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The Path to Glory – Evan Dicken

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A Black Library Publication

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The Path to Glory

Evan Dicken

Sulla

‘Hold the line!’ Captain Sulla shouted over the roar of combat. The Lantic forces drowned in a sea of blades, their ragged shield wall battered by the unreasoning tides of battle. Sulla swung her heavy greatsword, sprays of blood rising like startled birds as she hacked at the press.

Azakul the Winnower’s host seemed without end. Chaos marauders pushed forward, their faces bent around armatures of rage, spitting blood and teeth as they beat at the Lantic line. Sulla screamed back at them – insults, curses, oaths, but no prayers.

She would never make that mistake again.

A shrieking face emerged from the press. Standing a head taller than his fellows, the marauder champion was cloud pale, his beard woven with Lantic medals similar to the ones glittering on Sulla’s breastplate. He howled a corrupted legionary battle hymn as he brought his maul whistling down. Rather than block the blow, Sulla retreated a step, grinning as the champion overextended himself and stumbled forward. She raised her greatsword like a spear so the momentum of the man’s charge impaled him on the long blade, bringing them face to face. She could see he was young, the blasphemous sigils etched into his flesh still red and raw – a recent convert, then, one of the poor souls Empress Xerastia had meant to rescue.

His breath was hot on her cheek.

‘Die, traitor.’

With a scowl, Sulla twisted her sword, dragging it through the marauder’s chest before kicking him back into his comrades. The battle eddied around her as the Chaos forces drew back, uncertain.

Leaning on her sword, Sulla scanned the battle. The Lantic lines looked to be holding, a thin ribbon of gold arrayed against the fury of Azakul’s horde. The hot breeze carried hints of powder and oiled metal from the left flank, where the legion’s few cannons were ranged on the dune behind the scarred bulk of Old Tiberius, their last surviving steam tank. Like the heart of an ageing yet trusty warhorse, Tiberius’ boiler had burst as it slogged through the rusty orange sand of Chamon’s iron desert, but rather than abandon the steam tank, the legion had dragged it up onto the dune to serve as a bulwark against the Chaos forces.

Pride blossomed in Sulla’s chest – even alone, surrounded, and betrayed by their god, the Lantic Empire didn’t abandon its own. Her people died like heroes, but they still died.

‘Captain!’ It was Ardahir, the standard bearer for the empress’ personal legion. A red-spotted bandage covered the ruin of his left eye, his gilded armour chipped and battered. He carried a blade in one hand, the other bound to the ragged Lantic banner. Limping up, he thrust his chin at the centre of the horde. ‘They made it! Empress Xerastia faces the Winnower.’

Sulla squinted through the clouds of rust kicked up by the battle. The trackless iron desert had obscured the legion’s movements from the many Chaos warbands that roamed Chamon, but it was hell to fight in. They’d been just three days’ march from Uliashtai when the Winnower found them. Empress Xerastia had chosen to fight rather than lead another horde to the City of Gears.

Sulla caught a flash of gold amidst the tarnished murk, the empress’ armour glimmering like a coin tossed into a murky fountain.

Empress Xerastia’s plan had worked, in a way. The last remnants of the Lantic Legions had been too enticing a prize for the Winnower. The Chaos lord had committed his horde to the charge while Xerastia sneaked a cadre of hand-picked knights around to cut the head from the blasphemous host. But Azakul’s horde had been far larger than expected, its ranks swollen with traitors and fools.

‘She’s surrounded.’ Sulla gave Ardahir an anxious frown. ‘Does General Kelephon know?’

‘The general’s dead.’ The standard bearer winced. ‘Damn chimera broke through on the right, would’ve rolled up our entire flank if Kelephon hadn’t led the command battalion into the breach.’

Anger rose like bile in Sulla’s throat. Kelephon had been a pompous ass, but no coward – far better than most of the Lantic nobles who’d purchased their commissions. Another death to lay at Sigmar’s feet. The god’s treachery burned in her memory, Sulla’s anger so hot and bright she felt as if it would burst from her in a spray of flame.

‘Who’s in charge, then?’ she asked.

The standard bearer cocked his head.

‘No.’ Sulla’s mouth was dry, her scalp hot and prickly. ‘All of them?’

‘Afraid so.’ Ardahir glanced nervously towards the beleaguered Lantic lines. ‘Don’t mean to rush you, captain.’

Sulla cursed. Empress Xerastia’s expedition to lift the siege of Uliashtai had been doomed from the start. The legion had fought its way to a dozen former Lantic cities only to find them destroyed or gone over to Chaos. Khemal, Nehaj, Thun – the names of the traitorous cities burned in Sulla’s memory. She’d even heard rumours that some of the Eshunnaic Legion had defected after the fall of the Gilded Steamgird, but that had to be impossible…

When word had come that the mages in Uliashtai still resisted the tides of Chaos, Sulla had dared let herself be swept up by Xerastia’s blind hope. In the end, it had been a choice between dying by slow cuts or risking everything.

It was the same choice Sulla faced now.

Bright flashes marked the distant ridge where Empress Xerastia fought Azakul the Winnower. Few knights remained at her side, but they were cut off, buried by rank upon rank of dark-armoured warriors. The Chaos horde turned back on itself like a snake devouring its tail in an attempt to reach the Lantic empress. If Sulla called a retreat, the legion would survive, battered but intact.

She discarded the thought with a fierce scowl. She was no traitor, no coward.

‘Captain, your orders?’ Ardahir asked.

‘Sigmar might have abandoned the empire, but I won’t.’ She nodded at Ardahir. ‘Give the call to dress ranks. We advance.’

There were no more horses, so Sulla and the surviving greatswords formed the point of the charge; blade, axe and bow arrayed in staggered ranks behind. Spearmen screened the advance, holding back the screaming flood while the artillery launched a ragged fusillade to clear the way, Old Tiberius’ cannon booming like a funeral drum.

Fury lent strength to Sulla’s swings, her blade in constant motion. Many thought the greatsword a weapon of pure strength. They hacked and chopped at their foes, wielding the blade with all the finesse of an orruk, never understanding greatswords required more care, more finesse than the lightest duelling sabre.

Sulla cut into the seething press of bodies. Chaos came as a roiling throng, fierce but unordered, each warrior seeking to catch the attention of their dark gods, but their ferocity was no match for Lantic discipline.

Sulla’s limbs burned, her greatsword as heavy as a steam tank. The air was thick with scents of blood, viscera and oiled steel. Her boots slipped on spilled entrails, her blade shrieked across pitted steel to nest in flesh. She was close enough to smell the foul exhalations of her foes, to see the flicker of fear in their eyes as her weapon came slashing down.

And Sulla exalted in it.

She might not be able to set her blade at Sigmar’s throat or strike down the traitorous Lofnir Fyreslayers who had destroyed the Gilded Steamgird, but she could kill the enemies of her people, here and now, stroke by bloody stroke. She and her comrades painted the corroded desert sand a bright crimson, draping the high iron dunes in a shroud of twisted bodies.

The marauders drew back, fleeing before the men and women in tattered gold. Sulla stumbled, her legs weak as wet clay, but a hand steadied her. She glanced back to see Ardahir, his standard torn but unbowed.

The surviving Lantic soldiers were like statues covered in blood and flecks of rust. They closed ranks behind her, faces grim. Sulla turned to see a phalanx of heavily armoured warriors, shields marked with the ruinous powers’ twisted sigils, their helmets worked into the visages of fearsome beasts. She shouted the order to advance, already breaking into a run. She didn’t need to look back to know the others followed – they were Lantic, they wouldn’t abandon her.

A Chaos warrior with a helmet like a snarling steelcat raised his shield to catch her blow, but Sulla reversed her swing, dropping low to hammer her blade into the back of the warrior’s knee. She leapt over the toppling man to bury her greatsword in the helmet of the traitor behind him.

Sulla didn’t even see the axe coming. A heavy weight crashed into her side. Sulla’s breastplate took the worst of the blow, but it still knocked her from her feet. Sulla rolled on the ground, her mouth filling with bloody iron sand as she struggled to draw breath. The Chaos warrior raised his axe for the killing blow.

A shadow fell over her, a curtain of heavy brocade draping over her face. She swatted the fabric before realising it was the Lantic banner. Ardahir had lunged from behind, driving the spike at the end of the banner pole into the traitor’s throat. With a snarl, the Chaos warrior hacked down, cutting the banner pole in half.

Sulla rose with a strangled shout, her greatsword sweeping up to take off the enemy’s head. Lantic soldiers surged past, matching the fierceness of Azakul’s guard. For a moment, Sulla thought they could turn the tide, but there were too many foes, there were always too many.

Beyond the mass of Chaos warriors, atop a ridge, Empress Xerastia battled alone, her armour bright against the rusty backdrop. She fought with spear and shield in the ancient fashion, the duardin runes inscribed in their gleaming surfaces burning like miniature suns as she parried blows from the Winnower’s flail. Tall as she was, the empress seemed a slight thing when ranged against the Chaos warlord’s dark bulk. The Winnower’s armour was a labyrinth of interlocking plates. Strips of steel and bronze slithered like serpents, blurring Azakul’s outline. The Winnower moved with a puppet’s jerky grace, seeming to hang from invisible strings as he pivoted to bring his flail arcing around once more.

Xerastia rolled aside, driving her spear into the Winnower’s side. Azakul’s backswing knocked the empress’ winged helm from her head. The blow left Xerastia’s hair matted with gore, her one eye blackened and bloody, the empress’ expression showing no fear, no pain. With a defiant shout, Xerastia released her shield to put both hands on her spear, forcing the blade deeper into Azakul’s chest.

The Chaos warlord’s scream was surprisingly human. He caught Xerastia by the throat, the clawed talons of his gauntlet gouging bloody rivulets in the empress’ flesh as he bent Xerastia slowly back.

It seemed impossible, but even over the din Sulla could hear the crack of Xerastia’s spine breaking.

Bitter rage bubbled up through the cracks in Sulla’s reason. She threw herself at the dark-armoured ranks, cursing her traitorous limbs for lacking strength to reach her empress.

With a roar of triumph, Azakul flung Xerastia away. A cry went up from the Lantic troops, but there was no way to reach her. The Winnower swayed on his feet, black ichor dripping from the wound at his side as he shambled towards the dying Lantic empress.

