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Reclaimed Honour – Jacob Peppers

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Callis & Toll’

A Black Library Publication

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RECLAIMED HONOUR

Jacob Peppers

The charnel odour of blood and rotting meat hung heavy in the air, as thick as if he stood in one of Hammerhal’s abattoirs. Flies buzzed a celebratory chorus as they revelled in their grisly feast.

Don’t fret, Gideon. The darkest days give way to the brightest mornings.

He winced, rubbing at his leather jerkin where it covered the puckered scar on his chest. It was a nice sentiment. Sigmund had been full of those. But the scar served as a reminder that Ghyran cared little for nice sentiments.

He turned to his left, where his friend – his brother – had always stood. He was not there now, of course. Sigmund was rotting in his grave in Hammerhal along with the rest of their old company, all save Gideon himself. He was the only survivor. The last.

He gave his head a shake, trying to banish the grim memory. It didn’t go far – it never did. He frowned, regarding the man in front of him once more.

‘Tough day?’ he asked.

The man didn’t answer.

The corpse lying on the grass before him might not have spoken, but he still told Gideon plenty.

And none of it good.

Gideon scanned the woods around him, but whoever or whatever was responsible for the dead man was nowhere to be seen.

Satisfied that he was alone, Gideon knelt. Already, vines had begun to form around the body – Ghyran was anxious to use the dead man as fuel in its never-ending cycle of life. Still, the corpse was not yet as covered as he might have expected. The man had not lain there for long.

Gideon raised his gaze from the body, glancing this time not at the woods around him but at his dog, Runt. Like all Wildercorps hunters, Gideon had trained the trailhound from a pup and knew that Runt’s keen senses would detect danger far before his own. Runt, though, was far more concerned with chewing on the orruk thigh bone he had found half an hour ago than he was with the corpse in the clearing. Not that there was much left to chew. The trailhound was as unforgiving to such spoils as he was the living creatures he tore them from.

Gideon regarded the body once more. The man wore rough homespun clothes, the sort common among the settlements east of Hammerhal Ghyra. For some reason or another someone or something had taken it in mind to poke a few extra holes in him. Nothing so unusual about that. Out here in the wilds, far away from the Twin-Tailed City, there were a thousand things eager to kill a man, if given the chance. These wounds, however, didn’t appear to be the work of some Chaos-worshipping tribesman. Nor were they the ragged rips or tears Gideon would have expected if the man had run afoul of one of Ghyran’s many beasts. They were precise, circular wounds that appeared in patterns of three. A deep puncture at the centre with a shallower one flanking it on either side.

Gideon rose, surveying the ground near the corpse. A broken twig and a drop of blood further on were enough to tell him that the dead man had come from the north-east, likely one of the coastal villages.

He turned his gaze to the sky, darkening as evening came. ‘Come on, Runt. Time to go.’

As he set off, Gideon drew the small machete he kept at his waist. He wouldn’t use it to clear the brush and vines of the forest unless he absolutely had to, for like anyone who’d spent time in Ghyran’s wilder places, Gideon knew that here, the flora held grudges. Still, it felt good to have a blade in his hand. The sabre belted at his waist would have been better for combat, but its length meant that it would get snagged in the choking undergrowth in moments, should he swing it with any feeling.

An hour later, he emerged from the woods into a clearing, catching sight of Fort Satler in the distance. Not that anyone called it that. When the fort had been constructed twenty years ago, a dead gargant corpse had been found nearby. Instead of risking the forest’s ire by clearcutting any more than they had to, the builders had improvised, using the bones of that great fallen beast to form its ten-foot-high walls. And so the epithet ‘Fort Bones’ had been born.

It was a place where only the realm’s most foolish or unlucky would find themselves. Here, the fort’s inhabitants contended not just with local beasts and plants, but also the thick, humid Verdian heat. Not to mention the mosquitoes and flies that all seemed to compete in the application of their particular brand of misery.

And then there was the smell.

Even bone didn’t last forever, and those tasked with maintaining the walls were forced to improvise. Which meant days spent digging through beast carcasses for suitable materials. A femur here, a knucklebone there. Such repairs were often hurried – no one wanted to spend any longer than necessary at the task – and so most of the new bones still had gristly bits on them. A scrap of flesh, a stain of blood. Meat flapping in the wind, rotting in the sun.

The overwhelming stench those repairs produced was so powerful that nearly every visitor to the fort spent their first few minutes within its walls on their hands and knees, puking up their latest meal. Gideon, though, like everyone else stationed there, had long since grown accustomed to the stench. It was surprising what a man could get used to, if he had to.

Gideon slid his machete back into its sheath and started towards the fort, Runt trailing along beside him. In a few minutes he reached the gate and the two guards on duty.

‘Who goes there?’ one of the guards asked as he approached; never mind that Gideon’s brown leather tunic and trousers, his black cloak and Runt trailing along beside him marked him clearly as a Wildercorps hunter. Not that he was surprised by the man’s behaviour. Gideon wasn’t exactly personable – the few friends he’d managed to make over the course of his life were all rotting in the ground in one graveyard or another.

‘Hunter Gideon Vell returning.’

The speaker of the two sneered. ‘Last don’t you mean? It’s what they call you, ain’t it?’

Gideon fought back the sigh that threatened to come. This again. ‘Among other things.’

The other guard grunted, glancing at his companion. ‘Wait a minute, you mean he’s the Reclaimed – the one whose entire regiment was wiped out?’

‘That’s right,’ the first guard said. ‘He was the only one left. Claimed his marshal betrayed ’em to Chaos, but since everyone else is dead it’s only his word we got to go on.’

‘The word of a Reclaimed,’ the other said, frowning. ‘That’s coin that won’t spend. You ask me, we’d all be better off if you’d died along with the rest. Chaos-tainted bastard.’

