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Cover

Inferno! Volume 5 – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Watchers of Battle

Ben Counter

Black Library author Ben Counter’s Inferno! debut is also the first ever Inferno! story from the Warcry setting. It is a typically gory, visceral tale that explores the lengths one must go to in order to achieve true greatness in the eternal warzone of the Eightpoints.

As the warbands of four tribes converge on Bonebreak Pass, Voleska of the Spire Tyrants dreams of glory beyond battle and slaughter on the Bloodwind Spoil. As luck would have it, several of the Everchosen’s elite warriors have come to preside over the coming bloodshed and observe. This is Voleska’s chance to show her fighting prowess by crushing the savage Corvus Cabal, but how far must she go to prove herself worthy of joining the ranks of Archaon’s armies?

‘We’re a long way from Carngrad,’ said Kyryll as he trudged up the sludge and shale of the mountain slope.

Voleska looked up towards the sky and the peaks of the Fangs that surrounded them. ‘Not so far,’ she said.

‘Camp’s up ahead.’ Kyryll peered towards the scattering of bonfires and torches on the shoulder of the mountain above them. ‘Looks like the Blackblades and the Mercy Slayers made it.’

‘More to watch us,’ said Voleska. ‘More to weep.’

It had rained blood that night. Bonebreak Pass was clotted with coagulating gore. It formed a slow, black river along the pass, draining into the foothills of the Fangs, a sluggish bloodletting that formed a portent for what was to come. The pass was one of the few relatively stable ways past the Fangs and into the regions of the Bloodwind Spoil closer to the citadel of the Varanspire. Control of it had passed from one bloody hand to the next hundreds of times over the generations. Bones and shattered skulls mixed with the loose shale and formed natural cairns, pulled apart by the coagulating flow.

A lot of people had died there. A lot more were about to.

Voleska and Kyryll made their way through the encampment towards the hide tents and bivouacs of the Red Sand Raiders. Warbands from across the Bloodwind Spoil had gathered for the coming battle over Bonebreak Pass, and the banners of several Spire Tyrants bands hung from the spindly trees clinging to the upper slopes. On another day, they would be butchering one another for the right to be called the best among the Children of the Arenas. Tonight, they were allies against a common enemy.

Voleska pulled back the flap of the largest tent. Inside, Ferenk Sunder-Spine was scratching battle plans into the loose dirt. The Head-Taker of the Red Sand Raiders was a huge man with hundreds of finger bones piercing the skin of his arms and shoulders, each taken from a kill in the arena. He looked up at Voleska’s intrusion.

‘What do you want?’ he demanded.

‘Scouted, like you said,’ replied Voleska.

Ferenk grunted and poked at the battle lines he had scratched. ‘What have you got?’

‘The Crows have the high ground at the northern end,’ replied Voleska. ‘They reckon they’ll swoop down on us and peck out our eyes.’

‘How many?’

Voleska shrugged. ‘Six, seven warbands. Couple of thousand ears hanging from the trees. Flocks of birds everywhere.’

‘Were you seen?’

Voleska smirked. ‘Look at me. Course I was seen.’

Ferenk looked at Voleska as if seeing her for the first time. She was huge. Most of the time the really big competitors failed to make their mark in the fighting pits of Carngrad – they were too slow and cumbersome, and a leg tendon got cut or a gut was punctured before they could bring their bulk around to face a faster enemy. The crowds whooped when they emerged onto the sands, and they cheered when they fell. But Voleska had climbed the ladder of victories to challenge the very best, all while carrying more heft than anyone in the Red Sand Raiders. She carried a stone-headed hammer over her shoulder – a less than ideal weapon for a pit fighter, but one she wielded as if she had been born with it in her hand. What skin showed beneath her heavy garb of layered animal hides and splint mail was tanned and battered, and her lank black hair was tied severely back to show off the scar taking up the right side of her scalp.

‘Not like they don’t know we’re here,’ mused Ferenk. ‘What about the Unmade? The Scions?’

‘The faceless mob are on the west side of the pass,’ replied Voleska. ‘Opposite the Splintered Fang. Doesn’t look like the Scions made it.’

‘Too busy annoying the gods,’ said Ferenk. ‘Here. Come.’

Voleska walked up to the battle plans Ferenk had scratched out. The torchlight in the tent cast flickering shadows across a crude diagram of Bonebreak Pass and the positions of the warbands. ‘What’s the plan?’ she asked.

‘Spire Tyrants don’t do subtle,’ said Ferenk. ‘No feints. No secret paths. No false retreats. We’re going straight down the middle. Storm the heights, hit the Cabal, kill them.’

Voleska nodded. ‘They think they own the mountains. They’re arrogant. They’ll try something. But we won’t fall for it. Straight down the middle.’

