Untamed realms, p.1
Untamed Realms, page 1
Other great stories from Warhammer Age of Sigmar
HAMMERS OF SIGMAR: FIRST FORGED
A novel by Richard Strachan
GODEATER’S SON
A novel by Noah Van Nguyen
THE HOLLOW KING
A Cado Ezechiar novel by John French
THE ARKANAUT’S OATH
A Drekki Flynt novel by Guy Haley
• GOTREK GURNISSON •
GHOULSLAYER
GITSLAYER
SOULSLAYER
Darius Hinks
BLIGHTSLAYER
Richard Strachan
REALMSLAYER
David Guymer
DOMINION
A novel by Darius Hinks
KRAGNOS: AVATAR OF DESTRUCTION
A novel by David Guymer
GODSBANE
A novel by Dale Lucas
THE VULTURE LORD
A novel by Richard Strachan
CONQUEST UNBOUND
Various authors
An anthology of short stories
HALLOWED GROUND
A novel by Richard Strachan
GROMBRINDAL: CHRONICLES OF THE WANDERER
An anthology by David Guymer
A DYNASTY OF MONSTERS
A novel by David Annandale
Black Library
Books | eBooks | MP3 Audiobooks
To see the full Black Library range visit
blacklibrary.com and games-workshop.com
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Warhammer Age of Sigmar
Untamed Realms
THE ORDER OF AZYR
The Interrogator
The Orphan of Pale Harbour
Shadowglass Creek
LORDS OF THE AELVES
The House of Moons
The Low Road
Soul Warden
Cauldron of Blood
The Hunter’s Quarry
DESPOILERS OF THE REALMS
Crown of Flames
Anger and Ash
The Waste, the Worm and the Witch
Boss of Bosses
OLD WHITEBEARD
The Ancestors’ Hall
About the Authors
An Extract from ‘The Hollow King’
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.
THE ORDER OF AZYR
THE INTERROGATOR
Richard Strachan
The important thing was not to panic, Gaspar told himself. They must know it was a mistake, a terrible, terrible mistake.
There was a smell in the air of blocked drains and mould, the sharp metallic hint somewhere of what he hoped wasn’t blood. He sucked another breath in, spat it out, tried to peer through the weave of the sack on his head. Breath ragged, the hood smothering his face, sweat trickling down his forehead. There was a smear of torchlight somewhere off to his left, but everything else was in shadow.
Another drip of sweat coursed down the side of his nose. His hands were chained to a table in front of him, stretched out. It felt like someone had gone out of their way to make the chair he sat on as uncomfortable as possible. There was a constant tension in the small of his back, in his hips, his shoulders.
Tentatively he cleared his throat. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ He tried to muffle a sob. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘there’s been… This isn’t right, someone’s made a mistake, I swear!’
They’d taken him as he was leaving work. Stepping out of the Scrivener’s Guild, pausing a moment to inhale the heady evening scent of Hammerhal before heading home. Then a blow to the kidney that had him seeing fire, a hood thrust over his head, another solid punch to the stomach. The world had tipped, fallen back, broken into shadow and light as the pain rummaged its way through him. He’d felt himself bundled across the pavement, the hiss and slam of a carriage door, the rush of footsteps. A jouncing, rackety journey at speed, the sound of the horse’s hooves like some mad, discordant drumbeat. Then endless flights of stairs, his arms gripped on either side. And finally darkness, and silence, and that smell in the air he hoped wasn’t blood.
‘Please!’ he cried out again. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong!’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ a cold voice said in his ear.
The hood was whipped off his head. After all that darkness, the blaze of the burning torch blinded him. He screwed his eyes shut, heard footsteps, the screech of a chair being pulled out on the other side of the table.
Slowly he opened his eyes. He was in a stone cell, perhaps no more than fifteen feet from end to end. The ceiling was low and dripped with moisture. The torch flames wrinkled weakly against the wall on his left. He could see a door of black ironoak on the other side of the cell, with a narrow metal grille set into it at head height. And between Gaspar and the door, sitting opposite him at the table, was a woman.
A wide-brimmed hat with a tall crown cast her face in shadow. She wore a dark red coat, stained with travel, a pauldron of battered armour on her right shoulder, a pair of worn black leather gloves. He could see the glint of her eyes in the shadow beneath the hat’s brim. Hard eyes. Cold as ice. There was a stack of parchment on the table in front of her.
She folded her arms. ‘Your name is Gaspar Helding,’ she said. ‘You live on the first storey of the tenement block on the corner of Threshing Place. You work as a draftsman for the Scrivener’s Guild on Selstone Avenue, copying and filing requisition documents for the High Architect’s office. Stonemasonry supplies, scaffolding orders… that kind of thing.’
