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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
Josh Reynolds

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

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 ~

REALMSLAYER
David Guymer

THE BEASTS OF CARTHA
David Guymer

FIST OF MORK, FIST OF GORK
David Guymer

GREAT RED
David Guymer

ONLY THE FAITHFUL
David Guymer

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

SHADESPIRE: THE DARKNESS IN THE GLASS
Various authors

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Red Hours’

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.

Chapter One

Dawn brought fire, and the Changer of Ways. At first he was a crimson line, simmering beneath an amethyst vault. Then, with slow majesty, he became a gilded shield, rising from his hidden palace, embroidering the clouds with light, kindling the Arad Plains into life; transmuting night into day.

Vedra watched in silence, awed by the boundless alchemy of her lord. The message was clear: to change is to live. She clutched the talisman hanging around her neck and raised it in a silent promise, refracting the morning light. The crystal flashed in her palm like a fragment of the dawn.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said.

Then she grabbed her spear and jogged back across the barren hillside towards her chariot. She had spent the night training and a rapturous heat linked every sinew of her long, lean body. She was ready. No one could stop her.

She vaulted into the chariot and barked a command in the old tongue, spurring her hounds into life. Bailar and Balkar lunged forwards with a snarl. They were as large as warhorses and they hauled her copper chariot with ease, their huge paws thudding across the parched scrub, thundering down the slope towards an avenue of staves that led across the plain.

The heads of the slain had been mounted to face south, towards the Crucible Mound, in anticipation of the coming ritual. Vedra did not look at them as she hurtled past. She had no interest in trophies. The heads were a warning, nothing else. The plains had never seen a host like hers. The Untamed was the greatest gathering of Darkoath tribes ever to pay homage to a single Warqueen. But she was under no illusions. There was still work to be done. And if she showed the slightest sign of weakness it would be her head they placed on a stave.

As her chariot neared the mound, she saw that the gathering was even bigger than she expected. The need-fire was already blazing, a vast umbrella of sapphire light, hanging fifty feet above the mound, rippling and shimmering as it shone down on thousands of Darkoath warriors. Every one of the tribesmen was holding a weapon aloft as she reached the foot of the mound and she wanted to raise her iron spear in reply – to howl back at them and revel in the glory of what they had achieved. They had done what the chieftains thought impossible – they had driven the Blood God from their lands. After tomorrow’s battle, they would once more be masters of the entire plain – eight hundred miles of strongholds and farmsteads, from the Scornwood Holt to the shores of the Unmeant Lake, with the Sickle Keep at its heart.

Vedra did not raise her spear. She did not cry out. She did as tradition dictated and kept her gaze locked on the flickering nimbus above the mound, letting the lord’s fire flash in her eyes as Bailar and Balkar pulled the chariot up the slope.

There were nine crucible mounds scattered across the plains and they were all the same shape: a steep-sided hill with a bowl-like depression at the summit. Most of the tribesmen had gathered at the foot of the hill, but the chieftains were waiting at the top, in the crucible itself, bathed in blue light. There were dozens of nobles, but the three greatest of them, Budar, Leortas and Korvis, stood alone, flanked by shield-bearers and slaves, their chins raised proudly and their mouths clamped shut. They were draped in pelts and battle trophies – skulls, human and animal, clattered against their weapons as they stepped towards her. They wore the trappings of great leaders but they were weak, all of them. Not one of them had foreseen this. None of them understood how she had won so many battles. They were all too wrapped up in their own myths to remember what it meant to be a Darkoath chieftain. They had lost their way. How confused they must be now – how they must hate her – but honour and tradition came first. She had defeated them on the field and their creed left them only one course of action. One by one, they knelt, glowering and tense as they dropped to the cinder-strewn earth.

Next to the chieftains were her kin: brothers, sisters and cousins, all wearing new pelts and gold torcs. Vedra’s string of victories had accorded them even higher status than the chieftains, and they stared back at her, proud and defiant, determined not to fail her.

At the other side of the mound was her sanorach, Alimus, the Herald of the Ninth. Ancient and decrepit as he was, the Darkoath sorcerer made a striking sight, with his woad-blue robes and eagle-clawed staff. The staff had been carved to resemble the crooked leg of a bird and it was decked with iridescent feathers. They shimmered in the light of the need-fire, writhing and coiling like a living creature.

Beside the sanorach stood the rest of her new court – the horde of poets, prophets, heroes and artisans who now gathered at her hearth.

She looked back at the three kneeling chieftains. Budar of the Throod, brutish and colossal. Korvis of the Sachalites, wild eyed and skeletal. Leortas of the Tannen, haughty, stout and proud. This was her prize. These embittered old warriors. They had not knelt to anyone for decades, nor agreed to pay tithes; but now they prostrated themselves, pledging people and lands in return for survival. Victory after victory, stronghold after stronghold, she had bound them to her will.

She enjoyed their discomfort for as long as honour allowed, then nodded for them to rise.

‘Alimus,’ she said, looking over at the sanorach.

The seer bowed and approached, walking towards her in his familiar, awkward gait. When she was a child, she called him Cranefly, due to his wasted, gangly limbs, and now, arthritic and palsied, he reminded her even more of an insect, jerking and twitching towards her across the hilltop.

‘Warqueen,’ he said, his voice rattly and thin.

She cried out, letting her words carry across the silent crowds below. ‘I am Vedra the Sworn, Bringer of Change. Are you the Herald of the Ninth?’

‘I am.’

‘Do you hold the key to the nine doors of the soul?’

‘I do.’

‘It is the dawning of the ninth day of the ninth month. Once more, the Changer of Ways has driven back the darkness, illuminating us with the flame of truth. Have you brought me his fire?’

The old seer reached beneath his robes, briefly revealing the crooked, emaciated body beneath. It was branded with an intricate network of runes and diagrams and criss-crossed with scars.

‘I have,’ he said, holding up a drinking horn.

‘Then light my soul,’ said Vedra, stepping closer.

He raised the horn and tipped a few drops onto her head. Most of Vedra’s head was shaved, but a single, tawny band crested her skull, a short-cropped mohawk that ended in a thick ponytail. The liquid splashed across her scalp and glittered in her hair.

The effect was instant. The need-fire blazed brighter and dropped down to envelop her, obscuring everything else. As always, she was amazed by the power of it – a vast, boiling tear in the sky, revealing countless versions of reality. It was a fragment of a dream, draped beneath the stars. A part of her mind still saw reality, but it was fading fast as the ice-flames took hold. She was aware, vaguely, that her physical self was hurling itself through the furnace, inured by Alimus’ draught, dancing and whirling and howling to the rising sun; but her dream-sight revealed something far more wonderful: she was in the presence of her lord.

Vedra glided, weightless and incandescent, into a blaze of liquid crystal. Visions and vistas spiralled around her. The Changer of Ways had transformed her being with the same ease he had transformed the night. The facets became mirrors and windows. She saw her face and the faces of her foes. She saw chieftains and thralls, crushed between the wheels of her chariot, or forced into vassalship. Her lord had made it all possible and she whispered his name: Tzeentch. The crystal labyrinth boiled and crashed as she slipped further into the otherworld of gods and spirits. Outside, in the mortal world, she saw chieftains joining the dance – hurling themselves into the flames. She willed them away, focusing on the fantastic visions exploding all around her. As always, the need-fire led her to the truth. She saw herself at the southern edge of the Arad Plains, riding her chariot at the head of her vast host. Behind her was an ocean of blades and shields and ahead lay Khorne’s final foothold in the plains: the soaring, horned fortress locals had christened the Abattoir. The reek of blood and brimstone filled her nostrils as her chariot rolled towards its gates. She gripped the talisman around her neck, the Serpent Stone, the priceless symbol of Tzeentch’s trust in her.

To her horror, it had grown cold.

The visions fell away and Vedra was standing, once more, at the edge of the sapphire flames. She reeled backwards from the need-fire, gripping the crystal charm and staring at it in shock. The fire had gone from its rough-hewn heart. Its nine eyes had grown dark. It was heavy and cold in her hand, a simple piece of rock.

The dance of the need-fire continued. More chieftains were hurling themselves into the flames, bathed in light and drunk on sorcery as they cast down their weapons and furs, embracing the madness of the dance.

Vedra continued backing away across the top of the Crucible Mound, weighed down by a terrible sense of dread. She had earned her queenship by defeating a daemon and Tzeentch’s token had burned against her chest ever since. Now, on the eve of her final trial, it had abandoned her. With a sickening jolt, she realised that she had left the need-fire without seeing the culmination of her visions.

She raced back in, trying to recapture the moment, but it was gone. As she stood there, surrounded by delirious crowds, she reached up into the madness, catching nothing but smoke.

Chapter Two

They stayed up late into the night. Those that could, squeezed into Budar’s longhouse, and the rest camped outside, puncturing the darkness with laughter and a constellation of shimmering campfires. The nobles and chieftains gathered around a long, rough-hewn table, while everyone else sat on wooden couches or sprawled across furs and skins on the packed earth floor. The smoke holes in the roof did little to lessen the fumes so the hall was a fug of half-glimpsed figures – a dance of shadows, orchestrated by the rhythms of the great fire.

Vedra sat at the head of the table, silhouetted by the flames. Seated nearest to her were her family and then the chieftains and lesser nobles. A few of the younger tribesmen were drunk, lurching through the smoke and grinning, but they had the sense to keep away from the table. Everyone had heard tales of the Warqueen’s strange new beliefs, and no one wanted to earn her wrath.

As Vedra took her seat, the chieftains eyed her warily. Some whispered oaths to the Changer of Ways, opening cuts in their palms and smearing blood across their chests, but most watched her in silence. The air was heavy with the tang of sorcery and, as the flames blazed behind her, Vedra’s shadow fragmented, throwing serpentine shapes across the table.

She should have felt elated. The chieftains were cowed, tomorrow brought the promise of glorious battle and every shadow in the longhouse carried a glimpse of her divine patron. But she was furious. All she could think about was the lifeless Serpent Stone in her palm.

She glared at the chieftains, her muscles taut, her hand gripping the staff of her spear. How pathetic they were, with their backwards, debased faiths. How shameless.

‘Budar of the Throod,’ she said, addressing the lord of the southern plains – the chieftain whose table she was seated at. Her voice was quiet: the slow, dangerous murmur of a predator.

Budar shifted in his chair and gave a grudging nod. ‘Warqueen.’ He had to drag the word from his throat. Like all of the Throod, he was a dark, muscle-clad giant of a man, but the most striking thing about him was the strange contraption he wore over his head: a hexagonal cage, wrought of thick, oak bars and bolted to his neck.

‘Get that thing off,’ she said.

Budar’s face flushed a deep crimson. He gripped his axe with one hand and the table’s edge with the other.

Vedra raised an eyebrow. ‘Shall I prove myself again, Budar?’

There were few in the longhouse who had not heard of how Vedra had slaughtered the previous Throod chieftains. Budar had only been offered a chance to serve as her vassal once she had beheaded every serious rival. Stronger men than him had failed to cow her, and he knew it.

The room fell quiet as everyone watched to see how Budar would respond.

Budar let go of the table and loosed his axe.

His voice was a low growl. ‘Without my soul cage, my spirit will be unprotected.’

Vedra nodded. Then looked around the faces of everyone at the table. ‘His spirit will be unprotected.’ She raised her voice to reach the crowds in the shadows beyond the table. ‘Do you hear him? He thinks his soul can be preserved by a wooden box.’ She slammed her fist on the table, causing the dishes to clatter and silencing any remaining conversations. ‘Is this what we’ve come to?’

The rows of smoke-shrouded faces stared back at her in silence.

Her rage at the death of the Serpent Stone merged with her fury at how low her people had fallen.

She reached out with shocking speed and slammed Budar’s head against the table, shattering his wooden helmet.

‘No more!’ she howled, hitting Budar’s head against the table a second time, leaving his face full of splinters.

Budar reeled from the table, bellowing and clutching his face, blood rushing between his fingers.

His thralls rushed forwards, staring at her from inside their soul cages as they gripped their weapons.

Vedra’s family rose from their seats, drawing weapons, as she climbed on the table, gripping her spear in both hands.

There was a tense moment as warriors glared at each other through the fug, the only sound coming from the fire and Budar, gasping and cursing as he pulled splinters from his face.

Slowly, every warrior in the room turned to glare at Budar, irrespective of which tribe they belonged to.

Vedra felt a rush of pride. No one, other than his honour guard, had sided with Budar.

He looked around at the circle of cold, stern faces, and something flashed in his eyes – not fear, but recognition. He could yield or die.

‘Warqueen,’ he muttered finally, lowering his axe and ordering his men away. He sat back down, wiping blood from his face and removing pieces of cage from the bristles of his beard.

Vedra watched him for a moment longer, then dropped back down from the table and took her seat, looking at the other chieftains.

‘We hear you, Warqueen,’ said Korvis, Seer-lord of the Sachalites. His voice was a harsh caw, barely understandable. Like all the Seer-lords that came before him, Korvis’ devotion to Tzeentch was written in his flesh. His wiry body was painted with pale grey clay, to resemble a cadaver, and his eye sockets had been rimmed with charcoal to add to the effect, but his strangeness was far more profound than warpaint. His mouth had been sewn shut decades ago and the skin had knitted back together, leaving little more than a puckered scar. His words came from the crow that was embedded in his chest. The bird’s wings were spread beneath his skin, merging with his straining ribs, but its head was still visible, jutting from his sternum and eyeing Vedra with interest.

‘The Lord of Change sent you as his prophet,’ said Korvis, the crow’s head twitching as it voiced his thoughts. ‘No one can deny it. We’re here to do your bidding, Warqueen. What will you have us do? Why have you gathered us here?’

Vedra flexed her fingers then clenched them into fists, imagining pummelling his ashen face. Korvis’ mutation was a pointless affectation, just like Budar’s cage – a diversion from their true purpose. But she stayed her hand. He had knelt to her, before all of the Sachalites. There would be no honour in striking him and, besides, infighting and bickering was one of the failings she had vowed to rectify.

‘We are an echo of greatness,’ she said, ignoring Korvis and addressing the whole longhouse. ‘Darkoath tribes have ruled the Arad Plains for generations, but when the Blood God sent his dogs, what happened? We fell like children. They took our homesteads. They took our forts. We shamed the Lord of Change with our every defeat.’

‘Until you united us,’ said the lord of the Tannen, Leortas. He was sitting bolt upright, staring into the middle distance, his long silver plaits trailing down his back. He was clearly appalled by the lowborn company he was being forced to keep. ‘Since then we have crushed the blood tribes.’ His voice was resonant and deep, the voice of a man used to commanding respect. ‘There is barely a single keep we have not cleansed of their filth. Almost every corner of the plain is back under our control.’

Vedra studied him. The Tannen were the first Darkoath tribe to migrate south from the Great Parch into the Arad Plains. It must be crushing Leortas to even converse with her. She had to slaughter half of the Tannen nation before Leortas accepted her as queen.

Leortas sensed her watching him and sat even more erect, causing his cloak to shimmer. Like all of the Tannen, he tore the fingernails from his defeated foes, preferably while they were still alive. He then weaved the bloody mementos into his cloak, causing it to rustle and click as he moved. Vedra’s own furs were dressed with the bones of her enemies so this, at least, was a custom she could respect.

‘Barely?’ she replied. ‘Almost?’ She stared at him, until he finally turned and met her eye. ‘Is it enough for Darkoath tribes to almost rule their own lands?’

Leortas scowled but gave no reply.

She slammed her fist on the table again. ‘We will take back what is ours! All of it!’ She stood, pointing her spear at the hides draped over the entrance to the longhouse. ‘And then, once we have scoured those dogs from our kingdom, we will begin the real work.’

‘The real work?’ said Korvis. He had spent the meal feeding poison berries to the crow in his chest and his pupils were now so large that barely any white was visible. He was enraptured by Vedra’s words, staring at her like she was the Lord of Change himself. His wiry limbs were shaking from all the poisons he had consumed, and the words that emerged from the crow’s beak were trembling, as though he were battling to hold back hysteria. ‘What do you mean, Warqueen?’

‘I mean we will begin again. Begin the work we have forgotten.’ She raised her voice again and the crowds pushed closer to listen.

‘When our ancestors came south from the Great Parch, did they come seeking peace? Did they carve out this kingdom to grow crops and tend cattle?’

Korvis giggled behind his stitched lips, feeding more berries to the crow, his eyes rolling.

She waved at the drunks staggering through the smoke, trying to avoid her gaze. ‘Did they come to rot their minds with ale? Or grow fat and idle as other nations grow stronger? Or spend their time performing rites and rituals so obscure that they have no time to strengthen their sword arms and train their men?’

‘No,’ croaked Korvis, shaking both his heads in wonder.

‘No!’ roared Vedra. ‘They came to rule! They came to build an empire! They came to crush. To cut. To burn.’ She waved at the strange appearance of the chieftains, with their fetishes and eye makeup. ‘And now look at us. Look what we have become – distracted and weak, forgetting what we were. But no more. Tomorrow, we take back what is ours. And then, when every last one of those tin-clad outlanders has been driven into the ground, we will go to war. We will march south, north, east and west, beyond the great plains, seizing everything we find.’ She stared at the chieftains and warriors, pointing her spear at them, her breath coming in short bursts. ‘The Arad Plains are not enough! Tzeentch requires more! Tzeentch wants everything! And we will give it to him.’ She pounded the haft of her spear on the table, spilling drinks and food. ‘What are we?’

‘Untamed!’ roared everyone in the longhouse, rising to their feet, their faces flushed, their doubts forgotten as she filled them with battle-lust.

‘At dawn, we march on the Abattoir. No walls can hold us back. No swords can steal our blood. And when that final citadel falls, when the plains are ours, we wage war on the world!’

‘Untamed!’ roared the crowd again.

Vedra fell back into her chair and waved at the food, signalling for the feast to continue, sure that everyone in the longhouse now knew what was expected of them.

When the conversation had picked up again and the attention had shifted away from her, she thought again of the Serpent Stone, lying cold and heavy against her chest.

‘You look like you’re chewing bitterroot,’ said Zuchis, her older brother. He was a bear of a man, with a thick, matted beard that blended seamlessly with the greasy, matted hair on his chest and arms. His face was a mess of scars, gathered around a crooked, repeatedly broken nose and a brow like an anvil, but, as he leant close to her, there was concern in his eyes.

Vedra knew that she should feel relieved. The survival of her family was almost assured. She looked past Zuchis at her other siblings. All of their lives had been hanging in the balance since the death of their parents, but soon they would be safe under her royal aegis. No one could threaten them once she had conquered the whole plain. And there was only one last battle to win. And yet… She gripped the Serpent Stone, letting its chill eat into her palm.

Zuchis stared at her, puzzled. ‘What happened up there? You’ve had that look on your face ever since the dance of the need-fire.’

She shook her head.

Zuchis nodded at the chieftains, speaking quietly. ‘They’re fools, I know, but they’ll learn. None of them can deny the truth of what you say. And they’ll fight well for you. Whoever dreamt you’d gather such a host? Whatever tomorrow brings, it could never stand against so many tribesmen. Storm-daemons with lightning hammers could not halt us now.’ He sipped from his drinking horn, studying her over the rim. ‘But you look like we’ve already lost.’

Vedra’s younger brother, Tuath, was sitting next to Zuchis. Zuchis was a great edifice of a man, but Tuath was like a taut, knotted rope – wiry and tough, like a pit fighter. His gaunt face was covered with fierce tattoos but he smiled as he leant over.

‘Listen to him, Vedra.’ His voice was loud and rang out through a pause in the conversation. ‘The outlanders won’t stand a chance. They’re normal men under those metal suits.’

On the other side of Vedra, Budar looked up. ‘They’re not men,’ he growled, still removing splinters from his face as he glared at Vedra’s brothers.

‘What, then?’ asked Vedra, interested to hear what fanciful tale the lord of the Throod would regale them with.

‘Blood Warriors. Part man, part daemon. They have fire in their veins and brass hearts.’

Zuchis shrugged. ‘We’ll outnumber them ten to one, maybe more. Who cares what’s in their veins? Our last battle will be the easiest. The Changer of Ways has brought us this far, with Vedra as Warqueen. Now we’ll bring the outlanders the great gift of change. We’ll free their heads from those metal suits and turn their fortress to rubble.’

Vedra was still looking at Budar. ‘Is this why you’ve let them stain our lands with their presence?’ Her voice was taut. ‘Because you’re afraid of them?’

His eyes widened at the insult, but he remained seated and kept his voice level. ‘I’m not afraid. Death is of no concern. I will serve Tzeentch with devotion and honour and I will eventually be transformed by his divine fire. One day I’ll enter the Great Labyrinth.’

Vedra met his words with an unimpressed silence.

Budar flushed with rage. He leant closer. ‘The Throod have lived in the shadow of Khorne for decades. We face Blood Warriors every day. If you think they’re normal men, you’re wrong.’

Vedra was about to reply when she saw the old prophet, Alimus, teetering through the fumes and heading for the door. She rose from the table and strode after him, barging through the crowded fumes and out into the night, leaving Zuchis and Tuath to face Budar’s glare.

‘Alimus,’ she said, gripping his shoulder and holding up the Serpent Stone.

He looked up at her. His face was so lined with wrinkles that his eyes were barely visible, half-buried beneath pallid folds of skin. Vedra could see enough to be alarmed though. There was doubt in his yellowed, rheumy eyes. ‘I know,’ he said, glancing briefly at the crystal, then looking awkwardly at the ground.

‘You know? You know what? Speak up. Tell me what you saw in the flames.’

Alimus was reluctant to meet her eye, shuffling awkwardly in her grip. Then he nodded past the myriad campfires to the ominous silhouette of the Crucible Mound. ‘We should talk in private.’

Vedra remembered that she was standing in the heart of her army. Tribesmen and women were huddled around the fires in their thousands. Some were asleep, resting before the battle, but many were awake and had turned her way, muttering her name and nudging others in excitement.

She waved Alimus on, stepping quickly over embers and sleeping warriors until they stood alone in the shadow of the mound.

There was still a faint blue glow coming from the embers of the need-fire, pulsing up from the hilltop, cold and otherworldly, patterning the darkness. Alimus shook his head. ‘I don’t trust everything I saw today. This mound is a stranger to me. The mound at the Sickle Keep is the only one I can truly believe. The spirits down here in the south are unfamiliar. They speak in riddles. I cannot even be sure–’

‘What did you see?’ demanded Vedra, leaning close to him.

He shook his head, then nodded. ‘I saw what you saw, Warqueen. Tzeentch’s favour is in the balance. The auguries were confused but, it’s possible…’ He hesitated, grinding his raven-headed staff into the soil. ‘It’s possible that the Lord of Change will pass his patronage to another. That he will back another side in tomorrow’s battle.’

She shook her head. ‘Throw in his lot with the blood worshippers? Why? After all these victories. When I am so close to securing my place.’

Alimus shook his head, his face crumpling into a network of deep, furrowed lines. ‘No, of course not. Tzeentch would not ally himself to the Blood Warriors.’ He glanced back through the darkness, towards the longhouse.

Vedra followed his gaze and shook her head in disbelief. ‘One of the other chieftains? Why? I have proved myself again and again. I killed those that would not kneel. I am the ruler of the plains. No one can question my right. Why would Tzeentch cast me aside for someone I’ve already defeated in his name?’

She grabbed Alimus by his robes. ‘Those babbling mystics will never do anything for our people. They perform rites when they should be training. They plan sacrifices when they should plan wars. If Tzeentch chooses them for champions our territories will shrink until we have nothing left. Only I have the vision to lead us, Alimus. Only I will make us great again.’

Alimus looked increasingly more anxious as she wrenched him back and forth, whispering urgently into his face. He waved at the great, dark mass of the mound. ‘The need-fire speaks oddly down here in the south, but I gleaned enough to help you.’ He looked around, to check they were still alone, then lowered his voice. ‘Make sure you are the one to slay the lord of the Blood Warriors. It must be you that does the deed.’

‘You mean someone else will try to get there before me?’

Alimus nodded. ‘I saw two visions clearer than all the others. In one, you cemented your rule with a great victory. You defeated the lord of the Blood Warriors – they call him Khrall. You beheaded Khrall and freed the plains of his taint.’

‘And the other vision?’

‘Another chieftain reached Khrall before you. He took Khrall’s head and claimed the victory for himself, saying he should be lord of the Arad Plains.’

Vedra shook her head in disbelief. ‘The Untamed would not denounce me now, not after all I have done.’

‘Of course they would. It’s a matter of honour. This is the final battle of the war. Killing Khrall will be the death blow. If one of the great chieftains were to achieve that they would have a legitimate claim.’ He ground his staff into the mud again, looking pained. ‘Who can say what would happen?’

‘Then tell me who the traitor is.’ She looked back at the longhouse. ‘Budar?’ She thought of the fury in his eyes when she smashed his soul cage. ‘The south is his domain. His tribe is the largest. Is it him?’

Alimus shook his head, refusing to meet her eye.

‘Leortas? The Tannen all think they’re better than me. I can see how it irks Leortas to fight under my banner.’

Alimus shook his head, looking desperate. ‘The need-fire was unclear. I couldn’t see who. It was one of the great chieftains, but I couldn’t say which.’

Vedra gripped the haft of her spear. ‘Then I’ll kill all of them.’ She moved to go, the embers of the need-fire flashing in her eyes.

‘Wait!’ gasped Alimus. ‘Think. This is the eve of your greatest victory. You’ve aligned all the tribes of the Arad Plains under a single banner. What will happen if you murder their chieftains after they’ve knelt to you? Your honour will be in tatters.’

‘My honour? They mean to betray me.’

‘Maybe,’ hissed Alimus. ‘And maybe not. And even if the vision was true, who but us would know? Others would only see that you acted with dishonour – killing those that willingly bent the knee and leaving their tribes without chieftains. And how many of them would you kill? Would you kill every chieftain in the Untamed? What kind of army would that leave?’

Vedra whirled away from him, attacking the darkness with her spear, her muscles trembling with rage.

Alimus stumbled after her and grabbed her arm, flinching as she turned and glared at him.

