BENEATH THEBLACK THUMB

David Guymer

I

You come to me offering death, saidCopsys Bule, stabbing his long-handledtrident into the soft red soil. Blood orsomething distantly akin to it oozedlazily up around the sinking tines. Akingly gift, envoy, but death flourisheswhere I choose to sow it. I am aharvester of death.Kletch Scabclaw studied him with eyes

that could have gleaned weakness fromdiamond. They were milk yellow, andglared over the mangy scrap of man-skinthat he held pressed to his muzzle in theclaws from which he had taken his name.The look on his furry, verminous facemight have been one of disgust, though atwhat, or who, was something the plague

priest kept for himself.A new age begins, they squeak-say.

Spreading his paws, the skaven irritablyswatted aside a buzzing bloat fly.Through Bules blurred vision itappeared to have three eyes, until therat-man snapped his claws and hisvision once again became clear. Warcomes. Even to you.Bule snapped his head up.The skaven immediately backed up a

pace, hunched for fight or flight. Light onhis foot-paws, he stood atop the rottenmush that went up to Bules greaves. Hisright paw had gone for the weapon heconcealed beneath his robes, and hehissed a warning through his scented rag.

Bule smiled, rotten flesh yielding toproduce something too, too wide for ahuman mouth.Slowly, Kletch held up his empty paws,

then the gnawed-on nub of his tail. Itswitched over the rat-mans head withirritation. I did not come-scurry all wayfrom clan-burrow to fight-quarrel. TheBlack Thumb and Clan Rikkit werefriend-allies in the Age of Chaos. Iswritten. Is remembered. Now we must-need fight tooth to claw again.Bule turned his back with a mild shake

of the head. Withdrawing his bloodiedtrident, he stabbed three new aerationholes into the soil, the tines spearing aninch deep before hitting something

unyielding. Baring the black stubs of histeeth he gave a grunt of pleasure, plantedhis foot to the back of the fork-head, androcked back and forth on the handle.Levering the trident against his bloated

girth, he turned over the unyielding patchin a waft of decomposing flesh.The human corpse tore off its blanket of

topsoil and flopped over. A face thatwas grey-black and runny and lovely asa crop of sweet tubers fresh out of theground stared up at the slow circlingstars with the clarity of the dead.Disturbed maggots and worms squirmedunder the starlight, as if divulging somegreat secret under torture. Bule watchedthem re-bury themselves, lulled by the

drone of a billion bloat flies and the rankcackle of crows.Wriggle. Wriggle.Rotbringer, the skaven prompted him.Bule pinched his eyes wetly, mind

asquirm with worms and portent. Therat-man continued.The lightning men hit clan-burrows in

Cripple Fang, Untamed Lands and PutrisBog. Even clan-cousins from far Ghyrancome-flee, tunnelling the realm-places tobring word of war.Shouldering his trident, Bule turned

around suddenly enough to elicit a lowsqueal of alarm from the plague priest ofClan Rikkit. The rat-man leapt to oneside, reaching again for his concealed

weapon, but Bule merely squelchedthrough the spot he had been occupyingas though he were a zombie suddenlyimpelled to be elsewhere.Bule. Bule!Copsys Bule ignored him, his armour

emitting a mould-muffled clank withevery step. Several of the spiked plateswere split apart at the joins, but thedamage to his armour had been inflictednot from without but from within. Corpsegasses distended his belly, opening upthe plates from the inside like a fat grubeating its way out of an egg sac.Everywhere there remained living skin,swellings, boils and tumours causedfurther buckling, mottling the once-green

metal to black.Not since before the Age of Chaos had

Bule known an equal, and his gardensbrought weeping harvest to lands fromthe Bloodbloom Fields in the south tothe Avalundic Ice Kingdoms in the north,from the peat bogs of Murgid Fein to theunconquerable Rabid Heights and theirgargant kings.His demesne was too vast for one

name.It encompassed the Pox Sands, the great

Bloat Lake, the Plantation of Flies,fleshwork patches stitched withirrigation ditches that steamed withblight and hummed with spawningdaemonfly. As far into the bubonic haze

as the eye could see, scrofulous, once-human things tilled the soil with rakesand hoes, or waded into pools with longprods to turn the bloated corpses thatfloated in them, gestating towardsripeness. Hundreds expired in the time ittook Bule to walk past them, and weredragged away to the nurseries toreplenish the soil in their turn.But it was the nature of lesser beings to

attach small names to great things.They called it the Corpse Marshes.Seemingly at random, feeling where the

dead desired his knife, he squatted downinto the mire. A sigh of simple pleasureescaped him. The crucified remains ofmen, women and children staked the

ground in serried rows for a stretchgreater than a man could ride in a day.Here could be found the bodies ofalmost every race, including several thatno longer existed anywhere but as theydid here now. For reasons fathomable tofew but Bule himself, he called it hisLiving Orchard. A foetid breeze moanedthrough the dead, making them hum andsway, like lush-leaved trees in bloom.Drawing a curved knife from his armingbelt, he sawed away a hand thatliquefaction was beginning to pull awayfrom the wrist. It was human. Anectarine blackness trickled from the cut.He licked it from his hand, eyes closedin ecstasy.

There was no plan in his mind of howhis garden should be, but he knew whatneeded to be done towards itscompletion. And it would be soon. Verysoon.The thought thrilled him even as the

part of him that had cherished theselabours was saddened by their imminentpassing.There are a great many of your kind

here, Bule said, aware that the rat-manhad followed him and was nowcrouching on an old wall behind him.Keeping his distance. Your fur. Yourguts. You teem with life like no other.He cut away another sagging limb with aclinical slash. Nothing rots as quickly

as a skaven rots. Nothing embracesGrandfather Nurgle so completely.Is that what you want-wish me to take

back to my masters?Ask me again come the high moon.Why-why? What changes then?Bule licked his knife with a wide

smile. Birds cried in fevered tongues, adiseased animal sagacity that he mightone day have the fortune to fathom buthalf of. You come on an auspiciousnight. For the first time in two and a halfthousand years the stars will align myrealmgate with another.And then? Kletch hissed, suddenly

wary.Ask me again come the high moon.

IIFistula, First Blightlord of the BlackThumb, delighter in sickness and death,opened the orruk from hip to hip with asawing reverse of his blade. A surprisedsnort issued from the greenskins tuskedhelmet, but the fighter remained upright,tough as necrotic flesh and just as deadto pain. Holding its squirming guts in afist the size of a buckler, it swung its axeat the blightlord with a roar.Hardwearing, vicious orruks were

infamous. But the fever spreading firethrough its veins from the infected bellywound made it sluggish. Fistulasidestepped the clumsy slash with easethen broke its shin with a heel jab. It was

sweating. Most men would never knowthat an orruk could suffer the way thisone now did. But still it would not yield.Fistula appreciated that.Dashing aside its weakening backslash

on the flat of his sword, he stepped inbehind its flailing trunk of an arm, closeenough to smell the daemon plaguelingsrampaging through its veins, thenplunged his parrying dagger through itsthroat.The orruks mammoth jaws snapped

spasmodically as Fistula tore his daggerloose and kicked the brute away. Bloodfrom the torn artery sprayed in a risingarc and painted the open face ofFistulas helm green. He gasped. Partly

to drink the wetness from the air. Partlyfor the raw pleasure of doing so.Fistula looked down on the beaten

