Contents

Cover

The Threshold – David Annandale

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Neferata: Mortarch Of Blood’

A Black Library Publication

The Threshold

by David Annandale

It was, at last, his season of rest.

Lord Ormand walked slowly along the Suspire Bridge. The graceful, buttressed span used to link the keep in the upper reaches of the free city of Lugol to Blindhallow Pass, a narrow, treacherous fissure in the western arm of the Stonepain Mountains. The middle of the bridge was gone now, destroyed on Ormand’s orders, part of the physical and symbolic severing of Lugol from the darkness of Shyish. The jutting arcs, forever reaching towards each other and never to touch again, had become, for Ormand, the icon of the victory that had been the goal of his entire life. The goal achieved and secured, he could lay down his arms at last. There were others who were taking up the defence of Lugol in his stead. He could rest.

He had to pause twice, leaning on his ebony cane, before he reached the stump of a column that had been placed for him a few yards away from the gap in the span. With a groan, he sat down, facing the city. From here, he had a commanding perspective of Lugol and its surroundings.

The free city was built on a narrow, steep, rocky hill that stood apart from the sudden rise of the Stonepains. Its high walls protected it from enemies approaching on the plains. Concentric rings of battlements encircled the hill, all the way to the keep that surmounted the peak. Since its founding, it had never been taken. It had been more than a year, now, since the last siege. A year since the shattering of the Suspire Bridge. And a year since Lugol’s greatest wall, one that was built of something much stronger than stone, had been completed.

Far to the east, a caravan was making its way across the barren plain towards Lugol. Trade from Arkavas, no doubt. Two days’ march away, it was Lugol’s closest neighbour. It was not a free city. Its citizens bowed the knee to the Mortarch of Blood. Merchants still travelled between the two cities. Lugol could not, and had not, cut itself off from all intercourse with the other inhabitants of Shyish. It had, though, erected a barrier that mattered between it and the rest of the realm. Lugol was not just free of the domination of Neferata. It was, Ormand believed, free like no other city in Shyish.

The fight for that freedom had consumed him. He no longer had movement in his left arm. Walking was slow and painful. He had lost his right eye. He did not think he had another year of life left in him. He did not mind. He was grateful for what he had been able to accomplish. And he was grateful to have reached, at last, his season of rest, a time for him without struggle while he still drew breath. The final sleep would not be long in coming, and until it did, he would savour the hard-earned calm.

Sitting here, by himself, in the quiet of an evening – this was a prize worth the life he had paid for it.

‘It is a pleasant evening to look upon the work of a lifetime.’

The woman’s voice, low and rich, a sepulchral ambrosia, ran a frozen claw down Ormand’s spine. He jerked around painfully.

He froze in shock. His heart beat like a war drum, and his flesh prickled cold.

Neferata, Mortarch of Blood, sat on the edge of the Stonepain section of the span. Twenty feet of empty air separated her from Ormand. From the darkness of Blindhallow Pass, something huge growled.

Neferata glanced over her shoulder. ‘Hush, Nagadron. Behave yourself and do not interrupt.’ She turned back to Ormond and smiled.

Ormand clutched his cane. He wished for a sword. He tried to stand, but his legs betrayed him.

Neferata kept smiling. ‘I wish you would not flee, Lord Ormand, and deprive us of an interesting conversation.’ She sighed. ‘If you must go, though, then you must. Or perhaps you would be more comfortable if you summoned your guards?’

Ormand hesitated, aware that his reactions implied that he doubted Lugol’s defences.

‘Do I look as if I have come here for battle?’ Neferata asked.

She did not, Ormand admitted to himself. She wore no armour, clad instead in riding clothes and an enormous wrap of blood-red silk. Its ends extended ten feet past the vampire queen, floating effortlessly in the evening breeze.

‘A battle, no,’ Ormand said. ‘I think you would be content with an assassination.’ He could not run. He could not fight her. If this was his end, he would face it without wavering. She was powerful. It was possible that she could breach Lugol’s greatest barrier. Enough to kill him, at any rate.

‘Assassinate you?’ Neferata raised her eyebrows in amusement. ‘Why would I wish to do that?’

‘Vengeance,’ said Ormand.

‘For what?’

‘For sealing Lugol away from your foul touch.’

She pretended to be hurt. ‘That would be a very petty thing for me to do.’

‘It would also be futile,’ Ormand told her. ‘My corpse will be disposed of like any other, and my death would in no way weaken the city. My succession is assured.’

