The people have spoken, and have chosen two solid gold classics from the Black Library Archive to return to print: Lord of Night by Simon Spurrier and Riders of the Dead by Dan Abnett. Both titles are available to pre-order in paperback from Saturday.
Riders of the Dead is the story of two friends who find that they have two very different destinies, and set out on the road to conflict as they journey deeper into the Chaos-infested wastes. It was first published in 2003, so this classic tale of tragedy will be entirely new and exciting to many fans of Warhammer fiction readers – especially in light of the release of Warhammer: The Old World.* To whet your appetite, we have an extract:
At Choika, where the river was wide and slow, they rested their horses a day. The people there regarded them in a sullen manner, unimpressed by the sight of fifty Imperial demilancers jogging two abreast into the town square. Every horse was a heavy gelding, chestnut, black or grey; every man dressed in gleaming half-plate and lobster-tail burgonet. A light lance stood vertical in every right hand. A brace of pistols or a petronel bounced at every saddle.
The clarion gave double notes with his horn, long and short, and the troop flourished lances and dismounted with a clatter of metal plate. Girths were loosened, withers patted and rubbed.
The company officer was a thirty-two year old captain-of-horse called Meinhart Stouer. He removed his burgonet and held it by the chinstraps as he knocked grass burrs out of its comb of feathers.
Thus occupied, he barked sidelong at the clarion. ‘Karl! Find out what this town is called!’
‘It’s Choika, captain,’ the young man replied, buckling his gleaming silver bugle back into its saddle holster.
‘You know these things of course,’ smiled Stouer. ‘And the river?’
‘The Lynsk, captain.’
The captain raised his gloved hands wide like a supplicant and the lancers around him laughed. ‘May Sigmar save me from educated men!’
The clarion’s name was Karl Reiner Vollen. He was twenty years old, and took the teasing with a shrug. Stouer wouldn’t have asked if he hadn’t expected Vollen to know.
The company’s supply wagons, with their escort of six lances, rattled belatedly into the square and drew up behind the lines of horse. Stouer acknowledged their arrival and limped over to the well fountain. He was stiff-legged and sore from the saddle. He tucked off a leather riding glove, cupped it in his hand, and splashed water from the low stone basin over his face. Then he rinsed his mouth and spat brown liquid onto the ground. Beads of water twinkled in his thick, pointed beard.
‘Sebold! Odamar! Negotiate some feed for the mounts. Don’t let them rob you. Gerlach! Negotiate some feed for us. The same applies. Take Karl with you. He probably speaks the damn language too! If he does, buy him beer. Blowing that horn and thinking hard is thirsty work.’
Gerlach Heileman carried the company’s standard, a role that earned him pay-and-a-half and the title of vexillary. The standard was a stout ash pole three spans long. The haft was worked in gilt and wrapped in leather bands. On its tip was a screaming dragon head made of brass, from the back of which depended two swallowtails of cloth. These symbolised the Star With the Pair of Tails. Under this astrological omen, the great epochs of the Empire had been baptised. Some said it had been seen again, in these last few seasons.
Beneath the brass draco was a cross-spar supporting the painted banner of the company, a heavy linen square edged in a passementerie of gold brocade. A leopard’s pelt hung down behind the banner and parchment extracts from the Sigmarite gospel were pinned by rosette seals around its hem. The banner’s fields were the red and white of Talabheim, and it showed, in gold and green, the motifs of that great city-state: the wood-axe and the trifoil leaf, either side of the Imperial hammer. A great winged wyrm coiled around the hammer’s grip.
Gerlach kissed the haft of the standard and passed it to the demilancer holding his horse. Removing his helmet and gloves, he nodded over at the clarion.
The pair walked together across the square, their half-armour clinking. Long boots of buff leather encased the legs of every demilancer to the thigh. From there to the neck, they wore polished silver suits of articulated plate over a coat of felt-lined ringmail. The horse company was a prestigious troop, recruited from the landed nobility, unlike the levies or the standing armies of the state, and so each demilancer was required to provide for his own arming. Their armour reflected this, and the subtle nuances of each rider’s status. Gerlach Heileman was the second son of Sigbrecht Heileman, a sworn and spurred knight of the Order of the Red Shield, the bodyguard of Talabheim’s elector count. Once he had served his probation in the demilance company, Gerlach could expect to join his father and elder brother in that noble order. His half-armour matched those rich expectations. The panels were etched and worked to mimic the puffed and slashed cut of courtly velvet and damask, and his cuirass was in an elegant waistcoat style that fastened down the front.
Though outwardly similar, Karl Reiner Vollen’s half-armour was much plainer and more traditional. He could trace his lineage back to the nobility of Solland, but that heritage had been reduced to ashes in the war of 1707. Since then, dispossessed and penniless, his family had served as retainers to the household of their cousins – the Heilemans. Gerlach was two years Karl’s senior, but they had grown up within the same walls, schooled by the same tutors, trained by the same men-at-arms.
