by Mike Ashley
“Yes. And I’m doubly grateful to you for forewarning me.”
“Ah!” Again the warning gesture, but now the sly humour was back. “Be careful. I might take you at your word and alter the slate of our mutual indebtedness in my favour.”
It wasn’t always possible to tell when Savrinor was joking and when he was serious. After a moment, learning nothing from the historian’s expression, Benetan shrugged, smiled thinly and followed Savrinor out of the room.
In darkness relieved only by the faint eye of Savrinor’s candle the two men made their way via the castle’s mind-numbing maze of passages and stairways towards the stables. A small door admitted them to the courtyard, and Benetan paused for a moment to breathe the chilly night air and take in his surroundings. He would never become inured to the effect the castle had on him when seen in anything like its entirety; and at night the atmosphere that seemed to ooze from the stones was doubly and unsettlingly enhanced. Grim black walls, their angularity a perverse joke on the part of the architects and their supernatural inspirers, rose foursquare to each side of him, reflecting no light, absorbing the gaze like dark vortices. At the cardinal quarters stood four titanic black spires, spearing savagely into a cloud-wracked sky and lit by fitful shafts of moonlight. Fighting the drag of vertigo to look towards their summits, Benetan saw that a high window in each spire was lit by a dim, uneasy glow, a sign that someone there watched and waited. He looked away again, quickly.
“You see?” Savrinor, at his elbow, spoke softly. “They’re preparing. And if you stop still and concentrate, you can feel what moves towards us.”
Reluctantly Benetan stilled his breathing, muscles tense. For a moment he could hear only the faint, ominous murmur of the sea far below, pounding the titanic stack on which the castle was built. But then beneath his feet, far down in the foundations, he sensed a steady, pulsing vibration. Not a sound: it was pitched far too low to be audible to the human ear. But a movement, a shifting, something that stirred the marrow in his bones and made the cold sweat break out anew.
He glanced at his companion, his face taut and angry. “I haven’t time to waste, Savrinor. I must rouse my men.”
“Of course.” The historian fell into step beside him again as he set off across the deserted courtyard. The clouds broke, and the first and larger of the two moons hung like a disembodied face in the sky, blotting out the remote glitter of all but the brightest stars. Cold light showered down on the courtyard and the two men’s shadows flowed before them over the flagstones. Benetan tried not to shiver: summer waned fast in this northern latitude and he could smell the change in the season on the sharp sea air.
Something flickered across the sky, a brief-lived shimmer like distant lightning. Involuntarily Benetan glanced up, and was in time to see a hissing charge of energy crackle between two of the spires’ summits in answer to the celestial signal. His heart stabbed nervously and, unaware of the gesture, he made a quick, reflexive sign with his right hand. Savrinor, whose eyes missed nothing, smiled dryly.
“Yes; there’s a Warp storm coming.” He glanced heavenwards, speculatively. “More powerful than usual, I’d surmise. It should be an impressive spectacle.”
There was a faint glow in the northern sky; a sickly and unnatural radiance that hinted at something alien lurking over the horizon. Trapped lightning sang between the spires again. Unconsciously Benetan quickened his pace, until Savrinor was forced to jog to keep up with him. The stable block loomed in the moonlight ahead; they moved into the shadow of the arched doorway and he felt his tension easing as he heard the muffled stamp of horses in their straw bedding and smelled the warm, mammalian scent of them. Eyes gleamed in the glow of a single lantern, and at the sound of footsteps a shape shook itself from among a stack of haybales in the far corner, rising to its feet with undignified and fearful haste.
“Captain Liss . . .” Relief coloured the voice, and Benetan looked hard at the young sentry, who was hurriedly brushing hay from his clothing.
“Sleeping, Colas?”
“A moment’s rest only, sir –” The lie tailed off and the youth swallowed. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Aware that Savrinor was watching with lazy interest, Benetan said, “Don’t let it happen again, Colas. Another time, you may be interrupted by someone considerably less tolerant than I am.”
“Especially once tonight is over,” Savrinor put in, stepping forward into the reach of the lamplight.
