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Sylvaneth – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The rotling roared out a challenge and Felyndael, Guardian of the Waning Light, turned to meet it. They always sought to challenge him. It was not bravery, he thought, so much as hunger. Hunger for challenge, hunger for conquest… hunger for death. They were like the roots of a blighted tree, still stretching for nourishment even though the trunk was dead. They belonged dead, but could not die. He gestured contemptuously, and the rotling lumbered towards him.

Around him, his fellow tree-revenants fought with other rotlings, leaping and slashing among the clumsy plague-lovers. Scarred Caradrael bisected a bloated warrior from crown to groin as lithe Yvael cut the sagging throats of three with a single blow. Daemonic ichor splashed across the wondrous curved structures of the reed-city of Gramin as the rotlings stumbled and died beneath the blades of his twenty-strong kin-band.

Felyndael felt a surge of satisfaction as his warriors fought with their customary flowing grace. They flickered in and out of sight, lunging and striking at their opponents from every direction at once. They were veterans of the withering years, and could easily dispatch three times their number in open combat.

He turned his attention back to his challenger as the brute, bulbous and clad in stinking furs and pitted metal, came at him in a clumsy rush, roaring out the name of its foul god. It seared the air with its murk. An axe swept down, and Moonsorrow rose to meet it. The ancient blade hummed with strength and struck with the force of an avalanche. The jagged blade of the axe shivered apart. The rotling reeled back, pustule-dotted jaw working in shock beneath the rim of its foetid helmet. Flabby paws waved in hapless defiance as Felyndael darted forwards, quick as the wind.

Moonsorrow screamed in joy as it pierced the noisome bulk. Flesh, muscle and bone parted like smoke before the bite of the sword. The rotling hunched forward with a shrill wheeze, clawing helplessly at Felyndael’s bark-clad arms. Wriggling worms spilled from its mouth and pattered to the ground as its stinking ichor gushed from the wound.

Ably done, noble one, Yvael thought, her compliment pulsing through Felyndael’s mind as he pulled Moonsorrow free of the rotling’s cancerous body. He let the creature sag to the ground and looked around.

I am not alone in that, my sister, Felyndael thought. Around him, his tree-revenants finished off the last of the dead thing’s companions, killing the bellowing brutes with graceful savagery. The rotlings had become separated from the flow of the horde now occupying the circular streets of Gramin, and thus were easy prey for him and his kin-band as they erupted from the spirit paths close to the heart of the city.

The reed-city was as much a thing of Ghyran as Felyndael and his warriors. Alarielle’s magics had constructed it in ages past. She had drawn up the reeds that grew thick and wild in the shallows of Verdant Bay and woven them together into a great metropolis of canals, bridges and high, sweeping arches, spreading outwards from the Basilica of Reeds at Gramin’s heart. All as a gift for the mortals who had sworn to care for that which she had entrusted to them in ages past – a clutch of slumbering soulpods.

It was a duty that the citizens of Gramin had upheld until the final days of the withering years, when the rotlings had come from the sea. Their plague ships had clustered like maggots along the shore, befouling the green waters of the lagoon, kept pure until then by the budding soulpods. The raiders swept through the city with fire and axe, killing or enslaving all who inhabited it.

Felyndael’s grip on his sword tightened at the thought. Though they had not been of his soil, the mortals had been caretakers, even as the sylvaneth were. They had not deserved such a fate, and he wished that he had been there. Perhaps– no. The season was done, and the cycle continued. Though his heartwood cried out for vengeance for the atrocities of the past, his task now was more important than simple slaughter.

The raiders had left the city itself – and that which even now slumbered beneath it – untouched, after scouring it of all mortal life. Perhaps they had deemed it unimportant, or indefensible. Regardless, they had retreated to the great sargasso, where they had raised foul citadels upon the floating weeds and left the reed-city and its hidden treasure to sit silent and undisturbed.

Until now. Until Alarielle had awoken, and her scream had set the skies to burning and the winds to roaring. As the echoes of that scream spread throughout Ghyran, the rotlings had returned in their scabrous galleys, stinking of ruin, and their return endangered the slumbering grove of hidden soulpods. Now the city shuddered in the grip of a malaise, and the waters beneath screamed without ceasing.