Runt growled, and the two men glanced at the trailhound, their scowls betraying a hint of nervousness. Runt wasn’t much better with people than Gideon, but it had to be said that the hound had far sharper teeth.

‘Go on,’ the first guard said, his tough tone belied by the nervous glance he shot at Runt as he pushed the gate open. ‘Get out of here.’

Gideon watched the guard for a moment, thinking. Thinking about how no matter how much trouble a fool had, he always found himself looking for a little more. Not this time, he told himself. ‘Gladly,’ he said.

A moment later, he was walking into the fort. As he trudged down the muddy avenue that served as its only street, he passed a few dozen squat homes where women tended to small gardens. Dirty children scampered here and there, shouting and waving sticks at each other, enjoying some game of war.

Gideon wished them joy of it, knowing full well that when they got older – if they got older – that particular game would lose much of its appeal.

He gave the squat tavern a fond look as he passed it. ‘Soon,’ he promised as he walked towards the fort’s barracks. Once there, he stepped inside, making his way through the hallways until he paused outside the captain’s room, glancing down at himself, then at Runt. They were both covered in brambles from trekking through the thick forest undergrowth, and they left a trail of dirt behind them as they walked. Still, he thought that the captain would understand the need for haste.

Gideon knocked.

‘Come in,’ a voice far too young to belong to the fort’s grey-bearded captain called. Gideon frowned and entered.

The young man in the room turned away from the looking glass in which he’d been preening to frown in Gideon’s direction. ‘It’s about time. Now, this tunic is a bit too loose around the…’ He paused. ‘You’re not the tailor.’

‘Not last I checked.’ And you’re not the captain. ‘Still, I’ve been told I cut a fine figure.’

The man gave him a humourless smile. ‘In jest, no doubt. What do you want?’

Gideon glanced around the room. ‘I came to report to Captain Satler–’

‘My father is not here,’ the young man said, turning back to the mirror. ‘He was summoned to Hammerhal on pressing business and has entrusted me with Fort Satler’s care while he’s away.’

Gideon grunted, imagining that Ferrun Satler, the fort’s founder, must have been desperate if he’d left his coddled son, Quintin, in charge – a man whom Gideon wouldn’t have trusted to take a piss without wetting his trousers. ‘I see.’

‘As long as I am acting captain, you will call me sir,’ the founder’s son said before he turned back to the mirror, adjusting the sleeves of a doublet that cost more than Gideon’s entire wardrobe. ‘Tell me, do you always stand around gawking like a fool, Scout Vell?’

He meant the title to be an insult – after all, the position of scout was inarguably a demotion from the rank of warden that Gideon had once held in Hammerhal. ‘Sometimes I sit. Sir.’

The man sneered again. It was a fine sneer, if overused. Gideon wondered if he practised it in that mirror of his.

‘I don’t like you. Are you aware?’ the acting captain asked, then went on without pause. ‘I find you to be a disgrace. A man who let his entire company die. Oh, I know the story. That it was your marshal who served the Blood God, that it was he who was responsible for massacring your regiment. And yet, somehow, you survived. How is that, I wonder?’

Memories of screams and blood, of coming upon his men all butchered like hogs at slaughter, so badly cut up that it would have been the work of days to piece them back together flashed through his mind, but Gideon pushed them away. ‘I survived as all men do. Painfully.’

‘Sir,’ the other man snapped.

Gideon said nothing, only stared at the man, watching him finger the handle of the blade at his hip. Part of Gideon hoped that he would go for it. He had spent the months since his marshal’s betrayal and Sigmund’s death doing his best to forget. Time helped – ale helped more. But something about stumbling on the dead man so unexpectedly had brought the memories back, fresher than they had been in weeks, and now the captain insisted on prodding further.

Perhaps Satler saw something of his dark mood in his face, or more likely he’d simply grown bored with his taunting. In any case, he waved dismissively. ‘You said you came to report – get on with it, then. I have things to do.’

‘Yes, sir. The tailor – I remember.’

The young captain’s upper lip peeled back from his teeth in a silent snarl.

‘I discovered a villager’s body,’ Gideon said. ‘A little over half a mile to the east.’

The captain looked surprised at that. ‘From where? The fort?’

‘I don’t think so. I’d have recognised him. I can’t say for sure, sir, as I didn’t have time to check his back trail, but it appears he came from one of the coastal villages.’

‘Some of those damned Chaos cultists they say live in the woods, no doubt, sacrificing the poor fool to one of their dark gods.’

‘Didn’t look like the work of cultists to me,’ Gideon said.

‘You’d know, wouldn’t you?’ the captain said.

Runt let out a low, rumbling growl, and Gideon held up a hand, signalling the hound to remain where he was.

The younger man watched Runt warily before turning away, making a show of fluffing out his sleeves. ‘A beast, then.’

‘I’ve seen what’s left when one of Ghyran’s beasts goes at a man. This wasn’t that. He bore circular wounds in patterns of three.’

Satler frowned, considering it. Then, finally, he shook his head. ‘Cultists,’ he said. ‘It must be.’ He sounded almost eager. Excited. His glance at the mirror was quick, but Gideon didn’t miss it.

‘They think with my father gone they can oppress Sigmar’s faithful and no one will do anything about it, but they are wrong,’ the captain continued. Gideon could almost see the man’s thoughts, dreams of glory and fame flitting through his mind. ‘They are wrong,’ he said again, ‘and I will show them the truth of that.’ He turned back to Gideon. ‘You can find the body again.’

It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Now leave – I have preparations to make. I’ll rouse a squad – a dozen men ought to do.’

