Blacktalon: First Mark Read online

  ‘The forest spirits are your allies, aren’t they?’ asked Katalya.

  ‘In name at least, but you of all people know better than to trust such capricious beings.’

  ‘I never trusted them to start with.’

  ‘Then you’re wiser than I,’ breathed Neave. She still felt within herself that wordless trust of Wytha and her clan, but now it felt artificial, like something pinned to her heart, not born from within it. If she hadn’t seen the cracks in Wytha’s façade, hadn’t witnessed this apocalyptic aftermath, then Neave wasn’t sure she would have been able to make the distinction, but now she both mistrusted and yet trusted Wytha in equal measure. The two feelings clashed like storm-fronts within her chest.

  ‘It should have been us that killed the swamp king, not them,’ said Katalya, ‘but I am glad that he is dead. My tribe have some vengeance, at least.’

  ‘They would be proud of your efforts,’ said Neave.

  Katalya pulled a face. ‘They are dead, and the dead know nothing.’ Then, after an awkward pause, she added quietly, ‘But… thank you.’

  Neave rested one hand on Katalya’s shoulder. ‘You should call Ketto back. We must depart swiftly.’

  ‘He finds me, I don’t call him,’ said Katalya, frowning. ‘Ketto knows when he is needed. Meantime, you don’t want to look for survivors?’

  ‘The Shadowhammers will have been at the very centre of that catastrophe, mark my words. I’ll see them again beyond the anvils. No, the only thing that might have survived what we just witnessed is Wytha and whatever remains of her clan.’

  ‘Why would she do this?’ asked Katalya, sounding indignant. ‘You fought for her. The swamp king is dead.’

  ‘We’ve seen what her weapon can do, far better than those caught in the blast will have,’ said Neave. ‘She may not want that information spread further abroad. The Dreadwood are jealous with their secrets, and while we live freely, we are a threat to them.’

  ‘She did not seem good in here,’ said Katalya, thumping herself in the chest. ‘You think she would try to kill you?’

  ‘I defied her. I don’t think Wytha will forgive me that,’ said Neave. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her to try to seize me, imprison me, and bring me to heel again as they did in my past life.’

  ‘They could try,’ said Katalya fiercely.

  ‘They could,’ agreed Neave. ‘There would be bloodshed whichever of us prevailed. But for now, there has been enough of that. I’m going to return to Azyr and I want you to come with me.’

  Katalya blinked at her.

  ‘Why would I journey to the heavens?’ she asked. ‘The swamp king is dead now. My homelands are safer than they have been in many years.’

  ‘And yet, what is there for you here?’ asked Neave. ‘I don’t mean to be cruel but you’re the last of your people.’

  ‘Another tribe will take me in,’ said Katalya, but Neave could hear the doubt in her voice. She stared off into the jade fog banks that rolled steadily closer. Her vision was unfocused, her mind clearly lost in thought.

  ‘They might, if they don’t choose instead to strike you down and steal your things. And if they did, what if they worship the Dark Gods? Many do, even if they don’t realise it.’

  ‘I would know now. I have fought and bested the servants of Nurgle.’

  ‘Yes, you have,’ said Neave, ‘which is exactly why I feel you have more to give than simply returning to a life of hunting and surviving. I swore to protect you, Katalya, but if you return to the life of the tribes I can no longer hold to that vow. I can no longer fight at your side.’

  ‘I don’t need you to protect me.’

  ‘I don’t wish to be your protector,’ said Neave. ‘But your comrade? Your friend? That I would be in a heartbeat. If you return to Azyr I swear to you that I will find a place for you amongst the armies of reconquest. You would be able to take the fight to the Dark Gods, instead of simply running and hiding from them for the rest of your days.’

  Katalya drew breath to reply, but at that moment Neave’s eyes narrowed as a vibration passed through the air at her back, and a ghost of a feculent stench tickled her nostrils. She threw herself at Katalya and tackled her into the mire, even as a dark shape rose up through the mist. A jet of sizzling filth shot overhead, missing Neave and Katalya by less than a foot and raising steam where it splattered into the water.

  Neave came up with her axes in hand, spinning to face their attacker. Her eyes widened at the monstrous sight that greeted her.

