[Daemon Gates 03] - Hour of the Daemon Read online

  A WARHAMMER NOVEL

  HOUR OF

  THE DAEMON

  Daemon Gates - 03

  Aaron Rosenberg

  (A Flandrel & Undead Scan v1.0)

  This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

  At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl-Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

  But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering World’s Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

  PROLOGUE

  “How goes it, Ernst?”

  The sailor spat over the side and glanced up. “All’s quiet, cap’n.”

  “Good, good.” The barge captain moved away again, heading back towards his small cabin to the rear of the ship, while Ernst went back to staring out over the water. It was a quiet night, but that didn’t mean it was safe. The Sol River was hardly Black Fire Pass—it wound its way past Nuln and on, but still there were mutants, skaven, beastmen, and of course bandits. The worst they encountered was the occasional lowlife in a skiff, armed with a crossbow and delusions, and demanding a toll before allowing them past. The river was wide enough to simply ignore any posturing from the shore, but whenever the threat was waterborne, Helmuth deliberately steered towards it instead. He felt that letting such creatures sail the river, and make their demands, without repercussion set a bad precedent, whereas destroying them and their boats left a clear message to other would-be obstacles. They were no warship, but the Battered Eye was a good solid barge, and outside of port no one told her where to go.

  Ernst reached down for the wineskin at his side, and frowned when it proved lighter than he’d hoped; not a drop left, damn. He wouldn’t be able to refill it now, not while on watch. He wasn’t supposed to drink at his post anyway, but the captain didn’t mind, as long as it was just the one wineskin and he was still able to answer coherently. Now the rest of his shift would be long, dry and deadly dull.

  He was so busy lamenting his lack of drink that he didn’t hear the faint slosh of water against the barge’s side, or if he did, he thought it was merely the current. Nor did Ernst notice the soft scratching sound against the hull, a sound like an animal’s claws might make, but louder and slower, and almost cautious somehow. He was shaking his wineskin over his mouth, hoping for a few tiny drops to help assuage his thirst, and failed to see the shadows that rose from the water and slipped over the rails.

  Movement close by caught his eye, and Ernst turned, a question half-formed on his lips, but it was too late. The blow caught him full on the neck, shredding his throat, and only a faint gurgle escaped his lips as his lifeblood bubbled out. His body toppled to one side, over the rail and into the water, making a splash louder than any of the sounds he had missed, and the helmsman started at the sudden noise. Then a shadowy figure was upon him, and his torn body struck the deck a second later.

  Other sailors were emerging, hearing the sounds, some holding clubs, hooks and knives, but they were still befuddled with sleep and the night was dark, thin clouds hiding Morrslieb and the stars. The men saw only shadows, shadows that tore into them like wild beasts, with hisses and snarls. Throats were carved open, heads were smashed in, limbs were torn from torsos, ribs were laid bare and organs ripped loose, all within seconds. Men were choking on blood and bile, and clutching desperately at their wounds, trying to keep their lives from spilling out, even as they fought off additional attacks. Blood washed across the deck, and panicking sailors slipped in their blood and that of their fallen comrades, sliding and scrambling for purchase. Their attackers had no such difficulty, clattering across the wooden planks with ease. Within minutes, the screams, shouts and curses had stopped, leaving only the sounds of breathing, snuffling and chewing.

  Then a new figure appeared from the water, a man dressed in dark robes, climbing carefully over the railing and approaching the victorious attackers. They noticed him, but did not react. They were too busy enjoying the first spoils of their victory.

  “Enough!” the man snapped something in a guttural tongue, pulling one of the shadowy figures away from the body it was gnawing on. A quick cuff to the head and the creature rose, growling, and disappeared into the hold. Several of the others followed, urged on by the man’s blows and snarls. After a few minutes the first creature returned, a long wrapped bundle beneath one arm. More bundles followed, and then several small casks and heavy crates. The bundles were lowered onto a small raft floating alongside the barge and stacked across its tar-coated planks.

  The man watched all this silently, impatiently, and finally he nodded. He clambered back onto the raft and gestured for the others to grab the casks and crates, saying something short and sharp in that strange language. Shouldering their burdens and casting one last, longing glance towards the fresh meat they were leaving behind, the creatures stepped back over the railings and dropped into the water. The casks and crates floated before them as they swam silently away alongside the raft, the night and the river swallowing any hint of their presence.

  The Battered Eye was silent. Bodies lay everywhere, flesh torn as if by wild beasts. The largest pile of them was by the door leading down into the crew quarters, where sailors had been killed before they could even set foot on the main deck. The bodies lay in a jumble of limbs and torsos, blood and darkness making it difficult to see where one corpse ended and another began.

  Then a hand moved. It twitched, and then twitched again. It twisted, its fingers feeling around it, recoiling as they felt the shredded torso above them, then pushing against the body’s upper arm, trying desperately to break free.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Great,” Dietrich “Dietz” Froebel said, reining in. “A festival.”

