by Warhammer
‘What are you called?’ The warrior pointed to his own chest. ‘I am Athol Khul.’
It had been so long since he had spoken; he was not sure how many days, seasons, years had passed since he had met a living thing with which to exchange words. He had dredged up the knowledge on seeing the man but it was fleeting, like a butterfly on a meadow’s flowers. Memory, older still than the paintings, flashed through his thoughts. Among the screaming and beating, a word repeated.
‘Lashkar.’
The warrior from the painting looked at him with narrowed eyes, his spear arm moving to an attack position.
‘There was one of my people called Lashkar, lifetimes ago.’
The painter grinned and nodded. The more he heard of the words, the more they drove out the images in his thoughts, replacing them with the clarity of language.
‘Yes. I am Lashkar.’
‘The Bloodspeaker? The leader of the Khul that brought us across the worlds?’
The question brought its own flood of recollection. Rites of blood, the splashing of life on sacred stones to open the portal between realms. Revelation brought further comprehension, the lifetimes of mad toil sloughing away from his thoughts under the cleansing of human contact.
‘Yes, that was me.’ He saw confusion, and no small amount of horror. ‘I was the Bloodspeaker. I saved the Khul.’
‘I… How…?’ Athol – the name he had used – visibly took stock of Lashkar, teeth gritted. His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply, calming himself. ‘Our elders say that you slaughtered your own people. Killed your family.’
‘A few,’ he admitted. ‘Enough to appease the power that kept the ancient gates locked.’
Athol absorbed this without comment, though his fingers fidgeted on the haft of his spear.
‘Athol Khul. You have been led to me, yes?’
The warrior nodded.
‘And I have been waiting for you. Come. Come with me and learn the truth of the Khul and the Black Flames.’
Athol glanced around the clearing, perhaps suspecting the gor-folk would return. They would not. Lashkar’s presence since he had fully awakened the shrine kept them cowed, sometimes even terrified. Then Athol’s eyes strayed past Lashkar, towards the mount. Lashkar saw recognition in the gaze, and an expression of hope.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By the light of a flickering brand, Athol paced around the immense cave, trying to take in the size of Lashkar’s endeavour. Every reachable surface was covered with paint, showing intimate portraits and broad vistas, spanning worlds and lifetimes he could not comprehend.
‘You know that the Khul are not of these lands,’ the Bloodspeaker told him. ‘They are not even of this realm.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’ Athol looked closer at a painting of a battle, on the one side a horde of black and red, the other white and blue. Towers toppled and the skies flared with energy. Some of the figures were wrought in more detail, armoured warriors arrayed against slender creatures with pointed ears and wide eyes. ‘What realm?’
Lashkar sighed and sat down near the fire, gesturing for Athol to join him. He tossed the brand into the flames and seated himself on the floor beside the Bloodspeaker.
‘The Khul were born on a world that existed a long time ago, before the realms were created. There was a war beyond our darkest nightmares and brightest dreams, and that world was broken apart.’
‘And from the fragments, Sigmar forged a new world,’ said Athol. ‘I know this story.’
‘Everything you know is a lie,’ said Lashkar. ‘Sigmar did not create the Great Parch, nor any part of the realms. They are the remnants of magic made real, created out of the destruction of the World-That-Was.’
‘By who?’
‘By nature. By fate. Who knows? Sigmar found them, he did not make them.’
‘You speak of several realms, but how can that be? We live upon this world.’
‘One of many, even within Aqshy. Eight magical forces shattered the World-That-Was, and each became a realm. Our most distant ancestors that survived in the Wardstone Peaks, a region of Ghur, which is the true name of the Realm of Beasts. But we could not thrive there. Sigmar came and brought lies and cities, and our people were called savages because they remembered the ways of blood.’
‘Like the Last Forge?’
Lashkar’s face split with a broad grin.
‘Yes. It was gifted to us by our gods, the ones we served before Sigmar turned all ears against them.’
‘So, the Black Flames were a way to move from Ghur to this place? Aqshy, you called it.’
