The fyreslayers looked around as sickly yellow-green light bled into the cave, seeming to congeal the very air. From deep in the tunnels there came a low, threatening rumble, followed by a crackling roar that seemed to fill the entire cavern. In it, Ratgob heard the slap of feet on stone – many feet. Shrieks and cackles echoed from the gloom, mad chants, indistinct at first, but growing clearer by the moment.
‘By the ancestors…’ The stunty glanced around. ‘What new foulness is this?’
The loonboss drew in a great, rasping breath – his last, he knew now – and grinned up at the duardin.
‘Da Bad Moon will avenge me.’
As if to echo his words, the mountain began to scream once more.
About the Author
Evan Dicken has written the short stories ‘The Path to Glory’, ‘Fangs of the Rustwood’ and ‘Shriekstone’, and the novella The Red Hours for Black Library. He has been an avid reader of Black Library novels since he found dog-eared copies of Trollslayer, Xenos and First and Only nestled in the ‘Used Fantasy/Sci-fi’ rack of his local gaming store. By day, he studies old Japanese maps and crunches data at The Ohio State University.
An extract from Gloomspite.
Tobias Kench stepped from the tavern door into the cobbled street beyond. He wiped the blood from his knuckles and took a deep breath of cool evening air.
‘That’s better,’ he sighed, rolling his shoulders. The Wayward King rose at his back. The tavern was a slab-like architectural pile that looked as though it had been carelessly discarded rather than built. Its bottleglass windows were webbed with cracks, its heavy roof slates had begun to erode, and the rain-proofing was peeling down its frontage where the landlord had been remiss in his duties of care.
Tobias wouldn’t have drunk in this dive if his life depended on it. He wouldn’t have drunk anywhere in the Pipers’ District, come to think of it. But the Wayward King was always good for working out the stresses of a bad day. It had got so that the regulars knew to get very quiet and attend their flagons of rotgut when Tobias walked in, but there was always someone who didn’t know better: docksnipes off the barges that came upriver from Hammerhal Aqsha, spending their ingots before they’d earned them; a local piper who’d scraped together enough dust to drink their resentment away in the cheapest dive in town while cursing their betters for their own misfortunes; ne’er-do-wells making sure to celebrate their latest score a safe distance from any who would place their faces. Some days it was just outsiders that he judged to be lacking in piety, or those Tobias suspected had turned from Sigmar’s light.
Tobias would never take his fists to good, God-King-fearing folk. He would have been horrified at the thought. But the Wayward King never let him down.
‘Such impious souls always stray when the daemon drink takes them,’ he muttered to himself as he readjusted his watchman’s cloak and took a moment to work the sparker of his lantern. It stubbornly failed to fire, reminding Tobias that he had meant to hand it in for repair and draw a replacement from stores. Evening was drawing in and the shadows of the volcanic mountains flowed along Draconium’s streets like ink, pooling between the city’s tall, slate-roofed buildings. ‘I am merely preempting their transgressions, reminding them that Sigmar is always watching.’
Behind him, the tavern was quiet, as it always was after he left. It would become rowdy again soon enough. They’d light the lanterns, mop up the blood and carry on as though he’d never been there. Tobias, meanwhile, would continue his watch.
Ever was the pious man’s burden thus.
Lightning blossomed high overhead, drawing Tobias’ gaze to the sky. Up there, amidst the jagged peaks and rumbling calderas of the Redspine Range, storms brewed and broke with ferocious speed. The storm’s wrath was a sign that Sigmar watched over them all, thought Tobias, as arcing bolts were drawn from the sky to strike the metal prayer rods of the shrines that dotted the mountainsides. He wondered if any pilgrims were up there now, knelt upon narrow ledges of stone, their rapturous expressions illuminated by the arc and flare of one lightning strike after another. If so, there’d be bodies to bring down by morning, those who had passed into the realm of the dead and whose charred mortal remains were no longer required.
‘Not my task,’ Tobias told himself. ‘Not for many years now.’ Pilgrim retrieval was a duty given to the watchmen fourth class, and these days Tobias was second class. He touched a fingertip to the silver clasp, inscribed with Sigmar’s hammer, which held his cloak in place and denoted his rank. A habit, ever since Iyenna had left him to the affections of what she described as his twin mistresses – his job and his religion.
As it always did, the thought of Iyenna soured Tobias’ mood. He squared his shoulders and set off down the street. His normal patrol route took him from here through the fringes of Docksflow before he doubled back west to reach the factories and workshops of Forges, before angling back uphill through the more affluent streets of High Drake and thence to the watch blockhouse atop Gallowhill. It would only be a short detour, however, to angle through the dive streets of the Slump. Tobias was sure he would find more impious souls to punish down there.
The watchman had taken only a few steps before a subtle movement caught his eye. Shadows shifted in the alleyway beside the Wayward King. Between a broken crate and a heap of burlap sacks, something moved.
