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Contents

Cover

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

Soulblight Gravelords: Masters of Death

NEFERATA: MORTARCH OF BLOOD

1. A Call to Purpose

Chapter 1

2. Exhortations

Chapter 2

3. On the Crucible of Disaster

Chapter 3

4. Treatise on Blindness

Chapter 4

5. The Use of Enemies

Chapter 5

6. Philosophy of Deception

Chapter 6

7. The Understanding of Annihilation

Chapter 7

8. The Understanding of Annihilation

Chapter 8

9. Dominion

Chapter 9

10. Exhortations

Chapter 10

11. War and the Passions

Chapter 11

12. On the Crucible of Disaster

Chapter 12

13. The Orders of Chaos

Chapter 13

14. Exhortations

Chapter 14

15. The Understanding of Annihilation

Chapter 15

16. A Call to Purpose

Chapter 16

17. The Understanding of Annihilation

Chapter 17

NEFERATA: THE DOMINION OF BONES

1. The Red Art

Prologue

2. Lessons of the Gaze

Chapter 1

3. Overtures

Chapter 2

4. The Uses of Weakness

Chapter 3

5. On the Monstrosity of the Past

Chapter 4

6. Ruminations and Satires

Chapter 5

7. Tactics

Chapter 6

8. Maxims

Chapter 7

9. The Invisible Flames

Chapter 8

10. Strategies of Illusion

Chapter 9

11. Treatise On Pleasure

Chapter 10

12. Truth as Destroyer

Chapter 11

13. War and Ecstasy

Chapter 12

14. Threads of Stratagem

Chapter 13

15. The Forges of Death

Chapter 14

16. Ontology of Time

Epilogue

A DYNASTY OF MONSTERS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

THE THRESHOLD

OBSIDIAN

THE DANCE OF THE SKULLS

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Hollow King’

Backlist

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

The Mortal Realms have been despoiled. Ravaged by the followers of the Chaos Gods, they stand on the brink of utter destruction.

The fortress-cities of Sigmar are islands of light in a sea of darkness. Constantly besieged, their walls are assailed by maniacal hordes and monstrous beasts. The bones of good men are littered thick outside the gates. These bulwarks of Order are embattled within as well as without, for the lure of Chaos beguiles the citizens with promises of power.

Still the champions of Order fight on. At the break of dawn, the Crusader’s Bell rings and a new expedition departs. Storm-forged knights march shoulder to shoulder with resolute militia, stoic duardin and slender aelves. Bedecked in the splendour of war, the Dawnbringer Crusades venture out to found civilisations anew. These grim pioneers take with them the fires of hope. Yet they go forth into a hellish wasteland.

Out in the wilds, hardy trailblazers restore order to a crumbling world. Haunted eyes scan the horizon for tyrannical reavers as they build upon the bones of ancient empires, eking out a meagre existence from cursed soil and ice-cold seas. By their valour, the fate of the Mortal Realms will be decided.

The ravening terrors that prey upon these settlers take a thousand forms. Cannibal barbarians and deranged murderers crawl from hidden lairs. Martial hosts clad in black steel march from skull-strewn castles. The savage hordes of Destruction batter the frontier towns until no stone stands atop another. In the dead of night come howling throngs of the undead, hungry to feast upon the living.

Against such foes, courage is the truest defence and the most effective weapon. It is something that Sigmar’s chosen do not lack. But they are not always strong enough to prevail, and even in victory, each new battle saps their souls a little more.

This is the time of turmoil. This is the era of war.

This is the Age of Sigmar.

NEFERATA: MORTARCH OF BLOOD

My purpose is domination.

Domination of enemies. Domination of realms. Domination of events, of time, of fate, of chance, of self. Domination prevails. All else falls away. There are no limits to the sacrifices I will make in its name.

The past, the present and the future roll into one another endlessly, locked and grinding like vast mill stones, turning and turning and turning. The powers of the realms rise and fall, rise and fall, yet the passions of the living and the dead are constant in their nature. Hatred, revenge, ambition, desire, fear… they do not change, and their constancy makes them useful to me. They are my arsenal. So is disaster. When the sweep of events overwhelms all other calculations, the only choice is disaster. I embrace it, because through it, as through everything else, runs the tide of blood. Ebbing and flowing, rushing and stilled, it is constant yet changing. And it has always been mine.

– A Call to Purpose

Chapter 1

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

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

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

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

‘It is tonight, then,’ Mathas said.

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

The Culling of the Firstborn was upon them.

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

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

‘Would another night make a difference?’

‘No,’ Verrick admitted.

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

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

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

‘If you fall…’ Verrick began.

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

‘Will we?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I know,’ Verrick said, without conviction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I won’t fail,’ he said to Glanath.

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

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

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

‘Yet I must.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I can ask no more,’ said Teyosa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was going to destroy Neferata.

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

Your hour is coming, he thought.

They reached an intersection of many avenues. The land here was on a steep slope, and Mathas beheld a vista of the sweep of this quarter of Nulahmia. To his right, the city sloped downwards. To his left, it rose towards the great mass of Neferata’s palace. The enormity of what he intended struck home. Ending the being who had commanded Nulahmia into existence was madness.

It is an honourable madness, he argued. One worth dying for.

The Black Knights and Mathas crossed the wide expanse of the intersection. There were no other mortals on the streets at this hour. They had fled the grey snow as they would a fall of death from the skies. The city was not silent, though. In the shadows below and in the greater darkness above, Nulahmia groaned and rang with endless creation. The hunger of Neferata’s will was never satiated, and it urged the city into transformation. No structure or configuration of streets was eternal. There were monuments a thousand feet high and vaults as big as mountains, and they too would vanish, as if melting into air, at the command of the queen. Death and Neferata were the only constants. Death came for everything.

Mathas looked up at one of the soaring monuments before him. Engravings marked the deaths of a million souls in a distant battlefield. The towers rose from the corners of the intersection where, he recalled from his childhood, there had once been homes. Every change is death, he thought. In Nulahmia, creation’s only purpose was, in the end, to be washed away by blood.

Movement at the top of one of the towers caught his eye. A ragged glow, the colour of sorrow, rushed down the face of it with a howl that seemed to drag claws across his soul. A banshee floated a short distance above Mathas, its wizened face gaping at him in mockery and grief.

‘Proud Hellezan,’ the banshee hissed with a voice of crumbling earth, ‘joined to the proud Avaranthes. So much pride. Such nobility. How do they serve you now?’

Mathas did not answer. He stared straight ahead and kept walking.

‘Tell me of your defiance!’ the banshee taunted. ‘Sing to me of hope!’ The banshee kept pace with him. ‘Hooooooooooope!’ it shrieked, and then it rushed ahead, up the hill, wailing. It stopped by high iron gates, flowing in and out of the bars. ‘Hope,’ it repeated. ‘Hope. Come and tell me of hope, proud Hellezan.’

Mathas knew those gates. He tried to brace himself for what he would see when he drew near. But when he beheld the grand mansion beyond the gates, his eyes widened. He stumbled, shaken by sudden distress.

The rumours were true. Death had taken House Avaranthe. The light that came from the broken windows did not come from torches or lanterns. The glow was sickly green, the phosphorescence of wraiths that flowed, wailing, through gutted corridors. Skeletons swarmed over the façade, unmaking and changing. The roof was gone. A fell nimbus rose from the interior to meet the falling snow. It coiled around the walls, and seemed to work in conjunction with the skeletons. The corpses toiled to unmake the mansion and turn it into a new thing. Mathas could not make out the nature of the transformation, beyond the death of what had been. The new building was taller. Its gables reached out into the air, turning into clawed wings of stone, as if the structure would soon take flight.

The skeletons still wore shreds of clothing. It was falling in rotten tatters as the labours of construction continued. In the spectral light, Mathas could just make out enough of the designs that remained. The dead were the Avaranthes. The undead creatures they had become now slaved to destroy the home. Before long, no trace of the family would exist.

The banshee laughed with grief.

Mathas’ legs were numb. He could not feel the ground under his feet. He and Teyosa had feared for her family, and though he was not surprised by what he saw, the shock was immense.

The Black Knight in the lead had paused and was looking back at Mathas, skull cocked. Mathas did not know if it was amused or curious. He suppressed a shudder as he felt the cold evaluation of the eyeless gaze. He wanted to pull his sword and charge. For Hellezan! For Avaranthe! For life! The words were huge in the back of his throat, demanding to be shouted. He choked them back. Such defiance would betray the families and all they were struggling to bring about.

Does she know? he wondered. Did Neferata have the Avaranthes killed? She might have, but then again, it might really have been the plague that felled them. Even if Neferata was behind the destruction, she could have commanded it for any of a hundred reasons, or for no reason at all. No, Mathas decided, the conspiracy had not been discovered. If it had been, doom would have come for all of the Hellezans, and not just for him.

And if he was wrong, that changed nothing. His path was set. If Neferata knew, and still permitted him to enter her palace armed, then her hubris was even greater than he had thought.

Mathas tore his eyes away from the mansion and started forwards again. The Black Knight watched him for a moment more before continuing onward.

Another hour passed before they reached the palace. They did not approach it along the main avenue. The door that waited for Mathas was on the opposite side from the grand entrance. The Black Knights took him through a maze of ever-narrower streets, weaving through an endless graveyard. Colossal, nitre-encrusted obelisks clustered like sentries, looming over the road. The passage was so tight, the Black Knights now walked single file. Mathas’ shoulders brushed against the obelisks. Melting snow streaked his armour with gore. The road, slick with blood and slime, glowed faintly, giving just enough light for Mathas to see where he was going. He glanced behind once, and the way back was lost in impenetrable darkness.

The path narrowed still, winding and twisting. Mathas felt he had become a carrion worm, burrowing through a gigantic corpse. He lost all sense of direction; he had been unable to see the mass of the palace since entering the cemetery. A huge, squat monument reared up ahead, crouching over the path like an immense toad. The road entered a tunnel in its base.

The wind still blew inside the tunnel, whining in captivity. The crimson melt of the snow ran down the slope, and the low walls echoed with the footsteps of Mathas and the Black Knights. The tunnel ended in a wide antechamber, where the Black Knights brought Mathas to face a massive door. It was metal, but as dark and gleaming as obsidian. Its surface appeared featureless at first glance, but once he was closer, Mathas saw runes. They swam in the surface like oil on water. They shifted, flowed into one another and flickered on the edges of meaning. Mathas could not read them, but protean menace reached out from the door and wrapped tendrils around his soul.

The wind rose and fell. It hissed and rasped, and became the voice of the door.

‘Who would be pyre-bound?’ said the door.

For the first time, the lead Black Knight spoke. The cold that blew from his soul shaped itself into words, the syllables cut into sharp pieces by the rattling of teeth. ‘Mathas Hellezan,’ he said, turning Mathas’ name into a foul incantation.

‘Mathas Hellezan,’ the door repeated.

‘Firstborn of the house,’ said the Black Knight.

‘Firstborn!’ the door exulted. ‘Let him pass, and grasp his fate-thorn.’

The door opened, swinging inwards into gloom with the sound of a mountain grinding apart. A faint glow wavered deep inside the stone tunnel. Mathas’ eyes adjusted, and he realised a single torch hung on the wall, waiting for him.

Without looking back or glancing at his undead escort, he drew his sword and marched into the tunnel. The door closed behind him with the boom of hollow thunder.

Mathas raced down the tunnel, anxious that the caprice of the test might snatch the illumination away. The floor crunched under his boots. As he entered the circle of light thrown by the torch and snatched it from the wall, he saw that the floor was a pavement of bones. Skulls, femurs, pelvises and more, densely packed together into an uneven surface. There was no distinguishing between individual bodies. The floor was a compressed hecatomb, its brickwork stained the colour of old blood. Viscous fluid, too thick to be water, flowed down its length. The stench of corruption was foul. Mathas breathed through his mouth, and the smell scratched at the back of his throat.

The tunnel was about ten feet wide, and fifteen feet high at the centre of the rounded vault of the ceiling. It descended deeper into the foundations of the palace. Its slope was steep and its curve was sharp. Mathas could only see twenty feet ahead as he advanced down the spiral.

Echoes scrabbled upwards to meet him. Garbled and overlapping snarls. They grew louder, the voices becoming more distinct, and eager. They were unintelligible, as if the speakers had mouths full of bones. The noise of claws scraping against walls twisted Mathas’ spine into a knot. The stench was almost overpowering.

He moved as fast as he dared, careful not to slip on the curves of skulls poking up like slick cobblestones from the floor. The gabbing, snarling voices were close now. He sensed the enemy around the next curve. Monstrous voices laughed. They could hear him, too.

There was no point in attempting stealth. Gathering himself, he raised his sword and charged. ‘Withstand and prevail!’ he shouted.

There was an answering roar, and from around the bend came a trio of hulking monsters. Their flesh was pale as the underbelly of a dead fish, and was pierced by long, jagged bones, the trophies of former victims that stuck out of their limbs and torsos like spines. What had been mortal had become gargoyle, and they bared their blackened teeth in pleasure and drooling hunger.

The lead monster swung a misshapen bone-axe at Mathas before he was in range, missed and lunged clumsily, grasping for him with its filth-encrusted claws. Mathas dropped the torch, crouched, and drove his sword upwards with both hands, impaling the horror through the throat. ‘I have not come here for you,’ Mathas snarled as the monster staggered against him, its great weight almost bringing him down. ‘I am here for the Queen, and you try my patience.’ The monster choked on the blade. Dark, stinking blood gouted from its jaws, soaking his armour. One of its eyes burst from its skull. It dropped its axe and tried to grab him, but it was dying, and its claws slapped against his pauldrons, then fell to the side.

The other horrors gabbled at Mathas. Their words were nonsense, yet there was something in the rhythm of the yells that sounded like mottos, as if they were hurling the pride of their own noble houses back at Mathas.

‘Your foul blood sullies a noble blade!’ Mathas shouted back. ‘But come. I will kill you just the same!’

The horrors clawed and beat at the body of the first. They were crowding forwards, and in the confined space of the tunnel, they could not reach past the body to sink their claws and blades into Mathas. Between their blows and the mass of the corpse, his knees almost buckled. He managed to step to the rear, sliding his blade out of the body. With a jerk, he leapt backwards. The dead horror fell. The monster on the right had jammed its claws into the corpse’s flesh to pull it away, and the sudden shift pulled it forwards, off balance. Mathas slammed the point of his sword into the beast’s eyes and punctured its brain. He threw himself to the side as the last of the horrors reached for him. It caught his helm with the flat of its axe blade. His head rang with the blow and his eyes blurred. He swung to his right, slicing open the ghoul’s flank. It howled, dropped its axe and clutched at him with both hands.

The grip was powerful. His armour began to buckle under the pressure. The diseased claws sank into the seams. The beast gnawed at the front of his helm, breaking teeth on metal and suffocating him with the stench of its breath. It held Mathas’ shoulders, its strength like a vice of iron. He managed to move his forearms up, stab the monster in the belly and saw upwards, slicing through muscle and viscera. The horror’s snarls mixed pain and rage. It tore his visor off with its teeth, and the blood from its shredded gums and lips poured over his face and neck. Mathas gagged at the poisonous, rotting fluid. With desperate strength, he brought his sword up higher, and at last cut through too much for the monster to live. It stiffened, its snarl fading to a gurgle, and then fell, taking Mathas down with it.

Choking and coughing, Mathas broke free from the dead grip of the horror and squirmed out from under the hulk. He wiped his eyes clean of the thing’s blood, and tried not to think about how he might have been tainted. He picked up the torch and moved forward again.

The spiral passageway ended after another few hundred yards, levelling out into a wider cavern littered with bones, scraps of flesh and piles of detritus. The stench made his eyes water. On the other side of the chamber was an iron door. It screeched as Mathas hauled it open, and the echoes of its scream were swallowed up by a choir of shrieks in the huge space beyond.

Mathas crossed the threshold and walked out onto a finger of fused bone which arched gently upwards, extending over an abyss. The light of the torch could not reach the walls or the ceiling. The bottom of the cavern was an unguessable distance below. Its deep night was broken by fitful streaks of light and the glow of apparitions. Phantoms glided over the pathway to circle Mathas, rising from the depths and dropping back into them. They keened in distress and hunger, in anger and eagerness, in grief and madness. Spectral hands, gnarled as talons, formed out of ghostly energy, reached for him as they flew past, but they did not come near enough to touch him. The bridge seemed to be forbidden to the wraiths, and they screamed in an intensity of pain and frustration as they passed.

From somewhere in the dark came the heavy beat of leathery wings. Mathas held the torch high and swung it from side to side, but the thing that made the sound remained out of sight.

Mathas kept to the centre of the bridge where the footing felt even more precarious than in the tunnel. There was nothing to keep him from falling off the sides if he stumbled too far – or if something hit him. The flapping of the wings passed overhead, closer now, as if the predator were closing in, making ready to attack.

Ahead, the bridge reached a platform. But Mathas’ hopes that he had reached the far side were dashed when he saw it was a circular surface at the apex of the bridge’s arc. The span continued on the other side. Shaped into a shallow bowl, the platform was ringed by stones twisted into gnarled forms, as if it were in the grip of a giant skeletal hand. The stones thrummed with sorcerous power. Wraiths clustered around, casting the bowl in the sickly green of their soul-light, but though the power of the stones seemed to draw them, it also held them at bay. The phantoms were spectators, Mathas thought, forced to bear witness to the struggle to come, but unable to affect its outcome.

The screams of hunger chilled Mathas. He was surrounded by the ghastly persistence of existence after death. To become such as these things was worse than oblivion. The nature of their captivity in this cavern was even worse. It was a display; a statement that his struggle for survival was nothing more than another’s entertainment.

Your hopes are meaningless, it signalled. You are but a plaything.

Above him, the flapping of wings circled, waiting for him to reach the platform.

‘Are you amused?’ Mathas shouted at the unseen queen of Nulahmia. ‘I come to bring an end to your delights! You are right to hide from me!’ He ran forward. Let there be an end to games, he thought. Victory or death, let either come now.

Mathas crossed the ring of stones at a run. There was a sudden sharp flap from above, as of wings being tucked in for a dive. He changed direction abruptly, pounding around the curve of the bowl as the snarl from above became a roar. Unable to alter its trajectory quickly enough, the hunter smashed down into the centre of the platform, splintering the surface of bones.

The brute turned slowly, tracking him, its breath making like snarling bellows. It had the form of an immense bat. The talons on its wings were as long as his forearm; its massive torso furred and muscular – a body suited to battering through doors.

Varghulf, Mathas thought. The family chronicles made reference to such monsters in descriptions of past battles. Viscous saliva dripped from its fangs.

Mathas charged, aiming his sword at the varghulf’s throat. It swept a wing at him, and in the moment before it struck, Mathas hurled the torch into the monster’s face. His aim was true. The varghulf shrieked, its fur smouldering and its face blackened with the burn. Mathas threw himself to the right in the direction of the monster’s retaliating blow, and though weakened, the impact knocked him off his feet and sent him sliding up the platform, smashing against one of the stones. His chest plate cracked. He felt broken movement in his ribs as he struggled to his feet.

The varghulf swiped at its eyes with one of its wings, and lashed out with the other with wide, sweeping blows as it stormed up the slope towards Mathas.

He ran to his left, away from the scything wing, then down along the monster’s flank. Half-blind, the varghulf missed him. It paused at the ring of stones and sniffed for its prey, stopping just long enough for Mathas to plunge his sword into its spine.

The varghulf screamed and leapt. Blood streaming down its back, it flapped its wings and flew straight up from the stones. Mathas held tight to the hilt of the blade. He rose with the monster, his weight dragging open a longer wound. The varghulf climbed vertically, then looped, and Mathas fell.

He landed on his back. The impact knocked the air from him, and pain exploded down his spine. He could not move. Above, the varghulf climbed higher yet, then dived for him, its jaws gaping in fury. For a terrible moment, the sight of those jaws and the blaze of the monster’s uninjured eye held Mathas, extending his paralysis. Then, he thought of his family, and of his duty, and of the dream of freeing Nulahmia from the tyrant who arranged these battles for her amusement. Teyosa’s face rose before his mind’s eye. You do not die here, she said, her voice as strong in his heart as if she had really spoken.

With a surge of desperate determination, he rolled to the side and rose to his knees. The burning vision of the varghulf’s face was still before his mind’s eye. Its monstrousness was mesmerising, and though he had broken from its grip, it remained the vivid centre of his reality. It was the core of everything, and so when he rose, he stabbed at that centre with his sword. His instincts and reflexes knew where the face was even more than did his rational mind. He thrust, and the blade struck the eye of the varghulf. The speed and weight of the monster drove the blade deep into its skull. The varghulf’s scream cut off. Its immense body shuddered, and then, with a crash, collapsed.

Mathas crawled out from underneath a wing. He staggered up the side of the bowl to the descending arc of the bridge. Wraiths shrieked at him, skeletal fingers of ectoplasmic energy reaching out in frustration. Mathas’ stride steadied as he marched along the span, the adrenaline of victory coursing through his frame. It gave him the focus to work through his pain, and he moved faster. He raised his sword in challenge.

‘I know you are watching!’ he shouted. ‘I know you can hear me. Your nemesis has come, Neferata. Your end is here!’

His words were lost in the wailing choir of phantoms. But to speak the words aloud was a form of power. He did not have to hide any longer. Here, in this monstrous place, his rage was natural. Who would not wish destruction upon Neferata after this? So he roared his truth, and raced for the far end of the bridge.

At the foot of the bridge was another wide platform. Five doorways led off it. Each of the doors was forged from the same obsidian-black metal as the one that had barred the entrance to this netherworld of slaughter. In them, too, runes appeared, disappeared, and shifted, threatening him with meaning, but withholding the blow. Understanding was an executioner’s axe poised over his neck.

Mathas stepped onto the platform, and the door in front of him began to move. It stopped after a few inches, opening no more than a hand’s breadth. Mathas regarded it with suspicion. The other doors were silent. This was the path of the labyrinth he was directed to choose, then. He did not like having his hand forced. Then again, he thought, how much choice have we had at all?

None.

Even so, he delayed the inevitable, rebelling to the extent that he approached the doors to the left and right of the open one. The wraiths shrieked with mocking laughter at the futility of his gesture. The other doors were sealed to the walls. They would not move for him. Surely, they waited for some other victim, concealing some other doom.

Mathas returned to the first door. He grabbed the edge and, with a harsh scrape of metal against stone, dragged it open. The space beyond was completely black. He held the torch forward, and the flame became a feeble red glow, illuminating nothing. Mathas hesitated, picturing himself stepping forward and plummeting to his death. But where would be the sport in that?

He crossed the threshold, and the darkness drew back like a receding tide, settling into the recesses and corners of the chamber.

He was in a circular, domed hall. Sconces of skeletal human arms held torches on the curved wall. In the centre of the floor was a huge mound of bodies, the corpses of hundreds of warriors cast in iron, their death agonies and their shame of failure preserved for eternity. Limbs, armour, weapons and severed heads tangled together in a mass grave of humiliation. Would-be champions were now the tortured foundation for the throne that sat atop the mound. It was constructed of bone. It gleamed ivory-white in the torchlight, yet it was not as white, or as pure a thing of death, as the skin of the tyrant who now rose from it.

Neferata walked slowly down the mound of bodies, and Mathas felt his strength, his courage, his very ability to move, drain away. His sword arm hung limp at his side. The torch dropped from his fingers. He was paralysed. It was not mere beauty that transfixed him, but something far more terrible. It was majesty, a sublimity of command. Her presence struck him with awe, the true awe that was the supreme form of horror. Her being was too great for the hall, as if she were somehow larger than the space through which she moved.

She wore her tall, spreading crown of overlapping plates and gold-plated bones. It sat low on her brow, and beneath it her eyes glittered, eyes of devouring darkness that pulled Mathas’ soul with the strength of a monstrous whirlpool. Her lips, dark as arterial blood, curled upwards slightly in cold amusement. Her armour, of the same black and gold plating as the crown, left her arms bare, as if they disdained such mundanities as protection. Her only weapon was a dagger, and it was sheathed.

‘Well met, Mathas Hellezan,’ she said. Her voice was low and compelling, like a torrent dragging him to the heart of a glacier. ‘But where is my promised nemesis?’

The taunt broke Mathas’ paralysis. With a cry of hatred, he ran forward, sword raised. He reached the foot of the mound at the same moment Neferata did. She still had not drawn her dagger. He swung his blade at her neck.

Neferata’s strike was a blur, too fast for Mathas to see, but in that fraction of a second, there was time for understanding. Her arms were unclad not from pride, but so that their speed was without fetters. The blow knocked the sword from his hand and sent it skittering across the floor. Neferata yanked his helm from his head and grabbed him by the throat. Black claws sank into his flesh. Mathas could not believe those were fingers that held him. Surely he was in the grip of an unholy device of ice and iron.

Neferata tilted his head to one side. She looked at him with impassive contempt. ‘I’ll ask you again. Where is my nemesis?’

Mathas tried to find defiance. He tried to curse. All he could do was choke.

‘Not here?’ said Neferata. ‘That’s what I thought.’ Her lips parted, revealing fangs sharp as a serpent’s. She pulled Mathas close and bent her head to his exposed neck.

Mathas’ limbs twitched as the fangs slid into his flesh. His soul cried out though his voice was mute. He reached one last time for duty, family and honour. He saw Teyosa again, and his promise echoed back at him, cruel and mocking.

I will return to you.

Darkness closed over him.

Stability is a lie. It is the limning of a battlefield; the chance to prepare for war. Its risk is that it conceals the struggles already taking place. I am engaged in those struggles whether I am aware of them or not, and if I do not know it, then I will deserve my defeat. I must not be blinded by stability and its illusions of peace. I must never forget that peace has no reality, though its mirage can blind the gods.

– Exhortations

Chapter 2

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

The revels had returned to the Palace of Seven Vultures. In the centre of the great hall, Neferata presided over the festival from a vast, raised dais. She walked slowly around its periphery, circling her drakstone divan, watching her court unleash its desires. Her gaze let no detail pass ignored. In any corner, any shadow, or under any light, she might find that which her subjects tried to conceal.

High above her, wraith-light circled the great chandelier with urgent hunger, eager for her to find the guilty. The candles of human tallow blazed as if the souls of the executed themselves had caught fire, foreshadowing penalties to come. The volcanic glass and fossilised bone of the chandelier gleamed with a liquid brightness, a pure essence of corruption conjured from ancient, petrified death. Below, along the walls, flames rose high from the gilded bone braziers. Their burning light mixed with the colder, refracted light of red and green and blue from the jewels embedded in the crystal skull lanterns. The eye sockets were dark, yet they seemed watchful, joining their scrutiny to the queen’s.

The darkness of the hall cavorted with the light. Beauty and horror were one. The shadows danced, their movements both angular and sensuous, a pantomime of the pleasure, the grace, the cruelty and the bloodshed that filled the hall. The vampire nobility of Nulahmia gorged itself. The feast of blood was a harvest of mortals, highborn and low, chosen for their youth, their beauty, their strength, their artistry, their wisdom. Some vampires delighted in the destruction of something precious. Others preferred the vintage of blood taken at its prime, when its possessor bloomed in the fullness of vigour. Gore and torn flesh spread across the marble floor of the hall, but thralls gathered up the remains and swept the blood into draining channels with such dexterity that the revellers were never conscious of their presence.

For all the mortals doomed this night, there were as many who would not be bled, and they knew it. Neferata read the dark joy in their faces. They had purchased their safety with the sacrifice of their kin, and had been rewarded with gold, jewels and heightened prestige in the court. They danced too, and if they regretted the price in flesh they had paid, if they grieved the loss of children, siblings, parents and spouses, they showed no sign. And so the grand ball of slaughter moved around the pillars, crossing and re-crossing the expanse of the hall with a flow that was frenzied, precise and elegant. The swirling movement of predators and prey had so much energy, it appeared to govern the melodies that came from the orchestra in the gallery above.

The musicians were mortal. On some occasions, Neferata commanded the presence of vampire players, whose centuries of experience had honed their skill to a perfection no mortal could reach. But that was a cold perfection. On nights such as this, the terror of the mortal players lent their music a delicious and delirious passion. They played as if their lives depended on their performance, as if this was their final hour. For some of them, it would be.

Neferata studied her subjects and analysed them, searching for treachery. At her side, Lady Raia walked attentively. Neferata’s chief spy murmured quietly to the queen when her opinion was sought, and was otherwise silent, a useful shadow.

Neferata did not partake in the feast. She had satisfied her hunger earlier, when she had drained Mathas Hellezan. She still wore her armour, choosing to be a figure of dark command, the forbidding point at the centre of the maelstrom of riot. Her gaze returned again to Mathas, watching the newest vampire in the court fall upon prey for the first time, and weighed possibilities.

As the currents of the dance brought undead and mortals past the dais, they bowed to Neferata. When the music swelled, the multitude offered a choir of thanks and praise to her. The vampires were joyous in their savagery. The gift of blood she had given them was bountiful. And the spared mortals were giddy with survival and newfound riches. They had every reason to celebrate her reign.

Neferata did not trust their worship. Nulahmia had been safe from outside threats for some time. That safety bred complacency, which created fertile ground for rebellion.

A handmaiden approached the dais, lowering her head and clasping her hands together in respect first to Neferata, then to Raia. Neferata gave her a slight nod, and the vampire climbed the stairs gracefully.

‘You have news, Mereneth,’ said Neferata.

‘I do, my queen. Should Lady Raia and I retire so as not to disturb you?’

‘No. Tell me what you have learned.’

‘It is not as much as either of us would like.’ Mereneth spoke softly, too quietly to be overheard. Her words were almost an admission of failure. Neferata had executed underlings for less. But Mereneth had repeatedly proven her skill as a spy. She performed her visible role as handmaiden as expertly as she extracted secrets from Neferata’s enemies. She was too useful to be discarded lightly. If she did not have all the information Neferata expected, then that lack would itself be significant.

‘Go on,’ the Mortarch said.

‘What we suspected appears to be true. The Avaranthes were not alone in plotting against you. But the conspirators have concealed themselves well. The Avaranthes must have been far from the centre of the plot. They did not even know who their allies were.’

‘You are certain?’

‘Your necromancers have made sure. We continue to pursue the rumours, my queen, but for now we are chasing shadows.’

‘Yet the rumours are plentiful.’

‘They are, and they are proving to be of some use,’ said Raia. ‘They are giving us some sense of the extent of the discontent.’

‘Which is?’

‘Considerable.’ It was brave of Mereneth to be so blunt. It was also what Neferata demanded of her. ‘The stirrings of rebellion seem to be most widespread among mortals.’

Neferata had expected that. With no outside threat, the mortals would feel the predatory demands of the vampires more keenly, and with greater resentment. ‘Vampires are also more adept at concealment,’ she pointed out. Again, the absence of a threat was the problem. That was one less goad to find unity under her reign. She had rivals out there, even if she did not know who the dangerous ones were, yet. Their ambitions would be freer. Some would be toying with the idea of replacing her on the throne of Nulahmia. A select few would be moving towards making the idea a reality.

Nulahmia is mine. I created it. None shall rule it but me. Ever.

Raia said, ‘I am troubled, my queen, by how successful the mortals have been at concealing their actions. The rumours are legion, but vague. We are finding very little that we can act upon.’

‘That success implies considerable organisation,’ said Neferata.

‘So I believe, too,’ said Mereneth. ‘They are determined.’ The spy turned her head to look at Mathas. ‘The link of marriage between House Avaranthe and House Hellezan is suggestive.’

‘We will pay greater attention to the Hellezans.’

Raia said, ‘I am relieved that their firstborn is now your thrall.’

‘He will be useful,’ said Neferata.

Mathas took another offering, plunging his claws into the neck of a daughter of House Bantayre. Neferata noted how far he had progressed during the course of the revel. His initial kills had been frenzied, the work of a mad butcher. He had ripped the prey to pieces, shredding throats, ripping arms from bodies, bathing his face in huge jets of gore. So much flesh destroyed, so much blood wasted. Now he had calmed. He was no longer a wild animal. He attacked with precision, more like the warrior he had been. He had moved past mindless destroyer to discerning hunter. There was much promise in him. He would indeed be useful.

Especially once she sent the monster back to his family.

Neferata left the great hall before the end of the revels. The orgy of excess would continue until dawn, and she had accomplished her goals. She had been seen, reminding all present of who had brought the festival into being. More importantly, she had seen, noting well everything there was to observe. Now she retired to the most private of all her chambers.

The circular hall occupied the entire height of a narrow turret that rose from the centre of the Palace of Seven Vultures. It adjoined the great library, but its access was hidden, veiled by Neferata’s spells and wards designed by necromancers she had killed as soon as their work was completed, so that she alone would know the passes needed to arm and disarm them. Even the tower, the Claw of Memory, for all that it was clearly visible from the exterior, escaped notice. The observer’s gaze slid over it, all attention diverted to adjoining features of the palace.

Against the interior wall, a staircase of iron-clad bones spiralled up all the way to the roof. It climbed past shelves holding thousands of tomes bound in mortal flesh. The vertiginous chamber looked like another wing of the library. In a sense, it was a library, but one that held the works of a single author, who wrote for the eyes of a single reader. Here, Neferata wrote for the benefit of her future self, and consulted the wisdom of her past. The Claw held aeons of memories, and their analysis. In these books, she recorded all the means to power, to its preservation, and also the records of its losses, of the errors she had made, and of the inevitable blows of chance and destiny.

In the centre of the ground floor was a lectern. Its pedestal was a mummified body, strengthened by sorcery. Its jaws stretched wide by dried tendons into an expression of endless pain. The pain was no illusion, for the damned thing’s soul was trapped in the withered, leathered flesh, cursed to support the drakstone slab of the lectern’s top, and to feel the weight of every moment of eternal service.

The lectern held one of the bound volumes, open to a blank page, waiting. Neferata took up a quill, dipped it into a pot that was perpetually replenished in a fluid that mixed ink, blood and ectoplasmic ichor. She began to write, addressing a warning to herself for now and in the days and millennia to come.

A storm is coming. A storm is always coming, even for the gods. Where there is stability, there is ground awaiting disaster. Embrace the storm. If necessary, summon it.

– On the Crucible of Disaster

Chapter 3

AGE OF SIGMAR

THE SEASON OF CREMATORY

The thin vampire sat on the throne atop the mound of iron-cast corpses. Torchlight danced over his armour of midnight-blue. He cast his eye around the circular chamber. It had been abandoned by its former mistress who no longer used it to receive and devour the firstborn.

It is mine, now, Venzor thought. I decide its purpose. He smiled, and his flesh pulled tightly over his narrow skull. Bit by bit, he was establishing his claim on the Palace of Seven Vultures.

The door to the chamber opened. The vampire who entered was injured, but she walked without hesitation. Her armour bore the marks of huge claws, and her drawn sword was slick with blood. She stopped before the great mound and looked up.

Venzor rose from the throne, his membranous wings folded beneath his arms. He walked halfway down the hill, stopped and bowed.

‘I am Venzor,’ he said, ‘sworn to Arkhan the Black. I am his regent in Nulahmia, and I salute you, Dessina Avaranthe.’

The warrior’s eyes widened.

‘Yes,’ Venzor said, enjoying himself, ‘I know your hidden name. I am aware your splinter of that house has survived in the cracks and shadows until now. I have paid attention to the folklore of Nulahmia. I have heard the stories of the Avaranthes still fighting against Neferata, century after century.’

Dessina did not sheathe her blade, but she did not attack. She nodded, waiting for Venzor to speak again.

‘I am not the one you expected to find,’ he said.

‘Nothing in these halls is what I expected.’ She glanced back towards the open door. ‘I did not expect to do battle with Blood Knights.’

‘But perhaps you are not as surprised as you might be?’ Venzor asked.

‘Perhaps not,’ she admitted. ‘Who were they?’

‘Warriors loyal to Neferata, seeking to undermine what we are doing here. We do not prevent their infiltration of this region of the palace. We find them useful.’

‘And what is it that you are doing here?’

‘Recruiting,’ Venzor said with a thin smile. ‘Our lord Nagash has punished Neferata for her overreach during the recent siege. It was not her place to choose to forge an alliance with Sigmar’s immortals. For her presumption, she is punished.’

‘She still reigns over Nulahmia,’ Dessina spat, her voice filled with undisguised bitterness.

‘She does, but only after a fashion,’ Venzor reminded her. ‘Her authority is diminished. After all, here I stand, deep in her beloved palace. By right of my master, granted to him by Nagash, I have unlimited access to the palace. Our forces do more than govern the walls and the northern sector of Nulahmia. We watch her actions in the heart of her domain. We watch, we see and we act.’

‘Yet still she reigns,’ Dessina insisted.

Venzor conceded her point with a shrug. ‘For the moment. And so we recruit. We gather our strength. We prepare.’

‘You think to destroy her?’

‘Isn’t that what you thought when you found your way into these caverns? Did you really think to challenge her single-handedly?’

Dessina didn’t answer at first. At length she said, ‘I had to try something. I am a firstborn, and I knew that would open this entry point to the palace for me.’

Venzor’s fanged, misshapen smile became broad. ‘And you have done something. You are here. Join your strength to ours, firstborn of the broken House of Avaranthe and last of that line. You fought well for Nulahmia against the forces of Lord Lascilion, and you fought for a ruler who did not deserve your prowess. Fight with all your passion now. Be the leader you are destined to be. Avenge your house at last.’

‘You swear that Neferata will fall?’

‘Her final defeat is my great purpose,’ said Venzor. ‘And you. Are you true to your fallen house?’

‘I am.’ She pulled a chain out from her gorget. A large medal hung from it. Venzor noted the Avaranthe coat of arms: twin dragons coiling their tails around a spear of gold. Dessina let the medal hang on her chestplate.

Venzor nodded with approval. Carrying that medal, even concealed, was a supremely dangerous act of loyalty to her slaughtered ancestors. ‘Wear the honour of your house with pride,’ Venzor said, and walked the rest of the way down the mound of the dead.

Dessina took a step forwards, bent a knee and presented Venzor with the hilt of her blade. ‘My sword is for you, and for Arkhan.’ She bared her fangs. ‘Command me, so that I might drink the blood of Neferata.’

She had not lost the city. It had been stolen from her.

I will reclaim it.

The Queen of Shadows moved along the northern ramparts of the palace. Hate and determination swelled in her heart as she looked down the slope of Throne Mount upon the blemished vistas of Nulahmia. The blasting heat of the season of Crematory gnawed the bones of the towers. The wind was the breath of a forge, gritty with ash and blown dust. It was as nothing before the fire of Neferata’s purpose.

This will be mine again, she thought. All of it. All of you will be mine again.

The city still bore the scars of the invasion by the Slaaneshi lord Lascilion. Mausoleums, towers, bridges and grand boulevards had been destroyed in the fighting. One wound, at least, was healing to a certain extent. Nagash’s return had killed almost every living soul in the city, but mortals had since made their way back to Nulahmia. Even so, the metropolis of the living and the dead that had risen in answer to her will and her desire was marred. The aesthetic perfection of death that she had sought was cracked. The worst distortion was not the physical damage and a population that was still far from what it had been. The worst was the occupation.

Knowing how best to wound her, Nagash had decreed her punishment should be the loss of power, and he had commanded that the northern sector of Nulahmia be under Arkhan’s rule. Forces loyal to him, under the command of Venzor, were cantoned in barracks below the wall. Neferata was nominally sovereign over the rest of the city, but realities of shared rule meant that Venzor’s influence spread across Nulahmia. Mortal and undead powers were thinking through their allegiances. Neferata knew full well that there were those, even far outside the region controlled by Venzor, who saw advantages in allying themselves with Arkhan. As long as the other Mortarch had even a semblance of control in Nulahmia, Neferata could not be sure of her authority at any level. Nagash had undermined her from the foundations up. The city would not be hers until all of it bowed the knee to her again.

So she became a shadow, and made the Palace of Seven Vultures a tomb. There were no revels, no grand displays of power, artistry and blood. In time, when the Palace was truly hers again, she would remake it, too. For now, silence filled the halls. Venzor and his acolytes walked through the palace freely, but they encountered only the grey death of luxury. Her servants performed their duties, and members of her court came and went, but she refused to give Venzor the victory of seeing her daily humiliation. She passed from chamber to chamber like a breath of cold wind, seen only when she wished to be seen. She came upon courtiers when they did not expect her, emerging from darkness like a promise of vengeance. If Venzor wished to speak with her, then he must seek her, and if an encounter was absolutely necessary, it took place on her terms, where and when she chose. She was an absence, but a felt one. She was the movement in the corner of the eye, the footstep at the back. She was a whisper heard over all of Nulahmia. Every soul in the city, living or undead, tensed in the anticipation of her resurgence.

She had lost power, but she would reclaim it.

She walked the ramparts in silence, blending with the night, unseen by any of her sentries. She knew the rhythms of their patrols better than they themselves did. When she had had her fill of looking at what had been stolen from her, she withdrew into the interior of the palace.

Venzor went wherever he chose, but there was one door he had never seen, one chamber he had never entered. The Claw of Memory remained inviolate. When Nagash had returned from his apparent death, and she had been humbled on the point of turning the battle of Nulahmia into a great victory, Neferata had understood that punishment was coming to her, and that much would be stripped away. She had thrown all of her efforts into preserving her sanctum. It held the keys to her restoration. She would sooner burn it than have Venzor paw through its tomes, even though it was unlikely he would be able to interpret the ancient language of her writings. But the enchantments guarding its doorway had remained strong, and she had reinforced the wards since. Venzor’s pleasure in entering every other chamber of the palace was such that he remained oblivious to his blind spot around the single tower.

She left the outer wall of the palace, and made her way to the Claw, and to the parapet at the top of the spire. Only the elect of her servants could reach this peak, and even they could not do so from inside. There she could speak with her spies with no possibility of being seen or overheard. On this night, Lady Mereneth waited on her, standing against the battlements, facing outwards, away from the centre of the roof. The vampire noble bowed low when Neferata came up behind her.

‘Is there confirmation?’ Neferata asked.

‘Yes, my queen. Our scouts have observed the enemy force directly. It approaches from the north-west.’

‘It is a large one?’

‘Massive. Our initial judgement is that it is comparable to the army led by Lascilion, and its allegiance is to the Blood God.’

‘It is heading this way?’

‘We believe so, though it is still at such a distance that some doubt remains. There are also many obstacles between it and our walls.’

Neferata waved the matter away. ‘They are no longer obstacles that will stop such an army. Not now.’ Lascilion had pierced the veil concealing Nulahmia from the hordes of Chaos. Once found, the city could not be hidden again. Nor did Neferata wish it to be. ‘Does Venzor know of its existence?’

‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

‘Very well.’ Neferata was pleased. Mereneth had justified her elevation yet again. ‘Tell me its location.’

Mereneth did, and then, dismissed, she dropped over the side of the battlements and scuttled, a shadowy spider, down the outer wall of the tower. Neferata looked up in the night sky and whispered, ‘Come to me.’

Her words reverberated through the night itself. They were soft, a hiss of command intended for one being only, and they made distance meaningless. Moments later, a concentrated glow of aethereal energy descended on the tower. Answering the call of his rider, Nagadron the Adevore landed on the parapet, claws sinking deep into stone.

The dread abyssal whipped the length of his skeletal tail back and forth, eager to obey. Neferata had exiled her mount from the palace at the beginning of the occupation. Since then, Nagadron had flown over Nulahmia in wide circles, hidden in the ash-clouds that shrouded the land, waiting to be called upon. He was a thing of bone and claws. His huge rib cage was a prison for countless phantom skulls, souls all screaming for release, their agony finding expression in the sick, pulsating green of their ghost light. Nagadron was their eternal sentence, and the beast drew strength and pleasure from their pain.

Nagadron lowered his huge skull, and Neferata mounted his back. She touched his neck bones, and he leapt into the sky. The wind blew hard and cold against Neferata’s face as they flew north-west, but it was not as hard nor as cold as she. Neferata stared towards the horizon, waiting for her first glimpse of the Khornate army, waiting for the first hint of the disaster she sought.

She did spare one glance for Nulahmia before it dropped behind. She looked at the expanse of the city that had been stolen from her. This will be mine, she thought again. No sacrifice would be too great in the name of power. Disaster is the crucible of opportunity, and you will be mine once more, if I have to burn you to the ground.

If I believe myself to be all-seeing, then I am lost. My sight has shadows. In them, enemies find shelter. To forget this truth is to offer my back to their blades.

– Treatise on Blindness

Chapter 4

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

Mathas left the Palace of Seven Vultures at twilight. Gorged senseless on blood, he had slept after the revels. He had no coherent memories of what had happened since. He could not remember retiring to a chamber, yet he had awakened in a golden sarcophagus lined with silk. The chamber was illuminated by a chandelier of human arms. Their hands held candles, and their severed ends dripped a soft rain of blood into a bronze basin set into the centre of the floor. When Mathas rose, the arms moved with him, stretching to shine their light where he went. A wardrobe of the same golden design as the sarcophagus held fine clothes for him, their material rich beyond the means of any mortal in Nulahmia. He found boots and gloves made of the finest leather. His senses were heightened, and the touch of the leather was a sensual delight. He inhaled its scent, and learned that it was worked from the flesh of infants. Next to the wardrobe were his armour and his sword. They had been repaired, cleaned and polished. They gleamed in the light of the chandelier. They were hungry, Mathas thought. Their hunger reflected his.

He dressed, donned his armour and exited the chamber. Servants bowed their heads as they passed him in the corridor. There were no guards outside the door. Mathas turned left, and surprised himself by finding his way to the grand entrance of the palace. As a mortal, he had attended court functions, performing the expected, worshipful homage to the queen, but he had never ventured beyond the great hall. Now he walked through the palace with the same assurance he had in his family’s home.

Home. The thought rose, insistent, burning with the force of a command, when he passed beyond the palace gates. He did not just wish to go there. He must go there. There was no choice.

Mathas descended the Throne Mount along the Pathway of Punishment. He walked down the centre of the wide, switch-backing road. The mortals climbing up to worship at the gates of the palace gave him a wide, anxious berth. The bloody, iron architecture of torture lined the avenue. Victims cried out in pillories, atop elevated breaking wheels, and shuddered their last on impalement poles. Lines of pikes were topped with heads, freshly decapitated or rotten with flies. Before this day, Mathas had stared at the torture with horror and fear. Now the scent of blood made him heady. It didn’t matter how much he had fed the night before. The thirst was always there, always ready. If the duty to return to the Hellezan palace was not so ferocious, he saw how easily he might pause to drink from one of the suffering mortals.

Or perhaps he would have chosen a richer, stronger vintage. He could sense the blood pulsing through the veins of every mortal he passed. He was a predator moving through a river of prey, his for the taking. The kills would take no effort. He had learned that last night. His strength was prodigious. His hands could puncture bodies, opening them wide and spilling their treasures for his delectation. He was walking murder. He knew it, and the mortals did. They glanced at him in terror, and he could see their desperate hope that they would pass beneath his notice, that they would escape his desire, because there was nothing they could do to defend themselves.

But first, home. Nothing else was as important as home. It called to him, thundering in his head like a heartbeat, home, home, home, and he marched to the rhythm of the summons.

Below the Throne Mount, he moved quickly through the streets. His stride was effortless, and he passed over the cobblestones as if he were flying. The temptation of blood was everywhere, but he found the mastery of his instincts becoming easier. And the closer he came to the Hellezan palace, the more urgent the drive to reach home became.

Within those walls was the blood that was truly his.

He raised a gauntleted fist when he reached the palace doors, and he hammered on them with the same force that had called him out what must have been an aeon ago. The bronze trembled, as if it too feared the return of its house’s master.

Three streets away, overlooking the grand sweep of the Queensroad, a clock tower tolled the fall of night. It was a tall shadow, and twisted, a giant of tortured architecture, lit from within by a spectral glow. To look upon one of its faces was to see time as the inexorable approach of death. Now the hollow call of its bell sounded at the same moment as the doors of the Hellezan palace opened. Mathas could not but perceive an omen in that coincidence.

His parents and Teyosa were there, flanked by guards. The faces that met Mathas were almost as pale as his. He was white with death, and they with fear.

‘We prayed for your return,’ Verrick whispered.

‘Your wish has been granted,’ said Mathas.

Verrick blinked at his words, and turned even more pale.

In his father’s stricken face, Mathas saw the truth of what he had become. He was the shape of the family’s doom. Teyosa, Verrick and Glanath stood straight and proud despite their terror, and the guards did not flinch, though he could cut them down in an eye blink.

The people I love most are waiting for me to kill them, Mathas thought.

The thirst curled in his chest. He heard the hammering of pulses, smelled the blood that surely was eager to leap from veins into his mouth.

Mathas stepped across the threshold, into his moment of truth.

He looked at Teyosa, and reached out for her. ‘Do not fear me,’ he said.

She rushed into his arms, and they embraced.

‘She did not take you from me,’ Teyosa murmured.

Mathas groaned a sob of gratitude.

‘And she has not made me kill all that I love,’ he said. ‘I did not destroy her, but it is she who has failed.’

‘How is this possible?’ Verrick asked when Mathas and Teyosa at last broke their embrace. The guards had withdrawn to give them privacy. ‘You are…’ Verrick did not finish. He winced, overcome by grief and relief at the same time.

‘I am undead, father. We must say the truth, face it and use it. I am a vampire. But I am not her thrall.’

‘But how?’ Verrick insisted.

If he had been asked while he was still making his way through the streets, Mathas would not have been able to answer. He had not even known, then, if he was free. The thirst and the need to return were so strong, they had seemed to be the same impulse. He was thankful they were not. He was able to think more clearly now, and he understood at least in part how he had triumphed. ‘Family,’ he said. ‘It is our ties that have made me strong.’

He remembered the darkness taking him as Neferata drank his blood. ‘I could not fight her,’ he said. ‘She took me, and I fell into night. She stole everything that defines me…’ He paused, the memory of dissolution sending a shudder through his frame. Then another memory came, the memory of salvation, and his strength returned. He looked at Teyosa. ‘But she could not take you from me. At the last, I saw your face. I felt your presence, and your love – our love. It was the last thing that was mine, and I held it. You were the jewel whose light defeated the abyss.’ He smiled. ‘You are my truth. You are my duty and my defiance.’

The truth of love had sustained him in the hours that had followed, even if he had not been aware of its presence. He felt it now, in the centre of his heart. It was imperishable in its strength, eternal in its fire. His death had been as nothing to this truth. His body had died, but his self had survived.

The greater implication of that survival was not lost on him.

Teyosa saw it too. ‘She failed,’ she said, echoing him. ‘She can be resisted. She can be fought.’ What had only been a dream before was now a reality. Where there had been only determination, now they could add hope.

‘And she will have to be fought now,’ Mathas said. ‘Our time is limited. If I was permitted to return, it is because she believes me to be her thrall, and that I have come to prey on this family and control it in her name.’

‘Does she suspect us?’ Glanath asked.

‘If she does, she must be uncertain, and not see us as a threat,’ said Teyosa. ‘Or she would have destroyed us.’

Mathas thought of the destroyed House of Avaranthe, its inhabitants reduced to skeleton slaves reshaping their home into a monstrous image conjured by Neferata’s will. Teyosa gave him a quick look. She knows, he thought. If I had good news to give her, I would have done so. He would tell her what he had seen, but when they were alone, and she had the space to grieve. He held her eyes with his, and her lips thinned as she braced herself to go on.

‘We have her doubts in our favour,’ Mathas said. ‘But it will not be long before she realises that I have not done what she expects me to do, and that I am free of her control. We must strike before she takes further action.’

‘Can we possibly be strong enough?’ Verrick wondered aloud.

‘No matter how long we prepare, the only way we will know is in the struggle itself,’ Mathas told him. ‘But she is weaker than we thought. Her failure to destroy my will is proof of that. She is weaker, and we are stronger.’

‘He is right,’ Teyosa said to Verrick. ‘The time has come. The signs are all there. Tell him.’

‘Tell me what?’ Mathas asked.

Verrick smiled. ‘In the short time of your absence, we have received help from outside the walls of the city.’

‘What help?’

‘Come. I will show you.’

The four of them descended into the vaults of the Hellezan palace. Past the wine cellars were the deeper foundations, older than the palace itself, riddled with tunnels linked to the honeycomb of underground passages that swarmed beneath Nulahmia. Mathas did not know how far down they extended, though there were whispers that their roots were so deep that unwary explorers would enter the true underworlds, never to return.

‘She can still see us,’ Verrick murmured, ‘even down here.’

The tunnels, like every other aspect of Nulahmia, were part of Neferata’s design. The city was so utterly her creation that every bend and branch and dead end, in every specific location, had come into being because she had willed it. The sense of security created by the maze and the depths was an illusion. If Neferata turned her gaze this way, there would be no hiding from her.

‘She can see us,’ said Mathas, ‘but only if she knows to look.’ Her eyes cannot be everywhere at once. There must be some limits to her knowledge. There must be.

At length they reached a low, wide chamber, lit by a handful of guttering torches. The stone coffins that lined its walls were empty. The people gathered in the space would have been careful to make sure of that. The tombs had been disused so long that their interiors were thick with cobwebs and dust.

Present were the heads of more than a dozen of the great mortal families of Nulahmia. This was the first time Mathas had seen them together, outside of court functions. Each of them represented a cluster of families. The cells of the rebellion were breaking the security of isolation. They sensed that the time to strike was fast approaching. There were vampires present too. They represented houses that were under Neferata’s political control, but none were her direct thralls.

But among the vampires was one Mathas had seen only a few hours before. He was Jedefor, and he was a captain of the guard at the palace.

Mathas eyed him carefully. Jedefor gave him a brief nod. Mathas had not known he was part of the conspiracy. His jaw tightened with suspicion. ‘I am surprised Neferata would choose as captain a vampire who is not her thrall,’ he said.

‘I am surprised one of her thralls can claim to be a rebel.’

Teyosa touched Mathas’ arm, and he bit back his retort. ‘Indeed,’ he said, and forced a smile of acceptance. If Jedefor was here, then he had already proved himself loyal to the cause.

There was another vampire that Mathas did not know. His brow was heavy, his chin pointed, giving his face a pronounced triangular appearance. He was a noble, clad in fine armour of wightbone and leather. The insignia of his house, borne on his chest, was strange to Mathas. Jedefor introduced him as Lestor.

‘We come from a friend outside Nulahmia,’ said Lestor. ‘He has taken an interest in your cause, and pledges his support.’

‘Of what kind?’ Mathas asked.

‘Arms. Other reinforcements too, for when you march.’

‘And what is his price?’

‘Nothing you cannot afford.’

Mathas had his doubts about that. But the conspirators were not in a position to turn their back on aid.

‘Please convey our thanks to your lord,’ said Hasynne of House Nastannar. Broad of shoulder and thick of arm, the vampire seemed to have come into being to take to the battlefield in heavy armour. Hers was the most bellicose of the noble families. She brought great strength to the cause.

Lestor bowed. Jedefor looked pleased, and Mathas guessed what he hoped to gain from Neferata’s overthrow.

But this is more than an exchange of masters, Mathas reminded himself. Whoever replaces Neferata may be as cruel, but none will be as powerful.

‘This is very well, and we are grateful,’ said Sethek, one of the vampire nobles. Her gratitude sounded perfunctory. ‘But we are running out of time. Meeting like this makes certain the moment of our discovery is imminent. When do we attack?’

‘Very soon,’ said Mathas. ‘I agree with you. We must make ready.’

‘Very soon,’ Sethek repeated bitterly. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means what I said,’ said Mathas. ‘I doubt that anyone here is ready to march on Throne Mount tonight.’

‘We are ready,’ said the vampire lord Borzhas, standing next to Sethek.

‘Ready to attack on your own?’ Mathas asked.

Borzhas frowned at him.

‘That is why we are here now,’ said Teyosa. ‘To coordinate, to know what must yet be done, and to set about doing it.’

‘Let us be clear about my role,’ Jedefor said. ‘I will provide information about the Palace’s defences on the chosen night, and I will do what I can to assist behind the walls. But I cannot be seen to do so until the last moment. I will not lead the uprising.’

There was disappointment in the faces around the chamber.

Coward, thought Mathas. Though he understood Jedefor’s reasoning, and he wondered how certain the captain was of his troops. Mathas looked at the hesitation in the others. Sethek and Borzhas were still seething over the delay. They were reckless, he thought. Before either of them could step forward, he said, ‘I will lead. I will carry the banner for mortal and vampire alike.’

The veins of Borzhas’ face stood out in anger, giving him the appearance of cracked porcelain. Jedefor, though, was nodding. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Good. Her newest thrall. The proof of her weakness.’

‘The proof of our strength,’ said Teyosa.

Mathas believed Jedefor was right. He hoped Teyosa was too.

She looked at him, her eyes shining and strong, and suddenly he felt he could throw the Palace of Seven Vultures down with his bare hands.

If strength is to serve power, its true form must be recognised. Strength is to understand limits. It is to see the power of the adversary. It is also to see the enemy’s illusions of strength, and to turn them to advantage.

– The Use of Enemies

Chapter 5

AGE OF SIGMAR

THE SEASON OF CREMATORY

Ruhok turned at the sound of the rumbling grind and the screams. A stretch of land a score of yards across was eating more of his troops. The Mighty Lord of Khorne cursed the weakness of his men to let themselves be taken, and he cursed the ground on which they all walked.

His army was fighting its way through the Cremation Plain. The landscape looked like bare, jagged rock. In reality, it was composed of the remains of millions upon millions of beings. Their teeth were fused together in vicious clusters, jabbing upwards through densely packed ash. The surface might be solid for a long stretch, and then suddenly the ash would give way, insubstantial as a dust cloud, and the long, razored constructions of teeth would grind and slash. The Plain would take its victims one at a time, or it could devour a hundred at once. There was never any warning, and no way to tell where the unstable ground lay.

The teeth ripped flesh to shreds. Blood erupted in fountains from the dying men. And when blood touched the Plain, a new cremation occurred. Flames roared out and up from the collapse, incinerating the corpses, and washing over more troops as they fled the explosion. Ruhok stood without flinching as the fire engulfed him. His ornate bronze armour blazed crimson, shining brighter than the flames in the night. His flesh had become a blackened, scarred hide, so thickened and scaled with scabs that there was nothing left for the fire to consume. He waited out the fire. When the flames dissipated, it appeared to his troops as if he had defeated them. Shouts of anger and praise came to him, and the horde struggled on.

‘We move ever forward, Lord Ruhok,’ said Ghour, pausing with him.

‘Too slowly,’ Ruhok told the bloodsecrator.

Ghour did not contradict him. He bowed his head and, carrying Ruhok’s huge icon high, marched forward.

Ruhok paused a moment longer, watching the huge siege towers sway back and forth. The casualties among the brayherds hauling them forwards were tremendous. Every few moments, new flames marked where the ground consumed tuskgors as they pulled the great chains, or the towers jerked as their wheels dropped into another collapse. The towers were immense constructions of brass. Their peaks were carved into grotesque faces with gaping jaws. The interior of the maws glowed red. The towers had their own fires. They were forges of destruction. Nations had fallen to their advance, cities reduced to ashes on the wind. Ruhok had sworn to Khorne that he would bring the same fate to Nulahmia.

At the base of the towers, Torsek the Skullgrinder raged at the tuskgors. His anvil swung on its chain, striking any slave who did not pull hard enough. The towers were Torsek’s creation, and he rarely left them, as if his will alone was what pulled them to the walls they would destroy.

As Ruhok turned and marched forwards again, his slaughterpriest caught up with him. Vul’s chest was marked by the last explosions. His flesh glistened with burns, and his horned helm was charred. ‘Doubts are spreading,’ he warned. ‘Doubts that you know where you are taking us.’ He lowered the point of his spear with a rattle from the skulls tethered to the shaft, and pointed into the distance. There was nothing to see except the next few hundred yards of the Cremation Plain, lit by the torches of the warhorde and the infernal blazes of the siege towers. ‘By day and by night we march across this ground, and by day and by night there is only more of it.’

‘Are my followers afraid?’ Ruhok demanded. ‘If they are, they are weak. Let the ground consume them.’

‘It does, Lord Ruhok. It well and truly does.’

Ghour had stopped again, watching the exchange, his eyes narrowing with anger when he looked at Vul. Ruhok wasn’t sure if Vul was merely reporting on the discontent, or indirectly issuing his own challenge. It did not matter. His message for everyone was the same. ‘Let those who doubt me try themselves against the edge of my axe.’ He swung the blade of the terrible weapon up and down. The rune of Khorne glowed white with heat, and the axe hissed in hunger. ‘Spread the word!’ Ruhok shouted. ‘Tell them! Tell them all! Step forward if you defy me! Prove your leadership by usurping mine!’ He lowered his voice. ‘But tell them this, too. Tell them that their loyalty and their effort will be rewarded. Nulahmia will perish forever in a storm of fire and blood that will shake the entire realm.’

Vul bowed. ‘I will do as you command.’ His voice trembled with reignited fervour. The slaughterpriest believed in Ruhok’s promises.

‘Take my gospel to the warhorde,’ Ruhok said. ‘Fill the hearts of the Bloodbound with new fire.’

Ruhok marched on, thinking of the destruction to come. The visions of utter ruin had filled his thoughts since the Everchosen had given him the dispensation to correct the errors of that dilettante Lascilion and in some measure avenge the death of Bloodking Thagmok. Ruhok grudgingly admitted that the lord of Slaanesh had one genuine accomplishment of which he could boast, and that was finding the way past the magical defences that had hidden Nulahmia for so long. But once in the city, he had squandered his advantage, indulging too much in the pursuit of sensation rather than devoting all his energies to the complete annihilation of his foe.

Nulahmia was no longer inaccessible, but when Ruhok was done with it the city would have vanished again, this time forever. He would drown Nulahmia in blood, and leave nothing behind, not even the stones to mark where the city had once stood.

But first he had to reach it, and the land was seeking to grind his warhorde down before he could even be absolutely certain he was leading them in the right direction.

He felt the ground subside under his right foot. He sidestepped with a growl, while a spike of teeth ground futilely in his wake.

Movement in the sky caught his attention. A glow of wraithlight was approaching. He stopped walking and raised his hand to warn of an approaching enemy. There was just one, though. The appearance of a single foe made him far more suspicious than the thunder of an opposing army. An individual meant some sort of subtlety was being woven, and he despised such schemes. They were the delight of the followers of Tzeentch; all Ruhok asked of war was the endless spilling of blood.

The glow drew closer, and Ruhok’s jaw dropped in surprise. Mounted on a dread abyssal, the Mortarch of Blood flew towards him. Ruhok had never seen Neferata before, but he knew this was she. No other being could have such presence. Ghour hissed, and Ruhok growled low in his throat, discomfited by the sensations Neferata provoked, even at a distance.

The dread abyssal stopped less than a hundred yards away from the Lord of Khorne, and some twenty feet up. It made lazy passes through the air, its bony tail whipping sinuously. Ruhok looked on all sides for signs of an ambush, but Neferata appeared to be completely alone.

Kathag, the Exalted Deathbringer of Ruhok’s Gorechosen, came up behind him. The scars on his bare torso were so numerous, they had turned his hide into leathered armour. His face was barely human. He had cut his cheeks open, stretching his lips into a perpetual grimace of hate. The horns he wore completed his transformation into a beast of war, a thing of such coiled muscle and burning rage that he looked as if he needed no battering ram to shatter fortress gates. ‘This is a trap,’ he said. ‘Do not let her spring it.’ His voice was surprisingly soft. The anger of his words seemed to come from a source of instinct rather than wisdom. He adjusted his grip on his huge, ruinous axe. ‘I will destroy her.’

‘We shall present a fine skull to Khorne,’ Ghour said.

‘But can you?’ Neferata asked. Below her, bloodreavers had rushed forwards. They strained upwards with their blades, shouting in rage and hunger. She ignored them. ‘And will you?’ she asked, her attention on Ruhok. ‘When I offer you the keys to my city?’

‘This is a trap,’ Kathag said again.

‘Is it?’ said Neferata. ‘If it is, wouldn’t I have sprung it by now?’ She cast her eyes over the army of the Bloodbound. ‘It is done,’ she mocked. ‘The war is over. You are all dead.’

The warhorde screamed back at her.

Neferata shrugged. ‘It seems you are not.’ She turned back to Ruhok. ‘I will speak with you alone,’ she said.

Attack now, he thought. Destroy her, and the siege is won before it has started. The thought was not enticing. That was a victory unworthy of Khorne. Unlike Kathag, Ruhok was not foolish enough to think Neferata could be taken down so easily. If she was here, she was ready to fend off an immediate challenge. And her offer was interesting. After the endless march through the Cremation Plain, it was very interesting.

Ruhok nodded. ‘I will speak with you,’ he said.

‘You are a fool,’ Kathag snarled.

‘Then I will not return, and you will be Lord,’ said Ruhok. ‘And so you will be spared a duel you could not win. You should be grateful to the vampire. Perhaps offer her a few skulls.’ He pushed Kathag away contemptuously.

The Exalted Deathbringer’s eyes narrowed, but he stepped aside, calm despite the insult. The spikes of the skullgouger on his left hand were motionless. He had not even clenched his fist in response.

‘You accept insults too easily,’ Ruhok said, trying to provoke a reaction. He did not like the depths of Kathag’s self-discipline. He had yet to challenge Ruhok’s reign and had fought loyally. But this ability to channel his anger into still waters was a profound threat.

‘I ignore what is pointless,’ said Kathag.

Ruhok growled and stalked forward, following Neferata as her mount flew slowly away, remaining low and visible.

Ruhok followed the flight of the Mortarch for over an hour. There were only slight rises in the Plain, and they would have had to travel for miles to be beyond the sight of the warhorde. Neferata had to content herself with pulling him far beyond the possibility of immediate action from his army.

Ruhok laughed. ‘Do not think you are safe!’ he called.

Neferata didn’t answer. Her skeletal beast landed. Its head, covered with an eyeless mask, faced Ruhok, the jaws gaping slightly, perception deeper and more sinister than any provided by eyes focused on the lord of Khorne. Neferata descended and stood before Ruhok. In her hands were a black dagger and wide-bladed staff darker than the night. She held them casually, without threat. The danger they represented was clear. She looked steadily at Ruhok, and though her skull would be a supreme prize to offer to Khorne, he felt himself strangely reluctant to attack her. The low growl began once more in the back of his throat.

‘So,’ said Neferata, ‘what lord of Khorne is it who seeks to capture Nulahmia?’

‘I am Ruhok, and I will not capture it. I will burn it. I will grind it into dust.’

‘Good,’ said Neferata.

Ruhok snorted. ‘Do you expect me to believe you seek to betray your city to me? Without reason?’

‘I have every reason,’ said Neferata. Her voice wrapped itself around his head, its music insinuating and intoxicating. ‘It is not my city any longer. It has been taken from me, and what I cannot have, I will destroy.’ As she spoke, her voice became colder, shot through with an anger of ice and steel.

That was rage he saw in her, and Ruhok had a deep understanding of rage. ‘I will destroy your city with or without your help,’ he said, but he was curious now. ‘What could you offer me?’

‘You are approaching the city from the north-west,’ said Neferata. ‘Yes, Lord Ruhok, you are indeed heading in the right direction. You will continue as you have been.’

Ruhok stiffened in anger that she dared to give him an order. But he would hear her out. And, though he could barely admit it to himself, he wanted to continue listening to that voice.

‘You will, as you begin your attack, make a convincing feint towards the north-west section of our wall and the Hyena Gate. But your main strength must be ready to strike instead at the north-east. Send a small force ahead, and they will find the Raven Gate open to them. Let them hold it, and the city is yours.’

‘Why is this subterfuge necessary? Open Hyena Gate for us.’ He was already displeased to be discussing a form of warfare that was anything less direct than a battering ram.

‘I cannot,’ said Neferata. ‘That gate is too well guarded.’

‘And the other is not?’ Her tale was sounding more improbable by the second.

‘The second is not guarded because the defenders of the northern quarters of Nulahmia do not know about it. It is small, and my arts have kept it hidden from all eyes but mine. It is a route for my personal escape. If Nulahmia is no more, I shall have no further need of it.’

You will regret giving that secret away, Ruhok thought. You will die with the city you are betraying.

‘Once enough of your troops have…’ Neferata paused as if searching for the right word. ‘Once enough have entered the city, you may open whatever gates you like.’ She smiled, perfect predator teeth showing through the blood-red of her lips.

‘And what of your troops? You are sacrificing them on the altar of your displeasure?’

‘You will not be fighting my forces. Your foes will be legions in the service of Arkhan the Black.’ The smile vanished, and the terrible winter of fury consumed her features once more. ‘Did you not understand that the city is no longer mine?’

‘I do,’ said Ruhok. ‘And now so must you. I said that after I am done, nothing will remain of Nulahmia.’

‘So I should hope.’

‘My vow encompasses all that belongs to the city. Your betrayal is no protection. I will destroy you too.’

Neferata sheathed her dagger and stepped forward. She reached out slowly. Stunned by disbelief, Ruhok did not react. She dragged a nail down the scarred flesh of his cheek. The wrath of flame could not move him, but that delicate touch sent a shudder through his frame. ‘Please try, Lord Ruhok,’ Neferata whispered. ‘Please try. Be my disaster.’

Properly honed, the blade of truth and the blade of lies are indistinguishable.

– Philosophy of Deception

Chapter 6

AGE OF SIGMAR

THE SEASON OF CREMATORY

Neferata headed back towards Nulahmia in a shroud of darkness. She was the unseen watcher in the night, and she was hunting. She flew in a search pattern, covering a wide area on the path between the warhorde and the city. She scoured the ground with her sorcerous sight, seeking those who would remain unseen, watching for the other watchers.

She needed Ruhok to advance as far as possible without Venzor knowing. The warhorde was an impressive one, but she would give Ruhok every advantage she could going into the conflict. She needed the full power of the disaster.

Twice she caught sight of her own spies moving swiftly through the night. Then, midway on her journey, she saw two figures who did not serve her. They were moving north, and on the western edge of a path that would bring them to a point where they would catch sight of the warhorde. If they deviated slightly from their current direction, they might miss Ruhok’s advance entirely. But if they kept going, they would see what Neferata did not want them to see.

Nagadron plunged downwards, claws extended. Neferata’s veil of darkness shredded, and she descended on the scouts with the full fury of the hunt.

The Adevore opened his jaws wide, and the souls trapped within his frame screamed. The cry shattered the night, and the two vampires on the ground froze, prey paralysed by the shriek of a raptor. They looked up, saw destruction coming for them, and ran, sprinting in opposite directions. Nagadron streaked for the one on the right. Just before he reached the ground, Neferata leapt from his back, arcing through the air for the other scout. She landed in a crouch a few yards ahead of the vampire. Ash puffed up between her feet. Though his eyes were wide with fear, the scout kept running towards her, choosing to fight rather than veer off. There was no escape. His sword was drawn, and he lunged at Neferata with the ferocity of desperation.

Neferata rose from her crouch and blocked the scout’s blade with Aken-seth, the Staff of Pain. When the sword made contact with the staff, a crackle of eldritch magic arced from Aken-seth to the blade and down the arm of the vampire. He screamed, immobilised by pain that coursed through his tainted blood into the depth of his bones. Neferata stabbed him through the chest with Akmet-har. The Dagger of Jet pierced his heart. The scout’s vitality, which he had taken from the blood of mortals, was stolen again, devoured by the ancient weapon. The vampire’s face withered. His sword dropped to the ground, and then he fell too.

A short distance away, Nagadron was dragging his claws over the body of the other scout, spreading it over the Cremation Plain. A circle of fire erupted around the dread abyssal as the vampire’s blood soaked the hungry ground.

‘Take the body,’ Neferata commanded. ‘This one too.’

Nagadron obeyed, grasping his victim in curled claws, and seizing Neferata’s in his jaws. The monster’s teeth ground bones and organs to jelly. There had still been a spark of existence in the scout, and now he twitched his last.

Neferata mounted Nagadron again, and she directed him west as they flew off once more. They travelled for some time, and a murky dawn had come before Neferata brought Nagadron to land. They were in a region where the Cremation Plain transitioned to the Tombhills. The terrain became rolling here. The hills varied in size, but not in shape. They were all burial mounds. They held as little as a single grave, or many hundreds. There were so many that they overlapped, the upward slopes of some mounds emerging from the rounded peaks of others. Carrion grasses covered them: brown, razor-edged weeds that hummed and sang in the winds blowing over the hills. The grasses fed on the countless bodies buried beneath the surface of the Tombhills. They also added new bodies to the land, slicing the veins of any living thing that dared to enter the region.

Where they had landed, the grasses presented in thin clumps, dusted by the ashes blown in from the Cremation Plain. The ground here was hard-packed dirt, and stable. The reeds recoiled from the presence of Neferata and Nagadron, then leaned in hungrily at the mangled bodies the abyssal steed dropped. Tiny mouths opened along their lengths, puckering in hunger. A few stalks sank the sharp contours of their lips into chunks of flesh, but not enough of the grass could reach to entirely consume the corpses. There would be traces of the scouts for some time to come.

Neferata had Nagadron paw through the remains again. The violence done to the bodies must be massive in order to conceal the signs of her handiwork. Just as importantly, the extent of the injuries would suggest attackers of enormous ferocity. That would make it easy for Venzor to believe that Khornate forces had passed this way, moving in a direction that would make them miss Nulahmia. This one scene of murder would not be enough to convince him, but there would be others to come.

The following night, she spoke with Mereneth again on the roof of the Claw of Memory.

‘I will have Venzor blind to the north-west,’ Neferata told her spy, ‘but believing himself to be clear-sighted. Draw his attention westwards. Hunt for his scouts. Lure them from the path that would lead to them to Ruhok, or kill them. Leave no trace of violence that would cause him to look in the direction of the enemy.’

‘Sooner or later, he will know what is coming,’ said Mereneth.

‘I do not expect the forces of Chaos to take the city by surprise.’ At least, Neferata thought, not initially. ‘But I will have Venzor less than prepared. We will do what is possible. What is most important is that he does not suspect my hand in the death of his agents. Should he become anxious enough about the north-west to send a reconnaissance force that way, ignore those troops.’ She would alter her tactics when that eventuality arose.

Five nights later, Neferata stood in a narrow fissure sunken into the outer wall of the Palace of Seven Vultures. Far below, the glints from torches and lanterns in the windows of Nulahmia’s palaces were indistinguishable from the wraithlight of tombs. The city flickered with currents of light and darkness, and the night pressed down, heavy with the great heat. The anticipation of fire dwelled in the city, a fever-dream of catastrophe.

Mereneth approached down the tunnel behind Neferata. They were in the gossamer web of passages that gave her secret movement through the Palace’s walls.

‘Venzor appears to be satisfied, my queen,’ Mereneth said. ‘He believes the news he receives about the passage of the enemy.’

‘I am less concerned with whether his belief is sincere or not,’ said Neferata, ‘than how he chooses to act.’ She did not turn around.

‘His energies remain concentrated on his position in the city.’

Neferata smiled thinly. ‘He seeks to rule entirely. When he believes he is ready, he will move against me.’

‘His ambition will be his doom,’ said Mereneth.

‘Do not be dismissive,’ Neferata warned. Now she faced her spy. ‘His challenge is real. The longer my rule is diminished, the stronger he becomes.’ She could feel more and more of the currents of the city flowing away from her. Greed and fear were the engines of loyalty in Nulahmia, and she was no longer the sole controller of those passions. She was engaged in a race to reclaim her rule before it was taken from her once and for all. ‘Loyalties are shifting, are they not? My subjects grow restive. They perceive a new master.’

‘Some do,’ Mereneth admitted. ‘We have not acted against them, as you commanded. Do you wish us to punish them now?’

‘Not yet. My judgement will fall on them, and it grows heavier with delay. For now, we wait. But we do not wait much longer, Mereneth. Ruhok approaches.’

‘We cannot keep Venzor’s awareness away from the warhorde much longer.’

‘I do not intend to. Indeed, I will warn him myself. Where is the proud lord?’

‘Holding court, my queen.’

‘Excellent. Then I shall see him.’

She left the tower, and Mereneth followed, the loyal shadow following the great one.

Venzor had quarters in a palace near the north wall, one whose mortal inhabitants had been killed by the return of Nagash. Though it was close to the larger concentration of the troops under his command, Venzor had been spending more and more time of late in the Palace of Seven Vultures. He was growing accustomed to its surroundings. He was coming to see himself as the new master of Throne Mount. Like a monarch in waiting, he had taken, for his use, a magnificent suite of chambers adjacent to the grand hall. Neferata had not protested. She had remained the phantom in the halls of the palace, and it had suited her purpose that the only show of luxury and renewed energy in the palace should come from Venzor. Let him be the counterfeit ruler. His poor mimicry of the glory that had been hers would only be the more apparent.

Neferata threw open the doors of Venzor’s receiving hall. The vampire lord was seated at the far end in a chair of gold and wraithbone, its arms constructed from fused, bejewelled skulls. It was very close to being a throne. Neferata had amused herself in the past by offering the seat to ambitious nobles and wealthy ambassadors from outside Nulahmia. Her amusement came precisely from the fact that the seat was so very near to being a throne, yet it was not. It rarely took more than a few seconds for her visitors to understand this truth, and to feel torn between the honour that was shown them, and the humiliation of the lesson. Venzor, it seemed, was immune to the lesson of the chair. Neferata looked forward to ending his delusion.

Neferata strode down the centre of the hall. On either side of the central aisle, a procession of tall candelabra lit the room. They were bodies of mortals frozen in the moment of death agonies. Molten iron, and then gold, had been poured over them. The courtiers surrounding Venzor drew aside at her advance. Alarm crossed the faces of the vampire nobles. She gave each of them a quick, contemptuous look. Flanking Venzor were his lieutenants. One of them was Dessina Avaranthe. There, Neferata thought, stood the symbol of a family with a history deeply entwined with the currents of treachery that flowed through Nulahmia. Such turns of fate and chance it had taken for Dessina to exist at all. An age had passed since Neferata had ordered the extermination of the Avaranthes, yet here still was a representative of that house, clad in armour, and silent in power.

Venzor seemed entertained by Neferata’s interruption. ‘You honour us with your presence, Queen Neferata,’ he said. He hesitated minutely before and after her title, underscoring its precariousness.

‘It is not an honour I wish to bestow,’ said Neferata. ‘But your foolishness compels me to do so. I am here to demand that you explain yourself. With so much at stake, why have you concentrated solely on defence? I do not understand.’

Venzor’s thin lids lowered and raised in a slow, reptilian blink of confusion. ‘You have me at a disadvantage,’ he said, his rasp steady and unconcerned. ‘I do not know what you are talking about. Defence against what?’

Neferata stared at him, arranging her features into a mask of astonishment and anger. ‘Why do you dissemble? What purpose is there in pretence? Defence against the Khornate warhorde, of course.’

Venzor shrugged dismissively. ‘We have noted the evidence of its passing. The enemy has not located Nulahmia. There is no threat.’

Neferata maintained an icy silence for a long moment. Though she had engineered the deception, she still wondered if Venzor truly was as much the fool as he appeared to be in this moment. She didn’t think he was. Some of his unconcern had to be for show. Even so, her pretended outrage took very little effort to be convincing. ‘No threat,’ she said at last, repeating his words with a precise mixture of contempt and disbelief. ‘Evidence of its passing? Lord Venzor, what have your scouts been telling you? Where have you been sending them? My spies have seen the warhorde. The Bloodbound of Khorne will be at our gates in a matter of days.’

Now it was Venzor’s turn to be silent. His left eye fluttered with a nervous twitch. ‘You are certain of this?’

‘Would I be here if I was not?’ Neferata began to pace. ‘We have been fools, both of us,’ she said. ‘You, for remaining ignorant of what is closing in on Nulahmia. I, for assuming that you were taking measures to protect the northern walls. I should have spoken sooner.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

She stopped pacing and rounded on him with a snarl. ‘Because I did not wish to,’ she hissed. ‘Because your presence in my city is a perpetual humiliation. And because I thought you knew what you were doing!’ Venzor fumbled for a response, and she kept going. ‘At least my foolishness had limits. I have taken some measures to prepare for the coming war.’

‘What measures?’ Venzor asked.

Was that hope she heard in his voice? The irony was of a rich vintage. It was the first unalloyed pleasure she had experienced within the walls of Nulahmia in a long time. ‘My agents have opened negotiations with Lord Ruhok,’ she said, and the look on Venzor’s face was the equal in delight to the irony of his hope a moment before.

‘They have what?’ he sputtered.

‘They have promised, in my name, to ensure that the Hyena Gate will open to the warhorde.’

Venzor gaped. One hand clutched the arm of the chair, while the other clawed at the air, as if trying to catch the words that had failed him.

Until now, the rest of the vampires present had been silent, perhaps hoping to drop beneath the notice of the leaders in conflict and so be forgotten. Now they stirred. Whispers of fear circled the hall. Neferata felt their stares. None could understand what she was doing. All were reminded that in this room, there was only one being who had the right to inspire terror in their hearts, and that was their queen, not this ambitious lieutenant of the Mortarch of Sacrament.

‘What have you done?’ Venzor finally managed. Behind him, Dessina took a step forward, her gaze furious, her hand on the hilt of her sword. Venzor raised a finger, signalling patience and restraining her.

‘What, it seems, was necessary.’ She cocked her head and looked curious. When Venzor did not respond, she sighed in exasperation. ‘Do you not see? I have set the terms of the battle in our favour. We know where Ruhok will direct his strength, and we have time to prepare our defences and our counter-attack.’

Venzor leaned forward, some animation returning to him. His eyes narrowed. ‘And why would Ruhok trust you? Why would he believe you would betray your city?’

‘Because rage is what he knows. My spies brought him word of strife in Nulahmia. Will you pretend there is none?’ Venzor said nothing, and she continued. ‘They told him a tale of usurpation. And of a queen willing to destroy what was taken from her.’ There was no pretence of anger in her words. Her voice was the cold of vengeance, and the flames of the candelabra dimmed. The courtiers instinctively took a step back. No one in the hall doubted her sincerity.

‘That is a tale to convince a lord of Khorne,’ Venzor admitted.

‘I’m glad you agree,’ said Neferata. She strode forward until she towered over Venzor in his seat. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘what do you intend? Are my efforts to be in vain?’

‘They will not be,’ said Venzor. ‘If this is the situation we face, then we will make ready, we will break the siege before it even begins, and we will crush the forces of Chaos.’

Neferata read his eagerness and his determination. She was close to putting Venzor on the war footing she desired. If, he had said. If this is the situation we face. He was cautious. He knew better than to take her simple word as truth. He would seek certainty for himself. And look where she wanted him to look.

Once Neferata had left, Venzor turned to Dessina. ‘How much of what she said would you believe?’ he asked.

‘I was never close to the queen,’ said Dessina.

‘I am well aware of that. But your life and your undeath have been spent in Nulahmia. You have been in and out of her court. Your insights have already proven valuable. I would have more of them now.’

Dessina bowed her head in respect. ‘I believe most of what we have heard. A lie about the advance of a Khornate army would be too easy to disprove.’

‘Then you feel we should act on the assumption that her information is accurate.’

Dessina grimaced. ‘I would do so with reluctance.’

Venzor nodded, pleased. ‘As would I. The question, then, is where we are to find the lie in her words. This is where we must find the trap and its nature.’

‘She may not be lying at all,’ said Dessina.

‘Explain yourself.’

‘It is a strategy I have witnessed the Mortarch deploy more than once, but one I have not been able to detect until it is too late. She may have told you the truth, but perhaps not all of it. Or she may have told you all the truth, but told it slant. For Neferata, the truth is the most powerful of all lies.’

‘I see.’ Venzor sank back in his throne. One fang bit his lower lip as he began to go over Neferata’s words, looking for the gap in the story or the weakness in the reasoning that would show him what he must do to hold on to the city.

I know what lies on the other side of stagnation, of decay, of all forms of defeat. I have seen it. When I close my eyes, I can see it now.

– The Understanding of Annihilation

Chapter 7

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

Neferata was uneasy. Her impulse said, Look in the north.

Her discomfort came from more than the rumours of rebellion. It was acute to the point of pain. It was an instinct she did not dare ignore. Something was happening in the northern reaches of Nulahmia. From the highest tower of the Palace of Seven Vultures, she looked down the Throne Mount into the city, her witchsight revealing every street and courtyard to her. She saw nothing to warrant what she felt. The city pulsed with its nocturnal rhythms of cruelty and blood. Predators hunted prey, and the weak cowered behind locked doors and barred windows. The dance of the living and the dead continued as it had for millennia. She saw nothing to warrant her unease.

I see no rebellion, either, she thought. Yet I know the conspirators are out there.

And then again, Look in the north.

She would not ignore the instinct. So she seized the Staff of Pain and the Dagger of Jet, and summoned Nagadron. With Aken-seth strapped to her back, and Akmet-har in hand, she flew off from the Palace. What she could not see from a distance, she would hunt out. She left behind her bodyguard of morghasts. For now, she would be the unseen presence in the night. She would find the source of her unease, and then decide on a course of action.

On Nagadron’s back, she soared over the rooftops of Nulahmia. To the citizens, mortal and undead, who happened to look up, she would have appeared as no more than an eddy in the banks of fog that moved across the city. The Adevore flew low, grazing the peaked gables, flashing between the spires of mausoleums. Neferata was close enough to feel the pulse of the city, the throb of its lifeblood. No matter what discontent arose in her subjects, she was the creator of Nulahmia. Its being and its soul belonged to her, and whatever force now disturbed it, like an insect struggling in a web, she would find it, and preserve what was hers.

Deep into the northern region of Nulahmia, in the midst of the Silent Quarter, the disturbance grew stronger and clearer. The nature of the instinct that had driven her into the night became clear. She sensed the deployment of powerful magic. Its precise nature and location were still veiled from her sight, but its mere presence sent occult ripples through the aether. There was no question in her mind that this was connected to the stirrings of rebellion in the city, and it disturbed her that those who plotted against her had abilities on this scale. There was something familiar about the nature of the magic. Though she could not yet find it, and though she did not know what it was meant to do, it had a character. The closer she came, the more precise that character became.

The Silent Quarter was a vast cemetery. No mortals lived here, and no vampires held palatial homes. There were only the dead, entombed in mass graves, in humble tombs, and in sepulchres so vast they rivalled the Palace of Seven Vultures in size. Cobbled passages wound between the vaults and mausoleums in a twisting, tangled maze. The mortals who erred and wandered into the Silent Quarter soon became lost, and never emerged. The living who entered this region were doomed to fall into silence. At the centre of the Quarter was the Tomb of the Unnumbered. It was a colossal mausoleum, one of the oldest constructions in Nulahmia, and it contained legions upon legions of the dead. It rose from the surrounding tombs like a great, slope-backed beast, its spine covered with grim, black towers of basalt slabs and fossilised bone. The tallest were on its peak, twin spikes that reached hundreds of feet into the sky, clawing the fog into streamers.

Nagadron flew between the twin spires. Too late, Neferata realised this was the centre of the disturbance. Black, sorcerous energy lashed out from both of the windowless peaks. It enveloped both the vampire and her mount. Neferata’s limbs convulsed, and her hand clenched with such violence around the hilt of Akmet-har it seemed that she should have snapped the dagger in half. Pain coursed through her limbs and her spine, and that agony was as nothing compared to the searing eruption in her skull. She could not move, or think. Her head was thrown back, her jaws locked open in an unvoiced scream. Nagadron shrieked, his tail thrashing in fury and distress. He clawed and flailed at the air, as trapped by the coruscating darkness as his mistress. The souls inside his huge body screamed too, and then he began to lose cohesion, to return to the otherworld from which he had been summoned.

Neferata sensed the imminent dissolution of her mount, and through the torment of her paralysis came the salvation of anger, of outrage that she should be attacked here, here, in her realm. She could not yet move, but she could think again, and she could see, though her vision was cracked by black lightning. The greatest drive of all, the drive to adapt, to do whatever was necessary to survive, took over, and in the incandescence of agony, she began to move.

Nagadron was still in mid-dissolution. The attack had begun half a heartbeat ago.

As Neferata took back control of her limbs, two figures leapt from the top of the spires. They were winged vampire nobles, Borzhas and Sethek. They each carried a sword in one hand, and a large, gnarled, talismanic cylinder in the other. It was from these objects that the energy coursed, lashing across the gap between them with unending fury. The two vampires dived at Neferata, blades out to impale her.

Take them, she commanded herself, and because that was the greatest necessity of the moment, she did. Nagadron’s spine was the last portion of the abyssal steed to remain solid, and she launched herself from it in the moment before her mount vanished completely. Her leap was clumsy, her movements jagged with pain, but it was enough. She flew to meet Borzhas. Startled that she had broken her paralysis, he tried to veer out of her way, spoiling his blow. Neferata’s armour turned his blade aside, and she collided with him. The impact knocked him down, and they fell, a tangle of struggling limbs. As they dropped, the link between his talisman and Sethek’s snapped. The web of energy tore. Chaotic, weakened but still ferocious, the violent magic surrounded the combatants. Neferata’s pain lessened, and Borzhas screamed in the shock of new pain. He tried to fly, but she stabbed Akmet-har through the membrane of his wing, tearing it into flaps.

Down they fell, and the uncontrolled storm of the spell blasted through the roof of the Tomb of the Unnumbered. Neferata forced the pain of the energy further back into her consciousness and fought for control of her actions, but she was still awkward, still jerking wildly. As she and Borzhas tumbled over each other, she caught a glimpse of Sethek streaking down after them, her wings tucked in for the dive. She must have dropped her talisman when the magic recoiled. Her left arm was blackened and trailing smoke.

Neferata saw Borzhas’ talisman clearly now. It bore a great seal, one she recognised. ‘Mannfred,’ she hissed through her pain. The Mortarch of Night had lent his signature to the trap then. His hand was reaching into Nulahmia to attack her, mocking her from afar. ‘You strike with borrowed power,’ she sneered at Borzhas. ‘It will always betray you.’

They dropped through the domed vault beneath the roof of the Tomb. The stone coffins below were laid out in circular rings, forming a funereal amphitheatre. Spectral light shifted like tattered lace over the graves. The shouts of the struggle and the crackling blaze of the sorcery broke the silence of millennia. Then they hit the centre of the vault, the floor disintegrating before them.

They fell, end over end, snarling in anger and pain, a dark comet plunging through the heart of the Tomb of the Unnumbered. Borzhas tried to break free, but Neferata jammed the Dagger of Jet between his ribs, and held it there. Her grip was iron, and she trapped the other vampire in her fall. There was no escape for him. She would take him with her into the abyss of their own creation.

The magic seemed to be growing weaker, or perhaps Neferata was inuring herself to the pain. Yet she was still caught in the midst of a black explosion, whirling and falling, seeing only fragments of the monument around her and of the pursuing Sethek. Falling through level after level, ever downwards, through the foundations of the Tomb and its subterranean vaults, down through the tunnels and the caves beneath Nulahmia, and still down, Mannfred’s monstrous spell burrowing endlessly into the earth.

Borzhas smashed his other wing repeatedly against her head, dazing her, and he started to pull away. She snatched at the membrane with her free hand and sank her claws into it, shredding the leathery flesh. Borzhas screamed anew as his blood sprayed, and she dragged him closer, forcing him to see the journey of the fall to the end.

And down, deeper and deeper through rock, Sethek still following, until the rock became of uncertain substance. They fell through caverns so huge they seemed to have no walls or floor. They fell through howling fogs of ectoplasm, and past legions of wailing spirits. They were plunging through regions that were the threshold of spirit worlds.

Neferata’s head became clearer. The magic was weaker now, but it was still enough to tear through the substance of the realm. The thought came to her that perhaps this fall might never end. Then, as they fell through a maelstrom of whirling, howling, tormented souls, an instinct of terrible danger awakened in her, an instinct infinitely more powerful than the one that had led her to the trap, and one entirely hers. The deepest core of her being shrieked at her, that fundamental urge to survive howled that she must stop the fall, and she must stop it now.

With the Dagger of Jet still lodged in Borzhas’ body, still trapping him to her, she released his tattered wing and reached behind to snatch the Staff of Pain from her back.

Below, the chamber floor rushed to meet them. It glowed with green wraithlight tinged with a strange, thrumming grey. The stone of the floor was twisted into the form of a frozen whirlpool, as if wrenched and contorted into this shape by an immeasurable force below.

Neferata jammed the blade of Aken-seth against Borzhas’ chest and sent a withering blast of magic into his body. A searing flash of violet, sorcerous light hurled her and Borzhas away from each other. His left hand had closed around the talisman as if fused, unable to let go of the source of both their torments, and the shock of Neferata’s attack jolted his fingers open, dropping the talisman, and at last they were free of the corrosive magic.

Borzhas spread his wings. He tried to fly, but they were too shredded, and the festering wound where Akmet-har had pierced him slowed his movements. He could do no more than slow his fall. Sethek flew to his aid. She grabbed his arm, but his weight dragged them both down, towards the floor.

Her frame still jangling knots of pain, her mind filled with broken glass, Neferata straightened out of her tumble and focused her energies through Aken-seth and directed them at the floor of the cavern, hundreds of feet below. The stone surface rippled as if it were nothing more than a membrane ready to tear at the slightest touch. Feet-first, Neferata rode a pillar of magical fire, but she was too weak to reverse her fall. She slowed, dropping more like a feather than a stone, but still she dropped.

Borzhas’ lost talisman hit the floor of the cavern ahead of the vampires. The rock crumbled away beneath the talisman. Cracks raced outwards, covering more than a league in every direction. The cracks became crevasses, and the stone tore. It became something thin and fragile, mere parchment. It flaked away to nothing, shreds of rock and the talisman falling into the horror that waited below. There was a moan as if all existence mourned its death.

Neferata gasped. She knew, with terrible, final certainty, what she saw. It had always been a legend, even to the Mortarchs. Nagash had only mentioned it in her hearing once, millennia ago, and even then speaking as if there were some things that, for the gods too, were better left as myths.

A huge whirlpool of grey nothing churned beneath her, swallowing the falling wreckage of the floor, and eating at the distant walls. The grey had texture, the arms of its vortex wrinkled like the surface of a brain. The movement of the currents was heavy, but not sluggish, massiveness whirling with inexorable strength. But the sense of spinning matter was an illusion. The texture and the movement were visible only because they were the dying gasps of consumed reality. The truth of the whirlpool was that it truly was nothing. It was the greatest and most terrible of devourers, because everything, at the last, became nothing. This was the Maw of Uncreation.

Shyish was the realm of death, yet it, like all the mortal realms, was still a thing of being. It existed. But down in that whirlpool was the final end, absolute entropy. It was there that even death would come to an end.

Above her, Sethek and Borzhas screamed. Sethek flapped her wings with the power of pure terror, and carried them both towards the cavern wall.

Neferata’s slow fall was still a fall towards extinction. With the energy born of desperation, she called to herself a tangible wind of darkness. Its tendrils surrounded her and, at her command, threw her towards the cavern wall. As she flew, the dark disintegrated and fell into tatters, and she arced ever downwards.

The maelstrom was silent, its spiral movement of grey dissolution majestic in its indifference. She came closer and closer to it, the immense coils of the churn ready to consume her. In the seconds of her flight, she sheathed her weapons, freeing her hands. She reached out, a final act of denial. She would exist. And her hands gripped the rock of the wall.

Neferata’s fingers drilled through stone, and she clung to the curving rock face. She was less than fifty feet from the relentless turning current of non-existence. She looked down into the terrible grey. It mesmerised and repelled. There were no true features, only the endless movement of matter dying. She looked away, conscious of the danger of meeting the gaze of pure blankness. But though she was dangling over her terminal fate, and though she had so little strength left with which to save herself, her curiosity was not dead. This was a wonder below here, and it was also a power. One that could not be reasoned with, and that could not be grasped. Yet power was what she understood. It had been the study, practice and purpose of her existence.

She would not turn from the study of the Maw.

She would learn from it. For where there was power, there was opportunity.

Neferata looked up, and saw that Sethek had managed to bring herself and Borzhas to a narrow ledge midway up the cavern wall from Neferata’s position and some distance to her right. Borzhas was moaning in pain and fear, and Sethek was staring down into the whirlpool with fascinated horror. For the moment, they appeared to have forgotten Neferata in the extremity of their terror.

The Mortarch of Blood jammed her hands deeper into the rock. She kicked the wall, creating footholds. Certain, for the time being, that she would not slip, Neferata rested. Cautiously, wary of the pull to dissolution, she studied the Maw of Uncreation.

The point at which the cavern wall met the whirlpool drew her attention. It seemed that matter did not so much disintegrate as flow into the current. The stone was not molten. It was as cold and grey as the rest of the walls, yet it was as if the rock had become a slow-moving liquid, a gradual cataract feeding the hunger of the Maw.

The extent of that hunger was another puzzle. Once in contact with the maelstrom, nothing could resist it. Still, the Maw of Uncreation had not reclaimed all being, devouring Shyish and the other mortal realms. It was both the end and the precondition of existence. It was ravenous, yet it was contained within the boundaries of the cavern. Neferata wondered what supreme enchantment governed this cavern, giving the necessary strength to hold back the ravenings of absolute destruction.

She looked back up at the assassins. Borzhas had quieted, and they were both staring at her, torn between the need to finish her off and the fear of moving even an inch closer to the whirlpool. Neferata smiled at them, taunting them with their cowardice. Sethek snarled. She let go of Borzhas and rose to a crouch. Borzhas scrambled back on the ledge, clutching at the wall. Neferata had stolen the power of flight from him. If he fell, he would have no chance, and he knew it. He clawed gouges into the rock as if he would burrow his way back up to the surface.

Sethek hesitated, alarmed by Neferata’s smile. She looked back and forth between the Mortarch and the maelstrom, gauging distances and chances. Poised for flight, her balance on the ledge was precarious.

Thank you, Neferata thought. You have made all the errors I wished you to. Her strength renewed, she took up the Staff of Pain again and sent a sorcerous bolt blasting up to the ledge. It struck Borzhas and hurled him from the ledge, into the void. Borzhas screamed and grabbed at Sethek. He seized her ankle and she toppled over with him.

They fell, but Sethek reacted quickly. Her blade slashed down and severed Borzhas’ wrists. Howling, he dropped away from her and plunged into the Maw of Uncreation. He vanished beneath the grey, his scream silenced on contact. The speed of the current increased suddenly, and the level of the whirlpool rose.

Sethek wheeled away from Borzhas’ grave and flew straight at Neferata, eyes burning in fury. She came in with blinding speed, heedless of the cliff face, her blade extended, aimed at Neferata’s heart. The half-moon blade of Aken-seth glowed with dark power, and Neferata thrust upwards, impaling Sethek through the upper chest. Sethek choked, gasping, broken by her own speed. She dropped her sword and clawed at the Staff of Pain. Blood foamed from her mouth. Her blade clattered against the cliff, and dropped into the vortex.

Effortlessly, Neferata held Sethek out at the full extension of her arm. She dangled the other vampire over the Maw of Uncreation. ‘You did well,’ she said. ‘You may take pride in that. You also have my thanks. You have shown me just how dangerous my enemies have become. You came very close to achieving your ends,’ she said, and paused, then smiled again. Even in her final agony, Sethek writhed in fear from the promise of that smile. ‘Forgive me,’ said Neferata. ‘I misspoke. You did achieve your end after all.’

‘No,’ Sethek choked out. Now she clutched the shaft of Aken-seth as if it were her salvation.

Neferata lowered her arm and aimed the spear downwards. Sethek slid off the blade. Neferata watched her fall into the whirlpool, eager to see the reaction. Sethek sank, leaving the surface of the grey untroubled, but again the speed of the current increased, and again the level rose. The maelstrom was now less than thirty feet away from Neferata, and the pull of its lethal fascination was stronger than ever.

‘You feed, and you hunger for more,’ Neferata whispered.

The wall of rock vibrated under Neferata’s touch, and the entire cavern shifted minutely. The flow of stone into the Maw of Uncreation accelerated by the same infinitesimal degree, and the whirlpool receded, dropping back to its original level.

The sense of adjustment was profound. Touching the wall as the change happened, Neferata felt how far the change went. It was no spell, no magic as she understood it, that allowed the cavern to act as prison for the Maw of Uncreation. It was something greater. It seemed to her that Shyish itself acted to suppress the thing that was the destroyer of being. Neferata wondered how much of Shyish’s nature was shaped and governed, however invisibly, by the need to keep the Maw buried.

She scanned the cliff above her, and spotted a ledge a short distance away. She climbed up to it, and then sat, exhausted, waiting for enough of her strength to return so that she might summon Nagadron to the realm again, and have him take her from this place.

She turned her face away from the whirlpool, resisting the dark fascination. She looked up instead, at the distance she had fallen, and was troubled. In their plunge, she and Borzhas had broken the seals that had kept the Maw hidden away. Now it was exposed. They had opened a wound in creation. The whirlpool was contained, but if it was fed again, it might grow and rise. Disaster waited in the wings. Her city was up there, exposed to the hunger of the final predator.

I am the nomad of power, holding not to the illusion of structures and stability, instead moving from node to shifting node. I do not fight the currents and tides. I am one with them. I make their strength my own. I embrace then, too, the fluidity of labour, the mutability of art, and the eternity of the task. If the project before me appears long, even after more than a century of progress, I must remember that this is the nature of all work. There is no end except in the Maw of Uncreation. Creation keeps the Maw at bay, and death is the purest form of creation. All this I write, I believe, and I remember. I will not expect the project to end, but I will see it to fruition. I do not concern myself with utility. Let potential be my beacon.

– The Understanding of Annihilation

Chapter 8

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

At Neferata’s orders, an army descended on the Silent Quarter and into the deep foundations of the Tomb of the Unnumbered. The scale of the construction that began matched its urgency. The Silent Quarter was silent no longer, and no more did the Unnumbered dead sleep. The first contingent of the army to arrive was the necromancers who summoned the dead from their tombs to their duty. Their queen had commanded, and the living and the dead must obey. Thousands upon thousands of skeletons dragged huge slabs of granite through the streets of Nulahmia and into the depths of the Tomb of the Unnumbered. Tireless, they swarmed over the construction site to create a new seal over the Maw of Uncreation. It was higher than the final barrier that had existed before but it would be more solid, and closer to Neferata’s watchful eye.

She had named it the Annihilation Gate.

Most of the slaves creating the Gate were skeletons. When chains snapped and slabs dropped through the shaft that had been created in the Tomb, crushing scores of workers in their descent, there was barely a pause in the work. Skeletons did not mourn their comrades who had been smashed to powder. They did not wonder what it was they were labouring to seal away. They were not slowed by curiosity or fear.

But not all the workers were undead. Neferata demanded the presence of hundreds of mortals. Her Black Knights rounded them up from all levels of Nulahmian society. Slaves, prisoners, tradespeople, artisans, merchants and aristocrats, Neferata’s deathly guard took them all to the Silent Quarter.

The entrance to the Tomb of the Unnumbered was so wide, a dragon with its wings spread could have passed through. Neferata stood next to it, Raia at her side, as the stream of mortals entered the Tomb. The people bowed their heads as they approached her.

‘They are struck with wonder to be walking these forbidden paths,’ Raia said.

‘Some of them have realised that the paths are still forbidden,’ said Neferata. She looked at an elderly man whose face was pale with foreboding. ‘They know they will never leave the Silent Quarter.’

Raia was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘Rumours are raging across the city, my queen.’

‘So I would expect. The tales vary, do they not? There is no consistency except that the city is in danger of destruction from below?’

‘Precisely so.’

‘Good. Do nothing to counter them. I want my subjects to know that doom came near, but is being held back.’

‘I still do not understand the nature of that doom, my queen.’

‘Nor can you,’ Neferata said. ‘Not without seeing it, and its sight would destroy you. Content yourself with the rumours, Raia. Imagine that they are all true, and you come close to the heart of it.’

The weeks passed. Neferata supervised the construction in person, and as she strode past the lines of trembling slaves, she saw their growing terror, and the dawning of bleak understanding. On the day the Annihilation Gate reached completion, she addressed the mortals from atop a high plinth next to the Gate.

As she mounted the platform, the assembled mortals looked up at her with terror. They had laboured hard for her, and now that their task was complete, she saw that they dreaded the reward she was about to bestow.

‘You were right,’ she said, ‘to fear for your lives. But take this lesson into your hearts. You never had a choice. There was nothing you could have done to alter your fates. I command, and you obey. This is the plain truth of existence. The purpose of your lives has been revealed, and it is to serve the end you will, this coming night.’

The slaves trembled, their worst fears realised. A few, however, stood taller at her words, taking pride in the sacrifice they would soon make for their queen and their city. She noted who they were, each one. Their honour would see them through their deaths, and she would see that their families were rewarded. She regretted that she would not be able to reward their loyalty still further, and resurrect them as skeletons, that they might continue to serve. But even more than the strength of the great stones that made up its physical being, the Annihilation Gate needed the most powerful magic possible. The sacrifices would have to be absolute. Nothing could be held back, not bone, not flesh, not blood.

The dead who had worked alongside the mortals now surrounded them, herding them into a great circle before the Gate, to await the assigned moment of their doom.

The rite that would consecrate the Annihilation Gate was announced across Nulahmia. Vampires of the Palace Guard and the Company of the Walls marched down the Queensroad and the other great boulevards, banners unfurled, fanfares trumpeting the event. Once again, the queen had seen to the salvation of Nulahmia. Neferata declared three days of feasting, and even the lowest-born mortals, many of whom would be those feasted upon, rejoiced, for she decreed too that great hordes of gold and jewels were to be showered upon the human populace.

For every citizen who died, and for every citizen who grieved, she knew there would be another who would rejoice in their good fortune and shout their thanks to the Mortarch of Blood.

For the hours that preceded the ritual, Neferata returned first to her court, and then flew with Nagadron over the parades. She heard the cheers and the roars of gratitude. And during these hours, she felt the danger of an insurrection recede. The conspirators would not have the support they needed for the moment. The city was celebrating. They required its seething discontent.

That would come again. She had no illusions about that. This was a false peace, an even more brittle and misleading form of stability. It would not last.

The hour of the ritual approached, and the vampire nobility of Nulahmia descended into the Tomb of the Unnumbered. A wide chamber in the shape of a shallow amphitheatre surrounded the Gate. There were so many sacrifices gathered on the floor and the lower slopes that there was limited room for spectators, and so Neferata decreed that only one representative from any of the aristocratic clans would be permitted to attend. Even so, many had to be turned away. Hundreds of vampires in their finery gathered in the chamber, eager to bear witness to the shedding of so much blood. Channels had been carved in the slope of the amphitheatre to bring the flow of offering to the granite Gate.

On the plinth, Neferata watched the crowd. She observed the nobles’ eagerness and hunger. Most of them seemed to regard the event as no different from any of a thousand revels she had hosted in the Palace of Seven Vultures. Even if they were awed by the sight of what had been built, they did not appear to grasp the full import of why it was necessary. How could they? Neferata reminded herself. They have not seen what lies beneath. If they have not seen it, then its existence must be suppressed from their consciousness. As with the realm of Shyish, so with its inhabitants. She had not tried to tell the people the true nature of the danger. They would not understand, and she had no wish to see what sort of disintegration might ensue if they did grasp what the Maw of Uncreation meant. It was enough for them to know that a danger existed, and she had arranged for it to be locked away forever.

The Annihilation Gate was more than a hundred feet high, but was at such a low angle to the ground that it was several times that length. Its granite doors were inscribed with runes of imprisonment. Each of the runes was at least ten feet wide, and they overlapped, amplifying their individual power into a collective wall as powerful as Neferata and her necromancers could construct. At the centre of the doors was the seal, a multifoliate iron blossom of a lock, the edges of its petals honed such that the merest touch would cut deeply into flesh, flooding the trespasser’s body with a poison lethal to mortal and vampire alike. Its convolutions were so complex that no key could ever be constructed to fit them. At the cardinal points around its circumference, baleful eyes of pure silver gazed forbiddingly outwards, eternal, unblinking sentinels.

Neferata wore black, hooded robes woven with runes in threads of crimson and gold. When she moved, the voluminous folds concealed and revealed the runes, throwing them into different conjunctions with each other. Her every gesture was an incantation. Her eyes were shadowed. Her lower face was visible, that all who looked upon her would see her lips move. The words of power she would utter this night must be seen as well as heard.

She spoke, and her voice echoed against the wall and ceiling of the chamber, but was absorbed by the inert massiveness of the Annihilation Gate. ‘This is a night of celebration,’ she said, ‘but our celebrations are solemn. We do not mark a triumph. Instead, this is the moment of triumph. We have been engaged in a battle, and tonight we strike the final blow.’ She swept her eyes over the vampire nobles. ‘You who stand here before this great gate have not come to bear witness. You are here to act.’

She paused. The audience stirred uneasily. The vampires whispered to each other. Some of them appeared now to notice that the contingent of skeleton guards who surrounded the mortal captives was fairly small. It was enough to keep the prisoners contained, but it would take a long time for such a number to work through so many sacrifices.

At the front of the throng, Lord Tristallar stepped forward. He was a tall vampire, and ancient, though it had been many centuries since he had taken to any battlefield more dangerous than the ballroom floor. ‘Do you mean for us to perform the sacrifices ourselves?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Neferata said. ‘Not at all.’ She raised her eyes towards the back of the chamber.

The aristocrats turned to follow Neferata’s gaze. At the rear of the chamber was a much larger force, with more skeletons arriving though the entrance. They were the most mindless of reanimated servants, summoned from their vaults in the Tomb of the Unnumbered. They were draped in torn funeral shrouds and mouldering armour. Their blades were pitted and dull, though they would serve their purpose.

A number of the mortals began to laugh. Neferata looked at them and smiled, sharing their mirth. They were pleased that those who had come to witness their deaths would instead become part of their sacrifice.

‘You cannot mean this!’ Tristallar shouted, his voice shrill with outrage.

Neferata glared at him, and the force of command in her stare made him take a step back. ‘I cannot mean this, Lord Tristallar? Who are you to pronounce upon the nature of my intentions? How do you presume to know your queen’s mind? No one but I can ever declare what I mean. But I will tell you this. I mean exactly what I do.’ And she raised a hand.

The skeleton army descended the slopes of the amphitheatre. The warriors formed a solid wall. They marched slowly, steadily, without hesitation and began the slaughter. The vampires did not accept their destruction peacefully. They fought back. The air of the chamber burned with sorcerous energy, and scores of skeletons exploded into fragments of bone in the first few seconds. Against a single noble, even a dozen skeletons would not prevail, but they came in the thousands. No matter how many were destroyed, there were always more. There was no breach in the wall of bone and blade. A few vampires, motivated perhaps by rage, perhaps by panic, tried to fight their way back up the slope, throwing themselves deeper into the army. They managed to make some headway, but were always borne down and cut to pieces before they could reach the exit.

On her plinth, Neferata turned the Staff of Pain against the nobles. She selected for her targets the vampires who were holding their own most successfully against the skeletons. She hit them with withering black lightning. They doubled over in agony, their spells dissipating without effect. The skeletons closed around them and cut them down, bony arms rising and falling with unwavering, implacable rhythm, blades chopping through finery and flesh to unleash the stolen blood from undead veins.

The skeletons filled the chamber, and there were always more. There was no room for the vampires to fight. Many of the spells they cast crippled other nobles as well as incinerating skeletons, and the army of slaughter never diminished.

On a platform midway up the plinth, the necromancers chosen by Neferata to oversee the construction of the Annihilation Gate added their sorcery to hers, and it was not long before the throng of vampires began to thin. The thunder and crackle of magic diminished, giving way to the screams of the dying as vampires and mortals were united in becoming part of the great sacrifice. The blood ran in rivulets, then streams, then torrents. It overflowed the channels, and it rushed like a cataract across the entire slope of the floor. It lapped in waves against the stone of the Annihilation Gate, and the doors drank it in. The huge runes glowed fiery red, and the granite darkened. The blood spread through the grain of the stone as though it were sponge, changing its nature, transmuting the rock into a substance far stronger. The Annihilation Gate became the black of absence, an echo of the horror it concealed. The seal turned, its razor petals spiralling, and the silver eyes, now streaked with crimson veins, blazed with light. The Annihilation Gate sang as it came into its strength. Its voice was deep and grinding, and it was a choir of thousands of souls fused into unity, all individuality gone, its final trace in the multiplicity of the Gate’s triumphant cry.

As the storm subsided, the blood lapped higher against the edges of the Gate. The vampires fell, overwhelmed, and the skeletons moved deeper into the mortal prisoners. Some still refused the honour of their sacrifice, and they tried to fight. Without weapons, without hope, their struggle was brief. But several mortals, and even a few vampires, came forward to stand next to the plinth, before the gate. They looked up at Neferata and bowed to her. She nodded, acknowledging the grace of their acceptance, and its importance. They could not know what they died for, yet they knew their deaths were necessary. Because their queen commanded it, they gave their lives willingly.

They faced the Gate, looking in awe at that thing they would die to complete. Then the skeletons came, and hacked them to bloody meat.

Such loyalty, Neferata thought, watching the sacrifices fall. Would that I could see where it lay at all times.

Then she thought, I would be bored.

The certainty flashed through her mind and then was set aside. She needed to focus her concentration on the ritual, and leave nothing undone. The contemplation of that truth would have to wait for another time.

Now the butchering was done. No mortals or vampires remained on the floor of the chamber. Mutilated bodies and shattered skeletons lay everywhere, but there was no blood. The Annihilation Gate had devoured every drop.

The Gate’s song had dropped from its initial frenzy. Now it keened and whistled, through its stone throat. The seal turned and flowed, the petals of iron shaping the song like lips.

Neferata looked down at the necromancers. They looked back at her. ‘The ritual is complete,’ one of them said.

‘You have done well,’ Neferata replied. ‘Who is left now, who worked on the Annihilation Gate, or who knows even partial secrets of its construction?’

The satisfaction on the faces of the necromancers faded.

‘You are good and loyal servants,’ Neferata told them. She pulled the Dagger of Jet from her robes. ‘I receive your sacrifice with gratitude.’ She dropped down onto the necromancers’ platform, and slit their throats.

The Annihilation Gate sang as it accepted their blood.

When it was done, Neferata returned to the top of the plinth and contemplated her work. The angle of the doors was so low that from her position, she was almost at eye level with the seal. She watched its gradual, graceful revolutions and mutations, and listened to the grinding, rising and falling whistle of the Gate. The immediate risk to Nulahmia was past, but her efforts here were not truly completed. The Gate would require perpetual vigilance, and its strength would need to be renewed. The skeleton army would remain to protect the Gate, guardians as unflagging as the eyes that surrounded the seal.

At length, Neferata turned away, knowing she would return. There was also much to study here, even if she did not see the Maw of Uncreation directly. Much to learn. Much to think about. She had faced the hidden, obscene core of being, and had retained her sanity. There were lessons here. And where lessons could be learned, there was power.

On the following night, Neferata held court at the Palace of Seven Vultures, and the illusion of unity in Nulahmia was over. There was a mob of courtiers clamouring for her attention and for redress. There were mortals who had come to the great hall, though they were far outnumbered by vampires. Of that nobility, a few attended out of duty. Perhaps, Neferata thought, even out of loyalty, though she would not trust that possibility. What she trusted was the anger. She appeared before them on her dais, and waves of suspicion and resentment crashed against her. She was pleased by the honesty of the reaction. It told her where she stood. She was able to read the state of Nulahmia more easily when the anger was not hidden.

At first, she had intended to face her subjects clad in her armour. She changed her mind, deciding instead on robes of translucent emerald and red, their many layers so delicate that a breath made them billow like sails. Their voluminous sleeves and train exaggerated every movement she made. That exaggeration would be useful to her. So would their appearance of fragility.

She said nothing for a long time, letting the clamour grow. The demands were stated a hundred different ways, but they were all essentially the same. Why were so many of her most loyal – and here she understood the word to mean important – subjects massacred? The act was senseless, the nobles cried, though none of them truly knew the nature of what had happened. That their kin had never returned from the ritual was enough to stoke their rage.

Neferata waited until the shouting was at its peak. Then she stabbed again at the false stability of Nulahmia. Let the blood flow, she thought. Let treason come to light.

‘I will not be questioned!’ she shouted. She introduced a querulous note into her voice. Give them frustration instead of command. Give them weakness. The uproar in the great hall quieted enough that she could be heard. ‘I am your queen!’ She swept across the dais as she spoke, throwing her arms out in melodramatic anger, and the robes became a storm of movement. ‘How dare you stand before me in this way? Will you defy me?’ She paused, as if out of breath or at a loss for words, giving her question time to sink in. Let them ponder the idea. Make them decide. Push them to come out into the open. ‘You will not,’ she said, and she deliberately undermined her authority with a petulant gesture. Be weak, she thought. ‘And I will not answer to you,’ she finished.

She threw herself down on the divan, and her handmaidens rushed to tend to her. The walls of the great hall vibrated with even more shouting than before.

Raia knelt beside her. ‘You have fanned their unhappiness,’ she said, looking at the nobles.

‘Good. Let it spread. We will force the unrest in the city to the crisis point.’ Sethek and Borzhas had taken her by surprise. She would not let that happen again. If the slaughter of the nobility beneath the Tomb of the Unnumbered did not push the rebels into the open, then her show of vulnerability would.

‘Watch and listen,’ she told Raia. ‘When my subjects leave, you and your sisters will follow them, and see where the paths of anger take them. Most of all, observe those who shout the least. Beware the thoughtful. They are the ones we must guard against.’

She studied her restless subjects. The deeper truth behind the theatre she had mounted was that she was vulnerable. That was the lesson she had learned in the Silent Quarter. She hoped she was not acting too late.

Subjects belong to the ruler. Their happiness, their wealth, their lives, indeed every facet of their existence are the prerogative of the ruler. To believe otherwise is to march down the path that leads to the ruler being subject to the ruled. That end is ruin. It may be useful to allow the subjects to believe their well-being is the responsibility of the ruler. But in the end, they are but chattel.

– Dominion

Chapter 9

AGE OF SIGMAR

THE SEASON OF CREMATORY

Once more, Neferata was a shadow in the Palace of Seven Vultures. She had chosen the role, adapting to her circumstances. Yet as she moved through halls, observing but unseen, she felt those circumstances more painfully than ever. She was running out of time. The longer it took for the disaster to arrive, the more devastating it would have to be if she wanted even the faintest chance of taking back her city.

She flowed through the Palace with Mereneth in attendance. ‘Lord Venzor is spending more time at the wall, shoring up the defences,’ the spy reported.

‘So he has taken the bait. That is promising, but politically, he seems to be more active than ever.’

Mereneth nodded. ‘He has been making overtures to the nobles outside the northern quarter.’

‘Are they responding?’

‘They are.’

Neferata paused outside the archway to Venzor’s receiving hall. Shrouded by darkness, she and Mereneth observed the aristocrats who were speaking with him. There were a few who had been there before, and several new faces. Neferata’s appearance in this chamber, then, the reminder that she was present and that she saw all, had done little to shift the political realities. ‘They think they know which way the winds of power are blowing,’ she whispered to Mereneth. ‘And so they lay their plans. Mark them. Add their names to the register of judgement.’ They would know a full measure of terror when she was no longer a shadow.

Her determination was unchanged. But she saw how badly Venzor had undermined her. ‘He is no fool,’ she said. ‘He acts on two fronts. He assumes that I was telling the truth about the Bloodbound advance. And he assumes that I was lying. He seeks to counter both threats.’

Neferata withdrew from the doorway. ‘Come,’ she said to Mereneth. ‘Lord Venzor is too divided in his attentions. He needs focus, and I will give it to him.’

Morbhend lay to the north-west of Nulahmia, in a region of arable land past the termination of the Cremation Plain. Before the forces of Chaos had burned their way across Shyish, it had once been a city of considerable importance in its own right. It had begun to recover in the wake of Lascilion’s defeat, though it was a mere splinter of its former self. New walls had risen around the former keep, and its population, primarily mortal, lived within them. Beyond the walls lay miles upon miles of blackened ruins. There were just enough people in the reviving embers of Morbhend to have resumed trading with Nulahmia. Given time, if left in peace, Morbhend might truly rise from its ashes.

It was probable that Ruhok’s horde would come across it, but not certain. It was some leagues to the west of the Khornate line of advance.

Neferata had taken up a position in the peak of a ruined tower. The north face of the tower’s battlements had been destroyed, and the structure resembled a dagger plunged into the body of Morbhend. Nagadron was crouched on the edge of the remaining battlements, his tail coiled around the curve of the tower. In the night, he was an angular shadow, one more jagged piece of rubble among many. Even the glow of his imprisoned souls blended in. Wraith energies flitted over the smashed, burned streets of the city.

Neferata looked to the north-west, waiting. At last, she was rewarded. She saw her three scouts running across the fields towards the city. Some distance behind them came the torches and shouts of a Bloodbound raiding party.

Let yourselves be seen, Neferata had instructed the scouts. Draw the Chaos followers to Morbhend. They had done as they were told. Their mission was almost complete.

The scouts were running quickly, but so were their pursuers. The Bloodbound were gaining ground. The scouts sprinted past the rubble that had been Morbhend’s outer wall. They reached the open space of a large square and paused. They turned around, peering at the falling houses and low heaps of stonework. One of them made an uncertain movement. The other two looked back at the Bloodbound, who were closing in. They were, Neferata knew, wondering if they had erred, if they had stopped in the wrong location. They had not. They were doing exactly as she had commanded. They had done everything she had asked of them. What she needed from them next was not something they could give. It had to be taken.

Too late, they realised they had been abandoned. They ran for the shelter of the ruins. Given a few more seconds, they might have been able to find hiding places. But Ruhok’s warriors saw where they went. They ran into the shell of a temple, and the howling pack of bloodreavers followed. The Blood Warrior in command led a direct charge through the doorway. There would be no prolonged siege.

The three vampires fought hard. Neferata saw bloodreavers stagger back out of the temple, their throats sliced wide open, their jugulars spraying wide. The interior of the ruin flashed briefly with sorcerous energy. But her scouts had cornered themselves, and the Khornate savages were too numerous. Their frenzy only increased as their own blood was spilled. After a few minutes, the screams and roars faded. The Blood Warrior marched back out of the temple, the blade of his goreaxe slathered in vampire blood.

The Bloodbound explored the ruins for more prey. They passed by the side of Neferata’s tower, ignorant of the fact that a much greater predator observed their progress. Then the Blood Warrior shouted and pointed to the south. He had spotted the torchlight on the inner wall of Morbhend.

The warband rushed towards the gate, lured by the promise of greater bloodshed. Neferata climbed onto Nagadron’s back and they rose into the dark, invisible as she followed the progress of the attack. The first part of the martyrdom of Morbhend was complete. The next stage would require that she play an active role.

The defenders of the reborn city greeted the Bloodbound with arrows and boiling oil. Khorne’s followers shouted threats and ran at the gates as if they could break them down with hand-held weapons. The Blood Warrior was almost strong enough. The entire portcullis shook when he seized it. It held, though, and the defenders began to take their toll on the bloodreavers. Without siege engines, the Chaos warriors were not going to breach the wall.

Neferata smiled. ‘Such puppets,’ she murmured to Nagadron. The Adevore made a low, whistling sound, a hiss made from the cries of the damned, expressing pleasure at her words. ‘They have no choice in their roles. There is no question about their fates. They believe in their own wills, but only mine is real.’

The Blood Warrior marched away in disgust from the gate. He shouted at his followers.

‘Now they will choose to retreat,’ Neferata said to Nagadron. ‘They think they will return to the main army and return with a larger force. They do not understand that this choice is closed to them. I do not have time for Ruhok to be distracted by a siege here. Morbhend should be no more than further incentive for him. So take us down. Finish them all.’

Nagadron plunged to the earth, his skeletal jaws parted to issue a roar that was fashioned from the cries of imprisoned souls. The Bloodbound froze, then looked up, in time to see Neferata unleash an arcane bolt from the tip of the Staff of Pain. The blast struck a bloodreaver in the chest. It blew him apart, his body vanishing into ash, and the flash of energy knocked the Blood Warrior off his feet.

Nagadron landed, his claws crushing two other bloodreavers, and he lunged forward to seize another in his maw. The Blood Warrior rose and, with a roar, charged at Neferata. She looked down at him with contempt, and raised her hand. At her signal, her hidden forces joined the fray.

Despite the weakness of her position in Nulahmia, she still had a large army to call upon. For this night, she had chosen the troops carefully. She needed obedience and silence in equal measure. The foot soldiers were skeletons, and the commanders were her most trusted spies. The vampires and skeletons emerged from their concealment in the ruins of Morbhend and swarmed towards the Chaos warband. The Blood Warrior stopped before he reached Nagadron. He snarled when he saw the wave of skeletons descending upon him on both sides. He charged into them with a roar, his goreaxe smashing the undead troops into pieces. Neferata smiled at the frustration she heard in his shouts. His enemy did not bleed, and were a poor offering to his god.

Neferata killed a few other bloodreavers with fiery spells. They were no more of an irritant than carrion flies. The end of the struggle was decided before it began. Neferata’s forces overwhelmed the warband. The skeletons kept coming, relentless and seemingly infinite in number. The vampires circled around the Blood Warrior, moving like wind, attacking like serpents, and they wore him down. He cursed them, blood from a dozen wounds pouring down his limbs. At last, he cried, ‘My blood for you, Khorne!’ and fell to the ground with a crash.

Cheers resounded on the ramparts of the inner wall when the last of the Bloodbound died. Neferata’s spies gathered beyond Nagadron, the skeletons forming up behind them. Neferata mounted the dread abyssal again and flew to the height of the ramparts. ‘Open the gates,’ she commanded.

Her subjects were loyal, and they obeyed their queen without hesitation. The portcullis rose.

The skeletons streamed in.

The shouts of celebration from the people of Morbhend became cries of confusion. The new Lady of Morbhend had run forward to greet the saviours of her city. She stopped, frozen. ‘Wait!’ she shouted, a command of nothing to no one. She held up her hands, as if there had been a misunderstanding, and her plea could stop what was about to happen.

Now her citizens cried in disbelief, then in terror, and then in despair. The skeletal army marched through the reborn city. Their slaughter was cold and implacable. Under the command of the vampires, they put the inhabitants to the sword and set fire to the rebuilt structures. Neferata brought Nagadron in low over the massacre, weaving between the flames, judging the quality of murder.

‘More savage,’ she commanded her spies. ‘Tear the bodies apart. Flood the streets with blood. And cut the heads off.’ She let Nagadron join in the feast, his talons and jaws rendering the bodies unrecognisable.

On the steps of the keep, a hundred people were on their knees, their arms raised in supplication to Neferata. ‘What have we done?’ they cried. ‘Have pity on us, our queen! Let us redeem ourselves in your eyes!’

Neferata looked down at them, and shook her head at the weakness of their plea. ‘It is fascinating to me that dreams of mercy live on in Shyish,’ she told the cowering sheep. ‘You have committed no crime. But I am your queen, your lives are mine, and I have need of them.’ Then she turned Nagadron on them.

What the Bloodbound had failed to do, Neferata’s forces did for them. Two of her spies dipped the hair of severed heads into currents of blood and splashed the symbol of Khorne onto the walls of gutted buildings. When the last of the screams faded, and the fires died down to smoking embers, Morbhend had died a second time. Neferata walked the streets with an artist’s eye, evaluating the authenticity of the illusion she was creating here. The slaughter was well-wrought. Everywhere she looked, she saw the remains left by frenzy and butchery. And in the outer ruins, any searchers would find the bodies of some Khornate warriors, clearly the ones who had fallen in the early stages of the siege. Present too were Neferata’s scouts. She, too, was experiencing losses as Ruhok drew closer.

By the end of her inspection, she found no flaws in the evidence she was leaving in Morbhend. The story that would be deduced, that would reach Venzor’s ears, was clear.

Her spies gathered at the gate, which the skeletons had now demolished. The vampires waited for Neferata’s verdict on their work. ‘This was well done,’ she told them. ‘This will concentrate Lord Venzor’s mind.’

A force that passed through Morbhend was on a direct path for the Hyena Gate. As Neferata flew back to Nulahmia, she was pleased with the narrative she had constructed. She thought it would hold. She hoped it would gain her some time.

The race between disasters was narrowing.

Do not be bound by the chains of intentions. The intention of an act is unimportant when compared to its consequences.

– Exhortations

Chapter 10

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

Neferata stood before the Borzhas palace and watched it burn.

‘Why have we waited until now?’ Raia had asked.

‘I wanted the families to wonder about the fates of their commanders. I wanted all the rebels in Nulahmia to wonder what had happened. I have made uncertainty their poison. Let them worry about what I know. Let them look over their shoulders. Let them squirm and make mistakes.’

Only the mistakes had not happened.

‘The rebels are still hidden to us,’ Raia said, frustrated.

‘That is instructive too,’ Neferata said. ‘They are well-disciplined. And perhaps Sethek and Borzhas acted on their own. They may have attacked when the rest of the traitors counselled caution and patience.’

The north tower of the palace became a torch, flames roaring up its entire height and reaching up into the dark and falling snow.

‘We must change strategy,’ Neferata said. ‘If the battlefield is not what it appeared to be, I will not cling to an illusion.’ In the end, her goal was to shape the field to suit her, but she would adapt to each reality as it presented itself. She would always adapt. ‘We shall end the patience of the rebels. We will push them again and again, harder and harder, until they can no longer hide.’ The anger in the wake of the sacrifice at the Annihilation Gate had not even begun to fade when she finally sent justice upon the Houses of Sethek and Borzhas.

Neferata turned from the blaze. ‘Come,’ she said to Raia. ‘I would see all the fires at once.’

The palaces of the traitors were magnificent constructions, and they were huge – among the largest at the base of Throne Mount. It took a full night for Neferata’s guard to put their entire households to the sword. It took three nights before the flames that consumed the palaces finally dropped to embers. Neferata watched the conflagrations from her parapets, reaching out with her senses to smell the burning flesh, to taste the blood and the ash on the air, and to hear the screams of thousands. The extermination was total, down to the servants. If there were beggars on the doorsteps, they died too.

On the third night she went down to the ruins of the House of Sethek. She marched through the smoking stones and blackened timbers. Withered, scorched arms reached out from the rubble in entreaty. Every so often, Neferata passed arms that were still moving. She spotted a hand that bore the high rings of Sethek, and she crouched beside it. She cocked her head, listening, and heard a faint, despairing moan. With a few quick gestures, she tossed away the cracked slabs that covered the victim. Harkhaf, Sethek’s consort, dragged himself forwards. His legs were a jellied mass, and the blaze had charred away his silk robes, turning his skin shining red and black. His hair had burned away, and his scalp was split and suppurating. His hands were contorted talons, and he reached for the soles of Neferata’s boots, begging for mercy with a phlegmy moan.

Neferata ground a heel into his wrist, and the moan became a scream. ‘Your arrogance amazes me,’ she said. ‘You conspire against me, and now you turn to me for succour.’

‘Nnnnn… nnnnnuhhhh…’ Harkhaf gasped.

‘You would contradict me too? Sethek would burn in shame. She, at least, fought to the last.’ She took a step away from Harkhaf. The ruined vampire coughed, and tried to speak, but he no longer had lips. ‘What do you have to say to me? Promises? Truths? Lies?’ She shook her head. ‘I will not waste my time trying to decipher your final gasps. There are others who will do that.’ She gestured to two of the palace guards. ‘Take him to the Pathway of Punishment. Have someone listen to what he says while he is on the wheel.’

Harkhaf thrashed weakly as they came for him. His agony would soon be supplemented by torture. He made a palsied gesture at his heart, begging to be put to death.

Neferata only smiled at him, and kept walking.

At the centre of the ruin, where the fires had burned down into the cellars beneath the palace, she found Raia. ‘I would think it a kindness,’ the Mortarch said, ‘if you have found information of value to make up for your failure in not anticipating the perfidy of these houses.’

Raia hung her head, stung by Neferata’s words and her failure. She had been anxious since the assassination attempt, and Neferata was concerned that she was spending too much effort on the possibility of redemption rather than simply doing her duty.

‘Do not forget that I have other kinds of spies,’ Neferata said. ‘Some of them are so deep in the shadows that to use them is to sacrifice them. They are a precious resource, and there is no certainty that, even in their positions, they know more than you do. But I will consume this resource if you cannot serve me as I want.’

‘I will not fail you, my queen.’

‘Show me that you will not. Begin with what you know.’

‘We have found little,’ Raia said. ‘Even under torture, it seems most of the family was ignorant of the wider conspiracy. That knowledge must have perished with Sethek.’ She pointed at the tunnels below. Smoke billowed out of their entrances. ‘The conspirators meet beneath the surface of Nulahmia.’

‘Of course they do. That hardly narrows the location down.’

‘It does not,’ Raia admitted. ‘But it must be a point easily reachable by both houses. That will suggest some regions in which to look. I will take charge of the search myself.’

‘Do so.’ Neferata paused. ‘Explain your failures,’ she said. This was a test.

‘The rebellion is widespread,’ said Raia. ‘There are too many rumours to follow, and too many lead down unimportant avenues, to people who know little or nothing. We know our assassinations have had some effect. So did the sacrifice you performed, my queen. But the beast has many heads.’

‘How many of the families do you think are now involved?’

‘Of the vampire nobility, it is hard to say. I believe a majority of the families are still loyal to you.’

For the time being, Neferata thought. If they see the wind blowing against me, their allegiances will shift. There were very few she would trust, though there were more that she knew she could control.

‘As for the mortal families,’ Raia said, ‘it is possible that they are all involved.’

‘If they are, they will learn that they do not yet know what it is to truly fear me.’

‘They will have earned that lesson, my queen.’

Neferata thought for a moment. ‘What have you heard about the Hellezans?’ she asked.

‘Very little. Nothing since the thrall returned to his family. Is he not providing the information you require? Shall I dispatch a spy to that house?’

‘No,’ said Neferata. ‘Leave that house to me. Tell me where you think we stand overall.’

‘With regards to the wider conspiracy, decapitation will not be possible,’ Raia said. ‘Only extermination. For that, we need the rebellion to be in the open.’

‘Granted,’ Neferata said, still testing. ‘And are we nearly there?’

Raia waved a hand to take in the smoking ruins. ‘This kind of pressure will push them out of the shadows, or in the end, that is where they will die. It sends a warning, but it also breeds converts to the cause. Our task is to push them into the open before they are ready.’

‘Then what must we do to ensure that result?’

‘We must strike them where they feel safe. Even if we know we cannot find all their leaders, they must believe we can. So we must find their meeting places. We must make them desperate.’

Neferata nodded. Raia was thinking clearly. She had not tried to minimise the situation, and she saw what needed to be done. She had proved her usefulness, and so avoided execution. If Raia knew how close she had come to her doom, she did not show it. She demonstrated only her determination to serve her queen, which was as it should be.

‘Go, then,’ Neferata said, looking into the tunnels. ‘Find them and make them panic.’

‘You said we were about to act,’ Hasynne Nastannar said to Mathas, ‘and we have not. How many more will Neferata slaughter before we do?’

The meeting in the underground chamber was far more tense than the last one. Mathas could smell the desperation in the air.

‘Sethek and Borzhas were too impatient,’ Mathas said. ‘Now they and their families have paid for their hurry and set us back.’

