CONTENTS

Cover

Blacktalon: Hunting Shadows - Andy Clark

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Blacktalon: First Mark’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

BLACKTALON: HUNTİNG SHADOWS

Andy Clark

Neave Blacktalon prowled in the shadow of a towering throne, through the cool shade of the ancient monolith and back out into searing heat, then back through shadow again. The Knight-Zephyros’ whirlwind axes were lashed firmly to her armoured back. They were ready to be drawn forth at a heartbeat’s notice, and her hands itched to swing them.

‘The sooner something gives me the excuse…’ she murmured to herself, keen to be moving, hunting again.

She had her helm off, the better to stretch her superhuman senses out and taste her surroundings. Her hawk-like vision, her acute senses of taste, smell and hearing, her incredible sensitivity to vibrations in the air and soil – all were bent to absorbing every detail of this region of Aqshy. Known as the Brazen Plains, this region was as rugged as any she had seen in the Realm of Fire. Neave could tell that the cracked earth upon which she paced had been fertile until about three decades ago, when some catastrophe had scoured away the topsoil and salted what remained. She could sense the tectonic rumbling of a range of volcanoes two hundred miles due east, and tracked the passage of an arid dust-storm perhaps half that distance to her south.

Neave hunted alone. She had done so for four years and two Reforgings, through a dozen hunts for the most dangerous quarry Sigmar could assign her, and she had never once failed to bring down her mark. Of course, it was different when her Vanguard chamber, the Shadowhammers, marched out as one. Neave could strategise and lead as well as the next Stormcast officer, and she knew the value of the warriors she fought alongside. They were Hammers of Sigmar, first forged and still the mightiest of all Sigmar’s Stormhosts. Yet even at such times, she was the one to hunt her mark amidst the mayhem of the battlefield. She was the one to launch herself upon them at the crucial moment, whirlwind axes singing a terrible dirge as they clove the air again and again.

Her comrades fought to give her the opening she required, but it was Neave who ended the hunt.

Alone.

‘But not this time, apparently,’ she said aloud, stopping for a moment in the throne’s shadow and staring up at it. A remnant of some old and magnificent wonder from the Age of Myth, the marble throne jutted drunkenly from the bedrock, pitted and riven. ‘This time I am to have aid in my hunt. Why?’

Neave resumed her pacing, flicking irritated glances westwards. She sensed her comrades drawing closer from that direction, travelling at speed. The missive had been brought to her by an aetherwing, one of the highly intelligent birds of prey that aided the Stormcast Vanguard. The creature had found her as she loped across the Brazen Plains, tracking her mark.

The bird had swept overhead and cried at her to halt in its eerie, singsong voice. Neave had done so, waiting while the aetherwing banked and settled in the skeletal branches of a nearby emberwood. She had listened with surprise, then annoyance, as the bird relayed Lord-Aquilor Danastus’ orders to her.

She was to proceed ten miles east, whereupon she would find the ancient throne. There she was to await rendezvous with Tarion Arlor, a Knight-Venator, and a band of Palladors who would aid her in her hunt. The aetherwing had no answers for her as to why. Blacktalon had merely been bid obey, and so, though she burned to be about the hunt, she had done so.

‘They come, at last,’ she breathed as she picked out a thin dust trail rising to the west. The unforgiving light of Hysh shone from on high, glinting off burnished sigmarite as her comrades approached. The Knight-Venator was aloft, soaring on crystalline wings with his bright-burning star-eagle wheeling around him impatiently. Below, a crackling surge of energy and whirling dust showed where the Palladors rode their wyndshifting steeds.

Neave jogged out from the throne’s shadow, making sure she was clearly visible. The last thing she needed, she thought, was to catch an arrow in the throat from a surprised Knight-Venator. The star-eagle spotted her first and gave a piercing cry, swooping down towards her. The Stormcasts followed and, as the eagle shot overhead and alighted atop the throne’s back, Tarion Arlor spread his crystalline pinions and dropped from the sky. He thumped down twenty feet from Neave, raising a cloud of dry dust, then stood tall and favoured her with an honest smile.

Arlor went helmless, like her, noted Neave. He was built big, even for a Stormcast, and she saw from the way he carried himself that his was a solid and resolute sort of strength. She noted the relaxed grip that he maintained upon his bow, the tribal tattoos worn proudly upon his face and the way his quick gaze assessed her as frankly as she assessed him.

The Palladors appeared a moment later, lightning crackling and winds howling as they transmuted from their ephemeral form to solid flesh and bone. There were four of them, Neave saw, armoured warriors wielding stormstrike javelins. They sat astride rangy gryph-chargers that clacked their beaks and clawed the ground with their fore-talons. She recognised the Palladors’ leader, and a smile quirked one corner of her mouth.

‘Kalparius Foerunner, well met,’ said Neave. Typical protocol would be for her to greet the Knight-Venator first, as a warrior of equal rank to her own. Neave had little interest in such niceties, preferring to acknowledge those rare warriors that had fought alongside her and earned her respect.

‘Lady Blacktalon,’ said Kalparius and inclined his head in greeting. ‘It has been some time.’

‘Two years since we hunted the daemon Horticulous on the Thassenine Peninsula,’ said Neave. ‘Have you fared well?’

‘Well enough, despite our enemies’ efforts,’ said Kalparius. From his body language Neave saw the Pallador was pleased she had remembered him by name, though too taciturn to let it show.

‘Neave Blacktalon, it is good to meet you at last,’ said Arlor.

‘We have fought upon the same field more than once,’ she said. ‘Was that not sufficient?’

‘We have fought against the same foes, at the same time, but we have never fought as comrades,’ said Tarion. ‘You are the most famed of the Shadowhammers, Lady Blacktalon. I look forward to hunting at your side.’

‘The mark is away eastwards,’ said Neave, masking her irritation at the talismanic way in which the rest of her Vanguard chamber regarded her. ‘In waiting for your arrival I’ve allowed it to extend its lead. If it reaches the volcano fields, it will become far harder to track.’

Arlor’s smile vanished. ‘The township of Sigenvale lies in that direction. Our orders from the Lord-Aquilor are to call upon that settlement on our march and garner what information we can from the locals.’

‘If they lie in the mark’s path, there may not be any locals left to question,’ said Neave. ‘We can waste no more time. Come.’

Neave turned and set off eastwards. As a Knight-Zephyros, Neave’s inhuman abilities extended into unnatural swiftness, agility and reactions. Now she put them to good use, accelerating away in a blur of motion that quickly left the shattered throne far behind.

Moments later, Tarion appeared low overhead, keeping pace with her upon his outspread wings. His star-eagle spiralled alongside him, and to Neave’s right streaking shimmers of lightning and air marked where the Palladors, too, had matched her speed.

‘You can keep up, at least,’ called Neave. ‘I can infer from this that your orders weren’t to actively hamper my hunt?’

‘There’s more to our orders, Lady Blacktalon,’ said Arlor, raising his voice to be heard over the swift whip of the wind. ‘Did Sigmar tell you of your prey before you set out?’

‘When Sigmar gives me a mark, it is like an epiphany,’ Neave replied. ‘I feel his power flow through me and I sense the prey, a notion of the direction in which it lies. At the same moment I may learn a little of my prey, of its transgressions against Sigmar and why it must be slain. I know of this thing that it is a horror hidden behind a pall of shifting darkness, and that it is ruinously powerful. A trail of devastated settlements and slaughtered heroes lies in its wake. I know also that there must be more to this fiend than that, for Sigmar does not set me a mark unless they have earned his personal ire.’

‘I don’t know what this thing has done to anger Sigmar,’ said Arlor. ‘But I know that, since you began your hunt, word has reached us of the quarry wreaking further havoc. They say it tore down Fort Dunhaven and slaughtered the entire garrison, then ripped its way along the Wounded Road and left three trade caravans and all their guards in bloody tatters. Chaos warbands are stirring in the wilds at word of this thing’s deeds. We have not long driven the enemy back from this region and, if this murderous shadow continues its rampage, it risks becoming a rallying point behind which a fresh Chaos onslaught may gather.’

‘I saw the ruins of Dunhaven,’ said Blacktalon. ‘The carnage was hideous. I was not aware of the cult stirrings, but I can well believe it.’

Now the presence of these reinforcements began to make sense to her. There was grand strategy in play, and Lord-Aquilor Danastus prized expediency above all else. Even the sanctity of Sigmar’s hunt.

‘The Lord-Aquilor feels that this matter must be concluded swiftly, and with no chance of the quarry’s escape,’ said Tarion. ‘That is why we are not your only reinforcements.’

‘Who else?’ asked Neave.

‘Beyond Sigenvale, upon the headland above Brimstone Lake, we are to rendezvous with the cogfort Iron Despot,’ said Tarion. ‘The mobile fortress and all of its garrison will be at our disposal.’

Neave almost missed a step as she shot an incredulous glance up at Tarion.

‘A cogfort?’ she asked. Sent marching out from several of the cities of Order since the end of the Realmgate Wars, the cogforts were the crowning achievement of the Ironweld engineers. Land battleships propelled on huge clockwork-and-girder spider’s legs, each cogfort was a mobile armoured fortress with a garrison of well over a hundred human and duardin souls and bearing enough artillery and sorcerous ordnance to level a Dreadhold, or to break an enemy army in two. These vast war engines had not existed for long, but they had already garnered great favour amongst the forces of Order.

Lord-Aquilor Danastus was not given to grand gestures or strategic wastefulness. That he believed Neave’s hunt required this level of support was sobering. She glanced again at Tarion and saw her own thoughts mirrored upon his face. Neave set her jaw and ran on, west across the plains towards Sigenvale.

Her ominous sense of the mark grew surer with every footfall.

Neave knew something was wrong even before Tarion’s star-eagle, Krien, gave a piercing shriek.

They had travelled for a day and a night, and on into the next morning, relying upon the supreme fortitude that was Sigmar’s gift to his Stormcast Eternals. The hunting party had spoken little. They were Hammers of Sigmar, grimly determined to see their duty done, and all their thought was bent towards its prosecution.

Now, though, as they wended their way along the tail end of the Wounded Road through a nameless gorge, they slowed.

‘I smell smoke, and blood,’ said Neave as they drew to a halt in the lee of a mound of boulders. The part of Neave’s mind that was always alive to her surroundings noted that several of the boulders were actually graven chunks of statuary, piled in a tumble and eroded over long years.

