THE HALT
‘Why us?’ Sevora asked, staring at the massive wall that rose before them. It was made of the same dark rock as Rookenval’s broken tower, and it loomed over the ruined city that spread around them.
‘Because we are the last hope.’ Morgen wasn’t driving a wagon this time. She was walking, as were the rest of the Stormcasts. They were moving at a deceptively easy pace which had eaten up many miles along the foothills of the Adamantine Chain. They’d given Sevora a mare to ride, chosen from the stables hidden beneath the trees of Rookenval’s island, a gentle beast that still made her nervous. Even perched upon the horse, Sevora was lost in the Lord-Veritant’s shadow.
‘I thought you were a refuge. A place where the lost could find themselves again.’ Sevora looked ahead to where Corus was marching with the other Reclusians. When she did, his helm turned, his lightning-haunted eyes looking back at her. She looked away. Hope for something better. What was better? A life where all her choices weren’t taken away?
Hope is a lie.
‘We are,’ Morgen said. ‘When we can be. But we are Stormcast Eternals. Made by Sigmar to defend the Mortal Realms against destruction, death, and daemon. We are weapon and shield, and we will be used.’
‘No matter your condition?’ Sevora asked.
Morgen frowned. ‘Reclusians are not helpless, broken things. You’ve seen your great-grandfather spar. They are in some ways the strongest of us.’
‘Gods, don’t,’ Sevora said.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t make me have this fight.’
Sevora looked at the line of Reclusians that stretched in front of her. Fifty warriors in darkened silver armour, their cloaks marked with symbols like tiny stars. Their Memorians were moving beside them, childlike figures despite their own sombre clothes. Besides Morgen there were two more Lord-Veritants, moving through the Reclusians with their torches and their gryph-crows, searching souls for signs of dissolution. Over them, grey wings beat. Jocanan, free from her roost in the tower and her endless painting, circled by the ravens that had followed them when they had left the broken tower. And at the end of their line, solemn and alone, the Lord-Terminos. So few and so many at the same time, and Morgen was right, they did look deadly. But that was because she couldn’t see their eyes.
‘You said I didn’t want to care. You were right.’ Sevora looked at the wall they called the Halt, a pile of black basalt. It was as if the great tower at Rookenval had fallen across this pass, blocking it. ‘I don’t want to care about any of you. About Corus.’
‘But you do care about broken things,’ she said. ‘Like your brother.’
Sevora gritted her teeth. ‘Do you think comparing Corus to Yevin is going to help? I was getting ready to walk away from my brother. I practically killed him.’
‘You didn’t kill him. You just didn’t save him.’ Morgen looked at her, and for the first time Sevora saw something in her eyes like the pain and loss in the Reclusians. ‘I know the difference. You need to know it too. Before you lose him.’
‘I don’t care about losing him!’ Sevora snapped. ‘I never had him! He was dead long before I was born. When he was reborn, he was out there somewhere fighting while his family was suffering. Dying.’ Wind whipped around her, hot on her skin, tiny sparks riding it. ‘I don’t want to care about someone who never cared about me. If I want to care about something broken, maybe I’ll care about myself.’
‘Have you ever considered that the best way to do that might be to talk to someone who cares about you?’ Morgen asked.
‘You, Lord-Veritant? You care about me, the Memorian who won’t do as they’re told?’ The wind gusted out at Morgen and ruffled Peace’s feathers. The gryph-crow croaked in annoyance as Morgen shook her head.
‘No,’ she said, stroking Peace’s feathers back into place. ‘I want to care about you, the way Sigmar cares about us all. But I am no god. I am still human, flawed in my way, and you are no fool. You can see that. What you refuse to see is that Corus already cares for you. You are all that is left of his family. The only thing he ever really wanted.’
Sevora looked away from her, glaring up the line at where Corus marched. His head turned again, looking back at her, and she closed her eyes. Part of her wanted, desperately, to tell the demigod walking beside her to shut up. Maybe half-hoping that Morgen would kill her for her impertinence. But she gritted her teeth and kept her mouth shut. When she opened her eyes again, she could see Avil Tawn, Dreskir’s Memorian, looking back at her with disapproving eyes. She made a rude gesture at him, and felt better when he turned away, frowning. But when she saw Morgen looking at her with those calm, all-seeing eyes, she felt childish and ashamed and had to look away.
Sevora stood atop the Halt and stared down at the smoke pooling against its base. It was like looking down from the back wall in Rookenval, a great plunge of nothing ending in darkness. That view gave her vertigo. This one made her nauseous in a completely different way.
‘It’s poison,’ she muttered to herself. A vast sea of poison, stretching down the pass and covering the lands beyond as far as she could see. A few trees stuck out of the dark cloud, but their tops were dead and no birds perched there. The ravens that had accompanied them sat on the massive wall but did not cross out over the smoke. They stared at it with their dark eyes and grumbled to themselves, like old men watching a storm roll in.