‘So I have heard,’ said Neferata. ‘You have trained your daughter well. I gather that Kristane is already, in all but name, the ruler of Lugol. I congratulate you both, but you most of all, for your achievement.’ She lifted her hands towards the city. ‘Behold Lugol!’ she cried to an absent audience. ‘The city of Shyish where death is forbidden!’

‘Your mockery is a sign of impotence,’ said Ormand.

‘My mockery?’ She clicked her tongue. ‘I am justly chided, Lord Ormand. My pretence at ignorance does me no credit. I should declare things as they are. The powers of Death have no purchase in Lugol. Is that a better summation of your accomplishment?’

It was. There were no vampires in Lugol. No ghosts haunted its streets. There were no cemeteries inside the city walls. Any citizen who died was taken out to the plain and cremated there. And runic defences, a labour that had lasted throughout Ormand’s reign, warded off all necromantic arts from the city’s hill.

‘The accumulated wards of your sorcerers are powerful,’ Neferata said approvingly. ‘I am an admirer of ambition executed well.’

‘Which you have nevertheless come to destroy. I can guess your intent. You wish me to invite you into the city, and so destroy us from the inside.’

Neferata laughed. ‘Are your wards so easily bypassed? Is that all it would take? A single traitor in your midst? One citizen whose fit of pique brings down an entire city? Is this true?’

‘It is not.’

‘I am glad to hear it! And tell me, Lord Ormand, do you feel an urge to ask me to join you on your half of this broken span?’

‘I would sooner die.’

‘That too, I am glad to hear,’ Neferata said. ‘It would appear, then, that you have nothing to fear from me.’

The fact that she was making Ormand’s case for him made him more uneasy. ‘Why are you here?’ he demanded.

‘I am here because you interest me. Lugol is unique among cities. I have never encountered the like before. I adore the unique. I collect it.’

‘You will never collect Lugol.’

‘Forgive me. I misspoke.’ Always that smile. None of Ormand’s defiance seemed to diminish the Mortarch’s good humour. ‘What I should have said is that I would like to understand you better.’

‘There is nothing for the likes of you to understand.’ Ormand used his cane to lever himself to his feet.

‘Are you going?’ Neferata asked.

‘I am.’

‘Perhaps we shall speak again tomorrow?’

Ormand didn’t answer. He turned his back on the vampire and walked away. He expected a tug on his will to pull him back. He braced himself to struggle against the undertow of Neferata’s power. But his return to the keep was no more difficult than it ever was.

‘I wish you a pleasant evening, and an untroubled rest,’ Neferata called.

Ormand reached the portcullis that guarded the access to the bridge from the base of the keep’s north-east watchtower. It was open, and Kristane was waiting for him there, along with an escort of guards. She was in full armour, sword in hand.

‘You saw us, then,’ Ormand said.

‘Yes. Should we have come to your aid, Father? We were ready, but you did not look for us or call for help.’

‘You did the right thing,’ Ormand said. They entered the keep, and the guards lowered the portcullis. It descended with an emphatic clang, another of the city’s defences sealing off the danger without. ‘An unprovoked attack might be exactly what Neferata seeks. No one is to confront her. No one is to venture onto that bridge.’

‘And you, Father?’ Kristane asked. ‘The same applies to you? We cannot risk you.’

Ormand looked at his daughter, as strong and commanding as he had once been, but far wiser. Including now, at this moment, because though he knew she was right, he was also curious about the vampire’s interest. ‘What happens to me is not important any more,’ he said.

Ormand told Kristane the same thing the next day. In spite of Neferata’s well-wishing, he had slept badly. He had lain awake, revisiting every detail of the encounter, trying to find the key to the puzzle it presented. He did not believe Neferata’s purported reason for seeking him out. If she was here, she presented a threat, to him and to all of Lugol. What he could not see was the nature of that threat. He continued to wrestle with the puzzle when he rose at dawn, and then throughout the day, even while, at Kristane’s side, he ensured that the defences were reinforced, and that the city was put on a war footing.

When evening came, and the watch sent warning that the Mortarch of Blood had appeared on the Suspire Bridge again, Ormand made his way to the tower portcullis without hesitation or internal debate. He had known since last night that he would return. Neferata might not have used force of any kind to pull him out, but she had played well on his curiosity.

Kristane walked with him as far as the portcullis, trying to convince him not to venture out onto the bridge. ‘She’s manipulated you into speaking with her again,’ she said.

