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Cover

Silver Nails – Extract

A Black Library Publication Imprint

eBook license

I

The ground was his enemy, his prison. All his life, Warhawk had tried to escape its dreary pull. He was more comfortable up here on the rooftops than down below on the grimy cobbles, but his aim was higher still, in the freedom of the skies. On his wrist, Belle shifted slightly, hooded head bobbing. He envied her her wings, her flight. But soon, when the Device was complete, he would share her life, would truly be able to take her for his mistress and mate.

When, as the Device decreed, thirteen had died, he too would be able to soar above the dirt, plunge through the clouds, battle the cross-currents of the winds. Nine were dead already. And Number Ten was down below, an insectile speck crawling through cramped streets, never raising eyes from their boots, never dreaming of the wonders above. He did not know him or her yet, but they were already marked for death.

Warhawk had been capricious so far, choosing some of the sacrifices carefully, but picking others entirely at random. One of the most distinguished he had come upon by chance. It had never been explained satisfactorily why a cleric of Solkan, supposedly engaged in important archaeological work in the Grey Mountains, should be disguised as a ragged beggar in the streets of Altdorf, importuning the crowds outside the Vargr Breughel Memorial Playhouse. But that was precisely the activity in which Professor Bernabe Scheydt had been engaged when Belle took him. Warhawk knew all men led iceberg lives, four-fifths submerged in the dark. Death sometimes brought submerged things to the surface.

Balancing carefully, leaning to one side to counter Belle’s weight, he walked along the knife-point roof-prow of the Temple of Shallya. He strode without fear across the gap between the temple and the Imperial Bank, scaled the gabled cone of the bank’s upper cupola, and finally reached his chosen perch for the night – the service platform just below the great clock. Inside the cupola, machinery ground together, time relentlessly marching forward with the hands on the clockface. In a world slowly eaten away by Chaos, time was a certainty, and the bank clock was a byword for reliability. It was accurate to a quarter-hour, probably the most sophisticated timepiece in the Empire.

Down below, as the night people emerged, the Konigplatz became busy, crowded. It was chilly, but Warhawk, wrapped in his padded leather armour, felt nothing. His body bruised by too many falls, he had been careful in stitching together his black protective suit. A close-fitting hood covered his face, stylised hawk’s beak picked out on the leather, feathery swirls around the eyeholes. The few who had seen him swore he was a ghost, or a bird-headed altered.

He looked across the Konigplatz, the Place of Kings, at the cluster of Imperial statues forming a crowd of their own, jostling around the great form of hammer-wielding Sigmar, the earliest emperors faceless lumps of stone, the most recent vulgar caricatures, each vying for a better position. It was the tradition for a new-elected emperor to commission his own statue to add to those of his predecessors. After two and a half thousand years, it proved politic to let the oldest statues crumble away to make room. Still, another period like the Year of the Seven Emperors, which followed the death of the Emperor Carolus twelve hundred years ago, would require the demolition of one of the buildings abutting the Konigplatz to make space for the figures.

Belle’s talons were tight on his wrist, razored extensions snug in the grooves of his thick, reinforced glove. She was a good bird, the best he had ever trained – schooled almost from the egg to be a huntress, a weapon – and she would be the greatest of her age. His father would have been proud of Belle. She was easily the equal of the famous Sebastian or Boris the Ferocious, and, in time, she might be as fearsome as Minya, the huge she-hawk who had turned the Battle of Axe-Bite Pass, taking out the eye of Cervello the Traitor, and dying to save his father on the upper slopes of the Fastness of Jagrandhra Dane.

He looked down, scanning the crowds for a sign. From a full five storeys above, they were all tiny, insignificant creatures. His sacrifice was down there somewhere, waiting for a death that was the next movement of the Device. Some gesture, some colour, some sound drifting up. Something would call out. It always did. Meanwhile, Belle was patient. With Belle, the Warhawk had no need of jesses to restrain her ankles or hood to cover her eyes. She would not take to the air until he signalled.

The watchman, Kleindeinst, reminded Warhawk of his father. They had the same hard eyes, the same scarred determination. He had seen Harald Kleindeinst in public several times, even attended a citizens’ meeting where angry questions had been directed ceaselessly at the captain. Kleindeinst swore he would clip Warhawk’s wings, but had accomplished nothing. At first, the Warhawk thought Kleindeinst might prove a worthy adversary. The copper had brought down the Beast Yefimovich last year, ending the series of murders that had shaken the city during the fog riots. The palace itself had requested the watchman be given charge of the current investigation. Warhawk had sat with the broadsheet writers and concerned businessman, and watched Kleindeinst reel as he was angrily denounced by speaker after speaker. The people of Altdorf wanted decisive action, and couldn’t see how powerless the watchman truly was. Kleindeinst would never understand the Device, much less impede its workings. Before the meeting’s scheduled end, Captain Kleindeinst had left the room and stalked out alone, renewing his vow, striding from the watch station ahead of the crowd’s jeers.

