Blacktalon: First Mark

by Andy Clark

  ‘Katalya, the ratkin are close,’ shouted Neave. ‘Whatever speed Ketto has left, we need it now.’

  She increased her pace, running as fast as she dared without abandoning her new comrade. Katalya whooped and kicked her heels into Ketto’s flanks, driving the tattakan faster.

  A glance south showed Neave their enemies for the first time. They were surging up along the line of the forest in a ragged tide, hundreds of skaven dashing as fast as their gnarled footclaws would carry them. They were clad in the filthy robes of the Clans Pestilens, brandishing rusted blades and smoke-belching plague censers. Banners rose above the swarm like flotsam on a flood tide, emblazoned with obscene designs that hurt the eye. Gongs and bells raised a frantic clangour.

  At the front of the horde came a bow-wave of chittering rats, some almost the size of hounds. Amidst them were a dozen or more of the hulking rat ogors, pounding along on their hindclaws and knuckled fists, grotesque nostrils flaring. Further back, amidst the massed Plague Monks, Neave saw a huge wooden frame being shoved along on creaking wheels. A vast iron censer swung from its warpwood beams, trailing billowing clouds of plague-smog. Atop a platform that jutted from the construction’s prow stood some kind of archpriest, squealing encouragement and threats at his underlings. His beady red eyes were locked upon her and Katalya, and Neave could feel his maddened hate like a fever heat.

  ‘They’re moving too fast,’ shouted Katalya. ‘We’ll have to fight!’

  Neave could see the girl was right. Even as she ran for the forest she spread her senses, searching for any route out of this trap. She couldn’t abandon Katalya to the skaven. She wouldn’t.

  ‘There!’ she shouted. ‘Follow me and run as swift as you can. We can make this!’

  Neave angled her sprint, turning away from the skaven, cutting westwards along the line of the forest. She felt Ketto’s footfalls change direction as the beast thundered after her. In her mind’s eye she saw the landscape ahead, but overlaid with a less tainted echo of itself, and she followed knowledge she had no right to own.

  ‘Sigmar, don’t let me be wrong about this,’ prayed Neave, then the land dropped away in front of her into a steep-sided ditch. A sluggish watercourse cut through it as it sloped away south, ploughing a furrow towards the forest’s eaves. The ditch rapidly became a ravine, before vanishing into the trees between outcroppings of craggy stone and crystal that looked all too hauntingly familiar.

  Neave slid down the bank feet first, splashing into the water and accelerating into a sprint. Ketto was still on her heels, but she could feel the stampede vibrations of the skaven closing by the second, hear the horrific din they raised, smell their overwhelming stench.

  ‘They’re coming,’ yelled Katalya.

  ‘Just keep running!’ called Neave, foetid water spraying up with every footfall. The sodden slopes of the ravine rose higher above her by the second, transforming from a treacherous slope into a lethal drop. It was over this precipitous lip that the first wave of rats spilled an instant later. Furry bodies twisted frantically in the air, and talons scrabbled as the vermin fell like rain. They smacked down around Neave as she ran, several rebounding from her armour like bloated missiles. Behind her, Katalya shrieked.

  ‘Keep going!’ yelled Neave, dashing for a treeline that was now mere yards ahead. A monstrous roar echoed from above as the first of the sniffer-ogors plunged over the lip of the ravine and fell, dragging its handlers along in a rattling mass of chains. The beast hit the water directly in front of Neave, its bones shattering audibly and its blood spraying her. She hurdled the maimed creature, kicking the corpse of a chain-tangled handler out of the way as she landed.

  Another beast plunged over the edge, snatching at thin air as it fell, then a third skidded to a halt on the ravine’s lip, one handler squealing with terror as he slipped past his charge and fell in a tangle of cloth and chain.

  ‘They’re behind us,’ shouted Katalya, but Neave barely heard her. Another few paces and the shadow of the forest swallowed her up. As she passed into its embrace at last, she heard a crooning voice in the back of her mind, a sound made up of creaking wood and shimmering lights.

  ‘Welcome home, child.’

