They would probably be waiting for the same thing as the carrion birds. They were all waiting for him to die, maybe out of curiosity since very few outsiders must have ever survived this long in the jungle. Kron counted a dozen watchers, golden-skinned with heads half-shaved and with bones and feathers thrust through their skin. They were probably a roving patrol, the toughest of the whole tribe, headhunters, cannibals or scalptakers.
Kron smiled. Even now, wounded and tired, he could have fought them to death. It would hurt like hell, but he could take them all. In fact, with them scaring away the larger predators, he was probably safest with them watching him.
As he looked on, one warrior made a near-invisible gesture and a handful of the tribesmen peeled off, slinking through the vegetation to surround the hollow tree, to keep this unusual quarry from escaping. Perhaps they would try to kill him in the night with a poisoned dart or a thrown knife, but there had been a time when Kron could catch bullets. Maybe he still could.
With hungry cannibals creeping towards his hiding place, Kron shut down half his brain and caught some rest at last.
It would be impossible for any mortal to properly understand what thoughts went through the mind of Ss’ll Sh’Karr, if they could be called thoughts at all. They might resemble, in the most approximate way, a constant scream, or the word “blood” bellowed over and over again, or an overarching thirst, or pure hatred, or the sensation of being immersed in fire. But nothing would fully describe what made Ss’ll Sh’Karr, avatar of the Blood God, do what he did.
But it was still with something resembling nostalgia that Ss’ll Sh’Karr watched his army reborn. Hell was oozing up from the ground, the half-formed bodies of his legion dragging themselves from the blood-sodden soil. He had known they would find him—a daemon of Khorne was born of the concept of violence and anger, and Sh’Karr’s brothers had always been waiting in the earth of Torvendis, fed by every act of bloodshed. It just took the will of their lord released, and the lake of blood that saturated the earth beneath the walls, to bring them back.
A hundred hulking creatures, each twice the height of a man, yowling as they threw off their birth cauls and let iron claws tear out through their skin. A hundred could become a thousand, a thousand a million, all they needed was more blood. And there was no shortage of blood on Torvendis, or of ways to spill it. Ss’ll Sh’Karr could taste millions of packed bodies beyond the wall before him, weak and ripe and waiting to be torn apart for the glory of the God on the Throne of Skulls.
And to get to it all, they just had to get past the wall.
Tarn watched as the wall tumbled down around him. He was in the area immediately behind the wall, between the rear of the fortification and the barracks, grimly aware of the cruelty that his death now would represent when he could have died so many times over already since the previous morning. The wall, he knew, would fall in a great avalanche of stone, sweeping everything away, and that would be no way for a man to die.
Men were running everywhere, funnelling the wounded from the shattered ramparts and charging up the rearward working to relieve those who had fallen. There were terrible sounds from the front of the wall—the rumble of torn stone and the howling of daemons. Men were screaming as they were dragged down, limbs crushed by falling stone. There were shapes moving at the top of the wall, lumpen and shambling but with claws that took a head with every flash.
Tarn had woken beneath a pile of bodies, his head still aching from writhing, reeking dreams. He had crawled from the shattered tower to find the battle was over, the battlements strewn with the remains of Emerald Sword warriors. The stink of magic was still heavy and he could see, in the back of his mind, the rent in the air and the horrible things that had tumbled out of the tower walls at the sorcerer’s command, silken-skinned and clawed.
But that was before. Tarn had seen strange and terrible things and learned to shake them out of his head when he had to concentrate on survival. He had scrambled back down the walls, blocking out the pain from his many wounds, and made it into hiding in the shadow of the barracks complexes behind the walls. Right now he was lying in the shelter of a drainage ditch, brackish water up over his shoulders and his nostrils just above the film of clinging scum. Nearby lay a complex of barracks buildings, long, low dormitories with pastel-shaded banners flying along the roofs, along with silos for storing grain to feed the legionaries and paved roads for supplies and marching columns. It was impressive to see the workings of Lady Charybdia’s military machine—not for the first time, Tarn wondered how high he could have risen had he been born within the wall instead of outside it.