‘What in all the hells of Shyish are we supposed to do?’ Sevora backed away from the parapet. ‘Are the Reclusians supposed to go to battle with that?’ She had kept her voice low, but she still saw one of the guards watching her. A Golden Lion, from the city of Hammerhal Aqsha. A long way from home, but apparently they guarded this forgotten frontier. The soldiers should have looked smart in their pretty uniforms, but instead every one of them looked sick, exhausted. The Golden Lions had watched the Stormcasts, and despite what Morgen had said, the mortal soldiers didn’t act like they were seeing their last hope arrive.
The looked like they had already seen their hope die.
Sevora turned away from the man and stared down the wall. Morgen, the other Lord-Veritants, and the Lord-Terminos had vanished into one of the arched doorways built into the back side of the Halt, meeting with the leaders of this place, leaving the rest of the Reclusians and their Memorians to roam the top of the massive wall. They stood impassively in little groups, clusters of dark silver armour and robes like giant corvids, waiting. Twenty yards from her, Corus stood beside the parapet, looking down at the smoke. He had held that position since they got to the top of the wall, and she wondered what he saw in that roiling mass of darkness.
Images from his life? From his death?
Whatever he saw, it was enough to keep him from looking back over his shoulder at her for once, so she finally let herself stare at him. Corus was a myth, the central character in the stories she’d heard when she was a child. Siki had only told them when she was intoxicated, and the stories had been dark, bitter things, but even in them, Corus had been a hero. The man who had saved their family from murder and then was betrayed, by the cult and Whitefire Court. So he’d come to stand for the father she’d lost, for the heroes that other people spoke of in reverent tones, for the gods that others prayed to, a distant, perfect thing. Now here he was in the flesh, and he was everything and nothing like she thought. A giant figure, familiar but alien, human but divine, heroic but broken.
He was a man, hungry to speak to her, to build the family with her he had always wanted in his mortal life. He was a man with her brother’s eyes, the only person she had ever trusted. He was a man who needed her, according to a woman who had been judged worthy by a god. And what was she?
Angry. Alone. Petulant.
That last thought made her angrier, but it also gnawed at her. Everything in her life had gone wrong, everything had broken, but staring at this smoke, she was beginning to think that all that destruction was larger than her. It wasn’t just her life falling into ruins now. It was everything.
The Golden Lions at the top of the stairs came to attention, and Sevora pushed aside those thoughts to watch Morgen and the others step out onto the top of the Halt. When the Lord-Vigilant had stood before the Reclusians in the bleak shadow of Rookenval and told them that they were summoned, he had split them into two groups, for the tower had received two messages. One by messenger-bird from Hallowheart, one by some other means from the Halt. Avarin Day was taking the larger portion of his Reclusians to battle in some god-forsaken part of the Great Parch. The rest, a mere twenty or so, he’d sent here, naming Morgen Light their leader. But he trusted they would soon be joined by more of their Stormcast brethren who had picked up a summons in the Parch.
The Lord-Veritant walked to the edge of the wall with the Golden Lions’ leader, General Kant, the two of them staring at the smoke, talking in low voices. Making plans to assault the vapour? Sevora frowned at them, then finally gave up and walked over to the edge of the wall to Corus.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘I can’t hear everything. But they’re discussing attacks which occur each night. Something involving the Lord-Ordinator who was here. They’re planning to put a stop to them.’ He looked back at the smoke. ‘Which means we won’t be going into that until at least tomorrow.’
‘That’s poison,’ she said. A shimmer of green flickered through it, and Sevora’s stomach turned.
‘It is,’ he agreed. He looked to her. ‘I talked to the others on the road. I haven’t fought with the Ruination Chamber before, and I need to know how they fight. One of the things they told me is that their Memorians join them in battle. They are deemed as necessary then as during meditation and prayer.’
‘Deemed necessary,’ Sevora said flatly. ‘So when the Reclusians wade into that poison to fight whatever lurks in it, they will be bringing with them Avil Tawn.’ She pointed towards Dreskir Skyvault’s Memorian. The pudgy, middle-aged man was still trying to look serious, pious, purposeful, but instead he looked ridiculous in his black raven-marked robes, like a grocer who’d changed clothes with a sorcerer. ‘Because he is necessary.’
‘They will,’ he answered.
‘And that means me too, doesn’t it?’ Sevora looked down at herself. Did she look any less ridiculous in her robes than Avil? Not really, not when compared to her great-grandfather. All the Memorians, even the ones in arms and armour, were laughable compared to the Reclusians.
‘I will protect you,’ Corus said.
‘You will protect me.’ She wanted to rage, wanted to push Corus off this wall into the darkness, walk back to Hallowheart and blow the Whitefire Court off the top of the spire in a surge of flux-touched magic that would shatter the whole Shining Abyss. She wanted to close her eyes and open them and find herself with Yevin in the Warrens, stealing food and laughing as they ran, alive and hungry and free. But she couldn’t do any of that, and she couldn’t get angry. No wind whipped around her, no bright shining rage filled her. Everything was falling apart, and what was here to check it but the Ruination Chamber, broken immortals and their useless mortal minders.
Hope when hope was dying.
Hope is a lie.
Sevora stared out at the blighted landscape that lay on the other side of the wall, the churning dark and the dying trees, all those words clashing in her head. ‘You’ve died before, Corus. Would it be better to choke to death in that smoke, or get gutted by whatever is hiding beneath it?’
