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The Perfect Assassin – Gary Kloster

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Ghoulslayer’

A Black Library Publication

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The Perfect Assassin

By Gary Kloster

‘Murder.’

Maleneth Witchblade slid the whetstone along her dagger, making a point of not looking up. She’d noticed the woman enter the tavern, wrapped in fine clothes and gaudy jewellery, with five guards surrounding her like wolfhounds. This woman wanted to be seen, and heard. She’d stopped in front of Maleneth and waited for every other soul in the Broken Beam to fall silent, watching, before she dropped that one word.

It was a lovely, dramatic opening, spoiled only by the resounding belch that came from the other side of the room, where Gotrek Gurnisson had just finished another beer. Maleneth finally raised her eyes in time to see the lady’s mouth tighten at the sound, and wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or throw her knife at her crude companion. Instead, she did what she usually did, and ignored him.

‘Is that a personal request?’ Maleneth spoke softly, but in the tavern’s hush the words carried. The guards slapped their hands to the hilts of their swords. Maleneth spun her dagger through her fingers, the dim lights of the tavern dancing along the steel’s razor edge. Would any one of them even notice her blade tearing through their throat before they were all bleeding out on the tavern’s filthy floor? Trapped too long in this place, she itched to find out.

‘Two Lords of Losten,’ the woman said, ignoring her guards and the dancing blade in Maleneth’s hand. ‘Cut down in the last two nights. How long have you been in our city?’

The woman paused to look Maleneth up and down, taking in her dark leather armour, the hilts of the dozen daggers strapped to her.

‘Assassin?’

‘Long enough.’ The dagger stopped in Maleneth’s hand. She’d no idea who this woman was, or who these dead lords were. Barely recognised Losten as the name of this rude collection of broken buildings that could hardly be called a city. But she didn’t care. Maleneth was bored and frustrated, and if she picked this fight… maybe they’d get kicked out of this damned place.

‘It wasn’t her.’ The deep voice rolled across the room.

The woman shifted to stare across the tavern to the duardin who spoke. He was a hideous lump of tattoos and scar tissue, a mass of muscle and malice and hair. There was a metal rune embedded in his chest, shining, and Gotrek’s eyes caught that light and burned like coals.

‘She’s been here. With me.’

The cool poise of Maleneth’s disdain cracked, and she glared at Gotrek. When did he ever try to stop a fight? But he met her eyes, his lips twisting into a self-satisfied smirk, and she wanted to add to the collection of scars that marked his thick hide. The Slayer had a low cunning which kept catching Maleneth by surprise. He knew she was hoping to get them run out of here, and was thwarting it.

Because there was beer.

Maleneth looked away from him, and the woman did the same. Gotrek’s elemental brutality obviously discomforted her, and she clearly preferred the polished, deadly grace of Maleneth’s menace. Without exchanging a word, they both decided to pretend Gotrek didn’t exist.

‘I’ve killed no lords. Lately.’ Maleneth slipped her dagger back into its sheath. ‘And if I’d done so here, you would have never found me, which I think you know.’

‘What I know is that someone is stalking the lords of this city. If that’s not you…’ The lady frowned. ‘Someone else is playing a vicious and foolish game.’

‘So what do you want?’

‘Not to die.’ The lady pulled back the heavy cape she wore, ward against the chill fog that hung over this place. A heavy necklace hung beneath, a gold chain holding a gleaming green stone. ‘I am Talm, a Lord of Losten, and I am being hunted in my own city – I suspect by someone who refuses to leave the past properly dead and buried. Keep his blade away from me and I’ll see you well rewarded.’

‘Protection is not what I’m trained for.’

‘Then kill him before he kills me!’ Talm snapped, and in her anger Maleneth could hear her fear. ‘I’ll pay you even more for this false Shadow Lord’s life!’

Maleneth stared at her, considering. The tavern was still quiet, everyone else listening in, until Gotrek bellowed, ‘Another beer! Another!’ Everyone except Maleneth jumped. She just heaved a silent sigh.

‘I’ll consider it,’ she said, after the echoes of Gotrek’s shout had faded.

Shadow Lord. Maleneth had no idea what Talm meant by that, but finding out sounded more interesting than staying here.

Losten was dark – not that any place in Ulgu was ever really light. But this city held its shadows close beneath a blanket of dark fog and was somewhat hidden from the forces of Chaos and death that ravaged the realms.

Maleneth stood outside the tavern, quiet in the gloom that was broken only by the lanterns hanging beside the Broken Beam’s door. Around her the crumbling, grey-stoned buildings answered with their own silence. Losten may have been sheltered by fog and darkness, but the city was still dying slowly, choking on its own shadows.

‘The Shadow Lords… they’re dead, Lady Witchblade.’ The man who owned the Broken Beam stood behind her, wrapped in misery. ‘Dead and gone. That’s all I can say about them. All I dare say.’

Through the door of the tavern behind him came a bellow. ‘Another!’

The tavern keeper winced. ‘He’s still drinking. Still. He never sleeps. He never stops. He’ll ruin me!’

‘Do you think he cares?’ Maleneth asked coldly. ‘Do you think I care?’ The man shook his head, the desperation in his eyes turning to hopelessness. ‘You did this to yourself. Now go get him his drink.’

Maleneth stalked away, leaving the man to his fate. To Gotrek. He’d brought this doom upon himself, running that rigged contest. Defeat the Broken Beam’s champion at arm wrestling, and win all the beer you can drink! The champion had been an ogor, enchanted to look like a scrawny peasant. A way for the tavern keeper to cheat more valuables from the abandoned souls trapped in this city. Until Gotrek came.

The duardin was only half the height of an ogor, but he was almost as wide, and with the promise of free beer he’d almost torn that monster’s arm off. Then he’d settled in and started drinking, slow and steady, slower than Maleneth had ever seen him drink before. It’d taken her a bit to realise what he was doing. Stretching the beer out, going slow, so that his monstrous constitution would keep him from passing out. Gotrek had decided to drain this place, to spite the cheat who owned it… and because he wanted all the beer.

He was welcome to it all, beer and spite, Maleneth didn’t care. Except now she was trapped here with him, waiting for him to finish.

