Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

David Guymer Bear eater

The sun was searing bright, the sky a lens of crystal blue, shaped by gods for the glorification of their oasis of light. Towers of white stone with domed roofs of mosaic gold shone with a splendour that stole a man’s breath, and drew sweat even from an immortal’s brow. The trek across the Sea of Bones had been arduous, but dust and battle damage aside, the dozen Astral Templars still standing could outshine any Mortal Realm for glory.

Liberators in heavy armour of deep amethyst and gold marched in silent ranks; their shields were up in defiance of the sun, hammers strapped across their backs, heads high. The Prosecutors flanked them, walking in lockstep, but with the mechanisms of their wings unfurled, enhancing their size threefold. Their pinions sizzled with god-wrought might. To the rear came a pair of Judicators, the stocks of their crossbows each held in one heavy gauntlet, the stirrups to their shoulders. In the absence of the wrath of Azyr, the weapons were bright but otherwise inert arcs of blessed sigmarite. Impressive regardless, their function plain enough to anyone who knew war.

Even they were but a foretaste.

Hamilcar Bear-Eater marched a stride ahead, his helmet carried under the crook of his arm. His face was tattooed and bearded, his thick pile of red hair sweaty under the desert sun. His teeth were painted black, and he grinned for the awed men and terrified children that lined the Sacred Mile of Jercho to witness the return of Sigmar. Stick-figure representations of sacred beasts marked the rugged sigmarite of his armour, sandblasted, sun-faded, dim now as his own memory of the land and people that had spawned them. It clanked as he walked, the strapping loosened against the heat, his warding lantern banging on the opposite hip. A cloak of tattered Carthic bearskin trailed limply over one shoulder.

Larger than life, men had once called him, when he too had still been a man.

What then, he wondered, could they call him now?

The soldiery of Jercho lined the approach in their finest war gear. They were armoured in short-sleeved leather lorica and skirts sewn with bronze plates. Masks of the same metal, cast in the likeness of a rising sun, covered the upper halves of their faces, eyes peering through slit holes, only their frowns visible. The exposed skin of their arms, legs and chins was the brown of baked bread. Several ranks stood flawlessly to attention under the punishing midday heat — the sun was always high over Jercho — a line of spearmen that ran the Sacred Mile all the way from the Gates of Noon and the citadel of Jercho itself. Archers with long composite bowstaves made of hewnbeam and grindworm tooth tracked the procession from the rooftops.

The Astral Templars were not the only ones intent on making an impression.

‘There certainly are a lot of them,’ muttered Broudiccan.

The Decimator-Prime was a man of heroic stature and few words, which was what Hamilcar, a man of many words of tremendous import, appreciated about him most. His helmet bore a dent from a battle with the sankrit, a reptilian people whose small empire straddled the northernmost reaches of the Sea of Bones. The sankrit had clawed knuckles, and the blow to Broudiccan’s faceplate had left a deep gouge across the mask’s impassive mouth that only deepened the warrior’s gloomy aspect.

‘There always are.’ Hamilcar thumped his breastplate with a clenched fist, making one of the nearby spearmen start. ‘There is only ever one of Hamilcar.’ The granite-white gryph-hound, Crow, that padded alongside him growled in apparent assent, or perhaps in hunger as it considered the soldiers of Jercho.

‘Think of what might be achieved if these people can be returned to Sigmar’s fold,’ said Thracius, last surviving Prime of his Liberators, his armour sand-polished and aglow with Sigmar’s energy, his manner characteristically ebullient. ‘Look upon Jercho’s wealth. And these towers, so grand, earthly twins to those of Sigmaron herself! Two Mortal Realms have I waged holy war upon, Hamilcar, and never seen the like of Jercho — a nation of city-states, as yet unmarred by the Age of Chaos. Their confidence and power would be a boon to Sigmar’s, equal to anything we have achieved in Ghur thus far.’

Ever restless, Hamilcar’s mind turned back.

He had been dispatched to the Realm of Beasts to reconquer the cities of the Carthic Oldwoods and oversee their resettlement in Sigmar’s name. He had succeeded, for Hamilcar always succeeded, only to see that great work undone as one by one those cities fell to marauding bands of ogors, the orruk hordes of the Great Red, and then, the deathblow, to the undying legions of Mannfred von Carstein.

It had been Mannfred that had slain him, in the final battle for once-mighty Cartha, and the ignominy of his defeat lingered more than the appalling injuries required to slay one as mighty as he. He was troubled, more often than he would admit, by dreams of that day. He would awake, clad in sweat, his halberd gripped so fiercely that if the dreams did not cease then one day even blessed sigmarite would snap. A lesser immortal would have broken, but it was not often that the gods forged men of Hamilcar’s mettle. Aware, as a god must be, of the evil that plagued his greatest champion, Sigmar had granted him swift catharsis, giving him the vanguard of the bladestorm that had driven Mannfred from the Sea of Bones and, in alliance with the hosts of Arkhan the Black, broken the back of the Great Red. The quest to bring the vampire to heel went on, and, though it had aggrieved Lord-Relictor Ramus of the Hallowed Knights, there was none better than Hamilcar to pursue it.

It was not about vengeance. Nor was it even about restitution; in his heart he knew that the memory of his death would be with him to the end of days.

He was a hunter, and the vampire was his prey.

‘The Hammers of Sigmar and the Celestial Vindicators claim the realms for Sigmar,’ Broudiccan grumbled, ‘while we battle half-sentient lizard people for an arid waste that no one desires and one worthless night-walker that time forgot to slay.’

‘This is where the glory will be, brothers,’ Hamilcar declared.

‘What makes you so sure?’

Hamilcar spread his arms, his armour shining under the bright sun. The answer was so blindingly apparent that he did not need to speak it. He laughed instead, clapping Broudiccan on the pauldron so sparks of lightning played through the fingers of his gauntlet as he pushed his brother on.

Say one thing for Hamilcar Bear-Eater: he is not greedy with his glory.

The Knight-Heraldor, Frankos, sounded a note on his long, curved horn, the standard of the Knight-Vexillor held proudly aloft as Hamilcar and his best marched into the Plaza Solar.

The great plaza of marble and tinkling fountains was set in the sultry wind-shade of the citadel’s ramparts. They were immense. The white stone of the walls was dazzling. The arrowslits were framed with gold. Fantastical banners of bright and daring colours fluttered against the bright blue sky, but the Solar itself felt no wind. The ornamental fountains sounded a note of coolness, but heat pressed down like a mailed fist.

Frankos’ herald faded into the still air. Silence fell, breathless, with a clatter of sigmarite as Stormcasts shifted in their armour for relief from the heat.

Shielding his eyes, Hamilcar looked up the huge curtain walls to where a robed man with a bald head stood with his lips to a trumpet of gold-plated ivory. And there, on the highest rampart, surrounded by his banners and servants and beneath a shaded canopy, was the throne of Joraad el Ranoon.

The sun-king.

The king of Jercho was clad in a loose banyan of green silk, the hem and sleeve decorated with a chequer pattern of white and green. His arms were heavy with jewelled torques, his neck wound with heavy necklaces of gold. A golden mask that emitted rays like those of the sun covered his face in full, and a crown sat upon his head.

Joraad leaned forward and his voice, when he spoke, boomed from all around, hundreds of voices, echoing from the fine statuary and feminine caryatids of the Solar.

Hamilcar turned his gaze to see the men and women arrayed in royal livery above the square. He had been told of this. The Rays of the sun-king: bonded by ritual magic to the will of their lord.

‘I, Joraad, heir to the reign of Ranoon, regent of Jercho and king of earth and sky, welcome the embassy of Sigmar to my throne. Come in peace, brothers long lost, returned to us now by the blessings of the gods.’

A stilted breeze stirred the high banners. Hamilcar licked the salty dryness from his lips and squinted over the silent crowds. He had been expecting a cheer, a dutiful applause. Something.

‘Why does he sit in shade while we bake?’ Broudiccan murmured. ‘Is he the sun-king or is he not?’

Chuckling at his brother’s bleak humour, Hamilcar stepped forward. He let the quiet linger a moment longer. Then he took a deep breath; his lungs swelled, his diaphragm dropped.

Broudiccan and Thracius took a step back.

‘And Sigmar’s greeting to you!’ His voice was a hammer beaten against the shieldwall of the sky. The pennants above the castle gatehouse fluttered. He looked up to the sun-king, eyes narrowed and shot through with red by the noon glare. ‘We are the eternals of Azyr, and by the might of Sigmar we have returned!’

The sun-king peered down, nonplussed, appearing to remonstrate with one of his many fan-waving attendants, then waved a hand covered in rings towards the gatehouse and some garrison commander out of sight.

‘Here we go,’ Broudiccan muttered grimly as the gates creaked apart in a rattling of chains and a golden crack of light.

A block of half-masked soldiers encased in full plate armour of flawless gold and wielding wickedly curved polearms marched forth. A column with a rank of ten seamlessly became two columns with a rank of five, the marchers splitting to assume positions either side of the gate. A mighty bang reverberated about the Solar as two-hundred men of the Solar Guard smacked the butts of their weapons into the ground, turned forty-five degrees to left or right, and then stamped their boot to the flagstones.

The gryph-hound, Crow, lashed his tail.

Hamilcar rubbed the beast’s heavy beak to soothe him. ‘You heard the king.’ He turned to Broudiccan and Thracius with a grin. ‘He asked us to come in peace.’

The sealing of the gates actually brightened the gatehouse considerably. Natural light poured in through tall, outwards slanted windows, then burned like fire across the doors’ gold and electrum panelling. The walls were that same pitiless white. Hamilcar grimaced and held up a hand as a woman in jewelled armour approached through the files of Solar Guard, bent light streaming from her armour’s faceted edges in a dazzling spray of colours.

‘I had expected to be welcomed by General Sarmiel el Talame,’ he grunted. ‘It was his legion that treated with us in the border deserts of the sankrit. He was the one who arranged this audience once we had explained your city’s danger.’

The woman did not answer.

Everything about her spoke of remoteness, light without warmth.

Steeling himself with a deep breath, he turned to look directly at her.

Within her searing aura, he made out a smudge of darkness, skin, olive brown, and long dark hair ornamented with some kind of gold. Tears began to fill his eyes as he found the glittering lines of powdered gold drawn from the corners of the woman’s eyes. One of the Rays of the sun-king. He gave her a pained grin.

Crow, he held by the scruff to settle his growls.

‘The sun-king, Joraad el Ranoon, eternally glorious king of earth and sky, commands the surrender of your arms,’ she said.

Hamilcar rubbed his eyes and frowned. Sarmiel had not prepared them for that.

In addition to her armour, the woman bore an emerald-hilted tulwar, though it was belted in a scabbard of jewelled silk and could only have been ceremonial in function. Hamilcar squinted to the guards. He had counted about fifty outside, but if there had been any more waiting inside he could not tell, and one gold-armoured figure blurred into another here. How they saw him, he couldn’t fathom.

He supposed they got used to it.

‘You don’t draw the teeth from a bear and expect it to behave.’

Broudiccan snorted, and clutched his massive thunderaxe possessively.

‘Weapons are not permitted in the presence of the sun-king,’ the woman said.

‘Perhaps we should oblige them in this,’ Thracius counselled.

‘Am I able to speak to el Ranoon directly through…?’ Hamilcar waved vaguely over the blankly starring thrall. ‘This? An evil you are ill prepared for rides before us. Trickery is his weapon. Even your great citadel cannot be counted a haven. We are here to defend your kingdom, to test the sharpness of the vampire’s wits on Hamilcar’s blade.’

The woman’s eyelids fluttered, as if the host sought to wake but couldn’t. ‘The sun-king will settle for your blade, Lord-Castellant, if your followers will submit to having their weapons bound to the sheaths.’

Hamilcar conceded. He tossed his halberd to a barely visible Solar Guard and with a nod of assent bade Broudiccan stow his axe. The woman waved a gauntleted hand — the light in its path cut to daggered purples and greens — and called for silk for binding.

