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Chapter One

A fresh flurry of snow swept across the mountainside, layering onto thick drifts that already half concealed remnants of ancient walls and towers toppled in a distant age. The rusted and fused remains of great gears jutted from the ice, staining the snow the colour of dried blood. The immense barbican that had once housed them was little more than wind-worn boulders scattered across the area. Of the ramparts, buttresses and ravelins that had supported the gatehouse little remained – humps and ridges beneath the snow delineated by heaps and lines of unnaturally regular rocks.

The wind caused tent sides to crack and guy ropes to sing as it keened over an encampment within the comparative shelter of the centuries-old ruins. In the lee of broken stairwells and part-tumbled walls, the nomads huddled close to their fires, wrapped tight in pelts of many different colours and patterns – black bear, the white and grey stripes of snow tigers, exotic carmine and mauve spots against white from slain lyregryphs. On small spits over glowing charcoal they cooked their meat, slowly turning the skewered flesh while dripping fat caused the embers to sputter and hiss. Cauldrons bubbled over flames, the water within bobbing with pieces of gristle and bone through a greasy slick.

Tonight’s was a special feast, despite the weather, for the hunting had been good. Thick haunches and splayed ribs would grace the trenchers of the chief and her favourites, with fresh marrow and small cakes thick with congealed blood, while those less in regard licked their lips in anticipation of liver, shins, feet and fingers.

The cannibals bickered over the other spoils, fighting over metal buckles, tin cups, teeth pulled from the skulls – used as necklaces and for beads in braided hair and beards – while clothes, weapons, boots, jewellery and armour were stacked neatly in piles beneath awnings, awaiting the chieftain, who would award them to those that had fought the best or pleased her in other ways.

A few captives were still alive, roped together to an immense stake outside the large tent of the clan’s leader. Naked, they huddled together for what warmth they could find, terrified and numb with shock. There were eight of them, three women and five men, and each bore cuts and bruises from the battle, and rope burns from their chafing bonds at ankle and wrist.

The wind picked up, starting to pull at the tent ropes, flattening the flames of the more exposed fires, throwing sparks and ash into the air. The sky darkened and the arguing and laughter petered out. The Bonekeepers glanced at the heavens and to the tent of their leader, wary of the sudden change. There was good reason why no tribe remained in one place for long, for the mountains of Ursungorod were of ill-temper, always prone to the sudden spasms and constant peregrinations that had laid low the fortress currently sheltering the kin-eaters.

The prisoners started wailing, lifting shrill voices in lament while blue lightning crackled across the unnatural storm gathering above. The children who had been tormenting them fled for the shelter of the tents and the protection of the adults, who in turn rose from the firesides, whispering prayers to Kronra, God of the Bloody Feast.

Trailing half-naked suitors, the Gore Maiden emerged from her grand marquee, still clad in red-lacquered leather armour. Hair the colour of raven feathers spilled to her waist from beneath a helm adorned with a crown of bone splinters taken from the body of a goroxen she had slain single-handedly two winters before. She snapped commands, calling for her guards to form around her while others scrambled for spears and shields left close at hand.

The Bonekeeper war party gathered, the strongest at the front, the unblooded behind. Battle and internal politics, as well as long winters of famine, meant none amongst the Bonekeepers lived long enough to become old and infirm.

In a rough half-circle with their chief at its centre, the clan waited. Eight dozen pairs of eyes scoured the gloom, casting their gaze over snow-blanketed stones lit by the flashes of azure above.

A single bolt lanced down, striking the ground no more than a hundred paces in front of the Gore Maiden. All flinched from the brightness and blinked furiously to rid themselves of the after-shadow. When their eyes cleared they saw a single figure, a cerulean statue, standing where the lightning had struck.

It stood half again as tall as the largest warrior of the Bonekeepers, and was clad entirely in gleaming plates in representation of a muscled warrior. A huge guard curved across its left shoulder, the roundel where it met the sculpted breastplate moulded with a sapphire in the design of an upraised hammer that blazed two bolts of lightning from its head. A helm with a snarling visage hid the face beneath a spiked halo-like arc of gold. In the right hand a sword gleamed with moonlight brightness, angular runic shapes lit by their own power along its length. The left held a hammer, its head blazoned with the mark of a twin-tailed comet. From the figure’s shoulders hung a slatted cloak, each ribbon tipped by a weight in the shape of a warhammer.

