Dauntless Hall
Har Kuron, Aqshy
Tivrain Greymantle had only ever seen Anvilgard, now known as Har Kuron, three times before in her long existence. Dauntless Hall, she knew, was the city’s seat of power – the place where laws were ratified, justice dispensed, alliances forged and dynasties lionised. Now, marching up its broad front stairs towards its towering doors, a trussed-and-bound prisoner, she saw the brooding darkness inherent in the hall’s gargantuan architecture and ancient, salt-scoured stones.
Once, perhaps, this had been a place where justice held sway.
No longer.
Behind her, Heldymion Dawnslight struggled and cursed as a trio of Sisters of Slaughter beset him with swift lashes from their barbed whips, the Annihilator having stumbled as he mounted the great stairs. Now, his captors beat him with malign relish even as they exhorted him to get to his feet again.
Saran Doomsmaul lunged, reaching with manacled hands to pull Heldymion to his feet. He was answered with a storm of blows from heartshard glaives wielded by the Blood Sisters surrounding him.
Tivrain was on the cusp of ordering Heldymion to his feet, to keep their party moving, when the Annihilator snatched one of the snapping lashes mid-strike in his bound fists. He gave the whip a hard yank. Its masked wielder lurched towards him.
Before Heldymion could mete out his own punishment, however, the Sisters of Slaughter closed in upon their recalcitrant prisoner. Their barbed lashes whistled and cracked as Heldymion was whipped to his knees, his abusers sneering and laughing as they pummelled him.
‘Enough!’ the Khinerai Harpy leading their little company barked, great, leathery wings flaring from her back to signal her fury. ‘Get him back on his feet and press on! Our guests have an audience with the vice-regent.’
The Sisters of Slaughter seemed to comply with the Harpy’s exhortations only grudgingly. One looked as though she might cuff Heldymion just once more, to motivate him. Her fist hovered in the air, however, when she saw the Harpy glaring at her. Silently, the Sister of Slaughter helped Heldymion to his feet and drove him onward up the stairs.
Tivrain met the Khinerai Harpy’s hard gaze. The Harpy’s absolute command, her air of imperiousness, was as powerful as it was understated.
The Harpy saw Tivrain staring and edged nearer.
‘Have you something to say, Stormcast?’ she asked.
‘I would not have expected mercy from your kind,’ Tivrain said. She had no desire to compliment her captor – she simply had no energy to construct a lie.
‘It is not mercy,’ the Harpy said, the weariness in her voice telling Tivrain the silent story of her trials and tribulations in this place, ‘but pragmatism. We gain nothing by abusing the lot of you here, on the threshold of Dauntless Hall, and you gain nothing by enduring our abuse.’
Tivrain could only nod to that. She carried on, mounting the steps, one after another, towards the enormous hall on the hill above them.
Below and around her, the city sweltered and brooded in the humid night air, its broad avenues and towering architecture spreading around her, as though she were a fly entangled at the centre of a vast web. Above, the stars glared down upon Tivrain and her companions, their captors, the besieged city and its mournful inhabitants, their wan light indicative of their cold indifference.
Tivrain shuddered, already fearing what awaited them in the fortress on the hill.
They had retraced their path in the Undertunnels, eventually arriving at a side passage that they had bypassed on their first traversal. Having no other options, they had followed that passage, its gentle slope suggesting the surface and safety, while never revealing either.
By the time they had crossed their third hewn bridge above a narrow, plunging abyss, Tivrain had begun to realise that the passage’s promise of a surface opening had only been that – a promise, and not an honest one.
Ordys Stormwall had finally taken the lead, insisting that she could trace a path to the surface if she were allowed to investigate their options as they discovered them. For another hour or two, they wandered, Ordys acting as their living compass, surveying each new tunnel and intersection, until at last they came to a cramped upper passage that, miraculously, revealed storm grates opening onto the night-black streets above.
