by Rob Sanders
Pulling his shield in close and tightening his grip around the hilt of his daemonsword, Archaon bent his knee. As a shadow passed overhead, Archaon leapt for the creature. Swinging his sword overhead, Archaon cut through the throat of the pegasus. As he hit the ground, the winged horse dribbled gore across the battlefield before crashing messily into a throng of yeomen spear-stabbing a manfiend. Another leap only succeeded in turning a wavering lance aside, while a short run into a third sent the tip of the Slayer of Kings through the soft underbelly of another flying steed, splatter-spilling its entrails over the polished plate of Bretonnian knights. Archaon was so preoccupied with savagely ending the two noblemen that he didn’t see where the disembowelled beast landed or the lance of the mounted warrior that followed. Swooping in on his beautiful white winged beast, the knight aimed his lance squarely at Archaon’s horned helm.
Everything went dark for a moment. Archaon felt a crack of thunder pass through his faceplate, his skull and out the back of his head. The world tumbled. Then there was the slip-shod landing on his back, bloody mud oozing about him. He saw the pegasus knight pass overhead but also saw Drei beating his leathery wings in hot pursuit. Within moments, the wraith-warrior had mounted the beast behind the knight and slit his throat with one of his bone blades. As the throat-clutching knight slid from his saddle, down into the havoc of the battle, Archaon saw the sky close up above him.
His world, as disorientated as it had briefly become, was now the feverish smash of weapons and gritted teeth through mud-smeared faces. Men-at-arms bounced morning stars off his plate, while squires attempted to earn plate of their own by twisting the points of spears into his midriff. Suddenly there was a grizzled knight, helmless and sporting a leathery old scar that split his face in two. A greatsword seethed through the sky overhead and came down at the Chaos warlord. It appeared as though it might take off an arm or even Archaon’s head. It would have done if he hadn’t torn his shield back from the clawing attentions of two warrior pilgrims. Archaon felt the greatsword smack down across the surface of the shield. He knew another steel-splitting blow was coming.
Meanwhile, the Chaos warlord’s world continued to darken as more and more rabid baseborns and legacy-hungry paladins swept in to destroy him. His shield boomed with the desperate desire to see him dead. Snarling beneath his faceplate, which was miraculously still intact, Archaon kicked out, sweeping the grizzled knight’s legs out from under him. Swinging his daemonsword in a tight arc, the Chaos warrior chopped through leather boot and bone, felling his circle of attackers like trees. Sliding around in the mud, he continued to hack his attackers to a growing mound of screeching bodies, until finally – with a swish of his mud-slick cloak – Archaon was back on his feet. The face-split knight had also managed to haul his armoured form up and held the glittering sword above his head. He got no further. Archaon saw the surprise cross his face. Then the horror as the tip of one of Drei’s bone blades poked out of his throat, having entered from the back of his neck. As it slipped out and then disappeared, the knight dropped his heavy sword and crashed to the ground, revealing the shimmering shadow of Archaon’s bodyguard.
The formation of pegasus knights had banked and were swooping in for another skewering pass. Archaon readied himself for another sky-searing attack but he didn’t have to. Bolts of unnatural energy struck a crooked path up from the battlefield, striking the pegasi and their knightly riders. It was Vilitch the Curseling, striding up through the destruction of Archaon’s progress. The warrior-twin slashed men-at-arms out of his path with his sorcery-searing blade, while the twisting worm-like thing growing out of his shoulder directed his staff at the sky. As the Curseling’s bolts struck the pegasus knights, both mount and rider were transformed into sacks of leathery flesh that fell from the heavens. The disgusting fusions of flesh splattered into the battlefield before sprouting tentacles, claws and exotic appendages that reached out for nearby unfortunates. Whip-winding tendrils about the boots of fleeing squires, the spawn dragged the boys back through the mud and into the abomination’s absorbing fleshiness.
While sorcerous bolts streaked up from the battlefield, streams of flame blasted down from above. Knights aflame fell from the sky while pegasi kicked, flapped and bucked their agonies as they tumbled like balls of fire. Knightly riders were torn from their saddles by monstrous airborne predators, throwing and tearing the paladins to pieces between them, while their mounts were set upon in mid-air by winged serpents who savaged the wondrous steeds.
