Mir made straight for the sphinxes and attacked one head on while the other ploughed into the body of his warband. Though huge and fashioned from stone, they too moved quickly, slicing their arm-blades through the air at such speed that they blurred. The wind of their passing stirred Mir’s fire-scorched hair. He leaned backward, barely evading the cutting edge. Mir swung Skullthief at the living statue’s leg, seeking to cripple it, but the great blade attached to its left fist swept the blow aside and its scorpion tail stabbed down, the gems on it glowing with evil magic.
Mir dodged the sting, and the tail smashed into the carpet of bones on the ground. He swung Bloodspite around with all his considerable might. The daemon axe crashed through the enchanted stone of the tail. The tip came away, and the tail whipped back. The face of the sphinx was an expressionless mask, but it reared up in response to the wound. Its broad lion’s feet pawed at the air before stamping down in an attempt to crush the life from the Chaos warlord. He spun aside, axes whipping round. Bloodspite shrilled in excitement as it bit a chunk of onyx from the left foreleg. Cracks spread from the impact. Mir followed with a hit from Skullthief, and the cracks widened. Splinters of stone sprayed outward and the leg came free, falling to the ground and smashing more of the bones there. The sphinx staggered back, its remaining forepaw thumping down heavily. It limped around on three legs, the veins of minerals in its shattered limb bleeding magic.
Mir attacked again. Deflecting the axe unbalanced the sphinx, and Mir leapt high over the construct’s sweeping blades, twisting his back and body to clear them by inches. He landed on the other side. The crippled necrosphinx staggered around, but Ushkar Mir was already clambering up the decorative bronze-work studding its hide. The creature’s human torso twisted around, but it could not bring its arms, bound as they were into its blades, to bear on Mir.
Howling madly, Mir drew both axes back to his right and swung them together at the creature’s neck. Their supernatural blades cut through the bronze like paper, and clove deep into the stone.
The necrosphinx went rigid and its head toppled from its shoulders. Mir leapt from its back as it fell over onto its side, now only a defaced statue, metal bending and stone limbs cracking free as it crashed down.
The second necrosphinx was in the thick of Mir’s warriors. They attacked from all sides, their weapons marking its smoothly polished hide with chalky scratches, but they could not bring it down. Seeing an opening, Vuul whipped the khorgoraths into the attack. Both took long, deep wounds from the animated statue’s blades, but they did not fall. Driven to greater heights of fury by the bloodstoker’s expert goading, they grappled with the sphinx, holding its arms in place while the rest of the warband laid about it with their weapons. Orto hacked at its back leg, taking chips from the stone with his two-handed axe.
One of the khorgoraths roared, wrenching off the blades from the construct’s stone arm with a squeal of rending metal. The sphinx lashed out with its fist, slashing the khorgorath’s hide with the twisted remnants of its weapon. The khorgorath bit down hard, shattering its own teeth on the arm, but crushing stone nevertheless, and the arm came away.
Mir moved in for the kill, pounding through the swirling melee. He smashed into the side of the necrosphinx, battering at its side with his daemon axes. He howled as his rage was stoked higher by Khorne and the runes in his punishment band burned. Stone chips flew and cracks ran all over the statue’s sides. His followers joined him, jabbing weapons into the crevices Bloodspite and Skullthief had opened up and levering them wider.
Vuul goaded the khorgoraths, manoeuvring one into position on the far side of the statue to Mir while the other hung off the sphinx’s remaining arm. The poisonous tail of the necrosphinx stabbed down, the bronze barb plunging deep into the khorgorath’s back. The crystal bulb on the tail pulsed, and the poison drained away, pumping into the twisted Khornate beast. Bellowing, the khorgorath raised its fists and pummelled at the statue’s back, ripping open its own skin on spined armour as it tore it from its mounts, exposing the fixing pins beneath. Three times the khorgorath’s fists pounded down, each blow weaker than the last. Mir and the Bloodslaves hacked away at the living stone on the other side. Then the khorgorath’s fists descended a final time, and the statue shattered into two pieces joined only by twisted trails of wire.
Its unnatural life left it instantly.
