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  Blacktalon: When Cornered – Andy Clark

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Hammerhal & Other Stories’

  A Black Library Publication

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  Blacktalon: When Cornered

  Andy Clark

  A column of armoured wagons rumbled through dusty Chamonite wastes. Stocky duardin marched beside them, their shoulders broad, their eyes hard. They wore runic chainmail and were festooned with weapons. They watched the horizon with belligerent intensity. Squat dobkine plodded along in traces near the column’s rear, the chitin-armoured bovines hauling field artillery and wagons.

  A doughty duardin lord led the march. He was suited in magnificently crafted armour and wore a look of ferocious determination beneath his beetling black brows. He was carried atop a broad shield, its considerable weight borne without obvious discomfort by a quartet of grey-bearded champions.

  Beside him stalked Neave Blacktalon. The Knight-Zephyros was tall, even for a Stormcast Eternal, and in her sleek Sigmarite armour and sculpted helm her eyes were at the same level as the duardin lord’s.

  ‘The sorcerer has been caught, and he will pay for his crimes,’ said the duardin. His voice was a gravelly rumble so deep that Neave felt it in her chest.

  ‘For that, I am sure that Sigmar thanks you, Thane Halgrimmsson,’ she replied. Her tone was sharp steel to his grinding stone, tinged with the ghost of a tribal lilt.

  ‘You don’t, though, do you, Stormcast?’ asked the duardin.

  Neave didn’t immediately reply. She swept her eyes across the desolate lands around them. Her supernaturally keen senses drank in every detail, their acuity only slightly dulled by an omnipresent stench. The acrid stink wafted from some distance back down the line, from the caged wagon that contained the throng’s captive.

  More distantly, Neave could feel the thumping footfalls of some huge beast. Predatory, she thought, from its loping gait, but not foolish enough to assail a marching column of warriors, no matter how scarce prey might be. Where would it go after dark? How did anything survive here when the ashen people came? She heard the grumbling conversations of the duardin, her quick mind easily able to sift out any given conversation from amongst the hubbub of voices, marching feet and clanking wargear.

  Closer, she heard the steady thud of the duardin lord’s heart, read every nuance of his posture, smelled the sharp bite of his sweat. He was eager to provoke a row, she thought, all too ready to lead her into some sleight or act of disrespect that he could then pounce on as justification to deny her claim upon his captive.

  You don’t so easily snare a huntress, no matter how many times you try this, thought Neave.

  ‘Xelkyn Xerkanos has left a trail of horror and infamy behind him that stretches for thousands of miles and taints three of the Mortal Realms with its touch,’ she said, finally answering the thane’s barb. ‘He triggered uprisings in Hammerhal-Ghyra and Anvilheim. He stole the secrets of the Vault of Echoes and reduced their guardians to fleshspawn. He has insulted the dignity and authority of the God-King Sigmar time and again. I am glad that he has been run to ground at last.’

  ‘Aye, but only because he took his blade to King Halgrimm, and I made him pay for it,’ said the duardin, returning his eyes to the road ahead.

  Neave heard the unspoken accusation. She had been on Xerkanos’ trail for more than half a year by Azyrite reckoning, had fought him and his minions several times and come so close to slaying him that she could almost smell his foul blood upon her blades. She had been closing upon the sorcerer, sure this time of striking the killing blow, when the duardin had taken her quarry instead. That another had been responsible for claiming her mark rankled with Neave, but what troubled her more was that the mark still lived.

  ‘Your warriors fought hard and well,’ she said, keeping her tone neutral.

  ‘They also got there before you,’ said Halgrimmsson bluntly. ‘Neave Blacktalon. The most famed of Sigmar’s Knights-Zephyros, his arch-hunters. A warrior of the Hammers of Sigmar no less, and yet we got to your quarry before you could. I know if it were me, Stormcast, I’d feel the dishonour keen as a wound.’

  With pride like yours, I don’t doubt it, Neave almost said. Instead, she pressed her lips into a thin line behind her helm’s faceplate. She shot a glance back along the line of march to where the sorcerer’s cage-wagon rumbled along. She should have been back there guarding it, and would have been but for the necessity to once again appeal to Halgrimmsson’s better sense.

