Black Library Celebration 2021 by Various authors

Author:Various authors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-18T14:06:33+00:00

INFERNO! VOLUME 5

by various authors

Discover tales from across the worlds of Warhammer in a new instalment of the action-packed short fiction anthology!

Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

Skull Throne

Jake Ozga

I walk barefoot beneath the silent, predatory sky. I step carefully among brittle indigo flowers and leave no trace of my passing. I watch – unblinking – the line of trees as they tremble and fade away. The sky sighs and the flowers blur in the wind, their petals becoming indistinct smears of colour.

Time passes; it flows around me like a river. I settle back into its currents and drift. I close my eyes and when I open them again I am elsewhere. Day has turned to night and in the weak light of the moon the grass is blue and ethereal. I crouch among it and become invisible. I whisper to myself, ‘To live peacefully, we must live unseen.’ I whisper it over and over like a prayer. My mother taught me this when I was a little girl, when I was still a thing of flesh and blood. There is no sound in this Realm of Death, the place I once called home. There are no birds, no insects, just the barest breath of the wind. I listen. Any moment now. Here they come.

Dark shapes separate from the deep blue shadows of the treeline and walk into the field, down where the grass is shorter. I am as still as a mouse and if I breathe it is not so anyone would notice. There is a new sound, the sound of something scraping. It does not belong here, it is so vulgar in this place. Three men walk under the light of a burning timber, most likely taken from a homestead nearby; they make no secret of their presence. The first of the three drags along a girl by her hair. A second is lost in the shadows at the edge of the field, a darker shade. Moonlight picks out the edges of his form; it reflects on sharp corners and cutting angles. The third pulls behind him a great axe with hooks and barbs that furrow the earth as he walks.

I watch as they make the girl kneel in the gently swaying grass. She is like a bird, so skinny and delicate. Her bare arms and legs are almost translucent in the light of the waning moon. Her face is hidden by long, lank black hair. She doesn’t cry out; she knows better. I bite my lip and draw a bead of blood – a test to see if I am dreaming. They pull her head back and I see her face. Her wide, dark eyes seek out my hiding place, and just for a heartbeat her gaze meets mine. I see that she is me and I am her. I am her and I am there in the field, and they hold me by the hair as I kneel and I am scared but not for

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