Hallowed ground, p.1
Hallowed Ground, page 1
Other great stories from Warhammer Age of Sigmar
DIRECHASM
Various authors
An anthology of short stories
THUNDERSTRIKE & OTHER STORIES
Various authors
An anthology of short stories
HARROWDEEP
Various authors
An anthology of novellas
COVENS OF BLOOD
A novel by Anna Stephens, Liane Merciel and Jamie Crisalli
DOMINION
A novel by Darius Hinks
A DYNASTY OF MONSTERS
A novel by David Annandale
CURSED CITY
A novel by C L Werner
THE END OF ENLIGHTENMENT
A novel by Richard Strachan
STORMVAULT
A novel by Andy Clark
BEASTGRAVE
A novel by C L Werner
REALM-LORDS
A novel by Dale Lucas
GHOULSLAYER
A novel by Darius Hinks
GITSLAYER
A novel by Darius Hinks
• HALLOWED KNIGHTS •
Josh Reynolds
Book One: PLAGUE GARDEN
Book Two: BLACK PYRAMID
• KHARADRON OVERLORDS •
C L Werner
Book One: OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
Book Two: PROFIT’S RUIN
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer Age of Sigmar
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Part Two
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Dominion’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
The Mortal Realms have been despoiled. Ravaged by the followers of the Chaos Gods, they stand on the brink of utter destruction.
The fortress-cities of Sigmar are islands of light in a sea of darkness. Constantly besieged, their walls are assailed by maniacal hordes and monstrous beasts. The bones of good men are littered thick outside the gates. These bulwarks of Order are embattled within as well as without, for the lure of Chaos beguiles the citizens with promises of power.
Still the champions of Order fight on. At the break of dawn, the Crusader’s Bell rings and a new expedition departs. Storm-forged knights march shoulder to shoulder with resolute militia, stoic duardin and slender aelves. Bedecked in the splendour of war, the Dawnbringer Crusades venture out to found civilisations anew. These grim pioneers take with them the fires of hope. Yet they go forth into a hellish wasteland.
Out in the wilds, hardy colonists restore order to a crumbling world. Haunted eyes scan the horizon for tyrannical reavers as they build upon the bones of ancient empires, eking out a meagre existence from cursed soil and ice-cold seas. By their valour, the fate of the Mortal Realms will be decided.
The ravening terrors that prey upon these settlers take a thousand forms. Cannibal barbarians and deranged murderers crawl from hidden lairs. Martial hosts clad in black steel march from skull-strewn castles. The savage hordes of Destruction batter the frontier towns until no stone stands atop another. In the dead of night come howling throngs of the undead, hungry to feast upon the living.
Against such foes, courage is the truest defence and the most effective weapon. It is something that Sigmar’s chosen do not lack. But they are not always strong enough to prevail, and even in victory, each new battle saps their souls a little more.
This is the time of turmoil. This is the era of war.
This is the Age of Sigmar
PROLOGUE
The sun was on its long decline as the scavenger came across the dead. Spears of light lanced down from the far horizon and stabbed into the littered plain. The afternoon drowsed into dusk, coloured by all the bold shades of Ghur: purple and scarlet, orange and gold. It would be a long night, the scavenger thought. You could never really tell in this realm; even the nights seemed possessed of their own volatile and irrepressible will. They lasted as long as they pleased.
He waited above the plain for a little while, crouched by an outcrop of rock until the light had further dimmed. Around him, tough sprigs of thorn grass wavered in the breeze. He tapped his fingers lightly against the flank of his cart and gazed down on the spread of corpses a hundred yards away. Orruks mostly, he thought. An ogor or two, perhaps. Stragglers from the great armies that had marched this way a season ago, heading to the city on the Coast of Tusks – Excelsis, proud bastion of Sigmar’s domain. Fell tales had drifted along the trade routes since then, weaving their way through the wilderness. Awful stories of slaughter and dread, mayhem and violence. The walls of the city had been breached, some said. The populace had been drowned in their own blood. The hosts of Destruction had given no quarter, and they had feasted well that night.
Kragnos…
The scavenger shivered. He had heard the rumours. Some said a god had burst forth from the mountains of Ghur, a beast fit to trample entire empires into the dust. A new god or a very old one, no one could quite say. Whether Excelsis had survived or not was hardly his business, but he doubted any mortal stronghold could have held back such violence. The ground had shuddered for days with the passing of the host, but the scavenger had not been foolish enough to try and lay eyes on it. Better to wait, he had thought. Better to skulk about in the mountains and keep your head down, emerging only when the air had ceased to tremble with rage.