Maleneth walked over the rough cobblestones, swift and silent, another shadow between slumped buildings, until the street ended and she could see the ones she stalked. Talm and her guards were walking across the wide square that the street opened into, surrounded by the murky nimbus of dim light cast by the lantern they carried.

The square was otherwise empty. Beside Maleneth were buildings that might have been inns, regal facades of stone now rough with black moss, the windows dark as dead eyes. The right side of the square held a great pile of arches, towers and tall, narrow buildings linked into each other at odd angles, like broken teeth shoved up from the ground. They’d been told that was the Lords’ Palace when they’d first come here, the place where the rulers of Losten met. For such a noble name and purpose, the place looked almost abandoned, half the towers slumped into ruin, many of the once graceful arches cracked or broken. Light only burned in a few scattered windows.

On the left side of the square was a lone building ringed by a park of dead grass and skeletal trees. Not as large as the palace, but of a similar style, tall and narrow, it was the only building in Losten that didn’t seem half-falling-down. The Aethaneaum, the reason Gotrek had dragged her to this benighted city. A place where information could be bought, and the Slayer had wanted information. Killing gods was not as easy as Gotrek had hoped.

Insane. Gotrek was insane, and Maleneth had tied her fate to his. Daughter of Khaine, sworn servant of the god of murder, an assassin who’d joined with the Order of Azyr after killing her mistress, whose poisoned blades had committed the slaying sacrament across almost every realm, and now here she was with a crazed, drunken duardin. Why?

Because after all they’d been through, the Slayer had earned her respect.

Fool.

The word whispered through her mind. The voice of her dead mistress, the witch-aelf who’d taught her so much… but who she’d never respected.

What is respect from a failure?

‘I’m not…’ Maleneth hissed, then stopped, her hand clenched on the amulet that hung around her neck, the one that held the vial of her murdered mistress’ blood. She hated when that bitter voice provoked her, but the dead woman’s words stung. She couldn’t kill Gotrek when she first met him. And now… she wouldn’t. Dropping her hand from the amulet, she slipped silently out into the square, following that distant torch bobbing through the mist.

She wouldn’t kill that tattooed lump of muscle no matter how annoying he was being. But despite her pledge to watch over the master rune the duardin had hammered into his stinking flesh, damn her if she was going to spend another moment in that gods-cursed tavern. Gotrek could have his beer, and have the head of the tavern keeper if the man finally cracked and tried to knife him in the back. Maleneth would have… whatever entertainment she could wring from this dying city.

At the far side of the square, the lantern vanished. Maleneth moved faster, soft boots gliding over the stones, until she reached the place she’d last seen it. A narrow street opened off the square, running between the Lords’ Palace and the ruins of a great old house that dominated this last side of the square, and down it she could see Talm moving in her dim circle of light. Maleneth paused beside the abandoned house, keeping a careful distance. The ruin was a pile of stone almost as large as the Lords’ Palace, similarly built but even more decayed. Its towers were broken, arches collapsed, buildings abandoned. A sigil of a skull, jaw gaping, with tendrils of something spilling out of its empty eye sockets and fleshless mouth, was carved on its crumbling wall. She considered it a moment, but then from the street ahead there was a sound.

Maleneth crouched, blades already in both hands. Talm had stopped in the middle of the street, and her guards were ranged in a circle around her, swords drawn.

‘If you see something, slay it,’ ordered Talm. ‘Nothing good moves out here tonight!’

Truth, Maleneth thought, stalking closer, trying to see what had startled the guards. But her eyes found nothing. The cobblestones were empty except for Talm and her guards, and the shadows that stretched away from their lantern. Then one of those shadows moved.

It twisted, bulging up from the cobblestones like a black shroud, then broke, shattered like black glass but without a sound. A man surged through those spinning pieces of darkness, a sword in his hand, short and curved. He slashed it across the throat of the woman whose shadow he’d broken out of, and the guard dropped, clutching her throat, but her fingers couldn’t stop the blood pouring out. The man from the shadow turned from her, and drove his sword into the belly of the next guard.

The struck man shrieked and jerked back, trying to pull away from the blade that already transfixed him, and only helped his killer jerk the sword free. Blood splattered across the cobblestones, and the killer fell with it. He vanished into the shadow of the man he’d just stabbed, diving into the darkness as if it were a pool of deep water.

The other guards shouted, Talm belted orders, and Maleneth crouched, blades ready, fascinated. Watching the shadows, she saw another bulge and rise, saw the killer drive through it to bury his blade in the kidneys of another guard, then vanish again. The two guards left said nothing, but they both reached the same decision at once. They ran, tearing down the street and vanishing into the dark.

Talm flung the lantern after them, cursing, and it shattered against the cobblestones, oil whooshing up in a bright blaze that stretched the lord’s shadow up the street. That long shadow shifted, bulged, broke, and the killer stepped free again. Moving slow this time, deliberate. Maleneth could see he was a young man dressed in black, his features pale beneath long, dark hair. His blade was plain steel, and the only hint of colour to him was the necklace he wore, a chain of gold loops holding a pendant of some purple stone. There was a black shadow on that stone, but it was too distant for Maleneth to see well.

‘You know me,’ the man hissed. ‘Now, name me.’

‘No,’ Talm said. She had drawn a knife from somewhere, short and jewelled and useless, but her eyes blazed with fury.

‘Name me,’ the killer said again, his blade rising.

‘You’re dead. Your whole dark house. Dead!’ Lady Talm spat, and she rushed forward. She moved faster than Maleneth would have guessed in all that finery, surprisingly fast. Her flashing little knife would have caught the shadow killer in the chest if a piece of darkness hadn’t flickered up from the ground and blocked the blade.

The man snarled and swung his sword hard, the blade cutting across Talm’s throat. Blood arced out, splashing across him, and Talm crumpled to the stones, her eyes already empty.

‘Shadows never die,’ the man growled, wiping the woman’s blood from his face with one sleeve. He stomped down with his boot on the jewel the woman wore, cracking it against the cobblestones. Then he turned, took a step and was gone, disappearing into the shadows.

Maleneth waited, silent, blades ready, but he didn’t come back. When the broken lantern’s flames had guttered out on the cobblestones, she moved forward and stood over the dead woman.