Colas’s face lost all its colour as he saw the historian for the first time, and he made an obeisance. “Master Savrinor! I—”
“Save your excuses for your commander, boy; I’m not interested in reporting such minor breaches of discipline to higher powers.” Disdainfully Savrinor turned on his heel, and Benetan nodded to Colas. “It’s all right. There’s nothing to fear.” He felt on firmer ground now, in an element that was familiar to him, and his sapped confidence was returning. “Get the grooms and weaponsmen out of their beds.”
“Yes, sir.” Colas had potential, Benetan thought: he was learning never to question an order. The youth headed for the inner door that led to the cramped dormitory where the stable servants were housed, then hesitated and looked back.
“Beg your pardon, sir. Should I tell the grooms how many horses you’re to need?”
Benetan made to reply, but before he could speak Savrinor laid a light hand on his arm. “I think not,” the historian said quietly.
Benetan hesitated, then looked towards the far end of the stable, where an iron door, heavily barred but otherwise unremarkable, gleamed dimly in the shadows. He understood Savrinor’s meaning. It was some time since the Chaos riders had been required to make use of their alternative mounts; but this was no ordinary occasion.
Repressing a shudder, he turned again to Colas, who was watching and awaiting a reply.
“We won’t be using the horses tonight, Colas. We’ll have other requirements.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy frowned faintly, but the implications were lost on him: he was, Benetan reminded himself, a very new recruit to the elite ranks.
“Promising.” Savrinor spoke mildly as the door closed behind Colas’s back. “But not castle-bred, I suspect.”
“Colas came from a village in the east last year. He’s learning.”
“As you learned, of course.”
“Yes.” Their gazes met briefly, and Savrinor saw what he had anticipated in Benetan’s eyes: distaste, and a growing tinge of fear. He let his hand close on the captain’s arm.
“Take advice from your good friend Savrinor, and don’t expend needless energy on thoughts of what has yet to happen.” His thin fingers squeezed, a little too familiarly for Benetan’s liking, and he withdrew his hand with a final pat. “Dawn will come.”
“I don’t need –” Benetan began angrily, but before he could say any more a sound from somewhere within the castle silenced his tongue. Slow, sonorous, echoing, it was the voice of a single, deep-tongued bell.
Savrinor’s eyes narrowed with quick tension, then flicked to Benetan’s face. The historian nodded. “As I thought. We’d best go outside.”
The bell’s metallic voice continued while they moved towards the courtyard, then as they emerged the tolling abruptly stopped. The quiet in its wake was eerie, and for several minutes the night’s stillness remained unbroken. Then a door opened somewhere near the main gate, the sound of the latch carrying loudly and making Benetan start, and three men came hurrying across the courtyard. Others followed, and more doors were opening, dark figures emerging from the castle to converge on the stables. Metal glinted under the moon and Benetan heard the jingle of spurs and belt-buckles.
“I should be elsewhere,” Savrinor murmured.
With an effort Benetan gathered his wits. “Thank you, Savrinor. You’ve done me a service tonight.”
The historian’s answering smile made his face skull-like in the chilly light. “Good hunting,” he said, and moved away as silently as a shadow.
“Captain Liss.” The first group of men had reached him, and each touched a hand to the emblem of the Seven-Rayed Star at his breast in salute. “The bell – does it mean that—”
“It does,” Benetan replied tersely. “The grooms are being roused now.” To his private relief he felt his trained responses beginning to take over, eclipsing the sickness in his stomach. “Full complement: if we haven’t enough fit men, get the unfit out of their beds. I want everyone presented and ready ten minutes from now. Where’s your sergeant?”
“Here, Captain.” Dark eyes in a white face, the man’s rank denoted by a crimson shoulder-flash.
“Ten minutes, sergeant. It’s imperative that nothing goes wrong.” He added, more quietly, in the man’s ear: “The rumour is for Vordegh.”
Fear; yes. The same fear he had felt when Savrinor whispered the news. It stirred within him again now as he uttered the magus’s name, adding a sour spice to the disquiet. And with good reason, Benetan told himself as the sergeant hastened away.
With good reason.
They were ready when the expected summons came. Forty-nine fully armed warriors – seven times seven – ranged in silent ranks before the stable block. Inside the stable Benetan could hear the horses stamping restively; they had caught something of the pervasive atmosphere and were alerted. But the Chaos riders would have no need of them tonight.
