by Dan Abnett
A WARHAMMER NOVEL
WARPSWORD
Darkblade - 04
Dan Abnett & Mike Lee
(An Undead Scan v1.1)
This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.
At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.
But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering World’s Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.
Chapter One
BAG OF BONES
Two full moons hung low in the evening sky, gleaming like burnished pearls in a band of indigo just above the sharp mountain crags to the west. Their light cast a shimmer of faded gold across the restless surface of the Sea of Malice, and the wind blowing in from the water was cold and damp. Tendrils of mist coiled along the rocky shore, reaching tentatively northward through the rustling fields of yellow grass and touching lightly on the dark stones of the Slavers’ Road. As the night wore on the mist would thicken, swallowing the road entirely and pressing hungrily into the dense forest of dark pine beyond.
The small group of druchii walking along the winding road eyed the swelling fog with a kind of weary dread. After many days of travel along the seacoast, they knew that the wind and the mist would sink through their light summer cloaks like an assassin’s knife and settle deep in their bones. They were all young and strong — and had demonstrated so on more than one occasion since leaving their homes — but their muscles ached and their joints were stiff after weeks of sleeping on damp, cold earth. So when one of their number spied a small, cleared area with a fire pit at the edge of the tree line the band stopped in their tracks and spoke amongst themselves in low, hushed tones.
Their leader, a tall woman with finger bones plaited in her black hair, turned and looked along the road to the north, searching for a sign that their destination might only be a short way away. She wanted to press ahead a bit further, but when the man who’d first spied the clearing walked to the fire pit and pointed out a stack of ready firewood tucked beneath a nearby pine, that settled the debate. With a last, searching glance to the north the woman joined her compatriots by the fire pit, throwing back the folds of her cloak and shrugging her travel bags from her shoulders. Lengths of wood clunked and rattled as they were tossed into the pit and the druchii murmured easily amongst themselves, pleased at the thought of a warm fire to keep the fog at bay.
Preoccupied as they were with flint and tinder and unwrapping what remained of their meagre rations, none of them noticed the lean, haggard figure step quietly from the concealing mist close to the shore. Droplets of water glittered like shards of broken glass on the dark surface of Malus Darkblade’s heavy, fur-mantled cloak and ran in thin streams across his worn and split-seamed boots. His long black hair hung loose in a thick, matted tangle, almost indistinguishable from the wolf-fur that weighed upon his narrow shoulders. Moonlight limned the hard lines of his weathered face, sharpening the bony angles of his cheekbones and the dagger-point of his pale chin.
Shadows pooled in the hollows of his cheeks and the sunken orbits of his eyes as he studied the four men and two women forming a circle around the fire pit just a few yards away. As he watched, one of the druchii stuffed a wad of tinder beneath the piled logs and took up his flint, scattering a stream of thin red sparks with a few deft strokes before bending low to blow gently on the smouldering wood shavings. Within moments a tongue of fire rose from the tinder and licked along the cured wood, and the druchii all leaned forwards expectantly, reaching out with slim, pale hands for the warmth that was soon to follow. Malus smiled coldly, scarcely noticing the offshore breeze caress his face with cold, damp fingers. A few moments more, he thought, nodding to himself. They’d taken the bait, but now he had to set the hook.
Within a few minutes the druchii had a roaring fire going, filling the clearing and painting the sides of the dark pines with flickering orange light. The druchii ate cold meals of hard biscuit, dried fish and cheese, and stretched their feet wearily towards the blaze. After a long, hard day of travel the men and women seemed to come unclenched at the heady sensation of warmth and food in their bellies. None of them noticed Malus’ approach until he limped like one of the walking dead into the circle of the firelight.
Conversation stopped. Several of the druchii straightened, hands reaching for their swords. Their faces were carefully neutral, but Malus could see the calculating gleam in their eyes. They were sizing him up, deciding whether to treat him as predator or prey. Malus reached both hands from beneath the folds of his faded cloak and showed his empty palms. “Well met, brothers and sisters,” Malus said carefully. The words came out in a low, hoarse voice — after two and a half months of living like an animal in the woods along the Slavers’ Road he’d had little use for conversation. “Might a fellow traveller share your fire for a while?”
Without waiting for a reply, he unclasped his cloak and pulled it from his shoulders. Beneath, Malus wore a ragged shirt of blackened mail and a battered kheitan of human hide, cut in a rustic style common to the north country. A broad, straight northern sword and a set of knives hung from his belt above a set of faded and torn woollen robes. His black boots were ragged as well, the soles pulling away from their pointed tips. But for a large ruby ring glinting brightly on his right hand and a plain silver band glinting on his left, he looked like a half-starved autarii or a crazed mountain hermit.
