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Neferata: The Dominion of Bones – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

Light from the fires of Mausolea rose high along the flanks of the Sentinel of the Shroud. The city sprawled out from the western foot of the mountain, a supplicant prostrate before a towering, unforgiving god. Before the coming of the legions of the Blood God, Mausolea had been a city for the dead. Its avenues of monuments and vast sepulchres were grander and more numerous than the streets of the living. Whether entombed or walking the night, the dead had ruled Mausolea, and the mortals had prospered there only at their sufferance.

The dead ruled no longer. Mausolea had changed from a city of shadows and silence to a cauldron of flame. Its mortal population had grown under the reign of the Lord of Skulldagger Bastion. Khorne craved blood. To feed that insatiable hunger required an army and an industry unlike any that Mausolea or any of the lands and cities of Angaria had ever seen. Tombs had been opened, vaults had been ransacked, graves had been turned into primitive forges. Molten iron ran down the gutters of the streets. Graunos commanded, and an army grew, and from the maws of the industry that created the army came the flames that rose and spread their light on the mountainside.

There were other fires, too. The burning homes and the burning pyres of the day’s sacrifices to the throne of brass.

The flames of Mausolea illuminated the slowly changing face of the mountain. Though the structures of the city came very close to the base of the mountain, none were built upon the slopes themselves. None were permitted on the flanks of the turning mountain, and the near-vertical rock face defied any attempt to build upon it. Slowly, relentlessly, the towering pillar of rock rotated on its base, following the rhythm of the days and nights. Its peak hunched forward in the shape of an immense granite hood. When the light of Hysh fell upon the land, the Sentinel’s movement seemed to be an agonised turn away from the day, the hood seeking the darkness that had vanished. Then, with the coming of dusk, for all the regions that fell within the shadow of the Sentinel, the abyss within the hood appeared to be the origin of night, and it was from the mountain that the breath of darkness came to fall upon Angaria.

So it had been until Graunos had conquered Angaria and commanded the construction of Skulldagger Bastion. The base of the fortress was in the shape of a colossal skull of brass. It filled the cavern of the hood, and had transformed the Sentinel of the Shroud, giving it a face. No longer did the mountain turn from light and create darkness. Now it looked upon the land below, a gaping, snarling guardian of Chaos. The towers of the citadel rose from the crown of the skull like a forest of brass spikes. The spires of the periphery leaned at sharp angles, jutting into space beyond the skull. The central turrets climbed high above the peak, daggers that stabbed the day and blinded the night.

From the eyes and mouth of the skull came the light of Graunos. The daemon prince had come from Hysh, and he had brought with him his particular strength of anger. He brought, to the land of the dead, the curse of the most terrible, virulent light. The beam was red as blood, if blood burned at the touch. It was brilliant, its intensity dazzling even at the peak of day. At night, it was a sword that cut the darkness, a searing wound.

The light marked a scorched perimeter around Mausolea as the mountain turned. Where it passed, stone burst into flame, and the air rained molten brass. During the hour before it came again, the land remained as hot as the interior of a crematorium.

The tower that jutted from the centre of the skull’s brow, leaning the furthest out over the vertiginous fall, held in its peak the Offertory throne room. The chamber was a huge hemisphere. In the centre of the floor was a bowl-shaped combat arena. Here the supplicants of Graunos’ favour and the victims of his displeasure fought to the death. A mob of bloodreavers surrounded the arena, their raving howls urging the combatants on. There was no need for them to act as guards. No soul who entered the pit would think of climbing out without the severed head of their enemy, their offering to the figure who sat on the throne of brass and iron.

The throne was huge, a monolithic sculpture whose edges were serrated with claws. The iron talons moved perpetually, with the grinding of protesting metal. They slashed at the air, hungry for the flesh of all who dared approach the lord of the bastion. But massive as the throne was, it was dwarfed by the mound of brass-coated skulls behind it that climbed towards the distant vaulted ceiling of the chamber. Here were the heads of every failed supplicant and condemned prisoner. Though the victors of the pit presented the skulls to the ruler of Angaria, the mound loomed over the throne as a reminder that the offerings were truly meant for Khorne.

Graunos presided over the latest battle to unfold in the pit. Standing to the right of the throne, Kathag, lord of Khorne, divided his attention between the battle and the daemon prince. It served him well to gauge his master’s mood, and to study him closely.