‘Who are you?’ Gaspar squeaked. He cleared his throat, struggled against the chains, tried to inject some force into his voice. ‘What is this? I demand you let me go, this is, it’s… It’s an outrage, I am an innocent man! What do you want with me!’
The woman glanced without interest through the pile of documents. ‘What I want?’ she said. ‘What I want is the truth. Nothing more, nothing less.’
She took off the hat and laid it on the table between them. She had lank blonde hair, cut close at the sides and the back, a lock falling forward over her right eye. She brushed it away. There was a scar against her forehead, he saw, curving down and passing over her cheekbone. It twisted her face slightly on that side, made her seem as if she was scowling. Which, Gaspar was sure, she was most of the time anyway.
‘As for who I am,’ she said. Her eyes flicked up at him. ‘My name is Doralia ven Denst. I’m an agent of the Most Holy Order of Azyr. And you, Gaspar Helding, have found yourself in a world of trouble.’
He tried to laugh then, as if it was all some absurd joke. Some ridiculous prank that he had finally seen through.
‘The Order of Azyr!’ He tried to chuckle, but it still came out as a sob. ‘What in the name of Sigmar would a witch hunter from the Order of Azyr want with me? I’m a draftsman, a copywriter! I’m not important, I’m not…’ He looked at her, pleading. ‘I’m not anything.’
The blow seemed to come out of nowhere, she moved so fast. One moment Gaspar was sitting there with his arms stretched forward on the table, as though begging for mercy, the next there was a pinwheeling spray of white light and he was slumped against the table leg with blood pouring out of his nose.
His arms were twisted round and his legs were askew on the dirty cell floor. A great tide of pain came washing over him, cloying and thick and then sharp and searing. He retched, whimpering with shock. Bubbles of blood and spit popped on his lips. He tried to clamber up onto his knees.
The woman was behind him then. He felt her hands under his arms as she lifted him back into his seat, far stronger than he would have guessed. He winced and shuffled and sat there, still with his arms stretched out. Shuddering, the blood dripping from his nose onto the table.
He couldn’t look at her. He just shook and huffed in breath after breath, waves of burning heat and freezing cold washing over him. The pain in his nose receded to a dull, insistent ache, spreading out to grip his entire skull.
‘Let’s try again,’ the agent said into the silence. Her voice was utterly calm, as bloodless as stone. She reached for a sheet of parchment from the top of the pile and read it with as much emotion as she might recite a shopping list. ‘Two days ago you left work on Selstone Avenue and turned left, instead of right as you usually do. You walked two blocks along the avenue until you came to the Grindstone Tavern on the corner of Longwheeler Place.’
‘What?’ Gaspar managed to moan. ‘I don’t understand, so… so what if I did?’
‘You bought a tankard of Buckmaster’s Brew,’ she said, ignoring him, still reading from the parchment. ‘You sat at a table on the western edge of the common room, and when you left you turned the tankard so the handle was pointing towards the second window on the eastern side.’
‘So? So what, what does it matter?’ Gaspar cried. The blood was thick in his nose now, a congealed plug that he tried to snort out. ‘I had a tankard of ale, is that a crime?’
The witch hunter’s voice rose slightly, climbing in pitch. ‘Then, on the walk home to Threshing Place, you stopped to purchase a bag of fireberries from the market at Green Ash Square. You said to the market trader who sold you the berries that’ – she looked up at him with disgust, as if she had expected nothing less – ‘that you thought it might rain later that evening…’
His mind reeled. He couldn’t for a moment remember seeing anyone who might have been following him, let alone this awful vision with her burgundy coat, her wide-brimmed witch hunter’s hat, those cold, dead eyes.
He tried to marshal all of his faculties, to make his voice as calm and reasonable as he could. This was an agent of the Order of Azyr, not some street thug or cut-throat. Surely, if he could just make her see the truth then she would have to let him go? Surely?
‘Please, you must understand…’ he started. He fixed her with his gaze, trying to project every last thread of his sentiment towards her. ‘I have nothing but respect for the order and the dangerous work you do to keep us safe… But this is absurd, ridiculous beyond belief, it’s… Can’t you see? I left work, I went for a quick drink, I brought some fireberries… How in the name of Sigmar does something like that lead to something like this?’
He saw the blow coming this time and flinched against it, twisting his head to the side, eyes screwed shut and his shoulder up against his ear.
