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The Serpent’s Bargain – Jamie Crisalli

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Warcry’

A Black Library Publication

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The Serpent’s Bargain

Jamie Crisalli

Laila wriggled into the hole dug deep under the hut she called home. The hole was little wider than her hips and she yanked the stone cover over the opening, sealing her in a womblike darkness. Small holes the size of an old Pelos coin let in air. Thin roots tickled her freckled skin and the smell of Ghyran loam smothered her nose. A cache of water and bread in a sealed clay pot sat between her bare feet. In her shaking hand, she clutched a small leather bottle on a string around her neck.

Raw screams and exultant roaring filtered down to her in that tiny hollow. And other, more obscene sounds as the fiends went about their horrid joys. Of all the places in Ghyran, the followers of the Needful One had come to her village of Varna. The new palisade had not kept them out, nor had any fighter that they possessed.

Up above, the hut door banged open and she started, her heart racing.

A man moaned and licked his lips.

‘Not much sport here,’ he said, his voice melodious.

‘This is the first settlement in weeks not tainted by those reeking pus-bags,’ said another. ‘So, I’d enjoy yourself while you can. These little people are entertaining enough.’

Something crashed over, shards of pottery scattering across the floor. And they talked about what they had done and would do if they found someone. Shuddering, Laila clamped a callused hand over her mouth and pressed herself deeper into the dirt. Her mind shrinking away from the memories of her husband’s tortured last moments years ago, Laila worked the stopper out of the bottle and a dusty smell like dead flowers filled the air. She would not die as he had.

Inside was a poison called Blood of the Wight; it was not painless but it was lightning quick. Her mother had given it to her when she was a child and told her to keep it with her even when she slept. There were numberless things worse than dying.

With a hiss, the raiders went quiet. A shadow crept over the breathing holes, sniffing. Laila put the bottle to her lips. Then a shrill hollow tone wended over the town, reverberating in her head.

‘Is that a retreat?’ one asked in disbelief.

‘I would watch your forked tongue unless you want to be the cure for Lord Zertalian’s ennui,’ said the other. ‘Clearly he wishes to save this place for future amusement. So let’s go.’

Ceramic crunched under foot and the door banged shut. Yet, Laila could not move. She stayed, holding the poison to her lips, staring at the dirt wall, trying to breathe quietly. Only a buzzing tension remained, as if her head were full of bees. What if it was a trick and they had not left, instead waiting to pounce? No, it was better to stay in here with poison than risk that fate. Even as her sturdy legs cramped and her lips went numb, she held still. Then a familiar voice called her name.

‘Stefen!’ she called, her voice ragged.

Laila crammed the stopper back into the bottle and clambered out of her sanctuary. Then she paused.

Her home was wrecked, her meagre belongings tossed about and broken, her food stores spilled and trampled. Still, she was lucky – only her things had been touched by the seekers. She would burn it all as was tradition with tainted things. Hopefully the elders would spare the hut itself or she would have to move in with a neighbour during winter.

Stefen rushed in, his dark eyes wide.

She embraced him, trembling and choking back tears. He was an old childhood friend; they had gone on to their separate lives when he had become a hunter and she had married Jonas.

‘It’s all right, they’re gone,’ he said, pulling her close. Stefen was tall and well built, though the Rotskin pox had left him with scarred, pallid skin, ruining his good looks. A clutch of scrawny birds swung over his shoulder, along with his snares and bow.

A wash of cold fear rolled through her as the gossip of the raiders rattled in her brain.

‘Are the elders still with us?’ she asked.

‘Yes, they were spared,’ he said.

‘They need to know,’ she said.

Without waiting to see if he followed, she rushed out into the bright light of the Lamp. The palisade gate dangled as men worked desperately to wrench the doors back into place. Homes burned, releasing sweet smoke and pale flames as ashen-faced neighbours watched, making no move to put them out. Others wandered aimlessly, their clothing torn and eyes utterly vacant, while some desperately called out for missing loved ones. Horror seeped through the very air as if some malign spirit had made a home in every hut and heart, a final curse bestowed by the fiends. No doubt it would linger for years.

Laila walked, eyes seeing but unable to understand it, same as it had been then. The horrid memories edged into her mind and she forced them away. Jonas was long dead, praise Alarielle.

By some miracle, the stone elders’ hall had not been touched. Some speculated that it was once a temple devoted to a forgotten storm god. Perhaps that was why the fiends avoided it.

Inside, the place was stifling hot, the fires burning high to warm old bones. Yet, the crowd was more meagre than Laila had expected. The hall guards were gone to help with the gate. At the far end, sat in a loose half-circle, were the elders, some hunched and withered, some grey and still robust. The old altar loomed behind them.

‘We will rebuild and mourn as we have always done,’ Uma said, her voice like a creaking door. ‘The dark ones never stay. The seekers will move on and leave us be.’

The other elders nodded. As always, they acquiesced to the ancient crone. Laila suddenly hated the old woman and the sycophants that surrounded her. Of course they felt that way; they sat in the heart of the village surrounded by stone and armed guards. Did they even know what happened out there? No more than they had after the last raid by the seekers.

‘No, they won’t,’ Laila said, her tone cold. ‘They’re coming back.’

The silence sharpened and Laila blushed as all eyes focused on her. Uma’s face crumpled, her eyes narrowing.

‘What do you mean?’ Uma said.

‘They’re coming back?’ another man said.

The crowd bubbled with alarm, looking around as if the dark ones were going to lunge out of the walls.

‘Two of them came into my house while I was hiding,’ Laila said, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘They were summoned by their leader early. They said that they would return.’

Another rumble of discontent. If Uma could have killed Laila with her gaze, she likely would have.

‘I agree with Laila, we can’t wait and do nothing,’ Stefen said behind her.

‘What would the youngsters suggest?’ Uma said. ‘That we fight them?’

Laila stammered, her thoughts churning. She had no solution to the problem that she had presented. Then an idea popped into her mind. A dangerous endeavour but better than the alternative.

‘The Fair Ones in the Valley of the Oracle’s Eye,’ Laila said. ‘They help people if the foe is right. Is that not correct?’

The crowd murmured. The Fair Ones. Some said they had earned this name because they were beautiful. Others claimed they were hideous, with snakes for hair, and cursed those who did not flatter them. What the legends did agree on was that the Fair Ones hated Chaos more than anything else, especially the followers of the Needful One.