One of the gladiators was Antur Kesseng, scion of one of the noble families of Mausolea. He was in a land dispute with House Renteer. His opponent was Sekkana Garthan. She had collapsed with exhaustion at a weapons forge. The only reason she had not been executed on the spot was because her work had been ferocious in the service of Graunos’ armies. That her crime and Antur’s dispute had no relation to one another was irrelevant. In the Offertory throne room, the judgement in the arena was not for duels. All that mattered was survival or death.

The struggle had already been a long one. The two fighters were ragged, bloody masses, barely distinguishable from one another. They had no blades. Their only weapons were their bare hands and the bones of prior victims that littered the floor of the bowl. Antur seized a femur and swung it at Sekkana. She ducked, and Antur smashed the bone against the wall. It snapped in half, leaving a jagged stump in his hands. He wavered in pain and fatigue. Sekkana made a desperate lunge and shoved at his arms, pushing them back against him and thrusting the spike of bone into his throat. Blood poured over his hands and down his chest. He clawed weakly at the bone. Soaked in gore, it slipped from his grasp, and he fell to his knees. His mouth opened and closed in silent pleas and curses. Sekkana caught him as he slumped forwards. She grasped the spike with one hand, his hair with the other, and began to saw back and forth. It took almost as long to cut through all the muscles and tendons as it had to defeat Antur, but at last she tore his head free from his body. She held it up in triumph, and the shouts of the bloodreavers shook the stones of the chamber.

With the head clutched in both hands, arms stretched forwards in presentation of the gift, Sekkana marched slowly up the slope of the arena. The bloodreavers parted, clearing the way for her to approach the daemon prince. She stopped and knelt a few feet away from the base of the throne.

Graunos nodded. ‘Take command of the forces of House Kesseng,’ he said, his voice rumbling like a lava flow. ‘Burn House Renteer to the ground and slaughter all its sons and daughters.’

Sekkana looked up, her eyes shining with renewed energy and erupting bloodlust. ‘It shall be done, great prince,’ she said, and withdrew.

The bloodreavers roared in delight and fury to see Sekkana’s violence rewarded.

Kathag watched Graunos use the boon to fuel even more bloody competition for his favour. The word would spread like fire through the ranks. Every warrior in Angaria would burn with the need to gain Graunos’ favour. Nothing could withstand an army so driven.

Kathag smiled in anticipation of the fury that would fall upon Neferatia. For Graunos, this would be his next, inevitable conquest. For Kathag, it would be vengeance.

A gust of wind from the south blew through the arched windows of the throne room. The windows were tall, half as high as the ceiling, and ran the entire circumference of the chamber. They looked out in all directions onto the vistas of Angaria, and created the impression that the throne room floated in mid-air. Graunos had hurled many subjects who had displeased him through these windows, sending them flying with a dismissive flick of his wrist, not even granting them the chance to prove themselves in the blood of the pit.

Far to the south, lightning flashed. Then came the distant mutter of thunder. Graunos rose from the throne. ‘Leave us!’ he commanded, and the bloodreavers rushed to obey, emptying the throne room while Graunos’ bellow still echoed.

The daemon prince drew to his full, towering height and strode to the southern windows. He was a colossus. Lord Kathag was tall, his body swollen with the strength Khorne granted to the supremacy of rage. The scar tissue that covered his body was so thick he barely needed the protection of his crimson plate. The horns that had grown when he ascended to the height of Exalted Deathbringer made him loom even more mightily over the legions of the Gorechosen that he commanded. Yet he had to crane his neck to look up at Graunos, who was more than twice his height.

The daemon flapped his huge leathery wings once in displeasure as he faced south. Then he turned his visage back to Kathag. Graunos’ features were a mask of terrible enlightenment and blind rage. His eyes were silver, blank and searing orbs that Kathag could not look at for long without being blinded himself. He could not imagine how such things could see. They were weapons. They struck out. Perhaps they consumed what they saw just as fire consumed fuel.

‘What is our state of readiness, Lord Kathag?’ Graunos said. The emphasis he gave Kathag’s title was a reminder that the price of failure could be the loss of that title. And worse.

