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The Crown of Karak-Khazhar – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Crown of Karak-Khazhar

Darius Hinks

Sephyrum was burning. In some quarters of the city the heat was so intense it had warped the buildings, teasing shapes from the flames. Spires grew knotted limbs that stretched through the inferno. Domes sprouted pink and blue growths that opened like petals. Towers that once stood proud were now as twisted and grotesque as the corpses on their steps.

As Ulvgrid picked her way through the streets, she could not avoid the dead. They were everywhere: hanging from windows and stacked in market squares. They had been betrayed, all of them. These people were believers. When the Stormhosts came, preaching the word of the God-King, they saw their salvation. And instead they got this. This was where their faith had led them. She could still hear the sounds of fighting somewhere beyond the river, on the other side of the city, but Sephyrum had fallen. All that remained of its garrison were pitiful, blackened corpses. Even the ground itself seemed to be under attack. In several places the streets had buckled, spewing toxic geysers of quicksilver. The fighting Ulvgrid could hear was that of desperate survivors, battling to reach the Auratum Gate, looking for a way out. But Ulvgrid had seen the Auratum Gate. There were so many bodies it was impossible to crawl through them. There was no escape.

She paused near some of the dead, spotting a group of duardin lying among the humans. Members of the Ironpeak Clan. Her people. Some were even Ironbreakers like her, wearing the same heavy suits of masterworked armour. If she looked close enough, she might even be able to put names to the dead. Anger surged through her and she whispered a curse. Some of the bodies had been hacked and gored, or filled with arrows, but others had died in a more peculiar way, touched by the streams of alchemical metal. Their flesh had undergone a metamorphosis, transformed into lumps of mangled silver. The quicksilver was a form of liquid changestone and Ulvgrid was careful to avoid it as she moved on, jogging through the smoke, gripping her hammer and raising her shield, hiding in the banks of smoke that filled the street. Somewhere above the fumes there was probably daylight, but since the city had fallen she had stopped measuring time in days. She would have struggled even to say how long it was since the enemy came. At least a week. Two? Perhaps longer. How long had she been scouring these corpse-crowded ruins for a way out?

She paused to drink, taking off her gromril helmet and lifting a flask to her mouth. The water was ash-clogged and greasy but she forced it down, determined to stay focused. Determined not to give up. And she had more than just grit to keep her going now. She had a plan. A hope of getting out. She only had to hold her nerve for a little longer. And then, once she was far away, there would be time for grief and rage.

She ducked into an archway, crouching low. Her squat duardin stature enabled her to take cover behind the plinth as a crowd of soldiers rushed down the street towards her. It was the cultists. She knew it even before they emerged from the smoke. She could hear their thin, cawing laughter. Then they were running past her and she had to stifle the urge to howl a curse. They danced on the dead, kicking the bodies and sneering at them. They looked like characters from an obscene play, with blue, tattooed skin and long, curved beaks in place of mouths. Some of the cultists were human but others, like these, were so corrupted by their devotion to Chaos that it had warped their flesh, tugging swooping horns from their brows and replacing their feet with ridged, blood-encrusted hooves. Ulvgrid found it hard to remain where she was. Every part of her being screamed at her to attack them. To avenge the fallen. They were a sickening mixture of human, bird and goat, but even more disturbing was the way their flesh boiled and simmered, in constant flux, as though not yet settled on a permanent form. The quicksilver had no effect on them, however. They splashed through the metal without a thought. It was a weapon that only harmed the innocent people of Sephyrum, she realised.

Ulvgrid took deep, steadying breaths until they had passed, then she emerged from behind the pillar and sprinted down another street. For a worrying moment she thought she had taken a wrong turn. Then she saw the remains of a guildhall up ahead and knew she was still on the right track. The building belonged to the Ironpeak Clan, and her father had helped build it. It pained her to see it. The anvil-topped columns had buckled and slumped, ripping away sections of wall and causing some of the roof to collapse. A statue of Grungni that once looked out over the entrance had fallen, lying face down in the street.

Ulvgrid waited at the side of the road, staring into the smoke and listening intently. There were screams and cries coming from every direction and the distant crackle of blackpowder weapons, but none of it was nearby. She dashed across the street and in through the blasted façade of the guildhall. It was even gloomier inside. As Ulvgrid reached the central meeting hall, she paused to look around. Everything had been warped by the intense heat. Tiered seating reared over her, tortured into bristling spines by the flames that had ripped through the building. Embers were still rising through the floor, but the flames had ebbed away, having consumed everything they could. The twisted seats gave the place a threatening look and there were blackened remains heaped near one of the exits. Ulvgrid rushed past the bodies, circled carefully around one of the pools of quicksilver and left the meeting hall, heading on through a series of smaller rooms until she reached a storeroom at the rear of the building. After checking again that she was not being watched, she lifted a hatch and hurried down some steps.

The steps were long and narrow, heading into the city’s ancient sewers, and she heard the echoing sound of water flowing beneath the city. At the bottom of the steps she paused, looking up at a huge, barrel-vaulted ceiling. Some of the torches had been lit, and as she studied the architecture, she had to battle another surge of rage. Like the guildhall above, her ancestors had built the sewers to be a thing of wonder, a tribute to duardin empires of old. Thick, sturdy columns punctuated the shadows, carved with skilfully wrought runes and relief work. Here was a reminder of what her people were capable of. What they stood for, what they believed in, before they were swayed by the false promises of the Sigmarites.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in Gotrek Gurnisson Collection in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2023 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 Anna Lakisova.

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ISBN: 978-1-80407-608-8

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