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Skull Throne – Jake Ozga

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Castle of Blood’

A Black Library Publication Imprint

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Skull Throne

By Jake Ozga

I walk barefoot beneath the silent, predatory sky. I step carefully among brittle indigo flowers and leave no trace of my passing. I watch – unblinking – the line of trees as they tremble and fade away. The sky sighs and the flowers blur in the wind, their petals becoming indistinct smears of colour.

Time passes; it flows around me like a river. I settle back into its currents and drift. I close my eyes and when I open them again I am elsewhere. Day has turned to night and in the weak light of the moon the grass is blue and ethereal. I crouch among it and become invisible. I whisper to myself, ‘To live peacefully, we must live unseen.’ I whisper it over and over like a prayer. My mother taught me this when I was a little girl, when I was still a thing of flesh and blood. There is no sound in this Realm of Death, the place I once called home. There are no birds, no insects, just the barest breath of the wind. I listen. Any moment now. Here they come.

Dark shapes separate from the deep blue shadows of the treeline and walk into the field, down where the grass is shorter. I am as still as a mouse and if I breathe it is not so anyone would notice. There is a new sound, the sound of something scraping. It does not belong here, it is so vulgar in this place. Three men walk under the light of a burning timber, most likely taken from a homestead nearby; they make no secret of their presence. The first of the three drags along a girl by her hair. A second is lost in the shadows at the edge of the field, a darker shade. Moonlight picks out the edges of his form; it reflects on sharp corners and cutting angles. The third pulls behind him a great axe with hooks and barbs that furrow the earth as he walks.

I watch as they make the girl kneel in the gently swaying grass. She is like a bird, so skinny and delicate. Her bare arms and legs are almost translucent in the light of the waning moon. Her face is hidden by long, lank black hair. She doesn’t cry out; she knows better. I bite my lip and draw a bead of blood – a test to see if I am dreaming. They pull her head back and I see her face. Her wide, dark eyes seek out my hiding place, and just for a heartbeat her gaze meets mine. I see that she is me and I am her. I am her and I am there in the field, and they hold me by the hair as I kneel and I am scared but not for myself and then the axe swings just once and my head comes away from my body, which topples lifelessly, like a broken doll, to lie discarded in the grass.

I gasp, and the three men turn to look towards where I lie hidden, but they do not see me. The second man takes my head and ties it to his belt. I watch them do it. I watch them do it over and over and over. She is me and I am her. I lie down and curl into a ball. The scraping sound is changing and getting louder. From here, I know, things only get worse. I close my eyes.

Behind my eyelids the edifice looms from the pulsing, rusty haze. It is cyclopean, limitless, the colour of dried blood. There is a thunderous noise that I feel in the base of my skull, that I hear in the bone behind my eyes. It sounds like a boulder dragged across gravel or broken glass but repeated ten thousand times. I squeeze my eyes tight but the shape of the monolith is revealed to me: a monumental throne, built from skulls in numbers beyond my ability to comprehend. They grind against each other like teeth under the weight of the throne’s occupant, a form I cannot make out, lost in the haze. And in dark heavens at the limits of my perception, a burning eye holds me in silent regard.

We are no strangers to death, we who live in his realm. I am no stranger to death; it has always surrounded me. But this is not a vision of death, this is…

Violence. Always the same visions of violence. Even now, when I’m awake, I see the throne. I see the cutting edge of a jagged blade across a fragile, delicate neck. I see a burning, hate-filled eye. I see these things with my eyes open or closed. I see them interwoven with the mundanity of my hidden existence: they are there as I gather my herbs, as I walk under the blanched and sallow sun, as I whisper through the floorboards to the bodies down in the darkness, as I watch from the shattered windows of my ruined home in the realm of silent ghosts, and as I sleep alone under cold and lifeless stars.

Days and nights pass without distinction. Their edges blur as if viewed through a raindrop, remembered only as a dream upon waking – real in one moment and nothing but fragments in the next. I too am blurred. I am a figure without definition, a form without edges. This numbed existence – this fugue, this dream – I float through it like a ghost. Live unseen, but how do you live a life without hope? In truth I do not live, but I exist still, I remain. A heavy blade scrapes a furrow through freshly tilled soil and the skulls grind together under a crushing weight. I remain in incoherence. I linger in madness. I do not know how long it has been this way and I wonder if it will ever end. I am missing a part of my soul.

