Nagash the Unbroken (The Rise of Nagash Book 2) by Mike Lee

Author:Mike Lee [Lee, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2011-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

The Hour of the Dead

Cripple Peak, in the 76th year of Khsar the Faceless

(-1598 Imperial Reckoning)

The storm was the worst of the season by far, and it broke upon the shores of the Sour Sea with little warning.

It had been a cloudy, windy day, with sudden gusts of rain interspersed with long periods of drizzle – nothing out of the ordinary for that time of the year. But shortly after sundown the wind picked up, howling like a chorus of hungry ghosts across the barrow fields, and flickers of lightning danced behind the roiling clouds out to sea. The barbarians along the north coast heard the ominous rumble of thunder, saw the height of the waves dashing against the shore, and rushed to their low, rounded huts. Lowland tribes flocked to the hills, begging the hetmen for shelter from the coming storm.

The reaction was altogether different among the Keepers of the Mountain, as the barbarian priests were known. Their lookouts reported the rising winds and the ominous clouds to the High Keeper, and after a moment’s thought he ordered the patrols of the barrow fields doubled until the storm had run its course. The High Keeper was an old and cunning man, or he never would have risen to claim the God’s Eye in the first place. The elder Keepers were certain that the grave-robbing monster who’d killed their brethren had been driven away by their hunting parties, but the High Keeper wasn’t convinced. He was certain that the creature was still close by, perhaps hiding somewhere on the mountain in spite of his order’s best efforts to find it. If so, the storm would draw it out of hiding. The wind and the rain would conceal its movements, providing the perfect opportunity to resume its grisly deeds. And when it did, the Keepers would be waiting.

A few hours later, well past nightfall, the storm broke upon the coast in all its fury. The wind raged, lashing at the men out on the barrow fields with blinding sheets of rain. Visibility dropped to twenty feet, then fifteen, then ten; had the Keepers not known the plain like the backs of their hands, they would have been utterly disorientated. Even still, the patrols could do little more than huddle together against the furious gale and creep from one mound to the next, trusting that the Burning God would lead them to the monster if it were about.

Then, around midnight, with the storm still scouring the plain, the patrols spied a pillar of green fire blazing fiercely to the south, towards the older barrow mounds. The sight lifted the Keepers’ hearts. At first, they believed their prayers had been answered, and, in a bitterly ironic sense, they were right.

The four patrols made their way independently southward, converging on the source of the god’s own flame. They had learned their lesson after the first disastrous encounter with the monster. The ostentatious lantern-globes had been left behind, and the acolytes had been armed with bronze swords and spears from the fortress’s ancient armoury.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.