  Mangled and broken, Lord Ungholghott’s fly-dragon reared up and beat the air with its chitinous forelimbs. Stinking smog rolled away from it, tattering apart as Ungholghott’s warding enchantment dissipated. Neave could hear the thrumming roar of the monster’s tattered wings as they tried and failed to bear it into the air.

  Lord Ungholghott leaned around his steed’s neck, eyes crazed. Both he and the fly-dragon were sorely wounded, their flesh marred with burns and weird fungal growths, and Neave surmised from the cuts and crystal shards that lacerated them that rider and steed must have been forced to burst through a window to escape Wytha’s weapon.

  ‘You,’ roared Ungholghott. ‘You brought the stump and her filthy thorns into my fastness. You have sullied my slab with your disgusting purity. You should have been my prize to dissect. You still will be!’

  ‘I’ve hunted you a long time, Lord Ungholghott,’ said Neave, gesturing at Katalya to flee. The tribesgirl ignored her, instead clashing her vambraces together in readiness.

  ‘And yet I don’t even know what manner of beast you are, you pathetic maggot,’ spat Ungholghott. ‘But I know what you will be. I require a new fortress, Stormcast, and the furnace of energy that I sense within you will be its seed.’

  Neave felt sick as she remembered the foul biological feel of Ungholghott’s fastness, the pain and madness she had sensed through its walls. She had no intention of ending her days in the grip of such a disgusting curse.

  ‘Your empire is in ruins and your armies slaughtered,’ she said. ‘The filth of your magics will wash away from this swamp and the life of Ghyran will come again to purify what remains. But you won’t live long enough to see it, Ungholghott, because I am Sigmar’s huntress and you have long been my mark.’

  ‘You are a glopsom little clot. You’ll beg for death before the end.’ Ungholghott levelled his staff and hawked up an incantation, spitting it into the air like phlegm. Filthy light leapt from his weapon and Neave hurled herself aside. She rolled up onto her feet as the swamp exploded with diseased slime behind her.

  The fly-dragon loomed over her, its hide oozing from jagged cracks, its snout splayed wide.

  Neave charged.

  The monster spat another stream of filth at her, and she leapt high, spinning in the air with her arms tucked tight to her chest. Neave spiralled over the jet of acid and came down upon the fly-dragon’s head with her axes swinging. She rained an avalanche of blows upon the monster’s face, staving in one of its compound eyes, hacking away a bloody mass of snout-flesh, and severing the disgusting tendrils of its sense-pits. She planted one foot upon the thing’s leprous muzzle and kicked hard, back-flipping away through the air and narrowly evading the swipe of the fly-dragon’s huge talons.

  The monster reared, beating its mangled wings in a frenzy of pain. Filthy sludge sprayed from its savaged face and Ungholghott roared in anger. He spat another incantation, forming its vomitous words even as he clung to the pommel of his saddle. The swamp water around Neave bubbled in sudden frenzy. Before she could leap clear, rotting limbs burst from the surface. Talons wrapped themselves around her legs and held on with unnatural strength, pinning Neave in place. Ungholghott leered madly at her and heaved in an impossibly deep breath, his chest bloating like a toad’s throat-sac until she thought he must burst. Yellow pus squeezed from his pores as he expanded, dark veins standing out like ropes b
eneath his straining skin.

  Ungholghott opened his mouth impossibly wide and belched forth a rancid stream of slime and squirming maggots. Neave had time to suck in a breath and screw her eyes shut before the blood-warm tide of slurry hit her full in the face. She felt it searing her skin, flowing through the gaps in her armour, battering her in a relentless torrent that must surely drown her the moment she tried to breathe. Neave fought furiously against the limbs that trapped her legs, but their grip was like iron, and with the unbearable pressure of the filth-tide hammering her it was all she could do to hang onto her axes, let alone swing them.

  Dimly she heard the clash of metal, then a sudden choking roar of anger. The torrent abated, leaving Neave drenched in steaming filth, her skin burning and her armour creaking as rust crept across it. With a scream of revulsion, Neave swung her axes low and hacked away the hands that clung to her legs, then took several running steps and hurled herself into the swamp water. The thought that such stagnant slime could be cleansing would have made her laugh an hour earlier. Now, anything that sluiced Ungholghott’s filth from her could only be a blessing.