‘Warqueen,’ he said. ‘The Changer of Ways has given you a warning. That means you’re still in his thoughts. If anything, this is confirmation of his faith in you. All you need to do is take Khrall’s head. Get to him before the others. Then your place will be assured.’

She nodded, seeing the sense in his words. ‘I’ll make sure they never even come close to Khrall.’

Alimus nodded and reached beneath his robes, drawing out a sheet of vellum. He dropped to his knees and rolled it across the baked earth, waving for Vedra to kneel beside him. He whispered a string of invocations and, as he spoke, the blue tracery around his staff pulsed into life, splashing cool light across the vellum. It was covered in the obscure runes of the sanorach – densely packed columns of symbols that resembled beaks and flames, serpents and fish. He jabbed one of his misshapen fingers at a circular diagram, scrawled in the bottom corner of the scroll. It was a series of concentric circles, divided by a single, vertical line that ended at the edge of the central circle.

‘What is it?’

‘The Abattoir,’ explained Alimus, evidently pleased with himself. ‘Their fortress. Tzeentch has granted me many visions over the recent days and this one is particularly useful.’ He traced his finger round the circles. ‘It’s a series of circular walls linked by a single walkway.’ He pointed at the final stretch of the bridge. ‘If you deploy the chieftains in the outer circles they will be busy battling the larger portion of Khrall’s forces. Meanwhile, you can head to the inner keep, cross this final stretch of bridge and reach Khrall while they’re still battling in the outer chambers.’

Vedra shook her head. ‘Leave them to fight the larger battle? That would be a cowardly deed, Alimus. And I’ll never win the respect of my people by keeping my hands clean.’

‘There’s no chance of that.’ Alimus pointed at the final circle again. ‘My visions revealed something else – Khrall prefers to face his enemies in single combat. If you can get through his honour guard he’ll deem you a worthy opponent and fight you himself. The chieftains may fight the larger force, but you’ll have the harder battle. And you will deal the crucial blow.’

For the first time since the talisman went cold, Vedra began to feel calm again. ‘I’m a daemon-killer. Khrall has a shock coming if he thinks I’m easy prey.’

Footsteps interrupted them and they both jumped to their feet. As they rose, Vedra snatched the scroll from Alimus, stuffing it beneath her fur pelt.

Her brothers loomed out of the darkness, suspicious looks on their faces. Behind Zuchis and Tuath, she saw more of her siblings: her three sisters, Arva, Dyna and Ederata. The youngest of them, Arva, barged past the others and rushed to her side, looking up at her with a stern expression.

‘Sister,’ she said, gripping her arm. ‘Are you well?’

The girl had become so sure of herself in the last year. She was barely sixteen summers old but she had proven her worth in the recent battles, fighting with a ferocity and determination that reminded Vedra of herself.

‘The Throod are paying tribute to you,’ said Arva, her face full of pride. ‘They’re praising you in readiness for tomorrow’s battle, singing songs of your victories. You should hear what they’re–’

Vedra gripped Arva’s wiry arm and glared at her.

‘Pay no attention to them.’ Her voice was tight with rage as she nodded at the campfires and revellers. ‘All these rituals and rites just to glorify the chieftains make me sick. We’re here to kill, sister. That’s how we’ll prove our worth to the Lord of Change. That’s how we’ll survive this world. We must fight harder and better than anyone else. That’s all that matters – skill, strength, determination. The rest is a trap.’ She gripped Arva’s arm harder and pulled her sister close. ‘The world is cruel, Arva, so we have to stay strong. Understand?’

Arva nodded, her eyes wide and earnest.

Vedra held her gaze, then drew back her shoulders, anger still flickering in her eyes.

She looked south, to where she knew the Abattoir was waiting.

‘Sleep,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow we kill.’

Chapter Three

The gates of the Abattoir were magnificent – huge slabs of copper and brass, so monolithic that they seemed to graze the belly of the clouds. The garrisons of the Untamed were rarely more than a spear-tipped stockade around some huts and a longhouse. The Sickle Keep, Vedra’s own stronghold in the capital, was circled by stone walls and had a fortified tower at its centre, but even that would have been dwarfed by this. Vedra had never dreamt that walls could rise so high without toppling, or that metal could be wrought into such a monstrous, impregnable edifice. ‘I must learn how to build like this,’ she muttered. ‘I must build castles of my own.’

The fortress was designed in the shape of an eight-taloned claw, bursting from the ground and grasping at the sky. Each talon was a long, curved tower that swooped out across the plains, clad in innumerable skulls and leaking infernal, crimson light from arrow-slit windows. A thick column of smoke poured constantly from the citadel’s palm and a mushroom cloud of fumes rained embers on the surrounding wasteland. Vedra could not imagine how the Untamed would have breached those colossal gates, but the question was moot. The Blood Warriors had opened them in welcome.

She looked round at the host behind her. With the addition of the Throod, Budar had bolstered her army by another three thousand heads. As the morning sun flashed on their copper runeshields and chariots, it turned them into a burnished ocean. Vedra carried no shield, preferring to fight unencumbered. Her only concession to armour was a small, hammered shoulder plate, studded with brutal spikes. There were strings of teeth draped round her neck and pelts hung from her waist, but these were trophies rather than protection. Her armour was speed, fury and the iron-hard strength of her limbs.

‘They’re mocking us,’ said her younger brother, Tuath, whose chariot was beside hers. ‘Leaving their doors open like they have nothing to fear.’

She nodded. They could play whatever games they liked. They would die just the same. She looked around for Alimus and saw him drifting towards her on his peculiar steed. It was a Tzeentch-spawned wonder, made of ridged flesh and long, pitted talons. It was like no animal that was ever born on the plains – a flat disc of muscle and steel that rippled through the air with Alimus balanced precariously on its back. It looked like he would fall as soon as it moved, but she had seen him ride it through every one of their battles, hurling curses at their foes as the flesh disc carried him beyond the reach of every sword strike and spear thrust.

The creature watched her as it approached, its flesh parting to reveal a yellow, inhuman eye. She briefly met its strange gaze, then looked at Alimus.

The old seer stared back. The doubt she saw in his eyes the night before was still there. He looked across her army and nodded towards the three great chieftains, Budar, Leortas and Korvis, then he turned back to her.

She nodded in understanding.

Alimus whispered to his strange steed and it rippled away across the army, drifting over the heads of the front ranks and allowing Alimus to give them his strange blessing. As he passed the tribesmen they raised their weapons and Alimus tapped them with the claw of his staff, sending a flicker of blue flame down axe blades and spear tips, anointing Vedra’s host with Tzeentch’s flame.

Vedra’s brothers shared a wary glance.

Vedra caught the look and shook her head. ‘It was more than just muscle that got us here. Without the wisdom of the heralds, the Changer of Ways would never have heard our prayers.’

Zuchis was about to reply when Vedra saw something and silenced him with a raised hand.

Knights were marching through the gates. It was an army, but unlike any Vedra had seen before. They wore clanking suits of carmine and brass and they moved in perfect blocks, stepping in unison. Their heavy, booted feet drummed out a rhythm as rank after rank thudded across the scorched earth, mustering before the gates. They all carried huge axes. Even from half a mile away, Vedra could see that the weapons were bigger than Tuath and they were bleeding heat. In fact, the air all around the warriors shimmered with heat haze, as though they had just emerged from a furnace. The warriors’ faces were hidden behind razor-edged faceplates and tall, iron-horned helmets.

‘So these are the Blood Warriors,’ said Zuchis.

Vedra spat into the dust. ‘What kind of warrior hides his face from his enemies?’

Zuchis pulled back the yoke of his chariot, causing his war hounds to howl and snarl. ‘Let’s see how useful those big axes are when we crash through them like a thunderbolt.’ He patted the chariot’s spiked, iron-shod wheels, about to say more on the subject, when something else emerged from the gates.

It was more of the red-and-brass-armoured knights, but these were mounted on huge, metal bulls. As the creatures stomped and snorted into view, Vedra saw flashes of light at their joints, as though they contained fragments of the furnace that spawned them. Instead of horns, they all had a single, metal tusk jutting from their snouts, edged with serrated blades.

When the Blood Warriors had all formed into neat ranks, the gates began to swing shut, accompanied by a rattle of grinding gears and a hiss of engines. Vedra could see hundreds more of the knights gathered inside the keep, but they made no move to join the others, waiting in silence as the gates slammed closed.

Vedra scowled, irritated by so much regimented posturing. She had also been counting the Blood Warriors outside the gate. Khrall had sent no more than three hundred of his knights out to deal with her host of thousands. She clamped her jaws, annoyed by this second insult. She lifted her spear from her back and planted a kiss on the cold iron. ‘I didn’t come here to watch a dance.’

Vedra leapt on the yoke of her chariot and turned to face her army, her mohawk rippling in the wind and her spear held above her head.

‘What are we?’ she howled, her voice carrying across the ridge, amplified by the sorcery of Alimus.

‘Untamed!’ roared thousands of throats.

‘Untamed!’ howled Vedra, jabbing her spear skywards at the rushing clouds.

Then she leapt back into the chariot and yanked the reins, sending her hounds hurtling down the slope.

The Darkoath tribes thundered after her in a wild profusion of limbs, chariots and weapons, more landslide than army, wailing and frenzied as they screamed towards the citadel below.

Alimus’ warning echoed around Vedra’s head as she hurtled towards the Blood Warriors and she drove her hounds harder than ever before, racing with such fury that even her brothers and sisters struggled to match her speed. She would reach Khrall before anyone else.

She was still fifty feet away from the enemy when she hurled her spear. ‘Drink, Biurtan!’ she roared as its metal slipped from her grip.

The spear sliced through the air and landed in the throat of the foremost Blood Warrior, cutting through his neck brace like cloth. The spear emerged from the back of his neck, knocking him from his saddle, and he thudded to the ground, throwing up a cloud of hissing smoke.

Vedra’s chariot, carried by the momentum of her downhill charge, was now only twenty feet from the enemy. Her spear hand was still raised and as the fallen Blood Warrior lay clutching at his throat, Biurtan reappeared in Vedra’s fist, painted crimson.

‘They bleed!’ she howled, glancing back at the army thundering in her wake. ‘They die!’

Seconds from the enemy, she hurled the spear again with the same words, punching another Blood Warrior from his saddle.

Then, with a crash of shredding metal, she was amongst them.

Bailar and Balkar howled, tearing a path through the armoured ranks.

Vedra caught Biurtan in one hand and drew her sword with the other, howling as she split a knight’s faceplate, and hurled the spear again, embedding it in the chest of another Blood Warrior.

For a brief, blessed, moment, Vedra was alone with the enemy, careering through them with all the fury of a storm.

Then, with a sound like a thousand breaking cymbals, her army arrived, colliding with the enemy at incredible speed, whirling, hacking and howling as they showed the sons of Khorne who ruled the Arad Plains.

Chapter Four

By midday, the field before the gates was a dark, bloody pit. Darkoath tribesmen lay heaped in mounds, retching and howling in agony, or crushed, lifeless into the mire. Vedra was near the gates, her chariot surrounded by crimson-clad knights. The battle had ground to an infuriating impasse. Her host had swarmed over the Blood Warriors and their gargantuan, metal steeds, but the knights were almost impossible to kill. She swayed back and forth on her chariot, holding the reins in one hand and wielding her sword with the other. She fought with skill and fury. Months of war had honed her into a perfect weapon – fearless, lean and agile. Every sword strike hit home, slicing through the Blood Warriors’ armour and filling the air with hot blood. But it was futile. Every time she hacked one of them to the ground, he wiped the gore from his armour and staggered back to his feet. If anything, the Blood Warriors were invigorated by the ferocity of her attacks, becoming more hate-fuelled with each injury.

A mounted knight crashed his steed through the scrum and the beast’s horn punched into Vedra’s chariot, tipping it sideways.

Vedra lunged, ramming her sword into the monster’s eye.

Rather than killing it, Vedra unleashed a gout of fire from its battle plate. Heat blistered her face and drove her back. It was as though the creature’s armour contained a brazier.

The knight laughed – a harsh, clanging sound, echoing inside his helmet like a broken bell.

Vedra dropped into a crouch and saw the same infernal light burning through the eyeholes of the knight’s helmet. She recalled what Budar had said about the Blood Warriors being inhuman.

Rage pounded in her temples and, as the Blood Warrior laughed, she leapt onto her chariot’s yoke and sprang through the air. She gripped her sword in both hands and drove it down into the Blood Warrior’s neck, splintering his neck brace. Then, wrenching the blade sideways, she ripped his head away.

There was an explosion of sparks and blood as Vedra flipped backwards across the yoke and landed on the overturned chariot.

The surrounding tribesmen saw her behead the warrior and raised their weapons, cheering as he toppled back from his steed and thudded to the ground.

‘Untamed!’ she howled, lashing out and opening another armoured throat.

Her army roared again and repeated her war cry until it echoed across the whole battle.

A Blood Warrior near Vedra toppled from his saddle as a tribesman smashed into him.

It was Tuath. Vedra howled in delight as her brother knocked the Blood Warrior to the ground and beheaded him with a single swing of his axe.

Tuath reeled back through a cloud of embers and looked up at her. He was drenched in blood, his wiry, gore-splattered muscles glinting in the midday sun. His face was a crimson mask and his teeth gleamed, shocking white against the blood as he pummelled his way towards her. He hauled himself up onto the chariot and slammed his axe into the helmet of another knight, filling the air with metal and grey matter.

Vedra dodged an axe blow and jammed her sword through a helmet visor.

‘We’re losing hundreds of men,’ said Tuath as he reached her. She had fought beside her brother since they were children and she had never seen him look this troubled.

She stepped back to survey the scene. Huge swathes of her army had been hacked down, but the small group of Blood Warriors had barely shrunk. At most the Untamed had killed fifty of them.

‘Have you seen their lord?’ she cried out, struggling to raise her voice over the din of battle.

Tuath shook his head. ‘Must be in there,’ he said, nodding at the gates that loomed over them. ‘With the rest of their army.’

‘I need to reach him,’ she gasped. ‘We need to get in there.’

Tuath looked up at the colossal doors and raised an eyebrow.

Vedra gripped the Serpent Stone. It was still cold, but it reminded her that there was more than one way to defeat an enemy.

‘Alimus!’ she cried out. There was no reply. She scoured the battle and saw the sorcerer, gliding across the forest of whirling axes on his disc. As he weaved back and forth through the fumes he jabbed his staff at the warriors below, spewing gouts of sapphire flame.

‘Alimus!’ she howled.

This time he looked up and saw her. He wrenched his staff free and waved it in her direction, sending his disc hurtling towards her.

‘We’re wasting time!’ she cried as he loomed over her chariot.

More Blood Warriors rushed towards her but Alimus drew his staff round in a scything motion and they crumpled, crushed beneath an invisible weight. Their armour plates popped and warped, spraying blood from the joints as Alimus drove them deep into the ground.

Vedra and Tuath looked at each other in surprise.

‘Your power is growing,’ said Vedra as Alimus flew down towards them, his staff still shimmering with cobalt sparks.

He looked at his staff with a dazed expression, as though even he had not expected such a dramatic effect.

‘It’s a sign that we’re near victory,’ he said, swinging the staff round again. Fire spat from the claw at its head, enveloping the nearest Blood Warrior and blasting him from his saddle. As the knight crashed to the ground, his armour melted, eating into his flesh, leaving a smouldering soup of twisted metal and bubbling innards.

Vedra fended off a blow, downed another warrior, then waved her sword at the mounds of dead tribesmen. ‘There’ll be no victory if I don’t reach Khrall.’

The gates were still thirty feet away, but even from here she could see that they were impregnable – mountains of hammered metal, studded with iron spikes and enormous skulls.

Alimus nodded, gripping his staff in both hands. ‘I’ll meet you there. I can open them wide enough to get some of us inside.’

‘Just me!’ she cried. ‘And my kin,’ she added, catching Tuath’s expression. ‘Not the chieftains.’

‘No need to worry, Warqueen. They’re all back there.’ He waved at the main scrum of the battle. Then his disc hurtled away, skimming through the ash clouds towards the gates.

‘Zuchis!’ cried Vedra, spying her older brother not far away, pummelling a Blood Warrior to the ground with the butt of his axe.

Zuchis hurried over and, as he approached, Vedra saw some of her sisters nearby and called them over too.

‘To the gates,’ cried Vedra, jolting the reins of the chariot. Tuath leapt clear as Bailar and Balkar wrenched the chariot back onto its wheels, then hauled it towards the gates, opening the throats of anyone in their way.

One of the mounted knights crashed into view, blocking Vedra’s way and battering Zuchis aside with the back of his axe.

Bailar and Balkar reared, canines bared, then tore into the bull-like steed.

It staggered under their weight, then rose up again with its tusk jammed into Balkar’s chest.

The hound let out a tormented howl as it was torn in two and Bailar fastened its jaws around the juggernaut’s neck, dragging it down to the ground.

The rider brought his great, two-handed axe around in a backhanded swipe and it slammed into Bailar’s muzzle, sending it crashing to the ground.

As the hounds fell, so did the chariot, hurling Vedra through the air.

As she tumbled forwards, she grabbed her iron spear and drove it through the Blood Warrior’s chest.

Her momentum carried them both off the back of the juggernaut and they thudded into the blood bog.

The Blood Warrior rose and hurled Vedra back into the side of the chariot.

Air exploded from her lungs. She gasped, unable to breathe, as the Blood Warrior stomped towards her, throwing her into shadow as he drew back his axe to take her head.

Vedra was faster, jamming the spear into him again. She shoved the tip through the eyehole of his helmet, leaning all of her weight into the thrust, and they both fell backwards.

This time the Blood Warrior stayed down as Vedra pulled Biurtan free, but when Vedra staggered back from her kill, she groaned in horror. Both of her hounds were sprawled beneath the metal corpse of the juggernaut. For a moment, she forgot the battle, staring at them. She had trained them herself, over many years. They were her kin. The pain of losing them was like a chest wound. Then the roar of battle dragged her back from her grief. The chariot was on its side and everywhere she looked there were Blood Warriors, striding towards her, axes raised and eyes burning.

She whispered a farewell to the hounds, then hurried towards the gates.

Her brothers and sisters were already there. They had formed a semicircle before the gates and they were fighting furiously to keep the space clear.

Vedra looked past the wall of spears and axes and saw what they were protecting: Alimus. He had dismounted and was hunched at the foot of the gates while the others battled to buy him time.

Blood Warriors swaggered towards them from every direction, hewing down tribesmen with slow, calm fury, deepening the scarlet hue of their armour with waves of fresh blood.

Vedra vaulted over a staggering Blood Warrior and had almost reached Alimus when another one caught her with the haft of his axe, slamming her into the iron gates.

Colours and shapes flashed across her eyes as she slumped to the ground, blood rushing from her ear.

‘We can’t hold them for long!’ cried someone.

A hand grabbed Vedra, helping her up.

It was Alimus. The old man struggled to grip her, fumbling and grasping at her neck before he finally managed to grab the spiked pauldron she wore on her left shoulder.

‘Get the gates open!’ she gasped.

Alimus was as blood splattered and exhausted as she was, but he bared his crooked teeth in a grin, pulling her back a few paces so she could look up at the doors.

This close it was impossible to take in the full scale of the gates, but she could see enough to understand Alimus’ smile.

The whole edifice was tumbling and shimmering like a waterfall.

She looked at the sorcerer in surprise, impressed for a second time by his new-found power.

He gripped her shoulder. ‘The Lord of Change is here, Warqueen. He’s here.’

After a few seconds, the base of the gates had completely vanished, opening into a circular portal and revealing ranks of Blood Warriors waiting on the far side.

The knights backed away from the dazzling display, wary of Alimus’ sorcery.

‘Now!’ cried the sorcerer, pointing his staff at the opening. ‘Be quick!’

Vedra raced towards the gap, waving for her brothers and sisters to follow.

As soon as they ran into the courtyard beyond the gates, Blood Warriors rushed to meet them.

Remembering Alimus’ map, Vedra ran to the right, calling for the others to follow as she headed for a narrow staircase.

She glanced back as she ran and saw her siblings battling furiously to stop the knights from following her.

Vedra bounded up the steps and reached the slender walkway that led towards the centre of the fortress.

It was only as she paused, waiting for the others to catch up, that she realised something terrible had happened. As she reached for the Serpent Stone to thank Tzeentch for getting her this far, she realised that it was gone.

She looked back and saw that Alimus had not followed them up the steps. He was waiting down below, near the portal he had conjured in the gates. With a sickening jolt of realisation, she remembered how he had fumbled at her throat when he tried to lift her from the ground.

She looked down at him, outraged, drawing breath to howl.

Her cry stalled in her throat as she realised his treachery ran deeper than just the theft of her amulet.

He was looking up at her with an obscene smirk.

‘You lied about the chieftains,’ she whispered, knowing he could hear from this distance. ‘The traitor is you.’

His voice appeared in her mind, thrown by the force of his sorcery.

The Changer of Ways has chosen a new champion.

Then, with a mocking wave, Alimus stepped back through the portal into the battle outside.

As the gates began knitting themselves back together, she saw Alimus turning to face the crowds outside, and Arva, her youngest sister, still battling to reach the opening.

Vedra hurried back down the stairs leaping over her brothers and sisters who were charging up towards her.

She crashed into the Blood Warriors, jamming her spear into one, then another, trying to break through. There were too many and she fell beneath a flurry of blows.

She rolled across the floor, dodging axes, still trying to get back to the gates, but it was too late.

They were sealed.

Vedra was trapped inside the Abattoir, separated from her army, surrounded by gathering ranks of Blood Warriors.

Chapter Five

For a brief moment, Vedra tasted despair. She found it repugnant and alien and quickly washed it away with something more potent: fury. She leapt to her feet and sprinted away from the Blood Warriors, heading back up the steps.

Zuchis and the others stared in shock as hundreds of Blood Warriors rushed after her, striding towards the steps with their axes gripped in both hands and embers burning inside their jagged helms.

‘Vedra?’ cried Zuchis, his eyes wild as she ran past him.

The faces of her kin gave focus to her wrath. She looked around the fortress. It was a huge, circular keep that matched Alimus’ sketch. That much, at least, had been true. The staircase they were standing on snaked up around the inside wall, towards the narrow bridge she had seen earlier. It led through an archway into the next circle of the fortress.

‘We must find Khrall,’ she said, staring back at Tuath, her words choked with anger.

At the bottom of the steps, Zuchis and her sisters were already battling to hold back the tide of Blood Warriors, kicking and smashing them from the narrow steps.

Tuath’s expression was a mixture of awe and incredulity. He looked down at the hundreds of colossal Blood Warriors massing beneath them. ‘There are five of us,’ he said.

She looked up at the bridge. There were only two Blood Warriors marching towards them from that direction.

‘If we move fast, we can still reach him,’ she said, realising how insane she sounded as she raced on up the steps.

Tuath and the others followed at a slower pace, stepping backwards as they fought, facing the Blood Warriors’ fury with the ferocious determination of cornered prey.

The steps were only wide enough for one armour-clad Blood Warrior at a time and a bottleneck formed at the bottom of the stairs as the Blood Warriors struggled to fight their way up.

Vedra reached the top step just as the two Blood Warriors on the upper level reached her.

She dodged one axe blow and rolled beneath another, launching her spear as she flipped around to face them.

Biurtan hit its target with such force that the Blood Warrior crashed through a balcony, cartwheeling out into mid-air, before smashing onto the flagstones below.

The second Blood Warrior strode forwards, bringing his axe round in a low swipe.

Vedra leapt over the axe and jammed her sword down into his chest plate.

He fell back, then winded her with a punch, sending her rolling across the iron floor.

She flipped, effortlessly, back onto her feet and reached up to catch her spear. Then she staggered as hot agony spiked through her stomach. She looked down and saw blood rushing from her midriff.

As the Blood Warrior stood, he raised his fist in explanation. It was encased in a spiked, metal gauntlet that was dripping with her blood.

She hurled her spear into his throat and sent him spinning back from the balcony to land on the warriors below.

Then she raced towards the walkway that led deeper into the citadel.

She hesitated at the edge, glancing back at her brothers and sisters. They were still battling the Blood Warriors, holding them at the bottom of the steps, but it was only a matter of time before one of them slipped and allowed the Blood Warriors to break through. Only Tuath had followed her up the steps.

‘Go!’ cried Zuchis, glancing up at them both. ‘We can hold them!’

Zuchis and Vedra’s sisters, Dyna and Ederata, were yielding no ground and showing no signs of wearying, so Vedra nodded and waved for Tuath to follow her, sprinting towards the walkway.

It was made of the same studded iron as the walls and it led out over broad, circular channels of liquid fire. The whole fortress was like a man-made volcano. The blazing channels beneath the walkway were flowing with what looked like magma. Clouds of embers drifted up towards Vedra and she felt an immense heat radiating through the bridge, scalding the soles of her feet as she sprinted towards a tall, wrought iron gate at the far end.

‘How do we–?’ began Tuath, but before he could finish, the doors opened inwards, screaming on enormous iron hinges and revealing the next section of walkway.

Like the first, it was suspended above a series of concentric circles, blazing with vivid lava flows.

This section of the walkway did not end at a doorway, but at a broad, circular dais, fifty feet in diameter, forged from brass and ringed with terraces.

Vedra ignored the pain in her guts and hurried on down the walkway, wincing as the heat grew even more intense, then she froze as Zuchis’ voice cried out a warning.

They both rushed back through the doorway and peered through the clouds of smoke and embers. The Blood Warriors were advancing up the steps. One of them was carrying a severed head that was spraying blood and trailing a long beard.

‘Zuchis,’ breathed Vedra. The pain in her stomach tripled at the loss of her older brother.

Tuath cursed, shaking his head.

‘They can’t hold them for long,’ said Vedra, pointing her spear at Dyna and Ederata, still battling furiously with the Blood Warriors. ‘We need to go.’

Tuath nodded but did not move, watching in horror as their sisters began to stumble and flail beneath the Blood Warriors’ massive axes.

Vedra grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘We find Khrall, or this was for nothing.’

Then she hurried on into the furnace, dragging him after her.

‘First Khrall, then Alimus,’ she spat.

