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A Tithe of Bone – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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A Tithe of Bone

by Michael R. Fletcher

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

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

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

If he slept at all.

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

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

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

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

Scritch scritch scritch.

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

Scritch scritch scritch.

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

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

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

Palfuss dared say nothing.

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

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

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

‘What do you think, scribe?’

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

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

Palfuss felt the utterance shake his ribs.

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

Head down, Palfuss wrote fast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someone banged on the door, interrupting him.

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

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

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

‘Odd?’ rumbled the Champion.

‘The dead have come, my lord.’

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

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

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

‘Uh…’ offered Palfuss. ‘Destroy?’

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

‘My lord, these aren’t normal dead.’

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

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

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A Black Library Publication

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

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

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-754-5

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