by Darius Hinks
His expression hardens as I dig at the old wound. An awkward silence fills the room and I see something dangerous in his eyes. I curse my lack of tact – my anger may have cost me everything.
‘You’re not so changed, Boreas,’ he says after a while, staring at my armour. ‘For all your grand words, you still have an eye for interesting trinkets.’ He points at the box hanging from my waist. ‘You’ve not taken your hand away from that toy since you arrived.’ He studies the runes around its base. A few lonely threads of colour start pulsing in his cheeks. ‘It looks almost as old as I am. How important you must be that your new masters decorate you with such baubles.’
I back away, keeping a protective hand over the relic, and curse myself for revealing its importance.
I sink into one of the spectral figures. While we’ve been talking, they’ve formed a circle around the desk. They’re as cold and cruel as the spirit hosts outside. I struggle but I can’t force my way through and I’m reluctant to fight in front of Mopus. I turn to face the spirit. Its hood is deep but I see a gleam of skinless bone and grinning, bleached teeth.
It shoves me back towards Mopus with surprising strength.
‘Are we enemies, then?’ I growl, looking back to Mopus and glaring from behind my mask.
He still has a troubling brightness in his eyes. ‘Far from it. In fact, I’m beginning to think I might be able to help you. There’s more to life than friendship, after all.’ He stares at the bell jar. ‘If that’s as important as you obviously think it is, perhaps you have more bargaining power than you realise.’
‘Mopus,’ I growl, unable to hide my anger. ‘This means nothing to you!’
He laughs without smiling and I see that I’ve lost all hope of reasoning with him.
‘By the gods,’ he says. ‘You are eager to keep it. It must be very special. Why were you never this interesting when you were hanging off my coat tails?’
I can see his pulse racing angrily beneath his translucent skin. ‘If you give me that trinket,’ he continues, ‘the Anvil will be nothing more than a bad memory. You and your shiny soldiers can march on to fight whatever hopeless battles you choose. In fact, I’ll ensure your safe passage to the very mouth of the Crucible of Blood. Nothing shall bar your way. I’ll see to it. My reach is long. I’m sure you remember that much about me.’
‘Anything else,’ I say.
The fury in my voice just makes his eyes gleam all the more.
I feel like smashing the room apart. Without the Kuriat, capturing the Crucible of Blood will be impossible. Sigmar’s artisans spent years forging an icon that could reclaim the realmgate, and I know Mopus is only demanding it through spite. He has no idea of its true worth.
I’m about to storm out when I see the swirling image of battle still raging over Mopus’ desk. Tylos and the others are fighting with all the nobility and heroism I would expect, but the wall of blood warriors before them is impenetrable and growing larger all the time. Khorne’s legions are flooding from the surrounding towers, cramming the courtyard with a forest of axes. My head pounds. To give away the Kuriat means defeat, but Mopus is my only chance at breaking that bloody deadlock. For all his faults, Mopus is not a liar. If he says he will ensure our passage, then he will. If I refuse, Tylos will still be mired in battle when the sun comes up. And then all will be lost anyway.
When Mopus speaks again, his voice is cold and flat. ‘If the God-King is all you believe him to be, Boreas, what does it matter? Is there any deal you can make here that will hold him back?’
He’s mocking me, but he’s right. We must survive the Anvil and there is another way. ‘Forgive me, Tylos,’ I mutter as I unclasp the bell jar from my belt. I stare at it for a moment then reluctantly drop it into the necromancer’s grasping hands, whispering a prayer as I do so.
He tears off the lid and stares at the still-beating lump of black meat.
‘What will you do to the Anvil?’ I demand, all thoughts of friendship forgotten. ‘When will we be free to advance?’
He gives me a brief, unreadable look, before turning back to his desk and his endless reading. ‘It’s done. You should hurry. You’re missing all the fun.’