‘No, please! I beg you–’
Her fist caught him a solid crack against the temple. Another burst of light, a sick yawing to the side, then a rough hand around his throat dragging him back up. The fist came thudding into his ear next and made his head ring. He cried out, wailing like a baby.
‘What does it mean!’ the witch hunter shouted. She struck him again, slapping his jaw. ‘The handle of the tankard, the eastern window!’ A hand twisted his right ear until he screamed. ‘The fireberries! Rain! What does it mean!’
She grabbed his head and slammed it down hard against the table, with a crack so ear-splittingly loud Gaspar thought she must have broken his skull. He slumped to the floor, hands straining against the chains, blood pouring down his face. Every beat of his heart shivered through his weeping body. He could not breathe, could not open his eyes to look at the sheer fury that was standing above him.
‘Who were you signalling in the Grindstone Tavern?’ she said. Her voice was low now, but there was a tremble in it too, as if it were taking all of her self-control not to simply beat him to death in the middle of this miserable cell. ‘What do the fireberries mean? When is it going to rain, Gaspar? You need to tell me.’
She sat down again and adjusted her coat, pausing to push back that lank lock of hair. She looked through the documents in front of her. Gaspar’s watery sobs trickled across the room.
‘I want to tell you a story,’ she said at last.
He glanced up at her through his bloodshot eyes. She wasn’t looking at him now. She was staring at the flame of the torch, writhing there in its metal sconce against the stone wall. The drip of moisture from the ceiling, the crackle of the fire, the creak of her leather coat as she breathed. There was no other sound.
‘This was a few years back,’ she continued. ‘Maybe longer – I forget. After a while, all the years seem to blend into each other. The places too. This was back in Excelsis, in Ghur. Ever been to Ghur, Helding?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve… I’ve never even left Hammerhal,’ he stuttered.
‘Strange place. Fierce. Not somewhere you can let your guard down.’ Her mouth twisted into a tight smile. ‘Where is?’
Gaspar nodded. He had no idea where she was going with this, but anything that kept her occupied and not beating him half to death was to be wholeheartedly encouraged.
‘I was hunting rogue spells,’ she said. ‘Predatory incantations that had slipped the bonds of their masters. They can cause a lot of problems, let me tell you. Anyway, this one was bad. A dark vortex that caused uncontrollable grief and panic in anyone it touched. It had been haunting this district for weeks, appearing and reappearing at will. Folk were literally dying of sorrow whenever it came near. All their worst upsets and sadnesses, multiplied a thousand-fold…’
Her voice drifted away for a moment. Gaspar glanced at her, was shocked to see a gleam of moisture in her eye. He looked away as she flicked her gaze towards him.
‘I dealt with the spell, put it down,’ she said. ‘Nullstone bolt from my crossbow, job done. So I thought anyway. Turned out it just came back the next night. And then the night after that. Every time I put it down, it just came back. Took me a while to figure out what was going on.’
A silence opened between them. Drip of moisture, crackle of flame. The creak of her leather coat. Eventually Gaspar realised that he was expected to fill this silence.
‘What… what was going on?’ he mumbled.
‘Wasn’t a spell at all,’ she said. She leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the corner of the table. ‘It was an energy, a projection of some kind. I tracked the source down to a building in the middle of the district. An orphanage for children whose parents had been killed serving in the Freeguild. Just imagine all that grief, all that sorrow, concentrated in one place… There’s a lot of magic seeps through the streets of Excelsis. The Spear of Mallus sits there in the harbour, and everyone with the coin to spare can buy themselves a glimpse of the future. Like I said, strange place. Still, I stopped the vortex in the end. I got the job done. I always do.’
Gaspar took the hint this time. The longer she kept talking, he thought, the better it would be for him. So much harder to torture someone when you’ve had a long conversation with them, wasn’t it?
‘How did you stop it?’ he said.
The witch hunter picked up her hat from the table, sat there smoothing out the brim while she looked into the flames.
‘I had two choices,’ she said. ‘The grieving children were the source of the vortex, so I could either cure them of their grief or… I could find a more permanent solution. Sacrifice the few so the many would be safe. That kind of thing. Tough choice.’
She swung her legs down suddenly and leaned across the table, her face like it was carved out of wood.
‘But I made it all the same,’ she said. ‘And let me ask you this, Helding – do I look like the kind of person who can cheer up little grieving children?’
Gaspar shrank away from her, trying to stop the tears pricking in his eyes again.
‘Why are you telling me this?’
She tossed the hat back onto the table. ‘I need you to understand how serious this is, and what’s at stake. I need you to accept that I will get the job done – no matter what.’