I open my eyes. Daylight. I am in the charred remains of my crumbling home. I am standing at my favourite broken window that looks down onto a field where nothing grows and no animals graze. The glass panes are long since gone but there is no wind in this place to speak of and I no longer feel the cold. I am rarely hungry and eat sparingly; instead I make tea in a heavy iron cauldron that hangs from a chain over a modest firepit that I do not remember replenishing. The fire burns white, the pale smoke drifts away towards the stars through the ruin of the roof. The water takes time to boil. I add more of the herb than last time: a pinch of mhurghast root adds a bitter taste but too much can cause paralysis or even death. Brewed to the correct strength the tea removes my dreams, replaces them with this confusion of non-existence, though every day it takes more and more to grant me peace, and every day the dreams return like an invasive weed with roots grown deep inside my head. The herb is found everywhere in this quiet corner of Shyish and I have harvested enough to kill myself a hundred times over.

I do not know if I will kill myself. It is not that I want to be alive, it is that I am unable to decide. It is too much to decide a thing like that; I need guidance. I used to have help, but I have lost a part of my soul and so I am as a ship adrift, alternately becalmed or borne on indiscriminate tides. Decide to die, decide to live.

I see three shapes emerge from the shadows at the edge of the field. I quickly drink the tea and feel its effects immediately. The figures blur into nothing. The world loses its hard edges. I deliquesce, I slip away.

Wait. Wait. I wade back towards the shore from some impossible, dreamless depth. Something has disturbed me from my sleep; some primal instinct sets my heart fluttering as if a predator’s shadow has fallen upon me. I lie awake on my cot and listen. There is something… Far away I hear a man’s voice, raised in rough song. It echoes across this silent, dead land. This is new. My dreams have never sung before.

I walk to the broken window. I move carefully, barefoot on the fragile, fire-blackened floorboards that creak and splinter at my passing, tiptoeing so as not to disturb the bodies as they rest beneath me. I do not know if it is morning or evening. There is pale light as the sun swims weakly across a liquid sky that is always the same ashen grey, faintly diffused with smudged silver stars. The fields are smothered in a funeral shroud of mist and I see nothing and no one, but still I hear the song. It is a chant, vulgar and brutal; it does not belong in this place. I stand in the doorway and watch the shadows as they coalesce and pool together, and from the mist there comes a man.

There comes a man: tall, swaggering, alone. He sings his barbaric song with words I do not understand. He wears the piecemeal red armour of the invaders, so deep in colour that it first appears black. ‘To live peacefully,’ I whisper. ‘To live peacefully…’ My voice trails away. This is something new. I try to think what I should do. I should hide, I should remain unseen, but instead I sit in the doorway and watch as he turns to walk towards the house. I should fetch my mother’s spear, but it is too much to contemplate and instead I close my eyes, and when I open them he is approaching me. He is a new vision. So things do change after all – a part of me is relieved. I bite my lip and taste the metallic tang of blood, but I do not wake up. ‘Open your eyes,’ I say to myself. ‘Open your eyes.’ But they are open. I should run, but instead I sit and I think: it would be the easiest thing in the world to die now.

He does not stop his song as he takes a handful of my hair and drags me back into the charred bones of my house. With his free hand he beats the heavy iron armour on his chest, a percussive crash to accompany his chanting. I watch the stars as they blink out in the heavens. I watch the tea as it boils in the heavy iron pot on the last embers of the fire. Am I to be forever a spectator at my own death? Decide to fight, decide to die – even in these final moments it is too hard to consider.

He throws me ahead of him and I fall awkwardly beside my bed, scraping my bare knees. He draws the sword he wears across his back: an ugly pockmarked blade with a single, well-notched edge. He removes his helmet and I see he is a young man, not much older than me. He has stopped singing. His jaw is ruined from some old injury that has healed badly, and the wound is only partially disguised by a tangled black beard. He says something in a tongue I struggle to understand – the guttural, snarling accent of the invaders is so different from my own – but I know what he intends: I see myself on my knees. This has happened before, different but the same. Time repeats itself. Existence is a loop of chain, the links pass endlessly through my hands. He means to take my head, over and over again. The thought stirs something in me, an unfamiliar anger. Just the tiniest drip, drip, drip of this new feeling into a pool at the bottom of a deep, dark well. Maybe I can use it.