‘Your request begins to interest me, Lady Talm,’ she said to the body. ‘I will seek out this Shadow Lord for you, false or not, and see about his heart.’ She bent over, hands busy, collecting what she needed. Done, she reached out and closed the woman’s staring eyes.

‘You may thank me from whatever hell you find yourself in.’

The hall of the Aethaneaum was a great, silent vault, a mostly empty room with a high ceiling dimly lit by a few lamps. The only things in it were two guards, so still they might as well be statutes, and a desk where an old man wrapped in a grey robe was hunched over, reading.

‘I have questions,’ Maleneth said.

‘As do we all.’ The old man turned a page. ‘Do you have payment?’

Maleneth dropped a handful of jewellery on his desk, the rings and bracelets she’d stripped from Talm’s body. The old man poked at a ring that had tumbled across his page.

‘This will buy a few answers. Depending on the questions.’

‘Will this buy more?’ Maleneth dropped the necklace Talm had worn, with its heavy gold links and the green stone, cracked and scratched from when the killer stomped on it.

The old man considered it silently. ‘Did you kill her?’ he asked, curious, unthreatened.

‘Will that answer be counted in my payment?’ When the old man nodded, Maleneth said, ‘No.’

‘Interesting.’ He looked up at her for the first time. ‘What do you wish to ask, Maleneth Witchblade?’

‘I want to know about the Shadow Lord.’

‘Ah.’ The old man touched the cracked gem of the necklace. ‘Then let us discuss House Verska.’

‘The Aethaneaum guarantees answers, but not satisfaction.’ The old man, who had introduced himself as Revitz, set down a heavy book on the table before Maleneth, careful not to disturb her teacup. The chamber he’d led her to might have been the first comfortable place she’d seen in this damn city. Snug and full of bookshelves, it had a warm fire and three enormous black cats that roused themselves from their naps just long enough to acknowledge her as a fellow assassin.

‘Gotrek said you’d said that.’ Among a lot of curses.

Revitz nodded. ‘The duardin? Yes. He was… a difficult patron.’

The old man looked at an axe-shaped mark on the dark wooden panelling of the far wall. Maleneth almost asked what Gotrek had wanted to know – he certainly hadn’t told her. But she had the feeling Revitz wouldn’t answer.

‘Here is what you paid for.’ The leather cover of the book was stamped with the name House Verska, and the image of a skull with dark shadows spilling from it. Inside were pages lettered in a neat hand, alongside colour portraits of men and women in fine black clothes. Their faces were all similar, and each wore a necklace of heavy gold loops with a pendant holding a large purple gem. In the centre of that stone, like a dark flaw, was a black mark that looked like a skull.

‘There were once seven Lords of Losten.’ Revitz sat down, sipping his own tea as Maleneth paged through the book. ‘But only one that mattered. The lord from House Verska. The Shadow Lord.’

Maleneth looked up from the book, one eyebrow arched. Revitz shrugged.

‘It would be melodramatic, if the Verskas weren’t so good at killing people,’ Revitz said. ‘They were said to be the perfect assassins. All their enemies died. All of them.’

‘The perfect assassins,’ Maleneth said.

‘That was their claim,’ Revitz said.

He reached out with one hand, and flipped the pages of the book almost to the end, stopping on the portrait of a man with a pale face and cruel eyes. He looked vaguely familiar.

‘Novim Verska. The last true Shadow Lord. Before him, his house was feared, but respected. The Shadow Lords brought trade and power to Losten. But he was different. It wasn’t just his enemies that died. Novim enjoyed killing, and when he ruled this city every soul feared their shadow. It was a time of terror, and I pray never to see the like of it again.

‘When Novim finally died,’ Revitz continued, ‘Losten… survived. Barely. So many had died, so many had fled, but broken, decrepit, the city stumbled on. But without him, without a Shadow Lord, House Verska fell.’

Revitz turned the page. The last picture was of a thin young man with Novim’s looks, but drained of all his menace. His dark clothes seemed a costume, and around his neck… the necklace was similar, wide loops of gold, purple stone. But there was no black skull-like flaw in this stone.

‘Novim’s son lacked his house’s power. The shadows did not kill for him. It took a few years for the other lords to be sure of that. But when they were…’ Revitz waved towards the ruins that lay beyond the Aethaneaum. ‘The Lords of Losten became six.’

‘All men die, and so do their works.’ Maleneth shut the book. ‘This shadow magic of the Verskas. How was it done?’

Revitz smiled tightly. ‘Men die, but shadows never do.’ The old man picked up the book. ‘I will not speak of the Verskas’ magic. It is a thing of Ulgu, anyway, and such shadows are hard to see, perhaps, for those who have beheld the light of Sigmar.’ The scholar’s smile had disappeared, but there seemed to be a thread of dark humour buried in his words. ‘Those are your answers. Are you satisfied, Maleneth Witchblade?’

She lifted her cup, and took one last drink of tea. It was good. ‘I am,’ she said. She stood, nodded to the scholar, and started for the door. As she passed through it, she heard Revitz talking to himself, sounding well satisfied.

‘One trying to kill gods, the other shadows. What an amusing week!’

The perfect assassins.

Maleneth moved along the edge of the square, gliding past the Aethaneaum’s gardens towards the crumbling wall of House Verska. Some minor human lords, in some backwater city. The perfect assassins. Just the thought felt like sacrilege.

She reached the walls of the empty manor, and with a silent leap she caught the worn teeth of the house’s skull symbol and swung herself over the wall. On the other side she landed in darkness and ruin. The remains of the great house were empty of everything but vermin, all with more legs than two. If the man she had seen tonight was anywhere in this city, Maleneth was betting it was here, somewhere, and she started her search.

She found the family graveyard first, a knot of stone mausoleums in one lonely corner. The tombs, ornately carved with skulls and stylised shadows, were mostly whole except for one. The tomb of Novim Verska, the last great Shadow Lord, was open, its doors lying broken before it. Maleneth stepped inside and looked over the sarcophagus that lay shattered on the floor, pushed from the plinth on which it had rested.

She nudged at the bones scattered among the broken stone with her boot. They were barely gnawed by scavengers. This damage had been done recently. Maleneth picked through the rubble of the violated tomb, but other than the bones and a few twists of rotting cloth and leather, there was nothing else, no weapon, no jewel.

