The Blackhearts
By
Nathan Long
Product Description
Under threat of death for their crimes, Reiner and his companions are forced to carry out the most desperate and suicidal secret missions, all for the good of the Empire. Chaos cultists, ratmen, dark elves, rogue army commanders and more—time and again the Blackhearts are pitted against impossible odds and survive—yet what they most want is their freedom.
This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons
and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the
world's ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury
it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds
and great courage.
At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the
largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for
its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is
a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests
and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns
the Emperor Karl-Franz, sacred descendant of the
founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder
of his magical warhammer.
But these are far from civilised times. Across the length
and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces
of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come
rumblings of war. In the towering World's Edge Mountains,
the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and
renegades harry the wild southern lands of
the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the
skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the
land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the
ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen
corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods.
As the time of battle draws ever
near, the Empire needs heroes
like never before.
Table of Contents
MAP
INTRODUCTION
HETZAU’S FOLLIES
VALINR’S BANE
ONE: Victims Of Circumstance
THREE: In The Doghouse
FOUR: A Breath Of Fresh Air
FIVE: Heroes Don’t Win By Trickery
SIX: You Will Obey Me
SEVEN: The Right Thing To Do
EIGHT: They Still Come
NINE: Trapped Like Rats
TEN: Let The Wind Be Your Guide
ELEVEN: The End Of The Empire
TWELVE: There Is No Good Decision Here
THIRTEEN: All Is Not Entirely Lost
FOURTEEN: Come Taste Imperial Steel
FIFTEEN: Breastplates Won’t Be Enough To Save Us
SIXTEEN: Fellows Of The Brand
SEVENTEEN: The Banner Has Enslaved Them
EIGHTEEN: The Claws Of The Manticore
NINETEEN: I Will Not Fail Again
TWENTY: Your Greatest Service
ROTTEN FRUIT
THE BROKEN LANCE
ONE: An Untested Tool
TWO: We Are All Villains Here
THREE: The Finest Army in the Empire
FOUR: ’Tis Always the General
FIVE: Paragons of Martial Virtue
SIX: Where Does He Lead Us?
SEVEN: A Man of Vision
EIGHT: Manfred’s Noose
NINE: Is Someone There?
TEN: They Were Not Men!
ELEVEN: Black Death Take You
TWELVE: The Honour of Knights
THIRTEEN: Do You Still Say I Lie?
FOURTEEN: May Sigmar Speed You
FIFTEEN: They Knew
SIXTEEN: Shallya Receive You
SEVENTEEN: To Betray a Traitor!
EIGHTEEN: Shoulder Your Weapons
NINETEEN: All Must Die!
TWENTY: Heroic Deeds
TWENTY-ONE: Freedom
TAINTED BLOOD
ONE: The Tide of Chaos
TWO: An Honorable Profession
THREE: The City of Gardens
FOUR: A Great Opportunity
FIVE: Will a Fire Unmake It?
SIX: Touch Not The Stone
SEVEN: The Hand of Malekith
EIGHT: The Countess Demands An Explanation
NINE: In My Heart I Know It
TEN: This is Not My Home
ELEVEN: Beasts and Vermin
TWELVE: Great Magic is Done Here
THIRTEEN: I Am Not An Infant
FOURTEEN: All We Must Do Is Nothing
FIFTEEN: We Have Tonight
SIXTEEN: I Will Not Betray My City
SEVENTEEN: Kill Them
EIGHTEEN: We Fight On The Wrong Side
NINETEEN: There Is Blood To Be Spilled
TWENTY: Spears To The Front
TWENTY-ONE: The Gate Is Open
TWENTY-TWO: The Hero Of The Hour
TWENTY-THREE: Unfinished Business
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
A Finger In The Eye
When I moved out to Hollywood twenty years ago, my ‘big idea’ was to write traditional action movies with non-traditional heroes. I loved action movies—still do, but I got tired of the heroes. Too many of them were big, square-jawed white guys who ran around like they owned the place and solved all their problems with their fists or their guns—James Bond, Dirty Harry Commando, Rambo, Batman, Robo-Cop. They were always the biggest, toughest—and here’s the important one—the least human characters in the movie.
True, there were exceptions, and it was the exceptions that I loved the best. Aliens, Indiana Jones, Die Hard, The Road Warrior, Southern Comfort—all starred heroes that had at least some flaws and a few scraps of humanity.
I wanted to take that notion further. I wanted my heroes to be people of average ability but above-average heart—working men, house wives, punk rockers, beat cops, common soldiers, small-time hoods—who were swept up in an extraordinary situation and, because they weren’t the best fighters or athletes, and because they didn’t have the biggest guns or biceps, had to use their guts and their brains to stay alive and save the day
Needless to say, I didn’t sell too many scripts, but when Black Library asked me to write a novel for them... well, I thought I’d give my ‘big idea’ another shot.
