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Black Rift – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

Assault on the Mandrake Bastion

‘Forward! For Sigmar, for Azyrheim, and for the Realm Celestial!’ Orius Adamantine roared, as he and the Stormcasts of his Warrior Chamber fought their way up the ashen slopes of the Tephra Crater. They battled through the crumbled barrows of a fallen people, and amongst swirling clouds of ash stirred into being by the burning, acidic rain which pelted down from the ominous sky. Its sizzling droplets left black streaks on the golden war-plate of the Stormcasts. Jagged streaks of azure lightning thrashed in the belly of the clouds, and the storm grew in intensity as the Hammers of Sigmar plunged into the fray.

The Lord-Celestant’s sigmarite runeblade slashed out to cleave a bloodreaver’s head from his shoulders, even as his hammer crushed the skull of another. More enemies surged towards him, hurling themselves down the slope through the burning rain with savage abandon. Crude axes and jagged blades hacked at him, drawing sparks from his golden war-plate.

‘Forward, my Adamantine,’ he shouted, smashing a bloodreaver from his path. ‘Let no foe bar thy path, no mercy stay thy hand – grind them under!’

Liberators advanced up the northern slope of the Tephra Crater, moving through the rocky barrows in tight formation, shields locked against the blood-addled tide that sought to sweep them from their path. They marched in lockstep, never wavering or slowing, but steadily ascending. Behind them came the Judicator retinues, their skybolt bows singing. They launched crackling shafts of energy into the air over the heads of the advancing Liberators to explode amongst the enemy. Rank upon rank of the Bloodbound fell but more pressed forward, clambering over the dead in their eagerness to come to grips with the Stormcasts.

The retinues of the Adamantine fought their way towards the rudimentary palisades that stretched across the curve of the slope. Crafted from volcanic stone, with trees torn from the rim of the crater many miles above, these palisades were larger and sturdier than those Orius’ chamber had brought down on the lower slopes. Tribes of bloodreavers occupied those unsophisticated ramparts, defending them on behalf of the monster who had descended into the crater to drown it in blood.

‘Anhur,’ Orius growled, unable to restrain the sudden surge of anger at the thought of the Khornate warlord as he smashed a bloodreaver to the ground. The Scarlet Lord had made a name for himself as he carved a path of carnage across the Felstone Plains. There were monsters aplenty plaguing Aqshy, but the Scarlet Lord was no simple blood-soaked raider or warmonger. He had purpose, and that made him deadly indeed.

But then, you always were one for plans, Orius thought. A face surfaced from among his scattered memories, the face of a man he’d once served. Angrily, he banished the memory. That man was as dead as the man Orius had been. Only the Scarlet Lord remained.

Twice before they’d fought, in those first red days of war, as the storm broke over Aqshy. He’d been in the vanguard at the assault on the Bale-Furnace, where the Bloodbound forged terrible weapons. Anhur had been amongst those warlords gathered there, to pay homage to the twisted furnace kings in return for weapons and armour. The Scarlet Lord had retreated across the Furnace Lands, taking whatever fell artefacts he’d bargained for with him.

Warrior Chambers from no fewer than three Stormhosts had pursued the warlord to the Hissing Gates and brought him to battle amidst the searing geysers. There, for the first time, Orius had met his enemy face-to-face… A crimson figure, awaiting him beyond the boiling breath of countless geysers. The sound of their blades clashing… a moment of recognition… He shook his head, thrusting the memories aside. Anhur had beaten the Stormcasts back then, mauling them badly enough that they could not pursue him as he led his warriors across the Felstone Plains.

Why Anhur had come to the Tephra Crater, to Klaxus, Orius did not know, but he would deliver the creature up to the judgement of Sigmar regardless. He drove his shoulder into a barbarian’s sternum, splintering bone and killing the warrior instantly. He swatted the body aside and forged onward, a trail of crushed and broken bloodreavers marking his progress. Retributor retinues waded through the battle in his wake, their heavy lightning hammers striking with all the force of the storm itself. With every blow a resounding clap of thunder shook the air, and crackling sky-magics ripped apart the bodies of the foe.

Working in unison, hammers rising and falling with a brutal rhythm, the Retributors cleared a path for their fellow paladins – the Decimator and Protector retinues who would punch through the Bloodbound lines and lead the assault on the palisades. At Orius’ signal, the Decimators surged forward, plunging past him, deep into the enemy lines. Their thunderaxes reaped a red harvest as severed limbs and decapitated heads were flung skyward.

As the bloodreavers reeled beneath the counter-assault, Orius and the remaining paladins fell in behind the advancing Decimators. The stormstrike glaives of the Protectors wove searing patterns in the air as they shielded the Liberators from attack, and the lightning hammers of the Retributors tore great holes in the enemy battle-line. Soon, the fur- and brass-clad tribesmen were in retreat, staggering back through the swirling clouds of soot and stinging rain.

