The Hunt Read online

  There was no one else. Your path has been a lonely one. You had comrades in Grenholm Keep. Since then, you have not. You have only had suspects and servants. Kolth has been loyal, but you do not see him as your peer. You need to be remembered by someone worthy.

  But most of all, you need to be remembered by Thevena, and remembered without hate.

  You did not expect her to accompany you. So you tell yourself, repeatedly, until this seems to be something very like the truth. You are glad she is there, though. For so many reasons, you are glad. If she has not explicitly forgiven you, she has not condemned you, either. You will follow the trail of the Slaaneshi cult and exterminate every member, and she might well bear witness to that, and though what you do, you do for Sigmar, if this helps her too… well, that will sit well with you.

  And you will not be alone on this night. You will not be alone.

  You think you might be performing your final tasks as witch hunter. If you can act honourably until the end, you tell yourself you will be satisfied.

  The ruins of Grenholm Keep loom before you. The green has not covered them. The fallen towers and tumbled walls remain bare, like the bleached bones of a leviathan. The destruction the forces of Chaos wreaked here was too savage. The land has not been able to begin healing yet.

  ‘How many survived?’ you ask Thevena.

  ‘I don’t know. I saw no one else when I emerged, but that means little. I was below ground, alone, for days.’

  There is no adequate response to that statement, so you make none.

  ‘To fight so long against Chaos, and then betray the cause when the light of Sigmar has come to us...’ Thevena sighs. ‘I do not like to think any of our comrades on the ramparts had it in them to be so treacherous.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  The talk of betrayal makes you uncomfortable, even though it is treachery that you have come here to find.

  The last of twilight fails when you are less than a hundred yards from the ruins. The darkness of Ulgu covers Ghyran. You have been bracing yourself these past moments, and yet you are not prepared for the fury of the scream. It is enormous. It is as if the firmament itself howls in anger. You stagger. You gasp.

  ‘Bered?’ Thevena asks. ‘What is it? Are you ill?’

  I am not ill, you think. I am doomed. You look behind you. The spectral host is at the bottom of the hill, closer than it has ever been before, and encircling the rise. This is the night, then. This is the reckoning. There will be no escape. You cannot descend from Grenholm Keep, and you do not doubt that the phantoms will reach the ruins before dawn.

  The banshee points up the slope, her hair and robes billowing in the ethereal wind. She sees you, and her scream surrounds you, consumes you, and scrapes you hollow. You turn away with a groan, stumbling again, and Thevena holds you up.

  ‘Do you not hear them?’ you ask. ‘Do you not see them?’

  ‘See what?’

  You shake your head. ‘Nothing. Nothing. An attack has begun, but it does not concern you.’ It is better that she cannot see what is coming for you. It would be wrong for her to become an innocent victim of your fate.

  Of what am I guilty? you want to cry out. You do not, because you know the answer. The truth is all the more obvious since Thevena sees and hears nothing. The dead are the comrades you abandoned. They have been waiting for you to return to Grenholm Keep to exact their revenge.

  I betrayed nothing. I fought for Ghyran. I fight for Sigmar.

  You wish your protestations carried more conviction in your heart.

  How can the truth feel so much like a lie?

  No matter. No matter. You have a calling, and you will not abandon it now. You steady your breathing. You walk more quickly, as if even a small increase of distance could diminish the intensity of that shriek. You will learn what there is to learn in Grenholm Keep, and if you must die here, then you will charge Thevena to carry the knowledge found here back to Everyth, to raise the alarm, and to take the battle to the cult.

  You reach the gate of the keep. It is open, and passing through it no longer leads to a courtyard beyond the walls. Instead, the collapse of the keep has created a dome of rubble. You and Thevena penetrate into the darkness, your torches a weak circle of light revealing the angles of shattered stonework, scarred with burns. You see window frames turned on their sides and filled with boulders, fragments of staircases scattered like wheat, hints of corridors leading off like web strands into abyssal blackness.

