by Rob Sanders
Archaon looked out across the peaks and the twisted treetops to the crooked towers of the black citadel, Vayne’s Spite. He thought of the death waiting for them in the valleys below. The armies of the Hag Queen securing their prize. The Gorequeen-favoured Gorath and his mechanical slayers. The horrors and trials of darkness waiting for him in the citadel itself. He thought on his own small army. His rising star about to be extinguished in an ocean of blood. That would not happen. He wouldn’t allow it.
Sularii’s hand dipped down through the furs, trailing down the scars on Archaon’s chest. He grabbed the slender hand in his crushing grip and removed it from his flesh. He heard Sularii moan slightly. Archaon looked at the Slaaneshi’s sorcerous hand. He stared down at the glacier ice that burned beneath his bare feet. And it came to him. A chuckle built deep within him, finding expression in a mirth that seemed to ill fit the certain death they were facing.
‘My lord?’ Dagobert asked. Vayne allowed himself a smirk of contagious madness. The Brothers Spasskov continued their mumbling incantations. The Swords – as usual – said nothing. Archaon shrugged Sularii from his shoulders and turned, marching back up through the ice and towards the camp.
‘Ready our forces,’ Archaon said. ‘Get the army off the glacier and into the mountains. We shall attack both the druchii and the Bloodsworn from the forests on the higher ground.’
As the warlord walked away, Vayne looked to Dagobert.
‘The Hag Queen’s warriors will mount a determined defence,’ the dark elf said. ‘The Bloodsworn won’t stop until they have their mountain of skulls. I hope he has more of a plan than attack from the high ground.’
Dagobert looked thoughtfully after his master.
‘You cannot command the legions through bloodlust alone,’ the priest said. ‘That is why Gorath the Ravager will never become the Everchosen of Chaos. Such a title belongs to a man who is a living contradiction of both the strengths and weaknesses of the Ruinous Powers. Our master is such a man. Trust in that, druchii savage. You shall have your dread vessel and Archaon shall have his prize.’
‘How can you know?’ Dravik Vayne said. ‘What does your tome say, priest?’
Dagobert hugged The Celestine Book of Divination to his belly. Dravik could see the insanity in the priest’s eyes.
‘It says that sometimes you just have to have faith.’ With that, Hieronymous Dagobert turned in the slush and followed his master.
CHAPTER XIII
‘All praise to the screaming darkness of the world
Receive these untimely ends as dread offering
May their blood-glory bring you calamitous concord
May their screams carry your names into forever
May their spirits lend you terrible strength
Bestow on this reaper of souls your dark blessings
Let him bear the Mark that burns eternal
And in him see the Ruinous wonder of the world’
– Inscription, ‘Ara Ultimesh Noxa’
(The Altar of Ultimate Darkness)
The Iron Mountains
The Watchlands of Naggaroth
The Soul Harvest – First Blood (Druchii Remembrance)
The battle was difficult to watch. Bringing his army down through the rust-tinged peaks of the Iron Mountains and the dark forests of twisted fir and pine, Archaon had his men observe the slaughter from the highlands. Over the jagged treetops, Archaon and his horsemen, his marauders, his monsters and slaves to darkness, waited in silence. Their warlord was in the saddle and silent. His Swords, his chieftains and champions remained the same, drawing from the army a dark calmness. Among their ranks there was dread, there was envy, there was mindless need. Archaon and his army watched as blood was spilt and man, elf and infernal machine died.
The druchii were savage warriors indeed. They were ice and they were fire. Their ranks were cold, determined and disciplined in the execution of their duties, while murderous glee danced across their faces as they licked their thin lips in the delicious taking of life. Stunted watchtowers – nowhere near the size of the skygrazers on the northern borders – had been constructed about the tainted citadel. They bore bulbous keeps in their tower-tops that glowed with a ghastly light like spectral lighthouses. The elegant parapets swarmed with rotations of druchii crossbows and bristled with bolt throwers that peeped over the jagged crenellations. Between the tower perimeters, formations of dark elves held their ground with beautiful choreography, locking their longshields for the enemy’s impact before sliding their serrated spears over the top and into the opposing lines. Up to their boots in northern savages and berserker blood, the Hag Queen’s murderers clearly took pleasure in their work but never did they lose themselves in the bloody moment, break formation or push on into the valley to build on their success. When their dreadlords called them back to their lines, the dark elves retreated, the plates of their slender armour rattling rhythmically with their return.
