Blacktalon: First Mark
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Backlist
Discover more stories set in the Age of Sigmar from Black Library
~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~
THE GATES OF AZYR
An Age of Sigmar novella
HALLOWED KNIGHTS: PLAGUE GARDEN
An Age of Sigmar novel
EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
An Age of Sigmar novel
OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner
NAGASH: THE UNDYING KING
Josh Reynolds
NEFERATA: MORTARCH OF BLOOD
David Annandale
SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds
CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth
THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner
SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds
LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR
Various authors
THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1
Various authors
Contains the novels The Gates of Azyr, War Storm, Ghal Maraz, Hammers of Sigmar, Wardens of the Everqueen and Black Rift
THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 2
Various authors
Contains the novels Call of Archaon, Warbeast, Fury of Gork, Bladestorm, Mortarch of Night and Lord of Undeath
~ THE REALMGATE WARS ~
WAR STORM
An Age of Sigmar anthology
GHAL MARAZ
An Age of Sigmar anthology
HAMMERS OF SIGMAR
An Age of Sigmar anthology
CALL OF ARCHAON
An Age of Sigmar anthology
WARDENS OF THE EVERQUEEN
An Age of Sigmar novel
WARBEAST
An Age of Sigmar novel
FURY OF GORK
An Age of Sigmar novel
BLADESTORM
An Age of Sigmar novel
MORTARCH OF NIGHT
An Age of Sigmar novel
LORD OF UNDEATH
An Age of Sigmar novel
~ LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~
CITY OF SECRETS
An Age of Sigmar novel
FYRESLAYERS
An Age of Sigmar novel
SKAVEN PESTILENS
An Age of Sigmar novel
BLACK RIFT
An Age of Sigmar novel
SYLVANETH
An Age of Sigmar novel
~ AUDIO DRAMAS ~
THE PRISONER OF THE BLACK SUN
Josh Reynolds
SANDS OF BLOOD
Josh Reynolds
THE LORDS OF HELSTONE
Josh Reynolds
THE BRIDGE OF SEVEN SORROWS
Josh Reynolds
THE BEASTS OF CARTHA
David Guymer
FIST OF MORK, FIST OF GORK
David Guymer
GREAT RED
David Guymer
ONLY THE FAITHFUL
David Guymer
SHADESPIRE: THE DARKNESS IN THE GLASS
Various authors
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer Age of Sigmar
Prologue
ACT I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
ACT II
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
ACT III
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Shadespire: The Mirrored City’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
From the maelstrom of a sundered world, the Eight Realms were born. The formless and the divine exploded into life.
Strange, new worlds appeared in the firmament, each one gilded with spirits, gods and men. Noblest of the gods was Sigmar. For years beyond reckoning he illuminated the realms, wreathed in light and majesty as he carved out his reign. His strength was the power of thunder. His wisdom was infinite. Mortal and immortal alike kneeled before his lofty throne. Great empires rose and, for a while, treachery was banished. Sigmar claimed the land and sky as his own and ruled over a glorious age of myth.
But cruelty is tenacious. As had been foreseen, the great alliance of gods and men tore itself apart. Myth and legend crumbled into Chaos. Darkness flooded the realms. Torture, slavery and fear replaced the glory that came before. Sigmar turned his back on the mortal kingdoms, disgusted by their fate. He fixed his gaze instead on the remains of the world he had lost long ago, brooding over its charred core, searching endlessly for a sign of hope. And then, in the dark heat of his rage, he caught a glimpse of something magnificent. He pictured a weapon born of the heavens. A beacon powerful enough to pierce the endless night. An army hewn from everything he had lost.
Sigmar set his artisans to work and for long ages they toiled, striving to harness the power of the stars. As Sigmar’s great work neared completion, he turned back to the realms and saw that the dominion of Chaos was almost complete. The hour for vengeance had come. Finally, with lightning blazing across his brow, he stepped forth to unleash his creations.
The Age of Sigmar had begun.
Prologue
Thindrael awoke to the sound of bells tolling, sharp and frantic. Their warning cry wrenched him up out of some half-remembered dream and into the cold darkness of early dawn. The aelf fought free of the furs he had slept under, grabbing for his cloak and sword belt. The tolling was incessant. It jarred through his skull and made the hairs rise on his arms.
Thindrael pulled on fur-lined boots, glad that he always slept clad in his rangers’ garb, for preparedness as much as to ward off the high mountain cold. It was standard practice amongst the Swifthawk patrols to do this; they had always to be ready for danger at a moment’s notice, for to them fell the duty of warning the enclaves of Order about impending threats.
He begrudged every second wasted. His heart thumped rapidly in his chest and his thoughts grew less fogged by the second. The stone chamber was unlit, but aelven eyes were sharp, and in the scant light that fell through the arched window, Thindrael could see that he was alone; Nestrael and Yllith were not in their beds.
He rose quickly and crossed the chamber to the window, trying to gauge what manner of threat had triggered the alarm. The bell stopped tolling as he did so, its sudden absence as jarring as its peals had been.
