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The Low Road – Evan Dicken

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dominion’

A Black Library Publication

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The Low Road

Evan Dicken

Alarielle’s song filled the air. Normally the gentle chorus of growing things would have calmed Branchwych Shikal, but her anger burned hot and bright as a wildfire.

‘Why were we not summoned?’ She jerked her head like a stag in spring. ‘Does Kuonor not believe our kind capable of battle?’

‘You know that is not true, sister.’ Aletha’s steady contralto threaded Shikal’s aggrieved refrain, nudging her voice back into harmony. The old Branchwraith reached out a hand to touch Shikal’s shoulder.

‘This grove is young, our foothold in Ghur still precarious. We must deepen the roots.’

Aletha spoke wisdom, but Shikal was in no mood to hear it. Even now, the subtle thrum of Treelord Kuonor’s basso rumble spurred the martial chorus of scions and Tree-Revenants. Their warsong called to her, summoned her.

‘I would hear it from Kuonor before they depart.’ She took up her greenwood scythe.

‘If you must.’ Aletha turned back to the young mangroves, wading down to where the other dryads waited. It was high tide, and the thrashing gyre of the Krakensea sent waves lapping over the muddy patchwork of sedge and snakegrass to the upland marsh where the grove stood.

Drawn by Shikal’s outburst, a swarm of twigling imps filled the boughs of a gnarled mangrove, plucking up dead leaves and brush to pelt the circle of dryads below. They ignored the spites, hands linked as their voices spread along root and trunk, helping the grove grow deeper, stronger.

Several of the tiny, twist-limbed twiglings had managed to lift a particularly substantial bit of driftwood, and were even now wrangling it into place above Aletha’s head.

Shikal knocked it from the air with a quick swipe of her scythe. The move unleashed a torrent of chattering rebuke from the imps, but Shikal paid them no mind. Mischief was simply the nature of such spites, their tiny, fluting voices adding notes of whimsy to Alarielle’s chorus.

She picked her way across the copse, careful not to disturb the brackish, silt-choked waters beneath. Time and tide might shift the salt marsh, but Shikal never would.

The Sylvaneth were a guiding hand, not a grasping one.

‘A horde of Ironjawz orruks gathers upon the Bruteplains. We make for the greenhold.’

Shikal heard Kuonor’s deep echo long before she reached the grove’s centre. One of the more ancient Treelords, Kuonor had sprung forth in Ghyran during the long winter. His voice came like oaken taproots, strong enough to crack stone.

Scions and Tree-Revenants filled the small clearing, girded by a wall of woven mangrove roots.

‘You have a question, little one.’ Kuonor shifted to regard her, no doubt sensing the note of discord.

With all eyes suddenly upon her, Shikal became a tree in autumn – anger scattered like fallen leaves.

She drew in a shaky breath. ‘Why was I not summoned to war?’

‘Because you are not needed there.’ The multifaceted harmonics in Kuonor’s tone dulled the sting of his response. This was not a rebuke, but a compliment. Kuonor did not need her there, he needed her here.

Their grove was small, barely a few seasons old, precariously nestled between the Krakensea and the vicious, spite-haunted expanse of the Creeping Mire. The Ironbark Greenhold sat north of the Mire, its roots deeper, stronger. If the greenhold were lost to the orruks’ fire and steel, Shikal’s grove would soon wither.

Without words, without thought, Kuonor conveyed his trust in Shikal, his belief that she could protect the grove. There was no reproach in his voice, nor among any of the wargrove who marched this day.

All this Shikal understood, Alarielle’s song moving her soul in ways words never could.

‘It is time to march.’ Kuonor’s singing cracked the ground, water swirling as root and branch stirred the murk into an eldritch gyre. Shikal could almost feel power pulse through the ley line on which the grove was situated. She lent her voice to the chorus, letting Kuonor guide the tempo and cadence to bring the realmroots into being.

Swords and spears flashed in the afternoon light. Scions led war copses of Tree-Revenants into the darkened whirlpool, sinking into the eddying muck as they travelled along the realmroot to the Ironbark Greenhold to the north. The Creeping Mire was a terrible, trackless place, dangerous for even spirits of martial aspect. To cross would mean facing not only the perils of such unkind ground, but also the depredations of the Spite-Revenants who dwelt within – cruel, wretched creatures, unable to hear anything save a harsh skirl of wounded malice.

At last, Kuonor himself entered the pool, his gaze never leaving Shikal. Only he possessed the power to open the path, and with his departure the grove would be alone. But there was no trepidation in the Treelord’s measured stride.

Shikal was Ironbark, she would not be uprooted.

Only when the muddy water lapped over Kuonor’s branching crown did Shikal turn away. Her voice did not possess the deep, dependable foundation of the Treelord’s, but with the mangroves themselves providing watery cadence, she took up the song, her sisters’ voices lending strength.

Shikal knew that many races sang – aelves, humans; even duardin had their deep, rumbling melodies. She had heard high hymns in Sigmarite chapels, war chants bellowed across battlefields, rough peasant odes sung in smoky taverns, but none could match the truth of Alarielle’s song.

Even other gods could not understand the beauty of true harmony, not really.

How Shikal pitied them.

The bittergrub snaked about the thatch of rushes, rooting for molluscs and soft-shelled crabs left by the unpredictable tide.

Shikal straightened to regard the waves lapping at the coastal marsh. Unlike other oceans, the Krakensea stirred with the passing of great, sunken things. Vast creatures moved beneath its troubled waters, the ebb and flow of its tides defying measure.

Fortunately, Shikal’s grove sat on higher ground, mangroves and briny shrubs clinging to the rich, silty soil. Aletha and her dryads had worked to reinforce root and trunk, so the trees could weather the frequent storms that tore along the coast.

If only the greenhold could be so hardy.

‘Have you heard anything of Kuonor?’ She turned to Aletha.

The Branchwraith tilted her knotty head, silence answer enough.

Shikal frowned at the salt marsh. Wind blew among the rushes, the irregular flow of sea water causing them to bend and shift; the mudflat stood empty, the white-capped waves beyond grey and unwelcoming, but otherwise normal.

‘Something troubles you?’ Aletha asked.

Shikal drew in a pensive breath. ‘Yes.’

She gripped her scythe tighter. It was a foolish concern, born of anxiety over Kuonor’s fate. There were dangers in both sea and mire, but the ocean creatures remained beneath the churning waves, and the Outcasts knew better than to approach the grove lest they be reminded of what they had lost.

‘I defer to your wisdom, Branchwych.’ Aletha’s voice slipped below Shikal’s, trust evinced not only by words, but by low harmony.

There was a scuffle among the rushes. Stalks moved, water churned as Shikal’s bittergrub found some struggling morsel. It was over in a moment. The bittergrub’s segmented head broke the surface, barbed mandibles working as it swallowed one of the lizard-like silt skimmers that frequented the salt marsh.

Shikal’s bittergrub clacked its mandibles happily, forelegs scrabbling against her calf. She bent so it could scuttle up onto its customary place upon her shoulders.

Even the bittergrub’s familiar weight offered little solace. Nothing seemed amiss, and yet Shikal could not shake her feeling of unease. Jaw tight, she weighed her choices. To put the grove on defensive footing would undermine its growth. But a lost season was a small price compared to utter devastation.

‘Prepare the grove,’ Shikal said. ‘Something approaches.’

With a creaky nod, Aletha turned back towards the grove, the first notes of her warsong spreading like fire through the forest spirits within. Mangroves lashed and twined, trunks shuddering as the vast network of interconnected roots wove itself into a tangled barrier. Spurred by the martial chorus, even the spites moved as one: root harrows, soams, bristleburrs and twiglings flitting dangerously amidst suddenly dagger-like branches.

The tide shifted again. Waves lapped at the mudflat like thirsty wolves, flooding the branching estuaries with their brackish flow. Reeds and rushes shifted, swept into arcane configurations by wind and water.

Something bumped against Shikal’s leg. She glanced down to see another silt skimmer, belly-up in the water, its limbs limp.