In his introduction to The Founding, the first Gaunt’s Ghosts omnibus, Dan Abnett talks about choosing to write about the Imperial Guard because he found them easier to relate to than Space Marines. I had the same problem with Warhammer Fantasy. I loved the grim horror and grimy patina of the Old World, but I didn’t want to write about the noble knights of the Empire. I couldn’t get inside their heads. To me, they were the same big, square-jawed white guys who bored me to tears in the movies.
How can anyone care about men so brave, and so certain in their beliefs that they never have a moment of fear or doubt. I don’t believe these people exist, and if they do, I don’t want to know them. They’re dangerous to be around, and they’re boring to talk to at parties. If you have no fear of the enemy and don’t think twice about running into burning buildings to save dewy-eyed children you’re not a hero, you’re an idiot. A hero, at least in my mind, is the guy who pees his pants when he thinks about the enemy, and is terrified of burning, yet, when faced with the choice of fleeing or doing the right thing, overcomes his fears and runs into the fire.
So I asked Lindsey Priestley, my sainted editor, if the Black Library would let me write about that kind of hero and that kind of heroism—about the Old World equivalents of my working men, house wives, punk rockers, beat
cops, common soldiers and small-time hoods, and tell a story about how they conquered their fears and their natural self-centred cowardice to battle and beat the bullies on both sides of the never-ending war. Wonder of wonders, she said yes.
Valnir’s Bane, the book that resulted from this meeting of minds, starts off with the oldest cliché in the writer’s handy guide to plots—a group of convicts are let out of prison to go on a suicide mission, with the promise of freedom if they succeed. As quite a few people have pointed out to me, it’s ‘The Dirty Dozen’ Warhammer-style. Yes, I did know. Thank you.
So what?
It was the perfect structure on which to hang my kind of story, and feature my kind of people.
Who are the Blackhearts? Over the course of the three books contained in this omnibus edition we meet a noble second son turned failed student and professional gambler, a pair of sly farm boys, a field surgeon with nasty habits, a larcenous mercenary a construction engineer, a fencing instructor, a quartermaster, a student of botany, and a handful Of low-ranking professional soldiers, and many others. There’s not a square-jawed hero among them. Of course they have the occasional heroic impulse, but these are surrounded by episodes of villainy, cowardice, self-doubt, self-loathing, self-interest, and plain old stupidity. And they rarely win with their swords. They win with guts, determination and brains—crapping themselves all the while.
There is a precedent for this sort of hero. There was a time in popular culture when the big guy with the big muscles and the big gun who beat everybody up was the bad guy, and the little guy who stood up to him and fought back with brains and heart and guts was the good guy. Those little guys are my idols—Charlie Chaplin outwitting the Keystone Cops, Robin Hood tricking the Sheriff of Nottingham, Bugs Bunny getting the better of Elmer Fudd, Jackie Chan running circles around an army of gangsters, the Marx Brothers talking circles around an army of bureaucrats, David knocking out Goliath with nothing but a rock and a leather strap.
The Blackhearts are the scrappy descendants of these little guys—a band of hard-luck losers caught in a war between monolithic armor-clad behemoths that care not one whit for the survival of the mere mortals scrambling desperately to stay alive beneath their enormous, iron-shod feet I wanted their stories to be a reminder that, no matter what insignia the behemoths may wear, or what philosophy they may spout, a bully is a bully, and no matter how much they beat you down, as long as you’ve got one finger left, you can still poke the bastards in the eye.
Nathan Long
Hollywood
2007
PS. Rotten Fruit, the second short story in the collection, which appeared for the first time in Tales of the Old World, has been fleshed out with almost two thousand more words, making it a fifth longer and juicier. Enjoy the extra rottenness!
Hetzau’s Follies
REINER HETZAU WATCHED through the barred window of the camp brig as the hangman tested the trap of the gallows on the parade ground. With the pull of a lever, the trap fell open and a sack of dirt hung from the noose dropped and jerked in a way that made Reiner swallow—then laugh.
He swallowed because he was due for that drop tomorrow morning at dawn before the assembled troops of Count Jurgen’s army. He laughed because, after all the foolish things he’d done in his misspent young life, he was to be hung for crimes he had not committed.
Certainly he wasn’t entirely blameless in the affair. But when he had recognized his errors and seen the coming horror he had done his best to rectify the situation. In fact, it wouldn’t be going too far to say that he had saved the camp, and by extension the whole army, from a plague of Chaos that might have brought down the Empire.
But had they rewarded him? Showered him with titles and lands? No. They had thrown him in the brig with the dregs of the Empire’s armies: murderers, deserters, thieves, rapists, profiteers and smugglers, and fitted him for a noose.
He laughed again. To think that three days ago he had been complaining to Hennig—poor Hennig—of boredom. By Ranald, he would give all the gold in the world to be that bored again.
REINER AND HENNIG stood with their feet in the door of Madam Tolshnaya’s house of joy, trying to keep her from closing it in their faces. Their breath hung in the air and fat snowflakes pin-wheeled down from the grey sky and clung to their cloaks.
‘I assure you, my dear procuress,’ said Reiner, ‘the paywagon is due tomorrow. We will be able to pay you twice what we owe.’