‘You won’t choke,’ Corus said. ‘Memorians aren’t fodder, to be thrown away. We need you. We will protect you. We won’t let you wade into that poison and die, and we won’t let the skaven hurt you.’
‘Skaven?’ She’d heard the name before. Some kind of monster the miners fought in the Shimmering Abyss sometimes. But she couldn’t remember what they were, daemon or dead or something else.
‘Chaos worshippers.’ For once there was something hard in Corus’ voice. An edge of anger, but from him it seemed dangerous, the lightning in his eyes growing brighter. ‘Things that walk like men but are shaped like rats.’
‘Rats,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ Rats and ravens. Yellow teeth. Sevora remembered the thing that had burst out of her brother’s body, remembered its teeth and claws and the way it had tried to rise up on its rear legs before she and Siki had cut it down. A shudder went through her before she could hide it.
‘Morgen told me about what your brother said.’
‘Morgen talks too much,’ she said. He didn’t answer, just waited in silence until she spoke again. ‘She didn’t tell you how he died. Something bit him. Infected him, and then something grew inside him, and when my mother Siki slit his throat it came climbing out. A rat, with yellow teeth, and it carved its way out of him and tried to kill me.’
‘Your mother slit… Sevora, what happened?’ he asked.
There was such concern in his voice, such genuine horror she wanted to draw her father’s knife and stab him. But she just shook her head.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I just told you because if you want to protect me, here’s how you can do it. If one of those things bites me, and I get infected like that… then Memorian or not, you cut my damn head off before one of those things starts gnawing out my guts.’
The Halt was quiet when night fell.
The wall was lit by lanterns, and the glow of the quartz on its face. It was light enough for Sevora to see all the way up and down it, to see the guards peering out into the dark with frightened eyes, to see the Stormcast named Amon Solus making himself ready. He wore armour that was the purple of the sky in deep twilight, with a cloak that was as dark as the Reclusians. He was taller than most of the other Stormcasts, but leaner, the sharp bones of his face pronounced beneath his tanned skin. He wore no helm, just a circlet of sigmarite that bound back his long black hair, and his green eyes were hard as he pulled a leather harness over his armour.
‘What is a Knight-Questor?’ she asked Corus.
‘They can be many things,’ her great-grandfather said. He’d been careful all that afternoon, speaking only when spoken to, not getting too close. Treating her like a skittish animal he was trying to tame. It was annoyingly close to the truth, when Sevora thought about it. But she’d stayed near him. She didn’t know this place, didn’t like it, and what else could she do? She might as well stay with him and at least learn a few things before she was dragged off to some ugly death. ‘They are servants of Sigmar, as we all are,’ he continued. ‘But more directly. He sends them on quests, to learn things, to find people or objects, or to slay a certain foe.’
‘Assassins.’
‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘But they are more generally useful than that. But Amon Solus…’ He trailed off, his flickering eyes suddenly muddled.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘I was going to say that Amon Solus is a hunter. But I don’t know how I know that.’
‘You must have met him before,’ Sevora said, and he nodded, but he still looked strange. As if he were standing on a precipice, staring at some vast abyss. ‘Corus. That’s good, isn’t it? You’re remembering something. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be trying to do?’
‘It’s what the Lord-Veritant said I should do,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know. It doesn’t feel good.’
His eyes were wide, and even with the lightning flickering in them they looked so much like her brother’s as he struggled with the aftermath of one of his visions. She started to reach out her hand to take his, the way she used to hold Yevin’s hand to calm him, but she stopped herself. This wasn’t Yevin. This was the dead man who’d saved her family, then abandoned it, long before she was born. So she pulled back and watched him shake his head, confused, alone, and part of her wished she had taken his hand.
Then came the shout.
‘Shadow mark!’
A flurry of activity erupted along the wall. Soldiers pointed out into the darkness where a faint green glow could be seen moving through the smoke towards them.
‘That’s what Morgen described,’ Sevora said. The Lord-Veritant had assembled the Reclusians at sundown and briefed them on the attacks, and her plans for them to thwart them. Down the wall, Amon was tying himself off to a long rope. The wagon and mules used to anchor him before were gone, now replaced with five Reclusians. Near him, Morgen and the other two Lord-Veritants were getting ready with their own ropes.
‘It’s coming in!’ a soldier shouted, then cursed as a massive pair of wings swung over his head. Jocanan had taken to the air when the day had gone, disappearing into the night, but she was back now, javelin in her hand, circling over the glowing circle. Waiting, as Morgen had told them all to wait.
‘You should pull back,’ Corus said, freeing his shield and his axe.
‘I want to see this,’ she told him, watching as the shadow mark sped up, heading towards the centre of the Halt. But she spared a look for him, a single quick glance that told her he was remembering her anger over the idea that she and the other Memorians would be dragged into the Reclusians’ battles. Remembering it, but smart enough not to remind her of it. He just moved closer, his shield ready. Morgen had told him and the other Reclusians that weren’t holding ropes to stand ready.
