City of Secrets Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Act One

  Act Two

  Act Three

  About the Author

  An Extract from 'The Realmgate Wars: Ebook Collection'

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Backlist

  Discover more stories set in the Age of Sigmar from Black Library

  ~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

  THE GATES OF AZYR

  An Age of Sigmar novella

  ~ THE REALMGATE WARS ~

  WAR STORM

  An Age of Sigmar anthology

  GHAL MARAZ

  An Age of Sigmar anthology

  HAMMERS OF SIGMAR

  An Age of Sigmar anthology

  CALL OF ARCHAON

  An Age of Sigmar anthology

  WARDENS OF THE EVERQUEEN

  An Age of Sigmar novel

  WARBEAST

  An Age of Sigmar novel

  FURY OF GORK

  An Age of Sigmar novel

  ~ BLADESTORM ~

  PART ONE: VENGEANCE ETERNAL

  PART TWO: RIGHTEOUS BLOOD

  PART THREE: THE MANTICORE DREADHOLD

  PART FOUR: IRON TIDE

  PART FIVE: SPLITSKULL PASS

  PART SIX: CHOSEN OF SIGMAR

  PART SEVEN: THE SPIRAL TOWER

  ~ AUDIO DRAMAS ~

  THE PRISONER OF THE BLACK SUN

  A Realmgate Wars audio drama

  SANDS OF BLOOD

  A Realmgate Wars audio drama

  THE LORDS OF HELSTONE

  A Realmgate Wars audio drama

  THE BRIDGE OF SEVEN SORROWS

  A Realmgate Wars audio drama

  THE BEASTS OF CARTHA

  A Realmgate Wars audio drama

  FIST OF MORK, FIST OF GORK

  A Realmgate Wars audio drama

  GREAT RED

  A Realmgate Wars audio drama

  ONLY THE FAITHFUL

  A Realmgate Wars audio drama

  Warhammer Age of Sigmar

  From the maelstrom of a sundered world, the Eight Realms were born. The formless and the divine exploded into life.

  Strange, new worlds appeared in the firmament, each one gilded with spirits, gods and men. Noblest of the gods was Sigmar. For years beyond reckoning he illuminated the realms, wreathed in light and majesty as he carved out his reign. His strength was the power of thunder. His wisdom was infinite. Mortal and immortal alike kneeled before his lofty throne. Great empires rose and, for a while, treachery was banished. Sigmar claimed the land and sky as his own and ruled over a glorious age of myth.

  But cruelty is tenacious. As had been foreseen, the great alliance of gods and men tore itself apart. Myth and legend crumbled into Chaos. Darkness flooded the realms. Torture, slavery and fear replaced the glory that came before. Sigmar turned his back on the mortal kingdoms, disgusted by their fate. He fixed his gaze instead on the remains of the world he had lost long ago, brooding over its charred core, searching endlessly for a sign of hope. And then, in the dark heat of his rage, he caught a glimpse of something magnificent. He pictured a weapon born of the heavens. A beacon powerful enough to pierce the endless night. An army hewn from everything he had lost.

  Sigmar set his artisans to work and for long ages they toiled, striving to harness the power of the stars. As Sigmar’s great work neared completion, he turned back to the realms and saw that the dominion of Chaos was almost complete. The hour for vengeance had come. Finally, with lightning blazing across his brow, he stepped forth to unleash his creation.

  The Age of Sigmar had begun.

  Act One

  The prophecy promised slaughter and death, and so the Stormcast Eternals marched to war.

  The city of Excelsis watched them leave her borders. All along the great walls the lightning engines spun and whirred, sending flickering cascades of storm energy coruscating across the sky. It was a fitting salute. Beneath the churning aether, columns of solemn warriors marched under the panoply of their Warrior Chambers. Their splendid, gilded war-plate bore many colours. There was the pristine white with blue trim of the Knights Excelsior, most zealous of Sigmar’s sons. Elsewhere could be seen the grim black of the Sons of Mallus, a Stormhost whose temperament was as sombre as their aspect. Ahead, always ahead, was the sea-green of the Knights of the Aurora.

