The chieftain ushered Malus across the threshold with a bow, and then returned to his fellows. A long, broad corridor stretched beyond, lit by globes of flickering witchlight. The highborn composed himself before striding swiftly down the long passageway. Tall figures in ornate, archaic brass armour stood sentinel along the corridor. The men were inhumanly strong, their bodies swollen to hideous proportions, and they held huge, double-headed axes in their broad, scarred hands. The highborn studied them as he walked past, feeling the weight of their gaze, but unable to see the expressions behind their helmets’ ornate faceplates.
Malus stepped into a large, dimly lit space at the end of the passageway. A single shaft of light speared down into the centre of the chamber, falling upon a small stone altar carved of dark marble. Its square sides were anointed in fresh blood, and two grinning skulls rested upon it, their surfaces stained nearly brown by centuries of bloody libations.
Malus approached the ancient bones, noting that they were free from mutation and perfect in form. The cheekbones were sharp, the jaw lines angular. “The two dead kings,” he murmured, reaching out to touch the remains of one of the five lost assassins.
“You are not worthy to touch the bones of the Ageless Kings!” hissed a voice from the darkness. The sound was eerie, like a keening wind whistling through bare branches and forming words Malus could understand. It echoed in the vast chamber, seeming to come from every direction at once. “You defile this sacred place with your presence!”
Malus turned, seeking the source of the frail voice. “Are you wraith or man?” he called out. “Show yourself!”
Another voice spoke. Like the first, it was chillingly unnatural, like the groan of glacial ice. “We are ageless,” it said, “and we rule here, not you.”
The imperious tone in the groaning voice annoyed the highborn. “You rule here? I thought you were waiting, serving the will of Khaine and guarding the warpsword until the arrival of the chosen one.”
A third voice answered, thin and creaking like old leather. “Who are you to question us so?”
Malus took a deep breath. “I am the Scourge,” he said. “Your vigil is ended, for I have come for the sword. The Time of Blood is nigh.”
The echoes of his voice faded into the stillness. Malus waited, straining to locate the aged assassins in the depths of the room. After a moment he caught the faintest sound of movement to his left: a dry rustle of robes.
“Impossible,” the first voice said. “You cannot be the chosen one.”
Malus turned to the source of movement. “Can I not? Am I not druchii, like you? Do I not bear the blessing of Khaine upon my face? I have followed you here through the Vermillion Gate, drawn by the tie I have with the sword. How else could I have found you here in the Waste?” He held out his hand. “Will you bring me my sword, or will you dishonour your long vigil here at its end?”
More faint hints of movement whispered in the darkness. The second voice spoke. “You come from the temple,” it groaned.
“So did you, once upon a time,” Malus answered. “The true believers count you among the dead. The heretics in the temple concealed the theft of the sword and have ruled unchallenged for centuries.”
“That is of no matter to us,” creaked the third voice. “Let them rule atop their filthy hill. It will all be swept aside when the Time of Blood arrives.”
The voices were drawing closer. Malus was certain now. “Why conceal your triumph from your fellows?” he asked. “They might have swayed the people of the city to the true faith had they known.”
Faint shapes resolved themselves at the edges of the light. Malus saw the outlines of robed and hooded figures regarding him from the darkness. “We are the true faith,” the first voice replied.
“Prove it,” Malus said. “Give me the sword.”
“The sword is not here,” the second voice groaned, “and you are not worthy.”
“You dare deny me?” the highborn snapped. “I am Malus of Hag Graef, born in the city of shadow to the house of chains. My mother was a witch and I slew my father with my own hands. The skull of Aurun Var spoke to me through my sister, a living saint of the Lord of Murder. Have you forgotten your duty after so many centuries, or has your lust for power turned you into the very heretics you once rebelled against?”
All three voices shouted at once. “Blasphemy!”
“A man blasphemes against the gods, not cowardly figures hiding in the shadows of a ruined temple,” Malus shouted. “Did you steal the sword to keep it from the hands of the temple elders, or did you secretly covet its power? What are you but pathetic mockeries of the very heretics you once railed against?”
