The Hunt

by David Annandale

  Contents

  Cover

  The Hunt – David Annandale

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Genevieve Undead’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  The Hunt

  by David Annandale

  The screams are growing louder.

  You know they are. Ever since they began, more than a month ago now, the wails have torn the nights apart with greater ferocity. The sounds claw at the darkness. You can almost see the gashes, bright as lightning, lingering as guilt. You can almost see them. When you close your eyes, they are there in your personal darkness, flashing and throbbing with each peak of the howls. You don’t close your eyes often, though. Not if you can help it. Because there is something you can see.

  You see what is screaming. You see the spectral host. The screams are louder because the phantoms are closer. Night after night, they draw nearer. They are coming for you, Bered Davan. They first appeared as a foul glimmer on the horizon, barely visible to you, invisible to anyone else. With each fall of dark, they have closed in. It has been a gradual approach, though they are close enough now that you can see that they are racing wildly to reach you. The ground they cover is not the same as that which you tread. They must cross great ethereal distances before they reach you. That is a small comfort, but at least it exists. You still have some time. A little, but it is yours to act in, however you choose to do so.

  Have you been choosing wisely? You think not, though it is becoming more and more difficult to think. You have slept so little since the howling began. You never sleep at night now, and only in brief fits during the day. Time, yes, but so little. So very, very little. Like a tide, the host’s approach is imperceptible moment by moment. Like a tide, it cannot be stopped. Unlike a tide, it will never recede.

  The spectres will come until they fall upon you. The end will be bad. You should try to fight them. You don’t think you can. You know you cannot defeat such a horror on your own. You know you are strong. But you also know that you lack strength enough to try. And so your portion of shame grows, for this, witch hunter, is not how you should face your end.

  You have been at the casement of your bedchamber all night. Your quarters, in the peak of a thin tower near the centre of the Free City of Everyth in the realm of Ghyran, give you a fine perspective of encroaching fate. You have spent the hours of darkness looking out over the steeply gabled, moss-covered roofs below, watching your doom, futilely covering your ears against the shrieks. You watch the host as you would a storm. Its movements are furious, though it closes in slowly. You can see it far better than you would like. What started as a glow, and then a mist with dreadful purpose, has become an army. You see the shapes of spectres.

  You see the thing that leads them. It is the thing of screams. It is the thing that will destroy you. You even have a name for this horror. Banshee.

  This knowledge grants no power. It brings only greater terror.

  Dawn breaks, the arrival of grey in the sky that you await with such fervour every night. You try to think of it as a surcease, though you know it is an illusion. The fear is undiminished. The gift of dawn is the silence of the screams, the vanishing of the host. The absence is a lie, because the spectres will be that much closer when night comes again. If you cannot see them, though, and you cannot hear them, then perhaps you will sleep, if only a little. In the slow, twilight hour when Hysh and Ulgu exchange their roles in the dance, when night sighs its last and day gathers its breath, you have found the pause between vigilance and duty. Here alone is the pitiful fragment that is all that remains of rest for you.

  You rise from your casement chair and stumble towards the straw mattress that lies in the corner of your chamber. Your quarters are an elevated cell. You disdain luxuries. The chair and the table are carved from aged, fallen timber. A chest holds your clothes and your weapons. There is nothing else. You need nothing else. Nothing else except sleep.

  On this day, that is denied you. You lie down, and there is a knock at your door. You contain your sigh, because it might be heard, and you rise again. You take a moment, seeking to gather your energy and your dignity.

  As if there were any way to hide the haggard sag of your face.

  Your sunken, haunted eyes.

  You open the door to Kolth, your servant.

  ‘Forgive me for waking you, witch hunter,’ he says, his eyes lowered. He has never had the courage to look directly at your face. He is loyal, and he is fiercely proud to serve you as you serve Sigmar, but he fears you, too, and the judgement that you wield. ‘Your help is urgently needed.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Thevena Pasala, master.’

  It is good that Kolth stares at the floor. Otherwise, he would see your eyes widen at that name. For a long time now, since before even you became a witch hunter, it is a name you cannot hear without a painful spasm of guilt. Today, though, hope flares in your chest. She has asked for you, for your help.

  You never dared look to her for redemption. Now, perhaps, it is offered.

  You cannot help but think this is a sign. There might yet be a way of halting the doom that comes for you.

  Your carriage travels through the twisting streets of Everyth, heading for Rissilant, the manor house that is the home of Thevena Pasala. The journey is frustratingly slow. You have to fight down the illusion that you would get there faster on foot.

  Everyth is built on a hillside, its streets not carved out of the rock, but following the natural ridges of the slope. As if in exchange, the ridges are plentiful and level, the hill inviting the presence of a city. Everyth bears the scars of the Age of Chaos, but some of its former beauty has returned. Everyth withstood the long night that preceded the coming of the Stormcast Eternals. Long besieged, it never fell, and it has grown strong again in the new age.

  You are part of the reason why this has happened. You are one of Everyth’s saviours. Yet you feel no sense of pride. You feel only guilt. You made a decision, once. It was the correct one. It is the one for which you are desperate to be forgiven. And maybe, today, forgiveness will be yours.