orruk. It was still snapping its jaws evenas it drowned in its fluids and its eyesturned white. Fistula could have ended itquickly, should have, perhaps, butendemic as the orruks were in theshadow of the Rabid Heights there werenever enough to last. He looked up.The orruks were still fighting in

scattered mobs spread out along thelength of the narrow gulch into which theBlack Thumb had pursued them, but theywere broken. Not in the manner of ahuman or Rotbringer host. They did notrun. Rather, they held on with the witless

tenacity of sick beasts. Hardy as theywere as a race, all bore the stigmata ofinfection: weeping sores and crustedcuts that would not heal. For everyhundred that lay dead with an obviouswound, a hundred more twitched on theground with blood foam in their mouthsand flies on their rotting flesh.Gors and bestigors plunged headlong

into the fray, hacking and goring withfrenzied abandon. Rotbringer knights onmaggot-riddled steeds galloped up thesteeply climbing wall of the gulch tostrike at the orruk warleader. The hugebeast was surrounded by his biggest andmost brutal, but was already heavilybeset by the Tzeentchian warhost driving

in from the opposite side of the ravine.The Changeling host was a

cacophonous legion of colours andshapes. Gold glittered. Strange voiceswhispered. Flames of every cast, smelland texture danced along the crossbarsof banner poles, and suits of almost-sentient armour whispered secrets to thedeepest subconscious of all nearby witha mind to hear. Daemonflies buzzed overeverything and everyone. Blight houndsran along the flanks, pulling down theisolated and the maimed. Giant slugsburrowed up from under the hardpan toswallow Tzeentchian warriors wholewhile plague drones and sleek daemonicscreamers swept at each other in pitched

battle for the skies.The orruks had become almost

incidental.Fistula read the kindred mood in his

opposite number, the hunger, comingfrom somewhere out there in the gulch.They had both come to torment prey, butnow, starved of a true challenge, theythrew their warriors at the other withgreater ferocity than they had everbefore.It was something that Copsys Bule had

become too fat and old to realise. Eventhe most rapacious of plagues could betamed, lingering only on the scraps leftby those they had once devastated intheir millions.

A stamp of hellsteel and an ebullientcry called Fistula back from the abstractof the battle. Through a congested meleeof putrid blightkings and sickening orrukfighters half again their size, a Chaoswarrior encased in full plate armour ofazure and gold barged towards him. Hishelm was solid metal, with only theetching of half-lidded eyes throughwhich some enchantment perhapspermitted him to see. From the sides,golden horns spiralled inwards towardsinfinity. The Tzeentchian knuckled asidean orruk and roared the final strides withhis broadsword swept high overhead.With a shout, Fistula pivoted on the

spot and smacked his saw-toothed blade

hard into the larger blades descent. Itwas not a parry. He struck theTzeentchians broadsword as thoughmeaning to do it harm. The impact arcedup his arm. He felt it vibrate in his teeth.Reflex action shocked his fingers openand would have lost him his blade if notfor the blood and pus that pooledendlessly into his grip from infectedcalluses and glued palm to hilt.The Tzeentchian reeled as though it had

been struck on the head by a blow thathad left its helmet ringing. Its heavysword trailed, elbows locked in spasmwith the aftershock of keeping a hold ofhis blade.Fistula struck off the warriors head

with a single blow to the neck andlaughed.He was the opposite of Copsys Bule in

most ways. Where the Lord of Plagueshad become a bloated wreck of a man,Fistulas body was wasted, the favour inwhich he was held written in lesions onpared bone and in the ropey musculaturethat seeped and seeped without end. Hewas a warrior. A fever raged in his mindthat no level of war could ever purgeand his armour, lighter by preference,was etched with tallies of the blights hehad tasted and the civilizations he hadbrought low.Secure the dead, bellowed a

cadaverous, jaundiced blightking

wearing a cruel harness of scythe-edgedplates and hanging mail. He lay into theorruks with a pair of matching knifes,bloodily proficient in his preferredmode of killing. Fistula was one of thefew to know him as Vitane. To most, hewas Leech. The blightking turned andwaved a come now gesture. Bring upthe wagons. If we are not back by highmoon it will go poorly for you.Rattling in under a fug of disease came

a dozen wagons. Each was drawn by ateam of six wheezing horses, their loosewheels the size of a man, their high sidesscratched with the knife marks ofindividual warriors and with asplintered parapet of aged wood.

Leprous harvesters in hoods andswaddling leaned over the parapet withhooks to draw up the dead. The droverscalled a halt. The horses snuffled in theirtraces, hacking, puking, biting at eachothers flea-ravaged coats.Fighting his way to Fistulas side,

Vitane looked down on the orruk stilldying at his lords feet. The leatherytissue was continuing to shrivel away,the liquidised remainder sinking aroundthe bones.He will be unhappy. This one is

worthless.Fistula sneered. Vitane was old enough

to have fought with Copsys Bule fromthe beginning, lacking enough in

ambition or favour to prevent his starbeing eclipsed by the man he nowfollowed into battle.I am not here to scavenge and I am not

here for Bule, Fistula said.They could not all dine off glories past.Fistula scanned the confusion for the

Tzeentchian champion. Warriors ofevery stripe filled the gulch from wall towall with a riot of colour and noise.Even the sky reflected the vivid clash,the bubonic haze that blanketed Bulesdemesnes turned a sickly turquoise bythe rolling cumulus of Tzeentchian firethat followed the war horde from thenorth. Twisted trees covered in nakedsores and weeping black foliage clung to

the ridgeline. They swayed under theopposing winds.Fistula shivered though he could not

say why. His eyes narrowed.There was something there, hidden

under the drooping canopy. Fistulaglimpsed a figure, or the suggestion ofone. More a feeling than something hecould later describe and claim withcertainty had been real. He perceived asense of robes, of a gaunt, skeletalheight, but his overriding impressionwas one of watchfulness, of many, manysets of eyes trained upon every aspect ofthis moment in time. In a blink of themind it was gone. The inkling of its priorbeing was a subliminal glamour that

nevertheless refused to fully fade, asthough he had gazed overlong upon adaemon and imprinted its corona ofpower onto his mind.He shook his head, and with the

blessed release of a peeled scab pulledoff his helmet and wiped the orruksgore from his hairless scalp.The sense of watchfulness remained on

him, a nagging question at the back of hismind. He felt judgement, though forwhat, Fistula doubted he had thefaculties to comprehend. Nor did hecare. He bared his teeth in anticipationand raised his sword to signal thecharge. His own glorification was allthat mattered.

Let it watch. Let it judge.

IIIKletch Scabclaw spread his arms out toeither side while a skavenslave hung theheavy ambassadorial cloak of ClanRikkit over his shoulders. It was a bitmuch for the cloying humidity of theCorpse Marshes, and itched in hard-to-reach places that no garment so augustshould. Its fleas had been passed frompriest to priest for two hundred years,and were now the hardy descendents ofthose that had survived the clans fullarsenal of pesticidal sorcery.His dresser ducked under his arm and

shuffled around to the front.The slave was naked but for its own

scrappy fur and the brands of clan andowner, but Kletch was only partiallyreassured by that. To his mind therewere any number of innovative places inwhich a determined assassin mightsecrete a weapon. His yellow eyesdrilled into the side of the slaves head.The wretch bared its throat with awhimper, stabbing its thumb severaltimes in its panic to fasten the cloaks ratbone collar. Kletch fidgeted as the slavefussed.It was too hot. The garish green light of

the warpstone braziers around the low-roofed tent was too bright. The spiced

scent they gave off to hold back the reekwas too sickly sweet.How much-long to high moon? he

asked of the plague monk seated againstthe wall of the pavilion behind his back.Soon-soon.Scurfs piebald fur was pox-scarred, so

denuded of hair from his own incessantscratching that he resembled a game birdthat had been abandoned before it couldbe fully plucked. The crusted word-bringer set his claw quill onto the stackof man-skin parchment on which he hadbeen cataloguing the many new diseasesthey had encountered since their arrivalin the Corpse Marshes and shrugged.An hour, I think-guess.