‘Krien sees something beyond the mouth of the gorge,’ said Tarion, landing beside her. ‘He’s going to circle high and scout. If there are foes, they’re less likely to notice him than they are me.’

Neave bristled at Tarion’s presumption. ‘Spread out and take positions here,’ she said, continuing as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘Stay concealed and ready for trouble.’

Foerunner’s Palladors obeyed, splitting two-and-two to either side of the gorge, dismounting their steeds and melting back into the hard shadows. Tarion went right without offering further comment, dropping in behind the remains of a stone pillar and nocking a crackling arrow to his bowstring. Neave remained behind the boulders, sinking into a crouch and watching where the road sloped steeply up to the mouth of the gorge.

The storm she had expected the day before had changed direction, moving ahead of them on capricious Aqshyan winds. Its trailing clouds streaked the sky, softening the hot glare of daylight to merely intense. Still, heat already baked off the rocks in waves. Dawn had come barely an hour before. Neave assumed that by midday this region would be viciously hot, and wondered how the peoples of Sigenvale coped.

If the peoples of Sigenvale remained at all, that was.

Nothing moved save a few skittering lizards, and minutes later Neave caught the speck in the sky that was Tarion’s returning eagle. Krien flew on, over their heads as though nothing more than a wild bird of prey, then circled casually down before streaking back along the gorge to alight on Tarion’s gauntlet.

Neave waited as Tarion leant his head close to his eagle’s, locking eyes with the fierce bird. Its plumage glowed with celestial light, and it bobbed its head. Tarion murmured to Krien and the star-eagle made low, guttural sounds in return.

Tarion jogged across to join Neave.

‘Krien sees no foes, just the destruction they have left,’ he said. ‘Our conversations are never what you would call precise, but from what I can garner Sigenvale lies in ruin. That said, just because Krien doesn’t see enemies, doesn’t mean they’re not concealed and waiting in ambush.’

‘The mark could be lurking here,’ said Neave. ‘But it’s doubtful. It is as though my sense of it is dulled by something, some obfuscatory magic or charm. I felt the same at Dunhaven, a warding that interferes with my gifts. I think we should bypass the town and press on. I will know if we overtake the mark, allowing us to double back and surround it here. Otherwise, haste is our ally.’

She caught the subtle frown that Tarion suppressed before it could spread across his face, the slight tensing of his shoulders.

‘You disagree?’ asked Neave.

‘Not that we should make haste,’ said Tarion. ‘But there may be survivors.’

‘You believe they might tell us more of our quarry?’ she asked.

This time, Tarion didn’t try to hide his displeasure. ‘I was more of a mind that if anyone lives in Sigenvale then it is our duty to aid them.’

Neave snorted. ‘Danastus has sent me a bleeding heart, has he?’

‘We are the protectors of all Sigmar’s subjects,’ said Tarion, surprised. ‘We have a duty to these people. We were like them, once, and we would not have wished to be left in the dirt.’

Neave took a breath. Could the mark be here behind some warding veil, ready to spring its trap? She didn’t think so, but the interference with her gifts was maddening. She felt Tarion awaiting her decision. Though they were technically of equal rank, he had joined her hunt, and so by the customs of the Shadowhammers she had primacy. She contemplated ordering that they press on.

‘What if we stop to help a handful of wounded survivors, only for the mark to slaughter another town because we didn’t catch it in time?’ she asked him.

‘What if we aid any survivors here, and then catch up to the quarry in time to stop it hurting anyone else?’ he countered. ‘We are Hammers of Sigmar. Anything short of excellence is failure.’

‘Ah, not a bleeding heart then,’ she said, concealing her irritation at Arlor’s challenge behind a wry smile. ‘An optimist. That’s infinitely more dangerous. Very well, we perform a quick sweep through Sigenvale. Strictly reconnaissance and information gathering. If we locate any survivors, we do what we can for them, but we don’t get bogged down. We move on before Hyshian apogee.’

‘Understood,’ said Tarion, shooting a quick hand-gesture to the Palladors, who remounted their steeds.

‘Kalparius, you take the left flank, Arlor you’re on the right,’ said Neave. ‘We’re hardly inconspicuous, so move fast and keep your eyes open. We’ll meet in the town square, or whatever they have that passes for one. If the mark is here, don’t try to engage alone.’ That’s my job, she thought wryly, knowing she wouldn’t follow her own advice.

‘Krien will circle high and give warning if he sights any threat,’ said Tarion.

So saying, he sent his star-eagle winging up into the shimmering blue. Neave, Tarion and the Palladors climbed the slope to the mouth of the gorge and then split, each following their allotted paths.

As Neave crested the rise, she saw the ruin of Sigenvale. The town lay in a bowl-shaped depression perhaps a mile across and followed a rough grid of streets that cross-hatched the dry bedrock. Neave estimated Sigenvale had consisted of around sixty structures, predominately long, low builds wrought from quarried stone blocks. Their outsides had been painted white to reflect the intense heat, and diaphanous silken awnings had been raised on wooden poles to shelter the streets and rooftops. Gardens had grown on each flat roof, irrigated via capacious moisture traps and sheltered by the silk screens fluttering above. A high wall of dressed and cut stone surrounded the entire settlement, guard-towers dotted along its length with the barrels of Freeguild cannons jutting from their embrasures.

Neave could picture the place as it had been, bustling with weathered frontier-folk and hard-eyed militia.

Now it was a gutted carcass.

An entire section of the wall had been torn down and its sundered stones scattered for dozens of yards. Flyblown corpses were strewn around the breach in such a state of dismemberment that Neave couldn’t tell from this distance how many had actually been slain. The bodies continued inside the walls, as did the destruction. Buildings had been toppled as though by the strike of some huge weapon or the swipe of immense claws. Corpses lay in heaps, the blood slicks around them dry, brown and cracked by the heat.

‘Sigmar’s Hammer,’ breathed Neave. She accelerated into a swift lope that brought her down the slope to the breach in the walls in under a minute. There she slid into the lee of the wall and paused. The ground was blackened, as though fire had washed across it. The edges of the breach were scorched and cracked by heat-damage, and the ghastly corpses of Sigenvale’s defenders were little more than charred meat.

‘Like Dunhaven,’ muttered Neave. She crouched, slipping off both gauntlets and pressing her bare palms to the stone of the wall, and the bedrock of the ground.

Neave regulated her breathing, and allowed her heartbeat to settle into a slow, distant thump. She closed her eyes and focused her superhuman senses.

The stink of blood, gallons of it splattered on every surface and baked dry by the sun. Stone and soil mixed with spilt viscera and faeces. The stench of putrefaction setting in, hastened by the heat.

The sound of the wind through shattered stone and broken glass. A slow creak, something metal shifting in the hot plains’ breeze. The flap of torn silk. The drone of insects.

Vibrations through the bedrock, her allies closing in around the settlement, skittering lizards, the distant tectonic stirring of restive volcanoes.

And something else, a shifting deeper within the ruins of Sigenvale. Something large and heavy, she thought, moving as softly as it could.

Neave replaced her gauntlets and unhitched her helm from her belt, lowering it into place. She unshipped her whirlwind axes and stalked through the rent in Sigenvale’s walls. A street circled the town directly behind the wall, with other roadways radiating in from it like the spokes of a cart wheel, then winding crooked through the low buildings as they made for the town’s heart.

Neave found more bodies scattered here. Many were torn to shreds. Others, she saw, were crushed into pulp, their bones shattered and their flesh burst like split gourds. Most had had their heads torn from their bodies, and Neave was disturbed to note that she couldn’t see most of the missing crania.

The mark didn’t discriminate. It had butchered soldiers and townsfolk alike with equal savagery.

The buildings had suffered as badly as the people. Neave saw walls staved in, doorways ripped from hinges and lying dozens of yards away, great gouges torn from them. A glance inside the nearest structure made her wish she hadn’t. A larger humanoid figure huddled protectively over several smaller beings. That was all the identification she could make, as they had all been burned black, their remains melting to fuse with the wall and floor of the gutted structure.

Neave shuddered, then was still as she felt again the heavy shifting from deeper within the town. As the mournful wind moaned through the ruins, Neave felt her hackles rise. She turned away from what had once been a home and prowled deeper into the town.

A movement on high caught Neave’s attention and her grip tensed on her axes, but it was nothing more than the hot winds stirring a tattered awning overhead. She felt the pressure wave that rolled ahead of Kalparius’ Palladors, sweeping in through the town from her left. It was like a localised storm front, and Neave picked up her pace. Whatever she felt lurking here, it couldn’t fail to note the Palladors’ arrival.

Sure enough, she felt that heavy shifting again, more urgent now. Flies rose in buzzing clouds as Neave jogged down the street and rounded a corner past an overturned wagon. She groped for the sense of her mark, but the sensation was maddeningly vague.

‘Could be here, could be miles away,’ she muttered. ‘Wherever it is, I’d dearly like to know how it’s interfering with my gifts from Sigmar.’

Metal screeched against metal beyond the next row of buildings, and Neave envisioned wreckage being thrust aside. She sensed the Palladors closing in from the left and Tarion, an ozone tinge and crackle of power, moving in from the right. If the mark was here, she thought, it was just around the next corner and they were about to converge upon it as one.

Then Krien swooped low overhead and gave a piercing cry. That was enough to propel Neave into a full sprint, dust-devils whirling up in her wake as she accelerated down the body-strewn street. She wove around the tumbled wreckage of awning poles, flipped neatly over the flapping tangle of silk that clung to them, then slid to a halt behind the corner of the last building before the town square. She leaned around the shattered stonework, perceiving something huge moving at increasing speed across the open space. There came a snarl and – taking in a dark, scaly hide and long, hooked claws – Neave accelerated into a charge.

The beast must have weighed several tons and was all muscle and belligerence. Emerging from a ruined storehouse on the south side of the square, it hulked like a Stardrake at the shoulders, while its lantern-jawed head was set low between a quartet of powerful forelimbs. Its cluster of reptilian eyes swivelled in Neave’s direction and a hook-clawed arm swept out.

Neave was faster. Sliding under the blow at the speed of a galloping gryph-charger, she scissored her axe-blades through the monster’s wrist and neatly severed its hand. Neave rose from the slide and ducked under the huge creature’s jaw, spinning as she went and hacking both blades up through its throat.

