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Grombrindal : Ancestor’s Burden – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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CHAPTER 1

ALWAYS ONE MORE

Margew Venki’s insides squirmed. Sweat sogged his beard and misted his lenses. Beneath him, the iron bulk of the Frorlenhand hung heavy, the sky-hauler’s endrins straining. Whoever had laden it most recently had done so carelessly. His vessel would list sometimes this way, sometimes that, as if untethered cargo were sliding about its hold.

Who has done such lousy work? Margew grumbled inwardly. He reached up to adjust his mask, only to find his tether-line was snapped so tight to the wheel that he could not move his hands. Ah, right, he thought. Must’ve been me.

Even his thoughts were ill-balanced, oily and troublesome. His vision swam.

Before him, the great sky-port of Barak-Thryng glittered and twisted, a miracle of steel and stone suspended above the Spiral Crux. The City of the Ancestors appeared to him a dream, even as he sped towards it.

Home, Margew thought. At last.

‘It’s bouncing, Jhori.’

Endrinrigger Jhori Lintolk snorted. Elbow-deep in the innards of a swivel-gun rig, he patted around until his hands found the angular extremities of a dislocated actuator. He braced himself against the floating gun emplacement’s exterior and gave a firm push, and the actuator popped back into position. Jhori grunted with satisfaction. He’d earned a pint today. He could not say the same for his apprentice.

Pushing away, he let his aether-endrin carry him into open air for a moment. Above him, Teffi Ginstock steadied herself among the tower’s upper batteries and stared into the darkness. It was a cold, ill-favoured sort of night, great banks of cloud rising from forgotten peaks to barricade the sky-port.

‘Bouncing, aye?’

‘Real irregular, Jhori!’ Teffi replied, with the energetic urgency of youth. ‘Swinging this way and that.’

Jhori sighed. ‘Let me see.’

He drifted to the side and peered into the distance. Talk among the Perimeter Corps had been of metaliths within sight of the city. Nothing unusual. The same forces that kept Barak-Thryng aloft were alive throughout Chamon, ebbing and flowing according to the galvanic rhythms of the Spiral Crux.

Jhori narrowed his scopes on a dense patch of cloud. Despite knowing what he was looking for – a distant splinter, like a scratch on his visor – he saw nothing. Then his breath caught. The metalith had eluded him because it was so close it filled his vision.

It was in the cloud.

It was wide, flat on top and jagged beneath.

And it was bouncing.

Jhori heard whooping laughter on the wind. His blood chilled, and grim resolve tightened in his breast. He knew the duty he owed to his apprentice, to his kin, and to his city.

‘Teffi,’ he said, his tone low. ‘Go. Fast as you can. City, now.’

The apprentice endrinrigger’s head popped up over the battery above him, her head tilted in confusion and concern.

But Jhori was already moving. He swung his legs into the swivel-gun rig and disconnected his aether-endrin, letting it float away. He slid into the gunner’s seat. Recalibrated articulators responded smoothly, and he turned to face the oncoming metalith.

Behind the floating island the cloud bank parted, bathing all of Barak-Thryng in the light of the Bad Moon.

The city of Margew Venki’s birth had never seemed so radiant to him as it did when it welcomed him home. Barak-Thryng was a dour place according to some, but now, as it roiled and wavered before him, it appeared as it had in his youth – a glittering spectacle.

Maker’s whiskers, he thought, but that batch of Irontop Regular must’ve been strong, to have me wet-eyed and wondering, so.

Except I’ve not had a drink since–

Something foul settled on his palate. He began to remember.

The trade-captain is dead. The whole crew, dead by the hands of the ones who crept up from beneath the rickety old berth in the Dyrwood. It was them, with their shackles and their rusty knives, and their brews that made you see things.

Felt better to get back into the sky, didn’t it?

Nice full belly.

Nice full ship.

Margew blinked away distress and tested his grip on the wheel again. He couldn’t move his fingers. The Frorlenhand listed and rumbled with anticipatory energy as it sped towards the dockyards on the outskirts of the Azrilazi trade district.

