by Andy Clark
‘What were you trying to do?’ she asked. ‘What possible benefit could you derive from killing the duardin king?’
No response. Xerkanos’ mouthparts worked, rasping one over the other in a cleaning motion. He twitched slightly beneath his ragged robes.
‘I don’t believe it, Xerkanos,’ said Neave, her words barbed with scorn. ‘I am not fooled.’
‘You have never been able to see the full extent of my schemes, Blacktalon,’ he said. ‘Just as your idiot god cannot perceive the true breadth of my master’s plan. But you tried. You tried to predict me, to pre-empt me. It is your instinct as a huntress. This was what made you easy to evade and to manipulate.’
‘Not so easy to evade that I didn’t slaughter your followers and foil your schemes at every turn,’ she said, and was rewarded by a spasm that raced, there and gone, across his features. Neave had learned early on that Xerkanos liked his plans to run smoothly, his enemies to flounder bewildered, and to know the full extent of their defeat before he crushed them. With Neave at his heels, he had been forced to rush, to improvise frantically. It had cost him, both in terms of followers and ruined plans.
‘Still you goad and second-guess,’ he said, his buzzing voice sounding part mocking, part sorrowful. ‘You believe that I am, what, conning my captors in some way? That I have some plan of escape that they are stupid enough to be an unwitting part of?’
At the sorcerer’s words, Neave felt a couple of glares from the Ironbreakers. Just because they were ignoring her and the sorcerer didn’t mean the duardin were deaf to their conversation. She suspected Xerkanos was attempting to rile them.
‘I believe that you are a supremely dangerous being and that the Mortal Realms will not be safe from your taint until your head lies separate from your neck,’ she said in a low growl. ‘And even then, Xerkanos, you can be sure that I will see the body burned and the ashes salted and buried.’
Xerkanos hissed for a moment with what Neave realised was laughter, but then he seemed to deflate. The sorcerer rested his gnarled hands upon the wooden boards of the wagon’s floor. His torn robes pooled around him.
‘You give me more credit than I deserve,’ he said bitterly. ‘I will not give you the satisfaction of knowing how, or why, but these duardin failed to dance upon their puppet-strings as they should have. This is no ruse, Blacktalon.’
She stared levelly at him for long seconds, then Xerkanos hurled himself into sudden motion. He lunged towards the bars of his cage with an insectile hiss, blue sparks dancing to life at the ends of his taloned fingers. Chains rattled as they raced through the iron ring set into the wagon’s floor, then clanged taut. The runes inscribed along their length glowed with a baleful light and Xerkanos screamed in pain. His sorcerous energies died as suddenly as they had flared, and he slumped against the wagon’s floor.
‘X’thazk z’threkkis aeshlech g’zarr,’ he spat, a foul curse in a daemonic tongue. The beasts pulling the wagon snorted and reared at the unholy words, and even the Ironbreakers recoiled as if struck. Only Neave remained impassive, her eyes locked unflinchingly upon the Tzeentchian sorcerer. She caught the sound of scratching talons that all others surely missed in that moment.
‘Lady Stormcast, you are bothering the captive and that bothers us,’ grumbled one of the Ironbreakers, a champion or leader by his helmet plume.
‘My apologies,’ said Neave.
‘Save them and take them elsewhere, eh?’ said the duardin sourly. ‘We’ll be in Lightsdawn within the hour. Interrogate him then if you must.’ He glanced away towards where the light of Hysh was lowering towards the mountain peaks and the shadows were stretching long. It would not do to delay, that look said, for darkness brought death in this place.
Neave inclined her head and picked up her pace, sweeping past the cage-wagon and leaving its mutant occupant in her wake. She had no desire to antagonise the duardin further.
Besides, she had got what she wanted, heard the sound that indicated the sorcerer’s true intentions. In the instant that Xerkanos had cursed and the wagon had jolted, Neave had caught the imperceptible motion of one of his talons dragging a long scratch through the wood of the wagon’s floorboards. She had seen him nimbly lever loose a splinter of ironwood and flick it back into the ragged material of his sleeve for later retrieval. A lock pick, she thought.