The Stormcasts did not pause in their advance. Orius signalled to his auxiliary command, indicating that they should press onward. They had to reach the palisade before the enemy regrouped. He knew similar scenes were being played out across the circumference of the crater, on every slope. Warrior Chambers from a dozen different Stormhosts – the Hallowed Knights, the Astral Templars, Celestial Vindicators, and more – were fighting their way up these ash-choked slopes, smashing aside the bastions and stone bulwarks of the enemy in an effort to reach the rim of the Tephra Crater.

They all shared the same purpose, but each chamber had its own objective. To the south, the Hallowed Knights of the Stormforged Chamber fought to breach the enormous basalt gates which straddled the path to the rim-citadel of Ytalan. On the western slope, Lord-Celestant Zephacleas led the Astral Templars of the Beast-Bane Chamber against the howling hordes which guarded an ancient duardin road through the Raxulian lava-tubes. But to Orius and his chamber had fallen the task of clearing the Mandrake Bastion of Klaxus, and scouring that kingdom clean of the Blood God’s taint.

My kingdom, Orius thought, as he stalked forward, at the head of his warriors. While he, like many Stormcasts, could but dimly recall the days of his own mortality before his death and Reforging at Sigmar’s hand, Orius remembered enough. He could still recall the heady musk of the Ashen Jungle after rain, and the way the colossal roots of the immense trees had wound through the walls and streets of Uryx. The jungle and the city were one, and its people comfortable in either. He had been comfortable in either. Klaxus had been his home.

And now, he who had been Oros of Ytalan had returned to save it.

Yet though he remembered some things, others were lost to him. The day of his death, for instance. He remembered war – no, an uprising – as the people thought to throw off the shackles of oppression, but little else. Anhur had been there then, clad in the black armour of Ytalan, as Orius himself had been. He could not even say whose side he had fought on, save that he had fought for the right reasons. Otherwise, Sigmar would not have chosen him.

His reverie was broken by the voice of his Lord-Relictor.

‘This is the third of these filthy bastions in as many days, Orius,’ Moros Calverius said, as he joined his Lord-Celestant at the fore. ‘How many more dung-heaps must we scatter across these slopes?’

Holy lightning crawled across Calverius’ golden mortis armour. It wreathed his limbs and formed a crackling halo about his skull-shaped war-helm. In one hand he gripped the haft of his reliquary staff, and in his other he held a sigmarite hammer, its head marked with the runes of life and death. ‘Not that I mind the exercise, you understand, but I would like to believe we are making some form of progress, even if your strategy does not call for it.’

Orius grunted. There were still many miles between the Adamantine and the Mandrake Bastion, and with every palisade they toppled, the enemy seemed to redouble in strength. But he had expected that – he’d fought the Bloodbound before. He knew that they favoured attack over defense to a monomaniacal degree, and that the only way to break them fully was to blindside them. To that end, he’d dispatched the Angelos retinues of the Adamantine, led by Kratus, the chamber’s Knight-Azyros, to catch the enemy unawares. Kratus would assault what few forces had been left to guard the Mandrake Bastion, even as Orius and the rest of the chamber distracted the bulk of the foe. ‘You disagree with my plan, Lord-Relictor?’

Moros chuckled. ‘No, my Lord-Celestant. Merely making an observation.’ He raised his staff. ‘The palisade draws close. And it appears Tarkus has beaten us there, as ever.’

Orius peered towards the palisade and saw a number of Liberator retinues racing ahead of the rest of the chamber. They followed the gleaming figure of Tarkus, Knight-Heraldor of the Adamantine, as he chopped himself a red path through the enemy. As they watched, Tarkus raised his battle-horn and blew a bellicose note, exhorting his brethren onwards towards the gates and the palisade.

‘He was ever eager to take the fight to the foe,’ Orius said, annoyed. Tarkus was as brave and fierce as a Gryph-hound, but seemed to lack a single iota of that animal’s common sense. More than once, the Knight-Heraldor had found himself ahead of his brothers, alone amongst the enemy. Yet even so, he persevered. Where his horn sounded, victory soon followed.

‘We should join him, unless we wish to be left behind,’ Moros said.

‘And so we shall. Galerius, to the fore,’ Orius said. The heavily armoured shape of the Knight-Vexillor of the Adamantine pushed his way through the marching Protectors, the battle-standard of the chamber clutched in one gauntlet. ‘Moros, you and your warriors are with me – we shall join Tarkus. Galerius, lead our brethren forward.’

Galerius nodded. He raised the battle-standard of the Adamantine high, so that the celestial energies which crackled about it were visible to the eye of every Stormcast. Liberators moved forward at his signal, shields held at a steep angle as they ascended towards the palisade. Judicators followed them, firing over their heads in an attempt to drive the Bloodbound back. As the bulk of the chamber’s forces continued their steady ascent, Orius and Moros led their Paladins forward, clearing the way as they had before.