Uma snorted. ‘You are not serious,’ she said. ‘The valley where they dwell is a place of madness and they are themselves not remotely human. The Fair Ones fight on their own terms and no one else’s. You are a fool.’

‘Says the old woman who counsels that we wait for those beasts to return and finish what they started,’ Laila snapped.

Uma blanched, her thin skin turning whiter than the wisps on her head.

‘Out! I will not tolerate your stupidity a moment longer,’ Uma said, snapping a finger at the door.

Laila spun on her heel and pushed through the crowd, out into the smoky air. Inside the hall, the arguing escalated. Although there was a harvest to bring in, no one wanted to go outside the walls if there was the slightest chance that the fiends were waiting for them. Cries echoed, questioning why they did nothing. Others called for the villagers to resettle elsewhere. Uma shouted back with all the ferocity in her old bones.

‘And she calls me stupid,’ Laila muttered to herself.

‘She’s afraid, nothing more malicious than that,’ Stefen said. ‘This isn’t like the pox walkers. It’s worse. I should have been here.’

‘You would have just got yourself killed, or worse,’ Laila said. ‘We need to get help from people that can fight. Uma is right, we can’t defend ourselves against that.’

‘I can lead us to the valley,’ Stefen said. ‘I’ve been to the borders anyway.’

‘Really, you’ve seen it?’ she said. ‘That’s forbidden.’

Stefen blushed sheepishly and nodded. ‘Once.’

‘You will not get there alone, especially if the fiends are still out there,’ a stranger said in a hard, growling accent.

They both spun about. A man stood before them in leather and bronze plate. His skin was tanned and aged and he was built heavily with a round gut that spoke of a steady diet of beer and meat. That he was creeping into middle age indicated either luck or skill, likely both.

‘Who are you?’ Laila asked.

‘Ano,’ he replied, as if that explained everything. When they continued to look at him in silence, he added, ‘I worked for the merchant, Antton. I hope that if I help you, your village will let me stay over the winter.’

‘What we’re talking about doing is dangerous,’ Laila said, suspicious.

‘I heard, but what that old woman is suggesting is worse,’ he said. ‘What you described sounds like something that the fiends do. They wait for your guard to fall. And they can wait a long time. Then they strike.’

While Laila did not trust the stranger, when standing against the Chaos hordes all pure humans had to stick together. What few untainted humans remained.

‘The real question is will Hadlen let us out?’ Stefen said.

Laila winced; the reeve was stubborn at the best of times. ‘We have to try,’ Laila said. ‘He might be persuaded.’

Stefen smiled tightly. ‘Yes, and lightning men will fall from the sky and kill our enemies.’

They snickered at the old child’s tale and made their plans. They delayed as much as they dared, speaking to the few close friends that they knew would keep their peace. With the watch so tense, sneaking out would be a challenge. Carefully, they gathered their supplies – a few loaves of hard bread, dried beans and smoked meat. Then at the light of dawn the next day, they walked to the back edge of the village where the midden heap lay next to the wall. It smelled of rotten grain and human waste; however, there was a gap in the palisade where the beams had rotted and they slipped out into the greater world with no one the wiser.

‘So this is how you kept escaping,’ Laila said.

Stefen grinned as he brushed off his hands. ‘No one ever looked.’

As they walked around the village and onto the road, they saw not a single corpse. Just dried bloodstains and spatters of clear fluid like the trails of slugs. Strange perfumes lingered in the air, faded but potent enough to tickle the nose. Crows fluttered out in the fields, squawking at each other.

Stefen took them off the road towards the east, into the thinning forest. A deep layer of leaves rustled underfoot. Overhead, the skeletal trees rattled in the wind. The glow of the Lamp dimmed with the evening, while the Cinder Disc glimmered, already small and red with the autumn.

It felt almost unnatural to be moving away from Varna. The trees seemed to hide sinister threats, and Laila waited for some pale horror to come pelting out at them. Out here, the urge to leave struck her as impulsive while in the town it had felt brave. Had she misheard the raiders? Was Uma right? With a start, Laila realised that she had never been this far from the walls.

‘Second thoughts?’ Stefen said.

‘How do you do it?’ she said. ‘Leave Varna I mean.’

‘One step at a time,’ Stefen said, smiling.

They walked on, the shadows growing long. Stars flickered into being and the night birds started to warble to each other.

‘What about you?’ Laila said to Ano. ‘How did you come to travel?’

‘It’s tough to do,’ Ano said. ‘But there are advantages.’

‘Like what?’ she said.

‘Being paid in coin is good,’ Ano said.

It was practical, yet there was a mercenary attitude to his response that she did not like.

‘We can’t pay you in coin,’ she said, hoping to gain a clearer sense of his motivation.

‘No, but a bed for the winter is priceless,’ he said. ‘Besides, I could not help my employer.’

She let the subject drop when he looked away from her with a cough.

They travelled for several days, the forest twittering and breathing around them. It had not always been so. Once upon a time, this entire woodland had been a mire of maggots, rot and corpses. Then something had changed. Some said it was just the way of nature to reassert itself after a time. Others said it was a blessing from Alarielle, waking from her long slumber. Still others whispered that it was the Fair Ones that had freed the region of its decay.

Laila found herself dreading the night. Her sleep was long in coming and when she finally drifted off, nightmares haunted her with horrifying blends of past and present. The fiends, all wearing the manic sweaty face of Jonas, chased her through the fields. They always caught her and then cut her apart, ecstatic breathing echoing in her mind. The shadowy pain remained after she bolted awake, lingering in cramping muscles and unmarked skin.

Just as Laila began to think they were going the wrong way, Stefen spotted a coiling vine growing under the dense boughs of a great tree. It was black, like the night void when no other heavenly bodies lit the sky. Laila had never seen such a colour in nature before and marvelled at the glossy black leaves.

‘Don’t touch it,’ Stefen said. ‘Most things in the Valley of the Oracle’s Eye are venomous.’

‘Are you sure you can get us there?’ Ano said, shifting his weight.

‘Normally this is where I turn around,’ Stefen said. ‘If we just keep walking, the landscape will guide us. Though it will be dangerous in ways that are unfamiliar to us.’

