Hammerhal & Other Stories

by Various

  Admiral Thorki lunged up the ladder and charged at the Chaos butcher. His volley pistol barked, sending blasts of aetheric shot streaking at his enemy. Arcane runes flared outwards from the shield the barbarous foeman carried, each sigil surrounding one of the shots and snuffing it out entirely. The warlord’s glaive caught the upward sweep of the admiral’s immense hammer as Thorki tried to press his attack.

  ‘Thorki!’ Grokmund cried as he sprang for the ladder. But before he could help the admiral he found himself beset by an adversary of his own. A hideously mutated man suddenly appeared between himself and the ladder. Arrayed in armour seemingly moulded from molten sapphire and crushed malachite, the human stood a head taller than the duardin. An obscene growth protruded from his neck, bloated and feathered. The growth’s head rested against the smooth helm that covered that of its host.

  ‘It is the fool who would hurry his doom,’ the man declared.

  To Grokmund it seemed he heard the words not with his ears but more as though they were thrust directly into his brain.

  ‘All things come into season. Even death.’ The sorcerer raised the gnarled staff he carried. The riot of talismans and charms chained to its jewelled head clattered wildly as he harnessed their powers.

  Grokmund raised his anatomiser, thinking to spray the sorcerer with corrosive aether before he could work his magic. He was depending upon the stifling qualities of his own aether-powered equipment to at least partly impede whatever spell the warlock hurled against him. In this, however, he again underestimated the craft and cunning of the enemy. It wasn’t against the aether-khemist that the sorcerer directed his magic, but the deck beneath his feet. A coruscating spiral of crackling light spilled across the floor, undulating with a monstrous animation as it seeped into the wood and iron.

  The violent swirl of energy crackled through the planks. Before Grokmund could react, the deck under him shuddered open, gaping wide like a waiting maw. Like a plummeting stone, he was sent crashing down into the darkened hold below.

  His last view of the battle was the sorcerer and his parasite staring down at him from above.

  OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON

  by C L Werner

  Brokrin Ullissonn, a down-on-his-luck duardin captain, has a change in fortunes when he finds an untapped source of aether-gold – but is the danger that awaits him and his crew worth the prize, or are they doomed to further failure?

  Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

  An excerpt from

  Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows

  Josh Reynolds

  Somewhere in the mortal realms, the smith raised his hammer. He brought it down, striking the white-hot length of metal he held pinned against the anvil with one fire-blackened hand. He rotated it and delivered a second strike. A third, a fourth, until the smoky air of the cavernous forge resonated with the sound of raw creation.

  It was the first smithy, long forgotten save in the dreams of those who worked with iron and flame. It was a place of stone and wood and steel, at once a grand temple and a brute cave, its dimensions and shape changing with every twitch of the smoke that inundated it. It was nowhere and everywhere, existing only in the hollows of ancestral memory, or in the stories of the oldest mortal smiths. Racks of weapons such as had never been wielded by mortals gleamed in the light of the forge, their killing edges honed and impatient to perform their function. Beneath them were less murderous tools, though no less necessary.

  The smith made little distinction between them – weapons were tools, and tools were weapons. War was no less a labour than ploughing the soil, and hewing down a forest was no less a slaughter, though the victims could not, save in rare instances, scream.

  The smith was impossibly broad and powerful, for all that his shape was crooked, and bent strangely, as if succumbing to unseen pressures. His thick limbs moved with a surety of purpose that no mechanism could replicate. He wore a pair of oft-patched trousers and a battered apron, his bare arms and back glistening with sweat where it wasn’t stained with tattoo-like whorls of soot or marked with runic scars. Boots of crimson dragon-hide protected his feet, the iridescent scales glinting in the firelight, and tools of all shapes and sizes hung from the wide leather belt strapped about his waist.

  A spade-shaped beard, composed of swirling ash, and moustaches of flowing smoke covered the lower half of his lumpen features. A thick mane of fiery hair cascaded down his scalp, spilling over his shoulders and crackling against his flesh. Eyes like molten metal were fixed on his task with a calm that came only with age.

