Blood and Plague

David Annandale

In a dead land, the cold arena waited. Echoes of battles past and civilizations forgotten lined its cliff walls. The land did not remember the glories that had been. It remembered their loss. It remembered their fall. And it muttered to itself with the whisper of tombs. The whispers spread across the floor of the arena: broken archways, depressions of absent foundations, doors to emptiness. Eroded walls faded to nothing, sentences trailing off into silence.

Above the cold arena, on a projecting spur of rock, a sorcerer watched the whispers. He watched the land beyond. He watched as the waiting came to an end.

The Many-Eyed Servant faced south, seeing much further than the arena. The carriers of his vision flew over the land. A multitude of fragments became a composite panorama of the battle to come. From the east and west, warbands approached through the canyons of vanished waterways and time-gnawed sepulchres of civilisations. ‘They are almost here,’ he said.

Heavy footsteps crunched the stone behind him. A presence loomed at the daemon’s back. The Many-Eyed Servant’s master had come. He said nothing, but the daemon sensed his satisfaction. The Everchosen had arrived to witness the final display.

‘Where have you brought us?’

Copsys Bule thought before answering. Fistula’s words were less a question than an accusation. They had marched for a day and a night since passing through the gate. Until now, Fistula had said nothing to challenge the lord of plague’s command. Since their escape from the seraphon, Fistula had been less and less inclined to hide his anger and impatience. The blightlord had, for a time, been willing to accept that abandoning a second battle to the Stormcast Eternals was the right price to pay for the greater glory of joining the forces of Archaon. But that promise still showed no sign of being fulfilled. Instead, they travelled through nothing. The land was cracked, bare stone. The gate had brought the Rotbringers to the floor of a wide, twisting canyon. The riverbed had dried out centuries before. The journey between the cliffs took them through the traces of fallen cities and immense, fading graveyards. There was no life at all. Bule had abandoned a realm bursting with the gifts of Nurgle’s garden for a wasteland. No disease could flourish here. There was nothing here to decay. There was only the slow erosion of wind, and the fading into a greater silence. The groans of this realm’s flesh had been spent long ago.

But this was the way. The call of Archaon was as clear to Bule now as it had been mysterious before. The land held no promise, yet Bule followed the certainty of destiny.

‘We are where we must be,’ he said. ‘I have not brought us here. Archaon has. The blessing of Grandfather Nurgle has. There is no reason for anger, Fistula. Rejoice instead, and learn patience.’ Fistula fought well, but he had too little experience of the larger ebb and flow of war. Plague waxed and waned, but in the end, it consumed all. To deny this was to fail to understand the nature of disease. Rage was useful, but had its limitations.

Bule’s exhortation had little effect. The blisters on Fistula’s bald head crowded each other with suppurating anger. Bule watched Fistula’s grip tighten on his blades. He gauged the other Rotbringer’s stance. Are you going to attack? Bule wondered. He followed his own counsel and remained patient. His armour was heavier than Fistula’s. He had the advantage of bulk. He could absorb a first blow. But there was no need to precipitate a struggle; ahead lay glory for all. He would lead by example.

‘You don’t hear the call?’ Bule asked.

‘No.’ More anger in that single word.

‘Then put your faith in the path we have followed.’

‘From one retreat to another?’

‘The call I heed led us to that gate. Now it takes us to a culmination.’

Fistula grunted, but he plodded on. Bule looked back over the rest of the band. It was a much smaller horde now, consisting of only those who had followed him into the polluted river to find the gate beneath the foundations of the humans’ temple. The newly constructed symbol that rejected Nurgle’s gifts had concealed in its heart a cancer: the key to a greater victory. The loss of the rest of the warband, abandoned to the Stormcasts, had been a small price. Patience would see the coming of a greater bloom; of this, Bule was sure. Did the rest of his warriors share this certainty? Did they have faith, or did they doubt like Fistula?

He pushed the question aside. Though the canyon stretched onward, twisting in its grey death, the summons was clear to him. The flies that birthed from his head and swarmed about him buzzed with greater intensity. Faith would soon no longer be necessary. It would give way to proof.

If not around the next bend, then the one after that. The march through desolation would end soon.

Bule lengthened his stride. His gut bounced and roiled with his steps. Putrid gases rose from the rotting sores in his flesh. The garden was alive in him, and he would see it flourish in service to Archaon.

There were too many silences. Some were offensive to Ushkar Mir. Others were dangerous.

The snarl of his breath tried to fill the silence of the land. The absence of blood and fire was a frustration so intense it was agony. He saw bones. He saw skulls. But they were old, meaningless. They crumbled to nothing beneath his steps, giving off puffs of grey dust. There was no war here. If there had been violence once, even its memory was buried in stone. The emptiness of the canyon and the emptiness of the days: these were the silences that offended the exalted deathbringer.

It was the silence of Danavan Vuul that was a potential threat. The bloodstoker had said nothing for many hours now. With each day that had passed since Mir’s last trial, each day absent of any foe, each long day in the empty land, Vuul had said less. They were still in the Realm of Death. The longer the march had gone on through this cursed canyon, the more Vuul’s silence had expressed his doubts about the direction the Bloodslaves were taking. His face was hidden by his helmet. In his heavy crimson armour, he marched with a steady gait, leaning forward as if ready to break into a charge. Ushkar Mir monitored his every step out of the corner of his eye. He was braced for an attack. He contemplated killing Vuul, terminating the threat before it declared itself. He would have already done so were it not for the call. Archaon’s summons pulled him forward. He would find the Everchosen here, and soon. There was battle in this realm, and Archaon was at its forefront. The scent of war and bloodshed had brought him this far. It was immaterial whether the rest of the warband felt the summons too. Destiny was close, and the moment was coming when there would be an enemy to shatter.

