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Gods’ Gift – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Gods’ Gift

David Guymer

I held out my hand, palm down, fingers spread, hovering over the animal print caked into the dried mud of the mountain side. The heel of my palm was about level with the matching point of the imprint. The tips of my gauntleted fingers came nowhere even close to the clipped indents left by the passing beast’s claws. I frowned.

‘Are you familiar with the monster, Lord-Castellant?’

The old woodcutter, Fage, crouched across from me on the other side of the print, a long, long way away. His eyes possessed the faint shimmer of the Azyr-born, but his insect-bitten skin and sour odour were those of a naturalised Ghurite. He wore a wax coat fastened up tight with wooden toggles and string, and a pair of trousers of similar material but mismatched colour. A hat fashioned from the skin of a furred creature was pulled down over his greying head, flaps covering his ears. White fog curled about his lips, for though we were half a day’s march from the Seven Words and the great peak of the Gorkoman, the air still had teeth.

He looked at me, waiting to be told that ‘By Sigmar, yes, I know well this beast,’ and that it was nothing I had not slain a thousand of before. I had no wish to lie, particularly, but a reputation for semi-divine infallibility was the foundation of all that I had raised here.

‘I cannot be certain,’ I said, after a reasonable pause.

Broudiccan snorted. The hugely armoured Decimator loomed silently amongst the wiry leechwood pines a few dozen paces up-slope.

He knows me too well.

The trees of the High Gorwood were short, ten or eleven feet tall, clad in reddish bark with long, waspish branches swaying only partially in tune with the wind. A little deeper in, the shadows of several similarly outfitted Astral Templars of the Bear-Eaters jigged and wavered in the light of a fire. The clatter of a rough camp being set rang about the carnivorous trees. The warriors were in high spirits. One of the vanguard-hunters was already beating a slow rhythm into an improvised drum. Another, the raptor – Illyrius, judging by the quality of his singing voice – was opening the Saga of the Barrel Kings. The saga was a favourite of the Bear-Eaters due to their small (though not the way Illyrius sang it) role in the death of the god-beast Mammothas in its final verse.

In the Age of Myth, Sigmar had tasked his brother-god, Gorkamorka, with the purge of monsters from the mortal realms. With the dawning of the Age of Sigmar, that task had been bestowed upon the Astral Templars.

To the Bear-Eaters, a beast-hunt through the Gorwood felt almost like a reward.

‘We will know more when the light returns,’ I told the woodsman, ignoring my lieutenant’s weighted silence.

Fage peered out into the thickening darkness. Dusk fell suddenly over the Gorkoman, and the colour was fast draining from the landscape. The clicks and chirps of creatures were fading in the transition from day to night. The burden of life in the Realm of Beasts was more or less equivalent, regardless of your side of the dawn. The woodsman fiddled anxiously with the hatchet that dangled from his undercoat on a leather thong.

‘There is nothing to fear in the Gorwood,’ I said, baring my teeth. ‘Hamilcar Bear-Eater is with you now.’

The woodcutter pulled himself together and nodded, reassured.

As well he should be.

For I am a savage vision, awe-inspiring if I might say, at least to human eyes. My hair is dark and wild. My skin is marked with etchings of my own application. Others have oft-times questioned why I would deface Sigmar’s great work with my own. I have no answer for them except that I wished to do so and did. My armour is the colour of amethyst, the very spirit and hue of death, strung with dead animals and scrawled with tribal glyphs whose shape I recall but whose meaning I can no longer comprehend.

I am, if we are to speak in understatements, no Vandus Hammerhand.

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A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by John Michelbach.

Gods’ Gift © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Gods’ Gift, 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.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-847-1

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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