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Blightslayer – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

The City of Kranzinnport

Morning broke cold and clear; the sky was cloudless, and it promised to be another fine day in Kranzinnport. Odger woke early, as he always did, slipping from the bed where his wife Melita still slept. She could sleep through an ice-squall, one of those mad and blustering storms that came haring in from off the sea in midwinter, but Odger slept lightly. Dreams were all well and good, but real life happened when you were awake.

He leaned over and kissed Melita on the cheek. She drew the sheets up over her head. All he could see was the spray of her blonde hair across the pillow.

‘You’re up already?’ she groaned. ‘It’s the middle of the night – market doesn’t open till six.’

‘It’s dawn,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’ll put some tea on. And the market can’t open unless I’m there to see the stalls are all set up in the right place.’

She dragged the sheets up even further over her head. Her voice emerged from under them, muffled and complaining.

‘Most important man in Kranzinnport, aren’t you? Surprised the council even opens its meetings without checking with you first.’

‘And just think how wise their decisions would be if they did,’ he said, with mock solemnity.

‘Odger Pellin, the saviour of his city…’

‘And don’t you forget it,’ he laughed.

As he pottered about the house brewing Xintilian flower tea and getting his son’s breakfast ready, Odger allowed himself to wonder what being on the council would be like. Kranzinnport always needed good folk to guide its decisions and he couldn’t think of any better training for the ruthlessness of city politics than being the head steward in the market. The stallholders and traders were always at each other’s throats. Barely a market day went by without someone arguing over who had the better patch, or who owed whom on goods promised and received, or who exactly was busy undercutting prices on the legal fixtures… Sigmar’s blood, but it went on and on some days. You might look at a seamstress like Merosis and see only a pleasant, hardworking young woman, content at her tailor’s stall with her displays of fine Verdian silks, but behind her eyes was the cold calculation of a seasoned warrior. After that, the debating chambers of the city council would seem like a playground.

Odger smiled to himself as he poured the boiling water into the pot. It was a dream, nothing more, and like he always said, dreams were no substitute for reality. He was no leader of men.

The smell of the tea quickly filled the kitchen and suffused the house. Odger opened the door onto the backyard, a little square of well-tended grass and conch shells arranged by Melita, and looked out across the silent grey streets as they dropped down towards the cliffs on the far side of the city. He let his eyes wander over the domes and the tall, twisted spires, the towers shaped like the coiled shells of molluscs, the walls encrusted with salt spray. He looked on the cobbled precincts and noted the glint here and there, in rooftop and pavement, of nacreous pearl. It was a dark town of twisting streets and alleyways, of high grim walls and houses as tough and well defended as the iron-hard shells of the deep-sea creatures they relied on so much, but to Odger it was a beautiful city too. Hunkered here on the edge of the Rocanian Coast, clutching itself to the lip of the cliffs, it was sea and land both, and all the better for it.

No one was up yet, as far as he could see. Even the traders would still be enjoying another hour’s sleep before they started getting their wares ready. The fishermen would be waking soon, dragging their aching bodies from bed, gathering their gear with rough, salt-blistered hands as they hobbled down to the harbour. The caravan guards – tough, hard-faced men with missing eyes and missing fingers – would soon be rolling from the taverns and sharpening their blades before the first traders’ convoys set off for the wider realms. Drunks would still be passed out in the gutters, and a few corpses would be waiting with all the patience of the dead for the city guard to collect them once the sun was up. The night watch from the Kranzinnport Sabres, the city’s Freeguild regiment, would be changing shift on the walls. Odger loved this time of the morning. Everything silent and still, clean almost, the squabbling, rambunctious cut and thrust of city life still a few moments away. He thought of Melita drowsing in bed upstairs, a woman he had been married to for ten years now. He thought of his son, Clovis, whom he could just hear thumping down the stairs for his breakfast. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a hard word had been spoken in this house over the last decade.

It’s a tough, hard-bitten place, Odger thought as he sipped his tea, but Sigmar has blessed it all the same. There had not been a single raid from orruk warbands in nearly two years, and he couldn’t remember the last time there had been a serious riot. He warmed his hands on the mug. Truly, I am the luckiest man alive.

