Contents

Cover

Hammerhal & Other Stories – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Prologue

DARK GOD’S LAUGHTER

The divine consciousness of Sigmar Heldenhammer, the God-King, raced down from the celestial peaks of Azyr and into the tangled canopies of Ghyran, the Realm of Life. His awareness, shrouded in storm winds and rain, descended through vast clouds of floating spores, passing by the shattered husks of sky-islands and storm-reefs to the green lands below.

Ghyran was a vibrant realm. Life was everywhere, taking innumerable shapes. It grew and spread with a hunger that defied all logic, responding to the eternal song of Alarielle the Everqueen. He could hear her voice echoing from every corner of her realm, as the Goddess of Life tried to put right all that was wrong and heal the wounds of war. But there were places that even her song could not reach. Places where other, darker gods held sway.

In moments, the Nevergreen Mountains rose wild about him. Sigmar was there and yet not there, a shard of his godly might riding a storm wind through the dark pine reaches of the Hexwood, which covered the mountains’ slopes.

Gradually the wind coalesced, joining with the light of the stars and the sound of distant thunder to assume the seeming of a man, clad in golden war-plate embossed with celestial heraldry. It was a form the God-King had taken often, in days gone by, when the Mortal Realms were at peace and the gods were of one mind, united in a pantheon.

But all things ended. One by one, the gods had abandoned Sigmar’s grand alliance, or betrayed him. The embers of an old, familiar anger flared at the thought, and thunder rumbled somewhere over the mountain peaks. Even Alarielle had retreated at last, withdrawing deep into the hidden glades of Ghyran, there to sleep and dream.

And as the old alliances shattered, war had rocked the Mortal Realms to their very roots. The Ruinous Powers – the four Dark Gods of Chaos – pressed close about the threshold of reality, and no realm save his own had been safe from their attentions.

Ghyran had seen more than its share of that conflict. The Plague God, Nurgle, had claimed it as his own, turning the rampant creation to stagnation. But the servants of the Everqueen had fought alongside Sigmar’s own, if grudgingly, and had beaten the foetid servants of Nurgle back on several fronts, weakening the Plague God’s hold on the realm.

Nevertheless, where one of the Dark Gods weakened, the others grew strong. That was the nature of the Ruinous Powers. They waged war on each other as readily as on Sigmar or the other gods of the Mortal Realms. And where Nurgle found himself stymied, his great rival Tzeentch, the God of Change, was sure to seek some advantage.

And here, in the Nevergreen Mountains, the Architect of Fate was making his move. Sigmar could sense the innumerable skeins of possibility and chance weaving through the Hexwood. Every tree in the forest thrummed with corruption. Each one seemed to be a black wound in reality, and past them he could see cancerous pathways stretching away somewhere, beyond even his sight.

Something vast and monstrous waited here, just beyond the trees, watching him. It had foreseen his arrival, and its laughter itched at the back of his mind like a nagging ache. A susurrus of muttering pursued him as he moved on, teasing and taunting him. He longed to face the laughing presence that he knew to be Tzeentch as he might once have. In those early days, he had matched his might against that of the Ruinous Powers, but he’d come to learn through harsh experience that there was no profit in such a confrontation. So instead, he ignored it and continued on, speeding through the forest, faster now, seeking what had drawn his attention, even in high Sigmaron in his home realm of Azyr.

He felt the touch of a mind, much like his own, start in recognition as his consciousness entered a wide clearing. Twisted trees rose up like the crumbled parapets of a broken citadel, casting strange shadows across the bestial shapes cavorting beneath their branches. The beastkin reeked of Tzeentch; his corrupting touch was obvious upon them. The tzaangors were avian-featured and horned, bedecked in savage totems and bearing weapons of bone, iron and crystal. Some of them had once been men, before the magics of Tzeentch had twisted them into new, more awful shapes. Others had been born mere beasts, raised up by foul rites to walk on two legs rather than four.

Whatever their origin, the beastkin capered to the dissonant music of crouched drummers and whirling pipers, screeching and howling in time to the cacophony. The trees about the clearing seemed to flex and bend with the raucous noise, their bark blistering beneath the caress of the damnable incense rising from the multi-coloured bonfires which littered the clearing.