Around the gate the battle was nearly done. The last few skeletons fell under heavy axe blades. Silence returned to the Bone Sands.
The five-eyed skeleton alone remained. Its glistening eyeballs rolled in their sockets in different directions as it took in the aftermath of battle.
Skull leaned panting on his sword hilt not far from Mir. ‘The first test. Fury for Khorne. What is the nature of the second?’
The skeleton raised one hand and pointed. Whether north, east, west or south had any meaning in this realm was unknown to the Bloodslaves, but the purple glow of the sky was brighter in that direction.
The skeleton herald collapsed into the bone carpeting the floor.
Skull turned over its head with a foot, revealing five eye sockets full of dripping ooze. ‘I don’t trust this,’ he said.
Mir grunted. A soft wind whispered over newly shattered bone. Behind him, the poisoned khorgorath was choking out its last painful breaths. The other plodded around the field, stuffing dry skulls into its maw and lowing mournfully, perhaps for the lack of meat to savour, perhaps in sadness for its companion.
‘Ushkar Mir brings us victory!’ shouted Orto. His loud voice was immediately swallowed by the dry vastness of the desert, and the slaughterpriest looked dismayed for a moment.
‘A hard victory,’ said Vuul. He looked at the dying beast. With a last rattling moan, it expired.
Many Bloodslaves had died on the march to the gate. Two dozen at least had fallen to ancient blades here. There had been two thousand Bloodslaves only months ago. Less than a tenth remained.
‘Mir leads us. What does Mir command?’ asked Skull.
Ushkar Mir grunted and pointed with his chin to the lighter patch of sky.
‘Onward, then,’ said Skull. He plucked his sword from the dry earth, and sheathed it. ‘More skulls await, though precious little blood in this dusty place.’
If a sun shone over the Bone Sands, it was forever hidden by louring clouds. There was a day and a night of sorts, but the cycle played inconstantly. A day might last ten hours, or one. The land never grew any brighter than when they had first arrived, and the nights were utterly black, starless and frigid. The Bloodslaves’ lips blued and they shivered in the chill. They had nothing to burn and nothing to hunt. Each man carried only scanty provisions. There was no change to the relentless landscape. Horizons receded before their march to reveal yet more endless flat land, its featurelessness broken only by isolated skulls or ribcages that had escaped the attentions of time.
All save Kordos felt the punishments of thirst and hunger. The skullgrinder was sustained by the unholy fires of his chained altar.
By the end of the third day, their meat and drink had been exhausted.
The Bloodslaves’ confident march became halting. They dragged their weapons through the dust, leaving wavering trails behind them.
On the fifth night, the Bloodslaves fell on the weakest among them.
Darkness came suddenly. They huddled together as close as they dared as the temperature plummeted. Some instinct took a sole bloodreaver away from the rest. One too many hungry glances in his direction, maybe. He sat crosslegged, his hands on his weapons, but he could not defeat sleep. He had had no rest for days. No power can keep man from rest forever, unless he is highly favoured by the Four.
Three men attacked as soon as the drowsy bloodreaver’s head nodded onto his chest. He was up quickly at the sound of their approach. He desperately dispatched one of his attackers, but if he had hoped that this provision of unlooked for meat wou
ld save his life, he had been mistaken. He had been marked for death, and in that realm death did not relent.
Skull, Vuul, Mir, Orto and Kordos watched as the bloodreaver was killed. The warrior’s axe halted a blow aimed overhand for the crown of his head, but he had nothing to stop the knife that one of his erstwhile comrades plunged up under his ribs, piercing his heart. He fell dead instantly – a mercy. The Bloodslaves were not above eating their victims alive.
‘Fresh meat!’ rumbled Orto. The brassiness of his god-voice was diminished by thirst, and the desert was quicker to steal it the further they went into it.
‘Aye,’ said Skull. ‘We eat, but there are fewer of us.’
‘The weak perish,’ hissed Vuul. His lips dripped at thought of the feast. He wiped them on the back of his arm.
‘That they do,’ said Skull. ‘But there can only be one who is strongest. Do we devour each other until he remains, then starves himself?’ He half drew his sword, then slammed it back into its scabbard.
