The three figures sit slumped, as if awaiting the next deal of a card game.

Shoulders sagging in the cavalier postures of men beyond all care, they are pale and austere and still, with eyes lost in deep, dark hollows and jaws yawning low, as though they were at a hard day’s end.

‘You found them like this?’ I ask the messenger boy.

His eyes dart up from my long black cloak of Ulguan falsecloth, finding my gaze upon him.

‘Yes, sir.’ He nods, tucking wayward scrolls into the crook of his arm, eyes shining ochre by the light of the tent’s lone candle.

‘Exactly like this?’

Another nod, this time with a flash of childish defiance.

I weigh him with my eyes, then wave a curt hand. ‘Leave me. Attend to your duties.’

He parts the canvas of the tent and runs.

Alone now, I draw closer to the dead men. I recognise each of their faces, more or less. Two have the cauliflower ears, skewed noses and fat necks of amateur pugilists. I know them to be Steelhelms, their deaths both more inevitable – and less important – than most.

The third man, with windswept, craggy cheeks, I also recognise: Oskar Gebot. Wildercorps Hunter, marksman, drinker.

A knife coated in half-dried crimson sits alongside one of the Steelhelms. I kneel beside it. It carries no sinister signs – just another blade, mass-forged back in Lethis before the crusade.

But now, up close, I spy the deep, clean cut – and the opened veins of the Steelhelm’s arm. I glance about, noting the similar marks shared on each man’s wrists.

I get to my feet, and rummage through the Steelhelms’ black-and-indigo jerkins until I find the iconography of the Fourth Company: crossed swords, half-broken. Their ration books furnish me with names – Stygg and Dint.

I repeat the process with Gebot; the Hunters of the Wildercorps often keep trinkets of their long patrols. Sometimes they keep more than they ought, something that might explain this. His pockets, however, are bare. Except for a scrap of parchment. The script is ink-blotted, as if the author were frantic with haste. Only one word is legible: Sorry.

Like the weight of an off-balance dagger, none of this sits right.

By all appearances, what these men have done to themselves was the truest sort of tragedy – and the loneliest thing a man can do. To escape from torments smaller than a grain of sand, yet weightier than every realm combined? That is an admission of defeat, more private than words can say; more earnest than any lovemaking, born of a singular shame, to be witnessed only by silent shadows.

So why would Gebot join with two apparent strangers to commit something so personal?

As Whisperblade of this crusade, unravelling such questions is part of my service to Sigmar.

But thankfully, even in death men can tell me stories. I give the three bodies a final sweep, slower now, probing for any subtle sign of injuries. I hunt for bruises at the windpipes, fractures in the smaller, softer bones of the hands or feet, or the narrow punctures to the limbs and torso that elude the eye but kill like a broadsword. Anything to suggest these were inconvenient men, disposed of with convenient coordination.

But, at length, I give in. I am empty-handed, save for three names and one note.

I will need to ask some questions.

‘Zelef Eryx,’ Warden Lenghum says to me, using my name in mock greeting. ‘Well met.’

The dark, weathered skin of his wide face breaks into a crooked smile, and with casual composure he resumes work on the crossbow cradled across his knee. But his nonchalance is forced; like some obsessive, he keeps rubbing oil into the same latch.

‘To what do we owe your company?’ he asks.

‘Business, warden.’

‘I’m a busy man, Eryx,’ Lenghum says. Still feigning indifference, still oiling that same latch. ‘You’ll need to come back later,’ he adds, apologetic.

I glance about the Wildercorps’ assembly area – as befitting ran­gers and trackers, they keep an open assembly space at the edge of the crusade encampment. The Hunters watch me with either predatory poise or, like Lenghum, with sham sangfroid. Their trailhounds, meanwhile – beasts of corded muscle and slavering snouts – ignore me, busy at their feeding troughs of water and offal.

‘Oskar Gebot is dead,’ I announce, loud enough for my voice to carry wide.

The other Hunters stiffen, hiss questions back and forth like cross­bow bolts.

‘What happened, Eryx?’ Lenghum says, running a hand through his frizzy, coal-black hair. ‘Gebot was at muster. Just yesterday. Healthy. Living.’

‘I found the body earlier,’ I explain. ‘Triple suicide. Him and two Fourth Company Steelhelms.’

Again, murmured disbelief ripples out among the Hunters, like waves in a pond.

‘Suicide?’ Lenghum says. ‘How can you be sure those Steelhelms didn’t get to him somehow?’

‘Since when do two Steelhelms outmatch a single Wildercorps Hunter?’

Lenghum scowls, pride and resentment blurring on his face. I offer Gebot’s note, illegible though it is.

‘Gebot left this. Just before he cut his wrists – I’m guessing right about when the Steelhelms cut theirs, too. Listen, warden. I already spoke to the Fourth Company’s sergeant-at-arms and he swears he knows of no feuds between his mob and yours. Can you corroborate that?’

Lenghum launches from his camp-chair, the crossbow clattering away.

‘You have some balls, Eryx,’ he hisses under his breath, ‘coming here like this. When you say one of our own just killed himself – right in front of everyone? I don’t take that well.’

‘I don’t care how you take it,’ I reply. ‘Now, answer my question. Did Gebot have any enemies? Either in the Fourth Company or the wider crusade? Anyone who wanted him dead?’

