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Godeater's Son – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

Sometimes, when I look out over my world, I want it to end.

This time, the shadow of a sailing mountain drew my cold eyes to the burning flats. In its shade a woman staggered, her patent screams drifting up the way mirages do.

My spite warred with my pity. My soul groaned from the weight of my false indifference. Because I couldn’t not care. This was a priestess of Sigmar. Her Azyrite shrieks betrayed her, as did her ragged raiment and the worthless relics she carried.

The human in me wanted to help. Everything else screamed not to. Whatever the Azyrites claimed, they’d made beggars of us all. And I had not come here to save anybody. My conscience commanded me only to my sister’s word.

My eyes traced the priestess’ discarded baggage. Along that dotted thread, three figures gave chase. They were microscopic in the distance, yet lean and strong, accustomed to Aqshy’s heat. I saw it in their lanky swagger. I felt it in the glimmer of their sand-iron.

They were warborn of the Ushara, one of the Beltoll tribes. Centuries ago the Beltollers had submitted to Cardand and Bharat: the empires of my mothers and fathers, ruled by the great Yrdun houses and clans. That was a time of balance. Of restraint.

But this was the Age of Sigmar, and the old balance was gone. The Azyrites had destroyed the old order for the sake of their own. We were their prey, now. We were each other’s.

So I didn’t move. Let the priestess revel in the fires her people had kindled. Her tiny figure, swathed in bright clothes, stumbled. If her pursuers didn’t claim her, exhaustion would. If not that, then thirst.

If I didn’t help her, she would die.

And Varry would be disappointed.

My jaw hardened. I gulped a lungful of hot air. All I’d ever wanted was to make Varry happy. I’d seen her joy in guarded moments, in the dead of night. Twinkling in her smile, fading like cinderflies. But her joy was so rare. She took care of me, and I knew the toll those efforts extracted.

Always tired, Varry. Always bleak and forlorn. If I helped the priestess, I might see Varry smile. Something in that pleased me. Something covetous, something earnest. Most of all, something true.

Were this priestess sitting in my place, on the lee of this ridge – and were I in her place, in the shadow of leering mountains – she would not have helped me. Azyrites took everything and gave nothing in return. They’d never helped us. Not when we were rag-thin and roaming, nor when we built our home on the broken hill, digging our well into the rock until our hands bled.

But the Azyrites had never had what I had. Varry was all I lived for, the only mortal in blazing creation I would have died for.

Killing a handful of warborn for her would be nothing, nothing at all.

Dust billowed in the Ushara’s tracks. The nomads’ coal-black flesh gleamed beneath their Idoneth-dyed shawls, which whipped in the wind. The Ushara resembled serpent-dancers in Cardand’s night markets. Those dancers would gyrate like spinning tops, then plunge and roll to their feet. The warborn’s movements were similar, economic but showy. But when they fought they would be savage and merciless.

The priestess scrambled through the brimstone sands. She huffed prayers for protection to her god who didn’t care, who didn’t listen. She clutched a handful of precious jewel boxes in quill-thin fingers and ebony hands.

‘Please,’ she rasped. Her plea went unheeded, gobbled by the sounds of her scrabbling.

As I watched, I sneered. The priestess was a mewling child in the manicured flesh of a woman whose life had known only privilege. I loathed her – but it was not for her I had come.

Rising, I drew my javelin. Yolk-yellow sands dusted from my arms in sheets as I quit my concealment.

The warborn halted. ‘Yrdunko!’ one barked.

I whipped my arm forward. The javelin flew. My throwing thong slapped my wrist as the lead-weighted shaft speared the closest nomad’s eye. He snapped down headlong, blood misting the space where he had stood, then blossoming into a pool around him.

I drew my long dirks, both Hammerhal-forged. They were gifts from Jujjar, an old friend. Before this I had only appreciated their utility in cutting cord or slitting the throats of rustled cattle. Never in battle.

Immediately the nomads were upon me. The two remaining war-born expended as little energy as possible, exposing themselves not at all, cautious the way predators are. I fended off probing strikes. The Ushara’s serpentine fighting style was lethal, not a display I’d ever hoped to witness at blade’s length. At least, not without a rank of Yrdun Ashstalkers beside me.

Those days were gone. But before our Freeguild Ashstalkers had been disbanded, we had trained against warborn mercenaries. I knew this foe. The Ushara fought high and far, lofty in body and spirit, so I stayed low and tight.