Malus spread the cloak carefully on the ground and shrugged a plain cloth bag from his shoulder. Sharp, measuring stares flicked from Malus’ face to the stained brown canvas bag and back again. All of the travellers carried similar bags, kept close by their sides. Like Malus, the other druchii were dressed simply: plain robes and kheitans, light armour or none at all, and a single sword or broad knife to deal with encounters on the road. Had they horses and clinking bundles of slave irons they could have been traders on the way to Karond Kar in anticipation of the autumn flesh harvest.
After a moment the leader of the small band leaned forwards with a soft rustle of layered wool and studied Malus thoughtfully. Her hair was drawn back in a series of tight braids, accentuating her long face and severe features. The woman’s brass-coloured eyes shone like polished coins in the firelight. “Have you travelled far, brother?” she asked.
The highborn met the woman’s gaze and struggled to conceal his surprise. The woman’s eyes marked her as a high priestess of Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God. They set her apart even among other members of Khaine’s temple as especially favoured by the Lord of Murder.
Malus nodded slowly. “From Naggor,” he replied, thinking to describe his route down the Spear Road past Naggarond but holding back at the last moment. Say no more than you must, he cautioned himself. “And you?”
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br /> “From the temple at Clar Karond,” the woman replied, and then nodded to two men to her right. “And they from Hag Graef.”
Malus continued to nod, keeping his face carefully neutral and giving the two men only the briefest of glances. His mind raced and a fist tightened around his heart. A voice hissed inside his head, like a blade drawn across naked bone.
“I warned you of this, little druchii,” the daemon said, its voice dripping with contempt. “They will recognise you any moment and your pathetic scheme will come undone.”
“After tonight you will not be able to return to Hag Graef,” his mother had told him, her voice cutting through the howling wind as the city burned around them. “You must seek the Warpsword of Khaine in the city of Har Ganeth. Your brother Urial awaits you there, seeking to make the sword his own.”
And so he had travelled north and east, slipping from the corpse-choked Vale of Shadow with food taken from the ruins of the Naggorite camp. He moved at night and stayed off the roads whenever he could, knowing that his kin would be sniffing for his trail as soon as they were able. Once the fires had been put out and order restored in the city, his half-brother Isilvar would send his troops into the Vale to check every bloated and torn body to see if he lay among the fallen. When they realised he’d escaped, word would spread, and every druchii in the Land of Chill would be watching for him. For the man or woman who delivered Malus Darkblade — living or dead — into the clutches of the Witch King would reap a drachau’s ransom in wealth and favour. Not because Malus had led an army against his former home, but for the crime of taking the life of his father Lurhan, the Vaulkhar of Hag Graef, and by extension a sworn vassal of Malekith himself. No one slew the Witch King’s property without his leave, and for that Malus had lost everything — rank, property, wealth and ambition, all stricken from him with a single stroke of a sword.
He had thought himself clever, but in the end he’d played right into his enemies’ hands. Now Isilvar was Hag Graef’s vaulkhar and possessor of not only Lurhan’s wealth, but Malus’ as well. His half-sister Nagaira had conspired with Isilvar; together they’d known more about Malus and his secret quest on behalf of the daemon Tz’arkan than he’d realised. They knew of the five relics he needed to find in order to free the daemon from its prison and reclaim his stolen soul. They knew he would seek the Dagger of Torxus in the tomb of Eleuril the Damned, and so they’d arranged for Lurhan to get it first. And he, blind to everything except recovering the relics and ridding himself of the daemon, had done their bidding like a trained dog.
It had taken a week to reach the Slavers’ Road, and two weeks more to reach Har Ganeth, City of Executioners. Malus had stopped there, hesitating warily before the city’s open gates and sombre streets.
The gates of Har Ganeth never shut because the City of Executioners hungered for flesh and blood. It was Khaine’s city, seat of the temple’s worldly power, and no one came or went from it without the approval of the priests who ruled there.
Malus knew they would be watching for him. His half-brother Urial would have seen to that, if nothing else. Urial had every reason to hate and fear Malus, and desired the warpsword for reasons of his own. It figured into an ancient prophecy, one that the crippled highborn believed to be his birthright.
Malus had reason to believe otherwise. Prophecies were often slippery things, and had a tendency to turn in the hand of those who thought to wield them.
Nevertheless, he knew nothing of the city and hadn’t a coin to his name to bribe anyone with, so he had no confidence that he could slip quietly into the city and remain hidden beneath Urial’s very nose, much less go poking through the temple fortress in search of a sacred relic. More than once he found it bitterly amusing that before, when he had everything to lose he would have just charged headlong into the city, convinced he could think his way out of any mess he found himself in. Now, however, since he’d lost everything, he found himself much more circumspect.
He needed more information about the city and its inhabitants, he’d decided. So he retreated into the wooded foothills north of the city and waited for someone to leave.