As she expected.

She left the bones to the vermin and continued her search.

The cellar was dim and dark, lit with a few guttering candles. Their flames barely touched the stone arches that held up the remains of the house, and left a mob of shadows seething over wooden beams and flagstone floor. The dark made it easy for Maleneth to slip down the stairs, to stalk silently from one pillar to the next until she was close to the man who knelt in one corner of the room, working on something.

‘So much blood, Talm.’ The man – barely more than a boy – crouched over a bucket of water, soaking the black cloak Maleneth had seen him in not long ago, when he’d been slitting the Lord of Losten’s throat. ‘Try to kill me. The Lord of Shadows! All that got you was my blade across your throat.’ He scrubbed at the cloth, the water in the bucket turning red. ‘And your blood on my bloody cloak.’

He dropped the cloak and stood, muttering curses. The short, curved sword rode his hip, and around his neck hung that necklace, heavy links of gold holding up a pendant bearing a purple stone. Maleneth stared at that stone until she was sure she could see the dark flaw in its heart, that black skull-like shape.

Here was the Shadow Lord. The perfect assassin. Her hand moved on her belt, drawing out a blade and one thin bladder. She cut the bladder with the dagger’s razor edge and carefully coated the steel with a sticky mix of toxins. Then she drew another blade, larger and heavier, for her other hand. The man stood with his back to her, oblivious as he muttered about lords and revenge and how he’d soon have servants and a laundry. Maleneth remembered how he’d moved through the shadows, how the shadows had protected him. Remembered his heavy, sweeping strikes and slow feet. His skills did not impress her, but that magic did. It would be safest to kill him now, but…

The perfect assassin, she thought again. There were other considerations besides safety.

Fool.

Maleneth ignored her old teacher, and stepped out from behind the pillar. ‘Good evening,’ she said, and almost smiled when the man leapt like a startled cat, whirling to face her. His magic had better be potent.

‘Who…’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re that aelf assassin. I saw Talm talking to you when I was riding her shadow tonight. Well, you’re too late for whatever she wanted.’

‘Too late to kill?’ Maleneth asked. She watched him draw his sword with some speed and a little grace. Maybe he had some talent. ‘By my god, never.’

‘Witchblade.’ He’d been afraid for a moment, when she surprised him. Now he wasn’t, and it wasn’t just a young man’s braggadocio. ‘You aelf women. They tell stories about you and your murder god, how dangerous you are. But you’re nothing compared to me and the magic of my bloodline. I am Arvis Verska. I am the Shadow Lord.’

She arched one eyebrow at him. ‘You are a bastard.’ She considered his youth. ‘The bastard of a bastard. Playing at being an assassin.’

Arvis’ face twisted, but he controlled his anger. Barely. ‘You want to see me play, aelf? Come try me.’ He crouched, his sword ready.

Maleneth considered him, then snapped a kick at the bucket on the floor in front of her. It flew at his face, but at the last moment a shadow flicked down from the vault above and knocked it away. Still, a gout of bloody water splashed across the man, making him sputter.

‘I’ll kill you slow for that!’ he shouted, and fell backward into his own shadow, vanishing.

‘We all die,’ Maleneth said and spun in a smooth circle. Her own shadows stretched out around her, but one of them was moving, stretching up, breaking. She swung up her heavy blade and caught the sword Arvis had aimed at her throat, moving with the blow and sending him off balance. The thinner, poison-coated dagger in her other hand flicked out and should have scored a line across his back, but a shadow blocked it. Touching the darkness felt like hitting stone, and a shock of cold ran up the blade into her hand.

Maleneth stepped away, feeling the pain in her hand. This was going to be a challenge.

Arvis fell into a shadow, and punched out of one behind her. Maleneth shifted to the side, avoiding the thrust of his blade, spun and swept her leg up in a kick that she pulled even as she swung it – a strike that should have slapped his gut, but instead was blocked by the shadow. It felt like kicking a block of ice. Maleneth whipped her leg back, feeling the numb pain burning in her shin. If she’d swung properly, a blow that would have folded him over her shin and left him defenceless, she might have broken her leg. Whatever magic moved these shadows, it worked versus steel and flesh.

For the first time, Maleneth almost felt doubt, but she forced it back. Khaine would take her someday. But not today.

‘What was your plan, Shadow Lord?’ Maleneth spoke the name with a cutting edge of mockery, trying to keep him off balance while she studied him. ‘To kill the lords and take their place?’

He pulled back, glaring at her. ‘That’s what they did to my family.’

‘The lords had power and wealth behind them when they killed your family. What do you have?’

‘My shadow,’ he growled, and vanished. He appeared again, this time coming from above, dropping down from the vaulted ceiling. Maleneth dived out of the way, but she felt the edge of his blade touch her, drawing a thin line of pain across the side of her neck as she rolled away from the strike.

Arvis held up his blade, its edge marked now with her blood, and smiled. ‘Shadow magic is in my blood, making me the perfect assassin. I’ll kill the lords. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill everyone, until they bow to me or I empty this city. I’m fine with either.’

He rushed her this time, not bothering to dive out of the shadows, hammering blows. They were inelegant, but unrelenting. With the shadows acting as armour, Arvis didn’t have to worry about anything but attack. Every time she struck at him, darkness blocked her and a shock of cold and pain ran up her arm. Maleneth dodged, dancing around him, unable to push him back, and finally, inevitably, one of his strikes came through. It caught her on the wrist and she hissed through her teeth, almost dropping her blocking blade, but her body’s memory of all the pain she’d suffered whenever she let a weapon go during training made her hold on. She dodged around a pillar, giving herself some space, and Arvis stopped, breathing hard but smiling, untouched. Maleneth gritted her teeth to keep from panting. The cuts on her neck and wrist throbbed in time with her heartbeat, and blood was running down to her hand, fouling her grip.

Is this how you die? The voice in her head cut through the sound of her heart. Killed by a boy while abandoning the duty that you were failing at anyway? Truly, you are the perfect assassin.

Maleneth clenched her teeth tighter. She wasn’t going to die to this boy, no matter what magic he had. Gotrek would bust a gut laughing. Ignoring her dead mentor, ignoring her pain, Maleneth made her plan. She needed him to rush her again.