‘Divine majesty.’ A captain of the Solar Guard crouched to one knee as men moved amongst the glowering Astral Templars bearing bolts of silk, then bowed his head to the Ray as though he addressed his king in person. ‘The crowds have been cleared from the Solar. My men have secured the plaza and the legions return the people to the city.’

‘You have done well.’ Her eyes rolled backwards for a spell, the attentions of the puppet-lord momentarily elsewhere, and then the dolorous clangour of gongs and horns sounded from the ramparts.

Hamilcar squinted towards the high windows. Treating with a sovereign power was one part fine words to nine parts theatre.

And Hamilcar Bear-Eater knew theatre.

‘I was not advised on any further ceremony.’

The Ray nodded, as if to herself, then backed away. The pain in Hamilcar’s eyes receded appreciably. A few paces back she drew her ornamental blade from its sheath. It was a beautiful thing, as if drawn whole from the heart of a star.

‘The return of Sigmar and the elder pantheon has been awaited for centuries. Their disappearance was never explained to us.’ She lowered her head, and raised her sword flat across her palms to be kissed by the light that poured through the windows. ‘The people will not stand idle. Better they remain ignorant of what passes between us. I am the sun-king of Jercho, imposter, and Sigmar is dead to me.’

Hamilcar bellowed as the woman swung for him. He raised an arm. Sparks tore from the sword’s curved blade and it slid down the angle of his vambrace. A twist, a shove, and he threw the mortal off. She spun once before she landed, light spearing from her as though a cut diamond had been flicked across the face of the sun, any idea of pursuit discouraged with burning pins to the eyes. With a grunt, Hamilcar pulled up. Pain turned his face behind the shade of his own pauldron, eyes narrowed to tear-filled slits.

Dull things in their glorious plate, the Solar Guard moved in.

There was a reluctance to their step, but they came anyway, a reminder of why Hamilcar had always despised biddable warriors, served up in gold.

Whatever orders they had been given it was clear they had been told to execute them quietly, for without a cry or an oath they drew back their polearms and charged. Hamilcar was not about to oblige them their desire for silence.

Say one thing for Hamilcar Bear-Eater: he was loud.

With a bellow that caused the panelling on the gates behind him to rattle and the imprisoned moon dragon of Jercho to shift in its chains, he backhanded an incoming polearm from his chest, then drove his elbow into its wielder’s helmet with force enough to crack the man’s skull against his spine. Thracius shattered another’s breastplate with a punch that threw him into the wall. The Liberator Prime beat on his breastplate and roared. Disappointment had made him wrathful, and Hamilcar was almost glad that he did not have a weapon. With an inchoate beast-sound Thracius dragged a knight from his comrades by the point of his polearm, then dashed him against the ceiling.

Even unarmed, the Stormcasts were proving more than the elite warriors of Jercho had been prepared for.

With the courage of one who bore no share of danger, the Ray exhorted her faltering soldiers to press that attack. ‘They are unarmed. Bring down one, just one, and the sun will shine forever on you all.’ Her blade wove a dazzling pattern of sunsteel and diamond. It was a struggle just to look at her. Crow drew onto its haunches to leap for her, only for Hamilcar to throw his arm down across him like a barrier.

‘Down.’

The woman laughed coldly. ‘As the sun forever shines, so is Sigmar prideful.’

‘I am not Sigmar. Though the resemblance is marked.’

The thrall leapt forwards. Hamilcar unclipped his warding lantern just as the woman came within reach. The heavy sigmarite shutters struck her a mighty blow across the jaw, and she hit the floor like a pouch of gemstones. Hamilcar walked towards her recumbent form, rubbing his eyes, as Broudiccan and Thracius saw to the last of the Solar Guards.

‘Could Mannfred have worked his claws so deep so soon?’ asked Broudiccan. The giant Decimator was on one knee, looking over his shoulder as he sat an unconscious knight against the wall.

‘Mannfred would have known better. He would have sent more men.’ Blinking quickly, he turned to the downed woman. ‘Tell me why—’

Before he could finish, a knife appeared in the woman’s hand. Hamilcar drew back, but then, eyes glassed by distance, she ran the knife across her own throat. A red line appeared, and the glaze in her eyes cleared as the controlling spirit chose that moment to forsake her body. Its parting gift was a few moments of horrified incomprehension as the woman spluttered and gagged and clawed at Hamilcar’s boot as if he had the power to save her. And then she was still.

Hamilcar clicked his tongue.

He had died one time too many to be moved by barbarity now.

‘Whatever the reason, the sun-king wants us dead.’

‘Agreed,’ said Thracius.

Broudiccan spat on the ground as he rose. ‘And they say that Chaos never reached here.’

‘Chaos doesn’t always march with an army,’ said Hamilcar. ‘You can travel the seven realms to the farthest winterland and still find that Chaos got there first.’

‘Then we remove its stain from our boot heel,’ said Broudiccan, grimly.

‘Agreed,’ said Thracius.

Hamilcar and his brothers looked up to see Crow pacing restively before the electrum panelling of a heavy wooden door. The gryph-hound stared at Hamilcar. Intelligence and aggression in its eyes. Hamilcar grinned.

Retrieving his halberd, Hamilcar kicked the doors in. They smashed outwards and splintered against the walls of a corridor. Immediately, he recoiled. It was a blistering desert of pastel stone and points of gold without colour or finish, such was the unnatural intensity of light that blazed through its enormous windows. Despite the pain in his eyes, Hamilcar marvelled. No army could storm the sun-king’s citadel and prevail. No agent or saboteur could make it this far and navigate any further undiscovered.

‘Some ambassadors we turned out to be,’ said Thracius, sorrowfully.

‘Ambassadors.’ Hamilcar gave a snort. ‘Describe me thus again and I’ll rinse your mouth with sand.’

Broudiccan adjusted the sit of his dented helm and regarded them both sourly.

‘The sun-king seeks to thwart our great task and now he will pay for his crime. Such is the rule of Hamilcar!’ Hamilcar turned to his men, lifting his voice, and holding his halberd high. ‘We will bleed him, brothers. And give his kingdom to Sigmar!’

‘To Sigmar!’ they bellowed in return.

‘Hamilcar!’ he roared back at them, until the names were interchangeable.

His heart beat faster than the continuing medley of the sun-king’s horns and gongs as Crow tore off down the corridor. Hamilcar powered after him, the ground-eating stride of a demigod, his warriors close behind. Joraad could be anywhere, but he would know exactly what was loose in his citadel. Through a door and the corridor became another, great open space, its windows washing it with molten gold. Hamilcar staggered, another blow to eyes that were still raw. There was a gargling cry from ahead, short-lived, then a slam of gryph-hound against metal, against stone wall. Hamilcar stepped over the savaged Solar Guard and into a staircase. It was marginally darker inside, luminous rather than blinding, dark enough to see provided one shared the sight with superimposed images of his eyeballs’ veins.

The Astral Templars clattered down the stairs.

Hamilcar broke open another door.

It was some kind of receiving hall. A large wooden table was arrayed with nuts, dates and cured meats, presented as artworks on golden platters. Sunlight fell through slanted windows like taffeta ribbons, along with a natural breeze. A marble statue of womanly splendour poured water into a font from a horn of plenty. The cool chuckle of running water was a delight, so unexpected that Hamilcar almost charged right through the door and into the table.

The spread teetered on its platters.

His stomach stirred in sudden interest.

The Sea of Bones had been a journey to tax even the limitless constitution of the Stormcast Eternals and he had taken little but water and salted sankrit since. With an act of will that impressed even himself he ignored the growls of his stomach to focus on those of Crow, and the pound of armoured footsteps approaching from the other door across from the far end of the table.

‘Judicators, left and right.’

With exaggerated cutting gestures of his hand he directed the Judicators to either side of the long table, then leapt onto it two-footed. The elaborate vittle sculptures descended to the floor with a crash. He kicked aside a pyramid of dates that had somehow remained standing and twirled his halberd. The Judicators’ boltstorm crossbows sparked and whined as bolts of azyrite energy materialised in their tracks, fizzing against aetheric strings that were suddenly taut.

‘Loose on my order,’ Hamilcar bellowed, for there was no warrior who could not be improved by heeding the example of Hamilcar. ‘I claim the city of Jercho for Sigmar. The fewer of its people I have to kill, the greater will be his prize.’

With a crashing of gold-barred timbers, a phalanx of leather and bronze-clad common soldiery fell through the far door. ‘Hold!’ roared Hamilcar, and the mortal legionaries checked back in disarray at the monstrous visage he must have presented.

Pushing and cussing, a slightly bent old man draped in black silks with light silver vambraces and coif forced his way up from the rear ranks. ‘Is this the same legion that crushed the sankrit at Heliopalis, first through the breach at Anatoly? If I didn’t know better, then I—’ The newcomer hesitated as he saw Hamilcar up on the dining table. Without tearing his eyes away, he too gestured his men to stand down. With clear relief, they did so. ‘Lord-Castellant,’ he said.

Hamilcar might have laughed. He hadn’t even been as pleased to see the man when he’d first stumbled into him, blind with thirst, lost and half-mad from a sun that never set.

‘Sarmiel! Praise whoever you like for you!’

The Jerchese general did not return Hamilcar’s welcome. ‘There were reports of fighting in the gatehouse.’

A shrug. ‘That was us.’

‘I vouched for you before the sun-king himself. Do you know what that means? A dozen Solar Guard are dead!’

‘At least twice as many still live. Is that the work of invaders?’

Sarmiel hesitated at that, Hamilcar saw. He already doubted the truth of his reports or he would have come in fighting and to hell with explanations.

That was all the opening Hamilcar needed.

He had mastered his rhetoric in debate with the God-King himself, the Sigmarabulum crowded to its rafters by the admiring folk of Azyr, there to witness a bout between champions. They were a dozen spear-lengths apart, Hamilcar and the mortal man, but he lowered his halberd and extended a hand in friendship.

‘You remember the day we met. You remember what you said to me? I know you do because you had to tell me again after you had given me water and I became sensible.’

A nod. ‘That to have crossed the Sea of Bones you could only have been sent by Sigmar.’

‘You had me at your mercy. Now I have you at mine.’

His halberd tinked as its blade touched the flagstones.

Sarmiel appeared to sag in surrender. No sooner had he done so, however, than the stoop he had been carrying seemed to evaporate off him. He sheathed his sword with a shake of the head. ‘I doubt I could stop you anyway. Not with this lot.’ A glare at his men.

‘I didn’t want to be the one to say it.’ Hamilcar grinned.

‘I knew something was amiss when el Ranoon removed me from your honour guard. No. Before then. Since he moved his court to the Moon Palace.’

‘Moon Palace?’

‘It is where the first sun-king imprisoned the night.’

Hamilcar and Broudiccan shared a look.

‘Take us there.’

Hamilcar did not even realise he had been asleep.

He gasped, fighting with nothing, arms bulging as he fought to drive the… something from his breastplate. There was a pain in his heart. Black iron cracked his ribs like the shell of a nut and dug for the soft beating pulp within. With a roar he lashed out, his halberd having somehow found its way into his hand, and clove at the Abyssal’s neck. The splitting of stone and the crack as it hit the ground broke the dream logic, and he blinked the bloody image of his murderer, Ashigorath, back into nightmare.

In its place came the prattling of a fountain, the click and chirrup of insects, the rustle of leaves. Moonlit petals crept over the ledges of windows that faced in from no part of the fortress that Hamilcar could remember seeing. He held his chest and drew a deep breath. The air was jasmine-scented, as cool as dead iron. He looked back to the steel-barred portal that el Talame’s key had seen them past.

‘Here is where the night is bound,’ said the old general. ‘And everything that goes with it.’

‘Fitting,’ Hamilcar grunted.

Broudiccan and the others said nothing. Hamilcar knew no fear. They knew better than to doubt it.

The fountain he had heard was a few score yards from the portal, in a column of moonlight that the trees seemed to have twisted themselves to avoid. He walked to the basin. Kneeling, he splashed cool water into his face. As the ripples cleared, he saw himself looking into a face that he almost recognised: the tawny beard, scuffed by serried lines of scars, the thorny branch tattoo that swirled around his eye.