Moonsorrow trembled sympathetically in his grasp. He could feel the ghost of the mountain for which the sword was named stir within the blade. A sorrowful weight, a millennium of tragedy, condensed and compacted into the weapon he now held. A burden and an honour both. It sang to him sometimes, when the moonlight struck the blade just so, and the din of battle had faded.

But it was not singing now. Even if it had been, Felyndael could hear but one song – the war-song, the song of the reaping. Alarielle’s voice resounded through him, branch and root, summoning him, driving him to war. It had been centuries since he had last heard the Everqueen’s voice. It was like a gale wind, ripsawing through the realmroots. She sang and screamed and whispered all at once, crying out in wordless command.

It was a command he had no difficulty obeying. Indeed, he had never stopped fighting. Felyndael of the Fading Light had never set aside his sword, had never set down roots or shrunk into the dark and quiet like many of the others. He had fought without ceasing since the first rotling had set ragged claw on the good soil of Ghyran. And he would not stop until the last of them were mulch beneath his feet. He would not stop until they had been punished in full for their crimes against life itself.

The sword hummed in his grip, the voice of the mountain murmuring to him. Calming him, settling its weight upon the rage that rose up within him like a wildfire, snuffing it. But not for long, he suspected. It grew more difficult to ignore with every turn of the seasons. The harder he fought, the harder it became to do anything but fight.

He had become a hollow thing, burned black and made brittle by war. But he would serve until his roots shrank and his branches cracked. Calmer now, Felyndael examined the body at his feet. Why had the rotlings come back? The servants of Chaos always sought to destroy the soulpods, when they knew of them. But that was not the case here. He would have sensed it if the soulpods were in any direct danger. Something else was going on.

One of his warriors, Lathrael, stretched out her hand. The air is wrong here, she thought. Her words pulsed gravely through the connection that bound them.

It is sour, Caradrael the Scarred thought, with the mental equivalent of a shrug. Like everywhere the rotlings infest. And so? Caradrael’s bark had been kissed by fire long ago, and it had made him short-tempered. Let us kill them, and cleanse this place.

Their numbers are great, Yvael thought.

Then our vengeance will be all the greater. Caradrael’s thought was the hiss of a slashing branch.

No. Lathrael is right. It is different, Felyndael thought. Like the calm before a storm. It trembles, like a thing afraid. Wait – something is–

The air shuddered as unseen bells tolled. The sound of it was every axe-thud, every root-snap and crackle of flame. It was the sound of bark sloughing, curling, decaying and the scream of dry grass in the burgeoning. Felyndael nearly dropped Moonsorrow as he clutched at his head. The others were similarly afflicted by the droning reverberation.

As the tree-revenants recovered their wits, horns brayed in the distance, and drums thudded. The rotlings were agitated. But not, Felyndael thought, by his kin-band. Something else had come to Gramin. Come, brothers and sisters, he thought. Let us see what has our foes so excited.

Aetius Shieldborn, Liberator-Prime of the Hallowed Knights, led his warriors through the deepening murk that clogged the streets and plazas of Gramin. Three retinues of Stormcast Eternals from the Steel Souls Warrior Chamber marched in his wake. Their panoply of war gleamed silver where it was not befouled by grime and mud. Their shoulder guards were of deepest regal blue, such as the heavens themselves, as were their heavy shields, where they were not scored and marked by battle. The weapons they carried shimmered with holy fire, lighting their way through the gloom.

The Hallowed Knights were the fourth Stormhost of the First Striking, and only the faithful filled their ranks. Each warrior had called upon Sigmar’s name in battle, and each had shed their mortal flesh in the name of a righteous cause. Their courage had been proven in battles all but forgotten in the haze of their Reforging. And among the Warrior Chambers of the Faithful, the Steel Souls were pre-eminent.

For Aetius, it was not so much a matter of pride as it was a simple fact. The Steel Souls had been at the forefront of the war for the Jade Kingdoms, and the entirety of Ghyran itself. They had forged a path for their brothers to follow, hurling back the servants of the Plague God wherever they found them, from the Grove of Blighted Lanterns to the Mirkwater.

As they would do here, Sigmar willing.

