Gorechosen

Andy Clark

The sky was streaked with falling stars. Blazing meteors roared overhead, punching crimson trails through churning black clouds. Akhagor watched them for a time, their furious fires reflecting in his black eyes. The slaughterpriest admired the meteors, their singular purpose, their strength. They tore across the heavens to their own fiery end, and never once turned aside. The Blood God left messages in all things, thought Akhagor. One needed only the wit to see them.

He turned his attention back to his surroundings, to the burning ruins and the dirt road that had become a bloody quagmire. Bodies lay everywhere, the carrion remains of these pitiful tribesmen, whatever they had called themselves. How long the vermin had scratched a living from the rocky soil, Akhagor neither knew nor cared. Despite the passions of Aqshy that should have coursed through their veins, these wretches had been barely worth the trouble of slaughtering. The tribe’s meagre crops had burned, their homes had been cast down, and their severed heads sat in a bloody pyramid on the altar of their desecrated shrine. Still, it was a poor offering to Khorne, for they had given little fight.

Footsteps squelched in the bloody muck, and Akhagor turned to see Vorhak approaching. The aspiring deathbringer was caked in gore, the black plates of his armour turned ruddy brown with it. He rested his massive axe easily upon one shoulder, and within the visor of his skull-painted helm, his eyes burned a fiery red.

‘Swift butchery,’ growled Vorhak, squaring up to Akhagor as he always did, ‘and far too easy. There’s no glory to be found lopping such worms.’

Akhagor growled his assent.

‘That is true.’

The aspiring deathbringer’s eyes locked with Akhagor’s, his stare a challenge, as though he awaited more. Frustrated by the slaughterpriest’s silence, Vorhak turned and began to pace back and forth.

‘Then tell me this, priest: why do we tarry here? Why do we insult our blades with this weak gruel they call blood? We should abandon our mindless wandering and answer the summons of Korghos Khul!’

‘We go where Khorne commands,’ rumbled Akhagor. ‘We follow the visions that the Blood God sends. Do you question his will?’

‘Never!’ snapped Vorhak. ‘Khorne’s will is absolute! But it can be misinterpreted by the weak…’

Akhagor felt his daemon-tainted blood churn at the deathbringer’s insult, and he bared his fangs in a dangerous smile.

‘Always you dance around this, Vorhak, but you don’t strike. You know you are not strong enough to defeat me, and one day soon I will prove it. But not today. My destiny lies ahead. Follow.’

The slaughterpriest strode away through the ruined village, showing his back to his rival’s axe in a gesture of contempt. After a moment, he heard Vorhak give an annoyed grunt and follow. The two champions of Khorne strode through the remains of the lives they had ended, ignoring the bloodreavers who feasted upon the corpses of the slain and the skullreapers cursing the lack of worthy trophies this place had yielded. Soon, they came to the outskirts of the settlement and the perilous rift that lay beyond.

‘This,’ rumbled Akhagor with an expansive gesture, ‘this is where the Blood God sends us. This is why Khul can wait.’

At the champions’ feet, the rocky ground dropped away, a cliff-face plunging downward until it vanished in sulphurous mists below. The edge arced off for mile upon mile into the distance. Sweeping their gaze out along it, Akhagor and Vorhak could see that it was but one edge of a kingdom-sized crater. Below them, the mists churned, underlit by flickering flames and pierced by the peaks of towering blackpines. Occasionally, a roiling geyser of flame would leap high amid the vapours, spending its fury skywards with a whooshing roar. From down there, faintly audible even over such great distance, came the clangour of battle.

‘What is this place?’ Vorhak’s awe was such that, for a moment at least, he forgot his antipathy toward the slaughterpriest.

‘It has been in my visions for many days,’ replied Akhagor with relish. ‘It is the Scorchpit, and Lord Khorne commands that we descend into its depths. Down there we shall find battle worthy of the Blood God. Down there you will find your glory, and I shall find my destiny.’

Vorhak snorted in disgust.

