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TEN SKULLS

Josh Reynolds

Baron Aceteryx, former warden of the Scorian Bastion, held up his raw and glistening gauntlet, forestalling any sound or movement on the part of the warriors who crouched around him in the rain. Formerly warriors of the elite Scorian Guard, they had once been pledged to stand watch along the ancient bastion for which they’d been named. Now, like their master, they were pledged to the service of the Blood God.

Like him, too, they were all clad in oozing, scabrous armour, mystically crafted from the muscle and meat of their murdered kin. A sign of betrayal and godly favour, all in one. The armour wept blood, but was as hard as iron. They waited, spread out over the root-encrusted rooftop overlooking the square below, ignoring the pelting rain and the clutching growths which squirmed beneath them.

With the winged scouts of the foe distracted by Phastet and her savages, Aceteryx and his blood warriors had taken to the rooftops lining the Avenue of Ten Skulls. Here and now, in the Square of Four Fangs, they would strike and cut the Stormcast advance in two. More of his warriors crouched ready and waiting across the avenue for the signal to attack. But they would not wait for long. It had been too long since they had collected the skulls of the foe.

Aceteryx knew well how they felt. It had become a hunger in him. A need greater than any he’d ever experienced. It took all of his concentration to remain calm at moments like this. Then, he thought with bitter humour, I’ve never been one to take the cautious path. He rubbed his breastplate, smearing the blood with an unconscious gesture as he watched the Stormcasts troop past in formation.

Their column had spread out, with the vanguard moving ahead, and the bulk of the warriors marching more slowly behind. Berkut and the others would handle them. But this smaller force was his. It was moving to support those Stormcasts still battling Apademak’s cannibals farther back along the avenue. The foe had stretched themselves thin, hoping to maintain their momentum without abandoning their slower elements or endangering their control of the central thoroughfare. Not enough warriors, not enough time, he thought, in amusement. They were overconfident, or simply desperate.

Either way, they are our prey, Aceteryx thought, and smiled beneath his skull-faced helm. He reached up and stroked its contours – it had been his brother’s skull, and it was his brother’s scalp that adorned it as a crest. His brother had been prey as well. Weak, and fit only for the butcher’s block. All of his kin had been weak. Too weak to survive in a world fit only for predators. Eat or be eaten, he thought.

That was why he had done it, in the end. They had held out for so long, throwing back every invader who dared attempt to take the Scorian Bastion. Even as the lands the bastion had been built to protect flared out like dying campfires in the dark, consumed by the storm of Chaos that engulfed the kingdoms of the Felstone Plains, the folk of the bastion had held. Aceteryx had held. And what had it gotten him?

Nothing. Every battle, every assault, wore him down a bit more. More empty places in the line, more cracks in the wall, more wailing, useless peons, weeping for fallen sons and daughters. As if tears would bring them back. As if despair would fill the cracks in the stones and repair shattered shields and chipped blades. The only respite was in battle.

It had begun to weigh on him, like the ache of a wound that never healed. That ache was still there, but at least now he could lose himself in the joy of slaughter. He could bathe in gore, worrying about nothing save his tally of skulls. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, carved from his wife’s femur. He could almost hear her voice as he gripped it. Her whispered endearments, her choking pleas, her final anguished screams.

Those screams had been Anhur’s price. Victory at the cost of pain, the Scarlet Lord had said. Aceteryx could still remember meeting Anhur beneath a flag of parley. The dull rumble of the Scarlet Lord’s voice as he spoke of what awaited them all, and of the glories that could be theirs, if they but opened the bastion. Of a life without despair, and a chance to be something greater than the last baron of a forgotten fortress in a burning world.

And now I am Gorechosen, he thought. Now, his foot was on the stair to the greatest glories of all. Apademak had spoken of Anhur’s weakness, as had Redjaw and others besides. Murmurs of discontent had swept the warhorde since their retreat from the Hissing Gates. Many had seen Anhur’s gesture of mercy, and few approved of such blasphemy.

The moment of glory that the Scarlet Lord had promised him was near. All that was required of him was to seize the moment, as he had at the Scorian Bastion. And to do so before the others, to cut down Anhur and claim his place for himself.

He rose to his feet, sword and flail in hand. I will be a baron no longer, but a lord – Lord Aceteryx, he thought, liking the sound of it. His blood warriors rose with him, growling in anticipation. He gestured to what he assumed was the leader of the Stormcasts – a tall warrior, clad in baroque raiment and wearing a skull-shaped helm. ‘That one stinks of magic. He is mine,’ he growled. And then, with a roar, Baron Aceteryx leapt from the roof.

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