Chapter Ten
Lord-Celestant Tylos Stormbound
Sigmar’s light envelops me, blazing white, blue and finally crimson as it cooks our enemy alive. As the paladins advance in their hulking, star-forged armour they dwarf the surrounding Liberators, and each blow from their massive lightning hammers rocks the courtyard, scattering blood warriors and smashing craters in the ground. They look like gods torn from the heavens and as I lead them into the enemy, the ground shatters beneath their wrath. Hundreds of my Liberators are wounded, limping and staggering as they lash out with their hammers, but they hold their formations and advance close behind us.
Zarax tenses beneath me and unleashes another bolt of celestial fire. Finally we’re making some headway. The lines of Chaos knights are thinning and drawing back. The paladins are clearly too much for them. I wave the army on as Zarax tears into the reeling enemy warriors.
Only at the last minute do I realise that this is too easy; too quick. My instinct screams out at me that we’re being tricked and I shout an order, halting the advance.
As the Liberators lock their shield walls back into place, I see that I was right. The space that opened up before us is not the sign of a retreat. The smirking Chaos champion is ordering the bulk of his army to back away from us, making way for some new strategy. He barks out a command and his army parts, creating an avenue of armour and axes.
The ground judders as though a stampede is approaching. From my vantage point on Zarax’s back, I am the first to see the cause of the thundering sound.
Hundreds of skinless horrors charge from the opening in the enemy ranks, pounding across the courtyard towards us. They’re all eight or nine feet tall and lashed in glistening, blood-slick muscle. Tentacles burst from their raw, wound-like flesh as they hurtle towards our lines. We now have blood warriors on either flank and these newcomers charging us head on.
I act fast, ordering the Prosecutors into the fray. Drusus leads them over the battlements, dodging blasts of crimson from the walls as he hurls his lightning-charged hammers at the monsters.
More detonations rock the Anvil and the world turns white, but when the blaze dims, the monsters are still there. I manage to cry ‘Charge!’ seconds before they wade into us.
Revolting tentacles lash out from their armoured shoulders, hammering down against our rows of shields. Dozens of Liberators are forced to their knees but others rush to take their place.
Zarax does not wait for me to spur her on; she bounds forwards, crashing through the golden ranks of Stormcast Eternals and fastening her jaws around the head of the nearest monster. I bring Grius down into the head of another and, as it reels away from me, trailing blood from its obscene maw, a paladin pounds through the crush and lands his blazing, two-handed hammer between its cloven feet.
The creature is eviscerated, but the explosion also jolts Zarax to one side; she staggers, almost throwing me from her back.
Bodies crash into my steed and the echo of the blast grows louder. The ground shakes harder as the noise becomes a deafening rumble and I ride on through the scrum of bodies.
The monsters have forced us back through the archway. Hundreds of my men are now outside the Anvil, being driven slowly back towards the Field of Blades.
I yell a command but my words are drowned out by the rumbling noise. It sounds like the world is being torn in half. The tremor is now so violent that the walls around the gatehouse are crumbling and splitting. I look up, expecting to see the crimson moon overhead again, but the sky is empty.
Then I see Drusus. His incandescent wings hurl him through the darkness, lighting up the expressionless masks of the other Prosecutors.
‘Pull back!’ he cries, catching
sight of me.
I shake my head, outraged by the suggestion of retreat, but then look up in shock. Weapons and shields are lowered as everyone in the passageway takes in the bizarre sight unfolding within the Anvil.
The cloud-high spikes that jut out of the watchtowers have started to move and the battle is forgotten as we all turn to stare. The rumbling is now so loud the cause is unmistakable: the Kharvall Steppe is in the grip of an earthquake. The huge talons around which the Anvil has been built are juddering like wind-lashed trees. We’re forced back, reeling out of the passageway as it collapses around us, filling the air with dust and spinning fragments of rock. A few hundred of the Chaos knights stagger into the Field of Blades with us and we quickly despatch them, but most remain trapped in the huge crush of bodies that fills the courtyard.
‘Lord-Celestant,’ says a voice from behind me.
I look down from Zarax to see Boreas striding through the Field of Blades. He looks no different, but as he reaches my side the scent of death pours from him. He reeks of the grave.
