Colossal forelimbs encased in chitinous exoarmour and terminating in pincer claws snipped the struggling namarti neatly in half. Legs disappeared into a segmented, chute-like mouth. A still living, still screaming upper body, innards held inside his torso by the crushing in-pressure of the ocean floor, spun away in the whirlpool that the titan’s emergence had left in its wake. The gulchmare issued a terrified whinny. Ubraich was dimly aware of Sithilien screaming at it, rallying namarti reavers to loose and her thralls to close.

  How would it be to sit bestride such a beast? To stand upon that armoured back, heavy chains in hand? He would be as the caldai of the mythic asur, mounted on the reptilian god-beasts of the skies-that-were.

  As Teclis the Wise had always wished his children to aspire.

  He reeled his mind back from his grand visions of eolas with a tremble of effort. While he had indulged it, battle had been joined.

  Sithilien’s reavers peppered the monster with arrows that scattered harmlessly off its carapace. The lanmari-wielding thralls availed of themselves better, chipping away at the monster’s armour, though at a cost in blood. Every flex of its limbs crushed bones, knocked blades from hands, and sent muscular namarti aelves tumbling through the water. It pincered its claws menacingly, but the namarti were too agile and too wily to be drawn.

  ‘For Túrach. For Mathlann. For the pride of Anaer!’

  Sithilien aimed her voltspear, the gulchmare already hurtling forwards. The two monsters crashed together. Akhelion voltspear split crustacean-like armour and drove deep. The ancient deepmare was easily three times the gulchmare’s size but the moment of the charge sent them both spinning through the cordon of namarti. They grappled savagely as namarti were flung aside. The gulchmare raked carapace with fin-claws. The ancient fought back with chitin-bladed forelimbs. The gulchmare whipped the monster’s underbelly with its tails. It was how the embailors trained deepmares to battle leviadon, but unlike that warbeast, there was no weakness to its armour there. The ancient emitted a screaming pulse of sound that rippled out from it in a wave. Sithilien screamed as though she could not hear her own voice. Then the monster pincered through two of the gulchmare’s tails. Her mount scrabbled at the behemoth in a furious panic, breaking a fin-claw on its armour, before Sithilien, hands clapped to her ears, kicked her heels into her mount’s ribs.

  It swam away, leaving the akhelion’s voltspear sticking from the side of the titan’s head. Arrows continued to loop in as thralls swept back in to harry the monster with lanmari blades, buying their princess time to escape and regroup.

  ‘It is a defiant beast!’ Ubraich turned towards the embattled giant, kicking his legs harder for more speed. It did not occur to him that he spoke now in his own teacher’s voice. ‘Only through pain and the fear of pain can its walls be broken and its soul dominated. I cannot both cloud its wits and break its defiance. Confound its mind, my students, while I get close and aid the Lady Sithilien.’

  He heard no reply. His attention was too firmly fixed on his quarry. This would be the realisation of his dreams, the affirmation of the status he had always craved, even before he had known he craved it. The túrscolls of the entire Green Gulch and beyond would come to revere his name.

  A namarti fell diagonally into two pieces as Ubraich swam towards her, through the cloud of blood that stretched thinner and thinner between the departing halves.

  He drew back his pain-stave, and then stove it into the side of the monster’s head. Its eye splattered under his blow. Then… nothing. He stared in disbelief. The deepmare’s ancient nervous system was buried deep under an armoured shell. It was immune to the pain-stave. A panicked stream of bubbles escaped from between his lips as the monster turned towards him.

  He bashed at its snout with his stave, paddled back with both feet. At his command, debilitating waves of enervation and despair thundered from his psyche and through the alien mind of the monster. A tail looped around his ankle. He gasped in shock. It dragged him back towards the deepmare’s mouth. He sensed the disturbance in the water of the approaching pincer, struck at it as if with an asglir lance, and wedged his pain-stave into the closing claw. It withstood the monstrous pressure for a split-second before exploding. Bone fragments formed a grainy white cloud. His arm scissored off from his shoulder, sweeping through the cloud and away. He looked down.

  He screamed.

  Then he screamed again.

  A thrall hacked through the tail that held Ubraich’s ankle with his lanmari greatsword before the stump whipped into her gut. The thrall coughed up pulped organs as she drifted away.

  Irimé swam in.

  ‘Take its other eye, Irimé! Take it, and we will claim this beast together.’

  The young isharann extended a hand towards the deepmare as she swam. Power shivered through the intervening water. The master embailor was already the centre of the deepmare’s attentions, the taste of his lifeblood filling its mouth.

  It was simplicity itself to bid the predator to sink its every thought into the devouring of her former master.

  Ubraich screamed as the deepmare tore off his leg and sent him spinning into higher water. In the dimmest sense, he was aware of Irimé crashing blows against the monster’s head, Sithilien exhorting her as the akhelion princess came around for another pass at the beast.

  Embraced by the cold and the dark of oblivion, the screams of battle becoming muted, Ubraich smiled as the life poured from his wounded flesh. Like the cythai before him, like Teclis himself, he had been shown a great truth, and like those exalted antecedents, he had been blinded by it. He smiled because he understood it now, and if there was a lesson to be taken from eolas, then it was that one was never too old to learn.

  He smiled because one day Irimé would find herself usurped by her own creation too.

  About the Author

  David Guymer wrote the Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa, and for Warhammer 40,000 The Eye of Medusa, The Voice of Mars and the two The Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he wrote the audio dramas The Beasts of Cartha, Fist of Mork, Fist of Gork, Great Red and Only the Faithful. He is also the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned and the Gotrek audio drama Realmslayer. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Awards for his novel Headtaker.

  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 that 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 green 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.

  ‘Quietly, friend. Quietly. No need to speak.’

  Belloc quickly closed his mouth.

  ‘Good,’ continued the voice. ‘Good. Now, I need you to point out the berth belonging to the sky-merchant Rollo Tarn. Remember, don’t reach for the sword.’

  Tarn? Why did they want Tarn? He didn’t ship anything valuable. Just wood. Belloc’s mind spun in confusion. No one could expect him to die for wood, could they? He gestured slowly, hesitantly. The pressure of the knife was removed, and he sucked in a breath.

 

1 2 3 4 5