Mir stayed his hand. In so doing, he surprised himself. Regardless of Vuul’s anger, his ambition was obvious and dangerous. He resented Mir’s status as one of the Exalted. He made no secret of that, and obeyed orders with grudging reluctance. Two days ago, Mir would have treated the prospect of a prolonged period without a foe as intolerable. He would have assumed Vuul would move against him. He would have killed Vuul at the first opportunity.

Now he didn’t. For perhaps the first time in his life, another goal superseded self-preservation. The greatest need to was to find Archaon, and to become his champion. To achieve that goal would make him stronger yet, ensuring his survival and perhaps the immortality of his name. But now he wondered if perhaps he was reaching for something even greater than that. To fight alongside a being who refused to be the vassal of any single god would be a personal victory beyond any other. The brass band over his eyes burned his flesh. The endless pain of the metal and the miracle of his continued sight were perpetual reminders of his unwilling allegiance. Khorne owned him. His existence was devoted to the reaping of skulls for the Blood God, and so it would ever be.

Until he could achieve his vengeance.

But to be a champion of Archaon, to be among the number who fought for Chaos under the banner of the warrior who was a force unto himself – there would be pride in that achievement. There was no such thing as redemption. The concept was meaningless. He had witnessed the immolation of all such hope. He would grasp instead the chance to shed blood no longer for the sole benefit of Khorne.

The prospect of soon standing before Archaon subsumed all other thought and so he kept his eye on Vuul, but he did not instigate the duel. He had no patience for such a pointless delay. Even his axes were eager to reach their destination: Bloodspite, black as old blood, and Skullthief, red as a fresh arterial fountain, each containing a bloodletter daemon. The perpetual rivals for greater slaughter vibrated with their hunger, and they pulled him forwards. They too wished to fight for Archaon. Let Vuul stew in impotent rage. Let him witness the truth.

The canyon took another turn and beyond it, revelation unfolded. It opened up into a vast bowl, with a second entrance to the west. A great host lined the top of the north wall, but from the floor of the arena, he could not judge its full size. It extended along the entire wall of the arena, and he could hear the clamour of ranks upon ranks. Black smoke rose in the distance, and from somewhere in that direction came the screams and moans of prisoners.

Mir had never beheld such an army before. He saw exalted deathbringers and skullgrinders. He saw a warrior in huge and terrible crimson armour, a warrior who could only be a Lord of Khorne. And these powerful servants of the Blood God stood beside those sworn to the Plaguefather, and the Changer of Ways, and the lost God of Excess. Vuul even saw the tall, angular shape of one of the Great Horned Rat’s corruptors. The most powerful knights of Chaos in all its forms were gathered in a unity Mir could barely comprehend. They looked down upon him and they waited, for they did not command.

They followed a being greater than all of them.

‘I never imagined…’ said the slaughterpriest Orto. He who had been so confident in his preaching of Khorne’s will was at a loss.

You serve Khorne utterly, Mir thought. This army serves Archaon. You knew this was our goal. But you never imagined? Is your faith inflexible, slaughterpriest? Can it not survive paradox?

Below the host, a stone staircase descended to the floor of the arena. The staircase was huge. Its width took up half the cliff. It was badly eroded. It had become a majestic ghost.

A narrow spur projected far into the air from the centre of the north wall. On it stood a towering figure in black armour.

Archaon.

And at the sight of that being, that supreme warrior of Chaos, Mir too thought, I never imagined.

The Everchosen spoke.

Bule guessed what he would say. The lord of plagues saw the other warband enter the arena at the same time as his. Even though Bule knew the test that lay ahead, Archaon’s words rooted him to the spot. The voice, terrible in power, echoed across the arena. It was more than the voice of destiny. It was the voice of a being who had made destiny his slave.

‘Champions,’ Archaon said, ‘I welcome you to the Ossuar Arena. You have fought well. Now you are at the end of a journey. One will be found worthy to join my Varanguard. One.’ Archaon paused. His great horned helm tilted downward. He was gazing at the two warbands.

‘You will exact your own judgement,’ he said.

Across the line of the Everchosen’s warriors, war horns lifted. The arena resounded with the deafening blast of the call to war. The air trembled and cracked. The moment had come for the act of killing to return to this corner of the dead lands.

At the signal, Bule turned his gaze from Archaon and signalled to his warband. They began a rolling charge across the arena. The enemy was clad in armour the colour of blood and fire. Warriors of Khorne. He focused on their leader. Hundreds of yards separated the two forces, and Bule could make out few details of his rival. He was easy to identify, though, as he led his attack, fronting the warband’s collective howl of rage. In contrast to his followers, he wore no armour. A brass band covered his eyes. It gleamed, though no sun pierced the heavy clouds. His flesh was marked with burning runes. He was already outpacing the rest of his band. He was fast. Faster than Fistula.

The Bloodbound were a real threat. No matter. Here, at last, was the destiny that had guided Bule through three realms. No one would stand between him and his apotheosis. He would strike this pretender down, and, at Archaon’s side, he would see the Grandfather’s garden flourish as never before.

Bule answered the snarl of the Bloodbound with his own roar. He revelled in its wet ratcheting. It was the sound of disease at war. He would drown the rage-possessed in the joyous flood of pestilence.

Behind him, his Rotbringers joined in his call.

Plague rushed forward to clash with Blood.