At its heart, a blister of crystalline rock sprouted from the soil. It was a flux-cairn – a sour growth of stagnant magics, raised by the servants of Tzeentch to honour their dark master and facilitate his endless schemes. It spread like a gangrenous crown, its milky facets catching the light in eerie ways. The formation of fossilised sorcery towered over the tzaangors and reverberated with the thumping of their drums. Motes of iridescence, which Sigmar knew to be captured magics, crawled through it like fireflies.

The flux-cairn was the foul heart of the forest, the darkling pathways hidden within the trees all stretching unseen through its facets and into unknown realms beyond. Sigmar could feel the twisted paths growing, stretching towards their destination. The sensation of it was like the hum of a mosquito in his skull, or an itch he could not scratch. He desired nothing more than to destroy the cairn, to call down the lightning which was his to command and shatter it into a million pieces.

But something stayed his hand. He gazed deeper into the heart of the flux-cairn, and that was when he saw them: silvery spheres, wrapped in something that might have been vines or algae, hanging suspended within the cairn.

‘Soulpods,’ he murmured.

The newborn seedlings of Alarielle’s favoured servants: the sylvaneth.

The soulpods throbbed with potential – they were the raw stuff of life, waiting for their moment to bloom and grow. Within them, tree-kin spirits – though of what sort Sigmar could not say – waited for their rebirth and clamoured for release. They flickered within their cage of crystal. They sensed him, and their unformed consciousness stretched out towards him, imploring him for aid.

Aid he could not give them. This place was not his, and already he could feel the Everqueen’s anger at his presence growing. She had sensed him the moment he had entered Ghyran unannounced, and had raced with the winds to confront him. He felt her anger at his intrusion wash over him like the heat of a summer’s day. In an attempt to forestall her fury, he asked, ‘How long have they been captives, sister?’

‘Too long, Thunderer.’ Alarielle’s voice scraped across his consciousness like the sting of a hundred nettles. Her seeming appeared before him in a swirl of loose leaves and pollen. Teeth made from thorns were bared in a snarl of challenge. ‘It is no concern of yours, Lord of the Heavens. Leave this place and seek your own battles.’

Though it was his servants who had helped weaken the Dark Gods’ hold on Ghyran, Sigmar knew that Alarielle bore him little love. Perhaps she still blamed him for failures of old, or perhaps the war-song now beat so strongly within her that she could not perceive help when it was freely offered. Either way, he was reluctant to test the fragile bonds of their current alliance. And yet he could not bring himself to depart.

‘What is happening here, sister? Perhaps I can be of help…’

She swelled with wrath at his words, her form expanding to gigantic proportions, invisible to the mortal eye but unsettling nonetheless. Like Sigmar, her physical manifestation was elsewhere, engaged in some other conflict. But this shard of her was potent enough.

‘I need no aid. This is my place. My realm. Not yours.’

He could feel a familiar rage boiling within her. Long years of hardship had worn her patience to less than nothing. She longed to strike at the enemy as he himself did – to drive them before her and cast their corpses into the deepest pits. Her anger was like a hurricane beating against his perception. He drew back, lest it draw him in.

Around them, tzaangors sniffed the air and squawked nervously. They could not discern either god, but some magical sense, gifted to them by their twisted patron, had alerted them that something was amiss. The air was alive with magics.

Sigmar turned. The bowers and glens of the forest echoed with screams. He heard blades sink noisily into wood. Flesh was being torn by splintery claws, and bone snapped within constricting coils of vine. Something was coming.

‘I merely came to offer my aid,’ he began again, but Alarielle flung out a claw of pine needles and blossoms, silencing him.

‘My children have arrived. They come, and this farce ends.’

With an ear-splitting shriek, the sylvaneth erupted into the clearing. The tree-kin were bark-covered nightmares, with splintery jaws and branch-like talons. They resembled humans, but only at a distance. Some towered over their companions, swinging blades made from fossilised wood and rock. Others bore no weapons save their claws. They fell upon the tzaangors like the rage of the Everqueen made manifest. The beastkin screeched and fought back, trying to protect the flux-cairn.