Kletch wriggled his shoulders indiscomfort. Something is about tohappen-come. I feel-feel in my claws.I feel-smell also, said Scurf, always

eager to concur.The slave scurried over to the brass-

ribbed chest sitting open by the hidewall of the tent, and returned withKletchs warpstone-tipped staff. Kletchsnatched it off the slave with a snarledrebuke. Feeling a little better, he gavethe air a fresh sniff, opened his mouth totaste. Between the reek of putrefactionand his own efforts to keep it at bay,there was little left to be smelled, butsomehow he knew, knew, that there wasmore than just the three of them present

in that tent.You want-wish to go home? asked

Scurf.No, said Kletch, meaning yes.

Clanlords will not reward us forreturning with paws empty. The lightningmen hit them much-hard in lots-manyplaces. Clanlords grow desperate.They make bad decisions when theyare desperate.The slave scurried back bearing a

bottle filled with a greenish red liquorthat it poured into a goblet. Steam hissedoff the cup as the liquid hit the lacquer.The slave bobbed its head low andpresented the potation. Kletch eyed therodent severely. With a gulp, the slave

brought the cup to its lips and took thedaintiest sip.Kletch took the goblet from his retching

slave, stole his nerve, and then downedits contents. He grimaced, throattightening, musk glands clenching, andstuck out his tongue to say: Blegh!Best-best potions taste worst, said

Scurf sagely.Clan Rikkit had once been part of

Pestilens, before a tunnel collapse in theways between worlds had separatedthem from their brethren. They stillretained many of the old immunities, butthe cautious rat was the healthy rat.This all a waste of time anyway, said

Scurf, picking up his quill once more

and dunking it in the shelled ink bug stilltwitching on his table. Scratching awayat the parchment, he went on. He hasmany warriors, but this not the CopsysBule used to frighten my litter when Iwas small-young.Kletch was unconvinced. Bule could

afford to let the world pass him by for amillennium or two if he chose to do so,of that he was certain. And if Bule wasany less than the tyrant of clan legendthen Kletch was glad that he had notbeen the envoy sent to treat with thatLord of Plagues.One hour more we can wait. Let us see

this over-done, but have all my warriorsready to go.

Yes-yes, said Scurf, carefully foldinghis quill and packing it away.Kletch twitched aside the tent flap and

slipped out into the muggy night withwrinkled nose and downcast eyes. Twofrom the two-dozen plague monksquietly chittering their praises on thebroken ground outside of the tent fellinto step behind him.A colossal fortress-temple had once

stood here, built by a people who hadworshiped the stars and raised towers ofincredible scale that they might feel thedistant objects of their faith more keenly.For all that their eyes had attended theheavens, they had clearly also beenmasters of stone. Many of the great

structures still stood though they wereruinous now, verterbral columns of stonethat had been yellowed by blight,weather and war. Copsys Bule calledthis place the Hanging Gardens, namedso for the thousands upon thousands ofdead and dying strung up from its moss-clad defensive walls. Those still alivewrithed in fever so that the wallsthemselves appeared in motion. Theirmouths moved but no evidence of theirtorment could be heard from them, notabove the flies.To count the flies was to court insanity.

They were infinite, swarms withinswarms, billowing over the corruptedfortress in such numbers that at times

they were as the chitinous outer wings ofa beetle closing over the world andshutting out the sky. At such times thedrone was a gnawing on the boundarybetween earth and heavens, between realand unreal. At other times it was simplymaddening. It set the teeth on edge.The Clan Rikkit camp pavilion was set

up on the rubble where the innermostgate had crumbled to create a rockerypopulated with razor weeds that werewatered each day with the blood ofyear-dead men. It would foul a charge assurely as any gate ever would, assumingany enemy had the fortitude to survive asfar as Bules innermost defensive line.From that vantage Kletch had an

unimpeded and deeply unpleasant view.The Corpse Marshes were monstrous.

It reminded him only somewhat of thehoneycombed pox caves of Murgid Fein,where diseases were bred, mutated andharvested from slaves of every race. Buthere the scale was far more epic. Thevery fabric of the world for as far as hisdim eyes could show him felt rotten,perished. The reports of all of his sensesscurried about his mind to decry itswrongness and even he, master of theindustrialisation of degradation, feltsickened by it.A geyser of corpse gas rippled

upwards and outwards from a sinkholefurther down near the gatehouse. Grime

spattered back over the rotten gates andthe band of warriors marching homeover its splinters. A column of plaguebeasts and meat wagons followed them.Kletch recognised Fistulas pack: themost useful of Bules warriors, but adrop in the septic ocean of his horde.Leaning against his staff, he settled in to

wait.Another day spent in genuflection to

our lords placidity, envoy? said Fistulaas he tramped up the slope, evidentlybound for the same destination asKletch. The champion was spatteredwith loose gore and beaming, contemptfor all and sundry and for Kletch inparticular vibrant in his bloodshot eyes.

The blightlord walked over, laden cartsdrawn by withered, pestilential beastscreaking on behind him. Kletch stiffenedwith immediate suspicion and sniffed atthe flies buzzing lazily after the vehiclescargo. The experiments of Clan Burrzikin breeding eavesdropping mosquitoeshad faltered as a consequence of theclans incompetence, but one neverknew. One never knew.Maybe, he said, then chirred

something conciliatory and gestured withhis tail to the top of the hill.There, encircled by a ring of luminous

white pillars that in their cleanlinessexuded a sense of power andprominence, was a marble archway

carved with astrological constellationsand runic notations. It stood bare to thestars as if waiting only on their call, andeven inert as it was, the sight of it sent afrisson of imagined dread running to thetip of his tail. He could understand whythe ancients here had built such amonument to the heavens.He licked his gums nervously. What

does Bule want-think will happentonight?I can tell you what I think will

happen.Kletch caught the blightlords look and

read the need there. Battle. Survival.Aims not identical to his, but withcunning words and enough will perhaps

complementary ones. He glancedupwards again to mark the approach ofhigh moon, his neck, accustomed totunnels and caves, already sore fromcontinually doing so. That was when henoticed what had been worrying at himsince he left his tent.The stars were moving.

IVFor a count of years numbering seventimes seven times seven times seven,Copsys Bule had tended his garden. Hedid not know how many millions he hadpulled out of the ground since that firstday. Unlike some, he kept no lists, no

ledgers, except that which existed in hismind. He knew only that his god saw itas good.Turning his knife so that it was point

down, he pushed the blade into themushy chest of the body spread like softgrey cheese over dry bread across thetrencher table in front of him. There wasno resistance. It was like cutting intomarrow jelly.Flesh separated in a great swelling of

maggots as Bule carved from collar tococcyx. A comingling of organs andbody juices dribbled from the gash. Thesmell was pure ambrosia. His bellygurgled. Decay was a master gourmet. Itloosened the fat, softened fibres and

pulled meat from the bone. It brought outa depth and range of flavours that theimpatient flesh-eaters of Khorne or thesqueamish that burned their meat withfire could never experience.He licked the juices from his knife

blade, mouth distending to accommodatehis entire fist. The panoply of tastes andodours gave him shivers and he closedhis eyes.The added spice of plague magic, the

power of new life, tingled on the tip ofhis tongue and then diffused through himlike a warmth. He withdrew his hand,sucked clean, and then hung the knifefrom one of the curing hooks thatprotruded from his armour.