Then, from the skies, came a storm of wings.

There was his challenge. The putrid worshippers of Nurgle. Their charge made Mir snarl with disgusted rage. Their gait was a shambling rush. Their stench washed through the air in waves. Their blood would be a polluted stew. Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, he thought. Nor does he care for its purity, as long as it flows.

The Rotbringers were one more threat to his survival. He would tear them apart, and he would join Archaon.

He ran across the uneven floor of the arena, leaping over empty tombs and crumbled walls. As he did, he saw movement on the spur of rock. He looked up. Archaon had stepped back. A daemon moved to take his place at the end of the spur. It was a thing of skeletal majesty. Mir could feel its manifold gaze burning down on him from a hundred angles at once. The daemon spread its arms wide. A flapping cloud came into being around the daemon. It spread and swooped down into the arena, bringing winged night with it.

It was a gigantic murder of crows. Thousands upon thousands of the birds. They cawed and whirled. They were everywhere. They covered the space of the arena. And as they beat their wings and gave voice to their raucous song, the land began to change.

The ground rippled. It dipped and rose, transforming into hills and gullies. Stone became malleable. It turned into a liquid, then smoke. It lost its form. Barrenness gave way to convulsive life. Naked stone became muck. Mir’s boots sank past his ankle. Clouds of insects descended on him. Trees speared out of the mud. They unfolded branches heavy with rotting leaves. Growths twisted the limbs, and from them, things squirmed to be free, worms with pale, grasping hands. The trees reached out to each other, and the worm-things clasped and clawed across the growths, and a tangle of wood, soft, rotten, yet resilient, surrounded the warband. Blackened vegetation flowed around their legs. It was a rising tide of dying mulch. It fell apart, blossomed, sickened and died, then rose from its own decay in the space of a breath.

Mir could no longer see the enemy. The Rotbringers had vanished behind the wall of embodied putrescence. The crows dived through the canopy. They perched on branches and circled above the warband. Some of the birds were rotting as they flew. Others were on fire. They all had too many eyes. They cawed their mockery. Mir slashed at them and at the vegetation blocking his way forward. His advance slowed to a crawl.

‘You have turned Khorne against us!’ Orto shouted. ‘Archaon favours the followers of Nurgle.’

‘Are you already defeated?’ Skull answered. In the blood warrior’s words, Mir heard his own thoughts given voice. Khorne had rendered him mute, but Skull always spoke for him. Skull, whose loyalty was so unshakeable, it had to be a form of enslavement. ‘Do you abandon your duty to the Blood God?’ Skull demanded.

Vuul answered before Orto. ‘The transgression is Mir’s, not ours,’ he snarled. To Mir he said, ‘We followed you and this is our reward.’

Mir swung his axes. Branches fell, burning at their touch. I will have your silence and your effort, or I will have your head, he thought.

Skull said, ‘The enemy is close, and Ushkar Mir will not let a few trees stand between us and their skulls.’

Mir paused and faced Vuul. He parted his jaws, his teeth ready to tear flesh. He felt Vuul’s gaze on his face. There were no eyes for the bloodstoker to see, but Mir knew his band of brass blazed in the foetid shadows of the forest. Vuul hesitated, then, with a snarl, he turned back to hacking at the growths.

Vines tangled around Mir’s arms. He tore the lanyards apart. Spores burst from the ragged ends. The air thickened and sought to choke him. He spat it out and forced his way through the wall of rot. With each slowed step, his anger grew, and the forest began to shrivel at his touch.

He moved faster, a vector of wrath burning through the woods. He still could not see the Rotbringers. Nor could he hear them. He could barely hear his own troops over the shrieking of the birds. The stench of putrescence drowned out the scent of his prey’s blood.

No matter. He drove forward. If he did not reach the foes himself, the foes would come to him. And his rage would reap the harvest of their skulls.

The land erupted with violent death. Rivers of flaming blood ran between hills of skulls. Through the darkness of the crows’ wings, everything was the red of fire and the crimson of gore. Bule had been running across a barren plain, and then it had heaved skyward, stone transforming into bones soaked in blood, steaming and burning. Bule struggled up the slope. Skulls and femurs rolled and shifted. The ground tried to swallow his legs in avalanches of remains.

The Rotbringers reached the top of the rise. The walls of the arena had vanished. Bones, blood and flame stretched out to burning horizons in every direction. Overhead, the crows wheeled. Their many eyes glittered and judged.

‘We are abandoned,’ Fistula said.

There could be no garden here. There was no life. Only the perpetuity of pyres and the scarlet flow of rage.

‘We are challenged.’ Bule said. He would not despair, though the omen of the transformation was an ill one. Let it be a further trial, then, another means by which he would prove himself worthy of serving Archaon, and of the blessings of Grandfather Nurgle.

‘Look,’ he said, pointing, ‘we have an opportunity.’

The Bloodbound were further away than they had been before the land had transformed. The wall of the arena had vanished, and the battlefield was infinite. Still, the Khornate warriors were on the same heading. There was something odd about their advance. They moved more slowly than Bule had expected. Their gestures were strange. They were slashing at the air as if battling invisible enemies.

‘What are they doing?’ Fistula wondered.

‘I don’t care, as long as it does them no good.’ Bule thought for a moment. The Bloodbound warband looked strong. Whatever the confusion of the warriors’ gestures, they were striking forward with the coherence and force of a battering ram. Bule had little doubt that a head-on collision would go against him. That would be playing to the strengths of the wrathful. Neither band was very large. The possibilities for manoeuvring were few. But they still existed.