Sure, Gideon thought, but who’s going to carry all your glory back to the fort, I wonder? ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Give it a day. Tomorrow, Runt and I can go back out, survey the area. It might be that we–’

‘No,’ Satler interrupted. ‘My father could be back by then.’

Sigmar make it so. ‘And that would be… bad?’

‘No,’ the captain blurted, ‘of course not. No, I only meant… we are not all cowards, Reclaimed. Now go – we leave at first light.’

They assembled outside Fort Bones the next day, Gideon and a squad of ten Freeguilders. The captain stood before them, surveying his troops and clearly not impressed. Gideon couldn’t blame him. On the outskirts of Verdia, resources – including soldiers – were scarce and the ragtag Freeguilders were a far cry from the noble warriors who decorated the verses of bards’ songs.

No richly hued banners fluttered in the breeze. There was no finely polished armour or newly tailored uniforms fit for heroes – and none to wear them in any case. The Freeguilders were hard-faced men, over half of whom were criminals from Hammerhal rounded up by impressment officers and given an opportunity to atone for their sins by taking the Coin Malleus. Men who had failed in their lives and failed badly and so had found themselves here. Fools, really, and in that way not unlike Gideon himself.

‘Loyal servants of Sigmar,’ the captain said, his gaze roaming over them, ‘cultists have taken the lives of one of the God-King’s own. We go to see that they do not take another.’ The fool even went so far as to draw his sword, giving it a flourish before stabbing it into the air. ‘To the forest – and to glory!’ This last was delivered in what he must have imagined to be a rousing shout, one that was not echoed by the Freeguilders.

Satler scowled, then turned to Gideon as he slid his blade back into its gem-encrusted scabbard. ‘Lead on, Reclaimed.’

Glory, as it turned out, smelled a lot like death.

It didn’t take Gideon long to find the dead man again, despite his body now residing under a veritable mound of vines thanks to Ghyran’s attentions. After all, corpses tended to stay where you left them. At the captain’s insistence, they followed the villager’s back trail until they stood at the top of a ridge, staring down at a small village. Or, at least, what was left of it. Even from this distance, Gideon could see the shattered doors, the shattered bodies.

And then, of course, there was the smell.

They walked down into the village, and as they came upon the first corpse – a woman with a bloody ruin where her head was supposed to be – the captain let out a strangled gasp. ‘We must… The servants of Chaos must… must be made to pay for this, this–’ He cut off, abruptly falling to his hands and knees and retching.

The other soldiers grumbled worriedly, several making the sign of the hammer as they took in the carnage before them. Runt let out a sniff, and Gideon glanced to his side to see the trailhound with his nose raised, as if he’d smelled something unexpected. Gideon scratched his chin thoughtfully. The only thing sharper than Runt’s teeth was his nose. He drew in a long breath.

He smelled blood, mostly. Blood and meat left to cook in the sun. But beneath that powerful odour, he was surprised to find another. One he knew well, for he had smelled it nearly his entire childhood. It was the unmistakable salty tang of the sea. Ridiculous, of course, for they were miles from the sea, and yet there was no denying it.

The captain staggered to his feet and ran an arm across his mouth, staining the sleeve of his expensive doublet. ‘My father said he’d heard rumour of a band of Khornate cultists moving this way, fleeing the reach of Hammerhal.’

Gideon moved to one of the bodies and knelt beside it. A young man, barely old enough to shave, he guessed, the sword handle clutched in his dead fingers and his leather tunic and trousers marking him as what passed as a Freeguilder for the small village. A youth, no doubt still harbouring a boy’s dreams of courage and glory; but then dreams could turn to nightmares before a man knew it. If the captain was right, then the young man – like the rest of the village – had become nothing but a sacrifice. Blood for the Blood God. Words he remembered his marshal shouting when he’d charged him.

Gideon frowned at the soldier’s arm where it had been severed at the elbow. A precise blow, one that had left him defenceless. Glancing around at the other bodies, he saw that they bore similar wounds. Brutal, but with an eye towards efficiency. A far cry from the unmitigated slaughter he’d stumbled upon when he’d discovered his captain’s treachery.

‘I don’t think this was the work of a Khornate warband,’ Gideon said. ‘These wounds… they are precise. Purposeful. They wanted it done and done quickly. Besides,’ he went on, rising, ‘if it was… where are they?’

‘Likely fled back to where they came from,’ the captain said. ‘What does–’

‘Those bearing the Blood God’s mark do not flee,’ Gideon said grimly. ‘Nor do they surrender. They serve their god, and each death – even their own – is a sacrifice to him.’

‘Then perhaps they mean to attack another village,’ the captain said. ‘If so, we must stop them.’

Still thinking of his glory as so many soon-to-be-dead men did. ‘Whoever the enemy are, these here didn’t manage to stop them,’ Gideon said, gesturing at the corpses. ‘Twenty-five, by my count, and nothing to indicate they managed to take down even one of their attackers. Meanwhile, there’re only twelve of us.’

‘Twelve soldiers,’ the captain snapped. ‘Not women and children, fishermen who’ve never held a sword in their lives.’

Gideon thought about pointing out the soldiers – at least half a dozen – among the dead, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good, so he decided to try a different approach. ‘Captain Satler would–’

‘My father left me in charge while he was away, not you. You’re a tracker, aren’t you? So track. Or should I cut you down where you stand for disobeying orders?’

Gideon was tempted to let the captain try. There were few lessons a man learned better than those writ in blood. But then, while one murdered captain might be a coincidence, two… that was a pattern. He nodded, his mind made up to focus on the problem at hand. His grievance with the captain could wait for another day.

He set off further into the village, studying the tracks.

Finding what he needed after a few minutes, he grunted and returned to the rest of the group. ‘They went south,’ he reported. ‘Further along the coast.’

‘And what’s south of us?’ the captain asked.