As they neared the circular platform, Vedra saw Blood Warriors gathered at its centre. None of them made any move to attack as she approached, watching her in silence through the eye-slits of their helmets, their huge axes resting lightly in their hands.

Vedra and Tuath stumbled out onto the platform and looked around in confusion. There were around thirty Blood Warriors in the centre of the dais, but the circular terraces surrounding it were crowded with hundreds more. They were all standing in silence, watching, their hands resting on the heads of their axes. They looked like statues. The only movement came from the shimmering, ember-lights in their helmets.

Vedra and Tuath dropped into a crouch, weapons ready, expecting an attack, but none came.

‘That’s him!’ gasped Vedra, pointing her spear at a huge figure in the uppermost terrace, over on the far side of the dais, behind the Blood Warriors who had assembled to face them.

There was no mistaking Khrall. He was a giant, nearly three times the size of the Blood Warriors that made up his army. He was clad in similar armour – thick, red plate, edged with a serrated brass trim, but the design was more ornate, scored with dark sigils and jagged designs. He wore no helmet and his head was testament to how highly the Blood God had favoured him. The skin on his face was as red as his armour and it glistened in the firelight, dripping wet, like a recently removed organ. This gory lump had been split by eight horizontal gashes that ran the whole width of his head. Each gash was crammed with long, iron, needle teeth and dangling shreds of meat for tongues. At first she thought Khrall must be blind, but then, as she stared harder, she saw two small, coal-black studs embedded in his forehead, just above the uppermost mouth.

Unlike the other Blood Warriors, Khrall carried a sword. It was enormous – a two-handed blade, as tall as Khrall himself and as black as his eyes. He was as motionless as all the other warriors gathered around the platform, seated in a huge, brass throne, and, for a moment, Vedra thought he was chained to his seat. There were dozens of iron chains trailing down from his chest and arms. Then she saw that, rather than shackling him to the throne, each of the chains ended in a spiked, iron skull.

Vedra felt no fear, despite the size of her prey. All she felt was time, slipping away from her, as the Blood Warriors stared at her in silence.

‘Face me!’ she howled, levelling her spear at the seated giant.

Her voice echoed off the ridged, iron walls and she knew he must be able to hear her, but he showed no sign of recognition.

‘How can we get to him?’ asked Tuath, stepping past her, his axe raised, looking up at the terraces. There were no steps or ladders, just a single, barred gate, directly behind the rows of Blood Warriors gathered on the dais.

‘We fight through them until we reach him.’ Vedra’s heart hammered in her chest as she stepped forwards.

‘Vedra!’ hissed Tuath, grabbing her by the arm. ‘Look at them! How can we fight through so many, on our own?’

Vedra spat on the metal floor, seeing the truth of her brother’s words. Even if the numbers were fairer, the Blood Warriors were fresh and battle-ready, while she and Tuath were exhausted, stumbling and splashing their blood across the dais.

‘Face me, coward!’ she howled, waving her spear at Khrall.

He was so immobile that, for a moment, she wondered if he might actually be a statue, but then he raised his hand slightly from the arm of his throne, gesturing to his knights.

The Blood Warriors on the dais lurched into life, clanking quickly across the iron floor and swinging back their two-handed axes.

Vedra reached for the Serpent Stone, then cursed as she remembered Alimus had stolen it.

Tuath looked at her, shaking his head.

She gripped his arm. ‘What are you?’

He closed his eyes for a second, then, when he opened them again, the doubt was gone.

Then they both turned to face the advancing Blood Warriors.

‘Untamed!’ they roared in unison, leaping to attack.

Vedra landed, spear first, on the chest of a Blood Warrior. As the tip punched deep into his chest, she planted her foot on his shoulder and launched herself over the heads of the other knights, crashing into the Blood Warriors at the rear. As they recovered their balance, she sprinted across the dais, drawing her sword as she approached the gate leading up to the terraces.

In the corner of her eye, Vedra saw a Blood Warrior hurl an axe.

She dodged the blade but the handle thudded into her side.

With no armour to protect her, Vedra’s ribs cracked and she sprawled across the dais, winded, her sword slipping from her grip and clanging away out of reach.

The Blood Warrior pounded towards her, reaching for his axe.

Vedra jumped, drawing a short, triangular knife from her pelt. It was designed solely for the purpose of sliding between armour joints and she jammed it under the Blood Warrior’s helmet, ripping through his jugular.

Blood rushed into her face but, before she could dodge away, the Blood Warrior locked his metal gauntlet around her throat and pulled her close, holding her above the floor, scorching her face with his breath.

Vedra pummelled him with her fists, but she was punching iron and brass and succeeded only in tearing the skin from her knuckles.

The Blood Warrior slowly drew a short sword from a metal scabbard at his hip and held it to Vedra’s throat.

Then his head toppled from his shoulders and rolled across the floor, leaving his body to topple backwards.

As the decapitated Blood Warrior hit the ground, Vedra caught a glimpse of Tuath’s face as he rushed on.

Vedra cried out and held her hand aloft.

Biurtan materialised in her grip and, as the Blood Warriors charged towards her, she hurled the spear up into the terraces, rolled aside to reclaim her sword then slashed it through the shins of the nearest knight, slicing through the plate armour and shearing his lower legs away.

As Vedra leapt back onto her feet she snatched a look up at the distant figure of Khrall. He calmly raised a hand and caught her spear.

An axe rushed at Vedra’s head, causing her to dive clear and roll across the floor of the dais. She came to a halt just inches from the edge of the platform. The dais ended several feet short of the first terrace. The whole disc was surrounded by a gap that looked down onto the magma below. Heat scorched her face as she nearly fell into the furnace, then she jumped to her feet, and turned back to the Blood Warriors, sword raised in anticipation.

A Blood Warrior’s axe hammered into her sword with such force that she fell from the edge of the dais.

She caught the edge of the platform with one hand, hanging over the flames as her sword fell into the blazing pool below.

The Blood Warrior drew back his axe to hack her hands off, then jolted forwards and flew over her head, plunging through the air and landing in the lava, creating a hissing explosion of embers.

In his place on the dais stood Vedra’s oldest sister, Ederata. She was pale, gore-drenched and gasping for breath, but still clutching her axe with a look of determination.

She dropped to her knee, grabbed Vedra by the arm and hauled her back up onto the platform.

Vedra and her siblings were surrounded at the edge of the platform, feeling the heat of the lava scorching their backs as the Blood Warriors marched calmly towards them.

Tuath handed her a short sword as she fought to catch her breath.

‘They’re slow,’ she panted. ‘We can take down a dozen more at least.’

Her brothers and sisters stared at her, their eyes wide and their faces dripping with bloody sweat.

Vedra thought of everyone she had left outside the gates – cousins, aunts, uncles; even her sister, Arva. She would face her own death with dignity, if she must, but the thought of what the chieftains would do to her kin caused her to howl.

‘Fight me!’ she cried, pointing the short sword at the distant figure of Khrall.

The Blood Warriors hesitated, as though half-expecting a response.

None came. Khrall remained silent and motionless.

The Blood Warriors surged forwards.

‘Fight me!’ screamed Vedra, leaping at the Blood Warriors and jamming the short sword into the first she reached.

The Blood Warrior staggered and the other Untamed followed her, throwing themselves at the knights.

Ederata cleaved a Blood Warrior’s helmet in two, then she crashed to the floor as another one of the knights ripped her back open with an axe blow. As she crumpled to the floor another Blood Warrior slammed his axe through her neck, sending her head bouncing across the sizzling metal.

Dyna died the same way, fighting bravely until dozens of axes tore her down, sending her corpse hurtling into the flames.

Vedra crashed through the Blood Warriors, driving them back with a frenzy of sword strikes, moving so fast they could not land a single blow on her.

Tuath followed and they scrambled across the bloody metal until they were back-to-back, facing a circle of Blood Warriors.

As she fought, Vedra forgot everything beyond the simple, physical need to jump, hack and lunge. She lost all sense of time, consumed by fury and grief.

Finally, drunk on exhaustion and blood loss, she slipped in the gore and crashed to her knees, losing hold of her sword and watching it clatter across the dais.

She grabbed a piece of splintered armour from the floor and clutched it like a dagger, nodding for Tuath to do the same.

The Blood Warriors marched forwards.

A loud thud echoed around the chamber.

The Blood Warriors froze.

Vedra sensed movement up in the terraces as a great shadow washed across the dais.

There was another loud thud, then shadow consumed her as she fell, face first, into blackness.

Chapter Six

Alimus soared over mounds of dying and injured tribesmen – his countrymen, butchered and howling at the stars, bleeding their last before the brutal gates of the Abattoir. He had waited until the sun sank over the battlefield to reveal himself but now, after hours of slaughter, the losses were enough. He needed the defeat to be decisive, but not devastating. As his disc carried him high over the battlefield, he saw the ordered ranks of Blood Warriors pushing on through the darkness, burning like firebrands, lit from within as they butchered the Untamed, driving them back across the plains.

Alimus pretended to rage at the loss of life, grasping at his long, matted hair and shaking his head, playing the role of tormented victim, wailing and pointing his staff at the fortress. The gates were sealed, his sorcery extinguished, and the rest of the Untamed were being forced back across the plains, turning to flee in many places, as the Blood Warriors advanced in seamless, unstoppable ranks.

The chieftains had gathered in a hilltop ruin, half a mile away, for an urgent council of war. Alimus steered his disc towards them, struggling to maintain his dismayed expression as he saw how close he was to victory.

The ruin was no more than a knee-high circle of stone, the base of a long-gone tower, but the chieftains’ retainers had planted brands around its circumference, turning it into a wheel of flickering lights, scattering embers and shadows across the scorched turf.

‘Sanorach!’ cried Leortas, striding through the firelight as Alimus landed. ‘What news?’ The lord of the Tannen looked as scornful and proud as ever, his cloak of nails flung back over his shoulder and his hand resting on the pommel of his broadsword, but there was a glimmer of excitement in his eyes.

Control yourself, Leortas, thought Alimus. If the others see the glee in your eyes, they might guess the whole ruse. He gave Leortas a warning glance as he landed, then resumed his pretence of being distraught.

‘She’s gone!’ he gasped, climbing from the back of his disc and rushing towards them.

The chieftains gathered around. All of them were drenched in blood and muck, but none were seriously wounded. Alimus needed to speak with all three of the great chieftains though, so he held his tongue and waited. Leortas arrived first, still struggling to hide his excitement. Then Budar stomped across the turf with a thunderous scowl, gripping his bloodstained axe in his fists. There was still blood flowing from his face where Vedra had smashed his soul cage.

Alimus looked for Korvis, not sure how many times he could tell the lie convincingly. Korvis was on his way. The Sachalites believed that contact with the earth would rob the Seer-lord of his divinity, so they carried him on a feathered litter. He was snatching at embers as they brought him to Alimus, watching shapes no one else could see. Both his human head and the crow’s head in his chest were twitching and nodding, pecking at the air. There was no sign he was aware of Alimus, or anyone else for that matter, but Alimus could wait no longer.

‘I can’t believe what I saw,’ he gasped, still clutching his head.

‘What?’ demanded Leortas, his face flushed. ‘What happened?’

‘Where’s the Warqueen?’ snarled Budar, glaring past Alimus at the carnage below. The Blood Warriors had nearly driven the Untamed back to the ruins. They were already at the base of the hill, carving the tribesmen apart in cold, inhuman silence.

‘She went into the fortress,’ said Alimus, shaking his head and staring at the ground, trying to look stunned.

Up on his litter, Korvis started to convulse, thrashing and jerking across the feathers. His crow’s head began screeching an ear-shredding torrent of gibberish.

For a moment, Alimus thought it was in response to his news of Vedra, but then he realised Korvis was still unaware of his surroundings. He was just reacting to whatever fungal brew he consumed at the start of the battle.

Leortas grimaced at the mutated chieftain, then looked at Alimus. ‘They captured her?’

‘No.’ Alimus let the word hang in the air for dramatic effect. Then he gripped his claw-headed staff and whispered an oath. ‘She entered willingly. She betrayed us.’

‘That can’t be true,’ grunted Budar. ‘Whatever that woman is, she’s no traitor.’ He pointed his axe at the tribesmen dying at the foot of the hill. ‘She built this army. Why would she betray it?’

‘I never trusted her,’ said Leortas, regaining his usual, pompous expression, lip curled and nostrils flared. ‘Why was she so keen to cast aside all of our beliefs and traditions?’ He sneered at Budar. ‘I saw how she destroyed your soul cage. And I have witnessed countless similar acts. Why was she so keen to rob us of the things that make us strong?’

Budar shook his head, looking at Leortas in shock. ‘Vedra earned the right to rule. She bested us.’

‘But why?’ demanded Leortas. ‘What does she really want? If she wanted to grow our power, why cast down our beliefs?’

Budar was about to reply, then hesitated, shaking his head.

Alimus almost felt sorry for him. Budar’s simple, brutal mind was not made for such conversations. Budar despised Vedra as much as any of them, but his naive warrior code left him in the ridiculous position of having to defend the woman who made a fool of him.

‘My lords,’ called a herald, sprinting up onto the hilltop. He was pale and drenched in blood. ‘Do we attack again or withdraw?’

Budar nodded and was about to reply when Alimus held up his staff to silence him.

‘There’s something I have to tell you all,’ he said, deliberately adding an emotional tremor to his voice.

Budar’s scowl deepened, but he waved the herald away.

‘After the need-fire, you all asked me what I learned from the lights,’ said Alimus. ‘Do you recall my answer?’

‘You were evasive,’ said Leortas. ‘Unwilling to explain.’

Alimus nodded. ‘Because the things I saw were troubling.’ He shook his head, glancing back at the fortress. ‘I did not trust the flames, or perhaps I just didn’t want to. But now, everything I saw has come to pass. When we reached the gates, they opened at Vedra’s command. She marched inside, even as her kinsmen were being slaughtered all around her. I assumed this was just another example of Vedra’s bravery, but the Blood Warriors parted as she entered. They stepped aside.’

Budar leant over him. ‘Why? Why would they let her pass?’

‘It was exactly as I saw in the need-fire,’ said Alimus. ‘She entered the fortress and knelt before their lord.’

‘Never!’ snarled Budar. ‘I will not believe it. She knows what the Changer of Ways would do to such a traitor. She would never risk the wrath of a god.’

Alimus reached beneath his robes and revealed his masterstroke: the Serpent Stone. ‘She discarded this before she entered the fortress. She left it lying in the mud at the side of the gates. I snatched it up, intending to return it, but when the Blood Warriors saw me following her in, they weren’t so welcoming. I barely escaped with my life before the gates closed.’

They all stared at the crystal, shocked that Vedra had abandoned her most precious possession.

‘And what of Vedra?’ Leortas was speaking a little too loud, making sure the others heard. ‘What did she do when they attacked you?’

‘She smiled. She saw them coming for me and smiled.’

‘My lords,’ said the herald, waving at the approaching battle.

‘I saw it all in my visions,’ said Alimus, drawing the chieftains’ attention back to him. ‘This battle was never winnable. Vedra brought us here as a sacrifice. We are an offering. She has bought herself the patronage of a new god. And she has bought it with our blood.’

Budar was still shaking his head, but Leortas nodded. ‘It makes sense. Don’t you see, Budar? This is why she was robbing us of our defences, like your soul cage. She was weakening us, readying us for the slaughter.’

‘Korvis?’ asked Budar, looking up at the babbling figure on the litter.

Korvis finally acknowledged them, leaning down with a wild stare, looking at the Serpent Stone.

‘It glows,’ he screeched.

They all looked at the crystal talisman in shock. There was a faint, blue light shimmering in its depths.

‘What does it mean?’ asked Alimus, pretending he had not seen the light before.

There was no reply, so he glanced at Leortas, prompting him.

‘Tzeentch has chosen a new champion,’ said the chieftain.

‘Yes,’ squawked Korvis, nodding eagerly. ‘Vedra has failed him, so Tzeentch has put his trust in you, Alimus.’ The crow writhed in his flesh, as though straining for freedom. ‘You will rule in her stead. You will be king of the Untamed.’

Alimus shook his head. ‘A sanorach cannot be king. How could I best any of you in combat?’ Then he nodded. ‘But I could choose a king. I could be Tzeentch’s envoy.’ He stared at the stone, acting as though all these thoughts were occurring to him for the first time. ‘We must return to the Sickle Keep. This attack on the fortress was a trick. We must return to the capital and then I will look into a need-fire that I can trust. The Changer of Ways will tell me who shall lead us.’ He was careful not to look at Leortas. ‘He will tell me who to crown.’

Chapter Seven

Heat washed over Vedra’s body, more painful than anything she had experienced before. She let out an agonised, inhuman cry. The pain grew worse and she howled again. This continued for several minutes until a new thought formed in her head. She was not dead. The pain was building towards a horrific pinnacle, but her grasp on reality was growing at the same time. She could feel her heart working furiously to keep her alive – racing and skipping but refusing to stop.

Still howling, she opened her eyes, and saw that she was in a gloomy, metal cell. There were chains and manacles dangling from bloodstained walls and she was strapped to a metal slab. There was a copper brazier in one corner, filling the room with ruddy light and there was a man stooped over her, working industriously at her flesh, humming in a vague, tuneless way as he pressed a hot iron against her stomach, filling the air with smoke and the stink of burned meat.

He wore similar armour to the Blood Warriors, but it was draped in hooks, scalpels and paring knives and his head was uncovered. His face was so peculiar that, for a moment, it even distracted Vedra from her pain. It was a loose bag of grey skin, draped over his head like a hood. There was no mouth or nose holes, just two roughly torn openings for his eyes. She could see ligaments and muscle glistening beneath.

As her screams caught in her throat, the man looked up in surprise, causing the mask to slump sideways. He pushed it back into place with his free hand and leant over her, breathing in her face and filling her nostrils with the smell of offal.

His voice was like the snarling of a rabid dog – a liquid torrent of snorts and slurping sounds that made no sense. He tried again, louder, bellowing in her face, but he was speaking no language she had ever heard – if it even was a language. It sounded more like guttural belches, repeated at different pitches.

She tried to rise from the table, but she was strapped tightly and the effort caused her head to spin.

The man barked furiously at Vedra as the darkness took her again.

Chapter Eight

‘Vedra,’ whispered a soft voice in her ear. The pain had faded to a bearable level and her heart was beating at a steady, strong pace.

‘Vedra, it’s me,’ said the voice, louder. The voice was familiar and speaking words she could understand.

‘Tuath?’ she croaked, opening her eyes.

She was in another dark cell, but this one was larger and crowded with shadowy figures.

Tuath was sitting next to her with an anxious expression on his face. He was a mess. His sinewy body was almost entirely covered in blisters and scars and his face was a colourful explosion of bruises. His eyes were clear though and he looked as powerful and determined as ever.

He gave her a grim smile.

‘The others?’ she asked. But, before the words had even left her mouth she remembered the massacre on the dais. She closed her eyes, trying to remember the faces of her brothers and sisters, horrified to realise that they were already fading. One face was clear though, with its vile smirk: Alimus.

‘We need to get home,’ she said, trying to sit up.

Her head began to spin again and she would have fallen if he had not held her.

‘We’re not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘You’re in a worse state than me. They closed our wounds. Some kind of unguent.’ He nodded to her stomach wound. ‘I don’t know if it’s sorcery, but they kept us alive.’

Vedra’s midriff was a contorted jumble of scars, but there was no sign of bleeding or infection. The skin had healed over, leaving thick, silvery whorls of scar tissue. She took a deep breath and her head began to clear. Then she patted down the rest of her body. She was battered but intact. No bones were broken and every wound had been cauterised.

‘They didn’t kill us.’

Tuath nodded to the other figures sitting around them in the shadows. ‘And we’re not the only ones.’

The only light came from a torch beyond the barred door of the cell. It was in an iron sconce, fixed to the wall of a narrow passageway and the firelight barely reached into the cell, sending just a few weak fingers of illumination through the bars and across the floor. Most of their fellow prisoners were in utter darkness, and the few who were visible were a strange group. Nearest the light was a man who looked like something from a need-fire vision. He was unnaturally tall and slender. His torso seemed too narrow to contain any vital organs, but he was not scrawny. He was lashed with lean muscle and Vedra could see by the way he held himself that there was power in his rangy limbs. His face was even more peculiar – long, and slightly feline, with dark, almond-shaped eyes that stared from his bone-white skin. His clothes were odd, too. Rather than furs or skins, his trousers were made of a glossy, black material that shimmered in the firelight, as though wet, and was draped with metal barbs. The barbs hung down from his legs on strips of leather, swinging and glinting like matted vines.

He turned his featureless black eyes on Vedra, studying her with disdain.

Vedra scowled back at him, outraged by the scorn in his face.

The stranger laughed contemptuously, then leant forwards, reaching out towards her.

He was several feet away, but Vedra had to fight the urge to recoil as he extended his long, taloned fingers and spoke. His words were incomprehensible – sibilant whispers, like wind scratching across the bark of a dead tree.

Vedra tried to rise and lunge towards him, but she was jolted to a halt by a chain, fixed to an iron collar around her neck.

She sat back down with a strangled cough and the stranger laughed again, whispering more vitriol as he turned away from her, fixing his gaze on the torch outside the cell.

‘I don’t think he’s human,’ whispered Tuath. ‘They brought him in while you were asleep. He moves like a shadow – flickering and hard to see.’ Awe flickered in his eyes. ‘I think he’s a daemon.’

Vedra shook her head. ‘Daemons aren’t physical. But he is. See the scars on his chest. He’s been wounded in the past. He’s of this world. He’s not human though, you’re right. I think he’s an aelf.’

Tuath looked at the stranger with renewed interest. ‘An aelf? I suppose he could be. A traveller perhaps, come all the way south from the Great Parch. Who knows what lies beyond the Arad Plains.’

Vedra thought often of the world beyond the plains. If the Untamed were to survive, Vedra needed to forge an empire far beyond the limited imagination of the chieftains. She studied the pale stranger with interest. Perhaps this was the kind of foe they would face? Her need-fire visions had told her very little of aelves, save that they looked like this. How did they fight? What did they believe? She must be prepared for anything when she led the Untamed across the whole of Aqshy.

‘And that?’ asked Tuath, nodding to the figure seated opposite them.

It was hard to make out and, for a moment, Vedra thought it had no head – just a tall arc of neck that ended in nothing. Then she realised that the neck was actually a tall crest of hair, sprouting up from a surly, bearded head that was much lower than she expected. She leant closer and saw that the man was only around four feet tall but unnaturally thickset and powerfully built. He was naked apart from a small, leather tabard and every inch of him was layered with scarred muscle. He looked like a wild boar – hulking, savage and bristling with coarse, ginger hair. His weather-beaten skin was covered in piercings: thick golden slabs, sunk so deep that Vedra guessed he must have hammered them into himself while the metal was still hot. His gaze was locked upon the floor of the cell, so he did not notice Vedra and Tuath staring at him. He was mouthing a silent oath and one of his hands was pressed against his chest, the thick, square fingers spread over a rune.

He was not human, but some other class of being completely. His head was larger than hers and his features were oddly square and slab-like, as though chiselled from rock. ‘Duardin,’ she muttered, recalling another of the visions Tzeentch had shared with her. Again, she wondered how such beings might fight and live. She realised how little she knew of the worlds she intended to conquer.

‘Eat something,’ said Tuath, shoving a wooden bowl into her hands. ‘They’ll be back soon.’

The bowl contained raw meat, still clad in shreds of pale skin and floating in cloudy water.

‘There won’t be anything else,’ said Tuath when she hesitated.

Vedra could tell from the hollow sensation in her stomach that she must have gone days without food. ‘How long have I been unconscious?’

‘Hard to say without sunlight, but I think it’s about three days since they took us.’

‘Then the battle must be over. And we must have lost.’ The idea pained her almost as much as the deaths on the dais. ‘After everything I’ve done, the Untamed have been defeated.’

‘Eat,’ said Tuath.

She fished out some gristly meat and swallowed it quickly, trying not to think about where it might have come from.

‘Alimus,’ she said, swallowing the bile that rushed into her mouth. ‘He betrayed the whole army. He must have. Or these rooms would be swarming with Untamed.’

Tuath shrugged. ‘I think it’s more likely that, with you gone, the army fell apart. Who would they have followed without you? Budar? None of our kinsmen want their heads in crates. They would never kneel to that old lunatic. And the rest of the chieftains are all equally absurd. Only you had the skill to bring them under one banner.’

The meat tasted vile, but it had given her an invigorating rush of energy. She stretched, flexing her muscles, enjoying the sensation of strength returning. She took another piece and chewed it down.

‘There’s something more than meat in there,’ said Tuath. ‘I was half dead when they rammed the first bowl down my throat, but a few hours later I felt ready to kick my way out of here.’ He pulled his metal collar, jolting the chain against its bracket. ‘If I could just stand.’

Vedra studied him. He did seem strangely hale, despite his cuts and bruises. His eyes were bright and he was crouched on the bench, muscles tensed, like a hound on its haunches, ready to lunge.

Her eyesight was improving too. She looked around the cell and saw that most of the other prisoners seemed relatively normal – Darkoath tribesmen, by the looks of them, just from tribes she did not recognise. There was something at the far end of the cell though – a forbidding mountain of shadow that loomed over everyone else. She could see its chest rising and falling, so she knew it was a living creature, but it was far too large to be a man.

‘Have you seen that?’ she asked.

Tuath shook his head. ‘It was in here when I arrived. Even the guards keep clear of it.’ He gestured towards a heap piled at the base of the shadowy figure. ‘I think that’s why.’

It was a corpse. Its limbs had been wrenched so brutally that it was hard to work out which part was which.

‘Talking of which,’ said Tuath, as the sound of metal-shod feet echoed down the corridor towards them.

‘Have you spoken to them?’ asked Vedra.

‘No.’

‘Don’t. Let’s find out what they mean to do with us before we tell them who we are.’

‘I don’t think they could understand us anyway,’ replied Tuath.

‘Rhukan will,’ said the prisoner who sat on the other side of Vedra. ‘He and the Bloodmarshall speak the common tongue.’

Vedra turned to face him, shocked to hear someone speaking words she could understand. She cursed herself for talking so openly.