The Bloodbound were in full retreat now. All but the canniest of the bloodreaver chieftains had fallen, and those who remained were bodily dragging their warriors away from battle. Even as he fought his way towards them, Orius saw the crude gates rise on ropes of woven scalp-hair and brass chains, pulled up by savage tribesmen at the bellowed command of a bulky, lash-wielding warrior. Bloodreavers flooded out of the gates, howling war-songs as they trampled their own retreating comrades. Brutal duels broke out amid the carnage as chieftains and tribesmen clashed, fighting for survival.

The Decimator retinues waded into the madness, cleaving the combatants apart with broad strokes. Soon, the remaining bloodreavers were streaming back through the gates, their berserk courage broken. Orius picked up speed, running now as the gates began to close. Jagged spears and crude javelins, crafted from bone and wood, pelted from the top of the palisade, splintering against sigmarite armour. The Bloodbound had little liking for such weapons, but they employed them when necessary.

Even as he reached the palisade, the gates thumped down with finality. There were still some bloodreavers left on the slope, but they were isolated and easily picked apart by his warriors as they advanced. Tarkus met him at the palisade, his armour streaked with gore and ash, but his enthusiasm undimmed.

‘Unwelcoming lot aren’t they, my lord?’ he called, ignoring the chunks of stone and bone-tipped spears that rained down around him. ‘I’ve half a mind to blow this filthy nest of theirs right over.’

‘If memory serves, you got the last one,’ Moros said. He lashed out with his reliquary, smashing a javelin from the air.

‘And so? Am I not the herald? Is that not my duty, Lord-Relictor?’ Tarkus said. A chunk of volcanic rock bounced off his helm.

Orius waved Moros to silence. ‘It is your duty to announce us, Knight-Heraldor. Blow your horn and let them know we are soon among them.’ He motioned the paladin retinues to the fore. As the Liberators raised their shields over their heads to absorb the rain of rocks, javelins and spears, the heavily armoured Retributors and Decimators ploughed forward. He looked at the Lord-Relictor. ‘Moros, yours is the honour this time. Open the gate, O Master of the Celestial Lightning. Let them know the fury of the power aetheric.’

Moros whirled his staff about and slammed the sigmarite ferrule down against the hard black stones. As he did so, he spoke, fiercely and fast, firing the words as if from a skybolt bow. They shivered on the air as they left his lips, and Orius felt the power of them reverberate through him. The Lord-Relictor was calling upon Sigmar, and such a thing never failed to invigorate those Stormcasts who heard it. The glow about him grew brighter and brighter. With a roar that shook the ground, an immense bolt of lightning punched through the palisade, ripping away the gate and much of the wall besides. Dust filled the air, and the Stormcasts moved immediately to take control of the gap.

Decimators and Retributors widened the smoking hole, smashing aside burning bones and sections of charred stone so that the Liberators could step forward, shields locked. They formed a shield wall before the gap, marching forward slowly so as to make room for the other Stormcasts. The bodies of those Bloodbound unlucky enough to be too close to the gates when Moros shattered them lay scattered all around, and any survivors were quickly dispatched as the Stormcasts moved into the palisade.

As the smoke cleared, Orius saw that the Bloodbound had built their fortress on the plundered remains of hundreds of barrows. Savage altars of brass and iron, spewing red smoke, had been set up beneath primitive stone monoliths. These enormous pillars were covered in the hateful runes of the Ruinous Powers. Standards and daemonic icons had been stabbed into the rocky soil in haphazard fashion, and their number stretched back up the slope as far as the eye could see. Bodies hung from some of these – flayed, burned and broken by the savage tribesmen who even now gathered beneath them. Croaking carrion birds perched on iron crossbeams, pecking at human wreckage or watching silently from atop the monoliths.

‘Thus does the Blood God claim his killing fields,’ Moros murmured. Bloodreavers crept through the forest of icons and hanging bodies, chanting the name of their foul god. Larger shapes moved behind them – not blood warriors, but something else, something worse. Huge mutation-scarred warriors, clad in heavy half-plate the colour of freshly spilled blood, loped forward, smashing aside icons and any bloodreaver too slow to get out of their path.

‘Skullreapers,’ Tarkus muttered. ‘The head hunters of Khorne.’ Then, with a laugh, he added, ‘They must have heard we were here.’

Past the skullreapers, Orius saw a heavy-set figure standing on top of a crumbled barrow, exhorting the bloodreavers forward with gestures and the kiss of an expertly applied lash. He was clad in battered armour marked prominently with the rune of Khorne, and wearing a helm made from the split jaw-bone of some savage beast. His flesh was the colour of a fresh bruise and one hand had been replaced by a cruel trident, anchored in the raw, red stump of his wrist.

