Blacktalon - When Cornered - Andy Clark

by Warhammer

  ‘This place has been consecrated with fluids unnameable on behalf of Slaanesh,’ spat Achylla. ‘Your warp magics will not work here, sorcerer. But…’ Its laugh was a tinkling cascade of sound tainted with lascivious glee, like a beautiful brook fouled by a brothel’s sewage. ‘Do you seek this?’

  Achylla smiled a hideous smile and held up a blue crystal talisman on a heavy gold chain.

  ‘You will not leave here, sorcerer,’ said the mutant, its leer widening until Neave thought its head must surely split in two. ‘Now, my beautiful brood, come and claim him. Keep the huntress alive. Her stormflesh will make for an amusing diversion before the ritual.’

  Neave’s eyes narrowed at the mutant’s casual tone.

  ‘Try to take me, you lumpen freak,’ she snarled. ‘It will be your last and greatest mistake.’ Behind her, Neave heard the scrabbling claws, the panting breath and pounding feet of Achylla’s mutants surging in through the temple’s broken doors. To her left, Xerkanos slumped as though stunned by the mutant’s sonic assault. Directly ahead, Achylla’s throat sacs puffed and bulged as they sucked in vast quantities of air. Achylla reared back, spreading its arms wide with a look of glee in its eyes as it prepared to unleash another crippling scream.

  If that happened, Neave knew she would be helpless to stop the cultists from overrunning her.

  Lightning fast, she spun in a circle and hurled her axes. Even as they left her hands, she was accelerating, following her whirlwind blades as they sailed across the temple in a lethal trajectory. At the last instant, Achylla managed to turn partly aside, the mutant’s reactions unnaturally swift. Still Neave’s axes hit Achylla’s throat sacs and burst them with awful splatting sounds. Neave surged through the atomised spray of flesh and gore to drive a thunderous uppercut into the mutant’s distended jaw. Bone cracked, and blood sprayed as Achylla’s jaw separators tore through suddenly displaced flesh. A mouth that had spent years wired open crunched shut with a wet snap.

  The mutant lost its balance and toppled backwards off the corpse mound, limbs flailing. Gold flashed in the air as it fell. Neave followed, riding the huge body down the carrion slope and driving her armoured heels into its bulging torso even as she ripped her axes free.

  Achylla whipped and lashed like an injured serpent, the mutant’s movements fast and violent. It let out an awful keening squeal and bucked again, throwing Neave aside to land and roll in a clatter of armour.

  The mutant was up in an instant, hate and wounded pride burning in its gaze as it scuttled at Neave on all eight limbs. With a crunch of gristle, it forced its jaws open, foot-long fangs pushing through the pink flesh of its gums. Neave hurled herself aside and Achylla’s jaws snapped shut where she had stood. Before Neave could swing a blow, one of the mutant’s muscled arms lashed out and a fist the size of her head hit her breastplate with a sound like a tolling bell.

  Neave was flung backwards into the corpse mound. She rolled back to her feet as Achylla came at her again, useless throat sacs flapping like burst balloons. The mutant tried to grab Neave with two huge hands, but she wove inside its reach and scissored her blades to lop off one of the grasping limbs at the elbow. Another blow opened the mutant’s chest in a long gash that bled ropes of clotted gore.

  Achylla fell back with a screech.

  ‘Slay her,’ it managed to croak, scrambling away as blood spewed from its wounds. A mass of mutants surged over the corpse mound and Neave spun to face them. Her axes lashed out again and again, adding more dead bodies to the heap with every passing second.

  Suddenly, she felt her mark moving.

  ‘Sigmar’s throne,’ she cursed as she realised that, beset by Achylla and its brood, she had taken her eye from her quarry for vital moments.

  Neave took three steps and launched herself into a mighty leap, sailing over the heads of the thronging mutants and landing on the other side of the corpse mound.

  She was in time to see Xerkanos snatching up the amulet where it had slithered from Achylla’s grip. His mouthparts moved as he muttered a spell of awakening and the amulet glowed fiercely. This time there was no hesitation; Neave drew back her arm and hurled an axe. It flew end over end towards Xerkanos, only to sail through his shimmering outline as sorcerous energies flared. Xerkanos’ mocking laughter echoed through the temple for a moment, then was gone.