‘I saw you,’ said Ferenk. It was unexpected. He rarely said anything that wasn’t strictly necessary. ‘At the Gutripper Pits. Slavemaster Barakhor’s games. You killed four men.’

Voleska shrugged. ‘They were only small.’

‘The last one, you knocked his head clean off.’

‘Yes, that I did. Went right into the crowd. They called me the Gift-Giver after that.’

‘You fought well for us, Voleska. It was obvious enough, never had to say it. But a lot of us are going to die this dawn. Maybe someone important. Maybe me. The Red Sand Raiders will accept you if you want to step in. Do you want that, Gift-Giver?’

Ferenk looked at her now, piercing and intense, in a way he never had before. Voleska felt herself tense up, as if aware of an assailant trying to flank her. ‘I want… I want more,’ she said.

‘More than what?’

Voleska was rarely lost for words – like Ferenk, she didn’t use them when she didn’t have to. Now she had to fight to turn her thoughts into speech. ‘More than being… one among many. That’s what I fought for in the arenas, to be on my own at the top. That’s what it means to be a Spire Tyrant – we got to the top in the arenas and now we’re doing it in the Spoil. I’m not going to live and die as just another Red Sand Raider. That’s what I want. Something more.’

Ferenk nodded. ‘Maybe they’ll follow you, if it comes to that,’ he said. ‘But whether they will or not depends on tomorrow. Take some heads, give some gifts, I can make you my right hand. You want that?’

‘I’ll take what the Spoil gives me,’ replied Voleska.

‘Good,’ said Ferenk with finality. ‘Of course, first of all, you’ll have to survive.’

‘Not planning to do anything else,’ said Voleska.

‘With the dawn,’ concluded Ferenk, and turned back to his map of Bonebreak Pass.

‘With the dawn,’ agreed Voleska.

Outside, the night was turning chill. The moons were sinking as the night kept a jealous grip on the Fangs against the daybreak. The Spire Tyrants of their various warbands were resting, but few were asleep. They sparred and gambled, because the habits of the fighting pits never really left them.

‘What did you mean earlier?’ said Kyryll as Voleska emerged from the tent.

‘When?’

‘You said we weren’t so far from Carngrad.’

‘Because we aren’t,’ replied Voleska. ‘Back in Carngrad, we fought for the eyes of the audience. For the lords who might hire us. The crowds. Even each other, so we knew who to respect. You think it’s any different now?’

‘Not many arenas round these mountains,’ said Kyryll.

Voleska clipped him around the back of the head with her meaty palm. Kyryll wasn’t small, but he was smaller than her, and he cringed at the impact. ‘You’re an idiot,’ she said.

‘So who are you fighting for?’ retorted Kyryll. ‘For Ferenk?’

‘Him, among others,’ she said. ‘These other warbands will know not to stand in the Raiders’ way when they see us tear apart the Cabal. The Cabal will remember us, too, if we let any live. They’ll talk about the Ones Who Make The Sand Red, and the Gift-Giver. The Bloodwind Spoil will know we’re coming. They’ll beg to be the first to kneel to us. And then…’

Voleska gripped Kyryll’s shoulder and turned him to face one of the nearby peaks. Bloody snow clung to the highest point, well above the line where the spindly thorn trees thinned out to nothing. On one of the peaks, against the deep dark of the night, a sharp black outline was just visible.

It was a human of immense size, bulked out by plates of spiked armour and a massive tower shield. One hand held a halberd with a bundle of skulls strung around its point.

‘One of Archaon’s Chosen,’ said Voleska. ‘Saw them while we scouted. You were too dim to notice. They’re watching. Not just us, the Cabal, the Unmade, the Splintered Fang. Why do you think we’re here, Kyryll? To be the biggest dogs in the Bloodwind Spoil? Maybe that’s enough for you, but not me. They’re watching for warriors to take to the Varanspire. For Archaon’s army.’

The lone warrior didn’t move. The face was hidden behind a solid steel visor broken only by a black eyeslit.

‘You think they’re watching us now?’ asked Kyryll.

‘Me, maybe. You? Not so sure.’

Down the pass, in the direction of the distant Varanspire, the Corvus Cabal’s warbands held the upper slopes. They hadn’t set up bonfires and torches as the Spire Tyrants had. Their presence was betrayed by the trophies they strung up among the trees. Their Great Gatherer demanded trophies be taken from their dead. The Corvus Cabal cut a memento off every corpse they left in their wake, and hung up those orphaned ears and fingers everywhere they settled. The Cabal thought Bonebreak Pass and the Fangs were theirs, and they had been labouring under that misapprehension for far too long. With the dawn they would learn the truth.

And the watchers of battle would see them fail.

Click here to buy Inferno! Volume 5.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Alexander Mokhov.

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