With a sound like a snapping banner a flash of azure lightning streaked down from the roiling copper clouds above to strike Xerastia’s body. Sulla blinked away flickering after-images, and saw the ridge where her empress had lain was scorched and empty.

‘It’s over, captain.’ Ardahir pulled her back.

Sulla struggled free of his grip, but strong hands took hold of her – soldiers in Lantic gold, their expressions hard and bitter. Sulla saw bloodied arms and bandaged knees, faces caked in sand-gritted gore, her comrades almost indistinguishable from the marauders they fought.

‘We need to go,’ Ardahir shouted. ‘Before the Winnower’s host regroups.’

Sulla drew in a shuddering breath. It was if a giant hand pressed down upon her, the mad strength bleeding away to leave nothing but hollow exhaustion.

‘The empire doesn’t abandon its own,’ she shouted as they dragged her from the battlefield.

‘Take a look, captain.’ Ardahir almost spat the words. ‘There’s none of our own left to abandon.’

Kaslon

Monsters came and monsters died. Transfixed by precise lines of golden light, bisected by sheets of sorcerous energy, their bones transmuted to lead, the teeming mass of Chaos fell before the power of the Gilded Order. Kaslon stood in the great pattern, his chant lending strength to the master mages at its centre. As a sorcerer of rank, Kaslon was entitled to one of the vertices, apprentices relegated to lines and connecting points, reduced to mere conduits.

The mages stood between the horde and the shanty town that had sprung up outside the rune-covered walls of Uliashtai – The City of Gears, stronghold of the Gilded Order. More than a hundred mages of rank, all who remained of the Order, were arrayed upon the sacred geometry.

Birdlike daemons slipped through the air, gouts of green balefire licking around the edges of the mages’ wards. Kaslon swallowed against the sudden upswell of fear, willing his power along the lines and vertices of the pattern’s radiant formulae.

With a wave of her withered hand, Grandmaster Lek sent bladed parabolas arcing into the bird daemons, who fell like dying embers. In concert with the other masters Lek struck the ground with her staff and white gold lines radiated from the points of the pattern, carving through the horde outside the city walls.

Kaslon tried not to look at the Lantic refugees crowded outside Uliashtai’s high walls. The refugees had come in their tens of thousands, but the autarch had ordered the gates closed before retreating to his palace, and a great shanty town had sprouted outside Uliashtai. Although the Gilded Order’s sorcery was mighty, it was not kind.

At last, as it had a hundred times before, the gibbering mass retreated before the sacred geometries of metal. It had become something of a formula – the mages of the Gilded Order would decimate the horde, then Skayne Bloodtongue and his warlocks would spend weeks drawing more creatures from the twisted realms of Chaos. Over and over the pattern played out.

Except this time, something was different.

It came first as a tremor, a fractal splintering along the outer edges of Kaslon’s wards. One of the apprentices fell to her knees, a hand pressed to her forehead.

‘Keep the pattern!’ Grandmaster Lek called.

Kaslon glanced to the pattern and found its lines bowed, razor straightness skewed as if viewed through a concave mirror. He felt his concentration slip and desperately tried to sing the lines back to congruence.

The horizon seemed to shiver, and there, streaking from the ruins of the Gilded Steamgird on bladed disks, not a score of Chaos sorcerers, but a hundred, Skayne Bloodtongue at their head.

The Chaos lord was armoured in a patchwork of scintillating scales that caught the sunlight, twisting and reflecting it like a spray of broken glass. Constellations of light spun around Bloodtongue, his slightest movement accompanied by bursts of prismatic colour. The sorcerer’s hair wild and unkempt, his craggy brow, deep-set eyes, and crooked grin giving his features a kindly, almost grandfatherly cast.

Kaslon knew better than to be fooled.

The ground shifted at the sorcerers’ passing, the air above rippling like a heat mirage. Lek brought her staff crashing down once more, but the lines that emerged were skewed and weak, the perfect symmetry of the pattern twisted beyond repair.

It was too much. Kaslon stumbled away, hands raised to shield his eyes from the maddening distortion. He watched horrified as the apprentices along the lines intersecting his vertices erupted in columns of bilious flames.

Lek sang a shield of intersecting wards only to have the lines twist back, pinioning her to the ground. Arcs of golden light sprang from the disorganised pattern, cutting many of Bloodtongue’s warlocks from the air, but the survivors came on undaunted, the skein of reality warping before them.

There was no time for consideration, no time for shame, only the need to escape. Kaslon sang the Golden Mean, rising into the air on a spiral of gilded steel. He glanced back to see the mages of the Gilded Order dying where they stood. Like candles raised against a storm, their sorceries were feeble, flickering things, easily snuffed. Kaslon looked away, cheeks burning. The pattern was broken, there was nothing to be done.

He crested the wall near the city’s eastern gate, barely able to halt his descent. Uliashtai spread before him like the innards of a massive timepiece, streets, blocks, even entire districts rearranged by the methodical rotation of ancestor gears.

It was just after noon, the great golden expanse of Clock Street a perfect line leading between the only two fixed points in Uliashtai: the Gilded Tower at the eastern end of the city and the Autarch’s Palace in the west. Visitors often became lost in the shifting paths, baffled by directions that changed depending on the time of day. They thought the city disordered, anarchic, but there was a rhythm to Uliashtai, a complex and beautiful pattern that allowed those who understood it to traverse the city with surprising speed.

Kaslon had come over the wall near the eastern gate, so the Gilded Tower was nearby. He made for it. The tower would be safe; the survivors could regroup, strike back. Unfortunately, Clock Street thronged with terrified citizens.

‘What’s happening?’ A woman in cogtender leathers caught Kaslon’s sleeve.

‘Bloodtongue, he’s…’ Kaslon chewed his lip. What had Bloodtongue done? It seemed impossible that the Chaos lord had conjured so great a working. The ritual alone must have taken months, how had the masters not sensed it?

‘Will the walls fall?’ An old man with a spring-winding crook hobbled from the crowd. ‘Should we make for the Underway?’

‘Have to go through the palace to get to the Underway,’ The woman said with a scowl. ‘And the autarch has that place locked up tighter than a duardin vault.’

‘We must stay calm.’ Kaslon used a harmonic cadence to lend his voice strength and resonance. It was as much for his benefit as the crowd’s. The people were too frightened for Kaslon to transmute their nervous energy to true calm, so he settled for directing it towards a purpose, threading his speech with rhythms of command. ‘Go back to your homes, arm yourselves and await word. I must return to the tower.’

For a moment, Kaslon worried he might have to resort to more invasive sorcery, but thankfully the crowd dispersed with only a few anxious glances at the walls. When they had cleared a path, Kaslon hurried off.

The tower rose like the fist of Sigmar, a monument to perfection, its every curve, every angle in perfect symmetry. There were no doors or windows, only the subtle interplay of dimensions, the walls composed of interlocking tesseracts. Kaslon picked the closest one and followed one of its shifting faces into the tower.

The interior was honeycombed with libraries and workshops, repositories nested within classrooms within great halls, all separate, all together. Kaslon sent a globe of glowing silver spiralling up through the overlapping planes of the tower, a call to any who might yet remain.

When he received no answer, he conjured another, and another, quick as the stutter of a dying glowbug. Bloodtongue couldn’t have annihilated the whole Order. Lips numb, Kaslon mounted the steps to the Auracularium at the tower’s apex. Formerly, it had been barred to all save masters, but there was no one to stop him.

Scores of cochlear spines studded the long, vaulted chamber, rising through the mirrored ceiling and into the open air beyond. There was one for each gilded tower in the Lantic Empire. Once they had hummed with life, bearing messages from the cities across the Mortal Realms – Chamon, Hysh, Aqshy, and beyond. Kaslon walked the length of the chamber, pausing to rest his hand upon each as he passed, feeling, pleading for the vibrations that would tell him he wasn’t alone. But the spines lay still and dead.

All save one.

The quiver was slight, barely an echo, but Kaslon recognised the tell-tale rhythms of an Order cipher. He pressed trembling fingers to the vibrating metal, lips pursed as he translated the message.

All is lost.

The empire has fallen.

Flee to Azyr. In Sigmar’s name, flee.

Before it is too late.

The message repeated, over and over. Kaslon stepped back, the air seeming too thin to fill his lungs. The masters must have received the warning, they must have known Uliashtai stood alone, and yet they’d said nothing.

Comprehension settled on Kaslon like a shroud.

To leave Uliashtai would be to admit the sacred geometries were flawed. The masters had put their faith in reason, blinded by familiar patterns, but Chaos knew no order, no pattern. Bloodtongue couldn’t defeat their logic, so he had changed the rules of reality.

Kaslon staggered from the Auracularium. Everything seemed strange to him. The great orreries, tracking the motion of the Mortal Realms; tall pillars of steel and silver; walls inscribed with immutable constants in delicate gold filigree; vast libraries, their broad shelves creaking with millennia of collected knowledge, all useless. Bloodtongue would shatter Kaslon’s geometries as easily as he had Grandmaster Lek’s.

He needed something more powerful, and he needed it quickly. The layered wards on Uliashtai’s walls kept the horde at bay for the moment, but without mages to defend and repair the apotropaic formulae, it was only a matter of time before Bloodtongue bludgeoned his way inside.

Kaslon ventured into the depths of the Gilded Tower, to where the Order locked away the most powerful and dangerous artefacts. There was no time for caution, so he made for the greatest concentration of sorcerous energy.

Stumbling down a flight of uneven stairs, Kaslon found himself in a room unlike any other. It seemed to have no walls, no ceiling, the floor soft and yielding. Strange fractals blossomed in the gloom, tugging at Kaslon’s eyes, their razor-edged intricacy surrounding him like an embrace. Something rested at their centre – a shadow, long and thin as a serpent’s slitted eye.

Kaslon stretched out a hand, flinching back at the flash of golden light. The masters had warded whatever was in this room. They couldn’t countenance any flaw in their design, any truth they couldn’t bind and quantify, so, like the message, they had hidden it away.

Kaslon tore into the wards, singing errors into their design, tiny faults that slipped into the cracks and uncoupled the chains of logic. Such blasphemy would have brought every mage in the tower down on him, but Kaslon was alone.