‘The fat one – I know his kind. A bloodstoker. He’s lashing the others into a frenzy,’ Moros said. ‘They’ll drive us back through sheer momentum unless we break them now.’ Even as he spoke, the bloodreavers began their charge. They came in a howling wave, closing in on the Adamantine shield wall from all directions.

‘Then break them we shall. Set your standard, Galerius,’ Orius said. ‘We shall take not a single step backward. We smash them or they smash us. There will be no retreat. You will hold here until there is nothing left to hold.’

‘Aye, my lord,’ Galerius said, stabbing his standard pole into the rocky ground. ‘Let them come, and break themselves on our shields. None may withstand us.’

The Bloodbound crashed against the shield wall a moment later. Clouds of dust thrown up by their charge washed across Orius and his auxiliary commanders. The rattle of sigmarite meeting brass and iron filled the air.

‘No one seems to have informed our enemies of that,’ Moros said, as he directed his Protectors forward to bolster the shield wall. ‘Then, they seem a fairly primitive lot… Perhaps they simply don’t understand what and who they face.’

‘They understand,’ Orius said, watching as the Liberators locked shields and pressed the enemy back. ‘They know us by now, Moros. See how eagerly they run to us, and how joyfully they accept the gifts we bring.’ He raised his runeblade to point at a howling tribesman. The warrior had managed to clamber over the shields of the Liberators and had fallen behind the shield wall, his body covered in grievous wounds but his fury undimmed. As he struggled to rise, Orius removed his head.

‘Moros, Galerius, hold the line,’ Orius bellowed. ‘Tarkus, with me. Form up. Form up, my brothers – the enemies of all the realms stand before us.’ He gestured with his hammer and the Retributors swung into motion around him as he started forward, Tarkus at his side, leading them forwards. ‘Make a path, brothers,’ he cried, and the shield wall split with a crash of sigmarite. Orius led Tarkus and the others through the gap.

The Retributors struck the bloodreavers like a mailed fist, driving deep into the frenzied bands of tattooed warriors. Bellowing chieftains and clan-champions were broken and cast down by the heavily armoured paladin retinues. Grisly battle standards were shattered and discarded, even as those who sought to defend them were cut down.

‘The fat one is yours, Knight-Heraldor,’ Orius said, swatting a barbarian aside. ‘We shall break them here – you see that they do not get up again.’

Tarkus laughed harshly and blew a fierce note on his battle-horn, rallying his Liberators to him. He plunged towards the bloodstoker, chopping a path through the enemy. It was the Knight-Heraldor’s pleasure, and his duty, to meet the champions of the foe and break them in Sigmar’s name. Orius turned his attention back to the fray. He caught sight of the brass and bone icons of the skullreapers as they made for the Retributors.

Lightning hammer met daemonblade as the two groups slammed together, scattering lesser warriors in their haste. The crack of lightning and the bellowed prayers of the skullreapers filled Orius’ ears as he ducked a wild blow and rose up to ram his runeblade through the chest of one of the murderous berserkers. He forced the skullreaper back, even as his dying foe hammered at his head and shoulders.

Orius tore his blade free in a spray of gore, and spun, narrowly parrying a blow. He brought his foot up between his attacker’s legs and was rewarded with a shriek of pain. He crushed the skullreaper’s head with a blow from his hammer and turned. He saw one of his Retributors stumble as another skullreaper, larger than the rest, battered at the warrior.

The skullreaper’s jagged blade tore through the blessed sigmarite. The Retributor staggered and sank down as a second blow caught him on the back. His lightning hammer tumbled from his hands as he fell to his knees. The hulking skullreaper howled in triumph as his third blow severed the Stormcast’s head from his shoulders.

But the warrior’s glee was short-lived. The Retributor’s body evaporated in a searing bolt of azure lightning, which speared upwards. Stormcasts did not die as others – instead, the fallen returned to Azyr, there to be reforged anew by Sigmar. Our duty began with death, thought Orius as he started forward, and it shall not stay our hand.

The skullreaper staggered, roaring in fury, momentarily blinded by the display. Orius charged forward through the fading motes of blue light that marked his warrior’s fall and drove his shoulder into the skullreaper’s gut. The Bloodbound stumbled back and Orius gave him no chance to recover. His hammer snapped out, catching the maddened warrior in his unprotected throat. Cartilage crunched and the skullreaper bent forward, clawing at his throat. Orius’ runeblade descended, and his foe’s head rolled free of his neck.