Here was a place where travellers converged. Their vessels formed an irregular mass among the berths on the edge of the city. At its heart towered the bulk of the great Khrundal-class battleship Gromthi-a-Grund, pride of Barak-Thryng.

Too fast, Margew thought, his mind swimming. Then, again, more urgently: Too fast! Who set this rate, who charted this course?

He blinked, and his unsettling memories abandoned him.

Ah. Must’ve been me.

The city of Margew Venki’s birth had never seemed so radiant to him as it did when it welcomed him home.

Before the alarm could be raised, the sky-hauler Frorlenhand collided with the Azrilazi dockyards, keeling sideways and skidding to a halt. Fungal miasma gouted from the stricken vessel, bearing with it a lunatic tide of pitted blades and grinning green faces.

Izmok the Scratcher, self-appointed shaman-king of the Dyrwood, shrieked and clapped and urged his swarming stabbas forward. He was here. The moon was here. Here he would find the prize that was promised – not this great grimeless metal mess of a city, oh no, but the ship. The ship that the witch had shown him, when his shrooms and scratchings had, at last, ripped out the last of her mind’s glimmerings. Steal a ship to get a ship. That had been his great cleverness. A little ship for a big one. A ship to get to the city, then a ship to get to the moon.

He raised his lucky knife and wailed. Izmok the Scratcher’s time had come.

The arkanauts of the Perimeter Corps might have been caught wholly unawares were it not for the salvo of flares that rose from the outermost defensive tower in the final moments before impact. A corona of red light preceded a last, defiant burst of aethershot as the drifting island’s bulk smashed through the first part of Barak-Thryng’s defences. Then the geomantic forces within the metalith began to tangle with those that held the sky-city aloft. They repelled one another, and the island began to rise, higher and higher, until its bulk eclipsed the leering moon.

Those whose boundings and boingings had sent the metalith teetering towards Barak-Thryng cared not that the drop would likely be fatal. The Bad Moon told them to jump, and so they jumped, the whole lot of them, becoming a rain of grot and squigflesh as they tumbled through the skies.

It was Squigboss Krinkit who leaped first, his mangler squigs snarling and biting at the air as they fell. He screamed the whole way down, his body inflated with glee, because to fall was to bounce. The moon had said, For nine nights shall you bounce, and upon the ninth, you will know me. Then fall down upon the stunties, and leap back up to me!

I’m goin’ to the moon, Krinkit thought as he plummeted, pulling pointlessly on the reins. Squigboss Krinkit’s time had come, too.

All over the city, the alarm went up – in the Azrilazi dockyards most of all, where cannon fire shook the gantries of vessels at rest, the battleship Gromthi-a-Grund among them. In the ship’s shadow lurked the trophy-barges of Borsen Thond, which had gathered dust since the adventurer vanished a season prior.

We should be rid of them! those concerned had complained to the Admirals Council. Bad for business. And the stench–

Are the berths not paid up years hence? the counterpoint had come.

Well, aye, but–

Then all is as it should be.

And so the matter had been settled, as duardin matters often are.

And so the matter festered, as duardin matters often do.

In the depths of the largest of these trophy-barges, the calamity stirred movement in long-abandoned crevices. Among these skulked Skritbag, chieftain and seer. He twitched and giggled and began to claw at the dormant moult of his beloved Arachnarok. Slowly, he began to unmake the spun cleverness that had convinced Borsen Thond that he’d killed the great spider.

Thond had been wrong. Skritbag had made a tasty fool of him.

Now, Skritbag listened to the clamour outside, and the scuttling in the moon, and knew that his time had come.

Almost.

Give it a minnit, he resolved. I’ve eggs to see to.

Teffi’s endrin gave out as she fell into the tradeways at the edge of Azrilazi. By instinct, she aimed for the streets of hammered steel that formed the superstructure of the elevated trade district. Here were almshouses and workhalls that had been built according to the Code long ago, with the same hidebound rigour that the Kharadron of Barak-Thryng applied to all their doings. To Teffi, these promised greater safety than the makeshift cabins and tangled gantries that subsequent generations of traders and travellers had erected as their homes and businesses, using iron and stone of no certifiable quality.

