Contents

Cover

Blood of the Flayer – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Blood of the Flayer

Richard Strachan

She came to him in the wreckage of another Muspelzharr town, a petty settlement of rough farmland where they tilled the ore and sold it on to the Freeguild furnaces in far Andar. Through the choking smoke she moved, past corpses smeared across the dusty grass. By a tent of skinned hides there was a mound of severed heads, and carved on each was an eight-pointed star. There was lament on the air, the old blade-song of widowed women and old men mourning their sundered sons. They would follow them soon enough.

The warlord stood with his back to her, staring up into the cobalt sky. High up there, like meteors, moved specks of light.

‘You waste your prisoners, Lord Huthor,’ she said boldly. ‘They can last for days in the sweetest agonies, if you know how.’

He was a large and brutal man, she saw, scarred in the face, his skin battered by decades of Chamon’s flensing winds. He pointed at the lights.

‘Do you know what those are?’ he asked.

‘Yes, lord,’ she said, coming near. ‘Duardin sky-craft, trading vessels of those who style themselves “Overlords”. They come from the Ashpeaks and make for Barak-Zon, if I am not mistaken.’

‘Barak-Zon?’

‘Their sky-port.’ She bowed. ‘As I understand these things.’

‘Overlords… I thought so. I’ve seen them often in the last few days. I thought them an omen, at first…’ His voice trailed off, and his hand was white-knuckled on the hilt of his sword.

‘I do not know if they are an omen, my lord,’ the woman said. ‘But if they are then they must be a good one. For I am Dysileesh, and I bring you great tidings.’

‘If I could but reach up,’ he said softly, ‘and pull them down from the aether, I would do so… But you have to marvel at them,’ Huthor laughed. ‘With sweat and toil, to put a crafted thing into the air and sail it like that through the mineral tides – such courage!’ He turned to the man at his side. ‘Don’t you think, Vhoss?’

Vhoss, a hard and compact warrior, his shaved head flecked with scars, gruffly agreed. ‘Aye, Lord Flayer’ he said. ‘You can’t doubt their courage.’

‘And for what?’ Huthor spat, his mood shifting. ‘Coin. Trade. Lives ordered by the numbers they scrawl in a ledger.’

Dysileesh, seizing her moment, moved forward. She stroked his forearm. ‘And wouldn’t you like to tear those lives down, my lord? Wouldn’t you like to seize those riches for yourself? Fame you shall have, as well as power. Come,’ she said, and into that one word she put all the art of her influence, her intoxicating presence. ‘Let us talk. I bring tidings of the Dark Prince, the Lord of Excess… You have drawn the eye of Slaanesh, and power untold is yours if you pledge yourself to him.’

Huthor stared down into those violet eyes, and for the first time he took her in entire – the single dark lock cascading from her crown; the chain that linked the silver hoops in her ear and eyebrow and nose; her sickening smell, more alluring than the stench of battle.

‘Sweet tears have you spilled on the altar of Ruin,’ she whispered closely, ‘but the Dark Gods are jealous, and generous to those who dedicate themselves to their service. Make obeisance to the Prince, and all things shall be yours to savour and command. Does not your eye crave more luxurious sights, your tongue crave finer tastes than cheap fare and peasant women? And does not your lust run deeper than simple murders in the dirt… Seek Slaanesh with me and I will show you the thrill of torments untold, the ecstasies to be found in the depths of gluttony and starvation…’

Her tongue, a purple, serpentine thing, flicked madly from her lips, and her eyes blazed with lilac fire.

Others to whom she had made this entreaty would have strained to possess her by now, or would have been lost in greedy dreams of power. But the Flayer only took her arm in his iron grip and pulled her close. His face was a mask, grim and unyielding, scarred by battle. He drew her towards the tent. ‘Come then,’ he said. ‘Let me hear what the Dark Prince has to offer…’

It was on a whim, he told himself later. No more than that. A woman as devastating as any he had ever seen; his soul smouldering with black fire and eager to expand into new experiences; a grasp that exceeded his reach – all these things made him take the Godseeker into his tent. He would walk her path for a while, he told himself. Why not? A gift freely given is seldom scorned. And when he was bored of it, he would kill her and cast her body to the dogs.

With blasphemous orgies and sickening violence, with ecstasies of wine and song, the Raging Tide followed Dysileesh’s teachings, scouring the plains of Gazan Zhar in a decadent whirlwind. They raided the caravanserais of the free cities, looting fine silks and precious jewels to decorate their wargear. They made cloaks from the skins of their victims and found the most intense pleasures in the limits of their endurance. A troupe of Hellstriders on their freakish reptilian mounts soon swelled Huthor’s ranks, and the warband’s savage tribal marks were slowly replaced by sinuous tattoos, kohl-rimmed eyes and mocking smears of perfumed oil. Across the plains they plundered for a while, leaving in their passing a sweet and cloying musk, the wail of grief and torment.

Dysileesh was owned by no man or woman of the warband, and although she stayed most often in Huthor’s tent she lavished her attention on Elizha too, one of Huthor’s charioteers, riding with her as the warband raided across the plains. Soon she took up with Vhoss, Huthor’s most trusted lieutenant, although when she announced that she was pregnant Huthor did not reveal his suspicions. Vhorrun, born on the plunder-path, came screaming into the Mortal Realms like a true son of Chamon. His pale skin gleamed like silver, and the thick spikes of his black hair were dusted with gold. Violet eyes looked from an unforgiving face, but Huthor couldn’t say who his father might be. No matter. Like his own father, Huthor thought, he was not made to suffer children. So the warband grew, and the further they went on this path, the deeper Huthor plunged into the worship of Slaanesh, dedicating his pains and his pleasures to the Dark Prince and yet in his pride never straying too far from the road of his own self-made fate.

No god ordered his path, he said. He made his own.

Click here to buy Blood of the Flayer.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Oaths & Conquests in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Adrian Smith.

Blood of the Flayer © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Blood of the Flayer, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78999-642-5

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.