‘No.’

‘You want to think about that before you answer me again?’

Lenghum hawks a glob of spit on the ground. ‘And who the hell are you to talk to me like that?’

In one sudden motion I step close, my falsecloth cloak enveloping him like a lover’s arms. There, in the privacy of the flowing fabric, he feels the passing touch of my cold, hard knife. His lips tauten. His jaw clenches.

And I step back again.

To the Hunters, the whole motion would have seemed like a trick of the fickle falsecloth. Only Lenghum – fists balled, legs unsteady – knows the true threat that passed between us.

‘I am the Whisperblade of this crusade, warden. Answer me true and full.’

‘Gebot didn’t have enemies.’ Lenghum speaks now with a quiet growl. ‘That I know of.’

‘Did you see any unusual behaviour? Did he mention anything after his most recent patrol?’

A pregnant pause as memories return.

‘All of a sudden, he started talking about relatives. Dead ones. Family he’d not seen in years. Like he was real torn up about it,’ Lenghum says. ‘But then, he liked the bottle sometimes.’

‘But he never talked about harming himself?’

‘Nothing he ever shared with me, no.’

‘Thank you, warden, for your cooperation.’

Ephren is where I usually find him – at the entrance of the ­nearest cook-tent.

Wearing a sheepskin coat over his narrow frame, he squats on his haunches with a wooden bowl laid before him. All thin limbs and silver hair, Ephren is not much to look at. But, equally, there is not much in this crusade he doesn’t see – he is one of my best informants, well-attuned to the crusade’s moods and miscreants.

A fusil-sergeant kneels beside him. They talk, furtive, the sergeant placing generous cuts of meat and cheese in the bowl. The old man, meanwhile, reaches into his too-large coat and hands off a parcel with practised ease, fast and low.

The sergeant departs and doesn’t look back, and I approach Ephren unseen under the concealment of my Ulguan cloak. Its gossamer textiles shift colours to match my surroundings, and I startle the old man as I appear at his side.

‘Sigmar’s teeth,’ he splutters through his cheese. ‘Let an old man eat, Eryx.’

‘You lowered your prices,’ I say.

Ephren grumbles and swallows. ‘Disreputable types flooded the market with knock-off products and now the lads insist on paying rock-bottom rates. Say they can’t trust their supply these days.’

‘Is that why you took to selling contraband sweetblack? Or waters from Lake Lethis?’

The old man wipes his hands on his coat, a studied show of indifference. ‘You didn’t seem to mind my activities beforehand.’

‘I don’t. Relax.’

‘Good.’ Ephren sighs. ‘Don’t joke like that. It’s bad enough you’re scaring my regulars. Look.’ Ephren jerks his bristled chin at the ebb and flow around us. Most soldiers keep their heads down in studious silence, or else pass us with a wide berth.

‘You don’t care what they think, Ephren.’

‘I care, Eryx, if they think buying my wares means trouble from you. Now what is it?’

‘Three soldiers ended their lives recently. Two Steelhelms, one Wildercorps Hunter. Their names were Stygg, Dint, Gebot. Did any of them try to buy your Lethisian lake-water?’

Ephren makes an unhappy noise through his teeth. ‘I don’t sell those waters to just anyone. They erase emotions you’d sooner not feel any more, mask memories you’d rather not have.’ He pauses, realisation dawning on him. ‘You reckon they came asking for lake-water – to ease whatever daemons they had – but it didn’t work?’

I give him a slow nod. ‘I asked around, Ephren – first the Steelhelms, then Warden Lenghum – and I got the same story. Each of the three men apparently began talking about deceased relatives and loved ones, as if something were pulling them all into a spiral of despair.’

‘It’s a crusade, Eryx.’ He casts a hand around him. ‘These poor souls see things daily that test a man’s sanity. Why else do they buy my sweetblack or a taste of old Lethis? To escape. In any case, I don’t recall those names. And I’d remember a Wildercorps type, sure as sure. More than that – my product works. Drew it from the lake myself.

‘What has you so worked up over these three, anyway?’ he adds with a grunt of curiosity. ‘Hardly like death is unusual in their calling.’

‘Three men from different walks don’t suddenly exhibit the same despondent behaviour then seek each other out to end their lives together. Something, or someone, is behind this. Find me connections between Stygg, Dint and Gebot. Enemies, threats, histories. Get me something good and I’ll buy you firewater for a month.’

‘Nice,’ he replies, appreciative. ‘I was getting thirsty with all this talk.’

The cook-tent beside us is growing busier now: another relay of troops is arriving to take their meals, these latest wearing the broken crossed swords of the Fourth Company. Like those that came before them, even the stoutest shrink away from me as they pass.

But one stands out among the rest. He has the pale skin, black hair and pinched features typical of the Lethisian poor; before taking the Coin Malleus, he could have been a longshoreman, or some mortician’s apprentice. Nothing special.

Except I don’t know his face. I don’t know the faint hook of his nose, the line of his thin lips or the dour slant of the brow that leaves his eyes hooded and dark. He has a patchy beard, failing to grow through fully, but its length suggests he’s been growing it for some time – if more for poverty than vanity.

There are hundreds of men in this crusade who might share these features.

But none of them are him. And none other is so alien to me.

‘Do you recognise that man?’ I ask Ephren, nudging him with my boot.

‘Who?’