Hasynne growled, then she turned on Jedefor. ‘And they were killed by you!’

The captain of the guard shrugged. ‘Of course they were,’ he said. ‘I said I would not lead this rebellion. I most certainly am not going to openly defy Neferata while she still reigns.’

‘Do not mistake his alliance for belief in our cause,’ Mathas said to Hasynne.

Jedefor’s smile was cold. ‘That would indeed be foolish,’ he said. ‘But I see your strength, and it will get me what I want.’

‘I am satisfied,’ Mathas said before Hasynne could retort. To the others, he said, ‘We are not defeated. By her actions, Neferata has driven more families to our banner.’ There were missing faces in the chamber this evening, but there were new ones as well. He turned to Lestor. ‘You promised us support from your master. When is it coming?’

‘Very soon,’ Lestor said, unconcerned by the anxiety in the chamber.

‘It had better be,’ said Hasynne.

Mathas agreed. Anything less than immediately is risking disaster, he thought. The sacrifice at the Annihilation Gate and the destruction of the Houses of Sethek and Borzhas felt like the beginnings of a purge. It was important that he remain calm and lead by example, but Hasynne was not far wrong. If they did not act soon, they might not be able to act at all. But Neferata was still strong. With the reinforcements that Lestor promised, they would be very close to being able to confront her.

‘What are we to do then?’ Hasynne asked. ‘Have we gathered merely to talk again?’

‘No,’ said Mathas. She was right. One way or another, the moment of truth was close, and it was time to prepare.

There was a map of Nulahmia on the table in the centre of the chamber. He opened the large scroll. He studied it for the hundredth time, looking for the error in his plans. But the strategy remained firm in his mind. For all the doubts he was wrestling with, the plan of attack was one of his few certainties. He saw what must be done with such clarity, it felt like prophecy. ‘Get your forces ready. When we strike, we will have to take the Queensroad.’

‘Which is what will be expected,’ said Jedefor.

‘Of course, but there is no other way for an armed force to reach the palace, is there?’

‘No,’ Jedefor admitted.

‘Can you slow down the response of the guard?’

‘To an extent, yes.’

‘That will be sufficient,’ Mathas said. ‘Even a small delay should buy us the time we need.’

‘You’re very confident,’ said Hasynne.

‘I am.’ He had to be. That was part of the role he had accepted. He had as many doubts as any of them about their success. But Neferata had been weakened. She was lashing out, and though she had inflicted losses on the rebellion, they were not targeted ones. They were luck. So there was a chance of success. More than that, the need to fight back was imperative. The tyrant must be toppled, and now was the moment of possibility.

He had his doubts, but he had his certainties too. Victory was possible.

‘The cave is ready, is it not?’ he said. The massive natural formation lay several levels below the meeting chamber. Hasynne’s guards had kept it under constant watch for months, and no one had gone through it.

‘It is ready,’ Hasynne confirmed. ‘The tunnels between it and the houses are complete. Our forces may gather there at any time.’

‘Good,’ said Mathas. ‘Now look at the map. Imagine our houses as ramparts. See how we come close to forming a line that can choke off the Queensroad at the near approach to Throne Mount. Once we march at full strength, we could be on the slopes very quickly. But I think we do not need to take that route.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Jedefor.

‘Neferata will expect us to try to storm the palace.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No. We take the city instead. We hold the Queensroad. We lay siege to Throne Mount. We force her to come to us. While your guard wastes time mounting defences that we will not challenge, we consolidate our positions below and spread the uprising.’

Jedefor grinned. ‘And thus my loyalty is both unquestioned and useless. Our delay in descending will be considerable.’

Mathas looked around the chamber. The atmosphere had changed. There was eagerness now, and hope. They were on the edge of transforming Nulahmia.

‘What about the keep?’ Teyosa asked. The guard stronghold sat in the centre of the Palace Quarter. ‘Do we have the strength to take it?’

‘We will if that help arrives,’ said Mathas. He gave Lestor a significant look.

‘Be assured,’ Lestor said. ‘They will.’

‘I will feel assured when they arrive on time,’ Mathas said. ‘We do not have the luxury to wait much longer.’

‘Your patience will be rewarded,’ said Lestor, his unconcern palpable and enraging.

‘We no longer have patience,’ Mathas told him. ‘There is no space for it any longer. We…’ He stopped. The back of his neck was suddenly tense. His skin prickled with unease. He had heard nothing, but he was ready to lash out. There was an enemy present, and he knew this with the same clarity with which he had visualised the plan of attack. He forced himself to speak again. ‘We need to know when the support will arrive,’ he said, and signalled to Lestor to keep talking.

The other vampire nodded. ‘My master has not given me those details,’ he said. ‘It is not my place to ask. And the gifts of goodwill he has already given you were squandered by that premature ambush.’

Lestor went on, equivocating arrogantly and saying nothing at great length. Mathas held up a finger, warning the others not to question him as he turned away from the table and padded towards the doorway behind him. Teyosa looked at him in alarm. He gestured to her and to the other mortals to move to the back of the chamber.

He eyed the tunnel beyond the doorway. If they were being observed, then he was already at a disadvantage. If the intruder was only listening, he might have surprise on his side. He could see no one. His new sight pierced the shadows, down to the point where the tunnel curved. The passage was empty. If I cannot see you, he thought, you cannot see into the chamber. I hope.

He drew his sword silently from its scabbard.

The doorway was arched, which meant there was one place where an intruder could be close enough to hear every word and still be hidden. Mathas grasped the hilt with both hands and raised the blade. Then he lunged through the doorway and struck up at the low ceiling.

The spy was clinging like a spider to the roof of the tunnel. Mathas had seen her before at the Palace of Seven Vultures, always standing close to Neferata and whispering to her. It was Raia, and in the moment of Mathas’ attack, he realised that if he did not strike true, then it would not matter when the help from Lestor’s master arrived. The rebellion would end now.

Fate smiled. He stabbed Raia through the chest before she could react.

Raia shrieked. She dropped from the ceiling and rode the blade down. It protruded from her back as she grabbed Mathas’ neck with her claws. She sank them into his flesh, and his blood poured down his chest to mix with hers. They were trapped with each other now. Her claws plunged deeper. Tendons tore, and Mathas started to choke before he forced himself to remember he did not need to breathe. The tip of a claw scraped against bone, and in another few moments, she would be able to snap his head off. He twisted his blade and sawed to the right, fighting to reach her heart.

‘Traitor,’ Raia hissed, spraying dark gore in his face. ‘You will all burn.’

‘The tyrant failed with me,’ Mathas grunted, the words liquid as his mouth filled with his blood. ‘Now she will fall.’

Raia’s lips pulled back in a feral snarl. Her hands began to curl deep inside and tear at Mathas’ flesh. His physical being teetered on the brink of dissolution. He wrenched the sword desperately, and Raia stiffened. The blaze in her eyes dimmed, went dark. Her arms went slack, and her legs gave way. Mathas lowered her to the ground and released his sword. Carefully, he pulled her talons free from his throat. His blood was still pouring from his wounds and his mouth, and he felt a terrible looseness in his neck. He crouched and fed from her river of blood flowing from her severed heart. The vintage was rich with age and experience, and as he drank, his wounds began to close. This was blood stronger than any he had tasted before. His senses exulted. Savage, intoxicating pleasure roared through his veins.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he whirled, snarling, teeth bared to tear the throat from the rival who would dare drink from his kill.

Teyosa staggered back, eyes wide.

Her terror broke the feral spell. It stabbed into him, soul-deep pain much stronger than any murderous pleasure.

He rose from Raia’s corpse, swaying and reached out to Teyosa. ‘Do not fear me,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t ever fear me.’ He stayed where he was, his hand open and waiting.

Teyosa met his eyes, and she came forward again. She clasped his hand. He pulled her gently to him, embracing her with one arm, protecting her and at the same time leaning on her for the strength of her love.

He turned to the others as they crowded in the doorway. Still dizzy from the power of Raia’s blood, he pulled his sword free. He had killed a much older, more powerful vampire. It had taken luck to give him this victory. Yet the victory was real.

‘You see?’ he rasped. He could barely croak out the words. ‘We can win. And we will.’

‘Do you know who that is?’ Jedefor asked, eyes wide.

‘I do.’ With Teyosa’s help, Mathas took a step towards Lestor. ‘There is no more time,’ he said. ‘We need your master’s aid. Now.’

‘You aren’t returning to the court tonight,’ Teyosa said. ‘You can’t. Not after this. She will know.’

‘I must,’ Mathas told her. ‘She may not find out. But if I don’t return, she will.’ He paused, already anxious at the thought of being absent from his family. ‘Be ready to take Kasten into the tunnels,’ he said. ‘The passages can be reached by a door hidden in the wine cellar.’

‘We won’t be safe here either.’

‘But you will have hope.’

That night, Mathas took his place among the other vampire nobles. He composed his face into a mask of attentive humility whenever Neferata spoke, a thrall awaiting the pleasure of his mistress. He hoped Neferata would not look too closely at him. He hoped she would not perceive his thoughts of Raia’s dust scattered through the tunnels.

There were few revels in the Palace of Seven Vultures any longer. Neferata’s anger pervaded the halls, and Mathas took that fury as a good omen, another sign of her growing weakness. The light from the torches seemed dimmer, as if the fire itself were clotted with resentment and corrupted blood. Dark smoke coiled around the pillars of the hall and gathered, sullen, under the ceiling like a lowering cloud. There were no musicians, and no dances. In their place were terse whispers and the whine of complaints. The Mortarch of Blood still provided the court with fine mortal victims on which to feed, but the events seemed more like executions than celebrations. Over the course of the last several nights, Mathas had found himself looking carefully into the faces of his prey before he fed, increasingly worried that he might see someone familiar.

He watched the other nobles, too, careful not to hold the eye of fellow conspirators too long. The faces that interested him were the ones who were not part of the rebellion, but looked so unhappy they might well take part when the uprising began.

‘Why are you displeased?’ he overheard Lord Vasyth ask Lady Casein. ‘You ascended to control of your house thanks to that slaughter.’

‘We are as decimated as you are,’ Casein hissed back. ‘Control means nothing if there is nothing left to control.’

Neferata presided over harsh sessions where the encounters with her courtiers threatened to draw blood through words alone. The nobility was becoming less obsequious and more demanding. The queen was becoming less willing to grant favours, and more savage in her denials. In the great hall, beneath the smell of incense and spilled blood, the air reeked of conflict and hate. With a spark, the atmosphere would combust into war.

The stars were aligning. An uprising was inevitable. All Mathas asked was that he be able to choose the moment when the spark was applied.

He hung back, keeping to the rear of the hall, saying nothing and requesting nothing from Neferata, doing everything he could to avoid her attention.

Casein reached the front of the line of supplicants. ‘You have weakened us,’ she said, paused, and then added, with bitter pretence of respect, ‘my queen.’ Her hands were clenched in anger. ‘Yet your tithes are unchanged. We cannot sustain them. We seek compensation… my queen. We seek justice.’

Neferata rose from her divan. She strode to the edge of the dais and glared at Casein, then at the entire court. Weakened she might be, Mathas thought, but she was still terrible in her anger. Majesty wrapped around her like a cape and thundercloud. Her eyes burned with deep, volcanic fire. ‘You tire me with your needs,’ Neferata declared, her words a hissing serpent. ‘You would feed from my very veins if I let you. Your greed and your vanity would devour Nulahmia. I will not let them. Begone from my sight. I will see true fealty, or I will see no one.’

The courtiers pulled back from the dais as if burned and filed out of the great hall. Mathas moved with them. The ragged ceremony was done.

Then Neferata called out to him.

‘Mathas of House Hellezan, you will remain.’

He froze where he stood. With an effort, he forced himself to turn around. He stared across the empty space of the hall’s floor to the dark figure of Neferata.

‘Stand before me,’ she ordered.

He obeyed. As he walked towards her slowly, feeling the pressure of her glare, the doubts returned. He wondered how he could think to challenge this being in whom beauty and command and death were fused.

Mathas reached the edge of the dais and stopped. He looked up into a cold, merciless mask.

‘I hear little of your family,’ said Neferata.

Mathas forced the tremor from his voice before speaking. ‘There is little to hear, my queen,’ he said.

‘Isn’t there? That is, I must say, a pleasant change from the chattering vermin that assail me in my palace. And how well do you feed?’

‘Very well.’

‘Your wife and child, were they succulent?’

His face turned numb with fear. He grunted, unable to answer. He could not lie. She would know. She must realise they were still alive. The question was a trap, and there was no way out. ‘I…’ he said, and trailed off.

Neferata smiled, showing her perfect fangs and perfect cruelty. ‘You don’t know? No matter. I’m sure someone else knows the answer now.’

Mathas stared, trying to pierce through the pounding clouds of horror in his head to make sense of her words, and then trying to deny their meaning.

Neferata waited, her smile sinking its venom into his veins.

Then he turned and ran.

Guards closed in from the sides, but Neferata stopped them. ‘Let him go,’ she said. ‘Run, Mathas! Run to your house of traitors! Did you think you could hide your perfidy from me? Did you think I did not see your pretence? Did you think I would let Raia’s death go unpunished? You are a fool. Go now, and learn. Go, and burn.’

Mathas burst from the main doors of the Palace of Seven Vultures. He pounded down the Path of Punishment, and the martyrs to Neferata’s will were a blur in the corner of his eyes. The wind of his flight blew his hair back. He barely saw where he was going. A howl rose from his chest. It caught in his throat, then squeezed out of his jaws, so huge it emerged as a long, constricted whine.

As he ran, he sought hope, and found none. The fact that she had not succeeded in making him her thrall now seemed nothing more than an extra layer of cruelty. Part of him wondered how much Neferata knew, but that part was drowned in the incoherent grief and terror of the rest. He could not think. He could not plan. He could only run, and run, and run, and try to free the scream that grew larger and larger as he drew closer to the Hellezan Palace.

He smelled the smoke before he saw it. It billowed up over the roofs of Nulahmia, rising to greet the dark of the night, spreading its annunciation of doom, the crimson glow of flame pulsing from beneath. Mathas drew his sword as he flew down the final streets before his home. He was ready to fight and kill and die for his family. Jedefor, he thought. I curse your name, you coward. He had no doubt the captain had led the attack on the Hellezans without hesitation, unwilling to take any risk until the battle was already met and decided.

Mathas rounded the last corner. House Hellezan was before him, a black shell of walls containing a maelstrom of fire. If it had been Jedefor’s guards who had turned the palace into a torch, they were gone now. The streets were empty even of onlookers. No one wished to draw the Mortarch’s attention their way. Mathas stumbled forward, his sword raised in desperate anger, but he was alone.

Fire billowed out of the shattered doors. It spun in furious cyclones from the windows. The dull, suffocating roar of the conflagration filled Mathas’ ears. It was the cracking, rumbling thunder of the death of his family. Centuries of honour burned. Nulahmia might belong to Neferata. It was her creation. But the Hellezans had been part of it too. They had built a history and a tradition. They had placed their mark upon the city. They had helped shape it and its story, and surely what they had done was theirs to own and take pride in. Neferata was not a god. Some aspects of what made Nulahmia must be the work of its citizens.

Something must belong to them. Something must belong to a family that had stood proud and unbowed in this land of death, holding the line for an ideal of decency when decadence and cruelty flowed through the very air and ran in blood through the drains.

All gone now. History annihilated, symbols and flesh turned to fire and black smoke.

The walls trembled with the force of the firestorm. Mortar crumbled, and a portion of the upper wall collapsed inwards. No mortal could still be alive in the palace. Mathas knew that. Any who would not have been put to the sword would have burned alive. Yet he ran through the doorway, into the holocaust. He had no choice. It was the only action left to him.

‘Teyosa!’ he cried out in the great hall. He could not hear himself over the fury of the blaze, but he kept calling for his wife. The tapestries were curtains of flame, waving in the wind of destruction. Fire writhed and coiled along the ceiling, twisting into spectral shapes that mimicked the pain of dying souls.

Mathas staggered towards the stairs. ‘Teyosa!’ His cape caught fire and he tore it from his shoulders. His skin curled and cracked in the heat. He would already be dead if he were still mortal, and the violence of the firestorm could still destroy him.

A wall of smoking rubble crashed onto the stairway before he could reach it. The barrier stopped Mathas and jolted him back to rational thought. He had been racing on the wings of instinct, about to run upstairs to his and Teyosa’s chamber. She would not be there. If there was any chance she and their son had survived, it would be down below, in the deep tunnels, far from the palace.

He turned to the cellar doors. They too were smashed. Fire and smoke roared out to meet him. He hurled himself into the choking, flickering darkness. ‘Teyosa!’ He took the steps three at a time. He did not fall. He cut through the howl of the fire with preternatural grace. He dropped through the cellars and vaults of the Hellezan Palace. Flaming timbers fell before him, and he battered them from his path. On all sides, the wreckage of his family’s history blazed. Corpses lay under smashed shelves and overturned chests, and sprawled in his path. Their throats were cut. Their limbs were dismembered. They were eviscerated, decapitated. Every outrage of mutilation had been visited on their bodies by the command of the Mortarch of Blood. They were burned black, and beyond recognition to mortal sight.

But Mathas knew who they were. He smelled the nature of their blood through the smoke. His witchsight caught the residual agonies of their spirits still convulsing over them. Every corpse he passed, no matter how quickly, was a new stab of grief.

But none of the dead were Teyosa. None of them were Kasten.

There was too much horror for hope, and too much urgency for despair. Mathas ran faster yet. The fire was consuming even the deepest foundations of the palace, and it was here that he found Verrick and Glanath. His parents had died together, their mutilations fusing their corpses, and there was no telling one severed finger or fleshless skull from another.

And still he knew who they were. Their rings had not melted. His father’s blackened seal of office hung from his charred neck.

Mathas stood over the bodies, his lungs raw from smoke, his throat tight with grief, his limbs trembling with rage. He tried to give voice to his horror. If he screamed loud enough, perhaps he would banish the reality before him. ‘Nnnnnnn,’ he groaned. His teeth clenched tight, and his denial became an animal keening. ‘Nnnnnnnnnnnn…’

His parents had fallen in the centre of a corridor in the foundations. The hall led to the tunnels running under the palace, but not the important ones. Mathas entered the wine cellar, and gave a sob of relief when he found the entrance to the rebels’ network untouched. The cellar burned, but the mechanism that opened the stone door was not damaged. Perhaps, in a final act of defiance, his parents had misled their killers. Perhaps they had saved Teyosa and Kasten.

Don’t hope. Don’t you dare hope. Look for them. Find them. But don’t succumb to hope. It seeks to destroy us on this day.

Mathas closed the door, and he shut the fire away behind him. There was smoke in the tunnels, but much less. He ran through the maze, into a darkness that was ever cleaner, shouting his wife’s name. He made for the meeting chamber, the floor outside its threshold dark with Raia’s blood. Just before he reached it, he foolishly let himself think that perhaps, perhaps, Teyosa had found refuge there.

There was no one in the chamber.

Now there were no further destinations. Mathas had nowhere to reach, no sanctuary he could think of. There was nothing left to do except run, and run, fleeing the despair that at last closed in, its black pinions sweeping to embrace him.

‘Teyosa!’ he screamed. ‘Teyosa!’

Saaah-saaah-saaah! the echoes mocked.

He ran and shrieked until he no longer knew where he was, and his voice was hoarse. He sank to his knees. ‘Teyosa,’ he whispered, and the only answer was the susurrus of his pain rasping against stone walls.

Mathas hung his head, limp with despair. It was over. Some of the other families might still be committed to the uprising, but the battle would happen without him. Neferata had destroyed the Hellezans before they had begun to fight. He was spent. He thought that maybe, just maybe, he could will himself into nothingness right here.

Distantly, he heard the sound of marching feet. The palace guard, he thought. The coward Jedefor leading a sweep to finish his bloody work. Very well, then. He would accept his execution and be thankful for it.

As the boot steps drew closer, he realised he was mistaken. The marchers were approaching from the west, away from the palace. And there were many of them. Many more, he thought, than would have been necessary for the raid on his house.

He blinked, and rose slowly. He stood in the centre of the wide tunnel, waiting to face the arrivals.

Closer yet, he could hear the clanking of heavy armour and the grinding drag of heavy masses being pulled along the floor. Barely aware that he was doing so, Mathas tightened his grip on his sword. Deep in his soul, an ember glowed, and he was ready to fight one last time.

Lestor emerged from the gloom ahead. Behind him marched a seemingly endless column of vampires and skeletons. Their armour was dark, and shorn of all insignia. They were an anonymous army. There was no way to tell what master they served.

Lestor had drawn his sword, but put it away when he recognised Mathas. His smile of greeting faded when he met Mathas’ eyes. ‘Is all well?’ he asked.

‘It is not,’ said Mathas. ‘Neferata has destroyed us.’

Lestor bowed, acknowledging Mathas’ grief. ‘Am I too late, then? Have the other houses fallen as well?’

‘No,’ Mathas said. ‘The others are not burning.’

‘Then they have something to lose. Their leader must not.’

Mathas stared at Lestor. ‘If you mean to say the murder of my family is a boon…’ he snarled, and took a threatening step forward.

‘I do not,’ Lestor said. ‘But fate has chosen you, Mathas Hellezan, and fate is rarely kind. You were preeminent in the rebellion. Now your command will be unchallenged. And you will lead with such fury the enemy will burn before your gaze.’

Mathas felt the brutal truth of Lestor’s words. He thought about his wife and son. There were not even any bodies over which he could mourn. He had only his last memories of them to fan the embers of his soul, and ignite the ruins of his heart. Energy surged through his veins. Grief transmuted to anger, anger to strength. He was not done. He was not finished.

He looked at the army stretching into the gloom behind Lestor, and he was ready. He was ready to bring down a queen.

The anger of my enemy is to my advantage. I must be wary of mine serving my foe in turn.

– War and the Passions

Chapter 11

AGE OF SIGMAR

THE SEASON OF CREMATORY

Dessina at his side, Venzor strode through the Palace of Seven Vultures, seeking its shadow queen. He had sent word to her household that he wished to speak to her, but she had not appeared in his chamber. In frustration, he had left his throne to find her himself.

Though he marched past many of his underlings, the halls felt empty. At the same time, the air seemed thick, as if he were having to push his way through curtains of cobwebs. He caught himself several times about to raise his hands to part the invisible threads.

‘Where is she?’ he snarled.

‘Spinning her web,’ Dessina answered, as if she had read his thoughts.

‘You feel its presence too,’ he said.

‘It is her nature to weave it. It is always there, Lord Venzor. It would be a mistake to think any of us are ever free of it.’

‘I am not blind,’ Venzor snapped. Arkhan had warned him about Neferata’s skills, and he was not going to be lectured by a subordinate. ‘I know that I have been at war with the Mortarch since I arrived in Nulahmia.’ What he would not admit was that this was a war where he had difficulty perceiving even his own moves. The critical point was closing in. He had ceased any political activity not directly connected with the defence of the city against the Bloodbound. ‘Somehow, she plans to use the coming siege to her advantage. I will prevent her.’

Pride demanded that he confront her, and show her he was not going to be her fool.

Yet when he found her, he flushed with humiliation. After more than an hour of searching, on the verge of giving up, he looked once more in the throne room.

Neferata was there, seated on the great chair of bones coated in black iron. Clad in black, she was perched on the edge of the seat, a predator on the verge of pouncing, but also a statue of infinite and dark patience. She smiled at Venzor. No doubt she had been expecting him, he thought.

‘Leave me,’ he snapped at Dessina, wounded pride festering. He composed his features and advanced to the throne.

‘You were looking for me?’ Neferata asked.

‘I was.’

‘You have come to discuss our plans for the defence of the city?’

Venzor shook his head. ‘No. I am taking measures, and I will not seek your counsel.’

Neferata cocked her head. ‘Then why are you here?’

‘To tell you that I know your hand is at work behind the Chaos threat.’

Neferata laughed. ‘How will Ruhok’s conquest serve me? Do you think I plan to rule at his side? Do you think he plans to leave a single stone of Nulahmia standing?’

Venzor held on to his temper. ‘It is enough for me to know the attack will benefit you, even if I do not know how,’ he lied. ‘I will defend the city. I will defeat Ruhok. And I will defeat you.’

‘If I said that you were fighting on a front where there are no enemies, would you believe me?’

‘I would not,’ said Venzor. The response felt weak in the face of that knowing smile, but it was the best he could muster. He turned on his heel and left the throne room with what dignity he had left.

He returned to the private chamber he had claimed for himself. Maps of Nulahmia lay on the huge oak table in the centre. He had been studying them obsessively ever since Neferata had come to warn him of Lord Ruhok’s approach. He came back to them now, running a finger over the contours of the walls, searching for weaknesses in the defences, and trying to pry out the secret that could do him harm.

Neferata’s smile slipped as soon as Venzor was out of sight. Torturing his pride had given her pleasure, and filling him with doubts was useful. It was good that he seemed uncertain. But the fact remained that he was strong enough to counter her. Venzor was more of a threat to her than he knew.

From a shadow in the Palace, she became a shadow in the skies. Mounted on Nagadron, wreathed by mists of darkness, she flew over Nulahmia. She combed the city with her witchsight. She listened to the blood running through its veins. She pierced its secrets. And she flew north. North over a city that was no longer hers.

Along the southern border of Venzor’s area of control, she saw lines of torchlight. Neferata’s hands clenched in anger. Venzor was erecting barriers, sealing off the north from the rest of Nulahmia. Even the Throne Mount would be cut off once he was done. Barricades of wood and stone twenty feet high filled the streets. The houses along the line of the new wall had been emptied. Some of them were smouldering shells, their interiors burned and collapsed so they were an inert, impassable mass. Lanterns shone in the windows of others, where Venzor had stationed troops. Two of the broad avenues were still open. Through them poured the fearful of the south. Neferata flew low over them, glaring at the wretches with hate. They were all from the nobility of Nulahmia. She saw no one from the lower classes of the city, except the servants of fleeing households. Either the less fortunate had been turned away, or they still feared Neferata enough to know better than to make the attempt.

The faithless travelled from the south to the north in ragged caravans of wealth. Servants and horses pulled wagons overladen with gold, jewels, art, furniture, clothing and tapestries. The nobles sensed the coming of war, and they were trying to save their existence and their positions at the same time.

Neferata circled over them, her anger growing. She raised her head, looking away from the worms, seeking counsel with the darkness above.

Think about what you know you are about to do, she told herself. She worked to detach herself from the scene below, from the humming and whining of Nulahmia’s blood and fears. She sought to read the currents of power. This was, in the end, why she had taken to the skies. Remember what must be accomplished, she thought.

I remember. And I will do this thing, too. There is no contradiction. There is no error. This will change nothing. The disposition of the forces is set.

The river of power was growing turbulent. She still believed she could ride the turbulence to her victory.

Is this reason or rationalising?

It does not matter. I accept the consequences.

She dispelled the concealing mist, and brought Nagadron down to land on the vast heap of rubble that would soon be moved to block the width of the Bloodway. Already the avenue was half its normal span. Venzor’s troops were shepherding the refugees through the passage between the rubble.

Nagadron landed with a splintering crunch as his claws shattered stone. Soldiers and aristocrats turned in alarm. Neferata descended from the Adevore and walked slowly down the slope of the rubble. The citizens on the avenue winced at every step that brought her closer to them.

‘You are cowards,’ she said. She spoke softly, and she spoke so every soul in her sight heard her voice, and felt its hiss sink into their bones. ‘You are ungrateful.’

One of the vampires dropped to his knees in a practised show of obedience. His robes spread out around him in a flourish. ‘My queen,’ he said. ‘We wish for nothing but your eternal reign.’

‘Do you? How kind.’ She reached the bottom of the wreckage and walked over to the noble. People rushed to clear the way for her, stumbling into each other and against their wagons. Horses whinnied and bucked, their eyes rolling in terror at her presence. ‘Tell me, Lord Bessein,’ she said, standing over the kneeling vampire, ‘why are you so quick to mention my throne?’

Bessein coughed, his smooth obsequiousness slipping away from him. ‘I meant… That is… I did not presume to suggest…’

‘Fear drives you,’ Neferata said. ‘It has brought you here. It speaks through you now. It defines you, and its stench is repugnant.’ She turned around, catching hundreds in the scythe of her gaze. Venzor’s warriors stood by uneasily, knowing better than to move against her. ‘Fear drives all of you,’ she said. ‘Our city has suffered greatly.’ She tempered the anger for a moment, yet made her pretence of understanding so transparent that many of the wretches, Bessein among them, began to whimper. ‘Nulahmia will soon suffer again. Awareness of this truth will bring fear to the craven. This is the nature of things. Not all subjects are warriors. Nor do I expect them to be.’

She turned back to Bessein. He fell silent.

I will punish later, she thought. And I will punish now.

‘Your fears are misplaced, Lord Bessein. You have forgotten how much you must fear me. This I cannot forgive, and must correct.’

Bessein’s eyes widened. ‘Please,’ he said, and began to rise from his kneel.

Neferata whipped the Dagger of Jet from its sheath and plunged it through Bessein’s neck. She lifted the choking vampire until his feet left the ground. He tried to pull Akmet-har from his neck, but his strength was fleeing, his energy pouring down the blade and into Neferata. His flesh contracted on his skull, withering and turning grey, pulling back from his fangs, thinning into tearing parchment. His struggles grew weaker, but the pain in his eyes did not diminish. He dangled from the blade, a whimper of agony bubbling up from his throat.

Neferata looked around. ‘Lord Bessein has remembered to fear me. What of the rest of you?’

‘Mercy, great queen!’ nobles wailed, on their knees. ‘We are loyal! We have been misled!’ Others turned to run. Venzor’s warriors, seeing what must surely come next, were pulling back, putting space between themselves and the passage to the north. There was nothing they could do here, and they saw no reason to let themselves be destroyed pointlessly. Neferata pulled back on the reins of her anger, marking a limit to her actions. She would not force Venzor into open war.

She waited, drinking in the screams around her. At the edges of the crowd, to the north and south, people were fleeing, carrying their renewed fear like a virus. Bessein trembled weakly, his pain still rich as his body contracted in on itself.

‘Do you fear me?’ Neferata asked. With a sharp flick of her wrist, she cut through the right half of Bessein’s neck. His head flopped to one side, and he dropped to the ground. Already, his body was beginning to crumble to dust.

‘We fear you!’ the nobles cried. ‘We fear you!’

‘Not enough,’ Neferata said, and at her signal, Nagadron the Adevore craned his neck down and opened his jaws wide. He breathed a fog of terrible dissolution on the crowd. Spectral green, it screamed with the voices of shattered souls. Vampires and mortals alike screamed back as their bones shed their flesh, and a pain beyond the corporeal tore through their beings. The street filled with the roiling light of rot and pain. Neferata strode through it, slicing throats and tearing heads from their bodies, consuming blood with savage contempt. ‘To the living and to the undead I bring death,’ she pronounced, her voice an echoing toll of doom. ‘Death is no mercy, because I am a stranger to mercy. Death is merely the beginning of your unending suffering.’

Nagadron inhaled. The Adevore had no lungs, and he did not breathe, but he inhaled. A devouring wind howled up from the street, and with it new souls flowed, shrieking, into the dread abyssal’s maw. He gathered new prisoners into torment, new screams into the cage of his body. He snarled, the glow of death blazing from his core.

Neferata stood in the centre of the Bloodway, surrounded by twisted, broken corpses. Blood washed against the heels of her boots. Screams of terror came from the north and south. The nobles who had managed to move beyond the scope of her massacre were fleeing further into what they hoped would be Venzor’s protection. The ones to the south were cowering back, though she knew they would rush forward as soon as she left. She had given them new cause to fear, but it would not be enough to stop them. They still believed the south of Nulahmia would fall.

‘It is accomplished,’ she whispered, the flush of rage leaving her.

The satisfaction of punishment was a reward, and she would savour its taste for some hours to come. Her anger at the disloyal nobles was real, but the slaughter had served a larger purpose.

Venzor, do you see how weak I am? Do you see how I lash out to no purpose? Give me the gift of your contempt.

She returned to Nagadron and soared upwards. The site of the butchery dropped away, and with it the wails of the frightened. Neferata took Nagadron higher and higher, until all of Nulahmia was spread out below her. She reached out, the span of her fingers encompassing her city. Mine, she thought. Now and forever. Mine.

She looked to the north-west, and the night was burning. Flame and brass and blood was a day’s march away.

Catastrophe was coming to storm the gates.

Knowing that the storm must come, I may choose to summon it. But because a crisis can be called into being, that does not mean it can be controlled.

– On the Crucible of Disaster

Chapter 12

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

‘She has doomed herself,’ said Hasynne.

‘Yes,’ said Mathas. ‘Yes, she has.’ Hasynne was speaking the simple truth. In the cavern that had awaited them, the rebels had gathered at last; Mathas was surrounded by strength, and the fire of vengeance burned in his blood. The Mortarch of Blood must fall. Fate could not judge otherwise.

The hour had come, and the army of liberation had come together with such speed that a surge of satisfaction and anticipation cut through the walls of Mathas’ grief. ‘She has galvanised us,’ he said. ‘She believes she has killed my family. In truth, she has killed herself.’

‘The rest of us are not prepared to wait for her to decide when it is our turn on the executioner’s block,’ Hasynne said. ‘I do not think she intended it, but she struck the first blow of the war when she attacked your house.’ She paused for a moment, then said, ‘Jedefor has sent word that he is ready too.’

‘Jedefor,’ Mathas repeated, his voice flat.

‘If he led the attack, he had no choice,’ Hasynne reminded him. ‘I believe he is still loyal to us.’

‘To us?’

She shrugged. ‘Then to the promise of power. It has a powerful hold on him.’

Mathas grimaced, then nodded. With or without Jedefor, they were ready. ‘The time of hiding is over,’ he said. The warriors of a score of noble houses were assembled in the cavern. Their armour shone in the torchlight. Standard bearers held banners aloft. The colours hung motionless in the still air, barely visible in the gloom, but their presence was a brilliant shout of pride. Mathas smiled. ‘This is our fist of defiance,’ he said. ‘Our sword to slay a tyrant. Once it reaches the surface, it will be a clarion call to all who would be freed from the yoke of their fealty to Neferata.’

‘You are faring well, I see,’ Hasynne said.

Mathas thought before answering. ‘Yes,’ he said. He nodded. ‘I am well.’ He pulled his lips back over his fangs. ‘And I am ready.’ His family was gone. There were no Hellezans for him to lead into the fray. Instead, he was at the head of an entire army. His heart was in agony, but his soul blazed with power. He could, he thought, break the foundations of Nulahmia with his bare hands. He was fire. He was wrath.

He was vengeance.

‘We are ready,’ Hasynne said. ‘All of us are.’

‘Then let us begin.’ Mathas raised his sword, and the echoing din of voices and armour faded. ‘You are the great families of Nulahmia,’ he shouted. ‘And you have never been as great as you are this night. Because this is the hour when we declare that this city is not the work of a single being. And we are not her property. We are this city!’ A strange conviction took him, and he spoke the next sentence in full passion, before he could have second thoughts. ‘We are its life!’

‘Life!’ Lestor exclaimed in surprise. ‘A strange boast in Shyish!’ Yet he sounded curious in spite of himself.

Mathas wondered what had pushed him to speak those words. He felt as if he was tempting the anger of Nagash himself. He saw the irony in making that claim now, when life was no longer his. But the god of death did not strike him down. And he knew he was speaking the truth. Life. The word was strange, misplaced, yet it also felt right.

‘Yes!’ Mathas answered. ‘Life! There is life in this cavern, and this army will bring life to Nulahmia!’ He pointed his sword at the phalanxes of skeletons and zombies that had come with Lestor. ‘There is no life in them, but not because of what they are. It is because they are here at the command of your distant master. He has no interest in the well-being of Nulahmia and its citizens. He cares only for the downfall of Neferata. Is that also true of you, Lestor? You, who spoke to me of fate?’

The other vampire didn’t answer. A hesitant excitement spread over his sharp features.

‘Life!’ Mathas shouted again. ‘Life! It is in our passion for our cause! It is in our belief in what our city can be!’

And Hasynne cheered his words, as did all the other vampires in the cavern.

Mathas had had to die before this revelation came to him. He saw it now, and as the moment of the beginning of the march had come, he was alive in a deeper way than he ever had been before.

‘The three great tunnels are our route,’ he announced. ‘They run in rough parallels to each other, and through them, we shall storm to the surface. We must use speed against the tyrant. Our first strike must be too fast and hard to stop.’ He turned and aimed his sword at the exits from the cavern. ‘To war!’ he cried, and his army of followers obeyed.

At the head of his phalanx, Mathas marched, and then ran, racing back up through the underworld of Nulahmia, rising from the darkness, a blade reforged and made stronger by grief. He led his troops back through the tunnels that had marked his descent into despair, and then he was storming through the broken foundations of the Hellezan palace. Hasynne and Lestor followed closely behind him.

‘You were right,’ Mathas told Lestor. ‘I was mindful of risk before. Now I have nothing left to lose.’

‘You would be a martyr for the freedom of your city?’ Lestor asked.

‘For that prize? Willingly. And what of you? Do you march and die only for your master’s pleasure?’

Lestor hesitated before answering. ‘I am no longer sure,’ he admitted. And he grinned.

The ruins were still smoking. The blackened timbers and stones were a further goad to action. With the companies of House Tennsein, House Gallatal, House Vernax and House Bretherel, Mathas climbed through the ashes of his home, and burst like a phoenix of rage onto the street. Now, truly, the time of secrets was over. Mathas roared, and his troops roared with him. They thundered their challenge to the reign of the Mortarch of Blood, and with a still greater thunder they made for the Queensroad. The tramp of boots and crash of armour filled the streets. The standard bearers raised trumpets to their lips, and the music of rebellion blared in Nulahmia for the first time in the city’s existence.

The three corps merged together in the Queensroad. They hit the great avenue in a wave. The road was always crowded, as day and night the pulse of Nulahmia moved through it. Now Mathas severed the flow of merchants and serfs, pedestrians and riders, caravans and corteges. People fled in confusion and fear to the side streets. Dark towers of residences lined the road in this quarter, and faces crowded at their windows, looking down on an event that, until this very moment, had been unimaginable in the city of Neferata.

The army had advanced less than a mile up the Queensroad when it encountered the first guard patrol. The warriors stared, rooted to the spot for crucial seconds by the sight of the impossible. Mathas charged them, and the torrent of the army followed him. As the trumpets sounded again, Mathas yelled, ‘I am the vengeance of the Hellezans! For Nulahmia! For freedom!’

For life! he thought. He did not put the great heresy into words.

Not yet. Not quite yet.

He fell on the captain of the guard as the other vampire broke through his paralysis and lunged forward. Mathas smashed his sword to the side and barrelled into him, a battering ram of fury. The captain stumbled back and Mathas decapitated him with a single stroke. The rest of the guards planted their pikes and tried to stand fast against the wave that came for them. They were swept away in moments, trampled and cut to pieces by the unwavering tide of freedom.

‘First blood!’ Mathas shouted. ‘First victory!’ He paused to look up at the people in the windows. ‘You know us!’ he called. ‘We are you! We are Nulahmia! Join us! Together, we will seize the night from the tyrant!’

He ran forward again, taking the charge up the Queensroad. People were leaving their windows and emerging from doorways and side streets. ‘Join us!’ Mathas called. ‘Become the birth of hope in Nulahmia!’

At first the citizens hesitated. Before long, though, a stream of new recruits joined the rebellion.

The further Mathas went up the Queensroad, the larger his army became. Already it covered the width of the avenue, and it was so long he could barely see the end. It advanced relentlessly. Vampires and mortals marched side by side, supported by unflinching ranks of skeletons and zombies. Before long, a pale green cloud drew Mathas’ gaze upwards. A spirit host flew overhead. He readied himself for an attack, but it did not come. Faces emerged from the roiling mass of ectoplasmic energy. Their eyes were empty gaps, their mouths contorted howls of pain, but their anger was directed towards the Throne Mount. When they looked down at Mathas and his army, there was no anger.

It was tempting to believe he saw hope in the forms of the tortured dead. He knew better. Yet it was very tempting.

The crowd ahead of the rebels thinned quickly, and more and more of it became part of the march. The wave overwhelmed the individual squads of guards it encountered. There was still no coordinated response, no larger cohorts of troops loyal to Neferata.

Hasynne joined Mathas. Behind her, her troops of House Nastannar followed in a solid wall of armour. ‘Captain Jedefor is true to his word,’ she said.

‘So it seems,’ Mathas said bitterly. They were almost at the foot of the Throne Mount, where their stand would begin. Already, it was too late for Neferata to prevent the siege.

‘You sound disappointed,’ Hasynne said.

‘I would have welcomed the chance to kill him for his treachery.’

‘He will be careful, no doubt, to remain safely above the fray.’ Hasynne looked up towards the Palace of Seven Vultures. ‘We cannot surround the Mount,’ she said. ‘We can’t trap Neferata up there.’

‘We don’t have to,’ said Mathas. ‘Even if we did surround it, what does that mean to someone who can fly? We block her strength, though. We do not need her. It will be enough to take her power.’ It was a lie and he knew it. This might have been true a few nights before. He would not be truly satisfied now unless he could destroy Neferata. The souls of Teyosa and Kasten demanded it.

Be content with what you can achieve, he told himself. Look around you. You have made the impossible real.

Then why not a bit more? Why not one more impossibility?

He glanced up at the spirit horde, half-expecting to see the traces of his wife and child. There was no sign of them. They had vanished absolutely, and for that, he was grateful. His last memory of them was not of their burned corpses. He would have no new memories of their tormented, raging souls, or so he hoped.

The front ranks of the army reached the base of the Throne Mount.

‘Houses Tennsein and Vernax,’ Mathas ordered, ‘barricade the bottom of the Path of Punishment. The rest of us will move west.’ As the barriers went up, he eyed the slope. There was a formation of several squads of guards at the first sharp bend of the Path. Even from this distance, Mathas could sense the uncertainty in the troops. Whatever orders Jedefor had given them must have been contradictory or vague, at the very least unsuited to the circumstances. The guards held their position.

Sink into your doubts, Mathas thought. The longer you wait to act, the stronger our barrier will be.

Then, with Hasynne and her house at the fore, supported by Lestor’s undead hordes, Mathas turned the march to the west. Two thirds of the rebel force went with him. They left the Queensroad and plunged back into the Palace Quarter of Nulahmia, making for the guard keep at its centre.

‘Now comes a true test,’ Hasynne said. ‘There will be more than a matter of a few isolated patrols at the keep.’

‘We are strong enough for that,’ said Mathas. ‘But I agree. There is a test. It will be how the rest of the population of this Quarter responds to us.’

‘You think we will be defeated if they turn their backs on us?’ Lestor asked.

We? Mathas thought. Interesting. ‘I refuse defeat,’ he insisted. ‘But the fight will be hard without them, yes.’

He had his answer before long. The trumpets called, and the people answered. They shouted from windows and rooftops, and then they came running. From doorways and side streets, from alleys and markets, from courtyards and from the grand houses, the rich families of Nulahmia came running.

‘The moment has come!’ Mathas shouted to them. ‘We shall overthrow Neferata and make the city our own!’ He picked up the pace. ‘Move fast,’ he said to Hasynne and Lestor. The street was narrower than the Queensroad. ‘We must not become trapped by the crush of our own numbers.’

The larger the crowd, the faster it grew.

Despite the risks of the massive crowd, Mathas laughed. ‘Do you see?’ he asked Lestor. ‘Do you see the people taking courage from each other? Our movement will not be stopped. Did your master foresee something this vast?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lestor admitted. He did not seem to care what Mannfred had anticipated or not.

‘How many of our new recruits are believers, do you think?’ Hasynne asked.

‘I am not asking myself the question, because it doesn’t matter,’ Mathas said. ‘Even if most of them have joined us to be part of the victorious side of the conflict, I can accept that. The victory is important, and they will help get us there.’

Though Mathas kept his force together, concentrated on a single street, the march spread wide. Soon, it seemed to him that the entire Quarter was on the move. The immensity of the wave stoked his internal fire even higher. A new thing had come to the city. He would not call it life yet. With pride, he would name it hope. After untold centuries of decadence and excess and exuberant murder, hope was here. It was a strange, disturbing, disorienting emotion in Shyish, yet it was here, and Mathas exulted in its arrival. He did not know where it would take him or how the thing he had become could encompass it, yet he also knew that he would, just as surely as his thirst for blood would never be truly slaked. He hungered for the hot spray of salty gore in his mouth, and he was consumed with the determination to protect the citizens of Nulahmia. Perhaps the paradox could not be resolved. If so, he would be content. He would embrace it as the new truth of his being, and see defining unity in division.

The road ended, opening into a wide square that surrounded a squat, glowering keep. Mathas had expected to see defenders on its roof, for arrows to streak from the crenels and finally test the mettle of the rebels. Yet he saw no one. There were no shouts, no alarms; there was no attack of any kind. There were no torches on the roof, and the windows were dark.

‘Surround the keep,’ Mathas ordered. ‘Seal the exits. We’ll turn their fortress into their prison.’ Hasynne and Lestor repeated the commands. The rebels filled the square and flowed around the walls of the keep, a sea of arms enveloping an island of stone.

The keep remained silent.

‘Front ranks, torches,’ Mathas commanded. ‘Throw them through the windows.’

Flaming brands arced through the air and into the apertures. The interior began to burn, and still, there was no reaction.

Mathas, Hasynne and Lestor regarded the keep with growing concern.

‘Why haven’t they shuttered the windows?’ Lestor wondered.

‘Where are they?’ Hasynne said. ‘They can’t be hiding.’

‘That would be an odd strategy,’ Mathas agreed.

‘They have had time to prepare,’ said Lestor.

‘We always knew they would,’ Mathas told him. ‘We had no surface access points nearby. Better to seize the Queensroad and have that strong point than to be bogged down in the Palace Quarter while Neferata sent her reinforcements unchallenged down from the Throne Mount.’ He shrugged. ‘We expected this would be a hard fight.’

‘We did not expect nothing,’ said Hasynne.

‘We must assume they made ready,’ Mathas said, thinking aloud. ‘Why would they abandon their keep? This is their strongest defensive position.’

‘They can’t have simply retreated,’ said Hasynne.

Look to the west! The mental warning hit Mathas with the force of a physical blow. His body jerked as if struck by lightning, so intensely did his instincts shriek with the premonition of imminent danger. He spun around.

The exit from the north of the square was the Doomwood Way. The wide road reached the square at a hard diagonal, angling so sharply north-west that he could see nothing more than fifty yards of the Way.

‘They haven’t retreated,’ his said. ‘They aren’t defending. They’re going to ambush us.’

The vulnerability of the rebels’ position chilled him, and he saw the magnitude of the trap they had entered. His army was spread around the empty keep. A powerful strike from the Doomwood Way could hit without warning and smash the coherence of the rebel force before any defence could be mounted.

In the distance, they could hear the sound of marching boots.

‘We are fools,’ Hasynne groaned.

‘We are not destroyed yet,’ Mathas said. ‘They have already missed their chance. As long as we’re moving, then we have the offensive. He raised his sword. ‘With me!’ he shouted. ‘To the Ten Sepulchres!’

Warriors cleared a path for him and then followed. The distance across the square seemed infinite, an attack before he could reach the Way inevitable. And yet the wings of war supported him and he ran like the wind. Behind him, the forces of the rebel houses turned to the new direction of attack with the fluidity of a river.

We are not destroyed yet, he thought again. Hope refused to be extinguished, and he would not let it die. It was too precious a flame in Nulahmia.

At Mathas’ side, Hasynne bore a fierce, determined grin. You feel the flame too, he thought. Lestor kept pace with them, the commanders of the three largest forces hitting the Way together. Lestor was grinning too, and the smile was much fiercer, much more impassioned than earlier, when the first hint of excitement had crossed his features. Lestor, who had nothing truly at stake in this war. Lestor, who acted as his master’s tool, a master who saw the rebellion merely as a useful weapon against Neferata. But Lestor was grinning, his eyes shining with a fire that had nothing to do with cold calculation.

The rebellion of hope rushed into the Doomwood Way. The torrent thundered up the cobbled pavement between the façades of palaces and high walls bordering the grounds of great mansions. The army was well engaged in the street when the enemy came into view, less than a mile away. If Mathas had wasted another few minutes, staring at an empty keep, the trap would have closed. Instead, two juggernauts raced towards each other. Wide as the avenue was, it still constrained the armies.

‘How many, would you judge?’ Mathas asked Hasynne.

‘More than what would have been in the keep. Beyond that, I cannot tell. I cannot see as far as their rear flanks.’

Mathas glanced back quickly. ‘They will say the same of us,’ he said.

‘The queen is with them,’ Lestor said. He pointed up. The sinister glow of Nagadron flew above the front ranks of the guards. He moved back and forth across the width of the Way, his tail slicing sinuous wounds in the night. From her wraithbone throne on his back, Neferata looked down at the rebels. The golden crown of Lahmia caught the infernal light of the Adevore and shone with the majesty of cruelty. Mathas could not see her eyes, but he could feel her reptilian gaze strike him.

‘It is good that she is here,’ Mathas said, forcing himself free from the terror of those eyes. ‘It is good,’ he said again, exhaling the word in a long hiss of anticipation.

‘She means to end this war at a stroke,’ Hasynne said.

‘She will fail,’ said Mathas. ‘The victory will be ours. Nulahmia will have its freedom.’ I will have my vengeance. My family will have justice.

A bronze statue of Neferata stood at the intersection with a narrow cross street. The figure was posed in stern triumph, its head inclined downwards to judge all who passed beneath. Mathas leapt high and landed on its shoulders. Visible now to all his followers, he stood atop the image of the hated queen whilst he pointed at the real one, and shouted over the rumble of the two armies. ‘Behold the tyrant! Behold her fall! She has her power, but we have hope!’ And then the moment finally came for the greatest heresy, the challenge to all of Shyish, the roar of the most impossible, and most powerful truth. ‘We have life! Charge the enemy! Seize your victory now!’

The words were lightning. From them followed thunder: the thunder of voices raised in triumph and fury, and of boots slamming against the ground as the rebels hurled themselves forwards. Mathas jumped back to the ground and sprinted forwards, leading the way, leading the hope.

Like clashing oceans, the armies came together.

The study of enemies means more than learning their tactics. It means learning what they call themselves. To learn the names and the ranks by which they exult themselves is to learn their cultures and this, in turn, is to learn their souls. The souls of Chaos are the most crucial. Whether forces are to be used against each other or must be fought directly, their names must be known, and with them the strengths and desires and madnesses of the armies of the Dark Gods. Then the truth can be perceived. Truth must be mine. From it, I will craft the strongest illusions.

– The Orders of Chaos

Chapter 13

AGE OF SIGMAR

THE SEASON OF CREMATORY

‘She did not lie,’ said Venzor. On the north ramparts of Nulahmia, he and Dessina observed the approach of the monstrous horde of the Bloodbound. The air shattered with the blasts of brass horns. Towering siege engines made their slow, implacable way towards the Hyena Gate. Lit by torches, energised with hate, a surge of the crimson warriors of Khorne moved towards the gate with the destructive force of a lava flow. The first exchanges of arrow volleys between defenders and besiegers had begun, though the targets were still just out of range. ‘They are coming for the gate, just as she said.’

‘Truth is the most powerful of lies,’ Dessina reminded him. The words sounded like an incantation, as if she had survived as long as she had only by branding the sentence onto her soul. ‘You would do well to take that fact to heart, too.’

‘Yes,’ said Venzor. This moment, when events were definitively proving Neferata to be honest were when he should be most suspicious.

If he was going to alter the disposition of his forces, he had to act quickly. There would soon be no more time to manoeuvre. There was no doubt that Ruhok was attacking the Hyena Gate, and Venzor had prepared for that battle. And yet…

The Bloodbound horde was so vast, it stretched to the east and west as far as Venzor could see, the horizon turned to brass and blood, coming to embrace all of Nulahmia. The army was too huge for all of Ruhok’s warriors to assault a single portion of the walls.

Venzor cursed. The inspiration he had been pursuing for days finally came to him, when it might be too late. ‘Come with me,’ he told Dessina. He strode quickly to the command tent he had ordered erected on the battlements. Inside, a table held the same maps that had obsessed him in the Palace of Seven Vultures. He snatched the one he needed and unrolled the scroll. He stabbed a finger at the north-east section of the defences. ‘What do you see?’ he said.

Dessina studied the map. ‘Nothing. The wall is unbroken there.’

‘Exactly.’ He opened another scroll that showed the quarter of the Hyena Gate. ‘There is nothing when there should be something. The wall is unbroken, yes. For so very long a stretch. Why? Where is the gate?’

‘Should there be one?’

Venzor nodded. ‘The lack of one creates a delay for travel to the north-east that does not exist in other sectors. It makes little strategic sense, unless there is a greater reason for there seeming to be nothing here.’

‘An escape,’ Dessina said. She spat the word.

‘Would that not be in character?’ Venzor asked. ‘A secret egress for the queen rather than a passage for her troops?’

‘It would be,’ said Dessina. ‘That duplicity defines her.’

‘And I have been a fool not see this earlier,’ Venzor said. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Take your warriors to the wall. Find the gate if you can, but at all costs defend that region of the wall.’ He looked outside the tent at the monstrous siege towers still closing on the Hyena Gate. ‘You were right,’ he said. He pointed at the towers. ‘They are the truth that concealed the greater lie from me.’

Dessina bowed. ‘I will do what I must. I will not fail. This I swear.’

She hurried from the tent. Venzor watched her go, then advanced to the front of the battlements again to command the defence of the Hyena Gate. This attack was still a truth he must contend with. It constricted his actions and shut down his choices. He cursed Neferata and her corrosive truths, and he cursed himself for coming to understanding so slowly. His hope lay in the hate he saw in Dessina’s eyes. She would fly to the north-east in a fury that would match the rage of the Bloodbound.

A huge figure rode at the head of the legions below. His helm was a crimson skull of bronze, and from his shoulders rose a massive rune of Khorne. His dark cape swung heavily in the night wind. On the armoured flanks of the monster he rode, rows of spikes impaled skulls, and every death’s head wore a crown. A destroyer of nations advanced to the gates of Nulahmia. He came within the range of archers, and rose higher in the saddle as arrows struck against his armour and broke. He raised his axe and roared with a voice so loud and full of rage, it seemed to Venzor that a volcano had found a tongue and the power of speech.

‘Nulahmia falls this night!’ Ruhok shouted. ‘Do not seek mercy or flight – stand and die! I am war, and I have come to throw your towers down! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!’

The horde behind him echoed his shout, and the Bloodbound charged.

The parapet vibrated under Venzor’s feet. An arrow of doubt pierced him. We aren’t ready, he thought. It was as if Ruhok’s voice alone was shaking the walls. They felt thin as parchment, and weak as hope. Venzor pictured them cracking apart. He pictured himself falling through shattered stone to savage axes below.

Storm clouds had gathered over Nulahmia. They hung low, grazing the highest spires of the city. They glowed a dull red, reflecting the fires of Ruhok’s army. The architecture of Nulahmia cast angular, wavering shadows in their light.

Neferata moved through darkness in the far north-east of the city. Wreathed in a mist of shadows, she passed between two high, broad monuments. They were engraved with colossal representations of her image, seated in judgement, dispensing death. Their black, polished granite was cold to the touch, and they held all habitations at bay. They shouldered close to the city’s ramparts, allowing only a narrow passage between them and the wall. The darkness of the passage was eternal. The cobbles were slick with moss and slime. The alley was nameless. It was never used, and led nowhere. Except to the Raven Gate.

Neferata approached a featureless expanse of the wall and placed her palm against it. The stonework vibrated beneath her touch. A split ten feet high appeared, and two sections of the wall rumbled apart. She entered the tunnel, advancing a dozen yards before she reached an iron door. When she touched it, it ground upwards into the rounded ceiling.

She kept going. One barrier after another opened at her touch. No other key would open the Raven Gate. She moved through Nulahmia’s outer wall, a faint aura of sorcery surrounding her. It reached into the walls of the tunnel, holding at bay the wards that would destroy any presence that sought to pass the gate without her permission.

She had conceived of the Raven Gate as a means of escape. She had never intended to use it to permit entry into Nulahmia. She found the alteration of its purpose interesting, not distressing. The currents of power flowed in this direction, and so she had adapted. So she always would, or she would fall.

The outer stonework of the wall parted, and the gate was open. The land beyond was steep slope, broken by curved boulders, the fossilised claws of an ancient leviathan that had become its own monument. Neferata stood in the archway. She let the shadows flow away from her. ‘The city awaits you,’ she said. ‘Do not keep it waiting.’

The warbands emerged from behind the stone claws. Ruhok had clearly commanded them to do as she had instructed, and conceal themselves until the gate was open. Even that minimal gesture towards stealth ran against their natures and the warriors who came towards her were consumed with new rage. She smiled at them, fuelling their anger and confusing them at the same time. They did not understand what she was. Their instinct to attack her was, for the moment, troubled.

She wondered idly what orders Ruhok had given them concerning her.

‘Come,’ she said, and walked back through the open gate. The Bloodbound followed, running now, the promise of unleashed violence and mountains of skulls urging them on.

Ruhok’s warriors were savages, Neferata thought. That savagery would be useful to her. So would their strength. They entered the tunnel, and the walls seemed too small to contain their muscle-contorting wrath. Neferata knew the kinds and ranks of the followers of Khorne.

Most of the troops entering Nulahmia were bloodreavers. Many of them disdained armour, taking violent pride in the fresh wounds and old scars that covered their bodies and faces. The Blood Warriors who led them dwarfed their underlings. They were huge, mountains of crimson armour clanking with every step. At their head was the largest of them all. His helm, surmounted with massive horns forming the rune of Khorne, concealed his face. There was nothing human visible beneath the mask of rage. The spikes on his shoulders were coated in blood, and some of it was very fresh. He had, Neferata thought, anointed himself with the gore of a subordinate who had displeased him. She approved of the excess. She had less patience for the crude application of force.

‘And what do you call yourself?’ Neferata asked the Blood Warrior.

‘I am Wrahn,’ he said. The massive double blades of his goreglaive moved back and forth as he walked. ‘My name is the name of your destroyer if you betray us.’

Neferata laughed, making him jerk with surprise and anger. She tapped a finger against the edge of the glaive. ‘That would be singularly pointless on my part, don’t you think? Betraying you inside these walls would not serve my purpose at all.’

‘We are not here to serve you,’ Wrahn growled.

‘Aren’t you?’ She looked back at the long line of Bloodbound following her through the wall. There were over a hundred of Wrahn’s warriors already inside, and more were following. A very good start, she thought, for the work ahead. She was pleased with the size of Ruhok’s detachment. ‘I rather think you are,’ she said. ‘Lord Ruhok is too, though no doubt it will please him to believe otherwise.’

Wrahn growled. ‘Jest while you can.’

‘I do not jest.’

As she spoke, they reached the other side of the Raven Gate, and the Bloodbound spilled into Nulahmia.

Neferata took a step to the right, and crooked her hand in summoning. The mist of shadows rushed around her again at the same moment that Wrahn turned with her and swung his goreglaive at her neck.

The attack was as predictable as the fall of night.

‘Blood!’ Wrahn yelled. ‘Blood for the–’ His swing went wide, cutting trailing darkness. Then Neferata seized him from the whirl of shadow, tearing his helm from his head and clutching his throat, cutting him off in mid-shout. His features were a mass of scar tissue, huge parallel claw gouges running from forehead to chin. He gasped for air, but her grip had closed his air passages. He lashed out with the glaive again, and she grabbed its shaft, immobilising the weapon.

In answer to her will, sorcerous energies rose from the ground at her feet, lifting her and Wrahn into the air. Her attack was so fast that the other Khornate warriors were only just starting to react, and already Wrahn was out of their reach. The Blood Warrior had doomed himself the moment he had thought of turning on her.

Wrahn could not speak. He kicked at the air. His lips mouthed the words Blood God.

‘No,’ Neferata hissed, her voice tearing the air like lightning, blasting down to the army below. ‘Here, there is no blood for the Blood God. Here, the blood is mine.’ She snapped her head forward, a striking serpent, and sank her fangs into Wrahn’s neck. His blood flooded her mouth. She drank deeply, draining his strength in moments. She pulled back while the gore still pumped, letting it rain down, and tore Wrahn’s head from his shoulders. She crushed the skull to powder, brain matter and eyes squeezing from between her fingers. ‘This is my city,’ she thundered at the Bloodbound. ‘All that exists inside these walls belongs to me. Every life, every death, every drop of blood. You are mine. Now go, and wreak your havoc. Go, and do your worst. I command it.’

She dropped Wrahn’s corpse and rose higher, vanishing from the sight of the warriors as the shadows embraced her completely. She listened to the Bloodbound scream their outrage and hate and then, the target of their wrath gone, turn to punish the city in her stead. Neferata’s spell carried her to the roof of the tallest monument. She perched there, watching the Bloodbound bring their rampage. The first fires began to spread, and the stream of warriors was still passing through the gate. The Bloodbound raced through the streets, their path of murderous conquest fuelled by the even greater hate that was her gift to them.

Two fronts had opened in Nulahmia, and Venzor was caught between them. Catastrophe had come to the city, and the flames were the start of its great blossoming. Her fate – and Nulahmia’s – hung in a balance of destruction.

The currents of power had become a torrent, hurling everyone in the city at the rocks that could and would tear them apart. Exhilarated, Neferata laughed, her voice the crack of doom sounding over the city at war.

The blood is mine.

Never accept defeat. Never doubt its possibility.

– Exhortations

Chapter 14

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

Below Neferata, the Doomwood Way was awash with blood. Rebels and guards cut each other down in a war of passion against discipline. The skills of the guard slowed the advance, but no more. The rebels outnumbered them, and though their formations were more ragged, there were enough veteran warriors among the houses to make the difference. The ranks of the skeletons had a greater effect as the battle wore on and they moved up, bringing their unflinching relentlessness to bear. The defeat of the guard was more than predictable. Neferata could anticipate the moment of their collapse down to the second.

She took Nagadron high above the rooftops and looked down upon the panorama of the uprising. Most of the Palace Quarter was in turmoil, the streets filled with marching, chanting traitors. In the regions furthest from the combat, the rebellion had taken on the aspect of a carnival, the people celebrating a victory that had yet to occur.

I see you all, Neferata thought. You have revealed yourself to me, and my judgement will spare no one. Her anger would scorch the streets with the fury of the sun. The celebrants would curse their existence. Their deaths would be eternities of torment.

But the punishment could not come yet. She would need her victory first.

She took Nagadron back down, swooping in on the march a short distance behind the front lines. As the Adevore closed in, talons extended, she noted each banner and coat of arms. She had wanted to know who plotted against her, and here was that triumph at least. She had pushed them into the open, and there they were, defiant in their treachery, howling for her blood.

You see them all. Now crush them.

Nagadron struck the centre of the Way, crushing rebels under his talons, then raking more apart before leaping skywards again. Neferata turned Aken-seth on her enemies, blasting a storm of dark magic through their ranks. Rebels fell, twisting in death agonies, withered to emaciated mummies as the Staff of Pain drained their life forces in an instant.

She took Nagadron up again, leaving a score of rebels destroyed. But the gap in their formation closed almost at once. Nagadron dived again, and again, this time dragging long gouges through the army, shredding mortal, vampire and skeleton to pieces. The march did not slow. If anything it moved faster, as new warriors raced through the spaces Neferata and the dread abyssal opened. The rebels’ commitment to the struggle was absolute. They must know the only outcomes for them are victory or annihilation, she thought. And so they attacked with a fusion of belief and desperation.

There were so many. The line of rebels stretched all the way back to the Queensroad, and it seemed to be growing all the time. The guards were able to slow the march down only because the confines of the Doomwood Way limited the width of the front lines. And the reinforcements were massive. She had no doubt who had sent them. I survived the trap of your spell, Mannfred, so you try this instead. He had played his hand well. The skeletons and warriors he had sent were a small fraction of his strength, and represented no risk for him. Had they been besieging Nulahmia, Neferata would have exterminated them effortlessly. In the streets of the city, they were a much greater threat.

But that isn’t enough, she thought. Mere physical force was too crude an approach for Mannfred. There must be something more.

She soared up and down with Nagadron, attacking without cease, to little effect. The brief stalemate began to break down as the remainder of the guard made a last stand. When they fell, the rebels would be able to spread far and wide. There would be no front. The other guard formations would be isolated islands in the raging sea of the uprising. The rebels’ advance had to be broken in the Doomwood Way, while it was still concentrated. She needed a death blow.

And she still could not find Mannfred’s trap. ‘I know it’s there,’ she said to Nagadron. ‘You can feel it too, can’t you?’ Unease tensed her shoulders, and the Adevore hissed in distress. Something was concealed from her, forcing her gaze to slide over what she sought.

Neferata climbed again, and Nagadron banked towards the front lines as they began to move faster. As the Adevore turned, a sudden, violent movement of shadows caught Neferata’s eye. It came from partway back on the Way, far enough to the rear of the rebels that those marchers had not come under her attack yet. At first all she could see was a vague swirl of movement in the dark. The motion slowed, coalesced into a thick, pulsating dome of fog. The spell faded, and the fog dispersed, revealing a mortis engine. The ornate, necromantic throne was held aloft by a swarm of bound spirits. It had been travelling low to the ground, camouflaged by magic and the crowd of marchers. It rose now, Mannfred’s banners unfurling from its spikes to the howls of banshees. Standing on the throne, a robed corpsemaster pointed at her, thrusting his arms forward as if he were hurling a great weight. The mortis engine shook with a build-up of dark energy.

The mortis engine had been concealed until it was ready to attack. Now it did, and there was no time to react. Yet Neferata had all the time she needed to think, you wanted this.

The corpsemaster made his gesture of attack, and the power in the engine lashed out. The violent release shattered the throne apart. The corpsemaster disappeared in the black lightning, howling in the triumph of his sacrifice.

You wanted this.

The lightning struck Neferata, and pain eclipsed the world.

Then she was falling.

Mathas stared, dazzled by the jagged flare of black, and the war took a breath. The combatants on both sides looked up, their gaze seized irresistibly by the sight of a burning star plummeting to earth. Nagadron burned with green and black flame. The dread abyssal screamed and hurled himself back and forth across the avenue, smashing into the building façades, smashing spires down into the street. Neferata streaked to the ground, a comet of fire and darkness. She struck the Way a few hundred yards up from Mathas’ position. The pavement shook, and stone bubbled. A fountain of molten rock splashed outwards from the crater left by the Mortarch’s fall.

‘The tyrant falls!’ Mathas roared, and he attacked the ragged line of the remaining guards with the fury of imminent victory. He brought his sword down in a diagonal swipe at the throat of the guard before him. The other vampire’s block was too weak, Mathas’ strike too fast and too strong. The blow shattered the chainmail gorget as if it were glass. Mathas’ blade sliced through the guard’s neck and shoulder and down into his chest, severing his heart. Mathas gulped down the jetting blood, and strength built upon strength.

The guards went down beneath the surging wave of rebels. The sight of Neferata falling shattered their morale and energised the rebellion. Mathas fought and killed, but his spirit was already past the guards, and in moments his body was past them too, racing down the Doomwood Way to finish Neferata while the chance was there.

The Mortarch of Blood emerged from the crater. She was limping and bent over in pain. She moved quickly to flee, but Mathas and his comrades were faster. The distance between them narrowed.

‘She cannot escape,’ Hasynne said.

Beside her, Lestor grinned ferociously. He burned with the fire of the cause now, as fully as if it were his own. He had caught the scent of an epochal triumph, and of glory that went beyond being his master’s servant in this war.

Above, Nagadron flew uncontrollably. The sorcerous fire still consumed him, and the monster howled. Rubble fell to the street as he smashed back and forth across the avenue. Mathas threw himself to the side as a slab smashed into the street before him. A hail of shards exploded in his face, and bounced off his armour. He wiped away the blood that ran down his face and kept running. More wreckage crushed rebels running on the sides of the Way, but the losses were trivial now. The guards were destroyed, the way was clear, and Neferata was in desperate retreat.

The rebel army pursued. From the grand apartments bracketing the Way came shouts of jubilation, adding to the liberation chorus that resounded across the Palace District.

Mathas climbed a mound of rubble with Hasynne and Lestor, pausing at the vantage point for a moment to see the sweep of their triumphant force.

‘The citizens of Nulahmia are unanimous,’ said Lestor.

‘Can we truly be this unified?’ Hasynne wondered.

‘Let the perception be the truth,’ said Mathas. ‘If it is not true now, it will be after our victory.’ No one would dare admit to standing with Neferata after she was destroyed.

They ran forwards again, leading the hunt for the tyrant.

The huge statue of the queen stood in the centre of the Way. Mathas saw Neferata stumble as she passed it, steadying herself against a plinth twenty feet high. The obsidian statue was imperious, its chin raised, its eyes staring with merciless impassivity into the distance. Its heroic posture mocked the hunched, diminished figure beneath it.

Neferata pulled away from the plinth, and with a burst of speed, passed into the storied heart of the Doomwood Way. The rebels followed, and Mathas suddenly thought: it ends here. She can go no further.

In the middle of its length, the Doomwood Way widened into a circular plaza a mile wide. Surrounding it were the sepulchres that gave the road its name. They were colossal, hundreds of feet tall, constructs of black marble streaked with crimson, and each holding thousands of graves. They were built in the shape of immense trees. Their branches, thick as the temple spires, reached out to one another around the periphery and across the centre of the plaza, forming a grim, latticed dome. Iron sculptures of dead, drooping, ten-foot leaves hung in the tens of thousands from the branches, turning and grinding in the wind. They filled the plaza with the sound of unnatural, heavy foliage trapped in an eternal autumn, always about to drop, but never falling. To look up from the plaza was to see the twisting reminder of the imminence and immanence of death. To stand in it was to feel oppressed by gargantuan presences. The sepulchres were vast shadows of stone, their shapes mockeries of life that crushed the soul with the weight and majesty of death.

It was here, in the centre of the plaza, that Neferata stopped running. She turned to face the rebels, straightening now, in her hands the Dagger of Jet and the Staff of Pain. As small as her figure appeared in that space and at that distance, Mathas felt the force of her presence strike at him. Wounded, at bay, doomed, she yet seemed greater than the towering sepulchres.

Mathas’ mouth dried, and the fiery song of victory that flowed through his blood stuttered for an instant. Beside him, Hasynne’s smile faltered. The chant of the rebels dropped.

But only for an instant.

‘We have her,’ Lestor said.

Mathas heard his total commitment to the rebellion, and he took up the shout. ‘We have her!’

Furious that even now the queen could make him hesitate, Mathas ran even faster, his cry of vengeance tearing his throat.

His army ran with him.

The rebels howled the refrain of victory. ‘We have her! We have her! We have her!’

This spell. It would be wrong to say I hope never to cast it. I know the currents of fate and misfortune too well to preserve such an illusion. I have thought of the spell, and so the day will come when I shall cast it. Disaster will call upon a greater disaster. I do not know if this spell will work. I do not know if I can survive its casting. I do not know if I will be able to control it, once I have unleashed its force. I do know that I will not hesitate when the time comes. Certainties are tedious lies. Only mortals, caught in the narrow span of their existence, can believe otherwise. Power requires risk, and the casting of this spell will be the greatest risk. I will embrace the risk. I will revel in it.

– The Understanding of Annihilation

Chapter 15

AGE OF SIGMAR

THE SEASON OF CREMATORY

Blood before and fire behind, Venzor thought. He ran back and forth on the battlements, shouting orders no one could hear over the monstrous clash of arms and the roars of the Bloodbound. He could not fathom the true nature of Neferata’s trap. ‘She can’t have chosen to destroy her city!’ he exclaimed, turning to speak to Dessina, forgetting for a moment she was no longer there.

‘Trapped, trapped, trapped,’ he snarled to himself and cursed Neferata. ‘Where is Dessina!’ he shouted. ‘Where are her forces?’ Had she not reached the wall in time? Had she been overwhelmed?

No one answered, and the Bloodbound rampaged through Nulahmia. To Venzor’s rear, fires raged as the enemy cut through the streets towards the Hyena Gate. To the front, the horde was pushing through the volleys of his archers and the flesh-destroying spells of his necromancers. The ground at the base of the wall was awash with the blood of the fallen, but every death only drove the followers of Khorne to greater ecstasies of rage. They raised ladders as fast as the defenders could hurl them down, and the monstrous siege towers had reached the wall, and loomed over the battlements.

The towers’ maws gaped wide, unleashing cataracts of molten brass onto the parapets. The burning river spread wide, incinerating Venzor’s troops and driving them back from the defences. Skeletons stood their ground and vanished under the flow. The necromancers fled, but not all were fast enough. Their robes burst into flames and they screamed, drowning and burning at the same time as they were engulfed.

On the upper flanks of the towers were thick arms of bronze, fists raised to the sky. Now they slammed down onto the parapets. Stone shattered under the blows of the fists, and the arms became bridges onto the wall for the forces waiting inside the towers. Gates opened at the towers’ shoulders. They unleashed the hordes of Khorne. Brayherds and bloodreavers charged down the arms. At their head, swinging a blazing anvil on a chain, was a skullgrinder. Just before he leapt from the fist onto the parapet, he paused for a moment, bellowing with delighted hate at the sight of the destruction his engines had wrought.

Venzor jumped over the river of brass and landed on the crest of the battlements. He leapt from merlon to merlon, making for the skullgrinder. He gestured as he leapt, issuing silent commands. They were obeyed at once. Flights of vargheists and fell-bats swarmed out of the battlement towers. They swooped low over the parapets, talons and fangs tearing into the horde of Bloodbound. The parapet became a storm of wings and blades, of blood and molten flame. The spread of the enemy’s army slowed. The rush down the arms of the siege towers stopped as the Khornate warriors struggled against the ripping death that descended upon them, screaming, from the sky.

‘We are holding them!’ Venzor shouted to his troops.

We are holding them, Venzor thought. His satisfaction evaporated in the next moment. ‘Holding them for what?’ he said to himself. ‘Hold, hold, hold, and then? And then?’ Unless Dessina performed a wonder, all he had gained was a brief stalemate. The fires were raging higher in the city, and already much closer to the gate. Ruhok’s two forces were tightening the noose, and Neferata’s troops were all in the south of the city. ‘She won’t send them,’ he said, and startled himself with his high, bitter laughter. ‘She told me the truth, and I didn’t see it. She does want her city to die. She does. But I won’t let it. I won’t. I will make it mine. I will. I will.’

The skullgrinder marched across the bronzed corpses, using the dead as a causeway to keep him just above the killing flow. He wielded his anvil with the dexterity of a whip. Skeletons exploded into smouldering fragments on impact. As Venzor closed with the skullgrinder, the huge warrior hurled the anvil into the face of Akthal, one of Venzor’s captains. The vampire’s head burst apart, vanishing in a gritty spray of red. The skullgrinder saw Venzor and swung the anvil at him. Venzor feigned hesitation, then launched himself up at the last moment. As the anvil destroyed the merlon that had been his perch, he spread his wings and soared over the skullgrinder’s head. He came down behind the Gorechosen warrior’s back. The skullgrinder whirled, too slow to block Venzor’s daemon-possessed blade. With a vibrating hiss and a flash of violet, the sword sank deep into his shoulder and cut off his left arm. Howling, the skullgrinder threw himself against Venzor, swinging the anvil with his right hand. The chain wrapped itself around both combatants, pulling them into a bloody embrace, two corpses in a single coffin. The heat of the anvil whipped past Venzor’s face, and its momentum toppled him and the skullgrinder into the molten brass.

The jaws of fire and pain seized Venzor. They shook him, taking away his control over his limbs. He managed to jerk his head forwards and sink his fangs into the skullgrinder’s throat. The flow of rejuvenating blood healed him as fast as the stream burned. The skullgrinder thrashed, but was tangled in his own weapon and weakened quickly, his flesh sloughing off his bones. It took all of Venzor’s will not to scream, to keep drinking, and then the chain of the anvil snapped. He shoved the dying skullgrinder away and shot up out of the river of brass, howling in agony and anger.

His armour was scored and melted. His flesh hung in tatters. But he was healing, and he was in command of his powers. He flew up, shedding the burning metal and flying towards the peak of the nearest siege tower. He channelled his pain into a withering blast of magic that he aimed into the maw. The upper portion of the tower exploded, and an eruption of liquid brass drenched the battlements, falling on attacker and defenders alike. The huge engine became a torch. It collapsed with the roar of a dying monster.

Soaring over the battlements, Venzor looked into the city and his moment of triumph vanished. The Bloodbound infiltrators had reached the Hyena Gate, and were slaughtering its defenders.

To Ruhok’s left, the siege engine fell and unleashed an ocean of molten brass across the Bloodbound, hundreds at a stroke. The edges of the killing sea lapped at the feet of Enteth, Ruhok’s juggernaut. The armoured monster growled, but held its ground. The air roiled with the heat. Ruhok gave Torsek the skullgrinder’s fallen achievement only a passing glance.

‘The queen has betrayed us,’ said Kathag. The Exalted Deathbringer stood beside Enteth’s right flank, the eternal grin-snarl of his face more threatening than ever. He was as ready to attack his lord as he was the walls of Nulahmia. Nearby, Vul the slaughterpriest and Ghour the bloodsecrator said nothing, waiting to see how the confrontation would evolve. ‘She made us come here only to hurl ourselves against the strongest defences,’ Kathag insisted.

‘This is what she said would happen,’ said Ruhok. ‘This is not defeat. This is victory. Look. Look beyond the wall.’

Kathag hesitated, then obeyed.

‘See those flames,’ said Ruhok. ‘The city burns. Neferata should have lied, because she has sealed her doom. But she did not lie. Nulahmia is ours, and we will destroy it so utterly, it will vanish from memory.’

Ruhok had barely finished speaking when he heard booming sounds from the other side of the Hyena Gate. It was the knocking of fate. The time had come for him to raise a mountain of skulls in Khorne’s name.

As if in answer to his thought, the sound came from the other side of the walls of the Bloodbound chanting their praise of Khorne. Through the screams and clash of arms on the battlements, the words were still clear.

‘Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!’

‘Now!’ Ruhok shouted to his legions. ‘Take the gate now! Take the city! Drown it in its blood!’ Enteth thundered across the last of the ground that separated Ruhok from the Hyena Gate. Kathag and the other Gorechosen warriors kept pace. There was doubt in the Exalted Deathbringer’s eyes, but he obeyed.

Ruhok bellowed, exulting in the charge. There was nothing to hold back the legions of Khorne, and they launched at the Hyena Gate like a terrible, crimson fist. The defenders on the ramparts were either dead or locked in struggle. Forces still descended from the other siege tower. Torsek’s chained anvil no longer swung above the crenellations, but his creations carried his bloody work forward.

The great charge grew stronger with every step. ‘Give praise to Khorne!’ Ruhok commanded, and Vul picked up the chant, shouting prayers and imprecations that fired the blood of the attackers with a force greater than frenzy. He called upon the Blood God’s blessings, and his prayers were answered. Ruhok felt new power spread through his limbs and gather in the air itself. Ghour reacted the most violently. He raised his standard high, and the huge rune blazed with energy. Mouth agape in religious ecstasy, the bloodsecrator gathered the building fury into the icon. As the Gorechosen reached the arch of the Hyena Gate, the reality of Shyish grew brittle. Chaos itself was on the verge of breaking through.

The Hyena Gate glowed angrily as its wards sought to kill the attackers before they could strike the huge portcullis. ‘Weak!’ Ruhok shouted. ‘Show them, bloodsecrator! Show them the strength of Khorne!’ He urged Enteth forward as, with a howl of praise, Ghour unleashed the stored power of his icon.

In this small region of Shyish, the reality of the realm tore and crumbled. ‘Skulls for the Skull Throne!’ the Bloodbound raved, a thousand voices united in rage, and Chaos roared through a rent in the air. The anger of the Blood God lashed out, Khorne’s hatred of magic made manifest. The Hyena Gate’s glow turned into a death blaze, and then darkness. Enteth slammed into the portcullis, a living battering ram. Weakened from the other side by the attacks of the infiltrators, the gate flew apart before the incandescent rampage of the Bloodbound. Iron and stone shattered and melted.

Howling in the unstoppable glory of rage, the legions of Lord Ruhok stormed into Nulahmia.

Let me be on time, Dessina thought. Let me be on time.

She felt the weight of the city on her shoulders, and she took the burden gladly. The mission was the greatest honour of her existence. The prospect of its failure was her greatest horror. And failure was a possibility as likely as it was dreadful. Let her be on time? There was no time.

The tunnels through which she led her forces of vampires, skeletons and zombies were damp, and their echoes were old, dull with abandonment. They had not been used in an age. Every step she took down them was fateful. That she was here, that anyone was here, marked the day as a turning point.

‘I question again why we are here,’ said Felsein. Venzor had made her Dessina’s lieutenant, and she had served without hesitation until now. ‘Why are we here?’

‘We will take the enemy by surprise, from below.’

‘So you said. But, it will be impossible for us to reach the surface quickly. We are very far below ground, and we keep going down.’

‘Yes,’ said Dessina. ‘It is necessary.’

The other vampire tried a different tack. ‘We are urgently needed.’

‘I know that even better than you do.’

‘Were we not supposed to be making for the north-east portion of the wall? I think we have been going south at least some of the time.’

‘We are going where we must. I have never made so crucial a journey, and neither have you.’

The passion in Dessina’s voice quieted Felsein for a moment, but did not put an end to her doubts. ‘Did Lord Venzor order us to take this route?’

‘It was commanded,’ Dessina said, and her voice almost broke as she thought of the trust that Neferata had placed in her. I will not fail you, my queen. This would be her greatest act of loyalty, and the fires she would unleash would at last burn away the final traces of dishonour to cling to her name.

The destruction of the House of Avaranthe, in another age, had been deserved. It was the punishment due for treachery, and the Avaranthes had dared to rebel against the Mortarch of Blood. The destruction, though, had not been total, because not every Avaranthe had joined the Hellezans and the other conspirator houses. When Dessina’s direct ancestors had discovered the treachery, they had gone to Neferata, and condemned their kin to the flames. One of the few comforts Dessina could take from the history of her family was the knowledge of its punishment. Even now, centuries upon centuries later, she sometimes saw enslaved wraiths and skeletons that she recognised as the ancient rebels, still suffering their punishment.

Dessina had inhabited the shadows of Neferata’s reign for hundreds of years, unknown even to her sister spies, her every action having the sole purpose of projecting her queen’s will. She was Neferata’s hand, striking in the dark and at a distance. She proved her worth a thousand times over.

And it was never enough. Not for her. The shame of her family followed her, always in her consciousness. It found her no matter how deeply into the shadows she ventured.

On this night, though, with this task, she hoped at last to purge the shame.

One more descent, one more tunnel, one more passage through the emptiness and dust and silence of age, and then they crossed under an arched doorway. It was the last threshold.

Though she could not know if she was in time, and the doubt tormented her, Dessina smiled when she saw what stood before her. ‘We are here,’ she breathed. She could have wept in gratitude to Neferata.

‘What is this place?’ Felsein asked, shaken. The other vampire troops were murmuring, distressed. ‘We are not at the wall.’

‘No, we are not.’

‘And who are they?’

‘Reinforcements.’ Of a kind, Dessina thought.

Tens of thousands of skeletons awaited them. The tens of thousands of skeletons who guarded the Annihilation Gate.

The night was heavy with the heat of the season of Crematory. The sky was low, ash and dust falling in curtains over the rooftops, swirling in the desiccating wind. And a silence spread across the city from the Tomb of the Unnumbered. It smothered voices. It muffled the din of siege in the north. It was the silence of final anticipation. It was the silence that came before the roar of ending.

Nagadron circled above the Tomb of the Unnumbered. The Adevore moaned eerily, in sympathy with his mistress. Neferata’s eyes were half-closed. Her fingers combed and braided the air through which she flew. Her consciousness was divided between the work of her hands and her senses that reached down into the bowels of the city. She was waiting, waiting for the slightest touch on her web. The thrumming of a single strand.

In the north, the city burned. The flames had spread over entire districts, and the night crashed and boomed with the sounds of war. Two armies struggled for ownership of the city, one to control it, the other to destroy it. She would break them both.

Neferata’s gestures carved runes and summoned powers, shaping the most terrible of spells. The powers that she called to her were not hers alone. She drew upon the energy of the entire city. Her rule had been weakened, yet Nulahmia was still hers, by right of creation. It was as she had told the Bloodbound. All blood within the city’s walls was hers. All within was hers.

The power built. The spell trembled on the verge of completion. Neferata ground her fangs in the effort to keep it contained. Not yet, she thought. Not yet. If she unleashed it too soon, it would miss its mark, and all would be lost.

Then it came. The thrumming of a single strand. The presence of the loyal servant.

The arrival of the willing sacrifice.

Now, then, now was the time of the spell. And it was ready, howling to be unleashed.

‘Nulahmia is mine!’ Neferata shouted. ‘Mine to rule and mine to destroy. I reclaim it!’

She hurled the monstrous force of the spell down through the peak of the Tomb of the Unnumbered. A coruscating beam of starlight silver and void black roared towards the Annihilation Gate.

As if sensing the catastrophe to come, the city began to shake.

Against defeat, no sacrifice is too great. Beside defeat, all pain is trivial.

– A Call to Purpose

Chapter 16

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

On the Doomwood Way, in the plaza of the Ten Sepulchres, Neferata stood alone and faced the army she had come here to destroy. The deathly snow of quietus was falling, draping the monuments in grey and trickles of blood.

‘The city is mine,’ said Neferata. Did they think they could take it from her? Did they think they could destroy her? Did they not understand the arrogance of hope was theirs only because she willed it?

Pain still wracked her from the blast of the mortis engine. But the pain was inconsequential. It was the price she had paid, the price she had sought, to bring this moment into being. She had prepared for a blow that might be strong enough to fell her. The risk was necessary. The injury had to be real, so her flight to the plaza would be real.

The truth was the most powerful of lies.

Mathas and his army of traitors raced to finish her off. They filled the grand plaza of Doomwood Way. Their roar of triumph was deafening. Fifty yards away, Mathas slowed in his charge. He raised a hand, and the army slowed with him. He was looking at her wounds. She saw him take in the tremor in her limbs. He could read the extent of her injury. He could see the truth. He could see the importance of this moment, and how it would determine the fate of Nulahmia.

Neferata saw that he had learned well, and had determined, as his forces surrounded her, to savour his triumph. She could see the fire that burned in Mathas’ eyes. The fire she had ignited and carefully nurtured.

‘We have come for justice, tyrant,’ he said.

‘You shall have it,’ she said, her voice rough with pain.

Mathas walked forward slowly. Hasynne and Lestor followed a few steps behind. The last Hellezan advanced with determination, and a stern purpose worthy of a king. ‘Justice,’ he said. ‘For all your victims. For my family. For my son. For Teyosa.’

Neferata smiled, and Mathas hesitated. A cold wind rushed through the sepulchres. It blew harder and harder, a freezing annunciation that turned the snowfall into a stinging punishment. Neferata’s cloak billowed in the blast. Her hair streamed out from beneath the crown of Lahmia. The blood running down the sepulchres shot across the plaza to surround her, obeying the will of its absolute ruler. The burns on Neferata’s flesh faded away. Her wounds vanished.

She ceased to smile. She opened her eyes wide, and showed to Mathas and all before her a fury that was colder than any tomb, and colossal beyond measure.

‘The city is mine,’ she said again. ‘The city is mine!’

Her voice, the great tolling of judgement, boomed across all Nulahmia.

And she raised her arms, and she took the city back.

Thunder drowned out the roar of the rebels. The thunder of Neferata’s true army. The strength that she had held back until now, the strength that she had concealed, poured out from the huge sepulchres. Cavalries of Black Knights and blood knights led thousands of skeletons and vampires upon the rebels. From the upper branches of the monuments came another cavalry. Mounted hexwraiths galloped down through the air, leading hosts of spirits, an unending storm of glowing ectoplasm descending upon the plaza. Flights of fell-bats swooped through the deathly green, hunting for the blood of the queen’s enemies.

Flying on skeletal wings, Neferata’s morghast guards landed beside her. The monsters of shadow, monsters of bone, they raised their massive blades to slaughter in her defence.

She barely needed them now. Her will had called absolute destruction upon her enemies, and that rejuvenated her as much as the richest blood. She strode forward, Aken-seth held high. Mathas and the other leaders of the rebels were still making for her, but there was only desperation in their run now. Their uprising had no chance, and they knew it. Their shouts of triumph had turned into screams of despair, and the massacre had only just begun.

‘Life?’ Neferata taunted Mathas. He staggered as she turned his deepest thoughts into words. ‘Hope? You thought to bring them into my city?’ She laughed, and invited them to battle.

The morghasts fell on Lestor, chopping his limbs from his body before he could even begin to fight. Mathas and Hasynne brought their blades in at opposite angles, and at the same moment. Neferata blocked Mathas’ strike with the Staff of Pain. Hasynne’s sword cut through her wraithbone armour and into her side. Neferata snarled. With the speed of a mortis scorpion, she stabbed the hooked blade of Akmet-har into Hasynne’s right eye, cracking her skull open with the force of the blow. The powerful warrior slumped to her knees as the Dagger of Jet pulled her undead vitality out of her.

‘Life?’ Neferata repeated. She blocked a flurry of blows from Mathas. ‘What is life except the prelude to the power of death. Do you see its power now? Do you?’

‘I do,’ Mathas growled, granting a truth without admitting defeat. He came at her again and again, his fire undimmed.

‘Do you not know what you are?’ she asked.

He backed away and circled her, looking for an opening, trying to exploit her injuries. ‘I am not what you would have made me,’ he said. ‘I am free, and you are fallible. If you destroy me tonight, another will come, and your end will come.’

‘Free?’ Neferata said, speaking softly now, and smiling.

Mathas hesitated. The blaze in his eyes faltered. Perhaps he suspected what was coming.

‘I did not fail,’ she said. ‘You were never free. I have given you the illusion of freedom. I planted the venom of hope in your blood. I needed to know my enemies, and you led them to me. You have been, truly, a loyal servant.’

‘No,’ Mathas whispered. His eyes were wide, the fire gone, in its place a shine of horror. ‘I will not believe your lies.’

‘Then believe the truth.’ She smiled more broadly, showing him the pleasure his hope had given her. ‘Stop,’ she said, as if he had been overfilling a chalice, and he froze in mid-lunge.

‘Drop your sword.’

The blade clattered to the cobblestones.

‘Give me your neck.’

Mathas’ scream as he obeyed was the exquisite sound of perfect despair and absolute loss. It was a sound that took time to craft, and Neferata was pleased by her work. The scream went on and on, a perfect accompaniment as she drank his blood one more time. She turned her thrall into a husk as she washed her pain away with pleasure.

‘All blood is mine,’ she whispered to him.

The truth was the most powerful of blades.

The power of balance can be immense. I witnessed its strength in the chamber of the Maw of Uncreation. The matter of Shyish flows into the Maw at a rate that keeps it quiescent. If the balance is disturbed, whether through a sudden influx or through a withholding, then the vortex rises. Once the matter at the circumference of the vortex asserts the flow enough, the Maw will recede to its original point. So I believe. One day, I know, I will have to put that belief to the test. If I am wrong, then I will doom everything.

– The Understanding of Annihilation

Chapter 17

AGE OF SIGMAR

THE SEASON OF CREMATORY

‘Reinforcements.’ Felsein sounded doubtful.

‘Yes,’ said Dessina, and strode forwards. She no longer needed Felsein and the others to trust her. The few moments that their doubts would grant her would be enough.

She marched into the ranks of the skeletons. As they raised their swords to strike her down, she said, ‘I must see Karvent.’

The skeletons paused, then stepped back, clearing a path for her to the base of the Annihilation Gate’s plinth. A Black Knight awaited her there. As she walked, Dessina grasped the medal that hung from a heavy chain around her neck. It was the coat of arms of the Avaranthes. The symbol was a hated one, an embodiment of disloyalty. Now she broke it in half. Inside it was another, smaller, obsidian medal, carved to match the seal of the gate. She had been carrying Venzor’s doom in plain sight.

Dessina reached Karvent, and showed the Black Knight what she carried.

‘Has the time come, then?’ the skeleton asked with a voice like wind over sand.

‘By the command of our queen, it has.’

Dessina carried Neferata’s authority with her, but not the Mortarch’s power. The key would not, by itself, be enough to complete her task. But Dessina had her loyalty and her love, and for her, they were enough.

She had faith Neferata would provide the rest.

Dessina gestured at Venzor’s forces. She raised her voice so that all could hear. ‘They are the enemies of Neferata. Kill them all.’

‘Traitor!’ Felsein shouted.

‘No,’ Dessina said as Karvent led the skeletons forward. ‘My loyalty is greater than yours could ever be.’

She watched as Felsein and Venzor’s forces charged the skeletons. Their attack was futile bravado. Venzor had given Dessina strong warriors to command, but there were only hundreds of them. They could not hold out long against Karvent’s many thousands of guardians. Neferata had designed the Annihilation Gate’s defences to be impregnable to all but her or her chosen servant.

The chamber shook with the clash of steel and crack of bone. The vampires’ screams of rage became cries of distress as the skeletons overwhelmed them. Dessina turned her back on the slaughter and climbed the plinth.

She stood before the seal, and savoured the moment Neferata had given her. So great a boon, Dessina thought. I am not worthy, but I am grateful. ‘I am the hand of your will, my queen,’ she said, and touched the key to the seal. The seal began to move. She felt a thrum rise from within the Annihilation Gate, passing through her body, and up through the underworlds of Nulahmia. For a brief moment, Dessina was closer than she had ever been to her queen.

And the power came down.

Storm of night and storm of light, destruction had arrived to release annihilation. Dessina came apart in a blaze beyond the reach of fire. In the last fraction of a moment of her existence, she felt not pain, but ecstasy. There was joy in martyrdom, and finally there was honour in her name.

Neferata stood beside Nagadron on the peak of the Ossa Spire. Constructed entirely of fused bone, the tower was a thin, jagged spike stabbing hundreds of feet in the air at the northern edge of the Silent Quarter. Here she could witness the totality of her action. Her work of centuries was coming to fruition.

Not completion. Nothing ever ends.

Except that tonight, that was not true. Tonight, there would be endings. Tonight, the end itself would rise.

The time had come. She unleashed catastrophe, and the great engine of sorcery and stone roared to terrible life.

The tremors, centred at the Tomb of the Unnumbered, radiated across Nulahmia. Towers swayed and crumbled. As far away as the southern wall, spires collapsed in a thunder of rubble as the surface of the streets rose and fell like ocean swells. Spirits beyond counting rose from the splits in the ground and the shattered mausoleums, hurled from the underworlds as the shattering spread through the material and immaterial domains of Shyish. The engine opened a great wound in the Realm. This was the beginning of its work.

The shaking of the Tomb of the Unnumbered reached a new intensity. A cleft appeared, running vertically down from its peak, between the twin spires, through the centre of the structure. With an immense grind of tortured stone, the gargantuan mausoleum began to rise from the Silent Quarter. Sorcerous light of crimson and violet burned at its base, and the two halves of the Tomb began to part. The monument gradually took on the appearance of an opened claw. The mausoleum floated hundreds of feet above the streets.

Then the streets fell. The Silent Quarter dropped into an abyss. The pit widened quickly. Its edges moved towards the flames of battle. The hot wind blew straight down, air and dust called to their destruction too. Tombs and monuments disappeared, and then the Maw reached the border of the Silent Quarter. The Ossa Spire swayed. Neferata waited a moment longer, drinking in the immensity of what she had done, her gaze called by the darkness below, because she knew what waited in the depths. The Spire began to lean, and she experienced the vertigo of delicious, absolute destruction.

The gods themselves fear what I have freed, she thought, and then leapt onto Nagadron’s back. They flew to the skies, fleeing the jaws of the most perfect of disasters. The Spire toppled, snapping in half, and in half again. The great lengths of bone tumbled end over end into the pit, small as needles before they vanished.

Neferata gazed down, her witchsight unveiling every detail of the cataclysm. The abyss consumed the Crepuscular Road. Its citizens filled the street, tramping each other in panic as they tried to flee. The distant sounds of their screams reached Neferata’s ears. Individual voices merged into a single, collective shriek. At first, the scream was barely audible beneath the rumble of collapsing architecture, but soon it grew loud as more and more of the city joined in. Habitations, grand manors and palaces vanished. Thousands of the living and the undead perished in moments, and as great as the scream became, a greater silence followed, rippling outwards with the pit, putting an end to hope and despair alike.

And the war waged on, the armies ignorant for a short time yet of the doom that was coming for them.

The darkness in the abyss began to swirl and turn grey. The Maw of Uncreation was gorging itself into a frenzy. Its level rose and rose, the secret that could not be confronted becoming visible. Now madness outgrew and outpaced terror, as the inhabitants of Nulahmia beheld the absolute. The great scream took on a new tone. Madness and awe and terror became one.

‘So great a symphony,’ Neferata said to Nagadron. ‘And it is my creation.’

Neferata watched and looked away, watched and looked away. She did not gaze on the Maw of Uncreation long enough for it to seize her with its devouring blankness, yet she needed to see.

The work unfolded in all the glory of horror. The pit was miles wide now, and its circumference was spinning, pulling more and more of the city into the vortex of the Maw. When it reached the streets of the north, torn apart by battle, the firestorms plunged inside, the flames sucked away by a force of destruction that rendered theirs meaningless. The Maw of Uncreation rose higher yet, and it devoured the war.

Neferata took Nagadron north, the better to see the end of folly, the shared folly of Venzor and Ruhok that they had any right to the city.

The usurper was fighting with the Lord of Khorne. They had come to grips, and Ruhok was trying to snap the vampire in half while Venzor lashed at him with a frenzy of sorcerous bolts. To their rear, Bloodbound fled from the onrushing collapse. They cut each other down in their panic. Those who were close enough to the edge to see the Maw were frozen. They understood, to their cost, what they saw. No being could behold the destroyer and not know it for what it was, for it nestled in the deepest recesses of every thought, every belief, every consciousness. Every reality.

Neferata heard the glorious sound of the Bloodbound screaming in fear, and she laughed. Her laughter rang across the city in agony, clear and strong and merciless.

Venzor and Ruhok stopped in mid-strike. They stared at their doom. Not far from them, Kathag, alone among Ruhok’s Gorechosen, had understood the nature of the maelstrom in time to turn away. ‘Do not look!’ he cried. ‘Do not look!’

His warning was a whisper in a gale. Only Neferata heard it, and she smiled.

The bloodsecrator and the slaughterpriest did not run. Neferata witnessed the crumbling of their faith. Their muscles went slack. Their faces went dark with monstrous comprehension. At the last moment, just before the ground beneath their feet dropped away, the bloodsecrator hurled his huge icon into the pit. Then they vanished, unable even to curse.

Ruhok, too, was paralysed. He stared directly into the face of doom, but when it came for him, he raised his voice in a thunderous roar. His pain and his rage would have hurled fortress walls to the ground, but the Maw of Uncreation took his anger, and so this too, only Neferata heard. Then he fell, a meteor of crimson armour plunging into the terminal grey.

Venzor tried to flee, gabbling in terror. But he turned his head away too late. He was too slow, and when the Maw came for him, he looked at it again, all choice stolen. His last scream was high and long, rich in all the shades of terror.

Only Kathag moved fast enough. He tore through the struggling hordes of Bloodbound, trampling them into the ground, sprinting for the outer walls. He looked back only once, from the top of a hill of rubble. Instead of staring at the Maw of Uncreation, he looked up, and Neferata met his gaze.

‘Run!’ she called to him, and laughed. ‘Tell them!’ she shouted, as the Exalted Deathbringer turned and ran again, fleeing the collapsing city, the all-destroying hunger at his back. ‘Tell them all! Tell your god what you have seen this night!’

Whirling, growing, whirling and growing, the Maw of Uncreation swallowed the armies, casting the legions into final silence. It pulled the outer walls of the city down, and the northern edge of the abyss stretched into the land beyond. There were no fires now, no defenders and no attackers. The Maw had claimed them all.

The glow from the base of the Tomb of the Unnumbered sent tendrils to the circumference of the pit. They were the arms of disruption, and they prevented the material of Shyish from restoring the balance that restrained the Maw of Uncreation. The strain on Neferata’s sorcerous engine was enormous. The Tomb of the Unnumbered began to crack. Slabs of dark rock fell from its sides. Splits webbed across its façade, turning it into a broken eggshell. Foul light gleamed from inside. The engine was on the verge of flying apart.

Neferata did not know what would happen if it destroyed itself. And its work was done. Balance must be restored. So she turned the Staff of Pain towards the hovering monument and jagged sorcery crackled across the night to the Tomb. The force was powerful, but it did not drain her as before. She was not unleashing magic now. She was releasing the strain.

The spell struck the Tomb of the Unnumbered. The tendrils of light flared, then vanished. Now there was a rush of new material into the Maw faster than its hunger could grow. The vortex began to withdraw. The grey sank down into the darkness, receding to its chamber.

The Tomb of the Unnumbered began to descend. The open claw closed, the two halves returning to one another and, as far below the Annihilation Gate shut once more, so did the Tomb come to ground with a boom that shook the city. Destruction slumbered again, covered by the sleep of death.

The tremors ceased. Silence fell over Nulahmia. The silence of dread, the silence of rubble, the silence of Neferata’s rule. The northern quarter was a slumped pit. Phantasmal energies floated over it, a nimbus of green and loss. Mile after mile after mile of the city was utter ruin. The destruction was more complete than anything that had happened during Lascilion’s siege. What Neferata had created, she had destroyed. What she destroyed, she could create anew.

She brought Nagadron down into the wasteland. She dismounted and began to walk, first through what had been the Silent Quarter, then onwards, into the ruins of the north. The sound of her boots on broken stone rang sharply in the quiet. The wind gradually picked up again, keening with grief. And then, though the end of the furnace season of Crematory was still far in the future, it began to rain.

The rain fell up. It rose from the rubble, droplets darkened with ash. Neferata stretched out her hands, and the mourning of stone pattered up against her palms. She smiled, followed the flight of rain to the sky, where clouds turned sluggishly in aftershocks of pain.

At her back, she felt the sudden gathering of night. She wheeled around to see the coming of a god. She had expected his arrival. That did not make it any easier. Now she would see the ultimate consequences of her risk.

The ropes of night became limbs and armour. The cold fire of the gaze appeared, and then the terrible skull. In glory and might, he who was dread incarnate, he who was death incarnate, materialised before her. His armour was ribbed in golden wraithbone. Long spurs rose from his shoulders, symbols of his grasp reaching out beyond his form. In his hand he held Alakanash, the great Staff of Power, his authority captured in blade and bone.

Nagash was here to render judgement.

‘You risked my Realm,’ said the god of death.

‘I was not reckless with Shyish, master,’ Neferata answered, her tone humble and respectful, but not cowering. She must stand by her actions. ‘I knew, once I permitted it, that the balance would be restored.’

‘You knew, or you believed?’

‘The line between the two was insignificant.’

‘Yet it exists.’

Neferata bowed her head. ‘I do not believe that you did not know the Maw of Uncreation lay below Nulahmia, master. I do not believe you did not know I would, in time, make use of it.’

The eyes of the death’s head glowed with what she hoped was amusement.

Nagash swept his hand, taking in the devastation of Nulahmia. ‘The city was a different risk. You sacrificed much.’

‘It is mine to sacrifice. Is it not?’

‘Yours? Yours by my dispensation.’

Neferata said nothing, waiting.

The cold fire in Nagash’s gaze grew brighter, and she was sure, now, that she saw dark pleasure there. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yours. Through your skill at deceit, you have destroyed a legion of Khorne and reclaimed the right to your city entire. I revoke Arkhan’s claim.’

Neferata held her face still. She kept her triumph in her heart, though she had no doubt Nagash could see it. She lowered her head again. ‘My thanks to you, my lord. My service, eternally, is yours.’

‘So it must be,’ Nagash warned, and he faded from view, death returning to the night. The sense of his gaze lingered, a call to obedience.

Neferata turned back to Nulahmia. The city was wounded, bleeding. Her city. To wound and to heal as she saw fit.

Her city. Bleeding at her command.

For all blood is mine.

NEFERATA: THE DOMINION OF BONES

Conquest is an art form. Its canvas is a spiderweb. Its medium is blood. It is an art of refinement and of brutality. Too often, its practitioners ignore one for the other. Conquest without blood is mere seduction, ephemeral as love. Yet if there is only violence, then what is being practised is suppression, a passing game for fools. It, too, vanishes like dew and hope.

What my eyes see, my hand conquers. And all who fall within the compass of my reign will pay me the tribute of their blood.

– The Red Art

Prologue

The Stonepain Mountains raised their curved claws to the sky. The white of monstrous bones showed through jagged rents in the black granite, and the earth’s dried blood stained sheer cliffs with dark red. The mountain chain was the agony of the very rock of Shyish, thrust upwards during upheavals at the end of the Age of Myth. It marked the eastern boundary of Neferatia, but that was just one of the Stonepains’ frontiers. The chain formed a rough rectangle many hundreds of miles long and wide. It looked like talons, and it looked like ribcages, and it embraced an empire.

Mounted on Nagadron, her dread abyssal, the Mortarch of Blood flew above the highest peaks of the Stonepains. She looked east, into the realm of Angaria. ‘This will be mine,’ she said to the Lady Mereneth.

In the distance, the land glowed the red of boiling blood. The red flowed from the city of Mausolea in the far distance and reached all the way to the Stonepain foothills, where the blood became distinguishable as the fires from the enemy encampments. The armies aimed at Neferatia were growing night by night. Just visible at the horizon was the glint of brass at the top of the Sentinel of the Shroud, the highest peak in Angaria. It was an isolated mountain in the middle of a plain, and it turned, ceaselessly, a stone guardian casting a baleful gaze over its lands. The brass that defaced it was the mark of the usurper, the mark of Graunos. This was his empire, and he held it fast. The land groaned under the pain of his rule. Its glow was the reflection of his ferocity and his anger, and they were his strength, but that colour was still the colour of blood, and blood belonged to Neferata.

The legions of Nagash had pushed the forces of Chaos back, but the boundary of the Stonepain Mountains had yet to be crossed.

‘Graunos has the same designs on your realm, my queen,’ said Mereneth. Neferata’s chief spy glided beside the Mortarch, membranous wings catching the wind currents with effortless grace.

‘I am glad of it. I will use his designs against him and take what he thinks is his.’

Nagadron growled, eager to sink his claws into his mistress’ foes. The skeletal beast’s voice was the sound of a deep organ chord rattling through bones. The baleful glow of the souls trapped within his body grew brighter, the damned writhing in answer to the monster’s hunger.

Neferata held out a hand, cupping the vista of Angaria in her palm. The clouds above stirred sluggishly, heavy with burdens and anticipation. ‘I will awaken Graunos from his false dream,’ she said. ‘This land is mine.’ She closed her fist. ‘All of it.’

Lightning flashed to the south. Silver lightning, the lightning of a warstorm. Sigmar’s lightning, the mark of the coming of the Stormcast Eternals. It was the lightning that had called Neferata and Mereneth to these heights. Neferata wanted to gaze upon the storm and the domain she was going to conquer. This was the tempest Neferata had been waiting for, the one she needed so she could bring an empire to its knees.

The Mortarch of Blood pointed to the lightning. ‘They shall be my tools,’ she told Mereneth. ‘They will be the means of taking Angaria.’ She smiled, tasting the night, savouring the dance to come. ‘They will be mine, and so will Graunos.’ She reached out, spreading her fingers to grasp the lightning.

Never presume secrecy or the ignorance of the foe. Act on the given that the enemies see more than imagined. Perceive even more deeply than they can, and lead them to errors of interpretation.

– Lessons of the Gaze

Chapter 1

Light from the fires of Mausolea rose high along the flanks of the Sentinel of the Shroud. The city sprawled out from the western foot of the mountain, a supplicant prostrate before a towering, unforgiving god. Before the coming of the legions of the Blood God, Mausolea had been a city for the dead. Its avenues of monuments and vast sepulchres were grander and more numerous than the streets of the living. Whether entombed or walking the night, the dead had ruled Mausolea, and the mortals had prospered there only at their sufferance.

The dead ruled no longer. Mausolea had changed from a city of shadows and silence to a cauldron of flame. Its mortal population had grown under the reign of the Lord of Skulldagger Bastion. Khorne craved blood. To feed that insatiable hunger required an army and an industry unlike any that Mausolea or any of the lands and cities of Angaria had ever seen. Tombs had been opened, vaults had been ransacked, graves had been turned into primitive forges. Molten iron ran down the gutters of the streets. Graunos commanded, and an army grew, and from the maws of the industry that created the army came the flames that rose and spread their light on the mountainside.

There were other fires, too. The burning homes and the burning pyres of the day’s sacrifices to the throne of brass.

The flames of Mausolea illuminated the slowly changing face of the mountain. Though the structures of the city came very close to the base of the mountain, none were built upon the slopes themselves. None were permitted on the flanks of the turning mountain, and the near-vertical rock face defied any attempt to build upon it. Slowly, relentlessly, the towering pillar of rock rotated on its base, following the rhythm of the days and nights. Its peak hunched forward in the shape of an immense granite hood. When the light of Hysh fell upon the land, the Sentinel’s movement seemed to be an agonised turn away from the day, the hood seeking the darkness that had vanished. Then, with the coming of dusk, for all the regions that fell within the shadow of the Sentinel, the abyss within the hood appeared to be the origin of night, and it was from the mountain that the breath of darkness came to fall upon Angaria.

So it had been until Graunos had conquered Angaria and commanded the construction of Skulldagger Bastion. The base of the fortress was in the shape of a colossal skull of brass. It filled the cavern of the hood, and had transformed the Sentinel of the Shroud, giving it a face. No longer did the mountain turn from light and create darkness. Now it looked upon the land below, a gaping, snarling guardian of Chaos. The towers of the citadel rose from the crown of the skull like a forest of brass spikes. The spires of the periphery leaned at sharp angles, jutting into space beyond the skull. The central turrets climbed high above the peak, daggers that stabbed the day and blinded the night.

From the eyes and mouth of the skull came the light of Graunos. The daemon prince had come from Hysh, and he had brought with him his particular strength of anger. He brought, to the land of the dead, the curse of the most terrible, virulent light. The beam was red as blood, if blood burned at the touch. It was brilliant, its intensity dazzling even at the peak of day. At night, it was a sword that cut the darkness, a searing wound.

The light marked a scorched perimeter around Mausolea as the mountain turned. Where it passed, stone burst into flame, and the air rained molten brass. During the hour before it came again, the land remained as hot as the interior of a crematorium.

The tower that jutted from the centre of the skull’s brow, leaning the furthest out over the vertiginous fall, held in its peak the Offertory throne room. The chamber was a huge hemisphere. In the centre of the floor was a bowl-shaped combat arena. Here the supplicants of Graunos’ favour and the victims of his displeasure fought to the death. A mob of bloodreavers surrounded the arena, their raving howls urging the combatants on. There was no need for them to act as guards. No soul who entered the pit would think of climbing out without the severed head of their enemy, their offering to the figure who sat on the throne of brass and iron.

The throne was huge, a monolithic sculpture whose edges were serrated with claws. The iron talons moved perpetually, with the grinding of protesting metal. They slashed at the air, hungry for the flesh of all who dared approach the lord of the bastion. But massive as the throne was, it was dwarfed by the mound of brass-coated skulls behind it that climbed towards the distant vaulted ceiling of the chamber. Here were the heads of every failed supplicant and condemned prisoner. Though the victors of the pit presented the skulls to the ruler of Angaria, the mound loomed over the throne as a reminder that the offerings were truly meant for Khorne.

Graunos presided over the latest battle to unfold in the pit. Standing to the right of the throne, Kathag, lord of Khorne, divided his attention between the battle and the daemon prince. It served him well to gauge his master’s mood, and to study him closely.

One of the gladiators was Antur Kesseng, scion of one of the noble families of Mausolea. He was in a land dispute with House Renteer. His opponent was Sekkana Garthan. She had collapsed with exhaustion at a weapons forge. The only reason she had not been executed on the spot was because her work had been ferocious in the service of Graunos’ armies. That her crime and Antur’s dispute had no relation to one another was irrelevant. In the Offertory throne room, the judgement in the arena was not for duels. All that mattered was survival or death.

The struggle had already been a long one. The two fighters were ragged, bloody masses, barely distinguishable from one another. They had no blades. Their only weapons were their bare hands and the bones of prior victims that littered the floor of the bowl. Antur seized a femur and swung it at Sekkana. She ducked, and Antur smashed the bone against the wall. It snapped in half, leaving a jagged stump in his hands. He wavered in pain and fatigue. Sekkana made a desperate lunge and shoved at his arms, pushing them back against him and thrusting the spike of bone into his throat. Blood poured over his hands and down his chest. He clawed weakly at the bone. Soaked in gore, it slipped from his grasp, and he fell to his knees. His mouth opened and closed in silent pleas and curses. Sekkana caught him as he slumped forwards. She grasped the spike with one hand, his hair with the other, and began to saw back and forth. It took almost as long to cut through all the muscles and tendons as it had to defeat Antur, but at last she tore his head free from his body. She held it up in triumph, and the shouts of the bloodreavers shook the stones of the chamber.

With the head clutched in both hands, arms stretched forwards in presentation of the gift, Sekkana marched slowly up the slope of the arena. The bloodreavers parted, clearing the way for her to approach the daemon prince. She stopped and knelt a few feet away from the base of the throne.

Graunos nodded. ‘Take command of the forces of House Kesseng,’ he said, his voice rumbling like a lava flow. ‘Burn House Renteer to the ground and slaughter all its sons and daughters.’

Sekkana looked up, her eyes shining with renewed energy and erupting bloodlust. ‘It shall be done, great prince,’ she said, and withdrew.

The bloodreavers roared in delight and fury to see Sekkana’s violence rewarded.

Kathag watched Graunos use the boon to fuel even more bloody competition for his favour. The word would spread like fire through the ranks. Every warrior in Angaria would burn with the need to gain Graunos’ favour. Nothing could withstand an army so driven.

Kathag smiled in anticipation of the fury that would fall upon Neferatia. For Graunos, this would be his next, inevitable conquest. For Kathag, it would be vengeance.

A gust of wind from the south blew through the arched windows of the throne room. The windows were tall, half as high as the ceiling, and ran the entire circumference of the chamber. They looked out in all directions onto the vistas of Angaria, and created the impression that the throne room floated in mid-air. Graunos had hurled many subjects who had displeased him through these windows, sending them flying with a dismissive flick of his wrist, not even granting them the chance to prove themselves in the blood of the pit.

Far to the south, lightning flashed. Then came the distant mutter of thunder. Graunos rose from the throne. ‘Leave us!’ he commanded, and the bloodreavers rushed to obey, emptying the throne room while Graunos’ bellow still echoed.

The daemon prince drew to his full, towering height and strode to the southern windows. He was a colossus. Lord Kathag was tall, his body swollen with the strength Khorne granted to the supremacy of rage. The scar tissue that covered his body was so thick he barely needed the protection of his crimson plate. The horns that had grown when he ascended to the height of Exalted Deathbringer made him loom even more mightily over the legions of the Gorechosen that he commanded. Yet he had to crane his neck to look up at Graunos, who was more than twice his height.

The daemon flapped his huge leathery wings once in displeasure as he faced south. Then he turned his visage back to Kathag. Graunos’ features were a mask of terrible enlightenment and blind rage. His eyes were silver, blank and searing orbs that Kathag could not look at for long without being blinded himself. He could not imagine how such things could see. They were weapons. They struck out. Perhaps they consumed what they saw just as fire consumed fuel.

‘What is our state of readiness, Lord Kathag?’ Graunos said. The emphasis he gave Kathag’s title was a reminder that the price of failure could be the loss of that title. And worse.

‘It won’t be long,’ said Kathag, telling Graunos what he must already know. ‘But I do not think we are ready yet to confront Neferata.’

‘Is that caution I hear in your voice?’

‘It is.’ Kathag would not attempt to dissemble before Graunos. Whether the daemon prince saw with those eyes or not, he perceived everything. He was still a creature of Hysh, and he seemed to shine a violent light into the most hidden secrets of all who confronted him. But Kathag would have answered with the same honesty had Graunos been blind. He would have felt even more compelled to speak the truth. It was important that Graunos fully understood the nature of their opponent. ‘Lord Ruhok erred in his attempt to take Nulahmia,’ Kathag went on. ‘He underestimated Neferata, and we were destroyed. I will not make that same mistake. When we strike, it must be with such overwhelming superiority that the war is decided at its outset.’

Kathag, then an Exalted Deathbringer, was the only one of Ruhok’s Gorechosen to escape the catastrophe Neferata had unleashed. A maelstrom had opened up in Nulahmia, swallowing up the entire army, pulling it into an abyss of absolute dissolution. Kathag had looked away as it appeared, and so escaped its pull. But the partial glimpse he had caught still haunted him.

He was haunted too by the shame and the helpless fury he had felt as he staggered through the wasteland beyond the vanished walls of Nulahmia. In order to live, he had done that which had been unthinkable for all his life until that moment. He had fled. The memories were as burning and urgent now as the reality had been. The memories of running through a city turned into a blur of disintegrating wreckage, pulled inexorably into a maelstrom of unbeing, until, at last, he had been safe, alone, walking through the desolation beyond the walls of Nulahmia. He had put the city behind him, but not the humiliation, nor the defeat, nor the returning rage and the need for retribution.

He had fought hard to purge the shame, and to redeem himself in his eyes and in those of his god. He had gathered the broken remains of Ruhok’s horde and turned their flight from Neferatia into a slavering raid of vengeance on the lands beyond the Stonepain Mountains. He shed new blood for Khorne even while still in retreat. He had built a new warhorde. He never rested. His wrath was always on the ascendant. Flight became raids, and raids became a march of conquest. And one great night, waist-deep in slaughter, tens of thousands of the Bloodbound fighting for him and his favour, he felt the touch of Khorne. He was engulfed in crimson fire, and when the burn faded, leaving him scarred and exhilarated, the weapon in his hands was no longer the ruinous axe that he had wielded as an Exalted Deathbringer. It was a Wrathforged Axe, a weapon that imprisoned a daemon, and it marked him as a lord of Khorne.

It was not long after his elevation that Kathag witnessed the arrival of Graunos. Kathag’s conquests had always had one purpose. They were the means to return in vengeance to Neferatia, to hurl the walls of Nulahmia down and to destroy the Mortarch of Blood. In Graunos, Kathag found a being so mighty that his goal came within his grasp. Where Kathag had hordes at his command, Graunos had legions. The daemon prince had swept over Angaria, taking it and remaking it in his image. Soon he would reach further. He would destroy Neferata and plunge her subjects into the fires of Khorne. Graunos was doing more than destroying the enemy in the service of his god. He was reshaping Shyish, turning the land not simply into a wasteland but into a self-sustaining empire from which blood would flow in an endless, torrential tribute to the Skull Throne.

When Graunos looked to the west, Kathag saw in the careful gaze how different he was from Ruhok. Like Kathag, Graunos’ wrath was sharpened by strategy. He used the illumination of Hysh like a barbed whip. Neferata’s arts of deception would not help her this time. Kathag knew what she was. He was prepared, and Graunos listened to his counsel.

Now Graunos said, ‘We will not attack until we are ready. Agreed. But when will you know that moment has come? Can you know it?’ When Kathag hesitated, Graunos added, ‘We cannot gauge the full measure of her strength by watching her preparations as we complete ours.’

‘True,’ said Kathag. ‘She will dissemble. She will conceal her might.’

‘We will need to test her,’ Graunos said, his growl becoming a low, musing rumble.

In the south, lightning flashed again.

‘Then there is that,’ Graunos said, pointing. ‘You know what comes with such a storm.’

‘I do.’

‘Neferata to our west, Sigmar’s Eternals to the south. That has the appearance of strategy.’

‘She might have planned this,’ said Kathag.

‘No. The Lord of Undeath wages war against Sigmar. There is no alliance here.’

‘Yet.’

‘You think she can create one.’

‘If we can imagine such an outcome, we can be certain she does too.’

Graunos nodded. ‘If she did not plan this, she may well have waited for this opportunity.’ A growl built deep in his chest until the stones in the throne room began to shake with its force. ‘If this is her chance, then she will force our hand before we are ready. She is forcing me to react, and I will not have that. It is my will that will shape these lands.’ He paused for a moment, calculation moving like red lightning through the boiling clouds of his anger. ‘Reinforce the southern gate,’ he said. ‘But do not move beyond it. We shall observe Sigmar’s dogs, but we will not divide our attention unnecessarily.’

‘They are arriving on the far side of the mountains,’ Kathag observed.

‘Then Angaria is not their immediate goal,’ said Graunos. ‘Go now. Make fast the south, and prepare in the west. We will find our own opportunity here.’

Once Kathag had left, Graunos circled the throne room, sweeping his gaze over the empire he had built for Khorne and thinking about the war to come. What the lower of Khorne’s servants did not understand was that rage, in its great forms, had shape and purpose. Graunos could see the pattern in his existence, and in his presence here. In the Realm of Light, he had been in darkness, and had brought darkness. Now, in this world of death and shadows, he was bringing exterminating light.

In Hysh, he had truly been blind. Cursed and shunned because of this, he had won Khorne’s favour with the purity of his anger. He had repaid the gifts of the Blood God with an uncountable tribute of skulls. As a lord of Khorne, he had worn a brass mask that had granted him a form of sight. He had seen what needed to be destroyed, and the more powerful his rage, the more there was to destroy. One of the first conquests had been the city of Lykerna. He had crushed the place of his birth and marched on, unstoppable, and Khorne had raised him higher yet.

Now a daemon prince, he had plunged from the Realm of Light to the Realm of Death, a bright star tearing open the firmament, falling to earth to bring fire, to bring blood, to bring war.

The brass mask of his helm had become a thing of daemonic flesh upon his transformation, and Graunos’ perceptions had intensified. He saw with his god’s purpose, and Khorne’s purpose was slaughter. So Graunos perceived everything, for everything fell within the compass of the Skull God’s rage. Even the clouds and what they hid would be fodder for the axe. Perception was the fuel of wrath, and what Graunos perceived felt the touch of his igniting gaze. He looked down upon the sill of one of the western-facing windows. After a few moments, the stone began to smoke and bubble, ready to burst into flame. Graunos snorted and looked off to the horizon, his focus on the lands beyond the Stonepain Mountains.

The vampire called herself the Mortarch of Blood. So huge a presumption, so great an insult to the Blood God, could not be borne. Khorne had sent Graunos in answer, and he had forged Angaria. Now two empires of blood faced one another. There could be only one true reign. Graunos would make the throne of brass supreme.

The day was cold in the elevations of the Mourning Heights. It was always cold here. The wind cut to the bone in the season of Loss. Even during Crematory, it was rarely warm. Now it was the time of Lament, which felt like the true character of the hills. The sky always grey, the brush brittle and sharp, the rains of funerary ash and teeth mixing with the sullen rain. And the wind, keening, reaching through the seams of clothing to sink claws into flesh.

That the seasons existed this far away from Nulahmia was a sign that this was still Neferatia. Perhaps, as most in the family thought, the Mortarch’s gaze did not fall upon the lands of House Lytessian, but her spirit still shaped the land. There was something, too, in the form the seasons took that was true to the people of Neferatia as well. The Lytessians believed that the winds of Lament would blow no matter who reigned in the Palace of Seven Vultures.

Skarveth Lytessian rode with his cousin Vissya along the perimeter of the family’s land. The border was defined by practical, rather than political, considerations. House Lytessian was the only clan for leagues in every direction. Its holdings were limited only by what could be defended. Only the most stubborn and the most desperate lived in these unforgiving hills.

Skarveth had put the horse guard through a gruelling set of drills at dawn, and then sent his riders out on patrol. The rain had started mid-morning and had been pelting now for hours. Vissya and Skarveth sat forward on their chargers, shoulders hunched against the black water. Teeth rattled against their helms. Skarveth pushed himself as hard as he did his warriors. He and Vissya would be heading back to the manor house soon, but only to give the horses a rest.

‘Quiet again,’ said Vissya. There had been attacks by wolf packs five days ago. The beasts had been repelled and had not been seen since.

‘It’s always quiet until it isn’t,’ Skarveth said.

‘You sound like you hope for another attack.’

‘Not by wolves.’

‘No,’ said Vissya. She understood what he meant. She felt the same. The horse guard was trained for battle, to carry banners with honour in a noble cause. This work was menial, repetitive. When the wolves came, the struggle was no less fierce than any war. It simply lacked meaning.

They stopped and spoke with guards, mounted and on foot, at each watch position. The stones of the wall were huge, roughly hewn blocks, each larger than a man. Lichen discoloured them purple and green, turning rock into diseased flesh. It would take more than the feral monsters of the highlands to break that wall, and it would take more than a wall to keep the beasts out. It slowed them down, but they scaled it. Only the unceasing watch kept them out. Even then, some got in. Skarveth had the marks to prove that. A wolf had clamped its jaws on his face. He plunged his blade through its heart, but not before its fangs tore long, deep gouges in his cheeks. He now looked as if a daemon had tried to rip his face from his skull. The once-noble features were distorted and gnarled. It seemed to Vissya that Skarveth was more at peace with himself since the injury.

They finished their inspection of the wall and made their way back to the Lytessian manor house. It was carved out of the slope of the craggy hill against which it nestled, as brutal and monolithic as the boundary wall. It was blocky, squat, comfortless, hard, hostile as a closed fist.

The stable hands led the horses away, and Vissya and Skarveth walked through the front doors, into the great hall. The fire in its massive hearth barely warmed the space. The walls were the same unpainted stone as the exterior. Skarveth stopped to look up at the banners of Lytessian and its allied families. One pole bore no flag. The house it represented could not be named, though until his injury, Skarveth’s features had been the clan’s one visible echo.

‘So,’ said Skarveth, ‘rumours from the south.’

‘Yes,’ Vissya said, hoping Skarveth had more details.

Skarveth gave a slight shake of his head, his eyes still on the bannerless pole. ‘I’ve heard nothing more than you have.’

‘Do you credit what we’re hearing?’

‘Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘I do. Sigmar’s storm arriving when Neferatia and Angaria are poised to go to war? The moment and place are well chosen if the Stormcast Eternals wish to make headway in this region of Shyish. Neferata is not going to divert her attention from Graunos to fight them. There is too much that makes sense here. These rumours have the weight of news, not myth.’

‘What do you think this means for us?’

‘I think this means our waiting is at an end. I think it means we march to war. I think it means we ride to restore honour.’

‘That chance has been a long time in coming.’

‘An age.’

They had been waiting for this moment since the things they had witnessed in their childhood had changed them forever. But Vissya knew there were others who had been waiting much longer. Skarveth stared on at the absence where a banner should be, his scarred face twisting in anger.

They came for her when she was closing up her butcher’s stall. The market had been busy that day, the busiest Velaza Bentessas had seen since her arrival in Mausolea. She had sold almost all of her stores, and had used her cudgel only four or five times. The air had been thick with the violence of competition, but the buying and selling had been so brisk, the fights that had broken out were mere eddies of blood in the current of trade. There were the expected tithes to be paid as the bloodreavers made their way through the market square, but even those encounters had been brief. The contingents of warriors on the edge of the square were larger than usual, and they seemed to have been ordered to watch each other. Life in Angaria was savage and brief, but Graunos did not permit unbridled riot in the streets. Anger ruled the land, and a prince of Chaos on the throne enforced a kind of order, provisional and brutal, always in the service of the greater victory of the Skull God.

Velaza had taken her time to close up her stall. She had lingered, watching the crowds and the bloodreavers, gauging the extent and significance of the changes she was seeing. When she finally packed away the few cuts of meat she had left and locked her coin box, she was one of the last merchants in the square.

So she was not surprised when they approached.

There were three of them, bloodreavers on the hunt for some slaughter. They gave her plenty of warning, their booted feet slamming against the cobblestones, sending aggressive, clopping echoes ahead of them. With the crowds gone, the square was desolate. The pole-mounted torches that were still lit were few and far between, casting only enough light to turn the shuttered stalls into slumped, ghostly figures of uncertain shape. The Sentinel of the Shroud loomed in the distance, the deeper night of stone, its slow grind the eternal, mournful background roar to life in Mausolea.

Velaza put her pack and coin box down and waited for the bloodreavers. She watched the one in the centre closely. He was bigger than the other two, swollen with violence. His muscles seemed to be trying to burst from his skin. He looked like he was on the cusp of a great transformation. He clearly believed he was. His eyes were wide, bulging, and glittering with fanaticism. Blood trickled down the corners of his mouth, and when he grinned at Velaza, his teeth were dark with clotted gore. She wondered which of the other late-departing merchants this madman had killed.

The big man’s companions kept one step behind him, watching for his orders or the opportunity to kill him and take his place. They were wiry creatures, their limbs corded and taut, quivering with the anticipation of the kill.

‘I’ve already paid my tithe to Lord Graunos’ armies,’ Velaza said.

‘Not to us, you haven’t,’ said the bloodreaver on her left. He had narrow, pinched, rodent-like features.

The big warrior said nothing. He was looking back and forth between Velaza and the heavy axe he carried, eager for them to become acquainted.

Velaza shrugged and kicked her pack over to the trio. ‘Have at it, then. Save me the trouble of taking it back.’

The bloodreavers ignored the offering, but not her contempt. They snarled and ran at her. The big one reached her first, his axe raised. He roared in furious triumph.

He was ridiculously slow.

Velaza’s right hand shot out and seized him by the throat. She squeezed, throttling him. Choking, the bloodreaver brought down the axe, but she had already pulled her sword out from beneath her butcher’s apron. Without releasing his throat, she slashed his arms as they came down, severing both his wrists. The axe clattered to the ground, and the bloodreaver hammered fruitlessly at her shoulders with his stumps. Velaza squeezed harder, her fingers plunging deep into flesh and muscle. She made a fist, crushing his larynx, then yanked her hand free, pulling a bloody mass from his neck.

As the big warrior collapsed, Velaza struck left and right with her blade, stabbing the rat-faced bloodreaver through the heart and decapitating the third, cutting their attacks short before they had properly begun.

Velaza looked down at the three corpses heaped at her feet. Blood pumped from their wounds, pooling over the cobbles. So much waste. The old hunger swept through her, and fighting the urge to drop to her knees and lap at the gore was a greater struggle than the fight had been.

She must not feed here. There were witnesses. Now that the three bloodreavers were dead, a couple of the other remaining merchants had emerged from hiding and were staring at her from a safe distance. On the edges of the square, the curious were beginning to gather. There was no real risk in being seen to have cut down the warriors. That was nothing more notable than another instance of the struggle for survival that defined existence in Angaria. It was feeding that would give her away.

She would have to wait, and hold the hunger at bay. Perhaps she would be lucky. Perhaps an opportunity would present itself. A dark alley, a lone passerby… Perhaps. Even then, she would have to be careful. She must do nothing to jeopardise the mission Neferata had given her.

Velaza sheathed her blade, picked up her coin box and left the market square. She kept her steps heavy, trudging. Her identity as a butcher, long practised before she left Neferatia, fell over her again. Lady Mereneth herself had taken charge of her training, and Velaza was grateful for the skills the spymistress had given her. They were for a kind of war that was utterly foreign to any she had waged before. She was grateful, too, that Neferata’s logic in choosing her to lead the infiltration of Mausolea had proven to be sound.

Your concealment will come through your visibility, Neferata had said. This is a society where hidden violence is of no value. Do not seek out battle, but do not turn from it. When you must kill, do so with utmost savagery. Walk the streets soaked in the blood of challengers and you will vanish. You will be simply a natural part of the world Graunos has created. Let everyone look at you, and none will see you.

Neferata was right. Velaza marched through the streets of Mausolea with the directness of a battering ram, and she blended in. Though she had to set aside the pride of nobility that came with being a Blood Knight, her style of combat was suited to her disguise. She smashed her foes down, and so went unnoticed.

Avoid being ostentatious in your victories, Mereneth had warned her, and Velaza was cautious not to. It was one thing to thrive in Graunos’ empire. It was another to attract so much attention she was forcibly recruited into the warhordes.

So she found the balance and moved around freely. It was often easier for her to observe events of significance than for some of the other members of the force she led in Angaria, the ones who were more truly creatures of the shadows, and who depended for their success on true concealment.

Her walk back was not fruitful. She found no victims that she could take unseen. The irony of being unable to feed while being free to kill with abandon sharpened her hunger. When she reached her dwelling an hour later, she had her lips clamped shut to avoid baring her fangs in frustration.

The street was an ordinary one. Most of the inhabitants were, like her, small merchants. None were rich, but all were doing well enough to afford the modest protection the homes provided. Like so many quarters of Mausolea since the coming of Graunos, there were numerous gaps where houses had been burned to the ground, as a result of feuds or the gentle attentions of the bloodreavers. The houses that survived displayed the relative wealth of their owners not in ostentation, as they once had, but in increasing degrees of fortification. No home was truly secure. The value of many of the measures was the comfort of an illusion of safety. But even that illusion was necessary. The citizens of Shyish had long practice in dealing with the inevitability of doom.

Velaza had no illusions. But there was some utility to be had in physical defence. It was part of her disguise. She might walk the streets, swaggering her massively built frame, daring anyone to take her on. The fortifications of her home showed that even the formidable butcher had fears and knew she was not invulnerable.

The house was more thoroughly defended on the inside than out. Wards of protection guarded windows and entrances. She and all of her fellow spies would know at once, no matter where they were, if an intruder entered the home. There were other wards, too, deeper in the house, at the entrance to the cellar. These were wards of concealment. In a city where the only certainty was violent death, the house was as secure as possible.

Velaza unlocked the iron door and paused inside the entrance hall. She reached out with her witchsight for any signs of trespass. There were none, and she made her way down to the cellar. Four other spies were waiting for her. One of them, Guessa, had just returned from a journey to the west to observe the preparations, and the build-up of Graunos’ hordes.

The cellar room was a spare, unadorned space. Chests on the west wall held armour and equipment they had brought from Nulahmia. Vellum maps of Mausolea and the western reaches of Angaria were spread out on an oak table in the centre of the floor. Shelves against the rear wall held more scrolled maps, along with voluminous tomes containing the histories of Angaria. On stacks of loose vellum sheets were the notes on which Velaza and the others recorded their observations of the most minute changes in the life of the empire’s capital city and the adjoining regions. The most trivial incidents, Mereneth had emphasised, were often markers of larger, more concealed events. Velaza had seen Mereneth proven right again and again, and she read much into what she had seen today.

‘What news from the west?’ she asked Guessa.

‘More of the same, and with increasing intensity,’ said the winged spy. Thin, bald and pale as bone, Guessa could not afford to be seen at all in Mausolea. Her vampiric nature announced itself from afar. She could not pass for anything else, and Graunos’ conquest of Angaria had also been a war of extermination waged against the vampires. Guessa would always be a thing of shadows. Inside those shadows, she was swift, invisible, all-seeing. Velaza felt a contemptuous pity for those who fell under Guessa’s scrutiny. Even if they realised she was there, they were no better off. For them, she would seem omnipresent. They would believe her to be in every shadow, her taloned hands forever a swipe away from their throats, her eyes seeing every gesture, perceiving every thought. ‘The hordes grow larger and fiercer,’ Guessa continued. ‘The growth is becoming frenzied.’

