In spite of his survival, something had changed. He felt it in the shimmering heat of the air, heard it in the deep rumble of thunder overhead and beheld it in those who had come with the lightning, cast upon the storm.
For a time, after the battle, he had drifted in and out of a black daze in which his dreams were dark. Far from being restful, his torpor was a fitful sleep and wracked by paroxysms. His eyes opened, flickering in palsy against the sun, as something he had not felt in many years formed into being.
Defeat.
And with that realisation came the Blood God’s rage, urging Khul to his feet and fuelling limbs driven to the brink of exhaustion by the one known as the Hammerhand, a man resurrected, reborn, a man Khul should have killed decades before…
‘Vendell Blackfist… Vandus…’
As he muttered the name of his nemesis, he became aware of scavengers rummaging through the corpses, taking their fill of flesh, and soon they became aware of him.
The Igneous Delta looked as it had when Khul had fallen, a stinking, lava-strewn plain of scorched black rock. Only now it was his fellow Goretide that were coming for him, not the golden warriors from before.
Far from being cowed by Khul’s revival, the bloody chieftains and champions who prowled the dead saw a unique opportunity.
It was the way of the Bloodbound. The only road to Khorne’s throne was to climb a pyre of skulls.
Five warriors surrounded Khul, each with an axe or blade. They circled slowly, murderous ambition in their eyes, especially when they saw Khul was unarmed.
Khul grinned, exposing sharp, angular teeth. Through the eyeholes of his skull-faced helm, the world had turned a visceral red. He clenched his fists until the knuckles cracked.
‘Come then, take your chance and let’s see who Khorne favours.’
With a roar, the scavenging chieftains attacked.
A bearded brute of a warrior went first, swinging wildly with his axe. Khul deftly caught the chieftain’s wrist, fending off an overhead blow before pulling the warrior down, wrapping a muscular arm around his neck and snapping it. Before the chieftain hit the ground, Khul had taken his axe and embedded it in the chest of the second warrior. In a welter of gore, Khul wrenched the blade loose and flung it into a third aggressor, pitching him off his feet, the axe haft protruding from his face.
Three slain in as many breaths gave the other two pause. It was a momentary hesitation, yet ultimately fatal. Khul bellowed and charged, and the fourth chieftain hacked at him, but his sword only ate into the meat of Khul’s forearm, shearing through the armour and holding fast. Seizing the champion’s ruddy beard, Khul head-butted him until his faceplate cracked and then the bone beneath. The chieftains’ body capitulated, his legs buckling like broken reeds. Khul snatched up his sword.
As the champion fell, Khul was left facing the last attacker.
‘You’re thinking this was a mistake,’ Khul told him, his chest heaving up and down with barely restrained fury, his skin drenched in blood. ‘It was, but if you bare your neck I will make it fast.’
Eyes wide and suddenly unsure, the chieftain adjusted the grip on his axe and then looked to the weapon Khul had taken from one of the others. Blood dripped off the blade.
With a sudden movement, Khul lunged forwards and cut off the chieftain’s head. Then he butchered his flesh until nothing remained but a red ruin.
‘No place for the weak,’ he slurred, half drunk on rage, ‘at the foot of Khorne’s throne.’
Slamming the sword into the ground, he went to retrieve his axe. Its voice echoed in his skull, drawing his attention as it demanded for its bloodlust to be slaked.
‘Aye,’ Khul muttered to the axe, wrapping his meaty fist around the leather haft, ‘you’ll have your fill.’
He regarded the five corpses and began the grisly work of taking the heads and flensing them of all flesh and muscle.
After a short while, five bloody skulls stared at him through hollow eyes, their rictus grins suggesting they were much happier in death than they had ever been in life. Khul stacked them one atop the other, erecting a slaughter shrine so he might convene with his god.
As he ate the defeated chieftains’ flesh, he grinned, as if listening to words only he could hear, for the plains were almost silent. Then he heard a sound, one that emanated from the corporeal world. Strips of skin and sinew hanging from his teeth, Khul looked up sharply.
His axe was already in his hand as a daemonic hound sloped out from amongst the bodies.
‘Grizzlemaw…’ uttered Khul, both greeting and curse at the same time.
The beast had gorged itself, its mouth a ruby red from the feast. It was looking intently at Khul, deciding whether it should attack. Scenting Khorne’s favour, it relented and padded to its master’s side.
Khul seized it by the neck, despite the hound’s monstrous size.
For a moment the beast resisted, but Khul would not be denied and it heeled before his dominance.
‘You are mine, creature,’ he hissed to the beast, and heard it growl in acquiescence.
In the distance, Khul heard chanting. He smelled roasting flesh and saw the glow of immense fires on the horizon. A gathering of his warriors.
‘The feast is over,’ Khul murmured to his hound as he released it. ‘War calls.’
He snarled, his rage still molten at his defeat, but smiled through his clenched teeth at the prospect of a fight and an adversary most worthy.
The stronghold was close.
‘I shall take your skull, Vendell Blackfist,’ Khul whispered as he headed northward, ‘and then… ascend.’
Chapter Five
Bringers of the storm
Ithar cried out in agony. Ionus Cryptborn carefully but firmly placed his hand over the stricken warrior’s forehead to stifle his anguish. A mote of healing celestial magic entered the Retributor, but did little more than ease his pain. It would take more than this to sustain his life.
‘Be still, brother,’ Ionus whispered, one eye on the skies in the hope of seeing Sturmannon’s Prosecutors return.
Ithar’s heavy sigmarite armour was badly torn and rent. Huge grooves had been carved through the gilded breastplate and into his flesh. Bones had been shattered, organs pierced. In places, the flesh was burned. Though paladins were the hardiest of the Stormcast, they were not invulnerable. Ithar teetered on the brink, his stony-faced Retributor-Prime looking on.
‘Will he live?’ asked Theodrus, hefting his lightning hammer meaningfully. ‘Or is mercy all we have left to give him?’
Ionus raised his hand for calm.
‘I need a moment longer, Theodrus,’ he told him, returning to his ministrations.
It had been an ambush. Eighteen souls badly bloodied by a hunting pack of khorgoraths.
Ever since parting ways with the Lord-Celestant, Ionus’s chamber had been attacked at every turn. Monsters and peril were ubiquitous in these lands, it seemed. After a hard march, they had reached sight of their objective, a looming tower of brass. As the paladins had led the column through a narrow defile in a forest which bore blades instead of leaves on its trees, the khorgoraths had struck.
The four warriors who had lost their heads to the beasts were gone, with only ribbons of corposant to mark their passing. The rest had lived, but were brutally wounded. Now, Ionus had to try and keep them alive. They would need every hammer in the battle to come.
So far, he had managed to save all but two. Ithar was the last.
‘Sigmar…’ he intoned in a sepulchral voice. ‘O Lord of Azyr, Master of the Storm…’ Ionus clenched the relic hammer, holding it aloft as he let go of Ithar’s mouth with his other hand and gently placed it upon the warrior’s chest. His reliquary-icon stood nearby, driven into the earth. The skeletal totem bound to it, a sword in its bony fingers as it hung in silent repose, looked on as if in judgement. Ithar’s golden mask was lying next to it, split from crown to chin.