by Rob Sanders
‘To hell with your welcome, Curseling,’ Archaon told him. He gestured to the raging storm above. ‘This is your doing?’
‘Change is mine to wield like a sculptor his clay or artist his brush,’ the Curseling said. ‘A ship-enslaving storm is child’s play. You should see what I can do with light and the very darkness that crafts it. Or flesh and the thoughts that drive it.’
‘You Tzeentchians are all the same,’ Archaon scorned. ‘So in love with your sorcerous powers and fiendish intrigue. Dropping clues of doom to come into the poisonous tedium, you force me to listen to before coming to an actual point. I have scores of such sorcerers at my command. You don’t impress me, creature of unnatural arts – and neither will what you have planned for me. Besides, I’ve never met a sorcerer I couldn’t kill. Despite your talents, you all share the same weakness. My steel in your twisted flesh.’
The Curseling chuckled but Vilitch’s mirth sounded stilted, proceeding as it did from the warrior-twin.
‘You don’t disappoint, Archaon.’
‘You do,’ the Chaos warlord told the sorcerer. ‘You wear both the iconography of the Great Changer and Be’lakor, the Dark Master. Is it not inappropriate to wear the sigils of sworn enemies? Neither daemonic power will thank you for that, Curseling.’
‘Like you, Archaon,’ Vilitch said, ‘I serve the interests of all Dark Powers, through reverence of the pantheon.’
‘You serve only your own ambitions,’ Archaon accused. ‘Like all who bear the Dark Master’s mark, you are driven to madness with your desire for what I already have. The treasures of Chaos.’
‘All but one of the treasures, Archaon…’
‘And there it is,’ the Chaos warlord said. ‘The bait in the trap you already close about me.’ Archaon sniffed at the glowing mist that rolled and twisted about them. ‘A sorcerous trap.’
‘You are indeed a treat,’ Vilitch told him. ‘I didn’t expect the dark, driven, indomitable warrior of folk songs and stories to be so entertaining.’
‘A twisted mind, desirous of such treasures without earning them,’ Archaon continued, ‘might seek to acquire them through the promise of the last.’
‘Very good, Archaon. Very good,’ the Curseling said, the toothed worm-mouth of the sorcerer managing a horrid grin. ‘And how might Vilitch achieve such a thing?’
‘You would engage me in some fool’s errand,’ Archaon said. ‘Some cause of common darkness which necessitates me and the might of my army. Something to put all under your sorcerous spell. Something to stack the odds firmly in your favour, since neither you nor any of your tested minions could hope to stand before me blade to blade.’
‘Excellent!’ the Curseling cackled, each sound seeming forced and affected through the lips of another. ‘Truly, the Great Changer smiles upon you, Archaon. Now, the details.’
‘Do they even matter?’ Archaon said.
‘Always,’ the Curseling said. ‘I see that I still have a little to teach you, mighty Archaon. ‘A great lie – the kind that takes the lives of men, their futures, their very souls – is predicated upon the foundation of seeming truths. These truths rely on details that are an antidote to incredulity – as a life-saving potion might be to a poison – incredulity that would destroy the lie.’
‘Being in your mere presence is an education, Curseling,’ Archaon told the Tzeentchian. ‘A repulsive one, but an education all the same.’
‘Why thank you, Archaon,’ the sorcerer returned, ‘and I hope that when I have done with you, the pantheon will descend upon the self-importance of your soul and tear it to infinite shreds for eternity. So, the details.’
Archaon looked about the mist-swathed coastline and the darkness of the storm above.
‘These are Lucus lands,’ Archaon said, his half-remembered truths fielding the lie Vilitch needed him to believe. ‘The coastal Marches. If my charts are correct, Brilloinne Castle is not far inland. Baron Lucus was a famous knight of legend, even when I was a child. As part of his questing he recovered many cursed items, trinkets and dark artefacts of sorcerous power, securing them in the chapel about which he built his mighty castle. I assume you want access to this chapel.’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ the Curseling said. ‘Baron Lucus is long dead but the lands belong to his grandson. While he is not half the man his grandfather was, he is wealthy and his fortifications are well maintained. He also commands the allegiance of those still loyal to his grandfather’s memory, including an army of pilgrims devoted to protecting the sealed chapel’s secrets.’