Gideon started to answer, then paused as he caught a slight hint of the sea in the air again, thought he heard the distant sound of waves. ‘Another village,’ he said. ‘One bigger than this little hamlet. Torwind by name.’

‘See, scout?’ the captain said. ‘They go to slaughter more in the name of their Blood God. But not this time – this time, we will stop them. Lead on.’

There didn’t seem much point in arguing, not unless Gideon wanted it to turn bloody, so he did as he was told, leading them out of the village and into the forest.

As they walked, the smell of the sea grew stronger, and Gideon’s disquiet grew along with it. They were a quarter hour from Torwind when something caught his eye. He froze, thrusting an arm out in front of those nearest as he regarded the thick undergrowth before them, noting the slight, almost imperceptible red tinge to the snarling vines.

‘What is it?’ Satler demanded, walking up. ‘Why have we stopped?’ The man tried to sound brave, but Gideon could hear the anxiousness in his voice, see it in his face. Sometimes, he thought, pride and vanity might masquerade as courage, but they were flimsy shields when the dying started.

Instead of answering, he reached into his pack, withdrawing a hunk of dried meat he’d been saving for Runt. ‘Sorry, boy,’ he told the trailhound before tossing the morsel into the thicket.

Immediately, the pale red vines erupted into life, ripping and tearing at the small hunk of dried meat as ravenously as any wild beast might its prey. In less than half a minute it was over, and the vines grew still once more.

‘Crimsoncreeper,’ he told the wide-eyed captain. ‘Or so my father called it. It’s the blood that wakes it. Walk through here with an open wound, even a scratch, and you won’t be walking back out again. So how about it, lads?’ he asked, glancing at the Freeguilders, who were staring at the vines in horror. ‘Any of you sporting a scratch? Wouldn’t take much – one drop is all.’

‘Perhaps… perhaps we’d better go around,’ the captain said, licking his lips.

‘As you say, sir.’

It took them ten minutes to work their way to the edge of the crimsoncreeper, another five before the others felt comfortable stepping into the undergrowth.

Wisps of fog rose from the ground as they walked, grey fingers reaching for them out of the earth, and as they drew closer to the village, Gideon began to make out the sound of distant screams. They were faint, but he could hear the terror, the agony in them. Gideon rubbed at his jerkin where the scar on his chest – a parting gift from his old marshal before he’d cut the bastard’s head from his shoulders – had begun to ache.

‘Onwards, men,’ the captain exclaimed. ‘Glory awaits!’ Whether his voice trembled from excitement or fear Gideon couldn’t have said, and he doubted the man himself could have. ‘Now the servants of Chaos will pay for their crimes.’

By the time they reached the forest’s edge, the fog had become a thick blanket, blocking anything below the knees from sight. It seemed as if they travelled through some world of the damned, as if Nagash had reached out a withered hand and pulled them into his realm.

With Runt trailing beside him, Gideon stepped out of the trees. The fog was thicker here, not a blanket but a curtain of heavy mist that hung in the air. He squinted, barely able to make out the vague shapes of what might have been the buildings of Torwind.

Despite the fact that they had been walking slowly, Gideon suddenly found himself out of breath, and it was an effort to simply breathe in and out. Something flitted by on his left, and he spun, feeling slow and sluggish, and by some trick of the fog he saw what looked like a fish dart through the air as easily as it might the sea.

He gave his head a rough shake and turned as the others stepped out of the woods.

The captain frowned ahead. ‘Damn this fog. Is that the village?’

‘I think so.’

‘Finally,’ Satler said, drawing his sword. ‘Ready yourselves, men. It is time we prove our worth.’

‘You want to fight?’ one of the Freeguilders asked – a man with grey stubble and a scar going down one cheek that said he’d come up on the wrong end of a blade at least once. ‘In this? I can’t see a damn thing. Shit, it’s all I can do to stand.’

Gideon knew well what the man meant, for the moment he’d stepped out of the tree line he’d felt some strange pressure pushing against him.

If the captain felt any of the strange sensations, he ignored them. ‘Sigmar will guide us,’ he said. ‘If we cannot see, then we will follow the sounds to our quarry. Now come – the God-King will protect us. I’m certain of it.’

Gideon figured the graveyards of Ghyran were full of people who’d had similar thoughts, but before he or any of the others could say anything the captain drew his sword and started towards the village. The other Freeguilders muttered curses to each other, but they drew their weapons and followed, leaving Gideon to do the same.

Shadows moved in the mist, vague outlines, impossible to identify. Then, impossibly, a giant eel, twenty feet long at least, emerged from the fog at their side. Several Freeguilders shouted, and Gideon drew his sabre. He glanced at Runt, but the trailhound hadn’t so much as turned to regard the creature. The monstrous eel moved directly towards Gideon, its great maw open to reveal dagger-sharp teeth. The captain cried out, stumbling away, and Gideon roared, lashing out with his sword, stumbling and nearly falling over as he struck nothing but air.

‘An illusion,’ he hissed as the eel sailed past.

‘What sort of damnable magic is this?’ one of the Freeguilders asked.

Before anyone could answer, there was a scream from nearby, and a figure burst from the fog, sprinting towards them. One of the Freeguilders let out a roar, swinging his sword.

‘Wait!’ Gideon shouted, but it was too late. The figure, a villager, shrieked as the blade cut deep into his arm, and he staggered, falling to his knees.

‘Monsters,’ he gasped, clutching his bloody arm. ‘Monsters in the mist.’ They all looked from where he’d come, watching as another massive shape moved towards them through the fog.

‘Stop that shouting, damn you,’ the one who’d struck him snapped, before a massive green sea creature reared up out of the fog, the cavern of its vast mouth opening to reveal rows of teeth as long as a man’s forearm. The creature’s jaws closed around the Freeguilder and the upper half of his body was torn away, splashing those nearest in a spray of blood.

