Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Sins of the Ancestors - I
Sins of the Ancestors - II
Sins of the Ancestors - III
Sins of the Ancestors - IV
Sins of the Ancestors - V
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
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
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Epilogue
Characters
Khazalid
About The Author
Legal
eBook license
In the elder ages when the world was young, elves and dwarfs lived in peace and prosperity. Dwarfs are great craftsmen, lords of the under deeps, artificers beyond compare. Elves are peerless mages, masters of the dragons, creatures of the sky and air. During the time of High King Snorri Whitebeard and Prince Malekith, these two great races were at the pinnacle of their strength. But such power and dominion could not last.Fell forces now gather against elves and dwarfs. Malekith, embittered by his maiming in the Flame of Asuryan, seeks to destroy them both but still darker powers are also at work. Already strained, disharmony sours relations between them until only enmity remains. Treachery is inevitable, a terrible act that can only result in one outcome... War.
The dwarf High King Gotrek Starbreaker marshals his throngs of warriors from all the holds of the Karaz Ankor, whilst the elves, under the vainglorious and arrogant Caledor II, gather their glittering hosts and fill the skies with dragons.
Mastery of the Old World is at stake, a grudge in the making that will last for millennia. Neither side will give up until the other is destroyed utterly. For in the War of Vengeance, victory will be measured only in blood.
Sins Of The Ancestors
I
Thunder rolled across the slopes of Karag Vlak, shaking the earth for miles. Fire wreathed the sky, warring with the furnace at the mountain peak that glowed hot and angry through swathes of pyroclastic cloud. Shadows lurked within that grey smog, drifting against the wind on membranous wings…
Eclipsed by the mountain, two great hosts had gathered on a blasted plain of scorched rock studded with the corpses of petrified trees. Death had changed this place. Pastureland had become a sprawling battlefield of skulls, flattened by war engines and thousands of booted feet. Air tasted like ash and the rivers were veins of smoking acid. Mordant horns and harrowing death cries supplanted the shrill of birds, the bray of elk.
In the middle of this carnage, a soaring monument of stone reached into the fiery sky. It was called the Fist of Gron, so named for its ugly, knuckled shape and reputedly after the dwarf king who had supposedly shaped it with his bare hands. Once it might have been a magnificent mountain pinnacle but some past cataclysm during the shaping of the world had reduced it to a flattened edifice. Other than the lesions of dead forest puckering the landscape, it was the only feature for miles.
And like the swell circling the eye of a maelstrom, a great battle raged around it. Thurgin Ironheart eyed the enemy charging at his throng across the hellish plain and scowled.
The dwarf was part of the second vanguard, summoned from his place at the foot of Karag Vlak where the rest of the host was encamped. He and his warriors were to fill the gap left by the throng of Karak Drazh. Thurgin had already lost sight of their shields, the sigils of the Black Hold trodden underfoot in the eagerness of the enemy to shed more blood.
‘They are swift,’ he said, drawing a nod from his nearby kinsmen. Thurgin felt the tremor of hoofbeats through his heavy black boots and iron-wrought armour. Runes of warding fashioned into the breastplate began to ignite in a chain of forge-bright flares that emblazoned the metal as the enemy neared. The fierce effigy of his dragon-faced war helm caught the flicker of fire. His short emerald cloak stirred in a foul wind rolling off the mountain. Muttering an oath to Grungni, he gripped the haft of his rune axe.
They would need an ancestor’s blessing this day.
Never before had dwarfs waged war against such a foe. All of the orcs and goblins festering beneath the world could not come close in number to the horde riding down upon them now. The cavalry were but a small part of it.
Two hundred feet away from bloodying his axe and Thurgin growled an order. Despite distance and the clamour of the battle, his words carried to every warrior in the throng.
‘Sons of Grungni, lock your shields!’
It was a resounding shout, made louder by the rune magic of his war helm, and a call to arms from which there could be no turning back.
Dwarfs do not turn back. In Khazalid, the language of the dawi, there is no word for retreat.
Across the slopes of Karag Vlak, ten thousand dwarfs of Karak Izril obeyed.
They were but the first rank.
Drums beat, horns blared. Eight more armies marched slowly into the fray. Here was where the fighting grew fiercest. Several massive regiments of infantry had already engaged farther down a long, rippling line. Thurgin’s throng were coming forwards like the end of a gate with their hinge a half-mile to their left, about to close on the cavalry charging at them.
Amidst the clash of arms, Thurgin saw the banners of Kadrin, Vlag and Eight Peaks amongst those of his own hold. Thousands of dwarfs fought hammer and axe against the enemy hordes. His heart swelled with pride at the sight, even though he knew it might be his last. Other holds joined in as the dwarfs came together as one, but it was to the standard of the High King that Thurgin’s eye was finally drawn.
Almost a mile away, standing upon the Fist of Gron, Thurgin saw him.
It was said the High King could break the stars. To witness the rune blade he wielded