‘Your destiny. This again. You are no more worthy than any of us, slaughterpriest. Khorne cares not about you. Down there, I will prove it, and either you will end your days under my axe or follow on my heels like a whipped cur as I soar to true glory.’

Akhagor laughed scornfully, while fighting down the temptation to plant one hand on the deathbringer’s back and aid his soaring with a good hard shove.

‘More words, Vorhak? Did you talk all your previous rivals to death?’

The deathbringer span with a growl and raised his axe. In response, Akhagor spat at his feet.

‘Not now, Vorhak. We will serve Khorne better in the Scorchpit. You will see I am right.’

For a second time that day, Akhagor strode away and left the aspiring deathbringer bristling in his wake. For all his posturing, Vorhak would not strike yet. Not until he was sure he had turned enough of Akhagor’s warband to his side. Vorhak thought dominance and rulership would win him Khorne’s favour. He thought commanding an army showed faith. Akhagor’s monstrous features twisted into a savage grin at the thought. Soon enough, he would show the deathbringer just how wrong he was.

A short distance from the slaughtered village, the Bloodbound warriors of Akhagor’s Ironskull Tribe found a narrow roadway that twisted down into the Scorchpit. Forced into a marching column, over a thousand of the Blood God’s chosen warriors made their way down the perilous cliff-path with drums thundering and horns braying. Barbarian cannibals daubed in ashen war paint marched in ragged bands behind hulking, armour-clad killers whose fury shimmered like a heat-haze in the air. Spike-wheeled brass cages, each packed with panting, twitching lunatics too battle-maddened to follow even Akhagor’s lead, were hauled along by lumbering beasts. In the vanguard, cruel-eyed knights in dulled steel plate sat astride daemonic juggernauts, the living-brass steeds so heavy that the path cracked and crumbled beneath their monstrous hooves. They raised their heads and roared every time a meteor thundered overhead, until the skies were too lost in sulphurous mist to be seen.

Akhagor breathed deep of the brimstone air and knew that this was a place of unholy power. What road there was had become scattered flagstones, then nought but dirt shortly after the Bloodbound reached the floor of the gargantuan crater. Now the warband was swallowed by the shadows of the ominous blackpines that carpeted the Scorchpit. The dark trees rose hundreds of feet into the air, their boughs laden with soot-black needles and flickering with sparks and embers. Some strange sorcery kept the blackpines always on the edge of bursting into flames, yet ever strong and tall. The ground beneath the trees was carpeted with fallen needles that crumbled into thick drifts of ash, while the curdled yellow mist swirled between their looming trunks.

As the Ironskull warriors advanced fearlessly into this strange landscape, they found their footsteps crunching old bones or clanging upon rusted weapons and shields. Amidst the ashes there lay evidence of war fought here for centuries untold. Strata of slaughter. Layers of death. Newly slain corpses bloating and rotting amidst the bones of the ancient slain. From the screams and distant clash of weapons that echoed weirdly through the mist, the battle still went on.

‘Is this not a place fit for true warriors of Khorne?’ bellowed Akhagor to his followers, to an answering cacophony of battle cries and thundering drums.

‘It is a place of killing,’ replied Vorhak, ‘but where are the enemies? Where the battlefield? Where does this mystical destiny of yours lie, priest?’

Akhagor favoured the deathbringer with a steady glare. He raised his axe and pointed on, through the trees, toward the middle of the crater.

‘All the way across the pit, deathbringer. It is a road of battle and bloodletting that we must walk with our heads high. The worthy will reach the other side, and there we will find Khorne’s blessing. The rest will give their skulls to him.’

Aware of the warband’s eyes upon him, Vorhak didn’t hesitate. He turned and strode into the trees with morning star swinging and axe in hand.

‘Then let us not keep the Blood God waiting,’ he shouted back over his shoulder, ‘or do you wish to stand here and preach all day, priest?’