Her bittergrub shifted, but Shikal reached up to quell the beast, bending to retrieve the silt skimmer.

From its slackness, Shikal could tell it was newly dead – eyes clear, stomach unbloated. There were no marks upon its body, nor any sign of sickness apart from a strange, oily sheen on its skin.

With a soft ripple, several small crabs floated to the surface, their shells gone pale blue in death.

As if to echo Shikal’s concern, the breeze shifted, salty air threaded with the barest hint of something sharp. At first, Shikal thought it the sickly-sweet smell of decay. The Krakensea was not a friendly place, and it was not uncommon for low tide to leave all manner of rotting remains upon the mudflat. But this was different. Harsh, almost astringent, with a chemical reek that reminded her of the oily gases that sometimes belched from the muck.

Shikal straightened, head cocked as she scanned the estuaries. In each, she saw more dead animals – fish, molluscs, even the occasional bush hydra – all carried by the tidal flow. The brackish current bore the same greasy sheen as had covered the silt skimmer. Almost lost against the dark water, the swirling greens and purples spoke of something vile.

Shikal glanced to the surf, unsure of whether to expect some massive beast or a fleet of howling reavers. But the sea stood empty.

Which meant the corruption came from the marsh itself.

The shifting rushes took on new, dire meaning. Their rustling now seemed less the result of wind and wave, and more that of creeping, furtive movement.

Shikal gave voice to a shrieking ululation. Her harsh note of warning crashed through the burgeoning warsong like a breaking wave.

As if in answer, there came a gurgling roar. A hulking form rose from amidst the sedge perhaps twenty paces from Shikal.

The troggoth was vaguely man-shaped, although of huge proportion, its long, grasping arms wide enough to encircle the bole of an ancient cedar, its ragged claws tipped with vile excrescences. Bent almost double beneath the weight of the wooden armature strapped to its back, the beast staggered towards the grove like a sludge-soaked revenant, ready to rip and tear. The creature’s burbling growl was echoed by several grots perched upon its twisted back. Cackling, they waved barbed poles and long, hooked polearms.

Without a thought, Shikal charged after the troggoth.

In a cacophony of snapping reeds, dozens of orruks surged from their hiding places. Unlike the Ironjawz Shikal had faced in the past, these orruks were lanky things, with canny, deep-set eyes, their features sharp rather than brutal. Muck bled from shields to reveal painted faces. Snarling, animalistic, their terrible countenances were eclipsed only by the cruel glee of the orruks wielding them.

A rain of rusty bolts heralded the charge, striking sap from tree and spirit alike. Their wounded outrage sharpened the warsong. Aletha led a score of dryads through tangled roots, kind faces twisted with righteous fury as they met the orruk rush.

Their anger filled Shikal, whetting her own rage to thorny sharpness. At her sorcerous call, a torrent of hissing twiglings darted from the branches. They flitted past the clumsy swipe of orruk blades, undaunted by shield or armour. Like splinters, they lodged in exposed flesh, worming deep into muscle and viscera. Orruks dropped their blades to slap at stinging spines and claw at small, vicious wounds.

The troggoth reached the outer copse. Branches snapped, roots cracked as mangroves were ripped from the silty ground. One dryad was pinioned by a barbed spear, shrieking as a team of grots swarmed from the troggoth to hack at her with saw-toothed axes.

Shikal leapt to catch a dangling wooden strut. Like a climbing vine, she swarmed up the armature atop the troggoth’s back.

Her scythe took the head from the first grot before the riders even knew she was among them. Another of the scrawny greenskins tried to bring its jagged capture-pole to bear, but Shikal’s bittergrub lashed out.

The grot howled as serrated mandibles closed upon its shoulder, dropping its pole to claw the hooked gut knife from its belt. Before it could brandish the blade, Shikal sent it tumbling from the armature with a heavy kick, down into the murk below.

Dark water thrashed. The grot broke the surface for a moment, frantically tearing at the roots that pierced its flesh. With one last agonised shriek, it sank. More compost for the grove.

The last grot came at Shikal with a blade in each hand. She drove it back with a wide sweep of her scythe, only to stumble as the troggoth shifted beneath them. A great clawed hand reached back, blindly groping for her. She set her bittergrub upon it, and was rewarded with an aggrieved bellow from below.

The troggoth jerked. Snatching its hand back, it slapped at the grub, which burst with a wet pop.

There was no time to mourn. Shikal almost lost her footing as the armature shifted. Strapped to the troggoth’s back by a harness of rotted leather, the remaining grot lunged. One of its notched blades cut a line of cold fire along Shikal’s side, the other stabbing for her thigh.

But she was not a being of soft flesh, to be easily cut or pierced. Despite the grot’s sinewy strength, its blade pierced barely a finger’s width into her bark.

With a vicious grin, she caught the grot by the throat. Shikal’s sharp fingers dug bloody furrows into its flesh as she tore the creature from its rotted moorings and tossed it to the hungry trees below.

Scythe held in a two-handed grip, Shikal drove the curved blade into the back of the troggoth’s neck. It was a rough, unlovely blow, more fury than finesse, but it was enough to pierce the creature’s filthy hide.

The troggoth spasmed, furiously clawing at Shikal with both hands, but it could not reach her within the armature. Grunting from the effort, she rammed the scythe deeper, and the beast toppled like a felled oak.

Shikal leapt free of the troggoth, caught by the carpet of twining roots at the glade’s edge.

‘You were right, sister.’ Aletha picked her way through the trees to help Shikal to her feet.

‘By Alarielle’s grace.’ Panting, Shikal surveyed the edge of the grove. Perhaps a dozen of her sisters had fallen – too many. Although from the broken orruk bodies scattered amidst the reeds, they had taken many more invaders with them.

Still burning with the grove’s warsong, Shikal raised her scythe to the tangled boughs with a triumphant shriek. Other voices rose in brutal harmony as her sisters joined the song.

They were Ironbark. Whether they faced a score of orruks or a hundred, they would not be uprooted.

‘What is that?’ Aletha nodded at the oily sheen coating the mangrove roots, carried by turgid currents deeper into the grove.

‘Some manner of foulness,’ Shikal replied. ‘Although the grove seems proof against whatever corruption the orruks sought to spread.’

Aletha thrust her chin at the dead troggoth, already sinking into the mud. ‘What are orruks doing so far from the Bruteplains?’

‘I cannot say.’ Shikal frowned down at the beast. ‘But these are not Ironjawz.’

‘Do you think there are more?’

‘They are orruks.’ Shikal gave a grim shake of her head. ‘There are always more.’

From the marsh came a throaty shriek.

Cumbrous bodies shifted within the murk. Dripping silt, they rose from the poisoned water. Creatures of chitin and claw, of feather and fang, of scale and serrated stinger, they crawled, scuttled and flapped towards Shikal’s grove, bestial roars punctuated by the vicious shouts of the orruks upon their backs.

Not a score, nor a hundred, nor even a thousand, but an army so vast the entire marsh seemed to seethe with their horrid advance.

Aletha caught Shikal’s arm. ‘They are all around us.’

Shikal’s warsong faltered under the dreadful weight of realisation. Orruks must have slunk around the landward side while Shikal and the others beat back the initial assault.

The surviving dryads and spites gathered behind Shikal, their desperate fury sharp in her ears. But rather than advance, the orruks simply waited – cruel eyes glittering in the pale morning light.

‘Why do they not come?’ Aletha asked.

Shikal could find no answer.

A bulky shadow shambled through the ragged ranks, hooked foreclaws trailing in the mud. Long, matted hair sprouted from head and back, tufts of greasy black woven through the metal cages lashed to its back. Unlike the troggoth, the sludgeraker bore but one rider – an orruk of vile aspect, clad in piecemeal bits of armour. Its breastplate rattled with animal teeth. Sharp red eyes glared from the eye slits of a helm fashioned from the skull of some serpentine predator, the orruk’s gap-toothed leer framed by rows of curved fangs. Rather than spear or blade, it held a staff of pale bone fashioned from the femur of some giant beast, the knob limned with bruise-purple flames.

