‘My lord! Look!’
Some distance away there was an irregularity on the horizon. The Bloodslaves picked up their pace, staggering and half dead though they were, desperate for something other than ceaseless dust and bone to look upon.
Giant stone skulls were set in a circle facing outward. The spaces between them were tangled with a thicket of black-leaved thorns. As they grew nearer, the tell-tale glint of water shone.
‘An oasis!’ they cried. ‘Water!’
They jogged toward the oasis, many abandoning their weapons and throwing themselves at the bushes to get at the pool they guarded. Thumb-sized spikes of wood tore at their skin as they fought their way through. Others, more circumspect, hacked at the branches with axe and sword.
Mir marched up and swung Bloodspite at the bush.
‘I am no woodsman’s axe, to cut back the weeds!’ protested the weapon. ‘I am the chosen killer of Khorne!’
Down Bloodspite came anyway, forced to do Mir’s will. Where it cut into the tangle, the thorn bushes curled back, shrinking away like paper from fire. In a moment, the way was clear and the Bloodslaves were through. A silver-grey pool awaited, as still as a mirror. Mir’s men bounced from his back as they struggled past him, throwing themselves at the water. Mir watched them.
‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted Orto, his commanding voice ruined by thirst. He went to the men and pulled them from the water’s edge, but those there did not heed him and drank deeply. ‘This land is cursed!’
The men started to cry out. Those not yet at the water backed away cautiously as several of their comrades were afflicted by wracking pain. They splashed around in the water, crying for mercy and gripping at their heads.
Flesh convulsed and warped, limbs withered, and new ones sprang in profusion from backs bent into fantastical shapes. One man screamed as his bones tore themselves from his skin, the bloody skeleton running laughing into the desert, leaving the man’s soft parts behind as a heaving mess. Another lit up with blue flames that did not consume him as they burned, and the bloodreaver writhed and screamed until Orto cut off his head. The rest mutated rapidly, dying as their hearts gave out under the strain.
Orto pointed into the oily water. Green light pulsed in the depths.
‘Warpstone. This oasis is poisoned.’
There was a crack of thunder and a smell of brimstone. Over the water the messenger of Archaon appeared.
It was the same being as before, but in a different form, one assembled from other remains. The eyes were the same, nestling moistly in a skull ten thousand years dry, but the skull was different, as were the clothes and the rest.
‘New bones for our examiner,’ croaked Skull. ‘Why does it show itself now? Is it another test?’
‘I say Mir has completed three,’ said Orto. ‘Fury for Khorne, endurance for Nurgle,’ he looked at the shivering remains of the mutated Bloodslaves, ‘and restraint for the Dark Prince.’
‘You guess. These tests could go on forever,’ said Vuul.
Skull scowled at him. ‘You were vocal in your support for Lord Ushkar Mir.’
‘That was then, this is now. This gambit offers no reward. The call of Archaon could be false.’
‘It is not false.’ Skull pointed back at the desert. ‘If you are unhappy, leave. My lord is ready for the fourth test,’ said Skull.
‘Then what is it?’ snapped Vuul.
The skeleton responded by pointing to the water.
Now Skull felt doubt. ‘No, no! The water offers only death.’ He drew his sword and waved it at Archaon’s herald.
The skeleton gestured and the sword flew from Skull’s hand. Another gesture stayed his attack, freezing him in place, and a third lifted him into the air. Skull made a strangled noise.
‘Maybe, maybe,’ murmured Orto. ‘To drink deeply of this oasis is to die as you have seen. But to take one drop – could it bring power, visions, wisdom?’
‘It will kill him,’ said Vuul.
‘I drink of the slaughtergruel. That is deadly, if one is unworthy. Mir is worthy.’ Orto addressed Ushkar Mir. ‘You, Ushkar Mir, must face this trial and triumph, or the way to Archaon will be closed to you and we will all die.’
‘How can you know?’ said Vuul.
‘Khorne whispers in my ear. He must drink but a single drop!’
‘It is his choice, not yours, slaughterpriest. What will Lord Mir do?’ asked Vuul.
Orto grunted. ‘Cowardice is not Khorne’s way!’