‘Yes, the realms are connected by gateways. I found one that had been closed a long time, but I saw the old marks on it. Signs of blood that would awaken it.’
‘Your family? Why sisters and brothers?’
‘Would it have been better to kill another’s kin? Blood was needed, so I gave up what I could not take from another. I hid my intention and only when we had passed through did the elders discover my crime.’
‘And somehow you have survived until now.’ Athol looked at the wizened figure. ‘How is that possible?’
Lashkar pointed to the paintings, ignoring the question.
‘But what do they mean?’ Athol asked, looking again at scenes of bloodshed and conquest, magical duels and mighty feats of arms.
‘This is you, Athol Khul,’ said Lashkar, placing a finger upon Athol’s chest. ‘The spirit of blood has chosen you to be its new champion.’
‘What spirit of blood?’
Lashkar grinned again and stood up. He indicated for Athol to do the same and headed back towards the rope ladder.
The climb to the top of the mountain was difficult in the failing light. Lashkar sprang up the trail like a goat but Athol’s ankle twisted on every rock and root, his spear catching on every protrusion they passed – though the Bloodspeaker had told him he would not need the weapon, he could not leave it behind.
He was not sure what to expect and so when they passed between two tall rocks like gate towers he stopped dead, struck by the fire-like glow that emanated from the cauldron beyond. At the far side of the depression a blaze flickered from a crack in the ground, but it was the rocky floor closer to him that drew his eye. Distinct lines criss-crossed the broad space, delineating a visible rune.
The same as the one on the Last Forge. It was identical to the symbol on the head of the spear he had wielded in his blood-dreams.
‘What does it mean?’ he asked, tone hushed by the pervading atmosphere of power.
‘It is the skull rune of the blood spirit.’ Lashkar moved further into the depression, eyes glinting in the unnatural light. ‘The liars of Sigmar have their anvil shrines. This is where the true power of our realm comes from, the spirits of magic that were chained beyond the sky, their energy moulded into the realms we inhabit.’
‘My dream brought me here,’ said Athol, walking slowly around the ruddy basin, eyes following the lines of the skull rune again and again. ‘The mountain of skulls. The fire. The blood.’
‘You are of the Khul – it is in you to feel this thing. The blood spirit moves now, turning its eternal gaze upon us. Long has it waited. Its presence fans the fire in the hearts of those deluded by the tricks of Sigmar’s loyal thieves. Your anger is the anger of a king denied his rightful rule. Like the maggots that eat upon the flesh of the dead, we graze on the body of the blood spirit in ignorance of its magnificence. Now we have a chance to awaken it, to bring back the power that is inside you.’
Athol was not sure. Lashkar had slain his own family, taken them in secret and chopped off their heads. He could not be trusted.
Athol noticed something at the centre of the great rune. A polished skull, almost like that of a dog but too large, the eyes and cheeks not quite right. There were some parts missing.
‘My offering,’ said Lashkar, coming up beside him. Athol stepped away, out of reach, his eye straying to the crude knife in the Bloodspeaker’s belt. �
��You must make yours and then you’ll see the spirit of blood too.’
‘Stay back,’ growled Athol when Lashkar followed him. ‘What sort of offering?’
‘Blood, of course.’ Lashkar moved back towards the shrine’s opening, a hand held out towards the forest beyond. ‘Find a beast and bring it here.’
‘Why? What does this spirit of blood want with me? Why has it cursed my dreams with this awful mountaintop?’
‘Because it needs you. Because you need it.’ The other man’s words rang true, connecting with a feeling deep within Athol. Lashkar gestured again towards the outside of the stone ring. ‘Bring the blood of battle to this place and offer up the head of your victim.’
Athol stalked forward, spear at the ready.
‘If this is a trick, it will be your head that adorns this place.’
The Bloodspeaker nodded and stepped aside, letting him head towards the two gate-rocks.
