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The Solace of Rage

Guy Haley

In a castle fashioned from crystal, a weaver of destiny worked.

He, she, it – who could tell? None knew if the sorcerers had once been mortal or were daemon made. There were nine, or there were one, or there were both one and nine. In all things, including their number, they were mysterious. Or so they had meant to be.

The Many-Eyed Servant was one of the names of the nine, and it applied in this instance to a tall, skeletal figure, impossibly thin, with limbs like reed stalks and a body to match. Atop a strand of a neck balanced a broad head, disturbingly smooth and featureless save for a line of eyes along its ridge. A body of this sort was nought but a garment, and not the most important that it had occasion to wear. In this form, the Many-Eyed Servant’s cloak defined it, name and nature – a long covering made of eyelids that fluttered and blinked, from behind which moist eyeballs of every hue peered out curiously.

The Many-Eyed Servant dabbled long fingers in a pool of steaming quicksilver, flicking through the images it conjured there. Scenes of war. All the realms were in uproar with the coming of Sigmar. From time to time, it stopped to examine this hero or that, emitting a gentle purr of satisfaction when it saw one worthy of note, clucking in annoyance at those who disrupted its carefully placed webs of cause and effect. Once it had toyed with individuals of this type for its own ends. The Many-Eyed Servant had spent long lifetimes of men twisting the threads of fate into pleasing patterns – but no longer.

There was a tightness around its spindly limbs, chains of fate that were not of its making. Once it had been merely the Many-Eyed, but then Archaon had learned its one true name, and forced upon it the role of servant. Now it was bound to the Everchosen’s purpose, along with all its siblings.

The facets of the Many-Eyed Servant’s lair darkened along with its mood. Displayed by sorcerous means in panes of crystal were images of its eight counterparts. A few worked in their own dens, each a sanity-testing place conjured by the architect’s ineffable whims. Others were abroad in the realms, doing the bidding of their master. Wherever they were, they looked up as one at the Many-Eyed Servant’s pique and scolded him, wary lest Archaon’s attention be directed toward them. The Many-Eyed Servant hunched its shoulders and turned its back upon them. The others were overly concerned by Archaon. If Tzeentch learned of their bending to the Everchosen’s will, the displeasure of the Changer of the Ways would make Archaon’s worst wraths seem as nothing. Nevertheless, although the Many-Eyed Servant would not admit it was afraid of their current lord, it returned to its scryings, compelled by dread and duty.

Archaon demanded champions, and so the Many-Eyed Servant looked for them in every realm.

In the Realm of Beasts, there was a prairie of such extent it had no single name, a landscape that a man could not cross in the space of a single life. Stretching for thousands of leagues, the plains encompassed mountains and seas, forests and mighty canyons, but for the most part they comprised grassland of rich and infinite variety. Great beasts walked there, their horns as high as the crowns of trees. Men hunted them, as bewildering in the profusion of race and tribe as the beasts themselves were in variety.

The Bloodbloom Fields were found on these plains. The grasses were red, and its flowers crimson. The partly fossilised ribcages of animals of impossible size studded the scarlet, higher than cathedrals, their breastbones covered in patches of woodland that trailed long creepers earthward. Their eyeless skulls were osseous mesas, the phalanges of their paws greying crags.

At the time of the Bloodbloom’s breeding, when the wind blew just so, the flowers opened and spat their pollen to be carried far and wide. The flowers sang for days during this season. Individually, the voices of the flowers were almost too quiet to be heard, but the sound of millions together created a musical sighing that gave the Bloodbloom Fields its other name, the Singing Steppes.

These were rich lands, well populated with beasts and tribes. Even at the close of the Age of Chaos when Sigmar’s warriors rained down from the heavens with wrath in their hearts and lightning in their hands, there remained free people of the plains who had survived the terrible centuries. They were hunted because of it, for the gods loathe freedom above all else, but they survived.

It was to this place that the Many-Eyed Servant’s attention was drawn. Its restless fingers paused in their fretful dibbling, the ripples on the silver stilled. The image sharpened, and it leaned in closer.

Upon the Bloodbloom Fields was assembled a host of men. These were the Bloodslaves, the horde of Lord Kalaz the Hewer. The name came to the Many-Eyed Servant immediately. In ordinary times they moved restlessly across the plains, cutting a swathe across grass, herd and nation alike. Not today. Rank after rank of blood warriors and bloodreavers were arranged in a hollow circle atop a hill of stacked, gargantuan bones. To the north, the greying faces of the bones made cliffs twenty yards high; to the south, the hill sloped down gently to the plain. Atop this plateau, black and bronze armour gleamed in a sultry morning hazed by pollen.

Around the hill, the scorched marks of the Bloodslaves’ hundred campfires pitted the red with black. A broad road of crushed flowers stretched over the horizon, marking their passage to this place of battle. A trampled field of torn earth and dark bloody stains bore silent witness to the great slaughter that had been done there the prior day. Eight cairns of fresh skulls, still pink from flensing, ringed the site, all that remained of the Heyeran people.

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

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