Ushkar Mir was already kneeling by the pool. He extended one huge finger to the surface, and touched the water. The mirror surface broke but slightly, rings of ripples chasing each other and fading fast.
Skull fell to the ground with a clatter.
‘I do not see we have much choice,’ he said.
‘Nevertheless, it is our lord’s choice,’ said Orto. ‘It is not ours. He is the chosen of Khorne!’ He held his axe aloft in his hand and the remaining Bloodslaves fell to their knees.
Raising the finger to his exposed teeth, Ushkar Mir looked at the herald of Archaon. Its five eyes stared back.
‘But one drop!’ warned Orto.
Mir extended his crimson tongue, and licked the tip of his finger.
Immediately, the world went black.
Ushkar Mir fell through darkness. Wind rushed past him, but even its roaring could not subdue the far-away bellows of Khorne, demanding more blood and war. The call of Archaon he heard also, a trumpet blast that went on and on, unvarying in pitch and volume.
Then it was over and he was upon solid ground. Rain hammered off his head. It revived him, washed the dust from him. He licked at it, running his tongue over his arms and his chin to catch the moisture and moaned at the relief it brought from days of thirst. Noise of a different sort came to his ears – the sounds of battle. A wall of rough stone met his hands, and he scrabbled at it ineffectually. Shakily, he got to his feet, alarmed at the weakness in him, but it quickly passed. His sight returned and he found himself leaning upon a parapet looking down into a cauldron of war. Daemons and mortal followers of Khorne seethed around the base of mighty city walls, as numerous as ants.
Towering bloodthirsters whipped on lesser daemons and humans alike as they pushed at the bases of brass siege towers, two hundred feet tall. There were dozens of towers, absurd in scale. They should not have moved at all. But Chaos has no respect for the natural laws of Mortal Realms, and move they did. Gargants and other, less recognisable things strained in harnesses at the towers’ fronts. As Mir watched, one was speared by nine long bolts hurled by war machines from the wall, and fell howling. It did not matter. Its traces were cut, its body hauled aside by dog-faced beastmen, and the siege tower ground forward. The towers moved slowly, but were indomitable. Boulders rattled off their thick plating. The fire from magical artillery fizzled harmlessly from their spell wards. Every hit that was turned aside marked another dozen feet moved toward the wall.
Lightning boomed in stormy skies. The churning clouds were black, patterned with bright blue lightning. The wall on which Mir stood was deserted by the living, and choked with the dead. Proud knights and humble soldiers lay contorted in the positions of final agony, commoner and lord intertwined. Death holds no regard for rank.
The rain pouring out of the gargoyle spouts set into the wall’s outer face was coloured red with blood washed from the wall-walk. Mir knew, remembered, that soon the skies would send down not water but blood. A great tear would open in the very stuff of the realm, and the kingdom of Khorne would send forth its mightiest daemon legion. Already three of the five bastions he could see from his position had fallen, and the wall was riven with cracks. It would not be long now.
He looked again on the last day of Mir, and his last hours as a mortal.
‘I should kill you where you stand, traitor,’ said a voice behind him.
Mi
r turned suddenly, taken unawares for the first time in decades.
A tall, powerfully built man stood there. He wore a lamellae coat of iron plates enamelled red and gold, and a tall helmet with a horse hair plume. In his hands he held twin axes of blue steel.
‘And yet why do I not?’ asked the man curiously.
Ushkar Mir gaped, the rain running into his lipless mouth.
‘Ushkar Mir,’ he said, discovering to his amazement that he could speak once more. The words were clumsy, his lack of lips hindering his ability to talk, although less than it should. The man before him was Mir as he had been, before that terrible choice. A choice that, the Mir of the future realised, must soon be made again.
‘That I am. General of this city, and until hours ago bearer of its last hopes. But hope has deserted me.’ He looked hard at Mir. ‘How came you here to the top of this wall? None of the Blood God’s servants have surmounted it alive. Are you an assassin, come to kill me before the final attack? I did not think that your lord’s way, but then, we have irked him for some time.’ He smiled sorrowfully. ‘Tell me, before I kill you, what is your name?’
‘Ushkar Mir,’ said the future Ushkar Mir.