And then he steps towards me; he steps on brittle boards damaged by the fire. He does not tread lightly, as one should, as one must. I hear cracking. I see it coming, I almost smile. And so of course, the floorboards break, and he falls into the darkness, into the darkness with the corpses.

I touch my neck cautiously, but I am intact. I cock my head and listen, waiting for the grinding that heralds the vision of the skull throne, but it does not come. This is something new. The man is hurt – a bone broken in the fall perhaps. There is cursing and moaning: ugly words and sounds that have no place here and which make me want to retreat somewhere hidden and silent. But instead I sit at the edge of the hole, legs dangling into the darkness below, and watch him. He is struggling to get his arm free of some splintered wood that has him pinned in place. His leg is bent the wrong way.

‘Please be quiet,’ I whisper. But he does not hear me and he continues his awful noise. I consider the situation for a while, then I stand and stoke the fire that has cooled in the firepit. I add new bundles of kindling, taken from the thickets near the house, and then cuttings of the grey wood that I keep in a basket near the door, and I wait for the fire to catch and get hot and the water in the cauldron to boil, and then I push the whole thing over so that the cauldron falls and spills down into the hole. There is more screaming – louder now – and then finally there is silence. I watch the last of the water trickle over the broken floor for a moment. Drip, drip, drip. Then I go back to my cot and fall asleep.

Later, as I lie in my bed, I talk to him. I ask him what happened to his jaw, but he does not reply. I lie and watch the stars and imagine him injured in a duel with some brutish rival. I try to remember the song that he sang but when I attempt to whistle it, it does not sound right at all. It has been some time since I checked on him – some days perhaps – it is so easy to lose track. In the hole the moaning sometimes resumes but not for so long that I need to boil any more water. I leave the cauldron where it lies, I do not numb myself with tea. I feel different. I am feeling more and more different all the time.

One night I hear him talking. His voice is small now. I lie in bed, wide-eyed in the darkness, and I listen.

‘I do not want to die here. I do not want to die like this.’ He slurs his words. I have to concentrate to understand him.

‘We came here before. A year ago or more. We killed you,’ he says. ‘We killed you, my brothers and I.’

‘Yes,’ I whisper.

‘What are you? Are you a ghost? A spirit? We have met such things in this strange land.’

‘Am I a ghost,’ I whisper. ‘Am I a spirit.’

‘We killed you – we cut off your head!’

‘You cut off my head,’ I whisper. ‘You cut off my head and I want it back.’

The next day I make a decision. I rise from my bed and I retrieve my mother’s spear and I step down into the cellar, barefoot among the debris and the bodies. He is still trapped by a beam of splintered wood that tears into the meat and muscle of his arm when he tries to move. His leg is twisted. He has stripped off most of his armour until he is naked and his skin is pink and cross-hatched with raw and bloody fingernail marks where he has scratched at his blisters. His face is pale and his tangled beard is foul with vomit. He snarls at me and so I push the broad bronze point of the spear into the sole of his bare foot and he screams. ‘We killed you, we killed you,’ he groans. The bodies in the darkness watch us in silence and I try not to think about them. ‘You will tell me where you have taken my head,’ I say, and twist the spear. And so, in time, he tells me.

Later, we are sat quietly together. He says that he doesn’t want to die this way but I am not listening, my thoughts are elsewhere. His breathing becomes strange and uneven and eventually he goes still. I contemplate the information that he has shared and finally I decide what to do; I decide all on my own. ‘I know,’ I say to the bodies in the darkness, ‘I am feeling different. I am sorry that I have to leave you.’

I pack a few things from around my home and I carry my mother’s spear. I take a bag with some little provisions and my herbs, although I have not drunk any of the tea in some time. In the grey of the evening of that same day I set out to walk towards the setting sun, in the direction from which the man came some few days past.