Amon waited where the green light was coming in. With sudden grace, he threw himself from the wall, as if he believed he had Jocanan’s wings. He plummeted down, a shadow against the glowing wall, the rope playing out behind him. When the line went taut, the Reclusians holding it swayed but held firm. They fed the rope out, and Amon continued down the wall until he was just above the smoke. There he stopped and pulled his weapons free, a heavy sword and what Sevora had thought was a mace. But its head was a hollow cage with a mote of fire floating within, much like the Lord-Veritants’ torches.
He brandished them both, and as the green light approached he slammed the flat of his sword against the haft of the strange mace, and there was a roll of thunder, a wash of flame. Before him the smoke smashed backward, like the tide rebounding from a stone.
Sevora’s eyes were dazzled by the light, and when she could see again Amon had dropped to the ground, holding his sword and flaming mace before him. There was a semicircle open in the smoke, showing dead grass and a length of wall that was glowing fitfully, cracks marking the quartz. In front of the Knight-Questor, at the edge of the clear air, was a Stormcast carved out of darkness. A green glow came from the pendant hanging around the shade’s neck, and its one black eye was fixed on the Astral Templar as the shadow leaned forward and charged.
Amon held out his mace, the fire directed at the charging figure. Black flecks were flying off the shadow, like ash blowing in the wind, but it rushed forward and swung its hammer at the Knight-Questor. He spun out of the way, the black weapon passing through where he’d been. Amon’s sword scythed through the air, hitting the shadow figure, the blade leaving a rippling trail of emerald as it passed through. But otherwise the blow affected the shadow not at all.
The shadow shaped like the Lord-Ordinator turned to face Amon Solus, holding its hammer with one hand while the other reached back to touch the wall. It merely brushed the cracked quartz face with its fingers, but the whole wall shuddered as if struck by a monstrous blow. More cracks ripped through the quartz, rising above where the smoke had been covering it, and chunks of broken crystal flaked and fell away. Before the shade could strike the wall again though, Amon attacked, driving the fiery end of his mace into the shadow’s body.
This time Amon’s weapon found resistance. The fire in the mace seemed to catch on the shadow, and the darkness wrapped around the flame. The mace stuck halfway in, its light fading as it changed from crimson and gold to green. The shadow was losing more and more pieces, streams of black flecks drifting away, but there were tendrils reaching out from the smoke towards the shadow. Like thin, grasping arms they groped until they touched the shadow and flowed into it, and the dissolution of its darkness began to slow. The shadow of the Lord-Ordinator kept losing pieces as it fought to blot out the holy fire of Amon’s mace, but the smoke was rebuilding it, growing back the darkness that made it, keeping the shadow from dissolving away.
Amon was standing before it, his body rigid as he kept driving the fire into the thing. The shadow seemed solid now, as if this fight against the fire had given it weight. It reached out and grabbed Amon by his throat, throttling the Knight-Questor as it fought to drown his flame.
‘Now!’
The order snapped out from Morgen, and she and the other two Lord-Veritants threw themselves from the top of the Halt. They were not as graceful as Amon had been, but they dropped fast, their boots sending out ripples of light over the Halt. They hit the ground and let go of their ropes, moving to take position around Amon and the shadow, careful to avoid the twisting black lines that connected the shade to the smoke, then raised their torches.
‘By Sigmar, we bring the light!’ they shouted in unison, and slammed the ends of the heavy torches into the earth. The caged motes of light at their tops exploded, whirling out into gouts of flame. Even at the top of the wall Sevora could feel the heat, and when that light faded the smoke was smashed back, much farther than before.
In the dazzling light of those torches, the shadow was tearing apart again, pieces flying off faster and faster. The shadow’s hammer was almost gone, and the edges of the shade’s head and limbs were fraying, falling apart. A hole had formed around Amon’s mace, a crater in the dark, and the fire at the end of his weapon burned bright.
But one black tendril still connected the shadow to the smoke, and the shade took a step away from the wall, then another, trying to escape the light, trying to reach the seething mass of smoke. As it moved, the dark tendril connecting it to the poison vapour grew thicker. The dissolution of the shadow began to lessen, its darkness slowly beginning to rebuild.
Then Morgen drew her sword.
Sevora had never seen the Lord-Veritant’s weapon unsheathed. It was as dark as her patinated armour, but when she raised it and touched its tip to her torch, flames rolled down the blade. As they did, runes lit up along it, glowing bright against the dark metal. Morgen held the sword out, and great tongues of fire rose from the metal’s razor edge. Stepping forward, she swung the flaming weapon down upon the tendril of smoke.
Where sword and smoke met, the force of the impact was that of one powerful, solid object striking another, fire and flakes of darkness spinning through the air. The fire rolled harmlessly off the Lord-Veritant, but the flakes of black flashed to that ugly green when they landed on her armour or skin. Morgen didn’t flinch. She raised her sword and swung it again, cutting into the cord of darkness until it shattered at last like smoked glass, flying apart, and the smoke cloud below the wall flickered with green light.
The shadow flickered too. For one moment it tried to close in on the fire that Amon was holding in its chest, trying to smother it, but the light tore through it, and the shadow fell apart.
Like a statue made of ash, it crumpled. The last dark flecks of it wrapped like a cloud around the glowing pendant and blew away, taking the ugly green light back into the smoke where it faded, then was lost.
