The Hero of Glymmsforge

Captain Malendrek, civil engineer turned leader of the Glymmsforge South Gaters, scowled at the lumpy froth in his flagon. He had long ago pushed away the meal that Gertie had left for him. More bloody fish; he was sick of it.

Better a liquid meal, he had thought, and damn the morning after. Another night off duty spent at the Black Cat. It was getting to be too much of a habit.

They knew him here, at least. Knew what he had done for the city. He had told them often enough. But did he get a minstrel’s song to commemorate his deeds, like that privileged arcanocrat Knossian? Perhaps a silver statue, like the oh-so-humble Serafin Heldett, darling of the city?

No he did not. Poor, disfigured old Malendrek got a draughty room in the gatehouse, painful bunions from all the walking, and the occasional pint of cheap sweetblack bought by one of his men.

Sigmar had his chosen ones, and Vorgen Malendrek had not been among them.

The Anvils of the Heldenhammer, too obsessed with their own rites and antique rituals to answer his calls for a war council, had defended the East Gate. They were Stormcast Eternals, a force no mortal man could hope to match. They had hurled the undead hordes besieging the city back into the wastes, and kept the city’s blessed twelve-pointed arcanogram unbroken so the stealth-gheists couldn’t get in.

But so had Malendrek and the men of the city’s south. He and his lads had held it against the Slender Knight’s undead riders with nothing more extravagant than hidden moats, mist-shrouded spikefields and, at the last, a triple pincer charge led by mounted warrior priests.

That was his finest hour, even with the death toll. It had taken a lot of planning, bravura, and more than a little luck to pull it off. It should have been worth a song, or a verse at least in Knossian Glymm’s fancy ballad. But it seemed that cunning, resourcefulness and a flair for traps were not qualities good enough for two-penny minstrels, let alone the God-King and the Realm of Heavens.

‘Rot unto them,’ muttered Malendrek. ‘Rot and dust unto them all.’ He drained his pint, slurping down the dregs with a grimace. Resting his head on his arms for a moment, he let his eyes droop as his soul sank into a pool of despair and self-pity.

The barren desert stretched before him, cold winds whispering in a language he did not understand.

There, silhouetted against the tallest dune, was the deathly rider, clad in a flapping grave-shroud. It beckoned to him, as it always did. He heard its voice in his head, the promise it always made.

‘By the dunes of lost Nehekhara,’ it whispered in Malendrek’s own voice. ‘I am thine.’

The vision faded away. A powerful urge to urinate suddenly made itself known, and Malendrek stood upright with a slight stagger, banging his kneecap on the underside of the table in his haste not to disgrace himself.

He weaved his way towards the troughs at the rear of the tavern, shouldering next to a tall guard and relieving himself in a steaming yellow arc that splashed over his boots and a little over those of the guard next to him. He turned quickly away, making himself decent, and made hastily through the rear door into the alley before things turned sour.

Sour was about all he had left, thought Malendrek, these days. No wife and no family, not since the last incursion of the dead. Even his cat Threepaw had died, turned stiff and white after hissing at a lurker-gheist in the dark woods around Glass Mere. Now he had only memories, and the pity of those who still had lives worth living.

Out he staggered into the city. He passed the silver statue of the woman who had once been simply Serafin Heldett, and was now so much more. He felt the bitterness rise up to choke him, and made to spit at the statue’s feet. But his mouth was dry, and the gobbet of spittle swung from his lower lip like a pendulum, reluctant to detach. He wiped it on his sleeve and meandered on, heart swimming with shame and eyes pricking hot with tears.

It was the smoke, he told himself. The smoke of the day’s corpses, irritating his eyes. Nothing more.

That night, in his flea-infested bunk, Captain Malendrek dreamed fitfully. He dreamed of screaming, skull-like faces in the sky, and of a vast, impossible pyramid suspended over a bottomless pit. A rustling, bone-dry voice whispered on the cold, cutting wind that rushed towards that abyss.

With the strange logic of dreams, he knew who was speaking to him, for he had spoken to him before, and likely would do again. His mother had told him about this whisperer, many times, when he was a child too curious about the world to go to sleep. It was the voice of Elder Bones, a wizard-king from the olden days of Shyish, who was famous before Lyria had even been named, let alone Glymmsforge. Despite the whisper being on the cusp of hearing, he could feel the voice resonating in his skull, every syllable seeping into his bones.

‘You deserve respect,’ the voice said. ‘You deserve to be obeyed. Just as I do. Obeyed without question.’

Part of Malendrek found itself in agreement.

‘A new order is coming,’ said the voice. ‘I have chosen you to lead, as well as to follow, in that new worldscape. Open the way. Dig out the purple salt from the arcanogram at the south gate mausoleum. Replace it with sand of the same hue, and leave.’

Malendrek frowned and muttered in his sleep, not quite understanding, but feeling some manner of kinship nonetheless.

‘I am no false god, no warrior elevated above his station. I am a king, and though my rightful domain has fallen, it will rise again. Hands such as yours will open the way, until Sigmar and his golden fools are put back in their place forever more.’

The slumbering captain knew, somehow, that Elder Bones understood what it felt like to be supplanted, to be overruled, to have what was rightfully his snatched away. Perhaps he wasn’t a figure of terror after all. Perhaps he was just a man, a lost soul, misunderstood and longing for what should have been his all along.

This one, he could follow. This one would give him his rightful due.

The old captain turned in his bunk, pulled his threadbare blanket across his back, and dreamed of finally getting the laurels he so richly deserved.

A new dawn would be here soon enough.

PRODUCED BY GAMES WORKSHOP IN NOTTINGHAM

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

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