  The smith was older than the realms. A breaker of stars, and a maker of suns. He had forged weapons without number, and no two were the same – a fact he took no small amount of pride in. He was a craftsman, and he put a bit of himself into the metal, even as he hammered it into shape. This one needed a little more hammering than most. He raised it from the anvil and studied it. ‘Bit more heat,’ he murmured. His voice at its quietest was like the rumble of an avalanche.

  He shoved the length of smouldering iron into the maw of the forge. Flames crawled up his sinewy arm, and the metal twisted in his grip as it grew hot once more, but he did not flinch. The fire held no terrors for one such as him. Tongs and gloves were for lesser smiths. Besides, there was much to be seen in the fire, if you weren’t afraid of getting close. He peered into the dancing hues of red and orange, wondering what they would show him this time. Shapes began to take form, indistinct and uncertain. He stirred the embers.

  As the flames roared up anew, clawing greedily at the metal, he felt his students shy back. He chuckled. ‘What sort of smiths are afraid of a bit of fire?’

  He glanced at them, head tilted. Vague dream-shapes huddled in the smoke. Small and large, broad and gossamer-thin. Hundreds of them – duardin, human, aelf, even a few ogors – crowded the ever-shifting confines of the smithy, watching as he plied his trade. All who sought to shape metal were welcome in this forge, barring an obvious few.

  There were always some who made themselves unwelcome. Those who’d failed to learn the most important lessons, and used what he’d taught them for bitter ends. Not many, thankfully, but some. They hid from his gaze, even as they sought to emulate his skill. But he would find them eventually, and cast their works into the fire.

  The voices of his students rose in sudden warning. The smith turned, eyes narrowing in consternation. Talons of fire emerged from the forge, gripping either side of the hearth. Bestial features, composed of crackling flame and swirling ash, congealed. Teeth made from cinders gnashed in a paroxysm of fury. A molten claw caught at his arm, and his thick hide blackened at its touch. The smith grunted and jerked his arm back. The daemon lunged after him with a hot roar, its shape expanding as if to fill the smithy. Great wings of ash stretched, and a horned head emerged from within the hearth.

  ‘No,’ the smith said, simply, as his students scattered. He dropped the metal he’d been heating and caught the twisting flame shape before it could grow any larger. He had to be quick. It shrieked as he dragged it around and slammed it down onto the anvil. Burning claws gouged his bare arms and tore his apron to ribbons, as flapping wings battered against his shoulders, but the smith’s grip was unbreakable. He raised his hammer. The intruder’s eyes widened in realisation. It ­warbled a protest.

  The hammer rang down. Then again and again, flattening and ­shaping the flame into a more agreeable form. The daemon screamed in protest as its essence was reduced with every blow. All of its arrogance and malice fled, leaving behind only fear, and soon, not even that.

  The smith lifted what was left of the weakly struggling daemon. He recognised the signature on its soul-bindings as easily as if he’d carved them himself. Daemons were like any other raw material, in that they required careful shaping by their summoner to make them fit for purpose. This one had been made for strength and speed and not much else.

  ‘
Crude, always so crude,’ he said. ‘No pride in his work, that one. No artistry. I tried to teach him, but – ah well. We’ll make something of you, though, never fear. I’ve made better from worse materials, in my time.’

  So saying, he plunged the daemon into the slack tub beside the anvil. Water hissed into vapour as parts of the creature sloughed away into motes of cinder, swirling upwards to float above the anvil. What was left in the tub was only a bit of blackened iron, pitted and veined an angry crimson, the barest hint of a snarling face scraped into its surface. The smith bounced it on his palm until it cooled, and then dropped it into the pocket of his apron.

  ‘Now, I wonder what that was all about.’

  It had been some time since he had been attacked in this place, in such a way. That it had happened at all spoke of desperation on someone’s part. As if they’d hoped to prevent him from seeing something. He looked up at the cloud of floating cinders and reached to grasp a handful. He set aside his hammer and ran a thick finger through them, reading them as a mortal might read a book.

  With a grunt, he cast them back into the forge and gave the coals a stir with his hand. An indistinct image took shape in the flames. Moments later, it split into eight, these clearer – a sword, a mace, a spear… eight weapons.