  It had been the first prophecy in a decade to bring the city’s war council together. The Prophesiers had conversed with the mages of the Collegiate, and both had ratified the augury, mined from the deepest veins of the Spear of Mallus – the colossal shard of fate-touched rock that aeons ago had plunged into the Realm of Beasts and ripped from the earth the very bay upon which Excelsis now stood. This was truth, they said. There was no question.

  The orruks were gathering, and in numbers large enough to engulf a city.

  And so the Stormcasts marched. The fortified gates of the city rumbled open, and the columns of towering figures snaked off into the low hills and deadly plains of the Coast of Tusks.

  ‘Do they eat, do you think?’ said Custin.

  The boy was greeted with a volley of blank stares. Rare was the minute when the stick-thin guardsman wasn’t asking some damn fool question or another.

  ‘The lightning men,’ he continued, scratching his pointed chin, which was as ever covered with a fine blanket of wispy hair that was as close to a beard as he could manage. ‘My cousin Rullig, he says they do. Says they order up a big cart full of salted meat to their fortress every other market day. Now my other cousin, Ullig, he says that’s nonsense. Swears he’s seen them in the early hours, up on the high wall eating thunder and lightning. The lightning strikes and they just swallow it up.’

  ‘Sigmar’s bones, boy,’ sighed old Happer, leaning back on his bunk and staring at the stone above his head. Once grey, it was now stained a sickly yellow, a result of the pipe that constantly rested between his lips. ‘You’ve a rare talent for talking nonsense.’

  ‘Leave the lad be,’ said Corporal Armand Callis, stifling a yawn as he sat up on his bunk. ‘We can’t all be as wise as you, Happer. Not for a good few decades yet, anyway.’

  Happer snorted indignantly. ‘Boy’s been fed too many tall tales. I’ve lived long enough to know the Eternals ain’t no fairy-tale knights. I ever tell you about the purges, son? I’ve seen things that would make your guts turn to ice.’

  From the other side of the room came an exasperated groan, and a balled-up sock arced across to strike Happer on the side of the head.

  ‘Spare me another tale of the bloody White Angels,’ said Longholme, running a hand through her greasy black hair. ‘I’ve heard a hundred times how they’re going to come at night and steal us all away, damn us all as heretics and stick our heads on the harbour wall.’

  Happer opened his mouth to reply, but instead just shook his head and muttered darkly under his breath.

  Custin sighed and crossed to the window. ‘Raining heavy now,’ he said, looking out glumly. ‘We’re to get soaked.’

  From outside the heavy wooden door to the barracks, hurried footsteps could be heard. Shortly after, Jammud came bursting into the room, breathless from taking the stairs two or three at a time.

  ‘Corporal?’ he said, panting at the exertion. ‘The sarge is sick again. His belly, he says. He can’t make patrol tonight.’

  Callis hauled himself to his feet, biting back a curse. If Sergeant Ames spent less time stuffing his ever-expanding guts with dock cakes and cheap liquor, and more time earning his blasted rank, then maybe he wouldn’t be bedridden four
nights out of seven. Of course, Ames would be the one earning twenty more glimmerings a week while Callis did his job for him, so who was the real fool here? He buckled on his breastplate and tucked his pistol into the shoulder holster beneath his long overcoat. The black powder weapon would have to be kept dry. A lowly corporal could never afford one of those fancy duardin-made wheel-lock guns that kept out moisture – his sidearm was usually a trusty piece, but a sniff of rainwater and he might as well be wielding a loaf of bread.

  He pushed the bitterness deep down inside, adding it to his not inconsiderable stock, and jammed his sabre into the scabbard at his side.

  ‘All right, you lot,’ he barked. ‘On your feet. You know the drill here. We make our circuit, we do our best to avoid getting our pockets picked, and we get back here by the early morning for a couple of hours sleep before we have to do it all over again.’

  There was the expected chorus of grumbles and moans. Callis strode across to Custin and peered out of the window of the Coldguard Bastion. The young guardsman was right; it was a torrential downpour. Thick spears of rain, the kind that almost hurt when they hit you. The Bastion loomed over the eastern harbour side of Excelsis, an uncompromising slab of stone littered with gun emplacements and watchtowers. The massive cannons on top of the structure had range and power enough to defend the entire bay. That was the Coldguard Regiment’s unglamorous task, while the Stormblessed, the Bronze Claws and other elite units made their forays into the wilderness alongside the Stormcasts, earning glories and battle honours.