As the last of the protections fell away, he plunged his hand into the heart of the fractals, drawing forth a long, jagged staff. Fashioned of hard crystal, it seemed to shift in his hands, a riot of interdependent patterns sparkling within. He could feel the power radiating from it – more, he could see the promise. The staff contained multitudes, infinity writ small, bounded, yet somehow also without end.

Kaslon strode from the tower, heading for the eastern gate, staff in hand. It was all so clear now, how rigidity had destroyed the Order, how it had doomed their city, their empire.

‘Master Kaslon, praise Sigmar you survived.’ Relief was plain on the guard captain’s face as Kaslon climbed the stairs to the eastern gatehouse. ‘Bloodtongue’s creatures are swarming like locusts, but they can’t breach the walls.’

Kaslon surveyed the battlefield from atop the crenelated gatehouse. Uliashtai’s walls still held, millennia of overlapping wards proof against Bloodtongue’s sorcery for the moment. Twisted forms capered through the streets of the shanty town outside, tearing into the fleeing refugees. A mob had gathered outside the eastern gate, hammering at the great golden expanse while, inside, the guards watched with numb resignation. They had their orders, their foolish, inflexible orders. The guards were Lantic, there was no question – they would die rather than abandon their posts.

Not unless Kaslon made them.

The wards along the wall were ancient and powerful, but Kaslon knew their weakness. Like the people they shielded, they were hard, but brittle. It was delicate work, threading inconsistencies into the logical framework, but Kaslon drew upon the staff, spiralling down into its arcane fractals, each new revelation like a jolt of lightning down his spine.

Cracks began to form, wards flickering as the constants that bound them frayed. Kaslon could see it all, the fallacies, the inconsistencies. The masters had been wrong, they had all been wrong.

‘What are you doing?’ The guard captain stepped forward, hand straying to his sword hilt.

‘Saving us all.’ Kaslon let out a long breath as the gate burst open.

The guards came at him with swords and spears, their blades skittering from his wards in showers of sparks. With a sad grin, he turned to them. ‘The walls are breaking. There is nothing left. Spread the word – only the Underway remains open. Flee.’

And at last, they did.

Kaslon rode a twisting spiral down to the gate, spreading his arms wide to welcome the refugees. They came in a mad rush, filling the plaza inside the gate in a throng, their expressions wild and panicked.

‘You must remain calm.’ This time, Kaslon dispensed with subtlety, imbuing his words with enough magical force to cut through the babble. Normally, he would have been hard pressed to affect a dozen people with so blunt an enchantment, but the staff magnified Kaslon’s power. The refugees turned almost as one, eyes wide, mouths hanging open as Kaslon’s sorcerous command pressed down on them.

Kaslon tried not to wince at their glazed expressions. To lay such a compulsion on Lantic citizens went against everything the Order stood for, but if the decision was between dominating his people or watching them die, Kaslon knew what he would choose.

The mob parted as he strode towards the gate. Many of the refugees were inside, but the creatures of Chaos would be quick to follow.

He was surprised to see the flash of steel beyond the gate. A small force of men and women in Lantic gold had formed a cordon across the broken portal, holding the gate so the refugees could flee inside.

They were a ragtag bunch, their armour battered, their tabards almost unrecognisable beneath layers of blood and grime. At their fore stood a tall woman with tarnished silver captain’s stripes picked out on her breastplate. Helmetless, her dark hair was cut short in the legionary fashion, her expression sharp as the notched greatsword she swung in bloody arcs. The lines of her long face were picked out in dusty filigree, her scowl seeming bone deep.

For all her fury, Kaslon saw the legionaries would soon be overwhelmed. He drew on the staff, using the power within to lend strength to his sorceries.

He struck the ground with his staff, lines of force radiating out, shifting, transmuting. Chaos spawn floundered in earth gone suddenly soft, drowning in quicksilver. Spikes of liquid steel arced up from the ground to carve into the horde, as a golden lattice formed between the legionaries and their attackers.

The Lantic soldiers fell back, surprised, the captain calling out orders.

‘Quick, to the gate. My spells won’t hold them long!’ Kaslon shouted. The staff was like a living thing, writhing in his grasp, struggling to wrest free of Kaslon’s sorcerous bonds.

The legionaries rushed past, the captain stopping beside Kaslon while her soldiers filed inside.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her expression guarded. ‘You’re of the Gilded Order?’

Kaslon nodded, still struggling to cut the flow of energy from the staff. It was like trying to dam a river midstream.

‘My name’s Sulla. I command what’s left of the empress’ legion,’ she said.

‘Kaslon,’ he gritted out, sighing as the staff finally quieted.

‘We saw your battle with the Chaos sorcerers. How many Order mages remain?’

‘I may be the last.’ Kaslon turned back towards the gate. ‘Uliashtai has fallen. I can lead you from the city, but we must hurry.’

She snorted. ‘You’ll get no argument from me.’

Together, they hurried through the gate, Sulla already calling to her soldiers. ‘Ardahir, have the legionaries keep the people together, we need to move quickly.’

A small man clutching a broken staff nodded, and began shouting orders. With Kaslon’s enchantments tamping down their fear, the crowd fell in with no argument.

Sulla watched them, frowning. ‘Those people were screaming their heads off just five minutes ago. What did you do to them?’

Kaslon kept his expression neutral. ‘I did what was necessary.’

Sulla opened her mouth as if to speak, but her words were drowned out by the shriek of tearing metal.

‘They come!’ Kaslon shouted, already making for the far end of the plaza.

Sulla followed, her long legs easily keeping pace. ‘We’ll hold them off. You lead the others to safety.’

‘No need.’ Kaslon regarded the toothy border where the gate plaza’s ancestor gear met that of Clock Street. Already the street was almost blocked, the wall of a huge storehouse obstructing more than half of the entrance as the gears ticked their inexorable progress. ‘Get your people through that opening. In another minute or two Bloodtongue’s creatures will have to tear through half a district to catch us.’

Sulla raised an eyebrow.

‘This is Uliashtai.’ Kaslon spread his arms. ‘The city defends itself.’

With Kaslon’s enchantments and Sulla’s legionaries driving the crowd the refugees made good time, the stragglers slipping through the thin opening just as the first of Bloodtongue’s creatures burst into the plaza.

‘We must make for the Autarch’s Palace,’ Kaslon said. ‘The Underway opens beneath.’

Sulla’s scowl relaxed a fraction. ‘Lead the way, mage.’

They hurried through the shifting city, the distant roars of Chaos monstrosities urging them on. More people joined them from the surrounding houses and storefronts.

‘We’re making good time.’ Sulla joined Kaslon at the front of the column. ‘I set a dozen legionaries at the back to round up stragglers.’

‘I’m grateful for you and your soldiers, captain.’ He glanced at her uniform. ‘I thought the Lantic Legions were lost.’

‘We were,’ Sulla replied.

‘What are you doing in Uliashtai?’

She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘We came to save you.’

Livius

Livius awoke among the dead. Corpses sprawled across silken divans, lay draped across marble balustrades, and were wedged amidst the larger gears of the palace’s clockwork. Some bodies were prepared as if for a funeral, although whoever had begun the ritual appeared to have either died or fled before the transmutation from flesh to metal could begin.

Livius called for his mother, his father, anyone, but his throat was dry, his voice a weak croak. His last memory was of stumbling to his knees, Countess Ikara shrieking as blood came pouring from her mouth. With a groan, he rolled to his knees. It took him some time to rise, and even longer to find an unopened bottle of wine.

Not that Livius wanted to get drunk, he just knew better than to trust the water.

The Autarch’s Palace was unnaturally quiet. Gone was the music and laughter, the whispers, the raised voices and drunken slurs, the clash of duelling sabres. Blood and vomit stained the nobles’ fine robes a muddy brown, their exposed flesh covered with weeping sores. Livius’ memories came on like a nightmare.

The siege had done nothing to lessen the autarch’s already acute paranoia, and he had ordered the palace sealed at the first signs of plague, ancestor gears churning, every egress barred by heavy steel shutters. No one questioned his decision. Rumour had it that the sickness was worse in the streets, but few had any interest in venturing out to see. To leave court was to give rivals the chance to plot in your absence. Great families had been undone by less, and Livius’ family was far from great.

It had been too late. Death stalked the vaulted halls, the gear-lined chambers, snatching up people without regard for wealth or station. Livius had been one of the first to succumb, to no one’s surprise.

He stumbled past the bloated corpse of Baron Haakon, surrounded by the bodies of a dozen of his moon-faced progeny. A fat man even before the plague, the Baron’s skin had split to reveal rotting abscesses, red-tinged bile staining the thick carpet beneath.

Livius took a long pull from his bottle. Then again, perhaps he did want to get drunk.

A sudden bout of dizziness left Livius leaning against the wall, panting. He took a long drink to steady himself then stumbled down the hall towards the duelling floor. Alive or dead, his mother would be there.

Livius felt a flush of familiar embarrassment as he stepped into the enormous duelling hall. The chamber was circular, stepped seats surrounding a floor studded with raised gears. Livius winced as he recalled the one and only time he’d stepped onto a duelling gear. It’d been over a stumble on the dance floor that jostled Countess Atia’s skirts. Livius had been so nervous, his legs trembling, his skin seeming too tight. Atia had barely needed to take a step before he’d lost his footing, stumbling from the gear without her even needing to draw blood. Worse than the laughter were the beatings his mother had given him under the guise of ‘training’, as if bruises and broken fingers could wipe away the stain of embarrassment.

The memory stung Livius’ eyes like smoke. He drained the last few drops of wine then tossed the bottle aside. It made a very satisfying crash.

He found his mother sprawled across a sparring gear, Widowbane, the family sabre, clutched in her rotting fist as if she planned to cut the plague’s throat. Livius knew the sight should make him sad, or glad, or relieved, but he couldn’t seem to summon even the barest flicker of emotion.

Livius stepped up onto the gear and squatted next to the corpse, eyeing the rune-inscribed sabre. It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn his mother’s pale, glassy eyes followed him as he moved.

‘Our family has boasted heroes, kings, emperors. You’re not even worthy to speak their names.’ His mother’s voice echoed in Livius’ thoughts. ‘I’ll die before I pass Widowbane to you.’