‘It won’t be long,’ said Kathag, telling Graunos what he must already know. ‘But I do not think we are ready yet to confront Neferata.’

‘Is that caution I hear in your voice?’

‘It is.’ Kathag would not attempt to dissemble before Graunos. Whether the daemon prince saw with those eyes or not, he perceived everything. He was still a creature of Hysh, and he seemed to shine a violent light into the most hidden secrets of all who confronted him. But Kathag would have answered with the same honesty had Graunos been blind. He would have felt even more compelled to speak the truth. It was important that Graunos fully understood the nature of their opponent. ‘Lord Ruhok erred in his attempt to take Nulahmia,’ Kathag went on. ‘He underestimated Neferata, and we were destroyed. I will not make that same mistake. When we strike, it must be with such overwhelming superiority that the war is decided at its outset.’

Kathag, then an Exalted Deathbringer, was the only one of Ruhok’s Gorechosen to escape the catastrophe Neferata had unleashed. A maelstrom had opened up in Nulahmia, swallowing up the entire army, pulling it into an abyss of absolute dissolution. Kathag had looked away as it appeared, and so escaped its pull. But the partial glimpse he had caught still haunted him.

He was haunted too by the shame and the helpless fury he had felt as he staggered through the wasteland beyond the vanished walls of Nulahmia. In order to live, he had done that which had been unthinkable for all his life until that moment. He had fled. The memories were as burning and urgent now as the reality had been. The memories of running through a city turned into a blur of disintegrating wreckage, pulled inexorably into a maelstrom of unbeing, until, at last, he had been safe, alone, walking through the desolation beyond the walls of Nulahmia. He had put the city behind him, but not the humiliation, nor the defeat, nor the returning rage and the need for retribution.

He had fought hard to purge the shame, and to redeem himself in his eyes and in those of his god. He had gathered the broken remains of Ruhok’s horde and turned their flight from Neferatia into a slavering raid of vengeance on the lands beyond the Stonepain Mountains. He shed new blood for Khorne even while still in retreat. He had built a new warhorde. He never rested. His wrath was always on the ascendant. Flight became raids, and raids became a march of conquest. And one great night, waist-deep in slaughter, tens of thousands of the Bloodbound fighting for him and his favour, he felt the touch of Khorne. He was engulfed in crimson fire, and when the burn faded, leaving him scarred and exhilarated, the weapon in his hands was no longer the ruinous axe that he had wielded as an Exalted Deathbringer. It was a Wrathforged Axe, a weapon that imprisoned a daemon, and it marked him as a lord of Khorne.

It was not long after his elevation that Kathag witnessed the arrival of Graunos. Kathag’s conquests had always had one purpose. They were the means to return in vengeance to Neferatia, to hurl the walls of Nulahmia down and to destroy the Mortarch of Blood. In Graunos, Kathag found a being so mighty that his goal came within his grasp. Where Kathag had hordes at his command, Graunos had legions. The daemon prince had swept over Angaria, taking it and remaking it in his image. Soon he would reach further. He would destroy Neferata and plunge her subjects into the fires of Khorne. Graunos was doing more than destroying the enemy in the service of his god. He was reshaping Shyish, turning the land not simply into a wasteland but into a self-sustaining empire from which blood would flow in an endless, torrential tribute to the Skull Throne.

When Graunos looked to the west, Kathag saw in the careful gaze how different he was from Ruhok. Like Kathag, Graunos’ wrath was sharpened by strategy. He used the illumination of Hysh like a barbed whip. Neferata’s arts of deception would not help her this time. Kathag knew what she was. He was prepared, and Graunos listened to his counsel.

Now Graunos said, ‘We will not attack until we are ready. Agreed. But when will you know that moment has come? Can you know it?’ When Kathag hesitated, Graunos added, ‘We cannot gauge the full measure of her strength by watching her preparations as we complete ours.’

‘True,’ said Kathag. ‘She will dissemble. She will conceal her might.’

‘We will need to test her,’ Graunos said, his growl becoming a low, musing rumble.

In the south, lightning flashed again.

‘Then there is that,’ Graunos said, pointing. ‘You know what comes with such a storm.’

‘I do.’

‘Neferata to our west, Sigmar’s Eternals to the south. That has the appearance of strategy.’

‘She might have planned this,’ said Kathag.

