by Rob Sanders
Riding across a chill plain of stunted grasses and spidery patterns of burned soil, where lightning had showered down on the expanse, the scout party was accompanied by small twisters of dust and ice. Even on the desolation of the plain, Archaon and his warriors of Chaos were not alone. The Wastes wouldn’t allow it. The very perversity of the land itself seemed to take pleasure in rising and falling – allowing paths of least resistance to drift wanderers into bloody converges and encounters. Here, out on the haze of the plain, the fat mountain – the only feature for many miles – drew travellers towards it. The mountain harboured no obvious draws, like a settlement in its foothills or the refreshment of a waterfall cascading from its heights. On the insanity-inducing endlessness of the plain, it offered the reassurance of something different. A break in the dry, cold monotony of the wilderness and its eye-stinging haze. A feature that invited curiosity on the horizon.
For a time Archaon’s small host seemed on course to meet a larger warband led by a warrior-shaman. The Mung Savage was on horseback and trailed a train of wretched spawn tied one to another like a chain gang of criminals. Archaon suspected this was done to ensure the horrors did not wander off on their own. The shaman changed course suddenly, however, leading his band of unfortunates away from both Archaon and the mountain. Believing that the warrior-shaman had had some kind of prophetic indication of the danger ahead and had turned to avoid Archaon and the doom he represented, the Chaos warlord held his own heading, despite entreaties from Ulfen Schorsch and his Crimson Company to hunt down and slaughter the shaman and his spawn.
Not long after, a lone knight in black, burnished plate approached the party from some distance away, making his meandering way towards them. Upon taking off his helm, the knight introduced himself as Sieur Wenzel, grinning inanely through the tangled curtains of his long, unkempt hair. Slipping a dagger from his belt, Sieur Wenzel prompted the Swords of Chaos to reach for the bone swords in their wing-sheathes – ever in defence of their master. The mad knight only meant harm to himself, however, opening up his throat in front of Archaon and his Chaos warriors, before crashing face first into the hard ground.
The body attracted predators, chimera and chaotic fusions that stalked the scouting party. The monsters were blessed with the same chameleonic hides, which rippled with the dun colours and textures of the plain, hiding the danger of their numbers in the haze. Ograx the Great smelled the danger first. Dorghar seemed unconcerned and it was only a matter of time before the huntsman’s eye spotted their stalkers. When Jharkill warned his master of the imminence of their attack, Archaon slipped his battle axe from where it sat in one of his armoured saddle’s many holsters, hooks, sheaths and scabbards. Lifting his body shield up onto one arm, the Chaos warlord waited for the attack. The beasts were as fast as the lightning storms that burst above the desolation of the plain. They appeared suddenly from the haze, their surging movements revealing their positions.
Chimera swarmed the scout party, cannonballing members of the Crimson Company over and turning the savage tumbles into the desperation of clattering plate, claws and jaws. Thrice-breeds and abominate fusions leapt at Archaon, while others surged into the sky only to swoop back down at the hunting party. The air was thick with the roars, hissing and shriek-bleating of the monsters’ myriad heads, as well as the whoosh of their bat-like wings and the seething snap of their serpent tails. One of the beasts sank its claws into the body of Sieur Wenzel before surging up into the heavens, while others seemed unwisely preoccupied with Dorghar and the feast its midnight flesh would make.
As the chimera swept in, emboldened by hunger and twisted of predatory instinct, Eins, Zwei and Drei kept their closing number back with shadow-smeared flourishes of their bone blades. A surging opportunist left the ground and beat its wings, sending its drool-trailing jaws at Archaon and his mount. While Dorghar casually kicked the skulking forms of snapping chimera senseless with its spiked hooves, Archaon smashed the airborne monster aside with a swing of his shield. As the beast hit the ground nearby, it shook comprehension back to its three heads. It needn’t have bothered. Rearing, Dorghar brought its huge hooves brutally down on two of its skulls before kicking the snapping head of a malformed lion clean off its body.