The beastmen came at them in a stampede. Croaking war cries and bestial roars accompanied their charge, while the pound of cloven hooves raised a swirling cloud of ash that billowed before them. Akhagor drew himself to his full height and bellowed out a war cry of his own, hefting his axe as he watched their bestial shapes draw closer. Around him, bloodreaver tribesmen clashed their weapons together as they worked themselves into a frothing battle-frenzy.

‘Blood for the Blood God!’ bellowed Akhagor.

‘Skulls for the Skull Throne!’ they howled back at him, and with a mad roar of laughter, the slaughterpriest led his warriors into battle. It had been hours since they had entered the Scorchpit, he thought. It was about time.

Smouldering tree trunks whipped past and bones splintered underfoot as Akhagor sprinted forward. Ash billowed across him, and then malformed bestial warriors were all around. A hulking, goat-headed thing swung a pick at his neck. Akhagor wove aside from the blow, bringing his axe around in return and hacking the beastman’s head from its gnarled shoulders. Another foe lunged at him, its eyes wild, but before it could reach the slaughterpriest, a muscle-bound bloodreaver slammed headfirst into the beastman and they both vanished into the swirling ash.

‘Kill for Khorne!’ roared Akhagor at the half-seen tribesmen pressing forward around him. ‘Kill for Khorne!’

Off to the right, the slaughterpriest could hear Vorhak screaming praise to the Blood God. The deathbringer would be fighting at the head of his Khorbadakk, the elite band of blood warriors that made up his personal guard. Short-sighted berserkers, thought Akhagor contemptuously, but the carnage they were wreaking right now was bound to be spectacular. If he was to keep his followers loyal long enough to seize his destiny, he must make a spectacle of his own.

All around him, cannibal tribesmen hacked and battered at braying beastmen amidst the swirling ashes and curdled mist. The enemy were using the blinding conditions to their advantage, slipping between the trees to volley arrows into the Bloodbound or strike from unexpected angles. Akhagor strode forward into the madness, swinging his axe right and left to split torsos and lop off heads. As he advanced, he chanted, a slaughterer’s mantra of praise to Khorne that filled the limbs of his followers with manic strength. A copper-scented gale began to rise around the slaughterpriest, whirling into a vicious cyclone that screamed amid the trees. The unholy gale blasted outwards, staggering friend and foe alike as it swept the battlefield clear of blinding ash and fog.

The warriors of the Ironskull tribe roared their approval at this display of Khorne’s favour and set about their revealed enemies with renewed fervour. Juggernauts smashed blackpines from their path as they charged, splintered wood and clouds of cinders filling the air as the trees toppled. The blood-mad knights that rode the daemon-beasts swung their axes, hacking down those beastmen fortunate enough to avoid being trampled beneath the crushing weight of the juggernauts themselves.

The next moment, darts of black light screamed through the air, punching riders from their saddles and piercing the eyes and joints of the daemons they rode. Akhagor span in time to see a hunched, bestial shaman jab its bone-hung staff in his direction. A smothering cloud of gloom burst from the weapon’s end, flowing over Khornate warriors and leaving smoking skeletons in its wake.

‘Sorcery!’ bellowed Akhagor. ‘The tool of cowards! Lord Khorne, hear my prayer! Turn your contempt upon this weakling!’ Then the flowing darkness spilled across Akhagor, smothering his massive form in its tar-like coils. For a second, the slaughterpriest felt a searing cold burning against his flesh, and then his blood roared with fire and the spell sloughed away harmlessly. The beast shaman was not so fortunate. Its harsh cries of victory turned to agonised screaming as the fury of Khorne descended upon it. The shaman writhed and convulsed, crashing to the ground as steam rose from its broiling flesh and scalding blood jetted from its eyes and muzzle. Akhagor strode through the swirling battle, swatting aside those few beastmen foolish enough to bar his path, until he loomed over the shuddering shaman. Defiant to the last, the beast wizard pushed itself up onto its hands and knees, and spat a frothing wad of boiled blood across Akhagor’s feet. The slaughterpriest laughed, raised his axe, and brought it hurtling down.