Gramin had been beautiful once, Aetius thought, as he led his fellow Stormcasts through the vacant streets. The city was a living thing, shaped rather than built, and reeking of the strange magics that permeated much of this realm. Once it had been home to thousands. Now it was a husk, emptied and abandoned, and falling to the same blight which was slowly devouring all of Ghyran. Black ichor seeped from the reed-walls, and stinking water bubbled up through the mat of the street. Flies choked the air.

So far, their advance into the city had been uncontested. They had discovered great ironwood barges abandoned in the marshes and used them to reach the city. The barges now sat beside the beslimed quays of Gramin, guarded by a few volunteers from among his retinue. The outer ring of the city had devolved back into a quagmire of reeds and marsh-grass, uninhabited save by unseen beasts. But the enemy were near. The sea-wind carried with it the monotonous thud of their war-drums to Aetius’ ears.

The mortals who had once lived in this place had fought when the Rotbringers laid siege to their sea-gates and lagoon-walls. But without Sigmar to guide them, they had faltered and fallen. Those who had survived the sack that followed the shattering of the sea-gates had been taken in chains to the miasma-shrouded sargasso-citadels that now dotted the mouth of Verdant Bay like sores. There they had likely been cast into the plague-gardens as fuel for the balefires that now ceaselessly vomited pox-smoke into the skies above the marshy coastline.

But Gramin had remained, abandoned and forgotten. Until now. Until the bells. When they rang, they filled the air with their dolorous cacophony. The sound of the bells spread like a plague, stretching from the coastal marshes and onto the Plains of Vo. And the lovers-of-plague had come following it, drawn like maggots to dead flesh. Hundreds of them, moving from the north and the south, trudging towards the source of the clangour. The curse-bells, calling Nurgle’s children to war.

The rest of the chamber was to the north, somewhere on the Plains of Vo. Lord-Castellant Grymn had ordered scouting parties sent out to search for the bells while he led the other Steel Souls in battle with the migrating warbands. Numerous ruins dotted the coastline for leagues in either direction, and any one of them could have been the origin of the din.

‘It’s the basilica.’

Aetius glanced at Solus, his second-in-command. ‘What?’

‘That’s where they are, I’d wager. It’s the highest point in the city,’ Solus said, pointing towards the domed roof that was just visible over the tops of the other buildings. The great structure known as the Basilica of Reeds occupied the heart of the city. Once, Sigmar’s worshippers had filled it with the sound of song and reverence. Now the God-King alone knew what horrors stalked its aisles.

‘Maybe,’ Aetius said.

‘Definitely.’ Solus was possessed of a calm certainty that Aetius could scarcely fathom. Sometimes he fancied that the Judicator-Prime was the eye of a storm made manifest. When Solus deigned to speak, even Lord-Celestant Gardus, the Steel Soul himself, listened. Aetius envied his brother Stormcast that steadiness. Solus seemed to have no doubts as to his place or purpose in the world.

In contrast, Aetius had nothing but questions. Unlike some Stormcasts, Aetius had no memory of who he had been – no recollection of what event had prompted Sigmar to choose him for a life of eternal war. There was an emptiness in him, a hollow space in his soul that he’d hidden behind a wall of faith and now tried his best to ignore. For Aetius Shieldborn, there was nothing in the world save duty.

‘If they are here, we will find them,’ Aetius said.

‘If? That doesn’t sound like if,’ Solus said, as he drew and readied a crackling arrow. One by one, the Judicators of his retinue followed suit. ‘That’s not just the wind we’re hearing, Aetius. Listen!’

Aetius cocked his head. The sea wind rolled through the streets of reed and soil, carrying the sour smell of the distant sargasso. And something else. A low sound that spread like a fog rolling in off the sea… The sound of the bells of Gramin. A hollow groan rolled over the assembled Stormcasts, reverberating through their bones and souls alike with a horrible finality – it was the sound of dirt striking a coffin lid and the last cry of a dying beast, the crumbling of stone and the sifting of sand through an hourglass, the sound of futility and ruin. One of the Liberators stumbled forwards, vomit spewing from the mouthpiece of his helm.

