Age of Sigmar: Call of Archaon Read online

  Men stopped to shake the rage from their minds, looking back to Skull. A small group of warriors already gathered themselves around him. Mir strode to Skull’s side atop the knoll, and the trickle grew to a flood, scores of men ranking up into tight blocks about the bony knoll. Mir roared out and men looked to him. He gestured with his axes, and they understood, deploying themselves to his intent without error. Soon five hundred well-blooded warriors stood in readiness. A score of skullreapers came to Mir’s side, all slick with gore. Their skullseeker leader saluted Mir, and they gathered as a bodyguard around him. Then came Orto and Kordos, and the deathbringer’s battle line was complete.

  But many of the Bloodslaves did not heed Mir and instead followed Mathror.

  The wedge of ogors was two hundred yards from Mir’s position. Mathror’s men had broken through their skirmish screen and seethed around the ogor arrowhead. Ogor weapons scythed them down, sickle blades hacking them into bloody chunks. Mathror fared well, slaying all who came against him, but there were always more to replace those felled, and the ogors required great effort to kill.

  Mir looked to the flanks of the horde. The ogors continued to display their cunning. Large beasts were coming through the gates, arraying themselves into battle lines either side of the wedge. Bellowing at their shaggy mounts, the ogors goaded them so that the lines became oblique, facing in towards the leading edges of the wedge.

  ‘They mean to trap Mathror’s warriors between their skilled centre and the beasts,’ said Skull. ‘Should we aid them?’

  The shake of Mir’s head was decisive. Mathror would live or die on his own. Those men that had chosen Mathror could die beside him. They were caught up in battle lust and remained ignorant of the approaching danger.

  Mir’s attention was fixed on a massive ogor at the heart of the wedge. Bigger and even fatter than his followers, he stood a head over the next largest. His thick armour was decorated with gaping mouths inlaid in precious metals, and he carried a massive, two-ended bludgeon whose heads were huge ingots of spiked iron. Mir marked him. This gutlord would fall to his axes, he resolved, a fitting tribute to the god he would eventually slay.

  The last of the ogor elite strode through the portal. The wedge was complete. A number of ogors lifted their hands to their mouths and let out a tremendous hallooing, strangely musical after a fashion, and the others drew themselves up.

  ‘Skargut!’ roared their warlord.

  ‘Skargut! Skargut! Skargut!’ they replied.

  ‘We kill for Skargut! Revenge!’

  That was a sentiment Mir could understand.

  The ogors marched. The rest of Mathror’s supporters were shoved aside as easily as children.

  A second vocal trumpet hooted from the left flank, a third from the right, and the ogor war-beasts lurched into motion, braying loudly, their heavy tread making the ground shake. The war animals broke into a ponderous trot. Shouting their warcries, the riders guided the warbeasts to smash into the horde either side of the wedge, decimating the Bloodslaves. Mathror was confronted by a rearing monster sporting a wide sweep of stony horns, and disappeared under its feet.

  Mir grunted at this with a hint of satisfaction, and turned his attention to the closing ogor elite. He stared at their leader until their eyes met. Mir saluted with his axes. The ogor inclined its head in recognition. The challenge had been accepted. The ogors picked up speed. They came on, guts swaying, shouting deafeningly. As they neared, they raised their weapons over their heads.

  ‘Brace, O bloody men of Khorne!’ shouted Skull. ‘Cast them back!’

  ‘Blood! Blood for Khorne!’ screamed Orto, and brandished his axe over his head.

  Kordos silently wrapped one more loop of chain about his hand and gripped it tightly.

  The ogors’ charge was slow, almost sedate, but when it hit the Bloodslaves’ line it was devastating. With a roaring cry louder than the falling of city walls, the ogors thundered into Mir’s men. Return shouts of ‘Khorne! Khorne! Khorne!’ were cut short as the first ranks of Mir’s Bloodslaves were crushed or knocked flying to land on those behind them. There was a rolling clatter emanating from the point of impact, followed by a second as the ogors’ long hook blades fell, lopping limbs and heads.

