• THE VAMPIRE GENEVIEVE •
by Kim Newman
BOOK 1: DRACHENFELS
BOOK 2: GENEVIEVE UNDEAD
BOOK 3: BEASTS IN VELVET
BOOK 4: SILVER NAILS

THE WICKED AND THE DAMNED
A portmanteau novel by Josh Reynolds, Phil Kelly and David Annandale

MALEDICTIONS
An anthology by various authors

INVOCATIONS
An anthology by various authors

THE HOUSE OF NIGHT AND CHAIN
A novel by David Annandale

CASTLE OF BLOOD
A novel by C L Werner

DARK HARVEST
A novel by Josh Reynolds

THE OUBLIETTE
A novel by J C Stearns

SEPULTURUM
A novel by Nick Kyme

THE COLONEL’S MONOGRAPH
A novella by Graham McNeill

PERDITION’S FLAME
An audio drama by Alec Worley

THE WAY OUT
An audio drama by Rachel Harrison

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Horror

HAB FEVER LOCKDOWN

SUFFER THE VISION

A THRENODY FOR KOLCHEV

THESE HANDS, THESE WINGS

VOX DAEMONICUS

SKIN MAN

A DEEP AND STEADY TREAD

THE THING IN THE WOODS

MUD AND MIST

THE SHADOW CROWN

RUNNER

MIRACLES

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

VOICES IN THE GLASS

THE FUNERAL

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘The Oubliette’

A Black Library Publication Imprint

eBook license

A dark bell tolls in the abyss.

It echoes across cold and unforgiving worlds, mourning the fate of humanity. Terror has been unleashed, and every foul creature of the night haunts the shadows. There is naught but evil here. Alien monstrosities drift in tomblike vessels. Watching. Waiting. Ravenous. Baleful magicks whisper in gloom-shrouded forests, spectres scuttle across disquiet minds. From the depths of the void to the blood-soaked earth, diabolic horrors stalk the endless night to feast upon unworthy souls.

Abandon hope. Do not trust to faith. Sacrifices burn on pyres of madness, rotting corpses stir in unquiet graves. Daemonic abominations leer with rictus grins and stare into the eyes of the accursed. And the Ruinous Gods, with indifference, look on.

This is a time of reckoning, where every mortal soul is at the mercy of the things that lurk in the dark. This is the night eternal, the province of monsters and daemons. This is Warhammer Horror. None shall escape damnation.

And so, the bell tolls on.

HAB FEVER LOCKDOWN

Justin D Hill

Your girl, Tarja, pushes herself up from the cot, runs a hand through her hair to tease out the worst knots, and coughs. It is the first thing she does every morning. She sits up, bends over the spittoon, then wipes her mouth on the back of her sleeve.

‘Think I’ve got the plague?’

‘Yes,’ you say, in the deadpan way you do every morning. ‘You’ll be a stiff by lights-out.’

Tarja grabs some cold slab and shoves it in. Her work is all the way across Buttress Nine. The overseer punishes any who are late. She swills the slab down with brown sterilised water and slips on her shoes. That’s it, she’s ready to go. There’s no weather in the hive-city. It’s all one temperature. That’s all there is, lights-on and lights-out, work and sleep.

As she moves to the door you reach out to hold her back.

‘Later,’ she says and slips out of your grip. And then she is gone.

Your name is Arvid. Your parent hive is Panxir, a continent-spanning sprawl of spires that run like jagged mountain ranges, each one miles high, with their own foothills of daughter spires and rising buttresses.

Your spire is Ramsay 893. It’s a new development, only a few hundred years old, and it’s still growing upwards, like a volcanic island, rising on the mountains of slag that the excavations produce.

Your hab is located in Arena Green 36. It’s seventeen levels above the arena floor, balconies rising up like an amphitheatre, each one set with narrow corridors and porches. It’s all new-build but already the hive has started to settle and the doorways are bent out of shape. They’ve worn grooves into the floor and damp has rotted the bottoms. The whole place smells of mould. But it’s your home and it’s the best you can afford.

You exit your hab-stack into the hubbub of the arena below. It is a hectic and busy communal area, with salesmen, peddlers and fungus brokers lining the main thoroughfare with their wares spread out before them on squares of sackcloth. Old women poke about the slab-sellers. The toad butcher works constantly, hooking, dispatching and skinning, and then tossing the legs to one side and the scraps to the other.

You turn left and head down the broad bore-tunnel to the shaft-gantries. These great vertical chambers are the main arteries through the hive. They carry the air that keeps you all alive. It tastes faintly of the outside. Depending on external climatic events, you sometimes taste ash on its down currents, other times the earthy feel of fine dust. The walls are damp stone, thick with moss and algae, and dripping water. But the stairs are metal, and already rusting.

The treads are always crowded at this time. Everyone is going to their work. Your feet drum on the press-metal steps. In places they are worn smooth, and someone has spread sand to improve the grip. It’s one of the advantages of a new-build colony. People are still looking out for each other. The old hive gangs have not moved in. Cynicism has not yet taken hold.

You turn up at the pithead ten minutes before down-shaft. You change quickly into mine gear, and queue up for the lift. The lift-master is a bull-necked fellow, with a bulbous fleshy face and a head that slopes down into broad shoulders. He dislikes miners. He dislikes everyone, and he glowers at you as he checks you have nothing metal on you.

A spark in the methane-ridden pits would blow you all to mincemeat.

When all is ready, he shouts, ‘In!’ and uses a bar to squeeze the last few inside. He draws the chain-fence closed. You’re pressed cheek to jowl, like roaches in a tin. ‘Faith in the Emperor!’ he calls as he thumbs the lift button and the holding clamps release, and there is a sudden lurch as the lift plunges downwards.

It’s a sickening feeling. You are free-falling into the foundations of the hive. Only for the last hundred metres do the brakes engage. The sudden slowing makes your knees buckle but you’re all pressed too close to fall. The dampers whine and screech and the lift stinks of burning brake pads.

When you stumble out, you’re feeling sick. The lady at the bottom is short and round. She counts you out and then rings the all-clear and the lift begins to rise again.

Overseer Chinata fills the office at the bottom. Her small and sallow face peers down at you out of the barred window. She hands you your pit-tag. Each tag has a number. Each number tells you exactly which face you are working on.

65-V, you see, with relief. So today is not going to be too bad.

You take the conveyor to the mine-head. The walls of the excavated tunnels are a patchwork of rotting coir props, press-blocks and cheap rockcrete bricks, corrugated iron, flakboard and compressed coir fibre. Whatever is cheap and came readily to hand and will do the job.

The last hundred metres you crawl on your belly, the pit props just above your head. The picks are waiting where the last shift left them. You take one up, the wooden shaft damp from another man’s sweat.

Time is credits and you have work to do.

Your hours are filled with sweat and labour, hard work, danger. You are part of a team. You depend on each other to survive. One team push forward and when they’ve gone ten feet, the pit-proppers come in to secure the crudely arched roof with props of compressed coir fibre, strong enough to withstand the immense weights upon them, and yet with enough give that they will not splinter under their burden.

It is foul, filthy work. And you can never get over the fact that the whole hive presses down upon your head, nor that you are hacking your way into compressed detritus of millennia past. A midden-pit of human filth, plastek crap, rusted iron and occasional scraps of valuable tech that drop out of the dirt with all the drama of sparkling gems.

When you stop for food, the fifteen men of your shift sit together, heads bent over pressed-starch lunch boxes, old fyceline containers or recycled detonators. Each one, like yours, is wrapped in knotted cloth. You untie the cloth and lay it over your lap to keep the dirt off your food. The newest coir props creak as the weight of the hive settles above you. The sound used to terrify you, but you have heard it so many times you’re numb to the fear.

If you can hear the hive-quake then you’re too late. You try not to think of the weight of refuse and decay pressing down upon you. It could crush you like a louse. If it could be bothered. But the hive does not care about a peon like you. It is vast and ancient and will outlive your ashes. You are barely a heartbeat in the scheme of things.

Your work team have no warmth. To be honest, you do not particularly like each other. You are a pack brought together by the simple need to survive. You’re like war veterans. You face death every day. You rely on each other. In this time, usually, no one speaks. But the news is preying on all of you. It’s nagging at the back of your skulls, until someone is driven to say something.

‘Hear there’s a plague warning?’

You have. It’s like a distant rumble of hive-quake that draws closer.

‘How did it get here?’ another asks.

Some shake their heads. It’s beyond their grade to know stuff like that. But then the gobby ones throw in a few scraps.

There is rot plague, flesh plague, purge plague. No one knows which one it is. All they know is that it came onto the planet on a coke conveyor returning from the spinwards trade routes. It affected the starport first, brought in by an infected dock worker who blew his wages on whores and grog and all the pleasures that an orbital station like Sintown could offer.

‘Probably infected a hundred that night. They infected another thousand. The authorities closed the airlocks to Sintown and voided the whole lot into the upper atmosphere. Bam! Cleaned the whole place out in minutes!’

You think on that as you chew. Ten, twenty thousand voided into space.

‘No half-measures,’ the gang leader says. ‘If it gets to the hive then we’re all doomed. They’ll seal us off and wait a decade. A billion lives. Just like that.’ He clicks his fingers for emphasis.

Everyone puts in their two credits, and then you fall silent again, chewing and swallowing.

Plague, you think. You’d rather the hive fell on your head. Though sometimes you wonder what, exactly, you are trying to survive for. There will be no improvement on your lot. No real chance of betterment. The best you can hope for is that life does not get any worse. It could be worse, you have told yourself, and you are right. It could be a lot, lot worse, and in fact, the one thing that you are sure of is that it will be worse.

But worse can wait. Now you get to sit and rest and eat in silence. It is bland, tasteless mush. You can barely afford the salt that makes it palatable. You are still chewing the last gummy scrapes when the klaxon rings. There is no time to waste now, finished or not.

It is dark when you return to your hab. A pipe has burst in the upper levels, and in the tunnel from the mine-shaft, dirty effluent swills about your ankles. It flows down the stairs like a waterfall and is lapping under your hab door as you shove it open.

The door closes with a splash.

There is a shape in the bed. ‘Tarja?’

There is no answer. You are dead tired. Irritation mixes with concern. It is a combination that makes you volatile. ‘Tarja?’

You throw your wet shoes off. The rockcrete is cool and gritty underfoot. The cot you share is shoved up into the far corner. You are lucky. Others sleep on the floor like rats. You are not rats.

She is lying on the cot. You think for a moment that she is dead. But then a hand moves weakly.

A voice croaks out. It does not sound like her.

‘Arvid?’

She reaches for you. Or is she warding you off? You put a hand to her forehead. ‘I got bitten.’

She sticks her foot out of bed. It is red and swollen. ‘It was a bile-rat.’ She coughs and you fill a cup with water to give her. It is brown with steriliser. It tastes of chemicals.

Bile-rat poison knocks you out for a day or so. But then you recover. Nothing serious. ‘How did you get bitten?’

She pushes herself up woozily, and sits there with her knees drawn up to her chest. Her chin rests on her kneecaps. Her work trousers are stained. Her bare feet are engrained with hive-filth, the nails rimmed with half-moons of dirt. Her face is swollen from tears. There are purple bags under her eyes and beads of sweat on the upper surfaces of her cheeks. She swallows. Her left eye is bloodshot.

‘It doesn’t matter how,’ she snaps. ‘I got bitten. Understand?’ The livid red stares out at you. ‘I got bitten and you don’t care.’

‘I do.’ You really do, but she’s nasty when she’s sick. ‘Let me see.’

‘No.’

‘I want to see.’

She glares up at your from under her fringe. She decides that you are telling the truth and she lets you take her right foot.

Her skin is warm. The flesh around the puckered raw incision marks is swollen and purple and yellow, and an angry, inflamed red. ‘Ow!’ she says. You’re not being sufficiently careful. You let go of her foot and it falls to the bed. Nothing much, but enough to send a jolt of agony up her leg.

‘Throne!’ she hisses.

‘Sorry!’

‘Are you?’

She looks into your eyes. You see the line of her nose, the upturned almond shape of her black eyes, the hair that she has looped behind her ears, the blood clot in her left eye that is slowly growing. She is looking into you. She is searching for the truth and you look her first in one eye, then the other, the bloodshot eye, and then back to the first.

‘Sorry,’ you say again.

Her nostrils flare. She purses her lips, and nods and scratches to either side of the swelling. ‘It’s driving me crazy. Even when I don’t move it, it’s so frekking itchy!’ she hisses. ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘Sleep,’ you tell her. ‘Let’s see how it is in the morning. I can go get medicine.’

‘Can we afford medicine?’

No, you think. You can’t. She’s off work and not earning. You’ll have to pay bribes. You’ll have to grease the path. You have to work for everything in this shitty hive.

‘Of course,’ you say. ‘Sleep.’

‘I’ll try.’

She lies down. The flood is already starting to recede, leaving a scummy line of filth where it had once been. You use a mop to sluice the water out, and roll a cloth and set it under the door to stop it coming back in, just in case. Your stomach is groaning by the time you start to boil your own slab. You shovel in the food. It is bland and tasteless.

A bile-rat! you think before bed; this is all you need. How could she be so frekking stupid? She’s always letting you down like this. It all ends up on your shoulders.

She is hot in the night. It makes you restless. You have to move to the edge of the bed to get away from her. In the morning she’s sweaty. The flesh around the bite is blotched purple and red. The skin is taut with the swelling beneath. ‘I feel crap,’ she says. She lifts her head to see. ‘It’s getting worse.’

It is. This is all you need, you think. But you say, ‘I’ll go and get some medicine.’

‘What about your shift?’

‘I’ll take a double to make up.’

She doesn’t like you doing that. Working doubles can kill a man. Not just from exhaustion, but from the mistakes an exhausted man makes. The mine is a war, remember. It’s hungry and ruthless. It chews up lives. But what else can you do? If she won’t work, you must.

You eat your slab and set off. Outside there’s a nervous atmosphere. The slab-seller tells you that there’s plague.

‘I heard.’

‘It’s planet-side now.’

You pull a face. ‘I thought they vented Sintown.’

‘They did,’ he says. ‘But not until they got their own out. Nobles with enough credit to buy themselves an exit.’

‘Impossible,’ you say. But this is hive life.

He looks at you like you’re stupid. ‘Of course it’s possible. Just heard this morning. The whole port-levels have been sealed off. Slab-iron is piling hab-high. Total quarantine in the entire dock area. Military law.’

You blow out your breath and lift your eyebrows. It seems serious now. ‘Think they’ve caught it?’

He laughs. ‘Do you?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Me too,’ he says.

You get halfway to the gallipot dispenser when the klaxons sound. Usually they stop after five seconds, but this time they keep ringing. You think it’s a mistake at first. Then you pause. Everyone stops what they’re doing and looks about, and at each other.

When the klaxon stops a voice speaks.

‘All denizens to return to their habs. Military law will be imposed in ten minutes. Transgressors will be shot.’

There is a moment of utter shock as you all process what this means, and then everyone starts shouting and running and pushing others out of the way. You’re fit and strong and you have sharp elbows. You are going to make it.

Enforcer teams are already running into position at the intersections. They’re armed and tense, their faces obscured with rebreathers. They’re already shouting and shoving people about. Their voices are distorted by the vox-amplifiers. They have stopped looking or sounding human. You keep well clear. You’re not stupid.

Military law will be imposed in seven minutes.

The countdown keeps repeating. People panic. Everyone is running. You turn up the tunnel to your arena with a minute to spare.

You think you will make it but the gunfire starts early. The enforcers have no mercy. They are as panicked as you, and itching to kill. They are gunning people down behind you. The screams and shouts are all around you. A hard round sparks off the wall to your side. Another brushes your hair. Blood from the man next to you splatters your face.

You throw yourself into the stairwell, scramble up the steps on all fours, and crawl along your balcony. There are dirty puddles left over from yesterday’s leak.

You reach your hab door terrified and exhausted. You hear a scream and you tentatively peer over the railing. A pack of enforcers are dragging a body between them. It could be the toad-seller. You do not wait to see. You are not so stupid. You turn the handle, fall inside, pull it closed behind you and double-lock it.

You expect some words of concern from Tarja, but she is just lying there in the cot.

Her foot is swollen like a rotting sump-lizard. She’s burning up. You take her wrist in your hand. She’s a brave woman but she is in pain. You can see it in the desperate light as she opens her eyes and they try to focus on you, the speed of her breath, the way she clings to you as if you can save her from this.

‘It’s the plague?’ she says.

You nod.

‘Do you think I have it?’ she whispers.

‘No!’ you say quickly.

‘Did you get the medicine?’ she asks.

‘No. There’s a lockdown. It’s spread into the hive.’

There is a long pause. She swallows and winces. You feel powerless and stupid. You should have gone last night. It would have been so easy. But now the plague has spread and there’s a lockdown and there is nothing you can do.

‘It’s just a bile-rat bite,’ you say in a reassuring tone.

She nods. She trusts you.

You laugh to lighten the mood. ‘Listen. No one has ever died of a rat bite.’

Her eyes open at that. The blood clot is growing. She tries to joke as well. Her voice is just a rasp. ‘Maybe I’ll be the first.’

You tell her no one dies of bile-rat bites. She squeezes your hand. ‘Sure?’

‘Sure,’ you tell her.

She purses her lips. ‘Thank the Throne,’ she says. She starts to tear up. The blood has filled her eyeball now. It’s all bright red. ‘I was so afraid.’

You laugh now. ‘No need to be afraid,’ you tell her. ‘I will look after you.’

You give her a whole day’s ration of water. She swallows painfully, then sinks back into the bed.

As she sleeps you look at the wound intently. You study the bruises and the miscoloured blotches. You have all been told what the scourge looks like. Grey skin. Cold. Damp. Clammy.

Her illness is the opposite. It is not the plague. It’s just an infection.

You cannot stand to be cooped up like this. You want to sweat and work and earn. You think of the money you could be earning, and yawn. You’re tired. You want to sleep so you do not disturb her. Slumber is like falling into water. You are dead tired. It is just a matter of closing your eyes and letting the blackness sweep over you. You cannot be angry when you are asleep.

As you’re dropping off to sleep an enforcer patrol passes outside. Their vox-units sound inhuman.

‘You will stay in your habs. Transgressors will be shot. Contamination will be cleansed.’

You hear this and turn onto the other side. They told you it had been quarantined, you think, just before dreams, and you believed them.

Next day it is the same. Vox-horns inform you all that the infection has spread. ‘No one is to leave their habs. Derelictors will be shot on sight’. Same with the third.

On the fourth day there is suddenly the sound of shooting just outside your door. It’s your neighbours. You hear his voice, and the curses of his mother, mixed with the harsh bark of the enforcers. The shouts fade away then a dark liquid starts to pool under your door.

You mop it up, disgusted. The cloth comes away red. You realise what it is and throw the sodden cloth onto the floor, wipe your hands in disgust.

At last you open your door a crack. Blood has pooled outside your neighbour’s doorway. The door has enforcer tape drawn across it.

‘They took them all!’ the old woman named Sabbad says. She lives two hatches down. Her door is just ajar as well, and she’s peering out at you.

‘Did they have plague?’

She shakes her head. ‘They went out for food.’

You shut your door and bolt it again. This is not how you want to end up. But on the fifth morning you have run out of food and Tarja’s temperature has risen, both her eyes have turned red, and sweat stains her armpits and pools between her breasts.

‘I think I’m dying,’ she whispers. She leans into your side and wraps both arms about you.

‘I’m going to go,’ you tell her. ‘I’m going to bring you tonic. There’s a mendicant two levels above us. My mother used to go to him. I don’t know if he’s still alive, but maybe his son has taken over the trade. I’ll go after dark-time.’

‘It’s dangerous,’ she says.

‘I’ll be fine,’ you assure her.

She believes you and swallows and nods. You have made up your mind. You cannot sit in this filth much longer.

‘Sure?’

‘Sure.’

She closes her eyes and relaxes into you. The credits you had saved. You will take those. They are hidden in the corner, under the tin stove. It is your secret stash. You’re worried whether it’ll be enough.

Her breathing slows, her tension eases. You feel the dead weight of her head as she leans into you. You are propping up her dreams. This is a beautiful thing in a shitty, shitty world. When the time comes you lie her down gently, and pull the blanket over her.

An hour after dark-time you listen at the door, then open it a crack.

There is only a low ambient light, coming from down in the arena. The overwhelming sense is of stillness and quiet. You hold your credits in your pocket to stop them clinking against each other, turn right, and slide along the wall like a shadow, senses straining for any hint of enforcers.

Very distant gunfire drifts along the tunnel. There are lizards on the stairs. They dart to the side as you approach. You have never seen so many lizards. You are used to this darkness from working in the pits. You reach the arena floor and keep to the shadows, and make your way to the shaft and start to creep up the stairs.

This is the most dangerous part. Gunfire sounds far off, but the shaft is deserted, the downdraught is malodorous. The lack of people disturbs and disorientates you. You have never seen your hive without people. Nothing looks right without people. The hive feels vaster now it is empty.

Vaster, colder and totally disinterested.

You get to the level you want and pause to get your bearings. You are sweating. You wipe your brow, still clutching your credits, and you make your way to the back-street dispensary. It is locked and the windows shuttered, but you know there is a rear door that your mother used to take you to.

You slide down the alley. A bile-rat sits in the corner, its six legs drawn up about it. You can hear it munching. With the lack of people it has become bold. It does not run from the sight of you. You hiss at it, and gently clap your hands. ‘Yah!’ Very slowly it turns and squeezes into a hole in the wall till only its tail is left, disappearing after it.

Dim light seeps out from under the dispenser’s door. It still has the same sign hanging beside it.

You feel relief at that.

A scratch at the boards and it opens before you. The warm light is so sudden it is almost blinding.

A rough hand pulls you inside. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve come for medicine. My girl has been bitten by a bile-rat. It’s got infected.’

‘I’m the doorman. Tell your story to him!’

The hand shoves you through a thick black curtain and an inner chamber is revealed. Red lights cast a thin illumination. Small round tables have been set up, where pairs of men drink. At a makeshift bar a hunched worker sits with a bottle of grog before him.

The worker looks up at you as you pass. You stumble over a chair. You make sure not to go near any of them. You get to the bar. The man behind is wiping a glass as you lean on the counter. He is not the dispenser you remember. He is young, lean, with a stained white apron tied about his waist, the knotted belt hanging at his side. He ignores you, then puts the glass down and walks towards you. ‘What can I get you?’

‘I need counter-septic. My girl has been bitten by a bile-rat. She’s hot. She’s sweating. I need something to give her. I think the bite is infected. It’s been five days now.’

He nods and walks to the shelves behind him, and pulls out a vial of dark liquid.

‘Got a bottle?’

‘No.’

Your lack of preparation visibly irritates him. He turns and walks out of sight, and comes back with a small dispensary phial. He’s just washed it out, and flicks the last drops of water from it, then fills it up and twists the dull metal screw cap back on. You repeat the instructions back to him and he nods.

He tells you the price and you pay him. ‘Thanks,’ you say and turn to go, but one of the workers is standing right behind you. You almost drop the bottle as you bump into him. He overshadows you.

‘Going somewhere?’ he says.

‘Home.’

His eyes are shadowed. ‘Are you now?’

‘Yes.’

He jabs a finger at your bottle. ‘What’s that?’

‘Antitoxin. For bile-rat bites.’

‘Let me taste it.’

‘It’s medicine,’ you say, and the smell tells him all he needs to know.

‘Filthy,’ he hisses and you hurry past, but another man stands in your way. One by one they block your efforts. You shove past them, and the last to stand before you is the doorman. He puts a hand on your arm. It feels cold and clammy.

He sees the bottle and smiles. ‘Don’t worry.’

You look down and his flesh appears blotchy and grey in the ruddy light. Your mind scrambles for purchase. His flesh is grey and cold and clammy…

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘We’re all infected here.’

You want to scream as you shove past, thrust the door open and tumble out into the alley. You keep running through the shadows. You are sure that they will follow but the street remains deserted.

When you are a safe distance you look at your hands. They appear normal.

‘Thank frekk!’ you hiss and keep pushing yourself and you do not stop until you reach the stair-shaft. You scramble down the stairs. There is a patrol of enforcers making their way up so you have to climb out onto the support strut, and you crouch there, barely daring to breathe. They pause at the entrance to your tunnel. You can hear the strike of a match, and then the scent of lho-sticks. Their vox-chatter sounds strangely inhuman.

Bastards, you think. Keep moving.

Your girl is sick. You need to get back. You’re panicking. Can the plague have got so deep in the hive so soon? Have the authorities been lying to you all? Maybe the whole hive is already infected. Maybe the signs are not grey and clammy, but hot, like Tarja… As you crouch you can feel your heartbeat in your fingers. You are so tense. As taut as wire, the bottle cradled in your hand.

At last they move on and you move slowly out of cover, and pad down the stairs.

Your breath comes quickly as you take the last steps up to the level above your hab. You get to your door and put your head to the wall. It is cool and soothing. You push inside.

Tarja has fallen out of bed and lies on the floor. She moans as you help her back up.

She comes up into your arms easily. She is as light as a bag of ore that a child might drag along the tunnels. You kick the rug back with your foot and lay her down, as gently as a mother lays her baby down in the corner of the grog-shop. You give her a swig from the phial. You take one yourself, just in case. It is thick and syrupy, and tastes better than it smells.

The shock of the liquid jolts her eyes open. Both bloody red eyeballs stare up at you.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You look strange,’ she says.

‘Do I?’

‘Yes. The way you’re staring at me.’

‘I think I’ve been infected,’ you tell her.

‘With what?’

‘The plague!’

She moves slowly, pushing you away. Her bloodshot eyes barely look human. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘In the dispensary…’ you start, and look at your arm. There is grey mottling under your skin. It runs right up under your sleeve. Livid grey patches of scaly skin.

Her red eyes look at your arm, and then back to your face. ‘I don’t see anything,’ she says, and forces a smile, but there is nothing kind about the smile on her face. It has a dangerous, predatory look to it. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she says.

You stand up as she stares at you in that way. You back away from her as she sits up and tilts her head and says, ‘Arvid. Are you all right?’

You stumble and your hand touches something cold and hard. Her mouth moves, but the sound is not human. It is like the growl of an angry beast. Her teeth are fangs. Her lips drawn back in a snarl. She’s infected and she infected you.

You grip the knife in your fist. She speaks a word that brings terror to your heart. An instinct within you tells you the blunt truth. It’s you or her.

Only one of you is getting out of this alive.

SUFFER THE VISION

Jake Ozga

A detail captures my attention: there is something about the way the dead woman is lying that suggests she was crawling even while she bled out. Her arm is outstretched, her hand lost amidst viridian undergrowth. I brush the flowers and vines aside with my boot to reveal a child’s doll, a simple thing carved from a single piece of wood; it lies broken, splintered and snapped. Even though my soul is bereft of poetry, I can see the obvious parallels with the scenes of slaughter that surround me, and the sight is strangely poignant. I contemplate it for a while, even as the savage sun beats down and the flies begin to settle.

We have seen no sign of any child. I reappraise the dead woman; with her barbaric tattoos and animal-hide clothing it is hard to think of her as anything more than another wildling creature in this realm of beasts and monsters. But she could, I consider, be a mother that fought protecting a child and then died reaching for this doll in a final, futile gesture. A mother’s desperation fuelled by a mother’s love. I have heard of such a thing.

The clearing smells of blood and excrement, of death and pollen and fresh rain. The forest already reclaims the filth into rich, black soil. In this realm nothing is sacred for long: life is wild and death is voracious. Scavenger beasts have disturbed the corpses so that they are scattered and mauled, the flowers are trampled, and body parts and vividly coloured petals sit in pools of congealed blood, gathering flies. The events here are hard to interpret. I see a clump of red hair; I see tanned flesh patterned with blasphemous symbols. I see dark eyes, frozen in the moment of death. I see wounds wrought by tooth and claw. But I am far from an expert in the ways of beasts and this is not my realm, and so I travel here with guides.

It is my holy duty to seek those who would hide from Sigmar’s embrace: the apostate preachers, the children of a poisoned seed, the beasts that hide in the flesh of men. I lead a savage band, men of this land that turned on their own kin and renew their pledge of devotion to the God-King with unsurpassed violence. I strive every day to serve my god. I strive every day to be more holy in his eyes, for I know that he watches me. And at my back, I bring a storm.

‘Witch hunter.’ One of my companions calls to me. Grar is a man with eyes like chipped flint, twice my years and a native of this realm. He is a veteran who has worked alongside many witch hunters, but he is new to my employ and indeed, I am inexperienced at working with others. In his mouth my honorific is made to sound like an insult – these men bark and snarl like the animals they track. But it is merely posturing, or else it is some game of baiting they play amongst themselves, and either way it concerns me not at all.

He speaks again, and his accent – that of the Olg’hal hill tribes, one of the smaller tribes in this remote region of Ghur – is thick and his words seem to snag on teeth filed to points. ‘A bear, maybe an amberback. Not so common. This happened two days ago, at most.’

It is not like Grar to sound uncertain. He pauses to spit – more posturing. There is a sheen of sweat on his skin that the dirt and the pollen clings to. He is stripped to the waist and his scarred flesh is stained dark blue with a powerful dye that the Olg’hal apply as warpaint. The heat is oppressive, smothering. He copes with it far better than I.

‘A bear, then, a large one. They disturbed it in its lair.’ My guide gestures at the nearby cave. ‘And it reacted badly.’ He bares his sharpened teeth in what passes for a grin, then turns a body over with his foot. ‘They were Gath’ok tribe. This one was their warband leader. The others were his family or his slaves. They share family markings. See here? He had sworn them to Dark Gods.’ Grar spits in his hand and runs it over his shaven pate, a gesture I have come to recognise over these past few days as a sign of warding.

He looks me in the eye. ‘This beast has done good work for us, I think.’

‘And the child?’ I use my scabbarded sword to point to the broken toy, and he shrugs with practised indifference.

‘No sign of a child. Maybe the bear took it. Maybe swallowed whole.’ He gestures broadly at the mess made by scavengers. ‘Impossible to tell.’

I persist. ‘Could a survivor have fled into the cave?’

Grar looks unconvinced. ‘Or to the village, witch hunter. We are close now. Maybe the villagers have already strung the little beastling up for us, to celebrate our arrival.’ He bares his teeth again and I look away. This is no place for a child.

The other two trackers join us, fellow warriors of the Olg’hal. Like Grar they are outcast: men that now hunt their former tribe and the slaves of the Ruinous Powers. They are savages in exile, hunters in the service of the God-King. One of these men – No’grok – is the size of an ogor, while the other – Rhukhal – is a young man, maybe of an age with myself. They too have shaved heads, filed teeth and skin stained blue with warpaint they can never remove. The bond between the three men is deep, formed by the severing of all other ties. They have each other and no one else. I have no tribe of my own, no kin. I have my god.

The younger tracker pauses at the corpse of the woman, and with a practised motion he cuts off an ear, threading it onto a belt along with dozens of others. At first these trophies appalled me, but I have come to respect what they represent – when they turned on their former kin, these men burned all their bridges, and there would be no mercy for them now among the tribes. It is man’s nature to be duplicitous; all men are liars and deceivers, but these three make their truth a simple thing. They are a bane to Chaos. They are dogs that tear at the throats of monsters. Should my god judge them, he will find them to be true.

‘Witch hunter.’ Rhukhal addresses me with slightly more respect than Grar. ‘We should leave this place now. Before the storm comes. Before the beast gets her hunger back.’

I nod in agreement. Beyond the next hill lies the village we seek, and so we resume our journey. We pass the cave mouth cautiously. No’grok hefts his warhammer over one massive shoulder and waits, tense with anticipation, but all remains quiet. I stare into it, into the yawning darkness. It is only my imagination that it stares back.

We have travelled for eight days through jungle and forest to a place far removed from Sigmar’s gift of liberation, here at the edges of this so-called Realm of Beasts. The village we approach now was discovered by a warrior angel, borne aloft on wings of light. Seen from a distance, the Stormcast Eternal described a place untouched by the violence of this land. It seems unlikely that we will truly find free people here in this place of monsters – this land of warring tribes pledged to dark gods – but if there are men and women that have defied the corruption then I must find them and claim them for the God-King, to offer them his embrace. And if the corruption has claimed them first – if it has wormed under their skin and into their souls – then in the name of Sigmar, I will judge them, and I will show them what it means to defy the God of Lightning.

Black clouds gather in the distance, growing closer. The air is redolent with the promise of electricity – I feel it on my teeth. I bring the storm and it chases at my heels like a hound. It growls with anticipation of violence and the land trembles in reply. My head throbs with pressure behind my eyes – this pain is not a new thing but it worsens as the storm approaches. This is the weight of Sigmar’s gaze as he looks upon me from his throne in Azyr, as he has for all of my life. The attention of a god is enough to bring a man to his knees.

The forest thins as we approach the village and we see it clearly for the first time. A small stone tower, half in ruin, sits to one side of a collection of simple thatched hovels. No wall, no defences. It sits incongruously in a clearing, amidst a sea of flowers, surrounded by lush forest, and in the distance, the great snow-capped mountains of Ghur. It is a scene from a painting. It is beautiful, idyllic in a way that takes my breath away. A vision of a life without war, without death.

Grar sucks his teeth. ‘Such a place should not exist. It is not so hidden that the tribes could not find it.’

No’grok shrugs. ‘Maybe they are lucky.’

‘Then we come,’ Rhukhal mutters, ‘and so their luck has run out.’

We step from the treeline into the field of flowers. I shield my eyes from the blazing midday sun. Despite the heat, I fasten my cloak about me, the sigil of the Order plainly visible on my breast. It would not do to be mistaken for a marauder. But there are no sentries, no cry of alarm or barking dogs. There is no such thing as luck.

When I was a boy I lived among the peasants of the Denebreke. We called ourselves an army, though we saw little in the way of battle. The Denebreke were one of many such armies that raised a holy banner and the people of the city flocked to it, eager to follow in the footsteps of Sigmar’s crusading Stormcast Eternals, eager to share in their glory. I do not remember life before the Denebreke, nor do I remember my father in the years before my mother was taken by the God-King and remade, reforged. I longed to catch sight of the Stormhost in whose path we followed, but we never saw anything of them save for the devastation that they left in their wake. We were an army overcome with holy zeal, fuelled by righteous purpose. We marched in the footsteps of conquering heroes. I imagined that if we could but catch up, I would see my mother again, fighting in that holy host. I willed us to march faster, I prayed that we would. But instead, the Denebreke became a nightmare.

On the outskirts of the village, overgrown steps lead up to an ancient altar, weatherworn and crumbling. Built from golden stone, it is much older than the huts that now surround it. At the base of the altar, flowers blossom in even greater concentration, dazzlingly colourful and intoxicating with their aromas. We walk on into the village in silence, intruders, out of place. I see the people now, wide-eyed, trusting. Faces that have not known the depths of grief. Lives that have not known ruination, degradation. I see a village that should have been razed a hundred times, and in it people that should have died a hundred miserable deaths. I see children playing and I want to scream at them for daring to live this way. They live on the blade of a knife and somehow they do not see it.

We are met by the village elders. They are unarmed, garbed only in simple white robes. An old woman speaks for them. Her face is lined, her hair white and thin, but her voice is strong. She knows the common tongue and speaks it well. She shows us her village and it is like nothing I have seen before. There are no defences and yet the people here seem well at ease. They are confident in their safety, their security. The city of my birth had walls to scrape the sky and block out the sun; the lands I knew as a neophyte had fortified towns or settlements, but these were lands where the Stormhosts had walked and so they were purged clean of raiders and beasts, save for those few that it was my duty to expose.

‘No dogs. It is a cursed village to have no dogs.’ Grar mutters. He is uneasy, his hands remaining fixed to the pommels of his knives.

Even in the Denebreke we had hounds to guard us at night. There are no birds either, I notice, and the absence of animals is unsettling. Villagers gather to watch us, their broad, sun-lined faces revealing nothing but curiosity. They have the prominent cheekbones and round faces common to the people of this land, black hair fashioned in braids. Among them are children, barefoot in the soft grass. A part of me wants to believe in this, to believe in this safety.

We come to the ruined tower, a squat, solid construction but not much more than a guard post, barely standing above the nearby trees. The top levels have crumbled with age or from some tremor in the land, and from the ruins grow delicate silver trees, wild plants and a tangle of vines. The tower is made of the same stone as the altar, remnants of a settlement that predated the village by hundreds of years. Such sights are not uncommon in the Mortal Realms. So much history has been lost to the depravations of the Dark Gods. I trace a symbol graven on the stone above the doorway. The script is one I recognise from holy places in the realm of my birth.

‘This is a sigil for pathway. Or perhaps gate.’ My words are met with indifference or incomprehension. ‘These other symbols I do not know.’

Thunder rolls softly in a nearby valley, the sound echoing from the ruined hollow of the tower’s collapsed battlements, reverberating like waves breaking on rock. I look to the horizon, shielding my eyes with my hand from the blinding sun. Dark clouds begin to gather over the endless forest. The pressure behind my eyes increases and I rest my head for a moment against the cold stone. The old mother regards me and I wonder what she sees. Is there concern in her eyes? Does she fear now for herself or for me? I exhale slowly, collecting myself. There are secrets here, soaked like water into the soil with the passage of time and observed with ancient eyes. There are secrets, and it is my duty to uncover them.

We return to the altar’s steps. There are more sigils, and though weatherworn and overgrown, it is clearly the same ancient language. I am ashamed at how little I comprehend. The villagers do not join us; most keep a respectful distance. They watch us but have no visible weapons and I feel myself relaxing. Some braver children creep nearer, fascinated with No’grok and his vast bulk and blue skin. He bares his teeth and they run away screaming.

‘You are right to run! I will pick you from my teeth!’ he laughs and pretends to give chase. It is sometimes possible to forget that these men had once been monsters in truth, raiders and murderers for certain. Maybe even cannibals, as were many of the tribes in this barbarous region. Not so long ago they would have ridden into this village with death and depravity in their hearts. But men do not change, not really. Change is a deceit, a guise that men wear until it is time to let slip the mask and reveal their true nature.

The village elders return to us. They have been at council, seated within the ruined tower which seems to double as a meeting hall, though it is surely too small for more than a dozen people at a time. They offer us simple food and honey wine and my companions take it gladly. I do not eat – a childhood of starvation has given me little appetite as a man. I drink the wine. It is too sweet but the coolness is welcome. The elders are hesitant. I think that perhaps they see the true nature of my companions but the old mother’s eyes are fixed on me and it is in her that I sense the most doubt, the most uncertainty. I return her gaze.

I must trust my instincts, and my instincts tell me that safety is illusory. It is when you feel safe that you are most vulnerable, and it is when you feel safe that whatever little you have will be taken from you. My instincts tell me there is some evil here, hidden beneath the surface, under the skin. The old mother has seen something in me and she has retreated inside herself, hardened. She looks at me with lifeless eyes now, dry and devoid of compassion. She looks like any mother might. She speaks but I am no longer listening. I must trust my instincts. Let not the world deceive me with its pretence of beauty. My head throbs in time with distant thunder as my god watches. I exhale slowly, my breath snatched away on the gathering wind.

In whispered voice I pray: mighty God-King, wielder of Ghal-Maraz the Skull-Splitter, give me your strength, give me your wisdom, make of me your weapon so that I may punish those that turn from the light of your holy star that burns in the heavens. Send me your lightning, send me your thunder.

I offer my prayer, I offer myself to my god. I make myself a vessel for him to use. I stand in his place as the immortal judge of men and women, and in his place as the most holy executioner. I ask for the wisdom to seek out the apostate and root out the poisoned seed and unmask the beasts that hide in the hearts of men. I ask for the wisdom and the answer comes the same as it always does, the truth I know in my heart. And thus I consign this village to death.

Black clouds swallow the sun and the Realm descends slowly into darkness. The first rain falls. I have timed my arrival well to this cursed place, for I have brought with me a storm. I watch as water runs in rivulets along the bare steel of my sword, the details rendered in painful, unnatural clarity. My head reverberates with dull echoes of thunder, blinding light flashing behind my eyes, triggering cascading waves of pain. The old mother lowers her head, her eyes shrouded in shadow as wind whips at her hair. I am standing now – my sword is in my hand. I do not remember drawing it, raising it. I am seeing everything twice, two swords in two hands, reflected as if in a mirror. At my side stands an army of holy monsters, weapons in hand, their forms indistinct, dark shapes against a darker background.

The world begins slowly to lose focus and my sword falls from numb fingers. I drop to my knees and my vision contracts to a single point of light, like the star of Azyr. It flickers for a moment with lightning and distant voices, urgent voices growing fainter and fainter. And then everything fades to black.

In my dream I am just a skinny boy again. I am fighting for food when I see him: the man who would come to be my mentor, my master. He used to come to the Denebreke from Mhurghast every year, but he comes less frequently now that we no longer march, and it is not safe here, not even for a holy man. He is a glorious sight, dressed in silks and wearing a tall hat with a golden buckle. He rides a demigryph, a far more magnificent animal than I have ever seen, and the sight of his pistol keeps thieves at bay. On occasion during a visit he would collect an orphan – one of the many children whose parents had not survived the march – to train them as a neophyte. This became my dream, a way to escape the horror that the Denebreke had become, a way to forge for myself a purpose and to become more holy, so holy that even my father would have to take notice. When the man collected me – when he saw in me the potential to be his neophyte – my father did not even look up from his holy work.

I awake in a new nightmare, one devoid of colour and reason. I am dying, I think. I see shapes that I cannot comprehend, though I know they are familiar. I taste bile and this single thread of familiarity is enough to hold on to, to drag myself along by, back into wakefulness, back into consciousness. There are sounds of fighting, of confusion. The storm is here; the wind steals my faltering breath and the roar of thunder crashes against the edges of my consciousness like a tidal wave. Colour returns, though faint and ethereal in the pale moonlight. I am lying in wet grass – my body is wracked with convulsions as I retch. My head is surely split in two and the pain is unbearable, and with shaking fingers I probe for a wound but it is only blood from my nose that I can taste, and this is nothing new. I can see this blood running in black rivers to soak into the dirt, to pool before my unblinking eyes. And from the blood, impossibly, flowers grow. I watch, unable to move, amazed and appalled. Delicate stems uncoil, no longer than my finger. Tiny petals blossom and are snatched away by the wind. I reach for the flowers and they coil around my trembling hand. Lightning tears the night sky apart with divine ferocity and for an instant the colour is too much to comprehend. A riot of luminous flowers surrounds me. The lightning stirs some broken part of me and I wonder if Sigmar is come for me, come for me at last to remake me, to reunite me. Have I died a worthwhile death? Have I done enough? I close my eyes and wait for the pain to stop.

When I open my eyes again it is to the mundane world, yet there is no respite for me, no escape. I feel a hand grasp me by the collar of my cloak and roughly pull me to my feet. My thoughts are sluggish. I take too long to comprehend what is happening and I struggle to free myself. Then the figure that has a hold of me flashes white, sharp teeth, and at once I recognise Grar, his deep-blue skin meaning he is visible only as a silhouette in the dark of night.

‘You were poisoned, witch hunter, you have been dead to us for a long time – see? Now the moon is at its highest. The witch casts a spell perhaps, or slips a potion in your wine.’ Grar is bleeding from several cuts and scrapes, his eyes wild. In his free hand he holds a hunting knife, the blade broken and wet with blood. He appraises me and I stand like a child before him, unable to support myself, my head spinning. I realise I am staring uncomprehendingly at a tiny flower I grip in one shaking hand.

‘You have a broken nose, maybe, it is nothing. They trip over you in the dark but they do not take you. Their resolve breaks in the face of No’grok and his hammer. Their spells do not work on Olg’hal, our wards protect us!’ He spits a mouthful of gore, wiping it across his face. He is shouting to make himself heard over the storm. His words sober me as I realise what he is saying. The pounding in my head subsides slightly and I collect my thoughts. They poisoned me? Could they have so plainly read my intent?

‘We have taken some prisoners, witch hunter. When you collapsed, we made ready. They came at us but they were panicked. Their attack was poorly planned. We fought but it was too dark and the storm too strong. No’grok has some of the elders. Others lie dead around us.’

‘The elders… they prepared this.’ I shout to make myself heard over the roar of the wind. ‘We must act fast. They will surely try again. They seek to kill me… they know I bring the God-King’s judgement!’ I shrug free of Grar’s grip, standing on shaking legs, and wipe the blood from my nose. It is not broken – it often runs with blood. Such is the cost of Sigmar’s attention.

Grar nods. ‘Life returns to your face, witch hunter. This is just as well, because we need you to fight. We have taken prisoners, but they have… they have killed Rhukhal. We did not see him fall. An arrow in the back.’ Grar spits. ‘They have killed him, witch hunter. We must make them suffer.’

The storm forms a wall that encircles us as we stand atop the ancient altar, huge pale stones slick underfoot. Lightning has struck a tree nearby and it burns despite the rain, the flickering light casting dancing shadows. The witch is pale, with white skin and white hair plastered to her skull. Blood-flecked teeth, red-rimmed eyes. She has come in league with daemons. She has come possessed. She looks at me with hatred, with disappointment. She looks as any mother might. No’grok holds her with one massive hand. He cowers when thunder cracks and lightning splits the night sky. We are exposed up here and there are limits to his faith. Even Grar ducks, I notice, and I alone stand tall; lightning holds no fear for me. When Sigmar is ready for me, the lightning will take me too and I will welcome it. Grar is eager for vengeance, but I persuade him that first must come the trial. First must come the trial of lightning.

I wear now the God-King’s own visage – a helmet made in the divine image of the Stormcast Eternals, a thing of heavy iron layered in gold, lacking the perfect craftsmanship of Sigmar’s forges. A crude imitation, just as I am but a crude imitation. A golden face, devoid of emotion, devoid of compassion.

I raise my sword to the heavens, to the star of Azyr, lost now among dark skies. The witch flinches but I see in her eyes the question. She wants to understand why.

‘This is Sigmar’s plan. This is Sigmar’s grand scheme.’ My voice sounds strangely hollow as it echoes in my helm.

The witch speaks through lips cracked and bloodied. ‘He has no grand scheme.’ I strain to hear her, stepping closer. ‘He has no plan for you, for us. What you do here, you do alone.’

‘Sigmar’s plans are not for mortals to understand,’ I say.

‘A plan that mortals can never know, never see. That is torture. That is an obscenity.’ Her voice cracks with emotion.

There must be a plan, there must be a fate in store for me. To believe it is all chance, all meaningless, that would be too much to bear. All I do, I do for the attention of the God-King. I feel his touch in my skull, the touch that blinds me, that causes my head to pound. I know that he watches me, I know that he has tested me. This is his plan, it must be his plan, because otherwise it is…

‘We have done nothing wrong. It is not a god that does this, it is only you.’

The witch falls silent then as the stakes are hammered into place. There are two other elders and so there are three stakes in total, each half as tall again as a man and sturdy when driven upright between the stones of the altar. Sturdy still when each captive is tied in place, their hands raised above their heads, palms turned outwards, overlapping. No’grok drives an iron spike through their hands, raising them in a final prayer, a prayer to call down the lightning. The two other elders are screaming now, the sound distant. Only the old mother – the witch – makes no sound. Not even as the nail is hammered in place. And now Sigmar will make himself known in the Mortal Realms.

‘Do you think he will tread lightly when he walks among us? Do you think you will not burn, taken by his light?’

I envy them, I realise. I envy this finality, this chance to be judged. The thought angers me and my vision falters as the pain in my head increases. I feel faint, but in this mortal weakness I surrender my body to my god. I envy them the touch of lightning as the God-King reveals himself to them, I envy them that vision. And I envy them an end to suffering.

‘Suffer the vision.’ In my eyes are tears of pain or tears of elation. ‘Suffer the vision born in holy fire. Suffer the vision of the God-King astride in the Mortal Realms!’ My head is swimming as I pace between the stakes. I taste copper – my nose is bleeding. I am ranting, I know, overcome now with the attention of Sigmar.

My companions have withdrawn and watch me with hooded eyes as they take shelter from the storm. What do they see when they look at me? An avatar of the God-King. Holy justice given mortal form. They seem uncertain, eager instead to exact some measure of revenge on those that killed Rhukhal – but they will not interrupt me. They cannot deny the presence of Sigmar, his eye upon us from the star of Azyr.

And what will the condemned see, with heads full of lightning? I am lost with my thoughts as I wait for the trial to begin. In that final moment, is the God-King’s great plan revealed to them? Do they see him resplendent on his throne in the Eternal City? The look in their eyes for that instant… I strive to capture that look. It is the same look in my father’s eyes, the same divine clarity, a clarity beyond mere devotion, a clarity of purpose. Some great passion, some greater purity. I long to catch that look, to catch it in my own eyes and in my soul. I envy them, as their eyes catch fire and their skull splits with Sigmar’s touch.

And then his eye is upon us and he casts his judgement down from Azyr. The first lightning strike is drawn to one of the stakes upon which an elderly grey-haired man is transfixed. Sigmar’s wrath deafens me. An afterimage of the forked bolt is seared into my vision. The man burns as the Skull-Splitter ignites him, ignites his hair, his beard. His eyeballs melt. He screams and the lightning dances in his mouth. The holy judgement is come.

Tell me you know of a man that cannot, will not, be broken and I will show you a penitent with lightning in his skull. The touch of Sigmar is no gentle thing, and those he chooses will be split apart and burned.

‘Suffer the vision, with eyeballs aflame!’ My voice carries above the howling wind. Fire reflects on my golden mask as I watch the man burn. Holy fire dances in my tears, my vision blurred. Sigmar does not claim him for his Stormhost and thus his guilt is proven.

The storm rages on and I pace, waiting for the next judgement to come. Lightning strikes around us. Another bolt hits a tree near the village and sets it ablaze. The other elder is too weary to scream; he hangs from bleeding hands, exhausted, defeated. I approach now and listen for a confession, for an admission of guilt, of corruption, of apostasy. I watch his lips move, tears in his eyes. In truth, with my helmet echoing with the wind and thunder, I am deaf to his words.

He does not die as lightning winds down from the heavens, along his arms, across his face and buries itself deep inside his chest. Instead he convulses then goes still, eyes open, barely breathing. He has soiled himself. His teeth have broken where he has clenched his jaw. There are tears in his eyes and he dies slowly as his heart fails. It takes some time and I bear witness. I watch from behind a mask that shows no emotion, my mask that is no mask at all, but a true reflection of my soul.

‘I do not know!’ A woman’s voice. ‘I do not know how we lived here when all around us fell to ruin, but live we did!’ The old mother’s words carry to me and I move to stand before her. ‘We went unseen by gods and monsters.’ She speaks in defiance, her eyes full of anger, not fear. ‘We were protected – we have always been protected – from the monsters and evil men. Until you arrived.’

I am suddenly tired. The trial has lasted for hours. Time flows past me, carrying me along like sediment in a stream. On the horizon I believe I can see the first signs of dawn.

‘Witch, I will hear your confession, before the lightning comes. Tell me of your crimes against Sigmar.’

She laughs, a desperate sound. I see familiar madness in her now, at the edge of death. ‘What use had we for Sigmar? A god from ancient memory, a god that abandoned our ancestors.’ A shuddering sigh. ‘The land protects us, it has always protected us. And yet, it allowed you to pass… All things must change.’

Flame leaps from the burning tree to the thatched roof of a nearby hovel. It burns unnaturally blue as the building catches fire. The night is suddenly illuminated in brilliant azure light that flickers and dances as if possessed of a maniac will. More houses ignite to burn despite the rain that falls without cessation. I do not trust my own eyes, blurry as they are and overlaid with a confusion of ghostly afterimages. Through tears I see flames in vivid hues of red and blue and other colours, glimpsed for a moment only. It is as if I witness some alchemical conflagration. The village burns in a beautiful delirium as the storm rages and the sight fills me with awe.

‘And so it is over!’ the witch cries. ‘Look what your madness has wrought! We have done no wrong. We are innocent!’

The lightning takes her then, the Skull-Splitter. The blinding flash makes me stagger in surprise and the crash of thunder echoing in my helmet makes me deaf. In her eyes I see no trace of love, only horror. Sigmar does not welcome her with his embrace. Here then is your verdict, here then is justification. It does not kill her immediately, though it will not be long.

‘No one is innocent.’ I whisper. One of the first lessons my master taught me when he took me away from my father and the dying Denebreke – a hard lesson to learn for a boy. Depravity, murder, disease. These things hide in the hearts of all men and women. ‘Everyone is corrupt.’

The smell of burning hair nauseates me, carried on the wind. A smell from my childhood. Each morning we burned those who had died in the night. An army is no place for a boy to grow up, and the Denebreke was an army in name only. It was a rabble, a filthy mass of wild-eyed men and women. We had no supplies and food became scarce. As we suffered, my father grew ever more holy until his heart was filled with love for the God-King and there was no room in it for me. When he went to create his holy works with the chosen of the Denebreke – the men and women who cut on flesh to bleed out impurity – I knew that I had lost him forever. In time, when the army no longer marched, but stood and fought among itself for scraps, or begged, or sold themselves, or drifted away into the wilds to be taken by raiders, I knew that I had also lost my mother forever. I wonder if she remembers me. I wonder if she thinks of the youth that I was. I wonder if she heard of my father’s holy works.

The old mother is dying a torturous death. I sit with her, I wait with her. The storm rages around us and the night is dark and we are alone together. I witness her, and we watch the village burn together. She is coughing, choking. Her heart fails. She dies as any mother might. The only way to avoid the wrath of Sigmar is to do good deeds, to be a righteous man. I drive the point of my sword through her forehead. I strive every day to serve my God-King. I strive every day to be more holy in his eyes.

And then, from the blood, flowers blossom. I watch, unable to look away from the spectacle. Flowers pour from the ruin of her head, petals cascading away in the wind. Green shoots entwine her face, her neck, twisting amid white hair. I am entranced, appalled. Born of death, beauty grows. Flowers within flowers. As one blooms another emerges inside it in a pattern that repeats and repeats.

My head snaps back as a projectile hits me. The trance is broken. My metal helmet rings out like a bell, struck by a stone or pellet flung from a slingshot. I stagger, hands on my head, then drop to my knees as the ringing in my ears seems to pierce deep into the centre of my brain. Images are distorted, fractured, as if I look through fragments of shattered glass. In these myriad fragments I see No’grok is struck: a projectile hits him in his prodigious gut with little effect, but another strikes his temple and the giant collapses, toppling soundlessly to lie unmoving on the wet stone. Grar is running. He reaches the giant and with terrible effort drags him into the cover of a low wall. I see all this a dozen times at once, I see a splintered version of the world. I close my eyes, trying to blink away the distortion. Then, with effort, I crawl to join the others.

‘In the trees. They have encircled us.’ Grar’s voice is low and urgent. He cradles the larger man’s head. No’grok is not moving. We are sheltered by fallen stones that form this rough wall, concealed by the darkness of night, but the village burns and daylight creeps over the horizon and it will not be long before we are outflanked and visible.

‘Where is my pack?’ I try to keep the panic out of my voice. ‘We must fight our way clear.’

Grar gestures, and I see it lying on the steps of the altar, not ten paces away. I crawl to retrieve it, expecting at any moment to hear the crack of a slingshot or whistle of an arrow aimed at my back. My helmet makes my movements clumsy but I cannot take it off, not now. I retrieve the pack and return to the others, digging inside it to find a bundle wrapped with care at the bottom.

Lightning strikes nearby as I carefully unwrap the volley pistol with trembling hands. It is an ornate device that exceeds the lethality of a black powder flintlock, charged instead by a certain aetheric event, the details of which I am not fully cognisant of. It is a thing of great beauty and power, a wonder of Duardin engineering. The weapon catches Grar’s eye as I ready it.

I will myself to be calm, to not show weakness. I steady the weapon against our stone barricade. I try to control my breathing. ‘I have three shots, then we must run.’ Grar nods, though neither of us know where we will run to. It seems that the villagers have control of the woods, leaving us with…

‘The tower. Head to the tower. If we can get inside we can hold it.’

An arrow clatters on the stone behind me. I did not see its flight in the darkness, but Grar has keener eyes and he wordlessly guides my aim. I pull the first of the three triggers and the weapon flashes with alchemical energy, a cloud of phosphorescent vapour and a bark like a wounded animal. For a moment, nothing happens, and then there is a crash that carries over all other sounds as a tree topples. It is as if a great bite has been taken from its trunk. I am shouting, willing the others into action. From the woods there is the sound of confusion and a wail of pain. The collapsed tree will buy us some time.

No’grok stands, his movements clumsy. He usually moves with a grace that belies his bulk, but now he staggers as if drunk. He has an arm around Grar’s shoulder. We are running towards the tower, into the burning village. Around us the wooden huts are ablaze, black smoke concealing our movements. From the woods there is a cry and another arrow streaks over my head, vanishing into the conflagration. These are no soldiers – they are scared and angry, but they will find their aim before long. We are moving too slowly.

The tower is unthreatened by the fire. It is not so far. No’grok stumbles and cries out in a voice I do not recognise as his own.

‘We are nearly there!’ I choke out the words through a lungful of smoke. The wind has whipped the fire into a frenzy and the rain seems to have no effect on its ferocity. I turn, nearly slipping in the mud, and ready the pistol for another shot.

A figure emerges from the smoke before me. My eyes are not to be trusted, for this figure appears to made of glass or crystal of some sort. Its arms are raised as if in prayer, hands wreathed in coruscating blue fire. Where it treads, flowers blossom. A trail of them winds back behind it, charting its path, back to the altar. In its crystalline form the flames are reflected and reflected again. My head aches and pressure builds behind my eyes. For a moment I believe I will lose consciousness.

The spell is shattered by the bark of the pistol in my hands. The white cloud of smoke disguises my target for an instant, but when it clears there is nothing there, no trail of flowers. I am whispering a prayer to Sigmar. It is one I have not spoken since I was a child. I must be more holy. I must be more holy for there is madness in this place.

The tower door swings open as Grar forces it. He barely fits through the narrow stone doorway. Inside, the tower is suffocating; a fire pit burns with no chimney and the small room is smoky and stale. There are nine stone statues, softened by the passage of centuries and neglect until they no longer resemble anything I can understand. Some bear shields and crumbled hammers, others hold staffs ornamented with faded sigils. The weight of the building around me is comforting. This structure will not burn if the fire spreads.

‘The door…’ My instruction is a wasted breath, for Grar has already moved a heavy bench and the room is secured. Daylight leaks in through narrow windows, little more than slits to be used by archers. The tracker and I look out, searching for signs of pursuit.

‘They regroup,’ Grar says. ‘We have time. But they will come, sooner or later. This thing we do – they will want revenge. And besides,’ he flashes his teeth in a mirthless smile, ‘now they have nowhere else to go.’

‘This village is corrupt, alive with spectres and madness…’ I am ranting and my head swims with images I do not understand. Grar looks at me with hooded eyes. I am growing weary of that look. He kneels beside No’grok. The side of the giant’s skull is soft to the touch, the wound is red and deep. His eyes are unfocused.