‘Back in line,’ Aetius growled, as the warrior mumbled apologies for his moment of weakness. His brothers helped him to his feet. Aetius kept his eyes on the broad avenue ahead. The thick miasma clung to everything in this sour place and seemed to be thickening, growing more opaque with every toll of the unseen bells. It stank of the sea and of decaying seaweed and rotting fish. And from within it came the padding of many feet.

‘I know that smell… Rotbringers,’ Solus said.

‘Form a square, brothers.’ Aetius raised his hammer as his warriors shifted position, forming a loose phalanx. ‘Lock shields and brace yourselves,’ he continued. The Hallowed Knights had come seeking sign of the enemy, but it appeared that their foes had found them instead. ‘Solus, take your retinue behind the shield wall and ready your arrows.’

‘Aye, Shieldborn,’ Solus said, leading his men into the square of sigmarite. The Judicators would be able to ply their trade freely there. Few foes could break a Liberator shield wall and survive. Aetius stepped back into line. The miasma crept closer, billowing upwards and thickening. It reminded Aetius of nothing so much as a snake readying itself to strike.

The wall of mist ruptured, expelling a pestilent horde. The Rotbringers were clad in filthy rags and rusted armour. They had been mortal once, before they had surrendered their souls and sanity to Nurgle. Now they were a braying morass of suppurating flesh, stumbling forwards on bandaged feet and cloven hooves.

‘Solus – split the log,’ Aetius said. A moment later, the Judicators loosed a crackling volley over the heads of the waiting Liberators. Arrows struck the oncoming Rotbringers with unerring aim. Those in the front ranks were pitched backwards into their fellows or else hurled into the air by the explosive impact. A second volley followed the first, and then a third, as quick as thought. Slowly but surely, the foetid mass of enemy warriors buckled and split, dividing in two.

Sigmarite shields creaked as the Rotbringers slammed into two sides of the square. Aetius drove his hammer into a bloated belly, popping it like a pustule. The blessed metal of the hammer cauterised the creature’s seeping organs even as it crushed them. ‘Hold the line, brothers,’ Aetius cried as he ripped his hammer free of the dying warrior’s intestines in a plume of smoke. ‘Who will stand, as the world crumbles?’

‘Only the faithful,’ the other Stormcasts shouted, as one.

‘We are the faithful, brothers. We are the steadfast,’ Aetius said, as a moss-encrusted club thudded harmlessly from his shield. ‘Solus – scour these barnacles from our shields.’ A volley shrieked up over the wall, and fell screaming amongst the foe. ‘Push them back,’ Aetius said as he shoved forwards, arm and shoulder braced behind his shield. The front line of Liberators followed his example, and the Rotbringers reeled back. But not for long.

Over the din of battle, Aetius could still hear the sombre tolling of the dreadful bells. It was a summons, he thought, calling the Rotbringers and driving them into combat. More of them flooded out of side streets and doorways, coming at the Stormcasts from all sides. Some were chanting the name of their monstrous patron, while others were singing abominable hymns even as they fell to crushing hammer blows or sizzling arrows.

The Rotbringers pressed on with little regard for their own well-being, driven forwards by the bulky, lumbering shapes that strode slowly through the press of battle towards the gleaming silver battle-line of the Stormcasts. Aetius recognised the grotesque warriors instantly – putrid blightkings, the chosen of Nurgle. He had fought them before, and they were far more dangerous than the diseased fodder dying beneath the hammers of his retinue. There were more of them than his retinues could hope to hold at bay, at least while they were caught in the open. They had to fall back and find a more defensible position, one they could hold until reinforcements could be summoned, if need be.

Thinking quickly, Aetius fell to one knee and brought his hammer down on the street, sending a shockwave through the hard-packed soil. Rotbringers stumbled and fell as his Liberators stalked forwards, shields held high. Aetius rose to his feet, backhanding a Rotbringer with his shield as he did so. A mutant, her flesh encrusted in buboes, saw the opening and lunged forwards with her rusted blade held in both paws. She cackled with bitter amusement as the sword struck his breastplate and shivered to flinders. He crushed her hairless skull with a blow from his hammer and turned. ‘Solus – fall back,’ he called out.