Even so, good Thryng steel did not make for a soft landing, and the foe that now rampaged through the district cared little for the finer distinctions of Code certification. Teffi unhitched herself and stumbled forwards, and immediately a mad-eyed grot was upon her. Acting upon instinct, she fired her rivet gun point-blank into its guts.

Jhori wasn’t behind her. Jhori wasn’t coming. She’d heard his final salvo, and the crushing impact that followed. Swallowing grief and fear, she ran.

Instinct carried her away from the open street and into the tangle of alleys and stairways that bordered it. She heard distant cannon fire and knew that she had made the right decision landing here. The inner defences of Barak-Thryng were without peer – they would hold. But Azrilazi would not. Either the grots would take it or they wouldn’t, but the strafing fire of the hun-ghrumtok would leave it in ruins regardless. The Code was clear. Azrilazi was an outer district, open to outsiders, which in the strictest interpretation would open it to Four Point Five: Aid allies unless doing so would prove pointless. That being established, Nine Point Seven would come into effect: Excessive firepower is permissible.

Which was all well and good, but Azrilazi was Teffi’s home. It was where her father lived, in his beloved tavern, the Twins-and-Tankard, itself a relatively new addition to the dockyards. That was where she must go, she knew, as she ran. Though good Kharadron sense told her to seek sanctuary in certainty, her heart drove her towards kin.

Smoke from stricken vessels swept the tradeways, and her ears were full of the sharp report of aether-carbines. The Longshore Marshals, coordinating pockets of doomed defence all around her, had been given little time to brace for invasion. The foe were themselves in disarray, capering as they ransacked the city, surging without direction. She saw grots scurrying into open pipes, heedless of the fact that most of these led to the under-furnaces. Those that did not, however, led to the bilges. We’ll be scraping them out of there for ages, Teffi thought.

Eventually she emerged at the head of one of the tradeway stairs, a wide causeway that led down to the docking spars below. The Twins-and-Tankard was a lone building located between two of the larger yards. The berths nearby were big enough to house the largest sky-ships in the fleet, and Teffi had grown up in the shadow of austere, storied vessels. Indeed, above the tavern’s door rose a burnished depiction of the Warrior and the Maker, a sigil of the City of the Ancestors that had once adorned the prow of such a craft. Now, to her, it signalled Barak-Thryng’s defiance.

Teffi could make out a thin line of arkanauts, rifles in hand, their backs to the tavern. It was towards these that she ran, crossing the first docking spar, head low. As she reached them, she saw that the defence was being coordinated by an arkanaut bearing a spotter-sergeant’s insignia.

‘Brenk?’ Teffi asked, breathless. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Frustrating sort of a day, Teffi,’ replied Spotter-Sergeant Brenk, wearily. ‘Fancied a drink, but couldn’t get past the door. Some realm-plodding longbeard’s at the bar, holding court, telling tales. I couldn’t get a look-in. Place is heaving.’

‘Whole district’s heaving, Brenk,’ Teffi said.

‘Aye, well,’ he grumbled, tinkering with a valve and testing the pressure in his carbine, ‘still fancy that drink, don’t I?’

They turned together to stare out into the darkness, where the horde amassed, teeming from the shadows to swell upon the docking spars, spreading across the yards and overtaking one vessel after another. Teffi’s eyes went to the tavern door, and then to the spotter-sergeant, and she joined the line at his side, her fingers feeding bolts into her rivet gun. She’d followed her heart far enough. She knew her duty, now, just as Jhori had.

Patrons began to spill from the tavern’s interior, and she looked for her father among them. Many still had their tankards in their hands. The bulk of the emerging throng did not move any further than the doorway of the tavern, and Teffi wondered if she might need to direct them towards safety. She looked to Brenk, who seemed equally bemused. Then there was a disturbance that drew their attention back to the door, where a flaming crest of red hair wobbled into view.

‘Make… make way for Rhyngrim! Rhyngrim, runedaughter of Sigyorn!’

This belligerent, unsteady cry was loud enough to split the crowd. There was a particular smell to a Fyreslayer in their cups – like old hops left too long on a stovetop – that was in this case so powerful that it found Teffi’s nostrils through her respirator.