‘You have attacked Brilloinne Castle already then?’ Archaon asked.
‘I led a horde of spawn – all honouring the Great Changer with their gifts,’ the Curseling told him, ‘but they lacked the discipline of your monstrous army as I lack your warmongering leadership, Archaon. I lost my unfortunates before the castle walls to Baron Lucus and his attendant knights.’
‘So the baron is already alerted to your intentions,’ Archaon stated, ‘and no doubt has sent riders with word to neighbouring lords, knights oath-honoured to protect his grandfather’s legacy and pilgrims sworn to secure his chapel and its dark secrets.’
‘Yes…’
‘And why would I do this?’
‘You tell me, Archaon: why would you do this?’ the Curseling asked.
‘For one thing,’ Archaon said, ‘and one thing only. The location of the final treasure of Chaos. The Crown of Domination. But you know this already, sorcerer.’
‘Let me trade you truth for truth,’ Vilitch said. ‘I know not where the crown you seek is, but I know one that does. Take Brilloinne Castle and its secrets for me and I will tell you where he can be found.’
‘And then I shall have to gut you, I expect,’ Archaon told the sorcerer, ‘as you try to spring whatever feeble trap you have intended for me.’
The worm-like sorcerer’s mouth formed a horrid smile.
‘We are going to make such a good team,’ the Twisted Twin said, ‘you and I.’
Chapter XV
‘Where’er my eye roams
Whate’er I fail to see.
My thoughts untravell’d
Shall ever return to thee.’
– Jouffroy, The Pale Sisters
Brilloinne Castle
The Bretonnian Coast
La Fête du Lac IC 2518
Archaon walked the battlefield in a daze. About him tendrils of glowing mist reached through the ranks of dying men. The fields of Brilloinne were red and silver with the bloodied plate of the fallen. Men of noble birth. Knights with honourable histories. The lords of the Marches. Now they suffered like their lowly subjects. In the mud. In pain. Shown no mercy. Horses got up from where the smashed bodies of their owners lay before running off through the havoc of battle. Squires screamed, going down under axe and blade as swiftly as the knightly standards they humped through the butchery. Lances shattered against hell-forged plate. Steeds shrieked and reared with sword-cleaved legs, tumbling feathered paladins from the saddle.
It was havoc.
Like the land, Archaon’s mind was a mist-shrouded realm. He fought, though he knew not why. He killed out of instinct but the will wasn’t truly there. The Slayer of Kings cut through the sorcerous fog and the crisp air of the Bretonnian morn, reflecting an infernal radiance off the silvered plate of knightly warriors about to die and armoured chargers moments from being cut in half. Swinging the fat curves and serration of the daemonic weapon about him, Archaon cleaved through the colourful shields of men-at-arms hiding behind them and the bloody gush of pilgrim mobs that seemed to run straight into the orbiting path of the blade.
Archaon’s mind rang with doubts and questions. He was not some gore-clouded champion of the Blood God or some Slaaneshi deviant, living the moment by moment drive of their desires. He was Archaon. He thought for himself. And yet he could not find h
is way to answers. He was slaughtering. He was issuing orders. He was mounting a siege but he knew not truly why. It seemed a battle without purpose. He fought for the acquisition of knowledge, of dark treasure, to realise his destiny: he did not attack without reason like Chaos raiders sailing south in their longships. He was Archaon. He was Archaon.
Above him the walls of Brilloinne Castle reached for the dark, stormy skies of a long-fought day. The brick, beautiful in craft and pattern, formed high walls, towers and turrets. The castle was a statement of angular elegance, streaming with colourful banners and pennants, its colossal drawbridge closed before a red moat, choked with bodies. From within, Archaon could hear the agonising release of trebuchets. Gargantuan pieces of shattered masonry and castle wall were launched up into the dark sky, growing smaller, smaller, until rapidly they grew big, black and unavoidable. Hammering into the battlefield like vengeance issued from the heavens, the boulders created bloody craters of mangled flesh and armour before tumbling off through the ranks of Chaos warriors and mud-splattered knights. Ruinous armour and the polished silver plate of Bretonnian lords were equally unimpressive against such obliteration.
