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Cover

A Tithe of Bone – Michael R. Fletcher

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Rise of Nagash’

A Black Library Publication

A Tithe of Bone

by Michael R. Fletcher

A single ox-fat tallow candle lit the room with a flickering yellow light. It stank like burning hair.

Chaos Lord Markash, Champion of Tzeentch, paced the confines of his chambers, the floorboards groaning beneath him with each step. At eight feet tall, clad in monstrous plate armour with jagged barbs of razor-edged steel jutting at every angle, he towered over the sitting scribe, Palfuss. Wisps of black flame flickered about the armour, guttering and surging. Palfuss had heard that they changed colour based on Markash’s mood, but in the year he’d followed the colossal warrior, he’d never seen anything other than deepest sable.

Each inhalation rumbled like an iron forge; each exhalation twisted the air before the lord’s closed helm with its heat. Palfuss had never seen the man – if that’s what he still was – without his armour, and was well prepared to believe he slept in it.

If he slept at all.

Curls of gritty smoke leaked from the armour’s joints. Palfuss was once told that Markash lit campfires by breathing on the wood. At the time he had laughed. Now, sitting in the great Champion’s presence, nothing was funny.

‘Destiny,’ Markash said. His voice was like the deep bone-rattling bass of an avalanche, the crunch of dry snow beneath an elephant’s foot.

Scritch scritch went the sound of a sharpened quill on parchment as the scribe wrote the single word and hurried to describe the voice.

‘Tzeentch, the Raven God,’ said the Champion. ‘The Changer of Ways. The Architect of Fate. Chaos solely for the sake of Chaos. Beautiful seething potential, free of shackles. Lord of Destiny, God of Change. My god. He is always different, ever-shifting, never the same twice. To see him is to lose yourself to the glory of madness. He is the unpredictable dance of flame, the crash of ocean waves. They call him Ruinous.’

Scritch scritch scritch.

‘The philosophers say,’ the Chaos lord continued, sunken eyes of red fire glaring out from within the cavernous depths of his helm, ‘that destiny is nothing more than an idea, that it has no basis in reality.’

Scritch scritch scritch.

‘Delusion, they call it.’ The bloody eyes blazed bright as an armoured hand curled into a massive fist.

Markash laughed, or maybe grunted in scorn. Palfuss couldn’t tell. Was the knight even capable of such human emotion?

‘The philosophers are wrong,’ said the lord. ‘Destiny is real. Tzeentch makes it real. He decides. He shapes. He destroys.’ He gestured to where his sword, Ktchaynik, a daemon-bound blade too heavy for a mortal man to lift, rested against the wall. Ktchaynik breathed violence, tainted the air with hunger. ‘Is it not beautiful?’ asked the knight.

Palfuss dared say nothing.

‘Iron purpose,’ continued Markash, ‘wrapped in destructive rage.’ Slick smoke coiled like writhing snakes from the gauntleted fist. ‘The feel of that blade, cleaving through flesh and bone… That is the feel of destiny. Blood, painting the air…’ he drew fine traceries with his other hand, leaving dissipating lines in the silken haze. ‘The look. Torn bodies, gutted opponents. The stench. The feel of Chaos working within your veins, twisting you, writing the god’s plan in your very soul. These things are destiny.’

Palfuss wrote fast, dipping the quill in the ink pot when the characters grew faint. A score of already sharpened feathers lay ready and waiting. He would not miss a single word.

Markash focused on the scribe, and Palfuss felt his bladder loosen.

‘What do you think, scribe?’

A direct question. He had to answer. Swallowing, he stuttered, gathering his thoughts. ‘Philosophers speaking of destiny are like deaf people discussing music, or the blind critiquing art. They are ill-equipped to grasp the concept.’

Markash stopped pacing. Blazing orbs of fire dimmed to slitted embers as the lord studied the scribe. ‘Indeed.’

Palfuss felt the utterance shake his ribs.

‘Is one born with a destiny,’ continued Markash, ‘or is it something only the gods can create? Is it nothing more than potential, something anyone might possess, or is it rare, something special?’

Head down, Palfuss wrote fast.

Markash resumed pacing, the heavy planks of the floor bowing beneath his weight. ‘One man destined to be great while another is destined to be a farmer. Yet does destiny – one not derived from the gods – care about scale? Can one be destined to step in a puddle or stub a toe?’

Unsure if the Champion joked or asked a valid question, the scribe remained silent.

‘You’ve heard of Ammerhan,’ said Markash.

Palfuss nodded without looking up, quill scritch scritching against the dry parchment. Ammerhan, a legend among Tzeentch’s Champions, had come this way two years ago. With an army at his back, he’d been commanded to conquer Knazziir, drive out Nagash’s influence. He hadn’t been heard from since.

‘He was a great man,’ said Markash. ‘I would have said he had a great destiny, a god-granted destiny.’ He almost sounded wistful, as if remembering a better time. ‘He taught me to fight. He carved the weakness of humanity from me, cut holes in my soul and filled them with the eternal glory of Chaos.’ The Champion glanced at the scribe. ‘Was it Ammerhan’s destiny to die out here on the edge of Nagash’s domain?’ The lord grunted a deep laugh. ‘It matters not. It is my destiny to succeed where my teacher failed.’

Palfuss wrote, capturing every last syllable, throwing in occasional descriptors when the lord paused.

‘Nagash thinks death is everything,’ continued Markash, ember eyes scanning the room as if searching. ‘He believes all things end in death, and that this means his triumph is inevitable. He’s a fool. His very nature – his dependency on necromancy – blinds him to the reality. Death is nothing more than another aspect of change. And Chaos is change personified, the gorgeous manifestation of impermanence. Not everything dies. Gods are proof of that. But even gods change. In the end, there can be only Chaos.’