The creature continued past without even slowing, gliding through the air and hauling its grisly trophy away as what was left of the man collapsed to the ground.

Before Gideon could get over his shock, an arrow flitted out of the fog, burying itself in the throat of one of the other soldiers. Runt began to growl, and a moment later, eight figures out of nightmare stepped from the mist. They were aelves, but not like any Gideon had ever seen. Their skin was pale, almost translucent, and great iron collars rose up from behind their heads, embedded in the base of their necks. Flesh covered the spots where their eyes should have been, and their foreheads were scarred with strange brands.

Some wielded huge scythe-like axes with curved, serrated blades while others held tridents. Staring at these last, Gideon realised that they must have been responsible for the strange wounds on the dead man he’d found. Two of the aelves carried greatswords, though the weapons were much different from the zweihanders Gideon was accustomed to. The aelves didn’t utter so much as a sound as they glided through the mist like pale death.

All Gideon’s confusion, all his fear and worry vanished in an instant. Death had come for him, but it had come before, and now he stepped forward to meet it. The sharpened blade of a glaive scythed towards him. Gideon ducked, feeling as if he were moving in water but managing to get under the blow before he buried his sabre in the aelf’s stomach. The creature let out a piercing wail, one that cut off as Gideon ripped the blade free, and his next stroke sent its head flying from its shoulders.

Something flashed towards him out of the corner of his eye, and Gideon sidestepped by instinct, narrowly avoiding being split in half by a two-handed, overhead axe strike. A fearsome weapon but cumbersome. Gideon’s attacker started to raise it, but had only got it halfway up when Gideon pivoted, bringing his sword across the aelf’s stomach, carving a deep rent from which its insides sluiced out in a river of blood as it collapsed at his feet.

Panting for breath, Gideon risked a glance at his comrades to see that they were not faring well. Ten men had come with them, but only three remained standing, the rest dead or dying at their feet. The enemy had surrounded them, and even as he watched another soldier was cut down.

Gideon started forward to help but had barely managed a step when something struck him in the side. He grunted as the wind was knocked out of him, and his sabre flew from his hand as he was hurled from his feet. Wheezing for breath, he turned from where he was sprawled on the ground to see that Runt had knocked him out of the way of a curved greatsword.

His attacker raised the blade again, but Runt leapt forward, sinking his teeth into its arm. The aelf let out an ear-piercing shriek as the trailhound gave a savage twist of his thickly muscled neck, ripping its hand off at the wrist. The aelf screamed something in a language Gideon didn’t understand, giving Runt a vicious kick. The trailhound yelped in pain as he was sent tumbling across the ground to stop near Gideon.

The pale creature reached down and prised its own severed hand loose of its sword, then started towards Gideon like some walking nightmare, the greatsword carving a furrow in the ground as it dragged behind it.

Gideon rose, drawing the machete from his waist. A poor weapon, little better than useless, but it was all he had. See you soon, Sigmund, brother, he thought. But the aelf suddenly stopped, tensing in shock as a blade erupted from its chest.

The creature took another step towards Gideon, then another, before it collapsed onto the ground to reveal Satler standing wide-eyed, his face parchment white, his bloody sword clutched in a trembling two-handed grip. ‘I-I did it,’ the captain said, his voice shaky with terror and excitement. ‘I-I saved you.’

Gideon opened his mouth to thank the man, but the words died in his throat as a noose seemed to appear out of nowhere, slipping around the captain’s neck. The captain gasped before the noose was pulled tight, strangling the sound. His confused gaze met Gideon’s, then an instant later a blade separated his head from his shoulders.

Gideon’s breath caught in his throat as the dead captain fell to the ground. In his place stood another aelf. This one, though, was different from the others. He wore blue robes with plate armour and a stylised helmet that suspended a strange light, bathing him in a cold glow. The newcomer held a hooked polearm longer than he was tall, from which hung a hangman’s knot, both blade and rope stained with the captain’s blood.

The armoured aelf turned to regard Gideon, and he saw to his surprise that, unlike its counterparts, this one had eyes. Its gaze travelled down to the pitiful machete Gideon held, then it seemed to dismiss him, kneeling beside its companion and putting a hand on the wound the captain’s blade had left. The aelf had been dead; Gideon was sure of it. But he watched in horror as it began to move, the light on the armoured aelf’s helmet dancing as it called on some abhorrent magic.

Gideon didn’t need any more motivation than that. He glanced at Runt. The trailhound stood in obvious pain, but he was on his feet. Not daring to speak lest he draw the creature’s attention, Gideon motioned and started away, Runt following.

He’d only taken a few steps when he spotted a greatsword lying on the ground. It had been a long time since he’d used such a weapon, but then there were some things a man couldn’t forget… even if he wanted to.

Gideon sheathed his machete and knelt, retrieving the weapon. It felt good in his hands. It felt right. It had been years since he’d wielded his own in service of Hammerhal, and he hadn’t realised how much he’d felt the lack until that moment.

Armed once more, he started forward, Runt trailing along beside him. As he made his way past swathes of the slain, Gideon found himself thinking of his dead comrades, past and present, thinking, mostly, of his best friend. His brother, lying dead.

‘Sigmund!’ a woman’s voice shouted.

Gideon hissed in a breath, coming to a halt. At first, he thought he must have imagined it, but then the shout came again. The name came again. Sigmund. His brother’s name. Monsters hunted him through the mist, yet Gideon found himself moving towards the sound of that voice.

He could have done nothing else.

Soon he was able to make out the silhouette of a church ahead. The door lay broken into kindling on the ground, and two dead men lay beside it, their lifeless hands still clutching swords.