Archaon felt the ground quaking beneath him. Jharkill had unleashed his monstrosities as Archaon had commanded. As well as airborne monsters and the chimeric predators bounding, pouncing and mauling their way through the battlefield, the abominate titans of Archaon’s army had been committed to siege. Everything fell into shadow as the monstrous giant Archaon had freed from Lord Agrammon’s menageries stomped up behind. The giant was a small mountain of bone, withered flesh and the light of some malevolent life beyond life. Its bones had been etched with pantheon-pleasing symbols and its exposed ribs used as banner poles from which to hang Ruinous flags and standards. It picked up a colossal piece of masonry that had been launched from the castle and heaved it over the enormous dimensions of its deformed skull.
Archaon heard the tortured release of the castle trebuchets fire once more. Massive boulders hurtled skyward before tumbling towards the battlefield. Archaon gripped his shield. The Chaos warrior knew, however, that it could not save him from such an impact.
Things died horribly nearby. An irregular-shaped boulder smashed a throng of battling knights to nothingness before rolling bludgeonry through Bretonnians and the servants of darkness alike. Another managed to hit nothing for several mud-splattering impacts until burying one of Archaon’s deadly sorcerers under a ton of rock. A third dropped straight down on the corpse giant, shattering the monster’s malformed skull before landing behind it and tumbling away. Archaon stepped backwards as the bone colossus lurched. The ancient sorcery that gave the monstrosity life died to musty darkness and the giant toppled forward, its colossal masonry missile falling ahead of it. As the monster shattered to a small mountain of ancient bones, the falling piece of masonry cleaved down through the top of the castle wall. Its brick-pulverising path continued, cutting a narrow trench down through the side of the castle-exterior defences. As the dust settled and the excruciating noise of the impact subsided, Archaon watched tendrils of the glowing mist that cloaked the battlefield creep in through the narrow opening.
‘To me!’ Archaon roared, breaking into a plate-jangling run for the breach. Batting aside Bretonnian knights who were stumbling through the chaos with his shield, Archaon slashed apart men-at-arms that bravely barred his way with his daemonsword. Like a torrent of darkness, dread champions, Chaos warriors, Ruinous knights, manfiends, bestial half-breeds and marauders broke off from their desperate engagements and formed a rampaging column behind their warlord.
Inside the castle walls there was panic. The courtyard beyond was dominated by trebuchets, but upon seeing Archaon emerge from the breach in the castle walls and the hordes of Chaos pour through behind him, they abandoned their machines. Men-at-arms, charged with defending the fortress, poured from stairwells and archways, led by battle-scarred sergeants, while the remaining knights of Brilloinne brought their steeds back under control and rode for the besiegers.
With his dark horde a mist-swirling silhouette of spiked armour, horned helms and blades behind him, Archaon ran across the courtyard at his enemies. Smashing his shield about him with one hand – goring, bludgeoning and dashing – Archaon held the fierce fury of the daemon U’zuhl in the other, burning within the monstrous blade. Melting straight through the steel of lesser weapons, Archaon hacked the raging inferno of the daemonsword through the armoured forms of knights, through screaming squires and the unfortunate steeds that carried them. As Archaon stabbed, cleaved, brained and butchered a path through the crowded courtyard, the stench
of sorcery and bloodshed stung his nostrils. He knew where he was heading.
As soon as he had entered the courtyard, he had seen it. The tiny chapel, rough compared to the surrounding architecture that had been built by Baron Lucus. The stained-glass windows were covered by stout oak shutters and lengths of chain, while the archway door was barred by three thick lengths of oak and criss-crossed with tarnished silver chains. It was unmistakable: the chapel Baron Lucus had constructed to house the dark treasures Vilitch the Curseling demanded.
As trailing splatters of blood flew through the air about Archaon, with hacked limbs and blades that had been seared in half, he was filled with loathing for the cowardly grandson of the mighty Baron Lucus – the hero Lucus, whose stories had even reached Archaon as a boy in the far Empire.
‘Where is the baron?’ Archaon roared, his words bouncing about the courtyard walls. ‘The coward that hides behind his coin and his walls while boys and baseborns die for him?’
‘Kill him!’ Archaon heard from the castle walls. Looking about the castle Archaon found his foe. While longbowmen turned their weapons down into the courtyard, Baron Lucus the younger prowled the relative safety of the ramparts in polished plate of silver and gold. The plumage of his helm was colourful and extravagant, while the exotic saddled beast upon which he rode looked like one of the finest steeds Bretonnian coin could buy: a hippogryph, an elegant creature that boasted the back legs and body of a stallion and the wings, talons and beaked head of a monstrous eagle. The longbowmen seemed uncertain. ‘Do as your lord commands,’ Lucus shouted through the faceplate of his beautiful helm. Archaon swallowed back the bile rising up the back of his throat. He could hear the edge of cowardice along the cutting edge of the baron’s words. Here was a man deserving of death. A fool that thought that money and status could save him from a man like Archaon.