‘Shadow Lord,’ she sneered. ‘You’re no assassin. You’re an ill-trained boy.’

Arvis snarled and charged, sword swinging for her neck. Maleneth twisted away, and as she went her heavy blade caught one of the candles set on the floor, launching it at the boy’s face. The shadows twisted up, blocking it – but as with the bucket and water, the liquid wax passed through the darkness. It splattered across Arvis’ face and he shrieked, dropping his sword as his hand came up to cover his eye, where the hot wax had landed.

‘See? You’ve dropped your weapon.’ Maleneth stepped in, and stuck the tip of her heavy blade in one of the golden loops of his necklace, careful not to come close to the man’s skin. As she had hoped, when she was being careful not to touch him, the shadows didn’t block her. With a circle of her wrist, she pulled the necklace up and over Arvis’ head, the motion sending it flying across the room. ‘And lost this.’

Even through his pain, Arvis noticed. ‘No!’ he shouted, trying to scrabble after the necklace, but Maleneth booted his feet out from under him, dropping him down. The tip of her poisoned dagger came to rest on his throat, drawing a thick bead of blood.

‘That magic,’ Maleneth said. ‘I think maybe it wasn’t in your family’s blood, but in their jewellery.’

‘That’s mine,’ Arvis said. He’d dropped his hands, and his injured eye was weeping tears and blood. The other eye was searching the shadows, trying to find the necklace.

‘It was.’ Maleneth waited, until she saw the muscles in Arvis’ neck begin to quiver. Then his face, shoulders, legs. She stepped back and he tried to rise, but couldn’t. When she was sure he wasn’t going to move, she went to where the necklace lay. ‘A powerful family heirloom. But your grandfather Novim couldn’t give it up, could he? He decided he’d rather be buried with it, and let his house fall.’

‘His children were weak,’ Arvis croaked. The poison on her blade weakened muscles, but its victims could still talk, if they didn’t get too much. ‘I wasn’t. I found it, the real one. Give it to me.’

‘This?’ Maleneth bent to pick up the purple stone, but shadow covered it when she tried to touch it. When the darkness went away, the necklace was gone – except she saw it, glinting in the middle of a different shadow across the room.

‘My blood,’ Arvis said, and made a noise that might have been laughter. ‘Only a Verska can wear it.’

Maleneth frowned, walked over to the necklace and tried again. Again the shadows moved, the necklace vanished – and reappeared two paces away. She sighed, looking at it.

‘A shame. That could have been useful. But not necessary.’ She walked over to Arvis and booted him onto his back. ‘Assassination,’ she said, holding up her poisoned blade so it caught the remaining light, ‘is an art. And while tools can help an artist, it is still the skill that makes a masterpiece.’ She looked down at him. ‘My god can instruct you further, Shadow Lord.’ She smiled, then drove the slim dagger down through Arvis’ good eye. He spasmed when the blade hit his brain, but the jerking of his body was quieted by the poison.

Maleneth pulled out the dagger and considered the blood on it. She wiped it on her fingers, then walked over to the necklace and tried to pick it up again. But it vanished, reappearing this time draped over the body.

‘Truly a shame,’ she said and walked out, knocking over the candles as she went, leaving the room to burn behind her.

By the time Maleneth reached the Broken Beam, her bleeding had stopped and fire had engulfed the House of Verska, turning the black fog of Losten a baleful red. On the street before the tavern, she stopped. Through its dirty windows she could see the few drunks who hadn’t left to watch the fire and Gotrek, still slowly drinking his beer. Of course he wouldn’t let a conflagration stop him.

At least not a distant one.

Maleneth went to the door, grabbed the lanterns down that hung beside it, and stalked around to the back of the tavern.

The Broken Beam was burning bright by the time Gotrek staggered out, carrying a barrel of beer over one shoulder, his axe over the other. His beard was singed, and the wood of the barrel steamed from the heat of the blaze.

‘Damn idiot.’ The duardin glared back at the tavern keeper, who was running in useless circles before his burning building. ‘There was days’ worth of beer in there. Days!’

Maleneth nodded. ‘Tragic.’

Gotrek looked at her, finally noting the blood on her. ‘What in the hells have you been up to?’

‘I met a Shadow Lord,’ she said. ‘He claimed to be the perfect assassin.’

‘And?’

‘I stabbed him through the eye and burned down his house.’

Gotrek looked from her to the red glow behind her, then back to the burning tavern. His eyes gleamed with fire and suspicion, but he shook his head and growled something that might have been laughter.

‘Seems we’re both done with this place then.’

‘Seems so,’ Maleneth said, a shadow of a smile touching her lips as she started walking towards the city’s gate.

‘You gonna help me haul my beer?’ he shouted after her.

‘Absolutely not,’ she answered, feeling almost cheerful, leaving him to stump after her, the light of her fires stretching his shadow out to meet hers.

About the Author

Gary Kloster is a writer, a stay-at-home father, a librarian and a martial artist – sometimes all in the same day, seldom all at the same time. He lives among the corn in the American Midwest and his short fiction can be found in Analog, Apex, Clarkesworld and others. For Black Library, he has written the Necromunda novella Spark of Revolution, and a number of short stories.

An extract from Ghoulslayer.

Gotrek was snoring, attacking the night with brutal barks. Even asleep he was savage, hammering Maleneth’s skull with every snort. The sound rattled through the Slayer’s chest and shook the chain linking his ear to his nose. The brazier in his rune-axe was still smouldering, but the light had faded from his filthy muscles. He shifted, as though about to speak, let out a ripe belch and then lay still again. He had drunk for hours, downing ale like water, before finally collapsing next to an outhouse, surrounded by the corpses of brigands who had had the ill-conceived idea of trying to rob him. There was no dawn in this particular corner of Shyish, but even the endless gloom could not hide the rune buried in Gotrek’s chest. A great slab of burnished power. The tie that bound her to him. The face of a god, glaring from his ribs, demanding that she hold her nerve.

She stepped gracefully through the dead, as though gliding through a ballroom, scattering flies and gore, a dagger held lightly in each hand. The Stormcast Eternal had gone, scouring Klemp for news of his own kind, and she was alone with the Slayer.

