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Black-Eyed Saint – Extract

A Black Library Imprint

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CHAPTER ONE

Tiberius Grim felt a nudge and opened his eyes.

‘Snoring,’ Runar Skoldofr said, his voice barely a whisper.

‘I’d have to be asleep to be snoring,’ the old Sigmarite priest replied, bristling at the insinuation.

‘Then you must have been asleep,’ Runar said, ‘because you were bloody well snoring.’

Hunting had been Runar’s idea. Tiberius had only joined the young man because he had no pressing duties that morning. They’d set out in the pre-dawn darkness, Runar leading them on a meandering track into the hill country north-west of Gothghul Castle, following sign and spoor and offering very little in the way of conversation. When they reached rugged terrain littered with enormous boulders and scarred by sudden, precipitous gullies and washes, Runar had decided to lie in wait in a high position. Tiberius had grown so tired of lying on his belly, staring down into a dark cut below, awaiting the arrival of an animal he wasn’t sure existed, that he’d turned over onto his back to stare at the sky. And, apparently, fallen asleep.

Deep down, the priest knew he was an old man, but he hated to demonstrate that fact to a brash young scrapper like Runar, let alone endure a scolding because his snores might scare away their quarry.

Tiberius sighed and stared up at the featureless grey sky above him. During his brief respite, Hysh had risen, brightening the world around them. The clouds remained low and impenetrable, but they’d gone from slate grey to the colour of pale bone, and faint, ghostly shadows lay among the bald knobs of rock and thick carpets of heather surrounding them.

‘Any sign of your adversary?’ Tiberius whispered, turning onto his stomach again to peer down over the rocks into the gully below.

Runar shook his head. ‘No. But he’ll be along. There’s a little stream down there, clear and sweet as can be.’

Tiberius nodded. Waited. There was no sound but the sawing of the winds through the gorse and heather carpeting the declining country at their backs.

Something tapped the broad brim of Tiberius’ hat. He craned his neck sideways. More drops began to fall.

Runar evinced no notice. His eyes remained fixed upon the gully below, rifle at the ready.

The rain was light – misty, even – but Tiberius knew it could intensify into a downpour at a moment’s notice. Was it wise for them to remain out for something so self-indulgent as a hunt? Tiberius still thought of himself as hale and hearty, but he knew well that too many hours in a cold rain, in sodden clothes, and he might catch his death.

Runar suddenly tensed. Tiberius, recognising the look of predatory concentration now on the young sharpshooter’s face, turned to peer down into the gully.

An enormous moor stag picked a delicate path down the slope below towards the silver stream winding along the gully’s floor. The animal’s size and muscularity were wholly at odds with its ginger, subtle movements, its hooves barely making a sound. Tiberius counted seventeen points on its massive crown.

It was sublime – one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring creatures he’d ever seen.

The rain thickened, drops fattening, moment by moment. They drummed a nimble tattoo on Tiberius’ hat.

Beside him, Runar prepared himself for the shot he’d been coveting all morning, stabilising his rifle barrel and peering down its sights.

The moor stag reached the little stream, paused and raised his head ever so slightly. His ears swivelled, listening. His great black nose sniffed the air. His dark eyes scanned the world around him.

Finally, he bent to drink.

Runar blew out a breath, finger tensing on the trigger.

Then someone screamed.

The moor stag’s head snapped up and its body shifted, ready to bound towards a narrow cut in the gully on the far side of the stream.

The long gun thundered.

Tiberius’ ears rang. Through the still-roiling cloud of smoke belched from Runar’s rifle barrel, he saw the moor stag bounding across the floor of the gully towards the far slope. Its movements were strong, lithe, indicating no distress or injury.

‘Rotting hells,’ Runar snarled, hastily pouring black powder down the rifle barrel in preparation for another shot. In two breaths, he’d already rammed home another round and risen into a crouch to take aim again.

Too late. The stag disappeared into the narrow cut just as Runar’s rifle spat another round. The bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the rocks peeking through the soil on the opposite slope.

Once more, Tiberius heard that terrible scream, closer now.

The old priest rose, searching the broad moorland rolling away at their backs.

‘Troublemaking fools!’ Runar cursed beside him. ‘I had the beast, Tiberius, a perfect shot, and this idiot’s noise–’

Tiberius scanned the moors through the slashing rain. Unconsciously, his gloved hand fell onto the pommel of the rapier at his hip. He’d also brought a brace of pistols with him that morning, extra proof against wandering gheists or banshees loosed from unwarded graves.

Now he might have to put sword or guns to use.

Runar’s arm shot out, pointing to their left, towards a small, tight cluster of trees hugging the base of a nearby hill.

‘There,’ the sharpshooter said. His finger was fixed upon a figure that broke suddenly from the trees and barrelled headlong towards them.

Tiberius’ vision was no match for Runar’s. While the sharpshooter could no doubt see details – the newcomer’s face, complexion, even the rudiments of the clothing they wore – Tiberius could only discern movement and a vague outline. He noted the figure’s meandering, sidewinding track, however, careening this way and that, as though exhausted and stumbling.

‘It’s a woman,’ Runar said, voice full of worry and puzzlement. ‘Is that… blood?’

A second figure broke from the treeline, close behind the fleeing woman. Tiberius could make out no details – he only saw a hurtling body and the flash of something that looked like steel.

‘Another?’ he asked.

‘Aye, that,’ Runar said. ‘Armed. Steel’s naked and ready. Come on!’