  ‘Xerkanos is caught,’ she began after a moment’s thought. ‘His cult lies slain. It will be my blades that strike the fatal blow once your courts have accounted the sorcerer’s guilt. I see no dishonour in such a victory, thane, only the rightful cooperation of those who have allied themselves to oppose the Dark Gods.’

  Halgrimmsson gave a noncommittal grunt.

  Neave had come to the battlefield in Irongrief Vale too late to swing her blades in anger, but in time to witness the duardin binding Xerkanos in runic chains and loading him into a cage-wagon for transport. The carnage of that charnel field had been hideous. The duardin had bled for their victory. Still, Neave had only had eyes for the sorcerer.

  She had explained her hunt to Halgrimmsson and claimed Xerkanos as her rightful mark by the God-King’s authority. The duardin had scoffed, telling her that his clan’s blood debt outweighed all other considerations. He had implied that, allies or not, he would not hesitate to have his surviving warriors send her back to the Heavens if she meant to stand in his way.

  Rather than tell the thane just how many of his warriors would perish if he gave that order, Neave had begun what turned out to be a wrangling and hard-fought negotiation. There, amongst the dead, the Knight-Zephyros and the duardin, the thane had agreed that Xerkanos would be dragged in chains before the ancient Grudgekeepers of Clan Halgrimm, and there be tried and sentenced for the murder of Halgrimmsson’s father, the king. However, it would be Neave who would act as Xerkanos’ appointed executioner. Thus, she would conclude her hunt successfully and Halgrimmsson would have his justice. Just as important, particularly from the perspective of the hidebound duardin, was that no bad blood would be borne between Neave’s Stormhost, the Hammers of Sigmar, and Clan Halgrimm.

  It was not an arrangement that either party had delighted in. Neave was conscious that, had he not been forced to obey certain codes of honour in front of his clansmen, Halgrimmsson would most likely have refused it point blank.

  Neave knew that Halgrimmsson was young by duardin standards. He had just lost his father in terrible circumstances and it could not have escaped him that, had Neave brought her mark down sooner, that death would have been avoided. She knew she couldn’t blame him for his resentfulness, his stubbornness. Neave glanced back down the lines again. I can’t be blamed either, she thought, for finding his stance so damned frustrating.

  And so, they had found themselves in this situation: Neave accompanying what remained of the Clan Halgrimm forces across these nameless wastes towards where the Shuddering Mountains lined the southern horizon. There lay the karak the duardin called home, a mighty fortress delved deep into the mountainside. There, Xerkanos could be put to death in a manner that would satisfy the honour of all concerned, and the matter put to rest.

  Yet Halgrimmsson kept pushing, trying to edge Neave into undermining her claim.

  ‘It will be my blades that separate the sorcerer’s filthy head from his neck, thane,’ she repeated, taking care to inject the right blend of deference and
authority into her tone.

  ‘Aye,’ replied Halgrimmsson after a pause. ‘Such was our bargain. But not until time.’

  Neave was careful not to let her frustration show. When Sigmar gave her a mark, the sense of that quarry was imprinted upon her psyche. She felt her prey like a tingle or itch that grew more pronounced the closer she came to them, like a murmur that swelled to a ringing note. Having Xerkanos so close, just a hundred yards or so to her rear, and being unable to take her axes to his neck was almost physically painful for Neave.

  She had endured worse, of course – she had been slain and Reforged eight times already in Sigmar’s service. Her impatience with the arrangement stemmed not from discomfort, but bitter experience.

  ‘Thane, I ask again, can a tribunal not be convened here, now?’ she asked. ‘You have the authority and the good cause to try and then sentence this monster right here by the roadside. You have witnesses in plentiful supply and of unimpeachable character. You would incur no dishonour from the deed.’

  Thane Halgrimmsson heard her out stolidly, as he had each time she had made this same entreaty. Then shook his head just as he had each time before.

  ‘No dishonour, Stormcast, but the whispers would start all the same,’ he said. ‘“Halgrimmsson allowed his anger to spur him into actions over-hasty”, “Halgrimmsson had his judgement clouded by the words of some Azyrite outsider”, “Halgrimmsson failed to uphold the proper traditions of his people”, “Halgrimmsson’s oath is unfulfilled, and he is not fit to be king like his father before him.”’