‘We should be more cautious now,’ Ano said, gripping his spear. ‘Pay attention. Watch your backs. I will take the rear.’

‘Why?’ Laila asked.

‘Because I have the feeling that the beasts out here do not attack from the front,’ Ano said with a sardonic smile.

Laila shivered. The shadows seemed even deeper and more threatening than before. As they moved eastwards, the land grew bleak. The trees shrank, their limbs struggling upwards. Blood-red leaves coated the earth, filled with worms that slithered alarmingly under Laila’s bare feet. Above them, the Lamp grew fat and orange as if seen through a veil of ashes. Animals became quiet and unnatural, with deep black coats, bloated white eyes and long spidery limbs. The world of Ghyran changed, tainted by whatever miasma leaked from the Oracle’s Eye.

They trudged onwards until the Lamp suddenly winked out and darkness fell, a blackness so complete that it hurt the eyes. Laila stifled a scream. The night had never come on so fast back at Varna, not even in the depths of winter. A clammy chill rushed in, cutting through their clothes. The sort of cold that would slowly kill if allowed to.

‘Light,’ Ano hissed. ‘Now.’

Leaves rustled under foot as Ano shifted around.

The shadows watched them. This she knew. She felt their gaze lingering on the skin. Something whispered past her and she flinched. Shadows touched her hands, coiled around her legs and brushed her cheeks, light as cobwebs. She stayed still, even as a scream threatened to escape her throat.

Instead, she focused, her ears straining. The whisper of cloth, a soft grunt, a light rattle of stone. Something fell into the leaves. Stone clacked against stone. Sparks flared, stinging her eyes. Then the crackle of fire. The hiss of retreating things.

‘Hold this,’ Stefen said, handing her the torch before putting an arrow to the string of his bow.

‘Where is Ano?’ she said, looking around.

Their hearts hammering, standing in the little circle of light surrounded by blackness, they realised that their best fighter was gone without a struggle. How could he have not made a sound? Neither dared to call for the man. Laila crept to the edge of the light, as if she were looking over the side of a boat into a dark sea.

‘Ano, say something,’ she hissed, then her toes brushed something heavy and wooden.

Ano’s spear lay where he had dropped it. There was nothing else. Not a drop of blood, nor a shred of cloth. Not even the leaves were disturbed. With a start, she looked up, expecting some beast but there was nothing but blackness.

‘Don’t make a sound,’ Stefen said, then turned his back to the light and walked out a few paces. Unblinking alien eyes peered from the gloom, disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else. He raised his bow, drew and waited. Then he loosed and something hissed in pain out in the darkness. That he could see anything amazed her.

‘We should move, that’s not the only thing out here,’ Stefen whispered. ‘We may be in some creature’s territory and it will leave us alone once we’re gone. At least that’s what I hope.’

Some might have called her and Stefen cowards for not looking for Ano. However, death came quickly or sometimes not fast enough. He was already lost and she would not risk her own life for a corpse.

Laila nodded jerkily, shaking from the fear and cold. She picked up the heavy spear though there was no way she could wield the thing. The idea of fighting was not comforting: more than likely she would die. Still, better that than simply giving up. They moved on, searching for shelter of some sort.

Laila wrapped her cloak about herself. She had thought the greatest danger was the fiends waiting outside Varna; once past them, she imagined that the venture would go smoothly. Guilt crept over her. This journey was her idea. Ano would not have been out here if they had not gone. But what choice did they have, given what they knew?

They needed an army, and if Ano had died to give them that, then his death was not in vain. Yet if the darkness could take Ano, what hope did they have of reaching the valley?

Eventually, the pair found a small ditch within which they took shelter, building a roof of branches over the top and then a fire to stave off the chill. Laila did not sleep, every noise emphasised by the unnatural darkness. The rustling of her clothes, every small cough, even her breathing seemed loud enough that all the world heard.

Dawn came on weak and cold, the air thick with grey vapours. They helped themselves to some beans and bread, then moved on. The earth became hard and stony, the trees shrivelled and the undergrowth thickened with pale white plants that shrank back when touched.

‘We’re definitely moving down,’ Stefen said.

Grey hills rose on either side, shrouded in mist. Laila felt she was walking into a prison that she could not escape. Yet, her nightmares whipped her on. What dangers compared to what the fiends promised?

They walked on and then the rocky earth gave way to a smooth stone street, like the ancients had made before the Plague Times. Tall statues of women loomed on either side. But their proportions were strange, too tall and thin as if they had been stretched out. They wore scandalously little clothing and brandished swords as they silently charged towards an unseen enemy. Laila shuddered at their screaming faces and wild hair. The place seemed abandoned, yet every eye followed them as they passed.

Ahead of them, impossibly tall towers hove out of the mists, clawing up towards the heavens like a clutch of brambles. Laila had never seen anything so vast made by the hands of mortals. Set in the side of the nearest was a huge set of doors that stood open, guarded by another pair of stone warrior women. From over the doors, an idol with a screaming face watched them, grasping a downturned sword in one hand and something small and dripping in the other.

‘Maybe this was not the best idea,’ Stefen said. ‘We should not be here. This place is not for us.’

She found herself nodding in agreement.

‘We can’t,’ she said, more to herself than him.

‘That statue is holding a heart in its fist,’ he said, drawing an arrow from his quiver.

Laila paced around on the threshold, her fists balled up, trying to summon up her courage. One part of her wanted to yell at him for strengthening her fears, while another part wanted to leave and never return.

‘I know what they will do,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘I can’t let that happen to me or anyone else. This place is terrifying, but not as bad as being in that hole, knowing what they do.’

She looked at the black opening and steeled herself. With a deep breath, Stefen stepped forwards.

‘No, not you. Just her,’ a hoarse man’s voice floated to them out of the darkness.

They both froze like rabbits caught out by a fox.

‘And no weapons in this holy place,’ the voice said.

Laila swallowed. Reluctantly, she handed the spear to Stefen and then stepped over the threshold. A stifling silence enveloped her and when she looked back, the outside world was hazy and dark. Stefen was little more than an ink blot on a sheet of paper. Pale blue torches guttered, merely enhancing the deep darkness that settled in every corner. The ceiling loomed far above her, arched and covered in sharp, jagged runes. It made the old temple at Varna seem like a hovel.