‘He bleeds into his brain. There is damage we do not see. He may not come all the way back from this.’

For a time we sit in silence. I think to reload my pistol but I have lost the sack in which I carry the ammunition.

‘That weapon… there cannot be many like it.’

The question takes me by surprise. ‘It was a gift from my master.’

‘I have seen it before. Years ago. The man that once held it – I worked for him on occasion.’

‘It is not important…’ I begin, but Grar cuts me off.

‘This man, he had with him children. To train, he said. Always children.’

I say nothing. I am not breathing.

‘But never the same children, for long.’

I turn away. Sigmar stirs behind my eyes and I fear again that I will be overcome. I see at the back of the room a staircase. At first I thought it was impassable, once leading up to the collapsed floor above, but now as I move to inspect it, I see that there is also a way down; spiral steps lead into a chamber below.

‘A dead end.’ Grar warns, but I ignore him, taking the steps down into the gloom. It is dark; there are torches but we have no way to light them. There is something…

I stand in blackness, surrounded by the weight of this place, by the cold, ancient stone. I hold my breath, I close my eyes. I hear the pounding of my heart, I see strobing afterimages, flickering like candlelight. And I hear something else, something faint.

I hesitate, then I remove my helm. I hold it in one shaking hand. Without it I can hear more clearly, the wind outside the tower, a distant rumble of the retreating storm. And then I hear a voice. A child’s voice. It comes from the darkness ahead of me. Distant, indistinct. My heart races. I reach out in the gloom, stepping cautiously forward until my fingers touch the wall at the far end of the cellar. And in that wall, an opening. At my call, Grar joins me. We have no torch, but my eyes are growing accustomed to the dark. A small passage leads out of the room, hewn from the rock. My fingers trace a symbol graven above the passage, the ancient rune for gate. This is a way out. Grar hesitates; this darkness does not sit well with him. We do not know where it leads and I think for a moment that he will insist that we fight our way out, preferring to take his chances against the villagers.

‘There is a child,’ I say.

I can see in his eyes that he does not believe me, that he thinks me damaged in some way. I ready myself to argue, though I have little strength. My head pounds, a throbbing that seems to press into my eyes. And then the decision is made for us.

The villagers have regrouped, emboldened by the morning light. They hack at the door with heavy axes and throw burning bundles into the room through the holes they have hewn in the wood and through the windows, and the space quickly fills with choking smoke. No’grok shouts in alarm and Grar leads him to the stairs. I follow, lighting a torch in the fire as it spreads throughout the tower. We descend, hurried by the sound of the door breaking above us. The flame of the torch does not reach far into the tunnel. We step into the darkness.

I lead us along the winding passage, torch held out before me. The tunnel leads deep into the earth and is barely tall enough to stand in. Grar follows, dragging No’grok behind him. The giant’s eyes are wide and he does not comprehend what is happening. He spits into his palm, wiping it across his scalp. Ahead the tunnel narrows, then widens. Behind, there is the sound of pursuit. The sounds echo in my skull, footsteps reverberating like hammer blows. My vision blurs, becomes double. Two torches held in two shaking hands. Does Sigmar still see me, here in the dirt, hidden from his light? If I am to die, will he know? Will his lightning split the earth to claim me?

I press my back to the rock, squeezing through a narrow gap into a chamber beyond. Grar follows me, his face ashen – he has already realised that the space is too small for No’grok. Voices grow louder, echoing along the length of the tunnel behind us, disembodied in the dark. And then there is torchlight, spilling along the jagged rocks. No’grok forces his huge frame into the gap, there is a wet scraping sound of skin, raw against rock. He is talking to himself, words I do not understand, words that make no sense. His stomach and shoulders are wedged against solid rock, he cannot move. There is a red smear across the rocks at his gut as skin tears in his efforts. His eyes are wide with pain and fear, white against dark blue skin. Grar reaches for him, pulls at one massive arm. It is too late to turn back. And then they have caught him, and he cannot even turn his head to face them. I hear the sound of a knife or blade of some sort, a sickening wet scraping sound, and the giant wails in pain. He cries out, he cries in words I do not understand, in a voice that is not his own. We cannot see the attackers, even as No’grok dies, even as the knife cuts again and again and black blood runs in rivers across the rocks to pool between our feet. And I watch in silence as from the blood, flowers bloom.

We leave No’grok behind. Grar is stricken. There is nothing I can say. In truth I cannot spare a thought for him; I cannot think at all. My head pulses with each beat of my heart, and each pulse is a knife between my eyes. Sigmar is in my head, his presence too much to bear. I know this cannot continue. The path splits and splits again and at first I think it is just my eyes playing tricks, but Grar leads me with a firm grip around my arm. He looks at me from time to time and I cannot read his expression. It is one I have not seen before.

‘We won’t be followed here, I think,’ he says after a time.

I want to ask how he can be so sure, but I am unable to find the words. He must see the question on my lips.

‘Bones. Animal sign. We arrive at a lair. We have come full circle.’

My eyes are closing. I hear him say we are not safe, I hear him but it is too hard to focus.

‘We can get out this way, witch hunter. It will not be much further to daylight, then I will leave you – leave you hidden – while I go back to find help.’

I am shaking my head. My voice is distant in my ears. It does not sound like me, it is too far away, too strange. ‘There is a child.’

‘There is no child, witch hunter. You are not well.’

‘I must go back for the child.’

‘And even if there is some beastling, some tainted thing? Why do you care?’

I do not know how to explain. No child deserves to be left alone. I turn to go back, my pistol held in shaking hands before me.

‘He gave you this gun, your master?’

‘He did.’ I meet Grar’s gaze. At last I recognise the look on his face. It is so out of place on the scarred face of a killer. An expression I have never seen before, directed at me.

‘This man, I saw little of him. But I saw enough. It is a good thing that he is dead. I think Sigmar would forgive the man that killed him.’

The worst beasts are those that hide deep in the hearts of men. It was a hard lesson to learn.

‘It is a good thing that he is dead,’ I say.

He does not leave me. I do not know why. We take a different path. I lead us, listening for a child’s voice that does not come, that perhaps never came. We go deeper, lost in a warren of tunnels and caverns. The caves are natural, but here and there we see ancient stonework or traces of a tiled floor. It is all broken, as if the land itself has shifted. Whatever was once here, only fragments remain.

We come at last to the heart of the maze. The ancient symbol for gate marks the entrance. The room is half buried by a cave-in and the once grand chamber is now a ruin; all that it once held is lost in rubble. Among this rubble, the bear – the creature that was once a bear – has made its home. In the darkness the great black shadow stirs and then ignites in spectral luminescence, lit from within by flickering blue flame. It senses us, it greets us with a keening cry that drives me to my knees.

The creature that was once a bear staggers towards us. It stumbles on misshapen legs that end in claws the size of my hand. It emerges from shadow, fur matted with blood and filth. In place of a head it has a gaping maw, a suppurating wound lined with teeth and grasping tentacles. Even as I watch, the thing changes form, it reshapes; bones and flesh rupture and are remade as if the hide of the animal is no longer enough to contain the madness that rages inside it. The noise it makes – the endless moaning cry – is a fusion of pain and fury.

I am not afraid. Men are liars and deceivers but this creature, this monster, is a horror I can understand. It is at once a thing born of Chaos and it is a thing born of this realm. It is full of suffering and confusion. It is an abomination and it must kill us, just as it has killed everything else that strayed too near to its domain. This is all it knows. It has lost itself to a purpose it does not understand.

Where it walks, it scatters crystalline fragments that shimmer like precious stones. Flowers spring up around it, vines wrap around its feet, snaring it until it tears them away. Flowers in a riot of colours blossom and then die, dead petals drifting from it like a shedding skin before turning to a luminescent dust. And through it all, it cries out, a call of such animal anguish that it breaks my heart even as my brain shatters in my skull and my nose streams with blood.

My vision is fading. Everything is doubled, overlapping and indistinct. I see Grar, the white flash of a fierce snarl on his face. He moves in liquid motion, flowing like quicksilver, melting and reforging as he confronts the beast. His dagger is an extension of his arm, now a clawed hand, now a spear of molten glass. The blade thrusts into the animal’s maw, and he tears at the throat of the monster. Then he is flung aside, toppling away into the darkness of the cave, spiralling and distorted, like blood circling a drain, like a stone cast into a bottomless well. I see the bear as it was – a giant of muscle and golden fur. And I see it as it is now, a daemon, caught in a state of uncontrollable, agonising mutation. The images overlap, they are superimposed. And I see a third image of the bear as it will become and I know what I must do, what I am already doing.

I pull the trigger, firing the final shot with my pistol. The projectile is already in flight, it has already hit. The gun barks so loudly in this cavernous place that for a moment the sound stuns me and I drop the weapon. My vision is nothing but a white haze. The creature is already dead, it is already dying. The holy bullet hits and the daemon creature wails, a sound to haunt me for eternity. I see reflections, colours, shapes that make no sense, forms that do not exist. The beast thrashes, writhes. Tendrils unspool from its head, groping blindly. It becomes still.

From where it lies there is a trail of flowers. I crawl along this path and find Grar. He lies at a precipice, surrounded by the bones of the creature’s lair. I see clumps of red hair, torn flesh inscribed with unholy symbols. And beyond the precipice there is a void, there is…

‘What do you see, witch hunter?’ He lies on a bed of flowers. He is dying, staring into the void, the portal. Blood flecks his lips, his chest crushed, his voice nothing more than a whisper. He will not look away. From the void bleeds power, power that warps reality, changes all it touches. I do not dare follow his gaze. Instead I watch Grar as he changes, as he dies, here and now beside me, his blood turning to crystal in his veins. And as he lives – a young man, the first time he applies the warpaint of his tribe, as he is exiled and in that exile finds new purpose. As he is born; as a child, the eldest of three brothers, though not the largest. I see a life that resonates briefly, then echoes and fades, as all lives will.

The pain in my skull is overwhelming. I collapse, hands to my head. Is this it? Is this the Skull-Splitter? Has it found me, down here in the darkness? I wait as flowers grow around me, I wait to see my god revealed. And I think, it is a lie that a man can die but once. Over the course of my life I have died a hundred deaths. This is merely the end of it. Let this be the end of it.

Then, a child steps out of the shadows. She is ghostly in the darkness, ephemeral, as if she might fade away at any moment. She wears warpaint I recognise from somewhere long ago, family markings, slave markings. Red hair and dark eyes.

‘You are bleeding,’ she says.

I touch the blood running from my nose; it changes to crystalline dust on my fingers, dust that dissipates with my breath, glittering with blue fire.

I offer her a weak smile. ‘It is a god that lives in my head. I… don’t think there is room in there for us both.’

She nods with a sincerity that only a child can express.

‘It is waiting to be born,’ she says. She touches my forehead, a single delicate finger. Inside my mind a god’s eye opens. Inside my skull it unfurls like a blossoming flower. The pain fades away, a leviathan sinking back into the depths. It fragments, becomes a memory, a distant thing, and then it is lost forever in shifting tides.

‘Are you hurt?’

I exhale, I collect myself. I am renewed. Life returns to me.

‘No… no, I was but not now. Thank you. It doesn’t hurt any more.’

‘We waited for you.’ She says and moves to stand with the dying beast. She kneels at its side, one tiny hand pressed against its flank as its chest rises and falls. It makes a sound that is not of this world, something almost musical and impossibly sad. I think of her in this cave with the creature in the dark, the creature… but it is not a destroyer. It has always been a protector.

It is as if she reads my thoughts. ‘The people of this land did not understand what protected them, they only knew that they were safe.’

‘I sought to bring them to Sigmar’s embrace. But I brought only death.’

She shrugs. ‘All things must change.’

The beast moans a final time and then is still. In death its luminescence fades, blue fire dwindling away to nothing.

‘I think the creature did not understand this, it did not understand itself. Oh, it is so sad.’

I hesitate. ‘It killed your family. I am sorry.’

‘My father… it is good that he is dead. He was a cruel man. My mother was no better.’

‘Monsters hide where you least expect them, in the hearts of those you should be able to trust. These Mortal Realms are a cruel place for children,’ I say.

‘There are other places,’ she says.

I realise something so obvious I am confused about how I had never seen it before. ‘My father was not holy, he was insane.’

She watches me, dark eyes shrouded in the gloom of the chamber.

‘I think my mother could not bear to be a part of that madness, could not live with it.’

She says nothing.

‘I’m your protector now,’ I say. It is a truth that is so plain it does not really need to be spoken.

‘It is fate.’ She smiles, and her small hand grips my sleeve in a simple, childish gesture and it overwhelms me. I take off my cloak and wrap her in it. I let the sigil of the Order fall to the ground.

‘We can’t go back the way we came,’ I say.

‘We are not going to,’ she replies, and I know this, I have always known this. I see things with more clarity than I have ever done before. She leads me to the portal and I know it as a splinter of another realm, a gateway buried here since time immemorial. It bleeds its power across this land, distorting reality with no thought of malevolence. A catalyst of uncontrollable, incomprehensible change.

‘What do you see?’ she asks. Her eyes are so innocent, and when she talks her words reach me as a whisper, a whisper directly into my thoughts. If there is to be a god in my head, I think, then let it be this child.

I open my eyes to the portal and stare into the void. I fall to my knees in wonder. She cradles my head in her slender arms. I see a kaleidoscope of unknown stars painted in swirls and spirals across an incandescent sky – a sky that burns with azure fire. As I watch, stars explode into embers that coruscate across the void like a shoal of fish before coalescing once more, the explosion reversed and repeating. I see an infinite crystalline landscape, and in each reflective fragment there is another infinity, a maze of places that have existed, or will exist, or may never exist. Here I know there is no death or disease, no violence or murder, nor any of the perversities of man. In these infinite skies there is no Azyr; it has been plucked from the heavens, no longer to intrude in the lives of men, to watch us as we walk, to measure us as we stumble, to judge us when we fall. I suffer the vision, I suffer the vision with eyeballs aflame with blue fire. I see, with perfect clarity, the grand scheme in all its glory, revealed to me at last.

The images in my mind’s eye overlap. I see the village, engulfed in blue fire. The villagers weep for their loss and rage against the monsters that brought this ruin even as worse things gather in the shadows of the forest, things that bring change and things that will be changed in turn. I see myself, a lost boy pretending to be a man but too broken, too damaged. And further back I see my father, losing himself and losing his family. He turns to an uncaring god and so takes the first steps on a path he will travel for the rest of his life. I reach out to the skinny boy that is with him. I reach out and touch his forehead and plant a seed.

Then suddenly there are great wings and these wings encircle everything, wings with feathers in colours I have never seen before, colours I cannot describe. These wings encircle me; maybe they have always encircled me. They embrace me, offer me safety, freedom, everything I have ever wanted, infinite possibilities. I know that among these possibilities there is a path that I will walk, a fate for me. For the first time in my life I want to see where it will take me.

For an instant I see myself on another path. I am alone in darkness. A final convulsion as something ruptures inside me. It is just the briefest image, and then it is gone.

And then the child takes me by the hand. We step into the portal.

A THRENODY FOR KOLCHEV

Darius Hinks

The Morfran Sanatorium,
two miles south of Xeradrus City, Holy Terra

Doktor Morfran sprawled at the end of a long table, bathed in blues and golds. Terra’s eternal dusk was raining down through a stained-glass window and he looked like a saint in repose, basking in holy radiance. The light flashed over the augmetics that covered one side of his face and blazed in the absurd periwig that crowned his head. He wore a military-style uniform, braided and tasselled and tight enough to show off his powerful, bloated physique. He looked like an athlete gone to seed and dressed for dinner. He was handsome, but there was a predatory gleam in his eyes that belied his gentle voice. He dismissed his servitors with a flick of his cane and the hunched wretches trundled from the room, muttering in binharic.

Varamis fiddled with the sleeve of his coat, crossed his legs and then uncrossed them, trying not to meet the doktor’s eye.

Morfran gaped at him with a vacant expression, slack-jawed and breathing deeply. ‘You must be a good friend. Kolchev has requested no other visitors. He never requests anything.’ He crushed a fly with his forefinger, smearing it across the table. ‘Apart from death.’

Varamis shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. ‘We were good friends. Before the incident. But he made no attempt to contact me, before this, I mean. I have no idea what he wants.’

Morfran’s head remained rolled back on his shoulders, his mouth still hung open. ‘You were prepared to pay handsomely to see him.’

Varamis glanced in Morfran’s direction but lacked the courage to actually scowl at him. ‘You refused me access, even though you say Kolchev requested it. What else could I do? Whatever has become of him, he is still my friend.’

Morfran remained supine. ‘The father has been quite clear – Kolchev receives no visitors. Kept alive, but nothing else. No reversion therapy. No spiritual realignment. No corrective surgery or neural reprogramming. No admirers to be admitted into his presence. But the amount you were willing to pay… It made me realise that an exception had to be made. He’s clearly important to you. You must be more than just an admirer of his music.’

Varamis did not like the way Morfran was studying him. He tried to assume what he hoped was a sane expression. But the more he thought about his facial muscles, the less cooperative they became. He massaged his jaw and left his hand hovering over his disobedient mouth. ‘I was his student, at the Galatia Academy. We became good friends. But I hadn’t seen him for months when I heard that he had…’ Varamis glanced back at the door.

Morfran licked his lips. ‘Set himself alight. Made a mess of himself. I have seen it many times before. We didn’t expect him to survive.’

Varamis grimaced and shook his head.

Morfran rose with such languor that he seemed to float from his chair. ‘Let me take you to him. Keep it brief, though. Conversation is a stimulant, despite the sedatives.’

The doktor led Varamis down a tall, narrow corridor lined with doorways and piles of broken cogitators. The strip lumens running overhead burned with such a fierce, white glare that the walls seemed to glow, giving the whole place a dreamlike quality. Paint was peeling from the plasteel doors and the walls were a mosaic of brown stains. There were slogans carved into the cornices: A BROAD MIND LACKS FOCUS, CONTEMPLATION IS THE WOMB OF TREACHERY and other encouraging messages.

Robed attendants bustled past, pushing empty gurneys or carrying metal trays full of syringes and there was a distant sound, like a half-heard tide, that Varamis finally recognised as the muffled chatter of voices, talking urgently behind locked doors.

‘The sanatorium is built in the shape of the Imperial aquila,’ said Morfran, waving his cane proudly down the corridor. ‘This wing houses the females. Nearly half a mile long, twelve floors above and five below. Each floor makes a row of the eagle’s feathers. The head houses the chapels, dispensaries, administratum offices, medicae facilities, dormitories etc. The other wing houses the males, including your friend, the maestro.’

As they moved deeper into the sanatorium the voices grew in volume and Varamis had the unnerving feeling that the patients were aware of his arrival and demanding his attention.

Morfran caught his pained expression. ‘They have no interest in us. They are at war with their minds. Beyond help, most of them.’

‘Beyond help? Then why perform the treatments?’

‘Because they are too wealthy to die. They must suffer for their elevated position. Their families cannot bear to let them go, so they pay me to shackle their bodies and pickle their minds.’

‘So what do you do for them?’

‘Everything I can. And we have some successes. I said most of them are beyond help. We are constantly developing better, more vigorous methods. Our work is as much spiritual as physical or psychological. Weakness of mind is weakness of spirit. Madness stems from deviance. Lack of faith. They must learn to fear. Fear of the Immortal Emperor. Then they can begin to love him. And in that love they might find their sanity. It is a hard road, but I walk it with them.’

Varamis was not convinced that madness stemmed from a lack of faith. He was about to argue, but then he considered how easily he could find himself on the other side of the locked doors. Morfran did not look like a man who would enjoy debating the efficacy of his methods.

It took nearly an hour to reach the ward containing Kolchev and the clamour of voices had almost driven Varamis to distraction when Morfran stopped beside a door and waved for a servitor to unlock it.

The cell was in darkness and Morfran sighed, waving the servitor inside.

A glow-globe rattled into life, splashing the room with cheerless light, and Varamis backed away, shaking his head and pulling at his sleeves.

Kolchev was suspended in the centre of the room by an antigrav field. There was a generator humming somewhere as he rotated slowly, a few feet above the floor.

‘What are you doing to him?’ whispered Varamis.

Kolchev was cocooned in cables and chains. Every inch of him was bound. His face was visible but the skin and hair had been burned away and Kolchev’s head looked like a glossy, crimson skull. The ends of the cables were sewn into his skin, snaking under the surface like enlarged veins. They were crackling and humming, pouring electricity into Kolchev’s muscles so that he twitched and jerked constantly, as though performing an absurd dance. There was a faint aroma of cooking meat coming from him. He was staring at the ceiling, tears pouring down his ruined face as he mouthed silent prayers.

‘I am nurturing his faith,’ replied Doktor Morfran.

Morfran ambled into the room and tapped at a runeboard in the wall. The sound of the generator faded and Kolchev slumped in his bonds as the electricity left his body. Then Morfran took a syringe from a table and punched it into Kolchev’s thigh.

Kolchev’s eyes cleared and he looked around in confusion.

‘You have an hour,’ said Morfran, leaving the room. He paused in the doorway, leaning close to Varamis. ‘Don’t get within arm’s reach. His mind is in tatters.’ Then he left, slamming the door closed behind him.

For a moment Varamis forgot about Kolchev as panic filled him. He was locked in a cell, in the Morfran Sanatorium. What if Morfran never came back? What if the doktor forgot about him? Or decided he was not fit to leave?

‘Varamis?’ Kolchev’s voice was a whisper.

Varamis turned back to his friend. He could think of nothing to say. No way to begin a conversation with such a ruin.

Kolchev tried to speak but the words snagged in his throat. He nodded to a table near the door with a jug of water and some cups.

Varamis filled a cup, then hesitated, remembering Morfran’s warning.

Kolchev’s eyes were wide with desperation but Varamis could see no trace of violence. Besides, he had not come all this way to such a wretched place just to watch Kolchev gasp.

Kolchev was still floating a few feet in the air, so Varamis moved the table closer, stood on it and pressed the cup to Kolchev’s lips.

Kolchev drank slowly, spilling as much as he swallowed, then he nodded and Varamis backed away.

‘My friend,’ said Varamis. ‘It is dreadful to see you like this. Perhaps there is some way I could talk to your father about having you moved? This is not right, whatever you have done. It’s appalling. It is not right that you should be–’

‘No.’ Kolchev spoke with surprising force. He stared at Varamis, his eyes shining from his blistered face. ‘I must stay here. I am not safe. You don’t understand. You must do what I ask and then you must find a way to kill me.’

‘Kill you?’

‘But not yet. First you must go to Fevos House. And you must burn it down.’

‘Burn down your home? Why would you wish me to do something like that?’ Varamis saw that Doktor Morfran was right. His friend had no grasp on reality. He was raving. ‘I cannot do such a thing, Johann, you must know that. Fevos House belongs to your family. I could not set fire to it. Imagine what your–’

‘Burn it!’ gasped Kolchev, starting to struggle violently against his bonds. Blood bubbled from the stitches holding the cables in his flesh. ‘You have to!’

‘Of course,’ said Varamis in soothing tones. ‘Whatever you wish, Johann. I will burn Fevos down. You need not worry about it any more.’

Kolchev bucked and thrashed, even more furious. ‘Do not lie! I’m no fool.’ He halted his movements and glared at Varamis again. ‘And neither am I insane. Whatever Morfran has told you. I am sane, Varamis. Dear Throne, how I wish I were not!’

He let out such a dreadful, animal cry of grief that Varamis wanted to hug him, but he was growing more sure that Doktor Morfran was right. His friend was utterly deranged.

‘Listen,’ said Kolchev, lowering his voice. ‘I called you here because only you will understand how I could have done the things I did. You are my last hope, Varamis. If you will not hear me then that thing will go undiscovered and someone else will find it and the whole cycle will begin again. You must listen. By all that we have shared, by all that we mean to each other, I beg you, listen to me and believe what I say.’

‘Of course, old friend. I will listen, gladly.’

‘You are still trying to humour me, but once I have finished I think you will understand. Do you remember that night at the Valgaast Theatre? The first performance of Zelter’s Threnody.’

Kolchev’s conversation followed no logical progression, but Varamis was keen not to upset his friend again so he played along. ‘Yes, I do remember. We were there with Countess Euressa and her brothers. It was the premiere.’ He paused and smiled. ‘It was incredible, actually. I wept at the beauty of it.’

Kolchev looked pained. ‘Then you will understand. That night was the beginning of the end, Varamis. I knew it was coming, but that night it all came crashing down on me. I had felt for months that I was approaching a chasm. Nothing I composed was worth the paper it was written on.’

‘Not true!’ exclaimed Varamis. This was an argument they had had many times. ‘You are one of the finest composers of this generation.’

‘I am mediocre.’ Kolchev spat the word. ‘Vaccea, Nerulum, Demetrias – all of the new composers have surpassed my feeble attempts. And now I am old. I have been a fool, Varamis, wasting my life in pursuit of an impossible ideal. I have the aspiration but not the skill. I will never equal those great artists. I knew it long ago, but that night, when I watched Zelter conducting his Threnody I finally fell into the abyss. I could bear it no longer.’

Varamis nodded. ‘I remember you left without saying goodbye or speaking to Zelter.’

‘Speaking to him? How could I have spoken to the man who had just proven my worthlessness? I fled the theatre and roamed the slums, drowning my sorrows in whatever drinking dens I could find.’

‘Those places are not safe for a gentleman, Johann. You should have let me escort you back to Fevos House.’

‘Not safe?’ Kolchev laughed bitterly. ‘No, they are not safe.’ He looked around the filthy cell. ‘Nowhere is.’

‘So what happened to you that night? Was that the night of the fire? No, it can’t be. I heard of the fire as soon as it happened. It was weeks after Zelter’s Threnody.’

‘No, there was no fire that night. I drank and I drank until I was almost blind with it, stumbling through the ruins and hab-blocks. It’s a miracle I wasn’t murdered. No,’ he laughed again. ‘A tragedy I wasn’t murdered. Before I did the things I…’ His words trailed off and he stared at the floor.

‘What happened?’ asked Varamis. Kolchev still seemed deluded but there was something oddly compelling about his tale. He was talking with such conviction, such dread.

‘I found myself back near the academies – back amongst the inspired youths who drove me to such despair. And then I saw him, Zelter, still outside the theatre, his face full of youth and pride as he regaled his adoring public with his wit. I could hear him talking of how easy he found the process of writing music. I could not bear to face him, to tell him how perfect his threnody was, so I ducked into Arvad’s and hid.’

‘Arvad’s?’

‘The shop. I would not usually set foot in the place. Arvad is a crook. Not one of his instruments is worthy of a respectable musician.’

Kolchev hesitated. ‘But he was not there. Arvad was not in the shop. It was another man.’ He groaned and strained against his bonds. ‘And I knew. I knew, Varamis. As soon as I saw that man I knew there was something wrong. Why did I stay? If I had left then, I could have remained a tragic failure instead of this thing I have become. He smiled at me as though he were a normal man but when I looked into his eyes…’

Kolchev seemed unable to continue.

Engrossed, Varamis hurried over with another drink.

Kolchev nodded his thanks. When he was calm again he continued. ‘His eyes were too vivid, the colours too rich. I cannot explain it, but his face was a mask. A lie. I don’t know what he was.

‘I was about to leave. Even Zelter’s crowing was preferable to spending another minute with that peculiar man. My heart was racing and my stomach was so gripped with nausea I thought I might be sick.’

‘But you were drunk,’ said Varamis. Something about Kolchev’s tone was unnerving him even more than the asylum. He felt a sudden need to explain away the strangeness. ‘It will have been the wine that made you so ill. And that’s probably why the man seemed so odd to you.’

‘No!’ snapped Kolchev. ‘No,’ he repeated in a quieter voice. ‘He was like a figment of a dream that had dislocated itself from my mind.’

‘So did you leave?’

‘I tried, Varamis, but I think my fate was sealed before I entered the place. As I approached the door, I saw the most beautiful instrument I had ever seen. A six-stringed dulcimer, small and fretted and made entirely of silver, its body curved like a serpent and filigreed with intricate designs. I had never seen anything like it. It seemed to call out to me. I actually salivated as I touched it. I was like a famished man presented with a feast. And then, the strangest thing. Paying no heed to the stranger behind me, I started to play it. Oh, Varamis, if you could have heard the music that spilled from those strings. Even in such a stupor I managed to create a melody with more wit and insight than anything I had achieved before.

‘I told the shopkeeper I wanted to buy it and he named some absurd price, a fraction of the thing’s value. I wanted to recoil from him. He was toying with me. Playing a game beyond my comprehension. He smiled kindly but his eyes were like a void.’

‘So you left without it?’

‘No, Varamis, I bought it. I paid the man his ridiculous price and rushed from the shop, scurrying like a criminal lest Zelter saw me. And then, when I finally returned to Fevos House I cradled the dulcimer like a babe in arms and slept.’

‘But the fire, Johann, these terrible injuries, how did it happen?’

‘If only my scars were the extent of it. You have no idea, Varamis. The next morning I awoke and, without even eating I began to play the dulcimer. Drunk, I had made a beautiful sound, sober, I began to compose pieces of such subtlety and originality that I could not believe they had originated in my own mind. It was as if the Emperor’s light had pierced my soul and illuminated my poor excuse for a mind. Days went by and I almost starved, working tirelessly and forgetting to dress or wash. I grew terrified that someone might try to take the dulcimer away from me. I agonised over the meagre price I had paid and wondered why I had not insisted in paying the shopkeeper more. I was sure that he would arrive at my gates and demand I return it. I even dismissed my servants for fear that they would hear the instrument, discern its value and rob me. I slept every night with it in my arms and began work every morning, filling my house with mountains of notation. Eventually, even though I was alone, I began working in the cellars, in a chamber known only to me. And there I sat, in the darkness and the damp, performing works of genius to an audience of rats.’

Varamis was reminded of his days as a student when Kolchev would rhapsodise about the greatest works of Imperial music. He pictured himself in Kolchev’s cellar, seated among the rats, listening to music so wonderful it was divine. ‘But what did you do with the music? What use was it if no one heard it?’

‘You are right, of course. Like any artist, I craved recognition. I could find only so much satisfaction in entertaining myself. As the days wore on and I hunched in the darkness, filling the shadows with my symphony, I realised that I had to play the piece to someone. And it had to be someone who could understand its magnificence. It had to be Zelter.

‘I finished the piece and sent one of my servitors to him with a message. Then I washed and forced myself to eat. I had lost all interest in the needs of the flesh but I was determined to present myself with some dignity rather than fainting of exhaustion before I managed to play a note.

‘Zelter accepted my invitation and, three days later, I welcomed him into Fevos’ great entrance hall. I could see he was unnerved by my appearance. I had done what I could to make myself presentable but I was emaciated and as rapturous as a pilgrim reaching the Eternity Gate. Also, the absence of servants, or any human beings apart from myself must have struck him as odd. But he masked his doubts and greeted me with a veneer of calm and delightful manners. He flattered me, pretending to admire my work and for once the lies did not hurt, for I knew I was close to showing him what I was truly capable of. I savoured the moment, serving him wine and a meal I had prepared with my own hands and chatting idly as though it were a normal occasion. He watched me closely, no doubt sensing my excitement and trying to guess why he had been invited to this peculiar house. When I finally mentioned that I would like to perform a new piece for him Zelter did not quite manage to hide his amusement. It was just a flicker around his mouth, but I knew he was laughing at me. And I revelled in it, delighting in the thought of what he would say when he heard my composition.

‘I had taken the dulcimer out of the cellar and placed it in my recital chamber. I ushered Zelter to a seat and walked over to the gleaming instrument. After hours of entertaining my guest I was slightly drunk, but it did not matter. I had rehearsed the piece so many times, and in so many states of intoxication, that I knew I could play it with ease. The truth was, that like all great pieces, it was incredibly simple, the chords seeming so obvious that one imagined it must be an ancient, well-loved melody, but I had scoured every recording and assured myself that it was new.

‘As I played, the music consumed me to such an extent that, when I had finished, it took me a moment to remember I was not alone. I backed away from the dulcimer and steadied my nerves with another glass of wine. For a moment, I was too afraid to look at Zelter. What if he was unimpressed? What if I had imagined my genius? What if the tune’s inspired simplicity was actually infantile crudeness?

‘A slow handclap echoed round the recital chamber. Zelter had risen to his feet and was staring at me in shock as he applauded. “My dear Johann,” he said, and for several moments he could say nothing else.

‘Even when he asked me if the piece was really my own, I felt no sense of wounded pride, only a delight in his dazed expression and the tears glinting in his eyes. I have never felt such joy, Varamis. Nothing has ever made me feel so alive as watching Zelter trying to fathom how such beauty was possible. I was so exultant that, when Zelter asked to examine the dulcimer I managed to quell my feelings of jealousy and panic.

‘He stroked the designs on the silver body, mouthing silent phrases and I knew he was still hearing my music in his mind, still trying to unravel the hidden complexities. He gripped my shoulder and admitted that he had not realised the depth of my talents.

‘I felt as though I were airborne as I crossed the chamber to fetch another bottle of wine. I saw how wrong I had been to hide my genius in the cellars of Fevos House. I needed to perform. And it had to be in the Valgaast Theatre, where Zelter had played his threnody. I would show the world that I had achieved greatness.

‘I was so consumed by my imagined future, that I barely registered Zelter’s request to play the dulcimer.’

Kolchev paused and strained against his bonds again, staring at Varamis. He seemed unsure how to continue.

‘And did he play?’ asked Varamis, sensing that the tale was about to take a darker turn. His pulse was hammering in his temples as he waited for Kolchev to continue.

‘He played.’ Kolchev sounded desolate.

‘And what?’ demanded Varamis.

‘And the Emperor spoke directly into my heart. It was not music that emerged from the dulcimer but life itself, in all its terror and glory. I slumped back against the wall as the chords filled my head and knotted my stomach. Where my piece had been pretty and charming, Zelter’s was like an apocalypse, like divine judgement. It was exquisite and terrifying. It made my composition seem like a nursery rhyme or, worse, a pastiche of true art. And, when he finished, Zelter gave a casual shrug and told me his piece was unfinished, that I was the first to hear it.’

Kolchev began thrashing against his restraints again, spitting and grunting as he tried to free himself.

It took Varamis several moments to calm him again and convince him to continue.

‘The first crime was mine,’ said Kolchev, when he was able to speak. ‘I will not lay the blame elsewhere. I was drunk and half-starved and I had not been in human company for weeks, but I must own what I did. Although I never intended it to end as it did. I shoved Zelter aside and snatched the dulcimer, howling and weeping, tormented by a feeling of betrayal. I had thought the instrument and I shared a bond, that I alone could work such wonders through it. As Zelter raced after me, apologising, I took the dulcimer to the top of the stairs and hurled it down the steps.

‘To my horror, Zelter leapt to catch it, and he fell, hurtling down the spiral stairs.’

Kolchev took a deep breath. ‘I rushed after him, calling out in alarm but, Throne save me, he had tumbled to the very bottom of the tower. I knew before I reached him that he was dead. His head was bent back at a grotesque angle. But even in my grief, my repulsive soul rejoiced to see that he had the dulcimer in his arms. It was covered in his blood but he had saved it.

‘It was then that I realised I was no longer in control of my actions. You must believe this, Varamis. You are my only hope of ever being understood. I know I will die in here, disgraced and then forgotten, but I cannot bear the thought that no one knows what really happened. I dragged Zelter and the dulcimer back down into the hidden cellar and wept at my crime, but then I felt an external force, willing me to act, willing me to play the cursed thing again. As I picked it up, I saw to my amazement that Zelter’s blood had vanished. I peered at it, wondering if the blood could have been wiped off, but it was impossible. There was no trace. It was as gleaming and immaculate as the day I first saw it. It was then I realised the instrument was not of this world, not of any world.

‘Even as my doubts grew, I could not resist the urge to play it. So, with my audience now bolstered by a still-warm corpse, I began to play.

‘To my surprise, a new piece tumbled from the dulcimer. Rather than the elegant ditty I had played before, this was a thing of majesty and power, far surpassing my first attempt. And then, with a ghoulish laugh, I realised that I was playing Zelter’s composition – the work of such magnificence that it had sent me into paroxysms of rage.’

‘How?’ demanded Varamis. ‘Was it an old piece? Had you studied the sheet music?’

‘No. It was entirely new. Zelter had never performed it in public. I believed what he had said about playing it just for me. But somehow, after just that one listen, I was able to recreate it in all its splendour.’

‘I do not know how long I played that glorious music, ignoring the body bleeding at my side, lost in the enchantment of those notes. I stopped only to drink more wine and the drunker I became, the more wonderful the music sounded. And then, as I played, I began to realise what had happened. Zelter’s death had created some kind of union with the dulcimer. Along with his blood it had drunk his essence, his genius, and passed it on to me. It was a vampire, but a vampire of creativity. If you listen to Doktor Morfran he will tell you that this was when I truly lost my mind, but I swear to you, Varamis, what I did next was not of my own volition.’

Varamis was troubled by the image of Zelter’s death and he was scouring his memory for a time that the young composer had been seen in the academies since he premiered his threnody. He could think of none. ‘What did you do next?’ he asked.

‘I changed,’ answered Kolchev. ‘I became something other than a man. I see your doubt, Varamis, but I know that the dulcimer changed me. It was acting through me. It was the dulcimer that then sent the message to Demetrias, requesting that he visit me and play me his latest piece.’

Varamis shook his head. ‘You didn’t. I will not believe it.’

‘I did, and you must believe it.’

‘And once he had played?’

‘There was another fall. Another death.’

‘You pushed him?’

Kolchev would not answer.

‘But two deaths, Kolchev. Do you expect me to believe they would go unnoticed?’

‘I am no fool. I chose Demetrias not just for his genius. He was a loner. Even more so than I was. Months would go by before he was missed. But still, I knew it was only a matter of time before I was discovered.’

Varamis began pacing around the room. ‘So that was the reason for the fire. To cover your tracks. To make sure no bodies would be found.’

‘In part, but it was more than that. As I played Demetrias’ masterpiece, note for note, knowing that it was now mine, I could already feel a hunger growing in me, a hunger for more. That cursed instrument had me in its grasp. It was insatiable. It was going to demand that I feed it again. I had to destroy it. I threw it in a corner of the cellar with the two corpses, drenched them in oil and set it alight. But the damned thing resisted! The flames would not hold. They leapt from the metal and latched onto me. They looked like dazzling serpents, snatching at my face. The corpses went up like torches but the dulcimer was immune, gleaming and impervious. As the cellars filled with flames I battled to reach it, but the heat forced me back to the stairs. When my father’s servants arrived I begged them to burn the rest of the house down, but they would not listen.’

Varamis looked at his friend’s blistered face, imagining the scene: Kolchev, convinced that his lunacy stemmed from a dulcimer, battling the flames as his victims burned. It was dreadful, all the more so because he was starting to believe that Kolchev really had killed those poor men. His obsession with perfection and greatness had driven him utterly insane. It was even more of a tragedy than he had anticipated. Rather than one life being ruined, he now suspected that the world had been robbed of three great minds.

‘You have to go there for me,’ said Kolchev. ‘I can never leave this place, but you could go to the house and enter the cellars. I can tell you the route to the hidden chamber. Find it, Varamis, and destroy it. The thing is utterly evil. If you do not destroy it, there will be other fools like me, willing to do its grisly bidding.’

Varamis shook his head. ‘I cannot burn down your ancestral home, Kolchev. You do not want me to deceive you, so I won’t. I will not be able to do what you’re asking.’

Kolchev howled and struggled, letting out a bestial keening sound.

‘Wait!’ cried Varamis. His time was almost up and he could not bear to leave his friend like this. He doubted they would ever meet again. ‘Wait!’ he repeated. ‘Listen!’

Kolchev took a long time to calm himself, but finally managed to look down at Varamis.

‘I can’t do what you ask, but I will make you a promise,’ said Varamis. ‘I will go to Fevos House and find the cellar you described. And if the dulcimer is there, as you claim, I will have it destroyed.’

Kolchev was shivering and twitching almost as much as when the electric was passing through his veins but he managed to answer. ‘You swear it?’

‘I swear it. If the thought of that instrument is causing you such torment I will destroy it. Whatever alloy it is made of, there will be a furnace hot enough to melt it.’

Kolchev continued twitching and staring wildly at Varamis, then slumped in his bonds with a sigh. He closed his eyes and let his head rock back on his shoulders. ‘You swear?’

‘I swear.’

Fevos House, five miles east of Xeradrus City, Holy Terra

Varamis ducked as a freight hauler roared overhead, so hazed by smog that it looked like a phantom slicing through the gloom. He felt like a criminal, though he could not say exactly why. He had approached Fevos House from the rear, leaving his groundcar half a mile away and clambering down the landslide of prehistoric ruins that loomed over the Kolchev estate. Like most of Terra’s great houses, Fevos was surrounded on all sides by centuries of accumulated rubble and detritus, mountainous edifices so worn by time and war that they looked more like geology than architecture. Varamis had to hurry through several shanty towns before he reached the remains of Fevos’ outer walls. He clambered into the courtyard and made for one of the servants’ entrances. He had never approached the house from this direction and his sense of unease grew. He wished he could head back to the city and forget his promise to Kolchev, but he knew he could not. Everything good in his life stemmed from the old man’s patient tutelage. Varamis’ career as a musician would have never begun if Kolchev had not seen a spark of talent in him. He owed the old man this one last favour.

The door was locked, but Kolchev had told Varamis all the security codes and he tapped the runeboard quickly, scurrying inside before he was seen.

There was no power in the house and the glow-globes that lined the walls remained dark. Varamis pulled some shutters open, spilling wan light into the servants’ dining room. Everything was thick with dust, and rats scattered at his approach. He hurried on down a long corridor into areas of the house he recalled from Kolchev’s recitals. He found the stairs to the cellars at the back of the kitchens and lifted the hatch. The smell of charred wood rushed up to greet him.

Varamis hesitated, peering down the worn steps, picturing faces in the darkness: Demetrias and Zelter, drenched in blood as Kolchev played music over their corpses.

He took out a lumen and flicked it on, spilling light down the steps.

His fear grew so great that he wondered if he might have to give up. But his promise filled him with resolve and he climbed down the steps.

As he reached the bottom, something rushed towards him from the shadows.

Varamis howled, pointing his lumen at the shape.

It was paper, just a few sheets, covered in musical notation. They had been disturbed by the draft Varamis admitted when he opened the hatch.

He cursed himself and pressed on, passing through the cellars until he reached the hidden door that Kolchev had described. The incident with the paper had made him see how foolish he was being. What was there down here that could harm him? He shoved the door open and the smell of burning increased. Smoke still lingered in the air and he coughed a few times as the acrid smell hit the back of his throat.

It did not take him long to find the two bodies. Part of him had hoped that Kolchev’s delusions were so profound that he had imagined the deaths, but he could recognise the remnants of Zelter’s burned clothes so he assumed the other body must be Demetrias. He had seen dead bodies before, but never of his friends. He stared at the blackened shapes for a long time, too saddened to continue. The thought of helping Kolchev with one last good deed had felt like a glimmer of light, but now, seeing the bodies, he felt like he was partaking in some vile conspiracy. He would have to contact the men’s families and make sure they at least knew what had happened in this tragic place.

As he cast his light over the bodies, it glinted on a silver frame. Like the bodies, Varamis had half-hoped not to find the dulcimer, but there it was, resting on a mound of ashes, glinting merrily in the darkness. It occurred to him that, once the deaths were revealed, the instrument would most likely be taken away as evidence. He would lose his chance to fulfil his promise of destroying it. Unless he did that first.

‘I will come back for you,’ he whispered to the corpses, unnerved by the sound of his own voice. ‘Once this thing is melted. I promise you.’

He stepped past the bodies and grabbed the dulcimer, surprised by how heavy it felt. Then he headed back through the cellars and up the stairs.

As he re-entered the kitchens, the increased light revealed that Kolchev had been right in one respect, at least. The thing was beautiful.

Varamis placed it on a table and ran his fingers over the engravings. As his fingers brushed against the strings a chord rang out, echoing around the house.

The sound was bright and clear. He strummed it again, fretting a different chord and, in a wonderful rush, he thought of a whole progression that could follow the first two chords. He had never composed in his life, but as he played the dulcimer he realised that he had stumbled across something wonderful and unique.

He sat down in a chair and began to play in earnest, an entire symphony forming in his head.

Minutes bled into hours and Varamis remained hunched over the dulcimer, his face rigid with concentration.

After a long time, he started to smile.

THESE HANDS, THESE WINGS

Lora Gray

When morning hobbles, weak and pale, through the windows of Uncle Ourii’s farmhouse, Myles remembers his mother’s voice. It wraps dreamily around him as he wakes, warmer than the thin blanket Uncle Ourii gave him for his cot on the stone floor beside the hearth. He remembers a lullaby about a baby in a cradle that she sang to him when he was little, and another song about a flock of birds ushering in the night, their black wings covering the world in darkness, their starry eyes twinkling. Myles used to dream about their feathers enfolding him like his mother’s arms, soft and safe.

Nothing feels safe any more.

Myles rubs sleep from his eyes and sits up, his dirty fists smudging his cheeks. The kitchen is a tangle of dust and sour smells, rotten and mouldy. Outside, a pair of Uncle Ourii’s farmhands are talking, their words hushed beneath the rumble-clank of a plough. There are locusts with faces white as bone, they whisper, and disembodied voices in the onion patch, a heifer spouting blood instead of milk.

‘Necroquake,’ one of them says.

‘Death magic,’ says the other, and the morning breeze twitches, stiff and unnaturally cool, through the kitchen window.

Myles wonders. Is it the same magic that stole Mother’s breath away and made her blue and still? That lifted Father into that tree and left him there, twisted and boneless as a tossed puppet? That makes Uncle Ourii’s sows gore their piglets, that sends the geese flying headlong into silos? Is it the same magic that makes his uncle’s farmhands run away in the night?

There aren’t many of them left.

Every time Uncle Ourii wakes to a vacant bed in the workhouse, he curses them as cowards, screams and throws milk jugs and plates.

Sometimes, Uncle Ourii hits.

From the bedroom at the top of the stairs, there is a grumble. A snort. A pair of heavy thumps as Uncle Ourii gets up and out of bed.

Myles’ heart kicks like a trapped rabbit. He scurries to his feet, shoving his cot into the corner where his uncle won’t trip over it. He has to collect this morning’s eggs (if the hens aren’t too terrified to lay), and he doesn’t want to risk Ourii’s temper. His shoulder is still sore from where his uncle wrenched him awake when he overslept two days ago.

Myles is nearly to the door, egg basket clutched in one hand, when Ourii lumbers down the stairs. He is a mountain of broad shoulders and hulking arms, knob-knuckled hands scratching through grizzled hair. Where Father’s smiles carved laugh lines into his cheeks, Ourii has paunches. His eyes are hooded and bloodshot. His mouth is gripping the same snarl Myles was greeted with when he came to live with Ourii six months ago, after his parents died.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Ourii’s voice cracks through the kitchen.

Myles freezes, careful to keep his head lowered, eyes trained on his bare toes. They curl as if trying to hide beneath his own feet. ‘To the chicken coop.’

‘Put that basket down, boy.’ Ourii coughs, rattling and wet, and spits on the stone floor. ‘Why isn’t the hearth lit?’

Myles hesitates. If he puts the basket down, will Uncle Ourii accuse him of being lazy? Will he have to collect those eggs with his bare hands, punished for every one he drops? ‘It’s summer, Uncle,’ he finally manages. ‘You said not to waste the tinder. I’ll collect the eggs, I promise. I’ll be quick. I’ll–’

‘Shyish damn it all.’ Ourii strides across the kitchen, hands fisted and bristling. Myles flinches against the door, shielding his bruised shoulder with the basket, but Ourii shoves past him, his eyes fixed on the window. ‘Hemri, why aren’t you with the cattle?’ he shouts to the farmhands outside. ‘Are you daft? Stupid? I can’t spare two men to a plough!’

Ourii shakes his head, huffing as he turns back to Myles. ‘The hens can wait. Put your boots on. You’re old enough to scare crows out of the corn, even if your head is thick as wool. The snares I set aren’t working. Maybe you’ll earn your keep for once.’

Myles is startled enough to raise his head. Mother never let him go into the fields alone. There are savage warbands wandering the countryside, and terrible, formless spectres that would think nothing of devouring an entire village, let alone a poor, solitary boy.

‘What about the scarecrows?’ Myles asks before he can think better of it, but Ourii is staring out the window, his attention fixed on something distant Myles can’t see.

‘You ever hear of Mhurghast, boy? There’re tales of scarecrows coming to life there. Carried by cursed mists. Flying, some say. Howling in the night. Killing. Who knows what else.’ Ourii shakes his head, his gaze unfocused. ‘I’ll not chance any more of that death magic here. Nagash has cursed us enough as it is.’

When Ourii turns back to Myles, he squints as if he has forgotten he is there and snatches the basket away from Myles so roughly that the handle scrapes his palm.

‘Which means you’re my scarecrow now.’ Ourii jabs a thick finger into Myles’ sore shoulder and laughs when he winces. His breath is rancid and sour-sweet. ‘You’re so scrawny, those damned birds will never know the difference. Now put your boots on before I have to put them on for you.’

Stay in the field, Uncle Ourii says.

Follow the path.

Find the old post.

Chase the crows away.

It should be easy. Myles is nearly thirteen, more than old enough, his uncle says, to do something so simple, but already, only a small distance into the corn, the hair on the back of Myles’ neck prickles. The corn towers over him despite how withered the stalks are. The field slopes away from the farmhouse so steeply he can barely see the peak of the thatched roof above the pock-marked ears. The air is thick; it sticks to the back of his tongue, musty and mealy.

Myles tucks his arms close to his chest, as if, by making himself small enough, he can hide from the thousand unseen somethings he can feel watching from the jumble of stalks that stretch all around him.

He wants to run home. Not to his uncle’s farmhouse. But home. To Mother and Father. Mother would wrap her arm around him, comforting and patient. Father would stand between him and those lurking, twisting shadows.

The rumble of cattle and carts, the farmhands’ chatter, his uncle’s shouting, fade into silence as he walks, and Myles’ footsteps seem impossibly loud in their absence. The remains of last year’s crop crackles beneath his boots. The living stalks shift and sway all around him, leaves drooping across the path as if grieving their dead cousins. Myles tries not to touch them, but no matter how gingerly he toes his way between them, the leaves caress him as he passes, slipping papery fingertips over his arms and the back of his neck.

Myles’ mouth is dry. His palms are itchy and damp. Maybe he could turn back, after all, hide in the corner of the chicken coop until nightfall. But if Uncle Ourii found him…

Myles rubs his sore shoulder, chews his lip and walks faster.

Stay in the field.

Follow the path.

Find the old post.

The sun quivers behind a cloud and the shadows around him darken, congealing, until they seem boy-shaped and hunched. Wraiths? Gheists? Myles thinks he can see, from the corner of his eye, grinning mouths in the dappled spaces between the stalks. The corn silks shush together, tonguing words he doesn’t understand into the sallow air.

Nobody will really care if he disappears in the deep corn. Nobody will notice if these shadows eat him alive. Mother and Father are dead. The corn whispers.

Myles quickens his pace.

The shadows laugh.

Myles sprints, headlong and heedless, leaves slapping his cheeks and arms, snatching after him with greedy, serrated hands, biting his bare skin.

He stumbles into the clearing with a gasp. The old wooden post is there, a tall, splintered stump in the centre of a straw-strewn circle. Myles clambers up it, trampling the remnants of dismembered scarecrows, scraps of fabric the colour of old blood, sticks splayed like hands half buried in decades of soggy straw breaking beneath his feet. A crooked nail scrapes his elbow. A splinter lances his thigh through his threadbare breeches. Myles slips, skids, heaves himself up onto the top of the post and curls his knees to his chest, panting and trembling.

He isn’t a child. He’s almost thirteen.

But he wants his mother.

Because there are whispers coming from the edge of the field where the corn meets the treeline, inhuman voices, growing louder and louder. Closer and closer. Roiling. Cackling.

Cawing.

The crows erupt over the trees, a burst of black wings and bright cries. Myles flinches, instinct and his still-pattering heart telling him to duck. Uncle Ourii says the crows are cursed, after all. They’re evil. Possessed by Nagash’s death magic. They’ll eat them out of house and home, destroy the farm.

But the crows don’t fly into the field just yet. They wing a wide circle before settling into the trees, just beyond the loops of wire his uncle has strung as snares. One by one, they arrange themselves on the branches and survey the field.

For a while, they seem sombre and cautious. Myles can’t blame them. The air feels curdled and heavy, as if waiting for a storm. But soon the crows grow restless. They begin hopping from branch to branch. They bob their heads. They fluff and flutter. They preen and chortle and dance.

Are they playing? Myles wonders. They sound almost happy. Myles can’t remember the last time he sounded that happy.

They don’t seem evil. They just seem like birds, big and sleek, black feathers shining on the gentle slope of their shoulders. They’re almost pretty. There are thirteen of them, Myles counts and, to pass the time, he names them. Biddy. Nod. Old One Eye. Little Jack. Would Mother sing songs about them if she were here? Are there lullabies buried in the rough prattle of their voices? The thought eases some of the tightness in Myles’ chest. He smiles and imagines them smiling back.

He is sitting at the edge of the post, feet dangling, kicking idly as he nibbles on the heel of stale bread his uncle gave him for his lunch when the crows finally fly into the corn. There is a sudden ruckus in the trees, a chaos of black wings, and then the crows rise together, cresting high above the stalks for a quick moment before swooping out of sight and into the corn.

Myles scrambles to his feet, rising on his tiptoes to try to see them, but they are barely visible beneath the stalks, nothing but inky flutters bobbing up and down in the corn.

‘Hey!’ Myles’ voice is a high-pitched shock in the summer air.

The crows take to the air, but quickly settle back into the corn once more.

Myles hesitates and then, taking a deep breath, he climbs from the post and runs into the corn towards them, his legs pumping hard, praying that if he’s fast enough, those hunched shadows that followed him into the field won’t find him again.

The crows startle when Myles rounds the corner and skids to a halt. Mutilated ears scatter as they take flight, the husks peeled back, the exposed kernels pale as jagged smiles deep in the gloom beneath the stalks.

Only two crows remain: Old One Eye and Little Jack. Little Jack waddles awkwardly back and forth, his nest feathers ruffling on his tiny shoulders, as if uncertain of how to launch himself into the air with the corn so close. Old One Eye, ragged, scarred, and nearly as tall as Myles’ hip, angles himself between Myles and Little Jack. His size is unnerving as he squares himself to Myles, protecting the younger bird, cawing as he spreads his wings wide.

‘Hello.’ Myles’ voice quavers.

He shouldn’t be talking to these crows instead of chasing them. Uncle Ourii would be furious if he knew. But Myles likes this crow, the way it minces back towards Little Jack, protecting him the way Father protected Myles when he was small.

Very carefully, Myles licks his lips, wills his hands to stop shaking, and rips a small piece of stale bread from the heel in his hand. He tosses it towards the crows. They dance away from the bread, Old One Eye braying at him.

‘You…You should eat that,’ Myles says.

Old One Eye hesitates, still barricading himself between Jack and Myles.

‘I won’t hurt you.’

The crow shifts uncertainly and creeps forward, nipping the bread from the ground before hopping away again.

He doesn’t eat it.

He gives it to Little Jack.

There’s an ache in Myles’ chest as he watches. For a moment, all the fear, the dark magic cursing his uncle’s farm, the six months of crying and screaming and pain and beatings seem far away.

When the Old One Eye and Little Jack finally fly up and away from the corn to join the rest of the flock, their wings filling the sky above him with soft feathered darkness, Myles holds his breath. They move together, a family, Little Jack nestled in the centre, protected and safe.

Myles has learned not to linger inside at supper time. It doesn’t matter if he tucks himself into the corner of the farmhouse kitchen to wait for his uncle’s scraps. It doesn’t matter if he keeps his head down and his eyes averted. If Uncle Ourii sees him, he seethes, shouts, and accuses Myles of staring, of begging.

Uncle Ourii hates beggars.

So, Myles waits outside for his uncle to finish eating, and perches himself on the tree beside the kitchen window. The fatty scent of poached eggs and roast chicken tugs a grumble from his belly and Myles tries not to think about how good being full feels. He chews on his finger instead.

He thinks about his crows.

If he closes his eyes, Myles can see them. They flutter into that squat little tree beside him, soft wings brushing against his shoulders and back. Myles wriggles his fingers. If he pretends hard enough, his hands grow, longer and longer until they are wings. His toes sharpen into talons, sturdy and strong. He crooks his head, ruffles his feathers and laughs. No. Boys laugh. Crows caw. He tips his head back and squawks quietly in a language only he and his new friends understand.

He imagines flapping to the kitchen window, waiting on the sill for his uncle to turn his back. He will fly inside, steal a morsel of chicken, the rich, dark meat soft between his toes as he wings away. He’ll share it with his friends. He’ll make sure every crow gets a piece of that chicken, especially Little Jack. They’ll pass it back and forth, grease running thick and warm down their beaks, cawing happily.

And if Uncle Ourii tries to take that chicken away from them? If he tries to hurt Old One Eye and Little Jack and the others? Myles will dig his talons into his uncle’s arm, slice him open, flay him elbow to wrist. He’ll hurt him.

He’ll make him bleed.

‘What are you doing, boy?’

Myles jerks so violently, he nearly falls out of the tree. His feathers dissolve, his wings shrivel back into skinny, pale hands and he is left exposed, perched awkwardly on a low branch.

Uncle Ourii holds a bowl of scraps in one hand and Myles can see veins of meat clinging to chicken bones, worms of gristle glistening in the low sun.

‘I said, what are you doing?’

Myles eyes are fixed on the bowl, his belly aching as he climbs down. ‘Playing crow.’

‘Playing crow? Is that what you were doing in the field all day? Playing crow?’

There is a dangerous pitch to Ourii’s voice, a tight-jawed gravel that Myles knows from six months of angry fists and bruises. He should know better than to do anything other than bow his head and lower his eyes, but Myles is hungry and tired and all he really wants is a few bites of food, and then to disappear back into a world of warm feathers and soft dreamy darkness until tomorrow when he can find his crows again.

Uncle Ourii cuffs him, sharply, viciously, hard enough to knock Myles off his feet. He smacks the ground, pain shooting over the side of his temple and jaw. His mouth fills with blood and Myles gasps, chokes, turns, and spits. A tooth tumbles out, a white kernel in a puddle of watery blood.

Myles stares in shock at the tooth, small and pale and alone. He tongues the gaping hole against his lip and reaches down, instinctively, for his lost tooth, as if retrieving it would somehow put things right again, but Uncle Ourii fists his collar with a gnarled hand and drags him upright.

There is wine in the syrupy stink of Uncle Ourii’s breath. Wine and hate and that same musky rot that seems to leech out of the corn stalks. ‘I didn’t send you into that field to play with those birds! Do you think this is a game? Do you think it’s funny? Those crows are cursed by Nagash! They’ll be the death of this farm, you ungrateful boy! I don’t have to keep you. Damn it all, I don’t have to keep you!’

