Contents

Cover

Ushoran: Mortarch of Delusion – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Chapter One

Kosomir Vornarov of Rimerock raised his eyes from the sprawling map on the table before them.

‘Tell me again,’ he commanded. He needed to be certain that these people understood their roles in the assault to come. His Prime Commander, Ramius, his neatly trimmed beard the colour of polished steel, moved his leather-gloved hand over the map of the city once called Breach.

‘I shall ride the perimeter,’ Ramius said, ‘bolstering the cordon where it threatens to break or buckle.’

Gramlek, the High Artillerist, spoke next. ‘Gun crews will be stationed here, here, and here,’ the duardin said gruffly, indicating three opposed points on the map. ‘We’ll open with bombardment before the Stormcast sweep in, and we’ll have Freeguild gunners massed every hundred yards on the ridge.’

Kosomir looked to Sir Yorick, his oldest and most experienced arch-knight. The old man’s beard and flowing hair were still largely black, his advancing age only betrayed by flecks of grey at his temples.

‘Your cavaliers?’ Kosomir asked.

‘Six units,’ Yorick intoned, his voice soft, almost hollow. ‘At these points. Our task is to harry the flesh-eaters driven out by the Stormcast.’

Kosomir regarded the arch-knight. Yorick had been a stalwart servant of Kosomir’s family since Kosomir’s own, now-departed mother had been a girl. Knowing Yorick so well allowed Kosomir to see that something ate at the old man now: how his eyes remained fixed upon the map, vacant and unfocused.

Kosomir knew what weighed upon old Yorick. But he would not embarrass him by speaking of the matter in front of the war council. He was on the cusp of thanking Yorick for his clear statement of intent when another member of the council interrupted.

‘My swords and spears will back up the cavalry,’ Lord General Gavral broke in, unbidden. ‘If any of those scampering abominations scuttle past Yorick, we’ll stop them on the heights.’

Kosomir studied his old friend. Gavral was a merchant’s son, of an age with Kosomir himself. They’d grown up together, been schooled and trained together, collected bruises together in the tilt or sparring yards, and bled together as young men in the Howling Vale Freeguard. Gavral’s position of command and responsibility would have made Kosomir proud… had he not known the truth about the Lord General’s loyalties.

Betray nothing here and now, a voice inside Kosomir urged. His time will come…

Kosomir forced a smile.

‘As ever, my hounds guards my flock.’

‘And what of us, my lord?’ asked Maksem.

Kosomir looked to the mercenary captain – a powerfully built, middle-aged brawler with the look of a hungry wolf. His left eye, lost long ago in the heat of battle, was covered by a leather patch, but his right yet shone out of his sun-darkened face, clear and blue as a glacial lake.

‘Skirmishers,’ Kosomir said. ‘While Gavral’s forces hold the ridge, Yorick’s cavaliers will circle the ruins. Your Marauders will provide a second line of defence, so that none might reach the outer cordon.’

Kosomir had hired Maksem’s Marauders – a Freeguild of bruisers, brawlers, hunters and killers from Simmrog – to bolster his local forces. Maksem and his soldiers had not come cheap, but they had proven themselves over the past three months, following Kosomir’s orders without question, showing neither fear nor hesitation in the heat of battle.

‘And the rules of engagement?’ Maksem asked, eye glinting in his olive-skinned face.

‘No quarter, no mercy,’ Kosomir said without hesitation, then let his gaze sweep over all present around the map table. ‘Today’s assault, comrades, is a retaliation. It is our answer to decades of suffering. Today, we destroy the ghouls in their nest. Today, we avenge our slaughtered ancestors. We protect our fellows and neighbours who are still dying in vicious, unprovoked attacks such as we have seen on our borders. This land will be cleansed of its most vile infection.’

‘And what of the Stormcast, my lord?’ Prime Commander Ramius asked. ‘Should they not be part of this war council?’

Kosomir shrugged. ‘The Stormcast know their role in this, and we all know ours. To it, comrades. Let us usher in a brighter future than our parents or their parents ever dreamed of.’

Kosomir let all of them see his face – the light in his eyes, the hope and determination.

‘Adversity is the forge of strength, comrades,’ Kosomir said. ‘Keep sacred thy conviction and wash the lands clean with blood.’

‘Sigmar provides,’ all present said in chorus.

‘Sigmar provides,’ Kosomir answered. ‘To your posts.’

Outside, Kosomir separated Yorick from the others as they emerged from the pavilion and hurried away to their separate tasks.

‘How fares your heart, old friend?’ Kosomir asked quietly.

The arch-knight sighed. ‘Willing, Master Patriarch,’ Yorick said unconvincingly.

Kosomir laid a hand on the old man’s pauldroned shoulder. ‘We’ll slaughter them,’ he said, hoping Yorick heard the quiet determination in his voice. ‘To the last. For Elara.’

Yorick’s eyes glinted. He offered a forced half-smile, a silent nod, then continued to join his cavaliers. Kosomir watched as the seasoned old horseman trudged away.

Little more than a month prior, Yorick’s niece – a lovely, dark-haired maid named Elara – had disappeared. She’d been in a party tasked with delivering the afternoon meal to labourers in Rimerock’s barley fields. Reports suggested that she lingered to flirt with a handsome young farmhand before hurrying away to catch up with her companions. Somewhere between the fields and the place where she should have reached her fellow volunteers, Elara had vanished.