  After this last, he favoured her with a fierce glare, as though challenging Neave to agree with his imagined detractors.

  But Neave did not. Instead, she replied, ‘You know that every minute Xelkyn Xerkanos still lives, it is another minute that he is dangerous.’

  Halgrimmsson snorted.

  ‘He’s bound in runic chains fashioned by Borrikh Gnarlhelm himself, and being transported under armed guard by the best part of a hundred stout duardin warriors. He’s in a damned cage, Stormcast, unarmed and with his followers dead in his wake. He is no danger to us. What would prove dangerous is delaying our march long enough for night to come upon us and the ashen people to crawl from under the dunes. We don’t halt until we reach sanctuary.’

  Neave shook her head, breathed out slowly through her nostrils. If Halgrimmsson only understood what it meant to evade the pursuit of a Knight-Zephyros for so long, she thought, how diabolically devious and dangerously skilled Xerkanos had to be to achieve that feat, then perhaps the duardin would listen. She shrugged off the bleak notion that there was slim chance of that, at least until it was too late.

  ‘I understand the dangers of these lands,’ said Neave, trying again. ‘But I ask you to hear me, for our alliance’s sake. Xerkanos doesn’t need followers, or weapons. He needs only his mind and the time to plot. The longer we allow him those things, the greater the danger that he escapes.’

  ‘Just because he slipped your grasp, don’t think that means he’ll slip ours,’ said Halgrimmsson. ‘We ran him to ground first try.’

  ‘I still do not believe that was coincidence,’ said Neave. ‘He knew I was close, that I had the measure of him this time–’

  ‘So he let us catch him by staging the bloodiest battle I’ve witnessed in a century?’ interrupted Halgrimmsson. ‘He murdered my father just to draw my ire and then used me to keep him from your blades? He just happened to know precisely how matters would play out, and is even this moment manipulating all of us into effecting his escape yet again?’

  Neave remained silent. Halgrimmsson had just voiced her every concern, barring perhaps that Xerkanos had read the son’s insecurity and stubbornness in his prognostications and factored those into his scheme as well.

  ‘Hrukhni,’ swore Halgrimmsson. ‘Why would your sorcerer be so worried about one Stormcast when he was leading an army?’

  ‘He’s led armies before, thane,’ said Neave. ‘They’ve never stopped me.’ Halgrimmsson spat by way of reply.

  ‘Xerkanos perpetrated one act of malfeasance too many when he slew King Halgrimm,’ he said, his voice dangerously low. ‘He’ll pay for it by our laws and at the time of our choosing. You get to strike the killing blow that should, by rights, be mine. Be satisfied with that, Stormcast.’

  Recognising a lost cause when she saw one, Neave inclined her head slightly and slackened her pace. She allowed the king’s bearers to march on ahead as she dropped back through the column of march. Duardin flowed past in ordered blocks, clan banners flying proudly at the head of each regiment, drummers battering out a steady tattoo that kept their comrades in lockstep.

  Neave drifted to the roadside and let the duardin pass her by. She stared out to the horizon and its curling dust devils. This was a truly desolate land, one of the bleakest she could recall.

  Had it always been thus, she wondered, or had the Age of Chaos reduced some fertile paradise to this? Neave suspected the latter was true. If so, it was a stark reminder of why she fought, and what she battled to prevent.

  Her keen eyes caught the dull edges of wind-eroded ruins in the distance, and her cloak stirred in the cold breeze as she eyed them where they lurked, half buried in dunes of dust.

  ‘It is a sorrowful land,’ she murmured. ‘Good only for sorrowful things.’

  Still, the spark of civilisation had been re-lit here, Neave knew, and they were making straight for it. There was a walled town about an hour’s march ahead. Labouring under the overly optimistic title of Lightsdawn, the place had been raised by Azyrite settlers several years earlier and now acted as an outpost in this dead land. Neave had passed through Lightsdawn on her way to Irongrief Vale, had seen the underground springs and carefully husbanded crop-caverns that kept the place alive, the high walls and vast braziers that kept this land’s mysterious bogeymen at bay. She had seen its hard-eyed citizens and the copious soldiers who watched over them. Neave had seen precious little evidence of the resurgence of life in the wilds that the Sigmarite priests claimed was coming, however.