The Lord-Celestant turned as he heard the crunch of hell-forged iron on stone. Another skullreaper bounded towards him, a huge headsman’s axe clutched in either hand. Orius interposed his runeblade at the last second, halting the axes’ descent in an explosion of sparks. He staggered back, off-balance. The ashy ground crumbled beneath him, slipping away from his feet as he was forced back against one of the barrows. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Tarkus had reached the bloodstoker. The bloated warrior flailed at the Knight-Heraldor with his lash, but Tarkus pressed forward regardless. Orius grunted and shoved the skullreaper back.

The hulking warrior recovered quickly and hewed at Orius. The Lord-Celestant twisted aside, and the jagged axe tore a gouge in the side of the barrow, ripping it open. Stone crumbled, and ash-stained bones spilled across the ground as Orius surged forward. A flurry of blows drove the skullreaper back, and he gnashed broken fangs in frustration. Orius parried a wild slash with his runeblade and smashed his hammer into the Chaos warrior’s knee, buckling the crimson armour and pulping the bone beneath.

The skullreaper bellowed and staggered. Orius put him out of his misery a moment later, cleaving his skull in two. As he pried his blade free, Orius caught sight of the scattered bones. They were grey and crumbling, rendered thin and hollow by the heat rising from within the crater. He wondered, as he turned away, who they had been. Only the poor and unclaimed of Klaxus were buried on these far slopes, their bones tumbled into hollows and covered in dust and loose rocks.

Sleep in peace, whoever you were, he thought. The storm shall pass you by.

The last of the skullreapers had fallen, his head crushed by a lightning hammer. The remaining Retributors strode over their foes with nary a backwards glance as they pursued the retreating bloodreavers, driving them up the slope. Orius glanced around, taking stock. Moros and Galerius were advancing with the rest of the chamber, toppling the monoliths and shattering the standards left behind by the enemy as they ascended the slope. The Retributors and Decimators would see that the foe did not rally. They would drive them up the slope, all the way to the Mandrake Bastion, if need be. The Bloodbound would turn there and make their stand; Orius was counting on it.

If Kratus was successful, the Adamantine could catch the enemy between the hammer and the anvil and smash them utterly, freeing the Stormcasts to enter the crater-city of Uryx. Then would come battle of a different sort. Not a gruelling ascent into the teeth of the enemy, but house-to-house and street-to-street, a war of increments. The sort of war I’ve fought before, he thought. His grip on his weapons tightened, as, for a moment, he was back in Uryx, leading his warriors in a last desperate bid to unseat the priest-kings. He had failed then. Failed his people, failed Klaxus. But he would not fail now.

Tarkus joined him, carrying the bloodstoker’s head by its scalp.

‘Another for the ash-heap,’ he said, indicating the head. ‘If this is the quality of our foe, I wonder why the Hammerhand had such trouble in the Igneous Delta.’

‘Your arrogance will be your undoing. This is only the beginning,’ Orius said, tapping his hammer against Tarkus’ shoulder-plate in a chastising fashion. ‘We have surprise on our side – the eyes of the enemy are elsewhere. It will not last. When we reach the Mandrake Bastion, you will see the true measure of the foe, unless Kratus is successful.’

‘One can but hope.’ The Knight-Heraldor tossed his grisly trophy aside. ‘Kratus will be there to greet us, Lord-Celestant, of that you may have no fear. And Gorgus, as well. The light of Sigmar shall guide us to victory.’ The Knight-Heraldor lifted his battle-horn and blew a single, sterling note.

‘Let his will be done,’ Orius murmured, as far above the crater rim the black clouds split wide and azure lightning hammered down, again and again. Sigmar be with you, he thought. Then, he raised his hammer and roared, ‘Forward!’

As one, the Adamantine swung once more into motion, as inexorable and inexhaustible as the storm itself.

The stones of the Sulphur Citadel had begun to sweat blood. The stink of it mingled with the bitter stench of the vast sulphuric lake for which the citadel was named, and above which it rose like a gnarled fist of stone. It blighted the air and burnt the flesh of the warriors who climbed the immense porphyry steps of the temple-bastion towards the great gilded dome at the citadel’s summit.

The Sulphur Citadel was composed of hundreds of flat slabs of yellow stone, each larger than the last, rising in a slumped pile from the pale, steaming waters of the lake. These gigantic slabs were encrusted with thick battlements, looming turrets, and immense statues hollowed and shaped from the very stone. The uppermost levels had been carved into a many-pillared palace, from which the priest-kings of Klaxus had ruled.

Now, that palace was home only to monsters and madmen. The blood, and the wind which carried its charnel stink, was a sign. A call to arms. They came in silence, save for the rattle of the panoply of war. Flayed standards, torn raw and dripping from the bodies of captives and enemies, rustled softly in the stinking breeze, and red armour, creased by axe and sword, clattered as they climbed the steps.

