City of Secrets

by Nick Horth

  The younger guard came forward, aiming the spear point of his halberd through the bars. In the confined space, there was little room for the prisoners to avoid being skewered by the polearm.

  ‘We’re dead anyway,’ said the guard. ‘At least I’ll see you bleed befo–’

  A three-forked dagger grew out of the man’s neck. Arterial spray spattered across the dungeon’s occupants, and the man went down in a gurgling heap. Callis took a step back in shock, wiping blood from his face. Captain Zenthe stood in the doorway. She snapped him a salute with a bejewelled cutlass, and favoured him with a beaming smile. She was spattered head to toe in gore, and the pale-white of her skin and hair made her look like a banshee.

  ‘Witch!’ hissed the surviving guardsman, and rushed forwards with his halberd leading and shield raised. He was fast. Well-drilled. The charge was swift, and the shield was well placed to intercept his opponent’s blows. Quick, strong, and accustomed to moving in full plate. To a lightly-armoured defender, such an opponent should have been all but invulnerable.

  Zenthe skipped up off the frame of the door, impossibly fast. As the Palatine’s spear came in, she planted a foot on the haft, and kicked herself into a forward flip. A perfect rotation brought her down behind the outmatched human, already spinning. The cutlass bit into the man’s back, and he gasped in pain. To his credit, the guard managed to tuck in the spear and turn, using the haft as a quarterstaff to try and batter Zenthe to the ground.

  The aelf dropped on her back, let the spear rush past her head, wound her body like a spring and kicked straight back up. She scored another wound on the side of the man’s neck as she rose.

  ‘For Sigmar’s sake, aelf,’ shouted Toll, hammering on the cell bars. ‘Cease your elaborate dance and finish him!’

  Zenthe’s laughter was a sinister melody. She dodged two wild stabs of the halberd, and rolled past the guard’s shield as he tried to rush her against one of the empty cells. As she came to her feet, she pirouetted with easy grace, slipping behind the bewildered Palatine. There was the unmistakable sound of metal shearing into flesh, and the guard dropped to his knees. Zenthe spun to the side again, letting her momentum slide the cutlass free from her enemy’s back. Coughing blood, the guard’s eyes lost focus and he slumped forwards with a deafening clatter of metal on stone.

  Zenthe stretched like a cat, teeth shining through the blood that covered her face. ‘By the black depths, I needed that,’ she said. ‘You’ve no idea how dull it is to be anchored in Excelsis harbour, sitting there counting coins with nothing to kill.’

  ‘It’s good to see you, Arika,’ said the Witch Hunter. ‘Though you need not have come yourself.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it.’ The aelf corsair rummaged around the dead guard’s belt, fetching a ring of black iron keys. She stepped over the corpse and opened the cell door.

  ‘Did you find Vermyre?’ asked Toll.

  ‘No, worse luck. I was rather looking forward to flaying that fat little traitor alive. His guard are all dead, at least. Along with anyone else we found wandering around these halls.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Toll.

  ‘Didn’t do it for free,’ said Zenthe, twirling her cutlass with practised ease. She favoured the Witch Hunter with a pointed stare, her thin, dark eyebrows narrowing to dagger points. ‘You owe me, human. And rest assured, I’ll call in that debt.’

  ‘Aye, I’m sure you will. For now, you need to return to the harbour and prepare your fleet for war.’

  Zenthe laughed. ‘Me and my crew aren’t one of your pet regiments. We’re reavers, not soldiers.’

  ‘And what do you think will happen if this city falls to Chaos? This little empire you’ve carved out for yourself will collapse. Sigmar will burn the Coast of Tusks to cinders before he allows the touch of the Dark Gods to prosper.’

  The aelf stooped to wrench her main gauche from the neck of a dead guard.

  ‘I’ll have the Thrice Lucky beat to quarters,’ she said. ‘And I’ll send the same word throughout my fleet. My people will be ready when the time comes. If you can find some damned Freeguild in this city who haven’t turned their cloaks, that is.’

  ‘That can wait. The city has other sworn defenders to call on.’

  Zenthe’s eyes went wide, and she burst into laughter.