‘What have you wrought?’ I ask, looking from my brother to the tumult that surrounds us.
‘Lord-Celestant,’ he says, ‘we must back away from the Anvil.’
‘This is our only path.’
‘Trust me,’ he says and there is an uncharacteristic note of urgency in his voice that makes me listen.
‘Fall back!’ I cry, pointing Grius at the Field of Blades.
We barely make it clear in time. As my army floods into the rows of broken swords, the rumbling sound behind us becomes deafening: an oceanic roar followed by masonry whistling past my ears. As huge chunks of stone slam into the ground all around me I glance back and see what Boreas has done.
The talons at the centre of the watchtowers have risen into the sky, like the shoots of a strange plant. As they rise they’re tearing the Anvil apart, creating a new wall of dust and crimson light. As the spikes rise higher I see that they form the spine of an enormous fossilised serpentine skeleton – a snaking mass of ancient bones big enough to dwarf a mountain.
‘They never knew,’ cries Boreas, over the din. ‘They built the Anvil on the back of a fossil.’
I try to speak, but my words are lost beneath a new sound. As the mountainous, twisting skeleton rears up into the clouds, shrugging off the Anvil like a coat, it opens its jaws and bellows. The sound is unbearable, a cry of torment so loud that my ears ring when it ceases.
The ground rolls like a storm-lashed sea and whole towers fall from the sky. I’m blinded by dust and deafened by falling rocks, but my mind is racing. The blood warriors were still inside the courtyard. Nothing could survive this. I see Boreas up ahead and stare at him. Who could summon such a thing from the grave? What has my brother become?
Chapter Eleven
Vourla – High Priestess of the Steppe
We emerge near the shore, slipping from the fumes like a troupe of ghosts. Smoke whips up over rippling basalt, coating our metal steeds in ash and making us all gleam in the moonlight. It’s less than an hour since we rode out from the Anvil and we’re dead already; Hakh just doesn’t know it yet. I find it hard to suppress a victorious smile. The warlord rides on, blinded by his lust for power, carrying me behind him through the blazing heat. Tylos must be attacking the Anvil by now and I thank the fumes for the eerie, muffled quiet. If Hakh realised my trick, he might still have time to return and fight a battle he could win. I’m not going to give him that chance.
The Blood Creed ride behind us, the hooves of their hideous mounts crunching across the black rock. They make a monstrous sight, but it won’t make any difference. Nothing will survive what lies ahead. Not even Tylos and his gleaming host. As I recall his noble figure striding through the battle I feel a trace of guilt, but quickly suppress it. I didn’t choose Tylos’ path – I’m just turning it to my advantage.
Shapes loom out of the smoke and I gasp. The lakeshore is crowded with hulking beasts. They’re crouched menacingly on the rock, as though about to charge.
Hakh grunts with what might be laughter and rides on.
As we near the shapes I see that they’re not creatures but buildings – hovels, built in the shape of enormous horned heads. They’re all painted blood red and, as we walk past the mouth-like doorways, terrified faces peer out at us. There are few survivors of the old kingdoms left but some still eke out a pitiful existence as slaves and lackeys for Hakh and his ilk.
‘My kinsmen,’ I mutter.
As they realise that the Blood Creed hasn’t come for them, a few dare to wander out into the moonlight and I see their strange outfits. They’ve made costumes from scraps of wood in an attempt to impersonate the monsters they’ve based their homes on. They wear horned, wooden helmets, painted to resemble brutal, bestial faces. They look so absurd that I would laugh, if not for the pitifully deranged expressions on their faces. My beloved people have descended into superstition and barbarity. Khorne has broken their minds as completely as he has broken their land.
Our destination looms into view – a blackened fort, a hulking slab of scorched metal layered with dozens of smoke-belching chimneys and oil-spewing pipes. The artifice of the Blood God may be graceless, but it is powerful. I feel a growing nausea as we near its grumbling walls. Unlike the towers of the Anvil, the fort leans back at a drunken angle, as though straining against the huge chains that link it to the bubbling lava. The chains are each thicker than Hakh’s chest and there are so many of them that they form a kind of rattling skirt, spreading out from one side of the tower.
