Callis and Toll are back in action in this week’s short story from Warhammer Age of Sigmar, with urgent information for the Grand Conclave at Hammerhal. But are they too late?
For a fleeting moment, Callis thought Val Petras might collapse. The many marble steps leading to the Heavenhall were steep and the young arcanogeologist had weathered much over the last few days. And now here they stood before the Grand Conclave wedged between a burly Freeguilder and a grizzled witch hunter. Unlikely companions for sure.
They had come with all swiftness from the arcanogeologist’s guildhouse, where a deadly raid had seen its chambers ransacked, its guilders slain and the place itself overrun by a swarm of voracious rats. Armand Callis and his old colleague Hanniver Toll, along with Petras, had barely escaped with their lives.
And now, stinking of vermin and, in Petras’s case at least, caked in dried blood, they faced a very different ordeal.
‘Tell us then,’ uttered Sevastean Mench, the broad and bearded Master Patriarch glaring at the dishevelled figure standing at the end of the hammer-shaped table. ‘Why have we been gathered in such haste?’
He flicked a stern glance, first at Toll, then at Callis, who stayed silent. Hammerhal was under attack in the eastern districts, a large swathe of the city’s garrison marshalling to its defence. The path back to the Heavenhall had been fraught to say the least. Privation, war and insidious fear had wormed into the populace and driven them to the edge. Callis felt it in the air, a febrile tension that threatened to overspill.
‘I can only assume it is a matter of dire import to warrant the attention of the inestimable Armand Callis and Hanniver Toll,’ uttered a shadow sitting halfway down the table: Zane Delorius. ‘Ah,’ he added, ‘and I see you have brought young Val Petras with you. I know something of the guild’s work. I think we should listen to what they have to say.’
The so-called ‘Hidden Hand’ possessed an incongruously cheerful demeanour, or at least he had the last time Callis and Toll had met him, but he could turn from warm bonhomie to icy regard in a moment. He wore a white mask and a thick hood to conceal his features even at council, and consequently the rigours of the past weeks did not show on his false face as they did his fellow conclavists. It was rumoured Delorius had never been seen without the mask, and tongues wagged at what might be underneath it. At least until Delorius silenced those tongues through his feared Guild of Seekers.
Callis had no wish to be on the business end of a Seeker’s blade. Involuntarily, his hand strayed to the hilt of his sword in the master spy’s presence as he exchanged a wary glance with Toll. For his part, the witch hunter appeared irritatingly at ease, laying a gentle hand on Petras’s shoulder as a subtle cue for the guilder to answer.
‘It is the arcanothermic readings,’ said Petras shrilly as if startled, wiping a hand across their sweat-dappled brow before loudly clearing their throat. ‘Stolen from my guild. Priceless research gone. Taken! We have been… that is to say, our findings. Every nexus and font of arcana, every ley line, we have been exhaustive. It—’
Brow furrowed in consternation, Mench raised a hand and Petras’s mouth clamped shut.
‘With the greatest respect, guilder, what are you blathering about?’
Callis gave a weary sigh as he smoothed the days-old stubble on his chin. Another glance to Toll confirmed this wasn’t going well. The poor arcanogeologist had almost reached their limit, it seemed. Callis supposed finding oneself amongst the gnawed corpses of one’s fellows would do that to a person. He had seen it before in soldiers who had seen and experienced too much.
Mench went on. ‘We have reavers at our gates, parts of the city in flames, riots and shortages left and right, and we of the Conclave are expected to heed some half-cooked ramblings about buried nexus points and ley lines?’ He looked to Callis and Toll, as did a nervous Petras.
Callis’s sigh deepened. He had thought Delorius might speak up in Petras’s defence. The skittish young guilder was one of his informants, after all. Or so Callis assumed. At a surreptitious gesture from Toll, he noticed the spymaster appeared suddenly distracted, his thoughts evidently elsewhere. The other conclavists looked scarcely more engaged.
‘Well?’ pressed Katrik le Guillion, the Prime Commander having exhausted her patience, which was ever a half-filled cup. ‘What is the meaning of all this?’ She jabbed an armoured finger at Callis and Toll. ‘You two did Cinderfall a service sorting out all that Kingsblood mess, so you’ve got some credit, but I warn you – it is rapidly running out.’
Perhaps half-filled was too generous, Callis reflected. To his relief, Toll spoke up. ‘We found the guildhouse of the arcanogeologists attacked, its guilders killed and their research either taken or destroyed. At least one of the dead had been poisoned, while the rest had been near completely devoured. Our,’ he hesitated as he found the right word, ‘friend here, Petras, believes the guild had uncovered a calamity in the making, one that could extend the breadth of the Parch. Or even further.’
Toll dipped the brim of his hat to the arcanogeologist in a bid for them to explain further. Petras moistened their lips and did as requested.
‘It is as I’ve been trying to say. What we thought we knew about the ley lines of the Parch, or even all of Aqshy – it’s only part of the truth. Our readings strongly suggest they are not merely confined to the surface. Metalith fragments, subterranean depths. The ley lines are everywhere, extending like nerve clusters.’ Petras splayed their fingers as if to emphasise the point. ‘And something is happening. Seismic variance, geomagical fluctuations. The readings all point to one thing.’
‘Which is?’ asked an irritated looking Drobjorn, the High Artillerist. Callis suspected the duardin had more of a head for the arcanogeologist’s expertise than the others, but even he looked impatient.