‘Him. With the terrible beard. I don’t know his face.’

Ephren looks askance at me. ‘There must be a thousand souls or more in the ranks besides the camp followers,’ he says. ‘It’s no wonder you don’t recognise the fellow. You must have missed him before.’

But faces are my specialty. I know the crusade’s faces as an artist knows his paints.

‘Do me another favour, Ephren,’ I add. ‘Find out who he is.’

‘So you can add a name to a face?’ he scoffs. ‘What’s it worth to you?’

‘Phial of Aqua Ghyranis – if you get me a name before day’s end.’

‘For that, friend, I’ll get you more than a name.’

Perched up high on its floating metalith island, the noon-bell rings out over the crusade, sending activity blooming throughout the canvas city of soldiers and followers as shifts change and patrols return amid the distant, clamouring chorus of trumpets.

The marshal’s daily briefing will soon begin, so I seek out the Command Corps tent.

The crusade’s mascot gargoylian – a cryptid chimera as tall as a trailhound with mottled blue hide and sweeping black fur – notes my approach, but resumes its impassive watch as I let myself in, early and unannounced.

In here, Hysh’s light is snuffed by the thick hide-and-fabric blend, inlaid both with chain-mail to guard against an assassin’s arrows and Lethisian relics to ward off foul spirits. Unseen, I wait and watch by the light of the tent’s candles as the Freeguild captains arrive, singly or in their cliques. Warden Lenghum is last, dour-faced and stoop-shouldered, doubtless smarting from my visit.

Often the manner of these arrivals, as much as any talk, gives insight to key dynamics at play: of rivalries, both personal and professional, or feuds, ready to become more deadly discords. Slowly now, a hush falls.

A Relic Envoy – a young runner on the command staff – appears, puffs out his chest and declares, ‘My lords! Attention for Freeguild Marshal Luit Weiss!’

Weiss has a shock of blond hair, and a heavy, pensive brow rests above electric-blue eyes that suggest a sharp intelligence. Even without his customary armour he is a bear of a man, his broad-shouldered bulk apparent under a slate-grey doublet trimmed with silver filigree describing a raven’s outstretched wingspan. He glances across the assembly. In unison, all make the sign of the hammer.

‘Stand easy,’ he says with a curt wave. ‘I’ll get straight to it. As you know, we’ve been marching edgeward for a month. Lethis is already a distant memory. And so now more than ever I demand constant rigour in your ranks – any weakness will be all our deaths out here.

‘And yet…’ He pauses. ‘I have learned that half a dozen of our men took their lives last night.’

My ears prick up, but then my heart sinks. There had been three other suicides. Deaths I missed. There can be no such surprises. Each is a failure, flooding my veins with adrenaline, ice-cold.

‘Their circumstances are sinister,’ he adds. ‘Born, no doubt, of some foul sorcery. Panic will follow amid the common soldiery – I look to you, as leaders of your companies, to fight that. Just as I look to our Whisperblade to excise this weakness at its source.’

The marshal turns to a map stood behind him while the captains glance about to find me. Lenghum makes no such moves, but I can see the sweat beading at his temples. Weiss jabs his wide fingers against the vellum map, pointing to the Stygxxian Innerlands.

‘Even if such a disgrace were an option, we are too deep into Stygxx to turn back now. Having already forfeited two days for our stragglers to catch up, we also must break camp the day after tomorrow – no later. To linger any further risks drawing his gaze upon us.’

The unspoken name, Nagash, is too great a risk to whisper, even behind the tent’s talismans.

‘Until we know the true cause of this vile corruption, I have asked the crusade’s battle-priests to double the camp’s warding. I expect you captains to double the Freeguild patrols in turn. But above all, cooperate with my Whisperblade, without exception. Whatever lies behind this must be smothered before we march onward, or Sigmar alone knows what fate awaits us.

‘For now, continue all preparations for departure. I expect your readiness by noon tomorrow. Questions?’

An uneasy murmur follows.

‘Dismissed,’ he says, then, ‘Whisperblade, a word?’

Weiss folds his arms as Lenghum and the captains file away, waiting until we are alone.

‘I ask myself, Eryx – why did my Whisperblade fail to bring news of these deaths at once?’

The quiet barb straightens my back, quickens my pulse. ‘I had not gathered a full picture, marshal. Rest assured I have already been investigating.’

‘I don’t need excuses,’ he says. ‘Serve your purpose. Learn what’s afoot in my crusade. And fix it – before we break camp. Or I’ll find myself a new Whisperblade.’

‘Tell me what happened,’ I say to her, voice low. ‘I need to know.’

She trembles, as if from the depths of her core, as if weak-limbed from some entrancement, but she rallies enough to answer me.

‘Last night I came across them,’ she gasps, the strength stolen from her throat. ‘Told them to stop. Begged them. But they told me to leave. Sigmar strike me down if I lie – they just carried on.’

The girl is a slender waif, her face pale, drawn. Washerwoman’s apprentice, and, I’m told, the only witness to the further three suicides.

‘You were going about your duties?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And they were pulling up nooses, you say?’

‘Yes, sir. Stringing them off the back of the vittle-wagon. I didn’t realise what they were about to do until… That’s when I said to stop.’

I glance back. The girl’s counterparts, other apprentices, linger by the tent’s entrance.

