by Warhammer
The first killer rushed in to attack the second. Their blades clashed once before the crowd finally reacted. The spectators who had come out of simple curiosity now shouted in alarm and rushed for the doors, desperate to avoid the coming storm of violence. Fury rippled out from the centre of the nave. The families of Treveign and Halorecht and their allies and vassals roared with anger and hurled themselves at one another. None were armed, for Neferata had decreed no weapons could enter the Grand Chapel on this night, but vampires did not need steel to wage war, and the dim, crimson glow of the immense chamber exploded with the sudden fires of sorcery.
Karya sank to her knees. The frenzy around her was a dull, background roar. She cradled Evered in her arms. His eyes were dull, unseeing. His mouth hung open. A trickle of his own blood dribbled past his fangs and down his chin. Karya called to him again and again, rocking the body, begging him to return. His mother’s head lay a few feet away. Its flesh had fallen to dust. All that remained was an ancient skull in a splayed nest of grey hair. Nagra had been centuries old, and time had rushed to claim its due from her corpse. Evered did not crumble. Like Karya, he was truly young. They had both been turned only a few years ago, and so he lay in his pooling blood, youth in his features, decay having to take his body in its natural time.
Karya howled. She could not hear her own voice over the rising shriek of the battles around her. The force of her screams tore at her throat. Her dream of hope was gone, and it burned on a pyre of renewed violence. Instead of two families becoming one, soon there would be none. Inside the Grand Chapel of Night’s Hunger, darkness was swelling, gorged with blood. Karya screamed. She felt as if she would go blind. There was nothing before her now, no future for anything, only an abyss of absolute darkness.
She wept until she choked on her grief and pain. She doubled over Evered’s corpse, gagging. Around the two, fighting swirled, but the combatants ignored them. Both of the assassins lay still, ripped apart by outraged family members, who now were in turn fighting for their existence. Karya regarded the struggle with the dullness of despair. She did not look up for succour from Neferata. The slaughter unfolding in the chapel deserved nothing but disgust from the queen. The jaws of apathy closed around Karya. She welcomed them. They would hold her for eternity, or until a Halorecht finished the work of the second assassin.
She believed this for several long moments until, looking up, she searched for her father’s face amongst the fray. But Vorst Treveign was not there, nor was he lying butchered on the floor.
Karya frowned. The apathy began to lose its grip on her, and she stood. She turned around slowly, searching. It was entirely possible that her father was just a few yards away and that she would not see him. She could barely make out any of the bloodied faces in the flares of sorcerous fire and crushing darkness. Yet she kept turning, compelled by an instinct and a growing terror.
Finally, she saw him. He had managed to make his way through the melee to the far wall. The struggle between the nave and the main doors was too intense to push through without being drawn into it. Between the nave and the entrance to the tower, though, the crowd was more sparse. Vorst had climbed a short flight of steps leading to the tower’s landing. He paused before an open doorway, looking at the battle in the great chamber, and then his eyes met hers. Even from this distance, through darkness slashed by magical bolts and misted with blood, Karya felt the impact of his dispassionate contempt. Then he turned his back on his family and its foes, disappearing through the doorway.
Karya pursued. She plunged through the fray, running in a straight line for the tower. She pounded over flagstones slick with gore, ducking and weaving between the struggles, flowing around them as if she were the wind. Clawed hands snatched at her, tearing at her robes and flesh. Snarling, enraged faces turned at her passing. She was too fast to be caught. She had seen the face of betrayal, and rage gave her wings.
She reached the steps and raced up them, through the doorway, and then climbed the endless spiral staircase of the tower, never slowing. There was no apathy now. Her grief was as strong as ever, pricked to an incandescent fury. Somehow, her father had brought the horror below into being. Karya’s existence had narrowed to a single goal. She would confront Vorst and demand an answer. Why? She would force the answer from him if she had to rip it from his throat with her hands. Why?
Why?
From an archway at the top of the staircase, Karya ran onto the roof of the tower and stopped short. The immense claw-spire loomed thirty feet above her, a curved dagger of a silhouette in the night. Vorst leaned on the parapet, his back to her.
‘Father,’ she croaked, her voice raw from her screams.
Vorst turned around. He folded his arms and stared at her coldly. ‘What?’ he snapped, impatient.
His anger baffled her. He glared as if somehow she were to blame for the massacre. She refused to be cowed, and marched towards him.
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why have you done this?’
Her father snorted. ‘You served your purpose,’ he said. ‘And now your utility is over. I no longer have either the need or the patience to put up with your squalling pretensions of morality.’ He took a step forward and extended his right hand. ‘Come here, daughter. Let me throw you over the parapet.’
Karya froze.
‘You will do as you are told,’ Vorst said.
Karya backed towards the door.
‘I am your father,’ Vorst said. ‘You owe your existence to me, and so you are mine to dispose of as I see fit.’ His presumption of ownership was so powerful, his betrayal so utterly cold-blooded, that these words assumed a perverse, terrible authority. ‘You will obey me,’ he said.
The monstrous words held Karya fast. She could no longer move her feet.