Approaching Ktchaynik, Markash reached out a massive fist to grip the pommel. Hefting the blade, he examined the daemonic runes inscribed there, tracing them with the armoured fingers of his other hand. Sparks arced between sword and man, leaving purple slashes across Palfuss’ vision. The scribe had heard that a thousand souls had been sacrificed to bind that daemon. The stench of burnt meat and sulphur filled the room.

‘It is,’ the Champion mused, ‘an interesting conundrum. No matter what destiny is – outside force, something built by strength of character, or sheerest delusion – in the end it means nothing.’ He sheathed the daemonic sword, and Palfuss’ ears popped as the pressure suddenly changed in the room. ‘Ammerhan had a destiny and yet he is gone. And so destiny, like all things, answers to change. Chaos is everything!’

Nodding, the scribe scribbled the last few words and waited, pen poised, for the knight to continue.

Markash stood silent, motionless like a statue, smoke snaking from his armour in sinuous coils.

The scribe wondered if he’d been forgotten. Sweat dripped from his brow, stung his eyes. His lips tasted of salt when he licked them nervously. Had he been dismissed? Should he leave? But he hardly dared breathe, much less rise and let himself from the Champion’s presence.

‘As a boy,’ Markash finally said, voice barely a whisper, the raw scrape of granite on granite, ‘I dreamed of holding a sword. As a young warrior I dreamed of being a Chaos Knight. As a Chaos Knight I dreamed of being Tzeentch’s greatest Champion. And now I dream of–’

Someone banged on the door, interrupting him.

‘Something odd, my lord,’ came a voice from the hall. Palfuss recognised it as Stayn Lishik, the highest ranked Chaos Knight in Markash’s retinue.

Ember eyes blazed bright as if fed by a gust of fresh air from a forge bellows.

Palfuss darted a look at the sole window in Markash’s quarters. Darkness. Morning was still hours away.

‘Odd?’ rumbled the Champion.

‘The dead have come, my lord.’

Palfuss blinked. That was hardly odd. The corpses returned every week, as if begging for punishment. Out beyond the walls of Knazziir, this reeking dung-heap of a city Markash had conquered in a single evening of glorious war, great heaping piles of bones swarmed with crows and fat flies. Sometimes the men would leave one of the animated dead semi-functional and then bury it in corpses, taking bets on if and when it would manage to struggle free.

You had to pass the time out here on the frontier somehow, Palfuss mused, and it seemed harmless enough fun.

Markash nodded and his eyes returned to their usual smouldering burn. ‘Then we’ll kill them again. Re-kill them.’ He turned on Palfuss. ‘What do you call it when you kill something that’s already dead?’

‘Uh…’ offered Palfuss. ‘Destroy?’

Raging red rage eyes studied the scribe, and he swallowed a lump the size of those bulbous toads you found out in the swamps. The voice beyond the door saved him.

‘My lord, these aren’t normal dead.’

‘Are they any better with words than my scribe?’

‘Actually,’ said Stayn Lishik, ‘yes, they are.’

Markash strolled to the wall so he might see these ‘odd’ corpses. Stayn Lishik followed a step behind, his plate armour clanging and squeaking where Markash moved in perfect silence.

There was, Palfuss saw, something in Stayn’s eyes, a soul-deep anger. He hurried to keep up.

Markash cut through the courtyard by the city gate. Over one hundred Slaves to Darkness gathered there, checking arms and armour with the grim confidence of hardened veterans. No cowards here. Over and over, through countless wars and campaigns, the Champion’s followers had proven themselves among the very best Chaos had to offer. Under his leadership, these warriors had cut their way through ten thousand dead in the last month.

Palfuss checked the horizon and saw no hint of morning. Hours from dawn, and already the damp air stank of sweat and leather, oil and steel. Another hot one, no doubt. The muted clank of iron echoed off stone walls. Out here he couldn’t write, but made note of everything, every sound and smell committed to memory. For the last year the scribe had followed Tzeentch’s Champion, chronicling his exploits. Palfuss did his best not to wonder what had happened to the woman he had replaced. There were rumours. Torn apart by ravenous corpses, limbs ripped free and brandished as if prized trophies. Eyes plucked forth by some twisted dead thing that immediately popped them in its own gaping sockets, as if one might harvest the living for parts.

Shaking the thought off, Palfuss recalled how some had – quietly, and never when the Champion was within earshot – called Markash crazy when he had announced that he would take Knazziir, claim it in the name of Chaos. It’s too close to Nagash’s domain, they had said. He’ll never hold it. You’ll die there, they had told the young scribe.

Palfuss had shrugged. If that was what it cost to be this close to greatness, to get the chance to chronicle even a brief moment of the Champion’s life, he would gladly pay it.

Not only had Markash taken Knazziir in a single night, putting the city’s rulers to the sword and bringing the shining beauty of Chaos to these broken peasants, he’d held it for a month since.

Not a week after that first bloody night, a corpse, unusual for its expensive finery, strode towards the city. Terrified, the newly appointed town-master, some fat slob stinking of the weird food they ate here, had claimed it was a collector coming for bones. Or something. The Knazziiri spoke some strange dialect. Palfuss spoke the language, but not well.

‘What kind of bones?’ he’d asked the town-master.

The answer had something to do with soup. The scribe had done his best to explain it to Markash, who’d grunted, uncaring and disinterested. Either way, it hardly mattered. Talast, the Champion’s pet sorcerer, had burned Nagash’s undead servant to ash before it reached the gate, and everyone had gone back to killing and otherwise spreading Chaos.

‘Where is Talast?’ Markash demanded.

‘Busy, my lord,’ said Stayn Lishik, darting a glance at Palfuss.

The sorcerer often imbibed huge quantities of mind-altering substances as he clawed at the fabric of reality in his search for power. Even Markash would hesitate to interrupt one of his experiments.

Reaching the top of the wall, Palfuss stepped forward to peer through the murky night air. There, at the gate, stood a host of the dead. But where most of Nagash’s creatures were shambling ruins, these were thick and strong, comprised of clean bone. Leaning forward, he squinted down at them. A legion of warriors stood with foul swords clutched in fists of raw sinew. Broad shouldered, bones thicker than Palfuss’ thighs, they wore armour that looked suspiciously like a mockery of Markash’s Chaos plate.