More dead waited inside. A hundred, at least. The woman he had heard was at the other end of the nave, standing protectively in front of a boy who appeared to be no more than five years old.

Moving towards them were two more of the pale, iron-collared aelves. The pressure Gideon had first felt when stepping out of the woods had grown almost unbearable, and he felt weak. Tired. He didn’t like his odds should the creatures notice him, so he started forward as silently as possible, the greatsword held down at his side. They had been together long enough that Runt knew his intention, stalking forward beside him.

They were only a few feet away when the creatures turned. Straining with effort, Gideon lifted the greatsword – which felt as if it weighed several times more than it should have – and brought it down in a two-handed strike into the centre of the nearest aelf’s forehead. The sharpened steel cut the creature nearly in two before the sword became lodged in its ribcage.

The second aelf raised its blade but managed no more than that before Runt took a running leap, his powerful hindlegs propelling him through the air, and with one snap of his powerful jaws tore out the creature’s throat.

Gideon stepped over the corpses to where the woman and child cowered. ‘We have to get out of here,’ he told the woman. ‘Is there anyone else?’

She hugged the boy tighter, her eyes going to the corpses littering the church. ‘They… they’re all…’

Gideon grunted, nodding. He glanced at the boy. The youth was clearly terrified. He didn’t look like Gideon’s dead brother – wheat-coloured hair where Sigmund’s had been black, brown eyes to Sigmund’s blue. And yet… And yet he thought he saw something of his old friend in the child. His innocence, perhaps. An innocence that few managed to make it to adulthood with, but which was still there in the boy, for the moment, anyway.

Gideon knelt, meeting the boy’s gaze. ‘Sigmund, isn’t it?’

The boy gave a meek nod.

‘I need you to be brave, lad. All right? Do what I say, and I will keep you safe.’ He meant that as much as he’d ever meant anything. He’d failed Sigmund once. He would not fail him again.

The boy gave another nod, and Gideon thought he would be all right.

He rose, nodding to the boy’s mother. ‘Stay close.’

Then they were moving, out of the church and towards the tree line. They were halfway there when a sound behind him drew his attention, and Gideon turned to see that the fog had parted to reveal the armoured aelf who had killed the captain, along with six of the iron-collared creatures.

‘Sigmar save us,’ the woman whispered.

As sluggish as he felt and against so many, they stood no chance. Gideon dropped the greatsword, scooping the boy up with his free arm. ‘Run!’ he yelled.

They charged towards the woods but had only made it a few steps when a giant silhouette appeared in front of them.

‘What do we do?’ the woman screamed.

Gideon looked over at Runt, who was moving forward without so much as a single growl. ‘Keep going!’ he shouted back, still running. ‘It’s not real!’

The behemoth appeared out of the mist a moment later, opening a mouth that was wider than he was tall, and despite his confidence in Runt’s senses, Gideon tensed in anticipation as giant fangs closed around him, and he felt… nothing. Nothing, that was, save the growing pressure he’d felt since stepping into the fog, a pressure that made each step he took more difficult than the last.

But while the monster might have been an illusion, as he’d hoped, the aelves behind them were all too real. They ran on until, what felt like a lifetime later, they broke free of the fog. At once, the terrible pressure eased, and Gideon felt as if he could breathe, really breathe for the first time since they’d arrived at the doomed village. He spotted the woods in the distance and glanced at the woman. ‘Just a… little… further,’ he wheezed, thinking that their best chance – likely their only chance – was losing the creatures in the trees.

They were halfway to the forest when an arrow whistled past. Gideon spun to see that the enemy had emerged from the fog. One was fitting another arrow to his bow while another raised his for a shot. Gideon didn’t think. He dropped the young boy to the ground as he leapt forward, knocking the woman out of the arrow’s path. The arrow punched through his side, and Gideon gasped in pain, falling to his knees. ‘Take him… and run,’ he told the woman.

To her credit, the woman scooped up her son and started towards the woods in a shambling run. Gideon watched them go. He was tired. Tired and hurting, and he thought the aelf’s blade would be a quick answer to both.

Half delirious from exhaustion and pain, he found himself remembering words his father had always spoken to him when he’d complained of his chores, asking when he’d be finished.

When the work is done, his father had said. And the work is never done.

Gideon had promised the boy he would save him, and he was not safe. Not yet. Runt was beside him, waiting. Gideon put a hand on the trailhound, easing himself to his feet. ‘Just a little further,’ he told the hound, told himself. An arrow whistled past him, and he winced, starting forward at a shuffling run.

He caught up to the woman and child just inside the tree line. He knew they could not outrun the aelves, not wounded, and there was no time to hide.

An idea struck him. A desperate idea, but then he was a desperate man.

One hand clamped around the arrow in his side, Gideon staggered further into the woods. In minutes, they reached the thicket of crimsoncreeper. He looked down at his bloody side, thinking.

‘W-what can I do?’ the woman stammered.

‘Help me with my shirt, quickly,’ he said. She lifted it over his head, and Gideon hissed in pain as it pulled at the arrow still embedded in his side. He shot a look behind them. ‘My… my pack. A small vial… inside.’

The woman fished inside his pack, retrieving the bottle and handing it to him. Gideon looked at the shining blue water. Aqua Ghyranis. The potent, healing water of Ghyran. Even the small amount contained within the vial was worth a hefty sum.

But coin was of little use to the dead.

He drank half the vial in one pull, feeling the lifegiving water fill him with strength and vitality. What remained he poured on the wound, which began to close around the arrow. It would make for a painful time removing it later, if they survived, but then a man always needed something to look forward to.

‘A bandage,’ he said. ‘In my pack.’

She handed the strip of fabric to him. He wrapped the wound quickly but thoroughly, for should a single drop of blood touch the hungry vines, all his efforts would be for naught.

