdom of age. They existed together on her palate, forming the entire arc of mortal life. She was impressed. ‘You have some superb artisans at your disposal,’ she said.

Ahalaset raised her goblet in a toast. ‘I am pleased you think so,’ she said. ‘I selected this vintage purposely for your visit.’

‘I am honoured.’

Ahalaset lowered her voice. ‘I have, if you are interested, Queen Neferata, set aside a gift more potent yet.’ Her eyes flickered quickly to the left and right.

Ensuring that I am alone, Neferata thought. She was. She had dispersed her retinue through the crowd, inviting Ahalaset to make her move. ‘You interest me,’ she said. ‘Do go on.’

Ahalaset pointed to a small door in the corner of the ballroom, behind the dais. ‘You will find in there my personal choice of slaves,’ she said. ‘They have been curated for the quality of their blood. They come from the same families whose lives you have just tasted.’ She produced a small, golden key. ‘Should you wish to savour their delicacies…?’

Neferata accepted the key. ‘I should indeed,’ she said. Good, she thought, we are done with the prelude. Now we can begin. With a knowing smile to Ahalaset, she made her way over to the door and let herself in.

She entered a richly appointed chamber. In the centre was a divan draped in crimson cushions and silks. The candles of human tallow on the chandelier were encased in red-tinted glass skulls, suffusing the room with a warm, intimate glow. The light was dim, though, and Neferata noted the many deep shadows in the corners. The shape of the room was an octagon, and chained to the walls were the offerings. They were men and women in the prime of life, anointed in oils and scents, gold bands pulling their heads back to present their throats. Neferata felt the beat of their pulses, their rich blood a thin slice away from jetting into her mouth. Incense wafted from censers on either side of the divan. The atmosphere of the chamber was heady, luxurious. It was, Neferata thought, a most beautiful trap. If the opportunity arose, she must congratulate Ahalaset. She doubted Nagen had contributed much beyond his mere presence.

Neferata turned around slowly, her witchsight piercing the shadows. She did not think the attack would be that obvious, and she was right. The chamber was empty except for the slaves. She walked past the mortals, examining them closely but not touching any of them yet. They stared back at her, their pupils dilated. Their fear was mixed with a confused pleasure. Neferata inhaled the scent of their emotions, detecting the taste of a powerful opiate. She did not think it was poisonous. It seemed, to her senses, that its purpose was simply part of the flavouring of the blood.

Neferata’s lips drew back over her fangs. The bait truly was irresistible. Well done, Ahalaset. Well done.

She circled the chamber again. Between the prisoners hung tapestries depicting the most sensual of atrocities. Neferata moved them aside until, to the left of one of the male slaves, she saw the barely discernible outline of a door in the wall. She located the keyhole and experimentally inserted the key Ahalaset had given her. It turned easily, and she heard the lock slide into place. It was curious, she thought, and therefore significant, that the same key opened both doors to the room.

She locked the entrance door too. She stood in the centre of the room for a few moments, waiting. Whatever the nature of the attack, she would adapt, and she would counter it. That was her most terrible strength – to see each moment for what it was, to discard a plan instantly, and form a new one, to flow across war like water.

The attack did not come.

‘Very well,’ she murmured. ‘If we must play out this charade to the end, let us do so and have done with this.’ She walked over to the slave directly in front of her and sank her fangs into his neck.

The blood was everything Ahalaset had promised. If the vintage in the ballroom represented the peak of the art of blending, here she encountered a rarefied purity of blood. These slaves had clearly been raised since birth for this purpose alone. The taste of life was intoxicating, and Neferata would have willingly gorged herself from this single slave, then waited before indulging in the next. But this was war, and she would not cede the battlefield to Ahalaset. She swallowed twice, then stepped back from the prisoner. He looked at her with bovine fear. His lips moved, but they were too sluggish to form words.

‘You are a product of superb breeding,’ Neferata told the slave. ‘All of you are,’ she announced to the chamber. ‘Be proud of your destinies.’

With the flick of a clawed finger, she sliced the man’s throat wide open. The enticing blood poured down his body and pooled onto the floor. Neferata moved on to the next slave, drank briefly from her neck, then slashed her throat too. And so she went on, taking just enough for a taste and then killing the mortals. The chamber filled with the smell of wasted blood. Neferata shook her head, feeling the rare moment of regret. To throw away such fine stock was a crime.

Still the attack did not come.

Neferata’s senses were vibrating with tension. This had to be where she was most in danger. This had to be the trap. But the moments passed, and the slaves died, and nothing happened. The more time passed, the more she felt the temptation to relax her guard, and the more wary she became.

She had slaughtered two-thirds of the slaves now. She bent down to the neck of the next one. As her teeth sank into his throat, he brought his arms up in a flash. His chains snapped, brittle as porcelain. His right forearm and hand were a leather sheath, its illusion perfectly crafted, and they slid to the ground, revealing the blade built out of his elbow. It was silver, etched in runes, and flashed with emerald light. The air crackled with its power, and the assassin stabbed the sword at Neferata’s throat.

A moment’s unwariness and the blade would have decapitated her. But she had not been unwary. Neferata leapt to one side and ducked. The sword passed over her head, flashing with the heat of an arcane sun. She reached out and grabbed the assassin’s arm just below the elbow. He struggled to free himself, but he was held with a grip that could crush stone. Neferata pushed the arm back, holding it against the wall. The assassin struck at her with his other arm, but he might as well have been hitting steel.

‘Very good,’ she whispered. ‘Very good.’ She took the assassin by the throat and forced his head back. He began to whine in frustration and terror. ‘Shhhhh,’ she said. ‘You did very well. You came closer to succeeding than you think. Your queen should be grateful to you. Or is it your lord?’ Neferata cocked her head, breathing in the man’s fear. ‘No,’ she decided, ‘you are one of Ahalaset’s playthings.’ Nagen’s role in all of this was the political ally, and the extra force inside the palace. ‘Your queen decided to control all of the details of my assassination. She was correct to do so, even though she failed.’

The assassin squirmed in her grip. She lifted him off the ground, holding him in mid-air, depriving him of leverage. He groaned. ‘Hush now, hush now,’ Neferata said. ‘Your part in the dance is not yet done. There is a great turn to make.’ She yanked the assassin to her and bit into his neck. There was no time to savour the taste of his blood. There was only the attack. She drank his life. She drained him of his will, and of Ahalaset’s, and she filled him with hers.

When she was done, she released the assassin. He stood before her, docile, a thrall waiting for the orders that would define his new purpose. She looked him up and down. He was clad only in a loincloth, unsuitable for his new task. ‘You have robes elsewhere,’ she said.

He nodded.

She unlocked the doors from the chamber, then handed the assassin the key he would have used had he been successful. ‘Go and don your robes,’ she said. Then she gave him Nagen’s ring and issued her commands. He bowed and left the chamber through the hidden door. Neferata circled the room once more. She killed the remaining slaves quickly. Then, with sharp, rapid jerks, she tore the corpses apart and tossed the dismembered remains into a heap before the divan. In that hill of meat, discerning if there was a body that was missing would take time.

Neferata lifted the train of her dress. It was soaked in blood. She ran a hand over the silk, murmuring a soft incantation, and the blood pattered to the floor. Then she returned to the ballroom.

Nagen and Ahalaset were standing together at the feasting table when Neferata emerged from the chamber. Ahalaset hid her alarm well. Nagen looked rattled. Neferata smiled to them both, and ran a finger along her upper lip. ‘Your gift was beyond expectations,’ she said to Ahalaset. ‘I can only hope that I will be able to offer you something half as delightful when next you come to Nulahmia. And you will visit me, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will,’ said Ahalaset.

‘As will you, Lord Nagen,’ Neferata said.

He bowed, his composure returning. ‘Nothing would please me more.’

The orchestra had stopped playing for a few moments, and now it began again. A celebrated chord sounded, slowly thrumming twelve times, summoning the celebrants for the Dance of the Skulls.

Neferata offered her hand to Nagen. ‘I made you a promise,’ she said. ‘Now I shall keep it.’

His earlier rapture lighting up his eyes, Nagen took her hand and led her onto the ballroom floor. As they took their places, Neferata saw a handmaiden walk quickly from the chamber to Ahalaset and whisper to her. As careful as the queen of Mortannis had been when she was talking to Neferata, she could not disguise the relief that flashed over her features. She prowled the edge of the dance floor, her gaze on Neferata. Her look was of someone who had had a narrow escape, and now sought a new route to victory.

Satisfied, Neferata turned her full attention on Nagen as the dance began.

Vampires and human nobles faced each other in two lines. Servants gave each of the vampires an enthralled human slave with silver chains wrapped around the neck. Every mortal noble held an ivory bowl in the shape of a skull. The music played and the aristocratic dancers moved together in groups of four. Though the vampires and nobles faced each other, the true partners in each cluster were the undead. The humans were the subordinates. The only difference between the slaves and the bowls was that the slaves were able to support themselves for the first part of the dance.

The music hit its first crescendo, the dancers completed their first turn and, in time to a sudden, emphatic beat in the melody, the vampires cut the jugulars of the slaves. Now the dance proper began, where the skill of the participants was put to the test. The vampires controlled the jet of blood and as the humans whirled around them, they caught the blood in the bowls. At the start of each refrain, the humans bowed, presenting the bowls to the vampires, who drank, and then the bowls were filled again. Though the movements of the dancers slowed in time to the music, there were never any full stops. The motion was continuous, and it was forbidden for even a single drop of blood to fall to the floor. So the dance would go on until the slaves were exsanguinated and that, too, had to be timed perfectly so the victims did not die prematurely. At the final flourish, the vampires would decapitate the slaves and exchange skulls with the mortal nobles.

And all this time, the vampire partners never broke eye contact with each other. The letting of blood and the killing were performed as if unthought. The dance made the mortals unimportant, beneath notice. Blood flowed, people died, yet all that mattered was the contact between the partners, all the more intense because they never touched physically.

Neferata held Nagen’s gaze in a grip of iron. Though he was her willing prisoner, her task as they danced remained delicate. She saw before her a vampire who was happy to play the fool for her, yet she had no doubt that his loyalty remained with Ahalaset. Nagen feared Neferata as much as he desired her, and he wanted that fear disposed of. But he was vain, too, and Neferata read the fatal weakness in his vanity. He believed that he could indulge in the pleasure of her company and the dance until the moment of the assassination. The trap had failed. Perhaps there was another plan, or perhaps he believed he could distance himself from association with it. Whatever he was thinking, he would be wary. He was enraptured, not enthralled. He was not without his own power. If Neferata was too forceful in an attempt to control his will, he would sense the attack, and all would be lost.

So Neferata was subtle. What she wanted from Nagen was a small thing, a very small thing, a thing so attuned to his natural inclinations that it should require only the tiniest push to make him take a single, brief action when and how Neferata commanded. As they spun about the dance floor, rounding each other, bowing to each other, and drinking from the proffered skull bowls, she added subtle gestures to her arm flourishes. Her fingers played in the air for an extra moment, making patterns that were only for Nagen’s eyes. Even he would not notice them, but they had their effect. Halfway through the Dance of the Skulls, his face hung a bit looser than it should, and his pupils were a bit wider. And as they leaned in towards each other after filling the bowls with blood yet again, the torn veins of the prisoners pumping out streams between their fingers, Neferata moved her lips, shaping a few inaudible words. She did not even whisper.

She did so little. She was sure she’d done enough.

She saw Mereneth watching from the sides as the Dance of the Skulls drew to its climax. With a light inclination of her head, Neferata directed Mereneth’s gaze to the other side of the ballroom.

The exuberant finale of the dance came. The vampires snapped the heads off their slaves. The human nobles extended both hands, to receive and to give. The orchestra thundered a last, victorious chord, proclaiming the triumph of death.

And Ahalaset screamed.

All movement in the ballroom ceased. The assassin, clad now in the rich robes of a noble guest, unnoticed until he struck, stood behind Ahalaset, his blade arm through her back, her heart impaled on its point. The rune-enchanted silver glowed through a slick of gore. Ahalaset’s shriek turned into a hacking choke. The assassin held her body up a few moments more, and then it slid off the blade.

The assassin stood motionless over the corpse of the queen. He did not look up, and barely reacted when Ahalaset’s honour guard surged forward and cut him down with pikes and blades.

‘Search him!’ the captain of the guard commanded, and Neferata was pleased. It was much better that the idea come from one of Ahalaset’s minions.

In the time it took for the guards to turn out the pockets of the assassin’s robes, Neferata felt all eyes in the ballroom on her. This was the turning point of the larger dance, the one that only she had truly known everyone had been caught in this night. Right now, the two courts believed she was responsible for Ahalaset’s death. There was no other reasonable conclusion to be drawn. It was also the truth.

But the truth was ephemeral. It was a tiny, weak thing compared to the armoured colossus of perception. And the moment turned.

‘There’s a ring,’ said one of the guards.

‘I have seen that before,’ said the captain. After a pause, he said, ‘It has the seal of the House of Nagen.’ He sounded confused.

Now perception spread the fog of doubt throughout the ballroom, and truth retreated. It was time for her work during the Dance of the Skulls to bear fruit. Time for Nagen to do that single thing. To speak one sentence. A sentence that came easily, because it was the motto of his family. A sentence he took pride in, and believed in. It was his belief in that sentence, after all, that had led him to conspire against Neferata with Ahalaset.

He had simply never planned on uttering that sentence right now.

‘Never bend the knee!’ he shouted.

Neferata turned to look at Nagen with carefully crafted disgust. He was so shocked by what he had said that his mouth hung open, suddenly bereft of words.

Neferata raised her eyebrows in a show of anger calibrated so that only Nagen would be close enough to see that it was mockery. ‘I will have no part of your conflict,’ Neferata told him, and walked away.

‘Wait!’ Nagen called to her. ‘Wait!’ he shouted at Ahalaset’s guards as they descended on him. He tried to protest his innocence, but his words were drowned out by the roar of anger from the warriors.

Neferata gestured to Mereneth and the rest of her retinue. They followed her up onto the dais where she elected to watch the final steps of the royal dance. The orchestra was silent, the musicians huddling together for protection, but Neferata could hear music all the same. It was the beat and melody of violence unleashed at her command.

The palace guard cut Nagen down, piercing him with a dozen spears before he could muster a defence. Too late, the soldiers of Nachtwache rushed to his aid, and then to avenge their lord. Soon the dais was the lone island of calm in the ballroom. Neferata and her handmaidens brushed away the warriors who staggered too close, and plucked stray arrows from the air.

The fighting spread through the ballroom, the nobles from both cities joining in the attacks or caught between the blades of the warring troops. Blood and fire swept through the hall and out the palace doors. Neferata listened to the greater clashes of blades from the courtyard and the streets beyond, and to the growing thunder of armies hurling themselves against each other. She tapped at the air with a finger, conducting the carnage. When the time came for her forces to enter the city, she did not think there would be much left for them to do.

Neferata turned to the orchestra master. The thin vampire was crouched beside his chair, trembling. ‘My compliments,’ she said, speaking quietly, though her voice rode effortlessly over the clamour of battle. ‘Your music was most pleasing.’ She would see the musicians were well rewarded. ‘You played with exquisite skill.’

‘So did you, my queen,’ said Lady Mereneth.

Neferata smiled, accepting the compliment. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I rather think I did.’

It had been a most excellent ball.

ORDER OF THE FLY: TOURNEY OF FATE

Josh Reynolds

Thou shall never play false, and shall ever honour thy oaths, even unto ruin.

– Ocander Wolgus, Codex Maggotirim

The balefire crackled and popped with a sound suspiciously close to laughter. It cast strange shadows across the fat, twisted trees of the Bullawood. The shadows danced joyfully as the ancient gnarlmaws and hunched seeproots of the forest sagged and sighed, shaking their polypus branches in the night-wind.

Carkus Gryme watched as the eerie green flames bunched and twisted, and, for a brief moment, thought he spied a face most fair. Then she was gone.

‘My lady,’ he murmured, through ragged lips. ‘I will save you, though I must brave the crystal labyrinths of the Great Foe himself. Though I must wade through seas of blood and traverse glades of silk, your truest knight shall bring you home to the garden once more.’

Across the fire from him, Gryme’s only companion snorted. ‘Stop talking. Have soup.’ A hairy arm thick with fleas and buboes stretched over the flames, holding a bowl made from the cap of a man’s skull.

‘How dare you speak so, Blisterback,’ Gryme said, incensed. ‘Hold your diseased tongue. And anyway, I am not hungry.’

Blisterback continued to proffer the soup. The pestigor was a bulky thing, with gangling limbs and a swollen belly. He wore a tattered hood over his goatish skull, and a rotting leather hauberk. A cleaver-like blade lay beside him on the coarse grass, near the small, bubbling cauldron he’d just pulled off the fire.

‘Is good soup. Made from maggoth squeezings. Must keep up strength. Get fat.’

‘Grandfather will bless me with a knight’s girth in his own time,’ Gryme said, sourly. He laid his gauntleted hands reverentially over the sheathed blade that lay across his lap. The sword had been old when the Blighted Duchies were young, and it thrummed gently with baneful curses. An honest blade – a knight’s blade. Though its wielder was not yet a true knight, save in his heart.

‘Not a knight,’ Blisterback grunted.

‘But I shall be,’ Gryme murmured. ‘When I have rescued the Lady from him who stole her, and returned her to Cankerwall, I will reclaim my birthright.’ Angrily, he thrust a stick into the flames, stirring the embers.

As the balefire roared up, so too did his memories. He heard again the clash of blades, the rattle of lances, the cries of the common pustules – the sounds of a tourney, to determine the rightful heir to the duchy of Festerfane. He snorted at the thought.

The very idea was an insult. The duchy was his, by bile-right – whatever others such as that blowhard, Feculus, claimed. But he had not yet earned his spurs. He had not yet drunk from the Flyblown Chalice. He was not a knight, and so could not rule. Thus, a tourney had been held to find a new duke. One worthy of the title.

‘Worthy,’ he muttered. ‘And what am I, if not that? I am – I will be the greatest knight in the seven duchies.’ Was he not a descendant of the great Gaspax Gahool, who vanished into the shadowed canyons of Ulgu? Was he not cousin to Goral, who had carried war to the Writhing Weald, or Gatrog, who had faced the enemy at the Verdant Bay, and died a true knight’s death? How could he be anything but worthy?

And so he had entered the tourney with the intent to prove his claim. He grinned, baring black teeth. Oh, how they had exclaimed when he had revealed himself. He closed his eyes, remembering the look his lady had bestowed upon him.

Remembering her.

So momentous a tourney had required the presence of royalty. The Lady of Cankerwall had come, and in her train seventy-seven ladies-in-waiting, daughters of the noblest and most rotten of families. Sevenfold paladins of Cankerwall had escorted her, clad in verdigris and filth, bearing the heavy, suppurating blades gifted them by the great Bolathrax himself, in ancient days.

But compared to her, those beautiful ladies and mighty paladins faded to irrelevance. The Lady for whom all dukes bowed, who had forged seven warring duchies into a kingdom which might bestride the realms – a kingdom built upon the pillars of despair, acceptance and chivalry. The Lady of Cankerwall, in her rotting gown and mouldering furs, her face veiled, her pallid hair bound and coiled about her slim shoulders like a great, white serpent.

Hers was the beauty of the eternal cycle, of new life waxing fat in the ruins of death. Where she walked, grasses died, and the earth turned. The lower orders feared her, but no knight – no true knight – could help but love her, and despair.

He recalled the look she had given him as he demanded to enter the tourney, as was his right. At once dismissive and… intrigued. She had laughed and gestured, from her seat in the stands, granting him his wish.

He pounded the ground with a fist. ‘And I would have won the tourney, too. If only that foul Knight of Change had not interfered!’

That, too, he recalled – and with almost painful intensity. The interruption of a joyous event. Horses screaming, men dying – the smell of Changefire, sweeping through the tourney-ground.

And then, the ground-shaking tread of the Stalking Keep.

He paused, the image of the keep-beast vivid in his mind. A living fortress, stamping clumsily but swiftly on great talons, its stones clashing like scales, smashing aside all lesser dwellings in its haste. He shook his head.

‘I would have won,’ he said again.

‘You would not have won. Too young. Too thin. Have some soup.’

‘Fine. If it will shut you up!’ Gryme snatched the bowl from his servant and loudly slurped the bilious broth. It was tepid, and greasy. Just as he liked it. Then, Blisterback had been making it for him for a long time. Since Gryme’s childhood, in fact. Blisterback had been his father’s squire, once upon a time. Now he served Gryme, though his patchy fur was going white, and the pus of his sores had long since dried up.

In contrast to Blisterback’s bestial frame, Gryme was the epitome of knighthood – tall, but not yet swollen with the first and least of Grandfather’s gifts. He was clad in rusty plate and a worm-eaten tabard, marked with the tripartite Sigil of the Fly. A great helm with a stylised toad-dragon crouched atop it sat beside him.

The war-plate had belonged to his father, and his father before him. At the moment, it did not fit him as well as it had them. His frame still possessed the leanness of youth, and it hung loose in places. Nonetheless, it, like the sword, was proof of his lineage – of his bile-right to the duchy of Festerfane – and so he would wear it.

He took another slurp of soup. ‘We shall catch up with them on the morrow, I think.’ They had followed the Stalking Keep’s trail for days, from the feculent fields of Festerfane, to the gnarled depths of the Bullawood. It was not hard, for the great keep-beast left a trail a blind man could follow – singing flowers sprouted in its wake, and the trees lost their loathsome vitality. But they were not alone in following its trail.

A full two score and ten knights had ridden out in pursuit, accompanied by armsmen and troubadours. Gryme, possessing no steed, had been forced to follow more sedately in their wake. The humiliation only lent him speed. He would not be denied his chance at glory. Even if he had to walk from one end of Ghyran to the other.

‘Not going to catch them,’ the pestigor grunted. ‘Don’t even have a horse.’

‘I don’t need a horse. I am quite fast.’

Blisterback shook his head. ‘Not fast enough.’ He paused. ‘Hope is the weed in Grandfather’s garden.’ Almost consolingly, he added, ‘What will be, will be, young master.’

‘Enough,’ Gryme said, flatly. ‘I have sworn an oath. That is an end to it.’

Blisterback subsided grumpily. The pestigor was unhappy. Granted, he was always unhappy – but particularly so, at the moment. Blisterback had been his family’s most loyal servant – a truer son of the garden there never was. It had been Blisterback who had helped him plant his father’s skull in the family orchard, so that his service to Nurgle did not end in death. But the old brute was something of a nanny-goat. To him, this was all so much foolishness. Then, he was not a knight.

Gryme sighed and stirred the fire with his stick. ‘I must do this, old beast. Can’t you see?’

Blisterback said nothing. Gryme could hear him snuffling, and for a moment wondered if the beastman was weeping. Before he could speak, Blisterback’s head snapped up.

‘Danger,’ the pestigor growled, heaving himself to his feet. ‘Bird-stink.’

‘Bird–?’ Gryme began, but was interrupted by a raucous screech from somewhere out in the trees. He lurched to his feet, war-plate clattering, and drew his sword. It hummed in his grip, eager to dole out pain and suffering. ‘What is it?’

Blisterback only growled phlegmatically and brandished his cleaver. Gryme turned, putting his back to the flames. Around him, the forest rose wild and dark. It was not a place for honest men. He heard twigs snap, and branches rustle. Not the wind, this time, but something else. Many somethings, all moving closer.

Once, these lands had been safe for honest travellers. But of late, they had become dangerous. There was war on the air, and the scent drew strange things from their holes.

He smelled it now – the stink of Change. Like wet iron one moment, and sweet perfumes the next. He straightened.

‘Come out, whatever you are. Come out and face me.’ A peculiar, croaking laughter greeted his words. And then, a lilting, sing-song murmuring.

Go back… go back… the garden is ours…

‘Never,’ Gryme snarled.

The garden… the garden… and the Lady…

He tensed. ‘The Lady… Where is she?’ He took a step towards the trees. ‘Answer me!’ As his words echoed, he caught a glimpse of azure among the shadows. The gleam of untarnished gold. He heard the soft rustle of feathers. Then, a voice floated out of the dark.

‘Go back, young knight. Only death awaits you at the end of your journey.’

Gryme shook his head. ‘And who are you, to care about my death?’

‘One who has been set upon your path to warn you, of course. Such is my geas, and I shall fulfil it, as I am bound.’ A hunched figure, clad in tatterdemalion robes and a concealing hood, shuffled into the light. Knotted, withered hands that resembled talons clutched an iron staff, topped by a bird’s head wrought in silver. Its back was odd and malformed, as if by some unsightly growth or deformity. The figure leaned against the staff, breathing heavily, as if weary beyond belief. ‘Well? Are you going to invite me to sit?’

Gryme traded glances with Blisterback. The pestigor shrugged, and Gryme turned back to the newcomer. ‘I would have your name, first.’

‘Abigos. What sort of knight will not invite an old man to sit?’ The hooded head bobbed, as if in laughter. ‘Then, you are not a knight yet, eh? Perhaps never. Perhaps there shall be no more knights. What will become of you then, eh?’

Gryme felt a flush of anger and lifted his sword. ‘Perhaps I should run you through instead, old man. What will become of you, then, I wonder?’

Abigos sighed. ‘So pestiferous, your lot. I warned him, I did. Did he listen? No. Never. Who is he, to listen to me? Arrogance. It’s bred into your kind, whatever your persuasion.’ Eyes like gemstones shimmered in the shadowed depths of his cowl. ‘I am old. My back aches. I would sit, if for only a moment. Surely you will not deny me that?’

Gryme frowned, and lowered his sword. ‘No. No, I will not. Sit, old man.’ He paused. ‘Would you like some soup?’

Abigos shuddered. ‘Is that what I smell? No.’

‘What about your companions?’

Abigos levered himself down with a grunt. ‘No. Ignore them. They are but the hounds of fate – bit players in this drama, meant to ensure that things proceed as they must.’

‘Fate,’ Gryme said, dismissively.

‘Not a believer in fate, then?’

‘I believe only in acceptance. Men only speak of fate when they seek to change it, or tame it.’ Gryme sheathed his sword and sat. Blisterback sank into a crouch on the opposite side of the fire, his eyes never leaving the trees. ‘Change is but one more link in the chain of hope. Better to find freedom in despair, than be trapped by hope.’

‘And yet, here you are.’

Gryme paused. ‘Yes. Speak, sage. Why are you here?’

‘As I said. I was sent to warn you.’

‘By who?’

‘Ompallious Zeyros. The Radiant Knight.’

‘He is no knight,’ Gryme spat, lurching once more to his feet. ‘He is a base coward and a sorcerer.’ He drew his sword and extended it. ‘I will have his head.’ He could hear a rustling in the trees, but ignored it. ‘Do you serve him, then?’

Abigos used his staff to gently push the tip of Gryme’s sword aside. ‘Only because I have no choice in the matter. I am bound, and thus bound, I must obey.’ He slipped back his hood, revealing an avian countenance – like that of a crow or rook. Abigos’ feathered neck unfolded, raising his head, and Gryme felt a shudder of disgust run through him.

‘What are you?’

‘Less than I was,’ Abigos said. He hissed softly, as if in pain – or perhaps the memory of pain. ‘Once, I was as great as the stars, as vast as the seas. Now, I am folded and spindled into this weary flesh.’ He gestured to his body. ‘My wings, once mighty, will not support me. I must hobble, where once I flew. I feel the weight of the realms, pressing me down.’

Gryme felt a sudden flash of pity. He had met daemons before. The least of Grandfather’s children were ever underfoot in the halls of Festerfane, and they had been his truest playmates as a pusling. To see one – even one who served the Great Changer – so diminished was unsettling.

‘I am… sorry,’ he said, as he sat down once more.

Abigos peered at him. ‘You are, aren’t you? How curious.’ He ruffled his feathers and looked at the flames. ‘Never mind. It is but the pain of a moment. My story is not yours, and yours is not mine.’ He pointed a cracked talon at Gryme. ‘You have the blood of heroes in your withered veins, and it burns like poison. I can smell it. It drives you to seek the Stalking Keep and its castellan.’

‘I have sworn an oath.’

‘And your kind do love their oaths, more even than their Grandfather, eh?’

‘He stole away the Lady of Cankerwall, in full view of a hundred knights of the Most Suppurating and Blightsome Order of the Fly. What else could I do?’

‘But you are no knight. Where is your horse? Your spurs? In truth, you are barely more than a boy, tilting at a windmill.’

‘An oath is an oath, whoever gives it.’ Gryme shifted uncomfortably. ‘Speak, daemon. Say as you wish and be gone.’

‘Very well. Zeyros sent me to turn you from your path. Your skein and his intersect, and he seeks to avoid that confrontation.’

‘He is afraid of me.’

‘Or for you.’

Gryme looked at the daemon. ‘Speak sense.’

Abigos gave a croaking laugh. ‘There is no such thing, in this realm or any other.’ He leaned against his staff and clacked his beak. ‘You are not the first of your Order to seek him. Thirty knights rode this way, two days ago.’

Gryme was silent for a moment. Then, ‘And?’

Abigos fixed him with a glittering eye. ‘I would not be here if they had succeeded.’

‘But you did not warn them, as you now warn me,’ Gryme said.

‘No.’

Gryme nodded. ‘Because they had no chance. And I do.’

Abigos shrugged, a faintly grotesque gesture as things moved and twitched beneath his robes. ‘Who can say? The skeins of fate are tightly knotted. One can pluck at them, but they remain tangled.’ He clacked his beak again. ‘There is a clearing to the east. Follow the trail of flowers, and you will find what you seek.’

Suspicious, Gryme peered at the daemon. ‘Why tell me this?’

Abigos struggled to his feet. ‘I am bound to warn you, not hinder you. Go where you wish, do as you must. I will watch with interest.’

Gryme chuckled. ‘And if I slay Zeyros, will you be freed from your bondage?’

Abigos gave another harsh, cawing laugh. ‘What will be, will be. Isn’t that what you knights say? What will be, will be.’ The daemon turned to go, but stopped and glanced back. ‘Remember the slughorn, young knight.’ Then, in a rustle of tatterdemalion robes, he was gone. Gryme could hear the sounds of their unseen watchers retreating.

He looked at Blisterback. ‘I told you we would catch them.’

‘Not a knight,’ Blisterback replied, morosely. ‘Don’t even have a horse. Or a shield.’

Gryme frowned. ‘I will be a knight, you obstreperous brute.’

He stared into the flames, seeking some sign of her face. But there was only fire.

‘Or I will perish in the attempt.’

The flowers were singing.

That was how they knew that they had found the place. It was even as Abigos had said. The flowers clumped and crooned in wide, shrill swathes, covering the broken bodies of the knights and armsmen that lay scattered about the strange glen. Their bloated forms were rent and torn, as if by great blows. The smell of blood and ichor still hung thick on the air, as did the miasma of their passing. More than a dozen knights, Gryme estimated, and three times that number of armsmen.

As he and Blisterback traversed the charnel ground, he caught glimpses of familiar heraldry.

‘There – I think that’s Sir Veinsplit of Sludgewater… and beside him, Rourm Blotch of Bitterbile. There are knights from across the seven duchies here.’

All of them had been present at the tourney. Some participating, others only watching. They had all sworn there, on the bloodied field, to track and slay the one who had taken their Lady, blessed be her name. And Gryme had sworn as well, though they had heeded him not, save to laugh, though not unkindly, at his hubris.

Blisterback grunted. ‘All dead.’

‘From death, new life,’ Gryme said, softly. The words rang hollow to him. He had known some of these warriors. Had thrilled to their exploits as a pusling. Some of them had fought beside his father, and his cousins. They had plied lance and blade in the name of the Lady, and the King of All Flies.

To see them laid low – to see them broken and crushed, like mere mortals… It shook him, and he felt a flicker of doubt.

‘What has done this?’

‘Zeyros,’ Blisterback growled.

‘Not alone. True, Zeyros is a doughty knight, despite his persuasion, but this – what man can stand against an army of heroes?’

‘Better hero.’ Blisterback picked among the dead with interest. Scavenging was second nature to beasts, and Gryme restrained the urge to chastise his servant. He sniffed the air and caught the stink of Change. Once, this forest would have reeked of delightful stagnation. Now, there was wind, and the smell of flowers, of running water. He gagged and shook his head.

Blisterback appeared at his elbow, holding a battered shield. ‘Need shield.’

Gryme took it reluctantly. ‘It didn’t do its previous wielder much good.’

The pestigor shrugged. ‘Knight has shield. Want to be a knight, take shield. Or not. Die the same, either way, probably.’

Gryme sighed and slid the shield on. ‘My thanks, old beast.’ He turned, studying the trees. They were not the bent, crooked things they should have been. Instead, they stood tall, their leaves wet with morning dew. Songbirds sang in their branches. A light, airy song.

‘There,’ Blisterback said, pointing.

Gryme saw that the trail of flowers widened as it passed among the unbent trees, stretching deeper into the glade. The Stalking Keep was close. He could feel it. This was all too new, the deaths too recent. He looked down at a nearby body.

‘Abigos spoke of thirty knights – but there are only half that number here. Come. We press on.’

He advanced, trampling the flowers beneath his feet, hoping to silence their ebullient caterwauling. Their song melded with that of the songbirds in the trees. It grated on his nerves, incongruous as it was. As if they were celebrating the deaths of so many great warriors. Gryme plucked a rock from the ground and made to hurl it at the nearest branch.

‘No,’ Blisterback snarled, grabbing his wrist. Gryme shoved him back.

‘Unhand me,’ he snapped. ‘I grow weary of their chirping.’

‘Listen,’ Blisterback said, lifting a finger. ‘Listen, master.’

Gryme started to retort, when he heard it.

Silence.

The birds were quiet. And they were watching. Every little black eye in the glen was on him and his servant. As one, the songbirds rose into the air. They swooped and dived in perfect harmony, sweeping past him in a multicoloured swirl of tiny, feathered bodies. They skated low over the ground, and he heard the harsh clatter of armour. Bits and pieces of war-plate tumbled across the ground in the wake of the songbirds.

Gryme drew his sword, as the birds spilled upwards – a vibrant cyclone, the armour caught in the darting, spinning vortex of small shapes. The cyclone spun faster and faster, sending the bodies of the dead tumbling like leaves. Wind pulled at Gryme, and he raised his shield to block it, as Blisterback huddled behind him.

Only when it had died away did he lower his shield. Before him, a warrior stood – or, rather, hundreds of songbirds, in the shape of a warrior – blocking his path. Their wings fluttered, and the pieces of armour had been assembled roughly in the right shape, including a helm. A single gauntlet rose, clutching a broken sword. The whirr of their wings sounded almost like a voice, though Gryme could not tell what it was saying.

‘I have no quarrel with you, whatever you are,’ he said, striking the edge of his shield with his sword. ‘Stand – fly – aside. I shall not ask twice.’

Go… back… the birds sang.

Gryme frowned. ‘What?’

Go… back… go… back… go… back…

‘No. I made an oath. Stand aside.’ He set the flat of his blade across the top of his shield, as his tutors had taught him. He set his feet, ready for what he knew would come next. Wings whirred, and the mass – the knight – raced towards him, on legs that were nothing more than many small forms moving in concert. The sword struck, glancing from his shield. He returned the blow, but his own sword found no purchase. The songbirds were too quick, darting about the blade.

He backed away as the bird-knight struck at him again and again, singing shrilly as it – they – advanced. Unable to wound his foe, he settled for trying to disarm them. The birds slid over him, chirping and pecking. He swept his shield out, trying to scatter them, and almost lost his head. His foe’s blade slashed past him, quicker than any mortal arm would have managed. The birds’ song swelled as they undulated about him, encircling him and then drifting away, in a parody of a man’s movements.

The song had changed from one of warning, to being mocking. Wings beat at his helm, deafening him.

Go… back… go… back…

‘No!’ Gryme roared, hacking at the shape before him. ‘Not until my quest is complete, and my oath fulfilled!’ He swung his sword wildly, trying to break up the flock, to scatter them. He flailed with his shield and felt feathered bodies thump against it. But not enough. ‘Blisterback – where are you, old beast?’

‘Here, young master,’ the pestigor brayed. Gryme caught a glimpse of Blisterback, readying himself as if to lunge. The brute sprang, long arms shooting out. Gnarled paws clapped together on something, and the bird-knight suddenly came apart. ‘Got you,’ Blisterback roared. Birds flew chirping in every direction, leaving their stolen war-plate to tumble to the ground.

Gryme shook his head to clear it of their song. ‘What happened? What did you do?’

‘Heart-bird,’ Blisterback said, raising a finger to reveal the crimson bird trapped in his hands. ‘Always a heart-bird. Catch it, others don’t know what to do. Can’t think.’ The bird trembled in his grip, shimmering feathers ruffled.

‘What do we do with it?’ Gryme asked.

Blisterback looked at it for a moment. Then, he stuffed the struggling bird into his mouth. Tiny bones splintered, and the chirping stopped. In the trees, the other birds sang what might have been a song of mourning for their fallen leader. Gryme shook his head and turned back to the trail.

‘Enough foolishness. Our quarry lies somewhere close to hand, I can feel it. Let us hurry.’

As they passed through the trees, the birds followed them. Their song had become aggressive, dissonant – almost savage. But they made no move to attack. Gryme did his best to ignore them. But what he could not ignore was the way the trees changed the closer they came to the heart of the glen. They became pale, almost colourless, and finally almost… crystalline. Their reflections marched alongside them, stretching and warping all out of proportion in the faceted bark.

Blisterback snorted unhappily. ‘Bad air,’ he grumbled.

‘Quiet,’ Gryme said, softly. The birds had grown loud, screaming from every branch, beating at the air with their wings. A shimmering miasma rested just above the ground. As they strode through it, it stirred, thinned and parted. ‘There.’

More bodies slumped in slaughtered piles at the heart of the glen, left to rot where they had fallen. The last of the knights Abigos had seen, Gryme knew, though he could not tell who they were. Creeping vines of silver, shaggy with heavy, golden blossoms, crawled across the bloody ground, all but shrouding them from sight. Crystalline trees leaned forward like penitents, their glittering branches twitching.

The stink of raw Change hovered over everything. A sickly radiance that was all colours and none clung to the trees and the soil, and motes of pallid light danced on the convulsing air. And sitting amidst the dead, like a fox among slaughtered hens, was that which Gryme sought. The refuge of Ompallious Zeyros.

The monster which men called the Stalking Keep.

The birds fell silent as he stepped into the heart of the glen. All at once, they rose in a multicoloured cloud and sped away, as if abandoning him to his fate. He watched them for a moment, and then turned back to his quarry.

It resembled a grey tower, no taller than a gatehouse, but wide and ill-formed. Gates and windows bulged from its flat walls, seemingly at random. Its roof was shingled with bone and flaps of raw meat. Vibrant feathers tufted its parapets and sluice gates, emerging from the stone. It crouched on two great, knobbly legs, like those of some immense bird. The legs were flesh, unlike its body.

Where its clawed toes gouged the earth, flowers of shimmering hue sprouted in clumps and bunches. They wept and sighed in the voices of children, and some sang a soft, unintelligible song. The structure stirred as he moved further into the clearing.

‘Very well,’ he muttered. ‘I am a knight, and I will conduct myself accordingly.’ Raising his sword, and his newly procured shield, he took a step towards his quarry. He heard stone rasp against stone, and the edifice trembled slightly. Like a beast, readying itself to leap. The great claws clenched, digging into the earth. Unseen things laughed. Faces, wide and unnaturally pink, grimaced and grinned from within the crystal trees.

‘Wait.’ Blisterback caught him by the arm. ‘Look,’ he growled. ‘Horn.’

Gryme shoved him back. ‘What are you– Oh.’

The slughorn hung from a branch to his left. Had it been there before? He did not know. It did not matter. It was a war-horn, shaped like a mollusc shell. It dangled by a strap of frayed silk, and as he took it, it moved like a thing alive.

‘Just as Abigos said,’ he murmured as he sheathed his sword. Carefully, he took the horn down.

Gryme pulled off his helm and lifted the slughorn to his lips. The Stalking Keep rose on its birdlike legs, talons clicking. Unnatural muscles bulged, as if in readiness to leap. Gryme licked his lips and blew a single, quavering note.

The Stalking Keep froze. Roof-slates clattered like dragon scales. Windows seemed to thin, like the narrowed eyes of a wary beast.

‘Again,’ Blisterback muttered. ‘Blow it again.’

Gryme blew again, and louder. The note lashed at the air, clear as a sword-stroke. The Stalking Keep shuddered, with a sound like an avalanche.

Then, with a sound that might have been a disgruntled sigh, it sank back down on its bestial haunches. Crenellations of stone writhed back with a hideous grinding sound, exposing a portcullis of bone and iron. The portcullis ratcheted upwards with a groan, as unseen chains rattled. A gust of foul air washed through the glen.

‘Come,’ Gryme said, knotting the cord of the slughorn to his belt. As they approached the monstrous edifice, it suddenly made a rumbling sound – almost a growl. Gryme stopped short. He glanced at Blisterback, and then at the dark aperture behind the portcullis. ‘I think – I think I had best go on alone,’ he said. ‘Stay here.’ Blisterback began to growl a denial but subsided at Gryme’s glare. ‘Stay here, old beast. Someone must live to carry word to Festerfane if I fail.’

Blisterback was silent for a moment. Then, he grunted softly, ‘Trust in Grandfather, young master. Hope is the weed in his garden, and failure, his mulch.’

Gryme swallowed and nodded. ‘Hope is the weed,’ he said. Hope was the enemy. Only by seeing the world as it was could a knight attain true serenity. All things fed the garden, in the end. But even so, he could not help but feel a flicker of – what? – joy, perhaps. Excitement. But not hope. Never that.

He turned back to the portcullis. It rustled invitingly. Taking a deep breath, he stepped beneath it, and into the darkness. As he did so, the portcullis slammed down behind him with a satisfied clang.

For a time, there was no light. Then, slowly, he became aware of a growing radiance. It emanated from curious gemstones set haphazardly into the walls, revealing the crudely carved passage before him. The gems flickered with an eerie light. It had no colour that he could perceive, and he felt a creeping chill on his pockmarked flesh as he followed the passage. It sloped vaguely upwards, and the stones beneath his feet were unsettlingly soft and spongy. The passage narrowed and widened at random intervals, and he felt as if the walls were somehow moving, if imperceptibly. Like contractions of breath.

There was a smell on the stones, like raw meat turning sour in the sun. It reminded him of home – of the death’s-head orchards in the sprouting season. But it was not enough to settle his unease. Something was dripping, he could hear it. He could hear other things, as well. The sound of crashing stones, and laughter. Something that might have been music, playing in the distance.

He stopped. Ahead of him, the passage had given way to a set of slabbed steps, rising ever upwards. The steps were crude things, chipped and broken. Veins of gold ran through the dark stones, and they seemed to twist and squirm in the light.

At the top of the steps, there was a great archway, wrought in the shape of a bird’s open beak. To either side of the archway were two vast windows of coloured crystal. Things moved within them. Shadow-shapes, twisting and dancing in the light, stretching insubstantial hands out to him. Something told him not to look too closely at them.

Gryme steeled himself and climbed the steps. They were slick and wet, like the throat of an animal. His boots rang against the steps as he climbed towards the archway. There was a heavy, wooden door, set within the great stone beak.

The door trembled as he reached for it. It pulsed like living flesh. At his touch, it swung inwards with a raspy sigh. Behind it were curtains of tattered silk, which he parted with his sword, revealing a chamber greater in size than was possible. Somehow, it was larger than the Stalking Keep itself.

The walls were red and raw, and beams of bone rose from the floor to intersect overhead, like the join of a ribcage. The red places flexed and throbbed with silent heat, and the floor was made of what looked like yellow slabs of vitrified bile. Great mirrors of crystal were set in the wall at intervals, and within each he saw not his reflection, but other chambers. He saw gardens and laboratories, armouries and bedchambers, and places of strange purpose and function – great thickets of statuary, and galleries of black mirrors, stretching away into seeming infinity.

Opposite the doorway was another set of steps, curving upwards in a tight spiral. But at their foot was set a throne, carved into the very stone of the base. And in that throne slumped an armoured figure. Gryme stopped. Sweat beaded on his flesh and ran beneath his gambeson. The heat of this place had grown steadily more oppressive, and he murmured a prayer to Nurgle for the strength to endure it.

As the words left his lips, the armoured figure straightened. ‘What is that I hear? The puling whimpers of one of the Plague God’s curs?’ Black gauntlets gripped the armrests of the throne and the figure stood. ‘I thought I had killed all of you.’

Gryme stepped back, staring. The armour resembled his own, but it was older by far. Antiquated and baroque, even by the standards of the Blighted Duchies. The warrior wore a frayed tabard of white, bearing only the eight-pointed star of Chaos. He reached down beside the throne and hefted a great blade. The sword seemed to writhe in his grip, like an ill-tempered cat.

‘Who are you?’ Gryme demanded, hoping the unease he felt was not evident.

‘Do you not know my name, mortal?’ The warrior lifted his blade. ‘Am I truly forgotten in this benighted age?’ He twisted his sword, letting the light play along its length. It was an evil-looking thing, and Gryme could feel the heat of its hunger from where he stood. ‘In this time out of mind, is the lamentable tale of Mordrek, whom men call the Damned, remembered at all?’

‘I do not know you. But I do not fear you.’

‘Then you are a fool. All men should fear me, for I am the allchosen, and proof of the gods’ whimsy.’ Mordrek stepped down from the throne. Something about his movements spoke of an incredible weariness. Gryme was reminded of Abigos – here was a warrior for whom existence carried an incalculable weight. ‘I am the price manifest – loyalty, honour, all knightly virtues cast aside or trammelled by my oath to the Dark Gods.’

‘Nevertheless, step aside. I have no quarrel with you.’

‘Then why do you come here, boy? Why disturb my solitude?’

‘I come to rescue a lady fair, and slay her captor.’

Mordrek was silent for a moment. Then he laughed. ‘Go back, boy. Show better judgement than your fellows.’

‘I cannot.’ Gryme shook his head. ‘I swore an oath.’

Mordrek extended his sword. ‘Then I fear your soul is already lost.’

‘My soul is my own. I give it freely, and if it is my fate to be mulch for Grandfather’s garden, well then – let me be mulch.’ Gryme lifted his sword. ‘Stand aside, Sir Mordrek. Or prepare to defend yourself.’

Mordrek gave a hollow laugh. ‘I cannot stand aside.’

‘Then have at thee,’ Gryme shouted, lunging forwards. Mordrek reacted with inhuman swiftness, and his blade nearly split Gryme’s shield in two. The force of the blow sent Gryme stumbling towards the shimmering mirrors. Mordrek pounded after him. His second blow tore the ruined shield from Gryme’s arm, and numbed the limb to the shoulder. Gryme reeled back, and fell against one of the mirrors. The silvery surface split like water, enveloping him.

He fell backwards, and then upwards, slamming into a set of stone steps. More steps rose all around him, rising up and falling down, running parallel to him, or horizontal. A chamber of hundreds of steps, all going nowhere and everywhere at once. The scrape of metal echoed as if from far away, and he heard what might have been a door slam.

‘Mordrek?’ he called out. The echoes of his voice taunted him.

…Mordrek… drek… drek…

‘Here.’

Gryme spun.

Mordrek stood above him, standing upside down on the steps that curved overhead. He leapt, and for a moment, it seemed as if he were falling towards Gryme. Then, something twisted and Mordrek was charging up the steps towards him, blade held low.

Gryme interposed his blade at the last moment, and was driven back. Mordrek was strong – incredibly so. They traded desperate blows in tight spaces, the echoes of their duel rippling outwards through the chamber of steps. As Gryme was driven back and up, he felt the steps beginning to move. Around and above, they seemed to oscillate like immense clockwork gears. He could hear them scraping against one another, like some enormous, unseen millstone.

A blow from Mordrek nearly sent him toppling from the steps, but instead he fell back. He swung his sword wildly, holding Mordrek at bay. His opponent retreated and stood, waiting.

‘Stand, boy.’

Breathing heavily, Gryme clambered to his feet. He was only mortal, and Mordrek was taxing him to his limits. The warrior seemed tireless. Relentless.

Trying to buy time, he spoke. ‘Did you – did you slay the others? In the glen.’

‘Some. Those the Stalking Keep did not. They were brave, if foolish.’

‘Why?’

‘I am bound to him who raised me from the dim past.’ Mordrek held up a hand, and stared at it. ‘I do not even know if I can exist, outside this place. Am I a dream, made flesh? A memory, cloaked in iron? Or something else? The one who knows the answer holds my leash. All I know is that I am as I remember being. And that is enough.’ He climbed a step. ‘Now, lay your sword aside, and I will make it quick, boy.’

‘I am a knight of the Order of the Fly, and I would rather die a thousand times than surrender.’ Gryme lunged. Mordrek avoided his blow, and drove a fist into his abdomen. Gryme stumbled, turned, and caught hold of Mordrek’s tabard. Tangled, they fell from the steps. They struck stone and pinwheeled out, slamming against sharp edges and solid panes. Everything was moving. Grinding. Chewing.

Then, a circle of white, growing beneath him. Gryme felt glass shatter as he struck the circle, and a wash of cold swallowed him up. A moment later he was rolling down an icy slope, snow whipping about him. He heard the howl of a northern wind as he rolled to a stop at the base of the slope. He fumbled blindly for his sword, laying nearby, and snatched it up.

Everything hurt. His joints ached, his heart hammered. He could taste blood. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the echoes of grinding stone.

A vast tundra spread out around him. On the horizon, he saw what he thought to be a migration of ogors, atop their barbarous beasts, their great forms made tiny by distance. Or so he thought, until they scattered with thin, shrill cries as he shoved himself to his feet. He stared at them in bemusement, and was half tempted to pluck one up.

He turned. The slope he had rolled down was a mountain in miniature, its cloud-crowned peak an arm’s length above his head. ‘What is this madness?’

‘Madness is right,’ Mordrek said, from behind him. Gryme whirled, even as his opponent lunged through the swirling snows. Their blades locked, and Gryme slammed back into the mountain, causing an avalanche. Mordrek loomed over him. For the first time, Gryme realised that his foe’s eyes were those of a man – they did not glow or blaze, the pupils were not slit or warped. They were simply… eyes. But the look in them sent a chill through him nonetheless.

Mordrek laughed harshly. ‘You fight well, for one who has not a tenth of my strength. You might have made a fine champion for the Lord of All Things, equal even to Valnir himself.’

‘I do not know that name, but I thank thee for the compliment,’ Gryme said, through gritted teeth. He tried to force Mordrek back, but his limbs resisted the effort. Mordrek was too strong, and Gryme was drawing near the limits of his endurance.

‘What realm is this that a servant of the Plague God knows not the name of his greatest servant? Or perhaps you are simply ignorant, as well as foolish?’ Mordrek pivoted, and sent Gryme crashing to the snow with a single twist of his blade. Gryme scrambled away, trying to catch his breath. Mordrek stalked after him. ‘Get up, boy. Get up and fight.’

Gryme roared and surged to his feet. His wild blow drove Mordrek back a step. And then another. And another. Back and back, with blows that were more force than skill. Snow gave way to ice, and he could hear it cracking with every step.

‘You cannot win, boy,’ Mordrek said. ‘This battle’s end is preordained. Your fate is sealed.’

‘No.’ Gryme pressed on, remembering Abigos’ words, and the taunts of the songbirds. There was no fate. Only acceptance that what would be, would be. And what would be was yet to be seen. He redoubled his efforts, fighting through the fatigue that threatened to overwhelm him.

The ice splintered. Mordrek staggered, as one of his feet sank into the water. Gryme’s blow caught him on the side of the helm, and there was a sound like cracking wood. Mordrek fell, and the ice ruptured as he struck it. Gryme cursed as the chill waters reached up to snare him. Cold surged up around him, and through him, as his armour dragged him down.

He sank down, unable to tell which way was up. He clawed for the surface, lungs straining against the crushing weight of suffocation. Things moved around him, in the dark. Shapes so large that he could only dimly perceive them, as they slithered through the cold, dark waters. Then – light, somewhere below. A moment later, he was caught in a riptide, and dragged down towards the light.

There was no ice, no glass to crash through this time. Instead, he surfaced with a gasp, and found himself floundering in what appeared to be an ornamental fountain, surrounded by statues carved to resemble kneeling knights. Some of them looked vaguely familiar, as if he’d seen them somewhere before. As he splashed towards the edge of the fountain, he caught sight of Mordrek’s half-submerged form nearby. From the angle of his opponent’s neck, Gryme could tell it was broken.

He shook his head. ‘A foul end to a fair tourney.’ He rolled onto his belly, and tried to gather his legs beneath him. ‘A valiant foe, killed by chance. But lucky for me, perhaps.’ He looked at the broken body of his foe. ‘I do not think I could have bested you, Mordrek.’ He caught hold of one of the statues that lined the fountain, and drew himself up.

‘I am not dead, despite my wishes to the contrary.’

Gryme turned, stomach sinking. Mordrek shoved himself upright, water rolling from his armour. ‘Is that what you think this is, boy? A tourney?’ He laughed and twisted his head until it righted itself with a sickening crack. ‘I cannot be beaten by one such as you. Only one whose fate outweighs mine can defeat me and end my curse.’ He paused. ‘Once, I thought it done, at last. A world was dying around me, and I hoped to die with it. Instead, it is gone – all that I was is gone – and I am still here.’

‘Life is a gift, and you should not throw it away so recklessly,’ Gryme said, hauling himself to his feet. Everything hurt, but he could endure it – what was pain, but life’s song? If he had been a knight, such pain would have troubled him not at all. He spat up a mouthful of ichor and blood. ‘If you live, it is because the gods wish it. Why deny them?’

‘I do not deny them. I curse them. I cast my hate into their teeth.’ Mordrek caught up his sword and pushed himself to his feet. He looked down at his blade. ‘This sword can make monsters, if it tastes flesh. Do you wish to be a monster, boy? I think you do. Else you would not be here, seeking such a creature as your Lady.’

‘I wish many things,’ Gryme said. ‘But I hope for none. I will not surrender. Lay on, Mordrek.’ He staggered through the water, blade low. ‘And the Dark Gods take him who yields first!’ Their blades connected with a scream of metal. Mordrek snarled and shoved Gryme back, to the edge of the fountain.

‘Why persist? The others could not beat me – what hope have you?’

‘None,’ Gryme panted. ‘But I swore an oath.’ He lunged again, and again. Mordrek swatted him aside, this time knocking him from the fountain entirely. Gryme crawled away from it. The chamber seemed to spin about him. He saw great pillars of jasper and gold, rising from a floor of the same. Clouds of incense wafted through the air, and strange lights danced in the shadowed recesses between pillars.

Something was broken inside him. He could feel it, grating against something soft. He felt as if he could not lift his sword, or even himself. He was not blessed by Grandfather’s touch, nor by the waters of the Flyblown Chalice. He was not a knight, and barely yet a man. He heard Mordrek climb from the fountain, and something else – the soft whisper of a woman’s voice, swiftly answered by the dull rumble of a man’s.

‘Surrender, boy,’ Mordrek said, his voice echoing through the chamber. ‘I am as inevitable as death itself. There is no shame in sparing yourself pain. My blow will be swift, and sure. You will feel nothing.’

For an instant, Gryme imagined himself back on the tourney field, the eyes of lord and pusling alike upon him. He felt the weight of unknown gazes, of unspoken attentions. Blood dripped through his visor, to splatter on the floor. Maggots squirmed in the spreading red. From somewhere far away, he heard what might have been the susurrus of many iridescent wings, and knew that the King of All Flies was watching.

‘A true knight does not surrender,’ he croaked, shaking his head. ‘Not when he has made an oath.’

Mordrek was close. ‘I am sorry to kill you, boy. But my fate holds me tight. And yours claims you now.’ Gryme saw Mordrek lift his blade. And more – a gap. A single gap, where chest-plate met mail. ‘Farewell, boy. You fought well. But not well enough.’

Gryme’s hand convulsed, tightening about the hilt of his own blade, and with a bellow, he twisted and lurched up, driving his sword full through the gap in Mordrek’s armour. Desperation gave him strength, and the momentum of his lunge carried them back against the fountain. Mordrek slammed into one of the statues, and Gryme’s sword pierced him through and struck stone. Mordrek cried out, and Gryme stumbled back, all strength fled.

He swayed on his feet, watching as Mordrek struggled to free himself, to no avail. He sagged back, with an almost relieved sigh.

‘Impossible,’ he whispered. ‘And yet, the deed is done. Kill me, then. Free me.’ Mordrek reached up to awkwardly remove his helm. When it came away, Gryme bit back a curse. There was nothing there at all, except an unnatural radiance, pierced through by two all-too-human eyes. The eyes of a man, hovering inside a flickering colour of no possible description. ‘Free me, sir knight.’

‘I… I cannot,’ Gryme said, as he straightened. ‘I will not. You have fought valiantly and well, and I will not cut your thread.’ He caught hold of his blade with both hands and tore it loose. Mordrek slumped to the floor with a groan. ‘The battle is won, the tourney finished. That is the end of it.’ Gryme turned in the direction he’d heard the voices emanating from. ‘Do you hear, Zeyros? I have beaten your champion. I have won!’

Silence. Then, a sigh. ‘So you have,’ a voice said. A spark bloomed, and the darkness faded, receding into the stones of the walls and floor, revealing a high dais with a crystal egg the size of a man at its summit. Within the egg, a lithe form huddled, long arms wrapped about her knees, veiled head bowed. The Lady of Cankerwall herself.

Gryme’s heart leapt in his chest, and he started towards the dais.

‘Stop,’ the voice commanded. ‘Come no closer.’

Gryme paused at the bottom of the dais. A tall, armoured shape stepped out from behind the egg, silver-bladed glaive in one hand.

‘Ompallious Zeyros,’ Gryme said.

‘That is my name. Might I have the courtesy of knowing yours?’

‘Gryme. Carkus Gryme, heir to the dukedom of Festerfane. I’ve come for the Lady.’ Gryme raised his sword, though his muscles protested the gesture. ‘Release her, and we shall depart in peace.’

‘Bold words for a man who can barely stand. I thought you pox-knights were supposed to be tough.’ Zeyros tilted his head. ‘Then, you aren’t a knight, are you?’

Gryme ignored the jibe. He studied Zeyros. The Changeknight was tall and slim, his armour almost moulded to his lean frame. He wore a hauberk of gold beneath azure plate, and a helm topped by the shape of a swooping bird – or a daemon, its visor wrought in the shape of a frowning face. Streamers of varying hues of blue dangled from his war-plate, and a trio of small books had been chained to his belt. Opposite them was a slughorn, similar to the one still dangling from Gryme’s own belt.

But it was not this that drew Gryme’s eye. Instead, he stared at the patches of greenish mould growing in small clumps on Zeyros’ armour. An utterly incongruous thing. As he watched, Zeyros brushed at one of the clumps, ripping it away. The mould plopped to the dais and spread suddenly, creeping across the stone, giggling shrilly.

Zeyros thrust his glaive down, and Changefire engulfed the mould, reducing it to ash, even as it shrieked. Gryme saw that a new patch was already growing on his armour where the other had been removed. Zeyros laughed hollowly.

‘Am I not what you expected?’

‘You are… less radiant than I was led to believe.’

Zeyros chuckled wetly. He gestured to the patches of mould on his mail. ‘A parting gift from a friend. A curse.’ He hunched forward, coughing. Something wet and dark dripped through the visor of his helm to splatter upon the steps. ‘No matter how much I scour my flesh, the mould returns. It is in my lungs and my blood. It eats me hollow.’ He looked at the crystal cage and its captive. ‘Soon, I will be dead. Or worse.’

‘It is not a curse, Ompallious. That you think it is only shows your blindness to the beautiful thing that awaits you.’ The Lady looked up. Slowly, regally, she stood. Her dress was torn, exposing patches of mottled flesh, and her hair was unbound, casting a gorgon’s nest of colourless locks over her shoulders and back. Her veil stirred, and her eyes blazed with feverish heat behind its mouldering folds. She splayed her fingers across the surface of the crystal and looked at Gryme. She sighed, softly and sweetly. ‘Oh, Carkus. You should not be here. This is no place for one such as you.’

‘I-I came to free you,’ Gryme stammered, unable to look away from her burning gaze. It felt as if some delicious fever had gripped him, and he made to climb the dais. Yet even as he started up the steps, he found her allure strangely diminished. He was reminded again of Abigos, and wondered at the nature of the magics Zeyros had employed to cage her so effectively.

Zeyros struck the stones with his glaive, and Changefire boiled up, driving Gryme back. ‘Be silent, daemon.’ Zeyros looked down at Gryme. ‘I sent a messenger to warn you away. You ignored him. I sent a spirit to humble you, and you defeated it. The Stalking Keep itself should have devoured you, and yet you passed through its portcullis without harm.’ He glanced past Gryme. ‘And finally, my champion. Drawn from the shadows of a vanished epoch, through no little sacrifice.’ Gryme glanced back at Mordrek, and saw the ancient warrior slowly dragging himself to his feet, gaze unreadable. ‘He should have been your end. And yet, here you are. Why?’

‘I made an oath.’

‘That is not an explanation,’ Zeyros said. ‘It is a boast, cloaked in false humility.’ He shook his head. ‘What am I to do with you?’ He snapped his fingers, and Changefire danced in the air. ‘Shall I set you alight, and scatter your ashes from the windows of this place?’ Another gesture, and the Changefire became a bird, perched on Zeyros’ palm. ‘Or shall I set the birds upon you again – not one knight this time, but two or three.’

Gryme heard a chirp, and glanced up. Tiny, colourful shapes moved in the dim recesses of the ceiling. They sang a trilling note, and he hastily looked away.

‘Send an army, if you would. I will not turn from my path.’ He set his foot on the bottom step. He could hear Mordrek approaching behind him, and wondered if he had the strength to face both foes.

He tried to catch the Lady’s gaze, seeking some answer, some sign. But she turned her face away. So be it. He would die here. But not easily. Or quickly.

‘No. Of course not. That would be entirely too sensible to even expect.’ Zeyros sighed. ‘Things have changed little, since my day.’

‘That was the bargain we made, your brothers and I,’ the Lady said, suddenly, from within her prison. She looked at Zeyros. ‘That Change be slowed and the waters of fate go still. And I have held to it. The duchies flourish, in Grandfather’s shadow.’

Zeyros turned. ‘They stagnate, you mean. Only rot flourishes in still waters.’

‘Nonetheless, it is life.’

‘But one not worth the living.’ Zeyros looked at Gryme. ‘Do you understand, boy? Do you even notice the absence of what might have been, or are you too blinded by this shroud of chivalry she has woven about our folk?’ When Gryme didn’t answer, Zeyros laughed. ‘You are a fool, young knight. Then, perhaps we are all fools together.’ The Radiant Knight extended his glaive. ‘The Lady is mine. She holds in her the secret to my salvation. I shall prise it from her, and scour the rot from my veins at last.’

‘You are right. You are a fool. Only a fool would toss aside a gift from Nurgle.’ Gryme climbed another step. He was within seven steps of his foe – an auspicious number.

Zeyros laughed. ‘A gift?’ He looked at the Lady, in her cage of crystal. ‘How low my folk have fallen that they think what you offer them is a gift.’

‘Do not speak to her so,’ Gryme barked.

‘I shall speak to her as I wish,’ Zeyros snarled. ‘Would that I had killed her then, as the skies grew black with flies and she traipsed among us on dainty hooves.’ He slammed a fist against his chest. ‘I was there the day the first Grandmaster of our Order supped from her vile chalice, and became something monstrous. The day so many of my sword-brothers swore themselves to the banners of despair, all in a vain attempt to hold time itself at bay.’

Gryme stopped. ‘You were… one of us?’

‘Oh yes, I and Ephraim Bollos. Timar Bellicos, who took the name Bubonicus. Ocander Wolgus and Gaspax Gahool. Culgus of the Iron Ridge. The knights of the seven duchies, bound by honour and blood. And now, I alone remember those days clearly, my thoughts untainted by the stink of rot.’

Gryme started at the names. Heroes, all, who had led pox-crusades into far realms, and fallen in glorious battle against gods and heathens. And yet Zeyros spoke as if he had known them.

The Lady laughed, and Gryme felt a shiver run through him. ‘Oh, Ompallious – once, you might have ridden at my right hand,’ she said. ‘Was the dukedom of Festerfane not enough for you?’

‘That was not its name then,’ Zeyros said, softly.

‘And what was its name?’ the Lady asked, gently. ‘Do you even remember?’ Zeyros turned away, and Gryme saw the Lady nod. ‘You gave up so much, for vengeance. You let the Great Changer hollow you out of all but that singular ambition. But your end is here, and there is love yet in the ending. And serenity in acceptance. Come back to me, my love – my sweetest knight…’ Gryme felt something in his heart twist for the pain he heard in her voice. The truest love, of a lady for her knight.

‘Love,’ Zeyros said, harshly. ‘What do you know of love?’ He turned. ‘You pitted us against one another, for love. My brothers and I fought, for your love. My brothers in arms. All lost now. All dead…’ He began to cough, and bent nearly double from the force of it. The mould on his armour was shrieking with laughter. He clawed at it frantically, scraping it away.

‘Not dead,’ the Lady said. ‘Nothing truly dies in the gardens of the King of All Flies. They sleep and dream of the day when they are needed again, to safeguard the seven duchies.’

‘Be silent, rot-hag,’ Zeyros snarled. He struck the crystal egg with a fist, and its facets flared with a monstrous radiance. The Lady screamed, and Gryme screamed with her. He launched himself up the steps, blade raised to shatter the crystal.

Zeyros’ glaive swept out, driving Gryme back. ‘No. Not until I have what I want. The cure to this malady that infects me. Then I will banish her from this realm, and send her back to Nurgle’s vile garden, as I – I…’ He half turned away from Gryme, his body wracked by coughing. The blade of the glaive dipped. ‘As I should have – have…’ The rest of his words were lost in a deluge of hoarse hacking. The mould clinging to his raiment was spreading, and singing, now. Zeyros clutched at his abdomen, as if in pain.

Gryme turned. The Lady was looking at him, now. ‘My knight,’ she murmured. He did not stop to think who she might be referring to. Instead, he spun, sword raised. He would slay Zeyros, and free her. He would fulfil his oath.

But as he whirled, the haft of Zeyros’ glaive slammed into his helm. He crashed backwards, against the egg, and rolled down the steps. His sword slid from his grip and then Zeyros was upon him, one golden boot pinning him to the floor. The glaive swept his sword out of reach. Zeyros spun the weapon about, and placed the tip of the blade to Gryme’s throat. Almost gently, he prised Gryme’s helm off, and sent it clattering away.

Zeyros looked down at Gryme. ‘I have tried to avoid this, boy. You are of my blood – though centuries have thinned the stuff in your veins to gruel – and I would have spared you this, out of love for kin and kingdom.’ He raised his glaive. ‘But that was never our fate.’

Gryme did not flinch. If this was to be the end, he would meet it as a true knight. Zeyros tensed, readying the thrust.

‘Wait.’

Zeyros turned. ‘What is it, daemon?’

‘Spare him, and I will spare you, Ompallious Zeyros.’

Zeyros paused. ‘You would bargain with me?’

She spoke slowly, as if the words pained her. ‘His life means more to me than yours. Spare him, and your skein is untangled. Kill him, and suffer the fate you fear most.’

Zeyros lowered his glaive. ‘Do it, then. Cure me of Ephraim Bollos’ last gift. And I will spare your newest toy.’ He gestured, and the crystal egg splintered and fell away into flickering shards. The Lady brushed a shard from her shoulder and sang a single, sibilant note. Zeyros staggered. Clumps of giggling mould fell from his form and clumped together on the floor. One of them slid towards Gryme, wriggling like a worm, and he closed his hand about it, quickly, before his captor could see.

The rest of the mould was not so lucky. Before it could go far, Zeyros thrust his glaive into it and Changefire swept across the floor, burning it clean.

The Lady hung her head and sighed, sadly. ‘It is done.’

Zeyros looked down at his cleansed armour, and took a deep breath. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’ He looked at Gryme, and swept his glaive up once more.

The Lady cried out in consternation. Gryme bit back a cry of his own, as the glaive drove down towards his heart.

‘No.’ Mordrek’s blade caught Zeyros’ glaive and turned it aside. The Radiant Knight stepped back in surprise. Gryme looked up at his saviour, and saw no sign of the wound he’d given the other warrior. ‘The battle is finished, Zeyros. You have what you wish. To take any more than what fate provides is simple greed.’

‘You defy me?’ Zeyros said, incredulous.

‘My geas is broken,’ Mordrek said. ‘You bound me until my defeat, trusting in my pride. But this boy – this knight – set me on my back, and fairly.’ Mordrek glanced at Gryme, and then back at Zeyros. ‘Thus, my will is my own.’

‘I could send you back to death with but a word.’

‘If you could, you would have said it already.’ Mordrek lowered his sword. ‘You were a knight, once. And you swore an oath.’

Zeyros stared at him. Then, with a disgruntled sigh, he nodded. ‘Fine.’ He let Gryme rise, and stepped aside so that the young warrior could escort the Lady from the dais. She extended her hand as Gryme stumbled towards her.

‘My lady,’ he mumbled.

‘My Carkus,’ she said, softly. ‘Whatever am I to do with you?’ Pushing aside the sudden thought that she was somehow disappointed in him, Gryme took her hand carefully, and helped her down. She stood tall and regal, despite her bedraggled state. She looked at Zeyros. He met her gaze steadily.

‘Fair warning… I am not the only one who smelled the duchies’ weakness on the winds of Chaos,’ he said. ‘I am but the first to try my hand. There is a war brewing, in the spaces between. Nurgle recedes and Tzeentch ascends.’

The Lady looked away. ‘As Nurgle will ascend, and Tzeentch will descend, in days to come. Such is the eternal cycle. All seasons have their moment.’

Zeyros laughed. ‘As you say, my lady. But all things change. Even the dance of the seasons. A storm sweeps the realms, and what was once set is now upended. Malign portents crowd the minds of seers, and ancient things best forgotten stir.’

‘Let them stir,’ Gryme said. ‘Let them come. We will ride out to meet them. The Blighted Duchies belong to the King of All Flies, and he shall rule them for evermore.’

Zeyros looked at Gryme. ‘Your bravado, misplaced as it is, reminds me of another. A man I called friend. And then slew, for his treachery.’ He pointed at Gryme. ‘Do not cross my path again, or it shall be the same end for you.’ He turned away, and gestured dismissively. ‘Now be gone, all of you. I grow weary of the stink.’

Gryme watched as the Stalking Keep prowled away from the glen, crushing trees beneath its great talons. It somehow felt wrong to allow a foe to escape without even a token resistance, but the Lady had commanded, and he could but obey.

He turned. The others stood nearby. Blisterback crouched protectively next to the Lady, his cleaver over one shoulder. The old beast had waited loyally for them to emerge from the Stalking Keep’s craw, and had seemed unsurprised to see them. The Lady watched the Stalking Keep depart, her expression unreadable behind her veil. She seemed stronger than she had within the monstrous edifice, as if whatever force had been sapping her power was now gone.

Around her, the glen was returning to normal. The trees were darkening and twisting back into their usual shapes, and the flowers were dying. The sad notes of their dwindling song hung on the air, and Gryme sighed in satisfaction. Then he winced and clutched his chest. Pain flared in him. Blisterback scuttled towards him. The beast caught Gryme’s arm and wrapped it about his hairy shoulders.

‘You live, young master. Pain is good.’

‘The beast speaks true,’ Mordrek said. He stood some distance away, studying the stars overhead. ‘Pain is good, in moderation. It means you are still a man, whatever else.’ He looked at Gryme. ‘The stars are foreign to me.’

‘You get used to them,’ Gryme said. He winced again, as Blisterback helped him to Mordrek’s side. ‘What now, Mordrek? Will you return to Festerfane with us?’ He glanced at the Lady. ‘There will be feasting, I think. A celebration.’

Mordrek shook his head. ‘No, boy. I would explore this new realm I have been drawn up into. Perhaps there are wonders and horrors yet that I have not witnessed. If so, they might enliven the tedium of eternity, if only for a few centuries.’ He turned and extended his hand. ‘But if you need me, simply blow the slughorn you carry, and Count Mordrek will ride with all haste to your aid.’

Gryme glanced down at the horn. At the time, he had not thought to question its presence. Now, though, he wondered how it had come to be in this place. When he looked up, a question on his lips, Mordrek was already gone. Vanished into the rising miasma.

‘He has ever travelled strange roads, that one,’ the Lady said, without turning around. ‘No man or daemon can say where or when he will appear, or on whose side he will fight. A mystery.’ She turned, then, her gaze bright and scalding. ‘I do not like mysteries. I find them tedious. Almost as tedious as mortals.’

Gryme swallowed, suddenly struck dumb.

‘I did not require your aid,’ she continued. ‘Or that of these brave fools.’ She looked around at the heaps of fallen knights as if somehow… disappointed. ‘The matter was well in hand. Ompallious would not have harmed me.’

‘I – I thought…’ he began.

She laughed, softly. The sound was like a knife in his heart. ‘No. I doubt that greatly. Do you know what you have cost me, today? What you have cost the King of All Flies? From the ashes of Ompallious Zeyros, Ephraim Bollos might have risen, returned to us. Something which is sorely needed, in these dangerous times.’ She pointed an accusing finger. ‘I traded that possibility, for your life. What have you to say for yourself?’

Gryme shook his head. ‘Forgive me,’ he whispered. ‘I have disappointed you.’ He fell to his knees, head bowed. ‘But I have not failed you.’ He reached into his armour and withdrew the softly chuckling clump of mould he’d saved. It squirmed on his palms. Without a word he proffered it to her.

He felt the heat of her gaze falter. ‘Oh… Ephraim,’ she murmured, as if to a lost pet, newly found. Gently, she took the quivering mould from him and stroked it. ‘With this, he might yet return.’ She looked down at him. After a moment’s silence, she said, ‘Rise, young Carkus. Only knights must kneel before me. And you are not that. Not yet.’

Gryme hesitated. He rose slowly, staring at her. She laughed softly, and he was reminded of the gentle dapple of a plague-rain upon glass. Her fingers caressed his blistered chin, and her smile was as lovely as the reflected gleam of balefire on still waters.

At her touch, the pain of his wounds and the ache in his limbs faded, and a sweet numbness flooded him. ‘Not yet,’ she murmured, again. ‘Seven are the trials every knight must face to earn his spurs. This is but the first. Six remain for you, before you are deemed worthy to sup from the Flyblown Chalice.’

Gryme frowned. He wanted to argue. To proclaim his worth. But if he were truly worthy, would he need to say so? Finally, he nodded. ‘I am at your service, my lady.’

She stepped past him, crossing the clearing on dainty hooves. ‘That remains to be seen, young Carkus. But do not hope. Only in acceptance is worth found. Now come. Festerfane awaits. And there is a tourney to finish, I believe.’

‘As you say, my lady,’ he replied. ‘What will be, will be.’ But even as he said it, he felt a twinge deep in him.

As of a weed, growing in a garden.

THE HARDEST WORD

David Guymer

A mural of the two-headed orruk war-deity, Gorkamorka, covers the rock in age-blanched chalk. Beneath, the granite is stained with black, yellow and faded pinks, the marks left by a succession of lords of destruction and Chaos. Gorkamorka is the largest but not the most recent. Several layers of runes and glyphs adorn the mural, proclaiming the greatness of their lord and his god, but none of them claim this throne room now.

The visiting Lord-Veritant looks up at the painted wall, disapproving. But I like the wall. It is a tapestry of my enemies’ defeats, a thousand years old, and there is something about it that reminds me of my mortal home.

When Vikaeus is Lord-Castellant of the Seven Words, she can decorate as she pleases.

‘Do not haunt my doorway, Lord-Veritant,’ I say. ‘I will stand for no ceremony here.’

‘The doorway is not yours, you self-aggrandising fool. You guard it for Sigmar. Like a dog.’

With a scrape of her boot and a wind-ruffle of a cerulean cloak, she turns to me. The phrase ‘Ice Queen’ leaps unbidden into my mind.

I do not immediately disavow it.

Her armour is the white and blue of the Knights Merciless. Her mask is an expression of bitter spite, which I am relieved to see she carries underarm. The Knights Merciless are known for donning war-masks only when in hostile lands, or in the dispensation of Sigmar’s judgement. Her long black hair is drawn back from her forehead and worn in a tail. Her skin is like marble, though no artisan of Azyr ever worked on a material so hard.

I beckon impatiently.