I pass from the lands where my mother chose to hide into the land that once belonged to my father and his people. I walk through fields I knew as a child and then yet others that I have never seen before. All is still, all is dead. As it should be. At the edge of a copse of skeletal, ash-white trees I walk into a cloud of mist, until I come to a beach of colourless sand that stretches away into the distance. Each step I take along the beach is swallowed by the mist that spills out from a vast lake or sea, and it is only by following the edge of the water that I do not become disoriented. Behind me my footprints are erased by the milk-white water as it laps soundlessly at the shore. Ahead of me, my path is not yet written.

I walk along the shore until I reach the stone marker that I am looking for: an upright column of obsidian, almost twice as tall as me. I trace the razor-sharp edges of the stone with my fingers. Etched on the glassy surface is an eight-pointed star and another shape – a crude skull perhaps, repeated over and over. This object too does not belong here; I know somehow that it was once not of this realm, that it was carried here by the invaders.

I turn and step into the tepid water, the light of Azyr at my back and the spectre of the waning moon ahead of me. The shallow sea vanishes towards an invisible horizon, where it merges in silence with the mist. The water is thick and opaque and the air is redolent with the smell of brine. I taste salt on my lips. After a short while I am up to my knees in the milky water and it seems to get no deeper, the coast now long lost somewhere in the mist behind me, and all around is beautiful, bloodless serenity. I stop and I think that I could fade away here, that I could forget about the edges of myself and dissolve into this nothingness. I close my eyes. And then I hear the drip of the blood from the head I carry by its tangled beard, the drip of blood into the lifeless water, and I am reminded of why I am here and what I now seek. In the distance, muffled by the mist, I hear the familiar sound of bone grinding on bone, and I wade through the water towards it.

They are camped in the skeleton of some great sea creature. The bones of a giant ribcage rise from the water, black and ragged. A fire illuminates an area of land at the heart of the creature’s remains, the light diffused by the mist. Around it I see figures moving. I lower myself into the water until only my eyes would be visible if they were to look in my direction. I remain unseen. It is too shallow to swim but I pull myself along on the seabed, my hands sinking through the spongy silt to find purchase on the rock beneath.

I observe the scene for a while, drawing slowly closer to the camp. The water around the island is full of froth and movement, and I realise that it is surrounded by a frenzy of fish of some sort. No, not fish but eels. They gather at the island of bones, thrashing in the water, writhing and knotting around each other like coils of oiled rope as they fight to feed. They tear scraps from the carcass of the great sea creature, ripping black meat away from the bones and bringing it back into the froth. As I watch, I see an eel uncoil from the swarm to snatch something from the shore in its jaws: a severed human arm. There are many more body parts that lie discarded near a great iron cooking pot in the camp. Even as I observe, one of the men walks to the pile of body parts, takes part of a carcass upon a curved butcher’s hook and hefts the torso up and into the cooking pot.

Is this where they brought me when they took my head? I wonder. Is this where they would have tossed my body? My skinny little arms and skinny little legs and my poor little stump of a neck where my head should be?

Wait. I think. Wait, how could it be me? I am here. I am alive. I am more alive than I have been for some time.

Something moves in the water alongside me. A huge black eel glides past – clouds of white sand billow as it twists its body to turn and face me, almost as long as I am tall. It darts forward in the water; small, sharp teeth sink into the meat of my arm, drawing blood, and I drop the head that I have been carrying. And then the eel retreats, slipping away from me, back to join the others. I follow it, joining the writhing mass. I am surrounded by life and it is invigorating. The eels nip at me but they don’t persist and I let them have their fun. My blood tastes too bitter for them, I expect, full of poisonous mhurghast root. They coil around me, I am welcome among them, I am one of them. I smile. I make a decision. Decisions are coming easily to me now.

I slip out of the water, I crawl on my belly among the carcasses. I am coated with white silt and streaming with watery blood from dozens of tiny bites. I still have my mother’s spear and the pack containing the mhurghast root, enough to kill me a hundred times over. The men in the camp are fighting among themselves: violent games and duels. I think of the man in the cellar of my house, how his jaw was ruined. I think of his violent life and I think, well, my life has not been without violence. I had thought to offer it as a trade, but it doesn’t matter now. I throw the poisonous herbs into the cooking pot. Three handfuls. It floats for a moment in the scum on the surface of the stinking, rust-coloured stew, then sinks. I lie among the body parts.