Yet, despite the assault on her senses she was glad when the drunkest Fyreslayers she had ever seen pressed forward to join them. There were three of them, and they still had their balance, along with priceful weaponry. They moved with purpose, and it was then that Teffi realised that the tavern-goers were moving with purpose, too.

It was then that she saw the emptying of the Twins-and-Tankard for what it was.

Not an evacuation, but a disembarkation.

Following the Fyreslayers came Teffi’s father, Nytten. She wanted to call out to him, but it was too loud, and his attention was elsewhere. He walked alongside the last of the tavern’s patrons, a bristle-whiskered elder who Teffi did not recognise. The stranger closed the tavern door, then gave it a testing pull. Then he patted Nytten Ginstock on the shoulder and turned.

First, Teffi saw a traveller in good boots and a well-made but unadorned cloak. The stranger paused, sniffed the air, and his nose wrinkled in deep grudgement. Then he closed his eyes and rolled his shoulders, and Teffi blinked, or perhaps her lenses misted, because suddenly the cloak was gone, and what she saw next stilled her heart.

It was an impossibility. It defied every bit of good sense hammered into her by the Code, and by the strict tenets of the academies of Thryng.

It was a truth, also. Something deep in her bones knew the rightness of it.

In that instant, Teffi saw an ancestor returned to the City of the Ancestors. She saw a warrior in ancient mail, shining axe in hand. She saw a flowing cape of crimson. She saw rings of silver, gold, copper and gromril in a vast white beard.

And she knew why it was that her father’s tavern had been heaving.

‘Right!’ the stranger began, drawing all eyes to him as he strode forward. ‘There’s grobkaz in the air tonight, young ones. Foulness in the sky, and wretched things at our door. So there ever is, so there ever was.’

He paused, and for a moment seemed to take on the appearance of a mountain, a holdfast, a legend carved in stone.

‘On nights like these, our foes think themselves lucky. They think our era has ended, that we’ve grown too slow, too divided, to seize time’s workings and arrest the motion of the ages. They are wrong, young ones. They are wrong!’

Teffi heard renewed shrieking in the air, felt the decking at her feet tremble. The white-bearded stranger moved past her and turned his back on the tide of grots that spilled through the miasma towards him.

‘To arms, bold ones!’ he cried, slamming down with the hilt of his axe. ‘I call on you to be the ire that rocks the mountains. I call on you to give the grobi your rebuke! Give them drengi fire, and dawi mettle, and all the iron the sky can yield!’

The grots were almost upon him, but he held his ground, immovable. He drew one last deep lungful of night air, and bellowed as he turned to face the foe.

‘Khazukan kazakit-ha!’

These words were foreign to her. They matched no strain of Kharadrid that she knew. Yet they thundered within her even so, amplifying the same soul-deep certainties that the stranger’s presence had inspired.

A roar went up from them all, first from the Fyreslayers, and then everybody else – off-duty arkanauts and travellers of all stripes, armed with hammers and pistols, tankards, table legs and chairs. Each bellowed the war cries of their people, a dozen duardin dialects intermingling. Then the throng began to move, the whitebeard at its head, and Teffi realised that she was joining them, charging into battle in the wake of the inspiring stranger.

It was always something to find himself back among the foe, a weight of good gromril in his hand, his people around him, proving themselves to be as stubborn as they had ever been. The duardin were many people, and one. The Maker had seen to it that his white-bearded wanderer reflected this, and had the power to reflect it back upon those who beheld him – to be Ashkarn, Wytskarn, Witromm or Rigo, whoever it was that the moment called for.

Yet he was simply Grombrindal now, among the grobi once again, axe held forth. He had come to remind them who he was, too, for he knew that the mind of a grot was a meagre, shrivelled thing, and needed prodding if one wished to stir anything grander than puddle-deep reflection within it.

On this night, however, Grombrindal felt that the time for prodding had long since passed. This was an hour for chopping.

Grombrindal collided with a cluster of spear-clutching Moonclan, scattering them before him and ending the lives of three with a single sweep of his axe. They scrabbled backwards and he pressed onward, cracking skulls against the decking. The patrons of the Twins-and-Tankard filled the gap behind him, striking and bludgeoning as they went.