The sky was beginning to agitate now. The spires no longer spat their shivering bolts of energy, but the lightning far to the north was almost continuous and an uneasy spectrum of dim colours marched slowly across the heavens, blotting out the stars. Though the moon still glared down, it was haloed with a pale, ghastly corona; minutes more and its face would be obliterated as the supernatural storm, known to the cowering world as a Warp, gained power.
Benetan’s senses were straining involuntarily to catch the first eerie and far-off sounds that would herald the Warp’s onslaught. He was sweating again, and the black silk of his shirt and trousers clung to his skin with a cold, faintly repellent touch. He had put on the silver circlet with its ornate embellishments that made a fearsome half-mask around his eyes; it kept his unbraided black hair from blowing across his face but couldn’t hold back the perspiration beaded on his forehead. Each time he blinked, droplets of it glittered on his lashes, breaking and refracting the reflections of moonlight on silver wristbands and on the glinting gems at his waist and shoulders. His teeth were clenched – try as he might he couldn’t stop the reflex – as he listened for the first hell-born shrieking out of the north, and waited for the summons that he knew must come at any moment. Then a sound alerted him – the scrape of wood on stone, the creak of hinges – and he looked towards the double doors at the castle’s main entrance.
A shadow fell across the steps before the doorway, and a solitary man emerged. Disquieting patterns of light from the moon and other, less discernible sources distorted his figure and made him impossible to identify, but his bearing, and the long, heavy robe that enveloped him, told Benetan that he was no mere servant. For a moment the newcomer surveyed the scene, then a hand rose, gestured; and, heart quickening painfully, Benetan hastened across the courtyard and up the steps.
“Captain Liss.” The voice was dry, slightly clipped; old, shrewd eyes regarded Benetan from under hooded lids. In the fine embroidery of the magus’s robe, strange shapes writhed and shifted with a life of their own. “You are to be commended for your prompt response.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Benetan’s own eyes were unfocused; he touched a hand to his breast in formal salute, and somewhere overhead felt rather than saw the sky shiver. Footsteps sounded softly on the flagstones as the magus moved back from the steps and into the silent, lofty entrance hall beyond, and Benetan followed at a respectful distance. Then the dusty voice spoke again.
“We require a full harvest tonight. Satisfy that requirement and your diligence will be commended to those whom we all are privileged to serve.”
“I’m grateful, my lord. And I will discharge my duties to my utmost ability.” Benetan fought a tic that threatened to make his cheek muscles twitch, and silently praised Savrinor.
The magus nodded. “We ask nothing more, and demand nothing less. Now: you have a full complement of riders?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Then you are ready to take the sacrament.”
“I –” His voice cracked; he forced it back under his control. “I am ready, my lord.”
He could hear the first thin, screaming wail far out over the sea as the Warp began to move in towards the peninsula. Ten minutes, perhaps fifteen, no more, and the huge forces unleashed by the magi would come shrieking out of the night in wild and deadly celebration. And he must face the Warp, and lead his riders out into its howling heart . . .
He heard the magus turn away, heard the crisp snap of his fingers, the light, hesitant feet of the servant who had been waiting in the shadows and now came forward at his summons. She held a pewter tray on which were set a pitcher and a tiny chalice carved from a single diamond: averting her gaze she dropped to one knee before the magus and held the tray out.
As the sorcerer filled the cup to the brim, Benetan tried to quiet the pounding of his heart. He could see the faint, darkly phosphorescent gleam of the liquid, and against his will he found himself starting to crave it and the effect it would have on him. It was a bulwark against fear, a shield for his sanity in the face of what was to come. Shrewd, relentless eyes focused on him, seeming to see beyond the physical contours of his skull and into his inner mind. The magus smiled thinly and held out the brimming chalice.
Yandros, greatest lord of Chaos, strengthen my resolve tonight! Benetan shut his eyes as the silent prayer went through his mind, then drank, draining the chalice as swiftly as he could.
The taste of the draught burned his tongue as he swallowed, and he felt its heat pervade to his stomach. Then, his legs not entirely steady, he set the cup back on the tray.
“The Maze stands open and waiting, Captain. I would advise you not to delay.” The magus gestured towards the doors. “Search well, and reap a good harvest.”