Her footsteps clank on bare stone as she walks down the aisle towards my throne. A pair of gryph-hounds with beaks clad in blessed sigmarite, their neck scales picked out with runes of abjuration, snarl at her heels. My own companion, Crow, uncurls from the beastman pelts piled at my feet and barks a warning that echoes between the crumbling arches and columns.

It appears that even our hounds share a mutual dislike.

‘What brings a Lord-Veritant to the House of the Seven Words? Chaos retreats on every front, for Hamilcar Bear-Eater is as decisive as he is vigilant.’

She halts ten strides away and plants the staff bearing her Lantern of Abjuration, the symbol of her office, into the ground with a resounding clang.

‘I have crossed the Chamonic Gate and been admitted to the crucible pools of Molybdenos. I have spoken with the Prophet Argent, and conferred with the oracles of the Sigmarabulum. I have seen a skaven as old as the world, his paws in the secrets of the gods. His tail is a serpent of probing shadows and in my visions I see it winding close about Sigmar’s neck.’

I scratch my bearded chin. It is oft remarked that Sigmar and I share a likeness, and it is true, the resemblance is uncanny.

‘So why come here?’

‘I see a rising vermintide. It begins here. And I have seen you, Hamilcar. You appear in my visions most frequently of late.’ I smile importunately, but she douses it with a frown like ice water. ‘I see you caged in a storm of unholy lightning, screaming as you are broken, piece by piece.’

I lean back, the totems and trophies that bedeck my purple war-plate clinking as I shift position. ‘You are certain it is me? You are certain it is my fortress?’

‘Even if my visions were less clear, then yes. Now I am here, I am sure. I can feel the taint of the ratmen under my skin, Lord-Castellant.’

I glance up to the Lantern of Abjuration, a cage of comet ice that encircles the top of her staff.

‘They are here already,’ she continues. ‘Though I know not where, nor how they mean to enter a bastion of Sigmar.’

‘My fortress is impregnable,’ I say with irony, glancing up at the mural and its long legacy of capture and loss. I grasp the arms of my throne, rising from the seat in a creak of heavy armour and hanging mail. Crow yawns and stretches, and I kick him good-naturedly from under my feet. He chews at my greave in turn.

‘With me, Lord-Veritant.’

I throw aside the broken doors, still damaged from when I hurled the previous Castellant from his throne room, and stride out into the hall.

Rubble litters the old tiles, though most of it has been swept into messy piles away from the central aisle. The walls gape onto wispy clouds, and the occasional dash and shade of an aetár, the great eagle-kin, startles the gryph-hounds. The seven mortal winds whisper with seven mortal voices.

Down innumerable flights of duardin-cut stairs, Vikaeus and I find our way to the calefactory that the knights of the Bear-Eaters have commandeered for their own.

The chamber has no windows. Skins of beastmen and animals are thrown over the floor, the table and the backs of chairs. The hearth is cold, but simply being out of the wind is enough.

My second, Decimator-Prime Broudiccan, pauses, mid-sentence into an exaggerated tale about his battles with the sankrit on the Sea of Bones, a jug of something warm in his scarred and tattooed fist. His chair scrapes as he stands. Frankos and Xeros Stormcloud, clad in black armour and bands of skeletal decoration, both look attentive.

‘Rally the Stormhost,’ I command Frankos.

The Knight-Heraldor rises immediately. Dragging his battle-horn from the table, he hurries from the chamber. Broudiccan glances at Vikaeus, but does not ask. His knotted brow knots all the harder. The Decimator is a man of grave heart and few words, which is why he serves me so well.

‘Muster the mortal levies,’ I tell him.

‘What shall I tell them?’

‘That Hamilcar stands with them.’ I hold out my hand and Broudiccan, with a rare smile, picks up my halberd from the rack and tosses it to me.

‘That will please them,’ he says, nodding respectfully to the Lord-Veritant before following Frankos out.

‘What is it, Hamilcar?’ Xeros asks, but his dark eyes rove between Vikaeus and me.

‘A vermintide is coming, Lord-Relictor,’ says Vikaeus. ‘I came from Sigmaron with all haste, but the attack may come at any time.’

‘I want to know from where, how, and the numbers they bring,’ I say. ‘So that I can know where best to stand and how long I will need to spend killing.’

‘The local tribes speak of a skaven lair,’ Xeros muses, his eyes turning inwards. ‘Somewhere to the far south, across the Nevermarsh.’

‘I do not care where they come from. Only where they are now.’

‘I have seen nothing, but I will send word to Lord-Castellant Akturus. Perhaps he has seen something in the labyrinth that will look different in light of the lady’s news.’

The Lord-Castellant of the Anvils of Heldenhammer is a grim soul without a shred of humour to his name, but the most brutal, indomitable warrior I have ever seen. Endless patrols of the gloom that surrounds the Azyr Gate seem to content him while I rule as Sigmar’s regent over these lands. It is a division of labour that suits me equally well.

‘Send him word,’ I agree.

‘What are you doing?’ Vikaeus asks as I move around the table to follow after Broudiccan and Frankos.

I do not answer.

A Lord-Relictor of the Hallowed Knights I had once known, a man almost as quick to judge as Vikaeus, had once asked what madness called me to the role of Lord-Castellant. I am impatient, intemperate and afflicted by the curse of the wanderer. Indeed, I am firmly of the opinion that no cause was ever best served by waiting. But one trait I do hold in common with the Lords-Castellant of Sigmar’s hosts – the determination to defend Sigmar’s people, and to safeguard his realm with every weapon I can bring to bear.

Outside of the keep, nets and timber scaffolding cling to every surface that is, was, or is meant to be even remotely vertical. Hammers beat on nails while children shriek, the sounds alike to those of the aetár that dwell above. New cabins rise from the ashes of the old beastman yurts, faster almost than the masons and carpenters can physically assemble them. The scents of dung and sawdust follow men about their business like begging urchins. There is a living anarchy to the frontiersman spirit that I, champion of the cosmic order, ordinarily find ironically pleasing.

But not today.

Every child’s cry is directed to me as a warning. Every effluent channel and lumber wain is a menace that draws my eyes and sets my heart to beating. I bare my teeth as I survey it all.

Vikaeus is never wrong.

Not all Lords-Veritant are created equal. All serve as the seekers and purgators of Chaos in their own unique way, but Vikaeus’ gift for prophecy is known throughout the Stormhosts. Thinking of the vision she described troubles me more than I would willingly let it.

As I clatter down the stone steps to the gatehouse, a group of tonsured Listeners in soft, muted robes try to shush me.

A fortress did not come by a name like ‘the Seven Words’ without a long story behind it. It is hewn from the Gorkoman, Ghur’s highest peak, and the seven winds of power, from enigmatic Hyish to the blackest Ulgu, all blow across its battlements. In ancient times, Listeners travelled from across creation to kneel in blustery contemplation of the state of the realms. Now only a dozen or so dare the pilgrimage. Most are human, all from Sigmaron, and they listen not for the purity of the calling but for the military advantage to be gleaned from far-flung wars in distant realms. The last word, as always, belongs to Azyr. The Celestial Realm does not speak from the sky, for its power is bound and channelled to the dolmen of stone, metal and runecraft that lies deep within the mountainous foundations of the fort. Realmgates are to the realms what roads and rivers are to the petty empires within them, and the Azyr Gate is the second most important function for the Seven Words.

I briefly consider asking the monks if they found disturbances less frequent under Uxor Untamed, but manage to resist on this occasion. There are more pressing things on my mind than baiting the Order.

‘Hamilcar!’

I look over my shoulder to see Vikaeus following me. She ignores the mortals’ admonishing looks.

‘You cannot search under every home and flagstone.’

‘I will, if that is what it takes.’ Shielding my eyes from the mountain sun, I look up to the sturdily made, if old, ballista tower that stands bestride the main gate. ‘Barbarus!’ My voice could carry over a dozen battlefields, and there is not tumult in this world to drown it out when I have a mind to be heard. The Knight-Venator turns from the view to look down to me.

His armour is decorated with feathers from a score of different birds and beasts. His folded wings crackle with frustrated Azyrite power.

‘Is there anything out there?’ I ask. Barbarus shrugs and shakes his head. I gesture up to the hard blue sky. ‘Fly up. I would hear of anything untoward.’

With a nod of his beaked helm, the Knight-Venator flings back his wings. A thunderclap of godly power fills them with the seven winds and drags him skywards.

‘It is not enough to run about like a painted grot from a forest fire,’ Vikaeus snarls, watching Barbarus glimmer upwards. ‘We need to take time. Think. Corral the civilians into safer areas and conduct a more thorough search.’ She brandishes her staff, the star-born lantern swaying. ‘With Akturus’ and Xeros’ support, I will uncover the skaven’s plot and drive them into the light.’

I frown. An idea begins to form in my mind. ‘There is never enough time.’ Even as I think it through, I am striding through the wheel-rutted muck towards the gates.

Men crawl over it, hammering and sawing. One half of the gate is braced with wooden scaffolds and wedged shut with timber blocks. At my approach, they look up in surprise. I wave them down. ‘Send the men home, Danneil,’ I say, addressing the shift foreman by name, for I know them all. Workmen hurry by me as I lift the locking bar and throw it easily aside.

‘Sweet light of Sigendil,’ Vikaeus curses.

The clarion ring of Frankos’ battle-horn startles the roosting aetár to flight, its wing-shadow darkening my face as I glance up. The crowds, already made aware that something is amiss by the presence of their Lord-Castellant, three ill-tempered gryph-hounds and one of Sigmar’s dreaded Chaos-hunters, murmur uneasily at the winged omen.

I turn to Vikaeus.

The sun strikes her armour, ricocheting bolts of silver and gold. Her eyes burn as they meet mine. Not with a zealot’s fire but with a blinding cold that no hardship could ever quench.

We could not be more dissimilar.

‘Conduct your search, Lord-Veritant.’ I feel the impulse to clasp her shoulders in my hands and bid her rich hunting, but my arms wisely refuse to place my hands in such peril. Instead, I pull affectionately on Crow’s beak. ‘Aid the Lord-Veritant’s search. Behave with her hounds.’ I turn back to Vikaeus. ‘I will give you time.’

Before she can ask what I intend, I push through the single working gate and step out onto the rocky berm that extends in a half-circle from the gatehouse.

Distance. Scale. All of it falls from me as if the bottom has come away from the world. A duardin skybridge arcs from the shoulder of the Gorkoman to the peak of the next. No rope or strut supports it, just a single jaw-dropping arch of mottled granite. Clouds race below, like rapids at the bottom of a deep gorge, churned up by the protruding rock of lesser peaks. The winds tear at me, as if to drag me with them, making a storm of my long hair and beard.

I walk to the bridge and peer across.

The far side is hidden by the arch of the skybridge and hazed by distance, but still, no army will cross unnoticed by Barbarus’ Vanguard chambers and the Freeguild regiments that man the walls.

The berm is unpaved yet mostly smooth. Its slope is imperceptible to the eye, but enough to see most siege engines rolling to the precipice. Scrubby vegetation and goat trails cling to the fortress walls until the mountain becomes too sheer.

I turn about, backing up until I stand on the bridge and in full view of my fortress’ walls. The mortal cohorts that guard them watch me. Expectant Stormcasts in maroon and gold and a mix of animal furs only now arrive to take their places alongside them.

‘Before you stands Hamilcar Bear-Eater!’ I roar, holding my arms out wide and clenching my fists until they shake. ‘The greatest warrior to walk this realm since Sigmar in the Age of Myth!’

Whether it is true or not hardly matters, so long as men believe it. And Sigmar, they believe it.

I cup a hand to my ear as though I cannot hear them cheer.

‘Zephacleas Beast-Bane, you say?’ I scoff. ‘Who is this champion in a mask who wishes his name were…’ I thump my breastplate and shout, ‘Hamilcar!’

The battlements erupt with wild cheers and laughter. I wait for it to settle, then wave for quiet as it begins to look as though it will not do so on its own.

‘I bring fell tidings, daughters and sons.’ Silence comes then. I wait for it to fill the great emptiness that surrounds us. ‘Azyr sends warning that the foul skaven have their sights set on our new home.’ I strike the butt of my halberd on the rock and present the open gate with my spare hand. ‘See how I fear the verminous, hunchbacked, ill-begotten bastard child of the Ruinous Powers. See how I quiver before the wide-open gate of my great fortress.’

I turn my back on the wall now, drawing an enormous breath as if I might suck in the expanse of sky, and then shout as loud as I can. ‘Hear me, vermin! My gate is open! Face me. One on one or all together, it concerns me not. Best me here and my fortress stands open.’

A smattering of uncertain laughter edges down the wall behind me.

My peers believe the realms can be claimed through skill-at-arms, but I disagree. I have died once, slain by a swordsman with a monstrous ally that surpassed even my lost hounds and I in skill and strength. No. It is with reckless courage, infectious heart and brute charisma that Chaos will be put to the sword.

‘I am not moving until you show yourselves!’

My voice drains into the depthless blue. Then, there is silence. It stretches, only the howling wind and the clink of spears against armour to be heard. The men, duardin and aelves shuffle nervously alongside the solitary ogor of the Seven Words Freeguild.

Minutes pass.

‘Lord-Castellant,’ Broudiccan calls down softly from the walls, where he stands at the head of a dozen judicators of the Bear-Eaters. ‘I really don’t think that–’

There is a rustle from the undergrowth to my right, and the grasses part around a hunched and hooded figure. It is clad in armour made from rusty iron plates, patched together with inferior metals and all covered by a singed cloak. Every change of the winds’ direction brings a flinch that seems to begin in its twitching snout and spread through its entire furry body. It carries a scrap of almost-white cloth uncertainly between its forepaws.

‘Do not… do not kill-kill,’ it says, its voice something between a hiss and whisper.

I shrug, turning my halberd so that it lies point down. ‘I kill one and there will be thousands more hiding back there somewhere.’

It bobs its head. ‘Yes-yes. Many thousands.’

I can tell that its heart is not in the boast. Standing alone on a windy berm before the Lord-Castellant of the Seven Words was clearly not what it had been expecting of its day.

But therein lies the virtue of recklessness.

Even a skaven war-leader would never expect its enemy to do something as foolish as this.

‘I am Rillik,’ the skaven said. ‘Envoy and word-rat to Master Warlock Ikrit, under-ruler of the Nevermarsh, broacher of the Crystal Labyrinth of Tzeentch, he who penetrated the Hex of Hyish that clouds Tyrion’s white gates and stole into the Kingdom of Naga–’

I interrupt it with a short laugh. ‘If I recite my titles and deeds we will be here until my soldiers tire and go home, rat.’ Anxious laughter ripples through the ranks behind me. ‘You accept my terms?’

‘I–’ Its tail lashes at the undergrowth. ‘Er–’ It fiddles with the white sheet in its paws. ‘Master Warlock Ikrit accepts your challenge, but not the terms. He is uninterested in your stone-warren. He will accept-take your surrender. Alive.’

A vision of myself, caged in warp lightning and screaming, suddenly fills my thoughts. I wonder, for a moment, if I have been given a glimpse of Vikaeus’ prophecy.

I shrug it off. There can be no surrender now.

‘What can he want with me?’

‘He promise-squeak to take…’ Rillik tittered. ‘Pains. To make that clear when you are his prisoner.’ It presents its grubby sheet to me. ‘May I?’

I nod, and Rillik hoists his white rag overhead, waving it towards the bridge. I think I see something glint on the other side.

‘What now?’ I ask.

Rillik is already slinking into the undergrowth. More quickly, I note, than the skaven had emerged in the first place.

A sudden cry goes up from the watchers on the wall and I grip my halberd as though it is Sigmar’s own outstretched hand.

The skaven are coming.

Granite pounds under the clatter of metal, and sunlight turns off the red armour of the vermin. I squint as something colossal crests the bridge.

It is hunched in the manner of a rat, but taller still than I by half again. It is a golem cobbled together from the materials that scavengers might find to hand: metal plates, wooden planks, rattling chains, even stretched hides and furs are evident in its construction. One arm is a multi-barrelled firearm, with belts dribbling corrosive bile. The other ends in a spiked mace the size of my chest. A tail made of thick iron chains drags, like a ship’s anchor, on the stones behind it. It comes with a curiously hesitant stop-start gait, one leg or the other always dragging, but its speed is deceptive. As it draws nearer I realise that this is no sorcerous automaton, but a war machine piloted by a living rat. A square section of its hugely armoured torso section has been slotted with holes for a pilot to see through.

There is no break in the cheering behind me as the construct grinds and belches to a halt before us. Their voices become a chant, beaten to the time of iron ferrules on hard stone.

‘Ham-il-car. Ham-il-car.’

My heart swells. Even against this monstrosity they have no doubt.

‘Under-ruler of the Nevermarsh? He who penetrated the Hex of Hyish?’ I ask, my head tilting back. ‘I expected something bigger.’

‘Master Ikrit is too high-great to fight his own battles, fool-fool.’ Its voice is a hollow shriek, like the whistle of a steam tank. ‘You will see-smell him when you are safely in chains.’ It swings around its ratling gun, the weapon chewing noisily on its belt feeds.

Bellowing a prayer to Sigmar, I unhook the warding lantern from my belt and draw back the shutter. Golden light bursts from the relic and hammers the skaven battle construct with the radiance of Azyr. The pilot hisses and closes its mangy eyes, but its pain is merely a welcome side effect.

The light of Azyr is my shield.

Green-flecked bullets rip from the construct’s spinning gun barrels. Most spray wide, but the sheer volume of fire ensures that some at least find me. Bullets slam into the wall of light, surrounding me in golden ripples of misspent force. The noise is deafening, but I am still yelling, screaming against the pain as dozens of the poisonous lead balls punch through the shield and batter my armour.

Another Lord-Castellant might take this as evidence to the value of his helmet, but not I. With covered head, I am just another Astral Templar; I could be Vandalus Dustking or even Zephacleas bloody Beast-Bane.

But I am not just any Astral Templar.

‘Ham-il-car. Ham-il-car.’

Through it all though, I have breath enough to yell my name.

‘Hamilcar!’

The construct’s gun empties with a whine of empty, spinning tubes. I kick the construct in its torso section, even though my warding aura dims. It is huge, but Sigmar’s Stormcasts are no featherweights. The war machine totters from me, its heavy tail curling and scraping underfoot.

With space enough to swing, I spin my halberd one-handed until it blurs. I pick my moment, stabbing at the vision grille, then pull back, twirling the haft again and striking the cutting edge through the belts of its gun-arm. Unspent bullets spill to the ground like ball bearings and scatter for the precipice. The pilot squeals in outrage. My halberd’s blade spits purple sparks as it parries the skaven’s steam-powered mace. Once, then twice. It is too big simply to block and I do not try, instead knocking it off target with timed strokes. By the third, my arm is ringing. I strike the mace-head with all my strength, hard enough to twist the entire war engine around, only for its massive chain-link tail to keep it balanced.

The backswing crunches into my breastplate. Working against its own momentum robs the blow of power, but there is enough left in its arm to crack the sigmarite and hurl me into the curtain wall.

I test my ribs with a big breath and stumble back along the wall until I am well out of its reach. Nothing is broken, and the restorative power of my lantern is already repairing my bruises.

At the same time, the skaven walker circles around, snickering.

A gap opens up between us.

‘Ham-il-car. Ham-il-car.’

I hear a crack and a fistful of granite explodes from the wall near to where I stand. A greenish curl of powder rises from the far side of the bridge.

I confess to being just a little impressed. Only a genuine marksman can miss by only a foot from upwards of six miles away.

‘One on one or all together,’ the war machine’s pilot cackles. ‘You squeak-say that it concerns you not.’

Even though it hurts my ribs, I have to laugh.

More shells burst in the wall around me. A titter rings from the skaven’s speech pipes. But I will make this work for me. Every Lord-Castellant knows the secret to a good defence.

I hurl myself at the skaven machine with a cry, my toecaps leaving the earth as I leap through the skaven fire, and bring my halberd slamming down onto the construct’s hunched shoulders.

The blow smashes a smoke stack in half, causing it to splutter and cough. I duck under the swinging mace and elbow the construct under the heavily scaffolded armpit joint. It does no damage, but raises a hollow clang from inside the machine, which, judging from the tooth-grinding, claw-scratching and body-writhing sounds coming from inside, discomforts its pilot greatly.

The sniper fire trails off.

A few stray shots continue. Either the sharpshooters possess supreme confidence or they do not care either way if their master’s champion should be hit instead.

I keep close to the war machine, regardless.

The skaven lunges for me, meaning to crush me against the wall with its weight, but I am easier on my feet and slip out of its way. I strike the flat of my halberd into its back as we part ways. A harrowing squeal issues from the machine as brakes are applied and gears shift, only the drag of its tail keeping it from ploughing straight into the wall without me.

I grin.

My halberd hums as it gains speed. The construct swings its useless gun-arm, but I avoid it, stepping behind the mechanical beast. ‘Sigmar, lend me strength!’ I turn my halberd’s path downwards, letting my lantern clatter to the ground as, at the last instant, I take the haft two-handed for maximum power.

God-forged sigmarite shears through steel like a lightning bolt, severing the war machine’s tail from its body at the first and thickest link in the chain.

The skaven squeals in outrage once more as it comes about. It raises its mace and brings it crashing down. I jump back and the skaven’s mace smashes into the ground. Aftershocks run through the stone and shake me off balance as soon as my feet are on the ground. A jab from the construct’s gun-arm is enough to knock me down.

I hear a gasp from the walls as the war machine lifts its mace for the death blow.

It is a ridiculously overconfident move, baring one’s body to an opponent in that way, however finished he may appear. I understand confidence though, and nothing breeds it in a skaven like a winning position. Or an armoured war machine nine feet tall.

I swing around my halberd so the ferrule that reinforces the wooden haft’s base wedges against the construct’s eye grate. With a heave, I punt its intended blow over me and into the fortress wall. Its gun-arm whirls as it finds itself over-committed and tail-less and, slowly, it begins to pitch forwards. Using my halberd again, I give it one final nudge, driving its torso into the wall as I tuck my knees into my chest and roll back from underneath it.

The pilot squeals as the construct tips onto its side and grinds agonisingly down the fortress wall. I plant my boot on its mace arm, pinning it down, and hoist my halberd like a standard for my watching men.

‘Ham-il-car! Ham-il-car!’

I turn to look across the gulf to the far peak, surprised that the snipers’ efforts have not picked up again now there is no danger of accidentally hitting their own. I strain my eyes, waiting for the distinctive cloud that will warn me of the shot before I hear it, but see nothing.

‘Gallant of you, Master Ikrit,’ I mutter under my breath.

The crunch of boots on loose ground turns me round.

The sight of Vikaeus’ Veritant mask is instantly chilling, more so than all the hard looks and icy disdain her flesh could ever convey. Her judgement blade is drawn, both its serrated edge and her pearl-white armour sprayed with blood. I can hear screams from the city behind her, but they are some way off and appear to be contained. The smell of burning is faint on the winds too. Crow squeezes through the open gate beside her. He is carrying something wet in his mouth. Rather than greet me, he sinks onto his belly beside the downed war machine and curls up to gnaw on his bounty. It is a skaven arm.

I lower my weapon.

‘You managed to foil the skaven’s intended plan?’ I ask.

Vikaeus’ mask simply stares, as if incapable of speech.

‘So,’ I answer for her, ‘Hamilcar is no fool after all. With his sweat and valour did he distract the verminous hosts long enough for you and Akturus to find their point of attack. Come, now, you can say it.’

There is a splitting, crunching noise as Crow breaks into the marrow.

Vikaeus drives her still wet blade into its scabbard. ‘Your recklessness will return to haunt you one day, Bear-Eater.’ Her voice resonates from behind her mask. ‘My vision is far from played out.’

Without another word, she turns and walks away.

I frown down at Crow, who is gorging on skaven flesh. An increasingly desperate scratching emanates from the war machine beneath my boot. I close my eyes, hoping that the battering of the seven winds on my face will distract me from how Vikaeus’ words trouble me.

‘Very well,’ I mutter, once I am confident she is gone. ‘You don’t have to say it. I hear it is the hardest word.’

AUCTION OF BLOOD

Josh Reynolds

At the stroke of seven on the arranged evening, Palem Bok found himself wandering the miasma-choked back alleys of Greywater Fastness. A bookseller and a spy, Bok was the epitome of neither. Tall and nondescript, he was all sharp angles and conservative colours. A grey man in a grey world. Despite the dull hues of his garments, however, they were of an expensive cut, tailored to his lean form. Bok was a man with standards, if nothing else.

As the evening wore on, he traversed the tangled rookery with no sign of fear, despite the hostile eyes he felt watching him from darkened doorways and the cracks in boarded-over windows. Greywater Fastness was a hard city, and its people unforgiving of weakness. Bok was not weak. There was death in his heart, and there was nothing stronger than death.

Even so, his pale gaze flickered warily from side to side, watching the shadows for some sign of the person he’d come to meet. His hand rested close to the edges of his frock coat and the slim, multi-chambered flintlock pistol holstered beneath his arm. The pistol was of duardin manufacture, and thus guaranteed to perform its function without incident. Much like Bok, it was a most dependable weapon. He smiled as the thought occurred to him. There were worse things to be than a weapon. And worse masters by far than the one who wielded him. Or, rather, mistresses.

It had its annoyances. For instance, his intent for the evening had been to meet with a certain contact. He wished to arrange the purchase of a rare duardin bead-book, purloined at no small expense from the libraries of the Runemaster of the Hermdar lodge. There were any number of his usual clients who would dearly love to own such a rare volume on the art of fyresteel blending. Instead, he was now wandering this crooked labyrinth of back alleys, waiting for his mistress’ servant to reveal themselves.

Laughter echoed from a side street, where a crowd tossed rotting food into a massive cage. Inside it, a serpentine cockatrice shrieked and slammed against the bars. Its avian skull was hooded in order to protect gawkers from its deadly gaze. The hulking beast’s owner kept up a steady patter, trying to attract punters to come and see it up close. Bok felt a thrill of revulsion at the sight. He felt no sympathy for the creature. It was a foul thing, corrupt and twisted by sour magics into an abomination. He just hoped the cage was sturdy.

Loose metal rattled, somewhere out of sight. Bok paused, a fingerbreadth from drawing his pistol. Head cocked, he listened to the sounds of the city. Greywater Fastness was never silent. Its ironclad walls reverberated with the sounds of industry. The great furnaces roared day and night, and the sound of hammers ringing on metal filled the streets. A thick pall of soot and grime covered everything, blackening the walls of the buildings and obscuring the street. It was at its worst after a rain, and it was almost constantly raining.

Overhead, glowing spores drifted as they always did after a downpour, making strange patterns in the sooty air. Where they touched something solid, they took root and sprouted into shimmering fronds of iridescent greenery. Bok hurried into a covered alleyway, brushing some from his coat before they had a chance to blossom.

He heard muffled voices, echoing strangely through the cramped street. In the dim light of a sputtering oil lantern hanging above a nearby doorway, he caught a glimpse of shambling figures – beggars, seeking shelter, as he was. Night soil wagons creaked somewhere close to hand. The bells on Cathedral Hill tolled the hour, and a flock of crows hurtled skywards from the slum rooftops, croaking raucously, their feathers gleaming with spores.

Out of the smog lurched a beggar woman. She was small and hunched, wizened by hard living. She gazed at him through a veil of ratty hair, and her eyes lit up. She shuffled towards him across the filthy cobbles. ‘Sir, good sir, alms, sir,’ she wheezed. He could see bone gleaming through the pallid fuzz. Patches of leper-moss crawled across her skinny arms and marred her cheeks.

Bok’s nose wrinkled at the stench of her. ‘I have no alms, woman. No comets, no motes, no flinders for such as you.’ He made a show of fumbling at his pockets. Despite his obvious disgust, she did not turn aside.

‘Alms, sir. Alms for the poor.’

‘Leave me in peace, wretch. I said I have no money.’ Bok took a step back, as her stink enveloped him. His skin crawled at the thought of her touch. She caught the edge of his coat. Annoyed, he lowered a hand, and a thin blade slid from a concealed sheath into his waiting palm. One more body on the night soil carts would not be noticed.

‘But you have red hands, brother, and they have performed black deeds,’ the woman mumbled through rotting teeth. Arthritic fingers contorted themselves in a sign known only to a few. Bok relaxed somewhat, sliding the blade back into its sheath before making a similar gesture. This, then, was the person he’d come to this squalid alley to meet.

‘The valley low, and the shadows long,’ he said, completing the code-phrase. ‘Hail and well met, sister. You bring some message from our lady of air and darkness?’ He tried to keep the suspicion he felt out of his tone.

It wasn’t unknown for agents of the Queen of Mysteries to practise their arts upon one another, in an attempt to rise in their mistress’ esteem. Silent, swift wars occasionally broke out, between rival agents and their followers. Bok had taken part in his share of these altercations, though never without good cause. For her part, his mistress seemed unconcerned, even amused, by such internecine conflict.

‘I do, I do, brother. Our queen is much impressed by your handling of that matter with the playwright, some months ago. You rise swiftly in her regard, bookseller. Continue to do so, and there is no limit to what a man of your calibre might achieve.’

‘You may thank the great lady for me, but I am content with my lot. The life of a humble dealer in rare volumes suits me, I find. But I will serve her to the best of my meagre abilities, even so.’ It was a practised speech. At once self-effacing and boastful. The beggarwoman grinned, as if in shared jest.

‘Just so, bookseller. What profits it a man to forget his station, eh?’ She coughed phlegmily and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘We all have our parts to play in the black game.’

Growing impatient, Bok leaned forwards. ‘Get to it. What does she want of me?’

‘What she always wants, bookseller… You are to procure her something. Tonight.’

‘I have other business tonight.’

The beggar woman hissed, rheumy eyes narrowed in almost queenly disdain. She pulled herself erect. ‘You have no business save that which our lady allows you, bookseller. And you would do well to remember that. The charnel grounds are full of those who forgot that her desires superseded their own petty yearnings.’

Bok smiled mirthlessly. ‘I remember. What is it then? Another rare grimoire? A treatise on the architectural styling of Lantean Empire? A book of poetry, perhaps, or the journal of some forgotten explorer?’

‘It is not a book at all, brother. It is something greater by far.’ The beggarwoman clutched at his coat. She leaned close, and he gagged at the smell of her. ‘There is a certain house, near the Old Fen Gate, its shutters marked with the sign of the magpie…’

‘I know it.’ Everyone knew it. Everyone who was anyone, at least. The Magpie’s Nest had played host to illicit dealings of all sorts, since the city’s founding.

‘An auction is to be held there, this very evening, for a select few. You will go and procure for our lady that which she desires.’

‘Am I to guess, then, what that might be?’

The beggarwoman licked her chapped and blistered lips. ‘You will know it when you see it, bookseller. It is quite unlike anything else.’ She fingered the buttons of his coat. ‘Do not fail her, brother. Now give me an alm, sir. Give me an alm, lest someone mistake us for acquaintances.’ She glanced around furtively. ‘Hurry, brother.’

Grudgingly, he fumbled a coin from his coat and pressed it into her filthy hand. ‘Here. Now be off with you, wretch.’ He shoved her, for good measure. She scrambled away into the murk with a shriek he thought not a little overdone. He’d often heard it said that there was a frustrated thespian in every spy.

Bok sighed. An auction. He hated auctions, though he attended them often. At least this one was in the city, and close to hand. But he’d had no time to prepare. Then, that was likely the point. Neferata, Lady of Sorrow, was as cunning as she was powerful. The Queen of Mysteries gave her servants little warning of tasks they might resent, so as to ensure they did not waste time attempting to avoid them. Few tried to do so twice, in any event.

He turned his feet towards the Old Fen Gate. It seemed he would have to procure the bead-book another time. Such was the price one paid to serve the Mortarch of Blood. It was said by some that to serve Neferata was to serve death, and there was no master greater than death.

Bok had lived in death’s shadow since his childhood. He had hunted rats in the alleys of Hammerhal, one more feral orphan among the teeming multitudes. His parents had been soldiers of the Freeguild, he thought, though he did not remember them with any true clarity. It had been another life, and in another realm besides.

From rats, he had graduated to men. Even in the most orderly of cities, there were criminals. And criminals, or at least those of a certain station, often required the assistance of a man of Bok’s skills. He could balance a ledger and slit a throat with equal ease. Since he was a boy, he’d had a gift for sums and words, as well as blades. He had taught himself to read and write in his leaky lean-to, among the rubbish and vermin.

Now, he lived in a modest room above his little shop at the end of a cul-de-sac. Even in a city like Greywater Fastness, there were those who appreciated books. Especially old books, with cracked bindings and yellowing pages, which enterprising booksellers could charge handsomely for.

He still wasn’t certain how he had come to Neferata’s attentions, or why she had chosen to take him into her service. He suspected that it had something to do with his previous life. He had sent many souls shrieking to the lands of the dead. It was not inconceivable that Neferata had heard of him from one of his victims, and saw in him some potential. She had many pawns, some human, some not. Ageless and deathless, Neferata regarded the Mortal Realms as a game board – and men like Bok were her pawns.

All he knew for sure was that he owed much of who he now was to her patronage. She paid well – better than his old criminal masters – and often. And all she asked in return were regular missives, reporting on the activities of certain individuals native to the city, or the acquisition of rare texts and items of minor interest. Sometimes those acquisitions turned bloody, it was true. But such was a bookseller’s lot, and Palem Bok was a very good bookseller. Though there were days when he considered hiring an assistant. Someone to run errands, or commit the odd murder.

Upon leaving the tangled alleys of the rookery, he caught a rattletrap. The steel-rimmed carriage was an uncomfortable-looking vehicle, pulled by a steam-powered automaton wrought crudely in the shape of a horse. As he clambered into the battered conveyance, he held up a coin to the driver. ‘There’s an extra comet in it for you if you get me to the Old Fen Gate before the next tolling of the bells.’ The driver, a retired Freeguild soldier by his look, saluted lazily with the hook that replaced his left hand and gave a gap-toothed grin. He wrenched on the levers that rose up around his bench, and an excess of steam flooded the artificial innards of the mechanical horse. It gave a creaking whinny and clattered forwards, the rattletrap swaying in its wake.

The streets of Greywater Fastness were narrow rivulets of stone and metal, lit by oil lanterns or lightning jars. The latter dangled from iron chains, their flickering radiance washing over buildings, and making the shadows dance. The rattletrap passed through these striations of crackling light, carrying Bok to the city’s southern edge. Stone gave way to baked mud and thatch. The streets became wider, broken up by brick canals and wooden bridges. Turgid waters flowed slowly through these slimy corridors, diverted from the freshwater marshes beyond the walls.

Occasionally, marsh troggoths would haul themselves out of the canals, their flabby, scaly flesh encrusted with barnacles of ossified filth. The lumbering beasts would rampage through the slums, attacking anyone foolish enough not to seek shelter. They were almost always driven back by the soldiers of the Freeguild, and their bodies added to the great furnaces as fuel.

The marshes were smaller now than they had been when Bok first came to the city, and the walls farther out. Every season, the city grew and the wilderness shrank. Industry was ever the shield of civilisation, as an engineer of Bok’s acquaintance put it. He gave little thought to such things himself, and rarely left the inner city if he could help it. Bok was a man of soot and solid streets. The wilds of Ghyran held little to interest him.

‘Here we are then, sir,’ the driver grunted. There was a harsh burr to his voice, marking him as an Azyrite. Bok had no issue with Azyrites, though he knew those who did. What realm a man was born in mattered less to Bok than whether he had coin to spend. Bok paid him, and climbed awkwardly to the street.

The Old Fen Gate rose tall and solid over one of the largest and oldest of the canals. It had been the first gate, when the city was new and the marshes wild. The walls of the city had bypassed the towering structure, leaving it to become the de facto centre of a neighbourhood. There were shops now, instead of barracks, and the sides of the canal were thick with clustered clapboard buildings.

The Magpie’s Nest was one of those that crouched on the edge of the water. It bent over at an unsightly angle, faded bird-shapes daubed on its broken shutters. It looked as if one tremor would send all three stories sliding full into the canal. But looks could be deceiving. The building was sturdier than most, its foundations deep and its walls cleverly designed to fool the eyes of the uninvited.

He felt eyes on him as he made his way to the rear entrance, as was the tradition. The front door was for the Freeguild, or agents of the city’s rulers. The door overlooking the canal was for those who’d come to conduct business. Entrance was normally by invitation only, though occasionally there were open auctions, for the less notable.

He had attended one of these open auctions before, but had left empty-handed. His resources, while substantial, were not infinite, and the bidding had been fierce. Then, given that it had been a rare copy of Kelaf’s banned symphony, The Mirror of Onyx, perhaps not surprising. He wasn’t sure what was required of one to receive an invitation. He hoped it wouldn’t be an issue.

He knocked on the door, once and politely. It was always best to be polite, in these circumstances. It cut down on bloodshed. He heard the heavy rattle of a bar being withdrawn, and a moment later the door swung inwards. A slim figure was waiting for him. An aelf, he realised, taking in fine-boned features too perfect to belong to a human. Eyes like chips of obsidian met his own. She – and it was a she, though it was often hard to tell – was clad in loose robes of violet and a hauberk of black, jagged mail. A thick mane of white hair was swept back from her narrow face by a tiara of dark iron, and she had a curved falchion sheathed at her waist.

The aelf looked him up and down, an unpleasant smile crawling across her pale features. ‘Invitation?’ she purred, her fingers rubbing slowly against the pommel of her blade.

‘I don’t have one, I’m afraid.’

‘That is a shame. But the canal is close, and it will be quick.’ Her fingers tightened about the hilt and she made to draw her blade. Bok stepped back, ready to produce the blade hidden in his sleeve, though he disliked his chances. He’d fought aelves before. The experience had been unpleasant.

‘Surely that I am here speaks to my character.’

‘Not favourably,’ she said, taking a quick step towards him.

Bok hesitated. Instinct said flee. But she hadn’t drawn her blade yet. Maybe she was curious. Or bored. It must be dull, guarding a door. ‘I’ve come for the auction.’

‘No invitation, no auction.’ She spoke serenely.

‘How much to garner an invitation, then?’

‘That depends entirely on who you represent, my friend.’ The voice was a man’s. The aelf turned, bowed and stepped back, though her eyes never left Bok. The newcomer took her place at the door. He was a small man. Fussy looking, but bedraggled. Like a scribe gone ever so slightly to seed. True to that image, he held an armful of scrolls, and his hands and the cuffs of his robes were stained with ink. ‘Well?’ he pressed, adjusting the battered pince-nez he wore. ‘On whose behalf do you darken our doorway, sir?’

‘A lady of some substance.’

‘There are many ladies in Greywater Fastness. Shayl here, for instance.’ The little man gestured to the aelf. ‘I require a name.’ The way he said it made Bok pause. It was as if the little man were trying to impart something.

‘There we must part ways, sir. Her name is not mine to reveal.’

The little man shrugged and glanced at the aelf. She smiled and reached again for her blade. Bok, thinking quickly, said, ‘Shadows and dust, sir.’ Attempting the code phrase was a gamble, but he had little to lose.

The little man looked at him. He adjusted his pince-nez. ‘Just and unjust alike,’ he said, after a moment. ‘You are one of hers, then.’

‘I have that honour.’ Bok relaxed slightly. He had guessed right. Neferata’s influence stretched wide through the low places. All those who served her, even in the most minor capacity, recognised the code phrases of her agents. It was obvious to him now that she would have someone in the house, to alert her to the presence of certain items.

‘That is a word for it, certainly. Very well. Shayl, he may enter.’

The aelf frowned, but made no attempt to argue. She ignored Bok as he stepped past her and entered the house. The entryway was a small, rounded chamber. A single corridor, out of sight of the door, extended deeper into the house. ‘The auction is soon to begin. Come this way, Master…?’

‘Bok. Palem Bok.’ Bok followed the little man down the hall. Doorways lined its length, each draped with a thick, black curtain. Each curtain had sigils of warding and other, less recognisable magical symbols, woven into its folds. There would be illicit dealings going on in each of the rooms. Thieves laying plans, murderers plotting… The Magpie’s Nest was a house of rogues.

The little man glanced at him. ‘The bookseller?’

‘You know me?’

‘Of you. I am Pell. You are welcome here, sir. I trust you have come better prepared than your last visit. You were quite upset to lose that Kelaf symphony, I recall.’

‘I am here on another’s behalf, this time.’ In truth, Bok had no idea how much Neferata expected him to pay for whatever it was she desired, or whether she was even planning to compensate him. Such were the perils of a whimsical mistress. Perhaps she expected him to simply steal whatever it was.

‘Yes, I presumed so.’

‘Last time I was here, you had someone friendlier on guard duty.’

‘Shayl has her talents. Friendliness is not one of them.’ Pell smiled. ‘She serves well enough to keep things civil, among our patrons.’

Bok grunted noncommittally. Pell stopped before one of the doorways. ‘You will notice that you have not been disarmed. We expect all patrons to show a certain level of decorum in repayment for our hospitality.’

‘I remember.’

‘Good. Through here, please.’ Pell twitched the curtain aside, and Bok duly entered. The room beyond was not large. It was illuminated by half a dozen lanterns, scattered about and hanging from iron stanchions. The room itself was a plain square of wood and stone, barren save for several rows of hard benches, and a flat stage set at one end.

On the stage was a long table, and upon it were various objects of interest: a loose pile of thin volumes, obviously a set of some sort; a gruesome, bull-shaped icon that bore all the hallmarks of duardin craftsmanship; a bell jar, containing a night-blooming flower with amethyst petals; a small casket with brass hinges and a bear stamped on the lock; and a gilded skull with silver teeth.

But the most interesting of the lot was a curious whip-like weapon, consisting of eight jagged metal bars, joined together by thin rings, so as to form a chain of sorts. It had a handle made from a carved femur at one end, and a barbed dart at the other. The chain was coiled loosely, and rested in a circle of what appeared to be dust or salt. Protective sigils had been chalked into the surface of the table around it, and the air above them shimmered with an oily quality.

Something about the weapon unsettled him. There was a malign potency to it. It reminded him of a bog-viper, readying itself to strike. And even as the thought occurred to him, he knew that it was what he had been sent here to acquire. Neferata wanted it, whatever it was. And that meant he had little choice but to acquire it.

Bok took a seat, ignoring the glares of the other attendees. The benches were crowded. He surreptitiously studied the competition. Many of them were like him – intermediaries, acting on behalf of those too fearful or too well known to attend the auction in person. Others were more interesting.

One, sitting towards the front, was clearly a representative of the Collegiate Arcane, to judge by his ornate robes of white and gold, and the supercilious expression on his overfed features. He murmured softly to a small, dragon-like homunculus perched on his shoulder.

Another of the attendees was shrouded in all-concealing robes and a hood, with a strange, segmented mask hiding their face. The facets of the mask were marked with what might have been duardin runes, though not ones Bok recognised. The runes glowed dimly, and faint contrails of what might have been smoke or steam rose from them.

A woman dressed in crimson-dyed furs and leathers sat towards the back, her scarified features twisted in a frown. Her head had been shaved, save for a single braid, bound with brass wire. A savage, from the wilds of Ghur, perhaps, given the ritualistic nature of her scarring. She caught his glance and smiled widely, as if in invitation. Her teeth were filed. Bok looked hurriedly away.

Any further study of the crowd was interrupted by the arrival of the auctioneer. A thin man, fox-lean and ginger-haired. Pell was with him, and took a seat near the stage. The scribe opened a heavy ledger on his lap and produced a writing quill from somewhere about his person. He dabbed it into a cup of ink hanging from around his neck, and began to write. The auctioneer took his place on stage, hands clasped behind his back.

‘Greetings, gentles all. Welcome, and be at ease. My name is Ranaldsson, and I will be master of these ceremonies. Our first lot is the collected Revelations of Necoho, or the Light of Doubt, a fundamental text for an obscure sect of antitheists. Opening bid is one hundred comets, or the equivalent.’

Once begun, the auction progressed swiftly. One by one, the items were secured by eager bidders, and the losers were left to grumble and scowl. The stranger in the segmented mask claimed the grotesque, bull-shaped icon with a sizeable bid of two thousand comets. The gilded skull, revealed to be something called the Gelt Aurical, was decisively won by the Collegiate Arcanum representative, and a fat merchant from Hammerhal walked away with the amethyst blossom, after a winning bid of a hundred shards of shadeglass.

A pair of duardin almost came to blows over the casket, which proved to contain a single bottle of wine of ancient vintage. From the cut of their clothes and their harsh accents, Bok thought they might have been guilders, fresh from the Kharadron sky-ports.

Finally, the item he’d been waiting for came up for bid. Ranaldsson seemed hesitant as he turned to the weapon. ‘And our last item. A weapon of curious design, it has proven to be… unique, as were the circumstances of its… ah… its acquisition.’ The auctioneer hurriedly looked away from the weapon. ‘Through the diligent efforts of Master Pell and others of this house’s staff, we have confirmed that this is, in fact, quite possibly Charu, the Soul-Lash – one of the infamous Eight Lamentations.’

A stunned murmur swept through the crowd. Bok stiffened. Neferata’s desire for the weapon made sense, now. He’d heard the stories. Everyone in his profession had. Eight weapons, forged by the servants of the Blood God, Khorne, in the age before the storm of Chaos had washed over the mortal realms. The Eight Lamentations had been scattered and lost, appearing occasionally to wreak havoc before vanishing once more. Rumour had it that they had begun to resurface of late, and Neferata had directed her agents to keep their eyes and ears open for any hint of the weapons.

Bok had never thought to find one here, practically in his lap. From behind him, he heard the woman in red murmur, ‘From fire, came heat. From heat, shape. And shape split into eight. And the eight became as death.’

Ranaldsson gestured for quiet, as the crowd’s murmuring threatened to boil over. ‘Please, gentles, please. Rest assured, we are certain of the item’s provenance. All effort has been made to keep it contained safely. Though I hasten to add that we are not responsible for anything that may occur once it leaves these premises.’ He gave a brittle smile. ‘Opening bid is three thousand comets, or the equivalent.’

Bok grunted in consternation. A hefty sum, and one he couldn’t go far beyond without emptying his coffers. It would be worth it, though, considering the rewards Neferata might bestow upon him for delivering such a prize to her.

But before he could make a bid, the woman in red called out, ‘There will be no bids. The item is not for sale.’ She stood, and a hostile muttering swept the benches. At her gesture, several other members of the crowd stood as well.

They all wore shades of red, Bok saw, though the garments of some were of a more expensive cut than others. Their faces were similarly scarred, some in less noticeable ways. But for all the barbarity of her appearance, it was clear the woman was in charge. She stepped into the aisle between the benches and strode towards the stage.

Ranaldsson cleared his throat. ‘I beg your pardon, milady, but–’

‘I am Kesh, and I do not give it. This weapon is not yours to sell, little man. It belongs to a god, and we have come to take it back, in the name of he who strides the red skies, wolf-fanged and mighty.’ She swept back her furs, revealing a brass-banded belt, and a pair of crude hand-axes hanging from it. The others threw off their cloaks or tore open coats to reveal similar axes, of varying craftsmanship.

‘You will give it to us,’ Kesh continued, ‘or I will take your skull.’ She unhooked an axe and pointed it at him. ‘Khorne demands it, and you will not gainsay him.’

Ranaldsson spluttered. Bok had no doubt that the man had been threatened before, but perhaps never so bluntly. Others might have tried to win the bidding first, before threatening murder. But the servants of the Blood God were not known for their subtlety.

Pell chose that moment to lunge for a bell-pull hanging beside the doorway, but a thrown axe dashed his brains across the wall. As the scribe crumpled, Bok drew his pistol and fired. One of the cultists was punched off his feet, a red hole between his bulging eyes. With the echoes of the shot hanging on the air, the room exploded into violence. He saw the stranger in the segmented mask snatch a blood-cultist from his feet, and hurl him across the room in a display of inhuman strength.

A hurled axe sank deep into the bench behind Bok, narrowly missing him. He spun, but held his fire. Instead he cracked the blood-cultist across the skull, dropping her to the floor. The duardin pistol only had five shots. Bok was determined to waste none of them.

People were shoving and screaming, trying to escape the room. The blood-mad killers hacked and hewed at the crowd with furious intensity. Some among the patrons resisted, in their own fashion. The two Kharadron had drawn their cutlasses and fought back to back, their earlier argument forgotten. The Collegiate Arcane representative spoke a word of power, and turned a cultist into a living torch. The warrior screamed and fell across the benches, setting them alight. Somewhere, an alarm bell had begun to ring.

In the confusion, Kesh had reached the stage. Bok tried to take aim at the woman, but a cultist rose up before him, chanting the eighty-eight names of the Blood God as he chopped wildly at the panicking crowd. Bok shot him, but the cultist didn’t fall. His axe slashed down, nearly taking Bok’s arm off. A second shot punched his head back and dropped him to the floor. Desperate now, Bok forced his way through the crowd, determined to prevent Kesh from claiming the weapon.

As he reached the stage, he saw Ranaldsson leap to the floor with a panicked yell, clutching a bloody arm. He fled, screaming for help. Kesh laughed and reached for the chain-whip, a dripping axe clutched in her other hand. ‘I think not,’ Bok said. Kesh turned, teeth bared, axe raised. He fired his pistol as the axe left her hand.

She clapped a hand to her leg and shrieked. The axe pinned his coat sleeve to the table, and knocked him off balance. The pistol clattered from his hand. He tore himself loose from the table as Kesh caught up her prize.

There was a crack, like stone splitting, as her fingers wrapped about the bone haft of the weapon. The links of the chain clattered, as if in welcome, and a shudder ran through it, and her. Her eyes flashed with red lightning, and as she turned, he saw that every scar on her face had opened anew and was bleeding.

‘The Soul-Lash is mine, weakling,’ she snarled, whirling the chain-whip about her. Bok threw himself aside, as the barbed tip snapped out with a silky hiss. It tore through the throat of an unfortunate man near the stage. There was a sound like tearing cloth, and a shimmer of greenish energy erupted from the dying man. It spun around the barb, and was almost instantly drawn into the weapon.

Kesh hissed in pleasure and leapt to the floor, whirling the chain-whip up and about her in a growing frenzy. It tore through the crowd and her followers alike. More surges of light were torn away from falling bodies – green, red, ochre, blue – and drawn into the links of the weapon. ‘Yes, it is as the blood-seers claimed – Charu drinks the spirits of the fallen. I feel their strength within me.’ She laughed wildly. ‘Blood and skulls for my lord Khorne!’

The room was rapidly filling with smoke. The lanterns had been knocked over in the chaos, spilling burning oil everywhere, and the sorcerous fire started by the wizard leapt from bench to bench. There was a scrum at the doorway, as people tried to force their way out. Those left inside were either trying to stay out of Kesh’s way, or brawling with her followers.

Kesh’s form was limned with a sickly radiance. The chain-whip moved like a thing alive, rather than a weapon. Perhaps it was hungry, after its captivity. Bok pushed the unsettling thought aside as he found his pistol and scooped it up. He tried to line up a shot while she was distracted, but too late.

The chain-whip bent about her of its own volition and darted towards him. The barb tore flinders from the stage and forced him back a step. Kesh turned before he could recover, and the whip arrowed towards him again. He twisted aside, but not quickly enough. One of the metal bars caught him in the ribs and smashed him from the edge of the stage.

Pain flared through him as he hit the floor, and he felt as if something in him had torn loose. But luckily, the barb had missed him and his soul remained his own. He heard the crackle of magics and saw the Collegiate Arcane representative fling ethereal lightning towards Kesh. She snarled and cracked the whip. The spell tore in two, and ragged motes of light danced across the air. Unhindered, the barbed tip caught the wizard in the chest and tore his soul screaming from him. The backlash of sundered magics howled through the chamber, overturning benches and smashing bodies against walls.

Bok lay still, eyes closed against the glare. When he opened them, the crowd was gone. Most had fled, but the rest had not managed to escape. And Kesh was nowhere in sight, though he could hear the clash of weapons somewhere out in the corridor. For a moment, he considered letting that be the end of it. He could slip out, with no one the wiser. But Neferata would know. And that thought was more frightening than any mystical soul-eater.

Wearily, he hauled himself to his feet and stumbled out into the hall, after retrieving his pistol. Smoke filled the space. The fire had spread. The corridor was littered with bodies. Some had been trampled, others bore bloody wounds. The unseen alarm bells were still ringing, and he heard the thump of running feet somewhere above him. He staggered down the hall, clutching his side.

Kesh had carved herself a path to the street. The marks of the chain-whip were evident on the walls and floor, as well as on many of the bodies. When he reached the entry hall, he saw that the heavy door had been smashed off its hinges. There was no sign of the aelf. From outside, he could hear the rattle of steel and the stamp of feet.

He reached the door and stopped. Outside, the aelf, Shayl, and Kesh spun and fought with a speed that defied description. The aelf moved with all the quicksilver grace of her kind, but Kesh matched her speed, driven to inhuman extremes by the power of the Soul-Lash. Shayl’s blade deflected the chain-whip as it curled around her, sending the barb spinning away. Kesh parried the aelf’s counter-stroke with her remaining axe. The two women stamped and whirled back and forth along the edge of the canal. The ragged remnants of stolen souls clung to Kesh like a smoky shroud, and her laughter boomed out over the waters as she fought.

Bok leaned against the doorframe, wheezing. His side ached where the chain had crunched against his ribs. Kesh’s three surviving followers hadn’t noticed him yet, enraptured as they were by the duel. He extended his pistol. One shot left. He would need to make it count. Time stretched unbearably. Smoke from the fire billowed past him, filling the street.

Then, it happened – Shayl lunged, but Kesh smashed her blow aside throwing her off balance. The barb of the chain-whip hissed down, smashing her sword from her hand and throwing her to the ground. Kesh gave a shout and swung the Soul-Lash up, ready to add the aelf’s soul to her collection.

Bok fired.

Kesh stiffened. The side of her head was a red ruin. She turned, wobbling on her feet, her remaining eye fixed on Bok as her warriors turned. Kesh took an unsteady step towards him. The Soul-Lash snapped and twisted like an angry viper. Her mouth worked, but no words came out. She made as if to raise the chain-whip, but instead pitched forwards with a disgruntled sigh and lay still.

Bok swung his pistol towards the remaining cultists. ‘Stay back, or I’ll fire.’ The blood-cultists snarled as one and started towards him, axes raised. He tossed the empty pistol into the face of the closest, and drove a kick into the midsection of another. An axe bit the air dangerously close to his head, and he turned, punching its wielder. The haft of a weapon caught him in the side of the face and he staggered, the street spinning.

A second blow knocked him from his feet. He covered his head and rolled away. He heard a scream and glanced up. Shayl stood behind one of the cultists, her sword embedded in his back. She ripped it free and twisted, opening the jugular of a second. The third roared and leapt at her, axe raised. Bok snatched up a fallen axe and surged to his feet, catching the cultist in the abdomen. The man folded over with a gurgle and Bok released the axe, letting the dying man slump. Shayl looked at him, eyebrow raised. ‘I had him,’ she said.

Bok shrugged. ‘You’re welcome to the credit.’

She frowned and studied him. ‘You fight well. For a human. I am sorry we did not get to match blades earlier.’

‘I’m not,’ he said. She laughed.

‘No. It would have been a shame to kill you.’

Iron grated against the street. An ugly moan filled the air. Shayl turned, and past her, Bok saw Kesh struggling to her feet. Blood and brain matter dripped down the side of her face as her good eye fixed on them. Bok stared. ‘A bullet to the head usually does the trick.’

Before Shayl could reply, the barbed head of the Soul-Lash rose up over Kesh’s back like a scorpion’s stinger. The links clicked like laughter as the woman took a step towards them, and he realised suddenly that Kesh was no longer in charge.

Whatever fell power lurked within the weapon, it had obviously decided that it wasn’t finished with them yet. With an inhuman screech, Kesh jerked forwards, slashing at them with the chain-whip. Bok lurched aside and felt the air part before his face as the chain slashed down. Shayl attacked, driving her blade into Kesh’s side. The woman ignored the blow and shoved the aelf aside.

‘She’s already dead,’ Bok shouted.

‘Then how do we kill her?’ the aelf demanded, ducking beneath the arc of the chain-whip. She scrambled backwards.

Bok frowned, at a loss. Kesh laughed – there was nothing human in the sound. Broken spirits swirled about her, bound to the monstrous weapon. They moaned in what might have been pain, and the killing sigils hammered into the iron bars of the chain flared with unnatural heat. Kesh’s wrist bulged oddly as she slashed the Soul-Lash out again, carving divots from the street.

‘Her hand,’ Bok snarled. Shayl looked at him, eyes narrowed. Bok flung his arm to the side. A twist of the wrist and the weight of his concealed blade slid into his waiting hand. A moment later, the blade was flying through the air. It sank into Kesh’s remaining eye with a wet, hollow sound. She staggered, blind. ‘Now,’ he cried.

Thankfully, the aelf was quick on the uptake. Her blade chopped through Kesh’s wrist. The Soul-Lash, and Kesh’s hand, clattered to the ground with a petulant rasp of iron links. As soon as the weapon hit the ground, Kesh toppled backwards with a sigh.

Bok released a shaky breath. He approached the body carefully. But she seemed to have surrendered to the inevitable at last. He pried his blade free and wiped it clean on her ragged furs, before tearing them from her body. He nudged the chain-whip into the furs with his foot and wrapped it up. He could hear its links rasping in frustration.

‘What an awful thing you are,’ he said, as he tied the edges of the furs together. ‘The Queen of Mysteries is welcome to you, and good riddance.’

‘Is she dead?’ the aelf asked, as he lifted the bundle and slung it over his shoulder. She held a hand pressed to her gashed arm, but was otherwise unharmed.

‘For the moment.’ He looked up. The Magpie’s Nest was completely aflame now. It had burned before, and he had no doubt it would be rebuilt, in time. He looked at Shayl. ‘You appear to be out of a job.’

She shrugged. ‘It was boring.’

Bok hesitated. Then, he smiled.

‘Have you ever considered a career in the book trade?’

PANTHEON

Guy Haley

There was a lantern in the skies over Azyr – shining Sigendil, the High Star of Azyr, beacon of Sigmaron. Surrounding its body was a mechanism of great art, a thing of sliding spheres pierced with fretwork. With the shifting of the immense clockwork Sigendil twinkled, and shone the brightest of all the stars in the heavens of the Celestial Realm.

The inhabitants of Azyr loved it well. Sailors charted safe courses across stormy seas by its light. Mothers hushed crying children and pointed, saying, ‘There is the holy light of our God-King, see how he watches over you as you sleep.’ Merchants swore oaths by it and laws were ratified by its light, so constant it was, for Sigendil never moved from its appointed place in the sky as other stars did. In an age of awful wonder, the matchless light of Sigendil was a source of certainty.

But though it was itself invarying, Sigendil had witnessed change, even in Azyr.

Far to the north towered Mount Celestian, Azyr’s greatest peak. Only once in history had the mountain been assailed, when Sigmar’s great hammer Ghal Maraz smashed its peak away, leaving a lofty plateau dominated by a lake of shining blue. Upon its shores he built a city whose scale and glory outshone even Azyrheim, for it was made to be the abode of gods, not mortals. The divine survivors of the World-That-Was gathered under Sigmar’s banner on Celestian, to rule the Eight Mortal Realms.

There was a castle of bones so huge one would think them carved fancily, though any who touched them would find them dry and osseous. Another dwelling was a wooden stockade, much splintered and strewn about with more bones, these gnawed upon. To the east were twin, squat fortresses, one of iron and one of frozen fire. To the west was a trio of slender towers whose forms, though similar, reflected the differing temperaments of their builders. In a vale of scented woods where the waters of Lake Celestian tumbled to the lands below, grew an oak of inconceivable size.

At the centre of the city, temples gathered upon a vast silver acropolis. From their midst a tower of blue light pierced Azyr’s busy skies. Atop it was situated the Court of the Gods, a colonnaded space from whose vantage all the Mortal Realms could be seen. Thrones fit for titans ringed it – bone for Nagash, white marble for Tyrion, silver for Teclis, dark stone for Malerion, fire-hued amber for Grimnir and rustless steel for his brother, Grungni. Alarielle’s was of pale heartwood rooted in the stone, while Sigmar’s own gleamed golden. The thrones looked inward to the legendary Mirror of Bayla, a gleaming sheet of silver four yards across.

Together, mountain, city and court were known as the Highheim, the parliament of the gods in more peaceful ages.

No longer. The court had stood deserted for aeons.

The Ages of Myth had passed thousands of years ago. Mortals had forgotten the Highheim. Silence lay upon the city as thickly as the spent stardust that drifted in its thoroughfares.

That day, life returned awhile. A lone figure trod the court. Noble of aspect and mightier than the greatest mortal, he was dwarfed by the buildings, and so his own stature was uncertain. He looked like the man he had been, ages gone in a different world. But god he was – Sigmar, the architect and lord of the city, and uniter of the gods.

Sigmar stood between the columns. Overhead the spectacular heavens of Azyr turned; to the south blazed matchless Sigendil, almost but not quite obscuring the husk of the World-That-Was behind it. Scented wind teased out Sigmar’s long golden hair and stirred his cloak.

He waited impatiently. Though a god, he had a man’s humours still. His patience had been exhausted by the long vigil of the Age of Chaos. Now his war was in motion, Sigmar had ceased to plan. He wanted to act.

Yet he must wait.

Night did its complex dance, the wheeling stars a backcloth to the motions of zodiacal beasts and divine mechanisms that sailed the lower heavens. Dawn arrived to find Sigmar deep in thought, head bent over the Mirror of Bayla. Would she come? He did not truly know. Their friendship had passed with the elder days.

The first rays of the sun struck the white pediment of the colonnade, washing marble orange. Sigmar’s head rose. Sensing magic, he stood.

A glow took hold around the throne of Alarielle. The ancient wood creaked and groaned. It emitted a screeching crack, so that Sigmar thought it might explode, but it shuddered, and from its tall back fresh shoots sprouted, growing unnaturally fast, leaves budding from them as they unfurled and reached skyward. The throne’s roots flexed, cracking the paving, the slow might of trees quickened by divine power.

There was a wink of light, then another, and another still, until a cloud of golden motes danced around like fireflies. The swarm thickened and coalesced, becoming the form of a tall, proud woman. The scent of rising sap and luxuriant flowers wafted over the God-King. The lights solidified, until the features of Alarielle could be clearly discerned. Light faded. The throne put out a crown of fragrant blossom, framing the goddess’ broad wings of leaf and wood in white flowers.

Alarielle wore a crescent helm-crown, and carried a sinuous glaive. Her pale green skin was like that of a beautiful mortal’s, save her right hand, which was of strong, clawed branches.

Sigmar broke into a smile. ‘Alarielle, the Lady of Life. You came.’

Alarielle walked towards him, the motes of magic that made her image breaking apart a little as she moved. Her presence made the mirror shine. ‘I can spare you this projection, Sigmar of the tribes of men, for a short while. Speak and tell me why you called me back to this place.’

‘I thank you for coming. I appreciate the effort you have put forth.’

‘You do right in thanking me.’ Where she trod, delicate flowers sprang from the cracks in the paving. ‘The days when you might summon me are no more, prince.’ Her pupilless green eyes flashed in challenge.

Sigmar bowed. ‘I would not dream of summoning you. I invited, you responded. It is so good to see you again.’

A small smile curved Alarielle’s lips. ‘So the mighty Sigmar has learned humility. I had thought to find you more arrogant than ever. Your armies march across all the Mortal Realms. To unleash war on the four lords of Chaos alone is not the act of a humble man. Your rashness almost ended me, you realise.’

‘For that, my lady, you have my eternal apologies.’

She walked past him, trailing the smell of growth and new life, and looked out over the Highheim’s deserted ways. ‘No matter. Your actions, though impetuous, led to my rebirth and reinvigoration. You reawakened me. I spent too long brooding on defeat. If you had not caused my death, I would have been destroyed.’ She swept her gaze across the empty city. ‘So much beauty here, but it is sterile, bereft of life and purpose. It saddens me,’ she said. She looked at him. ‘I believed in your vision once, but it failed. If you have come to ask me to rejoin you here, to reform the pantheon of old, I will not.’

‘I did not ask you here to reform our old Order,’ he said. ‘Perhaps one day, but not now.’

‘Perhaps then I will be interested, when a new season comes upon me,’ she shrugged. ‘Perhaps not.’ She sighed, the air she exhaled dancing with colourful insects. ‘If you ask for alliance, you already have it. My warriors fight alongside yours. Any reluctance the wargroves felt towards your warriors of lightning is fading. War is joined on all fronts.’

‘I thank you for that also,’ he said, ‘and my Stormcast Eternals will aid the people of the forests wherever they may be found. But asking for alliance is also not my intent.’

‘Then what do you want from me?’ she asked, curious.

‘Something more subtle than blades,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ He reached to take her hand. His fingers passed through the glowing lights making up her form, but she followed when he walked to the flat silver of the Mirror of Bayla.

‘The gift of the Mage Bayla to the pantheon of old,’ he said.

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘Its use allows the viewer to see whither he will, be it in any realm.’

‘That is so,’ he said. He passed a hand over the metal. ‘It is into the past that we shall look, into another time and place. We will witness the quest of Sanasay Bayla himself.’

‘Are we to see the forging of this artefact?’ she asked.

Sigmar smiled. ‘We shall look back further than that, to the time he was a sage and a seeker in Andamar, at the far edges of Ghyran.’

‘A seeker after what?’ asked Alarielle. Her concern was rarely with thinking creatures of flesh. Her domain was of plants and growing things, and the wild spaces of the worlds. She knew little more of Bayla than she did of other short-lived fleshlings.

The mirror filled with swirling cloud. Lights flashed in the vapour, steadying until an image could be seen: a handsome man with walnut-brown skin and a ready smile. Intelligence flashed in his eyes, and a hunger.

‘He sought what all mortals seek,’ Sigmar said. ‘Knowledge.’

The image clarified, and the two gods looked back far into the past, to a time before the coming of Chaos.

There came a day when the Mage Sanasay Bayla had learned all he could from the great minds of his era. After long study he was acclaimed as the finest thinker of his generation, and the most powerful wizard in all of Ghyran. His family rejoiced in his achievements, but for him it was not enough. Sanasay Bayla lacked purpose, and it troubled him.

He lay in bed, staring through the glassless windows at dancing green auroras over the south. In Andamar, Ghyran’s life ran even into the sky.

Bayla exhaled loudly, waking his wife.

‘What are you sighing about there, Sanasay?’ she said sleepily.

‘I do not mean to wake you,’ he said.

‘You did.’ She smiled and rested her hand on his chest. ‘What troubles you, my love?’

He was silent, and so his wife poked him.

‘You lay hands on the greatest mage in Andamar, if not all of Ghyran?’ he asked in mock outrage.

She laughed, a sound that meant the most to him in all the world. ‘Tell me. If the greatest mage in Andamar, if not all of Ghyran, cannot confide in his wife, then he is a poor man, though a great wizard.’

Bayla frowned and laced his fingers behind his head. ‘I have unlocked many of the mysteries of the world,’ he said. ‘I have mastered five of the eight schools of pure magic. I understand the rest well enough, and know sufficient of the darker arts to leave them alone. Every question I ask, I find the answer to. I am bored, my wife. I must set myself a challenge that will test me. I need a purpose. I need to know why I do what I do, and to what end I should put my great knowledge.’

‘You could try getting up early every day, organising the household, seeing the children are cared for and that our finances do not collapse while you are riddling with fell beings,’ she said. ‘There is purpose there.’

He harrumphed.

‘I am teasing you, my love.’ She yawned.

‘I am without goal or cause. I must find out what it is I want,’ he said. ‘Then I shall be satisfied.’

‘What of the Realms’ End? You have never been there. It is said all knowledge can be learned where the realms cease to be.’

‘A myth,’ he said. ‘I determined long ago that it does not exist. The Realms are vast, perhaps infinite. I have travelled far, but never seen it. Every text I read suggests it is only a story.’

‘Then be content with what you have, my darling.’

‘Although I have much, the concern dogs me that there is more, if I but knew what to look for,’ he said worriedly. ‘I risk missing my greatest achievement.’

‘Surely the gods could help,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you ask them?’

She fell asleep. Sanasay Bayla could not. A new idea had come to him complete, and he set about planning its execution.

His wife probably meant for him to go to the temples, and consult with the priests there. But Sanasay was not like other men.

In Andamar’s Temple of Teclis the Wise, there was a tower of marble so slender only one person could climb the winding stair. As the stair neared the peak, it grew so narrow that the climber must proceed sideways. Finally, it opened via a thin hole onto a platform big enough for a single person to sit. On every side was a dizzying drop. The tiniest slip would condemn a man to a long fall and a swift death. Sanasay could have cast a spell upon himself, or used one of his marvellous devices, or conjured a great beast to fly to the top of the tower, but the gods dislike those that cheat.

He crept onto the pinnacle. Wind tugged at him as he unwrapped his mat and laid it on the moist stone, careful not to drop the sacred objects rolled within. When they were laid out in the proper manner, he sat cross-legged in the middle of the pinnacle. He poured a single drop of mona nectar into a silver cup, whispering the necessary incantations, and drank it back. The bitter liquid made his tongue burn, but the sensation quickly passed, and his mind buzzed as it moved to a different plane.

Sanasay Bayla slipped into a deep trance.

When he opened his eyes, he was walking upon clouds in a world with five suns. A nearer radiance turned the clouds to gold, forcing his eyes into slits. When he opened them, there was a tall figure not far ahead, made from purest light. His features were similar to man but he was not of his race. His garb was outlandish.

‘Great Teclis!’ called Bayla, and fell to his knees on the clouds.

‘Sanasay Bayla,’ said Teclis. ‘The quester after knowledge. You are brave to seek out the gods. I and my brother have watched you with much interest.’

‘Great Teclis,’ said Bayla, ‘who is the god of wisdom and arcane secrets. I beseech you, in all my–’

‘Hush now, Bayla,’ said Teclis in amusement. ‘I know why you look for me. You wish to know if Realms’ End is real, and how you might get there if it is.’

Bayla was not surprised the god could see into his thoughts. Teclis was the greatest wielder of magic in all the realms.

‘You have hunted for this place before, but gave up,’ said Teclis.

‘I convinced myself it did not exist. Foolishly, perhaps.’

‘I admire your dedication to your art, Sanasay Bayla,’ said the god. ‘I have known only a handful of your species able to learn so much of the ways of magic. But let it be known to you – too much knowledge is dangerous.’

‘You warn the forewarned,’ said Sanasay humbly.

‘I will tell you, for your motives are pure and your achievements many. Realms’ End exists.’

Bayla felt an uplifting in his heart. ‘How can I go there?’

‘There is a gate in the circling mountains that bound your land, those that no man has crossed. The gate leads into a tunnel that takes a route not of this plane. On the far side, Realms’ End is to be found.’

‘I will set out immediately!’ said Bayla.

‘There are two things you must know. The gate is locked, and there is no key. Only he who can forge the unforgeable can furnish you with one. On the far side is a monster which only death can kill. Find a way to overcome these obstacles, and Realms’ End will be open to you.’

‘I thank you, my lord,’ said Bayla gratefully.

‘Sanasay,’ said Teclis. ‘Be warned. This quest will consume you. You will discover your heart’s desire, but you may not like what you find. Perhaps it would be best for you to remain at home.’

‘I cannot know what it is until I see it,’ said Bayla sadly. ‘Though the risk is great, I must witness it for myself.’

‘Then go with my blessing,’ said Teclis. There was a clap of thunder. Bayla fell through the clouds. He landed hard in his meditating body. It rocked dangerously as he awoke, but he did not fall.

So it was he set out on his next task.

His wife pleaded with him not to go. The Iron Temples of the duardin were many years of travel away, and there was no guarantee its guardians would allow him within the precincts.

‘I must!’ he said. His young children clustered around their mother, and clutched at her skirts, but he was blinded by anguish, and could not see their tears. ‘What if I turn away, and never realised my full potential?’

For six years he travelled, through many Realmgates and over hundreds of lands. Finally, older, scarred and weary, he came to the Iron Temples in Chamon’s Ferron Vale.

‘You cannot enter,’ said the temple guard, when Bayla had stated his case. ‘This is sacred ground, dedicated to Grungni. No manling may go within.’ So the conversation began, and so it continued, developing into bargaining, then arguing, but the duardin remained unmoved, and they would not let him inside.

Bayla went high into the mountains, where he could overlook the carved peaks and smoking forges of the Iron Temples. Powerful runes glowed in the rock and metal of its walls. For all his sorcerous ability, the wards of the temple were forever denied.

Miserable, Bayla descended the mountains into forests of iron-thorned trees. By a wall of rock aglitter with veins of ore, he made his camp and settled down for a night of brooding, staring into the flames of his campfire.

‘Won’t let you in, lad?’ said a gruff voice.

Bayla started. Without his noticing, a duardin had taken a seat on the far side of the fire. His face was hooded, but from the shadows protruded a white beard of impressive length, and he smoked a pipe of bone so ancient it was polished smooth and stained dark with use. Bayla knew enough of Grungni’s folk to recognise an elder when he saw one.

The stranger chuckled at Bayla’s reaction. ‘Sorry, lad, I have a habit of creeping up on people. My apologies. Do you mind if I share your fire?’

‘Of course you may,’ said Bayla, who was wise to the ways of strange encounters. ‘Please, sit. I have a small measure of ale and food that I would gladly share.’

‘Well!’ the duardin said in appreciation. ‘Hospitality like that in the wilds, eh? Very good, very, very good.’

Bayla handed over his ale skin, which the duardin drained to the last drop, and gave over his food, which the duardin shared generously. They ate in companionable silence. When they were done, the duardin sniffed deeply. ‘Not bad. Tasty. I long for a crumb of chuf, but they don’t make that in this time and place.’ He fell silent a space and twiddled with his pipe, lost in his memories. ‘So then,’ he said brightly. ‘What’s a manling like you want with the smith god of my people?’

‘I seek a key to the door in the mountains that will lead me to Realms’ End,’ Bayla said. He blinked in surprise. He had not intended to reveal his purpose, but there were the words, tripping off his tongue!

‘Ahhh, well, Grungni can be a prickly sort. I have known him for, well…’ The duardin laughed again, a sound like rough stones being rasped together. ‘A very long time. Tell you what, why don’t you borrow mine?’

The duardin reached into his dirty jerkin and pulled out a slender key with five pointed teeth, three on top, two on the bottom, upon a leather thong. His massive fingers should never have been so deft, but he undid the tiny knot in the necklace easily and tossed the key across the fire. Bayla caught it in surprise.

‘There you are, lad.’

‘Is it real?’ Bayla asked in amazement. ‘I was told there was no key in all existence!’

‘An aelf tell you that, did he?’ said the dwarf sourly. ‘Don’t trust them. Besides,’ he added slyly, ‘he never said anything about outside existence, did he?’

‘Thank you,’ Bayla said.

‘A fair bargain for your kindness, and that ale.’ The dwarf stood up and brushed off his knees. ‘Right then, got to be going. Things to do, people to sneak up on unawares.’ He laughed at his own jest.

‘Who are you?’ asked Bayla.

Deep in the stranger’s hood, eyes twinkled. ‘Just a traveller, lad, much like yourself.’ With that, he went into the night, and disappeared.

Bayla could not know if the key was genuine or not, but he had no choice. By the same tortuous route, the mage returned to Ghyran. The road to the mountains took him far from his home, but he was eager to complete his quest.

For a further three years he searched for the gate. Only by questioning the local inhabitants carefully did he glean an inkling as to its whereabouts, and even then he wasted many months in fruitless search. Strange lights shone on the far side of the mountains that no mortal had ever crossed, tantalising him unbearably.

Eventually, by chance it seemed, he came across a door barely big enough to admit him, set high in a cliff-face. With trembling hands, Bayla slid the key home. It fit perfectly and turned smoothly, as if recently oiled. The door swung inward, and Bayla squeezed inside. At first he had to wriggle his way down a tiny tunnel, but it soon opened up into a wide, well-made passageway, with walls of fine masonry. By his magic he lit his way. Soon after his entrance, Bayla’s ears were troubled by a thundering rumble, and a hot wind that went in and out – the breath of the monster that guarded the way. Several days of travel later, during which Bayla lived off bitter mosses and water dribbling down the walls, the tunnel opened up into a giant cave. At the centre was chained a wolf of impossible size. Its head was as large as a cathedral, and rested on paws big as houses. Four thick chains ran from its collar, securing it to anchors set in the wall. All through Bayla’s walk the noise of its breathing had become louder. In the cave it howled like a hurricane. It looked asleep, but as he approached, eyes big as pools opened and stared redly at him.

‘You cannot pass,’ it said. ‘None can, whether god or mortal. It is the law, of which I am prisoner and guardian both.’

‘Then I shall kill you,’ said Bayla.