The eye however, he avoided looking into too deeply.

Say one thing for Hamilcar Bear-Eater: he wasn’t perfect. He dashed the reflection with his gauntlet.

Memories of death and reforging had never before troubled him while he had been awake. Was he awake in this place? He wondered, briefly, if el Talame ever slept and if he did, if he dreamed.

Crow whined up at him as he rubbed his breastplate.

Sigmar, would the dreams never leave him?

He turned to el Talame. ‘The sun-king. Point me at him.’

The general pointed through a crumbling stone arch. He was afraid to be here, but he marshalled it well, achieving as much as Hamilcar with far less in his making. Determined to be the champion of a god that warriors would kneel to, he shrugged the ache aside, then rose, flicking dream water from his fingers, and ducked under the arch.

The fact that they moved through the heart of the citadel of Jercho, or some timeless, dreamscaped version of it, was artfully masked by weeping orchids and clambering vines. Night birds twittered in backwards verse and things both ageless and unseen scampered amongst the branches. Blossoms drifted on the air as they need never fall.

Broudiccan tramped after him, grim, solid.

‘Do you think this place would resist a Chaos invasion if it came?’ Hamilcar asked him, surprised at how the garden’s solemnity made him whisper.

‘No. If an army can breach the Sea of Bones then Jercho and her sisters will fall.’

They passed onto a bridge over a gurgling stream, causing the wood to creak under the weight of their armour.

‘It needn’t be an army,’ said Hamilcar. ‘Mannfred can build an army. I saw it myself in Cartha—’

‘—hold!’

Broudiccan caught his shoulder and the column of Astral Templars and Jercho legionaries clattered to a halt.

The space beyond the bridge was littered with small stone benches and statues that had been subjected to centuries of weathering and then shrouded in creepers. The moonlight that filtered through the ornamental trees gleamed where it touched bare stone and cut sharply across reflective pools and small bowls of water. A young man with the entitled impatience of a nobleman rested with one arm against a statue, as though awaiting an audience. He was lightly armoured in a fitted leather lorica with gold accoutrements and a silk cloak swept over one shoulder. A fine pair of steel swords with jewelled hilts were scabbarded at his belt, and rested against the statue beside him was a long spear with a jade-coloured pennant tied around the base of the blade. Seeing Hamilcar at the same time as Hamilcar saw him, he swept up his spear and sauntered towards them.

Broudiccan didn’t wait for any sign of malice.

Striding towards the noble he planted his boot heel through the man’s chest, strength that had been beaten into him on the God-King’s anvil lifting the mortal from his feet and smashing him back against the statue. The youth dropped in a clatter of lorica scales into a reflective pool, broken, Hamilcar would have thought, but then he vaulted agilely to his feet. He hissed, bleeding from his mouth. His spear began to hum as he spun it.

And something that no man should possess glittered in the moonlight.

Fangs.

‘By the gods, that’s Gilgazed,’ el Talame stuttered, agog, pointing with his tulwar, ‘el Raniel’s eldest son.’

Snake-quick, the vampire struck Broudiccan like a spear thrown at a wall. The Decimator’s enormous axe whirled as fast as the vampire’s spear could match. Blade struck blade, haft against haft; claps of thunder shook invisible birds from their roosts amongst the trees as storm-fused barbarian battled undying fiend.

Hamilcar turned from his brother’s fight, the splash of water warning of the arrival of others from downstream. The vampire’s speed made him little more than a blur, a sweeping depression in the surface of the water that raced towards Hamilcar at the foot of the bridge.

The vampire’s blade came at him like the lance head of a galloping knight, hard enough and fast enough in that first dramatic instant of arrival to have speared through dragon scale had Hamilcar not had the wherewithal to duck. It sliced across him. Using his momentum to turn, Hamilcar backhanded the rising butt of his halberd across the vampire’s jaw. The knight’s face snapped back and spun away. Hamilcar forced the rest of the vampire’s body to follow. A boot to the back bent the vampire over the bridge’s handrail. Hamilcar lent in, drew his gladius, and rammed the stabbing blade through the vampire’s spine. The fiend’s legs turned to jelly, and Hamilcar’s boot held him where he was. Boot transferred to knee and then he leant in to bite down on the vampire’s ear. His teeth tore through cartilage, his mouth filled sluggishly with brackish warm blood, and then he put his full strength through his knee.

The handrail broke with a splintering crack and the howling vampire dropped the short way to the water. Hamilcar spat his bloody ear after him and roared.

He was Hamilcar of the Astral Templars. Eater of Bears. Sigmar would look upon him and then turn to his own two hands to marvel at the titan they had wrought.

The vampire writhed in the shallow water, and the slower men in clanking golden plate that had been hurrying to the bridge from the same direction looked up in surprise. Hamilcar grinned at them. ‘Hamilcaaar!’ He leapt, two-footed, and flattened the two men into the rocky streambed where the first still scrabbled madly to claw his way out. These were not vampires; they were mortal.

They never stood a chance.

‘Slaughter the infidels!’ cried a voice, cultured, but too steeped in the intonations of the Jerchese to be anything but a native. ‘By order of the sun-king!’

With a roar, four-score Solar Guards surged up the paths that converged on the little bridge and its island folly. A boltstorm bolt blasted a knight to scraps of liquid gold and cast the two behind into the trees with the aftershock. Prosecutors took wing. While Hamilcar and Broudiccan had fought, Thracius and el Talame had organised their men and they moved to oppose their attackers now. Armed and ready, Hamilcar would have counted on his dozen alone against five times the number of mortal warriors that assaulted them now, but for every ten heavy knights there was a sneering nobleman with an exotic blade and fangs.

With a hiss of fury, a vampire in oiled green lorica scales broke from his unit of mortals and punched through a line of el Talame’s soldiers like a ballista bolt fired from Shyish. Hamilcar yelled for Thracius as men began to cartwheel from the frenzied vampire.

Before the Liberator-Prime could intervene, the bushes behind the vampire burst apart and Crow bore the undying champion to the ground. There was a gargling scream as the gryph-hound’s beak tore through the armour of its chest. Hamilcar grunted at the sudden, shared pain in his breast, and splashed for the stream’s bank. Inexplicably breathless, he turned to see Broudiccan. The Decimator was now holding his own against three more, warring through the rubble of demolished statuary.

The Stormcast could handle the vampires, Hamilcar had no doubt, but that still left the Solar Guards.

‘Hold them, Thracius!’ he bellowed. He turned to find el Talame, shouting instructions to his own men, beset, on the other side of the bridge. Their rear ranks were ankle-deep in the water. ‘With me, my friend. Bring me to the sun-king.’

‘Take your own,’ the general called back across the water. ‘They will be more use to you.’

‘The Bear-Eaters can hold their own. You cannot. And I would hate to come so far to strike the wrong head from its shoulders.’ His chest was tight. Breathing came hard. ‘Lead me through this nightmare!’

One of Thracius’ Liberators took the slack as el Talame and his soldiers splashed across the water to Hamilcar’s side. The general himself was last, covered by a boltstorm from a kneeling Judicator that drove the Solar Guard from the water’s edge and allowed the Liberator to put down the vampire that had led them. Another with a snarling leopard daubed across his facemask took station on the bridge and grimly stood their ground.

‘This way.’ El Talame swept past Hamilcar. The pace he set was impressive for one so old, but Hamilcar had time enough to look back and see Broudiccan’s thunderaxe obliterate a statue and shred a dozen Solar Guard with shrapnel and still better it. He swatted aside a silver bower that grew across the path.

Unkempt for a court. And Hamilcar had once ruled from a cave.

And just like that he began to laugh.

Mortality had never seemed so distant.

With strength and vigour twenty times a mortal man’s, he forged a path to the front of the company of warriors, and forced his way through a tangle of ornamental dwarf trees to stumble into a clearing.

An elevated platform of eerie silver-grey stone rose above the small trees and tiered gardens. It looked ancient. The moon shone with a caged, furious splendour, shackled to the form of a splintered throne in which sat the sun-king, Joraad el Ranoon.

His golden mask beheld Hamilcar from his high throne.

With a series of shouts intended to bolster each other’s courage, el Talame’s men took the steps. In response the sun-king lifted one sleeve from the shining rest of his throne.

At his gesture a host of men and women, and even children, shuffled, unseeing, from the crackling glare of the throne and moved to block the steps. Some wore blazing suits of armour, similar to the woman that Hamilcar had bested in the gatehouse, although nothing so impressive in this penumbral shadow-realm. Others were in simple habits emblazoned with the unsetting sun. None of them spoke, smiled, or even looked down at the cracked steps as they pressed together between the oncoming soldiers and their king. If there was one amongst them that could appreciate the incongruity of that emblem in this place then it was the self-proclaimed god-king on the throne behind them, but he did not seem to.

The soldiers hesitated a few steps below the vacant Rays.

The Rays themselves looked over the soldiers as if they were blind, and soporific with the experience of their remaining senses.

‘You seek to best me with children,’ Hamilcar shouted up to the impassive sun-king. ‘Know that you face Hamilcar of the Astral Templars. I am a Stormcast Eternal!’ Hamilcar hefted his halberd high above his head, his lantern in the other. ‘Tell the Lord of Death when you cross the Stygxx Gate that it is the Bear-Eater that sends you, prince of lies. Tell him that you are down payment on the soul of a brother.’

The assembled host opened their mouths, and with one voice alone they spoke.

‘The men you have killed thus far have followed me freely. Not by choice perhaps, but they could have chosen death and that is as much a choice as any other. But these,’ the enthroned king waved a hand over his thralls. The proximity to his person of genuine peril must have caused his attention to lapse somewhat, for several of the thralls mimicked the gesture. ‘These are innocents. You will have to butcher them all to reach me, Eternal. I will see to it. Has Sigmar forged you the stomach for it?’

Joraad leaned forward then, and in a hundred distinct voices, male and female, old and young, began to laugh.

With a grunt, Hamilcar tossed up his halberd, reversed the grip, and then hurled it.

Like a javelin it hissed from his extended arm over the heads of the uncaring slaves and through el Ranoon’s belly.

There was a snarl of moonlight as the blade tip skewered him to his throne’s high back. A cry tore from Joraad’s throat. Blood and dark lumpy juices spurted from the hole made by the halberd shaft and turned the king’s banyan silks black. The gathered Rays echoed their master’s scream, then one-by-one passed into unconscious. The sheer number of them packed onto the steps kept them from falling far.

‘They call me the Bear-Eater,’ he called up to the pitifully crying sun-king. ‘You do not want to test my stomach.’

He frowned then as the increasingly pale king of Jercho slumped forward onto the halberd shaft.

‘Light above,’ muttered el Talame. ‘Is it dead?’

‘He is.’ Hamilcar was surprised.

Joraad el Ranoon was no vampire. It was true then: anyone could make a mistake.

Perhaps the mind-controlling magicks by which he ruled would have been affected by the transition to unlife. Or perhaps the land of the unsetting sun was simply no place for a vampire king.

‘I suspect Mannfred found him more useful as a willing puppet than a slave.’

‘So your vampire is still out there?’

Hamilcar laughed aloud at that, despite his disappointment at seeing the betrayer slip through his fingers once again. There was truth in what the old man said.

The vampire was his.

‘There is only so much of Ghur for him to run into. Say one thing for Hamilcar — in the end, he always triumphs.’

Josh Reynolds The road of blades

Ahazian Kel twisted in his saddle as the barbed arrow sank into the meat of his bicep. He looked down at it, and then up, to see where it had come from. More arrows followed the first. Most of these splintered against the warped plates of his crimson and brass armour, but several found gaps and pierced his flesh. More annoyingly, one found the eye of his horse, killing the scaly brute instantly.

The animal fell with a sibilant whinny, and Ahazian tumbled from his saddle with a curse. The Deathbringer rolled to his feet in a slew of choking dust and shredded grasses, weapons in hand. He ignored the broken arrows jutting from his scarred body. A little pain was good, like salt for meat. The goreaxe squirmed in his grip, eager to bite flesh, and the skullhammer throbbed, ready to crush bone. The thorns of metal set into their hafts bit comfortingly into his palms, sinking into old grooves of scar tissue. The weapons were a part of him, an extension of his arms and will. He stepped away from the dying horse, deeper into the waving, waist-high grasses of the plain, and set his feet, awaiting his attackers. If they wanted him, he saw no reason to disappoint them.