He had hidden there as the sun sank. The last moans from the battlefield had died down. And now, this.
Tarn risked putting his head above the lip of the drainage ditch. The barracks complex didn’t look quite so impressive now, as knots of men ran here and there in confusion. Reinforcements clashed with wounded men trying to get down the wall in the opposite direction.
Tarn looked up and saw movement on the top of the wall, something huge—bigger than anything he had ever seen, bigger than the sea monsters that hunted off the northern coasts and the roc-birds that carried the unwary from the western peaks. Horns and bloodstained metal jutted from the monster’s skin, gleaming wetly as it clambered onto the top of the wall, bellowing, sweeping its massive clawed paw through the legionaries trying to hold it at bay with spears and bows. It was a daemon, a huge beast of legend formed from the pure will of Chaos, and around its feet were swarms of smaller daemons enthusiastically mirroring its butchery.
A score of defenders was thrown down the steep stairways, bodies breaking as they tumbled down the steps and walkways. A troop of legionaries ran past Tarn’s hiding place, a centurion screaming orders, trying to forge some discipline from the confusion.
A sorcerer staggered past blindly, eyes and ears bleeding, from the massive feedback of sorcery rolling down from the wall—even Tarn could smell blood in his nostrils and taste it on his tongue, and hear the whispers in his head from a thousand thirsty daemons’ mouths. Hundreds of legionaries were swarming from the barracks but Tarn knew they couldn’t stop it. Arrows were raining against the daemon’s skin but it was ignoring them, digging its claws into the stone and pulling. The wall sagged and daemons were scrambling down into the barracks now, butchering their way through the legionaries massed to defend the rear of the wall, a tide of grey-skinned, half-machine monsters.
The wall was coming down like a tidal wave breaking. Palls of dust billowed and massive chunks of masonry rolled down its sides, smashing through barracks buildings and crushing whole centuries of troops.
The daemon strode down through the carnage. The legionaries were in full rout now—the few centurions who tried to stop them were ignored. The smaller daemons were amongst the barracks and supply lines, leaping hither and thither and killing anything they found. Tarn scrabbled through the foul water of the ditch to where a handful of legionaries were wading across—he grabbed the last one and pulled him under the water, holding him down until he stopped kicking. As the screams came closer and the stench of blood overpowered the sunk of the ditch, Tarn tore off the dead man’s silks and wrapped them around his own leathers, grabbing the spear and hauling himself out of the ditch—at a glance he would pass for a legionary, and no one would pause long enough to get a decent look.
Tarn had never been ashamed of running, for a man who killed for any master could hardly be ashamed of anything. He joined the rout at full sprint, heading away from the walls and further into Lady Charybdia’s kingdom. Daemons loped like wolves, tearing men apart. Showers of arrows plunged into battling knots of men and daemon, fired by archers willing to see their own side killed if it meant thinning out the enemy pouring over the mined wall.
The footsteps of the daemon lord were like war drums. The stench and the noise were awful. Tarn knew this was no longer just Golgoth’s desperate attempt to fight one last battle—something new and terrible had awoken,
and this wasn’t Golgoth’s fight anymore. That meant it wasn’t Tarn’s either, and so he ran, the seething blood fighting with the writhing images in his head.
If he lived, he would seek out another master, as he had done a dozen times before. But for now, his only ally was survival.
Lady Charybdia had not been so distracted for some time. Everything around her was wrong. The breach in her kingdom was like a wound in her side. Primitives and outsiders were spreading like diseases through Slaanesh’s domain. There was a bad taste in her mouth and an ugly screeching sound at the back of her hearing. Sometimes, she wished she could suffer the world with the crude senses of other mortals.