‘Embrace the enemy with the generosity of Grandfather,’ Bule ordered. He would take advantage of the Bloodbound’s apparent distraction. ‘Advance to meet them, encourage their charge, then split up and hit their flanks.’

Fistula nodded. Of course he’s pleased, Bule thought. He will lead half our band.

It was a risk, but one he saw no way to avoid.

Bule resumed the charge. He bellowed and stormed down the hill of bones. The footing was treacherous. He stomped hard on the shifting bones, shattering them, splashing through rivulets of blood, imposing his bulk on the burning land. The distance between the two bands narrowed. Though both struggled, it seemed as if the field were contracting once more. The crows called their excitement as the champions hurled towards each other.

We’re closing too fast, Bule thought.

There was nothing but the forest, nothing but the black, viscous, rotting density of the vegetation. Mir heard the Rotbringers, but could not see them. The sound of their tramping was muffled by the vegetation. There was no way to gauge their distance.

And then the forest fell away, shrivelling and burning at his touch, and the Rotbringers were before him. He roared. His hatred fuelled by frustration, he shot forward, axes raised. They screamed their hunger. The warrior at the Rotbringers’ head was huge, a festering mass of muscle and bulk. The spikes of his armour squirmed with rotting meat. His helmet was featureless except for a down-curving horn and a cluster of three eye-shaped holes. Mir saw in the design the idiot implacability of an insect, and his jaws parted in anticipation of the foe’s blood.

The Rotbringer was faster than he looked. He took a step back and pivoted to the right. Mir’s momentum carried him forward, too powerful to alter course. Skullthief slashed into the Rotbringer’s torso. Dark, stinking blood erupted into the air, boiling from the strike. The axe blade scraped against ribs. The Rotbringer shouted in pain, but kept moving, pulling free of Skullthief. Behind him, a second warrior, lighter in build and armour, broke left. He was very fast. He escaped harm. The knight coming up behind him was not as lucky. Mir brought his two blades together. The daemons within, as frustrated and raging as he, bit deep into the rotting, rusted armour. The double sweep slashed through flesh and bone. The knight’s head flew off. Blood fountained over Mir. It was thick with parasites. He snarled and batted the slumping corpse aside and the head rolled into the muck and vegetation. The plants rotted to nothing, as if the touch of the dead plague-bringer broke their hold on reality and they withdrew before the greater force of wrath.

Behind the fallen knight, a trio of marauders hurled themselves at Mir. They hacked at him with blades dripping with filth. The edges of his wounds turned black. The pain squirmed. He roared. Rage turned his vision red. It burned his veins clear of the infections. He brought Bloodspite down on one marauder’s skull, splitting it in two. Skullthief took another’s sword arm off at the shoulder. The wounded Rotbringer howled but pushed in closer, his rotten blood washing over Mir. Insects and worms tried to burrow through the brass. They succeeded in smearing his vision. Behind him, the rest of his band pushed forward.

But as he swiped the slime from his face, he saw that most of the Rotbringers had moved out to the left and right, flanking his warriors.

The wound burned. Not with the generous malignancy of Grandfather Nurgle’s munificence. It burned with a destroying fire, one that put the torch to the beauty of decay and left nothing but bone and ash. Bule hissed. His breath was pained and angry. The Bloodbound had hit so hard, so fast. Bule had seen them coming. He should have been able to judge when to move out of the way. But the distances in the battlefield were fluid, treacherous. He could not trust them. Fistula was right – there would be no blessings to look for from Nurgle. Everything was up to Bule. He would not find the garden in this landscape of skulls. It would be up to him to bring it here by fertilizing the ground with the blood of the wrathful.

Reeling from the blow of the Bloodbound champion, he moved in an arc away from the enemy horde. He glanced back. Just over a third of his knights followed him. The marauders took the brunt of the Bloodbound charge. They would be dead in moments. That was all the time he needed. On the other side of the enemy, Fistula kept pace with another third of the warband, mirroring his manoeuvre. The Khornate fighters smashed through the Rotbringers that stood in their way.

That’s right, Bule thought. You have broken us in two. Hold that belief.

He angled back in, ploughing through the bones, splashing through blood, bringing the weight and disease of his troops against the rear flank of the Bloodbound. The enemy turned, eager in rage to meet the challenge. But the ragged line was narrow. A concentrated wedge of Rotbringers hit it from both sides. Plague-ridden Chaos knights clashed with Khornate ones. Rotting armour and slimy, rusting blades met iron glowing red with the forge of anger. Barbarians in joyous states of decay fought counterparts whose faces were frozen in a rictus of perpetual wrath. Bule raised his battle axe. A green miasma spread out from it. The air itself sickened. Some of the foe began to stumble even before he made contact. One doubled over, choking with violent, rib-shattering coughs. His lungs, already half dissolved, pushed out through his straining jaw.

Bule brought his axe down. The pain in his chest faded into the background as the blade smashed down through a skullreaper’s shoulder and halfway down the torso. The warrior’s face screamed with hatred and pain. He struck at Bule with his other arm, wielding a sword the length of a man. It bled its own ichor. The blow struck just above Bule’s pauldron. The skullreaper had been aiming for his neck, but was weakening from more than loss of blood. The axe’s venom was running rampant through his body. Anger was impotent against the surge of transformative decay. Bule absorbed the blow and hit the skullreaper again in the other arm. The Bloodbound fell. Bule stepped over the still-breathing body. Where the blood of the Khornate warriors flowed, the land cooled. The low flames that flowed like oil over the mounds of skulls dampened. The bones crumbled into mulch. Shoots burst from the ground, pendulous with growths.