He didn’t have long to wait. A dozen horsemen galloped towards him through the sea of black grasses, their reptilian steeds shrieking with hunger. The cannibal-horses of the Caldera would, and often did, devour anything that fell beneath their scything hooves, even their own riders. The Horse-Lords of the Caldera were little better than their fierce steeds, and the other tribes of the steppes justly feared falling into their hands.

Clad in armour made from bronze plates and the reddish scales of their stallions, and draped in dark robes of firewurm silk, they made for a most impressive sight. Each rider carried a stubby, curved bow and an array of hand weapons that even the most ardent blood reaver would eye with envy. Masks of bone hid their faces.

Intimidating. But then, so was he. He stood hands taller than the tallest of them, and his broad frame was clad in heavy armour. His helmet curved upwards, coalescing into the rune of Khorne, marking his allegiances for all who wished to see. He spread his arms, extending his weapons outward, in a gesture of welcome.

One of the riders bent, and drew an arrow from the quiver on his saddle. He loosed so swiftly that Ahazian almost missed it. His goreaxe snapped up, and the arrow split itself on the blade. More arrows followed. His skullhammer swept out, smashing them from the air. The clans of the Caldera had fought his kind before, and knew that to get too close, too soon, was to die. They galloped in a wide circle, surrounding him, screaming their war cries.

When Anhur of the Axe had led the Eight Tribes across these lands, he’d sent Kung of the Long Arm to cast down the fang-standards of the clans, and humble them. Since Anhur’s death, at the fall of Klaxus, the clans had recovered their courage. Mostly, they contented themselves with raiding the slave-caravans of the Furnace-Kings, or warring upon weaker steppe tribes. That they were here, now, seemed almost an omen.

‘Khorne smiles upon me,’ Ahazian murmured. Perhaps the Blood God had sent him one last gift, before he left this place. Or perhaps they’d seen a lone rider and not realised his true nature until it was too late. Either way, he had little patience for such obstructions. He was close to the end of his quest. The Road of Blades called out to him, and he would not falter now.

Bored, he slammed his weapons together and glared at the circling horsemen. ‘Come on then. I am Ahazian Kel, scion of the Ekran, and I walk the Eightfold Path. I have no time for cowards.’

As if his words were a signal, a horseman screamed and galloped towards him, drawing a sword as he did so. Ahazian turned to meet him. He slammed his shoulder into the horse’s chest, and swept its front hooves out from under it with his skullhammer. Thick bones snapped, and the scaly creature fell with a scream that was almost human. His goreaxe slammed down, shearing through the fallen rider’s blade and the head behind. An arrow smacked into the small of Ahazian’s back, and he whipped around. He smashed aside a lance that sought his midsection, and removed its wielder’s arm for good measure.

He killed two more before the rest broke. The Caldera retreated, leaving him standing over the corpses of their fellows. ‘Perhaps your folk are not so foolish as all that, eh?’ he asked, looking down at one of the dead men. ‘They know when they are beaten, at least. Unlike my own.’ His amusement faded, as he silenced a wounded horse. He crushed the beast’s head, and let his skullhammer drink in its blood.

He looked around. The Black Grasses were exactly what their name implied — a steppe, covered in tall, blackened grasses, rustling in a hot wind. And beyond them, limned in the red light of the setting sun, the ruins of Caldus. Caldus, where the ancestors of the Calderan clans had made their final stand against the armies of the Bloodbound, before being scattered to the winds. ‘And here you are, standing against one of us again,’ he said to one of the corpses, laughing. ‘Perhaps you are a foolish people, after all.’

It was Caldus he had come to find. Caldus and what lay beyond it — the Road of Blades. The road to his destiny. Khorne had called him, and Ahazian Kel had come.

There were no more kels. Just him. There were no more Ekran, save in the armies of the Bloodbound. And all their works had been cast into the fire with them. That was the price one paid, for defying Khorne. And yet… and yet. Khorne prized defiance, even as he punished it. To fight was to earn Khorne’s blessings. And for a kel, there was only battle. To wage war, one must become war. That was the truest adage of the Ekran. Masters did not matter. Armies and nations were but distractions to the purity of war.

Ahazian Kel, last hero of the Ekran, sought to become war itself. But for that, he required greater weapons than those he currently wielded, weapons which could only be found in the Soulmaw. The goreaxe stirred in his grip, as if the thought had angered it. ‘I killed your first wielder to claim you,’ he said, chidingly. ‘There is little difference, that I can see. You discard masters, and your masters discard you. That is the fate of all weapons.’

The wind brought a scent to him. He tilted his head, taking it in. Old blood. Rust. Hot metal. The Road of Blades was close. He set off through the grasses, already forgetting the men and beasts he’d killed. The walk was long, but his endurance was inhuman. Gone were the days of honest sweat and aching muscles. He was like a blade, honed to perfection. A killing edge that would never dull, no matter how many lives he took.

He would never bend, until he broke. Such were the blessings of Khorne.

The distant ruins of Caldus grew larger — broken towers of basalt and feldspar rose above crumbling walls of blazestone. He saw the remains of a massive gateway, its ancient gilt work long since stripped from it by scavenging clans and treasure seekers. Where once the clans of the Caldera had lived and toiled, now only beasts dwelled. The Children of Chaos eagerly occupied whatever mankind abandoned, and warred amongst themselves for control of the ashes. That too was the way of Khorne. Only the strong survived.

The grasses grew thin, and soon disappeared entirely. A scar stretched across the plain, from the baroque portcullis of the city gate to a point just out of sight. It was as if some great blast of heat had scoured a path, burning away the grasses and leaving behind… what?

Weapons. Sourly amused, he realised that it was not called the Road of Blades without cause. Swords, mostly. But some axes. Spear blades. Arrowheads. The weapons had twisted in the heat, melting together into a flat ribbon as wide as several men. Ahazian studied them, trying to calculate the number of blades needed to craft such a pathway. They rattled softly, in their captivity, as if unseen hands were trying to pry them up. He had not noticed the sound before, but now, it was all he could hear. Metal squealed against metal. Pommels thumped.

A road of fire-warped weapons. ‘How fitting,’ he said. The weapons stilled at the sound of his voice, and he tensed, his instincts screaming a warning. But he saw no enemies. Only the ashes of the defeated, still drifting above their blades. That was the story told around the campfires of the Bloodbound. Of proud Caldus, and its fall, and how one of the Forgemasters of Khorne had taken the weapons of those who died in the city’s defence and made from them a road of blades. A road that was but one of eight. Eight roads for eight realms, all leading to the same place… the Soulmaw. The great smithy-citadel of Khorne, where the weapons of mortals and daemons alike were crafted by the Forgemasters and their servants. It extended outward from the Brass Citadel through all realms, for wherever there was war, there was a need for weapons. Its forges were fired by the flames of a dying sun, and its ever shifting ramparts swelled and contracted to the drumbeat of eternal battle.

Ahazian stepped onto the road. The weapons shifted beneath his feet, and he paused, waiting. It was said, in some war camps, that only the worthy could walk the road and survive. But then, that was said of most things of this sort. But Ahazian knew that all of existence was but a test of worth. Every breath, each step — all a test.

He turned and squinted into the distance. The red sun was setting, casting crimson shadows across the steppes. There was a haze, far ahead of him. A shimmering heat-sign. That was where he must go. The Soulmaw awaited him, like a promise yet to be kept. He strode towards it, following the curve of the road.

Ahazian could not say when he had first heard of the legendary smithy-citadel of Khorne. It was there, the savages of the Ashdwell whispered, that the weapons of the gods themselves were forged — even Warmaker, the Blood God’s great two-handed sword. Weapons such as those he desired. Those he deserved. Others contended that even the deep forges of the Furnace-Kings were but puny shadows of the Soulmaw, though he knew of none who had ever seen it and lived to tell the tale.

Like much of what he knew of the gods and their realms, it was all stories told at a remove, passed down from one warrior to another. And all of these stories might be true, or none of them at all. The gods, he knew, were vast, and contained multitudes — daemons and lesser spirits — all bound to the will and whim of their patrons.

Perhaps it was one of those multitudes that had sent him the signs and portents which had set him upon this path. He had seen the silhouette of an anvil in the blood smear of a dying orruk, and read strange sigils carved on the splintery insides of an Ashdwell sylvaneth. A flock of carrion birds had followed him for eight days, and croaked the name of Caldus to him at the eighth hour of each day. In red dreams, he had witnessed a titanic shape, wolf-fanged and mighty, striding through the heavens, and heard a voice, tolling like a bell. It had called out to him, commanding him to travel alone across the Furnace Lands, through the Felstone Plains and to the steppes of the Caldera. And he had done so.

Implacable, he had fought his way towards the setting sun, through enemies great and small. All to reach the Road of Blades. But now that he was here, he felt — not anticipation. Wariness, perhaps. His instincts had been honed on a thousand battlefields. If this was a test, he had not yet passed it.

Ahazian tightened his grip on his weapons and increased his pace. He could feel the broken blades turning beneath him, like serpents stirring in their sleep. As if the road were waking up. The ashes grew thick, filling his mouth and stinging his eyes. They swirled about the road, caught in the eternal heat of their burning.

He stopped. He thought he’d seen something, in the ashes. Like the outline of a shape. Almost human, but not quite. More of them, now. Following behind him, approaching him from ahead. Crowding him. The weapons were clattering again. But the sound had changed. It was almost… eager? ‘Ha,’ he said, softly. ‘So be it.’

The first blade rose up like an adder, and he crushed it with his skullhammer. A second tore itself free of the road and whirled towards him, borne aloft in a cloud of ash. Two more followed its example. An axe wrenched itself upright and spun towards his head. He bulled forward, knowing that to hesitate was to be overwhelmed. To stop and fight was the impulse of all warriors, but it was better to seek out a true challenge than to shed blood for no purpose. There were no enemies here, only the echoes of a defeated people. Khorne might not care from whence the blood flowed, but Ahazian did, especially if it promised to be his own.

He pressed on, smashing weapons aside. Beneath the rattle of metal and the hiss of ash, he thought he heard voices, cursing him, or warning him. The souls of the dead, perhaps, or maybe even those who’d failed to meet the road’s challenge. Arrowheads dug into his flesh like fangs as he swatted the axe from the air. Swords drew sparks from his shoulder-plates and back-plate. A spear blade crashed against his greave, and twisted away. Only once did he stumble, when a length of chain tangled his legs. But a quick strike with his goreaxe freed him, before the rest could take advantage.

Ahazian was bleeding from a score of wounds when he reached what he’d sought. The gateway rose up out of nothing, a coruscating vortex composed of swirling ash, splinters of molten metal, and a harsh, eye-searing light. It was not a physical thing, so much as the memory of one. Not a true gate, but a wound cut into the flesh of Aqshy, bleeding heat and light. Sweat beaded on his flesh as he approached the light, goreaxe raised to shield his eyes. Behind him, the road undulated. Weapon points gleamed in the raw light of the gateway as they surged towards him. He did not slow, or hesitate. He hurled himself through the gate.

He slammed down onto a hard, metal surface. He clambered to his feet and took in his surroundings at a glance. Fumes of sulphurous gas hung thick upon the dense air, partially obscuring the heights above, and the depths below. The gantry he stood on was a narrow strip of heat-scarred iron, extending over an indistinct molten expanse, far below. The path ahead led to a massive portcullis, wrought from brass and stone in the shape of raging flames. The portcullis itself was set into some vast, central edifice, the shape of which he found himself unable to comprehend. From everywhere echoed the din of industry and the grinding of stone. The noise was a force unto itself, battering at his senses.

The gantry vibrated from the quaquaversal reverberation, creaking in its vague moorings. Ahazian caught sight of movement some distance above him. Another gantry, gleaming like silver, stretched towards the central edifice from out of the choking haze. A lean figure strode across it, carrying a broad-bladed impaling spear over its shoulder. The figure stopped, as if it had caught sight of Ahazian. It shouted something, but the words were lost in the clamour. A greeting, or maybe a challenge.

