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  The Gift of Khorne – Guy Haley

  About the Author

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  The Gift of Khorne

  Guy Haley

  They called him Gigante, which in the tongue of Barruscuna meant ‘The Giant One’. For three hundred years he had terrorised the people of that remote kingdom, yet Barruscuna persisted, warded by stone and magic. The land around withered, poisoned by the evil of Chaos. Behind its enchantments, Barruscu’s broad hinterland of emerald farms and placid, sapphire lakes remained unchanged, and in the city peace reigned. The skies lost their mad tints over that realm, the rain that fell there remained of water, not blood. A heaven survived within the walls, even as hell raged without.

  No longer. For too long the white stone of Barruscuna’s walls had stood in the face of Khorne, and he decreed that it should burn. New gifts had been given to Gigante. New pacts made. A battery of daemonic cannons with brass mouths vomited fire and iron at the walls of Barruscuna. Masonry cracked under the barrage. The cerulean dome of magic shielding the city skies shimmered uneasily.

  Soon the walls would crumble, the dome would fail, the bright pennants atop the towers would fall, the countryside about the city would burn and wasteland would take its place. So it had been throughout the reign of Chaos. All that would remain of the Barrus people would be the name, born of scorn and fear, that they had given their killer.

  A final barrage from the cannons. Eighty-eight skulls of screaming iron bit into the fortifications. With a rush, the walls tumbled. The sky-dome flickered and gave out with a sigh.

  A hush fell over the horde. The rumble of the collapse petered out to a handful of isolated clacks as shattered rock slipped down over rubble. The peppery smell of broken stone spiced the reek of old blood coming off the horde. Dust clouds drifted away, revealing the unspoiled land of Barruscu’s countryside.

  With a great roar, Gigante’s horde ran for the breach. A torrent of missiles pelted down on them from the towers to either side. Darts, bolts, arrows, spears and stones slew the followers of Khorne by the hundred. An inconsequential tally for an army that numbered in the tens of thousands.

  Gigante was among the first to the breach, his clawed feet gripping the loose stone and propelling him through the gap. He leapt high, falling among the blocks of pikemen ranged upon the fields. Gouging and rending, he smote them, his axe never still. Warriors flooded after him and crashed into the lines of the Barrus.

  The sight of Gigante struck terror into the Barrus as much as his wrath. The cannons were only the latest of the gifts bestowed upon Gigante, if gifts were the appropriate word for the changes to his body.

  On the morning after the many painted spires of the holy city of Mirana fell, his spine had writhed its way free of his lower back, snapping outward and splitting, becoming twin tails tipped with knobs of bone whose cracks wept acid ichor. Being the first, this gift he treasured the most. Thereafter, humanity’s shape was no longer Gigante’s. Change after change had followed this first gift, until he looked like no man that had ever lived. For the destruction of the Singing Mounds, Gigante was remade to tower over his warriors, his stature swollen by Khorne. He was given power until he was bigger than an ogor. Outsized muscles rippled all over his back and arms, so large they tore his crimson skin when he moved. Following his victory at the duel of Fifteen Lords, his left arm had branched at the elbow and sprouted an extra hand. After killing his rival, Gorebull the Bloodkine, he had been granted mastery of the bullgor’s warherds and crowned with five spreading horns.

  His gifts came not only from victory. Such was Gigante’s favour that Khorne changed him no matter the outcome of his battles. When he had first been routed from the walls of Barruscuna, his eyes had melded into one, the most painful of his gifts. When it was over, he had opened his single, cyclopean eye to find everything tinted red. Further attempts at the wall led to further defeats. More gifts followed. Teeth, once even and white, became vicious fangs sprouting from blue gums that bled milky blood. His nose rotted until the holes of his nostrils were exposed, and around them the bones of his cheeks, brow and chin thickened, sprouting curved spurs.

  The slaughterpriests roared out their praises to Khorne in thanks of his transformations, demanding worship of their monstrous lord as an avatar of Khorne himself. The horde’s deathbringers watched carefully as Gigante moved further from humanity. The gods are fickle. Where the slaughterpriests saw approval, the deathbringers scented opportunity.