  He glanced around. They had just passed through Altdorf’s North Gate, still dusty and tired from their long journey, and rode into a scene from someone’s nightmare. Skulls and strange, leering masks hung from walls and windows, and across distant bridges, as did ominous cloaked figures, death symbols, and even distorted animals. Streamers hung everywhere, creating a low ceiling to the wide street, hiding the late afternoon sunlight, and giving the city a closed-in feel. The large crowd didn’t help, filling the Empire capital’s broad avenues with a throng of bodies, and adding to the midsummer heat. From the look of things, the streets would be packed right down to where the River Reik cut through the city, and possibly across it. Many of the revellers wore hoods and masks, and Dietz saw a number of beasts and birds, and even fish, cavorting with the rest, masked in bestial visages.

  “Of course,” his companion, Alaric von Jungfreud, said, slapping his horse’s reins lightly against his leg. “It must be Geheimnistag today. We’ve lost all sense of time.” He rubbed absently a
t his right eye, which had been bothering him since they’d left the Border Princes, the irritation no doubt increased by the mild cold he had apparently acquired. Specks of dust and minor illnesses were the least of their troubles, though.

  Dietz had hoped, when they’d arrived in Middenheim two weeks ago, that they’d be staying put for a while. The trek to the Border Princes had been long and harrowing; they’d survived exploring an ancient tomb, fighting off the liche king within it, battling evil cultists, miraculously fending off a daemon, and manoeuvring their way through a four-way war. That was more than most men had to handle in a lifetime, and it had only been a month. He was tired, and he knew his friend and employer was as well. Alaric’s normal good looks were wan, his face pale, his eyes glazed (especially the right one, which looked bloodshot), and Dietz had noticed a faint tremor in his friend’s hands from time to time. Who could blame him? Most men never had to learn that daemons were real. They had faced two, or the same one two times, and the second time it had known Alaric’s name and had taunted him. That was enough to drive even the sturdiest warrior stark raving mad. The fact that Alaric only looked exhausted and distracted was a mark of the strength hidden beneath his handsome features and elegant attire.

  They both needed rest, and Middenheim was the place for it. Dietz’s father, sister and brother were there, which meant they had a place to stay, and with any luck there wouldn’t be any more statues or cults, or maps, or anything else to draw them back onto the road, at least for a little while. Dietz had been looking forward to a soft bed, a decent mug of ale, and a home-cooked meal.

  Only Alaric had insisted on collecting the mask first.

  That damnable mask! Dietz wished he’d never taken it from that temple in Ind. If he hadn’t, maybe none of this would have happened. They never would have seen those statues in Rolf’s shop, they never would have fought the cultists beneath the city, they never would have been given that map, and they never would have wound up in the Border Princes fighting for their lives against a daemon. They could have led much quieter, saner lives if he’d only passed the mask by and brought back a vase or a bracelet instead.

  Of course, without their intervention, the Chaos cultists would have succeeded in their foul rituals. They had intended to summon a daemon, and they had almost managed it. Even with his and Alaric’s interference, the daemon had begun to emerge before they could destroy the last statue and shut down the gate. If they hadn’t intervened, what would have happened? A daemon would have been loosed on Middenheim, and then on the Empire? That could have been utter disaster. As for the Border Princes, the Chaos priest Strykssen would have found someone else to invade the tomb if they hadn’t appeared. He had been after the tainted gauntlet from the start, and he would have got it, given himself to the daemon, and started a war. He would have used it as cover to break into the town of Vitrolle, to take possession of the warpstone that the cultists had placed in the sceptre of their patron daemon—just as he had almost done, before they’d stopped him. The daemon could have been free to walk the earth in its true form. It would have raged across the Border Princes, slaughtering everything in its path, before turning and making its way over the mountains and into the Empire.

  Yes, their horrible adventures had been necessary. Twice now they had stopped the dark designs of Chaos. Wasn’t that enough? Hadn’t they earned some peace and quiet as a result?

  Alaric agreed. “I just want to sit somewhere quiet, by a nice warm fire, sipping a glass of wine,” he assured Dietz as they’d ridden down the stone streets of Middenheim towards Hralif’s shop. “I’m not even sure I want to look at the mask for a while, not until recent events have faded into memory.” He frowned. “But I’d feel better knowing it was back in my possession, and it’s not fair to make Hralif hold onto it now that we’re back, anyway.”

  Dietz couldn’t argue with that, so he scratched his tree-fox, Glouste, behind the ears and said nothing. Hralif was practically his brother-in-law, after all—perhaps he was by now, although Dietz hoped that he and Dagmar had waited for his return.

  That mask was certainly nothing but trouble. Hralif would be better off rid of it.

  They tethered their horses outside Hralif’s carpentry shop, pushed open the door… and froze in shock.

  “Morr’s blood,” Dietz whispered. “What happened here?”