Black gore spurted, and Neave slid free on her back, using the last of her momentum to perform a neat backward roll and coming back to her feet facing the beast.

It staggered, gore spilling from the ragged wound in its neck. The beast let out a gurgling roar, more blood spraying from its crocodilian maw, and doggedly tried to pursue her. Krien streaked in front of the monster’s eyes, causing it to rear back and, as it did, a trio of Tarion’s crackling arrows whistled down to thump into its chest.

The monster gave a snarl as lightning tore through its body, then stumbled as it tried to wheel again. At that moment the Palladors swept into the square from the opposite end and, not even slowing, bore down upon the creature with their javelins lowered like lances.

Foerunner and his cavalrymen hit the beast like a hammer blow. It swung two of its taloned limbs to ward them off, but Neave watched, impressed, as one rider leaned back in his saddle to evade the blow while the other leapt his steed clear over the hurtling limb.

The monster staggered, bewildered, bleeding in rivers, then sagged. Neave hefted one of her axes and hurled it. The weapon spun end over end and crunched home between the monster’s eyes. It gave a last burbling groan, then toppled onto its face.

Neave stood for a moment, head cocked to one side, waiting.

‘It was not the mark,’ she said, unsurprised as she felt her dim sense of her prey remain unchanged.

‘That much was obvious,’ said Tarion, landing nearby. ‘This thing didn’t cause all that death and devastation.’

‘It didn’t unleash any sort of fire, either,’ said Neave. ‘Whatever we’re hunting, he, she or it has burned half this town black.’

‘Corpsejaw,’ said Foerunner, cantering back around on his gryph-charger. The half-avian steed clacked its beak in disgust. ‘They’re a local scavenger species. Saw them during the purge of the Chamrian Hills. Our friend here didn’t do this, he just moved in and started scavenging once the dust settled.’

‘I think he’s the only thing that was left alive here,’ said Neave. ‘We move on.’

Arlor nodded grimly. ‘This was wasted time,’ he said. ‘My apologies, Lady Blacktalon.’

‘Not necessary,’ replied Neave. ‘For one thing, the devastation here is more extreme than in Dunhaven. That was bad, but there’s more fury now, more ferocity.’

‘As though the mark is gathering pace,’ mused Tarion.

‘As though the more carnage it wreaks, the more dangerous it becomes,’ said Neave.

‘Do you believe that we seek an it, not a he or she?’ asked Foerunner. His Palladors had gathered behind him and watched the approaches to the square intently.

‘If the mark is a being like you or I, then either they are employing some manner of weapons I cannot fathom, or ride upon some dire beast,’ said Neave. ‘No warrior’s blade caused the massive wounds and destruction we’ve seen here. The ground is hard, but rock and stone both bear the imprint of tracks, something with long talons and the weight to drive them deep.’

‘The entire town looks as though a feral gryph-hound got loose in a pyklin enclosure,’ said Tarion. ‘This was a rampage, a slaughter wrought by something that attacked everything that moved as though on instinct.’

‘Murderously thorough, though,’ said Neave. ‘And it must have happened shockingly fast. I haven’t seen a single body beyond the walls, have you?’

‘No one had time to flee,’ said Foerunner.

‘The mark can obfuscate my sense of its presence, is possessed of murderous strength and unholy weapons, and we must assume that it can move every bit as fast as we can. I believe that even as we hunt this thing, we risk being hunted in turn.’

A moment of silence settled across the Stormcast Eternals as they considered this. The wind sighed miserably through the baking-hot streets. Flies danced. Silk flapped from broken poles like grave markers.

Then, far to the west, something rose into the cloud-scattered sky and detonated in a crimson starburst. Another projectile sailed up after it, spreading another slowly fading bloom of red light and smoke against the tattered storm clouds. As the sky-fires burst, Neave felt dread settle like a lead weight on her heart. She knew what they meant even before Tarion spoke.

‘Flares, from Iron Despot,’ said Tarion.

‘Signalling for aid.’

‘No. Combat,’ said Tarion. ‘They’ve engaged.’

Dunhaven and Sigenvale lay butchered already. Neave wondered if the same was about to happen again.

‘Move,’ said Neave, determined to ensure that it did not, and broke into a run. Her comrades followed. The Hammers of Sigmar left the corpse of Sigenvale behind them to rot in the fierce heat.

The Stormcasts had been on the move for almost four hours, maintaining a swift pace as the baked earth and tough grass of the plains transformed into cracked stone, basalt outcroppings and sheer-sided chasms. Now, with the storm clouds thickening above and a misty, blood-warm rain falling, they were nearing Brimstone Lake. Neave could see the land rising like a clenched fist before them, forming a rocky headland that jutted out over the churning waters. Fumes rose from the vast lake, and an acrid stench hung on the air.

Beyond, the rising mass of the nearest volcano was now clearly visible, only a few miles distant, black fumes boiling up from its caldera to mingle with the storm clouds. The rest of the chain marched away westwards at its back, and Neave sincerely hoped that they caught up to their quarry before it could vanish into that savage region.

‘More flares,’ called Tarion from above.

‘I see them,’ replied Neave. ‘White smoke.’

Tarion’s face hardened. ‘They have ceased combat. According to Danastus’ briefing, white smoke is their appeal for aid. This is their last resort.’

‘What manner of thing could threaten a cogfort single-handed?’ wondered Neave aloud.

‘The flares rose from the southern bank of the lake, near the foot of the volcano,’ called Tarion. ‘The hunt moves ahead.’

‘And we must yet again dash to catch up,’ snarled Neave, frustrated. ‘We halted at Sigenvale to offer mercy to ghosts while the living go to their graves ahead of us. If Iron Despot falls, Arlor, it will be because you slowed my hunt.’

‘Lady Blacktalon, I–’

‘Save your words, only actions matter now,’ snapped Neave, increasing her pace and leaving Tarion to flounder in her wake.

They passed the headland, and Neave saw the deep tread-marks of the cogfort sunk into the bedrock. She could see its trail where it had stomped down from the north, the deeper indentations where it had settled its weight and awaited their arrival, and the more ragged gouges in the stone that suggested acceleration as it had moved away south and west along the bank of the lake. It would hardly take skill like Neave’s to follow such a track. She saw, as well, a few telltale talon marks like those she had spotted at Dunhaven and in Sigenvale.

‘It looks as though they gave chase,’ called Neave. She caught the sound of distant booms, rolling through the misty veil.

‘Cannon fire,’ said Foerunner.

The sounds of combat grew closer as they dashed along the edge of the lake. Neave’s frustration redoubled as whatever was occurring remained veiled from her sight. Down here by the lake, a mixture of reeking mist, sheets of rain and the sulphurous fumes rolling from the volcano conspired to drop visibility to a few dozen feet. The Stormcasts were forced to slow lest they run headlong into sudden danger.

Tarion dropped low so that he flew just above his comrades’ heads, Krien tucking in close on his wing. The Palladors spread out to either flank, remaining wholly corporeal.

Neave motioned for silence. The mark must surely be close, and she could feel heavy vibrations rolling through the bedrock. A mighty flash lit the haze ahead. The sound of an explosion rolled over them, muffled by the mists and rain, and the ground convulsed.

Neave and her comrades pressed on, towards whatever catastrophe had occurred. Neave thought she knew, but she wanted to confirm it with her own eyes.

The mists proved deceptive, warping distances. Tension built in Neave’s chest as she and her companions pressed forward. Her nerves sang with a sense of peril. Lightning crackled through the clouds above and reached down to form phantom trees of light that stretched between the lake and the skies. Thunder rumbled, and Neave cursed the sound as its echoes rolled over her. Between the increasing wrath of the storm, the throaty rumble of the volcano looming above them and the muffling veils of vapour, even her senses were of little more use than those of a mortal hunter.

It was like being smothered. Was this how mortals lived all the time, so unsure of what lay around the next corner, behind the next scad of cloud or veil of smoke? Was this how she had once lived?

Then, quite suddenly, the mist and fumes parted.

‘By Sigendil’s light,’ gasped one of the Palladors.

Neave’s reprimand to him for breaking the silence died on her lips as she absorbed the sight that lay before her. She had seen a cogfort once before, stalking towards an unknown horizon. She knew how this one should look: an ironclad fortress with thick, armoured towers rising from within a central wall. Cannons and fire-throwers jutting from hatches all over its superstructure. Firesteps thronging with Freeguild soldiery, dark glass filling the portholes of the command bridge high above, proud banners and thaumatransferric veins rising above its conical slate roof. And the legs – the eight huge, articulated cogwork legs with their steam conduits and hydraulic supports and complex webs of cables that kept them rising and falling with the same fastidious gait as some immense spider.

Iron Despot barely resembled that proud memory. The machine lay on its side at the rocky base of the volcano, three legs torn away entirely. The rest tangled around it, so much oil-slicked wreckage. The fall had sundered the fortress, splitting its flanks like overripe fruit and allowing segments of pipework, decking and mechanical innards to spill out. The incongruous details were the most horrifying: half a wooden stairway jutting proud here, a bent and buckled mess-table protruding there with scraps of food still smeared across its surface. Neave saw talon-marks in the metal of the cogfort’s shattered walls, and here and there a gouge in the hard stone upon which it lay.

Corpses lay around the cogfort where the fall had hurled them. Others sprawled amidst the ruins, just as bloodied, just as dead.

Neave cast a glance around, straining her senses to their limits to detect any threat.

Tarion landed beside her and placed a gauntlet upon her shoulder. Neave shrugged his hand away angrily and gestured at the carnage that surrounded them. She stared hard into his eyes and saw that he caught her meaning.

This is your fault, her stare said. Your insistence on delay left us too late to intervene. She saw pain in his eyes and realised that Arlor already knew and owned that guilt. He bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement, then gestured here and there amidst the ruin. Neave realised he was drawing her attention to the flames that crawled across the wreckage. They were white-hot, sizzling with an unnatural intensity and chewing away at metal and rock as happily as flesh and wood.

The fires still burned, she realised. The mark could not long have lit them.

She held up a clenched fist, ordering her comrades to halt and maintain their position in the shadow of the fort. They obeyed, drawing into a tight armoured circle and keeping watch into the mists.