‘You never could be wrong, mother.’ Livius pried the rune-inscribed blade from her grip, wondering if she’d died just to spite him.

He half expected sparks, or light, or flames, something to mark Widowbane as special. Family legend said the blade was a gift from Sigmar himself, transmuted from the bones of a hundredfold great-granduncle who had died nobly on some hoary battlefield of old.

Nothing happened, so Livius ran through some forms, drunkenness blurring his movements, and causing him to stumble.

Sloppy. Disgusting. An orruk could do better.

He winced, shoulders high.

You’re an embarrassment to the empire, to our family.

‘You’re an embarrassment!’ He whirled on his mother, stabbing down. Widowbane slid into her chest, necrotic flesh parting like clouds before the enchanted blade. He slashed at her again and again. ‘Commoners die in plagues, mother. Not nobles, not heroes. What does that make you?’

The exertion left Livius lightheaded. He overbalanced, ankle twisting to send him toppling from the gear. It was only a foot or so to the floor, but Livius landed awkwardly, skinning one knee on the tiles, Widowbane clattering from his grip.

Face burning, he snatched up the sword and stumbled from the chamber, his mother’s laughter chasing him from the hall.

Livius ran until his legs gave out, then slumped against the wall, gasping. Thankfully, the palace was silent save for the slow rasp of ancestor gears. He could feel their cold regard, blood calling to blood, however distant, however diluted. Transmuted from the flesh and bone of those who had come before, the Autarch’s Palace was the work of generations. Like his mother, the palace despised weakness, and Livius was nothing if not weak.

He sat for a long time, legs drawn up, face pressed against his knees as he had when he was very small, before his mother had found him and given his backside a dozen welts with the flat of Widowbane. But mother was gone, now, wasn’t she?

Dully, Livius wondered if they were all gone. It seemed impossible Livius was the only survivor. He pushed himself to his feet, wiping a sleeve across his face. ‘Time to find out.’

The corpses were fresher in the throne room. They were piled thick around the high articulated columns, splayed across the carpet, slumped in the shadowed alcoves where oaths and betrayals had been wrought in whispered tones. It made sense they would have gathered here at the last. Livius would have come himself if the sickness hadn’t overcome him so quickly. With morbid amusement, he wondered whether his father had been disappointed or relieved Livius had been the first to succumb.

He found the old man stretched out below the autarch’s dais, one beringed hand outflung as if to claw his way up the stairs. The plague had yellowed his father’s ruddy skin and made dark the hollows of his eyes, but the old man’s expression maintained an air of impatient irritation, like he’d taken death’s measure and found it wanting.

‘It seems fitting.’ Livius stepped over his father’s corpse, glancing up at the throne. ‘All your schemes and intrigues, and here you are, still sprawled at the autarch’s feet.’

At least I tried, boy.

‘Fair, fair,’ Livius nodded. The reply was typical of his father – when the old man deigned to notice Livius at all it was usually to berate him.

Sharp as a spoon, this one. You never had the mind for intrigue.

‘And yet, here I am.’ Livius clucked his tongue. ‘And there you are.’

And why do you think that is, boy?

Livius swallowed, unsure. How had he been the only one to survive?

Think you fought off the plague all on your own? That you were spared because you’re special? His father’s chuckle was thick and wet. You weren’t worth killing.

‘I’ll show you what I’m worth.’ Livius turned away from his father to climb the dais steps.

The Autarch of Uliashtai sat slumped on the edge of his throne, awash in gold embroidered robes now far too large for his plague-ravaged frame. His breastplate was embossed with silver cogs, arranged in a way that they seemed to be turning as Livius approached. Next to the meticulous finery of Uliashtai’s ruler, Livius seemed a beggar in tattered linen, his doublet stained with blood and bile.

The autarch had been a hero in his youth, fighting alongside his niece, Empress Xerastia, even as Chaos devoured the Mortal Realms. He had slain warlords and beasts, set scores of daemons and monsters screeching into oblivion. Beloved of the gods, the autarch had risen high, wielding powers beyond mortal comprehension, but the fall of the Steamgird had broken him, left the man bitter and paranoid. Instead of marching forth, the autarch had retreated from the world, locking his court inside the palace’s ancient walls.

‘And none of it saved you,’ Livius said, his voice little more than a whisper. His barest touch was enough to send the autarch’s body toppling down the stairs. Livius froze, mortified, but the blank faces of the dead held no admonition. He let out a long slow breath, then sat in the autarch’s throne.

He grinned down at his father. ‘Do you see me now?’

But the old man would never see, none of them would.

Livius had dreamed of this day. Now, he saw how foolish, how worthless it all was. He drew up his legs, pressed his face to his knees, and wept.

He had no idea how long he sat that way, but he must have fallen asleep, for a great hammering snatched him from fevered dreams. He stumbled to his feet, almost pitching headlong from the dais.

It had to be Skayne Bloodtongue, Chaos come at last. But no, the palace was still sealed, he would have felt if the gates were breached. Widowbane in hand, Livius stumbled down the stairs, stepping gingerly over his father. Thankfully, the old man remained quiet.

At the far balcony, Livius saw dark fingers of smoke curling up from inside the city walls. Bloodtongue’s creatures rampaged through the churning gears of the outer city, their progress marked by flashes of green-and-yellow balefire as they battled both the defenders and each other.

Livius glanced down, surprised to see not daemons, but a great mass of people below. Men and women in legionary gold assaulted the palace gate with a makeshift ram, to little effect. After a few moments, a robed man stepped from the crowd. Rolling back his sleeves to display dark skin inlaid with the delicate filigree of the Gilded Order, he brandished a crystal staff at the gate, unleashing a torrent of jagged lines.

But the gate was more than just iron and bronze, it was blood, and bone, and flesh – the souls of a thousand thousand Lantic heroes. They would not yield.

Livius called out, but his voice was too weak, so he staggered back to the throne, gripping the armrests with nervous strength. There were people below, his people, and the Lantic didn’t abandon their own.

He concentrated, willing the gears to turn, the gate to open. For a moment, he feared his blood was too weak, that the ancestor gears would fail to recognise him. Then, slowly, grudgingly, they began to move.

It was torture. Livius could feel their gaze upon him – queens, kings, autarchs, emperors, empresses in a long line stretching back to the beginning. Who was he to sit upon their throne? To command their obedience? Livius felt naked, exposed, worse than worthless.

Then came the pain. Their disdain raged through him like cold fire. Livius must have blacked out, because the next thing he knew there were people in the throne room.

Strong hands lifted him from the throne. ‘This one’s alive.’

Livius opened his eyes to see a tall, sharp-faced woman in the uniform of a Lantic captain. She wore a greatsword strapped to her back, and although her armour was battered to almost shapelessness, Livius could just make out the markings of the empress’ personal legion on her breastplate.

She set him down with surprising gentleness, tipping a canteen of warm water to his lips.

Livius drank greedily. The Gilded mage stepped into his vision, kneeling to offer a hunk of stale bread.

‘Careful, careful,’ the sorcerer’s voice seemed to resonate within Livius’ thoughts. ‘You’ll make yourself sick.’

‘You opened the gates?’ the captain asked.

Livius’ mouth was too full to respond, so he just nodded.

‘What happened here?’ the sorcerer asked.

Livius swallowed a large mouthful. ‘Plague.’

‘Strange.’ The sorcerer pursed his lips. ‘There was no sickness in the city.’

‘What does it matter?’ The captain said angrily. ‘They’re dead. And we’ll join them if we don’t keep moving.’

The sorcerer ignored her. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Livius. I am – was part of the autarch’s court.’ He took a bite, then looked around. ‘Now, I don’t know.’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ the captain said.

The sorcerer pressed a hand to his chest. ‘I’m Kaslon, and my impatient friend here is Captain Sulla.’

Livius stood unsteadily, nodding his thanks to them both.

‘Where is the Underway?’ Sulla asked.

‘Careful, that’s no way to address your emperor,’ Kaslon said.

Sulla took a step back, her mouth working. ‘You can’t mean…?’

‘He is of the blood.’ Kaslon leant on his odd crystal staff to offer Livius a deep bow. ‘Do you know of any other surviving nobility, captain?’

Livius swallowed, feeling his stomach clench. How many times had he dreamed of this? In the quiet, desperate moments when his parents’ expectations pressed in around him, when embarrassment burned like fire in his cheeks, when his failures and disappointments piled so high they seemed to blot out the sun? He’d fantasised about becoming emperor, but not like this, never like this.

Thankfully, he was able to lurch away before the vomit came boiling up. When he turned back, red-faced and ashamed, they were all kneeling.

‘Emperor Livius,’ Sulla said, her tone forced. ‘Your people need you.’

Kaslon

Kaslon stared into the latticed depths of the staff, drinking in the jagged interplay of its facets. He could feel the hint of a pattern lurking just beyond his ability to grasp. He would not repeat the Order’s mistakes. The masters had been unable to accept anything outside the narrow bounds of their logic. But knowledge had no bounds, no limits. Kaslon understood that now, just as he understood that to truly defeat Chaos he would first need to understand it.

‘They’re almost here.’ The hard rasp of Sulla’s voice broke Kaslon from his contemplation. She was leaning over the throne room balcony, scowling out at the city beyond.

He glanced up, frowning. ‘And the refugees?’

‘Still coming,’ she said with only the barest of flinches. The city guard had spread word of the Underway, and with the Autarch’s Palace lying open the people of Uliashtai had come in their hundreds and thousands, desperate to escape Bloodtongue’s creatures.

‘We must close the gates,’ Kaslon said almost without thinking.

Sulla’s scowl was sharp enough to etch glass. ‘And abandon our people?’

‘Better than losing everyone.’ Kaslon glanced at Livius.

The new emperor frowned, looking as if he was about to faint. Although eating had restored some of the young noble’s colour, it had done nothing to dispel the nervous flightiness that seemed to cling to him like a miasma.

‘I don’t think I can,’ Livius stammered. ‘Close the gate, I mean.’

‘What?’ Sulla asked.

‘I’m sorry,’ Livius said. ‘Opening the Palace nearly killed me.’

‘Then it’s settled.’ Sulla gave Kaslon a hard look. ‘The gates stay open.’