‘Did the three men give any reason for this? Did they speak of anything you might recall?’

‘No, sir. It was like their candle inside was all burned up. Like they had no emotion left.’

‘Were they sick? Did they have any marks, sigils about them?’

‘Please, sir. No more…’ She tapers off as she sees my face: grim-set, brow furrowed.

‘You may be the only witness to deaths that are my highest concern,’ I say. ‘Deaths that may happen again, and that only you might help to prevent. You know who I am – what I am – so you know that I won’t leave without an answer.’

I drop my voice an octave. Lean closer.

‘And you also know this – no one can help you, if you fail to help me.’

Sudden tears bead her eyes, crystalline droplets race down her cheeks.

‘Please, sir,’ she begs again. ‘All three of those men. They said nothing, did nothing, except put their heads in those nooses and shove me away when I tried to stop them!’

‘You expect me to believe,’ I hiss, with a venom that sends the girl shrinking into herself, ‘that three men simply came together to hang themselves? Why are you lying to me?’

‘Please, sir, I’m not…’

‘Who put you up to this?’ I snap, louder now. Panic flutters through her fellows. ‘Tell me!’

‘Sir… no one!’

‘Swear it!’ I bark, short and sharp like a punching blade. ‘On Sigmar’s name!’

The girl fumbles her words, lips betraying her, breath sucking, until, at last, she sobs, ‘Sir, I swear it!’

Hers is a voice robbed of all artifice, too desperate for anything more than one last, slender hope: that only speaking true will save her now. Intimidation is a crude tool, but it works fast.

I leave her moaning with fear in the care of her fellow apprentices.

The three bodies are still where the girl found them.

Knowing the marshal has taken an interest in them, no one has dared cut them down yet – but a clutch of Fusiliers watches me from afar, making an elaborate show of cleaning their weapons, or counting out rounds of the silver shot they save for gheists.

Much as the girl described, the dead men are suspended from the back of a vittle-wagon, wearing crude garlands of old hemp. The growing breeze stirs gentle motion among them.

‘You men!’ I call to the Fusiliers. ‘Help me cut them down.’

Wearing reluctance on their indigo sleeves, they hold the corpses’ legs as I sever the ropes. Then we lay them on the unforgiving earth. Their faces are clearer now, staring at me in silent accusation.

Just as I feared, I recognise men of differing units. I know then that, but for broken windpipes, each man is unharmed; nothing shows foul play.

Nothing save the happenstance of their deaths.

Darkness lends the crusade an abstract air of near-silent simplicity: the chanting of priests reaches me on the night breeze, as they consecrate fresh reliquaries to ward off dark spirits. Freeguild patrols thread the passageways among the tented camp, lanterns betraying their slow progress with motes of golden light – but with aching arms and blistered feet, Weiss’ patrolmen are merely set to catch a chill tonight.

Above it all the skull-faced moon, Lunaghast, leers lurid purple in the gathering blackness.

There I stand, staring at its scowling grimace, daring the fell gaze which – legend has it – drives men mad. Had the dead men all felt its touch? I wonder.

Had they stared too long?

Had I?

After all, what little I learned today has the touch of unreality to it. A defiance of all logic. The young girl’s testimony tells me the suicides were genuine; that no strings were pulled to put rivals in a grave, or exact some secret revenge. And after all, murder presumes motive. But what motive could span such disparate dead? Gebot, Stygg, Dint and the rest served in different companies – different roles, different ranks. Too many variables for some simple feud amongst vying units.

Only one curious connection links them: the words of their comrades and commanders alike, speaking of how each man suffered the same, sudden spirals into despair. But otherwise, as night falls, I am no closer to the solution that Weiss demanded. In fact, I have the same damned question that occurred when I first found Gebot in that tent: why would these apparent strangers come together to end their lives in unison? Not just that. Why did those strangers – and they alone – suffer such abrupt declines?

‘I’m glad you made it,’ declares a familiar voice at my side, breaking my reverie.

I turn to find Ephren eyeing me over.

‘Eryx,’ he adds, ‘you look troubled.’

‘Plenty on my mind and little time to work with,’ I admit. ‘What did you want to discuss? Your messenger said you had urgent news.’

Ephren rubs his hands with a salesman’s delight, announcing, ‘Information!’

‘Regarding the suicides?’ My relief is as palpable, rushing through me like a flood tide.

‘Suicides?’ the old man demurs. ‘No, about that man. At the cook-tent. You wanted a name, remember? I think you were right to worry – he’s a problem.’

‘Right,’ I say, reminding myself of the man whose face had defied my recognition. ‘But first, Stygg, Dint and Gebot – tell me what you learned about them.’

Ephren sighs, relents. ‘My friends knew them well enough – they had the sorts of connections that honest men don’t. That Steelhelm duo, for instance? Moonlighted as toughs among the camp followers. And that Wildercorps Hunter? Big drinker, with bigger bills among the painted ladies, right? Word was he could smuggle in rare finds from out in the wilds. But that’s all.’

That information is as good to me as an Ulguan pathway, leaving me right where I began.

‘The marshal will have my neck if I come to him empty-handed tomorrow,’ I tell Ephren.

‘Who said you were going to him empty-handed?’ he retorts, exasperated. ‘I told you that other man was a problem! Listen. I followed him myself into that cook-tent. And you don’t need a Whisperblade to spot an odd one. The troops didn’t know him – didn’t talk or joke with him. You know what else? He stole some firewater and ran.’