‘Come on,’ he said, starting towards the thicket. He tensed as he stepped inside, but when the crimson-tinged vines remained still, he motioned the woman and child forward. Runt was next, then Gideon tucked the bloody shirt tight against him and followed after.

He breathed a heavy sigh of relief as they reached the other side, stumbling out. He looked behind them to see that the aelves had just reached the opposite end of the thicket. Their leader said something, gesturing at the brush, and the six-collared aelves started forward. Gideon waited for them to get several feet into the creepers before he took the bloody rag of his shirt and pitched it into the snarl of vines.

The creepers burst into life instantly, tearing into the pale trespassers with vicious savagery. The aelves had seemed like monsters in the mist, like nightmares given flesh. But even monsters could bleed. Even nightmares could die.

Gideon watched with grim satisfaction until the vines were finished with their meal. The smell of blood and the screams of the aelves filled the air as the creepers did their work. It did not take long.

When it was done, he looked across the intervening space at the tall, lone figure regarding him from the other side. Gideon met the figure’s eyes, and as he did, he felt as if some fog – not unlike that he and the others had journeyed through – came into his mind, blurring his thoughts, his memories.

By the time the figure turned and walked away, Gideon had forgotten why it had been chasing them. By the time it moved out of sight, he had forgotten what it looked like altogether, it and the experiences he’d just gone through fading in his memory like nightmares often did.

‘What… what was it?’ the woman asked beside him, and Gideon turned to regard her, and the young boy standing by her side.

‘I… I don’t remember,’ he said, a cold shiver running through him. He could not remember how they had come to be here, only that something had chased them. Something horrible.

But the boy’s name was Sigmund. That he remembered.

And he had promised to keep him safe.

‘You saved us,’ the woman said. ‘And I don’t even know your name.’

He looked back at the woods, in the direction of the village where his fellow soldiers lay dead. ‘They call me Last,’ he said quietly.

‘What now?’ she asked.

‘Now?’ Last said, turning to her. ‘Now we keep going.’

Until the work is done, he thought, turning in the direction of Fort Bones.

And the work is never done.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jacob Peppers is a fantasy author living in Georgia with his wife and three children. He is the writer of more than thirty epic fantasy books, including the bestselling series The Last Eternal and The Seven Virtues. ‘Reclaimed Honour’ is his first story for Black Library.

An extract from Callis & Toll.

She wished she had never heard of snow.

As dawn approached, the blistering wind of Cinderfall howled into Anthea Maroth’s face. Ash filled her nose and mouth. Hot grit stung her eyes. She gagged and staggered, and her foot slipped in the stinking filth of the gutter beside which she trudged. She dropped the handles of her cart and lurched into the wall of the block-long tenement. Rough, grime-encrusted brick slammed into her forehead and scraped her cheek. She doubled over, aged lungs wheezing and crackling as she hacked out gobs of ash-blackened phlegm, her chest aching with the scrape of the Cinderfall Rattle. People shoved roughly by, cursing her for blocking their way. She rubbed at her eyes. They watered ferociously. When she could see again, grey tears smeared her hands. She coughed again, and winced at the scraping in her chest.

She cursed the thought of snow.

Who had told her such a thing existed? She couldn’t remember, not after so many years. A tale told by one child to another, a thing to be wondered at and shared in the midst of smoke and night and the slow, inexorable extinction of hope. Someone had known someone who had known someone who had come from Ghyran.

It didn’t matter who. Someone had given her the story of snow, the white ash that fell from the clouds and turned to water on the tongue.

A thought to torture her as she spat the dry shards of Cinderfall from her mouth.

On both sides of the streets, the tenements loomed high, hulks of contained misery turning Hunker Alley into a canyon that pulled in the stinging wind.

Anthea caught her breath, then started dragging her cart down the street again. It lurched awkwardly forward. The wheels, coated with the thick, stinking slime from the gutter, slipped, and the cart weaved behind her for a moment, out into the street, narrowly missing a collision with a pair of horses drawing a cart in the other direction. The cart jerked as the horses started. The empty coffins in its bed bounced up and down with a hollow rattle. The stained sides of the cart had The Great Voyage painted in gilt lettering, their style ridiculously ostentatious in the eternal gloom and smothering squalor of the district.

‘Sigmar blast you!’ the driver yelled at Anthea. ‘Ash-worm!’

‘To the Rift with you!’ Anthea fired back, but the driver was already well on his way, and her voice cracked too badly to shout.

Ash-worm. The insult, as familiar as her own name, should not have stung as it did. But it did sting, and it ignited the old anger to hear it at the end of her shift, when she barely had the energy to plod her way back to her hovel. She must have tipped the contents of her wagon off the Rift-edge a hundred times during the night. Her back felt as if forge-heated clamps held it in their squeezing grip. The blisters of new burns oozed, broken, on her arms, the gifts of embers hidden in the ash heaps and layers that she and the thousands like her dug and swept from the streets night after night, an army fighting forever to keep Cinderfall from suffocating itself to death.

‘How would you like it?’ she muttered. She glared at the other people on the street. A woman caught her staring and crossed to the other side of the alley, hurrying forward. ‘Go on,’ Anthea snapped at her, her voice a little stronger. ‘You’re no better!’ The woman’s clothes were hardly less filthy than hers. She wore the leather apron of a forge-worker, heading off to start the long martyrdom of her day in the local fire-bellows tower. Anthea saw the burn scars on her arms, the shining red tissue of her face. That woman had no reason to think her lot better than Anthea’s.

No reason except the need to do so.

‘How would you like it?’

Averted gazes around her. The people making their way through the alley she had cleaned two hours before ignored her. How would any of them like it if the ash-worms stopped their work?