‘No. The Lord of Undeath wages war against Sigmar. There is no alliance here.’

‘Yet.’

‘You think she can create one.’

‘If we can imagine such an outcome, we can be certain she does too.’

Graunos nodded. ‘If she did not plan this, she may well have waited for this opportunity.’ A growl built deep in his chest until the stones in the throne room began to shake with its force. ‘If this is her chance, then she will force our hand before we are ready. She is forcing me to react, and I will not have that. It is my will that will shape these lands.’ He paused for a moment, calculation moving like red lightning through the boiling clouds of his anger. ‘Reinforce the southern gate,’ he said. ‘But do not move beyond it. We shall observe Sigmar’s dogs, but we will not divide our attention unnecessarily.’

‘They are arriving on the far side of the mountains,’ Kathag observed.

‘Then Angaria is not their immediate goal,’ said Graunos. ‘Go now. Make fast the south, and prepare in the west. We will find our own opportunity here.’

Once Kathag had left, Graunos circled the throne room, sweeping his gaze over the empire he had built for Khorne and thinking about the war to come. What the lower of Khorne’s servants did not understand was that rage, in its great forms, had shape and purpose. Graunos could see the pattern in his existence, and in his presence here. In the Realm of Light, he had been in darkness, and had brought darkness. Now, in this world of death and shadows, he was bringing exterminating light.

In Hysh, he had truly been blind. Cursed and shunned because of this, he had won Khorne’s favour with the purity of his anger. He had repaid the gifts of the Blood God with an uncountable tribute of skulls. As a lord of Khorne, he had worn a brass mask that had granted him a form of sight. He had seen what needed to be destroyed, and the more powerful his rage, the more there was to destroy. One of the first conquests had been the city of Lykerna. He had crushed the place of his birth and marched on, unstoppable, and Khorne had raised him higher yet.

Now a daemon prince, he had plunged from the Realm of Light to the Realm of Death, a bright star tearing open the firmament, falling to earth to bring fire, to bring blood, to bring war.

The brass mask of his helm had become a thing of daemonic flesh upon his transformation, and Graunos’ perceptions had intensified. He saw with his god’s purpose, and Khorne’s purpose was slaughter. So Graunos perceived everything, for everything fell within the compass of the Skull God’s rage. Even the clouds and what they hid would be fodder for the axe. Perception was the fuel of wrath, and what Graunos perceived felt the touch of his igniting gaze. He looked down upon the sill of one of the western-facing windows. After a few moments, the stone began to smoke and bubble, ready to burst into flame. Graunos snorted and looked off to the horizon, his focus on the lands beyond the Stonepain Mountains.

The vampire called herself the Mortarch of Blood. So huge a presumption, so great an insult to the Blood God, could not be borne. Khorne had sent Graunos in answer, and he had forged Angaria. Now two empires of blood faced one another. There could be only one true reign. Graunos would make the throne of brass supreme.

The day was cold in the elevations of the Mourning Heights. It was always cold here. The wind cut to the bone in the season of Loss. Even during Crematory, it was rarely warm. Now it was the time of Lament, which felt like the true character of the hills. The sky always grey, the brush brittle and sharp, the rains of funerary ash and teeth mixing with the sullen rain. And the wind, keening, reaching through the seams of clothing to sink claws into flesh.

That the seasons existed this far away from Nulahmia was a sign that this was still Neferatia. Perhaps, as most in the family thought, the Mortarch’s gaze did not fall upon the lands of House Lytessian, but her spirit still shaped the land. There was something, too, in the form the seasons took that was true to the people of Neferatia as well. The Lytessians believed that the winds of Lament would blow no matter who reigned in the Palace of Seven Vultures.

Skarveth Lytessian rode with his cousin Vissya along the perimeter of the family’s land. The border was defined by practical, rather than political, considerations. House Lytessian was the only clan for leagues in every direction. Its holdings were limited only by what could be defended. Only the most stubborn and the most desperate lived in these unforgiving hills.

Skarveth had put the horse guard through a gruelling set of drills at dawn, and then sent his riders out on patrol. The rain had started mid-morning and had been pelting now for hours. Vissya and Skarveth sat forward on their chargers, shoulders hunched against the black water. Teeth rattled against their helms. Skarveth pushed himself as hard as he did his warriors. He and Vissya would be heading back to the manor house soon, but only to give the horses a rest.

