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The Hunt – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

The Hunt

by David Annandale

The screams are growing louder.

You know they are. Ever since they began, more than a month ago now, the wails have torn the nights apart with greater ferocity. The sounds claw at the darkness. You can almost see the gashes, bright as lightning, lingering as guilt. You can almost see them. When you close your eyes, they are there in your personal darkness, flashing and throbbing with each peak of the howls. You don’t close your eyes often, though. Not if you can help it. Because there is something you can see.

You see what is screaming. You see the spectral host. The screams are louder because the phantoms are closer. Night after night, they draw nearer. They are coming for you, Bered Davan. They first appeared as a foul glimmer on the horizon, barely visible to you, invisible to anyone else. With each fall of dark, they have closed in. It has been a gradual approach, though they are close enough now that you can see that they are racing wildly to reach you. The ground they cover is not the same as that which you tread. They must cross great ethereal distances before they reach you. That is a small comfort, but at least it exists. You still have some time. A little, but it is yours to act in, however you choose to do so.

Have you been choosing wisely? You think not, though it is becoming more and more difficult to think. You have slept so little since the howling began. You never sleep at night now, and only in brief fits during the day. Time, yes, but so little. So very, very little. Like a tide, the host’s approach is imperceptible moment by moment. Like a tide, it cannot be stopped. Unlike a tide, it will never recede.

The spectres will come until they fall upon you. The end will be bad. You should try to fight them. You don’t think you can. You know you cannot defeat such a horror on your own. You know you are strong. But you also know that you lack strength enough to try. And so your portion of shame grows, for this, witch hunter, is not how you should face your end.

You have been at the casement of your bedchamber all night. Your quarters, in the peak of a thin tower near the centre of the Free City of Everyth in the realm of Ghyran, give you a fine perspective of encroaching fate. You have spent the hours of darkness looking out over the steeply gabled, moss-covered roofs below, watching your doom, futilely covering your ears against the shrieks. You watch the host as you would a storm. Its movements are furious, though it closes in slowly. You can see it far better than you would like. What started as a glow, and then a mist with dreadful purpose, has become an army. You see the shapes of spectres.

You see the thing that leads them. It is the thing of screams. It is the thing that will destroy you. You even have a name for this horror. Banshee.

This knowledge grants no power. It brings only greater terror.

Dawn breaks, the arrival of grey in the sky that you await with such fervour every night. You try to think of it as a surcease, though you know it is an illusion. The fear is undiminished. The gift of dawn is the silence of the screams, the vanishing of the host. The absence is a lie, because the spectres will be that much closer when night comes again. If you cannot see them, though, and you cannot hear them, then perhaps you will sleep, if only a little. In the slow, twilight hour when Hysh and Ulgu exchange their roles in the dance, when night sighs its last and day gathers its breath, you have found the pause between vigilance and duty. Here alone is the pitiful fragment that is all that remains of rest for you.

You rise from your casement chair and stumble towards the straw mattress that lies in the corner of your chamber. Your quarters are an elevated cell. You disdain luxuries. The chair and the table are carved from aged, fallen timber. A chest holds your clothes and your weapons. There is nothing else. You need nothing else. Nothing else except sleep.

On this day, that is denied you. You lie down, and there is a knock at your door. You contain your sigh, because it might be heard, and you rise again. You take a moment, seeking to gather your energy and your dignity.

As if there were any way to hide the haggard sag of your face.

Your sunken, haunted eyes.

You open the door to Kolth, your servant.

‘Forgive me for waking you, witch hunter,’ he says, his eyes lowered. He has never had the courage to look directly at your face. He is loyal, and he is fiercely proud to serve you as you serve Sigmar, but he fears you, too, and the judgement that you wield. ‘Your help is urgently needed.’

‘Who by?’

‘Thevena Pasala, master.’

It is good that Kolth stares at the floor. Otherwise, he would see your eyes widen at that name. For a long time now, since before even you became a witch hunter, it is a name you cannot hear without a painful spasm of guilt. Today, though, hope flares in your chest. She has asked for you, for your help.

You never dared look to her for redemption. Now, perhaps, it is offered.

You cannot help but think this is a sign. There might yet be a way of halting the doom that comes for you.

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Warhammer horror

A Black Library Publication

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

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustrations by Dave Greco and Alex Boyd.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-619-7

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