This chamber of the keep had been drained of its extreme sensory input, so the others seated around the wide hardwood table could survive. A chill breeze keened in from the balconies that ringed the tower, bringing the echoes and scents of the city, rippling the war banners brought back by the legions from past campaigns and causing the weeping clusters of candles to flicker. Lady Charybdia did not like this place, high on a pinnacle of the keep, and she hoped that if she had to be uncomfortable then the others would be too. The white sage (whose name she still did not care to remember) was certainly utterly terrified, every muscle tensed, wizened eyes darting. The sweat was rolling off him. Lady Charybdia stifled a smile—at least, there were still the small pleasures.
Caduceia, the one person in her kingdom for whom Lady Charybdia had anything approaching genuine respect, lounged in a massive hardwood throne, one clawed hand lolling, her tentacled head relaxed. She licked her lips with a forked tongue and ruffled the gills ranged down her neck. Nothing frightened Caduceia—whether that was the daemon in her or just her natural state of mind Lady Charybdia was uncertain.
Lady Charybdia’s chancellor, Mape, had shrunk back down into the upholstery of his chair and was shivering. He was a tiny, monkey-like man with shrivelled eyes like black beads, who had been drained of his free will by his soul-destroying duties in calculating the total resources of the city. He alone actually had an understanding of just how much was hacked from the earth and then destroyed, poured down the throats of revellers or forged into buildings and weapons. The mathematics of this process were infused with Chaos and hence were fundamentally illogical, and trying to comprehend them had sucked out all the interesting parts of Mape’s mind. Lady Charybdia valued her chancellors and their staff as tools to calculate just how great her service to Slaanesh was, but as individuals they meant nothing. She went through chancellors quite quickly—Mape had held his position for three years and was on his last legs.
The door to the chambers swung open, and the last member of Lady Charybdia’s council of war entered.
Commander Demetrius of the Violators Space Marine Chapter was about four metres high and the same across, a massive metallic block mounted on hydraulic claw-footed legs. Each articulated shoulder ended in an arm-mounted weapon, a four-barrelled assault cannon on the left and a bouquet of barbed energy-lashes on the right. The flat surfaces of his ceramite-encased body were painted a pale blue-grey, like dead men’s lips, with the symbol of the Violators—a lightning bolt crossed by a dagger—wrought in gold over one side of the chest. On the other, dense script had been etched telling of the hundreds of engagements in which Demetrius had fought and the kill-marks of the important foes he had slain. On the centre of the chest, the sarcophagus where Demetrius’ physical body was held, was a fleshy knot like an unopened flower, pale and dead but pulsing with the machine’s heart.
The dreadnought stomped up to the table, servos growling. The petals of the sarcophagus opened and Demetrius’ old body was revealed, a scorched corpse with arms and legs sheared off, the face rotten and drained. Fronds, like the tendrils of some sea creature, waved from the skin—they were exposed and elongated nerve endings, the only way that any sensation could be delivered into Demetrius’ sense-dulled mind.
He had been horribly wounded on some distant battleground and recovered—though his body had been wrecked his tactician’s mind was intact, and his Chapter had entombed him in a dreadnought’s shell so he could continue to lead them in the eternal war that Chaos demanded of them.
“I am glad you could make it, commander,” said Lady Charybdia. “How is life on the walls?”
“Tolerable, my lady,” replied Demetrius, his voice a low, cracked rattle from his mined throat. “The air tastes of war. We shall serve our god soon, I think.”
“That is looking very likely. I can trust you and your men to ensure that the current situation is resolved rapidly and with a minimum of disruption to our sacred work. Is my trust justified?”
“It is, my lady. Every one of my battle-brothers is worth a thousand barbarians and more.”
“Good. I suspect that I shall be calling on you soon.” Lady Charybdia’s voice was cold. Compared to her Demetrius was a brute, his own lust for experience limited to the violence of warfare. Lady Charybdia had once been like that, revelling in slaughter, but she knew now that it had just been a phase on the way to the current perfection of her senses. Demetrius was stuck in the pattern of bloodshed which became ever more ordinary for him as he absorbed every experience that battle could give him. One day he would become unable to experience anything at all and his mind would wilt away, leaving just the dreadnought to house some other butcher. The Violators were extremely valuable, undoubtedly the best troops on Torvendis, but their presence reminded Lady Charybdia of the stagnation that was the fate of every unwary servant of Slaanesh.