‘Quiet again,’ said Vissya. There had been attacks by wolf packs five days ago. The beasts had been repelled and had not been seen since.

‘It’s always quiet until it isn’t,’ Skarveth said.

‘You sound like you hope for another attack.’

‘Not by wolves.’

‘No,’ said Vissya. She understood what he meant. She felt the same. The horse guard was trained for battle, to carry banners with honour in a noble cause. This work was menial, repetitive. When the wolves came, the struggle was no less fierce than any war. It simply lacked meaning.

They stopped and spoke with guards, mounted and on foot, at each watch position. The stones of the wall were huge, roughly hewn blocks, each larger than a man. Lichen discoloured them purple and green, turning rock into diseased flesh. It would take more than the feral monsters of the highlands to break that wall, and it would take more than a wall to keep the beasts out. It slowed them down, but they scaled it. Only the unceasing watch kept them out. Even then, some got in. Skarveth had the marks to prove that. A wolf had clamped its jaws on his face. He plunged his blade through its heart, but not before its fangs tore long, deep gouges in his cheeks. He now looked as if a daemon had tried to rip his face from his skull. The once-noble features were distorted and gnarled. It seemed to Vissya that Skarveth was more at peace with himself since the injury.

They finished their inspection of the wall and made their way back to the Lytessian manor house. It was carved out of the slope of the craggy hill against which it nestled, as brutal and monolithic as the boundary wall. It was blocky, squat, comfortless, hard, hostile as a closed fist.

The stable hands led the horses away, and Vissya and Skarveth walked through the front doors, into the great hall. The fire in its massive hearth barely warmed the space. The walls were the same unpainted stone as the exterior. Skarveth stopped to look up at the banners of Lytessian and its allied families. One pole bore no flag. The house it represented could not be named, though until his injury, Skarveth’s features had been the clan’s one visible echo.

‘So,’ said Skarveth, ‘rumours from the south.’

‘Yes,’ Vissya said, hoping Skarveth had more details.

Skarveth gave a slight shake of his head, his eyes still on the bannerless pole. ‘I’ve heard nothing more than you have.’

‘Do you credit what we’re hearing?’

‘Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘I do. Sigmar’s storm arriving when Neferatia and Angaria are poised to go to war? The moment and place are well chosen if the Stormcast Eternals wish to make headway in this region of Shyish. Neferata is not going to divert her attention from Graunos to fight them. There is too much that makes sense here. These rumours have the weight of news, not myth.’

‘What do you think this means for us?’

‘I think this means our waiting is at an end. I think it means we march to war. I think it means we ride to restore honour.’

‘That chance has been a long time in coming.’

‘An age.’

They had been waiting for this moment since the things they had witnessed in their childhood had changed them forever. But Vissya knew there were others who had been waiting much longer. Skarveth stared on at the absence where a banner should be, his scarred face twisting in anger.

They came for her when she was closing up her butcher’s stall. The market had been busy that day, the busiest Velaza Bentessas had seen since her arrival in Mausolea. She had sold almost all of her stores, and had used her cudgel only four or five times. The air had been thick with the violence of competition, but the buying and selling had been so brisk, the fights that had broken out were mere eddies of blood in the current of trade. There were the expected tithes to be paid as the bloodreavers made their way through the market square, but even those encounters had been brief. The contingents of warriors on the edge of the square were larger than usual, and they seemed to have been ordered to watch each other. Life in Angaria was savage and brief, but Graunos did not permit unbridled riot in the streets. Anger ruled the land, and a prince of Chaos on the throne enforced a kind of order, provisional and brutal, always in the service of the greater victory of the Skull God.

Velaza had taken her time to close up her stall. She had lingered, watching the crowds and the bloodreavers, gauging the extent and significance of the changes she was seeing. When she finally packed away the few cuts of meat she had left and locked her coin box, she was one of the last merchants in the square.

So she was not surprised when they approached.

There were three of them, bloodreavers on the hunt for some slaughter. They gave her plenty of warning, their booted feet slamming against the cobblestones, sending aggressive, clopping echoes ahead of them. With the crowds gone, the square was desolate. The pole-mounted torches that were still lit were few and far between, casting only enough light to turn the shuttered stalls into slumped, ghostly figures of uncertain shape. The Sentinel of the Shroud loomed in the distance, the deeper night of stone, its slow grind the eternal, mournful background roar to life in Mausolea.