The Judicators retreated, loosing crackling arrows at any Rotbringer who managed to squirm past the shield wall. Aetius struck out left and right. Their foes were as thick as fleas, and somewhere the great bell was still ringing mournfully. The blightkings drew closer, smashing aside Rotbringers in their lumbering haste to close with the hated Stormcasts. ‘Tomas, pull your retinue back and reform the shield wall – we will hold them while you disengage,’ Aetius shouted, gesturing with his hammer.

At his order, half of the Liberators disengaged and retreated. His own retinue tightened their lines, covering their brothers as they fell back. One of the blightkings bellowed something, a challenge perhaps, and tottered towards Aetius with a roar. A crackling arrow sprouted from the visor of the warrior’s helm, and he sank down with a choking sigh. ‘Thank you, Solus,’ Aetius murmured. Then, more loudly, ‘Fall back!’

He and his warriors fought their way free of the Rotbringers and backed away, shields raised and held steady. The arrows of the Judicators seared the air as they fell, ripping through those enemies who sought to pursue them. Aetius led his retinue past Tomas and the others, who waited to take their place in battle. The manoeuvre was repeated again and again, as the Hallowed Knights steadily retreated back the way they’d come.

Their withdrawal wasn’t without casualties. A Liberator fell, skull cloven in two by a blightking’s festering blade. Another was swarmed by chanting Rotbringers as blades and claws sought the joins in his war-plate. Aetius could do nothing to help either as they were reduced to crackling columns of azure lightning and returned to Sigmar’s forges. As the glare of their passing faded, however, he saw a thin shape, neither Rotbringer nor Stormcast, rise suddenly from the packed reeds that made up the street, a glowing sword clutched in its bark-covered hands. Long, vine-like hair whipped about a lean, almost human face as the newcomer removed the head from a Rotbringer with a single blow, before vanishing as swiftly as it had appeared. ‘What in Sigmar’s name…’ Aetius muttered. ‘Sylvaneth.’

It had been weeks since they had last seen any of the treefolk. After the Battle of Blackstone, and Alarielle’s rebirth, the sylvaneth had gone their own way, leaving the Steel Souls to fight where they would. They were fickle beings, and Aetius had been somewhat glad to see the back of them. What were they doing here?

A moment later, more of the strange sylvaneth burst from the reeds, their spindly forms moving with mercurial speed – first fast, and then slow, and always with a lethal, inhuman grace. Unlike the dryads, these creatures fought with weapons, albeit ones made from bark and stone. Despite the seeming crudity of their manufacture, the weapons cut through the diseased flesh of the Rotbringers with ease.

‘Tree-revenants,’ Solus said. ‘I saw them up close at the battle in the Hidden Vale. They’re some sort of royal guard, I think.’ He looked at Aetius. ‘They serve her will. And her will is not Sigmar’s.’ The Steel Souls had learned much about the sylvaneth in the weeks and months since Gardus had led them into the Hidden Vale. The treefolk did not forget or forgive, and they were as savage as they were enigmatic.

‘No. But we are allies, until the God-King commands otherwise.’ Aetius watched as the tree-revenants swarmed through the faltering ranks of the Rotbringers, butchering them in deadly silence. The enemy were confused, and in their confusion were growing frightened. Horns signalled the retreat as Rotbringers began to fall back in disarray. ‘Either way, they’ve given us the respite we needed,’ he said. He raised his hammer. ‘Forward!’

As he led his warriors into the fray, he watched the sylvaneth fight. Sometimes, they disappeared even as one foe fell, only to reappear across the battlefield, stepping from the seemingly solid reed-walls to attack another opponent from behind. Soon, the Rotbringers gave in to their growing panic and fled, streaming around the bewildered knot of blightkings, who roared in frustration and grunted vain commands to stop, to fight. Solus’ Judicators added to the panic, loosing volley after volley into the disorganised rabble.

Aetius and his Liberators slammed into the blightkings. Without the Rotbringers to support them, the fight that followed was swift and brutal. Preoccupied as they were, the blighted warriors were easy prey, though it took some doing to put them down for good. Luckily, the Steel Souls had had enough practice to know when to cease bludgeoning a fallen blightking and when to continue.

