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False Dawn – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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False Dawn

Christopher Allen

The landscape wore its beauty like a mask.

As far as Captain Ephrenna Brynn could see, wetlands gleamed beneath the sky’s unrelenting glare. Light caught on every ripple and every outcrop of nacreous rock. Curtains of thin mist drifted over the limpid pools, blooming with luminescence. This far into the reaches of Hysh, the illumination of day made everything a shining wonder, and it drowned her vision in a tide of brilliant detail. It was simply too much to encompass with mortal eyes.

Behind Ephrenna, a ragged column trudged through the silty muck. The Dawnbringers numbered more than a thousand, a heaving rabble of soldiers, pilgrims, zealots and opportunists. Most stared around in guileless awe, blind to any danger. The eyes of her own vanguard company, one hundred hand-picked veterans of the Five Nails Freeguild, were dark with smeared ash-black to ease the intense radiance, and they alone were ready for battle.

Ephrenna had striven hard to stand at this crusade’s fore, as she had for everything since she scrabbled her way out of the dust of the Spiral Crux. The faith that fired the pilgrims’ hearts seemed distant to her, and she knew Azyrite lordlings and Freeguild officers alike resented the authority she, as a Reclaimed clanswoman, had earned over them. It didn’t matter; she’d pay whatever price necessary for another chance to carve her name in the world through her deeds. Whether they liked her or not, they would carry her to the greatness she believed, in her heart, she was destined for.

It was hard to pick out individuals amid the mass of Dawners, but Ephrenna saw the gesture of the crusade’s commander nonetheless, beckoning for her. Only Anaximandra could exude such imperiousness in this realm, as if her pristine white-and-silver robes put even the clear Hyshian sky to shame. The wizard moved in a different world to the rest of them. Even trudging through the mire, she had somehow kept the hem of her garb free of muck.

Ephrenna pushed through the column of Dawners to reach her commander, as strange as it still felt to defer to the authority of the wizard. Though Anaximandra was neither general nor priest, her vision and hold over the crusade was absolute.

Anaximandra graced the captain with a brief glance as she approached, then turned her gaze to the horizon. ‘We approach Elucidae.’

‘A day’s march maybe, magister,’ Ephrenna said. ‘We’ll be there tomorrow, if you let me push this rabble.’

‘No, captain. We stand in its hinterland, and will proceed with caution. I must assess the geomantic energies at work. These pools were once fields, these rocks once menhirs. Whatever power Elucidae harnessed still lingers in their shape and alignment.’

Ephrenna snorted dismissively. ‘The city fell centuries ago, and you think whatever sorcery these mystics practised might still be at work? If this is what the outskirts look like, there’s nothing left but rubble.’

‘More than mere centuries ago, captain. Nonetheless, the aelves’ reports were strikingly clear. Elucidae still stands, and we do not yet know what calamity erased it from the annals of history. We will approach the city without haste. For now, find us dry ground for tonight’s camp.’

Ephrenna frowned but did not argue. Anaximandra was a wizard of the Collegiate Arcane and the beating heart of this expedition, the one who had willed it into being. It was she who had petitioned for the crusade to be issued forth, who convinced Lector Vieglund to call the faithful to arms, and who negotiated safe passage from aelven nobles. Whatever arcane secrets she believed the human mystics of Elucidae wielded, she would clearly move heavens and realm to reclaim them.

The captain hurried ahead, catching up with her command retinue beneath the regiment’s fluttering banner. Lieutenant Malerich loomed in the rust-and-grey heraldry of the Five Nails, the drab colours a balm for Ephrenna’s eyes amid the glaring light. Behind him scuttled Caustus, the pseudo-oracle’s face a ghastly mess of sutures wrapped in an elaborate duardin-made breathing apparatus. His hand eagerly fumbled with the pouches of glimmering phials at his belt, a considerable sum of harvested prophecy that had cost Ephrenna dearly in the markets of Excelsis.

‘Captain.’ The burly lieutenant gave a curt salute, then scowled. ‘This light’s giving me a bloody headache.’

‘You should be used to it by now,’ Ephrenna said. ‘Anything from the scouts? We need to find somewhere in this sodden mess to pitch camp.’

The lieutenant shook his head. ‘They’re overdue back, which worries me. These fens are hard to make headway through, it’s true, but…’

Ephrenna’s gaze flickered to Caustus. She didn’t need to ask; he thumbed a phial into an aperture on his breathing apparatus, twisted it, and greedily inhaled as shining vapours flooded forth.

Caustus was a false prophet, an artificial omen-seeker whose insight came solely from the fragmented power of Excelsis glimmerings, but his sensitivity to those brief flashes of revelation was stronger than most. He was entirely loyal to Ephrenna’s stockpile of purchased portents, and the fascinating thread of her own supposed destiny. He wanted to see her future almost as much as she did.

His ravaged face creased in a blissful grin of discovery. ‘Death,’ he murmured.

Sudden movement stirred the misty haze draped across the landscape. Ephrenna saw it then, too late: ranks of hunched shapes among the rocks ahead, each raising a shield of burnished metal that now reflected the shining light of Hysh’s noon sky. A moment later, and she could see nothing else but the blinding display of this false dawn.

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