None of those grates had yielded to their attempts to dislodge them, but they eventually located a stairway to a water-pumping station. Traversing the chambered cellars and climbing past the cisterns therein, they had finally reached the surface, emerging onto a broad city street lined by grand homes and colonnades where traders set up booths and carts during the day to sell their wares. No street urchins or hawkers were in evidence, however, because it was the middle of the night. Though Tivrain saw a few dim lamps or candles burning in high windows and likewise heard the scurry of vermin and feral cats in the darkened alleys nearby, the city seemed utterly deserted.
They had waited in that pumping station doorway for what seemed an eternity, Ordys, Tivrain and Ansonnir hewing to the shadows and creeping off in separate directions to scan the streets and alleys around them. They had to orient themselves, after all – and to find a place to hide before some random patrol located them.
When they were relatively certain that no one watched, they set out.
They’d barely taken half a dozen steps from the station doorway when their captors revealed themselves – Khainite Witch Aelves and Sisters of Slaughter, Khinerai Harpies and Melusai Blood Stalkers, all springing from the darkened alleys, rooftops and balconies that surrounded them. There were nearly two dozen of them, and they’d clearly been lying in wait, patiently, for the cautious Stormcasts to reveal themselves.
Even in retrospect, she was not certain what course of action, defiance or surrender, would have been the correct one, given the circumstances. Each seemed as likely as the other to assure the failure of their mission. In the heat and desperation of the moment, defiance had won out.
Briefly, fiercely, they fought their would-be captors, using every means at their disposal – spellcraft, forged weapons, their belligerent hearts – to gain some advantage and flee deeper into the labyrinthine streets. It was no use, however – the Witch Aelves were armed with blow guns, the small darts tainted by some paralytic poison. In short order, Tivrain and her companions had all been immobilised and bound. When the paralytic wore off several minutes later, the chains that bound them and the confiscation of their weapons made further resistance impossible.
Now, Dauntless Hall loomed large as Tivrain and her companions climbed the seemingly endless steps.
Passing over the threshold, they found the vestibule and enormous arcade beyond ill lit and shrouded in thick shadows. Torches sputtered in wall sconces and braziers crackled peacefully in widespread recesses, but the bright flames were poorly suited to lighting such a vast, imposing interior. There was also a permanent haze in the air, a veil of lingering smoke that turned the torchlights into bright smudges and softened the outlines of everything around them. Tivrain knew the source of the permanent haze well – it bore the unmistakable, herbaceous tang of the foul incenses employed by the Daughters of Khaine in their unholy rites. Dauntless Hall, once a bastion of conscientious rulership and justice, was now a fog-shrouded temple of murder and malignity, anointed by blood magic and permanently shadowed by Morathi’s iron rule.
They were marched through a labyrinth of side corridors and finally arrived before a pair of heavy doors. Khinerai Heartrenders bearing barbed javelins stood sentinel, flanking either side.
‘Prisoners,’ their Harpy captor said to the waiting sentinels. ‘The vice-regent expects us.’
Her voice carried not a hint of obsequy or nervousness.
The Heartrenders each took hold of one of the doors and drew them open. Despite their obvious size and bulk, they glided easily, as though floating on air.
The Harpy led the way. Tivrain, her fellows and the small gaggle of their captors – much-reduced after entering Dauntless Hall – marched through the doorway into the chamber beyond.
They climbed three more short steps, crossed a colonnade, then emerged from the shadows cast by the mighty pillars ringing the ovoid chamber into its central rotunda. The long, hammer-shaped table dominating the centre of the space and the looming statue of Sigmar at the far end made it clear that this was once the central administrative chamber of Dauntless Hall’s Grand Conclave.
The benign familiarity of that space was blasted, however, by the foul garden that had taken root therein during the nineteen years since the fall of Anvilgard.
Tivrain heard Ordys draw in a single, shuddering breath of disbelief.