In the battle’s wake, the Ironskulls set their camp. No sentries were posted, for the fear of attack was a weakness. No aid was given to the wounded; the enemy were decapitated and left to rot, while those Bloodbound too maimed to go on had their heads hacked off before their bodies were thrown onto the flesh heap for the dark feast.

What sparse daylight could penetrate the mists faded swiftly beneath the boughs of the blackpines, but Akhagor’s followers chopped down several trees and set a great fire burning in the ragged glade they had made. By the twisting light of the flames, they howled praise to Khorne, feasted upon the scorched flesh of the fallen and brawled savagely with one another. Those skullreapers who had failed to claim a worthy skull during the day’s fighting duelled one another amidst the firelight, and the watching warriors cheered and roared as the worthy lopped the heads from those who were not, then flung their offerings into the flames.

Akhagor sat atop a heap of beastman corpses, drinking from a heavy brass chalice as he watched the fights play out. Within the unholy vessel swirled the heartsblood of the brayherd’s champions and their shaman, whose head now hung, tongue lolling, at Akhagor’s belt. Spiced with warpstone, daemons’ ichor and a concoction of alchemical powders, every sip of the thick gore made the slaughterpriest’s head swim with visions of carnage. So did Khorne speak to his chosen priest. So did he promise a destiny.

Akhagor smiled mockingly down at Vorhak as the deathbringer strode to the foot of his carrion throne. The Khorbadakk stood behind their master, axes in hand.

‘The murder was good today, was it not, Vorhak?’

The armoured warrior inclined his head slightly.

‘An acceptable skirmish, priest. Skulls were taken. Blood was shed.’ Vorhak kicked the corpse heap. ‘But still we fight beasts. In a meaningless hole. Right now we could be earning our place as Gorechosen to Khul himself!’

Hearing the challenge in the deathbringer’s tone, the nearest warriors turned their eyes to the sudden confrontation.

‘We fight those the Blood God wishes us to fight,’ replied Akhagor in a tone of dangerous good cheer, ‘and we fight them where he wills.’

‘So you keep saying, priest,’ snarled Vorhak, ‘but whose word do we have for this? Yours?’

Akhagor rose slowly to his feet, the grin falling from his blood-stained face. He raised the brass chalice so all could see.

‘I am a slaughterpriest, a true devotee of Khorne. I drink the heartsblood of our greatest foes and through that sacred liquid, our lord and master speaks to me.’ Akhagor’s voice rose in volume as he spoke, building to an angry shout. ‘I am the conduit of the will of the Blood God himself! If ever I have spoken a single lying word about what he has shown to me, may Khorne’s wrath strike me down this very moment! Blood God, I beseech it!’

Through the mists came the thunderous roar of flame geysers erupting. The Bloodbound watched transfixed for long moments as they waited for the curse of spawndom to twist Akhagor’s body and blast his mind. Even Vorhak took a wary step back, his armoured back clanking against the breastplate of the nearest Khorbadakk warrior.

And then the moment was past, and Akhagor gave a booming laugh. He raised the chalice to his lips and gulped down the rest of its contents in a single swig before dropping the vessel. It clanked and rolled down the carrion heap, coming to rest against Vorhak’s armoured foot.

‘It seems that Khorne is satisfied with my interpretation of his word. Do you dare gainsay the Blood God himself, Vorhak?’

Conscious of the eyes of the warband upon him, the deathbringer stood his ground.

‘A fool takes silence for proof, priest. Khorne respects only those who take victory for themselves, and I mean to rip it from your sundered corpse’.

Looping his morning star in circles upon its heavy chain, Vorhak took a step up onto the slaughterpriest’s corpse heap. Akhagor gave a bass rumble of anger, and the warriors of the warband reached for their weapons as they scrambled to their feet.

