Blacktalon: First Mark

by Andy Clark

  ‘The ghunkha is dead, sky knight. I killed it. Nothing to fear!’ Katalya laughed again, as Neave slowly relaxed and straightened up. The beast was hideous, its malformed face jutting from a fat black body that resembled nothing so much as a fifteen-foot-long maggot. Its underbelly was busy with stubby legs and drooping pseudopods. It was undeniably dead, a huge chunk of flesh carved out of its guts, its ichor drying on the grass.

  Neave took a moment to centre herself, breathe, grasp her surroundings. It was dusk, and the slopes of the mountain loomed large overhead. She stood in some kind of natural hollow in the landscape, a depression ringed on three sides by jutting rocks whose flanks were graven with faded pictograms. The fourth side was open, providing a view south and west, where rocky foothills marched away towards fog-wreathed marshland in the fading light.

  Katalya sat at the heart of the depression, tending a small fire that crackled within a ring of stones. She’d set a crude metal spit over the flames, and Neave saw that several slabs of flesh were blackening on it even now. She had an unpleasant feeling she knew where they’d come from. Ketto sprawled in an untidy tangle of limbs near to his mistress. The creature’s antennae waved lazily in Neave’s direction, as though in greeting. Neave didn’t see her dented helm anywhere, and presumed Katalya had abandoned it. She felt no great sense of loss; it had been as good as ruined anyway.

  ‘You didn’t leave me,’ said Neave, approaching the fire.

  Katalya shrugged.

  ‘Stupid Ketto wouldn’t leave you. Traitor.’ This time, the word had less venom in it. Ketto chittered, brushing Katalya’s cheek with an antenna. She batted the insect away in mock annoyance.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Neave, sitting.

  ‘Do all sky knights collapse of a sudden like this?’ asked Katalya, smirking. ‘Maybe Sigmar doesn’t make you as mighty as you say?’

  ‘No, just me,’ said Neave.

  ‘Why?’ asked Katalya.

  ‘It is complicated, Katalya.’ The girl scowled.

  ‘You mean it is something you don’t want to say,’ she said. ‘I saved your life. You owe the Mourne tribe now, sky knight. And I claim the truth as my gelt.’

  Frustrated, Neave took a deep breath, then decided the tribesgirl had a fair point. She had grown weary of secrets, and in some ways it was easier to trust a stranger than an old friend.

  ‘Honestly, I do not know,’ said Neave. ‘It’s part of why I need to go to the Forest of Ghosts. When I collapsed, I had a vision. One that I have seen several times before. It haunts me. It’s as though something is guiding me back to that forest.’

  ‘It is a curse,’ said Katalya matter-of-factly, as though her pronouncement settled the matter.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Neave. She was surprised at herself, talking so freely to this girl that she had just met. But she felt drained, and for once she didn’t have the energy for mistrust. Katalya could have just abandoned Neave to the scavengers, or the skaven. She hadn’t, and Neave decided that earned the girl a little faith.

  ‘Old Yatti, she saw things,’ said Katalya, staring into the fire. ‘Every­one said that was a curse. It is why they didn’t listen to her when she saw the ratkin coming. They should have listened.’ The girl looked up, met Neave’s gaze with her own frank sorrow. ‘Curses are not always bad.’

  ‘I am truly sorry for all that you’ve lost,’ said Neave. ‘I can’t imagine…’

  Katalya sniffed, aggressively poked at her fire with a blackened stick.

  ‘You can’t?’ asked the girl. ‘The stories say Sigmar takes the sky knights from terrible battles. They are the last alive in hopeless fights. Didn’t he take you from your tribe?’

  Neave opened her mouth, then closed it again. She frowned, as she realised that she couldn’t answer Katalya’s question. She remembered battle, Reforging, the Thunderpeak and the realms, but nothing of her life before. Not even the circumstances of how she had come to be claimed in the first place. Had she lost the memory? Had she ever had it?

  ‘I don’t know that either,’ she said. ‘It’s been a very long time…’

  ‘I won’t forget,’ said Katalya. ‘Even when he takes me up, like he did you.’

  Neave frowned.

  ‘I can’t fault you for seeking Sigmar’s blessings, but I thought you hated us… sky knights? Why would you want to become one of us?’