‘The marshal isn’t after petty thieves stealing drink,’ I jibe, ‘but I grant you, the men in this crusade are tight-knit. They hang together like brothers. If they weren’t associating with him then he’s not one of them.’ I pause, thinking. ‘Did you stay on him after he ran with the drink?’

Ephren waves me off, as if offended I had to ask. ‘These old bones don’t go fast, but yes. Saw him slug half a bottle once he thought he was out of sight. He drank like he’d just come out the desert, like he was trying to drown himself. And he was raving, babbling away. But his voice was real low, like he didn’t want anyone overhearing. Couple bottles later, he staggers off – straight to the Wildercorps.’ Ephren adds, with a note of triumph, ‘And who greets him, but Warden Lenghum himself!’

‘Lenghum? But why?’ I ask, blurting the question in spite of myself.

‘Search me. Though he made sure no one else saw it. You can bet on it – Lenghum’s hiding him.’

Earlier, I had deemed Lenghum’s hostility as usual contempt for the post of Whisperblade. But perhaps there had been more to it – an earnest fear of discovery?

I arrest these swirling thoughts. All this changes nothing, my net is still empty.

‘Weiss wants to know why soldiers are killing themselves,’ I tell him. ‘Not whether his warden has a stowaway. And even if this is all true – why should he care?’

Ephren glances both ways, then cranes his head lower, as if from some sudden weight.

‘Because when I overheard the man speaking, in between all that drink? I actually heard him. And you know what? He was praying.’

‘To whom?’

Ephren makes the hammer and murmurs, ‘Him.’

There is no mistaking the look in the old man’s eyes, the edge in his voice. He speaks of Nagash.

Backlit by Lunaghast’s purple pall, the rain drifts in sheets on the unforgiving wind, plastering my hair about my face in sodden ringlets, chafing my pale skin into a lurid red about my knuckles, stealing my warmth like a jealous mistress.

Ahead stands the private fief of the Wildercorps’ encampment, and as masters of vital skills – trackers of any spoor, trappers of any game – they use these skills to keep a jealous watch. With drills that the rank-and-file soldiery would do well to match, the Hunters rotate night watches, confident in the snares of metal charms they laid out for interlopers.

And, of course, there are the trailhounds. Though most sleep in stout cages of bound wood, the Hunters have one on watch at all times. And their scent-tracking is renowned – nothing can defeat those noses.

But the sweetblack I laid out – borrowed from Ephren’s stock – is enough to distract the hound on patrol. Even now, I hear it snuffling at the puddle of irresistible intoxicant.

‘What is it, Fisch?’ a Hunter murmurs to the beast, his voice carried to me by the wind.

The unfriendly rain masks my footsteps as I slip unnoticed in amongst the Hunters’ tents, each dark and still, their occupants taking a much-needed rest. All bar Lenghum’s, at least. Firelight betrays activity within, the motion of crossing shadows suggesting two figures, pacing. If Ephren tells true, then I need to know who else is in there.

Step by patient step, I steal closer, and closer still.

A voice grows in the pattering rain, indistinct at first. But just as Hysh’s light breaks through morning mist, it resolves as I pull flush to the canvas, taut and shuddering from the wind.

‘Tell me!’ it hisses, thick with anger, threatening to boil over, like water in a searing pan. ‘What have you been playing at? I should gut you where you stand.’

I can picture him by the reproaching voice alone. Lenghum, his teeth bared, dark eyes roving.

‘I said I was sorry,’ a man’s voice answers, without thought or feeling or honesty.

It is a voice I don’t recognise, morose and rattling. Could this be the man Ephren followed?

‘You try spending a month hidden away as I did,’ he bemoans. ‘You’ll go find drink, too.’

‘Oh, Sigmar’s teeth,’ Lenghum sneers, the mockery of his retort palpable through the canvas. ‘We already went over your little drink run earlier. No…’ The sound of Lenghum’s voice moves now, as if to berate his interlocutor up close, or to jab at his chest with accusing fingers. ‘This is about something I didn’t have the time to mention earlier – given I was too busy saving your drunken hide from being spotted and caught.

‘This is about something the marshal told me today, after you came back stinking of drink. Six people killed themselves, he said. Gets me thinking, maybe you know why they did it?’

‘What are you talking about?’ asks the other voice, in a thin and hopeless moan.

‘Whisperblade came by earlier today. He said how one of my Hunters, Oskar Gebot, is dead. He said Gebot died alongside two others. I spent today asking around – turns out they were Stygg and Dint, some muscle I hired!’ Lenghum pauses, as if in comic disbelief. ‘As if it weren’t enough with all this heat – it’s because my people are getting killed!’

‘I don’t un–’

‘I should have known something was wrong when Gebot started on about his family like that… Did you do something to them? They saw you… and you did something to them, didn’t you?’

My hand tenses around the knife at my belt, pulls it free of its scabbard. The tip meets canvas.

Wait.

‘This was never part of the plan,’ Lenghum rambles on, as if to smother guilty thoughts. ‘After this, our deal is off. This wasn’t the plan.’

‘You can’t do that!’ the stranger cries, louder now, his voice plaintive, desperate. ‘Please!’ Lenghum hisses for silence, but the stranger shouts out, heedless: ‘You can’t!’