Aware that the last words might be either a blessing or a warning, Benetan repeated his formal salute. The servant stepped forward and handed him the tray; the magus nodded once, satisfied, and walked away as Benetan turned numbly back to the courtyard.
Two sergeants were waiting at the head of the line of men. One took the tray, and Benetan said curtly: “See that each man takes a full draught.”
“Sir.” The sergeant nodded, understanding. With a queasy sensation that couldn’t yet be due to the effects of the narcotic Benetan watched him carry the pitcher down the line, watched each man drink in his turn. Then he looked over his shoulder and saw Colas waiting, wide-eyed, at the stable door. The boy was too young and too inexperienced for this; better that he be dismissed now rather than risk him before he was ready. Benetan signalled, and Colas hastened forward.
“Captain?”
“Go to your bed, Colas. You’ll not be needed again tonight.”
“But sir—”
“I said, go to your bed. Or you’ll face the lash tomorrow for insubordination.” He didn’t want to be harsh with the boy, but there was no time for explanations. If Colas lingered, his sanity could be in jeopardy without the drug to shield him.
Colas’s eyes lost their focus and he touched his hand to his left shoulder. “Yes, sir!” He turned stiffly and strode away, trying to maintain his dignity in the face of stung pride.
Overhead the sky spat crimson lightning, and the distant singing sound swelled like a tidal surge, counterpointed by a far-off rumble of thunder. Without warning the scene before Benetan warped, as though he were viewing it from another dimension. The illusion lasted only a moment but it made him realise that the narcotic was beginning to work. He drew several steady breaths, counting, hearing the air rasp in his throat. The sounds in the sky were augmented now by a singing in his brain, an unholy choir of joyous v
oices; and an arrhythmic vibration thrummed through him. He felt as though his body was stone, the stone of the castle, and the breaths he took tasted of fire and of wine and of other, subtler things that he couldn’t name.
He looked to where his sergeant was administering the magus’s draught to the last men in the line. The ranks of riders looked alien, silhouettes etched by the night’s feral glow, and the world was turning, turning, the huge, dim spectrum of the Warp gaining strength as it wheeled across the sky high above. Benetan felt laughter shake itself into life deep inside him and he turned, moving in a fluid, dreamlike way to the stable, past the nervous horses and towards the iron door with its heavy bar. The grooms – meaningless shadow-men, not worthy of his notice – backed away from him, and the dimensions of the stable seemed to stretch into impossible distortions, walls rearing and lurching, floor undulating beneath his feet. Benetan knew he was hallucinating, but the earlier dread was leaving him now as the drug took hold of his mind and body, and he welcomed the illusions, gloried in them. The door loomed like a mouth; he stopped before it and from his belt pulled a pair of long, black gauntlets, each finger tipped with a silver claw. His hands tingled as he drew the gauntlets over them and smoothed them on his arms; under the moon the claws glinted and he flexed them, feeling the power and the control they granted him as they transmuted his hands into something other than human.
The door’s metal bar gave under his grip; he wrenched it aside and let it fall. Then he bunched his fist and the laughter spilled from his throat as he pounded on the door’s surface. With the seventh blow the door smashed back on to a black tunnel. Benetan swayed backwards as a vast breath of air belched out of the dark: then a heavy, phased clopping echoed in the confined space, and something huge, blacker even than the tunnel, moved beyond the door, treading towards the physical world.
Even in his drug-heightened state Benetan couldn’t fully assimilate it. It was a monstrous thing of iron and dark, horse-like but not spawned by any creature of flesh and blood, quartz hooves shimmering, cold silver glittering in its eyes, the shadows of great wings rising from its back. It opened a crimson mouth, and its breath was like the touch of fire on his face as he reached up towards it, grasped the mane that writhed like snakes in his hands, coaxed it, caressed it, urged its sleek, sinuous form out into the courtyard. Behind it more were emerging; huge silhouettes, things born of Chaos, demonic and powerful. Benetan was laughing again and his men were joining in as they, too, fell prey to the sacrament. The laughter, mingling with the voices that howled their weird harmonies in the sky and in his head, was tinged with insanity. The entire world was turning to black and silver as Benetan’s perceptions altered; he saw beyond the dimensions that physically held him, into places where other consciousnesses moved in dark and formless undercurrents, feeding on his excitement, imbuing him with sensations that made his blood burn and race in his veins.