The men grunt and brawl late into the night, their voices muffled by the mist; they pause only to eat their cannibal feast. I close my eyes. Bone grinds on bone as the skull throne looms but I remain unseen here among the dead. ‘To live peacefully,’ I whisper. I feel something warm inside my chest; it is a new and fragile and alien thing and I realise after a while that it is an ember that could in time become something good, and I nurture it within me as I lie among the bodies, warmed by the glow of the cooking fire as it slowly burns down to ash. In time, the warriors sleep. I am so tired now. I fade away. In the morning I am the only one to wake.

The new day brings with it a change of atmosphere and I almost do not recognise where I am. A cloud of choking sand has gathered to suffocate this evil place. The red light of the throbbing, heatless sun turns the air to deep rust. I walk through the haze, among the black bones of the camp. I tread carefully, barefoot among the men that lie here and there, and I leave no trace. Some of them are alive; their chests rise and fall, their eyes are open, but they cannot move and so they watch me as I pass. Most are dead. I tiptoe so as not to disturb the bodies. I hum the song that the bearded man once sang as he dragged me by my hair. I can’t get it to sound quite the same – it is confused somehow, distorted. To my ears, my variation sounds better.

In the heart of the camp, one of the invaders sits slouched in a chair crudely formed from black, glassy stone. A great axe – covered in cruel hooks and barbs – lies at his feet. His eyes follow my movements, his pupils pinprick vortexes in the bloodshot whites of his eyeballs. His fingers twitch; the muscles in his neck are bunched, the cords so prominent they look like they might snap. His jaw works slowly from side to side, like cattle chewing cud. My father once had cattle, back when I was little more than a babe. He is trying to talk. I wait patiently.

‘What vision is this?’ His speech is slurred. ‘What strange vision? Are you a daemon? Come to me, born in blood. Your kind are welcome here.’

I look down at myself. The white mud that coats me is dry and cracked and stained with blood.

I laugh and the sound startles me – it is so loud!

‘Am I a daemon? No, no. I am just a girl.’

There is silence for a while. His fingers continue to contract and stretch as he wills his body back to life, fighting against the paralysis. His eyes are so full of hatred and rage; it must be wonderful to feel so intensely, to conjure such emotions out of nothing. Around us the red haze closes in until we are the only two beings in existence; all else is obscured by a miasma of sand the colour of dried blood.

‘Just a girl,’ he rasps. ‘What are you doing here, girl? Do you come to die?’

I think on this; it is not an easy question to answer.

‘Don’t you recognise me?’ I ask. ‘You took my skull. You cut off my head with your ugly axe. I am here to take it back.’

Even as I say it I know the words are not true; they are confused, and out of shape, like the half-remembered melody.

No. I sigh. No, this is not right.

I sit cross-legged in the sand, my head in my hands.

Not my skull, I correct myself. My sister. My twin.

We were born on the same day, moments apart. Our mother said we shared a single soul. Only moments older, but how much she must have learned in those few fleeting heartbeats before I joined her. How wise she was. How I looked up to her. At times it was as if we shared a single body, that we looked on the world with a single set of eyes.

‘You cut off her head,’ I say. ‘And I could only watch.’

I hear the grinding of bone on bone; it echoes around this place. I feel it in the nape of my neck and behind my eyes. I can taste violence in the air. Violence poisoned this hidden corner of the realm when I was just a child. Violence bled into our lives from some other place, carried by invaders. My father did not survive it. My mother kept us hidden for a time. But my sister… my sister was my guide when I could not have survived on my own, when I struggled to understand and to make decisions. She was the guiding force and I merely a passenger. She was so brave to carry this burden and I… I was such a weight around her neck, and worse: a liability. Because I could taste this violence in the air – even as a child, I could taste it. And because I did not hate the taste.

He starts to speak again but I am not listening. I stand slowly and take the axe and drag it behind me to the first of the bodies, the first of the men that litter the camp. The axe is so heavy I struggle to lift it above my head and when I let it drop it is with weight enough to cut bone. It is hard work; one cut is not enough. Some of the men are not yet dead, but it is all they can do to watch me as I approach. Their eyes are full of hatred and something that might be fear. Would my sister have stayed my hand? I wonder. My sister was full of kindness and compassion but I have never truly understood those things.