Archaon watched as black clouds of bolts drifted across the battlefield, cutting through Gorath’s red-skinned beasts and dog soldiers. Small groups of swordsmen ran through the carnage with the grace of acrobats, finishing tribesmen and Khornate marauders with economical butchery. They then withdrew before the streaking death of tower-shot spears and the dark energies unleashed by the druchii witches. The flanks of the Ravager’s army were savaged by dark elf riders, slashing through tribal horsemen with their serrated blades. Their cold-blooded, scaly steeds bounded up the lines on powerful legs, their tails stiff like rudders, guiding their fore-talons and jaws through the delicious horseflesh of the Khornate cavalry.
All the while the Citadel of Spite towered above the battlefield like a bad dream. Beyond the citadel towers of black stone and metal from which Dravik Vayne’s corsair colours still flew like shredded rags, willowy mast-towers bore yards and furled black, leathery sails in great lateen configurations. Like much of druchii architectural deviancy, the fortress was both imposing and elegant – a midnight study in svelte stone fortification, storm-harnessing sailcraft and the macabre. Its stern was a mighty portcullis, while its prow was the tapering black skull of some twisted, abyssal behemoth. Like a talon, the Spite’s cluster of towers seemed to reach out of a cragged berg of obsidian that was buried in the valley floor like a keel or colossal flint spear-tip. The rock was dangling with dead weed and riddled with caves, hollows and grottos.
The druchii were defending well. The dark garrison was drilled to perfection and their safeguarding of the Ruinous citadel, warped and tainted by its time spent in the stormy Wastes and on the Chaos seas, looked likely to hold. It seemed likely the Spite would remain in the Hag Queen’s possession. As well as the willowy field pieces mounted on the sentry towers, the druchii had positioned deadly bolt throwers in the treelines. Gorath’s approach had been direct, bold and merciless – as befitting a champion of the Blood God. His forces had ripped up the valley like an elemental force and had crashed straight into the dark elf defences. The druchii had positioned bolt throwers in the evergreen woodland growing out of the steep valley sides, and they were slamming spears into the marauder host’s withering flanks. Archaon couldn’t see them but druchii scouts were also amongst the trees, giving the thrower crews cover and cutting down axemen, enraged beasts and both Bloodsworn riders and their gore-splattered mounts as they attempted to rush the ballistas.
Leading his horde from the west, down the valley side and through the bleak woodland, Archaon knew that he too would have to face the same druchii defences. He had little desire to aid Gorath’s assault but it would take nothing for the bolt throwers to turn back into the forest and skewer Archaon’s men. Similarly, the dark elf scouts would cut his advancing forces to shreds with repeaters fired from their hiding places. This, Archaon could not allow. Signalling Escoffier, the mad Bretonnian, Archaon ordered his warhounds released. The mangy pack of whippets tore away from their chains, t
heir skeletal frames and hunger carrying their throat-tearing maws through the forest at a scrabbling weave. Archaon waited. The warlord listened. Then he heard it. The shrill screams of elves being savaged and torn on the treeline below. He heard the carnage of the bolt throwers slow as their crews fought off the mindless beasts. For the druchii scouts there would be no hiding from the blood-hungry hounds. They would be torn from their crooks and hollows and ripped apart by the frenzied pack.
Fengshen Ku trotted forward on his steed. Archaon nodded to the marauder lord. Digging his leather boots into the horse’s sides, the Hundun warlord led his mounted sword clansmen down the valleyside after the hounds. Retainers and pikemen of the Dreaded Wo followed on foot. It was the easterner’s honour to finish what the hounds had begun. The throats of surviving druchii scouts and ballista crews were destined for the marauder’s curved blades.
Undoubtedly the relief offered to the Bloodsworn’s western flank would provide them with an advantage. Gorath wouldn’t need it. Archaon had seen the Ravager at work before. He had suffered it before. Gorath the Ravager was a merciless servant of the Blood God. He thought little of the souls he sacrificed in the name of achieving his deity’s dark will. Blood-blessed beastmen, Shadowland savages and Norscan berserkers were nothing to him. He granted them the mindless end they deserved. They slaughtered and were slaughtered in Khorne’s booming name. Their skulls joined those of their victims on Gorath’s growing mountain.