  It was no illusion, Neave knew. Her sense of her mark became suddenly diffuse, vanishingly distant. She would be surprised if Xelkyn Xerkanos was even in the same Mortal Realm anymore.

  Her flying axe hit a mutant and bisected its face. The creature thumped to the floor in a bloody mess, the haft of the whirlwind axe jutting up from its mangled skull.

  Neave took a slow, deep breath and looked around at the massed Slaanesh worshippers closing in on all sides. Something large moved atop the corpse mound, Achylla dragging its mangled body over the heaped dead to stare at Neave with murderous hatred.

  ‘Hundreds of you left,’ said Neave, her tone almost conversational as she stalked across the temple floor and wrenched her axe from the dead mutant’s face. Its legs kicked as she dragged the blade free with a sucking squelch. ‘Only the one of me, and I’d bet Ghal-Maraz its own self that the duardin are dead to the last by now. Poor, stubborn fools.’

  ‘You are doomed,’ rasped Achylla. ‘You have affronted the Dark Prince this day. How we will make you beg for death before the end.’

  ‘You murdered a stout band of duardin loyal to the cause of the God-King,’ said Neave, her voice dangerously low. She stretched out her limbs, working out the kinks and aches of battle one at a time. Warily, the mutant throng watched her, nerving themselves to attack.

  ‘Worse, you made me lose my damned mark,’ said Neave. ‘Again.’ Her heart thumped heavily in her chest, fury and frustration causing her head to pound in time with it. It was all she could do to prevent herself from shaking with rage. ‘For that, it is you that will meet your end, Achylla. And before your hordes drag me down and send me to my Reforging, I will slaughter so many of them that your cult will be destroyed, never to rise again. This I swear upon my oath to Sigmar himself.’

  With that, Neave launched herself into a blistering charge up the flank of the corpse mound. Achylla barely had time to blink in horror before Neave’s axes bit deep into the mutant’s throat, yet even as the foul creature’s head parted company from its shoulders, it was Xerkanos that Neave was thinking of.

  The hunt wasn’t over, she thought as Achylla’s corpse toppled sideways and a howling tide of mutants closed in from all sides. In fact, it had only now truly begun…

  About the Author

  Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Kingsblade, Knightsblade and Shroud of Night, as well as the novella Crusade and the short story ‘Whiteout’. He has also written the short story ‘Gorechosen’ for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower novella Labyrinth of the Lost. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

  An extract from Hammerhal & Other Stories.

  The rat chittered, exposing yellow incisors in warning. Belloc growled and tossed his knife. The rat fled as the narrow blade thudded into the side of a mould-encrusted crate. The dock-warden cursed and ambled to retrieve his weapon. As he did so, he saw the flash of eyes in the nearby shadows. The rat wasn’t alone. They never were. Where there was one, there were a dozen – these days, at least. The sacks of grain that were stacked along the causeway of the aether-dock were irresistible to hungry vermin.

  The docks rose high over Hammerhal’s warehouse district, one ring of berths and warehouses stacked atop the next, almost all the way up its length. From each ring, an ever-spreading canopy of high-altitude berths and quays extended out over the tangled streets below, like branches stretching from a tree of immense size.

  Belloc had heard tha
t it was, in fact, just that – that much of the city had been grown rather than built. He didn’t know whether he believed that or not, though there were stranger things in this realm, to be sure.

  Hammerhal itself, for instance. The Twin-tailed City stretched across two of the eight Mortal Realms, separated by untold infinities thanks to the Stormrift Realmgate. Like all realmgates, it was a portal through which one could pass into another realm entirely. Countless numbers of these apertures in reality were scattered about the Mortal Realms, and all of the great cities were built about one or more realmgates.