  Chapter Ten

  Neave’s thoughts were in turmoil, and she battled an awful sense of mental violation as the echoes of the invading voice faded in her mind. She was sure she had heard it before, crooning to her amidst half-remembered darkness and horror. Yet it had not been the mangled slurring of Xelkyn Xerkanos that she had heard but another voice, rasping and ancient.

  She had no time to consider such things now, and so she ran. Katalya and Ketto galloped in her wake, water splashing up around their footfalls. Gnarled trees and jutting roots spilled over the edges of the ravine and the canopy closed over their heads. Sound carried weirdly, one moment deadened by the thick undergrowth, the next echoing and rolling as though they ran not through a forest, but down the corridor of some gloomy sepulchre. Daylight carried weakly through the entangled branches overhead, the patches of light and shadow adding to the effect.

  ‘They’re close behind,’ shouted Katalya. Neave didn’t need the warning; she could hear only too well the chittering cacophony of the skaven as they poured along the watercourse at her heels.

  ‘We need to go deeper into the forest,’ she replied. ‘Don’t slow for anything!’

  ‘You think the forest spirits will scare them away?’ asked Katalya.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Neave. ‘Besides, we’re swifter than they are. We’ll outpace and then lose them.’

  Even as she said this, though, Neave knew it for a lie. Alone, she could have outstripped her pursuers with ease, but it would have meant plunging headlong into this dangerous and mysterious realm upon the winds aetheric, a risk Neave would have been loath to take. Even setting aside the hazards of injury or death from attempting to windshift amidst such torturously dense terrain, she would have chanced disturbing and angering whatever guardians awaited deeper within the forest’s bounds.

  For the sake of her quest, she could not afford to make that mistake.

  As it was, she wouldn’t leave Katalya to be overrun. But Neave could sense that Ketto was tiring, and any fool could see that the tattakan would struggle to fit between many of the gnarled tree-trunks and dense thickets of thorned creeper that overhung the waterway. They could only continue to dash along the bottom of the watery ravine, avoiding treacherous pitfalls and slick rocks as best they could, and hope for some form of salvation.

  ‘It’s getting steeper,’ cried Neave. ‘Take care – if we trip or fall they’ll overrun us.’

  The banks of the ravine had dipped until they were mere feet above Neave’s head. At the same time, the ground was indeed sloping away, the waterway becoming a chattering rill as it swept down over rocky outcroppings and moss-furred ledges. Neave felt momentum pulling her off balance and her feet trying to run away with her as she pelted down the increasingly steep slope.

  At the same time, she felt a spark of hope. Her sense of familiarity was growing, blue motes dancing in the periphery of her vision as a growing certainty blossomed in her mind.

  ‘Katalya, I don’t know how I know this but I believe there’s sanctuary ahead,’ she shouted.

  ‘It had better come soon. Look back,’ yelled Katalya, and Neave heard real fear in the girl’s voice. She shot a glance over her shoulder and her eyes widened. The skaven were surging along the ravine in a great mass, scrabbling and biting at one another, carried forward by their own crushing momentum. Some didn’t even look to be touching the ground, simply crammed together and borne along as though riding the crest of a festering wave. Their jagged blades and bulging red eyes glinted in the half-light. Foam flecked their chisel fangs.

  Worse was the billowing green miasma that flowed around and above the swarm. It spilled along the river like a flood-tide and swept with unnatural swiftness through
the trees above. Neave could scent the sorcery that roiled through that cloud, and the bitter tang of virulent poisons. The undergrowth shrivelled at the touch of the plague fog, wood warping and squealing as it rotted to blackened stumps.

  ‘Don’t let those fumes touch you, Katalya,’ shouted Neave.

  ‘I did not plan on it, sky knight! I won’t let the ratkin stab me either, eh?’

  Neave shook her head, incredulous.

  ‘Perhaps you’d make a good Stormcast after all, an Astral Templar maybe, with that attitude,’ she replied.

  ‘Looks like another chance to prove myself,’ said Katalya. Neave saw the girl was right; large beasts, part-rat and part-wolf, had burst from the rushing fog and were pounding along the banks of the ravine, slavering and snarling. They leapt, shooting down like furry missiles, and Neave was forced to weave frantically to avoid them.

