The Red Feast - Gav Thorpe

by Warhammer

  ‘No!’ he shouted as he saw Lashkar reaching for the bowl.

  Korghos pushed himself away, hand braced against the table as the ground lurched once more.

  ‘You are not betrayed, Korghos Khul,’ Lashkar told him.

  He held the bowl over his head, eyes ablaze with a fiery light. All seemed to grow silent, the clash of arms and screams of combatants ceasing for an instant. The stillness was broken by a sudden cry of pain that then stopped abruptly.

  ‘Eight hundred and eighty-eight champions have given their lives on this sacred isle,’ said Lashkar. ‘All that you desire will come to pass!’

  He upended the bowl, covering himself in blood. It did not slop to the ground but clasped tight to him, becoming a second skin. An immense jolt threw Korghos to his back as the Bloodspeaker tossed away the bowl, which cracked upon the hard ground.

  From his supine position Korghos saw the table from a new perspective. Above it the sky wavered, flickering in and out as though it were a candle flame behind a curtain. He saw a rough outline, like a vast circle on the heavens, and realised that the sacred Table of Okhon was not a table at all but the plinth of a Realmgate, one of the portals that crossed the planes of reality. The blood was an offering, just as when the Bloodspeaker had brought the Khul from Ghur.

  But where did this gate lead, Korghos wondered?

  The features of Lashkar contorted as Khorne’s avatar took hold, rearranging flesh and muscle into a body more suited. Horns and jagged spines broke the bloodskin, black as night. The eyes turned pure white, gazing at Korghos from a brow creased in fury. Wings of fire spread as the apparition grew, becoming taller and broader with each thunderous pulse of Korghos’ heart. A flaming whip cracked into life in a taloned fist, and a jagged-edged sword larger than the Khul’s champion formed in the other. And the face was that of the beast upon the table, bringing with it a memory of where Korghos had seen it before.

  The first time he had laid his gaze upon that monstrous visage had been in the cave of the painter. The wall had been painted with the face of a man, an image of a nightmare reflected in his pupil.

  Now Korghos looked upon that very same creature with his own eyes.

  Yet it was not terror that filled him but elation.

  YOU HAVE SERVED ME WELL, KORGHOS KHUL. I PROMISED YOU AN ARMY AND YOU SHALL HAVE IT. BUT I MUST HAVE ONE ALSO, TO CRUSH AND KILL AND MAIM FOR MY PLEASURE AND POWER.

  The skies above the island swirled, the Blood Moon seeming to crack open with fire. Korghos pushed himself to his feet and from his high vantage could see that the seas crashed against the shore with unparalleled fury, rising higher and higher, sweeping away hundreds of people on the lower slopes.

  The avatar of Khorne grew larger and larger. As it ascended, a figure staggered forth: Lashkar, whole and seemingly unharmed. He managed a few more steps and then fell to the ground at Korghos’ feet, blackened tongue lolling from his mouth. His chest rose and fell, though, showing that he still lived.

  The image of Khorne bestrode Clavis Volk, sword in hand. That dire blade swept across the heavens, its tip leaving a ragged tear across the sky. Blood boiled from the rent, falling as hot rain.

  Where each droplet hit the ground, a vapour rose. Shapes formed from the bloody mist – thin, hunched creatures with elongated heads and slender black horns, wielding glinting triangular swords, their eyes the same dead white as their creator. Monstrous hounds grew from the blood rain, their flanks scaled like a drakon, teeth of bronze in their massive jaws. Other things, bladed and deadly, towering and brass-like, emerged from the fog of power. Creatures upon the backs of brazen juggernauts whose hooves sparked flame from the stone. Immense beast-faced monsters fashioned in the likeness of the Blood God, armed with whip and axe, or burning flail, or tripartite blades that screamed for blood.

  Korghos watched in numb silence as the army grew and grew, until the isle was drenched in blood and the servants of the Skull Lord were beyond counting.

