Blood Gold - Gav Thorpe Read online

  Sheng guided the fyreslayers for many days, while each night the Blood Moon grew larger and larger. The Ironfists did not need much rest, and slept only for a small portion of the night, but when they stopped after each march Sheng would erect a small tent and hide himself away. Strange smells and sounds emanated from this dwelling, and often the human could be heard chanting in some unknown tongue.

  Unsettled by this behaviour, Brynnson confronted Sheng and demanded to know what he was doing. The dreamwalker took the runefather into his tent and showed him many crystals of different sizes and shapes: ruby, emerald and sapphire, each carved with small designs of interlocking lines and circles, so that their irregular planes created odd shadows by the firelight, thrown upon a stark white sheet Sheng had drawn across one end of the tent.

  Upon a brazier he heated dozens of strangely wrought brands, each as small as a thumbnail and exquisitely fashioned. Brynnson did not recognise the symbols as any language of duardin, human or aelf that he had encountered, but Sheng assured the runefather that they were nothing more than the tools of his rituals.

  ‘By the crystals I step into the dreamworld between the realms, my thoughts travelling on currents of past, present and future. In that state I use the symbol brands to record what I see, in the mystical language of my people. On waking I interpret what I have written.’

  He showed Brynnson sheaves of brand-marked paper, the individual runes dark, their accumulation creating whorls and angles and lines of letters that seemed like words.

  ‘And what do these dream-visits tell you?’ Brynnson asked.

  The human answered with a smile.

  ‘That all goes as I foresaw. The Direbrands are holding conclave, as I told you. One among them has already departed with an honour guard, leaving the gathering of their other leaders perfect for the slaughter.’

  ‘Slaughter?’ said Brynnson. He was no soft-heart but had marched forth expecting battle.

  ‘They are protected only by their closest family and few guards.’ Sheng’s delight was clear, his gold-studded teeth showing in the brazier light. ‘The greatest and wisest of the Direbrands will be easy pickings for a throng as ferocious as the Ironfists.’

  As Sheng had said, so it was to be.

  Three nights later the lodge warriors of Brynnson Drakkazak came upon the encampment of the Direbrands. They were in their revels, celebrating the coming together of their widespread tribe, drunk equally upon strong wine and good humour.

  The fyreslayers fell upon the camp with brutal ferocity, led by their runefather. Scores of foes fell in the opening charge, several hundreds more in the following battle. Brynnson let his fury flow as molten metal spills from the forge. His ur-runes blazed with the ire of Grimnir and his axe smote many a bone that bloody night. The Ironfists followed the lead of their runefather and showed no mercy, even as Sheng urged them on with exultant shouts and promises of reward.

  By the light of their fires, the Direbrands died. Though set upon by a terrible foe, worse the wear for their drinking and feasting, not one tried to run or surrender. As defiant an enemy as Brynnson had ever seen, the Direbrands fought to the last, man and woman, blades in hands as they were cut down.

  Sheng stalked among the dead and spat upon their bodies, joyful at the carnage.

  ‘Enough,’ Brynnson called to the man, axe in hand. ‘They died well, they deserve no disrespect.’

  ‘Speak not of respect until you have fulfilled your contract,’ Sheng replied with a snarl. He pointed to the tents of the Direbrands a short way off from the fires. ‘You promised the death of all that attended the gathering.’

  Shamed by the accusation of oathbreaking, Brynnson led his warriors upon this second camp. Yet there were children in the camp and even the battle-raged fyreslayers baulked at slaying these innocents.

  ‘You paid for warriors, not murderers,’ Brynnson told his employer. ‘You have won – the Direbrands will not recover from the blow you have dealt tonight.’

  ‘I want them all dead!’ shrieked Sheng, and he raged more, in tongues both understandable and foreign, calling the Ironfists weak-thewed and dishonourable. ‘None of them are to survive. The Direbrands will not rise to threaten my lord again.’

  ‘What lord do you serve?’ demanded Brynnson, for his pact had been with Sheng and no other patron had been mentioned by the mystic.