The orruk shaman kicked at the head of its sludgeraker, which obligingly knelt, digging its claws into the muck to support its ponderous bulk. Like a general surveying a newly conquered fief, the shaman carefully made its way down the beast’s long neck. Gripping a matted tuft of hair, the orruk leaned over and touched its guttering staff to the water.

Shikal drew in breath to shout, realisation coming a moment before the estuary ignited. The greasy scum atop the water had not been poison, but flammable oil. Seeping into the grove as the Sylvaneth beat back the orruk threat, it had gathered in the low places, inundating silt and root.

The swirl of sickly flames surged towards the grove. Shikal could do nothing but watch, scythe gripped in both hands as if to cleave the water itself.

‘Shikal, we must–’ Aletha’s words were cut off as the grove ignited with a chest-rattling whomp.

The breath was sucked from Shikal’s reply as she was sent tumbling through the air. She saw trees wreathed in ugly purple-green flames, the forms of her sisters little more than writhing shadows against the hideous conflagration. Their warsong dissolved into keening shrieks.

Shikal crashed amidst the reeds, the force of her impact driving her deep into the thick, black mud. Sap flowed from her wounds, hot against the silt’s crushing chill. Shikal struggled to move, to stand, but her limbs seemed numb and distant.

Cold muck filled her eyes, her ears, her mouth as the murky water closed above her. Screams faded. Consciousness slipped like sand through Shikal’s clutching fingers, bringing with it a terrible, crushing silence.

For the first time in her life, Shikal heard nothing.

‘Oi, we’ve got one!’ Shadows moved in the pale light.

Shikal blinked away blurry after-images, her mouth tasting of sea water and rotted vegetation.

‘Krakspine’s leavings.’ Another shadow joined the first. ‘Chief coulda left us more’n dregs. All the best dosh burnt up wif the sumpfire.’

‘You saw what they done to Mawka’s lads. You wanna end up face down in the muck?’ The first shadow grunted, and Shikal felt something strike her chest – hard steel, but not sharp enough to pierce bark.

‘Not me. But I wouldn’t mind a few others sucking silt if it meant we could dig summat nice out of these screamers.’ More hard blows. Shovels, Shikal realised. Low tide had come and the orruks were digging her out of the silt.

‘Hate crackin’ these woodlice open. Don’t have proper gold or nuffin’.’ The first orruk bent to grasp Shikal’s shoulder. ‘Shoulda just crept on by if you ask–’

Shikal caught him by the throat, lifting the struggling orruk from the ground as she stood. The second orruk, a scrawny creature with a missing eye, gave a startled squawk. It swung its shovel at Shikal, but she caught the blow. Tearing the shovel from its hands, she drove the dull blade into the orruk’s chest, ribs parting with a wet snap.

The beast was dead before it fell.

‘Who are you?’ Shikal regarded the other orruk. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Krakspine’s Klaws,’ it rasped out, vainly pawing at Shikal’s grip. ‘We’z combing the muck for dosh.’

‘No, not you.’ Shikal shook the beast, its knobby limbs flailing like wind-caught grass. ‘Why did your tribe come to this grove?’

Brackish blood dribbled between her claws, the orruk’s one good eye wide beneath its scarred brow as it gave voice to a garbled moan.

‘We slipped upcoast.’ The confession came in a choking torrent. ‘S’all part of the plan. Get you lot from behind while the ’Jawz bang about, hammer- an’ dagger-like.’

The orruk’s admission confirmed Shikal’s fears. This Krakspine planned to lead its forces through the Creeping Mire while Kuonor and the others faced the Ironjawz assault. They must have wiped out Shikal’s grove to prevent any forewarning.

Memories of flame caused Shikal to flinch. She glanced towards the remains of the grove, little more than charred trunks, matted undergrowth burned away by the sorcerous conflagration. She imagined the greenhold reduced to wet ash, the slumped bodies of her kin prised open by nasty orruks.

Meaning to ask more questions she turned back to the orruk, only to find the beast dead, its neck snapped, blue-black tongue hanging from slack jaws.

With a snarl, she tossed it away.

Casting about, Shikal felt the pulse of her greenwood scythe, buried in the muck perhaps ten paces from where she had fallen. Hurrying over, she dropped to her knees, scooping back fistfuls of thick, black mud until at last the worn handle was firmly in her grasp once more.

There were other orruks in the marsh, but Shikal’s sudden appearance had sent them scurrying away – scavengers to their rotten core. She moved before they could gather, before they realised she was alone and in silence.

Silence.

Shikal made for the remains of the grove. She could feel her sisters below. Aletha and the others, their lamentiri called to her, soulpods begging to be planted, reborn. But there was no time to harvest the fallen. The greenhold needed to be warned.

Every muscle tensed, Shikal knelt, hand pressed into the mud as she sang to the grove. The response was weak, unfocused, a cacophony of injured voices crying for aid. Shikal would have dearly liked to coax them back to harmony, to regrow that which had been so cruelly burnt, but she could already hear the rustle of reed and sedge, orruk scavengers creeping like silt skimmers. Even in her fury, Shikal knew she could not face them all, not alone, not with the weight of such terrible quiet pressing in about her.

Enough of the grove remained for her to make a final plea. Submerged roots wove around the bodies of Shikal’s sisters, dragging them deeper, deeper.

Shikal allowed herself a bitter smile. The orruks would have to dig up half the marsh to find them now.

‘I will return for you.’ Feeling as if snow had settled upon her branches, Shikal hurried away. With her wide stride and tangle of rootlike feet, she glided across the lichen-covered expanse of the Creeping Mire – easily able to outdistance the orruks, if not the crushing silence.

Shikal tried singing to herself, but her voice sounded cruel and sharp absent her sisters’ calming harmonies.

All around, the Mire moved. Like a living thing, it twitched and shuddered, bits of solid ground shifting amidst the moss and sharp-edged snakegrass. More than once Shikal almost stumbled headlong into one of the many deep, dark pools that yawned like mouths in the Mire’s surface. From watching animals venture into the muck, Shikal knew they were more than simple ponds. Things that slipped beneath the stagnant water did not rise again.

Like everything in the Realm of Beasts, the Creeping Mire was a predator.

Shikal passed orruk corpses by the dozen – limbs tangled among the branches of drooping willows, bodies half-covered with moss, fanged skulls grinning from shallow pools. Here and there, she even noted the slumped corpse of a warbeast, fur and scale pierced by creeping vines. It comforted her to know the Mire exacted a toll on all who waded through its hungry depths. Krakspine would reach the greenhold, but he would bleed along the way.

So intent was Shikal on forging through the shifting quagmire that she did not note the languid ripple in a nearby pool, the blink of bulbous eyes as a creature surfaced.

It erupted in a spray of filthy water, tongues lashing from a mouth that yawned wide as a sea cave. Sticky with the frog-like beast’s vile excretions, a dozen tongues wrapped around Shikal’s limbs and trunk, binding her fast.

Her talons opened pale rents in the beast’s flesh as it dragged her from her feet, heavy jaws of ridged bone crushing and chewing. Had Shikal been a being of flesh, the beast would have pulped her in seconds, but her heavy limbs and bark-covered body made a poor meal.

Twisting like a spring vine, Shikal wedged the blade of her scythe into the creature’s cavernous maw, her voice rising in arcane cadence as she called a swarm of stinging spites into being. Although the tiny creatures would have been hard-pressed to pierce the beast’s rubbery hide, its mouth and tongue were a far different matter. The creature gave a snorting bellow, as if it had just bitten down on a tangle of stinging nettles. It spat Shikal back into the muck, her summoned spites flickering back into the eldritch aether.

With an aggrieved croak, the creature sunk below the water, barely a ripple to show where it had been.

Groaning, Shikal pushed to her feet. She had lost branches to the assault, her bark weeping sap from a score of abrasions. Bruised, battered but blessedly unbroken, she limped after the orruks.