Sevora stared down at the battle, at the light pushing back at the smoke and the four Stormcast Eternals standing with their blazing torches, and it was beautiful and terrifying. Then all around her, the wall erupted into shouts. Cheers were sweeping down the Halt, shouts of triumph as the Golden Lions saw the darkness finally get pushed back. It was a shout of defiance, and it went on and on, until the first scream.
It came from down the wall, almost lost in the cheers, but Sevora saw Corus snap his head in its direction, heard the cheering falter.
‘What–’ she began, but then there was another, louder scream from the other side, and she caught sight of a soldier plummeting off the top of the Halt, smashing into the wall halfway down and leaving a smear of blood across the glowing quartz before crashing into the ground. The cheering died, and General Kant was moving down the wall, shouting for the soldiers to move back.
But she was answered with more death, as another Golden Lion was jerked off his feet and over the low parapet, his only sound a strangled gurgling as his hands clutched at something that had grabbed him by the throat.
‘Sevora, move.’ Corus’ words were calm, but they were orders nonetheless, and at that moment Sevora had no interest in disagreeing. She started to step away from the parapet when Corus moved, whipping his shield up beside her with such speed Sevora barely saw it. She was shoved backward, and there was a wall of sigmarite where the world had been.
She blinked up at it, and the shield clanged and vibrated, like a struck drum. A hit, she thought, the world going very slow around her, the way it had when she duelled with knives in the Warrens. The thought passed through her head as Corus whipped his axe around to strike over his shield. He pulled the axe back as fast as he had struck, and in the slow crawl of time Sevora could see he’d caught something on the hooked bottom of its blade, a black line like the tendril of smoke that Morgen had cut.
This wasn’t smoke, though it was as silent and dark as the vapour below. It was dark links of steel studded with cruel barbs. There was a blade on its end, its tip bent from striking Corus’ shield. That piece of reasoning flowed smoothly through Sevora’s head as she watched her great-grandfather twist his wrist, looping the chain around his axe. Then he pulled his arm back, giving the chain a mighty jerk.
The shadow the skaven was hiding in was a splotch smaller than Sevora’s hand. A real rat would have had a hard time fitting within it, but the thing holding the chain whip was Sevora’s size, taller but leaner, with glossy black fur and a bare tail almost as dark. It wore a black robe, whose hood had fallen backwards to reveal the sunken spots where its eyes should have been, hollow lids now stitched shut with yellow thread. The skaven dropped the handle of the chain whip that Corus had used to jerk it out of the tiny shadow, and dipped its clawed hands into its robe to pull out two curved daggers.
‘Chaos vermin,’ Corus said, flicking his axe and sending the chain whip tumbling silently across the stone. He shifted his shield, stepping smoothly in front of Sevora. ‘You made a mistake.’
The thing’s head shifted back and forth, nose and ears twitching, as if taking in the other Reclusians that were moving closer. Then it hissed, a drawn out Shhhh, right before it launched itself at Corus, curved knives aimed at his throat.
Corus didn’t move his feet. He stayed between Sevora and the skaven like a wall, and when the ratman leapt he lifted his shield and smashed it into the skaven’s face. Then he moved, turning to crush the stunned creature between his shield and the stone beneath him like a mortal would smash a roach upon the floor. He straightened, and the skaven lay sprawled, its chest crushed, blood flowing in jagged pulses from its mouth and nose. Dying but not quite dead, its breath frothing the blood on its muzzle.
Time had begun to flow normally for Sevora again sometime after Corus had smashed the skaven, and now she stood behind him, trying to breathe. She stared at the thing’s long yellow teeth, the thick incisors that tipped its muzzle. The teeth matched the triangular wound that had marked her brother’s shoulder, and she wanted to get up and kick the skaven in its broken ribs until she smashed its heart. But instead she simply whispered, ‘Monster. Murderer.’
The thing tilted its head towards her, and through its broken teeth came that horrible sound, a shhhh made liquid by the blood in the skaven’s throat. Then its head fell back into the pool of gore that surrounded it.
‘Are you alright?’ Corus asked, reaching out to help her up.
‘I’m fine,’ she said softly. She was, thanks to her great-grandfather and his shield. She shivered, thinking of the way that guard had fallen, thinking that could have been her, and wind gusted around her, stirring her robes. Then it was gone. She reached out her hand and took Corus’, and something snapped between their palms like a shock of static, but stronger. Something ripped through her mind, an image of someplace she’d never been, a memory of something she’d never seen.
It was, in a way. The Oasis of Tears was a pool of water, clear and blue, surrounded by trees and grass. The green stood out against the desert’s browns and greys, a blotch of colour so bright it almost hurt the eyes. But that piece of beauty was so small compared to all the blasted landscape surrounding it.
‘You always have a way of finding beauty, Aika,’ Corus said, and smiled at her. His wife smiled back, beautiful even with her face half-hidden by the scarf that protected her from the blowing sand.
‘And you always find danger,’ she said, reaching out and taking his hand. She was right in that too. Corus could see the hard lines that were blurred beneath the oasis’ greenery. There had been buildings here once, a town, the start of a city. Ruins now, long deserted. Something had happened here, long ago, to make the people flee this place.