Athol stopped at the threshold and looked back at the sigil gleaming in the ground. ‘A skull for the skull rune.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The sun disappeared below the line of the shrine wall-stones, so Lashkar sat in the blood-red gleam of the rune’s glow. The arrival of Athol had been like the crack in the dam across the river of his memories, first bringing a trickle and now a flood. With words to give meaning to the images, a semblance of human thought to shape the experiences again, Lashkar revisited the scenes that had flashed through his thoughts so many times in the past.
Like wolves circled by hunting hounds, the Khul had been forced to make a stand in the mountains north of their ancestral lands. Peaks of gold-veined rock tipped with black ash had provided little game to hunt, as their pursuers had known. In the foothills camped a vast army that had marched beneath the flags of thirteen nations; human, aelven and duardin combined. An alliance the Khul had thought impossible, forged by the Hammer-God Sigmar.
Aorgas the chieftain, his brother, had demanded that Lashkar divine the fate of his people, offering up his blood for the scrying. The Bloodspeaker had cut his leader as demanded, spilling the life-fluid into a brass bowl. Looking within, Lashkar had seen the Black Flames as clear as a reflection and the gate had called to him, pulsing in his veins.
But Aorgas had been a weak man; it had been his vice and pride that had led to the war with the city-dwellers. Lashkar saw another vision in the pool of his own blood. That night he had taken Aorgas and the rest of the family into the hidden valley to the dead gate. They had lain down to sleep in its shadow and Lashkar had fallen upon them without warning, taking a blade to their throats, one after the other.
He had not hesitated, for the call of the blood spirit was in him, showing him the road to salvation for his people.
And what a salvation!
Plains of grass and herds of beasts to hunt and farm, as far as the eye could see. Not a city in sight, and though the heat was oppressive, the suns in the sky promised growth and renewal.
The others had not seen it that way and, having come upon the bodies on the far side of the Black Flames, had cursed Lashkar. He had not fled, but faced their wrath. But they guessed his intent, for to kill him, to take his head in the time-honoured fashion of the Khul, would be to seal the pact he had made with the blood spirit. Already there were those that had been tainted by the word of Sigmar. They called for banishment, driving him from the tribe into the endless plains, thinking that he would die there as he would have done in their more desolate home.
And so the blood spirit had filled him with its anger and its hunger, driving him to the cave, spilling itself out through the painting on the walls, until its call had been answered by another. It was there still, much diminished, sated like the feaster at the end of a debauched night.
Lashkar was not worried for Athol. Though he ventured into the woods at night, he was the chosen of the blood spirit. The air was alight with the power waiting to be unleashed, the flickering glow of the rune stronger than ever.
The first of the night-moons rose over the stones before he heard a grunting from the pathway. Athol appeared sometime later, dragging the colossal bullheaded gor-man. Lashkar sprang to his feet.
‘I thought perhaps one of the smaller ones,’ he said, eyes wide.
‘If I am to make this offering, it will count greater than anything from you,’ replied Athol.
Lashkar grinned and backed away, waving for Athol to bring the beast into the shrine.
‘It is alive?’
‘Yes. The blood of battle, you said.’
Athol cut the bindings on the creature and rolled it to its back with his foot, spear in hand. He backed away and crouched, ready to fight, eyes locked on the beast. Lashkar put as much distance as possible between himself and the bull-man, his back to the fiery chasm that split the shrine.
Snorting, the gor-man roused, shaking its broad head as it sat up. Its nostrils flared as its vision cleared, seeing Athol right in front of it. With a bellow, the beast heaved itself onto all fours, about to stand.
Athol did not wait, but lunged forward, the blazing tip of his spear piercing the creature’s eye, punching out of the back of its head. Brains and blood showered down onto the rune upon which it had been laid, every gobbet and drop greeted with a flare of light like oil on a flame. He ripped the weapon free and the bull-man slumped sideways, spilling more blood into the channels in the rock. The progress of the leaking fluid was easy to follow, like molten bronze poured into a mould.
‘Why are you here?’ asked Lashkar, stepping towards Athol.
‘To find a way to protect my people.’ His hand moved to a half-sword at his waist, fingers stroking the scabbard.
‘But why are you here?’