‘Would you say an invasion is imminent?’ Tavensia asked. Like Velaza, she passed as mortal. Slighter of build, she had to be more careful not to reveal her true strength. She had adopted the guise of an itinerant scribe. She posed as one of the weak of Mausolea, those who scuttled at the edge of the city’s life, praying not to be noticed.

Guessa looked thoughtful for a moment before answering. ‘An attack won’t be long in coming. The hordes are not on the move yet, though. The drums are growing loud, but everything is still stopping short of a march.’

‘Graunos has his spies too,’ said Epikente. She was even more skeletal than Guessa, and was her sister in shadow. Where Guessa inhabited the darkness, Epikente was a shadow. She could vanish in broad daylight. Even when Velaza stared directly at Epikente, the other vampire seemed to be on the verge of slipping from her perception. ‘Our queen keeps her fist partly concealed, but we cannot afford the mistake of assuming Graunos makes his decision from a position of ignorance.’

‘Agreed,’ said Guessa. ‘He would appear to be anticipating a much more powerful enemy than he has been allowed to see.’

‘Could he attack now?’ Tavensia asked.

‘He could,’ Guessa said. ‘He would be foolish to do so, and I believe he knows it. The relative strengths of the armies are approaching parity, from what I have seen. But the situation still favours the defender, not the invader.’

‘Perhaps he waits for us to act first,’ said Epikente.

‘An army of Khorne waiting for an opponent?’ Tavensia scoffed. ‘That would be novel indeed.’

‘Graunos and Lord Kathag have already shown themselves to be unusual servants of the Skull God,’ Epikente pointed out.

‘Has the increase in activity been a sudden one?’ Velaza asked Guessa.

‘It has. Beginning a few days ago, it was as if the encampments had become hornets’ nests.’

‘Since the storm in the south,’ said Tavensia.

‘Precisely,’ said Velaza. ‘And the activity in the marketplace today was the greatest I have seen. Graunos’ warriors bought food by the cartload.’

‘Bought?’ Guessa asked. ‘Not just seized?’

‘I witnessed bloodreavers paying for supplies.’

There was a moment of silence as the others absorbed the implications of Velaza’s words. Graunos’ empire was a cauldron of violence, murder and rage. It was also one that could sustain itself. The daemon prince had created a power base that was stable enough to grow much larger, drawing more and more of Shyish into the bloody embrace of the Skull God. Part of what made Graunos so dangerous was that he understood that armies that supplied themselves solely through plunder would eventually run out of fuel. Graunos saw the savagery in competition, the viciousness in trade, and turned those impulses into another kind of tribute to the Blood God. From the predation of the market came the means to greater and faster conquest.

‘These are the signs of an entire empire on the march,’ Velaza said.

‘Graunos feels pressed by what is happening to the south,’ said Tavensia.

‘Yes,’ said Guessa. ‘Then he might attack before he is truly ready.’

‘The queen must know of this,’ said Velaza.

The others bowed their heads in agreement. Then Guessa and Epikente rose. They pushed the shelving in a section of the rear wall aside, revealing a small, circular chamber. Velaza passed through the doorway and they closed the wall behind her.

There was no light in the chamber, though Velaza saw clearly. A mortal prisoner was chained to the centre of the floor. There was always one such here, ready in case the need arose, as it had now. The spies had already blinded the young man and cut out his tongue. Silent, eyeless, he would have the honour of being granted one final sight. He would be the conduit between Velaza and the Mortarch of Blood, and he would, in dying, behold the magnificence of Neferata. His life was a trivial price to pay for such a boon.

He whimpered softly when Velaza touched him. Terrified, he tried to squirm away from her hands. She ignored his struggles, released him from his chains, then quickly broke his limbs, arranging him so his arms and legs pointed to the apexes of the great rune daubed with blood onto the floor. With the claw of her index finger, she slit his throat and sides. His blood flowed onto the rough stone, and the rune pulled the streams along its lines.

Once again, Velaza forced down the hunger and did not feed. She straightened, standing astride the twitching body of the prisoner, and chanted the words of the spell of communing. The blood rose in a mist that swirled around Velaza. The mist grew thicker, then began to glow. The light concentrated itself in front of her. It began to take on a form, elongating and gathering substance until Neferata appeared, her features hidden, revealed, and hidden again by the shifting mist.

The prisoner gasped. He turned his eyeless sockets towards the vision of the Mortarch. His body arched in wonder and in pain, and then was still.

‘What have you to report?’ Neferata asked. Her voice was hollow, an echo coming from a great distance, yet it was also an intimate whisper at Velaza’s nape.

Velaza told her what she and the others had observed and concluded. Neferata’s approving smile made her head buzz with pride.

‘This is as I would have it,’ the queen said. ‘Whether he desires it or not, Graunos will attack first, and on my terms. He is primed. All he needs is an opportunity. I will give it to him.’

Her image melted away into the mist, and the mist fell to the floor. Blood still pumped from the corpse, and at last, her heart filled with love for her queen and the anticipation of an empire’s fall, Velaza dropped to all fours and slaked her hunger.

Not all allies know that this is what they are. Choose carefully which will have their ignorance dispelled.

– Overtures

Chapter 2

His name was Erlik. He could remember that much. He must have had another name once, one that tied him to a family, but that was lost to him. He had been able to hang on to Erlik through the ages of his torment only through a desperate act of will, and because his diseased body called his name back to him with every breath. Ehhhhhhrrrrrrr, his lungs rattled as he inhaled. When he exhaled, lik lik lik lik lik was the sound of sputum slapping against the twisting, rotting, spreading flesh that had once been his.

Erlik had a few other memories. They were the last ones from before the diseased hordes had overwhelmed his position. He could not recall the passions or the convictions that had driven him to make his doomed stand. All he remembered was that he had made the attempt. As the dream of an earlier age and all he had known broke apart before the siege of Chaos, he had vowed to protect the Realmgate. Had he been ordered to do so? Had he been alone? Had there been comrades at his side? He did not know. He did not even know if he had fought. His weapons and armour, whatever they had been, had disintegrated long ago.

He did know who had defeated him, who had taken the land and made it run with foulness. He knew because the Children of the Bell never ceased to remind him as they celebrated and extended their clammy grip wider and wider. Banners, covered in mould, flapped in the wind, displaying a black bell on a field of pustulant green.

Just to the right of the Realmgate, held up by a framework of rusting iron whose feet rested in four separate wagons, was the great bell that gave the horde its purpose and identity. It swung ponderously, its rhythm always the same, never broken, its deep, muffled toll resounding to the skies. The sound was as profound as a mountain’s roots, and buzzed like a swarm of flies. It reverberated through Erlik’s frame, beating down thought, breaking down bone, summoning worms and fungus, dictating the speed of his breath.

Ehhhhhhrrrrrrr… lik lik lik lik lik…

He could not die. The Maggotkin were forcing him to keep his vow forever. He was still upright, had been standing until time and meaning had abandoned him. He had become a mockery of a sentinel, leaning against the ancient pillar of the Realmgate. He had stopped nothing, and he had become the despairing, undying witness as the portal vomited out floods of diseased reinforcements.

Now and then, over the years, a sorcerer paused beside him. ‘Are you enjoying your gift?’ he would whisper. His name was Flyswill. The folds of his body bulged from his robe, dripping pus. His face leaned out from inside his hood, pale, the skin gelid, worms crawling about his lips. ‘You are the beacon of life and its fruitfulness in the wastes of death. Rejoice! Rejoice!’

Erlik no longer had legs. His skin had rotted open, and growths had fused his bones together until a porous, knobby pedestal held him upright. His flesh became corrupt and fruitful with clusters of pustules giving birth to maggots. The worms feasted on his skin, grew fat and died. Their corpses turned into his new skin, which produced new generations of vermin, and so the cycle had continued through endless years of torment. The white, tattered, oozing tapestry of flesh now wrapped around the pillar of the Realmgate. It flowed down the steps of the portal’s dais, quivering and malodorous, spreading hideous life over the dead ground.

Time meant nothing. There was only the endless, wracking agony of disease gnawing his bones, the delirious swim of fever and the gurgling Ehhhhhhrrrrrrr… lik lik lik lik lik… of his breath.

Until now.

A storm had come. A storm so fierce, so strong, so utterly opposed to the world of plague that he could not help but see it. The poor remains of his identity, the core that still held on to his name, reached out through rheumy eyes to the lightning. It was so clean. It was something that could purge the land of its foul life.

After the lightning came a moving darkness. With his damaged sight, Erlik at first perceived only a cloud sweeping towards the Maggotkin. As the cloud drew closer, he saw that it was an army. The shapes in it were dark, grim as the land to which they had come, but noble in bearing and movement. Erlik’s cankered, trembling lips formed his first smile since Chaos had swept over the land he had sworn to defend. Those shapes did not bring life. They brought something better, and more precious. They brought hope.

The first wave of dark warriors arrived on wings of searing light. They flew over the ranks of flies and filth, javelins and hammers as blinding as the wings streaking into the Rotbringers. Bloated, foetid bodies burst asunder and burned to ash. Hails of arrows flew in answer to the attack, but they glanced off black armour. In Erlik’s eyes, it was as if the sky had given form to judgement. As the Rotbringers swarmed in confusion and died, and the three lords of the Maggotkin horde struggled to hold the lines, Erlik began to laugh. He laughed some more when Flyswill mounted the dais and took up a position in front of the Realmgate, brandishing his putrid staff as if the powers he commanded could truly combat what was coming.

Then, in the distance, Erlik saw true glory, a warrior mounted on a majestic, reptilian beast that seared the foe with lightning from its maw. And when this warrior charged through the centre of the Maggotkin hordes, Erlik turned to Flyswill and forced his blistered, swollen tongue to form words. ‘Rejoice!’ he screamed between the clanging of the monstrous bell. ‘Rejoice! Rejoice!’

The charge by Lord-Celestant Venthor Warfire of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer hit the Children of the Bell with the force of an axe striking a rotten log. Mounted on the dracoth Felkreth, Venthor led the Paladin retinues in a blow designed to cut the enemy army in half and shatter its spine. Venthor was the embodiment of a storm. His armour was as black as if carved from thunder itself, and Felkreth’s lightning crackled around him. And more than anything else, he was the fury of a storm.

On this day, Lord-Relictor Rhasan Darksight thought, there was even more fury than she was used to seeing in Venthor.

‘The Lord-Celestant’s wrath is mighty,’ said Lord-Castellant Arvax Grimtower.

‘It serves him and us well,’ said Rhasan. You noticed it too.

Rhasan and Arvax stood atop an outcrop of rock, watching the battle closely as Venthor’s will shaped the war. They were holding positions at the rear of the battlefield for the moment, waiting for Venthor’s charge to have its full effect. Further back, the Judicators, under the command of Lord-Veritant Hyreia Gravesun, launched endless volleys of skybolt arrows into the foe, striking the Maggotkin first to the rear, then in the midst of the horde, and then near the Realmgate itself, sowing confusion with searing attacks that seemed to fall from everywhere.

The enemy was in disarray. The plague warriors still outnumbered the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, but there was no coherence to their charges. They did not understand how to fight back. They understood even less that they had already lost.

The Maggotkin occupied a wide, barren plain. The Realmgate stood midway between the base of the western chain of the Stonepain Mountains and the city of Shadowvel. As Sigmar’s lightning had announced the arrival of the Anvils on the eastern edge of the plain, the foe had abandoned Shadowvel and surged eastwards to protect the gate, as Venthor intended. The Prosecutors hit first, striking directly at the Realmgate, turning the focus of the commanders inwards. Now Venthor’s hammer blow sent the diseased legions reeling.

They would regroup, though. No force of Chaos was to be underestimated. Rhasan was holding back with Arvax, Hyreia and the main body of the Liberators and Judicators for that moment. When Nurgle’s warlords thought they knew what they must do, that was when they would be doomed.

The ragged edges of the Maggotkin horde attempted disorganised attacks against the lines of Liberators standing with shields locked together. They formed a fortress wall, but their posture was not truly defensive. They were a trap waiting to spring. They struck back at the Rotbringers, lunging forwards with hammer and sword, cutting enemy warriors in half and pulverising skulls with swift, merciless contempt, then stepping back behind the shield wall.

From her raised perspective, Rhasan watched the moment Venthor had planned for draw closer. The Maggotkin regrouped. The banners were raised high, and the bells that festooned the shields and helms rang out with discordant chimes. The broken halves of the horde contracted, their fury coalescing in their effort to destroy the Lord-Celestant. He was the threat. He had caused the great injury, and he was closing in on the Realmgate. He was a cure, and the disease rushed to scrape him from the land.

Rhasan watched the Maggotkin make their fatal error. They thought the Anvils of the Heldenhammer had come to take the Realmgate, and so they moved to block the attempt. They were wrong. This was a war of extermination. The Realmgate would still be there when the Children of the Bell were no more.

A few hundred yards from the portal, Venthor turned Felkreth’s charge sharply to the right, thundering to meet an oncoming wave of Rotbringers. The force that had planned to attack the Anvils on their flank now met them head-on. A foetid wave broke against a promontory of stone. The Rotbringers faltered, their rush broken. Venthor and the Paladins drove deep into their mass, and then turned again to counter another wave crashing in from the left. Venthor and his retinues of implacable warriors turned again and again, their movement becoming a spiral. They created a vortex in the battlefield, pulling the devoted of the Plague God tighter and tighter. The tolling of the daemonic bell came faster, as if it were calling its followers to greater effort. The Children responded, turning with all their might and faith to bring an end to Venthor’s charge. And so they opened themselves up to the death blow.

‘Strike hard, Anvils of the Heldenhammer!’ Rhasan shouted, and she raised high the banner she carried. Resplendent in tomb-black and bone-white, its skeleton iconography commemorated death at its most solemn and sacred. It was the state every warrior in the Stormhost knew, more profoundly than any other Stormcast Eternal. From death they had come, and to death they would return, but not, each swore, before destroying every last minion of Chaos.

As she lifted the banner, Rhasan called death down from the skies. They darkened above her, building with the power. Sorcerous energy crackled around her in a fell aura. She held back the blow a few moments longer while Arvax, beside her, thrust forwards his warding lantern. Its sacred light gleamed on the black armour of the Liberators as they dropped their shield wall and advanced, a line of blades and hammers, into the rear flanks of the Children of the Bell. The same light stabbed into the enemy, sending flames washing over fever-slimed flesh.

The Judicators sent another savage volley into the foe and then divided their forces, moving to the ends of the line created by the Liberators. The line gradually began to curve, its wings closing in on themselves as they drove the Maggotkin forwards.

Rhasan unleashed the lightning. It struck with a deafening crack, snapping the night in two. Bolts of purest silver incinerated entire clusters of the enemy. Blackened bodies fell to the ground, their weapons melted and twisted. With the air sharp with the stench of burned flesh, Rhasan joined the march, pressing ahead into its centre, her hammer blazing as she brought it down with merciless precision onto the skulls and into the chests of the foe. She carved her path through the Children, heading directly for Venthor.

She reached out for the lightning again, and it answered with terrible swiftness and power. It seemed to her that her most lethal power was coming to her more easily than it ever had before. A part of her mind stepped away from the immediate frenzy and worked to observe the wider battle as best it could, always looking for where she was most needed. It noticed the facility with which she brought death to the enemy, and stored questions away to be contemplated later.

Rotbringers shouted in confusion. She heard fear, too, in their cries. They were right to be afraid, and they had more than earned a dose of terror. One warlord, thick with tumours and strong with their exultant growth, turned away from leading his followers towards Venthor. His helm was featureless except for a single hole over his right eye and a belled horn curving out to the right. He wielded a colossal double-bladed axe. He wore no armour over his swollen torso, revealing a slavering, tongue-lolling maw in his gut. He hurled himself at Rhasan with a roar, and in the last moment before they clashed, as his blank helm reflected the sigmarite skull of her own, he paused.

The movement was slight and brief. But there was no mistaking it for anything other than uncertainty. The blightking, champion of a parody of life, saw his death coming for him, and it shook him. Then he swung his axe, but he was too late. Rhasan slammed her hammer into his gut. The wound flashed blue as she smashed through the maw and the spine behind it. She withdrew the hammer and the blightking bent backwards, his body smouldering. Around her, his followers shrieked in dismay, and then another storm of lightning came down, reaching further and further ahead.

Rhasan marched, and annihilation preceded her.

Erlik discovered that there were still gifts to be received in this existence. True gifts, not the poisonous generosity of the Maggotkin. He had suffered an age, he had lost everything, and now he had his reward.

He saw the end come for the Children of the Bell.

‘Rejoice,’ he croaked. It was the only word he could speak, the command Flyswill had given him over and over during the eternity of his torture. There were no other words he knew, none he could form, even very roughly, that had any meaning for him. This one still did, thanks to the care and insistence of Flyswill. So he worked his oozing lips and thickened, furry tongue around the syllables. The sound was liquid, barely recognisable to his own ears. No matter. It was his victory, and he revelled in it.

He faded in and out of full awareness, falling into the delirium of his fever, resurfacing with acute stabs of pain from the worms eating their way through his body, and down again. In and out, in and out, on the eternal rhythm of his hissing breath. Every time he had his moment of clarity, he saw how much further the dark warriors had come, and he whisper-cried ‘Rejoice’ again. The Children of the Bell fought hard, the land erupting with their energy like a cauldron of plague. It was as if their foe did not deign to notice their efforts. At the centre of the cauldron, the mounted leader and his warriors drew the Maggotkin in and laid waste to them. Each time Erlik gazed outwards, the outer formations had moved closer. They were not just crushing the Children of the Bell. They were scraping their foulness from the land.

In and out of awareness, in and out.

Ehhhhhhrrrrrrr… lik lik lik lik lik…

Flyswill was on the platform, shouting his praise to Nurgle and calling forth swarms of insects. He defended the Realmgate with the desperate fanaticism that had brought Erlik to his fate. Once, just before Erlik’s vision swam with fever again, he managed to shout ‘Rejoice!’ with greater strength, and Flyswill heard him. The sorcerer stared at him with such naked hatred that it conjured a painful wracking from his ribcage. It was laughter.

Ehhhhhhrrrrrrr… lik lik lik lik lik…

And finally, he came to himself again to find the war over. The only sounds of illness and flies he could still hear came from his body. The Children of the Bell were no more. Flyswill lay on the dais beside him, his head crushed. A figure in black armour towered over Erlik. The warrior’s helm was a skull, white against night-black. It tilted down, looking at him. Its cold iconography embodied the purity of death, a purity he had feared would never be his.

‘Rejoice,’ Erlik whispered.

Gauntleted hands removed the helm. The woman who regarded him had features hewn from marble and ice. The planes of her face were hard, unforgiving, framed by iron-grey hair streaked blood-red. Her eyes were dark, cold as an empty tomb.

What Erlik needed from her was mercy. He did not think that was a quality she had in abundance. He pleaded with her all the same. ‘Rejoice,’ he said, desperate.

Something moved in the sky, drawing his attention. He looked past the warrior’s shoulder at the suggestion of sinuous flight. The object was too far and his eyes too dim for him to make it out. Though it was distant, it filled the sky and his heart with the force of its presence. Something was coming. Someone was coming, and Erlik feared the vision of death that would arrive. The dark warrior before him did not seem open to entreaty, but the being in the sky threatened the end of all mercy.

Erlik turned his gaze back to the warrior. ‘Rejoice,’ he begged. The promise of a true end, of a clean end, of precious oblivion was so close. He could not bear for it to be snatched away. ‘Rejoice.’ Viscous tears ran down his cheeks.

The warrior understood. She nodded, a glint of what might have been pity in those cold eyes. She raised her hammer. ‘Rejoice,’ she commanded Erlik.

As the hammer swung towards his face, he did rejoice, believing in the certainty of peace, and of escape from a darker fate.

Neferata guided Nagadron in slow circles around the battlefield. She watched as the Anvils of the Heldenhammer finished off the Children of the Bell and secured the Realmgate. A contingent of guards remained with the portal while the rest of the strike chamber moved to the walls of the broken city.

She wondered if they were hoping for survivors. Do they permit themselves that kind of illusion?

No. Not these warriors of Sigmar. These ones know death too well for that.

She waited while the Stormcast Eternals took possession of Shadowvel. She assumed she had been spotted, and made sure of it by dropping slowly, then pausing, clearly visible. She continued to circle, doing nothing that might be interpreted as an attack. When she saw that the Anvils were patrolling the ramparts, and that the consolidation of their position had properly begun, she whispered to Nagadron and began her final descent. The dread abyssal’s graceful, steady drop was the signal to the small escort that had marched from Neferatia under the path of her flight. From the base of the Stonepain Mountains, close enough to be visible but far enough away to present no threat, the dead began a fanfare, announcing the arrival of their queen. Skeletal arms beat heavy drums of leathered human skin. Wraiths and banshees cried out, a chorus of dark praise. The music of blood and mourning washed over the plain, its strength rising and falling before the gates of Shadowvel as it was caught by the wind, then dropping into sudden silence as Nagadron landed.

Neferata dismounted. She left her weapons fixed to the battle throne on Nagadron’s back and removed the helm of Lahmia. Though she was armoured, she made her peaceful intentions clear. She walked a few yards towards the main gate of Shadowvel, and then stopped.

Come forth. Let the siege begin.

The walls of Shadowvel looked as if they had been gnawed by the jaws of an immense, plague-ridden beast. Huge gaps and mounds of rubble broke up the lines of defence. Slimy moss covered crenellations rounded and pitted like rotten teeth. Vines bulging with tumorous growths clung to the face of the walls. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer had begun the process of burning away the diseased growths, but the stain of the Children’s occupation would linger for a long time. A stench, like corpses revealed by low tide, hung in the air and clung to skin.

This is good work.

When she had last been here, the battlements had been strong, the city’s banners flying proudly. The fortress and its guardians had repelled another assault by the forces of Chaos, and triumph had been in the air. Triumph, and also pride. It was pride that had led to punishment. Untempered pride that did not recognise the fact that the greatest part of the Chaos hordes had hurled themselves against Neferatia. If not for the Realmgate, Shadowvel would have had no strategic importance at all.

Neferata had been willing, for a time, to ignore Shadowvel. The insult of its pride had changed her mind. Shadowvel had invited punishment, and in so doing had made itself useful. Neferata had required bait for the Stormcast Eternals, and Shadowvel was perfectly suited for that role.

So she had engineered its fall. It was very likely that she would have done so regardless of the city’s sins. The presence of the Realmgate and Shadowvel’s proximity to the Stonepains made it perfectly suited to her design. The act of punishment, though, intensified the pleasure in the destruction. She tasted the delicacy of that pleasure again as she contemplated the ruined walls. The Children of the Bell had been wrong to celebrate taking the city. They had done so because Neferata had willed it. They, too, had been her tools. They had been the means to reaching this moment. Neferata had seen to it that Shadowvel suffered, and now she had her reward. The Stormcast Eternals had come.

The rusted gates still clung to their frames. They parted with a shriek as the Lord-Celestant of the strike chamber emerged, flanked by the Lord-Relictor, Lord-Castellant and Lord-Veritant. The four commanders stopped a formal five yards away. While the Lord-Castellant announced their names with an icy formality, Lord-Celestant Venthor watched Neferata in silence. His face was rigid, expressionless, his eyes unblinking, his hatred as clear as it was expected. His hair was short and lay flat on his scalp. His nose was long, aquiline, and his bearing would have seemed imperious except that he was standing straight against the heavy weight of war and command. He would not be easy prey. That made the challenge more enticing.

Lord-Castellant Arvax was more difficult to read. He looked older than Venthor, though Neferata had learned enough about the Stormcast Eternals to know that meant nothing. They were all both ancient and newly born.

Lord-Veritant Hyreia made no attempt to conceal her hostility, her anger closer to the surface than Venthor’s. It was Lord-Relictor Rhasan, though, who caught Neferata’s attention. Like Arvax, she seemed guarded, and was looking at Neferata with a cold curiosity. There was something about her face that nagged at Neferata, but then Venthor spoke, and Neferata put aside other concerns. It was time to focus on the intricate dance she was now to perform.

‘You know of us,’ Venthor said. ‘And we know what you are. What we do not know is why you are here.’

Neferata smiled graciously to show that Venthor’s disrespect had no effect on her. ‘I have come to congratulate you on your victory, and to welcome you to this region of Shyish.’

‘Lies,’ Hyreia spat.

Not at all. I will ensnare you with truth. Neferata bowed her head slightly, acknowledging the justice of Hyreia’s suspicion. ‘I cannot blame you for not trusting me.’

‘You cannot blame us?’ Venthor snarled. ‘Nagash betrayed our Stormhost, abandoned our comrades to their doom, and everywhere we are at war with his legions. You cannot blame us? You insult us with mockery.’

‘Your order was betrayed,’ Neferata said, ‘but not by me. You know this to be the truth.’

There was a slight hesitation before Venthor answered, and his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Clearly, he had not expected her to agree so completely about the betrayal. ‘Are you trying to make us believe you do not serve Nagash?’

‘Of course I serve Nagash. You would be a fool to believe I do not, and I would be the greater fool to try to convince you of such a thing.’

‘You serve Nagash yet you claim to welcome us,’ said Rhasan. ‘Your position is contradictory.’

‘Yes. Surely you are not going to claim that there are no such things as contradictory truths.’

Rhasan did not answer, but she looked interested. Venthor, though, was merely irritated. ‘I am not interested in your paradoxes,’ he said.

‘You should be,’ Neferata said. ‘They are more enlightening and trustworthy than simplicities. How can I serve Nagash and not be waging war on you? Because the Lord of Undeath has commanded me to be a true ally to you.’ She laughed, a silver bell tinkling with amusement and dark suggestion. The Stormcast Eternals stared at her, their puzzlement even greater. Can you feel the web of truth? It is wrapping around you, drawing you closer, choking off your means of retreat. Its strands are more unbreakable than lies. Truth has the power to hold you captive forever.

‘Why would Nagash give such a command?’ said Hyreia. ‘And why would you tell us this?’

‘Am I not obeying his orders by revealing them to you? Am I not proving myself trustworthy to you, and so furthering his ends? What those ends may be is hidden from me as it is from you. All we have is the certainty of the present moment.’ She laughed again, sharing with them the joke of the word certainty. ‘And so we are bound to use it best to fulfil our duties. Surely this much is clear.’

‘It is not,’ said Venthor.

‘Really?’ Neferata raised her eyebrows in gentle surprise. ‘You have taken Shadowvel and its Realmgate. Well done. The work of a night, the work of a beginning. Is this why you have come to Shyish, to this particular spot? Are you saying that you have no interest in what lies beyond those mountains?’ She gestured behind her, and looked back for a moment at the Stonepains. In the predawn, the clouds above Angaria pulsed a dull red, as though reflecting the cauldron of the empire.

Venthor was silent.

Neferata waved her question away. ‘Let it fall to me to be frank, since it is in my interest to be. I know where you will turn next. If you are here, it is because you will march on Angaria. Nagash and Sigmar are at war, but the gods of Chaos are not idle. What Graunos has fashioned must be stopped. You know this, and so do I. Can we perhaps see the wisdom of Nagash in this? This is why I am not at war with you. We have an enemy in common.’

‘We have nothing in common,’ said Venthor.

‘I think you are wrong.’

‘Our plans concerning Angaria are none of your concern, and we will not be made the tools of your ambition.’

So you think. ‘You would maintain that a divided campaign is better than a united one?’

‘Better than one serving your purpose alone,’ Venthor growled. ‘You will do as you see fit in your struggle against Graunos. It is no concern of ours. We have no designs on Neferatia. I offer nothing more than that.’

Neferata cocked her head. ‘Nothing more?’ She smiled again. ‘I am disappointed. But I cannot blame you.’ She smiled more broadly as Venthor’s brow turned thunderous. ‘I shall go, then, but I do believe we will speak again. I have extended the hand of friendship. I do not withdraw it. I shall hope that you will change your mind.’ She bowed to the Anvils of the Heldenhammer and walked back to Nagadron.

Neferata looked back at the four leaders once more after she was mounted. She focused on Rhasan again. There was pride in her bearing, like Venthor’s, but her nobility seemed more pained than his. She had unusually large, dark eyes, made cold by endless war. Her skin was stretched tight, the bones of her skull very close to the surface. Neferata was convinced she had seen those features somewhere before. She must learn where. Rhasan was watching her, still with more interest than outright hostility. There was something Neferata could use here, if only she could uncover what it was.

At her touch, Nagadron leapt into the air. ‘We return to Nulahmia,’ Neferata said to the Adevore. ‘We have a mystery to pierce.’

First, though, she had one more task to complete in the region of Shadowvel. She guided Nagadron on a low flight away from the walls of the city. As they neared the Realmgate, she turned her witchsight on the pillars. A spirit, newly released from its tormented mortal flesh, turned around and around the portal, uncertain about its new liberty.

‘Hello, Erlik,’ Neferata murmured. ‘Do you think your penance is at an end?’ Erlik had been the one most responsible for Shadowvel’s triumphs against Chaos. His, then, was the greatest punishment, and no one other than Neferata decided when the term of his suffering would end.

‘Do you see your prey?’ she said to Nagadron.

The dread abyssal rumbled in eagerness.

‘Then take him.’

Nagadron’s jaws gaped as he streaked through the air towards the Realmgate. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer guarding the portal braced for an attack, but Nagadron did not descend any lower. He roared, and the sound threatened to turn dawn back into night. In the realm of the spirits, the cry was even more terrible. It was the thunder of doom and a summons that could not be defied. The grounds before Shadowvel were crowded with the dead of wars beneath the surface, but Nagadron had roared for only one of them.

The spectre of Erlik shrieked in fear as it shot up towards Nagadron’s maw. Its scream and its flight were invisible to the Stormcast Eternals, and a spectacle of delight for Neferata. The shriek was unending and desperate, the conscious remains of Erlik seeing a new world of torment opening up. Nagadron snapped his jaws shut, consuming the howling ghost, adding Erlik to the horde of the damned who illuminated the monster’s ribcage with the eerie green glow of agony.

‘Well done,’ Neferata said. ‘Well done.’

She and Nagadron flew off to the north-west. Her great work was well begun.

Rhasan watched the Mortarch of Blood’s mount swoop towards the Realmgate, shake the dawn with its roar and then soar up into the distance. She turned to Venthor. He had been watching too. His cheek muscle twitched as his jaw worked in anger.

‘I’ll give her this,’ Venthor said through clenched teeth. ‘She has the confidence that comes with absolute arrogance.’

‘You don’t believe anything she said, then.’

Venthor jerked his head dismissively. ‘What she said is meaningless. It has no relevance to our efforts.’

You did not say if you believed her or not. ‘Would it not be useful to at least give some thought to her offer?’

‘You jest,’ said Hyreia.

‘I do not,’ Rhasan said. ‘Nor do I say we should accept. Simply that we should consider our position fully.’ There was more that she wanted to say, but was too uncertain to articulate. The ease with which she had summoned dread powers in battle, and their strength, gave her pause, though the implications were unformed, shrouded in grey mist.

‘The matter is closed,’ said Venthor. ‘There will be no talk of alliances with a known enemy.’ He turned and marched back towards the gate of the empty city. Hyreia followed close behind.

Rhasan hesitated. She exchanged a look with Arvax. The Lord-Castellant kept his peace, and his expression gave little away. He did, though, glance at Venthor, then back at Rhasan for a moment. The acknowledgement was slight. It was also real. He shared her concern.

Venthor was a great tempest on the battlefield. Off it, he was calm, always rigorous in examining potential strategies from the broadest perspective before committing to them. This did not make him indecisive. It meant that when he led his troops to war, he did so knowing the full consequences of the choices he had made.

He seemed different now. Since arriving in Shyish, his anger had been close to the surface, and the encounter with Neferata had made it burst into the open. Rhasan understood his resentment. She shared it. This was the realm of great betrayals. Even so, she had never known him to make a decision in the heat of anger before.

As she and Arvax followed Venthor back into Shadowvel, Rhasan thought about the empire beyond the mountains, and of Neferata’s insinuating smile. The danger of a wrong decision loomed, its shadow long. It troubled Rhasan to find herself wondering if Venthor had already chosen to walk into the shadow.

Give your enemies exactly what they think they want.

– The Uses of Weakness

Chapter 3

In the Palace of Seven Vultures, Neferata convened her council of war. Vampire lords, spymistresses, wight kings and the captains of the Blood Knights and the Black Knights gathered in the Scorpion Hall. The echoing, domed chamber was dominated by colossal statues of scorpions. There were four of them, rearing up from the far walls. Their pincers met beneath the centre of the dome, a hundred feet in the air, to hold a monolithic gold-and-granite sculpture of the crown of Lahmia.

The hall was an inverted amphitheatre. The floor on all sides sloped upwards to the centre, where, on a wide platform, ornate tables of bronzed bone held maps of Neferatia and Angaria. Though the platform was large, there wasn’t room for all of Neferata’s commanding officers, not when they were all present for a campaign of this scale. An empire was going to war. The lords and ladies of war took their turns on the platform as Neferata called upon them. They advanced to give counsel and to receive their orders.

‘The Anvils of the Heldenhammer are in the field,’ Neferata announced. ‘They do not fight at our side. Not yet.’ She smiled. ‘Their presence, however, already shifts the balance in our favour. Graunos must look to the south. He cannot afford to ignore them.’

‘Our spies in Angaria confirm this,’ said Mereneth. ‘Graunos sends forces with haste to his southern borders, and with even greater haste to the west.’

‘He sees the danger,’ said Ahlok of the Black Knights, his spectral voice issuing hollowly from his fleshless jaws.

‘He does,’ Neferata agreed. ‘He is so very cautious in his wrath.’ As much as Lord-Celestant Venthor seems wrathful in his caution. ‘Clearly, he is determined not to attack until he is ready, and seeks to anticipate our moves against him.’

‘He would appear to know us well,’ said Shavasta, captain of the Blood Knights.

‘He does,’ said Mereneth. ‘More than any champion of Chaos we have encountered.’

‘How can he?’ Lord Eventek asked. ‘We have not fought him before.’

‘One of the lords of Khorne pledged to him is named Kathag,’ said Mereneth.

‘And he knows me,’ said Neferata. She too had wondered about the degree of Graunos’ perception and care. It was only recently that Velaza had discovered that Kathag had been part of Lord Ruhok’s attack on Nulahmia, and that he had survived.

‘Graunos listens to a counsellor,’ said Eventek. ‘That is unusual for the creatures of the Skull God.’

‘Graunos has made Angaria much more than a multitude of hordes,’ Mereneth explained. ‘The picture our spies have painted for us is disturbingly complex. He has created a great machine of war. It is in the service of Chaos, and every subject, worshipper or not, is a slave to Graunos’ will. If a kind of order is necessary for the grander design he is offering to his god, then he will use it.’

‘He is still a daemon prince of Khorne,’ said Neferata. ‘I will see that this is his undoing. Graunos is wrathful, and so he rushes to prepare. He knows his time is short. He doesn’t know how short. Let us then consider how our forces stand.’

‘A growing stalemate,’ said Mereneth. Her words were greeted by nods around the platform and frustrated murmurs in the rest of the hall. ‘As quickly as we consolidate our strength, so does Graunos.’

‘He sees what we do,’ said Shavasta. ‘He has eyes on this side of the mountains.’

‘Of course he does,’ said Neferata. ‘We could never assemble so great an army in secret. We cannot control what he sees. I will control how he interprets it. At present, then, we are in a race neither can win. We both seek the upper hand before invading, and the greatest part of our work is dedicated to what is, in the end, a futile effort. This is the stage for my performance, and Graunos will be our audience. I will show him what he desires and what he fears. He will act. He will attack prematurely, on my grounds and on my terms.’

Neferata turned to Shavasta. ‘Are the preparations at Nighthall Pass complete?’

‘They are, my queen. We await your command.’

‘Then you have it. Raise the curtain.’

Nighthall Pass cut through the centre of the western arm of the Stonepains. From either side of the mountains, it appeared to be a narrow, jagged crack running from the base to the peak of Mount Rankyar, as if a massive blow had split the mountain in two. The passage was a tight zigzag between sheer cliff faces thousands of feet high. An army that ventured into Nighthall Pass would not be able to see more than a hundred yards ahead or behind. The pass was an invitation to ambush, but it was also one of the few western points where it was possible for a large force to reach the other side of the mountains relatively quickly. Graunos had no choice but to concentrate on the pass. At the Angarian entrance to the passage, the massive warhorde of the Brass Scythe had gathered, led by Lord Javassak. The Khornate build-up was, Captain Shavasta reflected, precisely as Neferata had predicted. So the time was coming for Nighthall Keep to play its part. The fortress guarded the pass at its widest point, midway through the mountains. Shavasta was looking at it now as she and her company of Blood Knights worked their way along the narrow ledge that led towards the base of the keep.

The keep was a squat round tower built into the north side of the pass, two hundred feet above the rocky floor. A semicircle of stonework emerged from the cliff, as if the mountain were giving birth to the keep. The walls leaned outwards, each row of arrow loops looking further out above the pass than the one below. The roof jutted out further yet. Ballista and funnels for molten and boiling attacks were mounted between the crenellations. Any enemy force that passed beneath the gaze of the unsleeping sentinels of Nighthall Keep would suffer annihilation from an unreachable height above. Inside the keep, a great company of skeletons kept eternal watch, ready, if the enemy proved stubborn, to descend the hidden flights of steps inside the mountain and emerge from staggered exits into the pass.

Other than those narrow staircases, whose lower doors were locked fast and invisible from the floor of the pass, the only approach to the keep was Shavasta’s ledge. It was barely the width of two hands, and came at the keep from the west. There was no ledge at all to the east. The sole, treacherous path was accessible only from Neferatia.

Graunos had to guard against the pass because the keep denied any crossing from the east and protected an advance from the west. And it could not be taken except through the most extreme, costly effort.

Or by treachery.

Shavasta held up a fist, calling a halt less than fifty yards from the base of the keep. The ledge narrowed ahead, curving around a bulge in the cliff face. Her Blood Knights were hidden from the guardians of the keep. Once they rounded the turn, they would be exposed and the attack would begin.

It pained Shavasta to take this action. Nighthall Keep had protected Neferatia long and faithfully. Though she understood the strategy, she felt as if she were about to betray queen and empire and leave both exposed to the daemon prince of Angaria.

And she was. Yet this was what Neferata had decreed. The attack must be real. The treachery must be real, or the tactic would fail.

What was built can be destroyed, Shavasta told herself. What is destroyed can be rebuilt.

She cut the air with her sword, a silent command, and ran forwards. She sprinted around the lethal curve, as sure-footed as if she were charging across a plain. Her troops followed. The arrows that rained down could not slow them. Nor could the barred iron door to the fortress.

A few minutes later, Nighthall Keep began to burn.

‘Impossible,’ said Lord Javassak. ‘This is a trick to draw us in.’ The messenger kneeling before him remained silent, knowing better than to answer while Javassak paced back and forth. His heavy boots struck sparks from the stones on the ground. His crimson cloak flapped with the violence of his movements. He glared at the entrance to Nighthall Pass, a crack of deeper darkness in the mountains ahead. Behind him the vastness of the Brass Scythe spread out over the foothills. Tens of thousands strong, it rumbled with the sound of drums and the snarls of its warriors.

At length, Javassak stopped pacing. He held back his anger and thought about what he had heard. While he pondered, his fingers traced the shape of the twisted spike embedded in the flesh on the right side of his skull. It ran from his chin to his crown, the ribbed brass twisting skin and muscle, pulling his face into a perpetual snarl of rage. It stabbed out of his forehead, forking into piercing horns.

Javassak turned back to the messenger. ‘Tell me again. Our spies witnessed more than just a fire?’

‘Yes, mighty lord,’ the Blood Warrior said. His frame quivered with the effort to keep still. He needed to be on the battlefield, harvesting skulls for the Blood God. So did Javassak. But the war was delayed and delayed and delayed, the armies endlessly growing, endlessly stalled before the mountains. Javassak and his Gorechosen inner circle were keeping the Bloodbound from turning on each other as the waiting stretched on. Battle arenas where the warriors could kill each other in limited fashion kept the horde from turning into a riot leagues across. But the situation could not last forever.

Now the word had come that the wait might be over, and Javassak did not trust it. Graunos had warned the lords of his armies of the deceptions practised by the Mortarch of Blood, deceptions Kathag had witnessed. Javassak had no intention of sharing Ruhok’s fate. Yet he wanted to believe in the news from the pass. He wanted to believe the time had come to flood Neferatia with blood.

‘Our spies witnessed battle,’ the Blood Warrior continued. ‘Vampires against skeletons. And they have seen the tower begin to fall.’

Javassak tightened his fists. With a supreme effort of will, he bit back the order to march into Nighthall Pass immediately. The grip of fear that chained him to Graunos’ will enforced discipline, and he passed the terror in turn down the ranks, teaching his warriors to dread him as much as he dreaded Graunos.

Ahead of the main body of the Bloodbound horde, where the land rose into the first of the mountain’s slopes, was a steep-sided depression in the rock. Harpies swooped in and out of the bowl, shrieking with hunger and delight as they toyed with the prisoners inside. As Javassak looked their way, one of them hovered just above the pit, her dark, leathery wings flapping to hold her in place. Her taloned feet gripped a soft, dripping mass that might once have been human.

‘Send word of what we have seen to Prince Graunos,’ Javassak said. The harpies were slaves to Graunos even more than he was, and the sport of slaughter kept them satisfied while they acted as messengers, streaking through the air back and forth between the western foothills and Skulldagger Bastion. ‘We must await his word.’ He swallowed bile, hating that he was so constrained, fearing Graunos’ anger and wary of Neferata’s deceptions. ‘But we make ready to march,’ he added. If Graunos gave the command to seize this opportunity, then the order would find Javassak at the entrance of the pass, ready to burn Neferatia with wrath.

Tireless, relentless, the harpy streaked to Mausolea, crossing lands that were barren, lands that smouldered after the passage of the warhordes and lands that were fertile, spared destruction in order to feed the hunger of Graunos’ armies. She flew to the Offertory throne room, and in shrieking, hissing tones delivered Javassak’s message.

Graunos jerked his head, and the harpy flew out of the chamber to perch on its roof and await the commands of her master while he summoned Kathag to his presence.

‘It’s a trap,’ said Kathag, standing before Graunos on his throne.

‘Tell me where the trap lies,’ said the daemon prince. ‘A key defence of Neferatia falls. The way is open to us, and the forces of death are seen to be fighting each other. There have been uprisings against the Mortarch of Blood in the past. We have applied pressure, and now the cracks appear. Is all of this impossible?’

‘It is because it is so believable that it must be a trap. I cannot see how the loss of Nighthall Keep redounds to Neferata’s advantage, but it must, or she would not have arranged for it to fall.’

Graunos cocked his head. ‘Is there any circumstance of apparent advantage that you would not consider a trap?’

Kathag’s lips pulled back in a silent snarl at the insult. He said nothing.

‘When, I wonder,’ Graunos continued, ‘would you ever give the command to attack?’

‘I did not say I would not attack now,’ Kathag growled.

‘Wordplay,’ said Graunos, contemptuous.

‘Attack,’ Kathag said. ‘This is a trap, but we must attack. This is the chance we have sought.’

Bored of taunting Kathag, Graunos nodded. ‘It is,’ he said. ‘And I agree with you. This is a trap. It is also her mistake. If she knew everything that we know, she would not give us this chance. She has revealed her ignorance. So we will strike.’

‘With our full force?’ Kathag sounded wary.

‘No.’ Graunos hungered to see the Mortarch’s empire crushed beneath the boots of his armies. He also would not commit his full might yet. If Neferata was blind to what he was about to unleash, he also acknowledged that there were risks he could not see. Ruhok had trusted his strength too much, and had seen what he wanted to see. Graunos knew better. The opportunity Neferata had created for him was a rich one. Believing a single blow could end the war, though, was a delusion. ‘Javassak is to take the pass and bring the battle to Neferatia.’ A strong probing attack was a risk worth taking. ‘The rest of the warhordes will wait, and prepare for a counterattack.’

‘What of Vask?’

‘He will hear my voice. He will know his opportunity has come.’

A monster roared in Nighthall Pass. The beast was a multitude, and the multitude was a unity. Tens of thousands of voices fused into a single bellow of rage, tens of thousands of boots tramped with the force of an earthquake, and tens of thousands of blades clashed against shields, sounding the thunder of the end of days. Javassak’s warhorde advanced through the pass like a serpent of blood and brass. Blood warriors smashed each other against the cliff walls in the crush to be at the front. No flow of lava was as dense, as implacable or as incandescent.

Mounted on his juggernaut, Daurax, Javassak charged through the pass at the head of his warhorde. He exulted in the rage. His jaws were parted painfully wide, as if he would bite down on the entire empire on the other side of the pass. There was satisfaction in the march, but even so, it was a delay. Neferatia was not burning yet. His axe had not yet severed the queen’s head from her shoulders.

Far behind, the siege towers were being dragged painfully through the narrow confines of the pass. Every sharp turn required hours of straining from the brayherds on the ropes to negotiate. The rest of the warhorde would long have left Nighthall Pass by the time the siege towers reached the Neferatian side. Javassak was beyond caring. He would strike with speed, with a swarm, with fire. In the rush of the march, it was easy to believe that any walls he encountered would fall before the sheer force of the charge. The Brass Scythe would smash the cities of Neferatia down like a wave breaking over sand.

Up ahead, and far above, the struggle for Nighthall Keep continued. What remained of the tower was burning furiously. As Javassak passed beneath the fire, the fortress that had barred his way for so long was a blazing torch. It lit the way forwards, filling the pass with a dull, flickering red. It presaged the massacres to come.

The mountain rumbled, and more of the shattered tower collapsed. Huge chunks of brickwork tumbled down, bouncing off ridges in the cliff faces, disintegrating and hailing rubble into the pass. Javassak heard cries suddenly cut short as fragments of the keep crushed bloodreavers behind him. The losses barely registered. They were trivial, meaningless. The Brass Scythe was surging past the point where the advance would have slammed to a halt only the day before.

Javassak urged Daurax faster, and he left the ruin of Nighthall Keep behind him. He roared in triumph. The way forwards was clear. Let the foe try to slow him down with ambushes. They would be futile. The fortress on its perch had been uniquely situated to deny any attempt to force the way through the constricted pass. Now the enemy faced the same claustrophobic confines as the Brass Scythe, but Javassak’s horde had the momentum. He would grind the defenders of Neferatia to bloody muck beneath Daurax’s hooves. He welcomed their attempt. He lusted for the welter of slaughter. It could not come soon enough.

The slaughter made him wait. No one tried to stop the Brass Scythe. The light from the burning fortress faded to the rear. Soon there was only the grinding thunder of the great charge. The pass twisted ahead. It widened slightly, then narrowed again, and turned again, denying Javassak any sense of how far there was still to go. It had taken two days at a forced march to reach Nighthall Keep. He lost track of time now as the triumphant fury of the long-anticipated attack took hold of him. He was vaguely aware of the gloom lessening with the coming of day, and then growing dark again. He was tireless. He was relentless. He drove himself and his warriors as if each bend of the pass were the last one and they were forever about to fall upon the foe.

And at last, as night gave way again to a day sullen as lead, the next bend was the last one. Daurax thundered out of the pass and down the rocky slope beyond. Neferatia opened up before Javassak, an empire waiting for his axe. The land ahead descended in low rolls from the mountains. It was a waste of low scrub and hard, rocky ground. Isolated trees, their growths twisted by the unceasing north wind, stretched out gnarled, grasping branches like entreating hands. Standing stones were scattered around the landscape as if strewn by an uncaring hand. Alone or in small clusters, covered in moss, they were half sunken into the earth, slowly being drawn down by erosion and time. Gravestones, leaning and weathered, poked up from the ground. They were even more widely dispersed than the monoliths, and some were barely visible. But their slumped forms jutted up in every direction for as far as Javassak could see. They seemed to be the final, despairing sigh of a vast civilisation as oblivion claimed it forever.

Far to the west lay the corpse of the city of Knell. The time-gnawed ruins covered most of the horizon. The city had once been as large as Mausolea, but it had been dead for a long time. Its people forgotten, its culture lost, it no longer had any meaning except as a symbol of the ultimate supremacy of death. Many of the ruins had crumbled into vagueness, no longer recognisable as anything at all. Here and there, the broken teeth of towers still stood. There was movement too, the idiot nodding of huge stone structures trapped in magic that would never fade and would never let them fall but could not prevent them from losing their form. Spurs a hundred feet long rocked back and forth like reeds in a wind, the undeath of architecture, the eternal farewell of a city whose murder, too, was forgotten.

Javassak resented the ruins. It was a city that had died before he had a chance to kill it. The extent of the death was a goad to his hate. If he had his will, all death would be at his hands and every skull would be an offering to the Skull God. But now, at least, he could impose his will. There was a dark line on the land just ahead of lost Knell. The army of Neferata awaited the Brass Scythe.

At the sight of the foe, the warhorde erupted with a colossal howl. Now the great butchery could begin. Now the fury that had been held back by the Stonepain Mountains could be unleashed. Neferata, in her madness, had laid out her forces in open invitation to disaster. She should have attempted an ambush when she lost Nighthall Keep. She should have been ready to strike at the exit from the pass. Instead, she was waiting on lower lands, and the Brass Scythe was coming at her on the winds of wrath.

Neferata was a fool, and Javassak rode hard to teach her a lesson in blood.

Consumed by the frenzy of the ride to battle, Javassak was midway down the slopes towards the foe before he noticed that the Neferatian forces had not yet begun their counter-charge. They were motionless, waiting.

Expectant.

And now, with all his warriors roaring with him, with the Brass Scythe running at full speed to sweep all before it in an ocean of blood, doubt struck Javassak’s heart. All the warnings about Neferata’s cunning, about her deceptions within deceptions, came rushing back to him. Lord Ruhok had been destroyed at the moment his victory seemed a certainty.

Javassak was rushing forwards in certainty. Yet the legions of the dead were not behaving as if they believed him to be a threat.

You were sent here alone. Graunos was holding back all the other warhordes. He had committed only the Brass Scythe. Unbidden, unwelcome, the thought rose that what he had believed to be an honour might instead have been a sacrifice.

Javassak shouted even louder, seeking to cast doubt aside with the force of anger. The Brass Scythe responded. The Bloodbound of Khorne shook the earth with the thunder of their voices and the pounding of their feet. Yet even through this clamour, Javassak heard a deep boom from somewhere to the rear. It was followed by a long rumble that built and built, that sounded like the death cry of a mountain.

The ground shook, and kept shaking, and then it was heaving so wildly that it almost threw Javassak off Daurax’s back. The juggernaut stumbled, its momentum falling away as it struggled to keep its footing. The charge of the Brass Scythe faltered.

Then the earth began to split. Chasms opened, splitting apart hills and plains, and the forgotten rose in shrieking vengeance.

Nothing ever truly ends. That which is forgotten waits for its time to come again. Its patience is endless, and fatal.

– On the Monstrosity of the Past

Chapter 4

The flames were dying now. Nighthall Keep smouldered like a fire dwindling in a hearth, the last logs blackened and turning to ash. Captain Shavasta led her Blood Knights away from the ruin. Its skeleton defenders were destroyed, hundreds of them smashed to splinters. They had fought to the end to save what had been their charge for centuries. They had failed, unprepared for a betrayal of this magnitude.

Shavasta looked back at the rubble once more before she reached the bend in the cliff. Most of the wall had fallen into the depths of the pass. Smoke billowed from the concavity in the mountain face. Where fire still guttered, Shavasta could just make out some of the remaining floors. Though the fortress had fallen, even its corpse showed the art of its makers. Her heart twisted. She hated that it had been necessary to smash so fine a defence.

She rounded the bend. Now, at least, the sight of the keep would stop opening new wounds.

A party of nobles waited a short distance along the ledge. The Blood Knights had left them behind during the attack. Neferata had given Shavasta permission to extend this small mercy. They were the elders of House Valnakt. Shavasta stopped a few steps away from Kerrow, the ancient lord of the family.

‘It is done, then?’ he said.

‘It is, father.’

Kerrow nodded. Though his eyes were lidded, their pain was clear. It was the Valnakts who had constructed the fortress an age ago. ‘I grieve that this should be Nighthall Keep’s fate,’ he said.

‘I grieve too. We will rebuild, father. We will make it even more formidable than before. And our task is not yet done. This will be a day of triumph for Neferatia.’

‘Yes,’ Kerrow said slowly, his shrivelled, reptilian features disguising the immense power he held. ‘Then let us realise this truth, and be glad. When we built the keep, we were but setting a trap. Today, we spring it.’

Shavasta bowed and stepped back to stand with the rest of the Blood Knights. What was to come now was the task of the elders. Shavasta was of the clan of Valnakt, but she was not among those who had been present for the construction of Nighthall Keep. She did not feel the very roots of the fortress, and she did not have the power to make the coming demand.

The vampire nobles faced the direction of the keep. As one, they began to chant the refrain of a great, necromantic spell. Their voices formed a deep, resonant chorus. Though they did not shout, the sound reverberated into the mountainside. The ground shivered under Shavasta’s feet. Softly at first, then growing louder, came the moan. It rose from the stones of the ruin and from the heart of the mountain. It was the cry of the souls of all who had laboured and died for the construction of Nighthall Keep. Even the dead who had defended it and had been physically destroyed were summoned back. Now, what the sacrifices in their thousands had died for was destroyed, and the House of Valnakt called to them one more time, to rise up and give all the deaths meaning.

The spectres cried out in anger. They came for a final task, one last act, not of defence, not of creation, but of ultimate destruction. All their rage and all their grief united into a single blow that shattered the mountainside. Shavasta forced herself to not wince as the shaking of the cliff gave way to a sudden burst of deafening cracks and then a cataclysmic rumble. The entire portion of the mountain where the keep had stood broke away. Tens of millions of tons of granite roared into the pass, blocking it forever.

The echoes of the spectral cry lingered on after the thunder of stone had faded. Dust covered the pass like a grey shroud. The elders ceased their chant, and the cry faded, becoming tattered whispers, then silence.

Shavasta turned away from the spectacle of the rockslide to begin the march west, back into Neferatia.

With the task complete, Kerrow’s jaw was set in grim satisfaction. ‘Since this had to be done,’ he said, ‘it is good that it is well done. There will be no reinforcements for those slaves of Chaos.’

‘And no retreat,’ said Shavasta.

‘Rise!’ Neferata cried. ‘Rise and destroy the enemy who dares trespass on this land! Rise and obey me, for I am your queen and I command it!’

The earth split, and the earth rose up. Sudden canyons yawned, swallowing the Bloodbound. Colossal wedges of rock reared into the sky like the prows of ships, their hulls open to reveal galleries of shrieking nightmares.

The city of Knell had died before the coming of Chaos to Shyish, but for the many centuries it had thrived during the Age of Myth, its dead had been buried outside its walls. The region between the Stonepain Mountains and the ruins of the city was a vast graveyard. The accumulations of dust and earth had concealed layers upon layers of tombs.

Neferata called, and the graveyard rose.

On Nagadron, she hovered in the air, her forces charging ahead below her. Her army was relatively small compared to the Brass Scythe. She could not risk pulling too much of her strength away from the other potential crossing points of the Stonepains. This weakness had been the final lure to pull Javassak into his heedless charge, and with her great summoning she turned the weakness into a lie.

The effort to call the dead in so vast a legion all at once, and to harness them to her will, was draining. She could barely move, her arms outstretched, frozen in the effort of maintaining the spell and extending her will over the leagues of the cemetery. With the ground splitting and rising up on either side of her, she was vulnerable to attack, but as her warriors rushed ahead with the great tide of unleashed spirits, the fighting was taking place a short distance ahead of her. She felt detached from the battle itself, an observer gazing dispassionately upon a distant war. The clashing armies were no more than swarms of insects. She controlled the dead as if she were directing the flows of rivers, and she cast the flood upon the Brass Scythe.

As the enemy’s charge disintegrated into confusion, her commanders began their advance. They knew her orders. She had to trust to their skill. She could not intervene now without relinquishing control of the spell.

Neferata reached deep into the earth with her will, found more of the unquiet dead and pulled again. Two more ships of earth thrust upwards on either side of her, bracketing her with hives of graves. Skeletons battered open their coffins. With mouldering shrouds hanging from their limbs in rags, clutching the blades, now pitted and rusted, that had been buried with them, they leapt from the risen cemetery and fell upon Javassak’s horde.

Spirit hosts burst from the hills of tombs in vast aethereal clouds. Vortices of disincorporated anger howled over the battlefield. Clawed hands and shrieking faces formed in the roiling ectoplasm. Tendrils of the glow became blades, and the phantoms plunged their swords through armour, leaving it untouched, to strike at the souls of the Bloodbound.

At Neferata’s command, in obedience to every slow, majestic gesture, death rushed over the land. Death swarmed over the warriors of blood and brass. It came for them from all sides, from above and from below. There was no retreat, nowhere to turn. You wretches worship Chaos. Very well. I will give you disorder, and confusion, and madness. And terror.

Terror unto death.

For coveting my empire. For taking what is mine. For daring to challenge my supremacy. For all of this, I bring you death.

Now the rest of her forces joined the battle. Arveil the Nightreaper commanded them. She ruled this province of Neferatia, and it was she, in her thirst, who had finally bled Knell dry and brought about its doom. So merciless and vast a thirst was worthy of respect, and Neferata counted Arveil among the most favoured of her nobles. Arveil directed the battle from her palanquin. She sat hunched on her throne like a vulture. The richness of her robes did not soften her angular, predatory silhouette. Though her hair was piled high on her head, it was so long that it also streamed down her back and sides to spread at her feet with the folds of her dress. She was a grasping, hungry shadow, and she revelled in the great shedding of blood.

The Khornate warriors’ defiance was hollow. No frenzy could save them. The land broke up their horde, and death swept over them, all-consuming. There was only one possible end to this battle.

Neferata smiled, an artist before a perfectly executed canvas.

Movement was difficult in the embrace of the corpse, but Vask was used to it. He accepted the burden, and had learned to compensate for the weight, the pain, the dome of the skull always looming in the lower periphery of his vision. But it was never easy. If walking was a chore, climbing was agony. He did not dare stop to catch his breath, though. If he did, exhaustion might claim him. He was halfway up the ruined tower on the eastern edge of Knell. He could not stop until he reached the summit.

The mummified torso gripped Vask like bands of iron. The arms wrapped around him, and its hands, hooked like claws, sank into his back. Even now, so long after the corpse of Kasten had seized him, so long after his flesh had closed and scabbed and scarred around the fingers, the pain felt fresh, as if he were just being grabbed, the clawed nails drawing blood and gouging through muscle for the first time. The same was true for his left shoulder, where Kasten’s teeth were sunk. The skull’s lower jaw had fallen away, but the upper went in so deep, it was as if the head were a growth emerging from his body.

Vask had screamed for three days when Kasten seized him. Three days of thrashing helplessly on the floor of his ancestor’s tomb while the dead thing sank its grip deeper into his body and his soul. At the end of the third day, he had staggered from the crypt, carrying the burden that would be his forever.

He had learned to accept the weight. There had been no choice. And his new reality was a complicated one. The withered monstrosity fused to his body transported him too. Kasten had carried him here, to this day and this place. It was time for Vask to fulfil the oath that had driven him his entire life and that had consumed Kasten even after death.

The day of vengeance had arrived. Vengeance for a crime from another age. Vengeance for the destruction of the House of Hellezan, and of the rebellion of hope it had led.

From the distance came the thunder of clashing arms and the gale-wind howl of warriors. He was hearing the clarion call of vengeance.

Vask reached up and found a handhold. Groaning, he pulled himself up another foot higher. He was more than halfway up what had been the interior of the tower, clawing his way from one broken step to another, one crack in the brickwork to the next. He was ascending the Guardian Spire of Knell. It had stood three times higher than any other structure before the fall of the city. It was still as tall as it had ever been, and the city had shrunk beneath it. The Guardian was a needle of stone. Like the rest of the city, it had died along with Knell’s inhabitants. The tower was an undead corpse. Its white stone had turned grey and porous, resembling rotting skin. Like some of the other buildings, it moved, reenacting the moment of its demise. Where one tower nodded, forever beginning its fall, the Guardian turned. It twisted on its base, agonised, in the prelude before collapse. It was frozen in the moment. Though it decayed and crumbled, shed stones and sculptures, though the caryatids of its arched windows had been eroded into shapeless wraiths and though it was turning into a skeleton, it could not fall. It turned, stone grinding against stone, a blind sentinel fruitlessly casting its blank gaze over the wastes of its domain.

Vask was bringing vision back to the Guardian Spire. His would be the first eyes to look out over the expanse of Knell and its land since the city had died. From the top, he would see the battle and direct the long-awaited justice.

In the section of the tower that he was climbing, less than a third of the wall was intact. Wind plucked at his robes, trying to shake him loose. If he could only manage a little longer, he would see that the staircase resumed. The Spire seemed more or less intact for the rest of the climb. But every movement was a risk. His palms were slick with sweat. As the Guardian turned, it felt as if the stone were trying to squirm away from his grasp. The weight of the mummy pulled down on him.

His foot slipped as he reached for another handhold, and he started to fall. He hung on with his left arm, and the jerk almost pulled the limb from its socket. He screamed, his feet scrabbling. They found a bit of a ledge, and he steadied himself, cursing.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ he screamed at the corpse. ‘Do you wish us to lose everything? Do you want her to escape? Why do you hinder me?’

Our strength is mine. You are the weak one. You are unworthy of the honour of our task.

Before the crypt, Kasten had been simply the most honoured of ancestors, the son of Mathas Hellezan. Neferata had killed Mathas and all who followed him, but his wife, Teyosa, had escaped with the infant Kasten, fleeing through underground tunnels as the family’s palace burned. Teyosa had nurtured the ember of rebellion, and Kasten had gone much further, sacrificing everything to prepare for this day. Where Teyosa had kept the rebels united and determined, Kasten had brought them the hope of victory by showing them power. He had sacrificed every vestige of his humanity to become a greater danger to Neferata than his father had ever been. And his ferocious will had continued to reign over the Lytessians and Hellezans after his death. Vask had often spoken to Kasten’s portraiture on canvas and in stone. Over the years, the conversations had become less one-sided, as Vask imagined, more and more vividly, Kasten’s responses. There had been times when the sense of his ancestor speaking to him, commanding him, had been so real, he had come to himself with his head spinning and the feeling that the ground beneath his feet was as insubstantial as mist. Even so, Vask had always known that he was, in the end, speaking to himself. Or at least, so he had told himself when he broke from the spell of Kasten’s gaze. Even the portraits commanded obedience.

Since the crypt, everything had changed. Kasten, or the wretched thing that had been him, was part of Vask now. And the voice in Vask’s head was both familiar and strange. It was the voice he had been hearing for years, yet it was stronger, angrier and more jagged. It stabbed into his skull when it spoke, shards of glass slashing through his mind. It seemed to come from within his skull too. In the early days of his capture, he had sometimes wondered if he were imagining the voice. He no longer had doubts. It said things he had never thought. It pushed him to take actions he had never considered. It harangued him, plagued him, and at times did not address him, howling mindlessly. He would join it, then, and two splintered souls would scream their anger into the darkness.

He was no longer just Vask. There was Kasten in him too. More than Kasten’s body had seized him. The spirit of the great hero was in Vask’s. It was broken, sharp, maddened. It was strong, too, and relentless. Its hatred for Neferata was undying. It had shown Vask what to do, and it had given him the power to do it, though its every command and whim were torments, shredding Vask’s self in mind and soul as surely as Kasten’s body was torn.

Through hate and agony, they had reached this day. Vask refused to fail now.

‘I am not weak,’ he snarled, pulling himself up again.

The Guardian Spire turned, the wind moaned and tugged, and Vask kept climbing.

‘I am not a burden!’ he cried. ‘You are my burden. But you will not pull me down. We will pull the Mortarch down! An end to her deception,’ he spat, and drew closer to the stairs. ‘An end to her lies!’ Closer yet.

An end to her! Kasten screamed in his head, and Vask hauled himself onto the steps.

He leaned against the wall for a moment, catching his breath. He glanced down at the gap below. As the tower spun, the vista of the broken city whirled past. Vask had climbed very high already. He looked away and resumed his ascent. Moving past the windows, he could almost believe that Knell was rotating around the still point of the tower. He was at the centre of things, and that, he knew, was the truth. He would soon prove this to Neferata.

At last, his breath harsh, the weight of the corpse pulling him forwards, the pain in his shoulder and back as hot as red coals, he reached the narrow roof of the Spire. It was less than ten feet across, and the parapets had fallen away. It would be easy to slip and plummet to the distant ground. Vask stood in the centre of the roof, shuffling his feet carefully to keep his stance and to remain facing east, where the battle waited for him.

From the commanding height of the Guardian Spire, he saw the forces of Khorne being savaged by the legions of the dead. ‘This is a rout,’ he said.

We expected nothing else. She shapes and manipulates. She would have the first true battle of the war take place on her terms. This is who she is. This is the danger we have come to destroy.

Despite himself, he was awed by what he saw. The plains and low foothills beyond Knell looked like an ocean in a storm. Huge waves of earth rose, crumbling, into the air, and chasms opened up between them. Ectoplasmic lightning and roiling fog swept over the fragmented horde of the Brass Scythe. The shrieks of spectres, the raging cries of berserk warriors and the crashing of the heaving land rolled towards Vask, smashing against him with the blows of a monstrous tide. Death was supreme over the land, and it was conquering in the name of Neferata.

There she is. There is the monster.

The Mortarch of Blood was in a straight line from Vask’s position, suspended between two of the upthrust wedges of earth. From this distance she appeared motionless. The only movement was the sinuous weaving of her dread abyssal’s tail. Below her, and slightly to the south, her army surged across a level expanse of the plain, driving into the largest portion of the warhorde that was still intact.

She thinks she has won. She doesn’t realise. She is vulnerable. Our time is now. At long last, our time is now!

Vask stopped shuffling. He let himself turn with the rotation of the tower until he faced east. He looked out over the full vista of dead Knell. The silence of the city was heavy, not easily disturbed even by the clamour of war. The roar from the west crashed against the Guardian Spire, but then the tide of sound ebbed. Stillness had gathered over Knell with the dust of centuries. Ruined while the Age of Myth was in its glory, Knell was ignored by the armies of Chaos who marched past its emptiness. The silence grew until it pressed down on the city like a sarcophagus lid.

To look upon Knell was to look upon leagues of crumbled absence. The only change the city had seen since its death was gradual but implacable decay. On this day, though, there was movement through the stillness. The movement was solemn, respectful of the huge sullen mediation of the vast, slowly vanishing sepulchre. Those who walked its streets had no desire to break the silence. They embraced it. They used it. It covered them as it covered the city, concealing their approach. Vask saw them, for they came at his command.

They are mine. This is my design they come to fulfil.

‘You began this. I complete it.’

You are mine as much as they are.

‘What happens this day is mine!’ Vask shrieked. The wind stole his cry, and the silence muffled it.

When, commanded by Neferata, Arveil had decreed that the entire region would march to battle at the Stonepain Mountains, there was one noble family that did not answer her call, and that single absence escaped her notice. House Lytessian had the means to disobey Arveil, and had every reason to. Once one of the richest families of Knell, the Lytessians had witnessed Arveil’s depredations and had realised what was coming in time to flee the city before the collapse. They had retreated to the shadow-haunted hills far to the north and carved out a precarious existence there. Hate had kept them strong. There was plenty of hate for Arveil, but the truest, purest hate was for Neferata. It was the Lytessians with whom Teyosa Hellezan had sought refuge with her infant son. That one surviving fragment of the Hellezans had been enough to alter the Lytessians forever. As Kasten had grown in anger and strength, he had made the Lytessians his own. He had been the spider hidden at the centre of the web, a necromancer patiently weaving his revenge, never venturing out of the depths of the clan’s manor. Gradually, the family had become an extension of his will. Even after he died, his purpose had shaped every action of the Lytessians.

There was much that Kasten’s will had commanded. There was the creation of a secret army, building upon the family’s resources, drawing in the discontented and the betrayed from Knell. There was, crucially, the meticulous crafting of the necromantic work, work that was built upon and strengthened by Kasten’s successors, which kept the dead of the Lytessians under their control, hidden from Arveil and Neferata. That was the struggle of generations. This day never would have come if Neferata had discovered that the Hellezan rebellion lived on. The isolation and remoteness of the Lytessians’ land helped. Until Neferata was ready to attempt to reconquer the lands lost to Angaria, the flows of the wars had left the Lytessians alone.

Vask had spent his life in a state of twitching impatience, knowing that he must prepare for battle as if the moment of revenge might not dawn for generations yet. He had been faithful to his charge, and then Kasten had taken him, and he had known that the time of waiting was nearly done. Kasten had turned Vask’s gaze to Angaria. Protected by a hundred wards of concealment, the fused necromancers had cast spells of summoning, drawing the attention of the daemon prince. At last, Graunos had answered. Rage had allied with rage, and House Lytessian began its march.

Vask watched his army now. The silent anger moved through the silent streets. There were vampires in the ranks, those who feared or hated Neferata enough to take up arms against her, driven by desperation and hope. The heads of House Lytessian were there, marching in close ranks through the narrow streets, the lines of skeletons reaching back until they disappeared in the shadows of the ruins. But at the head of the ranks, in command of the attack, were mortals. The Hellezan rebellion had always been, at its core, an act of glorious refusal by mortals to be ruled by the dead.

This was Shyish, and Nagash would claim all who lived in the end. So while the end was not yet here, they would burn brightly and give him nothing.

Mathas had still led the uprising after Neferata inducted him into the ranks of the undead, and that was the moment, as Teyosa and then Kasten had taught in the years that followed, when tragedy had overtaken the rebellion. While he was a mortal, Mathas had been in possession of his self. Once he had become a vampire, he had only thought this to be true. His every action had been governed by the monster who sat on the throne of the Palace of Seven Vultures. No vampire had been trusted with full knowledge of the rebellion ever since. Those who took up the cause had to accept that they would not rule it.

‘The living fight for the living,’ Vask whispered. The vow had a bitter edge. The weight of Kasten’s mummy and the pain of its grip mocked him.

What are you? What are you?

‘I am mortal,’ Vask said. ‘I shall die, yet I still live.’ It was a refrain he repeated daily, endlessly.

What are you? What are you? The question never answered, the taunt never silenced.

Vask was very old. So much of what made him mortal had withered and rotted, shrivelled like petrified flesh. He had begun to insist, through the refrain, on the reality of his mortality years before his descent into Kasten’s crypt.

‘I am mortal. I shall die, yet I still live.’

What are you? What are you?

The doubts and the insistence never gave him rest. The cycle gnawed at his heart. It was almost as painful as the corpse’s teeth.

Shuffling again to stay in place, Vask looked for the sight that would hurt him the most. He did so because it was also the source of his greatest pride. Skarveth Lytessian embodied what Vask had given up for the cause. He was the great commander, the icon of nobility who gathered followers simply by existing. He was what Vask had sacrificed in order to preserve. When Vask looked at Skarveth, he saw the future of the houses. He felt pain, because Skarveth was what Vask would never be again, and because of the scars that marred Skarveth’s perfection. But in full armour, with his face hidden, he was still perfect, and Vask felt more pride than pain.

Vask spotted Skarveth easily, there at the head of his great company of riders. The men and women of the house’s horse guard bore their colours proudly. Though the day was a deep grey, the gold and green was resplendent, as if the armour were imbued with its own light. Though the hoofbeats of the chargers were muffled by the city’s quiet, the pride of the banners was a shout. It would have been proper for Skarveth to wear the colours of Hellezan. He was a descendant of Mathas just as much as he was a son of Lytessian. But none of the Hellezan family armour had survived the fall of Mathas. Skarveth wore the colours of his other house with honour, and Vask thought this was well too.

‘Will you not want Neferata to know whose vengeance has come for her?’ Skarveth had asked.

‘I do,’ Vask had answered. ‘But if she goes to oblivion in ignorance, I will still be satisfied.’ Vask found it hard to set aside the instincts for secrecy that had been bred for generations into the narrow thread of the Hellezans. Even now, he felt no hesitation in keeping the name hidden.

Skarveth reached the foot of the Guardian Spire. He drew back on the reins, halting his charger, and looked up, raising his visor. The ground was too far away for Vask to see his face, but he knew the features well. They were very like what his own had been long ago. Skarveth was Vask’s legacy, the embodiment of what the two houses had been and would be again.

Skarveth was why Vask had opened Kasten’s tomb. He had sought to prolong his existence, and his reign as chief necromancer, in part to spare Skarveth from following his path for as long as possible. Skarveth was a commander of power. He would be a beacon on the battlefield. Dragging him into the necromantic dark would be a loss for the present as well as the future. There was more, too. Vask had given up more than his body. Monstrosity had reached into his spirit as well as his flesh. Skarveth lived to a code of honour that Vask could no longer even pretend to follow. Vask had no wish to steal that from the future either.

Vask had a dead thing clinging to his torso, and the cost did not seem great. Vengeance was nigh, and the man who would carry the Lytessians and Hellezans to glory was saluting him. Vask raised his arm in answer, and then turned and pointed east. With that gesture, he unleashed his forces against Neferata’s.

The infantry of skeletons and mortals charged past the Guardian Spire and through the low ruins of Knell’s walls. Though the horse guard had led the advance through the city, Skarveth held back for the moment, as Vask had commanded. The initial attack would already be a surprise. Vask would send Skarveth for the second shock, and the final blow.

He turned his attention away from the armed rush. It would have been satisfying to witness the initial impact, the moment when the long-dead hand of Mathas Hellezan reached from his tomb to strike back, at last, for what had been done to him and his family. But Vask could not afford to divide his attention. His body, growing used to the tower’s movement, fell into a steady shuffle, keeping Vask steady, his torso almost motionless, facing east. All of his energy, all of his focus, all of his skill and all of his power would now be directed at Neferata.

She had barely moved while he had been looking upon his army. Her focus was as singular as his, though she was controlling forces far more vast than anything Vask could summon. He didn’t have to be as strong as her. All he needed was to strike once. Not even fatally. Just hard enough.

Vask concentrated, staring at the distant queen. He saw nothing except the small, graceful, slow-moving figure. Everything else greyed and fell away at the edges of his vision. He began to speak the words of invocation. He clasped his hands together and held his arms out, rigid, pointing at the Mortarch. The energies of death built up in his hands. A nimbus of black and gold and red crackled into being. Vask’s arms shook as the power grew. He almost cried out to release the energy.

Not yet! Not yet! Be strong or be defeated. Prove yourself to be my descendant.

Vask’s chant sounded strangely in his ears. His voice was doubled. Two necromancers, one living and one dead, were speaking at once. The nimbus widened, and the spell grew more powerful. Trembling, agonised, Vask held back and kept chanting.

Neferata heard the outbreak of battle behind her. She did not know what was happening, and she did not know what it meant. She could not turn around quickly without losing her grasp on the waves of spirits. Then whatever had gone wrong rippled forwards. Neferata glanced down and saw confusion in Arveil’s ranks. Their march forwards stopped. Some were turning to the rear. Arveil stood up in her throne and looked back and forth as if uncertain where to direct the fight. Eastwards, the large mass of the Brass Scythe began to rally and press back against the Neferatians.

A new force had entered the fray, one Neferata did not know and had not foreseen. Her lips drew back in a gradual snarl of frustration. She would have to deal with this enemy, yet she was held by her own spell. Her work was almost done, but the battle was changing too quickly. Arveil was suddenly caught in a pincer attack. Neferata felt the cruel certainty that a second trap had been sprung, this time on her. Perhaps she could still disarm it. She began a slow turn, sweeping a cloud of ghosts with her, away from the Bloodbound they were harrying. She would hurl them against the new foe and give Arveil a chance to regroup.

Neferata was midway through the turn when the arcane bolt hit. It was a massive, brutalising shock. For a few moments, she knew nothing except the lightning of pain. Thought ceased. Her limbs twitched rigid. She had put so much of herself into the necromantic control of the spirits and the raising of the graves that she had no defences against a bolt of this power. It blasted through her spell, disrupting it, wrenching everything from her grasp.

Caught in the burst, Nagadron howled, jerking wildly, held by the waves of explosions of death energy. The force of the bolt hurled Neferata forwards, out of her seat on the dread abyssal’s back. She bounced against his spine, and then fell. She plummeted between the huge upthrusts of the tombs, convulsing in a flashing black cloud of force. And she felt herself drop through the tatters of her spell, the tapestry she had woven coming apart like a broken web.

Javassak had fought his way to the peak of the risen tomb wedge to the south of Neferata when he saw the streak of sorcerous light strike her from the direction of Knell. The balance of the war had already begun to shift, and the blinding fog of raging frustration lifted from his eyes. Though Javassak’s fury blazed on, cold calculation tempered his thoughts. When the land had cracked and heaved, it had separated him from the bulk of his warhorde. From this height, he saw that Herkon, the Exalted Deathbringer of the Brass Scythes, had command of a great number of the Bloodbound. In the time it took for Neferata to fall to the ground in the narrow gorge between the high galleries of tombs, Javassak hesitated between his choices.

Already, Herkon was hurling back the forces of that black vulture of a vampire noble. If Herkon took the day, he might also think to take the horde from Javassak. But Neferata was down, and the smell of revenge filled his nostrils. Hesitation vanished, burned away by the need to take so great a prize.

‘Her skull is mine!’ Javassak roared, and the warriors surrounding him shouted bloody praise to him and to Khorne.

They poured down the upthrust, leaping from level to level of tombs. They dropped so fast, their race was really a barely controlled fall. Javassak ignored the jarring impact as he plunged twenty feet at a time and his boots punched craters into packed earth and cracked stone. Daurax raced at his side, hooves smashing through stone shelves as the juggernaut hurled itself into a nearly vertical run. The slaughterpriest Ressiak and the bloodsecrator Baham were only a few steps behind, and they led the rampaging gore pilgrims. The sight of Neferata falling had driven the pilgrims to a maddened frenzy of worship. A great enemy waited to be destroyed in the name of Khorne, and they were heedless of personal risk. Some fell, breaking limbs and necks, and some were trampled. The losses were insignificant. The Mortarch was injured, and she was alone. Javassak had more than enough followers with him to destroy her.

‘Mine!’ Javassak shouted again. ‘Her skull is mine!’

More than her skull would be his. The war would be won by his hand. Graunos would elevate him above all other lords. He could not begin to imagine the rewards from Khorne for such a victory. He could not imagine them, but he could taste them, taste the blood filling his mouth and running down his chin. He had bitten through his tongue after another hard landing, and he exulted in its flow.

The Brass Scythes reached the floor of the canyon. Neferata was only just rising to her feet. She was still alone.

‘Blood for the Blood God!’ Javassak screamed. He raised his giant Axe of Khorne. The blade screamed too, hungry to destroy the usurper of blood.

Nobility is a useful weakness, easily exploited. I have heard it, time and again, through age upon age, proclaimed to be a strength. I have yet to see a single instance where this is true. Should the impossible appear, however, I confess without hesitation that it would interest me greatly.

– Ruminations and Satires

Chapter 5

The Guardian Spire turned, and Vask shuffled, holding himself in place so that he might see the unfolding of the Hellezans’ revenge. He could barely stand after unleashing the arcane bolt. The spell had taken all his energy. He was a dried husk. He felt as if the next gust of wind would shrivel him to ash. When he breathed, his lungs rattled wetly, all phlegm and loose stones. The weight of Kasten’s mummy threatened to pull him over.

It was all worth it. He had struck at Neferata, and he had watched her fall. The moment of her plunge was the crowning achievement of his life. His entire existence had been directed to making that moment real. By his hand, he had ripped her from the sky. By his command, he would now see her finished.

The struggle was not over yet. Neferata was not destroyed. But Vask could see the end coming, and if he had had the strength, he would have laughed. Javassak led a flood of Khornate warriors to where she had fallen. The cleft between the risen cemeteries had become a cauldron of fighting. Neferata was alone against a lord of Khorne and his most fanatical followers. It was possible that they would be enough to bring an end to her.

Possible, but not certain. He would make certain, and he would have the Hellezan line take part in her destruction, right up to the point that there was nothing left of Neferata but dust.

‘Go,’ he croaked. The word was a cracked whisper, barely audible to his own ears. He stretched his arm out again, and his command was visible to the Lytessian horse guard below. Buglers sounded the charge, and Skarveth led the thunder across the plain towards the struggle in the canyon. The banners were high, and for the first time since the Age of Myth, the banner of House Hellezan flapped proudly in the wind, racing towards vindication.

Vask followed the sight of the horse guard storming past isolated clashes and driving straight into the canyon. ‘It is accomplished,’ he said to Kasten. ‘In your father’s name, the battle is about to be won.’

End her. Smash her reign forever. My father reaches out from the grave to claim his victory.

Vask found the energy to shout, ‘Mathas, you are avenged!’

The armoured behemoth blazed with the power of his god. Javassak hit at Neferata with axe blows that would have shattered temple pillars. He was fast, too. He was a rockslide, and he was lightning. And there was desperation in his eyes. He had been on the edge of failure before that bolt had brought her down. He knew what failure would cost him if he did not succeed, and if he was to succeed, it had to be now. His desperation was his weak point, if only Neferata could use it.

She couldn’t. She blocked his attacks with the staff Aken-seth. Each time the weapons clashed, the air flashed deep crimson. Eldritch fire engulfed the arms of the duellists.

Javassak had the offensive, and she could not take it from him. She could only react and block. In her right hand, Akmet-har, the Dagger of Jet, screamed in anger, as hungry as she was to plunge the blade past the seams of Javassak’s armour and strike him all the way through to his soul. But she could not find the opportunity. Though Javassak roared ‘Her skull is mine! Her skull is mine!’, he did not shun the aid his minions gave him. His slaughterpriest swung repeatedly at Neferata’s right flank, and the gore pilgrims hurled themselves to their doom in the service of their lord. Neferata slashed with the dagger, killing two more at each stroke, opening throats and stealing the essence of her enemies even faster than their blood could jet from their bodies. Their blows, the few they landed, meant nothing to her, but they kept her busy.

The Axe of Khorne and the Staff of Pain slammed against each other again, and again, and the storm of their war grew, surging dark red across the canyon floor, engulfing all the combatants in a vortex of bloody fire. It swept the weaker of the Bloodbound into the air, burned them and wrenched their bodies apart, lashing the ground with the rain of their blood. Javassak leaned ever more heavily into his blows, his desperation driving his wrath even higher. His eyes bulged, and the spike driven through his skull glowed red with heat. His skin blackened, smoke rising from the top of his skull. His pain transmuted into rage, and he brought the axe down with such force that when Neferata blocked it, the ground trembled and split beneath their feet.

The Brass Scythe and its lord pressed her harder and harder. She could hold them at bay but not counter their attacks, and Neferata hissed as she saw where the struggle was going. Trapped here, she could not aid her forces, and if they fell, sooner or later, even more reinforcements would come to Javassak’s aid and finally overwhelm her. Her being still rang like a struck bell from the surprise blow of the bolt from Knell, and Javassak was not giving her the chance to gather her forces and unleash her sorcery. She was using all her concentration to block the next strike, to cut down the gore pilgrims who dared to come at her with their blades, to hold back the slaughterpriest’s harrying attacks and to weather the blasts that hit her again and again from the bloodsecrator’s skull icons as he chanted and prayed to the Blood God. Some of the attacks were getting through. Blood ran down her face and shoulders. Her armour was scorched, and her wounds burned with the fire of Khorne’s wrath.

Nagadron could not help her. The bolt had struck him hard too, and before he could recover, the Bloodbound had swarmed him. Though his jaws snapped bodies in half, the sheer mass of the attackers was holding him to the ground.

‘You will fall!’ Javassak roared, and slammed the axe down.

‘I will see you on your knees before me,’ Neferata taunted, blocking the strike, triggering ear-splitting thunderclaps and another blast of eldritch flame. She was trying to goad him into an error. It was the only tactic left to her to try to break the stalemate before it was too late.

Then she heard a different thunder, one of hooves. It was the sound of time running out.

Javassak heard it too, and understood its import. He brayed with furious laughter.

Banners flying, horns blaring, the horse guard slammed into the battle. Javassak swept his axe back and paused, waiting for the opportunity this new force would give him. In his contorted face, Neferata saw the certainty that the battle was about to end.

Then the lead horseman shouted, and Javassak froze, his eyes widening in astonishment and disbelief.

‘For Neferata!’ was the cry. ‘For our queen!’

‘For Neferata!’ all the mounted warriors echoed.

As surprised as Javassak, Neferata lunged forwards to seize his moment of confusion. Javassak reacted quickly, smashing the thrust of her bladed staff aside and backing away. Before she could press her advantage, the slaughterpriest charged her flank with a howling scream. She sidestepped and stabbed with the Dagger of Jet, catching the shaft of the slaughterpriest’s axe and forcing it up. The zealot kept charging, colliding with her. She held her ground and knocked him back, but then had to whirl to counter a new flurry of blows from the recovered, furious Javassak.

The tide of battle began to change once more. A company of the horse guard tore into the gore pilgrims attacking Nagadron. They trampled the Khorne worshippers into a blood mire and slashed them from the Adevore’s back. In moments, the weight had diminished enough for Nagadron to take to the air. Gore pilgrims howled as he shook them free, sending them plummeting down to smash on the ground. With a vengeful roar, he parted his jaws and swooped back down into the midst of the enemy, sweeping them up with his teeth, shredding their bodies and claiming their souls. His black skeleton glowed explosively, blazing with the green of captured spirits. The terrible light burned into the gore pilgrims to either side of him as he flew, crippling them, doubling them over in agony, leaving them helpless as he cut them down like wheat.

Screaming incoherently, Javassak came at Neferata with such fury that rock shattered and smoked beneath his feet. The air burned as the axe came in at her, and she had to counter with both her weapons to arrest the blow. The explosion of the impact was blinding. For a moment, she was surrounded by fire and lightning. The force of Javassak’s hit drove her into the ground as far as her ankles, and pain thrashed through her body. Before the glare of the blast faded, and before she could turn from the lord of Khorne, there was a rush of movement on her right. The slaughterpriest was coming at her again, while the gore pilgrims rushed into the flames from all sides.

Neferata leapt backwards, breaking away from Javassak and somersaulting through the air to land a few yards back from the attack. Before she could turn to the slaughterpriest, he staggered to a halt, his scream of rage cut short. The leader of the horse guard had plunged his sword through the zealot’s chest. The slaughterpriest’s head nodded forwards, starting at its bloodied reflection in the blade.

Other warriors rode up beside their leader, decapitating gore pilgrims with blows as savage as they were precise. Together, they bought Neferata the chance she needed. She had the moments to focus on Javassak alone.

He charged, maddened, as unstoppable as his juggernaut mount. His desperation was as acute as his wrath. He knew this was his last chance, and he was taking it with the power of a hurricane.

Then the cavalry leader jumped from his horse and put himself in the path of the lord of Khorne. ‘For our queen!’ he shouted, and ran forwards, blade extended.

Incredulous, Javassak struck the warrior with a side swipe of his axe. The warrior’s armour was as cloth against the blood-forged weapon. The blow cut through his flank and shattered his spine, killing him at once and hurling his body out of Javassak’s way.

Javassak’s attack was brutal and dismissive. It was also his mistake. He was still coming at Neferata, but he had to pull his axe back again. She didn’t give him the chance. Setting aside, for the moment, her own astonishment at the scene she had just witnessed, she rushed at Javassak like a shadow, like the wind, and she drove Akmet-har through Javassak’s right eye. His skull cracked. His legs kept moving, and he carried her backwards for several yards as his life and soul poured into the dagger. His jaw sagged, its rage draining away to the blankness of death.

Neferata yanked Akmet-har free and propelled herself away from the shambling corpse. Javassak took three more steps, then crashed to the earth like a felled tree. A short distance away, his juggernaut screamed at the death of its master, then screamed again as Nagadron landed on its back with the force of a meteor. The Adevore closed his jaws around the juggernaut’s head and crushed it.

Neferata did not understand what had happened. She experienced the mixed emotions that mystery always raised in her. She was wary of anything that she did not control. At the same time, she was delighted by the novelty of surprise. The horse guard that had arrived to be the salvation of her campaign was no force that she had anticipated. There was meaning here to be plumbed, but it would have to wait. She had the advantage now, and she must press it home.

Confusion was spreading through the Brass Scythe. The lord of the warhorde was dead, and so was the priest who stirred the warriors’ blood to battle. Even as Nagadron pulled the head off the juggernaut, the rest of the horse guard turned on the bloodsecrator and brought him down, bringing a sudden end to his prayers. The leadership of the horde in this region of the battlefield was gone, and the forces that remained fell back as Neferata turned on them in anger and majesty.

She spread her arms, brandishing staff and dagger, and rose into the air. Nagadron rushed to her. The Adevore hovered beneath her while she lowered herself into the throne-like saddle once more. Her strength was rushing back to her, and with it her command of sorcery.

Nagadron climbed higher, taking her above the fray on the ground, up between the great wedges of earth. Neferata reached out again to the spirits she had earlier enslaved to her will. They were still present, unable to leave the land where they had been interred. They had lost their purpose when she fell, and they roamed aimless through the air above the battle, a disordered, aethereal cloud. They were a storm that could not gather. The spirits on the ground attacked whoever was near. Their aggression was mindless and indiscriminate. They did not know what they were or what they must do. They knew only the pain of their existence and their hatred for anything that breathed.

The battle was not won yet. She needed to wield this host to complete her task.

‘Hear me!’ Neferata cried, and they heard her. ‘You are mine, for I am your queen, and your sole purpose is my will!’

She gave them direction again, and they came, howling, to answer her call. The storm gathered, and she guided it past the canyon, down to the broader struggle, where Arveil was on the verge of retreat. At Neferata’s command, the storm broke, shattering the blade of the Brass Scythe.

The betrayal defied comprehension. Vask stared for a long time before he understood what he was seeing. At first, from this distance, all he could make out was that the battle had suddenly turned against the warhorde. There was confusion and struggle where there should have been a quick end. The only enemies in the canyon were Neferata and her dread abyssal. Skarveth’s attack should have finished the battle. Instead it continued. And when the eldritch blasts of the duel between the Mortarch and the lord of Khorne ceased, Vask saw Neferata ascend once more.

Vask could not assemble what he was witnessing into a narrative he could comprehend until Neferata left the canyon and he saw that the struggle went on. The horse guard of House Lytessian was fighting the Brass Scythe.

Understanding gave birth to an even greater incomprehension. So huge a betrayal was impossible. It was beyond conception. The centuries of preparation could not have come to this.

Vask stared, mouth agape, unable to do more than hold his position atop the revolving Spire. The scream built in his chest. His jaws strained wider and wider. When at last the shriek tried to come it was so huge that it could not escape his throat. He danced his pointless, shuffling dance, unable to give expression to his hate and anger.

Kasten had the words. Traitor! the corpse screamed. Traitors! TRAITORS! There were no other words, yet the words were too small. The corpse howled in Vask’s head. It screamed for the justice that had been taken away, and for a new retribution.

There could be no justice against Neferata now. Not on this day, though while Vask drew breath, and while Kasten raged in the darkness of his strange death, the struggle for that justice would not end. He would see her destroyed yet, now or in a century.

Retribution, though, was moments away. The blocked, raging scream inside Vask became a flood of new strength. Rage became power. Graunos refused Vask communion with the god he served. Khorne would not have him, yet Vask swore his fealty all the same. He was devoted to wrath. It was something that could not be taken from him. In his defeat, his anger became even mightier. Vask drew the strength into another sorcerous bolt. It could not be as powerful as the one he had launched at Neferata. It did not have to be. His targets now were mortals, and he had fury enough to spare to make them die.

He hoped Skarveth was still alive. He wanted the worst of the betrayers to feel his anger.

The building up of the spell took precious time. The Neferatians would soon be victorious, and attention would turn to Knell. Neferata would seek the one who had harmed her. Vask had to flee. His death would spell the end of the dream of Mathas Hellezan’s revenge. Being a fool now would make him a traitor no less than Skarveth. Vask felt the time slip away, but he stayed where he was. His fury held him where he stood. It would take its shape and find its victims. In this moment, it was his master.

His mouth still strained and Kasten still shrieked when he finally raised his hands, fingers crooked into claws, and unleashed the scream. His wrath was blinding. It was a comet of red, and it streaked into the base of the canyon. The space between the cliffs flashed the colour of incandescent brass. It seemed to Vask that he could hear the screams of the dying, as if they travelled back on the traces of sorcery to give him this small reward.

Traitors! Traitors! Traitors! Kasten screamed.

‘Traitors!’ Vask hissed. He could speak again.

His shoulders slumped, though he fought back the new wave of exhaustion. It was time to flee. Already, to the south of the canyon, he saw that the rest of the Brass Scythe were being exterminated. He tore himself away from the sight of the disaster and started down the stairs of the Guardian Spire. He had taken the risk. It had been worth it. He could think more clearly again. There was much that he had to do, so he could not let himself be caught.

He would be gone from Knell before Neferata came looking for him. He could not believe fate would let her find him. He would hide, and follow the guidance of wrath until he could strike again.

The battle was over. Once Neferata took command again of the spirit host, the slaughter of the Brass Scythe did not take long. Arveil recovered quickly and drove her forces through the enemy. When night fell, the landscape was littered with bodies, the barren ground turning marshy with blood. A few siege towers had escaped the great rockslide at Nighthall Keep and had emerged from the pass. Now, smoking from the fires that had consumed them, they leaned to the side, on the verge of collapse, useless structures lost on the broken land. They were blackened memorials to Javassak’s folly. Neferata flew Nagadron once over the entire field of battle, ensuring that the last pockets of the warhorde were being exterminated. Then she released her hold on the spirit host, commanding the phantoms back to their graves. She had Nagadron return her to the ground and, accompanied by Arveil, she headed back to the canyon.

‘What is it you seek here?’ Arveil asked as they approached the site of Neferata’s duel with Javassak. The Nightreaper had left her palanquin outside the canyon and now glided along beside Neferata, her robes flowing over the ground like liquid shadow.

‘An explanation.’ The horse guard was dead, annihilated by the second powerful bolt she had seen launched from the Knell. Neferata had sent forces to scour the city, but she did not expect the enemy that had attacked her to still be there. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing to the scorched banners on the ground. ‘House Lytessian.’

‘The same colours were carried by the foe that attacked me,’ said Arveil.

‘Precisely. There are multiple betrayals here, and they are all surprises. I will not let this mystery stand.’

‘I did not know the Lytessians were this powerful.’

‘Nor did I.’ Neferata had no qualms in admitting her ignorance in this situation. It was evident that she had not anticipated the ambush. ‘What dealings have you had with them?’ Their lands were outside Arveil’s sphere of influence, but not as far from her centre of control as they were from Nulahmia.

‘I’ve had very little to do with them,’ Arveil said. ‘They keep to themselves.’ She shook her head. ‘To have built up such a force…’

‘It took time and secrecy, and most of all determination. This is not a rebellion that came into being yesterday.’

‘You will want to seek answers at their home.’

‘Yes.’ And she would burn it to the ground. ‘But my immediate question is here. The entire mounted force of the Lytessians turned against their house. Their leader gave his life for me.’ The sacrifice fascinated her. It was an act of utter selflessness and of a loyalty that was so rare she found it hard to understand.

Neferata searched the corpse-strewn ground until she found him. The side of his armour was split and melted from the Axe of Khorne’s blow. Neferata knelt and removed his helmet. The scarred face she revealed was unknown to her. She had not expected to recognise him, yet the confirmation that she had never seen him before made his actions even more striking. His loyalty had not been compelled by promise or by threat. To the contrary, he had led his troops against the ties of his own house. They had all followed him. And they had all died. She cast her mind back across the ages, riffling through her storehouse of memories, searching for another occasion when someone had given their life in her defence and it was not a sacrifice she had demanded, encouraged or manipulated. She could not find one.

‘What colours are those?’ Arveil asked. ‘They are not Lytessian.’ She was looking at a banner that had fallen near where the warrior’s horse lay dead a few yards away from its master. The banner was badly burned, but the tatters that remained were not the gold and green of the house.

‘I cannot tell,’ said Neferata. ‘Not from those shreds.’ She doubted the answer was in the identity of those colours, either.

‘Then the dead will have to answer for themselves.’

‘Yes.’ Neferata paused, thinking the matter through. Summoning the spirit of the dead warrior was unsatisfying. An event had occurred here, one that she would be mistaken to ignore. She sensed opportunity, at the very least. She felt the impulse to reward the horseman.

More than anything else, she wished to explore the mystery before her.

‘I have work to do,’ she said to Arveil.

The Nightreaper bowed, understanding that she had been dismissed. She walked some distance away, and the escort of skeletons, mortals and vampires that had come with them pulled back, giving Neferata some space for solitude.

Free to concentrate, she paced around the warrior, her path drawing a leftward circle. She gestured and murmured as she walked. Glyphs appeared in the air, traced by her fingers. They glowed like tallow candles. A grey mist gathered inside the rings of glyphs. It covered the corpse like a squirming shroud. The ground beneath the warrior began to tremble. The mist grew more dense, grasping the corpse tightly. Barely visible through the fog, the man’s face began to change. His flesh sloughed away, turning liquid. Skin and muscle and blood became a muck of pink and red that pooled beside the armour, leaving only bone behind.

Neferata’s chant became more insistent. The foul sludge of flesh responded to her commands, and it moved over and around the armour, covering the warrior with the fog and then pulling away again. It scoured the metal, removing all trace of the colours of House Lytessian. When the last of the muck withdrew, the man’s armour was black as death. Even the engravings of the house were gone. There was nothing to mark the corpse as owing allegiance to anything other than Neferata. It could be refashioned, but not yet. Not until she knew more.

Neferata finished her chant. The ring of glyphs tightened around the body. They filled the fog with the light of blood. The shroud of grey and red pulsed, and the tremors of the ground where the body lay grew more violent. There was a thunderclap, and then stillness. The fog and the glyphs were gone. There was only the armour and the skeleton it contained.

The body stirred. The skull turned to fix its empty sockets on Neferata. Then the Hell Knight rose. His blade lay close by, and he picked it up. He faced Neferata and took a knee, lowering his head and presenting the blade to her with both hands, an offering and a pledge.

‘My queen,’ he said.

Skarveth had waited most of a lifetime, and then beyond, to utter those words. He had mouthed them, silently, over and over through the years. The first time had been in late childhood, when he had seen Neferata for the first time. That had been a critical moment. He thought of it as the second of two revelations that, through their close conjunction, had determined his path then and forever.

His grooming to become the next commander of the Lytessians was already well underway when he discovered the tunnel leading beneath the foundations of the house. He was twelve years old. He had been inculcated with three guiding principles – duty, honour and the struggle of the Hellezans. The first two he grasped intuitively. They gave shape to drives he had always felt, if imperfectly understood. The third remained an abstraction, a story he was told over and over, but the conflict seemed far away, a thing that had happened long ago. He saw the anger and the drive in the adults around him, but he did not see how their struggle was his.

Perhaps if he and Vissya had not been playing that day in the lower reaches of the house, he would have embraced the rebellion. He liked to believe he would not have. He liked to believe that fate had determined that he would see the truth before it was too late.

Even before that day, he knew, without having the words for his belief, that honour and duty, those great nobilities, needed an object as noble as themselves in order to be real.

He had been hiding from Vissya in a disused storage chamber. Determined that his younger cousin would never find him and thus lose this round of the game, he squirmed further and further behind dust-covered chests and heaps of battered, forgotten furniture, until he had his back to the wall. Something made him turn around. Later, he would decide he had heard the call of destiny. It might have been as simple as a slight breeze on the back of his neck. Whatever the reason, he saw a darker patch in the deep gloom. There was a fissure in the wall. If he crouched, there was just enough room for him to squeeze inside.

He entered the fissure before he could hesitate. The blackness was complete. He pushed forwards, expecting to come out in another room. Instead, the passage kept going, turning, twisting and descending. It widened slightly, and he could move more easily. He felt his way forwards, still blind but following the distant echo of a whisper. Curiosity fought with terror and triumphed. On he went, until he began to see light again. There was only the faintest, wavering glow at first. Gradually, it grew brighter, becoming candlelight. The voice became louder too. It wasn’t a whisper. It was a rasping croak, as if the speaker had been shouting for hours.

At last, the passage narrowed again, becoming another crack in a wall, and he emerged in a low stone tunnel. Skarveth crept to the right, following the voice, until he stopped at the entrance to a circular chamber.

Candles guttered over symbols daubed in blood. He did not know what they meant, but they frightened him. In the centre of the room, a monster shrieked at itself.

‘But when, Kasten, when?’ the creature hissed at the skull biting its shoulder.

Skarveth’s parents had shown him the portraits of Kasten and Vask. He recognised Vask, just barely. There was none of the nobility he had seen in the paintings. This was a twisted, degenerate, rotting grotesque. Vask ranted of blood and vengeance, and cursed every day that stood between him and Neferata’s destruction. Not a single word about freedom or honour passed from the spittle-flecked lips. When Skarveth crawled silently away, he was terrified, but he also felt the beginnings of another emotion that would become powerful in the days ahead.

Contempt.

Skarveth did not show Vissya his discovery then. He would, though, after the second revelation. That came a few weeks later, with the image of Vask fermenting in his imagination. He, Vissya and the other young Lytessians travelled with the elders on the long journey south to Mortannis. No one told him why they were going. When they finally arrived, the city was in the midst of a celebration. Neferata had defeated an attempt by a warhost of the Ruinous Powers to take Mortannis exactly one year before, and she was to pass down the central boulevard in triumph to mark the anniversary.

The elder Lytessians brought the children into the crowds lining the street as the martial parade went by. Neferata rode Nagadron ahead of a great cavalry of vampires.

Skarveth’s mother leaned down and whispered, so softly he could barely hear her, ‘There. There is the enemy of our family.’

Skarveth stared, eyes wide with wonder. This was the being he was supposed to dedicate his life to destroying? She was majesty itself. She was beauty and power. No one was her equal, and no one should dare to pretend otherwise. She looked down on her subjects with an imperiousness that came with a right that truly was divine. She smiled, and every Mortannian shouted as if she had smiled at them, and only them.

Skarveth felt that smile too. It pierced him to the core. Here was a figure worthy of duty and honour.

He pictured the withered monster in the depths of the house, and he saw his family for the disgusting traitors they were.

My queen, he thought for the first time.

He looked at Vissya, standing next to him. He saw the shine in her eyes.

When they returned to the keep in the Mourning Heights, he showed her the secret he had discovered. He showed her the truth. Then he showed it to others who had been in Mortannis with him.

The rebellion within the rebellion began, with the children revealing to each other the lies of their elders. They would hold their great secret close, growing in knowledge and wisdom. They became the cavalry that Skarveth would lead. They were the visible expression of Vask’s hopes, and they were determined to destroy his dreams.

‘My queen.’ The skeleton’s voice came out from between its jaws like a rasping echo. ‘You have given me a boon I cannot ever repay. Will you do me one more and accept my service, now and forever, in whatever form you deem fit?’

‘Rise,’ Neferata said, and the Hell Knight obeyed, sheathing his sword. ‘Tell me your name.’

‘I am Skarveth Lytessian,’ he said, ‘though the name I bear is only half a truth, and half the shame I must expunge.’

‘Then declare the full truth.’

‘I carry the blood…’ Skarveth paused. He removed one of his gauntlets and stared at his skeletal hand. ‘I carried the blood of a traitor.’ When he corrected himself, the hollow timbre of his voice rose, like the sighing of the wind. His skull tilted to one side, and if it was possible for the eternal grin of a death’s head to convey real joy, it did in that moment. ‘I carried the blood of Mathas Hellezan.’

‘I destroyed House Hellezan long ago,’ Neferata said. ‘In another age.’

‘You did, my queen. But the wife and son of Mathas escaped your judgement. They survived, and were taken in by House Lytessian.’

‘A long time for a rebellion to be concealed,’ said Neferata. She had to accord due respect to the accomplishment.

‘And a long time to prepare. It is the work of Kasten, son of Mathas. His will is great, even after death. It is embodied now in his descendant, Vask.’

‘Kasten became a necromancer,’ Neferata deduced, thinking of the size of the skeleton army that had attacked Arveil.

‘So is Vask,’ said Skarveth.

‘But not you.’

‘No. I was assigned other… duties… in the war.’ His hesitation loaded the word with contempt. ‘I was meant to be a more visible symbol.’

‘You were to lead a charge, rather than raise the dead,’ said Neferata.

The echoing voice turned into a bitter laugh. ‘The nobility of cavalry,’ said Skarveth. ‘The glory of the charge. The banners held high in the hour of vengeance. So much nobility. So much glory. So much pride.’ He looked at his hand again. When he faced Neferata, he was calmer, as if soothed by what he had seen. ‘My duties were not just in battle, though. It was through me that the Hellezan line was to continue.’

‘Has it?’

‘I am the last.’

He spoke with pride. Neferata saw that its source was not that he was a Hellezan, but that he had ensured there would be no others after him. The Hell Knight seemed to stand taller, pleased that one of his tasks, at least, had been absolutely fulfilled.

The jaws of the skull gaped and there was laughter again, this time a chuckle like the rattling of stones.

‘I don’t think Vask ever forgave me the scars left on my face by a wolf,’ Skarveth continued. ‘I lost the face he lived through. I lost the face he wanted to see as a symbol for the risen Hellezans.’ The voice became grim. ‘I hope to encounter him again. I would very much like him to see me now.’

‘It was he who attacked from Knell?’

‘It was.’

‘The Hellezans have grown formidable over the centuries.’

‘They have had time and their hatred for you to hone their abilities, and to find allies.’

‘From outside Neferatia?’

‘I suspect so, but cannot prove it.’

‘Today was proof enough.’ It was too much to believe that Vask had been lucky in his choice of when and how to strike. Graunos’ hand reached further than she would have liked to believe.

This was useful information, but it did not yet answer the greater mystery, the one which had led her to raise the Hell Knight. ‘Kasten and Vask are explicable. You are less so. Why did you turn against your family?’

‘Mathas Hellezan was a traitor. So was Kasten. So is Vask. I believe in honour. I believe in the possibility of nobility, though the version Vask tried to force upon me is a travesty. I was raised to believe in something that was a sham, when the reality of our families was nothing more than eternal vendetta. For myself, and for my troops, the one true form of honour is to serve you.’ Skarveth spoke as if he had waited his entire life and beyond to express this belief. The words carried a conviction that his rasp could not.

‘Your service is accepted,’ Neferata said. How extraordinary. Loyalty, nobility, honour… These were concepts she considered to be combinations of myth and weakness. But they appeared to be embodied in Skarveth. He had died for them, but in dying, he had changed the outcome of the battle. That did not seem like a weakness. The Hell Knight was a being she must study.

Skarveth bowed his thanks. ‘Command me however you will, and if it pleases you, use me to exterminate the last of my accursed clan.’

‘I will. And what of your comrades? Did they know in whose name they fought?’

‘They did.’

‘Then they shall rise too. You and your guard kept the secret of your true allegiance well.’

‘The ability to act in secret is the one point I have in common with my ancestors,’ Skarveth said wryly. Already, he was learning, through slight pauses and the careful choice of words, to convey expression in his sepulchral voice.

‘Are there any other portions of House Lytessian loyal to me?’ Neferata asked.

‘None. The family was already corrupt when it took in Teyosa and Kasten Hellezan. The rot has been complete since.’

‘Vask seems to have been very well informed about my plans for this day.’

‘He was.’

‘There are no Lytessians in my court at Nulahmia.’

‘They have other friends.’

More traitors in my house. ‘Come with me, then. Your guard will become your Black Knights, and your service to me will begin by rewarding betrayal with a great purge.’

Skarveth bowed again. The smile of his skull was eager.

No foe, however badly defeated, ceases to be a threat until they are dust, and even this is no perfect guarantee. At the same time, every trace the enemy leaves in life is a potential weapon against them.

– Tactics

Chapter 6

Skarveth was at the head of his company once more. He felt that this was, in truth, the first time he had truly led them. He took pride in the action they had taken outside Knell, but they had been riding under false colours. He and his warriors had had to pretend to be something they hated. They were not yet their true selves.

Now they were.

He rode a skeleton horse, leading a skeleton troupe. The green-and-gold armour was gone. Everything was black now. They were a company of death, and they were a proud company. Skarveth’s life had been lived under the shadow of his treacherous ancestors. His days, since his coming of age, had been an eternal round of subterfuge and frustration. He could not say what he believed except in careful whispers to his comrades. His company was the single real accomplishment of his mortal existence, and now it helped define the shape of his new being.

He rode taller in the saddle than ever before. It was more than the currents of deathly power that flowed around his bones. It was the privilege of escorting the Mortarch of Blood on the ride to retribution at House Lytessian. And it was the knowledge that honour had won.

As they approached the wall, Neferata a short distance overhead on Nagadron, Skarveth turned to Vissya. Her posture mirrored his pride.

‘You followed me into death,’ he said. ‘You have my thanks, though I realise that is a small thing.’

‘It isn’t,’ said Vissya. ‘It is also unnecessary. We followed you, but you were taking us where we wished to go. And we have arrived.’

‘There has been a cost.’ He did not mean death. The company’s resurrection as Black Knights was a greater reward than any of them could have dreamed. But Vissya and the others had risen blind.

‘What cost?’ said Vissya. ‘Do I ride badly?’

‘You do not.’ The formation of the Black Knights was as precise as the horse guard’s had been in life.

‘We have become the full truth of ourselves, Skarveth,’ Vissya said. ‘Our queen has given us a rare gift. Vask sought to control what we saw and believed. Neferata has blessed us with a deeper perception. There is no loss. There is gain. I hear the world. I hear the living and the dead. I hear the shape of the underworlds. The image of the world, in my mind’s eye, is sharper and more true than I ever saw with eyes of flesh. I have a different kind of sight now. It is a magnificent one. And the path of my lance will be as straight as it has ever been.’

‘Then I am satisfied.’

They reached the wall and passed through the southern gate. It was hanging open, unguarded.

‘I sense no watch anywhere along this stretch of the wall,’ Vissya said.

There had been, though, when the army of House Lytessian had marched for Knell. Not every member of the house was fit for battle, and the lands still needed to be protected. ‘Killed or fled,’ said Skarveth. Even if all of them were loyal to Vask, they would not amount to a large force. In open battle, the Black Knights would finish them in moments.

They rode on, deeper into Lytessian land, rising in the highlands. Before long, Skarveth saw black smoke spiralling into the sky.

‘The coward has burned the house,’ said Vissya.

Skarveth’s grip on the reins tightened. ‘That task was rightfully ours.’ It would have been satisfying, and fitting, to have been given the duty of destroying House Lytessian after its secrets had been plumbed.

The house was blackened but still standing when they reached it. The fires were burning low, though clouds of smoke rolled over the landscape. Neferata descended from Nagadron and stood before the entrance, smoke eddying around her as if in obeisance. The conflagration had been hastily set. It seemed to have been an act of anger, a lashing out, rather than an attempt to erase all trace of what had been.

‘Search what remains,’ she said to Skarveth. ‘Look closely. Nothing is insignificant.’

‘By your command, my queen.’

Vask had been thorough in his destruction in one particular way. There were no survivors. The Black Knights found numerous charred corpses in the ruins, many of them run through before they had been burned.

‘Did they turn against him?’ Vissya wondered.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Skarveth. The few bodies that were recognisable were those of aged and infirm members of the household. ‘They were of no use to him where he was going, and a possible threat to him if they remained behind.’

The roof over the armoury had fallen in, and from what Skarveth could see of the wreckage, the chamber had been completely emptied before the fire had been set. In the cellars beneath the house, the tunnels that led deeper into the hillside were blocked. There was no point in trying to dig them out. Vask had sealed off the path of his flight utterly. It was as if the tunnels had never existed at all.

Many of the chambers on the main floor had been spared. Vask’s primary concern seemed to have been to take the weapons and block pursuit. One of the rooms that had escaped the blaze was the gallery, and Skarveth’s jaw parted in contemptuous anger when he paused at its threshold. This was the room he most wished to set alight. But he had a duty to show it to his queen first.

Skarveth and Vissya stepped aside for Neferata as she passed the ruined threshold and moved into the unburned hall. It was a narrow gallery, the walls lined with portraits. They were by different hands, in different styles, from different times and of different people. Yet they were all linked by the same family features.

At the far end of the hall were three bronze statues. The one in the centre was of Mathas Hellezan. The proportions were heroic. Mathas was a colossus, at least fifteen feet high. His chin was raised, and his blank metal gaze stared into the distance, as if he were looking past the horizon to the coming victory. The way Neferata had seen him at the end of his struggle was very different. He had been kneeling, defeated, broken to discover he had been under her sway from the moment he had become a vampire.

On either side of Mathas were two smaller statues. They were still easily ten feet tall. The one on the left she recognised as Teyosa. The other she deduced was Kasten. She had only seen him as an infant. The man he had become was an angrier figure than his father. These were the fountains of the long conspiracy.

Neferata studied the statues, then moved along the rows of paintings, stopping at each in turn, learning the features of enemies who had lived and died without her ever knowing they existed.

‘Vask taunts you,’ said Skarveth, his hatred for his ancestor clear. ‘That is why he preserved this hall.’

Neferata laughed. ‘The insult is obvious. So is Vask’s arrogance. Does he think none of this will be of use to me? Tell me, is there any family link between Lytessian and Hellezan?’

‘None. Their connection was their alliance against you.’

‘So none of these are pure Lytessians. This is solely the lineage of Hellezan.’

‘Yes.’

‘Was there a gallery for the Lytessians?’

‘Not like this. Their portraits were more scattered, adorning rooms in the rest of the house.’

‘I see. This hall says much about the hold the Hellezans had over House Lytessian. The guests came to rule, it seems, and it did not take long for them to do so. They were parasites upon the host.’

‘That is the achievement of Kasten,’ said Skarveth. ‘He was the great parasite.’

Neferata stopped before the portrait of a woman in plate armour. She stared at it, wondering why it had seized her attention. Then she smiled, her eyes widening in surprise. The woman in the painting might not be Lord-Relictor Rhasan Darksight, but she was at the very least a close relation. This is your mistake, Vask. You should have burned this room. You escaped, but you have also given me this gift. ‘Does Vask know about the Anvils of the Heldenhammer that have arrived to the south of Angaria?’ she asked.

‘We heard rumours of Sigmar’s lightning, my queen, but not much else,’ said Skarveth. ‘I would presume he knew more than we did, but he said nothing to me.’

Even if she granted that Vask was fed information by Graunos, there were limits to what the daemon prince could know at this point. She doubted Graunos was aware of the individual Stormcast Eternals. ‘You were high in Vask’s confidence,’ she said.

‘I was,’ said the Hell Knight, clearly proud to have betrayed a leader unworthy of loyalty. ‘He mentioned them only to say they were a possible source of distraction to you. I did not get the impression he gave them much more thought than that.’

‘Good. Then I have what I need from this hall.’

‘Do I have your permission to put these portraits to the torch and take a hammer to the statues of treachery?’

‘You do, with one exception.’ She pointed to the armoured woman. ‘Preserve that one.’

‘She will see!’ Vask cried again. ‘She will know how long our vengeance has been gathering! She will fear us!’ He triggered another group of wards long prepared in case he should need to flee. With a series of crackling explosions, the tunnel down which he had come fell in, forever sealing off another portion of his subterranean web of passages.

‘She. Will. Fear!’ he repeated, raising his arms in defiant triumph as the wind and the dust of the cave-in rushed over him.

Her lesson is not finished, said Kasten.

‘But it should have been!’ Vask hissed. He turned and resumed his limping march deeper and deeper into the roots of the Mourning Heights. ‘It would be over if not for treachery. How did you not see?’ he yelled at the corpse. ‘How did you not know?’

The dead grip of Kasten’s teeth in his shoulder throbbed. There was no answer.

Vask had been alternating between defiance and bitterness since leaving the Guardian Spire in Knell. His voice was hoarse, but he could not stop. He had only the company of his anger as he staggered down the narrow tunnels.

Entombed! Kasten cried. Entombed! You should not have let this happen. We should be claiming Nulahmia as ours!

The passageways were crude, barely wide enough for him to pass through. The light of his torch bleached the walls grey and showed the marks of the picks that had carved out this route. The mining was more careful than it appeared. It had taken centuries of effort to construct Vask’s routes through Neferatia. The secrecy had to be absolute. They could not intersect any other underworlds. Generations had worked on these tunnels, following the design and the maps drawn up by Kasten. He had found the ways they must pass, and the paths they must avoid. No one who laboured on the tunnels knew more than a piece of the secret. Only Kasten and his direct successors did.

All paths from House Lytessian were now destroyed. Vask had sent his remaining forces away. There were meeting points where they would gather again, along with the conspirators of other houses. The Lytessians and their allies would take different routes than Vask. The portions of the tunnel web they knew were for their passages alone. They would never know how he travelled. He needed the secrecy more than ever now, even from those who were loyal.

‘Loyalty!’ Vask ranted. ‘Who is loyal? There is no trust even in blood.’ The weight of the corpse pulled him forwards, staggering. ‘Why did Skarveth do it?’ he demanded of Kasten. ‘Why did he throw away his destiny and his life? He was the inheritor. Everything we did was for him. After the victory, he would have led the risen Hellezans. The people would have flocked to the banner. In time, he could have ruled Neferatia! Why did he betray us all? Why?’

Make them pay. Teach them the price of disloyalty. Blood will have blood.

‘What blood? Who will pay? Those who rode with Skarveth are destroyed, and he is dead. Dead! Skarveth was the last of the Hellezans. Our line ends with me. The family is extinguished.’

Make Neferata pay. Make his betrayal meaningless. We will have our blood. My father will not have died in vain. I will not have fought in vain.

Blood, Vask thought. Always blood. In the end, there is only that, to be shed and sacrificed and consumed. Blood pounded in his head. He tasted blood in his mouth. And he owed it in the bargain he had made.

It was that bargain he had to focus on now. Skarveth’s betrayal had meant that he had failed to keep his end. But that was not his fault. And he felt ill-used. There was a reckoning due, and he did not believe it should fall on him.

Vask could barely drag one foot in front of the other by the time he reached his goal. He had not rested since before the battle, and his body could not take such exertions without suffering. He arrived at his sanctuary, the way sealed behind him, and stood for a moment in the centre of the circular cavern. There were provisions stacked against the walls, enough food and torches to get him through the next phase of his journey, wherever that turned out to be. Having made it this far, he felt himself succumbing to exhaustion. He wanted to lie down on the stone floor and drift into oblivion.

Anger, his and Kasten’s, kept him going. He shook himself, then walked around the runic circle scratched into the floor, lighting the eight candles of human tallow on its periphery. The candles sat atop piles of human skulls, the heads of the last of Vask’s servants to labour on this chamber. They had become its primary sacrifice too, their deaths sealing his pact with the forces of Khorne. That was how he still saw his situation – a pact, not an oath of fealty. When the candles were lit, he completed the ceremony with a store of blood he had kept from the same victims.

As he poured the blood over the engravings in the stone, he became aware of a vast displeasure in the spiritual distance. He tried to swallow the fear that rose in answer. He knew his sacrifice was a poor one. It was also the only one he had, and he clutched his anger as a shield against dread.

Vask retreated from the ring, chanting. The blood streamed from the runes and pooled at the centre. The flames from the candles rose higher. In answer, a mist of blood coiled upwards from the floor. It spread until it became a sphere within the ring, then drew in on itself, thickening, taking on shape. At last, the swirling droplets took on the form of Graunos. The vision flowed in and out of substance, clarity waxing and waning, as it turned its eyes down on Vask.

‘You have failed in your task,’ Graunos said. His voice, forged by the violent waving of the candle flame, was the rippling noise of wind and fire.

‘I did not fail!’ Vask protested. ‘I was betrayed. If I failed, what of Javassak?’

‘Do you question me?’

Traitors! Kasten wailed in Vask’s head. All are traitors! Even the gods hurl us aside!

Vask grimaced, thinking past his anger and the corpse’s to understand he should not be challenging the daemon prince. ‘I do not question you, Lord Graunos,’ he said, fear and rage wrestling with each other.

‘That is well. Remember that Khorne cares not whence the blood flows, and it flowed in rivers on the fields of Knell.’

‘Perhaps, but to the benefit of the Mortarch of Blood.’

‘The war is not over,’ said Graunos. ‘It has not even truly begun. She has hurt us, and you have failed, so redeem yourself and bring her pain.’

‘My house is destroyed. I am greatly weakened. I cannot aid you on the battlefield in the same way again.’

‘You have other ways of making war. You have your other allies in her court.’

‘She will be looking for them now.’

‘Good. Let her have reason to. Let her be distracted. And gather the strength that remains. You are not done on the battlefield.’

‘What can you ask of me that I can do?’ Vask asked, frustrated.

‘Make for Shadowvel.’

‘To what end?’

Graunos told him, and for the first time since Skarveth’s betrayal, Vask felt a glimmer of satisfaction. Skarveth was dead, and Vask had taken his revenge on all who followed the traitor. Graunos showed him the way to a much greater vengeance.

Trust is the currency of the fool.

– Maxims

Chapter 7

The sounds of the gathering in the great hall reached Neferata and Mereneth when they were still many corridors away. The Palace of Seven Vultures echoed with the celebration of triumph.

‘Your courtiers are very eager for you to know that they rejoice in your victory,’ Mereneth said. Her smile was thin and sardonic.

‘What is your evaluation?’ Neferata asked. ‘Are they motivated more by desire for reward or by the fear of punishment?’

‘By terror, without question. I made certain that news of the Lytessians’ treachery travelled quickly.’

‘Good. Then we are well begun.’

They were walking down the length of the Hall of Pillared Night. Rows of basalt columns flanked the vast central aisle like a forest of stone trees. Damned souls, chained to each other, spiralled up each pillar, writhing in slow, perpetual agony. Mummified arms held torches a third of the way up the columns, and the upper levels of the hall vanished into the mystery of darkness. High above Neferata and Mereneth, the gloom stirred with hints of movement, some sluggish, some rapid, twisting around the dimly glimpsed traces of vaults. The hall was redolent with the vastness of night and the pain of death. The chains were laced with lines of rubies. Their crimson glints symbolised the solemnity of the hall paying obeisance to the Mortarch of Blood.

Mereneth looked up into the night of stone. Her wings rustled uneasily. ‘I am sorry, my queen, for having failed you,’ she said. ‘I did not uncover the plot of the Lytessians. Because I did not see the danger I cost us greatly. I cost you greatly.’

Neferata walked in silence for a short distance, her echoing footsteps as ominous as an execution’s drumbeat. She had no intention of throwing away as skilled a spymistress as Mereneth. It was important, however, that Mereneth appreciate the mercy that she was about to extend. When she felt that Mereneth was convinced that sentence was about to be passed, she said, ‘Tell me why you did not see them as a threat.’

‘Because I did not see them at all. They were politically insignificant.’

‘Exactly so. I did not see them either. They were indeed insignificant. They have been for centuries. Until now. That is the genius of the Hellezan conspiracy. I am forced to admire it, because it was exemplary work. The descendants of Mathas Hellezan hid in a family of no importance or influence, and maintained that appearance until now. That is impressive. They made detection effectively impossible.’

‘I welcome the chance to redeem myself in your eyes, my queen.’

‘Tell me what steps you are taking.’

‘We are beginning with the Lytessians.’ Mereneth spoke with more confidence now that it was clear her usefulness was not at an end. ‘We are exploring any connections, however slight, between them and other families.’

‘Good. Do not stop there. Look also where you have no reason to look.’

‘I will, my queen. I will not repeat my error.’

Our error. The attack and its source had caught Neferata completely by surprise, and it originated in a much older mistake. Centuries earlier, in another age, she had accepted the conviction of her agents that all the Hellezans were dead. She had not ensured that this was so. That oversight had almost doomed her outside Knell.

‘Cells,’ Mereneth mused. ‘The conspiracy must be structured in isolated cells.’

‘Yes,’ said Neferata. ‘For the secret to be kept so long, few must know its full scope. It is possible that only the Hellezan at the centre has known everything.’

‘Vask?’

‘For this generation. And before him, another single ancestor. But yes, Vask is the centre now. We must find him.’

‘He will be in hiding, after the failure of his attack.’

‘And no doubt hiding well. But unless he intends to give up on his revenge, he will have to make contact with his co-conspirators.’

‘If we can find out who they are,’ said Mereneth, ‘keeping them under close watch would give us the opportunity to find him.’

‘We will do better than that,’ Neferata said. ‘We will make them take us to him.’

‘That would be ideal. Following them will be difficult, though. They will all be on their guard.’

‘Indeed they will be. If they are wise, they are terrified. I can use their terror.’

Neferata smiled, anticipating the game ahead. She would teach Vask and his allies what vengeance really meant. The retribution would give her great pleasure. So would the process. They were both facets of her art.

She took great pride in the aesthetics of violence.

The noise of the revel grew louder, and when Neferata and Mereneth finally reached the great hall, there was a new and greater crescendo. A wave of sound greeted Neferata, rising high and foaming with shouted praise. Mortal and vampire nobles rushed forwards, crowding each other in the effort to be the most visible in congratulating the conquering queen.

Neferata gave the multitude her coldest smile and walked slowly through their midst, down the centre of the great hall. She passed beneath the great chandelier of bone and volcanic glass. Its wraith-light blazed at her approach, the candles of human tallow burning more brightly at her mere presence, as if the light were hungry and had sensed it would be fed more souls. The hall danced with the shifting play of eldritch light and shadow, the two mixing in a liquid dance, revealing and concealing the faces of the celebrants.

If any of them imagine they can hide in the dark, they will be disappointed. The darkness belonged to Neferata. It obeyed her and no one else.

As she mounted the dais in the centre of the hall, someone shouted, ‘All hail Queen Neferata!’

‘All hail the Mortarch of Blood!’ the crowd answered.

‘Glory to Nulahmia!’ from another noble.

‘Glory to Neferatia!’ from all.

In the gallery above the rear of the hall, the court musicians struck up a thunderous fanfare. It drowned out the shouts of the crowd and drew the nobles to attention. When it ended, the revellers were quiet. They stood still, looking at Neferata expectantly.

She wondered how many were fearful.

She knew better than to trust any of them. They could all be traitors, given the right circumstances. The question was which members of her court had already found those circumstances.

‘You are welcome to this celebration,’ she told the multitude. ‘Though the war against Angaria has barely begun, still we have hurt the foe most grievously. We have earned our revels. Turn to them now! Let us feast and dance, and drink to the triumph of the present and to victory of the future.’

The nobles began to turn to each other again, sensing that the formalities were over. The orchestra sounded a chord, and the crowd at the centre of the hall parted to either side, opening up the space for dancers.

Neferata held up a finger, silencing the musicians, freezing the movement of the court.

‘There are those among us who do not celebrate,’ she said. ‘They wear the masks of joy. They shout with as much enthusiasm as anyone else. But this is not a moment of triumph for them. It is a defeat, one they will not accept lightly. Already, they plot anew. But they have lost the element of surprise. I know they are here. My vengeance comes for them.’ She paused and looked over the heads of the nobles to the towering iron doors of the hall.

The doors opened, admitting Skarveth and his Black Knights. They were fully armed, and they had drawn their swords. The doors closed behind them, and they formed a line of forbidding, martial death. The shadows rushed to gather around them. Already, the work had been done on their armour to mark it with Neferata’s heraldry, and the skeleton warriors stood with menacing pride. The air of the grave haunted their plate and shields, like a kind of mouldering cold visible as hair-thin, wavering tendrils of darkness rising from the knights. At the same time, the metal gleamed with burnished gloom, its decay transmuted into strength.

‘Behold the heroes of the hour,’ said Neferata. ‘Their loyalty and their sacrifice turned the tide against the foe. They have shed the taint of their treacherous house. They are now the Riders of Knell.’

Neferata paused, letting the eyes of the assembly shift uneasily back and forth between her and the Black Knights. She turned slowly, facing the entire hall, letting every soul, living and dead, feel the weight of her gaze. As she moved, she spoke again, softly now. Her voice reached through the silence like a striking serpent. ‘I address myself now to the traitors. I am magnanimous, and I present to you a gift. It is the gift of a warning. I could let you believe that you are safe, that you are hidden, that I do not even know of your existence.

‘I could do this. Instead, I tell you now, you are not safe. House Lytessian is no more, and the flames of its pyre scour the shadows which you believe conceal you. You hide, but we will see you. You are silent, but we will hear you.’

She completed her turn and paused once more. She presented the nobles with a different smile. It was still cold. It was also hungry. It was the grin of a supreme predator. She gestured to the Riders of Knell. ‘They will hear you.’

As the night progressed, Nagia Thresend enjoyed the victory ball less and less. It had begun well. She had moved through the revellers with confidence, secure in her position. She had danced enthusiastically before Neferata’s arrival. She had cheered and shouted with everyone else. She had done well. She had been certain her secrets were safe, and that she was the one on the offensive.

Nagia was the youngest of the heirs to House Thresend. The family was far from being among the mortal powers of Nulahmia. The Thresends narrowly had the means to maintain a presence in court, and had enough friends in the vampire nobility to keep their blood from being preyed upon. If they wished to maintain what standing they had, they had to keep their wealth concentrated. Nagia’s eldest sister, Fahasca, would inherit the bulk of the fortune. Nagia had few expectations. It was her duty to increase the family’s wealth, by whatever means she could. It was a duty that had always grated. She chafed under the shadow of vampire rule, and so she chose to believe that the toppling of Neferata would be a lethal blow against the power structure of the city.

This had been her secret conviction since her adolescence, more than thirty years. She had also known not to breathe a word of her belief to anyone. Not once in her life. Yet Vask had come to know. Somehow he had learned of her. She had first learned of him in her dreams. His presence had emerged from every chaotic flow of images, night after night, hunched and hooded, too consistent and clearly defined to be dismissed as her imagination. He spoke words of resistance and hope. One night, he told her another ally would contact her in her waking hours.

She treasured that day, more than ten years past. It lived in her memory with perpetual clarity. It was, she believed, her first real step towards the dreamed-of triumph over the Mortarch of Blood. Following her dream, she had gone that morning to the market near Scarab Gate. She had lingered before a silk merchant’s stall, feigning interest in robes dyed green and black. After a few minutes there, a voice at her elbow said, ‘There is purity in such art. But not only there.’ The words were those Vask had told her to expect.

Nagia turned. The man who had spoken was dressed as a travelling merchant, his clothing fine but weathered by the road. His face, too, had been worked on by long exposure to wind. Cracked and leathered, it made him look older than he was.

Nagia stepped away from the stall. ‘You have wares I should see?’ she said, as Vask had instructed.

‘I bring you more than simple wares,’ said the merchant, completing the dream refrain. ‘I bring you wonders.’

They left the stall and moved off through the crowd, appearing casual, speaking carefully. At first, Nagia let the merchant do most of the talking, wary of taking the further, irrevocable step of speaking against Neferata and so becoming an active conspirator. Her reluctance crumbled quickly. If she wished to be more than a dreamer, then she must take the risk. And so, as the crew of dealers and the loud give and take of bartering customers drowned out her voice to any listeners except the man at her side, she said, ‘I will do whatever is asked of me.’

He nodded and they walked on, their talk becoming more cautious, and more serious. The merchant did not give her his name. ‘I do not know yours,’ he said. ‘This is how it must be between us. I also do not know what your task will be, nor who will contact you next. It may be me. It may be someone else. I know little more than you do, and that is how our struggle will triumph. Only Vask knows everything. We cannot betray what we do not know, no matter what is done to us.’

The fear of torture and death had kept Nagia silent until this day. Her rebellion had been a fantasy, never realised. And now the merchant made it clear that her fears were justified. Somehow, that justification diminished them. She knew what she was doing. She knew what she was risking. And she was ready.

Since that day, she had come to know only fragments of the fight against Neferata. Vask had spoken to her in her dreams once in every great while, and there had been other encounters with fellow conspirators. These had come in the markets, on the grand boulevards and in the chapels of Nulahmia. She had been tasked with observing what went on in court. She had never been asked to take action. Even her observations had been safe. She did not have to go where she should not. She did not have to pry into secrets. Being present in court and relaying what she saw was enough.

That was why, this night, at the celebration of the triumph at Knell, she had initially been sure she was still safe. She had never really done anything to put herself in danger. Even if one of her clandestine meetings had been overheard, what would Neferata’s spies know? That she traded in court gossip. It would have been unusual, perhaps even suspicious, if she did not do so. She had nothing to fear. Her conduct was beyond reproach. Though she conspired against Neferata, she did so primarily in her heart. She had taken no action that would be out of the ordinary for a loyal subject.

Nagia had told herself this many times. She believed it. Too many years had passed for it not to be true. Neferata did not know a viper moved through her court. The conviction of invisibility made Nagia feel powerful.

When Neferata began to speak of treachery, Nagia was unconcerned. She had expected this. It was inevitable, in the wake of Vask’s failed attack. Nagia was safe, though. Neferata had no reason to look her way. It was the end of Neferata’s address to her enemies that caused her first prickle of unease.

You are silent, but we will hear you. They will hear you.

It was as if Neferata had been speaking directly to Nagia. Of course it seems like that, she thought, pushing back against anxiety. The words were chosen to have that effect on anyone with a secret.

She dismissed the threat. I am stronger than your games. She kept a look of worship and awe on her face. It was a mask perfected over a lifetime.

She put the presence of the Black Knights down to more theatre. They added the menace of immediate retribution to Neferata’s words. But they could not hurt what they could not find.

The threat delivered, Neferata gave the signal for the revels to resume. The musicians began a basse dance. Nagia put aside Neferata’s speech for later contemplation, and concentrated instead on her task. Her duty to Vask had not ended. If anything, what she did was more important than ever after the defeat at Knell. Neferata’s speech and her demeanour were something for Nagia to pass on. This was a night to be sharp in her observations.

She danced with Lord Arkayle. He was a venerable vampire noble. He had joined the ranks of the dead in his dignified prime, and he carried himself with self-conscious pride in his appearance. He was a minor aristocrat, owing fealty to the Lady Arveil, and had fought under the Nightreaper’s command at Knell. Nagia congratulated herself on being seen with a vampire whose loyalty, on this night at least, was beyond question. They bowed to each other, and in unison with the other dancers met in the centre of the floor, palm to palm.

‘I have heard of your bravery on the battlefield,’ Nagia said. ‘It is an honour to dance with you.’

They moved two steps to the left, then the right, and revolved around each other once.

Arkayle nodded as they repeated the movements. His gesture was sharp, precise, a restrained acknowledgement of the compliment, received with no false humility. He was ostentatious in his lack of ostentation. ‘It was my privilege to fight for the queen,’ he said.

Arkayle glanced at the Black Knights. His lips narrowed with displeasure.