  ‘You’re going to parley with that devil? By the bloody-handed god, Hanniver, you’re full of surprises.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Callis. ‘Who’s she talking about?’

  ‘Refer to me as ‘she’ again, mortal, and I’ll wear your skin as a cloak,’ snarled Zenthe.

  ‘You’ll see soon enough,’ said Toll, and his grim aspect failed to fill Callis with much confidence. ‘You’re coming along with me.’

  Another aelf, face wrapped with a silk scarf, stepped into the room carrying the freed prisoners’ gear. Toll took his belt and strapped it on, adjusting the rapier and four-barrelled pistol until they hung loosely at his sides. The corsair held out another belt of faded, cracked leather, held together by a buckle in the shape of a beer mug. Kazrug’s pistol was still slung in its holster.

  ‘We found the duardin’s corpse upstairs,’ Zenthe said. ‘We put it to one side. Personally I couldn’t stand the filthy little creature, but I know you two worked together for some time.’

  Toll’s face bore no expression, but he turned the pistol in his hands. It was fine duardin work, rugged and practical, with a smooth wheel-lock mechanism and a twin pair of jagged runes engraved upon the barrel. He flipped the weapon over in his hand and held it out to Callis.

  ‘Here. It’s a good piece. Kazrug would have liked to see it used on the people who betrayed him.’

  Callis took the weapon. It was heavy, and the grip was clearly designed with a duardin’s hand in mind, but the machinework was of the highest quality. He cycled the wheel and checked the hammer. Smooth and clean. Compared to the standard issue gaurdsman’s piece, a revelation.

  ‘I’ll make good use of it,’ he said.

  Hanniver Toll nodded. ‘Then let’s go get ourselves an army.’

  The aelves led them up and out of the dungeons, past a score or more of slaughtered Palatine. Some had fallen to well-placed crossbow bolts, the black-feathered shafts protruding from weak spots in their fine armour. Others had simply been dissected, surrounded and carved apart with surgical precision. Scattered amongst the humans were several aelf corpses. Arrogant blue-bloods they might be, but the High Arbiter’s guards had not gone down without a fight.

  ‘You’d have thought that with all this wealth lying about, our dear Master Vermyre could have hired some guards that knew their swords from their backsides,’ mused Zenthe.

  ‘He’s not counting on a few-score highborn soldiers to take a city,’ Toll replied. ‘This lot served their purpose. Wherever the traitor is, I’d bet he’s gathering his real army.’

  The main hall of the palace was no less a slaughtering ground than the dungeon, and as they made their way out into the moonlit grounds they were met with an unsettling silence. There were no bodies at all out here. Just the peaceful hooting of a distant owl, and the constant, low thrum of the building’s occularies. It was all a lie, of course. Outside this comforting bubble of peace and quiet, the tempest still raged. Far overhead, beyond the illusion generated by the noble district’s aetheric machines, striated forks of lightning tore across the sky.

  ‘We’re headed there,’ said Toll, gesturing to the east, where the storm was fiercest and most concentrated.

  Over the tops of mansions and the distant inner wall, Callis could see a peak of black iron, ringed with jagged crenellations that were silhouetted with each blast of lightning.

  ‘The Consecralium,’ he whispered, and he felt a rime of frost wrap itself around his gut. ‘The Reaper’s fortress.’

  ‘You would seek aid from those butchers?’ whispered Zen
the, and the undercurrent of something approaching fear in the unflappable aelf’s voice did more to unsettle Callis than anything. ‘Once you summon the kraken, Hanniver, there’s no safe harbour to flee to.’

  ‘Our hand is forced,’ growled the Witch Hunter.

  Up close, the great fortress known as the Consecralium was terrifying to behold. Like most of the mortal inhabitants of Excelsis, Callis did his best to put its existence out of his mind. It was always there of course, looming in the distance through the morning mists like an executioner’s axe hanging over the head of every single person in the city. Yet if you didn’t look at it, if you ignored the storms that raged daily over its black iron battlements, you could almost forget the stories. The tall tales of the slaughter enacted at the height of the purges, and worse, the haunted truths told by those old-timers who had been lucky enough to survive when the full fury of the White Angels had been unleashed.