The attack was over swiftly enough. With half of the number dead, the pack of chimeric monsters broke off, either beating their wings for the sky or slinking back into the haze that had formerly hidden them. Whereas the kills of Archaon and his Swords of Chaos were modest enough – including even Dorghar’s brutal contributions – the pack suffered most at the hands of the rest of the scouting party. Jharkill’s bow hammered monstrous fusions into the iron-hard ground and pinned them there, impaled on the great bone shafts. Ograx the Great hadn’t even bothered to slip his skull-axe from his back. As a beast warped into the barbaric flesh of a man, Ograx was a wall of brawn and daemonic strength. When he wasn’t wrestling the chimeric monsters with his bare, muscle-bound arms – breaking necks and spines – he was stoving in ribcages with his hooves or lifting beasts above his head to gore on his infernal horns. Ulfen Schorsch and his Crimson Company, however, attacked the closing chimera with as much frenzied ferocity as the beasts themselves exhibited, hacking creatures apart with serrated axe and sword, painting the plain red with the excesses of their butchery.
As the ogre huntsman recovered his arrows, Archaon urged the scouting party on, pulling the Crimson Company from their favoured ritual of draining their enemies of polluted blood. Archaon’s orders were edged with distaste, having little time for the appetites of the fanged warriors, who looked like animals feeding on animals amongst the slaughtered chimera.
Step by step, the fat mountain rose above them. Closer, it was clear that the chimera pack had made their home in the caves, hollows and on the gentle bone-strewn slopes of the peak. Slipping between boulders and openings, the predators’ chameleon-like abilities could not hide their silhouettes creeping up and down the mountainside. At the foot of the narrow slope leading up the mountain’s broadness, Archaon brought Dorghar’s clopping hooves to a halt. Jharkill grasped the daemon steed by the chains and waited on his master. Archaon turned his helm. The Swords of Chaos stood behind him like statuesque shadows. Ulfen Schorsch and the Crimson Company crunched to a stop in the grit and scree with Ograx the Great bringing up the rear of the scouting party.
‘This is as good a place as any,’ Archaon announced, prompting Ulfen Schorsch to ask if they were heading up the mountain.
‘Some of us are,’ the Chaos warlord told him from the saddle. ‘For some, this journey has come to an end.’
Ograx the Great was suddenly behind the fleshless-faced warrior. Wrapping the muscular vice of his arm around the neck of the Blood God’s champion, the prince of fiends tore at his grotesque head. Schorsch’s clawed gauntlets scratched at the irresistible force of the arm and he sank his leech’s fangs into Ograx’s flesh. As his feet left the ground, the armoured warrior kicked out, clattering furiously in his plate. The struggle was over as fast as it had begun, however, as – with an excruciating crunch – Ograx tore the fleshless skull of the warrior from his suddenly flaccid body.
Realising that they were being betrayed, the Crimson Company ripped the barbed blades of their swords and axes from their belts, rallying to the commands of one of Ulfen Schorsch’s own lieutenants. This was one of the reasons that Archaon had ordered them killed. He was the only dread authority in the vast horde and the only one permitted to empower subordinates. The Crimson Company might have pledged allegiance to Archaon but Schorsch’s band of cannibals still harboured loyalties of and to their own kind.
Spinning around, their bone blades already whispered from their wing-sheathes, the Swords of Chaos decimated the front rank of Crimson Company warriors with a single coordinated strike. The decapitating slash sent skulls sailing through the air, the gloom glinting off their brass fangs. With weapons in each hand, the Swords swept the blades of the Blood God
’s warriors to one side and stabbed the tips of their shadowy swords through the bared bone of skulls. Retracting in unison, Archaon’s henchmen worked their way methodically through the Crimson Company, who were caught between the merciless bladework of the Swords and Prince Ograx’s skull-axe, being used to smash skulls from spines in showers of brain-mulched fragments.
It was not in the nature of the Blood God’s servants to flee and the Crimson Company did not disappoint, forcing Ograx to murder each warrior where he stood, smashing the armoured leeches into a mess against the hard earth of the plain.