Neave asked herself if she should warn the duardin, but she already knew the answer. Even if they would listen to her, even if they would halt their march long enough to search Xerkanos and remove the wooden jag from his person, she still didn’t believe that they would fully appreciate the threat he represented.
She would let this play out. The moment that Xerkanos revealed himself and became a danger to them all, that was the moment in which her slaying him would be unavoidable and entirely justified. Even Halgrimmsson would struggle to gainsay a battlefield execution, though his pride and anger might push him to try.
Neave wouldn’t make the mistake that the duardin had. She wouldn’t underestimate her mark.
With that thought foremost in her mind, Neave settled in to match the marching pace of the duardin, holding position fifty yards ahead of the cage-wagon. She would know the moment when it came.
Lightsdawn hove into view half an hour later. Despite her position far back down the line, Neave suspected from their lack of reaction that she saw the town before any of the duardin advance guard. It was built upon a natural outcropping of night-black rock that, Neave knew from her first visit, was so hard that the settlers had never been able to carve or break it, only build atop it. An artificial road of long wooden planks and sturdy girders had been raised around the massive bedrock. It wound up in a circle from the dusty plain to the town’s single gate a hundred and fifteen feet above.
A high wall of wood and iron ringed the settlement. Azyrite banners had been unfurled down its flanks, and they stirred listlessly in the cold breeze.
Neave could see the helms and spearpoints of town militiamen jutting above the rampart. Instinctively, she checked that they were moving, indicating soldiers on patrol instead of bodies propped upon a firestep as part of some ambush. She had been there before, she thought ruefully, remembering another battlefield, another Reforging. Only the lack of heartbeats had warned her, that time. She thought of Xerkanos, languishing in his cage at her back, a splinter of wood hidden deep in the sleeve of his robes.
She wouldn’t be caught unawares.
The cry went up from the duardin shortly after as they, in their turn, sighted the town. The march picked up pace as the soldiery made for the safe haven ahead. Neave moved up the column as they went so that she was once again close to Thane Halgrimmsson by the time his bearers began to ascend the road-ramp.
‘How long do you intend to stay here, thane?’ she asked. Halgrimmsson spared her a glance from under his heavy brows.
‘No longer than we must, Stormcast. Overnight, and leave with dawn’s first light. My lads would march on through if they could. They’d do it in a heartbeat if I gave the word.’
Neave caught the defensive note in Halgrimmsson’s voice. The duardin resented this halt. For all that he feigned indifference towards her, he didn’t want one of Sigmar’s Stormcast Eternals to perceive some lack of fortitude in his clansmen.
‘I don’t doubt it, thane,’ she said carefully. ‘It is well known that one does not chance these wastes after darkness falls. The ashen people would leave naught but bones by the dawn, no matter how stout your warriors. My own Stormhost would fare no better.’
Halgrimmsson made a rumbling sound in his chest that might have been agreement. Neave didn’t know the precise nature of the terrors that haunted the plains after dark, but the arrays of huge mechanical braziers that lined the town’s walls spoke to the very real threat they represented. Whatever the ashen people were, it was common knowledge in Lightsdawn that you did not chance their wrath after dark, and t
hat equally they would not step into the light. This, also, she had learned during her first brief visit to the town.
‘So, we press on for the karak at dawn,’ prompted Neave.
‘Aye, and none of mine will wake you,’ said Halgrimmsson sourly. ‘If you miss our departure you’re on your own.’
‘You assume that I sleep,’ said Neave, then fell quiet, leaving the thane to digest that somewhat unsettling thought.
The army’s massed footfalls rang upon the wood and iron of the roadway. It flexed and shuddered under their combined weight, but Neave felt its solidity beneath her feet. As the head of the column rounded the last turn that led up towards the town gates, she spared another glance out across the plains.
Darkness was falling as the light of Hysh slid behind the distant mountains. A dark pall spread across the wastes like spilled ink. She glanced up again at the men on the walls, saw their hard-eyed gazes beneath their helms. They stared not at the darkness, but at the column of duardin approaching their walls. The garrison would be used to threats beyond the walls, she thought, far more so than those who brought them within. Still, the intensity of the soldiers’ stares struck her as strange. They looked almost eager.