The man was a northerner, with the cold blue gaze and russet hair of the tribes who lived on the borders of the Great Parch. His face was as heavily scarred as Tuath’s and one of the scars had left a deep furrow through his brow and a puckered hole where his left eye should be.

‘Rhukan?’ she replied. ‘The Bloodmarshall?’

‘Bloodmarshall is what they call their lord, Khrall. Rhukan is his pitmaster.’ He nodded to the bars of the cell. ‘You’ll recognise Rhukan.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Kahem,’ he replied, but before he could say more, the guards reached the cell. Leading them was the man with the bag of skin for a face. He was flanked by a pair of massive Blood Warriors and a group of emaciated wretches – naked, half-starved slaves with sunken eyes and mindless expressions. Their skin was stained with unspeakable filth and they were clutching bowls.

Rhukan rummaged through the various torture instruments attached to his breastplate, grabbed a ring of keys and unlocked the door.

He gave the two Blood Warriors a nod and they stomped into the cell first, axes gripped firmly in both hands as they towered over the seated prisoners.

The slaves staggered in next, nervously grabbing empty bowls from the benches and replacing them with full ones. They hesitated as they reached the large shadow at the far end of the cell, then one of them lunged forwards, slammed a bowl down and leapt back. The large shape gave no sign it had even noticed them.

Finally, Rhukan entered the cell. He walked past the others and came straight to Vedra. As he reached towards her, Vedra realised he had a U-shaped hook in place of his right hand.

He lifted her chin with the hook, looking at her from behind the skin sack.

She resisted the urge to plant her foot in his groin, keen to learn why he had healed her.

Rhukan moved closer and she smelled his offal breath again. Then she realised that her breath probably now smelled the same.

He growled at her in the same incomprehensible language he had used before – a bestial torrent of barks and snarls.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘What… are… you?’ he said, his voice a canine rasp.

‘Vedra the Sworn.’ Her voice was defiant. ‘Warqueen of the Arad Plains.’

The pale, slender figure by the doors looked up as she spoke. Some of the derision faded from his eyes and he looked at her with interest.

‘War… queen,’ said Rhukan. His speech was too rough to be certain, but she thought he sounded amused.

He turned away and she thought he was going to leave, then he whirled back and punched her in the face, hitting her jaw with the rounded part of his hook.

Her head slammed back against the wall. Fury flooded her muscles and she jolted forwards, straining against her chain, trying to grab him by the throat.

He barely managed to step back in time and he laughed as she thrashed and pulled at the chain, spitting and snarling. Then he nodded and said something to the Blood Warriors.

‘Good luck,’ muttered Kahem as they unlocked her collar and grabbed her by the arms, hauling her from the cell.

Chapter Nine

The bodies were gone but the dais was still dark with blood. As the Blood Warriors dragged Vedra out onto the brass platform, she twisted in their grip, trying to see back over the heads to Khrall’s throne. He was there, ominous and silent, and there were a few dozen other figures gathering around him in the terraces but down on the dais there was just her, Rhukan and the two Blood Warriors.

At a signal from Rhukan they shoved her forwards, sending her staggering into the centre of the platform.

She managed to stay on her feet and whirled to face them, invigorated by the sensation of being free. She paced back and forth across the blood-slick brass, looking for an escape route. There were only two exits from the dais. At one end was the tall, skull-studded door she originally arrived through but it was locked shut. Behind Rhukan and the two Blood Warriors was the door that led back to the cell, but she would need to fight through them to reach it. She rushed around the edge of the dais, squinting as the heat of the magma rushed up to meet her. The gap ran around the whole circumference and it was too wide to jump.

‘What do you want of me?’ she demanded, glancing up at the distant figure of Khrall, then striding back towards Rhukan. He was laughing and she had to battle the urge to launch herself at him. She was unarmed. They would cut her down.

Rhukan did not reply. He just rocked back on his heels, arms folded against his chest, laughing to himself.

She paced away, her muscles taut with rage and hope. If she could find a weapon she could kill all three of them. Then maybe find a way to reach Khrall. She might never get this chance again, alone with just three obstacles to her freedom. Then she thought of Tuath, back in the cell. Could she leave him?

She hissed in exasperation as more figures marched down the passageway towards the dais. Six more Blood Warriors and, behind them, a scrum of slaves, staggering beneath the weight of a large, chain-bound metal box. There was a hammering and thudding coming from inside it and the slaves stumbled as the box jolted and swayed, shaken from within.

At a signal from Rhukan, the slaves placed the metal casket carefully on the floor and backed away, their eyes wide as they scurried back to the doorway and headed back into the heart of the fortress.

Some of the Blood Warriors approached the chest, axes raised, forming a circle around it, while the rest barred the way to the doorway.

Rhukan drew out his ring of keys again and stepped over to the chest. He unlocked three padlocks but, before unlocking the final one, he waved a Blood Warrior over and ordered him to brace the box’s lid with the haft of his axe.

Vedra stepped closer, fascinated. The contents were moving with such violence that the box was jumping and slamming across the floor.

‘Warqueen!’ growled Rhukan, causing his skin mask to ripple. He had a weapon in his hand, a hunting knife and, as she looked towards him, he tossed it through the air.

She caught it easily and dropped into a crouch, glaring at the lines of Blood Warriors. To hold a weapon again, even one so basic, was a dizzying thrill. She scoured the arena, wondering if there was some way she could fight her way out.

There was a click as Rhukan unlocked the case and backed away, waving for the others to follow.

The Blood Warriors disappeared from the dais, leaving Vedra alone with the case.

Nothing happened. Whatever was inside the box fell quiet and stopped moving.

Vedra paced back and forth, holding the knife before her, pointed at the box, trying to see through the gaps around its hinges.

The lid flew open and a shape exploded from the crate, hurtling at her face.

She rolled clear, lashing out blindly with the knife, feeling the blade connect with something tough.

Vedra bounded up onto her feet and turned to see an enormous hound, hunched and snarling, its skin covered in thick, raw scars. The creature’s eyes were fixed on her, ember-bright, and its back bristled with a mane of thick, spear-tip spines. It was massive, larger than a full-grown man and bound in thick layers of muscle. There was a hammered, brass collar around its neck, studded with long spikes, but the hound was so bloated with muscle that the metal had almost sunk from view.

Vedra staggered backwards as though she had been punched. ‘Bailar,’ she whispered, recognising the hound she had trained since it was a pup. ‘You survived.’

There was no recognition in the monster’s eye. It paced from side to side, snarling and twitching, then pounced, trailing drool from its jaws as it rushed towards her face.

Vedra dropped into a crouch and rolled away, then bounded up onto her feet, shaking her head as she looked up into the terraces. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘Not her! Not Bailar.’

Rhukan was watching from one of the lower terraces, with the other Blood Warriors, and she heard him laugh.

‘What have you done to her?’ she howled, glaring at him.

The hound had crashed down onto the dais, scrabbling on the blood-drenched brass until it could right itself. As it padded back towards Vedra, she saw how they had driven the animal into such a feral state that it could no longer recognise her – Bailar’s flanks and thighs were a rippling mess of scars. They had tortured the animal until it could see nothing but blood rage.

‘What did they do to you?’ she breathed, as the hound tried to lock its pain-crazed eyes on her.

‘I will not kill you,’ she promised, still whispering, her voice shaking with emotion.

As Bailar prepared to attack again, Vedra had an idea. She might not be able to save the hound, but she would not play the Blood Warriors’ vile game.

She backed slowly away from Bailar, keeping her knife raised as she moved towards the edge of the dais and the drop to the lava.

The hound was snorting, flinching and snarling, maddened by its agony as it came towards her, preparing to leap.

Vedra waved the hound on, summoning it over. Even now, Vedra could feel a bond with the poor creature – she could sense how it would attack – where it would leap.

The Blood Warriors in the terraces watched in silence as they saw the end approaching. Vedra’s back was to the lava. She had nowhere left to go. She either had to kill or be killed.

Khrall’s enormous throne creaked as he leant forwards to watch.

With a final, savage howl, Bailar hurtled forwards, leaping at Vedra.

Just as its vast weight was about to slam into her, Vedra rolled onto her back and kicked up as hard as she could, adding her strength to the hound’s momentum and hurling it across the lava.

‘Untamed!’ howled Vedra as the hound flew over the chasm, crashed into the terraces and tore into Rhukan and the other Blood Warriors.

None of them had expected to end up facing the hound themselves. Before they had chance to even draw their weapons, Bailar was tearing them apart, lost in a frenzy of bloodlust, ripping armour and bone and turning the air crimson.

One Blood Warrior died, his head ripped away, still in its helmet, then a second fell, then a third. Others were rushing down the steps to help, but they were still minutes away as Bailar ripped through the reeling warriors, devouring them with mindless abandon.

‘Untamed!’ roared Vedra, pacing back and forth on the dais, her knife raised, wishing she could join the slaughter.

Then the rest of the Blood Warriors reached the lower terraces and swarmed over the hound, hacking and lunging. For a few glorious seconds, Bailar drove them back, howling and leaping at their throats, then their numbers overwhelmed her. As the hound fell, howling, onto its side, Rhukan strode forwards and delivered the final blow with his hook.

As Bailar fell silent, the Blood Warriors backed away from the butchered animal, wiping the gore from their axes and looking up at the Bloodmarshall to see his response.

Khrall’s head was too grotesque to betray emotions, but he gave a barely perceptible nod.

Rhukan hesitated, seeming shocked, looking at the wreckage Vedra and her hound had caused. Then he clanged his hook against his chest armour in a salute and left the terraces.

When the Blood Warriors clattered back out onto the dais, led by Rhukan, Vedra considered attacking. Even with just a knife, she might kill a few of them.

Then she thought again of Arva, and the rest of her family, and Alimus, smirking as he left her to die. A heroic death was not enough. She had to live.

She whispered a final prayer for Bailar, then threw the knife onto the floor and let the Blood Warriors grab her arms, remaining silent as they hauled her back to the cell.

Chapter Ten

There was someone new in the darkness. As the Blood Warriors shackled Vedra back onto the bench, their torches washed over a newcomer in the cell. He was a human tribesman, but his markings were like none she had seen before. His only clothes were a loincloth and some battered leather vambraces strapped to his forearms, but his body was covered in ritual scars – tiny, densely packed symbols, scored into his skin with a knife, creating a silvery mesh of curves and slashes. It was the language of the Blood God, the dark tongue of Khorne. Vedra had seen his like before. He was a bloodreaver – a human warrior, but so devoted to his god that he had been changed – transforming his flesh through years of blood rites and cannibalism. The man looked up as Vedra entered and she saw exactly how he had been blessed. His eyes were entirely crimson – featureless red orbs staring from his gaunt, leathery face. The red eyes were not the only sign of his blessings. His teeth were all gone, replaced with hundreds of long, curved razors, turning his mouth into an interlinking cage of sharpened steel. He grinned at her, brandishing the blades with a grunt that could have been either a greeting or a threat.

‘What was it?’

For a moment, Vedra thought the bloodreaver had spoken to her. Then she realised it was Tuath.

She waited until the Blood Warriors had left the cell before she replied. ‘A dog.’

‘A dog?’ he laughed. ‘Gods. They made it easy for you. I had to fight one of those.’ He nodded at the bloodreaver sitting opposite them, still grinning and leaning towards them, straining against his bonds.

Vedra was on the verge of explaining which dog, when she realised it would be pointless. What would she gain by describing how they had tormented Bailar?

‘What’s all this for?’ she asked. ‘Are they training us? Is this how they make their knights?’

‘Not training,’ said Kahem, the fair-skinned northerner sitting to the other side of her. ‘Testing. They’re looking for something – or someone. No one knows what, but they’re using pit fights to find whatever they’re looking for.’

Vedra shook her head. ‘Pit fights? But I only fought a single hound.’

Kahem nodded. ‘Rhukan was testing his handiwork. He has to make sure you’re fit. If you fight badly – if you die too easily – it will infuriate the Bloodmarshall. And if Khrall is unhappy, Rhukan dies – and dies without honour, cast from the dais, robbed of his weapons.’

‘Then who will I really fight?’

‘Me,’ said Kahem, his voice deadpan.

Vedra was about to reply when Kahem nodded at Tuath. ‘And him.’ He waved at the other figures looming in the shadows. ‘All of us.’

Tuath looked at Vedra, shaking his head. ‘Until only one of us is left? I will not kill you, sister.’

‘No,’ said Kahem. ‘The Bloodmarshall usually halts the fight before that – whenever he thinks he’s seen enough. He likes the best fighters to perform again and again. Whatever he’s looking for, he can’t judge it on a single fight. Some warriors survive countless bouts, growing stronger and more skilled with every kill.’

Tuath frowned. ‘Until?’

‘Until they die. The only prize is a chance to kill until killed. No one gets out of here.’

‘And you?’ asked Vedra. ‘How many fights have you survived?’

‘Enough. Enough to know the most effective weapon.’

‘Which is?’

‘Learning your opponent’s weakness.’ He smiled, but it was a hard, cold smile. ‘Did I hear you say you’re brother and sister?’

The bloodreaver opposite laughed.

Chapter Eleven

As Vedra marched out onto the dais she looked up at the circular terraces. They were crammed with hundreds of spectators – a filthy scrum of hunched, brutal figures. Scattered amongst the crimson-clad Blood Warriors were black-armoured knights – pale-skinned foreigners with wide, angular faces. There were also dark-skinned tribesmen draped in black pelts. Slender, cowled priests moved through the crush, taking their positions, draped in grey robes and loops of gleaming skulls. Braziers smouldered at the end of each row, filling the air with sickly fumes that made it hard to see the upper levels clearly, but Vedra sensed that some of the shapes were not human – there were low, swooping horns rising from the smoke, alongside tall, taloned wings.

Looming over it all, silent and oppressive, was the mountainous presence of the Bloodmarshall. Even through the smoke, Vedra could see the butchered meat that passed for his face, with its eight gouged mouths and tiny, coal-shard eyes. His silence weighed over the crowds, preventing anyone else from speaking. Despite the numbers crammed into the arena, the only sound came from the crackling of braziers and the jangling of the prisoners’ chains.

As they stumbled out into the light, Vedra saw her companions clearly for the first time. Tuath was at her side and next to him was Kahem. The northerner was tall and rangy but his shoulders were broad and his arms were thick with scarred muscle. He caught her eye and winked. If she could have freed her arms, Vedra would have punched the smirk from his face.

Following Kahem came the duardin with runes hammered into his muscles and an enormous crest of ginger hair. He looked straight ahead as he was led out onto the dais, chin raised and shoulders back, still muttering the same oaths he had been reciting in the cell. As Vedra looked closer, she noticed that his golden runes were shimmering. At first she thought they were just reflecting the torchlight, but the more she looked, the surer she was that they were glowing. She nudged Tuath. ‘I bet those things are more than just decoration.’

Tuath nodded. ‘I’ll warrant he’s not the only one with tricks up his sleeve.’ He gestured towards the next captive to emerge. It was the pale, slender creature with barbs hung from his clothes. Where the other warriors stumbled and lurched, hindered by their chains, the aelf flitted through the darkness, silent, moving so lightly he seemed to glide. Even his metal barbs made no sound, rippling and flowing around him like weeds on a riverbed. His night-black eyes were fixed on the Bloodmarshall and his face was twisted in a sneer.

Next came the bloodreaver. He paced out into the light, hunched and feral, glaring up at the crowds like a wounded animal, snarling and spitting, straining at his chains.

After the bloodreaver came a man Vedra had not seen in the darkness of the cell. He was a shaven-headed priest – a sigmarite with a flaming comet tattooed across his forehead. He was dressed in a suit of thick, overlapping metal plates – burnished iron, intricately engraved with runes that he probably imagined would save his soul. He looked up at the crowds with an indignant grimace, tracing invisible shapes in the air as he strode out onto the dais.

Finally, came the massive figure Vedra had been unable to see in the cell. She hissed in surprise as it thudded into view. It was nine or ten feet tall and roughly human-shaped, but with arms so long that its knuckles could have touched the floor. It had a heaving sack of a gut and a face like something fished from a stagnant swamp.

‘A troggoth?’ she muttered. It felt ridiculous to use a name she had heard so many times in children’s rhymes, but there was no better description. Its skin was grey and pitted, like mouldering leather and, in some places, it had formed into a crust of stone shards. It was so heavy that the dais shook as it stamped out across the brass platform. The troggoth’s hands were as large as a man’s chest, with thick, crooked fingers and, as it looked up at the crowds, it tightened them into fists, as though imagining crushing throats. Nestled deep in the chiselled ugliness of its face, its eyes glinted with cunning, belying the lumbering nature of its ungainly limbs. In children’s tales, troggoths were simpletons, but Vedra sensed that the reality was different. There was a cruel intelligence in the creature’s eyes as it studied its opponents.

Up ahead of them, Rhukan had halted in the centre of the dais, pointing his hook back towards Vedra and the other warriors. He indicated that they should scatter to eight specific points around the edge of the dais. Once they had taken their positions, he and the other Blood Warriors bowed to the Bloodmarshall and left the dais, slamming the gates closed behind them.

The eight prisoners stood looking at each other across the dais. Vedra glanced at Tuath, who was standing a few feet to her right, wondering how they would begin.

He shrugged.

She was about to speak up – to call out to the crowd – when a low, resonant boom echoed round the amphitheatre.

It came from the Bloodmarshall. Khrall had pounded his iron-clad fist on the arm of his brass throne.

He raised his fist and pounded the throne again but, this time, everyone in the terraces joined him, stamping in time with his blow, amplifying the sound into a deafening tremor, shaking the walls of the chamber and the dais itself, causing Vedra to stagger as the brass juddered beneath her.

Khrall hammered his fist again and again, leading the crowd in a slow, ominous beat.

As the sound vibrated through the brass dais, it was answered by another sound: the hoarse cough of machines spluttering into life.

The other prisoners kept their gaze locked in the middle distance, unimpressed, but Vedra and Tuath stared at each other in shock. Neither of them had heard anything like it before: the seismic roar of huge, infernal engines, firing and turning. It sounded like a metal leviathan stirring beneath them, shrugging off enormous chains and rising from the depths. Black, acrid fumes billowed up around the edges of the dais, glittering with embers as they tumbled past Vedra and the others.

The crowd continued pounding out the same slow, menacing rhythm, led by the Bloodmarshall’s brutal fist, but the sound of the engines was louder, grinding beneath Vedra’s feet as the smoke enveloped her, causing her eyes to stream and burn.

Still, none of her opponents moved, holding their positions around the edge of the dais as it shivered and clanged.

As the engine noise grew louder, the dais began to change. Lines and intersections Vedra noticed earlier began to split apart, spilling hellish light up into the smoke. The lines were not scored into the brass, as she had thought – they were the edges of interlinking plates. As the engines howled, the dais began to fragment and rotate, splitting into dozens of rattling, razor-edged islands suspended over the blazing lava below. The section Vedra was standing on rose and turned with a series of mechanical clangs, lifting her up into the fumes. Some dropped lower, moving towards the lava. Others moved sideways or rotated into a new position.

After a few minutes, the movement ceased, leaving the prisoners scattered across a confusing jumble of platforms, all separated by a drop to the rippling heat below.

The engine noise died away, leaving just the heavy, thudding beat of the crowd. Then that ceased too as Khrall raised his fist and held it in the air.

He stood, throwing the terraces into shadow. ‘Blood!’ he roared, pointing at Vedra and the other prisoners. ‘For the Blood God!’

The crowd howled in delight, filling the amphitheatre with jeers, bellows and bestial roars.

There was another ratcheting click as the brass islands changed again. Holes opened in the centre of dozens of them and weapons clattered into view: axes, swords, maces and knives, all gleaming in the torchlight.

After so much fanfare and spectacle, Vedra was unprepared for what happened next.

The combatants leapt into action.

The aelf was the first to move, diving through the smoke as though he were weightless, tumbling out of view and then reappearing with one of the weapons in his hands – a small, curved knife, similar in shape to the barbs that whirled around him as he turned to face his opponents.

As the others all leapt from their platforms, Vedra cursed and scoured the smoke for a weapon. Nearest to her was a pair of hand axes. She launched herself out across the lava and landed on the next platform. The brass juddered under the impact and her momentum almost threw her off the other side, but she steadied herself and grabbed the axes, seconds before she felt someone else thud down beside her.

She whirled around and dropped into a crouch, preparing to fend off a blow.

Tuath emerged from the fumes, his hand raised in warning.

She nodded and handed him one of the axes, looking around for an attack.

There was movement all around – shadows lurching back and forth through the fumes. Since the engines died, the smoke had been starting to clear and Vedra spotted another platform a few feet away that looked to be empty.

‘Keep moving!’ she snapped. ‘There may be bows or spears. Don’t be a target.’

She leapt up onto the platform but, as she landed, she heard the clash of colliding weapons behind her.

Keeping low, she looked back and saw that Kahem had landed next to Tuath and swung a brutal-looking mace at his head.

Tuath parried, catching the blow with his hand axe, wrenching Kahem’s weapon to the floor and kicking the northerner hard in the stomach.

Kahem grunted and staggered back.

Vedra was about to leap back and help her brother when her platform jolted and knocked her dangerously close to the edge.

Instinct told her to duck and, as she did so, a sword sliced past her head, clanging against the brass, throwing up sparks.

She turned to face the duardin. His blow had broken the surface of the platform and she realised the platforms were actually wooden – the brass was just a thin shell, moulded over a frame. The sword looked like a toy in the duardin’s big, meaty fist, but he wrenched it free and lashed out with it again, swinging the blade at her face.

She parried, but the duardin was ferociously strong. The impact sent her reeling back towards the edge of the platform.

Her momentum was too great. There was no way she could avoid falling, so she twisted as she fell and kicked away from the platform, turning her fall into a dive.

She flew out above the lava and managed to land on one of the lower platforms. It was a long drop though and the air exploded from her lungs as she landed, causing her to gasp and stagger across the metal.

She looked back up at the duardin, expecting him to follow, but he cursed and glared at her, shaking his head, clearly unwilling to make the leap. Then he turned and leapt up onto another, nearer platform, disappearing from sight.

The crowd were still howling and there were figures diving all around her, but Vedra paused for a second to get her bearings. She needed to keep moving until she could gauge the strength of each warrior. She needed to play for time.

She sensed movement to her left, but the attack came with such silent skill that she barely had time to raise her axe.

It was the aelf. He had landed next to her so lightly that she never even felt it.

Pain exploded in her side as he drew his knife out of her, filling the air with an arc of blood.

The crowds roared in approval.

She whirled away and swung her axe at his face.

The blow landed on nothing. He had already moved, slipping away on the smoke tendrils, appearing at her other side.

The crowd howled again as he pulled his knife from her other side, splashing more blood across the brass.

‘Warqueen?’ he whispered, his breath on her ear.

Vedra cursed, not in pain but in rage. He was toying with her.

By the time she turned to face him, the aelf was already gone, bounding, lithe and fast, across the platforms, looking for another opponent. He had not even bothered to kill her, leaving her to bleed until he could be bothered to finish her off.

She reached down to touch the wounds. They were deep. Blood was rushing quickly down her sides. It would not be long before she would start to grow dizzy and weak. She cursed the aelf. Her plan of playing for time was ruined. She would have to kill her opponents quickly, before the blood loss made her too weak to defend herself.

Vedra leapt up onto a higher platform, looking around for Tuath.

The troggoth was nearby, locked in battle with the bloodreaver. The giant creature had not bothered to find a weapon, it was just pummelling the platform with its boulder-fists, causing the bloodreaver to stagger and lurch as he tried to swing a large, two-handed axe.

Above them, on another platform, the duardin and the sigmarite were circling each other. The sigmarite had a trident and a whip and, as the duardin lashed out with his sword, the sigmarite trapped it between the blades of the trident and jammed it to the floor, wrenching the blade from the duardin’s grip and causing him to stumble. The sigmarite turned and kicked the duardin as he staggered, sending him flying from the edge of the platform.

The crowd howled even louder as the duardin fell to his death, sending up a column of sparks as he hit the lava.

Even the Bloodmarshall nodded in satisfaction as the sigmarite reeled from his kill. The sigmarite bellowed something in response – a curse, presumed Vedra, by the defiant look on his face.

As Vedra watched the sigmarite stagger back and forth, clutching his trident, an idea began to form in her mind.

Her platform shook and she turned, hoping to see Tuath. It was Kahem, his mace flying towards her head.

She sidestepped and hacked at his forearm. The axe bit deep. The mace fell from his grip, bouncing across the platform and falling to the lava. Blood filled the air as Kahem backed away, wounded and unarmed.

The crowd roared, but as Vedra drew back the axe to finish him, Kahem grinned and nodded to another platform.

The aelf was attacking Tuath with the same soundless efficiency he had used on her, circling and twisting, thrusting his knife into her brother with every turn of his silent dance.

Vedra gasped as Tuath crumpled to the floor. Then she cursed as she realised Kahem had leapt away from her, trailing blood but surviving to look for another weapon.

Vedra was about to leap down to Tuath but the aelf rushed off in another direction, playing with Tuath as he had done with her.

She froze, rigid with hate. Too many of her brothers and sisters had been taken from her. She would not lose another.

As the aelf bounded away across the platforms, Vedra transferred all her hatred for Alimus onto his slight, shadowy form. Thoughts of strategy and survival fell away, drowned by her fury. She remembered the idea she had earlier and looked around for the sigmarite.

He was on the far side of the amphitheatre, separated from her by several platforms.

She bounded across her own platform and leapt through the air.

Kahem was waiting for her. He had grabbed a short sword and attacked as she landed, but she was so fixated on the distant figure of the aelf she barely registered his lunge, punching him in the face as she raced past and diving onto the next platform.

The crowd howled at her acrobatics as she sprinted and leapt again, crossing the whole amphitheatre in seconds and rushing towards the sigmarite.

He turned, alerted by the clamour, and raised his trident as she leapt towards him.

Vedra punched the trident aside and crashed into him, knocking him back across the platform.

He scrambled, trying to stay upright, but she planted her foot in his chest and kicked him into the smoke, grabbing the trident as he fell to his death.

The crowd exploded again, but Vedra had already moved on, the hand axe stuffed in her belt as she jumped across the platforms, clutching the trident.