  The men of the Bloodslaves were encircled, but they did not fall. Leaning into their adversaries, they pushed back against the great scrum of ogors. Their feet ploughed furrows in the blood-sodden earth as they were forced backward. Men threw themselves at other men’s backs, pushing hard until all the horde strained against the enemy. The ogor wedge penetrated only a little into the massed Bloodslaves. Their line flattened against that of the Chaos warband, and their charge was arrested. Hooked weapons whistled through the air, cutting down three men at a time, and the line buckled, but still the ogors could not force their way through to the bony knoll at the Bloodslaves’ centre. Men leapt up from the rear ranks, lightly armed bloodreavers running along the armoured backs of blood warriors. They screamed dark praise to their bloody god and hurled themselves forward, axes swinging for ogor heads. Dozens fell, split by the ogors’ massive blades, but more came through, planting their axes into piggy faces, or scrambling onto shoulders and stabbing down with serrated knives into the tough muscle of the ogors’ necks. Others leapt for the ogors’ arms, preventing them striking with their weapons. Their fellow warriors saw their chance, and pushed their blades up to the hilt in the ogors’ fleshy bodies.

  With terrible screams and crashes, the ogors began to fall. The Bloodslaves’ horns let out a brazen call, and they surged forward.

  From their vantage upon the bony knoll, Mir, Orto and the rest watched the battle shift. The ogors surrounded them in a long bow. Their war-beasts had done with Mathror’s men and were coming to the aid of the others, but the ogor elite barred their way, and the beasts milled about uselessly behind the main line. The time was right. Mir raised his axes.

  ‘Forward for the glory of Khorne!’ screamed Skull.

  ‘Skulls for the skull throne!’ shouted Skullthief.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God!’ shouted Bloodspite.

  Mir leapt from the knoll, sailing with supernatural might over the heads of his warriors to smash into an ogor. The giant warrior was rocked off his feet by the impact, gaping in surprise at the power of one so small.

  Its face was still wearing that expression when Skullthief swept off its head.

  Mir ploughed on into the ogor elite. Now they were in disarray, not the solid wall Mathror had encountered, and he hacked his way through them. Where they pressed too thickly he leapt at them, pushing off their thick limbs and stout bodies with his legs. Every swing of his twin daemon axes killed another. By his efforts alone he opened a wide gap in the ogor tribe, and his skullreapers came behind him. Massive, mutated men whose Khorne-given strength was a match even for that of the ogors, they widened the gap in the line. Lesser Bloodslaves came in their wake, advancing over a carpet of ogor fat and muscle.

  Mir fought forwards, seeking out the ogor lord. All the while, his open challenge to Khorne played in his head: By each skull I pave the road to your throne, by each step I come closer to vengeance.

  The runes in his punishment band glowed with hellish fire. His flesh sizzled, but he did not stop his blasphemous prayer.

  The last of the ogors between Mir and his target fell, and the ogor lord was before him.

  ‘You! Little man!’ roared the tyrant, pointing a finger fat as a man’s arm. Gobbets of saliva flew from his red mouth. ‘You I kill now.’

  Mir raised his axes to attack. The ogor tyrant swept round his double-ended maul, catching Mir in the chest and slamming him backwards. The ogor’s smile of triumph turned to a snarl as Mir shook off the blow, though his ribs glowed with a swirl of bruises, and blood ran from a deep gouge that showed bone. The tyrant advanced on him.

  ‘I don’t know who you are, twisted one. The Great Ma
w sent us to you, and not to he who slew Skargut, but you will do as an appetiser. Your god killed Skargut the Great, Prophet of the Maw, so we kill you!’ grunted the ogor chieftain. ‘We smash you puny men down, then we eat your livers while you watch.’

  The tyrant spun his maul around with astonishing speed, turning the iron heads into blurs of grey. Mir dodged one, then the second, but the third crashed into his face. Nails tore at his skull as his punishment band took the brunt of the blow. His head reeled, and he went down onto one knee.

  ‘Now you die. I ain’t one for pretty speeches, but I’ll tell you, I’ll kill every one of your bloody kind I see. I should have started long ago. Your god will learn to fear the followers of Skargut!’ The tyrant lifted up his maul, and brought it down towards Mir’s head with a force that would have pulverised the skull of a juggernaut.