‘I can see it in your face,’ she said. ‘The worry. Have no fears. We have the support of the Cult Unberogen, and the Whitefire Court. Your congregation will flourish here.’ She looked back as she spoke, at the lines of people with their packs, the laden wagons, everyone staring with excitement at the oasis ahead.
Corus hoped she was right. These people had been lost when he found them, abandoned by the rest of Hallowheart to rot in the dark of the Warrens. They deserved a better chance, a life in the light. But he couldn’t stop thinking of the wastelands they’d crossed since leaving the Shimmering Abyss, the distance they were from the safety of the city and the Hallowed Knights that guarded it. That distance weighed on him, no matter how many reassurances he had been given by the cult and the mages of the Whitefire Court.
‘I pray for that,’ he said. ‘I pray to Sigmar every day that this was the right decision. For them, and for us.’
‘It was,’ Aika said, and she moved his hand to her belly. ‘For all of us.’
Then it was gone, the memory shattered, and Sevora was standing, gasping, at the top of the Halt. The heat and light and dry-dust scent of the desert replaced with darkness and cool air tainted with the smell of blood and smoke. She stared around wildly, letting reality flood out what had taken her over.
A vision, just like when Yevin had forced them into her head. But Yevin was dead.
‘Sevora?’ Corus was watching her, his huge hand still holding hers, supporting her.
Touching her. This was the first time their hands had touched, and when they had, that vision had smashed through her. But it wasn’t a vision. This wasn’t from Yevin. This was a memory, Corus’ memory. That place had to be the doomed settlement he had been tricked into founding. And that woman. Aika. Her great-grandmother. Seeing the parts of her face not covered by her scarf had been like looking in a dusty mirror.
‘I’m fine,’ she said again, pulling her hand out of his. His eyes were on her, flickering with lightning, concerned, and she knew he didn’t believe her.
‘Clear the way.’ The voice was sharp, and broke Sevora out of the confusion of her thoughts. Silent Golden Lions stood around them, gawking like the crowd in the Cave of Knives. General Kant was cutting through them, her face hard, but when she saw the corpse lying in its pool of blood she nodded. ‘One of them. That shadow, and one of these damned assassins. Finally.’
‘Two.’ The voice was a deep rumble. Sevora recognised Dreskir. The Reclusian pointed back along the wall. ‘The Prosecutor Jocanan knocked one off the cliffside.’
‘Knocked off the cliff,’ Kant said. She looked less exhausted for once, the clean viciousness in her eyes pushing away her weary despair. ‘Good.’
She snapped orders to the soldiers, and in a few minutes the smashed body of the skaven had been hung over the side of the Halt, its black silhouette staining the glow of the front of the wall.
‘Golden Lions!’ Kant shouted, her voice carrying through the night. ‘My Twenty-Seventh! Attend! This is our enemy, who brought smoke, nightmares, and death. This is a skaven, a servant of Chaos, and it is not a thing of shadow and fear, it is flesh and blood and it can be killed!’ She paused for a moment, then pointed down, to where Amon and Morgen and the other Lord-Veritants were being pulled back up the wall, their torches still blazing, keeping the smoke back. ‘But we have seen tonight that even shadows can be killed! Sigmar has blessed us with the Stormcast Eternals, and with their strength we shall see this smoke lifted, the skaven dead. The Halt holds!’
‘The Halt holds!’ was shouted back, and in the eyes of the soldiers Sevora finally saw something like hope. It was powerful, and good, but a voice in her head whispered, Hope is a lie.
She looked away, and down the wall she saw Morgen pulling herself up over the parapet. When the Lord-Veritant’s boots touched the top of the wall, Peace was there to meet her, his eyes flashing in the light of her torch. Sevora watched Morgen stroke the gryph-crow’s feathered head, but then her eyes shifted to the rope that sat beside her. Its end was marked with burns, as if it had been dropped into acid.
Tomorrow at sunrise. That’s when she would follow Morgen and Corus and all the rest out into that poison.
Tomorrow.
They didn’t make them use ropes at least.
When the sky lightened from black to purple, Sevora and the other Memorians followed their Reclusians, winding their way down the stairs on the back side of the wall until they reached the ground. There was an empty square in the ruins of the old city, a great clearing where the gate lay. It was a tangle of gardens and pasture now, the ancient cobblestones torn up and used to repair the buildings that the villagers of Halt’s Shadow had claimed. But there was still a clear space before the huge arch that stood in the middle of the Halt.
The gate was formed by two perfectly square pillars jutting from the wall like a bas-relief, crowned by a smoothly curving arch, all of them carved with intricate, curving symbols that flowed over and through each other so that they were all one. But for those carvings, it would have been a simple opening, impressive only for its size. Except that there was no opening. The thin dirt track that led to the gate ended in a wall of basalt, a blank face of stone identical to the rest of the wall, unmarked by seam or hinge. Sevora stared at the blank stone face, wondering what would happen when they reached it. Because Morgen would not have brought them here if the path were blocked.
Sevora knew she was not that lucky.