‘Go on,’ the voice said.

She caught sight of a gaunt face in the dark, the eyes two black pits. Then it vanished into the gloom.

What kind of place was this? How could a darkness this deep exist? And was this one man all there was? No place this grand stood empty and unprotected. Yet the silence was so deep, and the place so empty. What if this was merely another grandiose ruin?

As she walked deeper, her eyes started to pull phantasms out of the black air, leering faces, flying serpents and skeletal men riding gangling horses.

A glutinous bubbling sound caught her attention and she moved towards it. As she walked closer, the air grew thick with incense and a sweet, coppery stench like cooking blood sausage. A strange altar revealed itself – at least, she thought that it was an altar. Two flights of stairs wound their way up to a vast cauldron held by a statue of a straining man. Steam rose from within the huge vessel. Looming over it was the same idol she had seen above the door. Yet this one was covered in thick red enamel, burnished gold and glittering gems. Its eyes burned crimson and seemed to follow her with predatory focus.

Something stirred in the cauldron, fluid sloshing over the side. A great coil rose, like a leviathan breaking the surface of the sea. Then a small green snake crept over the side, black tongue flicking. She cocked her head, puzzled. Another serpent and then another slipped over, peering at her with unnerving, single-minded interest.

Laila took a step backwards. Why would anyone put a snake colony in a cauldron? And what else was in it? Instinct rattled through her, the overwhelming need to run. There was a predator in here, one large enough to kill her.

Then a bright light leapt to life from her left, stinging her eyes. A woman’s voice, deep and rough with wisdom, spoke softly. Whatever was in the cauldron settled back like a dragon lulled to sleep.

‘I would come towards the light, young one,’ the voice said. ‘My sister is not friendly to the curious.’

Laila blocked the light with her hand and stepped towards it, feeling her way with her toes. She stumbled when her feet touched earth and a soft fragrant wind sighed through her curls. With watery eyes, she looked around at an outdoor garden, the surrounding walls gleaming like black glass.

All the plantings, neatly laid out in vivid clusters, were venomous: Strikeweed, Neolinem and Grave-eye. And those were just the ones she recognised. Other plants and trees whispered in the wind, dark and spiky or pallid and ghostly. Even the grass under her feet had a purple cast to it. Above her, the Lamp was shrouded, though still brighter than the blackness within the temple.

In the centre of the garden stood the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Now Laila understood why they were called the Fair Ones.

The woman resembled a human being only loosely. Long and thin as a blade, she moved with an airy grace, like a great cat. Her pointed ears peeked through her black hair and her skin was dark as a doe’s eyes, without blemish or scar. A jewelled leather cloak hung off her slim shoulders and underneath she was nearly nude, though Laila doubted she felt any shame in it. Two strange blades hung from her hips, more like torture instruments than weapons of war. Yet it was her face that was the most unnerving. While her expression was gentle, it was at odds with her sharp black eyes and thin cruel lips.

Next to the aelf was an elaborately carved table, upon which rested a stone bowl etched with sharp runes and the familiar idol in miniature.

‘We have not seen one of your kind in many years,’ she said, her accent hissing through the human words.

‘Generations, ma’am,’ Laila said, her voice scratchy with nerves. ‘I am Laila. I represent the village of Varna.’

The woman’s eyes narrowed and her smile deepened. No human expression, that. It was like seeing a sicklecat smile.

‘I always forget how short-lived you humans are,’ she said. ‘So, Laila of Varna, do you know who we are or have even your legends forgotten us?’

Laila opened her mouth but then realised that she could not in fact answer the question. Certainly, not to this woman’s satisfaction.

‘Only in the vaguest terms,’ she said. ‘We know that when the great enemy comes, you will fight for us.’

‘For a price,’ the woman said, with a tremor in her voice as if she were trying to repress some strong emotion. ‘Let us move beyond simple legends, shall we? My name is Cesse, and this is a temple of the Khelt Nar, a sisterhood devoted to the defeat of Chaos under Khaine’s holy guidance.’

‘So you are a holy order?’ Laila said warily.

‘Precisely,’ Cesse said, her voice bright with fervour. ‘We are dedicated to our faith and that is enough.’

‘And if you operate on faith, what is this price then?’ Laila said, sensing something was off.

‘The price is that of blood. Blood buys blood,’ Cesse said, drawing a dagger from her belt.

Laila took a step back.

‘Please, I will not kill you,’ Cesse said, flicking her hand dismissively. ‘You have a need of our skills. You need us to kill your enemy. What is this enemy?’

‘They worship… um… they worship…’ Laila started, then she took a breath and looked up at the sky. ‘The Needful One. The Beckoning Prince.’ Cesse looked at her, one thin brow arched in confusion. ‘Slaanesh,’ she mumbled finally, looking at her feet.

Heat crept into her face at her blasphemy, at speaking that abominable name. She looked up and recoiled. Cesse stared at her, every muscle standing like a cord under her skin. Seemingly unaware, the woman slowly drove her blade deep into the table, the wood creaking. The pleasant mask was gone, leaving a hate that shivered through the aelf’s limbs and etched her face into a scowl of furious cruelty.

‘Hear my words, human. We will not rest until your dread enemy is slain,’ she snarled, her voice a terrible rasp. ‘We will kill them without mercy. None of them can be allowed to live.’

Laila fought the urge to run, holding herself still as Cesse wrenched the dagger from the table. Seeing Laila’s expression, Cesse’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as if sensing some weakness.

‘Do you not want them all dead?’ Cesse said, her black eyes feverish.

‘Yes, of course I do,’ Laila stammered.

Cesse smiled. ‘Oh, I see. To be as ignorant as you are now. You do not know what they do. You do not know the thing that lurks in the darkness and eats at their souls.’

Cesse’s focus turned towards some inner turmoil, her eyes dark and dull. A profound hate flickered there, a self-loathing that was all-consuming and burned eternally. A shame that ever boiled, a pain that never eased, a hurt that never healed. What caused it, Laila could not guess. However, she did not want to be around when that storm of emotion turned outwards.

‘You will kill them for blood?’ Laila prompted. Now that she said it out loud, it seemed insane. What would a holy order want with blood? What was the significance?

Cesse tossed her head, her black hair shimmering, coming back to the present.