Down below, small knots of people were assembling around the empty bases of the oldest statues. In the evenings, speakers would take advantage of these ready-made platforms to address the crowds, preaching the worship of a lesser god, advocating the institution of an unheard-of political system, spreading gossip and sedition, or making public some commercial venture. In the past, Warhawk had himself spoken in that manner, declaring his intention to conquer the skies, ignoring the laughter of the unwashed mob and the sneers of the wizards. A Brustellinite revolutionist occupied his old pedestal. He was calling for a general uprising against the Emperor, and his audience, loyalists to a man, were getting restless. A strolling watchman, club already out, was moving in on the speaker, doubtless ready to make an arrest, and give the revolutionist a chance to get acquainted with the worthies he decreed should be free by spending a few nights in a straw-and-dung-floored cell with pick-pockets, beggars and cutpurses.

Harald Kleindeinst had been a disappointment. Warhawk was almost sorry for the copper. With each sacrifice, Kleindeinst’s position became more dangerous. By the time the Device was complete, the captain would be lucky to escape the wrath of the people he served. His body would hang on the docks for the river-birds. While he was rotting, Warhawk would be learning the ways of the air, striving ever higher, released at last from the tyranny of mud and stone. Still, Kleindeinst was as much a part of the Device as he was himself. He remembered his father saying that you should choose your enemies as carefully as you pick your friends.

It was his father who first told him of the Device, who had explained its workings. It was not magic, but alchemy, a true science. Magic only worked for wizards, but alchemy was for all who followed the steps. Wizards were arrogant, conjuring fire from the phlogiston in the air and sneering at ordinary men with their sulphur-sticks. But eventually magic would be swept away, and the Warhawk would fly, not through clouds of mystery and superstition, but upon solid principles of logic and balance. In the mean time, blood sacrifice must be made.

The watchman shouldered through the crowd and laid a hand on the revolutionist’s leg. Everyone was shouting. The unkempt Brustellinite jumped upwards, making a grab for the outstretched arm of the statue of the Empress Magritta, and swung like an ape. The copper scrambled up after the fire-breather, egged on by the crowd.

Warhawk knew.

He pointed leisurely, shrugging with his wrist. Belle’s wings spread elegantly and flapped. The bird rose from her perch, and swayed into the air, almost floating, beating her wings only when absolutely necessary. That was one of his father’s tricks: teaching the bird to glide silently towards the victim.

The empress’s arm broke at the shoulder and the revolutionist fell into the hostile crowd, who set about pummelling and kicking him. The watchman, sweating from his exertions, looked down. He removed his cap and used it to wipe his forehead.

Belle brought her feet down like a diver executing a back-flip and settled, claws-first, around the copper’s head, her beak digging into the back of his neck, her knife-ended claws rending his cheeks and throat. The crowd were too busy with the Brustellinite to notice the sacrifice. Warhawk felt the thrill of his kill, knowing the Device was one death closer to completion. He already heard the clouds calling to him and could feel the magnetic pull of the stars.

Belle let the watchman fall and his body tumbled into the crowd. Shrieks and screams rose into the night and his bird spiralled up away from the sacrifice.

He heard his name, repeated over and over, and stretched out his wrist for his faithful servant.

People were pointing up at him. He took care to be silhouetted against the clockface. He was not like the Beast, skulking in shadows and fogs. He was a clean predator of the skies and his daring was a message. A message to the ground-crawlers he despised, to the watchman who could never catch him, to the spirit of his departed father.

He was the Warhawk!

Belle landed on his wrist and he brought her close to his leather-covered mouth. He kissed her bloodied beak, feeling the warm wetness through his mask.

Climbers were already attempting to scale the bank. But by the time they reached his perch, he would have long since flown. With the song of the air in his heart, his devoted bird on his wrist, he disappeared from the clock platform. A touch of disappointment leapt inside him – disappointment that this was not the thirteenth sacrifice, that feet and hands not wings were the instruments of his escape… He began to make his pre-planned way down to the hated ground.

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Warhammer Horror
A Black Library Publication Imprint

First published in Great Britain in 2002.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Toni Deu.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-420-9

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