Archaon looked up. He stared at the broken shape of the traitor for long moments, and then said, ‘His hand?’
Canto reached into his saddlebag and produced a dripping sack. Something moved unpleasantly within. ‘I thought it best to disarm him,’ he said. He tossed the sack down.
Archaon didn’t laugh. He rarely laughed. He pushed himself up, off his throne, and strode down from the dais, after gesturing for the bloodthirster to remain where it was. He stepped over the sack as if he hadn’t seen it, and made his way to Ghular’s side. He looked down at the broken creature. ‘Grandfather Nurgle grows impatient. How many of his champions has he thrown in my path of late?’ He looked at Ka’Bandha as he spoke.
‘You do them honour, to call them champions,’ the bloodthirster growled. Canto heard the clatter of brass chains as the shadowy mass moved about behind the throne. ‘They are as blossoms, pruned from his garden, and as easily crushed.’
‘Yes,’ Archaon said. ‘Fewer of them than the Schemer or the Prince of Pleasure, to be sure, but still… a not inconsiderable number. Is it vengeance for the Glottkin? Or something else?’ The bloodthirster subsided into silence.
Canto knew Archaon wasn’t expecting an answer. He followed Ka’Bandha’s example and kept silent. It was always the same; Archaon spoke more to hear himself speak, than because he wanted replies. The Everchosen sank to his haunches with a creak of metal, and examined Canto’s prisoner. ‘Did he fight hard?’ he asked.
That he expected an answer to, Canto knew. ‘No harder than the others,’ he said. ‘I waited until he was looking the other way, and then cut his hand off. After that, he didn’t have much fight in him.’
Ka’Bandha made a sound like a dog choking on a bone. The heat grew intolerable, and Canto forced himself to look only at Archaon. The bloodthirster had a short temper, and it was made even shorter by such admissions. Simple murder was beneath the god of slaughter, apparently. ‘Coward,’ the beast gurgled, eyes shining like beacon fires.
Archaon stood. ‘You are getting a reputation, Unsworn. They say you are my executioner.’ Ka’Bandha made another disapproving noise, but Archaon ignored the creature.
‘I am but your humble servant, my lord,’ Canto said, bowing his head.
‘Then come with me, O humble servant. I wish to look upon my great work, and see how it progresses,’ Archaon said. Ka’Bandha rose to its full height, as if it intended to follow the Everchosen, but settled back at a gesture from Archaon.
Canto hesitated, watching the daemon warily, then slid out of the saddle and hurried after the Everchosen as the latter strode deeper into the temple. He could feel Ka’Bandha’s eyes on him the entire way.
‘What about the Festerhand?’ he asked, as he caught up with Archaon. They were descending into the chill depths of the Fauschlag. Those who knew such things said that the skaven had bought their survival with a treasure that they had located deep in the mountain’s guts, somewhere beneath the temple. And that treasure was the reason for the great excavation, as Archaon employed hundreds of slaves and gangs of sorcerers and daemons both in the endeavour, carving a path down through the heart of the mountain. Canto knew the truth of it, and knew that it was not a treasure, but something infinitely worse.
‘What about him?’ Archaon said. ‘If he survives until I return, then I will kill him – or spare him, as the mood takes me. If he doesn’t, the point is moot.’
‘As you say, my lord,’ Canto said obsequiously. He wondered what would get the Festerhand first… his wounds, or Ka’Bandha. Khorne had less use for beaten champions than he did for murderers.
Archaon stopped. Canto stumbled to a halt, just barely avoiding slamming into the Everchosen. Archaon turned. ‘Do you disagree?’ he asked. Canto hesitated. Archaon cocked his head. ‘Do you know why I elevated you, Unsworn?’
A thousand witticisms sprang to mind and immediately turned to ash on Canto’s lips. He shook his head slowly. ‘No, my lord,’ he said.
‘I elevated you because I am not your lord,’ Archaon said softly. ‘Not really. You are a scavenger, a jackal, haunting the edges of eternity. You owe no fealty to any god or warlord. Like a thousand others, you are a man apart, with no loyalty or code to bind your words or mark your path. You do not seek pain, pleasure, pestilence or power. You seek only to survive. Of all the men and women who ride beneath my banners, you and your ilk are the most human. The most flawed, the weakest. But also the strongest.’ Archaon turned away and continued walking. Canto followed.
Archaon continued talking. ‘The followers of the gods burn bright, but burn swiftly. In every war, they die first, and at the pleasure of the gods. But your kind survives. You cling to this world like a barnacle, holding tight to what you once were, though it profits you nothing. Why did you never seek out the favour of the gods, Unsworn?’
You’ve already asked me that. You ask me that every day, Canto thought. What he said was, ‘Fear, my lord. I feared losing myself.’ It was the same answer he always gave, but it never seemed to satisfy Archaon. Then, few things did. The Three-Eyed King seethed with a cosmic frustration, as if the very air scraped his nerves raw.
‘And would that be so bad?’ Archaon asked. Canto looked at him. It was the first time Archaon had asked that. They had come to a massive cavern, its walls marked by skaven graffiti and piles of rotting bodies heaped in the corners. Chittering, red-eyed rats scattered as Archaon and Canto stepped into the eerie light cast by the iron and brass braziers set about the circumference of the cavern.
Before Canto could answer Archaon’s question, a guttural voice bellowed a challenge. A trio of ogres, their flesh marked by tattoos of ownership and allegiance, and their arms and armour bearing all of the hallmarks of the daemonsmiths of Zharr Naggrund, stepped into view out of the shadows. The ogres bore heavy swords, and horned helmets that obscured their brutish features. Archaon raised his hand, and the ogres sank to their knees with much grunting and grumbling.
Archaon led Canto past the brutes, and into the gloomy chamber beyond the cavern. Something horrible and flickering occupied the bulk of the chamber – a black, glistening globe supported between two golden hemispheres. The globe was a blotch of shimmering darkness which seemed to draw all sources of light towards it. Canto staggered, struck, as always, by the sheer wrongness of the thing.
He had seen it more than once, but it never failed to cause his mind and what was left of his soul to tremble and cringe. He could hear a vast roaring of innumerable voices, and a thinner, sharper sound, like the scraping of rats behind the walls of the world.
Even worse, he knew it was but the merest tip of whatever monstrous eidolon was buried beneath the Fauschlag. Gangs of slaves worked day and night to uncover it, when Archaon’s pet sorcerers weren’t studying it, trying to unlock its power. Both slaves and sorcerers died in great numbers, their bodies left to rot at the bottom of the pit from which the thing rose. Soon they would have it fully uncovered, and they would pry it free of the mountain, like a pearl from an oyster.
Archaon moved across the chamber towards the dark globe, and the coven of robed cultists who were gathered about it. The cultists were muttering and invoking for all that they were worth. Which, Canto knew, wasn’t much. The masked fools were little more than attendants. One of them, obviously the leader if one went by his golden mask, hurried towards Archaon, trying to run and bow at the same time.