Contents

Cover

The Tainted Axe – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

The Tainted Axe

Josh Reynolds

‘The grove is singing tonight, Sir Roggen. Be wary.’

Roggen stopped. The voice seemed to come from nowhere, echoing through the tumbledown ruins that lay at the top of the slope.

‘Who speaks?’ Roggen said softly. He was a big man, built for war rather than peace. Even out of his armour, he looked like a warrior. His mane of unkempt hair merged with a thicket-like beard, the better to hide his scarred features, and his rangy limbs were thick with hard-earned muscle. His hand – his good hand – itched for the hilt of his blade. But his sword, along with his war-plate, had been left in his cell, back in the chapterhouse. At the moment, he wore only a simple habit of woven fibres, belted at the waist with a strip of leather. The traditional garb of the knights of the Order of the Furrow.

‘Only me, brother. It is my night to sit watch.’

Roggen looked down. A crooked shape sat in the moonlight, sitting cross-legged beneath the broken remains of what had once been an archway. Roggen had taken the sentry for a stone, at first, due to his stillness. ‘Hygal, is that you?’

‘In the flesh, brother. What remains of it.’ Hygal bent, coughing wetly. The moss-leper’s form was hidden beneath thick burlap robes and a concealing sack-hood, but these did little to conceal the musky stink of his affliction. Beneath the robes, Roggen knew that the other knight’s body would be covered in ever-growing patches of cancerous moss. It ate away at flesh and muscle, leaving only dense, green clumps clinging to the bone. It was a common ailment in these precarious times. When the winds blew hot and damp, carrying spores north from the Verdant Bay, no one was safe. Not even knights.

Mercifully, the afflicted felt little in the way of pain. And despite his illness, Hygal could still wield a blade. A sheathed sword lay across his chest, its hilt rising above his shoulder. Bandaged fingers tapped tunelessly against its length. ‘I heard that you’d returned to us at last, brother. I’m glad to see you’ve come back safe from the wilds of Ghur.’

Roggen lifted his other hand – or what was left of it. A mangled stump, bound in dressings. It hurt, but then, it always hurt these days. Sometimes it was only a little ache. Other times – now, for instance – it was a searing knot of agony that threatened to drag the burly knight to his knees. It was strange to him how something that was no longer there could hurt so badly. That he had lost it in service to a god was some comfort.

He had returned to Ghyran after its loss, seeking a familiar place to heal. The god, Grungni, in whose service he had been hurt, had offered to craft him a fine replacement of silver and steel, but Roggen had turned down the offer. He had half-hoped the arts of his Order might restore his missing limb, or at least alleviate the pain. So far, that had not been the case. ‘Safe, yes. But it shall always hold a piece of me, I fear.’

Hygal laughed until he wheezed. ‘Better a hand than a head, eh?’

‘It was a very good hand, brother.’

Hygal extended his own. Moss was growing between and over the bandages in places. ‘I’d give you one of mine, but… well.’

‘I thank you for the offer, brother, even so.’ Roggen looked past the archway, into the grove. Once, this place had been a chapel of stone, dedicated to some forgotten god or other. Now, its walls were gone, its roof long since fallen in, leaving only a few scattered archways and flat stones underfoot to mark its passing. A cathedral of ironwood trees rose tall, as if reaching towards the stars of Azyr, far above. As Hygal had said, the rustle of the boughs in the wind sounded like singing.

‘Something is abroad in the grove this night. I hear it wandering among the graves of our order. Like loose leaves scraping on stone. I think it is waiting on someone.’ Hygal looked up at him. ‘You should go back to your cell, brother. Let the night keep its secrets.’ He gestured back towards the low wedge of the chapterhouse, where its outer ramparts emerged from the hill. The fortress had been built into the slope centuries earlier – or perhaps the hill had grown up around the fortress. It was hard to say, in Ghyran.

Roggen had followed a winding set of crudely carved stone steps up from those angular walls of stone and wood, to reach the top of the slope, drawn by something he could not give name to. A dream? A compulsion? He could not say. He knew only that something – someone – was waiting for him. ‘I think I am expected, brother,’ he said. ‘But I thank you for the warning.’

Click here to buy The Tainted Axe.

A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustrations by Filipe Pagliuso and Kevin Chin.

The Tainted Axe © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. The Tainted Axe, 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: 978-1-78572-860-0

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.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.