For all the weeks from that day until the present, Kosomir had sensed Sir Yorick’s grief every time the old arch-knight was in his presence.

We’ll punish them, Yorick, Kosomir thought. Today, we shall exact our long-overdue vengeance for Elara and hundreds like her over the past century.

Kosomir turned to be on his way. He found a shadowy figure in a cloak and cowl waiting for him, just a few steps away.

‘Master Patriarch,’ the cloaked figure said, voice smooth, like spider-silk.

‘Lord Lesomir,’ Kosomir said, struggling to hide his shock. ‘I thought you remained at Rimerock, with the rest of the Conclave.’

Lesomir – the Hidden Hand of Rimerock’s Grand Conclave – pulled back the cowl of his riding cloak. He was just past sixty, grey-white hair and beard fastidiously trimmed, his handsome face smooth and barely lined.

‘I was moved to join you here,’ Lord Lesomir said. ‘This is a great day. I could not let you ride into battle without my blessing. You know you’ve always been like a son to me.’

Kosomir swallowed a bitter retort. Aye, like a son… a son you’re hoping to see fall today.

‘And you, like a second father,’ Kosomir said, affecting a smile and laying one hand upon the old statesman’s shoulder. ‘Your blessings are most welcome.’

‘You know,’ Lesomir said, easing nearer, ‘there is no need for you to take the field today. No one will think you a coward if you stay behind the lines to command.’

Kosomir’s gaze hardened. ‘Four generations past, my family led the first settlers into the Vale,’ he said. ‘For all those years, we have bled and died keeping the Flesh-eater Courts and all other threats from destroying what we’ve built. If this is the day we finally destroy them, I must be on the field. I don’t just owe that to the living, but also to the dead.’

A soft glint in Lesomir’s eyes suggested he was moved by Kosomir’s words.

Kosomir fought the urge to offer an ironic smile. Pangs of regret, old friend? Do you only now realise that betting against my victory and planning for my removal were foolish?

‘Adversity is the forge of strength,’ Lesomir said.

‘Sigmar provides,’ Kosomir answered, and continued on his way through the woods.

Enjoy your last days of freedom, Kosomir thought as he walked on, alone. When the flesh-eaters are dealt with, you and your conspirators will be next…

A soft mist still lay upon the world, along with a still, almost sacred silence. As Kosomir marched towards where his squire and horse waited, he saw knots of pikemen and gunners along the ridge on his left, forming ranks as squadrons of armoured arch-knights and cavaliers checked their mounts and front-line skirmishers made sure their weapons were sharp.

His people would prove their mettle today, as would he.

Weaving through the tall ash and pine of the forest, Kosomir came to the place where his young squire, Mircea, had tethered his horse. The dark, muscled destrier cropped at the dewy grass as the man examined its tack. Just beyond where Mircea and the horse waited, giant shapes hulked in the fog, clad in night-black plate edged in gold. A thirty-strong conclave of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer – their secret weapon. As Kosomir approached his tethered mount, the giants began to utter strange sounds, a slow dirge chanted in rasping tones that made the still, pre-dawn forest feel like the site of a secret funeral. Mircea’s sallow face grew a shade paler, his mouth pressing into a doubtful frown. Kosomir clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Ready?’ he asked, nodding towards the destrier.

‘Ready, Master Patriarch,’ Mircea answered, giving a slight bow as he spoke. ‘Your sabre is oiled and sharpened, and a spare blade hangs by your pommel.’

‘Very well,’ Kosomir said. ‘To your post.’

‘Master…’ Mircea hesitated, in no hurry to leave Kosomir’s side. ‘I thought I could ride into battle beside you? You may need–’

‘What I need in the heat of battle,’ Kosomir said mildly, ‘is freedom to move, to bear no concern for the young man beside me riding into his first bloodletting. I shall be safer if I know you are safe, boy. That is why I seconded you to Lord General Gavral’s rearguard.’

Mircea stole a glance at the chanting Stormcast.

‘I don’t like those songs of theirs,’ he confided. ‘They sound morbid… even sinister.’

Kosomir shrugged. ‘Then think of the flesh-eaters, and their skulls thumping to the ground to the beat of those bleak melodies.’

The young man nodded. He seemed on the cusp of departing, rocking back and forth on his booted feet.

‘Speak, Mircea,’ Kosomir said. ‘What troubles you?’

‘Should you ride into battle beside them, my lord?’ Mircea asked, jerking his head towards the Stormcast. ‘Is your life not too precious to spend so wantonly?’

‘This is my war,’ Kosomir said, drawing his gloves from his belt and sliding his rough hands into them. ‘If I am not in the van at the tip of the spear, why should anyone follow me? Everyone now surrounding Breach, waiting for the bloody conflict to come, risks something. I would be no man at all – no ruler, certainly – if I was not willing to risk as much.’

A proud smile crept onto Mircea’s face. ‘I’ll go then, lord.’ He gave a final bow. ‘See you… after.’

‘Stand, Mircea,’ Kosomir said. ‘Do your duty. Make me proud.’