‘It seems that I am not alone on this path, then. No matter.’ Ahazian raised his goreaxe in salute. A roar from below dragged his eyes downward, towards a third gantry, composed of what appeared to be fire-blackened bones. A heavy figure, clad in heavy armour the colour of clotting blood, glared up at him. It clutched an axe in one hand and had a heavy shield strapped to its other arm. ‘A path of silver, a path of bones, and a path of fire,’ Ahazian muttered. Perhaps the Road of Blades was not so unique as the stories had made out.

The bulky warrior below began to lumber towards what Ahazian suspected was his own portcullis. Annoyance flared in him. He had come too far to be beaten to his goal by some plodding oaf. He broke into a run. But as he did so, he felt the gantry begin to shudder and buck. He staggered, and nearly fell, as the portcullis ground open with a clatter of chains. Something massive stepped out onto the juddering gantry.

It was not alive, at least not in any way he recognised. It was shaped like a man, though it was the size of one of the gargants said to dwell in the Firepeaks. Its hide was brass and blackened iron, and it was draped with smoking chains. Vents spewed smoke whenever it moved. Its head was a mockery of his own helmet, and it clutched an enormous axe in its talons. With a grinding roar, it lurched towards him, axe raised. With every step, it caused the gantry to shudder and groan.

‘Another test? Another stone on which to hone my edge — come then. I fear nothing that walks.’ Ahazian’s weapons hummed in his grip as he lunged to meet the automaton. They were eager for battle, even against something that could not bleed. The great axe hissed down, and he twisted aside, nearly losing his footing. He struck out at the automaton’s joints, trying to slow it down. But it ignored his attacks the way he’d ignored the arrows of the Caldera earlier.

It was a weapon, and felt no pain from his blows, which only added to his frustration. ‘Scream, damn you — howl, shriek, something,’ he growled. Screams were his music, and never before had he been denied them. Even the bark-skinned sylvaneth screamed. But this thing refused to give him his due. Then, conceivably, that was the point. Like the living weapons of the road, this thing was not to be fought — but avoided.

Filled with new certainty, Ahazian hunched forward, avoiding a sweeping blow that would have removed his head, and threw himself between its legs. He rolled to his feet as it turned towards him, gears whining. Then, with a shout, he brought his skullhammer down on the trembling surface of the gantry. The iron had been weakened by the automaton’s weight, and it burst at the point of impact. The automaton staggered towards him, axe raised for a killing blow. Chunks of hot metal spattered across his helmet as he struck the gantry again and again. Then, with a final, echoing screech, the iron gave way and the gantry collapsed, carrying the automaton with it. The thing plunged down into the molten depths below.

Ahazian heard a creaking behind him and turned, expecting to see a second automaton. Instead, he saw the bars of the portcullis descending. They meant to trap him out here, whoever they were. He snarled in anger and sprang to stop it. But even as he moved, he knew he wouldn’t reach it in time. With a roar, he sent his goreaxe spinning towards the portcullis. The weapon wedged itself between the bars and the stone frame of the gateway, slowing the mechanism’s descent. Sparks flashed as the metal of the blade bit at the stonework.

The Deathbringer dived through the gateway even as his goreaxe snapped in two, and the portcullis slammed down. He glanced at the remains of the weapon. Another test. One of sacrifice. Ahazian found himself in an immense, circular antechamber, hewn from volcanic rock. The walls were bare, save for thick pillars of feldspar and eight portals, including the one he’d entered through. ‘Smaller than I thought it’d be,’ he said. On the floor was a mosaic of images — daemons, warriors, gods, all locked in battle — curling around colossal grates. Above him, the chamber stretched up into a smoky darkness.

The skin between his shoulder blades itched and he peered upwards. Between the pillars, he glimpsed what might have been individual tiers or levels, lit by firelight. This was only the bottom level, then. He heard the ringing of hammers on anvils, and the hiss of hot metal being cooled. Distant voices spoke, but he could not make out their words. The air stank of smoke and blood.

‘Are we expected to fight our way to the top, then?’ someone rumbled. Ahazian turned to see the brutish warrior he’d noticed before stump through an archway marked with symbols of death. The warrior’s armour was gashed and dented in places, and he’d lost his shield, but he still had his axe. Strange charms and tokens hung from his neck, and his breastplate was etched with scenes of battle. His helmet was crafted in the shape of a skull, and the haft of his axe was a human femur. He waved the weapon at Ahazian. ‘Answer me, fool, or I shall gut you and read the answer in your entrails.’

Ahazian stepped back towards the centre of the chamber. Perhaps this was the last test. A trial by combat, to see who was worthy of the Soulmaw’s gifts. ‘Do not make threats you cannot keep, brute.’ He spread his arms. ‘Come to me, if you wish to die.’

‘Does that go for all of us, or just him?’

Ahazian risked a glance to his left. The spear-wielder he’d seen before stepped through an archway of gold. The warrior wore an open-faced helmet and a polished cuirass of brass, marked with the rune of Khorne. His scarred, tattooed limbs were bare of armour, but his movements were so quick, Ahazian doubted he required the extra protection. Even so, blood dripped freely down his limbs from numerous wounds. ‘Feel free to join in, if you like,’ Ahazian said. ‘I’ve never had a problem killing strangers.’

‘Too much talking, not enough dying,’ the brute rumbled. He charged towards Ahazian, axe raised. Ahazian braced himself to meet the warrior’s rush, glad at last to face a living opponent. Even if he did smell like an open grave. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of more warriors entering the chamber through the other archways. He had little time to spare for them, however, as his adversary hacked at him. He caught the blade of the axe on the head of his skullhammer. His muscles bulged as he fought to force his larger opponent back. ‘Strong,’ the brute grunted.

‘Only the strong survive,’ Ahazian said.

‘And only the clever prosper,’ the spear-wielder interjected. The wide blade of his impaling spear skidded off the armour under Ahazian’s arm. He caught the weapon just behind the blade and yanked it forward, so that it slammed into the chest of the brute. The hulking warrior staggered back with a curse. Ahazian spun and smashed his skullhammer into the chest of the spear-wielder, knocking him flat.

‘A clever warrior wouldn’t have got so close,’ Ahazian growled, as he raised his weapon. He would crack this fool’s skull and then finish off the other one. However, as he moved to do so, smoke began to rise from the grates in the floor. It flowed upwards so swiftly and thickly that soon Ahazian could see nothing around him. The sounds of battle grew dim, and faded away entirely. Even the floor beneath his feet felt different. He could no longer feel the presence of his opponents. It was as if they had been stolen away by unseen hands. For a moment, curiosity warred with anger.

Then, in the smoke, came a light. A dull, orange glow. Acting on instinct, he moved towards it. The floor trembled beneath him as he moved, and he heard the thunderous creaking of unseen gears. From somewhere, a voice began to speak.

In the beginning, before the Age of Blood, before the realms cracked and the four brothers made war upon one another, there was fire. From fire, came heat. From heat, shape. And shape split into eight. And the eight became as death. Eight Lamentations.

Ahazian stopped. ‘The Eight…’ he whispered. Every warrior marked by Khorne knew the legend of the Eight Lamentations. Eight weapons, given by Khorne as gifts to his brother gods, but then lost. A single Lamentation could shatter armies. All eight together would rend the walls of reality, and cast down all that opposed them. Were these the weapons that had drawn him here? Was this why he had been summoned, to wield one of the Eight? The thought excited him. It was only fitting, was it not?

The smoke swelled, and Ahazian wondered if the chamber were changing shape, somehow. Everything seemed to be moving, drawing him closer to the orange glow. He pressed on, moving as quickly as he dared, without being able to see his surroundings. And through it all, the voice continued its tale.

The Eight were the raw stuff of Chaos, hammered and shaped to a killing edge by the chosen weapon smiths of Khorne. To each of his Forgemasters was given a task — to craft a weapon unlike any other: a weapon fit for a god. Or one as unto a god.

‘I am not a god, but I would gladly slaughter a pantheon for such a weapon,’ Ahazian said. His words were swallowed up by the smoke, without even an echo to mark their passing. With such a weapon in his hand, he would be as war itself.

Then came the Age of Blood and the Eight were lost. But it is said by the Brass Oracles that there will come eight warriors — Godchosen — who will reclaim the Eight for Khorne, and march with them at the head of his armies, at the end of all things…

Abruptly, the smoke billowed and began to disperse, as he was enveloped in a great heat. His boots scraped on rough stone, and he waved a hand to clear his vision. He was in a forge. Larger than any he’d ever seen, but crude. Primitive. It was a cavern, chopped and hewn so as to make room for fire-pits and cooling basins. Racks of weapons decorated the curved walls — hackblades, wrath-hammers, weapons of all shapes and sizes.

And at the heart of the forge, a huge anvil, and the smith himself, standing over it. One big hand clutched a hammer, while the other held something flat on the anvil. The hammer came down once, twice, three times, filling the forge with the sound of metal ringing on metal. The sound sliced at his senses, setting his teeth on edge.

Ahazian recognised the heavily muscled being before him. He’d seen skullgrinders before, though the war-smiths of Khorne were not a common sight. The creature’s armour was blackened and warped, as if he had been at the centre of a lightning strike. When the skull-faced helm turned, Ahazian saw that it was scored and marked in similar fashion.

‘You are of the Ekran.’

The skullgrinder’s voice was like an avalanche. Ahazian hesitated. Then, he said, ‘I am Ahazian Kel.’

‘The last kel.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you kill the others?’

Ahazian took a tighter grip on his skullhammer. ‘Some. Who are you to ask such questions?’

‘I am he who called you here, Ahazian Kel. I am Volundr of Hesphut. The Skull-Cracker. The Sword-Binder. Do you know my name?’

Ahazian did. ‘It is said, in certain circles, that it was by your hand that the sword Marrowcutter was forged. That you broke a hundred daemons on your anvil, and used their blood to cool the blade of the greatest of the Eight Lamentations.’

A low, guttural laugh slipped from the skullgrinder. ‘Even so, even so. You know who I am, then. But do you know what I am?’

‘The Forgemaster of Aqshy.’

‘Yes. One of eight sworn war-smiths, bound in service to Khorne. Though we are but seven, now. The forges of Azyr are cold, and my brother is gone. Even Khorne cannot find him.’ Volundr lifted what he’d been working on from the anvil. It was an axe — a black goreaxe, chased in gold. ‘This axe once belonged to another, who failed to live up to its promise and my expectations. Thus, I have re-forged it, and made it stronger.’

The skullgrinder turned, the axe licking out. Ahazian jerked back, bringing his skullhammer up to block the blow. His hammer burst as the axe bit into it, and he was knocked backwards. Volundr gave him no time to recover, or even mourn the loss of a faithful weapon. The skullgrinder spun the axe as if it weighed no more than a feather, and chopped at Ahazian’s head. Ahazian ducked aside. He didn’t waste time wondering why the skullgrinder had called him here only to kill him. Such was the skullgrinder’s strength, he had no doubt that a single blow would mean his end. He had to stay out of reach.

‘Why did you come, kel?’ Volundr rumbled. ‘Answer me quickly.’

‘I came seeking weapons,’ Ahazian said, avoiding another blow. He cast around, seeking a way out. His spirit rebelled at the thought of retreat, but he had not come all this way merely to die. There were weapons here — one of them might give him an edge.

‘Which weapons? This one, perhaps?’ The axe slashed down, nearly taking Ahazian’s leg off. He threw himself backwards, towards a rack of blades. ‘Or perhaps you came seeking one of the Eight Lamentations, eh? Did you come seeking Marrowcutter, or perhaps the spear called Gung?’

‘And if I did?’

‘Is that the only reason you dared walk the Road of Blades?’

‘What other reason is there?’ Ahazian snarled. He snatched up a hackblade and turned. The axe sheared through it, even as he brought it up. He cast the jagged stump into Volundr’s face.

‘To test yourself. To see if you were worthy of wielding these weapons you seek.’