When the last of the brutes had fallen, Aetius looked up and found the tree-revenants watching them. He stepped forwards warily, ready to defend himself if it should prove necessary. While the treefolk had fought beside them as allies, there were stories of less friendly encounters, especially in the Wyldwoods, where sylvaneth were said to hunt anything not of Ghyran, regardless of whether it was Rotbringer or Stormcast.

One of the tree-revenants moved to meet him. It was the first one he’d seen, a long, glowing blade clutched in one talon. Rough bark covered its form, though whether it was armour or flesh, Aetius couldn’t say. ‘Hail, warriors,’ he said, wondering how one addressed a sylvaneth properly. Lord-Celestant Gardus had made it look so easy. ‘A fortunate thing, to find you here. We thank you for your aid.’

‘We… have come to… free this place,’ the tree-revenant said. Its – no, Aetius thought, his – voice was like the rattle of windblown branches and the scratch of leaves through wet grass. His face was akin to a mask pulled taut over knotted vines, with features that reminded Aetius of the strange, reclusive folk known as aelves. But this creature’s face moved in odd ways, twitching and twisting strangely.

‘As have we,’ Aetius said. He held his shield away from his body and very slowly hung his hammer from his belt. ‘We come to silence the curse-bells that call the servants of Nurgle to this place. Will you fight beside us?’

‘Fight…?’ the tree-revenant said, head cocked.

‘Your aid… would be appreciated,’ Aetius said. ‘I am Aetius Shieldborn, Liberator of the Steel Souls.’ He extended his hand, and waited.

Felyndael felt something in him tighten at the sound of the Stormcast’s voice. It was a deep sound, low and grumbling, like the progress of rocks down a mountain slope. Or the crash of distant thunder. They smelled of rain and heat and raw iron, newly scraped from the good earth. They were not of Ghyran, these beings, but of Azyr, and they burned with a cold light that stung his senses.

These silver ones were known to him. They, alongside the amethyst ones, had fought to free the Gates of Dawn. They were also the ones who had unwittingly led the forces of the great enemy to the Everqueen’s hidden bower. Had they made the same mistake again, leading Alarielle’s foes to this place?

Many sylvaneth have died because of these silver-skins, thought Caradrael.

And many more have been saved, Yvael replied. These defended the Everqueen, even unto death and beyond.

The Everqueen is not here, Caradrael thought. He shifted impatiently, his blackened bark creaking with every twitch. Leave them, noble one. We have more pressing matters to concern ourselves with. Did you hear that tolling as we fought? It was like being in the fire all over again.

Yes, Felyndael thought. The echoes of the – what had the Stormcasts called them, curse-bells? – had finally faded. He tilted his head, listening to the wind and the crash of the sea, the creak of the reeds and the cry of marsh birds. Within that ineffable song was a hidden note, dim now, and weak. But growing stronger.

Those bells will shatter the soulpods if they continue to ring, Lathrael thought. We all felt their power. If these silver-skins come to destroy them, why not aid them?

We have no need of them, Caradrael thought.

Maybe, Felyndael thought, still listening to the call of the soulpods. The pulse of life as yet dreaming, a wellspring preparing to gush forth and leave something new in its wake. But if they were not recovered soon, their blooming could be twisted, and that was something he would not, could not allow.

He looked into the thoughts of his warriors, sensing the same resolution in each of the tree-revenants who had accompanied him to Gramin. Twenty in all, each was a child of the Heartwood Glade, and connected by bonds older than thought. Felyndael drew strength from that connection. Within it was a thunderous echo of glories past, which reverberated in the soul of every child of the forest. He felt again the savage exultation of the Third Harvest, and the sorrowful joy of the Crucible of Life.

We have known glories, he thought.

We will know glories again, Yvael replied.

In a span of moments he saw again every battle he had ever fought, every long war waged down the winding path of his people’s slow waning. His heartwood ached from the weight of those long centuries of retreat and loss. More, it ached with fear. Not for himself, or even his kin, but for that which nestled helpless and unawares somewhere beneath Gramin.

Fear that he would fail them. Fear that twenty warriors – even these twenty – would not be enough to confront the horde he could feel gathering elsewhere in the city. The reeds of Gramin whispered of their numbers to him, and whispered too of the pain the soulpods felt every time the bells rang. Lathrael was right – they might be destroyed if that monstrous tolling were not silenced.