There before them, enveloped in the lazy mantle of smoke and the choked, flickering firelight, were the Stormcast prisoners who had called out to Tivrain in their half-sleeping, half-waking distress. To her eye, the cocoons that held them and the tall, web-like vines upon which they were affixed resembled the woven silk of an enormous spider’s web. The thick, resinous strands forming that web stretched up into the shadowed recesses of the rotunda dome above them, while their rooted ends clung to the marble floor, as broad and gnarled as great tree roots. Though most of the strands stood vertically, rod straight, several more were bent or twisted around their brethren, stretching crosswise through the space of the great hall as if they had grown of their own accord.
The sight of those many, unmoving Stormcast, embedded in bundles of resin and webbing, made Tivrain’s stomach lurch – the fact of their imprisonment, the sight of them, at last, with her waking eyes.
Some slumped in attitudes of unconsciousness, eyes closed, faces placid. Others seemed to have been paralysed in moments of distress – mid-scream, mid-convulsion, mid-struggle. The eyes of some were wide, gazing into empty space, seeing yet not seeing. Others were half-lidded, somnambulant, as though on the cusp of sleeping or waking.
None moved. None blinked. None uttered a sound or offered so much as a heavy breath.
Tivrain threw a glance over her shoulder at her companions. They, too, drank in the silent suffering of their comrades with fixed gazes and grim expressions.
‘Admiring my garden?’ a silken voice said from the darkness at the edge of the chamber.
Tivrain and her companions sought the speaker.
Their host emerged from a nearby shadow, sidling towards them. Her great mane of wild white hair was the same colour as her smooth skin. The rich dyes that coloured her black-and-crimson raiment made her bone-pale flesh stand out in stark contrast. Like most of her kind, she had an ancient gaze and a smooth, young face – though the sharpness of her cheekbones and chin made that face harsh and terrifying, an idol hewn from cold, implacable stone.
‘We found them emerging from the Undertunnels, vice-regent,’ the Khinerai Harpy commander of the guard reported. Tivrain thought she detected a note of disdain in her otherwise bland report.
Their host – a Hag Queen, if Tivrain was not mistaken – assessed them, one by one.
‘So few, Malascyra? I thought there might be an even dozen?’
‘We scoured the area,’ the Khinerai Harpy – Malascyra – answered. ‘No more were discovered.’
‘Our companions perished below,’ Tivrain said. ‘In the Undertunnels. We are all that remain.’
The Hag Queen stepped nearer.
‘You lie,’ she said, clearly proud of herself for assuming so. ‘And you lie poorly.’
‘Mendacity is not so endemic to our nature as to yours, vice-regent,’ Ordys Stormwall said thornily. Tivrain saw that the Protector-Prime’s armoured form shook with bottled, impotent rage.
For a moment – only a moment – the Hag Queen tossed a baleful gaze towards Ordys. Then, she regained control of herself and turned her attentions back to Tivrain.
‘I am Vice-Regent Imreth Daemanta, Hag Queen of the Kraith, given dominion of this city by our holy oracle, the ascended Morathi-Khaine–’
Tivrain shot a quick glance at the Harpy, Malascyra. Her narrowed eyes and pursed lips suggested that Imreth Daemanta’s officiousness and attachment to her many titles annoyed her intensely.
There appears to be no love lost between them, Tivrain realised. Perhaps we could use that.
‘–and you have been brought before me to answer my queries and satisfy my curiosity,’ Daemanta continued. ‘Treat with me, and you shall be dealt with mercifully.’
Tivrain had to fight back the urge to smile at their over-proud hostess.
‘How many of you reached the city?’ Daemanta asked.
Tivrain gestured to her group. ‘Can you not count us, vice-regent? We stand before you.’
With stunning speed, the Hag Queen lunged and snatched Tivrain’s long silver-grey braid in one hand, yanking her head back. Suddenly, Tivrain was staring upwards towards the dark dome above.
‘How many are you?’ Daemanta snarled, leaning close. ‘Not only the six of you – the rest as well.’
‘Were you not listening?’ Pharena chimed in. ‘Our companions perished in–’
‘I know that you came here alone,’ Daemanta snapped. ‘Without leave, against your superiors’ express orders. One of your own alerted me to your approach, you fools! Your lies cannot profit you now.’