‘I would not be here if I was not,’ Ahazian said. He twisted aside and then lunged back, grabbing the axe by the haft. Volundr laughed and jerked him off his feet. He slammed Ahazian back against the wall with humiliating ease, holding him pinned.

‘No. I suppose not.’ Volundr studied him for a moment. ‘They are not here, you know. They were lost. Scattered across the mortal realms by unknown hands.’

‘Then why call me here?’ Ahazian demanded, struggling to get free.

‘To see if you are worthy of the quest. Do you think yourself one of the Godchosen, then, Ahazian Kel? Are you one of the eight champions destined to wield the Lamentations in Khorne’s name, in the final bloodletting, when the stars themselves are snuffed out?’

Ahazian clawed at the haft of the axe, trying to free himself. He lashed out at Volundr with his feet. It felt like kicking stone. Volundr chuckled. ‘Or perhaps such dreams are beyond you. Maybe you are simply a butcher, seeking a better quality of blade. Which is it?’

‘It is whichever Khorne wills,’ Ahazian hissed. ‘I am his weapon, to wield as he sees fit.’ He thrust his fingers into the eye slits of Volundr’s helm. The skullgrinder roared in fury and stumbled back, releasing him. Ahazian crumpled to the ground, gasping. Volundr had dropped the axe, and was clutching at his helm. Ahazian snatched the weapon up and lunged to his feet. He swung it towards Volundr’s neck. But, at the last moment, he pulled the blow.

Volundr lowered his hands. His eyes gleamed, in the depths of his helm. ‘Very good. You have a brain, Ekran.’ He straightened. ‘More than I can say for some of the others. But then, my brothers have never been as particular as myself, regarding their tools.’

‘Tool,’ Ahazian repeated. ‘Those others, they were summoned as I was.’ He thought of the brute, and wondered whether such a creature would have the wit to pass such a test. He doubted it. But perhaps the other Forgemasters valued different properties in their tools.

Volundr nodded. ‘By my brothers. The other remaining Forgemasters.’

‘Why? To what purpose?’

Volundr turned back to his anvil. ‘The time for war — the last war — will soon be upon us. The weak gods of the lesser realms have returned to contest our dominion anew, even as Khorne’s brothers scheme in the shadows between worlds.’ He slammed his hammer down on the anvil. ‘The Eight Lamentations must be found. And we will find them. You will be my hand in this task, as the others who were called will serve my brothers.’

Ahazian nodded. He’d been right. It had been a test, all of it.

‘And it still is,’ Volundr said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘If you are brave enough to continue. Your destiny awaits, Ahazian Kel. Will you falter?’

‘I told you before — I am Khorne’s, to wield as he sees fit.’

Volundr nodded and struck the anvil again. ‘Good. Then I will not have to shatter your skull on my anvil.’

Ahazian extended the haft of the axe to Volundr. ‘A good weapon. But not what I came for.’

Volundr shook his head. ‘No.’ He chuckled and struck the anvil one last time.

‘But it will serve until you have a better one.’

Guy Haley Pantheon

There was a lantern in the skies over Azyr — shining Sigendil, the High Star of Azyr, beacon of Sigmaron. Surrounding its body was a mechanism of great art, a thing of sliding spheres pierced with fretwork. With the shifting of the immense clockwork Sigendil twinkled, and shone the brightest of all the stars in the heavens of the Celestial Realm.

The inhabitants of Azyr loved it well. Sailors charted safe courses across stormy seas by its light. Mothers hushed crying children and pointed, saying, ‘There is the holy light of our God-King, see how he watches over you as you sleep.’ Merchants swore oaths by it and laws were ratified by its light, so constant it was, for Sigendil never moved from its appointed place in the sky as other stars did. In an age of awful wonder, the matchless light of Sigendil was a source of certainty.

But though it was itself invarying, Sigendil had witnessed change, even in Azyr.

Far to the north towered Mount Celestian, Azyr’s greatest peak. Only once in history had the mountain been assailed, when Sigmar’s great hammer Ghal Maraz smashed its peak away, leaving a lofty plateau dominated by a lake of shining blue. Upon its shores he built a city whose scale and glory outshone even Azyrheim, for it was made to be the abode of gods, not mortals. The divine survivors of the World-That-Was gathered under Sigmar’s banner on Celestian, to rule the Eight Mortal Realms.

There was a castle of bones so huge one would think them carved fancily, though any who touched them would find them dry and osseous. Another dwelling was a wooden stockade, much splintered and strewn about with more bones, these gnawed upon. To the east were twin, squat fortresses, one of iron and one of frozen fire. To the west was a trio of slender towers whose forms, though similar, reflected the differing temperaments of their builders. In a vale of scented woods where the waters of Lake Celestian tumbled to the lands below, grew an oak of inconceivable size.

At the centre of the city temples gathered upon a vast silver acropolis. From their midst a tower of blue light pierced Azyr’s busy skies. Atop it was situated the Court of the Gods, a colonnaded space from whose vantage all the Mortal Realms could be seen. Thrones fit for titans ringed it — bone for Nagash, white marble for Tyrion, silver for Teclis, dark stone for Malerion, fire-hued amber for Grimnir and rustless steel for his brother, Grungni. Alarielle’s was of pale heartwood rooted in the stone, while Sigmar’s own gleamed golden. The thrones looked inward to the legendary Mirror of Bayla, a gleaming sheet of silver four yards across.

Together, mountain, city and court were known as the Highheim, the parliament of the gods in more peaceful ages.

No longer. The court had stood deserted for aeons.

The Ages of Myth had passed thousands of years ago. Mortals had forgotten the Highheim. Silence lay upon the city as thickly as the spent stardust that drifted in its thoroughfares.

That day, life returned a while. A lone figure trod the court. Noble of aspect and mightier than the greatest mortal, he was dwarfed by the buildings, and so his own stature was uncertain. He looked like the man he had been, ages gone in a different world. But god he was — Sigmar, the architect and lord of the city, and uniter of the gods.

Sigmar stood between the columns. Overhead the spectacular heavens of Azyr turned, to the south blazed matchless Sigendil, almost but not quite obscuring the husk of the World-That-Was behind it. Scented wind teased out Sigmar’s long golden hair and stirred his cloak.

He waited impatiently. Though a god, he had a man’s humours still. His patience had been exhausted by the long vigil of the Age of Chaos. Now his war was in motion, Sigmar had ceased to plan. He wanted to act.

Yet he must wait.

Night did its complex dance, the wheeling stars a backcloth to the motions of zodiacal beasts and divine mechanisms that sailed the lower heavens. Dawn arrived to find Sigmar deep in thought, head bent over the Mirror of Bayla. Would she come? He did not truly know. Their friendship had passed with the elder days.

The first rays of the sun struck the white pediment of the colonnade, washing marble orange. Sigmar’s head rose. Sensing magic, he stood.

A glow took hold around the throne of Alarielle. The ancient wood creaked and groaned. It emitted a screeching crack, so that Sigmar thought it might explode, but it shuddered, and from its tall back fresh shoots sprouted, growing unnaturally fast, leaves budding from them as they unfurled and reached skyward. The throne’s roots flexed, cracking the paving, the slow might of trees quickened by divine power.

There was a wink of light, then another, and another still, until a cloud of golden motes danced around like fireflies. The swarm thickened and coalesced, becoming the form of a tall, proud woman. The scent of rising sap and luxuriant flowers wafted over the god king. The lights solidified, until the features of Alarielle could be clearly discerned. Light faded. The throne put out a crown of fragrant blossom, framing the goddess’ broad wings of leaf and wood in white flowers.

Alarielle wore a crescent helm-crown, and carried a sinuous glaive. Her pale green skin was like that of a beautiful mortal’s, save her right hand, which was of strong, clawed branches.

Sigmar broke into a smile. ‘Alarielle, the lady of life. You came.’

Alarielle walked toward him, the motes of magic that made her image breaking apart a little as she moved. Her presence made the mirror shine. ‘I can spare you this projection, Sigmar of the tribes of men, for a short while. Speak and tell me why you called me back to this place.’

‘I thank you for coming. I appreciate the effort you have put forth.’

‘You do right in thanking me.’ Where she trod, delicate flowers sprang from the cracks in the paving. ‘The days when you might summon me are no more, prince.’ Her pupilless green eyes flashed in challenge.

Sigmar bowed. ‘I would not dream of summoning you. I invited, you responded. It is so good to see you again.’

A small smile curved Alarielle’s lips. ‘So the mighty Sigmar has learned humility. I had thought to find you more arrogant than ever. Your armies march across all the Mortal Realms. To unleash war on the four lords of Chaos alone is not the act of a humble man. Your rashness almost ended me, you realise.’

‘For that, my lady, you have my eternal apologies.’

She walked past him, trailing the smell of growth and new life, and looked out over the Highheim’s deserted ways. ‘No matter. Your actions, though impetuous, led to my rebirth and reinvigoration. You reawakened me. I spent too long brooding on defeat. If you had not caused my death, I would have been destroyed.’ She swept her gaze across the empty city. ‘So much beauty here, but it is sterile, bereft of life and purpose. It saddens me,’ she said. She looked at him. ‘I believed in your vision once, but it failed. If you have come to ask me to rejoin you here, to reform the pantheon of old, I will not.’

‘I did not ask you here to reform our old order,’ he said. ‘Perhaps one day, but not now.’

‘Perhaps then I will be interested, when a new season comes upon me,’ she shrugged. ‘Perhaps not.’ She sighed, the air she exhaled dancing with colourful insects. ‘If you ask for alliance, you already have it. My warriors fight alongside yours. Any reluctance the wargroves felt toward your warriors of lightning is fading. War is joined on all fronts.’

‘I thank you for that also,’ he said, ‘and my Stormcast Eternals will aid the people of the forests wherever they may be found. But asking for alliance is also not my intent.’

‘Then what do you want from me?’ she asked, curious.

‘Something more subtle than blades,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ He reached to take her hand. His fingers passed through the glowing lights making up her form, but she followed when he walked to the flat silver of the Mirror of Bayla.

‘The gift of the Mage Bayla to the pantheon of old,’ he said.

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘Its use allows the viewer to see whither he will, be it in any realm.’

‘That is so,’ he said. He passed a hand over the metal. ‘It is into the past that we shall look, into another time and place. We will witness the quest of Sanasay Bayla himself.’

‘Are we to see the forging of this artefact?’ she asked.

Sigmar smiled. ‘We shall look back further than that, to the time he was a sage and a seeker in Andamar, at the far edges of Ghyran.’

‘A seeker after what?’ asked Alarielle. Her concern was rarely with thinking creatures of flesh. Her domain was of plants and growing things, and the wild spaces of the worlds. She knew little more of Bayla than she did of other short-lived fleshlings.

The mirror filled with swirling cloud. Lights flashed in the vapour, steadying until an image could be seen: a handsome man with walnut brown skin and a ready smile. Intelligence flashed in his eyes, and a hunger.

‘He sought what all mortals seek,’ Sigmar said. ‘Knowledge.’

The image clarified, and the two gods looked back far in to the past, to a time before the coming of Chaos.

There came a day when the Mage Sanasay Bayla had learned all he could from the great minds of his era. After long study he was acclaimed as the finest thinker of his generation, and the most powerful wizard in all of Ghyran. His family rejoiced in his achievements, but for him it was not enough. Sanasay Bayla lacked purpose, and it troubled him.

He lay in bed, staring through the glassless windows at dancing green auroras over the south. In Andamar, Ghyran’s life ran even into the sky.

Bayla exhaled loudly, waking his wife.

‘What are you sighing about there, Sanasay?’ she said sleepily.

‘I do not mean to wake you,’ he said.

‘You did.’ She smiled and rested her hand on his chest. ‘What troubles you, my love?’

He was silent, and so his wife poked him.

‘You lay hands on the greatest mage in Andamar, if not all of Ghyran?’ he asked in mock outrage.

She laughed, a sound that meant the most to him in all the world. ‘Tell me. If the greatest mage in Andamar, if not all of Ghyran, cannot confide in his wife, then he is a poor man, though a great wizard.’