They had left a clear enough trail, even in the sucking depths of the deep mire. The orruks’ progress was marked by burnt trees and patches of churned mud, vegetation uprooted by the thrashing of some captured beast. From the freshness of the broken limbs, Shikal noted they moved slowly, no doubt hoping to avoid the worst of the Mire’s pitfalls. At that pace, it would take several days to reach the greenhold, more if they required sleep.

Fortunately, Shikal did not.

Night came suddenly in the Mire. The brilliant disc of Hysh slipped below the horizon, shadows spreading as Ghur’s bestial constellations were lost amidst the ever-present miasma. Marsh lights glimmered in the gloom. Pale blues and greens, they bobbed like torches, coaxing the unwary into pit and peril.

Shikal picked her way across the uneven ground, taking care to test each step before placing her weight upon it. Cut by silence, she tried singing to the Mire, and found it a spiteful, unlovely place.

Time and time again, Shikal stumbled in the muck, sinking up to her chest before she was able to find her footing once more. With each slip, fury bubbled up within her. She wanted to fall upon the orruks, to crack their bones and tear their flesh, to hear them scream as her sisters had when the flames consumed them. They had robbed Shikal of Alarielle’s song. She yearned to take their lives in recompense.

Hatred welled up her throat, so hot and bright Shikal thought it might burst forth in a torrent of flame. She gave voice to a furious shriek, her high, keening wail drifting across the marsh.

As if in answer, there came a distant cry.

Laden with wounded spite, it echoed Shikal’s scream, creating a jagged harmony that seemed to cut to her core. From the mist-choked stillness another shriek sounded, and another, rising in dreadful chorus until it seemed to surround Shikal, slipping like venom into her soul.

The harsh melody stopped, as if waiting expectantly, almost hungrily.

After a day of silence, the urge to reply churned within Shikal’s thoughts, the need to be part of a song, any song. But Shikal knew that way lay madness. The melody that the Outcasts heard was fractured like broken flint, a maelstrom of sharp edges, its harmony turned to cutting, spiteful rage.

Even so, a traitorous part of her reverberated like a struck drum, reaching towards the cruel song. In it lay vengeance, justice, a way to punish the orruks for their transgression. Shikal would gladly sacrifice her life to the Ironbark, why not her soul as well?

The piercing call came again, but Shikal did not respond.

Jaw tight and shoulders hunched, she trudged onwards, not sure if her silence was rooted in courage, or cowardice.

Shikal ran.

Breath hissing through clenched teeth, she skidded across a muddy embankment, splashing down into a pool of filthy water. By Alarielle’s grace it was only waist-deep, although choked with swirls of algae that clung like limpets to Shikal’s bark.

She could hear the high yips of her orruk pursuers, their weapons glinting dully in the early morning gloom. How had they found her?

Shikal had come upon the orruk host on the evening of the second day. A ragged collection of campfires and leather tents strung along one of the Mire’s few bits of solid land. Shikal had been careful to give the camp a wide berth, circling across a stretch of boggy ground that should have been all but impassable to orruk hunting parties. Feeling her way in the dark, moving slowly so as to make as little sound as possible, Shikal had threaded the bogs and sinkholes, emerging on the far side of the orruk camp only to find a group of the green-skinned fiends before her.

There was a twang of tensioned cord to Shikal’s rear, and a heavy bolt hissed by her shoulder to splash in the murky water ahead. The orruk shooter gave a disgusted bark, met by hoots of derision from its fellows. They loped behind Shikal, spread across perhaps a hundred yards of marsh like the claws of a massive, grasping hand.

An orruk rose from a stand of twisted snakegrass to Shikal’s left, crude crossbow aimed at her chest. Rather than dodge, Shikal lunged for the beast. The orruk took a surprised step back, its bolt flying wide.

She slapped the bladed crossbow from its hands, giving voice to a furious howl as the orruk turned to flee. The beast was quick, but not quick enough, and Shikal was able to hook her scythe in its hide cape. It twisted like a serpent in her grip, almost boneless in its snarling, spitting struggle to slip free.

Shikal slammed it face first into the muck, pinning it with her scythe, then stomped down, taking cruel pleasure in the way its bones snapped like dry brush beneath her feet. With a furious shriek she kicked the broken body at the nearest orruks, and was rewarded with a snarl of surprise as they scuttled back into the brush.

The respite was short-lived. Shikal had run barely a dozen paces before the orruks resumed their pursuit, hooting and cackling as their barbed bolts slashed through the undergrowth. Had there been fewer, Shikal would have torn them to ribbons. But she had counted nearly two score pursuers, and was grimly certain more hid in the muck.

It was infuriating to come so close. Barely a dozen miles stood between her and the greenhold. By Shikal’s reckoning the orruk host would descend upon her brethren in late afternoon. She could cross the distance in half that time, giving the Ironbark hours to marshal a proper defence.

It seemed impossible the orruks had followed her through the trackless marsh, nor did it seem likely they marked her passage. Shikal had sensed no dire sorcery nor unwelcome eyes upon her. And yet, it had been as if the orruks awaited her arrival.

Arms raised to shield her face, Shikal crashed through a stand of clutch willows. The hooked thorns on their dangling branches cut shallow gouges in her bark, the pain giving her a wicked idea. With a deep breath, she sang a killing cant, using her sorcerous fury to stoke the Mire’s hunger. Eldritch power flowed through the trees, lengthening thorns, twisting branches, imbuing wood with a ravenous desire for blood and torn flesh.

The first of the hunters crashed into the grove, its cruel laughter quickly turning to panic as the trees lashed out. Shikal saw its struggling form lifted up into the canopy, blood-slicked branches striking out at the other nearby orruks. Another two were torn to ribbons before the remainder could check their advance. Wary of the enchanted trees, they circled the stand, heavy crossbows at the ready. If Shikal did not hurry, they would surround the willow grove and pinion her with barbed shafts.

The clearing beyond was framed by bullrushes. Shikal sprinted across the boggy ground, almost impaling herself as a spear-wielding orruk lunged from among the reeds. Although his jab missed by a handspan, Shikal’s twisting pivot revealed a dozen more grinning orruks among the rushes, cruel eyes glinting behind a hedge of hooked polearms. The reason for the hunters’ dogged pursuit became painfully clear as Shikal turned back towards the willows and saw a swarm of crossbow-armed orruks carefully wending their way through the thorny branches.

Shikal turned in the closing circle, scythe sweeping wide. She was not some cornered beast, some wild prey to be hunted and harried. Shikal was Ironbark. Her roots ran deep. If she were to die, it would be with her hands locked about the throats of her enemies, a pile of corpses at her feet. Days of trapped fury welled within her, breaking forth in a high, hateful shriek.

This time, there came an answer.

Harsh cries resounded from the marsh as muck-streaked shadows rose from the dark mud. Outcasts. Draped in moss, vines and clinging algae, they flexed lichen-covered talons, eyes burning like purple flame through masks of peat and rotted wood.

The first notes of the Outcasts’ warsong scraped across her senses. Their voices came sharp as first frost – a hateful cacophony whetted by pain and vengeful madness.

They fell upon the orruks not like predators, but butchers. Gnarled talons rent hide and flesh, heavy wooden fists pulped bone. Shikal watched a shrieking orruk ripped almost in half, the Spite-Revenant lifting the gore-streaked corpse, her head tilted back, grin wide, as blood fell like a spring shower.

A rain of jagged bolts fell among the Outcasts, but if the rusty quarrels caused any discomfort, the revenants showed no sign of it. In a maelstrom of fang and claw they slipped around Shikal to fall upon the orruk hunters, the agonised screams lost against the spiteful wail of their warsong.

Shikal knew she should run, should dive into the reeds and hasten towards the greenhold. The hunters had driven her far from the route, and Krakspine was no doubt on the move. Even at her fastest, she might not outdistance the warhost.

But the hateful, agonised song of the Outcasts seemed to slip into her bones, jagged notes resolving into something approaching music.