The wolf gave out a howling laugh that buffeted the mage back and forth.

‘You can try.’

Bayla had come prepared with every spell of death he could muster. Raising his arms, he flung back his head, and called down the most potent slaughter-curse in the realms.

The magic released was primordial and deadly. It screamed as Bayla drew it from the rock of the mountain and fashioned it into a spear of crackling power. With a roaring incantation, he cast the energy at the wolf.

The magic hurtled at the beast, piercing it between the eyes. The wolf cocked its eyebrow, unharmed. ‘You will have to do better than that,’ it said.

Sanasay Bayla tried. Nothing worked. The wolf was impervious to the direst magics known. Frustrated, Bayla even attempted to stab it in its massive paw with his dagger. The metal shattered. The wolf grumbled with mirth.

‘I have not had such entertainment in many ages,’ it said.

Bayla glared at it. ‘Let me pass,’ he said.

‘I shall not,’ said the wolf.

‘Then you leave me no choice.’ Bayla pulled out a crystal phial, full of a dark liquid. Defiantly looking the wolf in the eye, Bayla threw down the stopper and drained the bottle. ‘Poison,’ Bayla said. ‘Now we shall see who has the last laugh.’

He fell down, dead.

The world changed. Bayla’s soul rose from his body. From rocks that now glowed with inner light rose screaming ghosts, luminous scythes in their hands. They rushed at him, fleshless jaws wide, swinging their weapons for the thread that joined Bayla’s body to his soul.

Bayla had no intention to die completely. As the cavern receded from him at tremendous speed, he fought against the gatherers of souls with his magic, keeping them from severing his connection to the Mortal Realms. Through planes inhabited by the strangest things they sped, thundering down through veils of layered realities towards the Realm of Shyish, where the abode of mortals abut those places beyond even the gods’ ken.

Bayla burst through a cavern roof, the gatherers swooping around him. Shyish revealed its dreary landscapes. He flew over shadowy villages and moonlit meres, vast bone deserts and forests of trees that shivered with the sorrow of imprisoned souls. Parts of this land were roofed in stone, and from holes gnawed through it tumbled an endless rain of corpses, the dead of many realms come to take their final rest.

Ahead there was a mighty necropolis, a city of pyramids and bone towers whose edges crackled with a nimbus of soul light. The gatherers redoubled their attacks, their wails draining the warmth from Bayla’s being, their scythes only ever a moment from reaping his soul.

The battle continued right to the gates in the city’s wall of bone. Bayla halted. A man stood there, cadaverous, but alive. With a flick of his wrist he dismissed the gatherers of souls, leaving the disembodied essence of Bayla alone.

‘You are dead, and yet your thread is not cut,’ said the necromancer. ‘Why do you resist the inevitable?’

‘I am Sanasay Bayla, of Ghyran. I die because I wish to speak with the Lord of Death.’

The necromancer smiled, exposing black teeth. ‘Be careful what you wish for, Sanasay Bayla. My lord has been expecting you.’

Bayla was led through streets of bone and dark granite where the dead were legion. The recently dead were engaged in the never-ending task of expanding Nagash’s city, heaping bone and fashioned stone into new buildings. Skeletal warriors tramped the streets in rattling cohorts. Vampire lords rushed by in dark carriages. But though the city was huge, and populous, there was not a voice to be heard. The dead executed their duties in silence but for the hideous clattering of bones that echoed from every street.

They went to a black pyramid whose sides gleamed like mirrors, and whose capstone was of pure wyrdstone. Deep inside, past numberless deathrattle regiments, Bayla was brought into a lofty hall. There sat Nagash, Lord of Death, surrounded by the ageless pomp of his court. Ghostly handmaidens circled him, singing mournful songs.

‘Who dares to tread the road of death to Shyish, and yet is not dead?’ said Nagash.

Bayla’s soul stepped forward boldly, the thread of his mortal life held lightly in one hand. ‘It is I, great one, Sanasay Bayla of Andamar in Ghyran. I have come to seek an audience.’

Nagash’s bony jaws clacked mirthlessly. ‘To beg a favour, I think. What do you seek?’

‘I have sought many years to find passage to Realms’ End,’ he said. ‘I have come close to fulfilling my quest, but my way is barred.’

‘Afrener, the wolf at the door,’ said Nagash. ‘He keeps guard.’

‘I was told only death can kill him. You are death. Strike him down for me, so that I might look into the spaces beyond reality, and discover my true purpose in this life.’

Nagash stared at him with empty eye sockets. ‘Sanasay Bayla, I know you as I know all mortals. All creatures pass through my domain sooner or later, and echoes of them are here forever. I never grant mortals favours, but for you I will make an exception, if only because you are a mage of awesome power. Agree to serve me for five hundred years and five days after your death, and I shall grant your desire, and slay this beast.’

‘And what after five centuries?’

‘You shall pass from Shyish, which for all its affinity with the beyond is but a Mortal Realm, into the Unknown Countries past my borders, as all souls ultimately must.’

Bayla knew better than to make foolish promises to a god, but he was desperate. ‘Agreed!’ he said.

‘Then go, and do not forget our bargain,’ said Nagash. He tilted his head to one side. Witchfire flickered in his eyes. ‘It is done. But be swift, such a beast cannot remain dead for long. Awake!’

Sanasay Bayla returned to life with a moaning breath. He rolled onto his side, his restarted heart banging painfully behind his ribs, and vomited out all trace of the poison in his body. When he was done, he rose shakily, and looked upon the still corpse of Afrener. Mindful of Nagash’s words, he hurried past. Shortly past the beast’s reeking hindquarters, he came to the land of Realms’ End.

What can be said of a place that defies mortal comprehension? Few have seen the Realms’ End, and all who have have witnessed it differently. Bayla saw the far side of the mountains, sweeping down from unscaleable peaks to a short plain of bare rock. The horizon was close, the space beyond boiling with crimson and gold lights. There was no sky.

Full of relief that he would soon know his purpose, Bayla began a staggering run towards the edge of the worlds.

It was not far. He stopped where the land did, and peered down into a maelstrom of noise and fury. Amid roaring networks of lightning, lands were being born, coming into being fully formed, with forests, rivers and cities upon them, and no doubt peoples and histories too. They began as small floating islands, but grew quickly as more land solidified from the energy around them. Enlarged, the worldlets sank under their own weight, spinning slowly back towards the edge of Ghyran. At some preordained depth, they vanished in a burst of light, and so the process continued. Three lands were born while Bayla watched.

But of his purpose, he could see no sign. Searching up and down the uncanny shore, he spied a robed figure clutching a staff in three hands. Bayla did not recognise its sort, and was suspicious of it, but having no option he made his way towards it.

‘Sanasay Bayla,’ the creature said raspingly as the mage halted a staff’s length away. ‘You have come to discover your purpose in life.’ Its robes were a crystal blue, and a stylised eye topped its staff.

‘I have,’ said the mage.

‘Here the worlds of Ghyran are born from nothing. This is a place of purest magic. Everything can be seen. Behold!’ said the creature. It opened out its arms, and pointed to the roiling energies beyond the final shore.

A vision of Bayla as a wise lord appeared, surrounded by adoring subjects.

‘To be a king?’ he asked the being. ‘Is that my purpose?’

‘More. Watch!’ commanded the creature.

A procession of images paraded through the sky. Bayla saw himself in his library, moving faster than the eye could follow as time accelerated and the years coursed through the land of Andamar. New buildings sprouted, fashions changed. Wondrous devices were installed around the city, but Bayla did not age. His library grew in size and content. Knowledge unbounded filled his mind; he felt an echo of what he might learn, and was amazed. The great and the wise of many nations and peoples consulted with him. His name was known across time and in every realm. He watched avidly, eyes wide, and yet, and yet... There was something missing.

‘Where is my wife?’ he asked. ‘My family?’

‘They are not what you desire,’ said the creature. ‘Else why would you be here?’

The thing’s words rang falsely, and Bayla set his powerful mind to work on the stuff of creation where the vision played. He found it easy to manipulate. The creature shrieked out a spell, but its staff flew from its hand at a thought from Bayla and he refocused the scrying. The mage saw his wife and children grow old, unloved and neglected. As he succeeded, they failed, and were shunned. Palaces were constructed in his honour, while their graves were choked by vines and crumbled into the dirt. Realisation hit him. He wrenched the focus of the vision to the present, back to his home.

His wife waited for him. They had a new house, it seemed, and she bore all the trappings of success. Yet she looked sadly out over the minarets of Andamar. He was shocked at the signs of age that had settled on her, though she remained beautiful. His eldest son came to her side, to discuss some matter of business, and he saw he had been forced to become a man without his father to guide or nurture him.

Bayla stepped back in shock. ‘I have been away too long!’ he said. ‘What am I doing?’

The creature was hunched over, two of its long-fingered blue hands clutching at the scorched third. ‘Eternal life, ultimate power. These things are within your grasp,’ it croaked. ‘That is what you desire! Pledge yourself to my master, and they will be yours.’

The vision wavered, back to the hollow glories of an endless future. Bayla’s face softened a moment at the opportunity offered, but hardened again.

‘No. That is what I think I should want, but it is not.’ He concentrated, and the image shifted back to the domestic scene. ‘That is what I wanted, all along. To be a father and a husband. That is the purpose of a man in life. Power is fleeting. Family is eternal.’ And it was. He saw son after daughter after son being born to the line of his people. Among them were many who were mighty and wise, and Andamar prospered under their guidance. It seemed it would remain forever so, until suddenly fire rent the sky, and the city fell into ruin as a great cataclysm passed over all the realms.

‘Too much!’ screeched the creature. The vision fled like ripples over water. Bayla looked at the thing sharply.

‘What was that?’ he said, rounding on it. Arcane power glowed around his hands. ‘I do not know what you are, but I know of your kind. You are told of in the oldest books, the things of the formless realms. The daemons of Chaos.’

The creature laughed, and raised its hands in conjuration. But Bayla was a mage beyond even the servants of Tzeentch, and he blasted it from existence. Its soul fled shrieking into the maelstrom, and passed beyond the fertile voids of Ghyran’s edge, whence it would not return for thousands of years.

Bayla was troubled. War would come, one day.

Perhaps he had found two purposes.

He would warn the gods.

Turning away from the formless spaces, Bayla began the long journey home.

The mirror cleared of mist. Sigmar and Alarielle stared at their own faces caught in the silver.

‘That was why he made us the mirror,’ said Sigmar. ‘Little attention we paid to his warnings.’ The God-King shook his head in regret. ‘Bayla was rare among men. He learned wisdom. With his gifts he could have risen and joined the ranks of the gods, but at the last he turned back. He understood that immortality is not to be craved, that the end of life gives the little span it has great meaning.’

‘The gift of all mortals,’ Alarielle said. ‘They are free of the burden of life eternal. There is no surprise in this, and no new wisdom.’

‘Every time they learn it, it is new,’ Sigmar insisted. ‘So few of them realise it from the beginning. Their lives are so short, their fear of death prevents them from recognising the gift they have.’

‘You are immortal,’ said Alarielle. ‘They will find your sympathy false.’

‘I did not seek to be so,’ said Sigmar. ‘I would have happily lived and died a mortal king. Some higher power had other plans for me.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘Many chose Chaos because they had no other choice. They can be redeemed, even those whose hearts may seem black. But there are always those that seek to cheat death, and the lords of Chaos offer a way to do so, and are cunning enough to allow a few to ascend to become their immortal slaves. That is how they gained access to the realms in the first place. We became too distant from our charges, and they grew afraid. Chaos offered them immortality, of a sort. They did not know it was a trap.’

‘Then what do you want of me?’ said Alarielle.

‘You have held yourself aloof for many ages, my lady,’ he said. ‘It would aid us all in defeating the four powers for good if you went again among the mortals. Teach them your wisdom. You of all the gods understand the ebb and flow of mortality best, and that death is but a turning of the way.’

‘I do not know what becomes of the souls of men,’ she said. ‘Does even Nagash? You ask me to lie to them.’

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I wish you to invest in them a love of all that is natural and alive, to appreciate its power and fecundity. If they learn to follow the rhythm of life’s wondrous patterns, fewer of them will be tempted to fear its end. There always will be those who are incapable of fellow feeling, or whose greed outmatches their empathy,’ he said. ‘Many others can be saved by you.’

‘I cannot do this,’ she said. ‘What is the point? Chaos rules already.’

‘Cannot, or will not?’ said Sigmar. ‘You were worshipped all throughout Ghyran and beyond once, my lady. You can be again. You have become warlike to respond to a time of war, but you must reach inside yourself, and find that gentler creature you once were. We need to look beyond the end of this war, and prepare for peace. If we do not, then there will be another golden age, but soon enough Chaos will return and shatter the realms anew.’

‘Victory and defeat has a cycle of its own,’ she said. ‘It is the way of things.’

‘Maybe war and Chaos are the only constants of reality,’ he said. ‘But I do not have to accept it, and I will fight it for all time if I must. I cannot believe this is how the realms were meant to be. Send forth your spirits to speak with the wisest women and canniest men. Chaos has long used such missionaries against us. We shall do the same, and we have the advantage, for Chaos lies.’

Alarielle sighed, and the sound was of the wind in the boughs of a sleeping forest. She stared off across the plains of Azyr, still cloaked in the dark. The sun rose high enough to strike through the columns, casting long shadows across the city of the Highheim. When it struck Alarielle, she closed her eyes and basked in the warmth of it. Her body became translucent, and began to fade.

‘I will do what I can, Sigmar Heldenhammer,’ she said, her form becoming indistinct. ‘But if I have learned one thing in my long existence, it is that humans rarely listen, and their males more rarely still.’

The motes of light diffused. Her outline hung in the air a second. They flared and vanished, leaving a cloud of petals to drift to the floor.

Sigmar watched the day enter the city of the gods. As the golden light of Azyr’s sun flooded the empty streets, he remembered a better time. He did not know if there were higher gods set over him to guide him as he shepherded his mortal kin, but he gave a silent prayer to them that finer times would return.

Then he too vanished, leaving the Highheim to the silence and the light.

VAULT OF SOULS

Evan Dicken

Knight-Incantor Averon Stormsire scowled at the rows of listing colonnades that marked where the twisted, shadowy streets of Shadespire gave way to the mad architecture of the Nightvault. Like the shell of an idoneth mollusk, the ancient prison necropolis spiralled deeper and deeper, its lower reaches lost to clinging darkness.

‘At last.’ Rastus’ words boomed from behind his golden mask. The broad-shouldered Evocator cocked his head, hefting his heavy tempest blade with practised ease. ‘But say the word, Knight-Incantor, and we shall drag Thalasar from his decrepit lair.’

‘I doubt winnowing out the katophrane will be so easy.’ Ammis spoke from behind Averon. Disliking how it restricted her vision, she had yet to don her high-crested helm, her attention fixed not on the entrance to the Nightvault, but on her tempest blade and stormstaff. Concentration cut deep grooves in her darkly tanned face, her lips pressed into a tight line as she checked and rechecked the network of arcane formulae that bound the glittering conduit of celestial energy to her weapons.

Averon held up a fist to silence his companions. It would not do to come so close to their prey only to have Thalasar slip away again. Anger and frustration burned in the Knight-Incantor’s breast. There was no way of measuring time in the cursed half-light of Shadespire, but Averon and his Cursebreakers had spent far too long plumbing its maddening depths for the secrets of true immortality. Tasked by Sigmar himself, they sought a way to end the slow rasp of memory and soul that the Reforging process inflicted upon their fellow Stormcasts.

Closing his eyes, Averon reached out with his arcane senses, sifting through the fog of death energy for a hint of Thalasar’s sorcery. He could feel the souls still trapped within the Nightvault, their struggles like candles guttering in the murk. In shaking the foundations of Shadespire, the Shyish necroquake had also breached the Nightvault, laying bare arcane knowledge locked away since before the cursed city was cast into shadow. It was the dark promise of these secrets that had drawn Averon and his Cursebreakers to the ancient prison, and to Thalasar.

A thin glimmer of gold threaded the necromantic gyre that shrouded the upper reaches of the Nightvault. Cloaked in shadow, it drew Averon on, just as it had captured his attention the first time he had sensed Thalasar’s enchantments – so unlike that of his katophrane peers.

There was something different about it, something familiar. Averon had put a score of necromancers and unquiet shades to the question, and found that even among the most ancient katophranes, Thalasar’s creations were spoken of with jealous awe. If anyone in Shadespire held the key to slipping the terrible loss of Reforging, it was Thalasar, Averon was sure of it.

‘Knight-Incantor.’ Ammis stood. She slipped on her helmet, gaze fixed on the gloom. ‘Something moves in the darkness. I cannot see it, but I can feel its power.’

‘I sense it, too.’ Rastus interposed himself between his companions and the growing shadow, storm energy crackling around his weapons.

‘Do you want to bring every gheist within a dozen miles down on us?’ Averon shouldered past the tall Evocator, who lowered his blade and staff with a frustrated grunt. ‘Douse those weapons and remain here until I call for you.’

‘You are too hard on him.’ Ammis stepped to Averon’s side.

‘I don’t recall asking for your advice.’ Averon picked up his pace. ‘Or your company.’

She lengthened her stride, long legs easily keeping step. ‘Rastus is young.’

‘Rastus is a fool,’ Averon snapped back. ‘A boy who fancies himself a hero. His power is unrefined and uncontrolled, he overestimates his abilities.’

‘As did we all, once.’

Averon grunted, brushing away her reply. Rastus’ anger was understandable; unlike his companions, he had yet to be reforged. Like a fresh banner, his soul shone in the dark – bright, heroic and untattered in a way that Averon could hardly remember being himself.

Rather than respond, he studied the tides of death energy swirling around the Nightvault. Amidst strange, shadowy illusions that swathed the ancient prison, he noticed a thread of sorcery glimmering like a candle within the tides of dark energy.

It was Thalasar’s work, of that he was sure.

Carefully, Averon sent a seeking spell after the glittering strand of arcane energy. A lesser mage would not have been able to tease the thread from the deathly morass swirling around the Nightvault, but Averon was a Knight-Incantor of the Sacrosanct Chamber, possessed of power and skill accrued over several lifetimes of study.

He caught the glittering thread, pulling ever so gently.

The shadows fell away to reveal a creature from Averon’s nightmares.

Easily the size of a castle keep, the hulking undead monstrosity was supported by dozens of mismatched legs. Assembled from the mangled corpses of gargants, dracoliths, krakens and creatures Averon did not recognise, the construct lumbered along the upper levels of the Nightvault, its long, multi-jointed arms plucking struggling souls from among the rubble of the ancient prison. He and Ammis had drawn close enough now to see the jagged shards of shadeglass embedded in the monstrosity’s quivering exterior. They glittered with reflected light each time a shrieking spirit was fed to the amethyst flames that burned deep within the thing’s patchwork maw.

‘What is that creature?’ Ammis spoke with horrified awe.

‘It seems to be transmuting spirits into raw death energy, like some manner of Necromantic Retort.’ Averon studied the enormous undead monster, watching the flare of arcane light as another soul was fed to the fire. ‘I can feel the power gathering within. Somehow, it distills the spirits, collecting purified essence.’

‘To what end?’

‘I do not know, but I plan to find out,’ Averon replied.

‘How?’ she asked.

‘Even heroes have their uses.’ Averon looked back over his shoulder. ‘Rastus!’

The Evocator hurried up to them, clashing his blade and staff together to release a shower of crackling storm energy.

‘I stand ready!’

Ammis spared Rastus’ theatrics an irritated glance before turning back to Averon. ‘Is Thalasar inside?’

‘I sense his power, but I am unsure.’ Averon ran a hand through his beard, frowning as one of the Necromantic Retort’s long skeletal arms plucked another struggling bit of soulstuff from one of the cells that hived the massive columns.

‘Why would the katophrane create such a thing?’ Ammis asked.

Averon had no answer for Ammis’ question – at least, none he cared to give. That kind of knowledge caused more harm than good. The Knight-Incantor had counted many regrets during his long tenure in the Sacrosanct Chamber of the Hammers of Sigmar, and vowed he would see neither of his companions added to the list.

Averon laid a hand on his spirit flask, standing a little straighter as he drew strength from the churning maelstrom of souls within. Ignoring the concern in Ammis’ stance, he fixed his gaze upon the Necromantic Retort.

‘Rastus, bring that abomination down.’

‘With pleasure.’ The hulking Evocator charged the construct, a corona of energy gathering like a thunderhead around him. With a shout, Rastus brought his weapons together, an arc of brilliant energy hammering into the Retort’s side. Forks of celestial lightning played across the construct’s exterior even as Rastus’ stormstaff set the thing’s legs ablaze. Laughing, the Stormcast brought his heavy sword around, hacking through burning scale and bone.

The Retort listed, then crashed into the blackened basalt columns that flanked the street, patchwork limbs thrashing as it lay like an overturned beetle. A flailing arm knocked Rastus tumbling to the ground, but the Evocator was up again in a moment, slashing and hacking as the creature swiped at him.

‘Was that wise?’ Ammis asked.

‘Have I grown so senile you feel comfortable questioning my decisions?’ Averon snapped back.

‘No, Knight-Incantor.’ She bowed her head.

Averon bit back a flash of regret. Ammis was a talented mage, one of the best he had seen in decades. She deserved better than an old man’s acrimony.

He forced the gruffness from his voice. ‘We are not the only ones who seek Thalasar. Now that the Retort’s masking enchantments have been broken, the others will be quick to descend.’

‘Then we shall have to be quicker.’ Ammis nodded at Averon, her tone light. ‘Do try to keep up, old man.’

She sprinted towards the fallen construct, her sword and staff held in perfect parallel. She leapt to drive her tempest blade into the Retort’s side. Ancient flesh blackened and parted, necromantic bindings fraying at the touch of her sanctified weapons.

The Retort swiped at her with its myriad arms, but the blows were clumsy. Ammis dodged them almost without looking, and the construct’s long, clawed fingers closed on empty air. Rastus stepped up to guard her back, cutting at the Retort’s flailing limbs like he was hacking through thick brush. In moments, Ammis had opened a hole in the construct’s side, and Averon hastened to join them, already singing the spells that would ward them against hexes woven into the thing’s interior.

Inside the Retort was a confusion of torn flesh and broken shadeglass. The Cursebreakers found themselves in a long hall lined by tall ribs of blackened bone. They made their way across the uneven floor, dodging bits of rubble that shifted as the construct spasmed and shook.

A host of hexes descended upon them like biting flies, keyed to twist, and burn, and slay. Averon swept the dark magics aside, the arcane redoubt woven by his wards proof against all but the most fell enchantments.

‘Stay close.’ Averon could feel the power that burned within the Retort – not only the energy of the spiritual essences the creature had consumed, but something far more powerful, and familiar. Bruise-coloured flames limned the necrotic walls as the Cursebreakers made their way towards the centre of the thing.

The hall opened into a central chamber, a long, bone-columned gallery of obsidian tile and whip-tight sinew overlooking the raging amethyst flames below. Souls struggled in the fire, their incorporeal forms like tallow fed to a forge. Above the furnace hung an enormous cauldron of gold-flecked obsidian in which some manner of foul, metallic liquid bubbled.

Intent on studying the process, Averon peered towards the cauldron, but Rastus’ heavy, gauntleted hand closed on his shoulder, dragging him back. Averon drew in a breath, about to chastise the young Stormcast when a jagged shadesteel blade stabbed up through the floor of the gallery where Averon had stood a moment before. As the Knight-Incantor regained his balance, more blades cut away the floor before them. Attached to long, segmented arms, they extended up to dig into the walls of the chamber.

The thing that emerged from the hole was an abomination of black iron striated with veins of gold. It had no head Averon could see, only a spinning maelstrom of glittering shadeglass suspended in a circular cage of steel and bone. Eight arms were spaced equidistant around the horizontal axis, their ends terminating in jagged, scythelike blades.

‘A shadesteel golem.’ Ammis dropped into a fighting crouch, weapons pointed at the creature. ‘But like none I have seen before.’

‘More fuel for the great working.’ The golem’s voice came as a cacophony of screams, a chorus of raw throats babbling incoherent pleas that somehow formed words.

‘I think you will find us far less appetising than your usual prey.’ Rastus stepped past Averon to level his gleaming blade at the golem. It perched spiderlike in the broken gallery, limbs poised in terrible anticipation.

‘Thunder booms, but where is the storm, little one?’

‘Fear not.’ Rastus gave a booming laugh. ‘I shall show you.’

Averon studied the golem with his sorcerous sight. Necromantic energy swathed the creature in amethyst shadows, clouds of power illuminated by the occasional flash of brilliant light. As he studied the golem, a creeping disquiet took root in Averon’s chest. ‘Rastus, stay back!’

But the Evocator was already moving.

Rastus burned like a streak of lightning, his armoured form little more than a shadow against the glare. Although he struck the golem with the force of a charging demigryph, the thing barely shifted. Tempest blade and stormstaff left no mark upon the golem’s limbs, the energy of Rastus’ assault bleeding into the maelstrom of churning shadow that surrounded the creature.

It batted Rastus aside with contemptuous ease, pinning him to the ground with one scythelike arm even as it raised another for the killing blow.

‘By Ghal Maraz!’ Horror whetted the Evocator’s cry to razor sharpness. He stared, wide-eyed, at the veins of gold running through the golem’s metallic arm. ‘That is sigmarite!’

Ammis leapt to intercept the falling blade, weapons angled not to oppose but deflect. Celestial lightning crackled up the golem’s arm as it met her stormstaff. Even so, gold-flecked shadesteel cleaved the tiles mere inches from Rastus’ face.

‘Averon, what is this abomination?’ Ammis shouted as she shouldered aside the arm pinning Rastus, allowing her companion to roll to his feet. They circled the golem, dodging and parrying. Whenever they tried to strike at the thing, their blows were deflected in a flash of brilliant light. The golem moved with a mechanical grace, no wasted movement, its arms slashing with clockwork precision – almost as if it could anticipate the Stormcasts’ movements.

Averon shouted incantations, but each spell seemed only to feed the arcane gale that surrounded the golem, the veins of sigmarite running through its limbs glowing white-hot. It seemed impossible that Thalasar could have crafted such a creature, but Shadespire had swallowed entire chambers of the Hammers of Sigmar. The katophrane must have somehow acquired their armour and weapons.

The Knight-Incantor studied the obsidian vessel above the flame, realising where he had seen this energy before.

Like all initiates of the Sacrosanct Chamber, Averon had spent years tending the Cairns of Tempering in Sigmaron, healing the souls of fallen Stormcasts, making whole what had been torn asunder, salvaging what he could from essences twisted by dark forces beyond imagining. A cold foreboding settled in Averon’s chest as he recognised the power shielding the golem.

It was the torn, tormented soul of a fellow Stormcast.

Although the realisation hit Averon with the force of a charging dracolith, he knew what needed to be done. Tears stung the Knight-Incantor’s eyes as he sang the chants of binding, his voice fracturing along celestial harmonies, becoming a refrain, a chorus. The golem stumbled, one of its legs gone limp. Sparks of lightning spun from the thing’s central core.

Rastus and Ammis took up the song. Unable to match Averon’s arcane skill, their voices threaded his harmonies, empowering his choir.

Averon had no Cairn of Tempering, no Anvil of Apotheosis, so he snatched the spirit flask from his belt, coaxing the fragments of tortured Stormcast essence inside.

Robbed of its stolen celestial energy, the golem stumbled. Averon’s companions were quick to capitalise on the thing’s sudden weakness, Rastus leaping up to hammer at the frame that bound the golem’s spinning core while Ammis flitted between its slashing arms, cleaving joints and shattering exposed shadeglass.

Averon slammed his Incantor staff into the tiles, all his anger focused into a bolt of coruscating power that burned through the golem. It shuddered and fell limp, limbs twitching feebly.

‘Thalasar has gone too far.’ Rastus raised his flickering stormstaff to deal the final blow.

‘Wait!’ Averon flung out his hand. ‘The golem may know its master’s whereabouts.’

If Rastus heard, he gave no sign. The Evocator’s stormstaff arced down, only to be met by Ammis’ tempest blade. The weapons crashed together, spitting sparks as the two Evocators locked gazes.

For a moment, Averon feared Rastus might continue his assault, but the Evocator tossed his head like a cornered bull, then lowered his weapons, panting.

‘My apologies, Knight-Incantor.’

‘It is easy to unleash the storm, but far harder to bridle it.’ Averon stepped to Rastus’ side to lay a hand on his heaving shoulders. ‘You must learn to control your power or it will control you.’

The Evocator nodded. Sheathing his sword, he reached up to remove his helmet, then wiped his brow. Rastus’ olive skin was sheened in sweat, his black hair slicked to his scalp. Although he stood still, he glared at the golem, dark brown eyes narrowed, his stance vibrating with barely restrained fury.

‘Come closer, cousins.’ The golem’s voice was a mocking whisper.

‘We are no kin to you,’ Ammis said.

‘And yet…’ The golem chuckled weakly.

‘By what means were you forged?’ Ammis knelt to examine one of the golem’s severed limbs, prodding the veins of sigmarite with her stormstaff. ‘How did Thalasar manage to craft this alloy, let alone create weapons from it?’

‘My master is a giant among katophranes. We are as dust swept along in the gale of his mighty intellect.’ The golem tried to raise itself, but fell back.

Ammis looked ready to ask more questions, but Averon shook his head.

‘Where is Thalasar’s sanctum?’

‘The last place she would look,’ the golem replied. ‘My master shall not be found, not by her, not by anyone – not unless he wishes.’

Averon scowled down at it. Storm sorcery would be of little use extracting answers from the golem. It felt no pain, no fear; moreover, it knew they could not truly destroy it, not while Nagash’s curse still ruled Shadespire. Still, Averon knew spells that would lay the thing bare – cruel enchantments acquired over lifetimes spent struggling with the dark powers. Forbidden incantations, the knowledge of which would have seen any but a Stormcast of the Sacrosanct Chamber purged by their peers.

‘Knight-Incantor.’ Ammis’ call snapped Averon from his dark ruminations. ‘Something approaches.’

Averon felt it too: a chill at the edge of his senses, arcane sight distorted by a great nexus of necromantic force.

‘You are not the only ones who seek to leash my master’s genius.’ The golem made a noise that was half-laugh, half-sob. ‘The Briar Queen comes.’

Averon knew little of the Briar Queen, but what he did gave him pause. The opening of the Nightvault had unleashed many things, most of which were best kept locked away. Ruined souls shrieked the Briar Queen’s name, their laments tracing her mad cruelty in intricate detail. A death mage of consummate power, she stalked the streets of Shadespire at the head of a host of ravening gheists, ravaging all they touched.

‘We need more time,’ Averon muttered.

‘Then I shall give it to you,’ Rastus replied, already striding away.

‘Do not be a fool,’ Averon called after him. Glancing at Ammis, Averon sighed, adding more kindly, ‘The Briar Queen is a force even I would hesitate to challenge.’

Rastus’ shoulders rose as he stopped short. Averon could see the Evocator was still smarting from his earlier failure with the golem, but there was no time to coddle the young Stormcast’s ego further.

‘You shall be her playthings,’ the golem mocked.

With a snarl, Averon gathered energy to his Incantor staff. There was but one way to get the information they sought.

‘Allow me to assist you.’ Ammis stepped to his side.

‘Wait outside, both of you,’ Averon snapped back. ‘And be quick about it.’

There was a moment of stunned silence, then, seeing Averon would brook no argument, Rastus strode away. After lingering for a moment, Ammis followed.

Averon turned back to the golem, the forbidden chant sitting like oil on his tongue. He had long accepted the pitfalls of the path he trod, but was loath to expose his companions to the evils he had been forced to embrace.

Darkness would find them soon enough.

The chant blistered the air, words twisting over and around each other like dying serpents. Dark forces churned around Averon, sinking into his flesh, seeming to coat his very bones. The golem shuddered as the Knight-Incantor unleashed the full force of the tainted sorcery. His will bored into the golem’s fractured thoughts, sweeping the fragmented shards of its recollection into a patchwork whole.

Darkness surrounded Averon. Obsidian thorns rent his skin, and his back arced at the unbelievable torment. He saw the souls of his Stormcast brethren trapped within a black obelisk, their noble spirits subject to Thalasar’s mad experiments. Through the haze of pain and madness Averon forced himself to focus, raising bloody hands to grasp at the knife-edged secrets the golem sought to hide.

Like a dagger, knowledge pierced him, cold fire racing through his thoughts. Realisation came as a bitter, cutting wind. It bore fractured recollection steeped in millennia of pain and suffering, disjointed memories etched into Averon’s own soul by the screams of a thousand tormented spirits.

He fell back, exhausted, barely able to keep his feet as he staggered from the crucible chamber. Strong hands caught him in the corridor outside. He glanced up to see Ammis in the doorway, her eyes shadowed.

‘What did you see?’ Averon asked.

‘Nothing, Knight-Incantor.’ She slipped an arm around his shoulders, bearing him along the scabrous hall.

‘I told you to wait outside the Retort,’ he snapped.

‘My apologies,’ she replied, her voice distant.

Any further questions Averon might have had were choked off as they stumbled out of the Retort and into the shifting half-light that passed for day in Shadespire.

‘Hurry,’ Rastus called, stepping up to help Ammis support Averon.

Already, he could hear the mad shrieks echoing down the colonnaded plazas that ringed the Nightvault. Although the Briar Queen’s creatures were yet some distance away, the twisted acoustics of the ancient prison made it sound as if they were all around the Cursebreakers.

‘Deeper.’ Averon gestured at the spiralling galleries below. ‘We must go deeper.’

An exhausted glance over his shoulder showed the mob of gheists enter the far side of the plaza. The Briar Queen stood among them like a terrible idol – an apparition of ghastly aspect, her ghostly, thorn-pierced flesh clad in tattered finery, a bent and jagged crown upon her brow. As if aware of Averon’s scrutiny she lifted her skeletal head, the twin abysses of her eyes threatening to drag him into madness. Too far away to reach the Cursebreakers, she extended a bony hand, one long finger pointed at Averon as if to mark him for slaughter.

With a cry, he tore his gaze away.

For once, the Nightvault’s maddening geometries worked to the Cursebreakers’ advantage. As they fled deeper into shadow the snarled galleries quickly obscured them from the Briar Queen’s view.

Averon directed their course. Through the pain, the shadows that edged his vision, the darkness that had taken root in his thoughts, Averon muttered one word, a dark mantra repeated over and over in a voice that was not his own:

‘Nightvault, Nightvault, Nightvault…’

A desiccated beetle scrabbled across the back of Averon’s gauntlet. He flicked it off with an irritated shake, scowling. It was a testament to Nagash’s spite that even the insects of Shadespire could find no rest.

The Cursebreakers had spent what seemed like days delving deeper into the shifting bowels of the Nightvault, drawn on by the tainted memories Averon had ripped from Thalasar’s golem. Curving corridors of black basalt had slowly given way to dark marble and cracked shadeglass. Most of the ethereal prisons had been shattered either by accident or artifice, the souls within slipping out to wreak whatever torments they could upon the cursed city. Those few that remained in their prisons flickered with pale blue light, the agonised struggles of their captives filling the air with a sharp, actinic odour that reminded Averon of burning phosphorus.

‘Curse this vile place. Which way?’ Rastus asked from up ahead, his glowing stormstaff held like a torch as he inspected the branching intersection. The Nightvault’s tunnels curled back on themselves, a tangled web of dusty, shadow-haunted passageways as twisted as the veins of an ancient corpse.

Clenching his jaw against the sick, heavy feeling in his gut, Averon regarded the intersection. The answer came like the pain of an old wound, a dull ache building behind his eyes, whetted by the cruel memories he had stripped from the golem. Averon had known of the Nightvault only in the abstract, never realising – never understanding – the desperate torments that infused every stone. Now, the horror of it hung like a chain around his neck.

He thrust his chin at a set of uneven stairs that led deeper into the prison. Straightening his shoulders with an effort of will, Averon nodded to Ammis and stepped towards the passage. She followed him, concern glimmering through the stern visage of her mask.

‘I do not like this.’

‘Duly noted.’ Averon gestured for Rastus to continue.

‘He may not see what is happening to you, but I do,’ she hissed from behind. ‘There must be a better way.’

‘Better perhaps, but none so direct.’ Averon’s words came as a dry croak. ‘You know what pursues us.’

Ammis glanced over her shoulder. Even swamped in the choking miasma of necromantic energy that pervaded the Nightvault, Averon knew she could sense the Briar Queen’s approach. Like a terrible eye, her sorceries scoured the Nightvault, questing feelers of death magic slipping through the darkness like the barbed tendrils of her namesake. Averon had been able to shield the Cursebreakers from her gaze thus far, but the Nightvault sapped at his strength and blunted his wards. The ancient prison was the Briar Queen’s domain – it would only be a matter of time until she winnowed them out.

‘Then allow Rastus and I to assist you,’ Ammis said. ‘If we were to bear some of the burden–’

‘Enough.’ Averon turned away, following the glow of Rastus’ stormstaff. Shadows pooled along the stairs, strange humanoid shapes gnarled as old tree roots. They pawed at the light, jagged mouths open in silent screams, their hands held as if to beseech the Cursebreakers for aid. With a chill, Averon recognised some of them – the souls of men and women committed to ageless torment in the Nightvault. Memories of exquisite torture flowered in the dark corners of Averon’s thoughts, cruel blossoms sharp enough to etch strange desires into his breast. The golems had gathered these wretches for Thalasar’s experiments, bits of soulstuff woven into artefacts of such beauty and power as to make the gods weep.

With a pained grimace, Averon pushed the alien memories aside.

‘Do you think Thalasar will part with his knowledge willingly?’ Ammis persisted. ‘What then? Will you choose the direct way, no matter the cost?’

Averon pulled off his helmet and scowled up at her. ‘I will do what is necessary to save our brethren from what we have endured. You know what awaits in the Cairns of Tempering – you have walked the Avenue of Saints, heard the cries of those too damaged or broken to reforge.’

‘Yes, I have.’ She studied his face as if searching for something. ‘As I have read the names etched in the Annals Tempestus. I have seen our brethren fall, seen Stormcasts tainted beyond redemption, their spiritual energies sacrificed to keep the Star Bridge burning bright. Look at what the katophranes have wrought. What good is immortality if we lose our souls in the process?’

‘I have heard enough.’ Averon slashed his hand through the air as if to cut the throat of her reply. ‘I expect this sort of stubbornness from Rastus, but you understand what is at stake.’

‘Perhaps better than you realise.’ She gestured at the darkness behind them. ‘You saw what Thalasar did to our brethren – some secrets are not worth the cost.’

‘That is for me to decide, not you.’ Averon glared at her. ‘I am Knight-Incantor of the Cursebreakers – you are here to assist me, to follow my orders.’

‘And to protect you.’ Ammis met his gaze, unflinching. ‘Even from yourself.’

Averon’s grip tightened on his Incantor staff. The temerity, the insolence. He had spent lifetimes in service to the Sacrosanct Chamber, seen things that would blister the minds of his companions, and Ammis sought to question him?

Furious, he opened his mouth, only to be stunned to silence by a resounding crash from below. He and Ammis hurried down the stairs, weapons at the ready. They found Rastus at the bottom of the staircase, the remains of a black iron door smashed to hissing shards at his feet.

‘It was locked.’ The Evocator shrugged off his companions’ stares. ‘And we are in a hurry.’

The sight of the doorframe withered Averon’s admonitions – vines of jagged iron made intricate scrollwork around the portal. Twined into symbols of binding and punishment, their inner edges were studded with cruelly hooked thorns of shadeglass. The whole sight put Averon in mind of the maw of a deep-sea predator, some monstrosity pulled from the crushing murk to drag the unwary into oblivion.

Averon knew that to step through this portal was to risk never returning, and yet the sight filled him with a strange anticipation, a spiteful joy that brought a smile to his lips – so much beautiful suffering had taken place beyond this door.

‘Is this Thalasar’s lair?’ Ammis asked.

Averon shook his head to clear it of dark thoughts. ‘No, but we are close.’

So close.

At Averon’s nod, Rastus stepped through the door, Ammis following close behind, positioned to ward each other’s backs and cut off potential avenues of assault. Flickering storm energy from their weapons lit the shadows beyond.

Hedges of obsidian shadeglass filled the darkness, tangled creepers obscuring the dimensions of the massive chambers. They seemed to swallow the light, pressing in around the Cursebreakers like ravens on a fresh kill. The whole place smelled of ash and old blood, and echoed with a low, whispering moan just at the edge of hearing.

‘Shall I clear us a path?’ Rastus waved his tempest blade at the thorns.

‘No need.’ Averon stepped between them, nodding at an almost invisible path that wound through the maze of hedges. ‘I remember the way.’

Ammis cocked her head, eyes worried behind the mask of her helmet. Averon tried to ignore the glance she and Rastus shared, the wordless interplay of concern stitching the air between them.

‘Knight-Incantor,’ Rastus began, but Averon silenced him with a glare before striding off into the hedge. Let the fools worry; as long as they followed his commands he cared nothing for their childish misgivings. He led the Cursebreakers down the twisting trails. Thorns scraped across the Stormcasts’ armour, leaving thin trails of dark blood that was not theirs.

‘What is this place?’ Ammis asked.

‘Special.’ Averon chuckled. He could feel it now – the joy of watching a soul peeled back layer by layer, the understanding that came by reducing a mind to its component parts, seeing each bit of who they were, who they would never be again. There was much to be studied here, much to be learned.

At last, they came to a clearing in the hedge. Roughly circular, it was perhaps twenty paces across, ringed by more wards woven from obsidian vines. In the centre was a throne crafted of flawless shadeglass. Fitted with bindings of black iron it was a monstrous thing, a sharp-edged construction of razored points and cunningly crafted barbs, thorned hooks extending from the sides like the limbs of a dreadful insect, poised to flense and cut whatever poor soul was confined to the throne.

‘She wished to rule them,’ Averon said. ‘So they crafted her a throne fit for a queen.’

‘Why would Thalasar conceal himself here?’ Rastus asked.

‘What better place to hide than the prison of the one who seeks you?’ Ammis replied.

‘Thalasar was…’ Averon nodded to himself, walking around the throne, ‘responsible for the Briar Queen’s care.’

Rastus grunted. ‘She seeks revenge on her gaoler.’

‘Who would not, after millennia of this?’ Averon knelt, feeling along the underside of the throne. Waves of terror, madness and impotent rage wafted from the thing. Even these pale echoes of the torments the Briar Queen had endured at Thalasar’s behest were enough to make the breath catch in Averon’s throat.

There was a sharp pain as a tiny shadeglass barb pricked through the joint of Averon’s gauntlet, a single drop of blood welling from the puncture. He let it fall, then stood back to watch as the throne slowly ground aside to reveal steps leading down.

Unlike the other stairs in the Nightvault, these were cut from black marble, straight and narrow, the walls to either side free of joint or mortar. Averon knew without looking that they had been perfectly measured, every angle meticulously planned. The walls were etched with masking wards, layer upon layer of obfuscating sorceries meant to turn even an eye as powerful as the Briar Queen’s. Had Averon not known the way, he would have never found this place.

Warily, they descended, stepping out into the bowl of a small amphitheatre perhaps fifty yards across, a fan of seats ascending to either side. Man-sized obelisks ringed the upper level. Carved of black obsidian fitted with rings of shadeglass, they glowed with a pale violet light that filled the chamber. Motes of energy crackled between them, lighting up the shadows at the rear of the amphitheatre. In the darkness above, Averon could see dozens of spiderlike golems similar to the one they had battled in the Necromantic Retort. The constructs stood unmoving save for the swirling, churning tempests of shadesteel and sigmarite that spun at their cores.

At Averon’s nod, the Cursebreakers spread out across the bowl of the amphitheatre, gazes sweeping the rows of seats, ready for any threat. Averon began a chant of warding, only to have his incantations trail off as he saw other Stormcasts step through the lambent gloom.

Tall and noble, their shields emblazoned with Ghal Maraz, the Hammers of Sigmar moved through the gloom with practised ease, their weapons at the ready. Averon recognised them as part of a Redeemer Conclave, and was grateful for their presence until he noticed the way the darkness clung to them, their forms shifting as if seen through thick fog. A pair of Liberators stepped towards him, heads craned to watch the golems in the shadows. He half turned in surprise, expecting them to react to the presence of the Cursebreakers, but the Liberators simply passed through him, forming a line at the edge of the bowl of the amphitheatre.

With a start, Averon realised he was seeing echoes of the past. Tattered remnants of the souls of his missing comrades lost amidst the swirling aether that filled Thalasar’s lair. He tried to call out to Ammis and Rastus, but they seemed distant, less substantial than even the shades that haunted the ancient prison. Averon watched the Stormcasts advance, then pause as the obelisks lit with dark flame.

The golems descended on the Liberators. Bright flares of storm energy and crackling weapons were lost amidst the fire, the growing shadows seeming to swallow up even the most powerful assaults from his departed brethren. Each attack seemed only to stoke the flames, the struggles of Averon’s lost comrades growing weaker as the obelisks feasted on their assaults. In moments, it was over, a mound of armoured bodies slumped across the amphitheatre, their very souls sucked into the swirling vortex of spiritual energy, the obelisks serving as some manner of soul magnet.

Seeing the way the obelisks fed on the storm energy, Averon realised his mistake. With Thalasar, nothing happened by accident. The katophrane had sent the Necromantic Retort to the upper reaches of the Nightvault, had seeded Shadespire with rumour and promise, had lured the Cursebreakers here for a reason. The question was: why?

Welcome to my psychopompic inhibitor. The voice echoed in the Knight-Incantor’s thoughts, clipped and measured. I have been waiting for you, Averon Stormsire. More precisely, I have been waiting for your body.

Dimly, he heard Ammis shouting, felt her hand close on his arm. Averon blinked in confusion. When had he fallen to the ground?

Brilliant flashes pierced the shadows as Rastus blazed with the tempest. Through blurry eyes, Averon watched the Evocator charge up the amphitheatre steps, constellations of celestial lightning crackling around him.

Averon tried to move, to warn Rastus that the obelisks fed on storm energy, but his limbs seemed made of marble, his lips frozen in a rictus of agony.

You are my servant! Thalasar’s voice scattered Averon’s thoughts like fallen leaves. My vessel.

Dark memories took root in Averon’s mind, their tendrils spreading through the cracks in his recollection, breaking open his mind. His perception was overlaid with Thalasar’s. He could see Rastus battling the golems, knew that each assault was calculated to bait the Evocator into greater feats, the obelisks bleeding off more and more power. He could see himself, crumpled on the ground, Ammis knelt beside him, her lips moving in a terrible, yet familiar chant.

Dully, he struggled against the sucking morass of the katophrane’s will. With a cutting thought, he summoned the voidstorm, but the raging energy could find no purchase. Thalasar did not exist outside the obelisks, outside Averon’s mind – there was nothing for the storm to cast asunder.

A hundred incantations rose amidst the churning babble of Averon’s thoughts – spells that would banish the katophrane or shred his soul into a thousand ragged threads – but he could not seem to lay hands on any of them, the invocations slipping like sand through his fingers even as Thalasar’s will devoured more of his own.

‘Stormsire!’ A single voice cut through the confused babble. High and clear despite the terrifying promise of its chant, Ammis shone like a beacon in the maelstrom. Averon could see her leaning over him, her helmet off, her head bowed in concentration as the forbidden chant slipped from her lips.

For a moment, their minds touched, Averon’s memories becoming hers. The darkness of Thalasar’s will, divided, could not maintain its assault.

Like clouds parting, Averon could feel awareness return. ‘Rastus,’ he gasped, and knew Ammis understood.

Still, she hesitated, glancing down at Averon.

He pushed to his feet, shrugging off her hand. ‘Go!’

Ammis stood, already calling for Rastus. The Evocator turned, his head wreathed in a corona of roiling tempest energy, his eyes blazing with celestial fury.

‘The obelisks,’ Ammis shouted. ‘They are some manner of soul magnet, they feed on storm energy!’

‘The golems will destroy us if I stop!’ Rastus clashed his weapons together, the boom of thunder swallowed by the encroaching shadow, his roar lost amidst the clatter of shadesteel blades. The maelstrom surrounding him was too powerful and unstable for even Ammis to approach. ‘I will not fail you both again!’

‘Please, you must trust me!’ she shouted at him.

‘I cannot stop!’ Rastus turned away, unleashing another arc of storm energy into the growing dark. ‘It is too powerful!’

Teeth gritted against the pain in his head, Averon watched the exchange. He raised a hand, ready to call down spells that would douse the young Stormcast’s arcane energies. But something stayed Averon’s hand – a memory, rising as if through murky water. He remembered what it had been like before Reforging had worn holes in his soul, what it was like to be filled with hope, to be surrounded by Stormcasts whom he had looked up to – mentors, teachers, heroes. He remembered what it was to be the youngest, the least skilled; what it was like to try to prove himself to his betters, desperate for their approval.

‘Bridle the storm!’ Averon limped forwards, imbuing his voice with just enough power to be heard over Rastus’ arcane maelstrom. ‘I know you have the skill, Rastus, the knowledge. Show me the storm does not rule you.’

Meeting Averon’s gaze, the Evocator squared his shoulders, seeming almost to wrestle with his weapons. Celestial lightning crackled across his armour, his limbs wreathed in golden light. Screaming, he leashed the tempest, the light fading, until at last he stood in darkness.

‘I am proud of you,’ Averon said just before the golems came charging in.

Ammis rushed to Rastus’ side, her stormstaff deflecting one of the shadesteel blades. Rastus turned so they were back to back, and together they ducked and dodged, battling the golems with skill alone.

Averon stood by, feeling helpless. Even with Ammis’ and Rastus’ ability, they would soon be overwhelmed. Any storm energy Averon summoned would be drained into the obelisks. He could still feel Thalasar at the back of his mind, a cold presence gathering strength for another assault.

The katophrane stalked Averon like a demigryph hunting prey, studying him, learning his powers, his weaknesses. Seeing into Thalasar’s mind was like looking into a dark prism, each of Averon’s thoughts reflected back a thousandfold – there was nothing he could do that Thalasar had not already planned for. The Cursebreakers’ souls would be dissected, their armour and weapons turned into more of the katophrane’s shadesteel abominations. As it had for so many before, the Nightvault would become their eternal prison.

Cold realisation ran icy fingers up the Knight-Incantor’s spine. The Nightvault might be a prison, but it was a broken one, its captives freed, its gaolers hunted. Averon might not be able to tear free of Thalasar’s web, but he knew of one who could.

Averon’s incantation slipped unnoticed through the tumult of combat. A small thing, barely a wisp of sorcery, it bored into the cracks in Thalasar’s wards, seeking the weaknesses the Knight-Incantor had seen when his mind had briefly merged with the katophrane’s.

Ancient spells unravelled, bindings picked apart. Sensing Averon’s spell, Thalasar buttressed his wards, but it was too late; Averon had torn a tiny hole in the masking enchantments. Through it he sent a tiny flicker of storm energy, a spark that flashed briefly in the darkness before sputtering out.

Thalasar slammed the breach in the wards shut. The katophrane’s laughter filled Averon’s thoughts. For a moment, the Knight-Incantor feared it had not been enough. Then he felt a shift in the arcane currents, Thalasar’s wards reacting to a great and terrible force, a mad aethereal presence that drew death magic to it like a lodestone, shifting, tearing, annihilating.

What have you done? The katophrane’s voice cracked.

It was Averon’s turn to laugh as the ceiling at the far side of the amphitheatre collapsed, a torrent of howling gheists pouring into the chamber.

Shadesteel golems turned to meet the new threat, wading into the shrieking aethereal tide like gargants swarmed by skaven.

Ammis and Rastus retreated down the amphitheatre steps, rejoining Averon. Ammis took a step towards him, but he waved her off, nodding at the gheists and golems.

‘Keep them back. I must deal with Thalasar.’

With a nod, the two Evocators took up position on either side of him. A shock wave of aethereal force shrieked across the amphitheatre, almost knocking the Cursebreakers from their feet. Averon did not need to look back to know the Briar Queen had entered the fray.

There was no time for subtlety or care. Averon grasped his spirit flask as his incantation drove deep into the delicate web of enchantments that imbued the psychopompic inhibitor. He could feel the souls of his Stormcast brethren within Thalasar’s soul magnet, still struggling against the arcane chains that bound them.

His plans in shambles, Thalasar clung to Averon’s mind like a drowning man.

You are a fool.

‘And you are an abomination,’ Averon said. Gripping his staff, he summoned the unbinding spells that would loose the aethereal chains binding the souls of his fellow Stormcasts to the soul magnet.

But I have what you seek. Panic edged the katophrane’s voice. Millennia of research, planning, calculation – I am so close.

‘You slew my fellows, stole their armour, their very souls.’

It was in service to a greater goal. You will be reborn whole, we will all be reborn whole, Thalasar said. You, of all people, should understand the need for sacrifice.

Behind Averon, the Briar Queen screamed, her unnatural voice imbued with such pain and rage that it was like a dagger driven into Averon’s back.

Please, she must not take me. Thalasar’s voice echoed high and anxious in Averon’s mind. Bring me with you. Together we can achieve true immortality.

‘After what you did to the Briar Queen?’ Averon scowled. ‘You deserve destruction at her hands.’

Destruction? Thalasar gave a low chuckle. The Briar Queen may be mad, but she is no fool. She would use me, steal my knowledge. You seek a way to remain whole through the Reforging, Stormsire, but did it occur to you that there are those who might desire to lose parts of themselves?

Averon’s chant stilled. Freed of her madness, her anger, the Briar Queen would become an immortal death mage of incalculable power, a force capable of rivalling even the Von Carstein brood, or perhaps Neferata herself.

Take me into your mind, Thalasar whispered. And all I have will be yours.

Averon let out a shaky breath. He had suffered so much in service to the quest for immortality, seen others suffer. What might the Stormcasts accomplish with true immortality? What good might Sigmar do? Averon grappled with darkness every day, immersed himself in it. Was this not simply the natural and inevitable end to his quest?

With a sigh, Averon cast aside the chants of unbinding, his voice fracturing into the music of the spheres. Although it sickened him to do so, he would sing Thalasar into his mind. Any travail, any sacrifice would be worth it to free his fellows from the slow death of Reforging.

Another voice threaded with Averon’s. High and clear, it cut through his harmonies, weakening instead of empowering. Song faltering, he turned to see Ammis at his side, eyes narrowed behind her golden mask. Behind her, Rastus fought alone, the wide sweep of his blade and staff keeping the gheists at bay while she gripped Averon’s arm.

Confused by Ammis’ attempt to undermine his chant, Averon took a breath to strengthen his call, and Ammis seized on the pause. Hard-edged incantations flew from her lips, dark and terrible chants that tore into Thalasar’s immaterial will, shattering the weakened katophrane into a thousand shrieking shards.

Thalasar screamed, and Averon screamed with him, the agony like slivers of glass being driven into his eyes. He cast out a hand, bellowing for Ammis to be silent, but she would not relent.

Cracks spread through the shadeglass ringing the obelisks even as the basalt began to crumble. Sharp flashes of light marked the severing of the chains that bound the tattered Stormcast souls, and they slipped into the churning aether like bright forks of lightning.

Pained tears pricked the corners of Averon’s eyes as he fell to one knee, head bowed and limbs heavy.

‘What have you done?’ he rasped out between clenched teeth.

Without a word, Ammis reached down to pluck Averon’s spirit flask from his belt. Holding it high, she sang to the unmoored Stormcast souls. Although her voice faltered, unsure of the songs that would calm and reorient the wayward spiritual energies, the spirits came to her readily enough.

When it was done, she knelt to slip an arm under Averon’s shoulder, lifting him up. He could see Thalasar’s shattering had driven the golems mad, as they fought the gheists and each other. Those few who stumbled into the amphitheatre were quickly despatched by Rastus’ blade and staff.

The Briar Queen waded through the melee like an avenging god. Her necromancy scrabbled at the fragments of Thalasar’s soul, trying to stitch them back into some semblance of a whole, but, for all her power, Averon knew it was not in her nature to heal.

‘Quickly, before she realises he is gone,’ Averon gasped.

Ammis half carried, half dragged Averon towards the stairs that led from the amphitheatre.

‘She will follow.’ He pushed free, gesturing for his spirit flask.

Ammis hesitated. ‘You cannot break it, not with the other Hammers inside.’

‘Do you think me so foolish?’ Averon snatched the flask from her hand, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Rastus!’

‘Knight-Incantor?’ The Evocator spun, head cocked.

‘There are times for precision and care – this is not one of them. Unleash the storm.’ Averon grinned. ‘Bring this terrible place down behind us.’

‘With pleasure.’ The crackling inferno of Rastus’ celestial lightning cast Averon and Ammis’ shadows in harsh relief as they retreated from the amphitheatre. Gheist screeches and the clashing of blades were punctuated by great peals of thunder.

Whooping, Rastus barrelled up the stairs behind them, his armour still smoking from the arcane fury of his tempest. Blue light limned the tunnel, followed by a single, hate-filled shriek cut off by the boom of falling stone.

They came up from beneath the jagged throne, stumbling along the twisting paths. As they passed through the thorned door, Averon turned. Drawing forth his scroll he called the voidstorm down upon the Briar Queen’s former prison. The snap of lightning and crackle of shattering obsidian chased them up the stairs and into the bowels of the Nightvault.

‘Do you think the Briar Queen will pursue us?’ Ammis asked.

‘She will need to dig herself out, first.’ Rastus gave a panting chuckle. ‘I left not two cursed stones standing together.’

‘Scout the corridors.’ Averon gestured at Rastus. ‘With my connection to Thalasar broken, we are blind. And I do not wish any gheists to surprise us.’

‘Yes, Knight-Incantor.’ Rastus strode off with a bow.

When the Evocator had moved a suitable distance away, Averon turned to Ammis. ‘I should send you back to Sigmaron for what you did back there – questioning my decisions, undermining my authority.’

‘Yes, Knight-Incantor.’ Although Ammis’ words were contrite, her tone was not.

‘We could have finally saved our fellows the pain of Reforging and fulfilled our holy mission.’ Averon glared at her. ‘Do you have any idea how long I have been searching? What I have done in service of our quest? The sacrifices I have made?’

‘No, Knight-Incantor.’ She removed her helmet, but did not lower her head.

Averon rapped his Incantor staff against the tile. ‘No, you do not.’

They lapsed into uncomfortable silence. Averon could feel the anger roiling within him. He had been so close. And yet, free of Thalasar’s influence, he could see the pitfalls inherent in the katophrane’s promise – dark means led to dark ends, no matter the purity of vision.

‘Back in Thalasar’s lair.’ He frowned at Ammis. ‘Where did you learn those incantations? I certainly did not teach them to you.’

‘I am not blind, Knight-Incantor.’ She waved a dismissive hand, then gave a low grunt – a move so eerily familiar Averon felt he might have been gazing into a mirror.

Strangely, he found himself smiling. Just as Averon had taken a piece of the darkness inside himself, she had done the same with him, for him. It troubled Averon to know that Ammis had gazed upon his mind, seen the shadows and made them hers.

He shook his head, clearing his throat. ‘Well, if you are going to be casting enchantments, I should at least see to it you know your binding incantations.’

Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘Knight-Incantor?’

‘If even Rastus can learn discretion, then there may be hope for us all.’ Averon glanced around, grimacing. ‘We shall begin your lessons once we win free of the Nightvault.’

He clapped Ammis on the arm, then turned to follow Rastus, one hand resting on his spirit flask. He could feel the Stormcast souls within, free and safe, at least as such things were measured in the cursed city of Shadespire.

He walked a few paces, pausing when he noticed Ammis had not followed. A glance back found her standing in the centre of the corridor, her expression one of disbelief and shock.

‘Do try to keep up, Ammis,’ Averon called back to her.

With a start, she donned her helmet and hurried after him.

Already, Averon could feel the darkness of the Nightvault edging in around them, a twisting, doleful essence that seeped into the cracks in their resolve, shadowy hands scrabbling for purchase. It did not bother him. He had seen true darkness and come away battered, scarred, but unbroken.

Thalasar’s invention was a direct path to immortality, but one that would have stained the Stormcasts with its necromantic taint. The psychopompic inhibitor had been destroyed, Thalasar’s conscience scattered to the aethereal winds, but Averon had not come away empty-handed.

The katophrane’s memories still echoed within his mind – millennia of disjointed secrets for him to sift and digest. Perhaps a clue to true immortality lay within.

He glanced back at Ammis, then up to where Rastus plumbed the darkness ahead. The sight of his companions conjured a strange lightness in Averon’s chest. Whatever the danger, whatever the challenge, if the Nightvault held the answer, Averon would find it.

And he would not do so alone.

THE ROAD OF BLADES

Josh Reynolds

Ahazian Kel twisted in his saddle as the barbed arrow sank into the meat of his bicep. He looked down at it, and then up, to see where it had come from. More arrows followed the first. Most of these splintered against the warped plates of his crimson-and-brass armour, but several found gaps and pierced his flesh. More annoyingly, one found the eye of his horse, killing the scaly brute instantly.

The animal fell with a sibilant whinny, and Ahazian tumbled from his saddle with a curse. The Deathbringer rolled to his feet in a slew of choking dust and shredded grasses, weapons in hand. He ignored the broken arrows jutting from his scarred body. A little pain was good, like salt for meat. The goreaxe squirmed in his grip, eager to bite flesh, and the skullhammer throbbed, ready to crush bone. The thorns of metal set into their hafts bit comfortingly into his palms, sinking into old grooves of scar tissue. The weapons were a part of him, an extension of his arms and will. He stepped away from the dying horse, deeper into the waving, waist-high grasses of the plain, and set his feet, awaiting his attackers. If they wanted him, he saw no reason to disappoint them.

He didn’t have long to wait. A dozen horsemen galloped towards him through the sea of black grasses, their reptilian steeds shrieking with hunger. The cannibal-horses of the Caldera would, and often did, devour anything that fell beneath their scything hooves, even their own riders. The Horse-Lords of the Caldera were little better than their fierce steeds, and the other tribes of the steppes justly feared falling into their hands.

Clad in armour made from bronze plates and the reddish scales of their stallions, and draped in dark robes of firewurm silk, they made for a most impressive sight. Each rider carried a stubby, curved bow and an array of hand weapons that even the most ardent bloodreaver would eye with envy. Masks of bone hid their faces.

Intimidating. But then, so was he. He stood hands taller than the tallest of them, and his broad frame was clad in heavy armour. His helmet curved upwards, coalescing into the rune of Khorne, marking his allegiances for all who wished to see. He spread his arms, extending his weapons outwards, in a gesture of welcome.

One of the riders bent, and drew an arrow from the quiver on his saddle. He loosed so swiftly that Ahazian almost missed it. His goreaxe snapped up, and the arrow split itself on the blade. More arrows followed. His skullhammer swept out, smashing them from the air. The clans of the Caldera had fought his kind before, and knew that to get too close, too soon, was to die. They galloped in a wide circle, surrounding him, screaming their war cries. When Anhur of the Axe had led the Eight Tribes across these lands, he’d sent Kung of the Long Arm to cast down the fang-standards of the clans, and humble them. Since Anhur’s death, at the fall of Klaxus, the clans had recovered their courage. Mostly, they contented themselves with raiding the slave-caravans of the Furnace-Kings, or warring upon weaker steppe tribes. That they were here, now, seemed almost an omen.

‘Khorne smiles upon me,’ Ahazian murmured. Perhaps the Blood God had sent him one last gift, before he left this place. Or perhaps they’d seen a lone rider and not realised his true nature until it was too late. Either way, he had little patience for such obstructions. He was close to the end of his quest. The Road of Blades called out to him, and he would not falter now.

Bored, he slammed his weapons together and glared at the circling horsemen. ‘Come on then. I am Ahazian Kel, scion of the Ekran, and I walk the Eightfold Path. I have no time for cowards.’

As if his words were a signal, a horseman screamed and galloped towards him, drawing a sword as he did so. Ahazian turned to meet him. He slammed his shoulder into the horse’s chest, and swept its front hooves out from under it with his skullhammer. Thick bones snapped, and the scaly creature fell with a scream that was almost human. His goreaxe slammed down, shearing through the fallen rider’s blade and the head behind. An arrow smacked into the small of Ahazian’s back, and he whipped around. He smashed aside a lance that sought his midsection, and removed its wielder’s arm for good measure.

He killed two more before the rest broke. The Caldera retreated, leaving him standing over the corpses of their fellows. ‘Perhaps your folk are not so foolish as all that, eh?’ he asked, looking down at one of the dead men. ‘They know when they are beaten, at least. Unlike my own.’ His amusement faded as he silenced a wounded horse. He crushed the beast’s head, and let his skullhammer drink in its blood.

He looked around. The Black Grasses were exactly what their name implied – a steppe, covered in tall, blackened grasses, rustling in a hot wind. And beyond them, limned in the red light of the setting sun, the ruins of Caldus. Caldus, where the ancestors of the Calderan clans had made their final stand against the armies of the Bloodbound, before being scattered to the winds. ‘And here you are, standing against one of us again,’ he said to one of the corpses, laughing. ‘Perhaps you are a foolish people, after all.’

It was Caldus he had come to find. Caldus and what lay beyond it – the Road of Blades. The road to his destiny. Khorne had called him, and Ahazian Kel had come.

There were no more kels. Just him. There were no more Ekran, save in the armies of the Bloodbound. And all their works had been cast into the fire with them. That was the price one paid, for defying Khorne. And yet… and yet. Khorne prized defiance, even as he punished it. To fight was to earn Khorne’s blessings. And for a kel, there was only battle. To wage war, one must become war. That was the truest adage of the Ekran. Masters did not matter. Armies and nations were but distractions to the purity of war.

Ahazian Kel, last hero of the Ekran, sought to become war itself. But for that, he required greater weapons than those he currently wielded, weapons which could only be found in the Soulmaw. The goreaxe stirred in his grip, as if the thought had angered it. ‘I killed your first wielder to claim you,’ he said, chidingly. ‘There is little difference that I can see. You discard masters, and your masters discard you. That is the fate of all weapons.’

The wind brought a scent to him. He tilted his head, taking it in. Old blood. Rust. Hot metal. The Road of Blades was close. He set off through the grasses, already forgetting the men and beasts he’d killed. The walk was long, but his endurance was inhuman. Gone were the days of honest sweat and aching muscles. He was like a blade, honed to perfection. A killing edge that would never dull, no matter how many lives he took.

He would never bend, until he broke. Such were the blessings of Khorne.

The distant ruins of Caldus grew larger – broken towers of basalt and feldspar rose above crumbling walls of blazestone. He saw the remains of a massive gateway, its ancient gilt work long since stripped from it by scavenging clans and treasure seekers. Where once the clans of the Caldera had lived and toiled, now only beasts dwelled. The Children of Chaos eagerly occupied whatever mankind abandoned, and warred amongst themselves for control of the ashes. That too was the way of Khorne. Only the strong survived.

The grasses grew thin, and soon disappeared entirely. A scar stretched across the plain, from the baroque portcullis of the city gate to a point just out of sight. It was as if some great blast of heat had scoured a path, burning away the grasses and leaving behind… what?

Weapons. Sourly amused, he realised that it was not called the Road of Blades without cause. Swords, mostly. But some axes. Spear blades. Arrowheads. The weapons had twisted in the heat, melting together into a flat ribbon as wide as several men. Ahazian studied them, trying to calculate the number of blades needed to craft such a pathway. They rattled softly, in their captivity, as if unseen hands were trying to pry them up. He had not noticed the sound before, but now, it was all he could hear. Metal squealed against metal. Pommels thumped.

A road of fire-warped weapons. ‘How fitting,’ he said. The weapons stilled at the sound of his voice, and he tensed, his instincts screaming a warning. But he saw no enemies. Only the ashes of the defeated, still drifting above their blades. That was the story told around the campfires of the Bloodbound. Of proud Caldus, and its fall, and how one of the Forgemasters of Khorne had taken the weapons of those who died in the city’s defence and made from them a road of blades. A road that was but one of eight. Eight roads for eight realms, all leading to the same place… The Soulmaw. The great smithy-citadel of Khorne, where the weapons of mortals and daemons alike were crafted by the Forgemasters and their servants. It extended outwards from the Brass Citadel through all realms, for wherever there was war, there was a need for weapons. Its forges were fired by the flames of a dying sun, and its ever-shifting ramparts swelled and contracted to the drumbeat of eternal battle.

Ahazian stepped onto the road. The weapons shifted beneath his feet, and he paused, waiting. It was said, in some war camps, that only the worthy could walk the road and survive. But then, that was said of most things of this sort. But Ahazian knew that all of existence was but a test of worth. Every breath, each step – all a test.

He turned and squinted into the distance. The red sun was setting, casting crimson shadows across the steppes. There was a haze, far ahead of him. A shimmering heat-sign. That was where he must go. The Soulmaw awaited him, like a promise yet to be kept. He strode towards it, following the curve of the road.

Ahazian could not say when he had first heard of the legendary smithy-citadel of Khorne. It was there, the savages of the Ashdwell whispered, that the weapons of the gods themselves were forged – even Warmaker, the Blood God’s great two-handed sword. Weapons such as those he desired. Those he deserved. Others contended that even the deep forges of the Furnace-Kings were but puny shadows of the Soulmaw, though he knew of none who had ever seen it and lived to tell the tale.

Like much of what he knew of the gods and their realms, it was all stories told at a remove, passed down from one warrior to another. And all of these stories might be true, or none of them at all. The gods, he knew, were vast, and contained multitudes – daemons and lesser spirits – all bound to the will and whim of their patrons.

Perhaps it was one of those multitudes that had sent him the signs and portents which had set him upon this path. He had seen the silhouette of an anvil in the blood smear of a dying orruk, and read strange sigils carved on the splintery insides of an Ashdwell sylvaneth. A flock of carrion birds had followed him for eight days, and croaked the name of Caldus to him at the eighth hour of each day. In red dreams, he had witnessed a titanic shape, wolf-fanged and mighty, striding through the heavens, and heard a voice, tolling like a bell. It had called out to him, commanding him to travel alone across the Furnace Lands, through the Felstone Plains and to the steppes of the Caldera. And he had done so.

Implacable, he had fought his way towards the setting sun, through enemies great and small. All to reach the Road of Blades. But now that he was here, he felt… Not anticipation. Wariness, perhaps. His instincts had been honed on a thousand battlefields. If this was a test, he had not yet passed it.

Ahazian tightened his grip on his weapons and increased his pace. He could feel the broken blades turning beneath him, like serpents stirring in their sleep. As if the road were waking up. The ashes grew thick, filling his mouth and stinging his eyes. They swirled about the road, caught in the eternal heat of their burning.

He stopped. He thought he’d seen something, in the ashes. Like the outline of a shape. Almost human, but not quite. More of them, now. Following behind him, approaching him from ahead. Crowding him. The weapons were clattering again. But the sound had changed. It was almost… eager? ‘Ha,’ he said, softly. ‘So be it.’

The first blade rose up like an adder, and he crushed it with his skullhammer. A second tore itself free of the road and whirled towards him, borne aloft in a cloud of ash. Two more followed its example. An axe wrenched itself upright and spun towards his head. He bulled forward, knowing that to hesitate was to be overwhelmed. To stop and fight was the impulse of all warriors, but it was better to seek out a true challenge than to shed blood for no purpose. There were no enemies here, only the echoes of a defeated people. Khorne might not care from whence the blood flowed, but Ahazian did, especially if it promised to be his own.

He pressed on, smashing weapons aside. Beneath the rattle of metal and the hiss of ash, he thought he heard voices, cursing him, or warning him. The souls of the dead, perhaps, or maybe even those who’d failed to meet the road’s challenge. Arrowheads dug into his flesh like fangs as he swatted the axe from the air. Swords drew sparks from his shoulder-plates and back-plate. A spear blade crashed against his greave, and twisted away. Only once did he stumble, when a length of chain tangled his legs. But a quick strike with his goreaxe freed him, before the rest could take advantage.

Ahazian was bleeding from a score of wounds when he reached what he’d sought. The gateway rose up out of nothing, a coruscating vortex composed of swirling ash, splinters of molten metal and a harsh, eye-searing light. It was not a physical thing, so much as the memory of one. Not a true gate, but a wound cut into the flesh of Aqshy, bleeding heat and light. Sweat beaded on his flesh as he approached the light, goreaxe raised to shield his eyes. Behind him, the road undulated. Weapon points gleamed in the raw glare of the gateway as they surged towards him. He did not slow, or hesitate. He hurled himself through the gate.

He slammed down onto a hard, metal surface. He clambered to his feet and took in his surroundings at a glance. Fumes of sulphurous gas hung thick upon the dense air, partially obscuring the heights above, and the depths below. The gantry he stood on was a narrow strip of heat-scarred iron, extending over an indistinct molten expanse, far beneath him. The path ahead led to a massive portcullis, wrought from brass and stone in the shape of raging flames. The portcullis itself was set into some vast, central edifice, the shape of which he found himself unable to comprehend. From everywhere echoed the din of industry and the grinding of stone. The noise was a force unto itself, battering at his senses.

The gantry vibrated from the quaquaversal reverberation, creaking in its vague moorings. Ahazian caught sight of movement some distance above him. Another gantry, gleaming like silver, stretched towards the central edifice from out of the choking haze. A lean figure strode across it, carrying a broad-bladed impaling spear over its shoulder. The figure stopped, as if it had caught sight of Ahazian. It shouted something, but the words were lost in the clamour. A greeting, or maybe a challenge.

‘It seems that I am not alone on this path, then. No matter.’ Ahazian raised his goreaxe in salute. A roar from below dragged his eyes downward, towards a third gantry, composed of what appeared to be fire-blackened bones. A heavy figure, clad in heavy armour the colour of clotting blood, glared up at him. It clutched an axe in one hand and had a heavy shield strapped to its other arm. ‘A path of silver, a path of bones and a path of fire,’ Ahazian muttered. Perhaps the Road of Blades was not so unique as the stories had made out.

The bulky warrior below began to lumber towards what Ahazian suspected was his own portcullis. Annoyance flared in him. He had come too far to be beaten to his goal by some plodding oaf. He broke into a run. But as he did so, he felt the gantry begin to shudder and buck. He staggered, and nearly fell, as the portcullis ground open with a clatter of chains. Something massive stepped out onto the juddering gantry.

It was not alive, at least not in any way he recognised. It was shaped like a man, though it was the size of one of the gargants said to dwell in the Firepeaks. Its hide was brass and blackened iron, and it was draped with smoking chains. Vents spewed smoke whenever it moved. Its head was a mockery of his own helmet, and it clutched an enormous axe in its talons. With a grinding roar, it lurched towards him, axe raised. With every step, it caused the gantry to shudder and groan.

‘Another test? Another stone on which to hone my edge – come then. I fear nothing that walks.’ Ahazian’s weapons hummed in his grip as he lunged to meet the automaton. They were eager for battle, even against something that could not bleed. The great axe hissed down, and he twisted aside, nearly losing his footing. He struck out at the automaton’s joints, trying to slow it down. But it ignored his attacks the way he’d ignored the arrows of the Caldera earlier.

It was a weapon, and felt no pain from his blows, which only added to his frustration. ‘Scream, damn you – howl, shriek, something,’ he growled. Screams were his music, and never before had he been denied them. Even the bark-skinned sylvaneth screamed. But this thing refused to give him his due. Then, conceivably, that was the point. Like the living weapons of the road, this thing was not to be fought – but avoided.

Filled with new certainty, Ahazian hunched forward, avoiding a sweeping blow that would have removed his head, and threw himself between its legs. He rolled to his feet as it turned towards him, gears whining. Then, with a shout, he brought his skullhammer down on the trembling surface of the gantry. The iron had been weakened by the automaton’s weight, and it burst at the point of impact. The automaton staggered towards him, axe raised for a killing blow. Chunks of hot metal spattered across his helmet as he struck the gantry again and again. Then, with a final, echoing screech, the iron gave way and the gantry collapsed, carrying the automaton with it. The thing plunged down into the molten depths below.

Ahazian heard a creaking behind him and turned, expecting to see a second automaton. Instead, he saw the bars of the portcullis descending. They meant to trap him out here, whoever they were. He snarled in anger and sprang to stop it. But even as he moved, he knew he wouldn’t reach it in time. With a roar, he sent his goreaxe spinning towards the portcullis. The weapon wedged itself between the bars and the stone frame of the gateway, slowing the mechanism’s descent. Sparks flashed as the metal of the blade bit at the stonework.

The Deathbringer dived through the gateway even as his goreaxe snapped in two, and the portcullis slammed down. He glanced at the remains of the weapon. Another test. One of sacrifice. Ahazian found himself in an immense, circular antechamber, hewn from volcanic rock. The walls were bare, save for thick pillars of feldspar and eight portals, including the one he’d entered through. ‘Smaller than I thought it’d be,’ he said. On the floor was a mosaic of images – daemons, warriors, gods, all locked in battle – curling around colossal grates. Above him, the chamber stretched up into a smoky darkness.

