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Conn Crowhand’s Last Oath – Graham Thomas Wilcox

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Darkoath’

A Black Library Publication

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CONN CROWHAND’S LAST OATH

Graham Thomas Wilcox

I

One Godstide Eve, when brightest burned the triple moons, Conn Crowhand demanded an impossible quest from his proven. This was in the days before the Everchosen rallied the clans of Aqshy, and lost them. Thence drew down my people’s doom. It began thus.

In the hall of Balor Bres, Syve and I feasted. Servants brought us pork and ashenhoney and horn after horn of cindermead. Balor Bres brought over his newest bairn – a chomp-cheeked little lad whom the gods had blessed with a wolf’s fangs – and we cooed over the child and drank a horn to his name and sang, and all this was good. We killed no one, which was neither here nor there.

Then, a dog I knew trotted to our trestle. He licked my hand and growled to me in his native tongue, which I – alone of all men I’ve met – speak:

‘Crowhand summons you.’

I scowled. The dog’s head cocked.

‘You do not wish to see him,’ he said.

‘You see much.’

The dog’s tail thumped. I spitted him with my least charitable gaze.

‘Calm yourself, hound. I grant you no praise.’

The dog thumped his tail harder. I rolled my eyes, then tossed him a hank of rib. Much crunching followed.

‘You are joyous,’ said I, ‘for a scrap muncher and a bone beggar.’

The dog waited. His eyes were amber and void. Black iron collared his wrinkled throat. A moment passed, and his withers twitched.

‘Why do you not want to see Crowhand?’ he asked.

‘He is a bad chief.’

Again, the dog’s head cocked. ‘Chief?’

I sighed. ‘Master.’ The word unstuck itself from my tongue like a thirsty dagger from a full gut. The dog waited a breath (which is a deep courtesy, among dogs), then said:

‘You shall see Crowhand?’

Again, I sighed. ‘Aye. He is a bad chief now’ – I drained my mead horn, and wiped clean my beard – ‘but he was a good chief, once.’

The dog regarded me, and his eyes spoke greater sorrows than men may feel. ‘That too is the way of dog.’ Then away he padded, and shadows brambled anew the smoke-fogged hall.

In that moment, Syve turned to me. ‘Did you say something?’

I rose. ‘Crowhand summons us.’

She frowned and stood and kissed me, and then we were away, our cloaks drawn tight, our swords loosened in their scabbards.

II

We entered Crowhand’s hall while he spoke to the daemons.

Syve cursed and sketched upon the air the skull sign of the Red Hound, which wards off all druidry. I touched the iron of my greatblade’s hilt, then the gold of my torc. The words of daemons were slick as lust and solid as smoke, and to them, I bent no knee. Such was mine and Syve’s oath.

Crowhand felt otherwise. On this, we’d quarrelled. Quarrels among we Darkoath of Aqshy – as among all true men – oft drew blood. But Crowhand was yet my chief, oathsworn and blood-pacted. And so I almost left his hall straight away, for I did not relish the thought of slaying the man who held my fealty.

Syve halted me with a look, and a hand upon my chest.

I scowled. ‘Crowhand knows what he does by summoning us here, now. An insult. A patent insult.’

Syve shrugged away my words with that nonchalance common to the beautiful and the brave. ‘We’ve harnessed the chariot,’ she said, ‘let us take the ride.’

‘It’s a poor charioteer who wheels his way along a treacherous path.’

Syve threw me another look. ‘The best charioteer wheels his way along whichever path presents itself, and spares no thought for its quality. If truly he is the best, he shall win through regardless. Thus runs the oath of all who stride the Path to Glory.’

My jaw clenched, but I suspected she’d the right of it, as she so often did. ‘You speak only half so well as you fight, Syve Fhorranach.’

This, she considered.

‘I sleep well knowing that’s still twice better a speaker and thrice better a fighter than you, Nuatha son of Noisiu,’ she said.

My lips curled back. Syve riposted with a snarl of her own and there we stood a moment, our eyes narrowed as blades in the dark, our teeth set.

Then, Syve stuck out her tongue at me. Together, we dissolved laughing, merry as ghouls with a bone. Syve squeezed my arm, I kissed her cheek, and on we walked into Crowhand’s hall.

Above a cauldron boiling with the blood of Sigmar’s men, Crowhand stood. That cauldron had once been, so Crowhand boasted, one of the ritual artefacts wielded by Hag aelves of the Shadow Queen. Crowhand boasted loudly, and often, and I knew many of the boasts for lies – but this was, perhaps, one of his few remaining truths. Syve and I had wrenched that bitter cauldron, by the strength of our hands and the iron of our blades, from one of the dagger-arched temples of the aelf queens. At night, I sometimes woke in a cold sweat, the slither of serpent scales and the memory of knives hounding me from my sleep.

As our final footfalls faded, Crowhand steeped the thumb of his right hand in that cauldron’s brew, withdrew it, stuck it in his own mouth and bit down hard. Blood, hot and yellow as a Fyreslayer’s eye, streamed down his chin and into his beard.

From everywhere, and nowhere, a voice resounded.

‘The oath is struck.’

It sounded like flies buzzing upon the nameless dead. I tasted blood in my mouth, and beside me Syve blinked crimson tears. My right hand rested on my sword hilt. My left sought Syve’s own.

Crowhand leaned against the cauldron. His eyes rolled loose in their sockets and his talons crawled across his naked chest, gouging furrows as they went. For a moment, he seemed neither chief nor man but only a beast, old and mad and vicious within its den. But then he noticed us and he straightened, and it was as if he shrugged away all his madness as one shrugs off an old hauberk.

‘Syve,’ he said, ‘Nuatha. Welcome, my proven. Come, come. Drink a horn with your chief. His tongue withers.’

He ushered us to his throne and high table. Once there, he produced a flagon of cindermead and a trio of horns, and then commenced pouring measures of chiefly proportion. I reached for one, but once again Syve laid her hand upon my chest.

‘You’ve sworn a new oath, Crowhand,’ she said.

‘Have I?’ Crowhand smiled, sluiced a horn of cindermead down his gullet, and belched.

‘Yes. You summoned us.’

Crowhand’s brow wrinkled. He scratched his beard. ‘Hnh. I do not recall.’

Syve laughed her champion’s laugh, flat as a spear’s tongue. The sort of noise that offers no challenge, because challenge is far beneath it.

‘Do not play us false, Crowhand. Speak your piece, or we leave. The night ages, and we’ve better uses for its life than yammering with you.’

He waved a hand, as if dispelling from us all future plans. ‘I’ll thrust to the heart of it then. Men threaten me. I’ve sworn myself to their slaughter before Godstide’s end.’

This he said with a reasoned air, as if he spoke trifles rather than rank madness. Syve, to her credit, did not baulk. She owned a sword’s beauty, and an axe’s smile, and these she wielded as she said:

‘Indeed. Who dies?’

Crowhand leaned forward as might a beast before its pounce. ‘Owain Heartsbane. Inghen Nathrach. Muirchu Gorm. Longhair Maol.’

‘Those are the chieftains of the clans.’

Crowhand’s lips peeled back. Mirth, false as a Sigmarite’s tear, wrinkled his cheeks. ‘Aye. So they are.’

‘It is Godstide Eve.’

‘Aye. So it is.’

Syve did not sheathe her smile. But I saw her hand settle again upon her greatblade’s hilt. Only then did I step forward, and say:

‘There is an oath upon Godstide, Crowhand. No murder among the clans. This, all men know.’

Crowhand’s eyes remained fixed upon Syve, but it was to me he spoke. ‘True.’

‘And yet it is murder you ask of us.’

Again, his lips curled. ‘True.’

‘And all this, you swore to the daemons?’

‘Aye.’