Archaon had ensured that his own siege engines, crafted of daemonbone, tusk and sinew gave an equally devastating account of themselves against the castle walls. For hours now, the eastern wall of Brilloinne Castle had soaked up the most appalling onslaught, with smashed sections raining dust and brick under each merciless impact. Archaon had fought his way forward through a sea of shields, spears and pot-helmed men-at-arms, leading the spiked silhouettes of Ruinous champions and dark-armoured warriors of Chaos to the castle walls precisely because he expected them to fall at any time now.
Archaon heard the crank of the drawbridge. Seeing a way into the castle, Archaon swung the Slayer of Kings about him. The daemon U’zuhl glowed with blood-slaked fury as Archaon scythed heads from Bretonnian shoulders, like a reaper in a field. The bodies of men-at-arms, yeomen and squires thudded to the ground, allowing Archaon to lead his Chaos warriors, his fiends, his marauders and bestial hordes on through the ranks of silver knights. Progress was slow along the banks of the body-choked moat, and was slowed further at the sudden whoosh of arrows unleashed by ranks of longbowmen firing from the castle walls. Archaon brought up the Ruinous Star of his shield defiantly towards the heavens. Zwei and Drei were with him, globing the black shadow of their wings about their master, creating with the shield a barrier that thudded and pranged with the shattered shafts of arrows.
The drawbridge boomed the rest of the way down as the castle gate vomited forth another resplendent stream of knightly riders. Surging forth with lances and shields, the silver armoured warriors urged their huge steeds on, their heraldry and surcoats a blur of colour. It was a bold move to be carried out in isolation. Lifting the shield higher above his helm and with arrows still hammering into its metal surface, Archaon cast his gaze across the battlefield. Reinforcements had arrived. A column of knights riding out of the north, fresh, immaculate and trailing banners of eye-stinging colour – no doubt despatched by lords of the Northern Marches, fearful that an invasion force might be headed their way. Turning south, Archaon saw nothing. Then, blotching out of the heavens, he saw armoured knights swooping down out of the sky. Beautiful warriors on winged pegasi, come to inspire the knights and the base-bred of Brilloinne with hope. Come to defend the dark secrets of the castle’s chapel against those who would steal them.
Archaon grunted. He struck the silver helm from a knight who ran at him with a broadsword before stamping back another, crumpling his breastplate and sending the nobleman surging back into the brick-shattered castle wall. He turned to Zwei.
‘Give the signal,’ the Chaos warlord said. ‘Bring forth my knights.’
Zwei launched himself into the sky to carry out his master’s order. With arrows raining down about him, Archaon exchanged blows with a fat, aged knight who roared at him through his grey-threaded beard. The enchantments of the knight’s glorious blade sparked off the Slayer of Kings. With a roar of his own, Archaon smashed down through the ancient sword with his daemonblade. As the knight looked down at the ancestral weapon, with its ensorcelled blade shattered, Archaon brought the Slayer of Kings back with savage force, thrusting it straight through the Bretonnian knight. As the fangs of his crossguard scraped the demolished breastplate, Archaon tore the daemonblade out of his foe, allowing the horror-stricken knight to topple forwards onto his armoured knees before taking his head.
‘Jharkill!’ Archaon bellowed, mulching the knight’s gaunt squire and his bannerman with the flat of his irregular blade. The malformed huntsman was not far behind. He smashed men-at-arms into muddy graves, wielding his thick tusk bow like a club before stringing the brute weapon with the length of a colossal arrow and firing it at marauder-swamped knights. As skewered steeds crashed to the ground, Chaos marauders descended upon the armoured warriors, beating them to death in their plate. ‘Jharkill!’ Archaon roared again, Bretonnian arrows cutting through the air about him. ‘Unleash your monsters – bring this fortress down into its foundations.’
As the ogre snatched his shaman’s staff from an attendant half-fiend, Archaon pushed on through the mud and clashing bodies. Killing. Decapitating. Plunging his daemonsword through armoured foes. He desperately wanted to reach the drawbridge, but it was already rising. A manfiend and a marauder savage clung to the shuddering oak of its ascending form but Archaon knew it would take more than a pair of pantheon-pledged wretches to grant his army access to the castle.