Having seen more than his share of corpses, Palfuss had a pretty good idea what a man looked like if you peeled away the flesh and muscle. And this wasn’t it. Twisted bones were knotted, as if someone had skilfully knitted them together. Like ivy. The joints were wrong, too. Bulbous. Insectile, almost. He locked the scene in his memory so he might later capture it.

Behind the corpse warriors stood a monster constructed of bone and steel all melted together like some metallic corpse-beetle. Long scythes, polished bright, had been melded to misshapen limbs. It had too many damned legs, each one backwards-jointed like a spider, or a chicken twisted inside out. Flesh hung in raw ropes, glistening as if pulled from a fresh corpse. The thing bore huge baskets upon its spine and ribcage, strapped down with coils of hardened cartilage. Black crows and fat green flies swarmed the baskets. Every now and then something wet and pink stabbed out from somewhere within the torso of the creature to snatch a bird from the air. Flesh and feathers were stripped away in a heartbeat, and the dripping bones either tossed into one of the baskets or thrown aside. More dead things lurked behind the beasts, hidden in the dark.

‘What in the name of–’

Markash raised a gauntlet, interrupting his chronicler.

The Champion stared down at the dead, and they stared back up at him, empty eye sockets like holes in the world. There were clearly several types of dead here. Some stood with strange weapons held at the ready, while others, apparently unarmed, scanned the gathered living as if judging their value. A cancerous grey-green smoke writhed around a pair whose faces, stretched as if in horror, bore only smooth bone where their mouths should have been.

All this the scribe memorised.

For once, the fat flies were silent. No scree scree echoed through the night.

For one mad moment Palfuss was glad he was up here and they were down there, with a good thick wall in between. He shook it off. There was nothing Markash couldn’t kill. He was Tzeentch’s Champion, a man of destiny.

The tallest of the dead stepped forward, a gaunt corpse of indeterminate sex cloaked in robes of bright jade at odds with its pale bone. It bowed low, arms crossed, almost curtseying. Sparks of sickly green fire glowed from deep within its skull.

‘We have come,’ it said, voice deep like the grave, damp like putrescent flesh sloughing from a bog-drowned corpse, ‘to collect.’

‘Collect?’ Markash called down, sounding more curious than anything.

‘Bones,’ said the corpse, drawing the word out, turning its spectral gaze up to examine those on the wall.

That putrid town-master had said something about this. Why would the dead want soup bones? Did they eat? Were these the chefs for some deranged necromancer?

Markash waved at the piles of shattered bones littering the killing field beyond the wall. Countless thousands of dead had been broken there. Splayed ribcages, denuded of flesh, clawed at the sky like reaching fingers spread in supplication.

‘Bones.’ He almost sounded amused, though Palfuss had trouble attributing such human emotion to the Champion.

The corpse in green hesitated, and the scribe could have sworn its brow, skin chafed to bleached bone, wrinkled.

‘For the tithe,’ it said, bowing again, as if in apology, though it was the sort of overly polite apology of someone embarrassed for you. ‘Fresh bones,’ it said. ‘Bones for the tithe.’ Long fingers, those of an artist, drew graceful circles as if the thing sought to sketch its intent in the air.

Palfuss stole a glance at Markash, wondering what he was thinking.

‘Stayn,’ said the Champion, ‘you have the city until I return.’

A dark greed crossed the knight’s scarred features, gone before the scribe was sure he hadn’t imagined it.

‘Open the gates,’ commanded Markash. ‘We’ll destroy them all.’

Again the corpse bowed, though this time as if in thanks; as if it was somehow getting exactly what it wanted. ‘Good bones,’ it said, studying Markash. ‘Good bones.’

Trooping back down the steps, his Chosen warriors falling in as he passed, Markash marched to the front gate, waving at the gatekeeper.

Stayn remained behind, standing on the wall, gazing down upon the dead with a measuring look.

Wood and iron rose as Markash approached. The rattling clank of metal, the groan of damp wood and the grunt of men cranking the wheel. Palfuss slowed as he approached the gate, hesitant to leave Knazziir’s safety.

‘Come,’ Markash called over his shoulder. ‘Bear witness.’

Swallowing his fear, the scribe hurried to follow Markash and his retinue of warriors into the night, attention darting as he tried to drink in every detail. No time for fear; he would witness, as commanded.

The dead waited. They hadn’t moved, hadn’t shifted.

The jade-clad corpse nodded, a slight tilt of its barren skull. ‘Many bones. Such a fine tithe.’

Markash drew Ktchaynik and it sung a keening note of triumphant rage. Reality, savaged by its mad will, warped about the blade, giving it a twisted corkscrew appearance. For a score of strides around the Champion the grass died, turning brown as the colour leached away, curling into dry husks. The ever-present greasy green flies wobbled in mid-flight and then spiralled to the ground, tiny souls snuffed by the ravenous blade.

The dead flinched back.

Black fire crawled across the Champion’s armour, smoke leaking from every joint, bright eyes like blazing rubies piercing the damp heat of the night.

Destiny.

‘As a Chaos Knight,’ Markash had said, ‘I dreamed of being Tzeentch’s greatest Champion. And now I dream of…’

What could such a man dream? Palfuss reeled at the thought. Did Markash dream of attaining daemonhood? Did he dream of leading Tzeentch’s own dark legions?

One of the larger corpses strode forward, raising its sword in greeting and challenge. No one else moved. Not the dead. Not Markash’s loyal troops.

Palfuss took it all in. The squelch of heavy steps on damp ground. The rot-stench of piled corpses. The furnace roar of the Champion’s breath.

Markash nodded greeting, one warrior acknowledging another.