Neave smelled a chemical stink, sharp and acrid. She heard a rush and gurgle of fluids through hidden pipes, and a moment later the braziers along the walls roared to life. In that moment she caught another scent, strange and cloying beneath the smell of the pyre-oil. It was faint enough that, without her superhuman senses, Neave would never have smelled it at all.
Perfume, she thought, or some kind of scented oil. She tried to place the scent’s origins. It was nothing of duardin make, that was for sure. Rather, she thought the smell had wafted over the walls, from within the settlement. She doubted the townsfolk would trouble themselves to scent the oils that fed the braziers.
‘Thane, there is something amiss,’ she said, pitching her voice just loud enough for Halgrimmsson to hear.
‘Amiss?’ he asked. Ahead, the town gates began to rumble open as hidden gears worked in the walls. A blocky guardhouse was revealed beyond, rising to one side of a wide, slab-floored square. Solid-looking buildings of stone, wood and metal lined the twilit street that stretched away from the square into the heart of Lightsdawn. Oil-fuelled lamps burned to saturate the streets with light.
‘I smell a perfumed scent that hides a hint of corruption, and the behaviour of the wall guards seems wrong,’ she said. ‘They watch us like scavengers watch a sickening beast.’ And there, what’s that? she thought as they marched towards the gate. Was that blood she smelled? Faint, as though scrubbed or hidden? ‘And I smell blood,’ she added.
Halgrimmsson bristled. ‘You’d have me shy at the gates with the dark at our heels because you can smell perfume?’ he asked.
‘I would,’ said Neave, unabashed. ‘I long ago learned to trust my senses implicitly.’
‘They weren’t much use for my father though, were they?’ asked Halgrimmsson. ‘You’ve done naught but spout words of humanish caution about our captive since we set out. Now you spook at the sight of the town that will offer us sanctuary from the night. The danger is real, but it is at our backs, not to the fore. Either your Sigmar-given gifts are over-caution and cowardice, or else you imply a lack of competence on the part of my clansmen. Which is it, Stormcast?’
They approached the gates, and Neave saw two rows of guards lining the approach into the town. Their cloaks were swept back to keep their limbs free, and their spears were held out before them, butts to the ground. More guards clustered on the walls above the gate, and yet more could be seen on the roof of the guardhouse. Those had strung bows held ready.
An army marches though their gates and they gather their guards as a precaution, thought Neave, but she was not convinced.
‘Thane, I–’
‘I’ll hear no more, and I’ll not have you offend our allies by spouting accusations about them as we cross their damned threshold,’ growled Halgrimmsson. ‘Leave my side or forfeit your claim on the captive. I shan’t say it again.’
Neave supposed she was not the first to feel frustration at the legendary stubbornness of the duardin. Her instincts were howling of danger ahead, yet as she glanced back at the darkness now swallowing the roadway behind them, she knew that to remain outside the walls was to die.
There were too many guards, she thought. Moreover, she could see no townsfolk. Surely a few, at least, would have come out to watch their allies march through the gates, and to spit upon a captive Chaos sorcerer trussed in chains?
But Halgrimmsson wasn’t going to budge. Abandoning her entreaties, Neave halted and let him march over the threshold, his clansmen stomping resolutely along at his back. Neave folded herself into the shadow of the gates and let the duardin flow past. Dust-stained warriors thumped by without a glance in her direction, the welcome light of the town’s braziers playing across their leathery skin and reflecting in their hard eyes. Neave wanted to yell at them to draw their blades, to banish the looks of relief and satisfaction from their faces. She wanted to warn them that something was terribly wrong, but she knew they would ignore her.
This was a trap, and Neave knew its architect. She had tried to sway Halgrimmsson, but he was too emotionally invested in his course, and his warriors would follow him no matter what urgings she offered. In that moment, Neave discounted the duardin as lost. The only thing that matters is to slay Xerkanos before he can escape, she thought.