‘And what will we do when Bloodtongue’s monsters come shrieking down the Underway after us? We can’t outdistance them, not with all these people.’ Kaslon laid a hand on Livius’ shoulder, threading his words with lines of compulsion. He could feel them loop around the young noble’s scattered thoughts, then draw tight, leaving no room for fear or doubt. ‘You must try, emperor.’

‘I will try,’ Livius repeated.

Sulla made a disgusted rattle in the back of her throat. ‘I can’t believe a Lantic Emperor would–’

‘There’s more than honour at stake, here.’ Kaslon spoke over her. ‘The empire is dead, captain. Now isn’t the time to cling to tired doctrines, we’re facing extinction.’ He flicked his hand at the burning city visible beyond the balcony. ‘More than extinction, they will erase us from history.’

Sulla’s hands made white-knuckled fists at her side. ‘And what will we tell those inside the palace who have friends and family outside?’

‘Tell them it’s a necessary sacrifice,’ Kaslon said. ‘They’re Lantic, they’ll understand.’

Sulla looked to Livius, who trembled under the captain’s gaze.

‘I’m the emperor.’ The young noble’s voice was as thin as gold foil. ‘I’m responsible.’

‘Fine.’ Sulla flicked an angry hand towards the crowd gathered in the autarch’s court. ‘Then you tell them you’re leaving the city to die.’

With a terrified nod, Livius took a few steps up the dais.

Kaslon summoned the power for a spell, already tugging at the threads that would give Livius courage, but a strong hand fell on his shoulder, the grip painfully tight.

‘I looked the other way in the plaza.’ Sulla’s breath was hot on Kaslon’s ear. ‘I won’t again. We’re Lantic, mage, we stand free – to the end.’

Kaslon felt a momentary flash of irritation. It seemed the captain and her soldiers were too strong-willed to succumb to arcane compulsion. He gave a sour nod, and let the power bleed away.

‘I’m glad we have an understanding.’ The pressure on Kaslon’s shoulder relaxed.

‘My people,’ Livius looked like a caged animal, shoulders high, gaze darting around the chamber. ‘You don’t know me, but I am your emperor.’

That got the crowd’s attention.

‘Bloodtongue’s horde is inside the walls. They’ll be here soon.’ Livius swallowed, glancing at Kaslon for support. ‘We… we must flee. If I don’t close the palace gates now, Bloodtongue will–’

‘We can’t abandon the city!’ Shouts trickled from the back of the chamber. ‘My brother is still outside!’

Livius blanched. ‘I know we’re Lantic, but maybe just this once we could–’

‘Coward!’ The crowd took up the cry. ‘Traitor!’

‘I order you to flee!’ Livius was red-faced now, his voice high and desperate. ‘I’m your emperor. I’m your emperor!’

‘Are you satisfied?’ Kaslon pulled free of Sulla’s grasp. ‘The emperor has made his choice, or don’t you follow orders any more, captain?’

Sulla’s glare was deadly, but she gave a tight nod. ‘I’ll have my people restore order, explain why we need to close the palace gates. If there’s one thing the Lantic people understand, it’s sacrifice.’

Livius collapsed into the autarch’s throne, looking ready to vomit again.

‘Fine speech, boy.’ Sulla stalked off, abandoning all pretence of deference.

‘You made the right choice,’ Kaslon stepped up to lay a hand on Livius’ arm.

‘What does it matter?’ Livius put his face in his hands. ‘What does any of it matter?’

‘You showed bravery,’ Kaslon said, acutely aware the court was full of the corpses of Livius’ friends and family. He glanced at the autarch’s throne. ‘But there are trials, yet.’

‘The gates.’ Livius’ face crumpled.

‘You are emperor,’ Kaslon said.

Like a man facing his own execution, Livius straightened, fingers curling around the toothed cogs set into the arms of the throne. Shudders wracked the young noble’s body. Sweat broke out on his face as he convulsed upon the autuarch’s throne, a thin line of blood trickling from his nose.

Kaslon wanted to reach out, to use his powers to aid the young man, but the ancestor gears would not turn for sorcery. Only blood would tell.

So he waited, hands tight upon the staff, his throat dry as the iron desert.

Livius cried out, his back arching so sharply Kaslon feared it might snap, but, at last, the great gears began to move.

The first cries rose from outside the palace. At first surprised, they quickly turned furious as the gates slammed down.

Jaw clenched so tightly he feared his teeth might crack, Kaslon helped Livius down from the throne. The young noble was barely conscious, his feet slipping on the smooth marble stairs.

‘See, father, see,’ Livius muttered as Kaslon half carried him from the throne room and down through the spiralling galleries that led to the Underway.

Sulla’s soldiers had begun herding the refugees towards their escape. They marched down the stairs, shoulders hunched, muttering and surly. Grim men and women in tarnished legionary gold moved among the crowd. Their gazes raked over Kaslon, sharp as blades, but he paid them no mind. The Lantic soldiers would do their duty.

With a tight frown Kaslon followed, knowing that if he looked back, even for a moment, all was lost.

Runes lit the vaulted shadows of the Underway. Constructed long ago as a show of friendship between man and duardin, it burrowed beneath Chamon’s metal skin in a perfect line, connecting Uliashtai to the hold of their old allies in the Lofnir lodge.

Kaslon could feel it in his bones: the meticulous care in every line, every column perfectly arranged, nothing out of place. It was like standing between mirrors, flawless reflections retreating to infinity. The Gilded Order had worked hand in hand with the Auric Runemasters of the duardin, just as they had on the Gilded Steamgird, the great wall that had protected the empire since time immemorial. That was before the Lofnir lodge had betrayed them, brought the Steamgird crashing down and the Lantic Empire along with it.

The tunnel was quiet save for the echoing footfalls of the refugee column, silent now that the wails of those left behind had faded into the distance. The survivors clumped together in ragged bunches, eyes downcast as they hurried along, blind to the marvels around them. Massive metal statues lined the tunnel – heroes of the Empire, their armour picked out in golden foil, their shoulders broad and unbowed. Their eyes seemed to follow Kaslon as he passed, the heat of their steely gaze like a fire at his back.

He grunted. Let them judge him; the empire they knew was gone.

Kaslon gripped his staff tighter, leaning on it for support. The answer lay within its prismatic depths, he was sure of it. The power to save his people, to master Chaos. Kaslon knew he could find the truth.

He just needed more time.

Livius

‘We must stop,’ Livius said. It felt like days since he’d last rested, perhaps longer – they had been unable to mark time in the unchanging twilight of the Underway.

‘The Azyr Realmgate is but a few hours’ march,’ Kaslon said, shielding his eyes from the bright coppery sun overhead, as the refugees emerged from the Lofnir lodge’s massive gate in a staggering mass, blinking against the glare.

‘What use is reaching it if half our number are dead from exhaustion?’ Livius glanced back along the ragged column. Livius could see the exhaustion dragging in their every step, the quiet desperation that hung about them like a fog.

‘I agree with Livius,’ Sulla said. ‘We lost too many in the lodge. To press on would be suicide.’

Livius shivered at the memory of the Lofnir lodge’s vast empty halls and vacant chambers, its duardin inhabitants having abandoned the great bronze citadel in their mad lust for ur-gold. The channels and sluices had overflowed, molten iron spilling onto the broad thoroughfares, drowning the duardin halls and forges in a mass of cooling slag. Many had been overcome by the fumes, tumbling from the high bridges to disappear into the deep red of Chamon’s lifeblood. Livius would have been one of them if Sulla hadn’t ordered her legionaries to carry him. Thankfully, the lodge was stifling, and Livius’ humiliated flush was mistaken for heat stroke.

‘If Bloodtongue catches us, we’ll lose everyone,’ Kaslon said.

‘It would take him days to cross the Ringing Hills overland,’ Sulla stepped up to glare down at the mage. ‘And the palace gates are barred, remember?’

They looked to Livius. Responsibility hung like a noose around his neck, slowly strangling him. He chewed his lower lip, glancing at the jagged horizon. ‘Is that the Steamgird?’

Sulla grunted. ‘What’s left of it.’

‘We’ll rest there,’ Livius said.

Perhaps an hour later they collapsed in the derelict shadow of the Gilded Steamgird, its broken walls still bristling with the shattered remnants of cannons, arc casters, galvanic trip hammers, organ guns, and other war dynamos.

‘The empire will never see its like again.’ Sulla sat next to Livius, passing him a canteen.

The water was warm and tasted of rust, but Livius drank greedily before passing it back. ‘The Lofnir, why do you think they did it?’

‘Why do duardin do anything?’ Sulla shrugged. ‘Their reason doesn’t concern me, only their actions. And they will pay for those.’

The barely leashed anger in Captain Sulla’s voice made Livius uncomfortable. It reminded him too much of his mother. So he changed the subject. ‘You fought with Empress Xerastia?’

Sulla straightened a bit. ‘I did.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Xerastia?’ She sat quietly for a long while. ‘She was a hero.’

‘I’m sorry about back at the palace, I just couldn’t see any other way.’ He glanced away. ‘I’m no hero.’

‘I think the time for heroes is long past.’ She gave a tight smile, then clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Now get some rest, emperor. It might be your last chance.’

It seemed like Livius had just closed his eyes when he was shaken awake, but the sun was already slipping below the horizon.

Kaslon loomed over him. ‘He comes – Skayne Bloodtongue.’

Livius jolted up, rubbing his eyes. ‘Through the tunnel? So quickly?’

Kaslon frowned. ‘No. He comes overland.’

‘Impossible.’ A nearby shadow resolved into Captain Sulla. ‘The Ringing Hills would take days to cross.’

‘With Chaos, nothing is impossible,’ Kaslon said with a thin smile. ‘Bloodtongue flies. He hunts us with a small force.’

‘How small a force?’ Sulla asked, one hand drifting to the hilt of her greatsword.

‘I don’t know,’ Kaslon replied, gaze flicking to his staff. ‘I can only sense the echoes of his coming.’

Sulla made a fist, her grin as fierce as it was sudden. ‘This is our chance.’

Livius blinked.

‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘Bloodtongue overreaches. My soldiers and I can set an ambush, cut the head from the serpent!’