The two closed, circling. They feinted, testing the range and their opponent’s reactions. The dead warrior moved with grace and precision. Light on its feet, like a dancer – perfect balance, utter calm. Were it smarter, Palfuss thought, it would have feigned the jerky, shambling awkwardness so typical of the dead, and then surprised the Champion.

When it finally lunged, foul sword stabbing forward, the scribe was still startled by its speed. The damned thing had been moving slower than it was capable of.

Batting aside the attack, Markash cut the thing down, cleaving it from shoulder to hip so it fell in two directions. The gaunt jade-clad corpse who’d first addressed them straightened, that green fire deep in its gaping sockets surging brighter in what probably passed for surprise among the dead.

‘Destroy them,’ commanded Markash.

Roaring their battle cries, his warriors charged the fell host.

The corpse in the green retreated into the illusory safety of the dead warriors, and Markash cut down another corpse, Ktchaynik screaming its glee.

It was a slaughter. But not the slaughter Palfuss anticipated.

The lumbering beetle-like beast scythed through Markash’s Chosen, massive blades cutting men and women in half. Limbs like seething tongues flicked from within its carapace to catch the dying as they fell. The bodies were spun, some still screaming as the writhing tongue denuded them of flesh, shucked the bones like an angry child with a head of corn, and tossed the raw and dripping remains into the baskets on its back.

Destiny.

Palfuss knew a moment of nervous almost-fear. ‘No,’ he whispered.

Markash, servant of Tzeentch, Architect of Fate, had a destiny. The dead did not. So the scribe told himself, as he stood rooted, bearing mute witness, unable to move.

Screaming voices rose from behind, and Palfuss turned to see the gate fall back into place, leaving Markash and his handful of elite warriors trapped outside.

Stayn Lishik grinned triumphantly down from atop the wall.

The sounds of battle echoed from within the city, and the scribe knew they’d been betrayed. The Champion would deal harshly with Stayn once these dead were destroyed. His screams would last weeks.

Markash faced a new opponent, a bipedal four-armed creature with an oddly misshapen skull. The uppermost arms bore long swords of heavy steel as if they were the lightest feathers. The two lower arms worked in tandem to wield a monstrous barbed spear of hooked bone. The creature wore a carved bone mask displaying the savage grin of a warrior.

He knew that face. But from where?

So teasingly familiar, but so out of place.

Markash fought, spinning and slashing, stabbing and hacking. Moments of purest ballet pierced with savage flurries of vicious violence. The thing hooked Markash’s sword with two of its blades, dragging Ktchaynik aside so the spear could lash out in a disembowelling thrust. Twisting, he avoided the worst of it, but still felt a line of raw agony tear his side. It had slashed through his Chaos plate like it was nothing.

It pressed the attack, feinting and stabbing, sword carving wicked patterns of death – somehow strangely familiar – into the screaming air.

The grinning mask.

Those familiar patterns of attack, learned as a youth, drilled into Markash over and over by–

Everything clicked into place.

Ammerhan, the Champion who had trained him all those years ago.

Again Ammerhan tried to entrap Markash’s blade, but this time the Champion was ready. It had been years since the two had duelled, and Markash had learned a lot in that time. Twisting Ktchaynik, he sent one of his opponent’s swords spinning away, and lopped off that arm.

Grind, click!

The thing’s lumpen skull rotated and Markash faced a new mask, this one depicting the face of an aelven warrior caught in mid-scream. When it attacked, sword shearing through daemon plate like it was softest cotton and opening a long wound in Markash’s thigh, the Champion realised he faced an entirely new opponent.

He fought.

All around his warriors fell, cut down, stripped of flesh. Some bones were collected, thrown into the baskets. Others were tossed contemptuously aside, unworthy. The roar of battle became screams of terror became the wet sucking of flesh pulled from bone became the harsh sound of Markash’s own breath, the snarls of his pain, the ringing of steel on steel.

In moments he was alone out here, surrounded by the dead. Only his scribe stood, unmolested, ignored by the dead, witnessing.

Hundreds of faces watched from the Knazziir rampart, Stayn Lishik in the centre.

This couldn’t be Markash’s destiny.

A low spear thrust, hidden by a stabbing feint at his eyes with the remaining sword. Markash parried it, hacking the head of the spear from the bone shaft.

Grind, click!

He faced a new warrior – mask bearing the chiselled jaw and smug superiority of a Sigmarite champion – with an entirely new set of skills.

Markash laughed. ‘I don’t care how many faces you have, I’ll best them all,’ he roared at the thing.

It stabbed him in the gut with the tattered end of the spear, splintered bone tearing his insides, and he shattered another arm at the shoulder.

Flesh was nothing.

Blood was nothing.

Markash was naught but war.

Grind, click!

Another mask, this one a cold-eyed woman. The remains of the spear spun in its hands and all of a sudden Markash faced a weapon master skilled with a quarterstaff. It lashed out, crushing his daemonic plate, leaving deep dents. The sword followed, a weird fencing style with fanciful flourishes like high-court calligraphy.

Markash fought, parrying attacks, staggering back as the thing followed, weapons spinning and flashing, writing notes of pain in his flesh. He bled from a score of wounds, left a trail of blood.

The dead watched, waiting, making no move to aid their four-faced warrior.

One last face.

This was not his destiny. He was Markash! Some day he would join the ranks of Tzeentch’s greatest daemon princes!

The staff spun, cracked him in the ribs, snapping one like a damp twig, spun again, and shattered his left knee.

Markash roared again and staggered, half-kneeling in the bloody muck. Each breath felt like a hot knife driven into his lungs.

The four-faced corpse stabbed at Markash, and he caught the sword in his armoured fist. Twisting the blade aside, he felt it slice through his gauntlet, sever his fingers. There was a terrible moment when he felt the last of the strength in that grip fail. He drove his sword into the fourth and final face.

It stood transfixed, shivers running the length of its body.

‘Destiny,’ Markash said, tearing Ktchaynik free.

The dead warrior collapsed.