The aelf was watching her from a nearby platform, a wry smile on his face.

He made no effort to defend himself as Vedra raced towards him, twirling his knife in his hand as calmly as if he were watching from the terraces.

Vedra landed on his platform and jabbed the trident at his face.

He stepped aside easily and circled her with the same amused expression on his face. He looked up at the crowds and raised an eyebrow, eliciting a wave of cruel laughter.

Vedra lunged again, thrusting the trident at his midriff.

Again, he stepped aside easily, trailing his skirt of metal barbs as he whirled away from her, dragging more brutal laughter from the crowd.

Vedra had only attacked with half her strength. It was a feint. She put her full force into a third strike – one that was much faster and not aimed at the aelf.

His smile faltered as he saw what she had done.

She had slammed her trident down with such force that it passed through the strands holding his barbs and punched through the surface of the platform.

The aelf tried to pull away, snarling, but Vedra had pinned him to the floor.

His snarl did not last long. Vedra removed it with her axe, along with the rest of his head.

The crowd fell quiet as the aelf’s corpse slammed to the floor, then they erupted with their loudest cheer yet as Vedra pulled out the trident and kicked the body into the lava.

The bloodreaver was on a platform below Vedra’s and he crouched, preparing to leap.

Then he halted as the chamber resounded to a single, floor-rattling boom.

The Bloodmarshall had hammered his fist on the arm of the throne.

The bloodreaver dropped his weapon and bowed his head.

The few combatants who were still alive all did the same, as the crowd ceased their howls and jeers. An eerie silence fell over the amphitheatre, broken only by the gasped breaths of the surviving fighters.

The Bloodmarshall pounded his fist again and, this time, everyone in the terraces did the same, creating another resounding beat. As before, the thudding sound triggered a subterranean rumble, far below the platforms, as colossal engines roared into life.

Vedra staggered as her platform jolted forwards and began to slowly rotate. The fight was over. They were being returned to their cell. ‘No!’ she cried, looking around for a way to stay in the amphitheatre – a way to leap to the terraces. She would not accept this fate – to fight and fight again until she died. She had to return to the plains.

It was useless. The brass islands were too far from the crowds. She would fall to her death if she even tried. She pointed the trident at the Bloodmarshall. ‘Khrall!’ she howled, as the platform dropped back away from him. ‘Fight me!’

The colossus gave no response. He continued pounding his fist until all of the platforms had clicked back into place, creating a seamless, brass dais.

Rhukan was ready. As the engines fell silent, and the Bloodmarshall ceased his pounding, the pitmaster strode out onto the dais, waving his hook in different directions, sending Blood Warriors towards each of the survivors.

The bloodreaver, Kahem and the troggoth waited calmly, their heads bowed, clearly used to the ritual, but Tuath was gasping and clutching at his wounds, in too much pain to register the approach of the Blood Warriors. They grabbed him without ceremony and dragged him across the brass, leaving a wide smear of blood as his head lolled weakly between his shoulders.

‘No!’ roared Vedra. Every muscle in her body was screaming with rage. She would not do this. ‘Fight me!’ she howled, still jabbing her trident at the Bloodmarshall. He watched her in silence, unmoving. The crowds did the same – staring through her, deaf to her fury.

‘Warqueen,’ said Rhukan, his skin mask muffling the words.

She turned to face him and felt a sharp pain in her stomach.

There was some kind of machine in Rhukan’s hand and it was trailing smoke.

There was a piece of bone sticking in Vedra’s guts, two or three inches long and slick with black tar.

As she reached for it, the floor turned on its axis and slammed into her face, leaving her in darkness.

Chapter Twelve

‘We should kill them all.’ Leortas paced back and forth across the throne room, scratching angrily at his beard, glaring at the doors.

‘And go against the will of the need-fire?’ Alimus was seated near the throne, hunched over a copper bowl, jabbing at a mess of bloody feathers with his long, curved nails.

Leortas walked back towards him. The throne room was the grandest structure ever built by the Darkoath tribes – nearly a hundred feet long and crowded with battle trophies. Runeshields and sacred axes glimmered in the light of the great fire, creating the illusion of movement, as though the weapons were battling, even now. There were hide-strewn couches down both sides of the hall and every inch of earth was covered in animal skins. The throne itself was a grand affair, carved from the trunk of a single, vast oak and scored, by Alimus himself, with hundreds of runes and poems. The back of the chair had been sculpted to resemble an eagle, rising from flames, screaming at the smoke-crowded eaves.

‘I would never deny the Lord of Change,’ Leortas grimaced, staring at the throne. ‘But I can’t sleep, knowing that Vedra’s kin are here, in the Sickle Keep, watching me, all the time.’

Alimus nodded. This was entirely as he had foreseen. Leortas had no stomach for treachery. As the weeks rolled on, he was growing more and more disturbed by what he had done: lying to the other chieftains, tricking his way into power, helping Alimus murder their true ruler. It was eating at his soul, clashing with his idea of himself as a proud, ennobled Tannen. And each glimpse of Vedra’s kin only made it worse.

‘The Changer of Ways does not explain his reasoning,’ said Alimus, ‘but, in this case, it’s clear.’ The door was locked but he lowered his voice to be safe. ‘Your fellow chieftains believe that Vedra betrayed us. Imagine how it might look if all her kin were murdered. Even a bone-headed oaf like Budar might suspect that something else is going on – that Vedra was removed from the throne, rather than deserting it.’

‘When did a Darkoath king ever show mercy to his predecessor’s family?’ demanded Leortas. He gripped the handle of his broadsword. ‘Who would blame me for removing every echo of her face?’

‘You are not king yet,’ warned Alimus. He lifted his hand, bird entrails glistening as they dangled from his spindly fingers. ‘I have shown you the augurs. If you follow my advice, you will defeat all challengers on the night of the need-fire. But if you ignore the warnings of Tzeentch, we will both be dead before we get that far.’

‘But must I see their wretched faces? Especially her sister. She stares at me. I’m sure she knows something. The next need-fire is not until Dalenar. If I have to see that girl around here until mid-winter, I will go mad. And why must she serve me? We could at least send her away from the Sickle Keep. The plains are vast. Why must I see her suspicious face every time I step out of my own hall?’

‘Because the Lord of Change wills it.’ Alimus held up the Serpent Stone. ‘See how bright it burns? Every day a little brighter. Hold your nerve. Keep following the augurs and everything will go to plan. Sending Arva away will look suspicious. The others will wonder why you find her face so troubling. Dalenar’s Night is only six months away. Endure Arva’s presence until mid-winter and then, when you’re crowned king, you can do what you like.’

Leortas nodded and began pacing again. ‘I would never have agreed to any of this.’ He glared at Alimus. ‘Vedra forced me. Do you understand? If she hadn’t insisted on bringing the tribes together, things could have remained as they were.’

‘I understand, Leortas.’

‘How could I let her do that?’ Leortas’ anger grew, despite the fact that Alimus had agreed with him. ‘The Tannen claimed these plains centuries before her people came south. What would my ancestors have said if I let someone else claim dominion over the region they fought so hard for?’ He was glancing at the shadows thrown by the torches, as though addressing silent accusers.

‘You do not have to justify your actions.’ Alimus was still toying with the treacly contents of his bowl. ‘This was all planned by the Lord of Change. I saw it clearly in the need-fire. You and I were destined to rid the Darkoath tribes of Vedra. And then, by the time of the next fire, Tzeentch will be ready to make you king of all the tribes. You will rule the Arad Plains, as your ancestors always intended.’

Leortas grimaced, looking at the sword in his hand. ‘The sight of that wretched girl distracts me, that’s all.’

Alimus kept stirring, his knife clinking against the side of the bowl. He smiled as he considered how easy it is to mislead someone blinded by ambition. How could Leortas believe that he, Alimus, the mightiest sanorach who ever lived, had done all this work just to make Leortas ruler of the Arad Plains? ‘Not long now,’ he grinned. ‘The Lord’s plan will soon come to fruition.’

Chapter Thirteen

Vedra rolled across the platform and hurled her knife. It whistled through the air, thudded into the warrior on the next platform and flipped him backwards through the fumes. The crowd roared as he plunged towards the lava below.

She bounded onto a higher platform for a better view of the fight. The days had bled into a single, frenzied slaughter. Fight merged into fight; kill into kill. Vedra could no longer say how long she had been butchering for Khrall’s amusement. She could barely even remember how she arrived at the Abattoir. But two memories remained clear, two faces, driving her on through the bloodshed: Arva’s trusting stare and Alimus’ sneering grin. While she held those images in her mind, she was immortal. Whatever Rhukan threw at her she would face it down with more fury than the Blood Warriors could imagine.

As she reached the highest platform, the crowd howled in approval. With every kill, she earned more of their respect. Even through her rage and desperation, Vedra had noticed it: she had become their favourite. The idea sickened her. Every time they cheered, she howled, spitting curses and venom, hating them more with every death. Unfortunately, the violence of her insults only pleased the crowd more – the more she raged at them, the more they revelled in her savagery.

She looked around at the fight, trying to gauge the skill of the newcomers. Since the first bout, everyone but her and Tuath had died. Her brother would have perished too, but Vedra would not let anyone near him, leaping to his side every time he stumbled, butchering anyone who got close. Aside from Vedra and her brother, most combatants lasted one or two fights before newer, fresher warriors cut them down. Vedra had battled on through dozens. She had turned the savagery of the fights to her advantage, using them in place of the training regimes she had followed since childhood – using each deathblow to sharpen her skill, every leap to tone her flesh, learning from her opponents, growing stronger, quicker and more lethal with every day that passed. Where most of the prisoners could only manage a few mouthfuls of the vile food they were given, Vedra gulped it down, ignoring the bitter taste, even grabbing the scraps dropped by others. She had no thoughts of pride or dignity, only a burning will to survive.

Today’s opponents were a typical mix. There was another sigmarite – a deranged, scrawny zealot this time, spit foaming at his lips and ribs bulging through his tattooed skin. He was less powerfully built than everyone else on the platforms, but he was so frenzied and erratic that no one could land a blow on him. He was wearing a few shapeless scraps of cloth and gripping a wooden club, droning prayers as he twitched and lurched through the fight.

Next to him was a bloodreaver. Rhukan included one in almost every fight – presumably dragged from the Bloodmarshall’s own tribes. This one had pierced his jaw and scalp with dozens of iron tusks, so that his head looked like the spiked head of a mace. He was attacking the sigmarite with a morning star, swinging the chained ball around his head as he raged and howled, struggling to land a blow on the emaciated priest.

On the platform nearest to Vedra, there was a green-skinned monster – a massive, hulking creature with a jaw like a tree stump and biceps thicker than a man’s chest. She heard Rhukan call it an orruk and the name fitted with tales she had heard from Alimus as a child. The thing was a moron, lurching and stamping back and forth with no skill or finesse, but its body was bred for war – its head was small, hanging low between its massive shoulders, and its back was bent forwards in a permanent charge. It was currently trying to land axe blows on an aelf. The aelf had the same, willowy physique as the first one Vedra saw, but she seemed to be from a different tribe. Her face was hidden behind a golden mask and, as she danced around the orruk, the mask flashed and glittered. It appeared to be embedded in her skin, rather than simply worn, and it was fixed in a sadistic grin. Unlike most of the fighters, the aelf was revelling in the fight. She was attacking the orruk with knives and she turned every lunge and slash into an elaborate dance, pirouetting through the air, delighting in the roar of the crowd. It looked like she was enacting a sacred rite, rather than fighting for her life. All her spinning and gyrating left the orruk bellowing with rage as he failed to lay a blow on her. The aelf’s plan was clear: tire the orruk out until it was too dazed and maddened to dodge her knife thrusts. Vedra admired her cool, deft grace. She would learn a lot from killing her.

At the far side of the arena were two humans – Darkoath tribesmen. Vedra did not recognise the symbols tattooed onto their chests and she guessed they came from somewhere outside the Arad Plains. They were working together, watching the fight with their backs together and their swords held before them. It would not help. It was their first time on the platforms and they would not live long enough to master them. They were making their way towards Tuath and she singled them out as her first prey.

Vedra leapt across the platforms with ease. After so many fights she had learned every nuance of the layout, every tilt of the brass.

She had only made it halfway across the arena when a hot rage washed through her, filling her mouth with bile and causing her to stagger. The anger was not hers. It was an external force, jolting through her limbs like she had swallowed a poison draught.

She halted and whirled around, raising the falcata she was holding and looking around the platforms. This had happened before, in several previous bouts, and she knew who would be responsible. The other warriors had clearly felt the same thing. The orruk was now punching the platform with its fists, roaring and grunting as the metal buckled beneath its blows. Even the aelf had lost her cruel, elegant calm, staggering around the raging monster, struggling not to fall.

The tribesmen reached Tuath, but halted, as confused as Vedra.

She finally found the culprit: the bloodreaver. The sigmarite had landed a brutal blow on him, breaking his nose and buckling his head spikes. As the bloodreaver staggered, blood spraying from his face, Vedra knew he would be the source of the rage. He was mouthing oaths, identical to oaths used by previous bloodreavers. The words were radiating from his mouth, twisting the air. She could feel them, hitting her in waves. She could hear his guttural snarls, even though he was dozens of feet away. The power in the words was shocking, but Vedra had seen this kind of display several times before and she knew how it would end.

The sigmarite brought his club down again, shattering more of the bloodreaver’s face, but the bloodreaver kept spitting his oath through the splintered bones.

Vedra mouthed the words, caught up in the fury, unable to resist, but she knew she would not have to endure it for long. The bloodreaver was as foolish as all the others that had tried this. As the chant jolted through her, she glanced up at the terraces and saw something she had not seen in any of the previous fights: the Bloodmarshall had turned to stare at her. She could feel the intensity of his gaze and, along with the bloodreaver’s oath, it was overwhelming. She dropped to her knees.

The sigmarite drew back his club, trying to land another blow on the bloodreaver, but then he hesitated as the oath took effect.

The bloodreaver was convulsing and shaking, still reciting his oath through the wreckage of his face, and the words were transforming him. His limbs stretched and broadened with a series of audible snaps as he turned to face the sigmarite. His eyes blazed, like the lava, and his head twisted back into shape. The aura of violence grew as he stood erect, drawing back his shoulders, suddenly a whole head taller than the sigmarite. Blood rushed down his skin, not from his injuries, but boiling through his pores, popping and seething and making his whole body glisten. He howled the final word of his oath as hellish light blazed through his muscles, splashing across the fumes as he dropped his weapon, strode forwards and grabbed the sigmarite. He lifted him over his head with a roar and snapped his back, breaking it over his shoulders like kindling.

The bloodreaver’s cry silenced the crowd, but his transformation was not complete.

Vedra shook her head in surprise as he discarded the dead sigmarite and leapt across the platforms, making for the aelf and the orruk. As he ran, his blood-slick frame was still growing, still bursting with fresh muscle as his face contorted into a bestial snarl.

This was new. Vedra had seen other bloodreavers try to harness the power of the oath, but it always tore them apart seconds after they killed their opponent. She had never seen someone continue growing like this, living beyond the first, overwhelming flood of strength.

The bloodreaver’s head was juddering as he launched himself at the orruk, but he still showed no signs of collapsing. He abandoned his morning star, too feral to wield a weapon, and attacked with fists, staggering the orruk with a storm of punches.

As his fists slammed into the orruk’s face the creature tumbled from the platform, but the bloodreaver’s metamorphosis was still accelerating, turning him into a heaving, crimson mass. He howled, staggering back from the edge of the platform, turning on the aelf.

She flipped away but the bloodreaver was too fast – he seemed to materialise at her side, his hand locked around her throat.

He dashed her brains out on the brass and hurled her into the lava.

The crowd were deranged, banging weapons on the terraces, filling the arena with noise. None of them had seen anything like this. No bloodreaver had ever managed to harness the oath so successfully.

Vedra’s head was pounding with the bloodreaver’s words but then he finally started to struggle, labouring under the weight of his new muscle mass. The spikes in his head had become fast-growing tusks, coiling around his splintering skull, cutting into his face. He was still howling, but all trace of humanity had vanished from the sound – it was the cry of a wild animal.

With no opponent near enough to strike, he attacked the platform, pummelling it with his fists, beating the metal with such fury that it buckled and twisted, revealing the wood beneath. Then he saw Tuath and the other two tribesmen, watching him in shock, and lurched off in their direction, tumbling onto the next platform.

He was now more crippled by his changing flesh than empowered by it. The muscles were so grotesquely swollen that he could barely move his legs or carry his own weight. His face had vanished beneath the folds of raw muscle and the mass of horns still twisting out of his skull.

He crashed onto one platform, then another, and finally slammed down by the tribesmen. Tuath and the others attacked in unison, abandoning their fight until they had dealt with the horror shambling towards them.

The bloodreaver crashed into them with such force that they fell back across the platform. They landed a flurry of sword blows on him, but he was too frenzied to notice.

Vedra was already racing across the platforms as the bloodreaver smashed one of the tribesmen to the floor and gored him with his tusks, ripping his chest open and hurling him across the brass.

Vedra was still a few leaps away from the fight when the bloodreaver killed the second tribesman, crushing his skull in his fist and slamming the dripping pulp to the floor.

Only Tuath was left. He backed away, sword raised, as the bloodreaver loomed over him, bellowing and gargling as he staggered through the bodies.

Vedra landed and plunged her falcata into the bloodreaver’s side.

He turned and punched her in the face.

Something cracked in Vedra’s head and she fell back, gasping as she tumbled off the edge of the platform.

Strong fingers locked around her wrist and she looked up to see Tuath. He wrenched her up and she managed to stand just as the bloodreaver attacked again.

Tuath gasped as the bloodreaver barrelled into him, head first, skewering him with horns, tearing his stomach open.

Vedra howled, jamming her falcata into the bloodreaver’s head, throwing her whole body into the thrust and sending them both reeling away from Tuath.

The chamber resounded to a deafening thud. Khrall had pounded the arm of his throne, signalling the end of the fight.

Vedra and the bloodreaver were too far gone to notice, lashing and punching as they lurched back and forth.

The crowd picked up the beat and the rhythm thundered through the platforms, triggering the engines beneath.

As the platform juddered beneath them, Vedra and the bloodreaver fought on. Until that moment, Vedra thought she had faced every kind of opponent, but the bloodreaver’s oath had turned him into a savage animal. He was still gargling the words through his deformed throat and they thudded in Vedra’s pulse, laden with divine power. Khorne was in her veins, filling her with wrathful vigour as she tried to fend off the bloodreaver’s blows.

Khrall punched his throne harder and the crowd followed suit, but still the two combatants continued grappling and clawing, spinning and cursing as they fought.

The platforms slammed back together, reforming the large dais, and Vedra and the bloodreaver rolled across it, still landing blows and spitting curses, scattering blood across the brass.

‘Halt!’ cried a voice.

Vedra pulled herself clear and saw Rhukan marching out onto the dais, holding the device he had used to stun her before.

Behind him was the broken, lifeless shape of Tuath, his innards spilled across the metal, his head twisted back at a hideous angle.

She howled and turned back towards the thing that had been the bloodreaver. It could no longer stand. Its torrent of muscles were losing their coherency, becoming a thrashing mound of tentacles and tumours. It looked like a broth of body parts, bubbling and melting.

Vedra backed away in disgust as it collapsed into a nest of writhing, intestinal growth, grunting and choking, drowning in its own flesh as the muscles strangled its throat and lungs. It had finally succumbed to the same fate as all the other bloodreavers who swore the oath.

The drumming ceased and Rhukan stared at her through his skin mask, saying nothing, waving her back towards the exit.

Vedra ignored him and strode towards her dead brother, dropping to one knee and cradling his head.

She sensed Rhukan approaching but ignored him as she looked at Tuath’s death-grey face, his lips already turning blue. Tuath was a good warrior; a good brother. She held him tight, whispering a prayer to Tzeentch.

A shadow washed across the dais and she heard Rhukan halt a few feet away.

The Bloodmarshall had risen from his throne. He was watching the bubbling remains of the bloodreaver. It was barely moving, coiling and pulsing like a stranded fish.

‘Kill it,’ said Khrall. The words emerged from all eight of his torn mouths, feral and inhuman, more barked than spoken.

Rhukan left Vedra and started walking to the pile of shivering muscle.

‘No,’ said Khrall. Again, the word was a chorus of slavering yowls.

‘Warqueen,’ he said, looking at Vedra.

Rhukan halted, surprised, then lowered his device and nodded at Vedra, waving for her to approach her brother’s killer.

She did not need a second invitation. She grabbed the falcata and spent the next few minutes butchering the mound of flesh, venting her hate and grief, hacking and chopping until she was drenched in gore.

Only when all trace of movement had ceased did she drop the blade and stagger away, collapsing to the floor, breathing heavily, exhausted by her rage.

Khrall was still standing. When Vedra was finished, he signalled for everyone to leave the arena. As Vedra stood and headed for the door, following Rhukan, Khrall spoke to her again.

‘Not you.’

It took several minutes for the crowds to file out of the terraces and disappear into the bowels of the fortress. Once the last of them had gone, Khrall touched something on his throne and a walkway rattled out from the terraces to the edge of the dais, bridging the lava.

She grabbed the falcata, her heart racing. This was the chance she had been waiting for. To be armed and alone with the Bloodmarshall. If she could kill Khrall, she was sure his Blood Warriors would have to kneel to her. And, if not, she would at least have killed the arrogant tyrant who had kept her trapped, so far from where she needed to be, just so she could entertain him.

She gripped the sword handle tight as she crossed the metal walkway, staring at the colossus, trying to spot some sign of weakness. She had never seen him fight, but there had to be something she could turn to her advantage. As she got closer, she realised just how massive he was – at least the height of three men and clad in so much armour plate that he looked as impregnable as his fortress. She would have to target his head – it was fleshy and misshapen, badly deformed by the eight wide, torn mouths. And his black eyes were tiny, nestling deep in the folds of raw meat. How well could he see? Perhaps she could find a way to topple the braziers and throw them into darkness?

She climbed up through the terraces and paced towards him, scattering rats and shadows. She glanced at her body. The fight with the bloodreaver had left her with dozens of small wounds, but nothing that would slow her down. Months of battling in the arena had hardened her muscles into taut, steely cables. But she would need to bring him down to her level. Her only hope was to strike his face. Biurtan was long gone and her borrowed blade would never pierce such thick armour.

Vedra stopped several feet away, looking up at the Bloodmarshall, impressed, despite her hatred of him. It was like standing before a statue, built in honour of a war god. Khrall was utterly motionless, but there was such heat radiating from his armour that Vedra’s breath dried in her throat and her eyes streamed.

They studied each other in silence.

‘What should you worship?’ asked Khrall. This close, the savage clamour that emerged from his mouths was shocking. Vedra struggled not to flinch.

She shook her head, surprised by the question. She had expected attack, not conversation. And she was surprised by something else. Despite the brutality of his voice, there was something cold and deliberate about his words.

‘I…’ She shrugged, hesitating. Previously, the answer would have fallen quickly from her lips: Tzeentch, the Lord of Change. But, since the Serpent Stone turned cold and she lost her way in the need-fire, Vedra’s faith had been less sure. Was Tzeentch her lord? Or had he abandoned her? She shrugged, unable to think of any other answer without revealing more than she would wish, but wanting to prolong the conversation until she could spot a weak point in his armour. ‘Tzeentch,’ she said, yelling the name, defiant, despite her misgivings.

‘No,’ said Khrall.

Anger twisted Vedra’s spine and she struggled not to attack. How dare Khrall trap her in a pit, cause the death of her brother, then tell her what she did or did not believe?

‘I worship the Changer of Ways,’ she hissed.

Khrall leant forwards in his throne, fixing his coal-shard eyes on her, his mouths rippling and bleeding.

Vedra stepped closer, gripping the falcata tighter. If his head came just a little closer she would have a chance – one, powerful leap and she might be able to reach his eyes.

‘Then you’re a fool,’ said Khrall.

Vedra hesitated, enraged by such a pompous dismissal of her beliefs.

‘The Blood God is not the only power in the Eight Realms.’

‘Power,’ grunted Khrall. ‘Now that is worth worshipping.’

Vedra could see her chance getting closer. She could almost reach his face. But something in Khrall’s words resonated.

‘Power is what matters,’ he said. ‘Whatever the source.’ He spoke with such ferocity that Vedra’s sword trembled in her grip.

She nodded, despite herself. She did not pray to Tzeentch through religious conviction, but because he gave her a chance to survive. There was a brutal, simple truth in Khrall’s words that she could not deny. Then she shook her head, trying to stay focused. The bloodreaver’s oath was still echoing round her head. It must be confusing her. Khrall and his kind were the enemy. They had come to rob lands that belonged to the Untamed. The Bloodmarshall was trying to trick her. And yet, there was no trace of subtlety in his voice. He sounded savage, but true. It was almost as though he wanted to help her.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ she sneered.

He leant back in his seat and studied her in silence again.

Vedra cursed her stupidity. She would never get near his face now.

‘I see power in you.’ He waved at the empty terraces. ‘Many can follow.’ He nodded at Vedra. ‘Few can lead.’

Vedra shuddered. He was trying to win her over – trying to turn her against her own kind. She spat at the foot of his throne.

He nodded. Infuriatingly, he seemed to be pleased with her. Then he waved one of his hands and Blood Warriors flooded from the shadows, surrounding her. ‘If you live, we will speak again.’

She struggled as they bound her, straining against the shackles, but it was no use. She had frittered away her one chance. She had let Khrall distract her with insults when she should have been killing him.

She cursed and spat again as they took her away, but Khrall gave no sign that he had heard her.

Then, as she was being dragged from the hall, back towards the cells, he spoke in the darkness.

‘Power,’ he said. ‘Nothing else matters.’

Chapter Fourteen

A voice dragged Vedra from a deep sleep. Since the death of Tuath she had made no time for grief or rage. She had armoured herself in cold, unwavering determination – grabbing all the rest and food she could, growing stronger as her rivals grew weaker, thriving on the harsh conditions.

‘What is it?’ asked the voice – a tribesman, speaking in a dialect she could understand.

The torch outside the cell was guttering and needed replacing, and she could not see the faces of her fellow prisoners.

