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Darkoath – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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CHAPTER ONE

LONG SKULLS

In the east of Aqshy, the Realm of Fire
On the slopes of shattered Attramor
After the Vermindoom

RUN-RUN-RUN!

These were the thoughts of Skitterdeek, black-clad swift-killer, blade in hand. His grip on his punch-knife tightened, but there was no murder-boldness in him. Fear squeezed his muscles, flattened his dampening fur, and widened his eyes. He scampered between trees aglow with red fire, seeking the sanctuary of cold shadow, seeking darkness, finding none.

The burning forest was thick with skaven-shriek, and his nostrils burned with ash and terror-musk. Death crashed through the brush behind him – the woods-birthed monstrosity that had been the end of Deathmaster Zenyk.

DEATH-DEATH-DEATH!

Once, Skitterdeek had treasured the thought of his master’s demise. It was something to be wished in secret, private and precious. He dreamed often of his knife slipping quick-sharp into the gap between Zenyk’s shoulders. It would be a gasping, quiet, silent, clever slaying, in Skitterdeek’s imaginings. He would be feared, when the deed was discovered, and then they – his Night Runners – would call him Deathmaster Skitterdeek, and they would follow him.

Skitterdeek no longer wished to be followed.

A roar shook the trees and rattled through Skitterdeek’s skull. The worst doings of the hellpits of Moulder could not create such a noise as this. It was hot anger and beast-rage, the wrath of a realm defiled.

Skitterdeek had been there, when the cleverness of the Great Horned Rat had snapped the spine of the cosmos. He had felt the Mortal Realms buck and quake. The skein of unreality that encased the hidden domain of the skaven had split, sending its blighted innards erupting upwards, shuddering into the night sky of sundered Aqshy.

Blight City was hidden no more. Blight City had declared itself: Here I am, here I am! Know me in terror, know me in ruin!

On that day Skitterdeek had joined teeming others surging quick-quick beyond the shattered territories of the domain called the Gnaw, which burned warp-green and belched corruption. The fell touch of the Gnaw extended to grasp greedily at the realm, snatching away the territories of preening city-dweller and brutish marauder alike. The Great Horned Rat had done what no other god of Ruin could do, would do, and broken the world. Quick-cruel Skitterdeek was his clever blade, his servile supplicant, his scheming inheritor. One of many, one of millions.

Skitterdeek had performed much knife-work in the days and weeks since. As the Deathmaster directed, so he struck. He and his kin stole into the holdfasts of those who had stood against the skaven, and into the shelters and hiding places of those who were simply in the way. They made play of murder. They exalted in it, for the thirteenth hour had come. For the first time, Skitterdeek dared to ply his trade openly. For the first time, he met the gaze of those whose throats he slit. Skitterdeek thrilled at what it was to be witnessed, to be seen.

Skitterdeek no longer wished to be seen.

There were hunters in these burning forests, loping warriors who dared trespass closer to the fringe of the Gnaw than any other of their ilk. Deathmaster Zenyk and his killers had stalked them in turn. Then, in the darkest part of the night, they had lost them. This was an impossible thing. The Night Runners had split for the shadows, seeking the scent of sweat and blood in the air, but had not found it. Skitterdeek roamed a short distance from the others, taking advantage of their distraction, keeping his eyes on Zenyk. It was no small thing to track a Deathmaster in the dark, but Skitterdeek did so. Perhaps this would be his moment, after all.

Zenyk had slipped razor-quick between two thick trees and scampered up a sheer-sided boulder, seeking vantage. He sniffed. Something whistled against the ash and sulphur in the air; the Deathmaster twitched, caught its scent, and twisted to the side. An iron-tipped javelin missed his head by inches and dug deep into the rock at his back. Zenyk hunched, red eyes narrowing along the course of the javelin’s flight, keen senses reversing the path of the projectile to the hand that threw it. He found the place where his assailant had concealed themselves, and slunk low. The Deathmaster palmed a whisper-sharp throwing star and tensed in anticipation of the wrist-flick that would send it scything into the lurking human’s jugular.