Velaza put her pack and coin box down and waited for the bloodreavers. She watched the one in the centre closely. He was bigger than the other two, swollen with violence. His muscles seemed to be trying to burst from his skin. He looked like he was on the cusp of a great transformation. He clearly believed he was. His eyes were wide, bulging, and glittering with fanaticism. Blood trickled down the corners of his mouth, and when he grinned at Velaza, his teeth were dark with clotted gore. She wondered which of the other late-departing merchants this madman had killed.

The big man’s companions kept one step behind him, watching for his orders or the opportunity to kill him and take his place. They were wiry creatures, their limbs corded and taut, quivering with the anticipation of the kill.

‘I’ve already paid my tithe to Lord Graunos’ armies,’ Velaza said.

‘Not to us, you haven’t,’ said the bloodreaver on her left. He had narrow, pinched, rodent-like features.

The big warrior said nothing. He was looking back and forth between Velaza and the heavy axe he carried, eager for them to become acquainted.

Velaza shrugged and kicked her pack over to the trio. ‘Have at it, then. Save me the trouble of taking it back.’

The bloodreavers ignored the offering, but not her contempt. They snarled and ran at her. The big one reached her first, his axe raised. He roared in furious triumph.

He was ridiculously slow.

Velaza’s right hand shot out and seized him by the throat. She squeezed, throttling him. Choking, the bloodreaver brought down the axe, but she had already pulled her sword out from beneath her butcher’s apron. Without releasing his throat, she slashed his arms as they came down, severing both his wrists. The axe clattered to the ground, and the bloodreaver hammered fruitlessly at her shoulders with his stumps. Velaza squeezed harder, her fingers plunging deep into flesh and muscle. She made a fist, crushing his larynx, then yanked her hand free, pulling a bloody mass from his neck.

As the big warrior collapsed, Velaza struck left and right with her blade, stabbing the rat-faced bloodreaver through the heart and decapitating the third, cutting their attacks short before they had properly begun.

Velaza looked down at the three corpses heaped at her feet. Blood pumped from their wounds, pooling over the cobbles. So much waste. The old hunger swept through her, and fighting the urge to drop to her knees and lap at the gore was a greater struggle than the fight had been.

She must not feed here. There were witnesses. Now that the three bloodreavers were dead, a couple of the other remaining merchants had emerged from hiding and were staring at her from a safe distance. On the edges of the square, the curious were beginning to gather. There was no real risk in being seen to have cut down the warriors. That was nothing more notable than another instance of the struggle for survival that defined existence in Angaria. It was feeding that would give her away.

She would have to wait, and hold the hunger at bay. Perhaps she would be lucky. Perhaps an opportunity would present itself. A dark alley, a lone passerby… Perhaps. Even then, she would have to be careful. She must do nothing to jeopardise the mission Neferata had given her.

Velaza sheathed her blade, picked up her coin box and left the market square. She kept her steps heavy, trudging. Her identity as a butcher, long practised before she left Neferatia, fell over her again. Lady Mereneth herself had taken charge of her training, and Velaza was grateful for the skills the spymistress had given her. They were for a kind of war that was utterly foreign to any she had waged before. She was grateful, too, that Neferata’s logic in choosing her to lead the infiltration of Mausolea had proven to be sound.

Your concealment will come through your visibility, Neferata had said. This is a society where hidden violence is of no value. Do not seek out battle, but do not turn from it. When you must kill, do so with utmost savagery. Walk the streets soaked in the blood of challengers and you will vanish. You will be simply a natural part of the world Graunos has created. Let everyone look at you, and none will see you.

Neferata was right. Velaza marched through the streets of Mausolea with the directness of a battering ram, and she blended in. Though she had to set aside the pride of nobility that came with being a Blood Knight, her style of combat was suited to her disguise. She smashed her foes down, and so went unnoticed.

Avoid being ostentatious in your victories, Mereneth had warned her, and Velaza was cautious not to. It was one thing to thrive in Graunos’ empire. It was another to attract so much attention she was forcibly recruited into the warhordes.