  THIS IS OUR PRIZE. BEHOLD MY HOST OF IMMORTALS. BEHOLD THE DAEMON LEGIONS OF KHORNE!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs, and several audio dramas. He has written many novels for Warhammer 40,000, including Ashes of Prospero, Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah and the Rise of the Ynnari novels Ghost Warrior and Wild Rider. He also wrote the Path of the Eldar and Legacy of Caliban trilogies, and two volumes in The Beast Arises series. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Warhammer Chronicles omnibus The Sundering, and much more besides. In 2017, Gav won the David Gemmell Legend Award for his Age of Sigmar novel Warbeast. He lives and works in Nottingham.

  An extract from Scourge of Fate.

  In the Death-Realm of Shyish, the village of the Necris burned.

  Its people burned with it, their slaughtered bodies flung onto the pyres kindled from their homesteads. Those who attempted to flee were chased down, killed and immolated. The Black Pilgrim’s instructions had been clear – neither flesh nor bone was to escape the flames that night.

  The pilgrim himself saw little of the grisly work. He had ridden on from the village, leading his razor-fanged mount up the narrow, snowy tracks that wound their way into the Barrow Hills. He carried on now on foot, the firelight of the burning village long ago swallowed up behind him, bitter darkness and eddying snow pressing in on every side.

  Hold your course, mortal. The voice echoed through the pilgrim’s head, colder than the biting wind.

  He climbed higher. He was a towering figure, tall and broad-shouldered, his natural bulk accentuated by his armour. The black plate was baroque, edged with burnished silver bands and inscribed with dark runes of protection. Over his shoulders was draped a pelt cape, the hard blue scales of a slain Dracoth, now thick with snow. His helmet bore a slit visor and a crest of red-dyed horsehair, flanked by two horns that curled outwards like those of a ram. At his left hip was a heavy sword, sheathed in a scabbard of cured aelf-hide, while two long daggers were crossed over his chainmail cingulum. A shield of thick warpsteel was strapped to his left vambrace, embossed with an iron crest – a sea wyrm coiling beneath an eight-pointed star.

  Glory awaits you.

  The voice in the figure’s head was growing louder, its sickly tones quickening with excitement. It wished for nothing more than to be free, and the Black Pilgrim represented a chance for just that.

  The man – if man he was – passed between the burial cairns of the ancient dead, the stone mounds almost lost beneath the thickening snow. He ignored them – he had not come this far for some brass trinket or rusting blade. His destination lay ahead, rising out of the swirling darkness, a pillar of cold stone set into the fallow earth at the heart of the hilltop.

  The barrow of the Frost King, eternal lord of the Necris.

  Step closer, my champion.

  The Black Pilgrim halted at the barrow’s entrance, which was framed by two cornerstones of snow-clad rock. For a moment, he might have been a statue, cast from black iron, set to guard the king’s tomb for eternity.

  The illusion was shattered as he reached out with his right hand, the spiked gauntlet passing just beyond the entranceway flanked by the two great stones. Immediately, a thick coating of hoar frost closed like a vice over the black metal, threatening to shatter it. The figure withdrew, flexing his fingers and breaking the ice with a crack.

  He raised the gauntlet again, this time to the left-hand stone. A crunching blow shuddered away the snow that clung to it in a white cascade, revealing the markings carved into the rock.

  The figure spent some seconds assessing them. Then, with abrupt force, he slammed the edge of his shield against the first of the etchings.

  Did they truly believe their corpse-wards would keep him at bay?

  The Black Pilgrim broke them with his shield, each in turn, un
til all were reduced to shattered stone strewn around the entrance to the barrow. Their power dissipated and he stepped into the darkness beyond, no icy death-spell closing about his heart.

  He had come to retrieve a fellow servant of the True Gods, and he would not be dissuaded.

  At first, he could see nothing in the barrow’s depths. He murmured a prayer to the Silver Fin, asking for guidance. Slowly, the interior of the burial place resolved itself around him, though whether that was because his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness or because great T’char had answered him, he knew not.

  The tomb was large, a circular space of drystone walls against which were set a dozen plinths. They were carved with mortuary emblems – skulls, bones, hourglasses and all the weak esotericism of the servants of the so-called Great Necromancer. Upon them rested the remains of twelve warriors, all skeletal, clad in ancient battle armour and with long, two-handed blades clutched to their rusting breastplates.