‘Break the hold of wrath!’ Bule shouted. ‘Let the garden flourish in victory!’

To his right, he heard a snarl so fanatical in its rage it withered the sprouting vegetation.

Mir decapitated another marauder and turned back in time to see the rear half of the warband caught in a vice. Where the Rotbringers attacked, the diseased vegetation exploded with a new exuberance of rotting life. Vines and branches rose in tangled exultation towards the sky of crows.

He snarled at Vuul. The bloodstoker was fighting at his shoulder, flaying a Rotbringer knight with his great whip.

‘Why are you here?’ Skull said to Vuul. ‘Lord Mir commands you go back up the line. Hold the centre.’

‘And you?’ said Vuul, challenging.

‘Do it.’

There was a single moment’s hesitation. Had there been a second, Mir would have attacked. But Vuul turned and saw the imminent collapse. The triumph of the enemy was too hateful to be borne. He raced down into the thick of the fray.

Mir killed the last of the Rotbringers at his position. The blood warriors around him paused, uncertain. They were poised to lend support to Vuul and push back the enemy attack. Mir shook his head. He gestured with Bloodspite. With me. Skull, the skullgrinder Kordos and the rest of the leading warriors followed as he turned right, off the clearing forged by the battle, plunging back into the festering green. He knew exactly where the Rotbringers were now. He would use the obscurity of the foliage against them. He would even turn their own manoeuvre against them. He would smash their illusions of strength. They flanked us, he thought. Now we flank them.

He wanted the skull of the Rotbringer champion. Killing him meant more than achieving the task set by Archaon. It meant more than destroying the principle threat. Skullthief had tasted the champion’s blood, and it was hungry for more. Bloodspite, envious, sought to steal its twin’s kill. Mir shared their hunger and their frustration. The Rotbringer should already be dead at his feet. The absence of the corpse was an insult.

The forest was thick with disease and insects. Almost immediately, Mir’s sight was reduced to a few steps in front of him. All directions were the same. The sounds of the struggle were too close to muffle now, though. He knew where he was going. Nurgle’s profusion would do nothing now to impede the path of rage.

He slashed through vegetation. It barely slowed him. He moved in a fated arc. There was no doubt, no confusion. He came in behind the lord of plague’s contingent. Around the struggle, the land was in flux. Vegetation burned and fell away, revealing a terrain of skulls. Blood flowed between the bones, turned black, and fertilized the ground. Growths and flame blossomed, the marks of the gods battling each other for supremacy with the same fury as the warriors. The Rotbringers had their backs to Mir. He could catch them in their own trap, crushing this part of the horde with greater numbers, then annihilating the other.

On the point of beginning the attack, Mir stopped. He raised his right arm, calling a halt.

‘Why do we stop?’ Kordos asked. It took much to move the skullgrinder to speak. His confusion must have been great. Since when did the Bloodslaves stop mid-charge?

‘Why do you question Lord Mir?’ asked Skull.

Kordos didn’t answer. Mir turned his head in Kordos’ direction for a moment, letting the skullgrinder know he had Mir’s attention. Then he faced forward again.

Vuul was fighting with ferocious skill. The Rotbringers attacked on two fronts, but the bloodstoker held them off. His whip and torture blade were blurs. His voice rose in a howl of thirst. He took the skulls of the enemy in a frenzy of blows. He cut through the Rotbringers as though they were no more of an obstacle than the forest. He was a towering storm of wrath.

Archaon had said there could be only one champion.

Mir had understood what that meant, but he had pushed the consequences aside until now. The priority was the defeat of the Rotbringers. Afterwards, he would deal with any of his warband still standing. But now, as he saw Vuul fight, his priorities changed. Vuul was fighting too well. His rage was fuelled by desperation and ambition. He understood the import of Archaon’s words too. Vuul sought to become the Varanguard.

Skull and the others with Mir obeyed when he signalled them to stop. Did they realize what he was doing and why? Did they understand what awaited them? Or were they too blinded by their dedication to Khorne? Perhaps they thought no further than the next kill, the next skull. Perhaps they dared not think any further. Certainly they dared not challenge him. To do so would be to invite the end of their lives even sooner.

So they obeyed. Even Kordos. They stopped. And with Mir, they waited.

Vuul fought through the violent roil of battle to reach the lord of plagues. Fire clashed with thick green fog. There were too many warriors in the way. Mir watched another Rotbringer, a blightlord, close in on Vuul. He was lightly armoured. He was fast. His lips were pulled back in a snarling rictus. His body was riddled with sores, but his rage was so great that it rivalled that of the Bloodbound he cut down.

Vuul sensed the approach of the blightlord and turned to meet him. The bloodstoker blocked a dual-bladed attack with the hilt of his blade. The Rotbringer stepped back, pulling his swords away. He feinted forward as Vuul lashed out with the whip, aiming at his neck. It was a trap, and Vuul fell into it. The blightlord took another step back. The whip went wide. The blightlord tangled it with one of his swords and yanked. Vuul stumbled forward. The blightlord came in and brought his other blade down on the bloodstoker’s right upper arm. The sword cut deep, slicing through armour, flesh and bone. The arm hung limp, swinging on the end of a flap of skin. His whip fell to the ground.

Vuul’s wrath gave him speed. He still had his torture blade. He stabbed forward. ‘Behold your champion, Everchosen!’ he cried. The Rotbringer sidestepped. The blade glanced off his torso, hacking away a chunk of flesh. It was not enough to slow the blightlord down.

Archaon sees nothing in you, Danavan Vuul, Mir thought.