Despite all his fears, it was a quiet enough day in the market. Merosis didn’t threaten anyone with her pinking shears, Old Tamser actually used the proper weights on his scales for once, and the long-standing and pitiless rivalry between Krennin Brisker, the city’s oldest purveyor of pies, pastries and baked goods, and Dravett Pynn, importer of the finest buns, rolls and bread loafs in Kranzinnport, seemed to have settled into an uneasy truce. Izuvell the Astromancer cast his horoscopes, claiming this new conjunction of the moons wouldn’t be seen again for another thousand years; it was the most propitious occasion to tell your future. No one minded his nonsense today though. No one was stabbed. No one was bludgeoned over an argument about change, and no drunken scuffle turned into anything more serious than a cracked skull and a night in the town gaol. The sun shone high and clear, and the sharp bite of the sea wind put a spring in everyone’s step. The aqualith sparkled in the centre of the square, brimming with water.

Everyone had a good word for him as Odger walked between the stalls, the change purse on his hip. Melita was always on at him to carry a weapon in case someone tried to make off with the market takings, but Odger thought the idea was ludicrous. He was no fighter, and anyway – this was the Kranzinnport market, about as close as you get to a truce day in the whole city. Who would ever steal from him?

As he walked round, Odger made sure everyone was satisfied with their position, and that they had no complaints for him to take forward to the next meeting of the Commerce Committee. More than once a choice cut of meat was pressed into his hands, nestled between two sheets of grease paper, or a bottle of fine vintage was handed over with a nod and a wink, but Odger always made sure he paid the market price. Everyone knew that with Odger Perrin you got fair dealing: nothing more, nothing less.

When the sun was past midday, he paused by the shrine to Sigmar on the east side of the market square. He lit a candle, paused for a while to read the prayers that were pinned to the spikes of Sigmar’s heraldic crown. The god stood there as a golden statue three feet high, his hammer raised and the seaweed of his hair streaming down his back. His armour was of gilded seashells and starfish clung to his beard. The whole statue was covered in a light dusting of dried salt. Odger gave silent thanks for all that he had, and for all that the city had, too.

Melita and Clovis came over in the afternoon, holding a basket between them. Odger could smell one of Pynn’s Living City loafs, and it looked like there was half a bottle of Thyrian fruit wine tucked under the checked cloth as well.

‘Mum’s got four of Brisker’s jadespice buns,’ Clovis said, ‘but she says you’re getting fat in your old age and you can only have one of them.’

‘Is that right?’ Odger said, eyes wide. ‘I’ll show you fat!’ He roared and threw Clovis up onto his shoulders, the boy crying out with laughter.

‘A late lunch,’ Melita said, taking his arm. ‘As a reward for all your hard work. I thought we could take it down to the bluff and look over the bay.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

They strolled on to the plaza as the breeze picked up, coming out on the other side of the city into a wide, triangular space on the very edge of the cliffs. The marble flagstones underfoot were scuffed and dirty from all the passing feet, and the whole plaza was surrounded by a long balustrade of blue coral, the bars sculpted into the shapes of eels and fish. In the centre of the plaza was a square entranceway surrounded by a tarnished brass rail, which opened onto a flight of iron stairs. Folk were bringing up goods from the clanking cage lifts that led down to the harbour, far below at the base of the cliffs. Odger let himself be overwhelmed by the view, as he always was. It was breathtaking, the entire horizon from east to west filled with the majesty of the ocean, the Tendril Sea in all its muscular rise and fall. Seabirds cried and scattered above the waves, following the trails of the fishing boats as they sailed out from the harbour, their coloured sails stark against the gunmetal blue.

Far, far out to sea, forty miles or more, could be seen the airy puff of leviathans broaching the surface of the waves. Beyond that, so it was claimed, and so far that there wasn’t a single sailor in Kranzinnport who’d ever attempted the voyage, the edge of the realm curved round in a glister of magic, so wild and dangerous that it would burn the flesh from your bones if you got within even a hundred miles of it.

They sat on a bench near the edge of the prow, eating and drinking while the afternoon drifted away. After much earnest negotiation, Odger agreed to split the last jadespice bun with Clovis, and the lad hared off with it towards the other side of the plaza to stare down at the western reaches of the ocean where the Rocanian Coast curved away towards Yska. He was a fine boy – eight years old, curious and adventurous all at once. Odger watched him run across the flagstones, his mop of black hair streaming in the breeze. He never did anything at half measures. Why should he? He ran at life full tilt, like any lad his age.

‘I wonder what he’ll grow up to be?’ Melita said softly, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘A market trader? An official in the council? Maybe a soldier on the city guard?’

