Righteous blood, p.1
Righteous Blood, page 1
Righteous Blood
Matt Westbrook
‘You put your trust in witchcraft?’ spat the masked warrior. Bloody phlegm dribbled over his gore-encrusted chestplate, trickling down past obscene runes of devotion and damnation.
‘I put my trust in this,’ said Varash Sunken-Eye, raising his wicked blade, a hand-and-a-half of cruel obsidian. ‘It has never failed me.’
His opponent circled, as did the warrior’s two accomplices. A rabid pack, pink-eyed and drooling with hunger. Not hunger for sustenance, but for carnage, for spilt blood and shattered skulls.
Though to any true warrior of the Blood God, such things were as vital as water and bread.
Varash kept in step with his assailants, a wide grin splitting his ravaged face. It had been a while since anyone had challenged him – no surprise after what he had done to the Eyegouger and his men. Varash had kept his killers largely in check while the sorcerer did the necessary work, but a Bloodbound warband needed… pruning every now and then. If you wanted to lead, you killed your rivals so brutally, so painfully, that nobody dared to step across your path. Then you repeated that process any time they showed signs of forgetting who was in charge. It was a pattern that he had repeated a hundred times over the decades he had spent slaughtering in the name of the Blood God.
‘The sorcerer works a ritual at my command,’ Varash said. ‘No weakling magic, but an offering that will tear down the veil between worlds and free our blades to make murder once again.’
He said this for the audience’s benefit, of course. Hakkos and the two fools he’d brought along in this failed bid for power were dead already, they were just too foolish to realise it. They had staged their ill-considered ambush in the main courtyard of the dreadhold, under the great shadow of the Everchosen’s statue. The colossal monument had been repaired and enlarged since the orruks’ last attempt to tear it down, and now towered over even the mighty fortress. Sword raised, imposing horned helm proclaiming his dominance of not only the dreadhold but of this entire realm, the statue captured just a sliver of the real Archaon’s astonishing presence.
The dreadhold itself was a wedge of black metal built into the mountain, its walls lined with bronzed skulls and jagged spikes of obsidian. Daemonic faces glowered from beneath the battlements, eyes burning like hot coals, and banners of stitched skin marked with vile runes flew from the three watchtowers equidistant along the wall. Hooting, snarling, scarred killers formed a circle around the duelling warriors, or peered down from the skull-adorned ramparts.
Hakkos dashed forward, axe raised. At the same time, his two lackeys came in from each side, one swinging low, one aiming at Varash’s back. Perhaps they hoped that the ruined left side of his face wouldn’t catch the flanking attack.
Fools.
The Chaos lord was unthinkably fast. His bastard sword snapped out low, deflecting the attack from the left and hooking underneath the axe blade. He dragged the blade to his right, and sent the unfortunate warrior stumbling into the path of Hakkos. The traitor’s swinging axe struck him in the side of the neck, and a spurt of crimson arced out, splashing across Varash’s armour.
He didn’t waste a moment to savour the taste, but instead untangled his blade, and somehow got it raised in time to meet the axeman on his right. He stepped in close and smashed the pommel of the sword into the man’s face, pushing him back into an awkward stumble, then turned again and kicked the dying warrior on the floor into Hakkos. The traitor went down under the dead weight. Varash swept his blade in a figure-eight pattern, and roared in laughter.
The crowd roared with him.
‘It’s a great shame, Deathbringer,’ he said, smiling broadly as Hakkos scrambled to his feet. ‘The carnage. The mountains of skulls that we will tear from the orruks once Xos’Phet completes his ritual. The oceans of blood we’ll bathe in, Hakkos. You’ll miss it all.’
‘Your time is done, cripple,’ snarled Hakkos. ‘I’ll put out your other eye when I’m done here. I’ll flay you alive and hang you from the ramparts.’
He charged again, his accomplice in tow. Varash quickstepped back, dodging and blocking, letting Hakkos’ mad swipes rush past him. The man was devilishly strong, but faced with a competent opponent he had no answer but clumsy rage.
Varash ducked a wild swing and cut a gouge into the remaining accomplice’s leg. The man dropped with a howl, and the Chaos lord turned with the momentum of his strike, spinning and bringing the blade across in a backhand slice that swept the fool’s head from his shoulders.