Archaon looked down on the carnage. What others might have called brainfever or a murderous madness of the Wastes, Archaon considered pruning. Hordes, like shrubs and bushes, were at their healthiest when trimmed to ensure guided growth. Archaon needed warriors of character to lead the contingents of his monstrous horde into battle – a horde that assimilated more and more Wasteland wandering dross every day. What he did not need was the loyalty of those contingents in the hands of conspirators and dissenters, who might be tempted to secretly build an army within Archaon’s own, secure the future loyalties of other lieutenants and murder Archaon for his great treasures. This was not warp-baked paranoia. It had happened to Archaon before. He had lost an entire host through the machinations of pretenders to his titles to come and had barely escaped with his life. To ensure that never happened again, that the wild and wayward forces at work within the monstrous legion at his command were kept in check, Archaon routinely slaughtered his own. Issuing charismatic warriors, defiant savages and overly successful lieutenants acting on their own initiative with tasks and missions that took them and their loyal followers away from the horde, Archaon would have them secretly butchered. If he had any evidence of their plotting against him, Archaon would even end them himself. That had not been the case with Ulfen Schorsch and the Crimson Company, however. Archaon simply had an instinct for those overreaching individuals whom he felt would disappoint him. Such assassinations always happened in secret but there was a general suspicion amongst the horde’s wretched multitude that such a practice went on, and this also helped to subdue would-be challengers. In a land of madness, leading a dark army of the vile, the bloodthirsty and the daemonic, it sometimes paid to advertise a little darkness of your own.
‘Burn the remains,’ Archaon told Jharkill, stepping down from Dorghar. ‘With anything you can find.’
Archaon’s boot crunched in the grit next to Schorsch’s decapitated head. The warrior’s eyes still stared up at Archaon in searing, uncloseable accusation, while his fanged jaws snapped unconsciously in the dirt. Leeches were notoriously difficult to kill and Archaon wanted to ensure the fiery end of the vampiric Crimson Company. The monstrous ogre nodded his understanding, keeping hold of Dorghar. ‘Stay with Jharkill and my steed,’ Archaon told Zwei, who was cleaning off one of his bone blades. Like the ogre, the wraith-warrior nodded silently. ‘You two,’ Archaon told the others, ‘prince, with me.’
As Archaon set off up the winding incline, Eins and Drei flanked their master, while Ograx the Great, flicking gore from the skull of his daemon-headed axe, followed, his brazen hooves pulverising the grit of the trail. As they ascended, the wind picked up. The dizzying expanse of the endless plain glowered about the mountain, stretching off into the gloom in all directions. The fat mountain, meanwhile, wound its ridge-lined track up and around its odd bulk, working up towards the lip of the hollow above. Unlike the cold dirt of the plain, where only stunted grasses managed to grow, the stone of the mountain was warm underfoot and even provided shelter enough in crooks and clefts for twisted shrubs and the occasional petrified tree. As Archaon advanced, he saw chimera take to the wing from the heights ahead and swarms of monstrous eyes blinking malevolence from the darkness of caves. The predators did not seem to want a re-match and instead withdrew or fled to the safety of the skies.
As they hiked up the sweeping incline, winding up the fat mountain like a serpent, Archaon started to notice stains in the dirt. They were a reddish brown, and at first the Chaos warlord took them for the sites of recent kills by chimera on the mountainside. Upon closer inspection he found it to be rust blotching the mountain trail. Sporadic patches of corrosion that had stained the grit and stone. Looking about, Archaon saw that the stains were everywhere, covering the mountain like a rash. He considered the possibility of surface iron deposits or perhaps the abandoned weapons of the chimera pack victims. He knew this couldn’t be the case when he came across his first blade, stabbed into the mountainside and sitting straight up in the rock.
Kneeling down, Archaon inspected the weapon, an ancient blade almost black with rust and age, eaten to a ragged shadow of its former glory and design. Walking from patch to rust-red patch, Archaon found more weaponry, also corroded and ancient. Spearheads bearing the stumps of broken shafts. Brute axes buried almost up to their withered hafts. Blades – stone-cleaving broadswords, the tapering elegance of longswords, serrated scimitars cleaved into the rock, ensorcelled swords of dark magics long dead, rusting daggers stabbed almost up to the hilt. As Archaon trudged up the trail and around, he found himself in a graveyard of such weapons. The mouldering steel of primitive butchery, bejewelled craftsmanship and hell-forged lethality.