Eyes wide and terrified, an orruk ran past Shikal, an empty crossbow clutched to its sinewy chest. Almost without thinking she reached down to snatch up the creature. Raising a hand to bat away the swing of its bladed crossbow, she shook the orruk like a bittergrub with a marsh adder.

Her claws found purchase on the thing’s greasy flesh, and Shikal brought it to her mouth, shriek turning into a burbling howl as she bit down.

She tossed it away, already searching for more. But the orruks were dead or fled.

Only the Outcasts remained.

They surrounded her, eyes bright with the flames of a hundred burning groves. Rather than revulsion or pity, Shikal was filled with a strange sense of calm. She saw in them echoes of vengeance – branches gone hard and gnarled, twisted claws seeking justice.

Like sun burning away a morning fog, Shikal’s thoughts came clear. As she had with Aletha, as she had with her dead sisters, Shikal understood the Outcasts.

‘You led the orruks to me,’ she said.

‘Bait.’ The reply came in a chorus of harsh voices. ‘Trap.’

Anger blossomed in Shikal’s breast. Had it not been for the Outcasts, she might have reached the greenhold. She took an unconscious step forwards, fingers hooked into claws.

The Outcasts reacted with something approaching delight. They mirrored Shikal’s aggression, spreading out like winnowolves surrounding a wounded stag.

Shikal forced herself to relax, talons unclenching. She would be no use to the greenhold dead, nor would she gain anything by berating the Outcasts. They could not understand reason.

Not any more.

‘The Mire is ours.’ A tall revenant stepped from among the group. Beneath the moss and nettles, her bark was the pale, patchy white of a highland sycamore. Eyes like marsh flames guttered in a face wreathed by thorny vines.

‘Then you know the orruks seek to destroy the Ironbark Greenhold,’ Shikal said.

The Spite-Revenant inclined her head, shifting from foot to foot like a razorboar preparing to charge.

‘Can you stop them?’

‘Too few.’ The Outcast flexed her claws and half turned away towards the group, rough voice already slipping back into warsong.

‘Wait!’ Shikal raised a hand. ‘Show me which way to go. The greenhold, I must reach it.’

‘No time.’ The answer came through gritted fangs.

Shikal could see that the effort of speaking even so few words wore on the Outcast. They were not as other forest spirits, enfolded in the vibrant breadth of Alarielle’s song. There was no nurturing, no growth – only brutal honesty, their souls bound to singular purpose.

She must use this to move them.

‘The orruks burned my grove.’ Shikal’s words provoked an aggrieved howl from the assembled Outcasts. ‘My sisters are dead. Soon, all my kin will join them.’

Twisted claws rent the air. Some of the revenants even started in the direction of the orruk host, before darting back, distended jaws snapping like deep-sea predators.

‘You cannot defeat the beasts, but you can slow them. We can slow them,’ Shikal continued, speaking quickly as she dared, lest the Spite-Revenants become lost to the warsong. Now that she had them, she was not sure how to strike. An assault on the orruks would only end in their deaths. Yet though the Outcasts may have been few in number, they knew the Mire. The orruks were trespassers in more ways than one. A sharp idea blossomed in Shikal’s thoughts.

‘An ambush, like the one here,’ she said. ‘We strike at Krakspine, the shaman who burned my grove. The creature’s death will cause confusion, infighting, perhaps long enough for me to reach the greenhold.’

The lead revenant gave a choked snarl, branches rattling. ‘Death.’

‘To the orruks, yes.’ Shikal raised a fist. ‘Help me find the shaman. Help me kill him, and I shall bring the entire greenhold to wipe this blight from your Mire.’

‘Death,’ the lead revenant said again.

Without another word, the Outcasts moved, slipping into the silt and mud, their brutal song fading to an insistent hiss.

At first, Shikal thought they had abandoned her, until the tall revenant paused at the water’s edge. She glanced back, lips drawn back from teeth the colour of rotten heartwood.

‘Death.’

From the desperate, seething hatred of their song, Shikal realised the Outcasts made for the orruk host.

‘Death.’ She nodded, smile dripping with cruel promise as she followed.

The orruks moved along a low spit of fen. Only partially submerged, the twisting causeway threaded through bogs and seeping pools, drawing the orruk host into a thin column. With marshland to either side, their numbers counted for nothing.

Shikal watched them pass, crouching amidst the fronds of a stand of snakegrass. It was the perfect place for an ambush. Even Kuonor’s modest wargrove could have wreaked terrible carnage among the invaders – but Kuonor was not here. All Shikal had was a few score Outcasts, barely more than beasts themselves.

Even so, the tall revenant had not lied when she said they knew the Mire. Shikal could hear it now: a low, starved murmur just at the edge of perception, like the growl of some hidden predator.

It was not a place to be cultivated, the Creeping Mire, not a land to love and grow. The Mire needed no nurturing, no protection, it was strong on its own – and hungry, always hungry.

The orruks feared the place, that much was plain in the way their warbands clung together, flinching at the slightest sound. Even the great beasts seemed cowed by the oppressive murk. Huge eyes rolled white beneath sloping brows, the usual cacophony of screeches and snorting roars edged with furtive anxiety. More than once, one of the bent-backed troggoths had attempted to break free of its fetters, only to be driven back into line with much shouting and prodding.

Watching this, Shikal found herself filled with an odd respect for the place.

The Mire would not have burned. It would have feasted. If only Shikal could have been so strong.

‘It comes.’ The tall revenant spoke in a low hiss, delight clear in the way her feet dug at the mud as if it were the flesh of some fallen foe.

Shikal glanced to the column, spying the orruk shaman atop his long-necked beast. But the lead revenant’s attention was not on the orruks, rather she watched a slow ripple make its way across a marshy pool. Squinting, Shikal could just make out a huge form below the surface, a shadow among shadows, rendered almost invisible in the tepid sunlight.

A head broke the surface. Easily eight feet long and almost as wide, its scales were ridged to resemble rough bark, patches of moss and waterlogged swamp weeds completing the illusion of a fallen tree.

As if caught by a current, it floated towards one of the bellowing troggoths, almost languid in its meandering progress.

Shikal felt the Mire shift. Water flowed, solid ground becoming suddenly loose and boggy. The troggoth stumbled, riders shouting as they clung to the wooden armature.

The marsh kraken lunged in a spray of mud and muck. Its crocodilian jaws spread wide to envelop the troggoth, the welter of barbed tentacles on the shapeless lump of its body dragging orruks down into the boggy depths.

Shikal was up and running before the first orruk had disappeared below the surface. Marsh kraken were ambush predators. Once the beast had its fill, it would retreat back into the swamp.

The Outcasts’ harsh warsong rang in Shikal’s ears. She did not need to look back to know they followed; their jagged harmony told her as much.

They moved at an angle to the orruk line, easily crossing the boggy ground. The Mire spurred them on, knowing they would reap a harvest of fresh bodies, blood mixing with tepid water, piles of lovely bones dragged down, down into the sucking peat.

Shikal felt its hungry exaltation as her scythe sliced into the neck of a shrieking orruk. It batted at her with a notched axe, but Shikal barely felt the wound, brushing the blade aside like a bothersome spite.

Two orruks in piecemeal armour sought to bar her path, only to tumble back as the Outcasts fell upon them like ravenous bittergrubs. They were lost in a mix of mud and blood, but Shikal was already past the fight, striding towards the orruk shaman with deadly purpose.

It watched her come, head cocked, bone staff resting across sinewy thighs. Even its sludgeraker seemed almost curious, blackened tongue lolling from its muzzle as it squatted on powerful hind legs. Only when Shikal was a few paces away did it reach out a claw.

Deceptively quick despite its bulk, the beast raked at her.

Shikal ducked the claw, scythe tracing a long gash across its rubbery flesh. The blade came back covered in reeking slime, but Shikal was far beyond caring about unpleasant smells. Voice sketching a jagged melody, she sprang for the shaman, dropping her scythe to catch a great fistful of the sludgeraker’s coarse, stinking hair.