  The shop was a disaster. Hralif had always been a tidy man, not like his father—everything had its place, and his tools were always lined up neatly on his workbench or hanging from their hooks on the wall behind it. Shelves along the side walls held finished pieces, and larger works were lined up on either side, with a nice broad space to walk between them.

  At least, that was how it had always looked before, including right before they’d left for the Border Princes. Now the shop was almost unrecognisable. The shelves had all been pulled down, their contents smashed and shattered, and the desks, chairs and wardrobes had been overturned, and in several cases smashed or split. Hralif’s workbench had been tossed into the corner, only its sturdy construction keeping it intact, and his tools were scattered or missing. Dietz took all of that in at once, his hands automatically going to the hand axe and the dagger by his side, and beside him Alaric had drawn his sword as well. Glouste chattered her concern and alarm, taking up her preferred place around Dietz’s neck, her stout tail beating rhythmically on one shoulder, and her alert little face peering at everything, whiskers twitching, on the other.

  “Look there,” Alaric whispered, “blood.” Dietz nodded, noticing the dark drops as well. He just hoped it wasn’t Hralif’s.

  A sound from the far corner caught their attention, and Dietz led the way, picking a path through the destruction. There, behind and below the tilted workbench, he saw a pair of legs, and they were moving.

  “Hralif?”

  A groan answered his call, but Dietz had already stepped to one side far enough to peer around the workbench and see his old friend slumped in the corner. He quickly sheathed his weapons and dragged the bench clear so he could reach the carpenter.

  “What happened?” he demanded, dropping to a crouch beside Hralif. He could see blood staining Hralif’s shirt along the right side, almost certainly from a stab wound, and he had several bruises, and other slashes and cuts. Blood ran down his face from a nasty gash to his right temple. A heavy chisel lay nearby, and the blood along its narrow head showed that Hralif had used it to defend himself.

  “Thieves,” Hralif gasped, glancing up at Dietz, and at Alaric behind him. “They… burst in here… and tore the place apart. I tried… to stop them, but I… couldn’t. They struck me… in the head… before they left.”

  “One of you against several of them?” Alaric asked, sheathing his sword. “Of course you couldn’t stop them. You were lucky to survive. If that last blow hadn’t put you down they’d probably have killed you, to avoid any chance of you coming after them.” He frowned. “But who would want to rob you?”

  Hralif started to shake his head, but stopped and pressed a hand to his temple. “I don’t… know.” He tried to push himself up off the ground and winced. Dietz caught him under the arms and helped him stand, Glouste quickly nestling into his jacket to allow him easier shoulder movement. “Thanks. They took… the money… but didn’t… touch the… locked back room.” He frowned, clearly remembering. “It was as if… they couldn’t be bothered.” Then he glanced over at Alaric again, and something in that look sent a chill of premonition down Dietz’s spine. “They took… something else… too,” he admitted, and Dietz knew what was coming next. “The mask.”

  That got an immediate reaction. “The mask? It’s gone?” Alaric had moved towards the door as if he could still see the thieves somehow. “Where? Why did they take it? Who were they? Did they say anything?”

  Hralif shook his head. “They never said… a word,” he answered. “They were… rough-looking, unshaved and… unwashed… ragged clothes. One had a… jagged scar… across his nose and… right cheek.
Another had a… thick gold earring shaped like… a bent nail.”

  Dietz and Alaric exchanged a glance. They’d met others that had fit that general description: thieves and cultists.

  Of course cultists would want the mask. It had the same runes on it they’d found on the gauntlet, and on the map: marks of Chaos.

  “We need to go after them,” Alaric all but shouted, racing towards the door. “They might still be nearby!”

  But Dietz shook his head. “How long ago did this happen?” he asked Hralif, already suspecting the answer.

  “I don’t know,” his friend admitted. “I think I… blacked out.” He frowned towards the door, and the small window set in it, which showed that the sun had already set. “It was before noon, though.”

  “That was hours ago,” Dietz pointed out to Alaric, “assuming it was even today. Hralif has lost some blood, and taken at least one blow to the head—he might have been out for a day or more.”

  Alaric started to argue, but then nodded, his shoulders slumping. “You’re right,” he agreed. “They’re long gone by now.”

  Perhaps it’s just as well, Dietz thought, though he didn’t say so. That mask had already caused enough trouble. It had been in Rolf’s possession when he had been arrested for heresy, a false accusation that had none the less cost him his life, and it had been the cause of this attack as well. They were probably better off rid of it.

  That would have been the end of it, too. If Alaric hadn’t noticed the blood.

  “What’s that?” Alaric asked as they exited the shop a few minutes later, supporting Hralif on either side. Dietz looked, but didn’t see anything. “There,” his friend insisted, pointing again. “Right there. You don’t see it? It looks like… it looks like blood; like someone was wounded, dragged against the wall and left a smear.”