Snow fell thick and ghostly outside. The fortress stood at the bottom of a wide crater, rather like the maw of a volcano atop the mountain’s hollow peak. Thindrael could barely see the crater’s edge, while its ragged rim was lost to even his keen sight. He thought he could detect sounds out there, movement perhaps, or voices? There was a strange keening note in the air that was not the wind, something he felt in his teeth and behind his eyes. Thindrael frowned, concentrating, trying to place that strange noise through the muffling curtains of snow. He thought for a moment that he caught flickers of green light, there and gone amidst the snowfall, but try as he might, he couldn’t spot the phenomenon again.
‘Thindrael!’ The shout broke his concentration and made him jump.
He spun
to see Yllith in the doorway, wild-eyed with fear. ‘What is it, what’s out there?’ he asked.
Yllith shook his head in response. Only now did Thindrael see the dark stains on Yllith’s cloak, the spatters of red on his face, the sword dangling drawn and forgotten in one shaking hand.
‘Are you hurt, my love?’ he asked, hastening forward. Yllith stepped back, flinching. Thindrael stopped, now far more frightened.
‘It’s… not mine,’ said Yllith. ‘There’s dozens of them out there. They took Nestrael, tore her up like parchment in front of me.’
‘Who did? Where are Rellyth and the others?’ asked Thindrael, hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. He stared over Yllith’s shoulder, fearful of some unknown killer coming up the corridor.
‘Rellyth reached the alarm, he… It’s stopped… Oh gods of old, it’s stopped… They must have…’
Thindrael gripped Yllith and stared into his roving eyes.
‘Look at me. What is happening?’
Yllith’s pupils focused, sharpened. He steadied himself with a visible effort.
‘Khaelyen and Pellyria are making for the north perch – we must climb to the south. I don’t know what’s attacked us, Thindrael. By some glamour or sorcerous illusion, they made themselves look like aelfs but they weren’t.’ He choked, barely able to contain his overflowing emotion. ‘The night sentries are nearly all dead and those things are… There’s no time – I don’t know what it was, I don’t know how to explain it to you, just trust me. We must leave now!’
Thindrael nodded.
‘South perch, I understand. Come, we’ll take the Widder stair,’ he said. His blade whispered as he drew it from its scabbard, and the two of them dashed out into the corridor.
Highcrater Watch was not an especially large fortress; in truth, it was little more than a glorified rangers’ lodge occupying a stone tower and a clutch of small outbuildings, all nestled in a crater atop a shattered mountain peak. For three decades now, it had played host to the patrols of the Swifthawk Agents, the aelven rangers who plied the clouds in their hawk-drawn skycutters and bore messages between the cities of Order.
In all that time, Thindrael had never before had cause to be glad that the watch was a simple structure, and easily escaped from. He and Yllith ran along the cold stone corridor in the grey gloom, turning onto a winding stairway that coiled up widdershins around the tower’s outside to the south perch. There, under a covered ledge that jutted out from the broken peak, the hawks and skycutters waited.
As they ran, the keening note cut through the air. It was growing louder now, causing a strange sensation of heat to rise in Thindrael’s gut and a tingle through his skin. Motes of blue light burst across his vision. He blinked his eyes rapidly to clear them, but soon realised the lights were not some hallucination but actual sparks of blue fire drifting in the air.
‘What is that?’ he asked as they ran.
Yllith shook his head. ‘I don’t know, but it cannot be anything good. Our attackers were doing something when we fled from them. A ritual, perhaps. There was green fire in the air. I fear we don’t want to be here to feel its touch.’
The aelfs burst up through a trapdoor and onto the perch. Thindrael saw that both the perch’s greathawks, Hasha and Thiri, were already awake and alarmed. The huge birds fixed him with fierce avian glares, their beaks clacking and their plumage puffed.
‘Take Hasha,’ said Yllith. ‘You get him bridled. I’ll ready the skycutter.’
Thindrael crossed the snowy platform as swiftly as he dared, wary of ice rendered invisible beneath drifted snow. Heavy cloth awnings were strung above the perch and large braziers kept burning night and day, both for the hawks’ comfort and to stave off the worst of the weather. Still, at this frozen hour and in such poor light, Thindrael didn’t want to risk slipping over the sheer edge of the tower and plunging the hundred or so feet to the crater’s floor.
Snatching up a complex arrangement of tack and harness, the aelf began readying Hasha for flight. The greathawk stamped its taloned feet and clacked its beak in agitation, bearing Thindrael’s attentions with bad-tempered indignance.
‘I know you sense it, wing-brother, something terrible coming,’ muttered Thindrael as he worked. ‘But please, allow this of me so we might escape more swiftly.’
Finishing his task, Thindrael glanced along the length of the platform to see Yllith pushing a skycutter chariot towards him. He leaned over one side of the elegant vehicle, its construction so light he could propel it at a jog with little effort.
