Contents

Cover

Heart of Winter – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Chapter One

The seas were cold. Deathly cold. The wind was the breath of an ice dragon, sweeping down from the polar mountains with a rushing roar, cutting through fabric and bare skin to chill the bones and steal air from the lungs.

Arika Zenthe stood on the prow of a stolen ship, staring out across a desert of sparkling white. The aelf was thickly wrapped in furs and wore a gambeson of borean sharkhide that offered a modicum of protection against the savage winds, but still her teeth chattered and her hands were numb and raw. But she ignored the pain. She had other things on her mind.

A crunch of footsteps across the frozen deck caused her to glance behind. Oscus, her first mate, came to her side. He wore only a light tunic that exposed his well-muscled arms, every inch of coal-black skin marked with scars and inkwork.

‘We risk much straying into these waters,’ Oscus said. ‘This vessel is cumbersome and heavy-hulled, even with her cannons stripped.’

He spat over the rail, scowling in disgust. ‘Shoddy human craftsmanship. Built to swell its owner’s pride, not for anything practical. It takes a season just to turn her prow a few notches larboard. We should have waited until the Thrice Lucky was repaired.’

Zenthe’s ice-blue eyes flicked towards her second in command.

‘You reek,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘Ghyreshark blubber might not have the most fragrant smell in the realms, but it’ll keep you warm even in this cold. We’ve plenty of it stored below, fleetmaster.’

‘Not necessary. I’ve known cold worse than this,’ she replied. ‘And the Blood Drake will serve for now. There was no time to wait, in any case. My father rarely stays in one place for long.’

They stood in silence for a while. The Blood Drake yawed to the left, the helmsman taking a parallel course alongside a row of towering ice floes. Atop their frosted parapets perched a flock of razor-toothed birds, eyeing the passing ship with lazy curiosity.

Zenthe could feel her first mate’s gaze upon her.

‘I know what you wish to ask,’ she said. ‘Why do I despise my own kin so gravely that I’d risk everything to see him dead?’

Oscus said nothing. He’d never pried into her past, nor questioned her business. His phlegmatic nature was one of the main reasons she’d kept him around so long.

‘Zarkand Zenthe taught me everything I know,’ she said. ‘And for that I swore I’d watch him drown in his own blood.’

Oscus’ eyes narrowed, but he was not looking at her. They had traversed the wall of pack ice, and once more faced across the open sea. Far in the distance, nestled amidst a crescent of shifting ice floes, a wall rose out of the waves, black and foreboding. It was angular and dotted with dagger-shaped towers, many of which blazed with purple flames, bathing the night sky in violet light. This was no vessel at all, but a black ark. A fortress of the seas, a citadel afloat that rare few fleetmasters were powerful or influential enough to rule over.

‘The Eternity of Torment,’ Arika Zenthe said, and her voice was a cold whisper. ‘My father’s flagship.’

Turning to the watching crew, she barked an order.

‘Loose the mooring claws.’

They moored the Blood Drake by digging the larboard reaper bolt throwers deep into a drift of ice. The bulk of the ship was masked by the obstacle, but they could draw no closer without being spotted by the black ark’s watchtowers. Then they waited.

‘Patience,’ said Zenthe, as Oscus glanced at her. ‘There’s a reason why my father’s hidden in the Razor Flow. Out here a storm can brew up in a moment, or a freezing mist so thick you can’t see your hand in front of your face. This place has claimed more souls than the White Reaper.’

Sure enough, after several hours, a pall of sea smoke gradually began to settle in across the bay. The light fog would never mask the bulk of the Blood Drake, but it might just hide the pinnaces from wary eyes.

Zenthe picked out a dozen of her best fighters, armed variously with cutlass blades, flensing hooks and repeater crossbows. Oscus knelt beside her, a bandolier of throwing knives across his chest and a sabre dangling from his belt.

‘Laesha help us if those towers spot our boats,’ he muttered.