Tears well in Myles’ eyes. ‘I was only–’

Uncle Ourii throws the bowl to the ground with a clatter, the scraps scattering over the bloody puddle and Myles’ lost tooth. When Myles squirms to reach for it, to pull away, run away, fly away, Ourii hits him again.

And again.

And again.

That night, Myles dreams of flight. He stands high on a rise of naked earth, shadows all around him, rising tall and thin as corn stalks. They bristle. They sprout wings and beaks. They throw their heads back and howl and Myles joins them, his voice gleeful and bright. They gather, lifting him between them, his friends, his family, cradling him as they take to the sky, blood in the air.

Myles wakes to stiff bruises and a cold cot, an aching temple, and a fat and throbbing lip.

He doesn’t wait for Ourii to rise.

He hurries away from the farmhouse. A mist, heavier than Myles has ever seen, has descended over the farm, wave upon wave of damp, white fog, roiling in from the north, sunrise a vague, reddish haze bleeding over the horizon. The chickens in the coop are silent as he hurries past. The cows haven’t yet begun to low. If any of the farmhands are awake, the mist has smothered their voices.

Even the cornfield is barely visible as Myles patters across the wet earth. It’s a heavy shape, hulking and dark, a wall of uneven, indistinct spikes sloping away from the farm, growing harder and harder to see as the mist thickens. He imagines those stalks, rising up and around him like a fortress where only his crows will find him and he runs faster.

Myles hears the ruffling first, a frantic twisting in the dry leaves at the edge of the corn, and beneath it, faint, gurgling sounds that warble into silence the closer he gets. Myles slows, stooping to see through the heavy mist, easing the cornstalks apart as he enters the field, the dead leaves slick beneath his bare feet.

He nearly steps on Old One Eye.

The crow is splayed against a stalk, one wing snapped at an unnatural angle, one of Uncle Ourii’s wire snares tangled around it. The crow’s feet scrabble at the sight of Myles, the injured wing slugging behind him. Old One Eye stumbles and caws, his voice barking through the morning air, but the mist folds around the sound, quashing it almost immediately. Myles turns in an uneasy circle, looking up and through the stalks, but he can see almost nothing but the heavy mist now. Have the other crows abandoned Old One Eye? Did they lose him in the fog?

Heart galloping into his throat, Myles squats, whispering as Old One Eye tries to hobble away from him.

‘It’s all right. I’m hurt too. See?’ He turns his face, bruise-side, to the crow. ‘I’m like you.’

Old One Eye moves away, attempting to use his beak to shimmy onto one of the stalks, but he topples down again, squawking and thrashing before sagging into exhausted stillness. The crow’s single eye is still bright, even in the heavy fog, but he is breathing heavily. Myles tells himself that sour smell drifting through the air is just the corn stalks. Because Old One Eye can’t die. Who will protect Little Jack if he dies?

‘You just need food.’ Myles ambles to his feet, stretching high on his toes to yank one of the ears from its stalk. A part of him sparks gleefully at the thought of stealing that corn, disobeying his uncle, taking from him, hurting him.

Myles sits back down, the corn between his legs, and begins tugging the husk away in long strips. He can feel the kernels beneath the thin fibre, strangely ridged and hard. Is the corn unripe? He’s never actually harvested corn before and he isn’t certain. The kernels are pale and full when he finally exposes them, but instead of row upon row of perfectly round domes, the kernels are dimpled and uneven. Myles frowns, tonguing at the sore, empty space in his mouth as he wriggles his fingers around one of the unnaturally firm kernels and plucks it out, to make certain it’s safe for Old One Eye to eat. The kernel dislodges with a wet spurt into his palm. Hard as rock. Hard as bone.

It isn’t corn at all.

It’s a tooth.

It oozes at the root, jagged where it broke from the fleshy, pink cob.

Myles’ breath seizes in his throat, and he drops the half-husked ear, hand clamped to his own mouth. The cob rolls, teeth gleaming, the grey-green leaves peeling back like uneven lips, the single, gaping hole bleeding onto the ground.

Old One Eye watches intently before rising and tottering towards it, dragging his broken wing behind. The crow pauses, tips his head and nudges the ‘corn’ with his beak before digging into it. He chortles, clicks his narrow tongue and snaps at the cob, tugging and plucking a tooth free with a squelch. He tosses the tooth aside to dig at the meat beneath, ripping strips of flesh from deep inside. He grabs another tooth and another, tossing them beneath the corn, gore seeping from the ravaged cob.

Myles digs his fingers into the earth, his head buzzing, his pulse racing. When Old One Eye turns back to him, there is blood on his beak, thin and dripping. The crow cocks his head, his single eye gleaming and Myles tells himself not to be afraid. This is his friend. If Old One Eye wouldn’t hurt Little Jack, why would he hurt him? Myles grips the stalk behind him, his breath shallow, his lips slightly parted.

Bobbing his head, Old One Eye snuffles before limping closer, toeing his way around the discarded teeth. The air is thick as milk as Old One Eye moves closer, grows bigger, climbs up and onto Myles’ leg with ragged talons. His beak is crooked and pock-marked and wet. Very slowly, Old One Eye cocks his head. He angles closer, his beak dipping towards Myles’ parted mouth and the pulpy gap there where his tooth used to live.

‘Boy!’

Ourii’s voice slaps Old One Eye off Myles’ knee, and Myles turns to see his uncle hulking into the field, his bulk punching through the mist until he looms, scowling and furious. His hair is dishevelled. His eyes are red. There is a spade in his hand.

‘What are you doing? This mist is cursed! For the love of–’

Myles watches the rage unfold on his uncle’s face, the quick peel of shock at the sight of the crow at Myles’ feet, the ‘corn’ scattered all around them, a piece of husk still gripped in Myles’ hand.

‘What did I tell you?’ Ourii’s voice breaks. ‘What did I tell you?!’

Ourii draws his arm up and back. There is a flash of metal, an airy whistle and Ourii swings the spade so quickly, Myles only registers what his uncle is doing a moment before the spade hits home. There is a soupy clunk, a strangled cry, thin and wailing as a baby’s. Blood spurts over the stalks. Old One Eye’s head snaps and twists, his whole body heaving, and he caws, so loudly the mist can’t contain it. The sound shatters the fog, pealing clear and sharp as a bell.

Ourii swings again, the metal spade splintering bone, and then Old One Eye is still, a lump of black feathers, teeth scattered around him, his ruined head turned towards Myles, his single eye popped from its socket and shining.

There is a wail, so high-pitched and piercing that Myles doesn’t understand it’s him that’s making it until he is on his uncle, punching and kicking and clawing at his arm, pain and grief boiling up and through him so quickly that he can’t feel fear. Only heat, white hot and devastating.

Ourii staggers back before knocking Myles cleanly to the ground with a crack of his free arm. ‘What is wrong with you?!’

But Myles is scrambling to his feet again. The shadows are all around him, thick and heavy despite the mist, boy-shaped, hunched and howling, hands spreading wide as wings as Myles digs his hands into the earth and launches himself at Ourii. The stalks gasp, sawing together, swaying, keening, when Ourii raises his spade again, aimed at Myles’ skull.

The blow never lands.

The murder of crows smashes through the fog, a blast of dark bodies battering the corn like a sudden, terrible wind. They rend the ears from their stalks. Husks and teeth burst apart as they shred their way into the grey-green field, a blind frenzy that latches onto Ourii with talons and beaks, wings snapping and churning. Ourii bellows, voice thick and cursing. Myles shields Old One Eye’s body as his uncle flails beneath the onslaught, ducking as he flings the spade desperately from side to side, trying to smack them from the sky. But the crows are grappling with his arms and hands, shearing his cheeks to ribbons. One flies away with a fistful of hair and a dripping carpet of scalp. Another rips a heavy chunk from Ourii’s left ear.

There are too many of them. There have always been too many of them, and they dive and wheel, screeching gleefully, as if they have waited a lifetime for this moment, blood spilling from their crooked beaks. There is a garbled scream and Myles sees one of the crows wing up and away, a grape-sized something clenched in his talons.

His uncle drops the spade and crumples to his knees, clutching at his empty eye socket, blood gushing between his fingers.

Myles rises. He picks up the spade. It’s warm in his hands. Slick. Heavy. He doesn’t think twice as he draws it up and back, the crows parting to make room as he swings it as hard as he can at his uncle’s head. The spade hits with a crunch that rattles Myles’ arms and Uncle Ourii falls back, howling, his jaw askew and broken.

There is a moment of terror, Ourii’s eyes meeting Myles’ through the cloud of shrieking birds, murder boiling in his gaze when he sees the spade in Myles’ hand.

But Myles swings again, harder this time. He strikes Ourii’s belly, his neck, his shoulder, his face. There’s a pop, bone cracking, crunching, slopping as the spade finally pierces his uncle’s skull.

Again, Myles swings.

And again.

And again.

Until there is nothing recognisable about Ourii’s face, just an uneven mess of bone and fat, lips torn, gaping holes and oozing blossoms of grey and white and red where ears and hair and eyes used to be.

Myles drops the spade, his hands quaking and numb as the crows swoop past him and onto Ourii’s body. They dig deep into the ruin of his face, plucking tooth after tooth from his fractured mouth and dropping them, long and rooted, old and dead, onto the ground.

Myles watches, his breath becoming slow and even.

When at last, the frenzy ends, Myles is laughing. Cawing. Crowing.

When the mist, thick with death magic, finally sloughs away from the corn field, the crows take flight. One by one, their wings dark and soft, they rise.

And Myles follows them, his head thrown back, his arms spread wide.

Crows darkening the sky above him, he runs away from his uncle’s body.

Hands like wings, he flies.

VOX DAEMONICUS

James Forster

Josun looked to the anatomical drawing, framed behind dirty glass on the wall. He knew it by heart, but still he appreciated the image of the grox – a great, humped reptile covered in tusks and horns. He’d never actually seen one alive. The hive plotters, in their voracious pursuit of manufacturing and living space, had long ago brutalised the planet’s ecosystem beyond recovery.

Instead, agri worlds across the sector exported grox by the millions to the planet’s orbital shipyards. Once the animals arrived on-site, their meat was prepared for the hive world’s populace of more than twenty billion Imperial citizens.

‘When can I learn how to use the gun?’ Marcus asked. His eyes flitted down to the laspistol that Josun kept under the counter in case of robbers.

Josun frowned and considered Marcus’ fascination with the weapon. The history books said that the Imperium of Man had always been at war: total war, war that fuelled the manufacturing guilds and stoked the fires of faith in the hearts and minds of the human race. Josun knew that he should be grateful for that. Out on the agri worlds closer to the sector core, butchers like him profited greatly. Billions-strong armies had billions of mouths that needed feeding, after all.

But Josun wondered if perhaps he’d raised his son on too much ‘Imperial literature’ – too many stories about Space Marines. They were superhuman knights of myth and legend, and it was understood that every young boy wanted to join their ranks when they grew up. It didn’t help that in many of the stories, the Space Marines actually recruited children and transformed them, either through science or magic or a combination of the two, into new warriors.

Josun couldn’t say for sure whether they were even real, or whether they were just propaganda devices, something to put on stained-glass windows.

Josun picked up the laspistol. The safety was on, the charge pack detached.

‘We only own this so we can protect ourselves,’ Josun said to his son. ‘It’s not a toy, and we don’t have it so that we can try to be heroes. If we use it right, we never need to fire it. Just scare people away, in case they come in here with clubs or knives.’

The middle district wasn’t as bad as the lower hive, where people lived by the gun and blade and died by them just as quickly, but robberies were still commonplace. Luckily, they had never targeted the slaughter-shop in Marcus’ lifetime.

Josun rolled up the carcass of the grox that he’d been stripping, removing the chainmail gauntlets from his hands. He put his knife to one side and hung the carcass from a meat hook set into a track on a ceiling. Heaving the weight of the meat, he pulled the carcass along the track into the cryo-locker.

‘Time to head home,’ he said.

As Josun and Marcus weaved along the rockcrete pavement, passing between parked groundcars and hovering Land Speeders, they turned at the row of churches that were now disgorging their evening parishioners. Laud-hailers, great speakers sculpted into the shapes of trumpeting cherubs and angels, stood on columns scattered around the square. Hymns blared from the hailers, hurting Josun’s ears the closer he got to them. Would it kill the clergy to turn down the music just a touch?

A huge statue of a Space Marine, dome-shouldered in its power armour and standing a dozen metres tall, glared down at him disapprovingly as a holy chorus blasted from its stone helmet. Josun reminded himself that he always attended the mandatory morning masses, and as such was guilty of no heresy.

The statue seemed unimpressed.

Josun heard a few crackles of static. The hymns cut in and out before quieting to silence. Several pilgrims and churchgoers stared up at the laud-hailers in confusion.

The hailers began to broadcast a heavy slapping sound. Several passers-by craned their necks to stare up at the hailers, confused. Josun frowned. The sound was somehow familiar to him.

After a moment he recognised it – wet meat hitting a hard surface; the chop of a cleaver cutting through flesh and bone. Josun made out the snick of a blade slicing fat away from meat. A rattling hum, like some sort of vehicle engine or generator, rang in the background.

Josun had heard those sounds a thousand times before. But he didn’t recognise the baleful chanting, the strange whispers that issued forth in languages that he didn’t know, the words that hurt his ears just to hear them.

The laud-hailers started to blare screams that curdled Josun’s blood like sour milk. The meat-chopping, fat-slicing noises continued as the howls of pain and fear escalated. He may have recognised sounds of the butcher’s craft, but he’d never heard screams like those before.

Josun looked around to see how the other people in the street were reacting. They stood around like scarecrows, seemingly there but also not quite present, staring at the laud-hailers with mouths hanging open. In all honesty, Josun would’ve preferred that they’d started running, yelling for help. If everyone had fled, he would’ve known that the danger was real, would have known what to do – to grab his son and run.

As it was, the legion of silent bystanders left him paralysed. He didn’t want to be the one to break first, to start a stampede out of the street. Somehow, not knowing or not whether this was just a sick prank was even worse than if the emergency klaxons had just gone off.

A voice spoke over the hailers. It was deep, far deeper than any human voice had a right to be. The strength and power in it left Josun feeling sick to the stomach, as strange vibrations coursed through his guts. A mechanical reverb tinged the speaker’s words, as if he spoke through some kind of modulator.

‘Ave dominus nox,’ the voice spoke. That wasn’t a local accent – it was a guttural, rasping thing with jagged consonants. Every word sounded like an executioner’s axe striking against the block, chipping away sharp splinters of stone.

Josun recognised the High Gothic. He wasn’t fluent in it, but he’d heard enough of the highborn tongue at sermons and masses. The people in the street looked at each other in similar confusion, also recognising the language but not the words or their meaning. Josun could see they were filled with fright regardless.

‘We are coming for you.’

Marcus felt his father’s hand on his shoulder as they steered away into a side alley. The sound of bone snapping and yells of pain cracked in his ear. Marcus turned his head to see several people going down under the charging stampede of citizens trying to flee the area.

The rush of people clobbered one man down to the ground. As they ran, they stomped on his back and skull, smashing his head into the pavement over and over again. His face turned into a red mask and eventually he stopped trying to lift his head back up. He stopped moving altogether.

Black-clad enforcers in riot padding pushed back against the crowds, trying to keep them confined to the main square. They swung their shock batons, and some of the civilians who tried to shove past ended up twitching on the ground. However, for all the enforcers’ efforts, there were too many. Several people made it through, overwhelming the faltering cordon.

Marcus heard a bang – the loudest sound he’d ever heard in his life. It must have been a gunshot – not the crackling hiss of a laspistol but a real, solid-ammunition gunshot. He couldn’t be sure who had fired. One of the crowd? An enforcer?

At the sound, both sides tore into each other like packs of wild animals. Men and women clawed at black-visored helmets as the enforcers savagely clubbed the civilians. Marcus heard glass shattering. The line of enforcers collapsed as the civilians stampeded past and swarmed out into the streets beyond, a flood of water breaking through a dam.

Sirens flashed as enforcer groundcars rushed in to support the riot control teams. One civilian charged an oncoming car. It hit him square in the knees and he rolled up onto the windshield, over the roof and down the back. A second groundcar crushed several of the dying man’s bones under its wheels as it followed. The man’s screams and the cracking noises that followed sounded just like the nightmares from the laud-hailers.

‘Back to the shop,’ his father said breathlessly. ‘Come on, back to the shop!’ When Marcus didn’t move – his feet felt rooted to the ground – his father took him by the wrist and started to tug him.

As they turned a corner, they saw a pair of black riot shields moving towards them down the alleyway. Father put his hands up; Marcus mimicked him. The enforcers had laspistols holstered at their sides – no point in giving them cause to draw them.

‘Both of you – get down on your knees and put your hands behind your backs,’ one of the enforcers called out. She pulled a heavy-looking set of steel manacles from her belt – her partner followed suit. ‘You’re both under arrest for exposure to a moral threat, participating in a civil disturbance, and evasion of intellectual quarantine.’

‘No, no,’ his father said, shaking his head. ‘Moral threat, what? No, we’re not participating in anything! We’re not trying to hurt anyone, we’re just trying to get out of here.’

‘Evasion of intellectual quarantine,’ she repeated as she locked the manacles around his father’s wrists. He didn’t resist, but he continued to protest.

‘Please! We aren’t trying to push through the blockade, we just want to get to safety. You can keep us here, fine, but listen – I own a shop, not too far from here. I can prove it, I’ve got a writ of labour! Please, just let us go back there, lie low until this all blows over.’

The enforcer paused. She looked at Marcus. ‘Where’s the writ?’

Father nodded down to a pocket on his coveralls. She reached down and unbuttoned it, pulling out a folded-up sheet of vellum, which she unfurled to read. Marcus knew the writ already. It was an authorisation to work on the land where the slaughter-shop stood. It would have their address on it. That was the only place that the writ permitted Marcus’ father to practise his trade.

‘My son,’ his father said as she read. Marcus thought it would have been better to shut up and let her think. ‘He’s so young. He doesn’t know what’s going on, he hasn’t been exposed to any moral threat!’

Marcus scowled at him and his father gave him a warning glare. Marcus understood exactly what was going on – someone had hijacked the laud-hailers and, as a result, the people of the district had heard something that the planetary administration didn’t want them to.

The enforcer looked to her partner, then back at the writ in her hands. She glanced towards her partner.

‘We have our orders,’ the other enforcer said. The manacles began to close around father’s wrists.

Marcus heard glass shattering again. Suddenly orange light filled the alleyway. A blast of heat hit the back of Marcus’ neck and he felt the hairs there curling.

Craning his neck to look over his shoulder, he saw an enforcer groundcar, its hood aflame, swerving out of control and smashing into the wall of a hab-block. Several rioters stalked towards it as the car’s driver staggered out.

After a few more agonising seconds, each of which sounded like an hour with the screams of beaten bodies and the blares of sirens as a backdrop, the enforcers came to their senses. In a flash the woman shoved past the pair of them and, with her partner in tow, ran down the alley towards the burning vehicle, laspistol in her hand.

Wasting no time, Marcus and his father ran in the opposite direction.

Josun tried not to shiver. He and Marcus hid in the cryo-locker in the basement of the slaughter-shop. The grox carcasses were all gone. In an attempt to hide from the prying eyes of the enforcers, Josun had tossed all the frozen meat out onto the street.

He’d also turned up the temperature of the locker so that he and Marcus could survive inside without freezing to death. The enforcers’ powerful auspex scanners could penetrate several sublayers of the hive district, but the cold of the cryo-locker would mask their heat signatures so that anyone looking for an easy arrest would have to search elsewhere.

If Josun had left the meat in the cryo-locker with them, it would have spoiled, and neither of them had any interest in being locked in a basement full of rotting meat. Plus, the meat outside the store would attract scavengers – wild canids, sump-rats and other vermin – that might scare away opportunistic looters. Anyone looking for food and water would probably assume that the slaughter-shop was empty of any useful supplies.

The problem is, they would have been right. Josun had a sink for cleaning off his tools but that water wasn’t good to drink. The front counter was full of meat but they were a butcher’s shop, not a tavern, and they didn’t have any way to cook it. They’d gone two days without food and water so far, and they were both weak and fatigued.

But they hadn’t dared to go outside. A few hours after they’d locked themselves away, the shelling had started. Josun had prayed to the God-Emperor every night that, even if artillery rounds hit and demolished the store, their locker would survive. He prayed again now, giving thanks to the Master of Mankind that fortune had favoured them with their own impromptu bomb shelter.

‘Shelling’s stopped,’ Marcus said. His eyes looked hollow. He hadn’t complained about the lack of food and water, not once, but Josun noticed he hadn’t prayed either. Two full days without prayer of any sort was as good as heresy. If Josun had the strength, he would have chastised his son for his impiety.

‘Who do you think it was?’ Marcus asked. ‘Heretics?’

Josun lifted his head and unwrapped his hands. Marcus was right – the last shell detonation had sounded a few hours ago. At least, Josun guessed it had been a few hours. He’d never been able to afford a wrist-chrono.

‘The shelling?’ Josun asked.

Marcus shrugged. ‘The shelling. The laud-hailers. I suppose it might not be the same people.’

Josun frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe heretics hacked into the vox network,’ Marcus said.

‘It’s just a technical malfunction with the hailer systems,’ Josun said.

Marcus frowned. ‘But what about the shelling?’ After a moment, he spoke again: ‘It could be the enforcers. They don’t want anyone getting out of the district.’

Josun shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t do that.’

He climbed to his feet. He felt dizzy from dehydration and sleep deprivation. ‘Stay here. Time for me to go.’

‘Go where?’ Marcus asked as he stood regardless. He grabbed one of the meat hooks hanging from a chain to steady himself.

‘Back to the hab,’ Josun said. ‘I can stock up on food and water, bring back supplies…’

‘No way,’ Marcus shook his head. ‘I’m not staying here by myself! Besides, you’re too weak to go on your own. You need another set of eyes watching your back.’

Josun braced himself to argue. Times like these brought out the worst in people, and those people were doubtless prowling the streets even now looking for easy prey.

But then nightmare images flashed through Josun’s mind, images of violent looters breaking into the slaughter-shop, forcing the cryo-locker door open and finding Marcus inside.

‘All right,’ Josun said, nodding in agreement. ‘All right.’

He and Marcus climbed the narrow rockcrete stairs up to the shop foyer. When they reached the sheet-metal door, Josun cracked it open slowly, checking for intruders.

The stink of rotting meat hit his nostrils as flies buzzed near a broken window. Someone had thrown a brick through it and the stink of the carcasses outside had wafted in, filling the shop.

Josun put a hand over his coveralls and patted his pocket. There – he felt the cold metal grip of the laspistol and pulled it out, making sure the safety was on. This time, the charge pack was attached.

Marcus could see that his father was scared. As they moved through the abandoned streets of the hive, Marcus watched his father jump at any sudden noise, hand straying to the laspistol in his pocket.

But Marcus knew that if push came to shove, his father wouldn’t want to shoot.

He considered offering to carry the gun himself, but he knew his father would say no. Marcus might have been more ready to use it, but he admitted to himself that he didn’t actually know how to.

Every so often they’d come across a body. His father would try to cover his eyes but Marcus would push away, determined to understand this terrible new world that they found themselves in. He saw the bodies of men and women that gunshots had slain, and he quickly figured out that bloodstained clothes meant a solid round of ammunition, like a bullet or a slug, had taken the life. Laspistol beams cauterised the wounds they made, leaving a blackened hole of singed fabric and flesh as a kill marker. He saw civilians with caved-in skulls and burnt faces – bad electrical burns, the calling cards of shock batons turned up to their maximum setting.

As he scanned the sidewalk he heard gunshots, and his father wrapped an arm around his son’s waist, pulling him down behind an upturned waste-compactor. Marcus cursed himself. He’d been so fascinated in the grim forensics of the aftermath that he hadn’t been watching for danger in the now.

Marcus peered out from behind the compactor. He saw a six-wheeled black groundcar – an enforcer vehicle, the roof sirens deactivated – parked outside the grand, baroque opera house. Bright flashes of red light and hissing cracks – laspistol discharge – lit up the fourth-storey windows, near the top floor.

Marcus tried to get up from behind the compactor, but his father held him down. ‘Stay put,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘But they’re distracted!’ Marcus hissed.

Josun shook his head. ‘We wait until they leave,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Whoever survives.’

As if on cue, Marcus saw one of the glass windows exploding outwards into glimmering shards of silver. A black-clad body came headfirst out the window and started to plummet towards the street, upside down. Then Marcus heard a loud snap, and suddenly the enforcer was right side up, swinging from side to side. His father’s fingers closed over his eyes and the body of the enforcer disappeared into the blackness.

Josun kept his son blinded, despite Marcus’ protests. He didn’t want Marcus seeing the body of the enforcer, throttled on a spool of cabling and hanging from the fourth-floor window by the makeshift noose. Marcus had heard the man’s neck break, but Josun considered that a small mercy – at least the enforcer’s life had ended quickly. The last thing Josun wanted was for his son to hear the man gagging and choking, clawing at the wire noose as he kicked at the air.

‘Who did it?’ Marcus asked. He’d given up trying to pull his father’s hand away. Josun was a strong man; decades of heavy labour had muscled his body. ‘Who pushed him out the window?’

‘Looters,’ Josun replied.

Josun saw a ghoulish opportunity. If the enforcers and the looters killed each other off, Josun could cut down the hanging body and steal his body armour and uniform. That way, if they came across any more lawmen, Josun would have a disguise. If they encountered any other enforcers, hopefully they’d mistake him for one of their own, and Marcus for his prisoner, instead of opening fire. What’s more, opportunistic looters would probably be quick to look elsewhere for easier prey once they saw how heavily armoured he was.

His hopes died when he heard the grav-turbines of a Land Speeder zooming down the road, coupled with the blaring whines of emergency klaxons. The Land Speeder, a two-man enforcer model, came to a stop outside the opera house.

The Land Speeder’s driver and passenger disembarked, the blades of the rear turbines still spinning. One of them brought up a grenade launcher and fired a cartridge through the broken window from which their colleague hung like a gruesome festival ornament. White flames licked out where the grenade landed and Josun heard yells and screams.

The shadows of fleeing bodies rushed past the windows, brief cuts of black blotting out the white fire. A burning body exploded from a window and flailed as it leapt from the building to escape the flames. Josun looked away as the body landed on the road with a hard crack. At least the screaming stopped.

The enforcer with the launcher put five more cartridges into the building before the drum ran out. Then the two men moved closer to the opera house’s main entrance and tossed grenades from their utility belts onto the stairs leading up to the doorway. Instead of flames, thick clouds of sulphurous yellow-green smoke erupted, clogging the entrance in a haze.

As fire climbed across the structure, the grand wooden doors crashed open and several men and women in civilian clothes came surging forth. Many of them looked dishevelled or bruised, badly beaten, with ropes and manacles binding their wrists. Behind them, using the hostages as body shields, came a group of people carrying improvised weapons.

As the civilians and the looters pushed into the smoke they started to gag and cry. Josun saw eyes turning red and swelling up, fingernails scratching at throats and rubbing feverishly at burning eyelids.

The smoke must be choke gas – a chemical agent designed to seriously hurt and debilitate, but not to kill. The civilians fell to their knees and tried to claw their way out of the smoke while the blinded looters swung at random. The enforcers picked them off with their laspistols, dropping the looters with precise shots.

Josun pushed Marcus down to the ground to keep him where he was. This had been a mistake. They should’ve given themselves up days ago, when the enforcers had first accosted them in that alleyway.

The last looter fell. The civilians were still crying and choking. The two enforcers clipped rebreathers over their faces and started to drag the civilians out of the cloud of gas, throwing them to the roadside like the grox carcasses Josun had dumped near the gutter two days ago.

Some of the civilians squinted up at the enforcers through swollen eyes. Some flinched, expecting the crack of shock batons.

One of the enforcers, the driver, squinted up at the hanging corpse. ‘Throne,’ he said, his voice grim.

The enforcer nodded to the gas-choked entryway. ‘All right, I’ll clear the building. Check for any more survivors.’ He disappeared into the smoke, leaving his comrade with the grenade launcher outside.

Now was Josun’s chance – his chance to surrender, to turn himself and Marcus in and enjoy the safety of a barred cell at one of the enforcer precincts. At least Marcus would be safe in lockup. But something kept him from approaching.

‘By the Throne,’ one of the civilians choked out, stumbling over the words as tears ran down her cheeks. ‘By the Throne, thank you. Thank you!’ The other civilians either spoke in agreement or, in the case of the gagged, nodded their heads enthusiastically. The ones who had been exposed to the choke gas couldn’t manage much more than further weeping from inflamed eyes.

The enforcer drew his laspistol and shot the woman in the head. ‘Your words are a sickness,’ the enforcer spat. ‘Don’t speak.’

The civilians – those who weren’t still curled up on the ground from exposure to the gas – started to flee. With their wrists bound, and no doubt thanks in part to the abuse their captors had inflicted upon them, their balance was poor and many of them fell or ended up sprawling to the ground. Las-bolts burnt through the runners and the fallen alike.

The doors of the opera house banged open as the other enforcer came back outside. He had more civilians in tow – he hadn’t bothered to undo the bindings at their wrists and he pushed them out into the street.

‘Grim business, this,’ the enforcer commented. He looked sick to his stomach, though Josun felt no sympathy for the murderer.

‘Ordos mandate,’ his friend said, with the bored irritation of someone repeating himself for the hundredth time. ‘That damned vox could have infected any of them. No prisoners.’

‘Run,’ Josun whispered. ‘Now, while their backs are turned.’

Marcus was too slow. One of the enforcers heard him, turned, and aimed his laspistol at him. ‘You! Get on the ground, now!’

Marcus dived behind one of the groundcars, his heart hammering in his chest. Before either of the enforcers could react, Josun drew his laspistol and started shooting at them. Marcus saw red bolts flying from his father’s position behind the waste-compactor, and one of them hit an enforcer in the arm. The man dropped his laspistol and screamed as the sleeve of his uniform caught ablaze.

The two enforcers scrambled for cover behind the Land Speeder.

Marcus spotted the fallen laspistol near the entrance of the opera house and started to creep up between the cars towards it. Father kept shooting, but the Land Speeder was blocking his shots. If Marcus could just get to the pistol…

He saw the other enforcer, the uninjured one still carrying his pistol, trying to climb into the cab of the Land Speeder. Marcus rushed for the entrance of the opera house and snatched the laspistol off the road. Before the man could react, Marcus turned and shot him in the back, even as his companion yelled out a warning. The body fell halfway out of the open siding and hung there, slumped over and smoking slightly.

The other enforcer drew his shock baton with his working arm and charged at Marcus. Before Marcus could change targets, the enforcer drove the baton into Marcus’ ribs at high setting, prompting a bright flash of blue sparks. Marcus made a grunting noise and flew back, rolling across the ground.

The enforcer staggered to one side, off-balance. Then Josun was lunging at him, grabbing him by the shoulder. ‘Don’t look!’ he yelled out to Marcus. Marcus rolled over and stared down at the road as Josun heaved with all his might and pushed the enforcer into the whirring blades of the Land Speeder turbine. The last thing Marcus saw before he looked away – a red cloud coming out of the engine – reminded him a lot of the machinery at the slaughter-shop.

Josun stripped out of his bloodstained clothes. When he worked at the shop, he wore a plastek apron over his coveralls so that none of the groxblood would soak into his clothes. He now stank of copper, and even after he removed the ruined coveralls his skin was still slick with a fine red film.

Grimacing, he pulled off the dead enforcer’s body armour, unclipping the hard plates one at a time to get to the black uniform underneath. He took that as well, slipping into the ribbed undersuit before buckling the plates on over it.

‘Father?’ Marcus said. Josun just shook his head.

They’d got lucky. Josun should have taught him how to use the gun long before this ever happened. Marcus certainly seemed to have a knack for it.

Josun shook the doubts away. He was alive; his son was alive. Marcus had a nasty electrical burn on his side, but other than that they were both unhurt. He should thank the Emperor for that alone.

The continued expedition to the hab lasted nearly an hour. Marcus and his father spent half of that time jumping at shadows, expecting a riot control team or a pack of scavengers to come spilling out of the alleyways. As a result, they moved slowly, carefully flitting between walls and buildings to cover themselves – anything they could do to avoid notice.

‘Someone’s following us,’ Marcus said, turning and bringing up the service las.

His father looked over his shoulder and reached for his own pistol. Marcus spotted the figure slinking back into an alleyway beneath an overpass. The shadow disappeared from view behind a support column.

‘Keep your eyes peeled.’ His father kept his voice low.

One of the laud-hailers blared suddenly to life. Both of them jumped and then sighed, bracing themselves for another wave of tortured screams and occult whisperings. But, to their surprise, they heard a woman’s voice, layered over the triumphant hymnals of the Imperial Creed.

‘To anyone out there listening,’ she began. ‘I am Canon Haunild of the Cathedral of Dawn.’ Marcus knew the cathedral – it was one of the largest in the middle hive, reserved for those tradesmen and merchants wealthy enough to pay its high indulgence fees, but not so wealthy they could afford to live in the upper spires with the gentry.

‘We have been stockpiling supplies here – and we open our gates now to tend to the wounded and the injured.’

Josun and Marcus exchanged hopeful glances.

‘However… our pockets are not bottomless. And our reserves stretch thin. We can only attend to those in the most desperate of need. Families, those with children.’

Marcus frowned at his father’s expression. ‘I’m not a–’ Father shook his head with a warning glare as the broadcast continued. Haunild rattled off a set of street coordinates before the laud-hailer shut down back into silence.

Father looked at Marcus. ‘There’s safety in numbers,’ Father said.

‘What about the hab?’ Marcus asked.

‘I know the Dawn. Our hab is on the way. We salvage what we can and keep moving. They’re a lot more likely to help us if we’re bringing something to their table.’

Marcus nodded. Over his shoulder, he saw the dark figure slipping back into the shadows of an alleyway.

‘You stay down here,’ Josun said as he approached the door of their hab-block. ‘Keep an eye on the road – if anyone approaches, you come in and find me.’ Marcus regarded him coolly and nodded, clutching the service-las. Josun fished out his ward accessor and swiped it across the lock. The door gave a friendly chirp and the door unlocked.

Josun thanked the Master of Mankind that the hab’s generators were still working – he could have shot out the locking mechanism or climbed up the exterior scaffolding to break in through a window, but either option would have caused a lot of noise, and he had no idea who might be rummaging through the building for supplies.

Entering the hab with his pistol drawn, he climbed the central staircase, a zigzagging thing that snaked up through the central column of the hab. After a few minutes he came out onto his floor and moved for the door to the small tenement that he and Marcus shared.

All the doors looked the same – grimy white plasteel with numbers stencilled onto the metal. As he approached, he saw a large hole cut through the door’s handle and the frame around it. Looked like a lascutter – someone had forced entry.

The sounds coming from the apartment confirmed Josun’s suspicions. He heard furniture toppling over, shelves clattering to the floor, and voices talking over each other.

‘We’ve got amasec here!’ someone called out. Damn it, they’d found his alcohol. Josun considered waiting for them to leave, but if he did that, they’d make off with all the non-perishables and water he’d stocked.

‘Any weapons?’ another voice replied. ‘I’m tired of carrying around this scav. We need a gun.’

So they were unarmed – well, armed with improvised weapons. Josun’s finger tapped against the trigger guard of his laspistol.

Josun was angry. Livid, even. Marcus had been right. The enforcers had been the ones shelling the district from the start, trying to stomp out any trace of this vox interference. They’d even gone so far as to execute the people who’d had the misfortune of hearing the laud-hailer transmission – people who had committed the apparently unforgiveable crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And the things he’d had to do to survive in the new world that the Imperium had made – the things he’d had to do in front of his son, they made him furious. He could feel the dead enforcer’s blood still, dry and itchy on his face, tasting it on his lips.

And now these people, these rats, were going to steal from him?

Josun kicked in the door. The plasteel panel swung in with a bang and the three people inside – two men and a woman – jumped in fright. As Josun had suspected, they had no guns – one man carried a fire poker with both hands and the other brandished a utility knife, while the woman carried a crowbar.

Before any of the looters could react, Josun shot the man with the knife. The las-bolt burned through his chest and he crumpled to the ground.

The two others rushed at him, yelling in fury. They were too fast for him to aim at. The woman clobbered Josun in the side with her crowbar and Josun toppled to one side, crashing to the ground. The man raised the fire poker and brought it down in a bludgeoning strike to the joint where Josun’s shoulder met his neck. Josun’s arm went numb and he dropped his laspistol.

Josun heard the door on the ground floor opening and footsteps rushing up the stairs.

‘He’s got a friend!’ the woman yelled. The man snatched up the fallen laspistol and put it against Josun’s skull. ‘Get up, old man,’ he growled.

I’m not that old, Josun thought – a small rebellion, but an inconsequential one – and he climbed to his feet, putting his hands up for the second time that day.

The man shoved Josun out the door, using him as a shield. ‘You got a weapon?’ the woman called out. Josun saw Marcus standing at the stairs, the enforcer’s service pistol drawn.

‘Put the gun down, kid,’ the looter holding Josun said.

‘You’re not going to shoot him,’ Marcus said. Marcus’ deadly calm, the steadiness in his voice, chilled the marrow in Josun’s bones. ‘What’s to stop me shooting you if you do that?’

‘We don’t want to shoot anyone,’ the looter said. ‘He came after us, guns blazing. Killed one of my friends.’

Marcus gritted his teeth. ‘This is our home.’

‘And it’s a mean old world out there,’ the looter said. ‘This your boy, old man?’

‘The laud-hailers,’ the woman said, now emerging from the room. She looked at Marcus hungrily. ‘You remember what they said? Families only. Children.’

The man whistled. ‘So they did.’

Josun spoke breathlessly. ‘All right, listen. Listen. We can take you there. To the cathedral! You can’t get in there without us.’

The woman shook her head. ‘No. We can’t get in there without him.’ She pointed at Marcus. Marcus turned the barrel of his laspistol towards her.

‘You let my father go,’ he said. His voice was like ice. ‘You let my father go or I’ll shoot you both dead, right now.’

The man snorted. ‘You’re not that good of a shot, kid. You’re barely holding the pistol right.’

Suddenly the window of the hab exploded inwards. A black-clad woman came vaulting over through the windowsill – she must have climbed up the fire scaffolding. She cradled a pump-action shotgun.

The shotgun came up and blasted the woman holding Josun’s las. The crowbar clattered to the floor and she went down in a red cloud, her shirt perforated with little holes. The other man lunged with his fire poker but he wasn’t fast enough for the trained shooter. It took only a quick adjustment of the shotgun barrel’s angle to blow him away too.

Josun recognised the uniform – an enforcer! He could trick her with his disguise, just long enough to get close. He didn’t see any backup. There were no other witnesses… except for Marcus. Josun felt sick as his mind raced – if he could force her back out the window, over the edge of the fire scaffold…

The shotgun turned on him. Josun froze. At this close range, only a few yards away, he didn’t trust the thin breastplate to protect him.

‘Show me your badge,’ the enforcer growled. Josun cursed himself. Why hadn’t he taken the dead man’s badge?

‘I’m… I’m not,’ Josun stammered. ‘Please. Just let my son go.’

‘Show me your badge,’ the enforcer repeated. The shotgun barrel glared at him like a huge black eye.

‘I’m not a real enforcer,’ Josun admitted. He screwed his eyes shut, waiting for the end.

The woman laughed. ‘Thank the Throne for that. I thought you looked familiar.’

Josun opened one eye nervously. The woman unclipped her helmet. Josun tried to place her – the enforcer from the stampede! The one who had let him and Marcus go free.

She stuck out a hand. ‘Proctor Yronne Lamn. Planetary Enforcement.’

Josun shook her hand dumbly. ‘How… how did you find us? Were you looking for us?’

She shrugged. ‘I got lucky. I’ve been following you since the opera house. Caught sight of you as you rolled out. I recognised your son.’ She nodded over Josun’s shoulder at Marcus. ‘And I couldn’t tell if you were a real enforcer or not. Otherwise I’d have approached you sooner.’

Josun frowned. ‘So you’re not with the enforcers?’

Lamn’s face darkened. ‘They don’t pay me enough to shoot unarmed civilians.’

Josun nodded. ‘We saw some of that ourselves. The enforcers said they were working for something called the Ordos.’

‘The Holy Ordos?’ Lamn asked. ‘The Inquisition?’

Josun’s stomach dropped out from under him.

‘The Inquisition is real?’ Josun asked.

‘You didn’t hear that from me,’ Lamn answered. ‘What else did the enforcers say?’

Josun racked his brains. ‘They’re afraid of the vox network. I’m guessing they were talking about the laud-hailers, those malfunctions. They said the vox has ‘infected’ the district’s occupants somehow.’

‘They’ve abandoned sanity and reason alike,’ Lamn said. ‘The civilians and the enforcers both. It must be the vox. Listening to it must change you, somehow. Inside.’

‘So if the vox is making people sick, why don’t they send in the Sisters?’ Marcus snapped. ‘To start working on a cure, or at least evacuate the infected! Or why not summon the Space Marines – surely they could deal with whoever’s doing this?’

Josun put a hand on Marcus’ shoulder. He could see the fury bubbling in his son’s eyes. ‘Marcus…’

Marcus threw off his father’s shoulder. ‘They’re killing us, father! They’re not even trying to help! You said the Inquisition was behind this?’ he turned on Lamn. ‘Is this what the Emperor wants? Is this His will?’

‘Marcus,’ Josun warned. His eyes flitted to Lamn’s shotgun. Marcus’ words had crossed into outright heresy, and he was scared to see how the enforcer would react. ‘Some people are helping. Canon Haunild, at the Cathedral of Dawn.’

Lamn pulled a few shells from her ammunition bandolier and chambered them to fill up her shotgun. She didn’t look at Marcus, nor did she acknowledge his outburst.

‘If you’re going to get there, you’ll want someone with combat training,’ Lamn said. ‘You weren’t doing so well before I showed up, I should remind you.’

Josun looked her up and down. ‘Two enforcers ought to scare most people off,’ he said, gesturing to his own stolen uniform.

She nodded. ‘I make sure you get to the cathedral. You make sure I get to follow you in.’ She put out a hand. When Josun shook it, the armoured plates of their black gauntlets clanged, the sound echoing through the deserted hab-block.

The cathedral was a great stone building with a spiked dome. The dome was old bronze, tarnished green with verdigris. The arched windows were shattered, the walls peppered with bullet holes.

As the trio approached the entrance to the cathedral, two great double doors of varnished oak, they passed through a contemplation garden in the pavilion outside. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the garden – the clergy would permit only the most generous of patrons to enter the garden and enjoy one of the few enclaves of greenery in the middle hive.

The cathedral’s occupants, Josun could see, had set up a makeshift defence line from storage pallets, ruined stonework and toppled furniture. The defenders wore dark clothes in neutral tones – the dull browns of burlap and sackcloth, the grey of industrial coveralls, the black of creased leather.

The defenders carried battered-looking autoguns and most of them wore masks, either full-faced rebreathers or crude things of hammered metal, to hide their faces. Josun put an arm around Marcus and pulled him close. For once, Marcus didn’t try to squirm away.

‘My son,’ Josun said, gesturing to Marcus as if he were some kind of badge. ‘We have food and water. Whatever you need.’ Josun carried a backpack of supplies, scavenged from his own hab and several others, slung over one shoulder.

A few of the masked guards pointed guns at them but one of them, a man with a crude club made from a length of rebar, held up an open hand. The guns didn’t fire, but they didn’t lower either.

The man gestured to the cathedral doors. ‘Right this way, friends. After you.’ His mask muffled his voice.

His trepidation mounting, but painfully aware that he could do nothing but comply, Josun led the way into the cathedral. He felt relieved, glad to finally be able to put his safety back into someone else’s hands… but something wasn’t quite right. The way these people hid their faces, they didn’t look like any kind of pilgrims or parishioners he’d ever seen before.

The interior of the cathedral was just what Josun had expected – all columns and vaulted ceilings. He could hear a low, growling whirr, like a groundcar engine. Fire glowed from the burning braziers and candle sconces, casting everything into a kind of flickering half-light. Josun’s breath caught in his throat as he spotted shadows jumping along the walls.

Then he saw the bodies.

The bodies of men and women, clad in the vestments of Imperial clerics, hung from the ceiling, bound at their ankles. Their heads were purple where blood had pooled down and coagulated in their skulls.

Their killers had scalped every man and woman. Josun could see the sticky-looking red flesh of their craniums. They had tied the bloody strips of skin from their victims’ heads around their eyes as blindfolds. He could see the tattoos inked onto them: aquilas, the sigil of the Emperor, inverted.

Throne, what were these people going to do to them? He turned to run, to pull Marcus away and flee, but then he remembered the autoguns outside. They weren’t getting out of here, not through the front doors at any rate.

The growling whirr loudened, and Josun heard metal clanging on stone as something moved behind him. Josun and Lamn whirled around, Lamn bringing up her shotgun, Josun’s laspistol in his hand.

An eight-foot-tall automaton stalked towards them. Thick armour plates studded with tarnished brass rivets covered its body. Ribbed power cables crisscrossed the robot’s chest, connecting to a bulky backpack. One huge shoulder bore the symbol of a fanged skull with bat-like wings. The robot’s eye lenses glowed a hellish shade of scarlet.

Lamn started laughing, a terrified kind of cackling. Josun, screaming and backpedalling as he put his body between the creature and his son, couldn’t figure out what was so funny. Then he realised that the machine seemed somehow familiar to him.

The beaked helmet, the hemispherical shoulder pads. The bulbous, bug-like backpack! He thought back to the statue that had glared down at him just as the laud-hailers had first awakened outside the church district.

Josun wasn’t looking at a machine after all. He was looking at a Space Marine.

Lamn, still laughing as if she’d uncovered some grand cosmic joke, kept pulling the trigger of her shotgun, pumping the slide. Buckshot pinged off the Space Marine’s armour with little orange sparks. The Space Marine reached down to a sheath strapped to its thigh and drew a huge, serrated combat knife.

The corrupted Space Marine lunged at Lamn with the knife and, even as she cried and screamed, she ducked out of the way. An armoured fist swung low and clobbered her around the temple. Josun heard bone cracking and the woman fell to the stone floor, landing awkwardly on a knee and yelling in pain. She rolled onto her side, clutching her skull. Blood oozed from her ears and nose.

Josun fired the laspistol as fast as he could, energy bolts cooking the paint on the armour. The Space Marine, seemingly unimpressed, kept striding towards him as he backed away.

The Space Marine put one hand around his bicep and snapped his arm like a toothpick. Josun dropped the laspistol and screamed as it forced him to his knees. He could feel bone fragments tearing through the ruined muscle of his arm.

‘Please…’ Josun managed to choke out through the tears of pain. ‘My son…’

The fist came and Josun felt his nose break. Something hot and sharp stabbed into one eye and his left-hand vision went black. He tasted coppery blood in his mouth and felt several teeth disappear down his throat. Then the world became a spinning haze of grey stone and yellow firelight as he hit the floor.

He blearily tried to focus his remaining eye. Time seemed to be slowing down even as the cathedral’s interior turned into a dizzy kaleidoscope. He saw the Space Marine point at Marcus. To his horror, Marcus complied and approached the giant.

‘Marcus!’ Josun cried out. He tried to stand but he couldn’t; he was too dizzy and it hurt his head too much. He started to crawl on his elbow, using his good arm to drag himself forward down the aisle between the pews, following his son. He felt blood oozing from his ruined face and onto the floor, and he saw it soaking into his shirt as he dragged himself forward.

Josun heard Marcus call him, but his voice was echoing, as if there were more of him, coming from all sides. Josun shook his head to shake the echo away, to regain his focus. As he turned his head, he saw the cages, dozens of them, sitting tucked into the shadowed alcoves at the sides of the pews, hidden by the support columns and the darkness. He saw children locked inside, straining at the bars, reaching out to him.

Josun turned back towards the aisle, a new fire raging within him. He kept crawling forward until his chest and shoulder burned. Eventually he had to stop and he collapsed, panting hard.

He saw bare feet on the stone floor approaching him. He glanced upwards.

The Space Marine and Marcus disappeared up the stone stairs into the bell tower. A woman clad in dark robes, her head shaved, approached Josun.

The woman had no face. A large speaker grille dominated the entire front of her head, as if someone had cleaved the front half of her skull off and screwed the speaker into place. Her scalp and ears looked puffy, raw-red and infected where the skin met the oily metal.

‘Don’t be upset,’ she said. The voice issued from the woman’s grille-face. Josun recognised it as the one from the laud-hailers – the so-called ‘priest’ offering shelter for the desperate and the damned. Haunild. ‘A great destiny awaits your son.’

‘What are they going to do to him?’ Josun snarled, spitting blood. He lisped the words thanks to the new gap in his front teeth.

Haunild bent down. ‘The Lords of the Night will put stars of black fire in his heart. They’ll cut him open and put the blood of gods inside him.’

Josun remembered the old tales of the Space Marines, the legends out of storybooks that he’d read to Marcus as a child – superhuman warriors exploring dangerous jungles and vast deserts, recruiting children from the survivalist tribes of those harsh worlds to bring back to their great monasteries.

‘They’re going to… they’re going to turn him into one of them?’ he asked. He couldn’t feel the pain in his face any more – he just felt hollow now, a kind of emptiness in the pit of his stomach as if he had just had his guts scooped out.

Haunild chuckled. It was an unpleasant sound.

‘Let me come with you!’ Josun said. ‘Please, just… just let me be with him. You need to let me be there for him! Please, I’ll do anything, anything you want!’

The woman didn’t answer, continuing her path to the lectern. She adjusted the dials on its vox-interface and Josun heard the daemonic whispering, the black chanting, the screams of the tortured and the dying blare from the laud-hailers set into the hollows of the vaulted ceiling. He knew they’d be blaring from laud-hailers across the hive now too.

‘The vox!’ Josun exclaimed. ‘It will change me! It will turn me into someone else. That’s what the enforcers said. I’ll let it, if you just take me with you! Don’t take him away from me!’

‘Ridiculous,’ Haunild snorted. ‘The Vox Daemonicus is nothing more than a scare tactic. It’s no more dangerous than a ghost story.’

‘But the enforcers… they killed those people!’

‘And you knew they’d do it,’ Josun heard Lamn saying behind him.

He rolled onto his back to look up at her – she was limping, putting one hand on a pew to balance herself.

‘You knew that the Vox Daemonicus would throw the hive into anarchy. That was your plan the whole time – stir up some mayhem and harvest new recruits from the survivors!’

Josun’s stomach felt like it was full of acid. He’d delivered Marcus right into their hands.

Haunild nodded. ‘I envy the children. You should too. The Lords will make them strong.’ She looked at Josun. She wasn’t lying – he heard the longing, the jealousy in her voice, even without a face to give it away. ‘Your son will live a glorious life as one of the Lords. Better than any you could have ever given him.’

‘You’re all killers, either way,’ Lamn said.

‘Untrue,’ the woman answered. ‘The Lords haven’t taken a single life since they arrived. Not even them!’ She pointed up to the hanging bodies of the clergy. ‘No, Imperial citizens did that. Angry, bitter Imperial citizens freed from tyranny for the first time in their miserable lives. Those are the people you’re defending, enforcer. They hate you.’

Lamn didn’t speak. She just eased herself down into the pew and sat there, quiet, her head hanging.

Josun reached up to Haunild at the lectern. ‘Let me see him go,’ he said. ‘Please. Just let me see him go. One more time.’

Haunild continued to adjust dials, modifying the levels of the baleful noises.

‘It costs you nothing!’ Josun spat. ‘What threat am I to the Space Marines?’

‘Do as you wish,’ she said.

Josun grabbed one of the pews for support and levered himself into a standing position. Half-limping, half-crawling from pew to pew, he made his way out of the cathedral, through the front doors and down the steps into the garden. None of the cultists outside acknowledged him.

Engines roared and a huge gunship, covered in heavy armour plates and nearly thirty metres long, emerged from behind the great bronze dome of the cathedral, streaking up towards the sky. He didn’t know where it was going, but he searched desperately for a window, a viewing pane, anything that might have given him even the barest glimpse of his son. But the gunship didn’t have windows.

Josun couldn’t see him. The gunship shrank, growing smaller and smaller as it disappeared into the sky. The man fell to his knees. He wanted to scream at the sky as it swallowed up his son, to spit and shout on the chance that, by some miracle, Marcus might hear him. 

As the laud-hailers blared to life and howls of the tortured filled the broken city, hope died in his chest.

SKIN MAN

Tim Waggoner

Marceline drew her worn and tattered shawl tight around her shoulders as she made her way through the streets of Lowtown. The garment did little to insulate her from the chill air, and neither did her dress, which was comprised more of stitched-on patches than of the original fabric.

Lowtown was old. Precisely how old, no one seemed to know. Centuries? Millennia? The plascrete used to construct the streets and buildings had supposedly been designed to last forever – or so the stories told – but the grey walls were cracked and crumbling, the grey streets uneven and filled with potholes.

She was nervous being on the street, but while she kept an eye out for thieves and gangers – her right hand in her dress pocket, clutching the handle of a jagged piece of scrap metal sharpened to aid in food preparation – her mind was elsewhere. She missed Cole desperately, and while she knew her husband could take care of himself, he’d never been away for so long on a scavenging run. A couple of days, yes, three at the most. But six?

Sometimes you have to range far afield to find something really good, Cole had once told her not long after they were married. And if that happens, I might be gone for several days. But I’ll never go too far, my love. I promise.

Perhaps that was all that had happened this time. Cole had got wind of an item too good to pass up, one located farther afield than he’d ever gone before. He might be home any day. He could even be home right now, playing with Zach and Bethann, and wondering where his wife was. But she couldn’t escape the feeling that something had happened to him, something awful.

She wasn’t alone on the street. Men and women, along with a few children – the latter mostly unsupervised – were out. Everyone was rail-thin. Food was too hard to come by to waste by overeating. And if anyone did overindulge, they were liable to be killed for taking too much of the community’s resources for themselves, by angry relatives and neighbours who would cut them up, cook them up, and then swallow them down. Marceline had an uncle who had gone that way, the greedy bastard. She’d never liked the taste of human flesh, but she had to admit, he hadn’t been half bad.

She remembered the tale as her father had told it to her.

Our world is only one of many planets in a vast galaxy. People came here from elsewhere, settled it in the name of their eternal Emperor, and here they fought to hold back terrible beasts that spilled through cracks in reality. In time, Those Before won that fight – or so they thought – and they departed for other worlds, other battles. Some chose to remain on our world, although many were simply forgotten and abandoned, their services no longer needed by the Imperium. Those Who Remained did their best to survive, but they soon discovered that remnants of the Great Darkness remained as well, and the creatures it spawned hated them and sought to dominate them in every way – physically, mentally and spiritually. Thus it was, and thus it still is. We Who Remain wait in hope that one day the Emperor’s forces will return to save us. But until that day, we must always be on our guard, wary and watchful for signs of the Great Darkness at work. So I tell you, and so one day you will tell your own children, Emperor willing.

A perpetual yellowish haze hung above Lowtown, diffusing the sun’s light. As Marceline approached the open-air market known as the Crossroads, she heard only the quiet murmur of subdued conversation. No one called out to customers, extolling the virtues of their wares, exhorting passers-by to stop and look at the rare and astounding wonders they offered. In Lowtown, being loud could attract the notice of the things that dwelled within the ruins – things hungrier and deadlier than any human. It was, in short, an excellent way to find one’s self in an early grave.

Now that Marceline had reached the Crossroads, she relaxed a little. In Lowtown, there was safety – relatively speaking – in numbers. Plus, the Crossroads was considered neutral territory, and the street gangers that vied for control of the city left it alone for the most part. Thus, there was almost never any trouble here. The citizens of Lowtown paid for goods and labour one of two ways: either by using oldcoins – money minted by Those Before, their metal surfaces long since worn smooth by centuries of handling – or through barter. Of the two, barter was preferred, as it held a tangible value that oldcoins did not. The seller who most often purchased Cole’s goods was Darrick Garvin, an aggressive salesman several years younger than Cole. Darrick was the kind of man who refused to take no for an answer. Marceline had met him several times, and she didn’t much like the man, but she thought if anyone at the Crossroads might know anything about Cole’s whereabouts, it would be him. Reluctantly, she approached his stall, where he was haggling with a red-bearded man over a metal panel that had been twisted out of shape.

‘Word is that this was once part of the holy armour worn by one of the Emperor’s angels. You can see how strong it is.’ Darrick rapped the plate with his knuckle, and while the metal was thin, it gave a solid thunk, as if it was much larger and heavier than it looked.

She waited until Darrick had completed his business with the red-bearded man who, after some haggling, paid two oldcoins for the metal panel. Once the man left with his purchase, Marceline approached Darrick’s stall. It held an eclectic mix of odds and ends, objects from the time of Those Before, some fragmentary, some whole, the original purpose of most a mystery.

Darrick’s face broke into a broad smile when he saw her approach. He was taller than Cole by half a head, and his blond hair was always neatly trimmed. He was handsome in a sharp, severe way; Marceline had never been among his admirers, however.

‘Marceline! What a wonderful surprise! What brings you to the Crossroads on such a fine day? Dare I hope that you’ve come specially to pay me a visit?’

His voice was grating, his words tinged with mockery. She ignored them and got straight to the point.

‘Have you seen Cole?’

Darrick’s tone became teasing. ‘I usually see quite a bit of him.’

Marceline had to control her temper so she wouldn’t snap at him.

‘I mean recently.’

‘Why? Hasn’t he been home lately?’

She didn’t want to tell Darrick more than she had to, but she needed his cooperation.

‘He’s been gone for six days. It’s longer than he’s ever been away before.’

‘I see. That is troubling. Do you fear some ill might have befallen him? What a stupid question! Of course you do. No one would remain away from a wife as lovely as you any longer than absolutely necessary.’

‘Please,’ Marceline said ‘If you know anything…’

Darrick sighed and dropped the showman patter. ‘I haven’t seen him since the last time he brought me something – a few lengths of copper pipe. Good-quality stuff. That was…’ He thought for a moment. ‘Ten days ago, maybe? He hasn’t been around since, and I’ve been here every day.’

Marceline felt her stomach drop. She’d convinced herself that someone at the Crossroads could give her information regarding Cole’s whereabouts, but now it seemed as if she’d only been fooling herself, clinging to a false hope to avoid having to think that Cole had been hurt or even worse.

‘You know,’ Darrick said, ‘if by chance Cole doesn’t return, you and your two little ones will need someone to look after you. I make a good living, and I would be honoured to share the fruit of my labour with you. As well as my bed, of course.’

Marceline was so flabbergasted by Darrick’s sudden offer that at first she didn’t know how to respond. Her husband had only been missing for six days, and this bastard was already angling to replace him?

‘You’re disgusting,’ she said.

Darrick appeared unbothered by her response.

‘I know it’s somewhat unseemly for me to propose such an arrangement so soon, but life is short in Lowtown. If you want something, you have to move quickly to get it. And I want you. What will it take to close the deal?’