The blightlord brought his right blade up, into Vuul’s forward momentum, and used the bloodstoker’s mass to ram the tip through the left eye-slit of his helm. Vuul stiffened. His war cry turned into a stuttering, wordless howl. Then it stopped. His knees buckled. The blightlord yanked his blade free, and blood gushed forth. On contact with the air, it turned into a black froth. Tumorous fronds unfurled to embrace his corpse.

The blightlord moved forward, leading his forces through the few Bloodbound that separated him from joining up with his chieftain. One of them was Orto.

‘Blood for the Blood God!’ the slaughterpriest shouted. ‘Skulls for the Skull Throne!’

His zeal was unbroken. Mir knew that the Orto had found his path – he too understood how the contest must end, and he welcomed that meaning. He kept to the simplicity of fidelity to Khorne. He fought for the Blood God, and only the Blood God, to the end. He swung his bloodbathed axe with a speed that defied its size. The heads of rotted knights and barbarians flew in its wake. But there were too many, and the blightlord drove his blades into Orto’s back.

Mir roared. Now! His game was over. His rivals were falling. Time to finish off the others. He ran forward, blood boiling with the taste of victory.

Bule saw Fistula kill the bloodstoker. A few moments later, as the two groups of Rotbringers made contact, crushing the remaining Bloodbound between them, he heard the roar of the Bloodbound champion. The flames shot higher with the Khornate charge. Blood geysers erupted on either side of the warriors’ path.

Bule had seconds before the impact. There would be no evasion this time. The Bloodbound had been slow to arrive, though. The Rotbringers now had the numerical advantage.

But Bule turned away from the enemy. He had seen Fistula kill the slaughterpriest.

He had seen the skill, the speed and the rage. The skill and the speed were threats. The rage was an opportunity he must seize.

‘Fistula betrays us!’ he shouted. ‘He is apostate! Look how he abandons Nurgle for Khorne!’

Fistula blinked in astonishment, his blades deep in the corpse of a blood warrior. His battle rage gave way to blank surprise, and then returned, greater than ever, as he realized what Bule was doing. He snarled, freeing the swords, and played right into Bule’s hands. The violet blotching of his face and the contorted tendons of his neck were clear for all to see. He had always been the impatient warrior. His faith in Nurgle had been a crusading one, but only in the sense of the destruction of the Plaguefather’s enemies. He had shown little interest in the cultivation of the garden.

Now his anger doomed him.

Bule hurled the accusation. The Rotbringers heard and saw Fistula’s reaction. And Bule acted. He did so without pleasure. He swung his axe because he must, because only he could be Archaon’s champion, and Fistula’s visible wrath meant this was the moment his apostasy was plausible, and there was no chance Fistula could turn the warband against Bule.

He also swung the axe with conviction. Fistula’s rage was suspect. Bule believed the blightlord was a threat to the garden.

Even taken by surprise, Fistula’s reactions were fast. He swiped a blade across Bule’s torso. He tore the wound left by the Bloodbound champion wider and left a new furrow, dragging down deep into Bule’s gut. The filth on the blade reacted with the filth in Bule’s blood. Strains of plague did battle. Bule welcomed the conflict. It could only bear fruit, wonderful and dark.

Bule accepted his injury, gave thanks to Nurgle for the violent spread of infection, and smashed the massive axe blade down on Fistula.

The blightlord managed to jerk his head out of the path of the blow at the last second. It did him little good. The axe shattered his chestplate. It shattered his sternum. It split him open. He flailed. His arms batted at the weapon buried in his body. Their movements were so loose, so independent of one another, it was as if Fistula’s mind had been divided too, each half pulling at one set limbs.

Fistula staggered backwards, choking and gargling. Bule yanked the axe free and brought it down again. This time he smashed Fistula’s skull. The blightlord collapsed, his body erupting with maggots and rot. Its shape softened. The flesh rippled, then crumbled. Blood spread over the land. Where vegetation had grown from the death of Bloodbound warriors, it burned at the touch of Fistula’s blood.

‘Behold his treachery!’ Bule yelled, though his belief in his lie collapsed. Fistula’s blood had the same effect as that of his brothers in disease. Bule shouted to keep the lie alive in the minds of his warband just a bit longer.

Then the Bloodbound champion was upon them, and Bule abandoned all thoughts of strategy. There was no deception, no forethought.

There was battle, and there was his faith in Grandfather Nurgle.

And that was all.

Mir led the charge into the Rotbringers, and Chaos embraced the conflict. The land heaved and bucked. It burned and flourished. It was bone, it was muck, it was brackish stream and it was flaming blood. The order of the warbands broke down at once. There were no longer enough warriors on either side to maintain coherence after the initial shock, and as the numbers fell, the significance of Archaon’s words was felt by all. Mir embraced the disorder. From the moment he struck, from the moment Bloodspite and Skullthief began to feed, he saw only red. Every presence on the battlefield was a threat. The existence of any other being filled him with desperate rage. He waded in, killing any warrior within reach.

To Mir’s right, Kordos laid waste to the plague warriors with the burning fist of his anvil. He fought in silence, he killed in silence, until the anvil buried itself in the corpulent body of one of his foes. The Rotbringer slumped, his corpse smouldering, and the collapsing mass held the brazen weapon for a moment. Kordos grunted in anger, and that was the last sound Mir heard from him. The rhythm of his blows was disrupted just long enough for the huge lord of plagues to attack his flank. Mir saw Kordos’ death coming just as he cut down another barbarian. Two steps to the right and he could have joined Kordos, blocking the lord of plague’s attack.