The young man marched away, growing indistinct in the morning fog.

Kosomir swung into his saddle and nosed his destrier round towards the Stormcast. Despite his bravado, the war dirge made his own skin grow clammy as he approached. He surveyed the ruins looming on a rocky hillock in the distance.

Once, many generations prior, that fortified settlement was called Breach. It had been the first and brightest hope of his forebears. They had come to the Howling Vale when no other mortals dared dwell there, when monstrous predators natural and unnatural held sway, when this valley and the mountains that hemmed it in might as well have been the precipice of an abyss.

But they had built their settlement against all odds. First, it was a simple fort surrounded by earthen ramparts, then a stout fortress of stone and mortar, and then, year by year, a sprawling bastion of towers, keeps, and thick curtain walls.

Unfortunately, the ghouls that had once infested the caverns beneath Breach refused to abandon their home. For the fifty-odd years of its existence, Breach fought a never-ending war against a Flesh-eater Court that refused to surrender that parcel of ground. In the end, it was untenable. The flesh-eaters were prolific and ravenous; they didn’t tire as ordinary men did, and the bloody ruckus of war seemed only to lend them strength. Breach was abandoned. The seat of power in the Howling Vale shifted northward to its sister settlement, Rimerock, and the site fell into ruin, reclaimed by the horrors that Kosomir now hoped to exterminate.

He regarded the once-proud settlement: how its sagging curtain wall enclosed a jumble of collapsed towers and caved-in rooftops, how it rose on a broad, jutting promontory of stone between the curving spurs of foothills trailing down from the mountain above them; how that promontory was surrounded by a broad, empty depression, like a massive cauldron or a drained moat, and how the spurs of the foothills that ringed in that depression bent towards one another to the south-west.

Even with the morning fog clinging to the world around him, Kosomir could see his forces encircling the ruins. He had mustered every able hand in the Howling Vale – nine hundred regular Freeguild and Freeguard, mounted cavaliers, and arch-knights. Maksem’s Marauders added another one hundred and twenty, and extraordinarily, Lethis had dispatched thirty Anvils of the Heldenhammer.

By sheer will and profligate spending, Kosomir had mobilised every able body in his domain and lured a few more in from the outside. It was his dogged petitions that had brought the Stormcast. And now, all converged on this cold autumn morning to wage the decisive battle. Breach was surrounded, and soon, the bowl of empty ground beneath the ruins would be stained with abhorrent blood.

‘To ride in our company is to endanger yourself, Lord Kosomir,’ a low voice said at Kosomir’s elbow. ‘I would once more urge you to reconsider.’

Kosomir turned to find the only mounted member of the Stormcast conclave, Lord-Aquilor Lorros, at his side. The Stormcast’s massive eagle-faced gryph-charger screeched in answer to its master’s warning. Kosomir stared into the shadowed eyeholes of the Lord-Aquilor’s great helm.

‘I am responsible for these lands, Lord-Aquilor – these are my people. If I cannot hazard myself for their benefit, what purpose do I serve?’

The Lord-Aquilor seemed to chew on those words for a moment. ‘Very well, then,’ he said. His voice sounded like a great stone rolling into place before a tomb. ‘Stay close beside me. I shall do my best to shield you.’

‘And I you,’ Kosomir replied mordantly, offering a tiny smirk.

One of the hulking, armoured forms among the gathered Stormcast advanced towards them. It was the conclave’s field commander, Lord-Celestant Selhaine.

‘The mists are thinning,’ the Lord-Celestant informed Kosomir, voice as dry as desert sand. ‘We can wait no longer.’

Kosomir squared his shoulders. ‘Then let us signal the gunners.’

Lord-Celestant Selhaine turned and raised one fist above her head. In answer to her silent command, a bow-wielding Judicator nocked an arrow and launched it high into the air above the trees that sheltered them. The arrow bled burning embers and stuttering skeins of blue-white energy as it rocketed towards the apogee of its arc.

Kosomir waited, teeth grinding.

An instant later, the morning’s sacred stillness was obliterated by the thunder of duardin cannons. On the promontory, the ancient walls and sagging towers of Breach shuddered and belched smoke and dust, assailed by the artillery bombardment.

Now it begins, Kosomir told himself, struggling to keep his breathing even, his nerves steeled. A new day for the Howling Vale and the Free City of Rimerock.

‘Blaze with the fires of hate, brothers and sisters!’ Lord-Celestant Selhaine cried, her rasping voice like a blade scraped over a whetstone. ‘Stoke the wrath within! Purge this land of its long-festering infection! Now – on me!’

The Lord-Celestant broke into a run down a dirt road that snaked out of the forest and extended along an eroded causeway stretching towards the ruins of Breach. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer fell in behind her, their war dirge’s tempo providing the perfect rhythmic counterpoint to their steady, quick-step charge. The moment they cleared the tree line, Gramlek’s cannons went silent.

Four Stormcast bearing shining wings leapt skyward, one after another, swooping on aetheric winds towards the ruined city. Kosomir spurred his destrier, and beside him, Lord-Aquilor Lorros charged, his starbound blade held high.

