Hallowed Ground (Warhammer Age of Sigmar) by Richard Strachan

Author:Richard Strachan [Strachan, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2022-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Hallowed Ground

There were cemeteries up near the Noble Quarter that were grand, imposing places, with perfectly curated fields of marble mauso­leums and tombstones behind their massive wrought iron gates. Teams of groundsmen and gardeners kept the grass tidy and the flowers growing, and for the richest families the quality of their ancestral resting places was a keen source of competitive pride. The better your position in death, the more you had gained in life.

The cemetery of St Solicus was quite different. A dark and tangled patch of land, not much more than a few acres wide, it was set up against the city walls on the other side of the Veins. The rusting iron fence was crooked with age, and the gate was locked only with a coiled length of old rope. Over the years, the statues and sarcophagi had been gnawed by the elements, their details obscured, and most of the headstones had long since collapsed into the grass. The footpaths between the avenues of the dead were muddy and overgrown. Here and there, dark trees reached dead branches to the blackened sky. Only a handful of the lamps along the footpaths had been lit. It was old ground, Galen knew, dating back to the city’s first founding. Old, cold ground. One of the first things people did when they settled a new patch of land was to build a temple and set aside somewhere to bury their dead. As a native of the Amber Princedoms in Shyish, Galen knew that the dead were always with you one way or another.

Always more reassuring when they stay buried, though…

He stood at the gate and peered into the murky graveyard, listening to the rustle of the branches, the whisper of the grass, smelling the dead scent of rotting leaves and rich, loamy earth. On the other side of the cemetery, across a long strip of waste ground dotted with the shacks and huts of the city’s poorest folk, the western walls of Excelsis stood before them. A rugged cliff face of black stormstone, the walls were gnarled with slights and fractures, and were propped up with buttresses and scaffolding.

‘This is ancient ground,’ Jael Morgane said beside him. ‘I can tell. And the dead are buried deep.’

She laced her hands around the bars of the gate and inhaled. Even above the smell of the undergrowth, Galen could detect her dead-flower scent, the musty odour of the lace dress she had taken in Hollowcrest. He stepped away, revulsed, and unhooked the rope from the gate. Behind him, the twisted streets of the city brooded in their silence – a forest of gabled roofs, spires, blunt towers and black tenements.

‘Wait…’ the vampire said. Her brow was furrowed, and she placed a hand carefully against her stomach. ‘There’s something…’

‘Briomedes?’ he said. He reached for his sword.

Morgane faltered. She was afraid, he realised. If the necromancer had tortured her as thoroughly as she claimed, then even the most powerful need for vengeance had to break

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