  Katalya scowled into the fire.

  ‘It is the way of the realms. Without a god, you are weak. You are prey. With a god’s blessings? Look at you. Look at the swamp king. To become strong, you must choose a god and win their blessings, no matter what the price. Mourne tribe should have learned that sooner.’

  Neave’s frown deepened at the comparisons the girl was drawing.

  ‘Katalya… Were you really seeking the swamp king, or were you just seeking an end worthy of Sigmar’s notice?’

  The girl remained silent, blinking into the fire. She poked angrily at it with her stick. Neave sighed.

  ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ she said. ‘You can’t just count on being taken up for Reforging. You almost certainly would have died for nothing.’

  ‘Like we will both do when we go to the Forest of Ghosts,’ said Katalya. ‘Like we will both do if we find the swamp king, because even if the forest spirits don’t kill us, he will. But I won’t let the Mourne tribe die. I will impress Sigmar, and live forever, and have the strength to take my revenge.’

  ‘Katalya, I–’

  ‘The meat is cooked,’ said Katalya. ‘We have these. Ketto gets the rest when he shifts his lazy body to eat.’

  Neave recognised that the subject was closed, at least for now. Quietly, though, she resolved to keep Katalya from her death-wish if she could. Neave accepted a hunk of seared meat from her with a nod of gratitude, and did her best not to look at the carcass of the thing it came from as she bit into it. To her surprise, the food was good, if a little bitter, and meat juices dribbled down her chin as she ate with gusto. Stormcast bodies healed far more swiftly than those of mortals, but though the process was partly fuelled by the celestial magic bound into their souls, food and rest both helped. Only now did Neave notice that the exertions of the last few days had left her ravenous.

  For a few minutes, the only sounds in the hollow were the two companions tearing into the cooked meat, and the sighing of the wind across the mountain slopes that reared above them. The stars of the heavens began to appear in the sky, and the quiet between Neave and Katalya became slowly more cordial.

  ‘What manner of beast is Ketto?’ asked Neave. ‘I’ve never seen his like.’

  ‘He is tattakan,’ said Katalya, in a tone she clearly reserved for answering extremely stupid questions.

  ‘Tattakan,’ said Neave, tasting the word, pleased with its cadence.

  ‘They are brood of the Godbeast Tatto’Na’Kotto, who lives under the Shifting Stones,’ said Katalya. ‘They are fast and strong and loyal, and Ketto is the best of them all.’

  The two lapsed into silence again for a time. The fire crackled and the wind sighed.

  ‘Why did you do the warding?’ asked Katalya, tossing aside the last fatty remnants of her meal.

  ‘I’m not sure what that is,’ said Neave.

  ‘The…’ Katalya gestured, forming the twin-tailed symbol with her hand again.

  ‘It’s a gesture of the heavens,’ said Neave. ‘It was just… familiar to me.’ Even as she spoke the lie, she saw that Katalya didn’t believe it. But Neave was unsettled by that mechanical gesture, both familiar and not so all at once, and she couldn’t yet be sure whether it had been the trigger for her collapse. For now, she didn’t care to speculate lest it brought weakness. Still, she felt frustration at herself as Katalya’s expression became closed and watchful again.

  ‘We should sleep soon,’ said Katalya, ‘and we shouldn’t risk the fire.’

 
; ‘I can see well enough without its light,’ said Neave, ‘and I’ve slept enough. You rest. I’ll keep watch.’

  Katalya gave a non-committal grunt, but Neave could see the girl’s exhaustion, both physical and emotional. Her eyes looked almost bruised, and her head nodded slightly. Sure enough, though Katalya made a show of keeping her vambraces on and propping herself against Ketto’s flank, she was soon snoring gently. Neave doused the fire with dirt, and was surprised again at the surge of protective emotion she felt as she looked down at the sleeping tribesgirl.

  Ketto regarded Neave, antennae waving slowly. Neave looked back, and felt that perhaps a moment of understanding passed between them. Gently, she reached out and ran one gauntleted palm down the side of Ketto’s face. The beast chuntered and brushed at her with an antenna, then shifted itself so that its legs enfolded Katalya like a shield. Neave smiled faintly, before turning her back to the guttering fire.