‘You do not appreciate the presence of the Riders of Knell,’ said Nagia.

‘I do not begrudge our queen any action that she feels is necessary. The traitors must be rooted out. Even so,’ he said, his nose wrinkling with offended propriety, ‘I could have wished for tools better suited to the time and place.’

They withdrew, turned and came back together again. Nagia saw Arkayle watch one of the knights tread heavily past, boots striking hard on the marble floor.

‘They belong on the battlefield, not at a ball,’ Arkayle said.

‘I belong everywhere my queen directs me.’

Nagia had not seen the Hell Knight approach behind Arkayle. The vampire jerked, startled. The Hell Knight’s name had already become known throughout the court. It was difficult for Nagia to look at Skarveth Lytessian’s skull and keep her hatred from her face. You are the real traitor. He had betrayed all the generations that had come before him and protected a tyrant.

Skarveth moved on, keeping to the back of the dancers. Nagia remained partners with Arkayle through a few more dances, then excused herself during a break in the music. She strolled over to a gossiping trio of nobles clustered beside a pillar not far from the musicians’ gallery.

‘I came to attend a triumph,’ said Lady Sevall. ‘I thought we were here to celebrate, not to subject ourselves to suspicious eyes.’

‘Oh?’ said Lord Ankavas. ‘Do you have something to hide?’

‘No!’ Sevall sputtered. The vampire glared at the mortal. They were both tall, bald and wrinkled with age. In their finery, they looked like squabbling bedposts. ‘Of course I don’t. What I meant is that I do not appreciate being made to feel as if I do.’

‘If we are without guilt, then there is no reason to feel that way,’ Nagia put in, her tone reasonable and mild.

‘I think you are deliberately misunderstanding me,’ said Sevall.

‘I wonder what they understand,’ said Lady Ekansavad. She nodded at a pair of Black Knights moving slowly through the crowd at the end of the hall.

‘I keep waiting to see them encircle Drezhkhem,’ said Ankavas.

The others nodded knowingly. Drezhkhem did not descend from one of the noble houses. His public face was as a merchant, but his primary activity was money lending. He had been practising his trade for centuries, and there were many vampires and mortals in Nulahmia who were in his debt, and bitterly so. Seeing him revealed as a traitor would be a welcome spectacle for the crowd.

Sevall frowned. ‘Am I wrong? They don’t seem to be actually looking at anyone.’

‘They aren’t,’ Nagia agreed. The Riders of Knell turned their heads back and forth as they walked. The movement suggested that they were taking in all of the revellers around them. With skeletons, it was difficult at the best of times to tell where they were looking, but now that Nagia paid attention, she could see a difference between the ways Skarveth and his knights patrolled the hall. Skarveth clearly focused his gaze on one dancer or another. His warriors seemed to look through or beyond the courtiers, if they saw them at all.

‘They’re listening, I think,’ said Ekansavad.

‘To what?’ Ankavas asked. ‘Our conversations?’

‘If they are,’ said Sevall, ‘they can’t be hearing much that’s useful to them.’ The Black Knights never paused by any one group. They walked at a steady pace. They could only be picking up snatches of exchanges as they passed.

‘You’re right, though,’ Ankavas said to Ekansavad. ‘They are listening.’

Nagia’s mouth went dry. Neferata’s threat rose in her thoughts.

You are silent, but we will hear you.

They will hear you.

If the Black Knights were not listening for words, Nagia wondered, what did they expect to hear? She tried to think what other cues might give a precious secret away. Her sense of security vanished. She was terrified she had overlooked something. She became aware that her heart was beating hard.

The two Riders of Knell paused. They turned her way.

Forcing her voice to sound casual, she said, ‘If they find who they’re looking for, so much the better for everyone. They are awkward guests at a celebration.’ She nodded to the three nobles and walked away.

Nagia strolled towards the other end of the hall as if she were bored with the conversation and looking for more interesting company. The two Black Knights kept pace, walking in parallel with her on the other side of the dancers. Nagia looked around and saw another Rider of Knell, motionless, facing her way. Then the warrior began to march slowly and deliberately in her direction.

Nagia stopped beside a pillar. She pressed against the side facing away from the dais. She did not want Neferata to see her. More importantly, she did not want to see Neferata. If she beheld the queen looking at her, she would be lost.

She tried to steady her breathing. Her pulse hammered in her ears. They know, she thought. How? How do they know?

Maybe she was wrong. If the Black Knights knew her secret, why hadn’t they seized her? Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe they only seemed to be closing in on her.

She had to calm down. She was starting to behave as if she was guilty. That’s what she wants. You’re falling into her trap like the greenest fool. Neferata had declared that traitors were present. She brought in menacing warriors, ones who had been in Vask’s confidence. Then all the queen had to do was watch as fear spread and the conspirators revealed themselves.

Nagia pushed herself away from the pillar. She smiled at a group of passing revellers. Take part. Do not attract notice. Walk around the trap.

She took a breath and started to catch up with the chattering group. As she did, a Black Knight walked into view, five columns down, and stopped still, facing the wall on Nagia’s left, not looking at her.

Nagia froze. She held her breath, and her heart battered even harder.

The Black Knight turned abruptly and faced her.

They will hear you.

Nagia’s heartbeat was betraying her. These creatures could hear her terror. They were tracking her through her secrets. It didn’t matter how she behaved. Denials would be worse than useless.

They know! They know! They know!

She gasped, held breath escaping in a ragged stutter. The traitor in her chest hammered against the prison of her ribcage.

Leave! Flee! Get out of here! Now!

The Black Knight strode towards her.

The hope, tattered and desperate, that she could still somehow blend in with the crowd, that she could submerge her fear in the sea of others’ passions, pushed her to turn back to the main space of the hall. She would hide in the multitude. She would vanish in the collective anonymity until she could calm herself and be truly invisible again. She would…

She rounded the pillar, chasing the hope, and almost ran into four Riders of Knell. They were waiting for her, motionless, silent. The wavering threads of darkness surrounding them seemed to reach for her, beckoning her to judgement. Beyond the knights, dancers had faltered in their steps. They were looking her way, curious, nervous, eager to see if and how far they should distance themselves from her. She saw relief in their faces too. Neferata’s gaze would not be falling on them tonight.

She glanced at the dais. The Mortarch was no longer there. Indecision and terror paralysed Nagia. She couldn’t even think whether Neferata’s absence was a good or evil thing. She looked back at the Black Knights. They said nothing. They were waiting.

Do you want me to confess? Do you think standing before me will be enough to break me?

She wasn’t sure that they were wrong.

Then terror met defiance, and their fusion gave her the ability to move again. She turned aside from the Black Knights and walked down the row of columns to the main doors of the great hall. Her legs felt like rusted iron. She tried to maintain the illusion that all was well. There was nothing to see here. She was tired, that was all. She was retiring, not fleeing. Her departure had nothing to do with the Riders of Knell.

The Black Knights did not follow her, though they turned as if watching her leave. She looked back. The voids of their eye sockets were a terrible impassivity and the worst of all promises.

She forced herself to breathe evenly. Calm yourself. Convince them they are wrong. If her heart slowed and quieted, perhaps the Riders would believe she had simply been alarmed by their presence. She was mortal, after all. Death held every terror for her.

Two skeleton servants waited at the huge doors. They opened them for her without comment and bowed. There was nothing in their actions. They performed their duty no differently than she had seen them do so a hundred times before. If they had thoughts or opinions, they could not be expressed in the faces of bone. But to Nagia, their skulls were the mirrors of the blank judges behind her.

Nagia paused at the threshold. She told her legs to move. They refused. The skeletons looked at her, waiting.

She looked back again.

The full complement of Black Knights had gathered. Skarveth stood slightly to the side. He was watching his warriors rather than Nagia. He did look her way, though, when the others began to move towards her. They took slow, stately steps. They were unhurried. There was no possibility that she would escape them.

She would try.

Nagia walked through the doorway. She kept up her pretence that much longer. When the skeletons closed the doors behind her, the reverberating boom unleashed her panic. She broke into a run. She lifted the heavy folds of her dress and fled through the corridors of the Palace of Seven Vultures. She flew through uncanny emptiness. There were no courtiers to be seen, and if there were servants or guards about, she did not see them. Cold stone bore witness to her flight. Shadows pooling beyond the light of torches were knowing. There were eyes there, she was sure. Eyes and worse. She stuck to the centre of the passages, weaving from light to light, until she passed through the gates of the palace and onto the Pathway of Punishment.

Now, in the vastness of the night, she hoped to make friends with the dark. She needed it to conceal her. She could not hide in the great hall, but she could in Nulahmia. Though Neferata ruled the city, it kept secrets from her. Nagia’s allegiance had been one of those secrets until tonight. There were others. Somewhere out there were Nagia’s comrades in the struggle against the Mortarch. She wished she knew who they were. She understood why she must not. She was discovered, but they were safe. She could not betray them.

She could not hope for shelter from them. They were concealed from Neferata’s eyes, though, at least for now. Hiding was possible. She would find another way to disappear. She must.

The Pathway of Punishment zigzagged down Throne Mount, its boulevards lined with the tortured and the dead, thousands of bodies broken on instruments of agony for the pleasure of the queen. One of the wheels or stocks or hanging cages might be hers in the near future if the Black Knights caught her.

As she reached the first sharp bend in the road, she took one last look at the palace entrance. The Riders of Knell had emerged. Their line advanced slowly, inexorably, to the Pathway of Punishment.

Nagia ran. Fresh terror gave her a burst of energy, and she rushed down Throne Mount. The road was long, though. Three turns later, still some distance from the base of the Mount, she was staggering. Her breath rasped painfully. Her heart pounded with renewed frenzy, exhaustion compounding with fear. Her chest felt as if she had been kicked by a horse. She kept looking back, and a frail thread of hope returned to her. There was no sign of the Black Knights. She let herself believe she was putting distance between them and herself.

Once she had stumbled to the bottom of Throne Mount, she stayed off the grand boulevards of Nulahmia. She stuck to the narrower streets, never staying on a single one for long, taking intersections at random, changing directions for several blocks before resuming her original westward journey. She was soon past the great warehouses and the estates of the wealthiest merchants. The dwellings became humbler, the roads darker. Rows of houses, each containing dozens of apartments, leaned towards each other, their peaked roofs sometimes touching over the middle of the foetid alleys. The further into the poorer districts Nagia went, the thicker the darkness became. Despair wafted down the streets, a visible miasma emanating from people who clung to life because their fear of enslavement after death exceeded the misery of existence.

This was a region Nagia had come to know through a sense of necessity. Minor though the Thresends were, they had never known poverty. Their manor house bordered on this quarter, though. In her youth, Nagia had explored the streets, driven by a sense of adventure and curious to gaze upon the poor, whose life was so distant from hers she thought of them as a different species, creatures almost mythical. Since she had joined Vask’s struggle, she had made a more serious effort to learn the dark alleyways and dead ends, thinking of the quarter as a wilderness in which she might, should disaster strike, find concealment.

There would be no friends for her here. She knew that. Before tonight, when they saw her, the people had been suspicious of her motives and fearful of how she planned to use them. A noble in flight would be even less likely to engender sympathy. The people would keep their distance, and if the forces of the queen asked if they had seen her, they would not protect her.

As Nagia stumbled through the dimness, she caught glimpses of pinched, narrow, pale faces looking at her through grimy windows. She wanted to shout at them. She wanted to tell them, I am fighting for you, too! Join me! Help me!

They would not believe her. They were too much enslaved by their fear of Neferata.

She placed her hopes in the architecture of the quarter, in its squalor, in its miserable density that turned it into a maze. Lives vanished here. Souls vanished here. Hope vanished here. Surely she could too.

She was not thinking beyond the next few hours. If she survived them, then she would consider what to do next. She had the thought of fleeing to Angaria. The plan was unformed, a fantasy. She knew nothing of the empire except that it was the enemy of Neferatia. That was enough for now. All she needed was a vague dream of escape to keep her going.

She took the roads at random, choosing the darkest and bleakest. She was trying to become lost. In the logic of her terror, she felt that if she didn’t know where she was, neither would the Black Knights. The stench of the quarter was suffocating, and she had to breathe through her mouth. Sewage collected on the sides of the streets. Bodies slumped in corners, forgotten and unmourned, devoured by rats, swarmed by flies. The clammy, buzzing night wrapped around her, and Nagia felt truly invisible.

She turned a corner. The silhouette of a Black Knight waited for her at the other end of the alley.

With a sob, Nagia spun and ran back the way she had come. She paused at the next intersection, looking down every path. The way to her right was lost in profound darkness. Even so, she caught a glimpse of a cape flapping and heard the scrape of a boot on stone.

She fled, hope disappearing. She chased the dark, but it was no longer an ally. With every turn, she felt the noose drawing tighter. She was running in smaller and smaller circles. Her routes of flight were disappearing.

And then, at last, they were all gone. She worked her way by touch through a passage between two blank walls. It was so narrow, the buildings on both sides brushed her shoulders. Human debris squelched beneath her feet. She came out of the alleyway into a tiny courtyard. A disused well crumbled at its centre, clogged with rubble, leaking filthy water over the cobblestones. Faint illumination came from lantern light in the windows of the surrounding buildings. It washed over the courtyard like a shroud.

There was no way out.

Heavy footsteps rang in the passageway. Nagia faced the narrow line of deeper blackness and retreated until her back was against a wall. One by one, the Riders of Knell entered the courtyard. The air was still, yet their cloaks billowed slowly, as if caught in a sluggish, aethereal wind. They paused, their heads turning back and forth.

Nagia shrank against the wall. She held her breath. She willed herself to vanish.

Her heartbeat thundered, and the Black Knights closed in around her. Their movements were so unhurried and majestic, it was as if time slowed down in their presence. As they drew near, Nagia felt as if she were submerged in water, her own movements held by the lethargy of nightmare. She could not have run even if there was any way of getting through the line of Riders.

A cloud of darkness had arrived with the Black Knights. It spread over the courtyard, blotting out the light from the windows. Nagia could still see, though. A sepulchral glow emanated from the bones of the warriors.

Skarveth entered the courtyard shortly after the other Riders. He stopped beside the ruined well, watching his warriors.

The Black Knight directly before Nagia stepped forwards and pressed the tip of a sword against her throat. A woman’s voice, grating and echoing, issued from the skull. ‘Did you think you could hide, craven traitor? You cannot conceal the secrets of your heart from us. How did you believe you could run?’

Nagia stared into the empty eye sockets. She saw the shallowness of her dreams of rebellion and subterfuge. Before that darkness, they turned brittle, cracked and fell to dust. Her breath came in gulping, fearful gasps.

Then a voice even more awful than the face of death said, ‘I will deal with her.’

The Black Knight sheathed her sword. She stepped away from Nagia. She and her comrades bowed before Neferata. Nagia had not seen the queen arrive. She was simply present. The city was hers. Nagia cursed herself for ever believing otherwise. The queen could be anywhere. Her rule was everywhere.

Neferata clasped Nagia by the throat. Her grasp was effortless, smooth, cold and unbreakable. Her lips parted, revealing her fangs. ‘Do you wish to be a spy?’ she said. ‘Do you wish to be the unseen traitor? Do you wish to be the worm that destroys from within? Then I will grant your wishes.’ She lifted Nagia from the ground.

Nagia squirmed. Her feet kicked in the air. She tried to shake her head, to engage in one last act of denial. Neferata held her fast and bent her head back, exposing her neck.

‘Your dreams have always been a delusion,’ she said. ‘Your will is, and always has been, irrelevant. You are Nulahmian, and so you belong to me.’

Nagia screamed once as the queen’s fangs sank into her flesh. Though she could no longer cry out after that, there was no mercy as Neferata fed.

When she was done, Neferata dropped the insensible Nagia. When the woman regained consciousness, she would have no will except what Neferata chose for her.

The dark cloud swirled over the courtyard, concealing those present from curious eyes. ‘You were not seen to pursue her?’ Neferata asked Vissya.

‘No, my queen. We herded her through her panic.’

‘Then you have done well.’

‘Her departure from the great hall was certainly noticed,’ said Skarveth.

‘And so will her return be,’ said Neferata. ‘Her flight will be read as fear, and create more uncertainty. The other traitor remains at the dance.’ Two hearts had been beating with guilt at the revel. The one belonging to Lord Karlinth had been ignored. ‘Before dawn, seize Karlinth. Execute him at the top of the Pathway of Punishment. Mark the end of the celebration with his destruction. Nagia Thresend will become a mere distraction. Let the conspirators think that we think we have found all that we sought.’

‘And we allow the Thresend traitor her liberty for now?’

Neferata bent down to examine her prone thrall. ‘Yes. We will wait for her to take us to Vask.’

The change in troop deployment happened immediately after the Battle of Knell. Velaza didn’t realise its full extent at first. She witnessed the sudden spike in the mobilisation as the marches through the centre of Mausolea became an unceasing river of warriors. Day and night, the civilian population fled to the side streets as the great boulevards rang with the thunder of thousands of boots and the creaking grind of hundreds of supply carts. Brayherds’ bellows rattled the shutters of windows, and the tall silhouettes of siege towers loomed over the habitations. The deafening beat of war drums reached across the city. The incinerating beam that raged from Skulldagger Bastion blazed with ever greater fury.

The prince of Angaria had responded to defeat with a tidal wave of anger. Velaza had expected he would. For a few days, she could even look upon the scale of the marches as a sign of just how complete the rout must have been. He will wait no longer. He will throw himself into war whether he is ready or not.

That was exactly what Neferata wanted. She wanted Graunos’ injured pride to goad him into an attack governed by anger instead of strategy.

But as the days passed and the size of the Angarian march only grew, Velaza began to worry. Past a certain size of army, she wondered how much it would matter what thought there was behind it.

What would be worse, though, was thought and rage working together. From her perspective, on the streets of Mausolea, she could not tell if that was happening or not. It was Guessa who witnessed the ill omens. She spoke of them on the fourth night of the march, when she returned from her flights to the west and Neferata’s spies gathered in their cellar.

‘I didn’t comprehend the full import of what I was seeing until I was close to Mausolea again,’ Guessa told them. ‘I flew around the city to be sure. Graunos is no longer sending troops to the south.’

‘They are still leaving by the south gate,’ Velaza pointed out.

‘Only to relieve congestion to the west. Once they are outside Mausolea’s walls, they rejoin the rest of the army. Graunos is throwing his entire strength towards Neferatia.’

‘Nighthall Pass is closed to him. What good is that size of army if he cannot effectively get it into Neferatia?’ Tavensia asked.

‘Perhaps he has found another way in,’ said Epikente.

‘One unknown to us?’ Guessa sounded doubtful.

‘We cannot rule out the possibility, unlikely though it is,’ Velaza said.

‘Even granting that,’ said Epikente, ‘dismissing the threat of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer is foolish.’

‘We expected the possibility of a rash act,’ said Guessa. ‘Perhaps this is it.’ She did not sound happy with her own surmise.

‘Turning away from one threat to aim all his wrath at the source of a recent defeat,’ said Velaza. ‘That sounds very much like what we had hoped would be the result of the Battle of Knell.’

‘Too much like it,’ Epikente said gloomily.

Velaza nodded. ‘I think you’re right.’ She wished otherwise. ‘This is so evidently the mistake we have been looking for that it must be something else.’

‘I have listened to the conversations of the Bloodbound,’ said Epikente. She could come very close to the enemy without ever being noticed. ‘They are angry but confident. Morale is high. If there is any desperation in the bastion, it has not reached the troops on the ground. If anything, they are straining at the bit. They want vengeance for Nighthall Pass and Knell, and they are sure they will get it.’

Velaza grimaced. ‘This prince of Khorne refuses to be goaded.’

‘Let us imagine what he is doing, then,’ said Tavensia. She looked at the map of Angaria on the table they stood around. ‘If what appears to be a mistake is not one, then we must look to the south.’

‘Yes,’ said Velaza. ‘Has Graunos withdrawn any forces from the southern gate?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Guessa. ‘No more are heading in that direction, but none, as far as I can tell, are returning.’

‘Then Graunos has not decided the Stormcast Eternals are harmless.’

‘The simplest explanation is that he has reinforced the south enough to hold back the Anvils of the Heldenhammer,’ said Epikente. ‘And that he is determined to crush one foe before the other. Neferatia has always been his goal, and is the greater threat. So he will attack us first.’

‘That would be a tactically sound decision,’ Velaza agreed. ‘He is the one with the most to lose in having war occur on two fronts. The problem is that there still does not seem to be a way for him to attack Neferatia.’

‘A bluff,’ Guessa whispered, sounding impressed in spite of herself.

‘It could be.’ Velaza wanted to be wrong. ‘A massive thrust towards the west to draw all attention from the south.’

‘Implying he knows we’re here,’ said Tavensia.

‘He has to assume Neferata’s eyes are on him. She presumes the same.’

‘Graunos misdirects us, and plans to strike the Anvils of the Heldenhammer first,’ said Guessa.

‘And conceals his fist.’ Velaza did not believe the forces already at Angaria’s southern gate would be enough to prevail over Sigmar’s warriors.

There was a pause. The spies looked at each other.

‘We are agreed, then, in our interpretation of what we have observed?’

‘We are,’ said Epikente. The others nodded.

Velaza moved to the concealed chamber to bleed another prisoner and convey what she and her sisters had seen and concluded to Neferata. When she had finished speaking to the shape that had formed in the blood mist, the queen said, ‘I have a new task for your group. Observation will no longer suffice. It is time for you to take direct action. Let disruption be your watchword. Make Graunos feel my hand in the heart of his realm. Disturb his thoughts and plans.

‘Disruption, Velaza. Disruption.’

When war is inevitable, it is not always advisable to strike first. It may be advantageous to lure the enemy into acting first, and doing so against their own interests. What is an eternal truth is that the foe is making similar calculations. Thus, the battle rages long before the armies meet on the field.

– The Invisible Flames

Chapter 8

Nagia woke. She was in her bed in the Thresend manor. She sat up, surrounded by morning light. She had not pulled the bed curtains before falling asleep, and she blinked against the brightness. The house was silent. She had all of the east wing’s upper floor for her private use, and the servants knew not to disturb her when she slept.

She could not remember returning home last night, and she could recall only portions of the celebration at the palace. She had danced with Lord Arkayle. There had been conversations and gossip. Neferata’s chilling speech was clear in Nagia’s memory, and she remembered the Riders of Knell too. She had become nervous at some point and had decided to leave, but there her recall began to fail. Everything became vague. Somehow, she had made it to her bed before passing out. There had been nightmares, too. They were dim things now, filled with hints of pursuit, smothering and pain.

She wondered how much she had had to drink at the revel. She did not feel hungover, though. There was a slight muzziness in her head, but the light, now that she was fully awake, did not hurt her eyes. The anxiety of the night before had passed. Neferata had threatened her enemies with doom, but she had not seen into Nagia’s heart. The secrets were safe. Nagia was safe. She felt surer of purpose than ever before, her way forward absolutely clear.

Nagia dressed hurriedly and left the house. She had to get to the palace. She had to be seen. She wanted to erase any doubts about her that might be lingering in the minds of others. If, as she thought, she had departed the ball dramatically, it was important to restore normality. She did not want anyone, especially Neferata, to think she was hiding.

She made her way down the great boulevard of the Queensroad and up the Pathway of Punishment. Where the Pathway reached the top of Throne Mount, a crowd had gathered. People stood around a bifurcated torture device. Two iron poles pointed upward in opposing diagonals. Manacles held the arms and legs of the victim to the shafts. A clockwork mechanism at the base had slowly, hour by hour, pushed the poles away from each other, until the body of the condemned had been ripped apart. All that remained was a bloody, shredded mass dangling from the two halves. Nagia pushed her way to the front of the crowd and stared at the ruin of flesh and torn cloth.

‘Oh, there you are!’ Lady Sevall was at Nagia’s right elbow. ‘I was wondering where you’d run off to.’

‘I wasn’t feeling well.’

‘That’s the problem with being mortal. You should think more about my offer.’ Sevall had invited Nagia to become her thrall for the first time three years ago. She renewed the invitation regularly.

‘Perhaps,’ Nagia said absently. She gestured at the corpse. ‘Who was it?’ The skull and face had been separated from each other. The skull hung, wet and gleaming, on the left. The face dangled on the right, limp, a clump of red rags.

‘Lord Karlinth,’ Sevall breathed. ‘Imagine! I’ve never seen him put a foot wrong, whether he was dancing or paying court.’

‘Maybe that in itself should have made us suspicious.’

‘Very true! Very true!’ Sevall shook her head in a display of performative sorrow that didn’t even begin to disguise her glee.

‘What happened?’ Nagia asked.

‘It was as the ball was breaking up,’ Sevall said. ‘The Riders of Knell had left just after you did.’ She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. ‘I don’t mind telling you, dear, that I was worried they were going after you.’

Nagia smiled brightly. ‘Yet here I am!’

Sevall laughed. ‘And I couldn’t be more pleased!’

‘Thank you.’ Nagia had her doubts. The only thing that would have been more exciting for Sevall than the execution of a fellow noble would have been two executions.

‘At any rate,’ Sevall continued, ‘the Riders came back, and they seized Karlinth as we were leaving. He protested, of course. They never said anything. Just dragged him from the palace and chained him to the death engine.’

‘Did it take long?’

‘You only just missed the end. His final scream was less than an hour ago. It was a spectacle, my dear. A fine warning.’ She nodded in satisfaction.

‘A warning indeed,’ Nagia agreed.

‘We must hope that it is heeded,’ Sevall said piously.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I would prefer to see the traitors caught.’ Nagia spoke with confidence. She had escaped suspicion last night under the very eyes of Neferata. She had been nervous in the past, every time she had taken the most insignificant step of rebellion. That anxiety was gone now. She was sure she would never be caught. ‘I think that would be preferable to simply frightening them into inaction. Don’t you?’

‘Oh, of course, of course.’

Nagia stayed a few minutes longer before the remains of Lord Karlinth. She wondered if, even now, there were other allies of Vask who were being rounded up. She hoped not, but if they were, that made her commitment to the cause all the more important.

Fuelled by determination, she entered the palace and did her rounds, meeting with her usual circles of fellow courtiers. The talk was all about Karlinth, though there was curiosity too about Nagia’s sudden exit the night before. She explained that she had taken ill.

‘The thought of such treachery in our numbers could make anyone take a bad turn,’ said Lord Halfrenk, another mortal. His complexion was so sallow, he appeared to be in perpetual ill health. It was an impression he never took pains to discourage.

Nagia thanked him. As the day wore on, her lie gradually turned into truth. She did feel unwell. She was hungry and thirsty, but anything she tried to eat or drink made her stomach convulse. Cramps tightened her guts. As evening approached and she made her way back to the manor, she could barely walk upright. She staggered in through the main doors and leaned against the wall in the entrance hall. She waved away the doorman who came to help her.

One of her maidservants appeared at the landing of the main staircase. She ran down to Nagia, looking worried. ‘I will fetch Lord Thresend,’ she said.

‘No,’ Nagia snapped. ‘Let my father be.’ She reached the foot of the stairs, grasped the banister and began to haul herself up. ‘I don’t want to see anyone.’

‘But, my lady…’

‘I want to be alone. I want everyone off the top floor. Do you understand?’

The maid nodded, though it was clear she didn’t understand. Neither did Nagia. She didn’t know why she had given the orders. There was no reason for them. She was having trouble thinking clearly. All she knew was that she had a ferocious impulse to be by herself. The instinct was too strong to be fought.

She climbed the stairs, past ancestral portraits so dirtied by centuries of smoke from candles and torches that they were no more than murky silhouettes. The stairs seemed endless, her chambers suddenly on a mountain’s peak. She was gasping and retching by the time she at last reached the top floor. She weaved back and forth, bent double, clutching her stomach. She felt as if vicious creatures were chewing their way out from her insides. She would have screamed if her jaw hadn’t been clenched tight. Her breath hissed out from between her teeth.

She stumbled through the door of her bedchamber and fell to her knees, squeezing her eyes shut as the pain spiked again. When she opened them, she saw that she was not alone. A woman she had never seen before stood next to the open window. Her wings were draped around her like a cloak. She had dark skin and a noble bearing. Nagia did not know what house she might be from, but from the way the vampire gazed at her, Nagia sensed that she stood far above the Thresends. She held one end of a chain. The other end was around the iron collar of a man who was blindfolded and gagged. Nagia didn’t know who he was either. She guessed he was one of the countless anonymous souls who made up Nulahmia’s underclass.

‘Who are you?’ Nagia asked, squeezing her arms tightly around her agonised stomach.

‘My name is Skeentha,’ the woman said. She stepped closer, yanking the chain and forcing the man to crawl forwards.

‘Why are you here?’

Skeentha looked down at her contemptuously. ‘Because you need to feed, and you are evidently too stupid to understand what your body cries out for.’ She brought the man to within a foot of Nagia. Then she removed his collar, and with a quick slash of her clawed fingers tore open his neck. Blood spurted onto the floor, a glistening invitation.

Nagia’s hunger launched her forwards. She wrapped her hands around the man’s neck and lowered her head to the wound. She drank the blood in greedy mouthfuls. She was drinking pleasure itself, and life itself. Her pain vanished, driven out by a wave of ecstasy. Her body shuddered so violently she almost lost her grip on the man’s neck. She clutched him even more tightly and buried her face in the wound. She drank, and strength returned to her limbs. She drank, and lost herself in the glory of blood.

Skeentha laughed. ‘You do not even know what you are,’ she taunted. ‘Yet you revel in what you have become.’

Nagia barely heard her. She did not understand what Skeentha meant, and she didn’t care. She drank until, sated, she fell unconscious.

When she woke the next morning, the previous evening and night had faded from her memory. It worried her that she seemed to be engaging in drunken excesses. Now, more than ever, she had to be careful. She promised herself to observe more restraint today.

She got out of bed and paused, staring at the floor. She frowned. There was nothing in her room that shouldn’t be there, and there was nothing missing. At the back of her mind, though, she felt that there had been something here very recently. Something very important.

The feeling passed. She shook her head and dressed.

She went to the market, as she did every other morning, a routine that made it possible for her to be contacted, as rare as the event was. She had been there an hour when she saw, walking towards her, the merchant who had first brought her into the struggle against Neferata. His face was grave. When he saw that she had recognised him, he gave the smallest of nods then turned around.

Nagia followed him to his stall, where she bought several of his silks. In between the bartering, he said, ‘You must go to Mortannis. You will be given other directions there.’ When she looked surprised, he added, ‘There is to be a gathering.’

‘That will be risky.’

‘There is no choice.’

‘Do you know what is happening?’

‘Not precisely. But events are unfolding rapidly. Measures are being taken. We may yet turn defeat into victory.’

Nagia smiled and turned back to the silk. She felt the thrill of excitement. The risk might once have frightened her. No longer. She was invisible.

In her confidence, she laughed silently. Oddly, the laughter in her head did not sound like hers.

‘Contact has been made,’ Mereneth told Neferata.

They were meeting in a small room just off the throne room of the Palace of Seven Vultures. The Silent Chamber’s walls were among the thickest in the palace. Headless spirits interlaced with the stone. They could not see or hear. They could only strike out with a frenzied, slashing storm of limbs. Some were aethereal, and others were vulcanised bone. They would rip any intruder apart, turning flesh and spirit to tatters. The walls were basalt. So was the door. Only Neferata had the strength to open it. Wards covered the interior of the chamber in a spiderweb pattern of protection. The space was empty except for a slab of night-black diamond that served sometimes as a table, sometimes as an altar.

Neferata used the chamber for small, private councils. It surrounded the words spoken inside it with a wall of silence. Nothing entered or left the room without Neferata’s explicit consent.

‘Nagia Thresend spoke with Ersath Zay,’ Mereneth continued. ‘A merchant whose family escaped the fall of Shadowvel.’

Neferata smiled. ‘And now he travels, doing the bidding of Vask under the guise of selling his wares, seeking to avenge the death of that city. How tiresomely quaint.’

‘Shall we take him?’

‘No. Observe him and track him too. Do nothing else but follow the threads. Nagia may lead us directly to Vask, or she may not. But one of these threads will take us to what we seek.’

‘It shall be done, my queen.’

‘And what do you make of this contact occurring so soon after the execution of Karlinth?’ Neferata asked.

‘I might have called it panic,’ said Mereneth. ‘Though I do not rule out that possibility, the news from Angaria makes me doubt it.’

‘Quite,’ said Neferata. ‘If Vask is acting out of desperation, Graunos is using his panic to attack us on two fronts. We may have pushed Graunos to strike sooner than he intended.’

‘But he may be trying to do the same to us,’ Mereneth said.

‘We will assume that he is. And whatever we see of his preparations, we will remember that they are not the clear markers of his intent.’ She thought for a moment, picturing the gathering armies along the western chain of the Stonepain Mountains. She had to strengthen her forces in answer to Graunos’ actions, but she was holding back from a full commitment. There were still too many questions. What Graunos appeared to be planning was impossible. Worse, it was foolish. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I do not think he will try to cross the mountains again. He might try to force us to make that mistake. We need to learn what Vask plans. Then I will know how to make them alter their plans to my desire.’

It was Tavensia who took the first steps in the attack. They were trivial in appearance, actions so small no observer could imagine them having any effect. She took advantage of Graunos’ unusual strengths for a prince of Khorne. His army of Chaos was shot through with strong traces of order, buttresses supporting a monstrous engine of war, the better to bring about total destruction.

Tavensia had established herself as a useful scribe and had, over the course of months, become part of the battalion of functionaries that regulated the flow of supplies to the prince of Angaria’s grand army. While Velaza and the others waited for night, Tavensia acted during the day, making the slightest alteration in the flow. It was a minor reordering that would have a similarly minor effect on the timing of which supplies left the city at what time. The change would not matter to any of the Bloodbound. Not unless it was joined by other actions.

The appointed time came several hours after nightfall. Velaza and Epikente made their way to the western gate of Mausolea. Graunos had remade the walls, rebuilding them and transforming them into a tribute to Khorne. They were walls of brass, fifty feet high. The skulls of enemies and victims adorned pikes along the battlements. More skulls, thousands of them, were embedded in the walls and cast in brass. Their sockets and gaping jaws blazed a burning white, and from them spread the wrath of Graunos, turning the walls an angry red, slowly pulsing with heat. To touch the walls was to burn.

The gates were even hotter. They shone like fire, rows of skulls across their width screaming silently forever. They were so hot, it seemed they were on the verge of melting. But they were strong, incandescently brutal barriers to any who would enter the city against the will of its master. They were open now, as they had been for days as the endless army marched through them. Passing through was like crossing a threshold of flame, and the troops roared as they left the city, shaking the rooftops with their defiance of pain and ignited fury.

Velaza and Epikente emerged from a side street, onto the Boulevard of the Crimson Oath a short distance from the towers. They crouched in the ruined doorway of a house that had been torched after slaughterpriests had chosen the inhabitants as sacrifices for Khorne. Hidden from the marching army, the spies looked to their left, towards the towers that flanked the gates. Their curving walls were a duller red than the gates. Even so, Velaza felt their angry heat tightening the skin of her face.

‘We will have to move quickly,’ said Epikente. They had prepared for the task by imbuing their clothing and gauntlets with protective wards. There was much that vampire flesh could withstand, but the heat of Graunos’ fortifications was unnatural, and it burned in more ways than the physical.

‘That window will be useful,’ Velaza said. She pointed to an arched aperture about a third of the way up the left-hand tower’s height. It looked to the south-east and was large enough to fit through.

‘I’ll look for one in the other tower,’ said Epikente. ‘Hunt well, sister.’ She vanished into the house. She would climb the ruin, then use the rooftops, working her way back a short distance. There, centuries before, when Angaria was still part of Neferatia, the Boulevard of the Crimson Oath had cut through the fortified mansion of a family that had fallen from Neferata’s favour. The centre of the mansion had been destroyed, but its wings had survived to become separate houses, looking back at each other across the paving stones. The demolition had been purposely perverse, leaving a perpetual mark of the injury, and the houses looked like the amputated wings of a great bird. They reached out to each other with curving walls arching up and almost halfway across the road. They were empty now, as were most of the houses along Crimson Oath. The inhabitants had fled the proximity to the Khornate marches, and more than a few had become sacrifices too. Though the broken mansion’s wings stopped well short of meeting and forming an arc, their tips were close enough together for Epikente to leap them, and so cross the Crimson Oath unseen by the forces below.

Velaza knew what Epikente was doing, and she knew the route the other vampire would take. Yet from the moment she left, Epikente was as hidden from her as she was from the foe. Velaza grinned as she returned to the side street and cut through narrow lanes until she reached the last of the houses before the wall. If she could not spot Epikente, none of Graunos’ minions would either.

You cannot see what is coming. She glanced towards the army. But you will know when it arrives.

Between her and the wall was a strip of barren stone fifty yards across. The glow of the wall washed over the space, but even here there were shadows to be found. Though Velaza did not have Epikente’s skill, neither was she seeking to disappear in the full light of day. She was a spy for Neferata, part of the Mortarch’s invisible army, and the night was hers. It did not belong to Graunos. Let him fill the darkness with his strength and fury. It would swallow him and his kind. This was the realm of death, the one true inevitability. Graunos was a usurper. Angaria belonged to Neferata’s dominion, and Velaza would prove it.

She crossed the strip, silent and shrouded by night. She raced up to the wall, and the heat was so intense it felt as if she were forcing her way forwards against a river’s violent current. Where the tower met the wall, the fortifications were deep in shadow. Velaza ran to the angle and grabbed the tower wall. The fingers of her gauntlets ended in steel talons. The force of her grasp sank them into the brass, and she started to climb.

Heat surrounded her. It rolled over her in waves, as if keeping time with a monstrous heart buried inside the walls. It wrapped around her like a constricting fist, seeking to burn away the wards and turn her to ash. They held for the moment, and she climbed, gouging wounds into the wall. She defied the curse of the fortifications, and in seconds she was at the height of the window. She glanced down at the ground. She was not observed.

Oppressed by heat, defended by shadow, she swung out from the corner. She scuttled like a spider over to the window and jumped through.

Velaza found herself on the landing of a staircase that spiralled up the interior wall of the tower. Inside, the heat was no longer lethal. It was merely the intensity of a desert in the season of Crematory. It would serve no purpose for Graunos to incinerate his guards.

Velaza flew up the stairs, silent and swift as a night wind. At the top, the iron door to the guardroom overlooking the gate was closed. She pressed her ear against it and waited. She had faith that in the other tower, Epikente was doing the same.

The timing now became crucial. She and Epikente had to attack simultaneously, and once they did, they would only have the shortest time to complete their mission before they were spotted. They would not need long. But they had to know the moment was right.

Velaza listened for a sound outside the tower, a sound that, if it occurred, would raise no suspicion in the guards on the other side of the door.

The Sepulchre of the Rictus stood on a square that faced onto the Boulevard of the Crimson Oath, about a mile from the wall. It was a single block of basalt a hundred feet high, hollowed out and polished to a black sheen. The exterior was carved into the image of an immense skull, the flesh taut, pulling the lips back over the teeth in the final grin of death. The skull was tilted back, its blank eyes staring up at the sky, seeing nothing but the eternal absence of mercy.

Graunos had ordered the sepulchre defaced. Huge braziers burned in the eyes, and the worshippers of Khorne had destroyed the tombs inside, piling up the bodies into an altar mound dedicated to the Skull God. An iron crown of spikes twenty feet high had surmounted the skull, and now brass had replaced them too. But Graunos had permitted the bell at the centre of the crown to remain, and it still rang the hours.

Guessa had flown to the top of the sepulchre ahead of Velaza and Epikente’s advance. By now she would have killed the bell-ringer and would be watching from the crown. If Tavensia’s stratagem bore fruit, she would ring the bell at the normal hour. If something had gone wrong, Velaza would hear silence. She and Epikente would wait as long as they could for the bell to ring. There was a margin for delay, though it was not a wide one.

Motionless, Velaza listened, her sense of time counting down the moments to when the Sepulchre of the Rictus should sound the third hour.

Now, she thought, and the tolling began.

Velaza breathed the words of a spell into the door’s lock. Silently, the door unlocked and swung open. Velaza stepped through, drawing her axe.

The room beyond was small, stifling. Half of it was filled with the gate’s mechanism. The edge of a massive gear protruded into the room from outside the tower. The links of the chain wrapped around it were each over a yard wide. A heavy crank, large enough that it would require the strength of the three bloodreavers in the room to turn, operated the gear, winding the chain up and opening the south door of the gate. A lever taller than Velaza held the mechanism locked.

The bloodreavers assigned to the tower had been chosen for their absolute obedience. None of the Bloodbound were patient, and guard duty ran against their atavistic need to slaughter. But the ramparts and gates of the city needed their sentinels, and they had to be drawn from the Khornate ranks. The men before Velaza had demonstrated that they could remain where they were told. They would remain here forever.

Velaza decapitated the first bloodreaver with a single blow before any of them knew she was there. She hit with such force that the head arced forwards, bouncing off the chain while the body slowly crumpled. The other two bloodreavers turned awkwardly, fatally surprised. Velaza raised the axe high and slashed down, driving the blade through the top of the second bloodreaver’s head, cleaving helmet and skull in two. The last of the guards managed to draw his own axe and raise it. Velaza whirled on him, pulling her weapon free and swinging it horizontally into the enemy’s chest. The bloodreaver dropped his axe, gore bursting from his mouth. He gurgled something that might have been a curse, then fell to the stone floor.

Velaza hurried to the low balcony next to the gear. She looked across the gate to the other tower. Epikente was there, ready. Velaza looked down at the enemy line passing through the gates, and she saw Tavensia’s handiwork. Teams of brayherds were pulling long wagons stacked with wooden casks. Tavensia had worked on the timing of when these supplies were to be added to the march. She had ensured they would reach the gates at this precise moment.

The mechanisms in the towers were designed to shut the gate quickly in the event of an attack. Velaza and Epikente pulled on the release levers at the same time. The huge gears spun, feeding the chains out with rattling speed, and the gates of Mausolea slammed shut. Bloodreavers and brayherds shouted with alarm as the immense, red-hot brass monoliths came together. Warriors rushed to the gate to get through and ran back to avoid destruction. The threshold became boiling confusion. The screams came as the yards-thick slabs burned flesh and ground bodies together.

Scores of the enemy died in just the first few seconds of the closing of the gate. What mattered to Velaza and her sisters, though, was what was in the wooden flasks.

The sides of the wagons buckled and splintered. The brayers had been hauling the carts four abreast, and dozens of flasks cracked open like eggs. Their supplies of oil, intended for deployment from the siege towers, burst out and made contact with the burning wall. The oil ignited explosively. Pushed by the closing gates, a wave of liquid fire rolled back over the Bloodbound. The oil-drenched timbers of the other flasks caught fire, and the conflagration reached further and further, engulfing the boulevard in an ocean of crimson flame. The enemy died in the hundreds, screaming in pain. Drenched in burning oil, worshippers of Khorne ran blindly, spreading death.

As she descended the wall, unseen in the riot of destruction, Velaza looked upon the boulevard as the current of fire flowed on. It crashed against the bases of two siege towers that were following the supply caravan of oil. The flames roared up their sides, reaching behind the iron plating and leaping from timber to timber. The brayherds hauling the towers died or fled, trapping the crews in the rising tide of fire. The towers became immense torches. By the time Velaza had reached the ground and crossed back to the shadows of the houses, the towers had begun to waver.

Velaza kept hidden but close to the Boulevard of the Crimson Oath, watching the full effect of the attack. When she reached the broken wings of the severed manor, the streets shook with the crash of the falling towers. They closed the boulevard with a barricade of burning timber and blackened iron.

Epikente had already crossed the gap and was waiting for her. Velaza inhaled the smell of burning flesh and greeted her sister with a smile.

Skarveth Lytessian dismounted from his skeletal horse and began to walk the last mile to Shadowvel. Neferata followed him. He did not know she was there. Knowing how long it should take him to reach his destination, she had left Nulahmia only recently, flying on the invisible wings of a whispered spell to witness the end of his journey. She travelled without Nagadron, becoming entirely an unseen creature of the dark.

Skarveth crossed the plain, a single figure willingly exposed to the sentinels on the ramparts of Shadowvel. Neferata called the night to her. Darkness wrapped itself around her like a shroud. She hovered quite far above Skarveth for the moment. There would be sorcerous eyes seeking to pierce the night for any allies the Hell Knight had brought with him. There were none. Neferata was the only secret, and she would remain so, even from Skarveth. It was important that everything he said to the Anvils of the Heldenhammer was, as far as he knew, the truth. There would be time yet to draw closer. It was the coming encounter that she wished to observe.

What have you set in motion? Neferata asked herself. And why have you done it?

Curiosity was the simple answer. It was also incomplete. Neferata was plunged so deeply into the sea of subterfuge that she would never break surface. She knew this, and accepted it. She revelled in it. Some of the games to be played had definite end goals. There were foes to overcome and wars to win. There were other games that were experiments. They were exercises in discovery. This was one of them. She wanted to see where the events she had triggered would lead. It was more than curiosity that pushed her, and more than an instinct. It was impossible for her not to play the game. It was as deep a part of her nature as the thirst for blood.

She had come across two descendants of Mathas Hellezan within a short space of time. These were beings she had thought could not exist. She must have them meet, and see what happened next.

Shadowvel rang with the sounds of preparations for war. More Stormcast Eternals had arrived through the Realmgate since Lord-Celestant Venthor Warfire had put an end to the Children of the Bell. They mean to mount an important campaign. Still, for all their power, it would take more than this to conquer Angaria. That would be obvious to the most fanatical of Sigmar’s knights.

And you are waiting for something, Lord-Celestant, aren’t you? Neferata was amused. You are too obvious. You are not versed in these arts of deception. I doubt you are conscious of even having made the attempt. Everything you do is governed by the dictates of your honour. This is simple strategy, not manipulation. You expect Neferatia and Angaria to tear each other to pieces, and you will use our war to carve out a greater share of Shyish for the holy cause of your god.

The simplicity of the tactic made her want to laugh. Nevertheless, she appreciated the challenge.

The more she considered the usefulness of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, the more intrigued she became about the outcome of a meeting of the Hellezans.

‘Stand fast!’ a voice boomed from the ramparts when Skarveth was a hundred yards from the gate of Shadowvel.

Skarveth ceased walking. He stood beside his horse, sword in its sheath. He was the embodiment of pride in death.

‘State your business!’ the guard demanded.

‘I would speak with Lord-Relictor Rhasan Darksight,’ Skarveth said.

Silence greeted his pronouncement. The Hell Knight was, Neferata believed, exactly the kind of warrior that would invite anger and contempt from this Stormhost. You have flesh, and you bleed, and you live. Yet you are still revenants. You belong to Shyish. Skarveth is the reminder of your truth.

The silence became protracted. The Anvils were not going to speak with Skarveth more than was necessary. They had not denied his request, though, and that told Neferata what she wanted to know.

After a few minutes, a door in the eastern gate turret opened and Rhasan emerged, her helmet under her arm. She strode across the ground and stopped a short distance from Skarveth. Neferata risked descending until she was close enough to observe the details of Rhasan’s face. Cold eyes stared into black sockets.

‘Well?’ Rhasan said. ‘Why did you wish to see me?’

‘I have something for you.’ Skarveth opened the sack hanging from his saddle and pulled out two scrolls. One was of vellum. He presented them to Rhasan. ‘The message is for Lord-Celestant Venthor Warfire.’ Neferata’s seal held the scroll shut. ‘My queen expects that the Anvils of the Heldenhammer will find its information useful. There are details there on the movements of Graunos’ army. They were gathered in Mausolea.’

The Relictor slipped the missive into her belt. ‘Neferata seems very generous with the work of her spies.’ She sounded sceptical.

‘She hopes this will be taken as a gesture of good faith.’

Rhasan grunted. She held up the larger scroll. ‘And what is this?’

‘That,’ said Skarveth, ‘is for you.’

Rhasan regarded the canvas suspiciously, then unrolled it. Her eyes widened, shock breaking through her reserve, when she saw the portrait. She looked at it for a long moment, then back at Skarveth.

Skarveth answered her unasked question. ‘We are kin.’

Rhasan’s hand closed over the handle of her axe.

‘This doesn’t please you,’ said Skarveth. Mirthless laughter shook his bones. ‘I lived my entire mortal life consumed with loathing for my bloodline. Our bloodline. So you do not have my sympathy. You do have my understanding.’

‘You claim parentage with this person?’ Rhasan looked at the portrait again, then rolled up the canvas once more.

‘I would deny it if I could.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She is a descendant of Mathas Hellezan, as are you, as am I.’

‘That name means nothing to me.’

‘How fortunate you are. Mathas Hellezan was a traitor. He led an uprising against Queen Neferata. His cursed line has continued to plot in secret for centuries. The rebellion became open again at Knell.’

‘This means nothing to me either,’ said Rhasan. ‘The schisms of Neferatia are not my concern.’

‘I do not expect them to be,’ Skarveth said. ‘You asked who this was. I have told you.’

‘Why have you brought this to me?’

‘My queen told me to. Now that I have done it, I am freed of the last remnant of a treacherous clan. Keep the portrait. Burn it. Do as you see fit. That, I am happy to say, is of no concern to me.’

Rhasan studied Skarveth for a moment, as if she could read expression in his skull. Then she said, ‘Neferata wished me to have this. She wished me to know of my ancestry.’

‘She did.’

‘This portrait could be a forgery.’

‘It could be. It is not. On that you have my word of honour.’

Neferata watched the firmness of Skarveth’s declaration give Rhasan pause.

‘Why does she wish this?’

‘I do not know,’ said Skarveth. ‘She did not know of its existence until recently. Are you offended that she found something of your roots and decided that you should know too? Should she have kept this to herself?’

‘I am indifferent to this,’ Rhasan said after a slight hesitation. The statement was a bit too flat to be entirely convincing. ‘I doubt this is the whole truth of the past,’ she continued, brandishing the portrait. ‘Whatever the past might actually be, it is a lost world. The actions of the present and the hope of the future are all that matter.’

Skarveth clacked his teeth together twice in a suggestion of laughter. ‘You are wrong. The past shapes us whether we remember it or not. It governs our actions, even if they are in revolt against what our ancestors would have us be.’

Rhasan looked uncomfortable. She did not answer Skarveth directly. Instead, she mounted an attack from another direction. ‘We are also shaped by forces acting in our present. Your queen is not motivated by kindness. What did she hope to gain in this encounter?’

‘I do not know that, either.’

‘So you do as you are told. You act out of blind loyalty.’

‘Is that how you follow Sigmar?’ Skarveth asked.

‘Do not insult me.’

‘Then do me the same courtesy.’

‘From what you say, I gather that you were raised a rebel. You reject that. You reject your kin. You choose to destroy them, and to ally yourself with the tyrant of Neferatia. I wonder what I should see in such actions.’

‘You should see loyalty,’ Skarveth snarled. ‘Honour. Duty. I believe you are familiar with those concepts. Neferata is my rightful queen, and I am her obedient subject. My duty was not to the self-interested vendettas of Vask Hellezan. I know who I am. I know my roots, and they go far deeper than the beginning of the ridiculous perfidy of Mathas Hellezan.’ The hollow voice rasped in anger. ‘When my queen bade me come here, I did so gladly. And I was curious.’

‘Is your curiosity satisfied?’

Neferata watched Skarveth look at Rhasan, at the skull on the helmet she carried and at the figures of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer standing on the walls of Shadowvel.

‘I am satisfied on one point,’ he said, calm once more. ‘No matter what may be said, and what may yet happen, I believe we are agreed on the paramount nature of loyalty.’

‘Perhaps we are.’

‘Then I will leave you.’ Skarveth grasped his horse’s reins, then paused and pointed at the canvas in Rhasan’s fist. ‘I would burn that. It has no value. Neither of us is bound by the Hellezan past. As I said, the roots of true loyalty run deeper. But you are of Shyish. Remember that.’

He mounted his horse and rode off.

Neferata lingered, watching Rhasan. The Lord-Relictor waited until Skarveth was a good distance away before unrolling the canvas again. She stared at the portrait, conflicting emotions flickering across her face. Her fists closed around the corners. She raised her arms, about to tear the portrait in two. Then she paused. She kept looking at the armoured woman who resembled her so much. Even now, Neferata could not decide whether the portrait was of Rhasan herself or not. If Rhasan had the same difficulty, then the effect of the art must be thoroughly disturbing.

Rhasan rolled the canvas up once more. Her lips pressed into a grim line, she walked back towards Shadowvel.

Neferata rose into the night. She had much to think about. The encounter had gone very well. Rhasan fascinated her. There are possibilities here. Rhasan’s reactions to Skarveth, to his news and to his arguments only made her more interesting.

Skarveth kept drawing her thoughts too. Hearing him speak when he believed himself not to be observed by her was instructive. Such moments always were. What was different was the nature of the revelation. Or, rather, the confirmation. When she listened to her subjects, Neferata was used to uncovering secrets, whether they were ones she would use against them or ones that they planned to use against her. Skarveth’s words were in concert with his actions. It was difficult to deny the loyalty he had demonstrated in turning against Vask and giving up his life. But Neferata could imagine such a sacrifice being made for the ends of later victory. She did not think it likely, but she did not rule the possibility out. Skarveth was proving himself worthy of her confidence, though, in every action he had taken since then. His anger, when he had defended the idea of loyalty to Neferata, had sounded real. Skarveth appeared to be something Neferata had decided did not exist – the selfless, genuinely loyal subject.

There was so much to think about.

From the crown of the Sepulchre of the Rictus, Graunos and Kathag looked down at the wreckage along the Boulevard of the Crimson Oath.

‘This is my city!’ Graunos roared. ‘Mine!’ The bellow rumbled across Mausolea. In the street below, the people of the city stopped in their work of clearing away the debris and stared up at the colossal figure. They fell to their knees. Many covered their ears and hid their heads in terror.

Appearances of the daemon prince outside Skulldagger Bastion were rare and terrible. The slaves who looked upon him expected to die.

‘It is your city,’ Kathag agreed. ‘That is precisely why she attacked it. She seeks to provoke you into making a mistake.’

‘She has provoked me,’ Graunos said.

‘Let the mistake be hers,’ Kathag urged. He would not go down that road again. He would not fall into her traps. He had to save Graunos from the same error.

Anger was giving Kathag clarity. It was keeping him from fatal judgements. It was the anger he felt at the way in which Ruhok had let himself be led by the nose by Neferata, walking right into the total slaughter of his horde.

Not this time, though. If Kathag had to plead with Graunos, if he had to abase himself to keep the lord of Angaria focused, he would. He would have his vengeance, and he needed his new patron to see as clearly as he did.

The daemon prince growled, and the sepulchre vibrated, the tremors of Graunos’ rage running down its height. Then, to Kathag’s relief, Graunos nodded.

‘Yes,’ Graunos said. ‘Agreed. We will not play this game of hers. Especially not on her terms.’

‘She wants us distracted, misdirecting our strength.’

‘And then she strikes, having made common cause with the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.’

‘That alliance does not yet exist,’ Kathag pointed out.

‘Nor will it.’ Graunos looked at the burned wreckage again. ‘How long until the western gate is passable?’

‘A day.’

‘A day,’ Graunos repeated. He growled again. There was a new quality to the anger. It was deeper, more focused. ‘A mere day. She provokes me to the edge of foolishness, all for a single day.’

Good, Kathag thought. He sees beyond the immediate damage. His satisfaction withered when he saw the way Graunos was looking at him.

‘Do not think to instruct me,’ the daemon prince warned.

‘I would never–’ Kathag began.

‘Oh, wouldn’t you? I think you misunderstand your position. I am not the instrument of your vengeance. You are the tool of my anger. Its compass is greater than you can conceive. I rule here now, but the realm of Hysh still trembles at my name. This empire is but a drop in the ocean of my wrath. I will see all of Shyish crumble in flames. I will offer Nagash’s skull to Khorne before I am done.’

Despite the grandiosity of the speech, there was an undercurrent that was coldly sober. Kathag’s throat went dry. He must not underestimate the being in front of him. There were reasons why Khorne had elevated Graunos from his mortal station to become the great monster who crushed thrones in his grip.

And he was not done. He would rise yet.

Graunos seemed to read Kathag’s mind. His lips pulled back in a fusion of smile and snarl. ‘But first, the Mortarch of Blood,’ he said.

His lesson delivered, Graunos turned from Kathag. He faced south. ‘The Anvils of the Heldenhammer are an irritant. Go to the south. Ensure our tool does what we desire. Make an end of them.’

Perception is the lie at the foundation of reality.

– Strategies of Illusion

Chapter 9

Shadowvel had been killed several times over. Death lay heavily over its ruins. Purged of the noxious taint of the Children of the Bell, it remained an empty tomb. Even with the thousands of Anvils of the Heldenhammer occupying it, the city did not stir back to life. Its deaths were too profound. It had been too long since there had been any mortal inhabitants. Rhasan wondered if things would change. If people returned to the city, perhaps it would become a living thing once more. It would resist resurrection, though. It had been dead a long time, and was used to it.

Its fortifications were eroded, corners rounded and ramparts crumbling like old bones. They were still solid enough to serve a purpose, and the Anvils had reinforced the walls since their arrival. The city would do as a base from which to launch a campaign, but it did not live. It was a shell containing Sigmar’s warriors, nothing more.

Rhasan walked with Venthor on the northern parapet. They looked out at the Stonepain Mountains. The sky beyond the peaks pulsed red, as if the chain were a cauldron barely containing the boiling venom of Graunos.

Venthor held the message that Skarveth had given to Rhasan. ‘Do you think what this says is true?’ he asked.

‘I think it might well be,’ said Rhasan.

‘No further reinforcements on their way to Angaria’s southern gate.’ Venthor smiled sourly. ‘How convenient for us. How perfect an invitation.’

‘Too perfect, you think.’

‘As a stratagem to lure us into disaster, it is hardly subtle.’

‘Which is why I think what she says is true. What good would it do her to try to mislead us? She could not have any expectation that we would fall for such a trap.’

‘We’ll have confirmation one way or another soon,’ Venthor said.

They were expecting the return of Knight-Venator Jehnneka Stormire. She had led a flight of Prosecutors over the mountains, gauging the enemy’s force in the Angarian south.

‘At any rate,’ Venthor went on, ‘what she tells us here will hardly matter. It has little bearing on when we strike. So let us assume that what she says is true. What is her purpose?’

‘A gesture of good will, her emissary called it,’ said Rhasan.

Venthor snorted. ‘I would find it easier to believe in a fastidious nurgling. But she certainly commits herself to that charade.’ He glanced down at the letter again. ‘She urges us to coordinate our attacks with hers.’

‘And there is no sign of when she plans to attack.’

‘That would have been convenient,’ said Venthor. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer were not basing the strategy of their attack on the daemon prince on the assumption that the two foes of Sigmar would be fighting each other. But that situation would have helped. Venthor could not engineer the outbreak of their war on his terms, but Rhasan knew the hope had been present in his mind. ‘She seems to want us to be fighting side by side,’ Venthor said.

‘And what if we explored that possibility?’ Rhasan asked. She had debated the wisdom of the action. She had strong misgivings, but she could not dismiss the tactic out of hand. She did not trust Neferata’s overtures. And yet…

‘I said the matter was closed,’ Venthor snapped.

‘I think it should be reopened,’ Rhasan said, keeping her voice even. ‘She has nothing to gain in deceiving us.’

‘So you have said. You sound very certain of that.’

‘I am not. But I cannot see how doing so would help her in her struggle with Graunos. Being truthful with us, on the other hand, does have clear benefits.’

‘Our cooperation being foremost.’

‘Yes. My point, though, is that cooperation could benefit our cause as well.’

Venthor shook his head. ‘Even if that were so, whatever good might come of this for us would be as nothing compared to her victory.’

‘Which would be what?’

‘Whatever she chooses it to be. I simply will not be party to the triumph of Sigmar’s enemy.’

‘Things are rarely that straightforward.’

‘Sometimes they are.’ He folded up the letter. ‘She asks us to delay. We will not. We will strike when we are ready, and on our terms. I will not have an army of death on our flanks, waiting to turn on us when its perfidious queen decides the time is right.’

Venthor was adamant. There was no point in pursuing the question with him. Rhasan fell silent, uncertain whether she disagreed with the Lord-Celestant or not.

The two warriors walked on. Rhasan was looking north when the Prosecutors appeared, the blazing light of their wings surrounding the darkness of their armour, and she saw them first. She raised her hammer in greeting. Jehnneka Stormire returned the salutation, and the Knight-Venator angled off from the Prosecutors to descend to the parapet. The light of her wings dimmed as she approached, then winked out upon landing, their mystic flight no longer needed. Jehnneka rapped a fist against her breastplate.

‘Lord-Celestant,’ she said in greeting. ‘Lord-Relictor.’

‘What news, Knight-Venator?’ Venthor asked.

‘Good news, I believe,’ Jehnneka said.

‘That Neferata and Graunos have finally ceased their standoff and tear at each other’s throats?’

‘Not that, I am sorry to say. But there has been a shift. The reinforcements to the southern gate have ceased.’

Rhasan exchanged a look with Venthor.

Jehnneka removed her helmet and frowned. Brown-skinned and a giant in stature, she had the face of an eternal warrior. Her gaze was ferocious, but a shadow fell over it too, the shadow that haunted all the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. Forged out of death, pursued by its vengeance, they were the most doom-touched of Sigmar’s immortals. ‘It seems my report is already known to you.’

‘We were told, but the source was unreliable.’

‘Neferata continues to meddle,’ Jehnneka guessed.

‘Indeed,’ said Venthor. ‘What is your evaluation of the Wrathgate?’

The passes on the western side of Angaria were few, twisted and narrow. With the destruction of Nighthall Keep, there was no way for a large army to cross except stretched out and fatally vulnerable. The situation was different to the south. There was a gap in the Stonepains, the Axeway. Its name came from its shape. It was as if the mountains had been cleft by the blow of a god’s blade. The pass was several hundred yards wide and ran straight between smooth, sheer cliffs. It was Angaria’s most vulnerable point. Graunos had used it to his advantage in his war of conquest, and he had taken steps to ensure the weakness no longer existed. He had erected a brass gate. A hundred feet high, thirty feet wide, it blocked the entire pass. It could open, unleashing Graunos’ fury in a flood upon the lands beyond. Closed, the Wrathgate was the great obstacle to the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, just as the Axeway was the route they must take to strike into the heart of the empire of Chaos.

‘It is well defended,’ Jehnneka said.

‘As we would have expected,’ said Rhasan.

‘Quite,’ Jehnneka agreed. ‘The garrison is, though, significantly smaller in size than a full warhorde. There are certainly defences other than the physical barrier of the gate and the force of arms, but we cannot be sure of their nature.’

‘Can you speculate?’ Venthor asked.

‘Above the gate, suspended by a shaft running between the mountainsides, there is an immense sculpted skull. I doubt its purpose is ornamental.’

‘So noted,’ said Venthor. He nodded to himself, satisfied. ‘Neferata and Graunos may not be engaged in battle as we would have hoped, but their standoff is having much the same effect. Graunos’ defences will not be enough. Our way forward will be difficult, but it is clear. We will take the Wrathgate. Once it is ours, Graunos might slow our advance, but he will never be able to stop it.’

‘And now that we know that the message from Neferata is the truth, this changes nothing,’ Rhasan guessed.

‘Agreed,’ said Venthor. He was looking off into the night, towards the darker, vertical line in the mountain chain that marked the Axeway. His mind was on the march, Rhasan saw. He was picturing the strategies needed to take the Wrathgate. He had dismissed the new overture from the Mortarch of Blood.

Rhasan cursed her misgivings. But she could not shed them.

Nagia’s journey to Mortannis was uncomfortable. The winds blew hard over the hard land. Lament was the transitional season between Loss and Crematory, and the air seethed with its turmoil. The winds changed direction constantly, fiery one hour, frigid the next, never less than furious. Seeking anonymity, she rode with a trade caravan, and there were no provisions for her noble status. The saddle on the nag she rode was worn. Her body ached everywhere, and the pains only grew worse with the fall of night, magnified by the queasy hunger that was her constant companion now. She did not know what illness had taken her. It gradually turned each day into a nightmare, twilight into agony. When she woke in the morning, though, she always felt refreshed and strong. Sometimes she found scratches on her arms that she could not remember acquiring, and dark stains on her clothes she was sure had not been there the day before. The nights were blurs, as if she had been drinking heavily. At least the illness did not prevent her from taking action, and the further she travelled, the more focused and clear she felt.

When she arrived in Mortannis, she spent most of the day in aimless wandering before being jostled outside an inn. The woman apologised, and whispered, ‘Todost’. Nagia departed for that village, less than ten leagues from the much larger Mortannis. And in Todost, another encounter sent her to Valpurg, and in Valpurg she was told to make for the Field of Sighs.

Half a day’s journey from Valpurg, the Field of Sighs was a cemetery that stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction. Many of the towns and villages who had sent their dead here no longer existed. They had vanished into the dust, forgotten by all except perhaps Neferatia’s ever-watchful ruler. The traces of their dead remained, and there were millions here. The cemetery occupied a vast, rolling plain. Trees that never bore leaves thrust their gnarled-hand silhouettes up from the stony ground. Wrackdaws, huge carrion birds, perched on the branches. Their heads were fleshless skulls, gaping in eternal hunger. When they flew, they gathered in flocks that turned the sky black. Choking, necrotic dust fell from their leathery feathers. Tomb robbers haunted the shadows, scuttling down the narrow, cramped passages between the sepulchres and mausoleums. If they were caught in the dust storms created by the wrackdaws, they added their numbers to the tally of the Field of Sighs.

The grave monuments were so high and densely packed that no one who entered the cemetery could see far. Only the wrackdaws had any significant perspective. No walls contained the cemetery, its growth held back only by the network of deep gorges in the west and south and the sullen cliffs to the east and north. No wall was needed. The Field of Sighs offered nothing to an invading army. It was isolated, strategically useless. To those who wished to disappear, though, it offered much. The disappearance was very often final. Once inside, it was easy to lose one’s way and never emerge. But it was also the perfect place to hide.

Nagia rode alone to the Field. Midway there, she discovered that someone had slipped a piece of vellum into her purse. On it were instructions. She was approaching from the south, crossing rusted, swaying suspension bridges across the gorges. After the last of them, she was to look for a double-pyramid sepulchre on the edge of the cemetery. After that, no other landmarks were indicated. Her path was traced for her in counted steps.

She placed her faith in the missive. She put even more faith in the righteousness of her cause. It was infallible. She did not know how she had come by this confidence after the defeat at Knell, but it had the force of revelation and it pushed her forwards.

She spotted the twin peaks of the monument as she began her final crossing. She left her exhausted horse at the end of the outer line of tombs and marched into the Field of Sighs as night fell. The hunger did not trouble her as much as it had. She felt it still, but in the background. It receded before anticipation. She sensed an end to her travels. She sensed the approach of new revelations. She sensed victory.

She counted her steps carefully, turning down one dark passage after another, often having to turn sideways to squeeze between the cold stones of the graves. Lament’s wild winds screamed through the crevices. Nagia was lost in the jumbled labyrinth. It occurred to her that she would not be able to find her way out again. She was not troubled. She did not feel the need to try.

After a while, she became aware of other travellers in the Field of Sighs. She caught glimpses of them at intersections and turning out of passages just as she entered. She did not think they were grave robbers. They were always individuals, always moving in parallel with her or, if they were ahead, heading in the same direction she was about to take. At last, she thought, she was seeing her comrades in Vask’s crusade. A turning point had been reached. They were no longer to be isolated. This was a gathering.

Her belief in impending victory grew with every step.

She walked for hours. Twice, a flock of wrackdaws passed overhead. She sheltered in the archways of nearby mausoleums. She experienced no discomfort from the falling clouds of dust, and she ignored the birds after that. She did not know why she was immune. The question seemed unimportant, and she shrugged it off.

When at last she reached her destination, she was but one of a crowd. Mortal and vampire, they nodded to each other in greeting. Most were strangers, yet they were comrades, and this first encounter felt like a celebration. Nagia was almost giddy, the background discomfort of her hunger utterly forgotten.

Vask’s followers converged on a monolithic sepulchre. Time had erased the names that had once adorned it. It was a huge, brutish monument to the forgotten dead. Its gates had rusted away, and the opening was a gaping cave of darkness. In the company of hundreds of others, Nagia entered the tomb. There were no torches to light the way, but her eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom. The graves in the centre of the sepulchre had been displaced, and stairs cut into the floor. The new construction was relatively recent, and crude. It looked like it had been done hurriedly. The steps were uneven and rough, but all they were required to do was provide a way underground.

The descent was long and monotonous. The foundations of the sepulchre gave way to bedrock, and the stone walls gradually pulled away from either side until the staircase seemed to be descending through a vast emptiness. The effect was disorientating. Nagia felt that she was moving through a black limbo. There was no way to guess how far she had come, and there was no bottom in sight.

But she knew when she crossed the threshold. She could not see it. There was nothing different in the stairs before and after it. But she sensed it in her soul. She had been in one place, and now she was in another. There were ancient energies building up around her. There were eyes in the darkness. There was power here, and age, and a single-mindedness of purpose.

In the Silent Chamber, Neferata frowned. Nagia’s will was utterly slaved to hers. Not only was the thrall’s every thought exposed to Neferata’s scrutiny, she could not think anything that Neferata did not want her to think. When Neferata used the black diamond slab in the Silent Chamber to focus her spells, the hold became even stronger. She saw what Nagia saw, heard what she heard.

But suddenly, she was blind.

‘All has vanished,’ she said. Mereneth was attending her, waiting for the orders that would come once Neferata had uncovered Vask and his secrets.

‘Has she been destroyed?’ Mereneth asked.

‘No. I still sense her. I have control of her mind and can read her thoughts. What I cannot tell is where she is. She has crossed a barrier into a place I cannot see.’

‘In Neferatia? How can that be?’

It should not be. Furious, Neferata stared at the altar and concentrated. Under the power of her gaze, the diamond began to smoke. Neferata reached out with the full power of her witchsight, extending it down through the Field of Sighs, seeking the cause of her blindness.

The great cemetery was in the southwestern region of Neferatia. The Mortarch sank her consciousness into her land, into the villages and towns and dukedoms that surrounded the region. She pushed deeper, into the underworlds, into the sunless lands forbidden to the living. There she found the blankness. ‘Someone has erected a mystical wall,’ she said. ‘It blocks my view.’

‘That is a very powerful spell. Whoever has done this must have laboured long and hard in its making.’

‘Indeed.’ Neferata admired the craft in spite of herself. ‘I would never have noticed it had I not been looking specifically for a blind spot.’ Her awareness would have slid right over the wall.

Neferata held the location in her mind, refusing to let go of the blankness. She shifted her focus slightly, pulling back now from the barrier to find its location.

‘The sealed territory is an underworld,’ she said.

‘Below the Field of Sighs.’

‘I do not think so. It would be poorly hidden if it were. I believe Nagia and her fellow traitors have crossed a sorcerous gate. It has transported them to this new location.’ Neferata continued to withdraw from the barrier, learning the contours of the land, painting a portrait of the territory. An image appeared in the black mirror of the diamond altar. It took on a familiar configuration of plains, the edge of mountains and a ruined city.

‘Shadowvel,’ she said. ‘The underworld is linked to Shadowvel.’

Consequences. Nothing ever ends, and there are always consequences. She laughed, almost delighted to see a lesson she had long insisted upon become truth once more, even if she paid the cost. ‘Do you see the pattern, Mereneth? See the repetition and return. I destroy Mathas Hellezan and his revolt, and in a new Age, it rises again, even stronger. I punish Shadowvel for its arrogance, and I torment the souls of its captive dead. And now the thousands who died in the centuries before my judgement have thrown their lot in with Vask.’ Her laugh turned into a predatory hiss. ‘My enemies must face repetition too. I am stronger than they are. They will be punished anew, more utterly than before.’

‘The dead of Shadowvel – would they be numerous enough to be able to create that barrier against you?’ Mereneth asked.

‘Yes. With time, with patience, with effort, and with the direction of Vask, or of what he has become. He showed at Knell what he is capable of, and what he can conceal.’

‘This is an extraordinary feat for any necromancer.’

‘It is,’ Neferata agreed. ‘Skarveth says the mummy of Kasten Hellezan is fused to his body. The will of the dead thing is mighty and lives on. Kasten must have become powerful in his own right before his death. We are fighting two enemies who have become one.’

‘Do my sisters fly for Shadowvel?’

‘Not yet,’ said Neferata. ‘We know where Vask might be. That is not enough. He may move again. I need to know what he plans.’

‘But if Nagia’s senses are closed to you…’

‘Her thoughts are not. They are still mine.’ She would deduce what Nagia perceived from her reflections. It was a flawed glass through which Neferata looked, but it would do.

The cave, if it was a cave, was limitless. Torches lit the space, and the deathly light of spirits filled the air above Nagia’s head with the pale green glow of existence beyond the putrefaction of the body. The walls were so far away, they were invisible in the gloom. The ceiling was too high to be seen. The floor was smooth, polished stone, and from what Nagia imagined to be the centre rose a single towering stalagmite. Vask stood upon the rock column, and before him was his great army. Nagia had never imagined it would be so huge, especially after Knell. It was as if that defeat had never happened.

Nagia saw why Vask had chosen to gather all his loyal forces together. Though her purpose had been stronger than ever, there surely might have been others who doubted. They could not now. There were thousands here, tens of thousands, mortal and vampire and skeleton and ghost. There were so very many spirits. They had not been present at Knell. Vask would not have been able to gather an army of this size without it being noticed too soon. But here, in their domain, they were prepared now. Vask had forged an alliance with them, and this renewed army was ready to march.

Nagia was hundreds of yards away from Vask. He was a tiny, hunched figure, though her eyesight was surprisingly sharp and she could see him clearly. She had not expected the grotesque being. His appearance was at odds with the nobility of the cause. The leathery corpse that clung to his torso seemed to be tearing at him and biting him. It was monstrous. When Vask spoke, his voice was rough, as though he had a bone caught in his throat. His words, though, resounded throughout the infinite cave. Though his body was twisted and battered, his resolve was like iron.

‘We were bloodied at Knell,’ said Vask. ‘We were defeated there. We must not pretend otherwise. When you look at the multitudes gathered in strength with you, my children, my warriors, you may say to yourselves, “I will forget Knell. It doesn’t matter.” This is wrong. Knell does matter. We must not forget it. Let it be the goad to your fury. Let the memory of Knell become a fresh need for vengeance. Let there be no lies or dissembling. Truth and wrath are our watchwords now, our shields and our swords. Truth and wrath, my warriors. When we march, we march for Knell!’

‘TRUTH AND WRATH!’ throats living and dead bellowed. ‘FOR KNELL!’

‘I am here to tell you how we march, and against whom,’ Vask went on. ‘I am here to tell you that vengeance takes on more than one form. You are used to years of indirect action, of waiting patiently. Though we ride to war, I tell you that you must be patient a little while longer. Our loss at Knell has had consequences. We had our chance to destroy the Mortarch, and traitors took that away from us. We have a new opportunity now. It is the first step towards facing her once more. We have the patronage of the great prince of Angaria. Allied with him, we will see Neferatia fall.’

The throng roared again.

‘Neferatia is not Angaria’s only enemy. There are others. So we will attack and destroy these other enemies, and thus pave the way for Neferata’s end.’

Nagia’s thoughts became dominated by images of a vague plain, covered by innumerable bodies of Stormcast Eternals. Their armour was fanciful colours. Armies of the dead marched triumphantly over them, the hobbling figure of Vask at their head. It was a fantasy, as ridiculous in its conceit as it was in its details. It was also useful.

‘Vask is going to attack the Anvils of the Heldenhammer,’ Neferata said.

Mereneth raised her eyebrows. ‘After what happened at Knell, that does not seem like the wisest course of action open to him.’

‘It isn’t,’ said Neferata. ‘Given his hatred for me, I cannot imagine that this was his idea.’

‘How is this attack anything other than utterly self-destructive?’

‘Graunos would not throw away a valuable tool. His ambush against us occurred while we were already fighting Javassak. If he attacks when the Anvils march on the Wrathgate, Sigmar’s army will be caught in the Axeway.’

‘That is unfortunate for the Anvils of the Heldenhammer,’ said Mereneth. ‘They will not go down easily. We can let our enemies damage each other for us.’

‘I do not think it is always useful for us to have the Stormcast Eternals as enemies,’ said Neferata. ‘Their destruction, in this instance, is not in our interest. It would suit Graunos well, so it does not suit me.’

The images in Nagia’s head changed. She pictured herself gifted with omniscience, looking out upon Nulahmia from the air, then from the ground, seeing an imaginary construct of Neferata’s armies marching from the city.

‘Ah,’ said Neferata. ‘She and her cohorts from Nulahmia are to watch our movements and give Vask warning. Good.’ She shaped a new thought for her thrall.

The pang of disappointment Nagia felt when she learned an attack on Neferata herself was not imminent disappeared, seared away by the light of inspiration. ‘My lord!’ she cried. ‘My lord! We can destroy the Anvils and Neferata!’

Her voice sounded thin in her ears, a tiny thing lost in vastness. She made it cut across the cave, though, calling out in the brief silence between the army’s roar and Vask’s next words. Vask cocked his head, looking almost as astonished as she was at her temerity.

But he has to know. I must tell him. She held the key to the greatest of victories. This was her moment of destiny.

Her interruption caused an angry stir in the multitude. Vask held up a hand, quieting the rumble. ‘What is it you see that I do not?’ he asked, curious and threatening at once.

‘Neferata will march on the Anvils of the Heldenhammer very soon, my lord. She sent an emissary to seek an alliance, and he failed. I saw his return in court.’ The memory had just risen in her mind. She cursed herself for not having recalled such vital information sooner.

‘You think that failure portends war,’ said Vask.

‘Yes, my lord. Neferata believes she holds Angaria in a stalemate to her east, so she turns her eyes to the enemy already on her side of the Stonepains in the south.’

‘When will this happen?’

‘Soon, my lord! It must be soon! If we delay but a short while, this will come to pass.’

Vask looked at her for a long while. He muttered something to the mummy on his torso. He cocked his head, listening, then nodded. ‘Come forward,’ he said to Nagia.

The throng parted for her, and Nagia made her way across the cavern to the base of the rock column.

‘Climb up,’ Vask commanded.

Nagia obeyed. She found handholds and struggled up the stalagmite. When she stood before her lord, he seemed even smaller as she looked down at his hunched form. His eyes burned, though. This close to him, she feared they might set her on fire.

‘I will see what you have seen,’ Vask said. ‘I will see your memories.’ He reached for her head with both hands.

‘Yes, my lord,’ Nagia said numbly, though he had not asked for her consent.

The withered fingers grasped her temples. Long, cracked nails dug into her flesh. She shivered as something dry and hot with anger reached into her mind. It scraped against her memories, leaving scratches behind. It clawed her from the inside, yet when Vask finally released her and she fell to her knees and retched, her heart swelled with the honour to have served him.

‘Neferata ambushes the Anvils of the Heldenhammer instead of us,’ Vask announced. His head had dipped down, his eyes on the corpse he carried. His voice was lower, almost a mutter, though it still carried. ‘She does what we planned, and then we crush them both.’ He hissed with satisfaction. ‘So it must be. It is destined. It is written. It can be no other way.’ He looked up at his army. ‘And Graunos will see,’ he said, still not addressing Nagia. ‘He will come out in force. We will end the war with a single blow.’

A burst of ecstasy and pride filled Nagia’s mind.

‘It is done,’ Neferata said. She pulled back from the thrall. She would monitor Nagia’s thoughts. That would be sufficient for now. There was no further action she need take. She had planted the seed. ‘Vask has taken the bait. He believes I am about to march on Shadowvel.’

‘What do you intend, my queen?’

‘To gather a large force and march on Shadowvel. Our preparations must be highly visible. They will give Nagia much to report.’

Mereneth blinked. ‘I do not understand.’

‘I am going to make a truth out of Nagia’s lie. We will do exactly what Vask hopes and expects. There is no one more foolish and prone to fatal mistakes than an enemy who believes his most fervent dream is becoming a reality. The true gift is ours, Mereneth.’

‘You expect to finish Vask.’

Neferata shrugged. ‘I do. That is necessary, but not very interesting. What will be interesting is what happens with the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, don’t you think?’

She had nudged the players in the war into a configuration of her liking. It was time to take a great gamble. There was excitement in that thought. And bloody joy.

There are few ecstasies in a war whose every outcome is preordained. It is fortunate that such a war is impossible.

– Treatise On Pleasure

Chapter 10

Neferata mustered her army for the march in a shallow valley a few miles outside the walls of Nulahmia. The largest part of her forces remained east, against the Stonepain Mountains. What she was gathering for the southern campaign was greater than what she had taken to Knell. There were dukedoms she would be passing through on the way to the Axeway, where she would gather even more reinforcements. It was dusk, and the winds of Lament had blown in thick, boiling clouds. A cauldron in the skies reached down to the brewing violence below.

Skeletons stood in ordered, identical ranks. Wraiths flew over them, and then returned to the circle of black coaches where the will of dead vampires commanded. Shavasta and her Blood Knights rode up and down the length of the column, eager for the signal to begin the march.

Not yet. Not just yet. We cannot arrive too soon.

Skarveth approached, marching up the rocky rise to where Neferata stood with Mereneth. The Hell Knight bowed. ‘My queen,’ he said. ‘Lady Mereneth. I have come, as you commanded.’

‘Tell me,’ Neferata said, ‘what are your current thoughts regarding the problem of Angaria?’

‘I have no doubt that the campaign in the Axeway will be successful. However, I do not believe that taking the Wrathgate will be enough for a successful invasion of Angaria.’

‘And why is that?’

‘The narrowness of the pass. It allows for many more warriors to march abreast than Nighthall ever did, but it will always be a bottleneck. Graunos may not be able to stop us. He will be able to slow us down, perhaps long enough to bring the rest of his forces to bear.’ He paused. ‘I also believe that nothing I have just said was unknown to you.’

Neferata smiled. ‘Go on.’

‘If the largest part of your army is in the east, you are not expecting to stage the full invasion through the Axeway.’

‘I am not,’ Neferata agreed, ‘for the very reasons you stated.’

‘There are no siege engines. This is an army that will travel quickly, but it is not intended to take the Wrathgate itself.’

‘Exactly so.’

Skarveth looked down at the army, and then up at the high ridge behind Neferata.

‘There is something else that troubles you about our preparations,’ the Mortarch said.

‘We are not that far from Nulahmia. Though we are hidden from eyes inside the city, anyone curious enough to make a short journey will see this.’

‘I am counting on it.’ Neferata glanced up at the ridge. Nagia had concealed herself well. She was there, though. She had been most of the day. ‘Some secrets are not meant to be kept. It is the appearance of secrecy that is their value. Now, given what you have already deduced, you should have come to a conclusion.’

‘I have, my queen. I believe you have found another way into Angaria.’

‘I have. There is a way to take our forces through suddenly and with terrible power. That way is closed to us for now. I wish to open it, because events are aligning. And when it is open, we will also be in a position to strike Graunos in a way that he cannot imagine. You and Lady Mereneth will open this way for us. I need a diplomat and a thief.’

Mereneth smiled. Skarveth hesitated before answering, conveying his puzzlement.

‘I will do whatever my queen commands,’ he said. ‘Though I do not consider myself especially diplomatic.’

‘You are well suited to the task where I must send you,’ Neferata said. ‘You embody honour in a manner rare in this realm. Its aura surrounds you. I do not say this to flatter you. I do not say whether it is a weakness or a strength. But where I will send you, it is necessary. It must be seen that you are truthful. You will go to Obsidia, and Mereneth to Velkyn.’

‘The sealed underworlds,’ Skarveth said, beginning to understand.

‘Hothalas rules in Obsidia,’ said Neferata. ‘With the coming of Graunos, she sealed all of her realm’s borders. Much of it adjoins Angaria. If Graunos saw anyone enter his empire from Obsidia, that would draw his attention, and Hothalas would risk destruction. She has turned her back on me during our struggle with the Ruinous Powers, but I will forgive her if she lets my army through. I need something else from her, too. You must get her piece of the Sundered Crown.’

‘To what end?’

‘Mereneth will get the other. The crown of the broken realms of Obsidia and Velkyn will be forged anew.’

The Crown of Anguish had been whole once. Obsidia and Velkyn had been a single underworld, one province subterranean, the other floating islands in the clouds. Two sisters had ruled together. The wraith Hothalas and Kranyax, the great banshee, ruled over a domain that was as deep and as wild as the passions of the souls within its boundaries. As above, so below. There had been no distinction between the two states. Mourning spirits moved from the sorrowful caverns far beneath the surface of the earth to the howling heights in the air without crossing boundaries, carried by the tempests of emotion.

And then the Ruinous Powers had come.

The upheavals of the Age of Chaos ripped the realm in two. The depths and the heights were no longer one. Hothalas, in the pits of mourning, sought to continue the governance, but Kranyax, who was the uncomprehending anger before loss, disappeared into the madness of the passions. As the distance grew between herself and her sister and Kranyax’s reason disintegrated, she thought herself bereaved and betrayed. She then made the betrayal real. She attacked Hothalas, laid waste to entire regions of Obsidia and tore away the sky-borne province of Velkyn as the final traces of her sanity burned.

During that struggle, the crown was sundered. Anguish had a single crown. Before the war, it had been present for both sisters, though neither wore it. It sat beside the thrones in Obsidia and Velkyn, present in both places at once, complete in its form, its essence whole too, because Melancholy and Frenzy were but aspects of Anguish. When Kranyax attacked, she tried to seize the crown entirely for herself. By severing the underworlds from each other, she shattered the essence of the crown, and its shape split too. Now, each half existed in one place only, one in Obsidia, the other in Velkyn, the symbol of the shattered unity.

Skarveth knew the history. It was part of the common lore of Neferatia, and its truth was felt profoundly by any soul in Shyish who had experienced the twin faces of Anguish. In his mortal life, he had accepted the schism as eternal, as one of the unchanging facets of Shyish.

Now his queen had commanded that he should labour to end the eternal.

The road to Obsidia began in a single, isolated, nameless tomb a short distance to the north of Knell. Skarveth pulled open the rusted gate, opening a vault large enough for him to lead his horse inside. A huge sarcophagus lay in the centre of the vault. It was empty, hollow, and when Skarveth leaned against it, it swivelled aside, revealing a ramp descending into the earth. A few hundred feet down, the ramp ended at a road cobbled with the fossilised crowns of skulls.

Skarveth mounted the horse and travelled the Obsidia Road. The sound of hooves against skulls was hollow, echoing. Skarveth rode for more than a day through the darkness. It became difficult to keep track of time. The tunnels and their road were unchanging except for sloping ever deeper. Skarveth only knew that he had crossed through the portal when the dark began to give way to a faint glow in the distance. The tunnels grew wider, the glow brighter. At last, Skarveth emerged into vastness, an infinite limbo of night and spectral illumination that held the gate to Obsidia.

Two colossal pillars flanked the entrance. They were caryatids hundreds of feet high, their heads disappearing into distant shadow. The one on the right was a robed wraith clutching a scythe. Its jaws were parted in a scream of rage. It bore half a crown upon its head. The other column had been comprehensively defaced. There were no features visible, and barely a shape. The blows that had smashed the sculpture had been furious. The figure was gone. All that remained was the shape of pain. The pillar had been twisted by the blows that had taken away the body and the face. At its peak was the other half of the crown, the only portion of the column that had not been attacked. Hothalas, wounded and furious by Kranyax’s demented assault, had tried, at the end of the war that had severed Velkyn from Obsidia, to send her sister to final oblivion. She had failed, and had been reduced to venting her wrath on the image of Kranyax at Obsidia’s gate.

The stone of the pillars was itself a ghost. It was a memory of strength. What vanished in the ravages of time had an aethereal existence here. The pillars, the gate between them and the walls beyond glowed with a baleful spirit light. A low wail of anger came from the caryatid of Hothalas. Though the skeletal jaw never closed, it always appeared to be opening to howl its anger anew. The wounded column moved too, writhing slowly in its agony.

The gate was made of the huge bones of some titanic creature. They lined up vertically, a barrier of the dead. Hundreds of smaller skeletons filled the crevices between them, squirming like insects, enslaved souls endlessly pulling to reinforce the gate. The wall extended to either side until it vanished in the dark. It was the same construct of bones.

Spirits moved along the ramparts and watched Skarveth from the top of the gate.

‘Who dares approach Obsidia?’ The words were spoken in unison by a choir of phantoms.

‘Skarveth Lytessian, emissary from Neferata, Mortarch of Blood. I have business with Queen Hothalas.’

‘You will wait,’ said the voices.

Skarveth waited. An hour passed. He did not move. He knew how to be patient. He had been patient his entire life, waiting for the right moment to strike at Vask. He could be patient again here. Eventually, a door at the bottom of the gate opened with a reverberating sigh. Skarveth flicked the reins and rode through.

Obsidia erased the division between city and cemetery. There were no trades here, no commerce. There were no places of learning, yet there were libraries, where old knowledge was buried and never read. No artists created new works except at the express command of Hothalas, yet there were galleries filled with all that had been lost across the Mortal Realms.

Skarveth moved through a domain of tombs and monuments, of grand buildings made of bone, all of it bathed in the perpetual pale green light of mourning. Spirits in their thousands wafted through the streets. Many watched Skarveth, curious and hostile. Others ignored him and everything else, drifting as mindlessly as snow over graves and between open coffins.

An escort of hexwraiths rode beside Skarveth. Their armour was a tattered echo of his. In his death, he had retained the physicality of his body. They only had the aethereal trace of theirs.

Together, they travelled down the skull-cobbled boulevard towards the Palace of Anguish. It was constructed from the ghost of iron. The palace was black, its glow sullen. With its low structure swooping into a disproportionately high spire, it resembled a scorpion poised to strike. The spire was as smooth and curved and vicious as grief.

Skarveth and the hexwraiths advanced between wings that reached forwards like pincers. The main doors were open for them. Skarveth dismounted and entered, still under escort. The interior was all hard surfaces and harsh angles. Its walls were draped with the banners of fallen armies and the heraldry of betrayed kingdoms.

The hexwraiths brought him to the base of the spire. They left him there to climb the steps of its great, serpentine staircase alone. On the first step, Skarveth felt a sharp pang. In his mind’s eye, he saw the face of his mother, who had died not long after his fateful journey to Mortannis. She was loyal to a treacherous creed, but she was also loving and gentle. Her smile embodied Skarveth’s understanding of joy. And when a plague spread by the forces of Nurgle took her from him, that smile, in its absence, became the symbol of his first true experience of loss.

On the second step, he thought of his father. A scholar, not a warrior, he spent his life writing the moral justifications for the rebellion. He had been attacked on Lytessian grounds by a carrion leopard that had leapt the wall. He survived the encounter, but barely, and his mind had not. He lived a few years longer, his body a recognisable shell, the scholar within gone forever.

And so it went up the staircase. Each step brought another memory, and another sting of loss. Comrades who had fallen defending the Lytessian grounds, who did not live to die at Knell and rise again as Neferata’s Black Knights. Memories of wrong actions taken and right ones that had not been. As he climbed, Skarveth experienced every painful memory of his existence with the freshness of first grief. He had no breath to gasp. He had no eyes that could weep. His skeleton could feel no physical pain, and so his soul convulsed with even greater agony.

The ascent was a torment. When he reached the top of the staircase and entered the throne room in the stinger of the scorpion’s tail, there was no relief. Instead, all the losses blended together in a harrowing tapestry. The pain tolled like a mourning bell.

There was no reversing time. Those dead, he would not see again. Those choices, he could not undo. There was no remedy except to accept the pain, to carry it with him as he advanced towards the throne.

The wraith Hothalas sat on a throne of shadeglass. It was shaped into an amalgamation of daggers and claws. No mortal could have sat upon it without being impaled. Hothalas’ raiment hung like torn grave clothes. The flesh that still appeared on her bones was withered, her lips blackened and pulled back over her teeth. In truth, there was no skin and there were no bones. They were all an aethereal, translucent shape. The pain in her image at the gate paled before the piercing grief of the queen herself.

She wore no crown, whole or broken. Her sceptre was laid across her lap. The staff ended in a splayed, mummified hand.

Skarveth bowed low. ‘Queen Hothalas–’ he began.

She interrupted him. ‘I do not care for masks of diplomacy. We both know what fine words cover. Let the blades be visible. Let us be honest. Let us not waste each other’s time. I am not surprised this moment has come. From the day that Graunos conquered Angaria, I knew what Neferata would want. She desires to bring her army through Obsidia, doesn’t she?’

‘She does,’ said Skarveth.

‘Are you here to make a request or to issue a command?’

‘A request.’

‘I wonder if Lady Olynder would make the same request of me.’

‘Whether she would or not, she is not here.’ Skarveth almost reminded Hothalas that her domain was subject to Neferatia, but he stopped himself in time. That would not help. And Hothalas’ mention of the Mortarch of Grief was not one he could take at face value. Neferata had warned him of this likelihood. Hothalas vacillates between worship and envy of Olynder, she had said. One moment she wishes to usurp her rule, the next she wishes to be under Olynder’s thumb forever. There is no middle ground. And there is no predicting her mood. Ignore such invocations and stay your course. ‘Neferata makes this request in the hope you and she will march triumphantly together.’

Corpse lips pulled further back. The queen hissed. ‘And if I said no to this request, what then?’

‘I have no answer for that.’

‘Oh, but I do,’ said Hothalas. ‘What Neferata wants, she gets. It will be her army, not one messenger, that knocks at my gate next. Do I have the power to make her turn back? What do you think?’

‘I think such a war would be as painful and costly to both sides as it would be unnecessary.’

‘It would be grievous, you are right. Unnecessary? Perhaps not. If I let her through, do I know she would defeat Graunos? Do I know he will not come to annihilate Obsidia?’

‘Queen Neferata sends me not with threats but with promises,’ Skarveth said, trying to steer the dialogue into a different path.

‘Ahhhhhhh. Promises.’ The sigh was the sound of infinite loss. The word was bitter irony. ‘I know the nature of promises very well. So do you, Skarveth Lytessian. So do we all. Promises are the gallows of our hopes.’ Hothalas moaned with grief. The walls shivered with pain. Tears ran down them in rivulets. ‘And what does Neferata promise?’ she asked. ‘That I am the key to victory? That she will surely defeat Graunos?’

‘Neferata vows to defeat him.’

‘That is not the same as a promise. That is an intention. Graunos is strong. He is no fool.’

‘With her vow, she also gives you a promise,’ said Skarveth.

‘And that is?’

‘That the Sundered Crown will be reforged.’

Hothalas fell silent. She stared at Skarveth for a long moment. ‘How will this happen?’ she said at last. Skarveth heard something like hope in the wraith’s voice. It was an emotion this queen had purged from her realm long ago. She was allowing herself to imagine an end to the schism. Or an upheaval that would, at least, undo her sister’s mad work.

‘I will need you to entrust me with your half of the crown,’ he said.

‘I see.’ The hope vanished. Hothalas’ eye sockets blazed with another loss.

‘Neferata has also sent a loyal servant to Velkyn.’

‘To ask my sister for her half.’ The Queen of Anguish could not laugh, but there was pained amusement in her groan.

‘She is not going to ask for it,’ said Skarveth.

That brought Hothalas up short. ‘Does she have the skill to do this thing?’

‘I believe she does.’

‘And then what? Is all that was sundered to be made whole again?’

‘No,’ Skarveth said. ‘That cannot be done. Neferata does promise you, however, that if you do as she asks, where now there is two, soon there shall only be one. We shall bring the crown together in Angaria, and this promise will be fulfilled before Neferata’s army passes through Obsidia.’

Hothalas sat back in her throne. A shroud of darkness fell over her until Skarveth could see nothing except the dim embers of her gaze. He waited while the queen contemplated the promises and the risks, and pondered old grievances. At last, the shadows scuttled away and the great wraith leaned forwards.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘You shall have your prize, and I shall march to war.’

Mereneth flew amongst the clouds above Angaria. They flickered with crimson lightning. The wrath that boiled in the lands of the empire joined the chaotic winds of Lament, creating vortices. The sky was in fury. Given a chance, it would seize Mereneth and hurl her to the earth. She read the air currents and used them to her advantage, duelling with the storms and winning. When the winds blew east, she rode them. When they turned against her, she tucked her wings closer to her body and cut like an arrow through the wall of hostile air.

Mereneth flew on, further and further east, deeper into the clouds, seeking a different anger, the one that did not belong to Graunos. She found it at last high above Mausolea, in storms so thick they were black, storms that never cleared, storms that concealed Velkyn from the jealous eye of the daemon prince.

She flew into an archipelago of floating cemeteries.

Sepulchres clung densely, like clusters of needles, to the islands of flying rock. The smallest were barely ten feet across. The Throne Rock, at the centre of the configuration, was a rough circle five miles wide. There were many other floating worlds over Angaria and beyond, but all these had been brought together and were held by the maddened will of Kranyax.

There could be no negotiation with Kranyax. There could be only theft.

Mereneth flew beneath the floating rocks. Though the islands were honeycombed with graves, there were fewer tombs on the undersides, and fewer eyes to see her.

Crackling tendrils of aethereal energy linked the islands to one another. The platforms were caught in a web whose centre was the Throne Rock. The web was the essence of Kranyax. She was mindless yet wilful, an incoherent scream of pain that clutched everything to her in a vortex of possession. Kranyax would never let go. She had stretched herself over her domain to hold its islands in a grip that could end only with her own destruction.

Mereneth passed beneath rock after rock. Barren, inverted peaks frowned down at her. The banshee’s raging denial of loss vibrated through the air from the web. It cut into Mereneth’s heart, and she had to harden herself against giving in to the mourning rage. She kept her goal before her mind’s eye. She was not flying to defeat. She had come to inflict loss, not to suffer it. She pictured what her success here would unleash. The scale of Neferata’s vision filled her soul with a rush of ecstasy. She flew faster, determination renewed. She was one more streak of lightning in the storms. She would not be seen until it was too late.

The Throne Rock emerged from the roiling clouds. Mereneth saw it first as a massive bulk above her, like a solid chunk of night. She angled upwards, and it filled her vision. Desultory spirits swirled around the monuments that jutted downwards from gullies and atop crags. A volcanic cone emerged from the centre of the rock. Bodies tumbled from its crater. They were the unearthed dead, scavenged from the tombs of Velkyn and elsewhere by the banshee queen’s servants in an endless, fruitless quest to prove to her that she was not alone in her bereavement. But she would never emerge from her endless howl. Kranyax destroyed the offerings, and the shattered remains of the dead plunged from the interior of the castle, down through the base of the Throne Rock and out of the dead volcano. Huge carrion beasts surrounded the lip of the crater. Their skeleton forms were almost entirely neck, serpentine lengths that twisted and swayed for hundreds of feet before ending in jaws that could snap a galleon in half. Their short, wide bodies sprouted dozens of legs with giant, curved claws that held them fast to the rock. They snatched at and fought over every body that fell, leaving only dusty fragments.

Mereneth flew as close as she dared to the crater, staying well out of the range and notice of the beasts. She looked into the cone, contemplating its possibilities. There was a gamble to be made here. She did not wish to take it yet. She accepted that later she might not have a choice.

As satisfied as she could be with her decision, Mereneth angled away. She left the cone and its monsters behind and made for the edge of the Throne Rock. From there, she found a violent updraft and shot upwards, past the lip of stone, and flew over the central necropolis of Velkyn. Tombs shouldered around the castle, leaning forwards like supplicants. The keep of the mad queen resembled an explosion made of stone. Its walls bulged outwards from its base, forming a sphere of spectral rock glowing a dull greenish brown. Spiky towers thrust out in every direction from the surface of the sphere, some sprouting other towers, branches multiplying from jagged cuts. The castle was expansive, spreading the pain of loss like a dark sun. It also huddled in on itself like a closed fist, the wall a barrier to anyone who sought to pierce the closed, obsessive pain of Kranyax. The top of the sphere curved inwards into a narrow funnel, as if the construct were also imploding and would soon disappear in the void of its own creation.

Mereneth flew as fast as she could, jinking into strands of clouds to conceal herself from the hordes of spirits below. Caught in the agony of their queen, they moved around the castle in an endless double spiral, the stream flowing out from the centre to the periphery and then back in again. The spirits reacted to every twitch of their queen’s pain. The spirals convulsed as aethereal power jolted through them at random intervals. Held by Kranyax’s possessiveness, consumed by the anger of loss, none of the spirits looked up to see Mereneth’s approach to the Keep of the Howl.

She flew to a point just close to the middle of the sphere, then aimed at a window midway up one of the towers. She slipped inside. The stairwell was empty. The tower was canted at such an extreme angle that the stairs were useless. The interior was more like a corkscrewing tunnel than a spire. Her wings folded, Mereneth scuttled along the walls like a spider, following their twists.

At the base of the spire, she passed through an arched doorway into the main body of the Keep of the Howl. She experienced a moment of disorientation as the angle of the tower gave way to a level floor.

Where shall I find the crown? Mereneth had asked Neferata.

Close to Kranyax. She holds tight to all that is hers. Her madness is a jealous one.

When she saw the shape of the keep, a black sun for the archipelago, Mereneth had been certain the throne room must be near its centre. The great banshee would be at the very heart of her realm, drawing everything to her even as she stretched herself outwards to grasp it all.

As soon as Mereneth left the tower, she knew she had been right. She was in a high, wide hall. The only light came from a faint aethereal ribbon that ran to her left and right. It hovered midway above the floor, pulsing slightly as hate and pain rippled through its length. The glow illuminated walls and decor that appeared to have been frozen in the midst of liquefaction. Stone, sculpture, paintings and tapestries were barely recognisable or distinguishable from each other. They flowed together, becoming wrinkled, lined, tortured. They were immobilised motion. If the river of the keep’s being began to move again, it would be pulled into the maw of Kranyax’s loss.

Mereneth turned to her left, in the direction of the flow. The hall curved inwards gradually. She considered the spiral current of the spirits at the base of the keep. This was another spiral. If she followed the nautilus coil that embodied the constricting madness of its queen’s grief, she would find what she sought.

She stayed close to the outside of the wall, one shadow among many. Wraiths flew past her in both directions. They did not see her. They were too bound to their mistress, and saw only the tasks the spasms of her will had assigned to them. That would change, Mereneth thought, if she had the misfortune to draw Kranyax’s attention to herself.

As the spiral of the hall tightened, Mereneth began to feel the pull of the banshee. The queen’s voice rattled up the hall from the centre of the spiral. Mereneth had not been aware of it consciously when she first entered the fortress. It had been a slight tug, a tiny needle at the back of her eye. As she went deeper, the needle became a hook and the hook grew larger. The voice tore at her with endless, sudden, raging shock. It was a rasping, grating shriek. It was the first, terrible surprise of an unexpected scream turned into a constant state of being.

Mereneth followed the curve of the tunnel, and the coils of the Keep of the Howl wrapped around her. She was descending into a psychic hurricane. But though she was facing into the storm’s huge fury and the wind of shock roared into her face, instead of pushing her away, the gale pulled her in, a maelstrom’s inexorable current drawing her to the centre of grief’s anger. Losses long forgotten surfaced. The memories were daggers plunging into her soul, the wounds surprising and vicious. They were the early blows of grief, when bewilderment gives way to rage. Rage at fate, at foes, at the loved ones who dared fall and at the great savagery of chance. Mereneth relived shocks many centuries old, from another age. She no longer recognised the mortal she had been. That creature was a weak shadow, unable to dream of what she would become, unworthy even of that dream. But loss came for her, and a child’s squall at the death of her sister struck Mereneth with the force of a spiked gauntlet. The blows came endlessly. The flooding of her village hit her, and then the baby brother devoured by tomb spiders, and the raiding party that burned her family’s home. Neferata had given Mereneth strength and purpose when she drained her of blood. Vampirism for Mereneth was rebirth, and the forging of her true self, yet the losses did not end. Instead, she had centuries upon centuries to accumulate more, to see comrades fall in battle and to betrayal. She relived the vertigo of losing Lady Raina, her mentor and spymistress to Neferata in the Age of Myth, killed by Mathas Hellezan.

All the dagger blows of loss of her existence came for her, at once and repeatedly. It took all her discipline not to be swept up in the wave of anger. She held to her purpose, and knowing what it would lead to gave her strength. The fury of the banshee’s wail came from the wrongs that could never be righted. The losses of chance were the worst, because chance could not be made to answer. It ravaged with no thought, no reason. There could be no revenge against it.

But what Mereneth suffered now would end. She would repay the mad queen in kind. I will give you such a reason to scream, she promised.

Deeper, deeper, the hall’s turns becoming tighter, the monstrous howl filling all of existence, the petrified flow of the walls becoming more violent in tormented lines. The line of aethereal power in the air grew brighter, more intense, more furious. Mereneth stayed on the floor, against the outer wall, far beneath notice. She moved quickly, holding back just enough to avoid being caught by the current of Kranyax’s howl.

She slowed down when she saw a doorway at the end of the hall. Fighting to keep focused as the wail tore at her mind, she slipped through the archway and crouched in the shadows beyond, invisible. She took in the throne room and the monster who raged at its centre, and looked for her target.

The room was a twisting dome. Here, the stone really was flowing. Though the doorway did not move, the matter of the walls and floor whirled violently. Mereneth felt the spin through the soles of her boots as a continuous, vibrating ripple. The swirling ghost-matter of the keep tried to sweep her up and capture her in the macabre dance around the great banshee. It was Kranyax who created the spin. She turned and turned in place, endlessly circling as if she could find the cause of every pain and finally sink her talons into it. She floated midway between floor and ceiling. Her long robe was stained in the bruised, violet hues of grief’s anger. Her hair was enormously long. A comet’s tail of bone-white and muscle-red, it brushed against the walls, gouging them, hurling them into the spin. They bulged inwards, the force that whirled them also pulling them towards Velkyn’s queen.

Kranyax turned her face violently from side to side, always searching, always hungry. Spirits streamed in from every doorway in the galleries of the dome, bearing the bodies of the dead. Kranyax seized each with desperate urgency, as if each one was the cause of her pain and she would get her vengeance at last. But as soon as she held one body and had torn it apart, she was reaching for the next, and the next, her need as unquenched as her anger. The bodies fell into the shaft below her, to descend through the heart of the Throne Rock and finally be devoured by the carrion beasts on the volcanic cone.

Mounds of gold, jewels, icons and weapons surrounded the shaft. They were the relics of Kranyax’s existence, the pain of her memories given form. Some of them were as ghostly as the matter of the Keep of the Howl. Others were as solid as the rock upon which Velkyn was built. The mounds shifted, groaning, as Kranyax spun. A sceptre tumbled from the top. It picked up speed as it rolled, bounced off the edge of the floor and hung, suspended, over the shaft. It did not fall. Kranyax’s need snatched it and hurled it back into the mound. The great banshee would let nothing go. She clung to her griefs with jealous wrath.

Mereneth scoured the mound with her witchsight. She saw many crowns on it, all of them whole. The hill of memories was in constant movement, old pains burying new ones, then being buried in their turn. The relics that emerged at the top did not stay there long. Mereneth would have to move quickly. She was more than ready to. Every moment she passed in the presence of Kranyax increased her pain.

The Velkyn half of the Sundered Crown appeared. It was a crescent of iron forged in the likeness of savage thorns. No jewels were mounted in it. The crown was a black, sullen lump of pain.

It would be the source of still more.

Mereneth sprinted away from the wall. She ran in a curve, staying under the arc of Kranyax’s hair. She leaned into the spin of the room and timed her arrival at the mound so that she was just below the position of the crown. She spread her wings and shot up the slope. There was no room for stealth in this theft. She had to rely on speed. She raced against the suddenness of loss to deliver a shock of her own.

She was at the top of the mound. The Sundered Crown began to sink out of sight once more. Mereneth’s feet barely touched the surface of the hill, and she snatched the crown. It was heavier than she had expected, weighed down with accumulated ages of grief. She held it with both hands and launched herself down at the shaft.

Kranyax’s wail stuttered. The mad queen felt the theft. The presentiment of new loss stabbed her. Mereneth felt the wild gaze fall on her.

She was over the shaft. With a powerful beat, her wings propelled her down and then swung back. An arrow, she sliced into the darkness.

The wail came for her. It roared into the shaft, an avalanche of rage. It fell on Mereneth, and it tore a scream from her throat. It attacked her soul with such force it threatened to rip her body open from the inside. She screamed again, not in anger but in defiance. She held the image of Neferata before her. The Mortarch of Blood commanded her, not the crazed thing in the Keep of the Howl. The hurricane of anger battered her from side to side. It sought to force her back up. Her descent slowed. The air was turning thick as mud. She spread her wings again and beat them furiously, forcing her way through the wail. Kranyax’s anger almost yanked Mereneth’s wings from her shoulders, but she held fast to her being. She had her prize. She knew what she would do with it. Neferata’s purpose exalted her, and she began to pick up speed again.

Kranyax’s wail became desperate. It shook the walls of the shaft. Fissures appeared, racing down the walls ahead of Mereneth. Wedges of stone broke free and plummeted with her. They were large enough to crush her to nothing. She weaved between them, tucking into a ball and then diving down again. When a massive shard fell, she flew just above it, and it became her battering ram through the wail.

The walls changed. They became irregular. Mereneth had dropped below the foundations of the keep. She was in the volcano’s throat now, and falling faster. The queen’s shriek was losing its grasp on her. If Kranyax had relinquished her death-grip on even a small part of her realm, and so used a greater portion of her strength to seize the spy, Mereneth did not think she could have prevailed. But the banshee could not reason. She could never release what she held.

Mereneth flew closer to the falling stone until she was almost touching it, blending her shadow with it. The mouth of the volcano was close, and with it the devourers. Mereneth braced herself against the still-powerful gusts of the wail, holding herself near the centre of the rubble. Smaller shards exploded out of the shaft and collided with the rock. Shrapnel sliced into Mereneth’s leather armour and tore her face. She held her position.

The shard and Mereneth shot out of the crater amid a rain of rubble. Braced against the blows of the wail, she was vulnerable to the true winds of the storm outside, and they caught her. They threw her away from the shelter of the rock, revealing her to the carrion beasts. No other bodies had fallen for them while she held Kranyax’s attention, and they let out huge, rattling caws, angry with hunger. Three of them saw Mereneth. Their sinuous necks shot forwards. Their jaws, filled with teeth as long as her arm, parted. Clutching the Sundered Crown, she spread her wings wide, breaking her fall suddenly and rising back up into the wail. The monsters’ lunges missed. Two of the beasts collided, and they snapped at each other in anger, their necks entwining as they sought to bite down and decapitate their rival.

The third swooped its head up, empty eye sockets trained on Mereneth. Its maw opened wide and it lunged again. It was too close for her to evade, the jaw too long for her to fly over or under. So she flew directly into the maw, then angled hard right as the beast’s jaws closed again. The teeth brushed against her legs above and below as she passed between them, and snapped shut behind her.

Mereneth turned again, diving close to the struggling monsters. She spiralled down around their necks. They were still fighting when she dropped out of their reach and was free.

There was one last, immense blast from the wail as Kranyax felt the loss become final. The fury tore one of the devourers apart, and its fellows turned their attention to snapping up its disintegrating bones.

Mereneth angled straight down, heading for the base of the clouds and Angaria below them.

Doubts in enemies are useful, but their convictions are equally so. I choose to encourage the certainties of my foes. In this way, they commit themselves all the more fully to their mistakes. A well-timed warning of disaster, especially if true, can ensure the embrace of catastrophe.

– Truth as Destroyer

Chapter 11

‘The Anvils of the Heldenhammer are on the point of marching, my queen,’ Lady Skeentha reported. Returning from her scouting journey to the south-west, the spy had landed in front of Nagadron, bowing to Neferata, who stood beside the Adevore’s lowered head, her armoured crown under her arm. Skeentha paused, looking past Neferata at the march-ready army behind her. ‘But you know this already,’ she said.

‘I expected it,’ Neferata said. When Skarveth had met with Rhasan, she had seen the Anvils’ level of preparedness. Deducing when they would be ready to move had been a simple matter. ‘Your confirmation is useful,’ she said, and Skeentha lowered her head in gratitude. Knowing when the Stormcast Eternals should be ready was not the same thing as knowing they were. She held the war’s events in her grasp. She was about to make the pieces tumble before her, one after another. But for her design to be fulfilled, the timing of her actions had to be precise. If she marched too soon, Venthor might choose to attack her as the immediate threat. If she departed too late, Vask might change his mind about the idea that Neferata had, by means of Nagia, implanted in his mind. ‘It is time,’ Neferata said. ‘There will be no more waiting. The true battle for Angaria begins now, and there will be no rest until it has fallen.’

‘Your victory will be glorious, my queen,’ said Skeentha.

I shall have it so. The pieces on the board were arranged in accordance with her desire. Nonetheless, her opponent was powerful. She must not underestimate Graunos.

‘I have another task for you,’ Neferata told Skeentha, sparing a quick glance at the ridge above her gathered army. ‘We have come to the moment of completion.’

‘I understand,’ said Skeentha. ‘I know what I must do. There will be no error.’

‘Good. Then go.’

The spy departed, and Neferata donned her headdress. In full battle regalia, flanked by her morghast archai once more, she was ready and eager for the battle ahead. She mounted Nagadron and turned back to look at her forces. She was satisfied with what she saw. This was not yet the grand army that would soon invade Angaria, but it looked like it might be. To the thousands of skeletons, wraiths, vampires, mortals and ghouls, she had commanded the addition of three siege towers. They were impressive structures, forbidding things of dark wood and iron, their upper portions glowing in the deepening twilight with the fire within. They were also a form of theatre. She had no intention of using them for the purpose they appeared to have. She was not marching to take the Wrathgate. Her prizes were of a very different sort.

‘It is time!’ Neferata proclaimed. Her voice rang across the plain. Its command reached every soul in the ranks, alive or dead. She tugged on Nagadron’s reins, and he rose. ‘March with me,’ Neferata called. ‘This night, we bring humiliation and destruction to the enemies of Neferatia!’

The army roared, and as one, her servants of war advanced.

As Nagadron flew south, Neferata thought, Humiliation and destruction. She was not sure which fate was the more delicious.

Nagia fled her hiding place. She had found an outcrop at the top of the ridge. There was a crevice between the boulders in which she could be concealed while she watched the army’s preparations. There was no reason to stay there any longer. The earth shook with the tread of thousands of feet. The air screamed with the cries of banshees. Neferata was heading south, as Nagia had told Vask she would. She was heading south now. Vask had to know. The endgame had begun.

It was full night when Nagia reached Nulahmia. She passed through the gates with a trade caravan that was just arriving and made straight for the closed market. She was taking grave risks, but there was no choice. The message had to be passed on.

Nagia stood outside the shuttered stall of Ersath Zay. She knew his name now. Everything had changed since the gathering. She could feel the onrush of fate, and it thrilled her. She stayed in the shadows and remained silent. Her presence was signal enough. Ersath was always watching, and he would see her. She was there only a few minutes before Ersath appeared. She did not have to say anything. He nodded slightly and vanished.

Nagia left the market and returned to the Thresend manor house, satisfied in her work, agonised in her being. The hunger had returned, descending viciously within moments of Ersath’s departure. It was as acute as the first night. No. It was worse. All the way back from the market, iron talons of pain spread through her guts. She could barely walk by the time she reached her home. She staggered through the doors and up the stairs to her wing. She hurried to her chambers as fast as she could on stiffening, weakening legs. A memory from the first night of the pain was trying to surface, a memory of salvation. In her bedchamber, something had happened. The pain had been taken away. Her thoughts were muddled, thick and tangled. They were being stirred by a clawed finger. The closest thing to coherence she could manage was the hope that the salvation would be there again.

Nagia entered her bedchamber and locked the door. Bent double, she was halfway to her bed when a shadow detached itself from the wall beside the window. A woman stepped into her vision, and the claw withdrew from her thoughts. She could think clearly again, even through the pain. Memories rose from the dark waters where they had been submerged. She remembered this woman. Her name was Skeentha. She had brought a young man to Nagia’s room.

There had been blood.

Blood had sated the hunger. Blood had taken away the pain.

Nagia’s throat went dry. ‘What am I?’ she asked, though she knew.

The answer Skeentha gave was not what Nagia was expecting. ‘You are a traitor.’

‘No,’ Nagia began. Shame, stronger than the pain of hunger, shook her. Despite herself, she was frightened. ‘You are mistaken. I am loyal to our queen.’

Skeentha smiled, and Nagia heard laughter. It came from inside her head. She was sure she recognised the voice. It was neither hers nor Skeentha’s. The laughter unveiled more memories. The rest of the night of the victory revel came back to her. She remembered her flight through the streets. She remembered the Black Knights closing in on her. She remembered Neferata. And she knew whose laughter was in her mind.

Skeentha walked towards her. Nagia staggered back a few steps. There was no point in running, so she straightened as much as she could.

‘I am proud of what I have done for our just cause,’ she said.

More laughter, and Skeentha joined in too. ‘Is that what you think?’ she asked. ‘Then you are wrong. You are a traitor twice over.’ She seized Nagia by the neck with both hands.

You have done so very well, said Neferata. Now it is time for your reward.

Skeentha’s grip choked Nagia. She could neither speak nor scream. She wanted to cry out, to give voice to her horror as she realised the trap she had helped set for her comrades. Then the pain came as Skeentha shifted her grip. She pushed down on Nagia’s shoulder and yanked her chin up at the same time. The sudden flare of agony was terrible, but more terrible yet was the cracking and tearing that came with it. Worst of all was the sudden giving way.

‘Now you can see everything,’ Skeentha said. She turned Nagia’s head around to show her, in her final moments, the geyser of blood from her decapitated body.

Neferata turned to the morghast archai flying on her right. ‘Kerdathax,’ she said, ‘I need you to be a messenger for me.’

The armoured skull of the monster cocked in puzzlement. ‘A messenger, my queen?’ it asked with a voice of crackling thunder. The creature was a destroyer of armies. It descended only to kill, not to speak.

‘Yes. That it comes from you will ensure that its importance is clear.’

If Kerdathax was still puzzled, it asked no further questions. ‘I will not fail you, my queen.’

‘Oh, you will. I am counting on it.’

The Anvils of the Heldenhammer had barely left Shadowvel behind them when the monster approached from the north-west. It flew on tattered wings and bore an immense spirit halberd. The weapon’s blade was almost as tall as a man.

The morghast hovered just above the ground, a short distance ahead of the anvils. It held the halberd in one hand, upright. That was as much of a signal of peaceful intent as a creature such as this could manage. Rhasan, mistrustful, readied her axe for attack.

As they drew nearer, the morghast called out, ‘Lord-Celestant Venthor Warfire, I bring greetings from Neferata, Mortarch of Blood.’

Venthor pulled Felkreth to a stop and held up a hand. The Stormhost halted. Venthor’s dracoth growled low, glaring at the monsters. To Rhasan, Venthor said, ‘Come with me to listen to what it has to say.’ And he urged Felkreth forwards again.

Rhasan walked beside the dracoth, and they stopped a few paces away from the morghast. ‘Well?’ said Venthor.

‘The queen marches from Nulahmia to join you. She asks that you delay your advance a short while, that we may fight at your side against the daemon prince.’

Venthor grunted. ‘Your queen refuses to understand my clear statements on the possibility of an alliance. The days when the forces of death and the forces of Sigmar could make common cause are over. We are at war. I will not be drawn into her games. I will not pause, and if I see her coming up my rear flank, I will know that she is coming to attack, and I will respond accordingly. Am I clear this time? If she misunderstands again, the consequences will fall upon her head.’

The morghast said nothing. It issued a rattling growl, then flew off into the night.

‘Do you think she really means to attack?’ Rhasan asked as they returned to the Stormhost. ‘Warning us about her arrival is an unusual strategy.’

‘Everything about the Mortarch is unusual,’ said Venthor. ‘And everything she does is for her benefit, not ours. We might just as easily presume that announcing her coming is intended to make us lower our guard, and so be vulnerable to her attack.’ He shook his head. ‘I meant what I said. I will not be drawn in.’

‘I am not sure that is something we can avoid,’ Rhasan said uneasily. She had been unable to get the conversation with Skarveth out of her mind.

‘We can,’ said Venthor. ‘I have declared our actions. What she does next is up to her, but I refuse to guess. I will treat her presence as an act of war, as she will now know. This is clarity. This is certainty. There will be no game. And there will be no delay.’

With the coming of dawn, the Anvils of the Heldenhammer entered the Axeway. The sheer cliffs of the Stonepains rose on either side of them. The pass led straight ahead. Though it was wide, daylight barely reached into its depths. The shadows of the Stonepains covered the ground. The light was grey as dead skin. Rock crunched under the steps of Stormcast Eternals and dracoths. The winds screamed down the length of the Axeway, so sharp it seemed they were slicing the cliffs anew.

Jehnneka Stormire, flying forwards with her Prosecutors, sent a scout back to warn that the Wrathgate was close. Soon after, its glow appeared in the distance. Watching the gate grow larger as she marched, Rhasan thought about how straight the Axeway was, and how vulnerable any attacking force was to its defenders. There was no chance of taking the barrier by surprise.

‘Anvils of the Heldenhammer!’ Venthor called. ‘Our goal is in sight. Prepare for the enemy’s fury. Let it break against our armour! Let us answer the false light of the Ruinous Powers with the pure lightning of Sigmar.’

The warriors of the Stormhost roared, weapons held high, and at their Lord-Celestant’s signal, they charged forwards. A tide of sigmarite armour raced towards the wall. The thunder of the advance rumbled through the pass. The cold fury of a just war filled Rhasan’s soul, and the fall of the Wrathgate seemed as certain as destiny. Nothing could withstand the collective juggernaut of a Stormhost. A hammer of indescribable might was about to smash into the barrier.

As the great mass of the host rushed towards the wall, light struck the top of it. The Prosecutors dropped straight down from the clouds. They sent a hail of aethereal javelins ahead of them, and a second, searing, murderous dawn broke over the top of the Wrathgate. The defenders appeared as silhouettes at the moment of their destruction. Rhasan saw the human warriors of the Bloodbound sundered by the explosions of aethereal energy. There were other shapes, inhuman ones, that were caught in the fire of Sigmar’s judgement. They were lithe, horned, and their limbs were angled in a way no living human’s ever had been.

‘Daemons on the ramparts,’ she called to Venthor. ‘Bloodletters.’

‘I see them,’ Venthor said, and Felkreth snarled. The Lord-Celestant sounded grimly satisfied. ‘Graunos will fight hard to keep this gate. It is important to him. Its loss will be fatal in the long run.’

The Prosecutors pressed their attack. The top of the Wrathgate flashed again and again. Bodies fell, tumbling and broken. The upper portions of the ramparts glowed an angry orange, and Rhasan saw the first cracks appearing. The gate was massive, and there was a long way to go, but this was a very good start.

The skull, though, worried her. It, too, was beginning to glow. There was a crimson glimmer in the eyes. The weapon was gathering power from the deaths on the wall, and the Bloodbound were still replacing their losses as fast as they happened.

There might still be hope of smashing the defenders faster yet and overwhelming them before the skull’s hunger was sated. Rhasan called upon the lightning. Shouting her invocation, feeling the energy flow into her and from her with a ferocity unique to Shyish, she sprinted forwards and slammed the shaft of her hammer into the ground. Her storm broke over the ramparts. Searing flashes incinerated bodies. For a few moments, the centre of the ramparts was clear. But the light in the skull’s eyes grew even brighter.

Khorne cares not whence the blood flows, Rhasan thought bitterly.

‘Lord-Celestant!’ she called.

‘I see it,’ said Venthor. ‘Sequitors! Ready the shield!’

The Sequitors were marching in a long formation stretching down the length of the spearhead of the advance. As one, they raised their soulshields towards the gate and its baleful icon’s gaze. Silver energy crackled, leaping from shield to shield. As the Sequitors channelled their defence, aetheric power gathered over them and then spread, shimmering over the other ranks of Stormcast Eternals.

The Anvils of the Heldenhammer advanced swiftly. The assault by the Prosecutors stopped the Bloodbound from mounting a concerted response to the closing Stormhost. The volleys of arrows that they managed meant nothing to the Stormcast Eternals. They flew through the aetheric shield, but it had been created to defend against a much greater, more meaningful attack. The arrows bounced off and snapped against the sigmarite armour, harmless as rain.

The Stormhost was close now, the gate looming high, the skull a rictus of hate above it. The warriors spread out, across the entire width of the pass. They would hit the gate along its full length. Venthor’s plan of attack would have been absurd with an army of mortals. But the brass of even as massive a structure as the Wrathgate could survive the assault of a Stormhost for only so long.

The Prosecutors struck again, strafing the defenders with javelins. Light, green and white, erupted over the Wrathgate. A steady fall of bodies struck the ground far below. And then the skull’s eyes were blinding, their red even brighter than the burning glare of the Prosecutors’ attack. The skull turned on the mechanism that suspended it until it looked down on the assailants. Its jaw gaped wide, and the flames of rage descended upon the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.

The pass vanished from Rhasan’s sight. She was suddenly in the mouth of an erupting volcano. Daemonic fire filled the air above her. It blinded her with corrupted light. It breathed destruction over the sacred banner of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, seeking to blacken its iconography, and then burned harder yet. The hatred in the fire would not rest until the symbol of fealty to Sigmar evaporated.

But the banner did not burn. The shield of the Sequitors held. It flared with light as blinding as the fire’s. Absolutes of purity and ruin clashed explosively, and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer moved forwards again.

The ground beneath Rhasan’s feet began to soften. She pushed on, though the burn that made it through the aetheric shield seemed to be heating her plating to incandescence. The flames were unending. Their intensity kept growing. Rhasan’s ears were filled with the roar of aethereal rage. Coherent thought became difficult as the world fell into fire and pain.

Through it all, she had her purpose, and Venthor’s voice of thunder resounded in the pass, urging his warriors onwards to the Wrathgate.

The flames of Chaos began to fade. And though the ground was half molten, the base of the gate was within reach.

The Prosecutor turned from the skull and reached back to summon another aethereal javelin. Kathag seized his chance. With a roar, he leapt, weapon in hand, and grappled with the Stormcast Eternal. They crashed to the parapet and rolled. The javelin appeared in the Stormcast’s hand. It was too late. Kathag brought his Axe of Khorne crashing against the Prosecutor’s gorget.

The struggle was decided before the blow even hit. Kathag’s blade was blood-tinted brass streaked with a deathly grey. Claws spiralled off the end of the shaft and along the top of the axe. His reward from the Skull God when he ascended from the title of Exalted Deathbringer was a reminder of failure and a goad to greater victory. The grey in the axe and the curl of the claws symbolised the vortex of grey nothing that had consumed Lord Ruhok’s warhorde. Kathag had been part of that defeat. His survival did not mitigate his failure. Every time he used the axe, his god’s favour and his god’s scorn confronted him, and they pushed him to ever greater victories and ever greater feats of violence.

There was another echo of the Maw of Uncreation that Neferata had unleashed on that day in Nulahmia. When Kathag swung the axe, reality twisted and snapped around its passage. Eddies of disintegration radiated outwards from the blade. When Kathag attacked, the world bled as much as his enemies.

The Prosecutor’s armour curled like burning paper before the axe strike. It shattered, pieces caught and swallowed by the vortices in the air. The blade severed the warrior’s head at a stroke. For a brief moment, blood came from the warrior and from his armour.

The tribute to the Skull God was short-lived. It always was, with the Stormcast Eternals. Kathag rose and turned away from the body with contempt before the mystical lightning called it back to Sigmar.

Death had lost all meaning for the Stormcast Eternals, Kathag thought. Even these dark Anvils of the Heldenhammer did not know what it truly was any longer. And with no purpose in death, there was no purpose in life, either. Kathag’s existence had plenty of meaning. There was the conquest of empires. There was vengeance against Neferata. And there would be the exultation of hurling Sigmar’s warriors back.

The wrathfire had not stopped the Stormhost yet, but it forced the Prosecutors to retreat behind the shield created by their comrades. Then the skull exhausted its energy. The blast of fire came to an end. The skull would grow strong again with new violence and new souls. When it was fed, the fire would come again. The skull’s breath was nothing compared to the great beam that circled Mausolea. It was a small tributary of that power. It served well enough, though.

Except the Anvils of the Heldenhammer were still advancing. They had weathered the first blast and were attacking the base of the gate, ignoring the ramparts, depriving the skull of the fuel of violence. Kathag might have to start feeding it his own troops directly. He would if he had to, but the waste would displease him.

He shouldn’t have to. His hand might soon be forced, though, if the second phase of the campaign did not begin immediately.

He looked out over the battlements, past the lines of Stormcast Eternals. The Axeway beyond them was quiet. That was wrong. The enemy should not be having this chance to regroup.

Kathag growled. There was no time to waste. ‘Brezhek!’ he shouted.

The Gorechosen slaughterpriest rushed to Kathag’s side. Brezhek’s left eye was gone, replaced with a brass skull. His right eye blazed all the brighter, and he had cut off his eyelids so his wrath would never sleep. ‘What is your command, Lord Kathag?’

‘The skull needs volunteers for glory. Get them. Now.’

‘At once.’

What are you waiting for, Vask? We’ve handed you the chance for victory. The Anvils are expecting you. Attack them, as Graunos commanded. Attack!

Vask remained stubbornly absent.

Kathag stared into the Axeway, thinking of the enemy that was temptingly within reach. He thought he could destroy them.

He stopped himself. You know better. Arrogance destroyed Ruhok. You spoke reason to Graunos, and he listened to you. So listen to yourself. Rage must be directed, not squandered.

If he ventured out of the wall, he would be fighting on the terms of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.

Kathag looked at the skull. Already, Brezhek had gathered a group of skullcrushers, and they were hammering bloodreavers to death underneath the skull. Soon, the eyes were blazing with anger again.

Too soon, Rhasan thought as the monstrous weapon fired once more. The Bloodbound must have been sacrificing themselves by the hundreds. The Sequitors hurled their aetheric shield against the fire, but they had not had the chance to recover. There was a thunderclap of exploding energy, and the fire of wrath broke through the shield.

The blaze pushed the Stormhost back. It was too powerful to withstand without the shield.

Shelter. We need shelter.

Rhasan would create the shelter, and the time to regroup and strike again.

Staggering under the agony, her flesh roasting inside her superheated armour, Rhasan summoned Sigmar’s lightning and sent it to her left, against the cliff wall. Though she could not see her target, a huge, cracking roar told her she had struck home. A portion of the cliff gave way. Beyond the cataclysm of red, something huge thundered, and then a massive shadow loomed through the flames. Rhasan lunged out of the way as the rubble shouldered through the fire. She ran back and threw herself over the new hill of stone. It blocked the flames and the worst of the heat. She could see again, though the pain of her injuries tried to blind her anew. A moment later, Venthor joined her. Smoke rose from Felkreth’s hide, and the beast was thrashing in agony.

The Stormhost’s formation became a narrow one as its warriors took refuge behind the rockfall. The daemon fire was so ferocious, it would melt the rock eventually. But only if the foe kept destroying his own troops to keep the fires burning.

The battle at the Wrathgate turned into a siege. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer attempted to storm the gate, and Kathag forced them back. Always they came again, smashing the gate with greater force. Each time, Kathag replenished the skull’s power with the blood of his own troops, killing off hundreds more when the Stormcast Eternals resisted the attacks with their sorcerous shield. Kathag could continue to do this for some time. He could not do so indefinitely.

And still Vask refused to appear.

Kathag prowled the battlements in frustration and anger. Pausing briefly from his relentless slaughter at one point, Brezhek approached him. ‘Has Vask betrayed us?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Kathag. He was sure of that, if nothing else. ‘Vask’s anger is too strong. He would never ally himself with Sigmar’s dogs.’

‘Then why does he wait?’

‘There is another reason. I do not know what it is.’

‘He will be punished for this delay.’

‘Oh, he will,’ Kathag promised. No triumph would be great enough to compensate for Vask’s absence. The necromancer had doomed himself.

The siege dragged on. Kathag’s frustration and anger grew. Every charge of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer weakened the gate further. Time was running out. The skull had just finished turning another rockslide into melted slag, forcing the Stormcast Eternals back again, but not for much longer, when a bloodletter daemon stalked over to him.

‘News, Lord Kathag,’ it hissed. ‘Newssssssss.’ The daemons were more restive than Kathag’s human troops, and the mortals were straining at the bit to charge through the gates. The daemon looked at him with open contempt, but he ignored the insult. It had to obey him, and his dismissal of its taunting provoked it still further.

‘What news?’ said Kathag.

‘An army approachessssss.’ The bloodletter growled at the prospect of a new threat and the sense that someone was interfering with Graunos’ designs. At the same time, it grinned in eagerness, because a greater battle meant greater violence, and in the end, that was a suitable gift for the Skull God.

‘What army?’ Kathag asked. Then he knew. ‘Neferata.’

The daemon nodded. Its lips drew back over sharp teeth in a smile and a snarl. ‘The dead are coming,’ it said. ‘The dead come to bleed and die anew.’

Kathag turned away from the bloodletter, dismissing it. He felt none of the daemon’s violent joy. He felt only anger. He understood now why Vask had delayed. The necromancer knew that Neferata was coming to the Axeway pass. He was waiting, planning to attack both the Mortarch of Blood and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. He was dreaming of destroying them both in a single blow.

‘Dreaming,’ Kathag spat. He knew what must have happened. Neferata had tempted the necromancer into this overreach. ‘She let you discover what she was doing, didn’t she?’ Kathag asked the absent Vask. ‘You fool. Can’t you see that you’re doing exactly what she wants? You think you outwitted her with your spies? You think you can win when you are playing her game?’ He slammed a fist against the edge of the parapet. Brass deformed under the blow. Vask’s delay had already cost Kathag troops, feeding the skull and maintaining the siege. Neferata’s manipulations were hurting him, too. ‘Attack, then!’ Kathag shouted. ‘Do it, Vask! Here is your ambush. Here is your perfect trap. Prove me wrong. Let me see your victory.’

Kathag summoned Vergren, his Exalted Deathbringer. ‘Ready our forces,’ he said. ‘We march through the gates soon.’

The Deathbringer grinned. He had filed his teeth to points almost as sharp as a daemon’s. ‘Sigmar’s dogs are on the run?’

‘No,’ said Kathag. ‘The tide of battle has turned against us.’

Vergren stared, baffled. ‘How is that possible?’

‘The Anvils of the Heldenhammer are the tools of another enemy. She will be here soon, and she has already drawn blood. We may not defeat her here, but I will still have a trophy for Khorne.’

Neferata was close now. Her army was leaving Shadowvel behind to the south, and the line of the Axeway was visible in the mountains ahead.

‘Kerdathax,’ she called. ‘Fly to the Lord-Celestant. Warn him of what is coming. Warn him that he is about to be ambushed. Tell him we are coming to help, but he must be prepared. Warn him of the trap to come, now that it is too late. Tell him the treacherous dead arise!’

The morghast flew off, and Neferata laughed. She revelled in the sensation of deliberately marching into a trap.

A trap whose risks were delicious. A trap she had shaped. A trap she controlled. A trap that Vask thought he had set and that was about to close on his neck.