Tivrain felt as though she’d been slammed in the gut with a sigmarite warhammer.
‘One of our own?’ young Pharena piped up. ‘Impossible, you lying witch!’
Daemanta made a quick, sharp hissing sound, as one might to scare off a housecat nibbling at one’s victuals. In answer, one of the nearby Witch Aelves shot forward and kicked Pharena’s legs out from under her. The youthful-faced Stormcast hit the marble floor, the wind knocked out of her. Before she could rise, the Witch Aelf had yanked up her head and placed her razor-sharp sciansa dagger against Pharena’s throat.
‘How many are you?’ the Hag Queen pressed.
The Witch Aelf’s dagger bit into Pharena’s skin. Slowly, deliberately, she drew blood, letting all see the single crimson rivulet that ran down Pharena’s pale white throat.
To Tivrain’s amazement and horror, Pharena fought back. One gauntleted hand shot upwards, seizing the Khainite’s knife-wielding wrist and yanking the blade away. Before the Witch Aelf could adjust her stance and renew her grip, Pharena had driven her armoured elbow into her midsection. The Witch Aelf snarled and bent double, staggering backwards as Pharena lurched to her feet.
It was to no avail. Malascyra whipped one of her barbed sickles from its scabbard and lunged towards Pharena, arcing the deadly weapon before her, the blade passing very near Pharena’s throat.
Pharena dodged the strike but was thrown off balance.
Malascyra moved quickly, advancing right into Pharena’s unbalanced form. The young Stormcast stumbled and hit the floor again, her haphazard attempt at an escape no match for the Harpy’s grace and speed.
Malascyra lowered her sickle, the curved point hovering just before Pharena’s throat.
‘Stay where you are,’ she snarled, her voice cold and as sharply edged as the fearsome blade she’d unsheathed.
The Hag Queen yanked Tivrain’s braid again.
‘Speak!’ she commanded.
‘Twelve,’ Tivrain spat, disgusted and enraged. ‘We were twelve. We lost our companions underground. We’ve no idea where they might be, or if they yet live.’
The sworn truth, that. The question was, would Daemanta believe her?
The vice-regent’s eyes narrowed incredulously.
‘Twelve,’ she said, as though she’d never heard that number before. ‘Only twelve of you? Seeking to penetrate my city?’
‘Morathi’s city,’ Malascyra corrected, still looming over the prone Pharena.
Tivrain felt a strange, muted delight at the sound of the Harpy’s disdain for her vice-regent. Her suspicions were correct – they were rivals, not allies.
The doors behind them groaned. A lone Witch Aelf slipped into the chamber and presented herself to Malascyra. She bowed in deference, then hastily whispered in her ear.
Malascyra, without begging Daemanta’s leave or formally excusing herself, gave a curt nod and followed the Witch Aelf back out of the chamber, leaving the prisoners alone with the vice-regent and the few Sisters of Slaughter who remained.
The cogs and gears in Tivrain’s mind began to turn, slowly, grudgingly. Was this their moment? Their chance to overpower their captors?
No. Their weapons had been seized, and the Khainites in possession of them were not even in the present chamber. For all Tivrain knew, they might have taken their equipment to the armoury already. They could do a great deal with spells and their bare hands, but there were too few of them to get far without their weapons.
‘What should I take you as, then?’ the vice-regent demanded, interrupting Tivrain’s train of thought. ‘An advance party? Scouts?’
‘Call us what you like,’ Ordys said through gritted teeth. ‘Your hold upon this place is tenuous, vice-regent. Preparations are already under way for a massive invasion.’
Imreth Daemanta’s face betrayed no fear, no misgiving, only cold, cruel delight.
‘Your lies are thin as scraped parchment. The one called Steinbrech sent word ahead of you. He prepared me for your coming – and apprised me of your disobedience.’
Once again, Tivrain felt as though she’d had her guts smashed and her mind scrambled by a near-fatal warhammer impact. A quick glance around told her that the news hit her companions equally hard.