Neave surveyed the fallen fort a second time, forcing herself to start again, dispassionate, taking in every detail. The shores of the lake lay just yards away, and she realised from the angle at which the cogfort lay, and the tracks still visible around its shattered bulk, that it had been backing towards the water when it fell. The lake’s muddy banks were churned into an oil-streaked stew where one of the cogfort’s legs must have taken a swiping step and slipped over the mud. It looked as though they were trying to back into the lake itself.

A desperate plan.

Neave spotted one of the missing cogwork legs, lying some distance away. She took note of the deep gouges in the leg, the snapped cables and twisted stubs of metal. It had been ripped clean off.

The fort’s upper towers had broken across the rocky slopes of the volcano itself, several landing perilously close to rents that split its dark skin, glowing with hellish light and belching thick clouds of smoke. The heat from the rents had melted the wrecked superstructure and burned several human corpses that had been flung from the highest spires.

Tarion leaned close to Neave and murmured in her ear. ‘We should give chase, before the mark gets away again. I could not bear the weight of further deaths upon my conscience. Have you a sense of its location?’

Neave closed her eyes and reached out. She ignored the crackle of flames and the groan of stressed metal, the stench of sulphur and brimstone that billowed from the bubbling lake and from the slopes above. Lightning exploded above them with a volley of dry cracks. Thunder bellowed. Neave barely heard them, focusing her attention upon the mark.

‘Not everyone on that cogfort can have died in the crash,’ she whispered to Tarion. ‘The mark has been thorough, again. It left no man nor duardin alive. Even if it is large and powerful enough to massacre settlements and drag down a cogfort, that must have taken it some time. It can’t have gone… far…’

Neave’s eyes snapped open. Every fibre of her being burned with an adrenal surge of warning. She looked again at the muddy shore of the lake, where the cogfort’s rear limb had taken a single, swiping step. Where it had reduced the ground to a mangled mess in which no tracks would show.

Where the shallows boiled like a cauldron.

‘It’s still here,’ she hissed.

The surface of the lake exploded as something vast erupted from its depths.

The thing was as much forged brass and black iron as it was wet muscle, taut sinew and exposed bone spars. It was massive, taller at the shoulder than a Dreadfort wall and built so heavily that it was as though a fortress had mutated and come to predatory life. Neave caught sight of blazing furnace eyes and razor-sharp brass teeth in its hound-like head, a massive collar of spiked brass that encircled its neck, talons the size of battering rams and an armoured body into whose flanks were cut deep rents. Furious fiery light shone from those rib-like gaps, and as the abomination burst from the sizzling waters, black fumes belched out of them as though from the stacks of an Ironweld factory.

Despite its immense size and heavy metallic body, the beast moved blisteringly fast. It covered the ground to the Stormcasts before they had so much as drawn breath and swept a massive foreclaw through their ranks.

Neave leapt straight up, backflipping over the brass claw as it swept below her like some baroque siege engine. Tarion shot past her, taking to the air like a streak of lightning. The Palladors were less fortunate, two of their number failing to wyndshift away in time. Blood sprayed. Torn flesh rained down as the monster’s talon obliterated its victims, sending the sundered corpses of two gryph-chargers bouncing and rolling to a stop amidst the wreckage of the fort.

Two bolts of lightning arced skyward, Stormcast souls rushing back to the heavens to be Reforged.

Neave landed with catlike grace and found herself immediately on the defensive. No time to mourn the fallen, but time enough to let their deaths stoke her anger, adrenaline and speed. She leapt back from another hurtling claw swipe, then rolled aside as the monster’s jaws clanged shut where she had lain a split second before. Neave managed to lash out with her whirlwind axes as she rolled back to her feet; sparks rained down as they clanged from the abomination’s metal skull to no appreciable effect.

‘It’s some form of accursed daemon engine,’ barked Tarion.

‘It’s immense,’ cried Neave, weaving aside again as the monster slammed a claw into the ground with enough force to crack the bedrock. ‘Like a Khornate Flesh Hound grew to the size of a living castle! How did such a thing come to be?’ Sulphurous waters were still boiling away from its slick muscle-and-metal body, creating a choking cloud of steam that mingled with the black smoke churning from the thing’s insides.

A volley of crackling bolts whipped in from the side, peppering the armour around one of the daemon hound’s eyes and causing it to recoil with a growl like a furnace door being thrown open. Neave didn’t waste time thanking Kalparius and his remaining Pallador – she just took the momentary opening and accelerated away from the beast.

Crackling arrows streaked down as Tarion drew and loosed, drew and loosed far faster than any mortal warrior could have. The lightning-wreathed shafts impacted along the beast’s spine in blasts of white light. Neave cursed as she realised that, again, the attacks had done as good as nothing. Her eyes danced across its mountainous form as it moved, seeking weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Its armour plates looked utterly impervious to anything short of sustained cannon fire, and clearly even that hadn’t availed the cogfort. Perhaps the wet muscle and sinew that entwined its limbs, she thought.

Then the engine opened its jaws wide with a terrible shriek of hinging metal. Phosphorous flame leapt within its gullet.

‘Arlor, get clear,’ yelled Neave, in the instant before a spear of white-hot flame roared up from the daemon hound’s throat. Tarion had seen the threat coming, yet the engine moved with the speed of an onrushing avalanche. He barely managed to weave aside, crying out in pain as searing flames licked up the right side of his body. Neave saw the Knight-Venator’s armour catch light, and his crystal wing-veins crack in the intense heat. What kind of hellish fires could catch in forged sigmarite? thought Neave with growing horror. Surely this gigantic abomination must have been loosed from Khorne’s own daemonic forges, to possess such hideous gifts.

Tarion spiralled away, smoke boiling from his scorched form, and Krien gave a desolate cry.

‘Foerunner, attract the abomination’s attention,’ shouted Neave. ‘I’m going to try for its living flesh.’

Kalparius shot Neave a salute and spurred his gryph-charger, gesturing for his remaining warrior to follow his lead. The two Palladors rode hard, straight at the daemon hound, and lightning cracked overhead as they unleashed another salvo of boltstorm shots. Crackling blasts burst across the monster’s face and it gave a howl of fury before loosing another pyrotechnic blast from its maw. The Palladors wyndshifted out of the path of the searing beam, and it bored a blazing rent in the flank of the fallen cogfort.

Blacktalon seized upon the hound’s moment of distraction. She ran up a sloping armour plate that had broken away from the cogfort’s superstructure and leapt, axes raised high, sailing through the air and slamming down on the monster’s back. Neave buried both axes into a huge clump of flensed muscle that bunched and corded along the hound’s brass spine. Molten ichor sprayed, spattering her armour and faceplate and hissing as it warped the sigmarite.

Neave had an instant to be grateful she was wearing her helm, before the daemon hound bucked underneath her. She had half hoped its fury might make it insensible to her presence. Instead, the beast twisted and snarled, shaking its massive body left and right and almost dislodging her. Worse, Neave could feel furnace heat rapidly building, radiating up from the monster’s metal skin and through the soles of her armoured feet.

She couldn’t run with burned feet, she thought, and she couldn’t fight if she couldn’t run. This close, she could hear the daemon engine’s mechanical innards thundering away like some pandemoniac factory. She was surrounded by black smoke that choked her lungs and fouled her vision. She realised that, for all her speed and huntress’ instincts, she didn’t even know where to begin to try to bring down a monster so vast and strange.

Knowing she couldn’t remain still any longer, Neave ripped her axes free and began to run along the creature’s back towards the nape of its neck. She recalled seeing a great mass of muscle and sinew bunched between its shoulder blades. Perhaps, if she broke enough of those connections, she could behead the beast? For a second, she questioned what would happen if she couldn’t, but then crushed the notion down. Panic lay that way, and the realisation that if this thing slew them all, it would have free rein to continue its slaughter.

How many more lives would be lost if they failed here? How much more death would be laid upon their shoulders?

Neave made it ten paces before the daemon hound bucked again, footfalls pounding the bedrock as it turned a maddened half-circle trying to dislodge her. Neave’s balance and agility were superb, and she rode out the violent motion, hacking her axes into every visible fleshy substructure as she passed. Boiling ichor spurted in her wake, but the wounds seemed only to increase her mark’s fury.

The hillock of wet muscle rose ahead of Neave and she saw a webwork of capillary-strung tendons stretched like hawser cables between it and the brazen collar that encircled the beast’s neck. Pivoting on the balls of her feet to avoid being thrown loose again, Neave spun and swung her axes in a vicious arc. Their blades met the nearest tendon and rebounded as though they had struck a castle wall. Neave felt a moment’s horror. She had never seen anything resist her blades so completely.

The daemon hound chose that moment to wrench itself sideways, slamming bodily against the crumpled cogfort. Already off balance from the unexpected deflection of her axes, Neave was thrown from her feet and felt a sickening lurch in the pit of her stomach as she plunged over the hound’s shoulder and down to hit the ground at its feet.

Neave managed to control her fall, but only barely. She landed on one shoulder and rolled, hissing at the jarring pain that shot through her arm and down her back. She turned the roll into a rising start and began to run, but the hound slammed a claw down and managed to clip Neave’s leg. There came a tearing of metal, a crunch of bone and a vicious stab of agony, and Neave crashed down on her face. Fury and despair warred within her at the thought that she was about to be slain, that this abomination was about to best her and be freed to continue its slaughter. She was about to fail Sigmar for the first time, and the thought appalled her.

Neave rolled onto her back in time to see Kalparius and his surviving Pallador riding hard at the hound, shooting as they went.

They were trying to buy her time, Neave knew. But the blow to the head had stunned her momentarily, and with her shattered leg, she simply couldn’t move fast enough.

Tons of metal and roaring fire rushed overhead as the beast lunged, bounding right over Neave to swat the remaining Pallador through the air. His body hit the waters of the lake and sank like a stone, before his soul flashed up from the surface in a geyser of steam.

Kalparius was, if anything, less fortunate still. He hauled his gryph-charger into a hard turn, trying to weave between the hound’s legs to reach Neave. Impossibly fast, the hound’s muzzle darted down and its jaws clanged shut, taking Foerunner’s head from his shoulders with shocking precision. A second bite a moment later sliced the Pallador’s steed clean in half, the gryph-charger shrieking its last even as Kalparius’ soul shot heavenwards.

‘We’ve failed,’ breathed Neave through a haze of pain. ‘We’ve failed. Damn this monster.’