  You were not on the ramparts of Everyth when the forces of Sigmar and the hope they brought struck like a cleansing storm in this region of Ghyran. You were at Grenholm Keep, two leagues distant from the city, crowning a lower, rocky promontory overlooking the Allasha river. Grenholm Keep blocked the advance of the Ruinous Powers to Everyth. The siege it withstood went on so long, it seemed to you and your comrades that it was truly eternal. But then the Hallowed Knights marched into Ghyran. The people of Everyth and its environs rallied together into a new army.

  This is when you made your decision. You have relived it ten thousand times since that day, and you do again with renewed pain now. Your pulse beats harder as you draw near to Rissilant. This is not fear that shakes you. The spectres at your heels leave no room for you to fear anything but them. If not fear, then this is anxiety compounded of hope and shame.

  The choice you faced was simple in its alternatives, complex in its costs. You could continue to defend Grenholm Keep, but its strength was expended. Its fall could not be long in coming.

  (You insist on telling yourself this even now.)

  Or you could abandon Grenholm to the inevitable, and join what would become the Freeguild of Everyth and fight to save the city.

  Your comrades refused to abandon their posts. You were swept up in the great fervour for Sigmar. You fought for Everyth, and Everyth prevailed.

  And Grenholm Keep fell.

  Thevena Pasala was your oldest friend. You would have died for each other. Yet you left her with all the others
in Grenholm Keep. When the daemons of the Plague God, Nurgle, were finally thrown back, and the shambling, festering horrors were purged from the guttering ruins of the keep, Thevena was one of the few mortals to emerge from the rubble. Even with your blood burning with the flames of victory and of faith, you could not bring yourself to face Thevena. You did not speak to her then, nor on any occasion since. You knew what she and the few other survivors would think of you.

  Even when you became a witch hunter, and your name was spoken in whispers across Everyth, you did not seek her out. How could she forgive you? Had positions been reversed, you would not have forgiven her.

  Today, though, something has changed. Something is different. Miracles are possible today.

  Thevena is waiting on the steps of Rissilant when your carriage arrives. You alight, and she descends the stairs with her arms reaching forward. You hurry to her, and you embrace. You do not care who witnesses this unguarded display of emotion in the fearsome witch hunter. There is no time for dissembling and a denial of what you feel. The warmth of her welcome is more than you ever dared to hope for. It is more than you deserve, and you tell her so a short while later, when the two of you are sitting in the withdrawing chamber on the second floor of Rissilant.

  ‘We faced hard choices in the end, at Grenholm,’ Thevena says gently. ‘You did what you thought was right.’

  ‘Do you think it was?’

  She laughs. ‘How can I judge a witch hunter?’

  ‘I’m asking you to.’ Your voice has dropped to a murmur.

  She sees that you are serious, and that you put much stock in her answer. The seconds pass while she thinks. At last, she says, ‘I know what I felt on that day.’

  You wince.

  ‘But I survived,’ she adds quickly. ‘And look.’ She waves a hand to take in the chamber. ‘I have done better than survive. I am thriving.’ It is true. Over the years, she has become one of the most prosperous merchants in Everyth. She and you were born under the tyranny of the Ruinous Powers. You never knew anything except the privations of struggle and war. She has become wealthy. She could not be what she is now if there were no longer an Everyth. ‘If there had not been a rush to defend the city, perhaps it and the keep would have fallen. Maybe you saved me by abandoning me.’

  She smiles, but you cannot.

  ‘I cannot judge,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

  Can you forgive? you want to ask. The dread of no holds your tongue. Thevena’s equivocation makes you question the full depth of her welcome. Even with her wealth and position, she can no more cross a witch hunter than can Kolth.

  There are so many things you wish you could say. Don’t be afraid of me. I’m Bered. Just Bered. If I could change what happened at Grenholm Keep, I would, but I can’t, and I need you to understand I did what had to be done. You believe that. You must. Don’t you?

  Instead, you say, ‘Why did you send for me?’

  ‘Because I have evidence of a cult devoted to Chaos at work in the city.’

  ‘Show me.’ You are on safe ground. You can speak with authority again.

  Thevena rises and pulls a chest across the floor to where the two of you are seated before her ivy-covered balcony. She lifts the lid and reveals a jumble of food cases and the bottoms of barrels.

  The reason for her concern is obvious. Dark runes have been burned into the surface of every object in the chest.

  ‘This is all from one shipment,’ she says. ‘We had an entire caravan of provisions prepared for the journey east, towards Mhurghast.’ The plague daemons have been pushed back many leagues in that direction. Thevena does much to supply the efforts of Everyth’s Freeguild to purge the spawn of plagues from Ghyran altogether. What she has found in here is serious.

  ‘And the provisions?’ you ask.

  ‘Tainted. Turned to poison. I would never have known if a barrel had not fallen from a wagon and broken. When we saw what was inside, we checked the rest. We might have killed hundreds...’

  ‘Who is your cooper?’