There was a roar and a rush of heat as Rhyngrim of Sigyorn flung herself into the melee. Then the harsh crack of carbines heralded the arrival of Brenk’s arkanauts, who fired as they charged, overcoming the hidebound pragmatisms of their Code to join their kin at the heart of the fray.

Grombrindal’s whiskers bristled with satisfaction. In this age of upheavals there were, nonetheless, moments that set his feet upon solid ground. He snapped a grot’s spine with belligerent force before twisting to intercept a bounding squig. His axe caught between its teeth and sliced the beast in half. The heat and foulness of its demise mingled with an illusory sense of mountain chill. For a moment these high airs gave him a sniff of the high peaks of old.

His little army caught up with him and formed lines at his sides. They hadn’t taken much convincing to rush to their home’s defence, for duardin rarely did.

The resilience and ingenuity of the dawi, the cruel tenacity of the grobi – they were each bound to an eternal mechanism that tested one against the other, again and again, forever. And here, now, as ever, it fell to him to be fate’s engineer – to reach deep inside the guts of that eternal machine, find the fault…

And push.

The duardin defenders of Azrilazi formed ranks and pressed through the horde, drawing the grots’ attention as they battered their way towards the outer berths. For a moment, it seemed as if Grombrindal’s host would proceed unimpeded. Then there was a high, commanding wail from somewhere deeper in the horde. The tide of grots abated momentarily. A whooping cheer went up, and the Moonclan line burst apart to reveal a pack of fanatics whirling iron balls on crude chains.

‘This again,’ Grombrindal muttered.

He took a step forward as withering fire from the arkanauts thinned the foe – but on the fanatics came, heedless of the danger.

‘Hold true!’ he bellowed. ‘Steel yourselves, young ones!’

The runedaughter did not heed him, but listened only to the fire in her blood. She and her Hearthguard rushed forward, intercepting the first of the fanatics and vanishing in a whirl of iron and fire. By the time Grombrindal reached them, one of the slayers was on the ground, his beard matted with blood. The runedaughter was over him, punch-drunk and reeling, roaring defiance.

Another pack of fanatics came at her sideways, and in her rage she did not see them. The white-bearded stranger stepped past her and caught the first ball and chain around the hilt of his axe. He grunted with the impact, then steadied himself. The ball’s momentum, arrested suddenly, shot down the chain until the grot that wielded it was swept off its feet. Grombrindal raised his axe above his head and swung the creature like a flail, sweeping it into the path of its kin. Whirling chains and whooping grotflesh entangled with one another until the whole mass of them came to a skidding halt.

Grombrindal placed his hand on Rhyngrim’s shoulder. ‘Be mindful, young one,’ he began. ‘In your dealings with grobi, know that there’s always–’

Something massive collided with the Moonclan mob – a bounding pair of colossal squigs that chomped indiscriminately as they went, sending the foe into disarray. Grombrindal sniffed, gave a firm pull, and untangled his axe. There was a new discord in the air, distinct reeks intermingling.

Two clans, each a surprise to the other.

He sensed another presence within fate’s mechanism, its will competing with his own.

I’ll deal with you later, he thought.

Squigboss Krinkit bore down on the glittering stunty-chief, stuffed with glee. It was a moon-made miracle that he hadn’t burst with the thrill of it – the screaming descent, the bounding rampage, and now, a great munching to be done.

There were grots in his way. Foot-scrabbling little punies, happily squashed beneath his bounding manglers. Krinkit hauled on the reins, willing his twin steeds to do that which they were already doing. There was no stopping them when the chomping urge was upon them.

One of his manglers snapped forward and was met by a bladed edge of gromril that cleaved down through its cranium and embedded itself deep in its skull. The stunty-chief held his ground, letting the beast’s mass smash into him. Krinkit’s other mangler twisted to avenge its sibling, but staggered, tumbling sideways. There was little that Krinkit could do but let go of the reins and fly headlong into the fray.

This time, he did not bounce. He slid along the decking until at last he came to a wheezing rest at the base of a pair of armoured boots. His eyes snapped open, and the last thing he saw was the moon, eclipsed by the barrel of a rivet gun.