  They occupied the pilgrim’s attention only briefly. His gaze was drawn to the far end of the chamber, to the stone sarcophagus that stood there, flanked by the twelve plinths. Its upright lid bore a crudely worked depiction of a skeletal figure standing in triumph, praised by the outstretched arms of living tribe folk prostrate beneath it.

  Weak. So very weak.

  Yesss, hissed the sickly voice of Nakali in the pilgrim’s skull, slithering around like the Golden Serpent. He shrugged it off, approaching the sarcophagus and slamming his warpsteel shield against it without hesitation.

  The blow reverberated through the barrow, and sent a split running from the lid’s top to its bottom, breaking the effigy in half. He clenched his fangs and slammed home a second blow, then a third. The tomb continued to shake, and finally with a cracking sound the front of the sarcophagus crumbled and came crashing down before him.

  He took a step back. A figure lay slumped within, another skeleton. This one was more finely armoured than its guards, and bore upon its helm a circlet of bronze. It was not the barrow king’s attire that held the pilgrim’s attention though, but the weapon it clutched.

  The sword was large, its hilt gripped in two bony fists. The length was black steel, its double edge jagged and irregular. The pommel was crafted in the likeness of a golden serpent, its long fangs bared and its forked tongue darting out. The crosspiece was likewise fashioned into a two-headed snake, also cast in gold.

  It was no rusting barrow-blade. It was an exquisite weapon, forged in the daemon furnaces of the Varanspire. It was what he had been hunting for, the debaser of the Lightning Temple and the great serpent-daemon of Slaanesh.

  Nakali.

  There was a glimmer of illumination. It was not the wholesome flicker of flames, but was cold and bitter, like grave-dirt caught in the back of the throat. The pilgrim realised that blue deadlights had flickered into being in the sockets of the barrow king’s skull.

  The Frost King wakes, Nakali hissed. Quickly, champion!

  He reached out with his right hand to snatch the sword from the king’s grasp, but before he could touch it the skeleton shuddered. There was a rattle as its bones re-formed and straightened, dragged tight as though by the sudden twitch of a marionette’s strings. It stood fully upright, its armour scraping against the stone of its tomb. With a snap, its head turned to face the pilgrim, and the deadlights in its sockets flared with an unnatural, immortal awareness.

  Fool! Nakali shrieked.

  The Black Pilgrim drew his own sword, Serpent’s Fang, the sensation of the heavy blade in his fist sending a familiar thrill through his body. It was always a blessing to kill, even when the enemy was already dead.

  The Frost King stepped from its shattered resting place and hefted its own sword: Nakali, desperate to be free, desperate to be saved from the deathless grip of a warrior who could never be tempted by its whispers or tainted by its perverse aura. Though nothing but bone, the ancient undead champion carried the heavy blade without any difficulty, lent strength and vitality by the sorcerous tricks of its False God.

  ‘Come to me, corpse,’ the pilgrim demanded. ‘That I may release you from your long bondage.’

  He attacked. Serpent’s Fang met Nakali’s edge, the clash of Chaotic steel ringing through the barrow, and he knew at once that the king’s weapon was superior. The realisation brought a smile to his thin lips. It was good to know he was not wasting his time.

  He turned his right-handed stroke into an overhead blow, then a thrust, relying at first on his strength, then seeking to drive the reanimated corpse into the stone at its back. Neither tactic worked – the death magic binding the thing together was at least as strong as he was, and the master of the Necris had no human regard for self-preservation. It refused to take a backward step as he rained blows down upon it, its motions clumsy but enough to parry each strike. It was not trying to attack, he realised. After another flurry of blows, he understood why.

  More light had filled the chamber. He heard the rattle and clatter of bones and the scrape of worn armour, and noticed that the twelve guards had risen from their plinths. At first their motions were jerky and uncoordinated, but as they moved to surround him he knew his time was up. Soon every barrow and cairn across the hillsides would have awoken.

  ‘Tzatzo!’