It takes me most of the day but I gather their heads. The heads of all that came here, invaders in the realm of the dead. I have to pause frequently to rest. It is hard work but it must be done. I take their heads and bring them to the centre of the camp.

‘You make of these an offering,’ the seated man growls. ‘This is as it should be.’

His voice is no longer slurred. He has watched me as I have worked, his head turning to follow my movements even as I cut the heads from the men that he commands.

‘An offering,’ I say. ‘I offer these in exchange for my sister’s skull.’

‘You should be on your knees…’ His voice is so full of hatred and contempt. There are flecks of bloody saliva at the edges of his mouth. He begins to stand. ‘I will consider your request if you beg.’

‘It is not meant for you,’ I say. Before he can rise I push the tip of my mother’s spear into the soft flesh between his ribs and I laugh at his shock as the blade pierces his heart. He does not stop hating even as he dies, as he first slumps forward on his seat then topples to the blood-soaked sand. The grinding of skulls consumes me, overwhelms me.

‘God of violence,’ I call out. I have to shout to make myself heard above the crushing waves of terrible noise. ‘God of violence, I offer these to you. Your men, your Champion. All in your name.’

High above, in dark heavens, the blood-red sun is now a burning eye that holds me in hateful regard. I do not shy from its attention. And I know that this is still not enough.

‘God of violence! I have so little left that I can offer you.’

I push the hilt of my mother’s spear deep into the fine white sand until it hits bedrock. I angle it towards my own throat. It is still so sharp. The tip draws a bead of blood and I know that I am not dreaming. Decisions come so easily to me now. My parents would be so proud of what I have become.

‘Goodbye, mother! Goodbye, father! I’m sorry I troubled you… and I’m sorry I didn’t visit you, down there in the dark. My sister, my soul, I will see you soon.’

I am crying. It is a rare and beautiful gift to feel such emotion.

‘All I ask is that we may gaze upon each other!’

And the dark heavens shrug in acquiescence.

I hold the shaft of the spear tight in trembling hands. And I push myself forward with all my strength and I push and I push and I pu–

There is a noise like that I feel in the base of my skull, that I hear in the bone behind my eyes. It sounds like a boulder dragged across gravel or broken glass, repeated ten thousand times. The skulls of the skull throne grind against each other, unceasing, forever.

And we are together again.

About the Author

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, Abi; his dog, Freya; and his cat Horobi. His first story for Black Library, ‘Supplication’, featured in the Warhammer Horror anthology Invocations.

An extract from Castle of Blood.

Magda brought the slim, rakish blade whipping around. The sword slashed across its target, ripping deep into the bloated paunch. Innards spilled out and streamed across the copper-sheeted floor. A smirk of satisfaction teased at the young woman’s lips. She quickly tried to correct herself and adopt a more sombre pose, but she already knew it was too late. She had exposed herself and would now suffer the price.

‘A lack of focus will get you killed.’ The scolding words rang across the room.

Magda turned around and sheathed her sword. She set her hands on her hips and threw back her head in an effort to look defiant. Inside, though, she felt as if a bunch of mice were running around her guts. However hard she worked, however independent she thought herself, the displeasure of her father made her feel like a guilty little girl caught swiping fruit from the larder.

Ottokar Hausler stamped his way across his shop, each step a little heavier than the last. He used his left hand to brush away the belts and scabbards that hung from the beams. The right did not so much as sway as he walked, locked in place at his side. A dark glove covered the right hand, and the sleeve of his doublet covered almost all of the rest. There was only a little patch behind the wrist that was uncovered, revealing a flash of silver.

‘You have to concentrate,’ Ottokar said. His face was full, just on the verge of becoming flabby. The sharp nose was tinged red and the cheeks were flushed. There was still a keenness in his eyes, but it was dulled by the sheen of liquor. The sound of swordplay could still rouse him from his cups.