All. Ready, snuffled Gurhg, the brayshaman thumping the ground with askull-topped stave as he walked aroundthe stirring realmgate. Standing behindthe sagging trenchers in an octed aroundthe realmgate, blightlords and championswatched solemnly. The shaman raisedhis bull snout and snorted, bone fetishesand feathers tinkling from blisteredhorns. He closed his eyes and emitted alow sigh that made the hanging flesh ofhis throat quiver. Feel. Him. Stirring.Bule spread his arms with a smile.

Torchlight flickered from sconces set inthe columns. Brass tocsins played byhooded slaves with wire brusheshummed a sonorous chorus.

Feast, my children.To a great squishing of meat and

crumbling of rot-softened bone, thegathered worthies of the Rotbringerstucked in with a hunger. Bule watchedthem all, hands across his swollen girth.There was Fistula, ever prideful,ambitious, filling his mouth with thesame abandon as the others. Beside himthe old bloat hound, Vitane, sucked jellyfrom his fingers and laughed at a joke.Their greatly honoured guest from ClanRikkit was hunched behind a cornertrencher, nibbling diplomatically at a bitof bone and throwing uneasy glances upat the sky. Copsys Bule basked in thepaternal glow.

It was nearly time. The magic wasrising, and Bule could feel the realmgateresponding. For a moment he could feelthe connections that ran through theEightpoints to some other place, someother realm, where one far mightier thanhe tended a garden of his own. Helooked up. The moon was approachingits zenith. The stars were in alignment,brighter and clearer than Bule had everseen them before. One of themmomentarily grew brighter.Bule examined the moving constellation

with wide open eyes.Yes. Yes.The star grew brighter, brighter, shining

out the others around it and projecting a

beam of starlight directly onto therealmgate. Bule grunted at the sharpglare and shielded his eyes with his arm.As the light dissipated, he lookedimmediately back to the gate.A slender-bodied lizard wielding what

looked like a dartpipe and a spear wasnow standing on the pedestal before theGate. It stood on its hind legs like a man,shorter even than Kletch Scabclaw andmore wiry still. The black colouration ofits scales mottled to white as Bulewatched, matching itself almostseamlessly to the marble hues of theGate behind it. His eyes continuing torecover from the flash, Bule noticed ahundred or so more of the little

creatures, spread out in the shadowsaround the gathered Rotbringers.A strained silence fell over them all.

Even Gurhg noticed and stoppedchanting.The lizard-man lowered its head,

spines engorging to raise a vivid frill. Itemitted a warbling chirrup then lifted itsdartpipe to its beak.For one so vast, Bule could move like

poison through a panicking mans veinswhen quickened to do so. That he hadnot been so roused in over a hundredyears was nothing. He was Copsys Bule,the Black Thumb, and his knife was inhis hand and wrist deep in the lizardsstill-shattering ribcage before the

creature had drawn its breath.The lizards nictitating eyelids fluttered

in shock. Already its scaly skin wasbeginning to blister with the lesions ofNurgles blessed rot, daemonfliespupating inside the wound in its chest,but to Bules surprise what emergedfrom that wound was not blood but pure,cleansing starlight.Scalded where it touched his arm, Bule

tore his hand back, ripping a chunk of thelizards chest out with it. It shudderedand fell, vanishing in a cascade ofglimmering motes before it hit theground.Clenching and unclenching his fist

around his knife handle, feeling the

burned, cleansed, tissue pulling, Bulegrunted at the barely comparablesensation of a metal-tipped blow dartpuncturing his neck. He felt the venomenter his blood and would have laughedat its impish ineffectuality had he notbeen building towards such a fury.This was his moment, his time. The

signs had been guiding him for centuriestowards this night.With a snarl that came from deep in his

monstrous belly, he turned and flung hisknife. It spun end over end, so fast itappeared as a solid discus, and puncheda chameleon lizard from its feet in anexplosion of light and bone.Blow darts and javelins droned around

him like hornets, snuffing out the torcheswith the wind of their flight, and fallingon the Rotbringers. They bristled fromunfeeling flesh, rattled off heavy armourand even downed a handful of the mightywarriors before they had a chance toreact. The beastman, Gurhg, dropped tohis haunches and backed into a trenchertable with his head down. He foundKletch already under it.Air rippled inside the arch of the

realmgate.It was subtle but there, the power

awakening in direct response to theplague magic that Bule had nurtured inhis garden for two thousand four hundredand one years. That power was still

rising. Nothing would stop it now.Copsys Bule looked again at his hand,

free of blight for the first time since heknew not when.Kill them all! he shrieked. Let none

of them touch my garden!

VFistula was more disoriented than angry.He was drunk on meat and cankerberrywine, and on a power that he could notput name to but which filled him with afever swirl of thoughts. The discordantmoan of tocsins droned through his mind,though they were playing a cadence ofbattle now rather than of ceremony. The

taste of meat was in his mouth, but it wasfresh, torn not from the embrace ofCopsys Bules soil but from thestruggling bodies of the living.He spat out a mouthful of blistering

starlight. Or tried to. His throat burned,however hard he wretched and gagged.Goaded into lucidity on a knife-edge of

pain he struck down a lizard-man thatwas hissing in cold-bloodedconsternation at the chunk bitten out ofits wrist. It disappeared in a drizzle ofglimmer dust. Two more took advantageof the light-shock to blindside him. Theycame with spears held short.Fistula caught the haft of the first spear

thrust, then with his sword hand punched

it in half. The lizard stumbled. Turninghis body across and through it, he pushedit on its way to the ground, spitting hissword out to arms length to impale thesecond. Light exploded from its backaround the tip of his sword. This time hewas ready for the glare. Eyes alreadynarrowed, he spun quickly away,stamping on the first lizard and grindingthe light that bled from its fractured skullunder his boot.Something small and metallic spanked

his pauldron guard. Darts tipped withstarmetal zipped by. He saw a burlyRotbringer with a cloak of festering hidego down under a volley of them. Anothertook a freak hit, a dart straight down the

ear, dropping the warrior like his weightin dead meat.From somewhere, screaming. Melting

flesh and starlight.Every one of these warriors was a

master of war, the mightiest of mortalchampions uplifted to near daemonhoodby the Lord of Decay. But they hadforgotten what it felt like to bechallenged. After millennia of pointlesswarfare they had forgotten what it trulywas to fight.Fistula clutched at his gut with his off-

hand.He felt ill, stricken, a great swelling

pressing up from inside his chest.Pressure climbed up his throat, as though

he were a snake trying to regurgitate aman that had been too large for him toswallow. A bilious taste flooded hismouth and, on unconscious reflex, hedoubled over and vomited forth a torrentof foulness and corruption.The lizard-men caught in the flow died