The dark elves enjoyed the distraction of marauder incursions. They broke up the weeks and months of miserable guard duty in the wintry watchlands. They had not, however, faced a champion of Chaos like Gorath the Ravager. A warlord of hate, who saw all – his enemies, his own warriors and the innocents often caught in between – as sacks of flesh to be butchered and blood to be spilled. He allowed the druchii their overconfidence. He sacrificed his front lines of barbarians and gors to their storms of bolt and spear, the serrated steel of their swordsmen and the cool discipline of their ranks.
Archaon watched and his warhost watched. The hope. The belief. Victory, certain in druchii minds and the sibilant orders of their captains and dreadlords. Then it came. The unleashing of Gorath’s brazen Bloodsworn. His baroque army of clockwork knights, some on armoured clockwork steeds, punching up through their own ranks and advancing through the bloody haze with the unbreakable certitude of infernal machines. Hidden in their number was the Ravager himself – no less infernal in his slaughterous rampage. All died before his blood-hungry blade: beastmen; berserkers; reptilian monsters; dark warriors of the elder race. Horned daemons – red like the depths of that which had spawned them – moved through stomping ranks of knights like howling slipstreams of gore, leaving the drizzle of death in their wake. Archaon watched the tide turn. He watched the Khorne-worshipping warriors of doom sacrifice their own ranks in open celebration of the slaughter to come. Then, the thunder. The Ravager’s irresistible advance. The unfolding storm of the Bloodsworn smashed their way through the blizzards of bolts and shield walls that so far had held the illusion of being unbreakable. With a stomach-turning realisation, the druchii began to die in horrible number.
Archaon could imagine his own army decimated before the unstoppable onslaught of the Ravager’s ranks. All that he had fought for. All that he had created. Gone in mere moments of mindless rage. The glory of the Ruinous Star – followers of disparate gods fighting under one banner, one warlord, one cause – unified in the even greater glory of a single apocalyptic goal: all sacrificed to appease alone the Blood God’s wrath. He could not allow such waste. The Dark Gods stood for more than just momentary spectacle – the soul-shattering scream or the fountain of blood. Their very best champions – their chosen – their Everchosen should be more than just slayers, regardless of their infamy and considerable skill. Such warriors and chieftains had their uses but they were both solution and problem. The wide world would not be conquered by such goremongers. The legions of darkness would be led by a man of darkness, not of blood. A warlord who saw victory through the twilight of black skies, devoid of hope and sun – through the gloom of the End Times to come – not a rage-red haze of blood.
‘Will you be leading the attack, master?’ Dravik Vayne put to Archaon.
‘I will,’ the Chaos warlord told his Slaaneshi lieutenant.
‘Would you like my forces to secure the Citadel?’ Vayne volunteered, eager to be both on board his vessel-fortress and out from under Gorath the Ravager’s blade. Archaon allowed himself a smile.
‘You will sound the retreat,’ Archaon told him.
‘My lord?’
‘Have your forces hold position in the trees – above the snowline,’ the dark templar said.
‘Hold, sir?’ Vayne asked, confused.
‘I will take the horde down after the Hundun,’ Archaon told him. ‘I’ll punch through the Ravager’s flank with the witch’s maggot-men and Hornsqualor’s beastmen.’ Archaon nodded to himself. He would need the staying power of the Plague Lord’s afflicted and the gors to carry him through the Blood God’s marauder madmen and on to the Ravager himself.
‘My lord, you will need–’
‘–you to do as you are ordered, druchii-swine,’ Archaon barked back at him. ‘Remain here and sound the retreat, Corsair-Captain Vayne.’
For a moment, words failed the slaver. He had never known Archaon to order a retreat – and certainly not before a battle had begun. ‘Do you hear me, corsair-captain? Hold position here… I shall bring your floating fortress to you.’
Archaon dug his heels into Oberon’s black, scaly flanks. The stallion moved on down the incline and through the snow-dusted forest.
‘Now, my lord?’ Dagobert said, the fat priest buried in the folds of robes and shaggy furs.
‘Now…’ Archaon said, his voice cutting through the thin mountain air. Dagobert signalled to a Hundun archer the priest had requested of Fengshen Ku from the ranks of the Dreaded Wo. The celestial dipped his signal arrow in pitch and had another marauder set it aflame. Aiming up high through the treeline, north, in the direction of the Eisarnagga Glacier and the Wastes, the Hundun archer pulled back on his ivory bow as far as the taut weapon would allow before releasing the flaming arrow into the Naggaroth sky.