Still kneeling, Markash raised his sword in victory, spitting blood and bits of broken teeth at the watching dead.

The corpse in jade robes stepped forward. It now bore a viciously curved scythe.

‘Good tithe.’

Then it sliced Markash’s head off in a smooth and effortless swing.

His skull bounced once in the soft earth and then came to rest, one cheek against the cool muck. His fingers lay littered before his eyes like pale, undercooked sausages thrown into a midden pit. How long had it been since he’d seen his own flesh?

Markash blinked at them, mouth moving. Somewhere out of sight something geysered blood into the air and then toppled over with a wheezing wet groan.

His body.

Blood puddled about his face, filling one nostril and turning his vision red.

Blink.

One of the dead noticed the scribe, strode to the unmoving man, and cut him down. A snaking tongue flicked from the monstrous beetle-like beast, collected the dead scribe, and began shucking him of flesh.

Destiny.

No.

Movement.

Swinging movement.

They’re carrying me, thought some deep part of Markash, some dwindling spark.

Opening his eyes, he saw that long limb-tongue or whatever the hells it was flick out and curl around the ankle of his headless corpse. He watched it drag his body closer, lift and rotate it about, peeling away the armour.

Where was his sword? He wanted it.

Armour gone, the tongue stripped his meat from his bones.

Unable to escape into death, held at this teetering precipice between life and unlife, Markash was forced to bear witness to the harvesting of his loyal followers. He watched the gaunt dead sift through the grizzly remains, choosing bones by some alien metric he couldn’t understand. He saw men and women ground into meal, a sodden porridge stained pale pink, and be remade.

Some were used to repair damaged undead warriors, applied like a salve, or twisted into limbs to replace those lost in battle. Some were whole new constructions: towering beasts, giant corpses built from the bones of scores of fallen men and women.

And all the while Stayn Lishik watched from atop the wall.

Markash saw his own bones reduced to sludge and shaped to create new limbs for the four-faced warrior he’d battled. Hanging there, vision swaying slightly as whatever held him by the hair moved, he bore mute witness as they hacked Ammerhan’s mask from the once-again-whole warrior and tossed it aside.

Finally, they remembered him and he was brought closer. A great hand gripped his face, twisting it until the bone of his skull gave with a crack. Beyond pain, Markash finally lost himself to the nothing.

The Bonereapers of Ossia.

Markash knew them now.

The Mortisan Boneshapers: the master craftsmen who took the raw material collected by the Gothizzar Harvesters, those huge beetle-like beasts, and crafted weapons and warriors. The Mortisan Soulreapers: the mouthless corpses harvesting the animus of Ossia’s enemies. The Mortisan Soulmasons: deciding what purpose to bend each soul towards, veritable surgeons.

They carved apart the idea of Markash and found much of use. A lesser soul they would have turned to meal – soul porridge – much as they did the bones, rewritten it, painted something new by combining the harvested ideas of many. In Markash they found something special. Something rare and worth keeping: blind faith in himself, in his abilities, and in his god.

Iron loyalty.

Faith is but an idea, and the Soulreaper cut the idea of Tzeentch from Markash, left the shape of it intact, a hole in who he was. It then filled that hole with a new idea: Nagash.

It also found another, stranger idea at the core of the man. Destiny.

Standing over the Necropolis Stalker it intended to meld Markash with, the Soulmason considered its options.

It could remove this foreign idea, but wasn’t sure what to replace it with. Leave a hole in the idea that is a man, and the man cannot be complete. That, in part, was the strength of the Ossiarch Bonereapers. Though made from many souls and the bones of dozens, each Mortek Guard was still a complete idea. It knew what it was, where it belonged. It knew its loyalties and its purpose. But the shape of this idea, this destiny, was unlike any the Soulmason had previously seen. What could fit such a hole? Digging, it found the idea itself was created to fill an even deeper hole, a wound from far back in Markash’s past.

In the end, it left the idea. It was too integral to the idea that made Markash useful. To such an ancient soul as the Soulmason, the concept of destiny was pathetic, the kind of self-deceit the living were so fond of. There was only one fate. In the end, all things would share in it.

Death and destiny.

The two words meant the same thing in the Ossiarch tongue.

Markash woke.

Strong. Stronger than he’d ever been. Faster too. Unencumbered by sad flesh and muscle, scrubbed clean of life.

A warrior. Battle writ bone-deep.

He shared the body with three other mighty souls, united in purpose, existing in perfect tandem. One carved bone mask of four. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew the face it showed.

And there, a dim spark in the background, lurked Palfuss, the scribe. Harvested, his bones and soul had been deemed worthy of use. Fragments of him existed within the living corpse.

I witness, said that spark, still clinging to purpose. I still witness.

A Necropolis Stalker, one of the Ossiarch Empire’s elite shock troops, Markash understood his own place and purpose. War against the enemies of Nagash. Bring them death.

It was a glorious purpose!

As a Stalker, he was a near invincible warrior. Each mask was that of a champion, a peerless warrior. Face a style you could not defeat, or one better countered by one of the other masks, and a different soul stepped forward, took charge.

That– no. That was wrong. Someone else in charge?

Why hesitation? asked Ghaanmast, who was once the First Sword of an empire long fallen to dust. We have task.

And they did. Collect the Bone Tithe. Nothing could stop them. The tithe was everything, a holy command from Nagash himself.

And yet…

Ossiarch Bonereapers moved around him, each bent to its tasks. They marched to collect the tithe, tireless bone legs moving at a pace no mortal could match for long. The Mortek Guard moved in flawless formation; individuals, yet capable of fighting with impossibly unified precision. The Gothizzar Harvesters followed behind, their tongues lashing out to ensnare birds and any wildlife that dared approach too close. Most of the bones were useless, tested and tossed aside.