‘Blood for the Blood God!’ he screamed. ‘Skulls for the Skull Throne!’
Hakkos bellowed in return and leaped at him, axe leading. Varash sidestepped and sliced the traitor’s leg off at the knee, sending him skidding and bleeding across the floor. There was a roar from the crowd, and the lord of the dreadhold raised his blade in salute to his warriors, drinking in the applause.
He approached the stricken Hakkos, grabbed the warrior around the neck, and hauled him upright to stare into his ruined face.
‘You betray me?’ he growled. ‘You think to cut me down? You? I am here by Archaon’s command, you pitiful worm.’
He smashed a fist into Hakkos’ face, and hurled the broken man to the floor.
‘Witness this, you filth,’ he roared, and he felt blood trickle from his shattered eye socket. It had never healed, but he welcomed the agony, drank it all in. ‘Follow me and I’ll lead you to a slaughter that the Blood Lord himself won’t be able to tear his gaze from. Challenge me and I’ll tear the skin from your bones. I’ll drink your blood, you witless vermin.’
He drew his flensing knife from his belt, a short, wicked blade with a pronounced curve. He kneeled down beside Hakkos, felt ropes of bloody saliva drape across his chin.
‘Flay me alive, will you?’ he laughed, grabbing a fistful of the man’s lank hair. ‘Put out my eye?’
He leaned in close, and the smell of gore, sweat and fear was exquisite.
‘We can do better than that,’ he hissed, and brought the knife down.
Hakkos’ scream was a pitiful, high-pitched thing, drowned amongst the blood-crazed cheers of the men of the dreadhold.
Sun broke across the Roaring Plains, drenching the land in soft crimson light. The sky was a blood-red promise of agony and slaughter. Lord Varash Sunken-Eye savoured it like a fine wine.
The warrior stood at the very top of the great Manticore Tower, looking out across the jagged, broken earth towards the west. From here he could see the mouth of Splitskull Pass, beyond which were camped the numberless orruk hordes, mere miles from his position. He glanced down and smiled as he looked upon the flayed, ruined corpse of Hakkos, impaled on the spikes of the fortress wall. A satisfying kill, but little more than a momentary distraction from the real enemy.
The Blood God’s favoured and the endless hordes of the orruks were well acquainted. They had slaughtered each other across the Roaring Plains for centuries beyond counting, and no fortress there had seen more bloodshed than the Manticore Dreadhold. It had almost become a ritual by now; the green-skinned beasts would sally forth, hollering and screeching their war cries as they poured towards the dreadhold, drawn by the promise of death and slaughter. Warriors of Chaos would meet them just as eagerly, keen axes swinging. Khorne himself would smile to see such carnage. But this was the orruks’ land, and their numbers were beyond counting. They would take the dreadhold, they would deface its ruinous icons and the grand statue of Archaon and then, idiot brains sated by battle for a short while, they would retreat back to their stinking hovels. Archaon would rage at the creatures’ impertinence, and order fresh defences and reinforcements. And the cycle would begin again.
Save that Varash Sunken-Eye was in charge now, and he had no intention of letting it happen again.
‘The wretches have been quiet lately,’ came the voice of the Slaughterpriest Slaadh, Varash’s second in command. The towering warrior loped towards the Chaos lord, and Varash caught the sound of weight dragging across stone. Slaadh still favoured his left leg, the result of a wicked strike from an orruk flail that had torn most of the flesh from his right.
‘We hurt them last time,’ said Varash. ‘The orruks are reckless, but their leader is no fool. He bides his time, replenishes his ranks. This is a place of strength for them.’
‘So it is for us. The blood we have spilled here…’ Slaadh ran a dry, torn tongue across his razor-filed teeth, and blood stained his lips scarlet. ‘Our master does not forget our sanguine offering. The orruks will come again soon and we will make a mountain of their skulls.’
‘Do not underestimate them,’ said Varash. ‘The creatures have routed this place twice already. I saw Archaon’s fury when they defaced his great statue. I was one of the few to survive it.’