Were it any other man, I would have cut him down there and then. But Crowhand held my oath, no matter his other misdeeds. Know this: no crime besmirches a man more than oathbreaking.

Yet still. Crowhand spoke iniquity. This too you must know: a chief’s oath is his proven’s oath. Crowhand’s dealings were, therefore, our own. Thus he yoked us all to an unconscionable fate.

Perhaps something of my thought reached across the air and plucked at Crowhand’s heart, for he stared at us for a long moment, silent and grim.

‘The clans plot,’ he said at last, and I grunted.

‘When do they not?’

‘This time is different,’ Crowhand said. ‘There are rumblings across the realms. The Sigmarites amass great hosts in their fortress-cities. Brightspear, our infant neighbour, trembles forth its warbands beneath the Gravewing’s banner, and Hammerhal spews legion after legion, all clad anew in duardin steel. Many wield their firespitting weapons – against us, of all men! We, the flameborn, the firebred, sons and daughters of the Bright Mountains, whelped beneath our triplet moon, forged by battle against Grimnir’s gold-mad get!’ He slashed the air before him with his claw, as though reliving in that moment the deaths of his foes. Then he slumped back into his throne.

‘The Everchosen, that dripping of a churl’s arse, gathers strength in response. He calls his vassal knights and his companion hordes. The Varanspire, they say, rings hollow. His pet druids swear pacts on top of pacts.’

‘What of it, Crowhand?’ I asked. ‘The Darkoath are free. Let the Everchosen and the thunder lovers slaughter each other. What business is it of ours?’

Crowhand spat. ‘The Everchosen and his curs would make it our business. I hear things, Nuatha Silverfist. I know things. The clans chafe beneath my rule. They think me a coward for denying Archaon. They think me a fool for denying his wars. They covet my throne. My throne.’

And quick as summer lightning, Crowhand flung aside his mead horn and with his left arm clawed the air between us, as if all his many foes – real and imagined – might be summoned from smoke and shadow and forced to reckon their crimes. I stepped back, wary, for truly it is said that no man’s head sits sure upon his shoulders near a chief.

Syve, on the other hand, stood her ground. It was for that reason – among many others – that I loved her.

‘As you say, Crowhand,’ she said.

‘Aye, Syve Fhorranach. As I say. And I say, at Godstide they mean to strike me down. Their own chief, murdered like a common slave.’

Crowhand spat again and fell silent, but for the scratching of his talon against his flesh.

Syve and I exchanged glances. After a long silence, she said:

‘What would you have us do?’

Crowhand turned towards her. His eyes blazed. ‘I want you to find them. The both of you. Find them, and kill them. Do it swift and do it silent. Speak not a word to any clansman, ours or otherwise. Not even to the proven.’ He smiled.

Again, we exchanged glances.

‘Find who, Crowhand?’ said we both.

‘Them, gods eat you!’ Crowhand roared. ‘The plotters, the skulkers, the enemies of our people. Kill them. Maim them. Burn them. Kill, maim, burn, kill, maim, burn, kill maim burn.’

Mistake me not: Crowhand was a lord of war, once upon a time. But long had he walked the Path to Glory, and far. Such men turn strange. Not all the skulls he laid at the Hound’s throne belonged to foemen.

Syve looked him in the eye. ‘You doom us, Crowhand. You demand an impossible quest from us. You swear us to blood during the one bloodless time of the year. You set us against god and man alike. This is unworthy.’

No rage fired her voice. But she sheathed her smile, and her hands whitened upon her greatblade’s hilt.

Crowhand said nothing. He shut his eyes. He leaned his head upon his right hand. Then, in a voice low and soft, he asked us, ‘Which man among us does not seek the impossible?’

He sat there for a long time, fist to chin, as we stood silently before him. Eventually, he said:

‘Leave me.’

We did not require a second invitation. It was only as we reached the door that he called out again.

‘Silverfist. Stay. I’ve words yet in my hoard for you.’

Syve looked at me. I nodded and she stepped outside, though I knew she would not go far.

‘What?’ I asked.

He sniffed, then jutted his chin towards the threshold. ‘She is glory hungry, that one.’

‘She is a warrior.’

‘Ha! Aye, so she is. But consider this, boy. There are dogs, and there are curs. One licks the hand that feeds, the other bites.’

I looked at him. ‘You speak ill of a woman to her man, Crowhand.’

‘I am your chief, Silverfist. Hint no threats at me, lad. Your life is my coin to spend.’ His talons clawed splinters from the table as he spoke, and his eyes bulged like a man taken by the Blood God’s frenzy. I was unmoved.

‘She holds my oath as well, Crowhand. And I’ve hers. No man or god stands between us. Not even you.’

Crowhand relaxed all at once, a blade unflexed by its smith.

‘Aye, lad, I know. I know.’ Here he paused a moment, swilling deep from his mead horn.

‘If you’ve a point, make it.’

‘Just this, lad. You are like me. A man of the old school. To us, oaths mean something. Oh, aye, I’ve broken my share. By all the gods, I have. And I’ve suffered for it. That’s the way, Silverfist, the only way. A man must suffer for his wrongs.’

I shifted my feet. ‘Aye, true.’

‘But your Syve, well. She’d spit on all that for a moment’s glory. She’d writhe and wriggle her way out of any trouble thereafter too, ha! A hero’s quality.’ He winked. ‘But heroes can be a terrible thing. Watch her, lad. That’s all I say. Comes the time, she’ll see more glory out of my service than in it. She’ll spit on her oath to me then, and feel not a moment’s sorrow.’

I stood. I kept my hand from my greatblade, and that I considered a deed of heroic effort.

‘She will not.’

‘She will. And if she spits on that oath, what’s one oath more? I’ve seen her like before. We’re all moments in her saga, nothing more.’ Crowhand chuckled. ‘Mark me, lad. Watch her.’

I left him then. His laughter echoed.

Outside, I rejoined Syve. Hand in hand, we walked back to our own hall. It was a chill journey. This we endured beneath a crust of silence, at first. But eventually, Syve spoke.

‘What did he want of you?’

‘Words.’

‘That’s good. I do not share my bedmates. A serpent’s custom, that.’ She jabbed me in the ribs and grinned. When my own smile did not appear, hers faded. ‘What sort of words?’

I thought about that.

‘Mad ones.’ I looked up at the moons, then back to her. ‘This oath of Crowhand’s. It is an orruk black-burnt, but still, we must eat it. How, then?’

Syve looked sidelong at me. A cat’s grin twitched across her lips. ‘The way I see it, why bite?’

I blinked. ‘Crowhand swore the oath.’

‘Aye. Crowhand swore. Not us.’

‘And we are sworn to Crowhand. His words are our words.’

‘Crowhand is mad. Truly and utterly. Once, we might have hoped he might master himself. But now?’ Syve worked her mouth. ‘The gods pull him down, and us with him.’

Crowhand’s words drifted back to me. Watch her.

I grimaced, as one does at bitter memory. ‘It does not matter. We swore. Upon our steel and our souls, we swore.’

‘We swore to follow a strong chief. A chariot king and a ring giver. Him, we followed. This mad shadow is less Crowhand every day and more his daemons. And to them, I swore no oaths.’

My flesh hand I folded beneath my cloak, but my silver hand I clenched and unclenched at my side as if it might wring certainty from the vaporous night. ‘A warrior swears an oath, he swears it to himself most of all. A warrior breaks an oath, he breaks a part of himself first.’

Syve growled, chest-deep and spite-soft, and I did not begrudge her the sound.

‘An oath is a blade that cuts two ways,’ she said. ‘We swear ourselves to Crowhand, but Crowhand swears himself also to us. He walks the Path, same as us all. He stumbles now. He broke the blade, not us.’

‘Another man’s weakness does not convince me to weaken myself.’