‘Of course, that has always been the agreement,’ Cesse said. ‘And what is blood compared to the tortures that await you if you do nothing?’ Cesse leaned across the table. ‘Trust me when I say, the agonies and slow death that you envision are only the beginning. It is not just the body that they devour.’

‘Whose blood is it?’ Laila asked.

‘Yours, I assume,’ Cesse said. ‘Who else’s?’

Laila blushed. It seemed easy enough.

‘Why?’

‘All of creation moves at the beating of a heart. All things from the strongest godbeast to the stars themselves. Nothing can be outside it. The heart and the blood it moves are the most sacred of things.’

Laila nodded. ‘I agree on behalf of Varna. You will kill the raiders in return for blood.’

‘Excellent, now we can begin,’ Cesse said, gesturing that Laila should stand opposite her at the table. Then she began to chant, her words like the rattling of swords and spears. The aelven woman sliced the dagger across her palm without even flinching, as if she had done this many times before. Blood leaked into the bowl. Then she crooked a long finger at Laila.

Yet Laila hesitated. Then she shook herself. What was a little cut compared to what those creatures did to their victims? She thrust out a hand. Cesse took it, her skin feverish, and then quickly slashed open Laila’s palm. It burned like hot iron and Laila tried to jerk away, but Cesse held her fast until her blood fell into the bowl. At last Cesse released her, still chanting.

Now the blood began to seethe, filling the air with coppery smoke. Shadows crept among the shrubs and flowers. Cesse’s voice rose to a shout, darkness seeping around her body like a serpent. Then she clapped her hands together, the sound like thunder. Laila stepped back towards the door. The air became dark, vile and oozing, catching in her throat and lungs, crawling over her skin like spiders. Cesse’s eyes were pits of the blackest spite, her hands dripping blood and gloom.

‘It is done,’ Cesse said. ‘You will have our blades, our magic and above all our hate. All is yours for blood yet spilled. Now go, this place is no longer for you!’

Laila did not need to be told. She fled, the shadows hurtling after her. As she burst through the hall, something hissed and roiled up on that dread altar. Laila ran on, things catching and plucking at her clothes and hair. She bolted under that fearsome archway out into the sickly light.

‘Stefen,’ she yelled, slowing her breakneck pace only slightly. ‘We’re done. We need to go!’

He was not there. Only the spear, a broken arrow and an ominous spatter of blood remained.

‘Stefen!’ she screamed, looking around frantically.

The shadows boiled out of the temple, hissing like vipers.

Laila ran as fast as she could. Like any nightmare, it could not catch her if she did not look back at whatever it was that snarled and snapped at her heels. She reached the edge of the forest and hurled herself through the trees without pausing. The seething shadows grew distant and then retreated as if the brilliance of Ghyran was not to their liking.

Once she was certain that she had left the creatures far behind, she dropped to her knees and wept. Never had she imagined that Stefen would perish. She had always thought that it would be her, that Stefen would be the one to carry back the news of their success. After all, she was just another farmer and he was a hunter that went out in the wider world.

Why had she lived while he had not? As if in answer, the cut in her palm leaped to life, stinging like an envenomed lesion. The wound seeped a clear fluid, and the skin surrounding it was a sickly grey. She tore a strip of cloth from her frayed tunic and tied it around the torn flesh.

This done, Laila set off towards home, tormented at night by nightmares and pain, and driven on by terrors of fiends and predators during the day. Sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed thin pale men on dark horses slipping through the shadows. She wondered if she was going mad.

It was twilight on the third day when she came within sight of Varna, long shadows reaching across the fields. A familiar sickly-sweet smell tickled her senses. Had she been too late? Was that grim bargain all for nothing?

Exhausted fear leaped through her and she pelted out across the fields of red-tinged grain. She half expected some terrible shriek or that shrill tone to echo from the trees, but there was nothing.

The gate was already closed when she reached it. She banged on the wood and called out for someone to have mercy and open it, though she knew that they should not. They would leave her out here to survive the night as best she could before opening that door.

Then the gate creaked, opening just enough to let her in. She rushed through the gap and crashed into something solid.

‘Laila,’ Hadlen said, slowing her down. ‘Where have you been? Where is Stefen?’

One of the other warriors took off, running towards the great hall, shouting that she had returned.

She shook her head and told Hadlen what had occurred in a soft voice. Yet, she found herself obscuring details, even as the story spilled out. She lingered instead on Stefen, on his skills, on his calm. As she finished, she noticed a commotion coming towards her.

Uma. Of all the people in Varna, the last person she wanted to see was Uma. Laila had no stomach for the crone’s displeasure after everything that she had seen.

‘You were forbidden from doing this, Laila,’ Uma snapped as she shuffled up to them.

‘What would you rather have happen?’ Laila said. ‘That we just sit waiting to be slaughtered by the worst that this world has to offer? By those beasts. You know what they were going to do to us.’

Laila glanced around. To her surprise, some of the others crowded around rumbled in agreement. Still, many clearly sided with Uma, their faces set hard as stone.

‘You know not what you have done,’ Uma said. ‘Time will tell. The legends say to be cautious of the Fair Ones. Who knows what they will do in the end.’

‘They are going to kill all those fiends for us,’ Laila snapped, jabbing a finger in the old woman’s direction. ‘We might learn that we don’t have to be so afraid any more.’

It was an empty thing, grasping at surety in the face of Uma’s doubts. It was as if the old woman were plucking Laila’s own secret worries from her head, when Laila desperately wanted the bargain to work out. Uma had not seen Jonas’ body or heard his last wheezing breath. Sometimes the lesser evil was all that remained.

‘I doubt that,’ Uma said, turning away from her. ‘There is always something to fear.’

Uma shuffled away, her back bent more than Laila remembered. Her supporters went with her, scowling.

Exhausted, Laila excused herself when the others pressed in with urgent questions. She stumbled into her house and hurled herself into bed. Yet her nightmares continued, dreams of shadows chasing her through endless halls while the aelves’ bloody-handed god loomed over her with burning eyes. Sometimes, Ano and Stefen were with her and they were always devoured by whatever beast ran in the shadows.

As Laila returned to the familiar rhythm of her old life, she remembered the bargain with ever greater unease. She was missing something. But what? Cesse was sinister certainly, but had given her word in front of her god. While that god was no Alarielle, he was still a deity that had rules that were binding. So why did it feel like something had gone horribly wrong?