‘If they mark us, we’ll know about it soon enough,’ said Zenthe. ‘Each of those towers has a dozen bolt throwers with the range to blast us out of the water in a single volley.’

The walls of the floating fortress flickered with violet fire, and she could see the silhouettes of figures passing along the barbed parapet. It seemed as though they must surely see the profile of the light ships cutting through the brittle ice towards them, but Zenthe reminded herself that the fog was hanging low over the water, offering the perfect cover for their approach.

The scale of the black ark became apparent as they drifted closer. The perimeter wall towered over them, disappearing off into the mists on both sides. Its surface was black iron, harsh and marked with a patina of scarring from heavy waves and cannon shot. Beyond those walls was a place from the darkest of nightmares, a citadel of torture and debasement and a monument to cold-hearted avarice and mendacious cruelty. Where the Eternity of Torment sailed, the seas churned red with blood.

‘I am home,’ Arika Zenthe whispered.

She had not seen these walls for five hundred years or more. In that time her name had become feared across the realm. She had forged a legacy of brutally efficient privateering. Though she sailed under the auspices of the God-King’s free cities, all knew that Arika Zenthe answered to no one but herself. She sailed and reaved as she pleased, and none crossed her and lived. All her rivals were dead, corpses rotting at the bottom of the ocean. Every corsair that passed through the docks of Excelsis owed her fealty.

And yet now, looking once more upon the walls of the fortress in which she had been raised, she felt like nothing more than an errant child, returning, afraid, to face her father’s judgement. The weakness, the fear she felt, revolted her.

‘No,’ she whispered, forcing down her unease and allowing cold hatred to replace it. ‘I am a child no longer. I made a promise, father, and tonight I keep it.’

‘Captain?’ said Oscus, staring at her with an unreadable expression upon his face.

She waved him away.

They were perhaps five hundred paces from the facing wall when the water ahead exploded into action. An enormous tentacle as large as a sailing ship rose out of the water below the Eternity of Torment, rising into the air and unfurling to its full and horrifying length. The pinnace rocked at the sudden violent motion, tipping dangerously to one side. The lashing limb was followed by another, and a third. Zenthe’s corsairs gasped and dropped their oars, which clattered in their chains. Hands went to weapons reflexively, though the very thought that anything they wielded could be of use against such a monster was patently absurd.

‘Stow your blades, fools,’ hissed Zenthe, knocking aside the repeater bow that her coxswain Dherva held aimed and ready to loose. ‘Be still, and wait!’

The tentacles, covered in boulder-sized barnacles and glistening in the light of the stars, coiled and whipped back and forth as if tasting the air. Then they fell, slamming into the surface of the ocean and sending up a great wave that crashed down upon the pinnaces, drenching them all in ice-cold water. Zenthe gasped at the sudden shock and stared up at the wall looming above, almost certain she would see half a dozen guards staring down at them, crossbows aimed.

Nothing. Their luck held yet.

‘What in Khaine’s black heart was that?’ muttered Garsh, one of Zenthe’s cutthroats. He was burly for an aelf, with his hair shorn close to his heavily scarred scalp and a torn lip that turned his face into a permanent scowl.

‘That was the ghorvorasc,’ said Zenthe. ‘A titan of the deep seas. The Eternity of Torment is built into its living flesh – they are one and the same, the black ark and the monster that bears it. It is as foul-tempered as my father, and with a similar taste for blood. I’ve seen it crush an armada to kindling in moments. So don’t shoot the godsdamned thing.’

‘You want us to scale these walls with that… thing lurking down there?’ Garsh said, eyes wide with disbelief.

‘Of course not,’ Zenthe said. ‘We’re not going over the wall.’

There were a few shared sighs and looks of relief.

‘We’re going to swim underneath.’

Click here to buy Heart of Winter.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Akim Kaliberda.

Heart of Winter © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Heart of Winter, 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.
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ISBN: 978-1-78030-811-1

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