‘How many days do you think?’ she said, her voice dropping back to the rasping murmur. How many days before the ash built up so high they could no longer walk through it? How long before the heaps silted through the upper floor windows? Oh, there would be cries and cursing and pleading long before then.

Anthea pictured the puddles of acid that built up, one dripping leak at a time, on the cobbles outside the forges, those spills that someone would get around to when they got around to them. She could not clean those, but she kept them visible. She kept the ashes from concealing the danger. Oh yes, cries and curses when a horse stepped in one of those puddles, burned its hoof and went down, overturning its iron wagon filled with the even more corrosive waste it hauled from the forge.

Anthea grunted. That would show them. Or instead of a horse, a barefoot child…

She caught herself, the image making her grimace in pain. No, she would never want such a lesson to be taught.

As if to punish her for the thought, she passed by a mother and two children in one of the tenement’s entranceways. The children, two boys a year or two apart in age, had the Rattle. It left its dark, glistening trail down the side of their mouths. The mother, her face haggard with hunger and exhaustion, wiped their chins with a piece of rag. Her eyes were dead, the gesture meaningless yet instinctive. The children barely seemed to notice.

So far gone, then, and so young. Anthea, at least, had felt the pain of age enter her bones before the Rattle settled into her lungs.

The smallest boy started to cough. Terrible, wracking spasms shook his frame.

Anthea moved on, her muttering silenced. The rusty complaints of her wagon’s axle seemed to mimic the rhythm of the child’s hacking.

In the distance, the bells of the bellows tower tolled, sounding the dawn change of shift. Already, the streets were growing less dim. The glow from the street lanterns, fuelled by tiny fragments of aqthracite and suspended twelve feet up on iron poles, shone more dimly, their beacons seeming to grow dirty as deep night gave way to grey day.

Anthea turned right into a passage so narrow, and so short, it had no name. Night still squatted here, sullen amidst the squelching filth tossed from windows above and out of the back doors of taverns. She hurried as best she could to get through the shortcut to Brassnose Alley at the far end. Just as she reached the wider avenue, a door banged open behind her. She looked back and a man stumbled out of the tavern. He collapsed to his hands and knees, and vomited. Rats scuttled out of their hiding places under refuse. They flowed around him, squealing, some snapping. He flailed at them, and threw up again.

One of the rats, more dismayed than the others, ran away. It streaked towards Anthea. She let go of her wagon, grabbed her spade, and struck the rat with a practised blow as it sped by, breaking its spine. She picked it up by the tail and tossed it into the wagon.

Something for the pot.

She trudged out of the passage, leaving behind the warren of the Ashen Tangleways, and turned left onto the wider, though no less filthy, Brassnose Alley. She headed uphill, walking against the current of the stream of workers coming down from the fire-bellows tower at the far end of the alley. Red light pulsed from the stained-glass windows of its base of black stone. At its peak, sparks and smoke and ash poured into the sky, feeding the clouds. Even from this distance, Anthea could feel the heat from the tower. The thought of the inferno its interior must be made her feel better about her own backbreaking labour, now that it was done for the night.

Sparks and burning matter flashed and danced in the cloud cover. Some of those glints of fire came back down from the sky, drifting over rooftops. From a location a few blocks ahead and to Anthea’s right, its source hidden from her sight, came the orange glow of a fire. Another home or factory or business burning. The eternal risk in Cinderfall, the fear that lurked, subterranean, in every heart.

The fear that she and the other ash-worms alleviated. They took away the matter that could sometimes flare to new life. Not that any thanks ever came her way.

How would you like it if we stopped…

She dropped the resentment. She didn’t have the energy for it now. And the glow came from further away than Anthea had to travel. It was not her home that burned. Nothing else mattered. She shrugged off the sight and trudged on up the slope, the weight of the cart yanking new agony out of her arms.

Before she could withdraw entirely into the dull, enveloping, aching misery of her body, she began to notice the way people were walking, more quickly than usual, as if in a hurry to get away from this section of Brassnose Alley. They kept their heads down too deliberately, as if knowing exactly what it was they should not see. A prickle of unease spread through Anthea. The sounds of the bells now seemed too loud, the wind too insinuating, the dawn too uncertain.

Anthea looked around, alert for a threat. She saw nothing out of the ordinary near her. Then, a hundred yards ahead, level with the Chapel of Molten Faith, the crowd eddied. People hurried away from the centre of the disturbance, resolute to ignore it. Others, foolhardy or transfixed, stayed where they were. They faced away from the chapel, looking up at the ruin across the street.

Urvayne House. It had been as close to wealth as anywhere on Brassnose Alley came. Frankis Urvayne had been a merchant, a seller of religious icons. He kept shop on the ground floor, and lived on his own above that, living almost comfortably off the passing faithful. A bit over a month ago, the house had burned, and he had died, screaming, trapped by the bars he had installed in the windows to protect himself from thieves.

Her mouth dry, Anthea drew level with the house.

Burned timbers jutted out into the street like gnarled fingers. A metal framework of some kind stuck out of the exposed top floor, looking like a bundle of lightning rods. One of its longest poles hung over the street. It was bent under the weight of a body. Someone had driven the pole through the chin and up through the skull. Rags hung from the body, rags of cloth and skin. Pink sleeves, still dripping blood, dangled from arms that had been flayed to the bone. Slashes from blades or claws marked the chest. Only the face, limp in death, had been left more or less untouched.

The body swayed in the wind, a pendulum of flesh and bone. Its movement held Anthea’s gaze. Recognition took her prisoner, and kept her where she stood.

‘Is that…?’ she began.

‘Shush!’ Frightened voices silenced her.

The pendulum swung back and forth, back and forth, a rhythmic summons to nightmare.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

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Reclaimed Honour © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2025. Reclaimed Honour, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-83609-248-3

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