The foe were too numerous for his warriors to fight through alone, too many to avoid even, too many between him and his goal. All of this passed across his mind in the blink of a mortal eye, and he turned, opening his thoughts to his kin.

Sensing his frustration, they reached out to him, to comfort him. Even seething, impatient Caradrael. Fingers of bark and vine touched his shoulders and face, as each sung a single note which merged into a calming melody, pulling him back to himself. The Stormcast lowered his hand and stepped back, as if he could feel the edges of the spirit-song.

They had all suffered as much or more – Yvael had been with him at Ghoremfel where the Lady of Vines had led them into battle for the Tear of Grace, and seen the pride of House Lathrien splintered by daemons; Caradrael still bore the burns he’d suffered at the fall of the enclave of Verdantia; Lathrael… mighty Lathrael, who had fought her way free of the pox-waters which had drowned the Hidden Vale; and the others, whose voices and sorrows were as one with his own.

We will know glories again, they said.

Slowly, he added his own voice to theirs, until the air shivered with their song. Many became one, and in an instant, a decision was made. He turned back to the Stormcast called Aetius. ‘I… am Felyndael, of the Heartwood. We will aid you,’ he said.

Aetius blinked. He had felt something in that moment, as the sylvaneth communed with one another. A pulsing echo that had tugged at his soul. There had been pain there, and something that might have been… faith. A form of it, at any rate. Pushing the thought aside, he nodded gratefully. ‘I thank you, Felyndael of the Heartwood. With your help, we might yet cleanse this place of the filth that afflicts it.’

‘We must silence the bells,’ Felyndael said. He turned, chin raised, as if he were scenting the wind. ‘There.’ He extended his sword towards the distant dome of the basilica.

‘I told you it was the basilica,’ Solus said, from behind him.

‘Yes, well, now we must reach it in one piece,’ Aetius said, annoyed. He looked at Felyndael. ‘Can you lead us there? Lead us past the foe?’

‘Yes,’ the sylvaneth said. ‘We will go–’

‘Wait,’ Aetius said. Without thinking, he caught hold of the tree-revenant’s arm. Felyndael froze, and the others suddenly surrounded them, the tips of their blades pressed to Aetius’ throat. He heard the rattle of sigmarite, and flung up his hand, signalling for the other Steel Souls to stand down. ‘You as well – wait. Wait.’

Felyndael looked down at Aetius’ hand and then up. His face did not change expression. A moment later, the other sylvaneth stepped back. ‘We must go now,’ Felyndael said. ‘We must silence the bells.’

‘Will you wait for us to summon reinforcements?’ Aetius said carefully, releasing Felyndael’s arm. The tree-revenant seemed impatient. Aetius was not trusting by nature. Something told him that the sylvaneth had not intervened out of friendship. Or at least not for that reason alone.

‘There is no time,’ Felyndael said. The bells began to ring again, filling the air with hideous noise. The tree-revenants turned as one. ‘No time,’ Felyndael said again.

Aetius glanced at Solus. ‘No time,’ he said.

‘We are taking a chance,’ Solus said, a moment later, as they pounded after the sylvaneth. The treefolk were leading them a circuitous route through the curving streets, avoiding the largest groups of Rotbringers. The Stormcasts moved in perfect synchronisation, jogging shoulder to shoulder. The tree-revenants, for their part, moved more swiftly. Their thin shapes bled in and out of sight as they passed through the very walls of the surrounding buildings, or sprang across the sloping rooftops. ‘Lord-Castellant Grymn would say we are being fools, not calling for reinforcements.’

‘Why call for them, when they have come to us?’ Aetius said. Occasionally, he heard the sounds of fighting, and screams. He wondered what other horrors might stalk the city. ‘Besides, the bells grow louder. Time is against us, I think. We must silence them.’ He could hear the winding of horns and the stamp of feet. They were not the only ones moving towards the sound. So far, however, they had managed to avoid any further conflict. It wouldn’t last. The enemy knew they were here, and some of them, at least, were likely rushing to find them. He picked up the pace.

‘And then?’ Solus asked.