The thought was utterly unacceptable and, spurred by a fresh burst of rage and determination, Neave hauled herself into a crouch. She looked up at the underbelly of the beast, seeing more ironwork, bone, muscle and brass. Circular metal hatches were built into the creature’s torso, all but obscured by black smoke and bound shut with brass chains. They had unholy runic sigils etched into them, Chaos designs that stung Neave’s eyes worse than the smoke.

Were the hatches there to allow access? They couldn’t be. Not if they were chained from the outside. They must be hatches behind which something was bound, then.

She had no more time for thought, as the daemon hound circled with pounding footfalls and prepared to attack her again. Neave forced herself to stand, pain screaming through the broken bones in her right leg, and held her axes down and out to either side, blades glinting. The monster’s face drew level with her own, furnace eyes burning, hot breath gusting around her. Neave stared back, unflinching. She felt disgust and defiance as she locked eyes with the immense beast, and sudden scorn. It was so powerful, so unbelievably mighty, yet it did naught but destroy like a mindless beast. If this was all that the Dark Gods had to offer, they might well wreak a trail of destruction across the realms, but no amount of unholy strength would prevent Sigmar’s armies from winning this war in the end.

‘You can kill me now,’ she said. ‘But I will come for you again and again, and in the end it is you who will fall.’

She’d died before.

She knew its wrench.

She prepared herself for the wash of pain.

A storm of arrows whistled down and peppered the monster’s muzzle. Explosions of lightning drove its head aside, before a shrieking crimson comet shot down and raked glowing talons across the beast’s left eye.

The daemon hound reared back with a roar so loud that Neave could feel her ears bleeding. Beyond the beast, perched upon a wrecked spar of cogfort battlement, she saw Tarion beckoning her. He pointed at the shadowy rent in the fort’s flank below his position.

Neave summoned as much speed as she could on her mangled leg. Every footfall was blinding pain, but she kept moving, and as the hound came after her Tarion drove it back with another volley of shots to the face. Krien spiralled past, causing the maddened daemon hound to lash out with a massive claw. The star-eagle spiralled up and away, giving a mocking shriek as he shot towards the storm clouds above.

Neave lunged up a metal slope, footfalls clanging, and threw herself into the darkened interior of the fort. She heard a rush of metal and a thunderous impact behind her and was spilled from her feet as the fortress shook. Looking back, Neave saw one blazing eye staring at her through the rent in the fort’s flank, then it was replaced by the hound’s yawning jaws.

‘Oh no, no, no, no…’ gasped Neave as she dragged herself along the wall of the tilted corridor and fell desperately through a buckled doorway that yawned surreally in the ‘floor’. Neave slid out of control down a ruptured deck and crunched into the heap of wreckage that had piled up against the chamber’s far wall. She cried out in pain as the bones in her leg ground together.

Then came fire, filling the doorway with white-hot light. Neave felt the heat from the blast, even thirty feet down, and saw the metal of the door frame glow and begin to drip molten gobbets.

Then the fire was gone.

There came another thunderous clang, then another. A metallic snarl carried through the fort’s hull, and the structure shook around Neave as it suffered another thunderous blow.

‘For once, I am the cornered prey,’ she murmured. Neave heard the tortured shriek of metal, then another blow shook the chamber. Junked furniture and discarded weapons shifted beneath her.

‘Neave!’ She heard Tarion’s voice, distant, echoing through the cogfort. His cry was answered by a muffled howl from outside and another ripping sound.

Concentrating on the echoes of Tarion’s voice, Neave hauled herself across the drift of wreckage and through another door that had burst open in the chamber’s sloping wall. She found herself in a shrine to Sigmar, with a high ceiling and an altar that had fallen and smashed against a pane of stained glass. Spars of rock jutted up through the shattered window, and bits of broken glass twinkled, their representation of Sigmar fractured into a hundred pieces.

‘Neave, where are you?’ She heard Tarion again, closer, his voice tight with controlled panic. She began to scale the pews that had been bolted to the metal floor. Neave found bodies amongst the pews, broken and dangling where they had knelt in prayer before the end. A couple of soldiers, what looked like an alchemist of some sort, and a figure she was relatively sure was the fort’s cook.

Neave climbed on and, grabbing both sides of the doorframe in what was now the ceiling, she hauled herself up into another skewed corridor. There were more bodies here, Freeguild soldiers lying with their necks broken and bodies mangled by the fall. Fire had swept along it, and Neave saw that it had issued from the fort’s secondary engine room – a metal plate was bolted to the wall, its blackened lettering still just visible in the half-light that fell through small rents in the hull. A duardin lay beneath it, his Ironweld garb a blackened and bloody mess.

The fort shook again, and a howl of rage echoed from outside. Something heavy thumped down at the other end of the corridor, and Neave spun, axes raised.

‘Tarion,’ she said quietly, her voice tinged with relief. The Knight-Venator hastened to meet her, his cracked wings tucked close. She could see from the way he moved that he was in significant pain. His armour was fused and melted down one side.

‘Your leg,’ he said.

‘Broken,’ she replied. ‘Nothing I cannot ignore until the job’s done. You look worse.’

‘I am not dead yet,’ said Tarion, and to Neave’s surprise he shot her a lopsided grin. She felt herself respond in kind.

‘We soon will be if we cannot come up with a way to defeat this beast,’ said Neave, keeping her voice pitched low. There came another rending clang from somewhere close, shaking the corridor and causing oil to spatter down through rents in the wall.

‘Its hide seems proof against our weapons,’ said Tarion. ‘Direct assault isn’t going to work, not with two of us. It’d take an army to bring that thing down.’

‘I could distract it and allow you to make a break for freedom, but it wouldn’t do us any good,’ said Neave. ‘That damned collar around its neck, it’s thick with Khornate runes. Wards against magic of every sort. I would bet my blades that’s what’s been interfering with my gifts, obscuring the beast from my sight. If we lost it here, by the time we tracked it down again it could have an army rallied behind it.’

‘I was not for a moment suggesting that one of us flee for aid,’ said Tarion, and Neave realised he was affronted. ‘I meant only that we need to come up with another way to defeat the beast.’

The cogfort shook violently, and there came a tearing of metal. Daylight spilled into the corridor as the section housing the secondary boiler room tore backwards and away. The duardin corpse slithered bonelessly out of the hole, and the daemon hound’s furious visage filled the ragged gap in the corridor’s end.

‘Move,’ urged Neave, and both she and Tarion dashed along the corridor as fast as they could go. Neave felt pain ripping up through her mangled leg. She gritted her teeth and ignored the trail of blood she left behind her as she limped along. Again, the fort shook, and another chunk of superstructure tore away behind them as massive claws ripped through it.

‘We can’t hurt it with our weapons, we don’t have the numbers to overwhelm it,’ said Tarion as they ducked through a hatchway into what looked like a destroyed map room. ‘What else do we have to work with? Did you see any weaknesses, any hints at how to bring it down?’

‘The tendons around its neck looked promising, but they’re tougher than forged steel,’ said Neave as they lurched across the shaking chamber and scrambled up a heap of wreckage and corpses to reach the hatch above. ‘Its underbelly. There are hatches in its underbelly, chained shut,’ she exclaimed.

‘What if, even after we break the chains, whatever is in there does not care to vacate?’ asked Tarion. ‘That’s a powerful second skin it’s wearing. Would you give up armour that destructive?’

They reached the top of the stairwell only to find their passage blocked by an iron hatch. It had crumpled in its frame, something huge and heavy buckling the wall beside it. Tarion and Neave gripped it and tried between them to wrench it open. The hatch started to give with a groan, but wouldn’t shift any further.

‘Damnation,’ spat Neave, thumping one fist against the wall. Behind them, they heard the shriek and groan of metal tearing. Smoke billowed up through the stairwell.

‘It’s going to flush us, then burn us,’ said Tarion.

Neave snapped her head around to stare at him. ‘Tarion, that’s brilliant,’ she said.

‘It… what?’ he replied.

‘I’ll lead the mark,’ she said. ‘You get airborne, shadow us, and when I signal–’

The wall of the corridor tore inwards, huge metal talons raking through it as easily as though it were paper. Neave ducked, snarling in pain as a talon-tip raked a furrow through the back-plate of her armour. Tarion gave a yell of alarm as he was caught up in the mangled mass of metal and wood and ripped out of the cogfort’s corridor.

‘Tarion!’ yelled Neave, scrambling up through the rent, grabbing buckled pipes and severed girders as she dragged herself onto the cogfort’s outer skin. She saw the hound had clambered halfway up onto the wreck. It had Tarion trapped within its curled talons and was raising him towards its enormous maw.

Neave hobbled as fast as she could towards the beast, mind racing as she tried to figure out a way to get Tarion free. She saw a sudden crackle of light, and then the monster’s talons were blown open in a thunderous flash. Tarion was flung away, plunging off the side of the cogfort and vanishing from sight.

Neave had no time to work out what had happened, and no choice but to hope that her comrade was alive, and that he had understood and was capable of following her plan.

She would have to trust Tarion. The thought made her uncomfortable, but at this point it was their best chance.

Neave’s darting eyes quickly picked out the best route off the side of the cogfort. She moved as fast as she could, ignoring the jarring pain that shot up her leg, clambering and slithering between the buckled plates and jutting spars before lurching along the inside of the fort’s lower rampart and dropping ten feet to the bedrock. A gasp of pain escaped her, but Neave kept moving.

‘Come on, you mindless abomination,’ she muttered as she set off up the volcano’s slope. ‘You’ve hunted down every living thing that’s crossed your path since I’ve been on your trail. Don’t tell me you’re getting lazy now.’

Neave was rewarded by a tectonic thump behind her, the impact so hard it made dirt jump from the bedrock and almost spilled her from her feet. She didn’t need to look back to know that the beast was chasing her; the ominous sound of rumbling furnaces, screeching metal and iron clangour told her everything she needed to know.

Neave ran as fast as she could, accelerating as swiftly as she dared on her shattered leg. She controlled the tight fear that tried to constrict her chest and force its way up her throat, the tinge of dread between her shoulder blades where she expected the monster’s claws to smash down any second. She determinedly shut out the agony that shot up through her thigh, into her hip, then up into her spine, growing worse with every footfall. She knew by the end of this mission the limb was going to be so badly ruined that they’d be forced to reforge her anyway, even if she survived.