  Hammerhal spread outwards from the twinned thresholds of the Stormrift Realmgate into both Ghyran, the Realm of Life, and Aqshy, the Realm of Fire. Belloc had only been to Hammerhal Aqsha once, and the experience hadn’t been a pleasant one. The air had tasted of cinders and smoke, and he’d been covered in sweat from sunup to sundown. Ghyran was better, but not by much – it was too wet here, too humid. He missed Azyr. The Celestial Realm had its problems, but at least the weather was pleasant.

  He plucked his knife free of the crate and spun it lightly between his fingers, careful not to cut himself.

  ‘Well,’ he said, glaring at the rats, ‘anything to say for yourselves?’

  When no reply was forthcoming, he kicked the mouldering crate towards them. It came apart as his boot touched it, and he yelped in disgust. Bits and pieces clattered across the ground, and the rats took the hint, scattering into the shadows.

  Belloc hopped back, scraping at the sludge on his boot with the edge of his knife. If it got into the leather, he would have to get new boots, and he’d only just managed to break these ones in. He looked around as he dislodged the last of it. There was mould everywhere, growing on every warehouse and berth that occupied the vast wooden platform of the docks. And vines. And weeds, even. It seemed inconceivable that anything should be growing this high above the city proper, but life found a way. Especially in Hammerhal Ghyra.

  This side of the bifurcated city was awash in unwelcome growth. The heat from the Fire-Bastions could only do so much; no matter how much lava was channelled into the immense stone runnels from Hammerhal Aqsha, the city’s spires and golden domes were under eternal siege from Ghyran’s excessively exuberant plant life.

  And the rats. Always the rats.

  ‘Vermin,’ Belloc muttered, thrusting his knife back into its sheath.

  That was all this job was, at times. The dock-warden scratched at his unshaven chin. He was burly, but not especially brave, even with a sword on his hip. He wasn’t ashamed. Bravery cost extra, and the owners of the docks were notoriously cheap. You got what you paid for, and they had paid for Belloc. Luckily, no one was stupid enough to climb all the way up here, just to filch grain – or worse, try and steal an airship. So it was just him and the rats.

  He wondered if Delph and the others were as bored as he was. Probably. Things were either boring or terrifying this high up, but they had drawn the short straws and been forced to patrol the uppermost ring.

  He didn’t like it up here. The Kharadron vessels smelled of strange chemicals and the vibrations of their buoyancy endrins shook the entire dock. The sky-duardin were a stand-offish folk who kept to themselves, unless they had business to attend to. He’d heard from Delph that they lived in flying cities, but didn’t know how much credence there was in that.

  Then again, Delph was a duardin herself, so perhaps she’d know, if anyone did. She said the Kharadron were duardin who had retreated to the skies when the armies of the Dark Gods had swept over the Mortal Realms. She didn’t seem to like them very much. Granted, she didn’t like anyone.

  Belloc stared at one of the Kharadron vessels. It was oddly shaped. Too many curves. The bulbous aether-endrins that held the ship aloft glowed dimly, even when at anchor. If you stared at them for too long, you got dizzy. Belloc blinked and looked away.

  There were sounds up here too, sometimes. Not the usual creaking and groaning you’d expect, but something else. Smells, too – acrid and unpleasant. Once, he thought he’d seen something watching him from the roof of a warehouse.

  Suddenly uneasy, he glanced at the unfamiliar stars above. The sky was green here, even now at night, with the faintest tinge of azure. Sometimes it was so pale it was almost white, and sometimes it was so dark as to be black, but it was always a shade of green. The stars were the worst. They were the same as in Azyr, he was certain, but somehow different, as if he were looking at them from the wrong angle.

  He blinked and tore his eyes away from the unforgiving sky. Beyond the obscuring wall of anchored airships and skycutters, Hammerhal Ghyra stretched across the horizon. It was almost beautiful from up here. Parts of the city were given over to vast groves of trees, and amongst the green he could see golden domes and white towers rising over a sea of smaller buildings.

  A constant flow of molten rock poured down through immense stone and crystal runnels that emerged from the city’s heart, where the Stormrift Realmgate was located. The glowing lines stretched like veins through the tangled streets towards the distant defensive canals which marked the outer districts. He could just make out the faint reddish glow of the Fire-Bastions on the horizon.