‘I know,’ said Ormand. ‘I can see that very well.’

‘Then I don’t understand why you are doing what she wants.’

He sighed, feeling the deep ache of the years in his bones, and sensing how short his season of rest would be before his end. ‘Because I have to know what she intends. I know this is a risk, but I do not think it is to Lugol, not if we are careful.’

‘Careful how? Other than ignoring her. If you do not make yourself her plaything, she will be forced to change her tactics.’

‘We will be careful by ensuring that any possible harm ends with me. If I die, then I must be disposed of like any other corpse. I must be hurled from the end of the bridge if necessary. I will land outside the city walls. Still, I don’t think she plans to kill me. I think she was truthful about that.’

‘On what possible basis can you say that?’

‘That my assassination would be too crude an act for a being such as her.’

Kristane looked unconvinced. ‘Even if you are right, you are still playing her game by going out to meet her. Neferata does not engage in games she thinks she can lose.’

‘And if we do as you suggest, and hide behind our walls, refusing to confront her, what if that is what she wants us to do? What if that is playing into her hands?’

Kristane didn’t answer.

‘So we are clear? No matter what, do not put the city at risk to save me.’

She sighed. ‘Clear, Father.’

‘Thank you. And remember, Lugol is safe, because it has you.’ He passed under the portcullis and walked slowly down the span, taking comfort in the knowledge that sentries watched him, and that his city had a strong protector.

Neferata was seated as she had been the night before. She bowed her head in greeting as Ormand approached the gap in the span and sat down on his stump of pillar. ‘I am glad to see you, Lord Ormand,’ she said. ‘I am flattered that you have accepted to continue our dialogue.’ Her laughter was melodious with veiled cruelty. ‘We have so much to say to one another!’

‘I doubt that,’ Ormand said. ‘Yet I am here, notwithstanding. What is it that we have to discuss?’

‘My enlightenment! I seek to understand the true nature of Lugol’s greatness. Tell me, please, what is it that you think you have accomplished here?’

‘We have freed Lugol from you, and from Nagash,’ he said proudly.

Neferata cocked her head, giving Ormand a long, amused look. ‘I see that you do not jest. You cannot really believe that, can you? All that dies belongs to Nagash, and everything must die. And this is Shyish. All life in this realm exists only with the forbearance of the Great Necromancer.’

‘Is that true of the Stormcast Eternals?’

Neferata shrugged gracefully. ‘They will learn who owns them, in due time. And you are not eternal, Lord Ormand. Do you think you will escape Nagash after your death?’

‘I do not know what will happen to me when I die,’ Ormand said. ‘Therefore, it is not my concern. I know what will happen to Lugol, and I am content with that.’

‘That does not seem much of a prize.’

‘Oh, it is. I am free of Nagash while I live, and so is every soul within our walls.’

‘If I grant that you are correct in what you say,’ said Neferata, ‘what does that accomplish?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘How do you benefit?’

‘In freedom, as I said.’

‘What freedom?’

‘Your question is a foolish one. You have been answered.’

‘Are you going, Lord Ormand? So soon?’

He hadn’t noticed that he had risen. His body wanted him to leave. The proximity of the Mortarch made his heart pound with anxiety. He was sweating. His hands shook.

Furious with himself, he sat back down. ‘I find it painful to sit still too long,’ he muttered.

If she thought he was lying, she gave no sign. ‘Let us return to the question of benefit. I ask again, what is the good of this freedom you claim to have achieved? Do you not live in fear of the likes of me?’ She looked up and pointed, her arm striking like a serpent. A moment later, she snatched an arrow out of the air. She shook her head. ‘Your guards are anxious, Lord Ormand, and easily startled.’ She waved at the sentries, and sat back, relaxed. ‘Do you see what I mean? The life of Lugol must be one of perpetual siege, even when no army is present.’

‘Do not mistake vigilance for fear,’ said Ormand.

‘Do not mistake fear for vigilance,’ Neferata countered. ‘And consider the other aspects of your struggle. You have no protection other than your own. Or do you have a permanent garrison of the Stormcast Eternals in Lugol?’

For the first time, Ormand laughed. ‘I am insulted by so transparent a ploy for information.’

Neferata looked serious. ‘You should be insulted, if that was what it was. My question was rhetorical. I know that the Anvils of the Heldenhammer left Lugol for more pressing campaigns quite some time ago. We might say that accomplishing what you have in the past year and more is all the more impressive for having been done without their help. Is that true, though? My reach has grown too. The mountains to your east, and the plains to the horizon, are all part of Neferatia. Lugol has no strategic significance. It is nestled within my borders, and so an attack by the forces of Chaos is unlikely. You benefit from my protection without the pledge of fealty.’