The next moment, the ground bucked furiously. The firepit roared as whole treetrunks were dislodged to roll blazing through the camp. Warriors were thrown from their feet as the ground shuddered madly beneath them, and both champions found themselves half-buried in bodies as the corpse heap collapsed in a grisly avalanche. There was a moment of near-total silence before the edge of the camp erupted in a thundering column of fire. The geyser immolated blackpines, corpses and Bloodbound alike as it surged skywards. Blazing rocks rained down upon the camp like the comets that Akhagor had admired only that morning. Where they struck, they exploded with vicious force. Flames leapt from tree to tree, transforming the clearing into an inferno, while the ground around the eruption sagged and fell away, dragging more of the Ironskull tribe to fiery deaths.

As the column of flame finally flickered and died, Vorhak kicked the corpses from himself and made to rise. He stopped as he found Akhagor’s blade at his neck.

‘This,’ snarled the slaughterpriest, face smeared with ash and blood, ‘this is the sign of Khorne’s displeasure. This is what happens when you question him. When you question me.’ The Khorbadakk staggered to their feet, their axes gripped ready to fight, but Vorhak raised a hand to stop them.

‘Very well, priest,’ he grated, ‘your point is made. We all serve Khorne. None of us wishes his curse to fall upon us. What would you have us do?’

Akhagor turned his furious stare upon the warband, panning his black eyes across their fire-thinned ranks.

‘We march on. Now. We have tarried long enough, and there are skulls to be taken. Blood for the Blood God!’

‘Skulls for the Skull Throne!’ they raised the ragged chorus, before scattering to gather up their few belongings and prepare to march. Akhagor nodded, removing his axe blade from Vorhak’s neck and striding out to lead the advance into the gloom. Behind him, Vorhak clambered angrily to his feet while the blackpines crackled and burned.

The days that followed were a whirlwind of bloodletting. Above the fumes of the Scorchpit, the heavens wheeled in a dance of day and night. Down amidst the murk, there were only varying shades of gloom. Through that fog-choked limbo marched the Ironskulls, drums thumping and axes slick with blood.

They soon realised that the Scorchpit was a land contested by countless warbands. Petty kingdoms rose and fell beneath the blackpine boughs, as beast-kin fought skaven fought cultists fought barbarian tribes. What riches these peoples sought in such a hellish place, Akhagor had no clue. Nor did he care. To the slaughterpriest, the presence of such a wealth of foes upon which to test his blade proved only that he had Khorne’s favour. One battle followed another, chaotic and murderous amidst the close-packed trees. Each conflict saw more of the Ironskull tribesmen fall, but for every Ironskull that died, they slew ten times that many enemies.

On the sixth day, the Ironskulls entered a ragged gorge whose walls were veined with glittering red crystals. Down in those bloodlit depths they smashed their way through a skaven stockade. They butchered the screeching ratmen even as infernal warpflame weapons and poisoned gas launchers reduced luckless bloodreavers to bubbling gruel, and Akhagor claimed their warlord’s head.

On the ninth day, a monstrous horde set upon the Khornate tribesmen as they were fording a charcoal-black river. Most of the warband was still halfway across the turgid flow when gargants and dragon ogors burst from the trees on the far bank. More gargants lumbered into view atop the promontory overlooking the river and hurled boulders that slammed down upon the warriors still crossing. Akhagor, up to his chest in the river’s midst, could only watch as Vorhak led his Khorbadakk up the bank and into the enemy. While the Blood Warriors hacked apart one towering monster, Vorhak spun between the legs of another, deftly avoiding a ponderous kick that would have flattened a castle gate. With his victim still on one foot, the deathbringer swung his axe straight through the gargant’s ankle. The monster bellowed as it toppled sideways, crushing half a dozen bloodreavers. Vorhak leapt astride its chest and hewed its massive head from its neck. By the time Akhagor waded ashore, the deathbringer had led his followers up the promontory and butchered the last of the gargants.