  The smith frowned and stirred the coals fiercely, calling up more images. He needed to be certain of what he saw. In the flames, a woman clad in crystalline armour drew one of the eight – a howling daemon-sword – from its cage of meat, and traded thunderous blows with a Stormcast Eternal clad in bruise-coloured armour. She shattered her opponent’s runeblade, and the smith winced to see one of his most potent works so easily destroyed. He waved a hand, conjuring more pictures out of the wavering flames.

  A bloated pox-warrior, one side of his body eaten away and replaced by the thrashing shape of a monstrous kraken, wrapped slimy tendrils about the haft of a great mace, banded in runic iron, and tore it from the hands of a dying ogor. An aelf swordsman, eyes hidden beneath a cerulean blindfold, ducked beneath the sweeping bite of an obsidian axe that pulsed with volcanic hunger, and backed away from the hulking orruk who clutched it.

  Angrily, the smith swept out a hand, summoning more images. They came faster and faster, dancing about his hand like the fragments of a half-remembered dream – he saw wars yet unwaged and the deaths yet to come, and felt his temper fray. The images moved so fast that even he couldn’t keep track of them all. Frustrated, he caught those he could, holding them tight, only for them to slip between his fingers and rejoin the flames. The time had come around at last. He would need to make ready.

  He ran his wide hands through his fiery hair and growled softly. ‘Best get to work.’ He turned and fixed several of his students with a glare. ‘You there – stop skulking and find something to write with. Be quick, now!’

  His students hurried to obey. When they returned, bearing chisels and heavy tomes of stone and iron, he began to speak. ‘In the beginning, there was fire. And from fire came heat. From heat, shape. And that shape split into eight. The eight were the raw stuff of Chaos, ­hammered and sculpted to a killing edge by the sworn forgemasters of the dread Soulmaw, the chosen weaponsmiths of Khorne.’

  He paused a moment, before continuing. ‘But as the realms shuddered and the Age of Chaos gave way to the Age of Blood, the weapons known as the Eight Lamentations were thought lost.’ In the fire, scenes of death and madness played themselves out, over and over again, a cycle without end.

  Grungni, Lord of all Forges and Master-Smith, sighed.

  ‘Until now.’

  Elsewhere. Another forge, cruder than Grungni’s. A cavern, ripped open and hewn from volcanic stone by the bleeding hands of many slaves. Fire pits and cooling basins occupied the wide, flat floor. Racks decorated the uneven walls, and hackblades, wrath-hammers, weapons of all shapes and sizes, hung from them in disorganised fashion.

  At the heart of the forge, within a circle of fire pits, sat a huge anvil. And upon the anvil, a hulking figure leaned, head bowed. Sweat rolled down his muscular arms to splatter with a hiss upon the anvil. His crimson and brass armour was blackened in places, as if it had been exposed to an impossible heat. He inhaled deeply, trying to ignore the weakness that crept through him. He had infused the daemon with some of his own strength, in the hopes that it would prove a match for the Lord of all Forges. Or at least last longer than a handful of moments. He consoled himself with the thought that it was not every man who could match wills with a god and survive.

  ‘Then, I am no mere man,’ Volundr of Hesphut murmured to himself. ‘I am Forgemaster of Aqshy.’ A warrior-smith of Khorne. Skullgrinder of the Soulmaw. He had forged weapons without number, as well as the wars in which they were wielded. He had raised up thousands of heroes, and cracked the skulls of thousands more.

  But for the moment, he was simply tired.

  ‘Well?’

  The voice, cold and soft, echoed from the shadows of the forge. Volundr straightened, skull-faced helm turning towards the speaker who sat in the darkness, wrapped in concealing robes the colour of cooling ashes. Qyat of the Folded Soul, Forgemaster of Ulgu, was more smoke than fire, and his shape was seemingly without substance beneath his voluminous attire. ‘He saw,’ Volundr rumbled. ‘As I predicted, Qyat.’

  A second voice, harsh and sharp like shattering iron, intruded. ‘You seek to excuse your own failure, Skull-Cracker.’

  Volundr snorted. ‘Excuse? No. I merely explain, Wolant.’ He turned, pointing a blunt finger at the second speaker, who stood beyond the glare of the fire pits, his profusion of muscular arms crossed over his massive barrel chest.