‘We want none of your protection,’ said Ormand.

‘No, you seek protection from me.’ The white of her teeth glinted in the deepening evening, as if she were bathed in a fell light with no source other than her own presence.

‘We do not seek what we have achieved. You cannot enter here.’ No matter how much she pretended not to care, that was the truth of the situation, and Ormand took pride in reminding her of it.

‘What else do you shut out?’ Neferata asked. ‘What else, when your existence is nothing but struggle and terror? Is it to your benefit that your possibilities of trade are so reduced?’

‘They are sufficient to our needs.’

‘Sufficient to your needs,’ Neferata repeated. ‘A pauper’s phrase, devoid of anything that makes existence worth experiencing. What of joy, Lord Ormand? Is there joy in Lugol?’

‘Who are you to speak of joy?’ Ormand shot back.

‘Who better? My joys are many. Even this conversation is one. Art is another. Art is not sufficient to a need. Not in the sense that you mean, because I suspect you do not conceive of needs that are not related to a ration of food and a strong wall. Art is the excess to existence that makes it worthwhile. How do your sculptors fare in Lugol? Your painters? Your jewellers? Your poets and your musicians? Do they exist?’

‘This is pointless,’ said Ormand.

Neferata brushed his weak response away. ‘Look at your towers and walls, Lord Ormand,’ she said. ‘Look at them with my eyes. I see bare stone. I see no ornamentation. I see no pride except in the fluttering of banners, and how ancient are they? Are they the last flourishing of art in Lugol? Do you have no space at all for the vitality of excess?’

‘Excess,’ said Ormand. ‘The word seems important to you. Perhaps it describes you and your works very well. But I think what we are really discussing is decadence.’ He spat the word, disgusted.

‘Yes!’ Neferata cried, overjoyed. ‘Yes! Decadence is right. The greatest art is decadent. If it were not, it would be sorely lacking, and in danger of being that worst of things, instructive. Oh, Lord Ormand, you should travel with me back to Nulahmia. Your succession is assured, as you said. There is nothing to hold you here. Come, and see what art can be. If I could show you the murals in the Palace of Seven Vultures. If you could see how ebony and gold and human bone can become one, making even the most humble candelabra exquisite, its beauty so far beyond the requirements of its function that beauty has become its true end. If you could hear the purity of music when it is worked upon still-living flesh. If only I could show you the sublimity that comes when cruelty removes all the fetters of art.’

Ormand was on his feet again. ‘That is monstrous.’

‘It is!’ said Neferata. ‘Perhaps you begin to understand.’

‘I have heard enough,’ Ormand said. He began to walk away.

‘I don’t think you have,’ said Neferata, her voice following him, its melody wrapping around him like guilt. ‘I think you should come again tomorrow. Until then, again I wish you rest. But think upon our words. Look for joy in your city, Lord Ormand. Look, and tell me tomorrow if you find it.’

It was another bad night. Ormand barely slept at all this time. He was troubled by more than Neferata’s arguments. An hour after he retired to his bed, he began to cough. The fits shook him hard. They left him exhausted and spitting drops of blood. During the last month, he had been finding himself progressively shorter of breath. Now, when he breathed, his chest ached with the effort, and his lungs were scraped and ragged. When dawn finally came, he dragged himself from his bed with far less strength than the little he had had the evening before.

He was slow in dressing, slow enough that Kristane came to see if something was wrong.

‘All is well,’ he told her. He leaned on her arm and they walked out of the keep’s waking bastion and into the sun of the square that overlooked the rest of Lugol. ‘My time is drawing to its close,’ he said.

‘Father,’ Kristane said, and swallowed hard.

‘Please don’t grieve. I am grateful. My body weighs heavily upon me. I will be glad to set this burden down.’

‘This is the work of Neferata.’

‘Loath as I am to defend her in any way, this is not her doing. I saw the end approach well before she arrived.’

‘Perhaps so,’ Kristane said. ‘But please, do not speak with her again tonight.’

Ormand gave her arm a squeeze. ‘I have nothing left to fear. Allow me this indulgence. It is my last combat, even if it is just a duel of words.’

