by Phil Kelly
His vision swam now, distorted and smudged. One of his arms reached forwards for the leg of the bed, hoping for some purchase so he could pull himself away, maybe twist and kick himself free. The weight upon him was too much. He noticed with horror that the flesh of that arm was blotchy and covered with sores, the skin parchment dry and blackened as if by a year-long infection.
The creature reached out a limb of its own to grab his hand and force it back. Rags obscured his vision, looping and catching on his own arms as the thing shuddered and wriggled on his back. It was still latching its teeth into the nape of his neck, and seemed to be getting heavier, or else he was getting weaker. Perhaps both. For a moment he could have sworn he saw one of its limbs, hearty and clean, with all five of its fingers grasping after his own.
The reaching digits closed on his hand, and with a vile, nerve-shredding crack, his own fingers broke and came away in a slurry of rancid blood and deliquescing flesh.
There was a shout from the hallway below, the voice broken and of anguish.
‘Xarantine! No!’
Heavy boots thumped on the stairs, coming fast and with a deadly, solid purpose. ‘Whoever you are, I’ll kill you!’
Maltratt, thank Sigmar. Seconds away from salvation. Retribution, even.
Something gave in Alabastian’s chest, his ribs cracking and his lungs emptying in an awful, shuddering sob. Though his vision was stained red and black by fatigue and the nameless fluids smeared across his eyes, he saw the creature climb off him, looping rags and bandages falling away to drape themselves over his own sore-riddled arms.
The beggar-thing was no more. Standing before him, making its way carefully through the broken glass, was a tall, statuesque youth with unblemished, milk-white skin. He felt his innards clench, smelt the foulness of his own rotting form as it turned to look down over its shoulder at him. The creature smiled, perfect teeth glinting in the half-light. Its features were all too familiar.
‘It’s in here,’ the creature called out. It was a close analogue of his voice, albeit weirdly thin and phlegm-choked. ‘I have the measure of it.’
Alabastian’s eyes widened. He grasped out for the bed leg again, pulling himself hard to shuffle and wriggle underneath it in a cloud of dust and flakes of skin. Spikes of pain pierced him, but in his fear, he barely registered them.
He was halfway under when he felt a hard, solid grip on his ankles. As Maltratt hauled him back out, slivers of broken glass shredded his belly and chest. He tried to speak, to protest, but it came out as an inhuman moan.
The changeling that had taken his form leered down at him. It hawked up a gobbet of phlegm and spat. The wad of saliva spattered on his cheek, a final indignity.
Maltratt’s blade pinned him to the floorboards, and in a final shudder of wretchedness, he died.
‘Take it outside and burn it,’ said Alabastian Valenth the Second.
About the Author
Phil Kelly is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Farsight: Crisis of Faith, the Space Marine Conquests novel War of Secrets, the Space Marine Battles novel Blades of Damocles and the novellas Farsight and Blood Oath. For Warhammer he has written the titles Sigmar’s Blood and Dreadfleet. He has also written a number of short stories. He works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham.
An extract from Dark Harvest.
When I awoke, the rain was pattering against the canvas overhead. The wagon smelled of ghyroch and gunpowder. My back ached, and my head was ringing like a duardin smithy. I could taste last night’s mistakes in the back of my mouth, and my skin had that greasy, gritty feeling that comes from too many baths in water barrels.
For a moment I looked around, wondering what had woken me. Then I realised that the wagon wasn’t moving. I cleared my throat and called out, ‘Have we stopped?’
No one answered me. Then, ‘Blackwood? That you?’
‘It’s me, Lucio,’ I said.
The drover leaned through the front flap and gave me a tepid smile. ‘I thought you’d sleep right through it.’
‘Right through what?’
‘Come up and see.’
I sat up and winced. Everything hurt, the way it always did when I slept rough, which was altogether too often for my liking, these days. Sometimes it felt as if I’d spent half my life sleeping in the backs of supply wagons or in tents. At other times, I realised that was a charitable estimate. I tried not to think about it too much.
I squinted against the gloom. There was no lantern, and for good reason. The wagon was packed to the canvas with crates and barrels full of guns and gunpowder, the primary exports of Greywater Fastness. If it belched fire or spat lead, it came from the foundries of the Fastness. Business was good, especially these days. The dead rested uneasily in their graves, and shot was more effective than prayers.
I wasn’t the only one sleeping in the back with the merchandise, though I was the only one awake. When they were off-duty, the drovers were allowed to rest in the wagons, if there was room. I made my way to the front as carefully and as quickly as I could, trying not to disturb anyone. I had enough problems as it was. The last thing I needed was an angry muleskinner trying to knife me.
I didn’t like leaving the city. Especially to go into the wilderness. I’d had enough of that to last me a lifetime. But sometimes you have to do things you don’t like. Life is like that. And then you die.
The buckboards were wet when I hauled myself out onto the front of the wagon. So was Lucio. He wore an oilskin cape and broad-brimmed hat, but neither had done him much good. He didn’t seem to mind. He offered me an apple. ‘We got us a right fine quagmire here.’ I didn’t bother to ask where ‘here’ was. I’d realised where we were as soon as I saw the gun-towers – Mere Keep. The edge of civilisation, as far as many inhabitants of Greywater Fastness were concerned; where Sigmar’s light faded, and the dark of Ghyran began.