Syve snorted. ‘We’ve served Crowhand our whole lives. ’Twas he who handed us each our first spear and shield. Men will not look upon us and see the slayers of Narmastos, Scion of the Flame Enraged. Nor even the despoilers of the Agloraxi Citadel and its hidden, jaundiced kings. They will see only Crowhand’s proven, and think us naught but Crowhand’s fools.’

I did not speak for a long while.

Syve narrowed her eyes. ‘If Crowhand dies and we are free of our oaths, but no chief will take us into his proven, what then? How might we live out the year?’

I’d no reply to that, and so made none. We’d arrived at our hall anyhow. Snow bearded its stone and no lights glimmered therein, and as we entered the maw of its threshold, a black wind skirled round us, howling high and loud beneath the clouded moons.

III

Morning unsheathed its edge along the horizon, and it was a gold licked clean of all night’s oil. The clans arrived with it.

First came Heartsbane’s people in their chariots of bone and brass, the skull rune of the Hound blazoned proud upon their brows. Then rode in Inghen Nathrach upon her great black serpent and with serpents braided in her hair, and before her went her six sons with eyes slitted and banners bold and the sweet perfumes of the Great Serpent wafting in their wake. After her crept in Muirchu Gorm and his hearthguard, all afoot and with their axes shouldered, the sevenfold sigil of the Fly Lord stamped upon their blades. Woad bruised blue their cave-paled flesh, and they alone of all the clans sang no songs, and of them no songs were sung, save dirges by the balefires.

Last of all arrived Longhair Maol in a chariot of fire, its steeds long-beaked and white-plumed like ravens pallored by the Mad God’s breath, and his people followed him in armour of scale and pearl and winking sapphire, and the breath of the sea was on them and the sound of it too, as if a storm ever foamed within their wake, unseen but not unfelt.

It was to these last that Syve led us. She and I had fought wars alongside Maol’s clan, and in those wars we first trod our feet upon the Path to Glory. At the Gilded River of far Chamon, whence flowed out a dead godbeast’s glittered blood, we took our first skulls alongside Longhair’s banners. There we’d bled against the eyeless aelves and their toothy beasts while Longhair’s people retreated.

So aye, we’d friends among Maol’s folk. From them, Syve thought we might unearth a tale or two of plots and plans, if in truth any sprouted among the clans. We strode into their camp, and all the while I sweated like a man condemned. Syve, on the other hand, walked with arms swinging and chin high, as if the doom of a mad chief were but a feather’s burden.

She still held that lackadaisical aura when we met Aedh son of Artgal, who by dint of sweat shared and blood spilt we named our shield brother. Night still coloured his hair, though grey dawn crept up his beard and down his temples, and his belly now hillocked his hauberk, but he was otherwise himself, and our friend. Such is not always the case for those set upon the Path.

‘Silverfist!’ Aedh cried upon sighting me. He clanged his fist into my own, which rang as silver does when struck. Then he turned and swept up Syve in a hug, and she laughed and pummelled his shoulder, and it was as if all the intervening years boiled away like morning mist. We sat and spoke and drank, and laughed again together.

Soon, talk drifted Crowhand’s way.

‘Mad, he is,’ said Aedh, ‘plain mad.’ Neither Syve nor I disagreed. Seeing this, Aedh looked first left, then right, then leaned in close, his great roar of a voice embered down to a whispering stub. ‘Is it true he slew Eochaid of the Axe and all his kin over a daemon’s whisper?’

‘True as day, and twice so bold,’ I said, and Aedh’s face darkened, for Eochaid of the Axe once stood as shield brother to him and his father.

‘A woeful deed,’ he said, and the shag of his hair shook to and fro like a bear bedevilled by the fish.

Syve looked to me and I nodded. She leaned forward.

‘A doomful deed,’ said she, ‘for a doomful man.’

‘Aye,’ said Aedh, ‘aye! So some say, and no mistake.’

Syve’s eyes brightened, as if at the sight of blood. ‘Says who, now?’

But Aedh smacked his lips and patted his belly and tugged at his beard, and all this he did as if with hands untethered from their mooring sinews. By such flailings did I, from old memory, know him drunken.

‘Doomful, aye. But it is not Crowhand alone who suffers. The Hound stirs upon his throne. The Mad God sends aloft his ravens with blood upon their beaks. Grim tidings, so I swear.’ And here he belched, scorching us with his mead breath. ‘Do you recall Crowsbrook, up near the Hissing Gates? Good women, there. And better cattle. But gone now, all gone. Changed, so men say, by the breath of the gods. Or else eaten away by the worms of the earth.’

Syve looked unconvinced. I shared her opinion, at first. But hearing Aedh’s words and looking upon Aedh’s face crumpled beneath his beard, I thought only of Crowhand’s words and our quest and the laughing night’s wind upon our necks. My scepticism rotted unplucked upon its vine.

‘Dire tidings,’ I said, and Aedh nodded.

‘And not the worst of it. Many men have fallen off the Path this past year. More than ever, I’ve heard, and strike me blind as a druid’s dog if I lie. You heard of Ronan Redmane’s fate? He scorned his oaths, some say, thought himself too bold, too brave, to be bound by the words of lesser men. And so the ire of the gods fell upon him. That, all men could see. By day, he stalked as a wolf in the wood, and blood never dried upon his blade before more wetted it anew. By night, he sat alone upon the witchling hill and stared down the moons, and what things he whispered, no man living may say. But soon, Ronan Redmane changed. No bed knew his back, and no man knew his friendship. Long grew his teeth, and short his hair. He forgot the tongue of hearth and home. He grasped no blade and wore no mail but hobbled on all fours like a dog. He snapped and foamed and snarled and slew all who dared meet his eye. But men said his eyes, alone of all his other parts, remained a man’s. Men said that when the moons hung low upon the hill, Redmane lay beneath them like a cur before its master, and though his mouth roared a beast’s roar, his eyes wept a man’s tears.’

Aedh said all this, then lapsed into stillness and silence. Syve and I shared a glance, and though we said nothing, we each knew the other’s thoughts. Redmane’s fate augured our own, were we to fail. The gods punish the oathbreaker.

We learned nothing more from Aedh about the dooms of men, and so we left him, that we might call upon other friends and hear other news.

All told tales of ruin. None spoke of plots, plans or other such conspiratorial maunderings. Morning died and night neared before we conceded defeat and left Maol’s camp. Ravens winged overhead, and their croaks resounded mad and raucous as the bells of the ratmen beneath their tunnelled earth. A fitting choir, for the sights we saw as we walked the path to our hall. Sigmarite scalps flapped above tents and huts. The heads of dead aelves pranced on spears above dancing clansmen.

It was as we passed by the dancers that we saw the prisoners. Each had once been a champion of their folk, once fated for greatness, but destined now for Godstide’s end, when champions of each clan would duel them beneath the eye of the gods.

The misery of the enslaved stamped its mark on every brow but one: a woman, tall and strong, blue tattoos inked bright and swirling upon her cheek and brow. She hailed us as we passed.

‘Clansmen,’ she said in a voice whipped raw, ‘water.’

‘We’ve no alms for beggars,’ Syve said. The woman met Syve’s gaze, and did not blink.

‘I do not beg. I ask.’

Syve ceased walking, and looked at the prisoner for a moment. Then, she stalked over, produced her own waterskin and handed it to the other woman. The prisoner drank, and her eyes did not leave Syve.

The woman’s chains were strange: black and dull such as no metal I’d ever seen, and runed with sigils that writhed like worms of fire within their ebon graves. The woman herself looked more familiar. She was pale-skinned, light-eyed and red-haired; indeed, she might have been a daughter of our own clan, were her tattoos different. Instead, they were a curious mix: the swirling foliates of Kurnoth’s clans melded freely with the lightning bolts and hammerheads of Sigmar Lightninglord.