‘You may be all that remains of your legion,’ Kaslon said, his words taking on a deep, resonant quality. They seemed to slip inside Livius’ skull to echo through his thoughts. ‘We can’t afford to risk–’

‘I don’t follow your orders, mage. And if you try to enchant me again, I’ll break your legs and leave you for Bloodtongue.’ Sulla’s voice was low and threatening. She looked at Livius, her expression furious as she thrust her chin at Kaslon. ‘I saw it back at the city, this one’s been using sorcery to get his way.’

‘It was necessary.’ Kaslon crossed his arms. ‘Just like it’s necessary that we stay together.’

Livius glanced between them, wanting to run even though he knew there was no escape. Back at the palace, when Kaslon had spoken, Livius had felt, if not heroic, then brave, at least. He’d felt like the mage believed in him, like they all believed in him.

Just another lie.

A strange calmness settled on Livius. What did it matter? There was no escape. What did any of it matter? The only real choice that remained was how they would die.

Livius looked to Sulla, and nodded. ‘Go.’

She turned away, already shouting orders.

‘She’s going to get them all killed,’ Kaslon said.

‘They want to die like heroes,’ Livius said quietly. ‘I’d be a poor emperor if I didn’t let them.’

‘We should make sure their sacrifice isn’t in vain.’ Disdain whetted Kaslon’s words to razor sharpness, but the resonance was gone from his voice.

Livius took a long, slow breath, wondering if he should have gone with Sulla and put an end to his sad charade of a reign, but knowing he was still too much of a coward. ‘Wake the others. We make for the realmgate.’

Sulla

The fury shrieked as Sulla pinioned it with her greatsword, its filthy claws slashing bare inches from her face. Bloodtongue had brought with him a flock of the batlike humanoids, their membranous wings propelling them through the air. Sulla had fought monsters and daemons before – red-skinned devils with blades of pitted steel, great bronze-clad monstrosities that scattered men like pebbles – but none of it had prepared her for the speed and viciousness of the furies’ attack.

They clawed through the air like vultures, their high, teeth-gritting shrieks seeming to bore into Sulla’s skull as they darted through the dusky shadows. The first volley of crossbow bolts had downed a score of the monsters, but not nearly enough. Men and women fell, gutted by jagged talons, blood gurgling from slashed throats and ruined mouths.

With a snarl, Sulla twisted her blade, ripping it free from the monster in a spray of stinking ichor. It fell away to flop on the ground like a landed fish. Her soldiers reacted quickly, forming a rough phalanx to fend off the furies’ attack with spear and pike while the crossbows reloaded. Ardahir stood among them, shouting encouragement as he waved the broken banner pole above his head. The sight conjured a wild joy in Sulla’s breast. She was no leader, no politician, spending lives like coin; she was a soldier, she belonged in the press.

Here, at least, everything made sense.

Something flashed through her peripheral vision and she pivoted, bringing her blade around in a tight arc. Another monster came diving down, clawed hands and feet flexing to snatch Sulla up. Her slash left the fury with bleeding stumps and her backswing hammered it to the ground.

She twisted as another fury shrieked by, letting the sword’s momentum carry the blade around in a looping cut. It struck one of the creature’s wings, cleaving through muscle and bone. The thing’s shrieking ceased as she swept the sword down to divide its body neatly in half.

Panting, she scanned the ruins of the Steamgird, stalking through the scaffolded shadows, her blade at the ready. Kaslon had said the furies were Bloodtongue’s hunting hounds, but where was the huntsman?

It was the Chaos sorcerer’s armour that caught Sulla’s eye. It glittered like cut glass in the light of the setting sun, oil-slick colours sliding across the laminated scales. Skayne Bloodtongue floated over the battle on a disc of barbed flesh, watching with an air of detached interest.

Sulla crept closer, sheathing her sword to work her fingers into the carved runes of one of the cracked pillars of the Steamgird. Bloodtongue hovered perhaps ten yards above her, apparently blind to all but the desperate combat below. It seemed strange he hadn’t yet intervened, but Sulla was beyond questioning the motives of a madman.

The shouts of Sulla’s comrades lent urgency to her climb. Every pained cry was a knife dragged across her flesh. There would be a reckoning. Bloodtongue, the Winnower, the Lofnir lodge, even Sigmar. Somehow, she would find a way to make them pay.

The jagged metal cut Sulla’s fingers, hot runnels of blood trickling down her forearms. At last, she reached a ledge above Bloodtongue, who continued to hover above the battle. There was no time to judge the distance, so she drew her blade and jumped.

The Chaos sorcerer turned at the last moment, his eyebrows raised in an expression that seemed more amused than surprised. Sulla’s strike skittered from Bloodtongue’s armour in a spray of chromatic sparks. It was as if she’d struck an iron wall. Sulla rebounded from the sorcerer, her arms flailing as she tipped backwards through empty air.

Bloodtongue caught her by the shoulder. The sorcerer’s grip was light, but Sulla felt as if she’d been dropped into a forge, multicoloured flames licking across her skin, her every muscle contorted in agony.

Bloodtongue pursed his lips, inspecting Sulla as if she were a piece of fine metalwork. She wanted to hack his wizened face to pieces, but her limbs hung loose and liquid at her sides. It took all her strength just to maintain a hold on her greatsword.

Bloodtongue grinned at her, gesturing towards the packed ranks of Lantic veterans.

Sulla followed the line of his pointing finger, unable to do more than snarl as the realisation hit home. Bloodtongue’s monstrous hounds hadn’t been hunting Sulla’s soldiers, they’d been herding them.

Slowly, the Chaos sorcerer opened his outstretched hand, a ball of roiling balefire glowing between his spread fingers. Then, like a doting grandfather about to share a secret, he winked at Sulla.

Livius

‘We have to help them.’ Livius glowered at Kaslon. The surviving refugees crowded in a ragged circle around them, a few thousand, perhaps less – all that remained of the Lantic Empire. They muttered, casting glances at the battle taking place a few miles distant.

‘She’s dead. They’re all dead,’ Kaslon said.

‘Because we abandoned them.’ Livius glanced at the mage’s staff. It was unsettling how the thing seemed to shift and change, the outline blurring as if seen through warped glass.

Kaslon’s expression turned strange. ‘I thought you understood.’

Livius felt a nervous flutter in his chest as he regarded the mage. The Gilded Order were supposed to serve the empire, but Kaslon seemed different – wilder, less restrained. He glanced towards the distant shadow of the Azyr Realmgate. How easy it would be to just turn his back on Sulla. Still, Livius only had to look at the tired column of refugees to remember the screams of those they’d abandoned back at the palace.

Somehow worse was his memory of the cold scrutiny of the ancestor gears as he’d slunk into the Underway, the first emperor in Lantic history to flee without a fight. Not for the first time, Livius wished the plague hadn’t spared him. He was no emperor, no hero. From the moment he’d sat upon the autarch’s throne, every decision had been a mistake. There was no place for him among the ancestor gears, no glorious page in the Lantic histories. If he survived it would be as an embarrassment, the emperor who let everything fall to ruin.

Better to die, to be forgotten.

‘My people, hear me!’ He faced the gathered refugees, pointing Widowbane at the Azyr Realmgate. ‘There lies safety.’

It took all Livius’ willpower to keep his arm from trembling as he turned to the battle. ‘And there our comrades fight alone. I won’t think less of any who wish to press on to the realmgate, but I am going to stand with my people, my empire.’

The refugees were all watching him now. Kaslon gave an irritated grunt, but Livius pressed on. ‘We are of gold and steel, of fire and light. We are Lantic. Although our foes may rob us of our homes, our lives, they cannot take who we are, what we stand for. Not unless we let them.’

It was a poor speech, cobbled together from some third-dynasty romances Livius had read as a child. For a long moment, the refugees stood in silence, then, from the back came a ragged cheer. It spread like wildfire. People shook their makeshift weapons and roared, already streaming towards the battle.

Livius took a step back, surprised. ‘It worked.’

‘Of course it worked.’ Kaslon snapped back. ‘They’re Lantic.’

Livius turned towards the mage. ‘And you?’

‘I can hardly go through the realmgate alone.’ The sorcerer’s sour expression was spoiled by a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth. ‘What would I tell Sigmar?’

Livius clapped him on the shoulder, grinning despite the terror twisting in his gut. He was going to die. They were all going to die.

Kaslon winced as a flash of distant balefire lit the darkening sky an unhealthy green. ‘They’re not going to make it in time.’

‘Can you?’ Livius asked.

The mage gave a tight nod.

‘Will you be able to hold Bloodtongue until we arrive?’

‘On my own?’ Kaslon’s gaze flicked to the staff. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Do it.’ Livius’ mouth was dry, his fingers buzzing. What did it matter? The empire was gone, better to disappear with it.

Kaslon gripped the staff. Muttering incantations under his breath, the mage conjured a thread of glowing silver. It streaked from Kaslon’s outstretched hand towards the distant battle, straight as a surveyor’s line. Kaslon glanced back at Livius, then, with a pained expression, tugged on the line and was whisked away.

With a deep breath, Livius jogged after. He knew he should be terrified – death was almost certain, now – but the only feeling he could summon was relief.

It would all be over soon.

Kaslon

Kaslon could feel the heat of Bloodtongue’s power. The Chaos sorcerer burned like a tiny star, his aura flickering with bursts of mad energy as he showered the Lantic soldiers with gouts of balefire.

Kaslon hit the ground at a run, feet already tracing lines and vertices. He sketched a triangle ward to shield the soldiers from Bloodtongue’s coarse sorcery. There was still strength in the sacred geometry, more now that Kaslon understood its limitations.

A golden pyramid sprung up around the surviving Lantic legionaries, Bloodtongue’s balefire flickering across its sharp edges. The Chaos sorcerer redoubled his effort, brilliant blue-green flames so bright Kaslon had to look away.

The crystal staff was like a living thing, squirming in Kaslon’s grasp. He could sense the power within, galaxies of untapped energy, but there was too much risk. There was a way to circumscribe the maelstrom, to use Chaos without being used in turn. Kaslon knew he could discover it.

He just needed more time.

Kaslon moved along lines and axes, shoring up his wards with more complicated shapes. Intricate polyhedrals sprang into being, their edges curling like the legs of dying insects before the fury of Bloodtongue’s arcane attack.