Many of the warband looked at Vorhak differently after that day, and Akhagor felt his grip slipping. So the bloody road ground on, and Akhagor and Vorhak’s rivalry with it. Atop a craggy mesa, the slaughterpriest bested a raging manticore. During a frantic clash through the ruins of some ancient city, Vorhak slew a festering plaguelord of Nurgle. Akhagor won a great victory on a skull-hung bridge over a nameless chasm, boiling the blood of the Slaaneshi cultists who held it against him. Vorhak led his Khorbadakk into the heart of a clash between orruks and beastmen, leaping from one fire-ringed island of stone to the next and slaughtering as he went.

Day by day, the warband shrank as more warriors gave their skulls to Khorne. Day by day, the two champions grew in power, while their followers’ loyalties divided ever more firmly between them. And finally, after days uncounted beneath the trees, the land sloped sharply upwards once more.

Akhagor grasped for handholds, scree scattering from beneath his feet to rattle away below him. Gripping a gnarled blackpine root, the slaughterpriest hauled himself upward, and through the thinning mists he at last saw the lip of the pit. Akhagor redoubled his efforts, conscious of his surviving followers swarming up the slope all around him, and Vorhak some yards to his right. The slaughterpriest did not intend to find Vorhak’s axe biting into his neck as he reached the top. Putting on a burst of speed, Akhagor scrambled up the last stretch and hauled himself over the craggy rim of the Scorchpit.

Rising to his feet, the hulking priest raised his axe above his head and bellowed to the night skies. Behind him lay the Scorchpit, fire still leaping amid its mists. Above, the cold stars looked down with indifference upon his moment of triumph. Akhagor knew his destiny now. He had seen the signs Khorne sent, and he understood.

The Ironskulls were gathering now, the few dozen that remained. Every warrior was immeasurably stronger than when they had marched down into the pit. Most showed signs of their god’s favour, curling horns, glowing blades, flesh armoured in scales or bulked by slabs of muscle. Flensed skulls hung from their belts and harnesses, and pure murderlust burned in their eyes.

Through their midst strode Vorhak, his three remaining Khorbadakk at his side. The warband parted for him, watching warily as flames flickered within his helm and at the joints of his living armour.

Vorhak advanced to stand before Akhagor and, for all that Khorne’s blessings had made the deathbringer mighty, he still had to tilt his head back to look up at the monstrous thing the slaughterpriest had become.

‘Why do you cry victory, priest?’ growled Vorhak, his voice a caged inferno. ‘We followed your road. We crossed the pit. Where is this mystic destiny of which you spoke? Nowhere.’

A murmur passed through the Ironskulls, some warriors scowling with anger, others nodding and cursing.

‘There are none so blind as he who will not see,’ replied Akhagor scornfully. ‘My destiny is all around us, in the warriors who still live to reap more skulls for Khorne. My destiny is to take skulls for him in a place of endless battle ’til either my blood is spilled, or immortality be mine. My destiny is not to cross the Scorchpit, Vorhak. It is the Scorchpit.’

A cold wind blew across the barren plateau, and for a moment, all was silence amongst the Ironskulls.

‘Korghos Khul battles the Stormcasts of Sigmar,’ growled Vorhak, voice dangerously soft. ‘Eternal glory is carved from one battlefield after another. New Gorechosen step up to take power with every magnificent battle. And you would have us crawl back into this hole?’

Angry stirrings passed through the tribesmen, and some moved to stand at Vorhak’s back while others prowled to Akhagor’s side, weapons held ready.

‘I would have us follow Khorne’s will,’ rumbled Akhagor, ‘I would have us pile a mountain of skulls before his throne. I would claim my destiny.’

‘You would have us waste our might battling for some meaningless ditch!’ Vorhak was shouting now, flames rising from his words to dance upon the air. ‘I cannot tell, priest. Are you mad, or just stupid?’

With a cry of anger, one of Akhagor’s followers lunged for the deathbringer. Vorhak backhanded his assailant across the face, snapping his neck and sending his broken body skidding off the edge of the pit.

With a great roar, the two halves of the warband fell upon each other. Axes rose and fell. Hulking berserkers hacked at each other in an orgy of butchery. Blood-mad warriors howled as they slew, claiming the skulls of their kin and exulting in the slaughter.