‘Which one did you serve,’ I said to her, ‘the Hunter, or the Hammer?’

She handed back the waterskin to Syve and thanked her with a nod before she answered me. ‘Both, in their time. Neither now.’

‘A convert to the true gods, then?’

She scowled, twisting all the rough beauty from her face. ‘Never.’

‘You would walk alone then?’

‘If I could, aye.’ She rattled her chains. ‘A hard bull to rope, just about now.’

We turned and left her. But before we escaped earshot, she hailed us again:

‘Warriors! I know what comes. When we meet again, make it swift.’

Syve saluted her, and we were away. The screams of the dancers pursued us.

IV

We were glad to see our home again. We’d just passed its outer gate when a spear whistled past Syve’s head.

That was our only warning. Syve ripped her sword from its scabbard, whirled, stepped once, twice and lunged in the direction of the spear cast. Her thrust pulled back and a man came with it, gurgling his death rattle. My sword was out by then, and they were all around us.

Syve and I needed no words. As one, we struck: she the spear, I the shield. She thrust high, cut low, thrust high again, and each blow drew blood. A man with a horned helm and a longaxe hewed hard for her head, but I parried it, and when he drew back for another cut, I chopped off his hand. A gangly man stepped back and back and back again, his shield swatting away Syve’s every blow. One final step and the man halted, out of range. He grinned, brought his blade up in a flourish and died, Syve’s sword piercing his eye.

Our first wound was meant for Syve, but I took it. An axe slash off the backhand, aimed for her back as she crushed a man’s head with her sword’s pommel. I parried poorly, and the axeblade skimmed off my blade and into my arm. I cursed and killed the man with a cut to the throat, but the damage was done.

I knocked aside a spear thrust, then a dagger stab, but before I could muster a riposte the spearman was on me again. He thrust, stepped, feinted, thrust again. I bit on the feint, parried air and cursed aloud as pain seared my shoulder, and then the spearman was stepping back, a grin on his face and my blood on his spear. I would have smote him down for that grin, but my arm hung limp as a hanged man’s head at my side and would not rise.

Spearman and Daggerman glanced at each other. The former’s grin split all the wider, and his teeth were brown as the earth. The latter did not grin but tossed his dagger from hand to hand and stalked closer. Behind them, I saw Syve’s sword rising and falling and heard her shout, and thus knew that – for the time being, at least – I stood alone.

Daggerman was closer, but Spearman found his range first. No feints this time, just the hard lunge for the belly, like a boar meeting his huntsman. I caught the spear in my silver hand. Metal squealed on metal, sparks bit the gloom, and I jerked Spearman forward. He stumbled, and that was all I needed. I leapt, kicked his feet out from under him and punched him once, twice, thrice with my silver hand. He’d no face left after the third strike, and so I rose, turning just in time for Daggerman to rush me off my feet.

We grappled on the floor for a desperate moment. I felt his beard scruff my nose, felt his free hand clamp tight over my wrist. We rolled and he swung his dagger overhand. I caught it a finger’s breadth from my left eye, and there we struggled. Were I unwithered by wounds, perhaps I might have wrenched the dagger from his hand and gouged him a new smile. But as it was, he was a stout man, wide as a duardin and near as strong, and I could not baulk him.

‘Your soul is mine,’ he rasped, the dagger creeping towards me.

‘No,’ said a voice behind him, ‘it is mine.’

And then he screamed like a babe afire and Syve peeled him off me, her sword piercing his chest. She flicked him off the blade and he crashed into a wall, and then she was on him, cutting, thrusting, hacking, screaming herself now too, a raw animal sound birthed somewhere deep and bloody within her. When she was done, gore coated her like the Red Hound’s own froth, and that was the end of it. The daggerman had been the last.

I was standing by the time Syve made her way back to me, albeit on feet unsteadied by absent blood. She looked me up, then down, her gaze lingering on each wound in turn.

‘Parry next time,’ she said. I laughed and we embraced and kissed, and upon my blade I swear, nothing has ever tasted so sweet as Syve’s lips after battle. Some joys a man learns over and over. That truth I brandish as proof the gods do not loathe us entirely.

While Syve bound my wounds with herbs of hellknit and tincture of fleshscour, we spoke.

‘The crow is a tricksy bird,’ Syve said.

‘Eh?’

She nodded in the direction of one of the corpses. ‘That one I recognise. One of Crowhand’s rabble.’

‘We are Crowhand’s rabble.’

Syve tightened a bandage and I grunted.

‘We are Crowhand’s heroes,’ she said in the tone of a swordmother correcting her child. I might have scowled, had she not still had a hand upon my bandages.

‘Be that as it may, we know all Crowhand’s warriors. That man’s face I do not know.’

‘He served for a season two summers back. One of the seven brothers Maine. Blackknife, some called him.’

This time I did scowl, for I recalled the brothers and did not much enjoy the memory. Seeing my face, Syve laughed.

‘Aye, my thoughts also.’ She tied off the final bandage and we rose together. We heaped all the corpses in a pile outside and sure enough, each one resembled the other after a brotherly fashion. More from habit than need, we looted the corpses. They carried little of value: rings of greening bronze, weapons of rusting steel, clothing of reeking wool. All this, we tossed aside.

It was no loot that caught my eye, but a scrap of flesh. A scar marred the neck of the fifth Maine, and its shape sparked within me the shade of a memory. But like a bard’s lyric upon the tongue’s tip, the memory itself danced just out of reach. And so I stared at this scar, which writhed and puckered of its own accord upon the dead man’s neck. I stared, and I stared, and it seemed my ears trembled and I heard, as if beneath the very humming of the earth itself, a voice whispering, whispering, whispering, and–

Syve cursed, loud and long and vile. I started like a spooked steed, and when I glanced back at the dead Maine’s neck, I saw nothing but corpse skin. Syve cursed again, louder and longer this time. I rose.

Frowning, I limped over to her and she showed me what she’d found: a torc of fresh-worked gold, its finials a pair of talons outstretched. Crowhand’s mark, and no mistake.

Syve stomped on the seventh Maine’s head, and the skull shattered. This she did to each, denying them all an honourable beheading in the Hound’s name. I did not help, nor did I halt her. When she’d finished, she looked at me.

‘Vengeance upon Crowhand. Let us swear it so.’

Blood pooled all around us, black and glossy. I stared into that blood and, for a moment, it felt as if a thing vaster than myself glared back at me. Its laughter echoed, and was gone.

‘We know nothing of Crowhand’s work in this,’ I said, and I almost believed it. Syve patently did not.

‘You remember the Maines. They licked boots like the Fly Lord licks corpses. Any low deed flocked them near, and quick.’

‘I know. They sold themselves to any master, as you say. Not Crowhand alone.’

‘You jest, surely. Not Crowhand? You’ve seen the man. You know what he is becoming.’

That I could not deny. ‘Aye.’

Syve pointed towards the heaped corpses, and threw Crowhand’s torc upon them. ‘What more proof could you need?’

I crossed my arms. Pain lanced white fire through my shoulder, and I almost managed not to grimace. ‘Crowhand holds our oaths. I require more proof of his perfidy than a scrap of old gold and the piled corpses of fools.’

Her face darkened. Her fists flexed. She paced back and forth, and blood squelched beneath her. ‘Think of our names, Nuatha. Our futures. Crowhand stumbles from the Path. He shall drag us with him, if we allow it. I am worth more than such a fate.’ And here she gimleted me with a look. ‘We are worth more than such a fate.’

I parried her look with one of my own. ‘And what if Crowhand told it true? What if one among the chieftains seeks his head? Might this not be some ploy to deprive him of his champions at an opportune time? Crowhand holds our oath. We owe him more consideration than this.’

Syve’s face twisted, and she spat upon the ground between us. ‘I spit on Crowhand, and his oaths.’