The days turned into a week and then two, autumn cooled and the rains started in earnest. Fear of famine set in; their stores were lean as much of the harvest had rotted in the fields. Stefen and Ano’s funeral came and went, bleak and routine like all the others before it. Normalcy never returned. The cut in her hand would not heal; instead it constantly broke open and bled, the skin ashen and dry. Likewise, the vivid nightmares also continued, an unending torment.

Her neighbours treated her differently, either greeting her with cool politeness or pointedly avoiding her, making holy signs as they did so. Rumours that she was cursed began to circulate. Never had she felt as alone as she did now, surrounded by familiar faces, none of whom trusted her as they had.

Then late one night, a high musical tone sounded through Laila’s dreams, reverberating through her bones. Dazed, she opened her eyes as another call went out, louder than the last. Laila clamped her hands over her ears as the sound pierced her skull like a butcher’s pick. The horn-blower was real; worse, it was out in the fields. The fiends were outside the walls.

The cut began to itch, then to throb. She clutched her hand tight and felt warm blood. She stripped off the soaked bandage and searched for another. As she looked, another horn call went out, different than the first. Brassy and eerie, it shivered up the spine and set the heart racing. Then there was a high, keening howl.

The Fair Ones had come.

She wrapped her hand and glanced at her bolthole. Disgust at her fears and nightmares rose. She had to see the creatures die. Maybe then she would be free from the monsters that stalked her dreams and the memories of her husband’s death. The Fair Ones had promised to kill them all, why not see them fulfil that promise?

She paused. The sounds from the battle filtered through to her, high ululating screams, roars of elation and the metallic bang of weapons meeting. It was almost musical in its own way, rising and falling by some rhythm that she could not discern.

Even as the pain crept up her arm like venom, she stepped outside and looked up at the cloudy sky. No, not clouds. Shadows. They weaved through the sky as though they were living things, tinting the Cinder Disc into a colour like heart’s blood.

She climbed the wall to where Hadlen and a couple of warriors stood and looked out with them.

The scene was grim.

Out amongst the rotten grain, a great jewelled chariot lay crumpled like a dead beetle. Clustered about the wreck was a group of heavily armoured men, if one could call them such, bunched up with weapons turned outwards. At the centre was a tall, lithe creature with an elaborate helm, shouting in a silvery voice. All about them, shadowy women probed at the raiders’ defence, thin spears piercing through hardened armour, others tearing at shields with hooked blades. A final, bloody last stand.

Something flew out of the trees on the wings of a drake and circled above the battle. Then it dived down into the heart of the raiders like a hawk. The defensive knot broke apart, revealing a flickering dance between the Chaos leader and a monstrous winged aelf. Blows lashed between them and for a moment, it looked as though they were equal. Then the aelf skewered the leader through his jewelled breastplate, ending the beast’s life.

The winged woman was not the only monster. Other aelves with the bodies of serpents weaved among strange crystalline statues that glittered in the half-light, frozen in mid-flight. Still other warrior women flickered after their fleeing enemies, snaring them with barbed whips or lopping off limbs with long daggers. The crack of breaking bones, the chanting of women and the screams of dying things drifted out from beyond the trees. A strange fire burned out there, throwing up dense, ruddy mist. The stench of blood was so thick on the wind that it gummed in the eyes and throat.

Never had Laila imagined that their defence would be so ugly. Yet did those creatures not deserve it? Did evil deserve evil? Yes, they did. Maybe now, Jonas would no longer haunt her dreams with his screams and pleading.

As they looked on, a shadow walked down the road. It was Cesse. Below them, she stood, strong and cold. A bloody sickle gleamed in one of the aelf’s hands, while in the other was that magnificent crested helm. No, not a helm, a head in a helm. She lifted up the gruesome trophy, blood dripping from the severed neck.

‘We thank you for this glorious slaughter, which we have carried out in your name,’ Cesse said, her voice quivering with a cruel elation. ‘This creature will trouble you no more. Now, whose blood shall it be?’

‘What? I gave you what you wanted,’ Laila said. ‘I gave you my blood.’

Cesse blinked and dropped the head into the dirt. All the other aelves stopped and looked towards the village as one. The shadows paused in the sky as if frozen and then seeped downwards like black snow. Out in the forest, something rumbled and that dread altar rolled forwards of its own volition out of the trees, the cauldron the source of that terrible smoke. Around it slithered some terrible thing, a vast serpent.

‘It pains me that your kind are so forgetful,’ Cesse said, a hint of amusement in her voice as if she were revealing the punchline of a joke. ‘You spoke for all, therefore you are all. Your blood stands for your village’s obligation to us. Do not worry. We will not take the strong from among you, only the weakest from each household. The ones that you will not miss. Given the state of your harvest, you would not be able to feed them anyway. In time, you will be grateful for the lack of useless mouths. Just as it was before.’

‘She cannot be serious,’ Hadlen said. ‘Laila, you could not have agreed to this.’

‘I didn’t,’ Laila stammered. ‘That was not what we agreed to.’ She leaned over the wall. ‘I gave you blood.’

‘No, you sealed the agreement with your blood,’ Cesse said. ‘A few drops is not enough. Did you really think it was?’

Laila frantically searched her memory for some misstep, some loophole, something. Then a single moment leaped out at her.

For blood yet spilled.

It had been right there in front of her face. She had thought that the phrase referred to the enemy. But no, it had been her own people. That could not be right. She looked at the others, who glared at her with the frightened anger of those dragged into a situation not of their making. She had to fix this.

‘The whole point of this was so that the defenceless would live,’ Laila said. ‘If we could have done it ourselves, we would not have needed you.’

Cesse cocked her head, her sharp brows furrowing. ‘I do not understand your motive. We have laws. We do not move our forces on behalf of the weak without payment in blood. The weak must be culled from the strong so that the strong may continue unburdened. If you do not give, we will take what we are owed, no more, no less.’

Cesse did not – no, she could not – understand. She wasn’t human. It was inevitable now. Dozens were going to die because of Laila’s naïveté, her idiocy. There was now nothing that she could do. There never had been. Someone was always going to kill them; she had merely chosen a different foe.