Bayla frowned and laced his fingers behind his head. ‘I have unlocked many of the mysteries of the world,’ he said. ‘I have mastered five of the eight schools of pure magic. I understand the rest well enough, and know sufficient of the darker arts to leave them alone. Every question I ask, I find the answer to. I am bored, my wife. I must set myself a challenge that will test me. I need a purpose. I need to know why I do what I do, and to what end I should put my great knowledge.’’

‘You could try getting up early every day, organising the household, seeing the children are cared for and that our finances do not collapse while you are riddling with fell beings,’ she said. ‘There is purpose there.’

He harrumphed.

‘I am teasing you, my love.’ She yawned.

‘I am without goal or cause. I must find out what it is I want,’ he said. ‘Then I shall be satisfied.’

‘What of the Realms’ End? You have never been there. It is said all knowledge can be learned where the realms cease to be.’

‘A myth,’ he said. ‘I determined long ago that it does not exist. The Realms are vast, perhaps infinite. I have travelled far, but never seen it. Every text I read suggests it is only a story.’

‘Then be content with what you have, my darling.’

‘Although I have much, the concern dogs me that there is more, if I but knew what to look for,’ he said worriedly. ‘I risk missing my greatest achievement.’

‘Surely the gods could help,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you ask them?’

She fell asleep. Sanasay Bayla could not. A new idea had come to him complete, and he set about planning its execution.

His wife probably meant for him to go to the temples, and consult with the priests there. But Sanasay was not like other men.

In Andamar’s Temple of Teclis the Wise, there was a tower of marble so slender only one person could climb the winding stair. As the stair neared the peak, it grew so narrow that the climber must proceed sideways. Finally, it opened via a thin hole onto a platform big enough for a single person to sit. On every side was a dizzying drop. The tiniest slip would condemn a man to a long fall and a swift death. Sanasay could have cast a spell upon himself, or used one of his marvellous devices, or conjured a great beast to fly to the top of the tower, but the gods dislike those that cheat.

He crept onto the pinnacle. Wind tugged at him as he unwrapped his mat and laid it on the moist stone, careful not to drop the sacred objects rolled within. When they were laid out in the proper manner, he sat cross-legged in the middle of the pinnacle. He poured a single drop of mona nectar into a silver cup, whispering the necessary incantations, and drank it back. The bitter liquid made his tongue burn, but the sensation quickly passed, and his mind buzzed as it moved to a different plane.

Sanasay Bayla slipped into a deep trance.

When he opened his eyes, he was walking upon clouds in a world with five suns. A nearer radiance turned the clouds to gold, forcing his eyes into slits. When he opened them, there was a tall figure not far ahead, made from purest light. His features were similar to man but he was not of his race. His garb was outlandish.

‘Great Teclis!’ called Bayla, and fell to his knees on the clouds.

‘Sanasay Bayla,’ said Teclis. ‘The quester after knowledge. You are brave to seek out the gods. I and my brother have watched you with much interest.’’

‘Great Teclis,’ said Bayla, ‘who is the god of wisdom and arcane secrets. I beseech you, in all my—’

‘Hush now, Bayla,’ said Teclis in amusement. ‘I know why you look for me. You wish to know if Realms’ End is real, and how you might get there if it is.’

Bayla was not surprised the god could see into his thoughts. Teclis was the greatest wielder of magic in all the Realms.

‘You have this hunted for this place before, but gave up,’ said Teclis.

‘I convinced myself it did not exist. Foolishly, perhaps.’

‘I admire your dedication to your art, Sanasay Bayla,’ said the god. ‘I have known only a handful of your species able to learn so much of the ways of magic. But let it be known to you — too much knowledge is dangerous.’

‘You warn the forewarned,’ said Sanasay humbly.

‘I will tell you, for your motives are pure and your achievements many. Realms’ End exists.’

Bayla felt an uplifting in his heart. ‘How can I go there?’

‘There is a gate in the circling mountains that bound your land, those that no man has crossed. The gate leads into a tunnel that takes a route not of this plane. On the far side, Realms’ End is to be found.’

‘I will set out immediately!’ said Bayla.

‘There are two things you must know. The gate is locked, and there is no key. Only he who can forge the unforgeable can furnish you with one. On the far side is a monster which only death can kill. Find a way to overcome these obstacles, and Realms’ End will be open to you.’

‘I thank you, my lord,’ said Bayla gratefully.

‘Sanasay,’ said Teclis. ‘Be warned. This quest will consume you. You will discover your heart’s desire, but you may not like what you find. Perhaps it would be best for you to remain at home.’

‘I cannot know what it is until I see it,’ said Bayla sadly. ‘Though the risk is great, I must witness it for myself.’

‘Then go with my blessing,’ said Teclis. There was a clap of thunder. Bayla fell through the clouds. He landed hard in his meditating body. It rocked dangerously as he awoke, but he did not fall.

So it was he set out on his next task.

His wife pleaded with him not to go. The Iron Temples of the duardin were many years of travel away, and there was no guarantee its guardians would allow him within the precincts.

‘I must!’ he said. His young children clustered around their mother, and clutched at her skirts, but he was blinded by anguish, and could not see their tears. ‘What if I turn away, and never realised my full potential?’

For six years he travelled, through many realmgates and over hundreds of lands. Finally, older, scarred and weary, he came to the Iron Temples in Chamon’s Ferron Vale.

‘You cannot enter,’ said the temple guard, when Bayla had stated his case. ‘This is sacred ground, dedicated to Grungni. No manling may go within.’ So the conversation began, and so it continued, developing into bargaining, then arguing, but the duardin remained unmoved, and they would not let him inside.

Bayla went high into the mountains, where he could overlook the carved peaks and smoking forges of the Iron Temples. Powerful runes glowed in the rock and metal of its walls. For all his sorcerous ability, the wards of the temple were forever denied.

Miserable, Bayla descended the mountains into forests of iron-thorned trees. By a wall of rock aglitter with veins of ore, he made his camp and settled down for a night of brooding, staring into the flames of his campfire.

‘Won’t let you in, lad?’ said a gruff voice.

Bayla started. Without his noticing, a duardin had taken a seat on the far side of the fire. His face was hooded, but from the shadows protruded a white beard of impressive length, and he smoked a pipe of bone so ancient it was polished smooth and stained dark with use. Bayla knew enough of Grungni’s folk to recognise an elder when he saw one.

The stranger chuckled at Bayla’s reaction. ‘Sorry, lad, I have a habit of creeping up on people. My apologies. Do you mind if you share your fire?’

‘Of course you may,’ said Bayla, who was wise to the ways of strange encounters. ‘Please, sit. I have a small measure of ale and food that I would gladly share.’

‘Well!’ the duardin said in appreciation. ‘Hospitality like that in the wilds, eh? Very good, very, very good.’

Bayla handed over his ale skin, which the duardin drained to the last drop, and gave over his food, which the duardin shared generously. They ate in companionable silence. When they were done, the duardin sniffed deeply. ‘Not bad. Tasty. I long for a crumb of chuf, but they don’t make that in this time and place.’ He fell silent a space and twiddled with his pipe, lost in his memories. ‘So then,’ he said brightly. ‘What’s a manling like you want with the smith god of my people?’

‘I seek a key to the door in the mountains that will lead me to Realms’ End,’ Bayla said. He blinked in surprise. He had not intended to reveal his purpose, but there were the words, tripping off his tongue!

‘Ahhh, well, Grungni can be a prickly sort. I have known him for, well,’ the duardin laughed again, a sound like rough stones being rasped together, ‘a very long time. Tell you what, why don’t you borrow mine?’

The duardin reached into his dirty jerkin and pulled out a slender key with five pointed teeth, three on top, two on the bottom, upon a leather thong. His massive fingers should never have been so deft, but he undid the tiny knot in the necklace easily and tossed the key across the fire. Bayla caught it in surprise.

‘There you are, lad.’

‘Is it real?’ Bayla asked in amazement. ‘I was told there was no key in all existence!’

‘An aelf tell you that, did he?’ said the dwarf sourly. ‘Don’t trust them. Besides,’ he added slyly, ‘he never said anything about outside existence, did he?’

‘Thank you,’ Bayla said.

‘A fair bargain for your kindness, and that ale.’ The dwarf stood up and brushed off his knees. ‘Right then, got to be going. Things to do, people to sneak up on unawares.’ He laughed at his own jest.

‘Who are you?’ asked Bayla.

Deep in the stranger’s hood, eyes twinkled. ‘Just a traveller, lad, much like yourself.’ With that, he went into the night, and disappeared.

Bayla could not know if the key was genuine or not, but he had no choice. By the same tortuous route, the mage returned to Ghyran. The road to the mountains took him far from his home, but he was eager to complete his quest.

For a further three years he searched for the gate. Only by questioning the local inhabitants carefully did he glean an inkling as to its whereabouts, and even then he wasted many months in fruitless search. Strange lights shone on the far side of the mountains that no mortal had ever crossed, tantalising him unbearably.

Eventually, by chance it seemed, he came across a door barely big enough to admit him, set high in a cliff face. With trembling hands, Bayla slid the key home. It fit perfectly and turned smoothly, as if recently oiled. The door swung inward, and Bayla squeezed inside. At first he had to wriggle his way down a tiny tunnel, but it soon opened up into a wide, well-made passageway, with walls of fine masonry. By his magic he lit his way. Soon after his entrance, Bayla’s ears were troubled by a thundering rumble, and a hot wind that went in and out — the breath of the monster that guarded the way. Several days of travel later, during which Bayla lived off bitter mosses and water dribbling down the walls, the tunnel opened up into a giant cave. At the centre was chained a wolf of impossible size. Its head was as large as a cathedral, and rested on paws big as houses. Four thick chains ran from its collar, securing it to anchors set in the wall. All through Bayla’s walk the noise of its breathing had become louder. In the cave it howled like a hurricane. It looked asleep, but as he approached, eyes big as pools opened and stared redly at him.

‘You cannot pass,’ it said. ‘None can, whether god or mortal. It is the law, of which I am prisoner and guardian both.’

‘Then I shall kill you,’ said Bayla.

The wolf gave out a howling laugh that buffeted the mage back and forth.

‘You can try.’

Bayla had come prepared with every spell of death he could muster. Raising his arms, he flung back his head, and called down the most potent slaughter-curse in the realms.

The magic released was primordial and deadly. It screamed as Bayla drew it from the rock of the mountain and fashioned it into a spear of crackling power. With a roaring incantation, he cast the energy at the wolf.

The magic hurtled at the beast, piercing it between the eyes. The wolf cocked its eyebrow, unharmed. ‘You will have to do better than that,’ it said.

Sanasay Bayla tried. Nothing worked. The wolf was impervious to the direst magics known. Frustrated, Bayla even attempted to stab it in its massive paw with his dagger. The metal shattered. The wolf grumbled with mirth.

‘I have not had such entertainment in many ages,’ it said.

Bayla glared at it. ‘Let me pass,’ he said.

‘I shall not,’ said the wolf.

‘Then you leave me no choice.’ Bayla pulled out a crystal phial, full of a dark liquid. Defiantly looking the wolf in the eye, Bayla threw down the stopper and drained the bottle. ‘Poison,’ Bayla said. ‘Now we shall see who has the last laugh.’

He fell down, dead.

The world changed. Bayla’s soul rose from his body. From rocks that now glowed with inner light rose screaming ghosts, luminous scythes in their hands. They rushed at him, fleshless jaws wide, swinging their weapons for the thread that joined Bayla’s body to his soul.

Bayla had no intention to die completely. As the cavern receded from him at tremendous speed, he fought against the gatherers of souls with his magic, keeping them from severing his connection to the Mortal Realms. Through planes inhabited by the strangest things they sped, thundering down through veils of layered realities toward the Realm of Shyish, where the abode of mortals abut those places beyond even the gods’ ken.

Bayla burst through a cavern roof, the gatherers swooping around him. Shyish revealed its dreary landscapes. He flew over shadowy villages and moonlit meres, vast bone deserts and forests of trees that shivered with the sorrow of imprisoned souls. Parts of this land were roofed in stone, and from holes gnawed through it tumbled an endless rain of corpses, the dead of many realms come to take their final rest.