Lord-Arcanum Neiros Steinbrech, dispatched to fetch them home… and he had alerted their enemies to their approach?
Tivrain could not say what tortured her more, knowing that such a zealot as Steinbrech had used their enemies against them or knowing that she’d been foolish enough to think they could come here without being discovered and overwhelmed.
‘You do not prepare the way for an invasion force,’ Daemanta said after a long, awkward silence. She finally released Tivrain’s braid and stepped away. ‘You are criminals, deserters. Your own commanders have surrendered you, at least until this Steinbrech arrives to collect you. What do you think will become of you, now that you are in my hands?’
‘Strike us down, then,’ Heldymion growled, ‘and be done with it. I tire of your words.’
‘Strike you down?’ the vice-regent asked. ‘No, you shall all be added to my garden. And when Lord-Arcanum Steinbrech arrives, he can decide whether to leave you in my care or to dispatch you and send you back to your God-King himself.’
She broke away, swaggering out into the rotunda, amidst the thick towers of resinous spidersilk and the cocoons in which the captured Stormcasts reposed. Tivrain clearly saw the malign light that shone in her blood-red eyes, an indication that the very sight of all those suffering Stormcasts made Imreth Daemanta feel powerful, important. She regarded them as prizes, monuments to her genius.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘you could educate and guide us. Here, you could all be useful, even as you are idle. Here, you would submit to our every whim and investigation, revealing your secrets in perfect, helpless stasis.’
‘So that is their fate,’ Ansonnir said. ‘Torture at your foul hands. An eternity of suffering without meaning, without purpose.’
The vice-regent’s face glowed with arrogant exaltation.
‘Not without purpose, not so far as I am concerned.’
‘What purpose could there be in… this?’ Tivrain asked, forcing herself to study the horrifying spider’s web that held their long-imprisoned comrades.
‘We seek the secret of Reforging, Stormcast, the process by which a mortal being’s essential essences can be reaped and reshaped, again and again.’
‘You think Reforging a gift?’ Heldymion sneered.
Imreth pressed on, moving among the cocooned prisoners.
‘How much more powerful might we, the Daughters of Khaine, the faithful of Morathi, become if death itself posed no threat to us? Thus far, your master, the God-King, has hoarded this wondrous secret for himself, employing it solely to assure his primacy.’
‘And this,’ Ordys snarled bitterly, indicating the web and its sorrowful prisoners, ‘all of this explains why you are not worthy of such power. If this is how you treat your allies, I shudder to think what your enemies might endure.’
Daemanta was unimpressed by Ordys’ rueful disdain.
‘I assure you, given sufficient time and effort, I will tear that secret out of you – all of you – even if I have to slaughter you in hundreds or thousands before I arrive at it.’
‘And what have you subjected them to thus far?’ Tivrain said, studying the many encased Stormcasts visible in the strange garden. ‘I see no marks or scars upon them, no signs of physical torture. Perhaps you feed your own ego to call this abomination an experiment, when it is nothing more than a child’s butterfly collection writ large.’
The vice-regent turned to the nearest prisoner, a dark-haired female Stormcast whose wide eyes remained open, staring into empty space, her apparent terror matched only by her immobility. The Hag Queen stepped nearer, placing one hand upon the suspended Stormcast’s cheek.
‘There is a process,’ the queen regent said. ‘One cannot simply stoop to vivisection or dissection at once. However, their paralysed state makes them terribly resilient. I would imagine I could dissect any given subject down to their bones, every inch of flesh flayed, every vital organ removed or bypassed, and they would yet live, to some extent.’
‘Not one of us fears death, witch,’ Heldymion snarled. ‘Your threats are meaningless.’
‘Oh, I am well aware of your lack of fear in the face of death, Stormcast,’ the queen regent said, moving nearer to him. ‘That is why none of you shall be allowed to die, not while in my care. No, no, you will live – eternally if Morathi so wills it – even as we strip you of the flesh and muscle upon your bones and probe to the very seat of your souls in search of the secrets that bind you to your master’s service.’
