‘Khorne smiles upon me,’ Ahazian murmured. Perhaps the Blood God had sent him one last gift, before he left this place. Or perhaps they’d seen a lone rider and not realised his true nature until it was too late. Either way, he had little patience for such obstructions. He was close to the end of his quest. The Road of Blades called out to him, and he would not falter now.
Bored, he slammed his weapons together and glared at the circling horsemen. ‘Come on then. I am Ahazian Kel, scion of the Ekran, and I walk the Eightfold Path. I have no time for cowards.’
As if his words were a signal, a horseman screamed and galloped towards him, drawing a sword as he did so. Ahazian turned to meet him. He slammed his shoulder into the horse’s chest, and swept its front hooves out from under it with his skullhammer. Thick bones snapped, and the scaly creature fell with a scream that was almost human. His goreaxe slammed down, shearing through the fallen rider’s blade and the head behind. An arrow smacked into the small of Ahazian’s back, and he whipped around. He smashed aside a lance that sought his midsection, and removed its wielder’s arm for good measure.
He killed two more before the rest broke. The Caldera retreated, leaving him standing over the corpses of their fellows. ‘Perhaps your folk are not so foolish as all that, eh?’ he asked, looking down at one of the dead men. ‘They know when they are beaten, at least. Unlike my own.’ His amusement faded, as he silenced a wounded horse. He crushed the beast’s head, and let his skullhammer drink in its blood.
He looked around. The Black Grasses were exactly what their name implied — a steppe, covered in tall, blackened grasses, rustling in a hot wind. And beyond them, limned in the red light of the setting sun, the ruins of Caldus. Caldus, where the ancestors of the Calderan clans had made their final stand against the armies of the Bloodbound, before being scattered to the winds. ‘And here you are, standing against one of us again,’ he said to one of the corpses, laughing. ‘Perhaps you are a foolish people, after all.’
It was Caldus he had come to find. Caldus and what lay beyond it — the Road of Blades. The road to his destiny. Khorne had called him, and Ahazian Kel had come.
There were no more kels. Just him. There were no more Ekran, save in the armies of the Bloodbound. And all their works had been cast into the fire with them. That was the price one paid, for defying Khorne. And yet… and yet. Khorne prized defiance, even as he punished it. To fight was to earn Khorne’s blessings. And for a kel, there was only battle. To wage war, one must become war. That was the truest adage of the Ekran. Masters did not matter. Armies and nations were but distractions to the purity of war.
Ahazian Kel, last hero of the Ekran, sought to become war itself. But for that, he required greater weapons than those he currently wielded, weapons which could only be found in the Soulmaw. The goreaxe stirred in his grip, as if the thought had angered it. ‘I killed your first wielder to claim you,’ he said, chidingly. ‘There is little difference, that I can see. You discard masters, and your masters discard you. That is the fate of all weapons.’
The wind brought a scent to him. He tilted his head, taking it in. Old blood. Rust. Hot metal. The Road of Blades was close. He set off through the grasses, already forgetting the men and beasts he’d killed. The walk was long, but his endurance was inhuman. Gone were the days of honest sweat and aching muscles. He was like a blade, honed to perfection. A killing edge that would never dull, no matter how many lives he took.
He would never bend, until he broke. Such were the blessings of Khorne.
The distant ruins of Caldus grew larger — broken towers of basalt and feldspar rose above crumbling walls of blazestone. He saw the remains of a massive gateway, its ancient gilt work long since stripped from it by scavenging clans and treasure seekers. Where once the clans of the Caldera had lived and toiled, now only beasts dwelled. The Children of Chaos eagerly occupied whatever mankind abandoned, and warred amongst themselves for control of the ashes. That too was the way of Khorne. Only the strong survived.
The grasses grew thin, and soon disappeared entirely. A scar stretched across the plain, from the baroque portcullis of the city gate to a point just out of sight. It was as if some great blast of heat had scoured a path, burning away the grasses and leaving behind… what?
Weapons. Sourly amused, he realised that it was not called the Road of Blades without cause. Swords, mostly. But some axes. Spear blades. Arrowheads. The weapons had twisted in the heat, melting together into a flat ribbon as wide as several men. Ahazian studied them, trying to calculate the number of blades needed to craft such a pathway. They rattled softly, in their captivity, as if unseen hands were trying to pry them up. He had not noticed the sound before, but now, it was all he could hear. Metal squealed against metal. Pommels thumped.
A road of fire-warped weapons. ‘How fitting,’ he said. The weapons stilled at the sound of his voice, and he tensed, his instincts screaming a warning. But he saw no enemies. Only the ashes of the defeated, still drifting above their blades. That was the story told around the campfires of the Bloodbound. Of proud Caldus, and its fall, and how one of the Forgemasters of Khorne had taken the weapons of those who died in the city’s defence and made from them a road of blades. A road that was but one of eight. Eight roads for eight realms, all leading to the same place… the Soulmaw. The great smithy-citadel of Khorne, where the weapons of mortals and daemons alike were crafted by the Forgemasters and their servants. It extended outward from the Brass Citadel through all realms, for wherever there was war, there was a need for weapons. Its forges were fired by the flames of a dying sun, and its ever shifting ramparts swelled and contracted to the drumbeat of eternal battle.
Ahazian stepped onto the road. The weapons shifted beneath his feet, and he paused, waiting. It was said, in some war camps, that only the worthy could walk the road and survive. But then, that was said of most things of this sort. But Ahazian knew that all of existence was but a test of worth. Every breath, each step — all a test.
He turned and squinted into the distance. The red sun was setting, casting crimson shadows across the steppes. There was a haze, far ahead of him. A shimmering heat-sign. That was where he must go. The Soulmaw awaited him, like a promise yet to be kept. He strode towards it, following the curve of the road.
Ahazian could not say when he had first heard of the legendary smithy-citadel of Khorne. It was there, the savages of the Ashdwell whispered, that the weapons of the gods themselves were forged — even Warmaker, the Blood God’s great two-handed sword. Weapons such as those he desired. Those he deserved. Others contended that even the deep forges of the Furnace-Kings were but puny shadows of the Soulmaw, though he knew of none who had ever seen it and lived to tell the tale.
Like much of what he knew of the gods and their realms, it was all stories told at a remove, passed down from one warrior to another. And all of these stories might be true, or none of them at all. The gods, he knew, were vast, and contained multitudes — daemons and lesser spirits — all bound to the will and whim of their patrons.
Perhaps it was one of those multitudes that had sent him the signs and portents which had set him upon this path. He had seen the silhouette of an anvil in the blood smear of a dying orruk, and read strange sigils carved on the splintery insides of an Ashdwell sylvaneth. A flock of carrion birds had followed him for eight days, and croaked the name of Caldus to him at the eighth hour of each day. In red dreams, he had witnessed a titanic shape, wolf-fanged and mighty, striding through the heavens, and heard a voice, tolling like a bell. It had called out to him, commanding him to travel alone across the Furnace Lands, through the Felstone Plains and to the steppes of the Caldera. And he had done so.