The rest of the band gathered around the corpses of the bloodreaver and his felled killer. They waited, glassy-eyed with hunger, as the bodies were stripped. Two skullreapers hoisted the slain bloodreaver up by his ankles. A third crouched and slit the throat. Life fluid drained from the cut neck, splattering on the dust.
‘Meat for us, blood for Khorne,’ said Orto, his voice growing stronger at the sight of the blood.
‘Meat! Khorne provides!’ responded the others.
They cut their dead comrade’s head free.
‘Skulls for Khorne!’ shouted Orto.
‘Skulls! Skulls! Skulls!’ howled the others.
‘No,’ a voice boomed across the desert. The Bloodslaves looked around fearfully.
‘Look!’ cried one. He pointed at the ground, and they all stepped back. Where the blood wetted the bone dust it bubbled and hissed.
They readied their weapons. A figure rose from the ground, slathered in blood at first, but the fluid froze and cracked away to reveal a greenly glowing phantom within. Its ghostly eyes were blank orbs and its face bore no expression, but its mouth jerked to a will not its own.
‘This land belongs to Lord Nagash. All who perish are his,’ spoke the phantom.
Spectres arose from the ground all around the Bloodslaves and flew over to spiral around the first, making a terrible shrieking that had the Bloodslaves clapping their hands over their ears.
‘No!’ shouted Orto. ‘These skulls are Khorne’s! Begone!’
Three skullreapers lunged for the spirit. Their twin blades slashed the air, cutting nothing. The spirits moved around them like weeds disturbed in water, swirling about but never snagging. Their eyes grew brighter and they shrieked, diving down on the Bloodslaves. Their touch was death. Ethereal claws slid into chests and men’s eyes bulged as their hearts stopped. The Bloodslaves were brave and fired by the righteous wrath of Khorne, but against a foe that no weapon could touch they began to waver. The remaining khorgorath moaned, batting at the untouchable spirits as their hands caressed its warped flesh, leaving blackened trails of necrotic tissue in their wake. One swooped low, scooping up the half-flayed head of the slain bloodreaver, and started to retreat.
Mir had no fear of the spirit host. His men drew strength from his example, forming up as best they could around him as he strode into the thick of the spirits. Skullthief and Bloodspite hissed through the air. The daemons within whined at the touch of the dead, for they were of fire and hate and the coldness of the grave was unpleasant to them, but Mir forced them to strike. Wherever the axes fell, the spirits dissipated into shreds of vapour that were sucked screaming into the blades. They tried to flee, what little was left of their mortal souls terrified of the deathbringer’s axes, but they all fell to Mir and were consumed. He pursued the last, that which had stolen the skull of the bloodreaver, and hewed it from the air. Orto plucked the head from the dust and brandished it triumphantly.
Only the first phantom remained. It turned doleful white eyes on the deathbringer. Once again, its mouth seemed puppeted by some distant, malign entity.
‘You shall suffer for this insult. These are the lands of death!’
With a mighty cry it departed, shooting skyward as a pillar of green light. Where it hit the clouds above there was a flaring, and a single peal of thunder boomed across the sky. It echoed across the desert for an age.
‘Khorne’s meat! Khorne’s blood!’ shouted Orto.
There were many corpses now, thanks to the spirits’ attack.
‘We feast! To victory! To Mir!’ bellowed Orto.
‘Ushkar Mir! Khorne! Blood and flesh!’ The Bloodslaves cheered and drew their knives, advancing hungrily on their dead.
From nowhere, a sudden wind blew, dry but laden with the scent of slow putrefaction, whipping hair into eyes and choking the men with whirling dust. The Bloodslaves’ looks of anticipation turned to horror and woe, for the corpses withered in front of their eyes. Skin turned grey and flesh wizened. Lips drew back in hideous black grins. The bodies of the fallen dried to husks in an instant. Their skeletons collapsed to the ground where they fell into brittle pieces, as ancient in appearance as the bones they joined. Most were reduced to a powder that was carried away by the fell wind.
A few corpses held together, scraps of dried flesh adhering to their bones. Two bloodreavers, one desperate in his hunger, the other disdainful of the magic of the dead, tore off strips of this matter. It was tough, leathery as jerky. They worked their mouths on it hard, the hungry man fearful, the other laughing in his boldness.