Markash remembered this land. Hot and damp. Leather rotting so fast the armourers could barely keep up. Anything not magical or daemon-bound rusted. Insects everywhere. Biting, stinging, sucking, pestering. Those fat green flies swarming everything, getting in your eyes and mouth, tasting like rot. They still swarmed, but as a thing of clean bone he was of little interest. When they did land, he felt nothing. No tickling of little legs at the corners of lips and eyes. If it was hot or damp, he felt none of it. Not comfortable, just… existing. Such things were distractions the dead did without. Purity of purpose.

The warrior most suited to defeat an opponent takes the fore, said Markash.

He sensed the confusion of the others. There was nothing to discuss. They were one, servants of Nagash. They moved as one. Even though they took turns being in control, they fought as one. They would do whatever was needed, their individual desires unimportant.

And yet…

Something niggled, an idea. The memory of a memory.

Markash knew his old life, understood what he had been, why he had fought. No need to carve away the past and all its valuable lessons when you can carve the idea. He remembered his loyalty to Tzeentch and cared nothing. He remembered wanting to be Tzeentch’s greatest Champion, hungering to rise through the ranks, to achieve true immortality.

All pointless nothings.

As an Ossiarch, he was forever. If he fell warring for Nagash, he’d either be rebuilt, repaired or replaced. Such was the way of things and the way brooked no questions.

That hunger was gone.

And yet…

I defeated you, said Markash. I fought all of you, and I won.

Ammerhan was gone, cut away, replaced by Markash.

Destiny.

Death.

To the Ossiarch, they meant the same thing.

He remembered thinking about destiny. He would have laughed, if such things mattered.

I found it.

Found what? asked Ghaanmast.

My destiny. I am the best of us. I defeated you all and any opponent who could defeat me would beat any of you even faster.

They were one, served one purpose. They could not argue because he was correct. He had defeated them all. He was the best of them.

Markash knew then he would always be the mask that faced the world. It could be no other way. It was his destiny. He would rise until he commanded the Necropolis Stalkers. He would be the greatest of the Bonereapers. He would bring down the false gods, the pretenders. He would lay their flayed corpses at Nagash’s feet.

I still witness. Palfuss. A thin thought at the edge of existence.

It was, decided Markash, only right. The scribe would see it all, remember it all.

Today he would collect the tithe, as was his sacred duty. But this was only the beginning.

Heaped mounds of pale bone littered the ground. Glistening flies buzzed around the shreds of stubborn meat. The crows, having learned their lesson, wise in the way of death, fled when they saw the Bonereapers.

The nearest Mortisan Boneshaper sniffed at a pile as they passed. ‘Inferior,’ it said. ‘Unworthy of the tithe.’

Ahead, Markash recognised the fortified walls of Knazziir.

He remembered dying here. Somewhere, his fingers lay in the mud. How long ago had that been? As a flensed soul, he had no concept of time. Was it days? Years? Longer? Studying his hand, he saw it complete. His, but not his. Familiar and different.

Faces atop the wall, looking down. Damp with sweat, fear and disgust. He grunted an almost-laugh. This wall was nothing. The Ossiarch would tear it down, collect the tithe by force if necessary.

What funny? asked Ghaanmast.

I died here. He didn’t care if the First Sword understood.

Atop the wall a man pushed to the front of the crowd. He wore the plate of a Chaos Knight, daemon-bound, wrapped in foul sorcery. Poking over his shoulder, the pommel of a great-sword. Ktchaynik, Markash’s sword.

Markash recognised the man. Stayn Lishik, the Chaos Knight who’d betrayed him.

‘We have no bones for you!’ called Stayn.

‘Decent bones,’ said the Mortisan Boneshaper at Markash’s side. ‘Acceptable tithe.’

The Soulmason, dressed in robes of jade, the green smoke of harvested souls swirling about its ankles, nodded. ‘The soul is flawed, but usable in some lesser beast.’

The Soulmason opened its mouth to call out to the mortals above, but Markash stepped forward, interrupting it.

‘We have come to collect a tithe of bone.’

A rustle of confusion swept through the Ossiarch host. As the highest ranked of the Bonereapers, a Soulmason was interrupted by no one.

Stayn laughed. ‘Open the gate! Let us see these foul dead back to their graves.’

Markash, amused that this fool would repeat his own foolish mistake, awaited the warrior’s arrival.

When Stayn strode from the city, sword drawn, teeth bared in a confident grin, Markash met him in single combat. And took his head.

Blood and screaming.

Churned mud and spilled guts.

The Gothizzar Harvester, that enormous armoured beetle, chopped through the wood-and-iron gate with a monstrous scythe, and the dead poured in.

The wall was nothing.

The knights of Chaos were nothing.

The Ossiarch had come to collect their tithe.

Death and destiny.

One word.

And Markash had found his.

About the Author

Michael R. Fletcher is an author and grilled cheese aficionado with several dark and grim science fiction and fantasy novels to his name. He lives in the endless suburban sprawl somewhere north of Toronto.

An extract from The Rise of Nagash.

Akhmen-hotep, Beloved of the Gods, Priest King of Ka-Sabar and Lord of the Brittle Peaks, woke among his concubines in the hours before dawn and listened to the faint sounds of the great army that surrounded him. Sounds carried far in the desert stillness; he could hear the distant lowing of the oxen as the priests moved among the herds, and the whickering of the horses in their corral at the far side of the oasis. From the north came the reassuring tinkle of silver bells and the ringing of brass cymbals as the young acolytes of Neru walked the perimeter of the camp and kept the hungry spirits of the desert at bay.

The priest king breathed deeply of the perfumed air, filling his lungs with the sacred incense smouldering in the tent’s three small braziers. His mind was clear and his spirit untroubled, which he took to be a good omen on the verge of such a momentous battle. The chill of the desert night felt good against his skin.

Moving carefully, Akhmen-hotep disentangled himself from the arms of his women and slid from beneath the weight of the sleeping furs. He sank to his knees before the polished brass idol at the head of the bed and bowed before it, thanking the shedu for guarding his soul while he slept. The priest king dipped a fingertip in the small bowl of frankincense at the foot of the idol and anointed the brow of the stern, winged bull. The idol seemed to shimmer in the faint light as the spirit within accepted the offering, and the cycle of obligation came full circle.