They circled, thrusting their sand-iron, their falchions clanging off my dirks. If they attacked from both sides, they’d finish this. I had to stay calm, maintain control.

Then tremors ran beneath my feet. My eyes flickered down. A lavamander tunnelled through earthfire beneath the sands, sacred and massive and precious. Just what I hunted for – just when I wanted it least.

The second nomad barked and struck. Impulse had mastered her sense. She spent herself in a wild flurry, and when the time was right, I lashed out and swept my feet. She toppled; I finished her with a perfunctory thrust.

Sweat ran down my tarred brow. I had to focus on the third warborn, but fighting as a lavamander migrated only made this harder. Its moving mass shivered up my bones. The beasts were as quickly lost as they were found. To have followed this one’s movement now would mean losing sight of my foe. Even for a moment, distraction meant death.

Control. All I needed was control.

He thrashed forward. I parried a frenzy of blows from his sand-iron falchion, until a dirk slipped my grip. Survival in the Ashwilds required endurance, agility, tenacity. This foe possessed all three, in greater abundance than I. But rage ran in his veins like a curse. Fury had robbed him of reason. His breathing warbled as he panted hoarse oaths for the lives I had stolen. He had not mastered Aqshy’s heat; it had mastered him.

He was off balance, out of control. I could best him like that.

I feinted, then disarmed him. He gritted his teeth and shoved through my guard, tackling me.

Our blades thumped to the sand. His lithe fingers locked around my throat. With iron strength, his eyes cobalt fire, he squeezed the life from me.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t prise his stone hands from my neck. The world went red, then silver at the edges. I groped through hot sand until my fingers grazed a dirk’s edge. I seized the blade. Pain sang in my hand as its edge sliced through my palm and fingers. I jolted the dirk into the warborn’s arm, then twisted until sinews crunched.

He screamed, spraying me with spittle, drenching us both in blood. He crumbled and nursed his mangled arm.

I shuddered at the sight of his suffering. I would have closed my eyes if I dared. I finished him kindly, quickly. Not with pride, nor vim – just a breed of patience and remorse.

I sputtered, clearing the beetle in my throat, the throbbing in my head. Sand moistened by blood had infiltrated my wraps. This gory clay abraded my flesh and painted me rust. The stench of death hung in the air.

The mountains passing overhead reminded me where I was, and I scanned for more opponents. No Beltollers remained – only I and the mewling priestess, her eyes willow-green. Her thirst-gnarled lips hung awry, like the fixed rictus of my father’s death mask, a grimace that could frighten the dead.

The priestess hissed, half-mad. ‘Boy! Where did you come from?’

I raised a bleeding finger to my lips, then tucked my dirks into my sash. I padded after the tremors I had sensed. Here and there I paused to listen, holding my breath. Aqshy’s heat ebbed into my heels, running up my bones. My blood was hot; I fought to make it cool.

Then, beneath a shifting blur of heat, fissures split the earth. An animal’s coal-rough muzzle pushed up from beneath the ash-stricken sand. The lavamander.

I went prone as the black behemoth emerged. Ranks of thick legs carried its char-scabbed trunk from the ground, shedding crumbs of earthfire like slag. The blind creature sniffed the air, and I dared not breathe. The cracks in its tough hide glowed orange with the heat of its blood, which boiled mine.

A male, a juvenile. He bleated, then groaned. His call was all bass and glottalisation, like a knotted cord pulled through my head. He dragged his outsize mass onwards, seeking out a fresh vein of magma. The lavamander nosed into the hard earth and burrowed the way dogs play in sand.

I hugged the ground, still not breathing. When the earthen crush had ceased, I lifted my head. He was gone.

Varry had once told me our father uttered special words for lavamanders. Invocations to Sigmar, the god he worshipped, in Yrdo, the tongue of our people. In the past I thought that seemed right and well. But all things seem right to children.

I tugged a scrap of fire-resistant hide from my carrying sash and clambered into the cooling crater the lavamander had left behind. Magnure resembled crackling embers, smouldering and snapping with forever heat. Even through the enchanted hide it seared my hands and roused my heart. I kept the ice in me cold, counting my breaths, fighting the scalding heat with everything I had.

I wrapped the magnure, sashed it, then emerged from the crater.