Neave kept running, right through pain that would have rendered a mortal warrior unconscious. She climbed the slope, up through veils of smoke and fume, and as she went a fiery glow spread before her. She was closing in on the rents she had seen in the volcano’s flanks. She just had to hope that her mark didn’t catch her before–

A shriek of warning sounded from above, and Neave threw herself sideways with a silent surge of gratitude to Krien. She rolled behind a basalt outcrop just as white-hot fire billowed around her. It blazed furiously, and Neave swore as she felt her armour heating up.

The fiery blast swept away the vapours. Just upslope from her position, Neave saw the vents yawning wide and molten hot.

‘One last effort,’ she snarled through gritted teeth, but doubts clamoured in her mind. What if Tarion was already dead, and she just hadn’t seen his soul escape? What if he hadn’t fully understood the plan? What if he simply let her down?

Neave shut the clamour down, cutting off the voices of panic as though she had dropped a portcullis before them.

‘He’s out there and he’ll do his duty,’ she told herself. ‘He’s a damned Hammer of Sigmar. Besides, if I stay here any longer my armour’s going to melt and scald me to death anyway.’

With that, Neave bunched her muscles and launched herself into a desperate charge. She pounded upslope, staying in the lee of the boulder as long as she could. The beast’s fiery breath still washed around her, but it was jolting as the hound charged up the slope to run her to ground. Expending every iota of her focus and skill, Neave wove through the firestorm, still accelerating, knowing she had to be moving fast enough or it would all be for naught.

Metal pounded on stone behind her.

Fire washed around her in a furious tide.

Pain rolled through her in a nauseating storm.

The chasm yawned suddenly at her feet and, with a scream of effort and a last burst of speed, Neave leapt. As she pushed off on her left foot she spun so that she revolved over the hellish glare of the lava below and passed through the unbearable heatwash in a pirouette. Sure enough, the hound was almost on top of her, bounding closer in vast strides.

Neave had one chance. She drew back her arm and, sighting through the blistering heat haze, she hurled an axe with all her might.

She hit bedrock beyond the chasm shoulders first, and the breath was driven from her body. At the same moment, her axe spun end over end through the air and struck the chained hatch in the hound’s underbelly. Crimson sparks exploded as the chain was severed and Neave’s axe ricocheted away. The daemon hound, still ploughing forwards with all the momentum of an ironclad avalanche, reared to step over the rent. As it did so, the unchained hatch buckled as though struck from within, and then exploded open.

Light burst outwards, tinged in the impossible hues of insanity, and Neave gritted her teeth as a deranged howl erupted from the open hatch. Through a haze of pain and heat she saw something writhing, an ephemeral presence formed from swirling energy that seemed torn between bursting free, or drawing back into the hound’s shell like a startled sea creature.

The daemon hound’s foreclaws slammed down on Neave’s side of the rent, hard enough to send cracks radiating through the bedrock. The huge engine hesitated, its smouldering muzzle just feet from Neave, its fiery eyes flickering with the indecision of the entity bound within.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as the shimmering colours sucked back into the torn remains of the hatch, and fire billowed anew in the creature’s maw. It had been a desperate plan to begin with…

Tarion swept out of the smoke above the rent, his star-forged arrow crackling upon his bowstring. The Knights-Venator could summon these mighty projectiles only rarely, but they struck with the unleashed fury of a thousand thunderbolts.

Now, Tarion loosed his straight down into the exposed heart of the volcano. Neave grinned wolfishly up at the looming monster, and an instant later a thunderblast ripped through the depths of the rent. Primordial wrath and celestial fury raced outwards, mingling with the natural ferocity of the Realm of Fire. In any other realm, such a plan might have come to naught, but the volcanoes of Aqshy were proud and passionate entities, and their wrath was easily triggered. Tarion’s arrow was more than enough.

The ground convulsed, and an almighty blast of molten rock and searing flame jetted up from the rent. It struck the hound’s underbelly, and Neave heard an ululating shriek of outrage as gallons of molten magma funnelled up through the hatch to spew into the engine’s heart.

The daemon hound convulsed. Neave squirmed backwards on her elbows and heels, leaving a blood trail across the rock. The monster’s eyes blazed orange-white, and for an instant it looked almost shocked, before the brass plates of its muzzle deformed and exploded outwards like an obscene flower blooming. Fire and spinning chunks of metal rained around Neave, who rolled onto her front and scrambled as best she could away from the explosion.

She heard furious blasts rippling behind her, the snap of tensed cables letting go, the scream and moan of melting metal and something unnatural and monstrous being hurled out of the mortal plains and into realms beyond the sight of living things.

She threw herself forwards as the ground shook again, and rolled over in time to see the hound’s huge claws dragging deep furrows through the rock as its gutted carcass slid backwards into the rent. There came a final blast of volcanic fury, a crashing and rending of mechanical destruction and a billowing cloud of black smoke, then the hound was gone.

Neave’s sense of her mark vanished at the same moment.

Utterly exhausted, mind swimming with pain, she slumped back on the hot, hard rock of the volcano’s flank and allowed herself to pass out.

Some hours later, Neave and Tarion stood upon the bank of Brimstone Lake, their armour battered and blackened, their flesh burned and raw. Neave’s leg was splinted with metal and bandages salvaged from within the cogfort, and they had dressed Tarion’s burns as best they could. Krien sat nearby, ripping busily into something small, furry and unfortunate that he had caught amongst the rocks of the upper slopes.

‘That could have been us,’ said Neave, nodding at the bird’s bloody meal.

‘Your plan worked, though, Lady Blacktalon,’ said Tarion approvingly.

‘Neave,’ she said. ‘I think we’re past titles, don’t you?’

‘Neave,’ repeated Tarion with a smile.

‘I’ve never faced something that was a deadlier predator than myself,’ said Neave, shaking her head. The next words left her mouth only grudgingly, but she forced them out regardless. ‘Alone, I would have stood no chance of besting it. Thank you, Tarion. We don’t make the most terrible team.’

‘High praise indeed,’ chuckled Tarion, but she could hear in his voice that he was pleased with the grudging compliment. ‘We’ll have to thank our selfless Palladors once they’re Reforged, if they all make it through,’ he said, sobering.

Neave grunted an acknowledgement, staring out over the lake. ‘We will see them beyond the anvils,’ she said. ‘Meantime, I’m sure there will be another hunt for us.’

‘Us?’ asked Tarion, smiling again.

‘You pulled a fistful of arrows out of your quiver, didn’t you?’ she asked. ‘When it had you in its talon.’

‘It was the only thing I could think of,’ he confessed. ‘When they exploded, it hurt like Reforging itself, I’ll tell you that.’

Neave shook her head. ‘It worked. Anyone crazed enough to try something like that, and sharp enough to still finish that hunt alive? Yes, Tarion, I think I’ll hunt alongside you again,’ she said. ‘But in the meantime, we should return to the heavens. All joking aside, it’s going to take time to heal this battle-damage, and the war is never done. Beat me back to the Realmgate and I might even deign to have you accompany me in the hunt for my next mark.’

‘I can fly, and you are running on a broken leg,’ Tarion said flatly.

‘Well, then that just makes it a fair race, doesn’t it, Arlor?’ grinned Neave, and set off along the lakeside. Behind her, Tarion barked a laugh and took to the air. Krien shrieked in irritation as he was forced to cast aside the last of his meal to give chase.

At their backs the volcano rumbled on, the last molten remnants of Neave’s quarry dissolving deep within its fiery heart.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Kingsblade, Knightsblade and Shroud of Night, as well as the novella Crusade and the short story ‘Whiteout’. He has also written the novel Blacktalon: First Mark for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower novella Labyrinth of the Lost. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

An extract from Blacktalon: First Mark.

Far to the north of the city of Hammerhal Aqsha, amidst the thick, sulphur-fed groves of the Heironyme Jungle, a village stood in ruins. If the place had ever had a name it was gone now, buried beneath the drifts of blackened fronds and sulphurous dust that were slowly reclaiming its buildings.

The bloated jungle moon loomed over a clearing that contained a few dozen crumbling structures. They stood within a rotting palisade wall, just enough buildings to raise the ghosts of streets between them and lend the town an impression of civilisation, of imposed order. Yet the fields outside the walls were overgrown by anyoi trees and strangler’s twist, while the gaping hole in the village wall, and the hacked bones strewn amidst the ruins, put the lie to any notion that this tiny corner of Aqshy had been tamed.

Crouched amidst the jungle’s fringe, Neave Blacktalon studied the settlement intently. The nameless village and all its hopeful, pious settlers were long dead. Yet the prickle on her skin beneath her resilient suit of gilded sigmarite told her that something else had slithered in to inhabit the carcass of their butchered dream. Something that lit the night with eerie witchlight.

Neave’s senses were fully extended, alive to the slightest scent or sound, the merest vibration in the air. She reached out and felt the jungle around her, flitwings and diaphonids drifting through the canopy, treglyngs nosing between tree roots. She felt the strange movements within the slain village before her, long-limbed things stalking like wading birds, drums thumping a chaotic rhythm, unnatural beings cavorting. She sensed other movements amidst the jungle itself, but these concerned her less. Sigmar’s gift tugged at her, the siren sense of her latest mark close at hand, the quarry whose presence she would always feel, no matter how near or far, until she or they were dead.

Neave was one with the world around her, and she tasted the Chaotic taint that soured it. It gathered thick on her tongue and made her scowl with disgust and anger.

From her right, she felt gusts of air stir the jungle foliage. She heard the sounds of subtle movement draw closer, something large doing its utmost not to be heard. She scented the tang of ozone through the jungle’s sulphur. Curling her tongue, she gave a clicking signal: two low, quick sounds, a pause, then a third. The signal was returned, a moment before Tarion Arlor slid through the fronds of two anyois to join her.

‘Don’t tell me that Sigmar’s finest Knight-Zephyros needs that damned signal to verify it is me, Blacktalon. I know you heard my approach,’ said the Knight-Venator. Neave heard the smile behind the faceplate of his helm, and snorted with quiet amusement. Tarion was bigger than Neave, his bulky armour and its huge crystalline wings far less suited to slinking through the dense jungle.

‘Where is Krien?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t wish to tangle his wings amidst the foliage?’

‘He is on high, circling well out of sight,’ replied Tarion. ‘Star eagles are not noted for their love of confined terrain.’