Now, mother, Kosomir thought, keeping the ruins of Breach fixed before him. Now you’ll know what your son is capable of. The Howling Vale shall be delivered, and it shall be my hand that delivers it.

Ahead, the first wave of Stormcast barrelled over the stone bridge that fed through Breach’s western gate. Beyond that gate and the barbican squatting above it, Kosomir saw nothing but a roiling haze of smoke and pulverised stone. But, still, he heard them: hundreds of screeching abhorrants fleeing their subterranean vaults, crying out in alarm as destruction incarnate rushed towards them.

Then they were thundering over the bridge and through the gate. All the gathering light of the morning turned to grey-black twilight as soot and dust swallowed Kosomir. His lungs clogged, and his eyes streamed tears. In the half-dark, ghouls dashed to and fro, scrambling from half-collapsed doorways, leaping down from balconies and sloping rooftops. They ran behind the abandoned inns and into the crooked alleys, inside the shuttered houses and the old stores with their skewed hanging signs.

Arrows and javelins charged with Azyrite lightning rained down from overhead, and fifty yards before him, the first wave of Stormcast collided with a throng of flesh-eaters that had crowded into a passage where the streets narrowed.

Kosomir yanked on his destrier’s reins as pale, hairless faces with red-black eyes and gaping maws charged from the mephitic mists.

Lord-Aquilor Lorros’ gryph-charger found its claws and sabre-sharp beak more than a match for the flesh-eaters, while its rider brought his starbound blade down and up again in swift succession, bisecting and dismembering their hurtling bodies.

Kosomir unleashed all the fury, all the hatred that he’d spent a lifetime cultivating for those monsters in the shapes of men. As he thrust and slashed, his mount reared and snorted, using its iron-shod hooves as blunt weapons. Flesh-eaters hissed, screamed, fell bleeding or dead – but more always took their place.

A Lord-Heraldor’s battlehorn echoed throughout the city. In answer, the smoke-shrouded world lit up with the skeins of Azyrite lightning and radiant, arcane energy. The Stormcast, as one, surged forward. In the cacophony, Kosomir heard Lord-Celestant Selhaine exhort her companions to follow, for Sigmar’s glory, as Lord-Castellant Argus held his warding lantern high, its holy light piercing the haze, providing a beacon to guide the assault. Their onslaught and the energies they unleashed were too much for the flesh-eaters to bear. The line of abhorrants blocking the street collapsed.

Kosomir spurred his destrier’s flanks. The horse lurched forward at a gallop. Now, his world was all motion and speed. The screams of flesh-eaters and the grim orders volleyed between Stormcast were mere background noise: it was Kosomir’s deep, ragged breathing, his pounding pulse, the snort of his galloping horse and the sound his sabre’s blade slicing flesh that defined his world.

A great knot of ghouls dashed from the cover of a darkened alleyway on Kosomir’s right. They sped towards him and his mount, raking them both with diseased claws, snapping with their mouths full of sharp, thorn-like teeth. Kosomir’s sabre rose and fell, slicing flesh and cleaving bone. The fiends’ foul hands grasped at the edge of Kosomir’s furs and mail coat and tore into his tabard. His face and hands were slick with the ichor-like blood of his enemies, but still they swarmed, evil eyes alight, talons eager.

Then, a blinding white light cut through the smoke and haze like an arcing sword. Kosomir was forced to shut his eyes against the glare, but the monstrous un-men surrounding him were terrified by it. They fell to their knees, shielding their eyes, screaming as though the light burned their flesh.

Kosomir dared a look. A Lord-Veritant strode towards him, her lantern of abjuration providing the blinding holy light that paralysed the ghouls surrounding him. She prayed as she strode, hurling Sigmar’s blessings like flaming arrows, and when she was finally within reach, her judgement blade flashed, cleaving one flesh-eater in twain and separating another’s head from its stooped shoulders.

Emboldened, Kosomir launched his own counter-attack. He wheeled his horse around, slashing at any scuttling body. In moments, those who had thought to murder him lay dead or had fled.

The near-blinding light from the Lord-Veritant’s lamp dimmed.

‘The fighting grows fiercer as we thin their numbers, Master Patriarch,’ the Lord-Veritant said. ‘I suggest you seek more open ground.’

Kosomir started to swing his destrier back round the way they’d come. The Lord-Veritant raised her lamp and pointed.

‘Not that way, my lord. There, beyond the town square – egress onto the killing fields! Your sword will be as well wetted there as here.’

Does she think me a coward? Kosomir thought. A craven who would shun the thick of battle for safer climes?

He almost gave voice to his thoughts – but swallowed them an instant later.

Above, thick, dark clouds coalesced. The Stormcast mages were summoning the might of Sigmar’s storm. As he watched, the clouds blackened. Peals of thunder came, followed by luminous, down-slashing webs of lightning that made him quake. For all his nerve amongst the ghouls, he felt the truth of himself here: a fragile mortal dangerously close to this wild, godlike power.

He offered a nod of thanks to the Lord-Veritant and spurred his destrier towards the massive crack in the city’s curtain wall.

