More great stories from the Age of Sigmar
SACROSANCT & OTHER STORIES
An anthology by various authors
MYTHS & REVENANTS
An anthology by various authors
GODS & MORTALS
An anthology by various authors
THE RED FEAST
A novel by Gav Thorpe
SCOURGE OF FATE
A novel by Robbie MacNiven
THE TAINTED HEART
A novel by C L Werner
WARQUEEN
A novella by Darius Hinks
GLOOMSPITE
A novel Andy Clark
SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
A novel by Josh Reynolds
HAMILCAR: CHAMPION OF THE GODS
A novel by David Guymer
SHADESPIRE: THE DARKNESS IN THE GLASS
An audio drama by Josh Reynolds
THE PALACE OF MEMORY AND OTHER STORIES
An audio drama compilation by various authors
THE IMPRECATIONS OF DAEMONS
An audio drama by Nick Kyme
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer Age of Sigmar
THE HARROWER
Prologue
Part I
Part II
Part III
THE METHOD OF MADNESS
THE DEVOURER’S DEMAND
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
PROVING GROUND
EIGHT-TAILED NAGA
THE IRON PROMISE
About the Authors
An Extract from ‘Gloomspite’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
From the maelstrom of a sundered world, the Eight Realms were born. The formless and the divine exploded into life.
Strange, new worlds appeared in the firmament, each one gilded with spirits, gods and men. Noblest of the gods was Sigmar. For years beyond reckoning he illuminated the realms, wreathed in light and majesty as he carved out his reign. His strength was the power of thunder. His wisdom was infinite. Mortal and immortal alike kneeled before his lofty throne. Great empires rose and, for a while, treachery was banished. Sigmar claimed the land and sky as his own and ruled over a glorious age of myth.
But cruelty is tenacious. As had been foreseen, the great alliance of gods and men tore itself apart. Myth and legend crumbled into Chaos. Darkness flooded the realms. Torture, slavery and fear replaced the glory that came before. Sigmar turned his back on the mortal kingdoms, disgusted by their fate. He fixed his gaze instead on the remains of the world he had lost long ago, brooding over its charred core, searching endlessly for a sign of hope. And then, in the dark heat of his rage, he caught a glimpse of something magnificent. He pictured a weapon born of the heavens. A beacon powerful enough to pierce the endless night. An army hewn from everything he had lost.
Sigmar set his artisans to work and for long ages they toiled, striving to harness the power of the stars. As Sigmar’s great work neared completion, he turned back to the realms and saw that the dominion of Chaos was almost complete. The hour for vengeance had come. Finally, with lightning blazing across his brow, he stepped forth to unleash his creations.
The Age of Sigmar had begun.
THE HARROWER
David Annandale
Prologue
She did not sleep. There were no lids to cover her eyes. She still possessed the lids – the flesh of her face was stretched over the eight-pointed medallion fixed to the front of her armour – but they drooped over empty holes. Her eyes were wide orbs of agony, gazing out through the slit of her hood at the world of pain.
All existence was pain, but the landscape she stared at was the apotheosis of suffering, or at least it had been. She led her warband through the Desolate Marches of the Bloodwind Spoil. There was no path to guide her, no real landmarks to point her way. The land here had been murdered, and the moments of its greatest suffering were preserved in frozen, stilled convulsions. For leagues in every direction, barren rock split and rose in twisted formations. Monolithic slabs hung over each other and stretched upward like entreating hands to a merciless sky of roiling, crimson clouds. Spare clumps of long weeds had turned to brittle, grey straw. The wind blew dust and heat across the landscape, desiccating flesh, parching throats and scouring hope. Gravskein could not be certain that she was not leading her band in circles. She had faith that she was not. She had faith that she was still leading them towards their goal. Towards the Tower of Revels.
The tower had called to her in her dreams, though those visions had not come to her in true sleep. It had been so long since Gravskein had known the lying oblivion of sleep that she could not recall when she had last experienced it. Perhaps she never had. Sleep belonged to the despised, forgotten portion of her life from before her ascension, from before her awakening.
From before she had been Unmade.
That period belonged in oblivion. It was not worth remembering. There was nothing to be found there. Only fragments of grief, and the ashes of ruin. What mattered was pain and the present, and pain and the future. It was her duty to deliver the future. Only it seemed so distant now. Too distant, invisible beyond a looming barrier of despair.
No. She would not fall against that barrier. She would go on. She would go on until an end came. She believed in her quest, and she believed in an end, whether it was triumph or death. That was enough to keep her walking. That, and the awareness of Bulsurrus’ festering anger and ambition.
Gravskein did not sleep, but she still had to rest. And there were times when her consciousness pulled back from the world. Never all the way, never so far that the glory of pain abandoned her, but far enough that a grey veil dropped over the reality before her, and another reality made itself known, if it chose so to do. This was the realm of visions and omens, of premonitions and signs. What she had seen in this state had brought her this far.