The Mir of the past shifted back in alarm. ‘What?’ He searched Mir’s face for any recognisable feature. ‘That may be so. I have fought too long against the madness of Chaos to discount anything. That time is not free from the perversion of the Four surprises me not at all. But if it is the case, then I am much changed.’
‘Khorne,’ said Mir. ‘He... Argh!’
This latest test was the worst of all. Pain attacked Mir from every angle. His punishment band glowed with heat, his heart thudded with anger fit to burst, his blinded eyes ached. Worst was the pain in his soul. All the rest was imposed from without, but this pain came from deep within and tormented him mercilessly.
‘Look at you grovel. How could I become such a thing? No doubt I am offered the choice of the Dark Feast.’
Mir nodded.
‘And I fail?’ said the Mir of the past.
‘Not failure!’ gasped Mir. He pitted his will against his punishment band, pushing back the heat. He managed with effort, a feat he had not accomplished before. Perhaps this was some effect of his journey through time, or perhaps he was strengthened by the presence of his purer self.
‘Revenge?’ said the Mir of the past.
Mir nodded. ‘I fight in his wars, but I have but one goal. I will stand before him and spit in his face, and bury my axes in his head.’
The Mir of the past laughed. ‘That does sound like me.’ His laughter deserted him. ‘How many innocents have you slaughtered to further your vengeance?’
‘Thousands,’ said Mir. ‘They would have died anyway, and for ignoble ends. There is nothing good left. Better a quick death for the weak. After Mir falls, there is only Chaos. Revenge is all there is.’
‘Revenge that can never be achieved!’ said Mir of the past. ‘They say Khorne is as tall as a mountain and as mighty as the sun! Nothing can fight him. No man or daemon can kill the Blood God.’
‘Gods die,’ said Mir.
‘By the hand of the likes of us?’ Mir frowned. ‘Impossible. The realms are large and not all the free people will fall. I still harbour hopes of that. Better to kill as many of these filth as I can, and die with honour.’
‘I once thought so, but all kingdoms fall, one by one,’ said the Mir of the future bitterly. ‘To serve Chaos is your only chance at survival, and the only path to revenge.’ He shook his head. ‘This cannot be. This is an illusion. I have not been as you are for five hundred years.’
The Mir of the past silently contemplated their situation. ‘If it is an illusion, then you are the illusion, not I – one last torture before I die. The Chaos Gods are boundless in their cruelty.’ But then he closed his eyes. ‘No. This is real. I feel it.’
The Mir of the future felt it too. He felt his memories change. He recalled this meeting from the other side, many years ago. Within a minute, he could not remember ever having not recalled it.
They watched as magical fire shot in a giant plume to engulf one of the towers, burning so hot the metal of its superstructure glowed red and ignited. Screams of pain and outrage sounded from that quarter, as showers of burning brass mingled with the rain fell among the warriors of Khorne.
‘If you are myself from some distant time, tell me what befalls me,’ said the Mir of the past. ‘How do I go from this to you.’
‘In but a short time, the rain will turn to blood. The Lord of Skulls will open the gates to his own realm, and the worst of his hellish legions will come out. The city will fall. You will fight every step of the way while everything you care for and love is destroyed. Finally, in despair you will be taken, alive, at the steps of the Old Palace, and given the choice by Korghos Khul himself.’
‘You said yes to this choice.’
‘With my voice I did. With my heart, I did not,’ said Mir. ‘I say no every day. Khorne took my voice for defying him. He put this band upon me to torment me. But I amuse him, I think. He keeps me alive. That will be his mistake.’
The Mir of the past looked at his twisted future in disgust. ‘Then I thank you for showing me the consequences of revenge. I shall make sure to choose differently.’
‘No!’ shouted Mir. But his earlier self had brought his axes up with blurring speed. Mir’s arm was cut deep.
‘Stop! Wait!’ he shouted.
‘I will slay you first. You have become what I most fear, all for a coward’s moment of weakness. Death is preferable to this.’
The steel axes came at Mir’s head. But the Mir of the past stopped suddenly, his eyes wide with surprise. His axes fell from nerveless hands.
Mir of the future wrenched Skullthief out of his earlier self’s chest. The Mir of old had been a mighty hero, but the Mir of the Bloodslaves was blessed by Khorne. No normal man could best him.