  They strode across the great bridge to the fortress, the rain whipping at them and the wind surging against them as if anxious to dissuade them from their course. Ahead was a door tall enough for a gargant and wide enough for a ship, every inch engraved with images that could not be picked out in the downpour. What Callis could see were the murder-holes spread out across the face of the structure, great dark portals from which protruded the snouts of colossal ballistae, ranged and aimed to hurl their deadly missiles down upon the bridge and anyone foolish enough to attempt to cross it without permission. He was uncomfortably aware that he currently qualified as such a target.

  Several dozen yards from the gatehouse they came to a halt. The battlements soared so high above them that Callis had to lean back to glimpse the teeth of the crenellations. He felt utterly, totally insignificant. Even the rugged might of the guard bastions were as nothing compared to the unthinkable dimensions of this place. The very idea of any army attacking a city that held such a structure seemed almost laughable.

  Hanniver Toll stepped forward, removing his wide-brimmed hat. The wind and rain whipped his hair back and forth, and he raised his cold, grey eyes to the sky.

  ‘Here stands Witch Hunter Hanniver Toll, of the hallowed Order of Azyr,’ he bellowed. ‘The city is in grave danger. Lord of the tower, come forth. In Sigmar’s name, come forth!’

  Even through the storm, his words carried strongly.

  All that could be heard was the roar and screech of the wind as it whipped past them, and the cracking in the skies above. They waited there. By now the rain had seeped into every inch of Callis’ clothing, and his body was numb with the freezing cold. His hand was still nervously wrapped around the hilt of his sword, but he could not feel the comforting grooves of the metal. Toll, several steps ahead, did not move a muscle. He wasn’t even shaking with the cold.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the ground began to rumble beneath their feet. A sound like a galleon being carved open upon the reef met their ears, and, with aching slowness, the grand doors of the Consecralium began to inch open. Beyond, all was darkness, though Callis thought he saw the briefest glimpse of a flickering blue light. No formation of soldiers marched out of those doors. Only a single figure. And he was enough to very nearly bring Armand Callis to his knees.

  As a guardsman he had seen the warriors of Sigmar every now and then, marching in perfect order in their full battle array, gods of war sent down amongst mere mortals. It was always from a distance, though. In his six years of service, Callis had never stood so close to one of these peerless, mythic warriors. And as this champion neared, it was clear that he was an exemplar even amongst his own kind. His armour was pristine white, so polished and perfect that it gleamed in the storm like a beacon. It was fabulously ornate, so beautifully made that it seemed impossible that mortal hands had crafted it. Perhaps they had not. A cape of azure blue swirled around the figure’s shoulders, and his battle-mask was a pitiless white visage crested by a golden vision of an exploding sun. One hand rested on the hilt of a broadsword large enough to carve a troggoth in two, while the other held a staff upon which hung a golden lantern.

  Yet it was none of these wondrous items that made this giant extraordinary. It was the aura that resonated from him. Callis felt every layer of his soul being stripped away under the expressionless gaze of that white mask. Every sin he had ever committed, every black thought he had ever entertained, rippled to the surface of his mind. There was no hiding from this. There was no man or woman alive that could hold on to a lie in the face of such pure and radiant truth. Callis wanted to fall to his knees, confess every mortal weakness he had ever allowed himself to partake in.

  ‘Hold your nerve,’ said Toll. Callis spared a glance at the man. His jaw was set, and if he felt any fear or uncertainty he did not let it show. The Witch Hunter’s expression had hardly changed since Kazrug had been slain. His eyes burned with furious purpose, the gaze of a man who would pay any price to gain his revenge.

  The figure stopped a few yards from them. He stared at each of them in turn, but said nothing. After several tense moments that seemed to stretch on for hours, Toll ventured to break the silence.

  ‘Lord Sentanus,’ he said. Callis felt his skin crawl at the mention of that name.

  Lord-Veritant Cerrus Sentanus. The White Reaper. The saint of the purge. Amongst the many monsters and bogeymen that the parents of Excelsis invoked to send their unruly children to sleep, the figure that inspired the most terror was one of the city’s most famous warriors. The inquisitor-lord of the Knights Excelsior. The pitiless, ruthless executioner of the lost and the damned.