  One rat-hound fell past her head and hit the opposite bank with a crunch, rolling to a stop in the fast-flowing water. She sensed another plunging straight down between her shoulder-blades and threw herself forward. She hit the jagged ground and rolled, her armour taking much of the impact as the rat-hound flew overhead. It screeched as its momentum carried it over a ledge. Neave rolled smoothly back to her feet in a spray of water and kept running, leaping down over the ledge and whipping one axe around to behead the stunned creature as she dashed past it.

  There was a cry and a crunch of bone from behind her; another broken-looking rat-hound flew overhead, sparks of jade magic still crackling around its corpse. Neave didn’t have time to look around to check on Katalya, however. The footing was becoming ever more treacherous, white water frothing around her shins as the river fell down a series of rocks and rapids. The canopy grew denser overhead, plunging the whole scene into gloom. Neave half-ran, half-scrambled as fast as she could in the perilous conditions, aiming for the dark throat of leaf and water and wood and rock that narrowed away ahead of her.

  ‘How much further?’ shouted Katalya. ‘They’re almost on us!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Neave. ‘It’s just a sense. Keep going!’

  Neave could hear and smell the mass of Plague Monks spilling down the rapids after them. Squeals of pain and the crunch of furry bodies hitting rocks suggested their passage was even more dangerous than hers. Brackish blood tainted the water that poured around her shins. Yet still they came, and she was forced to duck instinctively as a rusted dagger whipped down from above to sail over her shoulder.

  Ahead, the water boiled through a rare patch of daylight, shimmering in the instant before it plunged from a rocky ledge. Neave felt a moment’s frustrated anger, before her determination surged back to banish it.

  ‘Katalya, the only way is down,’ called Neave. ‘If Ketto can’t make it we’ll have to turn and fight.’

  ‘Ketto can do it,’ replied the girl. ‘You lead, we follow!’

  Neave took a last few splashing steps and threw herself over the lip of stone. She fell, tangled branches and shimmering blue lights whipping by mere inches from her face.

  Neave hit the pool below with a loud splash, and the waters closed over her head. She sank straight to the bottom, weighed down by her armour. Feeling her feet dig in to silt and gravel, Neave pushed herself through the murk, holding her breath until she reached the pool’s edge. She grabbed slick black rocks and hauled herself out of the hissing pool, spray misting the air around her. Neave glanced back in time to see Ketto dropping from above, legs tucked in to form a chitinous sphere, rattling sub-wings thrumming from his thorax. Katalya clung onto her saddle for grim death.

  The tattakan hit the water and immediately spread his legs wide, clawing at the rocks and pulling himself forward. Katalya yelped at the pool’s icy touch.

  Looking ahead, Neave saw that the watercourse ploughed on, deeper into the tangled forest. The canopy was even lower here, and the ground rocky, but mercifully the gradient had become shallower.

  ‘You’re going to have to duck, Katalya,’ she said. ‘Or else Ketto will.’

  The girl leant forward in her saddle and slapped Ketto’s flank.

  ‘Just get us to your sanctuary, sky knight,’ she said. ‘It is still ahead?’

  ‘I’ve a sense…’ said Neave, her voice trailing off. The waterway was the only passage through the forest; all else was tangled thorns as long as her fingers, interwoven tree-trunks of gnarled wood and clutching masses of jagged twigs and branches.

  ‘It looks nightmarish here, yet I feel… safe? Safer, at any rate.’

  ‘Not for long,’ said Katalya as a loud splash came from the pool behind them, then another and another. Neave glanced back to see flailing bodies falling from the ledge above, ragged robes whipping around them. An acrid stink rose, the skaven musk of fear, and slick dark shapes flowed through the water towards the rocks. Worse, she could scent the bilious cloud of fumes spilling down, and hear the crackle and squeal of rotting wood. Blackened slime spattered from above as the branches withered and fell apart.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said, and set off again at a sprint. The skaven would struggle with the waterfall far more than she or Katalya; it would, at the very least, sorely disrupt their pursuit and break up their massed numbers. Yet at any moment Neave feared that the undergrowth would press in upon her and her companion to such a degree that forward progress would become impossible. Thorns and branches whipped at her face as she ran. Roots curled out of the ground as though seeking to trip her. The river slid along, glassy and dark now, a shallow ribbon of ink through the claustrophobic heart of the forest.