Whether these orruks and ogors on the plain below him had died at their own hands or at the hands of their enemies was not the scavenger’s business either. They were a brutish, violent breed, and it would have come as no surprise if they had all torn themselves apart over some slight or insult, or just for the sheer pleasure of fighting. No matter. He only cared that they had left a goodly spread of bodies for him to pick over. Weapons, scraps of armour, trinkets – all would fetch a decent price in any of the frontier towns on the other side of the plains. Some young bloods would trade all they had for orruk teeth as well; a handful of those in your pocket and you could pretend to any maid you fancied that you had torn them from the beast’s jaw with your own hands. The scavenger chuckled to himself. There was hardly a thing in the Mortal Realms you couldn’t put a price to one way or the other, or that someone, somewhere, wouldn’t be willing to pay for.
When the dusk had deepened a little further, he dragged his cart down the dusty incline towards the dead, rolling it over the stones and thorn grass. The smell from the bodies was atrocious, but it was nothing the scavenger hadn’t experienced before. He dragged his scarf up over his mouth and nose, and hefted the tools on his belt: pliers for teeth, a bone saw to cut rings from fingers, hammer and chisel in case he was lucky enough to find any jewels embedded in shields or breastplates. He hummed mildly to himself as he got to work, ignoring the slick, mouldering flesh under his hands; the cold dead eyes that stared up in milky blindness at the spread of night, its gaudy weave of stars. Battered pauldrons, iron belt buckles, earrings and teeth – all of it went into his cart.
He had been working for perhaps an hour when he heard the footsteps. The night was still and cool now, broken only by the distant roar of the Hellspeak Mountains grinding themselves together, the hooting call of some plains-bird scurrying across the dust. But then he heard them, steady and firm, crunching across the ground ahead of him, and… something else. A shuffling, stumbling tread; a quiet, eerie moan that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
The scavenger stopped where he was, crouched by the stinking corpse of an orruk, its eyes frozen in shock at whatever blow had killed it. He gripped his shears and carefully drew his cloak around his shoulders, hoping the darkness would be enough to hide him. Damn it, he’d fight if he had to, but he muttered a prayer to Sigmar, Alarielle, Nagash and any other god he could think of all the same. Kragnos, even.
Kragnos protect me…
The footsteps came closer. The sound of that faint shuffle weaved itself around and through them, a dragging scuffle against the dirt. The scavenger raised his head and risked a glance from the shadows of his hood. There, skirting the spread of corpses, was a dark figure wrapped in a black cloak, holding an obsidian staff. He walked confidently but without haste, and at his side there moved… something.
Gods, the scavenger thought, is that… is that a child? The scavenger peered into the shadows, and as he did so the spheres above were unveiled of cloud, and the scen
‘I seek the way to Excelsis, friend,’ the figure said.
He stopped no more than twenty yards away, on the edge of the charnel ground. His voice rang out like a bell in the stillness of the night. By his side, the child – if that’s what it was – stumbled to a halt. The scavenger could see its pallid face, thin and drawn, the dark eyes under a hooded brow. The figure reached out and carefully gathered the child into the folds of his cloak.
‘Am I on the right track?’ he said.
There was no longer any point in hiding. The scavenger slowly stood, his shears still gripped in his hand. Wrenching his eyes away from the child, he said, ‘Close enough, sir. You’re maybe a week away from it, on foot, if it’s on foot you’ll be going.’
‘It is.’
The scavenger swallowed. The stranger was slight, his face veiled by the shadows. He had no weapons, as far as the scavenger could see, but in all his long years on the plains of Ghur, he didn’t think he’d ever come across someone who radiated such a feeling of danger and threat. It came off him like an aura. The very rays of the dying sun seemed to fear him.
‘I’m honour bound to say,’ the scavenger stuttered, ‘that you might not find Excelsis in quite the state you were hoping.’
‘How so?’
‘A big battle,’ he said, ‘not a season past. Terrible destruction, from what I heard. The walls thrown down, people slaughtered in the streets. Sure, it’s said the city doesn’t even stand no more.’
The smile that broke across the figure’s face was terrible. The scavenger looked away. His legs were shaking, he realised. He wanted more than anything to run, but intuition told him that to do so would only be to invite disaster.
‘I can assure you otherwise,’ the figure said. ‘The city stands, and I would go there.’ He looked around at the corpses at their feet, tangled and rotting. ‘I see you have no fear of the dead,’ he said.
‘No, lord,’ the scavenger said, wringing his hands. ‘What’s ceased to live can’t hurt no one now, can it?’
The dark figure laughed. The child at his side began to tremble, making a horrible choking sound in its throat. Its hands shook, the jaw champed open and closed. Immediately the man crouched and wrapped his arm around its shoulders, hushing it, whispering in a soft and gentle voice.
‘There now,’ he said. ‘Peace, my son, peace.’
The scavenger felt he was going to scream. No corpse he had come across, no matter how ravaged and mutilated, had ever seemed as awful as that blank-faced child trembling in its father’s arms.
When the boy had calmed down, the dark figure stood and drew his cloak tight around him.
‘To Excelsis, then,’ he said. He smiled and gave a courteous nod. The scavenger averted his eyes.
