Contents

Cover

Web of Ruin – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Web of Ruin

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Broodmaster Oruthir of the Hollow Barbs was dead. Vexen found the hacked ruin of his corpse arched over a tumble of boulders. About him were the hulking heaps of three Darkoath Savagers, a webwork of red lines showing where his many blades had carved them. There had been too many, though. He was dead, and the spider brood that had made a home in his cloak were already fleeing his cold flesh, creeping under stones or digging into the blood-damp sand. Vexen tried to reach out to them, to touch the seeds of Chaos within their malformed carapaces and make them his own, but he was no Broodmaster.

That was about to be a problem.

The surviving members of Oruthir’s warband were gathering. Four others had fallen in the ambush. They’d started strong, caught the Darkoath column as it wound its way through a canyon near the exhausted varanite workings Vexen knew as Many Sockets. The Darkoath had rallied quickly, though. Oruthir had pushed too far, or else the rest had failed their leader, not strong enough to follow.

Elmeash the Doomweaver let out a long whistle of breath from under her mask. ‘This is the end, then,’ she said.

‘No,’ Vexen replied instantly.

‘Where is the favour of the Eightfold Watcher now?’ she asked plaintively. He saw most of the others nod. Their spider-shell masks were impassive, crafted to strike fear in their enemies, but right now the fear was plain in the human eyes behind them.

‘It is a test,’ Vexen insisted. ‘An invitation to show our strength. If we would have the favour of the Powers we must earn it. What, you think such things are given to all who merely raise a cupped hand?’

‘Oruthir had the Watcher’s favour.’ Elmeash indicated the fallen Broodmaster’s body, his extra arms and joints, the arch of the dead man’s back, the twin segmented claws that his feet had become. All the gifts the Brood so desperately sought, now wasted on a dead man. ‘We have failed. Weakness and foolishness sever us from the Watcher’s web.’

‘Broodmaster Tostveg is on the rise,’ another said. ‘They say he suffered the rapture of a divine transformation and has his third arm now, and fangs. He will take us in.’

‘As sacrifices, no more. And no more would we deserve if we went begging to them!’ Vexen insisted. ‘I shall be Broodmaster.’

The response from the others was less than he might have hoped. And it was true, he could not command the spiders, his form was still little more than merely human. He hauled his own mask up, glowering at them with his mismatched stare.

‘What is this, if not favour?’ he demanded, forcing them to look upon one wide human eye that blinked furiously against the sudden brightness, and a handful of glassy orbs on the other side of his face that could not blink at all. The place where greatness had touched and reworked him. His promise of favour.

‘I shall be Broodmaster and the Hollow Barbs shall endure,’ he insisted, seeing them waver but hold, the last few threads of their common history holding them together for now. Not for long, he knew. He needed a victory.

The Savagers had moved off in good order, but the fight had been bloody and Oruthir’s initial attack had cut them up badly. Perhaps there would be stragglers? Vexen knew the surest way to buy back the gods’ favour was with blood.

The Eightfold Watcher blessed Vexen with more than he could have expected. They followed the Darkoath trail through the canyon and into a badlands of gullies and broken ground, treacherous scree and the occasional half-tumbled watchtower where warbands had raised and then abandoned their fortifications. Here and there were the open-cast pans where shallow veins of varanite had been dug out. Vexen’s thumbs itched for it. Varanite on a bandage across his gashed eye had given him his mark of favour. Varanite and spider blood and the proper invocations would bring him the gifts of a Broodmaster and save the warband from dissolution. But these mines were all worked out long ago.

Then the tracks diverged, and he knew the Watcher was dangling this opportunity down from the tangled strands of fate. Two of the Darkoath had struck out on their own, injury showing in their irregular footprints. Perhaps they did not want to slow their fellows; perhaps they knew their former comrades would open their throats, and feared. Fear had no place in the heart of the Chosen. They had marked themselves as rightful prey, Vexen decided. If the gods would set ready victims in his path, who was he to turn aside?

They heard the sounds of butchery soon after – unfamiliar voices raised in the dusty air, high and shrieking. Not the bellows of the Darkoath, nor would even the Corvus Cabal sound so reedy. Cresting the rise, they discovered that someone – somethings – had already discovered the two luckless Savagers.

It was a wretched slaughter, a score of shrieking, diminutive forms hacking blindly at the two, for all they were pin-shot with crooked little arrows and already quite dead. Vexen blinked, trying to identify the attackers. None of them would stand past a man’s waist, save that some wore tall, pointed hoods and others fans of feathers, dusty and bedraggled in the parched air. They were mostly robed in black, flailing about with nail-studded clubs and swords that would barely be a bent knife in the hand of a proper human. Their skin was green.

‘Grots,’ Elmeash identified. ‘Vermin. What brought them here?’

‘The Watcher’s threads,’ Vexen decided. ‘They are here to offer their blood to us. Even the greatest spider feasts on small flies.’

Click here to buy Web of Ruin.

A Black Library Publication

This eBook edition published in 2023 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.

Web of Ruin © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2023. Web of Ruin, 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: 978-1-80407-717-7

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

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.