‘You are like the fiends, like a reflection of the Lamp in a lake,’ Laila said.

Cesse’s face twisted into a depthless fury that no human could know. All the self-loathing and hurt turned outwards. She leaped into the air with a shriek, her cloak falling away, wings like those of a great dragon snapping free. The monstrous aelf crashed into Laila, slamming her off the wall. Laila experienced a long moment of weightlessness before she hit the ground, the breath blasting from her body. Breathless and throbbing with pain, she lay there.

Shadows flitted past her, the gate groaned open and the aelves shrieked in. They bolted right for the hall and the villagers scattered like startled birds from a nest, fleeing in terror. It mattered not, they died all the same: the infirm, the aged, the injured and the unlucky.

Cesse crouched nearby, a fleshy tail flicking, her wings loose over her back, watching the slaughter.

‘Please understand, this is not purposeless or merciless,’ Cesse said, calm as if the screams mattered to her not at all. ‘We build a better world. One that is strong enough to stand against not only the destruction of the flesh but also the entropy of the soul. Illusions like justice and fairness allow weakness to fester. Killing the weak is merciful to the strong.’

Laila pressed herself onto an elbow, still trying to suck in a breath. Pain flared in her palm and then was gone as if it had never been. She looked down. A thin scar was all that remained of the wound.

‘The bargain is complete,’ Cesse said, straightening up. ‘Now you are strong and will survive.’

Cesse leaped into the sky, her wings hitting the air. In the space of a breath, she was gone. They were all gone as if they had never been. Light washed over Varna as the shadows lifted, revealing a village of sorrow and corpses, of wailing and death, of curses and recrimination.

And Laila wept.

About the Author

Jamie Crisalli writes gritty melodrama and bloody combat. Fascinated with skulls, rivets and general gloominess, when she was introduced to the Warhammer universes, it was a natural fit. Her work for Black Library includes the short stories ‘Ties of Blood’ and ‘The Serpent’s Bargain’, and the forthcoming Age of Sigmar novella The Measure of Iron. She has accumulated a frightful amount of monsters, ordnance and tiny soldiery over the years, not to mention books and role-playing games. Currently, she lives with her husband in a land of endless grey drizzle.

An extract from Warcry.

It was the same set of memories that came most often, and most forcefully. Memories of blood, of triumph and of purpose. Memories whose strength she needed.

Memories from before the Bloodwind Spoil. From before her ascension to the blessed state of Blissful One too, though her transformation and the journey she was called to were deeply entwined.

Memories of Shyish, and of the island of Tzlid. The island of loss and grief, and the island blessed by the Gods with the gift of pain.

The memories began with a hunt. Gravskein was still an Awakened One. She had sliced off her face, but she still had all of her limbs. She knew, though, that more change was coming, and soon. Her waking dreams were filled with whirling motion, a dance of murder and blades. The visions faded to shards when she returned to full awareness. They left her with impressions of herself suspended above the ground, filled with the light of agony and drenched in the blood of butchered enemies. And there was more. Looming over the hints of transformation, a lodestone at the centre of all her visions, calling to her, shackling her soul, was the tower.

Bulsurrus was leading the hunting party. He moved swiftly, leaping over obstacles with such grace that he seemed on the verge of taking flight. He and Gravskein had undergone their ritual flaying the same night, but he had rushed more swiftly towards transcendence. He was a Joyous One. Razor-edged chains hung from his shoulders, swaying viciously with every step. His arms were swords. He ran with them spread wide, eager to meet the world with his slashing embrace.

He took the patrol through the White Forest. The trees in this region of Tzlid were their own form of undeath. They were skeletons, the bark having long ago fallen away to reveal bones. The trunks were massive femurs, the largest looking as if they had come from the corpse of a dragon. The branches were strange clusters of arms, dozens of articulations sprouting smaller limbs until they ended in grey claws instead of leaves. They were dead, yet they grew ever larger. In the wind, they rattled like chattering teeth. Their claws drew blood from whatever brushed against them. The Unmade felt kinship with the trees, and Bulsurrus did not hesitate to burst through drooping tangles of branches, shredding his face with new wounds. The others followed his example. Blood flowed freely down Gravskein’s forehead and her arms, cooling quickly in the cold keening of the wind.

She kept up with Bulsurrus easily. They were drawing close to a Realmgate on the island’s southern shore, and her excitement was growing. A glow of presentiment spread like fire through her veins.

Bulsurrus must have seen the shine in her eyes. ‘You saw something during the night,’ he guessed.

Gravskein smiled, her fleshless remains of lips drawing back over her teeth.

‘What are we going to find?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Perhaps the quest has at last been fulfilled.’

‘No.’ Of this, she was sure. They would not find their comrades returning in triumph from the Eightpoints.

‘How do you know?’

‘They have not found the tower.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because their faith was not strong enough.’ It could not have been. If the latest band sent to find the Tower of Revels had been successful, the visions would not still be calling to her.

‘You still think you will be the one to find it,’ said Bulsurrus.

‘I know I will be.’

The Tower of Revels loomed large in the tales the Unmade told each other of the Flayed King. He who had once been King Vourneste had been changed along with his warriors in the realm beyond the gateway in the woods. He had returned with the gift of pain, and had transformed his people. He was long gone, though the hope that he would return one day and prove he had not been killed by Neferata lived on. And the stories of his deeds beyond the gateway were legion. They had grown in importance since the Unmade had learned of the Everchosen. The Flayed King had not returned, but there was another ruler out there, blessed by the Gods to command all the loyal subjects of Ruin.

It fell to the Unmade to prove their worth to the Everchosen. A sign that they must do so had come with the dreams of the Tower of Revels. In the tales, the Flayed King had found the tower in the realm beyond the gateway. The precise nature of the tower was vague. What was told was that it was a site of power, power so great and so attuned to the nature of the Unmade that the Gods could only have intended it for them. The Flayed King was going to lead his people back to the tower, so they might receive it as their gift from the Gods. But he had fallen before he could do so. Gravskein believed that it was treachery that had taken the Flayed King from the Unmade on that battlefield. She did not believe he could have failed. But he was gone, and so the Tower of Revels had become another chapter in the tragedy of her people. It was another kind of loss, another among so many. The Unmade embraced what they had become, yet what they had been lingered at the edges of their thoughts, transmuted into a remembrance of grief as ill-defined as it was sharp. The tower called to the Unmade through visions and lore with the force of that rarest of things – a promise. It was a gift that must be found, and its discovery was not an end in itself. It would be a proof of worthiness.