He watched them walk off into the shadows, heading deeper into the night. Eventually, all he could hear of them were those flat, patient footsteps and that shuffling tread as it broke against the dusty plains, and the further they went, the better the scavenger began to feel. It was like a cold, clammy blanket had been taken from his shoulders.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and sagged against the side of his cart.
Gods be praised, he thought as he reached for his flask. Sigmar, Alarielle, or whichever one of you kept your eye on me then, thanks be unto you for keeping me safe!
He tipped the flask to his mouth and drank deep, the firewater burning a channel of courage all the way down his chest and into his stomach. As he pushed the cork back into the bottle he glanced at the bodies at his feet, steeling himself to get back to work. He clipped the shears to his belt and unhooked the pliers, kneeling down in the dirt and tugging open the jaw of the nearest orruk. The stench of its rotten mouth was appalling, but with a lighter heart he began to prise and probe, tapping the pliers against one of the creature’s massive tusks.
It took him a moment to realise that the orruk was looking at him. They all were – each of them staring at him through the milky pupils of their cold, dead eyes.
PART ONE
INTO THE WILD
CHAPTER ONE
THE THREAD OF MEMORY
In the darkness, hands shaking, the girl hushed her breath and tried not to scream. There was a gap in front of her, a line of light to which she pressed her face. She peered through into the shadowed room beyond. The crackle of flame from elsewhere in the house, the stench of smoke, the reek of blood. On the floor lay her mother’s body, arms and legs twisted at impossible angles, her face turned away. The rent in her throat, blood pulsing onto the floorboards, the loaded crossbow at her side. She could see this. She could see everything. Her bed, the blankets tossed aside. Her dolls slumped on the sideboard. Her books. Her mother’s corpse.
She peered through the crack onto the ruin of her life.
‘Little girl…’ came the voice from deeper in the house. A woman’s voice, mocking and amused, sharp with pleasure. ‘Little girl, I can smell you… Come out, little girl, come out and play!’
Breath like a bellows now, rattling inside the darkness of the wardrobe where she had hidden herself. The girl clamped one hand over her mouth and reached with the other for the pendant around her neck. She squeezed it so tightly it broke the skin on her palm. The twin-tailed comet. Sigmar’s sign. Her mother’s final gift.
‘Sigmar protect me!’ she whispered. ‘Father, protect me.’
‘Child, don’t be so shy,’ the voice laughed. It was getting closer. The girl could hear the whisper of silk, the rustle of the woman’s gown. She could smell her corpse-scent beneath the stink of spilled blood. ‘If you’re waiting for your father to join us, then I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.’
The girl’s heart lurched in her chest. She sobbed, and the woman laughed to hear it. She was near now, very near.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ the woman said. Her voice was like red wine, like velvet. ‘He’s still alive, for now. Although, I imagine it will be a long while before he can walk again…’
The girl crouched in the darkness, tears burning in her eyes. Smoke was drifting into the room now, creeping in frills and tendrils across the floorboards. Her mother’s blood as black as oil, smouldering in the light of the aether-lamp.
‘What did you think would happen?’ the woman said. ‘For your parents to come after me like this, to try in their blundering way to hunt me down, like an animal…’ She snarled suddenly and the girl felt the blood in her veins curdle. ‘Like an animal!’
There was no way out. She would die here, die like her mother at the hands of this thing. And then her father would die, and his strong and gentle light would be taken from the world forever, snuffed out in agony and humiliation. The girl cried, no longer trying to muffle the sound. The tears burned down her face. In her hand the pendant felt like a circle of fire, but as the woman laughed, the girl felt something far beyond the pain and sorrow begin to take hold of her. Something stronger, and infinitely more powerful than grief or the love she felt for her parents. Something more fervent even than her fear of Sigmar.
The girl began to hate, and her hatred was like a cool, clear flame burning in the darkness. It was inextinguishable. Even if she died here now, the girl knew that her hatred would live on. It would never die. Even from the Underworlds it would shine out to her, like a beacon calling her home, until she had had her revenge.
She pressed her fingers to the wardrobe door, inching it open. The crossbow was on the ground at her mother’s side, the wooden bolt sharp as a dagger, anointed with holy oils and carved with the names of Sigmar’s saints. She pushed the door open another inch, and another. The woman’s voice drifted like a winter breeze, dusted with frost and ashes.
‘Oh, yes, little girl… that’s right. That’s good, I wholeheartedly approve. Don’t die like a rat in a trap, shivering in the dark. Come out into the light, little girl. Stand your ground…’ She laughed again, and the sound was like a broken bell pealing across a graveyard. ‘Come out, and embrace your mother one last time…’
The girl looked at her mother’s body, lying there as torn and twisted as a rag doll. She pushed the door open yet another inch, and as she slowly stepped out into the light of the aether-lamp, the corpse began to twitch.