  The pilgrim roared the name, the sound shaking the burial place just as surely as the first impact of his shield against the sarcophagus. The undead were unperturbed – they had no eardrums to burst, no brains to addle. The word had not been uttered for them, though.

  The Frost King attacked. Nakali clashed against Serpent’s Fang once, twice, and then scored a jagged blow down the pilgrim’s left pauldron. He realised the corpse was becoming stronger and faster as it fought, the magics animating it taking a firmer hold of its remains the longer it was awake.

  He took its next blow against his shield. Nakali rebounded violently from the hexed warpsteel, and he seized the chance to thrust Serpent’s Fang into the king’s open guard. His sword punched through the rusting breastplate and split its ribcage. Half a dozen shattered bones came away as he dragged the steel free, but the undead champion showed no sign of injury – it attacked, forcing him to take a step back or risk having his guard opened. He snarled with frustration, fangs bared.

  The barrow-guard were upon him as well, and he was forced to turn away to meet them. They were slower and weaker than their king, but they were a distraction he could not afford. He shattered the skull of one with an upward thrust of his shield and cut another from collarbone to pelvis with a tight, spinning blow. The broadsword of another clattered ineffectually from his back, snagging in his Dracoth-pelt cape, but he was forced to turn to the king before he could break the one who dared strike him.

  The undead master of the Necris had used the distraction well. It struck with an overhead blow. Made with the likes of Nakali, it would have cut open even a favoured champion of the Four. The pilgrim barely managed to get Serpent’s Fang up to meet it, and the clang of the two blades striking one another jarred up his arm. The blow was too much – with a clatter, the upper half of Serpent’s Fang came away, sheared in two, its tip impaling the frost-covered soil at his feet. He just managed to take enough of a step back to avoid Nakali’s descent.

  The moment seemed to slow. Death was reaching for him, its icy fingers scraping along his skin and tightening around his heart and throat. He brought the shorn hilt of Serpent’s Fang up with all his strength, angling for the Frost King’s arm as it swung downwards, cutting towards the exposed bone just above its brass vambrace.

  Even in death, Serpent’s Fang served the pilgrim well. The blade’s remains – a wicked stub – bit through the skeleton’s limb, splintering the ancient bone. Its fist came away, and with it Nakali, the sword spinning through the air for longer than seemed possible.

  As the Frost King’s shorn limb disintegrated, the pilgrim reached out and, with a bellow, he grasped the sword’s hilt.

  A landscape of writhing flesh consumes him. T
here are drumbeats on the perfumed breeze, primal and brutal. The vision comes apart, rent open with blood and screaming. In its place stands a boulder, a great block of pulsating green stone. Its outer surface cracks and splits, and verminous creatures spill out, gnawing the verdant substance with maniacal energy. It is consumed whole, and the flesh returns, crawling, writhing with lust-maddened need. Ahead of him, the Black Pilgrim sees a tree, its bark and boughs formed from intertwining bodies and grasping, fleshy limbs. A serpent is coiled about its groaning form, its scales golden and glittering with a lustre that fixes his eyes in place. It hisses his name, slowly, as though savouring it for the first time.

  Vanik.

  It lunges at him, its long fangs bared, and he lashes out with one hand, the motion born of instinct. The serpent is gone. The sky above is a black thunderhead, flickering with lightning. A single bolt slams down with a deafening crash, striking him, shattering him, splitting him into a thousand thousand broken shards–

  He returned to the present, to reality. Somehow, he was still whole. The roar died in his throat.

  Vanik blinked and, in the darkness, realised that his assailants had been flung back against the barrow’s walls. A shock wave of daemonic power had picked them up and hurled them away, the Frost King included, and now the barrow-guards lay shattered and broken around the edges of the tomb. The Frost King itself was slumped against its broken sarcophagus, head hanging to one side, a single flicker of deadlight still lingering in one eye socket.

  Vanik looked down. Nakali was clenched in his gauntlet. The whole blade was vibrating, buzzing with the ecstasy of release.

  Free me, the daemon’s voice slithered in his skull, full of hideous desire. I know your thoughts now, pilgrim. Release me, and all your desires will be realised.