instantly and in agony. The Rotbringerssimilarly touched were healed as if bythe beaming intercession of GrandfatherNurgle himself. Maggots squirmed overopen wounds. New and gloriousinfections puckered flesh that had beenrankly cleansed by the lizards light.Swallowing several times to assure

himself that he too was whole again, helooked about for more enemies. There

were none. All around him were inadvanced stages of rot or alreadyreturned to whatever heavenly body hadspewed them forth.He panted, heart racing. Was that all?Kill them all! he heard Copsys Bule

shout, a shrill note of fury screwing hisvoice tight. Let none of them touch mygarden!Fistula shot around to look down the

slope. His heart thumped hard for joy.Light knifed frenziedly from the

heavens. Flashes blossomed within thefug of flies, then glowed and spawnedwarriors. Many of them were bigger thanthe lizard-men he had just slaughtered.Some of them were a lot bigger. That

first wave must have been some kind ofadvance party. Scouts. Assassins,perhaps. This was an army, comingdown in conventional formations.Accompanied by tocsins and bells and

calls to glory, warriors of theRotbringers mustered over the oldcorpse-hung curtain walls to opposethem. Bule commanded the souls of ahundred thousand, and although morethan half were scattered wide over theCorpse Marshes and beyond, whatremained was a mighty host indeed.He bared sharpened teeth, a feral grin.

Now for notice. Now for glory. Thiswas going to be a fight.You want war? Bule roared at the

stars, and the very ground beneathseemed to tremble at his words.Someone had passed the Lord of

Plagues his helmet, and his voiceboomed from inside the steel. In bothhands he gripped the haft of the tridentwith which he tended his garden, veinsstanding out from bulging biceps as hecontinued to howl without words. God-gifted power oozed from him, turning theair around him syrupy brown. Sickly,cyclopean figures beginning to takeshape there. They were horned,drenched in mucous, stooped overserrated swords that reeked of soulrot.Nurgles tallymen. Plaguebearers. Fromthe strain in Bules bearing it was though

he passed them from his own body. In asense he did.Fistula howled, maddened by battle-

lust and plague.Bule crashed the brass ferrule of his

trident into the ground and screamed.I will give you war!

VIKletch Scabclaw ran in the middle of theRotbringers counter-attack, where hefelt naturally safest, ducking, weaving,leaping between pockets of solidground. Not that he felt all that safe.Beastmen thundered downhill like rabidanimals while Chaos warriors, each

with their own maddened cry on theirblack lips, battled each other to be thefirst to meet the enemy and in theirblundering almost dragged Kletch undermore than once. Of course, the plaguemonks of Clan Rikkit could be just aszealous in battle, but only with theinspiring words of their priest in theirears and the fumes of his blessed censerin their snouts. As well as being unruly,the horde was not as sufficientlynumerous as he would have liked. Thatwasnt exactly helped by those whowere continually peeling off to strike outat the lizard-man skirmishers firingdown on them from their flanks.The lizards scampered with near-

impunity over walls and pox moats that,judging by the clear lack of defenders,the Rotbringers had consideredimpassable.The Rotbringers had been fools.Even by Kletchs own standards, the

lizards were light on their feet. Theirbones seemed to be hollow, and withlittle else to them but light they skippedacross floating corpses as cleanly as ifthey were solid ground. Only the moatsthemselves gave them pause fecundnurseries of disease that hummed withdeadly daemonfly but they served onlyto funnel the rabid Rotbringers throughtheir own defensive works where theywere easy pickings for the lizards

dartpipes.Skinks.Kletch shivered, some deep residual

instinct to freeze and play dead almostkilling him there amongst the runningcolumn of Chaos warriors, beastmen andmind-plagued fanatics.He kept running, not watching, his pre-

conscious replaying him impressions ofjungles he had never seen, of steppedpyramids he had never visited, the terrorof being prey in a land he had nevercalled his. He had not seen or heard ofthese lizard-men, these seraphon, beforenow, but deep down he knew them, andit was a knowledge that a thousandgenerations of new lands and new

enemies could not wipe from his racialmemory.He leapt from one patch of solid ground

to another, then another, easily outpacingthe beasts and once-men that ran aroundhim. His heavy cloak slowed him only alittle, flapping out as he made one longleap, landing on a leaning root of acolumn. Sinking around his staff onto allfours, he sniffed the air for the musk ofhis own.Useless. The whole castle was thick

with decay. With a snarl, he resorted tousing his eyes.Despite the lizards the skinks

success in drawing the Rotbringers intomore difficult terrain, the bulk of Bules

horde were still charging for the goodground where the main outer curtainwalls converged on the gatehousecitadel. He could hear the drums andhorns, the shouts and the roar of beasts.Skaven eyesight grew dim over any kindof distance and for that, today, he wasgrateful.Go around! he squeaked, gesticulating

furiously from his pedestal to the band ofRotbringers that were wading into astinking brown pond to get at the brightlyscaled skinks on the other side. Go get.Kill-kill. Go!To no surprise of his, the Rotbringers

champion plunged on into deeper water.The warrior was an idiot. Hed earned

the dart in the throat that dropped himface down into the mire a moment later.The skinks were making a mockery of

the heavily armoured blightkings, makingthem look sluggish. The daemons wereanother matter.Every sore on Kletchs body wept,

every ache seizing and filling his wirybody with pain as ten of Nurglestallymen strode onto the pox moat,walking weightlessly upon the scum thatfloated on the surface and through thestinging daemonfly. The cold-bloodedstar-creatures barely reacted. Kletchwatched as a skink shaman rustled hisfeathered cloak, flying over theplaguebearers heads to land in a swirl

of red and gold on a stump of wallbehind them. There, he shook his staff,exhorting a hail of darts from his kin thatfell amongst the closing daemons.Kletch snickered. Everyone knew that

daemons could not be killed that way.But the tallymen fell by the handful, ifanything even more vulnerable to theseraphons envenomed darts than themortals they marched beside.With a snarl, Kletch reached inside his

cloak for his weapon, eyes locked on theshaman.See-smell how tough you are. Kletch

not afraid of scrawny scaly-meat.The faintest trace of reptile musk

warned him of the danger just before an

ear-splitting shriek from above re-triggered every instinct he had to freeze,run, hide. Terradon. The giant reptileswooped overhead, banked gracefullyunder the effortless direction of its skinkrider, then dropped a boulder from itshind-claws. It came down like a meteor.It was a meteor.With a terrified squeal, Kletch leapt

from his column, arms and legs churningas the spot he had been standing on wasannihilated, the air at his back electrifiedby a starlight explosion. His tail peeled.His cloak caught fire. He landed in aroll, steaming from fur and clothes andfrom the accidental release of fear muskdown his leg.

Scratch and sniff, he swore.Patting himself down, he brushed a

string of darts from the back of his cloak.He swallowed the bad taste in hismouth. Dropping to all fours to makehimself less of a target to any skinkslooking to pick off survivors, he scurriedfrom the path, zig-zagged through a vergeof bloodgrass that stuck up from ahummock of dead men and horses likepins, and then dived into a wild patch ofbruise-coloured bushes that clung to aledge growing out from the secondcurtain wall. A few tail-lengths in hepoked his head up through the scratchingbranches.Below, clanking streams of Chaos

warriors fed into a blurrily defined blobof screams and steel, a blood and lizardstink spilling out over half a league ofthe Hanging Gardens heartlands. Hedidnt need the eyes of a surface-dwellerto see the blocks of bulky lizardwarriors saurus grinding in undertheir golden icons. He could see wellenough the giant reptiles that toweredover all with swaying howdahs on theirbacks, even if he couldnt quite count thehorns on their bony head shields.The seraphon were being held back for

now. Nothing stood up to attrition like awarrior of Nurgle, and Copsys Bulecommanded monsters of his own. Kletchsniffed the air and shivered at the sharp,

unmistakeably vile scent.The Lord of Plagues was down there.