The immense gatehouse-keep straddled the only road out of the city, its foundations set deep in the muddy ground the way only duardin stonemasons could manage. Built of heavy, black stone, dredged from the marshes centuries ago by labour gangs, it held a dozen wide portcullises within its sturdy frame. Each of these gates was closed at the moment, causing much consternation among the waiting travellers.
Above the portcullises, a long, reinforced parapet supported a battery of cannons and their crews. Greycaps, armed with handguns and fire-casters, patrolled the palisade walls and gun-towers that stretched out to either side of the gatehouse and folded back along the road leading to the city like the walls of an immense corridor.
Once, the road had been bigger and there had been others. Now there was only one thin snake of raised stone and packed earth, squeezed between two expanses of blasted heath and mire. One way in, one way out. Even that had cost a generation of blood and fire to keep, and annual sacrifices to maintain.
I rubbed the apple on my sleeve, trying to find an unbruised spot to bite. ‘So what’s going on? Why aren’t the gates open?’
Lucio shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. I just drive the wagons. Scribe made a mistake somewhere, probably. Chantey is fit to be tied.’
‘I bet.’ Chantey was the master of the caravan I was hitching a ride with. He was unhappy at the best of times. Most caravan-masters were. It wasn’t the sort of job that attracted those of cheerful disposition. ‘Where is he?’
‘He and some of the other masters went looking for somebody in charge.’ Lucio leaned over the side of the buckboard and spat. ‘Good luck to them, I say.’
‘You get paid either way, right?’ I said, and he laughed. I bit into the apple and watched as Greycaps and scribes threaded their way among the line of covered wagons that waited to depart through one or another of the portcullises. The apple had a bitter taste, like much of the fruit grown in the city’s allotments. Something wa
s wrong with the soil, but everyone pretended not to notice. Or maybe we’d all just grown used to it, like the rain.
I risked an upward glance. The sky was the colour of slate. Grey on grey. Some said the weather was proof that Sigmar had abandoned us, that he was angry with us for our crimes. Though just what those crimes were, no one really knew. Others insisted it was punishment from the Everqueen, or even Elder Bones. All I knew for sure was that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the sun, or felt anything other than damp.
‘Is it true you used to be a priest?’ Lucio asked me.
I laughed. ‘Who told you I was a priest?’
‘Just something I heard.’
‘Gossip is a sin,’ I said.
It was his turn to laugh. ‘I just thought it was funny is all.’
‘Why?’
‘On account of you breaking legs for Caspar Guno.’
I took a bite of my apple. ‘You shouldn’t say such things. You never know who might be listening.’
He had the good sense to look afraid. The truth was, I didn’t break many legs, if I could help it. A man who can’t walk can’t work. Arms were my speciality. And occasionally necks. But only rarely. Most people were only too happy to pay tithe to Caspar Guno. Those that weren’t… well. Guno employed men like me for a reason. In my learned opinion, working for him wasn’t much different to serving Sigmar.
Atop the palisade, Ironweld cannons began to boom. Lucio started in his seat, and the ghyroch pulling our wagon began to low. The great bull-like beast was covered in shaggy, moss-like hair and had a rack of branch-like horns that rose higher than the top of the wagon. Massive, stony hooves splashed mud everywhere as it stamped in growing agitation.
It wasn’t the only one doing so. Animals up and down the line of wagons began to bellow, squawk and whinny. I saw two Chamonian axe-beaks claw at the mud with their talons, their metallic feathers shimmering in the rain, and a half-grown demidroth drool acidic spittle and lash its scaly tail as its duardin rider tried to calm it.
Lucio extended his goad and scratched the ghyroch between its shoulders, soothing it. ‘There’s something on the wind,’ he said, softly. As if afraid someone might hear him.
‘Besides gunpowder?’ I said, as the stink of the volley washed back over us. Living in the Fastness, you got used to the smell quick, or your sinuses burned out. It was everywhere in the city, in every stone. It wafted across the Ghoul Mere in black banks of powder-fog, staining the trees and turning the rain to acid. Was it any wonder the sylvaneth hated us?
‘They say the treekin are on the march.’
‘Who says, Lucio?’
‘Greycaps,’ Lucio said.
‘How drunk were they?’
‘Less than me.’ He looked around. ‘Listen to that.’
I didn’t ask what he meant. I could hear it well enough – had been hearing it since I’d woken up. I’d thought it was just the rain at first, but it was the sound of trees. Of branches swaying in the rain and wind. Only there was no wind. The sound beat against the air with a constant pressure beneath the more bellicose thunder of the guns.
Maybe Lucio’s Greycaps were right. I wondered if I ought to cut my losses and go back to the city. But that wasn’t an option.
‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just a lot of noise.’
‘Doesn’t sound like nothing. I haven’t seen them this agitated since…’ He trailed off. I knew what he’d been about to say. Since the last time the treekin had decided to tear the Fastness down, stone by stone. They’d failed then, as they always failed. But we lost ground nonetheless. We always lost ground.
‘Guess I picked a bad time to leave the city.’
‘You after somebody?’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘Only reason I can think of that a man like you goes anywhere is if you’re after someone – or they’re after you.’ Lucio looked at me. ‘So which is it?’
‘Bit of both,’ I said, after a moment.
It had started with the coin. A message from a dead man. Or someone as good as.
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