The hopelessness Marceline had felt earlier was now burned away by anger. She wanted to slap the smug smile off Darrick’s face, and she would’ve done it, too, if at that moment someone hadn’t stepped to her side and grabbed hold of her wrist.

Marceline turned quickly to the newcomer, expecting it to be someone else who wanted to replace Cole as her new mate. But she found herself looking at an old woman. She was hunched over, her spine twisted in knots, skin as pale and rough as a lizard’s belly, and dotted with patches of angry red rash. One of her eyes was a chalky milk-white, but the other was clear and gleamed with fevered intensity. She smelled rank, as if she’d never bathed in her life, and when she spoke, her breath was so foul, Marceline wondered if the woman was rotting away from the inside out.

‘Don’t listen to this fool. He’s a slave to his nether regions. They do all his thinking for him.’ She cackled with laughter that degenerated into a wet cough.

Darrick glared at the old woman.

‘This is a private conversation, Lucy,’ he said.

‘Yes, it is,’ the woman agreed. ‘Between us.’

She took hold of Marceline’s elbow with fingers that possessed surprising strength for one so old. She steered her away from Darrick’s stall, and Marceline allowed the other woman to direct her, grateful to get away from Darrick.

‘My thanks for the rescue,’ Marceline said.

‘Don’t thank me. Surely, it was the guiding hand of the Emperor Himself who brought us together this day.’

Marceline knew then that the woman was an Imperialist, a religious zealot who believed Those Who Remained had been left on-planet because their faith in the Emperor hadn’t been strong enough. It was up to their descendants to adhere once more to the true faith or else the planet – and all that dwelt upon it – would be destroyed when the Emperor returned to pass judgement.

‘I’m Lucy Shade,’ the old woman said. ‘So your husband is missing?’

‘Yes. For six days. His name is Cole. I came here to look for him because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.’

Lucy had guided Marceline away from the Crossroads vendors so they could speak privately.

‘Six days,’ Lucy said. ‘Long time to be missing in Lowtown.’

Marceline couldn’t help it; she began to cry.

Lucy took Marceline’s handed and patted it gently.

‘Everything will be all right, one way or another. It’s all part of the Emperor’s grand design.’

Marceline wasn’t religious, but if there was an Emperor, and Cole’s disappearance was part of His plan, she wanted nothing to do with the bastard.

Lucy continued speaking.

‘I know your husband. I tried to get him to pledge his soul to the Emperor many times. Like most, he refused to listen to me, but at least he was polite about it. He never spat on me or struck me.’ She shot a dark look in Darrick’s direction. ‘Unlike some. I spoke with Cole the last time he was here. He told me he’d had a run of bad luck lately scavenging in his usual places, so he decided to try his luck somewhere new.’

Marceline didn’t like where this was going.

‘Said he was thinking of trying the Black Lane.’ She shook her head. ‘The fool.’

Marceline had no reaction to Lucy’s words at first. The idea was so ridiculous that she couldn’t conceive of Cole even contemplating doing something so insanely dangerous, let alone actually doing it. Of all the places in Lowtown that were tainted by Darkness, the Black Lane was the worst. No one would ever go there willingly, not unless they were–

I’m sorry our meals have been on the meagre side lately. But the medicine for Bethann’s green fever costs so much, and I’ve run into a bit of a dry spell. But things will pick up soon. I promise.

 –desperate.

‘Now mind,’ Lucy said, ‘I don’t know for certain that’s where he went. But if he did…’

The old woman didn’t need to finish her thought. The implication was clear.

Marceline shook her head.

‘Cole and I have known each other since we were children. We married as soon as we came of age. We’ve only ever loved each other. If something had happened to him, if he was–’ she couldn’t bring herself to say dead, ‘–hurt, I would know it. I’d feel it.’

Instead of dismissing Marceline’s words, Lucy looked at her for several moments, as if trying to gauge the sincerity of her claim. Finally, she said, ‘I believe you. But whatever has happened to Cole, it’s preventing him from returning to you on his own.’

‘That’s why I’m going to help him,’ Marceline said.

‘You’re going to the Black Lane, too? You’re as mad as your husband! Only a fool would venture into the Skin Man’s domain.’

A memory came to Marceline then, her mama’s voice, telling her a bedtime tale.

According to legend, the Skin Man is a creature left over from the time of the Great Wars. Once he was a human, tasked with harvesting body parts from the living for transplant into wounded soldiers so they could continue fighting in the Emperor’s holy name. But this man became tainted by the Darkness that ravaged our world and was transformed into a monstrous, tainted thing. He wears a ragged cloak which barely conceals the obscenity of his rotted body. He exists in a state of perpetual decomposition, and he collects replacement parts from anyone unlucky enough to cross his path. This creature – and others like him – are why you should never, ever venture into the Black Lane, Marceline.

‘If you do go,’ Lucy said, ‘please be careful.’ She gave Marceline a toothless smile. ‘You’re a nice girl for a godless heretic.’

Marceline had never been to the Black Lane before. The closest she had ever come was when she and Cole were children. The group of kids they ran with would dare each other to see who was brave enough to go near the Black Lane, and she and Cole always won, coming within several streets of it, but only during the day. Even that close, Marceline had been able to feel a profound sense of wrongness, as if reality itself was ill, and she heard soft, almost inaudible whispers in her ears, speaking of foul things in a language she only half understood. She would have nightmares for weeks afterwards – dreams of partially glimpsed figures running through shadows, coming for her with ebon claws and night-black teeth. Eventually, she refused to play the game any more, and without her, Cole wouldn’t play either. After a while the nightmares lessened in frequency and intensity, but she still had one now and again, even after all this time.

So she knew the way to the Black Lane, and it took her only an hour’s walk to reach it from the Crossroads. As she drew close, she once again experienced that sense of wrongness, of violation, and she heard the whispers. They were louder now, more distinct, and she was able to understand more of what they said. They urged her to keep going, to come to them, to stay – and play.

Lowtown was never warm, but the air here was cold in a different way. Instead of seeping into your skin and bones from the outside in, it began deep within your body and worked its way outwards until you felt as if your blood had turned to ice water in your veins. She shivered uncontrollably as she walked, and she had to fight to keep her teeth from constantly chattering. Was this all the effect of the Darkness ahead, or was some of it due to her body attempting to warn her of the danger she was approaching? She didn’t know, and she supposed it didn’t matter. Her Cole was lost somewhere in the Black Lane, and nothing was going to stop her from finding him.

There were no street signs to indicate when she crossed over into the Black Lane, no clear line of demarcation to say she had left behind the normal reality of Lowtown and entered the Darkness. The first hints she had reached her destination were subtle. The air felt flat and dead, and when she breathed it in, it felt empty. When she breathed it out, it felt as if it left a residue behind, a thin layer of filth that coated her lungs and throat. The plascrete pavement beneath her feet felt less than firm. It gave beneath her weight a bit, and sometimes it seemed to ripple, as if instead of a street, she was walking on the back of some gigantic creature that lay slumbering, partially buried, which might wake at any moment and rise from the ground with a deafening roar of hunger and fury.

The buildings looked no different from those in the rest of Lowtown, at least in terms of basic design. But their lines and angles seemed to curve and meet in odd ways that her vision couldn’t quite comprehend. Out of the corners of her eyes, their surfaces seemed to swell and contract rhythmically, as if the structures were breathing. There were also what looked like open, suppurating sores, as if the buildings were made of flesh instead of plascrete. But every time she looked at the buildings directly, they seemed normal enough. She had the sense that she was being watched, by dozens of unseen eyes, yes, but also by the Black Lane itself, as if the Darkness that suffused the streets and buildings here had its own awareness, its own mind, and was observing her with mounting interest.

She made sure not to walk too close to buildings and alley entrances. There was no way to tell who – or what – might be hiding there, ever ready to lunge forth, grab hold of an unwary victim, and pull them into the shadows. Marceline kept her gaze fixed firmly on what lay ahead of her. Sometimes she caught a flash of movement in her peripheral vision, and she was tempted to look, to see what it was, to gauge whether it was a threat or not. But she never did.

As she continued walking, she heard a soft scuffling sound behind her. In response, she drew her crude blade from her pocket, and spun around, prepared to defend herself–

–only to find the street empty.

She knew better than to believe this meant she was safe, though. She kept her weapon in hand and remained alert as she turned back the way she’d been heading and continued. As she passed an alley, she heard a scraping sound from within, as if something sharp was being dragged across stone. This was followed by a high-pitched giggle that issued from an alley on the other side of the street. She was being hunted, but by what, she couldn’t say.

She picked up her pace until she was almost running. A moment later, she heard the sound of numerous bare feet slapping on the pavement behind her, and she knew the hunters were making their move. She sprinted then, passing more alleys as she fled, dark shapes darting out to join the pursuit. She glanced back over her shoulder as she ran, trying to get a good look at the things coming after her. There were maybe a dozen of them, clad in filthy rags, things that might once have been human children but which were now hideously distorted. Large black eyes. Hairless grey skin. Sharp teeth that clacked in excitement as they closed the distance, thick drool running from their lipless mouths. They were hungry – and they’d just found food. Fresh food.

She heard excited breathing as the child-things drew closer, and she pictured clawed hands stretching towards her, reaching, reaching…

She rounded a corner, eyes darting back and forth desperately. There was no way she could outrun the child-things, so her only hope for survival lay in finding a place to hide. She half-ran, half-stumbled to her left, heading towards a building on that side of the street. This one was as dilapidated as the others here, perhaps more so, and its windows and doorway were filled with shadows deeper than any she had seen before. Something inside her warned her not to go this way, but her conscious mind refused to listen. It was concerned only with survival, and the building looked like her best chance to obtain it.

As she ran, she took a quick glance backwards and saw the child-things come around the corner. She was still several metres from the building, and she knew they could see where she was headed. She was committed to this course of action now, though, and she ran on, knowing they would follow her inside the building, where they would bring her down and feast on her body. She hoped they’d kill her first. As starved as the creatures looked, they might well begin eating her alive.

She stumbled through the doorway – there was no sign of the door itself; it must’ve been removed long ago – and into the shadows within the building. It felt cold and damp, almost as if she’d plunged into cool, brackish water, but she ignored the sensation. She moved through the darkness to the closest window. Only a few segments of broken glass remained, coated with the grime of age, but she was able to see through the open areas well enough.

The child-things ran towards the building, moving with inhuman speed, but when they’d closed to within a few yards of it, they suddenly stopped. They crouched in defensive postures, obsidian eyes narrowed, nostrils flared wide as they scented the air.

What was happening?

The child-things looked at one another, and though they made no sound, Marceline had the sense that they were communicating. And then, as if by unspoken agreement, they whirled around and fled the way they’d come. Within seconds, they had disappeared around the corner, and moments after that, the sound of their footfalls diminished and died away to nothing.

Why had they turned tail? She was hardly a threatening presence, and the only weapon she had was her sharpened shard of metal. Even if she’d managed to wound some of them, they would have brought her down in the end.

Light only penetrated so far into the building, but it was enough for Marceline to make out a row of beds, their mattresses rotted and mould-covered. An assortment of metal implements, also rusted, sat atop wheeled carts scattered around the room. Marceline had never seen objects like these: tools that seemed to be designed for cutting, scraping, clamping, probing…

The plasteel floor around the tables was covered with dark stains which she thought might be old blood, and a great deal of it, that had soaked into the floor over the course of many years.

Now that the immediate threat was over, she felt the after-effects of adrenaline – rapid heartbeat, nausea, headache, weariness. She wanted nothing more than to sit down and rest for a bit, wait for her body to calm itself before moving on. But she wasn’t sure she could afford to do so. The longer she remained in the Black Lane, the less daylight remained. And if she was still here when night fell… No, she had to keep going.

She returned her makeshift blade to her pocket and began making her way to the door, but before she could reach it, a voice came to her from the darkness deeper within the building.

‘Good work. If those creatures had caught you, you’d be filling their bellies by now.’

At first, she was startled and almost made a dash for the door, but then she realised she recognised the voice, and held her ground. Her nausea and headache were forgotten as she felt a surge of hope.

‘Cole? Is that you?’

No response came. But a moment later she heard someone walking towards her. The footsteps were uneven, and it sounded as if one of the feet was being dragged across the floor. Had Cole been injured? That would explain why he hadn’t returned home. He’d been too hurt to make the journey. But she was here now, and she could help him. Together they could…

Not much light filtered through the open doorway and broken windows, but it was enough to allow Marceline to see the figure coming towards her. At first it was a silhouette, a shadow among shadows, but as it drew closer, she was increasingly able to make out more detail. The figure was tall, but lopsided – the right shoulder raised much higher than the left. One arm was thicker and longer than another, and its legs were similarly mismatched, which accounted for its strained, shuffling gait. The figure was garbed in a tattered, black, hooded cloak, making it seem as if it was garbed in shadow. The hood concealed the figure’s face, but its hands were uncovered, and when it came close enough, she could see that one hand possessed long, spidery fingers, while the other had short, stubby ones. The skin on that hand was mottled, dry, and cracked, and bones were visible in several places. The smell hit her then, a solid wall of stink that seemed to strike with almost physical force. It was the smell of rot and corruption, decay and disease, and if she’d eaten anything recently, she would’ve vomited it all out. As it was, her gorge rose, and she felt the burn of stomach acid at the back of her throat.

Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t Cole. It couldn’t be! Unless… unless something had happened to him in the Black Lane, something that had changed him into such a loathsome thing that he’d stayed hidden here rather than return to his wife and children. She didn’t care how he looked, though. She loved him for who he was inside, not for his physical appearance. Whatever had happened to him, they would try to find a way to fix it, and if that wasn’t possible, they would find a way to live with it.

She took a step towards the being that she thought was her husband, but the creature reached up with its long-fingered hand and drew back the cloak’s hood. The face that was revealed was so monstrous that Marceline froze in place and stared at its horrible features in disbelief. The face was an amalgamation of different parts, put together like some sort of grotesque puzzle. The eyes were different colours, and the nose had a line running down the middle, as if it had been made from sealing two separate halves together. The lips didn’t match; the lower was feminine, thicker and redder than the upper, which was a thin, masculine line. The mouth was open – the jaw set at an odd angle – and she could see the teeth were as mismatched as the rest of the thing’s face. There were molars at the front, canines at the back, their random placement making the mouth look like it belonged to some sort of monstrous beast rather than anything remotely human. The creature was bald, and as with the nose, there were lines – no, seams, she thought – all over the top of the head, the face and the neck. The skin ranged from light to dark, making the head resemble a quilt stitched together from human flesh. The ears were the least matched of all. One was tiny and pink-skinned, an infant’s ear, while the other was large, wrinkled and liver-spotted.

The creature was touched by rot and decay all over, flesh greyish-green in places, patches of skin in the process of sloughing off. The rot was worst on its stubby-fingered hand. Barely any flesh remained, leaving it mostly bone.

The figure stopped and regarded Marceline with its mismatched eyes, and now that she was over the initial shock of the thing’s appearance, she realised that pieces of it resembled her husband. The right eye was blue, like Cole’s, and the left half of the nose resembled his, too. The upper lip and perhaps the left cheekbone, too? Yes, she thought so. She looked into that blue eye, and she thought she could see her husband in there, trapped and screaming for release.

‘Do you know who I am, child?’

Cole’s voice again, but the cadence of the words wasn’t his, and there was none of her husband’s cheerful warmth in its tone. She had no idea who or what this thing in front of her could be, and when several moments passed without her answering the patchwork creature’s question, it spoke once more in that voice which was both so like and so unlike Cole’s.

‘Has it been so long that no one remembers the stories about me? Have Those Who Remain forgotten the great service I did for this world?’

Marceline knew then. ‘You’re the Skin Man.’

The creature’s lopsided smile was horrible to behold.

‘So I am remembered. This pleases me.’

The Skin Man took a single shuffle-step towards her.

Every fibre of Marceline’s being screamed for her to turn and flee this distorted apparition, but she stood her ground. Parts of him resembled Cole, and she needed to know why.

‘Why have you come to the Black Lane, child?’ the Skin Man asked. ‘Are you so weary of life that you seek an end to it? Do you think so little of your soul that you’re willing to risk it so carelessly?’

Marceline forced herself to meet the Skin Man’s gaze as she answered.

‘My husband is a scavenger. He came here six days ago in search of rare items he might sell. He did not return, and so I came looking for him.’

The Skin Man regarded her for a long moment, as if weighing her words.

‘You are either very brave or very foolish.’ The creature’s mismatched lips stretched into a twisted smile. ‘Perhaps both. You must love your husband deeply to put yourself in so much danger to find him.’

She focused on the parts of the Skin Man that resembled Cole.

‘I do.’

‘And what would you give to have him returned to you?’ The Skin Man’s tone became sly. ‘What would you sacrifice?’

She didn’t hesitate.

‘Anything.’

The Skin Man drew in a sharp breath and then released it slowly.

‘As you see, I have encountered your husband. He is now part of me. Or perhaps I should say parts of me. But I may be able to arrange his return to you. Would this be something you desire?’

‘Yes! Very much so!’

The Skin Man nodded, the vertebrae in his neck making loud cracking sounds, as if his head wasn’t firmly attached. For a moment, she feared the head might fall off and land on the floor at her feet, but it remained in place.

‘Then give me your left hand.’

Despite her declaration that she would do anything to have Cole back, she hesitated. But then she did as the Skin Man commanded. Her hand trembled, but she did not withdraw it.

The Skin Man moved far more swiftly than she thought him capable of. He wrapped the skeletal fingers of his own left hand around her wrist, clamped his right hand onto the back of hers, and then pulled.

The pain was beyond anything Marceline had ever experienced, including the pain of childbirth. She heard a high-pitched scream of agony, so loud and shrill it seemed to slice the air like the sharpest of knives. It took her a couple of seconds to realise the scream was hers.

Blood gushed from the ragged stump where her hand had been attached to her body, splattering onto the floor like thick red rain. As she watched, the Skin Man’s left hand – the one with the stubby fingers – crumbled away to dust, and he placed her hand near the dry stump of his arm. Fleshy tendrils extruded from the stump, wrapped around the hand, and pulled it tight against the Skin Man’s arm. Once the two ends were pressed together, the tendrils wrapped around the wrist and merged with the skin, fusing the part together, leaving behind only a bloodless line of scar tissue. It was like watching a wound heal at an impossibly accelerated rate. The Skin Man lifted his new hand in front of his face and admired it, flexing the fingers, turning it back and forth, getting the feel of it.

‘I think it suits me, don’t you?’

Marceline pressed her stump against her body in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. She felt woozy, light-headed from shock and blood loss.

‘You’ll need to cauterise that.’ The Skin Man gestured with his new hand, and several yards away yellow-orange flames burst into life. A metal barrel she hadn’t seen before – the kind that once had been used to store and transport chemicals – held a blazing fire. The residents of Lowtown often used such barrels to warm themselves. This fire burned brighter and hotter than any she’d ever seen, though. She gazed upon the flames, but she made no move towards them.

‘If you do not tend to your injury quickly, you will bleed to death.’ The Skin Man gave her another of his hideous smiles. ‘But if that happens, fear not. I’ll make good use of your remains.’

The thought of the creature picking at her corpse like some sort of carrion eater was enough to spur her to motion. She stepped towards the fire, left arm held out before her, blood still spilling onto the floor. The Skin Man’s earlier words returned to her then.

And what would you give to have him returned to you? What would you sacrifice?

Tears began to slide down her cheeks as she drew near the fire. Its heat was so intense she could feel the pinpricks of hot pain dancing on the skin of her face. When she reached the fire, she gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and plunged her bleeding stump into the flames. The scream that ripped free from her felt as if it tore her throat to shreds.

Then, mercifully, she lost consciousness.

She opened her eyes.

At first, she didn’t remember anything, including who she was. She was lying on a hard surface – a street, she thought – her back against a flat surface. A gutter. She’d been hot before, so very hot, and the coolness of the plascrete was a welcome sensation. She next become aware of a distant throbbing pain. She wasn’t certain what it was or where it came from, but it was most unpleasant and she didn’t like it at all.

She attempted to rise, but when she put her hands on the ground to push herself up, agony exploded in her left hand, so intense that for an instant a flash of white light obscured her vision. The pain cleared her mind and restored her memory. She was Marceline, and she’d gone to the Black Lane in search of her husband. Instead, she had found the Skin Man, and he…

Using only her right hand, she pushed herself into a sitting position. She then looked at her left hand – or rather the charred nub of flesh where her hand had once been. If it hadn’t been for the pain of her cauterised wound, she might’ve thought her encounter with the Skin Man had been a dream.

She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious or how she’d got out here on the street, but she jumped to her feet in sudden alarm. The light was dim. It was dusk, and that meant the darkest things that inhabited the Black Lane would soon emerge from their daytime lairs to fill the streets in search of prey. It was too late for her to get away, she would have to–

She got her first good look at her surroundings then, and she realised that she no longer was in the Black Lane but rather several blocks from it. She had no idea if she’d somehow managed to get here on her own, or if the Skin Man had brought her, but she didn’t care. She was too relieved to be away from the Black Lane and the foul things that dwelled there.

She heard the Skin Man’s voice – Cole’s voice – in her mind then. A memory she only now recalled or a message he was somehow sending to her from afar? It didn’t matter. What mattered were the words themselves.

The sacrifice of your hand was to prove the seriousness of your intentions. If you wish to restore your husband to life, I shall require new parts to replace his. You must bring me those parts. If you do not, you shall never see your husband again.

She immediately understood what the Skin Man was asking of her, and she was sickened by the idea. If she wanted Cole back, she would have to lure someone else into the Black Lane and offer up that person to the Skin Man in exchange for Cole. She would, in essence, become a murderer. Could she do that, become that, even to ensure the return of her beloved husband? Even to restore her children’s father to them?

She didn’t know.

‘Marceline!’

Startled, she whirled in the direction of the voice – a man’s voice. At first, she feared it was the Skin Man, come to claim another part of her body. But the man she saw running towards her was human. What he wasn’t, was Cole.

Darrick stopped when he reached her, cheeks flushed, sweat beading his brow.

‘I’m so glad you’re all right! When I saw you enter the Black Lane, I thought–’

He broke off as his gaze fell on the cauterised stump at the end of her left arm. His eyes widened, and when he looked at her again, she saw he was afraid.

‘What happened? Did something… Are you…?’

He took a step backwards. He feared her! It was so absurd that she had to fight to keep from laughing.

‘I lost a hand, Darrick. That’s all. I haven’t been tainted by Darkness and transformed into some sort of horrible fiend.’

Although now that she said these words, she wondered how she could know for certain they were true. She had no idea exactly what the Skin Man might have done to her while she’d been unconscious. But aside from the pain in her stump, she felt normal enough. A thought occurred to her then, and she frowned.

‘What are you doing here? You’re a long way from the Crossroads.’

Darrick looked as if he hadn’t made up his mind whether she was a threat, but he didn’t attempt to flee.

‘After you left the Crossroads, I closed up my stall and followed you. Once I realised what direction you were heading in, I became concerned for your safety. The streets near the Black Lane are dangerous enough, but to enter the place itself… I thought you might need some assistance.’

‘How gallant of you,’ Marceline said, upper lip curling into a slight sneer. ‘But you didn’t follow me into the Black Lane, did you? You stopped well before that.’

Darrick’s silence was all the confirmation that Marceline needed.

‘And I wager you were less interested in helping me than you were catching up to me, and doing what you’ve only fantasised about until now.’

Again silence, only now his cheeks reddened in embarrassment or anger. Perhaps some of both. Marceline went on.

‘What did you do after you saw me enter the Black Lane? Did you wait around, hoping that when I returned – if I returned – you could play the concerned would-be suitor and get into my good graces? Or did you hope that when I returned, I wouldn’t be in my right mind, and I’d be defenceless against your–’ She nearly spat the next word, ‘–advances?’

Darrick continued holding his tongue, but she saw no hint of embarrassment on his face now. She saw only anger well on its way to becoming rage.

And then, before she knew it was happening, Darrick backhanded her across the face. She stumbled to the side but didn’t go down. The right side of her face felt hot, the skin tight, but it was nothing compared to the pain the Skin Man had inflicted.

‘You think you’re so much better than me,’ Darrick said. ‘You and Cole both. I barely made a profit off the useless junk your husband brought me to sell. There was only ever one thing he had that I truly wanted – you.’ He gave her a smug smile then. ‘That’s why I suggested Cole try scavenging in the Black Lane. I figured at worst he might bring me something worth buying for a change, and at best, something nasty would catch hold of him, and he’d never return. I’ve wanted you for so long, and when you approached my stall today…’ He shrugged. ‘I decided to seize the moment.’

Marceline was stunned. Not because Darrick wanted her. Every time she’d seen him, she had felt his eyes roam across her body. She wasn’t even surprised that the man had schemed to eliminate her husband. Darrick was a selfish bastard who didn’t care who got hurt as long as his desires were fulfilled. She was surprised that her poor, sweet Cole had been foolish enough to listen to Darrick’s suggestion that he scavenge in the Black Lane. She knew Cole was desperate to support his family, but until this moment she hadn’t fully realised to what extent that had been true.

Darrick stepped forward and grabbed her left arm. With a look of disgust, he examined the cauterised stump more closely.

‘An unfortunate flaw, but one that can be overlooked.’ He displayed his teeth with a grin. ‘Assuming all your other parts are intact.’

He released her arm and fastened his hand around her throat. He squeezed tight, cutting off her air, while his other hand roamed across her body. Black crept in from the edges of her vision, and she knew if she didn’t do something in the next few seconds, she’d slip into unconsciousness, and then Darrick could do with her as he liked.

She reached into her pocket with her right hand, and her fingers took hold of the sharpened piece of metal she’d brought with her for protection. She withdrew it and rammed it into Darrick’s gut. He cried out in pain and stepped back, releasing his grip on her throat. He looked at the weapon in Marceline’s hand and then down at the widening crimson stain on his shirt, a puzzled expression on his face, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing. Then he looked up at Marceline, his face darkening with rage.

‘You harlot!’

He pressed one hand to his wound and reached out with the other as he lunged towards Marceline. But before he could get hold of her once more, she swept out with her makeshift blade and with a single stroke sliced open his throat. Blood poured from this new wound, and he reached up with both hands – stomach injury forgotten – and pressed them to his neck in a futile attempt to hold back the crimson flood. His face paled, and he looked at Marceline, eyes unreadable. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but all that came out was more blood. He swayed, took two steps to his right, and then collapsed to the ground and lay motionless, eyes wide and staring.

Marceline held her weapon at her side, Darrick’s blood dripping from its sharpened edge.

‘Skin Man!’ she called.

Marceline – tired, sore, and sweaty from having dragged Darrick’s body all this way – stood outside the building where she’d encountered the Skin Man. She was here. It was nearly dark now, and it took a moment for her to see a section of shadow detach itself from the rest inside the building and come towards her. The Skin Man stepped outside and stopped when he reached Marceline. He gazed down at Darrick’s body for a moment, then sighed.

‘What a waste of perfectly good blood.’

Marceline turned towards the conglomerate creature.

‘Is he an appropriate substitute for my husband?’ she asked.

The Skin Man looked at Darrick’s corpse, considering. Then his mismatched lips gave their lopsided smile.

‘He’ll do.’

A tendril of darkness extruded from the ragged hem of the Skin Man’s robe – if indeed it was a robe at all – and snaked across the ground towards Darrick’s body. The tendril wrapped around the dead man’s ankles and pulled itself taut. The Skin Man then turned and began making his way back towards the building, pulling Darrick’s corpse along after him.

As the Skin Man faded back into the shadows from which he’d come, he spoke one final time.

‘Go home and await your husband’s return.’

New sounds emerged from the building then, the tearing of flesh from bone, the wet sound of organs being removed from a body cavity.

Marceline turned away and ran towards home. She did not look back.

A couple of hours passed before she reached her home. As she entered the small room that served as both kitchen and main living area, she saw Zach and Bethann sitting at the simple wooden table in the middle of the room, a burning lantern on its surface the sole illumination in the place. The children’s heads were down on the table, their hands spread out beside them. They were both fast asleep. She stood and watched them for a time. Both of them favoured Cole – they had his same mahogany hair – and she thought of how happy they would be to see their father again. If she’d still possessed both her hands, she might’ve attempted to pick them up one at a time and carry them to their sleeping pallets in one of the two smaller rooms adjacent to the main one. But she didn’t, so she roused first Bethann and then Zach and led them to their beds. They were so sleepy they barely registered her presence, and soon as they lay down, they were fast asleep once more. The poor dears had been through much these past six days, worrying about their father. Soon their worries would be over, though.

Marceline returned to the main room. She was too excited to sleep, so she screwed one of their last promethium canisters to the stove Cole had built to warm the place up a bit. She then set about inventorying their meagre stores, trying to determine what she might be able to make for a celebratory breakfast to welcome Cole home.

By the time morning came, Marceline had breakfast going. After selecting her ingredients – bone meal and some grox-jerky she boiled to soften – she’d sat at the table facing the door, waiting.

The cooking smells woke the children. They shuffled from their room, yawning and rubbing their eyes. When they saw her, though, they came instantly awake and rushed over to the table to hug her.

‘You were gone so long!’ Bethann said. ‘We were afraid you wouldn’t come back!’

‘Like father!’ Zach added.

Marceline wrapped her arms around her babies and lowered her head down to theirs, inhaling the sweet scent of them.

‘Mother? What happened to your hand?’ Bethann said, alarmed.

Marceline released them and sat up. She held out her left arm to give the children a good look at her stump. The flesh was still blackened and sore, and it had begun suppurating in places. It still hurt, but Marceline didn’t care about the pain. It would lessen as she healed. Besides, a little pain was a small price to pay for Cole’s return.

‘I had an accident, but I’ll be all right.’ She almost added, it looks worse than it is, but even the children, young as they were, would’ve known it for the lie it was.

‘I’ve got a surprise for the two of you,’ she said.

‘We’re going to have a hot breakfast!’ Bethann said. Hot meals were a treat. They usually had to make do with cold hardtack and thin gruel.

‘That’s one part of it,’ Marceline said. ‘But the other part – the best part – is that your father…’

The front door began to slowly open.

Marceline smiled. ‘Is home.’

Marceline and the children watched the door open the rest of the way. A familiar silhouette was framed there, and Marceline felt her heart fill with joy near to bursting. The Skin Man had kept his promise. Cole was back!

She stood and started towards her husband, but when Cole stepped inside and she got a good look at him, she stopped and stared. It was her husband, there was no doubt of that, but his pale flesh was crisscrossed with seams just as the Skin Man’s body had been. The Skin Man had reassembled Cole, but it seemed his ability to do so was more limited than Marceline expected. Still, what did it matter what Cole looked like? He was here, alive, and that was what counted.

She went to him and put her arms around his neck.

‘We’re so glad you’ve come back to us, love.’

Cole didn’t speak. His jigsaw face held no expression whatsoever, and she realised his eyes – which looked like a pair of glass orbs – did not blink.

‘Cole?’ she said, uncertain.

He started walking then, and she let go of him and stepped back. He headed for the table, towards the chair that had always been his, movements stiff and awkward. Marceline had once seen a puppeteer put on a show during a Departure Day Festival. He’d worked wooden, jointed puppets, causing them to move as if they were alive by pulling strings attached to their various body parts. Cole looked like that to her now, a dead thing, given only the illusion of life by someone else’s trickery.

Cole reached the table. He stopped, swayed on his feet for an instant as if he might fall, before pulling his chair out and dropping onto it with a heavy thud. He continued staring ahead without blinking, his face statue-still.

‘What’s wrong with daddy?’ Bethann said, voice small and afraid.

In her mind, she heard the Skin Man’s voice one last time.

You gave me a corpse, so I gave you one in return. Fair trade.

Marceline fought a battle within herself then. It lasted only a few moments, but when it was over, a deep sense of calm settled on her. Maybe things couldn’t be the way they were before, but just because they’d be different didn’t mean they’d be bad. They could find a way to make this work. That’s what families did. They made adjustments, allowances, compromises. Sometimes for practical reasons, but more often for love. And she loved her husband, had ever since they’d been children. And here he was, now, with them, and they would be a family again. The four of them. She’d make certain of it.

Marceline, the bright light of madness dancing in her eyes, looked at her children.

‘Your father has returned. Aren’t you going to give him a hug?’

Bethann and Zach exchanged frightened glances.

Cole’s features remained slack for a moment, then his mouth stretched into a cold, cruel smile. His eyes, however, remained dead and empty. Moving with surprising speed, he wrapped an arm around each of his children and pulled them tight against his body. Zach and Bethann cried out as they writhed and struggled, attempting to free themselves, but he was far too strong, and there was nothing they could do. They began sobbing loudly.

Marceline hated to see the children cry, but she told herself it would be all right. Children were extremely adaptable. They simply needed time to adjust. And they would. Eventually.

She went to her husband and draped her handless arm around his shoulders.

‘Breakfast is almost ready, dear. Welcome home.’

He didn’t reply, of course, didn’t acknowledge her words in any way. But that was all right. When two people truly, deeply loved each other, they didn’t need words to communicate.

She bent down and kissed her husband’s cold, dead lips. Then, humming brightly, she went back to the stove.

A DEEP AND STEADY TREAD

David Annandale

On the day of the execution, the sky over Everyth was a hard, cloudless blue. There had been a storm the night before, but the morning light from Hysh shone brilliant and cold over the city, unforgiving as a blade. It was fitting, thought Velaya Navaan. As she and her mother, Beretice, rode towards the plaza, she stared forward from their carriage. Light turned the puddles on the cobbled ground into glares sharp as daggers. It carved every cornice and gable into a lethal angle, a stab of accusation and condemnation. The realm was marking this as a day of reckoning.

‘Justice marches with us,’ Beretice said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Listen. Can you hear its footsteps?’

‘I can,’ Velaya whispered. She heard it in the tread of the people in the street, almost all of them marching in the same direction as the carriage. It was in the surf crashes of a hundred simultaneous conversations, rising and falling like advancing waves. She heard it, too, in the crunching rhythm of the carriage wheels. And all the sounds came together to create a heavier beat, a deeper one. Velaya felt it pound, pound, pound, as if resonating from the very heart of Ghyran.

Justice was marching with them. It was marching to bear witness to the end of her father’s assassin.

‘We are almost there,’ Beretice said, glancing out of the carriage window. ‘Are you prepared for this?’

‘I am, mother.’ I am more than ready. Soon she would be able to breathe steadily again. Her chest had felt constricted since her father’s body had been found face down in the sewage canal where it passed under Everyth’s walls. The manacles of grief and anger and shame had been tight around her lungs. The days had been trials of slow suffocation. That would end now, she thought. Justice would come, and the shackles would fall away.

But when they reached the plaza, she had a moment of doubt. The crowd was huge, a teeming crush of insects. Angry, anticipatory murmurs swept around the carriage as it crawled through the mob towards the stand.

‘So many,’ Velaya said. Her words were drowned out by the welcoming crowd as they roared the Navaan name. ‘So many,’ she said again.

The uproar made her more uneasy. She expected to receive satisfaction at the execution, to feel some measure of peace at last. She had not prepared herself for this excitement. These people had not been directly touched by the awful deed, yet their rapture was palpable.

‘The murder of your father was an infamous crime,’ Beretice said. She spoke without emotion, as if she were the judge and your father was someone who had no relation to her. ‘It has finally revealed to the people of Everyth the true nature of the House of Holforn.’

‘The people seem glad.’

‘They should be.’

The carriage stopped by the stand. A city guard opened the door of the carriage, helped Velaya and Beretice out, and escorted them to some seats on the left-hand side of a raised platform. A stone block waited in the centre for the prisoner’s neck. It was a slab of granite, with a groove cut in the surface to funnel the blood into the iron basin. Black, dried blood crusted thickly at the edge of the groove.

The assembled dignitaries nodded to the two women as they ascended to the top row. Bassar Chalkrew, the unctuous mayor of Everyth, was there. So were the leaders of House Fallasing and House Derithkin, families that stood below the Navaans in the hierarchy of the city, and who hoped to benefit from their favour. There was also a Judicator of the Ghyran Guard. The Stormcast Eternal stood beside the stand, motionless. The impassive visage of her helmet faced the executioner’s block. She did not react when Velaya bowed to her. She was a silent witness, terrible in her stillness.

Beretice and Velaya took their places. They were alone in the top row, clearly visible to the crowd as representatives of the wronged family, the bereaved come for the solace to be drawn from a murderer’s punishment.

Beretice sat, her back as rigid and straight as the laws of Sigmar, her face as frozen as the Stormcast Eternal’s metal visage. Beretice was something greater than a victim. She looked as if it were her hand, and not that of the court or the executioner, that meted justice.

‘I envy your strength,’ Velaya said.

‘Why? How do you lack it?’

‘I keep thinking about father, and what that man did. It’s an effort to stay upright.’

‘You’re here. That is strength enough. It will soon be over.’

On this side of the platform, Velaya faced the courthouse and the prison, a building of red stone. Ivy covered its facade like a clutching hand. The main doors opened. The crowd murmured and parted as Jerek Holforn started across the square, flanked by two guards, his hands manacled.

Walking behind the prisoner, towering over him, came the executioner.

Krentz Navaan, Velaya’s brother, was as muscular as he was tall. His pace was steady, ominous. A hood covered his head, leaving only his mouth uncovered. His lips were set in a grim, expressionless line. His eyes looked out through two slits. They were a blue so pale they were almost colourless. Velaya could not see them from this distance, but she could feel their iron gaze. So could the crowd. People had begun to jeer when Jerek appeared. They fell silent at a glance from Krentz.

Jerek wore an iron mask, fashioned to look like a pig. He was making moaning, choking noises as he walked.

‘What is he wearing?’ Velaya asked, shocked.

‘A shame bridle,’ said Beretice. ‘At my request. He has done enough harm. I do not want him insulting us further with more lies and pleas of innocence. Now there can be no false pretence at bravery or honour. He will die with us seeing him for what he is.’

‘A coward,’ Velaya hissed under her breath. She should enjoy Jerek’s humiliation. It should please her.

Her jaw clenched uneasily.

‘A coward,’ Beretice repeated. ‘From a family of cowards.’

The hate between the Houses of Navaan and Holforn was of long standing. Their rivalry stretched back for all the generations that could be numbered. Velaya did not know how it had begun. She doubted anyone knew. It had been perpetual, a basic fact of existence as integral to her identity as the blood that ran in her veins. The Holforns had come from Mhurghast originally, and they were morally weak. They were perfidious. And now, as the Navaans were finally and definitively gaining the upper hand, the wounded Holforns had lashed out murderously.

Cowards.

‘They have always been lacking,’ Beretice continued. ‘Do not ask where they stood when Everyth was freed. Do not ask how they helped rebuild. Answers would shame the tongue that spoke them.’

Velaya was surprised by the intensity of her mother’s words. It was not like her to give voice to her feelings, even in so low a tone.

If there was a day to do so, though, this was it.

‘Did they fight against Sigmar?’ Velaya asked. She couldn’t imagine the family’s existence would have been permitted to continue if that had been the case. Yet she was prepared to believe just about anything when it came to the Holforns.

‘No,’ Beretice answered. ‘The chronicles tell us they welcomed the arrival of the Stormcast Eternals, as did we all.’ She snorted. ‘No, they did not fight against Sigmar. But how hard did they fight for him? With what rigour do they follow his laws?’ She gestured dismissively at the prisoner. ‘Look at him. That is all you need to know.’

Jerek Holforn mounted the stairs to the platform with difficulty. He dragged his left leg, and even though he was dressed in loose, stained sackcloth, Velaya could see that his posture was twisted. The criminal’s punishment had begun before his execution, then. Krentz had worked on him to extract the confession. Velaya wondered how long he had had to do so. She thought of her father, of the gentle man he had been. He had never been a warrior, perhaps not fully a Navaan in the tradition that Beretice and Krentz represented. He had been the warmth and the embrace of her home. His absence was a painful hole in her heart. She thought it would never heal, and she hoped Krentz had put Jerek to the question for a very long time.

The crowd’s silence deepened as the guards brought the prisoner to the execution block. They forced him to his knees. No one said a word. There was no ceremony. Jerek Holforn was to be despatched as if he were a steer before a butcher.

Velaya glanced at her mother. Beretice’s lips were in the same grim line as Krentz’s. At the corners of her mouth, though, there was the smallest hint of a smile.

Jerek was struggling in the grasp of the guards. The shame bridle scraped against the stone. He tried to speak, and started to choke.

‘Be done with it,’ Beretice muttered. The words were not a plea. They were a command.

Krentz stepped forward. He paused, looking down at the prisoner’s exposed neck. Velaya half-expected him to curse Jerek, to proclaim that justice was about to be served. But he was the city’s executioner in that moment. The wronged son had no role to play here.

Krentz lifted his axe. The huge, double blade flashed in the light, diamond bright. Velaya’s breath caught. The axe descended and the blow seemed heavy and fast enough to cut through the platform into the earth. But it rang against the framework of the shame bridle and did not cut all the way through Jerek’s neck. Krentz jerked the axe free. Jerek writhed in the grip of the guards, his wet, choking, shrieking squeal reverberating inside the mask. Krentz paused, untroubled by his failure to end the prisoner’s life with one stroke. Then he brought the axe up and down again with dismissive violence. There was harsh clang of metal against stone, and Jerek’s head fell into the basin. The guards released the body and it collapsed, blood gushing from the neck. Krentz reached into the basin and lifted the head. He raised it high, turning to face Velaya and Beretice.

‘Well done,’ said the mistress of the House of Navaan.

Velaya felt no relief, no peace, not even satisfaction. Instead, she felt a numbness, shot through with cracks of nausea. The brilliance of the day faded to grey. She was barely aware of rising to descend the stands. It wasn’t until the mayor addressed her mother that she took in what was going on around her once more.

‘You were right,’ Bassar was saying. ‘There is more evidence against the Holforns.’

‘You will be acting upon it.’

‘Oh, we will. Without delay.’

‘We will be grateful for your swift prosecution of justice.’

Velaya tried to nod in agreement, but all she could think of was the prospect of a long series of executions.

She was forced to snap out of her numbness the next day. Beretice announced that Bassar had called for Navaan representatives to meet him at the manor house of the Holforns.

‘Already?’ Velaya asked. Jerek’s death was just one part of the sentence passed on his family. For his crime, his kin were to surrender their property to the Navaans as restitution. Velaya was surprised the process had been completed so swiftly.

‘Krentz will meet you there,’ Beretice said. ‘Go and claim what is now ours.’

Velaya’s brother was standing outside the house when she arrived. Bassar was there too, looking pale, as if he had just been sick. Krentz was expressionless as ever.

‘There has been a development,’ Krentz said when Velaya alighted from the carriage.

‘Something more than that!’ Bassar exclaimed, his voice croaking.

‘The Holforns are dead,’ said Krentz.

‘All of them?’

‘All. Slaughtered down to the last.’

‘How? Who…?’ She sensed the inadequacy of her response. It was the best she could do.

‘We don’t know,’ said Bassar.

‘I think we do.’ Krentz looked at the mayor with cold contempt. ‘They knew what was coming for them. They knew their hour of reckoning had come, that their power and their cowardice had been smashed forever. They chose one last craven path.’

‘You think they killed themselves?’ Velaya asked.

‘I’m sure they did. There is no other explanation for the massacre.’

‘I suppose,’ Bassar said slowly. ‘But for all of them to be dead…’

‘You have doubts, then?’ Krentz asked with perfect calm.

‘No, no.’ Bassar shook his head. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘Of course I am. You have no objection, I assume, to my sister and me taking stock of what is now ours?’

‘Well, no, but the bodies…’

‘She is a Navaan and strong enough,’ said Krentz.

‘I didn’t mean to imply… That is… I wanted to…’ Bassar fumbled.

‘Thank you,’ Krentz cut him off. ‘Velaya? Shall we?’

Krentz strode in the main door without waiting for a response. Velaya followed, bracing herself.

The Holforn house was in the eastern quarter of Everyth, a wealthy home surrounded by others in a region favoured by successful merchants. The house was not as large as the Navaan’s mansion, but it was big enough, its gables jutting their shade imperiously over the street, making it seem as if the house were leaning forward.

Inside, the stench hit Velaya like a sickening wave. It filled the air, thick and choking, and breathing through her mouth gave her no relief. The smell seemed to hang from the gilt frames of the mirrors in the great hall, and drape itself over the rich furnishings. Velaya didn’t know where to look. She didn’t want to see, though she had to.

The blood was everywhere. It pooled across the floor. It was spattered across the paintings and mirrors. Some of the Holforns had been killed at the table in the dining hall. Two lay by the door, their arms outstretched as if pleading for mercy, or reaching for the escape that would never be theirs.

As Velaya and Krentz made their way through the house, they found other bodies in the bedrooms on the upper floor, and slumped on the staircase. The servants had been killed too. Most of them had been slain in the kitchen.

None of the dead were armed.

‘Who did the killing?’ Velaya wondered.

‘Other Holforns, like I said,’ Krentz said, undisturbed. ‘They might have fled. Though I don’t think so. The wounds on a few of the bodies did not look severe enough to have caused death.’

‘You would know.’

‘I would. I suspect those cowards may have taken poison.’

‘This is monstrous.’ Some of the bodies were very small. She had looked away as soon as she had seen them, but the images were in her mind now. She feared they would never leave. ‘How…’ she started to say. How could they do this? How could a family turn on itself like this? How could anyone commit such an atrocity? None of the questions were enough. And this horror was beyond answers. ‘Monstrous,’ she said again, her soul whispering in pain.

‘It is. A final revelation of the character of his corrupt house.’ Krentz spoke without interest or inflection, as if his words were rote and his mind was on the value of the Navaans’ new possessions.

The cellar held scores of casks of wine. Krentz ran a hand over them appreciatively. ‘The one thing I will grant the Holforns,’ he said, ‘is that they had taste.’

Velaya began to have difficulty breathing. None of the dead were in the cellar, but the darkness was oppressive. It closed around her like a tide, pressing back the glow from the candelabra Krentz held. The air was cold as an insinuation. It reached deep into her, freezing her core. When she took a breath, she felt the claws of insects scrape at her lungs.

‘I need to get out of here,’ she said.

‘When we’re done,’ said Krentz. He moved on, and she stumbled after him, clinging to the weak island of light.

Krentz rounded a corner between the stacked casks. The darkness rushed to capture Velaya. She hesitated, falling further behind, and then she could see nothing. She tried to feel her way forward, but then she heard something. She stopped, straining to hear better. Whispers came for her. They skittered against her ears, voices without tongues. Velaya gasped and fell against the casks, covering her ears, trying to shut them out.

The whispers flowed through the room, silver swimming through a black river. There were no words that Velaya could make out. She heard and felt the anger, the loss, the grief and the hate. The whispers cut into her soul, like razors. They multiplied and grew louder. They seethed around her with predatory intent. She crouched, closing her eyes in fear of what she might see if the darkness withdrew.

Things were drawing closer. Things without mercy, advancing with the strength of vengeance.

She wanted to cry out for help but was terrified to make a noise, in case the things behind the whispers found her first.

But they know where I am.

She squeezed into a ball, trying to shrink into the stone of the floor.

‘What are you doing?’

She opened her eyes. Krentz stood over her, frowning.

‘Can’t you hear them?’

‘Hear what?’

The whispers had stopped. The darkness receded.

Velaya stood up, her face burning under her brother’s withering glare. ‘You didn’t hear anything at all?’

‘What should I have heard?’

‘Whispers!’

He shook his head. ‘No. Nothing.’

‘I want to leave.’

‘Evidently.’ He headed back to the stairs, pausing with condescending courtesy to make sure she was keeping up. ‘Return to mother,’ he said, once they’d reached the ground floor and he had escorted her to the doorway. ‘You are no use to me here.’ He stood on the threshold, his boots planted in the blood of the dead. ‘I will meet the two of you when I’m done.’

‘When will that be?’

‘When I’m done.’ He closed the door in her face.

Krentz did not return to the House of Navaan during the day. He did not return in the evening. Velaya barely slept, worried about her brother, fearing his contempt and tormented by the memories of the whispers. A wind whipped up during the night, and she was jolted from her fractured sleep by every creak of the house. She would have heard him return.

She did not.

In the morning, she found Beretice standing by the window of the great hall. The wind still blew, steadily, relentlessly. The clouds had returned. They scudded over Everyth like an army, their heavy, unbroken masses of grey shouldering each other forward. The rain was holding off, the gathering storm building its strength into something terrible.

‘Where is Krentz?’ Velaya asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘He said he would return when he was done. He can’t still be at the Holforn mansion.’

‘Perhaps not. I already said that I don’t know where he is.’

‘Has something happened?’

‘Will you insist on asking what I have already said I do not know?’ Beretice snapped. Her voice shook slightly.

Beretice never raised her voice. She never let emotion taint the frozen command of her words. To hear actual anger break through was disturbing. To hear fear, even if only a hint, was worse.

Velaya withdrew. As she left the great hall, she caught a glimpse of Bassar Chalkrew in the atrium, evidently arriving in answer to a summons. She hurried to meet him before the servants took him to his audience with Beretice.

‘Do you have news of Krentz?’ She spoke quietly. She did not want Beretice to overhear and come in to control Bassar’s response.

‘No news,’ said Bassar, visibly anxious. ‘We are looking for him, but…’ He shrugged, helpless.

‘Did anyone see him after he left the Holforn manor?’

‘I have not spoken to anyone who has.’

‘And you looked for him there?’

‘We did. There was no sign of him.’

That was something, at least. Yet while his absence in that house should have reassured her, it did not. ‘I will look there as well.’ It was the last thing she wanted to do. ‘You might have missed something.’

‘I think it would be better if you did not,’ said Bassar.

‘Why not? The house is Navaan property now. I have every right to enter it.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. But… I assure you we found nothing, and it is so unpleasant there, even with the bodies removed.’ Bassar’s smile was forced. He was trying too hard to keep his voice level.

‘Merely unpleasant?’

He gave her a long look. ‘Please do not go in there,’ he said. ‘I would not go willingly again.’

‘I must. I have to look for my brother.’ She spoke firmly, so as not to let the memory of the whispers shake her determination.

Bassar grimaced and gave her the key.

It was early afternoon when Velaya arrived at the Holforn manor. She hesitated before the door. The house frowned at her as if she were an intruder. And, in her mind’s eye, the cellar waited, its darkness thick and squirming.

She let herself in. The blood had dried on the floors, and the worst of the stench had faded. Even so, the air felt wrong. It was much cooler than outside. Icy air caught in the back of her throat, tasting of grave earth. The silence was oppressive, growing heavier as she moved away from the entrance. It was also anticipatory, waiting eagerly to give way to a more terrible sound.

Velaya paused at the foot of the stairs. The ornate balustrade threw shadows like intertwining thorns. In the dimness, the stained-glass window of the landing was a rheumy eye, its colours murky, its angular pattern obscure. Velaya looked up towards the second floor, and wished she had a good reason to search up there instead of in the cellar. The light up there was feeble enough. It would take an effort of will to climb the stairs into the gloom. But doing so would be a waste of time, a delay to hold off the inevitable, and she would be staying longer in the house than was necessary.

Go up there at the end. Go up when you can look quickly and be done.

She descended to the cellar. She kept holding her breath, listening intently for what she did not want to hear. Every noise she made, every scuff of her boots against the stone of the steps and the floor, seemed to be hiding a vicious whisper. But when she stopped, keeping motionless and silent, the cellar was still. The rounded shapes of the casks were the hunched backs of feral beasts in the wavering light of her lantern. Crouched, ready to attack. The whispers lurked in the deepest shadows. The darkness coiled, its talons hovering a hair’s breadth from the back of her neck as she advanced.

But nothing moved. Nothing spoke. She sensed that which might become a presence savouring the moments and the taste of her fear.

The deeper into the cellar, the more intense the atmosphere of anticipation became. She kept herself going with the thought of her duty to her family, and the anger that the Holforns could still, somehow, be a threat. She had not truly understood, until now, just how deeply the corruption of that family ran. But they had murdered each other rather than surrender. Their house was corrupt too, she thought. The shadows of the stairs and furniture, even up above, joined in patterns she did not like. They felt like the gestures of a ritual.

Something glinted on the floor. The object was under the rounded swell of a cask. It was pure chance, or the workings of fate, that ensured she saw it. She knelt and picked it up. It was Krentz’s ring, a thick silver band engraved with the entwined laurel and thorns of the family’s crest. It was stained with blood.

Velaya straightened up. She stared at the ring, the implications of its presence sinking in, when, finally, the silence in the manor broke. Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked. After a few seconds, another did.

Velaya did not wait for the third. She closed her fist around the ring and bolted for the stairs. The floorboards creaked and creaked again as she scrambled up to the ground floor and rushed to the door. The sounds were coming from the upper storey, gradually but inevitably making their way towards the main staircase. Several seconds elapsed between each creak, but the regularity of the rhythm made the pattern of the sounds unmistakable. Something walked in Holforn Manor.

Velaya dared not be alone with it.

She ran out of the house and pushed the doors closed behind her with a heavy boom. She locked them and backed away into the street. The gables looked down at her, impassive. From outside, Velaya could not hear the creaks. The wind was too strong, its hollow roar too constant. Velaya started breathing again. She was on the verge of telling herself that there was nothing to fear. She even pressed her ear to the door, because there would be nothing to hear, and she would prove it to herself.

Then something hard scraped against the inside of the door, and she fled.

Beretice was still at her post before the windows in the great hall when Velaya returned, staring out into the gathering storm and the deepening gloom of the evening.

Velaya walked over to her. She held out the ring. ‘I found this in the Holforn manor,’ she said.

Beretice jerked as if struck. She looked at the ring for a long time. She said nothing, but her jaw tightened and her face paled. ‘Then our fate is sealed,’ she said, barely above a murmur.

‘We need to call in reinforcements for the guard,’ Velaya said.

‘There’s no need.’ The words were contradicted by the horror in Beretice’s voice.

‘I think there is. I heard… I heard something in the house too, and we’ll need different help against that, but there are obviously some Holforns still around, and if they’re strong enough to kill Krentz…’

Beretice cut her off. ‘There are no more Holforns.’

‘There must be.’

‘I know there are not.’

‘How?’

‘Because Krentz told me.’

‘When? You saw him after he left the house yesterday?’

‘No,’ said Beretice. ‘The night before.’

Velaya blinked, confused. ‘I don’t understand–’ she began. And then she did. ‘He killed them,’ she said quietly.

Beretice nodded. Her eyes remained fixed on the street. She looked back and forth, strain etching her features.

‘Why?’ Velaya asked.

‘Don’t be stupid. Because I told him to. Because it was time to finish things once and for all.’

The ring felt heavy and soiled in Velaya’s hand. She placed it on the windowsill. ‘Did father’s death matter at all to you? Was it only a chance to complete a vendetta?’

‘Your naivety grows tiring, Velaya. We have no time for it any longer.’

The numbness Velaya had experienced at the execution returned. She fought it off. ‘You didn’t,’ she gasped in disbelief. ‘No. No. Krentz wouldn’t have harmed father.’

‘Krentz did as he was told. He understood what was necessary. He always did. Your failure to do so is your great weakness.’

‘But why?’

‘Your father was a weak man. He was never truly a Navaan. He married into this family, remember. He had shown some skill on the battlefield, or at least he did not disgrace himself, and I had hoped that was a sign of greater strength. I was wrong, and that is the shame I must carry. But at least in death, he would give us the means to put an end to the Holforns.’

‘So Jerek was innocent.’

‘Innocent,’ Beretice spat. ‘Does innocence defend the walls of Everyth? Does it destroy the foes of Sigmar? It does not. It is a frail thing – a luxury that saps the strong who are forced to defend the true innocent. It is not a quality. It is a crime. Your father was guilty of it. So were the Holforns. They paid a just price.’ The iron had returned to Beretice’s eyes as she spoke with quiet vehemence.

‘Then what did I hear in their house?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ Beretice’s power leaked away again.

Velaya turned on her heel and started to walk away.

‘Where are you going?’ Beretice asked.

‘Elsewhere.’

‘Stay here! We have a vigil to hold.’

‘A vigil for what?’

‘I don’t know,’ Beretice said again. At last, she sounded truly frightened.

‘Then you will discover what it is on your own,’ Velaya told her, and left.

That gesture gave her a small piece of the satisfaction she had expected after the execution. She wondered if part of her had suspected, even then, that she was witnessing a charade, one whose main purpose had been to draw squeals of agony from a tortured, innocent man. Either way, she could not be in the same room as her mother. Hate, grief and anger warred with fear. The terror of the thing that walked was greater than all, but the struggle allowed her to keep breathing, and to fend off fear’s paralysis.

She retreated to her chambers. They were directly above the great hall, and she moved to her window. She watched the same street as Beretice, waiting for the reckoning.

No, she thought, as the fear grew. This is not justice. Whatever was coming for Beretice would be, but Velaya was innocent. She had hurt no one. There had to be a way to propitiate the thing that walked their way. Or a way to turn its anger from her.

She gathered the candles in her chamber. She lit them all, and placed them in an arc around the window. Kneeling in the protective shield of light, her gaze firmly on the street below, she murmured prayers to Sigmar. ‘Lord of Azyr, your hand delivered Everyth from ruin. Hear me, I beg you. I need you now as Everyth needed you then. Send your strength to my aid. Shield me from the doom of my corrupted family.’

She prayed, and night fell, and the storm broke. Rain fell in violent sheets, and hail hammered the cobblestones, fragments of ice bouncing like shrapnel. The candles flickered, their light growing weak. The sturdy, polished oak furnishings of her room, rich in bronze and silver design, seemed to withdraw from her, becoming less real. It was the gloom that was true, the darkness that was real, its presence slowly gathering as it had in the Holforn manor.

Velaya had been at the window for hours when the glow appeared. A spectral green approached from the right, spreading across the street. It grew brighter, though it made the darkness more profound. In its centre, a tall figure walked the street. Its pace was slow, steady, and though it was silent, Velaya felt the vibration of every step. They resonated in her soul, and her prayers faltered. She had thought she had been hearing justice march at her side on the way to the execution plaza. That had been a mere precursor, the first hint of what was coming for the Navaans. The tread she felt now was much deeper, and more terrible.

The thing that closed in on the Navaan door was Krentz. Velaya saw enough to recognise him in the torn executioner’s robes that floated majestically on an ethereal wind. He wore an iron mask that concealed most of his features. Its lower portion was a long, jagged point, giving him the aspect of a sepulchral bird of prey. It glowed with engravings, clearly visible to Velaya even from this height. They were the laurel and thorns.

Phantom skulls swirled around the executioner. They gaped and screamed at him. They snapped their teeth at his robes. They howled in his face. He did not fight them. He marched on in the midst of their torment, as if accepting his sentence.

His carried his axe, raising it with dread purpose as he reached the door.

Velaya closed her eyes. Her breath turned into a tortured whine she heard the blows and the splintering of wood.

‘This is judgement,’ she whispered to herself. ‘This is justice,’ she pleaded again. Let it stop with mother.