And there we came to it, I reckoned. The ghost of Crowhand’s words drifted back to me: She’ll spit on her oath to me then, and feel not a moment’s sorrow. If she spits on that oath, what’s one oath more?

Syve’s ambitions were known to me, and for them, I loved her. A man must respect a woman to love her, and a warrior respects nothing more than another warrior. Ambition defines the warrior. But truly it is said, those things a man loves in the morning might affright him by night.

I heard a dog bark outside, and in its rough tones I perceived a warning. Without any further word, I ripped free my sword from its scabbard and hobbled to the door. Syve fell in behind me at once, all prior argument forsworn. Squatting beside me, her greatblade gripped point forward, she whispered:

‘More foes?’

‘Perhaps. One man approaches.’

She nodded, and we waited.

The moment, when it came, was swift. Our hall’s door flew open as if battered by a gargant’s palm. Syve and I sprang back, and in flowed that unwelcome night. Within it floated a man’s shape. We awaited no parley but rather lunged forth all at once, Syve cutting low, I thrusting high. Neither blade bit home, and it was as if we each dived again into Ulgu’s Penumbral Sea, blinding black and numbing cold.

Eyes shuttered, I dared not strike out with my greatblade, for fear a wild swing of my blade might cleave Syve, or even myself. Syve too swung no steel, but instead groped for me and sidled close, that we might await our doom together. Her nearness was a comfort.

Then, the darkness boiled away like mist before the conquering sun and we stood again within our own threshold. My hackles bristled as if swept by unclean eyes, and I whirled and behind us there stood a man. Again, we bandied no challenge but leapt at once to the attack.

‘Halt,’ said the man and we did. A new chill shivered me then, for I knew a druid’s voice when I heard it, and it was a fell sound. Though I did not wish it, I made myself look at the druid, for a man must know his doom’s herald.

Hair, rust-red and curling, furred him all over. The hand he raised up between us was clawed like a hound’s paw and the voice with which he spoke was likewise a hound’s bark, albeit battered into the roughest mannish shape.

‘Syve Fhorranach,’ he said, ‘and Nuatha Silverfist. I am Dearg Doghide. Through me, the gods speak. Follow me, and meet your doom.’

V

Know this. Among my people, all men own but one oath in common, and it towers above all others: the word of a druid cannot be refused. Among the Sigmarite peoples, I know this is not so. Some among them even deem their druids ‘witches’, anoint themselves their hunters, and root them out with fire and sword.

I remain undecided on which custom I prefer.

Regardless. This druid led us through the night.

‘Where do you take us?’ asked Syve, and her voice dripped scorn as a manticore’s tail drips venom.

‘Say nothing,’ said the druid, and so silence ruled us until we reached a place of rock and root. There, stone heaped like the brow of an ogor sheltered a shallow cavern wherein pale fire burned. Up to that white flame walked the druid. We trailed him like his hounds. In my left ear, I heard the druid speak a word of power, but in my right ear I heard nothing at all, but felt only the cold sear of pain and then the warm gush of blood.

The white flame flared bright and through it stepped a man.

‘Hail to Maol, Bethad’s son,’ said the druid, ‘hail to he who shall be chief hereafter.’

I sketched the Hound’s rune upon the air and Syve followed suit. Longhair Maol, aetherflame spuming from his scaled armour like foam off a longship, took no note of us, and instead addressed the druid.

‘You have told them?’

The druid bowed low. ‘They remain innocent of our word, for now.’

Maol snorted, and ran a hand over his bald pate. ‘Innocence, aye?’ His gaze crawled over Syve, then me. ‘It holds no claim on such as these, I reckon.’

We said nothing, for we could not. Maol did not approve.

‘Do they have tongues, or does Crowhand cast those off as well, alongside all sense and honour?’

Syve stuck out her tongue, then jabbed a finger at the druid. Maol sighed.

‘Unleash them, Dearg.’

The druid cast some powder into the fire and spoke a word. Wormwood and corpse ash prickled my tongue and I cursed aloud. Syve smiled, and said:

‘Chief hereafter, Longhair? Mark me, that seems a daemon’s title – here today, mist tomorrow.’

Maol did not smile. ‘Do not mock your future chief, Syve Fhorranach. It is the way of chiefs to keep a long memory.’

‘You’ve trapped us and trussed us, Longhair, and for scant reason,’ I said. ‘We would have supped mead and meat with you without any druidry, had you but asked.’

Maol glanced sidelong at the druid, discomfort graven plain across his brow. ‘Aye, well. What we speak is no talk fit for the mead bench, Silverfist. A man must be certain of some things before he hazards them.’

‘You make a poor plotter, Longhair. Speak freely, or release us.’

Maol closed his eyes for a moment. When they opened again, he grinned. It was a wolf’s gesture.

He looked at the druid. The druid did not move, but something in his gaze must have emboldened Maol, for the chieftain drew himself up and said, ‘Crowhand must die.’

I drew my greatblade.

Or would have, had the druid not laid his hand upon my own and fixed me with his amber eyes.

Syve’s hand did not shift, but her eyes narrowed. ‘You speak treachery to Crowhand’s sworn swords. Are you so desperate for death?’

‘Death, is it? And what are you sworn to already, but death?’

I sniffed, for like an old hound with his trail, even I might scent out a hint from time to time.

‘You know of Crowhand’s new oath.’

‘Aye, Silverfist, I know.’ Maol stepped forward, and shadows hooded his face. ‘I know other things as well. Your breath had not cooled in Crowhand’s hall before he sent for Maine Blackknife and his six brothers. Nor was this the first time he ordered your deaths.’

Neither I nor Syve rose to that bait. But neither did we deny it. Crowhand’s madness was plain.

Doghide, seeing our silence, rummaged beneath his robes and produced a fragment of fireoak branch on which runes were scratched. Know this: all things of the realms have their oaths, even the trees. It runs thus: upon a fireoak’s unbroken bark, no man may etch a lie. But I knew also that Dearg Doghide would, in that moment, offer us no truth but one he wanted us to see.

Yet, a truth unseen is no less a truth. And so Syve and I grasped the branch together and read it over.

The head of Nuatha and the head of Syve for my footstools. And beneath that, the signature: Conn son of Cathal son of Lugaid, called Crowhand.

A coldness crept through me at those words and for a time, none of us spoke.

Maol broke first.

‘You see now. Kill Crowhand for me. Kill him at the Godstide feast, when the gods’ eyes open. Kill him then, and I shall free you of his fool dealings.’

Syve did not quite scoff. ‘Are you to be a god hereafter, Maol son of Bethad, as well as a chief?’

‘No. But the world changes, Fhorranach. More than you know, it changes. The old times are passing, and the old ways with them. We must change with them, or be lost. The gods turn their favour from us. Crowhand is not the only one stricken with madness, nor was Redmane the only one twisted unto beasthood. Our people cling to their traditions like a babe to its mother’s teat. But now we must be weaned, else we perish.’

I thought little of such talk, for I was a man well fitted for the old ways, but Syve nodded along, albeit with the air of one begrudging her own agreement.

‘We live in the gods’ realm, that I do not deny. But what do the gods respect if not might? And what shows more might than defiance of the gods?’

Syve and I shared a look at that one.

‘A mad thought,’ I said. Syve nodded.

‘Aye. If you’re set upon defying the gods until they love you, Longhair, then what do you need from us? March your clan into Crowhand’s hall and slay him now.’

Doghide stepped forward. ‘We enact the will of some gods, even as we laugh in the face of others. But the gods do not act as mortal men. They are creatures of symbol and ritual. My lord’s rise is destined, but destiny is a thing forged, not a thing born. There are forms we must follow. Your part in this is but a facet of a grander design. A necessary one, at this juncture.’

Syve frowned. She turned to Maol. ‘What do we stand to gain?’

