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Scar Crossed – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Scar Crossed

Nick Kyme

The first shot hits the door-warden in the shoulder. Karg is a big man, mainly gene-bulked muscle with a little excess flab, so he takes the saloon door off as he smashes through it. His pirouette is almost balletic before the second shot takes him in the back and puts him down for good.

Two shots, one after the other – slugger rounds. Messy. Stunned silence sweeps through the bar, followed by six rangy creeps wearing dirty trench coats and flare goggles. They step over Karg’s corpse, spreading out around the body to cover every angle. Facial ink marks these fellas as the Thronesworn, and never a more homicidal clan of zealots could you ever have the misfortune to meet in this part of the underhive. House Cawdor. I can smell the incense from where I am sitting, and practically taste the condescension and thinly veiled hypocrisy through the slug of Wild Snake I loll around my mouth.

I look up as their preacher enters the bar. Taller than his six thugs, he has no trench coat but wears black robes under a red flak jacket. His hood is up but I can see his teeth below the line of shadow covering his eyes. They are sharp and yellow. Like plague rats’ teeth.

‘This place reeks of sin,’ announces the preacher, his voice a wire-taut shriek. ‘I see the unclean, the intoxicated, the debauched. Defilers all. Behold! The hand of righteous flame!’

A spit of fire lights up the gloomy bar from the preacher’s gaping sleeve, exposing the stains and the otherwise dilapidated condition of the place. Most of the patrons hiss or clench their teeth, light as anathema to them as bathwater, judging by the overall stench.

I lean over for a closer look, idly wondering which wretch the preacher will latch onto first, and hear the smashing of glass. Slow-witted and bleary-eyed, it takes me a moment or two to realise that I am the cause of the ruckus. A shattered bottle of Wild Snake lies at my feet.

Just as I am lamenting the loss of some decidedly worse-than-average grog, the preacher turns his steely zealotry upon me.

‘Sinner!’ he proclaims, and seems to glide across the floor, his trench-coated thugs in tow. The other patrons wisely let him through.

I am about to move when my rump slips on the stool where I am sitting and I stumble backwards. I snatch at the edge of the bar, my fingers digging into the rotwood like claws, but keep my feet.

‘S… inn… er?’ I slur at length, trying to appear indignant.

The preacher comes in close, his rancid breath washing over me.

‘Your drunken excess is an affront to the Emperor of Mankind.’ He brings his left hand up to my left eye and I notice the small flamer he has attached to his wrist. It looks custom. Decent work. Deadly. He has the look of a man who likes burning things, I decide. A sadist-arsonist. A sarsonist? Arsodist? Never mind.

I try to take a step back before he torches me, but feel a gun barrel jab my kidneys.

‘Now, hang on a second, fellas…’ I say, my drunkenness diminishing at the same rate as my sense of peril increases.

‘Fire shall purge the wicked,’ promises the preacher, an eager glint in his eye that I do not like one bit.

I raise my hands in a plaintive gesture.

‘Can we at least discuss this like civilised…?’ I take in the expressionless faces of the Cawdor thugs, their bleached white skin, shaven heads, thin grey lips and blank-eyed goggles. My own face, somewhat worse for wear but growing ever more cognizant, reflects back at me. I look terrified. And with good reason.

‘Confess your guilt,’ snaps the preacher. ‘Confess and you shall be welcomed into the loving arms of the Immortal Emperor.’

‘Well,’ I say, trying to swallow the acrid aftertaste of vomit in the back of my throat, ‘you’ve kind of got me in a bit of a bind here.’ Belatedly, I smell the low quality grain alcohol – or sump alcohol, I don’t know, it was bad either way – soaking my shirt and breeches.

The preacher gives me an ugly smile and I hear him feed fuel to his wrist-mounted burner.

‘Wait, wait!’ I say. ‘I have a story about love, of true love against the odds. Surely, there is no finer thing in the underhive, no finer affirmation of the Emperor’s benevolence than that?’

The preacher regards me as he might a suspicious-looking stain on his robe. His thugs remain statuesque, their guns loaded and menacing.

‘Listen to it, and I promise to agree to whatever punishment you deem fit,’ I say. ‘I’ll even give up my disorderly ways and swear to your creed. But if you like my story, you let me go? You won’t get a better offer this side of the sump pit.’

Silence falls again, as every man, woman and mutant in the bar holds their breath. I like to think they are rooting for my survival, but I suspect they just want to watch a man burn.

The preacher’s eyes narrow, as if he’s trying to decide whether I am speaking truthfully. Zealots aren’t known for their shrewdness, and I hoped this would play in my favour.

He nods. I feel the need to void my bladder, but fear that he’d take it as reneging on the deal somehow.

‘Good, good,’ I say, licking dry lips and offering an ironic prayer to the Throne for the stay of execution. ‘Listen well, then, to a tale of two ignoble houses alike in indignity, in Infernal Corona where they laid their schemes…’

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A Black Library Publication

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

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Scar Crossed © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Scar Crossed, Necromunda, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, 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: 978-1-78572-928-7

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