Beretice screamed. There were more blows. A crack and a thud – and then, when the screams should have stopped, they continued, though their nature had changed, because she who howled no longer drew breath. Velaya heard the servants rushing below, and still more blows, and more screams, more screams that would not stop.

They did nothing. They are not at fault. Stop it, Krentz. Stop it!

The tread mounted the steps.

Velaya turned to face the door to her chamber. A sob of incomprehension rose in her throat. This was wrong. Judgement had come for her mother. That was the end of things. It had to be. ‘Sigmar, hear me!’ she pleaded. ‘Jerek Holforn, you and your family are avenged! Be at peace! Let there be no more blood! Krentz, it is done! In Sigmar’s name, leave me be!’

Silence. The tread and the screams had stopped. Velaya held her breath, waiting. There was nothing, not even the whispers, only the anger of the storm, and the pounding of her heart.

After what seemed an hour, Velaya moved to the door, her pace growing steadier with growing courage. She leaned against the wood, listening. The quiet beyond felt huge, empty, like a gaping tomb.

But when she opened the door, the candles blew out, and a baleful light surrounded her.

The lord executioner filled the entrance to her chamber. Velaya’s brother’s eyes fell on her, and they blazed with a hatred as terrifying as it was dead. The skulls floated into the room, their jaws agape but mute, their attention focused on her.

‘Please, Krentz,’ Velaya croaked. ‘Please. I am innocent.’

‘Innocent,’ Krentz hissed with a voice of serpents and blood.

‘INNOCENT!’ the skulls screamed with hungry, furious joy.

The spectres of the innocent surrounded her. Krentz raised the axe, and Velaya realised that its fall would only mark the beginning of her suffering.

THE THING IN THE WOODS

Paul Kearney

It is the drums that wake me, in the dark moments before the dawn – the confessor used to tell me that the hour just before morning is as black as a heretic soul.

But on rising from my pallet in the cell, it seems that they were no more than a shadow of the night, a memory. The darkness is silent. The forests beyond the Retreat keep their secrets. And the drums are in my mind alone – a nightmare, no more. I have imagined them yet again.

My old bones creak when I kneel, the joints ache and my back protests. But I pray always, on waking. I have prayed every morning on Carcanis for sixty years, and I’m damned if I will stop now. The words are a comfort to me – the Catechism of the Creed Temporal. I need no slate or book to remind me how to utter them. They are a part of me, inscribed upon my very soul.

I am the last of my kind on this world, and I will give witness to the Truth every morning, as I swore to the others I would – all those who came here with me and who are buried now in the graveyard beyond the walls of the vegetable garden. I remember them, every one. Sometimes it seems to me that I recall their faces better than I do those of the living who still surround me.

Bruni comes in when I am done – she puts her ear to the door to make sure she gets the timing right, I am sure – and she bears a jug of hot water, a clean towel and a mug of scalding tea, double-strength.

She is a good girl – not overly pious – but then the confessor once described me in exactly the same terms. She is almost nineteen now – or thereabouts – and she stands tall and dark and silent as I perform my ablutions naked before her. I have no modesty – I was taught to abjure it in my own youth.

I stand at last barefoot on the flagged floor with a leather belt cinched around the faded blue habit I have worn for days beyond count, and I sip the tea while she raises a thick eyebrow, and I nod to tell her that it is acceptable, as it always is. Bruni has been my maidservant for seven years, and is well used to my ways now. And she also knows that I am a finicky old bitch when it comes to my tea.

The morning comes at last, with the first sun over the mountains. We both stand and watch it, Bruni and I. It is not religion, not quite faith, to do such a thing, but it is a moment of grace, all the same.

Then the moment passes, and it is all about the day to come.

Well, I am old, there’s no getting past that. I come from common labouring stock – my father was a fisherman – and my hardy peasant genes have served me well, but now I feel age come creeping at my throat, sidling up through my bowels and looking for ways to confuse my mind.

It has been a long time – five decades – since we had a ship land here. The promise of the early years has foundered. But this world is still better for what we made of it – immeasurably better than the shrouded, tree-choked hell which confronted us on landing. I give thanks for that every day in my prayers.

And in my old mind I wonder now at our courage, our presumption in coming here to change the entire belief system of a primitive people. Homo sapiens without much of the sapiens. And I mean that for us as well as them.

I wonder at our arrogance. We were in the right – we had truth at our side. But there were deeds done back in those days that still unsettle my dreams.

We are a world alone here, isolated from the Imperium. Carcanis has an elliptic orbit about an old star, four moons, and very little in the way of open water.

I miss the seas of my youth – here the seas are of trees, immense, towering titans that have covered the world, the oldest half a kilometre high.

When we first came here, the great trees were almost gods to these people. They revered them beyond all other life – and beneath the wood and leaf, they worshipped some older deity in their ignorance, a dark presence which even in the first cleansing fire of our mission here, my fellow brethren of the Missionarus Galaxia could never quite pin down. It did not even have a name.

It was something which had once existed in the dark pre-history of this world, perhaps, and which wove its filthy tendrils across the settlers who first arrived in the time before the Eye of Terror, a time when Heresy was only a word in a book. That dark worship – those beliefs – left a mark on the people here which took a long time to erase.

At least, we thought we had erased it, in our pride.

Castra Gunnorum was named after the first of our number to be murdered on this world. In the beginning it was nothing more than a timbered outpost, a beleaguered fort defended by a stockade whose very creation outraged the natives. We sawed down the trees and made of them a wall before we even knew what such an act meant to those who lived there. It was sacrilege, to their eyes.

Ah, poor Gunnor, I remember him like it had happened yesterday.

He went out among them open-handed, though he was the best warrior of us all – confident in his faith and his jokes and his good humour and big fists. He had cajoled and threatened and persuaded his way across half a dozen worlds before Carcanis – he was famed for it in the Order. I loved him like a brother, for he had overseen my progress since first I had joined, and he had bolstered my own faith with his iron certainty.

They skinned him alive, starting with his face, and they were down to his waist before he died. They took their time over it, and gave him water to drink as they peeled the flesh from his body, to prolong his life and the universe of pain which they made of it.

I would have shot him long before then to end his agony, but the confessor stayed my hand, and all I could do was weep.

Gunnor’s end impressed those who killed him, for he stayed true to his faith until the last, and he even managed to laugh at them in his death throes. They respected such conduct, monstrous bastards though they were. They knew a brave man when they met one.

I was only a young woman, but back then I was as quick and deadly as a snake. With the Confessor’s reluctant blessing, I was next out of the gate, may the Throne forgive my presumption.

I was not sure, then or now, what it was I thought I was doing – whether I was going to preach to them or slaughter them. I had my sword at my hip and a laspistol in my robes, and they drew back from me as I charged into them, wild-eyed, my black hair flying free of my plaits – oh, what glorious black tresses I had when I was young, may I be forgiven for the vanity of remembering it!

I stood there ready to die beside Gunnor’s mutilated carcass, a spitfire full of rage and hate – and instead of cutting them down, I harangued the bloody-handed murderers of my friend, one fist on my sword-hilt, the other on the grip of my pistol, because it was what he would have wanted.

It did not come easy, that restraint. I remember weeping myself blind as I preached, and to this day I do not know if the tears were of grief or rage. Nor do I remember what words I used.

I know that I spoke to them of the light of the Imperium, even as the crows descended and plucked the eyes from Gunnor’s head on the gibbet above me. I swallowed the grief, the anger, the black murderous desire to kill them all and wipe the world clean of their pagan ignorance. Instead I told them of Holy Terra, of the Golden Throne and the immortal Emperor, and the vast, wide universe beyond the tree-choked swamp of their imaginings.

And that was the beginning of it, right there, in the bloody muck before our stockade. For they did not kill me, but listened. Gunnor’s courage had bought us that much. A brave man’s death earned me their forbearance. And that was how it began.

Throne be praised, we brought this world into the light – it took forty years, and a cascade of blood and tears, but in the end the Truth won out. They abandoned their ignorance, the tribes of the Carcani, and embraced the true Faith. They cast aside their ancient worship and the vile shadow that had enveloped them. And we who survived of the First Mission went out across the world, preaching and witnessing for the Truth – for the rest of our lives.

It makes me weary even to think on it now. For forty years I criss-crossed this continent like a restless ghost, while decade after decade those senior to me died doing the same. And after the warp storms descended we were truly cut off, those few of us who were left – we who alone on Carcanis had experienced the reality of other worlds, a higher mode of existence.

We made proselytisers of some converts, introduced others to the mysteries of our calling, but somehow it did not seem to stick. Somehow, they all fell away. None of them had seen the galaxy beyond their own fettered horizon, and in some ways, I think none of them truly believed that it existed. My fellow missionaries and I were a strange miracle. People who had descended from the sky with frightening ideas and the will to die for them.

‘The hastman is here with messages from the castellan which he needs you to read for him,’ Bruni says to me with that casual manner of hers. She always knows when to interrupt my daydreaming. ‘He awaits you in the atrium.’

Back in the present, I collect my thoughts quickly. ‘Does he now?’ I keep sipping the tea, the herbs warming me as much as the hot liquid. Even now, even at this late stage in the game, I am baffled by the fact that literacy has not taken a hold in this bloody place. But it does at least give me a usefulness which is not likely to disappear before I do.

‘He is early,’ Bruni observes. ‘That is not like him.’

Hastman Trivos of the Trevassi tribe is a fifty-year-old block of wood, his face brown and seamed and grey-topped with hair like greasy moss. I have seen him smile perhaps twice in the last decade. In his huge fists the despatch scrolls are like pale twigs. He inclines a little as I enter the atrium – his spine has grown stiffer of late. When the confessor was alive his bow was deep and genuine. Now it is a relic of past respect, no more.

‘I need these to be read to me, Kalek Dynah. They bear the hourglass seal, so time is… of the essence.’

He speaks Low Gothic with the guttural accent of his people, and still stumbles now and again over its more complicated constructions. Metaphor is beyond him, and he calls me by the Carcanish title I was given soon after arrival. Kalek means Witness. He has never spoken to me in his own tongue, though he knows I am fluent in it.

I know better than to offer him tea – none of the Carcani like to linger within the walls of the Retreat. Its stone-built massiveness awes them yet, and they make the sign against ill fortune when they pass under the shadow of the great Imperial aquila that tops the gateway, the ignorant fools.

I take the scrolls without a word, break the first seal and scan the calfskin. What I read there makes me whistle soundlessly.

‘You want the gist of it, or word for word, Trivos?’

‘Just give me the meaning, kalek.’

‘The Gurun tribe of Yar Godoris have attacked the settlements along the Timari River. A raiding band of some four hundred riders has been sighted, heading west. You are to raise the local hird and intercept them, but you are on no account to push beyond the river itself. The Gurun lands are not to be entered.’

He grunts, and clenches one mottled fist. ‘I had almost been expecting that. Hastman Jekyrr of the Gurun seeks to push us into open war. He has been seeking this for many months. And still the castellan will not respond in kind. The Trevassi villages burn, and the Gurun remain untouched. It is–’ He catches himself, looks away. Swallows his anger.

‘I have no doubt the castellan knows what he is doing,’ I say diplomatically. I have not seen such emotion on Hastman Trivos’ face for many a long year. I wonder what it signifies.

He says no more, however, and I move on to the second despatch.

‘A convoy of stone-wains from the Helvaris quarries will need an escort to Castra Gunnorum in three days’ time. You will detail twenty men for the task.’

No response to this. I open the last scroll.

Throne. ‘A guard of four men is to be placed at the gates of the Retreat in Castra Gunnorum from this day forward, to protect the kalek from possible disturbances in these unsettled times.’ I raise my head, angry. ‘I should have been consulted about this.’

The hastman merely shrugs, his wooden composure back in place. ‘As you say, I have no doubt the castellan knows what he is doing.’

Our stares lock once more. Twenty years of such dealings has brought us no understanding of each other – I might as well be trying to discern the humours of a tree.

I should not have let him see my anger, as he no doubt regrets revealing his.

‘You did not have to read the last of these to me,’ Trivos says, breaking the silence. ‘You could have falsified what it said, if it so displeases you.’

‘I am sworn to the castellan even as you are, hastman. My confessor held this place in his name, as do I. And I am alone here. I have no means to gainsay his orders, even if I deem them… ill-considered.’

He cocks his head to one side on that bull neck, his eyes like black stones. ‘Ill-considered? A day will come when this Retreat will be empty, kalek. It is a fine-built place, a fortress of stone. The castellan merely sets his mark on what will soon belong to him.’

‘Once I’m dead.’

‘Once you are dead.’

‘And how will the castellan have his orders conveyed to you then, Trivos, with no one alive in Castra Gunnorum who can read or write?’

‘We managed well enough before your folk came here,’ he says, unruffled. ‘We will return to the ways of our fathers.’

The drums. That was how they communicated, back in those days of blood and barbarism. I cannot resist trying to goad him.

‘And if another ship arrives one day from the stars with more of my kind on board – or with Imperial troops – what then?’

Something strange flits across his face – the ghost of a smile, a rare event indeed. He gives me that contemptuous half-bow again, and turns on his heel to go.

‘The despatches, Trivos – will you not take them with you?’

‘What good are they to me now?’ he says over his shoulder as his boots ring on the flagstones and his spurs clink like little tuneless bells.

Bruni closes the atrium doors on his back with a sullen boom, then strides to my side with her long hair flowing free behind her.

‘That man sees himself in this place, with a high chair and a golden cup.’

‘He wants war,’ I say simply. ‘War breeds opportunity as carrion breeds maggots. And he is the man to make it happen.’

‘I think he will break his oath to the castellan and set himself up as the chieftains did of old – as a Lord of Swords. The Trevassi were always a treacherous clan – my mother told me so. But this one has been patient a long time. Now the castellan grows old, like you – the High Seat in Ab Suren seems far away and he is too trusting of his hastmen.’

‘The castellan is no longer so trusting of me, it seems. He means to make of this place my prison, not that it has been much of anything else these last years. Before you were born, Bruni, the castellan relied on my brethren and me for counsel. That time is long gone.’

‘The eagle on the gate still has power here – you still have power, kalek.’

I smile sadly. ‘The power of memories. Such power dies along with those who remembered them.’

A wave of tiredness overwhelms me, though it is still early morning, and the birds are at their song in the woods all about the Retreat, a gossiping crowd amid the towering shadows of the trees.

We cut down the surrounding woods when we first came here, in our pomp, and made a clearing all about the Retreat so that the fortress walls loomed like a cliff over the town below – we set the fist of the Imperium on the soil here and worked it to our will. But now the trees have grown back, and their leaves brush the walls as though stroking the stone, whispering to it.

‘Do you truly think Trivos means to cast aside his fealty to the castellan?’ I ask Bruni.

‘He will make war on the Gurun – it is in his blood. The Trevassi have always hated them. And when that war comes, all the old order of things will be overthrown. Four hundred riders! That is no mere raid – it is more like an army.’

‘You have a wise head on such young shoulders, Bruni. Whence do you come by such certainties?’

‘This is my place, my home. You know my family are of the Drunai, who were here before the Trevassi, before the rule of the castellan, before your people came down from the skies. The villagers know this too, and they speak freely to me knowing I will never pass their words on to any Trevassi.’ Her young face clouds. ‘I, too, am the last of my kind, kalek. My kin were once priests, speakers to the trees.’

‘And yet you serve me here, I who cut down your trees.’

‘One magic drives out another, as the sun melts the snow. My mother told me that there was the light of truth in your words, a truth which reaches far beyond this world.’ She pauses, and looks up at the vaulted roof of the atrium, grey stone and black beams.

‘I, too, wanted to see something beyond the darkness of the trees, and the blood we sacrificed to appease the powers of the forest. I believed in you, Kalek Dynah. I had faith.’

Perhaps it was misplaced, I think.

Later that day, after the noon devotions and the midday meal, I call Bruni into the scriptorium with a ring of the handbell.

There are rows of desks here in the long, light-filled chamber, but they are all bare aside from the dust. I alone sit where once a score of us were instructed in penmanship by the confessor himself. Here, we produced beautiful vellum grimoires of Imperial wisdom, which were then packed across the continent to grace the castles of the Carcani nobility. How many of those books survive now? How many are still read?

I turn my mind from such melancholia, and concentrate on the task in hand.

The pleasure of calligraphy – the sensual curve of the black line on blankness. I love it still. There is a beauty in the arc and dot of every letter. I mouth the words in slow silent syllables as I write, savouring them. The words leave my mouth to move through the quill and the black ink, to mark forever the calfskin on my desk. There is an eternity in such a process. Long after I who create them today am gone to dust in the graveyard, the words will endure.

I used to find that a comfort – I thought it a moment of power, of magic. I know better now. But the craft of it remains a pleasure, all the same. Even when writing a simple message, one fraught with danger, heavy with meaning.

Bruni can read – I taught her five years ago – and she does so shamelessly over my shoulder, before I dust off the ink, roll the scroll and seal it with the confessor’s aquila ring on the blob of scarlet wax I have dripped upon it. The eagle is bright as blood on the pale vellum.

‘Well?’ I say to her.

She takes the scroll from my outstretched hand. ‘There is death in these words,’ she says.

‘Only for those who can read them,’ I reply.

‘You denounce the hastman to the castellan – but without evidence.’

‘Your instincts chime with my own, girl. Trivos means to make war, to throw off his allegiance to the High Seat. The castellan must be warned, and this message must go to him before we have Trivos’ men at the gate to watch what comes and goes from the Retreat. It must be today, as night falls.’

‘And I must do it,’ Bruni says.

‘There is no one else I trust.’

‘It is three days’ ride to the High Seat of Ab Suren. I could be gone a week. You will be all alone here.’ She looks away. ‘Who will make your tea?’

‘I will drink water. It will be my penance for inflicting this burden on you.’

‘I’m thinking that is not much of a penance to atone for this burden, kalek.’

‘You wait until you get to my age, girl – to sacrifice a good cup of tea in the morning is penance indeed.’

She looks down. ‘I do not want to leave you.’

‘I know, child. And I do not want you to go. But there is no other way. Saddle that flea-bitten roan of yours and pack up, there’s a good girl.’

‘What if I refuse?’

‘Then you will disappoint me.’

We look at one another. There are tears in her great dark eyes, and I am struggling to keep my own face impassive. I love this girl like she was my daughter, and it galls my soul to send her out into the violent world beyond the Retreat. But I was trained in a harsh school, and I will not allow her to see the turmoil I feel within.

‘If you hear there is unrest or fighting here in Castra Gunnorum… if you hear… No matter what you hear, do not come back, Bruni, not alone.’

‘Trivos will know – it may take hours or days, but in the end he will find out who it was that denounced him,’ Bruni says, her face contorted with grief.

‘He will not dare harm me. As you say, there is still power in the eagle over the gate. When the castellan comes south with his forces – and he will – then you will return with him, and not before. I cannot risk losing you, child.’ I smile. ‘Who else can make my tea the way I like it?’

I can tell my assurances sound as false to her as they do to me.

‘Come with me, kalek. There is no more purpose to your staying here, the place is a tomb.’

‘It is my home,’ I say sharply. And in a softer tone: ‘I am too old for long horse rides and sleeping on the cold ground. My bones belong here, along with those of my brethren who left theirs before me.’

‘You will die here, kalek.’

‘That was always my intent, child, from the first moment I set foot on this world. Now kiss me, and let us part in faith and friendship.’

I do not watch her leave or waste time on more goodbyes, but I know all the same. I recognise the very moment she leads her horse out of the postern and leaves me alone in the great shadowed silence of the Retreat. It is as if a warmth has been stolen from the place.

Bruni was right – it feels more like a tomb than ever, now that I am wholly alone at last within its great walls.

That night falls heavier and darker than any I have ever known on this world. The Retreat is a holy place, by the faith of my fathers. It is a refuge, and was aptly named. But that faith seems a flickering, insubstantial thing now when set against the vast looming forest that surrounds me and the dark world whose heart beats beneath my feet.

I climb to the battlements in the star-filled darkness, puffing and creaking my way up the stone steps, and feeling once more the long-forgotten slap of sword scabbard and holster at my bony old hips. I kiss the aquila ring the confessor passed to me on his deathbed, and look down at the benighted world below. The hilt of the gladius feels good in my hand, though I am no longer sure I have the strength to wield it, and the pistol I carry has charge enough for only a shot or two. But it is heartening all the same to have these companions of old campaigns with me once again. They remind me of a time when I was as young as Bruni is now, tall and straight and full of fire.

The moons rise, one by one, and they illuminate an endless sea of trees. The Retreat is a miniscule island in that vast ocean, and the villages which populate the woodlands are hidden by the canopy. Never in my life have I felt so alone. I stand there listening for I know not what, but when I hear it, I realise what it is I have been waiting for.

The sound of the drums, echoing out of the forests. Not a dream before dawn, but a barbaric staccato rhythm which signifies the ancient ways of this world.

We were fools to think we could uproot something buried so deep in the blood of these people. I know that now. But I have not lost all hope. In Ab Suren the castellan is a cultured ruler, a man who embraced the message we brought to this world and the reality of the wider universe. He will come. He will bring fire and the sword here, and cleanse this place of the old wickedness. He must.

One hour, two, I stand there, until my bones ache and the night coolness steals the warmth from my habit. The drums come and go – they carry clear across the shrouded valley, to the hills beyond and the far borderlands along the Timari River. They are gathering, the forest tribes. The drums summon them.

And at last there is something else below. Torchlight moving through the trees, following the road up from the village of Castra Gunnorum itself. I think I hear a murmur of voices in the night, but it could just be the frantic thumping of my labouring heart. The light splinters and flickers, and finally halts a few hundred yards short of the gates. Then I hear the shrill, high shriek of a warhorn cleave the silence of the night, a sound I have not heard on this world for thirty years. It sets the hair up on the back of my neck – raises memories of past slaughters, bloody battlegrounds amid the trees. A time when we fought against the barbarism of the tribes with sword and gun.

The torches move away again, dwindle into the darkness. And I know I must go down there. Whatever it is, I must seek it out – I cannot just remain standing here on the battlements of an empty fortress. That would be cowardice, and they would see it as such. I will not let them even guess at my fear.

I leave the Retreat through the postern in the mighty gate, and lock it shut behind me with the iron key which the confessor also entrusted to me on his deathbed. The cobbled roadway leading from the gatehouse is encroached on all sides by undergrowth and scrub and overhung with vast sighing branches. I move carefully, remembering my woodcraft, and draw my pistol with a scrape of steel on leather.

Up ahead, a single torch burns, flickering amid the leaves on a spear shaft. As I approach it, I feel a dull sense of dread drag at my bowels. A stake has been driven into the ground beside the guttering torch, a black, glistening stave planted in a gap between the cobbles.

Bruni’s head sits atop it.

Her black hair hangs limp and blood-soaked, clotted in shining ropes. Her eyes are open in a kind of baffled surprise, as if her death had not been what she thought it would be. From her lips a pale cylinder protrudes. It is the message scroll I had ordered her to take to the castellan.

I stand looking at her dead eyes, my own stinging with bitter grief. And in my belly there grows a raw, red hatred for this place, for the Carcani, for the ignorance of this backward world.

I am not alone. I sense eyes watching me from the trees, and I am not wholly surprised when a tall figure comes striding into the torchlight towards me. It is clad in the furs and hides of a more primitive time, and on its head are a pair of great horns, the antlers of a king stag. The torchlight glints in its eyes and it carries a long, curved blade of black iron.

It is Trivos, hastman of the Trevassi. And yet it is not. The man is there before me, but so is something else – something more than common humanity. His eyes have the gleam of a beast in the torchlight and there is blood on his lips, as though he has drunk of it. Behind him, there is a murmuring amid the trees as though an unseen crowd waits there, watching.

‘What brave man did this?’ I ask him, my voice as harsh as that of an old crow. I point the barrel of my pistol at Bruni’s severed head. ‘An unarmed girl is all she was.’

‘She was a traitor to her people,’ Trivos says, and it does not sound like his voice – and he speaks in Carcanish, his own tongue. The first time he has ever used it in my presence.

‘Your people!’ I spit with raw contempt. ‘What gives you the right to speak for them, Trivos? Hastman of the Trevassi you may be, but there are a hundred tribes on this continent alone, and the castellan claims the fealty of them all from his High Seat. Your people!’

‘The castellan betrayed his birthright and spat on the world that spawned him. He took up with your kind to gain power over us. He cast aside the customs and knowledge of his forefathers. He is no ruler here, not any more. The Lord of the Trees has awoken at last. He speaks through me. The alien ways that you brought to this world will be rooted out, and we will return to the world as it was, as it was always meant to be.’

‘You will lead your followers back into a dark age, Trivos. My brethren brought the truth of Imperial civilisation to Carcanis. That truth cannot be denied forever – beyond this world are a billion others and the Emperor watches over them all from His eternal Throne.’

‘There is no throne here, and no Emperor. There are only the ancient woods, and the power that watches over them. He has been sleeping, but now he is awake, and I am here to do his bidding.’

‘Are you now?’ I snap, and raising the pistol to his face I pull the trigger.

The weapon fizzes and jumps in my hand with a brief flare of light. I curse and look at the magazine. The charge is dead, yet it should not be. I should have had one last shot, at least.

I toss the useless relic aside.

‘Your weapons are no good here, not any more,’ Trivos says.

‘And what is my fate to be, then? Another head on a stick?’ As I speak I reach inside my habit for the key to the Retreat’s postern gate. Drawing it forth in one swift movement I pitch the key as far as I can into the blackness of the trees. I will not be going back, I know that now – but I will not let them merely walk in and take it.

Trivos does not move. His calm is eerie, the stillness of a predator before the pounce.

I draw my sword with the ring of good clean steel. Raising it, I kiss the aquila etched on the blade.

‘This weapon still works,’ I say to Trivos, then I lunge forward with all the speed and violence that my hate-filled old heart can raise.

Trivos raises his arms, and the trees come alive around him. A dark crowd of shapes rushes in on me and before my limbs have propelled me forward three feet I am surrounded. A hand grasps my wrist and squeezes, others pinion me. The sword drops from my fingers and I cry out with helpless rage. I smell sweat and clay and see lime-painted faces striped and snarling in the moonlight. Furs and flint, bone-tipped spears. A prehistoric mob lifts me off the ground and strips my habit from my back. No words are spoken. They grunt and hiss and growl like animals and their nails score my flesh as they grip my limbs.

These are the villagers I have lived beside for decades. I have broken bread with them, delivered their babies, treated their sicknesses. And now I see nothing familiar about them at all. They have reverted to something which is so primal as to be barely human, all traces of civilisation cast aside.

‘Bring her,’ I hear Trivos say in that dark new voice of his, and I am borne aloft by them, away from the torchlight, the cobbled roadway. I am carried struggling and cursing into the deeper darkness of the trees, into an ancient and unchanged world.

It becomes a blur. Moonlight and torchlight and tree-shrouded darkness as deep as any I have known. The rank smell of those who bear me, the grip of their hands. The shrill shriek of a warhorn from time to time, and under it all, the endless thump of the forest drums.

Their numbers grow as they march through the trees. First there are dozens, then scores, and then it seems many hundreds of people are moving in the night all about me, lithe as coursing hounds, silent except for a collective panting exhalation of breath. They follow no path that I can see – though I cannot see much as I am borne in their midst, the coolness of the night seeping into my body through the linen shift which is all I wear now. I have no longer the strength to struggle against them. I am remembering the manner in which many of my brethren died back in the early days: alone, tortured and maimed before their end, their corpses left hanging from the great trees like defiled fruit.

Very well. I will join them soon, and there’s an end to worrying about it. Death walks by my shoulder in the night, an old friend almost. All I must do now is die well, to make them remember me, to give them an example of my Order’s discipline and courage.

But as the monstrous cavalcade runs on, mile after mile into the deep fastnesses of the forest, I find myself wishing just once that I might have seen some of my own people here – a company of the Astra Militarum, or even a handful of the legendary Adeptus Astartes, the Angels of Death. Then these degenerates would have seen what the Imperium truly was, the faith and might and holiness of it.

Carcanis is but a tiny, dark ink spot on a canvas vast beyond measure. The Imperium is eternal. The Emperor is immortal.

The ground rises under us. We are climbing out of the Timari lowlands and into the hills beyond. Broad-leafed trees are now interspersed with the darker spikes of evergreens. We gave their species names when we first arrived – the terminology of Old Earth. Oak and sycamore and pine and ash. But in truth these trees are not the same as those which humanity has transplanted across half the galaxy. And among them are mighty giants of the forest that have never been categorised, their trunks many yards in diameter, their heads rising hundreds of feet to create a darksome, shifting canopy. These are lords among trees, kings of their kind. Nothing like them ever grew on distant Terra, I am sure.

The undergrowth dies away and the light of the moons is cut off. The Carcani slow their pace, and shuffle almost silently over the leaf-mould with the great trunks looming up in every direction, like pillars in an immense cathedral. I sense the awe of those who bear me – the fear they have for this place and these things. I feel it myself, and silently recite the Creed Temporal, reiterating the verses I learned in my youth. But the words run together into a nonsense in my head, crushed by the great silence of the forest.

I see before me a tree larger than any I have ever encountered before on this world. It rears up above its fellows like a mountain, hundreds of feet high, straight as a pillar and as wide as a hab at its base. The roots of the thing ripple through the ground for a hundred yards about its foot like great grey serpents, thicker than a man’s torso. And it is hollow – there is a cleft like a cavern in the trunk of it, wide enough for a wagon, and utter blackness within.

I am set down upon the ground with surprising gentleness by my captors, before the yawning gap in the tree. I stand there shivering, my old flesh bruised and scratched and bleeding. My hair has been ripped down into a grey mane and my sandals are gone – I feel the mossy forest floor beneath my bare feet, and through it I sense the thrumming thunder of a massive drumbeat which vibrates the very earth itself – but there is no sound. The drums have stopped. There is an unearthly hush about this place, and yet the power here seems to shout in my head.

I do not move – there is no point in running, and I mean to end with some shred of dignity intact. Trivos stands beside me with the blood shining round his mouth and that hellish light in his eyes, like some vulpine gleam catching the moonlight. I see nothing of the man in him now – his chest heaves and a rank stink emanates from his naked torso. It is inscribed with symbols that were not there before – swirls and runes and jagged lettering that coil in streams over his skin. The calligraphy of madness. The breath issues in hot clouds from his gullet.

‘Go,’ he says to me, more of a growl than a word.

I cannot speak or move. The darkness of the tree’s black heart looms before me and terror holds me fast. I have no words, no memories, just a blank fear of what lies inside.

‘Go,’ he repeats, and he pricks my side with the iron sword he bears. I feel the tip of the blade draw blood in my ribs, and the pain of it clears my head somewhat. I look around me. Many hundreds of people are gathered in a great arc before the tree, clenched in the silence of the not wholly sane. They wear animal heads – boar, wolf, badger, fox, deer – and aside from the paint on their bodies they are naked now, their skins and furs cast aside. Even their weapons have been dropped to the forest floor, as if to bear them in this place is to transgress against the power in the tree.

This is Carcanis, my home of sixty years. And it is as wholly alien as any place I can conceive of.

‘Throne,’ I say in a cracked whisper, ‘watch over me. Immortal Emperor, into your hands I commend my spirit.’

I limp forward, one step, two – and a wind comes out of the yawning hole before me, carrying with it a reek of carrion and soil and mould, the decay of life, the stench of the grave.

And in the darkness are red lights, two of them, blinking in unison.

I am drawn in, forgetting my faith, my vows, my long service to the Imperium. I am here at the foul heart of this world, a secret that has awoken at last, a thing that has lain here since the birth of the planet.

I am Kalek Dynah, Confessor of the Missionarus Galaxia. I am a dead woman, walking into the darkness of hell.

MUD AND MIST

John Goodrich

Constantine looked at the sky, hoping to glimpse the local primary, but Forlorn Hope’s omnipresent clouds strangled most of the star’s light.

‘When do you think they’ll come to relieve us?’ Dimitri asked, his voice plaintive.

How to answer that? This was Constantine’s eighth rotation in an off-world combat zone, but Dimitri’s first.

‘They’ll come when they come,’ Constantine said. ‘We hold until relieved or we die in the mud.’ He closed his eyes, sent up a silent prayer to the Emperor. ‘I hate this mud.’

‘That’s what you’re thinking? How much you hate the mud?’ Dimitri had been on the line for four days, so his uniform was merely spattered with yellow-brown sludge, rather than caked in it. He wasn’t that bright, but he stacked fuel canisters neatly, and could swap an empty in less than three seconds.

‘I hate a lot of things.’ Constantine shuddered and looked out across the devastated terrain surrounding them. What had been a stand of trees was a shattered graveyard of dead trunks standing like spears thrust into the earth. The underbrush had been burned and poisoned to nothing, leaving only the naked, all-consuming mud.

‘I hate being so far away from Hephaestus,’ he continued. ‘I hate Commissar Heston and his peaked cap, and the way he sneaks up behind everyone, listening for an excuse to do the only thing that makes him smile.’ He looked at Dimitri and mimed shooting him with a pistol. ‘I hate the tyranids for being filthy aliens. I hate the useless mongrels who live on this Emperor-forsaken mudball for being unable to defend themselves.’ And he should have stopped there, but they’d been without relief or leave for three months. His nerves were in tatters. He had to stay alert every moment, awake or asleep, because yet another tyranid assault might break on the line without warning. ‘And I hate the incompetent lord general, his idiotic captains, and every stupid officer on this deployment. They’ve turned this into a right ball of chalk, and we’ll be lucky to get off this planet with all our limbs.’

‘I’ve got some recaff,’ Dimitri mumbled, looking away. ‘It’s cold, though.’

Constantine looked at his loader and his unlined, fresh face. How could he be so young? Not too long ago, he’d been someone’s baby. Constantine’s last loader had been less tidy than Dimitri. He’d died begging for a clean death as tyranid ammunition-worms burrowed under his skin. Constantine felt his right eye twitch at the memory.

‘Think we could use the flamer to heat it up?’ Dimitri’s smile was forced.

‘We’re directed not to waste the Emperor’s promethium on anything but his enemies.’ Constantine looked across the line. The 33rd Hephaestus had dug scattered, shallow foxholes into the mud, forming a haphazard trench system. If they dug too deep, the mud walls slowly crept over sleeping men, smothering them. By morning, there would be no trace of the man or his foxhole, just a shallow depression. The thought of the mud oozing over him while he slept gave Constantine the shaking horrors. He woke several times a night, certain he felt the cold embrace of the mud closing over his face.

‘Emperor’s bones, what’s that?’ Dimitri pointed off to the left.

Constantine whipped the heavy gun around so fast he nearly went down in the slick footing. He stared at the rolling hills, like freshly dug graves about to be disturbed from below. As he stared, he realised he was panting, his heart hammering in his chest. Did he see one of those filthy things? If he couldn’t spot them, they would swarm them all in a heartbeat…

The sound of Dimitri laughing made him snap around. His loader was pointing at him, torrents of laughter pouring out of him.

Constantine felt the blood pound in his ears and he ground his teeth. This irresponsible sack of skin and stupid had just endangered everyone on the line.

‘You are the worst, most accursed son of a…’

‘What’s going on, Guardsman Panas?’ Commissar Heston’s voice sounded directly behind him. Damn the man and his unnatural quiet, sneaking up on them like that.

He could denounce Dimitri. His joke was dangerous, and he should leave it up to the commissar to dispense justice. But one look at his loader showed the fear in Dimitri’s face. And all the rage ran out of him, leaving only cold and fear.

‘Dimitri and I were having a little laugh, Commissar Heston, sir.’ His voice came out small.

The commissar looked from Constantine to Dimitri and then back again.

‘A little laugh.’ His voice was hard, disapproving. Constantine looked from the commissar’s peaked cap down to the well-worn holster at his hip. How many men had that bolt pistol killed? Constantine was determined not to be one of them.

‘How are you holding up?’ Commissar Heston asked, his voice surprisingly gentle. Something like kindliness worked into his eyes. Constantine flinched away, knowing it was a trap. Heston snuffed in disappointment, then turned his head towards Dimitri, like a keller snake sizing up a baby murmouse.

‘How is Guardsman Constantine Panas acting, Guardsmen Hiondros?’ Heston’s voice was cozening. ‘May I call you Dimitri?’

Dimitri struggled for something to say, looking from the commissar to Constantine.

‘Yes,’ he mumbled.

Heston’s eyes closed to slits. ‘Yes?’

‘Of course you can call me Dimitri, Commissar Heston.’

‘We all have to keep a lookout for weakness in our fellow soldiers, Dimitri.’ The commissar’s words were slow and liquid, like he was trying to seduce a pretty girl. ‘We depend on each other for our lives. If someone is weak, or showing signs of battle fatigue, they could get us all killed.’

Heston was just looking for an excuse. Constantine’s eyes were glued to the hand that hovered just close enough to the belt-holster to be a threat.

‘Guardsman Dimitri Hiondros, do you know of anyone who is showing signs of strain? Who might fail in the execution of the Emperor’s duty, thus condemning everyone on this line to death?’

Dimitri looked at his mud-stained boots. Constantine looked back and forth from his loader to the commissar, his neck growing tighter as the possibility of execution loomed ever closer.

‘Everyone misses their families. You want to go home to your family, don’t you, Guardsman Hiondros?’

‘Of course I do, Commissar Heston. The only thing I love more than my family is the Emperor.’

The commissar nodded, his eyes never leaving Dimitri.

‘A man who fails the Emperor could cause the entire line to collapse.’ Heston’s voice was so soft Constantine strained to hear it. ‘And that could lead to the loss of this zone, and after that, the entire planet. All because of one person who was weak in the face of the enemy. You understand how serious this is, Dimitri?’

Dimitri slowly moved his gaze from his own feet to the commissar’s polished black leather boots. He was going to denounce Constantine. He knew it, just as much as he knew how Heston dealt with the weak. What could he do? He didn’t want to die for the Emperor. But more, he didn’t want this blood to soak into the mud of Forlorn Hope just because Commissar Heston was bored.

‘No, sir.’ Dimitri’s voice was quiet but unwavering. ‘I mean, yes, commissar, I understand, but no, I haven’t seen anyone who is showing signs of strain.’

Constantine realised he’d been holding his breath.

The commissar clapped Dimitri on the shoulder. ‘You are a good and dutiful soldier. You know where to find me if you discover anyone who is showing signs of battle fatigue.’

Without waiting for a reply, Commissar Heston turned and walked away. Constantine stared after him, absurdly wondering how he kept his boots so spotlessly clean in the midst of so much mud. His hands shook.

‘Next time, I’ll say he’s showing signs of battle fatigue, see what he does,’ Dimitri muttered.

Constantine stifled his laughter until he was sure the commissar was out of earshot. Then it burst out like a river through a dam, and he laughed until the tears ran down his face. Dimitri laughed with him, the two of them doubling over, steadying themselves on the flamer because their legs were too weak to support them.

Their small moment of camaraderie was broken by the dull crump of the artillery behind them. Their laughter vanished as if it had never been. Constantine scrambled for his magnoculars and scanned the horizon. To the left, the line of the dug-in soldiers went on as far as he could see. To the right, the haphazard spread of foxholes ended at a rocky outcropping some two miles distant. In front of them… he concentrated. Shells were landing several miles away, but he knew what it meant. Another tyranid assault was on the way.

He closed his eyes. He wished he could rest. He was tired from sleepless nights, and knew that this was going to be a horror show. Constantine had fought orks on Obatala Tertius. They were horrifyingly huge and strong, but they made some sort of alien sense. They bled, they built, they felt pain. Tyranids didn’t. They came screaming at the line, each one a slave to a greater will, not giving a thought to their own survival.

They’d hit the 33rd Hephaestus’ line fifteen times in the last three months. Constantine had seen men hacked apart by massive claws, devoured from within by chittering beetles. Crystals of pure poison smashed through helmet and skull alike, yard-long bone javelins punched men’s guts out. He remembered the stench of blood mixed with mud, the sharp reek of exposed bowel layered onto the stink of burned alien flesh. His hands shook, his stomach roiled as he huddled into himself. Hundreds had already died in agony. It was only a matter of time before they were all overwhelmed and he was just another corpse rotting in the mud.

‘Are they coming?’ Dimitri whispered.

Constantine couldn’t say anything for a long moment. He unwrapped himself from his memories, forced the fear of anticipation out of his mind.

‘You can bet on it,’ Constantine said.

The echoing thunder of the Earthshakers continued. This was unusual; a barrage never lasted. The tyranids always closed the distance quickly, and even the dullards who manned the artillery knew better than to shell their own men.

The tyranids were trying something different. Something new and horrible, and it was bearing down on them. Would they be able to hold?

He looked out at the plain of mud before him.

‘We’ve broken more than a dozen attacks.’

The truth said, Constantine searched for a comforting lie. ‘They can’t overwhelm us. Doesn’t matter what they throw at us, the 33rd Haephaestus will be here to see them dead.’

Dimitri looked at him with the familiar half-hopeful, half-disbelieving expression of a child asking if a story was true.

‘How can you know that?’

‘Tactics.’ The word burst out of him. ‘We have reason, we can think. These tyranids have the tactical sense of a swarm of cockroaches.’ He said it with deadly earnest, trying to convince himself as much as Dimitri.

It seemed to work. Dimitri settled, although he continued to scan the horizon nervously. To keep from thinking, Constantine made sure the receiver of the heavy flamer was clear of the omnipresent mud, then went on to check the barrel, the protective hood and the promethium feed. The pounding of the artillery crept slowly closer, and now he could see the enormous gouts of earth thrown up on every impact. He prayed to the Emperor for a Baneblade, or a Shadowsword. Anything with armour would be better than this soft-sided, mucky hole. Why weren’t there any tanks? Why was this line being left to its own devices?

Up and down the line, his fellow soldiers checked their weapons with quick, jerky motions, their expressions grim. Everyone knew another tyranid assault was coming. No one knew when, just like no one knew if they would get off Forlorn Hope, see their families again. Constantine knew, deep in his bones, that they wouldn’t. None of them would.

The thunderous drumbeat of the artillery wore at Constantine’s concentration. The relentless noise rattled his bones, and he wanted to scream at them to shut it down. The barrage was doing more harm than good; they couldn’t possibly be killing anything, and he would sell his soul for a moment of quiet.

He looked at the foxholes. Now that enemy contact was inevitable, Commissar Heston was nowhere to be seen. Constantine cursed the man for a coward, not even careful about how loud he was. No one could hear him over the thunder of artillery. Probably Heston was off polishing his boots.

He shook his head to clear it, but the endless cannonade wouldn’t allow for more than one thought at a time. He looked at Dimitri, hugging himself pathetically, looking around with wide, panicky eyes.

When would the cursed tyranids get there? How would they attack? Despite the lies he’d told Dimitri, each tyranid assault was different. They’d weathered frenzied assaults by innumerable ’gaunts shooting flesh-eating worms, others by colossal armoured horrors the size of tanks. The worst were accompanied by winged creatures, screeching like furies, spattering the troops with caustic bile. Every time, they massacred Guardsmen until by some miracle they were repelled, and always at horrendous cost.

He looked at Fotis Spyros, the vox-carrier, who was head down, speaking rapidly into his equipment.

‘How far away are they?’ he shouted to be heard over the barrage. ‘When will they get here? Fotis, what are the blasted artillery firing at?’

‘Vox is full of static,’ Fotis yelled back. ‘I get words but they don’t make any sense.’

Constantine realised he was panting, and struggled to bring his breath under control. Without the vox, they couldn’t call for reinforcements. He stared at the creeping wall of detonations. Most artillery shells were landing in a brown smudge on the horizon. Fog? He’d seen rain on Forlorn Hope, but never fog.

Mud continued to mushroom into the air.

‘Is the vox clear yet?’ someone yelled, their voice cracking.

‘Still nothing intelligible,’ Fotis returned.

They were abandoned and alone. Constantine hung his head, prayed to the Emperor for protection. Others had done so, and it hadn’t saved them. Whatever torments the Emperor held for heretic and traitor, they couldn’t be worse than the line.

The barrage battered at the wall of mist, but it continued its inexorable advance. Now and then, a shell would throw up bizarre shapes that would slowly settle back into the cloud. Or a long tendril of the fog would reach out momentarily, only to be reabsorbed by the main mass.

Fear turned his guts to water. He looked for the commissar, still couldn’t see him. He could run. Flee, get away from this muddy hellhole.

If he ran, someone else would have to take his place, and they wouldn’t be as familiar with his heavy flamer. And that meant men of the 33rd Hephaestus would die horribly if he shirked. Maybe some of them, maybe all of them. He could imagine their mangled corpses strewn across the muddy earth, bodies hacked apart or chewed through by living ammunition. He clenched his teeth, controlled his breathing. He didn’t want his comrades to die. More than that, he didn’t want to die. There was no way out, and he was going to die. The constant pounding of the artillery was like the Emperor’s hammer bludgeoning his soul.

He brought his magnoculars up with unsteady hands and peered at the advancing wall of explosions. Huge fountains of dirt rose, then fell slowly. The base of the fog seethed, as if it crept forward on a thousand tiny insect legs. The bombardment was close enough to rattle his teeth.

The barrage ended. The silence was almost as maddening as the shelling had been. All he could hear was the ringing in his ears. Bursts of static came from the vox as Fotis swore at it.

When the mist came to one of the forward foxholes, it flowed downhill. He watched as the stuff pooled around Alexis Mavredou’s ankles, then climbed up to his waist. Alexis didn’t react, just watched the stuff as Constantine tried to shout at him to run from the mist, get out of there. But he just stared in rapt fascination, mouth oddly disconnected from his brain.

The wall of mist crept up Alexis. It silently enveloped both him and his muddy pit, hiding both from sight. He was dead. Constantine knew it. For three rapid heartbeats, he stared, hoping, praying that Alexis would emerge from that stifling cloud.

Then Alexis came running out, his face a bloody mask below his nose. He screamed, coughing, then stumbling. He lurched sideways and fell into the mud, and Constantine knew he wouldn’t be getting back up.

‘Rebreathers!’ he screamed. He should have thought of it before. The muddy pits were suddenly in motion as troopers grabbed their equipment and crammed their heads into their rebreathers.

Constantine could put on his own without thinking or looking. The mask came down over his face… and he immediately knew something was wrong. He could see too well.

He reached up and touched the left lens, felt the crack. The mask wasn’t sealed.

The wall of mist was less than twenty feet away now.

He had no superfluous equipment. They were issued one rebreather. Where could he get another? The mist crawled closer. Not enough time to get to Alexis’ body and take his.

Dimitri was right there. His back to Constantine.

He didn’t want to die.

With two fast strides he was behind Dimitri. His hand trembled slightly as he reached out, hesitated just a moment, then ripped off Dimitri’s rebreather.

He shoved his head into the mask just as the first tendrils of the brown mist reached them. Dimitri turned and gave Constantine a look of purest horror before clapping his hand over his mouth and nose. He grabbed Constantine’s uniform with his other hand, pulled him close. But he didn’t try to reclaim his rebreather. Blood flowed from under Dimitri’s fingers. He took them away, stared at them, the blood flowing like a river from his nose and mouth.

‘You treacherous bastard…’ he started, then coughed a welter of blood onto Constantine’s mud-caked uniform. His mouth continued to work, but all that came out was blood mixed with something black and tarry. Those eyes stared, huge and terrified. But only for a moment before they rolled up. Dimitri dropped to the mud and convulsed. He lay, twitching, as more blood and sludge flowed from his nose, mouth and ears. Before long he stopped breathing, and Constantine was alone with his blood- and mud-caked uniform.

The blowing mist was damnably inconsistent, showing his fellow soldiers clearly one moment, concealing them the next.

He stared at Dimitri’s corpse. And yet, he breathed through the stolen rebreather. He would live. Emperor willing, he would live through this.

The alien haze swirled around him. He jumped back to the gun emplacement. They were coming.

He sat behind the heavy flamer, exhausted yet alert. Had he been seen? He’d had to kill Dimitri. A loader didn’t know how to work a flamer. If he’d died, the line lost a key defensive anchor.

When would the tyranids come? When would this horrible anticipation be over so he could fight, do his duty for the Emperor? Everything else was superfluous. Wasn’t it?

He felt the cold kiss of a gun muzzle between his shoulders.

He was going to be executed. Murdering Dimitri had been utterly pointless. He’d only lived a few minutes longer.

‘Turn around,’ said Commissar Heston’s voice.

Reluctantly, Constantine did.

He couldn’t see Heston’s face, only his rebreather. The eyes were as blank and inhuman as the muzzle of the bolt pistol pointed at Constantine. Seeing the commissar’s expression wouldn’t have made the man any more human.

‘I should tear that mask off and let you die the way Guardsmen Hiondros did. You are a traitor, no better than some profane heretic.’ He could hear the commissar’s sneer. ‘I always knew you were weak, Constantine, and I want you to know that I’ve been looking forward to this for as long as you have performed your insufficient duty for the 33rd Hephaestus.’

The commissar pushed the muzzle of his bolt pistol against Constantine’s forehead.

‘I can’t shoot you in the back of the head. No sense in ruining another rebreather.’

The pistol dropped to Constantine’s sternum, where Dimitri’s wet blood stained his uniform. ‘You are a disease, and I am here to cleanse the body of the Astra Militarum.’

This was it, then. The end of everything. Constantine trembled. Heston wouldn’t listen to anything he had to say. He wanted to live, but he had no chance, no way out. He’d never see Calista or Matthias again. Trapped, just like he had been his whole meaningless life, which had led up to this useless, futile moment.

He desperately searched for one last piece of defiance. Something, anything to make some sort of mark in a titanic, indifferent universe that had put him through this grinder. He didn’t expect much, but he deserved better.

A lasrifle shot made the ground between their feet hiss, spattering hot mud. The commissar turned, and Constantine leaped. Overbalanced, Heston went down with Constantine on top of him. He heard the bolt pistol plop into the mud. He didn’t have time to draw his own sidearm. They struggled, not like soldiers, but with desperation, like beasts. Constantine found a strength he’d never known.

They savaged each other, snarling and grunting. Constantine stayed up on top, pushing the commissar’s head down into the sucking, greedy mud. Heston’s hands clawed at Constantine’s rebreather, but couldn’t dislodge it. Constantine leaned more of his weight on the commissar’s neck, watching the mud flow over Heston’s rebreather. Deeper, deeper he pushed, until the muck flowed over those merciless lenses he had instead of eyes. Even as Heston struggled with increasing desperation, Constantine kept his weight on the commissar’s neck.

Heston’s fingers grasped at his uniform, but Constantine knew he was dead if he relented. The yellowish ooze climbed up over his wrists, and still bubbles surfaced over Heston’s face. As Constantine’s breath rasped in Dimitri’s stolen mask, Heston stopped struggling.

Constantine pulled his hands out of the sucking mud. He looked up to see the commissar’s peaked cap lying next to the man’s body. Still, the cloying, concealing mist floated past.

Exhausted, arms shaking, he looked down the line. He could see the men of the 33rd in their rebreathers, eye-lenses reflecting green. Someone, he wasn’t sure who, nodded their anonymous, alien head, as if in thanks. Constantine let out a held breath. He wondered which of them had fired to distract Heston. Maybe he would never know.

He stepped over Heston’s body, and crouched at the flamer’s trigger. His arms and legs were heavy with fatigue. He was still panting. All around him, the mist grew thicker. He had broken every rule the Guard had given him, but he still had a duty to his fellow soldiers.

Something vibrated in the mud. He snapped his head around to look at the commissar, but his body was already halfway sunk into the cloying earth. No change in his position. Dimitri also lay where he had fallen, his blood turning the mud around him a darker brown.

The jarring motion came again, like a heavy transport driving past. Just a couple of shakes, and then everything was still. Emperor’s mercy, what now?

The cloud thickened, close to the soupy fog that sometimes enveloped Hephaestus. The ground shook again, and he heard the squelching of mud. Something was coming. The mist grew thicker, and he could barely see where Dimitri lay dead.

A shadow loomed over him, a black silhouette in the fog. Again, the ghastly sucking noise. The shadow grew until it was taller than a Hellhound. Half a dozen sharp-tipped tentacles hovered around its bulk, the legs thick as tree trunks. From the monster’s back, multiple chimneys spewed the venomous, choking fog. Constantine had fought tyranids, survived other assaults, but he’d never seen anything like this tentacle-faced, eyeless abomination.

Nearly frozen with horror, Constantine managed to pull the trigger on the heavy flamer. Burning promethium spurted, spattered, and burned the monstrosity. It shrieked like metal being tortured beyond its strength, rattling Constantine’s teeth like the artillery barrage. It burned, foul smoke adding to the filth coming from its chimneys.

Still it came on. A hail of lasrifle fire spattered across its armour, ineffective as raindrops. Constantine screamed as he played the stream of white-hot flame left and right, igniting the thigh-thick feelers that came questing towards him. The spear-tipped tentacles withdrew, curled and blackened. He tried to lay down a moat of flame between himself and the behemoth, but there was nothing to burn. Even promethium couldn’t ignite the mud.

The stuttering roar of a heavy bolter overwhelmed the shouts of the men in their trenches. The bolts smashed into the armoured side of the monstrosity. Splinters of chitin flew, but the gigantic creature didn’t even acknowledge the attack.

A tentacle lashed out at the flamer, smashing it, flinging it high into the air. Constantine stared for a moment at the empty air where the weapon used to be. Screaming through his rebreather, he pulled out his laspistol and fired. He was so close, he couldn’t miss the bulky creature. The pistol had no effect on the monstrosity’s blackened, oozing, promethium-ravaged skin.

His scream stopped when a chitin-tipped tentacle, its tip sharp as hate, punched through the right side of his chest. The sounds and chaos were suddenly muffled, replaced with a high-pitched hum. He could only breathe in short gasps, couldn’t catch his breath enough to scream any more. He watched, rather than felt, his pistol drop from his numb fingers.

With a sense of unreality, he looked down at the tentacle protruding from his chest.

The mud dropped away, and he was brought up to the filth-spewing horror’s chimneys. Writhing in agony, Constantine pulled his knife left-handed. The right side of his body didn’t work. He stabbed awkwardly, but the knife slid off the tough, slimy skin.

He stabbed madly, cursing the uselessness of it all. He had murdered two men of the Guard, and for what? All his futile efforts still ended with him hanging on a monstrous tendril. Only when he cursed the Emperor did the blade finally sink into the tyranid’s dense flesh. The tentacle snapped around, and he lost his grip on the knife. With a flick, the tentacle tore itself from his flesh, sending him flying.

Constantine was dead before he smashed into the mud. After a little time, the combat and confusion of battle moved away, and his body was left, alone in the quiet. Slowly, his body sank into the mud and was lost.

THE SHADOW CROWN

C L Werner

Night cast its long fingers through the alabaster halls of the royal palace, muting its brilliance to dirty grey shadows. In the long hours before morning, few were abroad within the colonnaded passages. One of those few was a young, copper-haired woman with dusky skin who kept a dark cloak drawn close around her as she stood at the back of an alcove just outside the Ocelot Plaza. A shiver rushed through her as she saw a shadow flash across a doorway opposite her. Even a noble of Lady Cualli’s status was aware of the stories that were bandied about in hushed whispers in the bazaars and taverns of the old city beyond the palace walls. It was said that deadly monsters prowled the streets, striking down all they encountered and leaving only a few gnawed bones for the gutter-rakers to find when dawn came to Aqshy.

Nor were stories of slinking monsters the only tales of dread and destruction rife among the commoners. There was also talk of plague, and wretched, disfigured people prowling the night, their countenances too horrible to be gazed upon in the light of day. Toxic miasma from the river was said to inflict such foulness. Some claimed it was the curse of Dark Nagash as his spectral tallymen sought to meet the underworld’s quota of damned souls.

Cualli wished she could truly feel the noble disdain she feigned when she heard such stories. The truth was that she knew there was some veracity to them. Something strange and terrible was stalking Maktlan. If there were any other choice possible to her, she would have remained safely locked in her own rooms. Unfortunately, the purpose that made her brave the night was not one she would entrust to anyone else. There were some matters that demanded personal attention, no matter rank and privilege.

From the shadows, she waited and watched. And listened.

Not long into her vigil, a man came slinking into the plaza. He paused beside the marble fountain and stared down at the bubbling water, oblivious to the grey mist that wafted up from the pool in the dim moonlight. He was well into middle age, and the topknot that grew from his otherwise denuded scalp was the colour of iron, with a ruby pin thrust across its centre. He had a stocky build beneath his rainbow-hued robe of cloud-viper scales, and the gem-encrusted sash around his middle struggled to confine his round belly. This was Chancellor Icnoyotl, formerly chief advisor to King Tlanextli.

Formerly. Cualli expected it was that fall from the king’s favour that had motivated Icnoyotl to hold this clandestine rendezvous. He was desperate to retain power, and so he’d turned to plots and schemes. Conspiracy.

Cualli observed Icnoyotl for many minutes before the sound of footsteps drew her attention to the far side of the plaza. The confederate Icnoyotl expected had arrived. She covered her mouth to stifle the gasp of recognition when she saw who the chancellor was meeting – a young, muscular man, his arms tattooed in the colourful patterns of the Blood Jaguars, Maktlan’s elite warrior caste. Slung across his back in a sheath of manticore hide was a macuahuitl, the obsidian-edged sword-club with which each Blood Jaguar was lethally skilled. Cualli knew first-hand this man’s skill with the weapon, as many times he’d put his deadly blade at her service. He was Tochtli – her brother.

Doubt worked its way into Cualli’s mind for the first time since offering to play the part of spy. She didn’t care overmuch about Icnoyotl or what might befall the chancellor as a result of his plotting, but she didn’t have the same detachment when it came to Tochtli. There was no one in Maktlan she felt loyalty towards except Tochtli… and the man who’d sent her to spy upon this meeting.

Misgivings about her task were cast aside when the two men started to speak. Cualli listened carefully to each word, committing them to memory. She knew she would be called upon to recite them exactly when she returned from her mission.

‘It is a dangerous game you play,’ Tochtli said as he joined the chancellor beside the fountain. ‘Why would you not meet me somewhere outside the palace?’

Icnoyotl shook his head and sighed. ‘I am too important, even now, to leave the palace without someone noticing. No, this was the only thing to do. The only way we could meet and decide what must be done.’ An edge crept into his voice and his eyes became as cold as iron. ‘What must be done about this vile Ekurzakir.’

Cualli felt her pulse quicken when she heard the name. So, it was true! Icnoyotl was plotting against Ekurzakir! When she brought this information back to him, she would prove her devotion and he would finally reward her loyalty.

Then Tochtli spoke and Cualli’s excitement turned to dread as she was reminded that things were always more complicated than they seem.

‘I despise the priest even more than you do,’ Tochtli told Icnoyotl, ‘but what can be done about the man? The king dotes upon his every word. He’d never listen to us if we tried to denounce Ekurzakir.’

‘Priest?’ Icnoyotl scoffed. ‘He’s naught but a charlatan. I doubt he had anything to do with the young prince’s recovery. He just showed up at the right time and exploited the king’s credulity.’