Below, in the broad, cauldron-like depression surrounding Breach, pale bodies clambered for escape from the ever-tightening noose of slaughter. Kosomir guided his horse down the rocky slope that Breach perched upon towards the level ground at the bottom of the bowl, where the fighting was fiercest. Just as the ground levelled beneath him, a shrieking abhorrant charged from the fray. Never allowing his mount to slow its charge, Kosomir lashed out with his sabre, and the creature flopped to the rocky earth.

On he rode, foul blood now painting his face.

Some distance to his right, Yorick’s cavaliers tore back and forth, skewering their prey on lowered lances, pinning them with hurled javelins, fletching them with arrows loosed from horseback. Farther on, where the hills rose towards the ridge above, Ramius sent his own riders and infantry towards any flesh-eaters that punched through Yorick’s line of death. At the fringes of the mounted forces, Kosomir saw smaller knots of Freeguilders in motley, mismatched armour – Maksem’s Marauders, eager to earn their keep and justify the expense of their contract.

Trapped ghouls huddled at the bottom of the bowl made by the surrounding ridges. More streamed down from the ruins, desperate to escape the fury of the Stormcast.

Gramlek’s guns thundered from the heights, barrels lowered to spray grapeshot into the flesh-eaters now clawing their way up the ridge towards the forest. As Kosomir’s eyes were drawn to the booming of one cannon, another fired farther down the line, then another. Between the cannon positions, massed handgunners fired at will.

The slaughter – so swift, so sure, so horrifically sublime – made Kosomir’s heart beat faster in his chest, pulse skirling in his ears like a war-drum.

We’re winning, Kosomir realised. We can destroy them – here, now, this day!

There came a terrible, nightmarish roar, like a living storm bearing down, its thunder felt as tremors in the earth itself. Kosomir turned towards the cacophony – towards Breach, on its promontory – and saw a new spell-storm summoned by the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. The tempest seemed alive; great jagged skeins of lightning blasted down to obliterate the ruins those ghouls thought of as their haven. As Kosomir watched, an old keep imploded, venting smoke and dust into the sky. More lightning sundered the foundations of nearby towers and brought those toppling into one another.

It’s beautiful, Kosomir thought. Their fear, our power. Their suffering, our victory.

Through debris billowing out from the rent curtain wall, more flesh-eaters fled down into the bowl, onto the killing fields, as towering Stormcast Eternals strode in their wake, driving them with almost indecent ease towards open ground.

We can’t let them re-form on the field, Kosomir thought. These might be the last – but if they mass here in this gully, there’s the chance they could overwhelm us…

A plan quickly formed in his mind. He spurred his horse towards Captain Maksem. The Freeguild commander was dashing between troops amassed in squares of twelve or fifteen soldiers, each set thirty yards apart. A few unwary ghouls saw Kosomir’s rapid approach and dared attack. He rode them down.

‘Captain Maksem!’ he shouted. ‘Break these squares! Spread your soldiers out in a broad column, three rows deep!’

Maksem’s single useful eye blinked. ‘We can’t defend ourselves in lines if we’re surrounded, m’lord!’

‘You need only stand for moments,’ Kosomir shouted back. ‘I’ll join Yorick’s cavaliers. We’ll drive the flesh-eaters towards your waiting lines. A tightening noose!’

The Freeguild captain gave an embittered shrug. ‘Your coin, your orders, my lord. Squares! Form lines! Three deep!’

As Maksem’s Marauders scurried to re-form, Kosomir threaded a jagged path through the slaughter, angling towards old Yorick. The veteran arch-knight was working his mount to a lather, shuttling between his cavalier units, barking orders and closing gaps.

‘I need a broad line of horses!’ Kosomir shouted as he reached Sir Yorick. ‘Gather the flesh-eaters into a mass and drive them right into the waiting steel of Captain Maksem’s Freeguild!’

Yorick made a quick assessment of his riders.

‘My lord, if we try to form now, while so many flesh-eaters have been loosed–’

‘We have to cull them,’ Kosomir snarled, unwavering. ‘As many as possible, as quickly as possible. We drive them towards Maksem’s lines, and when they’ve been slaughtered, we round up and drive even more – but we must move swiftly!’

Yorick hesitated, then gave a curt nod. He raised the war-horn at his side. His cavaliers, wherever they were upon the field, heard their commander’s call and converged. In moments, a ragged cordon of thirty riders, with Yorick on one wing and Kosomir on the other, had formed. Kosomir lifted his sabre.

‘On me! The horns of the bull!’

Kosomir’s spurs bit deep into his destrier’s flank. The beast leapt forward. Thirty riders on heavy horses thundered at his side. The ghouls littering the field before them had only two choices – to flee or risk being ridden down. Most obeyed their panic and scattered before the horses.

Kosomir kept his eyes fixed upon Maksem’s line in the near distance. The closer they drew, the harder he drove his horse, drawing his edge of the cavalry line forward to create a barrier against flesh-eaters seeking escape on the flanks. At the far end of the line, Yorick matched his manoeuvre. Too late, the flesh-eaters realised that they were being driven towards slaughter. A few of them – the brave, the ferocious – tried to exhort their companions, but in vain. The massed bodies slammed headlong into Maksem’s Marauders.

Lowered pikes and halberds skewered the unwary. Heavy maces and morning stars crushed skulls. Heads and limbs were severed by battle axes and bloodied swords. In moments, the choreographed collision became wanton slaughter as Maksem’s Marauders and the cavaliers encircling the ghouls slew and cleaved and murdered with abandon.