The courtyard whooshed with the flight of arrows loosed from the castle walls. While several arrows shattered and split off Archaon’s cursed plate – the Chaos warlord not even bothering to raise his shield – most ended up embedded in surrounding men-at-arms and the dirt of the courtyard floor.
‘Still hiding, baron?’ Archaon called up at Lucus. ‘Your men are dying and your castle lost. Fight me or flee – and make your failure complete.’
Baron Lucus attempted a battle roar of his own but no one was convinced. Not the commoners, for whom their lord’s weakling call was the last thing they heard. Not the knights, who fought for the memory of the wretched boy’s grandfather rather than the lord himself. Not Archaon.
Digging his heels into the side of the magnificent beast, the baron urged the hippogryph off the castle wall. Leaping like a forest predator from a tree, the hippogryph pounced on Archaon. The Chaos warlord brought up his shield. For a moment he was lost in the monster, buried in talons, hooves and muscle. With a bellow, Archaon reared and threw the hippogryph and its rider off him. As the thing was tossed back into the battle and bloodshed of the crowded courtyard, Archaon smashed it across the beak with his shield before immediately backslapping the beast further into the surrounding butchery.
Shaking off the impacts, the hippogryph stalked sideways about Archaon. The Chaos warrior and the baron’s monster circled one another. Lucus just seemed to be along for the ride. Striking out at surrounding Chaos warriors in spiked plate with his sword, Lucus had his bejewelled blade batted back by the battle-hardened warriors of darkness. The hippogryph reared at one, slicing three ragged talon-tears through the warrior’s plate and torso. The second it pecked in the faceplate, shattering the horned helm before snapping the warrior’s head up in its hooked beak and tearing it free of his body. Lucus let out a jubilant roar, despite the fact that the victory had little to do with his own personal prowess.
Archaon came in with the Slayer of Kings, the daemonsword trailing the glow and shimmer of hellfire. The hippogryph launched itself into the air, beating its wings to keep itself and its rider out of Archaon’s reach. Tossing the daemonsword into the courtyard, where it hissed blade first in the dirt, Archaon leapt for the hippogryph’s back hoof. Grabbing it with both gauntlets, Archaon used his considerable weight to drag the monster back down to earth. The hippogryph flapped furiously for the sky, feverishly kicking out with both back legs to free itself of the deadweight anchor of Archaon. As the hoof of the other leg struck the Chaos warlord and sent him crashing back to the courtyard floor, the hippogryph flapped over the heads of the knights who were fighting for their lives among the Chaos hordes.
As Archaon got to his feet he saw a squire run across the open space and attempt to tear his daemonsword from the dirt. Archaon didn’t know whether the Bretonnian boy intended to use his own sword against him or simply deny Archaon his devastating weapon. The Chaos warlord couldn’t help but be a little impressed. It didn’t last long, however, and neither did the squire. The Slayer of Kings would not move from its position stuck in the ground, dragging the squire back. Seconds holding onto the hilt of the daemonic weapon was enough to scorch the squire’s simple soul and envelop the boy in a flesh-melting inferno of hellflame. The daemon U’zuhl had no love for Archaon, but there were few souls dark and powerful enough to wield the possessed weapon, and the Blood God’s infernal servant made it a matter of monstrous principle to scorch from existence those unworthy and unwise enough to seize it.
Grabbing a man-at-arms from the throng of battle, Archaon killed him with a gauntlet-clenched punch to the head, snatching up the Bretonnian’s spear. Leaning back, Archaon launched the weapon at the flapping hippogryph, burying it in the creature’s flank. As the monster shrieked like an eagle about the castle, Archaon ducked and weaved the arcs of poor quality blades and notched axes. Smashing his armoured elbow into the spine of another baseborn warrior, Archaon pulled the warped spear in his grasp over his shoulder and allowed the broken-backed Bretonnian to collapse. Hurling the spear with furious force, Archaon sent the weapon through the baron’s plate, skewering his leg to his mount’s muscular side. Ducking beneath a Bretonnian knight’s battle axe, Archaon slammed the armoured warrior aside with his shield.