‘What was that?’ the priestess croaked.

I regarded her. A priestess of Sigmar, yes, but not one of those priests. No shaven scalp, no scar-stitched face. No platemail or hammer or storm-swell voice, holy books chained to her war-heart breast. I glanced along the trail of treasures she had dropped during her flight. The warborn must have thought her a gift from the gods; perhaps she thought as much herself. To have carried so much so far, she must have been strong. But I couldn’t understand why she’d bothered.

‘You come from Capilaria,’ I said, in the Azyrite tongue. ‘From that damn city, Hammerhal.’

She furrowed her brow. ‘Yes, yes. That damn city. My damn city, damn you!’

I stared.

‘Are you alone?’ she asked. ‘I don’t care if you are, but please say you aren’t. You’re from Candip? You must be. Where are your spears? Your vassals? Or… your liege?’

My eyes wrinkled. ‘What’s a liege?’

She huffed. ‘What’s a liege… Well, yes. At least I’m alive. There’s always that.’

I followed her gaze into the wastes, where ash danced over blistered sands.

‘We brought something,’ she murmured absently. ‘Izmenili of Chamon. Precious gems. Gems… shiny rocks.’ She made shapes with her hands, as if to qualify the shininess of rocks. ‘You’ll need to go back for them with whomever’s accompanied you. It’s too dangerous to go alone. Beastkin overtook us at dusk. They killed my party, tore them apart.’ She shuddered. ‘They’ll be back. Won’t they? Or… perhaps you can go alone?’

I planted my foot on an Ushara’s skull. Brains squelched as I yanked my javelin free. ‘They’ll be back. Eventide. Just wait.’ I wiped the javelin clean, checked its shaft for cracks. ‘How’d you survive?’

She exhaled. ‘I don’t know. Hiding beneath the wagons. I ran when I could, but they chased. Damned things they are, but they’re vicious. I ran and ran through the night. Somewhy, they gave me up at dawn. Then, those…’ She glanced at the corpses around us. ‘Them. They came.’

‘Ushara. Warborn.’

‘Yes. Them.’ She peered at the jewel boxes in her arms, as if all her suffering were nothing compared to their value. She held at least a dozen. More were tied into her clothes.

Then she sighed. ‘I shall wait here, beneath the metaliths’ shade. The flying mountain, metaliths are flying mountains. Bring water when you can. You know these lands? Look at you, of course you do. You’ll have no problem, you and whomever you’ve brought. Yes? So. What’re you waiting for? Go on.’

I peered at the ridgeline. Part of me had hoped Varry would see all this. I had saved this woman for my sister, not for charity. The priestess was not some motherless infant I would elevate to adulthood and teach my ways. She was a grown woman, strong enough to carry many things, then drop them. Thanks to me, she was still alive. She required nothing else.

The priestess grimaced. I thought she saw me for the first time, then. The flesh of my face like a nightmare’s, painted in sun-daub tar mixed from stolen scrivener’s ink and crushed charcoal. My matted, unbound hair. The heat shawl and wrappings I had drenched in blood to save her life, already crusty and scabbed.

Or…

Did she see a man? A mortal like her, with mortal wants and mortal needs? I had dreams, once. As she must have had – as all children had. Once my eyes were delinquent with wishes. As a child, I had possessed hope and faith.

But I don’t think she saw any of that.

‘You’re not going to help,’ she said.

I pointed to the wasteland horizon. ‘The beasts are Smoulderhooves. They move when Hysh sinks below the hills and the sky’s fires dim.’ Then I pointed to the ridge. More drifting mountains – more metaliths – peppered the sky beyond. ‘Smoulderhooves are scarce beyond these bluffs. That way lies the Burning Valley, Cardand. And within it, Candip.’ I hawked, spat. ‘Your city.’

She grew flustered. ‘I need help, not waypoints. I need your help. I need the other Izmenili.’

I palmed sand over my hand until my cuts clotted, then brushed the dried filth off. ‘I did help.’

‘The warborn? That was duty, not help. We’re both children of Sigmar. Kindred.’

I chuckled. ‘You’re no kin of mine.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why this indecency?’

Enough was enough. My head pounded, my blood blazed, and the magnure’s heat burned in my veins like a hillfire. I sipped from my waterskin and departed.