Maol smiled a rogue’s smile, such as he wore on our battlefields of yore. ‘Freedom from Crowhand’s madness. The eye of the gods. The renown of men. With that, and a strong sword hand, shall we ride roughshod over the realms.’

‘Ha! The Everchosen’s tongue speaks through new lips, I reckon,’ said Syve, though I could tell from the tone of her voice and the set of her jaw that she was tempted. Nor was I less tempted myself. With Crowhand’s treachery laid bare, I felt a different sort of man. Emptier, perhaps, yet freer also. And hungry, aye, hungry indeed for blood and souls and a mad vengeance upon the realms.

Perhaps some of this showed in my face, for it was Dearg Doghide who answered, his grin sly as the Mad God’s own.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. There are more masters in the realms than you know, and powers older and greater even than the Varanspire and its three-eyed lord.’

As the druid spoke, I stared at him, marking well his bearing and his accoutrement. I admit that before this moment I’d kept my gaze from him. But now some instinct compelled my eyes. I marked that, beyond his red and hairy hide, Doghide festooned himself with all the many bones and fetishes common to the druid, each woven in or around his tangle of beard or in his mane of hair. At first, his talismans seemed random in their arrangement, but even as I looked him over, it was as if the tumblers of my memory all clicked into place and I perceived within those relics a familiar rune. The third time this day, in fact, I’d seen its like. Yet, my face did not betray my recognition.

‘We agree,’ I said. ‘Crowhand dies, and fie upon the gods.’

Syve’s eyes widened, but she spoke no word against me. Even Maol seemed more surprised than pleased.

‘Bold words,’ he said. ‘Let us match them with bold deeds. Godstide Feast awaits!’

And before I or Syve might say elsewise, Doghide was between us, and his hands were upon our own and his words were in our ears and the white flame swaddled round us. We rose then into the sky, and I shouted, and Syve shouted, and between us Doghide howled his laughter as a blackness devoured us.

VI

My eyes opened, and a sword swung for them.

I leapt back, drew my own steel in time to parry the backcut, feinted a cut of my own and thrust instead. My greatblade sank to its quillons in a broad man’s belly. He coughed bloody foam in my face, and died. I kicked him off my blade and stepped back into a guard, heart racing, eyes scanning.

First, I saw Syve standing beside me, her own blade drawn and bloody, and that was good. But then I saw where we stood, and among whom.

We were at Godstide Feast, aye, and at its climax too. There, Crowhand and all the other chieftains gathered round his Hag aelf cauldron. In it, they mixed their blood for the god’s own brew while below them, in a pit of skulls, champions and prisoners fought.

‘Crowhand!’ Syve shouted, pointing with her greatblade to the cauldron perched on a dais above us. In her eyes glimmered a killer’s light, fiery as Aqshy itself, and it kindled in my breast a lust for blood, for souls, for red raw death.

But I remembered that rune upon Doghide’s person – among other places – and though it was the barest glinting of a plan, I realised I possessed a plan nonetheless.

‘Manacles,’ I shouted back at her, and her brow knit in confusion. I gestured at my wrist. ‘The prisoner. Manacles.’ I groped for the right word, sweeping my sword out towards our surrounding melee. ‘Runes!’

Syve’s eyes conveyed her understanding. Yet, her brow did not unwrinkle. ‘Crowhand,’ she growled.

I shook my head. She scowled and pulled away, but I looped an arm around her and drew her near and set my mouth against her ear and whispered, ‘Trust me.’

And whatever rejoinder she held for that, I do not know, for it was in that moment that a man barrelled between us, a hammer fisted in each arm and Sigmar’s name bawling from his lips. Thus did the battle come upon us.

The hammer wielder thundered a wide stroke at my head. I dipped below it and cut an upstroke at his hand, felt my blade bite home, heard him cry aloud in a foreign tongue, and then I was away, running through the melee as well as I could. What I remember, I remember only in fits and snatches. A longaxe hewed for my legs, and I jumped it like a chariot jumps a ford. A shieldmaiden, blonde of braid and broad of stance, barred my path and we swashed blows back and forth for a breathless moment before a spearman stuck her through the back. I slew the spearman – it can be a dastard’s weapon, the spear, and thus I always relish a spearman’s slaying – and then I was onward again, slipping on gore and trailing gut, my eyes combing, always combing, for the bright glare of a rune-marked manacle amid the din.

Above this all floated the chanting of the druids and the singing of the chiefs at their cauldron, and only once did I glance up from my red work towards Crowhand and his ilk. By him stood Muirchu Gorm and Owain Heartsbane and Inghen Nathrach and, aye, Longhair Maol as well, looking none the worse for wear. Crowhand, by chance or design, met my eye as I looked, and on his face he wore an expression whose meaning I could not divine. It was the face of man exultant, and of a man trapped.

But then I saw among the melee the red glower of a rune upon black iron and I forgot all else in my charge towards its bearer.

When I reached the prisoner, she was almost slain. Corpses ringed her, and she fought Inghen Nathrach’s champion, which meant she fought Inghen Nathrach’s eldest son, Bricriu. He wielded, of course, a spear.

And like a serpent, that spear darted for the red-haired prisoner. Bleeding already from half a dozen wounds, she scarcely managed a parry, flicking away Bricriu’s point with her own notch-edged sword. Bricriu thrust again and she stepped back. As she stepped, one knee buckled beneath her weight and she stumbled and Bricriu was there again, the tail of his spear whipping into her jaw and spilling her sideways, and it was as he raised his spear for the killing thrust that I struck him with a thrust of my own. The force of my blow barged him off his mark and his spear struck only dirt. I hewed for his head, but he caught it on the haft of his spear and kicked me back.

‘Silverfist,’ he said, and sketched a salute. ‘We’d all thought you dead. Or fled.’

I hewed another stroke at his head – I leave bandied words to the bards and their fables – and then I swung again and again. Bricriu was equal to them all, batting each aside like a cat might bat a mouse.

And then he was on me, thrusting with his spear’s head and clobbering with its tail and I stepped back and back and back with every blow. Blood seeped down my arms and legs as my wounds burst their bandages, and my sight swam before me as if I stood again before the eyeless aelves and their witchling sea.

But still I took my guard: point forward and feet braced. In such a stance should all men meet their death, if men they be.

Bricriu looked as if he meant to oblige me, advancing with his spear held in a shortened guard, his face blank. But then from behind me there came a sound like the clear clarion of a huntsman’s horn, and never have I heard a sound so sweet, for it was the sound of steel on steel, and of the breaking of chains. Sounds that, once heard, a man does not forget.

Bricriu turned, serpent swift as his namesake, and my eyes turned with him. Behind him stood Syve. She grinned at me and quirked her eyebrows and lifted up a manacle of black iron. Bricriu roared and started for her, but even as his first foot fell upon the dust, the red-haired prisoner rose up at Syve’s back, and her eyes were like no woman’s eyes but were instead balls of flame, and in her outstretched hands blazed that same fire.

Bricriu hesitated, and the red-haired woman clawed the air before her and flames burst over him like dawn upon the tomb of night. Smoking, he fell dead.

Syve and I leapt back and the red-haired woman rose still further into the air and flames leapt from her and all the while she screamed:

‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’

Syve leapt upon me and bundled me down and covered us with her cloak, upon which enchantments were woven. There we lay until the screams ceased and silence descended.

VII

Syve unbundled us from her cloak. We beheld a red and sweltered hell. All the clansmen were, it seemed, dead or fled. Of the red-haired woman, we saw no sign. This we counted a mercy. For her, and for us.

We climbed out of the pit and made our way to Crowhand, the chieftains and their cauldron. It lay overturned upon its dais, and of Inghen Nathrach, Muirchu Gorm and Owain Heartsbane, we saw naught. But of Longhair Maol and Conn Crowhand, we saw much. The last, I think, any living soul saw of them at all.