The Deathmaster permitted himself a chitter of satisfaction – a cruel murmur, scarcely audible above the tremble of the burning forest.

But Skitterdeek heard it, and so did something else.

Something above them.

The sound it made was little more than an exhalation, but the malevolence in it froze Zenyk stiff and had much the same effect on hidden Skitterdeek. Zenyk inched forward and made to leap down from the boulder, eyes downturned, blind to the slender limb that grasped towards him from the smouldering canopy.

Skitterdeek saw it soon enough to catch its shape, but not soon enough to warn the Deathmaster. The limb was pale and slender, serpentine but jointed in too many places, jagged like frozen lightning, ragged like bird bones. It twitched as it descended, splaying into seven slender fingers, widening until it had the aspect of a slow-grasping hand. It had no means of sight that Skitterdeek could see, but the uncanny creature tracked the movement of the Deathmaster with unerring surety.

Zenyk, star in hand, set on his own kill, sensed the danger at the last moment. The fur on his shoulders bristled into spines. He twitched, spun, and the creature grabbed for him, thin fingers closing about his neck. With violence it wrenched the Deathmaster into the air, piercing his flesh, forcing his head back, fixing his gaze upward. Zenyk scrambled with claw and tail for his daggers, but what his eyes saw in the canopy squeezed the fear-musk from him. He shrieked, and began to struggle like a trapped animal.

Skitterdeek, somewhat curious, somewhat compelled, crept a step forward. His fellow Night Runners were not so subtle. Cloaked skaven dashed from their hiding-spots and scampered to assist the Deathmaster. Skitterdeek saw grey-furred Kryllyk, craven-loyal, in the lead. He mounted the boulder and leapt, slashing for the predator that had their master in its grasp–

Death came for Kryllyk in the shape of another iron-tipped javelin, which caught him beneath his ribs and punched down through his guts. He flew away into the shadows, and instinct compelled the others to turn their attention to these new assailants and prepare to defend themselves. Night Runners were ambushers and trapmakers by trade, and it was a rare foe that could turn these same tricks against them. Those they hunted encircled them now in the trees, and Skitterdeek realised the precarity of his own, isolated position. He found his boldness, dashing for the shelter of the pack–

It was then that death truly came for the Deathmaster. Bad death, madness of the wild. The canopy started to shake as it birthed terror. Zenyk was hauled upwards with a juddering motion as the creature in the trees descended. No slender, serpentine hunter this, but a spawn of Ruin, multi-limbed and muscular. Skitterdeek froze. The limb that had seized up the Deathmaster was not a limb at all.

It was something closer to a tongue, barbed and unnatural, that hunted with a will all of its own and terminated in a long, canine mouth lined with hard, flat teeth. Rows of red eyes split the patchy fur of its cranium, and they glowed in the reflected light of the burning forest. Twining antlers were its crown, this avatar of Ruin, and Skitterdeek’s bravery left him. Neither pack-sure nor murder-bold, he dropped low and cowered.

The beast fell, and as it did it half-swallowed the Deathmaster. Zenyk’s legs bucked, and his tail snapped about as gnawing, grinding teeth found purchase. The creature came down upon the boulder with its hindlimbs and let its weight carry it forward to crush the fear-frozen skaven at its feet. That was when the shrieking began in earnest. That was when Zenyk’s clawpack was broken. That was when the cleverness of Skitterdeek, black-clad swift-killer, was undone by terror.

RUN-RUN-RUN!

And so Skitterdeek ran.

The ground beneath him rose into a rocky incline, not steep enough to slow him, but steep enough to indicate that he had reached the far side of the valley in which the burning forest lay. This was good. This was to be desired. Beyond the valley lay the broken mountains – broken by the Horned Rat itself – where Skitterdeek might find shelter, in the place where the monster was not.