I glance around, my pulse growing. The Hunters on watch may come checking for that noise.

I need to move. And I’ve heard enough.

My knife parts canvas in a single, sudden slash, and I launch myself through the opening. Voices mingle in alarm – until Lenghum’s turns into abrupt despair.

‘You!’ he cries.

I ignore him, setting my gaze on the other man in the tent. Sure enough, it is the man I first saw outside of Ephren’s cook-tent, the same pale skin, black hair, pinched face that vexed me. His mouth hangs agape.

I let him see the knife, shining saffron from the light of the tent’s roaring fire.

‘You,’ I tell him. ‘Name.’

The stranger stammers, voice locked with fear.

Lenghum answers me instead. ‘Eryx,’ he snarls. ‘Whisperblade piece of shit. Sticking your nose where it don’t belong.’

I look sidelong, finding his crossbow swinging up, and its loaded bolt staring me down.

I drop low, without thinking, cloak whirling.

Lenghum fires that same second, a clunking shudder of recoil.

The bolt flies, cutting the air and surging past my shoulder. But the Wildercorps carry repeater crossbows. So I move fast, launching off my haunches, hurtling headlong towards Lenghum.

The collision feels harder than granite, my momentum carrying us into the tent’s fireplace. Sudden, scorching heat blooms as we tumble through the heart of the flames.

All flailing limbs, we strike the tent’s edge, forcing air from our lungs. And Lenghum is pinned under my weight.

Neither of us wastes a word. We both know how this ends.

Rainwater scatters from me as I flip the grip of my knife, tip down, and spear it towards him. But the steel bites into his crossbow’s stock, wedged between us in our chaotic descent.

Lenghum gasps relief, then realises his opportunity. Thrashing under my weight, his frantic hands cycle the crossbow’s clunking mechanism, loading another bolt. I hurl myself back just as it fires, piercing a hole in the roof of the tent. Rainwater immediately begins pouring through, as if on cue.

Lenghum scrambles to his feet, silhouetted by the terracotta flames – a fine target.

I fling my knife at his outline. He howls, high-pitched, as my blade takes its bloody lodging. But he still has wits to try again with the crossbow. A third clunking cycle. Another bolt flies.

Only I’m already darting closer, half-crouching, concealed by the falsecloth.

Lenghum’s bolt flies wide, and I snatch up a log from the fireplace. The heat blisters my fingers, but I grip hard, slinging it into Lenghum’s neck. A flaming comet, it ricochets off him, sending him screaming, collapsing. The reek of burning hair fills the tent.

I pounce close, and kick the crossbow from Lenghum’s grip. He ­scrabbles back, reaching for his belt – so I crush his wrist under my heel.

I look around. We are alone.

‘Who is he?’ I bark at Lenghum, putting all my weight on his wrist.

‘Wait!’ he howls. ‘Wait!’

‘His name!’ I bellow, panting from exertion. ‘Give me his name!’

‘Chora! His name is Chora!’

‘What deal did you two make?’

He hesitates for a moment. So I find my knife, buried in the meat of his thigh. And I twist it.

‘Wait!’ he screams through straining lips. ‘A deal… I want a deal! My life for his.’

‘Depends what you say.’

‘We go way back, all right? We had a good racket going, back in Lethis – protection money. Until he and his family got caught by the Freeguild. Forbidden acts. Worshipping him.’

Another twist of the knife. Another moaning scream.

‘Get to the point, warden.’

Lenghum catches his ragged breath, and then speaks. ‘Chora was going to the noose for those charges. But I snuck him on the crusade instead.’

From the corner of my eye, I notice the air around us growing thick with acrid smoke. Glancing about, I see the log I threw, resting among ample kindling at the tent’s edge. The fabric is catching fast. We don’t have long in here.

‘Why smuggle him onto the crusade?’ I ask. ‘Why take that risk?’

‘Chora has a talent!’

‘What talent?’

‘He speaks for the dead! Gives you messages. Then I take the proceeds. Only something went wrong – the people dying are the ones he had been around, or spoken to. Like he made them sick, somehow.’

Voices reach us from outside: Hunters, alarmed at the fire and sounds of their warden’s tent.

‘Let me live or my mob will kill you,’ Lenghum says, taking desperate heart at the voices.

‘Tell me,’ I hiss, sweating freely from the mounting heat of the fire, ‘where Chora went.’

Lenghum’s bitter laughter is like a slap in the face. ‘You’ll need my people to find him now! Best trackers in the crusade!’

‘They’re not your people.’

The shouting outside intensifies. The Hunters are drawing closer to investigate.

‘Just step outside,’ Lenghum says, ‘let’s see who’s right.’

Snarling, I heave Lenghum upright and grasp my knife, tearing it free from the meat of his thigh. His screaming halts as I hold the blade to his throat instead.

My free hand seizes his frizzy, scorched hair and I drag him headlong out of the flaming tent. Outside, the fierce rain and colder air hits me like a fist in the gut. But the shiver that grips me is from the sight of dozens of Hunters, weapons up, shocked at the sight of their warden, lame-legged and captive. And the trailhounds, slavering, straining at their collars for release, and the taste of hot flesh.

Lenghum spits words at them like broken teeth. ‘Kill this bastard, you stupid pricks!’ he cries. ‘Do it now!’