Eighty-eight warriors, chosen from among eighty-eight thousand who had followed the Scarlet Lord into Uryx through the Ashen Jungle, ascended the wide steps to the upper bastion as the red sun sank past the horizon, and the pale, orange moon rose to replace it. Some still bled from the wounds which they had taken to earn their place here, while others clutched gory weapons, still wet with the blood of their fellows. Khorne cared not from whence the blood flowed, and neither did they. The bitter wind rose up from the sulphur lake and whipped amongst them as they splashed through the blood cascading down the steps of the citadel.

A war-wind, thought the Scarlet Lord as he ascended the steps at the head of his Gorechosen. It was a familiar thing, though in no way comforting. It was the stink of slaughter, of spilled blood and burning bone; a smell that he who had once been Anhur, Prince of Ytalan, had grown far too fond of. He had been assured by the god he now served that carnage was the coin by which victory was bought. But gods are not to be trusted, only obeyed, he thought. An important lesson, and one best learned quickly and soon by those who bartered their souls to the Ruinous Powers.

He had seen the truth of it on the killing fields of the Furnace Lands as he shed his old life and was born anew from the cauldron of war. Once, he had hoped to fight for his people, but they had turned on him. Now he fought for another – one more demanding than any mortal, but also more appreciative. The gods were not selfish with their gifts.

Then, some gifts are more useful than others, he thought. He had seen other men become beasts, reduced to slavering horrors as the hand of Khorne passed over them. Whatever their form, they battled in Khorne’s name, and that was all the Blood God truly required.

But not all battles were equal. Not all wars were worthy of the name.

He had learned that much, as he carved out his path to glory. Khorne favoured the bold, even in defeat. But victory… ah. Anhur had fought too long and too hard to countenance defeat. He had left a trail of fire and death behind him, but he would accomplish more than simple slaughter before he was finished.

Anhur stopped when he reached the top of the steps, and turned to gaze out over the city he had brought to ruin. Uryx was a labyrinthine maze of walls, palaces and plazas, built within the bosom of the Ashen Jungle, and up along the vast sweep of the crater’s inner slope, to the far northern rim, where the Mandrake Bastion rose wild. The city was a sickle moon of stone and wood, spreading like a stain along the rock face. Untold millions had lived, worked and died here. Generation upon generation had shaped jungle and crater-cliff into something more, something greater… Uryx of the Nine Hundred Pillars, greatest of all the crater-cities, mighty in war, wise in rule – the jewel of Klaxus.

Yes, Uryx had once been the greatest city of Klaxus, supreme among the kingdoms of the crater. Now, thanks to him, it was nothing. He looked down, at the eighty-eight Bloodbound who had followed him across the Bridge of Smoke and up the weeping steps of the Sulphur Citadel, and something in him whispered, Is it as you imagined, Prince of Ytalan? Is this the day you dreamt of, in your long exile?

No, he thought. Once, he had hoped to rule here, wisely and well. But the city was ashes, as were his hopes. Only a single dread purpose remained.

It was something of a relief, frankly.

Behind him, the great stone doors to the palace rose up, taller even than the brimstone gargants of the Flamefields. They were flanked by two immense statues, wrought in the shape of the loathsome toad-dragons which had once claimed the Sulphur Lake for their own, in the centuries before men had come to rule the Ashen Jungles of the Tephra Crater. It had been his ancestors who had slain the beasts and raised up a citadel over their bones.

‘Uryx of the Nine Hundred Pillars,’ he rumbled, as he spread his arms. ‘And not a single one left standing.’ Shrouded in daemonic iron, Anhur made for an imposing figure, even among the barbarous ranks of his followers. His war-plate was the colour of dried blood, as were the frayed silks he wore beneath it. His helm and tattered chainmail were as black as the single-bladed axe he carried easily in one hand. Great flat horns rose from the sides of his helm, and met above his head to form the crooked rune of the Blood God. His free hand rested on the pommel of the sword sheathed at his side.

‘Eight days,’ he said, more softly. ‘Was that all it took?’

Are you disappointed that it took so long… or that it did not take longer? the voice in his head murmured in reply. Is it all that you dreamt it would be, Anhur of Klaxus?

Anhur ignored the voice, stifling it with an ease born of experience. Now was not the time for doubt, only courage. He looked up and saw something vast cross the sky, blotting out the very stars as it passed – a monstrous form, made from smoke and screams and the light of the mad moon, reflected in the blades of the Bloodbound. Clad in baroque armour, his visage that of a snarling war hound, Khorne strode the red road through the burning skies of Aqshy, seeking war, the Allslaughter in his hand and his legions following.

For a moment, Anhur thought that the Blood God had seen him, and he tightened his grip on his axe. He could not say whether it was fear or eagerness which seized him. The moment passed, and he looked down at his Gorechosen – those champions who had proven themselves worthy to fight at his side – and wondered whether any of them had seen the god, as he had. He caught the eye of the hulking skullgrinder, Volundr, and the fearsome warrior-smith nodded. The smouldering anvil he bore turned slowly on its barbed chain as he pulled the links tight, and the weapons of those warriors arrayed behind him glowed briefly.