  Each time the city extended its borders, the Fire-Bastions were duly redirected by teams of human and duardin artisans. The engineers of the Ironweld Arsenal were capable of great feats of artifice. They bent the wisdom of two races towards devising weapons and mechanisms for the reconquest of the Mortal Realms.

  The Fire-Bastions were one such mechanism. Fed by the runnels of molten rock, they served to burn back the ­ravenous flora of the realm, keeping the outer districts of the city from being overwhelmed by fast-growing plant life.

  The hollow, ashen network of tunnels that were left behind when the Fire-Bastions were redirected were then gradually built over and hidden from sight. Belloc sometimes wondered how many of those tunnels were repurposed rather than filled in, and how many still ran beneath the winding streets of Hammer­hal Ghyra.

  ‘And probably rats in all of them,’ he muttered.

  The city was full of rats. And worse things. No one talked about it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t so. He’d left Azyrheim one step ahead of the thief-takers, but a stretch in the sky-cages didn’t seem so bad now compared to some of the things he’d seen.

  Delph and the others swore blind that the mystic wards around the city prevented anything too horrible from getting in. They said the magic kept the monsters out, but Belloc wasn’t concerned about the ones outside. He was more worried about the ones that might already be in the city somewhere. Hiding. Waiting.

  There were stories. There were always stories, even in Azyrheim. About rats that walked on two legs, and men with the heads of goats and wolf’s teeth. Belloc was no child. He knew that monsters were real, and their gods too. And he knew that nothing could keep them out for long, if they were truly of a mind to get in.

  As he gazed at the horizon, he found his eyes drawn towards the Nevergreen Mountains. He’d never seen them up close, but he’d heard about the great forest that covered their broken slopes and the things that lurked within it. Lightning flashed, arcing between the distant peaks and the night sky. He shivered. The lightning reminded him that the Stormcast Eternals had marched west, towards the mountains, two days before.

  He shivered again, thinking of those massive, silver-clad warriors as they passed through the steaming gates of the Fire-Bastions. Delph said they’d been human once, before Sigmar had blessed them with divine strength and holy armour, but what would a duardin know about such things? She didn’t even worship Sigmar. Like most duardin – at least those he knew – she worshipped Grungni, the god of her folk.

  Something clattered. Belloc froze. Then, slowly, he turned.

  It was probably a rat. It was almost certainly a rat. But sometimes it wasn’t. He’d heard stories that sometimes things crawled down out of the gr
een sky, looking for food. It was the same in Azyrheim, but it was somehow worse here. He reached for the hilt of his sword as he took a step towards where the sound had originated from – an alleyway between two warehouses.

  Belloc didn’t call for help. Delph had gotten angry the last time he’d called for help and there hadn’t been any need. He needed this job. Besides, if it was something other than a rat, calling for help would only attract its attention all the quicker.

  He took a step towards the alleyway. For a moment, he heard only the creak of rigging and the whistle of the wind blowing between the buildings. Warehouses of all sizes clustered thick here, near the edge of the ring, and they collected shadows.

  Another clatter, and a rat ran out of the alleyway, squealing.

  Belloc sighed in relief. He nearly choked on that sigh as something pounced on the rat. The rodent died instantly as four dun paws crushed it flat. A tawny, feathered skull dipped, and a hooked beak tore at its kill. Belloc took a step back. The thing turned, golden eyes fixed on him.

  ‘Gryph-hound,’ he muttered as a chill raced along his spine. The creature resembled a small lion, only with the head of a bird of prey. It was no larger than a wolf, but it was far more lethal. Its tail lashed as it crouched over its kill. He held out his hands and began to back away slowly. ‘Easy there. No harm done. Enjoy your meal.’

  It might have come off one of the airships, but there was no way to tell. Just as he was about to call out for help, he bumped into someone. An instant later, something very sharp was resting against his neck.

  ‘Hello, friend,’ said a voice. ‘No, don’t move. Especially don’t try to draw that sword you’re wearing. Things might take an unfortunate turn.’

  Belloc kept his hands from his blade. Thieves, he thought. Or worse. He made to speak, but the pressure of the blade against his throat increased slightly.