Vorst stepped forward, his hand crooked like a talon, reaching out to seize her. ‘I have seen your future,’ he said. ‘It lies shattered on the cobblestones below. It is time for you to join it.’
‘You are wrong.’ The words came from behind Karya. They came from a being infinitely older and of far greater authority than Vorst. He looked past Karya, his eyes blazing first in anger, and then in fear. His spell broke, and Karya rushed away. She crouched against the parapet, transfixed by the confrontation.
Neferata stood in the doorway, clad in blood and night. ‘It is your future that is shattered,’ Neferata said to Vorst. ‘Your manipulations are at an end, and so are you.’
For the space of a heartbeat, it seemed to Karya that, in his arrogance, Vorst would try to fight. Then he turned to flee, though there was nowhere to go. His eyes fell on Karya, and his face contorted with a hate so pure it burned. Karya covered her face in horror. Through her fingers, she saw him open his mouth, and she dreaded the curse he would call down upon her.
He never had the chance.
Karya was able to see what Neferata did next, because the majesty of the queen and the grace of her movement were such that they commanded witness. Yet she acted with a speed beyond lightning. She swept forward from the doorway, and in a single movement seized Vorst by the throat and lifted him high. She drew the dagger Akmet-har from the folds of her dress and slit Vorst’s neck. The gesture was so small it looked like an afterthought. Yet Vorst convulsed upon the instant. Blood flowed in a cataract down his body. With an idle gesture, as if flicking dust from a sleeve, Neferata tossed him over the parapet. The crunch of corpse on stone, when it finally came, was barely audible, though it would sound in Karya’s mind forever.
Karya advanced on trembling legs towards Neferata. She looked over the wall at the broken thing far below.
‘He did this,’ she said, as if speaking the words would help her believe them. ‘He allowed my union with Evered so that he could destroy both our families. Why? I don’t understand.’
‘Greed,’ said Neferata. ‘A hunger for power so great it bred delusions. Your father believed that if he gave
two houses and his only daughter to me as a burnt offering, this would prove his devotion, and I would reward him.’ She shook her head. ‘That is not loyalty. That is selfishness and waste. I reward neither.’ She smiled at Karya. ‘And he failed. Through you, House Treveign still stands.’
‘It does not stand,’ said Karya. ‘It kneels before you.’ She did as she said, her heart burning with gratitude and love for the queen who had saved her. Once again, Karya saw the chance of purpose in her existence, and she seized it with fervour. ‘I seek nothing now but the glory of serving you,’ she said.
Neferata smiled. ‘Then I am pleased.’
Mereneth joined Neferata on the rooftop some time later. Together, they watched the lone figure of Karya walking across the square away from the Grand Chapel.
‘The fire that fuelled her honesty is now the fuel of her devotion to me,’ Neferata said.
‘She has the makings of a good spy,’ Mereneth agreed.
‘I am confident you will make that promise flower.’
Mereneth bowed her head. ‘The battle is finished in the great chamber,’ she said.
‘Any survivors?’
‘Some. All the families involved will be greatly diminished.’
Neferata nodded in satisfaction. ‘Good.’ Vorst’s assassins, chosen by her, had done their job well. Where there had been two powerful houses of uncertain loyalty, now there was a single, weaker one that would be hers entirely.
‘I’m curious,’ said Mereneth. ‘How did you know Evered would give his life for Karya?’
‘I saw his devotion when they asked for my consent to their union. He was consumed with love for her. This made his actions utterly predictable.’
‘And it was Vorst who killed Therul?’ Mereneth asked.
‘Yes. The union of the two houses gave him the opportunity to stage this massacre.’
‘What did you tell Karya about his motives?’
‘The truth. That he believed this would earn my favour. I simply did not tell her that I encouraged him in this belief.’
Mereneth chuckled. ‘You hold her love with a dark truth.’
‘Darkness is the key, Mereneth. Look to the darkness in which your enemy operates, that shrouds a rival, that lives in the heart of a friend. Then find a deeper darkness, and use it.’ Neferata smiled, tasting the night. ‘Always seek the darkness,’ she repeated. ‘Always go deeper.’
She ran her fingers over the parapet, and savoured the feel of obsidian between bone.
About the Author
David Annandale is the author of the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the Warhammer Horror portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy range includes the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.
An extract from Rulers of the Dead.
Snow the colour of ash fell over Nulahmia. It was the grey of abandoned hopes and forgotten graves. It gathered upon rooftops like torn shrouds, their tatters sweeping onto windowsills. In the streets, mounds formed. Gazing down at them from his chambers in a corner turret of his family’s palace, Mathas Hellezan thought the mounds looked like huddled bodies. Cold death descended from the sky to blanket the city of tombs. Mathas felt trapped between the dooms of sky and land. He couldn’t breathe. He yanked at the casement and opened the windows. The wind of sepulchres keened into the room, stinging his face with the grey flakes. The cold braced him, and he filled his lungs. He choked, swallowing fragments of pain. Bent double over the sill, gasping, he heard the hammering at the palace doors. The sound shocked him back to calm. The knock was heavy, a mailed fist slamming against bronze three times.