Yet a world of difference existed between them, and it was about to get much wider.
The pine dwellings of Choika-on-the-Lynsk bore roofs of grey aspen shingles that overlapped to give the appearance of scales. There had been a town here for a thousand years. This incarnation had stood for two centuries, since the razing of the previous version in the time of Magnus the Pious. Dry and old and dark, it would burn quickly when the hour came.
Vollen and Heileman walked under low gables into the gloomy hall that served as the town’s inn. Ingots of malachite were inlaid around the door posts, and the lintel was hung with charms, sprigs of herbs, and aged, wooden-soled ice skates.
Under its roof of smoke-blacked tie-beams, the hall was dark. The compressed earth floor was strewn with dirty rushes, and there was an ill-matched variety of benches, stools and trestles placed about. Wood smoke fouled the close air, and twisted in the light cast by the window slits. Vollen could smell spices and spit-meat, vinegar and hops. Heileman couldn’t smell anything that didn’t offend his nose.Three long-bearded old men, grouped around a painted table, looked up from the thimble cups of samogon they were warming in arthritic hands. Their hooded eyes were deep-set in their crinkled faces, and utterly noncommittal.
‘Hail and met, fathers,’ said Heileman, perfunctorily. ‘Where is the inn host?’
The eyes continued to twinkle without blinking.
‘I said, fathers, the inn host? Where is the inn host?’
There was no reply, nor any sense that they had even heard his words.
Heileman mimed supping a drink and rubbing his belly.
Karl Reiner Vollen turned away. He had little time for Gerlach Heileman’s arrogance, or his condescending pantomimes. He saw a huge broadsword hanging on the wall and looked at that instead. Its blade was mottled with rust. It was a Kislev weapon, a double-edged longsword of the Gospodar, deep-fullered and heavy-quilloned. A shashka, he believed they were called.
‘What is you here?’ asked a deep voice. Vollen turned back, expecting a man, but saw instead a heavy, sallow woman who had emerged from the back room, hugging a round-tipped serving knife to her streaked apron. Her eyes were permanently narrowed to slits by the ample flesh of her face. She stared at Gerlach.
‘Food? Drink?’ Gerlach said.
‘Is no of food, is no of drink,’ she told him.
‘I can smell it,’ he insisted.
She shrugged, humping up the slopes of her thick shoulders under her shawl.
‘Is wood burns.’
‘You miserable old mare!’ snapped Gerlach. He tore a kid-skin pouch from his belt and emptied it onto the floor. Silver Empire coins bounced and skittered in the dirty rushes. ‘I’ve sixty-two hungry, thirsty men out there! Sixty-two! And there’s not a wretch in this ditch-town fit to clean the boots of any of them!’
‘Gerlach…’ Vollen said.
‘Get off, Karl!’ A blush was rising in Heileman’s neck, the sign of his ugly temper. He closed on the flabby woman, then suddenly stooped and snatched up a coin. Holding it between finger and thumb, he pushed it at her face.
‘See there? His Holy Majesty Karl Franz! On his orders we’ve come here, to take up arms and save this bloody backwater! You’d think you’d be grateful! You’d think you’d be happy to feed us and keep us warm so we might be fit and ready to guard your souls! I don’t know why we didn’t just leave you to burn!’
The woman surprised Gerlach. She didn’t recoil. She lunged at him, slapping the coin out of his hand so hard it pinged away across the inn. She shouted a stream of curses into his face; a torrential proclamation in the harsh language of Kislev.
As she did so, she waved the serving knife expressively.
Gerlach Heileman backed away a step. He reached for his dagger.
Vollen interposed himself between them. ‘Enough!’ he snapped at Gerlach, pushing him backwards with one hand. ‘Enough, mother!’ he added, waving at her to calm down.Gerlach walked away with a dismissive oath, and Vollen turned squarely to face the woman. He kept his hands raised and open to reassure her.‘We need food and drink, and we will pay for both,’ he told her slowly.
‘Is no of food, is no of drink!’ she repeated.
‘No?’
‘Is gone all! Taked!’
She beckoned him with a rapid, snapping gesture and led him into a little side room where sacks of rye were piled up. There was a wooden coffer perched on the sacks. She lifted the lid and showed Vollen what was inside.
It was full to the brim with Empire coins. Enough to make the chests of most company paymasters look meagre.
She raked her fat fingers through the silver. ‘Taked!’ she repeated firmly.
‘Tell me how,’ he said.
You’ll be able to pre-order Riders of the Dead and Lord of Night in paperback on Saturday.
* While this story does involve Kislev, the game will focus on the nine core factions for the foreseeable future – so don’t get too frenzied for Streltsi!