War has no certainties except destruction. The believer in a foregone conclusion is a fool who deserves extinction. Let us, then, find pleasure in the uncertainty, the risk, and the tempest of chance. If we can do this, then our pleasures, if nothing else, are assured.

– War and Ecstasy

Chapter 12

They gathered at a ruined farmhouse several leagues to the west of Mausolea. Neferata herself had chosen the house and directed her spies to use it for this purpose. It was one that Guessa had flown over many times on her journeys west from the city to the Stonepain Mountains and back again. She had given it little notice. It was a minor signpost on her flight, nothing more.

The house had been empty since the coming of Graunos. During the initial conquest of Angaria, his warhordes had stripped this region of all crops and killed the farmers who grew them. The building was falling into ruin. The farm was beneath any notice, less than insignificant. Velaza remembered Guessa’s surprise at Neferata’s questions early in their mission, almost a year ago now. The queen had seemed more interested in the buildings Guessa overflew than in the disposition of Graunos’ troops.

Velaza understood now. Neferata had seen this far ahead. She had planned this moment even then. Velaza wondered how anyone dared to challenge a being with such foresight.

The spies had made their way from Mausolea with meticulous caution. They had made certain that no one had followed. They were safe from the enemy’s eyes here.

Tavensia eyed the interior with distaste when they entered the house. There was a hole in the roof. Broken timbers and stones littered the floor. Moss spread where rain had fallen. The wooden table and chairs in the main room were blackened with mould. Thick layers of dust were draped over the corners of the room. Tavensia shook her head. ‘Should we be doing something? This is hardly fit to receive Lady Mereneth.’

Velaza felt the same impulse. The spymistress would be honouring them with her presence. It seemed wrong not to treat the occasion with some ceremony. All the same, she said, ‘No. Our queen has chosen this location. Therefore, it is as it should be.’

Mereneth arrived soon after nightfall. A shadow flickered over the hole in the ceiling, and then she was there, standing before her spies. Her face was strained. She looked exhausted. Her mission had taken a toll.

‘Is he here yet?’ Mereneth asked.

‘No,’ said Velaza.

‘He had further to travel,’ Mereneth admitted. ‘And he does not fly.’

‘Is it possible he did not succeed?’ Epikente asked.

Mereneth laughed. ‘If Skarveth failed where I triumphed, he shall hear about it from me. He only had to deal with the sane sister.’

Mereneth stepped out of the farmhouse. Velaza followed. They were on the crest of a low hill. This had been one of the most fruitful regions of Angaria. It had been scoured like a chewed bone. Mereneth looked east towards Mausolea and the Sentinel of the Shroud. She stayed where she was for most of the hour it took for Graunos’ beam to complete a revolution, then walked to the other side of the hill. To the west, the land rose like waves in a storm. Ridges sharp as knife blades built up, climbing higher in a staggered pattern. They resembled the saw teeth of a creature’s maw. Over the course of days, with slow, heavy grinding, the low hills rose and the high ones fell, and then the cycle would repeat.

‘He will come from there,’ said Mereneth.

‘How close are the boundaries of Obsidia from here?’ Velaza asked.

‘Not far. Less than a day’s ride.’

‘And we are less than a day from Mausolea.’

‘Yes,’ said Mereneth. ‘That would not be much of a warning. It is still more of one than our queen would like to give.’

‘I understand,’ said Velaza.

Mereneth turned to face her, her gaze serious. ‘I hope you do. Our queen commands, and it must be done. But what I am going to ask of you, I do not ask lightly.’

‘Anything you ask is my glad duty to fulfil.’

Mereneth rested a hand on her shoulder and turned back to the western prospect.

Their vigil was not a long one before the Hell Knight appeared. He was riding swiftly, his carrion horse tireless in death. He was draped in the night, though Velaza could see him clearly. His armour, engraved with the heraldry of Neferata, seemed to glint with a cold, inner light that rendered its darkness even more profound. As he drew near, Velaza wondered how a being with no face, no expressions, could radiate so strong a sense of nobility. There was, in Skarveth’s posture, a deep pride. It came, Velaza sensed, from what he served. Here, she thought as he dismounted, was a warrior who defined his entire existence through the commands of Neferata. That was nothing less than it should be.

Skarveth bowed to the spies. ‘My ladies.’

‘The rest await us inside,’ said Mereneth. ‘You come bearing a gift, I trust?’

‘I do. Also, a weight of guilt. I feel that, compared to yours, my efforts were utterly negligible.’

Mereneth smiled. ‘Your guilt is appreciated, but unnecessary. You have already sacrificed much for your queen.’

‘I don’t think I have. Rather, I have gained everything.’

‘Well said,’ Velaza remarked.

‘I am sure that the time will come for greater sacrifice,’ said Mereneth. ‘That is the nature of our calling. That is what we owe Queen Neferata.’

‘I am glad of it,’ Skarveth said. ‘I will be ready.’

In the farmhouse, they stood around the rotting table. Mereneth and Skarveth produced the two halves of the Sundered Crown.

‘So Hothalas gives leave to pass through Obsidia?’ Guessa asked.

‘Yes,’ Skarveth said. ‘And she will join in the march on Angaria. Once she has proof that the crown is whole.’

‘Everyone will have proof of that,’ said Mereneth.

Epikente cocked her head, looking at the two halves. ‘It has the power to do all that?’

‘It has the power it has been given,’ Mereneth said. ‘Especially from the mad queen. I believe that one part of its strength is innate. The rest comes from the sisters, and the importance they place in it. Thus it becomes important to us.’

Velaza picked up the pieces. The break was jagged. When she placed the halves together, the seam was almost invisible. ‘I don’t suppose holding it together will do,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Mereneth. ‘And no simple forge will do. The crown must be reborn through fire and blood. And most of all by loss.’

‘Ah,’ said Velaza. She saw more clearly what would be asked of her and her sisters.

Epikente and the others nodded solemnly.

‘What fire will be sufficient?’ Tavensia asked.

‘There are a few possibilities that would be powerful enough. Only one, though, that will achieve our queen’s goal.’ Mereneth looked east, through the empty doorway of the farmhouse, towards Mausolea and its terrible light.

‘Let her purpose be served,’ said Velaza.

‘Let this duty be mine,’ Skarveth said. He let out a dry rattle of a laugh. ‘I can pay my debt of guilt.’

‘No,’ said Mereneth. ‘Neferata commanded me to refuse your request.’

‘She knew I would ask?’ Skarveth sounded surprised.

‘She thought you might. She has other tasks for you. And you have no blood.’

The Hell Knight’s skull turned to face Velaza. What did she think she saw in those empty sockets? Sorrow? Regret?

‘We are, like you, glad of our service to the queen,’ she said. ‘Whatever form it takes.’

Mereneth left shortly thereafter. Velaza went outside as Skarveth readied his horse for the journey back to the boundaries of Obsidia, and thence to Neferatia.

‘I know you have not been in the queen’s service long,’ Velaza said. ‘Yet I feel as if you have always been of our number. I find this curious.’

Skarveth ran a hand over the raiment of his horse. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘I do believe that I have always served her, in one way or another, through two states of being. When I lived, I laboured for her in secret. She did not know of my existence, but everything I did had the goal of aiding her against her enemy. I was born into a family of traitors. Ending that treachery was my guiding purpose for as long as I can remember.’

‘Neferata is luring Vask onto the battlefield again. Do you grieve that you are not present for that encounter?’

His fist tightened on the dangling reins. ‘I do, yes. I grieve whenever I am not by our queen’s side.’

‘As do I,’ Velaza said.

This time, she was sure she saw sympathy in the eye sockets. She did not think she was projecting what she wished to perceive onto Skarveth. His next words proved her right.

‘Then I grieve for you too. You have been separated from her for much longer. And now…’

‘I am proud of what I will be able to do,’ she said.

‘I am proud, too, of my mission. If I am not by her side, it is because she needs me to be somewhere else, and that is all the honour I require.’ He paused, thoughtful. ‘I was apart from her until the day I died. This is a short separation, by comparison. And…’ He struggled for words, as if all those he found were too small to convey his full intent. ‘I tell you this,’ he said at last. ‘I died on the field when I finally rode to join our queen. But I had never truly been born until she raised me from the dust. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘I do,’ said Velaza. ‘She gives us purpose.’

‘Without her, I have none.’

‘I did not think of her as you did before I was turned. She was the queen, and that was all. I did not serve her. I wish I had. I cannot say that my life had meaning. My existence does now. So I understand you very well. And I envy you. You have indeed always served her loyally.’

He bowed his thanks. ‘I hope to prove myself worthy of such praise.’

‘I am pleased to have met you, Skarveth Lytessian.’

‘And I you, Lady Velaza. I wish you victory.’

‘It is assured. And it will be delicious.’

Skarveth leapt onto the back of his horse. He nodded to Velaza and rode off. Velaza watched him go until the night swallowed him again. Then she went back inside. The other spies were at the east window, watching the Sentinel of the Shroud turn. She joined them.

‘Do you know what irks me?’ Guessa said.

‘No. What?’

‘That I can’t be with Graunos to see the look on his face when it happens.’

The morghast archai had barely flown off when Rhasan heard the distant sound of drums and the blast of a fanfare that exulted in the promise of the mass grave. Neferata’s army was closing in on the Axeway.

‘She mocks us,’ Venthor growled. ‘She warns us of the very ambush she is springing.’

The thought crossed Rhasan’s mind that Neferata was going through considerable effort for so petty a goal. But the pleasures of the Mortarch were unfathomable. Though her doubts flickered, sparks that refused to die, Rhasan did not question Venthor. ‘Shall we turn and face her?’ she asked.

The Wrathgate skull was scouring the pass with flame again. The battlemages of the Anvils’ Sacrosanct Chamber had joined Rhasan in blasting the walls of the pass. Hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble had fallen. Between every blast, the attacks hammered the base of the gate. It was close to breaking.

‘We stay our course,’ Venthor said after a moment.

The Lord-Celestant was still mounted on Felkreth. He had remained so, a beacon to his troops and a target for the enemy, throughout the siege. The hill of rubble before them had grown to block almost half the pass. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer were formed up in close ranks near the eastern edge of the rockfall. It would take them no time at all to round that point and rush the gate. Rhasan saw Venthor glance to her right. He was evaluating the chances of success. The time between the skull’s streams of fire had become unpredictable. The Bloodbound might be running out of sacrificial fodder. The weapon was going hungry.

‘We are about to break through the gate,’ said Venthor. ‘If Neferata is trying to taunt us into battle with her, she will have to wait her turn. We are caught between foes no matter which way we charge. So we will seize our chance to take the gate. Once we force it open, we will alter the battlefield. Defenders and ambushers will both fail at a stroke.’

Venthor’s logic was sound. Rhasan had no reason to disagree with it. Yet in her heart, she did. His approach was too rational for the perversities of Shyish, and one of the perversities’ greatest authors was closing in on them. Instinct told her Venthor was making a mistake. Reason and loyalty argued that he was in the right.

She kept her doubts to herself.

She believed she was correct to do so. Reason dictated that she follow this course of action.

Much later, when she looked back at this moment, she would realise, with pain and anger, that a part of her, a part she refused to listen to, was already cursing her, raging against the magnitude of the error.

She would try to tell herself that she was the only one of her comrades to feel this way. That the other leaders of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer had no such doubts. That she had been manipulated by Neferata into this condition.

The truth of all these things would not matter. They would not give her any comfort.

She would remember, with bitterness, that the disaster began with furious hope. Venthor lifted his hammer high and called for the charge.

‘Now!’ he cried. ‘We claim victory now! The gate is ours! Now it falls!’

Felkreth roared loudly enough to shake a hail of fragments from the cliffs. He charged to the right. Rhasan shouted, summoning the Anvils of the Heldenhammer to the banner, scorched yet proud. The Stormhost shouted back, and thunder rose from the floor of the pass.

The Stormcast Eternals charged around the end of the rubble and headed for the gate. They held their shields over their heads, defending as they attacked. The strategy was a single-minded rush of force. There was no long-range strike by the Judicators or aerial strafing by the Prosecutors. It went against Rhasan’s military instincts to leave the enemy on the ramparts alone. Yet they could not risk feeding the skull more deaths. The entire Stormhost became a colossal swing of the hammer aimed at the base of the wall.

The Bloodbound hurled spears and arrows at the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. A hail of death that would have laid waste to the front lines of a mortal army darkened the air of the pass. The Anvils ran straight through the curtain of missiles. They did not merely shrug off the attack. They ignored it. The barrage was meaningless. There was nothing the Khornate troops could do to stop the coming of the hammer.

The trumpet blast of Neferata’s army sounded again. It was louder, and it echoed. It was closer. The Mortarch and her forces were in the Axeway.

Venthor was right. This was the way forwards. A massive blow against the Wrathgate to open it at last and burst free of the ambush. There was no reason for Rhasan to think Venthor was wrong.

No reason unless Neferata was telling the truth.

Rhasan stormed forwards beside the snarling dracoth. She held her banner high, attacking with fury at the enemy and faith in the Lord-Celestant.

But the doubts flickered. The doubts festered.

The Anvils of the Heldenhammer slammed into the Wrathgate. It trembled under the blow.

Then the earth screamed and gave up its dead.

The entrance to the Axeway was just up ahead.

‘The Lord-Celestant rejects your warning,’ Kerdathax said as he took his place once more on the Nagadron’s right flank.

‘Excellent,’ said Neferata. ‘He goes forward, then?’

‘He does.’

Then the final pieces of this portion of the game were in place, and doing what they should. Venthor was making the error she needed.

‘Now comes the time of consequences,’ Neferata said to the morghasts. ‘We shall see a collision of choices. Some have been made just now, and some were made an age ago. The Lord-Celestant refused to listen to you, Kerdathax. Consequences will flow from that. Vask will choose to attack us both. That will have its repercussions. And it is time that I meet the last consequence for my judgement of Shadowvel, and for how I suppressed the Hellezan rebellion.’

‘As you say, my queen,’ Kerdathax said. Dravashkon, the other morghast archai, remained silent.

‘Rejoice, my morghasts!’ Neferata exclaimed. ‘You should revel in the excitement of unpredictability. It is so pure, so concentrated, at a nexus of choice. Whatever happens, it will not be dull.’

The leading edge of her infantry turned into the Axeway. Neferata brought Nagadron flying in low, and the morghasts followed faithfully. At the front, a phalanx of skeleton drummers beat severed femurs against taut human skin.

‘Sound the fanfare!’ Neferata commanded. ‘Announce us! Let Vask hear! Let us tell him that I have come!’ She laughed. ‘Let us tell him that I have fallen into his trap.’

Trumpeters with neither lips nor lungs raised their instruments. Their music was mournful, fantastic and defiant. Death triumphant marched through the Axeway.

‘Where are you, Vask?’ Neferata called. ‘Is this not what you wanted? Is this not your great desire?’

She urged her army faster. Her legions marched into the bottleneck of the pass, closing the distance between them, the Anvils of the Heldenhammer and the wall. Flying higher, Neferata saw the charge of the Stormcast Eternals. The two forces were far enough apart that they would not be able to reach each other easily, though if Vask waited much longer, that would change. She looked to the rear, and her siege towers, those immense lies, were now in the Axeway.

This is the moment. Prove me right, Vask. Show me how predictable you really are in your petty anger.

Vask answered. Along the entire length of the Axeway, the vengeful dead attacked. With them came the living willing to die for their cause. A legion of fools, led by a fool.

Yet Neferata was impressed by the care Vask had put into the ambush. As the eruption began, she took a moment to savour the titanic effort that had been given to the project of destroying her. Centuries of hate had resulted in centuries of work. She was flattered. And she was intrigued. Vask and the dead of Shadowvel had made common cause. Their shared hatred of her made that easy to understand. But to have worked so long and well in secrecy, to hide the region from her sight, that was remarkable. The ambush was even more remarkable. The Axeway was not far from Shadowvel, but it still would have taken generations of meticulously crafted sorcery to have aligned the border of the hidden underworld with the Axeway.

How long have they been hoping to lure me here? It was as perfect a location for a trap as was possible within the region of Shadowvel. She wondered if the dead of the city had planned simply to fester in their anger until chance brought her here. That was a patience that had turned into madness. She thought that Vask had seen an opportunity and used his allies for his own purposes. He had shown himself more than able to mount an active campaign against her.

Vask used them, and Graunos used Vask. The neatness of her foes’ parasitical relationships fused with the improbability of chance appealed to her. She was pleased with this war. She was pleased with her role in bringing it about. Now she had to use it well.

The attackers appeared to materialise out of nothing. Skeletons, vampires and mortals rose from the Axeway floor. Waves of spirits burst from the cliffs. They sealed the entrance to the pass, and a great throng emerged in front of the Neferatian army, cutting it off from the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.

It was, truly, a magnificent strike by Vask.

‘Traitors!’ Neferata roared, her voice booming throughout the pass. ‘I bring you oblivion!’ And she brought Nagadron down. She grinned ferociously. She had a purpose here, too. She would show Vask that the true masterpiece of deception was the one that she had woven.

The parapet shook under the impact of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. Neferata’s army came into sight, and Vask finally attacked. The assault was well staged, and Vask had great numbers on his side. All of Shadowvel’s history before its fall had risen against Neferata.

‘We are ready,’ Vergren told Kathag. ‘Our forces await you below.’

‘Good.’ Kathag turned away from the panorama of the war and made for the zigzagging staircase carved out of the interior of the north cliff.

‘Lord Graunos’ tool has a good army,’ Vergren said.

‘It might be,’ said Kathag, ‘against Neferata or the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. Not against both. Numbers aren’t enough.’ He stopped at the entrance to the tunnel in the cliff and looked back at the skull. It was beginning to feed on the struggle below, but too many of the combatants were already dead and would give it no fuel. It would fire again, but only sporadically. ‘Nothing we have here is enough,’ Kathag said. ‘But we never thought it would be. If Vask had attacked when he should have, we might have defeated the Stormcast Eternals.’ Neferata’s machinations had ended that hope.

Kathag stormed down the stairs, taking them three at a time, his anger building to battle wrath. ‘Vask is a fool,’ he said. ‘His overreach will cost too much.’

‘Then we will turn the tide against the enemy,’ said Vergren.

‘No, we won’t. Not with the forces we have here.’

Vergren growled under his breath. ‘Lord Graunos might be interested to hear you disparage our strength.’

Kathag whirled, catching Vergren by the throat and pinning him against the wall in a single movement. ‘I speak for Lord Graunos,’ he snarled. ‘He knows exactly what can and cannot be done here. And if you question me again, the next skull I take will be yours.’

Kathag stared into Vergren’s eyes until he was sure the message had been received. Then he released the Exalted Deathbringer and continued down the stairs, his thoughts already back on the battle ahead. He would not let the Mortarch have her way. He would get his prize yet. It was time to wield the blade of focused rage.

He emerged from the base of the cliff. The warhost was assembled before the gate, a restless, stirring mass of barely contained violence. Kathag nodded in satisfaction. His warriors were already hungry to taste Stormcast Eternal blood. The longer he restrained them, the greater the violence when they finally hit the battlefield. If he timed the assault correctly, the explosion of hate would be something majestic, a worthy act of worship for the Skull God.

Kathag passed before the front ranks, stopping before the centre of the gate, where he mounted Borgheven, his juggernaut. ‘Ignore the dead!’ he commanded. ‘Turn your blades upon the living! The slaves of Sigmar are our prey this night. If they cheat us of their skulls by vanishing, their deaths are no less pleasing to Khorne. Blood for the Blood God!’

‘Skulls for the Skull Throne!’ the horde answered.

Above the Wrathgate, the skull icon fed slowly, but it did feed. At last it was ready again, and it unleashed its fire upon the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.

As soon as he saw the flame pour down again, Kathag struck the gate with the flat of his axe. ‘Open the gate!’ he called. The blow reverberated over its entire surface. Its effect was unlike the blows of Stormcast Eternals. There was no intent to destroy. This was a command, given through one icon of Khorne to another. The gate rang, a solemn, monstrous bell. The signal was given, and a vertical line appeared in the apparently seamless expanse of brass. With a terrible grinding, the Wrathgate opened outwards, and Kathag led the roaring furies of his warhorde through, into the Axeway beyond.

Vask was the shifting eye of the storm. He ran back and forth through the centre of the massed forces between Neferata and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. He kept moving, his hunched posture making him smaller than most of his warriors. His army here was not as aethereal as that coming from the sides of the pass. These were his loyalists, the mortals who had always been loyal to him and the vampires whose faith he had inherited from Kasten. They would protect him, and they would hide him. He would not stand out in this throng. Even so, he kept moving, never staying too near the centre for long, where he was sure Neferata would seek him first. He would hide the source of command.

Vask’s pulse beat with a new kind of fear. He did not belong on the battlefield. He belonged in the shadows, weaving the schemes that would control the clash of arms. The ambush at Knell was supposed to have been the culmination of his shadow war against Neferata. He should have destroyed her from afar.

He had failed, though, and now he was here. He had no choice. The stakes were final this time, all or nothing. He was frightened, but he was also resolute, and he was glad it had come to this. His victory would be much more meaningful.

And Kasten was frenzied. His screams filled Vask’s head, pushing him into a fury. There was barely room left in his soul for fear. Everything was at stake, and the corpse, desperate, lashed out in every direction. Held by his heroic ancestor’s will, Vask gave material form to Kasten’s attacks. Surrounded by a vortex of spirits, mortals and vampires, he directed the arms of the storm, sending them crashing into the front ranks of the Neferatian army and the rear of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. Deep inside the storm, Vask could see little except the violence of movement. Kasten was as certain in his commands as he was furious, though, and Vask trusted in the dead necromancer. He shouted orders and directed the whirl of his forces. His fists were tight, and his frame trembled with the effort of containing the bolts of death energy he had summoned. He had to hold them back, to have them ready when their moment came. If he attacked too soon, he would give his position away.

Neferata would be looking for him. She knew what a lethal threat he represented. She knew she must deal with him or lose an empire. He was proud of the terror he must have brought to her heart. He would see that terror on her face this time when he brought her low.

He turned to face the Wrathgate as it opened. The fire from the skull ended, and he heard the rumble of a new army charging into the fray, and then the collision, like crashing waves in a sea of iron, of Bloodbound and Stormcast Eternals.

The great, booming toll of the opening of the gate was a call he was meant to obey.

A new voice invaded his mind. It was the voice of his patron, of Graunos. He had heard it before, coming from a phantasmic manifestation held within summoning circles. He thought he had kept a safe distance from the daemon prince. Collaboration did not mean subjugation. He had been quite sure of this.

Destroy the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, Graunos demanded. That is why you are here. Your delay has cost enough.

An impulse came with the words. Sharp, iced with anger, it stabbed him behind the eyes. It would relent if he obeyed.

Poised on the edge of submission, he heard a monster’s roar from behind and above. And he heard a woman’s laugh, a laugh that delighted in all the pleasures of blood. Her voice boomed through the entire Axeway. In defiance of the pain, driven by Kasten’s need as well as his own, Vask turned and faced south.

Hundreds of yards away, mounted on her skeletal beast and flanked by two great horrors armed with giant blades, Neferata dived into the host of Hellezan and Shadowvel. She reached down with her black staff. It flashed dark light, and with it she reaped a harvest of shattered souls, the living and the dead scythed apart by her passage. The dread abyssal’s jaws gaped wide, a great devourer of spirits. The morghast archai swung their huge blades, carving two wide furrows through Vask’s great force.

It was as if an immense, taloned hand clawed gouges through his army. And Neferata was laughing. She was laughing.

Do as you are commanded, Graunos thundered in his mind.

But Kasten’s shrieks of rage almost drowned out the daemon prince.

Vask turned and turned. His forces were divided, holding off the Neferatians and pressing the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. He was attacking along the flanks too, but that was not enough. He had to commit fully or his assault would turn into a defensive fight.

Neferata’s siege towers lumbered in his view. His army was not slowing them down, though he saw the spirits of Shadowvel swarming over their heights.

Graunos raged. Neferata laughed. Vask hesitated, torn between fears.

Neferata knew that Vask was in that huge churn of his forces. Spectres and skeletons formed an almost indiscernible mass, mixed with mortals and some vampires. The mass struck out north and south in the pass, boiling with undirected anger. Vask was in there, hidden and protected by those who were his thralls as surely as if he were a vampire himself. She needed him to declare himself, to commit himself to attacking her. She was carving through the outer ranks of the mob, but she needed to know where he was before she could strike deeper. She was wary of being caught as she had been outside Knell. And Vask might yet do as his masters of the Ruinous Powers no doubt wanted, and throw his might fully against the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.

She would convince him to do otherwise.

‘Do you hide from me, Vask?’ she taunted with her voice of thunder, rising with Nagadron above the fray again. ‘Do you fear me?’

Neferata looked back at the siege towers. They were more than halfway through the pass now. Soon they would be a threat to the Wrathgate. They were covered with Vask’s wraiths, and mortal forces were attacking them at the base, cutting down the skeletal legions hauling them forwards and damaging the structures. The towers were slowing down and beginning to sway.

The siege towers were at the critical point, and her forces knew what would come then.

‘Do you not hate me enough yet?’ Neferata called to Vask. ‘Then let me give you further reason!’

Vask saw the siege towers tremble. Neferata’s taunts sank claws into his heart. Kasten shrieked, incoherent in his wrath. The mummy seemed to bite down harder on Vask’s shoulder.

KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER! Kasten screamed. The father of the long struggle against Neferata was a maddened, howling dead thing.

KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER!

The single thought consumed Vask’s soul. Yet the voice of Graunos was still present, yanking him back towards the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. Vask ran back and forth in the crowd of his warriors, hidden, undecided, torn by hate and anger.

The siege towers swayed more violently, trees about to fall, and his heart leapt in feral joy.

‘Do you not hate me enough yet?’ cried Neferata. ‘Then let me give you further reason!’

The towers blazed with searing violet light. Their top thirds burst apart, splinters of wood and iron flying across the battlefield. Two huge monsters leapt from their concealed perches. Wings spread, and the terrorgheist and zombie dragon flew towards the Wrathgate.

The light of the towers intensified. The spectres clutching their walls wailed in terror. With a blinding flash of violet, the towers exploded simultaneously. Then the blast collapsed in on itself. The wreckage of the towers hurled itself into the centre of the implosion. There was a terrible concussion, a crushing of matter and magic. An abyssal hollow opened up in the air above the floor of the pass. It spun, a thing of darkness streaked with a grey that was somehow even more awful. The whirling void was a hungry maw, and it pulled in everything within its grasp, living and dead.

Neferata had sacrificed her own subjects to the consuming void, but it was Vask’s forces that it swallowed in huge numbers. The living screamed as they were crushed. Skeletons imploded into dust. The maw stretched spirits into mere aethereal lines as it swirled them around its vortex, and still they screamed until they vanished into the dark.

From his vantage point, Vask could not see what was happening on the ground that far away. He was surrounded by the rush and roar of warriors, and wherever he moved in the crowd, there was only more of the same. But the maw in the air was sucking combatants up from the ground, and he could tell that the tenor of the battle was changing completely. He understood that he was not the one who had laid the ambush. The prospect of terminal defeat loomed, defeat that would end his rebellion forever.

All thought of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer vanished. The furious commands of Graunos lost all purchase on him. His anger had one great object, and soon she would be beyond the reach of his justice. This was his last chance. If he died, so be it. The only meaning his existence had was the destruction of Neferata.

‘We have no interest in the gate!’ he called. ‘Destroy the tyrant of Neferatia! Kill her! Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!’

The monstrous fire drove the Anvils of the Heldenhammer back once again, but it would be for the last time. The Wrathgate had buckled under their blows. Fissures spread upwards, glowing wounds in the brass flesh, and the centre was collapsing, huge slabs of metal falling away and crashing to the ground. Comrades fell, and Venthor led the final retreat back to the rubble from the cliff.

Then the dead attacked from behind and the sides, and while the Anvils turned to face them, the ruined Wrathgate opened wide, unleashing the warhorde’s desperate charge.

Venthor led a defence so ferocious it was worthy of a new assault. Even with the massive attack by the dead, the Anvils of the Heldenhammer broke the rush of the Bloodbound and began to turn them back. Rhasan and the battlemages brought more of the cliffside down, this time from the other side, as the Bloodbound charged. The avalanche crushed scores and narrowed the pass further. The Bloodbound had to get past the rockfall to get at the Anvils, and they ran into a withering barrage from the Judicators.

The Khornate warriors did not stop. They spread out and climbed over the rocks, and there the Prosecutors were ready for them. The winged furies of dark, embodied justice fell upon them with the speed of birds of prey and the brutal strength of battering rams. Even this could not quell the flood of the enemy. The Bloodbound washed over the rocks in waves, and on the other side, the Liberators drove them back against the stone. The tide of warriors became a tide of blood.

And still they came.

If the Bloodbound had been the only enemy, Rhasan thought, the outcome of the battle would have been inevitable. The Khornate could feed the skull with their own dead, or they could fight. In the long run, they could not do both. Only now they did not have to make a choice. The ambush Neferata had tried to warn the Anvils about had come, and they were beset on all sides. Phantoms emerged from the cliffs on both sides of the pass for as far as Rhasan could see. If it were not for the arrival of Neferata’s army, that entire spirit host, many thousands strong, would have rushed upon the Stormcast Eternals. Instead, the new foe was divided, its leadership seemingly uncertain, attacking in two directions at once.

The Stormhost formed a defensive circle, the bulwark of the Liberators holding back a force of vampires and mortals that attacked from the south. Fighting on the north front, crushing skulls and ribcages with the steady, merciless swings of her hammer, Rhasan caught glimpses of the struggle at the rear. The night burned with the warring lightning and deathly sorcery, flashing white and sickly green.

The defensive wall of shields, hammer and armour held. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer were not about to be overwhelmed.

There was another push from the Bloodbound. Venthor led a counter-charge and pushed them back through the passage between the two huge rockfalls. The lord of Khorne directing the attack appeared briefly on the peak of the southern hill of rubble. He had led the initial push. His juggernaut had trampled Prosecutors, and his weapon seemed to cut through reality itself. The warlord led charges and appeared to be directing others, but was not throwing himself and all his forces into the kind of single, massed charge Rhasan expected from his kind. He was using probing attacks instead. At this moment, he appeared to be surveying the Stormhost, strategising.

There was a huge double explosion that was immediately muffled, as if compressed, and the lord of Khorne looked up from the Stormhost. Rhasan cut the head from another bloodreaver that had descended onto her position by the rocks, and glanced back to see the black-and-grey vortex in the air.

‘What is that?’ shouted Lord-Castellant Arvax.

‘Something our foe does not welcome,’ said Rhasan.

Two monsters flew by overhead, making for the wall. Their ragged wings cast a deeper shadow over the night.

The warlord roared orders as he pulled back to the other side of the boulder ridge, and the Bloodbound’s charge ended. They retreated with their leader. A few moments later, the flashes of the battle to the south diminished too.

Venthor paused with Felkreth at the gap between the rubble hills. Rhasan saw him poised on the verge of ordering a counter-attack when Jehnneka landed next to him.

‘Lord-Celestant,’ the Knight-Venator said, ‘the ambushing army has turned its attention from us. Its forces are committed entirely to attacking Neferata. They have their backs to us.’

‘This is a chance,’ said Rhasan.

‘What do you mean?’ said Venthor. Felkreth was pawing at the ground, gouging it with his claws, eager to charge north. He reflected his master’s desire and impatience.

‘We can reverse the configuration of this battle. We attack the ambushers and catch them between ourselves and Neferata.’

‘And then?’ said Venthor, growing angry.

‘I take no pleasure in suggesting this,’ Rhasan said, ‘but Neferata and we have a common enemy. We destroy the ambushers, link up with her forces and then finish the Bloodbound.’

‘And then?’ Venthor asked again. ‘We find ourselves in exactly the position she wants, that she has been trying to bring about since we arrived in Shyish.’ He pointed south. ‘Can you say that she has not staged the battle she fights? Do you know that she is not sacrificing her forces so that she can convince us of her good will?’

‘No,’ Rhasan admitted.

‘If this is so, she has sacrificed many,’ Jehnneka ventured. ‘She would sacrifice even more to destroy another army as a sham.’

‘That destruction would not be allowed to happen,’ said Venthor. ‘We would barely have turned to the south when the trap would be sprung and both armies would turn against us, now with our backs to the Bloodbound. No, we go forwards. That sorcery in the air has pushed the forces of the Ruinous Powers into retreat. North is where we turn the tables, and the enemy’s retreat has given us that chance.

‘At my command, we attack!’

The implosion tore a hole in the air, and Kathag stared at the vortex with a chill of horrified recognition. It was the grey in the darkness that he feared. It was the grey that confronted him in his axe. It was the grey of the Maw of Uncreation.

She can’t, he thought. She can’t have the power to create that horror here. He had only glimpsed the Maw in Nulahmia. He had understood what it was, and had turned away from its lethal fascination. It was absolute destruction, a finality beyond death. If even a fraction of that power was loose on the field, fighting it would be a futile madness.

Vask was possessed by that kind of madness.

From his position at the top of the rockfall, Kathag watched the necromancer make the crucial mistake. He disobeyed Graunos’ commands and turned to fight Neferata. His obsession was too great. Kathag was impressed that it was strong enough to overwhelm the hooks that Graunos had sunk into Vask’s mind.

From behind and above came bellowing roars. The two huge beasts that had emerged from the towers were attacking the skull.

Kathag was almost out of time. There were events unfolding on the battlefield that he could not control, and whose endings he could not foresee. His prize, though, had not escaped his grasp yet. The arrival of the vortex in the air gave him the chance he needed. The Bloodbound had a very convincing reason to pull back.

‘Retreat!’ he ordered. ‘Withdraw towards the gate! Let Sigmar’s dogs come for us!’

Kathag hauled on the reins of Borgheven. The juggernaut plunged down the slope, cracking boulders beneath its hooves. When they reached the floor of the pass, Kathag turned the beast again so they were parallel to the rockfall, facing the gap. He moved forwards slowly, waiting for what he was sure would happen. He did not have to wait long.

The Stormcast Eternals thundered through the gap. They were so disciplined, it was as if they were a single beast of war in black armour. The Bloodbound ahead of them were in full retreat towards the Wrathgate. The Lord-Celestant on his dracoth pursued. The beast pounded the earth in its fury, and its speed took them further ahead of the main body of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.

Venthor’s appearance sprang Kathag’s trap. He had held back a third of the force with which he had ridden out, dividing them in two and sending them to opposite sides of the pass to stay low and motionless next to the fallen cliffs and wait for the signal.

Venthor was that signal.

‘Give me my prize,’ said Kathag. He growled low in his throat.

The Bloodbound attacked. Mobs of bloodreavers, led by brutal skullcrushers, howled in eagerness and fury. Bloodletter daemons ran along the rubble, leaping from rock to rock. A savage pincer closed on the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. Kathag urged his juggernaut into a stampeding run. The Lord-Celestant was his prize.

‘Give me your skull,’ Kathag hissed, his eyes on Venthor.

The Stormcast Eternals reacted to the danger at once. Venthor slowed down and the others ran faster, seeking to clear the gap before the jaws of the trap closed. Fast as they were, they were too slow. They never had the time.

Two battering rams of fury slammed into the flanks of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. The greatest concentration of the force hit Venthor’s position, cutting him off from his Stormhost. The Anvils’ formation attacked the mob that separated them from their leader. A Relictor led the attempt to break through. The solemn skull on the black helm was an expression of grim death as she smashed down Kathag’s Bloodbound. A skullcrusher came at her, shouting his promise to kill. Without a pause in her advance, she slammed her hammer into his face, pulping his head like overripe fruit.

Venthor’s dracoth pounced on the Bloodbound, biting men in half, smearing them across the stone with the slash of its claws. It caught the scent of Borgheven and snarled in challenge. Its master turned at the warning and rose taller in the saddle, hammer in both hands.

The cold, stern visage of the Lord-Celestant’s helm hid the warrior’s face. Kathag’s horns emerged from his helm, and its armour left his mouth exposed. Kathag wanted Venthor to see his expression. He wanted the Lord-Celestant to see his teeth-bared grimace of victory.

The dracoth let out a shrieking howl of hate and leapt. It sailed over the heads of the bloodreavers closing in on it and landed on others, crushing them. Its way clear, it rushed at Borgheven. The juggernaut bellowed in answer and, head lowered, rushed to meet the foe. Kathag stood up in his saddle too, his axe at the ready. His snarl became a grin when Venthor leaned back with his hammer, preparing a massive blow. The fool thought there were rules to this duel.

The two monsters collided. The ground shook with the impact, and the roars of the monsters were so huge they brought more boulders down from the cliffs. Kathag jumped from Borgheven’s back at the last moment, and Venthor swung his weapon through empty air. Kathag came down on the dracoth’s back, behind the Lord-Celestant.

Venthor spun, his speed surprising. He leaned back and swung the hammer in low, just managing to block the death blow Kathag had aimed at the warrior’s spine. The collision of weapons unleashed a flash of blue lightning and a blast of crimson fire. The dracoth screamed in pain, and the explosion hurled Kathag and Venthor from its back.

Kathag kept his feet and came at Venthor with one savage swing after another. Venthor blocked each one, but Kathag kept him on the defensive. Behind the Lord-Celestant, the beasts shook the earth with their struggle. They thrashed in anger and pain, jaws locked on each other’s throats.

The warriors of Kathag’s horde rushed to block the duel off from the other Anvils of the Heldenhammer. They sacrificed themselves to Khorne, for their attacks did little more than turn them into shields of flesh. Kathag didn’t care. They did as he had commanded, and far above, the skull, besieged by monsters, grew strong with souls again.

Venthor leaned into a block with such force that he made Kathag stumble. The power of their weapons warred again, the tempest unleashed by the sigmarite hammer colliding with the vortices of reality torn open by Kathag’s axe. There was another explosion, but both warriors weathered the blast. Kathag’s stumble gave Venthor the opening he needed. He pushed hard enough to topple a wall, throwing Kathag back a full step. Free to swing his hammer, he took the offensive.

But the wound of the first blast had weakened his dracoth, and Borgheven closed his jaws through the beast’s flesh. Blood gushed in a flood over the juggernaut’s face and he twisted, smashing the dracoth to the ground. Venthor’s discipline did not waver at the sound of its distress, but Kathag felt the fury of the Lord-Celestant’s coming blow. He tried to jump out of the way of the hammer, but Venthor was too fast. Kathag’s own speed saved him from being broken in two, but it felt as if a mountain had smashed into his flank. He roared, explosive pain becoming rage. He would not fall here. He could not fall. He had struggled too long and hard to achieve his redemption in wrath.

Kathag spun back at Venthor, and at the same moment, Borgheven leapt forward from the fallen dracoth. The Lord-Celestant sidestepped and brought his hammer smashing into Borgheven’s skull. The monster fell, stunned by the blow, and Venthor whirled again to face Kathag. But the double attack stole the initiative from him. It gave Kathag the fraction of time he needed. Though Venthor came at him again, he had the chance to lunge to the side, out of the way of the hammer. He turned into his blow, bringing the axe in from the side with all his force. The air screamed in writhing pain, and the monstrous blade struck Venthor’s armour at the side of his neck.

Reality erupted, lashing out in screams from the point of contact. Disintegration coiled and spiralled. A cyclone of tormented energy engulfed Kathag and Venthor. The Lord-Celestant’s limbs convulsed. His head jerked to the side in an unnatural angle. His arms twitched as if he might somehow wield his hammer one more time. Kathag gave him no chance. He pulled the axe back and hit again, just as hard. The cyclone shrieked louder, and then vanished.

Venthor’s head tumbled from his body. Kathag snatched it from the air and held it aloft. He held the prize only for a moment before a blast of purifying lightning stole it and Venthor’s body from him, searing the flesh down his arm and torso.

The moment was enough for Kathag. ‘For the Skull Throne!’ he shouted while he lifted the head.

The sky above flashed. A thunder too loud to be heard deafened Kathag, and a firestorm devoured the night.

Vask took the bait. The chaotic mass of warriors acquired sudden, definite purpose in answer to Neferata’s taunts and the destruction wreaked by the vortex. The spell that had taken the towers could not hope to replicate the power of the Maw of Uncreation. Nor did Neferata have the least wish to do so. What she had succeeded in forging here, in collaboration with her most ancient necromancers, was powerful enough, though it was only a pantomimic echo of the Maw. What the maelstrom did was simple annihilation, no worse than that, crushing its material and aethereal prey to nothing. It would dissipate soon, its work done.

Vask was panicked and enraged, and he was about to give himself away.

The army rushed forwards, clashing with her troops. Volleys of arrows flew her way. She was the sole focus of the throng below. Mortals waved swords over their heads as if they could reach high enough to cut her down. Vampires took wing, and her morghasts flew down to meet them.

Neferata smiled. In rising to a fight they could not win, the vampires thinned the crowd. The earth-bound combatants raved at her or fought as her skeletons marched, relentless in their discipline, deeper into the rebel ranks. But there was a cluster of fighters, more visible now, who moved differently. They did not rush forwards. The army had a single-minded direction, but inside it this small group moved back and forth seemingly at random, and stayed densely packed, as if protecting someone.

‘I have you,’ Neferata said. ‘Down, Nagadron. Take us to our prey.’

The Adevore streaked down towards the cluster of rebels. Kerdathax and Dravashkon cleared her path through the air. They cut through the vampires, and the bodies of the weak, treacherous undead fell in tatters to the ground. Neferata braced herself for the attack that would surely come. She channelled sorcerous strength through Aken-seth. A shield of night formed ahead of the staff’s blade. It was narrow but powerful, focused on protecting her from what would come from within the cluster.

‘Be ready,’ she whispered to Nagadron.

The blast came, as it had in Knell. It was not as strong as that attack. This was summoned in desperation and haste. Even so, its power was ferocious. There was a collective strength here, two souls acting as one. The bolt slammed against her shield. Roaring in pain, Nagadron dived through the burning fury. Neferata grimaced. Though her shield blunted the damage, it felt as though she were flying through a storm of spears. Her grimace became a hiss of vengeance, because the storm could not stop her.

She smashed through the bolt. It became ragged shards, hurled at her with all the force of centuries of a family’s hate and pain. They could not even slow her. Neferata tightened her grip on Aken-seth, bolstering the shield. The dread abyssal streaked over the warriors, breaking them apart with his claws. Neferata leaned over Nagadron’s side. She reached down and snatched Vask up.

Nagadron rose skywards, still heading north to the Wrathgate, and Neferata looked at the thing in her grasp. Her foe was a hunched, wizened man, his frame twisted by the grip and bite of the mummified torso clinging to him. She remembered the noble figure Mathas Hellezan had cut as he unknowingly led his followers to their doom, and she laughed.

‘Look at what you’ve come to, Hellezan,’ she said. ‘See what an age of struggle has done. What purpose is there left in your fight?’

‘Your destruction!’ Vask croaked.

She had him by the throat, and he could barely speak. His strangled voice sounded like two people. Neferata glanced at the mummy, and understood where Vask’s power came from.

‘My destruction?’ she asked as Nagadron soared higher. ‘That is all? You do not fight for anything any longer? That is a sorry end for your rebellion. But you will be useful to me, at the last.’

Above the gate, the terrorgheist and the zombie dragon attacked the skull and its supports. The defenders on the ramparts tried to kill what was already dead. The monsters retaliated. The terrorgheist’s screaming roar pulverised bone, and the zombie dragon bathed the battlements with breath that rotted the warriors where they stood.

The skull was damaged. It leaned forwards drunkenly. At the same time, its eyes blazed. It had fed well on the deaths of Khorne’s worshippers, and it was ready to burn the ground again. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer were in the thick of fighting with the Bloodbound. Almost half their number were still blocked in the gap between the rockfalls. Too many of them would not be able to retreat if the flames caught them now.

‘I am tired of you,’ Neferata told Vask. ‘But you see, in the end, though you could not see it, you have done my bidding. It is inevitable. I arrange the stage, and you are the players who perform as my desire wills it.’

The monsters grabbed the skull by its eye sockets and yanked the face up. The fires of rage climbed their bodies, destroying bone and rotted flesh.

Neferata hurled Vask at the skull. Screaming, the necromancer plunged into the right eye as the weapon began to fire.

The skull exploded. Its fire burst from cracks around its entire circumference, and then the weapon disintegrated, brass evaporating the furnace of its death. The fireball was blinding, a blast of uncontrolled, inchoate rage. Night burned away before the terrible day. A wave of heat roared down the length of the Axeway. Banners burst into flame at its passage. In the blinding glare, Neferata’s maelstrom receded, coiled into itself and then vanished.

The flames of wrath rose upwards in a mushrooming fountain, consuming the zombie dragon and the terrorgheist, then fell back in a flood over the Wrathgate. The deluge cut short the screams of the warriors on the ramparts. It melted the brass of the gate. The huge structure buckled and twisted. Metal turned molten. Large chunks glowed white-hot, then fell like meteors to the ground. Crumbling and melting, the Wrathgate groaned. The death cry of brass filled the Axeway like a screeching, mournful wind.

As the fire ran in torrents down the gate, it began to dim. There was no consciousness behind this anger. It was an explosion of rage that could not be sustained. The hissing of molten metal became a series of loud, sharp cracks. The two halves of the gate fell against each other, gaps opening up in the centre and at the base of the cliffs.

The last of the fire reached the ground, the rage guttering sullenly. The monumental gate looked as if it had been crushed in the fist of a god.

The last echoes of the blast fell away with the death cry of the Wrathgate. Other cries now made themselves heard. Vask’s death stole the heart from his legions. The rebels knew that they had lost, and that they were lost. Some tried to fight, some tried to flee, some tried for mercy. The spirits of Shadowvel tried to fight on. They knew there would be no mercy. They fought because there was nothing else to do. They had already been decimated by the implosion of the towers and the hungry vortex.

Neferata’s army moved swiftly and relentlessly through the pass. Her forces were a great scythe. This was no longer war. It was execution. Vask’s rebels shrank in on themselves while the Neferatians fell upon them with murderous contempt.

As the gate twisted, the Bloodbound retreated in a stampede, risking fiery annihilation to get through the gate ahead of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.

‘Quickly, Nagadron,’ said Neferata. She urged the dread abyssal to make speed and land ahead of the front ranks of the Stormcast Eternals. Lord-Relictor Rhasan was at their head, their banner still held high but burned almost beyond recognition.

Neferata’s army came up behind the Anvils, then stopped, keeping to the top of the rockfalls and the sides of the pass. Her host advanced no further than within a hundred yards of Sigmar’s warriors.

The last of the Bloodbound passed through the rents in the Wrathgate. Rhasan had not pursued them immediately, waiting for the full Stormhost to leave the gap and form up for a march of vengeance into Angaria.

Neferata dismounted from Nagadron fifty yards ahead of Rhasan, and barely more than that in front of the ruin of the Wrathgate. She stepped away from the Adevore, standing in the path of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, her weapons lowered.

‘Move aside,’ said Rhasan.

‘You have every reason to pursue your present path,’ Neferata said. ‘I will not try to stop you. I do ask you to stop, though.’

‘Why?’ Lord-Veritant Hyreia demanded.

‘Because I offer you the full measure of justice and vengeance.’

‘They are both just on the other side of that gate,’ Hyreia said.

‘I disagree. There are plenty of Khorne’s followers there for you to pursue and destroy, certainly. But you will not find the killer of Lord-Celestant Venthor. He has too much of a lead.’

‘He will turn and fight,’ said Arvax. ‘That is the way of his kind.’

‘Of his kind, yes, but not of Kathag. Like his master, he fights to win a war, not a mere battle. Vask, who ambushed us, was the main actor of this campaign. He was, I believe, meant to attack you alone. We are fortunate that he overreached. Kathag made no such mistake. He accomplished exactly what he set out to do.’

‘For the moment.’

Neferata nodded, granting the result of the implacable pursuit by the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. ‘Vengeance will be yours, in the end. You have pierced the defences of Angaria, and you will extend the thrust of your blade from here into the belly of the empire. But your campaign will be long and costly. There is another, better choice.’

She paused. The impassive faces of their helms hid their emotions, but she had struck a nerve. The leaders of the march slowed, then stopped a few paces from her. The Stormhost halted behind them. Rhasan and the others were ready to listen, then. Good.

She was careful not to smile. In killing Venthor, Kathag had served her purpose well. She hoped she would have the chance to tell him so before killing him.

‘What do you offer?’ Rhasan said.

Hyreia took half a step towards Rhasan, then stopped.

You do not even want to hear what I have to say, Lord-Veritant. You would stop Rhasan from listening to me as well, but you have too much respect for her to undermine her so visibly. This is good for me to know. Venthor’s views will be defended until his return. Very well.

‘I offer what I have from the start,’ said Neferata. ‘In this war, we should be allies. It is foolish to be divided against Graunos. We have seen today that we should be fighting together.’

‘How do you propose to enter Angaria if not through here?’ Rhasan asked.

‘My armies will travel through the underworld of Obsidia and enter Angaria a few hours’ march from Mausolea. I will strike at the heart of the empire. I will attack Graunos directly.’

Neferata did not have to see past the masks of the helms to know she had the full attention of the leaders of the Stormhost.

‘Your way forward from here is uncertain, and may well lead to another trap. At the very least, you are many leagues from Mausolea. March with me, and end the reign of Graunos now.’

‘And then what?’ said Rhasan. ‘What do you ask of us?’

‘Nothing,’ said Neferata. ‘If you wish to lay claim to Shadowvel, then it is yours.’

‘For your purposes, it would be better for us to attack from here and draw Graunos’ attention away from you until you are ready.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Then the reasons why you propose an alliance are unclear.’

‘They satisfy me.’

‘But not us,’ said Arvax.

Neferata bowed, conceding the point. ‘I could give you reasons. I could keep things as simple as saying that I want to see what it is like when the Stormcast Eternals strike from the shadows. Would you believe any of these reasons? Do you believe anything I say?’

‘No,’ said Hyreia.

‘I do not expect you to. You will only see the truth by joining me. And you will see the doom of Graunos too.’

The Anvils of the Heldenhammer made no reply. Finally, Rhasan said, ‘We will, in this single instance, fight with you against our common foe.’

‘Good,’ said Neferata. Good. ‘I ask for nothing more.’ She was pleased with Rhasan. She had thought that the Lord-Relictor embodied interesting possibilities, and she had been right. ‘Make your way to the western arm of the Stonepains.’

‘Where on the western arm? That is a very wide area.’

‘Ride until you see my army. It is not difficult to find. It is much larger than the one I brought here. Ride, and we will march together.’ Now she did smile. ‘You will have your vengeance. And we will make an empire fall.’

Permit your enemies to uncover a clear deception, and so blind them to the deeper one.

– Threads of Stratagem

Chapter 13

In the Offertory throne room, Graunos said, ‘A great price to pay for so small a prize. A single skull, which could not be kept or truly offered.’

‘There was meaning in the kill,’ said Kathag. ‘And a loss that the Anvils of the Heldenhammer will feel.’

‘You think that was worth the price we paid?’

‘Vask lost the battle before it began through his delay. The price was going to be paid. I chose to salvage something from that defeat. But yes, the cost is real. We are vulnerable to the south now.’

‘Vulnerable?’ Graunos shouted. ‘They should be attacking us by now! You were not followed. Why is that?’

Kathag looked puzzled. ‘The Stormcast Eternals have not pursued at all? I thought they were simply regrouping.’

‘No,’ said Graunos. ‘I have eyes upon the Wrathgate. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer withdrew from the Axeway with Neferata.’

‘With?’

‘With. They have been making for the western Stonepains.’

‘She has made allies of them, then.’

‘Which was always her intent. We have a united foe against us now.’

‘Why withdraw?’ Kathag wondered. ‘Why not seize the advantage they had gained. They could already be in Angaria by now.’

Graunos shook his head. He had been wrestling with the question since he had learned of the choice the Anvils of the Heldenhammer had made. He knew that nothing Neferata did was what it appeared to be. This action appeared to be nothing, meaningless.

‘She did not bring her full strength to the Axeway,’ said Kathag. ‘But why not have the rest of her army rejoin her? She has a much greater force now, with no way in.’

Graunos jerked up from the throne. ‘We have been fools!’ he roared. ‘The Anvils of the Heldenhammer would not join her forces and do nothing. We have no way into Neferatia, but she can enter Angaria. There is another entrance, and she knows of it.’

Graunos saw how perfectly Neferata had manipulated him. Even the acts of sabotage in Mausolea, seemingly designed to disrupt his movement of troops to the western border, had actually been a goad, driving him to redouble his efforts and leave the centre undefended, to protect a region that would never be attacked and to prepare for a march he would never be able to make.

‘But there are no passes she can cross,’ said Kathag. ‘Nighthall was the only one.’

‘She will not come to us through the mountains. She has engaged in a great charade to draw our forces there where they will be useless. We are undefended in the centre, and so it must be there, somehow, that she will strike. Bring them back! Bring them all back!’

Skarveth had taken one of many paths to Obsidia. There were as many roads to the city as there were roads to loss. Neferata had closed her realm’s primary gate on the border after Hothalas had sealed Obsidia. She opened all the gates now, and her legions entered the darkness that would take them to the sighing city. The tunnels of loss filled with the tremendous army of the dead.

Walking beside Nagadron, Neferata arrived at the gate of Obsidia. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer marched at the front with her. Rhasan had demanded they take the lead, and Neferata had agreed. She was pleased to let them. They should see what was coming first. The more they trusted her, the better.

Neferata’s fanfare sounded, its strains a celebration of the delights of blood. There was no mourning for Neferata. Death was a revel. Anguish was what she brought to others.

Solemn drums answered the blast of trumpets. Hothalas’ march was stately, and spiked with the sharp stabs of pipers. It was a counterpoint to the fanfare, though it was not in opposition. Anguish was ready to march with Blood.

The gates did not open yet. Neferata smiled at Hothalas’ caution.

‘Your ally is not eager to let you in,’ Rhasan said.

‘She awaits the accomplishment of a promise,’ Neferata said. ‘As she should.’

On the top of the gate, the company of spirits parted to make way for their queen. The great wraith appeared, sceptre in hand. She looked down at the host gathered at her wall, and was silent.

‘I salute you, Queen Hothalas,’ Neferata called. ‘I have come, as was agreed.’

‘I can see that you have come,’ said Hothalas, ‘but I was promised that the crown would be made whole. I was promised a victory.’

‘Both shall come to pass. They are as necessary to my ends as they are to your soul. Is my emissary with you?’

‘He is. I gave him my half of the crown, which he no longer has. He says it is with the other half.’

‘So it is.’ Neferata gestured to her right.

Mereneth left her place in the shadows behind her queen to fly upwards, hovering halfway up the height of the wall. ‘I was in Velkyn,’ she said. ‘I took your sister’s portion of the crown.’

‘Then where is it?’ Hothalas asked.

‘It is providing you with your victory,’ said Neferata.

‘It has not been reforged. I would know it.’

‘So will Kranyax.’

Hothalas fell silent.

‘I believe she is sifting through implications,’ Neferata said quietly to Rhasan.

‘What implications?’

‘The queen of Velkyn is mad. Her reaction will not be rational when the sundered is made whole and is not in her possession.’ Neferata turned back to Hothalas. ‘Do you see?’ she called. ‘Do you see the double victory that lies ahead?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Hothalas.

‘I do not ask that you trust me. You do not have to. You will know for yourself when my promises are kept. Look towards Velkyn, Hothalas of Obsidia. Look to Mausolea. You will see, and when you do, you will open the gates gladly, and we will march together.’

The ring of scorched earth surrounding Mausolea was several hundred yards wide. The four spies approached it from the west. They stopped on a plain of singing grass. The blades writhed, and where once they had whistled in sorrow, now they sang in anger. They were the echoes of the spirits that had sunk into the land. At the edge of the ring, the blades screamed, rehearsing the memory of fire. The Sentinel of the Shroud’s beam had passed a short time before. Velaza and her comrades had just under an hour before it came again. Time to make ready. For everything.

The land on which the fire passed had been scorched and melted repeatedly until it was blackened glass. The heat was still blistering. A shower of liquid brass pattered against the ground.

‘No army will cross this without loss,’ said Epikente. ‘Especially a large one.’

‘If the army is large enough, the losses will not matter,’ Velaza said.

‘If victory is attained, then no loss will matter,’ said Guessa.

Velaza exchanged a long look with her friend. She clasped Guessa’s upper arm. ‘We have always been ready.’

‘Yes, we have,’ said Guessa.

The other two nodded.

‘Then let us begin.’

They stood in a circle, their hands linked. Mereneth had trained them thoroughly in the collective spell they were about to cast. There had been no reason to use it before. Now, it seemed obvious that their mission was always going to bring them to this moment, and this very specific need.

‘Our queen always knew that things would come to this pass, didn’t she?’ said Tavensia. ‘This was her plan from the start.’

‘Yes,’ said Velaza. ‘I think so. Would you have preferred to know?’

Tavensia thought for a moment. ‘No,’ she decided. ‘Better not to know my fate, even if it is preordained. Especially if it is preordained.’

‘I have freely chosen to be here,’ said Guessa. ‘This is what I believe. It is simply that our queen always knew that I would make this choice.’

‘And I choose to be proud of what we will accomplish this night,’ said Velaza.

They began to chant. They drew upon eldritch forces. The unity of their voices summoned a greater strength than they could have individually and bound it with unbreakable shackles. The power gathered around them, closed around them, became an invisible shell around them. They created a shield no spear or spell could pierce.

It would have to withstand much more than that.

Velaza’s skin went numb. She knew she held Guessa’s and Epikente’s hands, but she could not feel them. She could hear the wind blowing softly through the singing grass, but she could not feel that any longer either. She was glad she had touched Guessa’s arm earlier. She was glad they had all been holding hands before the numbness descended.

They were ready. Velaza pulled the Sundered Crown out of the leather bag at her hip, and the spies walked the rest of the way to the blasted earth. Velaza discovered her skin was not completely numb. The radiant heat got through, though she felt it merely as a slight warmth. She knew that would change.

She was ready.

They stepped onto the black glass. It cracked beneath them. Smoke rose from the soles of their boots. The land grew hotter and the light of Graunos swept towards them. It was still a thin line in the distance, scorching a region of the ring well to the east.

Velaza presented the two halves of the crown to the others. They formed another circle around it, the four of them pressing it together. Then they waited for the fire to arrive.

Velaza was facing east. She watched the beam approach. Impassive and terrible, the Sentinel of the Shroud was turning its face to her. It cut through the night, the rawest of wounds, blood-red fire drawing ever closer. Her discipline gave her the self-control she needed to suppress the instinct to flee. No thinking being, alive or dead, would deliberately subject itself to this monstrous cremator. Not unless the highest of duties called, or the greatest of wills commanded.

The beam was wide now. It hurt her eyes to stare at it. The heat of the land grew more and more intense. The glass was already beginning to run again. Velaza’s boot heels were sinking into the surface. Summoned by the Khornate nature of the beam, a rain of brass began. It beat against Velaza’s head. It trickled down her face and from her shoulders. The spell of protection held, and the metal rolled off her, leaving the trace of a burn on flesh, a hint of a char on clothing. There was no pain. That was yet to come.

The pain was very close.

The pain arrived.

The light of Graunos fell upon Neferata’s spies. A splinter from the heart of Hysh itself and transmuted by the hate of its vengeful son, light more brilliant than any Velaza had ever seen engulfed her. She closed her eyes against it, but there was no darkness to be found, no succour of shadow.

Illumination was destruction.

The glass became a boiling river. Velaza sank into it up to her calves. The air burned. The river of glass burned. Everything burned. Flames ignited on the clothing of the spies. The heat and the light and the pain broke through the shield. Velaza had believed that once agony reached a certain level, it attained a kind of purity, a transcendence of sensation taken beyond the limits. There was no purity here. This was the agony of hate and rage. For the thing that consumed her now, no pain was enough, no torment was equal to its wrath.

As soon as the beam fell on the spies, their protection began to break down, and their destruction was inevitable.

Inside the monstrous light, a second light blazed, created by the first and even more intense. The sundered halves of the crown became a searing diamond, a shining white beyond silver. The sharp point of the light seized Velaza’s attention, momentarily stealing it away from her torment. The two halves of the crown were conducting the heat to each other, reaching to one another, seeking to become a single whole once more.

Seeking, reaching, but not complete. Not yet. Not while the blaze shone brighter and brighter.

Move, Velaza thought. The effort to remain focused on the task was the greatest of her existence. The light of Graunos must not leave them before the task was complete. They could not keep up with its movement. But even the fraction of an eyeblink more might be enough. It would have to be.

She shuffled backwards, in the direction of the beam’s sweep. Her sisters moved with her. She could no longer see them. There was only the light of blood, and the light of the crown. She knew she was moving, and that she was still holding the crown. She could do no more. She was doing as her queen commanded, and that was her strength and her anchor in the sea of pain.

She took only a few steps before she fell. She lost her grip on the crown. She dropped into the boiling, flaming glass, and the spell of protection crumbled away. She was finished. They all were.

And so was their task. In the midst of the conflagration, the crown cooled all at once. The blinding white contracted, absorbed into a dark silhouette of iron.

Black in the screaming red was Velaza’s final sight. Her last thought was of her queen’s laughter at what was coming for Graunos.

Through to the end of her pain, Velaza laughed too.

Graunos circled the Offertory throne room as the rotation of the Sentinel of the Shroud brought Skulldagger Bastion around to face Neferatia again. He paused at each window, stopping longest each time he looked west. Neferata’s attack was coming, he was sure of that. It was coming, and he would meet it with fury. What he did not know was where the assault would come from. He could assume nothing. He had been deceived this far. His one certainty was that one place from which no attack would come was the western Stonepain Mountains.

He was fortunate, and the fact that he had averted disaster through luck enraged him. At least he had realised that the standoff at the mountain range was a decoy while Neferata and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer were still making their way back to the main body of her troops. He had acted soon enough to recall his forces. He was gathering them around Mausolea. From here, he would strike with brutal force at Neferata, no matter where she found a way into Angaria. Kathag was out there now, leading the largest of the warhordes back to the city. Several of Graunos’ great hosts had already returned, and another massive wave of his legions was less than an hour out from Mausolea’s gates.

When Graunos looked west, he could see his warriors advancing over the low hills towards the city. They were darkness and fire, an ocean of violence drowning the land. They would bring a terrible illumination to Neferata. She would understand, as she was destroyed, that she no longer ruled the currents of blood in this region of Shyish. Graunos brought the light of wrath to burn away the shadows of her pointless schemes.

As he watched, the revolutions of the Sentinel of the Shroud brought the light of his anger around to the west. It turned the night crimson where it passed. Graunos waited to see his armies, camped around the city and still approaching, cast their shadows in the glow of the beam’s passage.

Before he could look upon the glory of the strength that had conquered one empire and would soon destroy another, he saw a flash inside the beam. It came from the base, on the ring of scorched land, as if a new fire were bursting into violent life inside the first. Graunos stared, baffled. The blister of silver-white shone only for a few instants. Then it winked out, and for the briefest of moments, Graunos thought he saw a black dot, the tiniest blemish in the perfection of his fire.

The beam moved on. Graunos puzzled over what he had seen. Then a premonition of disaster made him look up. He saw nothing at first, only the solid roof of storm clouds, flashes of lightning revealing their turmoil. He kept looking, suddenly certain that despite his efforts he had been deceived again. The charade he had uncovered had been merely one veil concealing yet another. He had been lured to pointlessness. Now he had been manipulated into bringing his army to catastrophe.

He saw movement in the clouds. It was heavy, vast, swift.

Then the sky fell through the storm.

The Sundered Crown became whole again, and it called triumphantly to the sisters. In Obsidia, Hothalas jerked, overcome with the simultaneity of completion and loss. The wraith sighed. The hiss of pain slithered across the city, forcing her subjects to their knees with the sting of a new, overwhelming loss that was not their own yet was greater than any they had felt before. Outside Obsidia, Neferata watched the Anvils of the Heldenhammer stir uneasily, though if they felt the loss, they hid it well.

Neferata smiled at the sound of the queen’s pain. For her, it meant that the final act of the war was about to begin.

In Velkyn, Kranyax also knew that the crown was reforged. The knowledge was instinctual. The banshee could no longer form anything close to coherent thought. She was a creature of passions. The passions veered first towards joy that the crown was whole, and then they became dark, because she did not have it. The crown had been stolen from her.

The need to possess it again swamped every other instinct. Kranyax’s broken consciousness reached out for the reforged crown. She must have it. She reached down to the plain below the Sentinel of the Shroud. Her monstrous, lunatic will seized at the spot where the crown had come to being again. It felt its contours and held fast.

She did not let go of her islands in the sky.

Whole once more, the crown of loss refused her. It would not be defined by one sister’s embodiment of loss. It would not come to her.

Her desire held it. In her need, she could not release it. The crown’s reality made it a thing she could not possess. The raging, maddened will pulled, and it was pulling on all of Shyish.

With no hint of reason, and no understanding, Kranyax’s howling need brought her realm low. Velkyn plunged through the clouds. If its queen had been able to release anything at all, the disaster would not have been total. But all that she held was hers forever. For Kranyax, the anger of loss was as possessive as it was eternal. And so, trapped in the jealous web of the queen’s will, the rock platforms plummeted to the ground.

The Throne Rock slammed into Mausolea just to the west of the Sentinel of the Shroud. Its edge glanced against the mountain, shaking it from roots to peak, cracking the walls of Skulldagger Bastion. The greater part of the city disappeared beneath the impact. The platform destroyed itself in the fall, and the Keep of the Howl came down, one league from the Sentinel, over the spot where the crown had been made whole again.

The volcanic cone shattered. The platform was demolished, and the sphere of the keep exploded into fragments, the spikes of its towers arcing over the ruins of the city. Millions of tons of rock sealed the crown away from the banshee forever. In the midst of the cataclysm, in the exploding wreck of her castle and its island, Kranyax screamed. She was so close to the crown, yet blocked from it, and she had lost her realm. Her shriek went on and on and on, louder and more frenzied than any before.

Mausolea fell, flattened by the fragments of the sky. The night came down, black shadows spreading over neighbourhoods and encampments. The people of the city looked up in terror and disbelief. They saw their end come, and some had time to scream for absent mercy before they were smashed to dust. Spirits rose from the crushed remains of two realms, howling in distress.

The land for miles beyond Mausolea rocked and quaked as Velkyn plunged and died. Dust rose from new craters and choked the air. Fireballs lit the obscurity. Lava poured from the wounded ground and from the shattered platforms. It ran over the devastation in flash floods, burning and consuming anything that still stood after the impacts.

The sky fell over the armies of Graunos too. In the camps, inside the city and approaching through lands beyond, nowhere was safe from annihilation. Kathag saw the great fall begin, the clouds belching fire as Velkyn roared through. He refused to run. There was no point. He would be destroyed by the rain of a city or he would survive. There was no shelter. The shouts and fury of the horde he led were inaudible. The pounding thunder of the rock strikes was so huge it drowned out every other sound. Some of the Bloodbound ran. Many raised their weapons in defiance against the sky that had come to kill them. And then they vanished, destroyed by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. Legions were snuffed out in an instant.

As he waited for the next few seconds to decide his fate, Kathag thought, She has done this too. The ground in Nulahmia and the sky over Mausolea obeyed her commands.

For the first time, he knew despair.

Then he was engulfed in darkness and dust.

The fires were fading and the dust had begun to settle over a broken landscape when the border between Obsidia and Angaria opened and the legions of Neferata’s creation poured into the wounded empire.

To claim that destruction leads to creation is to perpetuate a half-truth. Destruction, properly understood, properly used, is the purest form of creation. It precedes and follows all other forms. Creation, in its narrow sense, is nothing but the suspended moment between the grandeur of destruction.

– The Forges of Death

Chapter 14

The armies of Neferatia and Obsidia and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer raced from the hidden gates to the ruined landscape. Skarveth rode again with his Black Knights. Sword drawn, he exulted in the charge. Everywhere he looked, he saw the shaping hand of his queen. He and Mereneth had recovered the crown. Velaza, Guessa, Epikente and Tavensia had reforged it. The cataclysm had been brought about by the actions of many hands. But only one counted. Only one had directed all the others. They had been the agents of her will, enacting her design, and nothing more. What he bore witness to was the creation of the Mortarch of Blood, and he gave her thanks that he was here, in this moment, to see what she had done and to strike at her enemies yet again.

The Sentinel of the Shroud rose from a vista of destruction. Slabs of rock, like fragments of massive tombs, covered the land, leaning against each other, crushing the foundations of walls and buildings beneath them and standing erect like monuments to the uncounted dead. The light of Graunos still blazed from Skulldagger Bastion, the mountain’s slow turn bringing it inexorably around again. Skarveth urged his riders faster, to be the first to cross the ring of fire and fall upon the enemy. The warhordes of the Bloodbound had been smashed apart, but such was their number that many thousands of Khorne’s worshippers still survived, and they were swarming over the ruins towards the Mortarch’s forces, their appetite for blood undiminished.

He looked up. Neferata was in the air on Nagadron, in the lead of all, visible to every subject and foe, the author of this battle directing the final act. Her forces below were too vast, and the ground too broken, for them to advance in a narrow column. Instead, they came at the Sentinel of the Shroud on a front miles wide, a great tide of the dead washing over Mausolea.

As Skarveth’s cavalry raced past the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, Rhasan called out to him.

‘Is this what you have pledged yourself to? Neferata destroys the subjects she would rule.’

Skarveth laughed. ‘She has not! She has bestowed a great gift upon them. They have the chance of being, like me, reborn into her service.’

He rode on, through the heaps of boulders and across the dark glass. He and his companions made for a large group of Bloodbound survivors who were coming to meet them. Skarveth brought his sword slashing down as the two forces met. He sliced a bloodtaker’s head in half and trampled the corpse. He kept up the speed of the charge, cutting bloody passage through the enemy. The Bloodbound staggered, disorganised, rudderless.

Skarveth urged his mount faster as he killed, trying to keep abreast of Nagadron. When he glanced up again, he saw something descending the slope of the Sentinel. It burned with a crimson light, and a roar came to meet it from the scattered army below.

An even greater howl came from the flame on the mountain. A voice as deep as war called for vengeance.

Graunos raged down from the heights of Skulldagger Bastion. Wings spread wide, he hurtled through the air, a meteor of wrath. The air burned at his passage. Neferata had destroyed what he had created. She had laid waste to his armies. But in doing so, she had erred. She had stoked his fury to such a pitch that it would consume her utterly. She had lit the fires of her own pyre.

He would destroy her here, and then he would roll through Neferatia to destroy her works. He would raze her empire. He would repay the destruction of Mausolea a thousandfold.

‘To me!’ he bellowed. ‘The Skull Throne demands its tribute! Leave no foe standing!’

His command shook the land. The Sentinel of the Shroud groaned in echo, and the clouds boiled as if, at his will, the sky might fall again. The Bloodbound obeyed. Purpose took hold of them, and the survivors of the devastation rushed to him. Some were already fighting Neferata’s troops, but the others gathered at the base of the Sentinel, and they were a host that he would use well. They were strong in muscle and bone and hate. A single one of Graunos’ champions would smash a hundred skeletons without a thought. This warhorde was a fist that would punch through the wall of the dead advancing on Mausolea.

And the Sentinel was turning, bringing with it the light of annihilation. Much of Neferata’s army was still crossing the ring of glass. If he held it back a bit longer, his revenge would be well begun.

Graunos flew over the broken city, and his warhorde followed. He clutched Lightfall, the axe that had become his upon his ascendance. It was a weapon forged for a hate born on Hysh. The light that flashed from it was the illumination of lightning and crematoria. His silver eyes seared tracks of fire before him. He was light and he was truth, and what they were was violence.

Graunos turned south as he reached the front lines of the enemy. They were climbing over the monolithic remains of Velkyn that had fallen in the region of the ring of glass. The debris slowed down the advance, and Graunos descended upon the open areas to savage the larger concentrations of the enemy. Neferata was in the distance, a tiny figure leading the attack on the survivors who were making a first stand, just at the edge of the ring of glass. Graunos made for her, destroying her legions as he did. He flew parallel to the advance. His axe severed the aethereal beings of the spirits. Its light burned them and shredded the lie of their undeath, sending them to final oblivion.

Graunos angled his flight and cut deeper into the army of the dead. Its advance faltered, gaining time for the fist of his counter-attack to draw closer. Even closer was his most terrible light. The beam bore down on Neferata’s legions, bringing the judgement of its creator’s hate, incinerating vampires and skeletons by the hundreds, by the thousands.

Graunos lifted into the air as the beam closed in. To the south and west of his position, he saw a large contingent of the Bloodbound crashing against the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, fighting to hold them, too, in the path of destruction. Kathag was at the head of the attack.

You did not crush enough of us, Mortarch, Graunos thought. Not nearly enough.

The fire was upon them, as she had expected. Neferata had been curious to see if her forces could cross the ring before it came. Their failure did not disappoint her. She was prepared. There was even a reason to be glad of the failure. It created another opportunity.

It also created a great risk, one that fell on her.

The known risk was not to be despised. There was great pleasure to be found in it, too. And so she grinned as she turned Nagadron back, over the ring of glass and into the path of the beam.

She had begun preparing for this moment at the beginning of the campaign, meditating over the descriptions her spies had provided of the light of Graunos and its effects. She had spent months in the Claw of Memory, considering the proper creation of the protection spell she would need. She had passed on enough of what she learned to Mereneth to prepare Velaza and her sisters for their ultimate task. There were limits to the power they could summon, but it had been enough.

What Neferata needed, though, was a spell greater in power and scope. It was not enough to keep four vampires intact long enough for them to complete their service to her. She had to save an army.

She had begun muttering the incantation as soon as she had crossed through Obsidia’s gates into Angaria. She had led the first portion of the attack with her attention divided. Now her focus became total, and she shouted the final syllables of the summoning at the onrushing light. As the land and southern reaches of her army began to burn with the radiant heat, she finished the spell. She spread her arms wide and lifted her head back, looking up to the sky, then turned to embrace all her army to the north as well. With her gesture, she conjured a vast dome of protection.

Blood fought blood, darkness fought light, death fought wrath. The shield sprang into being in front of the beam. It was the red of blood, the black of night and the white of bone. Blood coursed through dark membranes stretched between a network of bones, a colossal hemispherical wing curving to protect the legions from the light of Graunos.

The beam hit, and the shield held. Neferata strained, sending her will across the membrane, commanding its strength, creating its strength. She felt the blast of the beam as an immense pressure, a mountain pressing down against the shield. The blood in her veins grew hot. The membranes fluttered, night threatening to tear and let a terrible day through. The weight pushed at her, and she took it upon her shoulders. Nagadron roared as the power applied to his mistress forced him down.

Neferata poured all her power and focus into sustaining the shield. The events on the ground below were remote from her. She could have no influence on them. They were enormously far away, yet they registered at the edge of her awareness. The armies were pushing forwards, slowed down as the Bloodbound rallied and counter-attacked. She saw the Anvils of the Heldenhammer look up at the protection she gave them. And she saw Graunos. He was still some distance away. He had savaged the front ranks of her forces to the north and was heading towards her now. He would not reach her, she thought, before the beam had passed. She hoped. Until she dropped the shield, she could not parry any attack.

There was movement on her right, and close. One of the Bloodbound of the horde engaging the Anvils of the Heldenhammer had left the conflict. He was vaulting over rubble and climbing higher on the fragments of fallen Velkyn, heading her way. There was power in his movements. This was a leader, a warlord, or perhaps one who sought to become one by destroying the great foe.

He wielded a huge runic axe. It shone like a fire of brass. He had a single, long, vicious horn on the left side of his head. She had seen similar weapons and horns before. The warrior was an Exalted Deathbringer.

He ran along the top of a massive fragment almost level with her. He would leap, she realised, and he would reach her. There was nothing she could do, and he knew it. He was close enough that she could see his jaws widen in anticipation of the kill.

She understood the danger, yet it barely registered. The tiny part of her awareness that was taking in the threat was watching as if from a great distance, detached, cold, mildly interested. The rest of her protected entire armies from annihilation.

There was another shape pursuing the Khornate warrior. It closed in, and Neferata saw that it was Skarveth. As the Deathbringer reached the rock’s edge, Skarveth threw his sword. It struck the Deathbringer hard enough to knock him off balance. He turned on Skarveth and pounded towards the weaponless Hell Knight, axe raised to destroy.

Skarveth ducked and tried to sidestep. He caught a massive blow to the side. It sliced away armour and smashed bone. Skarveth’s plate and his cloak caught fire. He kept moving, went past the Deathbringer and recovered his sword just in time to block a second hit. The blow was so powerful, the rock cracked open beneath his feet.

The Hell Knight and the Deathbringer duelled. Skarveth was dextrous with the sword, but the Deathbringer had the advantage of speed and power. Neferata did not think Skarveth could win. She could not help him.

To her astonishment, she wished she could.

Her concentration almost broke, and her grip on the shield slipped. She regained her control and pushed the duel further to the boundaries of awareness. In a few more seconds, she could act if she wished. In a few more seconds, the beam would pass and she could drop the shield.

The seconds were eternities.

She had never hesitated to sacrifice her subjects when the need arose. There was such a need now, and Skarveth was sacrificing himself for a second time. And she did not want him to.

The warriors clashed in the corner of her vision, a blur of violence and flame. She could not look, because she could not afford to be distracted. She did not look, because she did not want to see Skarveth fall.

The pressure ended just as she heard a bellow of triumph from the Deathbringer. The beam was past. Neferata dropped the shield. The night and blood and bone vanished, and she turned to fight the Deathbringer.

She did not need to. He stood over the prone Skarveth, both hands lifting the axe, his body motionless. Skarveth had stabbed upwards, shoving his blade through the Deathbringer’s throat and spine.

Neferata astounded herself a second time by discovering that she was relieved.

Then she dismissed the thoughts again. Graunos was close.

‘Fly,’ Neferata told Nagadron. ‘Flee the daemon prince. Give me time, Nagadron. Give me time to finish my work.’

The dread abyssal shot away from Graunos, and Neferata began a new incantation. As they raced the daemon prince, she saw another duel further below, and the symmetry of the war pleased her.

Kathag and Rhasan fell back from each other, battered and bleeding from another flurry of blows. Rhasan’s armour was gouged open on the chest and arms. Wherever Kathag’s axe had struck, it had torn the sigmarite and drawn blood. She had done him damage too, her hammer cracking open his armour and shattering his helm. Blood coated Kathag’s face like a red rag.

Around them, the maelstrom of war raged. Stormhost and warhorde had collided in fury. The battlefield was a mass of huge borders and narrow canyons between towering ruins. It was impossible for any force to move through it in a massed charge. The war had become a swarm of skirmishes. Once the armies met, there was nowhere to advance except beyond the ring of glass. There was no objective to take or hold. The only goal was annihilation.

Rhasan and Kathag circled each other. They were in a small bowl created by heaps of rubble on both sides. Kathag’s juggernaut lay on the hill, its head split open and smouldering from a lightning strike.

‘And now you are her plaything too,’ Kathag taunted with a growl.

Rhasan did not answer, watching for an opening.

Kathag laughed bitterly. ‘You don’t think you are? I didn’t think I was, either. I was wrong. Have you considered that it might have been part of her design that I killed your chieftain?’

Rhasan was startled. The suspicion was so much like Venthor’s, it was almost as if he were speaking through the hulking warrior. Still, she kept her silence. Kathag was trying to tempt her into a mistake. Wrath was his strength, and she would not fight the battle on his terms. And Neferata had tried repeatedly to warn Venthor. The choices he had made were his own. She would not dishonour his memory by thinking otherwise.

But the warlord’s bitterness troubled her. There was a melancholy there, a fault line running through his anger.

Kathag swung his axe back and forth and moved closer, ready to launch into her again. ‘Are you telling yourself the same lies I have been?’ he said. ‘I am done with them. I have believed them for too long. I thought I had escaped her once. I thought my lord and I would bring her to ruin because we knew what she was, and would not fall to her traps.’ He spat. ‘We are all her puppets, Relictor. We are her puppets even now.’

‘To what end?’ Rhasan asked in spite of herself.

The bitter laugh came again. ‘Only she knows. And today, the ends are ours.’

Kathag charged with brutal speed, his axe tearing whirls in reality. Braced for the attack, Rhasan stepped into it and blocked the strike. His blow was immense, and the power knocked her aside, as she had expected. She let it, absorbing the worst of the strike with speed as she came around his flank and hit back. Her relic hammer, charged with death and lightning, struck Kathag at the base of the neck. The shockwave of the strike cracked the boulders around them. Kathag’s armour flew apart, and he staggered, flesh charring with burns.

With a howl of rage, Kathag whipped back at her, inhumanly fast, his axe feeding on his anger. The rent it tore in the air was wide and squirming with disintegrating reality. The unleashed storm disorientated Rhasan, and she was too slow to evade the blow. She blocked it, the shock of the impact jarring her spine. The storm grew, and more wounds opened. She did not realise Kathag had pulled his axe back until she saw the overhead strike coming in. She blocked again. Lightning exploded from her hammer, striking into the disintegration vortices. The world shook with the eruption of sorcerous power. Kathag pressed down with all his fury, seeking to shatter her weapon and her with it. She pushed back. Lightning fought with sheer destruction.

She would not fall. She would avenge Venthor.

Kathag pressed harder yet, driven by the anger of despair.

The world was cracking around Rhasan. Swirling abysses joined together. Soon they would form a chasm large enough to swallow her.

Spectral light caged in bones flew overhead. It was Neferata’s monster, taking her east towards the Sentinel of the Shroud. Neferata’s voice cut through the tempest of the war. The syllables she pronounced were strange and terrible in Rhasan’s ears. They sounded like a command, and a final summoning. As she passed above the duel, and without pausing in her incantation, the Mortarch of Blood struck downwards with her staff. Crimson witch-light flashed from it and engulfed Kathag’s head.

The pressure on Rhasan vanished and Kathag stumbled away, clawing at the blood-fire. He kept hold of his axe and pulled his own flesh from his head, dousing the flames of the spell.

Rhasan waited until his vision was clear so he could see her death blow coming for his forehead. She called Sigmar’s lightning upon him at the same moment that she crushed his skull. Body smoking and charred, head a splintered concavity, Kathag dropped like a felled tree.

He was already dead, but Rhasan thought she heard his voice whisper once more in the dissipating energies of his weapon’s vortices. ‘Fools,’ he sighed. ‘All fools.’

Nagadron flew higher, Graunos closing in. He would be upon Neferata in a few moments. Let him, because she was done.

Neferata turned Nagadron around to meet the daemon prince, and to look down upon the devastated vista of Mausolea. She spoke the final syllables, completing her work. Below, the armies of the dead and the Anvils of the Heldenhammer fought against the legions of Angaria. Neferata’s forces had the advantage. Their victory was likely.

That was not good enough. She had not come simply to defeat Graunos’ ambitions, but to exterminate those who would challenge her rule.

She finished speaking, and the dead city answered with a scream of worship.

The citizens of Mausolea killed by the fall of Velkyn obeyed her. The dead in the cemeteries obeyed her. All the souls of all the ages buried within the compass of the burning gaze of Skulldagger Bastion obeyed her. An ocean tide of spirits rose through stone, shrieking in pain and praying to her mercy. All the ground of Mausolea crumbled, and the heaps of rubble moved again as corpses by the hundreds of thousands crawled out from their resting places. No weight of stone could stop them from answering Neferata’s call.

Graunos paused in his pursuit. He hovered just below Neferata, looking down. A legion dwarfing his at its mightiest climbed up from the depths. It was a deluge that covered the land and drowned his warhorde beneath its uncontainable magnitude.

‘You conquered only the surface of this land,’ Neferata said. ‘The foundations have always belonged to me. This is the dominion of bone, and it is mine.’

Graunos looked up at her, his silver eyes blazing. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You are wrong. If the land is not mine, then it shall not exist at all.’

He flew higher, past Neferata. Skulldagger Bastion was coming back into sight again, and Graunos turned his eyes upon it. He roared, his wrath splintering the night. Tremors shook the Sentinel of the Shroud. The fortress shuddered, and fissures spread out from its eyes. The corrupted light of Hysh radiated through them, cutting into the hood of the mountain. The fissures became wider. The visage of the fortress seemed to change from unconquerable stone to a gossamer web.

Neferata leapt from Nagadron and shot through the air at the daemon prince.

Skulldagger Bastion exploded, and the sun of annihilation appeared on the peak of the mountain. The last day, the consuming day, came to Angaria. The fireball spread wider and wider, melting the Sentinel, sending a rushing river of glass down its heaving slopes. The sun of Graunos grew towards the ground. In moments it had already consumed half the mountain.

Neferata flew with Aken-seth extended before her. The staff glowed with darkness in answer to the voracious light. Graunos snarled. He took the blast of witch-light full in the chest and swung his axe at the staff.

The killing light reached them. A fire spread over Neferata’s limbs. Raging agony took her, and the darkness of the night vanished. Graunos was silhouetted before her, and he was burning too. His blow knocked the staff away. Neferata veered off, grimacing with the effort to keep control through the fire and pain. She could barely see. Her sense of direction had disintegrated. All of existence was the ruinous sun and the dark shape of its creator in the centre.

Neferata called the risen dead to her as she circled Graunos, seeking an opening. The blaze of the sun darkened briefly as thousands of spectres rushed to answer her. Almost at once, they burned away into aethereal ash. The sun incinerated spirit and matter alike. The wraiths could not reach Graunos. In a few moments, they would all be gone, just as all the armies below would vanish too.

The wounds of the flames fractured her awareness. Neferata blinked, lost a moment of time, and suddenly Graunos was upon her. She could not avoid his axe. The blow smashed her down. The agony of splintering bones shot through the all-consuming pain of the fire. She dropped, and screamed in the fury of will. Her staff burned with its own fire as she channelled spells through it and arrested her fall. She flew back up at Graunos.

Neferata burned throughout her being. Her flesh, her blood, her heart, her essence, they were all in flame. She did not have much longer. She sent an arcane bolt of blood and night from the blade of the Staff of Pain. The daemon shrugged off the blow as if she had done no more than tap his shoulder. He beat his wings, soaring through the firestorm of his sun, and was upon her again, swinging his huge axe with the speed of lightning and with the steady, heavy rhythm of doom.

Neferata blocked with Aken-seth. She blocked again and again. There was no retreating from Graunos now. He was pressing her too hard, too fast. He was a cyclone of wrath, and she could not strike back. She weakened with every parry. She feigned a greater weakness, but the daemon prince snarled at her deception and struck harder yet, turning her lie into a truth.

The fire burned into her vision, and she could barely see Graunos. It burned through to her core, and she could barely hold on to her being. Graunos saw her end loom, and he attacked with renewed frenzy. The axe fuelled the sun to even greater brilliance with every swing. Graunos battered Neferata. He broke her down. Her parries grew weaker, and seeing how close she was to the end, Graunos gave vent to the fullness of his wrath, determined to finish her off.

As Graunos’ attacks became more frenzied, he cared nothing for defence. Neferata struck him with Aken-seth, and her blow meant less than nothing. The daemon rained blows on her with terminal fury. He saw her end. It was within his grasp.

There was no lie here, no pretence. She was at her end.

Truth is the destroyer.

Graunos did not even blink when Neferata slashed at his eyes with Akmet-har.

The Dagger of Jet barely touched Graunos, but it severed vision from his eyes. Darkness returned to him. Darkness, which had been his curse in Hysh, condemning the human he had once been to persecution and exile in the Realm of Light. Darkness, which he had defeated with wrath, took him once more.

The daemon prince howled his denial. He commanded that light return.

And the light obeyed.

The sun ceased its expansion. The monstrous fire contracted, rushing inside the being that had summoned it. Neferata pulled away from an imploding hurricane of flame, summoning protection with the last of her strength. She let herself fall, dropping from the screaming Graunos. He was held in the air by the forces he had unleashed, and which now rushed back to him with vengeance. The day vanished, and Neferata was in the night once more.

She brought her fall to a stop and watched, smiling, as the great fire vanished into the daemon prince. He had created the fire, but the light that Khorne had given his eyes was gone forever. He was plunged back into the darkness that had been his torment in Hysh. In his horror and anguish, his anger had no direction, no vision. It consumed him, and so too did the flames. His need and his terror could never be answered. They swallowed all of the sun.

They swallowed him.

Then it was done. Graunos vanished into oblivion. All that remained was a light rain of ash drifting gently down over the melted ruin of the mountainside.

Do not seek finality or endings. They are dangerous illusions. Look instead for the threads that emerge from every victory and defeat. They lead to the future. Seize the threads, and shape the future.

– Ontology of Time

Epilogue

Neferata found Skarveth where she had last seen him. He was kneeling over the body of the Deathbringer. He had struck his sword into the ground, and he rested his arms on the hilt. Fragments of bone littered the earth. He raised his head when Neferata dismounted from Nagadron, but he could not rise.

‘My queen,’ he said.

Neferata was glad to see he had not been destroyed by the blows he had taken from the Deathbringer. She was relieved to see the Hell Knight. The experience puzzled her. She would meditate upon it later. For now, she would give aid to her servant.

‘Rise, Skarveth Lytessian,’ Neferata said. She whispered a necromantic spell, and at the touch of Aken-seth, the Hell Knight’s bones knitted themselves whole once more. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I think it right that the descendants of Mathas Hellezan should meet in victory.’

The dome of the sky was greying with dawn when they approached Rhasan. The Lord-Relictor was standing on a leaning slab of rock, easily visible for the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. The Stormhost was reforming its ranks after the battle, making ready to march south.

Rhasan turned to face Neferata. ‘You are satisfied, I imagine. The rest of Angaria lies open to your reconquest.’

‘Which I see I shall do without your company. This saddens me.’

The skull-faced helm cocked to one side. ‘I doubt that. I do not think you are capable of sadness.’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘Are you not satisfied with this victory?’ Skarveth asked Rhasan.

‘Graunos is defeated. This was why we came to this region of Shyish.’

‘Oh, I’m sure that is just the beginning, as far as Sigmar is concerned,’ Neferata said. ‘Our paths will cross again, Lord-Relictor.’ I am not done with you. And you do not truly wish to be done with me. You have seen me keep my word. I have you now.

‘The next time we meet,’ said Rhasan, ‘it is very likely to be on opposite sides of the battlefield.’

‘That may well be,’ Neferata conceded. ‘Permit me to hope that will not be the case.’

‘I’m sure you’re being ironic in asking my permission,’ Rhasan said, and she turned back to the Stormhost.

Neferata looked back and forth between Skarveth and Rhasan. The skeleton and the Stormcast Eternal whose armour bore the iconography of bones. Both warriors, from the same family. Their destinies had put realms between them, yet here they were. The intersection of their fates was too unlikely to be a coincidence.

Some other power was at work here, Neferata thought. She saw its hand in the presence of the Hell Knight and the Lord-Relictor.

Who are you? Why do you conjure this mystery? Is this your declaration of challenge? Very well, then. I accept. Come to me.

Let us begin the next dance.

A DYNASTY OF MONSTERS

Chapter 1

The earth moved in the morning, when it should not have until the afternoon.

Jaras Anvarheim rose to greet the dawn of what was supposed to be the last day of the caravan’s journey to the Colonnade. The merchants and their armed escorts were camped on a high, wooded ridge, and though the Colonnade was not yet visible, Jaras knew it was just over the horizon to the east, hidden by another line of hills on the far side of a rock-strewn plain. A river cut a serpent’s line north-south, a barrier to cross a few miles away; a barrier that he expected to have changed by the time the caravan reached it.

Jaras watched Hysh rise, thinking about its rays shining on the Diamond Spire of home, and then the ridge began to rumble. Merchants scrambled out of tents to grab the tethers of startled horses. Jaras seized the trunk of the nearest tree, the instinct to hold on to something solid too hard to overcome, even when solidity was a lie.

The ridge dropped, and the land on either side rose. Stones flowed and reknit themselves. The trees swayed as if caught in a gale. Some of them disappeared, swallowed up where the earth turned soft as water. Jaras’ feet began to sink into the ground. He let go of the tree and danced away just as that patch of land folded in on itself. He jumped onto a boulder that emerged from the underbrush and rode it down. The rocks of the plain turned into scree as the new cliffs thrust their backs up. They tumbled down slopes that angled up from the horizontal to the near vertical, the roar of their fall filling the new valley. They piled up against the edges of the forest, toppling more trees.

The shaking stopped. The reshaping was complete. The ridge was now a deep gorge. The slopes of the forest had reversed, with the trees clinging to the lower slopes of the cliffs. About a mile to the north, a waterfall shouted down the cliff. The river on the plains had changed course and rushed into the gorge. Water foamed by fifty yards to Jaras’ right, where the centre of the gorge had formed a deep bed. The level of the river would rise quickly, but the caravan was high enough up the new banks to keep from being swept away.

Jaras looked up at the jagged cliffs and sighed. There would be no going east this morning. The merchants would have to travel south, where the level of the gorge and the riverbanks began a slow rise. He guessed the land shift had cost them half a day.

Someone was shouting at the caravan leader. ‘You said we had time! You said the change wouldn’t come until hours from now!’

‘That’s what the charts indicated,’ Vela Peltoan said, sounding both patient and exhausted.

Jaras made his way over to the confrontation. Three of the escorting guards from the Colonnade Freeguild stood nearby, unconcerned. They were used to merchants venting at each other, and Vela had proven adept at defusing tensions during the weeks-long trek from Fangshield. The upset merchant was named Bayar, and he had been in the vanguard of the malcontents from the first day out.

Jaras waited to see if he could help. As the caravan’s bard, he was being paid to keep morale up and make the journey seem shorter than it was. Now that it was going to be longer than it should have been, his duties would become more important. If the trip took an extra day, that put a few more riches in his pocket, though he was even more anxious than Bayar for the trek to be over. Bayar was from Fangshield. For Jaras, the Colonnade was home, and he had been away for months.

‘The charts!’ Bayar exclaimed. ‘Are they even real, or are you just incapable of reading them?’

‘They’re old,’ said Vela.

‘Can you afford the new ones?’ Jaras asked Bayar. He smiled to show he was sympathetic, that anyone would wish to have the latest tidal charts to come out of the Colonnade, but who in this caravan had the means for that? Quality was expensive. The charts from before the Necroquake were still accurate to within half a day, and that had been enough to make the journey manageable to this point. It was true that the early change in the land today was a hard blow. At the moment the end of the voyage should have been in sight, the horizon had been taken away.

Bayar turned to Jaras, ready for a fight. Jaras put an arm around his shoulder. ‘Listen,’ he said, as if to a fellow conspirator. ‘I’m grieving with you. Do you know how long it’s been since I saw home?’

‘You aren’t depending on the sale of rugs to put food on your table.’

‘That’s true. But you’re not hungry today, are you? We’ll still be at the Colonnade tomorrow. The next market isn’t until two days from now. But you know what? People will notice our delay. People will be anxious that they might not be able to buy the latest rugs from the looms of Fangshield. That won’t be a bad thing, will it?’

Bayar mumbled something incomprehensible, but his face was no longer turning purple. Jaras gave his shoulders a squeeze and let him go.

The caravan was ready to start the day’s march a few minutes later. The wagons were solid, built for the rapid upheavals of this region of Ghur, their cargoes held by four raised sides four feet high and securely fastened with nets. Jaras jumped up onto the lead wagon and stood up on its load of chests, making himself visible to the whole train. His clothing helped him stand out. It was a variant of the Freeguild livery of the Colonnade. A narrow wedge of silver, representing the castle’s great spire, bisected the green of the fields, above the brown of the land. This was the pattern for armour and uniforms alike. Jaras’ clothes turned the livery to a bright motley. The colours were there, but playfully brighter, and the complex repetitions of the pattern made it a celebration. The bard’s mission was joy, remembrance and exaltation.

‘My fellow travellers!’ Jaras called. ‘I woke up early just to look east. And you know what I saw of the Colonnade before the ridge fell? Nothing. It was still too far.’ He turned to address the cliffs. ‘Do you hear that, you rocks of the perverse? You are not taking anything away from us!’ Addressing the caravan again, he said, ‘The pleasure of our arrival is merely deferred! Let us use our extra time well! Shall we revel in our anticipation?’ He paused, long enough for a couple of faint cheers to make themselves heard, not long enough to make the absence of voices more awkward. He answered his own question with an enthusiastic, ‘Yes! We shall!’

He started to sing, and the walls of the gorge picked up his voice. Before he reached the second verse, most of the merchants had joined in.

‘Sing high for the hills, as they climb at dawn,

Sing low for the gorge, born the night just gone.

Sing high for the town that is unafraid!

Sing high for the Colonnade!

Oh, the land will rise and the land will fall,

And the waves of change shatter every wall.

But the Diamond Spire will never fade!

Sing high for the Colonnade!

Sing high for the Colonnade!’

There were twenty more verses. He had begun teaching the song to the members of the caravan on the morning of their departure from Fangshield. They all knew it by now, and they knew it well. By the time the song was done, the mood of the travellers was closer to eager than disappointed, and Jaras was satisfied.

He hopped down from the wagon and worked his way along the line of the caravan, joking with the travellers. He talked longer with those who seemed most troubled. One of those was a jeweller named Gallaf. Mid-morning, with the riverbanks rising more steeply, they could see the exit from the gorge only a couple of miles straight ahead. Gallaf looked as if he would be sorry to leave the cliff walls, as if their confines represented some kind of safety to him.

‘Why so grim?’ Jaras asked. ‘Don’t tell me that you’re starting to feel your jewels are shown off to better effect away from cities. Is the untamed land so much better a contrast?’

‘No, it isn’t that,’ said Gallaf.

‘You’re missing Fangshield,’ said Jaras.

‘I miss its civilisation.’

‘Is this your first trip to the Colonnade?’

‘It is.’

Jaras laughed. ‘Then you should be overjoyed. I mean no insult to Fangshield when I say that at the Colonnade, you will find true civilisation. It does not have its equal anywhere in Ghur.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘You don’t believe it,’ Jaras said, chiding.

‘Oh no, I do! I do! It’s just… I’ve heard some things about this region.’

‘What things?’

‘About monsters near the Colonnade.’

‘You mean the Avengorii,’ said Jaras.

Gallaf winced. He looked up anxiously, as if expecting the blue sky to darken and the horrors to fall on the caravan, summoned by the utterance of their name.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jaras said. ‘You wouldn’t find me in this caravan if I thought we were going anywhere near their lairs.’ He grimaced in disgust and anger. ‘The land they’ve stolen is some distance east of the Colonnade.’ He took a breath. ‘They won’t hold it forever,’ he promised.

‘You have a song ready for their defeat?’ Gallaf asked, doing his best to mount a front of bravado now that he knew he was safe from what he feared.

‘Many,’ said Jaras, and he strummed a few light chords on his lute before moving on.

To his right, the eastern riverbank widened as it rose. The cliff on Jaras’ left was less than fifty feet high now, its barren top poking up above the trees. The woods here were thick, though the trees stopped a good hundred yards from the edge of the water. The way forward angled westward ahead, but soon the slope would be level with the plain, and the caravan could finally strike eastward again.

Jaras was making his way back up to the head of the caravan, and was three wagons away from Vela’s, when the captain of the escort, walking point, stopped suddenly and held up a hand, warning for silence. The caravan creaked to a halt. Jaras padded forward to join Vela. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

She shook her head.

The guard looked back at them. ‘Thought I heard growling,’ she said.

Jaras turned around slowly, scanning the clifftops, staring into the shadows of the forest.

‘This doesn’t feel like a very defensible position,’ said Vela.

‘It isn’t,’ said the captain. ‘We also have no choice.’ She raised her horn to her lips to sound the call to form a circle.

Before she could, another horn blew. It sounded from just around the bend. The call was savage, brutal, more animal than instrument. It stopped Jaras’ breath with fear.

‘Beastmen!’ the captain shouted, but the call of the horn had already spread the news.

There were twenty guards of the Colonnade Freeguild in the caravan’s escort. Their numbers and their weapons had been enough to keep the merchants safe from the predators they had encountered. The route was a well-travelled one, with frequent heavily armed patrols. It was as safe as any path across the landscapes of Ghur could be.

It was not very safe at all.

‘What about Skykeep?’ Gallaf wailed. ‘Where is its garrison?’

No one answered him. The garrison of the fortress projected the Colonnade’s power into the east. It was the sentry guarding the city’s approaches, and the patrols on the road went out from its gates. Skykeep was strong, but its sentinels could not see or be everywhere.

The merchants struggled with their terrified horses to pull the wagons into the defensive formation. The guards made themselves into a wall facing uphill, their halberds, swords and crossbows at the ready. Their speed and discipline were impressive.

We’re all going to die, Jaras thought.

The sound of the enemy’s approach rumbled through the gorge. It came for Jaras with the force of an avalanche, a cacophony of braying and bellowing, a thunder of hooves shaking the ground. Jaras tried to brace himself for the sight of the terror that produced that sound. He could not. It was too great, and he was too small, and he wanted to disappear into a hole in the ground. And then, in a howling storm, the beastmen charged around the bend.

The warherd was larger than the entire caravan. Even if it had been a quarter of its size, Jaras thought, the guards would still have had no chance. A massive brute in crude, pale-blue armour led the attack, bellowing to shatter the air. Jaras felt the roars in his bones. Merchants sobbed and fell to their knees, already defeated. Jaras managed to keep his feet. He was with Vela, just behind the too-small line of defenders. Rooted to the ground, he stared at the avalanche of horned, fanged monsters. The earth thundered with the pounding of hooves, shaking as if the tidal change were imminent again.

Crossbow bolts flew. Some of the smaller beastmen fell. The larger ones only came on faster when they bled.

‘Sigmar preserve us,’ Vela whispered.

The leader of the warherd carried an axe larger than a man. Snarling, it swung the massive blade and killed two guards in a single stroke. The defenders hurled themselves against the charge, and they almost slowed the beastmen. They even killed a few of the hulking creatures before they were torn apart and trampled into a mire of blood and bone.

In his state of frozen terror, Jaras saw the struggle unfold slowly, every detail etched into his memory between the distant beats of his heart. The heroes of the Freeguild fought valiantly. Their valour was worthy of song, and snatches of mournful, stirring verse and melody flashed through his mind.

Someone must remember them. Someone must sing of what they faced and what they did.

Sing of how they died.

They died struggling to the last. They died with honour.

Do not sing of how they were killed.

Heads crushed. Limbs torn off and used as clubs. Struck with spiked hammers, and with such force that they burst open like rotten fruit.

Who will sing? It will not be you.

Not if I die. The thought broke the spell of fear and jolted him into movement again. Two heartbeats into the attack, Jaras sprinted away from the beastmen. He was one of a panicked mob, and the monsters laughed at the terror of the merchants. The beastmen roared after their prey. The smaller ones, light on their feet, faster than humans, streaked ahead of the crowd and cut off the path of escape. The warherd surrounded its prey and closed in.

The slaughter began in earnest. Jaras was caught in the middle of screaming, struggling bodies. He and the merchants were animals now too, terrified, unthinking – creatures of instinct lashing out and clawing at their neighbours, driven by the need to flee though there was nowhere to run. Blood slicked the ground. Blood sprayed the air. The stench of blood filled Jaras’ nose. He was breathing blood, choking on blood, slipping on blood.

A wagon went flipping end over end, breaking bones as it cartwheeled over the crowd, scattering its load, crushing more bodies with hurled chests. It crashed down, upended, in front of Jaras. One corner rested against a boulder, holding it up at a slight angle. There was suddenly a dark space in front of Jaras, and he slid under the wagon. A heavy body smashed into it, sending it sliding, and he scrabbled to keep up with its movement and stay underneath. Knocked off its boulder, the wagon thumped down level on the ground, trapping Jaras inside.

He peered through gaps in the splintered slats and saw only violent blurs. He was surrounded by the bellowing of the beastmen and the screams of the dying. It was all he could do not to curl into a ball and join in the screams. He crouched on all fours beneath the centre of the wagon, his breath coming in halting gasps, his eyes wide in the darkness. He waited for the axe or the hammer that would smash open his shelter and bring him his death.

After some time, there seemed to be fewer shrieks and roars near him. The massacre was moving downhill. Then something hit the wagon again, hard enough to send it skittering across the ground as if it weighed nothing. It took Jaras with it, rolling and scraping him across the stones of the riverbank. It slammed against a tree trunk and split open.

Jaras lay motionless, clothing torn, the flesh of his arms and legs scraped raw and bleeding. He was a ball of pain. His head spun. He didn’t know what was happening, but he kept still, mouth wide in a silent cry of agony.

The roars of the beastmen moved further away. He held his breath, listening. There was no movement near the wagon.

Don’t stay here. They might come back.

Jaras crawled to the side of the wagon. He pulled on the broken slats. They were an inch thick, made to stand up to the punishments of the tidal shifts. He had to pull with all his strength before one began to give. The splintering cracks were deafening in the small space. He didn’t stop, urged on by the thunder of murder from downslope. He had to trust in the hope that the beastmen wouldn’t hear him breaking wood. If they did, it wouldn’t matter if he stopped trying or not.

He forced open a gap just large enough to squeeze through. Jagged wood clawed at him and drew more blood as he struggled out from under the wagon. He was at the edge of the forest. The nearest beastmen were a hundred yards downslope from his position, laughing as they finished off the last of the merchants.

Run. Run. There’s nothing you can do.

Sobbing with shame and terror, he stumbled deeper into the woods. There were shadows in the trees and the promise of hiding places. But the promises felt like taunts. Hysh was high in the sky. He could hide only if no beastmen looked for him.

He ran anyway, crashing through brush, too frightened to stop and look for cover.

And then, the light in the forest failed. The shadows blossomed.

Jaras heard the sound of wings. Now he did pause. He looked up.

He screamed.

The sky shouted horror.

Chapter 2

Clouds boiled dark and grey, covering the sky. A torrent of black, clotted blood poured down from them, and the river turned dark and stagnant, its surface crusting over with scabs and brown foam. The things that flew down into the gorge seemed to Jaras to have been ripped from a storm. They were the savagery of lightning and the anger of thunder given form. Their flesh was pale grey, their bodies huge and rippling with strength. Curved talons jutted from their winged arms. Their skulls were nightmare deformations of the human shape, elongated and pointed of crown and chin, framed by ears sharp as horns. Their jaws were enormous, caverns filled with teeth long as daggers. The jaws were the manifestations of a hunger so terrible it had determined the shape of the skulls.

Vargheists.

Monsters from dreams and fireside whispers. When the name Avengorii was spoken, by voices hushed by fear and hatred, in the Colonnade, it was the image of vargheists that rose in the mind’s eye. There was another name that hovered in the background at such times too, but it was never said aloud. That name was too frightening, and she to whom it belonged was a being beyond the scope of nightmares. The creatures who served her were awful enough. They were everything the Colonnade repudiated. They were savagery that made the beasts of Ghur seem tame. Bestial was too weak a word for them, and the horror of the vargheists was made worse by the traces of the human that lingered in their shape.

And yet, leading the vargheists were two monsters even more horrible. Their torsos were human, but their lower bodies reptilian, serpentine in length, taloned legs clawing at the air as the vampires flew on huge, tattered, bat-like wings.

Jaras had never seen any of the Avengorii. They were the enemy always just over the horizon, out of sight yet too close for the imagination, pressing in against the thin veil of night. The Colonnade was impregnable to most of the threats of Ghur, but its defences were untested against the Avengorii. They were the great fear, because they were hated with even more ferocity than the beastmen. And though he had never seen them, the fear of what they represented – the most foul insult to the purity of the Colonnade – made them an obsession. The Avengorii haunted the studies of the scholars and the stories of the people, and so Jaras knew that the leaders of the flight, those things patched together from pieces of horror, were Vengorian Lords.

Jaras saw his fear made real, and saw it streak down to attack the other bad dream. The vargheists struck the beastmen with the force of a thunderclap, their hissing roars silent until the moment claws and fangs tore into flesh.

The beastmen howled, surprised. They fought back with an explosion of violence, leaping up at the vampires to hack them from the air with clubs and axes. Their fury was so great that Jaras thought for a moment it would give them the gift of flight.

He realised with a shock that he was crawling through the bush towards the fight. The need to see the fullness of this horror was stronger than the urge to flee. Mesmerised by the clash of flesh at its most hideous and powerful, he moved downhill and to the edge of the woods. He stopped behind a screen of trees, under the shadow of thick ferns, and watched. He was barely conscious of his pain. He stared at a spectacle so grotesque it had the power of the sublime. It held him, body and spirit, and showed him, over the space of a few acres, the greatest fear of the Colonnade: a war of monsters, with mortals reduced to slabs of butchered meat.

The vargheists fought with the frenzy of a hurricane. They carried no weapons, needing none. Their claws severed limbs. A single bite from their jaws tore out the entire throats of the smaller beastmen. Their foes retaliated with their axes and hammers, and Jaras felt his sense of reality become slippery where the beastmen, using weapons and armour, seemed more civilised than the vampires.

Only the commanders of the Avengorii were armed. They wore armour of crimson and black, and the larger of the two wore a helm topped with two crooked horns. It covered his forehead and eyes, but not his mouth, leaving the terrible fangs free to rip the throats of his enemies. He wielded a sword of blackened iron, and from the edges of the blade came a rain of scalding, clotted blood.

At first, Jaras saw only mindless hunger in the way the vargheists fought. They were overwhelming their foes through sheer fury and speed. Gradually, he saw patterns in their strikes as they responded to the snarls of the two horrors in command. They dived, hit hard and then took to the skies again. The larger of the two Vengorian Lords was the one who always attacked first, and rose first to launch the next strike.

The beastmen brought down some of the vampires, slashing their wings open, goring them with horns and then trampling the bodies. But the vargheists were larger, faster and stronger than the beastmen, and they shredded their earthbound foes. A mist of sprayed blood filled the air, mixing with the clotted rain. Jaras shuddered as the rotten gore pattered on the fern leaves above him. He pressed himself closer to the ground. He tried to will himself to another place, to any place that was miles from here, and yet he could not look away.

The largest of the beastmen roared a challenge, defiant though all but a few of his comrades were dead, their carcasses spread wide, dismembered and gutted. He brandished his axe at the leader of the Avengorii. The vampire landed a few yards in front of the beastman. The claws of his six legs gouged furrows into rock. He stretched to his full height, and he was taller than the bestigor.

‘Orgo comes!’ the beastman snarled. He raised his axe, bracing to charge. ‘His beastherd comes. We will trample you traitors to Tzeentch. All die beneath our hooves. Orgo comes!’

‘Lauka Vai has a message for Orgo,’ the vampire said, his voice a grating hiss. Jaras gasped at the utterance of the Mother of Nightmares’ name. With every passing moment, he was falling deeper into an abyss of fear. The Vengorian Lord’s lips, slithering up over needle teeth, shaped words with a precision that unnerved Jaras. The words were lucid, yet they sounded like the thinnest of veneers – a pretence of sanity over a ferocity of madness, barely and only temporarily contained. At the same time, the voice wounded him. Something tore in Jaras’ heart, and he did not know what it was. The agony he felt went beyond fear. There was grief. The pain felt personal. There was something horribly familiar in the monster’s intonation.

‘The Mother of Nightmares welcomes Orgo’s challenge,’ the vampire said, slowly circling the bestigor. ‘She would have him do his worst. Let him bring all his beastherd to meet us. All of you. When you are all before us, we will drown the land in your blood.’

The bestigor lowered his head and feinted a lunge at the vampire, who kept circling.

‘This is the message from Lauka Vai,’ the vampire said. ‘But you will not deliver it.’ He snarled and launched himself at the beastman. The bestigor charged too, his massive axe raised high. The vampire blocked it, his sword striking upwards against the shaft with such force that the bestigor stumbled back. The vampire thrust his head forward, striking like a snake, and sank his fangs into the bestigor’s throat. The beastman threw himself back, tearing free of the vampire, leaving behind a great flap of skin and muscle. Blood, instantly thick and dark, spilled down his torso. He weaved, but did not let go of his axe, whose blade was suddenly dull with rust. He came back in a stumbling charge and swung the axe over his head and down.

The vargheist jumped back from the blow and the axe slammed into the ground. One of the huge, ragged wings slashed at the beastman with its sickle-like claw and finished what the vampire’s jaws had begun. The bestigor’s head lolled back, dangling from a single strip of skin. Blood clotted at the stump of the neck. The body took a few steps, swayed drunkenly, then fell. The vargheist jumped onto the body and fastened his jaws around the top of the neck, feasting greedily on the rotted blood.

A hideous calm fell over the gorge. The fighting was over. There were no more snarls and cries. Instead, there were the wet sounds of sucking and lapping tongues, and the snapping of bones as vampires cracked open ribcages to get at the hearts within.

The spell that had held Jaras broke. He did not want to see any more. He could not bear to see any more. He crawled backwards slowly, fearful of making the slightest sound.

Don’t hear me. Don’t see me. Don’t hear me. Don’t see me.

He had witnessed the clash of nightmares. Worse, he had heard the speech of nightmares and knew what was closing in on the Colonnade. He had to get out of the gorge alive. He had to get back to the city. He had to sound the warning.

Slowly. Quietly. Don’t rush. Don’t make a mistake.

Jaras held his panic in check. He didn’t rise until he had crawled more than a hundred feet back into the woods. Then he stood. He could no longer see the vampires, though he could still hear the gobbling feast and the rustling of leathern wings. He turned his back on the riverbank and moved deeper into the woods.

The ground sloped up before long, and then he was on all fours again, scrambling over the scree. The top of the cliff was not far, and the sides were fractured, offering plenty of handholds. He could climb. He was sure he could climb. As long as he didn’t slip. As long as he didn’t fall.

He didn’t. He reached the top. To the east, the plain had changed into a landscape of rolling hills and isolated tors. The Colonnade seemed even further away. He couldn’t see more than a mile ahead.

He was out of the gorge. He had survived two massacres. Now he had a duty to survive at least one more day.

Under the grey, hungry sky, Jaras ran. Weaponless, exhausted, wounded, he ran, making for the glen between two hills and the promise of the city he must save.

Kavak drained the blood of the bestigor. His hunger sated, the red haze of slaughter pulled back from his eyes. He could think clearly again. Even across so many leagues, the will of his queen held him back from the pit of absolute unreason. He rose from the corpse and surveyed the aftermath of the slaughter. He and his comrades had slain all of the beastmen. He almost regretted that none had escaped the gorge to bring word to Orgo. He liked to imagine the beastlord’s anger. He wondered if the brute was capable of feeling worry. Perhaps the disappearance of his warherd would work its way into his thoughts, a jagged splinter of concern.

‘They’re ranging very close to the Colonnade,’ said Thalvess, the other Vengorian Lord attached to Kavak’s flight of vargheists. He licked at the blood that trickled from the corner of his upper lip.

‘Very close,’ Kavak agreed. ‘I wouldn’t have thought they had already come this far.’ His patrol had been flying back east after spotting the main body of the beastherd. Finding this group of beastmen had been a surprise. ‘Orgo is moving fast, if his raiding parties are already this far ahead,’ he said.

‘Bad luck for those mortals,’ Thalvess said, glancing at the remains of the merchants.

‘Bad luck for us too, I fear,’ said Kavak.

‘You think word will get back to the Colonnade? I didn’t see any survivors.’

‘Neither did I, for all the difference that will make. One way or another, the Diamond Spire will learn about this. We’re easily within the range of the Colonnade’s patrols. Sooner or later, someone will come across this.’

‘The mortals might blame the beastmen,’ said Thalvess.

‘I’m sure they will. Partly. But then who killed the beastmen, they’ll wonder. I doubt they’ll concern themselves with which bodies have been drained of blood and which have not.’

He watched Thalvess’ face as the long-term implications of the massacre sank in. ‘Do we go on?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Kavak said. ‘We head back. We must speak with Lauka Vai. We have to warn her that a collision is coming.’

Jaras fled through the hills. Where he could, he cut between them. Where he could not, he went over, and that was when he felt most vulnerable. When he crossed their peaks, he expected to be seen.

The vargheists and their lords flew overhead when he was still making his way through the first of the glens. He dropped flat and hid in the shadow of a boulder. He shivered, waiting for the raptor cry as one of the monsters dived down to seize the new prey.

But the vampires flew on, dark silhouettes against the clouds, sailing on wings whose lines were sharp enough to cut the sky. He didn’t move until they disappeared over the next rise. Then he waited some more, resting for the first time since dawn, gathering a little bit of strength.

He started to fall asleep. He jerked himself to, adrenaline surging, heart pumping hard with terror. He couldn’t sleep. Not out in the open. He had escaped beastmen and vampires, but there was everything else that lived in Ghur that would hunt him if given a chance. It was dangerous enough during the day. Already, he had seen some movement high on the wooded hill to his left. All he had with which to defend himself was the knife he carried at his belt. He was not a strong man, and he was growing weaker. He was an easy kill. At night, he would not be able to see where he was going, let alone what was approaching. He had to reach the Colonnade before sunset.

After the first few hills, the land grew barren. The trees thinned out, then disappeared. The grass withered. Soon there was only rock, the hills dark, stony masses. They seemed to lean towards him when he approached, leviathans on the verge of tearing themselves free of the ground.

Jaras was hungry, and he was thirsty. He had lost his waterskin in the gorge, and though the river on its new course would no longer bar his way, it would not be there to help him, either.

By mid-afternoon, only two fears kept him walking. His body was a lead weight. Every shuffled step felt like the last effort he could summon. Then the fears would prick his heart, and he would take another step. He was afraid for himself, and he was afraid for the Colonnade. He had to keep going.

The clouds parted late in the afternoon, and he had clear skies as evening made its approach. The hills were so close, one after the other, that he had no idea how far he had to go. He wasn’t even certain he was heading in the right direction. The hills had become the entire realm. He would see nothing but them until he finally surrendered to their embrace and lay down.

His hand brushed against his knife. It was still there, as it had been a few seconds before. He had started checking on its presence for the sliver of reassurance it gave him. Now the gesture was unthought, a habit. He barely checked for hunting wildlife. He had no energy left to run or fight. He was so tired, so thirsty, in so much pain, he would have welcomed a quick death.

The sky was bright orange and starting to lose its intensity. It would shade to violet soon, and then, not much later, the end would come with night. Jaras stopped at the foot of a ridge that stretched for miles to his left and right. He could not go around it. He stared numbly at the slope.

I can’t climb. I can’t.

Then don’t. There’s no point. What’s on the other side? More hills, and they’ll be hills in the night.

This was as far as he could go.

He sank to his knees. He embraced hopelessness with a grateful sigh. He had done what he could. He would sleep now, and his fate would come for him.

He lay down on the stony ground. It was surprisingly comfortable.

No. Get up. Get up.

I can’t. Enough. I tried.

Get up or you’ll die.

Good. I don’t care any more.

Get up. The Colonnade needs you.

One fear was gone. The other remained. He couldn’t abandon his city.

No one else can bring the warning.

Get up.

We’re easily within the range of the Colonnade’s patrols. The memory of the Vengorian Lord’s words forced him to his feet. The Avengorii were close to the city, too close. There was something else in the vampire lord’s voice that urged him on too. The wound it had opened in his soul still bled. Because he did not understand the reason for the depth of the pain, he could not ignore it. There was something that he had to fight, even when he had no strength left.

He had to fight the vampire.

Jaras took a few stumbling steps up the ridge. When he almost fell again, he looked up in despair at the distant top.

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

You must.

I…

There was movement at the top, a gentle swaying in the evening breeze. A line of tall grass nodded to itself.

No. Not grass.

Wheat.

The other side of the ridge was cultivated. One last climb, and he would be in the fields that surrounded the Colonnade and fed its population. He was almost there.

One last climb.

Weeping, this time with joy, he forced himself up the slope. Twice, he lost his footing and fell, crying out in frustration as he slipped back down. He grabbed at the stones, tearing off nails, arresting his fall. He stood again, and climbed again.

He made it to the top.

He looked out over the wheat field. He saw, in the dying light, the towering shape of the Colonnade.

Then he was running, shouting for help, pounding down the hill so fast he could not control his momentum. It didn’t matter. He was home. He was home.

And when he fell, surrounded by the waving wheat, he knew he could not get up again. He heard movement heading his way. He didn’t know if it was friend or beast.

It didn’t matter. He couldn’t move.

The dark claimed him.

It didn’t matter. He was home.

Chapter 3

The great pride of the people of the Colonnade was that they were above the bestial nature of Ghur, and so they had raised a city in their image. The Colonnade was built on a granite platform held aloft by two rows of immense pillars. The columns were polished granite too, and perfectly cylindrical. Each was fifty feet wide and two hundred feet high, and plunged another two hundred feet into the ground. When the land shifted, it rose up and down the pillars as if they were pistons, and the city remained stable, indifferent to the tides of the earth.

The city’s platform was an elongated oval. At its eastern end, the Castle of the Diamond Spire looked down from a high terrace onto the rest of the Colonnade, built upon the descending terraces radiating west. The castle’s walls gleamed with blinding white marble. It took its name from its central tower, whose high, tapering form was sheathed entirely in diamonds. Under the light of Hysh, it was the resplendent symbol of the Colonnade’s physical and moral elevation. It was the highest point in the Colonnade. It was the city’s summation.

At the opposite end of the platform from the castle, a huge, cobbled square dominated the lowest terrace. The square was the primary means of access to the city. Monumental engines stood at each corner, controlling chains that raised and lowered the square through the platform, to and from ground level. Every link in the chains was a leviathan. Hundreds of people could be brought into the city with each operation of the lift. There were smaller lifts located near the edge of each terrace, and one more provided direct access to the castle. It was rarely lowered, its use reserved for Lord Tarvynde and his entourage.

The terraces were the Above. The people who lived there considered it to be the Colonnade proper. In the Above, the houses were stone and finely hewn timber. What was built in the Above was built to last. The Above was the pride of the Colonnade.

On the other side of the platform hung the Beneath, the undercity. It was home to the poor of the Colonnade, the servants of the rich above and the labourers who worked the farmlands and the mines in the wider region under the city’s control. More chains hung from the underside of the granite, suspending a tangle of iron platforms on which were built the ramshackle homes and taverns of the Beneath. Some of the chains were as short as twenty feet, the roofs of the structures on their platforms brushing against the granite. Others reached halfway down to the low-tide ground level. Many platforms had been forged together along their edges for better stability, but many others dangled in isolation. Networks of suspension bridges and rope ladders linked the pieces of the undercity together. The people here walked as if on ships at sea, their wide stances compensating for the perpetual swaying of their world.

The sky of the Beneath was the darkness of stone. The nights were deep and starless. The days were shadowed twilight. Only when Hysh rose and set did its rays touch the undercity directly.

Atop the Colonnade’s granite platform, there was no fear of the movements of the land. It didn’t matter how high the ground rose. Even if it pushed against the platform, all it would do was raise the city. The pillars would hold the jewel of Ghur stable. In the undercity, the anxiety never went away. The ground had never, in the history of the Colonnade, come close to brushing against the bottom of the lowest of the hanging platforms. That did not mean it could not. The terror that coiled in the dreams of every inhabitant of the Beneath was a sudden, inexorable upheaval, one that crushed them all against the rock of the Colonnade.

Jaras was a Short Chain. He lived in the attic room of a boarding house built on one of the platforms that hung closest to the rock. When he looked out his window, he could see the folds and cracks and texture of the granite. He also had a vista of the undercity’s jumble below him. He couldn’t afford even the meanest habitation in the Above of the Colonnade, but he could enjoy the effect of being in a high tower, as if he were the lord of the Long Chains far below him. He liked to think that his home reflected his liminal position. He spent as much time in the Above as he did in the Beneath. He sang in the taverns of the lower terraces, and in the last few months before his journey to Fangshield, he had made the right connections to get him introduced to one of the grander homes just one level below the castle. The invitation to perform at an evening there had not yet come, though the expectation of its imminence had been one of the reasons for his impatience to come home. It was in the Above, too, that he had joined the outgoing caravan to Fangshield.

It was in the Beneath, though, that he found most of his work. There was no lack of demand in the taverns here, though the pay was worse. There was also always a group of labourers heading for the fields who would pay a bit to have a bard lighten the weight of the day.

So here, in the attic, he had felt poised between the Above and the Beneath, his direction of travel slowly but surely upward.

On the second day after his flight to the Colonnade, he was not thinking of his prospects. He lay on his narrow bed, resting yet sleepless, dressings on his wounds, his thoughts consumed with the question of whether his warning had been taken seriously, or even believed. He received his answer in the middle of the afternoon, when two members of the castle guard came for him.

‘Jaras!’ Bennor, his landlord, shouted from below, and he sounded alarmed. Jaras limped down the steep staircase of the house. Bennor waited for him on the ground floor. He was a balding, placid-looking man, except he didn’t seem placid at the moment. His expression was a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. Behind him were the guards, wearing the diamond-studded capes of the castle.

‘Lord Tarvynde has summoned his council,’ one of the guards said. ‘You have been called to address it.’

‘If what I have to say can be of any assistance, then I am honoured,’ said Jaras.

Bennor looked less frightened and even more impressed.

Jaras followed the guards across four separate suspension bridges to a position next to one of the great pillars. A ladder carved into the side of the column led to a cylindrical passage drilled through the granite platform. Inside the stone tube, a spiral staircase took them to the Above. They emerged from a hollow plinth beneath a silver-plated statue of a Stormcast Eternal of the Maelstrom of Light Stormhost, mounted on a gryph-charger, one of the four that guarded the square before the castle gates.

Jaras had visited the castle terrace a few times over the years. He had never passed through the gates before. As he did so now, he gazed at the unobstructed splendour before him. His chest swelled with the pride that was his birthright as a citizen of the Colonnade. It was easy, in the Beneath, to forget that pride. Here, it came back to him with a vengeance, and his spirit flew with the soaring heights of the battlements. The walls thrust out from the keep like the prows of huge ships, sailing to every point of the compass. The Diamond Spire shone so brightly, he couldn’t look at it directly.

This is what we have carved out of Ghur. This is our repudiation of all that belongs to the beast. We are above all, and stronger than all.

Inside the castle, Jaras walked with the guards down a great hall. The ribs of its vault were painted in gold leaf. Canvasses easily fifteen feet long depicted the Colonnade in storm and sun, at war and at peace. In every painting, it floated high above the landscape, invincible and impregnable. Jaras gazed at the paintings, his footsteps echoing on the mirror-polished floor, and promised to be worthy of the history they commemorated.

The council chamber nestled at the base of the Diamond Spire, beneath the throne room. The lord of the Colonnade sat on a high dais at the apex of a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of elaborate oaken stalls filled with seats. The elevated row, whose occupants were almost, but not quite, at eye level with the lord, was reserved for the nobility of the Colonnade, the families descended from the founders of the city. A private box on Lord Tarvynde’s right belonged to the representative of the Maelstrom of Light.

The Stormhost stationed at the Colonnade was a modest one. The city’s Freeguild army was strong, and the immediate region of the Colonnade had known a long period of relative stability. The Maelstrom of Light had little involvement with the administration of the city and had their barracks in the west wing of the castle. They used the Colonnade as a base from which to strike out further and further in the campaign to push the forces of Chaos out of Ghur.

Today, the box was occupied by the Lord-Celestant Uxa Dawnbolt. If Jaras had had any lingering doubts about how his warning had been received, her presence put them to rest forever. Her silver armour seemed to shine with its own light, a rival to the Diamond Spire. She seemed to Jaras to be a monument to war given life. Her eyes were a frightening translucent grey. Lightning gathered inside them, he thought, just out of sight but ready to strike down the unworthy at any moment.

In the lower row of the stalls sat the wealthy merchants of the Colonnade, not a few of whom Jaras had hoped to get to know, but in circumstances less serious than these. Also present were Havol Torvassen, the general of the Freeguild, and Baveth Ullior, the Scholar of Tides.

We could have used one of your new charts, Jaras thought when he saw Baveth. The scholar was a small woman, almost disappearing in her robes, a wisp of white hair poking out from her hood.

In the centre of the horseshoe, a single chair faced the dais. The guards brought Jaras to the chair and left him there. He bowed before Lord Tarvynde, then to the councillors on his right and left. He hesitated, unsure whether to sit down or not.

Tarvynde resolved the dilemma for him. ‘Thank you for coming, Jaras Anvarheim. Please be seated.’ The lord of the city was middle-aged. The city had known peace because its lord had not, leading one campaign after another to rid the Colonnade’s lands of raiding beastmen. His face had been worn and tempered by war into hardened iron. It was, Jaras thought, a noble face, its sharp profile imperious as befitted the ruler of the city of the Diamond Spire.

‘Anvarheim,’ Tarvynde repeated. ‘Your family was once one of considerable means, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘You are not, my lord,’ Jaras said. ‘We suffered severe losses during the siege of the tzaangors.’

It had been fifteen years before, in Jaras’ youth, that the Colonnade had come closest to falling since its founding. Its isolation from the ground had helped little against an Arcanite cult that had been able to deploy so many forces riding daemonic discs through the air. Jaras remembered the destruction that had been visited upon the Above. He remembered the burning of his family’s home and holdings. He remembered his older brother being part of the heroic stand on the Colonnade’s outer ramparts. The final stages of the battle he could remember less well. His memories were of ruin and flame. The tide had turned, and there had been victory, but he could not recall how that had happened. In his mind, there had been war and loss, and then in the aftermath he had found himself impoverished, the last Anvarheim alive.

‘You have brought back dark tidings with you,’ Tarvynde said. ‘I will ask you to repeat them for the benefit of this council. Please tell us everything you saw and heard when your caravan was attacked. Leave nothing out. You have our attention, and we have the time and need to listen.’

Jaras obeyed. He relived the horror in the gorge. He told his story slowly, wanting every detail to be right. He cut himself short a few times, when he was about to versify the events. This was not the moment to use that skill he had honed as a bard. The other one, the precision of recall, was what he needed. Tarvynde and Dawnbolt interrupted occasionally to clarify a point. Otherwise, the councillors were silent.

Jaras trembled by the end, but he was glad, too. This hour in the council chamber was a victory. The need to save his city had pulled him on, and now he was playing the part fate had decreed would be his in the coming struggle. He was more than glad. He was proud.

When he had finished, Tarvynde and Dawnbolt looked at each other, their expressions grave. Anxious murmurs ran through the rows of the stalls.

Tarvynde held up a hand, commanding silence. ‘There has been news of this beastherd for some time. Other Free Cities have fallen to it, but far from here. We’ve heard rumours that it had turned from its southward course and begun heading east, but not that it had already come so close.’

‘Can we fight it?’ one of the merchant lords asked.

‘If what we have heard about its size is true,’ said Havol, ‘we will be massively outnumbered.’

All eyes turned to Dawnbolt. She said nothing, offering no reassurance.

‘Do we have to fight?’ said Theos. ‘Unless the brutes have learned to fly, they will pass beneath us.’

‘And devastate the farmlands,’ Tarvynde reminded him.

‘Those can grow again.’

‘And if they besiege us?’ a noble asked. ‘What then?’

Theos had no answer to that.

‘How long do we have?’ Tarvynde asked Dawnbolt.

‘My Prosecutors are flying west as we speak,’ she said. ‘They set out to find the main body of the beastherd as soon as we had the first warning. We’ll know when they return.’

‘The further they have to fly, the better for us,’ said Tarvynde.

Dawnbolt nodded once in agreement. ‘I am inclined to think the caravan encountered a raiding party that had ranged far ahead. Nonetheless, the beastherd is clearly heading this way.’

‘What about the Avengorii?’ said Baveth. She leaned forward, her ancient face emerging from her hood. ‘They are part of the bard’s narrative too.’

‘If we have to fight both, we are doomed,’ the noble who had challenged Theos muttered gloomily.

‘Who said that is what we must do?’ his neighbour on his right asked. Atella Reigehren was younger than her fellow aristocrats, barely five years older than Jaras. Her family was not a rich one, but it had played a crucial role in guarding the ramparts from the founding of the Colonnade to the present day. She turned to Jaras. Her long red hair swept back sharply from narrow features and piercing eyes, and she made Jaras think of a bird of prey given human form. ‘You said that the Avengorii arrived after the caravan had already been destroyed by the beastmen. Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ Jaras said cautiously. ‘Barely, though. If they had come a few moments earlier, they could have taken part.’

‘But it was the beastmen they attacked.’

‘Yes.’ The admission felt like a lie. He wanted Atella to understand the horror of those beings. Who they killed at a given moment didn’t matter.

‘And they didn’t harm you.’

‘They didn’t see me,’ Jaras pointed out.

‘What is your purpose in asking these questions?’ Tarvynde asked Atella.

‘Simply this,’ she said. ‘If we are outnumbered by the beastmen, then we should seek an alliance with the Avengorii.’

Jaras’ jaw dropped in shock. Hadn’t Atella been listening? Her proposal wasn’t just irrational. It was incomprehensible. The Avengorii were monsters. There was only one thing to be done with them.

He was relieved to see the rest of the council was as shocked as he was. A chorus of shouts and anger greeted Atella’s words. Tarvynde and Dawnbolt said nothing, but they looked darkly at the councillor. When the furore finally abated, Tarvynde said, ‘I feel I should admire your daring even to think of such an alliance, yet I can’t.’

Atella was undaunted by the outrage she had created. ‘I don’t think you should reject my proposal so quickly,’ she said. ‘If we do not make this attempt, how will we survive?’

‘The Avengorii may be capable of speech,’ said Havol. ‘That does not mean they can reason. We have had little contact with them–’

‘Thanks be to Sigmar,’ called one of the merchants, interrupting him.

‘But when we have seen them, they have been ravening beasts,’ Havol continued.

‘And we have destroyed the individuals who came too near,’ said Tarvynde, to a chorus of approval.

‘Fairer to say you hunted them, I think,’ Atella said.

‘And rightly so,’ Havol told her. ‘All the more reason to think no ambassador would survive an encounter with them, let alone enter into successful negotiations. We are also far from defenceless. Even if we are outnumbered, we can use the isolation of the Colonnade to our advantage. Let us not forget that once we seal the city off from the ground, the size of the beastherd will hardly matter. The brutes cannot enter our gates. They cannot reach us.’

‘Unless the ground rises high enough,’ said Atella.

‘That has never happened,’ said Tarvynde. ‘It won’t happen now.’

Baveth stirred. Dawnbolt noticed. ‘What is it, Scholar of Tides?’ she asked. ‘Do you know something to disquiet us?’

‘I wish I did not,’ said Baveth, ‘but I do. I have just completed another examination of the currents in the land. We are heading towards a deformation unprecedented in the history of the Colonnade. The ground will rise higher than I have ever seen. And it will not be long in coming.’

‘Beneath us?’ Tarvynde asked.

‘I am not sure, my lord. I have spent the night hoping to find an error in my projections, and there is much that I do not know as yet. What I can say is that it seems almost certain that hills will rise just outside our walls. I fear that it will become possible to reach our gate directly from the ground.’

‘The enemy will besiege the city,’ said Dawnbolt.

‘I fear that too.’

‘Maybe the beastmen know what is coming,’ said Atella.

Baveth nodded. ‘Perhaps. They may read the changes of the land instinctively. They are part of Ghur in ways we will never be.’

‘Very well,’ said Tarvynde. His expression was grim. ‘Our hand is forced.’