Ahead there was a mighty necropolis, a city of pyramids and bone towers whose edges crackled with a nimbus of soul light. The gatherers redoubled their attacks, their wails draining the warmth from Bayla’s being, their scythes only ever a moment from reaping his soul.

The battle continued right to the gates in the city’s wall of bone. Bayla halted. A man stood there, cadaverous, but alive. With a flick of his wrist he dismissed the gatherers of souls, leaving the disembodied essence of Bayla alone.

‘You are dead, and yet your thread is not cut,’ said the necromancer. ‘Why do you resist the inevitable?’

‘I am Sanasay Bayla, of Ghyran. I die because I wish to speak with the Lord of Death.’

The necromancer smiled, exposing black teeth. ‘Be careful what you wish for, Sanasay Bayla. My lord has been expecting you.’

Bayla was led through streets of bone and dark granite where the dead were legion. The recently dead were engaged in the never-ending task of expanding Nagash’s city, heaping bone and fashioned stone into new buildings. Skeletal warriors tramped the streets in rattling cohorts. Vampire lords rushed by in dark carriages. But though the city was huge, and populous, there was not a voice to be heard. The dead executed their duties in silence but for the hideous clattering of bones that echoed from every street.

They went to a black pyramid whose sides gleamed like mirrors, and whose capstone was of pure wyrdstone. Deep inside, past numberless deathrattle regiments, Bayla was brought into a lofty hall. There sat Nagash, Lord of Death, surrounded by the ageless pomp of his court. Ghostly handmaidens circled him, singing mournful songs.

‘Who dares to tread the road of death to Shyish, and yet is not dead?’ said Nagash.

Bayla’s soul stepped forward boldly, the thread of his mortal life held lightly in one hand. ‘It is I, great one, Sanasay Bayla of Andamar in Ghyran. I have come to seek an audience.’

Nagash’s bony jaws clacked mirthlessly. ‘To beg a favour, I think. What do you seek?’

‘I have sought many years to find passage to Realms’ End,’ he said. ‘I have come close to fulfilling my quest, but my way is barred.’

‘Afrener, the wolf at the door,’ said Nagash. ‘He keeps guard.’

‘I was told only death can kill him. You are death. Strike him down for me, so that I might look into the spaces beyond reality, and discover my true purpose in this life.’

Nagash stared at him with empty eye sockets. ‘Sanasay Bayla, I know you as I know all mortals. All creatures pass through my domain sooner or later, and echoes of them are here forever. I never grant mortals favours, but for you I will make an exception, if only because you are a mage of awesome power. Agree to serve me for five hundred years and five days after your death, and I shall grant your desire, and slay this beast.’

‘And what after five centuries?’

‘You shall pass from Shyish, which for all its affinity with the beyond is but a Mortal Realm, into the Unknown Countries past my borders, as all souls ultimately must.’

Bayla knew better than to make foolish promises to a god, but he was desperate. ‘Agreed!’ he said.

‘Then go, and do not forget our bargain,’ said Nagash. He tilted his head to one side. Witchfire flickered in his eyes. ‘It is done. But be swift, such a beast cannot remain dead for long. Awake!’

Sanasay Bayla returned to life with a moaning breath. He rolled onto his side, his restarted heart banging painfully behind his ribs, and vomited out all trace of the poison in his body. When he was done, he rose shakily, and looked upon the still corpse of Afrener. Mindful of Nagash’s words, he hurried past. Shortly past the beast’s reeking hindquarters, he came to the land of Realms’ End.

What can be said of a place that defies mortal comprehension? Few have seen the Realms’ End, and all who have have witnessed it differently. Bayla saw the far side of the mountains, sweeping down from unscaleable peaks to a short plain of bare rock. The horizon was close, the space beyond boiling with crimson and gold lights. There was no sky.

Full of relief that he would soon know his purpose, Bayla began a staggering run toward the edge of the worlds.

It was not far. He stopped where the land did, and peered down into a maelstrom of noise and fury. Amid roaring networks of lightning, lands were being born, coming into being fully formed, with forests, rivers and cities upon them, and no doubt peoples and histories too. They began as small floating islands, but grew quickly as more land solidified from the energy around them. Enlarged, the worldlets sank under their own weight, spinning slowly back toward the edge of Ghyran. At some preordained depth, they vanished in a burst of light, and so the process continued. Three lands were born while Bayla watched.

But of his purpose, he could see no sign. Searching up and down the uncanny shore, he spied a robed figure clutching a staff in three hands. Bayla did not recognise its sort, and was suspicious of it, but having no option he made his way toward it.

‘Sanasay Bayla,’ the creature said raspingly as the mage halted a staff’s length away. ‘You have come to discover your purpose in life.’ Its robes were a crystal blue, and a stylised eye topped its staff.

‘I have,’ said the mage.

‘Here the worlds of Ghyran are born from nothing. This is a place is of purest magic. Everything can be seen. Behold!’ said the creature. It opened out its arms, and pointed to the roiling energies beyond the final shore.

A vision of Bayla as a wise lord appeared, surrounded by adoring subjects.

‘To be a king?’ he asked the being. ‘Is that my purpose?’

‘More. Watch!’ commanded the creature.

A procession of images paraded through the sky. Bayla saw himself in his library, moving faster than the eye could follow as time accelerated and the years coursed through the land of Andamar. New buildings sprouted, fashions changed. Wondrous devices were installed around the city, but Bayla did not age. His library grew in size and content. Knowledge unbounded filled his mind, he felt an echo of what he might learn, and was amazed. The great and the wise of many nations and peoples consulted with him. His name was known across time and in every realm. He watched avidly, eyes wide, and yet, and yet… There was something missing.

‘Where is my wife?’ he asked. ‘My family?’

‘They are not what you desire,’ said the creature. ‘Else why would you be here?’

The thing’s words rang falsely, and Bayla set his powerful mind to work on the stuff of creation where the vision played. He found it easy to manipulate. The creature shrieked out a spell, but its staff flew from its hand at a thought from Bayla and he refocused the scrying. The mage saw his wife and children grow old, unloved and neglected. As he succeeded, they failed, and were shunned. Palaces were constructed in his honour, while their graves were choked by vines and crumbled into the dirt. Realisation hit him. He wrenched the focus of the vision to the present, back to his home.

His wife waited for him. They had a new house, it seemed, and she bore all the trappings of success. Yet she looked sadly out over the minarets of Andamar. He was shocked at the signs of age that had settled on her, though she remained beautiful. His eldest son came to her side, to discuss some matter of business, and he saw he had been forced to become a man without his father to guide or nurture him.

Bayla stepped back in shock. ‘I have been away too long!’ he said. ‘What am I doing?’

The creature was hunched over, two of its long-fingered blue hands clutching at the scorched third. ‘Eternal life, ultimate power. These things are within your grasp,’ it croaked. ‘That is what you desire! Pledge yourself to my master, and they will be yours.’

The vision wavered, back to the hollow glories of an endless future. Bayla’s face softened a moment at the opportunity offered, but hardened again.

‘No. That is what I think I should want, but it is not.’ He concentrated, and the image shifted back to the domestic scene. ‘That is what I wanted, all along. To be a father and a husband. That is the purpose of a man in life. Power is fleeting. Family is eternal.’ And it was. He saw son after daughter after son being born to the line of his people. Among them were many who were mighty and wise, and Andamar prospered under their guidance. It seemed it would remain forever so, until suddenly fire rent the sky, and the city fell into ruin as a great cataclysm passed over all the realms.

‘Too much!’ screeched the creature. The vision fled like ripples over water. Bayla looked at the thing sharply.

‘What was that?’ he said, rounding on it. Arcane power glowed around his hands. ‘I do not know what you are, but I know of your kind. You are told of in the oldest books, the things of the formless realms. The daemons of Chaos.’

The creature laughed, and raised its hands in conjuration. But Bayla was a mage beyond even the servants of Tzeentch, and he blasted it from existence. Its soul fled shrieking into the maelstrom, and passed beyond the fertile voids of Ghyran’s edge, whence it would not return for thousands of years.

Bayla was troubled. War would come, one day.

Perhaps he had found two purposes.

He would warn the gods.

Turning away from the formless spaces, Bayla began the long journey home.

The mirror cleared of mist. Sigmar and Alarielle stared at their own faces caught in the silver.

‘That was why he made us the mirror,’ said Sigmar. ‘Little attention we paid to his warnings.’ The God-King shook his head in regret. ‘Bayla was rare among men. He learned wisdom. With his gifts he could have risen and joined the ranks of the gods, but at the last he turned back. He understood that immortality is not to be craved, that the end of life gives the little span it has great meaning.’

‘The gift of all mortals,’ Alarielle said. ‘They are free of the burden of life eternal. There is no surprise in this, and no new wisdom.’

‘Every time they learn it, it is new,’ Sigmar insisted. ‘So few of them realise it from the beginning. Their lives are so short, their fear of death prevents them from recognising the gift they have.’

‘You are immortal,’ said Alarielle. ‘They will find your sympathy false.’

‘I did not seek to be so,’ said Sigmar. ‘I would have happily lived and died a mortal king. Some higher power had other plans for me.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘Many chose Chaos because they had no other choice. They can be redeemed, even those whose hearts may seem black. But there are always those that seek to cheat death, and the lords of Chaos offer a way to do so, and are cunning enough to allow a few to ascend to become their immortal slaves. That is how they gained access to the realms in the first place. We became too distant from our charges, and they grew afraid. Chaos offered them immortality, of a sort. They did not know it was a trap.’

‘Then what do you want of me?’ said Alarielle.

‘You have held yourself aloof for many ages, my lady,’ he said. ‘It would aid us all in defeating the four powers for good if you went again among the mortals. Teach them your wisdom. You of all the gods understand the ebb and flow of mortality best, and that death is but a turning of the way.’

‘I do not know what becomes of the souls of men,’ she said. ‘Does even Nagash? You ask me to lie to them.’

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I wish you to invest in them a love of all that is natural and alive, to appreciate its power and fecundity. If they learn to follow the rhythm of life’s wondrous patterns, fewer of them will be tempted to fear its end. There always will be those who are incapable of fellow feeling, or whose greed outmatches their empathy,’ he said. ‘Many others can be saved by you.’

‘I cannot do this,’ she said. ‘What is the point? Chaos rules already.’

‘Cannot, or will not?’ said Sigmar. ‘You were worshipped all throughout Ghyran and beyond once, my lady. You can be again. You have become warlike to respond to a time of war, but you must reach inside yourself, and find that gentler creature you once were. We need to look beyond the end of this war, and prepare for peace. If we do not, then there will be another golden age, but soon enough Chaos will return and shatter the realms anew.’

‘Victory and defeat has a cycle of its own,’ she said. ‘It is the way of things.’

‘Maybe war and Chaos are the only constants of reality,’ he said. ‘But I do not have to accept it, and I will fight it for all time if I must. I cannot believe this is how the realms were meant to be. Send forth your spirits to speak with the wisest women and canniest men. Chaos has long used such missionaries against us. We shall do the same, and we have the advantage, for Chaos lies.’

Alarielle sighed, and the sound was of the wind in the boughs of a sleeping forest. She stared off across the plains of Azyr, still cloaked in the dark. The sun rose high enough to strike through the columns, casting long shadows across the city of the Highheim. When it struck Alarielle, she closed her eyes and basked in the warmth of it. Her body became translucent, and began to fade.

‘I will do what I can, Sigmar Heldenhammer,’ she said, her form becoming indistinct. ‘But if I have learned one thing in my long existence, it is that humans rarely listen, and their males more rarely still.’

The motes of light diffused. Her outline hung in the air a second. They flared and vanished, leaving a cloud of petals to drift to the floor.

Sigmar watched the day enter the city of the gods. As the golden light of Azyr’s sun flooded the empty streets, he remembered a better time. He did not know if there were higher gods set over him to guide him as he shepherded his mortal kin, but he gave a silent prayer to them that finer times would return.

Then he too vanished, leaving the Highheim to the silence and the light.