Kosomir’s own fierce, berserker rage only began to subside when his living adversaries thinned. The field around them was littered with pale, bloodied corpses, and every one of Kosomir’s allies – from old Yorick himself to the most tender-faced youth in Maksem’s company – was covered in ghoul gore.

Kosomir’s eyes swept the field and the ridges surrounding it. They had turned the tide. The flesh-eater forces on the field were now ragged, scant. The Stormcast lumbered among them, cutting down or crushing stragglers wherever they found them.

From the heights, Gavral’s Freeguard drove the last few desperate flesh-eaters back down the slopes into the bottom of the bowl, towards their swift and bloody fate.

‘We’ve done it,’ Kosomir said aloud. He was trembling with terror and joy. ‘By Sigmar, we’ve done it!’

‘My lord,’ a voice said, barely audible above the din surrounding Kosomir. ‘Master Patriarch.’

Kosomir spun his horse towards the voice.

A small-framed man staggered towards him, hands uplifted as if begging alms. For a moment, Kosomir thought it might be one of his reserve militia, rallying to his liege lord, for the man was dressed in the sort of stained, studded leather gambeson that his militia favoured. But as the figure drew nearer, Kosomir saw the truth: his teeth protruded slightly, the rims of his eyes seemed blackened as if with blood, and his skin was sickeningly pale, beyond the ordinary shade of most Shyishans.

‘My brave prince,’ the man cried, seemingly unaware of his affliction. ‘They shall sing songs of this day, I know it! You shall be celebrated, my lord – they shall make you a Sigmarite saint!’

The man reached towards Kosomir as if to touch the hem of his bloodied tabard, as if it was some holy relic that could cure him. Kosomir braced himself in the saddle and brought one leather boot up in a sharp outward arc. His kick sent the man reeling. The moment he hit the ground on his back, Kosomir yanked on his horse’s reins. The destrier reared. When its hooves came crashing down, they landed upon the man, who was still muttering praises where he lay. These were cut off mid-sentence. The horse snorted and, interpreting his master’s mood, stamped on the man’s skull for good measure.

Kosomir bent forward, patting the beast’s lathered and blood-caked shoulder.

‘There now, boy,’ Kosomir whispered. ‘It’s all over… The fighting’s done.’

‘Kosomir?’ a voice rasped above the subsiding din of battle.

Kosomir sought the speaker. Lord-Celestant Selhaine approached and plunged her bloodied warblade into the frosty earth before her. She removed her sigmarite helm, revealing an angular, pinched face. Kosomir couldn’t help but feel he’d see something similar if he lifted the lid of a tomb in one of Rimerock’s cemeteries. He couldn’t quite meet that sorrowful glare as he answered her call.

‘My knights scour the ruins as we speak,’ the Lord-Celestant said. ‘If any of the abhorrants remain, they shall be destroyed.’

‘Your bravery and determination are no mere legend,’ Kosomir said. ‘I thank you, humbly, for the service you’ve done us this day.’

The Lord-Celestant’s expression was unreadable. Her response took an uncomfortably long time. ‘We go where we are needed,’ she rasped. ‘If you will excuse me…’

Without further elaboration, she placed her helm upon her head, took up her warblade, and strode back across the killing fields towards the smoke-shrouded ruins.

A long stone’s throw from where Kosomir sat on his horse, there came a strange commotion: human laughter and what sounded like taunts mixed with the bestial sounds of ghouls. Approaching at a trot, he saw that Maksem’s Freeguilders had surrounded one of the ghouls – a barely transformed creature, still in a soldier’s uniform, yet on the very cusp of losing its humanity. The sellswords stood in a loose circle, pikes and halberds hemming the creature in. A guttural moan of fright and desperation provoked more laughter.

Kosomir nudged his horse towards them. As he neared, the sellswords thrust out their pikes and swiped the blades of their halberds and glaives, tearing at the man’s clothes and his exposed arms and legs with deliberate pressure. The little wounds were driving it mad.

Kosomir felt a cold satisfaction: the monsters that had so long terrorised his people, the living nightmares that had cast malevolent shadows over generations of settlers in the Howling Vale, were now experiencing some measure of the terror they had sown. That an hour ago this man had been one of his own army mattered not; there was something in the heart, a feebleness of the mind – he was sure of it – that led to a person’s body and soul accepting the taint. Better to be rid of all who would succumb so easily. He caught the eye of one of the sellswords and gave a small, approving nod.

Turning away, he noted a messenger speeding across the field on foot towards him: a young pikeman, his livery marking him as one of Gavral’s Freeguard. He was sweaty and streaked with blood.

‘Master Kosomir!’ the young pikeman shouted. ‘Come quickly, m’lord – there’s about to be a mutiny!’

‘A mutiny?’ Kosomir spat as though the word were another taint.

‘On the east side of Breach, lord, just past the north tower.’

Kosomir cursed under his breath. Never a moment’s peace…

He spurred his mount across the churned, blood-soaked field. He passed Stormcast and mortal soldiers moving among the fallen flesh-eaters, delivering death blows to those who still had any life in them. Gradually, the promontory and the ruined city upon it swung past on Kosomir’s right.