Cualli clenched her fists when she heard Icnoyotl insult Ekurzakir. He was a holy man, endowed with powers from the gods themselves. If King Tlanextli preferred the priest’s counsel over that of his chancellor, that was a mark of their sovereign’s wisdom, not his credulity. She sickened to hear Tochtli agree with Icnoyotl.

‘He is like a cockatrice dripping poison into the king’s ear with the advice he gives him,’ Tochtli said. ‘The king will listen to no one but Ekurzakir.’

Icnoyotl nodded. ‘Tlanextli ignores the troubles of his subjects. Supplies are being stolen every night now, but the king hears only Ekurzakir telling him to punish the merchants for scheming to create shortages and increase the value of their goods. Disease has spread through whole quarters of the city, but Ekurzakir says there’s no sickness, only lazy serfs who refuse to work and think to exploit the king’s generosity.’ He paused and a haunted expression came upon his face. ‘When people speak of seeing monsters prowling the streets at night, Ekurzakir warns of conspirators trying to scare others into staying in their homes while the traitors are free to plot and scheme.’ Icnoyotl’s voice became bitter. ‘Tlanextli has become paranoid. He distrusts everyone. Everyone except Ekurzakir.’

Cualli seethed to hear these pernicious lies spouted by Icnoyotl. She could well imagine what would happen when the king learned of this. And he would learn of it after she reported back to Ekurzakir. As soon as the conspirators left, she would steal back to the priest’s chambers and tell him everything. She felt some regret that Tochtli would share the chancellor’s fate, but it was his own fault for scheming against the holy man.

Then Tochtli started to speak again, and once more Cualli’s resolve faltered.

‘I care about none of that,’ Tochtli told Icnoyotl. ‘What matters to me is the hold this charlatan has over my sister. She has surrendered herself completely to him. Never have I seen Cualli seized by such a fascination.’

‘She has always been ambitious,’ Icnoyotl warned. ‘Cualli has always sought to aggrandise her own rank and status in the court.’

Tochtli gave the chancellor a warning glower. ‘You slight my kin. Tread carefully, friend.’

‘No matter what words I choose, you know their meaning is the truth,’ Icnoyotl replied. ‘Her path to power is littered with those she has used to gain that power. Your own position as captain of the Blood Jaguars – do you think you could have claimed such rank without her politicking?’

Cualli thought Tochtli would strike the chancellor down for daring to speak such words. Instead, her brother lowered his eyes and bowed his head.

‘This time it is different,’ Tochtli explained. ‘This time she is being used. Used by Ekurzakir to crawl his way to Tlanextli’s ear. She truly believes he’s a holy man gifted with divine powers.’ Tochtli turned and kicked the side of the fountain in frustration. ‘Ekurzakir has used her to get where he is now, but I think Cualli’s usefulness to him is nearing an end. I fear he will try to get rid of her. That is why I agreed to speak with you. I don’t care about what happens to Maktlan. I only care what happens to my sister.’

‘Whatever your motivation, I need your help,’ Icnoyotl declared. ‘Your Blood Jaguars can put a permanent end to Ekurzakir…’

Cualli listened as the two men discussed their assassination plot. Fear shivered through her heart – fear for Ekurzakir. She knew how capable the Blood Jaguars were. The priest would have no chance at all against them, even with his holy powers. She had to warn him! Yet at the same time she knew her brother would be branded a traitor if she revealed his part in the conspiracy. By his own words, Tochtli was motivated only from a misplaced concern for her.

She had to warn Ekurzakir, but could she do so knowing it would mean doom for Tochtli?

Cualli was still trying to find an answer to that question when the two conspirators left the plaza and withdrew into the darkened halls. She waited a long time before emerging from her hiding spot, but still she was uncertain how to resolve her problem. Furtively she made her way towards the priest’s chambers.

Who was more worthy of her loyalty, Cualli asked herself: Ekurzakir or Tochtli?

Cualli had never been able to understand why Ekurzakir had chosen this suite of rooms for his own. As the king’s favourite, he could have taken anywhere in the palace. Instead he’d removed himself to a few chambers on the lowest level, an area reserved for minor functionaries and petty nobles.

The priest’s chambers had a heavy, somehow musty smell that always reminded Cualli of the royal kennels – at least, the kennels after the week of enforced indolence that followed the Festival of the Hammer, when even the lowest slave was forbidden from doing any work. How Ekurzakir could endure the noxious atmosphere was a puzzle to her, though she imagined it kept unwanted visitors away. So too were the many wooden partitions that filled his rooms, bisecting the chambers and creating narrow pathways within them. Every partition and wall was covered by old, faded tapestries that seemed to depict a land marked faintly as Mhurghast. Relics recovered from the palace’s storerooms littered the rough-hewn shelves. She suspected that he had them moved frequently so that their pattern was never the same and would confuse anyone trying to use them to navigate. Something else to discourage intruders.

There was a dank, heavy quality to Ekurzakir’s sanctum. The close quarters always made Cualli feel like the air was condensing around her. Her skin felt cold and damp as she navigated the pathways to the small antechamber where the priest always received her. The divan that stood in the middle of the room was a model of decayed finery, its materials of the finest quality, though now its woodwork was splintered and its cushions frayed. A display of Ekurzakir’s humility that he shouldn’t ask the king to gift him finer things. Cualli had to laugh at the naivety of anyone taken in by such trappings. The priest was just as ambitious as she was, but like her, his ambition wasn’t for anything so meagre as material wealth.

Later, Cualli smiled and leaned against the frayed back of the divan. Ekurzakir had been very happy with her when she reported to him. She’d been confident he’d accept her story. The very fact he’d given her such an important task was proof of his trust. Ekurzakir knew well enough that Icnoyotl had every reason to plot against him, her statement was just the final proof he needed to act. He believed her when she said she didn’t know who the chancellor had met; it was enough to provoke him that there’d been a meeting. He’d at once gone to speak with Tlanextli about the conspiracy, telling her to await his return. Hours had passed since then, but Cualli didn’t resent the delay. It made her anticipation of her reward all the greater. Perhaps now Ekurzakir would understand the measure of her devotion. Perhaps now he would see her as more than an ally…

‘Wine.’ Cualli did not look at the servant standing against the wall on the other side of the room. She did not look at him as he jogged forward to fill the glass she held in her extended hand. Despite her outward display of noble disdain, in truth Cualli found the servant disturbing. Hunchbacked and impossibly ugly, the priest’s manservant scarcely seemed human. He moved with a twitchy, scurrying kind of step that always impressed her as somehow wrong in an indefinable way. There was always a hint of some peculiar smell to him. Worst, however, were his eyes. The hunchback was always watching her whenever she could bring herself to look at him. She couldn’t define the way he looked at her, she only knew she found it made her skin crawl.

The wine restored some of Cualli’s composure as she bolted it down. She shuddered as the drink’s warmth rushed through her. A dismissive wave of her hand sent the servant jogging away. It was unpleasant enough with him in the same room without having him within arm’s reach.

How she wished Ekurzakir would return! Cualli longed to hear of the priest’s triumph over the chancellor. Then Ekurzakir would appreciate her and understand the measure of her devotion.

A change in the atmosphere within the room brought Cualli out of her wine-warmed dreams of the future. A thrill pulsed through her veins and she smiled as she rose from the divan. He was here!

One of the tapestries hanging on the walls was pulled aside, exposing a rough stairway the existence of which Cualli had never even suspected. From this strange entrance, Ekurzakir stepped into the room.

The priest’s was an imposing presence. Certainly not from his appearance – he was barely taller than Cualli and his build was almost feminine in its slender grace. The robes he wore were simple in style, if not material, and devoid of any ornamentation. The only jewel he wore was a single ring upon his right hand, a band of silver with an onyx stone. His beard was long and dark, his hair sweeping back from his forehead and hanging down his back in a long braid. His face was sharp and narrow, with thin lips and a long nose.

It was entirely the effect of Ekurzakir’s eyes that endowed him with such a compelling aura. They were as intense as a living flame, deep and commanding. There were layers of depth to those eyes that fascinated Cualli to a degree she’d never experienced before. Tochtli had said that she was being used by the priest. When she looked into Ekurzakir’s eyes, she didn’t care if her brother’s fear was true, so long as she could gaze into those emerald depths. There was power in those eyes, power that she needed if she was ever to realise her own ambitions.

Ekurzakir slid the tapestry back into its place and concealed the stairway once more. Cualli felt resentment when the priest looked at his servant before he even glanced her way. She was mollified when the hunchback jogged out of the room. Ekurzakir had sent him away so that they could be alone. There was just a hint of triumph in the smile that appeared on her face. She quickly composed herself. She knew the priest was disturbed by such displays.

Curiously, when Ekurzakir approached the divan, it was the priest who had a smile. Cualli shrank from that grin, finding it evoked more fear than frivolity.

‘Icnoyotl has been denounced before the king,’ Ekurzakir pronounced. ‘Tlanextli had him seized before the whole of the court. There, before all the nobles of Maktlan, the chancellor was tortured until he confessed.’

‘Then what I learned has helped you,’ Cualli said, eagerness in her voice. ‘Your enemy can’t threaten you now.’ She felt the hostility boiling off the priest and shuddered from the intensity of his gaze. ‘I am glad I was able to help expose him.’ She hoped to turn the priest’s mind from his foe and back to the service she had rendered him.

‘Icnoyotl has been plotting against me,’ the priest said.

‘His plots will come to nothing now,’ Cualli assured him. She could see the murderous gleam in those emerald eyes. ‘I will help you uncover the other conspirators,’ she offered. ‘Leave it to me, they will all answer for threatening you.’

Ekurzakir ran his long fingers through his beard. ‘Indeed? You will find them for me?’

Fear roared through Cualli’s heart. For the first time she felt doubt, felt that Ekurzakir’s trust in her wasn’t as complete as she imagined it to be. Could he know about Tochtli? Could he know she’d tried to conceal her brother’s involvement? Again, the weight of her love for Tochtli warred with her own thirst for power. No – more than thirst, for without Ekurzakir she’d lose everything. She’d tried to protect Tochtli, but she couldn’t risk that. Her brother was important to her, but was he as important as her own life?

‘Icnoyotl must be questioned again,’ Cualli said. ‘He must be made to reveal who the other conspirators are.’

‘Icnoyotl is dead,’ Ekurzakir snarled. ‘He couldn’t withstand the torture he was subjected to.’ He made a chopping motion with his hand. ‘Before he died, he confessed. Before the king and the whole of the court, he revealed his confederates. All of them.’ In a blinding motion, Ekurzakir caught hold of Cualli and pulled her to him. ‘Even the man you tried to protect,’ he spat.

The priest flung Cualli away. She stumbled, terror resounding through her mind. All of her aspirations for the future were bound to Ekurzakir’s rise. She couldn’t lose his favour now.

‘He is my brother,’ Cualli explained. ‘He didn’t know what he was doing. Let me explain things to Tochtli. Once he understands, once he appreciates your magnificence, he will serve you as loyally as I have!’

Ekurzakir thrust a condemning finger down at her. ‘And how loyal have you been? You told me you could not see who Icnoyotl met within the Ocelot Plaza. Now I hear from his own lips that it was Tochtli who was there! You tried to hide this from me! From me.’

‘Forgive me, Ekurzakir. I should have told you everything. I should have trusted in your mercy and wisdom.’

‘There is no forgiveness for traitors,’ Ekurzakir snapped.

‘I was afraid for my brother,’ Cualli protested.

Ekurzakir sprang forward and seized her arm, his fingers digging into her skin. Cualli was shocked by how sharp his nails felt, and the blood that dripped from the scratches he made. ‘You should have been afraid for yourself,’ the priest told her. ‘Behold what you’ve lost.’ The hunchbacked servant returned, scurrying into the chamber with a large mirror clenched in his hands. Ekurzakir twisted Cualli around so that she was facing the gold-edged mirror.

Horror swelled up from the very core of her being. Cualli placed a hand against her cheek, unwilling to believe the reflection was truly her own. But when she touched her face, she felt the oozing boils and scabrous skin the mirror showed her. The pox, the disease she’d come to Ekurzakir to relieve, was far worse now than it had ever been. As that realisation struck her, she felt the searing pain of the sickness grinding through her body as never before.

‘You’re afflicted by the same disease the prince suffers,’ Ekurzakir explained. ‘Like the prince, only my magic sustains you.’ He tapped the ring he wore and backed away from her. ‘Only this relic has hidden your affliction from the rest of the court. With it, I can make anyone appear as I wish them to appear. Without it, you will look just as you truly are. You’ve been my eyes and ears in the court, a useful asset and one that would be less useful if those around you knew you were afflicted by the pox.’

Cualli spun around. ‘Please. Do not do this to me. Ekurzakir, I will do anything.’

‘You’ll be cast out from the court,’ Ekurzakir continued. ‘The nobles, even the lowest serf, will shun you and look on you with horror. Your status will be destroyed. You will rot in obscurity as the pox consumes you. Day by day, hour by hour, your body wracked with pain. Death will be long in coming for you. It is astonishing how tenaciously those who should most welcome death cling to life.’ His eyes glittered hatefully at her. ‘Your usefulness is over, Cualli. Crawl off somewhere so you don’t disturb the king with your cries of agony.’

‘No!’ Cualli cried. ‘Spare me, Ekurzakir! I beg of you to save me from this fate.’

The priest laughed, a cruel titter that was utterly inhuman in its amused contempt. ‘Save yourself,’ he scoffed. ‘Seek out the eternal flame in the Dragon Plaza. While you’re still strong enough. Before the pox robs you of even that much ambition.’

Cualli fled from Ekurzakir’s rooms. She kept her cloak wrapped tightly around her as she ran through the halls. The few servants awake at this dark hour stopped and stared as she ran past them. Guards outside the Serpent Gate called after her, but none abandoned the post to pursue her. Each step she took, she could feel the strength ebbing from her body. She knew Ekurzakir spoke truly. Without his magic she’d be helpless before the ravages of the pox. She had to act while she still had the choice.

The Dragon Plaza was ahead. Much like the Ocelot Plaza, it was a square within the palace that was open to the sky. There was a stone fountain at the centre, but what bubbled up from its core wasn’t water. Molten fire, blazing orange in the dark of night, casting its eerie shadows across the stone walls. The ancients called this the blood of the mountains and held that in ages past the mountains themselves were raised from the brood of Dracothion. The first king of Maktlan brought the molten fire to the palace and built the Dragon Plaza to contain the eternal flame.

Cualli had seen steel turned into smoke by contact with the eternal fire. It had been an awesome and horrible display of power. She looked down at her diseased hands and shuddered as a spasm of pain whipped through her body.

Long had Cualli schemed and plotted to gain power. Now the only power she coveted was that of the eternal flame.

The dungeons of King Tlanextli burrowed their way deep under the western wall of the palace. A region of shadows and screams, with rancid slime dripping from the walls and vermin scurrying along the floors. Those who entered these vaults returned broken in body and mind. When they returned at all.

Tochtli didn’t expect to return. The king’s torturers had worked him over with a barbed whip and a hot iron until his whole body felt like an open wound. Before the royal court he’d been tied to the wheel and put to the question. Who else was involved in the conspiracy against the crown? Over and again he was asked, and the interrogators were deaf to his protestations that it was only Ekurzakir he’d worked against. The priest had seized on that confession, and it was then Tochtli learned Icnoyotl had also been arrested and tortured, betraying Tochtli to their enemies… and anything else his tormentors prompted him to say. Tochtli wondered if even that had been enough to garner the chancellor the slightest measure of mercy.

For himself, he would not break. Tochtli wasn’t some pampered noble like Icnoyotl. He was a hardened warrior. Where the chancellor had broken and died under torture, he resisted. He endured. From the start of his ordeal, there was no hurt they could do him worse than the one that struck him every time he gazed out across the court. In vain he looked for Cualli, to find some sympathy among the spectators. Instead he found Ekurzakir’s intense gaze fixated on him, as though by sheer force of will he would compel Tochtli to speak.

The captain remained silent, and by his silence earned himself a cell in the dungeon. It would be a brief respite, only until the torture could be resumed on the morrow. Ekurzakir didn’t want Tochtli to die before he talked.

No chains bound Tochtli. In his condition it was felt that the iron-banded door of his cell would be enough to hold him. He felt inclined to agree. Even if the door were unlocked, he didn’t have the strength left to open it.

Yet open it did. Slowly, so gradually that Tochtli thought at first he was imagining it, the door creaked outwards. A moment later a torch illuminated the darkness of his cell.

‘Glory to the gods, you live!’ The speaker rushed into the cell and bent down beside Tochtli.

Sluggish after his torture, it took Tochtli’s brain a moment to understand what was happening. He drew himself off the floor and gave his companion a closer scrutiny.

‘Xochipepe,’ Tochtli gasped. ‘Can it really be you? Is this a dream or have I gone mad?’

Xochipepe laid his hand on Tochtli’s shoulder. ‘It is no dream. Did you think the Blood Jaguars would abandon you, captain? It cost us much to bribe the jailer, but we would not leave you to Ekurzakir’s doubtful mercy.’ The warrior turned away and looked out into the corridor. ‘We must hurry, captain. Everything has been arranged to get you out of the city, but the priest has many spies.’

Tochtli started towards the door. Each step he took sent red pain rushing through his body, but he fought through the agony. He would escape! He would put Maktlan far behind him and never look back.

He stopped before reaching the door. Tochtli suddenly realised he couldn’t escape. Not without Cualli. ‘I can’t leave,’ he apologised to Xochipepe. ‘We have to get my sister. We have to force her to leave too.’

The look Xochipepe gave Tochtli was a mixture of confusion and horror. ‘Captain,’ he said, his voice a regretful whisper, ‘Cualli is dead. Last night she threw herself into the fire that burns in the Dragon Plaza.’

The news struck Tochtli like a physical blow. He had to balance himself against the wall to keep from falling. ‘Dead,’ he muttered. He repeated the word over and over until his shock passed. Then he turned to Xochipepe once more. ‘What happened?’

Xochipepe hesitated before answering. ‘She was cast out by Ekurzakir.’

Tochtli smashed his fist against the slimy wall. He clenched his jaws against the cry of pain as his tortured hands struck the cold stone. He couldn’t stifle the moan of anguish that echoed through the cell. It was his fault. He’d failed Cualli. He knew the priest was too dangerous for her to manipulate as she’d done so many others, but he’d submitted to her assurances that she was the one who was in control, not Ekurzakir. He’d waited too long to realise the reality, too long to meet with men like Icnoyotl to move against the priest. Being revealed as a conspirator against Ekurzakir was doubtless what had finally caused him to abandon Cualli, but by that time it was too late. Too much of his sister’s status and power was dependent on the priest. She wasn’t willing to live without him and Tochtli wasn’t there to tell her otherwise. If only he had acted! If only he’d simply struck down the priest instead of engaging in Icnoyotl’s intrigues!

‘I’m not going,’ Tochtli told Xochipepe. ‘I’m not ungrateful for all the Blood Jaguars have risked for their captain, but there’s something more important than escape that I must do.’ He pointed to the macuahuitl the warrior carried. ‘I will need your sword. Before this night is finished, Ekurzakir must die.’

Tochtli was unobserved when he broke into Ekurzakir’s rooms. Above, where the nobles lived, he’d have had a hard time managing such a feat, but here in the lower reaches of the palace there were few guards and even fewer who were vigilant about their duties. The fugitive smiled to think that Ekurzakir’s pretence of humility and poverty would play a part in his final destruction.

Tochtli slipped through the darkened rooms, both hands clenched around the snakeskin grip of his sword-club. How eagerly he anticipated splitting Ekurzakir’s head with the obsidian blades. The one pleasure left to him in a world that had lost all of its lustre – revenge.

Tochtli sought his quarry in the bewildering maze of partitions and tapestries. He felt the stinking confines of the priest’s chambers pressing in on him. Even his cell in the dungeon seemed spacious by comparison. After slinking through the halls and finding himself back where he’d started, a grim fact impressed itself on him: the priest was gone. Tochtli slipped through the cramped hallways and returned to a small parlour to debate his next move. Should he risk discovery by trying to track down Ekurzakir or should he remain in these chambers to wait for the priest’s return? If his escape from the dungeons was discovered, Tochtli was certain when his enemy did return he wouldn’t be alone.

The choice was taken out of Tochtli’s hands when he was suddenly struck from behind. He felt claws rake down his back, tearing into his flesh. Teeth bit into the meat of his shoulder, worrying savagely from side to side. Tochtli felt blood gushing down his chest as his assailant tried to gnaw even deeper, as though trying to chew down to the very bone. Shouting in pain, he reached behind and seized his attacker by the neck. Tochtli howled in rage and threw the enemy forward, spilling him onto the floor in front of him. Ekurzakir’s hunchbacked servant glared up at him, his hands caked in blood, gore dribbling from his mouth. The servant growled and sprang at him with astonishing speed.

Tochtli brought the macuahuitl whipping around. The obsidian teeth of the sword-club slashed across the lunging hunchback. The servant’s body was flung away in bloody tatters, almost cut in two by the sharp volcanic glass. As the corpse crashed to the floor, a ghastly change came upon it. Tochtli watched in horror as the man he’d killed vanished. What lay on the ground in a pool of black blood was a monstrous thing. An enormous rat nearly as big as a human and dressed in the same livery as Ekurzakir’s servant had been. Tochtli couldn’t explain the transformation, but he recalled ancient stories about Maktlan’s dim past when the first kings made war with a verminous enemy they called the shadow-creepers. Was the thing he stared at now a shadow-creeper?

The captain stepped around the corpse and prodded it with his sword to reassure himself it was real. There was no doubt about the wounds the ratman had dealt. Tochtli looked around for something to staunch the flow of blood. It was then he discovered how his enemy had ambushed him. One of the tapestries was pulled aside to expose a narrow stairway leading downwards. Tochtli kept his eyes on the opening while he bound his wounds and fashioned a torch to light his way.

Down into the subterranean gloom Tochtli plunged. The odours of Ekurzakir’s apartment were soon left behind, blotted out by the even ranker, musky stench that filled the tunnel. The glow of his torch revealed only the winding stair as it delved ever deeper beneath the palace. As he descended, he noted that the construction soon changed. Worked stone gave way to rock and packed earth. He spotted the marks of pick and spade, but also the scratches of claws. Had humans built this passage, or was it made by something else? A chill gripped him as he considered the legends of the shadow-creepers and the ratkin lying dead in the room above.

Deeper the steps went. Tochtli judged he was now far past the level of the cellars and dungeons that should be below the palace. He felt like he was leaving the world he knew and entering a place forbidden and profane. Such was his mounting fear that even his thirst for revenge was losing its hold over him.

Ahead, the stairs reached their end. The narrow passage opened out into a broader space. Tochtli could see a green glow before him, a gibbous and unwholesome light. He could hear sounds of activity, foremost a wet, violent churning that made him think of a whirlpool. He set down the torch and took his sword-club in both hands. Warily, measuring each step, he crept down towards the green light. He froze when he heard the patter of bare feet on the stairs. Forcing his tortured, weary body to a speed he’d never demanded from it before, Tochtli darted into a shadowy niche in the wall.

Robed creatures came scrambling up the steps. Tochtli held his breath, feeling that even his heartbeat was too much sound as a pair of figures in tattered green robes climbed towards his hiding spot. He could see the verminous muzzles that jutted out from beneath their ragged hoods and the gleam of beady red eyes. The things held gnarled staves in their hairy hands and about their necks they wore icons of pestiferous profanity. His gorge rose when he saw the naked, festering tails that dragged behind them, leaving a trail of pus in their wake.

The ratkin wheezed and coughed as they walked past where Tochtli lay hidden, deafening them to whatever sounds he might have made. So rancid was the odour wafting off them that he doubted the creatures could smell anything at all. His eyes watered at their stench and he was almost grateful that the torturers had left nothing in his belly to spew as the verminous reek filled his nose. He pressed his face to the wall to muffle the sound of his heaving until the reduced smell told him the ratkin were gone.

He couldn’t fail. Tochtli couldn’t let these creatures find him until he found Ekurzakir. After that, whatever happened to him wouldn’t matter. With this purpose firing his ravaged body, Tochtli started down the stairs again.

What lay beyond the stairs was a wide cavern. It was illuminated by hundreds of braziers filled with a smouldering green rock. Scores of tunnels opened into it from all sides, even from the ceiling and the floor. Rickety walkways slapped together from wood and bone criss-crossed the chamber, forming a deranged lattice around the cave. Along these walkways, hundreds of the monstrous ratkin scurried. Some were starved, wasted things with blistered skin and mangy fur. Others wore heavy cloaks and robes, some ringing bells as they marched around the chamber, some uttering a chittering chant as they read from books bound in ratskin.

At the heart of the cavern was a gigantic cauldron, a vessel large enough to boil a team of oxen. It was from this that the violent churning sounded, for it was filled with a scummy, vile concoction that bubbled and steamed as ratmen fed the fire beneath it. Several cloaked creatures stood on a platform overlooking the cauldron and with long metal ladles they drew out measures of the foul brew. This was in turn poured into a riotous array of flasks, bottles, jars, barrels – anything that could hold the putrid mixture. Monk-like ratmen came forward and reverently removed the filled vessels, scurrying away to one of the tunnels and vanishing in the dark.

Tochtli backed away from the diabolic scene. The thefts, the sickness, the furtive figures stealing through the dark of night – all of it tied to these creatures. He thought of the old stories, how the shadow-creepers sought to pull down all that humans had built and claim it for their own. That was what they were doing now, and Ekurzakir was helping them! His poisonous counsel made the king ignore every warning of this threat to Maktlan.

The captain turned from the cavern and started back up the stairs. He had to find Ekurzakir. He had to stop the priest, not simply for revenge but for the very life of Maktlan. Everyone in the kingdom would be doomed if he didn’t find Ekurzakir.

Tochtli didn’t find Ekurzakir. Instead, the priest found him.

As Tochtli hurried up the steps, he found Ekurzakir waiting for him. The priest stared at him for only a moment before he waved his hand. At once, the shadows around Tochtli erupted into life. Ratmen in dark cloaks descended upon him. The macuahuitl was torn from his grasp and sent clattering down the steps. Half a dozen wiry ratmen pummelled him to the ground, chitters of mockery ringing in his ears. Only when he was sufficiently subdued did Ekurzakir come closer, his emerald eyes glittering with triumph.

‘You left a trail a blind mouse could follow,’ Ekurzakir sneered. ‘It is seldom my enemies are so obliging as to walk right into my claws.’

Tochtli struggled against the grip of the ratmen. ‘Traitor! Murderer!’

The captain’s rage appeared to amuse Ekurzakir. ‘Ah yes, the woman. It only makes sense that you would behave as stupidly for her sake as she did for you. It is a hard thing to remember that such insanity is so rampant. A distraction from what is true and holy.’

‘You dare speak of holiness? You who have allied yourself to these monsters!’ Tochtli’s outburst ended as he was beaten down by his captors.

Ekurzakir glared at the captain. ‘The temples of Maktlan will fall with all the rest. The days of this kingdom will soon end. The pox-brew is complete. All that remains is to spread it through the city.’ The priest tapped his fingers together. ‘I wonder if Tlanextli will beg as desperately for his own life as he did the life of his whelp.’

Tochtli again tried to throw off his captors to reach Ekurzakir. ‘These vermin will betray you! When they’re finished killing the rest, do you think they’ll let any human survive?’

Ekurzakir stepped closer. Slowly he removed the ring from his hand. As he did, his entire being changed. The robes were the same, but where only a moment before the priest had been standing, there was now a leering ratman with mangy grey fur and hideous pustules along its muzzle and the side of its face.

‘The Horned One will consume all in His righteous hunger,’ the thing that wore the robes of Ekurzakir declared. ‘All the decadence and madness of the man-things will be purged in His beauteous plague! Then shall the skaven claim what has been promised to us!’

The plague priest turned away from Tochtli. ‘Take him. Give him to the brewers. They will appreciate fresh meat.’

Tochtli screamed as the skaven dragged him away. He saw the plague priest slip the ring back onto its finger and once more it wore the shape of Ekurzakir.

Ekurzakir. The holy man.

RUNNER

Alan Bao

The runner fled across the tundra under a humbling sweep of stars. His breaths came in gasps, the filtration unit in his teeth cutting grooves into his gums. An artefact from home, so long ago; an old keepsake that he’d physically outgrown, kept for sentiment, not field-use.

The runner wiped the salt and spit from his chin as he kept his pace, tasting the gunmetal of the antique rebreather. His regiment-issued mask had been destroyed when he’d made his escape from the battle, just as the death-fog caught them. Every time he stretched or contorted his face, he could feel where the material had melted into his cheeks, turning the skin into unfeeling leather, chemical calluses that traced rivers down the sides of his jaw and onto his chin and neck. The hive behind him was almost certainly gone, along with whatever was left of his regiment. He wondered who’d get the blame when the news got out, if there was still anyone left alive to blame.

Nobody had thought much of it when the long-distance comms first went out, regimental equipment being what it was. Even on the second night, when their repeated queries to command went unanswered and rumours began to swirl about wet, inhuman mutterings on the vox-channel, most of the men had written them off as ghost stories cooked up by bored conscripts. Trenches were dug by the book. There was a perfunctory doubling of the night guard. The men whittled away the time playing cards and swapping dirty stories, and the city was mostly quiet.

But then the dead came to life.

The runner had never seen anything like it. The waste disposal chutes were the first to go, as dumped bodies clogged up the system with their sudden, newfound volition. Dead hivers crawled, shambling and jerking, out of the corpse-pits, overwhelming isolated positions, adding those unfortunate souls they caught to their twitching, shambling throng.

On the first day of fighting, the runner had been on rearguard action, fighting for access to a waste disposal pit. He’d got a first-hand glimpse of the vats of garbage and suddenly moving bodies before they flipped the switch for the incinerators – a blessing and a curse, since the living dead that were not incinerated outright staggered from the flames, heedless of the fire and rot that spread around them.

And then came the mist, and the other things.

In his years of service, the runner had fought and killed men of all stripes, on dozens of different worlds. But those other things – they were something else. Man-shaped, maybe – but not men. It was their stench that struck him: like some awful memory made solid, vague shadows in green mist, stumbling halfway between fugue and waking, absorbing las-shots with an apathetic softness that was not entirely flesh. They came and went in inexplicable fog blooms, one of which had caught up with his unit on the third day, while the runner was rotating in with one of the heavy bolter teams – Bigwum and Tinker-man hauling gear, Bullard watching their backs. When the fog bank fell upon them, the runner almost went blind from the stench. He couldn’t see through the tears and the thick, green air, but he remembered the sound of gunshots and Bullard screaming.

And then, as fast as it came, the stench disappeared, along with the mist, the shadows and the top half of Bullard’s body.

On his last day at the keep, the runner was given a water flask and a map to the next regimental command, two hundred miles to the south-east.

He was then relieved of his lasgun.

‘We’ll need the ammo,’ the old sergeant had snapped when he protested. ‘That’s ten pounds of gear that’ll slow you down, and you’re dead anyway if you can’t outrun this. Go and tell command–’

There was a whistle and a blast. A voice called out a belated heads-up as a dead hiver crested the makeshift trench line, exploding in a volley of las-fire. The sergeant swore as he was splashed with viscera, spitting and gagging at the rivulets of fluid that ran down his face and into his mouth.

‘Augh… Tell command we can’t hold. Tell them… tell them the keep’s fallen. Tell them those things are coming to them quicker than–’

Another arc of las-fire, followed by the crack of grenades. The runner and the sergeant stood a moment in silence, watching the rolling green mist bear down upon their position. Deep in the fog, barely visible to the human eye, there were shadows upon shadows, faint suggestions of writhing figures.

The short-range vox-comms became a symphony of gun cracks, pleas and screams. The long-distance comms were as silent as ever.

The mist rolled on, and the roar of heavy bolters and lasguns reached a crescendo. Over the stench and noise, the sergeant screamed, in a tone that the runner had never heard before from the grizzled veteran. Before the mist closed in and everything went green, he could hear the old man screeching, his voice cracked in panic, almost in tears.

‘Go! Go! Tell them!’

About a day out from the hive, the plains began to level. The keep still towered over the fields of permafrost behind him, but it was grey and muddled with distance. The burgeoning demi-hive that sprawled under the shadow of its protection was already well out of sight.

The hive had a name, of course. The whole world had a name, as did the system it inhabited. But, as the runner had learned throughout his tours of duty, names were mostly ornamental things, and always secondary to function. To most of the grunts in the regiment, this was just another world that they did not know, where they would fight another thankless war they could not name, in defence of (or perhaps in opposition to – who knew?) the innumerable ranks of locals who wore finery they had never seen, and spoke in tongues they could not understand.

The runner had a name too – arbitrary syllables that denoted some arbitrary personal identity, long ago. He could not remember the last time he’d used it. In the present, his rank was corporal, his role was to run, and his function was that of a servant to the God-Emperor. The whippings and mind-con of his trainee days had etched that hierarchy of functions deep in his mind, easily superseding the puerile realm of names and individual identities.

The runner steadied his breathing. The frozen plains bobbed by in mist and shadows. In time-hazed memory, he could vaguely recall running barefoot across sun-baked mountain paths, hopping from elevation to elevation in childish singsong. He could recall a time when he was just a runner in his company – one of the many expendable messengers from one of the many expendable platoons – before the intra-regimental game where he earned his title in a day-long foot race, tying his name and function together in a neat little sobriquet.

Then, as now, there had been sweat on his brow and a stitch in his side. But back then, the air had been thick with the hooting of his squadmates and other drunk spectators. Tinker-man and Machinist had snuck extra amasec from the mess hall and were passing it around to Bullard and the other boys who’d come back to the track after the shorter games had ended. The race had started at dawn, and the last competitor had staggered off the track in forfeit hours ago. Bullard had sprinted up alongside the runner, an eye swollen shut from a brutal wrestling match the day before, where he had nearly taken an ogryn off its feet.

‘Oi, little man! It’s been twelve hours. You’ve won. What the frag are you still running for?’

And the runner had laughed, remembering the scent of mountain air and sun-baked peaks. He laughed as he ran, on and on, until Bullard got too winded to cajole him, until the drunken spectators scattered into their respective bunks and the stars took their positions in the black sky.

‘I said, what are you still running for?’

The world opened in an expressionist gash of green. The runner choked. In his mind – he was not sure if it was in waking memory or dream – Bullard turned. Rather, the top half of Bullard’s torso turned – the half that had been absent when they had recovered his body from the fog bloom. He pivoted on severed vertebrae and fixed the runner with a gaze that was wrinkled and grey, like dead fish left out to bloat. The skin of his lips flapped and dripped syllables from a toothless mouth.

‘There’s no winning this race, little man.’

The stench made the runner’s eyes water. He muttered the prayers of benediction by rote. Bullard’s mouth stretched into a mirthless smile, splitting his face in half. He shambled closer, severed vertebrae snapping and cracking as they ground against each other with each dolorous lurch. When Bullard opened his mouth in a rumbling laugh, the world disappeared into its black, toothless depths.

The runner squeezed his eyes shut. He forced another litany of prayers from his chest, choking against the foetid stench.

There was a moment of stillness.

When he opened his eyes again, he was on his knees in the salted permafrost, his breath turning into steam over the vast desolation before him. There was no Bullard, no stench, no fog, only the endless sweep of the frozen plains and a sick hint of green splashed on the horizon. Above him, the sky opened in a gaping, existential maw; in front of him, only the tundra, and its promise of a long, cold dark.

‘What are you still running for?’

The runner staggered to his feet, and doubled his pace.

The terrain became hillier as evening fell. The runner clambered over glacial striations, cradling the stitch in his side. Overhead, streaks of orange-red-violet layered themselves across the sky. As the last streaks of violet faded to black, the runner wondered idly how he would avoid freezing to death in the night ahead. Regimental field kits usually included a flint and tinder pack for fire-building, but he’d neglected to grab anything of the sort in his inglorious flight from the keep.

The runner scanned his surroundings. In his peripheries, he caught occasional blurs of motion darting away from the sound of his footsteps. When he flicked on his op-specs, he could see the glint of mammalian eyes, peering cautiously back at him from the darkness. The runner recalled the regimental briefings he had been forced to sit through before planetfall – some appropriately dry vox-tapes about the nomenclature and ecology of the brine-plains, and the scavenging rodents that inhabited them…

His stomach growled. No flint or tinder, aye – but his body was sending biological imperatives he could not ignore. If only Old Sarge hadn’t taken his lasgun…

His pace slowed. The glinting eyes in the darkness came closer. The runner spat his antique rebreather into a breast pocket and slumped down against the side of a dune, feigning weakness. The creatures skittered uncertainly towards him, nearly within arm’s reach, their twitchy little snouts sniffing at the stench of his sweat and exhaustion.

The runner lunged. The rodents scattered, but not quickly enough. He grabbed at the nearest animal; predator and prey, death and renewal, one fuelling the other. The runner yelped as the furry thing turned and bit into his hand with its razor incisors. In the split second his grip was loosened, the animal darted away. The runner sprinted after it, low to the ground, scrambling across rocks and salt crystals, until a loose footing sent him sprawling over a dune-crest.

For one interminable moment, caught between inertia and gravity, the runner sailed through a black, star-speckled sea.

‘What the frag are you still running for?’

Then the ground rushed up and pummelled him in his teeth, his ribs, his back. He tumbled down the frozen dune and landed in a heap at the foot of the hillock, convulsing as his ankle bent backwards beneath his weight. Pain shot through his body and he cried out the prayers of benediction by rote. The words may have been ‘the Emperor protects’ but the meaning was help me, help me, it hurts.

The stars kept their apathetic vigil as the runner quivered and swore on the tundra below. Frustration welled up inside him: he’d had the damnable rat; if only he had just squeezed and broken its spine before it had the chance to bite…

He shifted his weight gingerly away from the twisted ankle. Now, far from being sated, he was still starving – and on top of that, more weary and broken than he had been before. The futility of it all boiled in his chest, twining with the pain in his leg and the stupidity of Old Sarge’s directive to give up his lasgun – and his own docile idiocy in relinquishing it. Something grey and infinitely overwhelming fell upon him. His frustration gave way to sudden exhaustion, and he let his fists fall limp into the permafrost.

A paternal voice chortled in his head.

Numbness crawled through him then, through his arms and legs, chest and spirit. He thought of how easy it would be to simply lie there, to let the darkness fall around him, to let his body heat leak away in wicks of steam, to let the little rodent creatures nip at his flesh until he was nothing more than hair and bleached bones. He wished for nothing more than to curl up in apathy, until he turned into dust, until the rodents themselves decayed into nothing, and the whole damnable star system spun away into the infinite, entropic darkness without so much as a whisper or a eulogy.

The runner closed his eyes. His Imperial conditioning urged him to invoke the name of the Emperor for strength – but all that emerged from his chest were defeated little sighs. Starlight formed gossamer webs through his tears, and a sudden memory struck him: rope bridges and footpaths, glinting under a warm yellow sun, spider-webbing into the distance between the mountain peaks. Long ago, his mother had leaned down and scooped him up above the cloudless plateau, crooning a name he had not used since he had been taken off-world.

‘Wanlek,’ she cooed in his birth tongue. ‘Wanlek, ak-chi atwa pat mogwil…’

The runner pulled himself into an agonised hunch and sipped sparingly from his canteen. He forced his mind away from the warm, hazy past. Here, in the present, he was alone, injured and freezing, with no food or shelter in sight. If he lay down to sleep now, he’d surely freeze to death.

The pain in his ankle simmered to a dull throb. The runner forced himself to a standing position, and slowly, laboriously, hobbled over the next dune-crest. A squall of wind gusted over the frozen salt-plains.

Gripping his coat tight around him, the runner hobbled deeper into the impenetrable night.

Dawn broke over a savage land, painting jagged shadows over salt fields and ridgelines. The morning mist traced streaks of white and green across the horizon, obscuring the half-running, half-hobbling man that was the only visible life for miles around.

The runner squinted against the sun, which was cradled like a red, swollen wound inside the mist. His left ankle was constricted and swollen inside his combat boot. Friction blisters had formed and popped and formed again during the night, and each step he took was now pained and squelching.

The sun glared in his eyes.

Once, long ago, his mother had told him a story about how the sun got its place in the sky – how it would fall into the abyss every night, and be pulled out again by the ancestors who toiled in their guardianship over the living.

He could not remember how that story ended now – though he could remember the commissar who had whipped him for telling it to his fellow recruits during the early days of his indoctrination. The Imperial Faith was never one for syncretism. He’d eventually learned to recognise and avoid the zealots in the officer corps – the self-styled pontiffs for whom every arse-lit fire was the Emperor’s Light, and any murmurs otherwise were grounds for a beating.

Still – the prayers were a helpful routine. They kept the exhaustion at bay, and distracted his mind from the pain in his feet. The runner had been using the Fede Imperialis as a mnemonic device for most of the night, synchronising each syllable with his own footfalls.

Our Emperor deliver us from plague, deceit, temptation and war.

Our Emperor deliver us from the scourge of the Kraken.

And thus, each word brought him that much closer to regimental command, where warmth, safety and a well-earned rest awaited.

The runner slowed his pace and tipped his canteen to his ragged lips, noting how it was less than half full. He wondered vaguely how long he had until the water ran out. He tried out new angles for his feet to hit the ground, so that his friction-flayed soles might have some reprieve from the pain that shot through them with every step.

And when his denial lapsed and his mental barriers weakened, he wondered about the voices.

It had started sometime during the night. An odd thing. In the darkness, he could’ve sworn he heard footsteps at his back, like an army marching through a bog, slogging along in low but jovial conversation. Some of the voices he’d recognised: Bullard, Old Sarge, Machinist and Tinker-man, and the mess-hall goons in his regiment. Sometimes they sounded so close as to almost be speaking directly to him – but whenever the runner chanced to look backwards, there was never anything but bare tundra.

Now, as he hobbled on his course, the army at his back marshalled again. He could hear a murmuring simulacrum of Bullard’s voice, the stomp of his heavy footfalls, the grinding of his severed spine as he kept pace with the runner’s footsteps.

‘Must be a hassle for you to keep following me around, Bull,’ the runner said to no one in particular. ‘That spine of yours sounds like it hurts something awful.’

‘It isn’t. And it doesn’t.’

The runner stumbled about and stared. The voice rattled him – more so than even the fugue-visions of the first day. Those, at least, he could put down to trauma. This, though – this was Bullard’s voice, close and conversational, articulate and real.

The desolation of the empty tundra stared back at him. Mist curled around his feet like so many longing fingers. The runner brought a hand to his forehead and felt a cold sweat, maybe a light fever. He let loose a feeble curse and turned back to his course. He had enough to worry about without contending with the possibility that he may be losing his mind.

Bullard’s voice piped up behind him, close and confidential.

‘Don’t fret, little man. Death is only horrifying to the living. Perspectives change when you’re on the other side.’

‘It’s all instinct and narcissism, you know.’

The runner gulped down water, unstrapping his boots and choking in pain as blood rushed to the swelling. It was midday, and he could run no more. His toenails poked through his socks, cracked and bent backwards – the nail of his little toe had come loose with a sickening tug, stuck fast in the rubber of the toe box.

‘Think of it, the aeons that passed before you were born, the aeons that will pass after you’re dust.’

A layer of skin sloughed away as he peeled back the fabric from his feet. The blister-fluids ran cold in the subarctic air. Salt burned his heels where he rested them on the permafrost.

‘Your existence is only an aberrant blip, in between two infinite threads of un-life.’

The runner lay supine on the salt bed, his muscles limp with exhaustion.

‘Ah well – nobody blames you. You can’t help what you are.’ The voice bounced between Bullard’s earthy wisdom and Machinist’s pompous philosophising. ‘Life exists to beget life. Your point of view is so irrevocably biased by your biology that you revile the perfectly natural state of un-living, and lionise the aberration of your own messy existence.’

‘Instinct,’ said Tinker-man disapprovingly.

‘And narcissism,’ said Old Sarge.

‘Shut up,’ the runner muttered at the empty tundra. He flexed his toes, watching his body heat curl away in ribbons of steam into the milk-white sky.

‘I’ve never known you to be incurious, little man. Is it really so bad to exist without pain, or striving, or the constant competition of kill-or-be-killed?’

The runner plugged his ears with salt-crusted fingers, but the voice pierced his mind like a las-shot.

‘There is peace here. Certainty. Comfort.’

A gust of wind picked up salt and dust and threw the stinging droplets onto the runner’s ravaged feet. Anxiety thrummed in his chest – he knew he couldn’t lie here like this but his exhausted muscles had no means of obeying the nervous jolts shooting through his limbs.

If I live through this, the runner thought, clutching his rebreather and licking his cracked lips. If I make it through alive…

There wasn’t much room for regrets in the Guard – if only because there wasn’t much that was within one’s control to begin with. But he swore that if he lived, he’d make sure to at least recover well and sleep for a week. And after that… well. Most likely die fighting in some other thankless war, on some other shithole planet. But if by some Emperor-blessed miracle he made it through his whole term of service alive – if there was ever a chance of going back home…

The runner clutched the antique rebreather in his pocket. He remembered the last time he’d looked on the peaks of Intinti. The thought surprised him. He didn’t think he could still remember the name of his home world after all these years, but there it was: a clear, cloudless sky, aqtipi doves scattering over a high andesite plateau, a procession of the wamani’s fifty healthy boys making its way sombrely up to the sky-temple, the runner among them.

Three ringing blasts from a bear-bone horn, and a tribute delivered.

The runner remembered grasping his ears as a roaring metal beast parted the clouds. The night before, he had indulged in the ritual feasting and the copious amounts of maize wine it had provided. The priests had anointed him with a dab of cinnabar, intoning, ‘Wanlek Dir, third son of the third wife of House Dir-ek, chaquec-in-training for the Imperial Couriers. You are anointed by the gods.’

He had embraced his mother and wept openly, earning him the teasing jibes of his brothers – but even they had tempered their teasing with a soft touch of melancholy. In the morning, he would be gone forever from the wamani, plucked by the sky-gods into the realm of the sun. In the morning, he would be Wanlek Dir no more. And so they cried and laughed and feasted and drank, and the priests scattered gold leaf and maize at their feet, finishing the initiation rites for the tribute to the sky-gods and their flying metal beasts.

How small the world was back then, the runner thought. He had known so little – all the wise and holy men had known so little. Closing his eyes, he could still recall the presiding nobles chanting their sun-prayers in rhythmic High Tahuanti.

‘Qulonqu-ek tapa, ik tapa ak qhapaq pat dwil…’

And then, only the dark hold of the spaceship. The interminable screeching of metal, the sweat and piss and sick from the other boys as the beast bore them into the sky, their hearts beating in their throats, their spirits humbled by the mounting expectation of divine revelation. And then the final docking jolt, the stench and the anticlimax as the gunmetal doors slid open on a sea of men. Mundane, sweaty, trammelled, frightened men.

‘I remember that day,’ Bullard’s voice rumbled in the cold present. ‘You looked like you were ready to faint – the whole sorry lot of you.’

The runner heaved a misty breath into the sky. His compatriots from Intinti had not lasted long in the Astra Militarum. By the end of their indoctrination, most had either died or been discharged to menial duty in the slave corps. He missed them, though he could not remember any of their faces clearly. He missed Bullard – the living, flesh-and-blood Bullard. He missed the half-remembered peaks of his childhood, where the sun was warm and he could run barefoot along the mountain paths without pain or exhaustion or the constant thrum of anxiety in his chest. He missed his mother and his many, many brothers.

If there was ever a chance of going back home…

‘What would you do?’

The runner thought about that for a second. For one, he would find his mother, if she was still alive. Maybe give the high priest a dressing-down about what was actually out there, in the ‘realm of the sun’. And then he would find the footpaths of his youth, and, under a warm yellow sun, he would run until all the awful off-world memories evaporated like sweat from his brow.

‘And after that?’

The runner ruminated in silence. After that? Grow old, retire on a mountain estate somewhere, raise children, grandchildren, and then, when his time finally came…

‘That’s the thing, isn’t it?’ Bullard gurgled knowingly. ‘You let the story go on long enough, it all ends the same way.’

The runner’s fingers clutched feebly at the earth. A good sign – at least his muscles were responding again. He dug out a wad of gauze from his waist-satchel and painfully manoeuvred his legs into a position where he could bandage his feet. The gauze stuck fast to the semi-dry blisters. He noticed that the bite from the rodent thing had begun to ooze, and he bandaged that too.

At least the hunger pains have stopped, he comforted himself. They had faded sometime during the day, replaced by a constricting tightness in his gut that he hardly noticed.

Resting his bandaged feet on the ground, he reached into his boots and scraped out the grit from the insides. Clumps of half-dried fluids and dead skin fell near his face. He dug his fingers into the toe box, extracting the nail that had been tugged off his little toe with a sick wave of satisfaction.

The runner pulled on his boots and stood up in a panoply of pain: the piercing, dry pain of the fresh bandages and the wet, dull pain where unbandaged skin rubbed up against the pus-moistened insoles of his boots. His joints protested his every move, and the muscles in his thighs and back would not stop shaking under his weight.

‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ said Bullard in rumbling tones, stoking his exhaustion. ‘I don’t like seeing you suffer, little man.’

The runner put one foot in front of the other, and ran.

Night fell on mist and shadows. The runner stumbled through the cold dark in a feverish chill. The soles of his boots had started to fray in the early evening, and now the rubber flapped in tatters with every step he took. He had fashioned a makeshift tourniquet to bind the boot together, stringing the gauze fabric under the sole and looping it through the bootlaces – but the sharp crystalline salt had quickly lacerated the fabric into a useless flapping rag.

The runner moved his feet in time with his prayer.

Our Emperor deliver us from plague, deceit, temptation and war.

Our Emperor deliver us from the scourge of the Kraken.

Behind him, the last sliver of sun vanished under the horizon.

‘I am Wanlek Dir, and I have been chosen by the gods,’ the runner addressed the darkening sky. His voice was cracked and delirious. ‘The Emperor protects.’

His flapping soles caught the ground and he tumbled forward. A mouthful of salt and blood.

Rolling onto his back, Wanlek snuffled in weak laughter as the apathetic stars careened overhead. He spat out salt and grit and reached for his canteen. He held it above his lips for a full minute before realising it was empty.

‘Revered Emperor of Terra,’ he wheezed. ‘Deliver us from thirst and shit boots…’

He wondered briefly where Terra might be, and what the Emperor might look like. Summoning up all the prayers and ancient stories he knew, Wanlek painted a picture in his mind’s eye: a big man on a golden throne. A non-specific, holy light. And…

And that was it.

Nothing else came through the haze of mindless reverence. For all the beatings and indoctrination, for all the practised veneration and conditioned awe, there was precious little he knew about the Holy God-Emperor that supposedly watched over all of mankind.

Wanlek raised his head, seeing the glow of mammalian eyes gather around him. He thumped the ground weakly with one hand, and they scattered back into the darkness.

Once, on his home world, Wanlek had seen an emperor. A scrawny old man in a golden-feather headdress. The emperor had been on a state visit, so there was no golden throne, only a painted palanquin bejewelled with pyrite and emerald. A tiny, frail old man – but as good a God-Emperor as any, for all either of them had ever done for him. After all, where were they when the keep fell? Where was the Emperor when Bullard got taken in half? Where was the Emperor when Old Sarge screamed and the mists closed around them?

All hail His holy impotence, the scrawny God-Emperor of Terra! Wanlek thought, deliriously giddy at the irreverence of it all. If any of his commissars could hear him now, he would surely be shot.

Wanlek rolled onto his stomach and crawled to his knees. The map declared another eighty miles between him and regimental command. He pulled himself out of his flapping, useless boots, and convulsed as his feet hit the piercing salt of the tundra. Only the parched dryness in his throat stopped him from crying out in pain.

‘Why not just rest for a while?’

Wanlek tuned out the gurgling voices of his dead squadmates. Little rodent creatures darted in and out of the shadows, trailing him with their glowing eyes.

They know that I’m dying, Wanlek thought. He took another agonising step. He could not remember feeling pain or exhaustion like this before in his entire life. Adjusting his magnoculars, he scanned the landscape desperately for any sign of water – the winding terrain of a riverbed, perhaps, or the reflective glint of snow or ice under the starlight.

A boundless desolation stared back at him. The dark tundra stretched to the horizon, endless and ageless. Mists swirled in longing tendrils. Wanlek Dir stared into the darkness, shivering as his muscles strained and his skin oozed.

And through it all, where was the Emperor?

A chorus rolled across the landscape, low and jovial, under an oppressive mist that smothered the stars. The rumbling backbeat soaked into Wanlek Dir’s exhausted muscles like seeping molasses.

‘I am flesh and I am rot.

‘I am flesh and I am god.’

The words came simultaneously from the darkness beyond the mist, and from deep inside his bones. Wanlek Dir hummed along in feverish delirium. No words came out, only a tuneless wheezing.

‘I am dirt and I am pox.

‘I am the flesh that time forgot.’

Salt and dirt pockmarked the naked flesh of his soles. A trail of prints extended behind him in pus and blood – though, for the last three miles or so, the impressions had mostly been made by his hands and knees rather than his feet.

Wanlek crawled onwards in fever and cold sweat. The palms of his hands were salt-flecked and raw, and his combat fatigues had been torn to reveal similarly bruised and ragged knees. He counted out his progress in multiples of seven. I am flesh and I am rot – and that was seven lurching movements. I am flesh and I am god – and another seven ragged handprints.

Bullard’s voice rang out over the chorus.

‘Lie down and rest, little man. You deserve some peace.’

Wanlek swivelled towards the sound, but saw nothing except mist.

The big bastard is always hiding from me, he thought. Bullard liked his practical jokes. Wanlek wheezed through his parched throat. Water – that was the main thing. He could not go much further without water.

I am the flesh that time forgot.

Wanlek crawled onwards, fading in and out of awareness, his mind thick with fever. The mist tightened around him; shadows within shadows churned with what might have been human forms. After an indeterminate amount of time, he woke to find himself propped up against the side of a rock formation, his bare hands shaking against a crook in the underside. He reached up to brush a stinging fleck of salt from his face, and his fingers came away from the rock cold and damp.

A primordial thrill cut through his mind-haze.

Moisture! Dew-frost on the underside of the rock. A simple, bestial urge leapt in his chest. Wanlek Dir lowered himself quivering to the ground, thirsting and needing, and licked at the stone.

Pain shot through his tongue. Wanlek gagged. The grit of salt lacerated his mouth, and the frost-moisture only served to spread the brine in a thin adhesive that stuck to his tongue and palate. He gagged again and tried to spit, but could not muster the saliva. His tongue split open in salt-damaged fissures.

Wanlek Dir collapsed in abject despair, moaning in half-forgotten Tahuanti. There was no Emperor in the galaxy that could help him. As the dryness caught in his throat and no more sounds would come, he mouthed mutely at the sky.

‘Mami. Mami, help me. I want to go home.’

The glowing eyes skittered closer. Wanlek tried to shoo them away, but the muscles in his arms would not obey the command. Beyond them, deep in the mist, roiling shadows enfolded themselves into human shapes. Indistinct edges became solid, and Wanlek could just make out the familiar outlines in the haze: Old Sarge, with his skin sloughed away as if doused in acid; Tinker-man, with half of his face bubbling with pox; Bullard, rocking and clicking on his severed spine, a black, grimacing hole where his mouth used to be. Squinting deeper into the darkness, Wanlek thought that he could also see the rest of his regiment gathered in a throng, their faces and outlines indistinct, fading endlessly into the all-consuming mist. There were Guardsmen wearing unfamiliar uniforms, too, and civilians in attire he’d never seen before – even Intinti men and women, some in priestly headwear.

‘All things must die,’ intoned the shadows in the mist.

Wanlek Dir laid his head back and closed his eyes. One of the braver rodents skittered up to his feet and nibbled at the ragged, pus-drenched gauze.

‘We are the flesh that time forgot,’ Machinist’s voice rumbled in the darkness.

‘We can make the pain go away,’ said Bullard, stepping from the mist and extending his hand in a gesture of aid.

Wanlek wheezed helplessly. There was a jolt from far away as one of the rodents bit into the flesh where his toenail used to be. He tried to kick it away, but again, his muscles failed to respond. As more rodents congregated around him, the sharp nicks of their incisors sent a hundred jolts of pain through his flesh. His skin flaked in the air as he tried to call for help, mouthing silent nothings through a tongue that had split apart in cracked, parched canyons.

The mist became as thick as tar. The rodents swarmed up to his waist, squirming over each other in their rush to feed. Bullard leaned over him, sickly-green, hand outstretched.

Wanlek Dir heaved one last breath into the sky, and reached up to take it.

He walked through the depths of a vast, impossible garden.

The soil squelched under his feet. The atmosphere was warm and moist enough to be tropical, though the skeletal vegetation around him looked much too black to be of any tropical variety, and no birdsong disturbed the still, humid air. He picked through the pathways with a purposefulness that surprised him. He knew that the soles of his feet were flayed raw, yet he felt no pain – each footstep gurgled into the ground with an odd, comforting numbness.

In the darkness, indistinct shapes shadowed his movements. Their forms morphed from Old Sarge to Machinist, from Bullard to the Intinti boys who had been lost ages ago during their Astra Militarum training. One shadow stepped out from the foliage – it wore the face of the old Intinti priest at his feast-day.

‘Wanlek Dir, third son of the third wife of House Dir-ek, chaquec-in-training for the Imperial Couriers. You are anointed by the gods.’

The shadow-form priest dabbed his forehead with a spot of pus, and scattered ash and buboes at his feet. Wanlek trudged onwards. A familiar face rose out of the mist to greet him.

‘I told you,’ Bullard gurgled as they embraced. ‘No more suffering, little man.’

Wanlek closed his eyes and listened to Bullard’s severed vertebrae crack to the rhythm of his breathing. He felt a deep, faraway sadness, but could not remember why. Vague memories of a yellow sun and thin mountain paths fell away from him. For a second, a fragile voice pierced the gloom, bright and ethereal.

‘My little aqtipi dove, do you know how the sun got its place in the sky?’

His sadness deepened. No matter how far he reached into the misty depths of memory, he could not remember the answer to that question, nor the reason why it resonated with such significance to him.

A third shadow rose from the mist. Wanlek stirred, and half-remembered words burbled from his mouth.

‘Mami?’

She slouched from the earth, her flesh soft and green and yielding. Not his mother – but close enough to the real thing to provide a deep, satisfying comfort. Her voice sounded like tar as she dripped her words into the swamp beneath their feet.

‘You have been anointed by the gods, my little dove. No more pain.’

‘No more pain,’ echoed the shadows in the mist.

She enfolded him in a wet embrace. Lukewarm kisses left splotches of pus on his cheeks. When they finally broke contact, she held him out at arm’s length, and looked over his face lovingly.

‘We’ve taken your pain, but it is not the end of duty. You still have a job to do. Do you understand?’

He nodded slowly.

‘I think I do.’

She smiled and gave him a final, gurgling kiss.

The runner opened his eyes.