“Seize him!” the first voice shrieked. Malus reached for his sword, but huge figures loomed silently out of the shadows to either side of him. There had been more of the armoured guards standing a silent watch in the darkness of the room, and they grabbed Malus’ arms and lifted him from the ground as if he was a child.
The robed figures crept slowly into the light, drawing back their hoods, and Malus looked upon them and cried out, horrified at what the assassins had become.
Their bodies were impossibly ancient, shrivelled and dried like mummies over thousands of years in the hot air of the Wastes. Two males and a woman — her paper thin lips framed a pair of yellow fangs that told Malus she had once been a blood-witch — little more than living skeletons with parchment skin stretched over sharp bones.
The man in the centre of the trio stepped close to Malus, studying him with cold, reptilian orbs that bore little resemblance to living eyes. “You are young and strong,” the creature said, its voice whistling from the depths of dried lungs and past cracked lips. “The people here are faithful, but their spirits are weak. We have lived on thin gruel for far too long,” the withered druchii said. “You are blasphemous, but in a sense you are also a blessing from Khaine. Tonight we will kill you, so that tomorrow we may call back your spirit and consume it. Your energies will restore us and lend us strength for a very long time to come.”
“You would dare take the life of Khaine’s chosen Scourge?” Malus raged.
The withered creature looked up at Malus and shook his head. “The true Scourge would not have been taken so easily,” he said, and gestured to the guards.
“Take the heretic to the plaza and crucify him,” the Ageless King said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE BURNING BLADE
Malus roared like a trapped animal, thrashing and kicking in the guards’ iron grip as they began to remove him from the altar room. Consumed with rage, he used their strength against them, twisting at the waist and kicking the man to his left in the side of the head. The highborn’s armoured shin rang like a gong off the polished brass helmet and the guard staggered, allowing Malus to pull his arm free.
The guard on his right reacted quickly for a man of his immense size, reaching for Malus’ throat with a wide, spade-like hand. Snarling, Malus ducked beneath the guard’s lunge and tried to grab the bone handle of a dagger sheathed at the man’s waist. The highborn’s hand closed on the hilt and he drew the blade free, just as a clawed hand grasped the side of Malus’ cheek and every nerve in his body exploded in icy pain.
Malus convulsed beneath the witch’s agonising touch. His body arched, taut as a bow, and his face locked in a rictus of torment. Malus dimly heard a sharp, brittle crack near his waist and realised that the bone hilt had snapped in his clenched, quivering hand.
Armoured hands grabbed him roughly, tearing the dagger away and lifting him from the ground. His gaze was fixed. He could not move, could not breathe, could not even blink. The pain was so intense that he could barely think. Tz’arkan’s name rose unbidden to his mind, but he had not the power to speak it.
The blood-witch recoiled from Malus with a frightened groan, her black eyes glittering with shock and honor as the guards dragged him away. The last thing he saw as darkness enfolded him was her white, withered face, its leathery features twis
ting into an expression of despair as the witch reeled from the glimpse she’d been given into Malus’ soul.
In time, the pain began to recede, like a slow tide ebbing from his tortured frame. Visions of red slowly resolved into a crimson sky, painted with twisting shapes of black smoke and ashen clouds. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Long shapes loomed at the edges of his vision. He lay on his back amid a forest of dying men, their ravaged bodies impaled upon iron stakes as tall as saplings. His body was contorted awkwardly on the wide paving stones, like a statue tumbled from its plinth. Figures moved slowly past the limits of his eyesight, their movements perceived as no more than shifting shadows playing across his contorted form.
He thought he heard a voice rise in anger, and moans of defeat and despair. Malus could not tell if they were real or part of a dream, and his mind wandered as he stared into the shifting, crimson sky.
Once he thought he saw the blood-witch standing over him, a curved knife trembling in her shrunken hand. Shrieks and groans echoed in the turgid air, and when he looked into her eyes she wailed like a ghost and shrank from his sight. He tried to laugh but managed only a low, tortured moan.