Teffi pulled the trigger and shielded her lenses from the blast of viscera that resulted. A roar went up from the folk at her back, and they began to press forward to where the white-bearded stranger took apart the massive squigs with a firm, practised hand. She felt a presence at her back, and when she turned she found herself looking directly into the eyes of her father. He was slick head to toe in dock-grime and grotblood, and he was beaming.

‘My girl!’ Nytten Ginstock said. ‘Do you see? He’s here!’

He pointed to the whitebeard, pulling her forward with him. In his other hand he gripped the heavy truncheon that he kept behind the bar for special occasions.

‘Who is–’ she began, her lips forming the question even as her father’s attention returned to the battle.

‘He’s here!’ Nytten repeated.

‘Aye, well, so’s the fleet.’

Teffi turned to see Brenk, his lenses set on the clouds. She followed his gaze to a point above the district walls, and it was then that she saw them – ironclads and gunhaulers moving at pace. The hun-ghrumtok. Teffi’s mind went to the Code.

Four Point Five.

Nine Point Seven.

‘Not long now,’ Brenk said, with an arkanaut’s dour pragmatism. Then he shook himself free of this grim cast and called out to the whitebeard.

‘Stranger!’ he yelled, over the din of the melee. ‘We’ve not long. There’s grudge-settlers in flight.’

The white-bearded stranger regarded him for a moment. He nodded. Then he met Teffi’s eyes, and the grey depth of them banished her fear. He was looking into her, she sensed. Seeking the worth that she could contribute.

‘This way,’ she said, quietly at first, then louder. ‘The Gromthi-a-Grund. They’ll raze the docks, but they won’t risk the battleship. Artycle Three, Point Two…’

Brenk nodded. ‘To the ramps!’ he bellowed.

As the bombers closed in on Azrilazi, they ran, the ramshackle lot of them, pressing through grots surging in the same direction – away from the promise of fire, towards the great battleship.

Yet the Gromthi-a-Grund appeared to them as if it was receding – drifting away as they drew closer, looming unsteadily, as a mountain does. The Moonclan set upon them with increased ferocity, and it was all they could do to maintain their momentum as the first bombers released their payloads upon the miasma that had engulfed the dockyards.

It was then that Teffi saw that the battleship was receding. More to the point, it was leaving. Of course it was. Other crews would understand, as she had, what the Code demanded – that the battleship must be saved. And so it would be, even as others raced towards it in the vain hope that it might save them, too.

Yet this was no orderly launch. Boarding ramps gave way and tumbled into open air before Teffi’s eyes, and mooring anchors were torn out of the dockside with wrenching force. No pilot of the Corps would be so careless. These are desperate times, Teffi supposed.

Eventually, only one boarding ramp remained – the largest of the cargo loaders, intended to deliver heavy freight to the top deck. The patrons of the Twins-and-Tankard converged at its base as it began to strain against the force of the battleship’s departure. Lunatic grots descended on them with increased ferocity. Brenk’s carbine was dry, and he took to holding the horde at bay with its heavy stock. Teffi loosed the last of her rivets into the face of a marauding grot, then reached for her father. She knew her duty.

‘Up,’ she told him. ‘Up the ramp. Go, now.’

Nytten looked at her, and she saw the exuberance in him fade.

‘My girl…’ he began, softly.

‘None of that, none of that,’ interjected the white-bearded stranger. ‘Up! Up, the lot of you. Here’s where I hold, and you climb. Together.’

It hadn’t been quite like this in Izmok the Scratcher’s imaginings. The witch hadn’t screamed of squig-rivals, nor of battle-doings and irritating duardin obstinance. It was no matter, no matter at all. The Bad Moon had always favoured Izmok, and it favoured him now with a sharp bit of luck: the stunties were running towards the prize he sought, guiding him to it and clearing the way.

Thrilled, he leaped and whooped, held out his knife and sent more stabbas in to do their stabbing, so that he might have all the glories that had twinkled in his mind since he was little more than a snot in the dark.