She guessed the source of the intrigue though. Something was glinting at the far end of the cell: flashes of gold and silver, as though Rhukan had dumped a haul of treasure in the corner.

‘Sigmarite,’ muttered someone else. ‘They brought him in a few hours ago.’

‘Is he singing?’

‘Praying.’

‘I can’t understand a word.’

‘He’s not from the plains. I saw him when they dragged him in here. He’s covered in gold. There’s not an inch of him visible. And he’s a giant.’

Vedra stared into the shadows. As Tzeentch’s chosen she had been granted many unusual visions. The need-fire showed her sights it did not reveal to others. She had seen Sigmar’s golden knights – the Stormhosts that fell from the skies, born of lightning, bringing ruin wherever they landed. They slaughtered and burned without fear or restraint. Alimus called them Stormcast Eternals and he spoke of them with horror in his voice. She had seen them in her dreams, but she had never heard of one landing in the Arad Plains.

Something flashed and, for a moment, they all saw him clearly. He was massive, as the prisoners had said, and his armour was incredible – thick, overlapping plates of polished gold, oiled and gleaming, engraved with intricate runes. She had never seen such skilled workmanship. He was holding something – it looked like a collection of metal discs and curves and he was turning them as he prayed. The device was the source of the light. With each word, he clicked one of the metal arms along the notches in the curved piece of metal. As he prayed, the device burned brighter, splashing rays across the filthy walls.

His prayers grew more fervent and the light shone brighter. The prisoners watched in fascinated silence, sensing that something momentous was about to happen.

Then footsteps clattered down the corridor and the Stormcast Eternal collapsed the device, folding it in a series of quick snapping movements until it was no bigger than his palm. Then he secreted it under a scroll that was hung from his belt, just before the cell door clattered open.

‘What was that light?’ demanded Rhukan, swaggering into the cell, waving his hook from face to face as Blood Warriors and slaves waited in the passageway outside.

Vedra had an idea. Sigmar’s knights were harbingers of the storm. A storm was what she needed.

‘The torch, you idiot,’ she drawled, making her voice as derisive as she could. ‘It’s dying and it threw sparks. Perhaps if you did your job there would–’

He clubbed the side of her head with his iron hook, staring at her through the eyeholes of his skin mask.

Since her conversation with the Bloodmarshall, Rhukan had been watching her closely. He reserved his most brutal blows for her and sneered at her with more vehemence than any of the other prisoners. Clearly, he did not enjoy the fact that Khrall spoke to her in private. She had thought nothing of it, beyond amusement at seeing jealousy in such a savage, but now, she saw how it might be useful.

‘The Bloodmarshall spoke of this,’ she muttered, wiping blood from her mouth. ‘Your incompetence.’

Rhukan leant over her, placing the tip of his hook under her chin. For a few moments, he said nothing, glaring in silence as he pressed the point deeper, drawing more blood. She wondered if she had pushed him too far. Was he about to skewer her head? Then he snorted. ‘You missed your chance.’ He nodded to the Stormcast Eternal. ‘Your luck has run out, Warqueen. Today will be your last fight.’

He turned and left the cell, still laughing as he slammed the door shut and clattered away down the corridor.

After a few minutes, the other prisoners slumped back into the shadows, resting before the day’s fight, but the Stormcast leant towards Vedra. His face was hidden behind his gleaming mask, so she had no idea what his expression was, but he gave her a slow, deliberate nod of thanks.

‘Savin,’ he said quietly, touching his chest, his voice resonating through his helmet.

‘Vedra,’ she replied.

Chapter Fifteen

Vedra had never seen anything like it. Savin butchered everyone that got close. He had grabbed an axe at the start of the fight and turned the crude, primitive-looking thing into the weapon of a vengeful god, splitting heads and sundering limbs as he stood, dignified and statuesque on one of the low platforms. He made no effort to seek a better vantage point or to hunt down weaker opponents, he simply stood, legs apart, axe gripped in both hands, waiting for each new attacker to make their futile assault.

Within minutes, he was surrounded by the corpses. His first three opponents had died quickly, without leaving so much as a scratch on his armour. He fought with none of the wild desperation that drove the others, killing calmly and cleanly, as if waiting for something more important to do. And Vedra had noticed something else. Beneath the prayer scroll at his belt, the metal device was pulsing with light. His armour flashed and gleamed so dazzlingly that the device was easy to miss but Vedra, knowing where it was hidden, could see that it was growing brighter with every minute the Stormcast spent near the lava. The heat was changing it, fuelling its magic.

She deliberately avoided combat with him, battling the warriors who moved across the upper platforms, until, after just a few minutes, Savin and Vedra had slaughtered all six of their opponents and the Bloodmarshall pummelled his throne, ordering them back to the cell.

As Rhukan led them back through the labyrinth of dank, narrow passageways, Vedra noticed that Savin’s device was flickering again, shimmering beneath the scroll. She walked closer, positioning herself between Savin and Rhukan.

Back in the cell, the next group was already waiting, shackled to their benches and staring at Savin in wonder.

Vedra sat near the Stormcast and, as he removed the device from beneath his prayer scroll, she brought her feet up onto the bench, using her raised knees to stop the light spilling out towards the guards. The other captives could see it, but they stared in silence. They, like Vedra, guessed that Savin might be their one chance of salvation.

The Stormcast removed one of his metal gauntlets. Vedra was not sure what she expected to see but it was not the leathery, worn skin of a normal man. As he adjusted the bundle of discs and ellipses, she noticed that his hand was not quite normal. The veins shimmered with a faint light, similar to the blue-white pulses coming from his device. He worked fast, no doubt anticipating the return of Rhukan and Vedra found it hard to follow his movements.

After a minute or so, he stopped, holding the object up before his mask and staring at it. Every piece of it was in motion, clicking and whirring like an insect, each metal limb interlaced with the others, sliding and rotating as the light at its core burned brighter. It blazed so fiercely that Vedra was blinded for a moment. When her vision cleared, the object was dark and inert. Savin looked at it for a moment longer, then folded it away and sat back against the wall with a long exhalation of breath, as though he had not dared breathe while he worked.

Nothing happened.

Vedra stared at him but he seemed oblivious, his head tilted back and his hands folded on his lap.

‘What did you do?’ she hissed.

He said nothing – gave no sign he had even heard.

‘What are you?’ she whispered.

‘The ordinator,’ he replied, without moving, his voice as odd and metallic as before.

She was about to ask him to explain when footsteps echoed down the passageway.

‘Him,’ grunted Rhukan as he entered, pointing his hook at Savin.

Blood Warriors crowded into the cell, gripping their enormous axes as slaves unfastened Savin’s shackles.

He made no effort to resist as they hauled him to his feet.

‘The Bloodmarshall wants you,’ said Rhukan, prodding Savin’s chest armour. He gurgled something in his own vile language, then shoved the Stormcast out of the cell.

Vedra wanted to follow, to demand an explanation from Savin. What had he been doing? What had she helped him do? After all that subterfuge and ritual, the device had simply died. She wondered if the endless combat was starting to cloud her judgement. Why had she helped a sigmarite? What had she expected? That the device would topple the walls? She leant back against the wall and closed her eyes, picturing Arva’s earnest, trusting face, as they stood at the foot of the Crucible Mound, the day before the battle. Was she still alive?

Chapter Sixteen

‘Why do you look at me like that?’ demanded Leortas.

Arva ignored him and kept scrubbing the flagstones around the entrance to the throne room. The sun had almost set, casting long, ruddy shadows through the narrow streets of the Sickle Keep, painting a spindly, distorted silhouette of Arva on the wall behind the throne.

Leortas had been drinking since dawn. It was only two weeks until the night of the need-fire, when Alimus could proclaim him King of the Untamed, but to Leortas it seemed an age away. He had ordered his retainers and bards away, unable to bear their questioning glances. And now he was left with the one person Alimus told him he could not be rid of: Vedra’s sullen, silent sister.

‘I am your chieftain,’ he snarled, swaying as he approached her, gripping his wine skin tightly in one hand and his sword in the other. ‘Answer me.’

She looked up at him, her eyes dead. He had stripped her of all the finery Vedra had draped her in – replacing golden torcs and furs with rags and bruises. Vedra’s family was large and she had dozens of relatives living in the capital, but none of them infuriated Leortas as much as Arva. The girl was only sixteen, but she already looked almost identical to Vedra, with the same lean, athletic build and scowling face. When she was not cleaning, she trained, right outside the throne room, lunging at shadows with a furious grimace on her face and glaring at him every time he walked past.

‘Answer me!’ he snapped, grabbing her by the throat and slamming her against the wall.

She moved with shocking speed, planting a kick in his stomach and sending him staggering back across the floor. He tripped, clumsy with drink, and landed heavily on the floor. When he looked up, she was standing over him with a knife in her hand.

‘You’re a liar,’ she breathed, her eyes wide and her voice trembling with rage.

He growled, lurched to his feet and tried to land a punch on her.

She easily sidestepped the blow and lashed out with the knife, scattering a bright arc of blood through the moonlight.

Both of them stared at the wound in shock. It was forbidden to attack a chieftain outside of the usual prescribed rituals.

Arva backed away, staring at the bloody knife.

Leortas wanted to kill her there and then but, even drunk, he remembered Alimus’ warnings. If he killed her, it would be in direct opposition to the Lord of Change’s will.

‘Guards!’ he roared and his retainers sprinted into the hall, weapons raised. They looked around for attackers, then halted, shocked, as they saw that their chieftain was glaring at Arva.

‘She’s a traitor,’ he spat, conscious, even through the alcohol haze, of how foolish he must look. ‘Take her to the Fervour Tree.’

Arva snarled and lunged at him, but the guards swamped her, knocking the knife from her hand and binding her arms.

Leortas followed as they dragged her out into the streets. Most of the tribesmen had already returned to their houses, but there were a few people loitering in the shadows as Arva cursed and struggled, kicking up dust as the guards dragged her towards the gates.

Word spread quickly, and by the time they reached the wall, dozens of people were waiting, staring in shock at the sight of a chieftain driving away one of his slaves.

He ignored them and waved the guards on. The gatekeeper let them out into the scrubland and Leortas led the way, muttering and cursing as he pounded past the Crucible Mound and on towards a wooded hillside framed by the low, sallow moon.

They were still a few minutes away from the silhouetted, leafless trees when someone called his name.

Leortas hesitated. The familiar voice sobered him up a little and he realised how foolish he was being. This was exactly what Alimus had warned him against: drawing attention to his hatred of Vedra’s kin.

He looked back and saw the sanorach near the gates, barging through the crowd of onlookers, lurching into the night with his odd, spider-like gait.

‘What are you doing?’ hissed Alimus when he reached Leortas’ side and drew him away from the others. His face was ugly with anger. ‘We’re only two weeks from the need-fire. This could ruin everything.’

‘She attacked me,’ he slurred. ‘I will not stand for it.’

Alimus grimaced. Then he looked over at the guards holding Arva. They had halted when Leortas did, watching the exchange.

‘So you’re taking her to the Fervour Tree?’ The sanorach squinted through the moonlight. ‘Without my sanction?’

Leortas nodded, trying to stop swaying.

Alimus nodded. ‘Very well. Do it. But I will say we discussed it, otherwise it will seem that you have broken with the old accords between sanorach and chieftain. I will say that her grief has driven her mad and we are determining whether she can be trusted or not.’ He nodded at the trees. ‘Begin the trial.’ Then he turned and hurried back to the crowd, waving them towards him.

Leortas tried not to grin. Whatever the risks, he was elated by the idea he would soon be rid of the girl.

The clinker trees shifted as Leortas and the others entered the wood. They were not true trees, but steep-sided cones of volcanic rock – black, jagged splinters of cooled lava that had been altered by the close proximity of the need-fire. The Crucible Mount was only a few hundred feet away and the power of change had given the clinker trees a strange kind of sentience. They creaked and popped as Leortas rushed past them, brittle and dry, crumbling into new shapes and reaching out with their cracked shards. The clinker trees were far too slow to catch a fast-moving man, but the people of the Sickle Keep still avoided the place. The clinker trees took every opportunity to feed. A misstep could be fatal.

The guards hurried after Leortas, dragging Arva up the hillside, through the clicking limbs of the clinker trees, up towards the summit.

The exertion was pumping the wine from Leortas’ body and he reached the top with a mixture of pleasure and doubt. Had he ruined everything?

The Fervour Tree was vast, looming over the rest of the wood, crowning the hilltop and filling the sky as Leortas walked cautiously beneath its charcoal boughs. Unlike the smaller clinker trees, it was veined with light. Golden threads pulsed beneath its shell, spiralling around the alcoves carved into its trunk – seats, framed by piles of rusty shackles and chains. Most of the seats were empty, but a few contained charred, twisted bodies. The figures were so burned they looked to be made of the same volcanic ore as the tree itself – jet black and gleaming dully in the moonlight, like the remnants of a fire. But, incredibly, they were not quite dead. As the group approached them, the blackened husks twitched in their seats, straining against the chains, crumbling to ash as they moved. Even if they had not been chained, they could never have moved. The Fervour Tree had skewered them with dozens of black spurs, shards of coal that had passed through the prisoners’ bodies and nailed them to the trunk.

Arva howled in rage as the guards dragged her towards the tree, staring in horror at the blackened bodies. The bodies tried to reply but their heads were too charred to speak. All they could manage was a pitiful moaning sound. Arva twisted in the guards’ grip, desperate to escape, trying to lash out, but they slammed her into a seat and shackled her to the trunk. She gasped in pain as she touched the bark, struggling frantically, but with every chain they fastened her movements became more limited until she could no longer stand. Smoke spiralled up from her back, drifting up into the jagged eaves. The smell of burning flesh filled the night.

‘He’s a liar,’ she snarled, glaring at Leortas, her voice strained and breathless. ‘I don’t know why, but he’s lying. Vedra did not betray us, she was betrayed. She died fighting. I saw her fall.’

No one answered, and Leortas smiled hungrily, keen for her trial to begin.

One of the guards headed off into the darkness and returned a few minutes later with black tar smeared over his hands. He grabbed Arva’s head and thumbed the tar over her upper eyelids, pasting her eyes open so that she could no longer close them or even blink. With her eyes gummed open and circled by tar, she looked even more furious, but she was now too securely fastened to move.

‘You attacked a chieftain,’ said Leortas, leaning close, filling her face with his wine-sour breath. ‘Within the sanctity of the throne room and without the permission of a sanorach.’ He stamped around the trunk, pointing his finger at her. ‘And you have added to the crime by accusing me of dishonesty!’ He held his hand near the trunk of the Fervour Tree, smiling as he felt the heat radiating from its core. ‘But I will not presume to judge you. We will let the Lord of Change decide,’ he waved at the tree, ‘through his creation.’

He stood in front of her again, still smiling, feeling a growing sense of relief as he pronounced her doom. Night-dark roots were already stirring near her feet, snapping and splitting, cracking into new shapes, nosing up towards her.

‘If you’re innocent,’ he said, waving at the charred remains either side of her, ‘you’ll survive long enough for the Lord of Change to embrace you, burning your flesh to the shell of the Fervour Tree.’

He touched one of the undead horrors, causing it to judder and crack. ‘But if you’re guilty, the creatures of the plains will take you before the tree can.’ He nodded at the empty seats. Many of them were glistening with blood. ‘And your guilt will be confirmed in the eyes of Tzeentch.’

He laughed as Arva spat on the roots that were already rising towards her, creating a hiss of steam. ‘Don’t worry. It never takes long. We’ll have our answer by dawn.’ He waved the guards away from the tree and began staggering back towards the Sickle Keep, feeling as though he had rid himself of a great weight.

Chapter Seventeen

A shuddering boom echoed through the amphitheatre and the platform beneath Vedra shook with such violence that she almost dropped her axe. She looked up into the terraces at the Bloodmarshall, surprised that he had ended the bout so quickly. Only two of the fighters had died, both at the hands of the Stormcast Eternal, Savin. Khrall was not pounding the arm of his throne, but he had leant forwards to stare at the platforms. Something was wrong. The crowd fell quiet as all of the brass platforms began to shake and tilt.

‘No engines,’ muttered Vedra to herself, looking down into the lava. Usually, when the platforms moved back into place, there was a grinding rattle of pulleys and chains, but she could hear nothing.

She staggered again as the platform began to upend itself. Then she leapt to another platform as hers tilted and juddered away from her, dropping quickly down towards the lava.

The other combatants abandoned their fights as a low rumbling noise echoed through the fumes and the whole amphitheatre started to give way. Still, it was not the sound of engines, but something far more violent, and on a much larger scale. It sounded like an earthquake. The crowds began running and falling as the terraces slumped, filling the air with dust and sparks.

The Bloodmarshall rose from his throne, gripping his sword and towering over the chaos, shrouded in smoke as he looked around for the cause of the destruction.

A shaft of daylight cut down through the hellish pall, a dazzling column of dust motes that splashed down on the reeling crowds.

Khrall shook his grotesque head, peering up into the light. Then another shaft sliced down through the darkness and Vedra saw what was happening – something was smashing through the roof of the Abattoir, letting the harsh glare of the Arad Plains into the fortress.

Khrall roared a command and the Blood Warriors struggled to obey, trying to rush from the terraces to distant doors in the walls of the amphitheatre. It was useless, the whole building was shaking. The doors were rattling in their frames and the platforms were crashing into the lava, shedding fighters as they went. Vedra’s platform whirled through the dust clouds and hurled her into the air. She managed to land on another that was also falling, but then she saw one that was rushing sideways rather than dropping, hurtling towards the terraces. She leapt again, barely managing to reach it. Then, as it neared the terraces, she took a running jump over the gap, using the momentum of the platform to hurl herself through the smoke.

She crashed into the crowds of Khorne worshippers.

A few of the Blood Warriors noticed her but they were all too busy dodging falling masonry and trying to reach the doors to stop and fight.

There were now dozens of shafts of light puncturing the abyss. The first few had been columns of sunlight, but now there were bolts of electricity crashing down, blasting the terraces apart and hurling metal through the air.

Vedra had to duck as she ran through the tumult, holding her axe before her head as a shield. She glanced back into the arena and saw that the platforms had all collapsed. A few of the fighters were still clinging grimly to their perches, but most had fallen into the lava.

There was a thunderclap right next to Vedra and she was hurled backwards, slamming painfully into a staircase. A plume of smoke and embers washed over her and she was blind for a few seconds. Then, when the cloud cleared, she saw Savin wading through a wall of embers towards her, his golden armour shimmering in the blaze.

No, she realised, it was not Savin. The Stormcast Eternal’s face was hidden behind the same polished helmet and he clearly belonged to the same tribe, but his armour was slightly less ornate and he was carrying a tall shield in one hand and a golden hammer in the other.

He saw Vedra slumped on the floor and lunged, swinging his hammer at her face.

She rolled clear and the hammer smashed into the stairs, buckling the iron slabs like rotten wood.

Vedra jumped to her feet and swung her axe at his gleaming faceplate, but he caught the blow on his shield. The impact jarred through her arm and she dropped the axe, staggering backwards and falling to the floor again. The axe clanged across the steps and fell into the lava.

The Stormcast Eternal was about to swing his hammer again when a Blood Warrior smashed into him, driving him away from Vedra with a brutal axe blow.

The Stormcast Eternal stumbled, then slammed his hammer into the Blood Warrior’s helmet, punching him onto his back.

More Blood Warriors charged from the smoke and the Stormcast was driven back, away from Vedra, disappearing into a crowd of battling figures, leaving Vedra on the floor, unnoticed.

Columns of lightning were lashing down all across the amphitheatre, ripping up the terraces and depositing Stormcast Eternals in smouldering craters. The terraces became a battleground as gold clashed with crimson. The Bloodmarshall was in the upper levels, wading through the crush, struggling to wield his enormous sword in the mayhem.

Vedra jumped to her feet and raced through the hail of metal shards, dodging between the combatants. Her mind was racing. This was it. This was her chance to escape. She bounded up the steps towards the upper levels, leaping over some blows and ducking others, but refusing to be drawn into the battle. All her determination and training had led her to this one, brief chance of freedom. Whichever army prevailed, they would have no sympathy for her, but the confusion of the battle could give her enough time to find a way out.

Light was slicing into the Abattoir from dozens of directions as Sigmar’s host ripped the building open. The noise was incredible, like the heavens were being torn down around her. She had no doubt how this had come to be: Savin’s device. He had summoned this army to the fortress.

Vedra had almost reached the upper levels when she saw that a wall had caved in revealing what looked to be an armoury. It was hard to see through the fumes and embers, but there were rows of axes mounted on the walls.

She had been headed for the outer walls of the hall but, at the sight of the weapons, she changed direction, racing down one of the terraces towards the rent in the wall.

The Blood Warriors were all rushing towards Khrall, forming into ranks as he bellowed orders at them, so Vedra was free to clamber over the smouldering wreckage and into the armoury. It was a long, barrel-vaulted hall, crowded with hundreds of axes and swords. They were arrayed across the walls in rows that were as precise and orderly as the serried ranks gathering around the Bloodmarshall. Vedra studied them, trying to spot an axe that would be more suited to her size. Most of the weapons were enormous, designed with the hulking Blood Warriors in mind. Then, about halfway down the hall, she spotted a row of hand axes that looked more manageable. She ran towards them but halted a few feet away. Placed at the foot of the walls, beneath the weapon racks, there were rows of metal crates with a more jumbled assortment of weapons. They must have been taken from prisoners, realised Vedra. She could see battered Darkoath runeshields and cruel, foreign-looking blades. She rushed to one of the crates and rifled through the piles of weapons, then, with a cry of delight, she saw something familiar jutting out of another crate.

‘Biurtan!’ she gasped, hauling the iron spear out from beneath a mound of rusting helmets.

The metal hummed in her trembling fist, as though sighing in pleasure. She placed a kiss on the cold metal and closed her eyes for a second, sensing that this was a good omen. Then she grabbed one of the runeshields and dashed from the hall.

The scene on the terraces was even more tumultuous. There were now as many Stormcast Eternals in the Abattoir as there were Blood Warriors. The knights were fighting with such force that their blows were hastening the collapse of the hall.

Vedra flinched as a colossal section of roof dropped onto the battling warriors, crushing dozens of them and spawning another cloud of dust.

Up in the rafters, an enormous shape shouldered its way through the hole it had torn.

Vedra reeled in shock. Never, even in the madness of the need-fire, had she seen anything like the monster that had torn the roof open. It was a lizard, but as big as a longhouse. Its jaws alone could have engulfed Vedra’s whole chariot and, as it opened them to scream, a bolt of pure white sorcery spewed from between its sword-sized teeth, slamming into the Bloodmarshall.

Khrall caught the blast on his ebon sword but the force of it was so great that even he struggled to hold his position, leaning forwards into the torrent to keep upright.

The lizard dropped through the hole in the roof, shedding more masonry on the battle below, and spread a pair of vast, cobalt wings. Its immense, scaled body was clad in gold armour and, as it swooped down into the smoke clouds, Vedra saw a Stormcast Eternal on its back. The rider was clearly the chieftain – his armour was even more ornate than Savin’s and his helmet was haloed by a crown of metal lightning bolts. Rather than a hammer and shield, the rider was holding a long, ceremonial axe that was crackling with the same power that was sparking across the lizard’s teeth.

Khrall strode through the crowds and slashed his sword at the monster.

The battle faltered for a moment as everyone turned to watch the clash of these two goliaths.

The Bloodmarshall’s sword ripped through one of the lizard’s wings and it thrashed violently, smashing stone columns and buffeting the smoke clouds. Before it fell, it spat another gout of lightning at Khrall.

The Bloodmarshall’s sword was trapped in the lizard’s shoulder and the lightning slammed into his chest, punching through his scalloped armour, engulfing him in flames.

Khrall staggered backwards, smashing more of the terraces with his teetering bulk as the lizard crashed down onto the floor, flattening dozens more warriors and sending everyone else reeling.

As the lizard struggled to rise, its rider waved his axe and more lightning lashed through the gloom, hitting Khrall in the head.

He tumbled back into the wall of the chamber, trailing flames and demolishing more columns.

More of the roof came away, sending huge blocks of iron and stone into the crowds.

As the two titans readied themselves for another attack, Vedra saw her chance.

As Khrall staggered back towards his opponent, he left a ragged opening in the wall behind him. Vedra’s eyes had become accustomed to daylight again and she could see the plains through the hole.

The battle was raging again and she barely had to defend herself as she ran through the carnage, ignoring both armies as she headed towards the opening Khrall had made.

She had to put her spear and shield on her back and climb the last stretch, hauling herself over the rubble.

As she got closer, she saw how perfect her escape route was. Everyone was behind her, either battling for their lives or watching the two giants warring over their heads, so the exit was clear. And Khrall had sent rubble out into the daylight, creating a slope of sheared metal and shattered stone that she would be able to scramble down.

Vedra was just a few feet away from the opening, when a Blood Warrior loomed into view, blocking her way.

‘Rhukan,’ she muttered, recognising the pitmaster’s jagged hook.

His armour was scored and blackened, and he looked injured as he rushed towards her. He was gripping an axe in his one good hand.

‘This was you,’ he said, waving his hook at the destruction ripping through the Abattoir. His voice was hoarse with rage. ‘I don’t know how, but it was you.’

Before Vedra could whip her spear from her back, Rhukan hit her with his hook, a savage, backhanded blow that snapped her head back and ripped her cheek open, spraying blood through the air and leaving her sprawled on the rubble.

She leapt to her feet, grabbing Biurtan as she rose, but Rhukan moved incredibly fast, kicking her in the stomach with one of his iron-shod boots.

Vedra dropped to her knees, unable to breathe.

Rhukan grabbed her mohawk, yanked her head back and drew back his axe for the killing blow.

Then he crashed to the floor, his head flattened, spilling blood and fragments of skull from his skin mask.

He twitched for a moment, then lay still. It was clear, from the shape of his mask, that his head had collapsed.

For a moment, as she struggled to draw breath, Vedra could not understand what had happened. It seemed as though Rhukan’s head had caved in of its own accord.

Then as she finally dragged air into her lungs, her vision cleared and she saw a Stormcast Eternal standing over the corpse, his hammer still shimmering with sorcery.