She did not think new revelations were at hand. She had not earned them. But exhaustion was about to drop the veil all the same. She could not go on much longer. At the same time, she could not show weakness. Not with Bulsurrus watching.
Gravskein looked back at the warband of the Unmade marching behind her. Her strides were twice the length of any of the others. She was a Blissful One, and her legs below the knees had been replaced by long, spiked blades. They turned her into a giant. She pierced the ground as she walked. Every impact sent a jolt of sharp, stabbing pain up her mutilated limbs. It was the touch of the Gods, endlessly repeated. Her arms, too, were receivers and bestowers of pain. Instead of hands, she had huge sickles, the curves of the hooks studded with more spikes. Where her wrists had been, long ribbons hung, inscribed with runes of praise to the Ruinous Powers. There was agony in her stumps, the flesh slivered and hot where bone met iron, and in the phantom memory of what had been.
Above her head, fastened with bolts to her temples, was an eight-pointed halo. Suspended at its centre was a skull, its mouth wide in a frozen scream. The skull had belonged to a special enemy. It was the battle with this foe that had enabled Gravskein to rise to the exalted state of Blissful One.
Though she had undergone the greatest transformation, all of her comrades had also been mutilated, unmade into beings of the greater slaughter. The band was still ten strong. Gravskein had lost many of her warriors on the journey. She did not know how long they had been searching. Time had little meaning in the Desolate Marches. They had been here for months, she thought. It might even be years. Had t
hey gone further and longer than the other bands who had searched for the tower? There was no way to know. She chose to believe that they had.
Skarask, one of the Ascended Ones, with a double hook instead of a left arm, stumbled. He was a comrade of hers of old. Though he caught himself immediately and marched on, all the others except Bulsurrus looked from him to her, as if now they had leave to show their exhaustion.
Gravskein gave a slow nod. The skull mounted over her head rose and fell with the gesture. ‘Rest here,’ she said. She climbed up to slightly higher ground, but there was no point in looking for a truly defensible position in this region. One tormented outcrop of rock was as good as the next. Gravskein stopped beside twin slabs that looked like a cleft skull. The others formed a defensive circle around the rock and sat down.
Their eyes, like hers, were forever open. The flayed flesh of their faces, like hers, was fastened to their armour. Their rest, like hers, would be a distant mockery of sleep. But her rest, unlike theirs, might contain visions. They would, she knew, be hoping, as ever, that new ones would come to her now.
None would. She had already been shown everything that she would be allowed to see until she completed the quest.
Gravskein perched inside the tight crevice between the slabs. She stared out at the undulations of the Desolate Marches. The grey veil came down, obscuring the crimson air. She did not fight it. The grey filled her sight, and on its canvas, she cast her memories.
Part I
It was the same set of memories that came most often, and most forcefully. Memories of blood, of triumph and of purpose. Memories whose strength she needed.
Memories from before the Bloodwind Spoil. From before her ascension to the blessed state of Blissful One too, though her transformation and the journey she was called to were deeply entwined.
Memories of Shyish, and of the island of Tzlid. The island of loss and grief, and the island blessed by the Gods with the gift of pain.
The memories began with a hunt. Gravskein was still an Awakened One. She had sliced off her face, but she still had all of her limbs. She knew, though, that more change was coming, and soon. Her waking dreams were filled with whirling motion, a dance of murder and blades. The visions faded to shards when she returned to full awareness. They left her with impressions of herself suspended above the ground, filled with the light of agony and drenched in the blood of butchered enemies. And there was more. Looming over the hints of transformation, a lodestone at the centre of all her visions, calling to her, shackling her soul, was the tower.
Bulsurrus was leading the hunting party. He moved swiftly, leaping over obstacles with such grace that he seemed on the verge of taking flight. He and Gravskein had undergone their ritual flaying the same night, but he had rushed more swiftly towards transcendence. He was a Joyous One. Razor-edged chains hung from his shoulders, swaying viciously with every step. His arms were swords. He ran with them spread wide, eager to meet the world with his slashing embrace.
He took the patrol through the White Forest. The trees in this region of Tzlid were their own form of undeath. They were skeletons, the bark having long ago fallen away to reveal bones. The trunks were massive femurs, the largest looking as if they had come from the corpse of a dragon. The branches were strange clusters of arms, dozens of articulations sprouting smaller limbs until they ended in grey claws instead of leaves. They were dead, yet they grew ever larger. In the wind, they rattled like chattering teeth. Their claws drew blood from whatever brushed against them. The Unmade felt kinship with the trees, and Bulsurrus did not hesitate to burst through drooping tangles of branches, shredding his face with new wounds. The others followed his example. Blood flowed freely down Gravskein’s forehead and her arms, cooling quickly in the cold keening of the wind.
She kept up with Bulsurrus easily. They were drawing close to a Realmgate on the island’s southern shore, and her excitement was growing. A glow of presentiment spread like fire through her veins.
Bulsurrus must have seen the shine in her eyes. ‘You saw something during the night,’ he guessed.