As Archaon rolled in the saddle, Oberon stomping and skidding his way down through the woodland scree and snow, he could hear the sound of battle beyond. Druchii screeching their last. The whoosh of spears and bolts through the air. The rattle of armour and the march of Bloodsworn knights. The hack and slash of decapitation. The steam of hot blood on the glass-cut breeze.
Turning the stallion to one side, Archaon rode out onto the bare mountainside, where the pines were thin and roots could not cling. Though high above them, Archaon had broken the cover of the forest and was now in full view of bolt thrower crews on the dark elf tower keeps and the clash of druchii and Chaos warriors on the valley floor. About him his Swords of Chaos rode. The maggot-warriors of Mother Fecundus stormed down the slope in their thick, chitinous armour. Shaggy beastmen crushed grit beneath their hooves as they raged their way down towards the Ravager’s forces. With his horde roaring down the mountainside after him and Fengshen Ku’s sword clansmen standing aside amid the slaughter of druchii scouts, Archaon rode out across the blood-soaked dirt of the valley floor.
Within moments the cool air and the serenity of Oberon at full gallop was gone. It was like hitting a wall. Archaon didn’t have to worry about spears and arrows from Gorath’s horde. It was not the Khornate champion’s style. His Bloodsworn lived for the judder of their blades through enemy torsos and the spray of hot gore across their furs and armour. As Oberon smashed through beasts and marauders, horribly trampling unfortunates under hoof, Archaon swung Terminus about him. The Blood God’s rabid servants came at him. Cleaving through helm, horn and bone, Archaon hacked his way in through the ranks. Norscans. Khorngors. Skull-draped savages. All died as the
Chaos warrior cut a path into the side of the Ravager’s horde, his own marauders following in his bloody path. If Archaon was the spear-tip of the assault – deadly and irresistible – his Swords were the wedge that opened the foe-host’s side open like a grievous wound. Hacking and slashing from the saddle with their bone swords, the winged warriors followed Archaon into the chaos and confusion of the battle, leading Archaon’s marauders into the bloody fight.
Archaon had only just got used to the brighter skies of the southern lands. When they disappeared, the warlord looked up into the sky to find a haze of repeater bolts blotting out the heavens.
‘Shields!’ Archaon roared back at his horde. Bringing his own body shield up and holding it to the sky, the Chaos warrior covered himself and his steed as best he could. The willowy shafts of crossbow bolts rained down on the valley. The druchii were hiding behind the distance created by their cowardly weapons. As the shield drummed with the pitter-patter of slender bolts, Archaon growled. About him the Swords of Chaos took cover behind the open expanse of their gargoylesque wings. Maggot-men hid behind their chitinous shields, while Hornsqualor’s warriors did their best to weather the slaughter. Fengshen Ku’s clansmen shielded themselves with the bodies of their enemies while Escoffier’s warhounds were pinned to the valley floor like crucified mongrels.
The Ravager’s horde was cut to ribbons but it didn’t seem to bother the maniacs. Bloodshot of eye and foaming at the mouth, Gorath’s marauders seemed not to care about the bone-grazing bolts embedded in their flesh. They fought on in their excruciating pain, intent on butchering their way to the craven druchii that had fired upon them. Oberon half-whinnied, half-growled as bolts found their way from the sky, past Archaon’s shield and into the steed’s flesh. As the shower of death died away, Archaon urged the beast on into the murderous fray.
Archaon stabbed and slashed down through Gorath’s slayers with his templar blade. He caved in skulls with its gore-stained pommel. He punched berserkers away with its cross-guard. A northman’s spear found its way under his pauldron and into the white-hotness of his skewered flesh. A warrior’s axe cut at his side, exploiting the damage created in the wake of a previous injury and hacking at his scarred flesh. His shield was an arm-numbing nexus of furious blows. Every blood-thirsty lunatic in the Ravager’s army wanted his steel through the Chaos warrior and it was only Archaon’s desperate bladework and the positioning of his shield between him and such furious intent that kept both the dark templar and his steed alive in the sea of murder. If the Khornate horde’s attentions had not been split between his attacking force and the wall of locked druchii shields barring their path to victory, Archaon was in such a position that he would have gone down under the deluge of wrath that perpetually threatened to crash over him.