Tivrain felt herself shaking beneath her armour, the endless suffering described by the queen regent stabbing deep into the heart of her most primal terrors.
Life unending?
Death forever a dream beyond their hope or experience?
Suspended in the abyss between life and death, endlessly?
It was too horrible to contemplate.
‘Here,’ Imreth Daemanta said, snapping her fingers and summoning a waiting subordinate from a dark corner. ‘Allow me to demonstrate.’
The subordinate was a thrall of some sort, an aelven male wearing leather raiment, bound in a cunning webwork of chains that allowed him to move so as to serve his mistress but not to threaten injury or even escape. He shuffled nearer, slowly, patiently, his ankles bound, and presented a large silver platter to the Hag Queen.
Upon the platter stood several phials of an unknown liquid, along with a dozen long, sharp needles.
Daemanta chose a needle at random, lifted it in her elegant fingers and dipped its tip in one of the phials. When the point was withdrawn again, Tivrain saw that it was coated in a viscous, violet-coloured goo. Slowly, Imreth Daemanta returned to where Tivrain and her companions stood, presenting the needle for their consideration. She regarded the tainted implement with breathless amazement – even affection.
‘It paralyses the body, slows the metabolism, makes movement or physical response impossible, all while preserving awareness and doing nothing – absolutely nothing – to dull sensations. One tiny drop, as I have on the tip of this needle, will do the work. The subject will be bound in the state you see these others in, for months on end.’
She let the needle hover before their eyes, so that they could each consider it and understand its import. Then she let her gaze fall upon Heldymion Dawnslight.
‘Since you doubt my sincerity, Stormcast, I suggest that you are the perfect subject to demonstrate what awaits you all.’
Heldymion roared and lunged towards the vice-regent, though heavy chains still bound his wrists and encircled his torso. His movement was so sudden, so violent, that even Tivrain and the rest of her companions were startled.
In an instant, everything exploded into chaos and violence.
Pharena used Heldymion’s attack as a welcome distraction. In a single deft movement, she slammed aside the sciansa daggers pointed towards her, rolled and came to her feet. The first Witch Aelf that challenged her found the young Stormcast’s chains wrapped around her throat, and she kicked and flailed against her bonds as Pharena tightened the chains, seeking to strangle her would-be imprisoner.
Saran used his enormous bulk to block Ordys and Tivrain as the two of them fell in beside one another and beset the nearest Sisters of Slaughter, eager to engage them at close range, to keep their barbed lashes from being effective.
Ansonnir hastily clasped his hands together, declaiming prayers to Sigmar to summon the power of his storm. In an instant, the air about the Knight-Relictor had changed, become charged, and small, flickering skeins of lightning began to bleed off his fearsome form.
For a brief, heartening moment, it seemed as though they might have caught the Khainites off their guard, that escape might – just might – be within their grasp. Their movements were swift and sure, their determination to fight unwavering. Tivrain even dared to summon the storm without her Incantor’s staff, using her own body as the conduit through which Sigmar’s power flowed. She blasted a pair of Khainites backwards, a Witch Aelf and a Sister of Slaughter, their pale bodies smoking with newly acquired heat scars.
Then Heldymion was overwhelmed.
It happened quickly, more quickly than Tivrain could have ever imagined. One moment, the Annihilator was roaring, using his bound fists and the trailing chains of his manacles as fierce weapons in close-quarters combat with a group of Witch Aelves and Sisters of Slaughter. In the next instant, they all surged upon him, barbed whips encircling his arms and shoulders and throat, sciansa daggers seeking the joints and weak points of his clanking armour.
Just as Tivrain was about to rush to Heldymion’s aid, a sciansa blade flashed and bit deep into his exposed throat. The moment the blade point rose, penetrating the dark flesh under Heldymion’s jaw, Azyrite lightning exploded from the Stormcast’s form, leaping with divine speed up through the ceiling and into the sky. The Witch Aelves and Sisters of Slaughter closest to the conflagration were blasted by the lightning and thrown backwards, smoking and half immolated. The rest shrank from the light and heat – and when it evaporated, Heldymion Dawnslight was gone, borne back to Azyr for Reforging.