The first thing he’d learned was that, unlike every other city in Naggaroth, few people came and went from Har Ganeth. It was almost a week before a lone traveller emerged from the city gates and headed west on horseback. Malus shadowed the solitary figure until nightfall, when the man left the road and built a fire at a campsite along the edge of the tree line. After watching the man for half an hour, Malus walked into the camp and offered to share some of his wine in exchange for a spot close to the fire. After sampling Malus’ wine, the man grudgingly agreed.
He was a stranger to the city, as it happened — visiting a cousin in Har Ganeth who kept a chandler’s shop close by the temple fortress. As Malus had feared, every stranger entering the city had to report to the temple straightaway and receive the blessing of the priestesses, or else he took his life in his hands. There were only three sorts of people in the City of Executioners: servants of the temple, guests of the temple and sacrifices to Khaine. A druchii caught on the street — by day or night — without the temple’s blessing could be slain out of hand as an offering to the Lord of Murder, and the people of the city were zealous in their devotion to the Bloody-Handed God.
The man knew nothing about the temple fortress. Only members of the cult were permitted to enter, leaving the devout to worship at any one of a dozen smaller shrines located across the city. He had heard a recent bit of gossip, though. There were rumours throughout the city that a holy man had appeared before the temple elders bearing signs and portents that the culmination of a great prophecy was at hand. What that meant the man could not say, but there were acolytes in the streets exhorting the faithful to prepare themselves for a time of blood and fire, and bloodied skulls began to appear in piles on every street corner. Fearing that soon his head would be added to one of the piles, the man fled for his life.
The news filled Malus with dismay. They finished the wine in dreary silence, and then he stabbed the man in the heart and went through his belongings for anything useful. Spite feasted on man and horse that night, and Malus had bread and sausage for a week after.
As the days passed Malus settled into a grim routine, stalking travellers leaving the city and learning what he could from them. Sometimes the conversation ended at the point of a knife; other times he chose discretion and slipped away into the darkness once the wine was done. Once he nearly had the tables turned on him, and it was only the Dark Mother’s own luck and his familiarity with the forest that allowed him to escape with a whole skin. Little by little, his knowledge of the city grew, but nothing he learned helped solve the most crucial riddles of all: how to avoid the notice of the temple without winding up an unwilling sacrifice, and how to find the Warpsword of Khaine.
It never once occurred to Malus to ask either Tz’arkan or his mother Eldire for help. The silver ring he wore had been a gift from his mother, one of the most potent sorceresses and seers in the Land of Chill. He could use it to speak with her on nights when the moon was bright. As for the daemon, it had never passed up a chance to tempt him with tastes of its supernatural powers — but after the night in the burning city, its behaviour had changed. It was warier now, questioning Malus’ every move and offering nothing unless asked. The daemon feared Eldire’s power for some reason, and that both pleased and troubled Malus.
As the summer wore on the pattern of travel changed. Druchii began heading for Har Ganeth — singly at first, and then in small groups of up to half-a-dozen, arriving at all hours of the day and night. They came down the Slavers’ Road from the west or crossed the Sea of Malice in boats, and they all travelled surreptitiously, without fanfare or finery. They came from all walks of life, as near as Malus could tell: highborn and lowborn, princes, bakers and thieves and everything in between, and once they entered Har Ganeth, they didn’t emerge again. Malus found himself thinking about Urial and his prophecy once more, and wondered
whether there might be something to it after all.
Seeking answers, Malus headed down the road and looked for a solitary traveller to share a bottle of wine with.
The first man he found welcomed him like a long-lost brother and barely took a sip of wine before trying to cut Malus’ throat. He’d laughed like a lunatic as they’d rolled across the damp ground, wresting over the man’s serrated knife. When Malus had finally gained the upper hand and searched the body afterwards he found a brown canvas bag filled with body parts: hands, ears, noses and genitals, many still sticky with gore.
Malus approached a second man a day later, and received another warm welcome. This time he was ready when the druchii leapt at him with a knife. He, too, had a bag full of freshly severed bits of flesh. In a fit of pique Malus tossed the druchii’s head into the bag and took it with him.
After that he watched the people on the road much more closely. Man or woman, young or old, they all carried a sword or a broad-bladed knife and a stained bag hung from shoulder or belt.
Was there some holy ceremony in the offing calling the faithful to the city to present their offerings to Khaine? He’d never heard of such a thing before. One thing was clear, however: the travellers seemed happy to kill any stranger they met except those carrying bags of their own. Malus had no idea why that mattered, but finally a glimmer of a plan began to take shape in his mind.
*
“Wine, brothers and sisters?” Malus pulled a clay bottle from a second carry-bag and offered it to the group. One of the men from Hag Graef leaned forwards and took the bottle eagerly. Malus caught the man’s eye as he surrendered the wine, but saw no glint of recognition there.
“I hadn’t realised there were any followers of the true faith living at the Black Ark,” the temple maiden said.