For ten heartbeats nothing stirred save for the snow devils whipped up by the wind. A few of the tribespeople edged forwards, looking to each other for reassurance, grunting in their guttural tongue.

The eyes of the helm blazed into life, filling with a scarlet glow. Magical energy coruscated across the figure’s body, crawling up the arms and into the weapons, causing them to shine even brighter with white light. The statue broke into a run, blade and hammer head leaving a trail of silver sparks in its wake.

In a voice edged with a boom of thunder in the skies, the lord of metal let forth a mighty shout. The volume alone was enough to shake all but the hardiest of constitutions, but what stunned the Bonekeepers was that the words were in their own tongue, albeit an ancient dialect.

‘The Bear-clad hath returned. The Hard Winter shall end and justice be restored!’

‘The storm comes.’

So spoke the sagesayer Radomira. The skies above the great mountains of Ursungorod filled with sinister clouds that flickered with green lightning. Withered hands with nails painted blood-red clutched the twisted wood of her staff, knuckles white with tension. Beneath a hood of coarse black wool, she turned her face up to stare at her krul, the warrior-king of the Ursungoran clans. There were tears in her eyes. ‘The omens have not changed. You shall not see the end of it.’

‘Ratkin scum,’ replied Arka, known as the Bear-clad for the thick black pelt he wore across his immense shoulders. A word came to him, passed down through the many generations that had fought against the plague-rats of the deep. A cursed word that came from the Times Before. ‘Pestilentzi.’

He stood nearly a head taller than the men and women of his stratzari, the best warriors from more than two dozen clans. Many had once been clan leaders themselves, of the kort, zakar, hussta, zagir, uztek, kimmeri, ussra, and many others. For this he was also called the Uniter, and the Bear of Hard Winters for other feats, and several other titles across the peaks and valleys of Ursungorod.

The elite of Arka’s army waited on the gatehouse, six hundred in number, their armour a mixture of hardened leather and bronze rings, supplemented with bands or roundels of steel for those fortunate enough to have inherited such protection from their forefathers. There were styles from across the mountains – the high-peaked helms and gilded aventails of the valley clans, rounded basinets and dog-faced visors common amongst the scythic clans that had once dominated the caverns of inner Ursungorod, and skullcaps flamboyantly decorated with tassels, crests and beast-visaged emblems from the summit clans of the upper snows. Flags of red and gold, banners of white and blue, and gonfalons of black fluttered and snapped above them in the strengthening wind.

All were set with grim faces turned towards the darkness approaching from the mountain depths – the zienesta abisal, the Shadowgulf. While the coming ratkin horde spread out from scores of tunnels and caves, the air above them seethed with corrupted power, churning and frothing like a maelstrom.

The high walls to either side thronged with three thousand of Arka’s spear- and axe-wielding warriors, for the most part guarded against harm by nothing more than layers of leather and wool, and wooden oval shields painted with the rune of their new overlord.

The outer wall of Kurzengor, the settlement itself but a small fragment of the immense city built above and dug below Ursungorod, stood five times the height of a man, and thick enough for chambers within. But it was broken in places, shattered by the constant upheavals that wracked the mountain range, the breaches filled as best as possible with dull brown bricks, mortared stones and thick planks.

It was not ideal, but it was the best place to meet the squealing, shrieking mass of half-man rat-things that boiled up from the tunnels below. The wall itself was nothing, it was the men and women who held it that would decide the course of the battle.

Arka held up his axe, its long haft in one hand, the crescent moon blade glittering in the light of the accursed storm. He lifted his voice above the growing rumble.

‘This was the weapon of my mother. She took it from the fist of my father when he fell at Nijholli, already bathed many times in the blood of their enemies. Scores of foes – human, gods-tainted and ratkin – fell beneath it from my mother’s hand. She lived for the battle, but the cowardly vile-rats did not give her the peace of a war-death. Their corruption, their filth, spewed forth on noxious clouds, and plague heralded their attacks. In her bed, choking on lung-rot, every gasping breath an agony, that is how she died.’

He paused, eyes closed as the memory of that sight sank its claws into his throat, stifling his words. Taking a deep breath, Arka continued.

‘Before her final moments, I, a child of eight winters and seven summers, took this axe from her. I bid her farewell, and swore that I would see every one of the rat-filth slain. Every day since, I have cleaved to that oath. Long I have waged that war, and now they are goaded into showing themselves in the full light of day. Today shall live long in the legends of our people.’