He let the incline guide him upward. Dark, bleeding shapes on the ground drew his eye as he passed them. Skaven dead, stuck with arrows, split by blade. Better than the bad-death, Skitterdeek thought.

Another roar shook the trees, as if in agreement.

He spied movement in the undergrowth ahead. With a dextrous, practised motion, Skitterdeek passed his blade from hand to tail, then burst forward on all fours. He crashed into the brush in anticipation of a quick, frenzied slaying of whatever creature blocked his escape.

The eyes that met Skitterdeek as he leaped into the fray were the mirror of his own: fear-wide, bloodshot, skaven. Momentum carried the two Night Runners into one another, biting, clawing and slashing, until pack-instinct pulled them apart. Skitterdeek hissed. Fear-musk masked his counterpart’s scent, but now he saw the blind white eye of one he knew as Qezqit. The other skaven bared his fangs and snapped, but recognition sapped the kill-urge from each of them. No cleverness or gain in this, they knew. Better odds together.

Skitterdeek flicked with the tip of his blade towards the steep-sided edge of the valley.

‘Go-quick,’ he hissed. ‘Go-quick-now!’

On they ran, Skitterdeek and Qezqit, a clawpack of two. Their paths interwove and pulled apart as they raced one another for the safety of the forest’s edge. Neither would have hesitated to flee were the other set upon by beast or hunter, or fall afoul of trap or wildfire. Each gambled, in that sense, on the other’s misfortune – but numbers, even scant numbers, returned some boldness to their quick-beating hearts and lent speed to their low, flowing forms. The realm-shaking roar of the forest-terror receded as the trees grew thinner around them, and the sulphurous air – the breath of Aqshy – gained the good sharp acid edge of warpstone, the distant but welcome signature of the Gnaw.

Skitterdeek bounded up the rocky ground, head low, eyes forward. Qezqit’s path converged with his as the incline narrowed towards a gap in the ridge. The forest fell away behind them, and they gained speed, combatting sudden moonlit exposure with sheer nightclad swiftness.

RUN-RUN-RUN.

These were the thoughts of Skitterdeek, calmer now as terror eased its grip and confidence returned. The burning woods belonged to the enemy, but the realm belonged to the skaven, and Skitterdeek was abroad in it now, Skitterdeek was free.

They pressed together through a break in the rocks, chasing the cold darkness that awaited them in the far lee of the ridge. Heightened senses caught a crunch – leather on metal on stone.

Not skaven.

Qezqit chittered. A spike of fear ran through both of them: paws found knives. Yet they were too close to stop now, and too fast to do anything but run and slay.

A shadow fell across Skitterdeek’s path – a shadow in human shape, tall, war-strong. Cold air misted beneath a heavy brow, and cold moonlight caught the edge of an axe, broad and black. It faced them alone, this shadow, and Skitterdeek tensed his grip on his punch-dagger and raised his tail-knife and shrieked. At his side, Qezqit did the same.

They bounded apart, scaling the sides of the gap in the ridge, throwing themselves forward into the fray, driven by fear and spite and kill-need.

KILL-KILL-KILL!

Skitterdeek did not meet the gaze of the warrior that set itself against him. As he leaped forward his eyes were drawn, unbidden, to the adornments that glimmered where they hung from the human’s neck, or were pinned within the mass of beast-fur that hung about its shoulders. Scratch-carved tablets of stone, monstrous fangs, trophies – and among these trophies, skulls. Long skulls.

Skitterdeek raised his knife, and the warrior’s axe came about in a wide, horizontal sweep. Skitterdeek saw the beast-in-the-woods in those long skulls, its jaw distended, helpless Zenyk in its teeth. Skitterdeek saw Qezqit in those long skulls, as the warrior kicked the other skaven aside with a heavy boot and made to crush him against the rocks as he bit and scratched for life.

Skitterdeek saw himself in those long, skaven skulls, as his killer’s black axe took his head.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2024.
This eBook edition published in 2024 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 Igor Sid.

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