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Five Candles – Extract

A Black Library Imprint

eBook license

Five Candles

Lora Gray

In Havisa’s dream, her fire was not fading. She was young and strong again, blazing bright as she always should have, an unstoppable force, spear in hand. A beautiful, terrible Aqshian warrior…

Havisa coughed herself awake, jerking upright where she’d fallen asleep on the stool beside her narrow bed. Smoke stabbed her lungs and eyes, acrid and stinking of scorched rushes and burning timber. Haze. She couldn’t see. Fire. She could barely breathe. Hacking and swearing, pain lancing through her arthritic hip, Havisa limped to the door and shouldered it open.

Smoke chased her outside, choking out the sunlight, the whole world dim and sallow. Or perhaps the sun had never brightened fully that day. It was why she had lit her candles that morning, after all. Dawn had seemed too feeble to chase away the death magic. It did no good to tempt fate when she was all alone and so far from the village. Havisa had lit her candles and had fallen asleep, leaving them unattended…

A timber popped and Havisa backpedalled, shielding her face. Flames licked up and out of the narrow window. Everything was burning…

Havisa smacked herself. ‘You fool.’ Ignoring the grinding protests of her hip and back, she grabbed the empty bucket beside the door. ‘You stupid, old fool.’ Gaping at that fire wouldn’t extinguish it.

Hobbling and huffing, Havisa hurried to the withered stand of trees and into the scrub-strangled gully beyond. Her eyes stung – from the embers, she told herself, not tears – and her lungs clenched, but she ran as fast as her body could carry her, until her knee finally buckled. She skidded down the bank of the gully, a flail of arms and ragged skirts, into the ruddy muck at the bottom. The bucket splashed into the water beside her. Havisa reached for it.

On the opposite bank, a dark shape rose from all fours.

He stood, a young man, tall, thin, dressed in black and backlit against the sallow sky. His cheeks were unshaven and patchy, jaw jutting from beneath the scruff. His hair was a mangy tangle that sprouted a pair of flies when he lifted his head.

Any other time, Havisa would have demanded to know who he was, why he was here on her land, but she didn’t have time to wonder. Her whole world was going up in flames.

Havisa plunged her bucket into the shallow water.

‘You stink of smoke, old woman,’ the stranger said, his voice a deep, uneven timbre.

‘Of course I “stink of smoke!”’ Havisa lost her grip on the bucket, coughed, and cursed. ‘The house on the hill there, my house, is burning!’

‘And you’re going to extinguish it all by yourself?’

‘It’s not going to put itself out!’ Havisa hiked her muddy skirts to her knees and turned to amble up the embankment towards her house. Had she been younger, she could have carried twice as much water. Had she been younger, maybe she could have asked this stranger for help without fearing judgement or pity. But she wasn’t young any more, was she? She was old, too weak to do anything properly…

Havisa didn’t anticipate the stranger’s hands when he grabbed her by the scruff and shoulder and hefted her up and over the lip of the gully. Havisa stumbled, water sloshing onto her feet, and sputtered, but the stranger was already loping past her, carrying his cloak, knotted into a makeshift water bladder, over his shoulder.

Havisa’s pride stung, but she was far too frantic and winded to protest. By the time she reached her house and tossed her meagre bucket of water onto the flames, the stranger was already sprinting towards the river again, a trough in his arms, for whatever good it would do. A single room didn’t take very long to burn.

She did her best to quash the fire, throwing armfuls of dirt onto the flames when they licked their way out of the narrow window, trying to smother rogue embers with her cloak, but finally, she resigned herself to save what she could. She darted inside, through the crackling flames and haze. She had only just retrieved a small sack of silver and her precious spear from its place beside the door, when the roof shuddered and collapsed inward.

Havisa careened from the rush of searing air, cinders biting into the exposed flesh of her arms and face as she fell, panting and coughing so violently she felt as if her lungs might lurch up and out of her throat, wet and blackened. She closed her eyes, struggling for oxygen, her skin prickling, her entire body throbbing from the running, the falling, too much smoke, exhaustion.

Heartbreak.

She concentrated on the pain. Not the loss. Not the horrible, gnawing grief of seeing the last remains of her sad little life burning to nothing. What did she have now? She had no friends; they’d all died as Aqshians should, gloriously, the heat of battle consuming them when they were young. Her fire had never been as fierce as theirs and she’d committed the cardinal sin of surviving, of growing old. She was a coward. Useless. Where would she go? Who would have her now?

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Warhammer horror

A Black Library Imprint

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Rachel Williams.

Five Candles © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Five Candles, Warhammer Horror, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, 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: 978-1-80026-422-9

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.

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