  There will be no further talk of forgiveness or the past. You will do what your calling demands of you, and cling to the hope that forgiveness does lie down this path, and with it escape from the screaming dead.

  You reach the cooper’s not long after work for the day has begun. It is a warehouse and workshop combined. This a prosperous enterprise, but Thevena has warned you that she suspects the owner, Aran Folkene, has ties to dubious elements in Everyth. His buildings are at the edge of the artisan quarter of the city, and its back looks out upon the narrower, darker alleys that twist through areas heavily damaged during the wars. Fire has swept through this part of the city more than once, and much of it still lies in ruins. The people who live here do not have the means to rebuild, and few in the rest of Everyth have the interest or the will.

  You enter the warehouse from the rear doors. Silence falls as if cast by your shadow. The workers stop in mid-task, their faces stricken by the sight of your dark cloak and wide, feathered hat. You stand in the doorway, waiting, letting the simple threat of your presence do its work.

  You have done this so many times before. You are good at it. Today, you can barely concentrate. The night is still a fresh memory. The phantoms were so close.

  It is only morning, but the night to come is rushing for you, the hours flowing away like water.

  Whispers spread through the warehouse, and it is only a short time before Aran Folkene trots across the floor to you, his hands clasped in obsequious modesty, his head bowed.

  ‘Witch Hunter Davan,’ he says, ‘you honour us. How can I be of service?’

  You stroll past him, towards a row of completed barrels. You raise the lids one by one. ‘I have seen containers bearing the marks of Chaos. Containers supplied by you.’

  He turns pale.

  ‘There must be some mistake. We are loyal servants of Sigmar, all of us.’

  ‘That would be reassuring,’ you say, ‘if I believed you.’ You look back at the entrance, and the blackened ruins beyond.

  ‘I do not judge my workers by their origins,’ Aran says quietly.

  ‘Perhaps you should.’ You turn back to the barrels. You have seen no runes yet, but your work has just begun.

  You raise your voice, addressing everyone in the warehouse. ‘You will leave this space. You will wait for me in the front of the shop. All of you. Wait, and be ready to answer my questions.’

  ‘Witch hunter...’ Aran begins.

  ‘You too.’

  You stare at him until he complies.

  Once you are alone, you move quickly through the rows of barrels and crates, torch in hand, prying open lids at random. You find nothing. It is possible that no tainted receptacles remain. This would be unfortunate. The less evidence you find, the more forceful your methods of interrogation will have to be.

  There is a pyramid of barrels against the far wall. You stop at the foot of the pile. It is constructed in steps, making it possible to climb to the top row and pull the barrels down. If there are any more of the unclean objects still in the warehouse, this would be a good place to hide them.

  You start to climb, torch still in hand. The shadows are thick here, and they waver in the light of the flame. You are three levels up when one shadow, next to the wall, detaches itself from the others and hurls itself at you.

  What chance does a mortal attacker have against you? You, who have been claimed as prey by the dead?

  You thrust the torch into the face of the assassin. He screams as his hood catches fire. Yet he does not retreat. He attacks still, already dying and maddened with pain, but driven to kill you by some greater force than his own will to live. Blind, he slashes at you, forcing you back a step. You draw your sword and drive its point through the man’s neck.

  The corpse tumbles down the barrels to the ground.

 
You descend, stamp out the flames on the smouldering cloak and hood, and examine the assassin. His features are burned beyond recognition. His clothes are finely sewn, though. This was a man of means. You were too quick to make assumptions about Aran’s workforce.

  You continue your examination. The man bears no jewellery, though there are veins of ur-gold in the hilt of his sword. When you cut open his tunic, you find tattoos. You grunt twice, first with satisfaction, then with shock. You expected to find the runes of Chaos, and the slithering shapes mark this wretch as a worshipper of Slaanesh.

  You did not expect to find the sign of vines entwining a mace.

  The sign of Grenholm Keep.

  You step back from the corpse, breathing heavily. The path before you is clear, and you dread it.

  You must return to the keep.

  The night and your past are reaching out to seize you.

  Day is failing as you climb the hill towards Grenholm Keep. How can the hours have slipped away so quickly? How could it have taken you so long to prepare, and so long to travel to the keep? How could you have been so spendthrift with your waning time?

  If there are answers, they do not matter. Soon, the screams will return. Soon, you will see the host. You do not know if they will reach you this night. But they might. They are so close now.

  At least you are not alone. Thevena is at your side, armed as she has not been since the siege. Her chain mail was once a verdant green, but it was battered and bloodied so during the siege that little of its original colour remains. Thevena kept it as a memorial to the dead of the keep, and she has donned it again in their honour, and, she has explained, as a symbol against the betrayal of Grenholm’s spirit that you found marked on the assassin.

  You should not have gone back to Rissilant. You should not have told her what you found. This is not her fight. You should have made your preparations and headed out. But the dread of the night was too strong.

  You feel the cold breath of fate on your neck. You feel the end approach. And if this night is to be your last, though it fills your soul with shame to give in to such craven emotions, you could not bear the thought of disappearing into silence. You wanted someone to know where you had gone and why. So you spoke to Thevena.