The Chaos sorcerer slid through the sky, bludgeoning Kaslon’s wards from every angle, the barrage of spells like stones flung without skill or finesse. As the sorcerer flitted by, Kaslon saw that he held the limp form of Captain Sulla. He could sense the weak pulse of life within her, snared by Bloodtongue’s enervating grasp.

Balefire licked around Kaslon’s feet, the heat growing painful. Blisters formed on his hands, the skin of his face hot and tight from the heat.

No matter Kaslon’s skill, the Chaos sorcerer was simply too powerful. Strangely, the realisation came tinged not with fear or sorrow, but a vague sense of disappointment. Kaslon had just begun to plumb the depths of this new understanding, just begun to grasp the infinite complexity of true sorcery.

He could not die like this.

With a snarl, Kaslon reached for the power in the staff. It came in a torrent, unbridled and uncontrollable. Kaslon did not shape the spell so much as unleash it.

Bloodtongue’s sorceries were devoured by skewed geometries of light, balefire dissipating along jagged lines and uneven vertices, warp bolts lost along twisting paths, arcing back up on themselves.

The tide of madness spread, enveloping the furies and the Lantic troops.

Kaslon could hear them screaming, mutating, but their voices were distant, little more than a fading echo against the power that roared through him. Everything was so clear. The staff was not a conduit, it was a lens, a way to better understand the truth. There could be order without balance, law without symmetry. The lack of a pattern did not preclude understanding, it only complicated it.

Kaslon tried to strike at the Chaos sorcerer, but the flying disc was too quick. Bloodtongue dodged Kaslon’s jagged warp blasts with contemptuous ease. It was like trying to crush a fly with a trebuchet. The energies in the staff were powerful, but difficult to control. Alone, Kaslon still had no chance against the Chaos sorcerer.

Except Kaslon wasn’t alone.

Shielding his eyes from the glare of balefire, Kaslon saw that Bloodtongue still held Sulla. Desperately, he set a tendril of power looping around the captain and, pressing the staff to his forehead, abandoned his wards to tear at the spell that bound Sulla.

Kaslon felt the sorcerous bindings snap a moment before a wave of arcane force knocked him tumbling backwards. There was a moment of sickening disorientation, then the ground hammered the breath from him, setting bright comets streaking across his vision.

He looked up to see Bloodtongue hovering above him. Lambent energy gathered around the sorcerer’s free hand, but Sulla was already moving. Freed of Bloodtongue’s enchantment she brought her greatsword around one-handed, hacking down not at the Chaos sorcerer, but at the disc that bore him.

Sulla’s blade bit deep. The disc wove drunkenly for a moment, then plummeted to the ground.

The roar in Kaslon’s head was replaced by ragged shouts. Dully, he turned to see a mob of refugees surge across the rubble, Livius at their head. They were met by the shambling forms of the Lantic soldiers, their bodies warped by Kaslon’s sorcery, merged with furies in an unholy amalgamation of man and beast. The burst of Chaos energy had spared only a few of the legionaries. Led by the sergeant with the broken standard, they hacked through former comrades, weeping as they did.

Screaming the names of their murdered kin, the refugees beat at the abominations with hammers, stones, axes, even bare fists, not caring that the twisted legionaries reaped a bloody harvest.

Kaslon staggered to his feet in time to see a spray of prismatic sparks. Captain Sulla howled a Lantic battle hymn as she slashed at Bloodtongue, her blade skittering from his armour. Bloodtongue flung a bolt of energy at her and it took all of Kaslon’s strength to send the blast streaking away. For all Sulla’s fury, her swings seemed to barely stagger the Chaos sorcerer. Bitterness nested in Kaslon’s breast – even now, he was too weak to defeat Bloodtongue, and without an enchanted blade, Sulla wouldn’t be able to cut through the wards that surrounded the Chaos sorcerer.

That was when Livius leapt from atop a pile of rubble. The young noble made no pretence towards self-preservation, screaming like a madman as he brought his sabre down, two-handed. With a flash of runic light, the blade sheared through the scaled plate on Bloodtongue’s shoulder.

The sorcerer reeled back, hands already bright with balefire. He raised them to strike Livius.

Head ringing, Kaslon drew on the staff, letting the mad power fill him. His skin burned, the gold filigree inlaid in his flesh glowing white hot. Screaming, Kaslon fought to leash the nested infinities, to channel them into a single word.

‘Stop!’ The word hit Bloodtongue like a spear, pinioning him for the span of a heartbeat.

Sulla threw her greatsword aside to seize the Chaos sorcerer, locking him in a great bear hug. Hair burning, she lifted Bloodtongue from the ground as Livius drove his sabre up and under the sorcerer’s ribs. The rune-inscribed steel hissed like a quenched blade as the curved tip of the sabre burst from Bloodtongue’s neck in an oily spray of blood. Livius gave the blade one last twist before drawing it forth.

Skayne Bloodtongue slid to the ground, unmoving.

Kaslon staggered to their side, catching Sulla as she bent to pick up her sword and almost collapsed. Livius slipped under her other arm.

Kaslon was relieved to see that none of the corrupted legionaries had survived, although the rubble was strewn with many Lantic corpses.

They limped towards the survivors – about a dozen soldiers and a few score refugees.

‘You came for us,’ Sulla whispered through blackened lips. ‘I’m sorry for doubting you – both of you.’

‘We don’t abandon our own,’ Livius said.

Kaslon let out a long breath. ‘No, I suppose we don’t.’

Sulla

The Azyr Realmgate was huge beyond reckoning. It rose from the mist-shrouded valley like the cenotaph of a long forgotten god, the few ragged bits of the Gilded Steamgird that surrounded it seeming little more than a child’s toys strewn about the coppery hills. It glowed with a soft, azure light, an intricate arch of steel standing without apparent regard for logic or gravity. The gate itself was inlaid with veins of metal filigree, gold and silver twining between polished gems to form bright points and constellations, a mirror of the night sky above.

It was almost dawn when they reached the gate, a small, shambling mass of exhausted folk, threadbare as their clothes. Sulla leaned against one of the massive steel columns that formed the base of the arch, using her greatsword as a prop. Livius murmured encouraging words to the few survivors while Kaslon limped forward to press a hand to the gate itself.

Sulla regarded her companions, chewing her already ragged lip. As much as she hated to admit it, she’d misjudged them. She’d thought Kaslon heartless, and Livius a coward and a fool, but it had been Sulla who’d led her people into a trap, and Sulla who’d failed to save them. Bitterness burned like a coal in her breast as she scowled up at the realmgate. No, it had been Sigmar’s failure, Sigmar’s betrayal that had done this to them.

Sulla was just a soldier, he was a god.

‘Captain,’ Ardahir came limping up, still leaning on the blackened haft of his banner pole. ‘Can I talk to you about something?’

Sulla glanced up, nodding.

‘It’s about the mage.’ He glanced at Kaslon. ‘I’m not sure exactly what I saw, but during the battle, I swear he–’

The realmgate crackled with cobalt lighting. With a stricken cry, Kaslon stumbled back, a smoking hand clutched to his chest.

Sulla pushed off the wall, at his side in a moment, Livius on her heels. ‘What is it?’

‘The realmgate.’ Kalson’s words were almost a sob. ‘He’s barred it.’

‘I don’t understand. Who?’ Livius asked.

‘Who do you think?’ Sulla didn’t even bother to hide her anger.

Kaslon’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. Livius crumpled to the ground, knees drawn up to his chest and face pressed into his hands as he rocked back and forth.

The scream rose from deep within Sulla’s chest, rattling up her throat to burst forth in an inarticulate roar – part rage, part despair. To come so far, to overcome so much only to fall to this final betrayal. She swung her greatsword at the realmgate, eyes burning, her fury lending strength to the blow.

Sulla’s blade snapped in half.

With a snarl she tossed it aside, beating at the massive steel gate with her fists, but either Sigmar didn’t hear, or he didn’t care.

‘Captain. Captain!’ Ardahir shouted.

Sulla turned on him, fists raised, but stopped as she saw what the sergeant was pointing at.

Dawn set the copper hills aglow. Arrayed upon the sloping ridgeline was a vast host. Weapons glittered in the sunlight, horses stomped and snorted as armoured knights jostled for position. Banners snapped in the morning breeze, tall and proud. It seemed impossible – there was the golden lion of the Thunnic Legion, the sparrow and sun of the Khemal Legion, even the snarling silver dragon of Eshunna, the city where Sulla had grown up.

She blinked back tears, her throat thick. They’d finally come for her. The empire didn’t abandon its own.

Then she noticed the eight-pointed stars, the streaks of blood and ichor across the banners, the leering faces, the dark forms of daemons and beasts among the gathered host. At the head was Empress Xerastia’s banner, affixed to a cross of black iron with General Kelephon’s severed head spiked at the top.

At last, Sulla understood. ‘It’s him. He’s come.’

Livius stood, rubbing his eyes. ‘Who?’

‘Azakul the Winnower.’

She knelt to retrieve her broken greatsword. The few surviving refugees huddled in a tight mass, Ardahir and his soldiers at the fore. Unable to even muster the strength to weep, they watched the horde advance, marching down the coppery slope in a maelstrom of waving blades and howling faces.

The forerunners of the host stopped well out of bowshot, not that Sulla or the others had any arrows left. As if by some silent signal, the uproar ceased, the horde parting as Azakul the Winnower emerged.

He came slowly, striding across the broken ground with the uneven, marionette gait Sulla remembered, his flail flung almost casually over one shoulder. He halted a few dozen paces away, then extended one hand and beckoned Sulla closer.

‘I think he wants to talk,’ Livius said.

‘We don’t want to hear anything that bastard has to say,’ Sergeant Ardahir barked back.

‘What choice do we have?’ Kaslon asked.

Sulla realised they were all looking at her. She gave a savage grin. ‘Maybe he wants to surrender.’

No one laughed, but she hadn’t expected them to. ‘Sergeant, keep order until we come back.’

Ardahir’s frown cut deep lines across his scarred face, but he gave a quick nod.

The Winnower spread his arms as she, Kaslon and Livius approached. They stopped half a dozen paces away.

‘Come to finish what you started?’ Sulla asked.