The sky darkened. Thunder rolled like war drums, and drops of blood mixed with gritty ash fell heavily against his face. Hands gripped him around his arms and lifted him. He rose into the air, wondering if he was being offered up to the storm.
Then he was falling again, being lowered onto a frame of rough wood in the shape of an X. The hands pulled at him, stretching his contorted limbs and laying them flat against the crossbars. His head sagged between the cross-posts, sending drops of dark red streaming down into his ears and hair.
He felt his gauntlets being pulled away. Something cold and sharp pressed against his right wrist. His mind drifted, unable to make sense of what was happening.
Then the first hammer blow struck, driving the spike deep into his wrist, and Malus began to scream.
Thunder crashed, vibrating his armour like a struck gong and startling him awake. His body jerked, and he cried out in the grip of raw, jagged pain as his broken wrists and ankles grated against the nails pinning him to beams. Agony caused his stomach to clench, and he vomited blood and bile onto the paving stones.
Darkness had fallen since the guards had nailed him to the wood and left him in the plaza to die. Lightning raged overhead, playing a nightmarish pantomime of shadows across the stones of the plaza. Blood and ashes had dried on his cheeks, forming a brittle death mask that lent a daemonic cast to his angular face.
Had it not been for his armour he would have been dead already, suffocated by his own ribcage as he hung from the upright wooden posts. As it was, the interlocking plates kept his body from sagging too far downwards, taking some of the weight off his mutilated wrists. He’d swum in and out of consciousness for hours, delirious from pain and loss of blood.
His mind was clearer now. Perhaps the last vestiges of the witch’s touch had faded, or else his nerves no longer had the power to communicate the awful truth of his injuries. It was enough that he was able to notice the solitary figure outlined by the flash of lightning only a few yards away.
Grunting in pain, he managed to raise his head slightly and peer at the motionless figure. “Sh… Shebbolai,” he whispered, his voice little more than a thready rasp.
The figure stirred. “I thought you dead,” the chieftain replied. He stepped closer. Another flicker of lightning etched his dark skinned face in sharp relief, revealing an expression of anger and torment. “How can this be?” he asked. You are the first warrior of Naggaroth to come here since the arrival of the Ageless Kings.
“You bested my finest warriors, and you bear the mark of Khaine in your eyes. You must be the Scourge!”
“The Ageless Kings have forgotten their duty to the Lord of Murder,” Malus rasped. “They have been seduced by power and wealth. Long ago they ruled this land to safeguard Khaine’s sword. Now they rule for their sakes alone.”
“Do not blaspheme!” Shebbolai snapped.
“You know it’s true!” Malus said. He tried to look up at the bodies hanging nearby. “On the way here you told me that your tribe rarely fought anymore. Where, then, did all these men come from? They have the look of warriors, but were they foes taken in battle or members of your own tribe who rebelled against the Ageless Kings and their inglorious rule?”
“You’re here now,” the chieftain said, “and The Time of Blood is at hand! How can they deny you?”
“Because this is all they have,” Malus said. “They’ve clung to life and power for so long that the struggle is all they know. They cannot return to Naggaroth, not as they are, and once I claim the sword, who will fear them? The centuries have made them mad, Shebbolai, and weak. Their time is at an end.” Malus met his eye. “It’s your time now. Of all the hundreds of chieftains who have led the red swords, it is you who will ride to battle beside Khaine’s chosen Scourge.”
An expression of awe transformed Shebbolai’s scarred face. “What would you have me do?”
“Tell me where to find the warpsword.”
“It… it is not here,” the chieftain said. “Long ago, when the kings first came here, the sword passed between them at the turning of each moon, so that all of them would share the burden of safeguarding it. One day the king who kept the sword refused to give it up, and they fought among themselves. The struggle lasted for centuries, or so the legends say.” Shebbolai turned and look back at the temple. Two of the kings died during the feud. “You saw their skulls in the reliquary chamber.”