They died choking on the flesh of their fallen brethren. Black lines ran over their skin, a map of corruption depicted by tainted veins. They fell, fingers scrabbling at the ground.
The Bloodslaves watched nervously. The wind did not return, and the bodies remained whole, but they did not eat these last casualties. Nor did they attempt to slaughter one of their own again. The servants of Khorne had learned wary respect for Nagash’s domain.
‘Onward,’ croaked Skull.
The Bloodslaves’ ranks thinned further as they succumbed to thirst. At first those falling listlessly were the weaker bloodreavers, but it was not long before the blood warriors started to drop, then even the mighty skullreapers, whose Khorne-given might availed them not against the harshness of the desert. Still the Bloodslaves followed Mir, who was fixed single-mindedly on the call of Archaon. Always it sounded in his ears, sometimes so faint he had to strain to hear it, at other times blaring so loudly in the night that all his followers heard it. Orto exhorted them to go on, while Skull whispered terror into their ears. Kordos said nothing.
One pale morning, the last khorgorath left them. As the Bloodslaves twitched awake from dreams of corpse banquets, the beast consumed the skulls of four warriors dead of thirst in the night. Ordinarily the creature would have continued its snuffling after fresh skulls to devour, whimpering at the endless pain that dogged it. Not this time.
The last skull eaten, the khorgorath stood erect, head held high and eyes wide. It came out of some stupor, for it gazed around the warband as if seeing it for the first time. It took up the chains that hobbled it in paws that had mutated into snapping mouths. Weighing them for a moment, it tugged hard, then wrenched, until it had split them asunder.
‘The beast!’ hissed Skull, kicking the bloodstoker, Vuul. ‘It is loose! Use your whip! Do something!’
Vuul looked up, startled.
‘Catch it!’ roared Orto. ‘Stop it from escaping!’
Several warriors advanced on it, grabbing at its manacles, but the khorgorath was indifferent to their efforts. It walked away, dragging the men that would not let go behind it and swatting at those who attempted to bar its progress.
Ushkar Mir reached for his axes, but the pudgy, calloused hands of Danavan Vuul stopped him.
‘No my lord, it cannot be stopped,’ he said. ‘Orto! Sk
ull! Do not stand in its way.’
The others faltered, looking to Mir. Mir nodded that they should obey. The men got out of the beast’s path.
‘It has eaten its fill of skulls,’ explained Vuul. ‘Now it must return to the Lord Khorne and vomit them at his feet. Later it will return to the Mortal Realms. Maybe it will come back to us, maybe not.’
‘Let us hope,’ said Skull, rejoining his lord.
Orto stood at the edge of the crowd and watched the khorgorath go, then his long, mutated legs brought him back to the side of the deathbringer and bloodstoker. ‘It is true. It is the sacrament of beasts. As we smash skulls upon Kordos’ anvil, or stack them into cairns so that they might be taken up by Khorne, the khorgorath has its own way of honouring the Blood God.’
‘You should have prevented it from feasting!’ said Skull. ‘That is a sore loss.’
Vuul shrugged. ‘I kept watch upon it and my whip kept it from consuming too many skulls. Who else took upon themselves this duty? I am no beastmaster. If it is time for it to depart, then that is as Khorne wishes. The khorgoraths are his creatures.’
‘It is the will of Khorne,’ agreed Orto. ‘Do not question it.’
They watched the Khorgorath plod away from the warband. The desert air was clear, and even after they took up their march again in the opposite direction, the khorgorath could be seen as a dark shape far away, until a flash of fiery light carried it away from the Bone Sands and the realm of Shyish.
‘It is still a sore loss,’ spat Skull.
The twelfth day came. Armoured corpses marked the Bloodslaves’ trail as far as the horizon, lonely metal islands in the bone dust. Above, the clouds cleared a little, finally revealing glimpses of a dim, purple sun. When it shone, the desert turned violet and made their eyes ache. There was no change to the desert until Skull stopped and raised his hand to shield his eyes against the glaring sky. He caught Mir’s wrist.
Age of Sigmar: Call of Archaon Page 15