The battle was fierce. Sigmar watched as a titanic sylvaneth swung a tzaangor about by its horn, smashing it to a bloody paste against the ground. The gleaming falchions and spears of the tzaangors drew sap from the twisting bodies of the tree-kin. The battle swung one way, and then the other. For every tzaangor that fell, two more raced to take its place, yet the sylvaneth fought with a fury that the beastkin could not match. The soulpods were their future, and they would risk almost anything to save them.

The air pulsed with Alarielle’s war-song as the Everqueen urged her children on. The wordless harmony rose and fell with the wind whipping between the trees, driving the sylvaneth to greater effort. Then, all at once, a shriek echoed through the glen.

Sigmar saw a hideous figure clamber atop the flux-cairn, staff in hand. This tzaangor wore ragged robes, and its thin form was bedecked with totems and sorcerous fetishes. It was a shaman, a wielder of twisted magics. It slammed the ferrule of its staff down against the top of the cairn, and the crystalline facets flashed with silent, sickly lightning.

The soulpods screamed. Their cry, part fear and part pain, echoed through the minds of every living thing in the clearing. Whatever the shaman was doing, it was hurting the nascent spirits. Alarielle echoed their cry, and her anger shook the clearing to its roots. The trees wept leaves, and the ground ruptured. The flux-cairn itself shook, and more lightning flashed as the soulpods within continued to wail.

The tzaangor shaman screeched meaningfully.

The threat was plain, obvious even to the most bloodthirsty soul. The sylvaneth were prepared to risk themselves, but not the very thing they’d come to save. The tree-kin retreated, slowly at first, and then more quickly. They slipped away, vanishing into the gloom, as the tzaangor screeched and howled in celebration of their victory.

Alarielle watched in silence, her earlier rage gone as quickly as it had come. Her seeming shrank into itself, her gaze fixed upon the flux-cairn and its prisoners. They called to her, but she could not answer them. She turned to look at Sigmar, her expression unreadable. She would not ask for aid. Could not. He understood – it was not the way of a god to beg aid from another.

‘Sister, let me help you,’ he said. He held out his hand. ‘As I have done before, let me do so now. Together, we might…’

But her seeming was gone. Like a morning mist, it wavered and dispersed, taking her attentions with it. There were other battles to be fought elsewhere that demanded her attentions. Ghyran shook with the drumbeat of war. This battle was lost; others might yet be won.

Sigmar let his hand drop. Weariness stole over him. Once, Alarielle would not have hesitated to accept his aid. Once, he and the other gods would have come to her aid unasked.

But those days were long past. The pantheon was dust, and less than dust.

He looked up, seeking relief in the stars. Azyr. The Celestial Realm. His realm. The last true bulwark against the depredations of the Ruinous Powers. He had his own wars to fight, his own realm to defend. If the other gods did not desire his help, he would leave them to it, for good or ill. But as he made ready to depart, he heard again the laughter of Tzeentch ringing out of the hidden places, taunting him.

Thunder rumbled overhead, and the laughter fell momentarily silent. The celestial lightning coiled about Sigmar as the old anger flared fully now. It was never far from the surface. He was a tempest wrought in the shape of a man. His hair and beard were as swirling black clouds, and his eyes were full of lightning. His face became a swirl of stars, blazing with cold light. His voice boomed like thunder as he bellowed a challenge into the teeth of the laughter. He was the first storm and the last, the storm which would wash the filth of Chaos from the Mortal Realms forever.

He lowered his hands, and the lightning calmed its writhing. The stars retreated, and the tempest with them, leaving only the cold edge of determination behind. The stars shone bright overhead, and he knew what he must do.

As he had done before, he would do now. And the Dark Gods be damned.

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A Black Library Publication

‘Vengeance Eternal’ first published in Bladestorm in 2016.
‘The Keys to Ruin’ first published in Fyreslayers in 2016.
‘Heartwood’ first published in Sylvaneth in 2016.
‘Great Red’ and ‘The Prisoner of the Black Sun’ first published in Mortarch of Night in 2016.
‘Beneath the Black Thumb’ first published in Call of Archaon in 2015.
‘Assault on the Mandrake Bastion’ first published in Black Rift in 2016.
Overlords of the Iron Dragon first published in 2017.
Skaven Pestilens first published in 2016.
Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows first published in 2017.
This edition 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 Akim Kaliberda.

Hammerhal & Other Stories © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Hammerhal & Other Stories, 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: 978-1-78572-784-9

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