  ‘One that will long remember this slight, Brynnson Drakkazak of the Ironfists.’

  The threat was empty though, for Sheng could not force the fyreslayers to turn their weapons on the infants.

  ‘They’ll die without care, all the same,’ the southerner said eventually. ‘The Flamescar Plateau is a cruel bower to sleep in.’

  ‘Do not think to shirk the payment,’ Brynnson warned.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Sheng, bitter and snarling. From his belongings he brought forth ingots of ur-gold, eight of them as had been agreed. A considerable sum for the effort involved, Brynnson had thought, but now he knew why the price had been so generous.

  ‘Take them and be gone,’ Sheng bid the fyreslayers.

  Brynnson did not think it boded well for the children for them to be left with Sheng, but he could not raise a weapon against the mystic while their pact was in place.

  ‘Never come again to Vostargi Mont,’ he told the dreamwalker. ‘If you do, you’ll find the axe-welcome waiting for you.’

  Leaving the remnants of the camp burning in their wake, the Ironfists took their ur-gold from Sheng and departed.

  The journey back to Vostargi Mont was one of mixed feelings for Brynnson. The deed performed left ash in his mouth, even as the gentle whisper of the ur-gold he had earned for his lodge soothed his worries. All the while they travelled back to Vostargi Mont the Blood Moon continued to swell to fullness, glaring down upon the Ironfists with its ruddy gaze. The Great Parch seemed to burn beneath its eternal stare, the air hot and still. A latent but potent tension lay upon the world.

  Coming back to their halls, Brynnson called upon his runelords and runesmiters to smelt the ur-gold and fashion the flesh runes as swiftly as possible. They warned that the portents were poor for such work, that the forging of runes beneath the swollen Sky Crucible was never wise. Brynnson roared at them to follow his command and against their better judgement the runeworkers complied. The ur-gold from Sheng was melted down and the blessings of Grimnir laid upon it as it cooled in the moulds.

  Runefather, runesons and all the Ironfists came to the temples to receive their reward and a great hammering was undertaken, to set ur-gold into flesh as tradition dictated. Brynnson was first and as the shard-flesh of Grimnir touched his skin he felt the power of the warrior-god course into his veins, bringing strength and pain and a deep burning through his body. He did not cry out, for it was against his creed to show any weakness.

  And when the ritual was done he bid the runesmiters to labour on his kin as the smouldering runes settled into his muscle and turned sinew to taut iron.

  That next night the Blood Moon waxed fullest, a ruddy orb pierced by the summit of Vostargi Mont. The fire in Brynnson’s flesh had not settled and the ache of the runes chafed his spirit as he declared a feast of celebration for the lodge. Uneasy in his own skin, Brynnson climbed to the outer galleries of his lodge halls and stood upon the flanks of the mountain.

  Looking to the south he saw a terrible tumult in the skies, of a black-clouded storm that boiled upon the far horizon, churning above the southern seas. A flickering face of almighty wrath and terrifying power appeared within the stormhead and it was as though the light of the Sky Crucible above reignited the flames that had smelted the ur-gold, for suddenly his body was ablaze.

  The flames burned into Brynnson, and even as his cries resounded from the mountainsides so he heard the anguished bellows and roars of pain from his kin within the lodge halls. In the echo of the clamour he heard a voice, recognising it
as Sheng’s.

  ‘Your fate is sealed, the curse brought upon you by your treachery against the Lord of Skulls,’ that dread voice declared. ‘From the ancient rocks of the World-That-Was the duardin were born. Into your flesh that lava-birth is re-enacted! And so for your kin forever more. When Grimnir fought Vulcatrix and was shattered, not all his pieces fell first to the Mortal Realms. The Bloodthirsty Power who had delighted in the battle between god and drake took His toll. He bade the Crimson Smiths that labour in the infernal citadel to bind the ur-gold with brass from the walls of his keep, and so forever made it part of his bloody domain. That reward should have made you stronger than any other, but in shunning the Blood God you have sealed your doom instead. Now the blood-marked ur-gold will turn your flesh to the magma of its birth!’