  Neave exploded from the water with a roar of anger, sludge pouring from her battered sigmarite armour. She was in time to see Ungholghott also rising from the mire, one side of his face caved in and gouting blood. His fly-dragon loomed over Katalya, who stood defiant, jade energies crackling from her vambraces. She must have blasted Ungholghott with those magics. Katalya had likely saved her life, but now her own was in mortal danger.

  ‘I defy you, swamp king!’ bellowed Katalya. ‘I am the last of the Mourne tribe and I defy you and your filthy god!’

  The fly-dragon lumbered forward, dragging its mangled abdomen behind it. It lunged, and Katalya fell back with a cry of alarm. She sent a desperate pulse of life magics at the monster, driving it back a few paces, but it rallied quickly and reared up to drop its massive bulk upon her.

  Neave broke into a headlong sprint. She streaked through the swamp and threw herself into a leap, bringing both axes high and whipping them back down like Sigmar’s own hammer. The blades bit home, crashing through the fly-dragon’s temple and driving deep into its skull. Diseased slime exploded, grey, snotty filth that sprayed in strings through the air as the fly-dragon’s head was torn sideways and driven into the mire.

  Neave rode it down, driving her foot into the beast’s unwounded eye and tearing her axes loose before hacking down again and again. More filth sprayed, and the monster’s limbs convulsed as it tried desperately to escape its tormentor. Neave heard Ungholghott bellow in outrage and leapt clear as bolts of yellow magic tore through the air towards her.

  Neave splashed down yards clear and looked back in satisfaction as the fly-dragon convulsed its last. Her fierce grin turned to horror as she saw Katalya running headlong at Ungholghott.

  ‘You will pay for the deaths of my people!’ shouted the tribesgirl, jade light gathering in a storm around her vambraces.

  ‘Katalya! Sigmar’s hammer, no! Get back!’ yelled Neave.

  ‘He cannot hurt me,’ shouted Katalya. ‘His filthy plague magic cannot get past my vambraces. I smashed his skull, and now I will kill him for my tribe. For Sigmar!’

  Neave accelerated towards Katalya in the hopes of knocking her aside again. With a plunging sense of horror, she realised she would be too late.

  Ungholghott brandished his staff with a sneer and sent a bolt of light straight at Katalya. The tribesgirl threw up her arms confidently, crossing them before her face. They had warded away the drifting plagues of Ungholghott’s fortress. They had given Katalya the strength to wound the foul despot responsible for the deaths of her tribe. Yet against the full sorcerous might of Ungholghott’s fury, they were not nearly enough.

  Time slowed to a crawl for Neave as she saw leprous energies crawl across Katalya’s skin, abrading it away a layer at a time. Pustules rose and burst upon Katalya’s flesh, even as the kinetic impact of the spellblast rippled through her body, shattering bones and lifting her from her feet. Neave’s razor-sharp senses were merciless, forcing her to see how one of Katalya’s eyes turned cataract-white in the instant before it burst in its socket, how the hair on that side of her face turned grey and fell away like dead straw, how a spray of bile and instantly-rotted teeth exploded from the girl’s broken jaw to patter into the swamp.

  Katalya flew through the air and splashed down in an untidy tangle of limbs. She fetched up half submerged in slime, looking for all the world like a plague victim’s corpse.

  ‘Kat!’ screamed Neave. Every instinct howled at her to rush to her friend’s side, to haul her from the water, but she knew that if she did that Ungholghott would finish them both. Katalya lived, or she did not. The only way Neave might uphold her oath and save the tribesgirl now was to slay her mark swiftly and mercilessly.

  ‘One worm crushed,’ roared Ungholghott. ‘And now for the other.’

  He turned to Neave and raised his staff. Several hundred yards separated them, wisps of green mist drifting across the open gap upon the breeze. A stillness pressed in upon the scene, and Neave narrowed her eyes.

  ‘I’m not a worm, Ungholghott, I’m a wolf,’ said Neave. ‘And this is the end of my hunt.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ leered the Chaos sorcerer. ‘Now come to me. Let me unpick your flesh.’

  Neave broke into a sprint.