Tivrain stole a glance at Imreth Daemanta. The Hag Queen shook with shock and rage, the loss of one of her prisoners more than she could bear.
The momentary shock that froze all present in place, the stunned disbelief that made the remaining Stormcasts all look to one another, was all that the Khainites required to once more take control of their prisoners. Reinforcements streamed into the chamber and surrounded the lot of them, weapons ready, eyes alight with fire and bloody murder.
Ordys looked to Tivrain, as if expecting an order.
Tivrain, sickened and hopeless, made it clear that she surrendered. Her companions did likewise.
There was nothing they could accomplish now, not with so few of them.
She prayed another opportunity might be seized.
Daemanta moved closer, almost gliding.
‘You fools,’ she said, pity and sadness darkening her voice. ‘There is no hope here, no reprieve. Your master’s only concern was to stop you from achieving your ultimate ends. You were doomed from the start. This, it appears, was always your destiny – to be added to my garden, to be subject to my investigations and queries into the mysteries of your creation. Only the overeager hands of my minions’ – she threw a disdainful glare at the barely moving Witch Aelf who’d landed the killing blow upon Heldymion – ‘can rob me of my prizes. Your own efforts will come to naught.’
Daemanta fixed her dread gaze upon Tivrain.
‘Expose her throat,’ she said to the Sister of Slaughter whose whip now coiled under Tivrain’s chin.
The Sister did as bade, tightening her lash and tilting Tivrain’s head sideways at an uncomfortable angle.
The poisoned needle in Daemanta’s hand flashed in the dim light of the vast chamber.
Tivrain prepared herself to join those she had thought to set free.
The great doors of the chamber suddenly groaned on their hinges, thrown open by a new arrival of terrific strength.
It was the Khinerai Harpy, Malascyra. She was followed by a small band of Khainite subordinates. Her quick movements and furrowed brow indicated deep distress.
Malascyra drew Imreth Daemanta’s attention. The needle hovered in the air, mere inches from Tivrain’s exposed throat.
‘Vice-Regent Daemanta,’ Malascyra barked as she marched towards her superior, ‘we have a problem.’
Daemanta withdrew the needle. Her narrowed eyes and pursed lips told Tivrain that she regarded the interruption as a personal insult.
‘Collect yourself,’ the Hag Queen said. ‘I have work to do here.’
‘Stay your hand,’ Malascyra said, whipping her deathblade from its scabbard and levelling it at Daemanta. Tivrain was amazed at the Harpy’s quiet forcefulness. She spoke to the Hag Queen almost as though she were a subordinate and not her commander.
‘You dare give me orders, sister? Draw your weapon and threaten me?’
‘The attack has begun,’ Malascyra said, loudly and forcefully enough that Imreth would truly hear her and understand. ‘The Bloodbound built siege engines – catapults, trebuchets, a trio of towers. They started bombarding the Burnished Gate only moments ago.’
Imreth Daemanta stared at the Khinerai Harpy, clearly having a difficult time understanding what she’d been told.
‘Impossible,’ she finally spat. ‘They are savages–’
‘Cunning savages,’ Malascyra said.
‘Will the gate hold?’
Malascyra nodded. ‘For a while. A few days, I should imagine. But the more troubling fact is that if they are now pummelling us with artillery, their next step will be to roll those towers into place and try to surmount the walls. They won’t wait long. They will try to clamber over the wall and past our defences, or seek some means of weakening the Burnished Gate itself.’
Daemanta’s stunned silence made her misgivings instantly apparent. Tivrain looked to her companions, each in turn.
‘Ready your troops, then,’ the vice-regent finally managed, her sudden imperiousness barely hiding her confusion and desperation. ‘We need every sister off the streets and on the walls. Prepare the spellcasters and archers and–’
Malascyra stepped nearer to her Hag Queen and snarled, her impatience and contempt apparent.