Slaadh grinned. ‘That is why we are here,’ he said. ‘The Everchosen sends his favoured killers. He gives us a flesh offering that will drown these plains in blood.’
Varash nodded and wiped away a trail of blood from his eye. He had earned his name thanks to the tender administrations of an orruk war-chief. The beast’s club had smashed into the Chaos lord’s eye, shattering the socket and pulping the orb within. Such a wound would cripple a mortal warrior’s ability to fight, but these days Varash was some way away from being mortal.
A fresh lance of agony stabbed through his skull, and Varash growled, grinding a mailed fist into the ruined socket. Ev
Screams echoed up the winding stairs of the tower. The gorepriests had begun carving their runes.
‘No more waiting,’ growled Varash. His ruined eye was drooling blood again, and it stained his vision crimson. ‘No more defending.’ The word left an acrid taste in his mouth. ‘We will carve open the sky and birth an army that will rip and tear its way across the Roaring Plains.’
‘The witchkin is already weaving his magic,’ said Slaadh, not bothering to mask his disdain and revulsion. Followers of the Blood God put no stock in weakling magic-users. Only fear of Varash had prevented his pet sorcerer from being torn limb from limb the moment he set foot in the Manticore Dreadhold. If his men did not shed blood soon, they would become even more restless. The Chaos lord cared nothing for the sorcerer’s life, of course. Once he had finished what needed to be done, Varash had half a mind to tear the snivelling wretch’s heart out himself.
No. Patience. Varash relished the flow of spilt blood as much as any warrior of Khorne, but he was no gore-crazed, reckless fool. That was why he was so high in the favour of the Everchosen, and why he had been trusted to defend the dreadhold.
‘Gather a raiding party,’ he said to the Slaughterpriest. ‘Send them out through the pass. Have them bring back more bodies for Xos’Phet’s ritual.’
‘And some meat for the cooking fires,’ said Slaadh, wistfully. ‘We haven’t eaten well in a good long time.’
‘We were foolish,’ said the scarred woman, and Lord-Celestant Mykos Argellon could hear the anger and shame in her words.
‘We were hunting, and seeking water,’ she continued. ‘It has been a hard season, and our supplies are low. We rode hard, day and night, and when we came upon the spring I let my warriors drink deeply. We let our guard down for a moment, and they were on us.’
She spat. ‘Foolish. They hacked our mounts to pieces, killed Jevir and a dozen others. The rest of us ran.’
‘And you survived,’ said Thostos Bladestorm.
The woman looked up and stared right at the Lord-Celestant. Her wolf-grey eyes met his own unnerving gaze and did not falter for a moment.
‘They could have slaughtered us all, but instead they welcomed the chase. We made good sport.’
‘What do they call you?’ asked Mykos.
‘I am Alzheer Nahazim,’ the woman said. ‘And this is what is left of my hunt.’
As she gestured, one of the prisoners let out a low groan and doubled over. Alzheer rushed to his side. Thick leaves of grass were bound around the man’s waist, stained a dark red. Alzheer gently removed them, and Mykos caught a glimpse of angry purple. Blood poured from the man’s midriff, and his pale face contorted in agony. A gut wound. If it was as bad as it looked, it was fairly remarkable that the man had made it this far. The Celestial Vindicators could do little to help. They carried no medical supplies, and the healing touch of Lord-Castellant Eldroc’s warding lantern only soothed the wounds of the storm-forged scions of Azyr.
‘How many of your people live?’ asked Mykos.
She shrugged. ‘We number a few thousand. Perhaps less, now. As I say, it has been a hard season. The orruks grow restless, and several of our hunting parties have disappeared without trace. Without food and water…’
Thostos turned to Mykos, and signalled him and the Lord-Castellant Eldroc over. The trio moved away from the prisoners, and were joined by Prosecutor-Prime Evios Goldfeather and Axilon, the Knight-Heraldor.
‘What do we do with them?’ asked Eldroc. ‘They may look savage, but they do not bear the marks of Chaos.’
‘Lord-Castellant,’ said Evios, ‘I do not think we can discount the possibility that these mortals may have been corrupted by the dark powers. We shouldn’t blindly trust them simply because they aren’t covered in flayed skulls and severed extremities.’
