Prince maesa, p.1
Prince Maesa, page 1
Other great stories from Warhammer Age of Sigmar
• GOTREK GURNISSON •
Darius Hinks
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SOULSLAYER
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STORMVAULT
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THUNDERSTRIKE & OTHER STORIES
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A DYNASTY OF MONSTERS
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CURSED CITY
A novel by C L Werner
THE END OF ENLIGHTENMENT
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BEASTGRAVE
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KRAGNOS: AVATAR OF DESTRUCTION
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• HALLOWED KNIGHTS •
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Book One: PLAGUE GARDEN
Book Two: BLACK PYRAMID
• KHARADRON OVERLORDS •
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Book Two: PROFIT’S RUIN
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Warhammer Age of Sigmar
Prince Maesa
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Part Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Part Three
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part Four
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part Five
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Part Six
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part Seven
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
About the Author
An Extract from ‘Realm-Lords’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
The Mortal Realms have been despoiled. Ravaged by the followers of the Chaos Gods, they stand on the brink of utter destruction.
The fortress-cities of Sigmar are islands of light in a sea of darkness. Constantly besieged, their walls are assailed by maniacal hordes and monstrous beasts. The bones of good men are littered thick outside the gates. These bulwarks of Order are embattled within as well as without, for the lure of Chaos beguiles the citizens with promises of power.
Still the champions of Order fight on. At the break of dawn, the Crusader’s Bell rings and a new expedition departs. Storm-forged knights march shoulder to shoulder with resolute militia, stoic duardin and slender aelves. Bedecked in the splendour of war, the Dawnbringer Crusades venture out to found civilisations anew. These grim pioneers take with them the fires of hope. Yet they go forth into a hellish wasteland.
Out in the wilds, hardy colonists restore order to a crumbling world. Haunted eyes scan the horizon for tyrannical reavers as they build upon the bones of ancient empires, eking out a meagre existence from cursed soil and ice-cold seas. By their valour, the fate of the Mortal Realms will be decided.
The ravening terrors that prey upon these settlers take a thousand forms. Cannibal barbarians and deranged murderers crawl from hidden lairs. Martial hosts clad in black steel march from skull-strewn castles. The savage hordes of Destruction batter the frontier towns until no stone stands atop another. In the dead of night come howling throngs of the undead, hungry to feast upon the living.
Against such foes, courage is the truest defence and the most effective weapon. It is something that Sigmar’s chosen do not lack. But they are not always strong enough to prevail, and even in victory, each new battle saps their souls a little more.
This is the time of turmoil. This is the era of war.
This is the Age of Sigmar
PART ONE
THE AUTUMN PRINCE
CHAPTER ONE
THE DUST GATE
Towers of stone rose from the wreck of ages when Sigmar returned, and deserted lands flourished again. Blade and spell pushed the great enemy back, so that man, aelf and duardin came once more to live in the countries of their ancestors, and the Age of Chaos faded into bloody memory.
For all the splendour Sigmar brought, the woes of antiquity remained. Underneath new cities were old foundations, and the stones of those places were steeped in death. Teeming streets and the homes of the rich and poor alike hid secrets that were not always well buried.
Far below Shanskir was a network of ruins. When the old city fell in aeons gone, the buildings were so thoroughly toppled as to be compacted solid as rock, and were built over accordingly. But threading through this lost grandeur were the narrowed traces of old roads, and these linked wider caverns walled with fine ashlar, and lower again was a spread of sewers and cellars that all cities push under the earth, and that often outlive their destruction.
To this city under a city, Maesa, aelven prince of the Wanderer Clans, had come.
He was tall and noble, sharp-boned, with no soft edges to him; beautiful, though in an inhuman way. He wore a hooded cloak of green over a short-sleeved byrnie of such fine rings it appeared like silver cloth. Upon his back was a quiver and bow in a case next to a small pack woven from spider silk, which was topped with a carefully wrapped bundle. At his side was a sheathed sword. Disquieting violet eyes looked out from a close-fitting helm. A small pair of antlers, like those of a roe stag, jutting up from the steel, accentuated the severity of his expression.
There were thirteen in his party. Eleven humans hired to escort this single aelf. Their leader was Captain Sendel, proud in the colours of his mercenary band.
The thirteenth member stayed hidden.
The men ran hunched under a ceiling of broken statuary, the feathers on their helmets wiping damp stone. Water filthy with waste seeping down from the new city washed around their feet. Toppled temple pillars leaned from the right, meeting at the left hand a jumbled mass of blocks.
The way opened into a wider space. Draughts tugged at the flames of the torches, and a cry of alarm went up from the head of the column. A choking gurgle marked a slit throat and the end of the vanguard’s life. His torch fell and was doused in the water.
‘Sigmar curse it!’ said Captain Sendel to the prince. ‘Forward!’ he shouted to his men. ‘Into the Cavern of the Lost Gods. Form a line. If the skaven catch us in this tunnel, we’re finished.’
