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The Interrogator – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Interrogator

Richard Strachan

The important thing was not to panic, Gaspar told himself. They must know it was a mistake, a terrible, terrible mistake.

There was a smell in the air of blocked drains and mould, the sharp metallic hint somewhere of what he hoped wasn’t blood. He sucked another breath in, spat it out, tried to peer through the weave of the sack on his head. Breath ragged, the hood smothering his face, sweat trickling down his forehead. There was a smear of torchlight somewhere off to his left, but everything else was in shadow.

Another drip of sweat coursed down the side of his nose. His hands were chained to a table in front of him, stretched out. It felt like someone had gone out of their way to make the chair he sat on as uncomfortable as possible. There was a constant tension in the small of his back, in his hips, his shoulders.

Tentatively he cleared his throat. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ He tried to muffle a sob. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘there’s been… This isn’t right, someone’s made a mistake, I swear!’

They’d taken him as he was leaving work. Stepping out of the Scrivener’s Guild, pausing a moment to inhale the heady evening scent of Hammerhal before heading home. Then a blow to the kidney that had him seeing fire, a hood thrust over his head, another solid punch to the stomach. The world had tipped, fallen back, broken into shadow and light as the pain rummaged its way through him. He’d felt himself bundled across the pavement, the hiss and slam of a carriage door, the rush of footsteps. A jouncing, rackety journey at speed, the sound of the horse’s hooves like some mad, discordant drumbeat. Then endless flights of stairs, his arms gripped on either side. And finally darkness, and silence, and that smell in the air he hoped wasn’t blood.

‘Please!’ he cried out again. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong!’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ a cold voice said in his ear.

The hood was whipped off his head. After all that darkness, the blaze of the burning torch blinded him. He screwed his eyes shut, heard footsteps, the screech of a chair being pulled out on the other side of the table.

Slowly he opened his eyes. He was in a stone cell, perhaps no more than fifteen feet from end to end. The ceiling was low and dripped with moisture. The torch flames wrinkled weakly against the wall on his left. He could see a door of black ironoak on the other side of the cell, with a narrow metal grille set into it at head height. And between Gaspar and the door, sitting opposite him at the table, was a woman.

A wide-brimmed hat with a tall crown cast her face in shadow. She wore a dark red coat, stained with travel, a pauldron of battered armour on her right shoulder, a pair of worn black leather gloves. He could see the glint of her eyes in the shadow beneath the hat’s brim. Hard eyes. Cold as ice. There was a stack of parchment on the table in front of her.

She folded her arms. ‘Your name is Gaspar Helding,’ she said. ‘You live on the first storey of the tenement block on the corner of Threshing Place. You work as a draftsman for the Scrivener’s Guild on Selstone Avenue, copying and filing requisition documents for the High Architect’s office. Stonemasonry supplies, scaffolding orders… that kind of thing.’

‘Who are you?’ Gaspar squeaked. He cleared his throat, struggled against the chains, tried to inject some force into his voice. ‘What is this? I demand you let me go, this is, it’s… It’s an outrage, I am an innocent man! What do you want with me!’

The woman glanced without interest through the pile of documents. ‘What I want?’ she said. ‘What I want is the truth. Nothing more, nothing less.’

She took off the hat and laid it on the table between them. She had lank blonde hair, cut close at the sides and the back, a lock falling forward over her right eye. She brushed it away. There was a scar against her forehead, he saw, curving down and passing over her cheekbone. It twisted her face slightly on that side, made her seem as if she was scowling. Which, Gaspar was sure, she was most of the time anyway.

‘As for who I am,’ she said. Her eyes flicked up at him. ‘My name is Doralia ven Denst. I’m an agent of the Most Holy Order of Azyr. And you, Gaspar Helding, have found yourself in a world of trouble.’

He tried to laugh then, as if it was all some absurd joke. Some ridiculous prank that he had finally seen through.

‘The Order of Azyr!’ He tried to chuckle, but it still came out as a sob. ‘What in the name of Sigmar would a witch hunter from the Order of Azyr want with me? I’m a draftsman, a copywriter! I’m not important, I’m not…’ He looked at her, pleading. ‘I’m not anything.’

The blow seemed to come out of nowhere, she moved so fast. One moment Gaspar was sitting there with his arms stretched forward on the table, as though begging for mercy, the next there was a pinwheeling spray of white light and he was slumped against the table leg with blood pouring out of his nose.

His arms were twisted round and his legs were askew on the dirty cell floor. A great tide of pain came washing over him, cloying and thick and then sharp and searing. He retched, whimpering with shock. Bubbles of blood and spit popped on his lips. He tried to clamber up onto his knees.

The woman was behind him then. He felt her hands under his arms as she lifted him back into his seat, far stronger than he would have guessed. He winced and shuffled and sat there, still with his arms stretched out. Shuddering, the blood dripping from his nose onto the table.

He couldn’t look at her. He just shook and huffed in breath after breath, waves of burning heat and freezing cold washing over him. The pain in his nose receded to a dull, insistent ache, spreading out to grip his entire skull.

‘Let’s try again,’ the agent said into the silence.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1,D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Thomas Elliott.

The Interrogator © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. The Interrogator, 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.

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ISBN: 978-1-80407-115-1

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