Prologue

ASHES

Hendrick Saul was surrounded by a whirling storm of faces, transformed from meek villagers to twisted gargoyles by their fear, their anger and their hate. They pressed around him on all sides beneath a dark and clouded sky, the cadaverous walls of Stonehallow looming at their backs.

‘Varlen!’ he heard Romilla Aiden shouting. ‘Varlen, stop! Please, you have to stop this!’

She was answered by an inhuman scream, a sound that seemed ripped from several throats at once, not all of them human. It pierced the torch-lit darkness and rebounded from the towering walls of ancient ruins.

‘It brings death!’ screamed the awful tangle of voices, the words so mangled they were barely decipherable.

‘Get out of my way!’ roared Hendrick at the crowd around him, and for a moment he was tempted to swing his heavy warhammer, Reckoner, into their midst. His fierce temper surged, its flames stoked by fear of his own.

Fear of what was happening to his brother.

Fear of what Varlen had become.

He controlled himself with supreme effort, reminding himself these were good people who had not asked for this horror to be thrust upon them. Holding his warhammer two-handed like a quarterstaff, he thrust at the townsfolk around him rather than swinging for them with its weighty head. Ignoring the farming implements and rusty daggers they held. Ignoring their outraged cries of pain and their furious demands that he stop fighting them.

‘What did you people bring into our home?’ the village headman cried. Hendrick had already forgotten his name. In the midst of this horror, he had forgotten everything but his brother.

‘Varlen!’ he yelled, shoving his way through the jostling mass of angry townsfolk. ‘Varlen, you have to stop this! You have to fight it!’

Bedlam surrounded Hendrick. The dark of night was full of panicked bodies crashing and grinding together like the bone-jarring confusion of a battlefield rout. Blazing torches threw hard light that danced wildly. One moment, screaming faces were lit in hellish hues, the next they were but dark silhouettes, limned by fire.

‘That monster was your brother,’ screamed an old woman, her eyes bulging and her spittle spattering his face. ‘For Sigmar’s sake, kill it!’

‘Enwin…’ another babbled, tears streaming down her face. ‘It tore… It tore his head off.’

Hendrick stumbled over sprawled bodies and crashed down onto the cobbles, where he slithered in blood.

Varlen had done this, he thought wildly. His brother, his garrulous, good-hearted, courageous brother, the leader of the Swords of Sigmar. He had transformed into… something. Some monstrous abomination had burst from within Varlen Saul’s flesh as the crown on his brow pulsed with eldritch power. It had ploughed through the mercenaries of Varlen’s company, battering Bartiman Kotrin aside with the tumorous flesh-mass that had been its right arm, gouging the flesh of Romilla Aiden with the thicket of talons sprouting from its left hand.