  ‘Lights!’ said Katalya. ‘Ahead!’

  It took Neave a moment to grasp that the shimmering blue motes she was seeing weren’t just some artefact of her visions, but actual glimmers of illumination. They danced, half-seen amidst the tangle of the canopy. Neave’s sharp vision picked out diaphanous wings, slender limbs and bulbous black eyes, humanoid creatures barely an inch tall.

  ‘Forest spirits,’ gasped Katalya, making her comet-warding again, and Neave heard the superstitious fear in her voice.

  ‘Whatever they are, they’re less of a threat than the skaven at our heels,’ said Neave, hoping she was right. As she and Ketto continued their dash deeper into the forest, the diminutive creatures flitted away through the canopy as though caught upon a strong gust of wind. Their lights winked out, yet in their wake Neave saw there was a little more daylight.

  ‘It’s thinning out ahead,’ she said with relief. Then came a shrill screech from behind, accompanied by the scratch and scrabble of dozens of foot-claws.

  ‘I can smell the fumes,’ cried Katalya. ‘Why don’t they rot the ratkin like they do the trees?’

  ‘Chaos sorcery, skaven witchery. Its tang is heavy on the air. Where those blighted fumes would blacken our lungs from within, they’ll be lending our pursuers a frenzied speed. The rats will pay for it, but not soon enough to matter to us.’

  ‘I hope they all choke,’ spat Katalya.

  ‘They will, but let’s not join them,’ urged Neave. ‘It’s opening out ahead. Sanctuary is near, Katalya, just keep Ketto moving.’

  The transition from gloom to pale daylight was so sudden it took even Neave’s heightened senses a moment to adjust. As though they had passed through an impossibly thick fortress wall, they emerged from the tangled undergrowth into an altogether different sort of forest.

  The ground still sloped steadily away, but the trees thinned out and became tall and elegant, their bark shimmering silver and grey. Drooping masses of leaves descended like jade curtains from their spidery branches, and their tops vanished into a misty white haze. The ground was spongy loam, dotted with mossy rocks and beautiful bushes and plants whose leaves and stems were delicate to the point that they almost resembled crystal. Veils of mist and shadow filtered between the trees, like curtains of spiderweb that drifted at random through the air.

 
‘Are there more spirits here?’ asked Katalya, unconsciously reining Ketto in.

  ‘I don’t know, but this is our chance to outpace the skaven,’ said Neave. ‘Don’t slow now – they’re right behind us!’

  Even as she said it, Plague Monks spilled from the undergrowth and pelted towards them. A dozen emerged, then more, spewing from the break in the vegetation like vermin from a sewer pipe.

  ‘Move,’ shouted Neave. ‘I’ll hold them back.’ Fear warred with anger and indignation on Katalya’s face. Neave looked up at her, holy lightning crackling in her eyes. ‘I said move!’ she barked, thunder rumbling behind her words. The shock was enough to get Katalya moving, and Ketto’s thudding footfalls resumed as the tattakan scuttled away downhill. Neave could see that the insect was all but exhausted, yet still he ploughed gamely on.

  The first of the Plague Monks came at her, and there was no more time for thought. Neave lashed her axe through the skaven’s throat, spinning away from the thrust of his rusty blade to slam her other weapon into the second rat-man’s skull. Ripping her weapons free, Neave wove around the whistling orb of a hard-swung censer, backflipping away from the trail of toxic smog it left and kicking its wielder hard under the chin as she went. Neave landed the spring and hacked the legs out from another skaven before the censer-wielder had even hit the floor, neck broken. She sprang forward, lightning-fast despite her long flight, and disembowelled two more Plague Monks.

  Still more skaven hurled themselves at her. A vicious stab saw a rusted knife shatter against her armoured midriff. Another blade screeched across one arm, spraying sparks as metal met metal. Neave replied with a blistering onslaught of blows that sent six skaven crashing to the ground, limbs severed, torsos hewn open. Their foul innards spilled across the forest soil, spreading blackness and rot wherever they corrupted the ground.

  Neave shot a glance over her shoulder and saw that Ketto was almost out of sight. The flow of skaven was not slowing, but she’d bought the girl some time.