Next to each other they lay, each man’s hand upon the other’s throat, each man’s blade in the other’s belly, each man’s flesh licked black by the red-haired woman’s flame. Here and there, pale bone peeked through the ash of their skin. Maol had no eyes left, nor a face to hold them, and it was only by his armour’s molten remnants that we recognised him at all.

Crowhand had more life in him, if only just. Next to his head, I squatted.

‘Behold, my chief, the man who swore your slaughter, slaughtered now himself before Godstide’s end.’

Crowhand did not turn his head. But his eyes rolled towards me, wide and white amid his blackened face.

‘Silverfist,’ he croaked.

Then he chuckled and choked and was dead.

I do not know how long I sat there beside him. But it was a longer vigil, I think, than many a chief receives.

At last, I stood. My legs buckled beneath me, and Syve steadied me against her shoulder. She kissed me, long and hard. And then we limped away from that place. We did not look back.

It was some time, and some distance later, that Syve asked, ‘The prisoner woman. How did you know she was a druid?’

I shrugged. ‘I did not know. I guessed.’

This was not strictly true, but my jaw ached and I did not quite feel up to explaining myself. Nor did I quite believe she’d make sense of what I thought, for I was unsure it made sense even to myself.

Syve took this all in her stride. Mad!’ she said. ‘Plain mad as any chief.’

Again, I shrugged. ‘Perhaps. We live, though. And free of the gods and their dealings to boot.’

The ‘for now’ I left unsaid, as a man must sometimes leave grim tidings unsaid.

Syve smiled at my words. ‘The last survivors of Crowhand’s last Godstide. There is a song in that, I say. A rare song, and that’s the truth. Our names shall grow by this.’

I was unsure of that last part, but the prospect of glory cheered her and I could not bring myself to prick her for it.

‘Not quite the last,’ said a voice behind us, and we froze, for it was not a voice unfamiliar to us. More’s the pity.

‘Show yourself, druid,’ I said, ‘and speak your piece quick. The oaths of the gods do not grip our hands so tightly as once they did.’

Dearg Doghide unfolded from the shadows above us, dropped down onto his haunches and fixed us each with his gaze.

‘Peace, Nuatha Silverfist. And peace, Syve Fhorranach.’ He favoured us with a lopsided grin. ‘Leal service you did me and mine today, heroes. It shall not be forgotten.’

This time, I drew my sword. ‘We are no hounds of Archaon, druid.’

Doghide snickered. It was not a happy sound. ‘The Everchosen, so called, rules me not. No no no, brave heroes, I serve a separate chief. A dark master, one might say, for he walks always among the darkened ways. A shadowed lord in truth, aye.’

With every word, his smile widened until his lips stretched back to his ears, wider than any man’s mouth should move. Syve did not strike at him, but her hand upon my shoulder tightened.

‘Prate your lies elsewhere,’ she said. ‘Whatever purpose we served, it was by chance. We freed ourselves of Crowhand’s madness. Aye, and Longhair’s too. Get you gone, else we free ourselves of yours also, and in much the same way.’

Doghide held up his paw-like hands as if in supplication. His smile remained fixed in place. Yet still we heard his voice, though neither his lip nor his tongue flapped.

‘As you will, as you will. Yet whatever else you may think, the fact remains – a service you were asked, and a service you performed.’ And here he clapped his hands together with a sound like thunder. ‘For every service, there must be a reward. Such is my master’s oath and thus, such is also my own. Therefore, I offer you now that greatest of all gifts, which is wisdom.’

He looked first Syve in the eye, then me, and said:

‘The Path to Glory is a lonesome walk. Neither man nor woman may stride it with a fellow. There shall come a day when you two must choose – each other, or the Path.’

And with that he ascended back into his shadows, a spider on its thread. Last of all to fade was his grin.

Syve and I looked at each other. Then, ahead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Graham Thomas Wilcox is a writer and editor living in the Northeastern United States with his wife and their two dogs. “Grimnirsson” is his first story for Black Library.

An extract from Darkoath.

RUN-RUN-RUN!

These were the thoughts of Skitterdeek, black-clad swift-killer, blade in hand. His grip on his punch-knife tightened, but there was no murder-boldness in him. Fear squeezed his muscles, flattened his dampening fur, and widened his eyes. He scampered between trees aglow with red fire, seeking the sanctuary of cold shadow, seeking darkness, finding none.

The burning forest was thick with skaven-shriek, and his nostrils burned with ash and terror-musk. Death crashed through the brush behind him – the woods-birthed monstrosity that had been the end of Deathmaster Zenyk.

DEATH-DEATH-DEATH!

Once, Skitterdeek had treasured the thought of his master’s demise. It was something to be wished in secret, private and precious. He dreamed often of his knife slipping quick-sharp into the gap between Zenyk’s shoulders. It would be a gasping, quiet, silent, clever slaying, in Skitterdeek’s imaginings. He would be feared, when the deed was discovered, and then they – his Night Runners – would call him Deathmaster Skitterdeek, and they would follow him.

Skitterdeek no longer wished to be followed.

A roar shook the trees and rattled through Skitterdeek’s skull. The worst doings of the hellpits of Moulder could not create such a noise as this. It was hot anger and beast-rage, the wrath of a realm defiled.

Skitterdeek had been there, when the cleverness of the Great Horned Rat had snapped the spine of the cosmos. He had felt the Mortal Realms buck and quake. The skein of unreality that encased the hidden domain of the skaven had split, sending its blighted innards erupting upwards, shuddering into the night sky of sundered Aqshy.

Blight City was hidden no more. Blight City had declared itself: Here I am, here I am! Know me in terror, know me in ruin!

On that day Skitterdeek had joined teeming others surging quick-quick beyond the shattered territories of the domain called the Gnaw, which burned warp-green and belched corruption. The fell touch of the Gnaw extended to grasp greedily at the realm, snatching away the territories of preening city-dweller and brutish marauder alike. The Great Horned Rat had done what no other god of Ruin could do, would do, and broken the world. Quick-cruel Skitterdeek was his clever blade, his servile supplicant, his scheming inheritor. One of many, one of millions.

Skitterdeek had performed much knife-work in the days and weeks since. As the Deathmaster directed, so he struck. He and his kin stole into the holdfasts of those who had stood against the skaven, and into the shelters and hiding places of those who were simply in the way. They made play of murder. They exalted in it, for the thirteenth hour had come. For the first time, Skitterdeek dared to ply his trade openly. For the first time, he met the gaze of those whose throats he slit. Skitterdeek thrilled at what it was to be witnessed, to be seen.

Skitterdeek no longer wished to be seen.

There were hunters in these burning forests, loping warriors who dared trespass closer to the fringe of the Gnaw than any other of their ilk. Deathmaster Zenyk and his killers had stalked them in turn. Then, in the darkest part of the night, they had lost them. This was an impossible thing. The Night Runners had split for the shadows, seeking the scent of sweat and blood in the air, but had not found it. Skitterdeek roamed a short distance from the others, taking advantage of their distraction, keeping his eyes on Zenyk. It was no small thing to track a Deathmaster in the dark, but Skitterdeek did so. Perhaps this would be his moment, after all.

Zenyk had slipped razor-quick between two thick trees and scampered up a sheer-sided boulder, seeking vantage. He sniffed. Something whistled against the ash and sulphur in the air; the Deathmaster twitched, caught its scent, and twisted to the side. An iron-tipped javelin missed his head by inches and dug deep into the rock at his back. Zenyk hunched, red eyes narrowing along the course of the javelin’s flight, keen senses reversing the path of the projectile to the hand that threw it. He found the place where his assailant had concealed themselves, and slunk low. The Deathmaster palmed a whisper-sharp throwing star and tensed in anticipation of the wrist-flick that would send it scything into the lurking human’s jugular.