His men were experienced, and obeyed without hesitation, running over the body of their fallen comrade into the space ahead. The bright flash of a sword cut down at a target Maesa could not see. A sharp squeal and a splash followed, and the scent of Chaos-tainted blood soured the air. The men pushed forward with many shouts, locking their round steel shields together, and made ready.
The ringing of metal erupted all along their line. Daggers whistled through the dark. Shields raised to deflect them, though another man fell with a glowing blade in his throat. The small group of humans held, peering forward, their sight extending only as far as the wavering edges of the torchlight. They were blind to the shadows leaping overhead. Maesa was not.
‘They are coming. Forty of them,’ said Maesa calmly.
More daggers rang off the shields.
‘Sigendil’s light!’ said Sendel. ‘So many so quickly. The infestation of these tunnels gets worse with every season.’ Another rain of daggers clanged off the shields. ‘Men, look to your backs!’ he shouted. ‘For every one we kill there are two in the shadows.’
‘Then I will lessen their number.’ Maesa slipped past the captain, stepped over the corpse of the first man to fall and the skaven slain for his murder. Drawing his bow from its case, he moved soundlessly to stand behind the rank of humans. He drew the string, and loosed. His arrow whispered through the air. A wet smack and a pained shriek marked a hit.
A moment of quiet followed. Maesa looked into the gloom.
‘They have expended their knives. They attack now,’ he said. ‘Above and to the front.’
‘I can’t see a damn thing,’ Sendel said.
‘Then let me illuminate matters,’ said Maesa. He twisted his hand before him, spoke a word of power, and a brilliant light burst into being, revealing black-clad skaven hurling themselves from broken statues, squirming from narrow cracks in the shattered masonry. They dropped from the cavern roof, cutting and slashing into the line of men. Maesa shot down another ratman. He killed a third before the second’s body had vanished into the water on the cavern floor, a new arrow on his string before the one preceding found its mark. The squeals and frantic chi ttering of rodent speech mingled with the cries of men. The shield wall bowed back, held, then collapsed under the weight of skaven into individual melees, single men fighting two or three of the hunched figures. The skaven had begun with stealth on their side, but now they were in the open, they were overmatched in strength and skill by Sendel’s men, and dazzled by the aelf’s mage light.
Maesa shot another as it leapt at one of the men. Sendel came to his side, duelling two skaven that came close, his blade smashing back crude black iron, and felling the wielders.
A skaven took its chance and rushed out of a crack in the cavern wall towards the prince.
‘Oh no, my friend, I think not,’ said Captain Sendel. Steel connected with flesh, and its head came off with a gush of blood. Its weapon slapped into the water, turning it luminous with the poisons weeping from the blade. Sendel’s sword caught in the bone of the shoulder, nearly twisting from his hand as the headless skaven flopped down. Black blood tainted the stream.
Sendel tugged at his sword, loudly cursing when it remained fast. A shrill, wordless war cry sounded overhead. Sendel looked to see a skaven falling from the distant ceiling, twin daggers ready to kill the aelf.
‘Prince Maesa, look out! Above!’ He yanked harder, but bone and flesh held the steel.
Maesa shot upwards, missing the creature. It came down before Sendel had the blade loose, landing softly, broad, naked feet plunging into the water so precisely they caused hardly a ripple. His own sword came out from its scabbard. The prince’s sword was an uncommon thing, a jagged thorn of russet edges and black points. A sense of power emanated from the weapon.
The skaven tittered at the prince’s blade. A bright pink tongue licked thin lips. Yellow shovel teeth bared in a vicious grin. It was bigger than the others, its daggers longer, their edges aglow with the sickly light of warpstone. Its long tail twitched back and forth over its head, a third blade held in the prehensile end.
‘You die-die, aelf-thing! These lands of the Lords of Thirteen,’ it said. Its voice was a harsh mix of squeaked vowels and lisped consonants, menacing for all its ludicrousness. ‘We claim-take. This ours.’
Maesa stared dispassionately from beneath his horned helm.
‘You should not have come here today, child of Chaos. Let me pass, or die.’
The skaven snickered. ‘No, you die, fool-thing! Bring wooden stick to fight. Haha! You dead.’
It leapt at the prince, moving with a nervous energy that was hard to follow, but Maesa was quicker still, his movements sublimely performed, countering all three of the skaven’s weapons. The aelf was lithe and supple, a war dancer, the skaven jitter-quick, both too fast for a man to beat. Weeping blades met the sword with hollow, wooden notes. Sendel cut down a lesser ratkin that moved upon the prince from behind, but he could not add his sword to the aelf’s duel. Blades blurred, skaven magic set against the sorcery of plant and bough.
The weapons met again. New notes played. Aelf and skaven came closer, twitching snout to perfect nose.
‘Now you die!’ the skaven hissed. ‘This poison kill anything.’