The moment Kosomir rounded the promontory bend, he saw the disturbance: a large group of his fighters, in the grip of some frenzy, pointing fingers and barking in one another’s faces. They came from every unit – pikemen, skirmishers, gunners, even a few cavaliers and at least two armoured arch-knights. The pikemen appeared to have a group of prisoners surrounded – prisoners that the soldiers outside the circle were trying to get to.

Among the contending soldiers, Kosomir spotted Mircea. His young squire seemed caught in the middle of something, bargaining with separate parties. He looked terrified.

Kosomir reined his horse in when he was nearly on top of them.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ he boomed. ‘Are you only a feuding rabble now? Mircea, how dare you leave your post!’

Mircea wriggled through the press of bodies. ‘My lord,’ the young man spat breathlessly, ‘they’re trying to slaughter them all!’

‘Slaughter whom?’ Kosomir demanded. ‘Make sense, boy.’

An old gunner with a jowly, hangdog face broke from the jostling group. ‘We know them, my lord,’ the gunner said. His face was haggard and lined, his voice like wind moaning through an old, hollowed-out tree trunk. ‘The taint’s barely on them – they can be saved!’

Before Kosomir could speak again, more voices joined the debate.

‘They’re tainted, they have to die!’

‘They’re newly accursed, perhaps prayers and isolation…?’

‘The arch-lector! Let us take them to her.’

‘Look how timid they are, lord – how weak! They’re still afraid of our spears – afraid of us. They’re still human! They’re begging for our help!’

‘They were turned because they were weak! They’ll drag us down with them!’

As the arguments intensified, Kosomir dismounted. He had just handed his horse’s reins to Mircea when a broad-shouldered arch-knight emerged from the furious crowd, his armour spattered with blood. Sir Yorick. Had he been among them all along?

‘Kosomir,’ the old knight said.

‘What’s happening here, Yorick?’ Kosomir hissed. ‘These people are out of control.’

‘It’s the prisoners,’ Yorick said quietly, suggesting the ghouls in the spear-circle. ‘They’ve been tainted. We think the ghouls were trying to swell their numbers even as we brought them down. Obren saw one of them tipping something into a soldier’s mouth. It looked like blood. Anyway, everyone in the circle is known by someone here. Friends. Relatives. Fathers, mothers, grandparents. Kosomir, even youths, not even old enough to shave… ’

Kosomir edged nearer to the arch-knight. His order came quietly, through gnashed teeth. ‘Their fate has been decided, Yorick. Destroy them.’

Yorick’s sad eyes flicked downwards. He sighed. ‘Aye, lord, but… Elara’s among them.’

Elara… Yorick’s niece, snatched a month before. Kosomir felt a strange twinge of pity for the old man, even as he realised that Yorick was not innocent in the incident unfolding.

‘This is your doing?’ Kosomir said slowly, indicating towards the ghouls held prisoner. ‘You allowed your men to capture these monsters instead of striking them down?’

The arch-knight’s hard, lined face betrayed the emotions warring within him. He edged closer to Kosomir so that his next words brushed against Kosomir’s cheek.

‘The pool, my lord,’ Yorick whispered. ‘The Aqua Ghyranis. If we submerged each of them – baptised them after a fashion–’

‘Silence,’ Kosomir hissed. He’d been so stunned hearing the words ‘Aqua Ghyranis’ from Yorick that he had not given the command as quickly as he should have. ‘I have commanded you never to speak of what you just uttered under the open sky or in the presence of others.’

Yorick nodded, ashamed, even as his eyes beseeched Kosomir. ‘My lord, I beg you. Elara, the others, they–’

‘Are doomed,’ Kosomir snarled. ‘Look at them, Yorick! Look!’

Kosomir gripped the nape of Yorick’s neck, just above his hammered gorget, and shoved his face towards the spectacle. ‘Do you not see their bloodshot gazes? The bones of their arms elongating before our very eyes? Do you not hear the cunning behind their cries?’ Kosomir pointed to a dishevelled man in the circle. ‘Is that the Tomas you commanded on the battlefield? The surgeon who but an hour ago was whole and obeying orders? Where is his eye, Yorick? Why is the flesh gouged from his face? Did he do that to himself, or was it the woman next to him? What madness lives in this taint… What did it latch on to in them?’ Unbidden, his grip on Yorick’s neck strengthened, and his voice became hoarse, decades of wrath welling up in his gut at the sight before them. ‘Who would allow for such an assault on one’s own body? Their minds were wanting, Yorick. They were weak! And now, they’re nothing but hollowed-out murderers. Would you endanger all of us by keeping them among us?’

Tears cut tracks through the dried blood and mud caked on Yorick’s cheeks.

‘Go to them, lord,’ he begged. ‘Speak with them. They are not like the others. They may yet be saved–’

‘You fool!’ Kosomir roared, and shoved Yorick sideways so hard that the arch-knight fell to the churned earth. ‘You coward! Watch now as I show you the meaning of my resolve.’

He strode towards the jostling soldiers and the dozen captured ghouls inside the cordon of spears, halberds, and glaives. The Freeguard created a path for him. He entered the circle and studied the ghouls. Though there were armed men on every side of him and a bloodied sabre in his own hand, he knew that if just one of these creatures chose to attack him, he might not be able to strike in time.