Arka spoke the words with passion, but as he looked down at Radomira, who had nurtured him after his mother’s death, he shared her sadness – though he could not show it.

‘The omens do not give us hopes.’ Her words appeared in his thoughts, not passing her lips. ‘On the day you were born, the Ursungorod shook and the earth cracked beneath the Skagoldt Ridge to throw up the fires of the deeps. I saw a storm that day, and in its depths comes your ending.’

‘You knew as much when you took me as your son,’ Arka replied without speech, as he had been able to do with Radomira since that day she appeared at the house of his dead mother and bid him to leave with her. ‘You also spoke of great things that will happen this day. Our people will be saved, you said. If that needs my death, so be it.’

‘I did not say our people would be saved,’ she chided. ‘You must pay attention to detail, I have told you before. I said from the events of this day our lands will be freed.’

‘It is the same thing,’ grumbled Arka.

Accelerating, Arkas gloried in the touch of the frozen ground beneath his feet. The air was crisp and clean in his nostrils, at once so familiar and yet an almost forgotten memory. It instantly brought to mind childhood hunts and stalking the other youths of the Greypelt clan.

Darker recollections encroached, fuelling his long stride. Much had changed, in the lands as well as in his form and knowledge, but still his heart burned with the same furious thirst for vengeance. Sigmar the mighty God-King had furnished him with the means to finally fulfil that oath to his dying mother, gifting him with an immortal reforged body and weapons of celestial power. He was Greypelt no more. His clan loyalties were insignificant compared to the brotherhood ties of a Strike Chamber. All of the old titles were nothing compared to the epithet he had earned from Sigmar himself – Arkas Warbeast.

The kin-eaters were foolishly brave, not knowing the full nature of the warrior that attacked. They saw a solitary figure and perhaps thought to overwhelm him with the first rush of their counter-attack. He pounded up the slope, vaulting toppled stones and bounding across crevasses that had once been tower chambers. Arrows from short bows and stones from slings clattered and cracked harmlessly from his plated body.

‘The Lord Sigmar sends this message to all that nestle in the bosom of the Dark Gods,’ Arkas roared, his voice carrying like the wind of a storm.

He swept out the trails of his cloak and a flurry of hammer-shaped bolts flew across the gap, slashing golden wounds through the cannibalistic Chaos worshippers. A dozen strides later, he met the first of the kin-eaters’ warriors. Arkas’ sword flicked out, trailing lightning bolts, its tip parting the depraved barbarian from gut to chin. His hammer smashed the heads from two others. Pig iron blades and studded cudgels clattered ineffectually from his silvered armour.

It was more than the earth underfoot and the air in his lungs – the subtle nature of the Realm of Ghur stirred within him, calling him back to his roots, unleashing the war-beast that had always been part of him. When he had been known as the Bear-clad it had been something of a madness, coming upon him in the heat of combat. As the bloodfever rose he understood now that something more primal was aroused – something in the fabric of the mountains of Ursungorod that ignited inside him.

The leading edge of the storm was no more than a bowshot from the walls. Putridity, foul and yet sweet, carried on the strengthening wind. The rankness of the vile-rats came before them, accompanied by the chittering and squealing of warriors with matted fur and ragged robes.

‘There are fewer of them than I expected,’ Arka joked. The pestilentzi numbered at least five times that of his host. But in truth he did not think it too many; his warriors were a match for that number, and the walls, though broken, gave them even more advantage. He started to think that perhaps Radomira’s dire prophecy was wrong. It was not unknown for her to misinterpret the signs.

A shout from the left brought his attention to the upper end of the valley. There were shapes moving through the rocks of the gorge, the sickly light of the storm glinting from rusted armour and weapons. Men with unkempt locks and filth-crusted beards skulked through broken boulders and stunted trees. Their womenfolk came with them, their hair teased out into untidy braids slicked with human fat.

‘The ghoul tribes,’ sneered one of Arka’s companions, a wiry uzteki called Timur. The one-eyed warrior spat on the stones. ‘They are already cursed by the foul powers, and now they have made an alliance with the ratkin.’

‘No matter,’ Arka replied, though the confidence he had felt moments earlier was starting to ebb. ‘They are hardly better fighters than the scab-rats from below.’

He eyed the storm, which washed over the grand fortifications, bringing with it choking fumes. Men and women on the battered ramparts coughed and retched as foul-tasting smog obscured everything.