‘Smell that?’ said Apademak the Hungry, another of the Gorechosen. ‘It’s a butcher’s breeze.’ The looming slaughterpriest stretched his long, scarred arms out, as if to grasp and pull the stench to him. ‘An auspicious omen. Khorne smiles upon us, brothers.’

‘Were you ever in doubt, Hungry One?’ Hroth Shieldbreaker asked. The exalted deathbringer was wide where Apademak was tall, and hairy where the other was smooth. A long beard, plaited with bone and gristle, hung down onto his barrel chest. Weapons of all sizes and shapes dangled from his war-harness, and he fondled them as he spoke. ‘He has blessed us with victories aplenty – even the Bloodwrath himself would have been hard-pressed to breach the crater-bastions of Vaxtl, but we did that in a fortnight.’

‘Aye, brother. Doubt is for the weak. Khorne calls us to the feast, Hroth, and to the feast we must go,’ Apademak said. His smile was a slash of red, his teeth stained the colour of spilled blood. ‘Klaxus is ours, my brothers,’ he said, more loudly. He turned and raised his axe, and a murmur of assent swept through the ranks of the Bloodbound.

‘No, Apademak,’ Anhur said. ‘Klaxus is mine. Even as all of the kingdoms of the Tephra Crater are mine. They are my offering to the Blood God.’ He lifted his axe so that the light of the moon limned the black edge of its wide blade. ‘By this axe, I rule. Do not forget or I shall add your skull to my tally, slaughterpriest.’

‘I meant no offence, my lord,’ Apademak said, with a mocking bow. ‘Take my skull, if it pleases you. I ask only that you mount it upon your shield, so that even in death I might face your foes and ward you from harm.’

Anhur extended his axe and slid the flat of the blade beneath Apademak’s chin. He raised the warrior’s face, and said, ‘Obsequiousness does not suit you, Hungry One.’

Apademak grinned. ‘I am glad to hear it.’

Anhur snorted and stepped back. He looked up. The sky had grown darker. Black clouds pulsed with silent lightning, and the air had grown harsh and clean.

‘A storm, my lord,’ Berstuk, the wildest of his Gorechosen, said. ‘It brings with it the clamour of war. Why do we tarry here, when there is blood to be spilled elsewhere?’ He struck the blood-slick steps with the brass ferrule of his portal of skulls. ‘The enemy is at hand – let us meet him!’ The bloodsecrator was a murderous engine, driven by thought of battles yet to come. His chest-plate was covered in skulls culled from the ranks of the defenders of Vaxtl, Ytalan and Klaxus – heroes and champions all, who had fallen to his ensorcelled axe.

‘We do not tarry, skull-bearer. And our battle is not over. Indeed, it has barely even begun,’ Anhur said. A sudden urgency gripped him, as distant thunder rumbled. The enemy – the true enemy – were near at hand.

Quickly, he led his warriors into the pillared corridors of the Sulphur Citadel. His Gorechosen followed in his wake, leading the rest of his warriors in silent procession, shattered bones crunching beneath their feet. They could feel it as well as he – it was in the air, and the slabbed, bleeding stones they walked upon; it clung to the gore-stained statues which lined the path to the palace’s heart, and bristled in every shadow.

The weirdling pressure grew stronger as Anhur led his warriors into the massive central chamber, where the Klaxian priest-kings had once sat in judgement of heretics and criminals. Now it was an abattoir. Hundreds of bodies were stacked like cordwood in great heaps, and flayed skins hung like tattered banners from the pillars. Skulls had been nailed to every imaginable surface, or else piled high in macabre pyramids. Flies hummed through the air, winding among the pillars in great, serpentine clouds.

As Anhur led his warriors towards the centre of the chamber, bulky shapes revealed themselves, moving purposefully to intercept them. The warriors were bloated mockeries of men, with sagging folds of rotting flesh squeezed into corroded armour. They carried pockmarked blades dripping with pus and stank worse than any battlefield. The blightkings stopped as Anhur raised his axe, and with many a wheeze and groan, sank to their knees.

He strode through the kneeling ranks of the pox-warriors. The chamber floor dipped, descending into a wide, shallow crater. A carpet of stitched flesh covered the bottom of the depression, hiding the intricately carved map of the Tephra Crater and its diverse kingdoms which stretched from rim to rim. Every inch of flayed skin was marked by bloody runes and sigils which caused his pulse to quicken. The flesh-shroud had been crafted from the skins of the last defenders of the citadel, and now it squirmed with potent magic.