Dawn was breaking over the tundra. A cold wind whipped across his face, but he felt no chill. He sat up, testing his muscles against his weight. They responded without complaint. He rested his flayed soles against the jagged salt of the tundra. They did not feel pain.

The runner pulled himself to his feet and looked out over the emptiness. The gauze on his feet fell away, along with a layer of skin. Other things, too. Flakes of memory. Fragments of a yellow sun. A puzzle in a story whose ending he could not remember.

He unstrapped the canteen from his belt and let it drop to the frozen earth. Next, his satchel. His belts and medals. Reaching into his breast pocket, he felt the solid metal lump of the antique rebreather – and, after a brief hesitation, he tossed that too.

The runner breathed deep, surveying the bloated rodent carcasses at his feet. Joints clicked and skin sloughed, but he found himself otherwise very functional.

‘We have taken your pain,’ rumbled a voice deep within his gut, ‘but you still have a job to do.’

The runner blinked. He suddenly remembered that he’d been running for days, and that his duty was not yet done. Yanking himself out of his repose, he made his way down the ridgeline, and further on into the vast, sweeping tundra.

It was best not to linger. He still had a message to deliver, after all.

It was late afternoon by the time the grey, hulking outline of regimental command loomed into view. The runner approached at an unhurried pace, humming his chorus happily as the air broke into rhythmic cracks around him. It took several more shots for him to recognise the sound of lasguns. Stray shots arced over his head – they did not deter his progress. The runner watched them with an idle interest, wondering if they were meant to be warning shots, or just indicative of terribly bad aim.

There was a crack and a hiss. He tumbled backwards with a distant concern, and looked down to see where a las-shot had blown a smouldering chunk from his shoulder. Why were they shooting him now? He had a message to deliver, and he had come such a long way to do so.

He struggled up from the ground and held up his good arm in a gesture of surrender.

The gunfire stopped.

After a while, several scrambling figures emerged from the fog, closing around him with practised speed. They hauled him to his feet, sweating and breathing fast. The runner regarded them with pity. They dragged him through the gate of the main compound, through a vast courtyard of stone and plascrete, and into a grey, squat bunker that huddled near the foot of the mountain hold.

The world passed in steel and meat and sulphur. Corridors upon corridors. More meat followed, barking, sweating, running, saluting with all the messy exertion one would expect. Finally a steel door along a far wall slid open, and the runner was deposited unceremoniously into a windowless room and shoved into a corner. More meat filed into the room after him, the gelatine of their eyes straining as they studied him.

‘Name and rank!’ the meat barked.

The runner blinked.

‘I am…’ he started, then frowned. He chided himself for his lapse in memory.

‘I am flesh and I am rot.

‘I am flesh and I am god.’

The meat buzzed around him – wheedling, prodding, hitting, shouting. The runner accepted it all with a soft indifference. He could not understand why they insisted on waylaying him now. His message was important, even if he was a little fuzzy on the details. A keep – that was it. A keep had fallen, and something was coming. Bullard and Old Sarge and Tinker-man were dead, and–

The runner frowned. No, that couldn’t be right. Bullard and Old Sarge and Tinker-man were fine. In fact, there was Bullard right now, in a shadowy corner of the room, his lips pulled back in a soot-black smile, deep, tongueless, toothless.

Outside in the corridor, a commotion broke out. Shouts rang out in a din, and heavy footfalls weaved this way and that in staccato confusion. Garbled messages flitted from vox-comm to vox-comm before the room fell deathly silent.

The meat shouted and hit him with another blow. He could feel the shock of flesh against flesh, knuckle against jaw.

Right. The message.

The runner opened his mouth.

‘I am the flesh that time forgot.’

A sudden understanding came over him. He stood up ponderously, working out the semantics in his mind. He was not a runner after all. He was more of a… what was the word?

A herald.

The meat recoiled from the green mist that leaked from the herald’s nose, mouth and pores.

‘I am the flesh that time forgot.’

Bullard stepped out from the shadows. And Old Sarge, and Tinker-man, and Machinist. The herald held the convulsing meat to his breast, as if to soothe a crying child. Its limbs kicked with a desperate vigour, but each blow came weaker than the last. The herald embraced the meat as a father would; cradled it, smothered it.

‘No more pain, little man,’ he said, as the mist grew thick and the shadows grew solid. ‘We are coming.’

MIRACLES

Nicholas Wolf

CHAPTER ONE

‘Jacen, would you like to say the blessing?’

I’m jolted from another formless, grey daydream. Night-cycle is falling on Praxis Hive and I’ve spent the last sixteen hours on an assembly line. It takes me a moment to process what she’s said. The faint buzz of amasec isn’t helping. Well, not with this.

Myra. Sweet, beautiful Myra. She’s staring expectantly at me, blue eyes encouraging me to pray. She’s always encouraging me to pray, especially in front of the children. The Emperor is our father after all, she says: they should learn about Him from their own father.

‘Of course,’ I say finally with a tired smile. We bow our heads over our plates: Markus, Arden and little Sophya, making the aquila over our chests. ‘Mighty Emperor, we thank you for your blessings this day, for light you give us in the darkness. Please protect us from harm, and bless this food, that it might nourish our bodies so that we may continue our service to you.’ I pause. I never know how to end prayers. ‘Thank you,’ I say finally.

I open my eyes. Myra is smiling. Markus and Arden are picking at their food. Sophya is still whispering, eyes closed, as though she’s speaking to the Emperor Himself.

When she finishes we eat.

Our rations are simple, but nutritious: reconstituted grox-meat, carbohydrate sticks and a grey fungus Myra has seasoned to make it somewhat palatable, along with vitamin-gel packets and anti-rad pills to stave off radiation sickness. The walls of our hab-unit are well lined, but the manufactorum overseers prefer to err on the side of caution.

I eat ravenously. We all do. Markus and Arden, eight years old and growing almost too fast to believe, scoff down their food in between groaning about having the same meal for breakfast. Sophya, already so bright, eats happily, humming something to herself as she chews. Myra eats quickly so she can begin cleaning up the dishes.

Outside the window I suddenly hear the tromping of boots, as familiar as the coming of night.

‘Third patrol tonight,’ I say absently, watching the enforcers through the slits in the window coverings. Within moments the procession of glowering black helmets passes by. ‘There were patrols all around the factory today, too.’

‘Why are there so many, papa?’ Sophya asks through a mouthful of vitamin-gel.

I give her the best smile I can summon. ‘They’re here to keep us safe, starshine.’ I don’t mention that three patrols is out of the ordinary, even for our hab-block.

‘I heard they found another body down the street!’ Markus blurts out suddenly.

‘Yeah, and I heard his eyes were cut out, and full of bugs, and–’

‘Enough!’ I bark, harsher than I’d meant to. The room spins a little. I take a swallow of water to chase my guilt, grimacing at the metallic taste. ‘Honestly, where do you two even hear such nonsense?’

The twins look at each other. I know that look. They’re trying to decide whether or not to lie. ‘At the schola,’ Arden admits finally.

I snort and return to the food growing cold on my plate. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear from your little friends at schola,’ I lie. ‘And you’re scaring your sister.’

Sophya gives me her best ‘I’m not scared’ face, but I can see the fear in her too-wide eyes. I can’t blame her. I’m scared, even if I can’t let it show.

Myra gets up and begins collecting the dishes, brushing off the morbid talk with the ease of a parent used to quickly changing the subject. ‘Well, do you know what I heard today?’

‘What is that, my dear?’ I say quickly, likewise eager to speak of something else.

‘You remember Old Guryn?’

Of course. Guryn Mansk, the blind Guardsman, had been begging down by the cathedral since I’d been a boy. ‘What of him?’

Myra smiles as though in possession of a great secret. ‘He can see!’

‘Huh,’ I shrug, going back to my plate. ‘How did he afford bionics?’

‘No, not bionics,’ Myra urges, setting down the plate she’s washing. ‘It was a miracle.’

I don’t mean to raise an eyebrow but I do. ‘A miracle?’

‘What happened, mama?’ Arden mumbles through a mouthful of food.

Markus swallows his food first. ‘Yeah, tell us!’

Myra sits down on the edge of the table. The children are instantly enraptured. She’s ten times the storyteller I’ll ever be. ‘Well, I was walking home from the cathedral, and I saw him there, dancing in the street. He said he’d seen an angel in a dream, and when he’d woken up he could see!’

‘An angel?’ Sophya squeaks.

‘An angel from the Emperor! Isn’t that exciting?’ she says, clapping her hands.

She’s looking at me. Expecting an answer. Corroboration. Support. I take another sip of amasec to buy myself a few moments to think of something to say, something that isn’t callous or bleak.

Suddenly I’m six years old again, at my father’s memorial service, standing in a room not ten feet from where I’m eating dinner.

‘The Emperor’s miracles are all around us,’ I say, remembering a piece of scripture someone had read. ‘And if you pray hard enough, miracles will happen to you.’

The rest of the night passes quickly. I sit in my favourite chair, attempting to keep my eyes open until it’s time to put the children to bed. I fight the urge to finish my amasec because I know I’ll just pour another and I’ve already had too much. Myra reads to them from a pamphlet she got from the cathedral. Somehow, even at the end of the day, she never seems to lose her vigour.

So like my own mother, before she’d lost her mind.

Eventually Myra’s story of Sebastian Thor comes to a close and it’s time to put the children to bed. The boys protest, as they protest having to do anything besides run in circles and fight, but Myra tactfully guides them to their rooms with a mother’s gentle hand, far more effectively than I would have.

I lead Sophya to her tiny sleeping alcove, and tuck her into bed. I go to extinguish the lumen. ‘Goodnight, starshine. Sleep well.’

‘Papa?’

I turn.

She’s quiet for a long moment, fidgeting with her tattered doll.

How old was she when I made it for her? One? Two?

‘You won’t let the monsters get me, right? The ones Markus and Arden were talking about?’

‘Oh, starshine,’ I say, going to my knees beside her bed and taking her hand in mine. ‘There are no monsters here.’

Her face scrunches up in thought. I can see her little mind turning it over, wondering whether or not to trust me. She’s clever, and more observant than I give her credit for. I still haven’t fully accepted that she’s not a baby.

‘Papa, would you pray to the Emperor for me?’

‘Sophya, you know you can pray to the Emperor whenever you want and He will hear you,’ I reply. It sounds like something Myra would say, except she’d sound like she actually believed it.

‘I know, but I want you to,’ she protests softly. ‘Please?’

I concede, of course. How could I not? What kind of father wouldn’t pray over his scared little daughter?

I close my eyes and make the aquila over my heart. ‘Oh, glorious Emperor, enshrined on Holy Terra, I humbly beseech you, please let your immortal light shine down on this bed, and keep it extra, extra safe so that my little girl can sleep tonight.’

She opens one eye. ‘And no bad dreams,’ she interjects.

I stifle a chuckle. ‘And please give her good dreams.’

Sophya smiles. As far as prayers go it wasn’t one of my best, but it seemed to be sufficient. ‘Thanks, papa,’ she says, holding open her arms for a hug.

I wrap her up in a long embrace. Outside I hear the stomping of steel-toed enforcer boots. And, in the distance, screaming.

‘The Emperor protects, my love,’ I whisper as I hold her tightly to my chest. ‘And so do I.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘Shipment arriving. Dock Four,’ the servitor drones. ‘Courier tag 14782-241.’

I’m already jogging towards the loading bay as a ground-hauler groans into the disembarkation hub. I’m never not jogging, running or sprinting somewhere, and I know where and when my shipments are coming in without some lobotomised bullhorn telling me. I’ve been working in this factory since I was thirteen years old, Terran standard, like my father before me.

A Sentinel loading mech clanks towards the lumbering ground-hauler. Its cargo is comprised of battery chemicals and magnetic coils, osmium housing and steel canisters, as it is seven times per day, every single day until the galaxy ends: all the material required to manufacture lasgun power packs. The munitions produced on Entorum supply the Emperor’s armies across the sector. I’m but a miniscule cog in the process, destined to be replaced the moment I can no longer fulfil my duty, but I’m a competent cog, serving the Emperor in whatever limited capacity I’m able.

I tap my data-slate, relaying the updated manifests to the central cogitator that’ll eventually feed the Mechanicus overseer, Magos Ghould, in charge of the manufactorum complex. A message flashes back, indicating that we’re twenty-seven minutes behind schedule for our next outbound shipment, and that as shipment supervisor I’m being held directly responsible.

A percentage of your weekly rations is being deducted. Blessed are those who serve the Emperor in body and soul.

‘Let’s get those crates unloaded!’ I shout to the Sentinel pilot, heedless of my headache. ‘You three,’ I yell to the monotask loading servitors standing mutely nearby. ‘Housings and filaments to assembly line Gamma-426, plasma cells to Rho-86, and Delta-281 for overflow!’

‘Compliance,’ the machines drone in something approaching synchronicity, before stumbling off to complete their tasks.

I sigh deeply, almost too deep, until I feel like my chest is going to explode. Everyone is working eighteen-hour shifts. I can’t remember the last time I slept more than a few hours. We’re working ourselves beyond exhaustion, and we’re still unable to satisfy our daily quota.

Because of the disappearances.

It’s a stupid term, one the local enforcers insist on using when they make their daily rounds to question us about the people who’ve gone missing, or, more commonly, turned up dead, mutilated or worse.

Disappearances.

The term seemed to imply that these people had simply vanished. Like my mother did. The truth, whatever it is, is far more sinister. I can feel it.

‘Jacen, I heard we’re going to miss our quota again.’

I turn around. It’s Tobin. Good old Tobin. His sunken, bloodshot eyes resemble mine. We started working in the manufactorum at the same age, both orphans.

‘We’re behind a little,’ I lie. We’re actually predicted to miss our daily quota by thirty-two per cent, which is more than the acceptable lenience threshold by a considerable margin.

He looks at me. By the Emperor, he looks bad. I can only imagine how I look. I’ve been avoiding looking in the mirror. ‘How are you holding up?’ he asks.

‘Well enough,’ I say through a yawn. ‘You?’

I hear a soft thump in the distance. Several workers look up from our labour, but only for a moment. It’s all we can spare.

He raises an eyebrow. ‘You tell me. How far behind are we? Really?’

I check my data-slate again and rub my eyes. The headache I’ve been fighting all day throws a haymaker behind my eyes. ‘It would take a miracle at this point.’

Tobin laughs mirthlessly. ‘Miracles don’t happen in Praxis Hive.’

‘Myra told me about that blind beggar down by the cathedral. You know, Guryn Mansk, the old Guardsman?’

‘Yeah, what about him?’

‘Apparently he can see now. Says he saw an angel,’ I smile weakly. ‘Sounds like a miracle to me.’

Tobin looks at me strangely. ‘You didn’t hear?’

‘Hear what?’

‘He’s dead.’

I stop. The blind Guardsman had been begging on the same corner by the cathedral since I was a boy. I pass him every day on my walk to the factory. I crawl back through the blurry smears of my memories: I can’t recall seeing him the last few days.

‘What happened?’ I ask hesitantly. Something in Tobin’s face tells me I don’t want to know.

‘I didn’t see it happen, just heard about it…’ Tobin says slowly. ‘People said he was running around screaming. Clawing at his eyes. Saying he’d killed someone. Stuff like that.’ He pauses. ‘Threw himself under a groundcar.’

‘Guryn wasn’t a murderer,’ I say firmly. ‘And he wasn’t crazy.’

Tobin stares off into the distance. ‘Sometimes a man has to do what needs to be done,’ he says quietly to himself.

Suddenly the ground shudders. Hard. Thousands of workers stop moving at once. I stand completely still for a moment, wondering if what I just felt was the throbbing of my feet or something else. Then I feel it again, a tremor passing through the ferrocrete floor.

The shiver of adrenaline courses through me. ‘Everybody out!’ I shout.

A klaxon belatedly begins to wail. Everyone who isn’t a servitor drops everything and stampedes for the factory exit. Magos Ghould’s voice blares from the servo-skulls swarming over our heads. No one listens. A massive explosion rocks the factory. The blast wave slaps me to the ground. Feet trample me. Tobin yells something. I hear the growl of flames before I feel the wall of heat rushing towards me.

For the first time since I was a child I truly pray with all my heart and mind and soul. I pray to the Emperor because I don’t want to die, because I want to see my children again.

But the Emperor doesn’t hear me, as I knew in my heart He wouldn’t.

Ravenous flames engulf me, roaring so loud it drowns out the screaming of thousands of men burning to death.

CHAPTER THREE

I’m awake.

My eyes open. I’m sitting at my kitchen table. But it’s a different table, even though it’s the same kitchen. Different photographs on the walls. I get down from my chair. It’s taller than I remember.

I look down at myself. I’m a little boy.

The kitchen is dark but for a single dim lumen casting long, deep shadows. A fly buzzes past my head, stirring the rank, humid air. I hear a soft scrabbling sound in the darkness, a murmur, like a distant voice.

‘H-hello?’ I call quietly to the shadows.

‘Hello, Jacen,’ says a familiar voice.

My mother steps into the lumen light.

‘M-mother?’ I stammer.

She’s exactly as I remember her on the night she left, auburn hair pulled back, wearing a white dress. ‘Be at peace, Jacen,’ she says with a warm smile.

I run up to her on the tiny legs of a six-year-old and throw my arms around her knees. She doesn’t smell like I remember, but I don’t care.

‘Mother,’ I say again. By the Emperor, just saying her name feels divine. ‘Mother… I’m… I was hurt. I think I’m dead.’

‘Be at peace, Jacen,’ she says again. ‘Do not be alarmed. You are not dead.’

I look around the familiar walls of the hab-unit, exactly as I remembered them as a boy. ‘Am I dreaming?’

‘No.’

I feel a creeping sensation of unease working itself up my spine. ‘You’re not my mother,’ I say. ‘My mother is dead.’

‘She is not dead,’ she replies sweetly. ‘Just… elsewhere.’

‘So what are you?’

My mother smiles the type of smile she often did before the bad days, before the visions. ‘The Emperor sent me.’

I peer at the thing claiming to be my mother. Her form blurs more the harder I stare at her, as though rebuking my mortal gaze. I think back to the local cathedral, to the stained glass windows depicting avatars of righteous fury vanquishing foul abominations in the name of the Emperor. As though reading my thoughts, I suddenly see the suggestion of wings and a halo of holy light.

I’m speaking to an angel.

I fall to my knees and bow my head, unable to do anything but. ‘Holy Angel…’ I begin, having no conception of how I plan to finish my sentence. I resolve to press my forehead against the ground before it. Sweat drips into my eyes. Something buzzes past my ear.

‘Rise, Jacen,’ my mother commands. I obey. ‘Do not fear me. It is by the Emperor’s grace, through me, that you stand here at all.’

‘What do y–’

Mother smiles. ‘I saved you from death today, in the manufactorum.’

A miracle.

Myra was right.

‘I… I don’t…’ I stammer. I sound ridiculous; I can’t tell if I’m speaking to my mother or an avatar of the Emperor. I’d care more if I weren’t so overwhelmed.

‘You were saved for a reason, my son,’ she says, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘A purpose only you can fulfil.’

‘There must be some mistake,’ I say. ‘I can’t be… I mean, I’m not…’ I trail off. I’m not what? Worthy? Capable? I’m a husband who can barely stay sober enough to remain on his feet in the factory and tuck his kids into bed at night.

My mother gives me a scolding look. ‘Do you suggest that the Emperor Enthroned makes mistakes?’

‘No!’ I yelp. ‘I would never! I just… What use would the Emperor have for someone like me? I’m not holy, or brave. I’m… broken.’

‘Because of your mother,’ the Angel says.

‘Yes,’ I mutter weakly. ‘Because of you.’

‘Your prayers to the Emperor have not gone unheard,’ the Angel replies with a reassuring nod. ‘Not a one. He is aware of your suffering, for He sees all from the Golden Throne.’

The same creeping nausea worms through my gut, leaving me shivering. ‘What… purpose am I to fulfil?’

Mother smiles sweetly, too wide. ‘This world is doomed.’

I can’t help but tremble at its voice. ‘What do you mean, “doomed”?’

‘I will show you.’

The Angel reaches out a hand, somehow both gently and faster than I can prepare myself for. It touches my forehead. Agony, like a metal spike being hammered through my skull, floods me.

And then I see.

I see Praxis burning in living fire that gives no light. I see shadows with the faces of monsters slinking through the darkness, feeding on a hive world as it dies. I see men and women running, screaming, tearing at their bodies as crawling things gnaw through their skin. I see the blood of innocents forming rivers in the streets as the skies turn the colour of clotted vitae. I see the insane carving their bodies apart while thorny monsters praise their mutilation. I see the corpses of children piled in rotting mountains that blot out the sun.

I see Myra, crying out in agony before a blood-drenched nightmare that devours her hope. I see Markus and Arden pulling their eyes from their skulls so that they don’t have to see.

I see.

I see.

Sophya.

The vision ends. I suck in putrid air like a drowning man.

‘By the Emperor!’ I choke out. My throat is on fire, like I’ve swallowed poison. I double over, vomiting across the floor. ‘What… was that?’ I finally gasp.

‘But a taste of the fate that awaits this world, and every soul in it,’ the Angel says in my mother’s ‘you’d-better-take-this-seriously’ tone. ‘Unless you stop it.’

I can’t close my eyes. Every time I blink I see echoes of that horrible reality etched on the backs of my eyelids. ‘But how can I stop it?’ I gasp. ‘I’m nobody.’

‘So were many of the Emperor’s saints. The divine may do its work through anyone, no matter how small. But first…’ The Angel pauses. ‘You must prove your devotion. To the Emperor.’

‘My devotion?’

The Angel’s form seems to blur in the lumen light. ‘The Emperor has heard your prayers, Jacen Hertz. He has also heard your skulking disbelief, your unrepented sins. The power to save this world, and your family, cannot inhabit a broken vessel.’

I cling tightly to my mother’s leg. ‘I’ll do anything!’ I cry out, unable to think of anything but the vision. ‘Anything!’

‘Bring me the heart of the child you love most.’

I stop.

The world stops, not just me. The Angel’s words are like being doused in ice water. Its form blurs once more as my childhood home spins back into focus.

‘No.’

My mother’s face twists in a frown, the kind she made when she’d started hearing voices. A resonant growl thrums from everywhere at once, pressing against my ears. ‘You refuse?’ she says, still smiling brightly.

I push away from her. My eyes sting with tears. ‘I can’t! You’re… you’re asking me to… to…’

‘The Emperor knows what He asks,’ the Angel says. ‘Do you think you’re the first person to have to make this choice? Do you not think He felt the same as you do when He sacrificed His sons to prevent this same darkness from swallowing the galaxy?’

My eyes brim with tears. ‘Why the heart?’ I finally spit out.

Why not the eyes, or the lips, or the tongue?

‘Well, it doesn’t matter!’ I scream at it, so loud my throat clenches. ‘I’m not killing my daughter!’

‘The choice is yours alone to make,’ my mother says grimly. ‘I am only a messenger. Either you accede to the Emperor’s test and cleanse your spirit in your daughter’s blood, or you watch as your world and your family dies. You have until morning.’

The weak lumen light splutters and dies, drowning the kitchen in shadow. The Angel sinks back into the darkness, leaving only two glowing eyes to regard me as the world fades away.

I open my eyes.

I’m awake.

Burned flesh and voided bowels.

I’m alive.

Antiseptic and lubricant.

I shouldn’t be alive.

Wailing screams and animal howls.

Where am I?

My eyes trace the astringent sterility of a medicae wing, roiling in complete chaos. Blackened wrecks of steaming flesh are stacked two to a bed, mewling prayers to the Emperor and begging for death. Corpses choke the floor and there are far too few blankets to cover them all. Sisters Hospitaller and medicae servitors scramble between the dead and the dying, overwhelmed, out of control. Priests, confessors and acolytes provide what succour they can. The laspistol crack of the Emperor’s Peace being administered on the doomed barely penetrates the cacophony.

It’s like the vision from my insane dream, in microcosm.

Through the chaos, like sinister islands in a roiling sea, I see enforcers.

Clad in glossy black carapace armour and clothed in ebon robes, these are no ordinary troopers. They shoulder through the insanity of the medicae wing, faces hidden behind glowering rebreather masks. They exude menace as they sweep through the room, grabbing survivors and hauling them away to places unknown.

I see an enforcer sergeant stop to interrogate a flustered Sister. She turns and points in the direction of my bed.

Oh no.

Before I can think or react the enforcers swarm over to me. Within moments I’m completely surrounded by hulking bodies and glaring helmets. Gloved hands grab me.

‘You’re coming with me,’ the lead enforcer growls, turning my blood cold as ice.

‘I-I can’t,’ I stammer. ‘I was in an accident. I’m hurt.’

I can’t see the enforcer’s face, but I can somehow tell he’s giving me a strange look. Only then do I actually look down at myself.

Just like in the dream, there isn’t a scratch on me.

The enforcers hustle me into a makeshift interrogation room that might’ve been a supply closet. It reeks of antiseptic and machine lubricant. Two of them guard the door, shock mauls shouldered but not activated. In the confined space I can hear them breathing heavily. Then it hits me.

They’re afraid.

The enforcer sergeant points to a chair in the centre of the room.

‘Sit,’ he commands. I obey.

With a tired sigh the lawman removes his helmet. Beneath is a face every bit as stern and intimidating as his mask: grey and scarred, with piercing eyes beneath a furrowed brow. He sits across from me, glaring, until I can feel sweat breaking out on my forehead.

Finally he blinks, settling into his seat and consulting a data-slate. ‘Jacen Hertz,’ he says, scrolling through something on his slate. ‘You’re a lucky man.’

I don’t feel lucky. The room feels stifling. Fecund. Like in my ridiculous dream. ‘What happened?’ I ask.

‘Sub-level plasma generator suffered a critical failure,’ he replies in a clipped tone. ‘Manufactorum was completely destroyed.’

‘By the Emperor…’ I whisper. My father worked in that factory. I’ve spent more of my life in that building than I’ve spent everywhere else in the world. And now it’s gone. ‘How many…?’

The sergeant raises an eyebrow. ‘Dead? Hard to tell. The servitors will be combing the wreckage for weeks, but with the degree of incineration it’ll be up to our best estimation. Tens of thousands.’

I try to think of something to say, some words to encapsulate the shock and horror. Nothing comes to my lips.

‘And then there’s you,’ he growls, his voice dropping to an icy pitch. In that moment I understand that this is a man who has killed people.

‘Wh-what do you mean?’

The enforcer shrugs his armoured shoulders, but there’s nothing innocent about the gesture. It looks mechanical. Rehearsed.

‘Factory power plant melts down, pretty much everyone and everything in a mile radius gets turned to dust, and then we find you without a scratch on you.’ He leans forward, resting his elbow on his knee. He looks like a servitor trying to appear human. ‘You understand why I’m a little curious.’

I fight the urge to shift uneasily in my seat. I’m suddenly acutely aware of the lawmen behind me. I hear the sound of leather-clad fists tightening on weapons. A fly buzzes past me. I smell the stink of sweat.

And the odour of sulphur.

‘What are you implying?’

‘You’ve had a hard life, Jacen Hertz,’ the sergeant says, switching to a voice I believe he thinks sounds amicable. He glances again at his data-slate. ‘Mother, Lynne Hertz, suspected psyker, kills father, Corbin Hertz, then vanishes. Son, Jacen Hertz, sent to take his father’s place in the manufactorum the day he turns thirteen years Terran standard…’

‘My father wasn’t murdered,’ I interrupt.

The sergeant raises an eyebrow. ‘Pardon?’

‘My mother didn’t kill my father,’ I repeat slowly, angrily. ‘He killed himself. The night she left.’

The enforcer looks back at the data-slate. I see an eyebrow twitch as his eyes scan the file. ‘If that’s how you remember it.’

‘And my mother wasn’t a psyker,’ I add hotly.

The sergeant gives me a long, blank look. I can tell he’s mulling a difficult thought but I can’t determine what it is.

‘Indeed,’ he says finally.

Something in his tone sets my teeth on edge, even though I know he’s wrong. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘I’m a sanctioned investigator, my mandate comes from the planetary governor himself,’ he says flatly. ‘Do you think there’s anything that goes on in my district that I don’t know about?’

The implication leaves me feeling nauseous. ‘My mother went crazy and my dad killed himself over it,’ I say quietly. ‘That doesn’t make me a criminal.’

The sergeant’s icy blue eyes grow wider. Too wide. ‘That kind of thing, especially at a young age… it does things to a man,’ he says. ‘Might make you snap one day. Maybe blow up that old manufactorum, for example.’

‘You think I–?’

The enforcer surges to his feet, sending his own chair clattering to the floor. ‘This may or may not surprise you, Jacen Hertz, but in accordance with the Lex Imperialis I have the Emperor-mandated authority to kill you, in this very room, whenever I damn well deem it. It also may or may not surprise you that today I am very low on patience. So you are going to tell me everything you know, right this very moment, or I will judge you in contempt of my investigation and shoot you in the head. You have until the count of three.’

My mind races. I can’t breathe. ‘I didn’t do anything!’

His bolt pistol is in his hand. ‘One.’

He’s going to kill me.

My stomach churns. I taste bile. ‘I didn’t do anything!’ I scream.

The cold metal barrel presses against my forehead. ‘Two.’

I’m going to die. I’m going to die, right here, right now. ‘I didn’t do anything!’ I sob. ‘I j-just want to go home!’

The sergeant kicks his chair hard enough to twist the metal. I hear the sound of the hammer cocking back. ‘Then how do you explain the fact that you’re sitting here, talking to me, instead of being scraped off the wreckage like everyone else in that factory?’ he bellows. ‘How?’

Tell him the truth, Jacen.

The enforcers approach behind me. I hear the sound of the sergeant’s gloved finger squeezing the trigger. ‘It was a miracle.’

After an eternity the sergeant holsters his weapon. Frantic breath gasps out of me. I ignore the warm wetness running down my leg.

‘A miracle?’ the sergeant sighs.

Suddenly I’m back in weekly service, Myra and Markus and Arden and Sophya at my side, listening to some priest whose name I can’t remember, preaching to me about the Emperor’s miracles all around me. He might have been the same priest who spoke at my father’s funeral.

‘I was saved by an angel,’ I say, swallowing my own sense of disbelief.

The sergeant raises a grizzled eyebrow. ‘Really? And what makes you so damned special?’

You were chosen, Jacen.

I don’t have an answer. I don’t have an answer to any of this. I’d been trying to figure out where the Emperor was in my life from the moment my mother, jabbering like a lunatic, ran out of the house into the darkness of the hive and never returned.

I don’t have an answer, or at least not one that makes sense.

You’re the only one who can prevent the darkness from consuming this world, Jacen.

The hairs on my neck stand up. ‘Hello?’

‘What?’ the sergeant snaps.

Skinless nightmares flaying men alive.

I whirl around. There is only myself, the investigator and his two enforcers. ‘Who said that? Do you hear that?’

The sergeant moves so fast I don’t even realise it until I try to draw in a breath of surprise and can’t. His hand tightens around my throat. I hear armour servos whirr over the buzzing of flies. My feet leave the ground.

Shrieking children drowning in boiling oceans of blood.

‘I’ve persecuted the Emperor’s foes longer than you’ve been alive, boy,’ he growls. His voice is a cold fury. I see it in those grey, steely eyes. ‘His justice is like a scouring flame. There’ll be no shadows for the wicked to hide in.’

The sergeant slams me into the wall hard enough to dent the metal. I collapse to the floor, coughing, wheezing. The enforcers tower over me as I struggle for breath. The light of the interrogation room flickers. The smell. I can’t breathe.

Like haunted carrion on a battlefield that never ends.

The sergeant stares at me for a long moment as I lie on the ground retching and gasping, studying me. ‘Get him out of my sight,’ he growls suddenly, mechanically.

Gloved hands grab me by the shoulders. The door clicks open and I’m shoved out into the hallway. I see the sergeant muttering into his vox-bead, his dead eyes lingering on me as the door slams shut.

He’s not letting me go.

He’s following me.

CHAPTER FOUR

I flee the medicae facility as quickly as is humanly possible.

Clattering orderly servitors attempt to record my information on reams of parchment as I pass through each wing of the hospital, but I run past each one without saying a word. The lobotomised menials do nothing to stop me. The Sisters are too concerned with saving lives to realise mine was just threatened. I feel the eyes of enforcers tracking me as I all but sprint into the streets. I can’t see anyone following me, but I know they’re there, watching me.

Only when I’m out in the streets, turning left and right at random, losing myself in the shadows of the hive, do I allow myself to actually breathe. The air is hot, hotter than it should be at this time of day. It smells of sulphur and ash. The explosion?

How far away was it?

How long was I in the medicae?

I wander, eyes on my boots, seeing nothing but ferrocrete passing beneath my feet. It doesn’t feel real. None of it does. This morning I was kissing my wife and children goodbye and walking to the manufactorum, fully prepared to spend the majority of my day building power packs. Now the manufactorum is gone, most of the people I know are dead and a damned enforcer thinks I’m somehow responsible?

You need to focus, Jacen.

‘Shut up,’ I say aloud. ‘You’re a dream. You’re not real.’

I trudge through the darkening streets of the hive, turning this way, then that way, drifting into a grey rumination and letting my feet guide me on the familiar path home. I pass into a tunnel, and the glow of the street-lumens fades to black, black as skies bleeding madness across the world. In the shadows I see glowing eyes watching me, following my every movement.

Why do you doubt what you’ve seen?

‘Because it’s insane!’ I snap, walking faster. ‘I mean, angels, miracles… I just… it’s all just…’

It’s not that you don’t believe, Jacen. It’s that you fear what the Emperor has asked of you.

‘I’m not going to kill my daughter!’ I yell, loud enough for my voice to echo. Onlookers give me a strangely knowing look and scuttle away, murmuring to each other.

I pull my coat tighter around my shoulders and all but run for home. A darkness is setting in, painting the hive in a gloom that not even the street-lumens can touch.

You saw what awaits them, should you fail.

The vision. I can’t escape it; even when I blink I see it. The urge to gouge out my eyes is kept at bay only by my desire to look upon my wife and children again. But still it’s there, embedded in my heart. Even trying to not think about it twists my stomach into nauseated knots.

‘Why does it have to be her?’ I ask, feeling tears brimming in my eyes. ‘Why?’

Power requires sacrifice, Jacen. The Emperor is promising you the power to save a world, and the rest of your family. Such power does not come without a price.

‘Then the Emperor is evil!’ I shout, fighting back tears.

His ways are mysterious. His plans are beyond fathoming to mortals.

I pass by the cathedral. Enforcers patrol nearby the spot where Old Guryn used to beg. There’s an area cordoned off, next to an impounded groundcar. I see enforcers glance up at me as I walk by, eyes tracking me.

‘Did you do this to Guryn?’ I ask.

You concern yourself with matters beyond your comprehension, Jacen.

‘You showed him, didn’t you?’

The festering corpses of my children stalk the streets where I once played.

‘No!’ I scream out loud. I see more eyes turn towards me. I duck into a dark alleyway. I glance over my shoulder: I’m being followed. I know it.

I’m gasping, panting, heart racing. It’s so hot. I can’t close my eyes. All I see is death, and misery, and suffering, and horror, and–

You can prevent all of this, Jacen. Just bring me her heart.

‘I can’t do it,’ I whimper. My head is pounding. My knees are weak. ‘I can’t.’

You have to. For them.

‘How do I know this is real?’ I say to myself. ‘How do I know I’m not losing my mind, like… like my moth–’

Jacen, look at me.

‘W-what?’

LOOK AT ME.

An icy shiver runs through me at the insistency of the Angel’s voice.

I turn around, slowly. Staring from the shadows behind me are two glowing eyes. Flies buzz around me. I smell sulphur and voided bowels, curdled blood and burned flesh.

Time is running out, Jacen. Bring me your daughter’s heart, or your world will burn.

CHAPTER FIVE

My hab-unit is dark when I return home.

Power still hasn’t been returned to the worker’s hab-block. Most likely weapon production has already shifted to other manufacturing facilities across the hive, requiring power to be rerouted to ensure that the Emperor’s tithes are not late.

I slide in through the door and stumble through the familiar darkness to the kitchen.

I’m going to do it.

I have to do it.

Every time I blink I see the Angel’s vision haunting me, howling abominations defiling my family over, and over, and over as they beg for death. Every microsecond is torture. Still I make my footsteps as slow as possible as I shuffle my way towards the kitchen.

Damnation, it’s hot.

I come to the kitchen, as dark as it was in my vision. I fumble past my dinner, wrapped in sealant, to the spare bottle of amasec I keep hidden in the cabinet. Before I know it I’m gulping down the burning spirit like a man dying of thirst. The first pull is hard. The second goes down easier. I remember the night my father died… no, the night he killed himself; he was so drunk he could barely slur his words.

Wasn’t he? What had he wanted to tell me?

I wish I could remember.

The third drag banishes the worst of the bad thoughts. The familiar faux-focus of drunkenness settles on me. I clench my jaw as the haze narrows my vision and makes me forget my horror.

‘Jacen!’

I whirl around. An electro-torch illuminates the room. Myra is sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

Her beautiful face breaks into the widest smile I’ve seen since the days when our children were born. She jumps up from the table, throws her arms around me in a tight embrace and buries her face into my chest. Her cheeks are wet.

‘I thought you were dead,’ she whispers. ‘What happened?’

‘The manufactorum generator exploded,’ I say flatly. ‘Sabotaged, I guess.’

She makes the sign of the aquila over her chest. ‘By the Emperor,’ she whispers. ‘I’ve been listening to the vox-net, they’re saying thousands are dead. Are you okay? Are you hurt?’

‘I’m not hurt,’ I say, unable to hide my own disbelief. ‘I’m fine.’

She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. ‘How? They said the manufactorum was completely destroyed.’

I pause, seeing the form of the Angel in my mind as though it’s standing in my kitchen, urging me to fulfil the Emperor’s test.

‘It was a miracle.’

Myra gives me a strange look. Then her face breaks into a contented smile. ‘We were all praying for you. Sophya most of all. The Emperor has answered our prayers.’

I feel the tears brimming in my eyes. I grit my teeth to keep my jaw from trembling and hold her close to me so she can’t see my face.

‘I’m going to kiss the children goodnight. Why don’t you go to bed, I’ll be there in a moment and tell you all about what happened.’

Myra hugs me and kisses me, warmly, deeply. I never want it to end.

‘I love you, Jacen,’ she adds as she walks out of the kitchen.

‘I love you, too,’ I say to the shadows after she’s already left. I take a final swig of amasec to force down the lump in my throat. I stumble towards Sophya’s bed.

To do the Emperor’s bidding.

I stumble through the darkness towards the kitchen, hands slick with blood. ‘Angel!’ I call into the darkness. ‘Angel, I’ve done what the Emperor demands!’

Silence greets me.

‘Angel!’ I cry out again. ‘Angel, show yourself!’

‘I’m here,’ a sweet voice says behind me. She’s here. She’s always been here.

Elsewhere.

‘I did it…’ I say, swallowing back the tears. ‘I did… what you asked…’

Two hearts fall from my hands.

‘Myra…’ I whisper. ‘She heard Sophya. She didn’t understand. I had to do it.’

‘You did,’ she says from the shadows. ‘And you did marvellously. Better than I could have expected.’

‘I didn’t want to…’ I say to the shadows. ‘I… I didn’t ask for any of this. But I did it. Now what happens?’

‘What do you mean, Jacen?’ the Angel asks pleasantly.

‘You know what I mean!’ I snap angrily. ‘How is the Emperor going to… you know, use me to save this world?’

The Angel pauses. ‘Oh, the planet will be saved…’

My mind races. What had I been imagining would happen? Something… divine? Holy? ‘But… how? When?’ I ask, feeling the blood on my hands begin to clot. Flies buzz around me. Nausea twists my gut.

‘When enough sacrifices have been made, Jacen,’ the Angel says behind me. ‘When rivers of blood drown the world, and the corpses of the innocent blot out the sun.’

My daughter’s blood, my wife’s blood, is drying on my hands. My sons will be scarred for the rest of their lives, just like I was. The horror of what I’ve done crashes down on me again, and again, and again.

I suddenly feel my mother’s gentle hand on my shoulder. ‘There, there,’ she coos, her voice suddenly changing, deepening. ‘I understand. Some of us are chosen for great and terrible things…’

I slowly open my eyes and look behind me.

The hand on my shoulder is a malformed claw, chalk-white flesh and cracked, jaundiced talons. Her arms are too long, her body gaunt and withered. Her mouth is a grinning lamprey maw of serrated fangs weeping corruption. Her eyes are sunken pits, buzzing with flies.

This isn’t my mother. This is something wearing my mother like a skin.

‘…Just like I was.’

My mouth stretches in a soundless scream as the monster draws me into a loving embrace. Witch-light blazes from her rotten eyes. The laughter of madmen and the wailing of the damned fills my skull. The abyssal horror of the warp yawns before me, a thousand times more terrible than the haunting vision I’d seen before.

Salivating.

Hungry.

Eternal.

‘And now, my son,’ the creature that was my mother hisses as it consumes me, ‘we can be together forever.’

VOICES IN THE GLASS

Richard Strachan

I will go out and speak to them. I must – before it is too late. Before they are swallowed utterly…

Amidst the city’s tangled borderlands, the temple stood plain and unadorned. Gilvar paused on the threshold to look back at the view below him; a ramshackle place of tall, dusty buildings, broken archways and silent, twisting streets shrouded with cobwebs.

Shadespire… he thought. It had been a long journey from the Grand Temple in Hammerhal. He shuddered, recalling the bizarre, discarnate madness of the Realmgates, his body and soul stretching and twisting as he moved through the aether… And, after an age it seemed, he was deep in the grey misery of Mhurghast, in the Realm of Death, then stalking through the Desert of Bones under the wheeling shards of scavenger birds, holding his faith close in the creeping gloom of those endless, infertile landscapes. He reached inside his cloak and touched Yollin’s letter.

I will find you my friend, he thought. I promise.

Across the rooftops came a low and mournful sound, like the call of some distant, sorrowful voice, and above it, like breath hissed through teeth, was the harsh and sibilant whisper of amethyst dust whipped off the plains.

Inside the temple, the braziers burned low with a dull yellow flame. On the altar was a gilded hammer, the symbol of the Cult of Sigmar. The pews were empty and disordered, but Gilvar was comforted to see copies of The Anvil and the Hammer at every seat. On the lectern was a large and leather-bound volume of Intimations of the Comet, the pages foxed with mould. He paused to read the marked passage: ‘And so sayeth the strong man unto the weak, Yea, will I guard and protect you as Sigmar guards the hearts of mankind; and unto the enemies of the righteous will the hammer mete; for whosoever wields his strength in holy purpose wields the strength of Ghal Maraz itself.’

He was reflecting on this, pleased that the temple seemed so clean and well cared for, when he heard the whispers.

They came from the shadows in the apse, lilting and soft, like the rustle of silk; and then suddenly rasping and bleak – Gilvar felt something curdle in his gut at the sound of them. He gripped the edge of the lectern, but as his fingers brushed against the holy book, he felt the strength return to him.

‘Who’s there?’ he said. Boldly he moved towards the shadows, but as he stepped forward the whispers ceased.

‘Yollin?’ came a quavering voice.

Hunched in the doorway to the vestry was an old woman in a plain, roughspun gown, a shawl drawn over her shoulders. One eye was milky with cataracts, and she had to twist her neck to look up at him. Gilvar composed himself.

‘No. My name is Gilvar. I am a warrior-priest of Sigmar,’ he said. ‘I’m here to replace Yollin. And to find him, if I can.’

The old woman gave him a tremulous look.

‘Your name?’ he asked.

‘Lyzabet, if it pleases you, priest,’ she said. ‘I tended the household duties for Yollin, the cooking and suchlike.’

‘For which I thank you,’ Gilvar said. ‘He was – is – a close friend of mine, and I’m sure he appreciates your help.’

‘The others are waiting for you in the vestry,’ she said, shuffling through the door. ‘This way, please.’

Gilvar paused. ‘The others?’

He followed her into the cramped room at the back of the temple. Around a table sat five figures, who started suddenly as he entered. To his surprise, Gilvar saw that one of them was a duardin, a Kharadron judging by his dusty fatigues. Another was an aelf – of the wilderness wanderers, he thought. She was strangely cowed and dishevelled, her face drawn and pale. Lyzabet touched the shoulder of an elderly man who she introduced as Branton. His eyes were rheumy and his bottom lip slackened with age. The others she introduced as Dunnot, Amyrillis, Dunceyn and Prentiss. Dunnot’s age was difficult to determine, as was usual for his race; the duardin fixed him with an irritable glare as he entered. Dunceyn was well into middle age but looked sleek and comfortable, his cloak trimmed with gemstones, his hair lacquered with an ill-smelling Aqshian pomade. Prentiss was a younger man, more austere in a plain black doublet, with sharp blue eyes and a lean face.

The whispers. I must have heard them talking, that’s all.

They stood up as he entered. Gilvar waved them back down and introduced himself.

‘I couldn’t help overhearing,’ Dunceyn announced, ‘that you’re here to track down Yollin, our elusive priest? Is that correct? As members of the faithful, naturally we have tried to keep the temple running in his absence.’

‘We would do nothing less,’ the aelf, Amyrillis, said. Her voice drifted off as she fussed absently at the matted tangle of her hair. She stared into the empty corner of the room.

‘You are congregants here?’ Gilvar asked, his gaze straying from the aelf to Dunnot. The duardin cleared his throat gruffly and nodded, but he said nothing. ‘The arch lector in Aqshy has indeed charged me with the task of finding Yollin,’ Gilvar continued. ‘This is a perilous city, from what little I understand, and my Order is determined that the Word of Sigmar must always be present in its streets.’ He took the letter from his pocket and passed it around.

‘Yollin had written to the arch lector many times before he arrived here,’ he explained. ‘He was eager to keep a record of the details of his journey, and his mission. But his missives took on a more cryptic turn as the months passed, as you can see.’

The others turned the parchment over in their hands, passing it between them, scowling over the scribbled words. Branton moved his lips when he read. Dunceyn glanced at it and passed it on, and only Prentiss seemed in the least bit concerned. Eventually the letter made its way back to him.

‘His mission?’ Prentiss asked.

‘Indeed. He came not just to minister to the souls here, but to spread the faith, to find… In any case, can you tell me about this?’ Gilvar asked them. He looked around the room. ‘Yollin ceased writing some years ago and he has not replied to any of the letters the arch lector has sent him since – that is, if they even reached him. Where did he go?’

Amyrillis shrugged, staring down at the table. Branton wiped his trembling lip, and Dunceyn merely considered his fingernails. Across his lap he had a fine, polished walking stick, topped with a ruby as big as his fist, although for the briefest moment as Gilvar looked at it, it seemed no more than a twisted branch topped with a peeling canker.

Lyzabet bustled through from the storeroom then, bringing pewter cups and a jug of wine so dark it was almost black. It poured like treacle into his cup, and Gilvar grimaced as he sipped the brackish, metallic liquid.

‘Not one of my vintages,’ Dunceyn said, ingratiatingly. ‘I import only the finest zephyr-wines from Chamon, but our missing priest was quite strict when it came to the communion offerings…’

‘Strict? Yollin?’ Gilvar said, in disbelief. The man he knew had always cleaved to the more extravagant side of the Cult: the incense and vestments, the high and splendid rituals. It had long been a point of contention between them.

‘He was faithful to his God-King, a pious man,’ Dunnot frowned. ‘But by the end…’ The duardin shook his head.

‘Yes?’

‘Well… maybe it was too much for the lad?’

‘What was too much for him?’ Gilvar demanded.

‘The district?’ Dunceyn said. ‘The responsibilities? Our congregation is a large and active one,’ he said with pleasure, ‘and with so many social occasions to draw on his time it’s not surprising if Yollin couldn’t manage the pressure. A priest of Sigmar is very much a public figure, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps,’ he said, ‘he craved solitude?’

Gilvar sat back in his chair. ‘Social occasions?’ He thought back to his journey through Shadespire’s winding cemetery roads, the empty windows like dead eyes, the littered paths and crumbling ruins, the silence. ‘Forgive me, but there seems little here that would have stretched the capabilities of a man like Yollin or pushed him to breaking point. I have known him for many years, and a more committed man of the God-King’s church I have never met.’

Prentiss spoke softly then, looking down at his hands. ‘But how well do we really know someone, I suppose? Who knows how they’ll respond to pressure, when they find it?’

‘Regardless,’ Gilvar said, ‘we are all members of this temple and have responsibilities of our own. You have been absent a priest too long, and we have a ministry to undertake, do we not?’

‘Indeed we do,’ Dunceyn said. ‘The ordinary folk need the lash of faith to keep them in line.’

Amyrillis glanced at him. ‘The folk… of course. The people… So many to care for here, you understand. Such a bustling place, it makes me long for the quiet woodlands and the green trees, and Ghyran’s blessed air…’

Gilvar frowned at her. ‘Starting tomorrow we will resume services for the congregation. Lyzabet,’ he said to the shuffling old woman, ‘if you would be so good as to show me to the manse?’

He glanced down at the letter in front of him – Yollin’s last missive, the parchment frayed and torn in places, the spidery handwriting already faded.

Voices there are here, fell and bleak, he had written. They whisper on the wind and scream in the quiet spaces of the day! Sigmar help me – help all of us!

They whisper on the wind… Gilvar thought. He tucked the letter away.

That night he dreamed of Yollin.

Lyzabet had shown him through to the manse next door. There was a study, a plain sleeping chamber, an austere dining room, but little else. On Yollin’s desk Gilvar found scraps of paper with scribbled notes – fragments of the scriptures, scrawled phrases heavily underlined: From the GLASS! he had written, or, It mumbles in my ear… In a corner of the bedroom’s only wardrobe he found a scourge flecked with dried blood, and there was a broken mirror scattered in fragments on the ground. He tidied it up as best he could, leaving the shards for Lyzabet to dispose of in the morning. Exhausted by his journey, he fell asleep as soon as he lay down on the bed.

In the dream, Yollin came to him from the darkness, and the darkness was cold. He fell apart like a grasped shadow, his face drawn and pale, his eyes like hollow pits. He raised his hand, slowly, a withered thing reaching out to touch him. Gilvar was pinned there in the darkness, paralysed in a limitless desert that stretched off and dissolved into nothing. He opened his mouth to scream but no words came, no sound at all, and then Yollin was opening his dead mouth to scream too, as if reflected in a dark glass, and behind him as it seemed stretched a long line of ghostly figures, all beseeching him, warning him, pleading with him to turn away. The black tunnel of Yollin’s mouth yawned wide, stinking of the grave, and from deep within came a rattling hiss more terrible than any scream – pained and sorrowful, agonised–

He woke in his chamber’s dim light, sweating, the sheets wrapped like a shroud around his body. Slowly he calmed himself. He recited a prayer in a shaking voice and reached for the hammer pendant around his neck.

Sigmar save me, he thought. Save all of us from this cursed place…

Then a voice barked beside him, thick and heavy, like someone shouting in their sleep.

Gilvar lurched from the bed and fell against the floor. There was no one there.

A whisper scurried around the room, louder one moment, quieter the next, no real sense to it but a jumbled dissonance that faded as suddenly as it had come. He caught snatches of meaning, fragments of words like Cold and Help! and a gentle sobbing, and then his eye was caught by glittering movement in the corner of the room – the shards of glass from the broken mirror, swimming now with shadows like the shadows from his dream. A shoal of flitting shapes moved slowly closer, skull-faced and black, moaning and staring with hollow eyes straight at him. Save us, they whispered. Please! Save us!

‘Begone!’ Gilvar screamed. He wrenched the pendant from his neck and flung it at the glass.

Immediately the whispers stopped. It was as if a door had been slammed shut on them.

‘Gilvar?’ Lyzabet called from the hall. ‘Are you all right? I heard voices?’

‘I’m… I’m fine Lyzabet, thank you.’ He clambered up from the cold floorboards. ‘It was nothing. Just a dream, that’s all. Just a dream.’

It was with a strange reluctance that he raised the issue with the others at the presbytery meeting a few days later. Drawn with exhaustion (every night he girded himself for sleep, expecting the nightmare to return), Gilvar hurried through the general administrative issues: restocking the wine for the Warrior’s Toast; having the silver polished; the perennial problems with the temple roof.

‘One final matter…’ he said. Branton, who had been struggling to rise from the table, now struggled to sit down again. ‘Looking through my predecessor’s archives, and… and, I have to confess, from my own experiences here, it seems that Yollin – and myself – may have been the victims of some sort of…’

‘Yes?’ Dunceyn asked. He turned a curious gaze on the priest.

Gilvar cleared his throat. Already Dunceyn vexed him, and he had known the man for barely a week. There was something well-satisfied and soft about him. He talked of society and pranced around in that mouldering cloak as if heir to great fortunes, expectant of rich prospects. He was delusional, Gilvar thought. They all were. There was nothing here but dust and decay. ‘Some kind of prank, perhaps. Or a hoax. Or possibly something else.’

‘I see,’ Dunceyn said, although his expression betrayed him. The others looked confused.

‘What kind of prank would this be then?’ Dunnot said. He peered uncertainly at Gilvar.

‘There were – there are – these voices…’

‘Voices, father?’ Branton asked.

‘Indeed. Disembodied voices.’

He had heard them more than once. They muttered in the corridor at night, when he knew he was alone in the house. They wept for mercy on the empty street outside. He would burst out of his study to catch them, or run into a dim evening lit only by the spectral aetherlamps, but each time he would be confronted by a silence so absolute it chilled his blood.

He was met with silence now. Amyrillis and Branton exchanged a look, but it was Dunceyn who spoke next.

‘And what, if I might ask, do these voices say?’

‘They say… You haven’t heard them?’ Gilvar demanded. ‘None of you?’

‘I confess, I haven’t,’ Dunceyn said. ‘Certainly not disembodied ones.’

He turned to Amyrilis. ‘Not even you?’

She smiled shyly at him, and then into her face came an expression of deepest sorrow.

‘Yollin writes of them, although I admit his notes are disordered.’ Gilvar laid out some of Yollin’s papers on the table. Like his letter to the arch lector, they were written in a scratched, uncertain hand, blotched with ink and in places barely comprehensible. Gilvar had spent many an evening trying to decipher them. ‘Let me read to you,’ he said. ‘“Mostly at night I hear them, but they beckon in the day, or weep and mutter in the dusk.” Then there’s this. “I heard a child crying for her mother last night, somewhere across the streets. Sigmar help me, but I was too frightened to go to her. There are no children in this part of Shadespire.” And then another: “They lap against my window like a tide. The glass. The glass.”’

Gilvar put down the notes. He looked at each of them in turn, but only Prentiss met his eyes.

‘Most strange,’ he admitted. ‘And perhaps something that goes some way to explaining Yollin’s disappearance. It does seem as if the poor man was in the grip of some kind of delusion.’

‘A delusion,’ Gilvar said. ‘And what of my own experiences? Do you think I’m in the grip of a delusion too? Aren’t any of you?’

Prentiss smiled, apologetically. ‘I don’t mean to imply as such. Like you say, a hoax perhaps? But if that is indeed the case,’ he went on, spreading his hands, ‘the question remains, a hoax by whom? And for what reason?’

‘That is indeed the question,’ Gilvar said, his expression grim. He tidied Yollin’s papers away. ‘And it is one that I mean to answer.’

‘I wish you the very best of luck,’ Prentiss said, with a slight bow. ‘Shadespire can be such a confounding place at times.’

He took to walking the streets when he couldn’t sleep, or when the words of his sermons began to swim on the page in front of him. Striding from the manse, he would explore the district as if marking its boundaries, pacing from the temple at the top of the hill to the mean little dwellings at its base. He crossed what must once have been the market quarter. The buildings were in ruins, but he saw Dunceyn lounging in a blackened doorway, waving at him with a hand bejewelled in rings. He wandered through a deserted strip of dingy scrubland, where Shyishan flowers bloomed in the verges, their bitter scent carried on the dry breeze. Larger and more well-appointed houses covered the district’s western slope, and it was amongst these houses one evening that he met Prentiss out for a stroll.

‘What brings you out at this hour?’ the man asked.

‘Clarity of thought,’ Gilvar said. ‘A brisk walk does wonders for the mind.’

‘If only Yollin had thought the same, perhaps he would still be with us.’

Gilvar grunted, dismissing the idea. ‘It remains to be seen whether Yollin was as deluded as you seem to think. He knew why he was here, and I doubt these voices would have turned him from his path for long.’

‘You’ve still been hearing them then?’ Prentiss asked. ‘I would put it down to children playing immature pranks, but as Yollin wrote, there are no children in this part of Shadespire.’

‘There seems barely anyone here at all!’

They were walking through a narrow passageway that opened out onto a wide, cobbled square. At the other side was an elegant, two-storey mansion, dripping with dead weeds.

‘The Mirrored City draws many to its streets,’ Prentiss said. ‘People come in search of secrets, or riches and treasures of all kinds, but it’s safe to say they don’t often find what they come for. And where they go afterwards… well, who can say?’

‘What brought you here, then? Riches? Treasures?’

‘Oh no,’ Prentiss smiled. ‘I came for opportunities of a different kind.’ He stared intently at the priest for a moment, and Gilvar met his gaze. ‘And what about yourself? A warrior-priest dispatched by the arch lector himself – what brings you to Shadespire, Gilvar?’

‘I’m here to find Yollin, you know that.’

‘And who was he sent here to find?’

Gilvar considered him for a moment: tall, lean, composed. How many years had he been here, he wondered? ‘Whoever came before,’ Gilvar said. He clenched his fists. ‘It is a great honour to be chosen to bring the Word of the God-King to Shadespire.’

‘Such zealotry does you credit,’ Prentiss said. ‘Perhaps you would like to come in for a drink and we can discuss it further? The nights in Shadespire are cold, after all.’

‘This is where you live?’ Gilvar asked. ‘A substantial dwelling for just one man. Extravagant, one might say.’ He grimaced.

‘A forgivable vice, I’m sure,’ Prentiss said. ‘There’s so little to do here, and my work does seem to take up an awful lot of space.’

‘I will say goodnight,’ Gilvar said. ‘I have work of my own to be getting on with.’

Prentiss nodded and unlatched the door, and Gilvar found himself alone on the darkened street. The shadows near the aetherlamp on the other side seemed to shiver slightly. Just the breeze… It was absurd, but he found he didn’t want to be out any longer than he had to. He turned and headed back the way he had come, over the crest of the hill.

He heard the child crying as he neared the manse.

It was a long, drawn-out sob, full of weeping sorrow; the cry of a young girl abandoned in the dark. It echoed around the empty streets, tearing at his heart.

But there are no children here…

He backed away, slipping down an alleyway, stumbling through the shadows. The weeping rose and surrounded him, buffeting his head like a breeze, higher now and more distressed. It seemed to pour from the windows of the houses that he passed, and he pressed his hands to his ears as he ran.

A child, Sigmar, forgive me! It’s just a child!

He staggered on, chased by this sorrow, and then fading in above it he could hear the hysterical crying of what must have been the girl’s mother, a screeching wail that carried in it all the agony of a parent powerless to stop her child’s suffering.