  Victory, defeat, his own death or relentless mutation… these things held no meaning for Gigante. He revelled in his gifts even as his thoughts dulled. He burned his foes with the acid of his tail. With his horns, he impaled his enemies. With his eye, he sought out fine skulls for his lord. With his doubled hand, he gripped his great axe all the better. With his teeth, he bit. It was of no consequence to Gigante that he struggled to speak, his tongue swollen too large for his mouth. He had long since given up addressing his warriors before battle. His orders were grunts and gestures. The sole clear statement Gigante could make was ‘Blood for the Blood God!’. Those were the only words that mattered, and he repeated them with an idiot’s persistence.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God!’ Gigante roared. The warriors of the Barrus cowered as he swatted their comrades to paste with the flat of his axe. Every stamp of his clawed feet was accompanied by animal growls. Gigante ran amok through the defenders of Barruscuna. Their peacock-bright uniforms were bloodied and trampled into the mud, mashed indivisibly into the bodies of their owners. Such little soldiers, their spear tips wavering with fear. The line of the Barrus bowed backwards under Gigante’s assault, their ranks pushed closer and closer to the edge of the nearest mere. Again he roared ‘Blood for the Blood God!’, striking to the left and the right, carving his enemies apart. None could stand before him.

  Warriors swirled through the broad gap Gigante opened up, rushing to claim the worthiest foes. There were so few fine opponents in the Lake Kingdoms now that they came to blows over who should slaughter the officers and champions of the Barrus.

  The Barrus reached the edge of the lake, and were trapped. Gigante raised his voice in a bellowing shout, no more human-sounding than the frenzied lowing of Gorebull had been before Gigante had ended him. Their formations disrupted, the pikemen’s long weapons became a hindrance, and red blood flowed into the lake.

  Feeble Barruscuna militia broke at the flanks, falling backward from the onslaught. What had started as an embattled crescent became a stream of running soldiers. So it had always been, since the time Khorne’s armies had come into Ghyran. His warriors were fully engaged with their foe to the front. Victory was at hand. Khorne would reward him again, Gigante was certain.

  A silver clarion rang out behind him. Others answered. Such a pure sound was anathema to one so tainted as Gigante. He snorted in pain as the note pierced his skull. Another call. He carved a bloody swathe through his own warriors as he swung around to confront the source.

  The gates of the wall towers opened. A new foe emerged from hiding within Barruscuna’s lofty defences. Their wargear jangling, they assembled at the flanks of Gigante’s horde. Warriors tall and proud, armoured in gleaming silver, high shields upon their arms, mighty warhammers and stout swords in their fists.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God!’ Gigante shouted. A worthy foe! He pushed his way back, desperate to close with this new challenge, to offer up choice skulls to Lord Khorne.

  To the fore of the silver warriors stood one who was taller than the rest, clad in raiment of stars. His face was a stern mask of metal, mouth downturned with scorn. In each hand he carried a weapon, a hammer and a sword, and he raised them high. A blazing shower of missiles arced over the front line of the warriors, bringing death to the creatures of Chaos.

  Parts of the horde died, but Khorne’s warriors were blood-mad and fierce. They screamed prayers to their god and slammed into the walls of locked shields. Order calls sounded from the trumpets, despicably sweet. Together, the two lines of shining warriors advanced, forcing the Chaos reavers into a tight press. A group of champions bearing long-bladed spears hacked their way through the frenzied tribesmen pouring through the wall’s breach. They clambered the rubble, their blurring blades preventing reinforcement from without the surrounding countryside and cutting the horde of Gigante in two. More of the warriors marched from the towers onto the parapets on either side of the gap, opening fire with deadly mechanisms that rained a thick cloud of bolts and blazing arrows into the Chaos warriors outside. By the lake, the remaining soldiers of the Barrus regrouped. In open combat, they stood little chance against Gigante’s horde of monsters, but that was not their purpose. Gigante huffed and snorted – the soldiers were bait to lure the horde into ambush. How clear it was now! The horde wavered. His rallying calls died in his throat. The words would not come, his tongue flopped uselessly behind the cage of his teeth. He tried harder to voice his warning, straining his muscles. He opened his mouth to shout, the skin tearing all down his neck as tendons flexed.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God!’ he said.

  Wracked with frustration and bloodlust, Gigante shoved his way through the melee until he stood before the champion in silver. He levelled his axe at the warrior, his lesser left hand plucking at the haft.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God!’

  The champion raised his sword to his face in salute, and attacked.

  Gigante had slaughtered every great hero the Lake Kingdoms had to offer. Mortal lords had fallen before him by the score. He had burned their cities. The warlord chiefs that had risen up in the ashes he had also bested, and then those who had thrown in their lot with Chaos, and their lords also. Daemons, men, monsters – none had been a match for Gigante.

