It was ritualistic. Shamanistic.
Even above the manic fervour of these men, Khul could hear the clangour of industry, the sound carrying across many leagues: the towers.
Forged of hell-brass and studded with the skulls of the unworthy, there were eight of these grim monuments. Each marked a point in the star of Chaos, the eightfold path upon which all worshippers of Khorne trod. And in the middle of that star was the Gate of Wrath.
Daemon blacksmiths and slaves in their thousands had toiled to raise the towers that stretched far across the Brimstone Peninsula. And though they were distant, nearly lost in the palls of unearthly smoke that blighted the sky, Khul felt their malign presence.
Chains that no mortal eye could perceive held the gate in thrall. Each was made not from metal, but from deeds. To the far south lay carnage, conquest, massacre and destruction, and to the north, fratricide, dismemberment, cannibalism and butchery.
A slaughterer’s oath, carved out in death and blood, bound each metaphysical chain to one of the eight towers and together kept the Gate of Wrath open.
Even then it struggled against its bondage.
Though he was still mortal, Khul had sight beyond the corporeal realm. He saw how the chains strained to hold their quarry. The tempest, the one creeping across the heavens in brooding thunderheads, the storm that had brought the golden warriors was the cause.
A threat manifested in Khul’s mind. They would come for the gate.
As he stepped into the maddening light emanating from the Gate of Wrath, Khul felt an unquenchable desire surge up from within.
For the first time since he had arrived, he noticed that the bodies being feasted upon were not just the Goretide’s fallen enemies. Many were warriors of Khul’s warband, feeding on their own instead of waging war against the golden warriors.
Khul saw Hrulkar the slaver-king, Goreklad the torturer-lord, Fenskar the skull-collector, Agrik the beast-master… Chieftains and champions all.
‘Weak… wretched…’
A tremor afflicted Khul’s hands. It grew into a tremble that ran up his entire arm. Then he was shaking, every bone wracked by a delirious frenzy that had froth spewing from his mouth.
Through a cage of clenched teeth, Khul spat to his flesh hound, ‘Slake your thirst.’
Several of the bloodreavers closest to their warlord looked up from their revels, their mouths and jerkins spattered and bloody.
‘Behold, Lord of Skulls,’ roared Khul, his voice ululating across the encampment until all had stopped what they were doing to look upon him. ‘A red dawn!’
The first bloodreaver barely had time to cry out as Grizzlemaw leapt and tore out his throat.
Others raised their weapons, at last realising their lord’s madness.
It would not save them. Screaming in rage, Khul tore into the throng with an unstoppable fervour.
The sun blazed overhead like a baleful eye observing the slaughter.
Two against hundreds, but Khul and his hound would not be denied. His savagery caused some to flee. Those who stood their ground were cut down, their heads cleaved. A great many heads, sacrificed unto the altar of Khorne from which all violent acts ultimately stemmed.
And throughout the carnage, the Blood God spoke to his chosen vassal, his voice the roar of endless destruction and the screaming of the damned. Khul gritted his teeth, but his agony was soon usurped by blinding, all-consuming murderlust.
It was a day of blood, a red dawn as Khul had prophesied.
The sun had dipped and grown cold in the black night by the time the massacre was done.
Khul sank to his knees. He shuddered with every laboured breath, driven to the brink of exhaustion by his reaping. Razors, not air, sawed in and out of his lungs. His heart thundered in a raging tattoo. And though his muscles burned and his limbs ached from the immense tally of the dead, he stood and found himself surrounded by a lake of blood.
Countless barbarian heads floated amidst the gore, but it was the reflection of the portal that caught Khul’s attention.
It began innocuously enough, a bubbling foam that rose to the surface of the crimson pool as the foul slick began to boil. Then there was intense heat and the stench of dying things, of burned metal and offal, the reek of a furnace.
Something stirred within the miasma of blood, a disturbance that formed ripples across the lake. Slowly, inexorably, a horn jutted forth from the congealed blood. It curved into a hook, black as sackcloth and wet like oil.
Khorne’s foot soldier blinked as it became corporeal, rising slowly. Khul saw the chain it had used to gain passage into this realm, and he heard snapping bone as the daemon’s hooves crushed the skulls from the Blood God’s endless battlefield underfoot.
To those untouched by Chaos, the bloodletter would have simply appeared to rise as if the lake was as deep as an ocean. Khul knew it was fathomless and he also knew that no daemon of Khorne could ever manifest in so gentle a fashion. As the summoning required blood and violence, so too did manifestation, and a host of bloodletters had vied for the right to enter the mortal realm. Daemon fought daemon, ensuring a slaughter from which only the strongest could emerge triumphant.
The one before Khul now was the first, therefore it was the mightiest.
The bloodletter was an exemplar of violence given form: bent-back limbed with an elongated snout, and red and iron-hard skin shimmering with heat haze. It bowed, horns dipped in respect but not acquiescence, as its black and hateful eyes regarded the warlord.
‘Are you the one who summoned me?’ it asked in both question and challenge, its resonant voice like metal scraping bone.
Khul nodded, his axe held loosely in his hand.
The bloodletter carried its own weapon. It was forged of no metal known to man or any creature of the Mortal Realms. A hellblade.
‘Then…’ uttered the daemon, as it drank in the slaughter arrayed around it and the offering in blood, ‘…we shall serve.’
The aetheric chains dangling in the pool had no anchor above, but went taut as a horde of bloodletters pulled their bodies forth into reality. Blinking and scenting, their long pink tongues tasted the air. They were not alone.
Hulking metal beasts emerged with them — bloodcrushers, the brass steeds of Khorne. They were no mere mounts; they were monsters. Far larger than any horse, there was something distinctly bullish about them but clad in armour plate stained with the blood of a thousand slain foes. The beasts bayed and growled, smoke exuding from their nostrils, their fell noises metallic and oddly discordant. Even for Khul, it grated on his senses and filled his mind with visions of conquest.
It took only moments for the warlord to have a legion of daemon riders at his command, their dread banners swaying with chained skulls and strips of leathery flesh.
As one, they raised their weapons.
Their leader, one of Khorne’s heralds, saluted with its sword.
‘Name the ones we are to murder,’ it rasped, its blood-cinder breath tainting the breeze.
‘Vendell Blackfist,’ Khul replied, for Khorne had shown him the army that marched on his towers and the one who was leading it. ‘Devour his vassals, but bring him to me so I can cut off his craven head.’
The herald bowed once more, and the bloodcrushers surged southwards. The earth trembled under the stampede of their mounts and red lightning cut ragged strips into the heavens.
‘Now you shall face a storm, Blackfist,’ said Khul.
His deep laughter boomed louder than the thunder.
Chapter Seven
Towers of brass