Contents

Cover

Prince Maesa – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

CHAPTER ONE

THE DUST GATE

Towers of stone rose from the wreck of ages when Sigmar returned, and deserted lands flourished again. Blade and spell pushed the great enemy back, so that man, aelf and duardin came once more to live in the countries of their ancestors, and the Age of Chaos faded into bloody memory.

For all the splendour Sigmar brought, the woes of antiquity remained. Underneath new cities were old foundations, and the stones of those places were steeped in death. Teeming streets and the homes of the rich and poor alike hid secrets that were not always well buried.

Far below Shanskir was a network of ruins. When the old city fell in aeons gone, the buildings were so thoroughly toppled as to be compacted solid as rock, and were built over accordingly. But threading through this lost grandeur were the narrowed traces of old roads, and these linked wider caverns walled with fine ashlar, and lower again was a spread of sewers and cellars that all cities push under the earth, and that often outlive their destruction.

To this city under a city, Maesa, aelven prince of the Wanderer Clans, had come.

He was tall and noble, sharp-boned, with no soft edges to him; beautiful, though in an inhuman way. He wore a hooded cloak of green over a short-sleeved byrnie of such fine rings it appeared like silver cloth. Upon his back was a quiver and bow in a case next to a small pack woven from spider silk, which was topped with a carefully wrapped bundle. At his side was a sheathed sword. Disquieting violet eyes looked out from a close-fitting helm. A small pair of antlers, like those of a roe stag, jutting up from the steel, accentuated the severity of his expression.

There were thirteen in his party. Eleven humans hired to escort this single aelf. Their leader was Captain Sendel, proud in the colours of his mercenary band.

The thirteenth member stayed hidden.

The men ran hunched under a ceiling of broken statuary, the feathers on their helmets wiping damp stone. Water filthy with waste seeping down from the new city washed around their feet. Toppled temple pillars leaned from the right, meeting at the left hand a jumbled mass of blocks.

The way opened into a wider space. Draughts tugged at the flames of the torches, and a cry of alarm went up from the head of the column. A choking gurgle marked a slit throat and the end of the vanguard’s life. His torch fell and was doused in the water.

‘Sigmar curse it!’ said Captain Sendel to the prince. ‘Forward!’ he shouted to his men. ‘Into the Cavern of the Lost Gods. Form a line. If the skaven catch us in this tunnel, we’re finished.’

His men were experienced, and obeyed without hesitation, running over the body of their fallen comrade into the space ahead. The bright flash of a sword cut down at a target Maesa could not see. A sharp squeal and a splash followed, and the scent of Chaos-tainted blood soured the air. The men pushed forward with many shouts, locking their round steel shields together, and made ready.

The ringing of metal erupted all along their line. Daggers whistled through the dark. Shields raised to deflect them, though another man fell with a glowing blade in his throat. The small group of humans held, peering forward, their sight extending only as far as the wavering edges of the torchlight. They were blind to the shadows leaping overhead. Maesa was not.

‘They are coming. Forty of them,’ said Maesa calmly.

More daggers rang off the shields.

‘Sigendil’s light!’ said Sendel. ‘So many so quickly. The infestation of these tunnels gets worse with every season.’ Another rain of daggers clanged off the shields. ‘Men, look to your backs!’ he shouted. ‘For every one we kill there are two in the shadows.’

‘Then I will lessen their number.’ Maesa slipped past the captain, stepped over the corpse of the first man to fall and the skaven slain for his murder. Drawing his bow from its case, he moved soundlessly to stand behind the rank of humans. He drew the string, and loosed. His arrow whispered through the air. A wet smack and a pained shriek marked a hit.

A moment of quiet followed. Maesa looked into the gloom.

‘They have expended their knives. They attack now,’ he said. ‘Above and to the front.’

‘I can’t see a damn thing,’ Sendel said.

‘Then let me illuminate matters,’ said Maesa. He twisted his hand before him, spoke a word of power, and a brilliant light burst into being, revealing black-clad skaven hurling themselves from broken statues, squirming from narrow cracks in the shattered masonry. They dropped from the cavern roof, cutting and slashing into the line of men. Maesa shot down another ratman. He killed a third before the second’s body had vanished into the water on the cavern floor, a new arrow on his string before the one preceding found its mark. The squeals and frantic chittering of rodent speech mingled with the cries of men. The shield wall bowed back, held, then collapsed under the weight of skaven into individual melees, single men fighting two or three of the hunched figures. The skaven had begun with stealth on their side, but now they were in the open, they were overmatched in strength and skill by Sendel’s men, and dazzled by the aelf’s mage light.

Maesa shot another as it leapt at one of the men. Sendel came to his side, duelling two skaven that came close, his blade smashing back crude black iron, and felling the wielders.