  ‘Speak,’ the war god rasped. His voice was the sound of thunder. The sound of an avalanche. Of an ice-shelf collapsing. Yet despite all its power, there was a faintly human edge of impatience to it.

  Toll stepped forwards, holding up the symbol of his order.

  ‘There is a conspiracy within the city,’ he said, and his voice did not tremble for an instant. ‘A cult of the Dark Gods has embedded itself throughout the hierarchy. The High Arbiter is one of them. As is the archmage Velorius Kryn. They have agents within the Excelsis Guard, and certainly the Prophesier’s Guild.’

  The Reaper continued to stare at Toll, not moving a muscle. He was so still it seemed as if he had been frozen in time.

  ‘You have seen the High Arbiter’s perfidy first-hand,’ he said at last. ‘What of Kryn?’

  ‘This man was a corporal in the city guard,’ said the Witch Hunter, indicating Callis. ‘While on patrol, he stumbled upon what appeared to be a black market trade of illicit auguries. There was an ambush. As he escaped, he was exposed to the stolen prophecies, and saw a vision of the city in ruins, burned to cinders by the archmage’s hands.’

  The towering warrior turned to regard Callis for the first time. ‘Come forward,’ said the Reaper.

  Callis’ feet moved, though whether under his own volition or simply by virtue of the command, he did not know. His heart hammered in the frozen pit of his chest, and he trembled as if fever-sick.

  The Reaper raised his lantern-staff and Callis cowered, expecting to be blasted into a million bloody fragments. Instead, the front of the device opened and radiant light poured forth, a searing ray of brilliant luminescence that bored into every fibre of his being. There was no hiding from this blinding radiance. It was the omniscience of gods, the indefatigability of pure truth. Callis fell to his knees. He had never thought of himself as a bad man. But in the face of that light he knew that he was guilty. Guilty of a thousand careless, senseless mortal weaknesses. Petty, hateful acts. Moments of cruelty and vice that he had excused or conveniently forgotten. Taken together, they were more than reason enough for this avatar of pitiless judgment to scour his very presence from the world. The light took everything. It pried loose every secret he held dear. Not just the truth of the visions, but older, harder secrets buried so deep within him that he had almost forgotten their power. The silhouette of his father in the fading light as
he walked away to battle for the last time. Knives in the alleyways, as a wayward, angry youth. The terrified, pain-wracked face of the first man he had ever killed.

  ‘Stop,’ he gasped.

  The cry of grief from his mother when she found out her husband would never return.

  ‘Please, stop!’

  The light cut out. Somehow the freezing lash of the rain was a blessed relief.

  ‘You saw what you needed to?’ came Toll’s voice. There was no concern or pity there. All business.

  The Reaper’s expressionless mask remained fixed on Callis. He felt those eyes boring into him as a physical ache. Any moment now, the killing blow would come, he knew. He closed his eyes, and waited for the bite of the sword upon his neck.

  ‘Lord-Veritant Sentanus,’ said the Witch Hunter, ‘I still have need of this one. His foresight may be invaluable in the battle to come. In the name of the Order, I must claim him.’

  Slowly, the Reaper’s head turned to fix his eyes on Toll. Callis risked a look up. Somehow Toll did not falter under that scrutiny. He stood tall amidst the storm that whipped at his long coat and hair, returning the Stormcast’s gaze in kind.

  ‘You have no authority here, mortal,’ said Sentanus. ‘Remember that.’

  With that he turned and strode away, back towards the fortress.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Toll. ‘You would walk away? The city will fall if we do nothing!’

  His words drifted away on the wind. The Reaper disappeared into the depths of the Consecralium, and moments later the great doors began to slide closed once more. Then they were alone. Neither said anything for a while. Callis knelt in the rain, trying vainly to regather his wits. It was like letting the world bleed back in after a heavy night’s drinking. His skull throbbed, and trying to hold on to a thought was like grasping a handful of mist. All he could see was the searing light, framing that pitiless mask of judgement.

  ‘Well,’ he said, after what seemed like several minutes. ‘I don’t think that was as successful as we hoped. I, for one, feel bloody awful. Like someone’s taken an axe to my skull.’