Aetius shook his head. ‘Let the Lord-Castellant figure it out. Perhaps we will take this place for our own, and fortify it. It would make an adequate staging area from which to launch an assault against the sargasso-citadels of the enemy. If we held this place, we might sweep Verdant Bay clean in months.’

Solus chuckled. ‘Sound thinking. I see now why they put you in command.’

‘I should have thought my qualities were obvious from the outset,’ Aetius said. Solus laughed and pounded a fist on Aetius’ shoulder-plate as they ran.

‘Only some of them,’ Solus said.

Felyndael listened to the dull grumble of the Stormcasts’ voices echoing up from below. They had no song to unite them, only artifice and discipline, and he pitied them their blindness. Though the one called Aetius had almost heard the spirit-song, he thought. What must he have made of it, Felyndael thought.

He feared it. Like all meat fears the song of life, Caradrael thought dismissively, as he outpaced Felyndael. The tree-revenants ran smoothly across the rooftops of the reed city, leading the silver-skins on, safely past the clumps and eddies of warrior-filth that clogged the streets of Gramin. Those foes who drew too close or seemed likely to stumble upon their allies’ trail were diverted by his warriors, led away or butchered before they realised their danger.

They fear the dark and the forest, as well they should. Those places are not theirs, Caradrael continued. His blade and bark dripped with blood, and he had scattered the severed heads of rotlings across the rooftops in his wake.

They are no longer ours, either, Yvael thought, as she kept pace with Felyndael. But these ones will help us claim something back.

Caradrael growled in disgust. Felyndael ignored his displeasure, and stretched his mind outwards. They were close to the centre of the city, and the hidden grove where the soulpods slumbered on, unaware of the danger crouched above them. He felt their song swelling in the dark. It had protected them thus far, but the city was infested with rot.

The buildings were weeping black tears, and the streets sagged in places, expelling geysers of foul water. The curse-bells were somehow warping the ancient enchantments that bound this place, twisting them into a new, more horrifying shape. Every time the bells rang, some part of Gramin died. They all felt its pain, twisting within them.

We should grant this place mercy, noble one, Lathrael thought. Let it die, lest its pain bend it all out of joint and into something monstrous.

The silver-skins seek to claim it, Yvael protested. Let them care for it, and it might yet flourish. She pressed close to Felyndael, and he felt her plea. If we but grant them soil to take root in, they will fight all the harder.

I cannot, he thought. Gramin holds our quarry within its heart. They are bound together, and when the one is removed, the other must die. Once, they might have flourished together, but now… Now the sick branch must be pruned, for the good of all.

And Gramin was sick. As the Jade Kingdoms were sick. As Ghyran was sick. But the sylvaneth could not purge the realm alone. They lacked the proper tools. Or had, at any rate. Until the coming of the silver-skins. Felyndael tightened his grip on Moonsorrow’s hilt, annoyed by the thought. He had fought since the mountains were first birthed by the seas. He would fight until the last leaf fell from the last tree. The Everqueen had grown him for war. He would be true to his nature. But hollow as he was, a seed of honour yet remained. To treat these sons of Azyr as tools went against everything House Lathrien and the Heartwood Glade had stood for.

You are disturbed, Yvael thought.

Perhaps we should tell them, Felyndael replied. Let them know what must happen. Let them know why we must do this thing.

It would serve no purpose, even if they could understand, Caradrael interjected. He slid to a stop and turned. We should use them as the noble one uses his sword – plunge them in and watch them bleed our foes.

And leave them there, I suppose, Felyndael thought. Caradrael looked away.

They are not our kin. Caradrael’s thought was shrouded in sullen resentment, but the sentiment was shared. Felyndael could feel the agreement of others – not all, but some. Alarielle’s rage burned brightly within them. How capricious, how inconstant they must appear to their allies, driven as they were by the war-song.

The wide dome of the great basilica came into view. The air throbbed like an open wound, and he felt his insides twist in revulsion. But beneath that maddening knell came the whisper of the soulpods. Still alive, still safe, but not for much longer.

No, Felyndael thought, looking down at the Stormcasts. They are not our kin. But they aid us regardless.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2016.
This eBook edition published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Mark Holmes.
Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-087-1

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