‘Yes.’ The Winnower’s voice was surprisingly soft. With a sigh, he removed his helmet, revealing an unexpectedly mild face – small and round-cheeked with a weak chin and a widow’s peak of thinning brown hair – more like what Sulla would’ve expected from a clerk than a bloody-handed warlord. She found herself staring at the Chaos lord’s unremarkable features. The stories said he never removed his armour, now Sulla knew why. Only Azakul’s eyes hinted at his true nature. Deep set, they were as dark as coal, but caught the light like an animal’s, flashing yellow as the warlord regarded Sulla and her companions. ‘Well, come on, then,’ Livius shouted. ‘Kill us!’

‘Kill you?’ The Winnower laughed, rocking back on his heels. ‘And waste such talent?’

Sulla spat at his feet. ‘Fine, we’ll kill you.’

‘Ah, but you can’t.’ The Winnower nodded back at his warhost. ‘Look, there – not a single one of them doesn’t want me dead. But they don’t have the strength. So they must bide their time, just as you must.’

‘You murdered my empress,’ Sulla said.

‘Xerastia was a worthy foe, I drank many toasts to her.’ The Winnower pressed a gauntleted hand to his side. ‘You were there. You saw. I fought her face to face, no trickery, no guile.’

‘What of our people?’ Kaslon spoke for the first time, his voice tentative, unsure.

The Winnower laughed again. ‘Look upon my host, mage. I count many more of your people among them than that paltry band cowering behind you.’

‘Traitors,’ Sulla snapped back.

‘Are they?’ the Winnower asked. ‘Traitors to what? To the empire that failed them? The gods that abandoned them? No, captain, it is they who were betrayed. I offer them a chance for justice, for vengeance, just as I offer it to you.’ He turned, arms spread as if to embrace his host. ‘All are here because they wish to be.’

Sulla could summon no reply. She wanted to charge the Winnower, to work her broken blade into the cracks in his armour and carve out his twisted heart, but she knew she was too tired, too weak.

‘Why us?’ Livius asked.

‘Bloodtongue was a senile old fool, clinging to scraps of power. With him gone, nothing stands in my way.’ The Winnower brushed back a loose lock of hair, an unnervingly human gesture. ‘You have fought, you have triumphed, the chaff has fallen away.’

‘You offer nothing but madness,’ Kaslon said.

The Winnower straightened. ‘I offer the truth. Not the gods’ truth, but your truth. I think you have already seen the promise, mage. I can help you understand, give you time to explore realms of which you’ve never even dreamed.’

Kaslon’s hands tightened on his staff, his expression troubled.

‘And me?’ Livius strode over to stare up at the Chaos Lord, seemingly unafraid. ‘What do you offer me, mighty Azakul?’

The Winnower knelt, coming face to face with the young noble. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

He held up a hand, fingers spread. ‘You will live or die as you choose, absent of judgement or expectation. I offer you the chance to leave your past behind, to tear free of the smothering weave of history.’

Livius took a surprised step back. ‘What of the others?’

‘I would be a fool to turn away such fine prospects.’ The Winnower stood. ‘The choice is theirs. The choice is always theirs. Unlike the coward who cowers behind this realmgate, my gods do not abandon their true servants.’

Sulla glanced at Kaslon, then Livius. They had stood by her, fought by her side. She owed them far more loyalty than she did Sigmar.

‘We could rebuild the empire,’ Kaslon broke the silence.

‘Or not,’ Livius said.

Sulla knuckled her brow, unsure.

Azakul crossed his arms. ‘Follow me, captain, and you’ll have the chance to kill more followers of Chaos than you ever did fighting for your empire.’

Sulla met her companions’ gazes, knowing they were thinking the same as she. Would it be better to die alone, unavenged and unremembered, or risk everything? The choice never really changed.

‘After all we’ve done, all we can yet do for the empire,’ Kaslon seemed to draw strength from the pronouncement, standing taller. ‘To throw our lives away would be the true betrayal.’

‘What does it matter?’ Livius massaged the back of his neck, wincing. ‘Xerastia, the autarch, the Masters of the Gilded Order, they all died, and for what? No one will remember them, no one will care. Whatever is left of the Lantic Empire is there.’ He gestured at the Winnower’s horde.

‘So that’s it, then?’ Sulla asked, looking at Livius and Kaslon in turn. ‘We join him?’

Slowly, they both nodded.

She glanced at the Winnower. ‘This doesn’t mean I won’t kill you.’

‘I would expect nothing less,’ Azakul replied.

The ritual was surprisingly painless. There was nothing to renounce, nothing to swear to, the Winnower simply looked into each of their eyes, one by one. His gaze seemed to bore into Sulla’s soul, but she stared back, daring him to doubt her conviction.

After a long moment he nodded. ‘You are finally ready.’

He extended a hand to touch her forehead, leaving behind a tiny brand with a hiss of sizzling flesh. Strength flowed into Sulla, the pain of her wounds receding. She hadn’t realised how tired she was. Exhaustion had become a silent companion, only recognised by its absence. What few doubts remained were swept away in the rush of renewed confidence. She would see justice done, visit bloody accounting on those who had betrayed her people.

She looked at Livius and Kaslon and knew they felt the same.

They had limped out to meet Azakul the Winnower. They walked back, heads high.

Sulla spread her arms, grinning. She couldn’t wait to tell Ardahir and the others – they could march with comrades again, rejoin the Lantic Legions. The empire wasn’t gone; it had simply changed.

A hurled stone hit just above her eye, glancing off her forehead in a spray of blood. Sulla stumbled back, confused. More missiles followed, legionaries and refugees throwing masonry and hunks of slag.

‘Ungrateful.’ With a quick gesture, Kaslon raised a shield of prismatic force.

The survivors charged, their faces bent around armatures of rage, spitting blood and curses as they beat at Sulla and her companions.

She pivoted out of the way of a woman with a notched axe, coming face to face with Sergeant Ardahir.

His banner pole cracked across her shoulder in a blow that would have broken bone had Sulla not been imbued with new, unnatural vigour.

‘Die, traitor.’ There was no friendship in Ardahir’s voice, no comprehension. He had seen all that Sulla had seen, suffered all she had suffered, and yet, he still couldn’t understand. Worse, she knew he never would.

Tears stinging her eyes, Sulla slid the broken blade of her greatsword into the joint between Ardahir’s breastplate and pauldron, driving it through muscle and bone to make a red ruin of the sergeant’s chest. He fell back, blood spreading like wings across the coppery ground.

There was an azure flash, the smell of ozone. Sulla threw up an arm to shield her eyes as a bolt of lightning streaked down. When her vision cleared, Ardahir was gone, a streak of molten copper all that remained. Sulla shrieked her fury at the sky, brandishing her broken blade. But, as ever, Sigmar paid her no heed.

The few surviving refugees fled towards the realmgate, even knowing it was closed, even knowing their god cared nothing for them.

It made Sulla sick to watch.

‘After all we’ve done, all we’ve sacrificed.’ Kaslon sported a new bruise on his cheek, a shadow against his dark skin. He touched it, then winced, glaring at the refugees. ‘They wouldn’t even hear us out.’

‘What do we do?’ Livius was panting, his doublet stained with slashes of red. Although judging from the two men lying at his feet, Sulla doubted any was his. ‘Azakul will massacre them.’

‘They made their choice,’ Sulla said, her voice thick. Livius was right, Azakul’s followers would revel in the slaughter. Sulla had seen it before, when Xerastia had ‘liberated’ Eshunna, Sulla’s home. The Lantic Legions had driven Chaos from the city only to find flayed skins draped across the walls like festival banners, familiar streets lined with ruined bodies. The survivors had shuffled from the ruins – eyeless, tongueless, their mangled hands outstretched, pleading for release.

And Sulla had given it to them.

‘It would be a mercy.’ Sulla’s knuckles whitened on the hilt of her broken sword. ‘We owe them that much, at least.’

‘I don’t know if I can,’ Livius said, his shoulders hunched as if to ward away a chill.

Sulla nodded at the corpses at his feet. ‘You already have.’

For once, Kaslon was silent, his expression like someone had buried a dagger in his ribs.

‘We don’t abandon our own,’ Sulla said, already striding towards the remaining refugees. She didn’t need to look back to know Livius and Kaslon followed.

Some of the refugees fought back, snarling like steelcats as they came. Sulla gave them quick deaths. Merciful, honourable deaths.

The others burned.

Kaslon’s eyes glimmered in the reflected balefire, tear tracks cutting silver lines down his cheeks. A few of the refugees ran, and Livius cut them down, crying out with each slash, one arm thrown across his face as if to blind himself to the slaughter.

They watched until the last of Kaslon’s balefire had faded, leaving nothing but blackened smears upon the realmgate. Sulla looked to Kaslon and Livius, seeing her pain mirrored in their red-rimmed gazes.

‘We did the right thing,’ Kaslon spoke slowly, as if trying to convince himself.

‘There was no place for them.’ Livius rubbed a hand across his patchy stubble. ‘Not any more.’

Sulla realised her hands were clenched at her sides, her whole body tensed as if to flee. Then, with a feeling of shaky relief, she realised they were done running, now and forever.

‘What now?’ Livius asked.

‘What I said back at the Steamgird – I was wrong,’ Sulla said. ‘The time for heroes is far from over.’

Livius blew out a shaky breath. ‘I’m no more a hero than I am an emperor.’

‘We’ll see.’ Sulla scowled at the blackened carnage. ‘I’m going to need help killing Azakul, and you’re the only two I trust.’

‘Lead on, captain.’ Kaslon gestured at the Chaos horde, leaning on his staff as if it were the only thing keeping him upright.

Together, they walked away from the Azyr Realmgate. A cheer rose from the Winnower’s horde, welcoming them home.

About the Author

By day, Evan Dicken studies old Japanese maps and crunches data at The Ohio State University, although by night he does neither of these things. He’s 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. Evan’s fantasy fiction has most recently appeared in: Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Fantasy Scroll. ‘The Path to Glory’ is his first story for Black Library.

Enter the Age of Sigmar with a selection of tales showcasing the many factions who battle for the fate of the Mortal Realms – including a brand new novella by Josh Reynolds.

A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

The Path to Glory © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. The Path to Glory, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-883-9

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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