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Shadowglass Creek – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Shadowglass Creek

Richard Strachan

Chellane loved mornings most of all, when Hysh rose slow and purposeful above the hills. For all that it was a rough and ready sort of place, the dawn could make even Shadowglass Creek seem as fresh and well tended as the Noble Quarter back in Excelsis. The pale light conjured streaks of gold and silver from the surface of the river that ran along the edge of town; it washed the streets clean and it sent the drunks blinking back to their hovels for the day. When Hysh rose, you couldn’t help but feel that every decision you had made in your life, no matter how bad it seemed at the time, must have been the right one – because it had led you right here.

She woke early, as she often did, dragged out of her dreams by the wailing cry of the bellman as he called the hour. Knuckling the sleep from her eye, Chellane saw that Niss was still asleep. Sigmar’s blood, she thought with a smile, but that girl could snore through an avalanche. She kissed her cheek and slipped out of the bed, padding softly across the bare floorboards. She dressed quickly and went downstairs, and as the town began to stir she filled the cashbox and tidied up the shelves before opening for the day.

Rope, pots and pans, firesticks, flints, blade-pine resin, cutlery, dried Hysh-flower tea, powdered Rondhol brew. There wasn’t much Chellane and Niss couldn’t sell you if you had the amberbones to buy it. The two of them had arrived in Shadowglass Creek with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and they’d built the store from the ground up. Side by side, whatever it took. Still, Chellane thought as she brewed a pot of tea, you didn’t get anything in these Mortal Realms unless you were prepared to work for it.

When the tea was ready, she stood by the window and looked out at the square. The street sweepers were clearing the duckboards on either side. The water from the aqualith tumbled like strewn crystal and the night guard was changing shift with the day watch over by the tanning yards. Soon the day would properly begin, another day in the heart of Thondia, carving a living out of the wilderness.

Work hard and worship Sigmar, Chellane thought. Someone you love by your side. And then there’s nothing in the realms that can touch you.

Doralia ven Denst leaned against the spur of rock and put the spyglass to her eye. The settlement leapt closer at once: a scratch place, high walls of ironoak and sabre-mastodon tusk, the recessed gates banded with steel. She could see the peaked roofs of cabins and wooden houses beyond. The Guardian Idols stood on either side of the gate, twin statues, tarnished by the weather, with great bronze shields and spears guarding the settlement from the wilds beyond the walls. The streets looked little more than muddy tracks carved between the houses, and a pall of pale grey smoke was rising from the chimneys. Just another small town planted in the wastes, she thought. Off the beaten track. As good a place as any for two cultists to hide.

She turned to her father. He stood there adjusting the strap of his breastplate. His eyes were like stone as he stared off the mile or two towards the town, as if he didn’t need the macroscope to take it all in. There was a rough patch of scrubland ahead of them, a few acres of bitter-thorn and a narrow, fast-moving river passing across it. There was a simple stone bridge over the river about half a mile down, and then a track that meandered through the scrub towards the gates. Doralia could see two or three young boys fishing the waters near the bridge, an older boy standing behind them with a spear and shield, keeping an eye on things.

‘Shadowglass Creek,’ she said. She folded up the scope and settled the wide-brimmed hat back on her head. Hysh was up; the Thondian heat was punishing, and it was still early in the morning.

‘Looks like,’ Galen said. He rubbed a gauntlet across his chin. Doralia heard the rasp of his stubble.

‘Your information was good then.’

‘Should be,’ Galen muttered. ‘It cost enough.’

‘You paid for it?’

He gave a tight smile and rubbed his knuckles. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

They hacked down through the scrub and headed towards the bridge. Ahead, many miles beyond the town, rose the far peaks of the Twinhorns. They stood there framed against the wide pastel sky, sharp as knives, harsh as winter. Off to the west were the brooding moors of the Hungering Veldt, a thousand miles of wasteland crossed by grazing herds of yethar. South were the Gnarlwoods, east the tumbled, shattered landscape of the Bloody Cirque. For a moment, the town seemed impossibly fragile – a trembling flag planted in a maelstrom. But they had made it this far, Doralia thought. Thirty or forty years since the crusade had left Excelsis and the first foundations had been struck. They’d survived the brutality of the environment, storms, disease, raids from orruks and worse. No one made it this far unless they were tough.

They crossed the bridge. The tousle-haired boys fishing at the riverbank looked at them, open-mouthed. The older lad with the spear swallowed nervously and shifted his weight from foot to foot. His dark hair was cut close to the scalp and he was wearing a simple woollen tunic, a pair of patched breeches. His feet were bare. He didn’t look like he’d be able to fight off much of anything.

‘Shadowglass Creek?’ Doralia said, nodding towards the gates.

‘Who… who wants to know?’ the lad said.

‘We’re just two travellers looking for a place to rest.’ She tried a smile, although that just seemed to unnerve him more.

‘Chellane Gythan and Niss Tabruth,’ Galen said. ‘You know them? They live here?’

Doralia sighed. Her father was probably the best investigator in the Order of Azyr, a man who could hunt down information the way a glimmer-addict hunted down a vial, but she’d be damned if he didn’t have an ounce of patience sometimes.

‘We’re old friends,’ she said to the boys. She drew her father away, back onto the path. ‘Haven’t seen them for years, thought we’d maybe surprise them.’

Galen grunted and they left the boys behind.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said to him. ‘You want to give them forewarning?’

‘It makes no odds if they know it’s coming or not,’ Galen said. He took his pistol from his belt and checked the load. ‘It’s just a matter of time, one way or the other.’

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A Black Library Publication

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Cover illustration by Thomas Elliott.

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ISBN: 978-1-80407-392-6

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