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Harrowdeep – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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CHAPTER ONE

Nico Spahr leaned back against the driftwood wall, the hilt of his heavy two-hander digging into his back, and stared at the crowd of Scourge Privateers that surrounded him. The aelven corsairs were decked out in all their finery: rich fabrics in dark greens and purples, blues and blacks, layered over with cloaks and armour made from the polished hides of sea drakes and kharibdyss. Weapons rode the ornate belts that crossed their hips, swords and daggers wrought of steel, inlayed with bone and coral and jewels. They were beautiful and deadly and proud, and when Nico couldn’t stand watching them any more he turned his head and spat.

‘No,’ Serim said. Her sharp brown eyes locked on him, her hard features set in that familiar warning frown.

‘What?’ Nico asked. He was a big man, tall, broad-shouldered, heavily muscled, with long red hair the colour of blood and a closely trimmed beard to match. Between his size, his booming laugh and his affinity for brawling, Nico was used to being the centre of attention. But not here, not at this conclave. Here, among the high and mighty that controlled the floating city of Misthåvn, he and his crew were freaks – humans and duardin and ogors, dressed in clothes that might have been fine before they were looted from waterlogged chests or corpses, carrying weapons of every shape and kind. They were the misfits sent to sit in the farthest, darkest corner of the House of the Grey Swells, the finest house on the finest raft in the city, while the sharp-eared masters of the city played their games and made their deals.

It was enough to make a man want to kick over his table, to stand and pull steel, just to see the cold, hard expressions on all those pretty, cruel faces change.

‘No to whatever you’re thinking.’ Adak sat on the other side of him, and his voice was as threatening as Serim’s frown. The duardin was short and broad like all his people, but his head and chin were bare of the usual bristly collection of beard and braid. Lines of scars pockmarked Adak’s neck and chin and scalp instead, circular scars left by the suckers of some hideous sea thing that had tried to tear the duardin’s head off when he was a boy. ‘We warned you. Told you the aelves would hate having us here.’

‘I thought you meant there would be a fight. Not that I’d be bored out of my mind.’ Nico looked around the huge common room of the House of the Grey Swells. On one end, on a raised stage over the long common tables, the fleetmasters sat around a table laden with food and drink, setting up the deals that would shape the currents of power and profit in Misthåvn. They were the reason for this conclave. Everyone else was crew of the best ships of each of the floating city’s disparate armadas, the privateers who controlled the Penumbral Sea. Nico had fought his whole life to be included in their number, and now that he finally was… they turned their back on him.

On one side of the room, the crews were gathered together, singing. The music was supposed to be drinking songs, but it was all in Aelfish chatter, pretty but nonsensical. Too pretty, really. Nico listened to those sweet, complicated melodies and had trouble believing they were about fighting, drinking, loving or drowning, the only things worth singing about. The other side of the room should have been better – that’s where the aelves were competing for the pennants they flew from the tops of their masts, bright trophies that the corsairs liked to show off. There were stupid contests with maps and astrolabes and knots, and there were some better ones with wrestling and knives, but the aelves somehow managed even to ruin fun like that. Right now they were having a knife-throwing contest, but were there cheers and boasts and insults and bets? No. The two corsair captains throwing were silent as death, and the only noise the crowd watching them made was a light patter of applause after each round.

Nico spat again. ‘I’ve been to funerals that were more fun than this. I’ve been to funerals of people I’ve killed that were more welcoming.’

‘It’ll be our funeral if you start something because you’re bored,’ Serim said. ‘This is the Fleetmasters’ Conclave. There’s no fighting here. Ever. I told you that.’

Nico picked up a mug – maybe it was his, maybe it was Serim’s, he didn’t care as long as it was full – and took a long drink. The ale here was damn good, better than he’d ever had on a human-controlled raft, and that wasn’t helping his mood. The Scourge Privateers always ended up with the best of everything in Misthåvn, it seemed.