  Inches before the impact, Mir swept Skullthief and Bloodspite together onto the bludgeon, shattering it into a thousand spinning fragments of iron that glowed with magical heat. They hissed as they landed on the combatants’ flesh. The ogor roared, overbalanced by the sudden shift in the weight of his weapon. Mir’s unholy vitality drove back the pain of his wounds, and he stepped aside as the ogor stumbled forward. The chief half recovered before Skullthief took his leg off at the knee, and he collapsed to the ground. A hand he raised to protect himself was similarly removed by Bloodspite, who cackled madly as he drank the blood coursing over his blade. Great hot spurts of life fluid pumped from the tyrant’s wrist to drench Mir.

  ‘A curse on you and all your murdering kind,’ spat the ogor chief, before Mir ended him. The deathbringer stooped, picking up the sodden mass of the tyrant’s ruined head, and held it aloft. Its face twitched as Mir roared his incoherent defiance at his divine master.

  The ogors quailed to see their mightiest warrior cut down. The end had begun for them.

  Mir fought his way onwards, butchering ogors wherever he met them. Kordos barged past him, flaming anvil whooshing through the air, each ogor it hit engulfed and flung backwards. They wailed as their copious body fat ignited with the sorcerous fire, turning them into living candles. Danavan Vuul’s barbed whip whirled around his head to strike the Bloodslaves and drive them on, provoking them to greater savagery.

  Many ogors were fleeing back to their gates. The Bloodslaves gave chase. A war-beast, its riders hanging dead in their harnesses upon its back, reared up against Ushkar Mir, threatening to pound him flat. A mad cry answered from the left, and the Bloodslaves’ two khorgoraths leapt at the monster. The beast fell. Mir did not stop to watch as one of the khorgoraths bit the beast’s head off, shattering its great horns in its powerful jaws, and swallowed it whole.

  He ran on. Bodies large and small carpeted the field once more. He fought down his exultation at the slaughter. That way led to true damnation. He clung to the kernel of his own will that still survived. He cut down a fleeing ogor, then another. The maw gates shone redly not far away. And then there was Mathror, coming toward him, sword held high.

  Mir abandoned his pursuit, and readied himself to continue his duel.

  Skull grabbed his next trophy’s hair and yanked upward, preparing to cut his skull free so that he might add it to the growing cairns.

  The man moaned and opened his eyes, and Skull let his head drop. He rolled the man onto his back. The warrior, a bloodreaver, blinked eyes that were free of rage and newly filled with fear.

  ‘Where am I? Where is this place?’ he said. He looked down his chest to inspect the deep wounds in his torso and saw the thick muscle, the crude tattoos, the spiked harness he wore as clothing. His eyes widened. ‘What has happened to me? What have I become?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Skull. ‘The fury has fled you.’

  ‘Fury? Who are you? Where am I?’

  ‘I am Skull,’ Skull said. He squatted next to the bloodreaver and drove his long knife into the turf. ‘Tell me, why do men fight?’

  The man’s face creased in puzzlement.

  ‘I am dying, and you pose me riddles? Help me!’

  ‘I am helping you. Answer the question, and you will have some idea of where you are.’

  The man gasped. His breaths were coming in short bursts, pink blood frothing at his lips. ‘A man fights to protect his land and his family. Or for money.’

  ‘And when those things are gone?’

  ‘A man fights to survive.’

  ‘Very good. So did you,’ said Skull.

  The man’s face took on a look of horrible realisation.

  ‘Old gods! I remember… What have I done? What have I done! The redness has gone from my vision. I see, I see!’

  ‘Shhh,’ said Skull, and knelt by the warrior. He smoothed hair wet with sweat and thick with blood. The man’s skin was slick, his beard caked and filthy. His face was disfigured by tattoos like those on his body, but what looked out from behind the savage mask was pure anguish.

  ‘The red rage has left you. Khorne has no more use for you. He abandons you.’

  The man wept. ‘I killed them all... My friends. I ate their hearts.’

  ‘And why did you do this?’ asked Skull. ‘You did it to survive.’