  Callis sighed. Guard duty was all soldiers longed for while on manoeuvres outside the city walls, but give it a season or two and you had a fortress full of bored troops on your hands, all with glimmerings to spare. Patrolling and constant drills were all you had to occupy them. And, if you happened to be a young corporal with a drunken sot for a sergeant, you had to take on that extra responsibility without even being paid for the privilege.

  Callis dismissed the sour thought. Before him stretched the tumbledown roofs and alleys of Squallside, its streets lit by waterproof marrowpitch torches and the strobing flashes of the lightning storm that roared overhead. Far in the distance, rising ominously from the dark waters of the bay, was the Spear of Mallus. The vast monolith of black stone seemed to move closer with every burst of lightning, as if it were some kind of primordial behemoth striding out of the ocean to crush the city of Excelsis underfoot. Callis could glimpse the fulminating energies of the mage towers as they circled the vast rock, siphoning off the deposits of purest prophecy that ran through its augur-touched stone. A flash of lightning illuminated the Consecralium. The forbidding stronghold sat out on a promontory that reached into the surging bay, to the right of the Spear. He glimpsed its soaring, angular battlements and the colossal siege-weapons that littered its walls. The home of the Knights Excelsior, the White Angels. Callis felt a shiver of unease, and turned away.

  ‘A week of this storm,’ he said. ‘The last thing we need is a flood tearing its way through the Veins. They’d have to send every regiment in the city to stem the riots.’

  Custin stared at him, eyes wide with fear. ‘Mam lives there,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘She’ll be okay, won’t she?’

  Callis grinned, and cuffed the younger guardsman on the shoulder.

  ‘Of course she will, Custin. Don’t mind me. If a flood was coming the omens would have shown it by now.’

  There was something particularly miserable about an early morning patrol, even when the sky wasn’t doing its best to drown you or freeze you to death. The five soldiers squelched through the streets of Squallside towards the harbour, past slick-cobbled lanes lined with stormstone town houses and dimly lit taverns. Here, the housing was built to last. These were imposing, blue-black edifices with steep roofs of grey slate, sacrificing aesthetic appeal for rugged sturdiness. The only warmth that emanated from them was the soft orange-white glow of tallow candles and lanterns through windows and doors. Residents here were well protected from the wretched weather, and the guardsmen could hear peals of good-natured laughter from within the augur-houses, where people came to trade and consume their hard-earned glimmerings. Outside, the vicious downpour had caused the gutters to overflow, and so the dismal conditions were capped by the gruel of rotten tallow and night soil, which seeped into their boots and wafted up their nostrils. Corporal Callis consoled himself by vividly picturing the vicious murder of the absent Sergeant Ames.

  Onwards they marched, serenaded by the sound of Guardsman Happer trying to cough up his innards. Callis half considered ordering him back to the bastion, but knew that the old soldier would only bluster and complain about being mollycoddled. They passed through Squallside, and headed down the wide cart lane towards the harbour.

  Far ahead they could see the forest of masts poking out of the mist and rain before the sheer face of the Spear. A haze of light radiated from the bay, hundreds of cabin lights and lanterns coating the water in a soft golden glow. No captain was foolish enough to set sail in the middle of all this, especially not upon the treacherous waters of the Coast of Tusks. Tall, broad ironoak and redbark masts marked the great galleys of human captains, gleaming metal chimneys the strange steam-powered contraptions of duardin seadogs. Even now the wolf-ships of the sinister aelf corsairs would be prowling the lanes and edges of the gathered mass. These were sleek and predatory vessels, their hulls festooned with ivory spears and other treasures torn from the hides of the sea-devils and behemoths that plagued the Coast of Tusks. For once they were not hunting. Instead, they watched the flock with a tyrant’s eye. No captain would risk breaking the rules of Excelsis harbour with the wolf-ships at their door.

  ‘We’ll cut down Rattleshirt Lane,’ Callis said. ‘Skirt the edge of the Veins, push down towards the harbour.’