The skin between his shoulder blades itched and he peered upwards. Between the pillars, he glimpsed what might have been individual tiers or levels, lit by firelight. This was only the bottom level, then. He heard the ringing of hammers on anvils, and the hiss of hot metal being cooled. Distant voices spoke, but he could not make out their words. The air stank of smoke and blood.

‘Are we expected to fight our way to the top, then?’ someone rumbled. Ahazian turned to see the brutish warrior he’d noticed before stump through an archway marked with symbols of death. The warrior’s armour was gashed and dented in places, and he’d lost his shield, but he still had his axe. Strange charms and tokens hung from his neck, and his breastplate was etched with scenes of battle. His helmet was crafted in the shape of a skull, and the haft of his axe was a human femur. He waved the weapon at Ahazian. ‘Answer me, fool, or I shall gut you and read the answer in your entrails.’

Ahazian stepped back towards the centre of the chamber. Perhaps this was the last test. A trial by combat, to see who was worthy of the Soulmaw’s gifts. ‘Do not make threats you cannot keep, brute.’ He spread his arms. ‘Come to me, if you wish to die.’

‘Does that go for all of us, or just him?’

Ahazian risked a glance to his left. The spear-wielder he’d seen before stepped through an archway of gold. The warrior wore an open-faced helmet and a polished cuirass of brass, marked with the rune of Khorne. His scarred, tattooed limbs were bare of armour, but his movements were so quick, Ahazian doubted he required the extra protection. Even so, blood dripped freely down his limbs from numerous wounds. ‘Feel free to join in, if you like,’ Ahazian said. ‘I’ve never had a problem killing strangers.’

‘Too much talking, not enough dying,’ the brute rumbled. He charged towards Ahazian, axe raised. Ahazian braced himself to meet the warrior’s rush, glad at last to face a living opponent. Even if he did smell like an open grave. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of more warriors entering the chamber through the other archways. He had little time to spare for them, however, as his adversary hacked at him. He caught the blade of the axe on the head of his skullhammer. His muscles bulged as he fought to force his larger opponent back. ‘Strong,’ the brute grunted.

‘Only the strong survive,’ Ahazian said.

‘And only the clever prosper,’ the spear-wielder interjected. The wide blade of his impaling spear skidded off the armour under Ahazian’s arm. He caught the weapon just behind the blade and yanked it forward, so that it slammed into the chest of the brute. The hulking warrior staggered back with a curse. Ahazian spun and smashed his skullhammer into the chest of the spear-wielder, knocking him flat.

‘A clever warrior wouldn’t have got so close,’ Ahazian growled, as he raised his weapon. He would crack this fool’s skull and then finish off the other one. However, as he moved to do so, smoke began to rise from the grates in the floor. It flowed upwards so swiftly and thickly that soon Ahazian could see nothing around him. The sounds of battle grew dim, and faded away entirely. Even the floor beneath his feet felt different. He could no longer feel the presence of his opponents. It was as if they had been stolen away by unseen hands. For a moment, curiosity warred with anger.

Then, in the smoke, came a light. A dull, orange glow. Acting on instinct, he moved towards it. The floor trembled beneath him as he moved, and he heard the thunderous creaking of unseen gears. From somewhere, a voice began to speak.

In the beginning, before the Age of Blood, before the realms cracked and the four brothers made war upon one another, there was fire. From fire, came heat. From heat, shape. And shape split into eight. And the eight became as death. Eight Lamentations.

Ahazian stopped. ‘The Eight…’ he whispered. Every warrior marked by Khorne knew the legend of the Eight Lamentations. Eight weapons, given by Khorne as gifts to his brother gods, but then lost. A single Lamentation could shatter armies. All eight together would rend the walls of reality, and cast down all that opposed them. Were these the weapons that had drawn him here? Was this why he had been summoned, to wield one of the Eight? The thought excited him. It was only fitting, was it not?

The smoke swelled, and Ahazian wondered if the chamber were changing shape, somehow. Everything seemed to be moving, drawing him closer to the orange glow. He pressed on, moving as quickly as he dared, without being able to see his surroundings. And through it all, the voice continued its tale.

The Eight were the raw stuff of Chaos, hammered and shaped to a killing edge by the chosen weapon-smiths of Khorne. To each of his Forgemasters was given a task – to craft a weapon unlike any other: a weapon fit for a god. Or one as unto a god.

‘I am not a god, but I would gladly slaughter a pantheon for such a weapon,’ Ahazian said. His words were swallowed up by the smoke, without even an echo to mark their passing. With such a weapon in his hand, he would be as war itself.

Then came the Age of Blood and the Eight were lost. But it is said by the Brass Oracles that there will come eight warriors – Godchosen – who will reclaim the Eight for Khorne, and march with them at the head of his armies, at the end of all things…

Abruptly, the smoke billowed and began to disperse, as he was enveloped in a great heat. His boots scraped on rough stone, and he waved a hand to clear his vision. He was in a forge. Larger than any he’d ever seen, but crude. Primitive. It was a cavern, chopped and hewn so as to make room for firepits and cooling basins. Racks of weapons decorated the curved walls – hackblades, wrath-hammers, weapons of all shapes and sizes.

And at the heart of the forge, a huge anvil, and the smith himself, standing over it. One big hand clutched a hammer, while the other held something flat on the anvil. The hammer came down once, twice, three times, filling the forge with the sound of metal ringing on metal. The sound sliced at his senses, setting his teeth on edge.

Ahazian recognised the heavily muscled being before him. He’d seen skullgrinders before, though the war-smiths of Khorne were not a common sight. The creature’s armour was blackened and warped, as if he had been at the centre of a lightning strike. When the skull-faced helm turned, Ahazian saw that it was scored and marked in similar fashion.

‘You are of the Ekran.’

The skullgrinder’s voice was like an avalanche. Ahazian hesitated. Then, he said, ‘I am Ahazian Kel.’

‘The last kel.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you kill the others?’

Ahazian took a tighter grip on his skullhammer. ‘Some. Who are you to ask such questions?’

‘I am he who called you here, Ahazian Kel. I am Volundr of Hesphut. The Skull-Cracker. The Sword-Binder. Do you know my name?’

Ahazian did. ‘It is said, in certain circles, that it was by your hand that the sword Marrowcutter was forged. That you broke a hundred daemons on your anvil, and used their blood to cool the blade of the greatest of the Eight Lamentations.’

A low, guttural laugh slipped from the skullgrinder. ‘Even so, even so. You know who I am, then. But do you know what I am?’

‘The Forgemaster of Aqshy.’

‘Yes. One of eight sworn war-smiths, bound in service to Khorne. Though we are but seven, now. The forges of Azyr are cold, and my brother is gone. Even Khorne cannot find him.’ Volundr lifted what he’d been working on from the anvil. It was an axe – a black goreaxe, chased in gold. ‘This axe once belonged to another, who failed to live up to its promise and my expectations. Thus, I have reforged it, and made it stronger.’

The skullgrinder turned, the axe licking out. Ahazian jerked back, bringing his skullhammer up to block the blow. His hammer burst as the axe bit into it, and he was knocked backwards. Volundr gave him no time to recover, or even mourn the loss of a faithful weapon. The skullgrinder spun the axe as if it weighed no more than a feather, and chopped at Ahazian’s head. Ahazian ducked aside. He didn’t waste time wondering why the skullgrinder had called him here only to kill him. Such was the skullgrinder’s strength, he had no doubt that a single blow would mean his end. He had to stay out of reach.

‘Why did you come, kel?’ Volundr rumbled. ‘Answer me quickly.’

‘I came seeking weapons,’ Ahazian said, avoiding another blow. He cast around, seeking a way out. His spirit rebelled at the thought of retreat, but he had not come all this way merely to die. There were weapons here – one of them might give him an edge.

‘Which weapons? This one, perhaps?’ The axe slashed down, nearly taking Ahazian’s leg off. He threw himself backwards, towards a rack of blades. ‘Or perhaps you came seeking one of the Eight Lamentations, eh? Did you come seeking Marrowcutter, or perhaps the spear called Gung?’

‘And if I did?’

‘Is that the only reason you dared walk the Road of Blades?’

‘What other reason is there?’ Ahazian snarled. He snatched up a hackblade and turned. The axe sheared through it, even as he brought it up. He cast the jagged stump into Volundr’s face.

‘To test yourself. To see if you were worthy of wielding these weapons you seek.’

‘I would not be here if I were not,’ Ahazian said. He twisted aside and then lunged back, grabbing the axe by the haft. Volundr laughed and jerked him off his feet. He slammed Ahazian back against the wall with humiliating ease, holding him pinned.

‘No. I suppose not.’ Volundr studied him for a moment. ‘They are not here, you know. They were lost. Scattered across the Mortal Realms by unknown hands.’

‘Then why call me here?’ Ahazian demanded, struggling to get free.

‘To see if you are worthy of the quest. Do you think yourself one of the Godchosen, then, Ahazian Kel? Are you one of the eight champions destined to wield the Lamentations in Khorne’s name, in the final bloodletting, when the stars themselves are snuffed out?’

Ahazian clawed at the haft of the axe, trying to free himself. He lashed out at Volundr with his feet. It felt like kicking stone. Volundr chuckled. ‘Or perhaps such dreams are beyond you. Maybe you are simply a butcher, seeking a better quality of blade. Which is it?’

‘It is whichever Khorne wills,’ Ahazian hissed. ‘I am his weapon, to wield as he sees fit.’ He thrust his fingers into the eye slits of Volundr’s helm. The skullgrinder roared in fury and stumbled back, releasing him. Ahazian crumpled to the ground, gasping. Volundr had dropped the axe, and was clutching at his helm. Ahazian snatched the weapon up and lunged to his feet. He swung it towards Volundr’s neck. But, at the last moment, he pulled the blow.

Volundr lowered his hands. His eyes gleamed, in the depths of his helm. ‘Very good. You have a brain, Ekran.’ He straightened. ‘More than I can say for some of the others. But then, my brothers have never been as particular as myself, regarding their tools.’

‘Tool,’ Ahazian repeated. ‘Those others, they were summoned as I was.’ He thought of the brute, and wondered whether such a creature would have the wit to pass such a test. He doubted it. But perhaps the other Forgemasters valued different properties in their tools.

Volundr nodded. ‘By my brothers. The other remaining Forgemasters.’

‘Why? To what purpose?’

Volundr turned back to his anvil. ‘The time for war – the last war – will soon be upon us. The weak gods of the lesser realms have returned to contest our dominion anew, even as Khorne’s brothers scheme in the shadows between worlds.’ He slammed his hammer down on the anvil. ‘The Eight Lamentations must be found. And we will find them. You will be my hand in this task, as the others who were called will serve my brothers.’

Ahazian nodded. He’d been right. It had been a test, all of it.

‘And it still is,’ Volundr said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘If you are brave enough to continue. Your destiny awaits, Ahazian Kel. Will you falter?’

‘I told you before – I am Khorne’s, to wield as he sees fit.’

Volundr nodded and struck the anvil again. ‘Good. Then I will not have to shatter your skull on my anvil.’

Ahazian extended the haft of the axe to Volundr. ‘A good weapon. But not what I came for.’

Volundr shook his head. ‘No.’ He chuckled and struck the anvil one last time.

‘But it will serve until you have a better one.’

BEAR EATER

David Guymer

The sun was searing bright, the sky a lens of crystal blue, shaped by gods for the glorification of their oasis of light. Towers of white stone with domed roofs of mosaic gold shone with a splendour that stole a man’s breath, and drew sweat even from an immortal’s brow. The trek across the Sea of Bones had been arduous, but dust and battle damage aside, the dozen Astral Templars still standing could outshine any Mortal Realm for glory.

Liberators in heavy armour of deep amethyst and gold marched in silent ranks; their shields were up in defiance of the sun, hammers strapped across their backs, heads high. The Prosecutors flanked them, walking in lockstep, but with the mechanisms of their wings unfurled, enhancing their size threefold. Their pinions sizzled with god-wrought might. To the rear came a pair of Judicators, the stocks of their crossbows each held in one heavy gauntlet, the stirrups to their shoulders. In the absence of the wrath of Azyr, the weapons were bright but otherwise inert arcs of blessed sigmarite. Impressive regardless, their function plain enough to anyone who knew war.

Even they were but a foretaste.

Hamilcar Bear-Eater marched a stride ahead, his helmet carried under the crook of his arm. His face was tattooed and bearded, his thick pile of red hair sweaty under the desert sun. His teeth were painted black, and he grinned for the awed men and terrified children that lined the Sacred Mile of Jercho to witness the return of Sigmar. Stick-figure representations of sacred beasts marked the rugged sigmarite of his armour; sandblasted and sun-faded, the etchings were as dim now as his own memory of the land and people that had spawned them. It clanked as he walked, the strapping loosened against the heat, his warding lantern banging on the opposite hip. A cloak of tattered Carthic bearskin trailed limply over one shoulder.

Larger than life, men had once called him, when he too had still been a man.

What then, he wondered, could they call him now?

The soldiery of Jercho lined the approach in their finest wargear. They were armoured in short-sleeved leather lorica and skirts sewn with bronze plates. Masks of the same metal, cast in the likeness of a rising sun, covered the upper halves of their faces, eyes peering through slit holes, only their frowns visible. The exposed skin of their arms, legs and chins was the brown of baked bread. Several ranks stood flawlessly to attention under the punishing midday heat – the sun was always high over Jercho – a line of spearmen that ran the Sacred Mile all the way from the Gates of Noon and the citadel of Jercho itself. Archers with long composite bowstaves made of hewnbeam and grindworm tooth tracked the procession from the rooftops.

The Astral Templars were not the only ones intent on making an impression.

‘There certainly are a lot of them,’ muttered Broudiccan.

The Decimator-Prime was a man of heroic stature and few words, which was what Hamilcar, a man of many words of tremendous import, appreciated about him most. His helmet bore a dent from a battle with the sankrit, a reptilian people whose small empire straddled the northernmost reaches of the Sea of Bones. The sankrit had clawed knuckles, and the blow to Broudiccan’s faceplate had left a deep gouge across the mask’s impassive mouth that only deepened the warrior’s gloomy aspect.

‘There always are.’ Hamilcar thumped his breastplate with a clenched fist, making one of the nearby spearmen start. ‘There is only ever one of Hamilcar.’ The granite-white gryph-hound, Crow, that padded alongside him growled in apparent assent, or perhaps in hunger as it considered the soldiers of Jercho.

‘Think of what might be achieved if these people can be returned to Sigmar’s fold,’ said Thracius, last surviving Prime of his Liberators, his armour sand-polished and aglow with Sigmar’s energy, his manner characteristically ebullient. ‘Look upon Jercho’s wealth. And these towers, so grand, earthly twins to those of Sigmaron herself! Two Mortal Realms have I waged holy war upon, Hamilcar, and never seen the like of Jercho – a nation of city-states, as yet unmarred by the Age of Chaos. Their confidence and power would be a boon to Sigmar’s, equal to anything we have achieved in Ghur thus far.’

Ever restless, Hamilcar’s mind turned back.

He had been dispatched to the Realm of Beasts to reconquer the cities of the Carthic Oldwoods and oversee their resettlement in Sigmar’s name. He had succeeded, for Hamilcar always succeeded, only to see that great work undone as one by one those cities fell to marauding bands of ogors, the orruk hordes of the Great Red, and then, the death blow, to the undying legions of Mannfred von Carstein.

It had been Mannfred that had slain him, in the final battle for once-mighty Cartha, and the ignominy of his defeat lingered more than the appalling injuries required to slay one as mighty as he. He was troubled, more often than he would admit, by dreams of that day. He would awake, clad in sweat, his halberd gripped so fiercely that if the dreams did not cease then one day even blessed sigmarite would snap. A lesser immortal would have broken, but it was not often that the gods forged men of Hamilcar’s mettle. Aware, as a god must be, of the evil that plagued his greatest champion, Sigmar had granted him swift catharsis, giving him the vanguard of the bladestorm that had driven Mannfred from the Sea of Bones and, in alliance with the hosts of Arkhan the Black, broken the back of the Great Red. The quest to bring the vampire to heel went on, and, though it had aggrieved Lord-Relictor Ramus of the Hallowed Knights, there was none better than Hamilcar to pursue it.

It was not about vengeance. Nor was it even about restitution; in his heart he knew that the memory of his death would be with him to the end of days.

He was a hunter, and the vampire was his prey.

‘The Hammers of Sigmar and the Celestial Vindicators claim the realms for Sigmar,’ Broudiccan grumbled, ‘while we battle half-sentient lizard people for an arid waste that no one desires and one worthless night-walker that time forgot to slay.’

‘This is where the glory will be, brothers,’ Hamilcar declared.

‘What makes you so sure?’

Hamilcar spread his arms, his armour shining under the bright sun. The answer was so blindingly apparent that he did not need to speak it. He laughed instead, clapping Broudiccan on the pauldron so sparks of lightning played through the fingers of his gauntlet as he pushed his brother on.

Say one thing for Hamilcar Bear-Eater: he is not greedy with his glory.

The Knight-Heraldor, Frankos, sounded a note on his long, curved horn, the standard of the Knight-Vexillor held proudly aloft as Hamilcar and his best marched into the Plaza Solar.

The great plaza of marble and tinkling fountains was set in the sultry wind-shade of the citadel’s ramparts. They were immense. The white stone of the walls was dazzling. The arrowslits were framed with gold. Fantastical banners of bright and daring colours fluttered against the bright blue sky, but the Solar itself felt no wind. The ornamental fountains sounded a note of coolness, but heat pressed down like a mailed fist.

Frankos’ note faded into the still air. Silence fell, breathless, with a clatter of sigmarite as Stormcasts shifted in their armour for relief from the heat.

Shielding his eyes, Hamilcar looked up the huge curtain walls to where a robed man with a bald head stood with his lips to a trumpet of gold-plated ivory. And there, on the highest rampart, surrounded by his banners and servants and beneath a shaded canopy, was the throne of Joraad el Ranoon.

The sun-king.

The king of Jercho was clad in a loose banyan of green silk, the hem and sleeve decorated with a chequer pattern of white and green. His arms were heavy with jewelled torques, his neck wound with heavy necklaces of gold. A golden mask that emitted rays like those of the sun covered his face in full, and a crown sat upon his head.

Joraad leaned forward and his voice, when he spoke, boomed from all around, hundreds of voices, echoing from the fine statuary and feminine caryatids of the Solar.

Hamilcar turned his gaze to see the men and women arrayed in royal livery above the square. He had been told of this. The Rays of the sun-king: bonded by ritual magic to the will of their lord.

‘I, Joraad, heir to the reign of Ranoon, regent of Jercho and king of earth and sky, welcome the embassy of Sigmar to my throne. Come in peace, brothers long lost, returned to us now by the blessings of the gods.’

A stilted breeze stirred the high banners. Hamilcar licked the salty dryness from his lips and squinted over the silent crowds. He had been expecting a cheer, a dutiful applause. Something.

‘Why does he sit in shade while we bake?’ Broudiccan murmured. ‘Is he the sun-king or is he not?’

Chuckling at his brother’s bleak humour, Hamilcar stepped forward. He let the quiet linger a moment longer. Then he took a deep breath; his lungs swelled, his diaphragm dropped.

Broudiccan and Thracius took a step back.

‘And Sigmar’s greeting to you!’ His voice was a hammer beaten against the shield-wall of the sky. The pennants above the castle gatehouse fluttered. He looked up to the sun-king, eyes narrowed and shot through with red by the noon glare. ‘We are the eternals of Azyr, and by the might of Sigmar we have returned!’

The sun-king peered down, nonplussed, appearing to remonstrate with one of his many fan-waving attendants, then waved a hand covered in rings towards the gatehouse and some garrison commander out of sight.

‘Here we go,’ Broudiccan muttered grimly as the gates creaked apart in a rattling of chains and a golden crack of light.

A block of half-masked soldiers encased in full plate armour of flawless gold and wielding wickedly curved pole arms marched forth. A column with a rank of ten seamlessly became two columns with a rank of five, the marchers splitting to assume positions either side of the gate. A mighty bang reverberated about the Solar as two hundred men of the Solar Guard smacked the butts of their weapons into the ground, turned forty-five degrees to left or right, and then stamped their boot to the flagstones.

The gryph-hound, Crow, lashed his tail.

Hamilcar rubbed the beast’s heavy beak to soothe him. ‘You heard the king.’ He turned to Broudiccan and Thracius with a grin. ‘He asked us to come in peace.’

The sealing of the gates actually brightened the gatehouse considerably. Natural light poured in through tall, outwards slanted windows, then burned like fire across the doors’ gold and electrum panelling. The walls were that same pitiless white. Hamilcar grimaced and held up a hand as a woman in jewelled armour approached through the files of Solar Guard, bent light streaming from her armour’s faceted edges in a dazzling spray of colours.

‘I had expected to be welcomed by General Sarmiel el Talame,’ he grunted. ‘It was his legion that treated with us in the border deserts of the sankrit. He was the one who arranged this audience once we had explained your city’s danger.’

The woman did not answer.

Everything about her spoke of remoteness, light without warmth.

Steeling himself with a deep breath, he turned to look directly at her.

Within her searing aura, he made out a smudge of darkness, skin, olive-brown, and long dark hair ornamented with some kind of gold. Tears began to fill his eyes as he found the glittering lines of powdered gold drawn from the corners of the woman’s eyes. One of the Rays of the sun-king. He gave her a pained grin.

Crow, he held by the scruff to settle his growls.

‘The sun-king, Joraad el Ranoon, eternally glorious king of earth and sky, commands the surrender of your arms,’ she said.

Hamilcar rubbed his eyes and frowned. Sarmiel had not prepared them for that.

In addition to her armour, the woman bore an emerald-hilted tulwar, though it was belted in a scabbard of jewelled silk and could only have been ceremonial in function. Hamilcar squinted to the guards. He had counted about fifty outside, but if there had been any more waiting inside he could not tell, and one gold-armoured figure blurred into another here. How they saw him, he couldn’t fathom.

He supposed they got used to it.

‘You don’t draw the teeth from a bear and expect it to behave.’

Broudiccan snorted, and clutched his massive thunderaxe possessively.

‘Weapons are not permitted in the presence of the sun-king,’ the woman said.

‘Perhaps we should oblige them in this,’ Thracius counselled.

‘Am I able to speak to el Ranoon directly through…?’ Hamilcar waved vaguely over the blankly staring thrall. ‘This? An evil you are ill prepared for rides before us. Trickery is his weapon. Even your great citadel cannot be counted a haven. We are here to defend your kingdom, to test the sharpness of the vampire’s wits on Hamilcar’s blade.’

The woman’s eyelids fluttered, as if the host sought to wake but couldn’t. ‘The sun-king will settle for your blade, Lord-Castellant, if your followers will submit to having their weapons bound to the sheaths.’

Hamilcar conceded. He tossed his halberd to a barely visible Solar Guard and with a nod of assent bade Broudiccan stow his axe. The woman waved a gauntleted hand – the light in its path cut to daggered purples and greens – and called for silk for binding.

‘Divine majesty.’ A captain of the Solar Guard crouched to one knee as men moved amongst the glowering Astral Templars bearing bolts of silk, then bowed his head to the Ray as though he addressed his king in person. ‘The crowds have been cleared from the Solar. My men have secured the plaza and the legions return the people to the city.’

‘You have done well.’ Her eyes rolled backwards for a spell, the attentions of the puppet-lord momentarily elsewhere, and then the dolorous clangour of gongs and horns sounded from the ramparts.

Hamilcar squinted towards the high windows. Treating with a sovereign power was one part fine words to nine parts theatre.

And Hamilcar Bear-Eater knew theatre.

‘I was not advised on any further ceremony.’

The Ray nodded, as if to herself, then backed away. The pain in Hamilcar’s eyes receded appreciably. A few paces back she drew her ornamental blade from its sheath. It was a beautiful thing, as if drawn whole from the heart of a star.

‘The return of Sigmar and the elder pantheon has been awaited for centuries. Their disappearance was never explained to us.’ She lowered her head, and raised her sword flat across her palms to be kissed by the light that poured through the windows. ‘The people will not stand idle. Better they remain ignorant of what passes between us. I am the sun-king of Jercho, imposter, and Sigmar is dead to me.’

Hamilcar bellowed as the woman swung for him. He raised an arm. Sparks tore from the sword’s curved blade and it slid down the angle of his vambrace. A twist, a shove, and he threw the mortal off. She spun once before she landed, light spearing from her as though a cut diamond had been flicked across the face of the sun, any idea of pursuit discouraged with burning pins to the eyes. With a grunt, Hamilcar pulled up. Pain turned his face behind the shade of his own pauldron, eyes narrowed to tear-filled slits.

Dull things in their glorious plate, the Solar Guard moved in.

There was a reluctance to their step, but they came anyway, a reminder of why Hamilcar had always despised biddable warriors, served up in gold.

Whatever orders they had been given it was clear they had been told to execute them quietly, for without a cry or an oath they drew back their pole arms and charged. Hamilcar was not about to oblige them their desire for silence.

Say one thing for Hamilcar Bear-Eater: he was loud.

With a bellow that caused the panelling on the gates behind him to rattle and the imprisoned moon dragon of Jercho to shift in its chains, he backhanded an incoming pole arm from his chest, then drove his elbow into its wielder’s helmet with force enough to crack the man’s skull against his spine. Thracius shattered another’s breastplate with a punch that threw him into the wall. The Liberator-Prime beat on his breastplate and roared. Disappointment had made him wrathful, and Hamilcar was almost glad that he did not have a weapon. With an inchoate beast-sound Thracius dragged a knight from his comrades by the point of his pole arm, then dashed him against the ceiling.

Even unarmed, the Stormcasts were proving more than the elite warriors of Jercho had been prepared for.

With the courage of one who bore no share of danger, the Ray exhorted her faltering soldiers to press that attack. ‘They are unarmed. Bring down one, just one, and the sun will shine forever on you all.’ Her blade wove a dazzling pattern of sunsteel and diamond. It was a struggle just to look at her. Crow drew onto his haunches to leap for her, only for Hamilcar to throw his arm down across him like a barrier.

‘Down.’

The woman laughed coldly. ‘As the sun forever shines, so is Sigmar prideful.’

‘I am not Sigmar. Though the resemblance is marked.’

The thrall leapt forwards. Hamilcar unclipped his warding lantern just as the woman came within reach. The heavy sigmarite shutters struck her a mighty blow across the jaw, and she hit the floor like a pouch of gemstones. Hamilcar walked towards her recumbent form, rubbing his eyes, as Broudiccan and Thracius saw to the last of the Solar Guards.

‘Could Mannfred have worked his claws so deep so soon?’ asked Broudiccan. The giant Decimator was on one knee, looking over his shoulder as he sat an unconscious knight against the wall.

‘Mannfred would have known better. He would have sent more men.’ Blinking quickly, he turned to the downed woman. ‘Tell me why–’

Before he could finish, a knife appeared in the woman’s hand. Hamilcar drew back, but then, eyes glassed by distance, she ran the knife across her own throat. A red line appeared, and the glaze in her eyes cleared as the controlling spirit chose that moment to forsake her body. Its parting gift was a few moments of horrified incomprehension as the woman spluttered and gagged and clawed at Hamilcar’s boot as if he had the power to save her. And then she was still.

Hamilcar clicked his tongue.

He had died one time too many to be moved by barbarity now.

‘Whatever the reason, the sun-king wants us dead.’

‘Agreed,’ said Thracius.

Broudiccan spat on the ground as he rose. ‘And they say that Chaos never reached here.’

‘Chaos doesn’t always march with an army,’ said Hamilcar. ‘You can travel the seven realms to the farthest winterland and still find that Chaos got there first.’

‘Then we remove its stain from our boot heel,’ said Broudiccan, grimly.

‘Agreed,’ said Thracius.

Hamilcar and his brothers looked up to see Crow pacing restively before the electrum panelling of a heavy wooden door. The gryph-hound stared at Hamilcar, intelligence and aggression in his eyes. Hamilcar grinned.

Retrieving his halberd, Hamilcar kicked the doors in. They smashed outwards and splintered against the walls of a corridor. Immediately, he recoiled. It was a blistering desert of pastel stone and points of gold without colour or finish, such was the unnatural intensity of light that blazed through its enormous windows. Despite the pain in his eyes, Hamilcar marvelled. No army could storm the sun-king’s citadel and prevail. No agent or saboteur could make it this far and navigate any further undiscovered.

‘Some ambassadors we turned out to be,’ said Thracius, sorrowfully.

‘Ambassadors.’ Hamilcar gave a snort. ‘Describe me thus again and I’ll rinse your mouth with sand.’

Broudiccan adjusted the sit of his dented helm and regarded them both sourly.

‘The sun-king seeks to thwart our great task and now he will pay for his crime. Such is the rule of Hamilcar!’ Hamilcar turned to his men, lifting his voice, and holding his halberd high. ‘We will bleed him, brothers. And give his kingdom to Sigmar!’

‘To Sigmar!’ they bellowed in return.

‘Hamilcar!’ he roared back at them, until the names were interchangeable.

His heart beat faster than the continuing medley of the sun-king’s horns and gongs as Crow tore off down the corridor. Hamilcar powered after him, the ground-eating stride of a demigod, his warriors close behind. Joraad could be anywhere, but he would know exactly what was loose in his citadel. Through a door and the corridor became another, great open space, its windows washing it with molten gold. Hamilcar staggered, another blow to eyes that were still raw. There was a gargling cry from ahead, short-lived, then a slam of gryph-hound against metal, against stone wall. Hamilcar stepped over the savaged Solar Guard and into a staircase. It was marginally darker inside, luminous rather than blinding.

The Astral Templars clattered down the stairs.

Hamilcar broke open another door.

It was some kind of receiving hall. A large wooden table was arrayed with nuts, dates and cured meats, presented as artworks on golden platters. Sunlight fell through slanted windows like taffeta ribbons, along with a natural breeze. A marble statue of womanly splendour poured water into a font from a horn of plenty. The cool chuckle of running water was a delight, so unexpected that Hamilcar almost charged right through the door and into the table.

The spread teetered on its platters.

His stomach stirred in sudden interest.

The Sea of Bones had been a journey to tax even the limitless constitution of the Stormcast Eternals and he had taken little but water and salted sankrit since. With an act of will that impressed even himself he ignored the growls of his stomach to focus on those of Crow, and the pound of armoured footsteps approaching from beyond the other door, across from the far end of the table.

‘Judicators, left and right.’

With exaggerated cutting gestures of his hand he directed the Judicators to either side of the long table, then leapt onto it two-footed. The elaborate vittle sculptures descended to the floor with a crash. He kicked aside a pyramid of dates that had somehow remained standing and twirled his halberd. The Judicators’ boltstorm crossbows sparked and whined as bolts of Azyrite energy materialised in their tracks, fizzing against aetheric strings that were suddenly taut.

‘Loose on my order,’ Hamilcar bellowed, for there was no warrior who could not be improved by heeding the example of Hamilcar. ‘I claim the city of Jercho for Sigmar. The fewer of its people I have to kill, the greater will be his prize.’

With a crashing of gold-barred timbers, a phalanx of leather and bronze-clad common soldiery fell through the far door. ‘Hold!’ roared Hamilcar, and the mortal legionaries checked back in disarray at the monstrous visage he must have presented.

Pushing and cussing, a slightly bent old man draped in black silks with light silver vambraces and coif forced his way up from the rear ranks. ‘Is this the same legion that crushed the sankrit at Heliopalis, first through the breach at Anatoly? If I didn’t know better, then I–’ The newcomer hesitated as he saw Hamilcar up on the dining table. Without tearing his eyes away, he too gestured his men to stand down. With clear relief, they did so. ‘Lord-Castellant,’ he said.

Hamilcar might have laughed. He hadn’t even been as pleased to see the man when he’d first stumbled into him, blind with thirst, lost and half-mad from a sun that never set.

‘Sarmiel! Praise whoever you like for you!’

The Jerchese general did not return Hamilcar’s welcome. ‘There were reports of fighting in the gatehouse.’

A shrug. ‘That was us.’

‘I vouched for you before the sun-king himself. Do you know what that means? A dozen Solar Guard are dead!’

‘At least twice as many still live. Is that the work of invaders?’

Sarmiel hesitated at that, Hamilcar saw. He already doubted the truth of his reports or he would have come in fighting and to hell with explanations.

That was all the opening Hamilcar needed.

He had mastered his rhetoric in debate with the God-King himself, the Sigmarabulum crowded to its rafters by the admiring folk of Azyr, there to witness a bout between champions. They were a dozen spear-lengths apart, Hamilcar and the mortal man, but he lowered his halberd and extended a hand in friendship.

‘You remember the day we met. You remember what you said to me? I know you do because you had to tell me again after you had given me water and I became sensible.’

A nod. ‘That to have crossed the Sea of Bones you could only have been sent by Sigmar.’

‘You had me at your mercy. Now I have you at mine.’

His halberd tinked as its blade touched the flagstones.

Sarmiel appeared to sag in surrender. No sooner had he done so, however, than the stoop he had been carrying seemed to evaporate off him. He sheathed his sword with a shake of the head. ‘I doubt I could stop you anyway. Not with this lot.’ A glare at his men.

‘I didn’t want to be the one to say it.’ Hamilcar grinned.

‘I knew something was amiss when el Ranoon removed me from your honour guard. No. Before then. Since he moved his court to the Moon Palace.’

‘Moon Palace?’

‘It is where the first sun-king imprisoned the night.’

Hamilcar and Broudiccan shared a look.

‘Take us there.’

Hamilcar did not even realise he had been asleep.

He gasped, fighting with nothing, arms bulging as he fought to drive the… something from his breastplate. There was a pain in his heart. Black iron cracked his ribs like the shell of a nut and dug for the soft beating pulp within. With a roar he lashed out, his halberd having somehow found its way into his hand, and clove at the Abyssal’s neck. The splitting of stone and the crack as it hit the ground broke the dream logic, and he blinked the bloody image of his murderer, Ashigorath, back into nightmare.

In its place came the prattling of a fountain, the click and chirrup of insects, the rustle of leaves. Moonlit petals crept over the ledges of windows that faced in from no part of the fortress that Hamilcar could remember seeing. He held his chest and drew a deep breath. The air was jasmine-scented, as cool as dead iron. He looked back to the steel-barred portal that el Talame’s key had seen them past.

‘Here is where the night is bound,’ said the old general. ‘And everything that goes with it.’

‘Fitting,’ Hamilcar grunted.

Broudiccan and the others said nothing. Hamilcar knew no fear. They knew better than to doubt it.

The fountain he had heard was a few score yards from the portal, in a column of moonlight that the trees seemed to have twisted themselves to avoid. He walked to the basin. Kneeling, he splashed cool water into his face. As the ripples cleared, he saw himself looking into a face that he almost recognised: the tawny beard, scuffed by serried lines of scars, the thorny branch tattoo that swirled around his eye.

The eye, however, he avoided looking into too deeply.

Say one thing for Hamilcar Bear-Eater: he wasn’t perfect. He dashed the reflection with his gauntlet.

Memories of death and Reforging had never before troubled him while he had been awake. Was he awake in this place? He wondered, briefly, if el Talame ever slept and if he did, if he dreamed.

Crow whined up at him as he rubbed his breastplate.

Sigmar, would the dreams never leave him?

He turned to el Talame. ‘The sun-king. Point me at him.’

The general pointed through a crumbling stone arch. He was afraid to be here, but he marshalled it well, achieving as much as Hamilcar with far less in his making. Determined to be the champion of a god that warriors would kneel to, he shrugged the ache aside, then rose, flicking dream water from his fingers, and ducked under the arch.

The fact that they moved through the heart of the citadel of Jercho, or some timeless, dreamscaped version of it, was artfully masked by weeping orchids and clambering vines. Night birds twittered in backwards verse and things both ageless and unseen scampered amongst the branches. Blossoms drifted on the air as they need never fall.

Broudiccan tramped after him, grim, solid.

‘Do you think this place would resist a Chaos invasion if it came?’ Hamilcar asked him, surprised at how the garden’s solemnity made him whisper.

‘No. If an army can breach the Sea of Bones then Jercho and her sisters will fall.’

They passed onto a bridge over a gurgling stream, causing the wood to creak under the weight of their armour.

‘It needn’t be an army,’ said Hamilcar. ‘Mannfred can build an army. I saw it myself in Cartha–’

‘–hold!’

Broudiccan caught his shoulder and the column of Astral Templars and Jercho legionaries clattered to a halt.

The space beyond the bridge was littered with small stone benches and statues that had been subjected to centuries of weathering and then shrouded in creepers. The moonlight that filtered through the ornamental trees gleamed where it touched bare stone and cut sharply across reflective pools and small bowls of water. A young man with the entitled impatience of a nobleman rested with one arm against a statue, as though awaiting an audience. He was lightly armoured in a fitted leather lorica with gold accoutrements and a silk cloak swept over one shoulder. A fine pair of steel swords with jewelled hilts were scabbarded at his belt, and rested against the statue beside him was a long spear with a jade-coloured pennant tied around the base of the blade. Seeing Hamilcar at the same time as Hamilcar saw him, he swept up his spear and sauntered towards them.

Broudiccan didn’t wait for any sign of malice.

Striding towards the noble he planted his boot heel through the man’s chest, strength that had been beaten into him on the God-King’s anvil, lifting the mortal from his feet and smashing him back against the statue. The youth dropped in a clatter of lorica scales into a reflective pool, broken, Hamilcar would have thought, but then he vaulted agilely to his feet. He hissed, bleeding from his mouth. His spear began to hum as he spun it.

And something that no man should possess glittered in the moonlight.

Fangs.

‘By the gods, that’s Gilgazed,’ el Talame stuttered, agog, pointing with his tulwar, ‘el Ranoon’s eldest son.’

Snake-quick, the vampire struck Broudiccan like a spear thrown at a wall. The Decimator’s enormous axe whirled as fast as the vampire’s spear could match. Blade struck blade, haft against haft; claps of thunder shook invisible birds from their roosts amongst the trees as storm-fused barbarian battled undying fiend.

Hamilcar turned from his brother’s fight, the splash of water warning of the arrival of others from downstream. The vampire’s speed made him little more than a blur, a sweeping depression in the surface of the water that raced towards Hamilcar at the foot of the bridge.

The vampire’s blade came at him like the lance head of a galloping knight, hard enough and fast enough in that first dramatic instant of arrival to have speared through dragon scale had Hamilcar not had the wherewithal to duck. It sliced across him. Using his momentum to turn, Hamilcar backhanded the rising butt of his halberd across the vampire’s jaw. The knight’s face snapped back and spun away. Hamilcar forced the rest of the vampire’s body to follow. A boot to the back bent the vampire over the bridge’s handrail. Hamilcar lent in, drew his gladius, and rammed the stabbing blade through the vampire’s spine. The fiend’s legs turned to jelly, and Hamilcar’s boot held him where he was. Boot transferred to knee and then he leant in to bite down on the vampire’s ear. His teeth tore through cartilage, his mouth filled sluggishly with brackish warm blood, and then he put his full strength through his knee.

The handrail broke with a splintering crack and the howling vampire dropped the short way to the water. Hamilcar spat his bloody ear after him and roared.

He was Hamilcar of the Astral Templars. Eater of Bears. Sigmar would look upon him and then turn to his own two hands to marvel at the titan they had wrought.

The vampire writhed in the shallow water, and the slower men in clanking golden plate that had been hurrying to the bridge from the same direction looked up in surprise. Hamilcar grinned at them. ‘Hamilcaaar!’ He leapt, two-footed, and flattened the two men into the rocky streambed where the first still scrabbled madly to claw his way out. These were not vampires; they were mortal.

They never stood a chance.

‘Slaughter the infidels!’ cried a voice, cultured, but too steeped in the intonations of the Jerchese to be anything but a native. ‘By order of the sun-king!’

With a roar, four-score Solar Guards surged up the paths that converged on the little bridge and its island folly. A boltstorm bolt blasted a knight to scraps of liquid gold and cast the two behind into the trees with the aftershock. Prosecutors took wing. While Hamilcar and Broudiccan had fought, Thracius and el Talame had organised their men and they moved to oppose their attackers now. Armed and ready, Hamilcar would have counted on his dozen alone against five times the number of mortal warriors that assaulted them now, but for every ten heavy knights there was a sneering nobleman with an exotic blade and fangs.

With a hiss of fury, a vampire in oiled green lorica scales broke from his unit of mortals and punched through a line of el Talame’s soldiers like a ballista bolt fired from Shyish. Hamilcar yelled for Thracius as men began to cartwheel from the frenzied vampire.

Before the Liberator-Prime could intervene, the bushes behind the vampire burst apart and Crow bore the undying champion to the ground. There was a gargling scream as the gryph-hound’s beak tore through the armour of its chest. Hamilcar grunted at the sudden, shared pain in his breast, and splashed for the stream’s bank. Inexplicably breathless, he turned to see Broudiccan. The Decimator was now holding his own against three more, warring through the rubble of demolished statuary.

The Stormcast could handle the vampires, Hamilcar had no doubt, but that still left the Solar Guards.

‘Hold them, Thracius!’ he bellowed. He turned to find el Talame, shouting instructions to his own men, beset, on the other side of the bridge. Their rear ranks were ankle-deep in the water. ‘With me, my friend. Bring me to the sun-king.’

‘Take your own,’ the general called back across the water. ‘They will be more use to you.’

‘The Bear-Eaters can hold their own. You cannot. And I would hate to come so far to strike the wrong head from its shoulders.’ His chest was tight. Breathing came hard. ‘Lead me through this nightmare!’

One of Thracius’ Liberators took the slack as el Talame and his soldiers splashed across the water to Hamilcar’s side. The general himself was last, covered by a boltstorm from a kneeling Judicator that drove the Solar Guard from the water’s edge and allowed the Liberator to put down the vampire that had led them. Another with a snarling leopard daubed across his facemask took station on the bridge and grimly stood their ground.

‘This way.’ El Talame swept past Hamilcar. The pace he set was impressive for one so old, but Hamilcar had time enough to look back and see Broudiccan’s thunderaxe obliterate a statue and shred a dozen Solar Guard with shrapnel and still better it. He swatted aside a silver bower that grew across the path.

Unkempt for a court. And Hamilcar had once ruled from a cave.

And just like that he began to laugh.

Mortality had never seemed so distant.

With strength and vigour twenty times a mortal man’s, he forged a path to the front of the company of warriors, and forced his way through a tangle of ornamental dwarf trees to stumble into a clearing.

An elevated platform of eerie silver-grey stone rose above the small trees and tiered gardens. It looked ancient. The moon shone with a caged, furious splendour, shackled to the form of a splintered throne in which sat the sun-king, Joraad el Ranoon.

His golden mask beheld Hamilcar from his high throne.

With a series of shouts intended to bolster each other’s courage, el Talame’s men took the steps. In response the sun-king lifted one sleeve from the shining rest of his throne.

At his gesture a host of men and women, and even children, shuffled, unseeing, from the crackling glare of the throne and moved to block the steps. Some wore blazing suits of armour, similar to the woman that Hamilcar had bested in the gatehouse, although nothing so impressive in this penumbral shadow-realm. Others were in simple habits emblazoned with the unsetting sun. None of them spoke, smiled, or even looked down at the cracked steps as they pressed together between the oncoming soldiers and their king. If there was one amongst them that could appreciate the incongruity of that emblem in this place then it was the self-proclaimed God-King on the throne behind them, but he did not seem to.

The soldiers hesitated a few steps below the vacant Rays.

The Rays themselves looked over the soldiers as if they were blind, and soporific with the experience of their remaining senses.

‘You seek to best me with children,’ Hamilcar shouted up to the impassive sun-king. ‘Know that you face Hamilcar of the Astral Templars. I am a Stormcast Eternal!’ Hamilcar hefted his halberd high above his head, his lantern in the other. ‘Tell the Lord of Death when you cross the Stygxx Gate that it is the Bear-Eater that sends you, prince of lies. Tell him that you are down payment on the soul of a brother.’

The assembled host opened their mouths, and with one voice alone they spoke.

‘The men you have killed thus far have followed me freely. Not by choice perhaps, but they could have chosen death and that is as much a choice as any other. But these…’ The enthroned king waved a hand over his thralls. The proximity to his person of genuine peril must have caused his attention to lapse somewhat, for several of the thralls mimicked the gesture. ‘These are innocents. You will have to butcher them all to reach me, Eternal. I will see to it. Has Sigmar forged you the stomach for it?’

Joraad leaned forward then, and in a hundred distinct voices, male and female, old and young, began to laugh.

With a grunt, Hamilcar tossed up his halberd, reversed the grip, and then hurled it.

Like a javelin it hissed from his extended arm over the heads of the uncaring slaves and through el Ranoon’s belly.

There was a snarl of moonlight as the blade tip skewered him to his throne’s high back. A cry tore from Joraad’s throat. Blood and dark lumpy juices spurted from the hole made by the halberd shaft and turned the king’s banyan silks black. The gathered Rays echoed their master’s scream, then one by one passed into unconscious. The sheer number of them packed onto the steps kept them from falling far.

‘They call me the Bear-Eater,’ he called up to the pitifully crying sun-king. ‘You do not want to test my stomach.’

He frowned then as the increasingly pale king of Jercho slumped forward onto the halberd shaft.

‘Light above,’ muttered el Talame. ‘Is it dead?’

‘He is.’ Hamilcar was surprised.

Joraad el Ranoon was no vampire. It was true then: anyone could make a mistake.

Perhaps the mind-controlling magicks by which he ruled would have been affected by the transition to unlife. Or perhaps the land of the unsetting sun was simply no place for a vampire king.

‘I suspect Mannfred found him more useful as a willing puppet than a slave.’

‘So your vampire is still out there?’

Hamilcar laughed aloud at that, despite his disappointment at seeing the betrayer slip through his fingers once again. There was truth in what the old man said.

The vampire was his.

‘There is only so much of Ghur for him to run into. Say one thing for Hamilcar – in the end, he always triumphs.’

GRAVESEND GOLD

C L Werner

Captain Brokrin leaned on the portside railing that framed the Iron Dragon’s deck and stared out across the cloud-swept skies. The ironclad was flying high above the desolate wadis of Droost and the dying sun set fantastic lights glimmering from the metallic desert sands. He always found the display somehow eerie, like something from another world. Those Kharadron who traded with the human inhabitants of Arlk said that the lights created strange mirages to befuddle those travelling across the desert on the ground. Brokrin was at least glad he had a sturdy ironclad to keep him well away from that hazard.

While he still had her, that was.

Brokrin tightened his grip on the rail, as though he could vent all the frustration and despair he felt by twisting the metal into a knot. ‘Ghazul’s curse,’ he muttered to himself. The ironclad had escaped destruction in the monster’s claws, but the bad luck that had dogged it ever since was starting to make even him start to believe in the jinx. The current voyage was looking no better than the three before it, the holds only half-filled. Crop blight, orruk raiders, even a religious festival had each made their ports of call less advantageous than they should have been. By the Ancestors! He was running out of excuses to offer his backers for their poor return on investment.

The sound of steps on the deck behind him brought Brokrin around. Old Mortrimm was favouring his good leg; the artificial one had been seizing up on him recently. Another weight added to Brokrin’s burden of responsibility. If these last voyages had been as profitable as they should have been, Mortrimm’s share would have been big enough to get the aether-work mechanisms inside the leg overhauled.

‘A word with you, cap’n?’ Mortrimm asked when he approached. Brokrin nodded and the old navigator continued. ‘Skaggi has evaluated what is in the hold,’ he said, referring to the ship’s logisticator. ‘He calculates that…’

‘After we share out to the backers and re-provision the ship we might each get enough to buy a flagon of beer, so long as it isn’t top-shelf stuff,’ Brokrin grumbled. He clenched his hand into a fist and banged it against the gunwale.

Mortrimm shrugged. ‘Maybe not as bad as that. Probably three flagons and a trencher of broiled goat.’ The navigator ran his fingers through his beard. ‘That was a joke, cap’n.’

‘I’m not in a jesting mood,’ Brokrin replied. ‘The crew has worked hard on this voyage. They deserve to have something to show for their efforts.’

‘So do you,’ Mortrimm said. ‘But the knucklebones didn’t roll so good this time. Everybody knows there is some risk and they accept that when they sign the charter. A bit of good luck and you get a good share…’

‘And a sting of bad fortune sees you with an empty belly, a dry throat and boots so worn-down they can double as sandals.’ Brokrin fixed Mortrimm with a questioning look. ‘I thought things would turn around by now. I mean, we have had bad streaks before, but never anything like this. That fiasco at the lamasery with the skaven, then that run-in with the flock of manticores over Silverreach… It just never seems to end.’

Mortrimm wagged his finger in reproach. ‘You have been listening to all that prattle about Ghazul’s curse. Dockyard drivel, and you know it! There is not a blasted thing wrong with the Iron Dragon. Grungni’s Beard, if you want to talk about luck, consider that despite everything we have gone through, the ship is still in one piece. There is some luck for you to chew over.’

Brokrin scratched at his beard. ‘You raise a fair point, old friend. She has weathered hardships that would have knocked another ship out of the sky.’ He rapped his knuckles against the gunwale again. ‘Maybe we are doing all right in the luck ledger, but we sure could use something we can enter in the “coin in the pocket” book.’

A commotion from the ironclad’s elevated endrin brought both the captain and the navigator looking upwards. Affixed to the front of the cylindrical endrin was a metal cupola where a single endrinrigger acted as lookout. The duardin had his bronze mask lowered and was peering through a tube-like far-glass while gesticulating excitedly with his free hand.

‘Starboard!’ the endrinrigger cried out. ‘Down four hundred fathoms!’

Brokrin fished his own far-glass from where it hung from a hook on his harness. Extending the instrument, he peered over the side and followed the directions the endrinrigger was calling out. A wide stretch of canyon dominated the landscape below, a fissure through which the gleaming band of the River Chael coursed. The walls of the canyon were vibrant with colour, bands of dark mineral showing through the rough limestone and granite. Here and there a columnar butte reared up or a hardy stand of desert trees sprouted from a patch of soil, but Brokrin saw nothing to occasion the lookout’s excitement.

Not until he turned his glass a bit higher, near the crest of the canyon wall. There Brokrin spotted something that caught and reflected the dimming sun. The unmistakable gleam of metal. As he narrowed the focus of his far-glass, he brought the image into sharper resolution. His own pulse quickened when he recognised the outline of a ship protruding from the rock face.

‘Have a look at this.’ Brokrin proffered his far-glass to Mortrimm. The navigator’s brow crinkled with surprise as he gazed at the canyon wall.

‘That wreck has been there a fair time, cap’n.’ Mortrimm was silent a moment, then handed the glass back to Brokrin. ‘Can’t make out her colours, whatever they were. No telling what skyhold she fared from.’

‘But it is a Kharadron ship?’ Brokrin asked. He turned his head and looked across the Iron Dragon’s decks. The lookout’s calls had drawn much of the crew up from below. Gotramm and his arkanauts jostled with Drumark’s thunderers for places at the rails as they tried to see what had caused such excitement.

‘Aye,’ Mortrimm said. ‘She is an old make, what they used to call a steam-gut for all the fumes her engines would spit. You can just make out one of the side-funnels on her hull. They stopped making that kind before my great-great grandfather was a beardling.’

Brokrin fixed the far-glass once more on the wreck. He pored over the lines of her hull, the corroded metal stabbing outwards from the cliff face. The funnel Mortrimm had described was there, its mouth shaped into the angry face of a duardin ancestor, its length banded by rune-etched rings at regular intervals. He saw the axe-like remnant of a rudder hanging off the ship’s tail, and somewhere near its topside a suggestion of a guardrail not unlike that on the Iron Dragon herself.

‘She is a Kharadron ship,’ Brokrin stated. He turned towards Mortrimm. ‘The Code makes it clear that we are under obligation to investigate her.’

Mortrimm nodded slowly. ‘Aye, unless it would prove an undue commercial burden to our voyage to do so.’

Brokrin laughed at the stipulation the navigator brought up. ‘This entire voyage has been an undue commercial burden,’ he grumbled. ‘But if that wreck has enough salvage on her, we might turn things about.’

‘She has been there a long time…’

‘All the more reason to see what is inside her,’ Brokrin told him. He flattened his far-glass and looked towards the horizon. ‘If we are quick, we can send a few endrinriggers down to inspect her before we lose the sun.’ Brokrin turned around and shouted to his crew. ‘There’s an old shipwreck down there, lads! So old there won’t be any question about our salvage rights! Don’t bet your beards on it, but if her hold is full then your shares in this venture will be too!’ He looked towards the wheel-house where the ship’s endrinmaster, Horgarr, was standing. ‘Get an aether-endrin ready for me! I’m going over with the lads to have a look at what we have found!’

Brokrin manipulated the drift of his aether-endrin, swinging around so that he could better observe the wreck. Only about a third of the old ship was projecting from the cliff face; the rest of it was buried in the rock. The amount of dust and debris that coated the deck was mute testimony to the many centuries that had passed since it crashed. He wondered what had become of the ship’s crew. Had they managed to abandon her before her fall or had they taken the final plunge along with her? He wanted to believe they’d got away. This was a lonely tomb for any duardin.

Horgarr and one of the endrinriggers were at work at the stern of the ship. The magnets in their boots allowed them to maintain position while they attacked the stern of the ship with aether-torches. Since time was essential, they had made the decision to force a way through the exposed stern rather than excavating the debris above to find one of the buried hatches.

‘She is so worn down it is like cutting butter,’ Horgarr called up to Brokrin. ‘We can be through her before Drumark can finish his grog.’

Brokrin looked aside to Gotramm. The young privateer captain and a few of his arkanauts had accompanied the explorers to act as guards, each of them keeping a pistol at the ready as they watched the shadows lengthen in the canyon below. It was always prudent to be wary with night so near.

‘Horgarr might be going fast, but I doubt he is that fast,’ Brokrin quipped.

Gotramm nodded, but kept his gaze on the buttes that arose off to the left. ‘He can’t work fast enough to suit me. There is something about this place that is wrong. I can feel it in my beard. It’s like something is close. Unaware of us right now, but still dangerous.’

‘Any idea what you think is out there?’ Brokrin asked. Gotramm was a newer addition to his crew, but he was a graduate of the Academy and knew how to handle himself in a scrape… and to recognise when one might be in the offing.

‘Can’t say,’ Gotramm admitted. He darted a look at the stern and the hole Horgarr was cutting. ‘That’s why I wish he could go even faster. If you know what you are up against it is easy to gauge your chances.’

‘Nobody likes to fight blind,’ Brokrin agreed. He looked away towards the horizon where only the thinnest sliver of sun remained. ‘I would still like to have a look at her. A good bit of salvage right now would go far to turning this venture around.’

‘We’re in!’ Horgarr suddenly called out. The endrinmaster and his helper shut off their torches and pressed their hands to the rounded area of hull they had been cutting. Pushing against the improvised hatch, they sent it slamming inwards. There was a dull boom as the metal plate crashed against the floor within.

Brokrin glanced towards the horizon once again. The sun was gone now; only the last flicker of light lingered to contend with the growing night. A thin sliver of moon could be seen starting its slow ascent.

‘We can at least have a look around,’ he decided. ‘Evaluate what is down in there. See if it is worthwhile sticking around until the morning.’

‘Then I am going in first,’ Gotramm said. ‘The Iron Dragon can afford to lose a privateer more than she can her captain.’ He quickly called out orders to the other arkanauts, advising them to keep a careful watch on both the wreck and the surrounding canyon.

Brokrin and Gotramm manoeuvred their aether-endrins to the back of the wreck. The hole Horgarr had made was large enough to admit a duardin, but not one wearing the bulky flying harness. Using their magnetic boots to secure themselves to the opening, the two explorers waited while they were unfastened from the aether-endrins. Horgarr and the endrinrigger would keep hold of the devices while Brokrin and Gotramm explored the wreck.

Looking at it from the outside, Brokrin found the opening into the wreck as dark and sinister as a dragon’s cave. There was, as Gotramm had observed, a nebulous sense of menace about the place. Compared to the unsettling feeling when he was unhooked from his aether-endrin with thousands of feet between himself and the canyon floor, this impression was even more foreboding. Try as he might, Brokrin could not keep the hair at the back of his neck from tingling. There was a cold and clammy feel to the air and a silence that made his heartbeats sound like thunder in his ears. If he had not already committed himself to this effort, he would have called the whole thing off. It was too late for that now. To back off at this point would mean losing face before his whole crew. Bad as his feeling was, it didn’t compare to that kind of disgrace.

A light showed from within the room Gotramm had entered. Brokrin followed the glow, at once impressed and unsettled by what it revealed. They were standing in a cabin – judging by the size and the corroded instruments fastened to the walls, either that of the ship’s captain or her navigator. The sextant and other tools were little more than calcified outlines against the thicker patina of decay that caked the walls. Little fingers of copper hung from the ceiling like metallic stalactites, drops of acid plopping down from them to splash against the uneven floor.

‘We will have to watch our footing,’ Brokrin warned Gotramm, gesturing with his own lamp to one of the dripping stalactites. ‘There is no knowing how compromised the integrity of the floor has become.’

‘Not a cheerful notion,’ Gotramm said. ‘Go crashing through rotten decks and straight to the bottom of the canyon.’ He glanced at Brokrin. ‘Want to call it over and head back?’

Brokrin shook his head and carefully approached the decayed desk that slouched in one corner. It was so choked by dust it resembled a mound of dirt, but by using his knife he was able to dig through the grime to the handful of objects sprawled across it. He found a logbook, its copper pages so decayed that they crumbled into metal flakes the instant he touched them. There was a crank-powered lantern of a design he had never seen before, but whatever power source had fed it must have gone bad and burst from its housing in a black sludge of acid. Then there was the ingot.

The ingot was heavy in Brokrin’s hand, much heavier than any metal he had ever handled. When he turned it around to stare at the side which he’d pried loose from the desk, he was stunned to see that there was a dark golden colour to it with just the faintest suggestion of a reddish overtone.

‘Deep gold,’ Brokrin muttered, his mind racing.

‘What was that, cap’n?’ Gotramm asked.

Brokrin held the ingot out to Gotramm. ‘I think this is deep gold. A rare ore the iron tyrants used to mine.’ He glanced around again at the decayed cabin. Just how long had this wreck been here? The iron tyrants died out during the Chaos invasions, taking the riddle of deep gold with them.

Gotramm hefted the ingot, impressed by its weight. ‘Exactly how valuable is this?’

‘To someone with any idea what they are doing, it is invaluable.’ Brokrin almost laughed. ‘Deep gold is the only ore strong enough to hold an edge. Tough enough that steel can’t even scratch it. Even a few ingots of that…’

Brokrin’s voice trailed off as excitement swept through him. Forgetting the perilous state of the floor, he hurried to the door. The portal was crusted over by corrosion, but opened readily enough when Brokrin put his shoulder to it. There was a sharp bang as the panel collapsed under his weight and crashed into the hallway beyond. Brokrin let his lamp play across the narrow corridor. The wreck might be old and of unfamiliar pattern, but there were certain rules of construction that the Kharadron never deviated from.

‘Cap’n, wait!’ Gotramm cried out. Brokrin could hear the privateer follow him out into the hall.

Brokrin did not wait for his companion, but instead hurried forwards. He could see the grisly mess of crumpled metal where the ship had dug herself into the cliff. It looked like the front third of the vessel must have been pushed back, twisted into a single snarl of wreckage. Just ahead of that tangled ruin, however, Brokrin could see a hatchway.

‘Get over here and help me!’ Brokrin ordered Gotramm as he started pulling at the cover. With the other duardin’s help, the hatch slowly came free of the corrosion that had cemented it to the deck.

‘Your light.’ Brokrin waved Gotramm to turn the rays of his lamp down into the hold. Combined with the rays of his own lantern, a big chamber stood revealed. The floor was a litter of smashed boxes and broken shelves. It was clear that the impact had tossed the contents of the hold around savagely. The corrosion and decay evident elsewhere was absent and the stale tang to the air that rose from the room made Brokrin wonder exactly how tightly it had been sealed away from the ravages of time.

Such questions quickly faded, however. By the light of the lamps, a litter of rectangular objects could be seen poking up from the debris. Each of the objects had a golden lustre and a faint reddish overtone.

‘Gotramm,’ Brokrin whispered. ‘We are rich.’

Brokrin could not take his eyes off the wreck. If he closed his eyes, the image of the hold filled with deep gold immediately filled his mind. Leaving it behind and letting Gotramm escort him back to the Iron Dragon was perhaps the hardest thing he had ever done. To know a fortune was there, just waiting to be taken, was a torture even the most sadistic grot could never match.

Gotramm was right, of course. It would be too dangerous to try to extract the gold in the dark. A good night wind rolling off the hot sands of Droost could have aether-endrins smashing against the canyon walls. One misstep on the wreck’s rotten decks might cause the ship to break apart. Even Skaggi, greedy and impatient as he was, agreed that they needed to wait for daylight before proceeding.

Still, Brokrin would not feel content until the deep gold was safely aboard. That uncanny sense of menace continued to nag at him. Whatever was provoking that feeling, he wanted to be far away from it.

The telltale sound of Mortrimm walking the deck on his artificial leg announced the old navigator before he joined Brokrin at the rail. Mortrimm had the single ingot that had been found in the cabin.

‘Surprised you could pry that away from Skaggi,’ Brokrin told his friend.

‘There may have been some mention of what he owes me from knucklebones.’ Mortrimm winked. ‘Besides, if he held on to it any tighter he would have to marry the thing.’

Brokrin patted the ingot. ‘For once I do not blame Skaggi. This is going to solve a lot of problems. Like a gift from the gods.’

Mortrimm shook his head and gazed across the canyon to where the black shadow of the wreck could be seen jutting from the wall. ‘Our boon, but those poor beggars sure paid for it.’

‘We did not find any skeletons. It is possible they abandoned ship before she crashed.’ Brokrin found the suggestion hollow even as he said it. If it came down to a choice of saving his skin or leaving a cargo as valuable as the deep gold behind, he wondered if he could make that decision.

‘If they got away, they would have tried to find her again,’ Mortrimm said. He stared at the ingot. ‘This is the kind of dream you don’t easily leave behind. Even if they got off the ship, they would never have stopped trying to find her again.’

Brokrin felt a strange chill as he listened to Mortrimm talk. That uncanny feeling that had been dragging at him. Maybe it was nothing more than the dark of night feeding the gloom. He turned his eyes upwards as a silvery glow began to spread across the cliffs. The moon, at least, would lessen the darkness. Perhaps put things in better perspective.

As he watched the silvery light creep down along the cliffs, Brokrin felt a sense of dread. It was unaccountable, but also undeniable. His eyes were drawn back to the wreck, held there as though by the petrifying gaze of a basilisk.

When he first spotted it, Brokrin refused to accept what he was seeing. A strange mirage was overcoming the wreck as the moonlight struck it. He could still see the darkened mass of the ship, but around it there was a translucent image, a phantasm that evoked the semblance of another ship. A ship that was whole and hale, not smashed against the cliff-face.

‘Mortrimm… do you… do you see?’

‘Aye, cap’n,’ Mortrimm gasped. ‘I see, even though I don’t want to.’

While he looked on, Brokrin observed figures moving around the decks. Transparent, as wispy as morning mist, they were yet distinct enough to make out the billowy, archaic pantaloons and jackets, the broad-brimmed helms and feather-festooned hats of a bygone age. They were duardin aeronauts, and Brokrin knew he gazed on the crew of the long-forgotten wreck.

‘They… they walked straight into the cliff,’ Mortrimm stammered, watching with disbelief as the ghostly duardin stepped into the solid wall. They did not vanish, however, for their spectral essence could be seen shining behind the stone.

‘That is where the rest of their ship lies,’ Brokrin said. His gaze narrowed as he saw a blast of ectoplasmic steam spill from the funnel along the side of the wreck’s hull. The implication was clear to him, as impossible as it seemed. ‘They’re firing up the engines. They’re making ready to sail!’

Mortrimm shook his head. ‘That can’t be. It has to be an illusion. A trick.’

That sense of dread pounding in his heart told Brokrin otherwise. ‘We have to get under way. They know we boarded their ship…’ Brokrin swung around. Cupping a hand to his mouth he bellowed to his first mate in the wheelhouse. ‘Vorki! Sound all hands! Everyone to his station!’ A moment later found Vorki repeating the captain’s commands over the ship’s loud-mouth array.

While the crew of the Iron Dragon quickly got the ship ready, Brokrin ordered every gun on board aimed towards the wreck. He joined Arrik and the hand-picked gunners manning the huge skyhook called Ghazul’s Bane. He didn’t know if it was possible to grapple a phantom, but if the ghostly wreck made any effort to confront the Iron Dragon, they would soon find out.

The ironclad’s crew watched anxiously as the spectres scurried about the deck of their phantom ship. A misty cloud now rolled away from the funnels alongside her hull. Gasps of awe rose from many of the duardin as the wreck suddenly pulled free from the canyon wall. All around the derelict was a translucent image, a wispy shell that conjured the dimensions of the Kharadron vessel as it had been before its crash ages ago. Instead of a single bulbous endrin to support her, a cluster of smaller, rounded spheres loomed above her decks, helmeted ghosts scurrying along cables strung between them.

‘All guns, stand ready!’ Brokrin called across the ironclad’s loud-mouth array. His words boomed across the ship, echoing through the corridors below deck.

‘Cap’n! You can’t fire on that vessel!’ Skaggi howled in protest. The sharp-faced logisticator went rushing towards the platform where Ghazul’s Bane was mounted. ‘Think of all the deep gold in her belly!’

Drumark intercepted the logisticator before he could climb up and confront Brokrin. ‘The cap’n knows what he is about,’ the sergeant said. ‘You can’t spend gold in a ghost’s gizzard.’ He tapped the barrel of his decksweeper and gave Skaggi a stern look. ‘Unless you have a mind to give it a try.’

His face almost apoplectic, Skaggi retreated below. Brokrin watched him slam the hatch shut after him, then returned his focus to the phantom ship. There could be no mistake about it now – the wreck had extricated itself from the cliff and, buoyed up by the spectral image that surrounded it, was now turning towards the Iron Dragon.

‘Fire!’ Brokrin shouted, the loud-mouth array carrying his command to every corner of the ship. An instant later, a fusillade of shots rang out. Aethershot carbines mounted in the hull crackled as their gunners opened up on the phantom. Drumark’s Grundstok thunderers aimed their rifles into the ghostly wreck and began blasting away. The booming discharge of an aethercannon sent an explosive blast crashing down on the deck of the spectral vessel.

Yet for all the fire trained on her, the phantom ship did not falter. The Kharadron could see splinters from the wreck buried in her guts go spinning away into the night, but the ghost itself remained intact, invulnerable to the havoc loosed against her.

‘Cap’n, do we turn Ghazul’s Bane against her?’ Arrik asked Brokrin. The gun team stood at their stations, ready to send the giant skyhook slamming into the ghost.

Brokrin shook his head. ‘If we can’t shoot her down I don’t think we can pull her down.’ He stared at the phantom, watching the ghostly duardin hurrying about her decks. He noted the silvery glow that infused them and considered that the explorers had gone unchallenged when they boarded the wreck. It had been the moonlight that had aroused the ghosts. Perhaps without the moon the spectral ship would return to being naught but a rotten wreck.

‘Vorki! Turn us about! All power to the engines!’ Brokrin climbed down from the gun platform and joined Horgarr beneath the Iron Dragon’s endrin. ‘We need to outrun her,’ he told the endrinmaster.

‘She’s an old hulk,’ Horgarr said. ‘The Iron Dragon could fly rings around her were all things fair.’ He gestured at the phantom ship as it drew away from the cliffs. ‘But you can’t expect reason to prevail against a ghost. It is more mist and shadow than steel and timber. How can you outrun something like that?’

‘We have to try,’ Brokrin insisted. ‘We just sent a broadside into her and it may as well have been spit for all the good it did us! But if we can keep ahead of her… stay clear of her until sunrise, we can make it.’

Horgarr scratched at his beard. ‘We could try a supremacy mine. Doubt it will take down a ghost, but it might slow it down some. Give us time to get clear.’

Brokrin clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Get the mine armed and over the side. She’s making straight for us, so it should be easy to lead her right into it.’

While Horgarr and a few of the crew hastened to get the powerful explosive ready, Brokrin’s attention was drawn to the activity on the ghost ship. The spectres were gathering around the prow, many of them hefting weird contraptions that looked part crossbow and part musket. Even as the Kharadron continued to fire at the phantom ship, the wraiths turned their own weapons on the Iron Dragon.

Wisps of silvery light shot out from the phantom ship as each duardin ghost shot at the ironclad. There was a tinny, faint echo that reached the ears of the Kharadron, like the distorted memory of gunfire. An instant later there was a sound of sharp impacts against the Iron Dragon’s hull. Long, spike-like missiles shivered against the sides of the ironclad, denting the armoured plates as they struck home. Before the stunned eyes of the crew, the silvery projectiles evaporated in a puff of mist. The holes they left behind, however, were all too real.

‘We can’t hurt them, but they damn sure can hurt us!’ Gotramm cursed as he aimed down the length of his pistol and tried to pick off one of the ghostly sharpshooters. The shot simply flashed through the phantasmal duardin, a bright glow amidst the silvery apparition.

‘Hold fast, lads!’ Brokrin barked. ‘Lose heart now and we are lost!’ He hoped he made the words more convincing to the crew than they were to him. Among the duardin, few things were as revered as their ancestors and nothing was more frightening than the thought of evoking their wrath. The ghost ship was the kind of thing designed to conjure a Kharadron’s childhood terrors.

Drumark stepped to the rail and turned his brutal decksweeper on the flying wreck. There was a deafening report as the weapon unleashed every barrel into the vessel. The sergeant waved his gloved hand through the gunsmoke and peered at the ghost ship. ‘You can’t fight what you can’t hit!’ he snarled when he saw the phantom was unscathed.

Brokrin shouted to his duardin, his bellow so fierce he didn’t need the loud-mouth array to carry it to every corner of the ship. ‘What do you want to do? Give up? Roll over for these grave-cheating ghouls? Not me! However helpless it seems, I am going down fighting like a true son of Barak-Zilfin!’ He heard a few listless cries of support, but too many of his crew were staring at the ghosts. Whatever he said to them, it didn’t speak louder than the oncoming phantom.

‘Cap’n, the mine is ready!’ Horgarr called out. Brokrin swung around and gave the endrinmaster the signal to send the explosive over the side.

‘A supremacy mine, lads!’ Brokrin shouted to his crew. ‘That hulk might shrug off a bit of gunfire, but a mine is another thing!’

This time their captain’s words brought a little bit of hope rushing through the crew. They watched with eager anticipation as the supremacy mine went soaring away from the Iron Dragon. It hung in the air behind them as the ironclad flew onwards. The glowing beacon atop the mine glimmered at them from the dark night, a little ember of light between themselves and the glowing phantom.

‘All speed!’ Brokrin shouted to Vorki. ‘When that spook reaches the mine, we don’t want to be caught in the blast!’ The warning was given more to reassure and remind his crew of the potency of the weapon they had set in the phantom’s course than any genuine fear their own ship would be affected by the explosion. Yet as he watched the ghost taking on more speed, he wondered if it was such an idle concern. Their pursuer would be within range of the supremacy mine much quicker than he had anticipated.

‘More speed!’ Mortrimm added his voice to the calls to race ahead of the impending explosion.

All eyes watched as the silvery phantom sped towards the blinking beacon. The ancient vessel was oblivious to the threat that lay in its path, intent only on chasing after the Iron Dragon. Set to detonate when the enemy was only fifty yards from the mine, the Kharadron watched with baited breath as the ghosts rapidly closed the distance.

‘Secure yourselves!’ Horgarr yelled, putting action to words as he wrapped his arms around a stanchion. The other crewmen caught hold of rails and guide ropes, chains and hatchcovers, bracing themselves for the detonation.

Brokrin kept his eyes locked on the ghost ship as it closed with the mine. For just a moment, he thought its spectral substance was too little to trigger the device. The glowing prow was within only a few yards of the beacon and still there was no explosion. Then the front third of the phantom, that which replicated the crushed regions of the wreck, gave way to the rearward sections where the physical residue of the ship acted as a solid core for the apparition. A shrill note rose from the beacon, its light changing from a blinking yellow to a steady red. Brokrin opened his mouth to keep the pressure from the imminent explosion from popping his ears.

The supremacy mine detonated in a blinding flare of violence. The soft light of the moon was banished by the dazzling fury of a tremendous explosion. The roar rumbled through the canyons, reverberating across the landscape. Rocks crashed down from the cliffs; buttes and windswept pillars fractured and went clattering down into the valley. A thick plume of smoke, blacker than the night around it, spilled high into the sky.

The Iron Dragon was rocked from side to side by the explosion. Brokrin could feel the fillings in his teeth shiver as the shock wave swept through him. Buckets and tools, anything that wasn’t fastened down on the deck was sent dancing about by the impact, some of them clattering over the side to vanish into the night.

Brokrin shook his head and tried to clear the ringing from his ears. He released the bottom rung of the ladder beneath Ghazul’s Bane and forced himself back to his feet. Firmly he walked across the still-shuddering deck and stared out at the dark plume of smoke. No sign of silvery phantoms now, only the mephitic residue left by the supremacy mine.

‘See, lads,’ Gotramm shouted to his arkanauts. ‘The cap’n was right! All it needed was a proper application of violence!’

The Kharadron slowly gathered at the ironclad’s rails, staring out across the night. The dreaded phantom was nowhere to be seen. The immense power of the supremacy mine had blasted it out of the sky.

Brokrin climbed the ladder back to the gun platform where Arrik and his team were making a quick inspection of Ghazul’s Bane to ensure the great skyhook had suffered no damage from the explosion. They snapped to attention when the captain came towards them.

‘Keep her aimed at that smoke,’ Brokrin told them. He wanted to believe the phantom had been destroyed by the explosion, but that sense of nagging uneasiness was still there. A vessel that defied the laws of time and mortality was one that might not obey the violence of a Kharadron mine.

‘Nothing could have survived that…’ Arrik began to protest. The gun commander’s good eye opened wide as he turned towards the smoke. ‘Grungni’s Beard,’ he moaned.

Just visible through the smoke was a silvery shape, a glow that echoed the moonlight. The phantom wreck was steaming through the column of smoke, its ghostly crew still clustered about its deck.

Brokrin opened his far-glass and trained it on the phantom ship. His skin crawled when the lens brought the wraith-like crew into focus, their archaic clothes and withered faces, their hungry, empty eyes. Hastily he turned the glass downwards, fixating upon the solid wreck at the core of the apparition. What he saw little resembled the derelict he had boarded. It was a jumble of ruptured plates and shattered timbers, busted crates and smashed planks. The supremacy mine hadn’t hurt the phantom, but it had delivered a crushing blow to the material foundation inside it.

The observation gave Brokrin a desperate idea. ‘Arrik, aim Ghazul’s Bane at the wreck inside that spook!’ he ordered. ‘If we can’t blast it out of the sky, maybe we can drag it down!’

Arrik and his team hurried to get the great skyhook ready. At a signal from the gun commander, the huge weapon was turned to the oncoming phantom. The massive skyhook growled as it was hurled from the gun, its heavy chain unspooling behind it.

For a tense moment, Brokrin watched the giant harpoon streak towards the phantom. Then there was a satisfying crunch of splintering wood and shattered metal as the skyhook ripped into the wreck. The phantom shivered in mid-air, winking in and out of view like a sputtering candle. With the skyhook embedded in its guts, the ghostly ship stopped moving, its menacing approach arrested.

A fierce cheer went up from the Iron Dragon’s crew. Brokrin smiled and gazed at the horizon. It was still several hours before the moon would set, but if they could keep the phantom at bay until then…

‘The ghosts!’ the lookout in the endrin’s cupola shouted. ‘They are doing something!’

Brokrin put the far-glass back to his eye. He fixated once more on the hollow-faced apparitions that stood upon the phantom’s deck. As the lookout had said, the ghosts were doing something. Something Brokrin recognised only too well. Quickly he turned to the loud-mouth array.

‘All hands! Prepare to repel boarders!’

Brokrin looked across the black gulf of night that separated the two ships. He saw the ghostly duardin draw battleaxes and pikes, cutlasses and crude bolt-throwing pistols. Then, as though the ships were side by side, the wraiths threw themselves up and over the gunwales of their phantom vessel. The spectral company did not plummet earthwards, but instead billowed across the open air, drifting inexorably towards the Iron Dragon.

