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The Vintage – Extract

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The Vintage

by David Annandale

‘You will command Fovos Keep.’

Ullior Arkhant looked up at Venthor Warfire, and wished he had misheard. The Lord-Celestant of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer looked back at him, waiting for a response.

They were on the roof of the keep’s central tower. The circular rampart gave a commanding view of the bleak lands surrounding Fovos. Once, this had been an agricultural region, but the fields had been swept clear of topsoil many years before, and were now nothing but an expanse of black, wind-blown stone. The keep’s storerooms were large, and it could withstand a siege for a long time on what was in them. To replenish them, though, Fovos depended on caravans reaching it from the distant free cities of Veilgard and Port Sorrow. The routes from anywhere to Fovos were long and uninviting, and the only strategic importance it held was that Venthor’s chamber of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer had come this way in their campaign to free more settlements in Shyish. Their path could just as easily have taken them elsewhere, and Fovos would have remained empty, a shell to be worn down by the centuries and elements. Its position as a point of connection between Veilgard and Port Sorrow was tenuous.

The challenges the keep faced were of concern to Ullior. They were not why Venthor’s words filled him with dread.

In all directions, the stony emptiness stretched for as far as Ullior could see. Coreward, in the far distance, the dark hills rose from the plain. Just barely visible on the highest hill, so far away that it appeared thin as a hair, was the source of Ullior’s dread. The tower was shaped like a twisted claw. Its name was Penumbrial. Ullior felt its presence even when he was not looking in its direction. He had stared at the crooked tower a lot since arriving at Fovos. He had been eager for the campaign to move on. He had not expected he would have to stay.

‘You have proven yourself in battle many times over,’ Venthor continued. ‘Fovos must be held, and it is clear to me that under your command, it will be. Be proud of your new post, Ullior Arkhant. You have done much to earn it.’

‘Wouldn’t I be more useful fighting at your side, Lord-Celestant?’ Ullior asked. ‘There are hard battles awaiting us Edgeward.’

‘There are indeed. But it is important, too, to hold the ground we have captured. That is why your skills are needed here.’

‘The walls of Fovos are strong and high,’ said Ullior. And they were, especially now that they had been repaired and reinforced. The rings of walls were like cliffs, each wall taller and thicker than the last, and it seemed to Ullior that the walls were only there to protect the stores, and the stores were there only to ensure the protection of the walls. Fortification was the sole purpose of the Fovos Keep’s existence.

‘The walls are only as good as their defenders,’ said Venthor. ‘You are the true strength of Fovos Keep.’

Ullior bowed his head in humility. There would be no changing the Lord-Celestant’s mind. But it was torture to think that the Anvils of the Heldenhammer would leave him behind, after he had been part of their battles in Shyish for so many years. And it was a worse torture to think that they were leaving him here.

‘Fovos Keep was your home, was it not?’ Venthor asked.

‘I was born in the village nearby.’

Venthor looked out at the vista of nothingness. ‘What village?’

‘It’s gone now,’ said Ullior. ‘All the villages that surrounded the keep are gone.’ They had left no trace of themselves, no sign that they had ever existed. ‘I can’t even remember its name.’

Involuntarily, he turned his gaze to Penumbrial.

But I can remember what happened to it.

Ullior was a child when she came for his village. How old had he been? He didn’t know. Old enough to walk, too young to work in the fields. His only memory of what had been his home was the day of its death.

He remembered walking down the dusty lane that was the closest the village had to a road. He was carrying a few stalks of wheat, pretending to help with the harvest. It was hot, the rays of Hysh baking the back of his neck. Then a wind suddenly blew cold from Coreward. It snatched the stalks from his grasp, and made Ullior look up. Dark clouds scudded overhead, blotting out the sight of Hysh. They fanned out like a grasping hand, and the hand was reaching out from Penumbrial.

Now a new, deeper stain came from the tower, a darkness of wings beneath the clouds, coming straight for the village. They came fast, flying on the winds of nightmare, and even before they arrived, Ullior was surrounded by people running and screaming in panic.

Ullior ran too. Weeping in terror, he ran for his home, the wood and packed-earth hut that he lived in with his parents. Everyone around left him behind in their flight. He couldn’t keep up. His parents were still in the fields. They were too far away for help.

He never saw what happened to them, though his dreams would show him their fate many, many times, in all its terrible variations.

The cloud of wings descended on the village as he neared the hut. Night had come from the tower of Penumbrial, a night of vampires, and they fell on the people with snarls of delighted hunger.

Ullior was almost at the doorway to the hut when a monster flew through the walls. It was huge, a thing of muscle and fangs. The adult Ullior, the warrior, would know the horror as a Vargheist. The child Ullior saw only an embodiment of the monstrous flying mere feet over his head while his home exploded. Roof and walls flew apart, then collapsed, falling towards Ullior. In his memory, the wreckage fell slowly, gently and gradually as feathers, the sight holding him fast, denying his escape. The hand of fate shaped the fall, and the hut came down over Ullior, but not on top of him. The wooden beams tented as they came down, forming a dark shelter over his crouching form.

He shivered and wept, but he was unharmed. When the groaning of the ruin subsided, the screams from beyond it forced him to open his eyes and peer through the gaps between the splintered timbers.

He witnessed the slaughter of everyone he knew. The vampires swept through the village like a swarm of locusts. Winged horrors snatched their prey into the air, fed, and then dropped the twitching, bleeding bodies. Cloaked predators on foot sprinted from home to home, fast as the wind that had brought them. The screams that came from inside the huts were brief, but agonised. Many of the victims were not killed outright. They were left in the road, helpless and terrified. They were left there by the vampires as offerings to their mistress.

And then she arrived. Anasta Malkorion, the Countess of Dread, strode up the road, her gait both leisurely and majestic. Her high ribbed collar was in the shape of a claw made of blood and terror. It framed her hairless skull. Her flesh was paler than fear, a white so deathly it was tinged with grey and green. Her ratlike fangs protruded from her thin lips. Though she took her time to walk, her head flicked back and forth with short, sudden movements as she caught one scent, and then another. She carried a long sword in one hand. With the other, she cradled a familiar, both feline and rodent, and as hairless as she.

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Warhammer horror

A Black Library Publication Imprint

First published in Great Britain in 2021.by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-747-3

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