He stepped forward instead. He heard the axe blow. The shattering of armour and the rending of flesh. When he heard the axe hit again, he knew Kordos was dead.

Mir fought on, killing his way toward glory, each corpse another step toward vengeance.

The land mirrored the storm of the war. It rose and fell with greater violence, as if Bloodbound and Rotbringers fought on the heaving chest of a great beast. It burned and flourished. It was turbulence itself.

Mir kept his feet. He lost himself in murder and wrath. He howled in an ecstasy of rage. He filled the air with his hatred for his enemy, hatred for his rivals, hatred for the other Bloodbound, hatred for himself. And the air answered. A fresh storm broke. Thunder roared, and blood lashed down in torrents and vortices. It blinded. It filled lungs. It surrounded Mir in a perfection of violent death. It turned blades away. He was coated in the bloody manifestation of his hate.

Every warrior fought for his own survival. Mir no longer knew whom he was killing. Nothing mattered except that those who stood before him fell to his blades. His axes, maddened and drunk on gore, screamed for more. And the storm of blood battled with another tempest, one of pestilence. A diseased wind battered Mir. It shrieked in his ears. It forced itself into his lungs. It was hot with decay. Each breath took in a legion of parasites. He burned the sickness out with the fever of his hate, and then in it came again.

The threat made him more furious yet. He slashed as if he would kill the air itself. He became part of the vortex of blood. Every blow was lethal. The death fountains of his enemies anointed him with victory and survival.

He saw no faces, only prey. Only shapes to be torn apart. Only skulls to be severed from their necks.

But then one spoke to him. One word, in the moment before the slavering Skullthief made the killing stroke. One word, in a voice so familiar, so in tune with his thoughts, that he had come to think of it almost as his own.

‘Lord–’ said Skull. Then Mir killed him.

He paused, suspended in his blood haze. He stared at the severed head of the blood warrior. Pale blue eyes in pale blue skin looked back at him with the final glimmers of life, and in them Mir saw not rage, but betrayal and grief.

What happened could not be helped. Only Mir could survive this war. Only Mir could be Archaon’s champion.

But this was Skull, who in all the warband had displayed a loyalty that went beyond an alliance of convenience. A loyalty that Mir now recognized, too late, as the last thing of value, the last thing unconsumed by wrath, that he would ever know.

He was vaguely aware of replacing Skullthief on his belt and picking up the head. Then he fell into the crimson fire once more, and there was nothing else. He killed and he killed and he killed. He was incoherent with rage and self-loathing. The world fell into ruin. All was storm. All was chaos. All was blood.

No longer for the Blood God. Blood for himself.

Killing and killing and killing.

Blood and blood and blood.

And…

And then Bule was alone. Alone against the being of wrath.

The storm raged on. Flame and pestilence whirled around him. The earth on which he stood shifted from loam to bone to blood to rock to all and none. There were bodies everywhere, rotting, burning and being devoured by the shifting land. The horizons had vanished. He and the Bloodbound champion faced each other in the midst of the collapse of all form.

The exalted deathbringer stood with an axe in one hand and a skull in the other. The head had been used as a weapon, and was a battered, smashed relic, but Bule could see it had been one of the Bloodbound, not a Rotbringer. The deathbringer looked at the skull with his head cocked, almost with regret.

How many of his own Rotbringers had Bule killed? He did not know. The answer did not matter. What mattered was the fulfilment of destiny. What mattered was to ascend to Archaon’s side as a warrior of the Varanguard.

His mind cleared of battle frenzy. He braced himself for the charge of the deathbringer. Bule was no match for his speed. This warrior was faster and more powerful than Fistula. Bule could not evade. He would not get the first blow in, but he would, with the Plaguefather’s blessing, get the last.

Against the quick, he had always used his great bulk. He won by being the hardest to kill.

The deathbringer dropped the skull and seized his other axe. He turned his maddened eyes to Bule and rushed in. He was a thing of crimson hate. His blades howled with him.

Bule braced for the impact. He stood with all the strength of a warrior for Grandfather Nurgle. He knew the fevers and the bodily erosion of a legion of diseases. They made him strong, for Nurgle valued the great resilience of life, and its ability to decay into ever more bounty, ever more life. Bule gathered the great endurance gifted to him by the Plaguefather. He would let fury spend itself against the bulwark of illness.

The deathbringer hit. He stabbed the axes low. He plunged both blades deep into Bule’s exposed belly.

It was exposed because it was a trap. Bule’s organs had long ago ceased to function in any mortal fashion. They were reservoirs of disease. His body was the carrier of pestilence. He was beyond the reach of ordinary weapons, no matter where they stabbed him. Time and again, foes had plunged their blades into his festering mass only to find their weapons stuck, and themselves left open to his counterblow.

This time was different. Wrath itself was upon him, with speed and fury and the frenzy of boiling blood. The deathbringer’s axes had their own will. They were a higher order of death-dealer. They went too deep. They burned too profoundly. They severed something too important.

Bule felt himself come undone. The strength went out of his legs. He lost feeling in the lower half of his body. His knees must have buckled because he was sinking toward the ground, drawing the wounds even wider. The exalted deathbringer’s face twisted into an expression of hate-filled triumph. The weakness spread up Bule’s arms. He dropped his axe.

He had lost without landing a single blow.

No, he thought. Not like this. I will not fail you, Grandfather. I am still your gardener.