‘Lay into them!’ Drumark howled as the ghostly boarders drew close. He punctuated his command by discharging his reloaded decksweeper into the oncoming throng. The foremost of the wraiths burst apart in the vicious hail of gunfire, but the silvery wisps of their substance came fluttering back again. In only a few heartbeats they resumed the shapes Drumark had fired into.

The fire from the other Grundstok thunderers and from Gotramm’s arkanauts was equally ineffective. As the first of the duardin ghosts surged up onto the deck, Mortrimm lashed out at them with a skypike, but the heavy blade passed through the creatures as though they were naught but smoke. One of the wraiths brought its spectral cutlass chopping down against the heft of the skypike. Mortrimm cried out and stumbled backwards, clutching at his arm.

‘Cold,’ the navigator gasped. ‘So cold…’

Brokrin leapt down to defend Mortrimm before the ghost could press its attack. His axe flashed through the wraith with as little effect as the skypike. When it struck back at him with its cutlass, he parried it with the flat of his axe. At once he felt an icy chill sear through his body, as though every nerve was aflame with cold fire. He staggered back and struggled to keep hold of his axe with his suddenly numbed fingers.

Across the ship the other Kharadron were likewise beset by the ghosts. Gotramm fired his pistol into one wraith, then tried to bring his cutter slashing into its chest only to have the spectre’s broadaxe block his blow. Drumark drove the butt of his decksweeper into the withered face of a boarder only to be knocked back by the unfazed creature’s pike. Horgarr brought an aetheric torch searing into the eyes of a ghost only to have the flame extinguished by the aethereal chill of the apparition.

Brokrin saw the plight of his crew. There seemed nothing that would harm the spectral invaders, but true to his earlier conviction, he would not let them take him without a fight. Tightening his grip on the axe he held, Brokrin started towards the ghost that had struck him.

Before he could reach the apparition, the wraith drew back. Brokrin saw that the other ghosts were likewise falling away from the Kharadron, not pressing their attacks against the crew. A moment later he saw why. A bearded ghost wearing a tricorn hat swept over the Iron Dragon’s side and down onto the deck. The spectre’s hollow eyes fixated upon Brokrin. Without looking away from Brokrin, it gestured at Mortrimm and the ingot of deep gold thrust under the navigator’s belt.

‘Cap’n? You can’t give it to him!’ Skaggi’s voice raised in protest. The call to repel boarders had brought the logisticator on deck, but he seemed more upset over losing the deep gold than the ghosts themselves.

Brokrin nodded to the ghost-captain and crouched over Mortrimm. ‘Looks like they want it back,’ he apologised to the navigator.

‘Would have been easier if they’d just asked,’ Mortrimm grumbled as he handed the ingot over to Brokrin.

Brokrin held the deep gold out to the ghost-captain. The wraith gestured to the phantom he had been fighting. Brokrin felt the same chill course through him as before when the spectre took the ingot from him. Fighting down his discomfort, he kept his gaze fixated on the ghost-captain.

‘You have what you wanted,’ he told the wraith. ‘Now get off my ship.’

The ghostly captain returned his gaze with its hollow eyes. Behind it, the spectral duardin continued to finger their weapons. The phantom captain raised its hand and in its grip there suddenly appeared a book. Battered and worn with age, far more trim and slender than the copious tome Brokrin knew, it was still recognisable as the artycles of the Kharadron Code. The wraith held it towards him, the pages fluttering until they settled upon a particular passage.

‘They want wergild,’ Skaggi grumbled. The logisticator had come forward in some futile effort to stop the exchange of the deep gold. Now, close to the spectres, he thought better of defying their demands.

‘Wergild?’ Mortrimm muttered.

‘Restitution for damages done to their ship,’ Skaggi explained.

‘But she was a wreck before we even laid eyes on her!’ Mortrimm objected.

Brokrin shook his head and stared into the hollow eyes of the ghost. There was just the faintest twinkle in them now, the gleam of a duardin about to haggle for a deal. However many centuries lay between the ghosts and their old lives, they were still Kharadron.

‘What do you expect as payment?’ Brokrin growled.

The ghost-captain jabbed its thumb towards the forward hold, the hold that held the gems and perfumes the Iron Dragon had gathered from the humans of Farnost. It represented the bulk of the trade they had been able to draw over the course of the voyage.

‘Why not ask for the whole blasted ship?’ Brokrin hissed.

The ghost pointed off towards the silvery phantom, as though explaining to Brokrin that it already had a ship. What it wanted was cargo.

Resigned, Brokrin bowed his head. As he did so, the ghosts began to vanish one after another. The spectral captain was the last to dissipate, a suggestion of a smile pulling at its withered face before it faded away.

‘Arrik!’ Brokrin called out. ‘Draw in the skyhook!’ While the gun crew began drawing the chain back, Brokrin turned his far-glass on the phantom. The ghost ship’s decks were again filled with activity, only this time the spectres were not getting ready to attack the Iron Dragon. Instead they were conveying all-too-familiar cargo into their aethereal holds. Brokrin stifled a moan of disgust as he watched the solid cargo fall through the ghostly shell of the ship and hurtle into the canyon far below.

‘There’s a grim lesson to be learned here,’ Mortrimm said, still massaging his numbed arm.

Brokrin ground his teeth together as he watched the phantom ship build up steam and fly away into the darkness.

‘Yes,’ Brokrin agreed. ‘The lesson is that you can’t haggle with ghosts.’

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: THE TAINTED AXE

Josh Reynolds

‘The grove is singing tonight, Sir Roggen. Be wary.’

Roggen stopped. The voice seemed to come from nowhere, echoing through the tumbledown ruins that lay at the top of the slope.

‘Who speaks?’ Roggen said softly. He was a big man, built for war rather than peace. Even out of his armour, he looked like a warrior. His mane of unkempt hair merged with a thicket-like beard, the better to hide his scarred features, and his rangy limbs were thick with hard-earned muscle. His hand – his good hand – itched for the hilt of his blade. But his sword, along with his war-plate, had been left in his cell, back in the chapterhouse. At the moment, he wore only a simple habit of woven fibres, belted at the waist with a strip of leather. The traditional garb of the knights of the Order of the Furrow.

‘Only me, brother. It is my night to sit watch.’

Roggen looked down. A crooked shape sat in the moonlight, sitting cross-legged beneath the broken remains of what had once been an archway. Roggen had taken the sentry for a stone, at first, due to his stillness. ‘Hygal, is that you?’

‘In the flesh, brother. What remains of it.’ Hygal bent, coughing wetly. The moss-leper’s form was hidden beneath thick burlap robes and a concealing sack-hood, but these did little to conceal the musky stink of his affliction. Beneath the robes, Roggen knew that the other knight’s body would be covered in ever-growing patches of cancerous moss. It ate away at flesh and muscle, leaving only dense, green clumps clinging to the bone. It was a common ailment in these precarious times. When the winds blew hot and damp, carrying spores north from the Verdant Bay, no one was safe. Not even knights.

Mercifully, the afflicted felt little in the way of pain. And despite his illness, Hygal could still wield a blade. A sheathed sword lay across his chest, its hilt rising above his shoulder. Bandaged fingers tapped tunelessly against its length. ‘I heard that you’d returned to us at last, brother. I’m glad to see you’ve come back safe from the wilds of Ghur.’

Roggen lifted his other hand – or what was left of it. A mangled stump, bound in dressings. It hurt, but then, it always hurt these days. Sometimes it was only a little ache. Other times – now, for instance – it was a searing knot of agony that threatened to drag the burly knight to his knees. It was strange to him how something that was no longer there could hurt so badly. That he had lost it in service to a god was some comfort.

He had returned to Ghyran after its loss, seeking a familiar place to heal. The god Grungni, in whose service he had been hurt, had offered to craft him a fine replacement of silver and steel, but Roggen had turned down the offer. He had half hoped the arts of his Order might restore his missing limb, or at least alleviate the pain. So far, that had not been the case. ‘Safe, yes. But it shall always hold a piece of me, I fear.’

Hygal laughed until he wheezed. ‘Better a hand than a head, eh?’

‘It was a very good hand, brother.’

Hygal extended his own. Moss was growing between and over the bandages in places. ‘I’d give you one of mine, but… well.’

‘I thank you for the offer, brother, even so.’ Roggen looked past the archway, into the grove. Once, this place had been a chapel of stone, dedicated to some forgotten god or other. Now, its walls were gone, its roof long since fallen in, leaving only a few scattered archways and flat stones underfoot to mark its passing. A cathedral of ironwood trees rose tall, as if reaching towards the stars of Azyr, far above. As Hygal had said, the rustle of the boughs in the wind sounded like singing.

‘Something is abroad in the grove this night. I hear it wandering among the graves of our Order. Like loose leaves scraping on stone. I think it is waiting on someone.’ Hygal looked up at him. ‘You should go back to your cell, brother. Let the night keep its secrets.’ He gestured back towards the low wedge of the chapterhouse, where its outer ramparts emerged from the hill. The fortress had been built into the slope centuries earlier – or perhaps the hill had grown up around the fortress. It was hard to say, in Ghyran.

Roggen had followed a winding set of crudely carved stone steps up from those angular walls of stone and wood, to reach the top of the slope, drawn by something he could not give name to. A dream? A compulsion? He could not say. He knew only that something – someone – was waiting for him. ‘I think I am expected, brother,’ he said. ‘But I thank you for the warning.’

Roggen made his way into the ironwood grove. The trees were tall and strong, growing among the ruins in copses and bunches. Their roots stretched deep into the hill and, in places, even through the stone and mortar of the chapterhouse within. They nestled among the graves of the honoured dead, who were bound in sacks and buried here, where they might add their strength to that of the trees.

His Order wore no metal, nor bore it into battle. Such was against the oath they’d made in generations past to the Everqueen. Their armour, their weapons, all were constructed from ironwood. They grew their war-plate in this very grove, from seeds gifted to them by Alarielle, long before the coming of Chaos.

They had worshipped a different god, once. Or so the stories said. Now, the Order of the Furrow bowed only to the Lady of Leaves, and watered her sacred forests with the blood of her enemies – and their own, when necessary.

Thick grasses grew between the few remaining stones, rustling softly in the night wind. It almost sounded like whispering, and Roggen wondered whether it was a greeting – or a warning. The rustling of the grasses and the creaking of the branches overhead stilled suddenly and he stopped.

‘I am here,’ he said.

‘So I see.’

At first, he thought the words merely a trick of the wind. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her. A tall shape, undeniably feminine, but not human. ‘Do you know me, son of man?’

‘I do not.’

‘And yet, I have called, and you have come.’

‘Even so,’ Roggen said. He forced himself to relax. ‘I ask you to name yourself, my lady. Who has called me here?’ He flexed his good hand. ‘And why?’

‘I have as many names as there are leaves on the trees.’ She laughed, and the sound of it – like thorns clattering over bone – made him shiver. ‘Your brotherhood calls me the Bramble-Maiden, sister to the Lady of Vines and daughter of the Everqueen. Do you know me now, son of man?’

Roggen sank to his knees. ‘I do, my lady.’ A handmaiden of Alarielle was no mere spirit, but the right hand of the Goddess of Life. Among the sylvaneth, there were none greater than the branchwraiths who served as the Everqueen’s servants. They were Alarielle’s word given physical form, sent to do her will in the world of men.

‘Good.’ She circled him, walking through the trees. They swayed and bent with her, hiding her from view. ‘I would tell you a story, sir knight.’ Roggen did not move. He knelt and listened, though it was a story he had heard many times before. Sometimes, he thought it was the only story there was to tell. Perhaps for the sylvaneth it was, or had become so…

‘The world was fair, in ancient days. Forests rose, one upon the next, tumbling upwards forever into jade skies, and the sounds of life were as the songs of minstrels, echoing between the glens without cease.’ Her voice was like the murmur of fresh water over smooth stones, soft but persistent. ‘Then came the Withering Season, and the Cruel Gardener. With his pitted scythe, Nurgle reaped life and made the air and waters foul. His slaves sowed sickness, planting a crop of plague-seeds which fester even now, in darkling vales.’

The trees ceased their swaying.

He could feel her gaze on him and cleared his throat. ‘Speak on, my lady. What is your will? If it is within my power, I shall see it done.’

‘Take care with your words, Roggen of the Ghyrwood March. A spirit crueller than I might take that as a binding oath, rather than a simple boast.’

Roggen frowned. ‘Perhaps it is. Why else would you come here to me?’ He glanced around, trying to spot some hint of her among the trees. He lifted his mangled stump. ‘Not to fix this, I think.’

‘And if I could, would you ask it of me?’

Roggen hesitated. The tone was teasing. He lowered his arm. ‘As novices, we are taught to be wary of Alarielle’s children, for they are not mortals and do not think as mortals do. They change with the seasons and cannot be trusted.’

‘Are we so wicked, then? Are we monsters, to be feared?’

He heard a susurrus behind him, as of something moving through the grasses. He did not turn. ‘No more so than the storm or the flood. We are taught to respect you, but not to trust you.’ He bowed his head. ‘Seek no favours of the tree-kin, but sink deep the roots of every bargain,’ he recited.

‘There is a wisdom, in those words.’ Her voice came from directly behind him. ‘Turn, sir knight. See me.’

Again, he hesitated. She laughed – a rough, rattling sound, as of many branches rasping across brick. ‘Do you fear to look upon me, then, mortal?’

‘I once heard tell of a young knight who wasted away for want of your touch and voice, having met you,’ he said. ‘They say you took him away and entombed him in some secret bower where he sleeps eternally.’

‘I, too, have heard that tale.’ Something light, like a strand of cobweb, stroked his cheek. ‘There is little truth in it. He sleeps, that knight, though it was not I who laid him to rest. But that is not important. Come. Look at me.’

Roggen turned. Like all branchwraiths, he saw that she was beautiful in her own way, but not human. Her face was a twist of bramble and bark, the features shifting constantly, from an approximation of a woman’s to something altogether more frightening. Her form was hidden beneath layers of creepers and cobwebs, and her hands were gnarled claws of splintered wood. Her hair was a spill of bramble vines, heavy with berries and spiky leaves.

‘Good. Far to the south sits the Writhing Weald. An old forest, even by the standards of my folk, and savage. Do you know it?’

‘I do, my lady.’ It was a foul place, baneful and hoary. Men went in and did not come out. At least not in one piece. It was said to be a haunt of dark spirits, more capricious than most, and malignant.

‘There is something at its heart – a mote of darkness. A plague-seed, like those I spoke of in my tale. An ancient weapon, once wielded by a cursed scion of Nurgle’s demesnes, who came many seasons ago to burn the Weald and take that which he had no claim to.’ Her voice became a hiss, and the tree branches made a sound like spears rattling. Her thorny claws pressed painfully close to his throat as she circled him.

‘He was slain for this temerity, and made food for the soil. But his weapon – his hateful weapon – lingers there, festering in the dark. And the forest grows sicker by the day. Do you understand?’ She leaned close, her splintery lips brushing his ear.

Roggen swallowed. ‘I do. But why do you not claim the weapon yourself, if it troubles you so?’

Again, the cobweb-gentle touch traced his jugular. ‘We cannot touch it. It pains us. It is a foul thing – an ancient weapon, hungry for the life of the forests. So a mortal must do so. In return…’ She touched his bandaged stump. There was a moment of pain, followed by a sensation quite unlike anything he’d felt before. The bandages bulged and tore as thin spirals of dark wood bloomed from his ravaged flesh. He watched in amazement as a new hand grew where the old one had been. It was a hand of bark and bramble, but a hand nonetheless.

‘My hand… You…’ Even as he tried to find the words, the hand shrank and withered, falling away from his stump. He closed his eyes, as the pain returned. ‘What would you have of me, my lady?’

‘The tainted axe, Roggen of the Ghyrwood March. Bring it to me, and I shall grow you a hand to replace the one you lost. Will you do this thing?’

Roggen nodded. ‘Such is my oath, and so it will be done.’

‘Good.’ A talon-tip lifted his chin, and he opened his eyes. ‘You will have safe passage, but even so, the Writhing Weald is a confusing place. You will need a guide.’ She held out her palm, and on it, a thin tendril of bramble sprouted and grew. It tore itself free of her and coiled about itself like a serpent. He heard what might have been a whine of complaint as she plucked it from her hand and set it in his.

‘This spirit will guide you. Trust it or not, as it pleases you. But it will help you find what you seek.’ She closed his fingers over the brambles. ‘Do not fail me, my knight.’ She leaned close and brushed his cheek with her lips.

A moment later, she was gone.

Roggen stood. When he touched his cheek, his fingers came away red.

The forest reeked of sickness.

There was no wind, but the trees shook as if afflicted with ague. Swollen, black roots ruptured the loam, and the hum of insects echoed from among the high branches. The air was still and damp. Almost stifling in its opacity. It tasted sour, like curdled milk.

Worst of all were the strange lights that danced between the trees, and the unidentifiable shapes that scampered through the underbrush, just out of the corner of the eye. The forest was alive, but it was a darker sort of life than he was used to.

‘A fair wood this is, eh, Harrow?’ Roggen growled, leaning forward in his saddle. The bronze-coloured ironwood war-plate he wore creaked as he did so, and his ragged, jade tabard rustled noisily. His demigryph squalled in reply, her tail lashing. The big beast, a monstrous blending of feline and avian characteristics, was covered in a shaggy pelt the colour of damp soil, and vibrant green feathers. Dark ironwood armour protected her barrel chest and lean flanks.

Larger than any stallion, she could run for days on end without tiring. Twice as vicious, she had dismembered an armoured warrior in moments on several bloody occasions. Now her great talons scythed into roots and bark as she carried her master through the vast blackness of the Writhing Weald.

Roggen had entered the forest three days ago, though it felt considerably longer. Even time itself seemed afflicted by whatever sickness had taken the Weald. He was half tempted to put the forest to the torch.

But that would not solve the problem. The forest would grow back, and the sickness would continue. It was in the soil, poisoning the roots of the trees and souring the waters. A tainted seed, nestled in the forest’s living heart. Something left behind that had festered and grown and now must be purged. ‘Such is my oath, and so it will be done, as the Lady of Leaves wills,’ he murmured. He glanced down at his wounded limb. A cap of ironwood now covered the mangled stump, preventing further injury. The bracelet of bramble vines the Bramble-Maiden had given him had been knotted about the end of the cap. The brambles moved slightly, contracting. He felt the pressure of the thorns as they scraped against the cap.

‘Are you awake, little spirit?’ he rumbled.

‘I do not sleep.’ The brambles spoke in a thin, hissing voice, like rushes in a breeze. ‘I cannot sleep, with your stink.’

Roggen chuckled. ‘So you have said. Which way?’ Without the spirit, he would have long since become lost in the black belly of the Writhing Weald. But it was an untrustworthy thing. He suspected it was taking him in circles. Then, perhaps that had been the Bramble-Maiden’s plan all along – the ways of the tree-kin were not those of men, and often seemed confusing or contradictory.

The bramble-spirit was silent for a moment. Then it twisted up like a snake preparing to strike and said, ‘South. I can feel it, there. Like a discordant note in the spirit-song. It… hurts.’

‘Not for long.’ Roggen thumped his heels against Harrow’s flanks. ‘Hup, girl. Let us not tarry here beneath these dark trees.’

‘Wise. These trees were watered on blood,’ the bramble-spirit murmured slyly. ‘They yearn to sink their roots into soft meats. Like the kind you hide beneath your ironwood shell.’

‘They shall find me more than a mouthful if they try.’

Harrow suddenly squalled as something hooked her forepaw, causing her to stagger into a tree. Roggen grunted in pain as his shoulder was caught by a branch and he was nearly plucked from the saddle. Above him, in the canopy, he caught a flash of something pale and heard high-pitched laughter. At first, he thought of children. But he knew better.

High, thin voices murmured in singsong tones. He seeks, he sorrows, he slips and sleeps… Nonsense words, spilling over one another in a babble of sound.

Harrow tore herself free of the tangled roots that had snared her and shrieked again. The demigryph’s claws tore strips from the bark and the pale things retreated, the echoes of their malign laughter dancing on the wind. ‘Up, girl, get moving,’ Roggen growled. Harrow sprang between the trees, moving quickly.

‘I did warn you.’

Roggen glared down at the bramble-spirit. ‘Is that what you call it?’

‘That they have not plucked out your eyes and made a toy of your beast’s pelt to taunt you with as you wander blind and anguished is proof enough that you have safe passage. But they are… agitated, nonetheless. Something else is abroad in the forest. And they cannot tell the difference between you and it. So they lash out.’

Roggen knew well enough the dangers of such spirits – outcasts from the groves of the sylvaneth, they took root in dark places and grew twisted and strange.

‘These spirits do as they will,’ his guide continued. ‘It is not Alarielle’s song that they hear, but a rather more primal melody, and darker by far, sung by one whose will is as tangled as the roots of this forest. You know of whom I speak.’

Roggen could not repress a fearful shiver. ‘I do.’ He did not say the spirit’s name for to do so was said to attract her attention. And that, he desperately did not wish to do. ‘Is she abroad in these lands again?’

‘Once. No longer. It was the self-styled Regent of the Outcasts who cursed this place with her thoughtless savagery. It was she who planted the plague-seed you seek, and her followers guard it even now.’

‘What?’ Roggen blinked. The Bramble-Maiden hadn’t seen fit to mention that. Drycha Hamadreth, the Queen of Thorns, wasn’t the sort of foe he would have relished facing, even with two good hands.

The bramble-spirit tittered. ‘She did not tell you!’

‘Perhaps she did not think it worth mentioning. Much like your name.’ Roggen pressed his injured arm close to his chest as he held on to the reins of his mount with his good hand. Riding a demigryph at full pelt was akin to being on a boat during a storm. It took years of training to learn the art, and years more to learn how not to get eaten in the event that you did fall off.

‘You would not eat me though, would you, my girl?’ he said, bending low over Harrow’s feathered neck. She squalled again, as if in reply, and snapped her hooked beak at the air.

‘Meat riding meat,’ the bramble-spirit hissed. It tightened its coils, scraping his bracer with its thorns. ‘Ridiculous.’

‘But efficient,’ Roggen said. ‘We cannot all slip through the trees as easily as a fish swims in water.’

‘What is a fish? Another meat-thing?’

‘Yes. A delicious one.’

The bramble-spirit made a disgusted sound. ‘Meat eating meat. Disgusting.’

‘Did you not just say these trees fed on blood?’

‘They are outcast, and mad.’

‘Yes.’ Roggen caught sight of a mark on a nearby tree – several gashes akin to those that might be made by a demigryph’s claws. Behind him, he heard something moving through the branches. He did not look back. ‘South, you said?’

‘Did I? I meant north. Yes, north. You are going the wrong way.’

Roggen frowned, but turned Harrow’s head north. The demigryph shrilled in protest, but kept moving. ‘I must have misheard you,’ the knight said.

‘Yes. Meat does not know how to listen. You are deaf to the song of spirits. That is why we are Alarielle’s chosen, and you are nothing.’

‘So you have said many times.’

‘Meat is forgetful and must be reminded of its place.’

Roggen snorted but didn’t reply. He thumped Harrow’s flank and she lashed out with a paw, gouging a nearby tree, marking their path. Only a few thin drizzles of sunlight pierced the canopy to illuminate the path ahead. He saw familiar slashes on several of the trees. They’d come this way before. ‘This forest fair drinks the light,’ he murmured.

The trees seemed to lean close about them, as if curious. Perhaps they were. You could never tell, in Ghyran. In the Realm of Life, some things were far more aware than they might seem at first glance. Even the stones underfoot might have something to say, if you but listened.

‘How did you lose your hand?’ the spirit hissed, suddenly. ‘Was it in battle?’ It sounded eager, as well as curious.

‘And are you interested in the deeds of meat, then?’

‘You have no idea how boring it is to be a bramble.’

Roggen laughed. ‘Fair enough. But a tale for a tale. I tell you mine, you tell me yours. How does that sound?’

‘I shall decide when I hear your story.’

Roggen smiled. ‘I lost my hand in battle against a sorcerer. He sought to turn my very flesh against me, so I removed it.’

He frowned, remembering the feel of change-fire as it seared his hand into a new and monstrous shape. The pain of that desecration had been worse, in its way, than that which followed. Sometimes, as he slept, he dreamed that he could feel some last tendril of altered flesh worming its way through him. Taking root like a cancer. He thought, perhaps, that he and the forest shared that in common.

‘Is that it?’

Roggen blinked, startled from his reverie. ‘Is what it?’

‘Is that all there is to your story? Did you kill the sorcerer?’

‘No. He escaped.’

‘That is a terrible story.’

‘Is yours any better?’

The bramble-spirit was silent for a moment. Then, with a rustling sigh, it said, ‘I was magnificent, once. A hero. I fought in the vanguard of my household and collected the heart-roots of many a foe. Now I am bound to these twists of bramble by the Everqueen’s command.’

‘And why would your mistress do that to you?’ Roggen asked, though he suspected that he knew the answer well enough. The Everqueen’s aspects were as varied as the seasons, and like the seasons, some were harsher than others.

The bramble-spirit hissed angrily and scratched at the cap of his stump. ‘I made a mistake.’ The bitterness in the spirit’s voice was evident. ‘We are no more united than you meat-things. Groves jostle for a place in the sun. Their roots squeeze each other, seeking water. In the eyes of the Everqueen, we are as children. Some among us are unhappy to be seen so.’

‘And you were one of these?’

‘It is no business of yours, meat.’

‘True. But will you at least tell me your name?’

‘You do not deserve to know it!’

‘Perhaps. Though we are companions, for the moment. I thought I should enquire.’

‘I would no more tell you my name than you could grow a new hand,’ the bramble-spirit said derisively. ‘Feh! – the weakness of meat. So fragile.’

Roggen grinned. ‘As the Lady of Leaves wills, little spirit. But there are some advantages to being made of meat, else I would not be here, in service to your mistress and mine.’

‘But do you truly serve her? Or do you serve another?’

Roggen frowned. ‘A man may serve more than one god.’ His Order had made an oath of service to the duardin god Grungni, in centuries past. Though they worshipped Alarielle, the Knights of the Furrow had often shed blood in service to Grungni.

‘And what if those gods disagree? The Crippled God,’ said the spirit slyly, ‘is not well loved in the courts of the Everqueen. His devices of steel and stone gouge the earth and gobble trees, scraping these lands bloody so that men might build cities. And yet here you are – a servant of the Lady of Leaves, wounded in the service of one she hates.’

‘I serve Alarielle in all things.’

‘Oh? I have heard, on the wind, that the Crippled God seeks weapons of power. Like the one entombed in this forest. Do you seek it for her, or for him?’

Roggen hesitated. In truth, he had wondered that himself. He did not believe that which he hunted was one of the weapons Grungni sought. If it had been, he would have seen some sign. He made to reply when he heard a sound. Not the hissing murmurs of the outcast spirits, flitting through the trees around him, but something louder.

‘Well, have you no answer?’ the bramble-spirit demanded.

Roggen turned in his saddle. ‘Be silent. I hear something.’ He hauled back on Harrow’s reins. The demigryph sank down with a petulant growl, tail lashing. He braced his elbow on her skull and cocked his head, listening. Sound carried strangely in this forest. Sometimes the source was closer than it seemed.

The bramble-spirit twisted, raising part of itself up. ‘The song… It has changed. Can you feel it?’

Roggen could. The trees shook slightly, the branches rustling. The whisper of the leaves was like voices, murmuring in growing fear. Harrow hissed. Roggen sniffed the air and patted her beak. Whatever it was, it was not the sylvaneth. ‘Yes, I smell it as well. Fire. And not the usual sort.’

It stank, like the forest. A cloying stench, like the pyres of pox-afflicted corpses. He knew that smell – balefire. He’d fought Nurgle’s slaves before. There were few warriors in Ghyran who hadn’t. Like the flames that had taken his hand, balefires twisted what they touched as they devoured it. Where the smoke went, sickness followed.

It was no wonder the forest was fearful – it was not so ill that it did not fear what the balefires would do to it.

‘Fire is fire,’ the bramble-spirit spat.

‘You know better than that, little spirit. This fire stinks, and not of smoke.’ His hand fell to the hilt of his sword. ‘I think I am not the only mortal in this forest.’

‘Rotlings,’ the bramble-spirit snarled in understanding.

‘Let us go and see if I am right, eh?’ Roggen urged Harrow into motion. She took off eagerly, sensing battle in her future.

‘You would confront them?’

‘It seems the quickest way to find what we seek.’ He bent low over Harrow’s neck as she surged through the wood. In the canopy overhead, he caught sight of pale faces. The outcasts were following him. Perhaps they already knew where he was going. Had they been trying to keep him away, or steer him to this point?

‘I am leading you to what we seek!’

‘You are not. At least not directly.’ Roggen glanced down at the tangle of bramble.

‘Answer me true, little spirit, or I shall toss you into the next stream we cross. You are leading me in circles. Why?’

The brambles contracted sullenly, their thorns scraping the cap over his forearm. Then, finally, in a small voice, it said, ‘I defend the Everqueen.’

‘And I serve her.’

‘Do you? This thing you seek is a poison. Better it be left in the dark.’

‘Surely it is safer in Alarielle’s hands than here, making the lands sick.’

The bramble-spirit gave a hissing laugh. ‘But it will not be in Alarielle’s hands, will it? You have not spoken to the Everqueen, meat, only her handmaiden. And they, like the seasons, turn as they will. Sometimes they blow sweet, and sometimes…’ The spirit subsided. ‘But such words are not for the ears of meat.’

Roggen frowned but did not reply. For his folk, the sylvaneth had always been a fact of life, remote and inhuman. But perhaps that was merely a mask they presented. Perhaps they were as prone to foolishness as any other peoples.

The thought was not a comforting one, and he quickly pushed it aside. Whatever the spirit’s worries, they were as nothing next to the thought that the servants of the Plague God might claim that which he sought.

‘Will you tell me your name now?’ he asked the bramble-spirit, as he rode. ‘It would be well to know it, since we are soon to go into battle together.’

‘We do not have to go into battle at all. They are welcome to the cursed thing.’

‘Then you would rather them have it? What would Alarielle say?’

The spirit fell silent. Roggen smiled sadly. ‘Very well.’

The ground turned to sludge beneath Harrow’s paws as they drew nearer to the source of the smoke. The trees and their tangling roots began to thin out, bending away to reveal a vast, rotunda-like glade. It was a veritable cathedral of wood, and the roots humped and coiled so that they resembled the stones of a nave.

At the end of that aisle rose a bubo of earth and rock. There was a wide gouge in its side, like a gangrenous wound. Piles of loose dirt and rock scattered haphazardly about. The stones which surmounted the bubo were larger than any man, and their flat faces were marked with strange, curling sigils beneath a shroud of yellowing moss. A trickle of gleaming water poured from between them to spill down the sides of the hummock of swollen earth.

As the water threaded through the worn runnels of dirt, it turned brackish and foul. Flies swarmed over it, their hum causing the air to quiver. Fleshy flowers the colour of rotting meat clustered about the base of the hummock and filled the glade. The air was thick with smoke and the sour stink of decaying vegetation.

Tendrils of balefire smoke wound through the woods opposite him. Roggen could hear the groan of falling trees. The ground shook with their dying. The bramble-spirit was keening softly. ‘I cannot hear the song. I cannot hear it,’ it wailed.

Roggen urged Harrow on. Mud splashed as she tore through the glade. She leapt up onto the hummock and scrambled up its slope to the stones. There was power in them; he could feel it. Though they were like healthy flesh grown over an infection. Whatever it was had burrowed beneath them and nestled below. But it seemed the Rotbringers had got to the infection first.

Quickly, he lashed his reins to his mangled arm and drew his blade. Like his armour, it was made from wood – in this case, the seedpod of a devourer plant. Thick, vein-like convolutions connected the dark blade to the hilt, and the pommel-stone was a milky-hued gem, uncut and heavy. ‘What are you doing?’ the bramble-spirit hissed.

Roggen ignored it. His attentions were fixed below, on the great hole that had been gouged into the hummock and the filthy labourers who clambered out of it, chortling amongst themselves. Two bore between them a heavy, oval-shaped scab of ossified roots. There was something within the tangle of rotting plant matter. An oily miasma seeped from it, and the air in the glade became close and foul as it was brought into the light. A sound like the buzzing of a thousand flies caused the air to tremble.

‘The axe,’ the bramble-spirit murmured, confirming Roggen’s suspicions. ‘They’ve found it.’

‘Aye, and they wouldn’t have, if you had not played me false. Now be silent.’ He clucked his tongue. Harrow leapt. She was among the half a dozen ragged figures before they could even react. Her great claws slashed out, snapping bones, tearing flesh. She shrieked and spun, sending broken bodies flying.

Roggen added his voice to hers, bellowing as he laid about him with his sword. The Rotbringers, clad in grimy hauberks and rusty helms, stank of something left too long in the sun. Ruinous sigils had been carved into their armour. Pestilential tokens hung from their clothing. Pitted blades, wielded in panic, hewed at Harrow to no avail. The blows glanced from her armour or missed entirely.

A horn sounded as the last of them fell. Roggen turned. Diseased shapes forced their way through the trees, wreathed in smoke. Crossbow strings hummed as he swayed to the side and kicked Harrow into a gallop. She sprang towards the newcomers, screeching. With cries of panic, they scattered. Roggen wheeled the demigryph around, hauling back on the reins lashed to his stump. He had the advantage, so long as they didn’t realise they had him outnumbered.

‘This is foolish! Let them take it if they would – they will remove it far from here,’ the bramble-spirit shrilled as the horn sounded again. Closer now.

‘No,’ Roggen growled. ‘I swore to claim it in Alarielle’s name, and so I will. Such is my oath, and so it will be done.’ A crossbow bolt glanced off his shoulder-plate, leaving a greasy mark. He urged Harrow towards the crossbowman who was hurriedly trying to reload his weapon with bandaged fingers. Harrow bore down upon him, crushing him to the ground with an almost playful leap.

A bolt thudded into a nearby tree and Roggen turned. Several Rotbringers crouched behind a hastily assembled line of wooden shields, readying their crossbows. Cursing, he dragged Harrow around. He would not reach them in time, but would simply have to hope he could weather the storm.

‘Hold! Lower your weapons.’

The bellow came from behind him. As it echoed through the glade, the Rotbringers lowered their weapons. Roggen straightened in his saddle and turned. ‘Lady of Leaves defend me,’ he murmured as he saw the newcomer.

‘I think you are on your own, meat,’ the bramble-spirit hissed.

The Rotbringer was bigger than the others, swollen with a hideous strength and clad in pitted, rusty war-plate. The leather straps of his armour creaked audibly as they sought to contain that putrescent form. A bulbous helm, wrought in a vaguely fungal shape, nodded atop a flabby neck. Strips of mouldy silk hung from the top of the helm, and a rotting tabard, marked with a stylised fly, hung from the brute’s torso. A heavy sword, blunt-tipped and saw-edged, rested across the saddle-horn of his steed, and he clutched a mollusc-shaped war-horn in one hand.

The horse – if it could be called such – was a scaly, scabrous monstrosity with too many legs and a concave skull that was more mouth than anything else. A barbed, serpentine tongue flickered from the depths of that cavernous jaw and tasted the air. It pawed the ground with enflamed talons, growling hollowly.

‘You have killed my men,’ the rider gurgled in a voice like mud striking the bottom of a bucket. ‘Who are you to dare such a thing?’ The Rotbringer did not sound angry as much as congratulatory. Then, such creatures rarely valued the lives of their servants.

Roggen hauled Harrow about. The demigryph hissed as it caught the plague-beast’s scent. ‘Who are you to ask me?’ Roggen countered.

The Rotbringer cocked his head. ‘You wear heraldry on that tabard of yours. Are you a knight, by chance?’

‘I am,’ Roggen said. ‘What of it?’ Smoke hung heavy on the air. He could hear the crackle of flames and the groan of dying trees. Harrow clawed restlessly at the ground in no mood to stand still.

‘Only that we seem to be at an impasse, my friend,’ the Rotbringer said, chuckling. He hung his war-horn from his saddle. ‘As you are a knight, honour bids me offer you fair challenge. And bids you accept, I think.’

‘What do you know of honour?’ Roggen growled.

‘More than most. I am Feculus, of the Duchy of Bitterbile. Knight of the Order of the Fly.’ The bloated warrior raised his rusty blade in salute. ‘Might I have your name, good sir knight?’

Roggen hesitated in disgust. The creature before him was a parody of the knightly values his Order lived by. Nevertheless, honour demanded he answer. A knight could do no less. ‘Roggen, of the Ghyrwood March. Knight of the Order of the Furrow. In the name of the Lady of Leaves, I bid you leave this place, Rotbringer.’

‘Alas, I cannot. I am on a quest. A relic of my Order rests here and I come to claim it – and through it, my birthright. I come to claim the broken axe of my kinsman, Duke Goral of Festerfane, left to rot here these many years.’ He gestured to the lump of cancerous root matter that now lay abandoned amid the bodies of the slain.

Roggen hesitated, eyeing the lump. Harrow was swift, but not swift enough to outpace crossbow bolts. There was no way he could reach it and escape. ‘You understand, I think,’ Feculus gurgled, mistaking his hesitation for something else. ‘I suspect you are after the same thing, else why would you be here now?’

‘I understand nothing about you.’ Roggen leaned over the side of his saddle and spat. ‘I know that heraldry you wear, as you seem to know mine. You are the spawn of the Blighted Duchies. I heard tales of the fallen knights in my crib. Monsters and fools in service to daemons.’

‘As we hear tales of you – blind servants of a mad goddess. You sold yourselves to the queen of shade and sweet water, and for what?’

‘Better a goddess of life than a god of disease.’ Briefly, Roggen caught sight of tall, inhuman shapes moving through the trees. It seemed the sylvaneth had come to watch. Perhaps they hoped the intruders would slay each other. Or maybe they had simply been drawn by the scent of blood and fire.

‘The King of All Flies rules all things – not just sickness.’ Feculus’ steed pawed the earth and he slapped its scaly neck affectionately. ‘But I have little interest in theological debate. Let us settle this argument in the way of true knights – with blood and steel. To the winner, the spoils.’ He gestured lazily to the hummock. ‘My kinsman’s axe, Lifebiter, stews there, in a poor grave. The victor shall claim the honour of freeing it.’

‘Do not trust it – rotten meat lies,’ the bramble-spirit hissed. Its coils tightened warningly about his stump.

‘No. Rotten meat is honest, if not pleasant.’ Roggen had fought the warriors of the Order of the Fly before – they had been true knights, once. Twisted though it was, tatters of their ancient honour yet remained to them. Enough to make this an even contest, perhaps. He lifted his sword, copying the creature’s earlier salute. ‘Fine,’ he called out. ‘To the winner, the spoils.’

‘Excellent! It has been many a year since I last jousted with a worthy knight.’ Feculus jerked on his steed’s reins, and brought it around. ‘Fear not – my armsmen shall not interfere.’

‘The thought had not crossed my mind,’ Roggen said as Harrow took up a position opposite Feculus and his steed. ‘This is a matter for knights. Not low-born serfs.’

‘Exactly. I knew you understood.’ Feculus laughed gutturally. ‘I knew the moment I heard their screams that Grandfather had blessed me with a proper foe. These tree-kin are no fit opponent for an honest knight. Creeping, scuttling things.’

The bramble-spirit hissed in anger but Roggen ignored it. ‘Is that why you felled the trees and set them aflame?’ he asked. The smoke scratched his throat and he prayed silently for rain. Even just a drizzle to stir the air.

‘Only way to deal with such cowardice.’ Feculus laughed again. ‘Your folk do much the same, I hear.’

‘You heard wrong.’ Roggen lifted his sword.

Feculus kicked his steed into motion, his spurs drawing yellow ichor from its flanks. The reptilian steed lurched forward with a bellicose hiss, its claws shredding many of the fleshy blossoms that littered the glade. He gripped its sides with his legs and lifted his heavy blade in both hands as it galloped.

Harrow lunged to meet it, squalling in eagerness, every feather on her neck stiff and sharp. Roggen raised his blade, angling it parallel to the ground. He would have to be quick; precise. The chosen servants of Nurgle were blessed with an endurance beyond human. They could survive wounds that would slay a mortal out of hand.

‘This is madness!’ the bramble-spirit shrilled, as the two beasts slid past one another. The plague-thing’s barbed tongue drew a bloody weal along Harrow’s flank while the demigryph’s claws gouged a hunk of meat from the other creature’s side. Feculus’ sword swept down, nearly splitting Roggen’s head in two. He weaved aside and thrust his blade through a wide gap in the Rotbringer’s armour. Black ichor spewed from the wound and his sword steamed as he ripped it free.

Harrow shrieked and twisted, catching hold of the plague-thing’s rear legs. Feculus turned in his saddle, bellowing. Roggen grimaced as he managed to deflect the Rotbringer’s blade. The effort it took all but numbed his arm.

The bramble-spirit dug into the cap of his stump as if in panic. ‘You cannot beat him, fool! He is too strong!’

‘Either help or be silent,’ Roggen snarled. He rolled his stump, tightening the loop of the reins, preventing them from sliding free. He jerked Harrow’s head about and the demigryph snapped at the pox-knight, almost severing his leg.

As Feculus reeled, Roggen drove his sword towards another gap. But his blow was weak and the tip of his blade skittered short of his target. The plague-thing turned on Harrow, contorting itself with boneless ease. Its barbed tongue raked across Roggen’s chest-plate, tearing his tabard and causing the ironwood to smoulder and bubble. The reins slipped loose from his arm as he jerked back, and he fought to hold on with just his legs. The plague-beast’s claws sank into the demigryph’s side. Harrow rose with a roar.

Off balance, Roggen tumbled from the saddle. He landed heavily and rolled aside, hoping to avoid the stamping feet of the two monsters. He held on to his sword – but only just. Feculus gave a shout of triumph and slashed at him. Roggen scrambled aside and the black blade dug into the ground. The pox-knight was too strong to parry.

As Roggen rose to his feet, Harrow knocked the plague-beast sprawling and pounced upon it. Staggering back, Feculus thrashed his way free of his saddle. Roggen flung himself at the pox-knight but Feculus spun, his sword looped out, nearly decapitating Roggen. The knight thrust his blade through a corroded hole in his opponent’s chest-plate and was rewarded with a groan. Feculus’ hand flashed down, catching hold of the blade.

‘A fair blow, sir, but for naught,’ the pox-knight hissed as he jerked Roggen forward, impaling himself further on the wooden blade. He raised his own sword. Roggen was forced to abandon his blade and leap aside as the blow shivered down.

Thunder rumbled overhead. A droplet of rain struck the back of Roggen’s neck as Feculus wheeled, laughing hollowly. He tore Roggen’s sword from his chest and tossed it at the other knight’s feet. He peered up at the sky for a moment, and then back at Roggen. ‘Fie sir, fie. Would you abandon your blade, like a coward? Pick it up.’

Instinctively, Roggen bent to snatch the sword up. He realised his mistake a moment later and twisted away from the blow that would have split his skull. Despite his speed, the tip of Feculus’ sword crashed down across his chest-plate and knocked him sprawling into the mud. All the air was expelled from his lungs at once, and he lay gasping in the rain.

Feculus loomed over him. ‘My apologies, Sir Roggen. But all is fair in war, no?’ He raised his blade in both hands. As it fell, Roggen flung up his arms, hoping to perhaps catch it, or at least absorb some of the impact.

‘I knew rotten meat had no honour,’ the bramble-spirit hissed as its shape twisted and undulated, seeming to expand. A nest of brambles exploded upwards and snagged the descending blade. Feculus shouted in alarm as his weapon was twisted from his grip. He stumbled back as the brambles caught at his helmet and gorget, threading through the gaps. The bramble-spirit launched itself from Roggen’s stump like a striking viper to writhe about Feculus’ head. The pox-knight staggered, clawing at the vines, trying to pull them loose.

‘If you value your life, meat, you’ll find your sword,’ the spirit shrilled. Roggen did as it bade, snatching up his sword. Whirling, he rammed it through Feculus’ back. The tip of the ironwood blade punched through the pox-knight’s corroded chest-plate, dragging a lump of sour, black meat in its wake. Feculus stiffened. Then, with a groan, he sank to his knees, and toppled forward like a felled tree.

Roggen ripped his sword free and turned as Harrow screeched. The demigryph crouched atop her own opponent, which twitched in its death-throes. Her flanks were striped with blood, her feathers plastered to her nape with the rain but she screamed again, savage gaze fixed on the remaining Rotbringers.

Roggen felt the impact of the crossbow bolt before he heard the twang of the string. He staggered as the bolt embedded itself in his chest-plate. Feculus had said his servants would not interfere – not that they wouldn’t try to finish what he’d started. A second bolt skidded past his cheek, tearing his flesh.

Before he could whistle for Harrow, he heard a scream and saw something reach down from the canopy overhead to pluck a hapless Rotbringer from his feet. The warrior vanished into the branches with only a scream to mark his passing. Pale shapes, wreathed in bark, scuttled from the underbrush. They rushed the pestilential warriors from all sides, hissing and chuckling, barely visible in the growing downpour.

Barbed vines snared a Rotbringer and dragged him to the wet ground. He was lost from sight among the thickly clustered flowers in a brief spasm of motion, his cries muffled by the fleshy blossoms. Another was yanked backwards into the trees, as if lassoed. His screams rose in pitch and volume for long moments, before falling abruptly silent.

The others broke and ran, fighting their way past the cackling tree-kin. Rusty blades bit uselessly at bark limbs, and corroded armour was little proof against slashing talons. Two more fell as the rest vanished into the trees. The outcasts descended on the stragglers with high-pitched shrieks of triumph before dragging them into the darkness past the trees. The Rotbringers wailed and clawed at the muddy earth, but to no avail.

Screams echoed through the glade. Roggen knew that the others would not escape, no matter how swiftly they fled. He limped to the corpse of the pox-knight, drawing the bolt from his chest-plate as he went. As the adrenaline faded, pain replaced it. His missing hand hurt worse than ever. He dropped wearily to the ground beside the corpse and looked at the tangle of bramble.

‘Do you still live?’

‘Of course I live. I am not meat. I do not break so easily.’

Roggen extended his stump. The brambles bunched and ensnared his forearm. ‘My thanks for your aid.’

‘I did not do it for your sake.’

‘Obviously.’

It hesitated. ‘You are hurt.’

‘I will be worse than that if the outcasts return before we have departed. I have a feeling they won’t be in any mood to honour my safe passage once their blood rises.’

Roggen levered himself to his feet, wheezing with effort. He went to the knot of roots where the axe lay forgotten and stripped off his tabard. As he approached it, he saw the waters pouring from the stones had turned clear. The filth that had contaminated them was gone. And despite the stink of smoke, the air tasted cleaner, somehow. He could not say whether that was due to the rain, or his prayers. Perhaps the Lady of Leaves was simply watching over him.

He dredged his tabard in the clear waters, then awkwardly bound the cancerous lump in an improvised sling. He whistled and Harrow trotted towards him. She shied back from the lump but settled down as he murmured to her.

With great effort, he tied his sopping prize to the back of his saddle, then hauled himself up. ‘What now?’ the spirit hissed, as Roggen urged Harrow into motion. The demigryph loped from the glade, hardly slowed by her wounds. The rain was falling steadily now. He could no longer hear the fires or the screams of the Rotbringers.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The axe. Who will you take it to? The Everqueen, or Grungni?’

Roggen shook his head. ‘There was never a question. I made an oath.’ He lifted his stump. ‘An axe for a hand, as I swore in the ironwood grove.’

After long moments, as the rain beat down on them and the trees leaned close, the spirit said, ‘My name is Kryael. I was once known as the Knight of Evensong. And I, too, swore an oath.’

Roggen smiled. ‘Perhaps you will be known as such again, my friend.’

‘Perhaps. And it could be, on that day, we will fight side by side again… Roggen.’

Roggen laughed. ‘As the Lady of Leaves wills, my friend. As the Lady wills.’

THE WITCH TAKERS

C L Werner

Mangled bodies lay stretched under the blazing desert sun. Puddles of blood glistened in the light. The gory litter lay scattered in a patch of carnage dozens of yards wide, broken weapons and severed limbs half buried in the scale-like metal sands of Droost.

In the very midst of the havoc, an ugly pit yawned. The piles of sand and broken stone marked it as a recent excavation. The jumble of old bones and rusted armour strewn about the opening served as silent testament to the callous looting of the uncovered tomb.

‘Tal, is there anything down there?’ The question was voiced by a tall and powerfully built woman. Long locks of deep golden hair peeked out from under the hood of the white cloak Esselt wore. There was an expression of deep concern on her well-defined features. Her gloved hands kept a firm grip on the immense silver-bladed greatsword she held at her side.

In response to Esselt’s query, a man emerged from the shadowy tomb. He was more compactly built, wolfish in form and a few inches shorter. He, too, wore a white cloak, though it was now greyed with the dust and grit of an ancient grave. His swarthy face had a pinched, almost hungry look to it, his moustached lip drawn back in irritation. Keen eyes studied the broken stones where robbers had smashed their way into the crypt. With a sigh, Talorcan shook his head.

‘Nothing, Esselt,’ he declared. He waved his gloved hand at the bodies strewn all around them. ‘Vulture scum they may have been, but they were very thorough. I don’t think there is so much as a strand of hair they didn’t drag out of there.’ He stepped over to one of the corpses, a body more complete than some of its mutilated companions. With the edge of his boot he kicked it onto its side. As it rolled over, a brand on the dead man’s forehead was revealed. A single hieroglyph depicting the slouching figure of a hyena.

‘The brand of thieves,’ Esselt observed. ‘The same as the man we found in Skra Voln.’ A hardness swept into her voice. ‘This is where the murderers came from.’

Talorcan inspected the ground, carefully noting the disturbances in the sand. ‘Only one set of tracks lead away from here. From here to Skra Voln… and the massacre.’ As he made his study of the bodies, he began removing objects from them. A bronze breastplate, a jewelled dagger, rings and necklaces. From one man’s fingers he pried away a vicious-looking sword.

‘Grave robbers who argued over their plunder,’ Esselt growled. ‘After murdering their comrades, the rest must have gone to Skra Voln to slake their bloodlust.’

‘Only one set of tracks,’ Talorcan reminded her. ‘When we reached Skra Voln, except for the herdsman who discovered the massacre, there was only one set of tracks going into the village.’ He turned the sword around so that Esselt could see what he had discovered. The grip of the sword was formed from a gnarled curl of bone, but its pommel was fashioned from blackened steel.

Instinctively, Esselt drew back, alarm shining in her eyes. She recognised the grisly symbol the pommel had been shaped into. None of the witch takers of the Order of Azyr were unaware of the Skull Rune, emblem of the Chaos God Khorne.

‘Grace of Sigmar, Tal!’ Esselt cursed.

‘This is the madness of the Blood God,’ Talorcan said, gesturing at the carnage around them. ‘Looks like this tomb was something more than the robbers bargained for. The grave of some champion of the Dark Gods. When they broke in here, they unleashed something. Some infernal force that provoked them to… this.’

Esselt shook her head. ‘And the victor carried his murdering frenzy with him to Skra Voln. Praise the God-King the evil died with him.’

Talorcan was looking at the collection of grave goods he had removed from the thieves. Every body had yielded up something. ‘When we examined the branded corpse in Skra Voln, there was nothing that was remarkable about him. No treasure that could have come from this tomb.’

‘No,’ Esselt said. ‘There was nothing. Only the tattered rags he was wearing.’ She looked at the pile of loot Talorcan had gathered. ‘Every man had his share. The thief at the oasis should have had something.’

‘But he didn’t,’ Talorcan stated, a haunted look stealing into his eyes. He suddenly dashed across the sands to where they had hobbled their animals. The demigryphs squawked in protest as he rummaged through the saddle bags. Finally, he found what he was looking for: a big metal flask with a dragonhide stopper. He returned hurriedly, removing the stopper from the flask and dousing the pile of grave goods with its contents. Metal and jewels began to smoke and bubble as the alchemical concoction spilled onto them.

‘We will destroy this filth,’ Talorcan said. ‘Then we must make haste back to Skra Voln.’ He gave Esselt a grim look. ‘I fear I followed the wrong trail. I wanted to see where the killer came from. I did not think to follow any trail leading away from Skra Voln.’

‘You believe someone survived the massacre?’ Esselt asked.

‘A survivor or someone who came upon the scene before the herdsmen did,’ Talorcan said. ‘Either way, whoever it was took something.’

‘The killer’s share of the treasure,’ Esselt stated, watching as the other plunder was swiftly reduced to a molten puddle. ‘Some cursed relic from a heretic’s tomb.’

Talorcan nodded, looking across the havoc around them. ‘Something from the grave of a champion of the Blood God. Something damned by the filth of Chaos. Something that could possess a man and make him ferocious enough to commit such atrocities. Something that may pass its curse along to whoever carries it.’

Esselt shaded her eyes as she looked across the vast dunes of Droost. To her it was like watching a sea of crawling silver. The blazing sun shimmered across the thin scales of metal that composed the sand. Despite the heat, a chill swept through her as she watched the wispy haze that rose from the hot ground.

‘It looks like water,’ she said, leaning around in her saddle to speak with Talorcan.

‘Many a traveller has thought so,’ Talorcan said. ‘Drawn on by the mirage. Parched brains imagining the illusion of rivers and lakes just beyond their reach.’ He shook his head. ‘A terrible end for anyone.’

‘And if I were to get lost out here?’ Esselt nudged him in the arm. ‘Don’t say you couldn’t find me, Tal. You’re almost as much a part of the desert as the dust-vipers.’

Talorcan was pensive a moment. ‘I might find you,’ he said. ‘But it would have to wait until the Order’s business is finished.’ He drew back as Esselt tried to swat him. ‘I’m only warning you to stay close until our work is done,’ he laughed.

‘When our work is done, you won’t have much to laugh about,’ Esselt promised, patting the greatsword sheathed along the side of the saddle.

Talorcan smiled. ‘An assignation then,’ he said. ‘I’ll hold you to it. You might have the advantage with that gargant-sticker of yours, but never forget that I fight dirty.’

Esselt gave him a sharp look. ‘You also cheat at cards. But if we’re going to discuss all of your faults we’ll be out here until the rainy season.’

Talorcan bowed in defeat and turned his eyes back to the landscape before them. From atop the summit of a scaly dune, he gazed out across the crawling desert and the rippling haze. They were no strangers to the great wasteland that encompassed the Khanate of Arlk. The cloaks that covered them were fashioned from the porous hide of the dune-jackal and bleached to a brilliant white to better defy the sun’s heat. The talons of the demigryphs they rode were swathed in thick moccasins to keep them from sinking into the scaly sands. A third demigryph followed close behind them, the creature’s beak muzzled by a mask of steel chain so that it could not twist its long neck around and snap at the burden lashed across its back – a keg of stout Varthian blackoak filled with water from the River Chael.

The witch hunters were silent for a time, intent upon their study of the surroundings. When the silence was broken, it was Esselt who spoke, her voice edged with frustration. The tomb of the Chaos chieftain and the massacre of Skra Voln were many days behind them, yet still their quarry was beyond their reach. ‘They cannot have gone much farther, Tal,’ she declared. ‘By the Light of Azyr, we should have come upon them already.’

Talorcan kept his eyes roving across the dunes, watching the rippling heat rising from the scaly sands. ‘By the Light of Azyr, we will find them,’ he said. ‘Skill and determination can lead a hunter only so far. After that it becomes a test of faith.’ One of his hands released its hold on his demigryph’s reins and pointed across the dunes. ‘There. Do you see? Where the mirage falters?’

Esselt followed Talorcan’s gesture, her own eyes narrowing as she spotted the disruption of the heatwaves. There was only one thing that could distort the sun’s effect upon the dunes, and that was some object blocking its rays from the metallic sands. There were some nomads who could track a hare by the faintest chink in the haze.

‘Your observation, as ever, surpasses my own. If you say there is some sign, I believe you, my love,’ Esselt said. Her face dropped into an expression of gravity. ‘Please to Sigmar God-King we have found our quarry.’

Talorcan nodded his head, his voice taking a sombre turn. ‘We do Sigmar’s work. He is always with us.’ He reached to the hammer-shaped amulet that hung from the clasp of his cloak. ‘But there are other powers and they are in opposition to our work. Where faith is weak, the Dark Gods prevail.’

‘Our faith is as sharp as our blades.’ Esselt once again patted the immense sword hanging from the saddle sheath beside her. A flicker of a smile crossed her face as she peered intently at Talorcan. ‘Or do you question my sincerity?’

‘I would not dare,’ Talorcan said, looking to Esselt and returning her smile. For a fleeting instant, the grim duty ahead of them was forgotten. Then his demigryph started down the incline of the dune and the onerous nature of their task resumed its primacy.

They could not know what they would find at the end of the trail, but of one thing Esselt and Talorcan were certain: there would be death. That was the one constant in the work of witch hunters.

He was dying. Perhaps he should be dead already. He wanted to die. He wanted to just lie down and let Black Nagash have him.

But to live or die was no longer his choice. A burning, snarling compulsion drove him on. His breath was a reedy rasp that seared his lungs, yet still he persisted. His muscles felt like they would rip through his skin, yet still he kept walking. Blood, yes, blood. It dripped and trickled, oozing from his wounds. So much blood. How could there be any left in his veins? How could there be enough to keep his heart pumping?

The demand that roared inside him would not let him stop. He could not pull out the spear-shaft that was lodged in his chest. He could not tie off the sword-slash that left his back open from shoulder to hip. He could not see from the eye that had been crushed when a mace had caved in the side of his head. Still, it would not let him die.

There was a terrible imperative that forced him onwards. Only when it was satisfied could he relent. Until then, he would stumble on through the dunes, lost and damned.

Tears glistened in his remaining eye. He wanted to die so badly. He deserved to die. The things he had done… Atrocity! He had no right to draw that next breath.

But draw it he did. And the next. And the one after that. The compulsion kept him moving. Up and down the crawling dunes, defying the desert heat and the ghastly wounds.

Through the desolation, at last a sight greeted him. The force driving him on became ferocious. Hungrily it urged him to greater effort, compelling him towards… something? No. Someone.

He tried to stop himself when he understood. He tried to throw the damned treasure away, to cast it out among the dunes where it should never be found. He didn’t have that kind of strength now. He only had the strength his destroyer allowed him to have.

The nomad spotted him. He saw the robed man draw a sword and watch him with wary eyes. The force driving him onwards exulted. It had no need of him now. The strength it had been dragging out of him evaporated and he crumpled. Almost lifeless, he slid down the dune towards the stranger.

His vision was already fading. He didn’t see the nomad, but he felt the boot that prodded his side. A moment later he felt the hands roving across his body. Frantically, he tried to warn the nomad, but all that escaped his lips was a gargled rasp.

The last thing he heard as his life drained from him was the nomad walking away. Death, so long denied, closed around him, conveying his spirit not to the morbid halls of Nagash but to a realm of blood and skulls.

Everywhere Talorcan looked the sand-like metal scales were stained a dull crimson, blotting out both their shine and the eerie animation that set the dunes of Droost crawling across the wastes. The unblemished scales about the blighted region shivered their way over the gory spectacle, creeping around the destruction.

‘Massacre,’ Esselt declared the site as she gazed down upon it. Boxes and bundles lay scattered about the depression between two dunes, strewn as though by a petulant gargant. The tatters of tents and pavilions fluttered in the hot desert breeze. Carcasses of immense draught-lizards quivered on their backs, their sluggish nerves still tugging at the muscles of their slaughtered bodies. Smaller bodies were littered about the scene, so covered in their own gore that it was impossible to tell simple drover from wealthy caravaneer.

‘By the Hammer, we are too late,’ Talorcan growled. He tried to urge his steed down into the depression, but the demigryph balked at his commands. The creature threw back its head and crackled an anxious cry. Annoyed, he dismounted and trudged down the crawling slope to reach the grisly scene. Throwing back his hood, Talorcan kneeled beside a small body, carefully folding what was left of its hands across its breast.

Esselt followed Talorcan down, leaving her own steed with the other animals. In her hands she carried the massive greatsword she had taken from her saddle. The silver blade glistened in the afternoon light, the sacred runes etched across its length shining like golden flames. The holy sword had been forged by the armourers of the Order of Azyr and thrice-blessed by no less than High Priest Crautreic himself. She had used the weapon many times to strike down the obscene daemons and mutated monsters of Chaos, but as she looked across the massacred caravan, the desire to visit justice and judgement with the edge of her sword burned more fiercely in her heart than ever before.

‘How many?’ Talorcan shook his head and looked up at Esselt. His face was lean and hard, darkened to defy the desert sun, weathered by the horrors he had unearthed and combated for so long.

‘Three nomad camps, one village and now this caravan.’ Esselt stepped to Talorcan’s side and laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ve been with you a long time, Tal. I know whatever atrocities you’ve been confronted by have not caused you to waver. You have never failed to see Sigmar’s justice meted out. It doesn’t matter how many it has claimed.’ An edge crept into her voice, a tone of menace that promised vengeance for the fiend they sought. ‘All that matters is we keep it from taking any more.’

Talorcan closed his hand around Esselt’s, drawing comfort from her reassurance and her determination. ‘I will track this fiend to the gates of Shadowfell if needs must,’ he vowed.

‘Perhaps it is dead already,’ Esselt said. She drew Talorcan’s attention to one of the bodies lying nearby, a corpse wearing the mail hauberk of a mercenary. Clenched in his hand was a bloodied scimitar. A little further on, another armoured body gripped a spear with its head snapped off. ‘The killer didn’t find such helpless victims this time. These people fought back.’

‘No,’ Talorcan stated, releasing her hand and rising to his feet. ‘It isn’t here. If it were, we would know it. The Order of Azyr has trained us to sense the corruption of Chaos. We would sense its taint, feel it crying out for new victims. The evil is gone. It has gone to seek new prey. To lurk unsuspected until its hunger is aroused.’ He stood and began stalking about the scene. Crouched over, his face peering intently at the ground, his hand brushing across the scaly sands. He looked at the footprints scattered about the havoc, trying to pick from the marks left by victims and killer. At length he found a track that steered away from the murder site. As he pursued it towards the farther dunes, he shouted to Esselt.

‘The trail will be easy to follow,’ Talorcan declared. ‘The ground on the slope of the dune bears similar discolourations. Faint, but obvious enough if you know what you are looking for.’

Esselt stood above the small body Talorcan had first inspected. She repressed the empathy the corpse evoked, her mind processing the sight with the cold practicality demanded of all witch hunters. ‘No vultures have been around,’ she observed. ‘Not even a hint of bloat-moths sucking at the wounds.’

Talorcan managed a smile. Despite the grim circumstances, he was proud Esselt had learned so much from his teaching. ‘Bloat-moths would already have laid eggs if they were here. That means these bodies have not been here overnight. At best this happened in the morning. The killer cannot have gone far.’

Esselt’s fingers tightened on the grip of her sword. Her eyes roved across the carnage. ‘I ask few favours of you, Tal, but I ask for one now. When we find this thing, I want to be the one who brings it the doom it has earned.’

Three hours riding across the crawling dunes of Droost brought the witch hunters to yet another morbid scene. From the crest of one dune, a dark shape sprawled in the sand. Crimson-stained blemishes along the slope of the dune gave vivid evidence of where the body had initially fallen and rolled its way downwards.

Cautiously the witch hunters dismounted and approached the gore-spattered body. Talorcan threw back the folds of his cloak, drawing sword and pistol from his weapon belt. The blade he bore was smaller and slighter than the one Esselt carried, a weapon made for finesse and speed. The pistol was a silver-barrelled device fitted to a frame of sacred shimmerwood. The charge within was derived from an alchemical powder, the shot itself a ball of silver bathed in the holy unguents of Sigmar’s temple. Talorcan kept his sword held out to one side and aimed the pistol at the body’s head.

Esselt stepped closer, both hands locked on her weapon. Her strength, the brutal impact of the silver greatsword she carried, the heavy armour she wore under her cloak, drove her to investigate the grisly carcass. Talorcan’s forte was the quickness of his reflexes. Coupled with the reach of his pistol, it made sense for him to provide cover for Esselt.

The wounds that afflicted the body were almost beyond measure. Esselt could count at least five that should have been mortal blows. The caravan had fought hard, even if their efforts had not been enough to save them. Keeping a wary eye on the body, she kicked it over onto its side. For a moment she watched it, waiting for some kind of reaction. She was about to dismiss the thing as nothing but a corpse when a sanguine glow filled the empty eyes.

In a heartbeat the thing sprang onto its feet. It rushed at Esselt with outstretched hands. Long talons were emerging from them and the clawed fingers raked across her breastplate, scraping the metal surface.

The next instant there was a cracking boom as Talorcan fired his pistol into the cadaverous thing. The shot caught the fiend in its shoulder, shattering bone and shredding flesh. A spray of dark blood and gleaming ichor flashed from the wound. The creature swung around, glaring at its new attacker. Its head was distorted beyond the vicious injuries the body had suffered in life. Great black horns were tearing their way up from beneath the scalp. Long, yellow fangs pushed up from the jaws.

Talorcan readied himself for the fiend’s charge, but before it could rush him it was served a violent reminder of the foe it had left behind. In a shining arc of silver, Esselt brought her sword slicing down upon the monster’s neck, all but cleaving its head from its body. Smoke sizzled from the mutilating wound, ichor vaporising as it encountered the blessed residue left behind by the slashing blade. It swung back around, clashing its fangs together as it glared at Esselt. Then it collapsed against the scaly sands, the impact tearing its head free from the flap of skin that held it.

‘Receive Sigmar’s judgement, horror of Old Night,’ Esselt recited as she stared down at the desiccated remains. The horns and other daemonic manifestations were rapidly fading into a crusty residue, leaving behind only a mangled corpse.

‘A minor daemon of the Blood God,’ Talorcan said as he observed the dissolution. ‘I should think it took possession of this body only after the soul was gone. The flesh was seeped in the energies of Khorne, enough to act as a temporary host. Without the life-force to sustain it, the thing could not have lingered long in Chamon.’

Esselt shook her head and pointed at the bullet wound in the corpse’s shoulder. ‘It had vitality enough to endure being shot. The one we found outside the village withered as soon as it was struck.’

‘And the host bodies we found outside the nomad camps were simply corpses,’ Talorcan expanded. ‘Time is the explanation to that riddle. We were farther back on the trail when we found the others.’

‘Then the strength of this possession means we are close,’ Esselt stated. A hard glint came into her eyes; a coldness settled upon her face.

Talorcan stepped past her and inspected the corpse. ‘It isn’t here,’ he declared. ‘Whatever damn thing was brought up from that tomb, it isn’t here.’

‘Someone else has it,’ Esselt said. ‘Like every other time, it found someone else to take it before relinquishing its previous owner.’

‘Someone else has it,’ Talorcan agreed. ‘But we can be thankful the evil is dormant now. It lacks even the power to make its new owner cover his tracks.’ He waved his empty pistol at a line of footprints that stretched out across the dunes. Already some of them had been covered by the crawling sands, but enough remained to betray a general direction.

‘It is my belief that whatever devilry is within this cursed relic,’ Talorcan said, ‘lies dormant until something serves to provoke it. The robbers outside the cairn can be assumed to have argued over their spoils. In Skra Voln it looked as though the village had started to butcher an old draught-lizard for a feast. At every site there was some sign that violence occurred before the massacre started. The relic must be empowered by the malignity of the Blood God, and once it senses bloodshed, it uses whoever carries it to create even more to sate its hunger.’

Esselt caught at Talorcan’s arm. ‘How long will it remain dormant? Can we catch the new owner before the evil is aroused?’

Talorcan placed a rough hand over hers. Wrapping his fingers around her wrist, he drew her close. ‘Sigmar knows we must,’ he said in a sombre whisper. ‘Otherwise the trail will lead us to another massacre.’

The oasis of Tora Grae was one of dozens scattered across the vast desert of Droost. Shielded from the crawling dunes by great outcroppings of copper-hued rock, Tora Grae offered succour from the blazing sun. Great stands of frond-leafed trees grew around a large pool of dark water. Tough shrubs and hardy desert grass formed an outer layer that ringed the trees, stretching to the very periphery of the rocks.

Where there was water to be found in the desert, so too would the society of man be found. Built within the outer ring of grass and shrubs, a small village had persisted for many generations. Huts woven from palm-fronds and reinforced with bartered cloth lay clustered together in a confused huddle. Beyond the huts, herds of wiry antelope nuzzled the grass within their fenced enclosures. Huge draught-lizards basked on the tops of rocks, soaking in the warmth of the day until, sated, they crawled into the shadows of their burrows. Demigryphs milled about, each animal tethered by a ring fastened to its beak and fixed to a stout wooden post. Dogs and poultry roamed freely through the village, doing their best to avoid the rambunctious children who raced around the huts. The older inhabitants of the village lounged in the shade of the trees. Early morning and early evening were their hours of labour, when they would see to their flocks and gather water from the pool. The middle of the day, with the hot sun blaring down on the world, was a time for rest and repose. Only children and fools bestirred themselves at such an hour.

Scattered about the rocky outcroppings, sentries maintained a lazy watch upon the desert around Tora Grae. Their main concern was the withering scalestorms that would reach down and rip away at the dunes, driving a blinding wall of shimmering sand across the desert to smother anything in its path. A lesser but still serious worry were the raider bands who prowled the wastes. Their usual prey were the caravans, but sometimes a gang would become large and bold enough to attack a village.

When one of the sentries spotted movement through the shimmering haze, his first inclination was to dip his fingers into the water jug resting beside him and moisten his eyes. After a few blinks, he looked again. There could be no doubt, there was someone riding through the desert in the very worst of the day. Two riders leading a third animal. The sentry hesitated only long enough to assure himself there weren’t others who had evaded his first sighting, then he scrambled down from his shaded perch and hurried into the village to alert his people.

As Talorcan and Esselt rode through a winding cut between the coppery rocks and onto the grassy expanse that surrounded Tora Grae, the witch hunters found themselves the centre of attention for hundreds of villagers. All the able-bodied inhabitants of the village were gathered together, hands locked around the hafts of axes and spears, the grips of swords and lizard-goads. Behind them, from the edge of the settlement itself, the very old and very young watched with anxious gazes as the strangers approached.

Talorcan looked across the assembled villagers, studying them with cold eyes, meeting the mute hostility of their own scrutiny. With a flourish he threw back the white cloak, displaying the weapons holstered on his belt, but more importantly revealing the heavy pectoral that hung across his chest. The surface of the metal plate was adorned in gold, displaying the image of a hammer centred above a pair of crossed lightning bolts. It was the mark of his chapter, the Witch Takers of Azyr.

Even in so remote a place as Tora Grae, the symbol of the witch hunters was recognised. An instant before and the villagers had been ready to fight these intruders. Now they shrank back, eyes wide with fright.

‘Who is headman here?’ Talorcan called out. ‘I would have words with your leader.’

The crowd was silent. Though they maintained their distance, none of them had lowered their weapons. Esselt shifted around in her saddle, slowly drawing her silver-bladed greatsword. An awed murmur rose from the villagers and they withdrew several paces back, some of them stumbling as they bumped into huts and fences.

‘We are the Hunters of Sigmar,’ Esselt declared, letting her words linger in the air. ‘We will speak with your headman,’ she added as she set her sword across the front of her saddle, its bright edge glistening in the sun. ‘Let him come forwards.’

An old man emerged from the midst of the crowd, his wrinkled brown body wrapped in a yellow burnoose bound about the waist by a heavy lizard-hide belt. The elder’s thin fingers were closed around a wooden hammer icon, and as he came towards the witch hunters, he held the holy image out to them.

‘Peace and rest be yours,’ the headman said, bowing low before the riders. ‘I am Morleo, leader of this community. Excuse the antagonism of my people. We did not recognise you for who you are.’ He drew the icon to his lips, kissing it reverently. ‘Tora Grae is dutiful in its faith. The God-King’s shrine is never neglected and I myself lead the morning devotions to Great Sigmar. We embrace and abide by the sacred teachings of his strictures–’

‘Into the halls of paradise the serpent of Chaos may slither,’ Talorcan interrupted, warningly. His gaze roved once more across the villagers. ‘We would have private conference with you. Then you will appreciate our purpose here.’ His tone dropped to a low whisper that barely reached the headman’s ears. ‘Then you will understand the danger your people are in.’

Talorcan and Esselt followed Morleo through his village. The shrine of Sigmar stood some small way from the huts, raised up on a log platform. Only a little larger than the huts themselves, the space within the shrine allowed enough room for a small altar with a stone hammer fastened to the wall behind it. A basin of water rested to one side of the altar while on the other side was an open box with a litter of coloured stones. The blues of lapis lazuli and turquoise clustered with the yellows of amber and the greens of malachite.

‘Offerings to Mighty Sigmar,’ Morleo explained when he noticed Esselt staring at the box. ‘My people are not wealthy, but such small treasure as they do find they bring here to render up in gratitude to the God-King.’

Esselt turned from the box. ‘Has anyone made an offering today?’

‘Not that I am aware,’ Morleo said. ‘It is possible someone may have come without my knowing. The shrine is open to all.’ An expression of almost painful regret replaced the worry that had been on his face. ‘Has something been stolen? Do you think one of my people to be a thief?’

‘Something has been taken,’ Talorcan said, slowly walking around the shrine, ‘but not from here. A foul relic from an unholy grave.’

‘Our problem is twofold,’ Esselt added. ‘We do not know who has it, nor do we know what it is.’

Morleo scratched at his chin in confusion. ‘If you do not know these things, then how do you know there is anything to look for?’

‘A string of massacres that has left red sand almost to your own threshold,’ Esselt growled, smacking her fist into her palm in frustration.

Talorcan glanced at her and frowned. Arriving too late to stop the slaughters was taking a toll on them both. He wished there was some comfort he could offer Esselt that wouldn’t seem a mere platitude.

‘Twenty days,’ Talorcan told the headman. ‘Twenty days we have been on the trail of this horror. It began with the grave of some chief of the Chaos hordes that once threatened the Khanate. Robbers took something from that tomb. Something saturated in the evil and madness of the Dark Gods.’

Morleo’s face took on a sickly hue. ‘You say that the trail has led you to Tora Grae? That a thief has brought this unclean thing here?’

‘Someone has brought it here,’ Talorcan said. ‘The relic has a way of abandoning its owners.’ His eyes were like slivers of steel as he met Morleo’s gaze. ‘It takes possession of them before the end and uses the one who carries it to further its evil.’

Morleo wrung his hands in despair. ‘It is horrible! Monstrous! If you do not know what this thing looks like, if you do not know who carries it, then how can you find it? I cannot even lead my people away from Tora Grae for, if you are right, we would be taking the curse with us!’

Esselt stepped beside the old man, grabbing him by the shoulder. ‘You will achieve nothing if you surrender to fear. Keep faith with Sigmar. Know that he has sent us here before this evil could be set loose. If you keep faith, then we will prevail.’

‘This is the only settlement near the place we found the body of the last man to carry this obscene relic,’ Talorcan told Morleo. ‘Whoever took it from him, this is where they went. I need to see anyone who was away from the village today. Man, woman or child. We must interrogate and examine them all.’

Morleo rang the bell that hung outside the shrine, summoning the people of Tora Grae. It took little time for a crowd to gather for most of the villagers had kept nearby, both intrigued and frightened by the headman’s visitors. The elder stood atop the log platform flanked by the two witch hunters as he addressed his people.

‘As many of you have heard, our visitors are from Sigmar’s Order of Azyr,’ the old man said. ‘They wish to speak with anyone who was away from Tora Grae today.’ Morleo waited while the hunters and herdsmen who had left the oasis stepped out from the crowd. Some of them, intimidated by the presence of the witch hunters, needed the encouragement of family and neighbours to admit that they had been away.

Talorcan stepped down from the platform and began speaking with each villager. He watched each of them with a piercing gaze, studying their faces for any trace of duplicity. His questions were simple. Had any of them found a dead man in the desert? Had someone taken something from the body?

Still upon the platform, Esselt was able to see more of the villagers than Talorcan. The questions he posed to the hunters and herdsmen were heard by those further away. At the very fringe of the group who had left the oasis, one of the hunters showed increasing signs of agitation. He kept looking at Talorcan, then hastily averting his eyes. Sweat beaded his brow and he kept fidgeting, kicking his feet in the dirt.

Esselt knew guilt when she saw it, and the simple hunter wasn’t crafty enough to hide his. Carrying her sword with her, she dropped down and pushed her way through the crowd. ‘Talorcan,’ she called to her partner. ‘No need for more questions. The one we want is here.’ The hunter’s alarm mounted as the armoured woman strode towards him.