It was Savin.

He held out a hand and hauled her to her feet.

‘He was right,’ he said, nodding at the collapsing fortress. ‘This is thanks to you.’

She nodded, unsure what to say. Sigmarites were her sworn enemy. If she had helped them, it was only to earn her freedom. And yet, here she was, owing her life to a Stormcast Eternal.

As she frowned at him, Savin seemed to guess what she was thinking.

‘The debt is repaid,’ he said. ‘Next time we meet…’

She nodded, glad they understood each other.

Vedra hesitated, studying him for a moment, ignoring the tumult that surrounded them. They were both utterly different and yet strangely alike.

Then she ran past him and bolted out into the light.

Chapter Eighteen

At first, Arva was too furious to think clearly. Then, as her heart slowed and her breath settled into a steadier rhythm, she tried to think as her sister would. Vedra had taught her everything she knew. Their parents were killed while Arva was still a child, and she could barely remember them, but Vedra’s face was present in every one of her memories: driving her on, forcing her to be quicker and stronger, raging at her when she did not think clearly or consider her words. What would Vedra do now, if she were still alive – if she were chained to the Fervour Tree? She would ready herself for whatever opportunities arose, she would keep her wits sharp and her limbs supple.

Arva tensed and relaxed each of her muscles in turn, checking for cramps and keeping the blood flowing. She was relatively uninjured. Her back was a sheet of agony where it had touched the Fervour Tree, but, even bound by the chains, she could tell that she could move as well as usual. As she checked her body, she tried to consider her situation calmly, as Vedra would have done. The chains that bound her were rusty and old, perhaps they would give if she stretched in the right way. After a few minutes of straining and grunting, she was sure that they would not give.

The roots beneath her feet cracked and splintered again, moving towards her. Two of them had already risen a foot from the ground, forming into crooked, spindly talons. The talons ended in sharpened points and Arva knew where they were heading – the Fervour Tree would pierce her eyes first, plunging its spurs through the pupils and on into her brain, where it would release its poisons, preserving her as she burned and blistered, merging with the tree. Her eyes had been pasted open so that she would see Tzeentch’s judgement edging towards her, inch by inch, with no way to avert her gaze from her supposed guilt. Hot panic flashed in her stomach as she considered the fate that awaited her, but she fought it down, determined to stay calm.

She looked past the slowly approaching roots, to the rest of the glade. It was a place of power. She was no sanorach, but she could feel it in her flesh. She came here often as a child, despite Vedra’s warnings. Dangerous as they were, the clinker trees fascinated her. The bards sang legends of the time when Darkoath tribes first conquered the plains – centuries ago, when their power was unmatched by any foe. And the legends told how, as the tribes marched, triumphant across the plains, raising the crucible mounds and slaughtering their foes, the glades of clinker trees burned like victory brands, filling the sky with fire. Even now, she could feel their heat, rippling through the air.

The clinker trees were meshed tightly together, creating an almost impenetrable mass of dagger-spines and stone shards. But people did force their way through the wood from time to time – outlanders usually. This particular patch of woodland was the quickest route to Old Scald, a geyser to the south of the Sickle Keep, and many travellers came hunting for the gemstones that boiled up through the pools around the geyser.

She called out into the darkness, her voice echoing oddly through the black, brittle rows.

There was no reply, just the breeze whistling through the boughs.

She shouted again, louder, her voice breaking with the effort, but still there was nothing.

Her eyes were in agony from being unable to blink and her vision was clouding over, but she could tell that there was no movement other than the roots edging closer. They snapped loudly and jerked a few inches higher – claw-like growths that had now reached as high as her knees, close enough to singe her skin. She tried to nudge them away, but the chains were too tight.

She called out a few more times, but something about the way her voice echoed through the night told her she was alone.

Night wore on and the roots crept closer. Incredibly, Arva began to feel drowsy. Even though she could not close her eyes, she found her thoughts slipping into dream-like abstraction. Scenes from previous days merged with the darkness of the glade. She saw Vedra as she last saw her, rushing back through crowds of Blood Warriors, trying to leave the enemy fortress, trying to return to the Untamed, fury etched into her gaunt features. She had looked utterly defiant, even as the Blood Warriors cut her down. Whatever Leortas had told the other chieftains was a lie. Vedra had been tricked. Arva had seen it in her eyes before she died. The thought of Vedra’s death filled Arva with a black, soul-leeching sadness that seemed to crush her into the seat. For as long as she could remember, the one constant in her life had been Vedra. She had always had absolute faith in anything her sister said. At no point in her life had Arva ever thought that Vedra might be as fallible as anyone else – that she might one day fail. Even now, she could not quite comprehend it: Vedra had failed. Her mind slipped from that heart-breaking thought to other, more mundane scenes; faces from her past merged with ones from her present.

Arva stiffened in her seat, sitting up with a jolt as she realised that she had somehow fallen asleep.

Her eyes were balls of agony and her vision was completely blurred. She could barely see the glade. Pools of tears had formed, unbidden, beneath her eyes, but the eyes themselves were as dry as sun-baked stone, she could feel them creaking and scraping as she tried to look around.

Someone was with her. The realisation caused her to gasp in shock. Even with blurred vision she could see someone looming in front of her, small and frenetic, bobbing from side to side, tilting and twitching. She realised it was not a person but a bird.

‘Not long,’ said a voice. It was a thin, peevish sound, like a nail being drawn from a plank.

Arva looked down and saw that the roots were just inches from her eyes – so close that she could see the sharpened points creeping slowly through the air towards her.

‘Who’s there?’ she demanded, looking past the bird’s face, trying to see who had spoken.

‘Why did he do this to you?’ said the hideous voice and Arva realised that it was coming from the bird.

She strained to focus on the shapes before her, confused by the strange collection of outlines. There was a bird just inches in front of her face, a crow, she realised, but it seemed to be merged with the torso of a man.

‘Korvis!’ she gasped, finally understanding. She had sat with the Sachalites’ Seer-lord during the victory feast and had seen close up how he spoke through the bird in his chest.

As soon as she remembered the chieftain’s mutation she was able to make sense of the figure before her. Korvis was sitting on something, up off the ground, and he had leant close, bringing his crow’s head level with her face, stuffing berries into its open beak. She realised that he was sitting on a litter, carried by several other Sachalites.

‘Why does Leortas fear you?’ asked Korvis.

One of the lessons Vedra had taught her was when to speak and when not to speak. She had kept her silence since the battle, speaking only to her kin about what she had seen. With Vedra gone, her whole family’s life was in the balance. But now, with the roots of the Fervour Tree hovering in her peripheral vision, she decided that, strange as he was, Korvis was her only hope.

‘He’s a liar,’ she said. ‘And he knows that I know.’

Korvis pushed a few more berries into the crow’s beak. It crushed them and threw its head back to gulp them down, then said: ‘What did he lie about?’

‘I don’t know what he said to you about my sister, but someone betrayed her. When she breached the fortress, she saw something that troubled her and tried to come back out, but the gates closed before she could reach us. She was furious. Someone tricked her. And Leortas knows who, I’m sure of it. I saw it in his eyes. He’s lying.’

Korvis leant back on his litter and fell quiet for a moment.

‘Thank you,’ he screeched. Then he waved at his litter bearers and started to leave the clearing.

‘Wait!’ she howled. ‘I’m innocent.’

Korvis halted his litter and looked back at her. ‘Of course.’

‘But you’re leaving me to die?’

Korvis laughed. The sound of a crow laughing was one of the cruellest noises Arva had ever heard and her heart sank. He seemed to be mocking her.

He waved his litter back towards her. ‘You don’t want to die?’

‘No!’ she cried.

He shrugged. Then he waved some of his men over to her and they began hacking at the chains with axes, filling the darkness with embers as the blades split iron and thudded into the Fervour Tree.

As his men worked, Korvis seemed to forget about Arva, stroking the crow’s head as he looked up at the stars, humming a tune in his human throat.

The chains were ancient and it only took the tribesmen a few minutes to destroy them. They had almost freed her when one of the blades shaved through the side of her thigh, splashing blood on the tree and causing her to cry out in pain.

She shook her head and waved for the man to continue.

As the last chain fell away they helped her to her feet.

Despite her efforts to prevent it, Arva’s legs were stiff with cramp and she had to stamp around the clearing like a revenant until the blood was flowing again. Then she gingerly reached up to one of her eyelids and wiped the tar away.

She gasped in pain as her eyelid scraped down over her dry cornea. It was more agonising than the burns on her back, so she did the same with the other eye before she had time to lose her nerve.

She stood there for a few moments, blinking slowly and wincing, trying to moisten her eyes. The pain got worse, but her vision began to clear and she saw that Korvis was heading back into the trees.

‘Wait!’ she cried, limping after him. ‘What will you do?’

He turned to look back at her and screeched through the crow. ‘Nest in the pathless grove. Contemplate the news.’

She shook her head, struggling to keep up as they carried his litter through the clinker trees and back towards the distant lights of the Sickle Keep. ‘What?’

Korvis had no mouth to smile with, but there was something about the way his eyes crumpled that made her think he was amused by her. He halted the litter and reached out, offering her a handful of berries.

Arva had observed the Sachalites at close hand. To a man they were deranged and distracted. Not many were as physically transformed as Korvis, but they all spent more time talking to air than people. She shook her head.

Korvis shrugged but continued staring at her. His human eyes managed to focus, briefly, on her face and he nodded. ‘I must look into the nine fires,’ he said, speaking slowly, trying to make the crow’s voice easier to understand. ‘You confirmed my suspicions, so now I must decide how to act. Leortas is not to be trusted. At least until I know why he is lying. He’s false. I saw that even before we left the south. Budar is unwavering though, I think. His grasp of the flames is too simple to be dishonest. I will find him and ask for help.’

‘Take me with you.’ Arva pounded her chest. ‘The Warqueen was betrayed. To her death. I saw her die.’ Her voice grew tight. ‘And I mean to avenge her.’

Korvis shrugged again, but he still had that same amused look in his eyes. He waved the litter on and nodded for her to follow.

Chapter Nineteen

Vedra travelled north, following the borders of the Scornwood Holt, knowing that the glades of clinker trees would eventually lead her to the shores of the Unmeant Lake. From there she would only have to follow the curve of the lake to the east, until the trees led her right to the gates of the Sickle Keep. The plains were as baked and hot as ever, but, as dusk fell, the stars revealed that it was now the ninth month – nearly mid-winter. The thought horrified her. It would soon be time for the next need-fire. She had spent the better part of a year fighting in the Abattoir.

She had spent the whole day running across the southern plains, determined to get as far from the Abattoir as possible before the battle reached a conclusion. If Khrall’s Blood Warriors were victorious, her absence would soon be noted and, after all that had happened, she had a feeling Khrall might send his knights out to hunt her down. When she spoke to the Bloodmarshall, she sensed that he wanted something more from her than her death – that he expected something of her. She had no idea what he saw in her but she was determined not to return to the Abattoir until it was at the head of an army.

Her muscles were screaming with the effort of so many hours’ running, so as the shadows lengthened, reaching out from the jagged tips of the clinker trees, she finally allowed herself a brief moment of rest. She was near a long, ancient ditch. The Arad Plains were networked with the outlines of vast citadels, relics from the ages before the coming of Chaos, built by a long forgotten race. This one was no more than ditches and mounds, but she used the higher ground to steal a look back to the south, towards the Abattoir. The sky was lit by two setting suns – the first was the true sun, the second was Khrall’s fortress, blazing on the horizon like a crucible, sending a thick black column of smoke up into the emerging stars. There was no sign of the storm clouds she observed when she first began fleeing across the plains, but there were still flashes of silver light, pulsing sporadically from its shattered silhouette. The battle was still undecided. She nodded, pleased. They would all be far too busy to worry about one escapee.

Vedra turned her gaze to the earthworks beneath her feet. They trailed away from her in every direction, describing the outline of great halls and keeps. Whoever ruled the plains before the arrival of Chaos had clearly been a great nation. There was nothing left now but grassy mounds in the shape of buildings, but the citadel must have been vast – even greater than the Abattoir. It had not helped them. Whoever built the place was long gone, driven out by an enemy that was probably also forgotten now.

She was about to continue on her way, when Vedra noticed something unexpected. The outline of the building she was standing on was a familiar shape – a twin-tailed comet. For a moment, she could not place the design, then she grunted in surprise. She had seen it on Savin’s armour and on the metal device he used to summon the Stormhost. She shook her head. There was still so much that she did not know. All that she had heard of the Stormcast Eternals was that they were a newly forged army, born in the heavens to conquer the Chaos gods, but here was evidence that servants of Sigmar once lived in these very plains, before the coming of Chaos. Vedra had spent her whole life training her flesh to be unbreakable, but her encounters in the Abattoir had revealed how little she knew of the wider world. She swore to learn more once she had dealt with Alimus. Alimus. The thought of the old sanorach twisted in her stomach. She sprinted on into the night, rage simmering in her veins.

Chapter Twenty

‘You’re lucky,’ said Alimus, glaring at Leortas as they climbed up towards the clinker trees. Leortas’ retainers were far ahead of them, scouting through the woods, and Alimus was free to speak openly. ‘Some of the younger chieftains made jokes at your expense, saying you had been rowing with your slaves, but I put the fear of Tzeentch in them. I reminded them that not all of the seats on the Fervour Tree have been filled. That stilled their tongues.’

Leortas could barely follow what the sanorach was saying. It was now mid-morning and the sun was rising high over the plains, but his head was still pounding from the wine he had drunk the day before. Every step he took clamped his skull a little tighter. Things that seemed glorious and assured yesterday, seemed shameful and full of risk today. ‘You said she was insane? You told them that’s why we had to kill her?’

‘Yes, I told them she was tormented by Vedra’s treachery. I said that she could not bear the idea that the Warqueen, her own sister, had so willingly joined the ranks of Khorne worshippers. I said that Arva’s thoughts drove her to such distraction that she turned on you – but you were too noble to retaliate and left her fate to the Fervour Tree.’

Leortas grabbed Alimus’ arm, halting him at the edge of the clinker trees. ‘Arva knows what really happened to Vedra. She saw it. She saw her die.’

Alimus nodded. ‘Yes, Arva was at my side when the Blood Warriors cut the Warqueen down. We were both near the gates and she saw it as clearly as I did. But it doesn’t matter. No one would take Arva’s word over mine. They think she went insane.’ He waved at the distant crown of the Fervour Tree. ‘And now we’re rid of her, so who cares what she saw? I told the chieftains that the Blood Warriors welcomed the Warqueen into their fortress and that she’s still there, praying to Khorne and plotting to destroy us. With Arva gone, who can contradict me?’

Leortas’ face was still locked in a scowl, but he nodded and loosed Alimus’ arm and they entered the wood, making for the colossus at its heart.

The clinker trees looked no less treacherous in daylight – fractured, glassy shards, splintering up through the packed earth like spears. Leortas was sweating after a few minutes of walking past them, muttering under his breath as their heat made his head pound even harder.

He was lagging behind Alimus when he heard the old man whisper something. He sounded surprised.

Leortas picked up his pace and hurried into the clearing. He staggered to a halt. Arva was gone. The chains had been smashed and ripped from the seat.

‘What’s this?’ he gasped, rushing to the Fervour Tree and almost touching the trunk before its heat warned him off.

‘She was guilty,’ said Alimus, sounding surprised. He nodded at a dark stain on the ground, near the tree.

Leortas dropped to one knee and touched it. ‘Blood?’

Alimus nodded, waving his staff at other, similar stains on the broken chains. ‘Something took her.’ He looked around at the menacing shapes of the clinker trees. ‘I thought she would be joined with Tzeentch, but she must truly have been disloyal.’

Leortas was still looking at the blood. ‘But what if she survived?’

Alimus laughed and nodded at the broken chains. ‘Whatever attacked her had jaws strong enough to break through iron. She’s dead.’ He placed a hand on Leortas’ shoulder. ‘Come, it’s nearly the night of the need-fire. Vedra is dead and so is her sister. Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.’

Leortas nodded, but as they headed back through the trees, his headache grew even worse and he could not shake his growing sense of dread.

Chapter Twenty-one

Alimus cried out, lacing his tremulous words with sorcery so that they reached the crowds gathered around the Crucible Mound. ‘Am I the Herald of the Ninth?’

‘You are,’ chorused the crowd, edging closer, staring at the miracle forming over the hollow behind him – a blaze bright enough to rival the dawn.

‘Am I the holder of the key to the nine doors?’

‘You are.’

‘It is the dawning of the ninth day of the ninth month. Once more, the Changer of Ways has driven back the darkness, illuminating us with the flame of truth.’

‘Have you brought his fire?’ called the crowd. It was an incredible sound. The Untamed had gathered beneath the mound in their thousands to witness the need-fire: the Sachalites, the Throod, the Tannen and the dozens of lesser tribes that had also sworn fealty to Vedra – legions of keen-eyed warriors, eager to know who now ruled in Vedra’s stead.

Alimus reached beneath his vivid blue robes and held up a drinking horn. Then he turned to face the three figures gathered next to him. Budar looked as imposing as ever – towering over Alimus, glowering and muscular, gripping his massive axe in both hands. His short, black beard was glistening with the sacred draughts he had consumed on the way to the mound and his eyes were glaring out from beneath his heavy brow. Next to him was Leortas, his chin raised, his expression proud, his mane of silver plaits thrown back from his imperious face. On the other side of Alimus was Korvis. Unusually, he was standing on the ground. The Sachalite faith forbade their Seer-lord from treading on normal, mortal earth, but the summit of the Crucible Mound was another matter. It was sacred ground, cooled by the flames of the need-fire and Korvis had abandoned his litter at the foot of the hill. His legs were so crooked and emaciated that he could barely stand, but his charcoal-rimmed eyes were wide with excitement and the crow’s head in his chest was jerking from side to side, pecking frantically at the air.

Alimus waved his claw-topped staff towards the flames at the top of the mound. ‘Three of you will enter,’ he cried. ‘Only one will return.’ He looked at each of the three tribesmen in turn. ‘The Architect of Fate has sent his fire. The flames will choose. Are you ready to begin?’

Budar gripped his axe tighter and nodded. Leortas held his sword aloft, eliciting a roar of approval from the Tannen. Korvis was staring at the need-fire in wonder and did not seem to hear Alimus.

‘Are you ready to begin?’ repeated the sanorach, leaning closer to him.

Korvis’ human eyes remained locked on the lights, but he drew two of the long knives strapped to his chest and the crow tilted its head to look at Alimus. ‘Let Tzeentch decide,’ it screamed.

Alimus hesitated. There was something about Korvis’ behaviour that troubled him. The old seer was even more agitated than usual, glancing from the need-fire to the glades of clinker trees around the Sickle Keep.

He shook his head. Annoyed at himself. The Sachalites were always strange. His nerves were just getting the better of him.

He approached each of the chieftains in turn and poured tincture on their heads. Then, as they ran, howling, into the lights, he poured some on his own head and entered the need-fire.

Chapter Twenty-two

‘He said the other side!’ Arva was racing ahead of her cousin, Haditha, heading away from the crowds to the far side of the Crucible Mound, behind the need-fire.

Haditha was a few years older than Arva and he was clearly annoyed by the off-handed way she was giving him orders. ‘We’re missing the whole thing. We won’t see anything back here.’

‘Keep your voice down,’ she hissed, nodding at the guards that surrounded the hill. They were scattered around the circumference in groups of two and three, lit up by the sapphire blaze above, ensuring that only Alimus and the three chieftains entered the Trial of Choosing.

Haditha glared at her but followed. He had seen her talking to Korvis and demanded to be involved in whatever game she was playing.

She pointed her spear at a nearby glade of clinker trees. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Korvis’ visions told him the true champion would emerge from those trees.’

Haditha shook his head. ‘True champion? The need-fire will decide who rules. Budar, Korvis or Leortas will become king. And none of them will want to keep us around. Why should there be another champion?’

‘Because they’re lying!’ she hissed, grabbing Haditha by the shoulder and pulling him close, her eyes blazing. She shook her head. ‘Korvis seems different, but Leortas and Alimus are tricking everyone, I know it. He and the sanorach said Vedra betrayed us, but I saw her die, still fighting the Blood Warriors when they cut her down. She never abandoned us, Haditha.’

He stared back at her. Then he looked up at the lights of the need-fire. ‘The sanorach is lying?’

She nodded, her expression grim.

Haditha shook his head. ‘If that is true, how can you trust Korvis?’ He waved at the trees. ‘Why listen to anything he says?’

‘Because he saved my life, Haditha, when he had no need to. I trust him. He said the true champion would emerge from those trees as soon as the trial began.’

He scowled at her again, but followed her gaze as she looked back towards the trees.

There was nothing there. He shook his head and turned to go. ‘The need-fire comes once a year and we’re missing it because a lunatic told you to watch trees.’

‘Look,’ gasped Arva.

A figure was sprinting across the scrub towards the mound, gripping a long, iron spear. She was filthy, covered in embers and caked in dried blood, but her defiant snarl was unmistakable.

‘Vedra,’ whispered Arva, feeling sick with shock, unable to believe what she was seeing.

The guards had seen her too. As Vedra neared the mound, they ran towards her, raising their axes and yelling warnings. No one, not even a Warqueen, could enter the need-fire without the sanction of a sanorach.

Arva sprinted across the grass towards her sister, her mind crowded with impossible thoughts. Vedra was alive.

Vedra was too busy to notice her sister. As the guards reached her she smashed them aside with her spear, vaulting blows and racing on to the mound, her face rigid with fury.

One of the guards, unseen by Vedra, drew back his axe to hurl it at the Warqueen.

Arva was faster, throwing her spear as she ran. It thudded into his back and sent him tumbling across the hard earth.

Vedra ran on and dived into the flames, oblivious, as the guards turned to face Arva and Haditha.

Chapter Twenty-three

Vedra had only ever seen the need-fire through the lens of Alimus’ sacred tinctures. As she stumbled to a halt beneath the sapphire dome, it looked more bizarre than ever before. Without the sorcery of the sanorach, there were no visions, just the bizarre sight of the three chieftains staggering back and forth through the blaze, blind to the real world, lashing out at unseen shapes.

‘Alimus,’ she snarled as she saw the old seer, staggering into the lights from the opposite direction. After so many months of picturing his face, cherishing her dreams of revenge, it was almost overwhelming to finally see him in the flesh, blinded by visions and lurching towards her.

She jogged across the hollow and drew back Biurtan, preparing to hurl the spear into Alimus’ throat. She hesitated. This was not right. This was not the revenge she dreamt of. How could she avenge Tuath, Zuchis and all the others who died if Alimus could not even see her face? No, he had to know she had come for him. He had to see his executioner. She had to enter the dance. She approached the sanorach, snatched the drinking horn from his belt, poured tincture onto her scalp and stepped into his dream.

‘Vedra!’ howled Alimus, cowering away from her.

She kept her eyes locked on his, ignoring the vistas exploding into view all around her, glorying in his confusion. Augur and prophecy blossomed through her thoughts, but she drove them down with the vehemence of her hate.

‘For Tuath,’ she cried, jamming her spear into his chest.

His eyes widened in shock and pain. Blood rushed through his robes.

‘For Zuchis!’ she cried, striking again.

Alimus paled and fell to his knees as she avenged every one of her fallen kin, accompanying every howled name with a thrust of her spear.

He collapsed onto his back, shaking in agony, clutching at his chest.

Vedra stepped away, battered by tides of madness as she waited to see him die.

Rather than stopping, Alimus continued to shake.

Something was wrong.

Vedra realised, to her horror, that he was not shaking with pain, but laughter.

Chapter Twenty-four

‘Now what do we do?’ cried Haditha as the guards rushed towards them, furious expressions on their faces.

Arva drew a dagger from her belt and shook her head, backing away. They were Tannen – Leortas’ men. There would be no negotiating with them, but the idea of running away appalled her.

More guards were approaching from the other direction, but before they reached her, they slowed and began pointing at the need-fire. Something strange was happening. The lights were lashing up from the Crucible Mound, reaching up into the dawn, and they were changing colour. Need-fires always burned the same sapphire blue, but as the need-fire abandoned its usual form, other colours appeared: green, red and gold, rolling through the furnace like storm clouds.

The guards stopped to look, forgetting about Arva and Haditha. None of them had ever seen anything like this. The need-fire was changing.

The lights stretched higher and then began spilling down the slopes of the mound, scattering limbs of colour through the early morning gloom.

A great clamour rose on the far side of the fire, where the crowds had gathered: voices crying out in warning and alarm.

Arva and Haditha glanced at each other, confused, then ran back the way they had come, heading towards the front of the mound with the guards running alongside them.

They rounded the shoulder of the hill and saw an incredible scene: thousands of tribesmen, howling and cursing, calling out to their leaders in the need-fire. Some of them had even climbed the slopes of the mound, trying to peer into the furnace.

Arva gasped as she saw the cause of the commotion. The horizon had turned red. A sea of blood was pouring through the fields, seething and tumbling across the plains.

Arva stared in shock as she realised the dreadful truth: it was not an ocean, but an army – Blood Warriors, thousands of them, marching on the Sickle Keep. At their head there was a crimson-clad giant, clutching a sword the size of a storehouse. He was pointing it at the need-fire, ordering his legions to advance.

Chapter Twenty-five

Vedra backed away from Alimus, horrified and confused as his body began to change. His blue robes began to splinter and fragment, becoming long, iridescent feathers. The blood pouring from his countless wounds added its colour to his plumage, edging the feathers with crimson and pink as the sanorach rose to his feet and stood before her, smiling.

‘Too late,’ he said. His words resounded in her head, but they also exploded in the air, forming a glittering rain of crystals that engulfed Alimus, fracturing his outline as it warped and mutated.

He raised his staff and she saw it had merged with his flesh. The claw at its head was now Alimus’ claw and he reached out with it, wrapping long, iron-hard talons around her throat.

‘Tzeentch has chosen,’ he said, forcing her to her knees, his words spinning around his head like shattered ice. ‘And he has chosen me.’

As Vedra struggled in his grip, she saw other shapes trying to fight through the kaleidoscope of exploding shards. Their shapes were confused and dazzling, but she recognised them: Budar’s lumbering bulk, Leortas’ proud stride and Korvis’ wasted, skeletal frame. They were trying to break through the shifting mass of colours, but it was impossible.