‘We have two and a half thousand of our sisters in this city, mistress,’ she said, as though she were speaking to a dullard or a child. ‘Not enough to fight off a determined warhost of twice that number. We need reinforcements, and we need them–’
‘There are no reinforcements,’ Daemanta hissed impatiently. ‘Not near enough to be useful!’
‘Then we need to mobilise the Freeguilders,’ Malascyra countered. The tone of her voice made it clear that it was not a suggestion – it was an order.
‘Coward!’ Daemanta shouted. ‘Betrayer! You would dilute our courageous, murderous honour by fighting alongside our unworthy servants?’
Tivrain met Ordys’ worried gaze. Mobilise the Freeguild? Things were dire indeed if that was the Khinerai Harpy’s preferred plan.
You know what you must do, Tivrain.
No. The mission – our comrades–
You exist so as to be a living bulwark, standing between the innocent and the depredations of Chaos. Here, now, the innocent need you.
Daemanta and Malascyra were still engaged in their battle of wills.
‘Go on,’ Malascyra taunted fearlessly. ‘I await your brilliant solutions to our quandary, vice-regent.’
‘There is no Freeguild,’ Daemanta answered. ‘We smashed the Freeguilds when we took this city!’
‘You think they haven’t been waiting?’ Malascyra asked. ‘The Gullies are rife with them. Beg their assistance and–’
‘We do not beg!’ Daemanta shouted. ‘We command! Have you forgotten that we hold this city, Khinerai? That it is ours to administer and defend as we see fit?’
‘Then help me to defend it!’ Malascyra snarled, her deathblade’s point never wavering. Even as her fury grew, her focus upon Imreth and her hold upon that sword remained ironclad. ‘If we’re to hold this city against that Khornate horde, we need every hand that can wield a sword or a spear–’
Tivrain spoke before she even realised that she’d formulated a plan.
‘You have our hands,’ she said, ‘and the weapons they wield.’
Both Imreth Daemanta and Malascyra the Harpy turned to stare at her. Daemanta looked as though she were on the cusp of having Tivrain beheaded. Malascyra, on the other hand, was clearly intrigued by the offer.
‘Better yet,’ Tivrain added, ‘help us find our companions and we shall add their numbers to ours – and yours.’
‘Muzzle her,’ Daemanta said to one of the Sisters of Slaughter standing nearby. ‘I won’t hear another word–’
‘Belay that!’ Malascyra commanded the Sister.
‘You dare?’ Daemanta hissed incredulously. ‘I command this city in Morathi’s absence, Khinerai. You shall do as I say–’
‘You administer this city, vice-regent,’ Malascyra said, not giving an inch. ‘I defend it. I suggest you stay out of my way.’
Tivrain saw the fury at work inside Daemanta, but also her helplessness. Malascyra was right, and she knew it.
‘You shall pay for this,’ Daemanta said between gritted teeth.
‘No doubt I will,’ Malascyra said bitterly, her voice as cold as a tempest blade drawn from an icy stream. ‘But only if we survive the Khornate onslaught.’ She turned her dark gaze upon Tivrain. ‘Tell me now, Stormcast, what can you promise us?’
‘Tens of thousands still call this city home,’ Tivrain answered. ‘Innocent mortals who stand to lose a great deal if the Bloodbound of Khorne breach the walls. Set us free and arm us, and we’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with you in their defence.’
‘Tivrain,’ Ordys hissed in disbelief.
‘This is not the way,’ Pharena balked.
‘It is the only way,’ Tivrain countered. ‘However much it pains me.’
And it did pain her, to her core. They had come so far, risked so much, and now, when they seemed on the cusp of fulfilling their mission, a more pressing threat loomed.
Malascyra looked to the nearest Sister of Slaughter.
‘Remove their manacles,’ she said.
Imreth Daemanta withdrew, snarling and cursing in impotent rage.