‘I think you have something to tell us,’ Esselt said as she closed upon the hunter. She held her greatsword over one shoulder, her stern gaze boring down upon the man.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ the hunter sputtered. ‘By the Hammer, he was dead already!’

Talorcan circled around to one side of the hunter. He threw back the folds of his cloak, keeping his weapons in easy reach. ‘The man you found is of less concern to us than what he was carrying,’ he said, his words quick and sharp. ‘We want what you took from him.’

‘He was dead,’ the hunter insisted. ‘What good would it have done to just leave something so pretty to be lost in the sand?’

‘Fool,’ Esselt snapped. ‘Do you have any idea what you are trifling with? What did you take?’

Talorcan was studying the hunter closely, but his eyes suddenly shifted from him to the crowd watching them from the village. He saw a woman, lissom and youthful, with an almost frantic expression on her face. He saw something more. Something that was out of place in a simple village like Tora Grae. Around her arm was a bronze armlet adorned with an immense girasol. The red opal was bigger than any he had seen in the courts of Arlk, bigger than the diamond that adorned the khan’s turban.

‘Esselt,’ Talorcan hissed. ‘He doesn’t have it. He gave it away!’

Before Talorcan could move towards the woman wearing the armlet, the hunter dashed ahead of him. ‘Please!’ he cried. ‘Leave her alone. I will get it for you.’

Reaching the woman, the hunter begged her to hand over the armlet before there was further trouble. She drew back from him, one hand closing protectively around the armband. Seeing her resistance, Esselt and Talorcan drew nearer.

‘Stay calm,’ Talorcan said. ‘We only want the relic.’

The woman either didn’t hear or didn’t believe Talorcan’s words. Her efforts to pull away became more desperate. The hunter tried to soothe his lover’s fright, but his words, too, went ignored. The woman grew more panicked the closer Esselt and Talorcan came towards her. Her attempts to flee only made the hunter more frantic to get the armlet away from her. The other villagers retreated from her vicinity, alarmed by the conflict but more frightened by the attention the witch takers were showing in the woman.

‘Get away from her,’ Esselt warned the hunter. ‘The relic is dangerous.’ The greatsword was no longer resting across her shoulder but was clutched tightly in both hands as she took another step towards the woman.

‘Please! I’ll get it for you! Don’t hurt her!’ the hunter pleaded. Desperation made his effort to get the armlet away from his lover violent. In his move to wrest the armband free, the rough edge of the bronze ripped open the palm of his hand. Blood gushed from the wound, streaming down the woman’s arm.

The huge girasol began to glow with a hellish light. A hideous chill swept through the village. Grass wilted. Breath turned to frost. A charnel stink filled the air, the stench of busy abattoirs and old battlefields.

‘Get away from her!’ Esselt shouted a second time. The warning came too late. Even if the hunter had intended to listen to her, the hand of his lover closed around his arm in a steely grip. He looked into the woman’s face, screaming when he found her eyes vanishing beneath a glaze of blood. Crimson tears ran down her face as her mouth curled back and long fangs sprouted from her gums. The cursed woman’s other arm drew back, slamming her fist into his chest with such colossal force that it erupted from his back in a spray of blood and splintered bone.

Terror raced through the village. The crowd parted, scattering in every direction. Morleo cried in horror and fled into the Sigmarite shrine. Animals bleated and howled in their pens, trying to trample through their enclosures. Dogs and chickens fled out into the desert, yelping and shrieking. Even the trees of the oasis seemed to shudder as the profane power of Khorne was unleashed.

The possessed woman moved with ghastly speed and power. In one swift motion she peeled the dead hunter from her clawed hand, casting the carcass aside like an old glove. Bones could be seen shifting and changing beneath her skin and clothes, a fringe of spikes stabbing out from her shoulders and spine. Hideous knots of muscle swelled around her arms and bulged from her legs while her face elongated into a lupine muzzle.

‘Butcher of Khorne!’ Talorcan shouted, firing his pistol into the monster. ‘By Sigmar, you will kill no more!’ The shot smashed against the thing’s breast, burrowing through to the heart. The shot alone would have finished a mortal, the blessings on the bullet should have vanquished a daemon. The awful power of the thing the witch hunters faced was that it was neither mortal nor daemon, but rather the murderous legacy of the ancient chieftain made flesh.

With steaming ichor spilling from the bullet wound, the abomination turned on Talorcan. It sprang at him like a rabid jackal, crimson froth dripping from its fangs. One clawed hand slashed for his face. Talorcan matched the incredible speed of his foe, bringing his sword licking across the mutated arm. A deep furrow was gouged into the corrupted flesh; bestial fingers were hewn from the gnarled hand. Yet the beast was oblivious to its hurt and its attack did not falter. Talorcan was thrown back as the maimed limb smashed into him. Unable to penetrate his armour, the blow still had enough force to send him flying. He crashed down on his back, almost cracking his skull against the edge of the log platform.

‘Leave him!’ Esselt’s cry rang through the air, so fierce it rose even above the screams of the villagers. She charged at the possessed creature, bringing her greatsword chopping down in a vicious arc. The thing snarled in fury of its own as the silvered sword chewed through its neck and sent its head slopping to the ground.

Esselt turned away from the mangled thing as it slumped to its knees. She looked for Talorcan, alarm in her eyes. He managed to sit up, making a dismissive wave of his arm to allay her concerns. Esselt was hardly reassured. She knew he would conceal the gravity of any injury from her in order to calm her fears. Slinging her greatsword up onto her shoulder, she started towards Talorcan.

It was Talorcan’s face that suddenly became twisted with fear. Eyes wide with horror, he thrust his hand and pointed. ‘Esselt – behind!’ he shouted.

Even as Esselt turned, the headless fiend attacked. Far from vanquished, its claws came sweeping down, scratching across her vambrace and tearing away her pauldron. She dived to the ground to avoid the vicious talons. She struck hard against the earth, kicking up a cloud of dust. She scuttled back as the dust settled and found herself staring into the grisly eyes of the fiend’s severed head. The monster noticed her, rolling its eyes and gnashing its fangs as it tried vainly to strike at her. Then a feral grin contorted its visage. The eyes stared upwards. It was warning enough for Esselt. Rolling across the ground she avoided the slashing claws of the thing’s body by the narrowest margin. Strips of shredded cloak fluttered upon the beast’s talons when it stalked after her.

Esselt had no intention of running from the possessed monster. Once she was clear of its reach, she regained her feet and waited for her opportunity. Removing the beast’s head had not killed it, but at least it had slowed the creature down, made its movements less agile. When it failed to strike her with another sweep of its claws, she lunged at its body. Esselt drove her sword deep into the thing’s side. With a brutal wrenching motion, she tore the blade free, ripping open a great gash from sternum to flank. A confusion of entrails spilled from the wound, flopping against the monster’s legs in a welter of gore.

Still the fiend would not fall. The back of its hand slammed into Esselt, sending her reeling. The headless horror came after her, relentless as a juggernaut.

At the base of the platform, Talorcan rallied. His head ringing from his violent impact, all pain was banished when he saw Esselt. A wave of dread seized him. Snatching up his sword from the ground, he staggered to where the decapitated head lay. The thing glared at him, clacking its fangs together in a display of mute fury. Then he brought his sword crunching down into the mutated skull. Twisting the blade, he bisected the head, the two halves sizzling as the ichor within them steamed away.

Unlike the discarded hosts they had found before, destroying the head was not enough to end the monster’s rampage. Talorcan saw the headless body lunge at Esselt once again, its claws just missing her face. Then he spotted the armlet still fastened around the beast’s arm, the girasol still ablaze with hellish light.

‘The relic!’ Talorcan shouted. ‘That is its power!’

Esselt gave no sign of hearing Talorcan’s cry, but her actions showed that she understood. When the monster came at her again, she ducked beneath its talons and attacked it from the side. The cleaving edge of her silvered sword smashed down on the thing’s shoulder, cutting through bone, muscle and tendon. The arm went rolling across the ground. Esselt was sent spinning through the dirt as the monster’s remaining hand caught hold of her cloak and flung her backwards.

Talorcan hurried towards the severed arm. The fingers were scratching at the earth, trying to flip the limb over so it could drag itself back into the fray. He stamped down on its palm, pinning it in place. His eyes stared down at the armlet locked about the bicep, the ghastly girasol still aglow with infernal power. Taking his sword in both hands, he brought it chopping down, striking the ancient bronze in which the gem was set.

A mighty howl roared across Tora Grae as the armlet was severed and the girasol was sent tumbling away from its host. At once the unnatural cold and gory scent that had descended upon the oasis was banished. The headless monster that only a moment before had been ready to attack Esselt now slumped to its knees. Esselt prodded it with her sword and it fell onto its side, already losing its monstrous proportions. Soon it wilted into the maimed body of a young woman.

Talorcan reached to his belt and removed a strip of golden cloth from one of its pouches. Carefully he set the cloth over the loosened girasol, noting with some dismay the way the cloth darkened when it came into contact with the gem. He didn’t ponder the phenomenon for long. Turning from the cursed relic, he staggered over to where Esselt stood above the carcass of their late enemy.

‘Are you harmed?’ Talorcan asked, his voice heavy with concern.

Esselt gave her companion an appraising look and raised an eyebrow. ‘I think I should be asking you that question, Tal,’ she told him.

‘Nothing that won’t heal,’ Talorcan said. He tried to smile, but the effort was ruined by a wince of pain. ‘I am more ashamed than hurt. I thought I had some idea of what we were up against, but the first thing you should never forget is that Chaos obeys few rules in its manifestations.’

Esselt removed what was left of her cloak and draped it across the mangled remains of the woman’s body. ‘What matters is that our faith in Sigmar brought us victory,’ she said. ‘How many times have we visited judgement on the filth of the Dark Gods? It will need more than a cursed bauble to overcome us.’

Talorcan looked back at the cloth he’d set over the girasol. The golden colour had turned a deep scarlet, almost the colour of clotted blood. ‘It still has power and I am not sure it is safe to carry back to the temple for disposal.’

‘What do we do with it then?’ Esselt asked. ‘We can’t just leave it.’

‘No, we can’t,’ Talorcan agreed. His gaze turned to the little shrine of Sigmar. ‘But maybe we won’t need to take it away with us.’

It was late the next day when the witch hunters left Tora Grae. The cool of dusk would soon descend upon the desert of Droost and the keen-eyed demigryphs would be able to pick their way across the dunes by moonlight as easily as they could by sunlight. With a long journey between themselves and the temple complex of Varthian, Esselt and Talorcan were eager to avoid as much of the daytime heat as they could.

The villagers watched them ride away from the tops of the barrier rocks. They had seen enough of the fight to know the peril they had been saved from. The witch hunters had their gratitude if not their adoration. Even for simple desert folk it was difficult to be at ease knowing the Order of Azyr was watching.

Old Morleo didn’t join his people on the rocks. Instead he was crouched inside the shrine, bowing his head before the altar and praying to Sigmar that Talorcan and Esselt would have a safe journey. The basin to one side of the altar was empty now and on the morrow he would have to bring up a new supply from the pool to bless in Sigmar’s holy name.

The box of offerings at the other side of the shrine was a little fuller than it had been before. There was a new stone there, a plain and withered-looking thing. All that remained of the brilliant girasol after it had been drowned in holy water and offered up to Sigmar.

All that was left of Khorne’s obscene relic once the Blood God’s malice was removed.

CALLIS & TOLL: THE OLD WAYS

Nick Horth

Armand Callis winced as the marsh strider bucked beneath him. Every time the beast moved, his legs rubbed painfully against the rough hide saddle that was lashed around the creature’s segmented body. They had been travelling for hours, and he still hadn’t got used to the strider’s awkward, rolling gait as it stretched out its six long limbs to balance on the soupy morass beneath them. He sighed as he peered through the gathering fog, hoping to catch sight of their destination looming into view. It was useless. He could barely see more than a few yards ahead.

‘How much farther?’ he shouted.

‘Soon,’ grunted their guide, a wizened old fellow with an expression that could turn milk sour.

Callis’ marsh strider clicked and hissed, before releasing an arcing jet of fluid from its mandibles. On the whole, Callis decided that he preferred horses.

‘Marshpoint is close,’ said Hanniver Toll, mounted upon his own strider to Callis’ left. Beneath his signature wide-brimmed hat, the older man’s face was chapped pink by the cold and had several days’ worth of stubble across his chin. Callis rubbed his own face ruefully. His typically neat and well-groomed moustache was tapering wildly out of control, and a coarse beard itched beneath the scarf wrapped around his mouth.

‘Follow my lead once we arrive,’ said Toll. ‘The feud between the Junicas and the Dezraeds is on the verge of erupting into a full-scale border war.’

‘No wonder,’ muttered Callis. ‘I’d be miserable too, if I lived out here.’

The Brackenmarsh was a featureless expanse of foul-smelling mud and grime that lay to the east of the great city of Excelsis. It was a bubbling pit of slime and weeds that reached to the mouth of the enormous Ulwhyr Forest. They had avoided the winding trade road that led through the marsh to the frontier township, as Toll had wanted to make it to Marshpoint as swiftly as possible. Unfortunately, marsh striders were the only way to cross the fenland – travelling by foot was a sure way of getting yourself drowned or eaten by the primitive beasts that dwelled within its murky depths. Despite their immense size and vicious, barbed forelimbs, the mantis-like beasts were completely docile. Each of their six legs ended in a tangle of thick hairs that spread out across the rippling surface of the water, forming buoyant pads that allowed the striders to skip across the marsh with surprising speed.

‘The disappearance of Aldrec Junica has turned a tense situation into a volatile one,’ said Toll. ‘House Junica has long accused the Dezraeds of trying to undermine their trade in silksteel, and now they have an excuse to spill blood.’

‘If that happened, the Freeguilds would not receive their shipments of silksteel.’

Silksteel was a substance woven by arachnids found within the Ulwhyr. Thin and light, it possessed a fearsome tensile strength, meaning that it could be woven into light, padded armour that stopped blades and arrows as surely as steel plate. As Excelsis lacked vast natural deposits of metal, silksteel was vital for outfitting the local regiments. Without it, the already undermanned city guard would find itself under-equipped too.

‘Indeed,’ said Toll, nodding. ‘We’re here to try to neutralise the fray by uncovering whether Lord Junica’s firstborn son was indeed slain by the hands of the Dezraeds, or simply drank too much, stumbled into the marsh and drowned.’

‘Hardly seems like vital work for an agent of the Order of Azyr,’ said Callis. ‘Couldn’t they have sent a detachment from the city guard?’

‘The city guard is stretched parchment-thin as it is,’ said Toll. ‘The battle for Excelsis left the city weak and vulnerable. If it comes under siege again, it will fall. Trade has been severely hampered and the people are ready to riot. Callis, this infighting could be the spark that ignites a full-scale uprising.’ Toll paused. ‘We would have no choice but to set the White Reaper loose. That’s not an outcome I would relish.’

Callis fought off a shudder. He had once come face-to-face with Lord-Veritant Cerrus Sentanus – the White Reaper of Excelsis – and had barely escaped with his life. If Sentanus was loosed upon the inhabitants of the city, the streets would run with blood.

‘Here,’ growled their guide, pointing one thin finger into the distance. Following his gesture, they could see the lambent glow of torches flickering. Rising up out of the mist like the backbone of some drowned behemoth, a perimeter wall loomed over a short pier of mildewed wood. It was a well-made fortification, as these things went. The wood was smoothed and sanded down to prevent anyone scaling it, and dotted along the line were swivel-mounted arbalests with large, hook-shaped magazines. A great, circular tower loomed above the parapet, and atop the battlements, Callis could see a heavy ballista, aiming out into the gloom.

‘The ones who built this place knew their business,’ Callis said. ‘You’d only require a few men to hold this wall against a horde.’

‘You’re looking at Junica coin,’ said Toll. ‘They employed the most skilled duardin siege-smiths when they built this place. You don’t survive out here, beyond the city’s reach, unless you can defend yourself. Their private armies are larger than many Freeguild regiments. House Dezraed’s included.’

Callis’ eyebrows quipped. ‘I’m surprised that’s allowed.’

‘Both Dezraed and Junica are old Azyr stock. At one time or another, they’ve both had figures on the council of Azyrheim. The men we’re here to see, though, are minor scions of the great houses. Still, they’re powerful figures with a bottomless supply of coin and the ear of the Excelsis council. As long as they pay their tithes and maintain their shipments, the city is content to allow their standing armies.’

As they approached the bank, the marsh striders hauled themselves out of the dank swamp, flicking their long limbs free of foul-smelling weeds.

‘Who passes?’ came a shout from the palisade gatehouse, where a bucket-helmed face peered down at them, silhouetted against the sickly yellow sky. The figure was leaning against a swivel-gun mounted upon the edge of the wall.

‘We are expected,’ shouted Toll, dropping nimbly from the saddle, patting the beast’s chitinous, armour-plated leg affectionately. The thing gave a shrill chirp and lowered its many-eyed head to the mossy earth, loudly slurping at a clump of moss. ‘I am Hanniver Toll, agent of the Order of Azyr. Open the gate.’

Even from a distance away, Callis could see the colour drain from the man’s face.

‘The witch hunter,’ breathed the guard. The figure made a frantic gesture to someone on the other side of the wall, and there was a clanking, grinding sound. Slowly, the great gate began to creak open.

‘So this is Marshpoint,’ said Callis. ‘Hardly a sight to set the blood astir.’

It was far from the worst hovel that Callis had ever laid eyes on – indeed the poor quarters of Excelsis were far more rundown – but a tangible pall of misery hung over the cluttered white stone houses that formed the main street. The construction was simple, functional and rather ugly, with thatched green roofs slanting away into the fog, and uneven masonry.

‘Someone threw this town up in a hurry,’ said Callis.

‘It’s more fort than town, truly,’ said Toll. ‘The only people who live here are soldiers and workers from the silksteel plantations. We’re probably the only outsiders these people have seen in months. Few travellers or merchants risk the trade road this far east.’

Shrouded figures hustled across a road of rough-hewn cobbles in the fading light, glancing at the newcomers with nervous eyes. The central plaza, such as it was, featured a statue of an imposing warrior, a Stormcast Eternal with hammer raised to the skies. The grandeur of the craftsmanship was marred by the smear of verdigris and mould, and the hazy green light that filtered through the darkening clouds gave the noble image an unsettling pallid glow. The looming towers and the high wall cast the squat, unremarkable little town in shadow, giving it a claustrophobic feel.

Several shabby-looking guards dressed in leather jerkins stared down at them from a walkway that ran the length of the outer wall. One strode down the steps to meet them, removing a woollen cap as he did so to reveal a boyish, earnest face, dark-skinned and fresh-eyed. He looked barely out of his teens.

‘They told us to expect visitors,’ he said. ‘But we weren’t expecting you here for another few days. We thought you’d take the trade road.’

‘I would prefer to resolve the situation here as swiftly as possible,’ said Toll. As he stepped forward, he removed his wide-brimmed hat and reached into his coat. He withdrew a waxen scroll, marked with the image of a blazing comet.

‘Sigmar’s teeth,’ whispered the guard as he studied the paper. His eyes went wide. ‘Sorry, sire. Forgive my blasphemy. I…’

‘I have business with Lords Fenrol Dezraed and Kiervaan Junica,’ said Toll, ignoring the man’s discomfort. ‘Send word of my arrival to both.’

‘Um… Begging your pardon, sire, but they won’t leave their estates,’ mumbled the guard. ‘Neither of them. We’ve already seen blood spilled, and with the Junica boy missing, they’re readying for war…’ He shook his head. ‘They’ve stopped the patrols and blocked the roads. There’s only fifty of us defending this entire town. Heavens forbid the orruks come pillaging and burning, or the bog-devils swarm the walls at the White Witch’s command.’

‘Your name?’ said Toll.

‘Guardsman Rolkyr, sire,’ said the man.

‘Send word to both the houses, Guardsman Rolkyr, and return to your post. Your diligence is noted. It would appear that there are some souls yet in Marshpoint who remember their duty.’

Rolkyr seemed surprised. He gave a slight nod and scrambled away up the stairs, shouting orders to his men.

‘Son,’ shouted Toll. The guard turned. ‘Where’s the tavern?’

‘The Moss Throne,’ said Rolkyr, gesturing to a rather shabby two-storey building across the cobbled square. Dim light shone through the lower windows, but other than that it looked more like an abandoned barn than a place to catch a good night’s sleep. The sloped roof was thick with ivy, which draped down the mouldy wooden walls like strands of wet hair. The windows were round and the entire structure sat oddly slanted on the street, as if it were about to slide into the bog. Still, it was a tavern, and they’d have ale. Callis had drunk in far worse places.

‘Obliged,’ said Callis, snapping a friendly salute.

‘Tell the Lords Dezraed and Junica that they can grace us with their presence at this fine establishment.’

‘Sire,’ nodded Rolkyr in agreement. ‘Just supposing, but what if they refuse?’

‘They will not,’ said Toll, ‘if they value their continued existence.’

They took a table in the centre of the tavern and ordered food along with a thin, tasteless ale. Gradually the clientele filtered out, eyeing the newcomers uneasily as they left. The common folk were mostly slight, pale figures, lean from hard work but rather sickly looking. No one but the barkeep, a rotund man of middling years with a drooping moustache and sad eyes, spoke to them. Callis, tired though he was, could feel the aura of tension and unease that surrounded them. It wasn’t merely their presence that unsettled the locals. The town had the distinct feel of a city facing a siege. A burgeoning sense of dread reminded him of times he had spent awaiting battle, knowing that bloodshed was coming, but unable to do anything other than stand ready until the killing started.

After perhaps an hour, they heard the clatter of hooves outside. Callis moved to the window, while Toll continued to pick at a rather sorry slice of grey meat. Peering out of the misted glass, Callis saw two-score soldiers riding pale mares and carrying long, forked spears emerging out of the haze. They flanked a great carriage of crimson and gold, shining gaudily amidst its unassuming surroundings. These soldiers were a different breed to the ragged fellows manning the palisade. They wore thick cloth tunics with silver pads upon the shoulders and chest, and their armour glittered in the gloomy evening light. The image of an aetherhawk in flight was embossed upon their chest-plates and upon the barding of their mounts. Callis recognised the motif – the symbol of House Dezraed. The same image hung from the banners of Excelsis’ market square and soared above the Halls of Justice.

He returned to the table and drained the rest of his ale, wincing slightly at the silty, bitter aftertaste.

A few moments later, the door opened, letting in a drizzle of rain and a chill wind. The soldiers entered in perfect parade lockstep, their boots stamping out a staccato rhythm on the wooden floor of the tavern. They spread out in a fan on either side of the door, slamming the hafts of their spears down and raising their heads imperiously. The tavern hound, a morose-looking beast with rheumy eyes and a matted mane of blue-grey fur, got up from its position under Toll and Callis’ table, and sauntered across the floor. It paused briefly to idly lap at its hindquarters and gaze at the newcomers.

‘My name is Captain Lecian Celtegar,’ said the lead soldier in a clipped Azyrite accent. He wore a half-face helm with a bright blue plume, and was the only guard not carrying a longspear. Instead, he rested his hand on a fine, silver longsword at his belt. He removed his helm, revealing a wave of blond hair and an angular face locked in a permanent half-sneer. Callis disliked the man on sight. ‘May I present my Lord Fenrol var Dezraed, the Eagle of the East, Warden of Marshpoint and the scourge of the forest greenskins.’

Callis glanced at Toll. The witch hunter leaned back in his chair, a long-suffering expression upon his face.

A man entered the tavern. At first, Callis thought it was several men, wrapped up in a single enormous bedsheet. The mighty Lord Dezraed was far from the statuesque patrician his entourage had intimated. He was a huge, wobbling bulge of a human, enormously fat with no suggestion of muscle beneath. A toga of rich crimson silk struggled vainly to lend an air of Azyrite nobility to the wall of flesh, but to no avail. Dezraed’s eyes narrowed as he laid eyes on them, two sunken pools of glassy ice within his pink slab of a face. The man’s thin blond hair had been separated and slicked back by rain, and he carried a look of utmost irritation.

‘So you are the findsman, are you?’ he said to Toll, his voice a deep, throaty gurgle. ‘You believe it proper to force me out of my home and onto the streets where Junica’s assassins lurk? You drag me to this hovel, like I am some minor cutpurse to be ordered about at your own will?’

Toll rapped his fingers on the table and stared levelly at Lord Dezraed.

‘Take a seat, my lord,’ he said, and there was not a hint of irritation or anger in his words. Not for the first time, Callis wondered how the man remained so calm. ‘Lord Kiervaan var Junica will be joining us presently, then together we three will unpick this mess.’

Dezraed’s eyes widened.

‘You invite the very man that seeks my death? Who baselessly blames me for the abduction of his firstborn son, as if I would sully my hands by laying them upon that thin-blooded wretch? I summoned you here to deal with that madman once and for all, not to–’

‘You do not summon the Order,’ said Toll, and though his voice remained level, there was a sliver of ice in his words. ‘You do not make demands of us. Now sit.’

The noble’s great lips quivered in astonished rage. He was not a man used to being spoken to so curtly, Callis thought with some satisfaction.

‘May I offer you a drink?’ said Toll, indicating his cup of ale.

Dezraed snorted, turning his nose up at the humble spread that lay before the witch hunter.

‘Wine,’ he barked at his retainers, who rushed back outside into the rain. Dezraed snapped his fingers and another two perfumed servants rushed forth carrying an immense curule chair between them. They set it down. The man eased his bulk into it with a groan of protesting timber.

They waited perhaps another thirty minutes or so in interminable silence before they heard the clatter of approaching horses. Dezraed’s men moved to surround their master, who slurped the last dregs from a horn of pale, sweet-smelling mead. The door swung open and a stocky man in black leather and chainmail entered. The newcomer took in the scene, fixing on Toll for a moment. The witch hunter met his gaze. Eventually, the man slammed one fist on the door and a group of heavyset men entered, armoured in gold-plated scale armour and long, black hoods. Each carried a black-iron mace fashioned in the shape of a comet. They held their weapons at the ready as they filtered in, glaring daggers at Dezraed and his own gleaming host. Callis let one hand fall to his pistol and readied a foot to overturn the table if things went awry, as they typically did in these situations. If Toll felt the tension, he did not show it.

A thin, aging man dressed in austere black entered, flanked by two more guards. He wore a military-style jacket and breastplate, polished and buckled with parade-ground precision. His greying hair was shaved close to the scalp, and he wore his moustache thin and curled with wax. This one fancies himself a military man, thought Callis. A strangely common delusion amongst the noble classes, that. Lord Junica took in his modest surroundings with the air of a man examining some unpleasant substance stuck to the sole of his boot. His face was gaunt where Dezraed’s was flabby, and his brow was furrowed in a cold glare that only intensified when he caught a glimpse of his rival.

‘Lord Junica,’ said Toll, tearing a hunk of black bread in half and dabbing it into the thin stew. ‘Please, join us. I am Hanniver Toll, of the hallowed Order of the Azyr.’

‘You ask me to sit beside the man who killed my son?’ hissed Kiervaan Junica. ‘I should paint the floor with this fat bastard’s blood.’

Dezraed spluttered in outrage and his guards stepped forwards, spears lowering threateningly. Junica’s men took a pace back, readying their own weapons. There was a muffled yelp as the barkeep dived behind his counter to the sound of smashing glass. Toll took another bite of bread and washed it down with a swig of ale.

‘I did not kill your idiotic spawn, but I wish I had,’ shouted Dezraed, slamming his meaty fists upon the table. ‘The only good Junica is a dead Junica, and if you insult my honour again, I shall seek the satisfaction. I warn you now!’

‘Enough,’ said Toll, and the two men looked at the witch hunter in surprise. Seemingly oblivious to their disbelief, Toll took up a napkin in one hand and dabbed at his moustache.

‘Stand your men down. If there is even a drop of spilled blood at this table, then word will make it back to Excelsis, I assure you. Next time the Order dispatches an agent to your doorstep, they will not send a single man. They will send in the hounds, my lords. Your lands and your profits will be confiscated. Both of you will be dragged before the Halls of Justice to explain why you defied the word of the God-King. Perhaps we shall give you to the White Reaper, so that he may uncover the true extent of your failures.’

Lord Dezraed’s red face went suddenly pale, and even Lord Junica looked unnerved at the threat. Callis allowed himself a small grin. There was a distinct pleasure to be found in watching Toll work.

‘This is a private matter,’ Kiervaan Junica stuttered. ‘There is no treason here. I only wish to know the truth behind the disappearance of my son.’

‘Disrupting the flow of vital supplies in a time of war is treason,’ said Toll. ‘If I possessed the same disposition of many of my kin, you both would already be returned to the city dungeons, there to wait for the hangman’s rope around your necks. Now sit, my lord.’

Junica eased himself into a chair. His bodyguards stood on either side.

‘Pass me the ale,’ said Toll, gesturing at Lord Junica.

The noble looked startled at the blunt request, as if Toll had just fired his pistol into the ceiling. His attendants stared at each other in confusion.

‘Excuse me?’ Junica said.

‘The ale,’ Toll repeated.

To Callis’ surprise, Junica reached out an uncertain hand and passed the jug of sour-smelling liquid to the witch hunter, who took it and poured himself a fresh cup.

‘You accuse Lord Dezraed of murder without proof?’ said Callis.

Junica glanced at him, surprised, as if he had not noticed him at all before he had spoken.

‘Long has the feud between Junica and Dezraed raged,’ he said. ‘When we forged a path on the frontier with blood and spirit, the Dezraeds followed us like parasites, leeching off of our noble work. As they have always done.’

‘You dare?’ roared Lord Dezraed, spittle flying from his lips. ‘House Dezraed desires only to serve the will of Sigmar, as we have always done. It is the Junicas who provoke us, stealing away the riches of the land for themselves alone, threatening honest workers and harassing my soldiers at every possible turn. Excelsis is built upon the blood of the Dezraeds. We were here long before the Junicas, and we shall be here long after your ragged house crumbles into dust.’

‘My steward, Ghedren, saw your men pursue my son into the forest,’ said Junica, indicating the unassuming man in the chainmail hauberk. ‘They were drunk, seeking sport. My firstborn son. Aldrec was a strong, brave boy, and your men ran him down like a dog. At your order, no doubt.’

‘My soldiers did nothing of the sort. Yet I know that you yourself resort to murder all too quickly, Junica,’ snarled Dezraed. ‘As did your son. On the very night you claim he was assaulted, it was he who murdered a Dezraed man in cold blood, then fled the scene of the crime rather than face the consequences. Half a dozen more of my men have disappeared also. No doubt their bodies have been dumped in some stinking bog with Junica daggers in their backs.’

‘You witnessed this altercation?’ Callis asked Ghedren.

‘I did,’ the man said, nodding. ‘It is as the Lord Junica states. Words were exchanged and swords were drawn. I do not know who struck the first blow, but Aldrec was wounded on the arm in the struggle. He fled on horseback. The Dezraeds chased him.’ The man spoke with a soft, lilting accent, quite at odds with his coarse and weathered face. Callis guessed that Ghedren was in his third decade or thereabouts, but he had the rough look of a man who plied his trade in the wilds. Callis noticed the familiar curling lines of blue-ink tattoos emerging from under the man’s collar. A fellow Reclaimed. A descendent of the nomadic tribes who had once lived here, before Sigmar’s Tempest brought the light of the heavens back into the realms, rather than a great, Azyr-born family like his masters. Perhaps that was why he appeared to possess some humility.

‘They went beyond the eastern gate and into the Ulwhyr,’ he continued. ‘I followed after them, but they were horsed and I was not. I lost them in the darkness, but I heard screams, so returned to seek help.’

‘The words of a low-born mercenary employed by the Junica,’ said Captain Celtegar, with a dismissive snort. ‘How utterly convincing. I tell you now, upon my honour and that of my men, no such incident took place. This one lies.’

Ghedren simply shrugged. ‘It is what I saw.’

‘How many days past was this?’ asked Toll.

‘Five days, sire.’

‘And you have returned since to search the area?’

‘We have. We found no sign of Master Junica, nor of his pursuers.’

‘It is possible, then, that something else could have occurred within the Ulwhyr? Not murder?’ Toll continued.

Ghedren shrugged. ‘Perhaps, but the Dezraed soldiers were after blood.’

‘You will take me and my associate there,’ said Toll. ‘You will guide us to the spot where you lost track of them. If what you say is true, there will be traces of their passing.’

Ghedren looked at his master for confirmation. Lord Junica nodded slightly.

‘Captain Celtegar will accompany you,’ said Lord Dezraed. ‘Along with two men of his choosing. Just to ensure that this is not some foolish attempt at revenge.’

‘I have such a thing as honour, you bloated fiend,’ snapped Junica. ‘A concept that escapes you entirely.’

Their bickering was about to start over anew, when Toll slammed his fist on the table.

‘Silence,’ he barked. ‘At dawn, we will enter the Ulwhyr and find out the truth of this. My lords, you will remain in Marshpoint until I tell you otherwise. And I warn you both, if blood is shed on these streets, I promise I will ensure that a price is paid. Now leave.’

Callis followed Toll out of the eastern gate of Marshpoint early the next morning, rubbing at his itching eyes. It had not been a relaxing sleep in the cramped guest chambers of the Moss Throne. The room had smelled of mildew and rot, and he had been kept awake by the sounds of buzzing insects and a slow, steady dripping from the roof above his head.

‘So, what do you think of our Lords Junica and Dezraed?’ Toll asked.

Callis scratched his beard and yawned.

‘They would each see the other destroyed if they could,’ he said. ‘That’s clear. But I am not sure about a murder plot. Lord Dezraed hardly seems like a master schemer.’

‘Do not underestimate him,’ said Toll. ‘Marshpoint may not be a glamorous place, but the silksteel plantations are of great value to both houses. They would not send lackwits out here to oversee one of their most valuable trades. Fenrol Dezraed looks like a greedy fool, but clever men often hide behind the mummer’s mask.’

‘Why the firstborn son?’ said Callis. ‘Why not the old man himself? If you’re going to start a war, why not make that your opening move? If this is a Dezraed scheme, what’s the end goal?’

Toll rolled his hat in his hands and nodded thoughtfully.

‘Be watchful as we enter the Ulwhyr,’ he said, checking the firing pan of his four-barrelled pistol. ‘Observe all. Discount nothing.’

‘I’ve patrolled the wilds before,’ said Callis. ‘I know well what it’s like out here.’

‘I do not just mean the forest,’ Toll replied, but before Callis could ask what he meant, the witch hunter strode over to greet the Junica steward, Ghedren, who was waiting for them on a flooded path that led out towards the distant spectre of the Ulwhyr Forest. The man carried a well-made composite bow and a heavy-bladed knife at his hip. He was wrapped in a large wolf-skin cloak that smelled strongly of wet fur. He dipped his head in greeting as they approached. The vast, ominous expanse of woodland that was the Ulwhyr lurked on the eastern edge of the town, emerging out of the early morning murk. The canopy was an impenetrable carpet of dark green, the trunks of the trees below gnarled and twisted, leading into darkness. A tide of sickly green mist rolled out from the bog, swirling around the mouth of the forest like the breath of a fallen giant.

‘So that’s where we’re headed?’ Callis said. ‘Seems like an inviting sort of place.’

Ghedren smiled. ‘The Ulwhyr is dangerous, yes. But it is also a place of life. For many years, my people walked its secret paths, hidden from those that wished us harm. It protected us, granted us all that we required. One need only show the forest the proper respect and they can walk amongst its shadows unscathed.’

‘You almost sound as though it’s a sentient thing,’ said Callis.

‘Perhaps it is. These lands are rife with magic. Within the Ulwhyr dwells things more ancient than a mortal could possibly contemplate,’ said Ghedren. ‘The forest belongs to them, not us.’

‘For now,’ interrupted Toll. ‘In time, the light of the God-King will reach even the darkest corners of these lands. We will tame this place, and then we will burn away the shadows.’

‘Some evils cannot be banished so easily.’

‘I did not say that it would be easy,’ said Toll, who then went to converse with the gaggle of nervous-looking guards manning the east gate, leaving Ghedren and Callis alone.

‘You were raised in the city?’ asked the steward.

‘I was,’ Callis replied. ‘Though my family weren’t Azyrite. I served in the Freeguild for many years.’

Callis briefly thought to mention his regiment, but decided against it. The Coldguard of Excelsis had been entirely liquidated for their part in the heretical plot to overthrow the city, after all, and he was the sole survivor. That fact tended to set people on edge, for some unfathomable reason.

‘I thought as much,’ said Ghedren, nodding. ‘You have a soldier’s bearing. It is surprising to me that a man so young – one of the Reclaimed, no less – is in the employ of the Order. You must be a man of rare talents to be elevated so high.’

‘I’m merely a soldier, as you say. Just doing what is asked of me.’

Ghedren gave an awkward, sad smile.

‘Aren’t we all?’ he said. ‘Yet it seems that we must work twice as hard for half the praise.’

‘Aye,’ said Callis. ‘I won’t disagree with you there.’

‘Your master… This witch hunter,’ said Ghedren. ‘He is Azyr-born, I take it.’

Callis blinked in surprise as he realised he had never thought to ask.

‘I confess, I have no idea,’ he said.

‘He’s more alike to them than us, I think,’ said Ghedren. ‘I worry that he does not understand this place, not truly. He is a creature of the crowded street, the shadowed back-alley…’

They heard boots squelching through the mud, and turned to see Toll leading three soldiers along the muddy path towards them – two Dezraed guards and the captain, Celtegar. All had pistols strapped to their belts and had ditched their spears for more practical longswords.

‘Corporals Brujda,’ said the captain, indicating the shaven-headed woman, ‘and Yol.’ The latter was a short, stocky red-headed man with a wispy beard and lazy eyes. The two soldiers gave perfunctory nods, all business. Celtegar cast a withering look at Ghedren.

‘Where do you insist that this fiction occurred?’

‘They pursued the Junica boy this way, along the path and into the forest,’ said Ghedren.

‘Lies.’

‘He was bleeding from his wounds, and they were striking him with lances.’

‘When this farce is over, I’ll have your head for this, savage,’ snapped Celtegar.

‘You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head,’ snarled Callis, moving to within an inch of Celtegar’s face, enjoying the look of surprised fury on the man’s angular features. ‘The only justice here will be served by the Order of Azyr.’

For a moment, Callis thought Celtegar would swing for him. He tensed his arms, ready to block the man’s punch and return it in kind.

‘Stand down, Armand,’ said Toll. ‘This is not the time nor the place.’

Callis stared into the captain’s grey eyes a moment longer, just to let him know the time had long passed where he would suffer the insults and barbs of blue-blooded fools. When he stepped back, Celtegar was all but trembling with rage.

‘Lead on, Ghedren,’ the witch hunter said. ‘I would have us get to the truth of this as soon as possible.’

Callis had never much liked forests. He’d fought in several during his time in the Freeguilds, and these had been amongst his most miserable experiences. The deep woods played tricks on a soldier’s mind, made one jump at every sound and every flickering shadow. The Ulwhyr was worse than most. It was a twisted labyrinth of curling boughs, smothered in darkness. Its mist swirled around their legs and up to their knees, making every step a potential hazard. Callis had expected the usual cacophony of sounds, the chattering of insects and the hooting of birds, yet the ominous canopy above them was startlingly silent. He winced at every snapped stick and muttered curse from his companions. If anyone was lurking in wait for them, they would hear the approach from a mile away.

They had been walking for perhaps two hours when Yol stumbled, then let out a curse in shock when he realised what had caught his foot. It was a corpse, face down in the soil. The grey flesh and stiffness of the limbs suggested this was at least a few days old. A man armoured in the silver of House Dezraed.

Callis rolled the body over with his boot. The dead man’s eyes were wide, crazed even, like a frightened deer. His mouth was open in a scream, and blood had caked around his eyes and mouth.

‘Lartach,’ breathed the Dezraed woman, Brujda. ‘He went missing a few days back. Around the same time as the Junica boy. He was an idiot and a drunkard, but a decent enough sort otherwise.’

‘There are no wounds,’ mused Callis. ‘Nowhere. How did this man die?’

‘The White Witch,’ muttered Yol, shaking his head.

‘Enough with that nonsense,’ snorted Captain Celtegar.

‘What’s that you say?’ asked Callis. ‘The guard at the gate mentioned that name.’

‘Just a legend,’ said Celtegar, waving a dismissive hand. ‘A tale concocted by the natives of this region. It’s all they ever talk about. The dreaded White Witch of the Ulwhyr, the taker of children. A ghost, whose screams can stop the heart of mortals.’

‘Oh, she is real,’ said Ghedren softly. ‘These are her lands.’

‘All you people ever talk about are ghosts, spriggans, tolmickles and bog-devils,’ mocked Celtegar. ‘Backward nonsense. This is probably just another fool who got drunk and choked on his own spew.’

Ghedren stood and slowly moved off deeper into the treeline.

‘Horse tracks,’ he said. ‘They lead this way.’

‘Continue,’ said Toll.

Callis squinted. ‘I don’t know how you can see anything in this fog.’

‘My father taught me to hunt in these woods,’ said Ghedren. ‘He taught me to track, to move unseen, to hide my trail. To understand and respect the dangers of the wild. These men we seek, the Dezraed guards, they may have lived here for many years now, but they have learned no such lessons. Such superstition is beneath them, so they say. They believe only in the power of the God-King, and scorn the wild tales of uncivilised folk.’

‘If Celtegar is what counts as civilised, I’ll gladly remain a so-called savage,’ muttered Callis, and Ghedren chuckled.

They were losing light now, despite the fact that it could not have been more than a few hours since they had set off. The thick canopy overhead cast them into near pitch-black darkness. Every tangled cluster of vine seemed to take the form of a skulking beast of the forest, and every wisping curl of fog seemed almost alive in its movement, drifting towards them out of the murk. Callis shook his head, angry with himself for allowing this miserable place to unsettle him. Eventually, they came to a wide, enclosed clearing, hemmed in on all sides by fat-trunked oaks. A great pool of greenish water spread out before them, dotted by clusters of drooping reeds and sharp rocks. At the far end of the pool, a bank of discoloured leaves rose into a steep mound dominated by a huge, long-dead blackwood tree. In the centre of the marsh was a small island of pale flesh and shining metal.

‘Another body,’ said Ghedren.

They waded out into the morass to get a closer look. It was a dead horse, half submerged in the foetid water, pallid and bloated. Something had torn great chunks out of the beast’s hide, devoured most of its innards. They shoved against the carcass and found a rider beneath, pinned by the animal’s weight. The dead man’s face was horribly swollen and his skin a pale green.

‘Scavengers,’ said Ghedren, noticing Callis’ uncomfortable look. ‘These are the bites of several creatures. These, however…’

He indicated scores of smaller slices across the flank of the horse and on the body of the dead man. They looked like gouges, ragged and imprecise, rather than the neat cut of a blade. One such tear had ripped open the unfortunate soldier’s cheek, and another had torn a bloody line across his throat. It looked as if the horse had been dragged down into the mud, and the rider had become trapped underneath its weight, helpless against his attackers.

‘There’s something out here,’ growled Captain Celtegar. ‘Watching us. I can feel it. Whatever did this, it isn’t far away.’

Ghedren knelt, placed a hand on the mossy earth and stared off into the blackness of the forest. After a moment, he shook his head.

‘I do not sense anything nearby,’ he said.

‘Who cares a damn what you sense, curseblood?’ snapped Celtegar.

Callis had heard that term before. Several of the officers in his regiment had muttered the same insult behind his back, not caring if he heard. It was used to denigrate any who did not hail from blessed Azyr, anyone who was – in their eyes – tainted by native blood.

‘Use that word again and I’ll break your jaw, you preening shit,’ said Callis, slowly and deliberately.

Celtegar’s men squared up, their hands on the hilts of their swords. The captain stepped close to Callis, who had to lean his head back to maintain eye contact. He was a big brute, this one, but still, Callis had fought bigger.

‘You will withdraw that insult,’ said Celtegar.

‘You shall first,’ said Callis. ‘You forget who I represent here, captain. Strike a member of the Order, and see the consequences.’

‘Silence,’ hissed Toll. The witch hunter’s pistol was raised, aimed out into the swirling fog. In a matter of moments, the mist had grown as thick as smoke, and now formed an opaque wall around them. They could barely see more than a dozen feet in any direction. Something stirred with a splash in the water nearby, and they all started, drawing their blades and forming a circle, hostility temporarily forgotten.

‘I told you,’ said Celtegar, his voice tight with fear. ‘Something is coming.’

He had barely finished speaking when something broke the surface of the bog and closed around his leg. Celtegar shrieked in surprise and toppled backwards, sending up a great wave of water as he splashed onto his rear. An arm, rotted through and draped in weeds, was clamped tightly around his ankle. A head emerged, flaps of decaying skin hanging loosely from a grinning skull. The undead thing began to haul itself along the captain’s prone form, reaching for his neck with creaking fingers. Callis put a boot against the undead’s chest, kicking it off the screaming Celtegar and into the murky water. He hacked at its neck with his blade. The head came free, sinking into the bog.

Another figure erupted from the water behind Corporal Brujda, wrapping its arms around her neck, teeth tearing at her neck and shattering as they crunched into her plate gorget. She gasped in revulsion and began to awkwardly swipe and slash at its forearms, trying to cut it loose. Yol smashed the pommel of his blade into the undead thing’s head, and it fell back into the water, but another was already rising in its place. This corpse looked fresher than the others, and was clad in the same shining metal plate as the Dezraed warriors. Its head lolled at a strange, unnatural angle, but Callis could make out a thin, cruel face with eyes glazed and vacant.

‘G-Gaulter?’ stammered Yol, lowering his blade just a fraction.

Too much. The risen corpse slashed its own weapon, a rusted sabre, across in a wide arc, and there was a splatter of bright crimson. The Dezraed guard fell, clutching an opened throat, gurgling and choking. He splashed into the water, and his former companion leapt upon him and drove its sword into his chest again and again.

‘Move!’ shouted Toll, grabbing Captain Celtegar under the arm and hauling the heavyset man to his feet. The water boiled to life as yet more rotting bodies clambered upright. The witch hunter fired and a corpse came apart in an explosion of bone and flesh. The stench of rot and acrid gunpowder choked the air.

‘This way!’ shouted Ghedren, splashing through the water towards a rising bank of dead leaves.

They staggered after him, weaving their way through the mass of decaying bodies. As they dragged themselves up onto the muddy bank, more dead things erupted from the water, scraping and clawing at their legs. Callis saw a skeleton rise up ahead of him, a curling branch of thorns protruding from its eye sockets. He drew his pistol and fired. The bullet smashed the skull into a thousand shards of wet bone, and the thing slumped back beneath the surface. Then they were out, on their hands and knees, dragging themselves free. Toll grabbed Callis’ hand and hauled him up. Callis turned, searching for the Dezraed woman, Brujda. She was wading after them, hacking at the bodies rising around her, eyes terrified.

‘Come on,’ roared Callis, stretching out his hand, straining to reach her.

She was only an arm’s length away when half a dozen dead things surrounded her and bore her down. Her scream cut off abruptly as she went under, and bubbles broke the surface. Callis and Celtegar tried to cut their way down to reach Brujda as she thrashed underwater, but more of the dead were rising with every moment, blocking their path and dragging themselves onto the shore. The foetid surface of the swamp turned a deep crimson.

‘She’s gone,’ said Toll, firing round after round, the grey-black smoke from his pistol churning with the pale, white mist.

An arm wrapped in rusted chainmail reached out of the mist to grasp the witch hunter around the throat. A leering skull appeared over the man’s shoulder, its yellowed fangs snapping as it sought to bite down into Toll’s exposed neck. Toll drove an elbow into the side of the thing’s head and there was a crunch of breaking bone, but its grip did not relent. Callis stepped forward, trying to keep his balance while straining to reach Toll. He lost his footing in the slick mud and fell, slipping and cursing, back towards the marsh water. Somehow he managed to grasp a fistful of gnarled roots to stay his descent. He looked up to see Toll stumbling backwards, the skeleton still tearing at his neck. The witch hunter fell, seemingly in slow motion, swallowed up by the mist.

‘Toll!’ shouted Callis, crawling forwards on his hands and knees, searching for his companion. There was no reply, and he could see nothing but the ghostly shapes of shambling figures drawing ever closer. He fired and one of the figures dropped to the ground with a rattling groan.

‘He is lost, Armand,’ shouted Ghedren. He loosed his bow and an arrow sailed past Callis’ head to smash a skeleton to the ground. ‘We must run! This way! Follow my steps.’

Callis took one last look into the thick fog.

‘Hanniver?’ he shouted, but heard only the echo of his own words in response.

It was hopeless. To blunder out into the gloom with the dead all around would be to seal his own fate alongside the witch hunter’s. He felt numb. It seemed absurd – all that he and Toll had been through, only for the man to fall here. Cursing, he turned and followed Ghedren, who led them higher, along the crest of the mound. It was a strange formation, Callis noticed. There was an almost artificial curve to it, a gently sloping arc through which rose a great, twisted tree of black wood. Ghedren stopped beneath its creaking boughs, watching the others as they approached him. The ground suddenly groaned beneath their weight, the roots splintering. Soil and clusters of leaves tumbled away into a pitch-black hole. Callis tripped and fell, sliding towards the drop, clutching desperately for a handhold on the mud-slick roots. He stared up at Ghedren.

‘Help us,’ he shouted, but the man did not move a muscle.

‘Forgive me.’

Ghedren reached down and tugged hard at a thick cluster of vines, raising his long dagger in one hand. He sliced down, again and again, and with a loud crack the roots came apart. The ground beneath Callis and Celtegar fell away. They toppled end over end as the world spun. Callis tried to grasp a hold, but could find no purchase. Something ripped at his cheek and blood splattered across his face. Dirt blinded him and filled his mouth. Suddenly, he struck something with enough force to blast the air from his lungs. Everything went dark.

Callis was dragged back to consciousness by a stabbing pain in his face. He brushed a hand against his cheek and felt torn flesh. Groaning, he struggled to his feet, spitting foul-tasting soil. He stared up and saw a trickle of light filtering down from above. That snake, Ghedren. He had led them here, like lambs to the slaughter. But where, exactly, were they?

Someone moaned beside him. He saw a gleam of metal in the darkness. It was Celtegar. The Dezraed man stood and teetered, favouring his left leg.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Callis.

‘Just fine,’ spat the man. ‘I warned you we could not trust that wretch. Now, where are we?’

‘Good question,’ said Callis. He squinted, waiting impatiently for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. They appeared to be in some kind of tunnel. It looked too smooth to be a natural formation. He ran his hand down the wall to his left and felt something hard and cold. Stone. So this was some kind of ancient structure they had fallen into, built from…

His hand brushed over a stone and he felt a circular indentation. Below that, he ran his fingers over a row of sharp objects, a surface of irregular curves and indentations. A shiver of fear ran down his spine.

‘Skulls,’ he whispered. ‘Skulls in the walls.’

Celtegar bent and picked up his blade. Callis gathered his own and recovered his pistol, his heart thumping. His eyes had adjusted to the light, and he could see that all around them were bones, packed into the earth – row upon row of grinning skulls and the curving beams of ribcages. Fingers and teeth arranged in spiral patterns that turned his stomach. Hundreds upon hundreds of dead things, packed and piled upon each other. Not just human bones, but the fanged skulls of forest beasts and the delicate frames of dead birds. He stepped forward and felt the crunch of more bones underfoot.

‘By the God-King,’ whispered Celtegar. ‘What is this place?’

Ahead, the tunnel curved and descended. Callis moved forwards carefully, the carpet of bone crunching with every footstep. Ahead, the tunnel ended at the mouth of a cave, a pitch-black archway of stone from which hung several objects that clattered and tinkled in the wind. Animal bones, bound together with long ropes of knotted hair, formed into gruesome marionettes. Runes were carved into the black surface, in a language Callis could not read. They were harsh, childlike etchings, and their simplicity somehow made them all the more unsettling. He edged closer and felt the dangling totems clatter against his leather jerkin as he eased past them. Beyond, a low-ceilinged chamber was formed from tangled roots, which curled around each other to create an enormous throne of twisted briar. Upon the throne sat a skeletal figure, head bowed. It was draped in robes of white cloth and a silk gauze covered its face. Around this figure were scores of skeletons, a congregation near one hundred in number, their heads bowed in supplication. Men, women, duardin and aelves. Some were full-sized. Most were small, delicate things. Children, Callis realised with horror. He moved closer. Behind the throne, he noticed another tunnel, thick with vines and thorny brambles. This one appeared to slope up, and he could see the faint shimmer of light.

‘This way,’ he muttered to Celtegar, who nodded. Together, they began to inch their way through the chamber, between the kneeling dead. They drew closer to the enthroned figure. Its fleshless hands rested upon the knotted armrests of its seat. In its right fist, it clutched a silver dagger.

At the very foot of the throne, kneeling amongst the throng, was a tall, broad-shouldered figure swathed in a black cloak, and a silver aetherhawk embroidered across the back glittered in the dim light. His shoulder-length hair was black, smeared with mud and dead leaves.

‘It’s the Junica boy,’ muttered Celtegar, starting forwards.

The man’s head lolled at a strange angle, and his neck was coated in dried blood.

‘He’s dead,’ said Callis. ‘We must leave.’

‘We need to retrieve the body,’ said Celtegar. ‘Here is the proof that the Lord Dezraed is innocent of any crime.’

‘If we stay here, we’ll end up as dead as this one. We have to move.’

The soldier ignored Callis and slowly reached out a hand towards the dead man’s head. The wind whistling through the chamber grew louder. Something clattered behind Callis making him spin around, raising his sword. He saw nothing but the sea of smiling skeletons. He turned back, shaking his head.

The figure on the throne snapped its head up to look straight into Callis’ eyes.

He cried out and staggered backwards. The figure rose, drifting up from its throne and into the air, throwing its silk-wrapped head back to reveal a gaunt and terrible face, a half-necrotised, feminine visage with eyes the colour of deep water. A crown of thorns rested upon the creature’s brow.

‘Il thua ca na men,’ it hissed, in a voice like splintering glass. ‘Worach mach bar!’

And then the spirit opened its mouth and screamed.

The sound drove a knife through Callis’ heart. He collapsed onto his back, mouth open in horrified agony as his chest tightened and his muscles tensed so hard that he felt the bones of his left hand pop from their sockets. He spat blood, and his vision swam with crimson. That awful sound. It was a keening wail of pure misery and hatred. His heart skipped a beat and he tried to breathe, but found he could not draw in the air. Panic gripped him and he almost blacked out.

Abruptly, the keening stopped. Callis lay there, unable to breathe, unable to move. Slowly, awfully, the spectre drifted above him, staring down at him with malice. The spirit bent down to embrace him, placing its ice-cold fingers upon each side of his head. He gazed into its night-black eyes and saw nothing but a deep and unquenchable hatred. His terror was absolute.

The spirit’s mouth yawned open, exposing blackened teeth. It came closer and closer. He tried to scream but could not form the sound.

Suddenly, the wraith’s eyes snapped off to the side, widening first in surprise, then in rage. A sword swept through the air. The spectre hissed as the silver metal swept through its incorporeal form. It spiralled away from the strike in a wisp of green-white light. Callis felt a hand grab him by the shirt and lift him upright. It was Toll. The witch hunter raised his pistol, the barrel a mere inch from Callis’ temple. As they heard the first awful, discordant notes of the spirit’s keening wail, Toll fired. The flash of the muzzle left a scar of light across Callis’ vision, and he was thrown backwards.

This close to their ears, in the cramped confines of the low chamber, the effect of the gunshot was akin to a cannon discharging. Callis heard nothing but a painful, piercing ringing. He gasped for breath, blue in the face, and finally sucked in a ragged mouthful of air. He saw Toll, standing before the floating spectre, one hand clasped to the comet symbol around his neck, the other wielding his silver rapier. The spirit rushed forward, its ragged mouth torn open in a silent scream, its dagger seeking the witch hunter’s neck. As the ghost swept in, Toll hurled himself to the side, slashing at the insubstantial body of the creature. The banshee screeched, then whirled and came for the witch hunter again. This time, Toll reached to his belt and hurled a handful of white powder. The spirit recoiled, mouth twisted in agony. It slashed its dagger across and Toll fell back, a spurt of blood erupting from his left shoulder. The witch hunter’s sword spun away into the field of bones. The banshee swooped towards the prone man, hands reaching for Toll’s throat.

Callis scrambled to his feet, almost tripping over the corpse of Captain Celtegar. The man lay staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, blood pouring from his eyes and mouth. Callis dived for Toll’s fallen rapier and took it up in two hands. It was light and perfectly balanced – even holding it seemed to still his thudding heart. The banshee wrapped its bony fingers around Toll’s throat. The witch hunter kicked, struggling and gasping for breath.

Callis leapt forwards and drove the tip of the rapier into the spirit’s side. The banshee arched its back and began to jerk, sickly green light pouring from its mouth as it spasmed. It turned to look at Callis, and the pure, cold hatred on its withered face almost stole the strength from his sword arm. He drove the blade into that awful visage and right down the creature’s throat.

The spirit rose into the air and, even through the ringing in his ears, Callis could hear its awful, high-pitched screech, this time a sound of pain. Then, in a blinding flash that hurled him from his feet, the banshee came apart, erupting into a thousand motes of baleful light. Around them, the bones of the kneeling dead crumbled into dust.

Callis collapsed to the ground, panting, exhausted.

It took several minutes for the ringing in their ears to subside. Even then, it did not completely disappear, nor did the pain fade away. They lay there for a long while, neither speaking. Eventually, Toll hauled himself upright and extended a hand to Callis, dragging him to his feet. The ringing in his ears was agonising still, a piercing pain that jolted through his mind like a lance of fire.

‘We should return the body,’ said Toll at last, his voice muffled as if it were echoing over a great distance. ‘That should spell the end of the Junica and Dezraed feud, at least until they find another reason to come after one another.’

‘Doesn’t feel like much of a victory,’ sighed Callis.

‘They rarely do,’ said Toll. ‘Leave the glorious victories to the soldiers, Callis. We deal in solutions.’

They took hold of the body of the lost Junica boy, and began to drag him towards the tunnel at the rear of the grotto. Callis glanced towards the fallen Captain Celtegar as they left.

‘We’ll send someone to claim his remains and those of his soldiers,’ said Toll. ‘And a priest to see these folk get a proper burial.’

It was a long, awkward struggle to haul the dead body up the sloping channel, but eventually they clawed their way out of a bank of close-packed soil and back into the gloom of the Ulwhyr. Callis sucked in a mouthful of air and slumped to his knees.

‘I never thought I’d be glad to see this place,’ he said.

‘You slew the White Witch,’ came a voice from behind them. They spun to see Ghedren leaning against the thick trunk of an age-old hardwood tree. He had his bow drawn and raised, aimed straight at Callis. Yet there was only defeat in his eyes, and slowly he lowered the weapon. ‘You are not the first. Just because she is gone for now, it does not mean she will not return. Nor that our children are safe. Killing you now will change nothing.’

Callis charged at the man, grabbed him by the neck and hurled him to the floor. Ghedren did not struggle, even when he drew his sword and pressed it to the man’s neck.

‘You led me there to die,’ Callis snarled.

It was a familiar sensation to Callis. The bitter sting of betrayal, and the sick surge of shame and rage as he realised how easily he had been manipulated. Was this how it always ended, he wondered? Trusting someone, only for them to drive their rapier into your unguarded spine.

‘Do it,’ said Ghedren. ‘Kill me, if you must. I do not begrudge your fury. I am sorry that it came to this, but I had no choice. She always returns, Armand. She always takes her due. The curse cannot be broken.’

‘The children?’ said Toll.

Ghedren nodded, a single tear trickling down his face.

‘When it began, I do not know,’ he said. ‘Before my father’s time, and before his father’s. A tithe born of her hatred for the living and her sorrow for a life that was taken from her, some say. The firstborn child of the tribal elder must be delivered unto the White Witch, lest her wrath fall upon all others. Every generation, another sacrifice. By giving one life to sate her fury, the people may survive.’

‘Lord Junica’s son,’ said Callis. ‘You led him to that beast as well?’

‘There are no longer any tribes, but the White Witch still demands her due. The Azyrites rule over us, and so they must pay the blood price. We tried to explain. We tried to tell them what lay within these woods, and the danger they courted by straying into the depths of the Ulwhyr in search of profit. The silksteel plantations, they strayed into her domain. We tried to warn them that her wrath would be terrible unless an offering was made, but they would not listen. They would not believe. And so, for the good of all, I acted.’

‘The Dezraed soldiers,’ said Toll. ‘How did you dispose of them?’

‘Their feud with Aldrec Junica was real enough,’ said Ghedren. ‘It was simple fortune that I was there that night, accompanying my lord’s son to the house of his mistress. We passed the Dezraed soldiers on the road. They were drunk and eager for a fight. Aldrec was never one to back down. Insults were exchanged and swords drawn. He slew one of their number and the rest pursued him. I saw a chance and took advantage of it. I led him deep into the Ulwhyr. The Dezraed followed, and one by one they were claimed by the forest.’

Callis slammed the man’s head against the ground. ‘And what? Murdering us was an attempt to cover up your crimes?’

Ghedren closed his eyes.

‘I did not wish to kill you,’ he said, his voice soft and sad. ‘But I knew you would never understand what is at stake. You would not stop until you found out the truth.’

‘The witch is dead,’ said Toll. ‘If you had trusted us enough to tell us the truth, lives could have been saved. Including, perhaps, your own.’

‘You ended nothing,’ snapped Ghedren, shaking his head frantically. ‘You think brave warriors have not fought the White Witch before? She is tied to this place, to the very spirit of this forest. No blade can lay her low. She has haunted these trails for centuries. Perhaps even longer. She will return, and her vengeance will be more terrible than ever. It is the children that will pay the price for your actions.’ He sighed. ‘I am ready to face my death. I know, in my heart, I did the only thing that I could have done. Do as you must.’

‘My boy,’ whispered Lord Junica. There were no tears in the old man’s eyes, but his voice broke. Callis looked away. He’d hardly taken to the man, but he knew all too well how it felt to bury a loved one.

Aldrec Junica lay in repose upon the bed of a carriage, his eyes closed and his arms folded across his chest. They had taken him to the local mission – a humble yet sturdy chapel of Sigmar, attended to by an elderly, grey-bearded priest who had performed the rites and consecrated the body with blessed oils. Candles fluttered in the chill breeze. Callis gazed at the benevolent, stained-glass figures that looked down from the chapel’s spire. Saints of old. Warriors and heroes, witnesses to this sad little ceremony.

‘He was slain by a wraith,’ said Toll. ‘A banshee of the forest. The Dezraeds played no part in it. In fact, it was one of your own who led your son to his death.’

Two guards dragged Ghedren forward. Lord Junica stared at him, his mouth trembling.

‘Ghedren?’ he whispered. ‘You?’

The prisoner raised his head and met his master’s gaze.

‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said. ‘But it was the only way. I tried to tell you. The White Witch required your son’s life.’

Junica staggered over to the kneeling man and struck him across the face.

‘Everything I have done for you.’ His voice shook with rage. ‘Everything you have been given, and you betray me? You murder my boy? My firstborn son?’

He struck Ghedren over and over, his blows growing weaker every time. Toll caught his arm as it fell again, and ushered the man away.

‘Enough,’ said the witch hunter. ‘Come.’

He led Junica out through the doors of the chapel and into the central plaza of Marshpoint. The guards led the bound Ghedren after them. He met Callis’ eyes as they passed, but looked quickly away. There was much that Callis wanted to ask the man, but the time for questions was long gone now. Ranks of Junica soldiers stood in an honour guard outside the Sigmarite chapel, banners fluttering from their raised spears. There were a few-score locals too, crowded around the edge of the square, no doubt wondering what all the fuss was about. Nearby, a small force of Dezraed soldiers mounted on horseback watched the ceremony with bored expressions on their faces.

‘Well, a sad business. But over now, at least,’ said Lord Dezraed, who sat upon the open step of his carriage, wrapped in thick furs to fend off the blustery wind. ‘Only the matter of a formal apology remains.’

‘What?’ hissed Lord Junica, eyes widening in outrage.

‘For your baseless insinuations,’ Dezraed said, as if the answer were perfectly reasonable. ‘Accusing me of this horrible crime, when it was your own man all along.’

‘You’ll get no apology from me,’ snarled Junica. His hands curled into fists. ‘Now leave. I have an execution to prepare.’

He turned to Ghedren.

‘You’ll suffer for what you’ve done,’ he hissed. ‘You’ll beg for death, but I will not be so merciful as to grant it. I will break you down, inch by inch, and I will take pleasure in every moment.’

‘These natives must be kept in line. I agree we must let them know we will not tolerate such betrayal,’ said Dezraed, nodding his great slab of a head.

‘I will ensure you live a long time before I am finished with you,’ snarled Junica. Ghedren looked up and met his gaze.

‘I believe,’ Toll began, ‘that it is the task of the Order of Azyr to administer justice here.’

He drew his pistol and fired a single shot. There was a burst of pink mist and Ghedren toppled like a sack of grain. He struck the cobbles hard, and a pool of blood flowed out from his broken body.

‘No,’ screamed Lord Junica. ‘He was mine. Mine!’

‘You will bury your dead son and return to your duties. The plantations shall reopen, and you will restart the patrols. Both of you.’

At this, he turned and jabbed a finger at Dezraed.

‘I should have you both dragged back to Excelsis in chains,’ spat Toll. ‘You have displayed incompetence, foolishness and borderline treason. Your petty feud has not only endangered this town, but also risked the lives of loyal soldiers by denying them the supplies they require. Now my patience with this farce is at an end. The fighting stops, or I swear I will make you both regret your actions for the rest of your miserable lives. Do you understand?’

‘I am a son of a great house,’ Lord Junica snarled. ‘I have powerful friends in Azyrheim–’

‘You are a minor scion of a great house,’ said Toll. ‘You are here only because the other lords of the Junica House have more pressing matters to attend to. You are replaceable, and you will be replaced if you cannot perform your duties. Do you understand? Both of you?’

There was a long silence.

‘Say the words,’ said Toll. ‘Say that you understand.’

‘I… understand,’ said Lord Dezraed.

‘I understand,’ growled Lord Junica through gritted teeth, as if each word were a knife in his gut.

‘You have a month to get your affairs in order,’ said Toll.

With that, the witch hunter strode off, Callis rushing after him. They made their way to the southern gate, and the guards waved them through. Callis’ heart sank a little as he saw the marsh striders looming above the jetty, chewing on clumps of moss. Their wizened guide was back, already stowing their saddlebags upon the beasts’ flanks. Another few days of back-aching discomfort awaited. The joy of it.

‘I can’t deny that was satisfying,’ said Callis.

‘I’m glad you found it amusing,’ said Toll. ‘Perhaps we should discuss your own failures.’

Callis blinked. ‘What?’

‘Why do you think I brought you here?’

‘Because it serves you well to have someone who can handle a sword guarding your back?’

‘I can throw glimmerings into any tavern in Excelsis to strike someone who knows how to fight. I brought you because you’re sharp, and you know when to draw steel and when not to. But that’s only part of this trade, Armand. What allows us to survive is the ability to read people, to see beyond the obvious to the deeper truth. I brought you here to see if you were ready to do that. You failed.’

‘You knew Ghedren was the traitor?’

‘As you would have, had you not been blinded by your dislike of the Dezraed and the Junica. You let your own personal opinions cloud your judgement, and you gave your trust to a man who had not earned it.’

Callis had never truly felt at home in the Freeguilds, but at that moment, he recalled the simple clarity of his former life with a wistful fondness. Recently, it seemed that even when he was sure he was doing the right thing, it turned out otherwise.

Toll hooked one foot into the stirrups on the side of one of the marsh striders, and hauled himself onto its back. He squinted down at Callis, pulling his hat down low to block the hazy light that filtered through the grey clouds.

‘This is a lesson, not an admonishment. We all make mistakes, but in this line of work they have a habit of getting you killed. God-King knows I’ve put my trust in the wrong person before – you know that better than anyone. Learn from this. Next time, I may not be there to haul you out of the flames. Now, come. We must be back in Excelsis within the next two days. We have new business to attend to.’

THE LIBRARY OF FORGOTTEN MOMENTS

Josh Reynolds

Out in the darkness, something wailed.

Balthas Arum paid it no mind. In Shyish, something was always screaming. Especially of late. It was a guttural sound, full of pain and pleading. It ratcheted along the mountain’s crags, growing louder and louder, before finally fading back into the silence from which it had sprung.

The Lord-Arcanum gave a twitch to the reins he held in his hand, urging the gryph-charger on. ‘Keep moving, Quicksilver,’ he murmured. ‘We are close.’ Whatever it was could live or die as fate intended. He had other business on this mountain.

Despite his attentions, his silver-feathered steed paused, bifurcated tail lashing. The gryph-charger stamped his rear hooves, and clawed the ground with bird-like talons. As much raptor as cat, the beast had a predator’s instincts.

‘We have no time for this,’ Balthas said. He gave the reins a firmer twitch. The gryph-charger chirped in what might have been annoyance. After a final glance in the direction of the scream, the animal continued to climb the narrow path to the mountain’s summit.

Balthas sighed. At times, he half suspected that Quicksilver had a curiosity to rival his own. The great beast was forever prowling in places he had little excuse to be. Much like himself, in fact. Much like now.

‘I must do this,’ he said, out loud. ‘Not just for myself. What we seek will be there. I know it.’ It sounded too much like rationalisation, even to his own ears.

Annoyed with himself, he sat back in his saddle, adjusting his crimson robes as he did so. His black-and-gold war-plate, bearing the heraldry of the Sacrosanct Chamber and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, creaked as he strove to make himself comfortable. His staff of office lay against his shoulder, motes of corposant dancing about the jagged lightning-shaped sigils that surmounted it. A rune-marked blade hung in its sheath from his saddle, alongside saddlebags stuffed with scrolls and tomes borrowed discreetly from the Great Library of Sigmaron.

Balthas glanced down at the blade. He only rarely bothered with it, preferring his staff. It felt more natural, somehow, though he had been trained to wield both with equal skill. Swordplay was for Evocators, and beneath the dignity of a Lord-Arcanum. Or so he had always maintained, to any who bothered to ask.

Balthas preferred books to battle, and suspected that the same had been true even before his Reforging on the Anvil of Apotheosis. A sharp mind was keener than any blade, and wars could be won with wisdom, as well as weapons. But wisdom seemed a dwindling resource in these troubled times. Fear had that effect, and it was rife in all the realms, as the dead rose in unprecedented numbers. These days, not even the celestine vaults of Azyr were safe from the scrabbling of rotted fingers.

The cataclysm which had instigated the mass revivification had been no natural event, but rather the machinations of a god – Nagash, the Undying King, had at last declared open war on the living. In every realm, a phenomenon of undeath had taken hold. Wild magics boiled the air and tossed the seas. The laws of nature and gods alike had been upended, and old certainties dashed to flinders by the actions of the God of Death.

An old, familiar chill spread through Balthas as his thoughts turned to recent events. Despatched to Shyish, and the city of Glymmsforge, his Sacrosanct Chamber had aided in the defence of the city against a tide of death greater than any in recorded history.

But during that battle, he’d come face-to-face with Nagash – or a shard thereof. The parting words of the god were emblazoned on his mind like a scar. You served me once, in another turn of the wheel, Nagash had whispered, and you will do so again…

Balthas shook his head. ‘Never,’ he murmured. Even with his voice at its quietest, his denial bounced from the surrounding rocks. Unseen things scrabbled away, startled by the sound. ‘Never, in this life or any other.’

And yet, doubt persisted. He hoped to alleviate some of it at his destination. He peered upwards, along the winding mountain trail. The path rose towards the mountain’s summit, where a tall structure sprawled along the slope of the peak – the library.

It was built into the rock, and topped with wide towers and onion domes. It had no formal name. The crag it crowned was merely one among the many that lined the jutting spine of the Splinterbridge Mountains. The library was on no map, and was mentioned in passing in only a few crumbling texts. And it was why he had left his chamber behind in Glymmsforge, and had set out alone across the trackless wastes of Shyish.

They had protested. Respectful complaints, to be sure, but complaints nonetheless. But they had their duties, and he had his. This was his hunt, not theirs.

He thought back to what he knew of his destination. The library had been old when Shyish was young. It was known as the Ghostwell, or the Lost Hall, to the caretakers of the Libraria Vurmis of Shu’gohl. The sages of the Great Repository of Skydock called it the Library of Forgotten Moments. From what little Balthas knew of it, that was as good a description as any. Within its halls was said to be the accumulated knowledge of innumerable forgotten epochs.

Balthas glanced up, instinctively. Though the red orb of Mallus was not visible here, in the nadir of Shyish, he could still feel its pull on his soul. He had long suspected that some part of him – some shard of the man he had been – had once walked that long-dead world. His confrontation with Nagash had only strengthened those suspicions.

He had come seeking the library, hoping to learn the truth. If there was an answer to be had, it might well be here. And if not, well, he might still find something of use. The life of a Lord-Arcanum was one of singular purpose: to discover a way to repair – or at least mitigate – the flaws in the Reforging process.

Balthas was no closer to that goal than any of his peers. It remained intangible, just out of reach of even the wisest among them. Some insisted the answers were to be found in the ruins of lost realms such as Shadespire, or in the prophecy-rich veins beneath the city of Excelsis. Balthas thought otherwise. He was certain that the key lay in the distant past, from the days before the gods walked the realms. From before the realms even existed, perhaps.

The Library of Forgotten Moments was said to hold the secrets of that lost epoch. Secrets that he dearly wished to know, whatever it might cost to learn them. Whether they led him to the answers of his past, or his future, mattered little. So long as they led him somewhere.

Another scream, somewhere far below. The sound echoed up from the rocky valleys and stretched to inaudibility. There was nothing human in that cry. Balthas felt Quicksilver stiffen, and saw the gryph-charger’s tails lash. ‘Easy,’ he muttered.

More cries came then, like rising arrows. Balthas glanced back down the trail, his keen gaze sweeping the mountainside for any sign of pursuit. He’d been forced to defend himself from roving packs of flesh-eaters more than once as he crossed the Carrion Deltas. The mewling creatures were blinded by madness, else they’d have sought easier prey. Even so, they’d harried his trail into the mountains. As if something were driving them to pursue him. With that unsettling thought in mind, he urged Quicksilver on. The more quickly they reached the library, the better.

The gryph-charger was well named. At Balthas’ urging, his steed broke into a crackling gallop. Gryph-chargers, when motivated, could race against the light itself, and arrive before the sun. Quicksilver shrieked as he ran, and the mountain seemed to give way beneath him, becoming simply a muddy stretch of colour that only solidified as the beast slowed.

Soon enough, they’d arrived.

The circular bronze gates of the library rose over him, within an archway shaped like a pair of cupped hands. The walls that stretched to either side were made of some dark, veined stone, and were lined with water-spouts, wrought in the shape of owls. The style of the structure was unlike anything in Shyish, or Azyr. Something about it seemed faintly, impossibly familiar. He remembered a city, smelling of strange spices and the sea, but could not call to mind its name or when he had visited such a place.

As he drew close, the bronze gates swung inwards silently. Idly, he wondered if he was expected. He paused, and then urged Quicksilver past the gates.

The courtyard beyond was narrow, and high archways blocked out parts of the sky overhead. A pathway of flat stones led down the centre of the courtyard, between two lines of free-standing pillars. As Quicksilver followed the path, Balthas saw that each of the pillars had several bejewelled skulls inset along its length. The skulls shimmered with an unsettling radiance, and he heard a persistent murmuring race along the path ahead, as if in warning.

At the other end of the path, a set of double doors slowly swung open, revealing a congregation of robed and hooded figures. They wore heavy cassocks and suits of battered mail, reminding him of the adherents of the Sigmarite church. The similarities ended there, however. The robes were frayed, and what flesh was visible was desiccated and bound in funerary wrappings. Bandaged skulls peered out of cowls, sockets alight with pinpricks of witch-light. The smell of incense and preservatives washed over him as he drew back on Quicksilver’s reins. The gryph-charger reared, and loosed a shriek of challenge.

‘Peace, son of Azyr,’ one of the dead men rasped, in a thin, rustling voice. The cadaver drew back his cowl, revealing mummified features. Wisps of colourless hair clung to a papery scalp, and the nose was eaten away, leaving a gaping hole above a mostly lipless mouth full of brown teeth. ‘We are but simple librarians, and mean no harm.’

Balthas calmed Quicksilver. ‘Even if you did, it would come to nothing. I have faced worse than you, in my time.’

