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Bride of Khaine

Graeme Lyon

Season of Blood, Year 223 of the Age of Vengeance

I am the broken queen of a broken city.

I sit in my iron throne, in the drab stone chamber at the pinnacle of my tower, and I gaze down through cloudy eyes at the fire and death in the streets below.

‘How dare they?’ I whisper through cracked and broken lips, not for the first time. The nerve of the humans, coming into my city and killing my people. Every druchii in Har Ganeth is mine to kill, in Khaine’s name, not theirs.

I should be down there amongst them, killing the barbarian worshippers of the so-called Blood God and any of my people foolish enough to get between me and them. But I am trapped here. Tonight is Death Night, Khaine’s night, when all across Naggaroth my daughters revel in the worship of the Bloody Handed One, falling upon the unwary and sating their appetites for murder and bloodletting. It is the night upon which I regain my youth and vigour.

For months now, I have been frail, my skin like parchment and my bones brittle. I am swathed in furs, like many of the savage northmen below, to stave off the cold that chills me to my core. My hair is dry and greying, my vision clouded, my joints arthritic. That is why I am not down there killing. But in just a few hours, the moons will rise and I will bathe in the Cauldron of Blood. I will be strong again, and I will seek revenge upon all that stand in my way.

I focus on the scrying mirror before me, trying to ignore the hideous reflection that lurks behind the images of carnage. The scene shifts, following my thoughts and seeking a single figure. Seeking my champion.

‘My champion…’

The words were as a whisper on the breeze, but they burned through Tullaris Dreadbringer’s mind with the force of a hurricane. He swung the First Draich, carving through the tattooed torso of a northern savage, and murmured a prayer in reply to the deity who spoke to him. Khaine’s words proved that the god was pleased with the night’s bloodletting – as he had been every day of these past few weeks. Since the Bloodied Horde had fallen upon Har Ganeth, many souls had had been given unto the God of Murder’s embrace.

Tullaris turned, driving his draich into the throat of a heavily armoured human warrior and tearing it out with a spray of blood. As the daemon-worshipper fell, a pair of goat-headed beastmen, grotesquely furred and clutching crude, broad-bladed axes, took his place. One leapt at the Herald of Khaine, its axe held high. With a quick chop, Tullaris broke the wooden haft of the axe and sliced through the beastman’s wrists with the return stroke. The creature fell back, bleating in agony, while its fellow struck from behind the Executioner, aiming a blow at his neck.

Tullaris ducked beneath the clumsy attack and lashed out, but the creature evaded the attack, moving faster than the Executioner would have deemed possible for such a hulking brute.

‘Impressive, for a savage beast,’ he breathed, swinging out an armoured elbow and catching the Chaos-tainted creature in its throat, crushing its windpipe. It dropped its axe and clutched at its ruined neck. Tullaris turned slowly, driving the point of his draich into the blood-soaked ground and pulling his dagger from its sheath on his belt. As the beastman choked and gasped, the Executioner carved the rune of Khaine into its chest, each stroke slow and precise. It looked up at him, and he marvelled that such barely sentient creatures could be a threat to the lands of men. The weak lesser races were truly pathetic.

‘You wonder why I do this, beast,’ he said. He knew it would be unable to understand him, but standards had to be maintained. ‘Were you an elf, I would use the First Draich to do this. But you are not worthy of that blade, the first to be blessed by Khaine himself when my order was founded.’

Finishing the last stroke, he watched the beastman’s blood well up in the shape of the sacred sigil. He wiped his dagger on the creature’s filthy fur, replaced it in its sheath, and bent close to the asphyxiating warrior.

‘No, you are not worthy, scum, but it amuses me to deny your soul, such as it is, to your dark masters. By this mark are you branded as Khaine’s. And when you die, you will belong to him, not to whatever Ruinous Power that drives you. Understand what an honour has been given to you, and how little you deserve it.’

The beastman clawed frantically at Tullaris’s breastplate. He let it. There was nothing it could do to him. He watched it until the light went out of its eyes.

‘Lord Khaine,’ he whispered, ‘I send you this meagre offering, the first of many, on your night, Death Night. Let this be a sign of the compact between us, and lend your strength to me. Let the murders I commit this night be in your name and for your glory.’

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