Good riddance.Scabclaw-master!Kletch hissed angrily to mask his

surprise, but this time held onto hismusk. Scurf was scurrying through theflesh-drinking grasses, surrounded by aclawpack of stormvermin mercenaries inmuddy black plate mail and wieldingvicious-looking halberds. Severalhundred raggedy plague monksfollowed, individuals breaking every sooften to sniff the air, lash their tails infear, and then hurry on.Lightning men! Scurf squealed.The word-bringer was in the same

stained linen cassock hed been wearingan hour ago, but had, apparently in greathaste, donned a mail coif and wasclutching a cracked tome that he heldonto like a shield. He waved a rustyscimitar at the stars. Flies eddied andswarmed, a billion billion, but the starsbehind no longer moved. An unnaturallyintense constellation in the shape of asquatting toad glared down with eyestinged red.Fool-fool, Kletch snapped. This is

something other.Something new?Kletch shook his muzzle. Something

old.The claw-packs are ready to leave-

go, added Scurf. He glanced down tothe battle and gulped. Very-very much-ready.Kletch bared his teeth, yellow eyes

shining. This might all just work outafter all. If Copsys Bule was defeated,as looked likely, then the clanlords couldhardly blame him for failing to secure analliance that the Lord of Plagues hadnever appeared to want at all. And if theweakened Lord of Plagues somehowmanaged to secure a pyrrhic victory?Will perhaps then the generous backing

of Clan Rikkit would appeal to himmore.This way, Kletch hissed.Darting back into the bloodgrass, he

wove through it, driving purposefullyaway from the main seraphon assault.Corpses at varying stages of ranknesswobbled underpaw, tipping, sinking, attimes disintegrating before he was ableto leap clear and plunging him intofoetid water. He spluttered a wordlessprayer to the Pestilent Horned Rat thatthe tonic he had drunk would continue toprove effective. Keeping his head downand his nose clear, he scurried on. Hewas moving inside the circle of the innerwalls to the far side of the fortress-temple. From there, with luck, he wouldbe able to clamber down and escapewithout great difficulty. He upped hispace, becoming a blur of fur and

movement.There was nothing in all the Realms

quicker than a skaven with a battle toescape, but Kletch was not yet soanxious to flee as to allow himself topull ahead of his brother monks.Not for the first time and he fervently

hoped not for the last sound skaventhinking saved his hide.Crashing through a canopy of hanging

dead, a lumbering reptile as massive asa barded warhorse snapped the leadclanrat up in its jaws, trampling threemore before the saurus riding it couldrein it back.Its predatory head was huge and low-

slung, supported by a monstrous neck

and counter-weighted by a thick tail thattacked menacingly in advance of itsmovements as it turned. The skaven in itsjaws was shrieking. A savage yank ofneck and jaw and the beast bit the pitifulcreature through, sending legs and torsoflying over opposite shoulders. A rake ofits vestigial forepaws claimed another.Scurf issued a rallying squeal, backing

into the stormvermin clawpack as thebeast completed its turn and snorted inhis nose. He whipped up his book ofwoes with a frightened squeak as thesaurus mace came down.The book was mouldering parchment

bound in cracked leather.The mace was meteoric stone.

Hurriedly withdrawing from thesmashed word-bringer, the stormverminlowered their halberds, throwing up awall of hooked blades between them andthe beast. The reptile a cold one snapped contemptuously, taking off oneof the blades and eating it.The saurus hefted its bloodied mace

and with cold calm scanned the skavenscattered across the grass before it.Every scale armouring its grosslypowerful hide was chipped and scarred.Its eyes were old. Beautiful works ofgolden plate clad vulnerable spots suchas its throat and wrists. It shone like thelight at the end of all the skavenstunnels.

Pumping its mace up into the air, it gavea roar that shook the air. With answeringroars, a full cohort of glittering sauruswarriors marched into the open.Kletch squealed for order, for ranks,

shoving his way to the back of them ashe did so. These saurus were on foot,armed with spears and shields, but itscarcely mattered. Each one was twicethe size of an armoured stormvermin andlooked the match for any six.With frenzied squeals, the plague

monks charged. The saurus trampledthem without appearing to notice andslammed into the line of stormvermin.Hold. Fight! Kill-kill! shouted Kletch,

growing ever shriller as the lizards

massive line troops ground their waythrough his.A rustle from the tall weeds to the right

made his heart sink. There were more.Hacking wildly at the bodies that came

at him on nooses from all sides,Blightlord Fistula ran through, savaginga saurus from behind before the cold-blooded brute had even realised he wasthere. Coming under a swarm of flies,his putrid blightkings piled in behindhim.This was a more even fight. The

blightkings were Bules elite and, Kletchknew, Fistulas were the best. He wasnot at all surprised that the firstblightlord had been amongst the reckless

few to be dragged out into the swampchasing skinks.In! In! Kletch squeaked, urging his

warriors on.Scenting blood, the clawpacks and

surviving plague monks pushed forward,wedging the saurus between two sets ofenemies.Observing the reverse in fortunes with

an impersonal, calculating detachment,the saurus pointed its cold one towardsFistula and roared its challenge. Thefirst blightlord ran at it with a yell, bothweapons out at his side, armour drippingwith bile.The saurus struck first. The cadaver-

thin blightlord parried the lizards mace

with a blow that would have broken bothof their arms had either been a lesserbeing, then rolled out of the lunge of thecold ones jaws. His knife chewed downthe side of the beasts neck and spat outscales. He dodged back, turning acrunching side kick from the old sauruson his vambrace, then charged back in.The saurus was wheeling his furious

mount when Fistula stepped onto aplague monks mushed body and, using ita springboard, vaulted over the reach ofthe cold ones flailing snap. Slidingdown the beasts spiny neck, he slammedbodily into the saurus and punched aknife towards its neck. It moved just fastenough to take it in the shoulder. If it felt

either surprise or pain it didnt show it.A shattering head butt snapped backFistulas head and sent him crashingover the cold ones flank and down tothe sucking ground. The cold onestomped on his breastplate, pushing himdeeper under.Then Kletch withered away the saurus

head with a bolt of plague magic.The cold one issued a defiant roar that

shook the eardrums long after it vanishedinto the same cloud of light thatreclaimed its master.Shivering off the giddy tingle of the

warpstone fumes from his pestilentcenser, Kletch secreted the relic backinto its pouch underneath his robes. He

had taken the weapon from the clanvaults to deal with Copsys Bule, but itsmelled like that was one precaution hedidnt need anymore.He had me. Fistulas laughter bubbled

crazily, riding down from some wildadrenaline high.We should be going-gone. Before more

like it come.Going? Fistula sat up straight, face

flushed red and cut in half by a razoredsmile. I would fight more of yourlightning men.They are not lightning men, Kletch

snapped, suddenly lacking all patiencefor the stupidity of others. The lightningmen are... are much worse.

