by Rob Sanders
‘You have lost my prisoner,’ the Witch Hunter General accused, as they made their way blindly through the derelict foundations of Rathskorn Keep, their lanterns guttering in the foetid stench. ‘No doubt he sends for his master, to bury us alive in this godless place.’
Horrwitz wasn’t so sure. Rhaanoc had been gone some time and there seemed little evidence of the presence of Archaon and his warriors of Chaos. True, the demolished catacombs rang with the screams of priests falling to their deaths and Eisenkramer’s witch hunters being crushed beneath collapsing walls.
Enemies announced themselves with their stink. As Horrwitz pushed on – half searching for his lost prisoner, half trying to crawl out of the labyrinthine death-trap – a terrible stench greeted him. It was the mouldy fug of grave earth punctuated with the sweeter zest of corruption. Like fruit that had gone off, the sickly sting of disease reached Horrwitz’s nostrils.
Each time his senses were assaulted by the repugnance, he would find an unfortunate, quietly dying in the darkness. Like the things they had encountered above, the afflicted shambled towards them, their bottomless hunger driving them to crave the freshness of flesh. Some of the diseased seemed genuinely lost, while others fed on each other, their ravenous sickness driving them to feast on their own. How a god, even a Ruinous one, could take pleasure in such degradation, Horrwitz could not fathom. He ended each shuffling victim as he encountered them, granting them the God-King’s peace with his blade. Unfortunately, the confines did not allow Horrwitz to maintain as much distance from the infected foes as he might like, and before long he was covered with their gore.
Finally, his exhausting advance slowed to a halt. Casting the light of the lantern behind him he saw the ghoulish faces of Sigmarite priests, templars and witch hunters in half-shadow. Eisenkramer said nothing. He just gave Horrwitz the stabbing glare of his eyes, puffing aggressively on his pipe. The foul-smelling tobacco went some way to masking the scent of corruption.
‘What?’ Eisenkramer said finally, unable to hide his disappointment and disgust from Horrwitz.
‘We’re going around in circles,’ the templar said. He was watching the silky smoke trail from the witch hunter’s pipe. The smoke was drifting away from him. There was a breeze. Horrwitz turned around to find a crack running through the stone wall. It didn’t appear to be an exit and Horrwitz had discounted it before. Evidence of a breeze sealed it for the templar, however. Leading with his sword and angling his plate, Horrwitz scraped his way through the narrow opening.
‘What are you doing, you damned fool?’ Eisenkramer hissed. But Horrwitz pushed on, grunting and heaving, his pauldrons all but becoming trapped between the shattered stone. He could feel the breeze getting stronger on his filthy face. Finally, with one plate-crumpling heave, Horrwitz extricated himself from the gap and stepped out onto what his lantern revealed to be a demolished stone stairwell.
‘Steps,’ the templar managed, prompting Eisenkramer and his priests to follow. ‘Leading up.’
Stumbling up the smashed stone of the collapsed stairwell with the Sigmarites at his back, Horrwitz found that both the breeze and the stench got stronger. The air was rank in a different way: ripe, heavy. The knight of the Twin-Tailed Orb froze as a crack in the wall revealed what passed for daylight in the Wastes. They were above ground, but that was the only good news.
Eisenkramer pushed past the templar. The Witch Hunter General was almost quaking with furious disbelief. Through the gap they could see the keep courtyard. It both smelled and appeared like a temple-hospice during an outbreak of pox or plague. The diseased dominated the scene. The infected were everywhere. Stout warriors stood on the derelict battlements, still and quiet in their rusting armour. The festering bodies of the afflicted were laid across almost every surface. Starving. Listless. Devoid of energy. They were all bloated and displayed the same rotting cavity where their guts and stomach had been. Several were feeding on unfortunates who were so torpid they could not even bring themselves to escape the cannibalistic frenzy.
At the centre of the insanity was a corpulent sorcerer, his mangy robes barely covering his distended form. He sat upon a throne of sloth, his bloated form settled on a mound of similarly suffering followers. His colossal stomach had ruptured and burst in several places but continued to fill with a terrible green gas that leaked from the ragged tears. The symbol of the fat, black fly on his robes identified him as Lebrus Wormshroud, whose banners Rhaanoc had pointed out to them before.
‘No…’ Eisenkramer hissed as he stepped out through the gap.
‘General!’ Horrwitz called, trying to grab for the witch hunter. Flies that had previously been content to feed and lay their eggs in the flesh of the afflicted rose in a droning cloud of blackness.