‘Archers!’ Arka bellowed, knowing that the pestilentzi would use the cover of the cloud to advance quickly. He had marked their approach carefully and had expected such a ruse – this was not the first time the ratkin had unleashed the foetid breath of the Horned One. ‘Loose to one hundred paces!’

Fifteen hundred bows were lifted and fifteen hundred dark shafts disappeared into the gloom. Eyes stinging, Arka could not mark their flight beyond fifty paces, but the fog could not wholly muffle the shrieks and squeaks of pain a few moments later. The archers reloaded and sent another volley, more ragged than the first, and another.

‘Fifty paces!’ Arka cried, seeing shadows emerging from the greenish mist. Overhead, the thunder cracked, shaking the ancient city wall to its foundations. Jade lightning crackled down, striking at several points along the rampart, each blast cutting down half a dozen warriors. Another bolt struck just ten paces away, blackening Aslanbek in his cracked armour, molten droplets of bronze spattering those nearby.

‘Clear the storm,’ Arka snarled at Radomira.

The sagesayer withdrew, her cabal of magicweavers gathering about her, brandishing a variety of rods, staves and wands, the jingle of their amulets and clatter of bone talismans a distraction for a moment.

The ratkin did not come for the gate, but threw the weight of their numbers towards a repaired breach about seventy-five paces to the left of it, where they clearly intended to scale the wall and meet up with the ghoul tribes coming from further along the slope. They brought no ladders or grapples, but simply climbed the wall with thin, clawed fingers, finding easy purchase in the pitted surface of stones laid countless decades before.

The first crash of metal on metal rang out along the rampart. Another immense roll of thunder caused Arka to glance up. It seemed that the tempest was changing, crackles of blue splitting the green, cerulean clouds bubbling through from the midst of the green sky. He did not know what Radomira was doing, but it seemed to be working. The fog that swathed the wall was swirling away in many places, revealing the skittering horde of ratkin approaching below.

Without any need for a command, a storm of javelins and throwing axes descended into the onrushing mass, sending the front-runners tumbling to the bloodied ground to be trodden down by the ratkin that followed.

The din of battle increased, the shouts of both sides and the clash of weapons echoing back from the inner wall some four hundred paces behind Arka. Checking to the left and right, he was reassured to see that his warriors were holding. Axes, swords and spears were relentless in their deadly welcome. Every ratman that made the rampart was met by two or three speartips or blades.

‘They use their numbers poorly,’ remarked Marta. She pointed with her tulwar, moving the tip along the wall to the right. ‘They should draw us out along the entire length, not throw themselves at one place where their mass counts for nothing.’

‘Do not expect sound strategy from verminous filth,’ replied Ljubo. ‘They do not count losses like warriors.’

This last comment stuck in Arka’s thoughts. The pestilentzi truly did not care how many died. He had seen twenty perish just to drag down one of his warriors. He stepped up to the wall and looked out, turning his gaze to the left.

The ratmen thrown at the walls were spindly, ragged creatures with bubo-pocked fur, armed with shards of stone, wooden clubs and crude daggers of rusted metal. A terrible choice for a first assault. What was needed was a spearhead of armoured, experienced warriors to create an opening for the masses to later exploit.

There were certainly such fighters in the pestilentzi ranks. He could see them advancing behind the slavish horde, decked in blackened armour, banners and tri-barred icons carried above their more orderly regiments. And then there were the sergahulla – plague-frenzied verminkind that wore thick robes and shrieked disturbing chants. They hurled themselves fearlessly at their foes. Either would make better siege breakers than the scum being tossed up against the walls.

Tossed up against the walls…

He leaned out further to look down at the ground at the base of the great bastion. Already hundreds of dead ratmen were piling up.

‘They are using the bodies of the dead for ramps!’ he cried out. ‘Fetch oil and brands, we must turn them into pyres!’

While this order was passed along the wall, a new wave of pestilentzi reached the defences, thrusting through the milling crowds of slaves. They were bigger, darker furred, with swords, halberds and shields. Arrows and sling bullets met the next assault but made little injury to the numbers of the foe.

Arka was about to order part of his guard to move down to the wall to form a mobile reserve when he felt a shift in the wind. He spluttered and others around him coughed and retched as a noisome reek blew along the wall.

‘What sorcerous…’ The words drifted away when Arka spied the answer to his question.