“And the sword?”
“They agreed to place it beyond their grasp except in the direst of circumstances, so that they would never feud amongst themselves again. They took the sword north, into the mountains, and hid it in a cave, so goes the legend,” Shebbolai said grimly, “as it has been passed down through the line of chieftains. It is part of our part with the Ageless Kings, to keep their secret from the rest of the world.”
“That’s all very fascinating,” Malus wheezed impatiently, “but how am I to find this cave?”
“Follow the skulls,” the chieftain said. “They will lead you through the gullies to the cave and its guardian.”
“Guardian,” Malus spat, “what sort of guardian?”
The chieftain shrugged. “The legends do not say: something powerful enough to guard the warpsword for ages and not be tempted by it as the kings were.”
“Delightful,” the highborn snarled. The pain in his wrists was starting to build once more. Gritting his teeth, he tried to take some of the weight off of them, prompting a groan of torment as he bore down on the spikes penetrating his feet just below the ankles.
When the agony subsided and his vision cleared he focused his gaze on Shebbolai once more. “You must pass the word to those of your tribe you can trust,” the highborn said. “When I return with the sword the reign of the Ageless Kings will end. Do you understand?”
The chieftain nodded. “I understand.”
“Good. Now get me down from this damned cross,” Malus groaned.
But Shebbolai was unmoved. He looked Malus in the eye. “If all you say is true, and you are the Scourge of Khaine, you should be able to free yourself.” He backed away from the cross. “I will await your return,” he said, and disappeared into the darkness.
Malus stifled a vicious curse. He had a plan for Shebbolai and his warriors, so for the moment he needed the chieftain on his side. Plus, he thought bitterly as he tried in vain to close his fists, there was not enough mothers’ milk in the world to heal him from the guards’ iron spikes.
Lightning flared overhead and arced among the iron poles of the plaza. Malus heard screams and smelled the sweet odour of burning flesh. He drew a deep breath.
This would not be any mere taste. He stood at the edge of an abyss. The next step he took would be into darkness.
Thunder crashed. “Tz’arkan!” he screamed at the bleeding sky, and his veins burned wi
th the daemon’s icy touch.
Power coursed through him in an icy torrent, banishing fear, weakness and pain. The strength of a god flowed through him. Clenching his fists, he tore them free of the iron spikes and laughed like a madman as shattered bone and torn flesh re-knit. Reaching down, he pulled the lower spikes loose with his bare hands and fell to his knees upon the gore slick stones. Malus squeezed the spikes between his fingers as if they were half-melted wax, and threw them high into the air.
He felt the lightning coming before it flared overhead. He heard the heartbeats of the men slowly dying among the forest of iron poles. He could taste the scent of each and every living thing in the city, and see the peaks of the mountains to the north despite the roiling darkness overhead.
It was like nothing he had ever felt before. The daemon did not merely strengthen and heal him. He was the daemon, and the daemon was him.
He’d found the cold one a mile outside the city, tracking it through the darkness by its peculiar, acrid scent. It had growled threateningly at his approach, lowering its blocky head and snapping its fearsome jaws, but he had met its red eyes and bent his will upon the beast. The nauglir struggled against him but a moment, and then recoiled with a cry of pain. He advanced on the beast, lashing it again and again with his power, until it lay on its belly and allowed him to climb into the saddle.
Malus led Spite around the ruined city under the cover of darkness and up into the broken foothills to the north. His razor-keen senses banished the darkness and allowed him to traverse the narrow, labyrinthine gullies as if it was broad daylight.
Shebbolai had spoken true. He began to see the bones almost at once: smashed skeletons of men and horses, the long bones snapped and sucked clean of marrow and the skulls split open to get at the brains. Shorn armour and broken swords lay rusting in the dirt, enough to equip an army. For the first hour he’d amused himself by counting the skulls, trying to gauge how many souls had gone into the narrow denies in search of Khaine’s sword. Before the hour was up he’d counted a thousand, and didn’t bother to continue from there.