Gilvar was sobbing himself now, scurrying like a rat down the twisted alleys, his head down, his hands clamped to his ears. ‘Forgive me,’ he moaned, ‘forgive me!’

As the screaming voices reached a crescendo, he crashed into the door of the manse and wrenched it open, falling into the hall and slamming it shut behind him. The whispers and the shouts came in waves against the door, bubbling and breaking, angry and bitter and agonised all at once. Lacerated by them, deafened, Gilvar stumbled into the bedroom and locked the door.

‘Silence!’ he screamed. ‘I command you, in the name of the God-King, leave this place!’

But still the voices came, and they did not heed the prayers he chanted or the icon he held in front of his face. From the glass, Yollin had written, and it was as if the very glass in the windows trembled with the sound of a thousand exhorting cries. Finally, able to stand it no longer, Gilvar lashed out and felt the glass break under the blow. His hand was ragged with pain, but the voices slowly faded away.

He fell to the floor. The only sound was his own weeping as he buried his face in his bleeding hands. Coward, he thought, craven coward that you are! In the midst of adversity his faith had failed him. He drowned in his shame.

He remembered one of the few things Yollin had left behind. Opening the wardrobe, he saw the scourge propped up in the corner, its knotted tassels crusted with Yollin’s blood.

Yes, he thought. He recalled the prayer: Only through purity is faith strengthened… and only through pain is purity achieved…

Yollin had learned this at the end, it seemed. Shame had undone him too, and so he had turned to mortification. Extravagance is the enemy of faith… He tore off his robes and reached for the bloody instrument.

‘He is a warrior god,’ Gilvar had once told Yollin in the seminary, when they were younger and bolder men. ‘Not some lurid princeling. All these elaborate adornments and tokens mean nothing in the end. After all, what do warriors do best? They fight.’

Gilvar’s sermon struck the congregation like a thunderbolt. At dusk he watched the worshippers shuffle in, and a madder, more straggling collection of the lost and the damned he had never seen before. Some were half-naked, clad in mouldering grave clothes. Others mumbled bitter laments under their breath, laughing and scratching their hands down their faces, while two or three merely wandered in and started picking through the rubble on the floor, holding up the broken plaster to the candlelight with as much pleasure as if they’d uncovered a cache of jewels. There were ragged travellers with bleak, empty faces, and ancient warriors in rusting plate; nobles in mirrored masks that were starred with cracks, and dusty explorers with hollow, unseeing eyes. Meekly they took the pews and stared up at him, and from the pulpit he stabbed at them with an accusing finger. What a place this is, he thought. What an awful, maddening place.

‘Faithless!’ he shouted. ‘All of you!’ He raised his hands and gazed up as if he could see far Azyr shining in the heavens. ‘Sigmar, forgive not these faithless people, these craven worms who live in such a baneful place. If they would be blind to the evil that surrounds them, then strike them blind indeed for their sin! Crush them beneath your avenging heel!’

One or two of them began to slip away. The rest were pinned to their seats, excoriated by Gilvar’s anger.

‘Aye,’ he said bitterly, ‘well might you sit there cringing in distress. But did not Saint Tolliver say that the hammer falls on the just and the unjust alike, yet only the unjust feel its weight! You live in an evil town, haunted by evil spirits.’

The bloody weals on his back began to weep. He leaned forward in the pulpit, fixing each of them with his gaze, and then he dismissed them all with an angry wave. With haste the remaining worshippers hurried out. He noted Dunnot hobbling down the nave for the main doors, Amyrillis creeping after him with none of the poise or elegance of her race, flinching at shadows. So even my elders have abandoned me, he thought with grim satisfaction. He couldn’t see Prentiss or Dunceyn – sensibly they had stayed away – but as he came down the steps of the pulpit he saw Lyzabet waiting for him at the bottom. Nervously she clutched her shawl.

‘So, not as craven as the others then, Lyzabet?’ Gilvar said with scorn. His back was a raging fire now, the blood pouring freely. On the edge of his hearing, he could just make out the whispers agitating the glass in the temple windows.

‘We’re simple folk,’ she wept, ‘that’s all. I’m sorry, but we’re so afraid!’

‘Afraid of what? What is going on here?’

‘Shadespire is a cursed place!’ she said. She covered her face with shame. ‘So many venture into these outskirts, and none can ever leave, and these voices, they–’

‘Yes?’

She could barely bring herself to speak. ‘They call to us in the voices of our family, our friends, pleading with us! Oh, forgive me, I should have said long ago. None of us in the temple know how long we’ve been here. Yollin… He tortured himself over it, until he could stand it no longer. “Yollin the Fearless” he called himself. He wanted to save them!’

‘What happened to him? Come now, tell me, woman!’

‘He went to confront them, to challenge the voices and demand they leave us. He gave a sermon as fiery as your own, and then he walked off into the night and we never saw him again! Forgive me!’

‘Only Sigmar can forgive,’ Gilvar said coldly. ‘And he does so but rarely.’

‘I will go out and speak to them,’ Yollin had written. ‘I must – before it is too late. Before they are swallowed utterly…’

In his hands he held the gilded hammer, taken from the altar, and as he marched through the misty, ill-lit streets he swung it at every window that he passed. The whispers rose and the voices shouted out, but he met them all with the blunt force of his strong right arm. From every smashed pane of glass, the murky voices spun and faded into nothing. Pleading for mercy or screeching in pain, they were soon banished from the district’s miserable streets. On Gilvar went, grim of purpose, over the hill and down to the hovels at its base, then across the western slope to the elegant quarter of those long-deserted mansions.

You see, Yollin – my faith is stronger in the end! Yours had no more substance than a swatch of gaudy baubles and a gilded gown. You took your mind from the task, and this place overwhelmed you.

He heard it then, calling to him across the silent streets. It was faint, stretched thin by pain and distance, but unmistakably it was Yollin’s voice.

‘Gilvar! Please…’

It grew faint, but it was still strong enough for him to follow. On Gilvar went, sometimes losing the trail down tapered alleyways or dead ends, at other times turning the corner onto mist-wreathed squares and cul-de-sacs. His footsteps rang out against the cobbles, and the buildings’ twisted roofs seemed to loom over him as he walked. The crumbled archways leaned like steepled fingers. ‘Gilvar…’ the voice called, again and again, insubstantial as the fog. He girded himself and followed.

‘I’m coming,’ he muttered. ‘Fear not, my friend.’

It led him to the door of the mansion where he had left Prentiss the night before. With wrath, Gilvar struck the lock and smashed it open, and he strode into a hallway the colour of blood.

There were mirrors on the walls, covering every inch of the corridor from the front door to a darkened chamber at the other end. Mirrors in ornate frames decorated with chalcedony and jade, others in simple settings of unpolished wood. In each, as he passed, Gilvar saw faint shapes take form – drawn faces, haunted eyes, the puckered grimace of a toothless mouth. They all moaned and slobbered at him as he passed, and to each he gave the gift of Sigmar’s hammer.

‘Foul blasphemies!’ he cursed, kicking through the broken glass. ‘To mock the poor people of this place in their distress!’

The voices felt as if they were mumbling in his ears, and he could almost feel the brush of cold, dead lips against his skin. He shivered, striking again and again, playing a discordant music with every savage blow. He recalled Yollin’s letter: Whatever those voices want from me, I fear I cannot give it to them!

Aye, Gilvar smiled. But I can.

A voice laughed softly, as if echoing to him from a great distance, from buried tombs long forgotten underground, dry with the dust of ancient death. Gilvar swung the hammer around in a wide arc, but there was no one there.

‘Welcome, priest,’ it said. ‘Welcome to my temple.’

‘This is no temple,’ Gilvar scorned. ‘It is purest blasphemy, necromancer.’

The voice laughed again, like a rustle of grave silk. ‘I am no necromancer,’ it said. ‘Merely… a collector, of sorts.’

‘Then forgive me for what I am about to do to your precious collection.’

For an hour or a day, Gilvar tracked the voice through the corridors and rooms of that deserted mansion. He passed through rooms devoid of light, which chattered with a thousand dying screams. He moved through great banqueting halls where long tables were silently attended by a hundred rotting corpses. As he staggered and ran, smashing every window or mirror he could find, the voices whirled around his head like a hurricane. He was deafened, blinded by rage and terror both.

‘Despite myself, I’m impressed,’ the voice whispered in his ear. ‘You’ve shown more spirit than your predecessor.’

‘Yollin?’ Gilvar shouted. ‘What have you done with him? Release him!’

‘Alas, he failed in the end, didn’t he, Gilvar? He couldn’t save the one who came before him, as you will not save him in turn… Well, that remains to be seen… This way… you are close now, priest, very close… I wonder who shall come for you, in time?’

A door opened and a shaft of light spread into the gloom. Warily the priest moved towards it, the hammer raised in front of his chest.

He found himself in a chamber larger than any he had encountered so far. In the middle was a small table on which a candle burned, and on each of its four walls was a profusion of mirrors – decorative and plain, in great reflective sheets or no larger than a looking-glass.

His eyes caught movement in the mirror above the fireplace, like a wave greasily smothering a broken shore. Slowly he approached it, the hammer ready.

There was no reflection, he realised. Instead, it was like looking through a window onto a miserable bog-land drenched in mist – drear and sunless, with tufts of grey grass and cairns of grey stone, where a grey shadow washed closer through the mist towards him. Slowly the form took shape, the vaporous body smearing from the fog, a pale and bloodless face peering out with hollow black eyes, groaning in dismay, and behind it, stretching out in an infinite trail, the shadowed figures of all the priests who had come before…

‘Gilvar…’

‘Yollin…? Sigmar’s grace,’ he whispered. ‘What have they done to you… to all of you?’

Snarling, Gilvar drew back the hammer – but before he could strike there was a hot burst of pain in his side, and then Prentiss was leaning close, twisting the dagger again and again until blackness washed over him. He heard Yollin howl with impotent rage, and as Prentiss muttered closely in his ear, twisting and gouging the knife, there was nothing left in Gilvar’s mind but pain, red pain.

He was cold, so cold it numbed his very thought. Everything around him was dark.

No, not quite dark – there was a vague hint of light ahead, a delicate little bloom of gold. He moved towards it, wading through dank and freezing waters. He came to the oval of light; a window that looked into a grand and well-appointed house, where a single candle burned. He pressed his face to that window, staring in from the dark and the cold. He could see someone lying on the floor. A priest, his robes black with blood, a figure hunched over him… Help him, someone, he’s hurt, he’s…

No.

The figure looked up from the corpse, its face red with blood. He stood and approached the window, wiping away the blood to reveal a face pale and lean. He stared at his reflection, smoothing his hair. And then the man met his eyes and stared, and he started laughing.

‘There you are, Gilvar. I wondered where you’d got to. Welcome,’ he said, and he bowed low.

Prentiss… he thought. Prentiss! He tried to claw the glass but he had no hands to reach it. He tried to scream, but all that emerged was an agonised hiss.

‘Welcome to Shadespire,’ Prentiss said, and then he turned away and snuffed the candle dead.

THE FUNERAL

Darius Hinks

What use is a shield when the bearer is dead? What use is a servant with no master?

The basilica at Eremos is a mirror of the Imperium that built it. A ghost of greatness, a travesty of crumbled colonnades and rotting drapes. The famous dome remains, still intact, but the murals have lost their vigour, leeched into insipid grey by the years. Chiselled saints whirl in a colourless sky, their armour dulled by neglect, their swords furred with lichen. The flagstones are damp, mossy and clogged with silt; a warning left by the ever-encroaching sea. Eremos is gradually being swallowed by the ocean. Each year, the floods come a little higher and the floor sags a little lower. The air is damp and cold. It leaves the taste of salt in my mouth. The whole place feels like a mouldering corpse.

As I expected, no mourners have come to pay their respects, but I wait a little longer, just in case, circling the altar, working through the various attitudes and positions, thrusting and disengaging, mouthing the names of the moves as I swing my sword through chilly air: Arzen, Sophico, Masius, Accous, Limni – they are ingrained in my memory more clearly than my mother’s face. Every day I spent in the service of Inquisitor Rabbath brought me closer to worthiness. Even now, slowed by age and injury, my blade cuts the colour-stained light with lethal ease. I am Crusader Voconis, servant and protector of Inquisitor Rabbath. And I did not fail him.

I am so surprised when the doors creak open that I stumble. It is Interrogator Tashk. Inquisitor Rabbath’s proudest achievement. A man whose intellect matched Rabbath’s own.

I lower my sword and rattle it back into its sheath. For a moment, I am too shocked to speak, then I offer him a small bow. ‘Brother Tashk.’

He nods vaguely, with the same condescending smile he used last time, and every other time. He thinks me a simpleton, cyber-enhanced muscle to be employed when intellect fails. He has no idea who or what I am.

He taps a crumbling column, creating a tiny stampede of insects. ‘Is he really dead?’

He shows no trace of emotion. Why has he come? Is it because he believes Rabbath may have left him something? Perhaps he thinks he might have bequeathed him an Inquisitorial seal; not literally, of course, but by letter of recommendation or some other weighty document. Tashk may have served Rabbath but he never believed in him; he must have some ulterior motive for coming here.

I nod. ‘He is dead.’

He finally deems me worthy of a direct stare. ‘Why hold the funeral here, Voconis? Why not in the capital? I had to cross half a continent.’

‘Rabbath swore never to return to Timphades after his seal was taken from him,’ I reply. ‘It would seem wrong to take him there now. I chose the basilica because it is the last place we were all together. The last time Rabbath was…’ I hesitate, reluctant to tell Tashk how low the inquisitor had fallen after his excommunication. I would never want people like Tashk to know what Rabbath became, in those final months, when the madness took hold of him. They would see it as justification, as proof that the prelates were right to drive him from the order. ‘This is the last place he was able to work in the way he was meant to,’ I say.

Tashk’s expression is never easy to read. He wears an Inquisitorial sigil on his face, a barred ‘I’ that has been hammered firmly into his skull, a lump of iron that bisects his forehead and terminates at the bridge of his nose. It distorts his brow and gives the impression of a constant frown. Perhaps he is constantly frowning. To live in his world must be a torment. A world where personal advancement is as important as faith.

He wipes the mud from a rotten pew and sits down, resting his head on the handle of his sword. He does a reasonable impersonation of a supplicant at prayer, but I doubt it was religious conviction that brought him here.

I find his presence troubling. Out of duty, I invited every member of Inquisitor Rabbath’s entourage, but I never expected any of them to actually turn up. It occurs to me that Tashk might want to see the body. I shudder at the idea. Rabbath’s madness is etched into his face, even after his death. What if Tashk asks me to remove the shroud?

Tashk makes no more attempts at conversation. He just sits there, head bowed, as I pace back and forth.

It is no more than ten minutes later when I hear the boom of thrusters outside. Sticks and leaves tumble down the aisle. Through the open doors I see a lander settling onto the courtyard.

Frater Arzen saunters into the basilica. He is draped in crimson vestments and his regal-looking head is tilted back as he gazes, eyes half-lidded, on an eternity only he can see. For many years, I believed in Arzen. Every word he speaks, every finger he lifts, is calculated to reinforce his air of divine wisdom. He glides so lightly across the flagstones that he barely seems to walk, and the lesser priests who follow in his wake are almost bent double by the weight of their adoration. Arzen was Rabbath’s most trusted advisor, a confidant he trusted with secrets and doubts he would never have shared with me. I know myself well. One does not reach the rank of crusader without exploring every facet of one’s mind. I was jealous of Arzen, jealous of the bond he shared with my master, but that is now gone. I have seen through his mask. Arzen is a lie, just like the rest of them. When Rabbath needed him most, he was not there. No one but me was prepared to remain at his side when he was stripped of his titles and rank.

His arrival is just as troubling as Tashk’s. Arzen never once offered me help when I was battling for Rabbath’s sanity. Why is he here now?

He stops before Tashk and grips the interrogator’s hands. ‘A tragedy.’ His words echo up into the vaults. ‘And all the more painful for those of us who truly knew him.’

Tashk nods, and withdraws his hands from Arzen’s.

Arzen whispers a prayer, kisses his fingers and presses them to the metal in Tashk’s head. Then he moves down the aisle towards me.

‘Crusader Voconis.’ He climbs the steps to the altar and stands at my side, surveying the ruined basilica. ‘How brave of you, coming back here.’

Arzen never speaks carelessly. His words are always carefully planned and I take a moment to consider what they mean. Is he trying to goad me? Why shouldn’t I come back here? He knows Rabbath’s death was not my fault, and he knows that such a suggestion would wound me.

He rests his hand on mine. ‘We all loved him, Voconis, but I know this is harder for you than any of us.’

To my surprise, his concern sounds genuine.

‘You served him so loyally, for so long,’ he continues. ‘Who could have wished for a better servant? The rest of us were not here for him, when he…’ He lowers his voice and leans close. ‘There was a sickness of the mind, wasn’t there, the final weeks?’

I cannot bring myself to lie, so I simply hold his gaze.

He nods, his eyes full of sympathy. ‘It must have been hard on you.’

Tashk walks over and he has the same look in his eyes. ‘We should have been here to help you. We should not have listened to the lies.’

More figures enter: Confessor Melsun, her red hair scraped back and knotted to reveal her scarred, florid face. She looks, as always, as though she has spent the last hour screaming at someone and is just drawing breath before her next outburst. Like Arzen, she has a train of acolytes behind her, carrying various relics and weapons.

She is followed by more familiar faces, Ecclesiarchy priests rubbing shoulders with flak-armoured mercenaries and lumbering abhumans, until nearly fifty people are gathered around the altar. Inquisitor Rabbath harnessed resources from every stratum of society but I never expected them to answer my call.

‘Brethren,’ I say, having passed beyond shock to delight at seeing how many of Rabbath’s acolytes are present. ‘Fellow servants of the Ordo Hereticus.’ My voice rings out across the basilica. ‘I do not idly rob Caria Prime of its most pious defenders. I am well aware of how dire our situation has become, and how precious your time is. But I am pleased that you have managed to come here today. It would have meant a lot to Inquisitor Rabbath.’

They listen in silence and I see the respect in their eyes. I have misjudged them. I have been too hard. All this time I have been furious that they did not stand by Rabbath’s side when he was cast into the wilderness, but now I realise that they were just doing what they had to do.

‘I am saddened to confirm that the rumours are true,’ I continue. ‘Lord Inquisitor Tyrum Rabbath has reached the end of his glorious crusade. Every traitor and heretic on Caria will sleep a little easier from now on. Their great nemesis has fallen. The scourge of the witch is no more.’

Arzen nods and whispers a prayer.

The rest of the crowd reply in kind and a breathy chorus filled the air.

Emotion threatens to overwhelm me, so I continue quickly. ‘I requested your presence so that we may celebrate the work of our great patriarch and leader, a man who devoted his entire life to the preservation of the blessed human soul.’

Their eyes flicker in the gloom and I see that all of them are moved. They are not cold-hearted turncoats. In fact, I realise, even by coming here now they are being brave.

‘You have travelled a long way,’ I continue. ‘Please rest and talk. Share your memories of the inquisitor and take comfort in the thought that he brought the Emperor’s judgement to so many wretched souls. Then, when the sun sets, we will consign his soul to Holy Terra.’

Conversations strike up immediately and a strangely celebratory air fills the basilica. People laugh and embrace. Servants provide the guests with food and wine. I feel a brief rush of outrage before I see that they are doing exactly as I suggested, recounting tales of the inquisitor’s great triumphs and toasting his unswerving devotion to the Emperor. It is appropriate.

‘Tell us the truth,’ says Arzen, putting his arm around me and drawing me into one of the groups. ‘Of the Voldori trial.’ He hands me a glass of wine. ‘You never had the chance to have your say. And none of us believe the lies that were spread about you and Inquisitor Rabbath. If you say Voldori was a witch, then everyone else can go hang.’

I am so delighted by Arzen’s assertion that I break a lifetime of abstinence and sip the wine. ‘He was a sorcerer,’ I say, meeting the stares of everyone in the group. They all fall quiet, hanging eagerly on my words. Finally, I have an audience willing to hear the truth. I only wish Rabbath were here to see it.

‘The judges in Timphades were blinded by Voldori’s social standing. If it had been anyone else, they would never have questioned our decision. Rabbath’s judgement had never been called into question before.’ I look up at the dome. ‘It was in this very building that I ground the truth out of Voldori.’ Words that have languished for months in my head tumble out, eager to be shared. ‘Rabbath had no doubt of Voldori’s guilt, and he would not let a man’s station in society become an obstacle to justice, so he gave me free rein to extract the confession.’

More of the mourners gathered round, eager to hear my version of the events that had ruined the inquisitor.

I empty my glass and it is refilled. The wine is so delicious that I make a mental note of its name so that I might drink it again: Valgaast.

‘There was no doubt in my mind that Voldori was damned,’ I say. ‘And I knew it long before his death. The manner of his death is irrelevant. His crime was clear.’

My mind slips back to the day I found Voldori, floating in the crypt, pale and limp in the black water.

‘Drowning was too good for him. I would not have chosen so natural a death. He should have been taken to Timphades and executed in full view of everyone who ever doubted that heresy leads to ruin. But there was certainly no crime in letting him drown. He forfeited his right to life.’

My head is growing light from the wine and I cannot seem to shake the memory of the floating corpse. ‘There was no doubt in my mind,’ I repeat.

‘And when the Ecclesiastical court summoned Inquisitor Rabbath he presented his evidence clearly and honestly. He did not even acknowledge that Voldori was the governor’s son. He knew that the Emperor’s judgement must be applied with an even hand and without prejudice.’

‘And were you called upon to give evidence?’ asks Arzen.

‘I was and I was proud to give it. I assured the court of Voldori’s confession.’ I am finding it harder to speak with conviction, so I drink more wine and talk louder to compensate. ‘Voldori drowned because the Emperor would not permit his presence to endure on this holy world. He died because he was not fit to live.’

Arzen nods encouragingly. ‘And the other stories – the ones about Inquisitor Rabbath’s supposed dalliance with occultism and necromancy, they were lies too, I presume?’

The crowd is silent.

I drink more wine. ‘Inquisitor Rabbath was a good man. In his final days, he became confused, that is all. He was never a heretic. But he felt so aggrieved by the rumours that his mind was not his own. He did nothing wrong though, even then, even after the entire planet turned its back on him.’

Arzen shakes his head. ‘This is the danger of raising men above the law. Elevating people like Voldori into a rarefied sphere, simply because he was the son of the governor, is a dangerous path to tread. If Voldori had been anyone else, no voices would have been raised against Inquisitor Rabbath.’

‘Exactly!’ I exclaim, a little too loudly. ‘And if they had come here, if they had made an effort to understand our methods, they would never have dreamt of excommunicating Rabbath.’ I empty my glass again and wave the guests back down the aisle. ‘Come! Come and see. We employed every one of the prescribed techniques.’

I find myself weaving a little as I cross the basilica and I almost slip on the wet, mossy stones. I reach the steps to the crypts and find that everyone has followed me. Good. Let them all see. My mind is flushed with excitement and, I realise, alcohol, as I wave them down the steps.

Lumen globes blink into life as I descend the steps, crackling in their rusty sconces.

My boots sink into nearly a foot of water as I leave the steps and head off down the main avenue. It is rising fast. In a few days, as the tide changes, the water will grow so high that the crypt will flood completely and water will bubble up through the flagstones into the main basilica. Just as it did when Voldori died. I recall another disturbing glimpse of his pale body drifting in the darkness.

We reach the end of a sarcophagi-lined avenue and I approach a barred door.

‘This is the room we interrogated Voldori in,’ I say, waiting for the others to catch up with me. ‘We worked in utter secrecy. We knew that, despite Rabbath’s position, the governor would try to intercede on behalf of his son if he found out what we were doing.’

There is a small, thick window in the door. I wipe the mud away and peer into the room. My mind slips back to the last day I spoke with Voldori. ‘You will not break me!’ Voldori had howled as he strained against his chains, his eyes wide with pain. ‘You will not break me!’

For a moment, I forget about the group behind me as I recall Voldori’s pained screams. I had known, when I saw him on that last morning, that there was no way back. We had broken his body beyond all recognition. If we let him go in that condition, with no proof of guilt, and no written confession, the governor would have had Rabbath executed. I could not let that happen. The damp air eats into me. I remember my horror at the thought that my master would be discredited, all because I had failed to drag a confession from a pampered wretch. I am a warrior, not an interrogator, and it pained me to think that my lack of experience might ruin the man I was sworn to serve.

‘May we enter?’ asks Arzen, drawing me back to the moment.

I nod and take out the keys. There is a dull rattle as I turn the various locks and shove the door inwards.

Most of the lumens have stopped working. There is just one, on the far wall, that blinks intermittently, revealing snapshot images of the room’s contents, brutal implements of torture and an overturned table where I kept Voldori chained during the interrogation.

They all file past me into the room, looking around, but Arzen stays by my side.

‘But you never managed to obtain a written confession. That would have made it all so much easier, wouldn’t it? If Rabbath could have presented the court with a confession from Voldori, they might not have been so willing to let the governor sway the course of justice.’

His face is flashing in and out of the darkness, but I still see nothing but sympathy in his eyes. He is not trying to mock me or cast doubt on my evidence.

‘I would have gained a written confession,’ I insist. ‘If Voldori had not drowned. He would have admitted his guilt eventually.’

Voldori’s cries ring out in my head so clearly I almost feel that the others might hear them. ‘You will not break me!’

Arzen looks confused. ‘But he did admit his guilt, didn’t he? Isn’t that what you told the court? Even though he drowned before signing a confession, he told you he was guilty, didn’t he?’

Perhaps it is the look of sympathy in Arzen’s eyes, or perhaps it is the wine I have drunk, but I cannot bring myself to lie. I draw Arzen away from the others and lower my voice.

‘He did not confess in so many words. But I knew. I knew without a doubt that he was guilty. And I knew that Rabbath would be executed if it was proved that Voldori died in his care, with no confession.’

‘So you lied?’

‘I did not lie, not in the eyes of the Emperor. Voldori confessed his guilt with every devious invention and evasion. He had confessed his guilt in countless ways before he drowned. I know Rabbath was right about him.’

‘But you told the court he admitted his guilt.’

‘I knew Voldori was a sorcerer and so did Rabbath.’

Arzen stares at me in the darkness. Then he nods and grips my shoulder. ‘I understand. I will not share this with anyone. But you should be careful, old friend. If the court were to hear of it, you would be executed.’

I nod, dazed by the fact that I have just shared such a terrible secret. I walk away from him before I say something else I might regret. I head over to the table where I kept Voldori chained. I picture him lying there, panicked, as the water rose around him.

I had warned him, in no uncertain terms that, if he did not confess, I would leave him in that room, with the door locked, even when the water rose over his head. I feel no shame over my lie to the court, because Voldori’s guilt was never in doubt. But when I think of my lie to Rabbath, it is a different matter, something coils in my stomach as I picture his face.

I told him it was an accident, that I had not known the water would rise, but even now it pains me to think that I deceived him. What choice did I have? If Voldori had lived, and told the court what he had endured, and been able to maintain his innocence, I knew Rabbath would be excommunicated. Who could have predicted that he would be driven out anyway? And besides, he would not have been allowed to live if the full truth had been known. Excommunication and execution often amounted to the same thing. I lied to him to save him, but the pain of it still cuts into me. Especially now, now that I know what became of him. When Rabbath sensed my deceit it drove him to madness. He knew that along with the shame of his excommunication, I had tricked him in some way. The two things cracked his mind.

The water is rising fast now. In another few hours it will wash over the bloodstained table. The pleasure I felt in seeing so many guests arrive has vanished. All I can think of is how I deceived Rabbath when I told him Voldori’s death was an accident. ‘We should leave,’ I mutter.

No one answers.

It occurs to me that the cell has become oddly quiet. There is only the drip, drip of the water and the electric hum of the lumen. All the voices have vanished.

I look around.

The room is empty. I am alone in the darkness.

No, Arzen is still there, standing in the doorway.

I wade through the water towards him. ‘Where did the others go?’ I ask.

‘They were never here,’ he replies. ‘Just me.’

His voice sounds odd and my words falter as I see that it is not Arzen.

The figure at the door is dressed in rags and his body is bloated.

‘Voldori?’ I gasp.

He smiles and woodlice spill from his mouth, tumbling down his white, glistening skin. It is Voldori, but the eyes are Arzen’s, filled with that same look of compassion that dragged my terrible admission from me.

‘You will not break me,’ says Voldori, still smiling. His words are accompanied by a wet bubbling sound and his face shivers as he speaks.

‘You were a heretic!’ I cry, filled with a mixture of triumph and disgust as I wade towards him.

He steps back and slams the door.

I hear the locks rattling into place and reach down to my belt to find that the keys have gone.

Voldori’s pallid face is visible at the window for a moment. His eyes cloud over, becoming colourless orbs, but there is no mistaking his amusement. Then he lurches away, leaving me alone in the cell.

The water is still rising and I rush back and forth, looking for a way out. I grab a knife and hack at the mortar. Then I hurl the blade back into the water. It is pointless. I chose this cell because there was no way out. On the other side of the walls there is only solid rock. And I fitted the door myself, using reinforced plasteel and hinges that could survive an earthquake.

I slump back against the table.

The water coils around me and I start to howl.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Justin D Hill is the author of the Necromunda novel Terminal Overkill, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Cadia Stands and Cadian Honour, the Space Marine Battles novel Storm of Damocles and the short stories ‘Last Step Backwards’, ‘Lost Hope’ and ‘The Battle of Tyrok Fields’, following the adventures of Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed. He has also written ‘Truth Is My Weapon’, and the Warhammer tales ‘Golgfag’s Revenge’ and ‘The Battle of Whitestone’. His novels have won a number of prizes, as well as being Washington Post and Sunday Times Books of the Year. He lives ten miles uphill from York, where he is indoctrinating his four children in the 40K lore.

Jake Ozga is a lifelong Warhammer fan and horror fanatic with a particular interest in exploring the dark corners of the Mortal Realms. He lives in Leamington Spa with his partner and a variety of animals. His first story for Black Library, ‘Supplication’, featured in the Warhammer Horror anthology Invocations.

Lora Gray lives and works in Northeast Ohio. Their fiction has appeared in various publications including Shimmer, The Dark and Flash Fiction Online. When they aren’t writing, Lora works as an illustrator, dance instructor and wrangler of a very smart cat named Cecil. Lora’s short stories ‘Crimson Snow’ and ‘He Feasts Forever’ feature in the Warhammer Horror anthologies Maledictions and Invocations respectively.

Darius Hinks is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Blackstone Fortress and three novels in the Mephiston series, Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius, Mephiston: Revenant Crusade and Mephiston: City of Light. He also wrote the novella Sanctus. For Warhammer, he wrote Warrior Priest, which won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best newcomer, as well as the Orion trilogy, Sigvald and several novellas. His work for Age of Sigmar includes Hammers of Sigmar, Warqueen and the Gotrek Gurnisson novel Ghoulslayer.

James Forster is a Warhammer 40,000 fan based in the United States of America. Ten years ago, the third edition of Codex: Necrons served as his introduction to the setting. He splits his time between Game-Mastering various iterations of the Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying games, as well as pursuing his own creative writing projects. ‘Vox Daemonicus’ is his first published short story.

Tim Waggoner has published nearly fifty novels and seven collections of short stories. He’s won the Bram Stoker Award, the HWA’s Mentor of the Year Award, and has been a multiple finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Scribe Award. Several of his stories have featured in volumes of Year’s Best Hardcore Horror. He’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.

David Annandale is the author of the Warhammer Horror novel The House of Night and Chain and the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy series 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.

Paul Kearney’s Warhammer 40,000 work comprises the novels Calgar’s Siege and Calgar’s Fury and the short story ‘The Last Detail’ from Legends of the Space Marines. He studied at Lincoln College, Oxford and has been widely published, as well as being longlisted for the British Fantasy Award. He lives and works in Port Glenone, Northern Ireland.

John Goodrich writes in Vermont. His interests include Old English poetry, Icelandic Sagas, World War One, and tyranids. He is the author of Hag and I Do Terrible Things. ‘Mud and Mist’ is his first story for Black Library, and he’s really excited about that.

C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Age of Sigmar novels Overlords of the Iron Dragon, Profit’s Ruin, The Tainted Heart and Beastgrave, the novella ‘Scion of the Storm’ in Hammers of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Horror novel Castle of Blood. For Warhammer he has written the novels Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Warhammer Chronicles: The Black Plague series. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer worlds.

Alan Bao is an illustrator and multimedia designer currently bouncing around East Asia. He is also a writer of poetry and prose, and ‘Runner’ is his first story to be published by Black Library.

Nicholas Wolf is an author, artist and occasional musician. He’s written science fiction for several publications, and his work includes the Warhammer 40,000 short stories ‘Reborn’ and ‘Negavolt’ for Black Library. He lives and works in Arizona, with his family.

Richard Strachan is a writer and editor who lives with his partner and two children in Edinburgh, UK. Despite his best efforts, both children stubbornly refuse to be interested in tabletop wargaming. His first story for Black Library, ‘The Widow Tide’, appeared in the anthology Maledictions.

An extract from The Oubliette.

The tolling of the church bells was truly breathtaking. Even through her haze of grief, Ashielle could appreciate the labour that had to have gone into the Toll of Mourning for her father.

All across Kostoveim, from cobbled streets to arched, embellished spires, the bells rang out for Governor Ruprekt Matkosen. Every bell in every cathedral, shrine and watchtower across Ceocan pealed at once, each rolling cry sounding perfectly in unison. After each ring, a brief pause followed to let the reverberations fade, to let each citizen of the planet appreciate the profound silence. Then the bells were struck again. Ashielle was grateful to the priests and clergy who had spent so much time coordinating the Toll of Mourning, ensuring that the timing of each ring was perfect as far as her ear could detect. She had never before heard the bells so coordinated. Even at the most sombre of state funerals, as long ago as she could recall, she could always remember hearing one cathedral out of sync. Of course, she’d never attended the funeral of a governor before. Very few of the people living on Ceocan had.

Certainly, none of those massed beyond the gates of the Augusta Korgana, the grand graveyard of the planet’s most venerated dead, had ever seen such a thing. Thousands of citizens had come out to pay their respects. It lifted her spirit to see so many people moved by their loyalty to Ruprekt, that they would face the cold, drizzling rain to stand in solidarity with her family. The noble families, the Adeptus masters, the other dignitaries whose stations and accolades demanded they be admitted inside the gates of the Korgana: they attended to be seen attending. They marched solemnly through the gravestones, cenotaphs and raised sarcophagi, shielded from the chill shower by wide, robust hoods, or beneath engraved and embroidered umbrellas held by numb and shivering servants. They bowed their heads to Ashielle, of course, mouthing platitudes or quoting bits of scripture which were meant to give her comfort. Always, of course, they maintained their dignity and composure, never allowing themselves to act as though this were anything more than a formality.

Beyond the wrought iron fencing, thinly threaded with rose canes, the populace of Kostoveim pressed in, clad in mourning black, their faces daubed with grey ashes. Their emotional displays were raw in their honesty, with many older serfs weeping openly and grasping at the Korgana fences, uncaring hands bloody against the thorns of the roses. When Ruprekt Matkosen’s body was drawn from the hearse, draped in its white shroud and adorned with the golden aquila, Ashielle could hear several voices from the gathered throng of commoners wailing in anguish. Truthfully, she drew more solace from their intense grieving than she did the perfunctory performances of the elite gathered near to her.

She remembered standing in the Korgana Ecclesiastia as a child, when the venerable Deacon Yasoven had passed. The pious had journeyed from all across Ceocan to pay their respects. The crowd hadn’t been half the size of that gathered for Governor Matkosen, but it was the largest state funeral she could recall. Then, as now, the gathered throngs wept and tore at their hair, the intensity of their mourning inversely proportional to their social rank. Ashielle had marvelled at the lives that the aged deacon had touched in his time on Ceocan.

‘He visited no great evil on their homes,’ her father had told her, ‘and placed no burdens upon their shoulders too great for them to bear.’ The planetary governor had seemed so tall and strong to her, as a child. His broad shoulders seemed stout enough to bear the grief of the entire household. Only she and Geordan were permitted to stand close enough to him to see the dampness beneath his eyes.

‘For most of humanity, that is all that is required for the foundation of a great leader. Given enough time, that simple basis can become the foundation of their whole lives.’ Ruprekt had given the slightest of nods then, to the crowd of wailing mourners. ‘After such a tenure as the deacon had, losing him is like waking to discover that a mountain has vanished, or a moon has fallen from the sky. They weep not because they have lost a friend or a loved one – instead they weep because a cornerstone of their world is missing, and now for them everything is uncertain.’ The governor turned his unyielding gaze to his two children, his marble grey eyes boring into them over his thick, bushy moustache. ‘The onus of stability falls to us. In this time of uncertainty, the governor must be the rock upon which the entire planet may anchor themselves. Do you understand?’

The enormity of the responsibility that might one day be hers had borne down on her, then. Geordan had reached out and taken her hand in his when Ruprekt turned away. She remembered smiling up at him, grateful for his support. She wished Geordan could be with her now, for she could use that manner of comfort again. Thinking of her elder brother brought a spike of grief of a different kind, one mixed with shame. His own funeral had been several days prior, and had been far smaller in scale, of course.

Ruprekt’s words had been prescient. If the deacon’s death was akin to the loss of one of Ceocan’s four moons, then Ruprekt’s had been as though the citizens had gazed up at noon and seen the sun explode. When the deacon had gone to the Throne, it had been a shock, but not an unexpected one. Deacon Yasoven had been nearing his fourth century when his body had finally failed. Ruprekt Matkosen had been much greater in importance than the deacon, and there had been no emotional preparation for his passing. The accident had seen to that.

As the bells continued their droning memorial, ringing out one toll for each of the one hundred and twelve years of Ruprekt Matkosen’s life, Ashielle felt a moment of true grief creeping into her throat. Hot tears threatened her eyes. She knew how the assembled crowd felt: Ruprekt should have governed them for decades to come. She was only thirty-three, far younger than anyone had ever thought Ruprekt’s heir would be when they ascended.

The mourners inside the iron barricades did not wail: they whispered. Out of the corners of their mouths and behind delicate fans, Ashielle knew they were murmuring. It wasn’t a sound she could hear; it was a sensation she could feel.

She spied the narrow shoulders of Langreve Oldemeier. He was leaning close – literally rubbing shoulders with Margreve Tianesh Bruisell. They huddled together, he in his jet-black suit with his raven hair, she in a charcoal mourning coat, the lace collar webbed across her throat, looking the very picture of young lovers sharing an umbrella on a rainy day. Ashielle knew better. Before he was the Langreve of his house, Uri Oldemeier had counselled Ashielle’s father to send her away to the schola rather than her brother, Hanrik. Despite her cherubic features and youthful complexion, Lady Bruisell was over one hundred and thirty, and Ashielle had heard her make remarks before, indicating her feelings that no one younger than a century should serve in any real leadership position. From a distance, their closeness could be mistaken for support and comfort in a time of sorrow, but Ashielle knew veteran politicians such as they would be whispering about some political manoeuvring which would benefit them both.

The bells ended, and a dreadful silence washed over the Korgana, drawing Ashielle back to the present. Deacon Phoebian placed a hand on the shroud covering Governor Matkosen. Former Governor Matkosen, Ashielle corrected herself. No one who spoke of Governor Matkosen was referring to her father any longer. Now that honour belonged to her, whether she wished it or not. The aged deacon held one hand out towards her.

Ashielle grabbed Hanrik’s hand and squeezed it for support as she stepped forward. Her brother allowed her to take his hand, but did not return her gesture. He seemed to have no need for her support, and no solace to give to her in return. If the gathered nobles and adepts were reserved, he was positively mechanical. The hooded saints carved in stone looming from the cenotaphs offered more succour than she saw in his unyielding face.

The other nobles she passed on her path to the deacon were no warmer. They had come to the Korgana dutifully, but like her brother, they had no comfort for her. Each of them offered kind words, of course, but not to lift her up or ease her burden. The heads of the planetary organisations, like Magos Crofeld, Adept Sheng and Master Trulanthion, attended because they had an obligation to do so. Like General Zhevan and the deacon herself, they came because they understood that the projection of stability they were obligated to show required them to be seen supporting her in this time of transition. The lesser nobles of the Grevenate offered her their verbal tokens as well, not that they had any desire to support her, either. Each hoped that somehow their paltry attempt at succour would be remembered when they came calling, as if they could buy political favour with a sad expression and a mumbled platitude.

Her servants followed behind her, but she gestured them away, taking a single umbrella from an elderly attendant, who released the handle from her icy fingers with relief. Ashielle held the canopy overhead and walked the final lengths to her father’s open sarcophagus alone. She collapsed the umbrella before kneeling on the prayer bench before the deacon. Let the mourners see her walking in the rain, enduring the cold and the damp for a few moments with no more protection than they had. From the street, she would be easy to pick out. Among the mourners, even those of means and noble bearing, she alone wore white, her pale gown and veil marking her as the head of House Matkosen and sole entrusted governor of Ceocan.

Deacon Phoebian placed her withered hand on Ashielle’s head, muttering whispered scriptures under her breath. In years long past, the spiritual head of the community would preside at state funerals, ritualistically serving as a conduit to pass the divine right of rulership from one liege to another. Now, of course, the action was entirely symbolic. The senior adepts had borne witness to her official ascension weeks ago, within hours of her father’s untimely passing.

Ashielle stood as Deacon Phoebian finished her liturgy, and drew the veil from her face. She let the cold rain wash over her features for a moment, taking a pause to appreciate the gravity of her last moments, symbolic or not, with her father’s presence. Then she placed her veil in Ruprekt’s sarcophagus, draped over his shrouded remains.

She stepped away, and the Ministorum servitors approached. They had the appearance of men, albeit hulking ones, naked save for a black tabard emblazoned with the image of the cathedral. Each wore a bronze mask, wrought in the shape of a bull’s head, to keep the public from seeing their slack-jawed, hollow-eyed visages. To the public they might be mighty, miraculous warriors of the church, but Ashielle knew their sorry nature. She knew, too, that little of human flesh remained to them, mostly pale skin stretched over their corded hydraulic musculature, and a lobotomised brain and spinal cord to coordinate the industrial machinery contained in their frames.

The two servitors lifted the lid of Ruprekt Matkosen’s sarcophagus, adorned with an image of the late lord governor kneeling in piety towards the Grand Cathedral, leaning against a sword, his forehead resting against the pommel. The servitors lowered the lid with a delicacy their forms would not seem to possess.

The sombre thump of the stone lid sliding home echoed in Ashielle’s mind. She would remember it more clearly than the tolling of the bells or the wailing of the mourners. That booming, earthen sound was the end of everything that had come before: there could be no denying now that she was the governor of Ceocan.

They came in ones and twos: the nobles and functionaries wishing her well or expressing a tearful reminder of how close they had felt to the late Governor Matkosen. Most of the words were hollow and meaningless, of course, but she smiled and thanked them nonetheless. More gratifying were the few nobles who seemed genuine in their grief. Paola Gavozny, who had been a fellow scholar at Trenkovi University with her when she had studied Artistic Legacy of Imperial Societies. Liana Chole, the daughter of Greve Chole, who Ruprekt had saved from bankruptcy with a generous loan which had become a gift, had honest tears in her eyes, which nearly moved Ashielle to the same. When the line of mourners finally came to Langreve Evanova, who had attended the capital’s elite schola with Ruprekt and with whom he had shared a fondness for aged amasec and fine Ystrodian cigars, the old man had become choked and unable to form a single word. He had just nodded, gripping Ashielle’s hand tightly, before his wife had put a hand on his shoulder and led him away.

There were a great many people who wished at last to express their condolences to her, now that they had an opportunity to be seen in public doing so. Lesser noble scions, heads of august and aged families, wealthy merchant captains: she knew all of them from years of careful briefings, which had been the subject of her renewed interest over the past few weeks. She knew which ones owed her family favours, which ones lusted for greater power, which ones were bound together by their own bonds of loyalty. So when a small man she did not recognise stepped forward, it was something of a mild surprise.

There were a great many aspects of the management of an entire planet to which Ashielle remained ignorant, and which she anticipated she would have to learn very swiftly in the coming days. Analysis of character was not one of those skills. Ashielle had met men like this before.

He had soft, gentle features and a round, chubby face. His hair was short, his nails clean. His clothes were tidy and neat, tasteful but not sumptuous. His jacket was short, offering no depths in which to conceal a weapon. He was heavier than was fashionable, although not so fat as to elicit comment. In short, every aspect of his being contributed to the general sense that the man presented no threat of any kind. Therefore, she concluded, he was an exceptionally dangerous man. Her father had taught her that only the most malevolent people cultivated such a well-manicured image of innocuousness. The stranger’s tinted, round-framed spectacles hid his eyes entirely behind mirrored lenses, which was perhaps the most damning trait of all. The eyes allowed a glimpse into the soul, and in Ashielle’s opinion, people who concealed them had something inside themselves they wanted to hide from those around them.

‘I don’t believe we’ve met before,’ she said.

‘We have not,’ the man replied. ‘I am Lostrovsky.’

Psycholinguistics had always been a passion of Ashielle’s. The idea that one could, through careful attention to one’s vocabulary and syntax, subconsciously influence actions or attitudes in a listener was an attractive one. There were days when she had her doubts as to the efficacy of its application, but she continued doing so anyway. At the very least, she reasoned, there was no harm in taking an extra moment to choose one’s words carefully.

‘What do you wish of me, Lostrovsky?’

The dangerous little man smiled. He had generous dimples that added to his harmless appearance, and he carefully presented his sad half-smile to show no teeth.

‘Nothing for myself, excellency. Rather, it is my mistress who would speak with you.’

Ashielle was intrigued, but it wouldn’t do to let Lostrovsky know that.

‘Who might your mistress be? One could consider it a grave insult that she doesn’t deign to make her requests of me in person.’

Lostrovsky shook his cropped little head. ‘My mistress is acutely aware of your excellency’s social station,’ he said. ‘She knows it would be improper for a supplicant of noble bearing to approach you on such an occasion. Hence her decision to employ a man of no particular house allegiance for this task.’ He made a humble gesture at his attire, as if to demonstrate his own inoffensiveness, in case she had missed it. ‘However, she did not want to pass up the opportunity to speak with you in this rather informal setting. Were you to seek her out here, in the Korgana, it would merely be a chance meeting at an event you were both attending already. Should she be required to seek you out, her attendance to the palace at Darcarden would certainly attract more notice than the two of you would wish.’

Ashielle had a sinking feeling she knew who Lostrovsky was referring to. Minor nobles made appointments to visit the governor at Darcarden nearly every day. There was only one ruling family whose presence at the governor’s palace would be worthy of comment.

‘Esilia Vaneisen calls a meeting? Now?’ Ashielle fixed Lostrovsky with an icy glare. Lord Ruprekt had mastered the bloodless stare, a skill Ashielle had tried to emulate. She had utilised the technique before, but this was her first time doing so with the authority of the title of governor behind her. She had never been sure if it was the threat that the title carried, or rather the confidence that it imparted, but Ruprekt had been able to chill a supplicant in their tracks with his gaze.

Lostrovsky was no street thug, but he seemed unnerved.

‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘My mistress would never think of compelling your excellency’s appearance in her presence,’ he said, his tone making it clear that he was implying quite the opposite. Even without his practised delivery, she would have known the truth: Vicereine Esilia Vaneisen, coadjutor to the planetary governor, meant for Ashielle to attend her then and there. Better to clear up any misunderstandings about their relationship immediately, before the city could go back to the mundane routines of daily life.

‘So the impropriety might be mine alone?’ Ashielle said. She crossed her arms, fixing the unctuous Lostrovsky with a wicked sneer. ‘I think not. If Esilia wishes to speak with me, then she’ll simply have to take the hit to her pride.’ She made a flicking gesture with one hand. ‘You, on the other hand, should go before I have time to contemplate the audacity it would take not only to attempt to coerce a planetary governor, but to do so on holy ground.’

Lostrovsky bowed, a sheen of sweat visible on his forehead. Good. She hated the notion of ruling like a tyrant, but she was no one’s puppet.

The other dignitaries were less audacious. Most of them repeated the same sort of platitudes they had already given her. A few kept their words perfunctory and light, as though burying her father was just an unpleasant formality, and now they could all move on as if he had never existed. She reasoned that to many of them, he was merely a distant figure, with no more a personal relationship to them than the sun above. So long as the dawn came, she couldn’t blame them for not being as broken as they might have been. Their honesty was refreshing, if anything.

More than a few had gathered around Hanrik. She supposed she couldn’t blame them for that, either. The youngest of the Matkosen children was something of a curiosity, having been sent away at a very early age. For many of those in attendance, it was the first time they’d seen the returned son.

By the time she had made her rounds of the minor nobles vying for her attention, he had been surrounded by a small knot of mourners. Ashielle noted with no small amount of amusement that several of those eager to hear more about the estranged Matkosen child were eligible young women of the minor noble houses. Hanrik’s disinterest was clear to her from a mile away, but several of the sons and daughters of the minor noble houses preened and posed and tittered at his small talk anyway.

‘Governor Ashielle,’ he said when she approached. Ashielle smiled at his stiffness and formality.

‘Arbitrator,’ she replied. ‘Will you be so good as to accompany me back to Darcarden?’

Hanrik paused for a moment, clearly weighing the discomfort of his various options. The two of them had never been close. She had few memories of him. He had always been a private child. With two heirs ahead of him and no valuable allies to be secured with his marriage, the truth was that Hanrik had been a potential danger rather than an asset to Ruprekt Matkosen. She had been too young to remember clearly, but Geordan had told her that their father had spent weeks arguing the issue with the Grevenate. The custom was an archaic one, he’d said, and no longer required or wanted in the governing family. An industrial crisis in the southern provinces had arisen, however, and protecting the lives of his citizens had necessitated every ounce of political capital he could spare. As always, when forced to choose between family and duty, their father had chosen his obligations to his people. Ruprekt had needed to pull many strings to get his youngest son accepted to the schola progenium on Sorinoux, but he had done what was required of him.

‘I would be happy to escort you to the palace,’ he said carefully. His words were chosen cautiously so as to neither exclude nor include the possibility of staying in the palace itself. Ashielle smiled. Perhaps they had more in common than she had previously thought.

‘My lady?’

Ashielle was surprised when she turned to find Esilia Vaneisen behind her.

Many of the wealthy elite of the Imperium used their influence and fortunes to stave off the effects of ageing, often reversing their physical appearance to a visage of youth. Not so with the matriarch of the Vaneisen family. Vicereine Esilia Vaneisen, coadjutor of Ceocan, chose instead to wear her age proudly, as both challenge and threat.

Look here, her steel-grey hair boasted, I have borne the weight of years; I have seen decades of sorrow and treachery. Every furrow on her perpetually scowling face was a campaign ribbon declaring her participation in some deep-seated feud with another dignitary, now humbled and long forgotten. Like many institutions of the Imperium, she might be weathered and weakened by the passage of time, but her resilience had not failed yet, and was not likely to do so in the near future.

‘Will you excuse us?’ Ashielle asked the gathered courtiers. She gave her brother the dignity of a personal dismissal. ‘Hanrik, would you be good enough to wait in the carriage? I’ll be there shortly.’ Her brother frowned, but strode off towards her carriage dutifully, picking his way through the tombstones and mausoleums. The other courtiers, egos stinging, retreated to their various families, leaving the governor and coadjutor alone in the garden.

The Augusta Korgana, like most cemeteries on Ceocan, was laid out not in the neat ranks and rows that predominated on worlds of the Imperium. Instead, the raised headstones and monuments were arrayed along twisting paths that intersected and branched in a maze of loops and spirals. The mourning gardens situated amid the curving paths were oases of respite, where nobles could rest and reflect amid small patches of grave blossoms.

Ashielle seated herself on one of the stone benches, decorated with a bas relief of Saint Symion smiting the unbelievers at Loresk. She folded her hands in her lap and cocked her head. In private audiences between nobles, etiquette demanded that social inferiors spoke first. Among peers, however, the honour of speaking second was passed to the eldest participant. Esilia regarded her, silently. Ashielle recognised the trick for what it was. If she gave into the instincts of a young noblewoman to defer to the matriarch, Esilia would begin both the conversation and their entire professional relationship in a position of authority.

After a moment, the elder woman realised Ashielle had no intention of speaking first.

‘Poor thing,’ Esilia said, feigning a matronly concern. ‘Here I am, waiting for you to speak first. How silly of me to stand on formalities in your time of grief.’

‘Not at all,’ Ashielle said, placing a forgiving hand on Esilia’s arm. ‘I’m grateful for your slip. Why, if I had similarly forgotten myself it might have looked inappropriate. We are, after all, no longer peers.’

Esilia Vaneisen frowned. The elderly matriarch had clearly expected this conversation to go differently. In each of their previous encounters, Ashielle had given way to Esilia, accepting her barbs and her slanders with downcast eyes and accepting nods. In every previous meeting, however, she had been the second heir, not the lord governor.

‘My apologies, my lady.’ Esilia switched tone. ‘The working relationship I developed with your father was so close that there were times when we regarded one another as peers. I forget that we have not yet developed so close a bond. Perhaps when you have been governor for more than a short time, we can build such a rapport.’ Her words were kind but Ashielle knew what she meant: a reminder that she had been a veteran at planetary politics before Ashielle had even been born.

‘I hope that we can build a relationship that close between ourselves,’ Ashielle said, answering Esilia’s lie with one of her own. ‘In time.’ She was cognisant of the eyes upon them. The gravestones, decorated with the winding knotwork and images of Imperial saints, were rarely tall enough to obscure sight, and the lesser nobles that ambled their way through the winding paths of the Augusta Korgana were taking their time, casting surreptitious looks back to the mourning garden. The words between her and Esilia might be private, but everyone was making sure to take note of their conversation, all witnesses eagerly doing their best to discern some clue as to the context of the meeting.

‘Forgive me, my lady.’ Esilia bowed her head as if committing some egregious crime. More egregious than the ones Ashielle knew about, at any rate. ‘I had hoped to broach a sensitive topic. I know it is a rather unfortunate time, but we find ourselves in a rather unfortunate situation.’

Ashielle cocked her head again. ‘Oh?’

‘As my lady may or may not be aware,’ she said, ‘when your own father ascended to the throne, he was already wed, with your brother Geordan already on the way.’ She was on more comfortable ground now, educating a younger noble on events that she had personally witnessed, as if Ashielle couldn’t possibly have heard about the circumstances of her father’s coronation. ‘In fact, the governor’s throne hasn’t been without an heir for over three millennia.’

‘Two,’ corrected Ashielle. ‘You’re referring to the Reformation, when a plague epidemic killed half the nobility. You’re forgetting about the second Great Collapse. Lord Governor Windover died without producing an heir, despite his four successive wives.’ Esilia cleared her throat, but Ashielle continued without pause. ‘Of course, the Matkosens were the coadjutor family at the time, and Sadion Matkosen had a number of heirs. Governorship was transferred to the new ruling family without incident, and the Grevenate elected a new coadjutor from among their number.’ Ashielle’s face brightened. ‘The Netsullens, if I recall correctly, although I believe they married into a wealthier, if genetically stunted, family and changed their name. To Vaneisen, I believe.’

Esilia sat, her face as impassive as the stone angels carved into the mausoleums around them. ‘I believe that’s correct,’ she said. ‘Broadly, at any rate.’

‘The Netsullens had a bit of wealth, and were owed quite a few favours,’ Ashielle said, ‘but they lacked somewhat in prestige, didn’t they? Something about the business they were in?’

Esilia cleared her throat. ‘Quite possibly,’ she said. ‘Waste management has long been considered a disreputable profession, despite the immense value it has, especially on an agri world. For their part, the Vaneisen family had reached an… unfortunate state of being unable to continue their practice of marrying within their own line,’ Esilia said. ‘Too few cousins to keep going, I suppose. Fortunately, in this instance, as is often the case, uniting two noble houses provided the remedy to both their ills.’ She folded her hands in her own lap, and gave Ashielle a serene smile.

Ashielle smiled sweetly. This was the battlefield her father had trained her for. She’d never faced an opponent with as much clout as the Lady Vaneisen before, but she had learned from the best. She paused for a moment, staring at the pale white weeping lilies arrayed around a stone aquila in the centre of the reflecting garden.

‘Why, Esilia, do you imagine the example from your family’s history has some sort of bearing on current events?’ No matter how reasonable the request, she couldn’t afford to let Esilia Vaneisen deal with her on a level playing field. She had to keep the old woman off-balance, treated like a pauper begging for alms.

Lady Vaneisen looked around as if considering whether or not to continue. She had to realise what Lady Matkosen was doing, of course. By refusing to acknowledge what Esilia was implying, she forced the elder noble to spell her request out in ever more explicit, and ever more demeaning, terms.

‘Your father was ever a proponent of stability,’ Lady Vaneisen said finally, ‘and the current situation is anything but stable. As coadjutor, it would be my recommendation that you find a spouse and produce an heir as swiftly as possible.’ Ashielle had to hand it to her rival: framing her power play as part of her duties as coadjutor was a wise manoeuvre, which gave her requests the veneer of respectability.

Ashielle gave a small nod. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘when matters of state permit, that would be one of my first priorities.’ Esilia looked pained, but Ashielle went on. ‘You understand, given the suspicious nature of the accident that claimed both my father and elder brother, the need to reevaluate our security measures before we allow an outside influence into Darcarden.’

The Korgana was beginning to empty. There was no reason to remain in the icy drizzle any longer, and most of the Grevenate families had begun to retreat to their own homes, to pursue their own petty interests.

‘We could, of course, offer our assistance in that regard,’ said Esilia.

‘Oh?’

‘Of course,’ the matriarch said. ‘We have a number of young men who would be suitable matches, I should think.’ She waved a hand and smiled as if they were old friends. ‘Such closeness between the regent and coadjutor families would be good for the political landscape, I believe. Unity is our best course in the wake of such tragedy, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, Esilia,’ said Ashielle, ‘not at all.’

The old woman looked as if she’d been slapped. ‘No?’

Ashielle shook her head and stood. The gesture wasn’t dramatic, but it was enough for anyone looking at their conversation to gather that she had rejected whatever offer had been put before her.

‘I admit to a certain degree of inexperience,’ Ashielle said, ‘although not as much ignorance as you apparently credit me with. It would take a great deal of ignorance, after all, for a house such as mine, with as solidified a reputation for honouring their obligations to the planetary populace, to marry into one such as yours.’

Esilia kept smiling, although her eyes were wide and furious.

‘Providing protection to the flesh peddlers, narcotics traffickers and extortionists of Kostoveim would be bad enough. But the rumours? The strife societies? The famed Black Mask balls your family hosts? And what happens to the… entertainment afterwards? My dear Esilia, even if only a fraction of the stories are true, the perversion would simply be too much to bear.’

She unfolded her umbrella and strode away, leaving Esilia Vaneisen fuming quietly on the stone bench in the graveyard.

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‘Miracles’ and ‘Runner’ first published digitally in 2019.
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