  Thevena’s breath catches. She pales, and it is clear now that she is finding each step as difficult as you are. ‘I had hoped I would never be here again,’ she says.

  You can see the nightmare of her final days in the keep surfacing in her memory, attacking her as savagely as the shriek that is calling for you. ‘You should go,’ you say.

  She shakes her head. ‘This is too important.’

  Then you will face your ordeals together. You raise your torch higher, spreading the light a bit further. You examine the slumped walls of rubble, looking for any sign of your prey. It is almost impossible for you to concentrate on your task. The scream is growing louder and louder. You are running out of time.

  Why have you come here? Why have you hastened your end? Why are you still trying to finish a struggle that you cannot win in the time remaining to you? Why do you not flee?

  Your breath is coming in quick gasps. Inside your leather gauntlets, your palms are cold and covered in sweat.

  Then you see it. Where the broken cobbles drop away in a steep slope, a rune, malevolently sensuous in its curves, has been daubed in blood on a broken slab.

  ‘There,’ you say, and then stop.

  The shriek is in the ruins with you. It shakes dust from the roof of stone. There is too much light, and it is a terrible light, the sickly glow of sepulchres. You turn, and the banshee is in the gateway, phantoms raging about her.

  ‘No,’ you say, and take a step backward. ‘Help me,’ you beg Thevena.

  You do not want to die. Not like this. The last of your discipline breaks. You thought you could fight until the end. You were wrong. The terror that has come is too great. You resisted until the moment came, and here is your limit. You are not the warrior you were called upon to be.

  You experience a moment of clarity that you have been suppressing for years. You know the answer to the question of whether you rushed to join the Devoted of Sigmar, or fled Grenholm Keep.

  The knowledge snaps you in half.

  ‘Can’t you see them?’ you cry hopelessly. ‘Can’t you hear them?’

  And then, suddenly, gloriously, you are no longer alone.

  ‘I do,’ Thevena says, and her eyes are wide with fear. She covers her ears.

  ‘They are here for me,’ you say.

  Two things happen at once. The host bursts into the ruins, and Thevena takes your arm and the two of you run, sliding and slipping down the slope. The banshee howls in rage, her hands snatching for you, and missing by a breath.

  Down you flee, and surely it is Sigmar who guides your footsteps and keeps you from falling, for you succeed in putting some distance between yourselves and the spectres.

  ‘I’ll hide you!’ Thevena shouts. You can barely hear her.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Where I sheltered from the Maggotkin.’

  You can think of nothing better, and to follow in Thevena’s footsteps somehow seems fitting. You will repeat her ordeal, and it was one from which she emerged.

  The rune you saw is unimportant now. If you survive, you will hunt again.

  You descend deep in the dark. The shadows thicken, pushing against the light of the torches. You can barely see two steps ahead, and the scream of the banshee threatens to shatter your skull in two.

  You reach a lower vault, one that is still relatively intact. Water is trickling in from somewhere. It is
an inch deep on the floor. Thevena splashes across the vault to the far wall. She kneels and pushes a stone aside, revealing a cavity in the base of the wall. ‘In here,’ she says.

  You approach. You look into blackness. You hesitate.

  The glow of the phantoms fills the vault. There is no more time, and there is nowhere else to run.

  There is a sudden, slicing flash of pain in the back of your legs and you fall, twisting. You land on your back, and Thevena is standing over you, holding the sword she used to sever your tendons. She glances back at the phantoms and hurries to push you into the hole.

  You shake your head. You want to plead, to beg, and to ask why, why, why? The words do not come, but Thevena answers all the same, because she wants you to know, she needs you to know.

  ‘There is ecstasy in purest revenge,’ she whispers. ‘I have given my worship for this ecstasy. It is glorious.’ She hisses in delight and gives you a final push.