The heart-shaped silver amulet at her throat flickered, revealing the vial of blood at its core. Now. This is your chance.

Maleneth ignored the voice, creeping closer to the Slayer, wincing at his stench. He was grotesque. A graceless lump of scarred muscle, bristling with porcine hair and covered in knotted tattoos. Even by the low standards of the duardin race he was primitive – like a hog that had learned to stand and carry an axe. He was shorter than the brigands he had carved his bed from, but twice their width and built like a barn. The stale, sweet smell of beer shrouded the bodies, mixing with Gotrek’s belches and stinging Maleneth’s eyes. She could see the dregs glistening in his matted beard as she leant closer, keeping her eyes fixed on the rune. The rune stared back.

Despite her loathing she hesitated, knives trembling, inches from his body.

The amulet around her neck flickered again. Coward.

That was enough to spur her on. Her dead mistress was right. Klemp would soon be rubble, just like all the other towns they had passed through. The whole region was in uproar. And when the fighting started, who knew where the Slayer would end up? Once he was in one of his rages there was no way of predicting what he would do next. It was a miracle she had stayed with him this far. This might be her last chance. The Slayer’s skin was like iron, though. She would need to punch the blade home with all her strength to get the poison into his bloodstream. She tightened her grip and leant back to strike.

‘Maleneth.’ The voice echoed down the alley, heavy with warning.

She whirled around, blades lowered.

Trachos’ armour glimmered as he limped through the darkness, sparks flickering from his ruined leg plate. He was wearing his expressionless helmet, but she could tell by the way he moved, careful and slow, that he understood what she was planning. His head kicked to one side and light crackled from his mouth grille. He gripped the metal, holding it still, but the damage went deeper than the mask. All that god-wrought armour had done nothing to protect his mind.

He stopped near the corpses, staring at her, lights flickering behind his faceplate.

He remained silent, but the way he raised his warhammers spoke clearly enough. That rune is mine.

They stood like that for a long moment, glaring at each other across Gotrek’s snorting bulk.

Trachos came closer, his metal boots crunching through broken weapons and shattered armour. The sky had grown paler, outlining him, and she saw how confidently he gripped the warhammers. Damaged or not, he was still a Stormcast Eternal. A scion of the thunder god. He was several feet taller than a normal man and, even broken, his plate armour made a fearsome sight.

Maleneth stepped through the pile of bodies, readying herself. She had always known this moment would come. They could not both claim the rune. There was a rent in Trachos’ leg armour from his left knee to his left boot. It had been there when he first approached Maleneth months ago, wandering out of the hills like a deranged prophet. He was in desperate need of medicine, or repairs, or whatever help Stormcast Eternals received when they returned to the Celestial Realm. Every step he took was difficult, and his Azyrite armour sparked whenever he moved. She smiled. Usually, such a warrior would be a test for even her skills, but in this state he should be easy prey. There would be blood for Khaine this night.

Maleneth dragged one of her blades across a vial at her belt. The crystal broke in silence, but she could smell the venom as it spilled across the metal.

Trachos dropped into a crouch, hammers raised.

The two warriors tensed, preparing to strike.

‘Grungni’s arse beard!’ cried Gotrek, lurching to his feet and grabbing his rune-axe. ‘Don’t you people know when you’re beaten?’

He swayed, obviously confused, still drunk, piercing the night with his one, scowling eye, trying to focus, trying to spot an opponent. Seeing none, he turned to Maleneth.

‘Aelf! Point me to the simpletons.’

Maleneth lowered her weapons and Trachos did the same. The chance was gone. She shook her head. ‘All dead.’ She backed away from Trachos with a warning glare.

Gotrek’s face was locked in a thunderous scowl and his skin was as grey as the corpses. He kicked one of them. ‘Lightweights. They could barely swing a sword. Even splitting skulls is no fun in your stinking realm.’

Trachos’ hands trembled as he slid his hammers back into his belt. ‘This is no realm of mine.’

‘Nor mine,’ said Maleneth, looking around at the peculiar hell Gotrek had led them to. The sky was the colour of old pewter, dull, bleak and riveted with stars. The stars did not shine but radiated a pitiless black. Points of absolute darkness surrounded by purple coronas, wounds in the sky, dripping fingers of pitch. And the town was equally grim. Crooked, ramshackle huts made of warped, colourless driftwood. There were panicked shouts in the distance and the sound of vehicles being hastily loaded. Columns of smoke stretched across the sky, signalling the approach of another army. They looked like claw marks on dead skin.

Gotrek muttered a duardin curse and picked his way through the corpses. ‘Where’s the ale?’

‘You drank it,’ replied Trachos.

The Slayer frowned and scratched his shaven head, causing his enormous, grease-slicked mohawk to tremble. Then he glared at the ground, his massive shoulders drooping and the haft of his greataxe hanging loosely in his grip. He whispered to himself, shaking his head, and Maleneth wondered what he was thinking. Was he remembering his home? The world he claimed was so superior to the Mortal Realms? She suspected most of his thoughts concerned his past. What else did he have? There was something tragic about him, she decided. He was like a fossil, revived by cruel necromancy and abandoned in a world where no one knew his face.

‘You’re right,’ said Gotrek, looking up with a sudden smile. ‘We need more ale.’

Maleneth shook her head in disbelief. She and Trachos were glaring at him. Anyone else would feel their hatred like a physical blow, but the Slayer was oblivious. He waved them back down the alley, away from the outbuilding, humming cheerfully to himself as he headed out onto the main street.

They stumbled into a chaotic scene. There were wicker cages rattling against every lintel and doorframe – hundreds of them, the size of a human head and crammed with teeth, skin and bones. Alongside the offerings to Nagash there were wooden eight-pointed stars, hastily hammered together and painted in gaudy colours. Braziers spewed clouds of blue embers across wooden icons that had been painted with the faces of daemons and saints. And all of this jostled happily against yellow hammer-shaped idols that had been scored with an approximation of Azyrite runes. Every corner revealed some desperate attempt to appease a god. And through this carnival of colours and shapes, people were rushing in every direction, hurling belongings from windows and clambering into carts. There was a cold wind whipping through the streets that seemed heavy with portent. Men and women howled at each other, arguing while their children fought in the dust, like a premonition of the violence about to be visited on the town. For weeks, seers across the region had been wracked by agonising prophecies. Some sprouted mouths in their armpits and spewed torrents of bile, others were visited by horrific, sanity-flaying visions, and some had found their voices replaced by a bestial, guttural language they could no more understand than silence. Whatever the nature of their visitation, all of them agreed on one thing – death was coming to the region. Most people had taken that as a cue to flee, but Gotrek, still furious at not finding Nagash, had decided to stay, relishing the coming fight as a distraction if nothing else.