He left Kristane then, to make what he thought might be his last walk through the streets of his city. He spent the day, resting often, making his way down to the base of the hill and the outermost of Lugol’s walls, and then even more painfully walking back uphill. During the entire journey, he thought about what Neferata had said, and he saw the free city with different eyes. He saw the oppressive blankness of the stone façades. He saw the anxiety gnawing at the faces of his subjects. He saw people endlessly watching for the next person to die, so they might expel corpse and memory of friend or kin as soon as possible. Mourning was forbidden in Lugol, not through decree but through terror, as if the contemplation of loss were an invitation to death to pass through the gates.

There was no art. There was no joy.

But there is freedom. He kept telling himself that. He held on to the accomplishment of Lugol as tightly as he did his cane.

He clutched it still when twilight came and he headed out onto the bridge once again. Ormand was eager to speak with Neferata this time. He would deny her the victory of his despair.

Neferata’s face was solemn as he lowered himself onto his seat. ‘You don’t look well,’ she said.

‘I am near my end,’ he said. ‘So there is really no reason for me to fear you.’

‘I have said so from the beginning.’

‘Now I am certain.’

‘Tell me,’ Neferata said softly. ‘Have you lived well? Is your purpose fulfilled?’

‘I have, and it is.’

‘I am glad for you.’

‘That is kind.’

‘No,’ said Neferata, cold as absence. ‘I am not kind. Only a fool would think that of me.’

‘I am no fool,’ said Ormand.

‘You are not. So you knew I would not leave things there. I will make you defend your claim. You say your purpose is fulfilled. I ask, was it a worthy purpose? Was it worth the expense of your life?’

‘Of course it was.’

‘Did you do as I asked? Did you search for joy in your city?’

Ormand didn’t answer.

‘Did you find it?’

He kept his silence. He would not be drawn into an obvious trap.

Neferata continued to speak as if she had received the response she had expected.

‘Purpose,’ she said. ‘Forces that are greater than ourselves impose obligations upon us. But purpose is self-created. I believe our purposes should be judged like any other form of creation.’ She paused. ‘Like any form of art.’ She smiled. ‘I look at your purpose, and see its embodiment in your city, and my judgement is a harsh one, Lord Ormand. There is no joy here. Listen to me. Listen to my words, to their sound, to the rhythms of my speech and the promise of music they contain. Listen to me, as you would the songs that have vanished from Lugol.’

Ormand listened. Her voice swirled around him. It carried him along the flow of words and meaning. It was intoxicating, and he knew it was, but he knew there was nothing left to risk. Anything she tried with him was too late. He listened, he indulged in the melody, and when she was done, he would counter her arguments. He would turn his back on whatever blandishment she proffered. He would linger on the shores of her call until then.

‘You have denied the aesthetic, Lord Ormand,’ said Neferata. ‘That is the crime for which you stand condemned. You have banished death. You have reduced it to the monotony of sheer disposal. You deny the surprise of death and its larger creation. You have turned your back on the revel of what comes after. The joy of blood, Lord Ormand, the eternal artistry of undeath and the immortality of change. Imagine them with me. Hear their glory in my voice. See their transcendence in my eyes. The gulf between us is meaningless if you send your imagination across the bridge. Listen and feel and learn, Lord Ormand. Know what you have rejected. Will you know, if only for a moment, what could have been? Will you know, if only for a moment, how to be surprised by the beauty of death?’

Just for a moment.

He felt it, then, the faintest touch of what he had denied himself and his city. He graced the edge of the monstrously sublime. The intricate convolutions of cruelties planned over centuries and enacted over generations revealed themselves as vistas of perfection. The exhilaration was vertiginous. He might fall from a height much greater than the bridge.

‘Enough,’ Neferata said.

Ormand blinked, bringing reality back into place before him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Enough.’ He stood quickly, energy coursing through his frame. He had confronted temptation so great he could barely understand its nature, and he had triumphed. He felt stronger than he had for decades. ‘We will speak no more,’ he said.

‘Before you go,’ said Neferata, ‘shall I tell you what I want?’

‘Yes. For all the good it will do you.’

‘I do not want to lay siege to Lugol, Lord Ormand,’ she said. ‘There is a much more elegant way for the city to fall to me. I want you to do my work for me. I want you to go inside, and set about its destruction.’

Ormand smiled. ‘You want what will not happen,’ he said.

‘Oh, but it will.’

‘And how is that possible?’

‘Because you are my thrall.’

Ormand’s smile froze and Neferata’s grew broad and knowing.

‘Feel your heartbeat, Lord Ormand.’