The ranks of the elite vermin were parting, the filthy ratkin throwing themselves to their knees and stomachs in obeisance. Through the gap advanced a monstrous figure, more terrifying even than the bekevic that haunted the mountain meres and could swallow a warrior whole.

A frightened muttering broke out through the stratzari. Warriors who had faced battle dozens of times whispered curses and flexed sweating palms on their weapons. Arka felt his mouth dry as he watched the approach of the creature.

Chapter Two

Incensed, driven along the teetering line of insanity between abject terror and suicidal desperation, the kin-eaters tried to drag down the Stormcast Eternal. Crudely forged blades shattered on his armour, and broken fingernails caked in blood scrabbled at his plate. He bulled his way through, crushing bodies underfoot and slamming his foes aside with sweeps of his arms.

Arkas had once been a man of flesh and blood. Now he was something far greater, fashioned by the spirit of Sigmar and armed by the great duardin god Grungni. Reborn, reforged, remade in an ideal – hope and nobility, courage unsurpassed, strength tempered by humility.

But here, now, on the slopes of Mount Vazdir, where he had seen his people fall to the filth of the Pestilens skaven, he was simply death incarnate. His runeblade and hammer had been created in the great foundries of the smith-god, made from purest sigmarite, but in his mind he bore an old crescent-headed axe given to him by his mother. In spirit if not in any physical sense, the weapon lived on.

‘Know this, servants of darkness! Your end has come! The Light of Sigmar falls upon Ursungorod and by his beacon shall the warriors of the storm be guided to his foes.’

Enemy blades shattered at the touch of his sword, leather armour and crude mail no guard against the weight of his lightning-wreathed hammer. In the Gladitorium of Sigmaron, Arka Bear-clad had finished his transition to Arkas Warbeast, Stormcast Eternal, herald of Sigmar’s wrath. It was not until now that he fully appreciated the changes wrought upon him by his Reforging. The kin-eaters fell to his sword and hammer like wheat before the reaper, leaving a dismembered trail in his wake as he cut and smashed his way towards their leader.

Not only in prowess had he been altered. The magical energy of the Mortal Realms, the essence of Ghur that sustained the Realm of Beasts, flowed around him, suffusing the landscape. He saw it escape the bodies of his foes as they fell, returning to the great flow of the wild and untamed world. He felt it in his body too, as he had once felt the enlightening power of Azyr open his mind to the full truth of the universe.

Arkas had desired revenge, but the sensation of justice fulfilled as he cleaved apart another handful of foes was unlike any feeling he had encountered. It was a redemptive force, payment for the agony of his Reforging, the reward for enduring endless trials and hardships to become a Stormcast Eternal.

He realised less than a score of heartbeats had passed since he had been hurled down to Ursungorod by the power of Sigmar, yet three dozen enemies already lay dead behind him. The kin-eaters’ mistress looked on with an expression of joy, not fear, and he stared into her dark eyes and saw only the madness of Chaos. In her the spirit of Khorne the Blood God was strong. Arkas could smell the taint on her as strongly as the metallic scent of blood leaking from his slain foes.

Drawing a wickedly serrated tulwar, the Gore Maiden leapt to counter-attack, hurdling the headless corpse of one of her followers as he fell away from Arkas’ swinging blade. She was as fast as his Stormcast companions, the tip of her sword cutting across the curve of a moulded pectoral. The blade appeared to steam with the power of Khorne, leaving a molten welt on the breast of Arkas’ armour.

Stunned for a moment, he stepped back, raising his hammer to ward away the next slashing attack. The sigmarite rang cleanly at the impact of the Gore Maiden’s tulwar, sparks of power erupting from its head. Another blow sped towards his arm and Arkas turned quickly, allowing it to fall just past his shoulder.

He kicked, his armoured boot connecting with the midriff of the Khornate champion, breaking ribs and throwing her a dozen strides across the snow. She rolled through a flurry of white, coming to her feet with a grimace just in time to block Arkas’ descending blade with her own.

‘Your bloody master cannot aid you against the righteousness of Sigmar,’ Arkas spat, knocking aside the Gore Maiden’s weapon with the haft of his hammer.

The Stormcast Eternal felt blows clanging against his back and helm, but all of his attention was directed on the Gore Maiden. He pressed his advantage, swinging his hammer towards her head. As she jumped aside, the tip of his blade met her neck, parting flesh and spine without pause.