The lights burned into her eyes as his eagle-claw crushed her throat. She tried to rise but his strength was inhuman. She could not breathe. Her pulse hammered in her skull and her lungs burned. Alimus leant closer, still laughing, as she started to die. The Serpent Stone was at his neck, blazing with the same power that burned in his eyes.

The chieftains were still flailing against the lights, but it was impossible. Alimus was ablaze with power. It was radiating from him like sunlight.

As the strength left Vedra’s body, her mind slipped through the coruscating lights, carried on the strands of lambent power. She began to hear thoughts: Leortas, raging at Alimus’ treachery, Budar, furious at himself for being misled and Korvis, willing her on, believing, despite everything, that she had come to retake her crown.

Her thoughts passed blindly on, out from the Crucible Mound, into the minds of her people. They were horrified by something she could not see. Something approaching them across the plains.

Their voices filled her head, a desperate clamour of curses and invocations, rising to such a dreadful cacophony that she found herself howling along with them.

At first, she cried like an animal, a ragged, meaningless roar, but then, as Alimus squeezed the last moments of life from her, words formed in her throat – harsh, foreign words that she did not understand. They took shape in her mouth of their own volition, but from the first syllable she recognised them. It was the oath she heard in the Abattoir – the oath of the bloodreavers. She hesitated, recalling the hideous fate that befell every one of the warriors who swore those words. Then she thought of the savage power they harnessed before it tore them apart.

Vedra looked at Alimus’ leering grin and knew she had no choice. If it was her time to die, so be it, but she would take Alimus with her. Khorne’s fury would destroy her, but it would unchain her first. She howled the words, deliberately this time, crying the curse with all the force she could muster.

Alimus’ expression changed instantly. The glee fell from his face as Vedra’s words roared from her throat. He shook his head, confused, as a new power entered the lights of the need-fire, flooding Vedra with savage, shocking strength.

As she cried the oath even louder, vigour flooded Vedra’s muscles. She rose, forcing Alimus back with wonderful ease.

His shock changed to fear as she gripped his claw and prized his talons from her throat. The bones snapped and crumpled as she pushed him back through the maelstrom.

Her muscles were swelling and blood was sweating through her pores, flowing down her limbs in rivulets, bleeding from her eyes.

Vedra’s cry became incoherent again. The oath was complete. Savage strength was coursing through her veins.

She crushed Alimus to the ground and wrenched his mutated limb from his body, shattering the bones and tearing the ligaments.

Fire erupted from Alimus’ torn shoulder and he screamed, thrashing in her grip.

Vedra’s heart was thundering. Her strength was incredible. Her howl became peals of laughter. To die, like this, was worth anything that followed.

She pulled Alimus apart, painting crystalline flames with his blood. Surrounding herself in walls of crimson. Destroying every piece of his flesh.

Finally, when there was nothing left of Alimus but glistening mounds, she grabbed the Serpent Stone from the gore, pressed it to her chest and closed her eyes, waiting for her body to disintegrate.

Her fury and strength continued to grow. As she stood there, eyes closed and head thrown back, the blood oath ripped through her bones, still transforming her. She had expected pain but felt only a glorious, heady ascendancy. She passed beyond the confines of her flesh. Embracing something greater. Something more ferocious.

A memory from the Abattoir came back to her – the Bloodmarshall, studying her with interest from his throne, as he said, ‘Many can follow. Few can lead.’

Vedra smiled as she realised something incredible. She was not dying.

Chapter Twenty-six

Arva raced through the crowds, back up onto the slopes of the mound, trying to get a better view. With the greater chieftains lost in the need-fire, the Darkoath tribes had devolved into a frenzied mob. As the Blood Warriors filled the plains with blocks of well-ordered troops, the tribesmen turned on each other, dozens of lesser chieftains vying for ascendancy, shouting over each other as they tried to seize control, but only succeeding in dividing the Untamed into dozens of confused factions, all unable to agree on a plan.

Arva shook her head, despairing.

‘It’ll be a massacre,’ muttered Haditha, climbing up beside her, his face ashen as he studied the vast host that had encircled them.

‘What are they doing?’ replied Arva, frowning. It was hard to see clearly with the need-fire blazing behind her, but the Blood Warriors were doing something odd. As they reached the glades and fields around the Sickle Keep, they were halting, still hundreds of feet away from the confused rabble around the Crucible Mound. A few blocks of troops, led by the armoured giant at their head, were marching closer, but they had not drawn their weapons. Finally, even they came to a halt. The giant planted his colossal sword in the ground and rested his hands on the pommel, silent and motionless.

As the Darkoath tribes saw what was happening, even they stopped their arguments, staring in confusion at the Blood Warriors.

A strange, expectant quiet fell over the plains.

Haditha looked at Arva. ‘What are they waiting for? They have us completely surrounded.’

Arva was about to reply, when the lights behind them blazed brighter. She whirled around and howled in shock. The need-fire had become a pillar of flame, reaching up into the sky, splashing colours across the underside of the clouds. It burned so bright that Arva and Haditha had to shield their eyes as they backed down the slope, driven back by a sudden wave of heat.

All around the Crucible Mound, the tribesmen dropped to their knees, crying out prayers and clutching amulets as they witnessed a miracle.

As she stumbled down the hill, Arva saw something almost as incredible as the pillar of fire – it was not just the tribes who were kneeling. The Blood Warriors were doing the same, thousands of them, dropping to one knee and holding their axes aloft. Finally, when the last of his soldiers had knelt, even their colossal general bent his knee, causing the ground to judder as he slammed his weight down onto the packed earth.

Arva shook her head in wonder. As she reached the foot of the hill, she stumbled and dropped down with everyone else, unable to comprehend the majesty of the scene. There was something forming in the flames – a point of intense darkness, swelling and changing, reforming itself as it moved closer, trailing tendrils of shadow.

Arva gasped as the darkness emerged from the fire.

It was Vedra, bathed in blood and wreathed in flames. She strode from the need-fire with her chin raised and something glinting at her chest. Arva tried to see what it was, but it flashed too bright for her to be sure.

Vedra stood there for a moment, exultant, taking in the vast host arrayed before her. Then she raised her spear over her head and howled into the tempest, her voice carried on the flames of the need-fire. ‘Untamed!’

There was a brief, shocked pause, then every throat on the plains roared back in answer. ‘Untamed!’

As she turned to see the scale of Vedra’s victory, Arva saw another miracle.

All across the plains, the clinker trees were igniting, filling the skies with an ember rain. She looked back at her sister. Vedra met her gaze, bathing in the glory, tears of triumph in her eyes.

About the Author

Darius Hinks’s first novel, Warrior Priest, won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best newcomer. Since then he has carved a bloody swathe through the Warhammer world with Island of Blood, Sigvald, Razumov’s Tomb and the Orion trilogy, and has ventured into the Warhammer 40,000 universe with the novels Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius, Mephiston: Revenant Crusade and the Space Marine Battles novella Sanctus.

An extract from The Red Hours.

‘Going somewhere, hero?’

The mounted guard leading Captain Byrun Hess’ ibuq jerked at the reins, forcing the reptile to shear left. With his hands manacled in front of him, Hess had to shift awkwardly to keep his seat. The move set the medals on his breastplate jingling, and the two guards laughing.

They’d stripped him of his sword, his pistols, even his mother’s lucky helmet, but Lord Marshal Khir had been insistent that Hess keep all his medals. They were, after all, why he was marching through the hinterlands of Chamon, rather than dangling at the end of a noose.

‘Not so arrogant now,’ the other guard, Rollo, said with a lazy sneer.

‘Captain,’ Hess replied through gritted teeth.

‘What?’ Rollo cocked his head.

‘Not so arrogant now, captain,’ Hess said slowly. Khir had left him his rank, too, and he’d be damned if he let some slack-jawed latrine digger forget it.

‘Apologies, captain, I forgot to salute.’ Rollo shifted in his saddle to solemnly place a fist over his heart, then punched Hess squarely in the mouth.

This time, he toppled from his ibuq.

The ground hit him like a cannon shot, driving the breath from his lungs. Although it was meant more for parading than hard use, his armour took the worst of the fall, but Hess’ head rebounded from a rust-spotted outcrop, sending red and white flares dancing across his vision.

He lay on the ground gasping like a gut-shot orruk. The ringing in Hess’ ears was gradually eclipsed by the laughter of the two guards – Rollo’s high and quick, Gert’s like the raspy croaks of a startled crow. They’d been goading him for days, poking, prodding, taking joy in Hess’ shame.

The base-born always enjoyed seeing a noble brought low.

Hess struggled to his feet, blood dribbling from his split lip down the front of his breastplate. He hated the Realm of Metal with its strange coppery sun and its jagged horizon. Even the mounts were wrong. Hess had been forced to trade his warhorse for an ibuq, a stocky, broad-shouldered breed of Chamonic lizard that grew to roughly the size of an ox. Although Hess was an expert rider, he found the ibuq’s waddling, splay-legged gait unsettling, not to mention the steady rasp of their scales, the flicking of their long tongues as they tested the air, and the low, rattling grind as they crushed rocks in their heavy underslung jaws. It was nothing short of maddening.

Gritting his teeth, Hess slowly pushed to his feet. More wounding than the pain in his side were the scuffs and tarnish on his ceremonial armour. The fall from his mount had chipped the rearing silver mare of Hess’ family crest emblazoned on the breastplate, the green and gold lacquer peeling from the rust-scabbed steel. He couldn’t help but recall the first time he’d worn the armour marching down the Grand Concourse of Azyrheim – his father’s eyes bright with unshed tears, the tight-lipped nod his mother had given as she watched him accept his captaincy in the Freeguild mounted pistoliers. But that was all gone now, lost to the jealousy of a petty old man. Now, Hess was nothing – a disgraced officer forced to endure the taunts and abuse of soldiers not fit to lick his boots.

Fury set Hess’ face burning, his throat hot and tight. He ran at Rollo, shouting and throwing his hands up to startle the guard’s mount. For all their fierce demeanour, ibuq were beasts of burden, flighty and unsuitable for combat. As Hess had hoped it would, Rollo’s mount shied away, hissing, and the guard tumbled from his seat.

Hess tackled the man before he could rise. They rolled on the ground, flakes of rusty metal scouring the filigree from Hess’ pauldrons and greaves. Although his hands were chained, he outweighed Rollo by twenty pounds, and managed to clamber atop the struggling guard to headbutt him in the nose.

Too late, Hess heard the clatter of Gert’s ibuq. The butt of her crossbow cracked across his shoulders, sending him sprawling.

‘Our orders are to deliver you to your new post – they don’t say in how many pieces.’ Gert reversed her crossbow and levelled it at Hess. ‘Do you feel like fighting, captain?’

Hess pushed to his knees to glare at the guard. Scowling, he shook his head.

Gert gave a satisfied grunt and turned to her companion. ‘Are you okay?’

Rollo stood, wiping the blood from his nose. He glared at Hess for a long moment, then walked over to slap the flank of Hess’ ibuq. With a snorting hiss, the beast shambled away into the rubble.

‘Looks like the captain’s mount ran off.’ Rollo moved to retrieve the reins of his own beast. ‘You’re going to have to walk the rest of the way, hero.’

Hess stiffened, squinting down the thin ribbon of gold that was the old Lantic road. To either side the Glitterpeaks rose like ancient, pitted blades, their jagged flint-and-iron crests dusted not with snow but orange-red blooms of corrosion. Instead of dust, the wind carried flecks of rust, the smell of it reminding Hess of old blood. Higher up, windswept metal rasped across flinty outcrops, producing the showers of sparks for which the mountains were named.

He looked to Gert. Of his two captors, she was the more reasonable, if only marginally so. ‘I won’t make it on foot.’

She returned his gaze with slit-eyed hatred. ‘My brother was at Beacon Field.’

Hess suppressed a wince. There was no sense in arguing. It didn’t matter that Hess had won the battle, that he had slain the sorcerer Avul Thrice-Burnt and scattered his mad followers to the wind. Someone needed to answer for the dead, and Hess, in his wounded pride, had as good as delivered himself to the lord marshal on a silver platter.

It was painful to straighten his bruised back, and even more so to walk, but Hess vowed he wouldn’t give Khir’s thugs the satisfaction of seeing him hobble. For a wild moment he considered running off into the jagged countryside, but he knew he would not get far. Even if he stripped off his plate, Hess had seen enough of Chamon to know he would survive barely a day in the scouring heat.

To add to the insult, Rollo approached and tied a rope around the chain that bound Hess’ hands, securing the other end to the pommel of his saddle. The guard’s ugly smile made it clear that if Hess stumbled, Rollo would be happy to drag him.

Hess staggered across the pitted ground, careful of the hunks of rusty metal that littered the road. Above, the sun glittered like molten bronze, waves of heat distorting the black iron peaks that loomed over them. His armour felt like an oven, the heavy ceremonial plate slowly broiling Hess alive even as the rough iron of the manacles chafed his wrists raw.

His tongue rasped against cracked lips, the skin of his face hot and tight. Heat pressed in from all sides, wicking away Hess’ sweat. Even the breeze was no relief. It came like the blast of a forge bellows, carrying grains of rust that scoured his exposed skin.

After what seemed an eternity, the guards called a halt, Gert tossing Hess a canteen while Rollo scanned the horizon. Hess made a grab for the water but stumbled as Rollo nudged his ibuq forward, the rope jerking Hess off his feet.

‘Go on.’ Rollo snorted a wet laugh through his broken nose. ‘Pick it up.’

Hess stood to glare up at the guard, not wanting to give Rollo the pleasure of seeing him scrabble in the dust.

‘We don’t have time for this,’ Gert said, thrusting her chin at something in the distance.

With a snarled curse, Rollo jerked Hess closer and untied the rope from his manacles. Perhaps noticing the murder in Hess’ eyes, Rollo waved the rope at him. ‘If you attack me again, captain, this will be around your neck.’

A few days ago, Hess would have been happy to teach the fool another lesson. Now, his thoughts were only of the canteen. The water was tepid and coppery, like blood, but Hess gulped it down as though it were wine from the Arch-Lector’s vineyard.

The guards dismounted. Retreating to the dubious shade of a sharp-edged overhang, they tied up their mounts, then began to argue in quiet tones. Rollo gestured at the mountains, his shoulders high and tight, the way he got when he was nervous. Gert chewed her lip, then gave an irritated nod, turning back to her ibuq to unlimber her crossbow.

‘What’s going on?’ Hess joined them in the shadow of the overhang.

Rollo kicked a spray of rusty grit at him.

‘Quiet!’ he barked.

Shielding his eyes from the bright sun, Hess scanned the path ahead. The old Lantic road twisted through the Glitterpeaks like a river of gold, still bright even after centuries of neglect. In the distance, Hess made out two riders on ibuq picking their way down a switchback etched into the pitted face of the mountain.

Rollo stepped into the centre of the road, sword drawn, while Gert stayed in the shade of the overhang, crouched behind a slab of corroded iron, her crossbow ready.

‘Who are they?’ Hess moved over to her.

Gert shrugged. ‘Maybe raiders, maybe natives.’

‘Unchain my hands,’ Hess said. ‘If there is a battle, you will need my aid.’

She snorted. ‘We don’t need nothing from you except quiet.’

Hess lapsed into silence, mentally counting steps – one to where Gert crouched, four to where Rollo stood in the road. If it came to a fight, he would need to move quickly. Hess would not die in this Sigmar-forsaken hinterland because his guards were incompetent fools.

It was not long before the riders arrived, slouched low in their saddles, almost completely hidden by long cloaks of rough-spun cloth threaded with rusty fibres of metal.

One of the riders hung back while the other dismounted with a wave, unwinding his scarf to reveal a darkly tanned face, his cheeks chapped and windburnt. Gold tattoos traced the line of his jaw, filigreed arcs twining across his forehead in an intricate pattern that glittered in the failing light.

‘Natives,’ Rollo muttered, shifting to point his blade at the tattooed man. ‘That’s far enough.’

The man paused, hands held wide, a broad smile on his face. He glanced past Rollo to grin at Hess.

‘By gold and steel, you must be our new captain.’ The man offered a sloppy salute. ‘Flynn, at your service.’ He nodded at his companion. ‘That’s Thystra – she’s our tracker.’

The other cloaked rider remained motionless. Little was visible save for her sharp, cool-blue eyes.

Rollo’s blade didn’t waver. ‘There was no mention of an escort.’

‘Castellan Altenbach sent us.’ Flynn’s hand drifted towards his cloak. ‘I carry the order if you wish to see it.’

‘Keep your hands raised,’ Rollo barked, gesturing to where Gert knelt. ‘Or she’ll put a bolt through them.’

‘We’re on the same side.’ Flynn’s eyes flicked to Gert as she stood from behind the rock, but his smile never wavered. ‘The Glitterpeaks are already sufficiently dangerous without your bellowing causing an avalanche.’

Rollo hissed. ‘If you are so afraid why don’t you turn around and go back the way you came?’

Flynn gave a sad shake of his head. ‘Can’t have our new captain marched to death now, can we?’

Rollo half turned. ‘Are these your friends, Hess? Other traitors come to break you out? If you think I’ll let you escape without a fight, you’re–’

Flynn skipped forward, slapping aside the flat of Rollo’s blade with his bare hand. The guard tried to bring the sword around, but Flynn was too close. The Chamonian dug his fingers into the pressure point at the base of the man’s throat. Rollo squawked. No stranger to brawls, he quickly recovered, crashing a fist into the smaller man’s side, and the two fell to grappling.

Gert let out a soft curse, shifting to take aim at the melee. Before she could fire, Hess lunged. His kick was awkward, but it was enough to send Gert’s bolt skittering wide. She hammered the butt of her crossbow into Hess’ stomach, and he crumpled like rotten wood.

Gasping on the ground, Hess watched helplessly as Gert tossed the crossbow aside to draw her blade and advance on the struggling men. He tried to call a warning to Flynn as Gert raised her sword, but could manage barely more than a whispery cough.

The scrabble of claws on metal caught both Hess and Gert’s attention. The guard spun to see Thystra’s ibuq, somehow now riderless, bearing down on her. The beast’s dark eyes were wide and frightened, its heavy jaw hanging open to bare the ridges of steely bone it used to grind minerals and hard scrub.

With a shout, Gert leapt from the beast’s path and right into Thystra’s arms. Hess had not seen her move, but somehow the rider had slipped along the other side of the road, her rusty cloak blending perfectly with the metallic detritus. Thystra rose from behind a rocky outcrop to hammer the pommel of her dagger into the back of Gert’s neck. The guard crumpled, her sword clattering from nerveless fingers.

Calmly, Thystra stepped over the unconscious guard, then knelt to grab a fistful of Rollo’s hair. The guard tried to pull free of Flynn but stiffened as Thystra jerked his head back and set her dagger against his throat.

‘Drop your weapon.’ Her voice was cold and flat, words whetted with the threat of violence.

With a snarl, Rollo cast his sword aside and relaxed his grip on Flynn.

‘See to your comrade.’ Thystra hauled him upright with surprising strength and shoved him stumbling towards Gert. As she moved, Hess was surprised to see the tip of one sharply pointed ear slip free of the hood.

An aelf.

Flynn got to his feet. He prodded at his bruised ribs, wincing, then ambled over to help Hess stand. ‘Are you fit to ride, captain?’

‘Always.’ Hess shook his manacles. ‘Although I do manage better with my hands unchained.’

‘Of course, captain.’ Flynn nodded to his companion. ‘Thystra, would you mind fetching the keys from our friends over there?’

The aelf moved to where Rollo knelt beside Gert, and held out her hand.

‘The lord marshal will hear of this.’ Rollo spat a bloody gobbet at her feet.

Thystra stared at the blood, strangely still, her hand tight on her dagger.

‘There’s no need for that.’ Flynn let go of Hess to hurry to the aelf’s side. With a pained smile, he knelt to retrieve the key ring from Gert’s belt and tossed it to Hess before taking Thystra by the shoulders and turning the aelf away with surprising gentleness. ‘Your mount.’

The aelf blinked as if waking from a dream. With a shake of her head, she shrugged free of Flynn’s grip, stalking off into the rubble to retrieve her ibuq, which was cropping at the scrubby brush a few dozen yards from the road.

Hess raised an eyebrow at the strange exchange. His new companions seemed colourful to say the least, but now was hardly the time to ask questions. He unlocked his manacles, then ambled over to Rollo’s ibuq and mounted. The guard’s glare could have etched steel, but Hess ignored him.

Flynn collected his own mount and, after a moment of rummaging in his saddlebags, produced a cloak of the same metallic rust-brown material he and Thystra were wearing. ‘Best put this on, captain. It’ll help with the sun and the grit.’

‘My thanks.’ Hess threw the cloak over his shoulders and drew up the hood. They started forward, Thystra drawing ahead.

Flynn handed Hess some dried fruit, which he devoured, and a full waterskin. When he had slaked his thirst, he turned to Flynn.

‘You are native to Chamon?’

‘I grew up in the Lantic ruins a few weeks’ ride from here.’ The Chamonian made a strange splay-fingered sign with his right hand. When Hess frowned at the gesture, Flynn gave a little chuckle. ‘Sorry, sir, it’s an old habit. My people believe the Gilded Web traps misfortune and bad memories.’

‘I am in need of some good fortune.’ Hess swallowed the last of the water and settled into the saddle, his various aches and pains receding into the background for the moment. ‘What can you tell me about the fort?’

‘The Grave of Heroes is paradise, sir.’ Flynn gave a little chuckle. ‘Tucked away, with high walls and plenty of stores. What more could you desire?’

‘What more, indeed.’ Hess gave a low sigh, feeling the weight of his future pressing down on him. ‘Though its moniker is ominous.’

‘The name is older than history,’ Flynn said. ‘Somebody hacked the fort from the Glitterpeaks in the Age of Myth. I figure it got its name from a battle, or maybe a mess of battles. Thystra might know more, she’s been here longest.’

‘We should find shelter.’ Thystra was scanning the darkening horizon. ‘The sky bears an ill cast.’

‘A shardstorm?’ Flynn asked.

Thystra cocked her head as if testing the breeze. ‘Perhaps.’

Flynn must have noted Hess’ confusion because he turned, shivering. ‘It seems we located you just in time, captain. Shardstorms are nasty, wicked things. A wind comes tearing through, while sparks and lightning streak along the Glitterpeaks.’ He broke off a bit of rusted iron from a nearby overhang, then held it up so Hess could see the roughly serrated edge. ‘It whips this chaff up into a maelstrom of spinning razors that can strip a man to his bones in less than a second.’

They clattered up a craggy switchback, Thystra ranging ahead in silence. Hess chewed his chapped lips while Flynn nattered on about the mountains, the weather and the local wildlife. They made camp in a shallow cave, formed where one of the mountain’s vast iron slabs had begun to shear away. It was out of the wind, at least, and Hess was grateful for the chance to lower his hood.

Flynn made a small mound of metal shavings and, after emptying the contents of a small vial onto them, set the pile alight. The Chamonian chuckled at Hess’ surprised flinch. ‘Merely a little alchemy, captain. It’s nothing to worry about.’

Hess started into the sickly green flames, the vile glow of Avul Thrice-Burnt’s balefire bright in his memory. The mad warlock had set it boiling down the battle line, Sigmarite soldiers little more than writhing shadows in the blaze. The field had been a trap, the ground seeded with pitch. Avul’s flames had burned through half the regiment before Hess managed to put an end to him.

He eyed Flynn, hand drifting to the place where his pistols should have been.

‘It takes some getting used to.’ The native’s grin set his tattoos flashing in the firelight. ‘But you’re in Chamon. This place has a way of changing things, captain.’

Hess offered the man a stiff smile, knowing it was best not to make enemies until he got a sense of the place. They hunkered close to the fire as the sun went down, ushering in a chill as punishing as the day’s heat.

‘How large is the garrison?’ Hess asked once they’d finished their dinner of dried meat and gritty bread.

‘There is Castellan Altenbach, Valdemar Schmidt, and Hanar – he’s the smith.’ Flynn ticked the names off on his fingers. ‘Oh, and Thystra and me, of course.’

Hess sat back, feeling a flush creep up his neck. Khir had truly chosen the most pathetic outpost of Sigmar’s might for Hess’ exile. ‘The garrison contains only five soldiers?’

‘Six, counting you, sir.’ Flynn gave an amiable nod. ‘There used to be hundreds, back when the Freeguilds first came through, but the front moved on. Those who remained were never replaced when they died or went elsewhere. You’re the first new addition since Schmidt.’

‘And what brings you here?’ Hess asked Thystra.

She made no reply but to tug her cowl lower.

‘Don’t worry, captain,’ Flynn said. ‘Thystra is a bit surly, but she is the best scout we have. She was once a Lion Ranger, in fact. I once saw her chop straight through–’

‘Enough, Flynn.’ The aelf’s voice was sharp. ‘You speak of that of which you have no knowledge.’

The Chamonian held up his hands in surrender, then lay down, wrapping his cloak tight.

Thystra moved to the mouth of the cave, her back to Hess as she stared out into the starless night.

Hess couldn’t seem to relax, made uncomfortable by the lambent green glow, so reminiscent of the inferno on Beacon Field. He found himself staring into the fire, the interplay of shadows giving the impression of shapes within the blaze – men and women writhing amidst the bilious flames, their forms merging into something huge and monstrous, something unholy. Even now, the memory of it lurked in the back of Hess’ mind like childhood trauma, tainting everything it touched.

He tore his gaze from the flames, tamping down the blighted memories. Thystra was watching him. The aelf’s eyes flickered like a cornered animal’s in the greenish glow, but her expression was, if not exactly sympathetic, then possessed of a certain terrible recognition.

She regarded him for a long moment, then nodded, turning back to her watch.

Hess took long, slow breaths, his hands tight on his knees. Silence descended on the camp, broken only by the occasional metallic pop of the fire. Although he was tired to the bone, somehow Hess knew sleep would be a long time coming.

Click here to buy The Red Hours.

For Lindsey Priestley, Wordqueen, Smiter of the Clunky and Rider of the Battered Blue Chair. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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