‘No,’ Eisenkramer rumbled again. He strode across the courtyard with the noses of Wormshroud’s diseased unfortunates rising in the presence of fresh meat. Eisenkramer slid a huge silver broadsword from his back. The crossguard was almost the width of his shoulders and the pommel was a decorative Sigmarite hammerhead. As the diseased shambled at him, reaching out with ravenous hands and claws, the Witch Hunter General went to work with the immaculate blade. It seemed like suicide or at least the insanity of blind devotion to his God-King.
It was neither.
Horrwitz understood. Rhaanoc had led them into a trap and, worse, had escaped. The traitor Archaon, who seemed to evade them at every step, was nowhere to be found in the keep. To seal the Sigmarites’ fate, they were surrounded by the Lord of Decay’s ruinous servants.
‘For the God-King!’ Horrwitz bellowed as he stepped through the crack in the stairwell wall, just in time to see Eisenkramer draw the long barrel of his pistol and put a single blessed shot straight through Lebrus Wormshroud’s bulbous, frog-like throat. As it hit the favoured of Nurgle, the gases within the bloated sorcerer ignited, blasting foul pieces of Lebrus Wormshroud all over the courtyard.
Suddenly the afflicted were everywhere, stumbling at Eisenkramer, reaching out for Horrwitz or scrabbling to feast on the remains of their leader. Warrior priests of Sigmar descended upon them with skull-smashing hammer blows while templars cleaved the diseased in two and witch hunters drew pistols and blasted through the plague carriers. The diseased were up. The all-but-dead were upon them. The infected buried Sigmarites in the corpulence of their rancid flesh and bit into Eisenkramer’s men with rotten maws.
It was a massacre. A stinking bloodbath that painted the courtyard of Rathskorn Keep a bilious red.
Moving about the ruined architecture, Horrwitz buried his blade in the dying and half-eaten. He granted the God-King’s peace to both the Lord of Decay’s diseased unfortunates and his own men. Helmut Horrwitz would not see the knights of Sigmar suffer as the Dark Gods intended. He would not see Eisenkramer’s screaming witch hunters become that against which they had fought. He would not see the God-King’s priests rewarded with agonies for a lifetime’s service. As Sieur Oberndorff, Father Sternthal and the last of the Sigmarites became the instruments of brute mercy about him, Horrwitz found Wolfram Eisenkramer standing before the keep’s rusted portcullis. Outside, the mist was clearing. The host that had laid siege to Rathskorn Keep did so no more. The ghostly silhouettes of marauders and beastmen were turning and leaving. Knights on horseback turned their mounts from the keep and the champions of Chaos took their leave.
The Witch Hunter General took the bars of the portcullis in his hands and stared at the departing warhost. They had left a small fire, built on the churned-up track leading to the keep entrance. Standard bearers came forward and dumped the banners of Lebrus Wormshroud in the flames. A cluster of Chaos warriors parted and lowered their helms in almost mongrel-like deference.
A brawny figure came forward. He squinted at Eisenkramer and Horrwitz through the dancing flames of the fire. The pair watched as he tensed his powerful body. His form was battered black and blue. Biceps and pectorals bulged
. Fresh scars split. With a grunt, Rhaanoc broke the shattered remains of his plate across his brawny back. Eisenkramer and Horrwitz watched in stunned silence. Rhaanoc pulled rancid steel plate and threadbare mail from his brute form and threw them into the fire. He turned his muscular back to them and removed the rent helm from his head, allowing it to clatter at his feet. The warriors of Chaos came forward with fresh standards. With armour. With horned helm. Furs. Cloak. Shield and sword. They began to dress the prisoner.
‘Rhaanoc…’ Eisenkramer hissed to himself.
Horrwitz joined him at the portcullis. ‘Rhaanoc…’
The men pictured the letters of the prisoner’s name falling from the pages of black leather tome in which the Witch Hunter General recorded his confessions. As the letters tumbled they spelled out a different word. The cursed word that fell from their lips together.
‘Archaon.’
‘Impossible,’ Horrwitz said, a sickening feeling spreading up through his torso. ‘It can’t be.’ Archaon turned in his fell plate and horned helm. The armour of Ruinous royalty. He stared at Horrwitz. Horrwitz stared back.
‘Get this portcullis raised,’ Eisenkramer snarled. Horrwitz felt the witch hunter haul at the rusted gate and swore that his seething efforts moved it ever so slightly. As Eisenkramer’s priests and witch hunters went to work on the portcullis windlass, the two men watched Archaon’s own men bring forth an armoured steed. ‘Come on!’ Eisenkramer roared.