  As you slide into the dark, your last sight of Thevena is of her exultation just before the spirits fall upon her, screaming in rage.

  Too late, you understand. The host was a warning, its ghostly arms seeking futilely to arrest your fate.

  You slide until you come to a jarring stop, your head jerked to a sharp angle and held tight between stone. You are wedged upside down between tonnes of rubble, the jagged texture of the stone pressing against your back and chest. Foul water trickles into your mouth. You choke and gag, but you catch rasping breaths in between retching.

  In your mind, you are screaming, believing yourself to be absolutely alone.

  You are wrong. I am here with you. I am a keeper of secrets, and you will be my secret plaything for an age of exquisite torment.

  About the Author

  David Annandale is the author of the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the Warhammer Horror portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy range includes the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

  An extract from Genevieve Undead.

  He had a name once, but hadn’t heard it spoken in years. Sometimes, it was hard to remember what it had been. Even he thought of himself as the Trapdoor Daemon. When they dared speak of him, that was what the company of the Vargr Breughel called their ghost.

  He had been haunting this building for years enough to know its secret by-ways. After springing the catch of the hidden trapdoor, he eased himself into Box Seven, first dangling by strong tentacles, then dropping the last inches to the familiar carpet. Tonight was the premiere of The Strange History of Dr Zhiekhill and Mr Chaida, originally by the Kislevite dramatist V.I. Tiodorov, now adapted by the Vargr Breughel’s genius-in-residence, Detlef Sierck.

  The Trapdoor Daemon knew Tiodorov’s hoary melodrama from earlier translations, and wondered how Detlef would bring life back to it. He’d taken an interest in rehearsals, particularly in the progress of his protégée, Eva Savinien, but had deliberately refrained from seeing the piece all through until tonight. When the curtain came down on the fifth act, the ghost would decide whether to give the play his blessing or his curse.

  He was recognized as the permanent and non-paying licensee of Box Seven, and he was invoked whenever a production went well or ill. The success of A Farce of the Fog was laid to his approval of the comedy, and the disastrous series of accidents that plagued the never-premiered revival of Manfred von ­Diehl’s Strange Flower were also set at his door. Some had glimpsed him, and a good many more fancied they had. A theatre was not a proper theatre without a ghost. And there were always old stage-hands and character actors eager to pass on stories to frighten the little chorines and apprentices who passed through the Vargr Breughel Memorial Playhouse.

  Even Detlef Sierck, actor-manager of the Vargr Breughel company, occasionally spoke with affection of him, and continued the custom of previous managements by having an offering placed in Box Seven on the first night of any production.

  Actually, for the ghost things were much improved since Detlef took over the house. When the theatre had been the Beloved of Shallya and specialised in underpatronised but uplifting religious dramas, the offerings had been of incense and a live kid. Now, reflecting an earthier, more popular approach, the offering took the form of a large trencher of meats and vegetables prepared by the skilled company chef, with a couple of bottles of Bretonnian wine thrown in.

  The Trapdoor Daemon wondered if Detlef instinctively understood his needs were far more those of a physical being than a disembodied spirit.

  Eating was difficult without hands, but the years had forced him to become used to his ruff of muscular appendages, and he was able to work the morsels up from the trencher towards the sucking, beaked hole of his mouth with something approaching dexterity. He had uncorked the first bottle with a quick constriction, and took frequent swigs at a vintage that must have been laid down around the year of his birth. He brushed away that thought – his former life seemed less real now than the fictions which paraded before him every evening – and settled his bulk into the nest of broken chairs and cushions adapted to his shape, awaiting the curtain. He sensed the excitement of the first night crowd and, from the darkness of Box Seven, saw the glitter of jewels and silks down below. A Detlef Sierck premiere was an occasion in Altdorf for the court to come out and parade.