He put his hand to his chest. He felt nothing. He clutched harder, and then, to his horror, he realised that he was not breathing. ‘What...’ he began.

‘You are dead, Lord Ormand. You died as you were caught in the spell of my voice. Vampirism takes many forms. I can drain your essence through means other than blood. Now you have the infinite vistas of undeath before you. Will you throw them away?’

‘No,’ Ormand said, and with a silent cry of despair, his will died. He would never disobey his queen, who had unveiled such truths to him, and given him so great a gift.

‘Go then,’ said Neferata. ‘Go and bring art to Lugol.’

Neferata returned the following night. The shimmer of wards that had surrounded Lugol was gone. She stood at the broken edge of the Suspire Bridge and waited. Shortly after her arrival, the portcullis rose and Kristane, armoured and robed, strode from the tower to the other side of the breach. ‘Queen Neferata,’ she said.

‘Lady Kristane. Tell me why you are here.’

‘To bend the knee to you,’ Kristane said, and she did, bowing her head. ‘I am here at my father’s bidding. There is no longer any need for succession. My father’s reign in Lugol will be eternal, and so I have come to offer you my service.’

‘Rise, Lady Kristane.’

Kristane stood.

‘Smile for me.’

Kristane obeyed, bearing her fangs. ‘Lugol is yours forever,’ she said.

‘I am pleased.’ Neferata held out her hand. ‘Let us go, then. The celebration of blood awaits you.’

Kristane stepped across the empty air and took her hand.

About the Author

David Annandale is the author of the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the Warhammer Horror portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy range includes the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood and Neferata: The Dominion of Bones. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

An extract from Neferata: Mortarch Of Blood.

Snow the colour of ash fell over Nulahmia. It was the grey of abandoned hopes and forgotten graves. It gathered upon rooftops like torn shrouds, their tatters sweeping onto windowsills. In the streets, mounds formed. Gazing down at them from his chambers in a corner turret of his family’s palace, Mathas Hellezan thought the mounds looked like huddled bodies. Cold death descended from the sky to blanket the city of tombs. Mathas felt trapped between the dooms of sky and land. He couldn’t breathe. He yanked at the casement and opened the windows. The wind of sepulchres keened into the room, stinging his face with the grey flakes. The cold braced him, and he filled his lungs. He choked, swallowing fragments of pain. Bent double over the sill, gasping, he heard the hammering at the palace doors. The sound shocked him back to calm. The knock was heavy, a mailed fist slamming against bronze three times.

Three reverberating booms, the tolling of a bell reaching up through the night for him. At first he was surprised he could hear the knocking from the far side of the palace. Then he realised what the summons portended, and of course he heard it. Every Hellezan heard it. The walls of the palace trembled with the impact of fate coming to call.

Mathas stood back from the window. He crossed his chamber, passed through the narrow recess into his armoury, and began to make ready. He was just donning his helm when his father appeared at the doorway.

‘It is tonight, then,’ Mathas said.

Verrick Hellezan nodded. He was pale, and his eyes were stricken.

The Culling of the Firstborn was upon them.

‘You aren’t grieving, are you, father?’ Mathas asked. ‘We knew this moment would arrive. We have been preparing for it.’ The Mortarch of Blood had cursed mortal houses of Nulahmia with the tradition centuries before.

‘Yes, I know.’ Verrick’s voice trembled with fear and the anticipation of sorrow. ‘I did not think it would be this night.’

‘Would another night make a difference?’

‘No,’ Verrick admitted.

‘She knows I am about to ascend to command of the house, father,’ said Mathas. ‘There is no hiding that from her.’ Like all other firstborns in his position, he must go to the Palace of Seven Vultures. ‘It is my time to be tested.’

‘I had hoped we might have been able to discover the nature of the test before this moment.’

Mathas smiled. ‘It is deadly. We know that much.’ The Culling was real. Most firstborn never returned, except in coffins. Their mutilated remains were presented to their families, and the biers were carried in mocking silence by a cortege of skeletons.

‘If you fall…’ Verrick began.

‘I won’t. But if I do, you will go on.’

‘Will we?’

Mathas could already see, in his father, the same despairing face he had encountered so often in the kin of the lost firstborns. ‘The Hellezans can survive,’ he said. ‘The others have.’ More or less. Weakened by the losses, some houses failed, decapitated by the death of the firstborn. But others continued to exist, diminished and humbled, taught the futility of resisting the blood queen, often even before the idea had been whispered in the halls. The grieving leaders of these houses bent their knees and bowed their heads before Neferata, entreating her that this son, or this daughter, should be a full and sufficient sacrifice.