Stumbling stunties took to the ramp that led up to the ship’s deck. All except one. As the last of them boarded the ship, a solitary figure remained behind, his visage a stone-set scowl. This one’s defiant last stand began at the ramp’s base and proceeded step by step until he was halfway up. He took the heads of a dozen grots with each careful step backwards.

Then he raised his head.

Deep grey eyes struck into Izmok the Scratcher. His pace faltered. This white-bearded one called forth something buried long ago – an ancient terror that waited within him like a deep-cave fungus.

Oh, nah, Izmok thought. Ah, oh, nah. But he was carried forward on a tide of his own moon-maddened kindred, borne upwards despite the protesting wisdom that had been awakened in him.

The white-bearded duardin set about Izmok’s horde with ease, an army of one, all of his own ancient animus brought to bear against a foe that he had stood against since time unremembered. One by one he cut them down, until Izmok the Scratcher was driven before him. That great silvery axe came up, and then down–

And stopped.

A strong hand shot out and gripped Izmok the Scratcher by the neck, then lifted him into the air. He shrieked and scrabbled, clawing for life.

‘Aye, well,’ said Grombrindal, over the shaman-king’s protests. ‘This is how it tends to go, grobi.’

Then he tossed him sideways with great force, and Izmok the Scratcher was flying – not upwards to the moon, but sideways, then down.

Down, down, down.

Until the Dyrwood welcomed him home.

Teffi joined Brenk and the drunken Fyreslayer at the winch and lent her strength to their effort, hauling the last ramp upwards, the white-bearded stranger with it. Maker, but he’s heavy, she thought. Then at last he stepped aboard, and the Gromthi-a-Grund drifted away from the trembling dock. A horde of grots pressed to the edge, pushing and jostling to escape the bombs that detonated at their backs. There was a roar, and a flash of flame filled Teffi’s lenses. When her vision cleared, she looked instinctively for her father. She found him at the railing, staring into the smoke that rose from Azrilazi. Looking for his tavern.

‘All the important parts will survive, old friend,’ said the white-bearded stranger, bloody but resplendent. ‘The Emberkin Sixty-Five will pop in all that heat, mind, but it wasn’t an especially good year.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ replied Nytten Ginstock, softly. ‘But it’s no matter. The Sigyorn lass already drank it all.’

The white-bearded stranger laughed – a deep, warm rumble – then quieted, gathering his resolve once more. As if on cue, the Gromthi-a-Grund lurched unnaturally, and all aboard staggered about. Teffi reached her father and snapped her tether-line to the railing, steadying them both. The Fyreslayer Rhyngrim lost her balance and fell. Then they heard a tapping, scraping, scuttling sound within the ship’s hold, an unnatural creaking…

A tap-tap-tapping upon the vessel’s underside, and the creeping of a great many-legged beast…

‘Command deck’s sealed!’ somebody yelled. ‘Door’s stuck something foul.’

‘What’s that sound?’

‘Who’s at the helm?’

Teffi’s eyes were on Rhyngrim as she climbed to her feet, assisted by the outstretched hand of the white-bearded stranger.

‘I had a bit of wisdom for you, runedaughter,’ he began, testing his grip on his battleaxe. ‘Before I was interrupted. In your dealings with grobi, know that there’s always one–’

The hold burst open, and the Gromthi-a-Grund listed sideways, tumbling into open air. For a precarious, stomach-lurching moment, the ship fell. Then the power within its mighty endrins flared, and the pride of Barak-Thryng launched itself moonward.

Skritbag’s time had come, at last.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

‘Rat Tail’ first published in White Dwarf #485 in 2023.
‘High Airs’ first published in White Dwarf #486 in 2023.
‘Durkar’s Wake’ first published in White Dwarf #487 in 2023.
‘King Osgek’s Prize’ first published in White Dwarf #488 in 2023.
‘No God’s Land’ first published in White Dwarf #489 in 2023.
‘Bitter Oaths’ first published digitally in White Dwarf #490 in 2023.
This eBook edition published in 2025 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Christian Byrne.

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ISBN: 978-1-80407-842-6

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And for Sean McCafferty, who has always known when to show up out of nowhere with a kind word, a bit of wisdom, and a pint.

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