  ‘Gn’khakor Gh’hurul Pustol’kh’ghorrygh!’ roared Ungholghott, blood spraying from his lips as he uttered the unholy words. Chaos energies swelled into a storm and plague flies boiled from the tip of his stave. Neave charged headlong into their midst before windshifting with a twitch of supernatural muscles. Flies fell crisped from the air and the cloud exploded as gale force winds tore through them. Neave recorporealised in time to weave aside from a hurtling bone spear.

  Three more projectiles flew at her, conjured from thin air by Ungholghott’s sorceries. She leapt clear of one, wove aside from a second and grunted with pain as the third punched through her ribs and burst from her back. Ungholghott’s cry of triumph curdled as Neave kept coming, closing the gap with incredible speed.

  Desperate, Ungholghott spat another incantation and summoned lambent green light around his staff. Neave didn’t wait to see what fresh horrors the sorcerer was conjuring. Leaping and turning in mid-air, she swung her axes and let them fly. The two weapons spun through the air, end over end, and slammed home with fleshy thumps. The first caved in Ungholghott’s chest. The second bisected his face, leaving one shocked yellow eye bulging on either side of the axe blade.

  Neave landed and kept running, crossing the gap as Lord Ungholghott staggered. She grabbed the hafts of her axes and wrenched them free, trailing rancid fluids and flailing maggots.

  ‘Ugh… ghu… huggh…’ croaked Ungholghott, split jaw chewing the air, staff falling from his nerveless hands.

  ‘I have executed many monsters, Lord Ungholghott,’ said Neave. ‘Let your last thought be that you are not special, not chosen, not near as mighty as you believed. You are just another corpse who couldn’t escape me.’ She spun, levelling a mighty backhand blow at Ungholghott’s neck and striking his head from his shoulders. Its two halves flew through the air and splatted down into the swamp, moments before his body crumpled and began to dissolve into rank slurry.

  Certain her mark was slain, Neave was already streaking back across the swamp to where Katalya lay. She dropped to her knees next to the girl’s prone form for the second time in less than an hour, and hauled her from the mire again. Katalya’s skin was ravaged, sloughing away from the left side of her face until yellowing bone was revealed. Boils had broken out across her body, and her flesh was pale and sweating. The tribesgirl was shaking with fever, burning hot to the touch and unconscious. Her breath rattled in and out, phlegm-thick and laboured.

  Neave looked to the heavens, her stare accusing.

  ‘I offered my prayers!’ Ne
ave roared. ‘I asked you to take me, not her! I would have given my life in a heartbeat to see your will done. I asked only that you gave me the strength to watch over her! Sigmar, why should they suffer in our place? Haven’t they suffered enough?’

  Her words echoed away across the swamp, falling dead amongst the mists. If Neave’s god heard her furious words, he sent no sign.

  Something large moved in Neave’s peripheral vision and she turned as best she could, shielding Katalya and brandishing an axe. She stopped and breathed out slowly as she saw the familiar shape of Ketto looming over her. The tattakan’s antennae batted her gently aside and caressed Katalya’s desolated face with obvious concern. He made a mournful rattle deep in his thorax and stamped his feet in the swamp water. Neave’s heart almost broke to see the sorrow so clear in the huge beast’s movements, the way he brushed gently and insistently at his mistress’ face as though trying without success to wake her.

  Neave shook her head, desperately relieved to see the huge insect.

  ‘She’s hurt, Ketto, terribly so,’ said Neave. ‘She has been cursed by dark sorcery, and I suspect only the magic in her vambraces is keeping Nurgle’s foulness from consuming her utterly. I don’t know if you understand the tongues of humans, but we have to get her back to Azyr at once. If she is to stand any hope of survival, we have to get her to the healers in Sigmaron.’

  Ketto gave a low rattle and stomped carefully closer, lowering himself part-way into the mire. Neave lifted Katalya easily in her arms, draping her over her saddle and securing her carefully with its leather straps. The girl felt so light, like a bundle of twigs. Every glance at the ruin of her features hurt Neave’s heart. She couldn’t see how Katalya would survive the hour, let alone cling to life long enough to reach the Realm of Heavens. A detached part of Neave’s mind wondered if the guardians of that most holy of realms would even let Katalya through its gates, seeing the unnatural sicknesses that roiled within her. Yet she had to try, even if it seemed hopeless.