As the incline steepened and Archaon’s strides pushed him up the mountain path with greater urgency and insistence, he found other weapons buried in the mountain. Amongst the stunted forest of blades, Archaon found hundreds of metal arrow shafts, rust-shattered and buried in the rock. He also discovered the pitted surface of great cannon balls sitting half buried in the mountainside. The countless swords that sat like the grave markers of soldiers in the stone were broken up by the occasional monument – great rotting weaponry of gargantuan size that had been smashed deep into the rocky surface. Monstrous axes, hammers and the huge spiked balls of chain-trailing flails – the kinds of gargantuan weaponry that could only be wielded in the huge hands of giants, great daemons and titanic abominations. Even they had done little but crack their way into the surface of the indestructible mountain.
Archaon’s mind whirled with dark thoughts. Perhaps the peak had been the site of a colossal battle? The Chaos warlord discounted the idea. The blades had not been abandoned there in the hands of rotting champions. They were embedded in the dirt and rock. Perhaps the mountain was some kind of unholy site or colossal tor? Archaon could see some brutal deity like the Blood God honoured with steel in such a way, but he couldn’t find any evidence that the mountain was dedicated to an infernal patron or marked by a daemonic sigil. The mystery ate away at him as he ascended. Behind, Eins and Drei followed their master in unquestioning silence, their own blades ready to behead some hidden attacker or emboldened chimera leaping out from a cave entrance. Prince Ograx simply chewed up the mountain path with stabbing steps of his hooves, yawning with boredom.
As they approached the crowning lip of the hollow peak, Archaon became increasingly agitated. The mystery no longer occupied his thoughts. In such a sea of rust-eaten steel and myriad swords, Archaon began to worry that he would miss what he had come to the mountain to find. Vangel’s daemonblade – the Slayer of Kings. Sword of the second Everchosen of Chaos. The steel prison in which the abominate entity U’zuhl the Skulltaker was trapped. How many of the magnificent weapons, half buried in brown-stained stone, could the Slayer of Kings be? As he rounded the hollow peak, Archaon’s progress slowed, the Chaos warlord moving from weapon to great weapon and inspecting the rusted ruin of each blade.
With no blade matching the specific description the daemon Z’guhl had given of the Slayer of Kings, Archaon reached the end of the mountain trail. He felt the hollow peak above him like a dare. Without stopping for breath, the Chaos warlord mounted the rocky wall. Like the rest of the mountain, the approach to the peak was littered with embedded blades, sunk in rust-stained blotches of stone. It was as though the mountain had been attacked by some great army. He hauled himself up through the
weapons. They made for excellent purchase, with the exception of age-corrupted hilts and axe hafts that simply disintegrated in the hand or under boot, showering the climber below in brown flakes. Nothing would stop Archaon, however. He felt close. He knew that the Slayer of Kings was on the mountain. That the treasure of Chaos was there for the taking. Ever impatient, Archaon started to leap from blade to rusted blade, heaving himself up through the forest of weapons at speed – even in his cursed plate. As his ragged cloak flapped in the rising wind like a banner or flag, Ograx the Great and the two Swords of Chaos followed. Ograx the Great found the climb a test but Eins and Drei, helped by occasional flaps of the wing, had little difficulty making the kind of ambitious jumps to which Archaon was committing himself. Moving across as well as skyward, Archaon swiftly inspected swords of particular magnificence, blades that could possibly have matched the description of the Slayer of Kings.
With no luck in locating the daemonblade, Archaon pulled himself up and over the precarious lip of the crater peak. Standing on the edge of a mighty hollow that ran deep down inside the fat mountain, Archaon’s black heart sank. Eins, Drei and the fiend prince were beside him, dusting off their hands. The mountain was no volcano. Not even a dormant one. It was hollowed out at the core, however. It reached down through smooth lines and a mountain trail that spiralled into the depths like the one leading up the rocky exterior. Just like the exterior, the inside was covered in a rash of rusted blotches and protruding from each one was an ancient blade, axe, spear or other kind of weapon, rearing up from the stone at crooked angles. The swarm of blades gave the hollow the appearance of some great mouth, brimming with needle-like teeth.