Magda swept a stray lock of night-black hair from her face and matched her father’s judgemental stare. She pointed to the stuffed target dummy she had disembowelled, sand still running from it onto the floor. Unlike her father’s, the glove she wore was to better her grip on a sword, not hide an infirmity. ‘My technique improves every day,’ she proclaimed. ‘I’m faster and more accurate–’

Ottokar waved aside her boast. ‘Skill is not enough,’ he said. ‘Discipline! Discipline is the key. You can be fast as lightning, precise as a viper, but still be an amateur with the sword.’ He came a few steps closer and then stamped his foot down on the pedal that controlled the target dummy.

Magda whipped around, and the blade leapt from its scabbard and ripped across the throat of the sackcloth dummy. More sand rained down on the floor. She started to turn back to her father. Only then did she realise he had stamped on the pedal a second time. The dummy was swinging around, a wooden sword in each of its eight arms. There was no time for her to dart in and strike, and no chance to parry all of the enemy swords. She jumped back and crashed to the floor.

‘Never let down your guard,’ Ottokar warned.

‘My blade crossed its throat,’ Magda countered. ‘If it had been a man, he would be dead.’ She rose to her feet and started brushing dust from her breeches.

Ottokar shook his head. ‘Some men take more killing than others, and the dead do not stay as dead as they should be.’ He sighed and gave her a studious look. ‘I would think that your paramour would have told you something about those kinds of things.’

It was one barb too many for Magda. Perhaps he was justified in criticising her ability with the sword, but he had no authority to speak about anything else she did. Ottokar had forfeited that right a long time ago.

‘You surprise me, father. You condescended to take an interest in me.’ Magda recovered her sword from the floor and swept it through the empty air. ‘Aside from what I can do with this.’

The sharp words caused Ottokar to look away. He glanced across his workshop, at the swords hanging on the walls and resting in barrels. The forge and the anvil, the ingots of bronze and iron and steel that he would shape into weapons. In one corner, each perched on its own stand, were elegant blades crafted in another time, weapons Ottokar would not allow anyone to buy. They had to be earned, bestowed on those the swordsmith felt were worthy of them. Guilt gnawed at Magda when she reflected that she was one of the few to have been given one of those swords.

‘This is my world,’ Ottokar said. ‘This is the only place where I am any good to anyone.’ He reached over with his left hand and gripped the lifeless hulk that had replaced his right. The motion caused anger to swell within his daughter.

‘Spare me the melancholy,’ Magda snapped. ‘You lost your arm in a duel, not your life.’

Ottokar looked at her, his eyes glittering with emotion. ‘Were they not the same thing?’

‘Only for someone who cares only about swords,’ Magda retorted.

‘You were too young to remember…’

‘Yes, I was too young to know who you were before you lost your arm. That’s an excuse I have heard many times, father. I weary of hearing it.’ Magda slammed the sword back into its sheath and marched towards the shop’s exit. ‘Do one thing for me,’ she said as she passed Ottokar. ‘Wait until I’ve left before you crawl back into the bottle.’

Magda could hear her father stamping his way across the workshop while she climbed the stairs that led up to the family’s home above the business. Briefly she thought about going back and apologising for her harsh words. She discarded the idea. She didn’t have anything to apologise for.

She brushed aside the strings of polished tin that curtained off the entranceway and stepped into the little courtyard beyond. Water bubbled from the bronze fountain that loomed over the little pool in the middle of the area. Imitation trees with fronds of painted electrum cast shade over the courtyard. Stone benches were scattered about in the shadows. A few marble-coloured birds flittered about, tweeting at each other with shrill cries. They scattered as Magda walked towards the curtained doorways at the far end of the courtyard.

A strong smell of boiling stew struck her nose as she stepped into a long common room. Magda looked towards the doorway leading into the kitchen. She could hear the sound of plates and bowls being moved around. A moment later her mother emerged from behind the curtain of tin strings.

Inge Hausler was not quite twenty years older than Magda, but age had touched her so softly that they might pass for sisters. She was not quite as trim and fit as her daughter, her long legs lacking the corded muscles of her child’s, her arms devoid of the strength that characterised the swordswoman. But her face had that same classic loveliness – big blue eyes and high cheek bones, a soft snip of a nose and lush full lips. Inge kept her raven tresses loose and wild, a dark cascade that spilled down her shoulders and across her breast. Magda preferred to keep her own hair tied back so that it would not be in the way, but her mother seemed to delight in the disordered abandon of her own. She was often trying to get Magda to follow her example.

