Lord of the Night by Simon Spurrier

Author:Simon Spurrier
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2012-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

ZSO SAHAAL

They came seeking sanctuary. The underhive recoiled from its wounds, slinking in the dark like a crippled fox, and where before its people had held the Shadowkin in contempt – fearing their vigilante strikes, deriding their zealotry – now their perceptions were changed. Now they saw strength, fortification, protection.

There was not a single family untouched by the Preafect’s pogrom, and without a spoken word, without vocal alliance or official consent, they gathered themselves in meagre packs, as best they could, and they trod the winding path into the depths, to where the snaking road descended no further, and there, on the shores of the rustmud swamps, they stopped.

In the heart of Sahaal’s domain.

They came seeking sanctuary, and amongst the hordes of their number they brought with them their former masters, their warriors and outlaws and leaders. Their heroes and their villains.

At the start of the second day following the vindictor attack, when the stream had become a trickle, and then finally cleared, Sahaal stared out from his throne across the sea of seething refugees, tasted their stink upon the air, felt their fear and dispossession and dejection, and smiled his secret smile.

He would use them.

‘What deception is this?’

‘Curse you, Shadowbitch! I’ll not stand for–’

‘Back off! One more! One more push–!’

Snarls of aggression jittered throughout the Shadowkin encampment; a ring of torches and weapon-gloss glints tightening around twelve strange – and furious – figures. They had come in good faith. Dejected at their flight for sanctuary, ashamed, even, of the exodus from their own territories, they were proud nobles nonetheless. And now, as they stepped from cobbled barges onto the russet-brown island of their former enemies, to find themselves encircled by Shadowkin gunsmen, they reacted with all the outrage of displeased royalty.

‘Slit your vile little throats, by the frogspirits–’

‘Suggest you lower your weapons, Shadowscum–’

And so on.

Condemnitor Chianni directed their corralling with the confidence of one born to lead, and as he watched the unfolding spectacle from the secret places of the island-drill’s mouldering carcass, Sahaal reflected gratefully upon her transformation. She had come to him as a stammering under-condemnitor; a witness to her leader’s casual slaying by a monstrosity from her nightmares. And now?

Now she was a representative of divinity, no less.

He had ordered her to gather their current guests in the Emperor’s name and she had obliged him without complaint. In the unfamiliar waters of politics and diplomacy, she was his most valuable tool.

‘Priestess! You get these guns out of my sight or–’

‘Angry! Killing soon! Hiveshit Shadowkin blooding!’

The Shadowkin warriors ignored the threats with patience borne of confidence, driving their charges on up the flanks of the rusted heap; towards the dark culvert at its heart where the vast throne of bone and rag – accruing new grisly pennants and morbid trophies with every day – stood empty. Its owner watched the visitors from other, secret vantages, and relished the fear their indignation concealed.

Since their arrival in the Shadowkin territories the swarm of refugees had maintained a fearful distance from the shade-slicked island with its black-ragged denizens and rumours of living horrors.

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