Athol frowned and pointed the spear at the dead gor-man.
‘You said I needed to offer sacrifice.’
‘Why have you come to the mountain of the skull?’ Lashkar struggled to think of some other way to phrase the question. He could feel the blood spirit stirring, within him and within the peak, drawn closer by the powerful offering of blood.
‘I need a way to defeat the Tithemasters.’ Athol stood over the corpse and took his spear two-handed, driving the point into the base of the creature’s skull, separating the spine. He worked the blade back and forth and then knelt, sawing away the last sinews with his knife. Holding it by a horn, he lifted up the immense head. ‘I offer this skull to the blood spirit.’
‘What do you want?’ Lashkar demanded, prowling around the edge of the mystical crucible.
The other man thought about this for some time, eyes cast out over the forest, back towards the Flamescar Plateau.
‘Power,’ he said eventually. ‘Strength. The ability to overcome my enemies. An army that will defeat all that it comes upon.’
‘Yes!’ crowed Lashkar. ‘That is the blood of the Khul. What are you willing to give?’
Athol strode forward and hurled the head into the flame-gleaming crevasse. Lashkar smiled.
‘An offering is good. But what are you willing to give? Your life?’
‘Yes.’ The answer came without hesitation.
‘Your soul?’
This time Athol did not answer immediately. He looked keenly at Lashkar, the ruddy light glinting in his eyes. There was no price he would not pay for his family.
‘Yes. I would give even my soul for this.’
Lashkar was about to speak when he felt something judder inside him. It was as though his heart stopped and his bones split, filling him with a sudden agony. He parted his lips, head thrown back to cry out, but no sound came forth. He heard the crackle of flames growing loud, felt the heat of dancing fire on his back and knew that the chasm was raging with an inferno.
The rune around him blazed in reply, its red light streaming towards him, its touch like sharp blades opening up hundreds of tiny cuts upon his skin, each welling with a single droplet of blood. The bloodskin grew, forming a thin veil across him, flowing over torso and limb, enveloping him from feet to sc
alp. As though he were opened up from within, the blood spirit moved into him, using his body and soul as its doorway as he had used it to save the Khul in that distant time.
Athol fought the urge to flee as Lashkar’s body continued to shudder, coated in a crimson film of its own blood. He opened his mouth and it seemed as though there were embers inside, curls of black smoke issuing from his throat. All of Athol’s attention narrowed down to that face, grimacing madly, though with ecstasy or agony it was impossible to say. The world itself might have disappeared, the stars swallowed, the mountaintop plunged into a pit of fire, for all Athol saw was a face sheathed in rippling blood, with a mouth of flames, the lips starting to char.
Then came a sound even louder than the greatest crash of thunder.
KHUL!
The word shook the mountaintop, causing Athol to fall to one knee. He kept his grip on his spear, knowing somehow that he could not relinquish his weapon in the face of this apparition. Instead he placed his fist on the ground in front of him, haft within its grasp, a salute to the manifestation of the blood spirit.
The lips were blackened now, the tongue a lash of fire that roved with a will of its own, the eyes like pools of molten bronze. Athol could no more break the gaze of that stare than he could topple the mountain with a punch.
DO YOU KNOW ME?
‘You are the blood spirit.’
MY NAME, MORTAL. DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?
Athol shook his head.
Lashkar’s mouth split wider than was possible, stubs of rotted teeth becoming sharp fangs.
I AM THE SKULL KING. THE GOD OF RAGE. LORD OF THE BRASS CITADEL. THE BLOOD OF BATTLE-SLAIN. I AM REVENGE UPON YOUR FOES. I AM CONQUEST INCARNATE. I AM THE FIRE THAT CONSUMED HEARTS AND WORLDS.
A single syllable forced its way up through the roiling froth of Athol’s thoughts, dredged up from where it had lain hidden in the blood of his people for a score of generations.
‘Khorne. We called you Khorne.’
I AM KHORNE. THE BLOOD GOD. DESTROYER OF FAITH. BURNER OF THE WEAK. EATER OF SOULS.