Seeing their chief decapitated robbed the kin-eaters of their remaining courage. The cannibals fled as he turned, some abandoning their weapons to speed their flight down the mountainside. They dashed left and right, splitting up, too many for Arkas to chase them all down.

The Stormcast Eternal lifted his hammer above his head, pointing to the skies where the Tempest of Sigmar still churned in cerulean glory.

‘To me, warriors of Sigmaron! Celestial Vindicators, our moment is upon us! Heed the call of your Lord-Celestant, my Warbeasts!’

There was a little likeness of a rat in the monster’s features, but it walked five times the height of the Chaos vermin, its head surrounded by a mane of curling, twisted horns. Its tail, longer than the beast was tall, was like a barbed whip tipped with metallic blades. Overlapping plates of serrated oil-black armour covered a ragged tunic of dun and pink-grey flesh, and a faceted helm of the same unnatural metal protected its skull and cheeks. A thick belt of cracked hide girded its waist and a huge book was bound there by a corroded chain, a smog-like cloud slipping from the fluttering pages.

In taloned hands it gripped a spear, the head splitting into four curved tines that sparked with magical energy. The air thrashed around the monster and the ground blistered under its tread, as if its simple presence offended the earth and sky.

‘Verminlord! Daemon of the Horned One!’

Arka heard the gasp and glanced over his shoulder in time to see Radomira collapsing. Blood ran from her eyes and ears, and her attendants looked on helplessly, ashen-faced, quivering with fear.

The verminlord thrust its spear towards the ramparts and a bolt of green energy struck the stones, sending up jagged chunks and charred corpses. The ratkin flowed forwards, their screeches deafening. Another bolt of magic slashed through the defenders to Arka’s left, turning armour to rusted flakes and the flesh within to rotten meat.

Arka saw again the face of his mother, withered before its time, claw-like hands grasping at the sweat-soaked bedding. Coughing wracked her body. In the horror of that moment, Arka knew that the creature stalking towards the gates was the same that had unleashed the pestilence on Ursungorod and ripped his mother’s life away.

He levelled his axe at the creature in silent challenge. It looked up at him with glowing green eyes and bared sharp fangs in what might have been a smile.

A rolling blast of thunder drew Arka’s gaze up for a moment. Blue lightning crawled across the bottom of the storm clouds, like nothing he had seen before. The stones beneath his booted feet shivered as the verminlord unleashed a blast of power at the gates, turning wood to mouldering splinters.

The lightning lanced down, hitting Arka’s upraised axe, earthing through his arm and down his spine.

He thought himself dead in that instant, but the feeling of energy that ran through him grew rather than weakening. He felt himself lifted, ascending towards the heavens. His body dissolved into energy, a bolt of power erupting upwards.

With a last conscious thought, he saw the ratkin swarming over the walls of Kurzengor and knew he had failed his people.

From the head of Arkas’ hammer, a beam of blue light leapt up to the skies, its signal carrying beyond the Mortal Realms to Sigmaron. An instant later, a crackle of storm energy lanced down. The two crashed together and a tempest of lightning bolts flared, raining down around the Stormcast. Where each blast touched the ground, the snow melted and the earth beneath charred. Each blinding flash left behind another giant warrior clad in turquoise armour, until a company of the greatest warriors stood before him.

Two lightning strikes flanked Arkas to the left and right, each just a few paces from him. On his left appeared a warrior bearing aloft a golden standard in the shape of crossed hammers, wreathed in parchments adorned with the blessings of Sigmar in Azyrite script.

‘Dolmetis, my Knight-Vexillor, raise the standard and proclaim these lands the domains of Sigmar, God-King!’

On the right his Knight-Heraldor materialised, bearing a long clarion from which hung a pennant in the colours of Arkas’ Exemplar Chamber.

‘Doridun, sound forth the challenge so that all will know that Sigmar’s rule has returned to Ursungorod!’

The Knight-Heraldor lifted the instrument and let forth a single peal, its note matched by a thunderous crash from the heavens that echoed across the mountain valley. As the last reverberations died away, Dolmetis approached his Lord-Celestant, casting glances at the mutilated remains of the kin-eaters that lay scattered across the blood-stained snow.

‘I thought we were to attack as a chamber, Lord Arkas?’

The Lord-Celestant laughed and pointed to the fleeing Chaos war party.

‘I left some for you! Doridun, signal the pursuit. Leave none alive!’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2016.
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* 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.