‘Erzbeta never bore me sons,’ said Wrodzik. ‘It saddened us, but our daughters filled my life with joy. They married well and bore me many grandchildren.’
‘Do they yet live?’ asked Katarin.
Wrodzik shrugged. ‘I do not know. Their stanitsas were overrun in the Year That No One Forgets. I know what the northmen do to the women they capture, and though all the gods curse me, I hope Morr took them swiftly.’
They nodded in agreement and Katarin felt her love for these brave warriors fill her. Not one of the thousand riders upon this hill had even thought of boarding the Empire ship. Such was their devotion that the thought never occurred to them.
Against impossible odds, they remained at her side.
She could imagine no greater love.
‘Tey-Muraz. Wrodzik. Urska. You are my bogatyr, my faithful knights,’ said Katarin, feeling the frozen chill of Kislev’s magic swell within her body. ‘And when men speak of this battle in all the centuries to come, you will be its greatest heroes, Kislev’s mightiest warriors who will return when the land’s needs is greatest.’
They wept at her words, honoured and humbled to be so beloved. The icy soul of Kislev surged in her veins as she stood tall in the saddle and called out to her warriors.
‘You all know I bore no heirs,’ said Katarin, her voice carrying to every man and woman who stood with her at Tor’s high temple. ‘But I have all my sons and daughters here with me today. On this rain-soaked hill, we are all one people, one land. Today we fight for Kislev! Today we fight for her lost sons and daughters, for her proud mothers and fathers!’
The warriors cheered, thrusting swords and lances to the benighted sky, yelling their defiance to the beasts below.
Katarin thought of the oft-repeated sentiment, words that had been spoken since the first khan-queen of the Gospodars had crossed the mountains.
Kislev is land, and land is Kislev.
Only now did she realise how wrong that was.
‘Kislev is people, and people are Kislev.’
Tey-Muraz repeated the mantra. Wrodzik joined him, then Urska Pysanka. They bellowed it until the rotas took up their shout, and Erengrad echoed to the sound of this new war-cry.
‘Kislev is people, and people are Kislev!’
Jagged bolts of lightning exploded above the stricken tower, forking from the clouds to strike the ruined city. More followed in bursts of zig-zagging purple that sent roaring flames curling into the ever-darkening sky.
‘Maybe Tor favours us?’ said Tey-muraz.
Deafening thunder boomed like the mockery of insane gods and the day was plunged into darkness. Fractures of void-black night tore the sky with the sound of ripping cloth, and the earth shook to the impact of bloody hammers on brazen anvils.
Things moved within the darkness: titanic, impossible things with wet meat bodies. They cloaked themselves in shadow, but Katarin’s seer-sight saw bloody crimson armour, eyes that watched worlds end and deadly weapons forged from purest rage. The grave-reek of rancid flesh and burning fur filled the air, like the remains of a plague pyre left too long in the sun.
‘The Lords of Ruin,’ she whispered.
Katarin bent double as searing agony exploded within her belly, as though invisible hands were ripping at her womb.
‘My queen!’ cried Urska.
Katarin pulled herself upright and let out a hissing breath straight from winter’s white heart. The magic of her homeland filled her more than it ever had, a cold so intense it turned the ground beneath her steed to solid ice.
The beasts roared as a single rider on a dark horse moved to the head of this host of beasts and daemons. He carried a rippling banner, its sigil that of a clawed hand tearing down an icy crown, the banner of her father’s killer.
‘Feydaj,’ said Wrodzik, his hands balling to fists. A towering brute of a creature with ruddy skin and a single, unblinking eye lumbered into sight alongside the hetzar. An enormous menhir was lashed to its back, a tapered stone encrusted with ancient sigils.
‘Ursun’s teeth!’ the Ice Queen said.
‘Yha, it’s a big bastard, right so,’ agreed Wrodzik.
‘No. That stone it’s carrying,’ said Katarin. ‘It is one of the stones from Urszebya.’
The roaring of beasts grew louder at the sight of the hetzar and the giant beast. They bellowed their blood-challenge, baring their chests, stamping their hooves and thrusting their horns.
And that challenge was answered.
A thunderous roar echoed from the summit of Tor’s hill.
It came from within the abandoned tower.
Lancers wheeled their terrified mounts away from its arched entrance as something enormously ancient and powerful lumbered from within. Its shoulders rolled with vast muscles, its thick fur pale as winter’s first ice. Its body was enormous, easily the biggest creature anyone gathered on the hill had ever seen, with fangs like tusks and claws like ebon daggers.
‘It can’t be…’ said Wrodzik.
The enormous white bear stood on its hind legs and roared again. The monsters below quailed before its raw power.
Katarin’s heart leapt to see her father’s bear once again.
‘Urskin,’ she said.
They charged from Tor’s hill, a thousand warriors with lances lowered and wing banners shrieking. They rode into history, following their radiant queen and the great white bear of her father.
The ground shook to the hoofbeats of their painted steeds as the soul of Kislev rose up alongside its people.
The dark winds blowing from the north were snuffed out.
The rains turned to snow.
And a blizzard of unimaginable ferocity swept over the walls of Erengrad. The High City froze solid as the Ice Queen’s magic gave the winter spirits of the steppe piercing form and fury. Sleeting blades of razor-edged hail tore through the forest beasts as Kislev’s doomed lancers smashed into their midst.
A rolling crash of swords and splintering lances burst upon the followers of the Dark Gods as the Ice Queen and Urskin cut a path through the snowstorm towards Hetzar Feydaj.
The blizzard engulfed Erengrad and the swirling darkness.
It rages still.
About The Author
Graham McNeill has written more Horus Heresy novels than any other Black Library author! His canon of work includes Vengeful Spirit and his New York Times bestsellers A Thousand Sons and the novella The Reflection Crack’d, which featured in The Primarchs anthology. Graham’s Ultramarines series, featuring Captain Uriel Ventris, is now six novels long, and has close links to his Iron Warriors stories, the novel Storm of Iron being a perennial favourite with Black Library fans. He has also written a Mars trilogy, featuring the Adeptus Mechanicus. For Warhammer, he has written the Time of Legends trilogy The Legend of Sigmar, the second volume of which won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award, and the anthology Elves. Originally hailing from Scotland, Graham now lives and works in Nottingham.