Mykos frowned. ‘Neither should we judge them simply because they aren’t well-dressed enough for your liking, Prosecutor-Prime. Look around you. This is a harsh place, and it breeds hard people.’
Goldfeather’s helm twitched slightly, and for a moment it seemed like the Prosecutor was about to argue the point. Instead he nodded abruptly, and fell silent.
‘We leave them,’ said Thostos.
‘They will die here,’ said Mykos. ‘They have no mounts and they’re deep in hostile territory. They’re exhausted and malnourished. Why did we save their lives, if we are simply to abandon them now?’
‘We cannot spare the men to guard them, and we do not have time to wait for mortals to keep up with us,’ said Thostos. ‘They will obstruct our mission.’
‘Our duty is to protect the sons and daughters of Sigmar,’ said Mykos.
‘You are wrong. Our duty, our only duty, is to defeat the forces of Chaos. If we fail to take the Manticore Dreadhold, the life of every mortal in this region is forfeit. Do not let emotion blind you to the importance of our task.’
‘We do not know the Roaring Plains,’ insisted Mykos. ‘These people do. They have survived here against all the odds. Their resilience and bravery is not in doubt, and their advice may be invaluable.’
Thostos looked out across the plain. Carrion birds were already circling above the piles of dead orruks. The wind was picking up again, whistling as it whipped through the clusters of long grass.
‘If they fail to keep the pace, we will not stop for them,’ he said. ‘Keep them under watch at all times.’
By the time the column was moving once more, the field of dead orruks was almost entirely carpeted by scavengers. Rat-mawed canine beasts ripped and tore, snapping at each other as often as they did the flesh of the corpses. Wiry, vicious-looking avian creatures tore strips of skin free and gobbled them down, while the ground itself began to crumble away as something unseen opened up great sinkholes to claim its own meal. Mykos Argellon watched the carnage with a kind of horrified fascination. Before the Stormcasts had passed out of sight of the battlefield, almost every scrap of matter had already been dragged away or consumed, even the orruks’ thick iron armour.
‘So much for the orruks stumbling across our little encounter,’ said Knight-Heraldor Axilon. ‘Almost makes one feel a little hungry, doesn’t it?’
‘Your appetite concerns me,’ replied Mykos.
They advanced out onto the open plain, the Celestial Vindicators setting a fierce pace that quickly saw the craggy foothills shrink into the distance behind them. The prisoners marched along behind the Stormcast column, guarded closely by the Liberators, who formed a rough circle around the group. Despite the harsh pace, the mortals showed no signs of exhaustion, save the wounded man, who was being supported by two of his fellows. His skin was pallid, and sweat poured down his face. It was astonishing that he was still standing, let alone keeping up with the others. Whether that would last, Mykos was uncertain. The Lord-Celestant felt the mortal leader’s eyes on his back. He turned, and she met his gaze unbowed.
‘What do you seek here, sky warrior?’ she said. Her voice had a soft, sing-song quality, at odds with her barbarous appearance.
‘Silence,’ said Liberator Phalryn, but Mykos held up a hand.
‘I cannot tell you,’ he said. ‘We do not know if you are trustworthy yet, and I will not risk my brothers’ lives on a hunch.’
She nodded. ‘Wise. But you have no need to mistrust us. You are sons of the Sky God, and you are our salvation. It is written.’
‘This Sky God you worship,’ asked Mykos. ‘Tell me more of him.’
‘Zi’Mar, the Rage upon the Storm. It is he who guides our arrows. He who welcomes brave warriors home when they fall in battle. He who blesses the hunt. He is far from us, but his strength guides us still. I am his daughter, and his priestess.’
‘You’re not exactly what I expect from a priestess, my lady,’ said Mykos.
She smiled, pulling aside the leather armour at her neck to reveal a lightning tattoo that reached from beneath her jaw to just above her collarbone. A symbol of a god of the sky, of battle and of lightning. It had been observed before amongst mortals who had survived the age of darkness without succumbing to the wiles of Chaos. Faith in a being as mighty as Sigmar did not die easily, even if the finer details of worship had been altered during the long years of his absence.