I look at them, not betraying the secret doubt I feel, the inner desperation gnawing at me, and force it into a metamorphosis – into the image of a firm, level-looking man, born to be here, as if it were natural to hold another man by his neck and stare down his fellows.

Behind me, Lenghum’s tent collapses amidst sudden, showering sparks and sucking air.

‘Come on, you cowards!’ he barks, ‘I’ve been good for you! Don’t forget that!’

But the crossbows and arbalests waver with common discord.

‘Listen to me!’ I call out to the Wildercorps, shoving down Len­ghum onto his knees. ‘All of you! This man confessed. To the aid and shelter of a murderer, and a disciple of Nagashizzar! Here, in your camp – a stain on your honour! He defiled your loyalty, your trust. And all just for a little more lucre!’

The Hunters look down, heads freighted with shame. Awful realisation dawning on him, Lenghum tries to flail free – so I stamp on his wounded leg. Desperate, defeated, he pleads to me with unintelligible words.

But the offer is clear in any tongue – he is trading dignity for life.

‘Six of your brothers are dead because of him! Six souls, lost to the dark, because of him! As your Whisperblade and in Sigmar’s name, for these crimes, I sentence death.’

I draw my knife across his throat – softer than a lover, stricter than a miser.

He gives a sharp, singular shriek, his hands clawing out in dreadful, despairing paroxysms. But already his voice is drowning into some wordless, convulsive crescendo.

I free my grip of his hair, toppling him face-first into the lifeblood flooding at his knees. There he chokes and, slowly, stills.

The hasty clatter of a horse’s hooves sings out in the night air, and a stallion races into view: Marshal Weiss. The marshal, rain-slick and staring, looks from body to knife to me, silent eyes questioning, until he nods approval.

He spurs his mount into an effortless turn, departing into the dark.

The bruises and burns I took are swelling already, blooming deep pain in my joints and skin. But there is no time to waste. Not until Chora – Lenghum’s secret gift to the crusade – is ended.

His reckless choice beggars belief – to bring a devotee of necromancy amongst our ranks and then rent out his twisted parlour tricks like some shabby shopkeeper? I spit reflexively.

Worse yet, Lenghum’s taunt rings out in my skull: You’ll need my people to find him now.

The Hunters are not Lenghum’s people – true loyalty would have seen them save their leader – but they are sullen and fearful, as withdrawn as scolded children. None will speak with me. And even the finest tracker would struggle to catch a fleeing man on a night like this – the rain is growing ever-heavier, a torrential deluge that hangs in the air like a physical weight.

So, without choice or thought, I play the hunted man’s part and hit the encampment’s passageways, letting guile be my guide through the rain.

For Chora, any tent could be his shelter, any shadow his friend. But step by imperceptible step, I begin to grasp that something is guiding my route true – some instinctive sense, helping me follow in the shadow of death. Here, as I go, I pass a battle-priest, alone, his head between his legs as he chokes silent sobs. And there, a Freeguild patrol, slumped in the rain, faces vacant as if some threadbare spirits had snapped inside them.

Then I find him. Ephren.

Tonight pities neither young nor old – and yet his smoke-white head is drenched and bare. His sheepskin coat is missing; his old blue tattoos blur and spread on his pale, shivering skin, as if the rain were stealing the very ink from his flesh.

‘Ephren!’ I cry out, and sweep him into the lee of the nearest tent, snatching loose rags and bundling them about his shuddering frame. ‘What in Sigmar’s name are you doing here?’

‘I left her,’ he weeps, his eyes a storied mass of burst veins, his voice raspy. ‘Sigmar help me, I was so young. I left her, so long ago I don’t know her face any more! But I hear her now…’

Frantic, I reach for my hip flask, unstoppering it before wetting my thumb-tip on its spout.

Ephren doesn’t fight as I part his freezing lips and rub the Aqua Ghyranis onto his gums, nor when I sweep him up in my arms and pull his body close to mine with a tenderness I haven’t felt for a lifetime – and a desperation beyond the normal compass of my soul.

I hold him tight in that relentless rain, while the Ghyranite water rebuilds his shattered psyche.

‘Eryx,’ he murmurs at last, shivering now merely from old bones chilled to the marrow. ‘Eryx, is that you?’

‘Easy, Ephren. It’s me. What happened here?’

‘My girl… my little girl. Eryx, damn my soul, I ran from her! I said I wasn’t ready for it – fatherhood. So like a coward, I ran…’

I grip him by the shoulders, firm now. ‘Who did this to you?’ I ask him, our eyes locked.

He clears his throat, as if ashamed.

‘He did. That man, the one I followed. He was in a blind panic, collided with me. Before I knew it, he was speaking tongues to me, Eryx. Only they made sense somehow, if I just listened a little closer. Tried a little harder. And then… I could hear my girl. My little girl.’

He pauses, catching himself. And, knowing what I am about to ask, points one bony hand towards the edge of the crusade camp.

‘He was running that way, Eryx. Please, for Sigmar’s sake. Go kill that son of a bitch.’

The crusade’s clumsy, temporary fortifications – earthworks, Hyshian torches, talismans – were all thrown up to keep out the horrors of Shyish, not to keep men in.

So when I reach the nearest cluster of barricades, I find a gaggle of Steelhelms, perplexed.