Inge smiled. ‘Sounds like practice is over for today.’ She wiped her hands on the apron she wore over her jade-coloured dress. She arched an eyebrow when she noted Magda’s demeanour. ‘I take it you two had words again. The miserable sot should know better when to keep his tongue in a bottle.’

As angry as she was, Magda took offence at the disparagement of her father. Even if her mother was voicing her own thoughts of only a moment before. ‘He means well,’ she said. ‘It’s hard on him. A swordsmith with only one arm. He has to leave most of the work to his apprentice and put his stamp on blades he feels are beneath his quality. That can’t be easy for him.’

‘Ottokar never chose anything that was easy,’ Inge said acidly. ‘Always had to keep proving himself. Never knew when something was good enough. Could never be satisfied to leave things as they were.’ She shook her head and gave Magda an excited look. ‘You’ll never guess what happened today. A messenger came from Count Wulfsige von Koeterberg!’

Magda gave her mother a puzzled stare. ‘The count? What could he want with us?’

Inge bristled at the incredulous tone. She puffed herself out, taking on the arrogant air she always adopted whenever someone questioned her status. ‘I’ll have you know that we’ve been invited to dinner at Mhurghast Castle. All of us are to be Count Wulfsige’s guests.’ She tossed her head back, the long raven tresses sweeping around her like the waves of some black ocean. ‘There was a time when I was courted by the count’s son. If things had turned out differently, you might have been a nobleman’s daughter instead of a drunkard’s.’

‘But why does the count wish to entertain us?’ Magda pressed. ‘I don’t understand.’

Inge frowned and stepped back into the kitchen. A moment later she came out with a thin sheet of copper, upon which had been etched the invitation. Affixed to the bottom of the metal page was the wax seal of von Koeterberg, a castle flanked by lightning bolts. ‘Here, since you seem to think I am making things up.’

Magda read the invitation. It was just as her mother said, but that only raised more questions. ‘But why?’

‘When good things happen, accept them,’ Inge advised her. ‘Count Wulfsige is one of the wealthiest men in Ravensbach. Can you imagine the spread he’ll have!’ She glanced back at the kitchen and frowned. ‘At least for one night there won’t be squab stew and beans. We’ll eat like ladies and lords should.’

‘The invitation only says to bring the family,’ Magda said, reading the page. ‘There’s no mention of how many. Do you think it would be all right to ask Klueger to come?’

Inge sighed in exasperation. ‘That man is beneath you,’ she said. ‘You’re a beautiful girl. You can do much better than him.’

Colour rushed into Magda’s cheeks. First the old argument with her father, now the ongoing one with her mother. ‘I don’t care about better. I love Klueger.’

‘Love.’ Inge tutted and shook her head. ‘How long do you think that will last? The man’s prospects are limited. What kind of advancement does he have with those Sigmarite priests?’ She looked at the room around them and frowned. ‘Even the best of them couldn’t afford this. You’d be stepping down, not up.’

‘We aren’t having this discussion,’ Magda stated.

‘I’m only looking out for what is best for you,’ Inge replied. ‘You’re still young. You could have any man you turned your attention to. I don’t want you to waste your opportunities the way I did.’

Magda’s hands curled into fists at her sides. Before she could think, the words were spoken. ‘I’m not sure you wasted any opportunity, mother.’

Inge’s eyes went wide with shock. She snatched the invitation from Magda’s hand with such force that it sliced her palm. ‘The messenger said to bring my family,’ she said as she turned and walked back into the kitchen. ‘That man is not part of my family, and he never will be.’

Magda stared after her mother as the tin strings fell back into place. She truly regretted the horrible thing she had said. She knew her mother loved her deeply and was only trying to do what she thought was best. The problem was that what was smart wasn’t always what was right. Magda trusted her feelings more than her mother’s strategising.

Blood dripped from the cut on Magda’s hand. She glanced down at it and the now ruined glove. More than her injury, she was thinking about the invitation.

They never did decide why Count Wulfsige should ask them to dinner at the castle.

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Warhammer horror

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