No, Jaras thought. No. There is always a choice. No.

‘Councillor,’ Tarvynde said to Atella, ‘if you believe so strongly that overtures must be made to the Avengorii, then you will make them.’

Atella bowed her head. ‘I will leave at once,’ she said.

No. You mustn’t parlay with monsters. They will destroy us.

‘May Sigmar watch over us,’ said Tarvynde.

To Jaras, the words sounded like a plea for forgiveness. He glared at Atella.

I won’t let you damn our city.

Chapter 4

The terraces of the Colonnade were counted in descending order from the castle. The Diamond Spire was the supreme expression of the city, first above all, the highest point above the brutishness of Ghur. Every level beneath it was a little closer to the ground, a little less blessed.

The residence of House Reigehren had its place on the third terrace, two below the castle. It had nothing of the luxury that typified the homes of the other important families of the terrace, and still less of the palatial glory of the mansions on the second terrace. It was built out of the northern ramparts, constructed from the same whitewashed granite blocks. It gleamed in the light of Hysh and was part of the greater glory that was the Colonnade’s beauty. But it was also a blocky, squat keep. Its lines were strong instead of graceful. It would always be a fortress, and never elegant.

It did not bother Atella that the house would always be seen as crude and faintly distasteful by the upper reaches of the Colonnade’s society. She had been on the ramparts fifteen years ago. If much of her family had chosen to forget the terror and the struggle of the siege, she would not.

Her rooms were in the house’s turret. It thrust up from the north-west corner, overlooking the outer wall. Her study was her favourite room. Standing at her desk, she looked out of windows facing north and west. Her view to the north was of the land beyond the Colonnade as it changed and twisted. West, she looked down on the descending terraces of the city. In this room, she saw what she had sworn to defend, and what threatened it.

She wondered how long it would be before the stain of the beastherd spread across the land.

Wait until my return. Wait until we are ready.

She grunted, suppressing a pained laugh at herself. What does ‘ready’ mean? Am I ready to speak with monsters? Am I ready to tie us to the Avengorii?

She didn’t know. She dreaded what she was going to face, and she wished this task was unnecessary.

But it is necessary. That much she believed absolutely.

She turned back to her travel bag, checking one last time that she had everything she needed for the journey. She had packed quickly after the council meeting, determined to be on her way before anyone changed Tarvynde’s mind.

‘You’re leaving tonight?’

Atella turned around at the sound of her mother’s voice. Yanna Reigehren had her hands clasped in front of her, a sign that this conversation was not going to go well. Yanna had some definite opinions to share, and was not going to be interested in hearing any disagreement. Her emerald robes had a long train, making her seem to glide without walking as she moved forward to show her daughter the errors of her ways. Like Atella’s father, Erulf, she had aged quickly in the last ten years. Their faces were creased with long-standing disappointment. The history of the Reigehren family did not matter to them as much as its future, and their firstborn refused to share their concern.

‘I’m leaving within the hour,’ Atella said. ‘I want to get as far as I can while I have daylight.’

Yanna pursed her lips, displeased. ‘I’ve been speaking with Ulliva Gastar,’ she said.

Better you than me, Atella thought. ‘Is that so?’ she said, carefully neutral. She didn’t want a confrontation. Even if it was inevitable, she wouldn’t be the one to trigger it, if she could avoid it.

‘She said that Vash heard about what happened at the council.’

‘I would think that by now most of the Colonnade will have heard. It would be surprising if Vash had not.’

‘It matters more that Vash heard, and what he thought.’

‘To whom? Not to me.’ So much for not being confrontational.

‘It should.’ Yanna took a breath, her prelude to making definitive pronouncements. ‘You are, by your words and actions, endangering the chance of a union of our families.’

Atella had known from the moment her mother had appeared in her doorway that she was going to raise this issue. She had known that her mother would say something to get her heated. She had known that she would respond combatively. She knew all this, and that knowledge was useless to her. It did nothing to prevent the inevitable duel, the one they had fought so many times before and would fight again, it seemed, without cease until the end of days.

‘The union of our families,’ Atella said, giving an ironic emphasis to each of the words. ‘How many times have I made clear that I have no interest in this union?’

‘Enough times to be disappointing.’

‘Not enough to make the idea go away, though.’

‘Because,’ said Yanna, ‘the union is too important to be brushed away on a whim.’

‘A whim…’ Atella muttered.

‘You will come to understand this.’

‘Will I?’

‘Your father and I see the wisdom of it. Ulliva and Senevon Gastar see it too, though Ulliva is beginning to wonder.’

‘Good for her.’

‘And Vash has understood from the start.’

‘Of course he has.’

The Gastars were a merchant family of the second terrace. They had been wealthy before the last siege and had flourished enormously since. Theirs was one of the largest of the textile trades in the city, their tapestries in high demand in all the Free Cities for hundreds of leagues around the Colonnade. When her parents had presented her with the idea of a marriage to Vash, she had wondered what there would be in the union that would interest the Gastars. That became clear the first time she had met Vash – not at one of the formal events Ulliva kept trying to organise, but at a council function. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and knew it. He had a look she knew well from many of the upper-terrace dwellers – one of a physique sculpted by private tutelage in fencing and the staged, indoor practice of war.

‘I was on the wall,’ he had told her, mere moments after introducing himself. ‘During the siege,’ he clarified, as if this were an event she might not be familiar with. ‘I was there.’

‘So was I,’ she said dryly. They would both have just come of age during that battle. If he had not been part of the defence of the Colonnade, that would have been surprising.

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ he said, simultaneously embarrassed and dismissive.

‘You were on the second terrace sector?’ Atella asked.

He nodded, carefully sombre. ‘On the north side. Dark days. Dark days.’

How stupid did he think she was? The north side of the second terrace battlements had been completely destroyed. All of its defenders had died. The only reason the Colonnade had not been overrun then and there was that infighting had somehow broken out in the rearguard of the tzaangors, causing enough disarray for the Colonnade forces to rally and hold the line until the Maelstrom of Light had turned the tide. If Vash had really been on the wall, he would be dead. Atella wondered how much of the combat he had actually seen.

I know very well where you really were. You were among the reserves in the castle, the reserves whose privilege it is never to be deployed except in the direst emergency. How frightening was it to be captaining the stores?

She never asked. She didn’t have to. She knew he had been protected from harm to the greatest extent that his family’s wealth could ensure. And that was why the Gastars were open to a union with the Reigehrens. She had fought. So had her parents. No matter how much she despised their political aspirations, she would never question their commitment to the defence of the Colonnade. The Reigehrens wanted social advancement. The Gastars wanted the confirmation of honour.

Atella had no intention of facilitating either. Her memories of the fighting on the wall made the games of society repulsively shallow. There was one memory in particular that was so intense she lived with it every day. It was of the height of the struggle, when the fate of the Colonnade hung in the balance. The tzaangors seemed to be everywhere. Atella hurled herself at them, with no thought of victory or even of what the next minute might bring. She was consumed by the killing of the foe. She seemed to be running through a rain of blood, soaked crimson, slashing through flesh with a fury that went beyond desperation and became exhilaration.

It was a memory she could not shake. Nor did she wish to. And at times, lying awake in the deep hours of the night, she would admit to herself that what she had felt was, in truth, not exactly exhilaration. It had been much closer to ecstasy.

‘Mother,’ she said now, ‘neither Vash nor I are society fledglings. We are now well past the age of being naive and pliable enough to be your chattel. Since we are reminding each other of the obvious, I am a councillor to Lord Tarvynde. I do not, and will not, answer to you. I never agreed the union. I never encouraged Vash. I have given you all my refusal more times than I care to count.’

Yanna shook her head. ‘To think my daughter would feel so little obligation to her family.’

Her mother’s dramatic woe startled a short, sharp, disbelieving bark of laughter from Atella. ‘Obligation?’ she said. ‘Obligation? My obligation is to the Colonnade. That has always been this family’s obligation.’ Her smile was more savage than she intended. ‘To think my mother would forget that.’

Her mother was ready for her. She might even have goaded Atella into that last declaration. ‘Yes, let us talk, then, about your obligation to the Colonnade. You are a councillor. And a councillor should act in the best interests of the city.’

Where are you going with this? ‘And so I am.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes. I’m on the ramparts again, mother, as we were fifteen years ago, and this time the land will rise and the enemy will outnumber the tzaangors by tenfold and more. I am doing what needs to be done for the Colonnade to survive.’

Yanna sniffed, offended. ‘You are doing nothing of the sort. You seek to sully the city. You will force us to have congress with monsters.’

‘I expected something ridiculous from you, but that makes me sad all the same. Our family has a history of pragmatism, mother. You and father taught me that. I wish you hadn’t forgotten it. Why won’t you understand? We can negotiate with the Avengorii. Not with the beastherd.’ She spoke with more certainty than she felt. She was not going to admit to any doubts in front of her mother.

‘If your negotiations are successful, what will that do to us?’ Yanna asked. ‘Is a dubious alliance, one where our new-found allies will turn on us and devour us at the first opportunity, worth losing our purity?’

‘Purity is pointless to the dead.’

Her mother pointed at her, looking triumphant, as if Atella had capitulated. ‘With your words, you condemn yourself. You show your lack of faith.’

‘In what?’

‘In the meaning of our city. You believe the Colonnade will fall.’

‘I believe that it might,’ Atella said, ‘if we don’t do all we can to save it.’

‘No.’ Her mother shook her head. ‘The Colonnade will not fall. It is its destiny to rise above the beasts and the plains of Ghur. We stand above, Atella. We stand above, in every way.’

‘Keep telling yourself that. Now, please leave me. I have preparations to finish, and I’m running short of daylight.’

Yanna glared at her. She had hurled unassailable logic at her daughter, and it had been for nothing. Such a loss could not be permitted. She stayed where she was, silent, as if waiting for Atella to change her mind, which she surely must.

‘Mother,’ Atella said. ‘Go. Now. Please.’

‘You shame us,’ her mother said, gathering up her robe with an angry flourish as she turned to go.

‘You say that like it matters to me,’ said Atella. ‘Maybe I’m ashamed of you.’

The Pillar and Sickle was not the lowest tavern of the Beneath. It marked the boundary between the Short Chain and Long Chain regions of the undercity. Below the tavern was where the miserable of the Colonnade gathered, the accretion of dark, cramped, stinking homes dense as flies on carrion. The Pillar and Sickle was not that low, but it was low enough. It was over fifty years old, though it looked as if it had been slapped together the week before and would last only a few days longer, with its walls of cast-off iron sheets and reused timber. Its interior was thick with smoke from its hearth and the pipes of its patrons. Its tables were even thicker with grime. The ale it served could be drunk without too much disgust, as long as it was drunk quickly.

The Pillar and Sickle was the third tavern Jaras and Bennor had visited that evening. Jaras had not quite given up on the idea of a fourth, but his head was swimming pretty badly. He had eaten, but not enough, and he wasn’t entirely sure what it was he had downed just after arriving here. He had accepted a bowl of grey stew from a miner and finished it, with the right amount of enthusiasm and an additional helping of eloquence. What he had not done was look at the stew long enough to identify it, and his stomach was having mixed feelings about the experience.

He was drunk, and he was growing nauseous, but he could still sing, and he had an audience. He had found plenty of willing listeners at each of his stops. They all wanted to hear about the warning he had brought to the Colonnade. He was proud of his ‘Lament for Vela’. After the council, he had thrown himself into the composition, making the caravan leader the focal point of heroism and tragedy. It was going down well, inspiring all the tears and anger he had intended. But it was the prelude for his real message.

‘Ohhhhhhh, they’re the glory of the Colonnade,

Our council of virtue never swayed!

The brave and the wise know better than we

And will see us bleed for their policy!’

He had plenty of verses. When he began, his circles of listeners at first reacted with shock and anxiety. But he already had them in his grasp with the songs of the slaughter, and he did not let them go. They were already afraid, and now he unveiled to them how the council planned to sell them out to the Avengorii. When he was done, he gave his lute a mocking strum, but sat back in his chair with a grim expression to show that his wit had been in earnest.

He looked around at the faces in the Pillar and Sickle. Exhausted faces, bitter faces, lined and hungry faces. They were the faces of the Beneath, the faces of the back-breaking labour behind the wealth of the Above. Jaras could almost think of them as the true faces of the Colonnade, except that the siren memory of the Above was too strong. He had never felt completely at home among these faces. He did not belong with them. He would leave them when he could. But they had to know what had been decided without their knowledge. They had to know what was coming. They had given their lives in the thousands in the days of the siege, for no reward other than the return to servitude.

Jaras had spent the evening spreading word of the betrayal, and he felt he had done good work. The population of the Beneath was large. If it could be moved to anger, greater work yet might be done.

‘You’re lying,’ said a hunched old woman. He had heard the same frightened denial at the other taverns, at first. ‘You were never at the council.’

‘He was. I was there when the guards came to take him there.’

Jaras nodded solemn thanks at his landlord, as if he had not done the same thing two other times that night for the same intervention. The first thing he had done on his return from the castle was speak to Bennor, tell him everything, and convince him of the necessity to warn everyone in the Beneath. The landlord was well known as a pleasant drinking companion, one who was content to nod along wherever the conversation went. If he spoke up, the event was rare enough to warrant attention.

‘Believe me as you believe in the burdens of your lives,’ Jaras said. ‘Lord Tarvynde is sending Atella Reigehren to seek an alliance with the Avengorii. A pact with monsters. And what, do you think, will be the price the Colonnade will pay for protection against the beasts?’

‘Blood,’ someone muttered.

‘Blood,’ Jaras repeated. ‘The only exchange of value for vampires. And whose blood?’

‘Ours.’ Several people answered at once, louder, with more anger.

‘Ours,’ said Jaras. For the purposes of his mission, he was one of the people of the Beneath. ‘After all, that is our purpose, isn’t it? Our lot in life is to keep the shining exemplars of the Above safe and happy. In their eyes, we aren’t worth anything else. As long as we are not united in purpose, maybe they’re right. As long as we are divided, clambering over each other in our struggle not to be the ones furthest below, I think they are right.’

There were gratifying nods and murmurs.

‘What difference does it make?’ a hoarse voice rasped.

Jaras turned around. It was the first time this evening that someone had asked such a question. The speaker was a thin man leaning against the back wall. He was so gnawed by poverty that it was impossible to guess his age. His eyes looked old and dead. He was, Jaras guessed, from the lowest, most miserable levels of the Beneath.

‘So I die at the hands of vampires,’ the man said. A wracking cough shook him. ‘So what?’ he said when he had recovered. ‘How am I worse off? And maybe some of us become vampires. How is that not better?’

The man looked unconcerned by the anger his words stirred, but its presence pleased Jaras. He barely needed to counter the man’s argument. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked gently.

‘Parek.’

‘Parek, would you give up your birthright? Would you become a monster and destroy the potential of the Colonnade? We are not monsters. We, all of us, are the pure hope of Ghur.’

There was clapping now, and the pounding of mugs on the table in approval. Parek’s flat expression didn’t change. Jaras didn’t mind. He didn’t expect to convince everyone. He needed to stir enough to anger that maybe there would be a chance of stopping this atrocity.

The door to the tavern flew open and a woman stormed inside, brandishing a parchment. Jaras thought he had seen her at the second tavern he had visited. ‘Have you seen this?’ she demanded of everyone. ‘Have you seen this?’

‘What is it?’ said Bennor.

The woman handed the parchment to Jaras. ‘A proclamation,’ he said, reading it. ‘Announcing the quest of Councillor Reigehren, and commanding the support of all loyal citizens of the Colonnade.’

‘There are guards posting those all over,’ said the woman. ‘You were right.’ She turned to the tavern in general. ‘He was right!’

Tarvynde had anticipated what the reaction to Atella’s mission would be. He had tried to stamp out opposition before it began.

Too late. I got here first. The people have heard the truth from me.

The anger in the tavern was building to rage.

It wasn’t bad enough that the ground surrounding Skykeep was rising, General Levyas Pennevan thought. He stood on the ramparts and looked west, listening to the sounds of devastation on the march. The sensation the climbing earth created, that Skykeep was sinking, was even more disturbing.

The earth had begun to swallow up the pillar the day before, just as the drums and horns of the beastherd first reached the ears of the fortress’ sentinels. Whispers ran through the Freeguild Guard, soldiers asking each other in fear and wonder whether the beastmen had the power to control the changes in the land of Ghur, or if they could foretell what shifts would come and where. Either possibility was fearful. So was the third, which no one dared whisper, but Levyas knew his troops were thinking about it, because he was, too. What he wondered was whether Ghur was reshaping itself to favour the beastmen. If he was at war with the very realm, what chance did he have?

The ground was now less than ten feet away from the top of Skykeep’s pillar. It had never been this high, not even close. And to the west, the mountains were sinking. Soon, they would be gone, leaving the way clear to the horror on the other side.

Skykeep was strong, and until this day, Levyas had believed it impregnable. It was the smaller cousin of the Colonnade. A single, massive pillar a hundred feet wide supported the fortress platform, which extended another fifty feet into the air on all sides. The four towers and thick ramparts of the keep made it seem, until today, like the head of a mace suspended high over the land. It was the projection of the Colonnade’s power into the west, important enough in itself that Levyas carried the rank of general, even though he was subordinate to General Havol Torvassen. Skykeep protected the caravan routes in this region and savaged the incursions by Chaos into the territory. It was provisioned by the caravans and by the taxes collected for it by the Colonnade.

The ramparts today were crowded with soldiers armed with long rifles and crossbows. In the central courtyard, there was barely room for the massed cavalry of Skykeep to muster before the gates. It was a rare occurrence for the full strength of the fortress’ troops to be gathered within its walls, but they had all been recalled when the messenger had come from the Colonnade. Baveth Ullior’s charts had predicted a disastrous rise of the ground at Skykeep in advance of a similar catastrophe at the city. Before that warning, Skykeep had been the inflexible sovereign of the region, towering far above any threat, sending out its forces to impose the peace of the Colonnade. Normally, the cavalry and the ranged foot patrols would have been lowered on a lift near the western edge of the courtyard. It was a fraction of the size of the one in the Colonnade’s great square, but was massive enough for the purposes of Skykeep.

Not today, though. Today, for the first time in its history, the fortress would open its gates, and its warriors would ride through them to meet the enemy. Today, Skykeep had lost its commanding position. It was just another fortress on a low hill.

As we do now, so the Colonnade will do later.

Levyas regretted the thought a moment later. It implied the defeat of Skykeep.

But it might happen.

He was going to strike with all the power of the fortress. He didn’t know if that would be enough. That uncertainty was new to him. Even when the stories of the Orgo beastherd had begun to reach Skykeep, he had not thought of the beastmen as a terminal threat. But the sound that came to him over the shrinking mountains was huge. It drowned out the rumble of reshaping rock.

The Freeguild Guard were not standing alone. A contingent of Prosecutors from the Maelstrom of Light was based in Skykeep too, under the command of Knight-Azyros Avan Rightspear. The Stormcast Eternal joined Levyas on the wall, his features already obscured by his helm. He looked to the west, ready to fly to the attack.

‘Your preparations are thorough, general,’ Rightspear said approvingly.

‘I thank you, Knight-Azyros,’ said Levyas.

‘I hear the touch of doubt in your voice.’

‘Though this is a keep,’ Levyas said, ‘it has never had to take on a defensive role. That has never been our function, or our known strength.’ The tactics he and Rightspear had adopted played to the strengths of the keep. A cavalry served no purpose held behind walls. Even so, Levyas knew Skykeep could stay on the offensive for only a short time against the beastherd. The siege would come.

Rightspear placed a huge hand on Levyas’ shoulder. ‘Skykeep has always been a weapon. It will be so again now. We are not a wall protecting the Colonnade. We are its lance, thrown forward into the chest of the enemy. Let the foes come, and we will pierce their foul and blackened hearts.’

The Prosecutors had flown over the mountains during the previous days, taking the measure of the beastherd. Rightspear knew what was coming much more precisely than Levyas. His unwavering confidence gave Levyas hope.

And yet the drums, the horns, the bellowing… The beastherd was colossal, and Levyas could not picture the scale that Rightspear had reported. But he could feel its size now, through sound alone. The bestial fanfare vibrated in his spine and made his left eye twitch nervously. He saw the same anxiety reflected in the soldiers to the left and right on the battlements. They were ready to fight, but they were afraid, too.

An hour later, the mountains melted away. They left behind a plain of cracked stone leading to a gentle rise to Skykeep’s walls. And as the last of the peaks disappeared, as if they were the parting of a curtain, they revealed the beastherd.

Levyas stared. A stain moved over the land, horned and roaring. The herd was gigantic beyond what he had dared imagine. Monsters in the tens of thousands bellowed their hunger for the destruction of Skykeep. For long, dizzying moments, Levyas believed the unspoken fear was correct – that Ghur had turned on the humans who dared think they could inhabit the realm, and had given birth to the horrors that pounded towards the fortress.

The wait to attack became even more painful. There was no point in sending out forces too far to attack an enemy that size. Levyas and Rightspear had to wait until the beastmen were closer, and sorties, supported by the bows and rifles on the walls, would not be foolish sacrifices. So Levyas hoped.

Soon, too soon, despite the agony of the wait, the beastherd was less than half a mile away, too far to make out individual figures. Except there was one, even from this far, that stood out, mighty in its rage and power. Levyas’ eyes went to Orgo, drawn as surely as if he had been one of the brutes under the beastlord’s command. Orgo was there at the centre of the leading edge of the herd, and Levyas felt more than saw the towering horror. The creature was not as tall as the giant beasts that, here and there, loomed over their kin as they tramped forward, but he was greater than all of them, a being so huge in fury and strength that the legions of beastmen followed his every command.

‘We will pierce their hearts,’ Rightspear said again. He raised his voice, calling to all the defenders on the walls. ‘The beasts come in their thousands, but they are just beasts. Our numbers are the strong, the faithful, the tested. We are Sigmar’s storm!’ He spread his wings of light. ‘Let us show the beasts the truth of fury!’ He leapt upward from the battlements. His Prosecutors gathered around him, gleaming silver in the light of the late afternoon, and they streaked towards the beastherd.

Levyas raised his sword, and the battle horns of Skykeep answered the challenge of the beastherd with a fanfare of their own. The blast of the trumpets was ferocious. It deafened Levyas for a moment, and for that glorious heartbeat, he could no longer hear the drums and horns of the enemy. Then the beastherd’s cacophony flooded his senses again, making Skykeep’s horns sound thin and weak.

The iron gates opened. Levyas tore his eyes away from the beastherd and looked down into the courtyard. Salla Uvor, captain of the cavalry, looked up at him, waiting for his order to advance.

‘Would that I were riding with you, captain,’ Levyas said. The duty of commanding the full strategy of the defence kept him on the wall. He wanted to be mounted instead, racing to the foe so fast he could outstrip his doubts.

‘We will do you proud, general,’ said Salla.

‘Take your troops through the gates, and wait for my command to charge. Hurt the foe, but make no vain sacrifices. Skykeep can ill afford them.’

‘Understood, general,’ Salla said, as if Levyas hadn’t explained the tactic he wanted several times already. ‘We will draw the blood of the beasts and then deliver them to slaughter from our guns and crossbows.’

Salla and her cavalry rode out of the fortress to gather at the top of the hill, forming up in a wedge, the charge held back like an arrow by a taut bowstring.

Levyas turned west once again, in time to see the Prosecutors begin their attack.

This was the moment. Levyas gave the signal for the charge. The cavalry stormed down the hill, lances forward and swords drawn. Just before they reached the front lines, the beastmen came within range of the long rifles.

‘Now!’ Levyas shouted. ‘Cover the slopes with their dead!’

The rifles barked, so many firing at once that their reports sounded like the long, stuttering echo of a single shot. The guns were aimed to the left and right of the cavalry, and scores of beastmen went down, shot through head and neck, at almost the same moment that Salla’s riders smashed into the centre.

The strike happened precisely as Levyas had planned, hitting the enemy in a way that maximised and concentrated the power of Skykeep, but all he could think was that the cavalry was so thin a blade, nothing more than a needle trying to stab an ocean.

The intent of the charge was to kill the leaders of the herd, if possible, but bloody the nose of the enemy all the same, then ride back and hit again, while the guns thinned the front ranks, joined by the crossbows as the foe came nearer.

The Prosecutors hit the beastmen like lightning sheathed in sigmarite. Wherever their aethereal hammers and javelins hit, turmoil erupted, whirlpools in the tide. Beastmen fell. Others crashed into each other as they tried to avoid the conjured weapons. But the roars of Orgo echoed across the plain, holding his brutes to their goal, and the advance did not slow.

Spears in their hundreds flew up at the Prosecutors, accompanied by eldritch blasts of sorcery from bray-shamans. At the same time, flights of chimeras swooped in at the Stormcast Eternals. Each one of the attacks, on its own, was unworthy of Sigmar’s chosen, an insignificant irritant to be batted aside. Together, they took their toll.

The Prosecutors struck, pulled back, and struck again. They hit forward elements of the beastherd, their attack amplified by the cavalry charge. The options of the limited forces at the keep were few. If the leadership of the beastherd could not be killed, then enough damage had to be done to hurt the beastmen’s ability to lay siege, and that was, in the end, a delaying action. Though the Prosecutors flew with grace and speed, circling to the fortress before each strike, and though they killed hundreds, they could not stop the inevitable. One by one, the Prosecutors began to fall, telltale lightning marking the moment each legend was borne down and summoned back to Azyr. They concentrated their attacks on Orgo, but the powerful bray-shamans that flanked him used their sorcery to shield him from most of the blows – if the javelins that got through pierced his armour, he showed no signs of injury, and the shadow of his presence seemed to reach the sky.

The charge failed too. Its thrust shattered against the might of the beastmen. Three riders, Salla among them, closed with Orgo at the same time. He ran at them, roaring with delight, and slashed at them with enormous twin axe blades. His first blow cut Salla in two and decapitated the man riding beside her. With a guttural laugh, Orgo brought both blades down on the third rider, hitting with such force that the warrior seemed to explode in a cloud of blood.

As he trampled over the bodies of soldiers and horses, Orgo finally came clearly into view for Levyas. His horns, curving as they stretched back from his skull, were as long as a man. He wore a helmet so covered in vicious spikes, Levyas could not distinguish at this distance between the points of iron and the jagged tusks.

The beastlord was unstoppable. His legions were unstoppable. The herd thundered up the slope. The Skykeep cavalry, reduced to a remnant in moments, raced for the gates, routed.

The beastmen were faster. The tide closed over the riders and destroyed them. Cursing, Levyas ordered the gates closed. There would be no one left to return to the keep.

Crossbows and long rifles fired again and again. The beastmen dropped by the dozens, by the scores. The losses were meaningless when hundreds took the place of every enemy killed.

The tide rushed towards the gate. In the last hundred yards, Orgo shouted a command, and most of the beastherd slowed down. Two doombulls, horned giants maddened by blood and fury, ran together at the gate. Their enormous bulks slammed into it at the same moment as a great bray-shaman unleashed a massive arcane bolt at the barrier.

It exploded. Jagged chunks of iron hurtled across the courtyard, impaling and crushing defenders as they ran to defend the entrance. The doombulls stampeded through the breach, their colossal axes slaughtering multiple guards at every stroke. They parted to let their master through, and the beastlord entered Skykeep, the flood of his herd at his heels.

‘Throw them back!’ Levyas shouted, knowing already that it was the last command he would ever give. There was nothing else to say. There were no tactics left. There was only the desperate descent from the battlements to join the fray, a few hundred guards trying to turn back uncountable numbers.

Just before he made for the stairs, Levyas glanced up, praying to Sigmar there would be hope to see in the skies. He saw Rightspear in his glory, turning with such speed he might have been a vortex, his aethereal hammers smashing the skulls of three chimeras who had dared close with him. But two others came down from above before he could react, and they bore him to the ground. Levyas stared, horror slowing time to a crawl. Rightspear hit the ground at the feet of a ghorgon. The colossus slammed its hooves, huge as boulders, on the Prosecutor, crushing the chimeras but also cracking open his sigmarite armour. The ghorgon let out a bugling roar and stomped again on Rightspear, until the lightning of the Stormcast Eternal’s demise blasted upward.

The ghorgon fell, burning, but Rightspear was gone.

We are lost, Levyas thought, but he rushed for the stairs to fight to the end.

Levyas made it halfway down the steps. Orgo smashed his way up the stairs, stone exploding beneath his hooves. He hacked guards apart, his axes chopping through armour, flesh and bone as though they were cloth. He came at Levyas through a cloudburst of gore and, with a dismissive snarl, knocked him aside with one of his blades. The speed of the attack was so great, Levyas did not even see the blow. He was suddenly flying, and his body felt wrong as he arced into the courtyard. It pulled in two different directions. He was open to the air, trailing a stream of blood as he fell.

Levyas fell into the midst of the surging beastmen. They paid him no attention. Hooves smashed his bones. He could no longer see anything, but he could hear terrible things. He heard the screams of his dying troops. He heard the final snapping and cracking of his spine and limbs. He heard the thunder of hooves and clashing arms.

Then he heard a new thunder, and that was the walls of Skykeep coming down. Overwhelmed by pain and darkness and failure, the last thing he heard was the triumphant bellowing of the beasts.

Chapter 5

Three days’ march north-east of the Colonnade, the land turned harsh again. Arable ground gave way to the sea of shifting dunes that was the Sascathran Desert. The dunes broke like waves against wind-carved monoliths of sandstone and buttes that rose and fell from the desert floor, foundering ships in the storm. Arches of rock stood like the gates to cities that had never been. There were formations that resembled the ribcages of petrified leviathans. Clusters of pointed towers reached clawing for the sky. They would linger for a time, their grasp an eternal stasis. A day later, they could be drowned beneath the sand, because eternity in Ghur was a lie.

On the surface, it was a lie.

Beneath the sands, there was an eternity. The rock formations were the spires of the inverted, twisted fortresses that honeycombed the underworld of the desert.

The legions of monsters who had gathered around the skeletons of rock knew about the ephemeral and its lies. They knew about the truths too, eternal ones, truths carved in the agony of changing bone and the ecstasy of transcendent flesh. They travelled Ghur, shadows of destruction that haunted the worshippers of Tzeentch. They clustered like bats on the arches and the spikes of rock. They filled the caverns below in their thousands, the spawn of the city of nightmares.

A huge, square-topped monolith of rock stood hundreds of feet above the sands. This was the gate to the city. Its cliff walls were vertical corrugations that, from a distance, resembled wrinkled skin, the cavern mouths a hundred open lesions.

The wind whispered with the sand. It mourned over the towers. It sang, high and sharp and whistling, through the caves of the butte. It serenaded the monsters, embracing its kin. Some nights, the monsters sang back. The choir of horrors celebrated their truth, their selves and their queen.

In the city, fortresses hung from cavern roofs, their gnarled towers pointing down to the silent depths. Their interiors were architectural delusions, as distorted as the beings who moved through them. Floors canted, staircases spiralled in on themselves, and corridors slithered like snakes. In the centre of the largest of the keeps was a chamber of shadows and night-black gemstones. Here, the Mother of Nightmares held court. This was her throne room, but if ever the land shifted more profoundly and swallowed castle and throne, she would leave without complaint. She called no place home, but claimed everywhere in the name of nightmare. There had been a home before her ascension, when she had been of the order of the Askurga Renkai. That home and the order were lost to her now, and that was a liberation. Now all of Ghur could feel the mark of her claws. Wherever her eye fell, so could the scythe.

She rested on a sculpted platform of jewelled leviathan bone, a throne suited for the greatest of monsters. A being far greater and more blessed in her transformation than any of her subjects, Lauka Vai towered over Kavak where he knelt before the platform. The scaled lower body of his queen and saint was that of a drake. The wings of the forelegs were enormous. The claws protruding from the webbing were longer and more savage than swords. Lauka Vai’s upper body, sheathed in violet plate, was still as she had been before her transformation. Her long, raven hair, streaked with a single stripe of death grey, framed a face as majestic as it was terrible. In its lines and planes were the vastness of pain that she had seen and inflicted, and a fury held in check by a will that was its only equal. Her eyes were a blank, pitiless yellow. Kavak could not meet their gaze directly any more than he could stare at Hysh.

Lauka Vai coiled her tail around the platform as she contemplated what Kavak had told her. He kept silent, as did Hevat Grask. The other Vengorian Lord was amongst the queen’s earliest followers. None of the other Lords were present. Hevat Grask was, like Kavak, one of the few Avengorii who could control his bloodthirst, at least temporarily, in the presence of humans. That he was here could not be a coincidence.

Finally, Lauka Vai said, ‘Orgo is a more formidable commander than we had supposed, if his beastherd is much more massive and closer than expected.’ Her voice was deep as mountain roots, echoing as a funeral bell. It slithered too, a serpent and a touch, filling the mind with insidious thoughts of what the body might become.

‘The Colonnade is directly in Orgo’s path,’ said Kavak. ‘Clearly he means to claim it.’

‘So you said.’ Lauka Vai cocked her head. ‘I understood you the first time.’

‘I apologise, my queen.’

Lauka Vai waved a hand. ‘No need, Kavak. No need. But I note your determination to ensure I knew the city was threatened. You seem troubled by the spectre of the Colonnade’s destruction.’

‘I am,’ he said.

‘The concern is still there,’ she said, not unkindly.

‘My concern is for the consequences to the Avengorii,’ Kavak insisted.

‘Leaving the Colonnade to its own devices could be useful to us,’ Lauka Vai mused. ‘Its defence would slow Orgo down. It would damage the beastherd. Perhaps leave us with easier prey.’

Kavak said nothing, unsure if Lauka Vai was serious or probing his reactions.

‘If this city falls,’ she said, with a smile of death, ‘that will be a fitting reward for its arrogance.’

‘What do the mortals of the Colonnade know of purity?’ said Hevat Grask. ‘They trumpet their watchword from their towers. They have raised their homes above the land and so declare themselves above all that lives in Ghur. Where is the purity of the flesh unchained? Where is the purity of the liberation of monstrosity?’

‘Nowhere in the Colonnade,’ said Kavak. ‘I will swear to that. Do not mistake my reasons for a lack of eagerness to see its destruction.’

‘I don’t,’ Lauka Vai said. She leaned forward, yellow gaze unblinking. ‘Do you?’

‘I am convinced that this is the reality of our situation,’ Kavak told her. ‘If we do nothing, I believe the Colonnade will fall. Orgo will lay a siege the city will not be able to wait out. Its resources will make the beastherd even stronger. Our odds against Orgo are uncertain as things stand now. They will be worse if he takes the Colonnade.’

‘Your argument is coloured by your past, Kavak Anvarheim,’ said Lauka Vai.

He couldn’t answer for a moment. ‘I know it is,’ he admitted, struck hard by the truth.

‘Good. Remember that. This is not a flaw. This is the sign that your true moment may have come at last, and that I may teach the city a lesson long in the making. How long before the beastherd reaches the Colonnade?’

‘Maybe two months, as the tides of Ghur permit.’

‘Very well. Leave me now. I will consider your words.’

Kavak bowed low, his long forehead touching the floor of the throne room. He made his way back up through the fortress to the surface, into the night of the dunes.

Anvarheim. He had not heard the name in years. He had not thought about it in as long. Lauka Vai rarely pronounced it. Kavak had discarded it with his old self and his old body. The Mother of Nightmares had been right to use it just then, though.

She sees me better than I do myself.

He leapt into the air. He soared up into the night. Lined on the edge of the butte’s peak, terrorgheists and zombie dragons roared greetings to their brother in horror. Kavak stretched out his wings. Though their flesh was torn and flapped in tatters, they propelled him through the air with power and precision. He glided, feeling the subtle changes in the air currents streaming against his body. The slightest movement of a wing finger and he rose higher. He banked suddenly, turning the ground below him. With a series of strong beats, he shot up a hundred feet and more, then turned his head to the ground, folded his wings and dropped like a stone. He bared his fangs in the exhilaration of the fall. Moments before impact, he spread his wings again and levelled off with painful suddenness. He skimmed the surface of a dune, then rose once more to a lone column of sandstone. He landed on the top and perched there.

Anvarheim.

He grimaced.

Why do I want to save the Colonnade? Do the old reasons still hold?

Perhaps so. Did that mean the new reasons were invalid and that he was wrong?

No. I don’t think so. Saving the Colonnade is in our interest.

Save it how?

He didn’t know. Things were different now. He couldn’t save the city of his birth the way he had fifteen years ago.

Fifteen years ago.

The tzaangors were coming, bringing siege to the Colonnade. Kavak had seen the scale of the army, and he knew the truth. He knew that something greater than a siege was coming. Doom was coming to the Colonnade.

He had taken his guard patrol out farther than any had dared go yet, looking for the main army of the enemy that had been sending raiding parties into the city’s fertile lands. At the top of a rise, looking down onto a wide plain, he and his comrades had seen the full scale of the Arcanite cult. Then they had run, as swiftly and as silently as they could, but not swiftly and silently enough, because they had encountered a group of tzaangor raiders. They had managed to kill the avian beastkin, but at a fatal cost.

Only Kavak and Herved Falhelm were still alive, and Herved was badly injured. He was bleeding from a tzaangor blade that had slashed him across his stomach. Kavak supported him as they stumbled south through rugged hills. Herved could barely move his legs. He had one arm around Kavak’s shoulders, and with his other hand he was trying to keep his insides from slipping out. Soon he wasn’t walking at all, and Kavak was dragging him. In the last glimmers of twilight, they reached the top of a slope. The hollow ahead of them was bathed in the deep shadows of overhanging oaks.

‘Can we hide here?’ Herved gasped.

‘Yes,’ said Kavak. It was an imperfect shelter, but it would do. If they were being followed, where they hid did not matter, because Herved had left a trail of blood that would lead their pursuers directly to them. If they weren’t followed, then this was as good a place as any.

‘Have to rest,’ Herved said, barely able to whisper.

Kavak got them down into the hollow. He laid Herved down against the slope and kneeled beside him. He wanted to dress Herved’s wound, but he had nothing that would help, and all he could see of the injury was a wet, black mass spreading down Herved’s stomach and legs.

‘Rest,’ Herved said again. His forehead was clammy, his breath shallow.

Kavak looked up into the sky for guidance. They were miles from the Colonnade. He couldn’t carry Herved all the way. He had to make it back and deliver the warning.

‘Go,’ Herved whispered.

Kavak shook his head, though he knew that Herved was right.

That was when the sky darkened and began to rain black blood. A huge, winged figure circled slowly, high above the hollow. Kavak froze and put his hand over Herved’s mouth for silence. The shape turned twice over the hollow, and then dropped straight down. The Mother of Nightmares landed two yards from them. There could be no mistaking this being for anything else. The world of reason seemed to shrivel and die in her presence. From her towering height, she gazed down on the two mortals. Herved jerked in terror. Kavak’s hand, numb, fell away from the pommel of his sword. The majesty of horror stunned him into helplessness, and his sanity teetered at the edge of the abyss.

‘I address the dying one,’ said Lauka Vai.

‘He isn’t…’ Kavak began, then trailed off. Lies were pointless before such a being, and he could barely speak. He wondered, giddy with fear, why so insignificant an insect as himself was worthy of destruction by so great and terrible a monarch.

‘I bring you a choice,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘You cannot be saved. You can live on.’

‘No!’ Herved gasped, terror for his soul granting him a last burst of energy. He shut his eyes. Spared the sight of the Mother of Nightmares, he could speak. ‘I am a citizen of the Colonnade. I will not stain my being. Kill me first!’

Lauka Vai frowned. Kavak flinched at the mere suggestion of her anger. He looked down at Herved, surprised to find himself questioning his comrade’s choice.

‘I am…’ Herved tried again, but he could not say any more.

‘Silence,’ Lauka Vai commanded. She stepped forward, brushing Kavak aside as if he were an insect, sending him sprawling. Lauka Vai reached down, grabbed Herved with one hand and lifted him to her jaws. She bit, tearing his neck open with a wet, ripping sound. Kavak knew the smell of fresh blood too well, but that wasn’t what he smelled now. Herved’s blood turned black and sluggish as it flowed into the vampire queen’s mouth.

Kavak didn’t run. He fought through the horror-induced awe and struggled to his feet, grasping hold of the will to die with honour. He stood tall, waiting for the end to come. The Mother of Nightmares finished with Herved, dropped the corpse and turned to Kavak. When he managed to draw his sword, she smiled. The blade rusted before her, but he did not drop it.

From the depths of his terror, Kavak summoned a spark of bravado. ‘I will die fighting you,’ he vowed.

Lauka Vai cocked her head. ‘Must you die? Must I kill you?’

‘You will have to, if you mean to prevent my return to the city.’

Lauka Vai shrugged, the gesture sending a ripple down the membranes of her wings. ‘What is it to me if you return to the Colonnade or not?’ She spread a wing. ‘You are free to go.’

Astonished, Kavak backed up a step.

‘But tell me,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘What difference will your return make?’

‘I have seen the enemy. I must warn the city of the size of the army that threatens us.’

She smiled coldly. ‘How will that knowledge help the defenders of the Colonnade?’

Kavak said nothing.

‘Will your return affect the Colonnade’s chances of survival?’ she pressed.

Kavak held his silence, though both of them knew the answers to the questions. The vampire queen waited him out. At last, Kavak said, ‘I have my duty.’

‘To defend the city.’

‘Yes.’

‘To save the city.’

‘Yes.’

‘What will you do to fulfil your duty?’

‘Anything. Whatever I must.’

Lauka Vai nodded. ‘I have seen the tzaangors too. The Colonnade’s odds are not good. They might be improved.’

‘How?’

‘Through the means your comrade refused.’

Kavak stopped breathing. His heart beat faster.

‘I think you are more reasonable than your comrade. Though the choice is yours. Leave without fear of me if that is your will.’

Kavak stayed where he was. Everything Lauka Vai said was true. The tzaangor army was too big. The Colonnade’s height was not protection enough. There were horrors of the air accompanying the Arcanite cult. The siege would be long. It would be bitterly fought. But he could see no possible ending except defeat. He thought of his younger brother, still a youth, excited by the prospect of war, unable to imagine that he and the Colonnade were not immortal. Everything Kavak loved was in the city. The thought of its destruction was beyond bearing.

‘I would give my life to save my city,’ Kavak said.

‘Your life?’ Lauka Vai seemed to think this through. ‘Yes, your life. That will be asked of you. But not your destruction.’

The implications of the choice before him sank in. Kavak already knew what he was going to say. He put off his fate for a moment longer. ‘Why do you offer me this choice?’ he asked.

Lauka Vai looked off in the direction of the city. ‘The Colonnade exalts the purity of its mortal forms. Your people hunt mine whenever they can. They would purge us from Ghur, if they had the power, yet they are also a bulwark against Chaos. I have in mind a lesson for the lords of purity. I see in you the potential to be a tool of instruction.’ She turned her blank, yellow eyes back to Kavak. ‘I offer the chance now of possibly averting the destruction of the Colonnade. I offer you the power you need to be the city’s saviour. Do you accept?’

Acceptance ran contrary to all the teachings of the Colonnade. The Avengorii were anathema. He would be damning himself in the eyes of his family. He might also be saving everything he loved.

Something else worked at his soul. When he looked at Lauka Vai, he saw a monster, a thing of foul appetites, a grotesque malformation of the flesh. At the same time, he felt the need to take the knee before her. He trembled before the power of her presence. Nobility and monstrosity combined in the Mother of Nightmares in ways Kavak could not understand. He couldn’t even understand how he could see anything beyond horror in the creature before him.

‘I accept,’ Kavak said.

Without another word, Lauka Vai advanced on Kavak and seized him. The greatest terror he had ever known gripped him, terror that was sublime. Even before her fangs sank into his neck, he felt the dawning of worship.

The pain of transformation was another form of the sublime. He lost the weakness of his mortality, but he also lost his identity.

And now. Fifteen years later. Doom calls for the Colonnade again.

I became a monster to save it once.

He remembered how the reknitting of his bones and the flowing change of his flesh had maddened him with agony, agony that went on and on when Lauka Vai took him, still in the process of altering, to the Sascathran Desert and subjected him to the korak’hor ritual. He was not destroyed by the ordeal and had emerged a Vengorian Lord.

His new fealty was as absolute as the monstrosity of his new self. But he remembered what he had been. Lauka Vai had made certain of that, and she had sent him to save the city he no longer served. By then, the siege of the Colonnade had been underway. With Hevat Grask, and a small but powerful force of the Avengorii, he had attacked the rearguard of the tzaangor host. He had been so consumed by the fire of his becoming that he was barely aware of the other vampires.

The strike had served its purpose. The Avengorii caused enough destruction to sow disarray in the ranks of the tzaangors and give the Colonnade the chance it needed to gather its strength and defeat the Arcanite cult. At the time, the victory had existed only at the edges of Kavak’s consciousness. The pain and the loss and his new-found hunger had fuelled the fury of his attack. Hunger and massacre had consumed him. Full consciousness and lucidity did not return to him until well after the battle.

He had fulfilled his oath. He had saved his city, though it was lost to him.

Do you regret the price?

He recoiled from the question. He revelled in the power of his body. In Lauka Vai, he had a leader for whom he felt a love and loyalty that showed how shallow his devotion to the Colonnade had been. No lord of the city could hope to inspire as she did.

But Kavak could not face his own reflection.

He shook himself, stretched his wings and folded them again, as if he could shed unwelcome thoughts.

Lauka Vai was right. The fragments of Anvarheim would not let him go. They shaped his thoughts about the beastherd and the Colonnade. He was right about strategy. He was sure of that.

He was also sure that he was not yet completely free of his humanity.

Let the Colonnade fall. Then you’ll be free.

No. I can’t do that.

He jerked out of his reverie. He sniffed the air.

Someone is coming.

Chapter 6

Ten of the Freeguild Guard escorted Atella on her journey to the Sascathran Desert. They were less than three hours out from the Colonnade when they took their first casualty.

Beyond the city’s cultivated lands, the vegetation ran lush and wild. The trees here were not to be trusted. Many of them were thorners, indistinguishable at a distance from their immobile brethren. If approached too closely, their flexible thorns uncoiled from around the trunk, whipping out to hook prey and pull it back for the tree to devour. The thorners could be identified by the spiral striations faintly visible in their bark, the mark of the camouflaged barbs. Gavar Loeverin was watching closely for the thorners – so closely he didn’t pay enough attention to the ground at his feet, and he stepped onto the vine of a sawrose.

The attack was too fast for anyone to help. The vine snapped around Gavar’s ankle, jerked him off his feet and yanked him into the brush. The sawrose had been supine. Now the plant reared up, revealing its crimson flowers, each as wide as Atella’s forearm. Triumphant in their vicious beauty, they snapped down onto Gavar’s face, neck and chest. The teeth hidden by the petals ground against his chestplate, bored into his neck and tore his face off. He was dead in moments. Other sawroses stirred nearby, excited by the blood in the air.

The rest of Atella’s escort prepared to burn the thicket of carnivorous plants down. Their captain stopped them.

‘Don’t be fools,’ Fassar Guelstein said. ‘You’ll only bring worse down on us. There are predators in Ghur that do not fear fire. It is a siren’s call to them.’

The troops stepped back from the thicket and put away their flints and torches. Sharing a glare of hatred at the plants, they moved on, more cautiously, into the forest, which grew wilder and thicker.

Just before nightfall, as they made their way between towering, ancient trees, the ground started to shake beneath huge footfalls. Trees splintered and fell in the near distance. Something immense was approaching.

‘Take cover!’ Fassar hissed.

One of the men drew his bow.

‘Are you mad?’ Fassar said, shoving the man’s weapon down. ‘Can’t you hear it? This beast is too big to fight! Our only hope is to pass unnoticed.’

‘There!’ said Atella, pointing. A nearby tree had roots so enormous that they formed a V-shaped gully next to the twenty-foot-wide trunk. Atella and the guards jumped into the dark shelter and crouched next to the trunk, waiting.

The leviathan came into view to the left, smashing through the trees as though it were wading through tall grass. Atella winced as trunks came down, crashing to both sides of the hiding place. Even if the monster did not see them, it could crush them beneath its feet or with a shattered tree. The beast was bipedal and reptilian. It walked leaning forward, balanced by a tail that ended in a curved stinger. A rigid, horned neck frill extended behind a skull that was more than ten feet long.

The beast charged forward with a purpose. It had the scent of its prey. Atella gripped her sword, bracing for the moment the jaws gaped her way. But the monster thundered past the hidden party. The earth shook even harder, and the beast bellowed a challenge. It was answered by another roar, and a second monster appeared. It barrelled forward on all fours. It was lower at the shoulder but more massive in the body. Its entire head opened up like a webbed, clawed hand, its spine-covered, venomous tongue shooting out to grasp and poison its enemy.

The beasts collided, and the world trembled. The earth shifted beneath Atella. There was a sharp crack, and a wedge-shaped fissure ran up the trunk.

‘Run!’ Fassar ordered.

The party jumped over the roots and sprinted north, away from the warring beasts. More trees were felled, and Atella had to rush out of the way into thick underbrush, heedless of possible sawroses or other, smaller animal predators waiting to pounce on the leavings of the victor.

Behind, the giants thrashed, tearing themselves and the forest apart. The roars hammered Atella’s ears. She couldn’t hear herself as she ran.

Someone was screaming, and they were almost inaudible. Near her, one of the younger guards yelled, ‘Are they chasing us? Are they chasing us? Are they chasing us?’

‘Shut up,’ Fassar snapped. ‘Save your breath and run.’

The party did not slow down for long minutes. At last, the ground felt stable again, though the snarls followed Atella for some distance yet.

Fassar called a halt for the night at a spot where the land rose sharply. The forest thinned a bit here, and the heaps of moss-strewn boulders offered some defensible positions and relative safety. The party made camp under an overhang. The air between the rocks was damp, and the night breeze chilled, but a fire was still too dangerous.

Atella drew her cloak tightly around her shoulders and leaned back against a stone. If sleep was beyond her grasp, she would at least try to rest.

Fassar crouched down beside her.

‘I am sorry about Gavar, captain,’ Atella said.

Fassar grunted. ‘Save your apologies for when we total all the dead this voyage of yours will have cost us.’

‘I do not want there to be any more. I really hope there won’t.’

‘Your hopes are all very well, councillor.’ From his tone, it was clear he was barely holding himself back from saying something far more biting. ‘The question is whether the sacrifices will be worth it.’

‘We’ll know before long,’ Atella said. ‘Once we reach the dunes.’

‘You really believe that?’ said Fassar. ‘You really believe in trying to forge this alliance?’

‘I would not be here if I didn’t. I would not be asking your guards to risk their lives.’

Fassar was silent.

‘You do not believe in this mission, I take it,’ said Atella.

‘I am following the orders of Lord Tarvynde. I will discharge my duty faithfully.’

‘A politic answer, Captain Guelstein. It tells me exactly where I stand. So let me be clear. I love the Colonnade as much as you do. My every action is dedicated to saving our city.’

‘By contaminating it.’

Atella sighed. ‘I am too tired to rehearse that argument yet again. Believe me, you are far from the first to raise it. I know I can’t convince you that you’re wrong, so I won’t try. Do me the courtesy, at least, of believing that you can’t change my mind any more than I can yours.’

‘I owe it to the Colonnade to try.’

‘And then what? We just go back? That really would make Gavar’s death pointless, wouldn’t it?’

‘Not if a tragedy was prevented. Any link between the Avengorii and the Colonnade would be a tragedy.’

The longer this conversation dragged on, the more exhausted Atella felt. ‘I am set on my course, captain. Nothing will turn me back from what I understand to be my duty. Only death will stop me.’ She gave him a hard stare. ‘I could easily suffer a misfortune along the way, though, couldn’t I? I could be killed and eaten by any number of predators. Who could prove otherwise when my escort returned, sorrowful, without me?’

‘Do not insult me,’ Fassar said stiffly.

‘I apologise. If you are insulted, then you are honourable. I said what I did to make a point. Killing me would be easier than trying to change my mind.’

Fassar stood up. ‘I will see you to your destination safely, Councillor Reigehren. On my honour.’

‘And on mine, I will save the Colonnade.’

The party lost another guard the next day, snatched from the ground by a forty-foot tree serpent. The deaths weighed heavily on Atella. She had been honest with Fassar, but knowing how much her escort resented the purpose of the mission made her feel even more guilty. When they reached the Sascathran Desert the following evening, she was grateful the losses hadn’t been worse, but felt no relief.

The forest thinned quickly as the ground became drier, finer. The transition was still abrupt, the trees ending suddenly before the ocean of sand. The land was moving when the party arrived at the edge of the desert. Fassar raised a hand, calling a halt until the new change was over. Dunes shifted like snakes. The sand flowed in great hissing whispers. The light of far Azyr shone in the night, and the sand glowed a faint grey. When the desert settled and the movement stopped, Atella could see a fair distance into the dunes. Some miles off, there were rock structures just visible.

‘Wait here for me,’ she said to Fassar.

‘You don’t intend to go on alone?’

‘I do.’

‘My duty–’

‘Will be to see me safely home when I return. If we venture into the lands of the Avengorii like this, we will look like a party of war.’ If a suicidally foolish one. ‘I stand a better chance of being listened to if I am alone.’

‘I took a vow to protect you,’ Fassar insisted.

‘Against an army? Because that is what we have come to find.’

Fassar shook his head. ‘You are mad.’

‘Perhaps. If I do not return within two days, you must assume my madness has led to my death, and return to the Colonnade.’

Atella turned and headed off into the sands. Once she crossed the first dune, she felt completely alone and strangely at peace. There were a hundred ways she could die without accomplishing what she had set out to do. She was taking a huge risk in leaving her escort behind. She had no idea how far she would have to journey before she found the Avengorii, or if she ever would. But she was not dragging the others any further on her fool’s errand. And she felt safer in the openness of the desert after the forest. The feeling was an illusion. She knew that. Yet it persisted, and she forged on, perversely cheerful, at ease with her decision.

Atella walked for hours, the night growing colder. The rock formations gradually drew closer. Sometime before dawn, she saw movement on the tops of the huge arches and craggy spires.

If I see them, they’ll have seen me.

They? What are they?

She didn’t know. She didn’t even know if she hoped she had found the Avengorii. There was nothing reassuring in the silhouettes. She was too far away to make them out, but their lines disturbed her.

She slowed down. An instinct made her look up, and she saw a winged shape flying above her. It dropped like a striking raptor, and she froze. The monster came down a few yards before her, its impact hurling a burst of sand skyward.

The vampire loomed over her, tail twitching dangerously. The claws of his forelegs scraped the sand in hunger, and beneath the menacing shape of his helm his jaws were parted, dark saliva oozing from his fangs.

I’m going to die. My quest was for nothing. Atella put her hand on her sword, ready to fight though she knew she could not win, and knowing that if she drew her weapon first, she would ensure her doom.

Something came over the vampire. It was as if, Atella thought, a greater force than his need to kill took hold, and commanded him. He folded his wings and tilted his head, looking at her with curiosity.

She did not recoil. Somehow, she sensed that it was important not to. The monster was hideous and had to know the effect of his appearance on mortals, but the way he held himself suggested a core of pride.

And there was more. The pride was justified. She responded to it on a level that surprised and confused her, as if she were in the presence of nobility embodied by monstrosity. Over the years, Atella had read all that she could find in the archives of the Colonnade about the Avengorii. The dynasty of nightmares so close to the city had fascinated her, especially since the siege, though she was not sure why. There was not a lot that was known, or that she felt she could trust, but she knew that the creature before her was a Vengorian Lord.

‘Who are you?’ said the vampire. The rasp of the voice sent a shudder through her soul.

‘I am Councillor Atella Reigehren of the Colonnade.’

‘Reigehren,’ the vampire repeated, as if tasting the name and finding it familiar. ‘I am Kavak, and I wonder why a councillor would leave the Diamond Spire to wander the Sascathran Desert.’

‘I come to find the Avengorii.’

‘You have found us. To what end?’

‘Negotiation.’

‘Really?’ Kavak’s red eyes glinted in the darkness. He seemed amused. ‘You come to negotiate with monsters. What is it you wish to discuss?’

‘My hope is to forge an alliance between the Avengorii and the Colonnade.’

Kavak tilted his head back and roared with laughter at the skies. The gales of harsh, grinding mirth went on and on. Then he looked back at Atella. ‘You will forgive me. I laugh at the whims of fate.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Perhaps you will soon. You are a brave mortal, or a foolish one, to seek us out, never mind for such a reason.’

‘I do this because I must.’

Kavak’s head tilted to the side, almost as if he were listening to something from afar. Then he seemed to approve. ‘If you would negotiate with the Avengorii, then you must speak with the Mother of Nightmares.’

Atella found she could not swallow. Lauka Vai. There were whispers of her in the Colonnade, whispers that were hushed as soon as they began. She was the legend that fascinated and terrified, the story that must not be told but could not be ignored. When Atella had conceived of her plan, she had suppressed the thought of who might be facing her. The idea of meeting the myth from the night was a thought too far. It could not be contemplated safely. Now the reality was closing in.

‘I…’ Atella said, struggling to speak.

‘Can you?’ Kavak asked, curious.

She cleared her throat and did her best to push down her fear. ‘I can do whatever I am called upon to do to save my city.’

‘Ah,’ said Kavak. ‘Ah, yes.’ For a long moment, he appeared lost in thought. ‘Tell me, councillor,’ he said, ‘does time move in cycles, or in spirals?’

‘Spirals?’ She didn’t know what he was talking about.

‘The echoes can be deafening. They are now.’

Baffled, Atella said nothing.

‘You find me cryptic. The fault is mine.’ Kavak crouched before her. ‘I will take you to Lauka Vai,’ he said. ‘You have my word that no harm will come to you until you stand before her. After that, your fate lies in her hands.’

‘I understand, and you have my thanks.’

‘The journey will require trust. Will you grant it?’

Atella took a breath. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then climb on my back and hold fast.’

Atella hesitated. She felt more and more that she had fallen into a dark dream. Reality felt distant, uncertain, and maybe that was why she found the courage to do what Kavak said. She was grateful for his armour, so that her hands did not touch vampire flesh.

She held on, and Kavak leapt into the air. He flew north, towards a massive tower of rock. Huge shapes on its peak spread their wings and bellowed in welcome. Flights of bats took off from within the caves pockmarking the flanks of the tower, and a storm cloud of wings surrounded Kavak and Atella as they flew towards one of them. Atella looked straight ahead, forcing herself not to flinch as the swarms flapped around her, the night itself broken up into a million wings and chittering shrieks.

Kavak soared into the cave. It was dark here, except for a faint phosphorescence emanating from some of the bodies clinging to the walls. Atella had a blurred impression of shapes her mind could not properly encompass, as if she were rushing through a tunnel of nightmares still forming. Then Kavak descended a long shaft, and when they emerged, she saw the city of the Avengorii.

She did gasp now, in shock and wonder. Torches and glowing fungi lit the immense cavern. It was so vast, she could not see its far walls. A legion of monsters filled the honeycomb of smaller cave mouths. Fortresses hung from its ceiling, their towers as twisted as they were majestic. Atella imagined the great and the mighty of the Colonnade condemning the world beneath the dunes as a disgusting inversion of their city. Where the Colonnade held itself above Ghur and its bestial nature of claw and blood, this cavern was lower than the beasts, its denizens the embodied horrors of an appetite that refused to end even with death.

That view was wrong. Atella knew it at once. It was the Colonnade that was the inversion. This dominion was far greater than the Colonnade, the construction far older, the truths expressed in stone more profound.

A zombie dragon crossed paths with them as Kavak banked towards the largest of the fortresses. The huge creature turned to fly beside them. Streamers of rotten flesh clung to the dragon’s skull. Empty eye sockets regarded Atella, curious about the tiny prey that had been brought into the heart of death. The zombie dragon veered off just as Kavak reached the main gate of the keep.

Atella’s sense of perspective kept tumbling. The fortress looked upside down, but when Kavak landed inside the entrance hall and she dismounted from his back, she was not standing on its ceiling. Vampires did hang from the ribbed vault, though. She looked at them, then looked quickly away before she began to stare. There were shapes that resembled humans, but they were mixed with parts of beasts. Strange forms rustled as if they could feel her eyes, and she lowered her gaze to Kavak.

‘Stay close,’ he said. ‘If you do not wish to become prey.’

Atella nodded her thanks. Kavak marched swiftly down the hall and disappeared in its gloom. Atella ran to keep up. Above her, things whispered and stirred. Words and guttural snarls were one, and she could not tell them apart.

Kavak ushered her down the halls and staircases of the fortress, and into the throne room. Vengorian Lords lined the chamber, the nightmares come to attend their queen. Most of them had some semblance of the human form from the waist up. From the waist down, like Kavak, they were reptiles, and they were immense bats. There was every variation of patchwork limbs, and claws. Ravenous faces watched her, waiting for her judgement of revulsion, waiting to feast if their queen released them.

Atella kept her expression neutral and her breathing as steady as she could. The Vengorian Lords did not need to worry about her looking at them with horror. Her gaze was held by their queen.

Atella felt dizzy, her senses overwhelmed by Lauka Vai’s presence. The amalgamation of creatures below her waist made darkness uncoil in Atella’s mind. Chilled, Atella realised that Lauka Vai was not going to inspire new nightmares. She was the source of all the nightmares Atella had ever had. But from the waist up, she was the warrior queen. Power surrounded her. It radiated from her. Physical power, and magical. The power to lead and the power to inspire.

Inspire.

Nightmares and loyalty. Terror and worship. Horror and exultation. Lauka Vai commanded all those things, and there was no distinction between them.

It took all of her will for Atella to remember why she was here, and not fall on her knees. As it was, she bowed her head. She could not do otherwise before such a being.

Strangely, she was glad for the presence of Kavak beside her.

‘We have been told why you are here, Councillor Atella Reigehren,’ said the Mother of Nightmares. ‘But I will hear it from your own lips.’

‘I have come in the hopes of forging an alliance between the Colonnade and the Avengorii.’

A susurrus of whispering ran through the throne room. Lauka Vai raised a hand and silenced it. Her will whipped through the chamber, and Atella felt it, a force as real as chains. It was the reason the Avengorii were not feasting on her blood. It was the source of the commands that directed Kavak. If it was turned on her, Atella believed she would burst into flames.

‘Did I not tell you that your moment had come, Kavak?’ said Lauka Vai.

‘You did, my queen.’

‘And what do you hope?’

‘I hope you will look kindly upon Councillor Reigehren’s proposal.’

Atella was startled. She wondered how she came to have an ally before negotiations had even begun.

The Mother of Nightmares smiled, and her smile birthed terrors. To Atella, she said, ‘I wonder why we should consider an alliance. The Colonnade has never been a friend to the Avengorii. We have memories of the monster hunts. Your fellow citizens have often sought to purge us from the regions the city claims as its own.’

‘I know they have,’ said Atella.

‘The past may demand reckonings,’ said Kavak. ‘But none as great as what the future threatens.’

‘You are fortunate,’ Lauka Vai said to Atella. ‘You had an advocate for your cause before you arrived, and I have already been thinking about the wisdom of an alliance. I concede its value against the beastmen.’

The vampire nobles stirred again. The back of Atella’s neck burned with the heat of their outrage.

‘However,’ Lauka Vai said, quieting her subjects again. ‘However. The Avengorii will not be the Colonnade’s army by proxy.’

‘I would never suggest that you should be.’

The pupil-less eyes studied her. Atella felt as if she no longer possessed any secrets.

‘No,’ said Lauka Vai, ‘I believe you wouldn’t suggest it. Equally, I believe that others intend precisely that outcome. There are terms that must be agreed upon. You will return to the Colonnade with my ambassador. The advocate you did not know you had.’

Kavak bowed before his queen.

Atella turned to him. ‘Will you tell me why you want this alliance?’

Lauka Vai answered for him. ‘You shouldn’t be surprised,’ she said to Atella. ‘Kavak still bears traces of the Anvarheim he was.’

‘Anvarheim?’ Atella croaked.

‘The Colonnade was once my home,’ Kavak said. ‘I became what I am so that I could save her, once.’

‘Anvarheim,’ Atella said again. ‘It was Jaras Anvarheim who warned us about Orgo.’

‘Jaras?’ Kavak hissed. ‘He was with the caravan?’

‘He was,’ said Atella. ‘He is…’ she began, but stopped. It was not her place to finish.

‘He is my brother,’ said Kavak, his rasp resonant with deep pain.

Chapter 7

It was day when Kavak flew Atella back to her escort at the edge of the Sascathran Desert. In the skies, the darkness of the Avengorii travelled with him, the dark clouds, heavy with blackened blood, shielding him from the light of Hysh. He landed a dozen yards away from the mortals, then took off again as soon as Atella was on the ground. There was no point in giving the guards a chance to react badly before she could speak to them.

Kavak flew low over the canopy of the forest, hunting. He struck down, landing on the back of a tusked predator almost as large as a terrorgheist. He ripped the animal’s throat open and tore out its spine. It slammed to the ground, dead, eyes wide with incomprehension. Its blood clotted at Kavak’s touch, and he gorged on it. Then he shot between the trees, already resuming his hunt. He needed to be fully in control of himself when he arrived at the Colonnade and faced what waited for him there. He had to dampen down his hunger as much as possible, without hunting so much that he gave in to the frenzy of the kill.

It occurred to him, as he took down a six-legged reptile that had been following the scent of the mortals, that he was clearing the way through the forest for Atella and her escort.

They will not thank you for your efforts.

She might.

He wasn’t sure why he took pleasure in reminding himself of that fact.

And she would be alone. As she will be at the Colonnade. Make no mistake. What do we think we will accomplish?

The destruction of Orgo and his beastherd. That is the goal. No one believes any alliance will last a moment beyond that. I don’t believe it will.

Do you hope it will?

That would be pointless. Why would I?

The answers were obvious. Thinking about them was futile. They were only a source of pain, and there was enough pain to anticipate as it was.

He was returning to the Colonnade. The impossible was going to take place. Kavak had made his choice fifteen years ago, knowing that his return could never happen. He had paid the price willingly, knowingly.

Sated from the blood of his latest kill, he flew straight up, above the trees, and circled slowly over the mortals, watching their progress.

He had never wished to return. He had found his home as one of the Avengorii. He owed fealty to Lauka Vai, not Lord Tarvynde, and in the Mother of Nightmares he had found a leader greater than any mortal.

But he was going back.

His return did not feel like a gift.

He dreaded it.

They were making good time through the forest. Kavak had left a trail of destruction, and it was one that the party could use. The vegetation had withered at his passage. The dead ground was easier to walk on; the dangerous plants were at a distance and clearer to spot.

‘Are you satisfied, councillor?’ Fassar asked. ‘Is this what you wanted?’

‘A real chance to save the city from the beastherd heading for it? Yes, captain, that is what I wanted.’ She was tempted to avoid arguing with him at all. But this was a rehearsal of the debates she would have to engage in when they returned. She might as well use Fassar to prepare herself for Tarvynde and the council.

And all the rest of the Colonnade.

No, she could not convince everyone. Those in power would have to be enough.

‘But one of the Avengorii within our walls…’ said Fassar.

‘What miracles did you think I could work?’ Atella asked him. ‘Did you think the Avengorii would agree, without any further negotiation, to bypass the Colonnade and do our fighting for us?’

‘I did not ask for their aid at all,’ Fassar reminded her.

‘Our pride will be our destruction if we are not careful.’

‘A lack of vigilance will be as well.’

‘A single vampire will enter the Colonnade,’ said Atella. ‘One. Hardly a threat to the might of the Maelstrom of Light. Or to the Freeguild, or am I mistaken?’

Fassar refused the bait. ‘One vampire may not be a direct threat to the city,’ he said calmly. ‘But it will not end with one. Soon there will be more. And then there will be too many. And then we are lost.’

‘We are lost without them,’ said Atella.

They reached the site of one of Kavak’s kills. He had butchered the creature, spreading its huge carcass over an acre of forest. Clotted, scabbed blood stank in pools. A foul rain had fallen here, killing the trees. Their branches hung with dead leaves. A few yards away, a cluster of sawroses was heaped on the ground, rotting.

‘Our return is already easier than our journey out, isn’t it?’ Atella said.

‘Easier? To walk through death? Easier?’

‘Death is always your companion, captain.’ Kavak’s grating voice came from overhead, startling them both. He was perched twenty feet up, in the branches of a tree just off the trail. ‘You owe it more than you think.’

Fassar jerked his head away, his face contorting with hate.

The Vengorian Lord stayed on his perch, this time not giving the party the gift of his absence.

The return journey took several hours less than the outward trek, and the party arrived at the Colonnade’s lands in the middle of the next day, under the shadow of the blood-laden clouds. The labourers were out in the fields, and they fled, screaming, when they saw Kavak. He had landed next to Atella’s escort as soon as the forest ended, and walked level with them, just far enough away to avoid being a direct threat but close enough so that he would be seen by others to be part of the same group. Atella detached herself from the guards, putting herself between them and Kavak.

They followed the trail of frightened shrieks towards the Colonnade. As they came into bowshot, Fassar called a halt. One of the other guards lifted a horn and blew. The note sounded, clear and pure and strong. It was the call of return and of victory. Kavak hissed softly in amusement. The captain and his troops looked anything but pleased with their victory. Kavak’s satisfaction was petty. He acknowledged it. He also knew that pleasures of any kind would be few for him today.

You are right to look grim, captain. This return doesn’t feel like a victory for me either, and I have been gone much longer than you.

Atella came up to him. ‘Now it is my turn to ask for your trust. Will you stay here until you are called?’

‘You must prepare the way for me,’ said Kavak sardonically.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘exactly. Without irony.’

‘I wish you luck, councillor. You will have need of it.’

‘I will try not to keep you waiting long.’

‘Thank you.’ He cocked his head. ‘Are you going to swear that I will not be harmed?’

She hesitated. ‘I swear that I will do everything I can to prevent any acts of folly on the part of my fellow citizens.’

‘A wise and politic answer.’

Atella sighed. ‘It is not the assurance I would choose to give.’

‘I would not have believed you if you had been more categorical. Remember that I know the Colonnade. My ties to the city are all but broken. My memories are not. Will you do me a favour, though?’

‘If I can.’

‘Speak to my brother. There is no easy way to tell him about me. But speak to him first, before I arrive. If you can.’

‘I will try.’

‘In return, I promise not to tear the city down if some sentinel is reckless with a bow.’

Atella smiled. It had been a long time since Kavak had seen a mortal smile. It delighted him to see her do it. ‘I seem to be in your debt,’ she said, ‘whether on the threshold of your city or mine.’

‘Clever of me to arrange that, isn’t it?’

She was still smiling when she left him.

Word of Atella’s return spread quickly through the Colonnade. Jaras hurried down to the Pillar and Sickle as soon as he heard. It was Bennor who brought the news to him, along with stories of people fleeing from the work in the fields. She had brought a Vengorian Lord with her. That was worse than Jaras had feared, and better than he had hoped. She had proven his every warning right. Dragging Bennor along with him, he made for the tavern to reinforce his message to whoever was there.

Though it was still only afternoon, the Pillar and Sickle was crowded with labourers who had fled directly from the fields to the temporary comfort of ale and company. Jaras didn’t have to say a thing when he entered.

‘You told us!’ a woman shouted. ‘You told us!’

Others took up the cry, their faces creased with fear. They gathered around him as if he were a prophet. People were looking to him for guidance. It was a new sensation, and it wasn’t unpleasant, in spite of the circumstances. He was angry too, and he was frightened. But responsibilities were gathering on his shoulders, and he promised himself he would be worthy of them.

‘What do we do?’ Bennor asked.

‘We stay vigilant,’ Jaras said, aware of how inadequate a response that was. He tried harder. ‘We stay united. The day may come that we will have to act if our rulers refuse to do their duty.’

Now his words had gone from the inadequate to the dangerous. His heart beat faster. He was afraid of what he had just said. He was also glad he had said it, because it was the truth. He held his breath in the silence that fell in the tavern. Everyone else was just as aware of the risk he had taken. The safe thing would be for them to condemn him, perhaps report him to the Freeguild.

Instead, there were careful nods and murmurs of agreement. Flagons were rapped against tables in approval.

Then the door to the tavern flew open and the guards were there.

Jaras’ heart stopped.

‘Jaras Anvarheim?’ one of the two guards said, looking at him.

‘Yes,’ he croaked.

‘Lord Tarvynde sends us. You are commanded to join the council as it greets the Avengorii ambassador.’

Not what he had expected to hear. Why me? he thought, but did not say, in case the order was rescinded. It was clear why he had been asked to testify about what he had experienced before the council. Being part of this delegation was far more confusing. His family might have had some influence once, but it had never been part of the nobility, never part of the Colonnade’s inner circles of power. He could think of no reason why he was wanted.

Not that he had any intention of refusing. He was becoming the centre of things in the Beneath, and now he was going to be at the centre in the Above, too. There were intimations of destiny here, and he welcomed them.

‘I will come at once,’ he said.

The guards nodded and stepped out of the tavern. Jaras started to follow, then paused in the doorway. He looked back at the frightened people. ‘I will be vigilant too,’ he promised.

Anxious faces nodded in understanding. He would be the eyes of the Beneath. He would tell the people the truth.

All the way to the castle square, Jaras worked at the puzzle of his summons. Was this an attempt to silence him? Did Tarvynde know what he had been doing in the Beneath? Until today, he had been circumspect after his initial condemnation of Atella Reigehren’s mission. He had hoped it would be a failure. He was surprised she had survived the journey, let alone been successful. Whatever his views, though, this invitation didn’t make sense as a way to silence him. An arrest, yes. Greeting an ambassador, no.

Ambassador. So that was the word being used for the monster. What a corruption of language. Jaras didn’t think he could even compose a satire about it. The perversion was beyond mockery. It should make anyone who employed it cower in shame. And Atella, the traitor, should be hung from the battlements.

He saw her when they reached the square. She was standing with Lord Tarvynde and Lord-Celestant Uxa Dawnbolt in the centre, facing north. The rest of the council formed a semicircle around them. Behind the council were rows of the Freeguild Guard. Behind them towered a score of the Maelstrom of Light’s Liberators.

Jaras wondered where he would be standing. To his shock, the guards led him to the centre of the square.

Atella looked as if she wanted to speak to him, but as soon as he arrived, Tarvynde raised his arm. In answer to the signal, a row of guards blew into their fanfare trumpets. The heraldic blast filled Jaras’ heart with pride and dread. He stood tall to hear the sound of what the Colonnade embodied. He feared the sight of the thing that would answer.

Atella was saying something to him. He could not hear her over the fanfare. He stared away from the traitor and looked towards the walls.

The trumpets sounded. The summons was unmistakeable, and Kavak launched himself into the air. It was a long, vertical flight past the huge pillars of the city, though it was not as long as he had remembered. The ground was rising again, he guessed.

He shot up above the walls. Even under the dark clouds, the white stone of the Colonnade shone with aggressive purity. The Diamond Spire dazzled. This was what he had sacrificed himself to save, and it was part of the further irony of the day of his return that though he did not regret the cost, what he saw now did not seem worth the price. The city’s beauty was an artifice and nothing more. It was the creation of pride and the source of pride, a shallow, brittle circularity.

Why would I want to return?

Because Lauka Vai wishes it. Because I am the agent of the lesson she will teach this proud city. The beastlord Orgo will fall before the combined might of the Avengorii and the Colonnade. But the Colonnade will not come out of this unchanged.

In the square before the castle gates, the glory of the Colonnade had been arrayed to greet him. He circled the square, descending gradually, trying to read the political battlefield laid out below him. A point was being made with the splendour of the delegation. The Freeguild in its parade colours was not here to welcome the return of a lost comrade, though Kavak had no doubt they knew who he was. No, Tarvynde and his councillors had commanded this display as a declaration of intent and of identity. We are the Colonnade. We are pure. We are strong. Know your place.

It occurred to him that Atella, perhaps, had a different intent. She knew, and appeared to understand, what he had done for the city. She might wish the fanfare to be a welcome and not a warning. He thought this might well be true.

He flew lower, slowing down, making ready to land. He saw Jaras in the centre of the square, looking up with hatred and fear.

Does he know?

Atella was gesturing, trying to get Jaras’ attention and failing.

He doesn’t know.

He circled one more time, bracing himself to be among these creatures of blood and flesh. So much prey below him. So much blood to take. His frame vibrated with the need to dive into the Colonnade and slaughter until the streets ran crimson. He tensed, fighting the instincts of frenzy. Lauka Vai’s will was with him. It reached him from the Sascathran Desert, and gave him the strength he needed to hold back the impulse to kill.

He came down. He landed a few yards from the four figures in the centre of the square. The Lord-Celestant wore her helm, its impassive silver face giving away nothing of her thoughts. Her warhammer was sheathed, a signal that she did not consider him a threat but that she could deal with him if he chose to make himself one. Jaras looked as if it was taking him a heroic effort not to break and run. Atella’s expression, by contrast, was one of sorrow and apology. And Tarvynde…

Tarvynde was imperious, the man elevated above all other citizens of the city elevated above all Ghur. His eyes were cold, the corners of his mouth turned down in ill-concealed contempt. Kavak sensed an air of triumph in him too.

Why is he pleased? Be wary.

Tarvynde took a step forward. ‘You know me,’ he said, ‘because you know the Colonnade.’

Kavak bowed to the creature of meat, holding back his snarl and taking the formal high ground. ‘That is true,’ he said. ‘I remember you well, Lord Tarvynde.’

The assembled councillors, already uneasy, now murmured in confusion. Tarvynde turned to them. ‘The Avengorii have sent as their ambassador a former son of the Colonnade,’ he said.

Kavak saw what Tarvynde was doing. He was reminding the councillors that new information would always come to him first. He would always know more than they would.

‘This is Kavak Anvarheim,’ Tarvynde announced. He turned to Jaras. ‘Your brother has returned.’

Jaras swayed. The horror on his face was so pure, so complete, that Kavak could not look at him.

Jaras collapsed, unconscious.

Chapter 8

Atella climbed the stairs of the castle’s south-west tower. The views through the narrow windows alternated between the late-evening gloom of the land beyond the Colonnade and the Diamond Spire, glittering in the glow cast by the great signal light at its peak. At the top of the stairs, she reached a short hall. Two guards were stationed outside the door at its far end. She greeted them, then said, ‘Has our guest asked for anything?’

‘Guest,’ one of the guards spat. ‘Is that what he is?’

‘Yes,’ said Atella. ‘A guest. Why? Did you think he was a prisoner? Do you think a Vengorian Lord would be stopped by that door?’ Or by you? She let the unspoken question hang in the air.

‘He hasn’t asked for anything,’ the guard said after a moment, sounding sullen and noticeably more nervous.

‘Then if you’ll excuse me…’ Atella said, and stepped towards the door.

‘We will escort you,’ the other guard said.

‘You will not,’ she told him.

The guard looked horrified. ‘You shouldn’t be in there alone.’

Atella laughed. ‘I have already been alone with the ambassador. Him, I am inclined to trust,’ she said pointedly.

The guards stepped aside. Their glares spoke volumes, which she ignored.

Atella entered the chamber and closed the door behind her. Inside, Kavak was coiled near the window. His long body took up a large portion of the space, though he could fly out the arched window if he chose to. The furniture had been removed from the chamber, leaving it bare. For someone without wings, it would have been a prison.

Atella looked around. ‘I hesitate to ask if you are comfortable,’ she said.

‘My needs in the Colonnade are few. These walls are dark and without polish. That pleases me. This space is perfectly adequate for my purposes.’

‘Have you…’ She wasn’t sure how to frame the question. How did one enquire of a vampire as to whether they had dined, or been offered something to eat?

Kavak took pity on her. ‘Have I hunted?’ he finished. ‘Yes, I have.’ Her unease must have shown, because he added, ‘In the forest. For animal blood.’

Atella nodded, relieved. ‘I came to apologise,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For not speaking to Jaras before you arrived.’

‘I saw you try.’

‘I should have tried harder.’

Kavak waved a hand, dismissing concerns and griefs of small import. ‘In the end, I don’t think it would have made much difference.’

‘I also want to apologise for this,’ said Atella, indicating the bare stone of the chamber. ‘Your needs aside, this is unacceptable discourtesy.’

Kavak grinned. There was no way for the expression not to look predatory, but Atella understood no threat was intended. ‘What use would I have of luxury?’ he asked. ‘The truth is, this amuses me. Are your fellow citizens pretending to themselves that I am their prisoner?’

‘It seems that they need to.’

‘Would I be right in guessing the decision to make this my quarters was a complicated one?’

That made Atella laugh. ‘You would be right. It shames me how right you would be.’

‘Tell me.’

‘The council would have preferred to see you caged in the lowest region of the Beneath.’ Her cheek twitched in anger as she thought of the debate, and how close things had come to the entire point of the negotiations being forgotten. Her success was being treated as a crisis, the impending threat of Orgo all but ignored. ‘But you are an ambassador, and the council has, thankfully, been unable to forget that completely. Much to its dismay.’

‘I flew under the Colonnade a short while ago. The Beneath has grown in my absence, and not changed for the better. It is even more of a warren. It would be very hard to keep track of me down there.’

‘That is, precisely, why you are here. Your chamber in this tower provides a comforting illusion of containment.’

‘That illusion can have its uses,’ said Kavak. ‘I will choose to be grateful for whatever advances the negotiations, or at least does nothing to hinder them.’

‘I will try to think the same,’ Atella said. ‘I will take my leave, then, and see you in the morning, when your trials will begin in earnest.’

‘Thank you for coming,’ said the vampire. ‘I enjoy speaking with you.’

‘I was in need of sensible conversation myself,’ Atella admitted. Their exchange, so anodyne, felt disconcertingly weighty.

‘Then please, stay a bit longer.’

She stayed, not in spite of Kavak’s monstrosity, but because of it. She stayed because the transcendence of horror that she had experienced in the presence of Lauka Vai lingered with her. The transcendence surpassed any experience she had ever had. She found that she needed that sense of something vast, something that made the Colonnade and its pretentions seem small. She had been raised in the Colonnade’s culture of purity, but ever since the siege, she had grown more and more disenchanted with it. The Avengorii, in their very being, were a repudiation of the Colonnade’s teachings, and they embodied something that was a different, stronger, more absolute purity. It pulled her. It called to her.

So she stayed, bathing in the reality of the monstrous.

In the morning, the council met with the ambassador from the Avengorii Dynasty.

If he had stretched his wings, Kavak would have taken up so much of the centre of the council chamber that the councillors seated on both sides of him would have felt he was reaching for them. There would still have been a few yards of distance, but it was easy to gauge the effect he would have. The temptation to indulge in it was there. Do you fear me, mortals? You should. I could show you why. But no. This was not the time or the place. He suppressed hunger and anger, and kept his wings folded tightly against his body, containing the threat of his presence as much as he could.

There was nothing he could do about his voice, though. A shudder swept through the merchants and the nobles as he began to speak. ‘I will begin by stating the obvious before any of us tries to suggest otherwise,’ he said. ‘Neither the Avengorii nor the Colonnade have, or should have, any illusions about what we are attempting. This is not an alliance that comes naturally. It is, though, a necessary one. Councillor Reigehren believes this. So do I.’

‘Councillor Reigehren has spoken persuasively,’ said Tarvynde, sounding less persuaded than Kavak would have preferred.

‘I’m glad she has,’ said Kavak. ‘Because she is telling us all an important truth. The threat of the Orgo beastherd is real. We must fight it together.’ He paused. ‘Let me repeat. Together. The Avengorii will not be the tools of the Colonnade. Our forces must stand side by side.’

‘Of course they will,’ said Tarvynde irritably, his honour offended.

‘Then we are in agreement so far. I am encouraged, Lord Tarvynde. Permit me to point out a second obvious, and equally relevant, fact. This will not be the only such threat in this region.’

Silence. Atella was nodding. She understood. The rest of the council was frowning, suspecting a trap.

‘You are implying something,’ said Tarvynde. ‘Make it plain, ambassador.’ He did not try to hide how much it pained him to use that title. At least he was looking directly at Kavak. Most of the other councillors were either averting their gaze or staring at him with revolted fascination.

‘I shall be clear,’ Kavak said. ‘I was merely establishing first principles for what I will now say. Lauka Vai has commanded me to deliver the following terms. If this is to be an alliance, it will be a real one. The legions of the Avengorii will come. They will base themselves outside the Colonnade while we prepare our combined assault on Orgo.’

‘That is no different from what we expected,’ Tarvynde said, looking relieved.

‘I am not finished. Lauka Vai will enter the city.’ He paused so the collective intake of breath he had expected did not drown out his next words. ‘And there will be a permanent Avengorii delegation within the walls of the Colonnade. A small one. No more than two of us.’ He stopped talking. It was time now to wait out the roars of outrage and horror.

When the wave of noise finally faded, Tarvynde spoke again. ‘That is unacceptable,’ he said, barely holding back his rage.

‘What do you propose instead?’

‘The obvious course of action. The Avengorii will remain outside the Colonnade. All of you. We will send our delegation to you in order to coordinate strategies. There is no need for your kind to take up residence here.’

Your kind. Kavak doubted that Tarvynde had even noticed using the insult. Atella had, though. She winced.

‘What you propose,’ Kavak said, ‘is an alliance of convenience. Your convenience.’

‘If that is not acceptable to the Avengorii, then there is little for us to talk about.’

Kavak struggled to hold his temper. Had Tarvynde been this arrogantly ignorant when Kavak had still been mortal and fighting for the city? ‘I said the alliance was necessary,’ Kavak said. ‘I believe that absolutely. I also know that it is more necessary for you than for the Avengorii. If the worst happens, can the Colonnade retreat from the advance of the beastmen? Can your pillars walk?’ Kavak swept his eyes over the council. Were they afraid yet of something other than him? They had better be. ‘I remember the lands of the Colonnade well. I know that they have risen recently. How much higher are they going to rise? Since you were willing to countenance Councillor Reigehren’s proposal at all, then you fear or know the worst.’

There was more shouting now, and at least one argument was breaking out in the council’s ranks. But the overwhelming majority was still against a permanent Avengorii presence in the Colonnade. Kavak said nothing, letting the currents of the debate flow. In the middle of the discussion, the door to the chamber opened and a Prosecutor of the Maelstrom of Light appeared. His armour was badly damaged, and he could barely walk. Dawnbolt rushed over to him, Tarvynde right behind her. The three spoke quietly, and then the injured Prosecutor withdrew. The Lord-Celestant and the lord of the Colonnade conferred with each other for a few moments. Tarvynde shook his head sharply and glanced significantly at Kavak. Dawnbolt was impassive, but carried the day. They returned to their seats, and with Tarvynde glowering at her, Dawnbolt addressed the council.

‘We have received tidings,’ she said, ‘of which the council must be made aware. They have a bearing on your discussions.’

Kavak noted the your. Dawnbolt was holding herself and the Maelstrom of Light aloof from the negotiations, even as she was intervening in the debate. He wondered what that meant. Had the Stormcast Eternals already decided what their course of action would be? I can’t see how they could do one thing and the Colonnade another. Dawnbolt was impossible to read, but Kavak watched Tarvynde even more closely. There were deep political currents here, and Lauka Vai would want to know which way they ran.

‘Skykeep has fallen to the beastherd,’ said Dawnbolt.

Her declaration was met with stunned silence, and then an uproar of shouted, frightened questions. Kavak said nothing, observed the panic, and thought it likely that Orgo had done much to move the negotiations forward.

When Tarvynde managed to restore order, Havol Torvassen asked, ‘How long until the beastherd reaches here?’

‘Six weeks,’ Dawnbolt told the general. ‘Maybe less.’

‘And the land rises,’ Atella said, seizing the moment. ‘What is the projection there? When will it reach the height of the columns?’

All eyes turned to Baveth Ullior.

‘Soon,’ said Baveth. ‘My charts are not yet complete. But not much more than a month, if that.’

‘Then,’ Dawnbolt said, ‘I suggest you make your peace with necessity, Lord Tarvynde.’

Tarvynde glowered at Kavak for a long moment before he answered. ‘I will not dispute the Lord-Celestant’s wisdom,’ he said. ‘The Colonnade accepts the terms of Lauka Vai.’

The roars from the councillors began again, but Dawnbolt silenced them, and now she turned to Kavak. ‘The peace must be kept,’ she warned, her voice as calm as ever, but with the threat of a storm behind it. ‘Lauka Vai must be true to her word. You do not want us as enemies.’

Kavak bristled. Will you repeat those words to Lauka Vai? he wanted to say. He caught the look of hope on Atella’s face, and he relented. And then, looking again at Tarvynde, he saw a glint of satisfaction in the man’s eyes, a trace he was unable to conceal.

Things clicked into place. Tarvynde, Kavak realised, had always known that he had no choice but to accept the Avengorii’s terms. He had performed a charade of rejection for the benefit of his council. Their horror at the idea of the monstrous Avengorii staining the purity of the Colonnade was a mirror of the revulsion of the citizens at large. Tarvynde had established that he was of the same mind. He was, Kavak thought, seeking to forestall a rebellion against his rule. The blame for the agreement would fall on the Maelstrom of Light, beings so removed from the mortal that they could not be expected to understand what they were forcing on the city, and beings so powerful that no one would dare fight against their decree.

Did you play a willing part in this charade, Lord-Celestant? How much do you know or care of the Colonnade’s political games?

Tarvynde was less of a fool than Kavak had thought. He was also more dangerous.

The worst of Kavak’s anger passed, but it did not vanish. Just as he understood Tarvynde better, he looked forward with greater anticipation to the lesson Lauka Vai would teach the city. The Colonnade’s arrogance of purity was an obscenity, and deserved to be confronted by its worst fear.

‘The Avengorii will honour this agreement,’ Kavak vowed. ‘We look forward to our new relationship with the Colonnade.’

He kept his tone serious, but the words resounded with irony in his ears.

Chapter 9

Jaras sat at a corner table in the White Tauralon, nursing ale, grievance and grief. It was two days after the Vengorian Lord that had been his brother had left the Colonnade, four days since Tarvynde had said the words Kavak Anvarheim. The four days might as well have been four heartbeats ago. The pain, the hate and the anger were as fresh as the first stab of the knife, and they had only grown deeper.

The White Tauralon was a mid-terrace tavern and theatre. Its white marble columns and walls were garish with interlocking fronds of gold leaf. Residents of the lower terraces were drawn by the ostentatious luxury of its decor. Those from the upper terraces came to indulge in an atmosphere that was just seedy enough to be exciting. All were lured by the decadence of the spectacle.

The White Tauralon’s tables were on three levels. On the third, the most expensive seats were theatre boxes, and their patrons had the choice of anonymity or celebrity, sitting unseen at the rear of the boxes or making themselves visible for the entire establishment by leaning against their balconies. On the stage, the performances were dances, songs and short plays. Almost everything took the form of encomiums to the heroism of the Colonnade and the triumph of its philosophy of supremacy and purity. What was different in the White Tauralon’s approach to familiar subjects was its presentation. The costuming was excessive, a riot of colours and materials so overwhelming that at times the performers seemed to blend together, becoming an unbroken eruption of silks.

Then there was the portrayal of the Colonnade’s foes. The bestial and the enemies of purity paraded across the stage engaged in shameless, seductive corruption before they were righteously defeated. They were a sweaty indulgence, draped in the aura of the forbidden, an expression of everything the culture of the Colonnade had repressed, and so found fascinating as long as it was contained within a proscenium arch, and ultimately defeated by the representatives of virtue. The defenders of the Colonnade usually took the form of Freeguild guards, though sometimes the singers, dancers and actors portrayed the physical expression of the virtues themselves, and the performance became entirely symbolic.

But still very sweaty.

The White Tauralon was not an establishment that Jaras could frequent as a simple patron, not if he hoped to set anything aside and one day leave the Beneath. He earned some fragments of realmstone and drinks there as a bard, moving between the tables of the ground floor, performing songs in between the main events on the stage. He had been spending a lot of his time here since Atella’s return to the city. He showed his face in the Beneath enough to make it clear he had not gone into hiding, but he did not trust himself to say the right things to the people who were looking to him for answers and leadership. No one did that in the Above. He was merely an amusement. That gave him time alone with his thoughts.

His thoughts weren’t pleasant company, and they would not leave him alone.

He didn’t want to believe the creature was Kavak. But Tarvynde had declared that this was so, and the vampire had not denied it. And when, at the close of the formal greetings, the monster had turned towards Jaras as if he wanted to speak with him, Jaras had fled.

He might still have tried to tell himself that it was all a lie, a charade mounted for reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom, but why would the lord of the Colonnade and a horror of the Avengorii work together to torment someone so unimportant? Even so, he might have tried to believe this was somehow the case, and he might even have been successful, because the need to pretend that the monster was not his brother was that strong.

He might have been able to do this, if he had not heard the Vengorian Lord speak. It was the same voice he had heard the day of the caravan’s slaughter. It had sounded familiar then, despite its transformation into a harsh snarl, but he had dismissed the impression as a delusion. He couldn’t now. He recognised his brother’s voice.

Jaras had been too young to fight on the ramparts during the siege of the tzaangors. He had looked up to Kavak. He had invested his dreams of heroism in his brother. He had mourned Kavak when he had disappeared. He had held Kavak’s memory sacred, a hero fallen in the defence of his city. More than that, Kavak had died in defence of the ideals the city embodied. Jaras couldn’t remember when the Colonnade’s principles had become so important to him. He thought it might have been after the siege, after Kavak’s disappearance. The philosophy of the Colonnade gave his loss meaning, and his loss made the philosophy all the more crucial. He would do anything for the city. Just as he thought his brother had.

He should have despised Kavak’s memory. His brother was a traitor. Jaras couldn’t begin to imagine how a man who had exemplified the ideals of honour could turn against his duty and his identity in so foul a way. He didn’t want to imagine. After he fled the square, he hid in the Beneath, ducking into shelter whenever he heard the beating of wings. Kavak was looking for him, heedless of the terror his presence spread in the suspended streets.

Jaras’ instinct was to hide even after Kavak had departed the Colonnade. He overcame that quickly. That was the tiny sliver of pride he clung to. He couldn’t hide. If he did, he would surrender the Anvarheim name to ignominy. He would not do that. He would not let Kavak win. So he was present, in the Above and the Beneath. He let his grief and anger show.

When he was ready, he would return to his work in the Beneath. For the moment, he wasn’t sure what form it would take, or what he could say. If he was stoned to death for what his brother had done, he wouldn’t see it as an injustice.

In the Above, and in the White Tauralon, he was left to himself when he wanted to be. Because he was ignored, he heard rumours. Those were always useful to store away. And when he sang and drew attention to himself, he received sympathy as well as wine and ale. He chose his songs carefully. He set aside all satire for the moment. He performed old favourites, tunes that everyone knew and could sing with him. They were emotional songs, tragic tales of familial betrayal. Their relevance to his situation was obvious. Instead of hiding from his name’s disgrace, he embraced the tragedy, and was rewarded.

More than a few patrons bought him drinks. One who did every night was Ollam Reigehren, Atella’s younger brother. Jaras cultivated him. Ollam shared his sister’s red hair, and that was the only thing they had in common. Like Jaras, Ollam had been too young to fight in the siege, and the fact that he had yet to hold up his family’s tradition of protecting the city had left him with a permanent, pinched expression of embarrassed disappointment. He was quick to anger and quick to get drunk. He was rarely circumspect in his opinions when sober. When he was in his cups, not at all. Jaras had seen him in the White Tauralon often enough over the years, but they had never spoken until a few days ago. Since the return of Atella, he had become eager to have Jaras’ company, as if in response to a shared sense of familial betrayal.

This night, the White Tauralon was full. People were drinking hard, responding too boisterously to the stage show, and looking for reasons to fight. The atmosphere of simmering violence was something Jaras had never seen before in this establishment. But today, Lord Tarvynde had issued a proclamation. It set out the broad strokes of the agreement with the Avengorii, and it forbade anyone to speak against it. So the outrage and the fear had to find another outlet, and for many, whoever was closest would do.

Jaras had let the last few interludes go by without a song. He had no need to stir anything up here. Tarvynde had done that for him. And he didn’t want to make himself too visible. He had never been one for brawls, and the hatred for Kavak might point his way, despite his efforts to show that this was a hatred he shared. Faced with the present reality of violence, he decided that he didn’t want to be stoned to death, after all.

He felt safer when Ollam entered the White Tauralon and waved for Jaras to join him. Ollam wasn’t alone. He was keeping company with Havol Torvassen, as he had been doing quite a bit of late. Jaras got up to make his way over, and conversation on the floor ceased as people turned to watch the entertaining but hardly significant bard become part of the general’s party. Jaras followed the two men up to the third level, where they settled in at a private booth overlooking the stage. Two large bottles of wine were placed before them immediately, and Ollam helped himself. His face was already flushed. He had been a few drinks in before arriving.

Havol poured himself and Jaras drinks too. He sipped slowly, while Ollam downed half his goblet at once. Havol was watching Ollam and the crowd below closely. He was looking everywhere except at the stage, registering the currents of the mood of the White Tauralon. Jaras told himself to be careful what he said.

‘You heard the proclamation?’ Ollam asked him.

‘I did,’ said Jaras.

‘We will welcome the Avengorii with the true hospitality of the Colonnade,’ Ollam recited as if Jaras had answered in the negative. ‘They will be our allies in the coming struggle. Let none speak against this and break unity.’ He drained his goblet and refilled it. ‘That sounds like a threat to me,’ he said to Havol.

‘It’s going to be a difficult time,’ the older man said. ‘We will need order to get through it.’ His tone was one of studied neutrality, as if he were reciting too. He was giving nothing away about how he felt.

‘You can’t tell me you agree with it!’ said Ollam.

‘It’s what is commanded.’

Ollam shook his head, took another drink and turned to Jaras again. ‘You understand. You know this is obscene. You know what it’s like for family to betray you.’ He looked mournfully into his wine, then continued, self-pity changing the course of his rant. ‘We had everything lined up with the Gastars. It was a perfect match. And she threw it away!’

Jaras decided to twist the knife a bit to see what that prompted. ‘There have been whispers of worse,’ he said. ‘Rumours of rumours that she has done much more than reject Vash Gastar.’ The proposed match between the Reigehrens and the Gastars had been the subject of gossip for months. Its failure had drawn even more social curiosity.

Ollam stared at him, but did not look surprised. The whispers had reached him, then. He slammed his goblet on the table, sloshing wine. ‘What are we going to do about it?’ he demanded.

‘It?’ said Jaras.

‘Your sister’s marriage?’ Havol asked.

‘The proclamation!’ Ollam shouted, as if they were both stupid for not keeping up with him.

‘We’re not going to do anything about it,’ said Havol. ‘We’re going to do what we’re told.’ He slipped, then, just a bit. Jaras heard the anger behind the words.

‘Tarvynde can’t believe this is the right thing to do,’ Ollam said, pleading.

‘These are his orders until he is persuaded otherwise,’ said Havol.

Ollam stared at him blearily, confused and unsatisfied.

‘Speaking of persuasive,’ Havol said to Jaras, ‘I hear that’s what you have been in the Beneath.’

‘I don’t know if I would say that,’ Jaras said, choosing modesty as the safe bet, unsure what point Havol was making.

‘Oh, I would,’ said the general of the Guard. ‘I think Lord Tarvynde would agree.’

‘Is that a problem?’ Jaras asked.

‘Just an observation.’

An observation to what end? Does Tarvynde expect me to rally support for his vile proclamation? And he still had no idea why the lord of the Colonnade had commanded that he be present for the arrival of Kavak. He had fled the instant the ceremony had ended. He had served no purpose at all.

Or had he?

‘Lord Tarvynde hears what is said in the Beneath,’ Havol said. ‘I think that is to everyone’s benefit, don’t you?’

That sounded like tacit encouragement.

‘I do,’ said Jaras.

‘Something I don’t understand,’ Ollam slurred, trying to get back into the conversation. ‘Why did he wait so long to issue the proclamation? Everyone knew what the agreement was two days ago.’

‘Presentation,’ Havol said.

Ollam nodded as if that meant something.

Maybe it did, Jaras thought. Maybe Tarvynde had wanted rumour and gossip to run wild before he issued the official line. Maybe he and Tarvynde were working together after all, at a safely deniable distance.

And maybe, just maybe, without knowing it, he had had Tarvynde’s ear from the start.

Three days later, the Avengorii arrived at the Colonnade.

At their approach, the sky turned grey, then black. Heavy, stagnant rain fell, the drops slithering down the walls of the city, leaving black trails and the stench of old blood. In the Above and in the Beneath, many citizens hid, shuttering their windows and locking their doors, crouching in terror and covering their ears. They sought to block out any hint that the horrors had come, even though they knew some of the monsters were here to stay, and that sooner or later their eyes would be blasted by the sight of the things that had dwelt until now only in fearful whispers.

The fields were deserted. The fear that had greeted the arrival of Kavak was an insignificant ripple compared to the wave of panic that came when the legions appeared at the edge of the woods. All work on the lands of the Colonnade ceased on that day, and the people took what shelter they could in the city.

Not everyone hid. Thousands gathered before the castle. They came from all walks of life, and the people mingled with little thought of rank for the first time since the war against the tzaangors. Jaras was among the onlookers. He had already suffered his great shock, he thought. He already knew the worst. There was nothing that could horrify him more than that sight of his traitor brother.

As the dark rain plummeted from a sky that had brought night to day, a flight of vargheists arrived, the vanguard of the official Avengorii delegation. Next came ten of the Vengorian Lords, and Jaras began to doubt the wisdom of having come. At the sight of these creatures, those patchwork things of bat and reptile, of ragged wings and hooked claws, he felt as if he were seeing fragments of his own bad dreams over the great square.

The monsters did not land. They circled, a show of power and force, but kept well above the city. Then two more Vengorian Lords descended through the centre of the ring of vampires, and behind them came their ruler, who made all who had come before seem the merest hint of horror. For she was monstrosity in its awful divinity. The gathered people screamed. Jaras covered his face with his hands, though he peered through his fingers, unable to look away as the Mother of Nightmares flew majestically down into the square.

She landed with her vast wings spread, and towered over all around her. Lauka Vai’s shadow seemed to spread across the entire Colonnade. Jaras felt it cover him and freeze his heart.

‘I greet you, citizens of the Colonnade,’ she said, her voice booming across the square, reviving old fears and creating new ones. ‘The Avengorii have come to save you.’

The words sounded like the promise of doom.

Chapter 10

The grand ball was held on the evening of the day after the arrival of the Avengorii. Atella didn’t know whose idea the ball was. She knew it was part of the traditional welcome to honoured delegations, but the Colonnade’s isolation from other major Free Cities meant that it had been some time since that particular form of political ritual had been invoked. She found it hard to imagine that anyone on the council and in the powerful families of the city would want to associate with the Avengorii in any way that wasn’t absolutely necessary. It hardly seemed like something Tarvynde would wish to host, given how reluctant he was to accept the vampires’ presence inside the Colonnade. Yet the ball would not have taken place without his authorisation.

The event had an awkward start, and almost didn’t take place at all. The problem was the ballroom itself. The hall was one of the jewels of the Diamond Spire. It was two hundred and fifty feet long, and forty feet wide and high. Its walls were gilded in gold and bronze. The gently arched ceiling was covered in frescoes depicting the heroic construction and defence of the Colonnade. The central image celebrated the city in all its glory. It conveyed the Colonnade’s supremacy by depicting it flying, without the need of columns, over the bestial lands of Ghur.

The problem with the hall was also the source of its most glittering effect. Twenty floor-to-ceiling mirrors, each composed of hundreds of individual mirrored surfaces that very slightly angled away from each other, lined every wall. They reflected the hall and the ornate chandeliers suspended from the ceiling, multiplying the size of the space and sending shafts of light glittering in every direction. The ballroom celebrated the apex of the Colonnade’s artistry, and the Avengorii would not set foot in it.

The Vengorian Lord Hevat Grask was the other member of the Avengorii sent by his queen to be part of the permanent delegation at the Colonnade. He had arrived an hour before the ball was set to start. He took one look into the hall, hissed and withdrew. What followed was heated discussions between Kavak and Tarvynde’s representatives, with much anger about insults, but no actual explanation as to the nature of the problem. It was not resolved until Kavak sought out Atella. ‘The mirrors,’ he told her. ‘My fellow Vengorian Lord and I are proud, and we will not come out and say that we will not look at our reflections, but that is what must be addressed.’

So now, as the ball began, every last mirror was covered by a tapestry hastily brought in from other chambers in the castle. The hall was still grand, but diminished. The tapestries brought the walls closer to one another, making it seem narrower than it was, where before it had seemed to stretch off to infinity. The Colonnade’s lustre had been dimmed, and that amused Atella. She was growing more and more sick of the city’s pride and its displays.

At the north end of the hall was the throne for Lord Tarvynde. Lauka Vai rested beside him, and though she had curled her reptilian legs on the floor, she was still taller than the lord. Tarvynde’s throne should have made him the centre of attention down the perspective of the hall. Instead, the eye skipped off him and to the vampire next to him, and there it was held in fearful awe.

At the other end of the hall, the musicians were assembled on a raised platform. After Tarvynde had made a half-hearted, and very brief, opening speech of welcome, they began playing to an assembly that showed no immediate signs of wishing to dance. Members of the council and the cream of the Colonnade’s noble families lined one side of the ballroom, facing the two Vengorian Lords with stricken looks. Kavak and Hevat Grask had exchanged their armour for what Atella imagined were formal robes. They were grotesqueries, elaborate patchworks of sanded flesh, some of which she was sure was human. The robes clung to the forms of the vampires, almost as if they were dripping from the Avengorii like curtains of wax.

Atella couldn’t take her eyes off the vampires, held by the spell of monstrousness.

On the mortal side, servants passed with refreshments, offering crystal goblets of wine on silver trays. Nothing was offered to the vampires, and Atella noticed that the trays lost all their lustre, turning dark and tarnished whenever they came near the Vengorian Lords.

Atella was just making her way down the hall towards Kavak and Hevat Grask when Vash Gastar came up to her with a pleased smile on his face.

‘This is pretty clever, don’t you think?’ he said, very confidential and closer than she would like.

Atella suppressed a wince and moved half a step to the side. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It shows them up for the beasts they are,’ Vash said, ‘us having drinks while they have none.’ He took a satisfied sip of his wine.

Maybe the ball was Tarvynde’s idea after all.

Vash moved in close again, the gesture smooth and natural in the most studied sense, in the middle of taking another drink. It was as if it had happened without any intention on his part, and the art of the gesture cried out to be noticed and appreciated for what it was, as did all the other aspects that collectively made up the firstborn son of the House of Gastar.

Vash was as handsome and as gilded as the ballroom. Every gesture was polished, and every pose honed. In his dress and manner, he was a perfect match for the frescoes, as if he were the depicted heroes, all of them. Vash Gastar, founder and protector of the Colonnade, his profile unblemished by the scars of combat.

That miracle was due to the fact that he had not served on the walls during the siege. He had been, thanks to his family’s influence, part of the reserves within the castle. He had helped oversee the distribution of weapons, a task that was necessary, but not necessarily one for an able-bodied citizen of his age. He had come out of the war without a scratch, a fact that had been noticed by others less fortunate, though less so by the members of other rich families who similarly were kept off the front lines for as long as possible. Marrying a Reigehren would do wonders to erase that lingering stain.

‘Our parents are furious with you,’ Vash said, as confidentially as before.

‘So I gather,’ said Atella. This was, she knew, meant to be her cue to look at Vash with a worried expression, gaze at his finely wrought features and into his empathetic blue eyes, and seek his reassurance. At least according to the narrative Vash seemed to be constructing for himself. Instead, she watched the other attendees. So far, no one had dared attempt to engage the Vengorian Lords in conversation, and the stance of the vampires suggested a barely restrained urge to devour the company. A few of the nobles had found their courage, though, and started to dance. The careful, elegant formality of the steps seemed, after what Vash had said about the wine, to be yet another rebuke to the monstrosity of the Avengorii.

‘I’m not angry, though,’ said Vash.

Lucky me! ‘Is that right?’ Atella said, without any interest at all. She shook her head to the tray of drinks a servant offered her.

‘Yes, it is. I think what you have done is very clever.’

‘I’m flattered.’ She wasn’t. Then she was worried. ‘What is it you think I’ve done?’

‘You’ve brought the vampires here. They’ve agreed to fight for us…’

‘With us,’ Atella corrected.

‘Oh, of course.’ Vash touched the side of his nose and winked. ‘They’ll fight with us. And then they’ll be on their way.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so. Why would they stay? They know they’re not welcome. They know they don’t belong here. They’ll return to their holes of their own accord. Wouldn’t you, after a few more events like this one? And then we can go through the whole charade again the next time they’re needed.’

Atella took a deep breath. It was really not worth her time or her energy to get into an argument with Vash. It was pointless. He was pointless.

‘That was very courageous of you,’ Vash went on, ‘deciding to take the blame for bringing the vampires here. You’ll be forgiven once they go, though. Once people see that I’ve forgiven you, they’ll understand.’

His presumption was so breathtaking, she didn’t have a response to it. Even if she said something cutting, he wouldn’t believe her. He would think she was flirting. There was nothing she could say that would conflict with his ironclad sense of self-worth.

Vash put his empty glass down on another tray as it went past. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I think people should see that I’ve forgiven you now. That will save time later. Send the right message. You know.’

I really don’t want to know.

‘So,’ said Vash, as if he had just successfully concluded a complex set of negotiations, ‘shall we dance?’

The musicians had just finished one piece, and there was a pause before they began the next one.

Her gorge rising, Atella walked away from Vash without answering. She marched down the hall towards the throne and stopped before Kavak. She smiled. ‘Will you do me the honour of joining me for this dance?’ she asked.

The Vengorian Lord smiled, teeth glinting over his lower lip. He looked at her curiously. ‘You have not yet had your fill of the monstrous, then,’ he said.

‘Only of a particular kind.’

Kavak bowed. ‘In that case, the honour is mine,’ he said, and followed her into the centre of the floor. Two mortal couples darted away from them, shooting Atella murderous glares and Kavak terrified ones.

As Atella and Kavak took up their positions facing each other, it suddenly occurred to her that, in a moment of self-righteousness, she might have placed him in an awkward situation. She had no idea if, with his body, he could dance. She opened her mouth to apologise, but the first chords of the lutes sounded, and without hesitating, Kavak extended a hand to her. She placed her hand on top of his, and they began their turn about the floor.

Kavak could dance. He was graceful in his horror. The claws of his six legs scraped against the floor. His tail made sinuous, scratching noises.

‘You remember your steps well,’ Atella said.

‘Hardly,’ said Kavak. ‘I was never a good dancer before.’

‘Where did you learn?’ she asked, then wished she hadn’t, worried she was insulting him.

He wasn’t offended. ‘There are balls of a kind in our realm,’ he said. ‘As for here, I observe and learn.’

She was impressed. ‘You’re a quick study.’

‘We must be,’ he said. ‘Of more than just dance.’

She took his meaning, and she saw now that there was a predatory quality to the elegance of his steps. It was not aimed at her, though. He was not moving around her as if about to strike. The predator was innate, a core of his being, moulded into every muscle of his frame. She found that she enjoyed watching him. Every movement was infused with purpose, and she found that attractive. The way Kavak inhabited his body was the opposite of Vash, where movement was just another form of ornamentation. Kavak’s form knew war and survival. He was a being who knew sacrifice. Vash had only a distant acquaintance with the existence of the word.

‘We are being watched,’ Kavak said, as they rotated around each other once again.

‘I imagine so. By my family in particular, I suspect. With outrage.’

‘And revulsion. If they are who I suspect, based on the looks directed our way, then you are correct.’

Atella felt another gaze too, one much more powerful. She took a quick glance to her left and saw the blank yellow eyes of Lauka Vai fixed on her.

‘Your queen…’ she began.

‘She approves,’ said Kavak.

Atella smiled with sudden pleasure.

Lauka Vai’s approval suddenly meant more to her than her family’s wrath.

Chapter 11

‘They’re holding a ball for the Avengorii!’

Jaras walked the swaying streets and rope bridges of the Beneath, and he spread the word.

‘They’re holding a ball for the Avengorii!’

Night in the Beneath was profound. The platform of the Colonnade blocked all light from the stars. The only illumination to pierce the pitch-blackness came from the oil lamps in the windows and a scattering of others mounted on iron poles. Jaras could not see more than a few yards ahead, at best, as he made his way through the warren, but he had lived there long enough to know his path by feel. All the inhabitants of the Beneath were sure-footed. They had to be. Those who were not did not live long.

‘They’re holding a ball for the Avengorii!’

For now, he was not stopping at any one tavern. He wanted his news to travel as quickly and as widely as possible. He might return to the Pillar and Sickle when he was done, there to reinforce and build on his message. But his immediate goal was for all the Beneath to know the crimes of the Above. He was nightwatchman and town crier, and he had come to raise anger. Maybe this was what Tarvynde wanted him to do, at some level of the complicated political game he was playing. Jaras didn’t care. With enough anger, there would be strength in the Beneath, perhaps enough to force the powers in the Above to turn from the path to damnation.

Jaras did not walk alone. People filled the roads and joined him, wanting to know more. They talked among each other, their voices growing louder and angrier, and that drew still more of a crowd.

‘A ball?’ a man asked. ‘What about protecting us from the vampires?’

‘The council isn’t interested in protecting you,’ Jaras said, speaking loudly. ‘That is what this ball means. They are embracing the monsters that will look to you for prey.’

He was carrying his lute. He strummed a harsh chord, then sang.

‘Our hands! Our sweat! The blood in our veins!

They belong to our betters, the masters of chains!

The lords of the city, the strong and the wise,

Now feed us to monsters, and revel in lies!’

Shouts greeted his verse. ‘Will you submit?’ he asked.

‘No!’ came the answering roar.

The anger was good to hear. He hoped there really was strength gathering. The people would need it. Over the last few days, the Freeguild Guard had forced them back into the fields around the Colonnade, and to the open-pit mines to the south of the city. They laboured within sight of the massive Avengorii gathering, sheep pushed out before wolves. Whatever Tarvynde’s actual sympathies might be, he was still making the people work, and no one had dared raise a hand in rebellion. Not yet, at any rate.

Earlier, Jaras had ventured out into the fields during the day. He had headed north-east as far as he dared, as close to the Avengorii as he could make himself go. He had walked among the labourers, sung for them, clapped shoulders and arms. He made sure he was seen. He comforted the people with solidarity, and he confirmed every fear. They had been lied to enough.

The closer he came to the edge of the forest, the more the people paused at their work and looked up the slope, faces drawn with anxiety, to where the evil shapes had gathered. There were many creatures with wings perched in the trees, and even more on the ground, half-hidden in the shadows of the forest. They moved, and rustled, and the sounds of hideous voices came down into the farmlands like the warning touch of nightmares to come.

‘What do they want from us?’ Jaras was asked again and again.

He answered with the simple truth. ‘They want us.’

He had stayed out in the fields until dusk, then hurried back to the Colonnade. Once there, he had visited the White Tauralon, but had not stayed long. As soon as he heard about the ball, he had hurried back to the Beneath.

Now he was spending the night by spreading his warnings of betrayal. More and more people were joining in the march, coming in on the rope bridges from other platforms to see what was happening and then staying to add their voices to the protest as they followed him through the narrow, zigzagging streets. Before a line of boarding houses crowding in on each other like crooked teeth, he began another chant.

He felt emboldened to say what he wanted after the encounter with Havol and Ollam. There were guards about, but fewer than usual, and the ones he did see ignored him and his growing following. Jaras wondered again what Tarvynde’s game was. Why was he making it easy for Jaras to stir up resentment? Maybe, maybe Tarvynde was secretly convinced that dealing with the Avengorii was a betrayal of the Colonnade.

Maybe he’s trying to have things both ways. Then he can choose which side to support according to which suits him best.

Jaras didn’t like that idea, even though it also struck him as plausible. If that was what Tarvynde was doing, it meant he believed he would be able to crush any kind of trouble in the Beneath if he had to. And he was probably right. The Freeguild had all the weapons. The warrens of the Beneath might have the superior numbers, but if the Maelstrom of Light decided to intervene, then any attempt at rebellion was the most futile of dreams.

But I’m not trying to start a rebellion. Not really. I just want people to know the truth. I want us to shout long and loud enough so the council will hear the truth also. That’s all.

In the street, he sang his song again, about the perfidy of the Above. Everyone near him joined in, and the noise of the crowd was so big, so fierce, that it did sound like a revolt.

None of his lyrics mentioned the Stormcast Eternals. He still had faith in them, even if Dawnbolt had acceded to the idea of the alliance. He couldn’t believe they would let the Colonnade fall to monsters. What worried him was their distance from simple mortals. They might not understand how terrible the situation was for the people of the city. They might not see how damaging any alliance, no matter how brief, would be.

Especially for us in the Beneath.

He had no trouble seeing himself as whatever part of the Colonnade suited his mood of the moment.

There were no squares in the Beneath. There were no open areas large enough to hold a big crowd, and it was impossible for vast numbers of people to gather at a single point. In the darkness of the winding alleyways, Jaras could not see far enough back in the line to guess how many people had joined his procession. But he could see a few lit torches behind, before the suspended houses blocked his view. There were more torches, twinkling fireflies, on the bridges that led towards his position. There were people coming from all sides. He caught glimpses of moving lights on some of the bridges above and below him too.

That was good. The word was spreading. He was accomplishing what he had set out to do tonight. He wasn’t sure what would come next, and was foggy about the longer term. He would focus on tonight, then. He was at the centre of the event in the Beneath, and people were listening to him. All of this was good.

He turned around the next corner, and stopped. He was on one of the largest of the Beneath’s platforms, midway down its depths. The street here, or what was called a street in this part of the Colonnade, was a bit wider than most. He was standing before the Beneath’s Temple of Sigmar. There might not be the space for a gathering, but this was still the point where most people would come, instinctively, in times of distress. The temple was a humble one, a poor cousin to the magnificent building, with its golden dome, located in the centre of the Above. It was still the largest structure in the Beneath – built almost entirely of timber, or not even the great chains holding its platform would have been able to support it. Its single spire reached up towards the stone sky of the Beneath. The lamp burning inside the belfry sent out a weak glow, and most of the temple was a vague mass of black.

Jaras looked at the faces surrounding him. They were faces marked by hard living. Even the youngest looked cracked and weathered from labour and the never-banished spectre of hunger. The faces were angry. To be sacrificed not just to the mines and the fields but also to monsters was too much. Some expressed their anger with mutters. Others shouted to burst their lungs, as if their yells could bring down the mansions of the Above. Jaras gave them the words for their rage.

‘Our hands! Our sweat! The blood in our veins!

They belong to our betters, the masters of chains!’

Each time he shouted those bitter words, Jaras felt the thrill of risk. Singing them here, in front of the temple, he felt that he was pleading with Sigmar. Look upon us! See what is being done in this city, this reflection of Azyr in the wild darkness of Ghur. Send us your strength and justice!

When the song ended, he heard the flapping of wings.

Jaras held his breath. The crowd fell silent, everyone responding to a sudden, instinctive fear even if they had not heard the sound of the predators.

The people nearest Jaras pressed closer to him, as if he could protect them.

‘What is that?’ someone asked.

‘Avengorii,’ Jaras whispered.

A shadow whipped through the air, edges of night with sudden movement. Jaras caught only a glimpse, but he knew the monster was there. So did everyone around him. The crowd bunched together, a terrified flock in the presence of winged predators. The air turned cold. The torch flames wavered and sank back. Lanterns dimmed. Something flew past the temple’s tower windows, blotting out the light. Then it settled on the peak, crouching. In the dark orange glow from the windows, red eyes looked down on the people of the Beneath.

Frozen, Jaras stared up at the eyes. After another few moments of frightened silence, the people began to scream. They fled, streaming into the temple and back down the alleys, running for the shelter of tavern and home.

Jaras stayed where he was. At first, he couldn’t move. He was the frozen prey, and in a moment, he would feel the monster’s teeth. They would open his throat wide. There would be pain and blood, and the worst sort of death.

The moments passed, and the vampire did not move. When Jaras felt he had control of his limbs again, he also realised that the vampire was not attacking. It was just watching him.

Is that Kavak?

There was no comfort in the thought. He felt observed by a predator.

As he began to overcome his initial terror, he told himself that the vampire couldn’t attack. A slaughter in the Beneath would end the treaty then and there, and the Colonnade and the Avengorii would be at war. If the vampires were going to destroy them, now was not the time. Not just yet.

They will, though. If we don’t destroy them first.

He wanted to run. Anger revived his courage. The Pillar and Sickle was not far from here. There would be comfort there. There would be company, four walls and a low roof.

No. I will not hide from the foe.

He still had his message to spread.

He looked away from the red eyes above, turned from the chapel and headed for a rope ladder leading down to the next level. He travelled quickly down bridges and ladders. The quarters grew more and more cramped and miserable. There would be no room to fly here, the longest of the Long Chain regions. He was in the lowest portion of the Colonnade.

Here were shelters that were barely worthy of the name. They clustered together, walls of discarded tin and damp sod leaning against one another, holding the indigent and the beggar, the old and the weak, the miners and labourers who could not work enough any longer to earn their keep anywhere but here. This was the home of the desperate and the criminal. Jaras had avoided it until now. He despised the people who lived in this squalor. They were the visible reminder of how far one could fall from the Above. He avoided them as if their misery were contagious, a slick that would coat his skin and stay with him when he travelled back upchain, ready to drag him down. He had relied on word of mouth to send his message to these depths. It was time, though, for him to be present here too. He must be known, and he must be seen.

Jaras looked around, his shoulders tense and his skin crawling from the encounter with the vampire. The cramped surroundings reassured him. No red eyes looked out from the shadows. He didn’t think he had been followed.

The terror of the vampires had not reached here. No one from the Long Chain regions had been part of the march. There were a few people about, many in rags, all of them looking at Jaras with cold suspicion. He didn’t look hungry, and he was well dressed by the standards of anywhere in the Beneath. Here, he stood out as much as if he had been a noble from the upper terraces. Self-conscious but determined, he moved through the cramped, filthy alleys. Foul water dripped from the levels above, and the footing was slippery with stinking muck.

They’re holding a ball for the Avengorii! The rallying cry stuck in Jaras’ throat. The people he saw did not look receptive. He didn’t want to shout. He found that he was moving as quietly as possible. He decided to look for a tavern.

What he found wasn’t a tavern in the sense that the rest of the city understood the word. It was a shack, larger than most, built from bricks of sod. A dirty sign against the outside wall read ALE. Jaras brushed aside the worn cloth that hung in the doorway and went inside. The interior was hot, stuffy and dark. It stank of sweat and unwashed bodies. There was an unpleasant tang that hurt Jaras’ throat and made his eyes water, and he worried he was smelling the vintage offered by the establishment. Candles of yellow tallow on the makeshift counter cast a sullen glow over the gloom. Men and women leaned against walls or sat on stools, drinking from tin cups. They looked at Jaras when he entered. They said nothing, waiting.

Jaras approached the barkeep and bought a cup of the ale. He tried not to show his wince of apprehension as he raised it to his lips, and tried even harder not to show his disgust when he swallowed. The stuff was rancid, and he feared how his stomach would react in a short while. The drink was also powerful. It burned down his throat and chest like acid. Whatever this was, ale was a misnomer, and it would take hardly any to get him massively drunk. Which he supposed was its purpose.

He made himself stand in the centre of the shack. ‘Have you heard?’ he said, as if he were a regular and not the subject of a dozen hostile stares. ‘The Above is welcoming monsters into our city. They’re throwing a ball for them. A ball.’

There were a couple of mutters that sounded like agreement. There was also more silence.

‘So what?’ a man asked, his voice cracked, his breathing permanently thick with dust. It was Parek, the man who had challenged him before at the Pillar and Sickle.

‘So that shows the truth of what’s happening, doesn’t it?’ Jaras told him. ‘They really are letting vampires come to live among us.’

‘And?’ Parek insisted.

‘And who will be their prey?’ Jaras asked. ‘We will.’ He hoped the we sounded sincere.

The man grunted. ‘What difference does that make?’ He spat. ‘Will we be worse off? Like that matters to you, Short Chain. You with your eyes on the Above.’

‘It does matter to me. We all matter, Parek. Or we should. And what difference does it make if the Avengorii are permitted to hunt us? I think you’ll know the difference when one of them sinks its fangs into your neck.’

‘A quick death,’ said Parek. ‘Maybe painless.’ He coughed, sounding like his lungs were full of wet sand. ‘Can think of worse. And what do you care, Short Chain?’

‘Short Chain?’ someone else said before Jaras could answer. ‘Not for long, he isn’t. I know who this is. He was from the Above, and he’s bound there again, if he has anything to say about it.’

Parek laughed. ‘So we matter, eh? We matter to you?’ He got off his stool, limped over to Jaras and poked him in the chest. ‘You’re not going to stand on me to get back to the Above, Short Chain.’

The rest of the patrons had left their drinks and were gathering around Jaras. There was no one friendly now.

‘I’m sorry for bothering you,’ he murmured. ‘I just thought you should know.’

‘I’m touched, Short Chain,’ said Parek. ‘Full of gratitude, I am.’

Jaras pushed past the woman behind him and left the shack. The group followed him. Outside, when the people in the street saw trouble taking shape, they gathered around Jaras too, eager for their share.

Someone tugged at his lute, and the strap over his shoulder jerked him sideways. He stumbled, and there was angry laughter. He tried to push through, but hands grabbed his arms.

‘Short Chain thought we’d be useful to him,’ said Parek. ‘Thought he’d see what the Long Chains had to offer. Let’s show him.’

‘Release him or die,’ said a deep, rasping hiss.

No one moved. The hands let go of Jaras.

Kavak crouched on the roof of the ale shack. He was armoured, his helm covering the top half of his face, but Jaras knew it was him, and he hated the fact that he could recognise the monster so easily. That there should be anything recognisable in the monster was sickening.

The Long Chains hesitated, locked in place by fear. Kavak spread his wings. In the confines of the alley, he was colossal, his body an assemblage of bad dreams filling the space, ready to destroy flesh with tooth and claw, tail and blade. The Long Chains broke and ran, leaving Jaras alone in the street.

He wasn’t sure what was worse, the beating he would have received or the situation he was in now. Word of Kavak’s intervention would spread like a grass fire. He would never be able to set foot in this part of the Colonnade again. Even if he dared, there was no chance his message would be listened to.

‘What do you want?’ Jaras said. He would be damned if he was going to thank the vargheist for saving him.

‘I want to speak with you,’ said Kavak.

‘I have nothing to say.’

‘Then listen. That’s all I ask.’

Jaras wanted to turn his back and walk away. That would be the right gesture. The strong one. The dramatic one. But then where would he go? Would he be able to climb the levels fast enough before the mob caught him again? So he just nodded.

‘You think I’m a traitor,’ said Kavak.

Jaras broke his determination to remain silent immediately. ‘You are a traitor,’ he said.

‘What do you think happened to me? Why do you think I disappeared?’

‘You succumbed to temptation.’

‘I see. What kind of temptation would that be?’

‘Power,’ Jaras snapped, contemptuous. ‘Immortality. You tell me what weakness made you give up your humanity.’

‘You think the Avengorii are obscenities,’ said Kavak. ‘Would you feel any temptation to become such as we are?’

‘No!’ Jaras shouted, horrified.

‘Yet you think your brother did. If you can’t imagine that anyone would be tempted to become a monster, then why believe that is what happened to me?’

‘I don’t know what corruption you hid from me when we were growing up. But it must have been there, for you to want to be this… thing.’

‘You can imagine no other cause for my transformation.’ Kavak sounded disappointed.

One did occur to Jaras now, though he did not like it. He could no longer attribute any kind of innocence to his brother. Even so, he asked, ‘You were forced?’

‘No,’ said Kavak sharply. His eyes glittered anger in the dim light. ‘I was not. I was given a choice, and I took it. I became what you see in order to save the Colonnade. And I did. I did save it.’

Jaras snorted. ‘When? How? I don’t recall a Vengorian Lord leading the charge on the battlements.’

‘Has no one here wondered why the rear ranks of the tzaangors underwent a sudden collapse?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I suppose not. The enemy fell on itself because of the sheer power of the Colonnade’s purity.’

‘That is your claim as saviour of the city?’

‘It is. I and my fellow Avengorii sowed havoc in the tzaangors. Without our intervention, the forces of the Colonnade would have been overwhelmed. And that intervention happened because Lauka Vai gave me the chance. The chance to save your precious city.’

‘I hear your contempt. You loved this city once.’

‘I did. I do not any longer, though I do care for some of those who inhabit it. And this is the truth too: I have come to save the Colonnade again.’

‘You lie, monster.’

‘You lie, monster,’ Kavak repeated, sounding amused. ‘You are a bard, aren’t you? You always had a gift for performance. Do you always convince yourself, Jaras? I do wonder about that.’

‘I’ve had enough of this.’ He made as if to go, still unsure what direction he would take. It would have to be fast, once Kavak left.

‘I said I came to save the Colonnade,’ Kavak said. ‘Let me prove it.’

Jaras hesitated. Go. Don’t listen to any more lies. Just go.

Curiosity held him where he was. The need to know everything, to know the extent of the monster’s falsehoods so they could be exposed for what they were, meant he could not walk away.

Despite himself, he said, ‘How?’

Chapter 12

As the night began to give way to dawn, Kavak flew west, with Jaras on his back. Jaras’ skin crawled from contact with the vampire. He felt tainted. From the moment he had realised he would have to climb onto the monster’s back, he had done his best to disassociate himself from his body. He had to hold the present moment at a distance, or be sick with horror.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Jaras asked. He raised his voice over the wind rushing past. Kavak flew quickly, even with the extra weight.

‘To the people that my kin and I must save today, and where your skills might prove useful.’

‘My kin,’ Jaras repeated.

‘Yes, my kind. That is what they are now, and have been for what is now close to half my life. My ties to them are stronger than any you have in the Colonnade.’

‘You seem very certain about that.’

‘I am. More certain than I am in the pillars of the city. I say this as one who has known both worlds.’

Jaras went back to his first question. ‘You still haven’t said where we’re going.’

‘To Farwilde.’ It was a small village due west of the Colonnade, at a distance of several days’ march.

‘Why there?’

‘It is one of several villages in the direct path of the beastherd. The Prosecutors are helping the ones under immediate threat, but they cannot be everywhere. Lauka Vai has said she will save the people of this one. Orgo will be upon it in two days.

‘Save the people how? By carrying them off?’

‘No,’ said Kavak. ‘Most of the Avengorii could not come so close to mortals without feasting upon them. You and I fly to warn the people that they must flee immediately. Lauka Vai and the rest will spur them, if necessary. It would be better if they did not. Horses and wagons from the Colonnade are on the way towards Farwilde already, but the people must make good time now or be annihilated.’

The mental image was one Jaras had trouble forming. ‘What does this have to do with me?’ he asked.

‘The people are more likely to listen to you than to me.’

Jaras’ short bark of a laugh was one of total disbelief. ‘This is your proof? I have to trust your word that this is true? You want me to urge the villagers to flee their shelter. Why? To be picked up and slaughtered by the Avengorii?’

‘If that was what I wanted, then the Avengorii would have wasted a lot of time and energy entering into an agreement with the Colonnade only to tear it up immediately. You were never stupid, Jaras. Try not to be now.’

The scolding sounded so much like his exasperated older brother, memories of childhood rushed up in Jaras’ mind. He said nothing for a while, wrestling with the grief they brought. When he spoke again, he did so with petty venom. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘did you enjoy the ball?’ He didn’t care that he was being small-minded. He wanted Kavak to feel some of the hurt he did, and he had no difficulty imagining how the Avengorii had been received. Whatever the implications and the political reasons for the ball, he had no doubt that the aristocracy of the Colonnade would not have hidden its revulsion. He had seen the faces when Kavak had arrived, and when the greater horrors had come.

‘Yes,’ Kavak said. ‘I enjoyed myself very much.’

Somehow, the vampire made his rasp sound bright and cheerful. The sound was so horrible, Jaras never wanted to hear it again, and said nothing else for the rest of the flight.

They arrived at Farwilde near the end of the day. The village’s situation was a testament to the increasing violence of the land’s upheavals. It had been in the middle of an arable plain. Now it was at the bottom of a steep, narrow valley. The outer faces of the new, craggy ridges were sheer enough, but the inner ones to the west were almost vertical. It was as if a massive jaw had opened up and swallowed Farwilde. The eastern slopes at least, though rugged, could be climbed without too much difficulty. That was the way the people would have to flee.

‘Hold fast,’ said Kavak, and he plunged towards the valley floor. Jaras clung on with a death grip, the wind screaming past his ears, the cliffs blurred into a streak of grey.

Kavak circled low once over the village, and Jaras heard shouts of fear come from below. Then the Vengorian Lord landed a few hundred yards from the village’s wooden palisade. The valley floor was so narrow, the eastern and western walls of the fortifications were flush with the cliffs. Jaras shuddered at how close Farwilde had come to being crushed.

He dropped to the ground. His skin crawled from being in contact with the Vengorian Lord. He felt soiled, as if monstrosity were contagious.

‘Make haste,’ Kavak said. ‘You have less than an hour.’

‘Before the beastherd arrives?’ The land to the west was mountainous, and Jaras had not been able to see far in that direction while in the air. There had been smoke rising into the sky in the distance, but that had been the only possible sign of the beastmen.

‘There should still be a day or more before Orgo arrives,’ Kavak told him. ‘Though perhaps he is only a few hours away. But it is the Avengorii who are hard by. You must convince the villagers to leave before my kin reach this valley.’ He paused. ‘The Avengorii’s methods of persuasion will be harsh.’

‘An hour is not a lot of time.’

‘And you’re wasting it, little brother. An hour is all I could manage.’

‘What happens if I fail to make your argument?’

‘Then terror will drive the villagers off. It would be better if they left of their own accord. Don’t you agree?’

Jaras pictured the horror of being descended upon by a legion of nightmares. Kavak was right. He was wasting time.

Torn by mistrust and disgust, he walked quickly away from the monster. A short distance from the gates, one of the guards atop the spiked battlements hailed him. ‘Halt and state your business!’

Jaras stopped where he was.

‘Move and you will be shot,’ the guard said. The order was unnecessary, except perhaps for the guard’s peace of mind. He sounded nervous. The huge betrayal of the land was reason enough, but Jaras wondered if the villagers were feeling intimations of the doom that was coming for them.

‘I am Jaras Anvarheim,’ he called. ‘I have come from the Colonnade with urgent news. I must speak with the mayor of Farwilde at once.’

‘We saw you arrive,’ said the guard. ‘What is that thing that brought you?’

‘The reason I must see the mayor,’ Jaras answered. He raised his arms and turned around slowly. ‘I am unarmed. I am here to help.’

‘Help with what?’

‘Your survival.’ He spoke firmly, even though he was riven by doubt. He had always been able to perform well, regardless of circumstances.

He must have been right about premonitions casting their shadows over the people, because the guard didn’t challenge him any further. The wooden gates opened to him, and another guard advanced to be his escort. She had the drawn face and sunken eyes of someone who had not slept in days.