  ‘Yet the curse was not to slay the Ironfists,’ Ungrimmsson told the fyreslayer, gesturing at the lava-form of his own body. ‘But still we are fyreslayers, though we have raised axe against ally and our own kind, and are exiled from the mountain of our birth. By Brynnson’s oath we are bound, still searching for Grimnir in the ur-gold wherever it has fallen.’

  ‘And that is how we earned the name Zharrthagi, for killing in betrayal?’

  ‘It is,’ Ungrimmsson said with a sour look.

  ‘You speak the tale as though you remember it, lodge-sire.’

  ‘I do, for it was not just the Ironfists whose name changed.’ A tear of flame ran down Ungrimmsson’s cheek. ‘It was me that took the payment. And for generation after generation Khorne has kept me alive to know the price of my betrayal.’

  Alvi swallowed hard at this revelation, eyes wide with shock. Now the fyreslayer understood the truth behind the name Ungrimmsson – inheritor of the broken oath.

  ‘Back to your blade-brothers, now,’ said Ungrimmsson.

  The Bloodbound horde was but a hundred paces away, the earth rumbling beneath their feet, their cries and crashing weapons a din that rang back from the gatehouse and mountainside.

  Fifty paces distant the army of Khorne’s mortal followers slowed and stopped. A single figure emerged from the front line, a warrior taller than any other. She was clad in red-and-black armour, a standard of bones tied to her back, and carried an axe in each hand.

  She approached the runefather, but there was no challenge nor charge. The champion of Khorne set her axes into the earth a few paces from Ungrimmsson and brought forth a small sack. She upended it into her palm, where a ruddy light shone from nuggets of metal. Ungrimmsson felt the runes in his body twitch in recognition of tainted ur-gold, the same that had cursed the Zharrthagi.

  ‘Blood is blood, Khorne cares not who sheds it,’ said the champion, putting the ur-gold back into the bag before throwing it to Ungrimmsson’s feet.

  ‘And gold is gold,’ replied Ungrimmsson, stooping to pick up the sack as he turned towards the gates, readying his axe with his other hand.

  About the Author

  Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs, as well as several audio dramas including the bestselling Raven’s Flight and The Thirteenth Wolf. He has written many novels for Warhammer 40,000, including Rise of the Ynnari: Ghost Warrior, Jain Zar: The Storm of Silence and Asurmen: Hand of Asuryan. He also wrote the Path of the Eldar and Legacy of Caliban trilogies, and two volumes in The Beast Arises series. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Time of Legends trilogy, The Sundering, and much more besides. In 2017, Gav was awarded the David Gemmell Legend award for his Age of Sigmar novel Warbeast. He lives and works in Nottingham.

  An extract from The Realmgate Wars: Volume 1.

  The bolt struck Vandus Hammerhand like a spear flung from the heavens. First there was light, a searing luminescence so bright it eclipsed all sense of being and self. Then pain brought him back with white daggers of pure agony. Heat, fury, and the drumbeat of immortal vigour rushing through his veins reached a crescendo so loud it turned into deafening silence.

  Then peace, a feeling of true solace and quietude.

  Vandus would come to learn it was always this way. This is what it meant to be born of the storm and borne by the storm.

  Reforged, wrought anew. Brought back. This is what it was to be eternal. But as with all such godlike deeds, this apotheosis did not come without a price.

  Before…

  After defeating Korghos Khul, the Hammerhands went north.

  Though the Goretide were scattered, their ranks would swell again. The war against the dominion of Chaos was far from over, but Sigmar’s Stormcasts had won a great victory at the Gate of Azyr. Now that momentum had to be seized upon were it to mean anything.

  And so the Hammerhands went northward.

  Thousands clad in unalloyed sigmarite crossed the Igneous Delta. Liberators bloodstained and begrimed by war marched with grandhammers slung across the burnished plate of their shoulder guards. Dour Retributors strode in grim silence, their massive lightning hammers held firm across their chests. Above the infantry, retinues of unearthly Prosecutors had taken wing and soared across the blighted sky. At the clarion sound of the warrior-heralds’ war horns, their masked brethren below would close ranks and raise shields, knowing an enemy horde approached.