‘You tell me a lot of things,’ Nico growled. He slammed down the empty mug and shifted his elbow instinctively to block his kidney from the vicious little jab Serim threw at it. Serim was going to kill him someday, and he’d deserve it, but he’d probably at least be laughing.

‘We could leave,’ Adak said. ‘Any other house on any other raft in the city would be more entertainment. And you could punch anyone you liked.’

‘You charting my course, sailing-captain?’ Nico asked.

‘I’m trying to keep you from landing us all on a reef, battle-captain,’ Adak answered.

Nico grunted, and looked at his crew, gathered around this back table in the darkest part of the house. ‘What do you think, you mass of eel bait? Should we leave this funeral to the long-eared corpses?’

Halfway down the table, Grizi the ogor raised her kettle of fish guts – the third they’d given her – and slid the last of the slimy dregs down her gullet. ‘Point the prow, cap’n,’ she grunted, ‘and we’ll set the sails.’ She slammed the kettle down and belched thunderously, completely covering another round of quiet clapping. Nico looked over just in time to see the aelves gathered around the knife-throwers glaring poison at them, and his hand fell to the ornate hilt of the knife sheathed at his belt.

‘Then let’s go!’ Nico surged up and his crew took their last swallows of wine or ale, stuffed leftover food into their pockets, and stood behind him. The aelves ignored them as they started out, their indifference a silent shout of contempt. Serim walked beside Nico, her hands free but always close to the hilts of the short swords that rode her hips. She saw where Nico’s hand rested, and shook her head.

‘We’re on our way, Nico. Whatever it is, you don’t need to do it.’

‘You think I’m just going to scuttle out of here like a crab dodging gulls?’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be funny.’

‘Funny,’ she said. ‘Getting us killed isn’t funny – you know that, right?’

‘Nobody’s dying today,’ he said. They were walking past the knife-throwers, who were so intent on their game they weren’t even looking at them. One of the corsairs threw up the next set of targets, a dozen little wooden discs, and they started their throws – just as Nico pulled the knife from his belt and flung it across the room.

He didn’t know where the blade had come from. He’d taken it from a sailor who had tried to jam a cutlass in his guts, and the man hadn’t been in a condition to explain its provenance after Nico had finished with him. The ornate blade must have come from Azyr or Hysh or Chamon, though, someplace where they knew how to work spells deep into steel. It was beautiful and valuable and it’d be a shame to lose it, but showmanship was important to Nico. When he threw it, the single dagger split apart into a dozen whirling blades and each point slammed home into the centre of one of the targets, knocking them out of the air before the other throwers’ knives could even reach them.

Blades and targets clattered to the floor in a room suddenly gone silent and staring. Nico grinned at all the bright eyes facing them, happy to finally be the centre of attention.

‘Lovely party, thanks for having us, but we really must go… anywhere else.’

The male corsair who’d been throwing knives was snarling and fingering one of his blades as if he would throw it, while the other corsair captain was watching Nico with deep, intense fury in her eyes.

‘You can send the pennant to my ship,’ Nico said, smiling at them. ‘The Mother’s Luck. I’m sure you know her. Or you will.’

With that, he led them out into the fog-covered night, heading for a house that would be louder, better and filled with the proper reek of sweat and ale and blood.

‘Funny, right?’ Nico said.

‘Hilarious,’ Serim said, watching behind them, making sure they weren’t followed.

‘And nobody died.’

‘Not tonight.’ Serim looked back at him, that frown returned to her face. ‘But aelves remember. You made new enemies tonight, Nico.’

Nico looked past her, past the shouting, laughing members of his crew, to a group of shadows flitting across the boardwalks far ahead of them, fleeing their approach. ‘There’s worse things than being remembered, Serim.’ He watched the shadows – drift-born children of Misthåvn’s poor out scavenging for food – disappear into the fog and the darkness of Ulgu’s perpetual twilight. That had been him, not so many years ago. ‘There’s never being seen at all.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch,
Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Maxim Kostin.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-610-0

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