They passed through the walls and into the community of several hundred souls. The fortifications were sturdy, as they had to be in Ghur. With their line of tree trunks sharpened into stakes leaning out from the walls, they were enough to hold many of the realm’s predators at bay. They would not be enough against a beastherd that could threaten the Colonnade. Orgo would sweep over Farwilde, leaving nothing behind, and the massacre wouldn’t slow his advance in the slightest.

The houses were simple, solid wooden structures with peaked roofs. One main road ran north-south through the village. Smaller alleys branched off it to the east and west, adding another few rows of homes. In the village was the town hall and the temple to Sigmar. The hall was not much bigger than the homes. The temple was smaller than the one in the Beneath, though it felt more spacious with the square of tamped-down earth around it.

The square was crowded. The sight of Kavak flying overhead had been the trigger for most of the population to gather here. The town hall’s floor was raised above ground level, and the mayor, Teaxa, stood at the top of the steps leading up to it. She was a farmer, like most of her fellow citizens, and long years of hard work and hard weather had rounded her posture. She faced Jaras with an authority that seemed well earned. The people parted before him, and looked to her for reassurance and answers.

‘I hear you’ve come to save us,’ she said. ‘From what and how?’

‘From the beastherd of Orgo. You are in its path, and will be destroyed if you remain here.’

Teaxa looked alarmed, but not altogether surprised. The murmurs of fear from the crowd had the ring of confirmation, as if something long dreaded was now at hand.

‘The land has imprisoned us,’ said Teaxa. ‘How are we to flee?’

‘You can climb to the east,’ Jaras said. ‘And you must do so at once. Move quickly, and you will encounter help from the Colonnade in due course.’

‘You come bearing this news, yet you arrive on the back of a horror.’

Jaras grimaced. ‘It was the only way to warn you in time.’

‘You don’t sound convinced of what you are saying, Jaras Anvarheim,’ said the mayor.

Because I’m not. Was he betraying these people by doing what Kavak had told him? Orgo was coming. That was true. The village was in danger. But he kept feeling as if he were lying. He cursed the Avengorii, and he cursed Tarvynde and the council. He tried again, speaking what he knew to be true. He wasn’t sure he believed most, or any, of what Kavak had told him, but flight was the only chance he could see for these people. It was the wager he had no choice but to take.

‘I did not choose to come here as I did,’ he said. ‘I loathe the creature that brought me. Yet this is the reality we face. The Colonnade has entered into a treaty with the Avengorii.’

‘What does that have to do with us?’

‘The Avengorii are coming to force you out. If they harm you, the treaty will collapse. But they will not allow you to stay.’ He realised he was using Kavak’s reasoning. It was sound, even if he didn’t trust it.

‘And if none of us survive to tell the tale, who in the Colonnade will know that the Avengorii broke faith?’

That possibility had troubled Jaras too. The only answer he had was one that he despised. ‘I do not think that will happen, because, though it shames me to speak these words, the creature that waits beyond your walls is… was… my brother.’

Teaxa stared at him. She didn’t answer. The people were silent for a moment, then began arguing with each other. They were no less afraid, just more uncertain.

Jaras let the arguments swirl around him.

Say more. Make them accept what is going to happen.

I’ve said all I can. What else is there?

You would find the words you need in the Beneath.

There I know that I am telling the truth.

The only thing he believed with certainty was that he had come here for nothing.

Light faded from the sky as suddenly as if a coffin lid had slammed down over Farwilde. The arguments died away. A cold wind blew from the east, even though the valley was too narrow to permit it. The people turned in frightened wonder. As one, they looked up at the top of the east cliffs.

Hundreds of silhouettes of horror gathered at the edge of the cliff, then soared into the air. At their head was the Mother of Nightmares. When her great wings beat, it was as if they were the cause of the wind that chilled the heart.

Lauka Vai descended to a point halfway down the valley. She circled slowly over the centre of the village. Above her, the horde of monsters hovered, waiting for her command.

Though people had begun to scream, her voice drowned them all out.

‘People of Farwilde,’ she said. ‘The beastherd of Orgo is coming to destroy you. Leave now, or we will make you run.’

She spoke, and all Jaras could hear was the voice of monstrosity, and the voice of terror and death. He cowered at the sound, and he had known it was coming. He had been able to prepare himself.

Lauka Vai did not drop down any further. She continued to circle. Yet she must have given a command, because the hundreds of vargheists that had come with her now dropped towards the square.

Jaras crouched and covered his ears as a sea of screams rose to drown him.

Chapter 13

A storm of wings and clawed feet plunged towards the square, a cyclone of monsters. The villagers tried to flee. There was a sudden, massive surge away from the centre of the village, everyone trying to run in every direction at the same time, and the hundreds became like thousands in the chaos of their terror. Instead of running for the gates, they ran for their houses and the temple and the town hall. They jammed the doors, trampling and crushing each other. The vargheists snarled in anger at the villagers, and Jaras thought they were surely going to descend on the people and reduce them to shreds of meat. Some force seemed to hold them back, barely restraining their blood madness, and they attacked the roofs of the buildings instead, tearing them off, destroying the illusion of shelter.

The guards on the walls tried to defend their village against the invasion of nightmares. They turned their bows on the vampires, and the barrage of arrows was ferocious for so small a force. It was also as futile as it was brave. The arrows did nothing but further anger the vargheists. In quick, low, swooping flights over the walls, they battered down the guards. One vargheist seized a guard with its talons and began to rise, its jaws wide and slavering. Then Lauka Vai thundered, ‘No!’ and the vampire dropped its victim before flying high, shrieking in anger and hunger.

Jaras did not move from where he stood when the Avengorii descended. Helpless, uncertain, horrified, he had nowhere to turn or run. He didn’t know what to do, though as the panic erupted, he was agonised by the feeling that he should be doing something. He had a responsibility. He wasn’t sure what it was. He had been half convinced it was to keep the villagers calm when the Avengorii came, to urge them to obey. Then he wondered if he should have been warning instead of trying to reassure. Now it didn’t matter. There was nothing he could do.

At first, he couldn’t move. The arrival of so many monsters at once had him rooted to the spot, as terrified as anyone else. Then, caught in the middle of the panic, he struggled to stay on his feet. He tried moving towards the town hall, thinking for a moment that its raised steps would be an escape from the danger of the mob, but too many people were pushing in that direction.

All he wanted was to escape.

All everyone wanted was to escape.

And some of them blamed him for what was happening.

Amid the screams were shouts of anger. The villagers could not fight the Avengorii. They could take out their fear on him. He was knocked back and forth by the rushing bodies, and then a blow staggered him. He didn’t see who hit him. He wavered, his vision blurred. A punch to the gut had him doubled over, and then he lost his balance.

Jaras fell. Feet pounded over him. He couldn’t see. Pain pushed him into a deeper blackness. He screamed in pain as a heel ground into his outstretched hand. Then he couldn’t breathe. He tried to curl into a ball, but his limbs were all distant lands of agony. They were beyond his control, hammered by the panic of others. Oblivion gathered at the edges of his pain. It grew wider, darkness gathering to take him once and for all.

From somewhere a long way away came a huge snarl. It made the distant attacks stop. His body, calling to him from so far off, was no longer being hit. The encroaching darkness hesitated.

Something took him in a hard grip. It lifted him into the air. The rush of wind against his face brought him round, pushing the darkness back. He opened his eyes and saw the roofs of Farwilde receding below him. Kavak had seized him, and was carrying him up towards the ridgetop once more.

‘Where…’ Jaras croaked. His ribs felt like shattered porcelain when he tried to breathe.

‘Back to the Colonnade,’ said Kavak.

‘No,’ said Jaras. He hissed at the pain of trying to shout. ‘No,’ he said again. He was finding it easier to think again, though his consciousness was at the centre of a throbbing ache. ‘I will see this. You wanted me to witness it. So I will.’

Kavak didn’t answer. He landed on the ridge, placing Jaras gently on the ground before landing beside him. Jaras moved to the cliff edge. He looked down into the valley, at the hideous shapes dropping and rising as they razed the village. Screams rose up from Farwilde, and the wailing continued as the people finally fled their homes, running up the eastern slopes as fast as they could manage, their fear given spurs by the monsters that flew over them, wolves herding sheep. Jaras watched the exodus, shaking at the fear of the villagers. He watched until the ragged train of refugees dwindled in the east, urged on by the swooping wings of horror. It was very hard for him to believe that he wasn’t witnessing a slaughter.

‘Is this your rescue?’ he said to Kavak, his voice trembling with fury.

‘It is.’ The Vengorian Lord’s rasp was quiet.

‘Are you even capable of shame? I hope you are. You should be feeling it now. I saw nothing like a rescue. I saw a village destroyed and a population terrorised.’

‘A population that has a chance of survival because of their fear.’

‘Why should I believe you?’

‘Why would I wish you to see a massacre? What good would that do?’

‘I cannot guess how monsters think. Perhaps you thought to awaken my bloodlust. Perhaps you want me to fall as you did.’

Kavak growled. ‘Even though you are my brother, there are limits to the foolishness I will endure from you. I had my period of naivety. That was when I was a mortal, and believed unerringly in the doctrines of the Colonnade. I have learned much since then. I know who my true kin are. I know what they are capable of. I know what we are capable of. Could we have devoured Farwilde? We could. We did not. Lauka Vai has given her word, and despite your judgement of what you have seen, these people have been saved.’

‘I wonder if they will agree.’

‘If they do not, once they are at the Colonnade, then they were unworthy of our help.’

‘Who sits in judgement now? Are the innocent of Farwilde to submit to the judgement of monsters?’

Kavak’s lip curled in anger. ‘I see that everything I say, and everything we do, is damned in the sight of the pure of the Colonnade. So be it. I understand more than ever the terms Lauka Vai exacted from your city. You will not be allowed to turn away from us after we have saved all of you from the beastmen.’

‘You still call this saving?’ said Jaras.

Below, a fire had started in one of the houses. Perhaps a lantern had been thrown at a vampire by a desperate villager. It had spread, and there was a line of burning buildings now, sending up dark curtains of smoke.

‘You leave ashes in your passage,’ Jaras said.

‘You would have preferred us to do nothing?’ said Kavak. ‘Should we have left the people to their doom?’

Jaras didn’t answer. He had watched the village emptied, and now he watched it burn, and the sights made nonsense of Kavak’s words. He stored away each scream, each struggling person, each snarl of the vargheists, and the tang of smoke as it rose from the valley floor. He would remember all of these things. He would remember what he had witnessed on this day, and the Colonnade would know of it.

Unchecked, the fires continued to spread. Soon, even the palisade was ablaze. By the next day, there would be nothing but charred, fallen timber to mark where the village had been. The destruction would be total.

As it was always meant to be. Jaras felt the grim satisfaction of conviction.

Not all the Avengorii had flown back east. Many remained over Farwilde, including Lauka Vai.

‘Why are they staying?’ Jaras asked.

‘To greet the enemy,’ said Kavak. ‘We shall stay as well.’

‘I have already seen the beastherd at work.’

‘The caravan? You saw nothing. Not even a splinter. You will stay and witness. You will see the true threat to your city.’

So they stayed on the ridge, through the night and the next day. Jaras lit a fire to keep warm, and Kavak hunted. Jaras went hungry, unable to think about eating after Kavak returned, the blood of some animal dripping from his lips. They spoke little. Jaras wandered back and forth along the ridge, watching for what would come, keeping away from the thing that had been his brother, hating the sight of the swarm of vampires that circled endlessly high above the ruins of Farwilde. Their queen hovered at their centre, patiently awaiting the arrival of her adversary.

At the end of the second day, Jaras heard a deep noise in the west. At first, he thought it was simply thunder in the dark grey sky. It grew louder, and he realised he was hearing voices. Thousands and thousands of them, roaring with bestial fervour. He stared at the mountains opposite, fearing what he would shortly see.

‘What…’ He trailed off. He knew the answer to his question, though he was afraid of it.

‘Yes,’ said Kavak. ‘Orgo has come.’

Jaras turned away. His nerves had been scraped raw by the sight of the Avengorii. He didn’t want to see the beastmen, not even from a distance. The memories of the caravan massacre rose in his mind, strong and bloody.

‘No,’ said Kavak. ‘You will not be so selective in what you witness. You choose to see the worst in what we did here. Very well. Think what you will. But you will see what we saved these people from. You will see what is coming for the Colonnade.’

‘I already know.’

‘You only think you do. What happened with the caravan is nothing. You saw the violence meted out by a handful of the beastmen. You do not know what it means when a beastherd of the Twistfrays descends on you. So today, your ignorance ends. Climb on my back.’

Jaras shook his head.

‘Do as I say,’ Kavak growled. ‘Or I abandon you to the beastmen.’

Hating himself, and hating his brother, Jaras obeyed, and Kavak took them high into the air. The thunder in the west grew louder yet, and the beastherd appeared. Its legions flowed over passes and down the slopes, a horned and hoofed deluge staining the land. Monsters in numbers he could not count arrived at the far ridge. Jaras saw brutes of the kind that had killed the merchants of the caravan. There were many other kinds, too, even more huge and terrible. The most frightening of them all was the behemoth in armour who advanced onto a spit of rock that jutted out over the drop.

Kavak stayed well out of range of attack. Though the beastlord was a distant figure, he seemed huge and close in Jaras’ eyes. His presence was colossal, like Lauka Vai’s, and Jaras knew, as he knew the fall of night, that this was Orgo. His was the will powerful enough to govern the massed ranks of beasts. His was the desire to hurl the Colonnade from its pillars.

Flanked by her escort of Vengorian Lords, trailed by her legion of vargheists, the Mother of Nightmares rose until she was fifty feet above the level of the ridges. When the beastmen saw her, their bellows were loud enough to crack the mountainsides. Orgo brandished axes with blades so huge they looked like they could decapitate a Stardrake at a stroke. He roared at Lauka Vai, and his voice vibrated through Jaras’ bones.

Lauka Vai’s answering laughter, contemptuous and angry, rolled across the mountains. It chilled the exuberant roars of the beastmen. It seemed to Jaras that a shadow passed over the entire herd. Lauka Vai beat her wings with slow grace, hovering in place, taunting the legions of brutes. They bellowed promises of blood, and Orgo’s voice was the loudest of all. Lauka Vai laughed again, and slowly turned her back on the foe.

‘Flee!’ Orgo roared. ‘Flee before our might! Flee as long as you can! Slaughter is coming. Your slaughter! The blood of the Avengorii will flood the land!’

‘Blood,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘Ah yes, there will be blood. There will be a great tide. Its waves will rise so high they could drown the Colonnade. Prepare for that, Orgo. Prepare for my promise.’ She wheeled away from the outraged roars of the beastmen. She and the Avengorii began the long flight back to the Colonnade.

Kavak followed at a short distance back. Once the beastherd had disappeared over the horizon, Jaras said, ‘Stop. Put me down.’

Kavak did as he asked. They stopped on a wide plain. The wind whispered through the nodding grasses. Jaras looked up at the sky, leaden with black rain, and shook with the anger of despair.

‘You wanted me to see the truth of things,’ he said to Kavak. ‘I have seen it. The truth is a war of monsters with the Colonnade in between.’

He had seen another truth, too, one that he would never admit to Kavak. He already knew the terrible awe he felt whenever he saw Lauka Vai. He hated himself for succumbing to it, but he had no control over his reaction. She was too truly the queen of her subjects. He had felt something similar when Orgo appeared. And the truth was that these two beings possessed more majesty than the rulers of the Colonnade could ever dream of. The truth was so disgusting, it made him need the destruction of the Mother of Nightmares and the beastlord more than ever.

‘The Colonnade is not caught between forces,’ Kavak said patiently. ‘It faces destruction by one and has the support of the other.’

‘You heard your queen. Waves of blood will drown the Colonnade.’

‘Could. She said could, not will. A bard surely knows the difference?’

‘Your parsing of words does not interest me,’ Jaras declared.

Kavak’s fists clenched, then relaxed with visible effort. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose it does. Is there nothing we can say to one another?’ The hissing voice sounded mournful.

‘Nothing,’ said Jaras.

‘Then I will take you back and trouble you no longer.’

‘As long as there is one of your kind in my city, you will trouble me.’

Chapter 14

On the night of the ball, when Lauka Vai took her leave to prepare the flight to Farwilde, the Vengorian Lord Hevat Grask stayed behind and lingered in the hall, forcing the nobles of the Colonnade to linger too. He was enjoying inflicting his presence on the mortals who feared and despised him. With the musicians gone, the elite of the city milled about, uncertain, their desperate need to leave etched into their faces.

Advancing on his reptilian legs, his ragged wings folded tight against his body, he bowed before Lord Tarvynde. ‘My profound thanks for the evening,’ he said. Hevat Grask crafted his smile to appear diplomatic while conveying sardonic menace.

I know what you think of us. I know the ball was meant as a farce. But we took it from you. We made you suffer instead of the other way around. Treat fairly with us, Tarvynde, or we will take much more from you.

Tarvynde pressed himself back in his chair. He muttered something that could, if the vampire squinted, pass for a courtly response. Then he rose, made excuses and left before any of the other Avengorii could thank him in their turn.

His smile still in place, Hevat Grask caught up to Baveth Ullior before she reached the exit of the hall.

‘I did not express my thanks,’ he said, ‘for our dance earlier. Allow me to convey them now.’

The Scholar of Tides cringed. She stared at the floor. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said quickly. She shuffled her feet as if to move away, but Hevat Grask had placed himself between her and the doorway. Her face twitched at the mention of the dance. She was working hard to forget it had ever happened.

‘The evening was a fine one, don’t you agree? I hope there will be many more to come.’ He transformed his anger into courtly precision. The disgust of mortals filled him with rage. Look at me! he wanted to shout. What makes you so worthy in your form that you can judge me? He could not bear to have his self-loathing reflected back at him. He reacted with forced pride. By staying in the ballroom as long as possible, he was compelling his hosts to delay too, and remain in his presence just a bit longer.

‘I’m sure there will be,’ said Baveth. She didn’t sound like she was really listening to what she was saying. Her eyes darted back and forth, trying to see around Hevat Grask.

‘Then I will look forward to developing our acquaintance.’

She looked up at him, then. She couldn’t help it. And she couldn’t hide the horror she felt.

I could show you so much more than you fear. I could teach all of you the true measure of respect you owe us.

Baveth opened and closed her mouth. No words came out.

Keeping his smile fixed, Hevat Grask moved aside. ‘I will see you anon, then,’ he promised.

Head down, Baveth fled.

Hevat Grask left the hall. He had made his point. He had given his pride something to feast on, at least for a little while. There were other things to do this night. He had the rest of the Colonnade to explore.

Though his wings were leathern rags, he could still fly. Not as well or as quickly as many of his kin, but well and fast enough. He left the castle through an open window and flew the length and breadth of the Above. He was a shadow in the sky, landing on rooftops to watch and listen. He harvested the conversations of the Colonnade.

He wanted to harvest more. With Lauka Vai no longer nearby, it was harder to rein in his bloodlust. For now, he suppressed it by concentrating on being a different form of predator and learning as much about the prey as he could.

The social structure of the city interested him, as he knew it did Lauka Vai. He would have many things to tell her when she returned from Farwilde. He was painfully aware of how his self-disgust and his pride warred with each other. That made him pick up on the contradictions that underlay the Colonnade’s identity. The people saw themselves as having risen physically and spiritually above the predatory nature of Ghur, yet they were consumed by the need to move higher on the terraces, and to look down on those who were their social inferiors. What was that except yet another form of predation? It had taken Hevat Grask only the few hours since his arrival to see these forces at work. It interested him that the people of the city did not, but it did not surprise him. Perhaps a rare few did see the Colonnade and themselves for what they were. That would take an uncommon self-honesty. If too many people saw things clearly, the city’s social organisation would collapse.

It wasn’t long before he tired of the Above. He had seen enough, for the time being. He made for the Beneath, where resentment festered, more and more consciously down the lengths of the chains. He dropped deeper and deeper, looking for those who had no illusions about their city.

He was also looking for prey.

When the monster came and saved Jaras from a needed lesson of Long Chain justice, Parek fled with the others. He ran from the presence of the bard’s pet vampire, but he didn’t go far. He couldn’t move quickly, and hadn’t been able to for a long time. Not with his lungs in the state they were. He got as far as the first shack and went around the corner of its wall. There was a heap of discarded wood and chunks of sod sticking out from the wall, and he ducked down behind it. When he heard the vampire and the bard speaking, he raised his head slowly until he could see them.

This was something interesting. He couldn’t remember when he had felt genuinely curious about anything. Chronic hunger had a way of killing interest.

Parek watched the exchange. He noted Jaras’ contempt. Ah yes, there’s your true self showing through, Short Chain. Jaras’ condescending solicitude in the drinking shack hadn’t fooled him for a moment. He was also struck by the power of the Vengorian Lord, even while the monster was still, and by its hideous dignity.

They’re holding a ball for the Avengorii. The reason for Jaras’ outrage seemed very humorous all of a sudden. Parek liked the idea of a ball for monsters. He liked the idea of the rich scum of the Above getting a taste of something they didn’t like for a change. Something to disturb their stinking purity, just like he did. Just like every Long Chain did. It was nice for the Abovers not to be reminded of the people who hung low under the shadow of the platform. It was nice for them to go about their lives with their food and their building materials magically provided. They could ignore Parek and his fellow travellers in darkness. Parek was down here, far from the Diamond Spire, out of sight and, for the most part, out of mind. The rare encounters he had had with an Abover, when one of the mine owners had visited the open pit for an inspection, had made it clear to him how the Long Chains were viewed. Their poverty was a moral failing. If they had been true to the Colonnade’s ideals of purity, they would not be in their miserable states. The broken bones, the missing limbs, the dust-clogged lungs and all the physical marks left on them by their lives of drudgery were the visible evidence of their impurity. The cost of their immorality was their perpetual hunger and their lack of shelter.

The Short Chains looked down on them too. Once, on one of the rare occasions that Parek had had the energy to climb higher in the Beneath, he had overheard someone jokingly ask why the Long Chains complained if they didn’t have shelter. After all, it never rained in the Beneath.

Only it did, down here. The liquid filth of higher levels dripped and spattered endlessly. The rain of misery. The rain of squalor. The rain of ignorance.

The Avengorii, though, were in the Above. They were impure, and they were powerful. Parek saw how much Jaras hated talking to the vampire, and though the creature frightened him, he found himself admiring it too, and appreciated the obvious discomfort of the Short Chain bard.

The discussion ended, and the monster flew away with the bard on his back. That was interesting too. That made Jaras’ thinly veiled invitations to rebellion seem all the more suspect.

What is your game, Short Chain?

Parek couldn’t guess. He decided he didn’t really care.

He got up from his hiding place and wandered through the dark lanes and swaying bridges. There were few people about. Word of the monsters had spread. Those who had shelter had sought it. Those who didn’t were hiding wherever they could. The people feared what might be flying in the dark. And there was something. As he walked, Parek kept thinking he saw movement, sudden blurs, and heard the sound of flapping. At first, he thought it was his nerves – still jangling after the encounter with the vampire – that were making him imagine things. Then he realised, with a lurch of his heart, that another monster moved in the dark above. And then he became more and more convinced that it was tracking him. It kept flying near. He ducked and threw himself down against the side of a building, in the stinking gutter, every time he thought he sensed the presence in the night above him.

Am I being hunted? The suggestion of something in the dark followed him from street to street. Why? Why bother with me?

He had said to Jaras that death by vampire was no worse than life in the lower platforms, and perhaps even a liberation. Now he didn’t want to shed his life. He just wanted the thing in the air to leave him alone.

He stopped beside a tumble of wreckage. There had been a few huts here, built one on top of the other, and they had all collapsed. He looked up into the blackness, widening his eyes as if that might pierce the dark and he would see what was stalking him.

A snarl came from above and behind.

Parek jumped. He turned around and looked up into a tangle of disused stairs and bridges. A monstrous shadow lurked at its centre, a spider in its web. The shadow moved, leapt into the air and landed on the rubble. The vampire had the body of a man from the waist up. His skull was hairless, his eyes a glowing white and his ears almost as sharp as his long fangs. From the waist down were four scaly legs. He flapped his wings once, shaking tatters of flesh, and then tucked them into his side. Over his human torso, he wore a robe of flesh.

The vampire looked at him hungrily. There were thirty yards between them, and the vampire’s need for blood washed over Parek and held him in place. The monster trembled on the verge of leaping, but was just barely holding himself back. ‘Do not flee,’ the Vengorian Lord commanded. ‘Come no closer.’

‘Who are you?’ Parek quavered.

‘My name is Hevat Grask, and I have been learning much about this fine city of yours.’ He drew out the word ‘fine’ until it became a vicious hiss. ‘Tell me your name.’

‘Parek.’

‘Parek,’ Hevat Grask repeated. ‘Parek,’ he said again, more slowly, as if he were tasting the sound. The way the vampire said his name frightened Parek to the same degree that Jaras’ condescending use of it angered him.

‘Parek,’ Hevat Grask said a third time, ‘is this a fine city for you? Do you live in purity?’

‘No,’ said Parek, beginning to feel curiosity in the midst of his terror.

‘No,’ Hevat Grask repeated. Those white eyes looked around, taking in the misery around them. ‘No indeed.’

‘Are you…’ Parek hesitated. ‘Are you hunting?’

‘I have been observing. I have been learning.’ A pause. ‘Yes. I am hunting.’

Parek found it hard to talk with his mouth so dry. ‘Do you hunt mortals?’

‘Lauka Vai has ordained that we do not. We hunt the creatures of Chaos. We drain animals.’

‘Never mortals, then?’

Hevat Grask gave him a huge smile. ‘It is difficult for our kind to be near mortals. The will of our Mother of Nightmares holds us back from turning the Colonnade into a slaughterhouse. Even so, most of my kin would fall on you and tear your throat open if you were a single step closer than you are now.’

‘One step closer,’ Parek whispered.

Hevat Grask regarded him with a fullness of attention Parek had never experienced before. ‘Do you know what would happen if you took another step?’

Parek felt as if a crimson cloud were filling his senses, a cloud shot through with the lightning of madness and a hunger that could never be sated. The cloud filled him and surrounded him. It seized him with tendrils of blood-fog, and it began to pull. He felt the approach of savagery, of ravening monstrosity that was only ever delayed and never truly suppressed.

The numbers of the Avengorii do not grow through births.

Did Hevat Grask speak those words? Were they a thought born from within the crimson mist, or borne along its currents? Parek didn’t know. The promise of the monstrous pulled on him; hideousness terrified him and enticed him.

I have always been part of the hideous.

Where did those words come from? The thought was his, but its shape seemed to emerge from elsewhere. It frightened him even more, and it angered him too, because it was true. The Abovers looked at Parek and the other Long Chains as subhuman, as a stain on the purity of the city.

Born into servitude, his useful life spent digging in the mines until they wore him out, he knew his existence had been determined by the choices of others and by brute necessity; he had never had any choices. He had always been despised. The Abovers would not hesitate to call him a monster, though a powerless one.

The numbers of the Avengorii do not grow through births.

When he took a step forward, he still did not know if it was his will moving his body. He opened his mouth to cry out in terror, and that was genuine; that came from within.

He did not have the chance. Hevat Grask launched himself at Parek, jaws wide, white eyes blazing.

What happened to Parek then was not gentle.

Oblivion never came to mask the pain.

Nor did it for the other prey that night.

Or on the nights that followed.

Chapter 15

Kavak and Jaras were silent for the entire journey back. Neither spoke until they reached the Colonnade, a day later. Jaras broke the quiet as the pillars came into view.

‘Where are they?’ he demanded. He had been watching for the train of refugees since they had left the ruins of Farwilde, and he had not seen them, or the force that was supposed to have been sent to meet them.

Kavak’s eyesight was better, and he saw the refugees from Farwilde first. ‘At the base of the west pillars. They are alive. All of them.’ But that doesn’t really make any difference to you, does it? ‘The Prosecutors must have been able to escort them. The two days they had to run seem to have brought them within range of help. What happens to them now is up to the munificence of Lord Tarvynde and the council, who didn’t want to greet them in the great square of the Colonnade.’ They would all be housed in the Beneath. He had no need to point that out. He suspected that most, if not all, of them would wind up in the lower reaches.

‘Take me to them,’ was all Jaras said.

Kavak angled down towards the clusters of villagers. ‘Well?’ he said as they drew closer. He was being foolish in trying to debate with Jaras any further, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘Do you see? They are safe.’

‘I see the frightened,’ said Jaras. ‘I see people who will never again sleep without nightmares.’

‘You will see what you will.’ The desire to debate, having surged, now vanished, leaving Kavak feeling exhausted. His undead body did not know fatigue the way his mortal form had. His spirit could, though. He wanted Jaras off his back. His brother was lost to him. It was time to fly away from a futile struggle.

‘Leave me there,’ said Jaras.

‘I can take you to the Above.’ Kavak went through the motions of the offer. There was no need for Jaras to make the longer journey to his home all the way from the bottom of the pillars.

‘Just put me down.’

Kavak did. He landed a hundred yards from the nearest of the villagers. They still cried out when they saw him, and shrank together, as if expecting to be killed now, at the Colonnade.

Most of my kin would devour you, if you came within reach. But we saved you, whether you believe that or not.

Jaras jumped to the ground. He ran forward, then slowed as he approached the villagers. Kavak took petty pleasure in seeing that they regarded Jaras with deep suspicion.

Jaras spread his hands and bowed his head in a show of humility. ‘I am as you are, a victim of these days,’ he said.

Are you going to believe him? Kavak wondered. Of course you are. You want to. He didn’t convince you to listen to him in Farwilde, but his heart wasn’t in it. Now he wants you to trust him, and you will. The stories of what he was saying in the Beneath, and how people were listening to him, had reached Kavak’s ears too. His brother was a skilled bard. Kavak had hoped he would turn his abilities to supporting the treaty. That was one thing among many that he no longer hoped for.

Kavak took to the air again. He flew up to the Colonnade’s platform and over the city, towards the castle. He came down at the heavy door to the south-west wing. The entire wing had been given over to the housing of Lauka Vai and the two Vengorian Lords. The tower that had been Kavak’s residence on his initial trip to the Colonnade was not large enough for the Mother of Nightmares. Even though she would not stay in the city for the long term, the prospect of even two vampires residing there tainted the entire wing. It had been emptied of mortals and, as with the tower, all ornamentation. In the eyes of the inhabitants of the castle, the building had become a gangrenous limb, fit only for amputation. They had turned it into a shell of stone. That suited the Avengorii. The trappings of mortal wealth were of no interest. The Colonnade’s architecture was shallow posturing compared to the wonders beneath the Sascathran Desert.

At the end of the wing was the large hall that Lauka Vai had claimed. Though it was empty, her presence turned it into a throne room. The statuary lining the walls, heroes of the Colonnade in full armour, seemed to shy away nervously from the Mother of Nightmares. Kavak entered the hall to find Hevat Grask in attendance to the queen.

After he had approached and bowed to her, Lauka Vai said, ‘I don’t have to ask how it went with your brother. The reactions of the villagers to our arrival told the story.’

‘He cannot be persuaded,’ said Kavak. ‘His heart is set against us more than ever.’

‘The attempt and its failure are useful in what they tell us. You had a connection to Jaras. It did not hold. If the bonds of brotherhood mean nothing to him, then we know that there will be a great many minds in the Colonnade that cannot be changed.’

‘Almost all, I would venture,’ said Hevat Grask.

‘There is Atella Reigehren,’ said Kavak.

Lauka Vai and Hevat Grask shared a glance.

‘After the ball,’ said Lauka Vai, ‘she would appear to be in a minority of one.’

Hevat Grask expanded on her point. ‘Not a single other noble altered their attitude. As with Jaras, they are set against us. Their hearts are hardened.’ He shrugged. ‘We expected no more or less.’

And so we become the means of the Colonnade’s lesson. The Avengorii delegation would stay in the Colonnade not just for the reasons Lauka Vai had set out to the council but also precisely because their presence was an affront to the mortals. They would force the zealots of purity to face the form they utterly despised. The more the citizens of the city recoiled at the thought of the vampires in the Castle of the Diamond Spire, the more they would suffer the sullying of their precious purity.

‘The Colonnade is more than the citizens of the Above, however,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘The situation in the Beneath has possibilities.’

‘That is true,’ said Hevat Grask, sounding very pleased with himself.

‘What does this mean?’ Kavak asked.

‘We have some new recruits to our dynasty,’ Hevat Grask told him. He managed to look even more pleased.

‘You preyed on the Colonnade? When?’

‘After the ball. And during the nights of your absence.’

Kavak turned to his queen. ‘This is a risk worth taking? Are we not breaking faith with the agreement as soon as it has been forged?’

‘We are testing its limits,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘We are testing the rulers of the Above. They know what has happened. They must know. Hevat Grask did not conceal himself. I have heard no word of objection from Lord Tarvynde or anyone else. They pretend nothing has happened. The inhabitants of the Beneath are as disposable to them as they would like us to be. They matter only as the means by which the wealth of the Above is produced. What Hevat Grask is doing is another part of the lesson. And agreement or no, I will not impede the spread of the truth of monstrosity.’

Kavak said nothing, struggling to find the words.

‘Speak your mind, Kavak,’ Lauka Vai said.

Kavak sighed. ‘I am concerned about the effect of hunts on the other citizens of the Beneath.’

‘They will believe what they choose, just like your brother,’ said Hevat Grask. ‘They cannot be set against us any further.’

‘Can’t they?’ Kavak asked. ‘Do not underestimate what my brother can stir up. The people have not acted against us yet. They may.’

‘Let them dare,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘Let them dare, and fall to Orgo.’

Though the climb back up the levels of the Beneath was a slow one, Jaras was glad he had made Kavak leave him on the ground. The villagers had not wanted to speak to him, or even have him near them. Not at first. He had pleaded with them to listen to him, and he had spoken with a passion he had not been able to summon in Farwilde. When he told them about the arrival of the beastherd, and of the confrontation between Orgo and Lauka Vai, they gave him their full attention.

‘I was deceived,’ he said. ‘The Colonnade has been deceived. You may have been saved from one kind of destruction, but only so you can be part of the greater deception. The Avengorii did not feast on the people of Farwilde because they plan to devour all of the Colonnade.’

They heard him. He saw nods. He heard murmurs of agreement. He could not speak to all the villagers, and not all those he spoke with seemed convinced. Enough were, though. Once again, his message had found fertile ground. When he spoke the truth, his words were strong, and they travelled.

The chain-lift platform he travelled up on with a group of villagers only went as far as the lowest levels of the Beneath. There was a contingent of Freeguild Guard on the ground, controlling the flow of refugees to the lifts. Jaras expected to see more at the head of the lift, but there were none. The villagers of Farwilde were being left to fend for themselves. It was up to them to find shelter and food. Their hundreds, which had seemed so many in the village square, would now be scattered, absorbed into the Long Chain regions. No one in the Above would ever know they had arrived.

He heard Kavak’s voice in his head. Which is exactly how the Above wants it. The village must be saved, but the responsibility ends there.

Maybe so. That absolves the Avengorii of nothing.

The people of the Long Chains hadn’t listened to him the night of the ball. But his message would get through to them now, transported by all the newcomers who knew what he said was right.

That thought comforted him as he made his way up. He was nervous in the deep levels, and wanted to be out of them as quickly as he could. He was slightly higher than the drinking shack, and crossing a suspension bridge towards a filthy rope ladder leading up, when a man started across the bridge from the other side. Jaras slowed. The bridge was narrow, the footing slippery. It would be difficult for the two of them to pass each other.

The man was holding on to both guide ropes. He moved faster.

Jaras recognised him. He had been part of Parek’s mob. He turned around. Before he could run, the man stomped on the suspension bridge, shaking it. Jaras slipped and fell. He grabbed at the ropes to keep from dropping over the edge. Below him, other bridges seemed thin as threads, the drop between them hungry for him.

He got back on his feet just as the man reached him and seized his arm. ‘You made it happen!’ the man shouted, spittle flying in anger.

Jaras tried to squirm free. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ The man wasn’t big, but he was wiry and reckless.

‘You had Parek killed by one of your monsters. What are you trying to do to us?’

‘I don’t know what happened to Parek.’

‘A vampire took him. Not long after you left with your pet horror. I saw it!’

‘That was nothing to do with me! I’ve been trying to warn you!’

The man wasn’t listening. He was frothing with fear and hate. ‘I won’t let you take me!’ he promised. He tightened his grip on Jaras’ arm and pushed him at the guide rope, trying to throw him off the bridge. Jaras’ feet went out from under him again, and he slid down under the man’s legs, surprising him. He staggered forward, dragged off balance by the sudden drop of Jaras’ weight. He let go. Frantic, Jaras kicked up, and the jolt pitched the man over the rope.

He screamed all the way down. He struck another bridge as he fell. The impact knocked his body into a spin. Jaras looked away before he struck the ground. He jerked in horror when the scream suddenly stopped.

He dragged himself up. His arms and knees shook. He had to wait a long minute before he trusted himself to start moving again. He looked left and right, peering through the deep gloom of the day to either end of the bridge. He saw some movement, but no one else came after him. If whoever was there had seen what had happened, they had decided it was none of their concern, at least for now.

Jaras hurried as quickly as he dared to the rope ladder and hauled himself up to the next level. He did his best to avoid people as he rushed back up to safer regions.

Once he was on familiar platforms once more, he promised himself he would not descend to the depths again. Not unless his presence was absolutely vital, and even then, not without an escort.

He believed what the man had said, though. He believed that Parek had been taken by a vampire. He had seen their savagery at Farwilde. He had seen monsters barely holding back from a massacre. That one would prey from the shadows on the underclass of the Colonnade seemed only natural. He made straight for the Pillar and Sickle. It was low enough down that he had no doubt the rumours of what had happened to Parek would be the talk of its patrons.

He was right. In the tavern, he sat and listened, speaking only to ask questions and to show how worried he was. He had every reason to be. What he heard confirmed his worst fears, and surpassed them. Parek was not the only victim. There had been other disappearances too. All of them Long Chains. All of them among the most miserable of the Colonnade.

‘Why them?’ a woman asked. ‘Someone said Parek was even glad to know they were starting to infest the Above. Why not hunt their enemies? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It does make sense,’ Jaras said, realisation and dread growing together. ‘That is how they grow their numbers in the city. That is how they erode our identity bit by bit. That is how they destroy us.’

Chapter 16

‘Have you seen this?’ Bennor asked when Jaras reached his lodgings. The landlord greeted him at the door as if he were a faithful hound, watching for Jaras’ return for days. He brandished the latest proclamation. It had been issued the morning after Jaras’ departure with Kavak.

‘I haven’t, no,’ said Jaras. He took the parchment. It was ripped at the top where Bennor had torn it from the nail that had pinned it to his door. Lord Tarvynde declared that all citizens of fighting age were to begin mustering for the march against the beastherd. The date of departure would be announced soon, but it would be within the next several days.

‘I thought the Avengorii were going to head to the beastherd while we defended the walls,’ Bennor complained. ‘I can join a wall defence. I understand how to do that. I’ve never marched before. What’s the point of this agreement? How does it help us at all? People don’t want to leave the Colonnade to be slaughtered.’

Jaras reread the announcement carefully. ‘The Avengorii will be the vanguard,’ he said. ‘We will be marching behind them.’ He was surprised to see that much detail about the campaign in a handbill. This was perhaps Tarvynde’s way of reassuring a population that was receiving unpleasant news.

‘That doesn’t make me feel any better,’ said Bennor, showing exactly how effective the reassurance was.

‘I gather the idea is to smash the beastherd before it reaches the Colonnade. That way, there won’t be any siege at all.’

‘Let there be a siege!’ Bennor complained. ‘We know how to deal with those.’ He spoke as if he were a veteran, but most of the citizens of the Beneath had been reserves during the siege. They had helped the Guard fend off the tzaangors’ attempts to strike upward to the platform. Most of the Short Chain population, like Bennor, would have been far from the front lines, their experience of the war limited to tending to the wounded and dealing with privations. ‘I thought we would stay here while the vampires went out,’ he said again, sounding very upset. ‘This isn’t right.’ He wasn’t in tears yet. He might be soon.

Jaras crumpled the proclamation. ‘This is the doing of the Avengorii,’ he said. He could see it clearly. Once you know that they want the Colonnade, all their actions start to make sense. ‘They’re already taking action against us.’

‘How?’ Bennor asked.

‘They think we’ll shut them out,’ Jaras said. ‘They think that if they leave without us, they’ll fight the beastmen, and then we’ll hold the walls against them when they try to return.’

‘We should,’ said Bennor.

‘Indeed,’ Jaras agreed. ‘This is how they prevent that from happening. We all go out with them, and leave only the barest force behind.’

‘I won’t go,’ Bennor declared.

‘You won’t have to.’ Bennor was no longer fit to hold a pike. He would be called to the wall as a last resort, but he would not be leaving the Colonnade. ‘You’ll stay as part of that barest force.’

Bennor brightened for a moment, and then his face fell as he pictured being virtually alone in the city as a swarm of monsters came for him.

‘Everyone else will have to march,’ Jaras went on. ‘It’s that or arrest.’

‘Can’t we stop this?’

‘Yes,’ said Jaras. He clapped a hand on Bennor’s shoulder. ‘We will stop it. If we all stand together. If all of us are willing to fight for the Colonnade as we know it should be.’

Bennor looked hopeful and doubtful at the same time. ‘How can that happen?’

‘You’ve heard what the Avengorii are doing to the Long Chains?’

Bennor nodded. ‘Everyone has.’

‘Everyone has heard the rumours,’ said Jaras. ‘That isn’t good enough. They’re still rumours that the Abovers can ignore, if they hear about them at all. They’re still just stories to us. No one in the Above listens to the Long Chains. The Abovers are barely aware they exist.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘We need more than rumour. I have the ear of some of the people in the Above. I need to see what happens. I need to bear witness.’

He could use what he had heard. He could embellish the tales, fill in details as he needed. He could paint a convincing picture. Only that wouldn’t be enough. He was angry, but he needed to be even more angry. What he had witnessed at Farwilde roiled in his heart, demanding to be told in a song like he had never composed before. He needed more of the same inspiration. He couldn’t just invent. He needed to see the truth.

He grimaced as the full nature of the necessity faced him. He was going to have to head back down into the depths.

Jaras stole a few hours of sleep, then headed back to the Pillar and Sickle, taking Bennor with him. He ate there, and explained to those present what had to be done. It was late evening now, full dark in the Beneath, and what he proposed sounded much more frightening than it had when he had first spoken to Bennor. He almost hoped that he would find no one else to accompany him below. If he didn’t, Bennor didn’t have the nerve to be the only one, and Jaras could not go on his own. His encounter on the bridge had made that very clear.

But the tavern was full of his stalwarts that evening, people who had been listening to him from the first, and before he had finished his lamb stew, he had his volunteers. He led a group of five into the night. Three of them were from the same level as the tavern. They lived close enough to the lowest depths to be terrified of the hunts that were happening just below them. The other, a woman named Ura, was, like Bennor, a Short Chain. She did well enough as a grocer that she was rich by the standards of the Beneath, but the cost of trying to live in the Above would ruin her. She was the sort of Beneather that the Above favoured, though, when business took her to the top of the platform. She had worked hard to cultivate the image of the model citizen of the Beneath. She was quiet, pleasant, respectful and, most importantly, knew her place. She was the kind of witness that Jaras wanted, the kind whose voice might be listened to, and add weight to his own testimony.

First, though, he had to witness a hunt.

‘How do we know what to look for?’ Bennor asked as they started down the nearest rope ladder.

‘We’ll know,’ Jaras promised. ‘Stay quiet and listen. We’ll know.’

Having company gave him the courage to travel quickly. As they reached the dim alleys and treacherous bridges, and could barely see more than a few yards ahead, he watched for hostile faces from the other night. He saw none, though he wondered if he would have recognised anyone other than Parek. He remembered them as an anonymous mob, a blur of dirty faces crowding in on the man who was only trying to save them.

It was so dark, though, that he felt sure no one would recognise him either, unless they came within a few feet. The clothes he wore were grimy and nondescript. He was blending in as best he could.

And he wasn’t alone.

There were whispered complaints, at first, about the filth and the stench. ‘Quiet,’ he hissed, and the urgency of his whisper did the job.

He started the search by bringing his group to the vicinity of the drinking shack.

‘Why here?’ Ura asked quietly.

‘As good a place as any,’ said Jaras. ‘We should watch for someone very drunk.’

‘Because they’ll be easy prey?’

‘That was my thought.’ He didn’t have anything better than that as a strategy. The fact remained that he was depending ultimately on luck.

The platform swayed gently. They huddled in the shadows of stacked huts a dozen yards from the shack, and waited. The people who passed by paid them no notice. There was no lack of figures crouched and sleeping in the gutters and next to walls. Hours passed, and people went in and out of the shack. The volume of the voices inside swelled and ebbed. The occasional fight spilled out the entrance.

Jaras didn’t hear or see what he was looking for.

But, now and then, the air above him stirred with the sudden passage of wings.

‘Did you hear that?’ Bennor whispered, eyes wide and round.

‘Yes,’ said Jaras. ‘Something is hunting. And we are hunting the hunter.’

He tried to sound confident. Bennor did not seem less frightened.

In the last hours of the night, even the drinking stopped. The silence was thick in the Beneath. The creaks of chains and the constant patter of liquid from the higher levels were part of the leaden quiet. That was when Jaras finally heard what he had been waiting for.

‘Where are you?’ a woman called. Her voice was slurred and mournful, broken between despair and a dark hope.

‘There,’ Jaras said. He rose and listened.

‘Where are you?’ the cry came again. It wasn’t far away. It seemed to be coming from the right, and below.

They moved down the alley to the edge of the platform. There was only a low iron wall to guard against falls. Jaras and his escort crouched behind it and looked down. A light was moving down there, a torch the woman was carrying. She was swinging it around as she looked up into the darkness. It illuminated little except her and her immediate surroundings. She didn’t care. She held it as high as she could, as if it would reveal what hid in the darkness. ‘Where are you?’ she called again, then wept.

She was dressed in rags and standing on one end of a tiny platform, nothing more than a wide ledge that extended past some sewage pipes that ran down from the Above. She dropped to her knees and buried her head in her hands. ‘Where are you?’ she said, her voice breaking and going quiet.

A deeper, angular shadow detached itself from the pipes. It was Hevat Grask, the other Vengorian Lord. He clutched the pipes with his clawed feet and long tail. He hunched over, a vulture eyeing carrion. He hissed, wind over sand.

The woman looked up. There was just enough light for Jaras to see her face, her features etched by lines of darkness. He saw a face that poverty, hunger, despair and grief had gnawed to the bone. He saw a woman who felt that she had nothing left, and was seeking the rumour that lived in the night. She had come, in her extremity, to look for liberation.

Only now she saw what she had been looking for. She saw the monster above her. The desperate need in her face changed to fear. What lived in the night was more awful than she had thought. The reality was nightmare, and she was not ready to lose the agony of her existence. Not to the horror that had come for her.

‘No,’ the woman whispered, her last word, a plea that fell into the dark and vanished.

The vampire spread his wings and leapt down, a patchwork blur of the hideous: reptile and bat and distorted human, fangs and talons and wings, all wrong, all the pieces a whole of ravenous attack. The monster fell on the woman, and ripped into her throat with his fangs. Blood, instantly rotted, sprayed over victim and hunter. Hevat Grask fed, an animal savaging its prey. The torch dropped from the woman’s limp hand. It rolled off the edge of the platform and dropped away. Shadows fell over the scene, but did not obscure it completely. Jaras could still see silhouettes. He could still see awful, jagged, rhythmic movement.

‘No,’ Ura whispered. ‘Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.’

Bennor sobbed quietly. The others stirred as if they wanted to flee, but Jaras held up a hand, and they stayed where they were. They took in every moment of the horror.

Bennor clapped his hands over his ears, trying to blot out the liquid sounds of chewing and slurping. Jaras let the obscenity wash into him, scarring his soul, branding his memory.

Hevat Grask lifted his head from his victim. The woman moved, not dead yet, though Jaras could not believe she was really alive either. With a snarl that turned into a liquid laugh, the Vengorian Lord picked up the body and flew off into the dark.

Jaras’ companions sighed in relief that the spectacle was over.

‘Can we go?’ Bennor asked. ‘Please tell me that we don’t need to see any more.’

‘That was enough,’ Jaras said. ‘We have seen what we came to see.’

He had the inspiration he needed. It burned in his heart. Its winds were hurricane-strong in his mind. The song needed to find its way out. He felt that he would fly apart if he didn’t release it. He was barely able to concentrate on his footing during the entire climb back.

There was no need for quiet any longer. Bennor and the others kept up a frightened exchange during the entire return journey. They were seeking comfort in their shared terror. They kept asking Jaras questions, turning to him for a leadership of greater comfort.

He gave them silence instead. This was not the time for comfort, but a time for anger. They must embrace the horror they felt, and use it to fuel their resistance. He spoke just once. ‘Now you know,’ he said. ‘This is what will happen to all of us in time, unless we fight back.’

He would not tell them that things would turn out for the best. Their survival, and the survival of the Colonnade, depended on them being willing to take action. Them, and everyone else truly loyal to the city.

Jaras left his companions at the door to the Pillar and Sickle. They would tell what they had seen, and the story would begin its spread without his help. He rushed to his garret. He had to give the song form before it burned him alive.

He pounded up the stairs of the residence and flung open the door to his quarters. He didn’t bother to close it. He threw himself onto the stool in front of the battered table, took up a quill pen, opened a vial of ink and got to work on a sheet of vellum. He had worried that he would miss his lute, lost when Parek and his cronies had cornered him. His fears turned out to be groundless. If anything, the lack of an instrument helped him. It was important that this song not need an accompaniment. It had to be a tune that would leap to the lips of anyone who heard it even once.

The words spilled onto the page as fast as he could write them. The ore of anger, forged in horror, became the steel alloy of art. The song was unlike any he had composed before. There was no humour in it, no satire, no cheer. There was only rage. The truth was he was not composing this anthem to the purity of the Colonnade. He was unleashing it.

He wrote without awareness of time. He wrote without seeing the words, though he heard them, strong as war trumpets, in his heart. When he was done, he rubbed his eyes, disoriented at first to find himself in the mundane surroundings of his home.

He should have been exhausted. He wasn’t. The fire burned as brightly as ever. Writing the song down was not enough. It was still straining at its bonds. He had to sing it. He had to hear others sing it.

He almost broke his neck in the rush back down the levels to the Pillar and Sickle. Fate guided his steps and kept him safe. He burst into the tavern, and the people there looked at him as if flames were pouring from his eyes. For a moment, they were frightened of him. Then they listened to him as if the mantle of a prophet had fallen on his shoulders.

Jaras sang his song. When he did, everyone joined in as if they had always known it.

The fire of righteous anger ignited in the Beneath.

Chapter 17

Lord Tarvynde had forbidden anyone in the Colonnade from speaking against the alliance with the Avengorii. Forbidding speech was easy. Preventing it was more difficult, and Atella was not convinced Tarvynde had much interest in doing so. She was still not sure what game he was playing, though she was sure there was a game being played. She hoped he had thought through its consequences.

Then there was the song. Before today, she had never heard ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’. The tune had spread like a sudden plague, and she encountered it being sung and whistled everywhere during her walk from the Reigehren house to the council chamber in the castle. Its lyrics angered her, yet the tune was lodged in her head and had no intention of departing. A few of the councillors were whistling it when they took their seats, and Tarvynde said nothing to them. He did not even look displeased. The song did not mention the Avengorii at all, but in its ferocious call to arms to preserve and restore the purity of the city, its meaning was clear. It was a repudiation of the alliance, of everything Atella was struggling to bring about, and of what Tarvynde ostensibly stood behind. But it was impossible to challenge anyone who sang it. The lyrics were, Atella thought bitterly, a masterpiece of disingenuousness. Line by line, they were a celebration of pride. What was wrong with that?

Everything. It’s a work of hate.

But a deniable one.

Atella despised it, and she couldn’t shake its melody.

No one spoke of it at council, or of the rumours that were running rampant about the Avengorii preying on the destitute of the Long Chain regions. The entire city was whispering about them, just as it was singing ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’. In the council chamber, the rumours were the great unspoken, perhaps because of the attendance of Lauka Vai, a huge, coiled presence at the back of the chamber. The rumours were what could not be addressed, Atella realised. If they were, everything would collapse. Whatever Tarvynde thought he was doing, it was clear that he did not want to lose the strength of the Avengorii for the battle against Orgo’s beastherd.

The rumours troubled her. What troubled her even more was that she was not as disturbed as she thought she should be. She was interested. She was fascinated. She found her reaction hard to understand.

More than anything, she wanted to speak with Kavak. Alone. She felt that need as an imperative. So much so that it took an effort to focus on what was happening in council.

It was hard, too, to take her eyes off Lauka Vai. The other councillors were finding it as difficult as she was to concentrate with the Mother of Nightmares so close to them. They kept shooting furtive looks at the great vampire, and then turning away with pale faces and shudders. Atella wanted to hear her speak. She wanted to hear the powerful voice, and know what the queen of horror thought of the deliberations.

Plans were being drawn up for the campaign. Time was growing short, and strategies needed to be nailed down. The land outside the Colonnade was changing, exactly as Baveth Ullior had warned. To the west and the east, hills were rising, closing the Beneath in ever more profound shadow. They were higher each day. Soon, they would be level with the platform. The fields were no longer fields. The crops were unharmed, but that in itself was a dark omen, because the slopes were gentle. The beastherd would find it an easy march to the city’s walls.

Baveth summarised the changes in the land and her conclusions were gloomy. ‘The volatility is becoming more severe, as we feared,’ she said. ‘The land truly does seem to feel the tread of the beastmen.’

Lord-Celestant Dawnbolt spoke next. ‘We have been making plans in concert with Lauka Vai and General Torvassen. To smash the beastherd, we must move soon, and quickly. Our coordination will be critical. The starting point will be our massed forces leaving the Colonnade at the same time. The Avengorii, however, are a winged legion. They can reach the enemy before the mortal infantry.’

‘Which is what we shall do,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘We will form the vanguard of the assault, and strike the enemy first.’

‘The Colonnade forces will not be far behind,’ Dawnbolt continued. ‘While the beastmen are staggered, the Freeguild and the Maelstrom of Light will strike like a battering ram, and break them utterly.’

Atella wondered whether Dawnbolt had included the Freeguild in her statement as a courtesy. ‘The Maelstrom of Light is not without its wings,’ she said. ‘Will the Prosecutors not be part of the vanguard with the Avengorii?’

‘No,’ said Dawnbolt. Her jaw was clenched. She gave the impression of someone who had been faced with an impossible decision and was dissatisfied with having chosen the lesser of two evils. ‘They will be prepared to strike forward as necessary–’ she began.

‘It will not be necessary,’ said Lauka Vai. There was a hint of suppressed amusement in her tone. ‘Be at ease, Lord-Celestant. You will not have to entrust your lightning host to our company.’

‘We have faith in the abilities of your legions,’ Dawnbolt said, every syllable dragged out of an unwilling throat. ‘The coherence of the Stormhost will be maintained for maximum effectiveness.’

Atella thought she saw the calculation Dawnbolt had been compelled to make. It was against her doctrine of war to let another force reach the enemy first, but it was a force that she did not trust, and it massively outnumbered the Prosecutors. If the Avengorii broke faith, Dawnbolt would have divided her forces in a way that dangerously weakened her position and her ability to deal with two enemy armies instead of one.

Lauka Vai seemed to understand exactly the same thing, and was enjoying the Lord-Celestant’s discomfort.

‘The timing of the march will be crucial,’ Dawnbolt said, determined to move on. ‘We must advance when the land is stable and provides as smooth a passage as possible to the enemy, in order for the infantry to travel rapidly. Our hammer blows must come close together.’

‘Will we have that chance?’ Tarvynde asked Baveth.

‘Yes, my lord. I have the preliminary geomantic charts completed. I will have the hour chosen for you within two days.’

‘Very well. The beginning of our war awaits your word, Scholar of Tides.’

After the council, Atella marched swiftly across the great hall of the castle. The most public space inside the castle’s walls, it was where supplicants from all the terraces of the Above came to curry favour and influence. The vaulted ceiling was a deep, cerulean blue, scattered with diamonds that reflected the light of the chandeliers. Daylight was filtered through the violet and red of the huge, circular stained-glass windows that dominated its walls to the east and the west. Scores of narrow, fluted columns, fifty feet high, were meeting places both public and discreet.

Atella headed down the central aisle. She was two-thirds of the way to the doors when Vash Gastar popped out from behind a column, wearing his pleased smile.

‘I was hoping I’d run into you,’ he said.

You almost did. Literally.

‘What did you want?’ she asked.

Either he ignored the brusqueness of her tone, or he didn’t notice it at all. His smile didn’t waver. ‘I wanted to talk about how I can help you.’

‘Oh?’ You could help me by going away.

‘I think it’s all going well. Really well.’

‘It?’

He winked. ‘The plan. Everyone is becoming more and more upset about the Avengorii. And that song. That’s just brilliant. I’m just a little bit worried that some of this is happening too fast.’ He laughed. ‘You don’t want the open rebellion before the war, now, do you?’

‘No,’ she said carefully. ‘We really don’t.’ The possibility he raised chilled her.

‘Don’t you think it would be better if events slowed down just a little bit?’

‘Yes,’ she said. I really do. ‘The sentiment of the crowd is not something I control.’ I wish I did.

‘You also need to watch your reputation,’ said Vash. ‘I’m hearing that more than a few people think part of the song is about you.’

‘What?’

He chuckled, and it sounded patronising. ‘You know, those verses about the “betrayer within”, who is referred to as “she”.’

Hearing Vash parse song lyrics was a novelty. It almost distracted her from her rising anger. She had not made the connection to herself. She had been too focused on the overall message of ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’ and the damage it was doing.

‘I think we should let people know you’re not the betrayer,’ Vash went on.

‘We should,’ she repeated dully. She was having trouble processing all the absurdities she was hearing.

‘I know exactly how to do it.’

‘How?’ She was morbidly curious now. Whatever horror was about to come out of his mouth, it was sure to be interesting.

‘By announcing our wedding!’ His smile was so wide it shone more brightly than the diamonds in the ceiling. He looked at her as if he had just performed an acrobatic feat and awaited applause. When she just stared at him, he interpreted her horror as admiration. He held out his arm. ‘Shall we?’ he said. ‘I think a turn about the square together would set tongues wagging in precisely the way we want.’

Atella’s gorge rose at the mental image. She waited a moment, so she could speak without gagging. ‘There is nothing I want in what you have just described,’ she said.

She thought her meaning was clear. Vash managed to misunderstand. His self-love was as strong as sigmarite. ‘Too ostentatious?’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’re right. What if–’

Atella raised a hand, interrupting him. ‘Will you do me a favour?’ she asked.

‘Anything,’ he said, filling the word with shuddery promise.

‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘Wait right here.’

‘Of course.’ He tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially.

‘Thank you.’ She walked away.

‘What should I wait for?’ he called to her.

For me to leave. She said nothing and headed straight for the doors that led outside.

People milled everywhere, except for near the entrance to the south-west wing. Atella slowed as she passed that corridor, and saw Kavak in its gloom. Though he was barely visible, his presence drew the gazes of passers-by and they hurried on, frightened and revolted. Atella walked over to him.

‘You have heard the stories,’ he said. He did not have to specify which ones.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What is happening?’

The Vengorian Lord shifted his wings. ‘Much,’ he said.

‘I need to discuss this much with you,’ she said. She glanced around. ‘Privately.’

Kavak nodded slowly, his eyes knowing, as if he had expected this of her. ‘We shall speak tonight,’ he said.

Atella wondered if she was falling into some kind of trap. She wondered, too, why she did not mind.

She had duties to attend to before nightfall. As well as being on the council, she was responsible for the mustering of her terrace. That had been the duty of the Reigehrens for generations, though she found it hard to believe her parents had once done the same. They seemed to have forgotten all they had known about the defence of the city, turning their energies to the prospects of social climbing that she frustrated wilfully and that her brother, Ollam, disappointed through drunken whim.

Atella oversaw the exercises in the main square of her terrace, a few streets over from the Reigehren house. The ranks of the Freeguild Guard had swollen with the call to arms. Newly armed citizens stood shoulder to shoulder with veterans, practising lines of advance, turning their pikes into extensions of their bodies. What she saw satisfied her, but it did not make her heart swell as it would have even a short while ago. The blades and the gold trim of their armour did not glitter as brightly in her eyes. She saw too much vanity and pride, and it stained the determination of the growing army, turning it into something unworthy.

It was early evening when Atella reached home. Ollam sauntered out the door just as she was arriving. He blocked her way. ‘So, big sister,’ he said, his breath already stinking of wine, ‘have you been doing good work today? Have you been putting a shine on our family name?’ He whistled a bar from ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’.

‘I’ve been doing what needs to be done,’ she said. ‘I gather you have been too.’

‘Ooooh, is that a jibe? Are you judging me?’

Atella rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, just go, Ollam. Go and finish getting drunk. The White Tauralon needs its champion.’

Ollam leaned forward. ‘Yes, it does,’ he said. ‘The city needs all its champions.’

‘On that we agree.’

‘You think I’m shirking,’ said Ollam.

Atella said nothing.

‘You think I’m the family’s disgrace.’

‘I never said that.’

‘You think it, I said.’

Atella sighed. ‘I don’t think it. I don’t think about who is disgracing what in House Reigehren at all.’

Ollam swayed. He squinted, as if struggling to keep her in focus. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I believe you. You really don’t think about it, because you don’t care about it. Everyone can see that. The whole Colonnade can see that.’

‘You’re the honour of the Colonnade, then? You’re its glory to come? If you are, I wonder why I bother.’

‘Spoken like a traitor.’

‘Very witty. Very cutting. Now off you go.’

Ollam sauntered away, whistling ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’.

Atella stepped into the entrance hall, and found her mother and father blocking the way to the stairs and her room, where she had planned to catch a few hours’ sleep before meeting Kavak. The prospect of rest retreated into the distance. Her mother had her arms crossed, her face set in an expression of granite displeasure. Her father, Erulf, stood behind her, the broad and taciturn support to his wife’s advance.

‘I’ll assume you heard everything Ollam and I said to each other,’ Atella said before her mother could speak. ‘Would it be possible not to go over the same ground?’

‘I want to talk to you about that song,’ said her mother.

‘So it isn’t possible,’ said Atella. ‘How nice.’

‘Is this amusing to you?’

‘No. It really, really isn’t.’

‘The entire city is singing about you.’

‘I somehow missed hearing my name in the lyrics.’

‘It doesn’t have to be there,’ her mother said. ‘The betrayer is you. Everyone knows it. Are you satisfied with your infamy? You have tarnished the Reigehren name.’

Her father nodded in grim, but silent, accord.

‘It’s a good thing Ollam is doing his best to restore its lustre, then, isn’t it?’ said Atella.

‘Your disgrace gives him licence to indulge in his worst impulses. I shouldn’t have to explain that to you.’

‘I shouldn’t have to regard him as my charge, and I don’t. My duty is to see that the Colonnade survives.’ She stepped forward, coldly furious, unwilling to tolerate another moment of the game of social hierarchies. Her father flinched and took a step back. Her mother’s impregnable righteousness faltered. ‘That is the duty of this family, or so you raised me to believe. Ollam won’t lift a finger to fulfil that duty, unless he’s forced to. And you, both of you, abdicated your responsibilities before the siege of the tzaangors. Preserving the Colonnade has been my burden since I fought on the battlements. To be honest, more and more what I see being tarnished with dishonour is the Colonnade itself, but I will protect it, because I am sworn to do so. You can’t see any farther than a house on the next terrace up. Very well, gaze in envy to your hearts’ content. But get out of my way. Now and always.’

She took another step forward, forcing them to step aside. She started up the stone steps, then paused and looked back down at them. ‘One more thing,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to hear another word about a marriage to Vash Gastar. I’ll burn the Gastar house down and put the family to the sword if that’s what it takes to end this ridiculous idea.’

‘You will–’ Yanna began.

Atella took half a step down in fury, and her mother fell silent. Her father retreated out of sight. They were afraid of her, actually afraid, if only briefly.

It disturbed her that she was pleased by their fear.

Atella met Kavak on the ramparts of the castle’s south-west wing. He flew with her on his back to the east, to the highlands of the forest, far from her people and his. They landed at the edge of the woods and looked back towards the Colonnade, where the Diamond Spire shone in the light of its lanterns.

‘Are the stories true?’ Atella asked. ‘Have the Avengorii been preying on the Beneath?’

‘Yes,’ said Kavak. ‘That is the work of Hevat Grask.’

‘Why?’ Atella cried in frustration. ‘Doesn’t Lauka Vai realise the consequences? Can’t she see them unfolding? Why risk tearing the treaty apart when we most need it?’

‘The risk is a calculated one,’ Kavak said, watching her closely. ‘Do you think the council will turn from the treaty? I think not. The Colonnade needs the Avengorii more than we need it.’

‘But why?’ Atella insisted.

‘What do you think of the council’s lack of response?’ Kavak asked, seeming to change the subject. He was still watching her closely, studying her, she thought.

‘It…’ she began, then stopped. It’s a betrayal of our people, she had been about to say. The hypocrisy is monstrous, she thought too. Neither response was adequate, though they were both true. What they did not capture was what she truly felt. She was frustrated. She was more and more disgusted by her fellow citizens. Beneath all of that was a thing that she could barely acknowledge. There was something she wanted. She did not know its full contours yet, and it frightened her.

She shied away from the growing thing within. ‘The council is contemptible,’ she said. ‘But what of Hevat Grask’s victims? What did they do to deserve slaughter?’

‘That is not what they received,’ said Kavak. ‘They are not among the dead and gone. They are with us still. They have joined the dynasty of the Avengorii.’

Atella was silent again. Then she asked, ‘Did they choose that fate?’

‘No. But they do not regret it. And there have been some mortals, in the past, who have come to us willingly.’

‘Like you.’

‘Like me.’

She stared at him. She couldn’t find the words that would convey the right question.

‘You want to know why a mortal would want to become one of us,’ Kavak said gently. ‘Why anyone would want to be a monster.’

‘No, that isn’t…’ She trailed off before she lied. ‘I know why you made your decision,’ Atella said. ‘It isn’t the same for these people, though, is it?’

‘No, it isn’t. Though do you think about the lives of the people of the Long Chains?’

‘No,’ she admitted.

‘Have you ever been to those regions of the Beneath?’

‘My duties have never taken me there.’ Her cheeks were hot with shame.

‘The poverty and misery there is as extreme as the wealth of the high terraces. If you had the choice to escape that misery, and the bonds of a servitude that ground the life from you, would you not welcome it, even if you did not choose the moment of your liberation? Would you not see the appeal of freedom and power this existence offers?’

‘I would,’ she said easily.

‘The Colonnade’s doctrine of purity has its echo in the Avengorii. We have a commitment to purity too. We believe in the purity of monstrosity. The new form of the body taken to its fullest extreme.’ He paused. ‘You’re frowning.’

‘Is that really true?’ Atella asked. ‘Do you really embrace the monstrous? Then why forbid mirrors at the ball?’

‘We believe in the glory of the monstrous,’ said Kavak. ‘We believe we must embrace it. That does not mean we succeed. We are proud of the extremities we have become, but we know what horrors we are, and we hate that too, and we resent your disgust.’

‘Not mine.’

‘No, not yours.’ Kavak smiled as if she had said more than she knew. ‘The disgust of other mortals, then. We strive to embrace our condition. We fail. We have our contradictions. But the pride of nightmares can be transcendent. I think it is a worthy goal.’

‘It is,’ said Atella, with feeling. She looked at the powerful being before her, at the pure, monstrous abandon of his form. The memory of her battle on the walls of the Colonnade came rushing back, and her mouth flooded with the taste of blood.

Chapter 18

Sitting in the White Tauralon, Jaras mused on how satisfying the work of a single day could be. ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’ had landed in a tinderbox, and the flames of the song had washed over the Above and the Beneath before Hysh had risen to its zenith. The spread of the song had happened at the same moment as the conscriptions for the defence of the city had entered their full force. No one dared disobey that decree, and all feared what the beastherd would do if it was not stopped. The song became the expression of the people’s anger even as they obeyed. Especially in the Beneath, the mustering of the army came very close to becoming a series of protest marches in the slowly swaying streets. The message to Lord Tarvynde was clear. The people would fight against the beastherd, but they would not accept the Avengorii among them.

A curfew had been declared for the second hour after dark, running until dawn. The White Tauralon was having to start its entertainment early, and abbreviate it. The purpose of the curfew was to impose order on a city where feeling against the alliance with the Avengorii was so strong, it was one spark away from setting fire to the streets. As long as discipline held, the growing army would be a force for that order. Too many drunken soldiers, though, and too many frightened ones in the Beneath, could transform the newly armed into something savage. Tarvynde did not want that.

Nor did Jaras. He had shown up at his mustering point, received his armour and sword – less fine than those of the Freeguild Guard, but adequate to their purpose – and taken part in the exercises through the Short Chain regions of the Beneath. The war was one that had to be fought. What he was concerned with, though, was its outcome and its aftermath. He had spent the day thinking about these things. It was not enough for the people to have a means to express their anger. They needed a solution too.

The idea must have been building throughout the day, but when it became something he could articulate, it hit him like a blast of lightning from Azyr itself.

Now, in the White Tauralon, he was waiting to act on his revelation.

He was enjoying himself much more than he had on his last visit. He was proud of his work, elated by the experience of hearing his song sung everywhere he went. He was known, too. People knew who had composed ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’. In the Beneath, they wanted to speak to him, to thank him, to confide in him, to ask him what must be done. Even in the Above, he was celebrated. He did not have to perform in the White Tauralon this evening. More drinks than he wanted were bought for him, and when his table was full of brimming flagons, then more realmstone shards went into his pocket instead. Already, the takings of this day had him thinking about his permanent move to the Above. It would happen as soon as the war was over. Perhaps a small apartment in the lowest terrace. But maybe he should be setting his sights a bit higher.

There would be time for that when all was over. For tonight, his sights were set on a more specific target. He came in an hour before the curfew. Ollam Reigehren was alone this time, but so loud in his greetings it was as if he had been awaited by every patron in the White Tauralon. Some of them laughed. More than a few turned away. Ollam didn’t care. He spotted Jaras right away and rushed over to his table. Jaras had taken a seat in the centre of the ground floor so he would be seen. The entire tavern’s theatre had resounded with multiple renditions of ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’, and the former intermission bard was the toast of the night. When Ollam came to the table, he was not doing Jaras a favour. This time, he was the one who wanted to be seen in Jaras’ company.

Ollam gave him a massive smile and seized Jaras’ hand with both of his. ‘The man himself,’ he said. ‘The man himself. I owe you such a debt, Jaras. If you had seen my sister’s face a short while ago…’

‘I’m honoured by your words,’ Jaras said, and Ollam beamed. Jaras stood up and leaned forward confidentially. ‘I was hoping to see you,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘There is something I would like to discuss.’

‘Yes yes yes!’ Ollam’s eyes, a little glassy, shone with excitement. ‘I’m all ears.’

‘It might be better in private.’

‘Even better!’ Ollam exclaimed. He threw his arm over Jaras’ shoulders and the two of them went up to the upper balcony.

Once they were in Ollam’s favourite booth again, Jaras said, ‘You like the song, then? You’re not offended?’

Ollam opened his purse, took out a handful of shards and slammed them down in front of Jaras with a laugh. ‘There!’ he said. ‘For you! That’s how offended I am.’ He leaned back and bellowed the first verse of the song. Then he pulled Jaras forward over the table and kissed his forehead. ‘Brilliant work,’ he said. ‘You may not know it yet, but you are the hero of the Colonnade. The next songs will be about you.’ He was sounding less drunk than Jaras had thought at first. ‘The citizens of the Colonnade have one voice now, thanks to you, and it will be heard. Once the battle is over, the Avengorii will never be allowed back inside these walls. The council wouldn’t dare permit it.’

Jaras put on the sober, worried face he had been practising. ‘The will of the city might not be good enough,’ he said. ‘The command of Lord Tarvynde might not be good enough.’

Ollam stared at him, his exuberance draining away. ‘Why not?’

‘If the Avengorii decide to force their way back in, do you think we could stop them? After we’ve been weakened by the campaign?’

Ollam thought about this. ‘The Maelstrom of Light…’ he began.

‘They’re party to the treaty,’ said Jaras. ‘I doubt they like the Avengorii any more than we do, but they will abide by the agreement.’

‘But if the Avengorii force their way in…’

‘That’s my point,’ Jaras said, shifting ground. ‘They won’t have to.’ Then he shifted again. ‘But let’s say the alliance collapses after the battle. Let’s say the Avengorii attack us. Yes, the Maelstrom of Light will fight them. The Stormcast Eternals are mighty. They are also few in number compared to the Avengorii. The monsters are legion.’ He had worked through the same arguments with himself, imagining both possibilities. The more he thought about it, the more he saw the doom of the Colonnade approach. ‘Unless something is done,’ he said, ‘our end draws near. The Avengorii say they don’t want to be used by us. That isn’t what’s happening. We are being used by them. We weaken ourselves in the war against the beastmen, and then the vampires will turn and make us their feast.’

Ollam was nodding solemnly, and looking worried. ‘What can we do?’ he asked.

‘Do you know what would be perfect?’ said Jaras. ‘Imagine if the Avengorii and the beastmen were both destroyed.’

Ollam was suddenly sober. ‘Yes,’ he said, very quietly. He looked around, as if the shadows in the booth might be listening. ‘Is there any way that could happen?’

‘I think so.’

‘How?’

‘I have an idea, but I need your help.’

‘Anything,’ said Ollam, clearly seized by the idea that he, and not his sister, would save the Colonnade.

‘Your family has connections,’ Jaras said.

‘We do.’ Ollam grinned.

‘There’s someone I need to see.’

‘Tell me their name, and I’ll have you in their home within the hour,’ Ollam boasted.

When Jaras told him, Ollam’s smile faltered. ‘You’d better come with me,’ he said. ‘You need to speak with my parents.’

The welcome at the residence of House Reigehren was not warm at first. Jaras asked Ollam not to introduce him as the bard behind ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’. Ollam agreed, but as soon as he spoke Jaras’ name, Yanna Reigehren’s eyes turned to flints. It took some pleading from Ollam before she agreed not to have the servants throw Jaras out of the house. It took even more pleading to have him admitted beyond the entrance hall.

They retired to a sitting chamber at the back of the house. The fire in the hearth warmed the room. Worn heraldic tapestries covered the walls, barely visible in the candlelight. Jaras and the Reigehrens sat in oak chairs before the fire. Yanna and Erulf looked at him with simmering resentment.

‘Tell me, and tell me quickly,’ Yanna said, ‘why I should have the man who has besmirched my family’s name under my roof.’

‘Because I think I can restore your honour to the level it really should be,’ said Jaras. ‘Or at least, I can help make that happen.’

‘How?’ Yanna asked sharply.

‘By seeing to the destruction of both the beastherd and the Avengorii.’

Yanna and Erulf looked at him for a long time.

‘If you can bring that about,’ said Erulf, ‘you are not a bard. You are a sorcerer.’

‘Not at all,’ said Jaras. ‘It’s simply a question of seeing the one who actually does have the power to make that happen, and speaking to them so that they, too, can see their duty to the Colonnade more clearly.’ He paused. ‘Helping my fellow citizens to see clearly is all I ever wanted to achieve with “The Fires of the Colonnade”. There was never any intent to harm your family.’

‘The one who really needs to listen to you is the one who refuses to do so,’ Ollam muttered.

‘The one who actually has the power,’ said Yanna. ‘You want an audience with Lord Tarvynde?’

‘No,’ Jaras said. ‘I believe he has less power in this matter than you might think. I also believe he is in sympathy with us. If he can see how both our enemies might be destroyed, he cannot act on it, not after agreeing to the treaty. It is up to us to act for him.’

‘Then who is it you wish to see?’ Yanna asked.

‘The Scholar of Tides.’

Yanna and Erulf looked at each other.

‘Baveth Ullior is an old friend,’ said Yanna.

‘That is well known. That is why your help is so important. She does not know me. She has no reason to listen to me, or even admit me to her residence.’

‘Why her?’ Erulf asked. ‘What do you want her to do?’

Jaras grimaced. He said nothing.

‘It’s better that we don’t know,’ Yanna said.

‘There is nothing you need to do that would in any way be considered a crime, or a breach of honour,’ said Jaras. ‘What harm can there be in making an introduction between two people, neither of whom is under any shadow? None. That is the only thing I ask of you. What I will say to the Scholar of Tides must remain between the two of us.’

‘Your visit should not be known of either, then,’ said Yanna.

‘That would be better.’

She nodded, and she smiled at him. It was not a warm smile. Jaras wasn’t sure she had any warmth to give. It was, though, a smile of pleasure.

‘Come with me,’ she said.

Jaras and Yanna left House Reigehren’s residence on the edge of curfew. There were still a few minutes left, so for the first part of their journey, there would not be any trouble with guards if they happened to run into any, especially not given Yanna’s standing. Jaras wore a hooded cloak borrowed from one of the servants. In the dark, he would be unrecognisable at a distance.

They headed for the lowest terrace, where Baveth lived in her tower. By the most direct route on the streets, it would have taken less than half an hour to walk. Even with the cobbled roads deserted, it would also have been difficult to avoid being spotted. Yanna took Jaras a different way. When they left House Reigehren, they just crossed the street, and Yanna knocked on the door of House Pevellen. When they were admitted into the entrance hall and were greeted by Issaya Pevellen, Yanna simply said, ‘May we pass? For the Colonnade.’

‘Of course.’ Issaya led them to a rear door, without any questions. She touched Yanna’s arm in understanding as they left. Jaras recognised the firm complicity in that touch. If anyone asked, Yanna and Jaras had come for a visit, and Issaya did not know where they had gone next. This was the bond between the elite, the pact between those with the privilege never to be questioned harshly.

And so the journey continued, through courtyards and across alleys, Yanna and Jaras passed from house to house. They were never in the open for more than a few moments, and anyone who saw them would witness them simply making a short trip from one residence to another. Yanna’s influence over the lower terraces was wide, her friends many. Jaras marvelled at the birth of a silent conspiracy. The only knowledge communicated by Yanna to the families who passed them through their houses was that something important was happening. The Reigehrens stood for the defence of the Colonnade. Atella had tarnished that image with her actions. If her mother now sought help, that meant she was doing something to counter the damage caused by Atella. Nothing else needed to be known. Jaras and Yanna were seen but not seen, their purpose unknown but supported. The most any family could know was which house they had just left and to which home they went next.

This was better than Jaras had hoped. The Colonnade was ready for something to be done. The treaty was an abomination. The Avengorii tainted the soul of the city more with every moment they were within its walls. The deepest instincts of every citizen had to be to see the vampires gone. Those same instincts directed Yanna and her allies. They were acting for the salvation of the city as naturally as they drew breath.

What Jaras saw told him that when the critical moment came, the city would act as one. By the time he and Yanna arrived at Baveth’s door, his confidence was soaring. His mission this night would be successful. He wasn’t going to have to work hard to convince Baveth to do what was right. He was simply going to have to show her what that was.

The Scholar of Tides lived in a tower that rose higher than any of the other buildings of the lowest terrace. It stood at the eastern edge of the great square, midway across its width. The windows in its peak looked out across the land, with commanding views to the north, south and west. Only the guards standing watch at the top of the Diamond Spire could see farther.

Jaras and Yanna emerged from a house on the north side of the tower, separated from it by a narrow lane. Yanna had Jaras wait in the house’s doorway while she went around to the servant’s entrance at the tower’s rear. When she came back a short while later, she said, ‘The tower door is open. Close it behind you. You will see no one. Take the stairs to the top. Baveth has agreed to meet you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jaras.

Yanna looked at him seriously. ‘Do what you have promised, and we will all be in your debt.’

He lowered his head humbly, though he felt a burst of ecstasy as he thought of the horizons that would open to him when it came time to collect that debt. He would have earned the prize too, because he would have saved his city.

You would have condemned us to monstrosity, Kavak. You betrayed everything, but you will not win.

‘I will wait for you here,’ said Yanna. ‘Come back to this door.’

Jaras nodded again, and he stepped out into the lane. He hurried around to the tower’s rear entrance. It opened out into a cramped courtyard where the darkness was so thick he could almost touch it. The door was ajar, letting out just enough illumination for him to make his way inside.

He closed the door and found himself at the foot of a narrow staircase. It spiralled up into the tower’s heights. The wedge-shaped steps were barely wide enough for one person to climb, and he was careful to keep next to the outer wall, where he could place most of a foot on each stone step. Torches in iron sconces lit his way, and he headed up as quickly as he dared. At length, he arrived at a wooden door, banded in iron. He tried it, and it opened, letting him into the study of the Scholar of Tides.

The ceiling was low, and the night breeze blowing through the open windows leached warmth from him. An ornate wood stove glowed in the centre of the chamber, and Jaras hurried over to it. Two high-backed chairs sat before it, Baveth in one of them. Behind her, dominating the wall between the south and west windows, was a long, oaken table. A lantern hung above its centre, casting a glow over the vellum charts spread over its surface.

Baveth had a woollen shawl draped over her shoulders. She looked tired, drained from the efforts of reading and predicting the storms of change that shook and shaped the ground. She gestured to the other chair. ‘Please sit. Yanna Reigehren is a friend whose judgement I greatly respect. If she says you have something to say that I must hear, then it is clear that I must.’

Jaras sat. ‘I am here,’ he said, ‘to show you how you will save the Colonnade.’

Baveth raised her eyebrows and laughed. ‘I will save it?’

‘Yes. By ensuring the destruction of all its enemies.’

She stopped laughing. ‘Do you count the Avengorii among its enemies?’

‘I do. Don’t you?’

She contemplated him silently. Then, apparently satisfied by what she saw, she said, ‘I had a most disagreeable encounter with one of them at the ball Lord Tarvynde hosted.’ Her words were chosen carefully, her implication clear.

‘You should be spared further encounters of that sort,’ Jaras said, playing along.

‘That is not up to me.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Jaras. ‘You, more than anyone else in the city, are in a position to play a pivotal role.’

‘Intriguing. Go on, then. Convince me.’

‘Your charge is to prepare the charts that will allow the army of the Colonnade to march to battle against the beastherd.’

‘That’s right. A task I completed a short time ago. The charts are ready.’

‘Have you presented them to Lord Tarvynde and Lord-Celestant Dawnbolt yet?’

Baveth’s eyes narrowed. ‘No,’ she said cautiously.

‘How accurate are they?’

‘Very,’ Baveth said, her pride in her skills piqued. ‘The rising intensity and frequency of the convulsions makes predictions beyond the short range impossible, but I know exactly what deformations of terrain will occur, and when, between the Colonnade and the last known position of the beastherd.’

‘You have found a route for our infantry, then?’

‘A route and a time,’ Baveth emphasised. ‘The hour that the march begins is crucial.’

‘What I am thinking about,’ said Jaras, ‘is what might happen if the hour is badly chosen. Or to put it another way, if the truly correct hour is the one that will ensure not just the survival of the Colonnade, but the victory of its purity.’

Baveth stood up. She walked over to the table. She clasped her hands behind her back, contemplated her charts and said, ‘Go on.’

‘There are three things that must happen,’ said Jaras. ‘The beastherd must be destroyed, the Avengorii must be destroyed and the Colonnade must not break faith with the treaty. Or at least, it must not be seen to do so, until the time is right.’

‘And you think there is a way for all three things to occur.’

‘I do, depending on the answer you give me to my next question.’

‘Which is?’

‘Imagine what would happen if the march began and the forces of the Colonnade were delayed through no fault of their own.’

Baveth grew very still.

‘Is there an hour that would lead to such an event?’ Jaras asked.

Baveth took her time in answering. She unclasped her hands and leaned on the table. She ran a finger over a chart, then stopped at a single point. She seemed to stare at it, as if it were a message that she had received but not understood until this moment. She turned back to Jaras, her face flushed with excitement. ‘I will answer you in this way,’ she said. ‘I was arrogant when, a few moments ago, I said that I knew exactly what would happen to the land and when. The volatility is too pronounced for so categorical a statement.’ She picked up the chart, rolled it up, brought it over to the wood stove and shoved the scroll into the fire. ‘Indeed, I have already found an error in my work.’ She smiled. ‘I will have to rework the chart I was to present to Lord Tarvynde. And even then, there might be errors. Who is to say?’

Jaras smiled back. ‘We are at the mercy of chance and fate. Who among us can say what havoc they will wreak on the plans of the mighty and the powerful?’

‘I think you could say,’ said Baveth. ‘I think you, Jaras Anvarheim, would be able to say exactly what would happen to those plans.’

Chapter 19

Hevat Grask wheeled slowly in the night of the Beneath. His nostrils flared. He extended his long tongue and tasted the air. He was learning the flavours of the Colonnade. The flavours, and its layers. There were the architectural layers, and even in the Beneath they could be learned. They were broken and staggered. They intersected with each other. Yet there was an order, because the social hierarchies of wealth and power were as strong here as they were in the Above, just taking on the form of levels of poverty and weakness. These layers were useful to Hevat Grask, because they traced the contours of the layers that were of real interest. He followed the layers of misery, the layers of pain.

He tasted pain on the wind, and followed its call. He knew the vintages of pain deeply, because his own ran so deep. His pain had come upon him as a sudden, irrevocable blow, and it had struck with even greater force because it had been his fault. He had been arrogant. He had convinced himself that he could bathe in the powers unleashed by Nagash’s Necroquake. He had believed he could master the energies that would course through him. Instead, they had mastered him. They had changed him into a monster.

He had not been alone in his arrogance. That turned out to be no comfort. It was Lauka Vai who had rescued him from despair and madness. She had rescued all the Avengorii, no matter what journey of foolishness or pride or cursed luck had led to their transformations. She had saved them from becoming utterly mindless animals. Through her will, Hevat Grask and his kin always found their way back to rational thought. She had pulled him from the abyss of unreason. She had given him purpose, and she had given him back a kind of pride. What she could not do was take away his pain.

It was his pain, at least as much as his pride, that had driven him to hunt again each night at the Colonnade. He refused to be alone in his pain. He had to spread monstrosity. Gift or gospel, truth or curse, he had to spread it.

It did not salve his pain to increase the dynasty of the Avengorii. Nothing could do that. There was satisfaction in the act, though. There was the fire of pride in knowing the power of the Avengorii grew with every broken, miserable cog he removed from the mechanism of the Colonnade. He also enjoyed the challenge of feasting at the edges of the treaty.

The sense among the other Vengorian Lords was that the entire population of the city was against the Avengorii and the alliance. With the exception of the councillor that had come searching for them in the Sascathran Desert, that was true of the Above. It was also true in much of the Beneath, and the suspended platforms seethed with unrest. There were nuances in the Beneath, though. Already, in the space of a few nights since the arrival of the Avengorii, the flavours that Hevat Grask tasted in the lower depths had changed. On his first night of exploration, it was fear, and fear alone, that he had tasted when he winged over the cramped streets. He had found a crack in the fear in Parek, and the crack had widened since. There was curiosity now as well as fear. And sombre, fragile hope. More and more people were daring to think of a future, rather than trying to blot out thought of their present. The Avengorii were still feared in the regions of the Long Chains, but they were not hated by all there.

Every night, there were more souls who wondered if they might be willing to embrace monstrosity.

Hevat Grask found it interesting to think about the future of the Colonnade after Orgo had been defeated. He amused himself by speculating what the Avengorii might offer to the city, and how they might change it.

How they might continue the task that he had begun.

Already, the lesson Lauka Vai had come to teach the Colonnade was taking hold.

There were calls in the night again. There were the voices of the lost, seeking the gifts of the Avengorii. They ignored the curfew, now hours past. They had no fear of punishment. There was nothing the powers of the Colonnade could do to make their lot worse than it already was.

There was easy prey for Hevat Grask if he answered those calls. He did not. Tonight, they were not interesting. Tonight, he wanted a challenge.

He flew higher, leaving the worst of the misery below him. He smelled pain above, and he followed the scent.

Suvan’s friends gathered around her in the common room of the boarding house. They had lit every candle they could find, trying to push back the darkness as if that could push back her grief. The effort failed. The candles showed up the grime and smoke on the timbers of the house. They illuminated every corner of the room and made the absences all the clearer. They could not soften her agony. They could only make its outlines sharper.

The room was crowded. Suvan had many friends. What she did not have was a family. Not any more. Not after today, when her daughter and her son had been taken away from her.

They had been working, as she had been, in the open pit of the diamond mine to the south of the Colonnade. In the shifting lands, mining tunnels were impossible, an act of madness even to contemplate. The tunnels could vanish without warning, annihilating anyone inside. The open mines were safer, at least as far as the conscience of the distant rich of the Above was concerned. The reality was more brutal. Even a small change in elevation, a mere ripple in the ground, could trigger slides. Like the one today.

Suvan had just carried another load of precious rock to the wagons at the top of the pit when the tremor hit. The ground bucked beneath her. A hillock rose and knocked her off balance, upending the wagon. And then the edge of the pit collapsed. She scrambled back, out of the way. She was above the fall, and she was safe. Below her, the thunder of shattered, falling earth swept down into the pit. The cracking that announced disaster gave almost everyone enough time to run, and only a narrow wedge of the bowl of the pit disappeared beneath tons of rubble.

Only her children, already fifteen-year veterans of the mine, did not have time to escape.

On her feet again, Suvan looked down in horror and saw the ground slump towards Vel and Aran. She saw what was going to happen. And then she saw what happened.

The bodies had not been recovered. They had been buried forever.

And now, though she was surrounded by friends, she was alone. They mourned with her, but she was alone, because how could they know the full, raw, scraping howl of her pain? They tried to comfort her, but she was alone, because the only thing that could comfort this pain was the miraculous reversal of its cause. They shared her fury, and they were angry that there had been still more death just so the castle could add diamonds to its store, but she was alone, because they could not match her anger. No one could, who was not experiencing the same loss.

She was seated at the long, unvarnished table of the common room. She was doubled over, exhausted from another wave of wrenching cries. Her stomach and her ribs ached.

There were so many people, crowding around her, touching her, patting her shoulders, trying to hug her.

She couldn’t breathe.

She forced herself to her feet. ‘I need air,’ she said.

Laveya, her best friend, took her arm. ‘Don’t go out,’ she pleaded.

‘I don’t care about the curfew.’

‘I’m not thinking about that. I mean them. They hunt at night.’

‘Not this far up.’

‘Just because they haven’t hunted here yet doesn’t mean they won’t start.’

Suvan shook herself free. ‘I don’t care.’

Laveya tried to take her arm again. ‘Then let me come with you.’

Suvan gave her a hard look. ‘Do you really want to?’ she asked coldly.

‘I don’t want you to be by yourself,’ Laveya said, too frightened to lie convincingly.

‘I want to be,’ Suvan said, and pushed through the crowd and out of the boarding house.

The air was better in the street. It was less close, and there was a breeze. She took a shuddering lungful and started to walk.

She paid no attention to where she was going. She was in the throbbing numbness between grief’s spasms. Her head was stuffed with lead, and her eyes were scratchy, heavy as stones. She stumped along, following the melancholy relief of the breeze.

Her boarding house was on one of the larger platforms at this level of the Beneath, one layer down from the Pillar and Sickle. She could walk a fair distance along the twisting lanes before she would have to navigate a suspension bridge. She was conscious enough of her surroundings and what she was doing to know better than to try a crossing in her state. And she was so tired. Any effort beyond the thudding momentum of walking was too much.

Once, as she crossed an intersection, she saw a pair of guards down the other street on her right. They were walking the other way. She moved a bit faster until she felt they were far enough away to be safe.

The numbness began to break up, and she paid more attention to the city around her. She did care after all about being arrested. A little bit, at least.

Something flew overhead. She looked up quickly. She saw nothing, had only an impression of a sudden current in the darkness. She heard the beat of wings once, and then the thing was gone. The breeze eddied around her, disturbed by the passage of the predator.

Suvan stayed where she was, motionless, suddenly aware that now, now, she really was alone. She held her breath, waiting for the thing that flew in the night to return.

It did not. The night remained calm and silent.

She started walking again. She carried on in as straight a line as the patchwork streets permitted. The road she was on ended at the edge of the platform, next to the massive iron framework that held one of the chains. She sat down beside it, leaning against the low wall running along the platform edge. She couldn’t walk any longer. She started to weep again.

Stone cracked under heavy claws.

She screamed.

‘We should go after her,’ Laveya said. She had hoped Suvan would only step outside, and not actually wander off. She had been gone a while now. Laveya had opened the door to look several times, and there was no sign of her. Laveya’s guilt was growing with her anxiety. ‘I shouldn’t have let her go.’

The others were milling around, as unsure what to do as she was.

‘You didn’t have a choice,’ said Kav, looking worried and guilty himself. ‘She wanted to be alone.’

‘I should have gone anyway.’ Laveya went to the window of the common room again, and looked up and down the dark street. ‘She’s been too long.’

‘I’m sure she’s all right,’ Kav said, sounding very uncertain.

Laveya shook her head. ‘We should go after her,’ she said again.

‘It’s after curfew,’ said Kav.

‘So?’

‘If we’re arrested, we aren’t doing her any good. She might have been arrested too.’

‘And if she hasn’t?’ Laveya said.

No one said anything. The unspoken question was whether something worse had happened to Suvan, and whether they had the courage to do something about it.

Laveya took a deep breath. ‘This is our city,’ she said to herself. ‘This is our city,’ she said, louder, more forcefully. ‘Even here. This isn’t their hunting ground. If we’re too scared to move at night, we’ve surrendered.’

The speech sounded good in her ears. It did little to ease the rapid beating of her heart. She didn’t want to leave the boarding house. No one here did. But they had to. They couldn’t abandon Suvan. Not tonight.

Kav was nodding, and beginning to look angry as well as scared. ‘She’s right,’ he declared. ‘This is our city.’

Everyone agreed. With the bravado of numbers, they became resolute. They moved towards the door as one, with Laveya leading the way. They hit the street as a determined mass, and then they stopped, directionless.

‘Where would she go?’ Kav asked.

‘We could split up into smaller groups and search,’ Laveya said doubtfully. The platform was suddenly a dark maze, one where hunters could be concealed in every shadow.

Then they heard the scream.

A monster landed beside her. It walked on a reptile’s legs, and its wings were ugly shreds. It was a thing sewn together from fears of the dark. Suvan jumped to her feet and, with nowhere to run, threw herself back against the wall. She began to lose her balance. The monster from the waist up was a man, and he reached out and caught her. ‘Careful,’ he said, solicitous, his voice low and strangely soothing despite his appearance. The human face transformed, its jaw distending to reveal rows of savage teeth, and Suvan screamed again.

The pain of the fangs sinking into her throat was a shock. The stabbing flare went deeper than her flesh. It went to the core of her being. A hunger that was not hers reached into her. It invaded her blood and her soul, and it pulled them out of her body. Far, far away, she heard the sound of an animal drinking. She was being devoured, and she was being changed. No, she thought. She couldn’t speak. No. I don’t want to lose…

…to lose…

To lose what?

Her old self swirled away, sand through her fingers, frail and broken and not worth keeping. Her new self came in through the pain. It settled into her flesh. It sank into her bones. It was dark, and it was strong, and it was not really new. It had always been there, held down by the weakness of the body. A change in power was coming, and the strong self, the true self, would be dominant. She would not be broken again.

Yes, she thought, and she plunged into darkness.

As she fell, she heard the shouting of a crowd. She heard her name. People had come for her. They had come to rescue her. They had come too late.

They were not wanted.

She would never be alone again.

New pain exploded through her body. It began to change too.

She dropped into darkness, and it enveloped her in its welcome.

Chapter 20

The mob spilled out of the lanes and surrounded Hevat Grask in moments. He was surprised, and impressed. He had never thought the people of the Colonnade would dare confront any of the Avengorii so openly, or in such numbers.

The people carried torches. And they had come so fast.

The rage against us is stronger than I thought.

‘Back!’ he commanded. He spread his wings wide and held up a hand. His voice roared against the walls of the grimy, steeply gabled houses.

‘He has her!’ a woman cried. ‘He’s killed Suvan!’

‘I have given her power,’ he said. As he spoke, he realised he would not be believed. He had only just finished draining Suvan. Her change was beginning. For now, she was motionless, limp, with black, clotted blood caking the wound on her throat. Her appearance made him into a liar.

Hevat Grask did not fear what these people could do to him. He worried about what he would do to them. Though he had fed, the taste of blood was so fresh, the unreasoning fury of slaughter the tiniest slip away. Lauka Vai had chosen him and Kavak as delegates because they could restrain their impulses to kill around mortals. If he fought to defend himself, that restraint would crumble, and the massacre would be something the council could not ignore. Better to leave with Suvan and deal with the consequences of his apparent murder later.

‘Take him!’ someone shouted, and he saw that it was a Freeguild guard. There were several in the crowd. They had not come to restore order. They had been swept up in the frenzy, and Hevat Grask began to see the breadth of his folly, but also that Lauka Vai might have miscalculated the size of the reaction to the Avengorii in the Beneath, and the direction it might take. He still did not think he had risked his continued existence. He did see how he had pushed the treaty to the edge of a precipice. The surprise, though, was not the guard or his shout, but what happened next.

The citizens of the Beneath were good with ropes. They had to be. The suspension bridges and ladders needed constant care, repair and replacing. The people built new connections all the time, recreating and reimagining the web of their undercity. Ropework in the Beneath had the same value as masonry in the Above. Hevat Grask had seen the people and their industry with ropes during his flights of exploration. He had not expected to see the ropes come for him. They did now.

Nooses landed around his wings and arms. They tightened suddenly, pulling his limbs in opposite directions, forcing him to drop Suvan. Her body landed with a dull thud at the base of the platform wall. Hevat Grask reared back, and more nooses caught his forelegs.

They wouldn’t dare.

The shock of the attack stunned him, slowing his reflexes. He was caught in a swamp of disbelief. What was happening was impossible.

Torchbearers set fire to one of the houses at the end of the alley. The timbers caught quickly, and then Hevat Grask felt himself being pulled towards the blaze.

Enough!

He jerked his right arm, yanking hard on the rope. A man holding on to it stumbled, and with a scream, he fell over the wall. But the others held firm and hauled back, pulling Hevat Grask’s arm out again with such force that pain burst from his shoulder and swarmed down his flank.

Hevat Grask roared, and a sudden squall of black, rotten blood swept over the platform. It drenched the mob. It ran in a flash flood down the street. People screamed and fled, but others fought with a bravery born of terror. The fire burned on, growing in power as it consumed the house. The ropes, sodden, held him even more tightly. Still more of them caught him. One landed around his neck and would have throttled him if he had still needed to breathe.

The mob was getting bigger, louder. There were triumphant shouts, and still more guards joining the mass. The ropes pulled him closer and closer to the fire.

This cannot be.

He shouted, his voice a ragged, raptor cry in the night. It was a shout of warning. He was about to lose control. If he attacked now, he would rip the mob apart in moments and feast on a deluge of blood.

If he massacred the people, the Avengorii and the Colonnade would be at war.

The fire spread to another house. Curtains of flame reached for Hevat Grask.

The people of the Beneath were willing to burn their homes down to strike back at the Avengorii. They would not stop.

He would have to kill them.

Spears of energy, more powerful and more searing than lightning, shot into the burning houses. Their frames blew apart, and the explosion consumed the fire. The crowd shrank back, shouting in fear. They stopped pulling Hevat Grask. The Beneathers looked up in awe.

The Prosecutors of the Maelstrom of Light had arrived. On shining, aethereal wings, they circled the scene, blinding white javelins and hammers of energy in their fists. The Prosecutor-Prime landed on the top of the wall. The lowered tilt of his helm conveyed the fury behind its impassive silver face. ‘Well?’ he thundered into the silence that had fallen. ‘Will you save the beastmen the trouble of putting the Colonnade to ruin?’

‘My lord!’ the woman who had accused Hevat Grask earlier called. ‘We seek justice! The monster has killed Suvan.’

Hevat Grask turned to the Prosecutor. ‘I have not,’ he said, using his calmest and most reasonable tones. It was difficult to speak through the haze of madness that licked at the edges of his mind. ‘As I tried to tell–’

The Prosecutor cut him off. ‘I have little interest in knowing what act you committed that required an explanation. Though I am now forced to learn what it was.’

Suvan’s body convulsed, triggering more screams from the people nearby. She flipped violently onto her stomach, then arched her back in pain. Her arms grew longer, and a web of flesh detached itself from the bones of each. It spread like dough, and she shrieked in ecstasy and pain at the birth of her wings. Her skull began to deform, her jaws extending, the dome of her skull pushing up into a point.

The crowd backed away from the nascent vampire.

The Prosecutor-Prime stepped down from the wall. He seized Suvan by her trembling shoulders. She thrashed in his grip. He held her fast. ‘Do you hear me?’ he said. ‘Do you understand me?’

His strength of command was such that stone would have answered. Suvan choked back a shriek and nodded. Her arms continued to grow.

‘Do you choose this?’ He did not hide his disgust.

‘I do.’ Suvan howled in agony and triumph.

The Stormcast Eternal released her and stepped away.

‘She needs the care of her new kin,’ Hevat Grask said. ‘With your permission, I will take her home.’

After a moment, the Prosecutor gave a curt nod. Hevat Grask bent down and gathered the writhing vampire in his arms.

The Prosecutor summoned a blade of light and with short, angry gestures severed the ropes. ‘Disperse,’ he ordered the crowd. ‘And by Sigmar, do not make me come to such a riot again.’ He pointed at one of the guards. ‘You disgrace the colours you wear by fomenting disorder. You are fortunate that I am not your commanding officer.’ Then he turned to Hevat Grask. ‘Get out of my sight,’ he snarled.

‘You have my thanks–’ Hevat Grask began.

‘Leave.’

Hevat Grask bowed in his turn, then leapt over the wall and into the dark air. He beat his torn wings, shaking off the pain of the ropes. He stretched his limbs and flew faster.

A huge shape cut across his path and stopped him in his flight. He recovered awkwardly, hovering with an effort. ‘My queen,’ he said, and his voice quavered.

‘You,’ said Lauka Vai, ‘are coming with me.’

‘It is not the duty of the Maelstrom of Light to police the Colonnade,’ Lord-Celestant Dawnbolt said, her anger punctuating every syllable.

There were four of them in the otherwise empty council chamber. Dawnbolt, Tarvynde and Lauka Vai stood in the centre of the hall. Hevat Grask was at the side of the Mother of Nightmares. He was careful to stay silent. Though his fate was uncertain, he was able to appreciate the irony that so enraged the Lord-Celestant. Her forces had been obliged to intervene on behalf of vampires. That had to be a bitter draught to swallow.

‘Are your guards so lacking in discipline?’ she asked Tarvynde. ‘If this is a sign of how the Freeguild will comport itself in war, then our prospects are far more grim than any of us had feared.’

‘The Freeguild will fight with honour,’ Tarvynde said stiffly. ‘They always have. They have always been the glory of the Colonnade. You have no cause to doubt them, Lord-Celestant.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘I will not rehearse their history. You know it as well as I do.’

‘They should see to it that they do not dishonour their history, then.’ She whirled and pointed at Lauka Vai. ‘As for you, this is a strange way of respecting a treaty.’

‘We turned a blind eye to the rumours that reached our ears from the Beneath,’ Tarvynde joined in. ‘But this, we cannot ignore.’

The Mother of Nightmares looked down on them calmly. The end of her tail coiled and uncoiled lazily. ‘I take it that I am to ignore a Vengorian Lord trussed like a fowl before the feast, because what is honour to the Avengorii?’ She snorted. ‘If we treated your nobility in a like manner, the consequences would be severe, I think.’

‘The consequences of preying on your allies will be as well,’ said Tarvynde.

‘If your people turn to us for succour…’

‘Lies!’

Lauka Vai’s smile was slow and cold and dangerous. ‘Have you been to the Beneath?’ she asked him. ‘I suspect the Avengorii know it and the misery there better than you do, and this after only a few days. If you knew what we know, you would not be surprised that there are regions of your city where our gifts might be received.’

Dawnbolt intervened before Tarvynde could answer. ‘None of this matters. It does nothing to resolve the issue. What matters is that last night’s incident in the Beneath will not be repeated.’

‘It will not,’ said Lauka Vai. She looked down on Hevat Grask. He gasped as her will seized his. An iron band circled his mind, threatening to squeeze it to nothing. He had presumed too far, and risked too much. But Lauka Vai’s anger was greater than that. She was furious that events in the Beneath were escaping her control. His four legs trembled then buckled under him, and he slumped to the floor.

Her point made, Lauka Vai released him. ‘This Lord is banished from the Colonnade,’ she said. ‘You will never see him within these walls again. Be certain of that.’

‘I am,’ said Tarvynde, ‘because we march tomorrow.’

‘You have received the charts from the Scholar of Tides?’ Lauka Vai asked.

Dismissed from consideration, Hevat Grask struggled upright and backed a few discreet paces away.

Tarvynde nodded. ‘We leave at dusk.’

‘A propitious moment,’ said Lauka Vai.

‘Very well,’ said Dawnbolt. ‘Then there are questions about last night that we will put aside. They shall await our return.’

‘Agreed,’ said Tarvynde. He sounded almost cheerful, as if the prospect were so far distant it was something he would never have to consider.

Chapter 21

By mid-morning of the day the Colonnade would march to war, the ground had risen to the level of the city gates. Kavak circled the western wall, watching the gatherings that formed in the morning hours before the march began. The people of the Above looked at the wonder with awe and fear. In the history of the city, this had never happened. The gates had never been opened, except as part of the annual Festival of the Elevation. On that day, the huge bronze barriers slid aside to reveal the empty air that was the Colonnade’s shield, its certainty that it would never be invaded.

Kavak remembered the Rites of Elevation. He remembered the pride of standing in the great square and looking out through the gates. He remembered taking part in the processions, thousands long, past the opening to look down at the ground below and know that this shining city was untouchable, elevated far above the savage grasp of Ghur. Year after year, throughout his childhood and on until the siege of the tzaangors wrenched him from the Colonnade, that ritual and that sight had inculcated in him a belief in the superiority and the permanence of the city. The pillars were invisible from the perspective of the Above. What the view taught was that the Colonnade floated serenely above the land it had conquered.

He had shed that delusion long ago. He was glad of that. He was saddened by how much of the poisonous doctrine had filtered down through the Beneath, where the people lived in the darkness beside the pillars, where the ground was the threat of a fall, or something that would rise and seek to crush, and where the sky was an eternal darkness supporting the lives of the privileged. But the myths of the superior and the pure were easy to nurture and hard to eradicate. The social hierarchies reinforced by the physical structure of the city reached down along the chains and bound the people. They clung to their shackles as if they were gold.

Today, though, the belief in the floating city was shattered. The gates opened onto a gently sloping hill. Tall grasses waved in the wind. The land brushed against the platform, and there was no gap to cross. For the first time, one could walk out of the gate and onto the ground. It was a circumstance that served the Colonnade’s army well. There would be no need to send regiments out one by one, lowering them by means of the lift of the great square. Even the people of the Beneath would have the chance to experience this wonder. They would be coming up shortly, through the numerous service lifts, to form up and take part in the great march out from the Colonnade. Until then, though, their privilege was to live in the most profound darkness they had yet experienced, almost all sign of day cut off by the cliffs that had risen to the east and west.

Kavak kept circling. As the day drew on, the armies of the Colonnade lined up. Their banners flew in pride along the ramparts, snapping in the wind. The colours, though, were drab under the Avengorii sky of iron cloud. Their armour would have been resplendent in the direct light of Hysh. Only the sigmarite of the Maelstrom of Light seemed to shine with a radiance of its own. The breastplates of the Freeguild Guard, though polished as mirrors, were simply steel.

If we were marching together, that metal would already have rusted. As well, then, that the Avengorii would be going on ahead.

They would wait until the Colonnade was ready to march. The Stormcast Eternals were the first to pass through the gates. Rows of trumpet bearers saluted them with fanfares as Lord-Celestant Dawnbolt led the march on her dracoth, Havazzor. The Prosecutors flew above her on wings of light, and Kavak gave them a wide berth, pulling back east to watch from a distance. As the ranks of the Paladins, Judicators and Liberators headed out, their booted feet striking the pavement stones of the square in such perfect unison that it was as if thunder itself had been shaped into a disciplined force, Kavak was joined by Hevat Grask.

‘Is it curiosity that brings you here?’ Hevat Grask asked. ‘Or is it something rather more unusual?’ He grinned. ‘Or should I say someone more unusual?’

‘I’m sure you find yourself highly amusing.’

‘I do, at that,’ Hevat Grask admitted. He changed subject. ‘We are ready,’ he said. ‘Our queen is at the encampment. At her word, we fly.’

‘Am I summoned to return?’

‘On the contrary. You are bid to do your leave takings as best you can.’

‘Does Lauka Vai approve of my dialogues with Atella Reigehren?’

‘She does,’ Hevat Grask said with a twinge of envy in his tone. ‘She sees that this councillor is learning the lesson we seek to teach more readily and more fully than could have been foreseen.’

The last of the Stormcast Eternals passed through the gates, and the Freeguild Guard began to form up in the square. The two vampires flew in closer. ‘Their pageantry is as expected,’ said Hevat Grask. ‘I hope they will appreciate the spectacle we will offer them.’

‘I fear you will be disappointed,’ said Kavak.

‘I fear you will be correct.’ Hevat Grask cocked his head. ‘Has that cursed song become part of the fanfare?’

Kavak listened. He ground his teeth in anger. ‘It has,’ he said. The trumpeters played a few bars of ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’, and then returned to more traditional anthems he remembered from his service in the Guard.

And now the crowds lining the square began to sing the full song.

‘I think I see your brother leading the choir,’ said Hevat Grask.

‘And I see why,’ said Kavak. Atella had entered the square, leading the regiment from her terrace.

The crowd burst into a loud rendition of the verses about the betrayer within.

‘Enjoy your leave takings,’ Hevat Grask said grimly.

‘I’m sure I’ll find my conversation with my brother fascinating,’ Kavak growled. He folded his wings, arrowed down towards the square and spread them out at the last moment to come to a sudden stop in front of Jaras. He was in front of the crowd before the tower of the Scholar of Tides, conducting the singing. He was already wearing his Guard livery. For the conscripts, it was simply a red-and-white cloak worn over their own clothes. He was using the sword he had been issued to mark the beats of the song.

Kavak landed hard enough to shake the pavement. Thrown off his stride, Jaras turned to face him. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword.

The crowd stopped singing. They drew back against the wall of the tower, leaving space around the two brothers.

‘I won’t ask if you’re proud of yourself,’ said Kavak, ‘because I know you are.’

‘It isn’t a question of pride.’

‘Your face says otherwise.’

Jaras shook his head. ‘Everything I do is about saving the city.’

‘You plan to do that by slandering the name of one of its commanders, and by undermining the alliance that was formed to save it?’ Kavak hissed in disgust.

Jaras’ face twisted. ‘That alliance is a betrayal. It was never more than a war of subterfuge by the Avengorii. The alliance is your means to destroy the Colonnade. I saw what your kind have been doing in the Beneath.’

‘What you saw and what you understood are different things,’ said Kavak.

Jaras was contemptuous. ‘A fine lie,’ he said.

‘Believe what you will. Indulge in your petty hatreds. I will save the Colonnade in spite of you. I have no idea what you think you’re doing. I do know that your actions are pointless at best, and destructive at worst.’

Jaras came closer to Kavak and looked up into his face. He raised the sword. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’ll tell you what I’ve done. I’ve saved the Colonnade from the beastmen and from you.’

‘Quite the boast.’

‘You’ll see that it is true. In time. You will never have the Colonnade.’

‘You’re welcome to it. I don’t want it.’

‘Oh really?’ Jaras looked past Kavak into the square.

Kavak turned around. Atella and her troops were waiting for their signal to march from the gate. She was looking at him, and in her face it was plain that the call of the monstrous had taken a firm hold. There was no glory in the parading Colonnade for her. She had seen the truth, and it would not release her. Kavak wondered how far she would be able to go in its pursuit. He had willingly become a monster, but he had done so for a mortal’s purpose. If Atella ever made the same choice, he thought it would come from a place more profound than that.

Kavak turned back to Jaras. ‘I’m not sure what you think you know about Atella Reigehren. What I am sure of is that you do not know the truth. All truths are alien to you, brother. They will come for you, though, I promise you that.’

Jaras shook with hate. ‘And I promise you this,’ he said. ‘I will see you both burn.’

Kavak snarled at him, his jaws wide, lips pulled back to display his teeth in all their horror. Jaras reeled back, and Kavak advanced on him, his claws gouging the pavement. ‘You zealous little maggot!’ Kavak roared. ‘I was such a fool even to try to speak with you. I had hoped there might be a bond between us. I had hoped I might see my brother again. I was wrong. He’s gone. In his place is a corrupt, self-serving homunculus. I thought I was the monster. I was wrong about that, too. You talk about disgust? You have no comprehension of the depth of the disgust I feel for you. I have never been more grateful to have shed my mortal form, because I can boast that there is nothing that links us but a dead past and a name that has lost all meaning. I despise mirrors, Jaras, but you should fear them.’ He spat at Jaras’ feet. The stone hissed and bubbled.

The crowd was frightened. Jaras was pale, his hands in fists so tight his knuckles were white. Guards made their way cautiously towards the brothers.

Kavak spread his wings. ‘There is nothing to fear,’ he called to the guards. ‘I am going. I leave it to you to ensure this worm that was once my brother does not disgrace himself in battle. Much luck may you have in it.’

He flew off. He wheeled over the square once more, taking in the city he had come to despise. He hated the thought that if Orgo was defeated, he would have to return to the Colonnade. There was no home for him here. He didn’t think there ever had been.

Jaras tried to rekindle a chorus of ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’, but the fear of Kavak’s rage would not be dispelled that easily, and no one sang with him. Then it was time for him to join his regiment. He was in a foul mood as he lined up. In the ranks, he was just another anonymous Short Chain. The name he had made for himself meant nothing all of a sudden. He had tried to keep some of the attention focused on himself at Atella Reigehren’s expense, but Kavak had ruined that, turning the attention into something negative. It wasn’t Kavak’s anger that had the worst effect. It was his contempt, his visceral disgust. The people of the city had just seen a vampire express revulsion for a mortal, and that made an impression. Not the one Jaras wanted.

People had looked at him with guarded curiosity. Even pity, which was even worse. And now no one looked at him at all. That was bad too.

The captain of his regiment, Velazun, raised his sword, preparing to order the conscripts forward. There were fewer people watching now that all the regiments composed of citizens from the Above had left. The fanfares were smaller too. This was the time for the poor and the expendable to pass through the square and get on with their duties. It was not necessary to see or celebrate them.

The remaining trumpeters raised their instruments, and Jaras could feel the perfunctory nature of the tribute before it even sounded.

It did not sound. Velazun’s sword dropped, but not with a gesture of command.

The people still watching from the sides of the square screamed, and many of Jaras’ conscripted brothers and sisters cowered. He hunched down in spite of himself, and the fear broke through his shield of hate.

The Avengorii were flying over the Colonnade.

The full strength of the dynasty of monsters appeared to the city for the first time. All the legions that had been waiting and hunting in the forests at the edge of the Colonnade’s territory now filled the air over the towers of marble and diamond. The sky went from grey to black at their coming, and a mist of blood fell, slicking the roofs and the pavements. It would linger, a blackened stain on the purity of the white stone. It would linger, like the memory of horror that would haunt the sleep of the witnesses of the flight.

The monsters went by like a river of darkness. They filled the sky with their wings and their terrifying shapes. They cried out to each other, and their voices sounded like the laughter of ravens. The shrieks and the calls were their own fanfare, a hideous triumph that mocked the glory below.

The blood fell harder. It spattered into Jaras’ face. He coughed, retched and rubbed desperately to get the foulness from his eyes.

The trumpeters tried to sound their instruments, to counter the nightmares above. They failed. Captain Velazun stood motionless, his sword useless at his side, gaping in terror at the writhing sky. Moans of horror rose across the Colonnade, and perhaps that was the tribute the Avengorii sought.

Jaras forced himself to watch. He held tight to his hatred, and it gave him the strength not to turn away. He gave thanks for his destiny, and for every fated action he had taken to see the Avengorii destroyed. There, in the sky, that vision that ate at the soul and slashed reason to bloody tatters, that was the truth of the Avengorii. That was the future of the Colonnade if measures were not taken.

He had taken them. He had placed the city on the road to salvation.

I’m glad that we’re marching to war, Kavak. I’m glad that we’re going to follow you. I’m glad because I’m going to see you die. And then we’ll see to our traitors, too.

Finally, after an age of shrieking night, the last of the Avengorii passed over the Colonnade. The swarm of monsters disappeared into the west. The rain of blood ceased. The darkness of the sky lessened. The clouds lost their anger, faded to a lighter grey, and then, for the first time since the coming of Lauka Vai, they began to break up. By the time Velazun had recovered himself and given the order to march, the sky was clear. The fanfare sounded with far greater energy than Jaras had expected, but he was not surprised. The trumpets were no longer a farewell to the regiments from the Beneath. They were a greeting to the return of beauty to the heavens.

It was dusk, the hour that Baveth Ullior had said the march should begin. It was the hour, Jaras knew, that marked the beginning of the Colonnade’s victory. Hysh was disappearing below the horizon. The sky was a deepening blue, almost violet, and the purity of the colour made Jaras’ heart soar as he strode down the slope outside the gates, at one with his comrades. The lifting of spirits was universal. Someone started to sing ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’, and soon thousands of voices joined in.

As Hysh vanished, the sky to the west turned crimson. Jaras sang with greater fervour at the sight. It was an omen, perhaps sent by the hand of Sigmar. The future was drenched with the blood of beastmen and Avengorii. And the fires of the Colonnade blazed to the skies in triumph.

Chapter 22

Atella was conscious of the whispers of her troops. She had seen the suspicion on the faces of many when she had gathered her regiment for the night’s march. Hours into the journey, she knew that if any of her guards had not heard all that was being said about her before they left the Colonnade, they would have by now. So be it. She had not expected things would be any different. She had set herself on the path she now walked when she first suggested turning to the Avengorii for help.

She would have preferred that her soldiers trusted her command. What mattered, in the end, was that they fought the beastmen. On that count, she was confident.

Though it was night, and the army marched by torchlight, progress was swift. The route west was clear. To the north and south, the land became uneven, a jumble of rocky outcroppings and gullies. But Atella walked on a long slope, covered in scrub, leading to a flat plain. At the end of the plain the ground rose again, but gently. That rise had been the horizon, the last thing Atella had seen in the distance before night came down. The Avengorii were on the other side of it. She would see them again, she hoped, before the attack began. The beastmen were on the other side of the rise too. So close, but still frustratingly out of reach.

Far ahead, shining in the darkness, the Maelstrom of Light led the way forward. The light of the Prosecutors’ wings cut through the night, a beacon of strength and a brilliant spear aimed at the heart of the beastherd. The armour of the Stormcast Eternals on the ground picked up the light. A silver glow, outlining the shapes of massive, unstoppable warriors moving relentlessly on.

Behind the Maelstrom of Light was the elite regiment of the Freeguild Guard. Lord Tarvynde rode at their head along with General Torvassen. Their armour and the mail of their horses was gold, and studded with diamonds. It reflected the torchlight, and though they were dimmer figures than the warriors of the Maelstrom of Light, they were another bright ember. They were the glory of the Colonnade, pushing back the darkness, heading to war to destroy a greater one.

Atella could not look at them with the pride she once had. Is this how my troops are looking at me? If so, then she was all the more confident of their comportment in battle. She would follow the commands of Tarvynde and Torvassen, and her regiment would follow hers.

The regiments marched through half the night, then made camp a few hours before dawn. They had to rest, because the next march would lead them directly to war. They were expected to reach the beastmen by late afternoon.

A few fires were lit, but no tents were set up. The night was not cold, and there would be little time to strike the camp. The charts that Baveth had presented to the council had no room for error. The advance had to be made at precise hours, or it would fail.

Atella had just unshouldered her pack when Ollam came up to her.

‘This had better be important,’ she said. ‘I don’t have any time for family politics.’

‘You should let me lead,’ Ollam said simply.

‘What, the regiment?’ The idea was so absurd that she had to have misunderstood.

‘Yes, the regiment,’ Ollam snapped, offended by her bafflement.

‘You have no experience.’ Atella felt like she was informing him that night was dark.

‘I’m a Reigehren,’ he said, as if the family name conferred ability.

‘You are not a captain,’ she said, slowly, clearly, wondering why she was caught in this pointless conversation.

‘You don’t have the trust of the troops,’ Ollam said. ‘You have to step aside.’

She held her temper. ‘I have trained them, and I have trained them well. They may not like me, but they know how to follow orders in battle.’

‘Like? I said trust. Will they obey you? I wonder.’

‘You wonder if they will attack the beastmen? I wonder that about you, but not about them.’

‘The beastmen,’ he said. ‘Oh yes, of course.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sure we will all fight them.’ His tone was hard to read. He sounded sly, as if there were another meaning to his words, but she could not guess what it was.

‘Go away and get some sleep, Ollam,’ she said. ‘I will not step aside, and I will not listen to your demands. You will follow my commands in the battle, or I will execute you for mutiny.’ She kept her voice calm, her tone level, so he would know the threat was real. ‘And if you try to undermine my command, I will execute you for that, too.’

Ollam stared at her, his face turning bloodless as he realised she was serious. ‘You wouldn’t,’ he said.

‘Try me and find out.’

He left her, and Atella turned her face towards the west again. Far off in the night, there was a faint red glow, barely leaching above the horizon. The fires of the beastherd, she guessed. The Avengorii would have the foe in sight, and be preparing for the assault. They were going to attack come day, an unusual strategy for vampires, but necessary to coordinate with the timing of the Colonnade’s attack.

I wish I were there.

There were many things she wished. She wished she could think about the future. She wished she could think there was a chance, after the war, for a real alliance and peace between the Colonnade and the Avengorii. Stop it. Do not indulge in these wishes. The alliance will not survive beyond this battle, and you know that.

Yes. Yes, I do.

Acknowledging the truth was freeing. She realised she didn’t care about the political outcome of the war. She cared about something more important. She’d had, through Kavak’s teaching, a glimpse of something sublime, and the glimpse would not be enough. She held on to that goal. It was stronger than wishes. It let her sleep.

The Avengorii flew distant rings around the beastherd at night, staying out of sight, gauging the full strength of the enemy. Kavak and Hevat Grask flew in close formation with Lauka Vai. The ground below, a vast, shallow bowl on the other side of the hills that separated them from the advancing Colonnade forces, swarmed and bellowed with horned, stamping creatures of Tzeentch.

‘It’s vast,’ Hevat Grask said of the beastherd.

It was. It had grown since Kavak had last seen it. The Avengorii did not draw close enough to see the precise composition of the herd, nor did they need to. It was enough to know the scale of the enemy, and to know that every kind of beast was there, following in the heavy footsteps of Orgo. There were monsters in the air, too, flights of chimeras. They were not yet hunting for their enemies, though Kavak thought the beastmen had to have caught the scent of the vampires. Lauka Vai was not keeping the coming attack a secret, and the storm clouds of the Avengorii had blotted out the stars. But Orgo would have to wait and snarl and wonder a bit longer before he was given the satisfaction of battle.

‘We are going to war against a sea,’ said Kavak.

‘We are,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘We will sink our claws into the sea, and it will learn that it can bleed, that it can be stabbed, and that seas can die. When we are done, there will be only barren earth where the sea of Chaos once lapped.’

When they had circled around again to the hills on the eastern side of the herd, Lauka Vai gathered the Vengorian Lords around her and pointed. ‘We will cut through the centre of the enemy. If we destroy Orgo and his shamans in the first moments, so much the better, though I will not underestimate our foe by expecting such an outcome. Our goal will be to drive forward and through, to the other side of the herd. Cut it in half.’

‘That will sow confusion in their ranks,’ said Hevat Grask.

‘Not for long,’ Lauka Vai said, echoing Kavak’s thoughts. ‘We will use what there is to our ends, and to greater slaughter. Do not lose the advantage of flight. There are beasts of the air.’

‘And once we have reached the other side?’ Kavak asked.

‘We butcher them there, and draw the herd to the west. That will be the moment for the Colonnade to strike the herd while its attention is on us.’

Kavak noticed that she did not say when the Colonnade strikes the herd.

‘Will the Colonnade keep faith?’ Hevat Grask asked.

‘A question to ask Lord Tarvynde,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘It is in their interest to do so.’ She bared her fangs.

‘If they fail us?’ said Hevat Grask, insistent.

‘They will not dare. They have seen our full strength. They know that they need us to fight against Orgo. We do not need them, and I will force them to confront the monstrous within themselves. For every vampire that they have hunted in the past, there will be the slow retribution of the erosion of their self-belief.’ Her eyes narrowed, their blankness hinting at terrible vengeance. ‘But that is not our task of the moment. The beastherd of Orgo must be destroyed,’ she said. ‘It shall be. I will not permit this taint of Tzeentch to remain upon the land.’

The Avengorii gathered behind her, preparing, forming themselves into the great, shattering wedge that would strike through the heart of the beastherd.

Dawn came, though it arrived without light. The darkness of the clouds was too profound. The sky pressed down, heavy with blood.

The storm of the Avengorii was poised to fall upon the beastmen.

From the east, where daylight tried to find a hold on the land, came the sound of the Colonnade’s call to arms.

‘Tear the beasts apart!’ Lauka Vai cried. Her voice rolled over the land, drowning out the bellows. Wings outspread, claws extended, she swept her arm down, wielding a sword whose immense blade could cut a mortal in half at a stroke. With the gesture, she condemned the horde below to the slaughter. ‘Be the glory of monstrosity, my children!’ Her voice was lightning, and it ripped the clouds open, unleashing a deluge of black blood. ‘To our feast!’ And her voice filled the souls of her dynasty with hunger, with frenzy and with the ecstasy of death.

Lauka Vai streaked downward, her wings creating a gale in her wake. The Avengorii dived with her, a legion of ravening monsters turned into a single, murderous spearhead, the maddened vargheists guided by the lucid Vengorian Lords. Kavak roared, exulting in the charge. He saw the ground below in a haze of red. The need for blood, oceans of blood, consumed him. As the spearhead closed in from the west on the front lines of the beastherd, the thought skittered through his fevered mind that a hundred thousand gors would not satisfy him. He would feast until not a single beast of Chaos lived in the realm of Ghur.

The beastmen answered frenzy with fury. They stampeded forward, an unbroken mass of horns that filled the entire bowl. They welcomed the attack of the Avengorii with hurled spears and lowered horns. Leading the charge, Orgo looked up and roared, his two massive axes upraised. On either side of him, his shamans howled their praise of Tzeentch and conjured foul sorcerous energy. An aura of blue and red rippled over the forward part of the herd.

Lauka Vai descended on the leading edge of the beastmen with the force of a meteor. Mother of Nightmares and beast of annihilation raced towards each other. At the last moment, she shouted an incantation of her own and blasted mystical bolts into the beastmen. The bolts struck Orgo full in the chest. He staggered, roared in defiance of their power and kept coming. But when the full force of the Mother of Nightmares arrived, a hurricane of wind and torrents of blinding blood with her, he threw himself to the side. He turned to bring his axes down against her flanks, but her tail lashed out and knocked him aside.

Kavak saw the near encounter between Orgo and Lauka Vai. She snarled in frustration that she could not turn back and confront the beastlord. But the command was forward, always forward. The momentum could not be slowed, or it would be stopped. The spear blow had to cut all the way through the herd. So Lauka Vai kept going, leaving Orgo behind to turn after her and pursue, forcing his way through his own warriors.

The wedge cut into the beastmen. The Avengorii slashed through brutal flesh, and the battle began with the slaughter Lauka Vai had commanded. The vampires parted a sea of monsters, and Kavak revelled in the fact that his queen was right. The sea could bleed.

Kavak’s flight turned him into a scythe. The huge claws of his wings and his blackened iron blade slashed throats and gutted bellies. His clawed feet tore heads off as he passed. Mouth open, he glutted himself on the fountains of blood that exploded at his passage. The torrents hammering down from the sky mixed with the blood of the beasts, blackening it the moment it burst into the air. The taste of warm death drove him mad with the need for more and more killing. He was on the precipice’s edge, so close to falling into the abyss of his own bestial urges, the abyss that was the fate of any of the Avengorii not held in the realm of reason by the will of Lauka Vai. He flew faster and faster. He was the hand of butchery. He did not see individual enemies. There was only the mass that he was cutting down. He could not be stopped.

But though the sea parted, the waves crashed back. Gors and bestigors pushed in, crushing the smaller ungors in their fury to trample and rend the vampires. A huge body hurled itself at Kavak. He saw it coming, saw that he could not stop its charge. He tried to pull up.

Do not stop. Do not stop. Do not let them slow you.

The gor leapt and seized him. The weight was immense. Kavak strained upward. The gor kicked as its hooves left the ground, found no purchase and rammed its horns into his chest. Kavak shrieked in anger. He beat his wings harder, flew higher. He lunged his head down, ripped open the back of the gor’s neck and stabbed his sword into the brute’s ribs. He feasted on his foe’s life, replenishing his strength as fast as it could wound him. The gor weakened, and Kavak hurled it away. It fell and disappeared into the cauldron of violence below.

Kavak paused, the flames of his frenzy dampening, and saw that he was at the western edge of the beastherd. He shot forward again, becoming part of the mass of the Avengorii. The legions came out of the mass of the herd and rose upward, then turned back to face their foes.

They had killed hundreds in that great sweep. It seemed to Kavak that they had not even touched the herd.

‘An axe blow to water,’ he muttered.

The beastmen did as Lauka Vai had foreseen. The entire herd was rushing west, intent on revenge. Orgo, left far back by the spear thrust of the Avengorii, had now made his way to the middle of his forces and was thundering towards the new front lines. He was not roaring in animal rage. He was barking orders, and the herd responded. The aura surrounding the beastmen intensified.

Sparks ran down Kavak’s armour as the energy built.

Lauka Vai led the Avengorii into a second charge, coming in higher this time, aiming for the shamans, racing to stop the counter-attack before it was unleashed.

Kavak looked to the east as he followed his queen.

At his side was the Vengorian Lord Thalvess, his companion from his first encounter with the beasts of Orgo. ‘Where is the Colonnade?’ he said. ‘Now is their time.’

Kavak listened for the sound of trumpets over the snarls and roars of beasts.

Instead, he heard the rumbling of the earth.

Atella wanted to sprint up the hill. On this side of the slopes, she could not see the Avengorii. She could not see what was happening. She could only hear the storm of howls, roars and screams.

She kept her discipline. She was responsible for her regiment. They led the way up at a steady pace, behind the elites. The Maelstrom of Light were near the top of the rise. The Prosecutors were above it. They would see the progress of the war. Atella willed them to launch their assault.

The vibrations began under her feet. In the first moment, she refused to believe what they meant. There was a mistake. This was a harmless tremor. The Colonnade’s regiments had followed the hours of Baveth’s charts. The land would not change. Not now. Not now.

The ground erupted. At the top of the rise, immense granite slabs shot straight up with such speed that they forced even the Prosecutors to fly back or be crushed by the millions of tons of stone suddenly clawing for the sky. The deafening, piercing cracks were the birth cries of mountains. The ground shook itself back and forth like a trapped animal. Atella fell, along with her regiment and all the soldiers of the Colonnade. They slid and rolled down the slope. Its gradient steepened so quickly, it felt as if the realm were folding itself back over her.

She sank her fingers into the ground and arrested her slide. She looked up, and up, and up, and saw the gigantic vertical cliffs that blocked the advance. Somewhere nearby, Ollam was laughing.

Atella howled.

Chapter 23

The sounds of war came to Jaras from the other side of the new cliffs. He picked himself up and laughed. He cut a short caper in front of a rock wall a thousand feet high, then obediently got back into place as his regiment reassembled itself. He couldn’t stop grinning and looking at the barrier. There would be no crossing it. The Prosecutors could fly over the jagged top of the cliff, but no one could climb it.

A few hundred yards away, at the base of the wall, Dawnbolt and Tarvynde conferred. Jaras couldn’t hear what they were saying. Dawnbolt’s gestures were brusque, frustrated. She had been marching to war and now was stymied. Tarvynde seemed considerably more relaxed. He nodded and shrugged. Jaras thought he even smiled once, very briefly. His expression was otherwise serious, but he radiated a calm equanimity in the face of the barrier. The events of the land were beyond his control.

He is one of us, Jaras thought, more sure of that than ever. He must see the chance to save the Colonnade that now lies before us. The question was whether Tarvynde had the courage to seize the opportunity.

Dawnbolt pointed to the south several times, and once her discussion with Tarvynde ended, the Colonnade’s forces took that direction. The cliffs stretched for miles, but to the south, they dropped back down into the earth just at the edge of Jaras’ sight. The armies would go around the wall there, and head back north towards the battlefield. It would take most of the day to complete the journey. Plenty of time, he thought, for the two races of monsters to have completed their massacre of each other.

As the march began, Jaras saw the unease in the faces around him. His comrades did not yet see the truth of their situation. They were worried the rise of the cliffs would endanger the Colonnade. He had to correct them.

He gestured at the cliffs and laughed again. ‘Rejoice!’ he called out. ‘This is the work of the hand of Sigmar!’

‘How can that be?’ the woman next to him asked. ‘Why does he stop us?’

‘He doesn’t.’ Jaras spoke to her but projected his voice so everyone nearby would hear. ‘He aids us. He shows us what must be done.’

‘Which is what?’ a man asked.

‘We must destroy all the enemies of the Colonnade.’

Jaras let them think about that for a moment, then asked, ‘Will you welcome the Avengorii back into the city?’ The hate he saw gave him the answer he wanted. To prick it to greater intensity, he said, ‘Will you offer your children to their feasts, and say this is for the good of a fine alliance?’

He left the angry responses to grow and spread, and made his way to the front of the regiment, falling into place beside Velazun. He knew the captain slightly. He had been a member of the Guard for many years, but he was also a resident of the Beneath, and his roots were deep.

‘You seem grim, captain,’ Jaras said. ‘You shouldn’t be. Can’t you see the gift that has been granted us?’

‘What gift?’ said Velazun. ‘We will be too late.’

‘Too late for what?’

Velazun blinked. ‘To affect the outcome of the war.’

‘No,’ said Jaras. ‘We’ll be just in time. Or do you harbour sympathies for the Avengorii?’

Velazun spat. ‘I wish I never had to see them again.’

‘Like I said,’ said Jaras. ‘The cliffs are a gift.’

‘Go on,’ Velazun said after a moment.

‘This war is to save our city. Now it can be. We know that all these monsters are our enemies. Why do we pretend that one of the races is not?’

‘You won’t catch me pretending they aren’t,’ Velazun growled. ‘I won’t kneel to them, no matter what the council says.’

‘Nor will I,’ said Jaras. ‘Nor will any of us. We won’t have to. Our duty is clear, captain. Whatever survives when we reach the other side of this wall must be destroyed. It must.’