‘No!’ screamed Ushkar Mir. ‘No!’
Then a most curious thing happened. A lightning bolt smote the wall-walk where Ushkar Mir had died. The Mir of the future was thrown back, dazed. When he recovered his wits, his earlier self had gone.
Ushkar Mir had no time to ponder this new development. The first of the siege towers hit the wall. Its brazen drawbridge clashed down onto the parapet and the warriors of the Blood God streamed across.
Very well, if his earlier self was not here to fight, then Mir would take his place. Mir ran forward to engage them, to spill their blood again and try vainly to save his home. But the wall dissolved beneath his feet, and the battle’s noise vanished. He wheeled his arms as he fell back into blackness, helplessly falling.
Ushkar Mir’s body convulsed. He sat bolt upright, coughing hard. Black sludge poured from his mouth. When he reached his hand up to wipe it away his arm twinged with pain. Looking down, he saw the gash inflicted by the Ushkar Mir of the past, and marvelled at it.
‘You have succeeded,’ said a voice from the sky. The skeleton fell apart, splashing into the pool. The sky wobbled, and a huge skull set with five eyes shimmered into being in the heavens. The sky convulsed again, and the daemon-thing that Mir had seen in the Bloodbloom Fields revealed itself to all the Bloodslaves.
‘The way is open!’ said the Many-Eyed Servant. Its voice sounded loudly, from everywhere, and the Bloodslaves shrank back from it. ‘I judge you worthy. Go to Archaon and submit your pledge. The final decision rests with him. You will find him elsewhere in Shyish. Beware, for others come also.’
‘Do we fight them?’ shouted Skull.
‘That is up to Mir,’ said the herald.
The vision, Mir tried to say. Was it real? All that came from his mouth was animal moaning. The herald understood.
‘All choices carry consequences, Ushkar Mir. Choose wisely!’
A crackle of magic ran from horizon to horizon. The bushe
s withered to nothing and the pool was sucked away into the ground, leaving no trace of its existence. The skulls pulled themselves under the ground. Endless desert once again greeted the Bloodslaves, and they wailed in despair.
‘A trick!’ hissed Vuul.
‘Wait,’ said Orto.
A light shone over the place where the pool had been. A bright star as large as a fist flared into being before Mir’s face, rays of hard light stabbing out from it. The desert wavered through its light. The star burst outwards. A shower of sparkling motes hit the ground and a way opened up.
The Bloodslaves looked through the portal and saw a new land where a kinder sun shone. Dark against the horizon was a range of low hills covered in sere grasses. The tiny dots of birds wheeled in the sky. It was arid, but a paradise in comparison to the Bone Sands. Warm wind blew through the gate.
The horns of Archaon blared again. Ushkar Mir stood. He probed the wound he had taken in his vision, uncertain what it meant. Was what had happened real or illusory, or both?
Skull sniffed at the wind. ‘I smell decay.’
Orto pointed through the gate. On the faraway hills a line of marching figures went along a ridge. The faint strains of cheerful music reached their ears along with the foetid reek.
‘The servants of pestilence. Filth-eaters,’ said Orto.
‘The others the herald spoke of,’ said Vuul.
‘Some. There will be more,’ said Orto. ‘We will slay them all.’
Mir was not listening. He put the vision from his mind. There was only blood and skulls, and the distant possibility of vengeance. Nothing else mattered.
He sheathed his axes, and set out towards his destiny.
In the Lands of the Blind
The Many-Eyed Servant, whose many eyes were everywhere at once, blinked his way across the Mortal Realms. Sights. Scenes. The serenity of horror observed but not experienced.
A banquet for the eyes. The daemon drank in the multiplicity of the realms, and of existences beyond that.
Life, death and everything in between played out before him like an unpleasant fiction. Children were born, their cries echoing those of their mothers just moments before. Men roared their rage, groaned in agony and spoke their secret and most desperate thoughts to themselves. Kings and beggars ached for what they couldn’t have, while the beasts that roamed the realms around them knew only the living moment. Here in the lands of the blind, where mortal wretches understood nothing more than the immediacy of their world and their miserable place in it, the Many-Eyed Servant was all-seeing, all-knowing.
Age of Sigmar: Call of Archaon Page 16