But it was what hung above the flesh-shroud that occupied his full attention. Eight immense plates of polished obsidian hovered above the centre of the chamber, suspended in the air by sorcery, rotating with ponderous, machine-like precision. The plates were each as large as the palace doors, but as thin as silk and framed with etched brass, marked with the runes of Khorne. Their slow dance was almost hypnotic, and as each spun in its turn, Anhur thought he could see dim forms and faces pressed to the oil-black surface.

The plates had been shaped by the twisted artisans of the Bale-Furnace, and they had dubbed them the Black Rift. Given their purpose, Anhur thought it as good a name as any. The Furnace-Kings, with all the terrible artifice of their kind, had shaved and chipped the obsidian into polished smoothness, and crafted the brass frames which banded each.

It had taken months to transport the plates across the Felstone Plains from the obsidian fields of the Igneous Delta and then up the crater wall before descending into the jungles within; more than once, they had almost lost them to misadventure or enemy action. The loss of even one would have been disastrous.

Anhur looked around. It was here that the Klaxian noble families had made their final stand, and it was here that he had butchered them, beneath the great gilded ceiling. He gazed up at it, past the obsidian plates. The inner curve of the dome was shaped like a vast, inhuman countenance, bearded and stern. It was duardin work, he recalled, gifted to the first king of Klaxus in those dim, distant days before the coming of Chaos, and shaped like the face of…

‘Sigmar,’ he said, thinking of the lightning he’d seen thrashing about in the clouds.

‘Aye, and a great one for glowering he is,’ a voice said. Anhur laughed harshly. A lean shape, hooded and robed, wearing rusty scraps of armour, joined him in his examination of the dome. ‘He’s been doing it since I started the ritual,’ the hooded shape continued.

Before Anhur could reply, the obsidian began to pick up speed, the plates turning more sharply. The runes etched into their frames began to glow white hot, and the air grew thick and cloying. Anhur could smell rotting meat and brimstone, sour blood and burning bone. The obsidian began to wobble and tilt and there were pinpricks of red within the starless dark. The flesh-shroud began to undulate as if in pain, the stretched and flayed faces of the dead twisting in silent screams.

The blood which stained the stones of the chamber began to bubble, as if something stirred beneath it. Half-formed shapes heaved and splashed, pushing up from below the dried gore, striving towards the light. Brass talons and black horns breached the surface, but only for a moment. A litany of frustrated howls nearly deafened Anhur before fading to nothing, as the blood grew still and calm once more.

‘Pay them no heed, my lord. At the moment, they are not worth the effort,’ the lean figure said as it turned from the slowly spinning facets of obsidian. He threw back his hood, exposing mouldering, cadaverous features. One eye bulged from its socket, a glittering, faceted orb, like that of one of the flies which swarmed about the chamber.

‘Soon, then?’ Anhur said. ‘Will it be soon, Pazak?’

‘It will happen as the gods will, and not a moment sooner,’ Pazak of the Faceted Eye said. The sorcerer looked at Anhur and sniffed. ‘Glaring at me won’t make it happen any faster.’

Anhur’s hand fell to the sword, sheathed on his hip. ‘Careful, Pazak. I spared you once. I shall not do so again if you continue to test my patience.’

Pazak looked at the sword and then at Anhur. ‘And if I thought you would actually draw that sword, I might fear such a threat,’ the sorcerer said. ‘But you have never done so. Even when pressed, you refuse to draw it.’

‘And so? What business is it of yours which weapons I employ?’ Anhur hefted his axe. ‘Shall I test my axe, then? It served to still your tongue well enough in the Alkali Basin, as I recall. Should I finish what I started that day and remove your head in its entirety, rather than simply scratching your throat?’

Pazak threw up his hands in surrender. ‘Forgive me, my lord. It was a silly question, I know. Curiosity has ever been the greatest of my vices,’ he said. Anhur laughed.

‘I doubt that,’ he said. He looked around. ‘Did you know, in all my years here, I never once saw this place for myself. This citadel was barred to all save the priest-kings of Klaxus and their retainers.’

‘And for good reason,’ Pazak said. ‘One can only imagine the havoc you might have caused, had you and your allies gained access to this place and its secrets.’ The sorcerer cocked his head. ‘Then, given that you fled one step ahead of the headsman, I suppose that you caused quite a stir regardless.’

‘I led a rebellion, Pazak,’ Anhur said, watching the facets.

‘A ruckus, then.’ Pazak gave a wheezing laugh. ‘All for the best, I suppose. Victory was achieved, in the end.’

‘We have not won yet.’ Anhur looked at the sorcerer. ‘The storm is on our doorstep, even as we speak.’ Anhur lifted his axe and pointed it at Pazak. ‘We must welcome it,’ he said, and smiled, thinking of the glories to come. Come storm-walkers, come lightning-men, come dogs of Azyr… Come and meet thy doom.

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First published in Great Britain in 2016.
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