  The Trapdoor Daemon understood the Emperor himself was not present – since his experience at the fortress of Drachenfels, Karl-Franz disliked the theatre in general and Detlef Sierck’s theatre in particular – but that Prince Luitpold was occupying the Imperial box. Many of the finest and foremost of the Empire would be in the house, as intent on being seen as on seeing the play. The critics were in their corner, quills bristling and inkpots ready. Wealthy merchants packed the stalls, looking up at the assembled courtiers and aristocrats in the circle who, in their turn, looked to the Imperial connections in the private boxes.

  A dignified explosion of clapping greeted the orchestra as Felix Hubermann, the conductor, led his musicians in the Imperial national anthem, ‘Hail to the House of the Second Wilhelm.’ The ghost resisted the impulse to flap his appendages together in a schlumphing approximation of applause. In the Imperial box, the future emperor appeared and graciously accepted the admiration of his future subjects. Prince Luitpold was a handsome boy on the point of becoming a handsome young man. His companion for the evening was handsome too, although the Trapdoor Daemon knew she was not young. Genevieve Dieudonné, dressed far more simply than the brocaded and lace-swathed Luitpold, appeared to be a girl of some sixteen summers, but it was well-known that Detlef Sierck’s mistress was actually in her six hundred and sixty-eighth year.

  A heroine of the Empire yet something of an embarrassment, she didn’t look entirely comfortable in the Imperial presence, and tried to keep in the shadows while the prince waved to the crowd. Across the auditorium, the ghost caught the sharp glint of red in her eyes, and wondered if her nightsight could pierce the darkness that sweated like squid’s ink from his pores. If the vampire girl saw him, she didn’t betray anything. She was probably too nervous of her position to pay any attention to him. Heroine or not, a vampire’s position in human society is precarious. Too many remembered the centuries Kislev suffered under Tsarina Kattarin.

  Also in the Prince’s party was Mornan Tybalt, grey-faced and self-made keeper of the Imperial counting house, and Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich, hard-hearted and forceful patron of the League of Karl-Franz, a to-the-death defender of aristocratic privileg
e. They were known to hate each other with a poisonous fervour, the upstart Tybalt having the temerity to believe that ability and intellect were more important qualifications for high office than breeding, lineage and a title, while the pure-blooded huntsman von Unheimlich maintained that all Tybalt’s policies had brought to the Empire was riot and upheaval. The Trapdoor Daemon fancied that neither the Chancellor nor the Graf would have much attention for the play, each fuming at the imperially-ordained need not to attempt physical violence upon the other in the course of the evening.

  The house settled, and the prince took his chair. It was time for the drama. The ghost adjusted his position, and fixed his attention on the opening curtains. Beyond the red velvet was darkness. Hubermann held a flute to his lips, and played a strange, high melody. Then the limelights flared, and the audience was transported to another century, another country.

  The action of Dr Zhiekhill and Mr Chaida was set in pre-Kattarin Kislev, and concerned a humble cleric of Shallya who, under the influence of a magic potion, transforms into another person entirely, a prodigy of evil. In the first scene, Zhiekhill was debating good and evil with his philosopher brother, as the darkness gathered outside the temple, seeping in between the stately columns.

  It was easy to see what attracted Detlef Sierck, as adaptor and actor, to the Tiodorov story. The dual role was a challenge beyond anything the performer had done before. And the subject was an obvious development of the macabre vein that had been creeping lately into the playwright’s work. Even the comedy of A Farce of the Fog had found room for a throat-slitting imp and much talk of the hypocrisy of supposedly good men. Critics traced Detlef’s dark obsessions back to the famously interrupted premiere of his work Drachenfels, during which the actor had faced and bested not a stage monster but the Great Enchanter himself, Constant Drachenfels. Detlef had tackled that experience face-on in The Treachery of Oswald, in which he had taken the role of the possessed Laszlo Lowenstein, and now he was returning to the hurt inside him, nagging again at the themes of duality, treachery and the existence of a monstrous world underneath the ordinary.