‘I have no doubt,’ the dead man said. Balthas thought the corpse sounded faintly amused. Annoyed, he slid from the saddle. ‘It has been some time, since one of your sort has visited us,’ the cadaver said. ‘Your God-King has ever been one who prefers to seek out the next horizon. He has little love for the wisdom of past ages.’

‘He has love enough, when it is of use.’

The dead man nodded, as if in understanding. ‘And what do you seek here, traveller? To what use do you hope to put our gathered wisdom?’

Balthas drew himself up. ‘That is my affair, librarian. Will you yield me passage?’

‘And if we do not?’

Balthas paused, considering. He did not doubt that he could fight his way into the library. He was a Lord-Arcanum, and the mystic arts were his to wield in war as well as peace. He had routed armies in his time. A handful of dead men – dead academics, at that – would prove little challenge. And yet… there was something about them. Like a fire, newly snuffed, but ready to burst to life once more.

He’d heard stories of sorcerers haunting their own bodies, possessing all the powers they’d had in life. He glanced at the librarian, and found the dead man gazing at him, as if reading his thoughts. After a moment more, Balthas said, ‘Then I will leave in peace.’

The dead man laughed, a hoarse, hollow sound. Balthas felt the sudden easing of a tension he had not realised was there. It had been a test, and he had passed. The librarian stepped back, and gestured.

‘Enter freely then, and of your own will, son of the storm. But your beast must stay here, with the steeds of the other patrons. Fear not. We will tend to him.’

Balthas nodded, and gave Quicksilver’s beak a rub. ‘I do not fear for him. Be warned, he is temperamental.’

‘As the riders, so the steeds,’ the dead man chuckled. Balthas pretended not to hear this witticism, and instead gathered his robes about him and strode in the direction the librarian had indicated.

Dead men stood at attention to either side of every doorway he passed through, as he entered the library. He was not surprised – the dead were natural caretakers of the past, and not just in Shyish. He knew of a certain monastery in the Starfall Mountains of Azyr, wherein a soulblight anchorite was interred. The vampire had sealed himself in a cell of stone, the better to come to grips with his curse. He whispered tales of the past to any who dared visit, and many an academic had traded a drop of their blood for a lecture on events of centuries gone by. Even Balthas himself, and more than once.

But here, the dead walked freely, if in silence, passing among the stacks, replacing tomes and scrolls from where they’d been taken. The library was a labyrinth of thousands of high shelves, each crafted from balewood and taller than a gargant. The shelves seemed to stretch in all directions, a forest of polished wood. Each one was burdened with more books than it could handle. In places, the excess had been stacked haphazardly on the floor, and scrolls piled in loose hills of papyrus.

Above him, the upper galleries twisted in a tight spiral, rising towards the curve of the domed roof. He saw shadowy figures prowling the stacks there, and heard the murmuring of hushed voices.

On the lower floor, he turned a corner, and startled an aelf clad in blue-green robes that smelled faintly of the sea. The aelf hurried past him, and Balthas felt a flicker of unease as he caught a glimpse of the other’s soul with his storm-sight – silvery bright, like a fish sliding through sunlit waters. The aelf vanished in moments, lost in the winding maze of shelves. But he was not the only visitor on the lower level.

Balthas glimpsed others – some human, some not – crouched on the floor, poring over grimoires, or hurriedly copying the contents of yellowed scrolls. The souls he glimpsed were coloured by every realm, and the voices he heard spoke with many accents, some unfamiliar even to him. He paid little attention to them.

Others might be content to dig through the dust of the Mortal Realms for nuggets of wisdom. He had come looking for something else. Something older. A quick glance at the shelves told him that it was as the ancient texts had said – the library was organised by epoch. More recent volumes were higher, and older ones lower.

A spiral staircase led him down to the lower galleries, those far below ground level. The lower he went, the fewer dead men or visitors he saw. Drifts of dust and cobwebs covered the floors. Books were chained to the shelves, their covers padlocked, as if in fear that they – or what lay within them – might escape. Scrolls rustled softly as he passed honeycomb shelves, and he heard a whisper of voices, as if from far away.

Ghostly shapes moved by him, like visual echoes of visitors past. They did not interact or give any sign that they noticed his presence, and he did not interfere with them. As he prowled the stacks, he lifted his hand and whispered a single syllable. A tiny light blossomed on his palm. A second syllable sent it whisking away from him. The light would lead him to the books he sought.

It flashed between shelves and around the edge of the gallery, moving swiftly. He followed, and found himself in a circular space, lit by iron lanterns. Curved shelves lined the walls, and the books shifted in their nests of dust, like startled birds. The light bobbed along the shelves, pausing every so often before zipping away once more. The whispers were louder here, and the phantoms more prevalent. Some even seemed to take note of him.

The light stopped, bobbing in the air, and he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. The books before him were not as aged as he’d thought they’d be. Indeed, their bindings were fairly new. Basilisk hide, if he was any judge. He pulled one down and gently turned the roughly cut pages. The script was not one he knew. It was not any dialect of Azyrite, or Ghurdish, or even Aqshyan. And yet, it was achingly familiar. As if he had seen it somewhere before, but forgotten it.

‘Al… al-kahest,’ he murmured, sounding out one of the unfamiliar words. He blinked. For a moment, a man’s face had filled his mind’s eye – a ship’s captain, by his look, but wearing a style of clothing that was popular only in certain districts of Azyrheim. The man was grinning as Balthas handed over a golden ingot. Only it was not truly gold, Balthas knew, but lead. But by the time the fool learned the truth, Balthas would be…

He closed the book with a snap. Replacing it, he selected another. The script was different, but as before, the bindings were new. Herein were strange, swooping runes that reminded him of the writings of certain aelfish philosophers. ‘Ahrain… daroir… cynath…’ he said, the unfamiliar vowels tangling his tongue.

Again, he closed the book. He peered down the line of the shelves, and his heart quickened. He felt as a hunter must, upon seeing that first track in the snow. What he was searching for might well be here, among these strange words. And yet… there was something else. He could feel it at the edge of his perceptions. Like an old ache in the bones.

There was magic here. He’d sensed it the moment he set foot in the library, but it had been diffuse. Now, it was more concentrated, as if he were closer to the source. He looked down at the floor, eyes narrowed. There was another level, below even this one. The peak had been hollowed out to make room for the library and all it held. And perhaps more than just the peak. He set the book aside and sank to one knee.

He pressed his palm to the floor and felt it, then. A faint resonance, like the distant boom of thunder. Or the beating of a heart. He closed his eyes, and tried to attune himself to the magics he felt bleeding upwards through the stones. A moment later, he jerked his hand back and opened his eyes. For an instant, it had been akin to standing at the edge of a mighty tempest, and knowing that at any second it might sweep over you.

As he rose to his feet, he heard the soft rustle of cloth against armour. The sound came from above him. One of the upper galleries.

‘Well, well, what have we here?’

The voice that echoed down was oily, and proud. As if the speaker were trying his best to restrain laughter. Balthas looked up.

‘Who’s there? Who speaks?’

‘One who is surprised to see you. You Stormcasts are not known for being bookish.’

‘And who are you, that you would know anything of us?’ Balthas said, as he turned, scanning the upper galleries for any sign of the speaker. The voice sounded familiar, somehow, but he couldn’t tie it to a face, or a name. He heard boot heels on the stone floor, and the clink of spurs. The speaker was moving through the shelves at the edge of the gallery just above, keeping out of sight. Even with his storm-sight, he saw little more than a flicker of sickly, amethyst radiance – a will-o’-the-wisp flitting among the shadows.

‘Is there one of you, then, who does not know me?’ Laughter slithered down from above. ‘I do not know whether to be insulted or pleased.’ A pause. ‘Did you feel it, then?’

‘Feel what?’

Another laugh. ‘You know of what I speak. Answer me.’

Balthas gestured surreptitiously. A ball of blue light blossomed in his hand. ‘Reveal yourself, and I will.’ The light flickered and swelled. He tossed it up, and it expanded like a miniature sun, filling the chamber, and searing away the shadows. He heard a strangled cry from above, and then one of the great shelves was tottering on its base.

The shelf toppled from the gallery, shattering as it struck the floor. Balthas leapt back as scrolls and ancient tomes were scattered in all directions. More shelves followed suit, one after the next, an avalanche of balewood. Balthas was forced to twist and dodge out of the way as each one smashed down. In the meantime, without his concentration, the light faded, and the shadows surged back once more.

As the darkness swelled, he heard the rustle of a cloak, and the sharp whisper of a blade leaving its sheath. Then, a form was falling towards him, sword raised. Instinctively he interposed his staff, and caught the blow. The strength behind it was unexpected, and he found himself driven back a step. Another blow followed the first, and then a third. His attacker was swifter than any mortal, and stronger.

The sword crashed down again, biting into the sigmarite of his staff. He twisted his shoulders and wrenched it from his attacker’s grip. It slid away, and his foe cursed. Balthas jabbed his staff forward, and lightning snarled, momentarily illuminating his opponent. He saw baroque, sharp-ridged armour and a pale, narrow face, scooped to a vulpine point. Bare arms corded with muscle swept out, the clawed hands limned with witchfire.

Balthas paused. With his storm-sight, he saw more than just the physical corpus before him – he glimpsed the rot nestled within it. A bestial shadow, roiling within a shell of long-dead flesh. Ever-hungry and all-consuming.

‘Soulblight,’ he muttered. A vampire. Nagash’s curse upon the living and the dead alike.

‘You’re no swordsman, but you have some skill,’ the vampire said, as his eyes blazed crimson. Fangs bared, he slashed his hands out. His claws scraped the air, drawing forth purple flames that convulsed and lashed out.

Balthas slammed his staff down, and the malign spell unravelled even as it washed over him. His opponent raised an eyebrow.

‘More than some,’ Balthas replied, haughtily. He swung his staff up and levelled it like a spear. ‘Name yourself, leech.’

The vampire smirked and drew himself up, every inch the arrogant lordling he resembled. He inclined his head with mocking graciousness. ‘Mannfred von Carstein, at your service.’ He laughed. ‘Do you know me now, man of Azyr?’

‘I do.’ Von Carstein was a name etched on the skin of history, not just here in Shyish, but in all realms. All Stormcasts knew the reputation of the Mortarch of Night, even as they knew that he had been responsible for the deaths of many of their brethren. Sigmar had decreed that the vampire was an enemy of Azyr, to be captured on sight. ‘There is a bounty on your head, leech. The God-King himself wishes to discuss certain matters with you.’

‘Still?’ Mannfred smirked. ‘You’d think he’d grow tired of pursuing me, when there is greater prey to be had.’ He took a step back, and Balthas pursued. He had no intention of letting the vampire escape his sight. ‘Fair is fair, I’ve told you my name – tell me yours.’

Balthas paused. There was danger in giving a vampire your name, or so he’d heard. But pride compelled him.

‘Balthas Arum. Lord-Arcanum of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. And you are in my custody.’ Even as he spoke, he wondered where the librarians were. Someone should have come by now, to investigate the commotion. Then, perhaps the dead had wisely chosen not to interfere.

‘I’ve heard that name before.’ Mannfred’s expression became one of curiosity. ‘Have we met?’ His eyes flicked about, as if searching for something. ‘There’s something familiar about your scent, beneath the harsh tang of Azyrite sorcery.’

‘If we had met, you would be in a cage already.’

Mannfred bared his fangs in a smile. ‘Are you certain?’

‘Quite certain,’ Balthas said, though not with as much assurance as he’d have liked. ‘The librarians let you in?’

‘I asked politely,’ Mannfred said. ‘All who come in peace are welcome.’ He looked around. ‘Besides, you are not the only one who yearns to know the secrets of forgotten epochs, Stormcast.’

‘And which secrets are those?’

‘You know, I’m not sure.’ Mannfred glanced slyly at Balthas. ‘Perhaps if you tell me why you’re here, it might prod my memory.’

‘I am the one asking the questions, vampire.’

Mannfred shrugged. ‘Ah well, never mind.’ Before Balthas could reply, the vampire lunged to the side. In a burst of inhuman strength he wrenched one of the shattered shelves from the floor and swept it about. The suddenness of the attack caught Balthas by surprise. He was knocked sprawling in a spray of splinters and broken shelves. As he shoved aside the remains of the shelf and scrambled to his feet, Mannfred snatched up his fallen blade.

Balthas thrust his staff forwards and spat a string of clarion syllables. Lightning sawed through the air, and Mannfred leapt aside. Laughing, the vampire stretched out his hand and a gust of spectral wind raced towards Balthas. Phantom skulls gaped, and ethereal claws stretched out, seeking to grasp him. Balthas swung his staff about him in a wide circle, and a shimmering haze of starlight sprang up. The phantasms struck the mystic shield like water, and faded. As the spell dissolved into sparkling motes, Balthas saw that the vampire had fled.

Even as he cursed himself for allowing the creature to escape, Balthas struck the floor with his staff. He could feel the weight of Mannfred’s tread on the stones, and hear the echo of his boots. Flickering wisps of purple radiance briefly outlined the Mortarch’s footprints. Balthas followed them quickly, wondering as he did so why the Mortarch was here, and whether it had anything to do with the power he could sense pulsing beneath his feet.

Silence enfolded him as he passed between the lower shelves. Idly, he let his free hand drift out to caress the cracked spines of nearby books. So much knowledge here. So much wisdom. But was any of it what he sought?

Laughter drifted down from somewhere above him. He looked up, and saw nothing but shadows. When he looked back at the floor, Mannfred’s trail appeared to have come to an end. It shimmered before him, almost mockingly.

‘Having trouble, Balthas?’

Balthas turned, trying to pinpoint the vampire. He did not bother to reply.

Mannfred continued. ‘I think you came here for the same reason I did. You noticed what I already knew… old words, but new bindings. Intriguing, no?’

Balthas heard the scrape of a spur on wood and spun, as a slim shape leapt across the gap between shelves and vanished.

‘Where do they get those old words, do you think? Those ancient languages, unspoken by any mortal of the realms?’

‘I do not care.’ Balthas spoke before he could stop himself.

‘That’s a lie, if ever I heard one.’ Mannfred’s voice echoed down, and Balthas swept the stacks with his eyes, seeking any hint of movement. ‘I think we’re of a kind, you and I. Searchers into mystery, the pair of us. We yearn to know the unknowable, and make use of it.’ A pause. Then, ‘Are you entirely certain we are strangers? I feel as if I have had a similar conversation. In another age.’

Balthas frowned. ‘I would know if I had met you before.’

‘True. I’m told it’s quite an experience, meeting me for the first time.’ Spurs clinked against wood. Balthas heard a shelf rock on its base. ‘If you’re waiting for aid, it’s not coming. The librarians and I have… an understanding. I have the freedom of this place, and they remain silent, lest I let slip their location to others less… genial than I.’

‘I gathered as much,’ Balthas said. His voice echoed through the gallery. He could feel Mannfred drawing closer. Try as he might, the vampire could not hide the stench of his curse from one attuned to such things. He set his staff, and reached out, letting his thoughts brush across the books around him. They responded, twitching on their shelves. The air thickened and bunched, as he manipulated it like clay.

‘What are you doing?’ Mannfred called out. ‘I can feel…’

The first book slid from its shelf a moment later. Then another and another, born aloft by the sylphs he’d conjured from the dusty air. The elementals were small things, barely there at all. But enough for his purposes. More books joined the first. Hundreds of them, rising up like a swarm of bats. They spiralled upwards, covers flapping.

Then, as one, they swooped towards the dim pulse of Mannfred’s soul. Balthas heard a snarl of realisation, and then the thud of boots on wood. He smiled. The books filled the air, flocking in serpentine fashion, harrying their quarry. They could not hurt the creature, but they might provoke him into making a foolish mistake. His sense of satisfaction faltered as he heard a sound like splintering wood, and then a boom. Another boom followed the first, and then another, each louder than the last.

The floor shook beneath him, and a belated realisation caused him to turn, even as the shelf to his left began to topple towards him. Instinctively, he dropped his staff and raised his hands, catching the shelf as it fell. The weight was immense, and he grunted with effort. He realised his mistake an instant later, as Mannfred erupted from the shelf in a cloud of splinters, claws reaching.

The vampire crashed into him, carrying him backwards, through the shelves behind. Books and chunks of wood rained down as they rolled through the debris. Balthas shoved his attacker aside and stretched out his hand. His staff shot towards him, but before he could catch it, Mannfred was on him, blade in hand. Balthas’ hastily conjured shield shattered into fragments of energy, and he stumbled back, on the defensive.

‘Stop.’

A flare of amethyst light swelled to searing intensity, momentarily blinding Balthas. When it had cleared, he saw the dead man he had spoken to in the courtyard standing between him and Mannfred. The librarian lowered his hand.

‘There will be peace, here.’ More dead men stood arrayed about them, arms folded, eyes glittering. As before, Balthas felt a power in them, like a flicker of heat from a pile of embers.

Mannfred frowned as he took them in. ‘You dare come between me and my prey?’ Something about the way he said it caught Balthas’ ear. As if the vampire had expected this.

‘If it means the preservation of this place,’ the dead man said. He looked back and forth between them. ‘You have both come seeking the same thing.’ He glanced at Mannfred. ‘Whether you admit it, or not.’

‘And so?’ Balthas demanded.

‘And so we will show it to you, if only to prevent further destruction.’

‘Feed the wolf and he will leave you in peace, eh?’ Mannfred said, with a smirk. He sheathed his blade and looked at Balthas. ‘What say you, Balthas? Truce?’

Balthas studied him for a moment, considering. If the answers he sought were here, then it would be rankest folly to forgo them on account of the vampire. Or so he told himself. Slowly, he nodded.

‘For now.’

The librarian nodded, as if he had expected no less. ‘Come, then. Come and see the heart of this place.’

The librarian gestured, and Balthas bit back a curse as the stone floor flowed like water, revealing a set of spiral steps, curving downwards.

Mannfred raised an eyebrow. ‘So that’s where you hid it,’ he muttered.

The librarian led them down the steps, into the depths of the mountain. The walls of the stairwell were marked with strange, runic sigils that Balthas only vaguely recognised. Even so, he knew their purpose – to mask and diffuse the power he felt emanating from below. It beat on the air like the heat from a forge.

At the bottom of the steps was a crude chamber – or perhaps a cave. It was large, and shadows clung thick to the walls. Concentric rings of kneeling corpses, each clutching a handful of parchment and a quill, surrounded a shallow pool of water. A natural spring, Balthas thought, before his attentions were caught by the shape hanging above the water, caught in a web of rusted chains. It was a great lump of reddish rock, its surface smoking and bubbling, as if it had recently been exposed to great heat.

‘What…?’ Balthas croaked, feeling suddenly weak.

‘A shard of the World-That-Was,’ Mannfred said, in quiet satisfaction, staring at the chunk of molten rock resting in its chains. ‘Can you feel it, Stormcast? The weight of ages undreamt, dragging on whatever passes for your soul…’

Balthas did not reply. Could not. But he could feel… something. The chunk of Mallus steamed in its web, still hot from the world’s destruction untold millennia ago. Splinters sifted from it, to tumble into the waters. Flashes of light and thrums of noise – a steady hum of whispers – accompanied this constant crumbling, and each sudden flare dug painful hooks into his skull. As the light flashed, the kneeling dead hurriedly put quill to parchment. They were writing, Balthas saw, filling each page with unrecognisable words.

Balthas shook his head, trying to clear it. ‘This… this is…’

‘The secret of this place.’ Mannfred turned, studying the ranks of seated scribes. ‘And these are the scribes who wrote the tomes above.’

The librarian nodded. ‘We found this shard, in ages past. When our blood still pumped, and our hearts still beat. We found this mote of antiquity, embedded in the mountain like some precious gem. It spoke to us, and we listened. We built this place to house it.’

‘But… why?’ Balthas said. ‘Why record these – these whispers?’

‘It is our duty to record it, so that what it speaks of will not be lost, and to keep it safe, so that it will not be misused.’

‘I cannot think of a worse misuse than simply leaving such a potent artefact hanging here, forgotten in the dark,’ Mannfred said. He looked at the librarian. ‘Thank you for showing it to me. I will be taking it with me, when I depart.’

The dead man stiffened, but did not otherwise react. Mannfred nodded, pleased. ‘Good. I see you understand. You could not hide it from me forever, you know.’

‘You knew,’ Balthas said. His grip on his staff tightened.

‘Of course,’ Mannfred replied, grinning. ‘I have been here a hundred times, searching for this chamber and what it contained, and never have I found it. But then I spotted you, crossing the Carrion Deltas.’ He looked around. ‘I encouraged the corpse-eaters to attack you, to see if you were what I thought you were. When my suspicions proved correct, I simply waited for you to arrive, as I knew you would.’

‘You could not know I was coming here.’

Mannfred snorted. ‘Where else would you be going, out here?’ He looked at Balthas. ‘You were easy to provoke. Then, Stormcasts always are. As with the master, so too the slave, as they say.’

Balthas bridled at that. ‘I am no slave.’

Mannfred laughed. ‘That is what all slaves say.’ He gestured to the kneeling corpses. ‘Look at them, Stormcast. Drinking in the whispers of a dead world, and scratching them onto paper for any eye to see. They would say that they are scribes – guardians. But they too are slaves. And I have come to free them.’ He looked at Balthas. ‘I thank you for your aid, in that, by the way. Without you, I would not be here.’

‘Why are you here at all?’ Balthas demanded. ‘What use is dead knowledge to you?’

‘It is of no particular use to me. But Nagash is a different story.’ Mannfred glanced at the shard, his smile fading. ‘I can feel it, scraping at the walls of my mind. Trying to make me remember things that never were. Imagine what would happen if its secrets were loosed upon the realms…’ He drew his sword. ‘I would be doing all of us a favour if I simply destroyed it, and its servants.’ He lifted his blade, but before he could strike the closest of the scribes, Balthas interposed himself. He raised his staff.

‘You will destroy nothing. You will take nothing.’

Mannfred backed away warily. ‘Another childish truism. Another sermon. Is that all there is to your sort?’

‘There is more to me than there is to you,’ Balthas said. ‘Are you not but a splinter of Nagash?’ He laughed harshly. ‘A slave. Just like me.’

As he’d hoped, the words provoked a snarl of fury. ‘I am who I am, and nothing less,’ Mannfred growled. ‘Watch how you speak to me.’

Balthas took a step towards him. ‘Or what? You will talk me to death?’

Mannfred stared at him. ‘It does not have to be war between us, Balthas. Let me take this shard, in Nagash’s name. I will leave you the books, to plunder at your leisure. We both get what we want, and make our masters happy.’

‘Hadn’t you heard, vampire?’ Balthas said. ‘We are already at war.’ He gestured sharply, and a bolt of arcane energy coalesced and arrowed towards the vampire. Mannfred brushed it aside with a sneer.

‘So be it.’ Sorcerous flames gathered about his hands as he spat a string of grotesque syllables. The eldritch flames enveloped Balthas with a roar. His robes blackened and burned, and his war-plate had grown painfully hot before he could slam his staff down, dispersing the flames. He was already chanting the words to his next spell as they faded.

Above them, the shard twisted in its chains, shuddering like a thing alive, as their magics lashed across it and ripsawed across the chamber. The dead did not move, enduring the tempestuous cacophony. They watched attentively as the battle raged.

Balthas began to sacrifice subtlety for raw power, not bothering to even shape the energies that he wielded. He felt lightning thrum in his veins as his will slammed against Mannfred’s again and again. Grudgingly, he realised that the vampire was stronger, steeped in magics that were beyond his comprehension. Inevitably, Balthas would fall. He would fail.

‘No,’ he hissed, through gritted teeth. Failure was inconceivable. It was for lesser mages. For mortals. Desperately, he plumbed the aether, seeking the magics he’d felt here. If his own were not up to the task, then perhaps they might be.

He grasped at the skeins of magic which inundated the chamber, and found them all too responsive. It was as if they had been waiting, for just this moment. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt, and yet, like so many things here, painfully familiar.

‘No,’ Mannfred snarled, eyes widening. He’d realised what Balthas was doing. ‘Don’t!’ He lunged, and Balthas thrust out a hand to stop him. There was a flash – light, without heat. He felt as if he were sinking into rising waters. Mannfred seemed to freeze, mid-lunge. Time slowed to a crawl.

Then, Balthas was somewhere else – a cavern, a deep well of stone, full of noise… the howling of daemons, the shouts of warriors – he staggered, feeling as if something were being drawn out of him, a horrible wrenching sensation. A shadow at the corner of his eye, a voice full of malice – then pain, sharp and searing. A sword, jutting from his chest. He screamed, and heard Mannfred scream with him.

The vampire was clawing at his face, as if to blind himself. It was as if whatever he’d seen had driven him mad. Balthas lunged, staff extended like a spear. Preoccupied as he was, Mannfred couldn’t avoid the blow, and was knocked sprawling. Balthas whirled his staff up and drove the weighted ferrule down. The vampire caught the staff just before it struck home, and Balthas felt a jolt as something passed between them.

The world twisted about him, and images flooded his mind. Memories, perhaps, but not his own. The images were cacophonic. Dreamlike. A phantasmagoria of colour and sound. But little of it made any sense. In its nest of chains, the shard of Mallus seemed to flex, like a man’s heart struggling to beat one last time.

Balthas tasted blood, and cried out as something sprang from a broken sarcophagus to savage at his throat. He felt a flare of hatred as he met the gaze of a haughty nobleman, with hair the colour of ice, and the eyes of a beast. Fear raced through him as a woman – a vampire – clad in ornate armour and unfamiliar finery slashed at him, screaming her rage. He saw a one-eyed duardin, and felt the bite of an axe; heard the thunder of a god’s voice and felt the death-scream of a world. A hundred thousand memories swirled about him.

He tried to catch hold of them, to keep them, but they slipped from his mind like sand spilling through open fingers. Dazed, he staggered back. Mannfred shoved his staff aside and rose, tears of blood rolling down his cheeks.

‘What…?’ he croaked.

‘A past that never was,’ Balthas said, his voice a harsh rasp. ‘Forgotten stories. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? Well choke on them, leech.’

Mannfred shook his head. ‘No. No.’ He sprang onto Balthas, knocking him backwards into the pool beneath the shard. Balthas’ staff clattered from his hand as the vampire tore at him with bestial fury. They grappled in the steaming waters, fighting not like mages, but like savages. And as before, here too Mannfred had the advantage. Every blow rattled Balthas’ senses and he felt something break in him. Flailing, he found something hard and sharp and snatched it up, unthinking. Dully, he realised that it was a splinter of Mallus itself, even as he rammed it into Mannfred’s side.

A jolt ran through him. The vampire howled in agony and twisted away from him, smoke boiling from the wound. He staggered from the pool and tore the splinter from his flesh, his hands burning at its touch. He screamed in a language Balthas did not understand. Flames of silver and black ran along his arms and crackled across his armour, searing him to the bone.

Balthas rose and splashed towards his staff. He snatched it up with a cry of triumph, and whirled. But Mannfred was gone.

‘Where…’ he said, hoarsely.

‘Gone,’ the librarian said. He leaned down and picked up the splinter of Mallus. Unlike Mannfred, he did not burn at its touch. ‘As we foresaw.’

‘You… foresaw,’ Balthas said, slowly. Then, as realisation dawned, he shook his head in bewilderment. ‘You knew his plan the moment he stepped into this place, didn’t you? And yet you let him in – why?’

‘As he said, feed the wolf, and he will leave you in peace. Especially if he cannot stomach that which he devours.’

Balthas shook his head. ‘And why let me in?’

The librarian held the splinter of Mallus out to Balthas. ‘It told us to do so.’

Balthas stared at the splinter of stone. What secrets might he learn, what sort of power might even a shard of that long-dead world yet hold? Perhaps the power to save his brothers from the slow erosion of their souls, or the secret of the man he had been.

He thought again of the things he’d seen, the memories not his own. Unfamiliar voices and strange images all warred for space in his mind. In the shadows of the chamber, he saw a face of gold, watching him. He heard a voice that he thought might be his own, whispering urgently. But he could not tell what it was saying.

Or perhaps he simply did not wish to know.

‘Well, son of Azyr?’ the librarian said. ‘Is your stomach stronger than his?’

‘I do not know,’ Balthas said. Around him, the dead seemed to sigh, though whether in satisfaction or sadness, he could not say. It did not matter either way.

He smiled. And reached for the splinter.

‘Let us find out.’

GODS’ GIFT

David Guymer

I held out my hand, palm down, fingers spread, hovering over the animal print caked into the dried mud of the mountain side. The heel of my palm was about level with the matching point of the imprint. The tips of my gauntleted fingers came nowhere even close to the clipped indents left by the passing beast’s claws. I frowned.

‘Are you familiar with the monster, Lord-Castellant?’

The old woodcutter, Fage, crouched across from me on the other side of the print, a long, long way away. His eyes possessed the faint shimmer of the Azyr-born, but his insect-bitten skin and sour odour were those of a naturalised Ghurite. He wore a wax coat fastened up tight with wooden toggles and string, and a pair of trousers of similar material but mismatched colour. A hat fashioned from the skin of a furred creature was pulled down over his greying head, flaps covering his ears. White fog curled about his lips, for though we were half a day’s march from the Seven Words and the great peak of the Gorkoman, the air still had teeth.

He looked at me, waiting to be told that ‘By Sigmar, yes, I know well this beast,’ and that it was nothing I had not slain a thousand of before. I had no wish to lie, particularly, but a reputation for semi-divine infallibility was the foundation of all that I had raised here.

‘I cannot be certain,’ I said, after a reasonable pause.

Broudiccan snorted. The hugely armoured Decimator loomed silently amongst the wiry leechwood pines a few dozen paces up-slope.

He knows me too well.

The trees of the High Gorwood were short, ten or eleven feet tall, clad in reddish bark with long, waspish branches swaying only partially in tune with the wind. A little deeper in, the shadows of several similarly outfitted Astral Templars of the Bear-Eaters jigged and wavered in the light of a fire. The clatter of a rough camp being set rang about the carnivorous trees. The warriors were in high spirits. One of the Vanguard-Hunters was already beating a slow rhythm into an improvised drum. Another, the Raptor – Illyrius, judging by the quality of his singing voice – was opening the Saga of the Barrel Kings. The saga was a favourite of the Bear-Eaters due to their small (though not the way Illyrius sang it) role in the death of the god-beast Mammothas in its final verse.

In the Age of Myth, Sigmar had tasked his brother-god Gorkamorka with the purge of monsters from the Mortal Realms. With the dawning of the Age of Sigmar, that task had been bestowed upon the Astral Templars.

To the Bear-Eaters, a beast-hunt through the Gorwood felt almost like a reward.

‘We will know more when the light returns,’ I told the woodsman, ignoring my lieutenant’s weighted silence.

Fage peered out into the thickening darkness. Dusk fell suddenly over the Gorkoman, and the colour was fast draining from the landscape. The clicks and chirps of creatures were fading in the transition from day to night. The burden of life in the Realm of Beasts was more or less equivalent, regardless of your side of the dawn. The woodsman fiddled anxiously with the hatchet that dangled from his undercoat on a leather thong.

‘There is nothing to fear in the Gorwood,’ I said, baring my teeth. ‘Hamilcar Bear-Eater is with you now.’

The woodcutter pulled himself together and nodded, reassured.

As well he should be.

For I am a savage vision, awe-inspiring if I might say, at least to human eyes. My hair is dark and wild. My skin is marked with etchings of my own application. Others have oft-times questioned why I would deface Sigmar’s great work with my own. I have no answer for them except that I wished to do so and did. My armour is the colour of amethyst, the very spirit and hue of death, strung with dead animals and scrawled with tribal glyphs whose shape I recall but whose meaning I can no longer comprehend.

I am, if we are to speak in understatements, no Vandus Hammerhand.

Leaving his axe where it hung, Fage planted his hands to his thighs and stood with an audible creak. I chose to remain crouching, lest the mortal startle.

‘This beast took twenty of my people,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘The rest of the camp fled.’ He looked at the print as if vowing to commit it to memory. ‘I’m the only one that made it to the Seven Words.’

‘It is a long journey,’ I said, rising slowly with a rattle of heavy sigmarite and hanging mail. I stand over him like a mountain. ‘You may find that others have made it upon our return.’

It was also a terrain crawling with beastmen, skaven and worse, but this, I judged, the woodcutter did not wish to hear.

A sudden rustle in the litterfall had the man reaching for his axe, but it was only Crow. My faithful gryph-hound had been scouting further downslope and burst from the trees, chewing my gauntlet in greeting, then dropping his ice-blue beak to sniff at the print in the mud. I did not know what, if anything, he expected to find, for the print was days old at least. Frankly, we were fortunate to have even that much to go on, for the ground of the Gorkoman is hard, its topsoil thin and its climate sufficiently disagreeable to turn an exposed patch of earth to slurry in short order.

‘Sigmar blesses us,’ I said aloud, scratching the downy feathers behind Crow’s eyes. The gryph-hound clacked his beak in annoyance, then surrendered to my touch, emitting a throbbing growl as he pushed his head into my gauntlet. His bright blue eyes glittered in the twilight, tilted sideways, but still studying the trees with more caution than I could profess.

Broudiccan crossed his arms.

‘The camp is made,’ he said. The Decimator-Prime was a man of grim and silent stature. I have never seen a warrior so capable with a starsoul mace be so reticent to speak of his deeds. If a few of his acts had been misattributed to my heroism, then I would not be surprised. ‘We should rest,’ he went on, the nature of the quest clearly rendering him uncommonly loquacious. ‘Continue tomorrow.’

Fage looked at me, startled. ‘You sleep?’

I startled him just a little further with a roaring laugh. ‘Only when my foes are uninspiring.’

I do not dream. Sometimes I think it another mortal impurity beaten out of me on the Anvil of Apotheosis, but I know others who speak of their dreams and it is true that I used to dream. It was not so very long ago that I would close my eyes in dread of reprising my dying moments under the claws of the Abyssal Ashigorath another night. Though I must remind myself that it has been a hundred years since the Realmgate Wars raged over Ghur. There were times when I feared myself mad, but perhaps that, too, was a symptom of my second Reforging, for the nightmares became less frequent as the decades passed. Now, I do not dream.

That was how I knew this dream was not mine.

A giant tree stood above me, a deciduous monster that had no earthly place amongst the carniferns and leechwood pines of the High Gorwood. It was night, a vastly swollen moon framing the great oak’s bower. The stars were unfamiliar ones, as if positioned as an afterthought by one who had never given them much consideration. I, on the other hand, am a creature of Azyr, and they were the first things I noticed out of place. The night chorus, too, was gone. Silence circled me and the great tree like an unseen threat, and though I felt no wind on my skin, the oak leant over me and rustled.

In a groan of bark and a murmur of leaves, it spoke.

‘Help me.’

With an angry crunch, the tree reared up onto its roots, tearing great clumps of earth away from the ground as if it meant to rise away. I reached over my shoulder, but whoever’s mind conjured this dream had not seen fit to furnish me with a weapon. My warding lantern was similarly absent.

‘He stole my life.’

‘Where are you?’ I roared over the shaking branches.

‘I am dying. You will be next.’

There was a ripping sound, a splitting of hard bark, sap splattered from the wound like human blood. I flung a hand in front of my eyes as the sap turned to searing amber and burned the dream from my sight.

I woke up waving my hands furiously, Ghur’s bright sun a stabbing pressure on my eyes. I grunted, still only half awake, prising Crow’s beak from my vambrace.

‘I was having the most pleasant dream,’ I said, stretching ruefully, hoping to brazen the episode out.

Unfortunately, there were those amongst my Vanguard chamber who had been with me since Jercho and the Sea of Bones, and even those who had not would have heard the stories. They watched me arm myself as if I might pick up my halberd upside down or try to fit my warding lantern over my head.

Fage, naturally, was oblivious. The masks the Stormcast wore to battle made it almost impossible for one who knew them less well than I to judge their mood. The woodcutter had apparently woken early and hovered about the outskirts of the camp, coat fastened, axe in hand, and clearly eager to find what was left of his group.

I forced the man to eat something while I splashed the soil with watered wine, a libation to Sigmar and the local deities of the hunt, and set the anxious woodsman loose.

Fage hared off into the trees, the pair of Vanguard-Hunters I had ordered to keep an eye on him striding purposefully after him.

Only Fage knew exactly where we were heading. The Seven Words was still a ruin of her former (and I am being generous here) glory. No one, least of all me, had paid overly close attention to where the woodcutters and quarrymen that poured through the Azyr Gate disappeared to upon their arrival. I knew there was every chance that Fage could find the monster that had taken his fellows without my warriors’ help, but with any luck the sharp-eyed Vanguard-Hunters would spot the beast before it spotted him.

The remaining hunters fanned out into the trees, Raptors with longstrike and hurricane crossbows advancing more carefully behind them.

The Astral Templars were no less keen than their mortal guide to be about the hunt.

I walked over to Broudiccan. The Decimator nodded to me as he pulled on his battered helmet and tested the draw of his heavy-headed mace from its shoulder sleeve. It was all the welcome I was going to get, but my dream was weighing on my thoughts and I needed to discuss it with someone.

‘What do you know of the Gorwood?’ I asked him, measuring my stride to his. He shrugged. ‘I know that Uxor Untamed held the Seven Words for several years before I took it from him.’

‘You and Lord-Castellant Akturus.’

I waved off the correction. ‘Is that why we still call it the Gorwood, I wonder? Has it always been the haunt of beastmen and their kind?’

Another shrug.

Broudiccan’s imagination was as stilted as his words, but to me the staggering variety of the eight Mortal Realms has always been a source of wonderment. The mark of the gods was not always as obvious as the Mountains of Maraz or Gouge Canyon, but wherever you chose to look, that was what you saw there. Every peak and defile, every endemic tree and native creature had been shaped, deliberately or otherwise, by the divinities that had once moved amongst them – and in many lands still did.

‘Do I recall Barbarus speaking of a cult of tree worshippers?’

‘A dead cult.’ Broudiccan shrugged. ‘I saw some of the ruins they left behind. They were gone long before the Untamed took their country.’

I pondered on the Decimator’s words as we continued after Fage and the Vanguards.

Ghur was a wild place, ever changing, and little of it had been effectively explored. This was true even of such bastions as Excelsis and Shu’ghol, fortresses of enlightenment to which Sigmar knew better than to send the likes of me, but compared to their toothless savagery the Gorkoman was an ancient and untamed wilderness.

Anything could be lurking on the slopes of the High Gorwood.

The leechwood pines thickened as I pushed downhill, sharp-edged branches striking against my armour, the occasional twig drawing blood from my face. The Vanguard had dropped out of view, even Crow loping off after them, agitated by something or other. He left Broudiccan and me alone.

‘I dreamt last night,’ I said.

‘I know.’ Clearly, the Decimator had no wish to discuss it further.

‘It was a prophetic dream.’

Broudiccan’s grim mask turned towards me.

‘You do not believe me?’

‘Prophecy is not your gift.’

The Decimator’s understatement threatened to bring a laugh out of me, but I suppressed it. ‘If you doubt me because of the incident with the seraphon…’

Broudiccan sighed. ‘The stars were all in their proper place when I looked at them.’

‘They had shifted once again by the time you had dragged yourself to my throne room,’ I barked. ‘The slann was signalling me for help. Just as the oak is now.’

‘The… oak?’

I gave him a feral grin. ‘Tell me it would not be the strangest thing you have seen in the Mortal Realms.’

Broudiccan did not answer that. ‘But why do these portents speak only to you?’

I frowned.

I could see that the Decimator would take some persuading. My reputation amongst the Freeguild regiments of the Ghurlands was a legend of valour, courage and shining charisma. My reputation amongst my immortal brethren was for recklessness, grandstanding and personal bravado. The Bear-Eaters wore my legend like a token of blessing on their armour, but that did not mean they would follow me into the Crystal Labyrinth on the strength of my say-so.

‘Tell me where the oak guides you and we will go there. But if it does not guide you…’ Broudiccan shrugged again. I was getting a little sick of seeing it. ‘We still have a monster to hunt.’

I threw him a reluctant nod of agreement, just as Crow’s shriek and the wail of something bestial rang through the trees. My first thought was that the gryph-hound had found something more appetising than jerked lizard for our repast, then an arrow thudded into the tree beside me.

‘Beastmen!’ I yelled at the top of my formidable voice as gangly ungors clad in crimson bark and animal skins poured out from the trees. Arrows hissed towards me. Most were caught up in the hanging nets of predatory branches, but a dozen or so clattered off my and Broudiccan’s armour.

The Decimator wordlessly freed his starsoul mace and ran to meet the beastman charge. I spun my halberd overhead, lopping off an ungor’s head as it ran towards me, then caught the haft two-handed to bring it down as though I were an axeman splitting wood. The blade struck the ungor’s arm from its body. The animal bleated in shock and panic as leechwood pines leaned in on all sides to haul the struggling creature into their branches.

I tried to ignore the horrific slurping noises from the trees as the beastman’s death throes subsided, thinking again of those cuts to my face that I had foolishly dismissed as insignificant grazes.

A star blast from Broudiccan’s mace proved a welcome distraction, pulverising a beastman. The shock wave threw two more off their hooves and into the clutches of the thrashing leechwoods.

Just as I made to join the Decimator, Crow bounded into the carnage.

The gryph-hound scrabbled to a halt on the rough ground, silver beak and claws all bloody, only to stare at me judgementally before turning and running back the way he had come. Huffing air out through my pursed lips, I left Broudiccan and chased after the gryph-hound. The Decimator-Prime could take care of himself.

Branches lashed at my face as I pounded after Crow. The trees were aroused now, responding to the taste of spilled blood in the air and the vibrations of the hunt. The wood around me shivered in expectation.

A larger beastman gor galloped into my path. A longstrike bolt fizzled in its gut. I ran it down without slowing, and the goat-headed monstrosity thumped off my breastplate. Something purple winked from behind a tree. I stumbled to a halt, arms out like a break sail. Illyrius. The Raptor pointed his hurricane crossbow at the creature and swore in a language dead even to me. A withering volley of charged bolts whittled down the pack of gors that had been massing behind me for a charge. When I had regained my composure, I saluted the Raptor with my halberd and looked around for Crow.

I did not need to look too hard.

Simply following the sound of bones being cracked and organs torn open, I found the gryph-hound, up to his neck in a large gor’s stomach.

A Vanguard-Hunter ran across me before I had a chance to move. Firing off thunderous blasts of his boltstorm pistol from the hip, he headed towards Fage.

The woodsman was fending off a pair of ungors with the speed and strength of uncompromising terror. The opportunistic runts had naturally been drawn to the human while the two Vanguard-Hunters I had left with him were engaged with five of their burlier cousins. Each of the giant bestigors boasted the size and brawn of a Stormcast Eternal, if not the blessed raiment and the skill. Broudiccan barrelled into the melee with his customary silent rage, and I left him to it, confident that the woodcutter would live to tell the tale.

Hooves pounded on the hard ground behind me. Closing fast.

Timing it to perfection, I looped my halberd up and back and saw the blade sink into the muscular but unprotected torso of a stampeding centigor. The beast’s speed and my own strength came together to devastating effect, my halberd passing clean through the centigor’s chest and bringing its equine lower quarters crashing to the ground at my feet in a spray of mulch and grit. I confess to being unsure as to the ultimate fate of its upper body.

Twirling my halberd through a sequence of lazy circles, I scanned the area for more enemies, only to find them all fully engaged in dying or fleeing. The fizz and snap of hurricane and longstrike bolts pursued the latter, a bestial squawk or two and a shaking of ravenous trees attesting to the Raptors’ lack of mercy and their aim.

If not their actual woodcraft in spotting the ambush in the first place.

I found Broudiccan in the aftermath doing as all good second-in-command’s should in such situations, remonstrating bitterly with the two hunters I had left with Fage. The mortal looked rattled, but none the worse for a scratch or two that would give him a story to tell when he returned to the Seven Words.

I dismissed the three warriors and crouched by the shaken woodsman. His eyes rolled towards me, and for a second I was afraid he might bolt.

The last thing I wanted was to have to send Crow to bring him back.

‘I presume you have not been troubled by beastmen before now?’ I said, as kindly as I could muster.

He shook his head. ‘The best lumber comes from further down the mountain, nearer the Nevermarsh. Our palisade was high enough to keep the… the beasts at bay. And we paid natives to ensure the woods were clear before we set out to cutting.’

‘Natives?’ I asked. I could not say why that struck a chord with me, except perhaps that Fage had never bothered to mention them before now.

He swallowed and nodded. ‘Good people. Primitive. But good people. Whatever they could take off the beastmen was the only payment they would accept. All they asked was for us not to damage their sacred trees.’

‘And did you?’

The man blanched. ‘Cut a sacred tree? In the Gorwood?’

A twitch of movement caught my eye, and I reached instinctively for my warding lantern, but it was only a bestigor, suspended between the branches of a pair of trees and jerking as the blood was sucked out of it. It seemed to make the woodsman’s point neatly, and he did not elaborate further.

‘Could the monster that murdered your comrades have been some slave beast of the brayherds?’ I asked.

‘A jabberslythe?’ suggested Broudiccan.

‘A razorgor?’ offered Illyrius.

Fage shook his head, angry. ‘I don’t know. How would I know?’

‘It is all right,’ I said. ‘I do not think it is either of those things.’

I had seen both before and far worse in the armies of Chaos, and none could account for the track we had found the night before. An idea formed in my mind and I pursed my lips, ready to give credence to the possibility that I just might be infallible after all.

‘Show me where the better trees are.’

The sun sank behind the mountain. Ghur’s sun is a wild and untamed thing, prone to rise and set wherever, and whenever, it will. Its abandon I can respect, though it does make timekeeping a challenge. I estimated that it had been eight or nine hours (by the Azyrite measure) since the ambush in the Gorwood when Fage pointed me towards a swathe of large and imposing trees.

For all their rude stature, there was something funereal about the scene. The woodcutters’ hard work had coppiced into the boundaries to leave a verge of jagged stumps between those bigger, rounder trees and the bloodthirsty homunculi of the Gorwood. They looked like grave markers – the sort that you can find in the Freeguilder cemeteries of Azyrheim, if the Knights of Usirian will let you pass, which is seldom a given.

It all reminded me of my dream.

I perused the treeline, the idea I had been playing with since my last conversation with the woodsman taking on a kind of shape. I pointed to a tree at random. Being no expert, one looked about as good as another to me.

‘Cut it down,’ I said.

Fage looked at me as if such wild nonsense had never been heard within shouting distance of a lumber camp.

‘What?’

‘Humour me.’

The woodsman glanced at the other Stormcasts for support, but to a warrior they were masked and grim and he found no contradictory argument there. ‘All right.’ He made his way, half skipping over the stump-riddled slope, towards the tree I had indicated.

Fage unhitched his axe, eyed up the trunk, measuring the blow, then hacked into the wood. Bark flew off as he teased the axe-blade out of the trunk. I wondered if the groan that passed through the verdant copse was genuinely one of discontent or purely in my imagination.

Finally, the axe came out. The gash it had inflicted on the wood was pitifully shallow.

Felling a tree was clearly harder than it looked.

‘Is that all?’ I said

Fage lowered his axe, his pride stung. ‘It’d take a score of men, paired up and working in shifts, to bring something like this down.’

I crack my knuckles. ‘Step aside.’ I walked towards the wounded tree, letting the haft of my halberd slip through my grip until I held it near the butt. The long curve of its axe-like blade glinted in the last of the sun.

This time I definitely heard something.

A groan, as if ancient timbers were being drawn into a stressed and unpalatable new position. The foliage rustled briefly, then moved, a wave of restless leaves heading slowly in our direction. Fage hurried back to the line of Vanguards who calmly raised their weapons to the trees.

The front rank of trees gave way, and I took an involuntary step back.

I saw then why I had such difficulty identifying the spoor we had discovered in the High Gorwood, why there had been only a single print, and how it had been made in such unlikely ground.

The creature towered over us all. It was huge, lignified, armoured in thick plates of reddish bark and encrusted with orange lichens. Buzzing clouds of insects emerged from bore holes in its bark and swarmed around its aggressively branched crown. Its eyes were myopic pools of amber, buried within toughened whorls. They seemed to have difficulty focusing on something as small and active as me, and the monster peered down with short-sighted loathing.

I have never been to Ghyran.

I am familiar enough with the warlike forest spirits that inhabit the Jade Kingdoms to bluff it, if challenged, for they exist too in the wilder places of Azyr. They are different, of course, as the Everqueen and the God-King are different: reclusive, patient, less prone to spring rages and content, by and large, to sleep through the cycles of the heavens.

This was a Ghurite Treelord.

It was a beast.

I lowered my halberd, lifting my open hand to show I meant it no harm.

‘You came to me in my dream. Tell me, how may Hamilcar Bear-Eater hel–’

The treelord snatched me up without breaking stride, blasting the wind from my lungs and tossing my halberd to the ground. Broudiccan shouted something that I could not hear for the wind whistling in my ears, presumably ‘loose!’ for soon thereafter the air burned to the rapid fire of hurricane crossbows. The smell of wood smoke reached me, but the treelord took another lurching step and smacked a Vanguard-Hunter into the bole of a tree with a swipe of its hand. The Stormcast dissolved into a bolt of lightning that hammered the dead warrior back to the heavens. The tree smouldered in its wake and the beast gave a rumble of steady outrage, its grip on me tightening until sigmarite creaked and ribs bowed.

My vision burst into colours, stars blistering the foreground of what was otherwise a blur of bloody bark and hissing swarms. The treelord’s hand had swallowed my lower body up to the waist. Its grip pushed my warding lantern up against my breastplate, but its gnarly index finger was clamped over the shutter and I could not open it.

Bracing my hands against the treelord’s finger, I tried to force it far enough down to free the lantern.

I am a beast of a man, a giant even amongst my fellow Stormcast. I am the Champion of Cartha, the Eater of Bears. I slew the Ironjaw war chief, the Great Red, in an unarmed combat that lasted a day and a night. My strength is a thing of fireside tales and legend, yet I could not for the life of me move that finger.

I was not even wholly convinced that it noticed the attempt at all.

Lightning-flecked quarrels and boltstorm fire thundered and cracked. Somewhere in that awkward streak of greenish ground and amber sky, I saw Crow tearing bark from the treelord’s shins, trying to climb. The treelord ignored him utterly. Another streak of lightning bolted skywards.

I am not afraid to die.

I have done it before and I will doubtless have to do so again, but if my warriors were to be spared the torment of the soul forges that day, I was going to have to fell the treelord myself.

The constant spinning motion of the treelord waving me about in its fist was starting to have an unpleasant effect even on my constitution. I gritted my teeth against the rising bile, then spat with inch-perfect precision in the monster’s lidless eye.

I felt the anger run through the treelord’s gnarled bulk as it turned its age-dulled eyes from my warriors to me.

I would have gasped in pain, but the monster’s grip was crushing my diaphragm and all I could do was mouth silent profanities as it drew me in. I could feel my bones being ground, my feet, legs and stomach being compacted like a nut in a vice. Something metal clattered hollowly on hard wood. I almost cried in elation as I looked down to see that the treelord’s tightening grip had forced my warding lantern wholly out of its clutches.

Frankly, I had no idea if the restorative power of Sigmar would harm or hinder the Ghurite, but it was all I had. My fingers felt as if they were clad in sponge rather than sigmarite. My arms had become bendy and gained a joint, but somehow I got my hands over the lantern’s mechanism and drew the shutter.

The light of Sigendil and every bright star over Azyrheim emptied from my lantern and into the treelord’s half-blind eye.

It gave a slow but emphatic roar of pain.

I had hoped that it would drop me, but, of course, it had to hurl me with every chip and whorl of its awesome strength as if I had just burst into flames.

I crashed through a tangle of leechwood pines, their branches willowing over my heavy armour and savaging my face. By some sweet irony, the treelord had thrown me too hard for the branches to get a purchase on me, only slowing me down as I battered my way through and thumped heavily to the ground.

Groaning, astonished that my legs could still stand my weight, I stumbled up and around, and swayed to face the treelord.

Its legs had been stripped of bark. One was on fire. Its body sprouted quarrels like virile new growths and the eye I had burned was leaking a milky white sap. It gave a tortured groan and collapsed.

It dropped straight down, falling onto what I will call its knees, though they did not bend so much as bow, then split like hollow bones. Its shoulders sagged, and then it was still, the creak of settling wood overlain with the grating disquiet of the insects that had called it home. My relief was such that the sight of Fage swatting at a furious swarm of fat-bellied wasps with the flat of his hatchet almost made me chuckle.

The sudden shudder of tearing bark knocked my good humour flat, throwing me straight back into the final moments of my dream the previous night.

Acting on a premonition, I flung up a hand as the treelord’s great trunk tore up the middle and a searing beam of amber flashed across us.

It faded quickly, leaving only a tingling warmth upon my skin, and I lowered my hand to see the bark that had clad the belly of the treelord had given way to reveal a cocoon of some kind within the dripping sap. Held in a foetal curl within its protective juices was a sylvaneth unlike any I had seen before. Her bark was brittle, and where new growth showed, it was yellow and unhealthy. The entire inside of the tree smelled rotten.

The tree spirit looked up at me like a blind crone on her death bed.

I went to her.

‘It was you,’ I said, gruff, but gentle. ‘It was you that sought to reach me in my dream.’ The sylvaneth turned to the sound of my voice without any suggestion of recognition or, indeed, sanity. ‘Why did you attack us? Or the woodsman’s people?’

‘I am dying,’ she rasped, her voice like wind through reeds.

I understood. The Jade lines ran strong here, strong enough to support these great trees. ‘You fled here to heal.’

‘Ghur’thu heard my call,’ she said, presumably referring to the treelord I had unfortunately just slain. It must have killed Fage’s woodsmen and driven off the native tree worshippers too, which must have come as a nasty shock to their beliefs.

‘It does not look as though you are healing,’ I said.

‘He stole my life.’

I shot a questioning glance at Fage, who shrugged. ‘Not yet, he hasn’t.’

‘He stole my life.’

Her use of the word ‘stole’ struck me as awkward, and I was almost certain that I was misinterpreting her meaning somehow. There was no time to interrogate her further than that, however. She was dying.

‘You will be next,’ she hissed.

That gave me pause. A vision of myself held in a cage of warp lightning and screaming filled my thoughts, and I cursed the Lord-Veritant of the Knights Merciless who put it there.

‘What… makes you say that?’

‘Because he told me.’

‘He?’

She opened the mottled bark of her mouth to answer as a feeble shudder passed through her body. She relaxed into the soft wall of her cocoon with a sigh, and said no more.

For a time, no one sullied the grove with words.

I lowered my eyes and placed my hand upon her body. I felt a light tingling through the metal of my gauntlets. I did not know what had been done to her.

But I would find out.

OBSIDIAN

David Annandale

It would not be the first wedding in Nulahmia to be preceded by a murder, Karya Treveign thought. She stood beside Evered Halorecht in the nave of the Grand Chapel of Night’s Hunger, looking back towards the main entrance. The two were alone in this cavernous space. But there was room within for thousands. Here, Nulahmian society would congregate to make obeisance to Nagash, and to the consuming, predatory need that was the cost of existence after death.

The Grand Chapel was constructed around the fossilised ribcage of an ancient leviathan slain by Nagash at the dawn of the Age of Myth. The chapel walls therefore curved outwards, then back in, and formed the building’s dome. Monolithic slabs of obsidian filled the spaces between the ribs. Adjacent to the dome stood the high tower, carved from the monster’s legs, and from the tower’s roof a single claw jutted, a spire raking at the sky. The trace of the predator’s hunger.

From the centre of the dome hung two fangs, each more than fifty feet long. Between them was a latticework of smaller bones holding hundreds of tallow candles, encased in glass stained with red and fragments of blue and green. The flames filled the ribcage with this softly blended, crimson hue. In the glow, the blackness of the petrified bones was rendered even more profound.

If Karya was honest with herself, she would have to admit that it would not be the first wedding precipitated by a murder, either. And being honest was, for Karya, a matter of principle. Honesty in Nulahmia was a precious metal, rarer than gold. Even so, she had been forced to engage in some degree of subterfuge when it came to her relationship with Evered. She had had to do more than omit to reveal the truth of their love to her father. On three separate occasions, Karya had lied about where she had been. The memory of each of those instances was a festering wound upon her heart, an injury that struck all the deeper because her father, Lord Vorst Treveign, had believed her. And he believed her because he trusted, absolutely, in her honesty.

You are, he had once told her, that which I have never had the strength to be. The path you have chosen is a hard one. It runs against the grain of everything our queen has forged. I fear for you. But you give me hope, and for that I will be eternally grateful and proud. Your mother would be, too.

‘Do you think she’ll agree?’ Evered whispered, pulling Karya from memories and guilt.

‘We can but hope,’ said Karya. She looked at him and entwined her fingers with his.

‘Hope,’ Evered repeated. He smiled. ‘I can do that. You have taught me how. You have shown me that there is such a thing, and that it is strong.’

Their sibilant echoes seemed too loud for their hushed voices, and so they gently kissed, each wrapping themselves in the other’s protective silence.

Hope. The one Karya held now was that the Mortarch of Blood would agree to her and Evered’s request. There was no guarantee, though, that they would even have the chance to speak with her, let alone receive her blessing. There were many reasons why Neferata would refuse to permit the union of the Houses of Treveign and Halorecht. Karya was not naïve. Trying to follow strict principles of honesty had forced upon her a hard awareness of political realities. No, this was not the first wedding preceded by murder, nor the first precipitated by murder. But this murder leading to this union would, she knew, be the talk of Nulahmia, and perhaps all of Neferatia, if the dread queen allowed it to come to pass.

Karya and Evered had come here to force the issue.

In one of the circular crypts that clung like petrified tumours to the sides of the main chamber lay the body of Therul, high counsellor to House Treveign. When Karya had heard that Neferata planned to pay her respects to the assassinated vampire lord, she had determined to face the Mortarch and know her fate. No one knew when Neferata intended to come to the Grand Chapel, so Karya had performed her own visitation to the corpse, shortly after her father’s, and then, joined by Evered, she had waited.

They had been here, in the centre of the nave, motionless and expectant, for five hours. No one else had passed through. Karya felt trapped, pinned by a dagger of expectation to a limbo as huge and unforgiving as the structure of bone and obsidian that enclosed her.

‘Will she believe in us?’ Evered wondered aloud.

‘Yes,’ Karya said. ‘I am sure she will. She will understand.’ If, that is, Karya could prove she understood the political realities, was not blind to them, and knew how to overcome them.

The huge iron doors of the entrance opened. The deep, reverberating groan of their hinges climbed the walls of the Grand Chapel, becoming the echo of the great beast’s death rattle. Neferata advanced down the aisle, accompanied by the Lady Mereneth. The Mortarch and her high courtier wore long, black dresses. Neferata’s was accented by threads of silver that picked up the dim light of the candelabra, flashing in and out of sight with the movements of the dress like a glint of steel or, as Karya chose to interpret it, the return of light that always waited within darkness. Mereneth’s robes were trimmed in a deep crimson that counterpointed and emphasised the brilliance and deep shadow of her mistress’ garb.

Queen and noble regarded Karya and Evered as they approached. Mereneth’s gaze was cold, flat, unreadable. Neferata bore a smile as slight as it was powerful. Her eyes were narrowed in amusement. Karya’s determination wavered. The closer Neferata came, the more Karya felt herself shrink before the aura of majesty that surrounded the queen. Neferata’s presence filled the Grand Chapel until it seemed as though the monolithic building struggled to contain her. She was more ancient than the fossil, and more powerful than the beast had ever been in life. Karya was beneath the notice of so great a being, though she had dared to call attention to herself by standing in the path of the queen.

She realised that she would be fortunate not to be turned to ash. To ask for more would be foolishly presumptuous. Yet she gathered her failing courage to do just that. Beside her, Evered was rigid with barely suppressed trembling.

At a slight nod from Neferata, Mereneth turned from the couple and swept past, heading off towards the crypt where Therul lay. Neferata stopped before Karya and Evered. Her smile grew almost imperceptibly broader. Her lips were the red of arterial blood, her face the white of perfect, glacial death.

‘Treveign and Halorecht, side by side,’ said Neferata. ‘I doubt I will see a greater wonder today. Explain it to me. What is the nature of this wonder?’

Karya had no doubt that Neferata already knew the answer to her question. She had felt the queen’s gaze scour her being of all secrets. Yet she was called upon to speak, and so she did, honestly, and proud.

‘We are pledged to one another,’ Karya said. ‘We seek your blessing for this union.’

Neferata laughed. Her mirth was as silvery as bells, filling Karya’s heart with love and the urgent need to please her ruler. The laughter’s echo resounded with the iron slam of a coffin lid, and Karya quailed in fear.

‘And thus it comes to pass,’ said Neferata. ‘After centuries of enmity, the two great houses are joined through the love of their heirs. How very star-crossed of you. How worthy of verse you both are. Tell me more. Delight me further. Why now? How can it be, Karya Treveign, that the murder of your father’s right hand leads not to greater bloodshed but to reconciliation?’

‘It is because the death of Counsellor Therul could make things worse that we must act now, my queen,’ said Evered.

Neferata regarded Evered for a brief moment, then turned her attention back to Karya. ‘Did Therul approve of this union?’

‘He did not know about it,’ Karya said, glancing at Evered. ‘He would certainly have advised my father against it. Without his opposition, I believe that my father will be easier to convince. Should we have your blessing, I know he would be.’

Neferata laughed again. ‘An easy prediction,’ she said. ‘Its truth is too certain to have any worth as flattery. What interest would I have in granting this blessing?’

Karya had not been trying to flatter. Everything she said was the truth as she saw it.

‘Acting as one, Treveign and Halorecht could serve your majesty with tremendous strength and loyalty. Our every act would be an expression of gratitude. This I swear.’

‘And what can you offer as guarantee of your word? Your father rules House Treveign and your betrothed is just as powerless – or has Nagra Halorecht relinquished control to her son and I am ignorant of it?’

Karya bowed her head, as did Evered beside her.

There was silence for a long moment. Then, for a third time, Neferata laughed. ‘Your answers only increase the wonder of this union,’ she said. ‘You delight me, and so you shall have my blessing. Have you given any thought to where you will celebrate your union?’

‘Here,’ said Karya, looking up. ‘Both our families have long attended the Grand Chapel.’

‘I approve. Go, then. Make your preparations. Surprise Vorst Treveign and Nagra Halorecht. Surprise Nulahmia. For I will do more than bless your union. I will attend its ceremony.’

‘Treveign and Halorecht together are more than twice as dangerous as each is separately,’ Mereneth said when Neferata joined her in the crypt. The spymistress did not sound happy.

‘Of course they are,’ said Neferata. ‘The way to neutralise this threat, though, is not by simply opposing it.’

The crypt was circular. The only light was the gloomy red that filtered in through the arched doorway. The walls bulged outwards in imitation of the great chamber’s gargantuan ribcage. Neferata walked around the dais upon which Therul lay. There was a gap of a few inches between his head and his body. His entire neck was missing. Whoever had killed him had taken care to create a wound so massive, it could not be interpreted.

‘Did Therul ever mention the romance?’ Neferata asked. As long as the two families had been at war, she had not had to devote much attention to them. Vorst Treveign’s high counsellor had been her spy. With him in place, she had been content to let things simmer, ready to interfere only if the violence between the families rose to a level that inconvenienced her. Peace had never been a possibility. But the situation had changed, and her attention was required.

‘I don’t think he knew of the courtship,’ said Mereneth. ‘Not directly, at least. He reported that Vorst had some concerns about what his daughter might be doing, but it does not appear to have crossed his mind that she might be falling in love with Evered Halorecht.’

‘And they are both sole heirs,’ said Neferata.

Like many of the vampire nobility, the Treveigns and Halorechts had, through the ages, ensured there were enough mortals in the family to sustain the bloodline through direct descent. The firstborn of each generation were given the soulblight curse of vampiric immortality. Both Nagra Halorecht and Vorst Treveign had lost their consorts shortly after the births of Evered and Karya, and neither had thus far acted to produce any further offspring. Vorst was strong, and it might be a millennium before Karya took control of her house. Nagra, though, seemed weak. Therul suspected the Treveigns had found the means to erode her immortality with poison, though the assassin had silenced him before he could find proof.

‘Therul’s death is convenient for the union,’ Neferata went on. ‘Karya admits this freely. Do we know where she was at the time of the assassination?’

‘At a masked ball hosted by House Falkreach,’ said Mereneth. ‘Do you think she arranged the killing?’

Neferata thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘She is too young… and sincere. Had she wished Therul dead, I believe she would have killed him herself and then confessed. No, this union must benefit someone else.’

‘So the question is whether Therul was a target because he would have opposed the union, or because he was our spy,’ said Mereneth.

‘We will act on the presumption that both are true. Belief in coincidence is the prologue to defeat. The stage has been set for us. Let us take measures. Then we will let the performance proceed, and the players reveal themselves.’

Twenty feet up from the floor of the Grand Chapel, a gallery ran the entire circumference of the walls. On the night of the marriage ceremony, Neferata walked the gallery alone. As she passed from archway to archway, she appeared and disappeared to the sight of the gathered multitude, but the crowd was always open to her gaze.

The Grand Chapel was filled with hunger. The full houses of Treveign and Halorecht were there, as were their allies. There were hundreds on both sides, two armies present to witness a contentious peace treaty. The curious were more numerous still, here in their thousands. The hunger for power and the hunger for knowledge were so thick, the air roiled with tension.

The walls were hung with the colours of the two houses. Treveign’s banners were obsidian streaked with gold. Halorecht’s were scarlet, trimmed with black. They seemed to hang together, rather than in opposition, and Neferata wondered if the two lovers saw a good omen in the complementarity of the colours. For herself, the serendipity was irrelevant. As the ceremony progressed, what Neferata saw was a ritual that was the result of a much greater, longer, hidden orchestration.

In the centre of the nave, surrounded by their families, Karya and Evered stood facing each other, attending the words of the ancient necromancer, Alvaras. The few wisps of hair on Alvaras’ yellow-grey scalp floated in the still air of the chapel, a serpentine halo. Ceremonial attendants flanked the betrothed, each holding the golden chain of a collared, subdued mortal from each household. As Alvaras approached the conclusion of the ceremony, Neferata scrutinised the leaders of the houses. Even the slightest change in their expressions was clearly visible to Neferata’s witchsight. Nagra looked even more fragile than when Neferata had last seen her. The Halorecht matriarch was stooped, her face withered as crumbling leather. Her features were pinched into a frown, but her eyes were rheumy, as if she had trouble concentrating on the event unfolding before her. Vorst Treveign, on the other hand, looked far more sanguine. His expression was neutral, but Neferata could see no flicker of concern as his sole heir pledged herself to the son of his enemies. The other members of the family seemed much more uneasy than Vorst. Their expressions mirrored Nagra’s and those of the other Halorechts. There seemed to be very few parties present who saw the union as anything other than harmful to their interests.

‘Where two rivers of blood have flowed, let there now be one,’ Alvaras intoned. He gestured to the attendants, who pulled the imprisoned mortals forward. They opened the collars, but retained their grips on their charges’ shoulders. Alvaras bowed to Karya, to Evered, and then, in a single motion rose and turned, right arm outstretched. His talon of a nail on his middle finger sliced open the jugular veins of the mortals. Every move of the ritual was known and rehearsed by the participants, and the couple fastened their mouths on the throat of the other family’s mortal before a first jet of blood had splashed to the ground. Treveign drank deeply of Halorecht blood, and Halorecht drank Treveign. They drained the bodies, then quickly twisted off the heads, completing the sacrifice, leaving bloodless husks that would not rise again.

The lovers stepped away from the bodies, joined hands and stood before Alvaras again. He touched their foreheads with his crimson-stained finger. ‘And so two are one,’ he said, his voice like the rasp of sand over bone. ‘The work of this solemn day is complete.’

No, Neferata thought. I believe it has just begun.

The taste of the Halorecht mortal’s blood still on her tongue, Karya looked up at the conclusion of the ritual to see Neferata gazing down at her. She had been circling the ceremony since its start, only fitfully visible, a shadow in flowing crimson robes. Now that she had paused, Karya saw that her arms were clad in what looked like dark armour. It seemed to Karya that the queen was clad for the celebration and for war. Karya felt reassured. Neferata’s dress revealed the risks attendant on this union. Karya would have donned more protective clothing too, if there had been a way of doing so. But the robes she and Evered wore would not have concealed any armour underneath, and the result would have been a provocation to violence. So she and Evered were armed only with hope. She trusted that would be enough.

There was a flurry of movement to Karya’s left. She turned in time to see a silver blade stab through Nagra Halorecht’s throat. Evered’s mother opened her mouth in a soundless gasp of agony. Night-dark blood burst from her lips, and her skin crumbled like parchment. The figure behind her was hooded and robed, a shape of darkness so featureless it was as if the sword moved of its own volition. While Karya was still in the first moments of shock, the blade withdrew from Nagra’s throat, rose to one side, then slashed into the side of her neck. Her head tumbled off her body and rolled to her son’s feet.

In the same moment, another figure leapt out of the crowd from Karya’s right. It was shrouded like the first, though to Karya’s horrified eyes the clothing seemed subtly different in style, wrapped around the limbs more tightly. That was enough for her to understand. Though her limbs were frozen in horror and surprise, it came to her that the attackers were not of the same faction. They were not working together. The second was responding to the actions of the first.

The assassin raised his sword, pointing it at Karya’s heart. She took a step back. Evered threw himself at the killer, and the blade plunged forwards.

‘Evered!’ Karya screamed as the assassin stabbed him through the chest. Evered’s hands fluttered at the hilt in weak protest, and then stilled as his body went limp.

The first killer rushed in to attack the second. Their blades clashed once before the crowd finally reacted. The spectators who had come out of simple curiosity now shouted in alarm and rushed for the doors, desperate to avoid the coming storm of violence. Fury rippled out from the centre of the nave. The families of Treveign and Halorecht and their allies and vassals roared with anger and hurled themselves at one another. None were armed, for Neferata had decreed no weapons could enter the Grand Chapel on this night, but vampires did not need steel to wage war, and the dim, crimson glow of the immense chamber exploded with the sudden fires of sorcery.

Karya sank to her knees. The frenzy around her was a dull, background roar. She cradled Evered in her arms. His eyes were dull, unseeing. His mouth hung open. A trickle of his own blood dribbled past his fangs and down his chin. Karya called to him again and again, rocking the body, begging him to return. His mother’s head lay a few feet away. Its flesh had fallen to dust. All that remained was an ancient skull in a splayed nest of grey hair. Nagra had been centuries old, and time had rushed to claim its due from her corpse. Evered did not crumble. Like Karya, he was truly young. They had both been turned only a few years ago, and so he lay in his pooling blood, youth in his features, decay having to take his body in its natural time.

Karya howled. She could not hear her own voice over the rising shriek of the battles around her. The force of her screams tore at her throat. Her dream of hope was gone, and it burned on a pyre of renewed violence. Instead of two families becoming one, soon there would be none. Inside the Grand Chapel of Night’s Hunger, darkness was swelling, gorged with blood. Karya screamed. She felt as if she would go blind. There was nothing before her now, no future for anything, only an abyss of absolute darkness.

She wept until she choked on her grief and pain. She doubled over Evered’s corpse, gagging. Around the two, fighting swirled, but the combatants ignored them. Both of the assassins lay still, ripped apart by outraged family members, who now were in turn fighting for their existence. Karya regarded the struggle with the dullness of despair. She did not look up for succour from Neferata. The slaughter unfolding in the chapel deserved nothing but disgust from the queen. The jaws of apathy closed around Karya. She welcomed them. They would hold her for eternity, or until a Halorecht finished the work of the second assassin.

She believed this for several long moments until, looking up, she searched for her father’s face amongst the fray. But Vorst Treveign was not there, nor was he lying butchered on the floor.

Karya frowned. The apathy began to lose its grip on her, and she stood. She turned around slowly, searching. It was entirely possible that her father was just a few yards away and that she would not see him. She could barely make out any of the bloodied faces in the flares of sorcerous fire and crushing darkness. Yet she kept turning, compelled by an instinct and a growing terror.

Finally, she saw him. He had managed to make his way through the melee to the far wall. The struggle between the nave and the main doors was too intense to push through without being drawn into it. Between the nave and the entrance to the tower, though, the crowd was more sparse. Vorst had climbed a short flight of steps leading to the tower’s landing. He paused before an open doorway, looking at the battle in the great chamber, and then his eyes met hers. Even from this distance, through darkness slashed by magical bolts and misted with blood, Karya felt the impact of his dispassionate contempt. Then he turned his back on his family and its foes, disappearing through the doorway.

Karya pursued. She plunged through the fray, running in a straight line for the tower. She pounded over flagstones slick with gore, ducking and weaving between the struggles, flowing around them as if she were the wind. Clawed hands snatched at her, tearing at her robes and flesh. Snarling, enraged faces turned at her passing. She was too fast to be caught. She had seen the face of betrayal, and rage gave her wings.

She reached the steps and raced up them, through the doorway, and then climbed the endless spiral staircase of the tower, never slowing. There was no apathy now. Her grief was as strong as ever, pricked to an incandescent fury. Somehow, her father had brought the horror below into being. Karya’s existence had narrowed to a single goal. She would confront Vorst and demand an answer. Why? She would force the answer from him if she had to rip it from his throat with her hands. Why?

Why?

From an archway at the top of the staircase, Karya ran onto the roof of the tower and stopped short. The immense claw-spire loomed thirty feet above her, a curved dagger of a silhouette in the night. Vorst leaned on the parapet, his back to her.

‘Father,’ she croaked, her voice raw from her screams.

Vorst turned around. He folded his arms and stared at her coldly. ‘What?’ he snapped, impatient.

His anger baffled her. He glared as if somehow she were to blame for the massacre. She refused to be cowed, and marched towards him.

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why have you done this?’

Her father snorted. ‘You served your purpose,’ he said. ‘And now your utility is over. I no longer have either the need or the patience to put up with your squalling pretensions of morality.’ He took a step forward and extended his right hand. ‘Come here, daughter. Let me throw you over the parapet.’

Karya froze.

‘You will do as you are told,’ Vorst said.

Karya backed towards the door.

‘I am your father,’ Vorst said. ‘You owe your existence to me, and so you are mine to dispose of as I see fit.’ His presumption of ownership was so powerful, his betrayal so utterly cold-blooded, that these words assumed a perverse, terrible authority. ‘You will obey me,’ he said.

The monstrous words held Karya fast. She could no longer move her feet.

Vorst stepped forward, his hand crooked like a talon, reaching out to seize her. ‘I have seen your future,’ he said. ‘It lies shattered on the cobblestones below. It is time for you to join it.’

‘You are wrong.’ The words came from behind Karya. They came from a being infinitely older and of far greater authority than Vorst. He looked past Karya, his eyes blazing first in anger, and then in fear. His spell broke, and Karya rushed away. She crouched against the parapet, transfixed by the confrontation.

Neferata stood in the doorway, clad in blood and night. ‘It is your future that is shattered,’ Neferata said to Vorst. ‘Your manipulations are at an end, and so are you.’

For the space of a heartbeat, it seemed to Karya that, in his arrogance, Vorst would try to fight. Then he turned to flee, though there was nowhere to go. His eyes fell on Karya, and his face contorted with a hate so pure it burned. Karya covered her face in horror. Through her fingers, she saw him open his mouth, and she dreaded the curse he would call down upon her.

He never had the chance.

Karya was able to see what Neferata did next, because the majesty of the queen and the grace of her movement were such that they commanded witness. Yet she acted with a speed beyond lightning. She swept forward from the doorway, and in a single movement seized Vorst by the throat and lifted him high. She drew the dagger Akmet-har from the folds of her dress and slit Vorst’s neck. The gesture was so small it looked like an afterthought. Yet Vorst convulsed upon the instant. Blood flowed in a cataract down his body. With an idle gesture, as if flicking dust from a sleeve, Neferata tossed him over the parapet. The crunch of corpse on stone, when it finally came, was barely audible, though it would sound in Karya’s mind forever.

Karya advanced on trembling legs towards Neferata. She looked over the wall at the broken thing far below.

‘He did this,’ she said, as if speaking the words would help her believe them. ‘He allowed my union with Evered so that he could destroy both our families. Why? I don’t understand.’

‘Greed,’ said Neferata. ‘A hunger for power so great it bred delusions. Your father believed that if he gave two houses and his only daughter to me as a burnt offering, this would prove his devotion, and I would reward him.’ She shook her head. ‘That is not loyalty. That is selfishness and waste. I reward neither.’ She smiled at Karya. ‘And he failed. Through you, House Treveign still stands.’

‘It does not stand,’ said Karya. ‘It kneels before you.’ She did as she said, her heart burning with gratitude and love for the queen who had saved her. Once again, Karya saw the chance of purpose in her existence, and she seized it with fervour. ‘I seek nothing now but the glory of serving you,’ she said.