Now the shaman moved. Bones rattling, he stood, staff igniting with a smell like burning marsh gas. He stretched out a clawed hand, the gesture almost gentle, as flames licked from the knob of his staff to curl around Shikal like sputtering vines.

At last, a spark of pain lit in the furious haze of her thoughts. Her warsong stuttered, broken by an agonised scream that ripped from her throat. The flames clung to Shikal like burrs. Searing through bark and wood, they seemed to reach inside her.

It was all Shikal could do to cling to the beast, talons worked deep into the creature’s matted pelt as it tore at her.

Then came the fractured chorus. Flecks of broken stone, fallen limbs, wind-caught leaves, the Outcasts’ voices rose in terrible cadence. Where before their song had seemed naught but raging disorder, Shikal was now able to sift strains of harmony from the broken refrain.

Her voice joined theirs, pain becoming fury, agony a weapon.

The tall revenant leapt upon the sludgeraker, sinking claws into the creature’s rubbery flank. It twisted to swipe at her, only to have another two Outcasts catch its arm. Like pain-maddened boars, they tore into the flesh, dragging a tortured bellow from the beast.

The orruk swung its staff like a banner. Bruised flames lashed wooden bodies, kindling in bark and branch. But the Outcasts’ song did not falter. They dwelt in pain, revelled in it. Shikal understood now there was no hurt the orruks could inflict that would equal the torment that already filled the Spite-Revenants.

Shikal grinned through the agony, her soul bending like a reed in the wind.

Cackling, she began to climb once more.

At last, the orruk shaman’s bemused expression faltered. Its self-important smirk bled into surprise, then fear as Shikal waded through the swirling miasma of flames. Her bark split and peeled, rootlike muscles blackening as the sap boiled from within.

She ripped the shaman’s staff from its gnarled hands. The heavy femur snapped across her knee, a guttering blast of sparks twisting up like smoke.

Already the shaman was moving, fingers splayed as it jabbered and gestured. Pale yellow mist began to seep from its mouth and nose. A hand coalesced in the smoke, huge and clawed.

Shikal did not give it the chance.

She drove her claws into the orruk’s face, flesh and bone parting before razored talons. It stumbled back, still trying to complete its vile enchantment. Shikal’s fist slammed into the shaman’s ribs with a wet snap, her fangs punching through rusty metal to pierce its shoulder.

The orruk’s incantation became a quavering scream, lost against the wrathful howl of Shikal’s warsong. She ripped and tore at the shaman, continuing the assault long after it had ceased to squirm.

As if sensing its master’s death, the sludgeraker shuddered, finally borne to the marshy soil by the furious press of Spite-Revenants.

Shikal lifted her blood-streaked head to glare around the battlefield. The marsh kraken was gone, the orruks already beginning to gather, surging across muck and mire towards the combat.

A Spite-Revenant reared up, gore-covered face almost ecstatic, only to reel back as one of the orruks’ barbed bolts hammered through her neck.

Shikal wanted to turn on the advancing horde, to scour them as she had their shaman. But some small part of her remained aware of their numbers, their ferocity. She and the others might kill a score, a hundred, but their blood would be nothing compared to the destruction the orruks would wreak upon the Ironbark Greenhold.

Like a swimmer surfacing from a deep dive, Shikal drew in a wracking breath, her surroundings seeming to snap into focus.

At Shikal’s choked screech, the Spite-Revenants too seemed to realise the danger. Already, bands of orruk hunters moved to cut off their escape, while hard-eyed beast drivers goaded their charges towards the battle.

Shikal leapt from the fallen sludgeraker and stumbled into the marsh. Spite-revenants scattered amidst the rushes, seeming almost to disappear into the swampy muck as the Mire welcomed its children home.

Shikal, too, must have sated its hunger, for her feet found solid ground beneath the water, bogs and sinkholes forming in her wake. Mist seeped from the willows, seemingly beckoned by the skirl of high voices, beautiful and cruel.

Shikal sang with them.

Wild exhalations steamed in the humid air, Shikal’s breath seeming possessed of a new, inner heat. It was as if she and the Outcasts were bits of flotsam carried upon a great and terrible wave. Shikal all but skipped through the deepening fog, the distant greenhold throbbing in her perceptions like a rotten fang.

She knew she would reach it. As she knew the Mire would never allow the orruks to catch her.

Just so long as she kept it fed.

The two Tree-Revenants guarding the greenhold’s southern sward recoiled as Shikal burst from the scrubby undergrowth. With burns, bruises and broken branches, she must have looked terrible, but even her condition did not explain why they pointed spears at her.

‘Begone,’ said a narrow-faced guard with hair the colour of autumn grass.

Shikal bit back her anger. Rather than knock the offending revenant aside, she spread her hands.

‘Orruks. From the Mire.’ Her voice came as a rough growl. ‘Thousands. An hour or two behind me. They seek to take the greenhold unaware.’

‘The Mire is impassable,’ Narrow-face scoffed.

‘I made it through.’

‘Good. Now get back to your swamp.’ He thrust his chin at the distant Mire. ‘You are not welcome here.’

‘There is no time. Take me to Kuonor.’ Shikal gestured with her fire-blackened scythe, feeling her lips draw back in a snarl. The lead revenant levelled his spear, and might have thrust had not the other laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘Shikal?’ He squinted, pale-green eyes widening with surprised recognition. ‘What has happened to you?’

‘Orruks. The Mire.’ It was all Shikal could do not to scream at the fool.

The revenant stared at her, his expression a mix of revulsion and horror.

Galdun. That was his name. Shikal remembered, now.

‘Orruks burnt our grove.’ She shook her head as if to dispel memories of fire. ‘Everyone. Gone. They come for the greenhold.’

The thin-faced revenant seemed about to offer another cruel dismissal, but Galdun shook his head.

‘We shall send for Kuonor.’

They disappeared into the glade. Shikal paced back and forth, aware she was being observed, but unable to pick the watchers from the tangle of foliage. The last time she had visited, the greenhold had seemed an imposing place – massive oxbow maples shading stands of dappled birch and knife oak, roots sheltered by a soft carpet of moss.

Now it only looked vulnerable. A jumble of kindling waiting for a spark.

She glanced back to the edge of the marsh, picking out the jagged shadows of Outcasts amidst the clumps of sablethorn and snakegrass. Shikal had learned much on her journey through the Creeping Mire. With her help, the Ironbark could make the greenhold impregnable.

‘Oh, little one. What have they done to you?’ Kuonor’s voice came absent the deep rumble of arboreal harmonics. His words were empty, tuneless, little more than disjointed sounds.

Shikal turned to stare up at the Treelord’s craggy face. Where once kindness and wisdom had found a home, now she saw only sorrow, pity.

With the suddenness of a winter storm, Shikal realised she could not hear Alarielle’s song. The awareness should have terrified her, and yet Shikal felt nothing.

Well, that was not true – she felt angry.

Angry Kuonor had abandoned her and her sisters to the orruks. Angry she had failed to protect the grove. Angry that, even now, her brethren did not believe her.

‘Orruks. Thousands.’ It was a struggle to say even that much. Shikal tossed her head at the swamp. ‘Death.’

Kuonor closed his eyes, as if the sight of her caused him physical pain.

‘Death!’ Shikal shrieked the word.

He nodded, weather-beaten features shifting into something hard and cold.

‘Summon the wargroves.’ Kuonor lowered his head. ‘Our foe strikes through the Mire as well.’

The trees fluttered with activity, spites and dryads hurrying to spread the word. Shikal heard nothing but the rustle of leaves, the creak of ancient branches.

‘You should depart.’ Kuonor looked away, seeming unable to meet her gaze. ‘There is nothing for you here.’

On that point, Shikal agreed. Noble spirits, paragons of war. Once she had marvelled at their prowess; now they appeared hesitant, unwilling to do what must be done, unwilling to sacrifice what must be sacrificed.

Task complete, Shikal turned away, striding down the sward without a backward glance. Kuonor was right, the greenhold held nothing but the empty promise of growing things.