A skaven took its chance and rushed out of a crack in the cavern wall towards the prince.

‘Oh no, my friend, I think not,’ said Captain Sendel. Steel connected with flesh, and its head came off with a gush of blood. Its weapon slapped into the water, turning it luminous with the poisons weeping from the blade. Sendel’s sword caught in the bone of the shoulder, nearly twisting from his hand as the headless skaven flopped down. Black blood tainted the stream.

Sendel tugged at his sword, loudly cursing when it remained fast. A shrill, wordless war cry sounded overhead. Sendel looked to see a skaven falling from the distant ceiling, twin daggers ready to kill the aelf.

‘Prince Maesa, look out! Above!’ He yanked harder, but bone and flesh held the steel.

Maesa shot upwards, missing the creature. It came down before Sendel had the blade loose, landing softly, broad, naked feet plunging into the water so precisely they caused hardly a ripple. His own sword came out from its scabbard. The prince’s sword was an uncommon thing, a jagged thorn of russet edges and black points. A sense of power emanated from the weapon.

The skaven tittered at the prince’s blade. A bright pink tongue licked thin lips. Yellow shovel teeth bared in a vicious grin. It was bigger than the others, its daggers longer, their edges aglow with the sickly light of warpstone. Its long tail twitched back and forth over its head, a third blade held in the prehensile end.

‘You die-die, aelf-thing! These lands of the Lords of Thirteen,’ it said. Its voice was a harsh mix of squeaked vowels and lisped consonants, menacing for all its ludicrousness. ‘We claim-take. This ours.’

Maesa stared dispassionately from beneath his horned helm.

‘You should not have come here today, child of Chaos. Let me pass, or die.’

The skaven snickered. ‘No, you die, fool-thing! Bring wooden stick to fight. Haha! You dead.’

It leapt at the prince, moving with a nervous energy that was hard to follow, but Maesa was quicker still, his movements sublimely performed, countering all three of the skaven’s weapons. The aelf was lithe and supple, a war dancer, the skaven jitter-quick, both too fast for a man to beat. Weeping blades met the sword with hollow, wooden notes. Sendel cut down a lesser ratkin that moved upon the prince from behind, but he could not add his sword to the aelf’s duel. Blades blurred, skaven magic set against the sorcery of plant and bough.

The weapons met again. New notes played. Aelf and skaven came closer, twitching snout to perfect nose.

‘Now you die!’ the skaven hissed. ‘This poison kill anything.’

‘I have better magic,’ Maesa said. He deflected the skaven’s daggers, and the point of his sword darted down, scraping across the skaven’s naked thigh. Its titter at the feebleness of the scratch turned to a scream, as the glowing form of its soul was dragged from its body and sucked slowly within the blade. Spectral paws raked at the prince, finding no purchase. Ghost mouth wailed as living jaws went slack. The screech went high, falling to a deathly whisper as the soul was finally, irrevocably consumed.

The remaining skaven froze. Maesa turned to face them, his strange sword aglow.

‘This is the Song of Thorns,’ he sang out. ‘If it pricks you, then you die forever. Begone!’

The enemy squealed in dismay. An acrid stench filled the cavern.

‘Flee-flee!’ one shrilled, and together the survivors turned tail and fled, vanishing into the dark as suddenly as they had emerged. Broad feet plashed in shallow water, and they were gone.

‘They’re running!’ shouted one of the men. ‘Cut them down!’ The soldiers began to follow.

‘Hold your ground, you damn fools!’ Sendel shouted. ‘They’ll slit your throats the moment you are away from the light. Keep your guard up. Stand!’

Maesa’s spell dimmed, and shadows rushed back. The men nervously scanned the darkness. No sound was heard. Cautiously, the soldiers stood down, and saw to their wounded. Sendel’s corporal organised a party to return with those too badly injured to fight, reducing the number of warriors to six.

Sendel wiped his sword on skaven rags before he returned it to his scabbard. ‘Well done, my lord prince. That was a pretty display.’

‘I am blessed with a little magic,’ said Maesa.

‘Only a little? That blade, it is surely powerfully enchanted.’

Maesa sheathed the Song of Thorns. It was clean of blood.

‘It is a terrible weapon,’ said Maesa softly.

‘From where does it come?’ asked Sendel. ‘A wooden sword? I have never seen one like it.’

Maesa appeared disinterested by the captain’s question – most of his attention was on the fragments of art preserved in the rubble of the cavern wall – but he answered. ‘Not wood, as you think. A blade of living thorn. You heard me name it. Pray I have no cause to do so again.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2022 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 Billy Christian.

Prince Maesa © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. Prince Maesa, 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: 978-1-78999-856-6

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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