Neferata smiled. ‘Then I am pleased.’

Mereneth joined Neferata on the rooftop some time later. Together, they watched the lone figure of Karya walking across the square away from the Grand Chapel.

‘The fire that fuelled her honesty is now the fuel of her devotion to me,’ Neferata said.

‘She has the makings of a good spy,’ Mereneth agreed.

‘I am confident you will make that promise flower.’

Mereneth bowed her head. ‘The battle is finished in the great chamber,’ she said.

‘Any survivors?’

‘Some. All the families involved will be greatly diminished.’

Neferata nodded in satisfaction. ‘Good.’ Vorst’s assassins, chosen by her, had done their job well. Where there had been two powerful houses of uncertain loyalty, now there was a single, weaker one that would be hers entirely.

‘I’m curious,’ said Mereneth. ‘How did you know Evered would give his life for Karya?’

‘I saw his devotion when they asked for my consent to their union. He was consumed with love for her. This made his actions utterly predictable.’

‘And it was Vorst who killed Therul?’ Mereneth asked.

‘Yes. The union of the two houses gave him the opportunity to stage this massacre.’

‘What did you tell Karya about his motives?’

‘The truth. That he believed this would earn my favour. I simply did not tell her that I encouraged him in this belief.’

Mereneth chuckled. ‘You hold her love with a dark truth.’

‘Darkness is the key, Mereneth. Look to the darkness in which your enemy operates, that shrouds a rival, that lives in the heart of a friend. Then find a deeper darkness, and use it.’ Neferata smiled, tasting the night. ‘Always seek the darkness,’ she repeated. ‘Always go deeper.’

She ran her fingers over the parapet, and savoured the feel of obsidian between bone.

BLACKTALON: HUNTING SHADOWS

Andy Clark

Neave Blacktalon prowled in the shadow of a towering throne, through the cool shade of the ancient monolith and back out into searing heat, then back through shadow again. The Knight-Zephyros’ whirlwind axes were lashed firmly to her armoured back. They were ready to be drawn forth at a heartbeat’s notice, and her hands itched to swing them.

‘The sooner something gives me the excuse…’ she murmured to herself, keen to be moving, hunting again.

She had her helm off, the better to stretch her superhuman senses out and taste her surroundings. Her hawk-like vision, her acute senses of taste, smell and hearing, her incredible sensitivity to vibrations in the air and soil – all were bent to absorbing every detail of this region of Aqshy. Known as the Brazen Plains, this region was as rugged as any she had seen in the Realm of Fire. Neave could tell that the cracked earth upon which she paced had been fertile until about three decades ago, when some catastrophe had scoured away the topsoil and salted what remained. She could sense the tectonic rumbling of a range of volcanoes two hundred miles due east, and tracked the passage of an arid dust-storm perhaps half that distance to her south.

Neave hunted alone. She had done so for four years and two Reforgings, through a dozen hunts for the most dangerous quarry Sigmar could assign her, and she had never once failed to bring down her mark. Of course, it was different when her Vanguard chamber, the Shadowhammers, marched out as one. Neave could strategise and lead as well as the next Stormcast officer, and she knew the value of the warriors she fought alongside. They were Hammers of Sigmar, first forged and still the mightiest of all Sigmar’s Stormhosts. Yet even at such times, she was the one to hunt her mark amidst the mayhem of the battlefield. She was the one to launch herself upon them at the crucial moment, whirlwind axes singing a terrible dirge as they clove the air again and again.

Her comrades fought to give her the opening she required, but it was Neave who ended the hunt.

Alone.

‘But not this time, apparently,’ she said aloud, stopping for a moment in the throne’s shadow and staring up at it. A remnant of some old and magnificent wonder from the Age of Myth, the marble throne jutted drunkenly from the bedrock, pitted and riven. ‘This time I am to have aid in my hunt. Why?’

Neave resumed her pacing, flicking irritated glances westwards. She sensed her comrades drawing closer from that direction, travelling at speed. The missive had been brought to her by an aetherwing, one of the highly intelligent birds of prey that aided the Stormcast Vanguard. The creature had found her as she loped across the Brazen Plains, tracking her mark.

The bird had swept overhead and cried at her to halt in its eerie, singsong voice. Neave had done so, waiting while the aetherwing banked and settled in the skeletal branches of a nearby emberwood. She had listened with surprise, then annoyance, as the bird relayed Lord-Aquilor Danastus’ orders to her.

She was to proceed ten miles east, whereupon she would find the ancient throne. There she was to await rendezvous with Tarion Arlor, a Knight-Venator, and a band of Palladors who would aid her in her hunt. The aetherwing had no answers for her as to why. Blacktalon had merely been bid obey, and so, though she burned to be about the hunt, she had done so.

‘They come, at last,’ she breathed as she picked out a thin dust trail rising to the west. The unforgiving light of Hysh shone from on high, glinting off burnished sigmarite as her comrades approached. The Knight-Venator was aloft, soaring on crystalline wings with his bright-burning star-eagle wheeling around him impatiently. Below, a crackling surge of energy and whirling dust showed where the Palladors rode their wyndshifting steeds.

Neave jogged out from the throne’s shadow, making sure she was clearly visible. The last thing she needed, she thought, was to catch an arrow in the throat from a surprised Knight-Venator. The star-eagle spotted her first and gave a piercing cry, swooping down towards her. The Stormcasts followed and, as the eagle shot overhead and alighted atop the throne’s back, Tarion Arlor spread his crystalline pinions and dropped from the sky. He thumped down twenty feet from Neave, raising a cloud of dry dust, then stood tall and favoured her with an honest smile.

Arlor went helmless, like her, noted Neave. He was built big, even for a Stormcast, and she saw from the way he carried himself that his was a solid and resolute sort of strength. She noted the relaxed grip that he maintained upon his bow, the tribal tattoos worn proudly upon his face and the way his quick gaze assessed her as frankly as she assessed him.

The Palladors appeared a moment later, lightning crackling and winds howling as they transmuted from their ephemeral form to solid flesh and bone. There were four of them, Neave saw, armoured warriors wielding stormstrike javelins. They sat astride rangy gryph-chargers that clacked their beaks and clawed the ground with their fore-talons. She recognised the Palladors’ leader, and a smile quirked one corner of her mouth.

‘Kalparius Foerunner, well met,’ said Neave. Typical protocol would be for her to greet the Knight-Venator first, as a warrior of equal rank to her own. Neave had little interest in such niceties, preferring to acknowledge those rare warriors that had fought alongside her and earned her respect.

‘Lady Blacktalon,’ said Kalparius and inclined his head in greeting. ‘It has been some time.’

‘Two years since we hunted the daemon Horticulous on the Thassenine Peninsula,’ said Neave. ‘Have you fared well?’

‘Well enough, despite our enemies’ efforts,’ said Kalparius. From his body language Neave saw the Pallador was pleased she had remembered him by name, though too taciturn to let it show.

‘Neave Blacktalon, it is good to meet you at last,’ said Arlor.

‘We have fought upon the same field more than once,’ she said. ‘Was that not sufficient?’

‘We have fought against the same foes, at the same time, but we have never fought as comrades,’ said Tarion. ‘You are the most famed of the Shadowhammers, Lady Blacktalon. I look forward to hunting at your side.’

‘The mark is away eastwards,’ said Neave, masking her irritation at the talismanic way in which the rest of her Vanguard chamber regarded her. ‘In waiting for your arrival I’ve allowed it to extend its lead. If it reaches the volcano fields, it will become far harder to track.’

Arlor’s smile vanished. ‘The township of Sigenvale lies in that direction. Our orders from the Lord-Aquilor are to call upon that settlement on our march and garner what information we can from the locals.’

‘If they lie in the mark’s path, there may not be any locals left to question,’ said Neave. ‘We can waste no more time. Come.’

Neave turned and set off eastwards. As a Knight-Zephyros, Neave’s inhuman abilities extended into unnatural swiftness, agility and reactions. Now she put them to good use, accelerating away in a blur of motion that quickly left the shattered throne far behind.

Moments later, Tarion appeared low overhead, keeping pace with her upon his outspread wings. His star-eagle spiralled alongside him, and to Neave’s right streaking shimmers of lightning and air marked where the Palladors, too, had matched her speed.

‘You can keep up, at least,’ called Neave. ‘I can infer from this that your orders weren’t to actively hamper my hunt?’

‘There’s more to our orders, Lady Blacktalon,’ said Arlor, raising his voice to be heard over the swift whip of the wind. ‘Did Sigmar tell you of your prey before you set out?’

‘When Sigmar gives me a mark, it is like an epiphany,’ Neave replied. ‘I feel his power flow through me and I sense the prey, a notion of the direction in which it lies. At the same moment I may learn a little of my prey, of its transgressions against Sigmar and why it must be slain. I know of this thing that it is a horror hidden behind a pall of shifting darkness, and that it is ruinously powerful. A trail of devastated settlements and slaughtered heroes lies in its wake. I know also that there must be more to this fiend than that, for Sigmar does not set me a mark unless they have earned his personal ire.’

‘I don’t know what this thing has done to anger Sigmar,’ said Arlor. ‘But I know that, since you began your hunt, word has reached us of the quarry wreaking further havoc. They say it tore down Fort Dunhaven and slaughtered the entire garrison, then ripped its way along the Wounded Road and left three trade caravans and all their guards in bloody tatters. Chaos warbands are stirring in the wilds at word of this thing’s deeds. We have not long driven the enemy back from this region and, if this murderous shadow continues its rampage, it risks becoming a rallying point behind which a fresh Chaos onslaught may gather.’

‘I saw the ruins of Dunhaven,’ said Blacktalon. ‘The carnage was hideous. I was not aware of the cult stirrings, but I can well believe it.’

Now the presence of these reinforcements began to make sense to her. There was grand strategy in play, and Lord-Aquilor Danastus prized expediency above all else. Even the sanctity of Sigmar’s hunt.

‘The Lord-Aquilor feels that this matter must be concluded swiftly, and with no chance of the quarry’s escape,’ said Tarion. ‘That is why we are not your only reinforcements.’

‘Who else?’ asked Neave.

‘Beyond Sigenvale, upon the headland above Brimstone Lake, we are to rendezvous with the cogfort Iron Despot,’ said Tarion. ‘The mobile fortress and all of its garrison will be at our disposal.’

Neave almost missed a step as she shot an incredulous glance up at Tarion.

‘A cogfort?’ she asked. Sent marching out from several of the cities of Order since the end of the Realmgate Wars, the cogforts were the crowning achievement of the Ironweld engineers. Land battleships propelled on huge clockwork-and-girder spider’s legs, each cogfort was a mobile armoured fortress with a garrison of well over a hundred human and duardin souls and bearing enough artillery and sorcerous ordnance to level a Dreadhold, or to break an enemy army in two. These vast war engines had not existed for long, but they had already garnered great favour amongst the forces of Order.

Lord-Aquilor Danastus was not given to grand gestures or strategic wastefulness. That he believed Neave’s hunt required this level of support was sobering. She glanced again at Tarion and saw her own thoughts mirrored upon his face. Neave set her jaw and ran on, west across the plains towards Sigenvale.

Her ominous sense of the mark grew surer with every footfall.

Neave knew something was wrong even before Tarion’s star-eagle, Krien, gave a piercing shriek.

They had travelled for a day and a night, and on into the next morning, relying upon the supreme fortitude that was Sigmar’s gift to his Stormcast Eternals. The hunting party had spoken little. They were Hammers of Sigmar, grimly determined to see their duty done, and all their thought was bent towards its prosecution.

Now, though, as they wended their way along the tail end of the Wounded Road through a nameless gorge, they slowed.

‘I smell smoke, and blood,’ said Neave as they drew to a halt in the lee of a mound of boulders. The part of Neave’s mind that was always alive to her surroundings noted that several of the boulders were actually graven chunks of statuary, piled in a tumble and eroded over long years.

‘Krien sees something beyond the mouth of the gorge,’ said Tarion, landing beside her. ‘He’s going to circle high and scout. If there are foes, they’re less likely to notice him than they are me.’

Neave bristled at Tarion’s presumption. ‘Spread out and take positions here,’ she said, continuing as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘Stay concealed and ready for trouble.’

Foerunner’s Palladors obeyed, splitting two-and-two to either side of the gorge, dismounting their steeds and melting back into the hard shadows. Tarion went right without offering further comment, dropping in behind the remains of a stone pillar and nocking a crackling arrow to his bowstring. Neave remained behind the boulders, sinking into a crouch and watching where the road sloped steeply up to the mouth of the gorge.

The storm she had expected the day before had changed direction, moving ahead of them on capricious Aqshyan winds. Its trailing clouds streaked the sky, softening the hot glare of daylight to merely intense. Still, heat already baked off the rocks in waves. Dawn had come barely an hour before. Neave assumed that by midday this region would be viciously hot, and wondered how the peoples of Sigenvale coped.

If the peoples of Sigenvale remained at all, that was.

Nothing moved save a few skittering lizards, and minutes later Neave caught the speck in the sky that was Tarion’s returning eagle. Krien flew on, over their heads as though nothing more than a wild bird of prey, then circled casually down before streaking back along the gorge to alight on Tarion’s gauntlet.

Neave waited as Tarion leant his head close to his eagle’s, locking eyes with the fierce bird. Its plumage glowed with celestial light, and it bobbed its head. Tarion murmured to Krien and the star-eagle made low, guttural sounds in return.

Tarion jogged across to join Neave.

‘Krien sees no foes, just the destruction they have left,’ he said. ‘Our conversations are never what you would call precise, but from what I can garner Sigenvale lies in ruin. That said, just because Krien doesn’t see enemies, doesn’t mean they’re not concealed and waiting in ambush.’

‘The mark could be lurking here,’ said Neave. ‘But it’s doubtful. It is as though my sense of it is dulled by something, some obfuscatory magic or charm. I felt the same at Dunhaven, a warding that interferes with my gifts. I think we should bypass the town and press on. I will know if we overtake the mark, allowing us to double back and surround it here. Otherwise, haste is our ally.’

She caught the subtle frown that Tarion suppressed before it could spread across his face, the slight tensing of his shoulders.

‘You disagree?’ asked Neave.

‘Not that we should make haste,’ said Tarion. ‘But there may be survivors.’

‘You believe they might tell us more of our quarry?’ she asked.

This time, Tarion didn’t try to hide his displeasure. ‘I was more of a mind that if anyone lives in Sigenvale then it is our duty to aid them.’

Neave snorted. ‘Danastus has sent me a bleeding heart, has he?’

‘We are the protectors of all Sigmar’s subjects,’ said Tarion, surprised. ‘We have a duty to these people. We were like them, once, and we would not have wished to be left in the dirt.’

Neave took a breath. Could the mark be here behind some warding veil, ready to spring its trap? She didn’t think so, but the interference with her gifts was maddening. She felt Tarion awaiting her decision. Though they were technically of equal rank, he had joined her hunt, and so by the customs of the Shadowhammers she had primacy. She contemplated ordering that they press on.

‘What if we stop to help a handful of wounded survivors, only for the mark to slaughter another town because we didn’t catch it in time?’ she asked him.

‘What if we aid any survivors here, and then catch up to the quarry in time to stop it hurting anyone else?’ he countered. ‘We are Hammers of Sigmar. Anything short of excellence is failure.’

‘Ah, not a bleeding heart then,’ she said, concealing her irritation at Arlor’s challenge behind a wry smile. ‘An optimist. That’s infinitely more dangerous. Very well, we perform a quick sweep through Sigenvale. Strictly reconnaissance and information gathering. If we locate any survivors, we do what we can for them, but we don’t get bogged down. We move on before Hyshian apogee.’

‘Understood,’ said Tarion, shooting a quick hand-gesture to the Palladors, who remounted their steeds.

‘Kalparius, you take the left flank, Arlor you’re on the right,’ said Neave. ‘We’re hardly inconspicuous, so move fast and keep your eyes open. We’ll meet in the town square, or whatever they have that passes for one. If the mark is here, don’t try to engage alone.’ That’s my job, she thought wryly, knowing she wouldn’t follow her own advice.

‘Krien will circle high and give warning if he sights any threat,’ said Tarion.

So saying, he sent his star-eagle winging up into the shimmering blue. Neave, Tarion and the Palladors climbed the slope to the mouth of the gorge and then split, each following their allotted paths.

As Neave crested the rise, she saw the ruin of Sigenvale. The town lay in a bowl-shaped depression perhaps a mile across and followed a rough grid of streets that cross-hatched the dry bedrock. Neave estimated Sigenvale had consisted of around sixty structures, predominately long, low builds wrought from quarried stone blocks. Their outsides had been painted white to reflect the intense heat, and diaphanous silken awnings had been raised on wooden poles to shelter the streets and rooftops. Gardens had grown on each flat roof, irrigated via capacious moisture traps and sheltered by the silk screens fluttering above. A high wall of dressed and cut stone surrounded the entire settlement, guard-towers dotted along its length with the barrels of Freeguild cannons jutting from their embrasures.

Neave could picture the place as it had been, bustling with weathered frontier-folk and hard-eyed militia.

Now it was a gutted carcass.

An entire section of the wall had been torn down and its sundered stones scattered for dozens of yards. Flyblown corpses were strewn around the breach in such a state of dismemberment that Neave couldn’t tell from this distance how many had actually been slain. The bodies continued inside the walls, as did the destruction. Buildings had been toppled as though by the strike of some huge weapon or the swipe of immense claws. Corpses lay in heaps, the blood slicks around them dry, brown and cracked by the heat.

‘Sigmar’s Hammer,’ breathed Neave. She accelerated into a swift lope that brought her down the slope to the breach in the walls in under a minute. There she slid into the lee of the wall and paused. The ground was blackened, as though fire had washed across it. The edges of the breach were scorched and cracked by heat-damage, and the ghastly corpses of Sigenvale’s defenders were little more than charred meat.

‘Like Dunhaven,’ muttered Neave. She crouched, slipping off both gauntlets and pressing her bare palms to the stone of the wall, and the bedrock of the ground.

Neave regulated her breathing, and allowed her heartbeat to settle into a slow, distant thump. She closed her eyes and focused her superhuman senses.

The stink of blood, gallons of it splattered on every surface and baked dry by the sun. Stone and soil mixed with spilt viscera and faeces. The stench of putrefaction setting in, hastened by the heat.

The sound of the wind through shattered stone and broken glass. A slow creak, something metal shifting in the hot plains’ breeze. The flap of torn silk. The drone of insects.

Vibrations through the bedrock, her allies closing in around the settlement, skittering lizards, the distant tectonic stirring of restive volcanoes.

And something else, a shifting deeper within the ruins of Sigenvale. Something large and heavy, she thought, moving as softly as it could.

Neave replaced her gauntlets and unhitched her helm from her belt, lowering it into place. She unshipped her whirlwind axes and stalked through the rent in Sigenvale’s walls. A street circled the town directly behind the wall, with other roadways radiating in from it like the spokes of a cart wheel, then winding crooked through the low buildings as they made for the town’s heart.

Neave found more bodies scattered here. Many were torn to shreds. Others, she saw, were crushed into pulp, their bones shattered and their flesh burst like split gourds. Most had had their heads torn from their bodies, and Neave was disturbed to note that she couldn’t see most of the missing crania.

The mark didn’t discriminate. It had butchered soldiers and townsfolk alike with equal savagery.

The buildings had suffered as badly as the people. Neave saw walls staved in, doorways ripped from hinges and lying dozens of yards away, great gouges torn from them. A glance inside the nearest structure made her wish she hadn’t. A larger humanoid figure huddled protectively over several smaller beings. That was all the identification she could make, as they had all been burned black, their remains melting to fuse with the wall and floor of the gutted structure.

Neave shuddered, then was still as she felt again the heavy shifting from deeper within the town. As the mournful wind moaned through the ruins, Neave felt her hackles rise. She turned away from what had once been a home and prowled deeper into the town.

A movement on high caught Neave’s attention and her grip tensed on her axes, but it was nothing more than the hot winds stirring a tattered awning overhead. She felt the pressure wave that rolled ahead of Kalparius’ Palladors, sweeping in through the town from her left. It was like a localised storm front, and Neave picked up her pace. Whatever she felt lurking here, it couldn’t fail to note the Palladors’ arrival.

Sure enough, she felt that heavy shifting again, more urgent now. Flies rose in buzzing clouds as Neave jogged down the street and rounded a corner past an overturned wagon. She groped for the sense of her mark, but the sensation was maddeningly vague.

‘Could be here, could be miles away,’ she muttered. ‘Wherever it is, I’d dearly like to know how it’s interfering with my gifts from Sigmar.’

Metal screeched against metal beyond the next row of buildings, and Neave envisioned wreckage being thrust aside. She sensed the Palladors closing in from the left and Tarion, an ozone tinge and crackle of power, moving in from the right. If the mark was here, she thought, it was just around the next corner and they were about to converge upon it as one.

Then Krien swooped low overhead and gave a piercing cry. That was enough to propel Neave into a full sprint, dust-devils whirling up in her wake as she accelerated down the body-strewn street. She wove around the tumbled wreckage of awning poles, flipped neatly over the flapping tangle of silk that clung to them, then slid to a halt behind the corner of the last building before the town square. She leaned around the shattered stonework, perceiving something huge moving at increasing speed across the open space. There came a snarl and – taking in a dark, scaly hide and long, hooked claws – Neave accelerated into a charge.

The beast must have weighed several tons and was all muscle and belligerence. Emerging from a ruined storehouse on the south side of the square, it hulked like a Stardrake at the shoulders, while its lantern-jawed head was set low between a quartet of powerful forelimbs. Its cluster of reptilian eyes swivelled in Neave’s direction and a hook-clawed arm swept out.

Neave was faster. Sliding under the blow at the speed of a galloping gryph-charger, she scissored her axe-blades through the monster’s wrist and neatly severed its hand. Neave rose from the slide and ducked under the huge creature’s jaw, spinning as she went and hacking both blades up through its throat.

Black gore spurted, and Neave slid free on her back, using the last of her momentum to perform a neat backward roll and coming back to her feet facing the beast.

It staggered, gore spilling from the ragged wound in its neck. The beast let out a gurgling roar, more blood spraying from its crocodilian maw, and doggedly tried to pursue her. Krien streaked in front of the monster’s eyes, causing it to rear back and, as it did, a trio of Tarion’s crackling arrows whistled down to thump into its chest.

The monster gave a snarl as lightning tore through its body, then stumbled as it tried to wheel again. At that moment the Palladors swept into the square from the opposite end and, not even slowing, bore down upon the creature with their javelins lowered like lances.

Foerunner and his cavalrymen hit the beast like a hammer blow. It swung two of its taloned limbs to ward them off, but Neave watched, impressed, as one rider leaned back in his saddle to evade the blow while the other leapt his steed clear over the hurtling limb.

The monster staggered, bewildered, bleeding in rivers, then sagged. Neave hefted one of her axes and hurled it. The weapon spun end over end and crunched home between the monster’s eyes. It gave a last burbling groan, then toppled onto its face.

Neave stood for a moment, head cocked to one side, waiting.

‘It was not the mark,’ she said, unsurprised as she felt her dim sense of her prey remain unchanged.

‘That much was obvious,’ said Tarion, landing nearby. ‘This thing didn’t cause all that death and devastation.’

‘It didn’t unleash any sort of fire, either,’ said Neave. ‘Whatever we’re hunting, he, she or it has burned half this town black.’

‘Corpsejaw,’ said Foerunner, cantering back around on his gryph-charger. The half-avian steed clacked its beak in disgust. ‘They’re a local scavenger species. Saw them during the purge of the Chamrian Hills. Our friend here didn’t do this, he just moved in and started scavenging once the dust settled.’

‘I think he’s the only thing that was left alive here,’ said Neave. ‘We move on.’

Arlor nodded grimly. ‘This was wasted time,’ he said. ‘My apologies, Lady Blacktalon.’

‘Not necessary,’ replied Neave. ‘For one thing, the devastation here is more extreme than in Dunhaven. That was bad, but there’s more fury now, more ferocity.’

‘As though the mark is gathering pace,’ mused Tarion.

‘As though the more carnage it wreaks, the more dangerous it becomes,’ said Neave.

‘Do you believe that we seek an it, not a he or she?’ asked Foerunner. His Palladors had gathered behind him and watched the approaches to the square intently.

‘If the mark is a being like you or I, then either they are employing some manner of weapons I cannot fathom, or ride upon some dire beast,’ said Neave. ‘No warrior’s blade caused the massive wounds and destruction we’ve seen here. The ground is hard, but rock and stone both bear the imprint of tracks, something with long talons and the weight to drive them deep.’

‘The entire town looks as though a feral gryph-hound got loose in a pyklin enclosure,’ said Tarion. ‘This was a rampage, a slaughter wrought by something that attacked everything that moved as though on instinct.’

‘Murderously thorough, though,’ said Neave. ‘And it must have happened shockingly fast. I haven’t seen a single body beyond the walls, have you?’

‘No one had time to flee,’ said Foerunner.

‘The mark can obfuscate my sense of its presence, is possessed of murderous strength and unholy weapons, and we must assume that it can move every bit as fast as we can. I believe that even as we hunt this thing, we risk being hunted in turn.’

A moment of silence settled across the Stormcast Eternals as they considered this. The wind sighed miserably through the baking-hot streets. Flies danced. Silk flapped from broken poles like grave markers.

Then, far to the west, something rose into the cloud-scattered sky and detonated in a crimson starburst. Another projectile sailed up after it, spreading another slowly fading bloom of red light and smoke against the tattered storm clouds. As the sky-fires burst, Neave felt dread settle like a lead weight on her heart. She knew what they meant even before Tarion spoke.

‘Flares, from Iron Despot,’ said Tarion.

‘Signalling for aid.’

‘No. Combat,’ said Tarion. ‘They’ve engaged.’

Dunhaven and Sigenvale lay butchered already. Neave wondered if the same was about to happen again.

‘Move,’ said Neave, determined to ensure that it did not, and broke into a run. Her comrades followed. The Hammers of Sigmar left the corpse of Sigenvale behind them to rot in the fierce heat.

The Stormcasts had been on the move for almost four hours, maintaining a swift pace as the baked earth and tough grass of the plains transformed into cracked stone, basalt outcroppings and sheer-sided chasms. Now, with the storm clouds thickening above and a misty, blood-warm rain falling, they were nearing Brimstone Lake. Neave could see the land rising like a clenched fist before them, forming a rocky headland that jutted out over the churning waters. Fumes rose from the vast lake, and an acrid stench hung on the air.

Beyond, the rising mass of the nearest volcano was now clearly visible, only a few miles distant, black fumes boiling up from its caldera to mingle with the storm clouds. The rest of the chain marched away westwards at its back, and Neave sincerely hoped that they caught up to their quarry before it could vanish into that savage region.

‘More flares,’ called Tarion from above.

‘I see them,’ replied Neave. ‘White smoke.’

Tarion’s face hardened. ‘They have ceased combat. According to Danastus’ briefing, white smoke is their appeal for aid. This is their last resort.’

‘What manner of thing could threaten a cogfort single-handed?’ wondered Neave aloud.

‘The flares rose from the southern bank of the lake, near the foot of the volcano,’ called Tarion. ‘The hunt moves ahead.’

‘And we must yet again dash to catch up,’ snarled Neave, frustrated. ‘We halted at Sigenvale to offer mercy to ghosts while the living go to their graves ahead of us. If Iron Despot falls, Arlor, it will be because you slowed my hunt.’

‘Lady Blacktalon, I–’

‘Save your words, only actions matter now,’ snapped Neave, increasing her pace and leaving Tarion to flounder in her wake.

They passed the headland, and Neave saw the deep tread-marks of the cogfort sunk into the bedrock. She could see its trail where it had stomped down from the north, the deeper indentations where it had settled its weight and awaited their arrival, and the more ragged gouges in the stone that suggested acceleration as it had moved away south and west along the bank of the lake. It would hardly take skill like Neave’s to follow such a track. She saw, as well, a few telltale talon marks like those she had spotted at Dunhaven and in Sigenvale.

‘It looks as though they gave chase,’ called Neave. She caught the sound of distant booms, rolling through the misty veil.

‘Cannon fire,’ said Foerunner.

The sounds of combat grew closer as they dashed along the edge of the lake. Neave’s frustration redoubled as whatever was occurring remained veiled from her sight. Down here by the lake, a mixture of reeking mist, sheets of rain and the sulphurous fumes rolling from the volcano conspired to drop visibility to a few dozen feet. The Stormcasts were forced to slow lest they run headlong into sudden danger.

Tarion dropped low so that he flew just above his comrades’ heads, Krien tucking in close on his wing. The Palladors spread out to either flank, remaining wholly corporeal.

Neave motioned for silence. The mark must surely be close, and she could feel heavy vibrations rolling through the bedrock. A mighty flash lit the haze ahead. The sound of an explosion rolled over them, muffled by the mists and rain, and the ground convulsed.

Neave and her comrades pressed on, towards whatever catastrophe had occurred. Neave thought she knew, but she wanted to confirm it with her own eyes.

The mists proved deceptive, warping distances. Tension built in Neave’s chest as she and her companions pressed forward. Her nerves sang with a sense of peril. Lightning crackled through the clouds above and reached down to form phantom trees of light that stretched between the lake and the skies. Thunder rumbled, and Neave cursed the sound as its echoes rolled over her. Between the increasing wrath of the storm, the throaty rumble of the volcano looming above them and the muffling veils of vapour, even her senses were of little more use than those of a mortal hunter.

It was like being smothered. Was this how mortals lived all the time, so unsure of what lay around the next corner, behind the next scad of cloud or veil of smoke? Was this how she had once lived?

Then, quite suddenly, the mist and fumes parted.

‘By Sigendil’s light,’ gasped one of the Palladors.

Neave’s reprimand to him for breaking the silence died on her lips as she absorbed the sight that lay before her. She had seen a cogfort once before, stalking towards an unknown horizon. She knew how this one should look: an ironclad fortress with thick, armoured towers rising from within a central wall. Cannons and fire-throwers jutting from hatches all over its superstructure. Firesteps thronging with Freeguild soldiery, dark glass filling the portholes of the command bridge high above, proud banners and thaumatransferric veins rising above its conical slate roof. And the legs – the eight huge, articulated cogwork legs with their steam conduits and hydraulic supports and complex webs of cables that kept them rising and falling with the same fastidious gait as some immense spider.

Iron Despot barely resembled that proud memory. The machine lay on its side at the rocky base of the volcano, three legs torn away entirely. The rest tangled around it, so much oil-slicked wreckage. The fall had sundered the fortress, splitting its flanks like overripe fruit and allowing segments of pipework, decking and mechanical innards to spill out. The incongruous details were the most horrifying: half a wooden stairway jutting proud here, a bent and buckled mess-table protruding there with scraps of food still smeared across its surface. Neave saw talon-marks in the metal of the cogfort’s shattered walls, and here and there a gouge in the hard stone upon which it lay.

Corpses lay around the cogfort where the fall had hurled them. Others sprawled amidst the ruins, just as bloodied, just as dead.

Neave cast a glance around, straining her senses to their limits to detect any threat.

Tarion landed beside her and placed a gauntlet upon her shoulder. Neave shrugged his hand away angrily and gestured at the carnage that surrounded them. She stared hard into his eyes and saw that he caught her meaning.

This is your fault, her stare said. Your insistence on delay left us too late to intervene. She saw pain in his eyes and realised that Arlor already knew and owned that guilt. He bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement, then gestured here and there amidst the ruin. Neave realised he was drawing her attention to the flames that crawled across the wreckage. They were white-hot, sizzling with an unnatural intensity and chewing away at metal and rock as happily as flesh and wood.

The fires still burned, she realised. The mark could not long have lit them.

She held up a clenched fist, ordering her comrades to halt and maintain their position in the shadow of the fort. They obeyed, drawing into a tight armoured circle and keeping watch into the mists.

Neave surveyed the fallen fort a second time, forcing herself to start again, dispassionate, taking in every detail. The shores of the lake lay just yards away, and she realised from the angle at which the cogfort lay, and the tracks still visible around its shattered bulk, that it had been backing towards the water when it fell. The lake’s muddy banks were churned into an oil-streaked stew where one of the cogfort’s legs must have taken a swiping step and slipped over the mud. It looked as though they were trying to back into the lake itself.

A desperate plan.

Neave spotted one of the missing cogwork legs, lying some distance away. She took note of the deep gouges in the leg, the snapped cables and twisted stubs of metal. It had been ripped clean off.

The fort’s upper towers had broken across the rocky slopes of the volcano itself, several landing perilously close to rents that split its dark skin, glowing with hellish light and belching thick clouds of smoke. The heat from the rents had melted the wrecked superstructure and burned several human corpses that had been flung from the highest spires.

Tarion leaned close to Neave and murmured in her ear. ‘We should give chase, before the mark gets away again. I could not bear the weight of further deaths upon my conscience. Have you a sense of its location?’

Neave closed her eyes and reached out. She ignored the crackle of flames and the groan of stressed metal, the stench of sulphur and brimstone that billowed from the bubbling lake and from the slopes above. Lightning exploded above them with a volley of dry cracks. Thunder bellowed. Neave barely heard them, focusing her attention upon the mark.

‘Not everyone on that cogfort can have died in the crash,’ she whispered to Tarion. ‘The mark has been thorough, again. It left no man nor duardin alive. Even if it is large and powerful enough to massacre settlements and drag down a cogfort, that must have taken it some time. It can’t have gone… far…’

Neave’s eyes snapped open. Every fibre of her being burned with an adrenal surge of warning. She looked again at the muddy shore of the lake, where the cogfort’s rear limb had taken a single, swiping step. Where it had reduced the ground to a mangled mess in which no tracks would show.

Where the shallows boiled like a cauldron.

‘It’s still here,’ she hissed.

The surface of the lake exploded as something vast erupted from its depths.

The thing was as much forged brass and black iron as it was wet muscle, taut sinew and exposed bone spars. It was massive, taller at the shoulder than a Dreadfort wall and built so heavily that it was as though a fortress had mutated and come to predatory life. Neave caught sight of blazing furnace eyes and razor-sharp brass teeth in its hound-like head, a massive collar of spiked brass that encircled its neck, talons the size of battering rams and an armoured body into whose flanks were cut deep rents. Furious fiery light shone from those rib-like gaps, and as the abomination burst from the sizzling waters, black fumes belched out of them as though from the stacks of an Ironweld factory.

Despite its immense size and heavy metallic body, the beast moved blisteringly fast. It covered the ground to the Stormcasts before they had so much as drawn breath and swept a massive foreclaw through their ranks.

Neave leapt straight up, backflipping over the brass claw as it swept below her like some baroque siege engine. Tarion shot past her, taking to the air like a streak of lightning. The Palladors were less fortunate, two of their number failing to wyndshift away in time. Blood sprayed. Torn flesh rained down as the monster’s talon obliterated its victims, sending the sundered corpses of two gryph-chargers bouncing and rolling to a stop amidst the wreckage of the fort.

Two bolts of lightning arced skyward, Stormcast souls rushing back to the heavens to be Reforged.

Neave landed with catlike grace and found herself immediately on the defensive. No time to mourn the fallen, but time enough to let their deaths stoke her anger, adrenaline and speed. She leapt back from another hurtling claw swipe, then rolled aside as the monster’s jaws clanged shut where she had lain a split second before. Neave managed to lash out with her whirlwind axes as she rolled back to her feet; sparks rained down as they clanged from the abomination’s metal skull to no appreciable effect.

‘It’s some form of accursed daemon engine,’ barked Tarion.

‘It’s immense,’ cried Neave, weaving aside again as the monster slammed a claw into the ground with enough force to crack the bedrock. ‘Like a Khornate Flesh Hound grew to the size of a living castle! How did such a thing come to be?’ Sulphurous waters were still boiling away from its slick muscle-and-metal body, creating a choking cloud of steam that mingled with the black smoke churning from the thing’s insides.

A volley of crackling bolts whipped in from the side, peppering the armour around one of the daemon hound’s eyes and causing it to recoil with a growl like a furnace door being thrown open. Neave didn’t waste time thanking Kalparius and his remaining Pallador – she just took the momentary opening and accelerated away from the beast.

Crackling arrows streaked down as Tarion drew and loosed, drew and loosed far faster than any mortal warrior could have. The lightning-wreathed shafts impacted along the beast’s spine in blasts of white light. Neave cursed as she realised that, again, the attacks had done as good as nothing. Her eyes danced across its mountainous form as it moved, seeking weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Its armour plates looked utterly impervious to anything short of sustained cannon fire, and clearly even that hadn’t availed the cogfort. Perhaps the wet muscle and sinew that entwined its limbs, she thought.

Then the engine opened its jaws wide with a terrible shriek of hinging metal. Phosphorous flame leapt within its gullet.

‘Arlor, get clear,’ yelled Neave, in the instant before a spear of white-hot flame roared up from the daemon hound’s throat. Tarion had seen the threat coming, yet the engine moved with the speed of an onrushing avalanche. He barely managed to weave aside, crying out in pain as searing flames licked up the right side of his body. Neave saw the Knight-Venator’s armour catch light, and his crystal wing-veins crack in the intense heat. What kind of hellish fires could catch in forged sigmarite? thought Neave with growing horror. Surely this gigantic abomination must have been loosed from Khorne’s own daemonic forges, to possess such hideous gifts.

Tarion spiralled away, smoke boiling from his scorched form, and Krien gave a desolate cry.

‘Foerunner, attract the abomination’s attention,’ shouted Neave. ‘I’m going to try for its living flesh.’

Kalparius shot Neave a salute and spurred his gryph-charger, gesturing for his remaining warrior to follow his lead. The two Palladors rode hard, straight at the daemon hound, and lightning cracked overhead as they unleashed another salvo of boltstorm shots. Crackling blasts burst across the monster’s face and it gave a howl of fury before loosing another pyrotechnic blast from its maw. The Palladors wyndshifted out of the path of the searing beam, and it bored a blazing rent in the flank of the fallen cogfort.

Blacktalon seized upon the hound’s moment of distraction. She ran up a sloping armour plate that had broken away from the cogfort’s superstructure and leapt, axes raised high, sailing through the air and slamming down on the monster’s back. Neave buried both axes into a huge clump of flensed muscle that bunched and corded along the hound’s brass spine. Molten ichor sprayed, spattering her armour and faceplate and hissing as it warped the sigmarite.

Neave had an instant to be grateful she was wearing her helm, before the daemon hound bucked underneath her. She had half hoped its fury might make it insensible to her presence. Instead, the beast twisted and snarled, shaking its massive body left and right and almost dislodging her. Worse, Neave could feel furnace heat rapidly building, radiating up from the monster’s metal skin and through the soles of her armoured feet.

She couldn’t run with burned feet, she thought, and she couldn’t fight if she couldn’t run. This close, she could hear the daemon engine’s mechanical innards thundering away like some pandemoniac factory. She was surrounded by black smoke that choked her lungs and fouled her vision. She realised that, for all her speed and huntress’ instincts, she didn’t even know where to begin to try to bring down a monster so vast and strange.

Knowing she couldn’t remain still any longer, Neave ripped her axes free and began to run along the creature’s back towards the nape of its neck. She recalled seeing a great mass of muscle and sinew bunched between its shoulder blades. Perhaps, if she broke enough of those connections, she could behead the beast? For a second, she questioned what would happen if she couldn’t, but then crushed the notion down. Panic lay that way, and the realisation that if this thing slew them all, it would have free rein to continue its slaughter.

How many more lives would be lost if they failed here? How much more death would be laid upon their shoulders?

Neave made it ten paces before the daemon hound bucked again, footfalls pounding the bedrock as it turned a maddened half-circle trying to dislodge her. Neave’s balance and agility were superb, and she rode out the violent motion, hacking her axes into every visible fleshy substructure as she passed. Boiling ichor spurted in her wake, but the wounds seemed only to increase her mark’s fury.

The hillock of wet muscle rose ahead of Neave and she saw a webwork of capillary-strung tendons stretched like hawser cables between it and the brazen collar that encircled the beast’s neck. Pivoting on the balls of her feet to avoid being thrown loose again, Neave spun and swung her axes in a vicious arc. Their blades met the nearest tendon and rebounded as though they had struck a castle wall. Neave felt a moment’s horror. She had never seen anything resist her blades so completely.

The daemon hound chose that moment to wrench itself sideways, slamming bodily against the crumpled cogfort. Already off balance from the unexpected deflection of her axes, Neave was thrown from her feet and felt a sickening lurch in the pit of her stomach as she plunged over the hound’s shoulder and down to hit the ground at its feet.

Neave managed to control her fall, but only barely. She landed on one shoulder and rolled, hissing at the jarring pain that shot through her arm and down her back. She turned the roll into a rising start and began to run, but the hound slammed a claw down and managed to clip Neave’s leg. There came a tearing of metal, a crunch of bone and a vicious stab of agony, and Neave crashed down on her face. Fury and despair warred within her at the thought that she was about to be slain, that this abomination was about to best her and be freed to continue its slaughter. She was about to fail Sigmar for the first time, and the thought appalled her.

Neave rolled onto her back in time to see Kalparius and his surviving Pallador riding hard at the hound, shooting as they went.

They were trying to buy her time, Neave knew. But the blow to the head had stunned her momentarily, and with her shattered leg, she simply couldn’t move fast enough.

Tons of metal and roaring fire rushed overhead as the beast lunged, bounding right over Neave to swat the remaining Pallador through the air. His body hit the waters of the lake and sank like a stone, before his soul flashed up from the surface in a geyser of steam.

Kalparius was, if anything, less fortunate still. He hauled his gryph-charger into a hard turn, trying to weave between the hound’s legs to reach Neave. Impossibly fast, the hound’s muzzle darted down and its jaws clanged shut, taking Foerunner’s head from his shoulders with shocking precision. A second bite a moment later sliced the Pallador’s steed clean in half, the gryph-charger shrieking its last even as Kalparius’ soul shot heavenwards.

‘We’ve failed,’ breathed Neave through a haze of pain. ‘We’ve failed. Damn this monster.’

The thought was utterly unacceptable and, spurred by a fresh burst of rage and determination, Neave hauled herself into a crouch. She looked up at the underbelly of the beast, seeing more ironwork, bone, muscle and brass. Circular metal hatches were built into the creature’s torso, all but obscured by black smoke and bound shut with brass chains. They had unholy runic sigils etched into them, Chaos designs that stung Neave’s eyes worse than the smoke.

Were the hatches there to allow access? They couldn’t be. Not if they were chained from the outside. They must be hatches behind which something was bound, then.

She had no more time for thought, as the daemon hound circled with pounding footfalls and prepared to attack her again. Neave forced herself to stand, pain screaming through the broken bones in her right leg, and held her axes down and out to either side, blades glinting. The monster’s face drew level with her own, furnace eyes burning, hot breath gusting around her. Neave stared back, unflinching. She felt disgust and defiance as she locked eyes with the immense beast, and sudden scorn. It was so powerful, so unbelievably mighty, yet it did naught but destroy like a mindless beast. If this was all that the Dark Gods had to offer, they might well wreak a trail of destruction across the realms, but no amount of unholy strength would prevent Sigmar’s armies from winning this war in the end.

‘You can kill me now,’ she said. ‘But I will come for you again and again, and in the end it is you who will fall.’

She’d died before.

She knew its wrench.

She prepared herself for the wash of pain.

A storm of arrows whistled down and peppered the monster’s muzzle. Explosions of lightning drove its head aside, before a shrieking crimson comet shot down and raked glowing talons across the beast’s left eye.

The daemon hound reared back with a roar so loud that Neave could feel her ears bleeding. Beyond the beast, perched upon a wrecked spar of cogfort battlement, she saw Tarion beckoning her. He pointed at the shadowy rent in the fort’s flank below his position.

Neave summoned as much speed as she could on her mangled leg. Every footfall was blinding pain, but she kept moving, and as the hound came after her Tarion drove it back with another volley of shots to the face. Krien spiralled past, causing the maddened daemon hound to lash out with a massive claw. The star-eagle spiralled up and away, giving a mocking shriek as he shot towards the storm clouds above.

Neave lunged up a metal slope, footfalls clanging, and threw herself into the darkened interior of the fort. She heard a rush of metal and a thunderous impact behind her and was spilled from her feet as the fortress shook. Looking back, Neave saw one blazing eye staring at her through the rent in the fort’s flank, then it was replaced by the hound’s yawning jaws.

‘Oh no, no, no, no…’ gasped Neave as she dragged herself along the wall of the tilted corridor and fell desperately through a buckled doorway that yawned surreally in the ‘floor’. Neave slid out of control down a ruptured deck and crunched into the heap of wreckage that had piled up against the chamber’s far wall. She cried out in pain as the bones in her leg ground together.

Then came fire, filling the doorway with white-hot light. Neave felt the heat from the blast, even thirty feet down, and saw the metal of the door frame glow and begin to drip molten gobbets.

Then the fire was gone.

There came another thunderous clang, then another. A metallic snarl carried through the fort’s hull, and the structure shook around Neave as it suffered another thunderous blow.

‘For once, I am the cornered prey,’ she murmured. Neave heard the tortured shriek of metal, then another blow shook the chamber. Junked furniture and discarded weapons shifted beneath her.

‘Neave!’ She heard Tarion’s voice, distant, echoing through the cogfort. His cry was answered by a muffled howl from outside and another ripping sound.

Concentrating on the echoes of Tarion’s voice, Neave hauled herself across the drift of wreckage and through another door that had burst open in the chamber’s sloping wall. She found herself in a shrine to Sigmar, with a high ceiling and an altar that had fallen and smashed against a pane of stained glass. Spars of rock jutted up through the shattered window, and bits of broken glass twinkled, their representation of Sigmar fractured into a hundred pieces.

‘Neave, where are you?’ She heard Tarion again, closer, his voice tight with controlled panic. She began to scale the pews that had been bolted to the metal floor. Neave found bodies amongst the pews, broken and dangling where they had knelt in prayer before the end. A couple of soldiers, what looked like an alchemist of some sort, and a figure she was relatively sure was the fort’s cook.

Neave climbed on and, grabbing both sides of the doorframe in what was now the ceiling, she hauled herself up into another skewed corridor. There were more bodies here, Freeguild soldiers lying with their necks broken and bodies mangled by the fall. Fire had swept along it, and Neave saw that it had issued from the fort’s secondary engine room – a metal plate was bolted to the wall, its blackened lettering still just visible in the half-light that fell through small rents in the hull. A duardin lay beneath it, his Ironweld garb a blackened and bloody mess.

The fort shook again, and a howl of rage echoed from outside. Something heavy thumped down at the other end of the corridor, and Neave spun, axes raised.

‘Tarion,’ she said quietly, her voice tinged with relief. The Knight-Venator hastened to meet her, his cracked wings tucked close. She could see from the way he moved that he was in significant pain. His armour was fused and melted down one side.

‘Your leg,’ he said.

‘Broken,’ she replied. ‘Nothing I cannot ignore until the job’s done. You look worse.’

‘I am not dead yet,’ said Tarion, and to Neave’s surprise he shot her a lopsided grin. She felt herself respond in kind.

‘We soon will be if we cannot come up with a way to defeat this beast,’ said Neave, keeping her voice pitched low. There came another rending clang from somewhere close, shaking the corridor and causing oil to spatter down through rents in the wall.

‘Its hide seems proof against our weapons,’ said Tarion. ‘Direct assault isn’t going to work, not with two of us. It’d take an army to bring that thing down.’

‘I could distract it and allow you to make a break for freedom, but it wouldn’t do us any good,’ said Neave. ‘That damned collar around its neck, it’s thick with Khornate runes. Wards against magic of every sort. I would bet my blades that’s what’s been interfering with my gifts, obscuring the beast from my sight. If we lost it here, by the time we tracked it down again it could have an army rallied behind it.’

‘I was not for a moment suggesting that one of us flee for aid,’ said Tarion, and Neave realised he was affronted. ‘I meant only that we need to come up with another way to defeat the beast.’

The cogfort shook violently, and there came a tearing of metal. Daylight spilled into the corridor as the section housing the secondary boiler room tore backwards and away. The duardin corpse slithered bonelessly out of the hole, and the daemon hound’s furious visage filled the ragged gap in the corridor’s end.

‘Move,’ urged Neave, and both she and Tarion dashed along the corridor as fast as they could go. Neave felt pain ripping up through her mangled leg. She gritted her teeth and ignored the trail of blood she left behind her as she limped along. Again, the fort shook, and another chunk of superstructure tore away behind them as massive claws ripped through it.

‘We can’t hurt it with our weapons, we don’t have the numbers to overwhelm it,’ said Tarion as they ducked through a hatchway into what looked like a destroyed map room. ‘What else do we have to work with? Did you see any weaknesses, any hints at how to bring it down?’

‘The tendons around its neck looked promising, but they’re tougher than forged steel,’ said Neave as they lurched across the shaking chamber and scrambled up a heap of wreckage and corpses to reach the hatch above. ‘Its underbelly. There are hatches in its underbelly, chained shut,’ she exclaimed.

‘What if, even after we break the chains, whatever is in there does not care to vacate?’ asked Tarion. ‘That’s a powerful second skin it’s wearing. Would you give up armour that destructive?’

They reached the top of the stairwell only to find their passage blocked by an iron hatch. It had crumpled in its frame, something huge and heavy buckling the wall beside it. Tarion and Neave gripped it and tried between them to wrench it open. The hatch started to give with a groan, but wouldn’t shift any further.

‘Damnation,’ spat Neave, thumping one fist against the wall. Behind them, they heard the shriek and groan of metal tearing. Smoke billowed up through the stairwell.

‘It’s going to flush us, then burn us,’ said Tarion.

Neave snapped her head around to stare at him. ‘Tarion, that’s brilliant,’ she said.

‘It… what?’ he replied.

‘I’ll lead the mark,’ she said. ‘You get airborne, shadow us, and when I signal–’

The wall of the corridor tore inwards, huge metal talons raking through it as easily as though it were paper. Neave ducked, snarling in pain as a talon-tip raked a furrow through the back-plate of her armour. Tarion gave a yell of alarm as he was caught up in the mangled mass of metal and wood and ripped out of the cogfort’s corridor.

‘Tarion!’ yelled Neave, scrambling up through the rent, grabbing buckled pipes and severed girders as she dragged herself onto the cogfort’s outer skin. She saw the hound had clambered halfway up onto the wreck. It had Tarion trapped within its curled talons and was raising him towards its enormous maw.

Neave hobbled as fast as she could towards the beast, mind racing as she tried to figure out a way to get Tarion free. She saw a sudden crackle of light, and then the monster’s talons were blown open in a thunderous flash. Tarion was flung away, plunging off the side of the cogfort and vanishing from sight.

Neave had no time to work out what had happened, and no choice but to hope that her comrade was alive, and that he had understood and was capable of following her plan.

She would have to trust Tarion. The thought made her uncomfortable, but at this point it was their best chance.

Neave’s darting eyes quickly picked out the best route off the side of the cogfort. She moved as fast as she could, ignoring the jarring pain that shot up her leg, clambering and slithering between the buckled plates and jutting spars before lurching along the inside of the fort’s lower rampart and dropping ten feet to the bedrock. A gasp of pain escaped her, but Neave kept moving.

‘Come on, you mindless abomination,’ she muttered as she set off up the volcano’s slope. ‘You’ve hunted down every living thing that’s crossed your path since I’ve been on your trail. Don’t tell me you’re getting lazy now.’

Neave was rewarded by a tectonic thump behind her, the impact so hard it made dirt jump from the bedrock and almost spilled her from her feet. She didn’t need to look back to know that the beast was chasing her; the ominous sound of rumbling furnaces, screeching metal and iron clangour told her everything she needed to know.

Neave ran as fast as she could, accelerating as swiftly as she dared on her shattered leg. She controlled the tight fear that tried to constrict her chest and force its way up her throat, the tinge of dread between her shoulder blades where she expected the monster’s claws to smash down any second. She determinedly shut out the agony that shot up through her thigh, into her hip, then up into her spine, growing worse with every footfall. She knew by the end of this mission the limb was going to be so badly ruined that they’d be forced to reforge her anyway, even if she survived.

Neave kept running, right through pain that would have rendered a mortal warrior unconscious. She climbed the slope, up through veils of smoke and fume, and as she went a fiery glow spread before her. She was closing in on the rents she had seen in the volcano’s flanks. She just had to hope that her mark didn’t catch her before–

A shriek of warning sounded from above, and Neave threw herself sideways with a silent surge of gratitude to Krien. She rolled behind a basalt outcrop just as white-hot fire billowed around her. It blazed furiously, and Neave swore as she felt her armour heating up.

The fiery blast swept away the vapours. Just upslope from her position, Neave saw the vents yawning wide and molten hot.

‘One last effort,’ she snarled through gritted teeth, but doubts clamoured in her mind. What if Tarion was already dead, and she just hadn’t seen his soul escape? What if he hadn’t fully understood the plan? What if he simply let her down?

Neave shut the clamour down, cutting off the voices of panic as though she had dropped a portcullis before them.

‘He’s out there and he’ll do his duty,’ she told herself. ‘He’s a damned Hammer of Sigmar. Besides, if I stay here any longer my armour’s going to melt and scald me to death anyway.’

With that, Neave bunched her muscles and launched herself into a desperate charge. She pounded upslope, staying in the lee of the boulder as long as she could. The beast’s fiery breath still washed around her, but it was jolting as the hound charged up the slope to run her to ground. Expending every iota of her focus and skill, Neave wove through the firestorm, still accelerating, knowing she had to be moving fast enough or it would all be for naught.

Metal pounded on stone behind her.

Fire washed around her in a furious tide.

Pain rolled through her in a nauseating storm.

The chasm yawned suddenly at her feet and, with a scream of effort and a last burst of speed, Neave leapt. As she pushed off on her left foot she spun so that she revolved over the hellish glare of the lava below and passed through the unbearable heatwash in a pirouette. Sure enough, the hound was almost on top of her, bounding closer in vast strides.

Neave had one chance. She drew back her arm and, sighting through the blistering heat haze, she hurled an axe with all her might.

She hit bedrock beyond the chasm shoulders first, and the breath was driven from her body. At the same moment, her axe spun end over end through the air and struck the chained hatch in the hound’s underbelly. Crimson sparks exploded as the chain was severed and Neave’s axe ricocheted away. The daemon hound, still ploughing forwards with all the momentum of an ironclad avalanche, reared to step over the rent. As it did so, the unchained hatch buckled as though struck from within, and then exploded open.

Light burst outwards, tinged in the impossible hues of insanity, and Neave gritted her teeth as a deranged howl erupted from the open hatch. Through a haze of pain and heat she saw something writhing, an ephemeral presence formed from swirling energy that seemed torn between bursting free, or drawing back into the hound’s shell like a startled sea creature.

The daemon hound’s foreclaws slammed down on Neave’s side of the rent, hard enough to send cracks radiating through the bedrock. The huge engine hesitated, its smouldering muzzle just feet from Neave, its fiery eyes flickering with the indecision of the entity bound within.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as the shimmering colours sucked back into the torn remains of the hatch, and fire billowed anew in the creature’s maw. It had been a desperate plan to begin with…

Tarion swept out of the smoke above the rent, his star-forged arrow crackling upon his bowstring. The Knights-Venator could summon these mighty projectiles only rarely, but they struck with the unleashed fury of a thousand thunderbolts.

Now, Tarion loosed his straight down into the exposed heart of the volcano. Neave grinned wolfishly up at the looming monster, and an instant later a thunderblast ripped through the depths of the rent. Primordial wrath and celestial fury raced outwards, mingling with the natural ferocity of the Realm of Fire. In any other realm, such a plan might have come to naught, but the volcanoes of Aqshy were proud and passionate entities, and their wrath was easily triggered. Tarion’s arrow was more than enough.

The ground convulsed, and an almighty blast of molten rock and searing flame jetted up from the rent. It struck the hound’s underbelly, and Neave heard an ululating shriek of outrage as gallons of molten magma funnelled up through the hatch to spew into the engine’s heart.

The daemon hound convulsed. Neave squirmed backwards on her elbows and heels, leaving a blood trail across the rock. The monster’s eyes blazed orange-white, and for an instant it looked almost shocked, before the brass plates of its muzzle deformed and exploded outwards like an obscene flower blooming. Fire and spinning chunks of metal rained around Neave, who rolled onto her front and scrambled as best she could away from the explosion.

She heard furious blasts rippling behind her, the snap of tensed cables letting go, the scream and moan of melting metal and something unnatural and monstrous being hurled out of the mortal plains and into realms beyond the sight of living things.

She threw herself forwards as the ground shook again, and rolled over in time to see the hound’s huge claws dragging deep furrows through the rock as its gutted carcass slid backwards into the rent. There came a final blast of volcanic fury, a crashing and rending of mechanical destruction and a billowing cloud of black smoke, then the hound was gone.

Neave’s sense of her mark vanished at the same moment.

Utterly exhausted, mind swimming with pain, she slumped back on the hot, hard rock of the volcano’s flank and allowed herself to pass out.

Some hours later, Neave and Tarion stood upon the bank of Brimstone Lake, their armour battered and blackened, their flesh burned and raw. Neave’s leg was splinted with metal and bandages salvaged from within the cogfort, and they had dressed Tarion’s burns as best they could. Krien sat nearby, ripping busily into something small, furry and unfortunate that he had caught amongst the rocks of the upper slopes.

‘That could have been us,’ said Neave, nodding at the bird’s bloody meal.

‘Your plan worked, though, Lady Blacktalon,’ said Tarion approvingly.

‘Neave,’ she said. ‘I think we’re past titles, don’t you?’

‘Neave,’ repeated Tarion with a smile.

‘I’ve never faced something that was a deadlier predator than myself,’ said Neave, shaking her head. The next words left her mouth only grudgingly, but she forced them out regardless. ‘Alone, I would have stood no chance of besting it. Thank you, Tarion. We don’t make the most terrible team.’

‘High praise indeed,’ chuckled Tarion, but she could hear in his voice that he was pleased with the grudging compliment. ‘We’ll have to thank our selfless Palladors once they’re Reforged, if they all make it through,’ he said, sobering.

Neave grunted an acknowledgement, staring out over the lake. ‘We will see them beyond the anvils,’ she said. ‘Meantime, I’m sure there will be another hunt for us.’

‘Us?’ asked Tarion, smiling again.

‘You pulled a fistful of arrows out of your quiver, didn’t you?’ she asked. ‘When it had you in its talon.’

‘It was the only thing I could think of,’ he confessed. ‘When they exploded, it hurt like Reforging itself, I’ll tell you that.’

Neave shook her head. ‘It worked. Anyone crazed enough to try something like that, and sharp enough to still finish that hunt alive? Yes, Tarion, I think I’ll hunt alongside you again,’ she said. ‘But in the meantime, we should return to the heavens. All joking aside, it’s going to take time to heal this battle-damage, and the war is never done. Beat me back to the Realmgate and I might even deign to have you accompany me in the hunt for my next mark.’

‘I can fly, and you are running on a broken leg,’ Tarion said flatly.

‘Well, then that just makes it a fair race, doesn’t it, Arlor?’ grinned Neave, and set off along the lakeside. Behind her, Tarion barked a laugh and took to the air. Krien shrieked in irritation as he was forced to cast aside the last of his meal to give chase.

At their backs the volcano rumbled on, the last molten remnants of Neave’s quarry dissolving deep within its fiery heart.

About the Authors

David Annandale is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, several stories involving the Grey Knights, including Warden of the Blade and Castellan, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Kingsblade, Knightsblade and Shroud of Night, as well as the novella Crusade and the short story ‘Whiteout’. He has also written the novel Blacktalon: First Mark for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower novella Labyrinth of the Lost. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

Evan Dicken has written the short story ‘The Path to Glory’ and the novella The Red Hours for Black Library. He has been an avid reader of Black Library novels since he found dog-eared copies of Trollslayer, Xenos and First and Only nestled in the “Used Fantasy/Sci-fi” rack of his local gaming store. He still considers himself an avid hobbyist, although the unpainted Chaos Warband languishing in his basement would beg to differ. By day, he studies old Japanese maps and crunches data at The Ohio State University.

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 has written the novel Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods. 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.

Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novels 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.

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

Robbie MacNiven is a Highlands-born History graduate from the University of Edinburgh. He has written the Warhammer Age of Sigmar novella The Bone Desert, as well as the Warhammer 40,000 novels Blood of Iax, The Last Hunt, Carcharodons: Red Tithe, Carcharodons: Outer Dark and Legacy of Russ. His short stories include ‘Redblade’, ‘A Song for the Lost’ and ‘Blood and Iron’. His hobbies include re-enacting, football and obsessing over Warhammer 40,000.

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.

C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Age of Sigmar novels Overlords of the Iron Dragon and The Tainted Heart, the novella ‘Scion of the Storm’ in Hammers of Sigmar, the Warhammer novels Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague series. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer worlds.

An extract from Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods.

I arced over the gurgling water like a zephyrgryph with his claws unfurled. The air was ice, the sky a weird shade of green, amber leaking into the night with the dawn. My face was the painful side of numb as my arms and legs paddled the thin air. All I could hear from beneath me was the creak of ice, the rush of the river and the wind slipping through my fingers. I started to laugh, my mouth thus conveniently wide for a roar of triumph as my boots slammed into the frozen slush of the Nevermarsh. Cracks spread through the frost-veined mud, but it was already hard as rock and did not break.

Just as well – sinking to my greaves in mud or getting into a tug-of-war for my boot was hardly the look I had been going for.

‘Yes!’

The cry exploded from my chest and I spun around with my fists in the air.

‘Let it be known that Hamilcar Bear-Eater is first across every river, first into every charge, first unto every blade!’ I bellowed.

Broudiccan’s slow handclap wasn’t quite the enthusiastic reaction that I felt the feat deserved. My second-in-command cut an imposing figure on the other side of the water, a fortress of a man in the thrice-blessed maroon and gold of the Astral Templars. His Mask Impassive, the grim facial covering of the Stormcast Eternals, was anything but; a gouge from a beast’s claw had cloven the stoic purple mask in two, leaving a disdainful aspect which suited his taciturnity to the ground.

If he thought he could leap twenty feet across ice-cold rapids then I would have very much liked to see him try.

‘Bravo, Lord Hamilcar,’ Frankos shouted through cupped hands, separated from the burly Decimator by the haggard width of a tree. ‘Congratulations on being the first of Sigmar’s Stormhosts to set foot in the Nevermarsh.’

Distinctions of age and experience counted for little within a company of immortals, but the Knight-Heraldor had always been possessed of a youthful effervescence that made me feel old. I nodded my thanks, pausing to glare at my second.

‘May the Heraldor Temples always proclaim it so,’ I bellowed back.

‘They shall, my lord,’ he cried with gusto. ‘They shall.’

Frankos was also quite unique amongst my warrior chamber in taking everything I said in deadly earnest. He continues to do so, in fact, even after the later reversal in our fortunes.

The sigmarite mountain called Broudiccan rumbled as the giant sighed.

His masked gaze slipped towards the frothing water.

Feral-looking birds with wicked red eyes twittered back and forth between the two banks. Their beaks were perfectly made for the stripping of flesh, the cracking of bone, and I suspected they could even chew the cure right off a man’s armour. Generally, the birds were happy enough scavenging for fish and insects amongst the densely tangled buttress roots that clawed out of the riverbank and into the water, but the Freeguild army I was leading through the Gorwood might as well have been one giant victuallers’ caravan for all they were concerned. More than one poor soldier had already lost a finger or an eye. Broudiccan swatted at one, which knew better than to test its toothed beak on sigmarite and flapped out of reach to shrill from the leafless canopy.

‘I’ll wait for the bridge,’ he grumbled, after a while.

I barely heard him over the white roar of the water, but I am a Stormcast Eternal, and my ears are sharp enough.

‘I wonder about you sometimes,’ I laughed. ‘Are you a plodding Knight-Excelsior, summoned to my warrior chamber in error?’

Broudiccan shrugged. ‘Even Sigmar can make mistakes. The pain of reforging is proof enough of this.’

‘Ha! Indeed. I remember my last day as a mortal, when I feasted with Him and ten thousand warriors in the Heldenhall.’ The memories of my mortal life were dimmer back then than they are now, jumbled like a stained glass window that had been broken and thrown back together, most of the pieces still missing, but this I remembered. ‘He has a delicate stomach. For a god.’

Frankos frowned at nothing. ‘I do not remember my final night.’

‘Parts of mine are a little blurry also. It was that aelf nectar wine. I swear there was nothing like it where–’

A racket worthy of Gorkamorka drowned me out as the rest of the army made their way through the trees.

I looked past the two Astral Templars, my sentence unfinished.

About nineteen hundred soldiers, two of the five Freeguild regiments of the Seven Words, had followed me into the Gorwood. Their baggage train and camp followers amounted to about the same again although I generally deferred the small details to Frankos and the mortal generals themselves. The fifty warriors of my Chamber, the Bear-Eaters, were strung out over several leagues of woodland. The trees that grew here at the boundary of the Low Gorwood were twisted runts compared to the predatory bowers that canopied the high slopes of the Gorkomon, but no less deadly. For all my efforts, the Gorwood was – and would always be – a wild place, home to as many hungry creatures as it had been when the Beastlord Uxor Untamed had ruled these heights. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The men and women that emerged wore a collage of colours – torn, faded, chewed on – over armour of tough leather and the occasional skin. There were a few wooden or leather shields, but most carried two-handed spears, javelins or hunting bows. Despite the cold and the predations of the forest they were still laughing – Ghurites all of them, none tougher – whistling catcalls at those behind and pointing at me on the other side of the river.

Coming in behind the vanguard was a trio of ogors in tattered surcoats, hauling a bridge of coppery lumber behind them. Their faces were snarled with effort, muscles standing like boulders from a mountainside. A few of the soldiers dropped their gear to run in and help push, the ogors hissing something that probably wasn’t all that complimentary through their teeth.

I put my hands on my hips and watched them, my heart ready to burst with pride.

I loved them all.

Only slightly less than they loved me.

‘Who is first upon the Nevermarsh?’ I called out to them, thumping my breastplate. ‘He who waits upon no man, beast nor creature of Ruin.’ I thrust my gauntleted fists in the air, wringing the musty stink of bear from my cloak.

‘Hamilcar!’

Cheers rippled through the treeline. The ogors took the opportunity to draw up and wipe the sweat from their sledgehammer-like brows, before readjusting the draw-chains wrapped round their fists.

I made a grand show of pulling off my gauntlets, rubbing my hands together and blowing into them, despite the fact I have little feeling for the cold. I am a champion of Heaven, and to be of Heaven is to be as cold as starlight. And yet it means something to the common soldier to see his hardships shared. Most Stormcast Eternals, broken from humanity in order to be elevated to that space beyond, would never even have considered such a gesture. There are better warriors than I in Sigmar’s Stormhosts. I’ll not name them, and I’ll only deny saying it should it get back to them. Let’s just say I have all the fingers I need to count them. But if you think that any of them can get as much as I can from a mortal man, then I would say you have passed too many times over the Anvil of Apotheosis, my friend.

‘The winter is cold,’ I yelled. ‘The Ghurlands are dangerous. But you know cold, you know danger. Every man and woman here is a veteran of the Gorwood. You have fought beside me against beastman and skaven and orruk, yet here you all are with me still. Why?’ My breath shrouded my tattooed fist in fog. ‘Because Hamilcar Bear-Eater is your brother and your champion, ahead of you every step of the way!’

‘Hamilcar!’

The cry came back louder now, men still spilling out of the forest to hear my words.

I unhooked the halberd from its bracket across my back. The black wood of the haft scraped over my armour as I drew it. The head sang as it came free. The blade was sigmarite, forged by the first of the Six Smiths under the Auroral Tempest, imbuing the metal with the storm’s vicious power. Bands of amber and violet rippled through the blade as I turned it and held it aloft. A pair of predator birds that I had managed to trap and kill myself dangled from the head on chains. Runes of my own inscription decorated the haft. They imparted no power I know of, and I had no idea from which ice hole of my memory they emerged, only that in those days you could not leave me with a flat surface and a knife and not return to find the former filled with the strange pictograms.

I had always assumed them to be a facet of my lost life as a mortal, which would of course prove to be correct, though I never gave it much thought at the time.

‘The Nevermarsh is another challenge again. No army of Sigmar has ever crossed its border, and yet…’ I spread my arms to indicate the river running across me. The soldiers chuckled, a few of them still shouting my name. A cloaked and helmeted veteran in a glittery cuirass of leather and glass and a rash of insect bites on his browned face choked with laughter. Even I didn’t think my remark was that amusing, but I acknowledged the old-timer with the point of my halberd. I recognised him from some battle or other, and I always liked to give the impression of familiarity with every woman or man who bore the Twin-Tailed Comet in my name.

‘This is where our enemies seek to hide from us, so this is where we hound them. We will run them to the ground, my friends. We will kill them, we will butcher them, and we will feed their bloody carcasses to the carniferns of the Gorwood!’

The bank erupted with a mighty cheer.

‘For Sigmar!’

‘Sigmar!’

‘For the God-King!’

My voice was the coming of thunder. I held the final syllable until my throat was hoarse and my body shook with passion.

I rehoused my halberd, leaving my fist raised in salute.

The men would all be warm now. If my Vanguards were right about the position of the hole that our enemy had found to hide in, and they generally were, then I expected the fire I had put in the soldiers’ bellies to last them until it was needed.

‘A good speech, lord,’ Frankos shouted to me.

I could almost sense Broudiccan’s eyes rolling.

‘Go and aid with the bridge,’ I told the Heraldor. ‘You’re as strong as any ogor, brother.’ One hand on the pommel of his broadsword, Frankos bowed low, his white crest bobbing in the frozen muck. I called after him as he departed. ‘Be sure that it’s good and flat. I would hate for Broudiccan to fall off.’

I chuckled to myself, Broudiccan still wearing that disdainful look of his.

Now ordinarily, these sullen spells were precisely the reason I chose the Paladin for my second. The long silences gave me more room to talk, but a man can only bear so much.

‘Spit it out, brother,’ I barked.

‘It is nothing.’

‘With you, it’s never nothing.’

The big Paladin grumbled. ‘You are like a boy on his first hunt, lord.’

I smiled wistfully. ‘You remember your first hunt?’

‘No.’

‘Nor I mine.’ I cocked a grin as though he had just made my point for me. ‘Every time is the first now. The realms are so vast, the enemy so numerous. It is always new.’

‘You are a Lord-Castellant, not an Azyros or a Venator to go seeking out new dangers.’

I blew out through my lips. ‘The best defence…’ Broudiccan’s eyes narrowed reproachfully, and I motioned towards the Freeguild further uphill, dragging the bridge towards us with renewed vigour. ‘They will work faster knowing I’m here on the far side. I don’t forget my calling, brother.’

Frankos had joined the labourers as I spoke, jostling in between the ogors and taking up some of the chain to help pull.

‘He is a bad influence upon you,’ said Broudiccan.

I laughed at that. ‘I suspect most would say it was the other way around.’

‘I have known Frankos longer than you. He is perfectly incorruptible. You, on the other hand, will do anything for an audience.’

I frowned across the water, but Broudiccan had nothing more to add. Frankly, I should have been astonished to have got as many words out of him as I had, but I was justifiably distracted by what happened next.

Lightning struck earth a few feet from where I was standing.

Not an actual lightning bolt, of course. Deliverance from the Celestial Stair remained as possible as it ever had been during the Realmgate Wars, but it had become rarer in those days as Sigmar’s wars spread his attention thinner. Azyrite energies crackled and burst as the Prosecutor furled his wings then stood. His armour was the black of freshly dug soil, richer in gold even than my own, and embellished with images and inscriptions as one would a tombstone. It put me in mind of the mortis armour worn by Xeros Stormcloud, my Lord-Relictor, who had earned his war name for the black mood that followed him wheresoever he chose to darken with his tread. Or so I chose to believe, and tell all who ask.

Despite having just risen, the Prosecutor dropped again to one knee. ‘Lord-Castellant, I bear an urgent missive from my lord, Akturus.’ His delivery smacked of some ritual phrasing, the effect only slightly ruined by the breathlessness that came with a long flight from the Seven Words. He presented a tightly furled scroll, sealed with a flickering Azyrite rune.

The scroll fizzled under my nose.

Now, it has never been any secret that I find the written word disturbing. Trapping a man’s words and thoughts, his soul even, on parchment or tablet still seems to me like witchcraft and I avoid it where I can.

An awkward second passed between us in which neither moved or spoke.

‘Urgent was Akturus’ word, lord,’ said the Prosecutor, the formality of his address slipping. ‘Not mine.’

I sighed.

If in doubt, bluff it out.

‘Read it to me as we go.’ I turned my back, picked a direction from the frostbitten scabgrass and sand-coloured rushes of the Nevermarsh in what I was sure was an authoritative manner and started walking.

‘Yes, lord.’

The sounds of hammering and sawing and the strains of an ogor working song faded quickly as I strode into the marsh, swallowed by the chirp of predatory birds and biting insects. I idly swatted at a few. Largely out of habit. Most things in Ghur would try to eat you one way or another, but there wasn’t much out there that would willingly make a meal out of the storm-fused flesh and blessed sigmarite of a Stormcast Eternal.

The realm’s erratic sun was just pushing over the horizon, kissing every leaf and frond with amber lips. It was beautiful. From behind me, there came a faint crack as the Prosecutor broke the lightning seal and unrolled the scroll.

‘Brother Castellant,’ he read aloud. ‘Praise Sigmar, for he has noted your abrupt absence and seen fit to reinforce the Seven Words until your prompt return. Lord-Veritant Vikaeus Creed did arrive this morn at the head of the Drakwards, Exemplar Chamber of the Knights Merciless, to–’

I grumbled under my breath, missing whatever it was that the Prosecutor said next.

Vikaeus and I had what you could call a history.

She thought me foolhardy and arrogant. Actually, she still does, and nor is she exactly wrong. Foolishness and arrogance are two of my finest qualities, virtues to which too few amongst the Stormhosts can lay claim. I, for my part, have always been underwhelmed by the Lord-Veritant’s much vaunted gift for prophecy. While it is true that she accurately prophesied the coming of the White Pox to the Valdenmoor, and foretold of Skulla Gashamna’s ascension to daemonhood months before Lord-Ordinator Vorrus Starstrike read it in the stars, her warnings of my imminent self-inflicted demise had thus far all come to naught.

‘Still waiting for that vermintide she foresaw swallowing the Seven Words, I imagine,’ I said.

‘The Lord-Castellant did not impart that detail, lord.’

‘I bet he didn’t. Did he impart anything else?’

‘Yes, lord. He asked me to tell you that he prays for your swift return, and to remind you that the slight raised against his honour still stands.’

I said nothing to that.

Akturus Ironheel commanded a warrior chamber known as the Imperishables, a force numbering some four hundred souls. As a Lord-Castellant, we were equivalent in rank, but utterly dissimilar in character. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer, the Stormhost to which the Imperishables belonged, were a force of black repute, assembled from the heroes of empires long-dead and hammered into being while the Mallus turned under a darksome phase.

Or so their lords-relictor claim, and good luck to them, for no one knows better the power of a fearsome legend than I.

‘It was meant in jest,’ I said. ‘He enjoys it.’

‘He has already prepared the ring for ritual combat, lord. All of the Seven Words are eager for your return.’ It could just have been me, but I was certain I heard a smirk in the winged warrior’s voice.

Akturus might have preferred sitting in a castle to taking one, and despised the untamed Ghurlands as much as I hated being bottled up in the Seven Words, but he was the most vicious and underhanded fighter I have ever had the misfortune to cross in all my centuries of war. I swear, he knew the weaknesses of aegis armour and the pressure points of a Stormcast Eternal’s body the way a Lord-Castellant should know bricks and mortar.

And he was touchy about the honour of his war name, as I had recently learned.

‘Not nearly as eager as I am,’ I said, though I would have rather challenged the entire Drakwards Exemplar Chamber than entertain Akturus in the ring. If there’s one thing people admire more than a victor, it’s a bold loser, and being batted around the Seven Words by a Dracoth or two would at least be a moral triumph of sorts.

The Prosecutor chuckled, which I took as more comradely than mocking. It was easy to forget sometimes that the Imperishables were as human beneath their armour as I.

I sighed. I supposed that my reputation could afford to suffer a knock or two, taken in good spirits.

Suddenly, I stopped walking, holding up my hand as I stared into the endless marsh. It was called the Nevermarsh for a reason.

‘The thought occurs. I have no idea where I’m going.’

The Prosecutor gestured back the way we had come. ‘This way, lord. I am not the only bringer of news.’

Click here to buy Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods.

A Black Library Publication

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

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Vladimir Krisetskiy.

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