‘General,’ Horrwitz said as the prospect of what Eisenkramer was doing dawned on him. They had a handful of men but the Witch Hunter General intended to lead them into battle against Archaon’s battle-hardened warhost. ‘Wolfram, listen to me.’
Eisenkramer wouldn’t, though. His gaze burned into the doom of all the world. The chosen of the Dark Gods. The warrior who had fooled them so completely, because he could. Archaon slowly mounted the magnificent black stallion.
‘Wolfram, this is suicide,’ said Horrwitz. The Witch Hunter General did not seem to hear him. His whole world was the warrior before him. Obendorff and the warrior priests looked to Horrwitz. With grim acceptance, the templar nodded and the Sigmarites lent their weight to the wheel-crank.
Settling into the saddle, Archaon stared straight back at Eisenkramer. Horrwitz watched as the warrior of Chaos gave him a slow nod before turning his steed around. Eisenkramer went wild, tearing at the portcullis as it shuddered upwards, raining rust down on him. Archaon, chosen of the Dark Gods, followed his men into oblivion. As Eisenkramer roared after him, the living apocalypse became one with the mist. Like a rabid animal wanting to be free, Eisenkramer scrambled under the rising spikes of the portcullis.
‘General!’ Horrwitz called, but he was away, his silver sword glinting in the half-light of day. Struggling to get through the gap in his plate, the templar broke into a heavy run. Within moments the mist had claimed him. He found Eisenkramer staring wildly about, searching for any sign of Archaon.
Then they heard it. The bellowing. The braying. The roars of warrior gors, beastmen and Khazgar of the Brazen Tusk. Horrwitz heard the thunder of hooves down the side of the valley. The beastlord had come to claim Archaon’s skull for his Blood God. Archaon, however, was gone, the whisper of a dark and forgotten rumour, lost to the breeze. But he had not left his foe wanting. He had left them Sigmarites who would fight hard for their lives.
Horrwitz brought up his blade, the blade with which Archaon had saved his life, the blade the traitor had returned to him. The bestial bellows were deafening. Silhouettes closed on them: a wall of ferocious horn, muscle and man-hate.
‘We’ve got to get back,’ Horrwitz called. The templar knew that the keep was their only chance of survival and the tunnels below it their only chance of escape. Back to the valley. To the God-King’s altar. Wolfram Eisenkramer fell to his knees.
‘General,’ Horrwitz roared, ‘we’ve got to go, right now!’ The knight of the Twin-Tailed Orb could feel the quake bestial charge through the ground. ‘Wolfram, come on!’ The Witch Hunter General was down in the dirt. His blade was buried in frozen grit of the Wastes and the Sigmarite held onto the weapon’s great cross guard, his head resting against the sword hilt and the decorative hammer-head that formed the pommel. Eisenkramer was done.
Horrwitz wanted to run, but knew he couldn’t. With the rumble of charging monsters closing, the templar tried to steel himself. They were a handful against an army. Death was certain. Horrwitz cast a glance after the ghostly shape of Archaon and his warriors of Chaos. He was about to pay his penance for his comrade’s fall in full. The Everchosen of the Dark Gods had set his enemies one against the other. Eisenkramer and Horrwitz had thought of him as their prisoner when they, in fact, had been his. Shackled to the doom he had planned for them all along.
Horrwitz thought on the words he had exchanged with Archaon on the rise. The lies that had passed between them.
‘More than anything else, I long for peace,’ Horrwitz had said.
‘I would have you get what you want,’ Archaon had told him.
Horrwitz’s sufferings were all but done. Kissing the flat of his templar blade, the Sigmarite prepared himself for the horror to come, and the peace that would inevitably follow. In that, at least, Archaon – Everchosen of Chaos – had spoken true.
About the Author
Rob Sanders is a freelance writer who spends his nights creating dark visions for regular visitors to the worlds of Warhammer to relive in the privacy of their own nightmares. His Black Library credits include the Warhammer novel Archaon: Everchosen, the Warhammer 40,000 books Redemption Corps, Atlas Infernal and Legion of the Damned and various shorter tales for the Horus Heresy. He lives in the small city of Lincoln, UK.
For TC, Jonah and Elliot – you know why…
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Archaon: Everchosen published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
'Archaon: The Fall and the Rise' published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
© Games Workshop Limited, 2014. All rights reserved.
Cover by Raymond Swanland
Map by Nuala Kinrade
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