  He looked over to where Mir and Mathror still battled. In the gathering evening the men fought, neither besting the other. The ogors were dead or gone, and the Bloodslaves had ceased their own struggles. Those handful who were left sank exhausted to their knees, dumbly watching the deathbringers. A few of them made their offerings to Khorne. Wandering the battlefield they hewed the heads from the fallen and piled them onto the cairns from yesterday’s battle. One of these had grown higher than the rest, and had been lit. Open jaws and eye sockets glowed with fire.

  ‘I shall tell you a story,’ said Skull softly. ‘There was once a land, with a glorious city named Mir at its heart. It had kings both just and kind, whose reigns were held to be exemplary. Mir had many armies, with fine warriors and knights mounted upon fabulous beasts, and a talent for battle. Hundreds of mages were theirs to call to war, and the peoples of its towns were master wrights. They were peaceable, but they turned their talents to the construction of engines of death readily enough once the gods abandoned the realms. By these means they remained free while the nations of their neighbours fell to Chaos, either destroyed or seduced one by one, until only the land of Mir was left, all alone in a sea of darkness.

  ‘For long years Mir persisted, a beacon in a dark age of blood. Refugees from other lands flooded the streets, but Mir took them in without complaint. Diversity became their strength.’

  Skull sighed. ‘There is but one story Chaos tells, and that is of defeat. Fast or slow, it comes to all who defy the Four. Every year saw the borders of Mir shrink. A duchy here, an island there. Sometimes the land of Mir fought back and retook the lands it had lost. Every victory was tainted with sorrow, so many dead in return for territory made barren by the power of Chaos. Seas turned to blood, forests became hellish groves of screaming bone trees, farmland withered to dusty plains where phantom armies fought every night. Very little taken back could be made use of, and Mir died, one bloody bite at a time, until only the city remained.

  ‘Ushkar Mir...’ gasped the man. ‘He was the king?’

  Skull shook his head. ‘No. Mir was not the king, but he was the champion of his age, blessed with an ability at arms to rival Sigmar himself, and a command of strategy not seen since the Age of Myth.’ Skull smiled at the futility of it. ‘But he could not win. Then came the inevitable night when Mir’s walls were assailed a final time. The full might of Khorne’s armies were brought to bear on this one last city, for Mir’s continued defiance had become an affront to the Lord of War. They could not hope to win. But Mir, he was... he is... a singular being. He looked out upon that endless horde of brass and steel, and he did not despair. He could not win, not on that battlefield, so he chose another. That is why Mir wished to survive, to find a ground bette
r suited to victory. He was offered the Dark Feast by Korghos Khul himself, it is said. He accepted without complaint.’

  ‘So did I, so did I! I am sorry, so sorry.’ The man choked. ‘So sorry.’

  ‘Do not ask for forgiveness!’ snapped Skull. He pointed to the duelling deathbringers. ‘That is Ushkar Mir! His wish to live is no petty desire to preserve a worthless life. Mir plots revenge! By dedicating himself utterly to Khorne’s red road, he hopes to ascend to the heights of daemonhood, and challenge the gods themselves. Do you not see my friend? In a sane world, a man achieves immortality through his children or through his works. But this is no longer a sane world. Children are slaughtered and works cast down. If the great powers of the universe take family and achievement away, a man is left only one means to gain immortality – to survive, and to exceed his master. Of course, the Lord of Skulls knows of Mir’s desire, but I think the Blood God takes some pleasure in his defiance. Maybe Mir shall succeed, maybe hubris is the gods’ only weakness. Maybe... well, who knows?’

  Skull looked down at the bloodreaver. Sightless eyes stared out of his face, the light gone from them. Horror remained on his dead face. ‘This is what I have learned, this is what Mir taught me.’

  Skull stood. ‘Skulls for the Skull throne!’ he whispered, and severed the man’s head with a quick downward strike of his sword. He retrieved his knife, took the head up and carried it to a pile where he tossed it high, then went to the next dead man to repeat the grisly ritual.

  All around the battlefield, the skull cairns grew.

  Finally, as night drew in, Mathror fell. The two deathbringers were exhausted, their bodies sporting dozens of cuts and Mathror’s armour in tatters. Blood stained their skin from head to foot. Mathror’s ankle turned on the horned helmet of a dead blood warrior, and he went down, driving the point of his nameless weapon into the warrior to steady himself. Were he fresh, he might have sprung back to his feet with alacrity.