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Past Returns – Extract

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PAST RETURNS

Hal Wilson

It is almost midnight when Colonel Kai Valgor is forced to kill the footman.

His ceremonial dagger flashes silver in the candlelight, gliding through silk and soft flesh. The footman snarls, lunging a fist into Valgor’s tunic and the ample paunch beneath. With an explosive gasp, it steals his breath.

But not his wits.

Twisting the blade’s grip to break the suction of wet muscle, he works the knife like a butcher with a fresh cut. Up and down, striking true until the work is done.

The footman slumps now to the rug, sticky from spilled lifeblood. Panting, sweating, Valgor kneels and wipes his dagger clean with the footman’s cloak. With shaking hands, he returns the blade to the gilt scabbard at his waist, carefully positioned to hide the moth-bitten hole in his faded tunic.

He listens: the laughter of the distant gala is undisturbed.

He breathes silent relief, despite his pulsing headache.

The headaches, his constant companion since the Boneshard Plains, are growing more frequent lately – enough to demand drink, to dull their keen edge.

Drink. The very thought sets his parchment-dry tongue questing fruitlessly around his mouth.

‘Colonel!’ gasps a woman. ‘What in Sigmar’s name…?’

Valgor looks up. A figure stands across the room, clad in ceremonial uniform and plumed hat. He recognises her by the candlelight: Freya Gorrick, captain and first recruit of his Freeguild regiment.

‘Oh,’ he sighs. ‘It’s you.’

‘Explain,’ Gorrick hisses, adding a perfunctory, ‘sir.’

‘We had a disagreement.’

‘Sigmar’s teeth… How much firewater have you drunk?’

Old man with a problem. That’s how they see you now, Valgor…

He reaches to the footman’s bloodstained doublet, parting it with a tear.

‘Cultist,’ Gorrick murmurs, making the sign of the hammer.

The dead servant’s pallid torso is pierced with exotic rings and barbs; inked with vile symbols that intertwine like lovers, as if daubed by some manic-obsessive.

‘The Dark Prince’ – Valgor nods – ‘has followers at this gala.’

‘How did you know?’ she asks. ‘About him?’

He shudders, recalling the cult ceremony he found in the backrooms. Drawn by instinct – that sense which had kept him alive in combat – he had followed half-heard noises, like whispers of some fever dream. And through the crack of a humble servants’ hatchway, he had seen them: cavorting figures – bare-skinned, androgynous – daubing blood and other, viler, fluids across one another. Each one making frantic repeats of a single icon: a shaft, topped with opposed sickle-moon curves. The ruinous mark of Slaanesh.

Valgor had backed away silently, lest those sickening figures find him. But one had stirred – looked square at the hatchway, even as Valgor went. There could be no doubt: that had been the servant, drawn to him by some dark gift, perhaps.

‘I needed some air,’ Valgor explains, ‘took a wrong turn and found a chamber room. Saw things I’d sooner forget. I snuck away. But he followed.’

He takes a breath, clenching his fists as the adrenaline surges through him – that old, familiar flush that follows the killing of another man. He had almost forgotten how it felt.

‘You should run. His fellows will find you before long.’

‘No, captain. No running.’

‘What?’ Gorrick’s flinty eyes suggest an inner strength, now tested. ‘Why not get help?’

‘Because anyone here may be one of them.’ He thumbs at the corpse. ‘Besides, who trusts the word of an old soldier with a taste for firewater? I need proof.’

‘Isn’t that body proof enough?’

‘A lone deviant proves nothing of how far this goes.’ Valgor pauses. ‘But we should hide the body, before they find it and realise someone has their trail.’

‘Leave that to me, colonel. I’ll hide it behind that,’ she says, gesturing to a tall cupboard.

Valgor nods. ‘Good luck, captain. I’ll find you later.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2023 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.

Past Returns © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2023. Past Returns, 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.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-80407-497-8

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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