Like a force of nature, the knights riding from the castle smashed into the throngs swarming the besieged fortress. Everything was suddenly broken bones. The shrieks of the impaled. The screams of the trampled. Horses dying. Trains of bodies shot past, skewered on the lengths of lances. Walls of horseflesh, armour and colourful caparisons blurred by. Bretonnian knights were hammered from their saddles by the plate-piercing spikes of maces and flails. Presented spears and pikes went home before snapping in the hands of the infernal warriors clutching them, and both knights and their Ruinous foes went down under an avalanche of faltering steed. Chaos warriors in suits of hell-forged armour suddenly disappeared before Archaon in a cacophony of demolished plate. Blood. Metal. Everywhere.
Archaon turned to present his body shield to a magnificent knight thundering down on him with the merciless length of his lance. As the weapon punched the metal surface of the shield, Archaon locked his shoulder and pushed back. His boots skidded back through mud and bodies as the Ruinous shield, the cursed plate of Morkar and the warlord’s stone-laced bones soaked up the impact. The lance began to shear, split and shatter, showering the area with splinters. As Archaon’s boots ground to a half-buried halt, he felt the steed slam into the shield. Archaon surged back through the throngs of clashing warriors, barrelling dark knights and their Bretonnian opponents out of his path. When he came to a stop once more, Archaon felt the armoured rider leave the saddle and sail over his head. Pushing the steed back, Archaon came out from behind the shield to see that the spike in its centre had gored the warhorse. Going up on its hind legs, a ragged puncture wound in its chest, the beast gave one last whinny and a kick of its legs before toppling over and burying a fleeing yeoman.
Archaon whirled around to see the unsaddled knight some distance away, trying to scrabble to his feet, struggling in both crumpled plate and the mud. Archaon ran forward as the knight attempted to tear his sword from the gaudy decoration of its scabbard. As the blade cleared its sheath, Archaon booted the knight in the midriff, half lifting him from where he was on all fours in the battlefield mire. The sword slipped from the knight’s hand and he landed on his chest. Putting a boot on the back of the knight’s helm, Archaon put his weight down on the knight’s head. The helm sank under the mud, water flooding in through the faceplate eyeslits and breathing holes. As he held him there, the knight bucked and kicked out in his heavy plate. Men-at-arms and a deranged squire came at
Archaon but the Slayer of Kings tore through them. Arrows from the castle walls sang off his plate, with two finding their way between his pauldron and backplate. Archaon wouldn’t move, however, until the knight’s thrashings slowly ceased.
Reaching back, Archaon tore the arrows from his plate before turning around. The knights of Brilloinne continued to smash their way through the ranks of his armoured warriors, his half-breeds, his manfiends and marauders. Exalted champions of Chaos in their benighted plate, bearing the gifts and cursed weaponry of the Dark Gods, rode in through the murderous malaise to meet them, while wretched sorcerers unleashed their dread powers on the silver-suited knights.
Archaon heard a monstrous clash to the north. Peering through the forest of blades, the fountaining brain and falling banners, Archaon could see that the castle’s knightly reinforcements had been turned aside by Archaon’s own arriving dark knights. Warriors in black plate riding possessed mounts. Slaaneshi horsemen on spiked steeds. Columns of knights in rusted plate, riding skeletal horses. The Blood God’s chosen astride mounts of metal and thunder. As the silver stream of riders were diverted by a wall of armoured steeds and mounted warriors, plate clashed, horses shrieked and weapons sang off one another. The Chaos knights, bearing ghastly shields and the armour-shearing blades of axes and serrated swords, smashed the knights of the Marches out of formation. By the time the noblemen had dropped their useless lances and drawn their swords, many had lost their heads or had the teeth of barbed axeblades buried in their breastplates and chests.
Screams brought Archaon’s attention back around as knights swooping from the sky on their winged mounts soared across the battlefield. Some skewered dark warriors on their lances, tearing them from the battlefield in a screech of plate and flailing limb. Others leaned out and beheaded ruin-blessed champions from the sky with surging swipes of their glorious blades. Heads and helms dropped to the battlefield in the wake of beaten wings and spurting blood.