‘But you won’t have to just survive,’ Mathas said. ‘I will return. I will return as myself,’ he emphasised, as he saw the shadow of a greater horror pass across Verrick’s eyes.

Some firstborn did not return in coffins. Shrouded by darkness, their flesh cold and pale, their eyes red with ancient, unquenchable thirst, the new vampire thralls of Neferata crossed their thresholds as destroyers.

‘You weren’t at the home of the Salveins,’ Verrick said. ‘You didn’t see what Harvath did to them. He painted the walls with their blood. And the bodies…’ When Verrick shook his head, it seemed to Mathas that he sent a tremor down his entire frame. ‘They filled the corridors, and we couldn’t count them. Such butchery. So many pieces.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, squeezing them tight against the vision of the charnel halls. ‘Harvath just stood there, the blood of his family dripping from his mouth. I don’t know if he even saw us.’

‘That won’t be me, father. You know it won’t.’

Verrick smiled sadly. No matter what Mathas said, it seemed, the old man refused to be comforted. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You might be more restrained.’

‘Like Wrentis Nalvaux?’ He had been merciless in his bloodletting, killing his family members who needed killing, turning those who would be of use, and subjugating everyone else. And so another house had become Neferata’s, controlled by her will as surely as if her terrible presence resided in its chambers. ‘No,’ Mathas said. ‘I will return, and we will all rejoice. This is not the moment of doom. This is our chance to strike.’ He paused. ‘We want this,’ he said softly.

‘I know,’ Verrick said, without conviction.

Mathas clasped his father’s shoulder. Verrick had devoted himself to the struggle, and the effort of the decades had told on him. His frame had withered. His bones seemed frail under Mathas’ touch. His eyes were sunken in his sallow face.

‘You’ve done well, father. You’ve brought us this far. It is time I took up the torch. This night, I will.’ He had been in training for his entire life, waiting for this very night. He, his parents and their allies had not known when the summons would come, but they had known it was inevitable. Mathas was a firstborn, and as mercurial as the queen of Nulahmia could be, she had never spared anyone marked to take part in this ritual.

Why would she? Mathas thought. It is so useful for her.

He left his quarters and made his way through the palace. Verrick walked at his side, seeming to age with every step. The wall sconces burned brightly in the halls, casting a defiant light over the great portraits of the Hellezan line. Gold inlay on the columns and gold leaf on the ceiling gleamed, rich with the pride of a family that had carved out a wealthy life in the kingdom of death. Withstand and Prevail: that was the Hellezan motto, and Mathas believed in it. He would prove its worth and his own tonight.

His armoured boot steps echoed down the halls, the only sound in the palace, though everyone was awake. Servants clustered in doorways to watch his passage. The household seemed to be holding its collective breath. His mother, his brother and his sisters were waiting for him at the main entrance. Teyosa of House Avaranthe, his wife, stood beside them holding their infant son, Kasten.

The doors were closed, but Mathas could sense the dark beings waiting on the other side. Two men-at-arms stood at attention, ready to pull the doors open when he gave the signal.

Mathas embraced his mother. Glanath’s lips were pressed together tightly, her face taught with strain. The years had been hard on her too. It was his responsibility now to make sure his parents’ sacrifice had not been in vain.

Nor would they be the only ones depending on him. There were other families whose fortunes would rise or fall because of this night. In truth, he believed that the fate of all Nulahmia rested on his shoulders. There was solemn pride, but no vanity, in that belief. If he succeeded this night, everything would change. If he failed, someone else would have to take his place, and someone surely would, because the struggle was too important. There was no alternative, other than the despair of complete surrender.

‘I won’t fail,’ he said to Glanath.

‘I know you won’t,’ she said. ‘You march from our palace to a greater one, and to your destiny.’ Her voice trembled only once. She spoke quietly, but with incantatory fervour.

Mathas turned to Teyosa. ‘I will return to you,’ he said. His hand hovered over the sleeping head of Kasten. ‘I swear it.’

‘You should not have to fight alone,’ said Teyosa.

‘Yet I must.’

‘I could…’ she began, but trailed off as he shook his head.

‘If you tried to follow, they would kill you before you had taken ten paces from our gates. You are second-born. Your family has already paid its tithe of blood. And we need you here.’

Teyosa looked down at Kasten and nodded. ‘You will pass by my family’s house,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Mathas. ‘I will learn what I can as we do.’