As Gotrek swaggered onto the wind-lashed street, he almost collided with an enormous beast that was being led through the crowds – an armour-clad mammoth, draped in furs and sacks and scraping tracks through the dirt with its tusks. Dozens of fur-clad nomads were crowded into its howdah, and more were swarming round it, driving it on with sticks and insults, trying to goad more speed out of the plodding creature.

Gotrek halted, glaring at the nomads, and Maleneth guessed immediately what had annoyed him. She hated to admit it, but she was starting to understand him. He was brutal and heartless in many respects, but there were a few things that seemed to offend his primitive sensibilities. The sight of a wild creature bound into servitude was one of them. For a moment, she thought he might accost the nomads, but then he shook his head and marched on, barging through the traders and making for the largest building on the street, muttering into his beard.

Maleneth struggled to keep up as the Slayer booted the door open and plunged into the gloomy interior of the Muffled Drum. Despite the scenes of panic outside, Klemp’s only inn was crowded with languorous, dazed patrons – people so far gone they lacked the sense to try to save their own skin, calling the prophecies scaremongering nonsense. There were more nomads, wearing the same filthy furs as the travellers outside, but there was also a bewildering array of other creeds and races – humans from every corner of the Amethyst Princedoms and beyond. Maleneth saw hulking savages from the east, as heavily tattooed as Gotrek and looking just as uncouth. There were waif-like pilgrims, dressed in sackcloth and wearing charcoal eye makeup that had been smeared by the beer they were lying in. In one corner there was a party of duardin, dispossessed travellers, hunched over their drinks and eyeing Gotrek from under battered crested helmets.

Gotrek made a point of ignoring the duardin and stormed straight across the room to the bar, where a tall, fierce-looking woman was looming over one of her customers, shaking him back and forth until coins fell from his grip and rattled across the bar.

‘Next time,’ she snarled, ‘it’s your guts I’ll spill.’

The man fell away from her, collapsing in a shocked heap on the floor before scrabbling away on all fours as Gotrek strode past him and approached the woman.

‘Still no good,’ said the Slayer, looking up at her.

She shook her head in disbelief, then leant across the bar and stared down at him, peering at his impressive gut. ‘You drank all of it?’

Gotrek pounded a fist against his stomach and belched. ‘For all the good it did me.’

The woman looked at Maleneth as she reached the bar. ‘He drank it all?’

Maleneth nodded, grudgingly, annoyed to notice that the landlady looked impressed.

Gotrek studied the bottles behind the woman. ‘Got anything stronger?’

She stared at him. ‘Are you with them?’ she asked, nodding at the party of duardin.

Gotrek kept studying the drinks, ignoring the question. The only sign of a response was a slight tightening of his jaw.

She shrugged, taking a bottle from the shelf and placing it before him. It was the shape of an elongated teardrop and it was clearly ancient – a plump dollop of green, murky glass covered in dust and ash. There were fragments of something suspended in the liquid.

Gotrek grabbed the bottle and held it towards a fire that was crackling by the bar, squinting at the whirling sediment.

The woman grabbed one of his tree-trunk biceps. ‘It’s not cheap.’

Gotrek threw some coins at her, then continued eyeing the drink.

He jammed the cork into the bottle with his fat, dirty thumb, and a heady stink filled the room.

Maleneth coughed and put a hand to her face.

Gotrek sniffed the bottle and grimaced. ‘It’s not Bugman’s.’

‘Don’t drink it then,’ said Maleneth, remembering what had happened the last time the Slayer got drunk. There was no way they would leave Klemp intact if Gotrek picked a fight just as an army came over the horizon.

He gave her a warning glare.

‘What about Nagash?’ she said, the first thing that came to mind.

His scowl grew even more fierce, but he did not put the bottle to his lips.

‘You dragged us all this way to find him.’ Maleneth looked over at Trachos. He was standing a few feet away, watching the exchange, but as usual he seemed oblivious, locked in his own personal hell. Realising the Stormcast would be no help, she turned back to Gotrek. ‘And now, just as his armies are about to reach us, you’re going to drink yourself into a stupor. You could miss the very chance you’ve been looking for. The chance to face him. Or whatever it is you were hoping to achieve.’

Gotrek glowered. ‘He’s not here. Gods don’t have the balls to lead from the front. Nagash will be hiding somewhere, like the rest of them.’ He drank deeply from the bottle, holding Maleneth’s gaze.

Then he paused for breath, threw more coins on the bar and took the bottle to one of the benches that lined the room. The wood groaned as he sat.

There was an elderly man sitting at the bench, and he watched with interest as Gotrek drank more of the foul-smelling stuff. He was tall and slender, sitting stiff-backed and proud, and as he sipped his drink he moved with the precise, delicate movements of an ascetic. Unlike everyone else in the Muffled Drum, he was immaculately dressed. His tunic, cloak and trousers were embroidered with golden thread, and his receding, slicked-back hair was so adorned with beads and semi-precious stones that it resembled a skullcap.

When Gotrek lowered the half-empty bottle onto the table, the man leant over and whispered, ‘You have business with the necromancer?’

The drink had clearly not affected Gotrek yet. His hand shot out with surprising speed and locked around the man’s scrawny neck.

‘Who wants to know?’

A strange noise came from the man’s chest. It might have been laughter.

Gotrek cursed. Rather than grabbing skin and bone, his hand had passed through the man’s neck and was left holding a fistful of ash. The powder tumbled through his fingers as he snatched back his hand. He glared at the man.

For a fraction of a second, the old man had no neck, just a landslide of fine dust tumbling from his lower jaw onto his shoulders. It looked like sand in an hourglass. Then the dust solidified, and the man’s neck reappeared. He stroked his greasy hair and looked at Gotrek, his eyes glittering and unfocused, as though he were looking into smoke.