Gravskein smiled, her fleshless remains of lips drawing back over her teeth.
‘What are we going to find?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Perhaps the quest has at last been fulfilled.’
‘No.’ Of this, she was sure. They would not find their comrades returning in triumph from the Eightpoints.
‘How do you know?’
‘They have not found the tower.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because their faith was not strong enough.’ It could not have been. If the latest band sent to find the Tower of Revels had been successful, the visions would not still be calling to her.
‘You still think you will be the one to find it,’ said Bulsurrus.
‘I know I will be.’
The Tower of Revels loomed large in the tales the Unmade told each other of the Flayed King. He who had once been King Vourneste had been changed along with his warriors in the realm beyond the gateway in the woods. He had returned with the gift of pain, and had transformed his people. He was long gone, though the hope that he would return one day and prove he had not been killed by Neferata lived on. And the stories of his deeds beyond the gateway were legion. They had grown in importance since the Unmade had learned of the Everchosen. The Flayed King had not returned, but there was another ruler out there, blessed by the Gods to command all the loyal subjects of Ruin.
It fell to the Unmade to prove their worth to the Everchosen. A sign that they must do so had come with the dreams of the Tower of Revels. In the tales, the Flayed King had found the tower in the realm beyond the gateway. The precise nature of the tower was vague. What was told was that it was a site of power, power so great and so attuned to the nature of the Unmade that the Gods could only have intended it for them. The Flayed King was going to lead his people back to the tower, so they might receive it as their gift from the Gods. But he had fallen before he could do so. Gravskein believed that it was treachery that had taken the Flayed King from the Unmade on that battlefield. She did not believe he could have failed. But he was gone, and so the Tower of Revels had become another chapter in the tragedy of her people. It was another kind of loss, another among so many. The Unmade embraced what they had become, yet what they had been lingered at the edges of their thoughts, transmuted into a remembrance of grief as ill-defined as it was sharp. The tower called to the Unmade through visions and lore with the force of that rarest of things – a promise. It was a gift that must be found, and its discovery was not an end in itself. It would be a proof of worthiness.
Gravskein would find it. She could accept no other purpose to her visions. It called, and she would answer. She would not die trying, as so many had before her. She would come to the tower. No other destiny was possible.
‘Have your visions told you what we will find today?’ Bulsurrus asked. They had fought side by side for years, and were held close by bonds of shared combat and shared pain. He did not experience visions, though. He treated Gravskein’s glimpses of fate with a mix of jealousy and scepticism.
Gravskein shook her head, refusing to be baited. She did not believe Bulsurrus was foolish enough to think the Gods spoke to her so directly, or about matters so beneath them. If the Unmade could not defend the gate without the intervention of the Gods, then they did not deserve ever to find the tower.
Gravskein heard the enemy force before she saw it. She heard the beat of horses’ hooves, and the tread of marching feet. Bulsurrus forged straight ahead, silent now, his flayed features set into a predatory snarl. Soon, the hunting party arrived at a vantage point overlooking the Realmgate. The terrain was hilly, and the gate stood at the foot of a slope, facing the end of a broken road that led out of the White Forest towards the western shore of Tzlid, and the channel that separated the island from the Screaming Wastes. Finger bones grew bet
ween the cracked, disintegrating paving stones. Most of the road had vanished beneath the soil, another fading memory of a dead civilisation. The path was still quite wide, and marked a clear way through the forest for mounted troops.
At the head of the foe, a vampire in resplendent crimson armour rode an obsidian stallion. Long, golden hair streamed from his head. His flesh was more pale than the trees. His features seemed carved from alabaster, their perfect symmetry and sharp lines making him, in Gravskein’s eyes, a living incarnation of pride.
Beside her, crouching behind the trunk of an undead tree, Skarask said, ‘He has never known enlightenment.’ Spittle dripped between his teeth. He was as eager as the rest of the band to visit revelation upon the blood knight’s face.
Behind the vampire marched an infantry composed of skeletons and corpses. Whether they had been summoned by this vampire or dispatched by a more powerful lord, Gravskein did not know. What was clear was their unthinking obedience. All were armoured, and though their plate was not as resplendent as the knight’s, it looked rich to Gravskein. Their shields and cuirasses were all engraved with the same insignia as the knight’s, depicting a fanged skull radiating rays of light.
A huge dire wolf paced alongside the stallion. Rotting flesh hung from its frame. Rib bones were exposed, yet its musculature, viscous and grey, was still powerfully corded. Its head swayed heavily from side to side as it sought the scent of prey. The Unmade were downwind of the beast.
‘They do not see us yet,’ Bulsurrus whispered.
‘There are many,’ said Skarask. There were three times as many undead as there were Unmade.
‘Does that trouble you?’ Gravskein asked.
‘Only that there are so few living to teach.’
Gravskein nodded. The dead that marched had left pain behind. They had forever lost their chance to know the true glory of the gift. ‘But there is still one,’ she said. The blood knight was not beyond pain. He was not beyond scarring.
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