Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

The press of bodies around him doubled as more warriors crashed into the fray, slashing, kicking and punching with their spiked weapons. Gore flew around them in whirling slicks, thrown wildly by the hurtling axe-heads. Rakh ducked again, too slowly, and was struck on his helm with a glancing blow. It made his ears ring and he scrabbled into the shadow of a bloodreaver, avoiding death by offering up his pack-mate.

More than a quarter of the rest were already dead, gutted like fish and gasping bloodily on the rocks. Sleikh had kept the pack together and was fighting hard, trying to reach the narrow cleft where they might at least have a rock wall at their back, but Rakh could see that it was already hopeless — they were surrounded, caught in the open and badly outnumbered. This would all be over very quickly.

He tried to break out, shoving the iron shield of a blood warrior aside and lashing out with his cleaver to clear a path. He managed to down another one — slicing through the creature’s upper thigh, thrusting upward, head-butting him savagely across his exposed face — but he was stumbling amid the churning bodies, desperate to break free.

Somehow, driven by that desperation, aided by the flickering shadows, the screams, the darkness, he shoved himself into a narrow space between moving bodies, and saw the edge of the melee before him. Spitting thanks to the Blood God, he went for the gap, lunging out and slipping on the blood-wet rock.

He almost made it. Too late, though, he saw just why a space had opened up, large enough for him to slip into. Rakh skidded to a halt, falling back on to his withers, his ravaged jaw falling open.

The figure looming before him was gigantic. He towered over the blood warriors just as they towered over Sleikh’s rabble. His armour glistened in the fading light, dull red like spoiled wine. The plates were lined with bloodied bronze, and adorned with skulls. He carried a great brass standard, and above it was set the icon of Khorne in smouldering metal.

This was the leader, then, the champion, the brooding presence that kept the warband on its leash. Rakh had never seen armour so fine, nor a weapon so suffused with earth-scouring power. As the first crack and growl of thunder broke out across the landscape to the north, Rakh writhed in the ankle-thick mire, shuffling backwards, uncaring now about anything other than escape from the behemoth that towered over him.

The champion took a single stride, covering the distance between them effortlessly, and pulled his standard high into the air. Flickers of carnelian slid up its shaft, crackling as they burned from the Khornate icon above. Rakh could only stare up at his killer, already tensing for the agony of the spiked staff’s heel crunching into his stomach. Duly enough, the pole came down, and Rakh screwed his eyes closed.

‘Skullbrand!’ came a voice, roaring out of the night, shaking the earth beneath their feet.

Time froze. The screams died out, the battle-roars echoed into nothing.

Rakh’s lungs continued to pull in air. Slowly, he opened his eyes. The heel of the killer’s staff was just inches from his body, held rigid by the champion. The death’s-head helm above was impassive — Rakh could only see the glowing light of two unnatural eyes burning behind a grotesque mask of iron.

The champion did not move. The warriors around him did not move. As if held by some invisible net, they had paused in their slaughter, leaving the surviving bloodreavers to cower on the ground beneath them.

Grudgingly, the champion withdrew the staff’s spike. Rakh slithered backwards, away from the icon-bearer, glancing up at the warriors around him as they retreated. He managed to shuffle his way over to Sleikh, who had collapsed on the ground with a gaping chest wound. Despite everything, Rakh couldn’t help but eye the glistening flaps of skin hungrily.

‘What is this?’ Rakh whispered.

Sleikh, grey-faced, gestured weakly. Something else was coming down the slope from the east, crunching through the loose stone. Blood warriors were falling back, making passage for it. The icon-bearer waited where he had paused, as still as a graven image, his staff held stiffly at his side.

‘Blood for the Blood God,’ Rakh murmured, issuing the words like a prayer. Prayers never helped, not in this land, but the habits of forgotten generations still persisted.

Another crack of thunder rumbled along the valley’s edge. Rain began to spit, fizzing as it hit the winding cracks in the realm’s charred land-skin. Rakh peered out into the gloom, at once daunted and compelled. An aura of dread hung over the whole tribe now, more complete than that generated by even the icon-wielder and his trained killers. Then the owner of the voice strode out of the shadows, and Rakh’s pulse began to truly race.