‘Which way?’ I snap at them, not pausing to elaborate the question.

One points ahead, out towards a low rise of hills, mere outlines in the gloom.

I give chase without pause, lungs surging, legs carrying me on with long, hungry strides. But away from the crusade’s lights my eyes must attune to this black season of the night, so I slow my pace, and all while the nightmare of this realm becomes ever-more apparent.

Spiked hedges of dark wood stretch and lunge at me with rapacious animism, sharp edges lined with longing, clutching bones. Amid wan, weak tufts of grey-green grass, I see skittering motions that flee my approach. Fell things – carrion fiends yearning for hot blood, or spies perhaps of Nagash himself. Stacked skulls watch me pass, arrayed in the stylised, inverted scythe of Shyish, their vacant sockets tilting after me with a voyeur’s obsession.

To walk here, beyond even the mere wrappage of crusade civilisation, is to walk life’s edge and stare into a dark more abyssal than any sea. But this very barrenness makes life more enlivened. The pulse in my veins, the air in my lungs, the memories of my life – each becomes more luminous in my mind, more intimate, until burning so bright I want to throw my head back, and laugh aloud with thoughtless spite against all the envious, crippled shades out here.

But Chora’s death is all that matters now.

Focus.

So when I find fragments of cloth, torn away on clutching bone-wood shards, I take heart. Soon after, footprints in the sodden, sandy soil confirm my path. Then, as the rain dies away, I hear the gasping, bellowing sound of a man past all exertion.

I pull my falsecloth tighter and orient off the sound, until I spy Chora. He’s on his knees, in a depression in the earth. He must have felt himself safe there. Hidden, even.

My knife is up, still red with Lenghum’s blood. My approach is glacier-silent, inexorable, drawing ever closer behind Chora’s unsuspecting back. I watch for weapons or foul trinkets. But he carries nothing, save the perdition of all who live around him.

Mere feet away now, his posture suddenly stiffens, as if warned of my approach.

Too late.

I dive forward, just as he tries to get off his knees, and put my knife against his throat, feeling my steel pressing against his flesh, using my legs to pin him in place.

‘Not a word,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t say a single word. Nod if you understand.’

He nods gingerly.

‘You got six men killed, Chora,’ I say, ‘so I’m going to ask questions. And you’ll answer. Short, to the point.’

I push the knife against his jugular, letting it speak for me: no tricks. Another nod, near imperceptible. We understand each other.

‘How many others are there like you in the crusade?’

‘None.’

‘Lie again and I take an eye out. How many others are there?’

‘None. Just me.’

‘You’ve been here since the start,’ I ask, trying a new tack. ‘Why start killing now?’

‘I never wanted to ki–’

‘Just answer me! Why start now?’

‘I was taking my time – he’s patient, my master. So I ran my séances clean. I took messages. But then they got greedy.’

‘Who did?’ I ask.

Chora cranes his head back, half-looking up at me. When he speaks next, his voice comes as a hoarse whisper, as if fearful of more than just my threats.

‘The dead!’ He clears his throat. ‘They got hungry. They want more souls – and they started using me to take them! I didn’t realise at first. But they started twisting people, saying things they shouldn’t hear – things that made them seek each other out, and do those things…’

‘You expect me to think this isn’t your fault?’ I ask.

He laughs, mirthless. ‘I had a plan. A plan he would have favoured. But it got out of control. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. Your crusade will fail – for the arrogance of stealing lands that aren’t yours, for pretending you can defy him! You forget yourselves! You forget that death is coming!’

I yank his head back with a merciless heave at his hair, silencing him.

‘I know death. More than most. I neither fear him, nor your broken malice.’ I tighten my grip on the knife, ready for the simple forearm twist to–

‘She wants to speak to you.’

My heart stills.

Chora blinks hard. ‘She says… says your boy is with her. She… won’t stop saying it.’

My voice is thin, as if I’m hearing it from another’s lips. ‘Who?’ it asks, but I already know the answer.

‘Let me go,’ he retorts, glancing to my steel. ‘And I’ll let you talk. Deal?’

The blade suddenly weighs heavy in my hand, as though it’s hewn of stone, and all the strength is pouring from my limbs like so much eager blood. An unbidden tremor shudders through me. I know it’s wrought from a place not entirely human. I know it. But though I can barely admit it, I know in my heart I want it, just as an addict wants his craving. I want to be whole again.

I want to fill the vacuum where my heart had been – and return to being more than this shell, more than just this facsimile of the man I used to be. Just as a compass wants – needs – to show the way, I want to feel the grace of love again, and the simple gratitude for having it.

I want to go back, before time and loss and the diminishing returns of my fading memories.

I want you.

Chora shudders as I drive the knife through his throat. As if disbelieving, he gasps, then looks down, then puts his hands on his severed arteries, as if to stem a river at flood tide, gargling and spluttering on his own heedless blood.

I kneel behind him, and let him lean back into my lap, feeling the warmth of his lifeblood painting my legs. With slow motions I pull back Chora’s hands, one at a time, all the while looking into his pleading black eyes, watching the single, voiceless word forming on his lips.

A message, perhaps, from you.

Why?

‘I have my duty,’ I say – to you – softly, lest my voice fail and the tears break from my eyes. ‘Forgive me. Please. I have my duty.’

Chora dies in my arms, choking.

Part of me dies with him.