Velazun looked like he wanted to agree. His lips were a tight line of strain. He looked straight ahead, torn between his heart and his orders.

‘We are all with you,’ Jaras said softly. ‘There isn’t a soul behind us that wouldn’t see the Avengorii burned to ash. We know where the city’s salvation lies. All of us.’

Velazun eyed him gratefully. ‘If this is true…’

‘You know it is.’

Velazun thought for a moment. ‘I think you should speak to the captains of the other regiments,’ he said.

‘I agree.’

‘Be discreet.’

‘I know. There are those who cannot admit the truth yet. They will.’

‘I wasn’t just thinking of them.’

‘Yes. There are traitors too. Not many, though.’

Velazun nodded. ‘They’ll get their justice.’

‘We’ll see to that.’

Velazun smiled at last. He clapped Jaras on the shoulder. ‘You’re right, bard. This is a gift.’

Jaras saluted, then ran forward to the next regimental formation to spread the word.

Within the hour, troops along the entire length of the advance were whistling ‘The Fires of the Colonnade’.

The wall of stone rose to the east, blotting out the weak daylight, sealing the battlefield in night and cutting it off from the Colonnade. Kavak angled his flight to begin the new attack, and anger flashed through his mind like lightning. This was treachery. He could not believe the event was accidental, that the Scholar of Tides had miscalculated to this unfortunate degree. But now he had no room to think about the Colonnade, its perfidy and what the cliffs portended. There was room only for blood and war.

The Avengorii flew into the beastherd as a wedge a second time. The beastmen were ready, and their counter-attack hit the moment after Lauka Vai slammed through the front of their lines again. The build-up of sorcerous energy exploded into a coherent assault. Two monsters of fire and murder came into being. They had the shape of bulls, almost twenty feet high at the shoulder. Their bodies were massive, heavy battering rams that smashed iron to shreds and stone to splinters. Their hindquarters were streams of flame, and their charge was destruction made manifest. Other beastmen went down beneath the pounding of their hooves as they hurtled across the bowl to charge at the vampires.

The diving attack had started. The momentum could not be arrested. The Avengorii saw what was coming at them as they sliced through more gors and ungors. They and the wildfire taurus spells converged at such speed that there was no time to evade. The bulls collided with both sides of the Avengorii wedge. They crushed the vampires with horns and hooves and sheer mass, rending flesh and smashing bones to powder. The flames swept over the vampires, becoming an incendiary storm undimmed by the deluge of blood from the sky. The unnatural fires consumed body and soul, bringing pain to the Avengorii they had not felt since their times of transformation. Vampires screamed, and then even their screams burned, and then there was only ash, driven on the winds and vanishing into the tumult of violence.

The sorcerous bulls ploughed through Avengorii until they battered into each other. For a moment, they locked horns. Then they bellowed, breathing fire, and turned away from each other. Side by side, they rampaged up the vampire formation, breaking it into pieces, ending its charge.

The Avengorii took to the skies, evading the bulls, but the beastmen shamans were ready for them. Arcane bolts lanced up from the ground, piercing vargheists through the neck, incinerating their skulls with magic. Their bodies plummeted back to the ground to be trampled to pulp beneath the hooves of the beastmen. Chimeras streaked after others, burning and slashing their victims.

Roaring their vengeance, the beastmen forced the Avengorii out of the skies and down into the cauldron of the battle.

Kavak and Thalvess climbed together, away from the wildfire taurus stampede. A chimera pounced on Thalvess, knocking Kavak back with the speed and brutality of its dive. It clawed at his wings. Its avian and leonine heads tore at them with beak and fangs. The draconic head inhaled deeply and reared back, preparatory to bathing Thalvess in the annihilation of flame.

Kavak circled up and around and hurled an arcane bolt at the monster’s back. The draconic head shrieked and whipped towards him. Kavak came in at full speed and swung his blade into its neck. The blow half severed the draconic head. It choked and gurgled. Flames leaked from its mouth and from its wound, burning blood flowing in searing streams down its neck and body. The other heads screamed. Kavak came back again and cut the draconic head free. Ignited blood covered the chimera, consuming it with its own flame. The monster released Thalvess and dropped like a stone, its screams ending when it hit the ground and burst over the beastkin nearby. They writhed and beat at the flames, spreading them farther as they collided with their fellows.

Thalvess tried to fly. His left wing was shredded to ribbons. He spiralled downward. Kavak sped after him, but before he could reach him, a colossus seized Thalvess. It was a ghorgon, a creature warped into a monster that towered over the battlefield, raging in mindless frenzy. Two of its four arms ended in blades as long as a man. It still had hands on the other two, and it snatched Thalvess out of the air. The oxen head opened its mouth, revealing grinding teeth. Crushing Thalvess’ legs in its grip, it bit down on his chest. Bones snapped and splintered. Thalvess’ one good wing flapped in helpless agony.

Shrieking in rage and grief, Kavak dived at the ghorgon and landed on its head. It slashed at him with its blades. He flattened himself against its back, wrapped his tail around its muzzle and squeezed, breaking bone. With two quick stabs of his blade, he put out the monster’s eyes, then took to the air again.

The ghorgon howled. It dropped Thalvess and broke into a stumbling run. It clawed at the blood streaming down its face. It weaved back and forth, crushing its kin until they were forced to hack at its legs with axes and fell it like a tree.

Kavak caught Thalvess just before he landed. Narrowly missing horns and blades, he swooped back up, carrying his friend through the rain of blood.

‘Finished…’ Thalvess croaked.

‘You just have to feast,’ said Kavak.

Thalvess shook his head weakly. ‘Be my vengeance,’ he said.

Kavak grimaced in soul pain. ‘I will,’ he promised.

‘Carry my blood with you,’ said Thalvess, a last wish for honour and the mercy of a meaningful death.

The Vengorian Lord’s body twitched and shook, its undead force draining quickly, leaving it forever.

‘I shall,’ Kavak promised. He bent down and, in mid-flight, bit through Thalvess’ throat. The other vampire shook once more and was still. Kavak drank long draughts of his blood. Then he dropped the body. It was no longer Thalvess. The memory of Thalvess lived with him now, and the Vengorian Lord’s blood cried out for the extermination of the beasts.

Below him, as Kavak lunged back into the struggle, Lauka Vai descended on a great bray-shaman. The sorcerer was surrounded by heavily armoured bestigors. Orgo’s elite warriors protected the bray-shaman by raising shields and axes, bracing to hurl themselves into the Mother of Nightmares. She didn’t give them the opportunity. With a shout of anger, she unleashed a single, enormous arcane bolt. Brighter than day and colder than night, the blast struck through the bray-shaman’s sorcerous protection. It transfixed him to the land he had thought was his ally. The explosion that followed scattered his guards into fragments of meat. Of the bray-shaman, nothing remained. The wrath of the Mother of Nightmares had vaporised him.

One of the conjured bulls exploded in its turn, engulfing vampires and beastmen. Its flames raged on over the bodies of the dead, but the monster was gone.

Lauka Vai laid waste to the beastmen around her, cutting a swathe through the devoted of Tzeentch, fighting to reach Orgo. The beastlord was making for her as well, the monarchs of death converging across the battlefield, their encounter slowed by their own followers. Vargheists fell on Orgo, and he hacked them from the sky with whirlwind blows of his axe blades. As Lauka Vai gathered sorcerous energy around her once again, one hand blazing while the other wielded her blade, three cygors converged on her. The single, blank eye in the centre of each beast’s forehead was blind to everything but sorcery, and Lauka Vai’s power drew them with the force of a riptide. They came to devour her.

They came into her trap.

She held back on her blast, building it up and up until her fist was a lethal star in the darkness of the battlefield. The fall of blood from the sky spun in a vortex around the blaze. The cygors closed in, and Lauka Vai’s sword flashed. She slashed up on the left and right, a single, fluid movement of monstrous grace, and gutted the cygors. Their feet tangled in their own viscera, and they fell, still reaching for the feast that was denied them.

Lauka Vai unleashed the blast, incinerating a score of beastmen before her.

A score. Out of thousands upon thousands.

Lauka Vai had said that the Avengorii did not need the Colonnade to defeat the beastherd. Kavak had believed that. It had seemed impossible that this brutish mass could overwhelm the dynasty.

But now…

No. Not even now. The beasts would not win. They would die. They must die.

Kavak dived into the maelstrom of battle, striking from the midst of a swarm of fell bats. The Avengorii killed beastmen everywhere in the field, but they had lost the coherence of their formation. The sea of beasts was closing in, and it threatened to drown the vampires in unending waves of brutish force.

The flat of a bestigor’s blade rang Kavak’s skull like a bell, and he fell to the ground. He slashed furiously with wings, claws and blade to keep from being trampled. He severed legs and cut off the hands that reached for him. He was caught in a battering darkness. There were no individuals. It was as if he were surrounded by a storm of claws and hooves and blades.

He roared, crying vengeance for his comrades and fealty to Lauka Vai, and he would not be stamped into the mire of blood. He would not end here, like this. He slashed his way up, dismembering an ungor that thought it would hack his wings off, and then he was in the air again.

And so was Lauka Vai. She climbed high, burning the chimeras that tried to stop her. Midway between the land and the clouds, she spread arms and wings and shouted at the sky, commanding it to do her will. The sky answered. The tempest of blood became a hurricane, a deluge that fell with such force that the sea of beasts found itself in a true sea of blood. The wide bowl of the battlefield filled with black gore. The rain fell in heavy, unbroken sheets. In moments, the beastmen were wading ankle-deep in blood, and the tide kept rising. The wind that came with the rain was corrosive. The armour and weapons of the enemy rusted and pitted, turned brittle and shattered against the bodies of the Avengorii.

At the centre of the battlefield, Orgo shook his axes at Lauka Vai. ‘Coward!’ he bellowed. ‘You fear to face me!’

‘No,’ Lauka Vai answered. Her smile was so terrible, the lesser beastmen froze at the sight of it. ‘I was merely whetting my appetite for you.’

She dived at the beastlord, sword before her. The earth shook at their meeting, in a clash of blades and claws. Orgo was covered in the blood of the Avengorii he had slain, its red smearing with the black rain. Streamers of vampire flesh hung from his jaws. He was the monster of a thousand fears, the beast that trampled the world before him. He attacked Lauka Vai with a fury that had levelled armies. She fended off the two axes with her sword, and he pressed her hard, forcing her back, not giving her the chance to retaliate. She blocked a high strike, and Orgo lunged forward, his horns slamming into her armour and piercing the chestplate. Lauka Vai snarled in pain, forced back and back. Orgo had the momentum, and she could not free herself of his monstrous horns. The beastlord thundered forward with greater force, a stampede of one. His bellow of triumph shook the ground.

Lauka Vai answered with a hiss of rage. She pushed back instead of retreating, took the greater injury from the horns and snaked her long tail around Orgo, wrapping it around his throat. She choked off the beastlord’s roar. She squeezed. Her grip shattered Orgo’s armour. The coil of her tail tightened around his neck. His jaw worked, his voice suddenly silenced, as he struggled for air. He tried to hack at the tail, but she blocked him again with her sword, and kept blocking him.

He was the monster of a thousand fears, but she was the far greater monster. She was the Mother of Nightmares.

Lauka Vai beat her wings and rose into the air, lifting the beastlord with her, still fending off each of his axe strikes. His movements became more frantic, pained and uncoordinated. The tail squeezed even tighter, and snapping sounds came from inside Orgo’s body. Lauka Vai grabbed his shoulder with her free hand, sinking her clawed fingers into the armour.

With a final wrench of her tail, she decapitated the beastlord.

Thousands of bestial throats let out a cry of dismay as Orgo’s head tumbled through the air. Lauka Vai fastened her mouth over the stump of the neck and feasted.

Leaderless, the herd faltered. Uncertainty rippled over the ranks of the beastmen.

Lauka Vai drank deeply. Her anger and her bloodlust flowed directly from her to every member of her dynasty. As she gave herself to the frenzy of the kill, so did they, and the tempest from the sky became a mere squall beside the storm of bloodletting that hit the battlefield. As one, the vampires fell on their foes with a devouring fury. They were more bestial than the beastmen.

Kavak’s sense of reason and self vanished. He was a thing of instinct, a thing of hunger, a body of teeth and claws. He could not be harmed, and his thirst could not be sated. He saw only black and red. He was a predator in a sea of hapless prey, and for a long time he had no sense of anything except the ripping of flesh and the taste of blood – the taste that made him burn within, that made him kill and kill and kill. His world was the feast, and his existence was a tearing asunder.

After an age of lost time, the will of his queen reached into Kavak’s mind. It pulled him out of the frenzy. It restored him to reason. The clouds of his bloodlust parted, and he knew himself again.

He was standing over the eviscerated corpse of a bestigor, up to his underbelly in a swamp of blood. Lightning flashed through the clouds, illuminating the battlefield, revealing an abattoir miles across. The corpses of beastmen and vampires lay everywhere. The Avengorii had lost many of their number, but the beastmen had lost all of theirs. The beastherd of Orgo was gone, its legions reduced to butchered slabs.

And everywhere the Avengorii hunched over corpses, triumphant vultures. Only Lauka Vai was in the air. She hovered over the centre of the battlefield. She was looking to the south.

And from the south came the blare of trumpets. The Colonnade announced its arrival in the war. The fanfare sounded like a mockery.

The Avengorii looked up from their feasting, and a snarl of anger rumbled over the land.

Lauka Vai, the empress of the slaughter, was silent, her blank yellow eyes cold and waiting.

Chapter 24

‘The war is over,’ Dawnbolt said to Tarvynde, her voice tight with anger.

The lords of the Maelstrom of Light and the Colonnade had called a halt at the edge of the massacre. Torvassen, Atella and the other senior officers of the Freeguild Guard had drawn near to the two supreme commanders. The gathering was less an informal council and more a search for understanding. The full force of the Colonnade had marched for two days for nothing. The threat that had sent fear through the city, that had cast its very existence into question, no longer existed.

Atella stared at the battlefield, at the lake of stagnant blood. The ranks of the Maelstrom of Light stood at its edge, boots sunk in the mire. A strong wind blew, stirring the blood into blackened foam. More blood fell in a steady rain from the clouds, slowly making the lake deeper.

This was death on a scale she had never seen, not even during the worst of the tzaangors’ siege. Tens of thousands of bodies lay hacked apart, half submerged in the blood, or stacked high into heaps. Snapped bones stuck out of limbs. Ribcages stripped of flesh stood out, outlined by the flashes of lightning. The Avengorii crouched over the bodies and on the hills of flesh, angular silhouettes of darkness. And above them all, their queen hovered with slow beats of her wings, gazing down at the forces of the Colonnade with something colder than judgement, deeper than anger.

Truly, this was where nightmares were born.

Truly, this was the work of the monstrous. The field of massacre stretched out as far as she could see in the blackened day. From the Guard came exclamations of horror and disgust. She felt stunned admiration.

‘There is no battle here for us,’ Dawnbolt said. ‘This is…’ She trailed off, lost for words and lost in frustration, and cursed.

Atella grunted in surprise. It was almost comical to witness Stormcast Eternals deprived of purpose. They had come for a war, and the war had not waited for them. It had gone and finished itself, leaving them nothing to do.

‘This is a stain on our honour,’ Dawnbolt said.

‘Your honour will survive, as will the Colonnade,’ said Tarvynde. There was no frustration in his voice. He sounded indecently pleased.

Honour. The word stung Atella like a hornet. Tarvynde had no right to utter it. She rounded on him, furious. ‘Honour?’ she shouted. ‘What honour? We betrayed the Avengorii.’

‘The convulsions of the land are not our doing,’ said Tarvynde. He was worse than calm. He was smug.

‘Aren’t they?’ Atella asked. ‘Wasn’t our departure from the Colonnade planned down to the hour? What use are charts? Why even have the position of Scholar of Tides? Is Baveth Ullior a soothsayer mumbling over goat entrails? Or is she merely incompetent?’

‘You forget yourself, Councillor Reigehren.’

‘No,’ said Dawnbolt, ‘she does not. Her questions are pertinent, and I would hear an answer instead of an evasion.’

Tarvynde sighed. ‘The land is increasingly unpredictable. We all know this. Scholar Ullior has done her best. Her predictions were wrong by very little.’

‘A very little hour,’ said Atella. ‘One that has made all the difference.’

‘Your insinuations are unworthy,’ Torvassen put in.

‘They aren’t insinuations. They are accusations.’ She glanced back at the Avengorii and their furious stillness, and her cheeks burned in shame. ‘This betrayal was deliberate,’ she said.

‘I will not–’ Tarvynde began, then stopped, interrupted by a roar from behind.

‘What is that?’ said Dawnbolt, though she knew.

She had to. Atella knew what the sound was, and she shared Dawnbolt’s disbelief. She stared in horror at the regiments of the Colonnade.

Each time he witnessed the acts of the Avengorii, Jaras beheld a new zenith of monstrosity. The destruction of Farwilde had made what he had seen the day the caravan had been destroyed seem insignificant by comparison, and he had not slept properly since that first encounter. But the vista before him now surpassed his worst fears and his most extravagant hopes. He had trouble understanding what he was seeing. That lake could not be blood. Those islands could not be bodies. Such things were not possible.

Only they were.

His body wrestled with contradictory emotions. He was nauseated by the sights and by the stench that wrapped itself around him like a thick, wet cloth. The smell of rotten blood thrust itself into his nose and down his throat. He wanted to throw up, as if he were trying to cough up a snake. He also wanted to dance. He wanted to shout.

Do you see this? This is my doing! I have done this! I speak, and thousands die!

He had told Baveth to ensure the Colonnade’s forces would not reach the battle in time. He had predicted the Maelstrom of Light and the Freeguild Guard would find a weakened enemy. Everything had happened as he had commanded and foreseen.

Look at me, Lord Tarvynde! Look at me, Lord-Celestant Dawnbolt! This lowly bard holds the string of your destinies. You dance to my whim.

Now it was time for the final stage of his plan. All was ready. The only thing that was missing was Tarvynde’s order to attack.

It didn’t come.

He should have issued it as soon as the city’s forces arrived at the site of the battle. Instead, the march stopped. Tarvynde, Dawnbolt and others were speaking, and nothing was happening. Jaras wanted to hear what they were saying. He wanted to order them to do what he and fate compelled them to do. They just talked, and talked. Dawnbolt argued with Tarvynde, her displeasure obvious even from a distance.

No. The moment is going to be lost. We have to attack.

The Maelstrom of Light were motionless statues.

Jaras shouldered his way to the front of the lines. He found Velazun. He was staring at the lake of blood, grey and uncertain. He looked at Jaras, and his eyes were pleading for leadership.

‘Comrades!’ Jaras shouted. ‘You see this! You see the truth of these monsters! We must act now!’

There was a stirring. The shock of the spectacle began to release its hold. The salvation of the Colonnade depended on hate, and the hate he had stoked in the city and in the regiments began to reassert its hold.

‘Look!’ Jaras commanded. ‘Look! This is what the council wants to admit back into the Colonnade. They want those monsters inside our walls. How long will it be before we never wake again? Don’t you see?’ He pointed at the lake and its corpses. ‘This is the future of the Colonnade. We will drown in our blood unless we attack now.’

Attack. The first time he had used the word. He had left it unspoken until then, an implication hovering behind his suggestions. The time for hints was over. Attack. The people had to feel the urgency of the word. They had to learn that it was a command.

‘See how many of the Avengorii are dead!’ he said. He ran back and forth in front of the regiments, looking directly at the troops, focusing first on one face, then another. He was speaking to them directly, forcing them to look into their souls and know that he was right. ‘This is our chance. It will never come again. They are weak. Come with me, comrades. Come and save the Colonnade, and all of Ghur. Come and exterminate the monsters!’

The anger overflowed. The regiments became a mob. The heroes of the Colonnade answered Jaras with a roar. They saw. They feared. They hated. They were ready.

Jaras drew his sword. ‘ATTACK!’ he shrieked, and he slashed the air with his blade.

The regiments raced forward, the soldiers howling their hate of the monstrous. They rushed past Jaras. He stayed where he was, motionless, sword pointed at the vampires, shouting ‘ATTACK!’ until he was hoarse and the army had left him behind, running to embrace the destiny of purity.

‘What are your troops doing?’ Dawnbolt shouted as the Freeguild surged forward. ‘Command them to stop.’

‘They will not listen,’ Tarvynde said. The expression of concern on his face was so transparently a mask that it was an insult. His eyes were bright. Atella saw through him. She saw him at his worst. He had not engineered this event. She didn’t think he had even knowingly allowed it to be engineered. He had simply hoped that it would happen. A politician to his marrow, he wanted the purity of the Colonnade preserved and his word of honour untainted. He would be able to say he never acted against the Avengorii, while at the same time being the lord who presided over the city’s preservation.

Torvassen, though, was grinning fiercely. Whatever role he had played in this, he had known the moment would come.

‘Halt!’ Atella shouted, sword raised. She was a leaf in a hurricane. Her voice was drowned out by the roar of hate from the troops.

‘Halt!’ Dawnbolt’s voice cut through the roar. Her hammer flashed with lightning. Her Stormcast Eternals turned around at her shout, and they were a line between the Freeguild Guard and the Avengorii. The front of the charging mob stopped at once, the authority of the Maelstrom of Light beyond challenge.

Atella felt hope flare. The worst would be prevented. The shame of the betrayal would have to be dealt with, but she welcomed that next to the atrocity that Dawnbolt had stopped.

There was another voice on the wind, shouting behind the regiments. She couldn’t hear the words. She recognised the tone. It was Jaras Anvarheim.

At the rear, his influence was stronger than Dawnbolt’s. He was not a distant figure, rarely seen in the Colonnade, holding himself aloof from the lives of the citizens. He was one of them. His songs gave voice to their hopes, their fears and their hate. He was their true representative. He shouted and they obeyed, because he was not giving commands. He was unleashing the truth of the Colonnade.

As the full realisation hit home, Atella had time to think, This is what I fought so hard to save.

From the rear came a hail of crossbow bolts. The volleys arced, whistling, over the Maelstrom of Light and came down in the lake of blood, on the Avengorii. They thudded into the bodies of vargheists and tore through their wings as they began to take flight. Some of the vampires did not rise. They lay where they had fallen, pierced by iron.

The horse-drawn artillery thundered in the next moment. Helblaster volley guns opened up in the darkness. A storm of metal shot exploded into the Avengorii. Atella saw at least two take direct hits, and their bodies were blown to shreds.

Time slowed for Atella as the beats of the catastrophe fell, as if the land were held by the heavy, relentless tolling of a mourning bell. She saw each act unfold in its awful inevitability. She was moving as though deep underwater, seeing as if from a distance.

Dawnbolt turned around to witness the effect of the artillery attack. The arm that held her warhammer lowered, a gesture of despair as she saw events torn from her grasp.

Lord Tarvynde and General Torvassen leapt onto their horses. They were not shocked. They were part of the current that flowed through the souls of the Colonnade. The flight of crossbow bolts released them from all pretence. Jaras had unleashed them, too.

The Avengorii rose into the air, a legion of monsters turning on their betrayers, their wings the shape of vengeance.

The Mother of Nightmares roared, and a bolt of crimson, coruscating power flew from her hand. It struck the rear ranks of the Freeguild. The fireball of the volley gun’s explosion illuminated the battlefield, casting the red of flame over the black sea of rotten blood.

Lord-Celestant Dawnbolt raised her hammer again. Her Stormcast Eternals turned and struck forward, because there was no longer anything to prevent, and they had a purpose once more. War had begun against the forces of Nagash.

Tarvynde shouted, ‘For Sigmar, and for the Colonnade!’ He urged his steed on, and he led the charge as his regiments raced to the attack again.

With his shout, time accelerated. But Atella was still frozen. Now she was the one whose purpose had been stolen from her. She had devoted herself to the creation of an alliance, and it was burning. Her oaths of duty bound her to join in the attack, but those oaths burned with the alliance. She would not be bound to atrocity.

This is what I fought to save.

I was a fool.

There was nothing in the Colonnade worth saving.

She stood in blood, and smelled blood, and war surrounded her again with the promise of more and more and more blood. The blood took her back to the walls of the Colonnade, to her slaughter of the tzaangors. The taste in her mouth was a thirst, and it was a need – the need to disappear in the eruption of battle. All that Kavak had said, all that he had taught and all that he had shown her came together in her soul. She knew where her true allegiance lay. She knew where she belonged, and she made her choice between two kinds of monster.

Torvassen drove his horse past her, knocking her into the blood. She was on her feet again in an instant, her armour and face slicked with gore. Its stench was less offensive than the sight of the commander of the Freeguild Guard.

Torvassen had pulled his steed to a stop beside her. He looked down at Atella, his lips pulled back in a grimace of contempt. ‘We’ll deal with traitors later,’ he said.

‘You’ll deal with me now,’ Atella snarled. She leapt at him, seized his cloak and yanked down with her full weight.

Startled, Torvassen lost his grip on his reins and fell. They struggled and thrashed in the blood. He tried to use his greater bulk to force her under and keep her there. She was faster, and more agile. Before he could pin her arms down, she rammed her fist against his chin, jerking his head so violently that he fell back. She lunged back up, sword arm free, and came at him. He raised his blade to block her blow at his head, but she changed her strike at the last moment, swinging back and then sideways, cutting through the joint of his armour and breaking his knee. He howled and fell. The thick blood slowed him, and she stamped her foot on his sword arm, trapping it.

Torvassen looked up in disbelief. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he said.

She laughed, because for the taste of blood she dared everything, and then she drove her blade through his eye.

Chapter 25

More than a mile away from the mortal forces, Kavak shared in the collective anger of his kin at the sound of the Colonnade’s fanfare. The long silence that came next gave him pause. It was the pregnant silence that preceded thunder. His shoulders hunched with tension. He was too far away to see what was happening. Lauka Vai was in the air, though, so there was no dialogue between the Colonnade and the Avengorii.

Tension turned to dread.

The attack began. The rage of the Mother of Nightmares and the rage of her dynasty were one. She destroyed the artillery of the Colonnade, and Kavak rose with his kin to gather in the great swarm around his queen. The rain of blood, which had eased in the aftermath of the victory over the beastmen, became ferocious again. The wind awoke waves on the black lake.

Lauka Vai’s will resounded in Kavak’s mind. She had but to conceive of her strategy and her dynasty responded. The Avengorii descended on the Freeguild Guard as a storm, as rain. There was no formation this time, no wedge upon which the Maelstrom of Light could concentrate their might. There were no front lines. The vampires struck everywhere at once. The charge of the Colonnade faltered because there was no concentration to attack. The regimental formations broke up as the guards responded to the wrath that came at them from above. The blood corroded their armour and weapons. Pistols exploded when fired. The nightmare that the citizens of the Colonnade had feared came for them, summoned by their own treachery.

But as the Freeguild forces began to fall to confusion, the Maelstrom of Light struck, their unbreakable discipline untouched by the rain and the raiding flights of vargheists. Any vampire that tried to approach them was cut down. The Stormcast Eternals moved across the battlefield at a steady pace, their attacks as precise as they were merciless. The Judicators sent up a steady barrage of skybolts. Like a curtain of lightning striking upward, they burned the Avengorii out of the air. The methodical concentration of the shots forced the vampires back and gave the guards within proximity of the Maelstrom of Light the chance to regroup. Handgunners, crossbowmen and pistoliers coordinated their fire. Many of the weapons were still functional and lethal. Barrage after barrage came from the ground, taking out more and more of the vampires. Avengorii came down, many still able to fight but unable to fly. Sigmarite weapons finished them off. The Maelstrom of Light marched on, crushing every attempt to break their lines.

And in the air were the Prosecutors. They were a worse threat than the chimeras. They flew with tactical purpose. They caught up to vargheists and crushed their skulls with celestial hammers, and impaled them from a distance with storm-blessed javelins.

There were two storms over the battlefield, warring with each other as much as the armies did. The lightning and blood of the clouds answered to Lauka Vai and the Avengorii. Sigmar’s storm cut through the vampiric one, blue-white energy lancing out to mystical weapons and incinerating the vampires those weapons struck.

Lauka Vai’s command did not change. Spread out. Strike from all sides. Do not create a concentration. Force them to hunt you one at a time.

The Maelstrom of Light were almost untouchable, but they were massively outnumbered still. Like an axe blow to water, Kavak thought, as he drove through Guard infantry a safe distance from the Stormcast Eternals. This time it was the Avengorii who were the water.

Only they had finally killed the sea they fought. Mere numbers would not be enough.

The assaults coming from everywhere on the Freeguild had some effect. They forced Dawnbolt to spread out her attacks more than she would have chosen. The Maelstrom of Light could not focus too precisely, or the Freeguild would be destroyed completely. The mortals of the Colonnade were not defenceless, and their regiments were strong, but alone against the Avengorii, they were outmatched. The Avengorii were still a dynasty. They had been bloodied by the beastherd, but not broken.

Dawnbolt sent the Prosecutors to range wider. Their strength was barely diluted, and their armour and the range of their weapons made them lethal to the vargheists. The Vengorian Lords fought back with sorcery, but the Avengorii no longer had mastery of the air.

Kavak cut through lancers, then shot up and back before their comrades could get a fix on him with crossbows. He climbed high and fast, one with the storm and the cataracts of blood. Searing light came at him from the left, and he banked in an instant, folding his wings and dropping into a vertical dive

A Prosecutor was coming after him. The Prosecutor-Prime was hunting him.

He’s strong. Stay alive. Look for the chance.

It was a fight he had never wanted. As a mortal, he had held the Maelstrom of Light in awe. Even when he had been conscious of the failings of the mortal government of the city, he had regarded the Stormcast Eternals differently. They were above the petty politics of the council. They were beings of a higher plane than the mortal. After he had become one of the Avengorii, and finally seen the philosophy of the Colonnade for the obscenity it was, he exempted the Maelstrom of Light from his contempt. Perhaps he had been wrong.

Not that the right or wrong of anything in his past mattered now. His existence was reduced to the succession of seconds, each passing one perhaps his last.

He jerked out of his dive, banked right, dived again, then swooped up sharply, the effort almost pulling his wings from his body as their expanse caught the wind. The Prosecutor followed hard after him, his match in agility and armed with terrible weapons. He threw javelins at Kavak, a new one materialising in his hand as soon as each was away. It was like trying to evade a lightning storm. The javelins seared the air and hit the ground with thunderclaps. Kavak launched an arcane bolt back at the Prosecutor, who banked sharply, evading the attack. His pursuit never slowed.

Kavak kept his flight unpredictable. He pulled ahead as far as he could, trying to hide himself in the sheets of rain. He could not shake the Prosecutor. The champion of Sigmar had chosen Kavak for destruction, and nothing would sway him from his path.

Kavak flew through war, explosions of sorcery and lightning blazing on all sides. The cries of vampires, the shouts of Stormcast Eternals, the screams of guards and the howls of the storm were a tapestry of violence that enfolded the land.

He couldn’t evade much longer. He had been battered by the struggle against the beastmen, and the effort to keep up his speed and violent turns was draining his energy. He would need blood to replenish it. He was tiring, a mortal sensation he had almost forgotten.

There was no escape from the Prosecutor-Prime. There was no escape from the war. It seemed there was no escape from a destiny that ended here.

I will not accept that.

Go where he cannot follow.

Leave the air.

Kavak dived again, beating his wings furiously to go faster than he ever had before. He jerked left and right, and then straight down again, as if he could outpace the lightning. A javelin burned past him just as he dodged left again, close enough to send a streak of fiery pain down his right flank. Then he plunged into the centre of the lake of blood.

The black rain had fallen so hard that the lake was more than fifteen feet deep in the middle of the bowl. Kavak shot straight to the bottom, curled up and lay still.

This is blood, Prosecutor. This is my element. Follow me at your peril. I have a promise to keep.

Stormcall javelins pierced the night of the rotted blood, turning into steam where they hit. They fell in a scattered pattern. The Prosecutor could not see him.

Kavak looked up. The blood concealed him, but it was as air to his dark eyes. He saw the Prosecutor fly overhead, then circle, uncertain. In the depths of blood, filled with blood, one with blood, Kavak became the hunter again.

The Prosecutor-Prime wheeled once more, then began to move away. His back was to Kavak’s position.

Kavak shot out of the blood, directly behind the Prosecutor. He arrowed vertically up and seized the Prosecutor’s helm with his foreclaws. His speed and violence were enough to tear the helm off. The Prosecutor reeled in the air, but he already had a javelin in his hand. He whirled to throw it at Kavak.

Kavak looped backwards the instant he had pulled the helm free. The Prosecutor hurled the javelin up, but Kavak was not there. The loop was tight and fast, and he came at the Prosecutor again from below. The Stormcast Eternal didn’t have time to look down before Kavak’s sword slashed through his throat.

In the centre of the battlefield, Lauka Vai and Dawnbolt met, the nightmare warring with the storm. The dracoth Havazzor spat lightning at the vampire. She deflected its bolts with counter-blasts of sorcery, and her blade clashed with the Lord-Celestant’s hammer. The earth shook each time the weapons met, and concussive blasts rippled out, hurling away the bodies of anyone who tried to interfere with the duel.

‘I expected better of you,’ Lauka Vai said, blocking another swing of the hammer. ‘I thought you were a warrior of honour.’

‘I do not defend the actions of mortals,’ said Dawnbolt. She pressed hard against Lauka Vai, striking with swift, shattering blows, forcing the vampire back. ‘But I defend the mortals themselves.’

Lauka Vai’s tail thrashed angrily. Her huge wings beat a wind of blood at the Lord-Celestant and her mount. Havazzor choked on the gore, and he thrashed with his foreclaws in retaliation. ‘And so you dream of your moral high ground,’ she said.

The dracoth spat lightning again at the same time that Dawnbolt hit with her own thunderbolt, and the duel explosions struck home, burning the vampire. Lauka Vai snarled and leaned harder into the battle, unleashing an arcane blast that Dawnbolt barely deflected with her shield.

‘I do not dream,’ said Dawnbolt. ‘My one purpose is to serve Sigmar.’

‘Then you should return to him.’ Lauka Vai blocked the hammer again, and raised her left hand as if to hurl another arcane bolt. Instead, the blow came from the sky, as she channelled her power through the tempest. An immense fork of blood-born lightning slammed through the Lord-Celestant and her mount. Havazzor collapsed, his body charred and smoking.

Lauka Vai seized Dawnbolt’s right arm as she tried to strike back. The Mother of Nightmares held her prey fast. Her eyes blazed. She and Dawnbolt glowed with a dark, violet aura. Dawnbolt shook, her body convulsing as the full strength of Lauka Vai enveloped her. For these few moments, the blood tempest ceased, all of its energy called down to one foe. The power to erode the weapons of an entire army flowed to the point where Lauka Vai held her, and the impossible happened. The Lord-Celestant’s sigmarite rusted, pitted and disintegrated.

‘I take no pleasure from this,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘Your vigilance should have been turned inward, and I was wrong to think of peace with the rotten heart of the Colonnade.’

Then she ran Dawnbolt through with her sword.

As with the beastmen, so with the Colonnade. Frenzy came for the Freeguild Guard. Everything the people of the city had feared about the Avengorii was unleashed, and it devoured them. The Avengorii tore the bodies of their foes apart and feasted on the remains, a tempest of savage nightmares. Yet as he streaked back and forth across the battle, harrying the guards, drinking their blood and eroding the size of the regiments, Kavak felt the queen’s will forcing him to surface now and again from the ocean of pure, frothing madness. She kept pulling him and the other Vengorian Lords back to themselves long enough to redirect their attacks, before plunging them into the delirium of blood once more.

It was against the Stormcast Eternals that instinct and fury could not be enough. And so while the vargheists tore the Freeguild asunder like a plague of monstrous locusts, Lauka Vai and the Vengorian Lords took on the Maelstrom of Light. There was no moment of despair from the Stormcast Eternals when Lauka Vai slew Dawnbolt. There was no cry of dismay. The Stormhost pursued their campaign without pause, without mercy, and strove with yet greater determination, spurred on by the need to avenge the Lord-Celestant. But the loss was meaningful. The most skilled tactician and most powerful warrior of the Stormhost was gone, taken by Sigmar’s lightning back to Azyr. Her absence was felt.

Kavak felt that absence when Lauka Vai altered her strategy. Her will said Gather. Her will said Fall on the Stormcast Eternals. Overwhelm them.

He obeyed, flying towards the centre of the conflict. As he closed in, he saw Hevat Grask in a sorcerous duel with a Lord-Arcanum.

Too close.

Kavak paused.

The two sorcerers were within a few feet of each other, and their battle had turned into a stalemate, both of them drawing upon ever-increasing intensities of force, unleashed in the form of continuous, colliding arcane bolts. They seemed to be connected by writhing, intertwining lightning.

You fool!

Hevat Grask was risking too much. He had been reckless in his hunting at the Colonnade, and he was being reckless again. He and the Lord-Arcanum were locked in a cycle that could only end one way. Neither could retreat. Neither could stop.

Neither could win.

Kavak banked away from the approaching cataclysm.

The energies overwhelmed the beings who wielded them. They fed into each other, fused, and then lost all coherence in an annihilating explosion. A terrible dawn burst over the lake, a dome of boiling forces that incinerated all within its boundaries. Hevat Grask perished, and so did all the Avengorii that were fighting near him.

So too did many of the Maelstrom of Light, and they could not afford the losses.

Maybe not such a fool, Kavak thought. Hevat Grask’s final hunt had turned the tide in favour of the Avengorii, and it would not be pushed back. Huge swarms of fell bats clustered around the Prosecutors, frustrating their flights, distracting and slowing them, giving the vargheists the chances they needed to take the winged knights down one by one. Lauka Vai destroyed one champion after another.

Now it was the turn of the Avengorii to be methodical, and while the Colonnade’s regiments struggled not to drown in the rising lake, the warriors of Sigmar who had been their guarantors and protectors were, slowly but surely, ground down.

Atella’s sword pierced the heart of pistolier. She felt nothing as he fell. She had been fighting her fellow citizens of the Colonnade for hours now. She recognised many of the faces of the people she had killed. She had trained some of them, and led them to this place of tragedy.

Killing Torvassen had been an act of justice. The other deaths had been acts of war, but each time she had seen the incomprehension and the accusation in the eyes of the soldiers. They had heard the rumours about her. Perhaps they had believed them. But not fully, not really, not until the moment that she took their lives.

She became numb to the looks, numb to her crimes. Now she was a traitor. Now she had betrayed her oaths as officer and councillor many times over. It did not matter that she had set out to save the city. What mattered was what she did now.

And she kept fighting. She renounced her vows, because she had seen the true purity of the Colonnade, and it was hatred. She had seen it on the faces of her comrades as they had rushed forward in the belief that the Avengorii were a spent force, and easy to exterminate. She had seen the Colonnade renounce the vows it had made, because the treaty had been signed with beings it did not honour.

What worth were oaths made to a faithless city? What worth were oaths made to hatred?

And she had seen the sublime in Lauka Vai. She had seen what she had been born to embrace.

So she fought, and she killed, and she descended deeper and deeper into the dream of a war that she did not believe would ever end. She was knee-deep in stinking blood, moving from skirmish to skirmish, and nothing had any meaning any longer, except blood, more blood, the waves and oceans of blood. She no longer fought for what she believed to be right, which she once believed had been her purpose. She fought for the blood, and for the blossoming of monstrosity.

Atella turned from the dead pistolier, and a Liberator confronted her. The Stormcast Eternal was without a squad, and his armour was scorched and pitted. The downpour of black blood stained the silver face of his helm.

Atella stood still. She had no chance against the towering warrior, though even now the thought of attacking one of the Maelstrom of Light remained a step too far. She had raced past every other line she would have drawn.

The Liberator looked at the corpse of the pistolier, then back at Atella. ‘You have dishonoured yourself, councillor.’

‘I think not,’ she said.

‘If you do not think so, then you are truly lost.’ He spoke with melancholy and raised his axe with an air of regret.

Before he could swing, an arcane bolt slammed into his side, scorching his armour and throwing him down into the blood. He was on his feet in a moment, and rushed at the Vengorian Lord who had landed in the blood ten yards away. Kavak swung his sword, but the Liberator, moving with blinding speed, evaded the blow and slammed his warhammer against Kavak’s chestplate, cracking it in two. Lightning flashed, burning undead flesh. Kavak staggered, badly wounded.

The Liberator loomed over Kavak, readying the death blow. Kavak hurled a mass of sticky, rotten blood in the Liberator’s face. The Stormcast Eternal raised his helmet to see his prey.

Atella had the pistolier’s gun in her hand. She shot the Liberator in the head, and at last, she thought, there were no more lines to cross.

The explosion of the volley gun stunned Jaras. The concussion knocked him down, and he was slow to rise, his head stuffed with lead, his ears ringing. He shook himself and staggered up. His vision cleared as, a hundred yards from the edge of the blood lake, he watched the war unfold. He exulted in the first stages of the battle. He had been waiting since his first sight of the Avengorii to see the monsters killed, and now he did.

But then the Mother of Nightmares killed Lord-Celestant Dawnbolt. And then the Avengorii wore down the Maelstrom of Light steadily, and there were still too many monsters in the sky. Horror filled the air and covered the battlefield. Monstrosity reigned triumphant.

‘No.’ He spoke the word as if it were a spell, one that would break the illusion he was seeing. ‘No.’ There was no other response to this madness. This was not what fate had decreed. Something was wrong. ‘No!’ The monsters could not be victorious. The Colonnade could not fail. It was not permissible for the grotesque to triumph over the pure.

‘No!’

The cry tore his throat. He spat blood. His denial was so great that it should have cracked the firmament. But the monsters did not fall.

Jaras fled. He ran from the black lake, ran from the growing massacre, ran from the impossible. He found a horse, its harness caught by an overturned supply wagon. He freed it, mounted it and rode south, along the cliff wall, racing to the low point where he could turn east again.

He had to reach the Colonnade. That was his mission, his justification, his rationale. He had to reach the city and raise the alarm. He had to rouse a city that no longer had an army to defend it.

He was just starting the eastern journey when he heard, from far behind, the Colonnade’s trumpets sound the retreat.

Chapter 26

‘Let them run,’ said Lauka Vai.

The dynasty of the Avengorii lined the top of the new mountains. The slaughter was behind them. They looked to the east, towards the Colonnade. Already, the clouds that foretold their coming were moving for the city, blotting out the light of Hysh and casting their deep shadow over the retreating forces. Atella could not think of what remained of the Freeguild Guard as an army. It was a rabble, a tattered, fleeing band of frightened survivors. It would be the work of an hour for the Avengorii to slaughter them all, but Lauka Vai held back. She wanted them to return to the city, Atella guessed. She wanted the Colonnade to know exactly what had happened.

‘I was wrong,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘I did not seek the destruction of the Colonnade. I thought to humble its pride, to confront it with monstrosity and with its hypocrisy.’ She paused. ‘I was wrong,’ she said again. ‘I let my own pride govern my decisions. I did not understand that the pride of the Colonnade is a facade over a hatred much more profound. There is only one lesson to teach the city, and that is vengeance.’

‘Why do we not pursue them?’ Kavak asked. He had a hand on Atella’s shoulder. She felt the shield of his protection, as she had in the Sascathran Desert. Once again, she was a lone mortal surrounded by vampires. This time, she was not an ambassador seeking an alliance. She did not know how the other Avengorii regarded her. Kavak’s gesture was a declaration that she was not one of the treacherous mortals fleeing across the plain.

‘We do not pursue them because I want them all in the city,’ Lauka Vai said. ‘Our final lesson will come to all, and at the same time. They will know, most profoundly, what it means to betray the Avengorii. They will know, all of them, what it means to awaken the wrath of the monstrous.’

‘They will think they have the refuge of the walls.’

‘They will,’ Lauka Vai agreed. ‘They still have their walls. They still have their pillars. They have the delusions of their beliefs. What of them? What help will they be against us? What they do not have is the Maelstrom of Light.’ There were no Stormcast Eternals in the retreat. They had fought to the last. ‘What the people of the Colonnade have is nothing. We shall teach that to them, also.’

Lauka Vai turned to look down on Kavak and Atella.

‘Do not fear your truth,’ Kavak whispered to Atella. He let go of her shoulder and stepped back a pace.

Atella bowed before the queen of the Avengorii.

‘You stood with us,’ said Lauka Vai. Her blank eyes glowed in the deep shadow of the day. The deluge of blood had finally spent itself, but the wind was still strong, blowing the vampire’s long hair.

I stood for what was right, Atella was about to say. She stopped. Do not fear your truth. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I stood with you.’ The idea of standing for anything except this divinity of horror was absurd. The ideals of her past were a false dream from another age. She no longer recognised the person she had once been, or the principles she had once thought worthy of defence.

Lauka Vai smiled as the night smiles. ‘Tell me what you want. Are you still of the Colonnade? Do you wish it spared?’

Atella shook her head. ‘There is nothing for me there. I believe now that there never was.’ She drew her sword and, taking a knee, presented it to the queen, her head lowered. ‘I renounce all my former vows. They were made to a falsehood. I offer you my service, if you will accept it.’

‘I do,’ said Lauka Vai, ‘but is that all you want?’

Atella hesitated.

‘Look at me.’

Atella looked up, into that beautiful and terrible face.

Lauka Vai coiled her tail around her and bent down, her eyes filling Atella’s soul. ‘I am the Mother of Nightmares,’ she said. ‘What do you wish?’

‘To be one of the nightmares,’ said Atella. She tilted her head back, baring her throat.

In the ecstatic pain that came when Lauka Vai’s fangs sank into her flesh and the change began to take hold, she felt herself becoming Atella in the fullest and most transcendent sense, and the chains of Reigehren fell away.

Who would sing of the fall of the Colonnade?

Of whom would they sing?

Would they sing of the bard, he who had composed the last song of the city? Would they sing of how he returned?

This was what they would have to sing of. They would sing of Jaras Anvarheim, two days after the catastrophe, riding up the evil miracle of the slope that rose to the gates. They would have to sing of the tears that streamed down his face, and how his voice was hoarse when he called for the gates to open for him. The guards who had remained at the city knew him. His was the voice that had given utterance to the soul of the Colonnade. The guards hurried to let Jaras in, hoping that he had returned first with news of victory.

But even as the gates parted for him and he dismounted from his exhausted horse, the guards realised that this was not the news he brought. The sky darkened. The clouds of the Avengorii swept in from the west and hid the face of Hysh from the Colonnade.

‘They are coming,’ Jaras gasped. ‘The Avengorii are coming to destroy us all.’ He wept. ‘All is lost!’

On the ramparts, the officer of the watch shouted that she saw banners of the Colonnade in the distance. The Freeguild Guard was returning.

‘I do not see the banners of the Maelstrom of Light,’ she said, her voice filled with dread.

‘Gone,’ said Jaras. ‘All gone.’

He ran again, through the half-deserted streets, crying out that the Avengorii were coming. His shouts were not a call to arms, because what defence could there be? They were wails of despair, the pleading of a man who had abandoned himself to terror, and who could think only of dragging everyone he saw into the terror with him, so he would not be alone in its abyss.

He did not know where to go. He had always striven to return permanently to the Above, but now its openness made him feel exposed to the claws that would come from the air. In the end, he scurried to the refuge of the Beneath and the familiarity of his garret.

‘What is it?’ Bennor asked when Jaras burst into the boarding house. ‘What has happened?’ He shrank away from Jaras’ expression, not wanting the answer to his questions.

Jaras climbed the stairs to the garret. It was dark in there, and that and the enclosed space made him feel like he could hide. He sank down to the floor against a corner of the wall, drawing his knees up to his chest. He would stay here, and wait out the storm. That was the most he was capable of planning.

There he stayed, for the ten days and the ten nights that followed, when the skies remained dark but the attack did not come, and did not come, and the city held its breath, and the foolish dared to hope.

Jaras simply cowered, until, on the eleventh night, a huge shadow appeared at his window. It smashed the wall open, splintering timbers with the claws of its six legs, and then it spoke.

‘Hello, little brother.’

No. They would not sing of the bard.

Would they sing of House Reigehren, the storied defenders of the Colonnade?

Would they? They would have to tell how Ollam entered the city as part of the beaten, filthy army. Like everyone he marched with, and like the lord he marched behind, he was caked in dried blood. If he had still had the concerns of the Ollam Reigehren who had caroused at the White Tauralon, he would have thought that he looked like something from the most miserable reaches of the Beneath.

The thought did not occur to him. He was barely able to set one foot in front of the other. He was numb with shock. Terror carved into the granite shape of despair weighed him down, yet kept him moving. The animal instinct to flee, to find a safe burrow, burned in his heart, a glowing ember, and it took him to the door of his family’s home. He had not noticed when he broke away from the rest of the regiment and trudged on by himself. Now he stared at the door, as if uncertain how to go about opening it.

In the end, he did not have to solve the puzzle. Ollam’s mother opened it, and she recoiled at the sight of her son. Behind her, his father turned pale and began to shake in fear.

Ollam made himself cross the threshold and start the thousand-league journey across the entrance hall to the stairs that would take him to his quarters.

‘Well?’ said Yanna. Her imperiousness had turned brittle, but she clung to it still. Perhaps it was all she had left.

Ollam paused with his hand on the bannister. A ragged, mournful chuckle rattled out of his chest. ‘The beastherd is defeated,’ he said. ‘It is utterly destroyed. It is no longer a threat to the Avengorii.’

Yanna frowned. ‘What about us?’

‘Oh yes. Us. We are no longer a threat to the Avengorii either. We too are utterly destroyed.’ The sob that formed inside him was too huge to get out. It would have ripped his throat apart. He kept it within. ‘We should be pleased, mother,’ he said. ‘Our schemes were masterful. We have engineered our destruction with a perfection undreamed of by the beastmen. Did you understand that you and I were labouring to give the Avengorii dominion over the Colonnade?’

‘What of your sister?’ Yanna asked.

‘What of her?’

‘She has the ear of the monsters. Will she intervene for us?’

Ollam laughed again and almost choked on bitterness. ‘She took up her sword against the Colonnade,’ he said. ‘She slew many of our warriors.’

Yanna’s eyes were flints. ‘Did you kill her, at least?’

Ollam turned away from her. ‘Do not look to Atella for mercy,’ he said. ‘I fear she may have learned more from you than she would admit.’

He went up the stairs, leaving footprints of blood and muck.

Eleven nights later, as Jaras encountered his brother, so Ollam’s sister would come for him.

Why would ten days and ten nights pass after the return of the defeated? What would the songs answer? They would surely tell of the ten dawns, on each of which the people of the Colonnade watched the land drop a bit further, until, on the last day, the pillars stood proud and high again and the city looked down once more on the distant prospects of Ghur. On the tenth day, though the sky glowered, the people of the Above began to breathe more easily, at least those who had not taken part in the war. Many went about their lives as usual. Some even began to say that the dark clouds were nothing to fear. No one had actually seen the Avengorii. There was no rain of rotten blood.

Day after day, more and more people told themselves that the worst was over. Day after day, the fall of the Colonnade came closer.

Because day after day, and night after night, Atella screamed.

This is what the songs would have to tell of her, though no mortal eye saw what happened, and no mortal tongue could give voice to a song that bore witness to her passage.

Pain and darkness and crimson convulsed Atella’s frame when Lauka Vai fed, and they did not release her when the Mother of Nightmares had slaked her thirst. Atella had little awareness outside of agony, but she knew that she was moving through the air. Lauka Vai held Atella in her arms and flew, hard and fast, west and north, past the Colonnade, past the forest and on into the Sascathran Desert.

Lauka Vai carried Atella beneath the sands, into the realm of the Avengorii, down and down, far past the throne room, down and down to the darkest reaches of the fortresses. Lauka Vai brought her to its centre, and before huge doors of stone. There, Atella felt the vampire queen’s will force her to become aware of herself once more, to see clearly through the red fog of pain.

The stone of the doors was black and rough, utterly without reflection. The designs that covered their fifty-foot height appeared to twist and shudder in the amethyst glow that suffused the hall. The light seemed to be coming from the other side of the doors as if they were porous.

‘Beyond these doors,’ said Lauka Vai, ‘is the Void Maw. It is a Realmgate through which none travel, but by which all are transformed. Now is the time for your first act of service to me.’

‘What must I do?’ Atella managed.

‘You will pass through the doors, and you will undergo the rite of korak’hor. For ten days and ten nights, you will confront yourself, and what comes from the Void Maw. Embrace the blood, Atella Reigehren. Embrace the truth of yourself. Embrace the monster. If you do, and you are strong, you will be great among the Avengorii. If you are weak, then you will be destroyed by madness and change.’

The wracking pain in Atella’s frame grew worse. She could feel her bones changing; the process seemed to have become faster and more severe since they came before the doors and the glow washed over her.

‘I am ready,’ she said. She didn’t know how great the ordeal would be, but she was ready to serve the Mother of Nightmares.

‘Then let the korak’hor commence,’ said Lauka Vai. She spread her arms and spoke arcane syllables. The air vibrated with her words, grew taut, and then with the rumble of mountains, the great doors pulled back from each other. Sorcerous, violet energy pulsed within the blackness of the chamber beyond.

Atella stumbled forward before she could hesitate. She crossed the threshold, and the doors slammed shut behind her, sealing her in the chamber.

She could not tell if the space she was in was vast or small. The walls and ceiling vanished in the violet light. At the centre was the Maw. Within a crumbling, barely discernible stone arch, power writhed. It was hunger itself, and it was death itself, and if Atella had not thrown herself on the floor, it would have pulled her in and devoured her. Even as it hauled at her being and her mind and her soul, it reached out too, radiating power that was a hunger in itself, a hunger that changed what it touched forever.

The death-hunger took Atella. It became the form of her pain. It sought to tear her asunder, to destroy her, to reduce her to a nothingness of ash. She screamed, desperate for blood, for its taste, for its power and for the death that came from taking it. She screamed as the hunger that was death blasted from the Void Maw. And she screamed to embrace her becoming, to embrace the monstrosity that was the most transcendent servant of death.

Ten days and ten nights passed, every second an eternity, an eternity lost in the collapse of time. There could be no end to her pain, no end to the howling madness that consumed what she had been. And because there could be no end, she embraced the agony of death’s change.

If she had not embraced her transformation, she would have perished, as so many had before her. When her lower body lengthened, and bones multiplied, she rejoiced. When she knew she was being wrenched apart and reassembled like a patchwork beast, she rejoiced.

The blood-hunger grew in her. It grew beyond measure, and beyond reason. Yet she knew who she was, and whom she served.

At the end of the tenth night, Atella uttered one more scream, this time of triumph, and the doors opened again.

A Vengorian Lord emerged from the chamber of the Void Maw and grovelled before the Mother of Nightmares.

‘Rise,’ said Lauka Vai. ‘Arise, and fly to the Colonnade. Be the instrument of my vengeance. Teach them the final lesson.’

Now the song would turn to the eleventh night. Now the song would turn to the night of the fall. But whom would it remember? Would it recall the last night of House Reigehren?

If it did, it would tell of Ollam, jerking awake with a terrified gasp to see a great shadow at his high, wide window. The shape crawled in, shattering part of the frame, and it filled the room. Ollam fumbled with the lantern at his bedside, and saw the thing Atella had become. She was a reptile from the waist down, and she had wings, and though her flesh was the colour of bone and her eyes were obsidian, Ollam still recognised her.

‘Hello, little brother,’ said Atella. Her voice rasped and snarled. She shrugged her wings, as if still exploring the novelty of a new form.

Beyond her, outside the window, lightning cut through the clouds. The first drops of black blood spattered against the house. The wind blew some into the room. Atella licked the drops that hit her face. She looked down at Ollam, and she trembled, as if she were barely holding herself back.

Ollam found a reserve of bravado, perhaps even courage, he had never shown before. It surprised even him, though that would hardly make him worthy of even a single verse in the song.

‘You are cowards,’ Ollam whispered. ‘We are weak, yet you creep into the city like thieves.’

‘You are weak,’ Atella agreed. ‘So it doesn’t matter if retribution comes by day or night. It will not come in secret. And the Avengorii are not inside the city yet. Only Kavak and myself. We wanted to see our brothers, to whom we owe so much.’

Ollam thought of trying to escape, then abandoned the idea. He wouldn’t get more than two paces before he fell, whether or not Atella pursued him. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘I thought it was obvious. I am here to complete our family’s disgrace.’

She was speaking with some difficulty, it seemed, each sentence ending in a hiss that made Ollam think she was about to attack.

Ollam closed his eyes. He braced himself for the agony of claws and teeth.

‘Get up,’ Atella ordered.

His throat parched with fear, Ollam opened his eyes and obeyed.

‘Go to the window, Ollam,’ said Atella. ‘And try to keep your balance.’

The wind blew into the room with greater force. Ollam moved to the window. The blood spat against his face. He looked to the west and began to sob.

The Avengorii were coming. Lightning flashed in sheets, outlining the swarm of winged horrors.

‘And now, brother,’ said Atella, ‘bear witness to the end of our line.’ Her hiss turned into a snarl. Ollam faced her, and her claws split him open before he had the chance to scream.

Who would wish to sing of House Reigehren, a home’s walls awash with blood? Why sing of the Reigehrens and their disgrace of pride and bad faith? They were not unique on that day in the Colonnade. They were not worthy of song. They did not even fight well when the eldest child hurled heads and limbs across the halls in a frenzy of hunger and rage.

Would the bards wish to sing of the Diamond Spire?

Would they sing of the high-born within its walls? If they did, they would tell how Tarvynde, the last lord of the Colonnade, wandered the corridors of the castle day and night without purpose. There was nowhere he could rest. He was pursued by the phantoms of his failure, and the cold fears of what was yet to come. On the eleventh night of his return, he found himself in the empty council chamber. He stared at the throne upon which he had made the decisions that had led to this moment. The gold of the throne mocked him. Its bright gleam was a lie. Its artistry was vainglory.

‘Did you know?’ Atella said from behind him.

Tarvynde knew the voice despite its alteration, and though he was frightened, he was not surprised to see a Vengorian Lord when he turned around. The transformation of his councillor seemed to him to fit the march of events as perfectly as the arrangements of the diamonds on the castle’s spire. With this insight, Lord Tarvynde was closer than most of his subjects to seeing the poetry that was coming for him. But he would not sing of the fall of the Colonnade. He would not sing at all.

‘Did you know?’ Atella asked again.

‘I chose not to.’

Atella nodded slowly. ‘Then I was right.’

‘Does your insight give you satisfaction?’

‘It does not.’ She hissed in frustration. ‘None of this had to happen,’ she said. ‘If you had chosen to know, if you had truly kept faith with the treaty, the Colonnade would be safe, and you would have returned in triumph.’

‘You are wrong,’ said Tarvynde. ‘The Avengorii would never have been accepted. No return with them would have been a victory. It would have always been a betrayal of who we are.’

‘Then who we…’ Atella paused and corrected herself. ‘Then who you are is worthy only of betrayal.’

‘I see that was your decision. Have you come to kill me?’

‘No,’ Atella growled. She wiped blood from her lips. ‘It is only because I despise you so much that I am able to refrain from killing you. I want you to witness the fall. It is the outcome that you ensured, though I will not give you credit for its conception.’

Atella left the council chamber and the worm within it. She threw open the door to the great hall with such force that it flew off its hinges, and she shivered in pleasure at her new strength.

The great hall was not deserted, though it was the dead of night, and there would have been no chance of an audience or the granting of a petition even during the day – because the rulers of the Colonnade were not among those who had given in to the delusion of hope. There were a few nobles gathered near its pillars. They, perhaps more than any others, were unworthy of song. They were the ones that had succeeded, once again, in escaping the risk of war. They had gathered in the hall every day since the departure of the armies, even though there was no one in the throne room with whom to seek favour. Their lives, lacking purpose, depended upon habit instead. It was habit that had brought them here again tonight. They had witnessed the humiliating return of the army eleven days ago, and Lord Tarvynde’s stagger as he entered the Castle of the Diamond Spire. But the lord was within his walls again, and the sky was dark by day and night, and the blood had begun to fall, and they were afraid. So they sought the reassurance of doing what they always had.

Atella stalked down the length of the hall, her tail slashing left and right, her claws clacking against marble, her jaws slightly parted. The nobles hid behind the columns. One of them was Vash Gastar, and Atella pounced. He fled, and she pursued him until she cornered him against a wall. He whimpered and tried to shrink into the stonework.

‘What’s wrong?’ she growled. ‘Don’t you recognise me? Have you changed your mind about seeking my hand in marriage?’ She reared up to her full height and spread her wings wide, ecstatic in the fullness of her monstrosity. ‘Am I not magnificent?’

Vash made high-pitched whining noises. He fell to the ground and raised his hands, pleading for mercy.

It was the plea that snapped the last shred of Atella’s self-control. As it had in her family’s house, the frenzy overcame her. She grabbed Vash with one hand, lifted him high and, with her other hand, yanked his head from his body. His rotting blood poured into her mouth, over her face and down her body. Screams surrounded her, the call of more prey, and she lunged from one victim to another in the great hall. She did not think, and she could not think. She could only tear and feed until the crimson storm passed because there was no one left to kill.

The eastern stained-glass window exploded into shards. Atella looked up. Lauka Vai hovered just outside, and Atella flew up to her queen, and to the Avengorii that awaited her.

‘Now you are truly one of us,’ said the Mother of Nightmares. ‘Welcome, daughter, and rejoice, for we have devoured the hypocrisy of the Diamond Spire.’

Atella laughed and soared away from the Castle of the Diamond Spire, and no one would sing of what she left behind.

Would anyone sing of Baveth Ullior in her tower? She was not the architect of the betrayal, though she was surely its stonemason. She had performed her role well, and now she waited in terror to be removed from the stage.

Eleven days before, in her tower, she had watched the final stages of the prelude to the fall. She had watched the fateful grey clouds race in from the west, grow darker, and knew they would inevitably let fall the rain of blood on her city. She had watched the pitiful remnants of the Freeguild Guard make its painful way up the slope to the gates, and she had wept to wonder how things might have been if she had not broken the duties of her office.

On the eleventh night, she watched as the reckoning came. She watched the storm gather and break. She watched the rage of the lightning, and the black wings fill the sky. The cries of the Avengorii rang in her ears. The legions that had flown over the city on the way to fight for it had returned. They were coming with fury and with vengeance.

Leading the storm was the Mother of Nightmares. Her tremendous wings beat the air with the majesty of fate. Her hair streamed behind her, and it seemed to give birth to the clouds themselves. The fury of her dynasty was in her face, and its sight made Baveth scream and cover her eyes.

But though she squeezed her hands so tightly against her face that she drew blood, she could still see the rage of Lauka Vai, and feel the beating of those wings.

But who would sing of the fall of the Colonnade?

Would it be the bard? He would not be wanted in the song, but would he be the one to give it voice? He had been the Colonnade’s voice. He had sung its destiny into being.

On this eleventh night, after he took Jaras from his garret, Kavak carried his brother to the edge of the forest to the north. Here, the land had changed little. This elevation offered the full prospect of the Colonnade. They saw the complete length of the city, the magnificence of its towers and the wonder of its colossal pillars holding the immense platform aloft, everything illuminated by the continuous lightning of the bloodstorm.

They saw the rain fall in black curtains. Already, in the Above, the streets were running with flash floods of blood. The unwary were swept off their feet. Soon, there would be drownings.

This was just the beginning.

Jaras turned his head away from his city’s suffering.

‘No,’ said Kavak. He sank a claw into the back of his brother’s neck. ‘I want you to watch.’ When Jaras obeyed, he eased the pressure. ‘This is your doing,’ he said. ‘Look upon your works.’

The dynasty of the Avengorii descended on the Colonnade. There were still guards along its ramparts, though not many, and they fired at the vampires with crossbow bolts and iron shot. The battle did not even begin, because after pausing briefly over the castle, Lauka Vai took her legions under the platform, to the Beneath.

‘What are they doing?’ said Jaras.

‘My queen has no interest in storming the Castle of the Diamond Spire. Her throne in the Sascathran Desert is a thousand times more grand. This is not conquest, little brother. This is retribution. This is what you have wrought.’

The Avengorii brought the full wrath of the blood tempest with them. The winds in the Above were fierce, and the blood pelted like hail. Underneath the platform, the winds sheared the weaker chains. Rope ladders disintegrated. Suspension bridges snapped like whips. The blood struck hard enough to tear flesh.

The pillars of the Colonnade were more than a perfection of strength and engineering. They were perfect in their artisanship as well. Nothing else could be permitted for the constructions that were the symbols of the Colonnade as well as its protection. The polish of the granite was so perfect, the stone shone. It reflected, as fine a mirror as a deep pool.

The Avengorii would not permit such mirrors to exist.

At Lauka Vai’s command, the tempest vented its rage against the pillars. The wind hurled blood at stone, and the erosion began. The rock pitted. It rotted. It crumbled and cracked.

Lauka Vai and her Vengorian Lords attacked the pillars with arcane bolts and the magic of decay. Their fury ate into the works that were the wonders of this region of Ghur. But these pillars were young, too. The Colonnade was an infant next to the underground cities beneath the Sascathran Desert.

Who would sing of the fall of the Colonnade?

What would they sing of?

This much is certain. They would sing of the moment the first of the pillars died. The crack resounded across the land. There was movement where none should be beneath the platform. A tree that was a mountain toppled, slow and heavy. Its immense bulk crashed into the pillar next in line. Weakened, that column snapped in half.

The platform began to tilt.

Jaras groaned.

‘Watch,’ said Kavak.

His command was unnecessary. Jaras could not look away, though his soul shrieked at him to shut his eyes.

Another pillar fell, and then another. The levels of the Beneath swung free, their chains snapping, and fell. The catastrophe accelerated, and the great platform angled up like a stricken ship about to slide beneath the waves.

At last, there was no more strength. The pillars tumbled all at once, smashing each other to death, and the city fell. The platform cracked in half, and then in half again. The thunder of its death cry boomed across the leagues, shaking the ground with such force that, like a wounded animal, the land lashed out. A wound split wide, a canyon a thousand feet deep, and it swallowed the cascading ruins of the Colonnade.

A cloud of dust billowed upward. It was caught by the gale of the Avengorii. Its vast shape eddied as if in agony, and then the rain of blood forced it back down.

Then there was nothing.

‘So,’ said Kavak. ‘You saw. You made this happen, Jaras. Can any other bard in Ghur say the same? Can any mortal say they toppled a city? No. You would be a legend, Jaras. You would be, except you will not be remembered.’

Jaras opened his mouth.

‘No,’ said Kavak. With a quick flick of a wing claw, he slit his brother’s throat.

Jaras choked and clutched at the flow of blood. He dropped to his knees.

‘There will be no more words from you,’ said Kavak. ‘You have sung enough.’

Jaras’ mouth gaped. He struggled for air he would never have again.

‘I won’t feast on you,’ said Kavak. ‘I will not taint myself with your blood.’

Jaras fell forward. When he was still, Kavak flew up into the dark beneath the clouds, where Atella waited for him.

Who would sing of the fall of the Colonnade? No one, perhaps.

But if one did, their song would be flawed if they did not turn their gaze to the sky and see there, wheeling around each other, two creatures winged with the grace of monstrosity and blood, reborn in truth to be the destroyers of lies.

THE THRESHOLD

It was, at last, his season of rest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Vengeance,’ said Ormand.

‘For what?’

‘For sealing Lugol away from your foul touch.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It is not.’

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

‘I would sooner die.’

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

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

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

‘You will never collect Lugol.’

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

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

‘Are you going?’ Neferata asked.

‘I am.’

‘Perhaps we shall speak again tomorrow?’

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

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

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

‘You saw us, then,’ Ormand said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘On what possible basis can you say that?’

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

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

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

Kristane didn’t answer.

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

She sighed. ‘Clear, Father.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Is that true of the Stormcast Eternals?’

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

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

‘That does not seem much of a prize.’

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

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

‘I don’t understand.’

‘How do you benefit?’

‘In freedom, as I said.’

‘What freedom?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘They are sufficient to our needs.’

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

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

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

‘This is pointless,’ said Ormand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Father,’ Kristane said, and swallowed hard.

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

‘This is the work of Neferata.’

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

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

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

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

There was no art. There was no joy.

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

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

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

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

‘I have said so from the beginning.’

‘Now I am certain.’

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

‘I have, and it is.’

‘I am glad for you.’

‘That is kind.’

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

‘I am no fool,’ said Ormand.

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

‘Of course it was.’

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

Ormand didn’t answer.

‘Did you find it?’

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

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

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

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

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

Just for a moment.

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

‘Enough,’ Neferata said.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh, but it will.’

‘And how is that possible?’

‘Because you are my thrall.’

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

‘Feel your heartbeat, Lord Ormand.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Rise, Lady Kristane.’

Kristane stood.

‘Smile for me.’

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

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

Kristane stepped across the empty air and took her hand.

OBSIDIAN

It would not be the first wedding in Nulahmia to be preceded by a murder, Karya Treveign thought. She stood beside Evered Halorecht in the nave of the Grand Chapel of Night’s Hunger, looking back towards the main entrance. The two were alone in this cavernous space. But there was room within for thousands. Here, Nulahmian society would congregate to make obeisance to Nagash, and to the consuming, predatory need that was the cost of existence after death.

The Grand Chapel was constructed around the fossilised ribcage of an ancient leviathan slain by Nagash at the dawn of the Age of Myth. The chapel walls therefore curved outwards, then back in, and formed the building’s dome. Monolithic slabs of obsidian filled the spaces between the ribs. Adjacent to the dome stood the high tower, carved from the monster’s legs, and from the tower’s roof a single claw jutted, a spire raking at the sky. The trace of the predator’s hunger.

From the centre of the dome hung two fangs, each more than fifty feet long. Between them was a latticework of smaller bones holding hundreds of tallow candles, encased in glass stained with red and fragments of blue and green. The flames filled the ribcage with this softly blended, crimson hue. In the glow, the blackness of the petrified bones was rendered even more profound.

If Karya was honest with herself, she would have to admit that it would not be the first wedding precipitated by a murder, either. And being honest was, for Karya, a matter of principle. Honesty in Nulahmia was a precious metal, rarer than gold. Even so, she had been forced to engage in some degree of subterfuge when it came to her relationship with Evered. She had had to do more than omit to reveal the truth of their love to her father. On three separate occasions, Karya had lied about where she had been. The memory of each of those instances was a festering wound upon her heart, an injury that struck all the deeper because her father, Lord Vorst Treveign, had believed her. And he believed her because he trusted, absolutely, in her honesty.

You are, he had once told her, that which I have never had the strength to be. The path you have chosen is a hard one. It runs against the grain of everything our queen has forged. I fear for you. But you give me hope, and for that I will be eternally grateful and proud. Your mother would be, too.

‘Do you think she’ll agree?’ Evered whispered, pulling Karya from memories and guilt.

‘We can but hope,’ said Karya. She looked at him and entwined her fingers with his.

‘Hope,’ Evered repeated. He smiled. ‘I can do that. You have taught me how. You have shown me that there is such a thing, and that it is strong.’

Their sibilant echoes seemed too loud for their hushed voices, and so they gently kissed, each wrapping themselves in the other’s protective silence.

Hope. The one Karya held now was that the Mortarch of Blood would agree to her and Evered’s request. There was no guarantee, though, that they would even have the chance to speak with her, let alone receive her blessing. There were many reasons why Neferata would refuse to permit the union of the Houses of Treveign and Halorecht. Karya was not naïve. Trying to follow strict principles of honesty had forced upon her a hard awareness of political realities. No, this was not the first wedding preceded by murder, nor the first precipitated by murder. But this murder leading to this union would, she knew, be the talk of Nulahmia, and perhaps all of Neferatia, if the dread queen allowed it to come to pass.

Karya and Evered had come here to force the issue.

In one of the circular crypts that clung like petrified tumours to the sides of the main chamber lay the body of Therul, high counsellor to House Treveign. When Karya had heard that Neferata planned to pay her respects to the assassinated vampire lord, she had determined to face the Mortarch and know her fate. No one knew when Neferata intended to come to the Grand Chapel, so Karya had performed her own visitation to the corpse, shortly after her father’s, and then, joined by Evered, she had waited.

They had been here, in the centre of the nave, motionless and expectant, for five hours. No one else had passed through. Karya felt trapped, pinned by a dagger of expectation to a limbo as huge and unforgiving as the structure of bone and obsidian that enclosed her.

‘Will she believe in us?’ Evered wondered aloud.

‘Yes,’ Karya said. ‘I am sure she will. She will understand.’ If, that is, Karya could prove she understood the political realities, was not blind to them, and knew how to overcome them.

The huge iron doors of the entrance opened. The deep, reverberating groan of their hinges climbed the walls of the Grand Chapel, becoming the echo of the great beast’s death rattle. Neferata advanced down the aisle, accompanied by the Lady Mereneth. The Mortarch and her high courtier wore long, black dresses. Neferata’s was accented by threads of silver that picked up the dim light of the candelabra, flashing in and out of sight with the movements of the dress like a glint of steel or, as Karya chose to interpret it, the return of light that always waited within darkness. Mereneth’s robes were trimmed in a deep crimson that counterpointed and emphasised the brilliance and deep shadow of her mistress’ garb.

Queen and noble regarded Karya and Evered as they approached. Mereneth’s gaze was cold, flat, unreadable. Neferata bore a smile as slight as it was powerful. Her eyes were narrowed in amusement. Karya’s determination wavered. The closer Neferata came, the more Karya felt herself shrink before the aura of majesty that surrounded the queen. Neferata’s presence filled the Grand Chapel until it seemed as though the monolithic building struggled to contain her. She was more ancient than the fossil, and more powerful than the beast had ever been in life. Karya was beneath the notice of so great a being, though she had dared to call attention to herself by standing in the path of the queen.

She realised that she would be fortunate not to be turned to ash. To ask for more would be foolishly presumptuous. Yet she gathered her failing courage to do just that. Beside her, Evered was rigid with barely suppressed trembling.

At a slight nod from Neferata, Mereneth turned from the couple and swept past, heading off towards the crypt where Therul lay. Neferata stopped before Karya and Evered. Her smile grew almost imperceptibly broader. Her lips were the red of arterial blood, her face the white of perfect, glacial death.

‘Treveign and Halorecht, side by side,’ said Neferata. ‘I doubt I will see a greater wonder today. Explain it to me. What is the nature of this wonder?’

Karya had no doubt that Neferata already knew the answer to her question. She had felt the queen’s gaze scour her being of all secrets. Yet she was called upon to speak, and so she did, honestly, and proud.

‘We are pledged to one another,’ Karya said. ‘We seek your blessing for this union.’

Neferata laughed. Her mirth was as silvery as bells, filling Karya’s heart with love and the urgent need to please her ruler. The laughter’s echo resounded with the iron slam of a coffin lid, and Karya quailed in fear.

‘And thus it comes to pass,’ said Neferata. ‘After centuries of enmity, the two great houses are joined through the love of their heirs. How very star-crossed of you. How worthy of verse you both are. Tell me more. Delight me further. Why now? How can it be, Karya Treveign, that the murder of your father’s right hand leads not to greater bloodshed but to reconciliation?’

‘It is because the death of Counsellor Therul could make things worse that we must act now, my queen,’ said Evered.

Neferata regarded Evered for a brief moment, then turned her attention back to Karya. ‘Did Therul approve of this union?’

‘He did not know about it,’ Karya said, glancing at Evered. ‘He would certainly have advised my father against it. Without his opposition, I believe that my father will be easier to convince. Should we have your blessing, I know he would be.’

Neferata laughed again. ‘An easy prediction,’ she said. ‘Its truth is too certain to have any worth as flattery. What interest would I have in granting this blessing?’

Karya had not been trying to flatter. Everything she said was the truth as she saw it.

‘Acting as one, Treveign and Halorecht could serve your majesty with tremendous strength and loyalty. Our every act would be an expression of gratitude. This I swear.’

‘And what can you offer as guarantee of your word? Your father rules House Treveign and your betrothed is just as powerless – or has Nagra Halorecht relinquished control to her son and I am ignorant of it?’

Karya bowed her head, as did Evered beside her.

There was silence for a long moment. Then, for a third time, Neferata laughed. ‘Your answers only increase the wonder of this union,’ she said. ‘You delight me, and so you shall have my blessing. Have you given any thought to where you will celebrate your union?’

‘Here,’ said Karya, looking up. ‘Both our families have long attended the Grand Chapel.’

‘I approve. Go, then. Make your preparations. Surprise Vorst Treveign and Nagra Halorecht. Surprise Nulahmia. For I will do more than bless your union. I will attend its ceremony.’

‘Treveign and Halorecht together are more than twice as dangerous as each is separately,’ Mereneth said when Neferata joined her in the crypt. The spymistress did not sound happy.

‘Of course they are,’ said Neferata. ‘The way to neutralise this threat, though, is not by simply opposing it.’

The crypt was circular. The only light was the gloomy red that filtered in through the arched doorway. The walls bulged outwards in imitation of the great chamber’s gargantuan ribcage. Neferata walked around the dais upon which Therul lay. There was a gap of a few inches between his head and his body. His entire neck was missing. Whoever had killed him had taken care to create a wound so massive, it could not be interpreted.

‘Did Therul ever mention the romance?’ Neferata asked. As long as the two families had been at war, she had not had to devote much attention to them. Vorst Treveign’s high counsellor had been her spy. With him in place, she had been content to let things simmer, ready to interfere only if the violence between the families rose to a level that inconvenienced her. Peace had never been a possibility. But the situation had changed, and her attention was required.

‘I don’t think he knew of the courtship,’ said Mereneth. ‘Not directly, at least. He reported that Vorst had some concerns about what his daughter might be doing, but it does not appear to have crossed his mind that she might be falling in love with Evered Halorecht.’

‘And they are both sole heirs,’ said Neferata.

Like many of the vampire nobility, the Treveigns and Halorechts had, through the ages, ensured there were enough mortals in the family to sustain the bloodline through direct descent. The firstborn of each generation were given the soulblight curse of vampiric immortality. Both Nagra Halorecht and Vorst Treveign had lost their consorts shortly after the births of Evered and Karya, and neither had thus far acted to produce any further offspring. Vorst was strong, and it might be a millennium before Karya took control of her house. Nagra, though, seemed weak. Therul suspected the Treveigns had found the means to erode her immortality with poison, though the assassin had silenced him before he could find proof.

‘Therul’s death is convenient for the union,’ Neferata went on. ‘Karya admits this freely. Do we know where she was at the time of the assassination?’

‘At a masked ball hosted by House Falkreach,’ said Mereneth. ‘Do you think she arranged the killing?’

Neferata thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘She is too young… and sincere. Had she wished Therul dead, I believe she would have killed him herself and then confessed. No, this union must benefit someone else.’

‘So the question is whether Therul was a target because he would have opposed the union, or because he was our spy,’ said Mereneth.

‘We will act on the presumption that both are true. Belief in coincidence is the prologue to defeat. The stage has been set for us. Let us take measures. Then we will let the performance proceed, and the players reveal themselves.’

Twenty feet up from the floor of the Grand Chapel, a gallery ran the entire circumference of the walls. On the night of the marriage ceremony, Neferata walked the gallery alone. As she passed from archway to archway, she appeared and disappeared to the sight of the gathered multitude, but the crowd was always open to her gaze.

The Grand Chapel was filled with hunger. The full houses of Treveign and Halorecht were there, as were their allies. There were hundreds on both sides, two armies present to witness a contentious peace treaty. The curious were more numerous still, here in their thousands. The hunger for power and the hunger for knowledge were so thick, the air roiled with tension.

The walls were hung with the colours of the two houses. Treveign’s banners were obsidian streaked with gold. Halorecht’s were scarlet, trimmed with black. They seemed to hang together, rather than in opposition, and Neferata wondered if the two lovers saw a good omen in the complementarity of the colours. For herself, the serendipity was irrelevant. As the ceremony progressed, what Neferata saw was a ritual that was the result of a much greater, longer, hidden orchestration.

In the centre of the nave, surrounded by their families, Karya and Evered stood facing each other, attending the words of the ancient necromancer, Alvaras. The few wisps of hair on Alvaras’ yellow-grey scalp floated in the still air of the chapel, a serpentine halo. Ceremonial attendants flanked the betrothed, each holding the golden chain of a collared, subdued mortal from each household. As Alvaras approached the conclusion of the ceremony, Neferata scrutinised the leaders of the houses. Even the slightest change in their expressions was clearly visible to Neferata’s witchsight. Nagra looked even more fragile than when Neferata had last seen her. The Halorecht matriarch was stooped, her face withered as crumbling leather. Her features were pinched into a frown, but her eyes were rheumy, as if she had trouble concentrating on the event unfolding before her. Vorst Treveign, on the other hand, looked far more sanguine. His expression was neutral, but Neferata could see no flicker of concern as his sole heir pledged herself to the son of his enemies. The other members of the family seemed much more uneasy than Vorst. Their expressions mirrored Nagra’s and those of the other Halorechts. There seemed to be very few parties present who saw the union as anything other than harmful to their interests.

‘Where two rivers of blood have flowed, let there now be one,’ Alvaras intoned. He gestured to the attendants, who pulled the imprisoned mortals forward. They opened the collars, but retained their grips on their charges’ shoulders. Alvaras bowed to Karya, to Evered, and then, in a single motion rose and turned, right arm outstretched. His talon of a nail on his middle finger sliced open the jugular veins of the mortals. Every move of the ritual was known and rehearsed by the participants, and the couple fastened their mouths on the throat of the other family’s mortal before a first jet of blood had splashed to the ground. Treveign drank deeply of Halorecht blood, and Halorecht drank Treveign. They drained the bodies, then quickly twisted off the heads, completing the sacrifice, leaving bloodless husks that would not rise again.

The lovers stepped away from the bodies, joined hands and stood before Alvaras again. He touched their foreheads with his crimson-stained finger. ‘And so two are one,’ he said, his voice like the rasp of sand over bone. ‘The work of this solemn day is complete.’

No, Neferata thought. I believe it has just begun.

The taste of the Halorecht mortal’s blood still on her tongue, Karya looked up at the conclusion of the ritual to see Neferata gazing down at her. She had been circling the ceremony since its start, only fitfully visible, a shadow in flowing crimson robes. Now that she had paused, Karya saw that her arms were clad in what looked like dark armour. It seemed to Karya that the queen was clad for the celebration and for war. Karya felt reassured. Neferata’s dress revealed the risks attendant on this union. Karya would have donned more protective clothing too, if there had been a way of doing so. But the robes she and Evered wore would not have concealed any armour underneath, and the result would have been a provocation to violence. So she and Evered were armed only with hope. She trusted that would be enough.

There was a flurry of movement to Karya’s left. She turned in time to see a silver blade stab through Nagra Halorecht’s throat. Evered’s mother opened her mouth in a soundless gasp of agony. Night-dark blood burst from her lips, and her skin crumbled like parchment. The figure behind her was hooded and robed, a shape of darkness so featureless it was as if the sword moved of its own volition. While Karya was still in the first moments of shock, the blade withdrew from Nagra’s throat, rose to one side, then slashed into the side of her neck. Her head tumbled off her body and rolled to her son’s feet.

In the same moment, another figure leapt out of the crowd from Karya’s right. It was shrouded like the first, though to Karya’s horrified eyes the clothing seemed subtly different in style, wrapped around the limbs more tightly. That was enough for her to understand. Though her limbs were frozen in horror and surprise, it came to her that the attackers were not of the same faction. They were not working together. The second was responding to the actions of the first.

The assassin raised his sword, pointing it at Karya’s heart. She took a step back. Evered threw himself at the killer, and the blade plunged forwards.

‘Evered!’ Karya screamed as the assassin stabbed him through the chest. Evered’s hands fluttered at the hilt in weak protest, and then stilled as his body went limp.

The first killer rushed in to attack the second. Their blades clashed once before the crowd finally reacted. The spectators who had come out of simple curiosity now shouted in alarm and rushed for the doors, desperate to avoid the coming storm of violence. Fury rippled out from the centre of the nave. The families of Treveign and Halorecht and their allies and vassals roared with anger and hurled themselves at one another. None were armed, for Neferata had decreed no weapons could enter the Grand Chapel on this night, but vampires did not need steel to wage war, and the dim, crimson glow of the immense chamber exploded with the sudden fires of sorcery.

Karya sank to her knees. The frenzy around her was a dull, background roar. She cradled Evered in her arms. His eyes were dull, unseeing. His mouth hung open. A trickle of his own blood dribbled past his fangs and down his chin. Karya called to him again and again, rocking the body, begging him to return. His mother’s head lay a few feet away. Its flesh had fallen to dust. All that remained was an ancient skull in a splayed nest of grey hair. Nagra had been centuries old, and time had rushed to claim its due from her corpse. Evered did not crumble. Like Karya, he was truly young. They had both been turned only a few years ago, and so he lay in his pooling blood, youth in his features, decay having to take his body in its natural time.

Karya howled. She could not hear her own voice over the rising shriek of the battles around her. The force of her screams tore at her throat. Her dream of hope was gone, and it burned on a pyre of renewed violence. Instead of two families becoming one, soon there would be none. Inside the Grand Chapel of Night’s Hunger, darkness was swelling, gorged with blood. Karya screamed. She felt as if she would go blind. There was nothing before her now, no future for anything, only an abyss of absolute darkness.

She wept until she choked on her grief and pain. She doubled over Evered’s corpse, gagging. Around the two, fighting swirled, but the combatants ignored them. Both of the assassins lay still, ripped apart by outraged family members, who now were in turn fighting for their existence. Karya regarded the struggle with the dullness of despair. She did not look up for succour from Neferata. The slaughter unfolding in the chapel deserved nothing but disgust from the queen. The jaws of apathy closed around Karya. She welcomed them. They would hold her for eternity, or until a Halorecht finished the work of the second assassin.

She believed this for several long moments until, looking up, she searched for her father’s face amongst the fray. But Vorst Treveign was not there, nor was he lying butchered on the floor.

Karya frowned. The apathy began to lose its grip on her, and she stood. She turned around slowly, searching. It was entirely possible that her father was just a few yards away and that she would not see him. She could barely make out any of the bloodied faces in the flares of sorcerous fire and crushing darkness. Yet she kept turning, compelled by an instinct and a growing terror.

Finally, she saw him. He had managed to make his way through the melee to the far wall. The struggle between the nave and the main doors was too intense to push through without being drawn into it. Between the nave and the entrance to the tower, though, the crowd was more sparse. Vorst had climbed a short flight of steps leading to the tower’s landing. He paused before an open doorway, looking at the battle in the great chamber, and then his eyes met hers. Even from this distance, through darkness slashed by magical bolts and misted with blood, Karya felt the impact of his dispassionate contempt. Then he turned his back on his family and its foes, disappearing through the doorway.

Karya pursued. She plunged through the fray, running in a straight line for the tower. She pounded over flagstones slick with gore, ducking and weaving between the struggles, flowing around them as if she were the wind. Clawed hands snatched at her, tearing at her robes and flesh. Snarling, enraged faces turned at her passing. She was too fast to be caught. She had seen the face of betrayal, and rage gave her wings.

She reached the steps and raced up them, through the doorway, and then climbed the endless spiral staircase of the tower, never slowing. There was no apathy now. Her grief was as strong as ever, pricked to an incandescent fury. Somehow, her father had brought the horror below into being. Karya’s existence had narrowed to a single goal. She would confront Vorst and demand an answer. Why? She would force the answer from him if she had to rip it from his throat with her hands. Why?

Why?

From an archway at the top of the staircase, Karya ran onto the roof of the tower and stopped short. The immense claw-spire loomed thirty feet above her, a curved dagger of a silhouette in the night. Vorst leaned on the parapet, his back to her.

‘Father,’ she croaked, her voice raw from her screams.

Vorst turned around. He folded his arms and stared at her coldly. ‘What?’ he snapped, impatient.

His anger baffled her. He glared as if somehow she were to blame for the massacre. She refused to be cowed, and marched towards him.

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why have you done this?’

Her father snorted. ‘You served your purpose,’ he said. ‘And now your utility is over. I no longer have either the need or the patience to put up with your squalling pretensions of morality.’ He took a step forward and extended his right hand. ‘Come here, daughter. Let me throw you over the parapet.’

Karya froze.

‘You will do as you are told,’ Vorst said.

Karya backed towards the door.

‘I am your father,’ Vorst said. ‘You owe your existence to me, and so you are mine to dispose of as I see fit.’ His presumption of ownership was so powerful, his betrayal so utterly cold-blooded, that these words assumed a perverse, terrible authority. ‘You will obey me,’ he said.

The monstrous words held Karya fast. She could no longer move her feet.

Vorst stepped forward, his hand crooked like a talon, reaching out to seize her. ‘I have seen your future,’ he said. ‘It lies shattered on the cobblestones below. It is time for you to join it.’

‘You are wrong.’ The words came from behind Karya. They came from a being infinitely older and of far greater authority than Vorst. He looked past Karya, his eyes blazing first in anger, and then in fear. His spell broke, and Karya rushed away. She crouched against the parapet, transfixed by the confrontation.

Neferata stood in the doorway, clad in blood and night. ‘It is your future that is shattered,’ Neferata said to Vorst. ‘Your manipulations are at an end, and so are you.’

For the space of a heartbeat, it seemed to Karya that, in his arrogance, Vorst would try to fight. Then he turned to flee, though there was nowhere to go. His eyes fell on Karya, and his face contorted with a hate so pure it burned. Karya covered her face in horror. Through her fingers, she saw him open his mouth, and she dreaded the curse he would call down upon her.

He never had the chance.

Karya was able to see what Neferata did next, because the majesty of the queen and the grace of her movement were such that they commanded witness. Yet she acted with a speed beyond lightning. She swept forward from the doorway, and in a single movement seized Vorst by the throat and lifted him high. She drew the dagger Akmet-har from the folds of her dress and slit Vorst’s neck. The gesture was so small it looked like an afterthought. Yet Vorst convulsed upon the instant. Blood flowed in a cataract down his body. With an idle gesture, as if flicking dust from a sleeve, Neferata tossed him over the parapet. The crunch of corpse on stone, when it finally came, was barely audible, though it would sound in Karya’s mind forever.

Karya advanced on trembling legs towards Neferata. She looked over the wall at the broken thing far below.

‘He did this,’ she said, as if speaking the words would help her believe them. ‘He allowed my union with Evered so that he could destroy both our families. Why? I don’t understand.’

‘Greed,’ said Neferata. ‘A hunger for power so great it bred delusions. Your father believed that if he gave two houses and his only daughter to me as a burnt offering, this would prove his devotion, and I would reward him.’ She shook her head. ‘That is not loyalty. That is selfishness and waste. I reward neither.’ She smiled at Karya. ‘And he failed. Through you, House Treveign still stands.’

‘It does not stand,’ said Karya. ‘It kneels before you.’ She did as she said, her heart burning with gratitude and love for the queen who had saved her. Once again, Karya saw the chance of purpose in her existence, and she seized it with fervour. ‘I seek nothing now but the glory of serving you,’ she said.

Neferata smiled. ‘Then I am pleased.’

Mereneth joined Neferata on the rooftop some time later. Together, they watched the lone figure of Karya walking across the square away from the Grand Chapel.

‘The fire that fuelled her honesty is now the fuel of her devotion to me,’ Neferata said.

‘She has the makings of a good spy,’ Mereneth agreed.

‘I am confident you will make that promise flower.’

Mereneth bowed her head. ‘The battle is finished in the great chamber,’ she said.

‘Any survivors?’

‘Some. All the families involved will be greatly diminished.’

Neferata nodded in satisfaction. ‘Good.’ Vorst’s assassins, chosen by her, had done their job well. Where there had been two powerful houses of uncertain loyalty, now there was a single, weaker one that would be hers entirely.

‘I’m curious,’ said Mereneth. ‘How did you know Evered would give his life for Karya?’

‘I saw his devotion when they asked for my consent to their union. He was consumed with love for her. This made his actions utterly predictable.’

‘And it was Vorst who killed Therul?’ Mereneth asked.

‘Yes. The union of the two houses gave him the opportunity to stage this massacre.’

‘What did you tell Karya about his motives?’

‘The truth. That he believed this would earn my favour. I simply did not tell her that I encouraged him in this belief.’

Mereneth chuckled. ‘You hold her love with a dark truth.’

‘Darkness is the key, Mereneth. Look to the darkness in which your enemy operates, that shrouds a rival, that lives in the heart of a friend. Then find a deeper darkness, and use it.’ Neferata smiled, tasting the night. ‘Always seek the darkness,’ she repeated. ‘Always go deeper.’

She ran her fingers over the parapet, and savoured the feel of obsidian between bone.

THE DANCE OF THE SKULLS

The Mortarch of Blood’s party arrived at the royal palace in Mortannis with the coming of full night. Neferata, her handmaidens and her ladies of court swept up the grand staircase leading to the palace doors. On either side, standing to attention, were the elite guards of two cities: Mortannis to the right, Nachtwache to the left. Walking one step behind Neferata, Lady Mereneth said, ‘I do not trust the nature of this honour.’

‘Nor do they expect us to,’ Neferata told her favoured spy. ‘This will not be the trap. They know the consequences will be too great. What will come will be more subtle, one our enemies can deny.’

Neferata had come to Mortannis to attend a ball arranged explicitly for her visit. The event was formally presented as an act of fealty and peace. She knew, therefore, exactly what it was. She was entering a battlefield.

She would not have it any other way.

Mortannis lay close enough to Nulahmia for it to be a point of concern. Queen Ahalaset had never challenged Neferata directly, and the tensions between the two cities had long been unspoken, subterranean. Close to the borders of Mortannis’ region of influence lay Nachtwache. It was ruled by Lord Nagen and Neferata had kept a close watch on the relations between Mortannis and Nachtwache. As long as there had been friction between the two, friction that she had encouraged, the two powers had kept each other contained. She had even tolerated temporary alliances in the face of the threat from the legions of Chaos. But the armies sworn to the Everchosen were, for the time being, pushed back from this region of Shyish, and it appeared that the cities’ rulers had formed a much more substantial alliance. That would never do.

So she had accepted the joint invitation from Ahalaset and Nagen immediately, after putting on the expected charade of diplomatic negotiations. There was work to be done here, and she knew she was putting her neck into the jaws of a trap. Though she arrived at the palace with only her immediate retinue, she was confident in her assurance to Mereneth. Ahalaset and Nagen would not strike here, with their own guard. Neferata’s army waited outside the gates of Mortannis – legions of vampires, skeletons and wraiths cantoned in the lower reaches of the mountains that surrounded the city. Any move by the forces of Mortannis or Nachtwache would see Mortannis burned to the ground.

These were the realities of the game about to be played. They were known by all. The war would take place at another level. There would be no siege, no scaling of the walls. After all, this was a celebration. The war would be invisible, until a point came when the combatants chose to drop the illusion.

Neferata’s party passed through the high doors of the palace, down the entrance hall and into the grand ballroom. Torchlight shone off the gold leaf of marble caryatids that held up the vaulted ceiling of the ballroom. The ceiling mosaic was a wonder of bronze-covered bones. Hundreds of skeleton arms reached from the edges of the vault towards the centre, where a huge skull composed of other skulls opened its jaws in an ecstasy of death.

The honour guard of the two cities was also present in the ballroom, but more discreetly, keeping to positions against the walls. In the fore, lining the path of the procession to the large dais at the back of the ballroom was the gathered nobility of Mortannis and Nachtwache. Vampires and mortals bowed as Neferata passed. She acknowledged their greetings with the faintest of nods. She met the eyes of the nobles, all of them, and watched the spasm of fear and admiration take them.

Queen Ahalaset and Lord Nagen stood together on the dais. Though Ahalaset was host, they were side by side, equals at the event. They bowed too, completing the show of respect that had greeted Neferata.

No one was armoured except the guards, and even their plate was ceremonial, adorned with jewels and golden skulls, more resplendent than practical. Neferata, like her opponents on the dais, had prepared for the kind of war about to be waged. She wore a regal black dress of silk so fine it flowed like water. The train of the dress was much lighter than its length would suggest, and it moved behind her over the marble floor like the touch of night. From her shoulders hung a crimson cape. Its leather, so soft it was a mere breath of wind against the fingers, was made from the tanned flesh of fallen enemies.

‘We are honoured, Queen Neferata, that you accepted our invitation,’ said Ahalaset as she rose again. Her cheekbones were high, her eyes proud. Her brilliant green robes shimmered with silver thread, which wove the designs of scores of coats of arms, as if meant to remind Neferata that Ahalaset too had long experience on the battlefield.

At the end of his bow, Nagen began to reach out for Neferata’s hand to kiss. When she did not extend her arm to him, he turned his gesture into a flourish, though the effort was clumsy enough to be obvious, then straightened. He wore a damask coat and a waistcoat inlaid with diamonds. The buttons of the coat were obsidian and shaped into finger bones. Its delicate fringe was human hair. Nagen’s features were narrow and refined, and he consistently let a single fang poke down from beneath his upper lip. ‘It is our greatest wish,’ Nagen said, ‘that you understand our intentions to be peaceful. We want you to know that Nulahmia can trust Mortannis and Nachtwache.’

‘Of course you do,’ Neferata said, and smiled.

Her hosts hesitated for a moment, uncertain how to take her words. Then they returned her smile and descended from the dais. ‘We hope you will enjoy the ball,’ said Ahalaset. She and Nagen led Neferata’s party to join the other nobles. ‘There will be a Dance of the Skulls.’

‘Then my pleasure is assured in advance,’ Neferata said.

Ahalaset clapped her hands. Musicians emerged from side doors at the rear of the ballroom, carrying instruments and chairs. They mounted the dais. Within moments, the orchestra began playing, and the war began.

‘Do they think we do not realise this is a trap?’ Mereneth whispered to Neferata as they watched the first of the dances.

‘Of course they know that we are not fooled,’ said Neferata. ‘They believe they can overcome our wariness, and that is what matters. They will act, have no fear. Our journey will not have been in vain.’

A few dances in, Neferata saw, from the corner of her eye, Lord Nagen turn towards her, about to invite her to the floor. As if she had not noticed, she took a single, graceful step away and began to speak to one of the ladies of Ahalaset’s court. Mereneth remained where she was, and Nagen, already committed to the beginnings of a bow, had no choice but to make his invitation to the spy. Mereneth accepted.

Neferata left her conversation as quickly as she had begun it, but though her departure was abrupt, the other vampire was awed, not offended. With a parting glance, Neferata saw the woman shrink before her, overcome with the knowledge that she had not been destroyed.

Neferata walked slowly along the edge of the dance, watching Mereneth and Nagen. Other nobles parted before her, backing away even when they also sought to greet her. She exchanged brief words with the vampires and mortals she passed, but they did not deflect her attention from the ball.

Mereneth was a skilled, graceful dancer. Nagen had difficulty keeping up with her. Her movements were never such that he stumbled, though. She kept him away from the edge of humiliation, and though Neferata could tell that he was a well-practised dancer himself, and prided himself as such, Mereneth’s control of their turns made him appear even better than he was. He had to focus on his steps, and he was grateful enough for the guidance of Mereneth’s hands that he did not pay attention to what else they might be doing. Neferata kept level with them as they moved up and down the ballroom floor. Twice, at chosen moments, she caught Nagen’s eye and gave him the hint of a smile. The first time, he seemed unsure that she had done so. The second time, his face lit up with certainty, and her unspoken, vague promise was enough. He devoted himself with even greater energy to his performance, as if to say, Look how well we shall dance together.

Neferata allowed her smile to grow a little broader, though she hid her amusement. Are you already forgetting your purpose, Lord Nagen? she thought. For the moment, it seemed he had.

When the dance ended, he and Mereneth joined her. Nagen rushed to speak before Neferata could escape him again. ‘Queen Neferata,’ he said, ‘will you do me the honour of being my partner for the Dance of the Skulls?’

‘It would be my great pleasure,’ she said.

Nagen beamed. Neferata held him before her with her smile. He would, when the necessity pushed him hard enough, remember what he was supposed to be doing. He would remember that his purpose this night was not to secure a dance with the Queen of Nulahmia. But he was not remembering now. And while Neferata transfixed him, he was not looking at Mereneth, and he did not see her slip the ring she had stolen into Neferata’s hand.

‘And now,’ Neferata said, releasing Nagen from her gaze, ‘I have neglected my other host for too long.’ She left Nagen happy and willing to be distracted by Mereneth once again. She doubted he would ever notice the missing ring. The theft was a preliminary step. She had no specific use for the ring as yet. Instead, her possession of it opened up a wider field of action. She would see what possibilities would arise.

Ahalaset was at the feasting table on the other side of the ballroom. She gestured for Neferata to join her. ‘You must tell me what you think of this vintage,’ she said when Neferata drew near. She filled two crystal goblets from a large decanter.

Neferata accepted hers and brought it to her nose. She sniffed a finely crafted blend of blood. ‘Most inviting,’ she said, but did not drink.

Ahalaset smiled. ‘Please accept it,’ she said, and drank first.

Neferata sipped. ‘This is extraordinary,’ she said, and it was. She tasted the innocence of the newborn, the enthusiasm of youth and the wisdom of age. They existed together on her palate, forming the entire arc of mortal life. She was impressed. ‘You have some superb artisans at your disposal,’ she said.

Ahalaset raised her goblet in a toast. ‘I am pleased you think so,’ she said. ‘I selected this vintage purposely for your visit.’

‘I am honoured.’

Ahalaset lowered her voice. ‘I have, if you are interested, Queen Neferata, set aside a gift more potent yet.’ Her eyes flickered quickly to the left and right.

Ensuring that I am alone, Neferata thought. She was. She had dispersed her retinue through the crowd, inviting Ahalaset to make her move. ‘You interest me,’ she said. ‘Do go on.’

Ahalaset pointed to a small door in the corner of the ballroom, behind the dais. ‘You will find in there my personal choice of slaves,’ she said. ‘They have been curated for the quality of their blood. They come from the same families whose lives you have just tasted.’ She produced a small, golden key. ‘Should you wish to savour their delicacies…?’

Neferata accepted the key. ‘I should indeed,’ she said. Good, she thought, we are done with the prelude. Now we can begin. With a knowing smile to Ahalaset, she made her way over to the door and let herself in.

She entered a richly appointed chamber. In the centre was a divan draped in crimson cushions and silks. The candles of human tallow on the chandelier were encased in red-tinted glass skulls, suffusing the room with a warm, intimate glow. The light was dim, though, and Neferata noted the many deep shadows in the corners. The shape of the room was an octagon, and chained to the walls were the offerings. They were men and women in the prime of life, anointed in oils and scents, gold bands pulling their heads back to present their throats. Neferata felt the beat of their pulses, their rich blood a thin slice away from jetting into her mouth. Incense wafted from censors on either side of the divan. The atmosphere of the chamber was heady, luxurious. It was, Neferata thought, a most beautiful trap. If the opportunity arose, she must congratulate Ahalaset. She doubted Nagen had contributed much beyond his mere presence.

Neferata turned around slowly, her witchsight piercing the shadows. She did not think the attack would be that obvious, and she was right. The chamber was empty except for the slaves. She walked past the mortals, examining them closely but not touching any of them yet. They stared back at her, their pupils dilated. Their fear was mixed with a confused pleasure. Neferata inhaled the scent of their emotions, detecting the taste of a powerful opiate. She did not think it was poisonous. It seemed, to her senses, that its purpose was simply part of the flavouring of the blood.

Neferata’s lips drew back over her fangs. The bait truly was irresistible. Well done, Ahalaset. Well done.

She circled the chamber again. Between the prisoners hung tapestries depicting the most sensual of atrocities. Neferata moved them aside until, to the left of one of the male slaves, she saw the barely discernible outline of a door in the wall. She located the keyhole and experimentally inserted the key Ahalaset had given her. It turned easily, and she heard the lock slide into place. It was curious, she thought, and therefore significant, that the same key opened both doors to the room.

She locked the entrance door too. She stood in the centre of the room for a few moments, waiting. Whatever the nature of the attack, she would adapt, and she would counter it. That was her most terrible strength – to see each moment for what it was, to discard a plan instantly, and form a new one, to flow across war like water.

The attack did not come.

‘Very well,’ she murmured. ‘If we must play out this charade to the end, let us do so and have done with this.’ She walked over to the slave directly in front of her and sank her fangs into his neck.

The blood was everything Ahalaset had promised. If the vintage in the ballroom represented the peak of the art of blending, here she encountered a rarefied purity of blood. These slaves had clearly been raised since birth for this purpose alone. The taste of life was intoxicating, and Neferata would have willingly gorged herself from this single slave, then waited before indulging in the next. But this was war, and she would not cede the battlefield to Ahalaset. She swallowed twice, then stepped back from the prisoner. He looked at her with bovine fear. His lips moved, but they were too sluggish to form words.

‘You are a product of superb breeding,’ Neferata told the slave. ‘All of you are,’ she announced to the chamber. ‘Be proud of your destinies.’

With the flick of a clawed finger, she sliced the man’s throat wide open. The enticing blood poured down his body and pooled onto the floor. Neferata moved on to the next slave, drank briefly from her neck, then slashed her throat too. And so she went on, taking just enough for a taste and then killing the mortals. The chamber filled with the smell of wasted blood. Neferata shook her head, feeling the rare moment of regret. To throw away such fine stock was a crime.

Still the attack did not come.

Neferata’s senses were vibrating with tension. This had to be where she was most in danger. This had to be the trap. But the moments passed, and the slaves died, and nothing happened. The more time passed, the more she felt the temptation to relax her guard, and the more wary she became.

She had slaughtered two thirds of the slaves now. She bent down to the neck of the next one. As her teeth sank into his throat, he brought his arms up in a flash. His chains snapped, brittle as porcelain. His right forearm and hand were a leather sheath, its illusion perfectly crafted, and they slid to the ground, revealing the blade built out of his elbow. It was silver, etched in runes, and flashed with emerald light. The air crackled with its power, and the assassin stabbed the sword at Neferata’s throat.

A moment’s unwariness and the blade would have decapitated her. But she had not been unwary. Neferata leapt to one side and ducked. The sword passed over her head, flashing with the heat of an arcane sun. She reached out and grabbed the assassin’s arm just below the elbow. He struggled to free himself, but he was held with a grip that could crush stone. Neferata pushed the arm back, holding it against the wall. The assassin struck at her with his other arm, but he might as well have been hitting steel.

‘Very good,’ she whispered. ‘Very good.’ She took the assassin by the throat and forced his head back. He began to whine in frustration and terror. ‘Shhhhh,’ she said. ‘You did very well. You came closer to succeeding than you think. Your queen should be grateful to you. Or is it your lord?’ Neferata cocked her head, breathing in the man’s fear. ‘No,’ she decided, ‘you are one of Ahalaset’s playthings.’ Nagen’s role in all of this was the political ally, and the extra force inside the palace. ‘Your queen decided to control all of the details of my assassination. She was correct to do so, even though she failed.’

The assassin squirmed in her grip. She lifted him off the ground, holding him in mid-air, depriving him of leverage. He groaned. ‘Hush now, hush now,’ Neferata said. ‘Your part in the dance is not yet done. There is a great turn to make.’ She yanked the assassin to her and bit into his neck. There was no time to savour the taste of his blood. There was only the attack. She drank his life. She drained him of his will, and of Ahalaset’s, and she filled him with hers.

When she was done, she released the assassin. He stood before her, docile, a thrall waiting for the orders that would define his new purpose. She looked him up and down. He was clad only in a loincloth, unsuitable for his new task. ‘You have robes elsewhere,’ she said.

He nodded.

She unlocked the doors from the chamber, then handed the assassin the key he would have used had he been successful. ‘Go and don your robes,’ she said. Then she gave him Nagen’s ring and issued her commands. He bowed and left the chamber through the hidden door. Neferata circled the room once more. She killed the remaining slaves quickly. Then, with sharp, rapid jerks, she tore the corpses apart and tossed the dismembered remains into a heap before the divan. In that hill of meat, discerning if there was a body that was missing would take time.

Neferata lifted the train of her dress. It was soaked in blood. She ran a hand over the silk, murmuring a soft incantation, and the blood pattered to the floor. Then she returned to the ballroom.

Nagen and Ahalaset were standing together at the feasting table when Neferata emerged from the chamber. Ahalaset hid her alarm well. Nagen looked rattled. Neferata smiled to them both, and ran a finger along her upper lip. ‘Your gift was beyond expectations,’ she said to Ahalaset. ‘I can only hope that I will be able to offer you something half as delightful when next you come to Nulahmia. And you will visit me, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will,’ said Ahalaset.

‘As will you, Lord Nagen,’ Neferata said.

He bowed, his composure returning. ‘Nothing would please me more.’

The orchestra had stopped playing for a few moments, and now it began again. A celebrated chord sounded, slowly thrumming twelve times, summoning the celebrants for the Dance of the Skulls.

Neferata offered her hand to Nagen. ‘I made you a promise,’ she said. ‘Now I shall keep it.’

His earlier rapture lighting up his eyes, Nagen took her hand and led her onto the ballroom floor. As they took their places, Neferata saw a handmaiden walk quickly from the chamber to Ahalaset and whisper to her. As careful as the queen of Mortannis had been when she was talking to Neferata, she could not disguise the relief that flashed over her features. She prowled the edge of the dance floor, her gaze on Neferata. Her look was of someone who had had a narrow escape, and now sought a new route to victory.

Satisfied, Neferata turned her full attention on Nagen as the dance began.

Vampires and human nobles faced each other in two lines. Servants gave each of the vampires an enthralled human slave with silver chains wrapped around the neck. Every mortal noble held an ivory bowl in the shape of a skull. The music played and the aristocratic dancers moved together in groups of four. Though the vampires and nobles faced each other, the true partners in each cluster were the undead. The humans were the subordinates. The only difference between the slaves and the bowls was that the slaves were able to support themselves for the first part of the dance.

The music hit its first crescendo, the dancers completed their first turn and, in time to a sudden, emphatic beat in the melody, the vampires cut the jugulars of the slaves. Now the dance proper began, where the skill of the participants was put to the test. The vampires controlled the jet of blood and as the humans whirled around them, they caught the blood in the bowls. At the start of each refrain, the humans bowed, presenting the bowls to the vampires, who drank, and then the bowls were filled again. Though the movements of the dancers slowed in time to the music, there were never any full stops. The motion was continuous, and it was forbidden for even a single drop of blood to fall to the floor. So the dance would go on until the slaves were exsanguinated and that, too, had to be timed perfectly so the victims did not die prematurely. At the final flourish, the vampires would decapitate the slaves and exchange skulls with the mortal nobles.

And all this time, the vampire partners never broke eye contact with each other. The letting of blood and the killing were performed as if unthought. The dance made the mortals unimportant, beneath notice. Blood flowed, people died, yet all that mattered was the contact between the partners, all the more intense because they never touched physically.

Neferata held Nagen’s gaze in a grip of iron. Though he was her willing prisoner, her task as they danced remained delicate. She saw before her a vampire who was happy to play the fool for her, yet she had no doubt that his loyalty remained with Ahalaset. Nagen feared Neferata as much as he desired her, and he wanted that fear disposed of. But he was vain, too, and Neferata read the fatal weakness in his vanity. He believed that he could indulge in the pleasure of her company and the dance until the moment of the assassination. The trap had failed. Perhaps there was another plan, or perhaps he believed he could distance himself from association with it. Whatever he was thinking, he would be wary. He was enraptured, not enthralled. He was not without his own power. If Neferata was too forceful in an attempt to control his will, he would sense the attack, and all would be lost.

So Neferata was subtle. What she wanted from Nagen was a small thing, a very small thing, a thing so attuned to his natural inclinations that it should require only the tiniest push to make him take a single, brief action when and how Neferata commanded. As they spun about the dancefloor, rounding each other, bowing to each other, and drinking from the proffered skull bowls, she added subtle gestures to her arm flourishes. Her fingers played in the air for an extra moment, making patterns that were only for Nagen’s eyes. Even he would not notice them, but they had their effect. Halfway through the Dance of the Skulls, his face hung a bit looser than it should, and his pupils were a bit wider. And as they leaned in towards each other after filling the bowls with blood yet again, the torn veins of the prisoners pumping out streams between their fingers, Neferata moved her lips, shaping a few inaudible words. She did not even whisper.

She did so little. She was sure she’d done enough.

She saw Mereneth watching from the sides as the Dance of the Skulls drew to its climax. With a light inclination of her head, Neferata directed Mereneth’s gaze to the other side of the ballroom.

The exuberant finale of the dance came. The vampires snapped the heads off their slaves. The human nobles extended both hands, to receive and to give. The orchestra thundered a last, victorious chord, proclaiming the triumph of death.

And Ahalaset screamed.

All movement in the ballroom ceased. The assassin, clad now in the rich robes of a noble guest, unnoticed until he struck, stood behind Ahalaset, his blade arm through her back, her heart impaled on its point. The rune-enchanted silver glowed through a slick of gore. Ahalaset’s shriek turned into a hacking choke. The assassin held her body up a few moments more, and then it slid off the blade.

The assassin stood motionless over the corpse of the queen. He did not look up, and barely reacted when Ahalaset’s honour guard surged forward and cut him down with pikes and blades.

‘Search him!’ the captain of the guard commanded, and Neferata was pleased. It was much better that the idea come from one of Ahalaset’s minions.

In the time it took for the guards to turn out the pockets of the assassin’s robes, Neferata felt all eyes in the ballroom on her. This was the turning point of the larger dance, the one that only she had truly known everyone had been caught in this night. Right now, the two courts believed she was responsible for Ahalaset’s death. There was no other reasonable conclusion to be drawn. It was also the truth.

But the truth was ephemeral. It was a tiny, weak thing compared to the armoured colossus of perception. And the moment turned.

‘There’s a ring,’ said one of the guards.

‘I have seen that before,’ said the captain. After a pause, he said, ‘It has the seal of the house of Nagen.’ He sounded confused.

Now perception spread the fog of doubt throughout the ballroom, and truth retreated. It was time for her work during the Dance of the Skulls to bear fruit. Time for Nagen to do that single thing. To speak one sentence. A sentence that came easily, because it was the motto of his family. A sentence he took pride in, and believed in. It was his belief in that sentence, after all, that had led him to conspire against Neferata with Ahalaset.

He had simply never planned on uttering that sentence right now.

‘Never bend the knee!’ he shouted.

Neferata turned to look at Nagen with carefully crafted disgust. He was so shocked by what he had said that his mouth hung open, suddenly bereft of words.

Neferata raised her eyebrows in a show of anger calibrated so that only Nagen would be close enough to see that it was mockery. ‘I will have no part of your conflict,’ Neferata told him, and walked away.

‘Wait!’ Nagen called to her. ‘Wait!’ he shouted at Ahalaset’s guards as they descended on him. He tried to protest his innocence, but his words were drowned out by the roar of anger from the warriors.

Neferata gestured to Mereneth and the rest of her retinue. They followed her up onto the dais where she elected to watch the final steps of the royal dance. The orchestra was silent, the musicians huddling together for protection, but Neferata could hear music all the same. It was the beat and melody of violence unleashed at her command.

The palace guard cut Nagen down, piercing him with a dozen spears before he could muster a defence. Too late, the soldiers of Nachtwache rushed to his aid, and then to avenge their lord. Soon the dais was the lone island of calm in the ballroom. Neferata and her handmaidens brushed away the warriors who staggered too close, and plucked stray arrows from the air.

The fighting spread through the ballroom, the nobles from both cities joining in the attacks or caught between the blades of the warring troops. Blood and fire swept through the hall and out the palace doors. Neferata listened to the greater clashes of blades from the courtyard and the streets beyond, and to the growing thunder of armies hurling themselves against each other. She tapped at the air with a finger, conducting the carnage. When the time came for her forces to enter the city, she did not think there would be much left for them to do.

Neferata turned to the orchestra master. The thin vampire was crouched beside his chair, trembling. ‘My compliments,’ she said, speaking quietly, though her voice rode effortlessly over the clamour of battle. ‘Your music was most pleasing.’ She would see the musicians were well rewarded. ‘You played with exquisite skill.’

‘So did you, my queen,’ said Lady Mereneth.

Neferata smiled, accepting the compliment. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I rather think I did.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Annandale is the author of the Warhammer Age of Sigmar novels Callis & Toll and A Dynasty of Monsters, and the Neferata titles Mortarch of Blood and The Dominion of Bones. His work for Warhammer 40,000 includes Ephrael Stern: The Heretic Saint, Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights. His Horus Heresy titles include the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar, Vulkan: Lord of Drakes and Mortarion: The Pale King. For Warhammer Horror, he has written the novels The House of Night and Chain and The Deacon of Wounds, as well as the novella The Faith and the Flesh. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

An extract from The Hollow King.

The girl ran through the wood under the grin of a skull moon. Breath panted from her lungs. The roots tangled the ground under her feet. A branch caught in her hair, and her head snapped back. She pulled at the branch. The thorns tangled deeper. She yanked, panting, tears running through the blood smearing her face.

A howl came from the direction of the road.

‘Please…’ she cried, the words dissolving into a gasping ball of panic. She wanted her mother, her father, her elder sister. She wanted to be back in the rocking dark of the wagon as it jolted along the road in the twilight. She wanted the world to be a shape she understood, to hear a voice say that everything would be all right. She wanted someone to reach down and pick her up.

The thorns sliced into her fingers. The branches of the trees thrashed. She saw crimson eyes, pinpricks of ember red in the dark, behind her, coming closer.

Branches whipped Cado as he ran. The moon poured silver down on him. He could smell blood. Could taste it. Death was howling through the forest. The quarry was out there, running, flooded by fear, bleeding. It was fast too. He reached a thicket of trees. His eyes had become red flames in their sockets. The skin of his face pulled back from his teeth. The world was silver and red. It had taken too long to catch the caravan. Too long running along the lich-marked paths, hunger growing inside, as the prey sent a fraying thread pulling him on. Now the wagons of the caravan lay behind him on the road, tipped over, spattered with blood, dying horses thrashing in the harnesses. Now there was just this chase and a world redrawn by hunger.

His senses were singing. The reek of blood was a crimson haze. Magic spiralled through the bare branches. The gasp of breath. Bones rattling. Close. An abyss of hunger open and waiting to swallow him. He reached a rock, bounded onto its top and launched up into the branches of the trees. Birds took flight, cawing, their song splitting the air.

She had been asleep in the wagon, and then there had been shouting. She had come awake blinking, thinking for a second that the shouts were echoes of her dreams.

‘Stay here,’ her father had said, and she had clutched at the cold-iron hammer amulet and pulled the furs close. The rock and sway of the wagon had slowed, and then the vehicle had kicked, and she had heard voices shouting to ride fast. Her heart jolted. The grave-coins, bone amulets and dried roses hanging from the wagon’s roof swung on their cords. She hoped they would keep them safe again. There were things in the forests. For as much as her parents and the other adults tried to hide it, she knew this land wanted them dead.

Two nights ago, she had heard muttering and the click of cocking crossbows as she lay awake. She had sneaked up and opened the hatch at the back of the wagon. Peeking out she had seen something drifting through the trees. At first it looked like nothing, just a smudge of pale light. It was no more than two hundred paces away. It glowed, fizzed. Dead leaves rattled on tree branches above. The more she looked, the more she thought it had a shape – like an old person bent under a cloak, long arms and thin fingers trailing. She had wanted to duck back into the wagon but stayed, watching as the shape crackled past. Once it turned, and for a held breath she was certain she could see a head, the curve of a hood hiding a face and eyes. It had looked at her while the breath she was holding burned in her lungs. Her fingers had gripped the little iron hammer. She whispered what she could remember of the names her mother had spoken while hanging the charms inside the wagon: Sigmar, Morrda, and others that were just sounds.

Please let all the cruel things of this realm pass… Please protect us… Please let us reach a safe place… Please.

The blurred figure had drifted away through the trees. The guards settled again as she went back inside the wagon and watched the amulets turn on their cords as the wheels rolled on.

Tonight, as she heard the guards shout, she had begun to plead to the names and amulets again. Not whispering. Calling. The wagon had started to shake, wheels bucking over earth and stone. They were going fast, trying to outrun something coming after them. Then the world had tipped over. The wagon rolled and skidded, and the amulets clanged against each other. Toppling bundles of clothes half buried her. She heard the horses cry, and her father shout, and then another sound. A sound that froze her in place. A howl that passed through the wagon’s walls like they weren’t there. More shouts and then a loud, wet crunching. She had lain still, hardly daring to breathe.

Then she had heard claws on the outside of the wagon. She had looked around at the hatch-door, now on its side and level with the ground. Its bolt had broken, and it lolled on its hinges. The scrape of claws came closer. Her eyes stayed fixed on the hatch, waiting for a shadow to blot out the sliver of moonlight falling between it and the frame. Then there was a shout from somewhere nearby and the scraping of claws paused. She had not waited. She was up and through the hatch and running before her heart beat again.

There had been an instant when she had seen the shadow, looming close, ragged under the moonlight, eyes red. She had run into the trees. She saw a figure ahead of her, running too. She had followed. So had the red eyes of the ragged shadow.

She yanked her hair free from the thorns. Ran, gasping. Small bare feet over dark loam and tangled roots, fear numbing the cuts of sticks and stones. A tall, twisting tree stood in the middle of a clearing ahead. Its bare branches reached up to the rictus face of the moon. Birds crouched upon them. Hundreds of birds. Hunched forms of white and black feathers.

She could see someone running ahead of her. It was one of the caravan guards. Morinar, the kind one with the gut that did not fit under his armour; who always gave her one of the dried fruits from his pack when she asked; who was never scared of the sounds that came from the night, and always smiling.

‘Help!’ she cried. He turned, armour plates and chainmail jangling. He had a sword in his hand. His face was pale, eyes wide with terror, air gasping from his mouth. ‘Help! Please!’ she called again. Her foot caught on a root.

She fell. Her knee hit the edge of a stone. Blood… Blood beading her skin, black under the moon’s glare. She twisted to look back.

Red. Spots of red in between the trees. And jaws. She froze. A rattling sound of breath through long teeth came from behind her. The tears had stopped now. The birds shifted on their perches, beaks and feathers rustling. A rattling sound of something that could not breathe growling through a rotten throat. She was shaking. Her eyes clamped shut.

‘Mama…’ she whimpered, ‘Papa…’ It was the only thing she could think to say, the prayer of a child in the face of the unimaginable. It was right there, on the other side of her eyelids. She needed to be brave. Be brave and things would be all right. She turned, shaking, and opened her eyes. Glowing eyes looked back at her. Rotting skin and fur hanging from a long, yellow skull. Bits of red and pink hung from its teeth. It cocked its head. The ember light in its eyes flared. Two others padded from its shadow. Death-light and blood drooled from their mouths. Dead muscle tensed under flesh. Jaws hinged wide. She could see strands of hair and bits of cloth caught in the fangs. Be brave…

A sound like a scythe passing through wheat. Black, rotten blood splattering.

The nearest dead wolf twisted. The two halves of its split skull thrashed from side to side. A bubbling howl came from its throat. A shadow landed. It looked human. Almost human. It crouched on the ground between her and the wolves. A tattered cloak covered its back. It had a sword in its hand, bright under the grin of the moon. Two dragons coiled either side of the cross guard. She noticed rings on the thin fingers, black iron on pale skin. The wolves gave a growl. Their heads lowered. The figure in the tattered cloak looked back at her over its shoulder. Red eyes. Skin pulled taut around a mouth of knife-point teeth.

‘Run,’ it said.

The wolves howled.

The birds in the tree above took flight.

She ran.

Cado rose, looking at the other wolves. Ghost-light crackled silver in his sight. The fat caravan guard had his back against the tree. The man raised his sword, undecided whether to run, climb or fight.

‘This one is not yours,’ said Cado. The wolves tensed. Dead muscles bunched. The hunger trapped in their rotting shells would not turn away now – any more than Cado would. He felt the weight of the sword in his hand. The silver runes in its steel breathed cold into the lengthening second.

The wolves pounced. The sword came up. The first wolf’s jaws were wide. Cado rammed the tip of the blade through the top of its mouth. Force jolted down his arm. Another wolf landed on him, jaws fastening on his shoulder. Fangs shattered as they met the armour under his cloak. He pivoted, ripping the sword out of the skull of the first wolf and throwing the second onto the ground. It hit with a crack of shattering bone. Pale light fizzed in its mouth and eyes. Cado stamped down. The creature’s skull shattered. He whirled. The rest of the pack were already past him. The wolves flowed towards him, blurred shadows, howling. Cado leapt, sword tracing a silver-sickle path through the moonlight. Bones parted. He landed amongst the mess of rotten flesh and guttering magic. The substance of the wolves was already turning to black froth as the sorcery animating them dissolved into the wind.

Cado turned to the fat guard. The hunched birds in the branches were quiet and still.

‘They could smell the reek of your god on you,’ said Cado, nudging a crumbling wolf skull with his foot. ‘You brought them to the caravan. Did you think the innocent could mask you, or were they just a shield to be spent?’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ gasped the guard.

‘You almost outran me, but this hunt is over.’

‘I… Don’t… Please don’t. We just wanted to reach safety, please…’ The man had started to move away from the tree, ready to run. Cado levelled his sword.

‘You worship lies. You should know when one has run its course.’

He looked up at the fat man’s eyes. They were suddenly steady, unblinking. There was no fear there now.

The man opened his mouth, paused, and then smiled.

Cado lunged.

The guard spat a word into the air.

Moonlight shattered into rainbow. The birds exploded from the tree branches. Cawing cries filled the canopy. The guard’s shape unravelled. Fat and skin and armour and smile spun into blue fire. The sword in his hand melted. Sculpted muscle unfolded under translucent skin. A grinning mask of bronze now covered his face. He had a knife in his hand. The blade flickered like a flame.

The blow was fast, but Cado’s sword turned the blade, and sliced the hand holding it. The man in the bronze mask flinched back. Cado rammed the pommel of his sword into the mask. Its bronze grin crumpled. The man staggered, and Cado was on him before he could recover, hammering blows into the face and chest. The masked man lashed out. Cado grabbed the fist and twisted. Force snapped up the man’s arm. Bones shattered from wrist to shoulder. Then Cado slammed him onto the floor. He lay, gurgling, blood and breath forming pink bubbles in the mask’s mouth slit.

Cado tied the man’s limbs, broken and whole alike, then hooked his fingers under his chin and began to drag him back through the forest towards the caravan. Above him the birds were wheeling.

The caravan was still intact, but there was almost no one left alive. Almost. One guard, gasping last breaths, legs worried to ribbons, lay where he had collapsed, trying to crawl away. He looked too old and thin for the scraps of armour he wore. Most of his blood was now soaking the ground he lay on. Cado paused above him, looking at the worn dagger still clutched in the bloody hand. Others must have survived, he reasoned: travelling chests and bundles had been opened, possessions taken. Two of the five wagons were gone. He could read the hoof and foot marks where someone had harnessed the surviving horses to them. He wondered if the girl had been amongst them. Maybe. None of them had seen the dying guard. Or perhaps they had; perhaps they had heard his gasping pleas for help. Either way, they had not stopped to give succour. He was not surprised; the underworlds were not kind places for the living. Everything dissolved into agony and loss. Only revenge and justice remained true in such an age.

The beliefs of mortals had made the underworlds. Across existence the living had told stories and dreamed of what would follow death, and with time those beliefs had become real. Places of punishment, plenty, reward, reincarnation and eternity – conjured into being with all the variety of imagination, hope and fear that life could create. There had been mountains and forests crossed by rivers, the waters of which carried the souls of the dead; great networks of caves where grey shades moved between stone tables to set them with two cups and talk again to every person they had met in life; orchards that never seemed to end, where the trees always bore fruit and the dead lay in warm shadows under green boughs and winter would touch neither leaf nor air.

That had been the beginning of the Realm of Death: an archipelago of kingdoms made by the beliefs of the living, in which only the dead dwelt. But in time the living had come. Colonies of mortals had made the underworlds their homes. Cultures had grown. The ways of the newcomers had intertwined with those of the dead. It had been the first invasion of the afterlife, and from it the Realm of Death had become a Mortal Realm. Then Chaos had descended. The followers of the Dark Gods had stepped from the shadows. Realms and underworlds had burned. Blood had soaked the ground as daemons feasted on the souls of the dead. The past had become fire and ashes. The lives of mortals became ones of cruelty and suffering. Long ages of pain, with no light of hope or rest from the hunger of the Ruinous Powers.

Finally, a change. There had been a war, a new invasion to add its layer of blood to those that had come before. This one wrapped itself in promises of hope and help. It echoed, to Cado’s ears, the hubris of the past, spoken in a new voice. Faith, alliances, light, order and majesty… all of it so crushingly familiar. All of it empty of anything except inevitable failure. The Realm of Death was a broken dream still sliding into darkness. Chaos had breathed its taint into everything, and the unquiet dead took what little kindness remained.

In the great cities of the underworlds, the living clung either to the protection of the servants of the Lightning God of Heavens, or the tyranny of the undead and the shadow of Nagash. Both were a lie. Sigmar, Lightning Born, could not undo the poison poured by the Dark Gods into the Realm of Death. It ran too deep. Nagash and his legions tried to make empires of bone and shuffling corpses, as immune to corruption as they were to time: another bargain, made with a lesser torment.

The people who had led the caravan through the forests had been humans. Either their forebears had survived under the hand of Chaos, or they had come to resettle this land. Regardless, they were fleeing whatever life they had made. They were trying to find safety, Cado guessed: a city guarded by the forces of Sigmar, a way out, other mortals to join up with. All lies told like stories to soothe frightened children. Now all that remained of their credulity and hope was an old man in battered armour gasping his last in shallow, bloody breaths. Cado paused and knelt beside him. The guard did not react. Pain and the nearness of death had stolen his sight. Cado could feel the tug of hunger rise to the reek of the man’s blood. Slowly, carefully, he reached out. The guard flinched at the touch of Cado’s hand on his neck. Cado flexed his fingers and felt vertebrae crack in the man’s neck. Then he stood and picked up his captive again.

He dragged his prisoner to one of the remaining wagons. It had slewed off the road and pitched onto its side when its wheels caught a rut. A tree bore its weight now, branches bunched against its side. The tree was in bloom, Cado noticed. Purple blossom covered its twigs and branches in thick clumps, petals open to the moonlight. He fastened the prisoner to a wheel with an iron chain and pitch-dipped rope. The man’s head lolled forward, unconscious. The bronze mask still hid his face, blood dripping from under its edge. Cado watched the thick scarlet droplets slide down the man’s chest. The heart inside that chest was still beating… Warm… soft… the rhythm of redness.

He had gone very still. The smell of the drying blood and torn flesh all around him was suddenly a haze threading his senses. Hollowness opened wider inside him, screaming with silent hunger.

He stepped back, closed his eyes. The world was red threaded with black. A high, dry shriek filled his head. The blackness was roaring up from inside.

Hunt now, run through the night and find the living. Rip, tear and feast…

Red warmth. Emptiness filled with crimson. The comfort of iron and copper on the tongue.

He held himself motionless. Slowly the shriek faded to a dry chuckle. He could still hear a remembered echo of that false laugh when he opened his eyes.

The face of the moon was looking down on him from a break in the trees above the road.

He shivered then raised his hands in front of him. Nine rings sat on the fingers. Each was iron. He looked at them for a second, forcing himself to read the names etched on the metal. His eyes closed briefly again. He touched his right thumb to the ring on the index finger.

A cold shiver just behind his shoulder, and then her voice breathing into his skull.

~You are troubled.~ Solia’s voice was the same as it had been when she had been his tutor. He opened his eyes. The blurred haze of her shade was just behind him and on the edge of his sight. If he turned and tried to look, her presence would shift too, so that she was always just out of view.

‘I am…’ He paused. ‘Weary.’

~The dead can’t become tired, my boy. It’s a privilege left to the living.~ He almost smiled at that, but it faded as she spoke again. ~The weight you bear, I can see it is growing heavier.~

Yes, he wanted to say. Heavier by the day and by the year, each one added to the others. Links on a chain dragged behind him through time. Every prey brought down, every new road trodden… heavier with each step.

~It shall end, one day, my prince,~ said Solia.

My prince… She had called him that even when he had become a king. He could still remember her standing on the balcony on the high wing of the palace. Straight-backed, black hair fading to grey where it fell down her blue-and-ivory robes.

‘Scholastis Solia,’ his father had said, and she had turned and knelt to him.

‘Your majesty,’ she had replied. His father had said something and then turned and left. Cado had blinked, looked down, and begun wrapping his fingers over each other, then remembered his mother and nurse’s scolds about fidgeting. He put his hands behind his back. He wanted to look where his father had gone, but that was not what you did. Solia, still kneeling so that she was on a level with him, had smiled.

‘Do you know why I am here?’ she had asked.

‘To teach me,’ he said. ‘You are my…’ He tried to form the word that his mother had said. ‘My tutor.’

She smiled more broadly. There were flecks of amber in the deep blue of her eyes. He smiled back.

‘That’s right, my prince,’ she said.

~You have not fed,~ said Solia’s shade.

He shook his head. He had not fed since before he had crossed the boundary into this underworld. Even then it had only been the congealing remains of a single vial. Warm blood, rich with fading life, and the beat of a panicked heart… he had not tasted that since he had left the City of Rivers. The rictus face of the moon had twisted through darkness and crescent once since then.

‘I have the prey we were tracking,’ he said and nodded at where the man in the bronze mask lay against the wagon wheel.

~So you have,~ she said, and he could imagine her frowning, eyes taking in details as she listed them. ~It is one of the Hidden Ones, an acolyte of Change. No marks of the higher mysteries. Alive too, or for a while at least. Two limbs broken. Bleeding inside. You won’t have long to get answers if you get any at all.~

Cado nodded. He could hear the man’s soul struggling to hold on to body and flesh. There was an edge of cooling iron in the smell of blood dripping from the chin of the mask onto the man’s chest. Life dimming drop by drop. Cado crouched next to him.

~What do you wish of me in this, my prince?~ asked Solia from behind him. He could hear the hesitancy in her voice, the plea. She was a shade, an echo of who she had been in life, bound to the iron of the ring. Like all the dead, she was beyond the concerns of flesh, but the weave of her soul remained. ~Is this going to be distasteful?~

He did not answer. Another thick drop of blood formed on the hooked nose of the man’s mask. Cado raised his hand; ice breathed from between his teeth. Pale light grew from his fingers. He placed his hand on the man’s chest. The light flared and then sank into the skin. The masked head jerked up, and snapped around. Muscles bunched against the ropes and chains. The man’s heart was a thunder roll of panic. Then his eyes found Cado, and he became still. Cado could not see a mouth, but he was certain there was a grin behind the mask. The man drew a breath. It sounded wet, rattling. When he spoke, it was in the sing-song rhythm of verse.

‘By what twists of fate, mere knaves and beggars do find themselves in cruel hands, made cold by death’s grave smile,’ said the man. ‘From the Call of Trisanda, Vagabond’s chorus, second act. Do you know it?’

Cado nodded once. Long ago… players moving between trees, laughter in a lost kingdom. He knew the words and knew that they had been written in an age that only the immortal and the dead remembered. Through the mouth of this man, the Dark Gods were laughing at him.

‘I know it,’ he said.

The bound man laughed, blood spattering from the mouth of his mask.

‘And I know you, Hollow King.’

Click here to buy The Hollow King.

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