Her feet crunched into the sand behind me. ‘You ingrate. You animal! You’re an ashfoot, aren’t you? A Paler, an Yrdun native. I’ve heard of you Yrdun. Miscreants and reprobates, charging extra for those who speak Sigmar’s tongue! After all we did for you! After everything we gave you!’

Ashfoot. My shoulders tensed, but I walked on. Perhaps I need not share the events of this day with Varry.

‘We raised aqueducts in Candip!’ the priestess said. ‘We walled your city, our armies patrol its reaches! We contain foes who would ravage your lands, you know that? Ra-vage! You’d be gheists but for us. You’d be thralls to the Dark Gods! This is how you repay us?’

I stopped and turned. ‘Repay who?’

‘Us! The God-King!’

My finger jolted out at her. ‘You did nothing when the beasts came for my family. Nothing when me and my sister were alone, except hire us to fight your wars. I’m not thankful for nothing. I don’t repay nothing.’

‘Civilising the Reclaimed is not nothing!’

I marched onwards. ‘Hail Sigmar.’

Blissful quiet followed, broken only by the rustle of wind. Then, a sizzling reached my ears. The air suddenly stank of brimstone and baking pottery.

I glowered and turned. The priestess made the old signs with her fragile fingers, trying to cast some spell. Cuneiform runes perforated the air, disturbing to behold for long.

‘Put your hands down.’ When she didn’t, I drew a dirk and lurched out. ‘I said, put them down.’

The priestess blanched, her skin going the shade of dusk. Her fingers danced faster. But she tugged the wrong threads of magic, and her sleeves ignited. The rune’s cinders caught aflame. Her eyes widened.

I ducked just as the spell exploded. Heat washed across me. Then I straightened and stormed over, swatting away the embers of magic. I seized the coughing priestess by her ragged raiment collar – she stank of sickly perfume. I hurled her down, then pushed my blade to her neck to silence her puling.

Breathless with terror and forceless indignation, she spoke. ‘What are you doing?’

I twitched, my knuckles digging into her soft neck. Soft, from a soft life of creams and silk and touching soft things. To a creature so soft, I must be jagged and ungiving.

Then the thought struck me. She thought I was the bad one.

For a moment, I wondered what she might have thought if we had met in Candip and not here. In the crevasse-city her people had stolen from mine, sitting on one of her priesthood’s heavy palanquins as it was borne upon the stooped shoulders of my impoverished kindred. Men like Jujjar, or women like Varry. Varry believed the Azyrites deserved reverence for the salvation they brought to Bodshe. Salvation.

I would not kill this priestess. Not even for summoning spells against me – not even in these Ashwilds where nobody would learn of her death. True, Varry would never have forgiven such a crime. Even in her absence, I craved to please her. I yearned to be the brother she loved.

But that wasn’t the heart of it. The Azyrites had already taken so much. I would give them nothing more. Not another moment – not another breath.

My eyes dropped to the hammer-faced medallion hanging from the woman’s neck. I cut its cord, tucking it away. Then I released her. ‘Seek the Burning Valley and Candip. There many will tumble for the chance to help you. Send them to kill me if you wish.’ I rose. ‘They’ll get lost.’

Tears formed in the corners of the priestess’ eyes. ‘Please. I can’t go alone. I just need help.’

But I was already gone. Her whispers became screams, then threats, then promises of reward. Perhaps her words would have swayed Varry, but Varry was blind to the truth of the realm. The gods did not love us. And just as well, for I loved nothing but Varry.

As the creaking hulks of passing mountains joined the priestess’ distant noise, I clambered up shingly slopes, each step careless. Errant thoughts washed through my mind.

Then someone emerged from behind the nearest tor.

I tensed as I recognised Varry. She wore a shawl like mine, and the same tar on my brow painted hers. Tufts of sand-caked hair protruded from beneath her cowl. She had come to find me, right where I’d promised to be.

The corners of my lips rose into a smile. Varry always looked tired. Beneath her spring-water smile and starlight eyes lay a forlorn strength, the prerequisite for our existence. She was the only person who had ever loved me. But she had come much sooner than I expected.

I froze, as if stillness could conceal the distant priestess or mute her petulance, but Varry was observant. She glimpsed the blood on my clothes and frowned.

‘Held, what have you done?’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2023.
This eBook edition published in 2023 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Manuel Castañón.

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