‘I have better magic,’ Maesa said. He deflected the skaven’s daggers, and the point of his sword darted down, scraping across the skaven’s naked thigh. Its titter at the feebleness of the scratch turned to a scream, as the glowing form of its soul was dragged from its body and sucked slowly within the blade. Spectral paws raked at the prince, finding no purchase. Ghost mouth wailed as living jaws went slack. The screech went high, falling to a deathly whisper as the soul was finally, irrevocably consumed.
The remaining skaven froze. Maesa turned to face them, his strange sword aglow.
‘This is the Song of Thorns,’ he sang out. ‘If it pricks you, then you die forever. Begone!’
The enemy squealed in dismay. An acrid stench filled the cavern.
‘Flee-flee!’ one shrilled, and together the survivors turned tail and fled, vanishing into the dark as suddenly as they had emerged. Broad feet plashed in shallow water, and they were gone.
‘They’re running!’ shouted one of the men. ‘Cut them down!’ The soldiers began to follow.
‘Hold your ground, you damn fools!’ Sendel shouted. ‘They’ll slit your throats the moment you are away from the light. Keep your guard up. Stand!’
Maesa’s spell dimmed, and shadows rushed back. The men nervously scanned the darkness. No sound was heard. Cautiously, the soldiers stood down, and saw to their wounded. Sendel’s corporal organised a party to return with those too badly injured to fight, reducing the number of warriors to six.
Sendel wiped his sword on skaven rags before he returned it to his scabbard. ‘Well done, my lord prince. That was a pretty display.’
‘I am blessed with a little magic,’ said Maesa.
‘Only a little? That blade, it is surely powerfully enchanted.’
Maesa sheathed the Song of Thorns. It was clean of blood.
‘It is a terrible weapon,’ said Maesa softly.
‘From where does it come?’ asked Sendel. ‘A wooden sword? I have never seen one like it.’
Maesa appeared disinterested by the captain’s question – most of his attention was on the fragments of art preserved in the rubble of the cavern wall – but he answered. ‘Not wood, as you think. A blade of living thorn. You heard me name it. Pray I have no cause to do so again.’
‘I mean no offence,’ said Sendel, uneasy at the prince’s tone.
‘The weapon was Alarielle’s gift to me,’ said Maesa. ‘It thirsts for souls. To draw it again in your presence would seal your doom, I cannot stay it. It will pierce your skin and drink your spirit. It must be fed when it is unsheathed.’
‘Then I shall not ask of it again,’ said Sendel.
‘You are wise,’ said Maesa. He ran his fingers over a portion of frieze.
‘Wise? Me?’ Sendel snorted. ‘It is strange to hear an aelf speak of a man so positively.’
Maesa looked back at him, his piercing gaze forcing Sendel to avert his eyes. ‘Men can be wise, as aelves can be humble.’
‘A rarity then! I am not wise. No. Greedy, and eager to live? That I am.’ He surveyed his men. Those hale were looting the bodies of the skaven and complaining about the poor quality of their plunder. A couple discussed flaying the corpses and selling the skins to the local mages, but Sendel dissuaded them. ‘We do not have time!’ he said.
The corporal’s party set off back to the surface. The others lit fresh torches.
‘We are done here, get ready to move,’ Sendel said to his men, then he spoke with Maesa. ‘I pledged to bring you to the Dust Gate. We are nearly there.’
‘Thank you, captain.’
A blacker patch on the dark ahead suggested an exit. The water ran quicker as the space narrowed. A bubbling rush came to them on a damp breeze.
‘Thank me when you are there. My men go no further than the gate.’ Sendel signalled. ‘Men, we go. Keep an eye out for the ratkin.’
The tunnel steepened. Not far into the corridor, the foaming water gurgled down a spiral stair.
‘Down,’ said Sendel.
The humans cursed at the treacherous footing, for the steps could not be seen, and they had been worn to awkward angles by the rush of the stream. Maesa was not hampered, and moved serenely through the torrent, until at last they arrived at the bottom and a tunnel in fair condition opened up in front of them. The water slowed, and deepened so that it came over their knees, where it ran as sluggishly as a canal. The light from the torches broke into scintillations on ripples the men made, and all but Maesa muttered fearfully about what foul things might live in the water. Fortune favoured them, and they travelled the length of the tunnel without mishap, coming to an ornate chamber that finished abruptly in a wall of rock. In the corners the water drained, and made its way deeper underground.
‘We are here,’ said Sendel. ‘Pay me, and go.’
‘This wall is the Dust Gate?’ asked Maesa.
‘Aye,’ said Sendel, looking up at the rock wall. ‘Disguised by glamour when the old city fell. It does not seem much, but it is a secret way, long lost, that should never have been found. I rue the day greatly that I did. It will take you to the remains of one of the great towers in Shadespire.’ He reached into his tunic and pulled out a pouch on a cord, which he broke with a sharp tug. From inside the pouch he drew out a chain. A square-cut diamond flashed on the end. ‘Here is the key to the gate.’