There was a scratching at the heavy linen covering the entrance to the chamber. Menukhet, favoured servant to the priest king, crawled inside and pressed his forehead to the sandy floor. The old man wore a white linen kilt and fine leather sandals whose wrappings rose almost to his knees. A broad leather belt circled his waist, and a leather headband set with semiprecious stones sat upon his wrinkled brow. He’d wrapped a short woollen cape around his narrow shoulders to keep the cold from his bones.

‘The blessings of the gods be upon you, great one,’ the servant whispered. ‘Your generals, Suseb and Pakh-amn, await you without. What is your wish?’

Akhmen-hotep raised his muscular arms over his head and stretched until his hands brushed the tent’s ceiling. Like all the people of Ka-Sabar, he was a giant, standing almost seven feet tall. At eighty-four he was in the prime of his life, still lean and strong despite the luxuries of the royal palace. His broad shoulders and the flat planes of his face bore the scars of many battles, each one an offering to Geheb, God of the Earth and Giver of Strength. The Priest Kings of Ka-Sabar had long been accounted as fearsome warriors and leaders of men, and Akhmen-hotep was a true son of the city’s patron deity.

‘Bring me my raiment of war,’ he commanded, ‘and let my generals attend upon me.’

The favoured slave bowed his shaved head once more and withdrew. Within moments, half a dozen body slaves entered the chamber, bearing wooden chests and a cedar stool for the king to sit upon. Like Menukhet, the slaves were clad in linen kilts and sandals, but their heads were covered by hekh’em, the fine ceremonial veils that kept the unworthy from viewing the priest king in all his glory.

The slaves worked swiftly and silently, preparing their master for war. More incense was cast upon the coals, and wine was offered to Akhmen-hotep in a golden cup. As he drank, nimble hands cleaned and oiled his skin, and bound his short beard into a queue with braided strips of glossy leather. They dressed him in a pleated kilt of the finest white linen, placed red leather sandals upon his feet, and set around his waist a belt formed of plates of hammered gold, inlaid with lapis lazuli. Wide gold bracelets, inscribed with the blessings of Geheb, were pressed around his wrists, and a bronze helmet crowned with a snarling lion was set upon his shaven head. Then a pair of older slaves placed his armour of woven leather bands around his powerful torso, and a broad necklace of gold, inlaid with glyphs of protection against arrow and sword, around his neck.

As the armourers finished their tasks a pair of veiled slaves entered the sleeping chamber with trays of dates, cheese and honeyed bread for their master to break his fast. They were followed by a pair of armoured Nehekharan nobles, who fell to their knees before the priest king and touched their foreheads to the floor.

‘Rise,’ Akhmen-hotep commanded. As the generals straightened, sitting back on their haunches, the priest king settled onto his cedar chair. ‘What are the tidings of the foe?’

‘The army of the usurper has encamped along the ridge north of the oasis, as we expected,’ answered Suseb. Akhmen-hotep’s champion was called the Lion of Ka-Sabar, and was tall even among his own people; at a crouch, his head was nearly level with the seated priest king, forcing him to bend his neck ever so slightly to show proper deference. The champion carried his helmet tucked beneath one powerful arm. His handsome, square-jawed face was clean-shaven, as was his dark-skinned head. ‘The last of their warriors arrived only a few hours ago, and they appear to have suffered greatly on their long march.’

Akhmen-hotep frowned, and asked, ‘How do you know this?’

‘Our sentries along the northern perimeter can hear groans and fearful murmurs rising from the enemy camp,’ Suseb explained, ‘and there are no signs of tents or campfires being lit.’ The priest king nodded.

‘What do our scouts report?’

Suseb turned to his companion. Pakh-amn, the army’s Master of Horse, was one of the wealthiest men of Ka-Sabar. His black hair was curled into ringlets and oiled, falling over his sloping shoulders, and his armour was ornamented with lozenges of gold. The general cleared his throat. ‘None of our scouts have returned as yet,’ he reported, bowing his head. ‘No doubt they will arrive at any time.’

Akhmen-hotep waved the news away with a sweep of his hand.

‘What of the omens?’ he asked.

‘The Green Witch has hidden her face,’ Pakh-amn declared, referring to Sakhmet, the baleful green moon, ‘and a priest of Geheb claimed that he saw a desert lion hunting alone among the dunes to the west. The priest said that the lion’s jaws were dark with blood.’ The priest king scowled at the two generals.

‘These are fine portents, but what of the oracles? What do they say?’ he asked. It was Suseb’s turn to bow his head regretfully.

‘The Grand Hierophant assures me that he will perform a divination, after the morning’s sacrifices,’ the champion said. ‘There has been little opportunity up to this point. Even the senior priests are occupied with menial tasks–’

‘Of course,’ Akhmen-hotep interjected, grimacing slightly at the memory of the shadow that had fallen over Ka-Sabar and the other cities across Nehekhara barely a month past. Every priest and acolyte touched by that tide of darkness had died within moments, leaving the great temples decimated.

Akhmen-hotep was in no doubt that the foul shadow had been spawned in blighted Khemri. All of the evils plaguing the Blessed Land for the last two hundred years could be laid at the feet of the tyrant that ruled there, and the priest king had vowed that Nagash would at long last answer to the gods for his crimes.

The priests of Ptra greeted the dawn with the blare of trumpets. On the plain to the north of the great oasis, the assembled warriors of Ka-Sabar’s Bronze Host shone like a sea of golden flames. To the east, the weathered line of the Brittle Peaks was etched in harsh, yellow light, while the endless, rolling dunes of the Great Desert off to the west was still cloaked in shadow.

