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Anger and Ash – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Anger and Ash

Gary Kloster

The day was dying and the shadows stretched long across the Broken Plains, burying the men that hunted me in darkness.

Mother was right, I thought as I reined Thorn in on the top of a low hill, silhouetting us against the darkening sky. It’s dangerous out here. A lone woman on a pale horse, what an easy target I must look – and I smiled as I waited for the men to take the bait.

They were almost silent as they moved through the shadows, but my senses were keener than my hunters could imagine. I listened to the whisper of the dry grass as they closed in, heard the thin creak of their bowstrings being drawn. When they fired, the twang of those strings was as clear as thunder to me, and I whirled Thorn around.

The nomads made their short bows from wood and bone, and they could launch an arrow surprisingly fast. Thorn was still turning when the missiles reached us; she’d moved enough for the first three to cut harmlessly past, but the fourth one struck her in the chest, the barbed steel punching between her ribs, and she tossed her head at the impact, annoyed.

The last arrow came in higher, streaking for my throat, but my bright sword was in my hand. I spun the blade and it flashed like the heat lightning that danced along the horizon. The arrow tumbled into the grass by Thorn’s hooves, cut in half, and I looked at the nomads crouching before me.

‘Oh no,’ I said mockingly, parting my lips wide to let my fangs flash in the dying light. ‘An ambush.’

‘Spirits protect,’ one of the men gasped. ‘It’s the dead princess.’

Princess. ‘My name,’ I snarled, ‘is Nyssa Volari.’ In my chest, my still heart lurched, stirred to movement by my anger, and my cold blood began to move. I dug my knees into Thorn’s sides and drew my other blade with my left hand. My mount charged forward and the surprise on the men’s faces switched to terror. The raiders’ easy target had become a vampire riding a Nightmare, fangs bared and carrying a sword in each hand, one dark as the night sky, the other bright as the stars that studded it. They saw me coming for them, and they scattered, screaming.

You’re always right, Mother, I thought to myself. It is dangerous out here. I raised my swords, and then they fell as the rich scent of blood filled the air.

‘Nyssa has returned, my king.’

Arvan was tall and broad-shouldered, and he almost filled the door to the chamber. But his head was bowed low, his black eyes down. So humble. I set aside the book I was reading, keeping my face carefully blank. There was a thread of ambition hidden in that submission, which made me dislike Arvan. Corsovo, of course, was amused by him.

I swear my lover sometimes selected the more difficult members of his brood with an eye towards annoying me.

‘Excellent.’ Corsovo rose, a tall man whose pale skin contrasted with his long, dark hair, violet eyes, and the black claws that tipped each finger. Even in his lounging robes of dark silk stitched with crimson roses, he looked imposing, royal, until he flashed his smile at me and winked. ‘I told you your daughter would be back safe.’

I swept to my feet, frowning. ‘You encourage her too much.’

‘Are we not a family?’ he asked, walking with me from the royal apartment into the hall outside.

‘We are vampires. We are Kastelai. We are death,’ I said. ‘Why attach such a ridiculously mortal notion as family to us?’

‘Because there is power in connection, Vasara.’

‘And pain,’ I said.

‘True.’ Corsovo, king of the Broken Plains, smiled again, fangs flashing in the dim passage. ‘They go hand in hand, my queen.’ His claws pressed against my skin as his hand took mine, and we swept out into the ash-dusted courtyard of our Grey Palace.

In the centre of the yard, Nyssa stood beside Thorn, a line of horses drawn up behind them. She was tall, with dark hair and brown skin, ruddy from recent feeding. Her eyes shone with that new blood too, thick red striations marking the dark brown of her irises. They were her best feature, but they couldn’t hide the problem of Nyssa’s face. She wasn’t beautiful, her lean features too sharp for that, but that wasn’t the issue. It was how young she looked. No one knew how old Nyssa was when Corsovo had taken her mortal life and given her this one, but she couldn’t have been out of her teens. Almost seventy years had passed since then, but Nyssa’s face hadn’t changed. It was as young as it had been that last day of her first life, and the mind behind that face seemed just as rash and reckless as the girl who’d once tried to kill a vampire lord with a kitchen knife.

‘Nyssa,’ Corsovo said. ‘What have you brought us?’ He let go of my hand and strode to her while I stood back, watching them embrace. I wondered about the strange bond that lay between my lover and his adopted child. It wasn’t unknown for a vampire to feel affection towards their progeny, but the feeling usually faded fast. The two of them, though, seemed to share a genuine bond, one that did echo a mortal’s attachment, enough so that I had started calling them father and daughter. A jibe that had come back to bite me when they decided to include me in it.

‘Mother,’ Nyssa said as she stepped back away from Corsovo. She did not move towards me for an embrace, of course. She just tilted her head to me, a gesture I fractionally returned. Nyssa was not my progeny, and I did not share Corsovo’s odd affection for her. Though I did acknowledge that we shared a kind of bond through him.

‘Band of the Fist,’ I said, nodding towards the horses. They were Nightmares, actually, though it wasn’t obvious. They moved with the easy grace of living animals. But I could see the empty sockets where their eyes had been, filled with wisps of vapour, and the slow stirring of their manes and tails even though no wind moved in the courtyard. The pennants that hung from their halters were still, untouched by that grave wind, and bore the band’s marks. ‘Did you find them, or did they find you?’

‘A little of both,’ Nyssa said. ‘I saw signs of riders, and I cut across where they were heading, letting them find my tracks. To see if they would follow.’ She looked back at the Nightmares. Across four of them, lifeless bodies had been tied over the saddles. ‘They did.’ Nyssa smiled. ‘It seems no one told them that it was dangerous out on the Plains.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Nuala Kinrade.

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ISBN: 978-1-80407-240-0

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