‘You say that last week,’ said Madam Tolshnaya, a proud Kislevite beauty of middle years with a nose like a hawk and the curves of an Araby harem dancer.
‘But this week it’s true,’ said Hennig.
‘Have a heart,’ begged Reiner. ‘We are stranded far from home, deprived of all gentle company.’ He put an arm around Hennig’s shoulder. ‘Look at this lonely lad.’ Karl was a beardless boy of seventeen, three years Reiner’s junior. ‘Won’t you do your part to raise the spirits of a noble warrior who defends your land from the depredations of Chaos?’
Madam Tolshnaya curled her lip. ‘You want spirits raised, raise you some money.’ She slammed the door.
Hennig jerked his foot back in time, but Reiner wasn’t so quick. The door caught his toe and he hopped around on his bad leg, hissing and cursing in the muddy street. He flung himself onto a wooden bench outside the tavern next door to Madam Tolshnaya’s, groaning. ‘Any more of that Samogon, Hennig?’ he asked.
Hennig joined him and handed him his flask. ‘Just a swallow.’
Reiner gulped down the potent Kislevite liquor, wincing as it burned its way to his empty stomach. ‘Good lad. I’ll fill this again tomorrow, when…’
‘When the paywagon comes,’ finished Hennig dryly.
They sat for a while in the lazily falling snow, watching the endless river of shabby refugees who were crowding into the town, fleeing the devastation in the north, from Praag, Erengrad and little hamlets too numerous to name, all razed to the ground by the unstoppable hordes of Chaos.
That was why Reiner and Hennig were here on the Empire’s border with Kislev. Noble sons, like most pistoliers, they had come up with Von Stolmen’s Pistols from Whitgart only two weeks ago, attached to Count Jurgen’s army. Upon arrival, they had been sent instantly to the front without a chance to recover from the long march, and thrown into a fierce action against mounted marauders at Kirstaad. What a mess that had been. No briefing. No orders. Just in at a gallop and every man for himself. The pistols, light cavalry meant to wheel, fire and retire, had been forced to stand and fight like armoured knights when a troop of halberdiers broke before a Chaos charge and blundered willy-nilly into their line of retreat.
Reiner and Hennig had both been wounded in the hard-fought withdrawal; Reiner with a gash in his thigh—and hadn’t that bled like a river—Karl with a handful of broken fingers. After the battle they had been declared unfit to fight, and sent back to Vulsk with the other wounded, where the army was quartered, to recover from their wounds.
Now, two weeks later, with his wound only a throbbing annoyance, Reiner was going stir crazy. Vulsk, like border towns the world over, had its share of diversions: brothels, taverns and bear pits, even a crude little inn-yard theatre where broad slapsticks were performed, but nearly all had been commandeered by the army for officers’ quarters, stock rooms and stables. Every space with four walls and a roof was packed with counts and their retinues, knightly orders with their grooms, cooks and servants, companies of greatswords, crossbowmen and pistoliers and engineers with barrels of volatile substances, as well as assorted priests of Sigmar and Morr, and their acolytes. And what space the army disdained was crawling with refugees: starving peasants huddled in the lees of buildings, desperate merchants standing guard over mud-spattered wagons, threadbare Kislevite cavalry tented with their horses on frozen stubble fields. There wasn’t room in town to swing a cat, not that there were cats to swing, for food was scarce, and many was the peasant Reiner had seen eating cat, rat or his own shoe leather and call
ing it dinner.
But even if the army and the refugees hadn’t been in residence, and all the town’s entertainments open for business, Reiner and Hennig still wouldn’t have been able to partake, for they were flat broke. Reiner had not lied to Madam Tolshnaya. The paywagon was due the next day, just as it had been due a week previous, when a party of raiders had ambushed it and made off with everything. The army hadn’t been paid in a fortnight, and the meagre allowance Reiner’s miserly father had reluctantly doled out to him before he left home was long gone.
‘By Sigmar, Hennig,’ said Reiner. ‘I am damned tired of this poverty.’
‘As am I,’ agreed Hennig. ‘I wonder how the poor stand it.’
‘I’m a man of the world,’ said Reiner, gesturing grandly. ‘I need sophisticated diversion. Music, poetry, stimulating company, food worthy of the name.’
‘Eh?’ said Hennig, affronted. ‘You don’t find me stimulating company?’
‘Not below the waist, lad. Terribly sorry.’
Hennig guffawed. ‘You cut me to the quick.’
Reiner rested his chin on his palm. ‘How to make some money? There’s no looting to be done.’ He waved at the shambling river of refugees. ‘These poor wretches have nothing, and the campaign will be over before we’re allowed back to the front. No chance at battlefield trophies or Chaos curios to sell to “men of learning”. Even selling my armour wouldn’t buy enough for a night’s drinking. Sigmar curse my father’s skinflint heart. He wouldn’t pay for new kit. Hand-me-downs he gives me. A bunch of dented tin an orc wouldn’t go to battle in.’