In the midst of the fight, Akhagor and Vorhak met. The Khorbadakk came at Akhagor first, and the slaughterpriest laughed as he fought them off. The first took his axe to the breastplate. The second and third were beheaded not by Akhagor, but by Vorhak himself.

‘Presumptuous curs, he is mine!’ bellowed the deathbringer, before launching himself at Akhagor.

Vorhak’s morning star rattled out and smashed into Akhagor’s shoulder, mangling flesh and breaking bone. With a furious roar, the slaughterpriest responded by stepping in close and swinging his axe at Vorhak’s neck.

The deathbringer brought his own blade up to block the strike, staggering from its force.

‘How does it feel to be so wrong?’ snarled Vorhak, spinning on his heel and lashing his morning star at his rival again.

‘Wrong?’ spat the slaughterpriest, ignoring the agony in his shoulder and snatching the chain of Vorhak’s weapon.

‘Wrong?’ he laughed, wrenching the morning star from the deathbringer’s grip and hurling it away.

A pair of armoured warriors stumbled between them, one ripping at the other’s throat with his wolf-like muzzle. Vorhak smashed them both aside and charged at Akhagor again.

‘Wrong!’ he bellowed, battering his axe into the slaughterpriest’s guard and forcing him back towards the edge of the pit. Vorhak hewed at Akhagor like a demented woodsman as he screamed at his hated rival.

‘Can’t you see it even now, priest? Have you even fooled yourself?’

Axe blade met axe haft in a shower of sparks.

‘There is no special destiny for Akhagor!’

Again the weapons smashed together. Again the slaughterpriest gave ground.

‘There is only this shameful death, while I take your warriors and earn my place in Korghos Khul’s Gorechosen!’

With a resounding clang, Vorhak’s weapon met Akhagor’s axe haft again, splitting the weapon in two and forcing the priest back until rock crumbled beneath his heels. With a howl of triumph, Vorhak lunged.

Akhagor moved fast as a snake, shedding false exhaustion and swinging both halves of his weapon. The haft he used to smash Vorhak in the back, propelling him forward with battering-ram force. The blade he used to sweep the deathbringer’s head from his shoulders.

Flaming gore jetted from the stump of Vorhak’s neck as body and head tumbled away, down the slope of the Scorchpit and into the mists below. With that single, spectacular kill, the fight was over. The last of the Ironskulls stopped, chests heaving with exertion, blood dripping from their weapons. They stared at Akhagor as his eyes burned with exaltation.

‘Vorhak did not understand,’ he intoned, as blinding firelight burst upon his brow. ‘Vorhak lacked faith.’

As the cinders scattered, a fresh rune of Khorne was left, seared into Akhagor’s forehead. The last of his warband dropped to their knees at this sign of Khorne’s favour.

‘Khorne cares not where wars are fought, or beneath whose banner. Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows.’

Turning, Akhagor stood upon the lip of the Scorchpit and spread his arms.

‘Our god cares only that we fight, and kill, and claim blood and skulls until we too fall slain! In the Scorchpit, we will find war unending. In the Scorchpit, we will become Gorechosen, but not to some mortal lord.’ Akhagor turned back to his awed followers, a mad smile twisting his features. ‘We will become the Gorechosen of Lord Khorne himself.’

With that, the slaughterpriest picked up Vorhak’s fallen axe, discarding the shattered halves of his own. Then he vaulted over the edge, back down the steep slope and into the Scorchpit’s maw. His warband rose and followed him. As they vanished into the mists below, the blood of their former comrades spilled over the edge, running red in their wake.

About the Author

Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 short story 'Whiteout' and the Age of Sigmar short story 'Gorechosen'. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

The Lords of Chaos gather their forces...
The Call of Chaos echoes across the Mortal Realms and into the grim darkness of the far future.

Two new serialised supplements, and new fiction for Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar.
Collect them all and answer the Call of Chaos.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.