Gotrek’s cheeks flushed with rage and he gripped the haft of his greataxe. ‘What are you? A spirit? In my day we burned the restless dead.’

‘I’m quite well rested, thank you,’ said the man, with a vague smile.

Maleneth and Trachos approached the table.

‘What are you?’ demanded Maleneth.

The man ignored her question, studying the rune in Gotrek’s chest and the barbs on Maleneth’s tight-fitting leathers. Then he looked at the shattered gilded sigmarite of Trachos’ war gear. ‘You don’t look like servants of the Great Necromancer.’

‘But you do,’ said Gotrek, taking another swig from the green bottle. ‘Why don’t you…’ He hesitated, looking at the bottle with a surprised expression, rolling his head loosely on his shoulders. ‘Actually, this isn’t bad.’

He looked over at the landlady and gave her a nod of approval.

To Maleneth’s disbelief, the ridiculous woman blushed.

‘Like you, fyreslayer, I kneel to no god,’ said the man, looking at Gotrek with an expression that was hard to read.

‘I’m not a fyreslayer, and you’re nothing like me.’ Gotrek stood up and started away from the table. He stumbled and had to grip the bench to steady himself. ‘This is good.’ He sat back down, and the bench gave another groan.

‘Why do you wish to reach Nagash if you don’t serve him?’ asked the stranger.

‘What are you?’ repeated Maleneth, gripping her knife handles. ‘Are you human?’

‘I’m Kurin,’ he replied, holding out a hand.

Maleneth eyed it suspiciously.

Gotrek had closed his eyes, leaning back against the wall, and when he opened them again, he had to blink repeatedly to focus.

‘You’re drunk,’ muttered Maleneth.

Gotrek grinned. ‘And you’re ugly. But tomorrow I’ll be ugly and you’ll still be…’ His words trailed off and he shook his head, frowning. ‘No, wait… I mean, tomorrow I’ll be ugly and you’ll still be drunk.’ He shook his head, muttering to himself, trying to remember the joke he had cracked every day for the last week.

‘I belong to an order of magisters called the hush,’ said the man, ignoring Gotrek’s rambling. ‘Shrivers, as some used to call us.’

‘I’ve never heard of you,’ replied Maleneth, eyeing the man with suspicion. There were a lot of people who would like to get their hands on the rune in Gotrek’s chest. Perhaps it was no accident that Kurin was in the Muffled Drum at this particular moment.

‘Not many have,’ said Kurin. ‘Our skills are no longer in much demand.’

‘Skills?’

He held out his hand again, draping it before Maleneth in such a languid, aloof manner that she wondered if he was expecting her to kiss it. Then he flipped his hand around so it was palm up.

Maleneth, Gotrek and Trachos all leant closer, watching in surprise as the lines of his palm rose from his hand, spiralling up into the air like fine trails of smoke.

‘Touch them,’ he said.

Maleneth shook her head, and the other two leant back.

He shrugged. ‘We’re an ancient order. We ruled these kingdoms once, long before any of these ill-mannered barbarians who are currently trying to claim lordship. We are one with the dust. We share none of the failings of mankind – no doubts, no regrets, no grief, no shame. The sod is our flesh and the ground is our bed. It makes life simple. Mortal concerns do not bother us, so we have time to concentrate on more elevated matters.’

Gotrek managed to focus. ‘You don’t care about anything?’ He picked a shred of meat from his beard, stared at it, then ate it. ‘Doesn’t sound particularly “elevated”. Even I’ve managed that.’

Kurin smiled, his hand still outstretched, his skin still spinning a tiny storm. ‘I sense that you care about more than you would like to admit. But I can shrive you of your crimes. We are able to see into souls, Slayer – we see their value and we see what haunts them. Take my hand, tell me what drives you to drink so eagerly, and I will take the memory from you.’

Gotrek sneered, but then hesitated and stared at the man’s hand. ‘Take it from me?’

The Slayer had never told Maleneth much about his former life, but she knew he wished to atone for a past deed. He sought glorious death in battle as a kind of penance. Her pulse quickened. If Gotrek was able to forget the thing he wanted to atone for, he would stop charging headlong towards his own destruction. She could simply lead him, like an offering, back home to Azyr, with Blackhammer’s rune intact.

Kurin was still smiling. ‘Or, if you do not wish to be rid of your painful past, I can give you a chance at reconciliation. I can rouse your ghosts, Slayer. I can drag your shadows into the light. Is there someone you would wish to accuse? Or apologise to? My reach is long.’

‘A charlatan,’ sneered Maleneth. ‘I suppose you tell fortunes too. And how much does this all cost?’

‘No money. Just honesty. Nagash has persecuted my order for countless generations.’ Kurin waved vaguely, indicating the streets outside. ‘And left me surrounded by people so stupid they worship all the gods when they should worship none.’ He looked at the three of them in turn, with that half-smile still on his lips. ‘And now I hear you three are seeking him. While every other wretch in Klemp is snivelling to Nagash, you want to take him on. It’s a long time since I heard anything other than fear.’ He looked at the rune in Gotrek’s chest. ‘There is something different about you.’

Maleneth nodded. ‘So if we tell you why we’re seeking the necromancer, you’ll relieve Gotrek of his guilt?’

‘If that’s what he desires.’

The Slayer was still staring at Kurin’s hand, but Maleneth sensed that his mind had slipped back into the past again. His usually fierce expression was gone, and robbed of its normal ferocity, his face looked brutalised rather than brutal – a shocking mess of scars and buckled bone.

‘Do you?’ prompted Kurin, an odd gleam in his eye.

Gotrek was staring so hard Maleneth wondered if the drink had finally made him catatonic. Then he laughed and leant back, relaxing as he took another swig. ‘These realms are so damned subtle. I see what you’re doing, sorcerer – you would rob me of my past and leave me beaming like an idiot. You would have me forget my oath.’

Kurin frowned, confused, shaking his head, but before he could disagree, Gotrek continued.

‘There’s no solace for me, wizard. No absolution. No bloody shriving. Not until I find my doom.’ As the Slayer’s anger grew, his words became more slurred. ‘And, one way or another, the gods will give it to me.’

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