Worse?Come with me, Kletch hissed, sidling

closer, tail switching side to side. Buleis old. Leave him to rot in his garden.Come kill-slay with Clan Rikkit.Fistula looked to his warriors. Kletch

bared his fangs in a grin. He wouldnt bereturning to the clanlords with emptypaws after all.

VIICopsys Bule was untouchable.Of the lizard-men that came close, only

the very mightiest amongst them couldmake it within reach of his weaponbefore Nurgles Rot left them crippled

and blind. And yet on these star-lizardscame, fearing neither death nor disease.His trident struck like an adder,

piercing the throat of a heavily scarredlizard and exploding through the back ofits neck. With one huge scaly hand itgrappled with the haft, swinging aglowing starmetal axe with the other.Bule yanked back on his trident, pullingthe impaled scar-veteran into a forwardstumble and sending its axe strokeflailing harmlessly past his shoulder. Anopen fist to the gut punched the scar-veteran off his weapons tines, two feetthrough the air and onto its back. Buleclosed the distance, trident spinningonce, twice, overhead, and then

smashing through the lizard-mans chest.With a heave, he drew the trident up, theweapon arcing back overhead to its fullextension to polearm the spear warriorthat had been charging his supposedblindside.With the rest of his horde struggling to

hold their line, Copsys Bule took anotherforward step.A powerful lizard in golden armour

blocked him. The blinding might of Azyrscreamed between the joins of its scales,and the roar of its challenge was likethat of a furnace. Saliva stellar whitehissed from its jaws as it brought up aprimitive-looking two-handed blade.Bule turned the hacking stroke with a

loop of his trident, then took the haftbetween both hands and drove theferrule into the sun-lizards groin. Thewarrior emitted a grunt and staggeredback, unhurt, throwing a punch thatcaught the haft of Bules weapon. Thestruck trident popped out of Bulesfingers and landed in the mud behindhim. It was the deft, impish move of amaster of unarmed combat.With a celestial roar, the sun-lizard

swept its weapon overhead.Spinning and dropping, Bule planted

his knee on the ferrule and slid his handunder the tridents haft. Halfway along, aflex of the fingers bounced it up,reversed against the slope of his

shoulder, just as the sun-warrior chargedin to deliver the deathblow.There was a heavy crunch, a sigh, the

burn of starlight raining across his back.Bule turned as he rose, swinging his

weapon out like a scythe, letting fly, andsending the dying sun-warrior cannoninginto the head of the hulking lizard giantthat had just strode into view. Both wentdown in a mighty crash. The sun-lizardvanished in a flash of sunbeams. Thegiant, merely unconscious, did not riseagain.Is this it? he cried, laying out a

murderous sigil of overlapping figure-of-eights. Is this all that you have? Tokill again, and to kill swiftly, felt

glorious. Colours were vivid, scentssharp, cries like bells. He was a manawakening from a coma andremembering that he was furious. Doyou even realise whom you face?He shovelled down another lizard-

warrior on the flat of his tines, then span,alerted by the prickling sense ofsomething approaching from behind.A robed figure stood there on the

writhing carpet of sickening lizards. Itregarded him through the haze of flies,neither noticeably human nor obviouslyreptilian. Daemonic perhaps, yet not. Itshead was angled like a hoe with a rowof eyes along its ridge. Some of themexamined Bule archly, others with

compassion, mirth, and contempt. Inspite of himself, of what and where hewas, Bule felt a chill.Blind to their visitor, a cohort of

warrior lizards charged through thehazing flies. They died one by one. Theinhuman apparition did not react, but,despite having no obvious mouth, Bulehad the impression that it smiled at him,as though he were a bloat hound that hadearned a treat.A tremendous death bellow drew his

attention away.There, the mighty plague maggoth that

had been rolling over the lizardsadvance with a wedge of Rotbringers intrain collapsed in an avalanche of folds.

A sunbeam split the monster fromshoulder to navel and the armour-platedhead of some apex reptile butted itaside. Fixed to the lizard creatures backwas the silver and star-metal housing ofsome inscrutable god-engine, whichclicked and reset amidst a glow ofenergies. The Rotbringers retreated,their forward push stymied. Bule wasaware of the enemy pouring forward onall fronts now as his own defencesbegan to crumble. With a snarl, he tookhis trident overhand like a javelin andmade to challenge that armouredreptiles invulnerability.He seeks a champion.The apparitions robes whispered as it

followed him. Its clothing was made notof hides or cloth but of eyes, and thesusurrus it made was the sound ofhundreds of blinking eyelids, ripplingwhite, green, black, and every othercolour that skin came. It moved withouttruly moving. It spoke without speaking.Seek him, champion.Turning, gesturing without anything so

prosaic as a pointed finger, the figuredirected Bules gaze to the realmgate.The skin within it flexed. The starsabove it wheeled. Even from afar Bulecould see that the view within was nolonger of the garden with which it hadpreviously been twinned. Fury returnedto him redoubled. Disbelief. It was not

mere bad fortune that had brought theseraphon upon him with the aligningstars. They had come for his realmgate.Somehow they had manipulated the

Eightpoints to change its destination.How? The magic involved in enactingsuch a feat was godlike!The apparition hissed in sudden

distress. Its cloak shimmered with manycolours, every eye tightening shut asthough simultaneously blinded. And thenin a searing moment of universal light, itwas gone.Grandfather! Bule cried, light like a

fire in his eyes. Aid me!Shading his eyes with one heavy arm,

he peered into the oncoming host.

Floating on a cushion of force abovethe golden spears of its warriors camethe source of the light. It was as if a starhad been called down from the heavensand condensed into a brittle caul ofbone-brown wrappings and dry flesh. Itspresence alone was massive. From itspalanquin, the mummified creatureregarded the battle with the distantdisinclination of an inhuman god.Instinctively, Bule understood that herecame a being that had known power longbefore some daemons had even come tobe. He felt himself drawn spirituallytowards it, the golden funerary mask thatpicked out its amphibian features injewels swelling to fill his mind as the

universe subtly reordered around it.It made no word or gesture, but

somewhere in the cosmos somethinggave.The heavens opened.Bule howled impotent fury as the stars

glimmered and fell, plucked from thesky, and smashed into his horde.The first meteorite hit at an angle,

obliterating a dozen Chaos warriorsutterly and blowing a crater hundreds offeet wide. Then came the rest. Theground shook under the fury. The skyturned white, light and sound reaching anintensity where they sublimated into one,a single shrieking colour in Bules innereye, and even the daemons burned in

fire.Bule struggled gasping onto hands and

knees, tripping a warrior lizard runningin behind him with a backward kick andriding it face-down into the filth until itstopped thrashing. He stood up, dazedsenseless by thunder. Waves of powersmashed out from the advancingpalanquin. It was almost impossible tostand against it, but in a tremendous featof will, he stood. He shook his head.Aid me!Nothing. Nothing but the awesome

presence of this starmaster.Moving with difficulty, he turned and

staggered back the way he had come.Never in his life had Copsys Bule run

away, but Grandfather Nurgle did notknow defeat.With every waning, he would wax

again.