The Deathmaster permitted himself a chitter of satisfaction – a cruel murmur, scarcely audible above the tremble of the burning forest.

But Skitterdeek heard it, and so did something else.

Something above them.

The sound it made was little more than an exhalation, but the malevolence in it froze Zenyk stiff and had much the same effect on hidden Skitterdeek. Zenyk inched forward and made to leap down from the boulder, eyes downturned, blind to the slender limb that grasped towards him from the smouldering canopy.

Skitterdeek saw it soon enough to catch its shape, but not soon enough to warn the Deathmaster. The limb was pale and slender, serpentine but jointed in too many places, jagged like frozen lightning, ragged like bird bones. It twitched as it descended, splaying into seven slender fingers, widening until it had the aspect of a slow-grasping hand. It had no means of sight that Skitterdeek could see, but the uncanny creature tracked the movement of the Deathmaster with unerring surety.

Zenyk, star in hand, set on his own kill, sensed the danger at the last moment. The fur on his shoulders bristled into spines. He twitched, spun, and the creature grabbed for him, thin fingers closing about his neck. With violence it wrenched the Deathmaster into the air, piercing his flesh, forcing his head back, fixing his gaze upward. Zenyk scrambled with claw and tail for his daggers, but what his eyes saw in the canopy squeezed the fear-musk from him. He shrieked, and began to struggle like a trapped animal.

Skitterdeek, somewhat curious, somewhat compelled, crept a step forward. His fellow Night Runners were not so subtle. Cloaked skaven dashed from their hiding-spots and scampered to assist the Deathmaster. Skitterdeek saw grey-furred Kryllyk, craven-loyal, in the lead. He mounted the boulder and leapt, slashing for the predator that had their master in its grasp–

Death came for Kryllyk in the shape of another iron-tipped javelin, which caught him beneath his ribs and punched down through his guts. He flew away into the shadows, and instinct compelled the others to turn their attention to these new assailants and prepare to defend themselves. Night Runners were ambushers and trapmakers by trade, and it was a rare foe that could turn these same tricks against them. Those they hunted encircled them now in the trees, and Skitterdeek realised the precarity of his own, isolated position. He found his boldness, dashing for the shelter of the pack–

It was then that death truly came for the Deathmaster. Bad death, madness of the wild. The canopy started to shake as it birthed terror. Zenyk was hauled upwards with a juddering motion as the creature in the trees descended. No slender, serpentine hunter this, but a spawn of Ruin, multi-limbed and muscular. Skitterdeek froze. The limb that had seized up the Deathmaster was not a limb at all.

It was something closer to a tongue, barbed and unnatural, that hunted with a will all of its own and terminated in a long, canine mouth lined with hard, flat teeth. Rows of red eyes split the patchy fur of its cranium, and they glowed in the reflected light of the burning forest. Twining antlers were its crown, this avatar of Ruin, and Skitterdeek’s bravery left him. Neither pack-sure nor murder-bold, he dropped low and cowered.

The beast fell, and as it did it half-swallowed the Deathmaster. Zenyk’s legs bucked, and his tail snapped about as gnawing, grinding teeth found purchase. The creature came down upon the boulder with its hindlimbs and let its weight carry it forward to crush the fear-frozen skaven at its feet. That was when the shrieking began in earnest. That was when Zenyk’s clawpack was broken. That was when the cleverness of Skitterdeek, black-clad swift-killer, was undone by terror.

RUN-RUN-RUN!

And so Skitterdeek ran.

The ground beneath him rose into a rocky incline, not steep enough to slow him, but steep enough to indicate that he had reached the far side of the valley in which the burning forest lay. This was good. This was to be desired. Beyond the valley lay the broken mountains – broken by the Horned Rat itself – where Skitterdeek might find shelter, in the place where the monster was not.

He let the incline guide him upward. Dark, bleeding shapes on the ground drew his eye as he passed them. Skaven dead, stuck with arrows, split by blade. Better than the bad-death, Skitterdeek thought.

Another roar shook the trees, as if in agreement.

He spied movement in the undergrowth ahead. With a dextrous, practised motion, Skitterdeek passed his blade from hand to tail, then burst forward on all fours. He crashed into the brush in anticipation of a quick, frenzied slaying of whatever creature blocked his escape.

The eyes that met Skitterdeek as he leaped into the fray were the mirror of his own: fear-wide, bloodshot, skaven. Momentum carried the two Night Runners into one another, biting, clawing and slashing, until pack-instinct pulled them apart. Skitterdeek hissed. Fear-musk masked his counterpart’s scent, but now he saw the blind white eye of one he knew as Qezqit. The other skaven bared his fangs and snapped, but recognition sapped the kill-urge from each of them. No cleverness or gain in this, they knew. Better odds together.

Skitterdeek flicked with the tip of his blade towards the steep-sided edge of the valley.

‘Go-quick,’ he hissed. ‘Go-quick-now!’

On they ran, Skitterdeek and Qezqit, a clawpack of two. Their paths interwove and pulled apart as they raced one another for the safety of the forest’s edge. Neither would have hesitated to flee were the other set upon by beast or hunter, or fall afoul of trap or wildfire. Each gambled, in that sense, on the other’s misfortune – but numbers, even scant numbers, returned some boldness to their quick-beating hearts and lent speed to their low, flowing forms. The realm-shaking roar of the forest-terror receded as the trees grew thinner around them, and the sulphurous air – the breath of Aqshy – gained the good sharp acid edge of warpstone, the distant but welcome signature of the Gnaw.

Skitterdeek bounded up the rocky ground, head low, eyes forward. Qezqit’s path converged with his as the incline narrowed towards a gap in the ridge. The forest fell away behind them, and they gained speed, combatting sudden moonlit exposure with sheer nightclad swiftness.

RUN-RUN-RUN.

These were the thoughts of Skitterdeek, calmer now as terror eased its grip and confidence returned. The burning woods belonged to the enemy, but the realm belonged to the skaven, and Skitterdeek was abroad in it now, Skitterdeek was free.

They pressed together through a break in the rocks, chasing the cold darkness that awaited them in the far lee of the ridge. Heightened senses caught a crunch – leather on metal on stone.

Not skaven.

Qezqit chittered. A spike of fear ran through both of them: paws found knives. Yet they were too close to stop now, and too fast to do anything but run and slay.

A shadow fell across Skitterdeek’s path – a shadow in human shape, tall, war-strong. Cold air misted beneath a heavy brow, and cold moonlight caught the edge of an axe, broad and black. It faced them alone, this shadow, and Skitterdeek tensed his grip on his punch-dagger and raised his tail-knife and shrieked. At his side, Qezqit did the same.

They bounded apart, scaling the sides of the gap in the ridge, throwing themselves forward into the fray, driven by fear and spite and kill-need.

KILL-KILL-KILL!

Skitterdeek did not meet the gaze of the warrior that set itself against him. As he leaped forward his eyes were drawn, unbidden, to the adornments that glimmered where they hung from the human’s neck, or were pinned within the mass of beast-fur that hung about its shoulders. Scratch-carved tablets of stone, monstrous fangs, trophies – and among these trophies, skulls. Long skulls.

Skitterdeek raised his knife, and the warrior’s axe came about in a wide, horizontal sweep. Skitterdeek saw the beast-in-the-woods in those long skulls, its jaw distended, helpless Zenyk in its teeth. Skitterdeek saw Qezqit in those long skulls, as the warrior kicked the other skaven aside with a heavy boot and made to crush him against the rocks as he bit and scratched for life.

Skitterdeek saw himself in those long, skaven skulls, as his killer’s black axe took his head.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2025 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

Conn Crowhand’s Last Oath © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2025. Conn Crowhand’s Last Oath, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-83609-247-6

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