Suddenly there was a monstrous explosion from the east wall. Dust rocketed across the courtyard as an avalanche of demolished masonry cascaded inwards, burying trebuchets, mounted knights and Chaos marauders alike. Archaon deflected the slow swing of the battle axe off the surface of his shield before spinning about the grey-bearded knight and slamming the shield-spike straight through his armoured back.
Prising his shield from the blood-spitting knight, Archaon walked back across the courtyard, snatching up the Slayer of Kings from where it still quivered in the dirt. In the narrow opening he had used to enter the castle he saw Jharkill, the malformed ogre, holding his shaman’s staff. Manfiends and marauders pushed past him, eager to join the butchery inside the castle. The Curseling was with him, the warrior-twin opportunistically slicing at Bretonnian knights who were desperately trying to stem the flow of invaders. As the ensorcelled blade of the twin cut through plate and the flesh behind it, the Curseling’s opponents were swallowed up by a violaceaous whirlwind of raw energy that tore the blade-marked victim apart before twisting furiously to nothing. The worm-sorcerer that sprouted from the warrior-twin’s shoulder held its staff up high, trailing the haze of the glowing mist and striking castle defenders down with spawn-rupturing bolts of lightning from the headpiece.
The Bretonnian knights needn’t have bothered trying to secure the breach. The abominate form of Archaon’s slaughterbrute had decimated an entire section of wall and was now crawling across the rubble. The monstrosity of chitinous plate, horn, claw and dagger-filled maw bore the red flesh and fury of its Blood God. It was living decimation and visited some of that potential on Brilloinne Castle. With three tongues flopping out of its mouth, cascading the drool of violent anticipation, the monstrosity smashed its clawed fists through walls, through the foundations of tottering towers and down through the stable structures and c
ourtyard buildings. It snatched up fleeing men-at-arms and bit them in half, discarding what was left before stamping down on a foolhardy knight with its huge hooves, reducing the armoured warrior to splattering scrap.
Winged serpents circled the castle walls, lighting up the ramparts with streams of flame, prompting the flaming, flailing longbowmen stationed there to jump to their deaths. Chimeric predators tore past Archaon, savaging yeomen, squires and knights as they ran from the destructive horror of the slaughterbrute and the monstrosities attacking the castle.
As the abominate creature moved towards the chapel, Archaon found himself running against the terrified Bretonnians, his daemon sword slashing this way and that to clear a bloody path. Waving his shield and the infernal radiance of his sword before the huge monster, he saw the thing stop – its clenched claw just moments from smashing the chapel to brick-dust. Under the control of Jharkill’s primitive charms, the thing turned away, suddenly attracted to the flapping form of the hippogryph and the gleaming plate of the baron on its back. Lucus swung his beautiful blade at the inevitability of the beast’s closing claws but the miserable nobleman could not land a strike. It was horror to behold as the slaughterbrute snatched the hippogryph and its rider out of the air. Tearing the shiny form of the screaming baron from the saddle, the abomination grasped the winged steed in its fist. Smashing the knuckles of its clenched claw into the courtyard floor to crunch the creature’s bones and snap its wings, the Chaos monstrosity flung the hippogryph’s broken carcass with merciless force into the north wall. Archaon could hear the screams of Baron Lucus inside the prison of the slaughterbrute’s claw. The monster looked down at its shrieking fist before crushing the insignificance of the nobleman, the royal blood of the baron spurting out from between the abomination’s knuckles.
Such a sight was too much for even those knights who had pledged to defend the castle when the baseborns turned and fled. With the castle in ruins and the lord to which they owed their oath dead, there was little left at Brilloinne for the knights to die for. As the knights fled, running for the drawbridge that had been cranked open, Archaon left them to his besieging horde. Turning towards the chapel about which the castle had been built, Archaon levelled the thick oak door with a kick. Worm-eaten oak splintered, and chains slipped through rings and dropped before the entrance. Holding the Slayer of Kings out before him, the blade blazed brightly in the presence of such a holy place. The chapel interior was resplendent with the gold and silver iconography of the blessed Lady of the Lake and the Grail, from which the legendary Baron Lucus had sipped. As the furious glow of his daemonblade lit up the darkness of shuttered stained-glass windows, Archaon found the chapel to be empty. A hole shattered in the aged brick that made up the back wall had allowed recent entrance into the chapel, and the dust was disturbed evidence of the recovery of the dread treasures of darkness that had remained locked inside.