‘Krien isn’t well known for his love of anything, save you,’ said Neave. ‘Sometimes I cannot tell if he’s your familiar, or you his.’

Tarion shook his head ruefully. ‘Damn bird is lucky he’s such a gifted fighter.’

‘We may need him to be so very soon,’ said Neave. ‘Xelkyn is here – I sense his taint. The conclusion to our hunt draws near, but something feels wrong. What did you see?’

‘Little,’ confessed Tarion. ‘It’s a clear night and the moon is vast. Even distracted by ritual and blinded by firelight, I could not risk them looking up and seeing my silhouette against the sky. There’s perhaps five or six dozen of his coven in the village. Stiltkin. Disc riders. Ogroids.’

‘I do not see any sentries,’ said Neave.

‘I did not spot any from afar,’ replied Tarion, shaking his head. ‘Xelkyn is arrogant. He no doubt believes himself hidden in this remote location.’

‘The sorcerer knows we hunt him,’ said Neave, not taking her eyes from the village, from the warped kaleidoscope of vivid light that welled up from its heart, the weird shadows that danced across its walls. ‘We almost had him in the Carathacium. You slew his Mutalith. He’s a toweringly arrogant creature, but his mind is a barbed maze. He has let us run him to ground, Tarion. There’s a trap here.’

‘Be that as it may, he’s conducting a ritual in there,’ said the Knight-Venator. ‘Look at the lights. Listen to the drums, the chanting. Feel the power gathering on the air.’

‘You think that slipped my notice?’ asked Neave wryly.

‘You know what I mean, Blacktalon. He may be summoning daemons, or opening a rent into the Crystal Labyrinth. If he slips away into the embrace of his master’s realm, he’ll be beyond even Sigmar’s reach.’

Neave cocked her head, listening intently to the timbre of the drums, the tone of the chanting, shrieking voices. Some sounded human, albeit rendered bestial in their frenzy. Others were cawing and avian. From amongst them she filtered another voice, commanding yet brittle somehow, as though an insect were trying to form human words with mouthparts not meant for the sound. She knew the hateful voice of Xelkyn Xerkanos, favoured covenmaster of Tzeentch and arch-traitor to Sigmar’s great city of Azyrheim, all too well.

‘He does not sound panicked,’ she said softly. ‘Tarion, he sounds angry. Spiteful. Determined. Whatever Xelkyn is conjuring in that village, it is not an escape route. It’s a weapon.’

‘What then?’ asked Tarion. ‘He’s your mark, Blacktalon. I merely hunt at your side.’

Neave paused and removed her helm, letting the foulness in the air wash over her skin, steeling herself against its touch. It thickened imperceptibly as she waited, like gossamer cobwebs caught on her flesh. She ran her gauntleted hand over her face, an unconscious gesture to scour away the invisible strands of Chaos magic that gathered there.

‘There isn’t time to seek aid,’ she said, replacing her helm. ‘Whatever Xelkyn is doing, his power builds by the minute. If we leave now, he will have completed his ritual and quite possibly vanished into the realmscape again long before we can return.’

‘There’s a lot of them,’ said Tarion in a warning tone. ‘You know we likely won’t survive a headlong assault.’

‘Neither will Xelkyn,’ said Neave, steel in her voice. ‘What’s wrong, Tarion? Afraid of death?’

‘Again? So soon after Gallowfall?’ he replied. ‘Could we not formulate some sort of plan that doesn’t involve a suicidal headlong attack on a Tzeentchian arch-sorcerer and his entire coven? Reforging has its price…’

‘And its boons. Did I not develop the talent of windshifting at will after my most recent reincarnation? What is that, if not a blessing from Sigmar himself? Besides, do you see another option?’ she asked, easing her whirlwind axes from their sheaths and spinning them in her hands, refamiliarising herself with their weight. She had fought with the weapons until they were as much a part of her as the hands that held them, but it was a ritual she often undertook.

‘No,’ said Tarion after a few moment’s frustrated thought. ‘If he knows we are coming then any attempt at luring his force away or splitting them up will only alert him to our arrival.’

‘Well then.’ Neave rose into a crouch. ‘Take to the air, do what Sigmar gave you the gifts to do, and if it is such a terrible inconvenience then… I don’t know, try not to get killed?’

‘Why in the realms do I hunt with you?’ Tarion hefted his bow as coruscating arrows of lightning crackled into being in his quiver.

‘Duty?’ suggested Neave. ‘Friendship? The deep-seated need to prove that you can keep up?’

‘Just give me a few moments to get into position, Blacktalon,’ said Tarion, and again she heard the smile behind the impassive mask of his helm.

‘Be swift,’ she said. Tarion spread the crystal-and-sigmarite wings that rose from the shoulders of his armour. Celestial energies glimmered through them, playing across the foliage like the promise of dawn, before he sprang skywards and punched up through the canopy with barely a rustle.

For all their repartee, Neave trusted Tarion more than any other Stormcast Eternal in all of Sigmar’s grand armies. He would cover her assault with a skill few in the Mortal Realms could match.

She glanced up, through the swaying jungle fringe, seeking the distant constellations that marked where the Realm of Heavens hung in the distant reaches of the void. Up there, somewhere, she knew that Sigmar looked down upon the realms and the battles his reforged warriors fought in his name.

‘Sigmar, watch over me now and lend me your strength, that I might do your will and strike down your foes,’ she murmured, before reaching out again with her huntress’ senses. She felt the winds aetheric as they whirled across the lands, gave herself up to their ensorcelled power, let them flow through her limbs and course through her lightning-wreathed soul. Her eyes crackled with barely restrained power, and her heart beat faster as the thrill of the hunt welled up within.

‘You may have laid a trap for Sigmar’s huntress, Xelkyn, but you had better be sure you don’t get caught in it yourself…’

Neave tore across the abandoned fields at such a pace that had any enemy seen her approach, she knew their eyes would have registered little more than a streak of displaced air and lightning. She cleared the village wall with an agile leap that carried her fifteen feet into the air, thumping down in the bone-strewn street beyond without missing a stride. Overhead, Neave caught a fleeting glimpse of Tarion, wings spread wide, storm-charged arrow nocked and ready to loose. The Knight-Venator was no longer trying to hide, and neither was she.

The street led towards the centre of the village, taking a left up ahead as it passed between the tumbledown buildings. In the distance, she saw Tzeentchian cultists clad in bright blue robes and grotesque avian masks wrought from gold. Their exposed flesh displayed forbidden markings and they bore the daggers and staves of minor wizards, while unholy fires sparked around them.

The enemy caught sight of Tarion. Shouting in surprise, they pointed skywards towards the swooping comet of the Knight-Venator’s star eagle.

‘Much too slow,’ hissed Neave as she bore down on the cultists like a meteor.

Tarion unleashed a volley of lightning-wreathed arrows with impossible speed. They shot overhead as Neave charged. The arcing shafts lit the night white with their fury, piercing robed bodies and throwing cultists backwards as though they’d been shot with a bolt thrower. One man slammed into a building wall and was pinioned there, dangling and twitching as lightning cooked his flesh and set fire to his robes. Another took an arrow to the face and was catapulted from his feet to crash through the sagging doorway of a nearby hut. Such was the force of his impact that half the structure’s roof came down upon him, burying the Chaos worshipper in an impromptu cairn.

Then Neave hit the cultists’ lines. She leapt and spun, pirouetting through the foe with her blades angled outward. Blood exploded in fans as her axes bit through cloth, flesh and bone. Tzeentch worshippers were flung away from her, crunching into the sides of the derelict buildings or rolling along the street to lie in crumpled heaps.

The survivors were still reeling, frantic, seeking their assailant even as she hit the building at the street’s end with her feet. Neave bent her knees, taking the shock of the impact and propelling herself back into the enemy like one of Tarion’s arrows. She struck the head from one cultist and lopped an arm from another as she flew, before landing in a roll and coming up in a fighting crouch.

One cultist remained standing, drenched in the blood of his fellows even as their bodies crumpled, spurting, to the ground. He raised his stave with shaking hands and pointed it in Neave’s direction. A crackling arrow slammed into his throat with such force that it passed clean through. She heard the man’s heart stop as celestial lightnings coursed through his body and killed him even before his blood began to jet from the wound.

Wordlessly, she raised an axe to Tarion in thanks, then sped on towards the heart of the village. The drums had increased their tempo and the chanting had transformed into warlike cries.

‘They now know we are coming,’ muttered Neave to herself. ‘It becomes more interesting from here.’

Neave rounded the corner between a tumbledown cottage and a mouldering tavern, and found herself confronted by a hellish spectacle. At the heart of the village lay a rude square, in the middle of which a well had been raised. Into the sulphurous dirt around the well, Xelkyn’s followers had driven nine tall silver pillars, each topped with an icon of Tzeentch, the Chaos God of change, fate, magic and mutation. Sorcerous energies crackled between the pillars, weaving a complex web of vivid blues, purples, greens and yellows that hurt Neave’s eyes to look at. A monstrous light beamed up from the well’s depths, hues of indescribable madness that seemed to crystallise and warp in the air as they rose.

Around the pillars was arrayed the remaining strength of Xelkyn’s coven. They packed the square to capacity, a throng of the deformed and the deranged all turning towards her with blades drawn and screams of hatred contorting their monstrous features.

With predatory speed she took in the enemies that confronted her, assessed which were the greatest threats, which would be the hardest to slay, which could be ignored or evaded altogether. The vast bulk of the enemy were human cultists like those she had already butchered, yet amongst them she saw knots of Tzaangor, blue-skinned and corded with wiry muscle, their bodies deformed with features both bestial and avian. A few hovered above their fellows, riding on fleshy, daemonic discs. They wielded twisted bows of silver and sinew.

Here and there, Stiltkin loomed, their bodies little more than masses of blue rags and dirty feathers, their masks beaklike. The weird creatures towered over their comrades on stilts of bone and gold sutured directly into the stumps of their legs, and they held long-hafted silver scythes which Neave knew from painful experience could cut through sigmarite with ease.

Most dangerous of all, several ogroid Thaumaturges rose like muscular islands amidst the press of foes, their flesh branded with glowing runes, their bull-like features and flowing manes crackling with power as they hefted sorcerous staves.

‘There,’ shouted Tarion from on high. ‘Amidst the pillars. Xelkyn.’