The thought should have saddened her, but all Shikal could feel was a strange species of excitement as she loped across the marshy ground.

Beyond, her sisters waited to welcome her.

There were orruks to kill.

And the Mire was always hungry.

About the Author

Evan Dicken’s first story for Black Library was ‘The Path to Glory’, and he has since penned several more tales set in the Age of Sigmar, including the novella The Red Hours, and short fiction for the anthologies Gods & Mortals and Myths & Revenants. He has been an avid reader of Black Library novels since he found dog-eared copies of Trollslayer, Xenos and First and Only nestled in the ‘Used Fantasy/Sci-fi’ rack of his local gaming store. He still considers himself an avid hobbyist, although the unpainted Chaos Warband languishing in his basement would beg to differ. By day, he studies old Japanese maps and crunches data at The Ohio State University.

An extract from Dominion.

The city grumbled and lurched, almost hurling Niksar from the wall. He was perched on a broken lintel, looking down over one of Excelsis’ most unwelcoming streets – a rain-lashed warren of lean-tos and hovels that looked discarded rather than built. The Veins had always been one of the poorest parts of the city and, during the tremors of recent months, several streets had caved in, opening craters and revealing the coiled horrors that wormed through the city’s foundations.

Excelsis was besieged. Not just by tribes of greenskins but by the land itself. Walls groaned as grubs devoured the mortar. Sewers flooded as lizards spilled from drains. Slates tumbled from roofs, hurled by screeching, feathered rodents. Nothing was stable. The ground stirred, constantly, and every shattered flagstone revealed something repulsive. It was like being on the deck of a sinking ship. And this close to the city walls, the tremors were even more violent.

Niksar looked over at Ocella, hoping she was nearly finished. Ocella was only standing a dozen feet away but he could barely make her out through the mounds of rubbish and debris. He was sure it must be dawn by now, but the light clearly had better places to be. Niksar could sympathise.

As far as he could tell, the exchange was going as planned. The street was deserted and Ocella was talking eagerly to her contact, showing no signs of alarm. She had promised Niksar this would be an easy job. She was meeting a dockhand to buy information, tipped off by one of her pets, and as usual she wanted Niksar on hand in case there was a disagreement. Niksar almost wished there would be so he could shift into a different position, but it all seemed to be going swimmingly. The dockhand was a weaselly old salt Ocella had met on several previous occasions. He was hunched and wizened but Niksar guessed he was probably no older than thirty. Life beyond the city walls was brutal. It took its toll on everyone who sailed the Coast of Tusks.

The dockhand kept glancing up and down the rubble-strewn alley, peering through the rain, clearly nervous. Niksar could see why Ocella had asked him to hide himself up on the wall.

Ocella twitched and threw back her head. Then she laughed. Her laugh was peculiar, a kind of ‘haw haw’ that reminded Niksar of a coughing dog. The more he worked with her, the stranger he found her. He knew she was wealthy, but she wore filthy animal skins and a tattered cloak of greasy feathers. She looked like she had never slept under a roof. She wore a crooked feather headdress and had dozens of tiny bird skulls plaited into her hair that clattered as she moved. And she moved constantly. It was hard to be sure of her age, covered as she was in muck and feathers, but Niksar guessed she was around twenty years old. Despite that, she held herself like a palsied crone, always flinching, spitting and scratching. She leant constantly on a staff carved from a wing bone. The bone was taller than she was and as she talked it juddered in her hands, shaking rain from the beak at its head.

The meeting continued to be uneventful and Niksar’s attention wandered. He had never mentioned it to Ocella, but the role of lookout did not really play to his strengths. He thought about the deal they were hoping to make tomorrow with an armourer over on Quadi Street, then his thoughts ranged into the distant future as he returned to his favourite fantasy. He pictured himself rising from the squalor he had endured for the first twenty years of his life. The city was on the verge of collapse, but his own fortunes had never been better. He was close, this time. Close to really becoming someone of importance – someone who did not have to scrape by to survive. So many of his schemes had come to nothing, but working with Ocella had gained him an incredible collection of artefacts. Strange as she was, he had to agree they were a good team. And, because Ocella thought everyone else in the city was trying to kill her, Niksar could not see their lucrative relationship ending soon. Visions of opulence and power filled his head.

His daydreams were interrupted by movement near his hand. A beetle wriggled from beneath a stone and pounced on a plump, slow-moving grub. The beetle locked its mandibles around its prey and swallowed it whole. Once it had finished eating, the beetle took a few steps, then paused, as though remembering something. Niksar leant closer, fascinated, knowing what would come next. Sure enough, the insect juddered and fell onto its side, twitching and trying to stand, then its carapace burst, revealing a mass of teeming larvae. Mature burrow grubs sacrificed themselves so that their young could start life with a hearty banquet. Niksar grimaced as the larvae devoured their host. There were so many it only took a few seconds.

The land is always hungry, thought Niksar, remembering the words of an old Thondian song.

A loud bang echoed down the alleyway, followed by the acrid smell of gunpowder. Niksar cursed in surprise and leapt from the wall, drawing his sabre and pointing the blade into the rain.

Ocella stumbled away, and for a moment Niksar thought that his golden goose had been shot. Animals shifted under her furs and glossy eyes stared out at the drizzle, panicked by the noise. Then he noticed that the docker had a hole in his forehead. The man wheezed quietly and crumpled to the ground.

‘Sigmar’s teeth,’ muttered Niksar. In all the times he had worked with Ocella, his presence had been a formality. She was crippled by paranoia but there had never actually been any need for a bodyguard.

The alleyway was empty, but the sound of the gunshot would have carried to all the nearby streets. Passers-by might come to investigate. Or even the city watch.

‘Niksar!’ cried Ocella, staggering away from the corpse, hysterical, waving her staff at the shadows.

‘Damn!’ he spat, rushing to her side and staring at the dead body.

Ocella looked everywhere but at him, her eyes rolling loosely in sunken sockets. ‘Why weren’t you looking?’ She laughed, making the haw haw sound again. ‘The lookout who doesn’t look!’ Her straining eyes made it clear that she did not really find the situation amusing. She reached under her furs, trying to calm her rodents and birds.

Footsteps echoed towards them and Niksar hauled Ocella behind a lean-to.

‘It came from that direction,’ he muttered, peering through the shadows. He tried to shove her further back but she gripped him like a terrified child.

‘I told you,’ she whispered. ‘They’re after me.’

‘Who?’ demanded Niksar, but before she could answer a figure strode into view, splashing through puddles, silhouetted by the dawn. ‘It’s a guardsman,’ muttered Niksar as he saw a Freeguild uniform replete with a polished breastplate and a broad, feather-plumed hat.

‘A soldier?’ Ocella wiped drool-sodden hair away from her mouth and tucked it behind her ears. She tried to look less panicked but her mouth refused to stop twitching. ‘Here? No one comes here. That’s specifically why I chose here. Here is where people aren’t. If you ask anyone about here, they will–’

‘Niksar!’ cried a familiar voice.

Ocella gasped and stared at Niksar. ‘Did you sell me out?’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘You? I thought I could trust you.’

Anger pounded in his temples. ‘Of course I didn’t sell you out. Just because I fight for glimmerings doesn’t mean I’m a–’

‘Niksar!’ cried the soldier again, pointing a pistol his way and stepping close enough for Niksar to make out a face. It was a young woman in her mid-twenties with an angular, proud face and large, dark eyes. She was tall, broad-shouldered and powerful looking.

Niksar lowered his sword in shock. ‘Zagora?’

‘Who is it?’ hissed Ocella, swaying and stumbling as she tried to look.

‘My sister. She won’t hurt…’ Niksar’s words trailed off as he looked at the docker’s corpse. ‘Zagora,’ he demanded, striding out of his hiding place. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Saving your life.’ She was reloading her pistol as she strode past him towards the docker.

Niksar’s rage was starting to be replaced by concern. His sister had forged an impressive career in one of the city’s Freeguild regiments. She was risking a lot by coming here and associating with the likes of him and Ocella – never mind shooting dockworkers.