Akhmen-hotep and the nobles of the great army gathered by the waters of the oasis, glittering in their martial finery, and offered up sacrifices to the gods. Rare incense was burned to win the favour of Phakth, the god of the sky and bringer of swift justice. Nobles cut their arms and bled upon the sands to placate great Khsar, god of the desert, and beg him to scourge the army of Khemri with his merciless touch. Young bullocks were brought stumbling up to Geheb’s stone altar, and their lifeblood was poured out into shining bronze bowls that were then passed among the assembled lords. The nobles drank deep, beseeching the god to lend them his strength.

The last and greatest sacrifice was saved for Ptra, mightiest of the gods. Akhmen-hotep came forward, surrounded by his towering Ushabti. The priest king’s devoted bodyguards bore the marks of Geheb’s favour; their skin was golden and their bodies moved with the fluid power of the desert lion. They stalked around the priest king with massive, two-handed blades gleaming in their taloned hands.

A great pit had been dug at the edge of the oasis, in full view of the gathered army, and seasoned wood brought all the way from Ka-Sabar had been piled in it and set alight. The priests of the sun god surrounded the blaze, chanting the Invocation of Going Forth to Victory. Akhmen-hotep stood before the hungry flames and spread his powerful arms. At his signal, shouts and screams shook the air as the Ushabti dragged a score of young slaves forward and cast them into the flames.

Akhmen-hotep joined the chanting of the priests, calling upon Ptra to unleash his wrath upon Nagash the Usurper. As the smoke darkened above the fire and the air grew sweet with the smell of roasted flesh, the priest king turned to Memnet, the Grand Hierophant. ‘What are the portents, holy one?’ he asked respectfully.

The high priest of Ptra shone with the Sun God’s reflected glory. His short, round frame was clothed in a robe woven with threads of gold, and golden bracelets pinched the soft flesh of his brown arms. Upon his chest lay the polished golden sun-disk of the temple, inscribed with sacred glyphs and showing the likeness of Ptra and his fiery chariot. His fleshy face was covered in a sheen of sweat, even at this early hour.

Memnet licked his lips nervously and turned his face to the flames. His deep-set eyes, shadowed by a thick band of black kohl, betrayed none of the priest’s inner thoughts. He studied the shapes in the smoke for a long time, his mouth set in a grim line.

Silence fell upon the scattered nobles, broken only by the hungry crackle of the flames. Akhmen-hotep frowned at the Grand Hierophant.

‘The warriors of Ka-Sabar await your word, holy one,’ he prompted. ‘The foe awaits.’

Memnet squinted at the curling ribbons of smoke.

‘I…’ he began, and then fell silent. He wrung his podgy hands.

The priest king stepped close to the smaller man.

‘What do you see, brother?’ he asked, feeling the expectant stares of a thousand nobles weighing upon his shoulders. Cold fingers of dread tickled at his spine.

‘It… it is not clear,’ Memnet said hollowly. He glanced up at the king, and there was a glint of fear in his dark-rimmed eyes. The Grand Hierophant glanced back at the sacrificial fire. He took a deep breath. ‘Ptra, Father of All, has spoken,’ he said, his voice gathering strength as he fell into the ceremonial cadences. ‘So long as the sun shines on the warriors of the faithful, victory is certain.’

A great sigh passed through the assemblage, like a breath of desert wind. Akhmen-hotep turned to his noblemen and raised his great bronze khopesh up to the sky. The light of the sun god blazed from its keen, curved edge.

‘The gods are with us!’ he cried, his powerful voice carrying over the murmurs of the throng. ‘The time has come to cleanse the stain of wickedness from the Blessed Land! Today, the reign of Nagash the Usurper will come to an end!’

The assembled nobles answered with a great cheer, raising their scimitars and crying out the names of Ptra and Geheb. Trumpets sounded, and the Ushabti threw back their golden heads and roared, baring their leonine fangs at the cloudless sky. North of the oasis, the serried ranks of the great army took up the cry, clashing their weapons against the faces of their bronze-rimmed shields and shouting a challenge in the direction of the enemy camp, more than a mile away.

Akhmen-hotep strode back in the direction of his tents, calling for his chariot. The assembled noblemen followed suit, eager to join their warriors and reap the glory that awaited them. No one paid any more heed to Memnet, except his fearful and exhausted priests. The Grand Hierophant continued to stare into the flames, his lips working soundlessly as he tried to puzzle out the portents contained within.

A mile distant, along the rocky ridge that sat astride the ancient trade road leading to far-off Ka-Sabar, the warriors of Khemri lay like an army of corpses upon the dusty ground.

They had marched night and day, burnt by sun and frozen by darkness, driven by the lash of their generals and the implacable will of their king. League after league passed beneath their sandalled feet, with scant pause for rest or food. Years of famine and privation had rendered their bodies down to little more than sinew and bone. The army moved swiftly, winding down the road like a desert adder as it bore down on its foe. They travelled light, unburdened by the weight of a baggage train or extravagant retinues of priests. When the army stopped, the warriors sank to the earth and slept. When it was time to move again, they rose silently to their feet and shuffled onwards. They ate and drank on the move, eating small handfuls of raw grain and washing it down with sips of water from the leather flasks at their hips.

Those that died on the march were left by the side of the road. No rites were spoken for them, nor were any gifts offered to propitiate Djaf, the god of death. Such things had long been forbidden to the citizens of the Living City.

The corpses withered under the merciless heat of the sun. Not even the vultures would touch them.

As the light of dawn stole across the stony earth and the warriors of the Bronze Host shouted the names of their gods to the sky, the warriors of Khemri stirred from their exhausted slumber. They raised their heads and blinked dully at the sound, turning their dust-streaked faces to the oasis and the shining army that awaited them.

A dry, rustling sound, like a chorus of swarming locusts, rose from the shadows of the dark pavilions erected behind the army’s silent ranks. Moving slowly, as though in a dream, the army of Nagash rose once more to its feet.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Mark Holmes.

A Tithe of Bone © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. A Tithe of Bone, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78999-754-5

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.