‘The ley lines,’ Petras replied, ‘it’s as if they’re on fire. It presages a major, imminent and potentially realm-wide trauma. An unprecedented cataclysm.’
Murmurings of mild alarm travelled around the table. Mench quirked an eyebrow. ‘And you have proof of this?’
Shoulders slumped, Petras slowly shook their head.
‘Then I fail to see what choice I have but to stop waiting for our—’ Mench began, about to pronounce judgement, when a sharp hiss from Delorius stopped him.
The Hidden Hand rose to his feet like silk against air, a stiletto suddenly in his hand.
‘Something lurks in here with us which does not belong…’
Callis shared a look with Toll, the old witch hunter raising an eyebrow. The tide of vermin in the guildhouse rose anew in the mind.
Mench visibly paled, as did several others of the Conclave, the Eve of Four Killings still recent in the memory. Callis noticed the Master Patriarch’s gaze went to old bloodstains, faded but still visible, on the wyrmwood table. Delorius’s eyes, though, were on the shadows around the room that had abruptly deepened.
Taking his lead from the master spy, Toll pulled forth a ragged length of hemp rope from a pouch beneath his cloak and proceeded to light it with a match.
‘What is it? asked Katrik, her one good eye narrowed as she reached for the jewelled hilt of her sword.
Toll was watching the fire as it bit and smoked along the rope, the flames crackling orange at first before changing to lurid green. Callis drew his pistol.
‘Skaven…’ he uttered to shallow gasps around the room, remembering their terrifying mission in the sewers below the city.
‘In the Heavenhall?’ protested Drobjorn, though his keen duardin gaze flitted from shadow to shadow. ‘Impossible.’
A hubbub of minor panic began to ripple through the chamber, threatening to boil over. Mench turned, about to summon the guards when Delorius bade for quiet.
An eerie stillness descended, threaded with unease.
Callis had been watching the darkness too as an oily shadow, long and thin like a night-black talon, crept up the wall and onto the ceiling. There it spread into an inky pool, drawing the eyes of the room.
Raising his pistol, Callis took aim at the shadow, but before he could fire he saw the smoke from Toll’s rope pulling to the side, not the ceiling. The Freeguilder was already turning as a sudden flurry of movement caught his eye from the penumbra at the edge of the chamber. Light flashed against metal, spinning, sharp. A triskele.
Callis cried out a warning, turning, pistol booming thunderously at a ragged shape that had materialised as if from scraps of shadow.
Too late.
Petras squeaked as the bladed missile flew towards their throat.
A hand’s breadth before it found its mark, Toll swept out his cloak and deflected the triskele in mid-flight.
Pulling a second pistol, Callis fired again as anarchy seized the Heavenhall. He only wounded the creature, a black-swathed rat-thing that sprang backwards and flipped onto the table as Toll added his weapon to the fusillade. Mench was bellowing for the guards as the Heavenhall erupted in clamour and the skaven assassin brandished three knives, one in each blade-fingered paw and one clutched in its tail, each sizzling with a corrosive substance.
Snarling, it leapt for Petras.
Almost faster than Callis could follow, Delorius lunged with his stiletto. At first, he seemed to have missed his mark until his form appeared to blur like a smear on an artist’s canvas, a shadowy simulacrum echoing the original but for the minor shift in position. Callis blinked, barely able to parse what he was seeing as the shadowy blade pierced the assassin’s throat.
The Hidden Hand withdrew, the stiletto folding back into nothing as the man himself stood innocuously over the dead skaven, hands tucked within his robes, expression inscrutable behind the mask. A bullet hole still smouldered in the ratman’s leg.
‘A fine shot in the circumstances, Freeguilder,’ said Delorius, giving Callis a slight nod. ‘I think you may have winged it.’
‘Sigmar’s blood,’ cursed Mench, as the conclavists returned to their seats. Le Guillion sheathed her blade, but still rested a hand on the pommel. Drobjorn sniffed his indifference but the duardin’s gaze didn’t stray from the corpse lying on the table.
‘Let’s see it then,’ he grumbled, doubtless wanting to be sure it was dead.
Delorius carefully pulled back the creature’s hood to reveal the rattish snout of a skaven, its dead eyes staring blankly, tongue lolling from its mouth. ‘A spy in our midst.’
‘You would know, I suppose,’ muttered Toll, who had wandered over to examine the ratman corpse. He earned a side glance from Delorius.
‘I wouldn’t antagonise that one, old friend,’ Callis murmured into his ear.
Toll seemed unconcerned, his mind apparently on other matters. ‘The ratmen are growing bold if they are sending assassins into our most protected halls.’ He glanced up at the ceiling. ‘I believe its ingress was probably via the roof.’
Mench nodded, shaken but still angry. He gestured to the guards, mildly seething at their ineffectuality.
‘Burn it and conduct a thorough search,’ he said. As the guards hurried to remove the skaven, Mench’s attention fell on Callis, Toll and their nervous charge. ‘It seems we are in your debt again.’ He turned to Zane Delorius, ‘and to you, spymaster.’
Resuming his seat, Delorius gave no indication he had heard or even cared for the Master Patriarch’s praise. Mench appeared only slightly perturbed as he turned back to Petras.
‘Now…’ he added, regarding the arcanogeologist with fresh respect and motioning to an empty seat, ‘tell us again of these readings, honoured guilder.’
It’s fair to say that their fears have been borne out by yesterday’s revelations from the Mortal Realms. You can check out everything we’ve revealed about the Skavendoom below, and we’ll be back with another Dawnbringer Chronicle next week…