She lurked in the shadows, sliding her axes from their sheaths on her back and lowering herself into a huntress’ crouch. She was ready. The moment the cage-wagon drew level, Neave would spring her own ambush. And if the Ironbreakers sent her soul back to Azyr, so long as they cut her down after Xerkanos was slain, then so be it.
Then came the scream.
The sound exploded over the marching column like the sudden impact of an avalanche. To call it deafening would be to call an inferno hot. The scream stabbed into Neave’s mind like silvered blades. It seemed to reach into her body and wind coils of bladed wire around her very bones. Her phenomenal senses were overloaded by the sawing shriek that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Neave gave a scream of her own, axes clattering to the ground as she clamped her hands to the side of her skull in an effort to shut out the agonising howl.
Neave’s sheer mental discipline ensured she remained aware of what was happening around her even as she dropped to her knees, her vision swimming. The duardin were reeling, stumbling into one another, dropping weapons and tearing off helms as they slapped their hands to their ears. She saw the worst affected vomit blood or give silent cries of agony as gore wept from their nostrils, ears and eyes.
The dobkine went mad. The chitinous beasts reared in their traces, antennae waving and forelegs kicking. Neave saw the team pulling the forge-wagon run mad with pain and drag the rolling workshop straight over the edge of the roadway. She could only imagine the terror and agony of the Runesmith and his apprentices as their forge spewed hot coals across them and their workshop plunged to smash apart on the ashen plains below.
The rest of the dobkine surged and pulled, trying to flee the agony. Neave saw Xerkanos’ cage-wagon rattle past her, one trace broken, a wheel cracked and spewing wooden shrapnel as it disintegrated further with every revolution. She dimly perceived Xerkanos’ hunched form in the back of the wagon, sailing past her and into the town.
Neave felt rather than heard the gate’s huge mechanisms engage. Gritting her teeth, she forced her hands away from her ears, enduring the redoubled agony of the sonic barrage long enough to snatch up her axes and throw herself into a dive. The huge gates swung inwards, cog-teeth meshing where she had crouched moments before.
Neave caught a last sight of duardin and dobkine still outside on the roadway. Her eyes locked with those of a clansman just yards from the gate, scrambling forward on his hands and knees in the instant bef
ore the gates slammed shut. She would remember his look of shock and desperation for years to come.
The gates closed and as they did, the scream cut off as suddenly as it had begun. Neave rolled into a crouch and surveyed the scene, the ringing in her ears swiftly subsiding. That was her Stormcast physiology at work, she knew. Others would not be so lucky.
Not that any of the duardin could be considered lucky at this moment. Around Neave, carnage and mayhem reigned. Somehow, the guards had either endured the scream or else been entirely unaffected by it; while the duardin were thrown into utter disarray, they had struck. Arrows whipped down from the blockhouse roof to punch through mail and flesh. Duardin, already driven to their knees by the sonic assault, were spitted on spearpoints as the guards set upon them from all sides. Here and there the clansmen tried to mount a defence, drawing together in shield walls just a handful of dazed warriors strong. Arrows fell amongst them, feathering shield bosses and flesh alike. As soon as gaps were opened the human spearmen lunged in, whip-swift, to stab at faces and guts.
Cultists, Neave thought. Xerkanos’ cultists, Tzeentch-worshipping filth who had murdered the townsfolk and the guards, had stolen their uniforms and taken their place. They must surely overwhelm the duardin, and if they did, Neave would stand alone.
She allowed herself the merest moment of fury at Halgrimmsson for blundering into so obvious a trap when he should have marched his soldiers in with guns blazing and axes bared. Yet would it have helped? she thought. The duardin couldn’t have stayed outside the walls lest they be claimed by the ashen people. They couldn’t have predicted nor countered the scream that had shattered their resistance before it even had a chance to form.
A scream that might return at any moment, she realised grimly. Before that, she had a mark to slay.
Xerkanos’ wagon had ploughed through the duardin that blocked its path and had crashed into the corner of the blockhouse. It listed at a crazed angle, its dobkine full of arrows and dead in their traces. Neave read the flow of the slaughter and realised that three bands of armed guards were closing on the cage-wagon from different directions.