‘What are you talking about?’ he asked, following her over to the body.

Zagora dropped to one knee beside the corpse, avoiding the quickly spreading pool of blood, and ripped the man’s doublet open. Then she stepped back, bumping into Niksar.

‘What?’ He pointed his sword at the corpse, expecting something to leap at him. His pulse quickened as he saw the tattoos that covered the dead man’s chest.

‘The Dark Gods.’ Zagora made the sign of the hammer across her chest as she stared at the crudely inked symbols. She turned to Niksar, her expression neutral. ‘What have you got yourself mixed up in, little brother?’

Niksar shook his head. ‘That can’t be right. I was just here as a–’

‘There are purges happening today. Did you know? This morning. Right across the city.’ She pointed at the dead man. ‘Because of this. Because of him.’

There was a clattering sound behind them followed by the splash of running feet. Niksar whirled around to see Ocella weaving off through the darkness with surprising speed, her head held low. Niksar considered chasing her but his sister shook her head.

‘You really don’t want to be seen with that woman.’ She nodded in the opposite direction, to the other end of the alley. ‘This way.’

Niksar hesitated, looking at the crumpled corpse. ‘My fee.’

‘Do you realise how bad this is? Even for you?’ Zagora waved at the crumbling buildings. ‘The city is falling apart. This really is not the time to be seen with cultists. Can’t you see what’s on his chest? The man’s a heretic. If you so much as touch him you’ll be strung up outside the White Angels’ tower, feeding gulls with your innards.’

Niksar stared at the corpse again. The tattoo was so repulsive it was hard to look at. The shape was simple enough – a fish-like swirl with a circle in its lower half, but it was the details that made his head hurt. The design was covered in intricately inked flames and scales that were morphing into screaming faces. The faces were partly human, but partly something else, something that Niksar could not quite explain but that filled him with inexplicable terror.

He nodded weakly and let his sister lead him away. As soon as they emerged onto one of the wider streets, Zagora stopped running and adopted a confident, nonchalant stride, ignoring the glances that came her way. She was dressed in the gold and red of the Phoenix Company, one of the regiments formed in the wake of the city’s recent hardships. She cut an impressive figure and people scattered at her approach, ducking back through the doors of their crooked, tiny shacks.

‘I had no idea.’ Niksar’s pulse was still hammering at the memory of the tattoos. People had been put in the gallows just for looking at symbols like that. ‘How did you know? Ocella has always seemed like a reputable–’

Zagora glanced at him. ‘Reputable?’

Niksar licked his lips. ‘Reputable might not be the right word. But I’d never have dreamt she was involved in anything to do with… I can’t believe she would knowingly involve herself with cultists. I didn’t think–’

‘You didn’t think at all. You rarely do. Did you ask her where she met that docker?’

‘There’s not much point asking her anything, to be honest. She generally just–’

‘You could end up swinging from a rope.’ Zagora glanced around and lowered her voice. ‘Me too, if anyone saw what happened back there. Or if that witch decides to talk.’

‘She won’t.’ Niksar spoke with more confidence than he felt. ‘And she’s a fool, not a witch. And I’m the only person in the city she trusts. She won’t want anything to happen to me.’

Zagora shook her head and continued down the street. ‘I heard about this from someone in my regiment, Niksar. I dread to think who else has heard about it. That docker’s linked to a cult called the Mirrored Blade. And then, when I heard he was selling things to someone called Ocella I remembered that you worked with someone called Ocella. Aren’t you two partners?’

Niksar took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. ‘Not partners, exactly. That’s not the word I would use. I’m just her muscle, really.’ Niksar was slender and wiry, but he was good with a sword and he had grown up on the streets, so what he lacked in bulk, he more than made up for in speed and nerve. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s no real harm done. Thanks to you. You’ve got me out of a mess, Zagora. I won’t forget it.’

They turned onto one of the city’s main thoroughfares leading towards a large market square. The city was as unsteady as Ocella, but life continued. Lots of the traders were already setting up whalebone awnings and unloading their wares, attracting a crowd of peevish-sounding gulls that battled against the rain.

‘You might not be out of the mess yet,’ said Zagora. ‘This morning’s purges are being organised by witch hunters.’

‘The Order?’ Niksar stumbled to a halt.

Zagora waved him on. ‘We need to put some distance between us and that body.’

Niksar shook his head as he stumbled across the square. The Order of Azyr were hard-line zealots, killers who hunted down anyone considered a threat to the Sigmarite faith. Their methods of extracting information were famously inventive and as the assaults on the city grew worse, the fanatics gained even more power, striking without censure at anyone they deemed suspect.

‘And you need to stay away from that woman,’ said Zagora.

They left the square and hurried through the growing light to the edge of the Veins. Finally, after walking in silence for half an hour, they left the slum stacks behind and headed out into the wider, cleaner streets of the Temple Quarter with its grand stormstone facades. The buildings here were sturdy and well-made, and they were still mostly intact. Even here, though, there were cracks in the road that revealed ominous, sinuous shapes beneath. As they wound higher, up through the levels of the city, they began to catch glimpses of the bay and the city’s hulking bastion walls, lined with garrisons and siege cannons. Beyond the rain-whipped harbour and the bobbing masts of the ships, Niksar saw the Consecralium: the forbidding keep of the White Angels. It was probably the city’s last hope of survival. But it might also be his final resting place if this ever got out.

Zagora saw his troubled glance and paused. They both leant against a wall to catch their breath.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘There’s so much going on at the moment that your idiocy will probably go overlooked. You’ve promised me you’ll have nothing more to do with her. And I killed the dockhand. So he’s not likely to talk. And I’m sure you weren’t so stupid as to be seen in Ocella’s company. As long as there’s nothing linking you to either of them the Order won’t come looking for you.’

Niksar frowned.

She studied him. ‘Is there something linking you to them?’

He looked at the Consecralium again, imagining the White Angels spilling from its depths, nailing the faithless to walls. ‘There… Well… Possibly.’

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall.

‘Ocella didn’t usually pay me with glimmerings,’ he said, referring to the prophetic stones used as currency in Excelsis. ‘We had an arrangement. I kept her safe and then we shared the objects she… procured.’

Zagora looked amused. ‘You kept her safe?’

‘She’s still alive.’

She laughed. ‘How you’ve made a career as a hired sword is beyond me. I saw you up on that wall. You were looking off into nowhere when I shot the docker. Lost in a daydream. Like always.’

‘I’m not the dreamer.’

She ignored the jibe. ‘Did you keep all the “objects” Ocella gave you?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? I knew she was odd but I had no idea she was a cultist.’

‘I don’t know if she’s a cultist. But she certainly doesn’t worry about whose company she keeps. I’ll be amazed if she survives the day. This is not the time to be involved with dubious societies. Did you keep everything she gave you?’

‘Yes. My plan was to sell them as a collection. I need to raise a lot of glimmerings, you see. I have a problem with–’

Zagora held up a hand. ‘One problem’s enough for now. I can imagine how many other disasters you’re working on.’ She looked out at the harbour and the churning clouds. ‘Everything might still be fine. If you’d sold any of those things people would be talking about them. But if you’ve still got them stashed away, no one knows you have them. You have to get back to your rooms. Destroy everything that connects you to Ocella. What are we talking about? A couple of weapons? Some jewellery?’

Niksar massaged his temples, avoiding her gaze. ‘It might be easier if I show you.’

‘I don’t want to see them. Just get rid of them. And quickly. If the witch hunters find you in possession of that stuff, Sigmar help both of us.’

‘I can’t just throw it all away. I need to sell those things, Zagora. You don’t understand how much trouble I’ll be in if I don’t.’

She waved at the distant fortress overlooking the bay, and the bodies hung in cages at its walls. ‘More trouble than being taken to the Knights Excelsior?’

Niksar slumped against the wall. ‘I’m dead.’

She stood and hauled him to his feet. ‘If you were, my life would be so much easier.’

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