  Wolant Sevenhand, Forgemaster of Chamon, was a brass-skinned, eight-armed abomination, clad in armour of gold. Seven of his arms ended in sinewy, fire-toughened hands. The eighth ended in the blunt shape of a hammer, strapped to a mangled wrist in an effort to correct a long-ago injury. ‘If you think you can succeed where I failed, then try your luck by all means,’ Volundr continued.

  ‘You dare–?’ Wolant growled, reaching for one of the many hammers that hung from his belt. Before he could grab it, Volundr snatched up his own from the floor and slammed it down on the anvil, filling the smithy with a hollow, booming echo. Wolant staggered, clasping his hands to the side of his head.

  Volundr pointed his hammer at the other skullgrinder. ‘Remember whose smithy you stand in, Sevenhand. I’ll not suffer your bluster here.’

  ‘I’m sure our bellicose brother meant no harm, Volundr. He is a choleric, self-important creature, as you well know, and prone to rash action.’ Qyat unfolded himself and stood. He loomed over the other two skullgrinders, a tower of lean, pale muscle, clad in black iron. ‘Even so, if he is so rude as to threaten you again, I shall lop off another of his hands.’

  ‘My thanks, brother,’ Volundr said.

  ‘Even as I will pluck out your eye, if you continue to stare at me so balefully,’ Qyat added, mildly. He spread his thin hands. ‘Respect costs men like us so little, my brothers. Why be miserly?’

  Volundr bowed his head. ‘Forgive me, brother,’ he said. Weak as he was, he was in no shape for a confrontation with a creature as deadly as the Folded Soul. Wolant was bad enough, for all that he was a brute. He set the head of his hammer down on the anvil and leaned forwards, bracing himself on the haft. ‘Wolant is right. I failed. The master-smith knows. And now he is aware that we know, as well.’

  Wolant growled. ‘If you had not failed–’

  ‘But he did, and so new stratagems must be forged in the fires of adversity.’ Qyat pressed his hands together, as if in prayer. ‘The ­Crippled God cannot be allowed to take from us that which is ours.’

  Wolant laughed. ‘Ours, Folded Soul?’ He spread his arms. ‘Mine, you mean. Perhaps yours, if I am unlucky. Or someone else entirely, for we three are not alone in our quest. Our brother forgemasters begin their own hunts. The Eight Lamentations
call to we who forged them, ready to spill blood once more.’ Seven fists shook in a gesture of challenge and defiance. ‘Only one of us may earn Khorne’s favour by recovering them. Or had you forgotten?’

  ‘None of us have forgotten,’ Volundr said. ‘We have each chosen our champions, and cast them into the realms to seek the Eight. But that does not mean we cannot work together against those outside our fraternity.’ He shook his head. ‘Grungni is not our only foe in this endeavour. Others seek the Eight as well. If we do not work together, we will–’

  Wolant clapped four of his hands together, interrupting. ‘Nonsense. The greater the obstacle, the greater the glory. I came only out of respect for the Folded Soul’s cunning. Not to join my fate to yours. My champion will acquire the Eight Lamentations for me, and the skulls of your servants as well, if they get in his way.’ He laughed again, and turned away. Volundr watched him stride towards one of the great archways that lined the cavern wall, and wondered whether he could split the other smith’s skull while his back was turned.

  Qyat chuckled softly, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Would that you could crack his thick skull on your anvil. Though I would be forced to slay you in turn, brother, should you choose to break the iron-oath in such a way.’

  Volundr grunted. The iron-oath was the only thing keeping the remaining forgemasters from each other’s throats. The truce was a tenuous thing, but it had held for three centuries. And he would not be the one to break it. He gestured dismissively. ‘It will be more satisfying to snatch victory from him. My champion is most determined.’

  ‘As is mine.’

  Volundr nodded. ‘Then may the best champion win.’ He turned his attentions to the fire pits and gestured, drawing up the cinders and sparks into the air. He stirred the smoke, casting his gaze across the mortal realms, seeking a singular ember of Aqshy’s fire. When he found it, he cast his words into the fire, knowing that they would be heard.