  ‘I’ll keep watch,’ she repeated, ‘and you’ll come to no further harm today, Katalya Mourne.’

  It was several hours later, in the deep watches of the night, that Neave returned to the hollow. She moved swift and silent, crouched low, slipping like a wraith past the ashes of the camp-fire. She woke Ketto first, brushing the beast’s antennae until it stirred into consciousness with a deep rattle of its thorax. When Neave looked to Katalya, she saw the girl’s eyes were already open, and her vambraces were glinting with jade energy.

  ‘They’re coming,’ murmured Neave.

  ‘Ratkin?’

  ‘Maybe. Or others.’

  ‘We fight?’

  ‘No. They’re still distant, but by the vibrations through the bedrock, they’re many. More than we could hope to defeat.’

  Katalya nodded and rose, swiftly gathering her meagre belongings into panniers strapped to Ketto’s flank, before swinging up into her saddle. Neave was grateful; she had expected obstinacy, perhaps a resurgence of the girl’s apparent death-wish. But now that the moment came, Katalya’s honed survival instincts were obvious. Neave supposed they had kept her alive when the rest of her tribe had fallen.

  ‘The Forest of Ghosts is this way,’ said Katalya, gesturing south and west along the mountain’s flank. ‘It is a day’s ride.’

  ‘I know, though I don’t know how,’ said Neave. ‘These lands become ever more familiar, yet I’ve never seen them before.’ The sensation was bewildering, especially for one as used to hard, empirical facts as Neave. She was used to following Sigmar’s gift towards her marks, but this was different. Neave still didn’t trust where this knowledge had come from, but she had come this far. She wouldn’t back away now.

  ‘If you collapse again, Ketto will carry you,’ said Katalya, and Neave laughed grimly at her matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘If I collapse again, we’re both in trouble,’ she said. ‘We move fast and stop for naught until we’re beneath the forest’s eaves, yes?’

  Katalya slapped Ketto’s flank, hawked and spat, then shot Neave a fierce grin.

  ‘We’ll see you when you get there.’

  With that she gave a high whoop. At her signal, Ketto surged forward, footfalls thudding like drumbeats upon the grassy soil as he powered up and out of the depression. Neave watched, one eyebrow raised as the tattakan accelerated away across the grass. Ketto’s legs rose and fell like mechanical pistons, moving so fast they almost blurred; he was a swifter creature by far than she had imagined, and for the first time she allowed herself to hope that they could outrun their pursuers.

  Whoever they might be.

  ‘Sigmar, lend us speed,’ said Neave, and set off after Ketto at a swift lope.

  Dawn came upon them quickly, the moons plunging below the horizon even as the sun rose bloated and red. Neave kept easy pace with Ketto, despite the fact the beast could run swift as a gryph-hound and seemed to have endless reserves of stamina. The miles vanished behind them as the hours rolled past.

  To begin with they kept to the mountain’s lower slopes, preferring the rocky hillocks and stony dells to the soggy grasslands below. Strange winged things wheeled above them amongst the crags, gangling and many-limbed. For a time, Neave kept a weather eye upon the creatures in case they should decide to investigate the intruders in their realm, but the beasts showed no predatory interest, merely drifting and crying to one another in low, booming voices.

  As the sun rose fully, Neave and Katalya were forced to abandon the rocky foothills. Their path led due south now, down into the mist-shrouded wetlands. Neave could feel the vibrations growing through the soles of her feet, and currents of displaced air disturbed by massed movement.

  ‘There’s more than one group pursuing us, Katalya,’ said Neave as they ran. ‘One trails us from the battle site, if I’m correct. The other is sweeping up from the south, though I don’t know how they could be tracking us. Perhaps they’re on our path by chance?’

  ‘It is the…’ Katalya mimed sniffing and snorting, and flared her nostrils. ‘The rat monsters, the blindlings. I don’t know how they did it, but they got the scent of the Mourne tribe and they followed us wherever we went. It was a curse.’

  Neave absorbed this new revelation. She had already known she was complicating her quest by taking Katalya under her wing. Now it seemed she might have drawn foes down upon herself by that same act of compassion. It didn’t trouble her, despite the dangers closing in around her; Sigmar had not created her to walk the easy paths, but to win through on the most difficult and dangerous trails. She would not fail him now.