  There was an awkward pause. Eventually Guardsman Jammud spoke.

  ‘Ah… corporal?’ he muttered. ‘The sarge doesn’t like to go in there. He says there’s nothing worth protecting anyway. Just a bunch of pickpockets and knifemen. Why don’t we just stick to the trade lanes?’

  ‘That is our assigned patrol,’ Callis snapped. ‘Besides, in the narrows we’ll get some cover from this damned rain.’

  No one liked to go into the Veins if they could help it, least of all those who actually lived there. It had been thirty years since the last consecration, since the city borders had been expanded and her walls rebuilt. In that time, the population of Excelsis had almost doubled, with waves of refugees and fortune-seekers of all races appearing from across the realms, drawn by the promise of the city of secrets, where merchants dealt in raw prophecy and even the poorest man could witness a glimmer of his future. With no space left for housing, the city’s craftsmen had hit upon a novel solution – keep building regardless. Known as the Veins for its labyrinthine network of cramped alleyways, the poor quarter of the city stretched from the east to the western wall, a rookery of thrown-together, multi-storey shacks piled haphazardly on top of each other with no care for safety or comfort.

  ‘Watch your coinpurses and cover your throats,’ grumbled Happer, clutching his steel mace firmly in two hands.

  ‘No band of roof-runners is stupid enough to start a fight with the Coldguard,’ said Callis. ‘Now get moving. I’d like to climb into a cold, uncomfortable bed at some point in the next week or so.’

  Fortunately, the overhanging roofs did indeed provide some cover from the pouring rain, though the streets here were even filthier than the main thoroughfares. There were no drains or sewers here in the sprawl. Wary eyes peered at the guardsmen from behind broken doors and shattered windows, and hunched, pale figures scattered like mice when Custin’s lantern shone into the dark corners of the alleyways.

  ‘Through here,’ said Custin. Oddly enough, the youth seemed far more comfortable out here on the streets than he ever did amongst the soldiery of the Coldguard Bastion. ‘It’s a shortcut,’ he told Callis,
grinning widely despite his soaked longcoat and drowned-rat hair. ‘It’ll take us out past Hangman’s Row.’

  ‘Good work, lad,’ the corporal said.

  They filed through Custin’s shortcut, tramping over the accumulated filth of the Excelsis poor. Fragments of bottles and burnt-out glimmerings, the tell-tale remnants of a drunkard’s futile quest for a secret that could get him out of this hell-hole for good – a half-glimpse of a valley festooned with precious amberglass, perhaps, or the location of a swarm of rare quarrelfish. When they were fresh from the mint, the small, silver glimmerings would have flickered and gleamed with the faintest hint of prophetic magic, imbued as they were with fragments of the strange metals found within the Spear of Mallus. Now, their magical properties consumed, they were a dull grey-black and appeared charred, as if they had been sifted out of the ashes of a house fire. Malnourished figures scuttled away into the darkness as the guardsmen approached, like beetles fleeing from underneath an upturned rock.

  ‘What a waste,’ said Longholme derisively, her long, oft-broken nose crinkling in disgust. ‘You don’t get nothing from a few glimmerings. Odd feeling in your guts, maybe. Might get lucky at the card table a couple of times. Nothing you can actually use. Imagine if these gin-wits had saved up all this. Earned themselves a decent living. Typical native-born, can’t even…’

  She tailed off as Happer dug an elbow into her arm. With an apologetic and fearful expression, she turned to the corporal.

  ‘Ah, what I mean to say, sir,’ she stammered. ‘Just that some of them…’

  Callis allowed himself a few moments of enjoyment from her embarrassed guilt. He was second generation reclaimed himself, descended from the nomadic tribesmen who had flocked to Excelsis when the light of Sigmar had returned to the realms. He had the same dark skin and slight, lithe frame of his mother, a legacy of the many generations his ancestors had spent scratching an existence from the ruthless plains and valleys of the Coast of Tusks. Despite their insistence that all were equal in Sigmar’s realm, many pure-blood Azyrites still harboured a mistrust of those descended from the reclaimed tribes. The unspoken assumption was that such folk were untrustworthy somehow, as if their people’s long years without the light of Sigmar must surely have left them tainted.