Three reverberating booms, the tolling of a bell reaching up through the night for him. At first he was surprised he could hear the knocking from the far side of the palace. Then he realised what the summons portended, and of course he heard it. Every Hellezan heard it. The walls of the palace trembled with the impact of fate coming to call.
Mathas stood back from the window. He crossed his chamber, passed through the narrow recess into his armoury, and began to make ready. He was just donning his helm when his father appeared at the doorway.
‘It is tonight, then,’ Mathas said.
Verrick Hellezan nodded. He was pale, and his eyes were stricken.
The Culling of the Firstborn was upon them.
‘You aren’t grieving, are you, father?’ Mathas asked. ‘We knew this moment would arrive. We have been preparing for it.’ The Mortarch of Blood had cursed mortal houses of Nulahmia with the tradition centuries before.
‘Yes, I know.’ Verrick’s voice trembled with fear and the anticipation of sorrow. ‘I did not think it would be this night.’
‘Would another night make a difference?’
‘No,’ Verrick admitted.
‘She knows I am about to ascend to command of the house, father,’ said Mathas. ‘There is no hiding that from her.’ Like all other firstborns in his position, he must go to the Palace of Seven Vultures. ‘It is my time to be tested.’
‘I had hoped we might have been able to discover the nature of the test before this moment.’
Mathas smiled. ‘It is deadly. We know that much.’ The Culling was real. Most firstborn never returned, except in coffins. Their mutilated remains were presented to their families, and the biers were carried in mocking silence by a cortege of skeletons.
‘If you fall…’ Verrick began.
‘I won’t. But if I do, you will go on.’
‘Will we?’
Mathas could already see, in his father, the same despairing face he had encountered so often in the kin of the lost firstborns. ‘The Hellezans can survive,’ he said. ‘The others have.’ More or less. Weakened by the losses, some houses failed, decapitated by the death of the firstborn. But others continued to exist, diminished and humbled, taught the futility of resisting the blood queen, often even before the idea had been whispered in the halls. The grieving leaders of these houses bent their knees and bowed their heads before Neferata, entreating her that this son, or this daughter, should be a full and sufficient sacrifice.
‘But you won’t have to just survive,’ Mathas said. ‘I will return. I will return as myself,’ he emphasised, as he saw the shadow of a greater horror pass across Verrick’s eyes.
Some firstborn did not return in coffins. Shrouded by darkness, their flesh cold and pale, their eyes red with ancient, unquenchable thirst, the new vampire thralls of Neferata crossed their thresholds as destroyers.
‘You weren’t at the home of the Salveins,’ Verrick said. ‘You didn’t see what Harvath did to them. He painted the walls with their blood. And the bodies…’ When Verrick shook his head, it seemed to Mathas that he sent a tremor down his entire frame. ‘They filled the corridors, and we couldn’t count them. Such butchery. So many pieces.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, squeezing them tight against the vision of the charnel halls. ‘Harvath just stood there, the blood of his family dripping from his mouth. I don’t know if he even saw us.’
‘That won’t be me, father. You know it won’t.’
Verrick smiled sadly. No matter what Mathas said, it seemed, the old man refused to be comforted. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You might be more restrained.’
‘Like Wrentis Nalvaux?’ He had been merciless in his bloodletting, killing his family members who needed killing, turning those who would be of use, and subjugating everyone else. And so another house ha
d become Neferata’s, controlled by her will as surely as if her terrible presence resided in its chambers. ‘No,’ Mathas said. ‘I will return, and we will all rejoice. This is not the moment of doom. This is our chance to strike.’ He paused. ‘We want this,’ he said softly.
‘I know,’ Verrick said, without conviction.
Mathas clasped his father’s shoulder. Verrick had devoted himself to the struggle, and the effort of the decades had told on him. His frame had withered. His bones seemed frail under Mathas’ touch. His eyes were sunken in his sallow face.
‘You’ve done well, father. You’ve brought us this far. It is time I took up the torch. This night, I will.’ He had been in training for his entire life, waiting for this very night. He, his parents and their allies had not known when the summons would come, but they had known it was inevitable. Mathas was a firstborn, and as mercurial as the queen of Nulahmia could be, she had never spared anyone marked to take part in this ritual.
Why would she? Mathas thought. It is so useful for her.
He left his quarters and made his way through the palace. Verrick walked at his side, seeming to age with every step. The wall sconces burned brightly in the halls, casting a defiant light over the great portraits of the Hellezan line. Gold inlay on the columns and gold leaf on the ceiling gleamed, rich with the pride of a family that had carved out a wealthy life in the kingdom of death. Withstand and Prevail: that was the Hellezan motto, and Mathas believed in it. He would prove its worth and his own tonight.
His armoured boot steps echoed down the halls, the only sound in the palace, though everyone was awake. Servants clustered in doorways to watch his passage. The household seemed to be holding its collective breath. His mother, his brother and his sisters were waiting for him at the main entrance. Teyosa of House Avaranthe, his wife, stood beside them holding their infant son, Kasten.