  As they descended the slopes, Katalya turned smoothly in the saddle while Ketto thundered along. She fished a heavy cloak from within her panniers and swept it about herself. She affixed it to her body with straps and pulled its hood over her head, then right down over her face. Neave could smell the sharp tang of alchemical treatments worked into the fabric and saw that the hood itself had brass air-seals and eye-pieces set into it. Someone, presumably Katalya herself, had decorated the hood with a crude white skull design; the effect was surprisingly menacing.

  ‘Tattakan, sky knight, you can cross the foetorlands,’ Katalya said, her voice muffled and rasping through the filters. ‘Mourne tribe, though, not so easy. The swamp king’s touch is on this land. There is too much sickness, even for we.’

  ‘It is the touch of the Plague God, Nurgle,’ said Neave, running steadily alongside the tattakan. ‘He is one of the four Dark Gods that my lord Sigmar wars against. It’s his loathsome gifts that have corrupted this land, and his servant that we hunt.’

  ‘Nurgle,’ said Katalya, struggling with the strange word as though it tasted foul. ‘He is the god of the swamp king?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Neave. ‘It’s in his name that the swamp king does what he does.’

  ‘Then he is an even bigger th’katkha than your Sigmar,’ spat Katalya. ‘Once we deal with the swamp king, we kill him next.’

  Neave couldn’t help a bark of incredulous laughter. Yet her mirth was quickly swallowed up as they plunged into the fume-wreathed mire.

  The swamplands here were far worse than those Neave had crossed the day before. The hand of Nurgle had twisted the natural order of the Realm of Life, perverting its vital energies into something self-destructive.

  Rotblossoms nodded, bloated and straining, amidst squirming throttleknot and meadows of desiccated butcher’s grass. Plague flies swarmed above pools of congealed sludge, and fat white worms writhed through mud that stank of corpse-gas. A miasmal haze filled the air, cutting visibility to a few dozen yards ahead. Their pace slowed as they found themselves forced to turn aside again and again from sucking pits of slime and water courses that had turned the virulent yellow of infected pus.

  Through ragged gaps in the haze, Neave caught momentary glimpses of avian shapes hovering high and distant to their rear. They were too far away to identify, but she knew now they had been no figment of her imaginat
ion.

  The skaven were not her only pursuers.

  ‘Both groups are gaining on us,’ said Neave after a particularly frustrating detour. ‘I feel their passage through the shaking of the ground and the disturbance of the air. Whatever draws up from the south, it is far closer than that pursuing from behind.’

  ‘The Forest of Ghosts is still many miles ahead,’ said Katalya. ‘They will cut us off before we get there.’

  ‘Not if we are swift,’ said Neave. ‘Come on.’

  They pressed on through the filth and foulness. Marsh gases ­bubbled and popped in their wake, and a sorrowful wind blew across the marshes. Undulating shapes rippled through the muck, their rumbling passage causing Neave to brandish her axes in warning. Ketto struggled, only his broad leg span allowing him to avoid sinking hopelessly into the swamp.

  ‘Khakhoa take this stinking place, and mudhagha spit upon the swamp king’s corpse,’ Katalya’s muffled curses carried from under her cowl, half-lost in the endless drone of flies.

  Each time they were forced to halt, or divert their passage, Neave had to resist the temptation simply to leap into the winds aetheric and streak away towards the forest’s eaves. She knew instinctively where they were, though she couldn’t say how. The knowledge was bound up in some part of her mind that sounded like creaking branches and burning huts, and caused blue lights to dance behind her eyes when she tried to reach it.

  At last, the ground grew firmer again, and the haze began to part.

  ‘There, the forest!’ shouted Katalya, pointing urgently ahead. Neave could see the treeline some miles before them, revealed by the parting swamp gases. Tangled, gnarled and dark, it was hardly a welcoming sight. Yet to Neave it felt like a haven long sought, and she put on a surge of speed towards it.

  The wind changed, shifting so it blew from the south, and her nostrils were assailed by the reek of Chaotic corruption. Distantly, growing closer, she heard the tolling of warped bells, the thunder of footfalls, the rasp of flesh and cloth. Chittering shrieks carried to her upon the wind, sounds of madness and hunger.