Neave saw her mark standing within the shimmering aegis of the pillars, looming over the well with his arms raised. Xelkyn was every bit as hideous as she remembered, with his spiralling robes of flame and light, his painfully elongated limbs, squirming mouthparts that dripped acidic drool, and iridescent eyes formed from fractured domes of crystal.

All this information flowed through Neave’s mind in a split-second. She didn’t even slow, instead angling her assault for a slight weakness that she perceived in the enemy’s lines, trusting that Tarion would cover her from on high. She was not mistaken.

As Neave charged, and the enemy raised their weapons to fight, a storm of lightning-wreathed arrows fell amongst them. Cultists and Tzaangor crashed to the ground, twitching and shrieking as their lives were snuffed out. One of the Stiltkin toppled like a tree as an arrow punched through its leg, sending its scythe blade swinging out of control to lop the head from a bellowing ogroid. Neave’s path was cleared amidst concussive blasts of celestial energy as she arced towards her target.

Still, the foe were many, the Stormcasts just two. Tarion could not suppress all Xelkyn’s coven at once.

‘Beware the soulfire,’ she shouted to him, catching flaring energies in her peripheral vision. Neave leapt aside as one of the ogroids hurled a ravening column of flame from the tip of his staff. The sorcerous energies bit into the ground, raising dust and steam as they blasted a trench where Neave had been. They clipped several luckless cultists, whose screams distorted into gibbering howls as their flesh melted and mutated beyond recognition.

Bands of cultists raised their staves and sent balls of magical fire leaping skywards, a meteor storm that set the air alight. Neave saw Tarion weave through the hail of projectiles, drawing and loosing arrows with inhuman speed as he did. His shots reaped a tally amongst the enemy, hurling more from their feet by the second. Yet they struck him in return, a blast of energy blackening his breastplate, another smashing shards of crystal from his left wing.

In response, there came a piercing shriek as Krien soared down from the night sky. The star eagle ploughed through the cultists’ ranks like a blazing comet, raking eyes and setting light to robes with his magical energies. A knot of Tzeentch worshippers scattered before the proud hunting bird, and Neave cut them down as she sprinted through their midst.

She dived beneath the swing of a Stiltkin scythe, hacking her attacker’s legs out from beneath it even as she heard the whoosh of its blade passing perilously close above her. Coming up in a headlong charge, Neave bisected a Tzaangor then spun around another as it swung its falchion at her.

The Knight-Zephyros moved so fast she knew her enemies would be fighting nothing but a blur that rendered even the most skilful of them clumsy by comparison. Yet they had the numbers, and she could not slow long enough for them to overwhelm her. She left her flailing attacker behind, hurling an axe spinning to thump into the face of an ogroid. As the monster toppled she leapt over it, snatching her blade free from its skull with a sucking squelch and a spray of golden blood.

Sorcerous fire blazed around her in an inferno, bolts of mutating energy missing her by the barest of margins. The pillars were close. Xelkyn was close. But the cult was surrounding her, contracting like a gnarled fist, massing between her and her mark. She could hear Xelkyn’s malevolent laughter ringing over the battle.

Tarion’s shadow raced overhead as he peppered another knot of enemies with arrows. His armour trailed magical flames and dirty smoke, and she could see lightning crackling around bloody wounds in his torso.

‘I’ll clear you a path – just end this before they overwhelm us,’ he shouted.

Neave saw Tarion draw a gleaming golden arrow from his quiver, star-fated sigmarite glinting in the witchlight of the pillars. Flames leapt around him. Tzaangor arrows punched through his body, each fresh wound causing Neave’s rage to burn hotter. Ignoring the pain, Tarion drew back his bowstring and loosed his enchanted projectile. It whistled down at a sharp angle, punching clean through the skull of the last ogroid and flying on with a mind of its own, through cultists and Tzaangor, leaving a bloody trail in the air behind it. A dozen foes fell at a stroke before Xelkyn snatched the projectile out of the air and snapped it with a contemptuous snarl.

The next instant, arrows and spellflame struck Tarion from three directions at once. His proud wings shattered. His armour was rent and torn, and his roar of pain cut out as a searing blast of magic blew his head from his body. Krien gave a dismal shriek as his master’s corpse fell from the air, discorporating into arcs of lightning and racing upwards into the void above. The star eagle followed, becoming nothing but a streak of light as it raced after its master’s unfettered soul.

‘May we meet beyond the anvils,’ said Neave, even as she charged through the gap that Tarion had wrought. Her axes windmilled, sending cultists and Tzaangor tumbling with heads and limbs shorn away. Moving at breakneck pace, Neave saw Xelkyn gather a shimmering ball of magical energy at the tip of his serpent staff. He hurled the projectile at her with a hiss and she slid beneath it. She launched herself back onto her feet in time to block the swing of a Stiltkin scythe, but she barked a cry of pain as a Tzaangor arrow punched through her ribs.

She spun, lashing out with her whirlwind axes, sending the Stiltkin toppling backwards and felling two more cultists before snapping the shaft off in her side. Another arrow whistled past her helm and shattered against a silver pillar. A third struck her breastplate and buckled, driving the air from her lungs. Neave saw enemies massing all around and knew she had seconds at best.

‘You did not die for nothing,’ she spat, hooking a toe under one of the cultists’ corpses and kicking it into the air. The body flipped, limbs flailing, into a mass of enemies and drove them back. At the same time, Neave dived around the silver pillar at her back, hearing more arrows smashing against it as she went.

Bloody and bruised, she rose to confront Xelkyn Xerkanos. Neave saw herself reflected in the crystal shards of her mark’s eyes, every reflection warped and subtly different from the one beside it. She screamed in pain. In one image her flesh burned with unholy fire; in another it crawled with crystal insects. In yet another, it was not her at all but Tarion reflected in the sorcerer’s gaze.

Xelkyn favoured her with a leer and slammed the haft of his staff against the ground. Light pulsed from the well, and the energies crackling around the pillars billowed into a dome. Neave stopped, suddenly wary as she found herself cut off from the cult warriors, alone in this prison of crystalline light with he who she had hunted for so many months.

‘So obliging, spiteful huntress,’ spat Xelkyn, his insectile jaw mangling his words in a way Neave had long come to despise. ‘To spend your comrade’s life, just so you might offer yourself up to my master as a sacrifice…’

Neave rose and paced warily around the dome, a hunting beast stalking the edge of its enclosure. Blood dripped from her wounds, but she ignored it, instead taking in every possible element of her surroundings. She kept her movements relaxed, her expression neutral, while within her mind she sought furiously for the nature of her enemy’s trap.

‘You have trammelled yourself in a prison of your own making, cut off from your followers, with the most dangerous close-quarters combatant that has ever sought your death,’ said Neave, her tone low and angry. ‘Hardly a masterstroke.’

‘And yet, the power that burns from the beyond in this place, the power I have conjured, that will spell your utter annihilation, huntress,’ crooned Xelkyn. The sorcerer kept his stave levelled at her with one taloned hand. The fingers of the other were twitching, she saw, working some incantation while he kept her busy with words.

Neave tilted her head, frowning at her mark with scornful disappointment. Fast as lightning, she sent one of her whirlwind axes spinning across the dome. At the same time, she flung herself sideways, evading the inevitable blast of fire from Xelkyn’s staff.

The sorcerer’s attack missed Neave and washed across the inside of the magical prison, blackening the crystalline light and sending cracks racing through it. In return, her axe lopped Xelkyn’s hand off at the wrist before crunching into the far side of the dome and dropping to the dirt.

The sorcerer shrieked in agony, an insectile whine that set Neave’s teeth on edge and tore at her sanity. Cracks raced through the crystal dome, spears of light shattering free from it and spiralling away into the night. The cult’s surviving warriors massed frantically beyond, hacking and smashing, trying to ram staves through the gaps to blast her with fire.

‘Whatever you planned, Xelkyn, you’ve failed,’ snarled Neave. ‘And now, in Sigmar’s name, you die.’

Neave Blacktalon launched herself across the dome with her remaining axe held high. She swept the blade down in a killing arc that Xelkyn blocked with his stave. Her weapon swung back and down, then back and down again, battering at the sorcerer’s guard with ferocious speed. Sparks showered them both as his stave was shorn in two, Neave’s fourth blow carrying on to gouge a bloody furrow in Xelkyn’s chest.

Around them, the crystal prison shattered and spun away in a million shards of fractured light. Cultists and Tzaangor reeled, clutching at faces and eyes pierced by melting spears of energy. Neave raised her weapon again and brought it down in a savage blow that hacked deep into Xelkyn’s collarbone and half severed his revolting head. Shimmering blue blood sprayed her armour as her mark sagged, falling against her and clawing at the gorget of her armour with his one remaining hand.

Neave looked down at him with pitiless eyes, raising her axe for a last, killing blow. Head lolling sideways, blood spurting in gouts, Xelkyn croaked something through a mouthful of ichor. Even Neave’s razor-sharp senses could not discern it precisely. She caught only a handful of words.

‘…not… the fate… has wrought… a curse…’

With that, Xelkyn hurled himself backwards with a last burst of strength. Neave cried out in anger as he pulled her off balance, toppling forward, feet flying out from under her. The dying sorcerer cast himself into the yawning mouth of the well, into the pulsing, dirty light of raw Chaos, and as he went he dragged Neave Blacktalon with him. Her axe fell, splitting Xelkyn’s skull, yet even then she could not prevent his deadweight carrying her with him over the brink. Her stomach lurched with the sudden feeling of precipitous motion.

Neave bellowed in fury as she tumbled into an impossible, burning abyss whose dimensions the well could never have contained. She plunged into raw madness and lies made of shadows and light. She saw Xelkyn’s body consumed by the raging fires of change, fires that swept through her own armour, her flesh, her bone and soul. In a white-hot wash of agony, she felt herself disintegrate.

Click here to buy Blacktalon: First Mark.

A BLACK LİBRARY PUBLİCATİON

First published in Gods & Mortals Anthology in Great Britain in 2019.

This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Cover illustration by Vladimir Krisetskiy.

Blacktalon: Hunting Shadows © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Blacktalon: Hunting Shadows, 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.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78030-928-6

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.

See Black Library on the internet at

blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at

games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.

Table of Contents

Cover

Blacktalon: Hunting Shadows - Andy Clark

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Blacktalon: First Mark’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license