He held on to the most fundamental fact of his being. Death was coming to Bule, but Bule was just a name. He was a lord of plagues. To the end, this was his truth, and so he took all that he was, all the vast strengths bestowed upon him by Nurgle, the power that was more important than his axe, more important even than endurance, the essence that shaped his physical form into a poor mirror of its full reality. He became infection. As he fell, he reached out for the wounds on the Bloodbound champion’s body. His arms were weak. His blow was glancing.

But infection needed only the slightest touch to take root. All it needed was a point of ingress. All it needed was blood.

Bule found the other champion’s blood. And with the totality of his being, with the pure transmission of disease, he stole this blood from the Blood God.

The land became quiet. Fire, rot and bones became simple stone again. The empty wastes of the arena returned. The crows flew off, vanishing against the dark of the sky. The Rotbringer fell at Mir’s feet. He spasmed and twitched, still alive but fading quickly. There was no need to strike again. Even so, Mir prepared to mark his triumph with the decapitation of his foe.

He tried to raise his arms.

He could not.

He staggered back from the body. Something crawled over his flesh and through his veins. He shook so hard that he lost control of his limbs. His lungs could not draw air. He was suffocating. His gasp was the sound of iron dragged across stone.

Mir wheeled away from the Rotbringer. The stairs of the arena seemed leagues away. But Archaon stood on the end of the rock spur once more. The Everchosen waited for his champion to climb up and claim his prize. Mir would climb.

Except he was on all fours. The tremors had him in their jaws. Cold and fever hit him in waves. Thick, bloody mucus poured from his nose and mouth. He crawled toward the stairs. They were too far, too far. Behind him, he heard the Rotbringer drag his carcass forward with slow, pitiful scrapes.

Mir gasped. Everchosen, he thought. The victory is mine. Free me of this pestilence. Induct me into the Varanguard. Heal me, he thought. Let me live.

‘The final blow was mine,’ said the Rotbringer, his words barely audible. ‘Let me serve.’

Mir collapsed onto his stomach, racked by coughs. There was nothing either of them could do. Archaon knew who the victor was. He would raise that warrior up and save him.

Archaon’s laughter rumbled across the arena. ‘And thus do both exact judgement. Well done. On this day I witnessed more than a struggle between wrath and pestilence. You presented me with the contest between survival and fealty. It was instructive. And, for both of you, futile. I chose my champion before your arrival.’

No, Mir thought. His anger flared, but it could do nothing for him now. He watched Archaon walk away and out of his sight. Darkness fell over his eyes. In his last moments, he regarded the monstrosity of his years, and he recognized the fitting pointlessness of his end.

He thought he heard the laughter of crows.

The Many-Eyed Servant watched Mir and Bule die. And then it was done. He had witnessed every moment of the contest across the realms. He had looked through the eyes of insects and crows, and he had seen all there was to see. The compound tableau of vision was complete.

Except it wasn’t. There were gaps. He had not seen through the eyes of the combatants themselves. Their thoughts were closed to him. So were Archaon’s.

The Everchosen stopped up beside the sorcerer. ‘More eyes, Gaunt Summoner,’ Archaon said, in answer to an unasked question. ‘I always need more eyes.’ He gestured to the corpses below. ‘They were blind. My champion is not. And it is time he assumed his duties. Return us to my fortress.’

‘My lord,’ said the Many-Eyed Servant. He moved his arms in eldritch signs. Mystic energies gathered around him and Archaon. They grew into a great pillar of fire. It rose to the heavens. And with a clap of implosive thunder, the cold arena vanished.

‘Rise.’

Orphaeo Zuvius stood. He knew he was in the throne room. He was conscious of his body. It was healed, it was strong, and yet it retained a wound. His sight was odd. It was off-centre. He raised his fingers. He moved them toward his eyes, and when he did, his vision turned and he saw his own face from the perspective of his shoulder.

He was looking through Mallofax’s eyes.

The blue daemon bird watched what Orphaeo needed him to see. A blue jewel sat in Orphaeo’s right eye socket. A pink one occupied the left.

Orphaeo tilted his head back, and Mallofax looked up at Archaon. ‘Why have you spared me?’ Orphaeo asked.

‘Spared you? I have made you my champion. And why? Because you have vision. Because you think to look and see where others race to pointless combat and die. You sought me here, not on the battlefield. For your trespass, I have punished you. For your vision, I have blessed you.’

‘But you have stolen my sight.’

‘Have I? Look further.’

Through Mallofax’s eyes, Orphaeo examined his face again. He considered the jewels. Their facets. So many planes and angles. So many perspectives.

Of course.

With understanding came more sight. He saw as Mallofax, and he saw as the warriors under his command. He was in the fortress. He was outside its walls.

He was everywhere he would send his forces.

All the facets of the battlefield would be his.

‘Do you see?’ Archaon asked.

‘I do, Everchosen. Oh, I do.’

‘Then it is time to go to work, champion. I have wars for you to witness and to shape.'

About the Author

David Annandale is the author of The Horus Heresy novel The Damnation of Pythos. He also writes the Yarrick series, consisting of the novella Chains of Golgotha and the novels Imperial Creed and The Pyres of Armageddon. For Space Marine Battles he has written The Death of Antagonis and Overfiend. He is a prolific writer of short fiction, including the novella Mephiston: Lord of Death and numerous short stories set in The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 universes. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

The storm breaks as the Stormcast Eternals go into battle for the first time. Read the first book set in the Age of Sigmar.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

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

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The Realmgate Wars: Call of Archaon – 7 Blood and Plague © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Realmgate Wars: Call of Archaon – 7 Blood and Plague, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, 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.
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ISBN: 978-1-78251-962-1

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