  The stranger flicked his shining cloak outward. Small hammers hung heavy from the fringe, and these whipped free, magically transformed into roaring thunderbolts which flew unerringly for Gigante’s face. Gigante raised his arms to protect himself, and the thunderbolts burst on his hands, burning his flesh. Under the cover of this distraction, the silver stranger leapt, warhammer and sword drawn back to strike. Gigante barely caught the movement in time. With a clangour like the bells of fate, the stranger’s hammer crashed into the axe of Gigante. The axe, black as old blood and tempered in the souls of the damned, blazed white as a star’s heart, and shattered.

  Gigante and the champion were thrown back, the warriors fighting around them blasted from their feet. Shaking his head, Gigante faced his foe again across clear ground. The silver warrior waited, hammer held to strike, sword held to guard. The sight enraged Gigante. How dare this tiny creature in silver defy him?

  Gigante dipped his horned head. Howling wordless praise to Khorne he charged, his claws ripping grooves in the bloody earth. The sword flashed down, severing one of Gigante’s horns. The hammer shattered his right shoulder. Gigante ploughed on, knocking the warrior reeling. His twinned left hands plucked the warrior from the ground and shook him. The warrior’s sword fell from his grasp, his head and limbs snapped back and forth. Gigante lifted him high, the better to show his god in his red heaven. In the full sight of Khorne, he squeezed. Armour cracked. Flesh split. The warrior scrabbled at the Chaos lord’s hands, his impassive mask a ridiculous contrast to his panic. With one final roar, Gigante crushed him, and the champion sagged dead in his hand.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God!’ he bellowed.

  No shouts came to echo his triumph.

  Rain plashed upon his skin. The sky opened. Thunder boomed. Gigante blinked cold water from his single eye. He was surrounded on all sides by the silver warriors. The last of his horde were being hewn down. Rage burned in him as he saw them throw aside their weapons and plead for clemency, abandoning mighty Khorne. Helpless, he offered the corpse of the silver warrior higher, and begged one last gift from his lord.

  Khorne’s favour was granted. It began as a bubbling sensation in Gigante’s feet, radiating upward until his body tingled from horn-tips to toes. Gigante laughed, for the feeling was familiar to him. He held his arms high and roared his thanks at the storm. Daemonhood was upon him!

  A single moment of triumph was his to enjoy, then his legs gave out beneath him, pitching Gigante into the bloody mud of the lakeside, and the giant knew his final defeat. He rolled onto his back and pushed himself up on his left hands in time to see his feet disappearing in a writhing mass of tentacles, thick as grass roots and horribly mobile. The flesh of his legs ran together, wax in the furnace of Khorne’s wrath. The bones within them cracked loudly, reforming into spreading branches that grew rapidly before collapsing into mush. Gigante’s chest heaved, his skin sloughed away. Red muscles crawled and flopped over each other, moving into agonising new positions. His left hands shrivelled back into themselves, vanishing into a stump that withdrew into his shoulder, losing form and function. Unsupported, he fell. His rib cage collapsed into crawling gore. All below his neck became a heaving mat of matter, studded with chitinous limbs. His jaw sagged, the bones of his skull softened and his head flattened. His prized horns fell from their sockets.

  As his single eye floated free of its mooring, he saw the corpse of the champion in silver transmute to bright lightning and leap up into the storm. What little thought remained to him became thick and sluggish.

  How Gigante wanted to attack the warriors crowding around him. His new form flopped and heaved but would not obey him. A tall lord appeared in his dimming view. At a word of power, the shutters of the lantern he carried opened. An unbearable light shone out.

  Gigante squirmed under the light’s searing rays, the flaps of muscle fringing his body burrowing under the mud. But Gigante could not escape.

  The champion made one last appeal to his master. Mouths opened up all over his shivering, protoplasmic body.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God,’ they gurgled.

  Gigante burst into flame, and was consumed.

  So perish all who displease mighty Khorne.

  About the Author

  Guy Haley is the author of the Space Marine Battles novel Death of Integrity, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Valedor and Baneblade, and the novellas The Eternal Crusader, The Last Days of Ector and Broken Sword, for Damocles. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

  The Lords of Chaos gather their forces...

  The Call of Chaos echoes across across the Mortal Realms and into the grim darkness of the far future.

  Two new serialised supplements, and new fiction for Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

  Collect them all and answer the Call of Chaos.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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  ISBN: 978-1-78572-013-0

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