Once more, the woman screamed long and loud, but her shout was cut off as she tripped over a stray clump of sedge and sprawled face forward into a divot of mud. Desperate, she thrashed, clawing her way up onto a heather hummock before struggling to her feet once more. The man on her heels nearly overtook her, but stumbled as he tried to redirect his forward momentum. He rolled haphazardly, right through a thicket of gorse. Tiberius heard the fallen pursuer curse as the thorns tore at him. He wasted little time in righting himself, though; in an instant, he was back on his feet, barrelling on after his quarry.

Tiberius yanked one of the pistols from his belt and broke into a run. Runar followed.

‘Help me!’ the woman screamed, clearly having seen the two of them now. ‘He’s mad! He’s trying to kill me!’

‘Stop her!’ the man cried from behind. ‘Don’t let her escape!’ He sounded winded and weary, much older than the woman he chased and feeling the strain of his pursuit with each ragged breath. Unfortunately, his weakness did not seem to slow him.

‘He killed them!’ the woman screamed. ‘He killed them all!’

No matter how fast he ran, Tiberius felt as though he were moving in ankle-deep mud. He felt the strain on his old body, the thumping of his heart, the way his lungs burned with each gulp of air. Worse, the woman no longer seemed to be moving directly towards them. Instead, she followed the upward slope of the land before her, carrying on headlong towards a rising ridgeline a short distance ahead of her. A mass of moss-covered stones and muddy earth bloomed there like a tumescent growth before abruptly dropping off again on its far side.

The woman was headed right for a sheer bluff and a long, deadly fall.

‘Runar!’ Tiberius cried, waving one hand wildly. ‘The girl!’

‘I see!’ Runar barked, huffing. ‘I’ve got her!’

‘Witch!’ the chasing man snarled. ‘Madwoman! I’ll have you!’

On Tiberius’ left, Runar sprinted towards the woman as she scrambled up the incline. Now closer, Tiberius could clearly see their faces: the woman’s pale, wide-eyed and terrified, streaked with mud and blood; the man’s snarling and wild. He was closing in by the moment, swiping back and forth randomly with the short sword he carried, as though he might luck into a killing blow. His blade was slick with gobbets of flesh and half-coagulated blood despite the rain’s persistence.

Tiberius’ guts knotted upon hearing that accusation. Witch. Even so, he found himself wrestling with long-honed instincts, his ancient training as a priest of Sigmar, and listened instead to his hard-hammering heart and the evidence provided by his weakening old eyes.

The woman was frightened. Terrified.

The man looked dangerous, vengeful, a zealot ready to rip her to shreds.

Tiberius had only one duty: to stop that fiend’s blade and keep the girl from plunging over the bluff into the gully below. All his questions could be answered when those two exigencies were attended to.

Runar rushed towards the woman, trying to place himself between her and the fast-approaching precipice. Just as he was about to reach her, as his hands reached out to take hold of her and drag her down and stop her forward flight, her would-be assassin cried out, wild and furious.

‘No! You fool, get away from her!’

He raised his blade, closing the distance between himself, the woman and Runar.

Runar slammed into the woman. Both went sprawling.

The man raised his short sword.

Tiberius, never breaking stride, sighted down the barrel of his pistol and squeezed the trigger. The gun belched smoke and flame.

The swordsman lurched and hit the ground hard, rolling haphazardly over a bed of heather and wet turf.

Runar and the woman lay at the edge of the bluff. She thrashed and screamed in his arms, but he held her tightly, as though afraid she might throw herself over the edge if she wriggled loose.

Tiberius slowed as he passed through the cloud of gun smoke that hung in the air before him. Breathing deeply, raggedly, his heart threatening to hammer its way right out of his chest, he edged closer to his quarry.

The swordsman lay foetal on the ground, bleeding and coughing. Tiberius kicked the fallen blade far from the man’s grasp and fell onto his knees beside him. He was younger than Tiberius, but not precisely youthful, his dark hair and beard shot through with veins of grey. His wide eyes, filled with wild bloodlust only moments before, now betrayed a terrified wonder. Blood burbled from a hole in his chest like a newly made hot spring. More blood, mixed with bubbling saliva, erupted from the man’s open mouth, covering his upturned face with each cough or exhalation, even as the driving rain washed it away. He seemed to be clutching at something, his coat or his torn collar, as though both were strangling him.

Tiberius studied the wound, then bent over the would-be killer, voice low but firm.

‘You’re dying,’ he said flatly. ‘That is what your villainy has bought you. Have you a last confession? Dying words?’

The man’s mouth kept moving, seeking words that he seemed to choke on.

‘Please,’ the man managed. One bloodied hand worked feverishly at his throat, clawing at something beneath his shirt.

Tiberius, moved by instinct, snatched the bloody hand. He found it grasping at a bauble of some sort, on the end of a long, thin leather band: a simple, carved stone talisman, attached to the band by a primitive little cage of knotted wire.

Tiberius’ eyes fixed upon the man. It was not a symbol he recognised.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

‘D-Don’t,’ the man sputtered.

The priest lost patience and bent closer. ‘Don’t? You’re dying, you fool. Confess! Beg Sigmar to forgive you before–’

‘M-Mhurghast…’ the man sputtered, then died.

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WARHAMMER HORROR

A BLACK LIBRARY IMPRINT

First published in Great Britain in 2023.
This eBook edition published in 2023 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 Aurore Folny.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-823-4

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