VIIIFirst Blightlord Fistula stepped out ofthe realmgate and onto another world.The air was syrupy, hot, sweetened by

the sweat of fat citrus-scented leavesand by the bell-shaped blue flowers thathe and his warriors crushed underfoot.He looked around in amazement, turningponderously. He felt weightier, as ifthe sky itself pushed him down under itspalm. And the sun forgetting for the

moment that it should be night wasover large and buttercup yellow. Wingedcreatures rustled through the leavesabove. And from somewhere, screams.He pulled off his helmet, wiped his

running nose, and drew deep.New lands.Soon all that was green would be a

verdant collage of yellows and brownsand leaf-rust reds. It would be the cradleof a new lands blight, the metastasisfrom which a new canker would swell.And all of it was his.Over here, growled Vitane, crunching

through the undergrowth in the vaguedirection of those screams.Fistula acceded to the old blightkings

instincts for pain and followed. After afew minutes of unexpectedly heavy goingthrough the dense foliage of this foreignland, the warriors were, to a man,blowing hard, their armour hangingloose on straps. The screams got nearer.More abject. Chesting aside a branch,too weary to bother his arm with thetask, Fistula pushed ahead into a sun-drenched clearing.Varicoloured lichens and mushrooms

covered the split bark of the fallen logthat dominated the clearing. The crieswere coming from the other side of thelog.Shading his eyes from the visceral

brightness of the sun, Fistula saw the

bray shaman, Gurhg, who was easyenough to pick out with his totemic staffand cloak woven with bones, evenwithin a knot of his followers. Therewere perhaps two-dozen, stompingabout and smashing horns re-establishing dominance hierarchies andstaking claim to new territories. Gurhgstood hunched and swaying in the middleof it, nodding his goat head approvinglyas six men and a woman bound to a lineof hastily woven racks screamed. Thewails of the seventh man were of adifferent order. A beastman with the faceof a horse and a line of horrendouslyinfected iron piercings through its top lipdiligently flensed the human with a blunt

knife.Fistula smiled. There were people

here. Good. It had been too long.Blightlord. Arms spread, snout turned

to bare the throat in that odd gesture ofhis, Kletch Scabclaw padded towardshim through the forest. The skaven envoyfussed at the clasp of his cloak, butdespite his obvious discomfort he didnot seem inclined to take it off. At thetreeline, he bobbed low and withdrewwith a hiss, averting his eyes from thesun.Where are your warriors? asked

Fistula.In woods. Less brave rats than I must

cower where sky is less bright-strong.

Good.Fistula looked across the clearing at the

brawling beastmen, and the blightkingsnow spreading out through the lichens tocrash down and rest. It was not much,but it would be a start, and more wouldflock to him soon enough.I will have them seek-burrow for the

way home at once, said Kletch,stamping his foot-paw anxiously.GoodFistula put his hands on his hips and

turned his face full on to the sun. It washis. It was all his.Something heavy and wet tramped up

through the woods behind him. Thewheezing breath on the back of his neck

was thick with the stench of stagnantmeat.I began my quest with less. I can begin

again.Fistula spun around.Bule.I see now, said Copsys Bule,

unhelmed, smiling blackly. I see what Ihave been missing.This is mine, Fistula snarled, baring

his blades. Some withered instinct forself-preservation kept him from usingthem, some dim recognition that the godstoo had their favourites. He backed intothe clearing. Bule moved towards him,Fistula continuing to retreat until thefallen tree prevented him from going any

further. He dropped into a fightingcrouch. I will not let you turn myconquest into another garden. You haveforgotten how to do anything else!The Lord of Plagues spread his arms in

forgiveness as he passed from the treeline and into the sunlight. His eyessqueezed shut against the sudden glare,but still Fistula did not think to attack.Mosses mottled and died where Buletrod. Insects dropped dead out of the airas he breathed it. Throughout theclearing beastmen, skaven andblightkings alike stopped what they weredoing and abased themselves.He came within swords reach, knifes

reach, arms reach. Fistula lowered his

weapons. He felt lethargic. His skin washot.Dropping to one knee in front of him,

Copsys Bule leaned in and embracedhim.Fistula made an attempt at fighting it,

but he felt so weak. His breath drainedup and down like fluid. He shiveredwith chills even as fever sweat poureddown his skin. Jerking in hisdetermination to fight, he struggled as theLord of Plagues cradled him, loweringhim to the ground. Fistula tried to starehatred at him, but failed even in that.Delirium fogged his eyes and opened hismind to wisdoms flood.Sorcerers robed with eyes. An army of

champions. Chaos united. A three-eyedking. Round and around.Ill. Fight you. Forever, he swore.Grandfather Nurgle does not want us

to submit, Bule smiled. He wishes usto rage.The last thing Fistula saw before

Nurgles Rot fully entered his mind wasBule turning towards Kletch Scabclaw,arms open in blessing and friendship.

IXCopsys Bule broke up the earth with histrident. A tangle of roots knotted up thesoil, making it tough, and before long hewas breathing hard, a burn spreading

through his shoulders. It felt good. Thesimple labour eased his mind and hismuscles. The repetitive activity gavehim the chance to think, and to order histhoughts.He had much to think upon.There, he said, giving the ground a

vigorous final crumbing, then stabbinghis trident to one side. He ran his armacross his lank-haired brow, then turnedand nodded.Vitane slid his toe under Kletch

Scabclaws body and rolled the corpseinto the rill that Bule had prepared forhim. Flies crawled over the ratmanslips. His eyes were the black of rot-pickled eggs and the smell had that same

astringent piquancy.So much life. However many skaven

he buried, the truth of that still filled himwith wonder. My garden will thrivehere. It is as I said to you, envoy, noother race gives so thoroughly ofthemselves to Grandfather Nurgle.The skaven did not answer and nor did

Bule expect him to. He would live again,of course. That was Nurgles promise toall. The ratmans flesh would nurturemany millions of short and wondrouslives, his decomposition would bringbounty to the ground in which he lay, butnever again would he talk, think, orinterfere in the ambitions of a Lord ofPlagues.

Pulling up his trident, Bule proceededto bed the skaven in.The humans would go here, and here,

either side, where their decay would beaccelerated by the skavens proximity.One of the other rat-men hed dig a plotfor over by the south-facing tree linewhere its remains could feed the poplarsthere. They were fast growers, and therot would spread quickly. Already theirleaves were beginning to wilt and brownat the edges. Birds hawked up a thin andsickly chorus of phlegm on the bowers.He could see it now. He did not know

how this was to end, he never had, buthe knew how to begin.Archaon.

Fistula was fetched up against the log,shivering like a man just fished in fullarmour from an ice pail. He mutterednon-sequiturs under his breath, tired, forthe moment at least, of raging them at theforest. His eyes rolled, like bones castby a feverish shaman, and his brush withNurgles Rot had bequeathed him acirclet of rugose blisters that rimmed hisbald head like a crown. Bule examinedthe stigmata. There was a sign there, heknew it, but of what?He grows more lucid, observed

Vitane.Nurgle favours him greatly.A lord of flies, Fistula murmured,

shaking. A king with three eyes.

A sign. Definitely.Taking up his trident, Copsys Bule

pushed it into the ground and beganagain.He had much to think upon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Guymer is the author of theGotrek & Felix novels Slayer,

Kinslayer and City of the Damned,along with the novella Thorgrim

and a plethora of short stories set inthe worlds of Warhammer andWarhammer 40,000. He is a

freelance writer and occasionalscientist based in the East Riding,

and was a finalist in the 2014David Gemmell Legend Awards for

his novel Headtaker.

The storm breaks as the StormcastEternals go into battle for the firsttime. Read the first book set in the

Age of Sigmar.

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The Realmgate Wars: Call ofArchaon 1. Beneath the Black

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All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-693-4

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