In the last week, rumours had reached the Hellezan palace that a plague had come to House Avaranthe. Silence had fallen over the family, but there had been no way to learn the truth, no way to know if Neferata had discovered that they were part of the plot against her. If the worst had happened, there could be no open contact between the two houses, especially now that the attention of the dark queen had fallen on the Hellezans.

The days and nights of the Hellezan palace had been consumed with the dread anticipation of Mathas’ summons. The Culling of the Firstborn came to every house. Since there were no exceptions, the summons was predictable. It was possible to prepare for it. Mathas had. The threat stiffened the resolve of the Hellezans and the families with whom they forged quiet, whispered alliances. They vowed to break the chains Neferata had thrown over Nulahmia. The city may have been her creation, but it was time it was freed from the grip of its creator. As plans were laid and the kernel of an organised resistance slowly, almost imperceptibly, came into being, the links between the families had become, on the surface, more distant. If the Avaranthes had been found out, and punished, the appearance of that distance was all the more vital.

Teyosa understood. Yet Mathas knew she feared for her family and grieved in the expectation of tragedy. Knowing one way or another might help. Mathas needed to know, too. Everyone in House Hellezan did.

‘I’ll find out,’ he promised, determination growing. ‘Good news or ill, I will come back, and I will hold you as I tell you.’

‘I can ask no more,’ said Teyosa.

Mathas nodded to the guards, and they opened the doors.

The wind shrieked into the entrance hall, blowing grey before it. The snow whirled about the Hellezans. Verrick winced and brushed the flakes from his shoulders as if trying to shed himself of a dark omen. Three Black Knights stood on the portico. Their heavy armour gleamed dully in the reflected lights of the hall’s torches. The cold breath of the night whistled through their empty eye sockets, and the chill of the grave worked through the seams of Mathas’ armour and clutched his face with a numbing grasp. The blast of the snow storm surrounded the Black Knights, but another, more frigid wind blew from the undead warriors themselves.

Mathas took in the eroded crests on the trio’s armour and bowed. The skeletons were nobles from houses that had been powerful when their families were alive, and were even greater now they were dead.

The middle Black Knight cocked his head as if amused by Mathas’ display of courtesy. You aren’t fooled, Mathas thought. You sense my loathing. Good. But I will walk into the dark with honour. Do not think you can take that from me. He stared back into the knight’s empty sockets. After a few moments, the skeleton turned and strode away, armour creaking, bones grinding together. The other two waited for Mathas to come between them. When he did, they fell into step on either side, an escort of doom.

At street level, the mounds of snow looked even more like bodies, huddled in agony against the building walls. Though the night was freezing, the shapes were melting, heated by the unnatural alchemy that governed their existence. Where the grey was piled high enough to take on the curves of agony, it began to bleed. The masses sank down, rotting, turning to blackened slush, then running in crimson streams down the cobblestones, washing against Mathas’ boots.

The Black Knights took him down a wide boulevard that ran between towering mausoleums. The black walls were hundreds of feet high. Rank upon rank of huge, snarling gargoyle maws covered the facades. Behind every gaping mouth was a stone throat, leading into the structures and the tombs within. The mausoleums held tens of thousands of coffins. Few of their occupants slept soundly.

The grey snow fell past the gargoyles. It gathered on Mathas’ shoulders. It settled onto the street, and was swept away by the streams of blood.

Everything in the night shouted to Mathas that only death could triumph in Nulahmia. He was going to prove the night wrong. They did not know it, but the Black Knights were giving him the opportunity to make that attempt. He would spill blood, and he would kill. But it was one death in particular he sought. One death, to bring the hope of life to the mortals of Nulahmia. Or, no – not a death, for he did not pretend he could kill what was already dead. Destruction, then. He lived to destroy one being.

He was going to destroy Neferata.

Mathas recognised the folly of the quest. He knew he was not the first mortal to make the attempt. What did his two decades of training mean compared to her countless millennia of existence? The hubris of his attempt was without measure. But one of us will bring you down, he thought. One of these times, the blade would strike home. He refused to believe that she was eternal. She, too, was guilty of pride. What was happening to him this night was proof of that. She was inviting destruction over her threshold. One day, the invitation would be accepted.

Your hour is coming, he thought.

Click here to buy Neferata: Mortarch Of Blood.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Christian Byrne.

The Threshold © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. The Threshold, 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: 978-1-80026-319-2

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.