Their faces were vaguely familiar. He could name none of them, certainly, but there was a field labourer he’d seen during his morning rides, a vintner’s boy and a scullery maid from his own household, a clothier from Rimerock’s high street, and a wizened old maker of divine talismans. They all stared back at him, red-black eyes wide, as though they could not believe they stood in the presence of the celebrated Patriarch Kosomir.

From the crowd around him, Kosomir heard cries.

‘Mercy!’

‘Kill them all!’

‘Have pity, good lord!’

‘Destroy the abhorrants!’

But his eyes had fixed upon a face whose name was crystal clear in his mind. Elara.

At first glance, she looked almost normal: her proud, slightly jutting chin, her head cocked in that familiar expression combining curiosity and challenge. But her eyes gave her away. Her eyes, like two red-black marbles. Her teeth, straining behind her human lips as though they could barely be contained.

Kosomir had stolen a thousand glances at Elara over the years, at one of Rimerock’s ceremonies or balls, waiting impatiently for their turn to talk, for her to pose a question to him. His stomach fluttered at the thought of her quick mind, the depth of her wit, the music of her lilting voice, and the poetic instincts revealed in her strange turns of phrase. His admiration for her, his delight in her presence and attention, had born in him an abiding desire.

Now, staring at her, seeing the woman behind the mask of a beast, he thought Elara could read his thoughts – present and past. Her blood-blackened eyes seemed to bore into him, laying him bare…

‘That woman,’ Kosomir said, pointing to Elara. ‘Bind her well and separate her.’

Yorick surged forward. ‘My lord, thank you – but the others?’

‘We’ll take her back for questioning,’ Kosomir continued, ignoring him. ‘She may yet be human enough to educate us on this… weakness.’

A quartet of nearby pikemen rushed into the circle. Elara howled in defiance and tried to avoid capture, to no avail. The pikes and halberds bristling on all sides hemmed her in. In moments, she was dragged from the circle. None of the other ghouls came to her aid.

‘And what of the rest?’ Yorick asked. His eyes glinted with tears.

‘As I commanded.’ Kosomir spoke to the surrounding Freeguard. ‘Collect their heads for display at Rimerock.’

He departed the circle as the soldiers closed their formation and screams of horror rang out. Those who had argued for mercy fell to their knees. The ghouls perished without a fight – almost without a sound.

A hurtling body collided with Kosomir, throwing him sideways. He smelled fear. It was the dog-faced gunner – the one who had interrupted Mircea when Kosomir first arrived. As Kosomir tried to right himself, the Freeguard snarled through gnashed teeth.

‘They’re your subjects!’ he spat. ‘Your subjects and our families! You’re a monster, abandoning them like this! Murdering them!’

Soldiers surged forward. Some sought to aid the angry gunner; more were eager to pry him loose, to defend their patriarch. The man was not simply distraught or angry – he was murderous. His fingers sought Kosomir’s throat. His face was a mask of hatred. Short on options, Kosomir yanked the long, curved dagger from his belt and plunged the blade deep into the gunner’s gut. His attacker stiffened, all the fury and fight bleeding out of him.

The jostling and fighting ceased. All present stared.

The gunner tore himself away from Kosomir, choking, a rope of blood-tinged saliva hanging from his gaping mouth. He studied the bleeding wound, then looked to Kosomir. He seemed furious and amazed, all at once.

Kosomir could no longer stand to look at the man. Without hesitation, he plunged his dagger blade into the gunner’s gut again and again until he sagged to the frosty earth, blood spreading in a wide, dark puddle around him. Then, without a word, Kosomir strode away.

When he reached his horse, the reins held out to him by a stunned Mircea, Kosomir sought his canteen from his saddlebag. He poured water over his bloodied hands, then yanked the reins from Mircea and swung into the saddle. Looking up, he saw that Yorick approached, an expression of stunned misery on his face.

‘That is the price of disloyalty, Sir Yorick,’ Kosomir said. ‘Now… we need to guard these ruins and ensure the monsters don’t return to repopulate them. Little matter the towers are toppled and the keeps all shattered…’

Kosomir’s gaze swept the ridgeline around them. He pointed.

‘I want an outpost there, where that ruined watchtower stands,’ he said, suggesting a rocky knob on a ridge north-east of Breach. ‘And I want you manning it. I grant you four cavaliers and thirty Freeguard.’

Sir Yorick surveyed the hill in question.

‘My lord… so far from Rimerock, so near the monsters’ nest. I fear that position might be too remote, even indefensible.’

Kosomir glared down at Sir Yorick from his saddle.

‘I pray, for your sake, that you are incorrect.’

Without giving the old knight a chance to reply, Kosomir spurred his destrier and angled away across the killing field.

Click here to buy Ushoran: Mortarch of Delusion.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2025.
This eBook edition published in 2025 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 Svetlana Kostina.

Ushoran: Mortarch of Delusion © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2025. Ushoran: Mortarch of Delusion, 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: 978-1-80407-860-0

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
warhammer.com

For absent friends.

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

the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). 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.

* 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.