  There had been many enemies, for the Igneous Delta and its surrounding lands were overrun by those bound in blood to Khorne.

  It would fall to other Stormcast Eternals to hold the realmgate they had opened to Azyr. At least now they had a foothold at the Brimstone Peninsula, something to defend. But the vanguard could not rest. They had to forge on, despite the lead in their limbs.

  Only when night had fallen and they reached the crags did they stop to make camp on a sheltered plateau of rock. Here the army had mustered, whilst a few of its leaders had walked up the shallow incline to a second smaller plateau from which they might gauge the best route onwards.

  ‘This is a strange land,’ murmured Dacanthos as he regarded the rime of frost around the fingers of his gauntlet. He clenched it in a mailed fist, ­shattering the ice that had formed.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Sagus, leaning on the head of his lightning hammer as the caustic wind of the delta tried to sear his armour. The air was rank with the stench of blood and cinder. It carried a foul cawing, like the mockery of crows, only deeper, as if uttered from the throat of a larger beast. Several carrion-creatures had already been seen.

  The Hammers of Sigmar had left the scorched desert behind them. Here, on the rugged crags and low hills, a deep winter prevailed.

  Snow hid some of the land’s deformity, its hillocks like the petrified claws of some ancient leviathan, a golem trapped forever in its final moments of agony. Eight stunted crests rose up from the smothering tundra like horns, and there were hollow cavities where eyes might once have been.

  ‘It is a grim place, enslaved to darkness,’ uttered Vandus, his voice deep, his distaste unmasked. From the edge of a rocky promontory, he looked out across the Igneous Delta and beyond. Swaths of forest colonised much of the eastern lands, but the trees looked unnatural, bent and tortured, their limbs petrified.

  The Lord-Celestant’s eyes narrowed. He could have sworn he saw something stir within the dark heart of the forest. His gaze went skyward to an even greater and larger mountain fastness than the one his warriors had camped on. Clad in ice, it appeared more like a glacier. Oily mists crept from its footings, lathering the earth below in a foul tar.

  Further north, Vandus discerned the forbidding silhouette of an immense tower, obscured behind scads of pyroclastic cloud. It was one of eight brass towers that surrounded Khul’s domain. Here then was their god-given mission, though he knew his own destiny lay elsewhere.

  ‘Rank indeed,’ snarled Vandus as he turned away to speak to his men. ‘But there is wor
se below…’ He gestured for Dacanthos and Sagus to join him at the cliff edge, certain those below them would not notice three figures watching from on high.

  Sagus’s gauntlets cracked loudly as he clenched the haft of his hammer, and when the Retributor spoke it was with barely restrained anger.

  ‘Wretched filth… I would see them seared from this land, scraped away like dirt from a boot.’

  Dacanthos had no words. He merely stared through the lifeless eyes of his mask, his body trembling with righteous anger.

  Far below in a smoke-choked basin of tar-black rock, shawled by drifts of ash and snow, were mortal followers of Khorne known as the Bloodbound.

  Hordes of the warriors had gathered to rest, after a long march. A great fire burned, spilling a column of smoke that almost reached the promontory where the Stormcasts were watching. Garbed in spiked leather and furs matted with dried blood, the tribesmen left their arms and torsos exposed. These Vandus and his men had come to know as bloodreavers. The lesser of the vast and mighty Goretide, they were nonetheless brawny and muscular fighters. What they lacked in skill, they made up for in aggression and devotion to Khorne.

  Bellowing and fighting, they revelled around the fire. Long shadows cast by their bodies contorted in the fell light, transformed into an echo of what they might become should they live long and worship with enough devotion. A bloodreaver’s altar was the battlefield, his offerings slaughter and death.

  They were a rabble, but a dangerous one. Their blades were thick and sharp, notched by battle and stained black with the blood of innocents. But of late they had grown arrogant and complacent.