“Caduceia,” said Lady Charybdia, “appraise us of the situation, if you will.”
Caduceia stood up. “Of course, my lady.” She waved her clawed hand and an old, tarnished servitor-creature, which had been fitted out as a holoprojector, shone an image of Torvendis’ prime continent into the air above the table. “The initial attack was on the western walls, here.” The image closed in on a section of the wall bordering the foothills of the Canis Mountains. “The mountain people mustered a surprisingly large horde and assaulted the walls directly.”
Demetrius snorted a laugh. “Hah! How many did we kill?”
“About half of them,” continued Caduceia unperturbed. “For minimal losses. Then, we believe an ally of theirs arrived.”
The image was blurry—compiled from the various séances and remote viewings of Lady Charybdia’s pet sages, it was distorted by some sorcery. But it was clear enough to show something huge and monstrous tearing through the walls with its bare claws.
“We believe,” said Caduceia, “that this is the creature referring to itself as Ss’ll Sh’Karr. Daemons of the Blood God followed in its wake and brought down the wall. The remains of the barbarian forces followed. Our legionaries have fallen back to the outskirts of the inhabited city but they have been severely mauled. I have despatched several divisions to defend the western outskirts of the city in depth.”
The tension grew higher, if such a thing was possible. The borders had been penetrated. The sanctity of the city was violated. It had been a long time since anyone had given Lady Charybdia news this bad—anyone other than Caduceia could not have expected to survive her disappointment.
“Mobilising the reserves will take time,” said Lady Charybdia, calmly.
“We have deployed a force to slow them down,” continued Caduceia. “Slaves mostly, culled from the western mines. The Blood God’s minions are notorious for their love of slaughter for its own sake—they are unlikely to resist the temptation of such a weak foe.”
“And when the slaves are dead?”
“The legions will mass in the west of the city. If the barbarians attack, we will hold them off. If they do not, we will launch a counterattack and drive them back against the west wall.”
“How many invaders are we talking about?”
A scattering of markers appeared on the flickering map, speckling the breached wall like a disease. Green for barbarians, red for daemons. “Perhaps a hundred thousand of the tribes people. We killed a great
many but more are flocking to their cause. We cannot estimate the numbers of the daemons. Ss’ll Sh’Karr once commanded millions.”
“But this is not Ss’ll Sh’Karr. Sh’Karr is dead.”
“Yes, my lady. But some inheritor of his could rival him in power.”
“Not if we send him back to his god first. Commander?”
“My lady?” answered Demetrius.
“The daemon lord is yours. The Blood God is the foulest of all our foes in the heavens, I expert your battle-brothers to execute the full anger of Slaanesh against his creation.”
Demetrius’ smile split the skin of his cheeks so a rictus grinned down from the width of his face. “A pleasure, my lady.” His servos buzzed with excitement.
Lady Charybdia looked towards the white sage. “What can we expert from the warp?”
The white sage looked startled to have been addressed. Lady Charybdia noted that she often had that effect. “The city is disturbed, as you are, my lady,” began the sage falteringly. “Their pleasures are… qualified. Tainted. Fleshly abandon is not quite so abundant. However, the Prince of Pleasure surely sees how important you and the city are to his worship, there is no doubt our ministrations will summon a great many of his servants should the need arise.”
“No doubt? You do not sound so certain.”
The sage was shaking. His old man’s eyes were wet. “Very little is certain anymore, my lady. The Slaughtersong has been above the horizon for weeks. Strange things are being born in the city.”
“The city is full of strange things already, sage.”
“My lady, do not misunderstand us, Slaanesh would never desert you, but… but there are many prophecies, and many of them are coming true. A calf with three heads, as the seers of the Crimson Knights foresaw, and a litter of half-devils with tentacles for hands such as was written by the prophets of the undersea kingdoms. They are omens of destruction and mistrust, the oldest there are. They say that something has returned that means the Pleasure God ill.”
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