The shrill note suddenly redoubled in force, and the two hawks shrieked and flapped, the downdraft of their wings buffeting Thindrael and almost knocking him from his feet. Dancing motes of blue fire swirled through the air, drawing together and weaving through each other. They no longer resembled random starbursts, but purposeful swarms that left glimmering afterimages burned into the air behind them.
To his shock, Thindrael saw that Yllith’s nose was bleeding freely, as were his ears. It was then he felt a wetness beneath his own eye and dabbed at it with a fingertip that came away red.
‘What is this?’ he asked, then gasped as pain raced through his body. It felt as though his veins were on fire. His heart pounded, and each beat felt like a nail driven further into his chest.
Yllith screamed and staggered, the skycutter skidding away from him as he fell to his hands and knees. Through a red haze, Thindrael grabbed at the chariot, dragged it to him. Clumsy, he slammed the hitching gear together, barely registering the pain as his cold-numbed fingers smashed against the mechanism.
He shot a glance at Hasha, who was wide-eyed and straining at his traces, but otherwise unharmed by whatever awful spellcraft was at work.
‘Yllith!’ he gasped, then retched a spatter of bright red blood across the snow. The keening rose to an unnatural screech and winding sigils of blue fire raced through the air like swarms of insane fireflies. Thindrael staggered two steps, then felt his legs give out. He slumped against the side of the chariot, reaching towards Yllith, noting with horror that droplets of blood were squeezing out of his skin and forming delicate red strings of beads over the back of his hand.
A dozen feet away, Yllith stumbled up with a supreme effort, staggering closer. Thindrael felt sick with horror at the sight of the blood that poured from Yllith’s face. He was half-blinded by his own gory tears, yet it seemed as though the blue fire was weaving itself in webs around Yllith. Where it flowed, his love’s flesh writhed.
Yllith gave a last lurch of effort, throwing himself forward. Too late, Thindrael realised that the other aelf was not attempting to reach him, but to strike him. Yllith’s hands drove into Thindrael’s chest and pitched him backwards into the skycutter in an untidy heap.
‘Khae thelymar!’ screamed Yllith, the command that told the greathawks to leap skywards at once. Thindrael croaked a wordless denial as he felt the chariot lurch and skim across the platform, gathering speed. There came a familiar moment of weightlessness as the craft left the ground, then the skycutter was arcing away into the falling snow.
Thindrael got one hand over the railing, hauling himself up so that he could stare back with bloodied eyes towards the fortress below. He could see nothing but the south perch, seeming to float like an island on a white ocean. It was engulfed in dancing blue and green flame that ate away at everything around it. Vicious green light spilled up from below, underlighting the scene in a hellish fashion. The awnings were curling like parchment and melting away. The braziers were shuddering. The stone itself seemed to burn, while Yllith was barely visible, lying motionless in a spreading crimson slick. Only Thiri seemed untouched, shrieking and flapping at her perch until her bindings snapped and she leapt into the air and away.
The torturous sound receded as the skycutter climbed rapidly, until the outpost vanished altogether. Thindrael slumped back, true tears joining the crimson
sludge still squeezing from his eyes. He shook his head slowly, shock setting in and causing him to shudder with more than just cold. As Hasha bore the chariot higher and higher into the heavens, Thindrael felt consciousness leave him again, welcoming the black oblivion that waited beyond.
ACT I
Chapter One
Far to the north of the city of Hammerhal Aqsha, amidst the thick, sulphur-fed groves of the Heironyme Jungle, a village stood in ruins. If the place had ever had a name it was gone now, buried beneath the drifts of blackened fronds and sulphurous dust that were slowly reclaiming its buildings.
The bloated jungle moon loomed over a clearing that contained a few dozen crumbling structures. They stood within a rotting palisade wall, just enough buildings to raise the ghosts of streets between them and lend the town an impression of civilisation, of imposed order. Yet the fields outside the walls were overgrown by anyoi trees and strangler’s twist, while the gaping hole in the village wall, and the hacked bones strewn amidst the ruins, put the lie to any notion that this tiny corner of Aqshy had been tamed.
Crouched amidst the jungle’s fringe, Neave Blacktalon studied the settlement intently. The nameless village and all its hopeful, pious settlers were long dead. Yet the prickle on her skin beneath her resilient suit of gilded sigmarite told her that something else had slithered in to inhabit the carcass of their butchered dream. Something that lit the night with eerie witchlight.
Neave’s senses were fully extended, alive to the slightest scent or sound, the merest vibration in the air. She reached out and felt the jungle around her, flitwings and diaphonids drifting through the canopy, treglyngs nosing between tree roots. She felt the strange movements within the slain village before her, long-limbed things stalking like wading birds, drums thumping a chaotic rhythm, unnatural beings cavorting. She sensed other movements amidst the jungle itself, but these concerned her less. Sigmar’s gift tugged at her, the siren sense of her latest mark close at hand, the quarry whose presence she would always feel, no matter how near or far, until she or they were dead.
Neave was one with the world around her, and she tasted the Chaotic taint that soured it. It gathered thick on her tongue and made her scowl with disgust and anger.