Odger laughed. ‘Any of that would make me proud,’ he said. He stared out to sea, where the wash of blue was beginning to stain at the edges with dark clouds. The sea looked choppy now, the slow waves beginning to crest into whitecaps. He frowned. ‘As long as he doesn’t become a fisherman,’ he said softly. ‘Sigmar knows we value them here, but it’s a hard and dangerous life…’

The clouds were thickening. From east and west they seemed to gather, rolling like banks of fog over the agitated water. The breeze quickened. There was something feverish in it, and the waves were rising higher, as if lashed to some strange purpose. The fishing boats were turning back to harbour, pitching and swaying in the tide.

Odger stood slowly from the bench and leaned against the rail of the balustrade. It was getting dark. He stared out at the ocean. There, to the south, something was stirring. It was like the sea was boiling, twenty miles out. He could hear the hiss of it from here, like a pot clattering on a stove, the liquid furiously bubbling. A lance of cloud seemed to pierce down from the heavens above it, black as pitch. There was a thick, cloying fog creeping over the waters, pale and billowing, like breath exhaled on a cold day.

Melita joined him at the rail, her brows furrowed. She placed her hand on his. They could hear the cries of the fishermen now, seven hundred feet down as they guided their boats back into Kranzinnport harbour at the foot of the cliffs.

‘What is that?’ she said. ‘The water there, it’s… Is it a leviathan? I never heard of one breaching so close to shore.’

Odger shook his head. ‘I don’t think so…’ He looked to the other side of the plaza. ‘Where’s Clovis? I think we should head back to the market.’

But it was as if the market had come to the plaza instead. More and more people were strolling to the balustrade, leaning against the rail, pointing and arguing while they looked out to sea.

‘Ain’t no leviathan,’ one old timer said. He tipped his straw hat back on his head. ‘Damned kraken, that’s what that be.’

‘Kraken?’ someone else replied. ‘Have you been at the seaweed ale again, there ain’t no such thing.’

‘Is too. I done saw it when I was a lad, out there on the water like. Big as the cliffs here, with tentacles as long as Kranzinnport’s tallest tower, and eyes wider than the moon.’

There was much laughter at this and the old man grumbled into his beard.

‘It’s no kraken,’ Odger said confidently.

He shaded his eyes with his hand as the fog rolled in, as the banks of cloud rippled and contracted above the water. Soon they were spreading their turbulent vapour above the bay, and with them came a clammy sense of cold. He was aware of everyone nearby looking at him, deferring to him as one who never played anyone false. If Odger Pellin was saying it, so they seemed to think, then it was worth listening to. Odger cleared his throat and looked again.

‘It’s no leviathan either,’ he said. ‘Looks like… Looks like a damned island rising up out of the water.’

There was nothing else it could be, and soon enough everyone could see the same. Through the haze of fog, Odger could see the low-slung black shape frothing with water, the foam dripping back into the sea from crags and rocks and headlands. It was like a rugged disc of stone, shining black, twenty miles out and no more than five miles by five, if that. Rumbling across the water came a rolling boom, as if the very sea bed were protesting. Waves shook and thundered around it, surging back to strike the cliffs in long and angry breakers.

A pall seemed to settle over everyone. It was more than the clouds streaming in above the city, and it was more than the fog that crept ever closer across the bay. Something new had come into the world, unannounced and unexpected, and there wasn’t a single person in Kranzinnport who knew what to say about it.

Odger rubbed at the bristles on his chin. He looked for Clovis in the crowds, saw the boy pressing through to get back to his mother.

‘Did you see it, dad?’ he said. ‘Came straight out of the water, I ain’t never seen the like! What is it?’

‘I don’t know, son,’ he said quietly. ‘I wish I did.’

He turned to go, taking Melita’s arm and reaching for Clovis. He wanted to get back to the market, make sure everything was all right. More than that, he wanted to get home. He couldn’t say why, but he just wanted to shut the doors and light the fire, and sit with his family. That’s all he wanted.

The rain began to fall. The dark clouds broke, and the oily drizzle spattered on the flagstones. There was a smell in the air suddenly that made him wrinkle his nose. A smell of rot, and decay. All the bells from the Freeguild barracks started ringing then, mustering the garrison. The city was nowhere near large enough to support a Stormcast Eternals contingent, but it would be well defended all the same if danger approached. Odger was sure of it. This was a hard town carved out of the cliffs on a hard coast. He wasn’t worried. Not really.

A shame, he thought as he hurried on. And it had seemed such a beautiful day that morning.

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A Black Library Publication

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.

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Cover illustration by Anna Lakisova.

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