A sergeant of the Golden Lions waited beside the arch, and Sevora watched her as they approached. Was there some secret mechanism? Or was the stone wall an illusion? But the woman just touched the stone between the pillars and it pulled back on itself, the massive wall of basalt folding in like a curtain until it was gone. Now a tunnel lay open, wide and long and tall, glowing red as if lit by the coals of a banked fire.
They moved into it, the huge figures of the Reclusians lost in the space. It was much like the tunnel through the wall of Rookenval, except larger. Behind them, dawn’s light was suddenly cut off as the gate swept shut again, and for a moment she was certain that the whole tunnel would close, collapsing in and crushing them, and Sevora shuddered.
Beside her, Corus looked at her with concern. She hadn’t talked to him after the fight on the wall, of the vision that had swept through her. Corus had shown no sign of knowing what had happened to her, of realising that his memories had spilled into her, and she didn’t feel like telling him.
Was this what happened with Memorians? Was this what she was here for, somehow, instead of just being a lackey meant to supply encouraging words? If so, was this worse? She didn’t know, and she damn well wasn’t going to ask Morgen, or any of the other Lord-Veritants.
At last they reached the end of the tunnel, where another wall of blank basalt waited, and like the entrance this one swept itself out of the way at Morgen’s approach. Outside was daylight, dead grass, the churning black bank of smoke, and Amon Solus. The Knight-Questor stood framed in the newly opened arch with his mace held high, the flames of it pressing the smoke back away from the entrance. As Morgen stepped out, she struck the base of her torch against the ground and it lit, its flames further pressing back the smoke. Carefully the Reclusians stepped out of the gate, forming a semicircle of armoured bodies, their Memorians in the middle. The torches of the remaining Lord-Veritants blazed to life, and they were all standing in a clearing. They could breathe – but they were so packed together Sevora was having a hard time keeping herself from pressing into Corus’ armour.
‘We can’t fight like this,’ Amon said. ‘We can barely move.’
‘We must spread out.’ Morgen looked out over the ranks of Reclusians. ‘It is time to test the mettle of this poison. Which of you will chance it first, so we may measure its potency against the strength of the Ruination Chamber?’
‘I will.’ The voice was immediate, and familiar. It came from Dreskir, and Sevora remembered Morgen telling the Lord-Vigilant about the fear of death in him, the fear that made him reckless. The Lord-Veritant’s eyes narrowed just a bit, but she nodded.
‘Go.’
Dreskir hoisted shield and axe and stepped away from the group and into the smoke. His patinated armour blended in with the swirling dark, and he was gone, vanished in less than three steps.
Sevora looked after him, then swung her eyes to his Memorian. Avil Tawn had raised his hand to the sky, a hammer-shaped sigil of Sigmar gleaming in it. Still trying to look pious, but obviously puffed up and proud that Dreskir was the first.
Shaking her head, Sevora looked away from him and to the sky. It was a deep, clear blue in the morning light, and high above she could see Jocanan circling, her wings gleaming in the sun. Rookenval’s mob of corvids still refused to fly over the smoke and instead perched on the Halt, black dots high above, watching them. Waiting with the patience of carrion birds.
‘How long is he going to be out there?’ Sevora muttered, just as the smoke swirled and the Reclusian reappeared.
‘It reeks. Bad enough to taste,’ Dreskir said, stepping into the clear. Wisps of smoke followed him, like grasping claws, but they frayed away in the light of the torches. ‘But I could breathe.’
‘Your eyes?’ Amon asked. ‘Did they burn?’
‘No,’ the Reclusian said. ‘But I could see no more than a few yards. I walked to the far cliff and back, and had to stay close to the Halt so that I did not lose my way.’
Amon frowned. ‘If the Reclusians can stand the smoke, they can spread out beyond the borders of our torches’ effect. But not very far, or we will lose each other.’
‘It will be sufficient,’ Morgen said, and organised them. The three Lord-Veritants formed a triangle, with the Memorians between them, furthest from the smoke. The Reclusians formed up around them, a wall of sigmarite that faded in and out of the smoke. Amon and his torch stood at the front, cleaving their path forward. It was awkward in the middle, and Sevora was jostled by the other Memorians, but it worked. The smoke rolled back from them, and though she could smell its acrid rancidness she could breathe. Maybe she wasn’t going to choke to death out here after all.
When they moved away from the Halt, and the smoke rolled in to surround them, she felt less reassured. If something happened to the Lord-Veritants’ torches, that black cloud would roll in and drown them in its noxious dark. Morgen and the others held their torches close in their gauntleted hands, but what if one of those chain whips came sweeping out of the dark? The skaven Corus had smashed would not have been strong enough to wrest a torch from the grasp of a Stormcast Eternal, but how many of them were out there? How many of those eyeless assassins were slipping through the smoke unseen, waiting to strike?
It was an unsettling thought, and a breeze whispered around her, little sparks flickering against her hair. Sevora tried to settle her magic and her anxiety, but she knew this mission couldn’t be this easy. There would be an attack, soon.
She still missed it when it came.