  She reflected that but for the alliance with the duardin, this town might well have choked on the dust and desolation that surrounded it or been overrun by the terrors that came at night. It was duardin fuel and ironwork that kept Lightsdawn together. That was part of the reason that Halgrimmsson had taken this road towards his distant karak; the column would stay overnight in the capacious cavern-barracks that his folk had dug out beneath Lightsdawn for just such a purpose, and would push on towards the Shuddering Mountains in the morning.

  Before then, Neave meant to have a conversation with their captive.

  Presently, Neave heard the armoured wagons rumbling up behind her. Several contained weapons and ammunition, she knew, another a complement of healers. Another was a heavy affair of iron spars and reinforced wheels with a blackened chimney protruding from its roof. That wagon housed a mobile forge presided over by Runesmith Gnarlhelm.

  Amidst them all, rattling along with a knot of heavily armoured Ironbreakers marching beside it, came the cage-wagon that held Xelkyn Xerkanos.

  Neave had been able to smell his acrid stench ever since Irongrief Vale. Now, as then, it swelled in her nostrils and coated the back of her throat until it made her want to gag. It was the reek of unfettered sorcery, of mutated flesh, squirming insects and caustic ashes.

  It was the scent of her mark.

  Neave matched pace with the cage-wagon, moving up behind it and pointedly ignoring the clanking Ironbreakers just as they ignored her. She stared in through the stout iron bars of the cage at the figure hunched within. Neave felt a violent surge of hatred swell in her breast at the sight of him. She pushed it down with an effort. This pathetic-looking pile of blue-and-yellow rags had cost her good comrades and caused grief and pain to both her and many that she cared about.

  ‘Xerkanos,’ she said, her voice cold as drawn steel. ‘
I see you, sorcerer. I see you clearly.’

  Xelkyn Xerkanos unfolded from his crouch like a mutant spider emerging from its burrow. Insectile limbs scraped together, rune-wrought fetters clanking as he moved. The sorcerer’s face was a ghastly mixture of human and dragonfly, gross mouthparts squirming in a fleshy jaw, iridescent chitin bursting in ridges through tattooed flesh. Neave saw herself reflected in the lenses of his bulbous compound eyes, each mirror image subtly different and filled with a promise of violence and horror to come.

  ‘Do you, Blacktalon?’ he asked, his warped mouth mangling his words. ‘I wonder…’

  ‘You’re going to your death, you realise?’ she asked. ‘Whatever machinations you intended, they have landed you in chains and on the road to your doom.’

  It was a crude stab, and Neave knew it, but sparring with Halgrimmsson had worn down her patience. She wanted to jog a reaction from Xerkanos. Neave’s gifts allowed her to read the slightest nuance of posture, expression and response, even in a being as cunning and unnatural as Xerkanos. If he had anything to give away, she would see it, and in her experience his greatest flaw was his sense of smug superiority.

  Sure enough, there it was, a very slight twitch of knowing amusement in the stretched muscles of his cheeks, a minute trip of his ninefold heartbeat.

  ‘If you say so, Blacktalon, then it must be so,’ he said, and his voice was like knucklebones clicking and insect wings rasping together. ‘What is the might of Tzeentch when set against the pre-eminent majesty of your God-King, after all? How might a humble servant of the Changer of the Ways contend with so formidable a gathering of my master’s foes? Surely, this time, I am doomed.’

  He sounded defeated, she thought. Miserable, even. Neave knew better.

  ‘After all the times you scried the weave of the future to evade me,’ she said. ‘After the armies of cultists you raised and the powerful secrets you stole, you were cornered and defeated by a host of duardin.’

  ‘Prognostication is imprecise,’ said Xerkanos. ‘Fate is a scattered reflection on broken waters, not an image in a mirror, clear to see.’ There was nothing false about the bitterness she heard in his voice this time.