So she found the balance and moved around freely. It was often easier for her to observe events of significance than for some of the other members of the force she led in Angaria, the ones who were more truly creatures of the shadows, and who depended for their success on true concealment.

Her walk back was not fruitful. She found no victims that she could take unseen. The irony of being unable to feed while being free to kill with abandon sharpened her hunger. When she reached her dwelling an hour later, she had her lips clamped shut to avoid baring her fangs in frustration.

The street was an ordinary one. Most of the inhabitants were, like her, small merchants. None were rich, but all were doing well enough to afford the modest protection the homes provided. Like so many quarters of Mausolea since the coming of Graunos, there were numerous gaps where houses had been burned to the ground, as a result of feuds or the gentle attentions of the bloodreavers. The houses that survived displayed the relative wealth of their owners not in ostentation, as they once had, but in increasing degrees of fortification. No home was truly secure. The value of many of the measures was the comfort of an illusion of safety. But even that illusion was necessary. The citizens of Shyish had long practice in dealing with the inevitability of doom.

Velaza had no illusions. But there was some utility to be had in physical defence. It was part of her disguise. She might walk the streets, swaggering her massively built frame, daring anyone to take her on. The fortifications of her home showed that even the formidable butcher had fears and knew she was not invulnerable.

The house was more thoroughly defended on the inside than out. Wards of protection guarded windows and entrances. She and all of her fellow spies would know at once, no matter where they were, if an intruder entered the home. There were other wards, too, deeper in the house, at the entrance to the cellar. These were wards of concealment. In a city where the only certainty was violent death, the house was as secure as possible.

Velaza unlocked the iron door and paused inside the entrance hall. She reached out with her witchsight for any signs of trespass. There were none, and she made her way down to the cellar. Four other spies were waiting for her. One of them, Guessa, had just returned from a journey to the west to observe the preparations, and the build-up of Graunos’ hordes.

The cellar room was a spare, unadorned space. Chests on the west wall held armour and equipment they had brought from Nulahmia. Vellum maps of Mausolea and the western reaches of Angaria were spread out on an oak table in the centre of the floor. Shelves against the rear wall held more scrolled maps, along with voluminous tomes containing the histories of Angaria. On stacks of loose vellum sheets were the notes on which Velaza and the others recorded their observations of the most minute changes in the life of the empire’s capital city and the adjoining regions. The most trivial incidents, Mereneth had emphasised, were often markers of larger, more concealed events. Velaza had seen Mereneth proven right again and again, and she read much into what she had seen today.

‘What news from the west?’ she asked Guessa.

‘More of the same, and with increasing intensity,’ said the winged spy. Thin, bald and pale as bone, Guessa could not afford to be seen at all in Mausolea. Her vampiric nature announced itself from afar. She could not pass for anything else, and Graunos’ conquest of Angaria had also been a war of extermination waged against the vampires. Guessa would always be a thing of shadows. Inside those shadows, she was swift, invisible, all-seeing. Velaza felt a contemptuous pity for those who fell under Guessa’s scrutiny. Even if they realised she was there, they were no better off. For them, she would seem omnipresent. They would believe her to be in every shadow, her taloned hands forever a swipe away from their throats, her eyes seeing every gesture, perceiving every thought. ‘The hordes grow larger and fiercer,’ Guessa continued. ‘The growth is becoming frenzied.’

‘Would you say an invasion is imminent?’ Tavensia asked. Like Velaza, she passed as mortal. Slighter of build, she had to be more careful not to reveal her true strength. She had adopted the guise of an itinerant scribe. She posed as one of the weak of Mausolea, those who scuttled at the edge of the city’s life, praying not to be noticed.

Guessa looked thoughtful for a moment before answering. ‘An attack won’t be long in coming. The hordes are not on the move yet, though. The drums are growing loud, but everything is still stopping short of a march.’

‘Graunos has his spies too,’ said Epikente. She was even more skeletal than Guessa, and was her sister in shadow. Where Guessa inhabited the darkness, Epikente was a shadow. She could vanish in broad daylight. Even when Velaza stared directly at Epikente, the other vampire seemed to be on the verge of slipping from her perception. ‘Our queen keeps her fist partly concealed, but we cannot afford the mistake of assuming Graunos makes his decision from a position of ignorance.’