There was the sound of coughing and cursing behind her, and she spun to see a thick tendril of smoke, like the ones that had fed the shadow last night, reaching into the cluster of Memorians. It wrapped itself around the face of a young woman in black armour. The smoke wasn’t drifting, it was moving with a purpose, driving itself into her mouth and nose, choking her. Black flakes were coming off it, drifting away through the air as the torchlight tore at the smoke’s substance, but it wasn’t dissolving nearly fast enough.
The Memorian was on her knees, her hands struggling uselessly with the smoke enveloping her face. The Reclusian closest to her was swinging his huge black axe into the tendril, but the keen edge was having as much effect as the dying woman’s hands. The Reclusian kept swinging though, growling oaths over and over as he tried to shatter the insubstantial attack.
‘Clear, brother!’ The shout came from the Knight-Questor. Amon Solus had left his spot at the front and was running down the side of the triangle, his mace raised high. When he reached the tendril he swung his weapon down, and fire smashed out of it as it crashed into the black, twisting line. The mace broke the tendril, and the Memorian fell forward and retched, spewing black vapour out of her mouth as if she were vomiting up night. She was alive. But there were shouts all around Sevora now. More black tendrils were flowing from the smoke, reaching out to catch and choke.
One hit a man just beside Sevora, smoke lashing onto his face like a striking snake. She saw the Memorian’s panic as the poison poured up his nose, and she slashed at it with her knife, the worn blade doing nothing at all – then it happened again.
In a rush of light, a memory flooded through her that wasn’t her memory at all, and everything else went away.
‘They’re coming,’ Ishvan gasped. His hand was pressed to his side, and blood ran between his fingers, dripping down to pool upon the broken rock that had once been part of a wall around the ruins.
‘How big is the band?’ Corus asked. Two months they had been at the oasis, rebuilding these ruins, and this would be the eighth time one of the loose bands of Chaos cultists that haunted this desert had attacked. How much longer would this go on? They already had too many dead, too many wounded.
‘Not a band.’ Ishvan coughed, and blood spattered from his mouth. Corus held him up, until the coughing slowed. ‘Army,’ the man gasped, his voice barely a whisper. ‘Damn army. Come to kill us all.’
He coughed again, and a torrent of blood splashed out against Corus’ chest. Then Ishvan sagged, and Corus lowered him to the ground. He could hear the others on the broken wall muttering in fear, asking him questions, demanding answers, but he ignored them. He rose and scrambled up the ruins until he was at the top. Behind him was the oasis, green and full of the people he had brought to this place, working, talking, laughing, singing. Before him was the desert, a wasteland blotched now with warriors. An army of them, carrying standards stained with blood and topped with skulls. An army of the Blood God, the Skull God. An army driving towards the Oasis of Tears. Driving towards Aika.
‘No,’ he whispered. Then he raised his voice to a shout. ‘No!’
The word ripped out of Sevora, torn out by the horror of that terrible memory, by the terror of what was happening. She shouted her denial, and with that word came the wind. It whirled down from the sky above, a gale full of glowing orange sparks that whipped around the Memorians like a tornado, tumbling some of them to the ground. But it also whipped away the reaching lines of smoke and drove them back into the cloud with a flurry of sparks. The tornado grew, spreading outward, lashing over the Reclusians who were unmoved by its violence, bracing themselves against its fury. But the cloud was shoved back, driven away so that the circle of clear air was suddenly twice the size. Then Sevora fell to her knees, gasping, exhausted, and the sparks faded as the wind died.
‘Sevora!’ Corus was there, picking her up before she could pull in enough breath to tell him to get away from her, to get out of her head. ‘Did it touch you?’
‘No.’ It was Amon who answered, the Astral Templar looking at her. ‘She drew the wind, and pushed it away.’
‘You did well,’ Corus said, letting her go when she weakly pushed him away.
‘I’m going to pass out,’ she muttered, then regretted it because he tried to hold her up. She moved away, like a toddler from a doting parent, wavering on her feet but free.
‘Excellent, Memorian,’ Morgen said. She was staring out at the smoke, which was slowly beginning to creep back in. ‘We will take advantage of this, and move a little faster, at least until it closes in once more.’
‘And when it goes for us again?’ Sevora asked, her voice weak.
‘We will do the same, but faster,’ Morgen answered. ‘Hold position, Amon will strike what he can, and you will draw your wind to force the smoke back.’
Sevora was still pulling in her breath to protest when Corus spoke.
‘She did it once, and saved us, but it cost her. You can’t force her to do it again.’
‘Trust me, I know I can’t force anything from your Memorian,’ Morgen said. ‘But the Knight-Questor has told us what happened to at least some of the beasts that breathed this poison. They became infected with monsters. So unless she wants to share her twin’s fate, she will find the strength.’
Rage ran through Sevora, and she glared at Morgen Light, her hand on her knife. Then from behind her she heard Corus growl.
‘You push too far, Lord-Veritant.’ The lightning in her great-grandfather’s eyes snapped as he spoke.
Peace bristled, his feathers rising, but Morgen simply nodded. ‘Look around us. I push as far as is necessary, Reclusian. Always.’ Then she turned away and started walking, driving the wedge of Reclusians forward with her, like a knife thrust into the dark.