There is only one door and Hakh strides towards it, climbing a row of steps that circle the tower’s base. He leaves his army behind and drags me along with him. There’s nowhere I could run even if I wished to, but Hakh won’t let me out of his sight. As we wind around the scarred rock, I get a better look at the strange machinery that adorns the metal bastion. Illuminated by the hellish light of the lake is a vast collection of gears and spindles, scorched and blackened but still intact and coated in thick black tar. The chains are threaded through various wheels and jammed in place by hunks of rusted iron. I’ve seen such infernal engines in use before and I prayed never to do so again.
After several minutes, Hakh reaches the door – a brutal riveted slab of brass tall enough to admit a giant but with no obvious handle. Next to the crudely wrought door is a stone plinth, topped with a long, curved horn.
Hakh glances at me, then pounds the door.
The clanging echoes through the tower and soon I hear the slamming of doors and the clattering of armoured feet on metal walkways. After a few moments, the door swings inwards with a grudging moan. We’re greeted by the smell of old machines and rotting meat.
There are figures in the gloomy entrance hall – more of the brutish, armour-clad Blood Creed – and one of them steps out into the moonlight. I’ve met Khorlagh the Keeper once before but familiarity doesn’t lessen the shock. He’s almost as massive as Hakh but, rather than weapons, he carries the brutal tools of his trade. His bloodstained armour is adorned with billhooks, iron staves and thick, studded manacles. In his hand he clutches a jagged trident, warped and glowing with heat, as though recently drawn from a furnace. Tucked into his belt is a cruel, barbed whip. It’s not the brutal implements that make me shrink away from him though; it’s his skin. It is corpse-white, marbled with indigo streaks, and sags away from his body like an ill-fitting suit, revealing glimpses of the glistening flesh beneath. The effect is made all the more disturbing by his oddly gracious manner. He performs a ridiculous, formal bow and then gestures towards the open doorway.
‘My Lord Hakh,’ he says, his words turned into a moist rasp by his flapping, bloodless lips. ‘What an honour. What an honour indeed.’ He glances back at the figures loitering inside the tower. ‘I received no word from Vhaal that you would be inspecting the fort. We have made no preparations.’ He tries to tidy his face, tucking h
is skin back into place and smoothing it down like a courtier adjusting his wig.
‘Get us across,’ says Hakh, nodding at the ranks of knights gathered below.
Khorlagh frowns and then laughs. ‘For a moment there I thought you meant you were going to the crucible right now.’ His laughter causes his skin mask to sag again. ‘But of course you don’t mean that.’ He waves us inside again. ‘You’ll have to excuse our lack of preparation. You can use my chambers to rest until it’s safe to make the crossing.’
Hakh grabs Khorlagh by the arm and hurls him towards the brass horn. ‘Now.’
Khorlagh looks shocked. ‘My Lord, we can’t cross now. It’s nearly dawn.’
Hakh lets go of me and clutches his sword in both hands. ‘Are you the only one here who can take me across?’
Khorlagh briefly shakes his head, but then he sees sense and nods. ‘Yes, My Lord!’ He waves his trident at the lake of lava ‘No-one else can control them. Without me, passage is impossible, I assure you. I’ve spent long decades mastering the techniques and understanding the–’
Hakh silences Khorlagh by raising his sword a little higher.
‘Of course.’ Khorlagh turns to the horn.
He swings the mouthpiece to his lips and a harsh braying sound fills the air. Khorlagh’s lungs seem bottomless and the noise grows to an unbearable volume. I clamp my hands over my ears and almost topple down the steps, but Hakh drags me to his side.
Finally, Khorlagh lets go of the horn and staggers back from its stand.
For a while, there’s nothing but the echoes of the horn blast, but by the time Hakh has led us both back down the steps, a great din is booming out from the walls of the tower. I hear the rattle of machinery lurching into life and the roar of huge furnaces. The narrow windows spill crimson light out into the darkness – daemonic eyes, opening one by one.