‘Agreed,’ said Guessa. ‘He would appear to be anticipating a much more powerful enemy than he has been allowed to see.’

‘Could he attack now?’ Tavensia asked.

‘He could,’ Guessa said. ‘He would be foolish to do so, and I believe he knows it. The relative strengths of the armies are approaching parity, from what I have seen. But the situation still favours the defender, not the invader.’

‘Perhaps he waits for us to act first,’ said Epikente.

‘An army of Khorne waiting for an opponent?’ Tavensia scoffed. ‘That would be novel indeed.’

‘Graunos and Lord Kathag have already shown themselves to be unusual servants of the Skull God,’ Epikente pointed out.

‘Has the increase in activity been a sudden one?’ Velaza asked Guessa.

‘It has. Beginning a few days ago, it was as if the encampments had become hornets’ nests.’

‘Since the storm in the south,’ said Tavensia.

‘Precisely,’ said Velaza. ‘And the activity in the marketplace today was the greatest I have seen. Graunos’ warriors bought food by the cartload.’

‘Bought?’ Guessa asked. ‘Not just seized?’

‘I witnessed bloodreavers paying for supplies.’

There was a moment of silence as the others absorbed the implications of Velaza’s words. Graunos’ empire was a cauldron of violence, murder and rage. It was also one that could sustain itself. The daemon prince had created a power base that was stable enough to grow much larger, drawing more and more of Shyish into the bloody embrace of the Skull God. Part of what made Graunos so dangerous was that he understood that armies that supplied themselves solely through plunder would eventually run out of fuel. Graunos saw the savagery in competition, the viciousness in trade, and turned those impulses into another kind of tribute to the Blood God. From the predation of the market came the means to greater and faster conquest.

‘These are the signs of an entire empire on the march,’ Velaza said.

‘Graunos feels pressed by what is happening to the south,’ said Tavensia.

‘Yes,’ said Guessa. ‘Then he might attack before he is truly ready.’

‘The queen must know of this,’ said Velaza.

The others bowed their heads in agreement. Then Guessa and Epikente rose. They pushed the shelving in a section of the rear wall aside, revealing a small, circular chamber. Velaza passed through the doorway and they closed the wall behind her.

There was no light in the chamber, though Velaza saw clearly. A mortal prisoner was chained to the centre of the floor. There was always one such here, ready in case the need arose, as it had now. The spies had already blinded the young man and cut out his tongue. Silent, eyeless, he would have the honour of being granted one final sight. He would be the conduit between Velaza and the Mortarch of Blood, and he would, in dying, behold the magnificence of Neferata. His life was a trivial price to pay for such a boon.

He whimpered softly when Velaza touched him. Terrified, he tried to squirm away from her hands. She ignored his struggles, released him from his chains, then quickly broke his limbs, arranging him so his arms and legs pointed to the apexes of the great rune daubed with blood onto the floor. With the claw of her index finger, she slit his throat and sides. His blood flowed onto the rough stone, and the rune pulled the streams along its lines.

Once again, Velaza forced down the hunger and did not feed. She straightened, standing astride the twitching body of the prisoner, and chanted the words of the spell of communing. The blood rose in a mist that swirled around Velaza. The mist grew thicker, then began to glow. The light concentrated itself in front of her. It began to take on a form, elongating and gathering substance until Neferata appeared, her features hidden, revealed, and hidden again by the shifting mist.

The prisoner gasped. He turned his eyeless sockets towards the vision of the Mortarch. His body arched in wonder and in pain, and then was still.

‘What have you to report?’ Neferata asked. Her voice was hollow, an echo coming from a great distance, yet it was also an intimate whisper at Velaza’s nape.

Velaza told her what she and the others had observed and concluded. Neferata’s approving smile made her head buzz with pride.

‘This is as I would have it,’ the queen said. ‘Whether he desires it or not, Graunos will attack first, and on my terms. He is primed. All he needs is an opportunity. I will give it to him.’

Her image melted away into the mist, and the mist fell to the floor. Blood still pumped from the corpse, and at last, her heart filled with love for her queen and the anticipation of an empire’s fall, Velaza dropped to all fours and slaked her hunger.

Click here to buy Neferata: The Dominion of Bones.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Kevin Chin.

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