Gravskein would find it. She could accept no other purpose to her visions. It called, and she would answer. She would not die trying, as so many had before her. She would come to the tower. No other destiny was possible.

‘Have your visions told you what we will find today?’ Bulsurrus asked. They had fought side by side for years, and were held close by bonds of shared combat and shared pain. He did not experience visions, though. He treated Gravskein’s glimpses of fate with a mix of jealousy and scepticism.

Gravskein shook her head, refusing to be baited. She did not believe Bulsurrus was foolish enough to think the Gods spoke to her so directly, or about matters so beneath them. If the Unmade could not defend the gate without the intervention of the Gods, then they did not deserve ever to find the tower.

Gravskein heard the enemy force before she saw it. She heard the beat of horses’ hooves, and the tread of marching feet. Bulsurrus forged straight ahead, silent now, his flayed features set into a predatory snarl. Soon, the hunting party arrived at a vantage point overlooking the Realmgate. The terrain was hilly, and the gate stood at the foot of a slope, facing the end of a broken road that led out of the White Forest towards the western shore of Tzlid, and the channel that separated the island from the Screaming Wastes. Finger bones grew between the cracked, disintegrating paving stones. Most of the road had vanished beneath the soil, another fading memory of a dead civilisation. The path was still quite wide, and marked a clear way through the forest for mounted troops.

At the head of the foe, a vampire in resplendent crimson armour rode an obsidian stallion. Long, golden hair streamed from his head. His flesh was more pale than the trees. His features seemed carved from alabaster, their perfect symmetry and sharp lines making him, in Gravskein’s eyes, a living incarnation of pride.

Beside her, crouching behind the trunk of an undead tree, Skarask said, ‘He has never known enlightenment.’ Spittle dripped between his teeth. He was as eager as the rest of the band to visit revelation upon the blood knight’s face.

Behind the vampire marched an infantry composed of skeletons and corpses. Whether they had been summoned by this vampire or dispatched by a more powerful lord, Gravskein did not know. What was clear was their unthinking obedience. All were armoured, and though their plate was not as resplendent as the knight’s, it looked rich to Gravskein. Their shields and cuirasses were all engraved with the same insignia as the knight’s, depicting a fanged skull radiating rays of light.

A huge dire wolf paced alongside the stallion. Rotting flesh hung from its frame. Rib bones were exposed, yet its musculature, viscous and grey, was still powerfully corded. Its head swayed heavily from side to side as it sought the scent of prey. The Unmade were downwind of the beast.

‘They do not see us yet,’ Bulsurrus whispered.

‘There are many,’ said Skarask. There were three times as many undead as there were Unmade.

‘Does that trouble you?’ Gravskein asked.

‘Only that there are so few living to teach.’

Gravskein nodded. The dead that marched had left pain behind. They had forever lost their chance to know the true glory of the gift. ‘But there is still one,’ she said. The blood knight was not beyond pain. He was not beyond scarring.

Gravskein looked to Bulsurrus, awaiting his signal. He was the most transformed, and so the most enlightened, of the hunting party. He waited as the blood knight reached the dais of the Realmgate. The vampire turned his horse around slowly, scanning the wooded hills that embraced the gate on three sides.

He will see us, Gravskein realised. The vampire was gazing at his surroundings with something greater than mere sight. She looked again at Bulsurrus, and he nodded. He saw the danger too.

With the nod, the Unmade rushed out of concealment and charged, howling, down the hillside.

There was little art to their attack. Once, in the lost time, there would have been. Now, there was only the direct charge, the straight line to the prey and to the evangelism of pain.

The hunting party came down on the left flank of the undead, midway between the rear of the skeletons and corpses and zombies and the Realmgate. The blood knight saw them at once. He shouted, and with a thrust of his sword he commanded his troops to meet their attackers. The infantry ran forward, and they met the Unmade just before the base of the slope. Gravskein’s comrades had the advantage of speed and momentum, and they slashed into the blood knight’s troops.

Bulsurrus whirled once, his arms outstretched, decapitating the skeletons closing with him, and then he turned, flying over the ground in his ecstatic sprint to reach the vampire. Gravskein followed. She had a flail-headed chain in one hand, a sword in the other, and she whipped the chain into the corpses. She moved swiftly, only a few paces behind Bulsurrus. She had little interest in the things without pain. She would fight to hold them off, but they were not important.

Behind her, the rest of the band was not as fast, and plunged deeply into the struggle. Skeletons and zombies fell without a sound. Screams of rage and shouts of joyful agony reached her ears, though. Her comrades were dying too, but not without a final burst of blessed pain.

The blood knight charged, the dire wolf at his side. He made for Bulsurrus. The Joyous One leapt high to meet the vampire, attacking with the swiftness of the wind, but the vampire was faster. He batted Bulsurrus’ blades aside with a contemptuous blow of his sword, smashing the Unmade away. Bulsurrus landed hard, one leg twisting badly beneath him.

The dire wolf leapt at Gravskein before she could run to Bulsurrus’ aid. The massive beast flew through the air, a battering ram of fur and muscle. It slammed into her and brought her down, its paws crushing her chest with its weight. It snarled and opened its jaws wide. Hot, foetid breath washed over Gravskein, and she stared into the darkness of its maw and at its curved-dagger teeth. She jabbed up with her sword, and the wolf reared back, evading her blow. Released, she scrambled back, but the beast came at her again, its jaws gaping to tear out her midsection. She kicked at it, jerking its head away once, but the animal was bigger, stronger and faster than she was. She was doing nothing more than delaying its meal by a few seconds.

Then, with joy and exultation, she saw what she must do.

She kicked again, this time aiming for the maw itself. The jaws snapped shut on her leg. The dire wolf’s teeth came together, severing muscle and snapping bone in a single, monstrously powerful bite. The wolf sank its teeth deeper, pulverising her limb. The pain was enormous, consuming, glorious. It was, since the removal of her face, the greatest pain she had experienced.

The greatest gift.

Click here to buy Warcry.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Inferno! Volume 4 in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

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