Warbeast, p.10
Warbeast, page 10
Even as he luxuriated in Sigmar’s reflected glory, Arkas felt something marring the light, a darkness close at hand. In the ground beneath Theuderis’ warriors, a coming together of evils. Diving down, seeking the source, Arkas chanced upon a chamber lit only by luminescent fungi. A skaven clad in black conversed with a goat-headed creature with twisting horns that wore thick layers of tanned human skin as a robe and cloak. Their intent was clear – they plotted against the army of Theuderis.
An ambush. Arkas had to warn the Silverhand somehow.
What you have seen is but a shadow, a mirror of the past. Events are already in motion.
Dark woods spread out across the advance of the Knights Excelsior and in the shadows beneath the boughs gathered a throng of beastmen and Chaos-warped monsters. The immense trees shielded them from the eyes of the Prosecutors flying overhead. Theuderis was already marching straight into the trap.
There had to be some way to reach Theuderis. If through the magic he could see the Lord-Celestant, perhaps he could communicate with him? Arkas felt resistance from the queen.
That was not our bargain, Bear-clad.
The freezing became an agony, lancing through Arkas’ thoughts, blood snapping, marrow cracking.
Remember your oaths!
Chapter Thirteen
A sudden darkness warned Theuderis an instant before a monstrous beast hurtled through the trees close at hand, descending in a welter of snarling and broken branches. He barely had time to register it as another griffon attacked, black like a dreadful blend of raven and panther, eyes aflame with Chaos magic. On its back clung a knight armoured in bronzed plate and links, a sigil of the Dark Gods burning with yellow fire upon the blade of his axe.
Griffon and dracoth collided, the winged monster bowling over the mount of the Lord-Celestant. Theuderis released his hold and rolled with the motion of Tyrathrax, throwing himself clear of her as she turned onto her back, claws raking at the underside of the griffon even as its beak skittered and screeched across the armour protecting the dracoth’s throat.
The Chaos champion’s axe blade bit into the back of Theuderis’ shoulder as the Stormcast came to his feet. Powered by vile sorcery, the edge of the blade parted sigmarite and flesh down to the bone. Theuderis threw out an arm in reflex, the head of his tempestos hammer crashing against the flank of the griffon, snapping bones and pulverising flesh.
Spitting and snarling, Tyrathrax struggled free of the griffon’s clawed grip, lightning crackling along her fangs. Theuderis sprang forwards, using the back of the dracoth as a launch point to hurl himself at the Chaos champion. Taken unawares by this tactic, the griffon’s rider could do nothing as Theuderis’ hammer connected with the side of his helm. Arcs of power erupted from the Stormcast’s weapon and the champion’s head caved in, skull splintered and neck snapped by the force of the blow.
Wound gushing from its flank, the griffon was not yet ready to die. Battering Theuderis aside with a wing, the monster charged Tyrathrax once more, beak closing around the dracoth’s foreleg with a sickening snap of bones. Tyrathrax snarled in pain. Lightning flared from her mouth and crackled across the sable hide of the griffon, leaving burning welts in the flesh.
Theuderis swung his hammer in both hands, bringing the head around in a long arc to connect with the shoulder of the griffon where leg and wing met the body. Bone shattered beneath pulsing flesh, forcing an unearthly scream from the beast. The blow lifted and toppled the griffon to its side, a wing buckling and snapping beneath as its heavy body rolled onto the blood-pooled dirt. Tyrathrax was on the wounded monster in a heartbeat, chewing into the exposed flesh until her head disappeared, tearing out entrails with swipes of her claws.
Gore-slicked scales shining in the cerulean light of Theuderis’ hammer, the dracoth ripped herself free of the twitching corpse, ribbons of tissue hanging from her jaws. She limped to her master, feeling now the wound caused by the griffon’s assault. It was obvious she would not be able to bear Theuderis’ weight.
The larger gors and bestigors that had been following their smaller cousins stalked closer, perhaps thinking the wounded creature would be easier prey. Theuderis turned a glance back to his army and saw half of the centre had now broken away to reinforce the rearguard, where hulking beast-brutes, thrashing, formless spawn and nameless foul creatures were throwing themselves at the Liberators and Judicators.
Tyrathrax was not Stormcast, she would not be reforged but returned to the stars to be reborn as a child of the cosmic serpent, Dracothion. He did not know whether they would be reunited. Yet for all the tenderness Theuderis felt for his mount, who had bonded with him on the arduous Trail of Starwalking and deigned to carry him since, his duty lay with his warriors.
He laid a hand on her neck and she understood his intent without words. The dracoth turned towards the approaching beastmen and hissed a challenge, standing over the body of the griffon as though she defended a prize or nest.
Theuderis turned his back on her and broke into a run, carving into the ungors that ebbed and flowed around the Stormcasts like a sea breaking on rocks. The righteous fire was tinged with a bitter feeling as he set upon his deformed foes. Grief powered his arm more than vengeance. The Lord-Celestant battered his way back to the line, crushing smaller beastmen beneath his boots as he opened a path with devastating sweeps of his hammer.
Two Decimators stepped forwards to meet him, parting to allow him past while their gleaming axes smashed aside a flurry of ungors hurling themselves at their commander’s back. As fluidly as they had counter-attacked they fell back into place, their comrades’ blades rising and falling in unison to carve apart the next wave of foes.
Theuderis sought out Voltaran and found his Knight-Vexillor commanding the opposite side of the line, facing down the slope of the mountain. Swift centigors rode back and forth just a dozen paces away, hurling axes and javelins while they laughed and cursed in their barbarous tongue. The missiles were of little threat, but the Liberators were pinned in place by the attacks, unable to move to support their brothers beset by fiercer foes while the centigors threatened a charge.
‘Their leader is dead, their spirit will break soon,’ Theuderis assured his officer. ‘Stand fast for the moment.’
‘I fear otherwise, my lord,’ replied Voltaran. He gestured down the mountain. ‘We have not yet seen the worst of it.’
Further down the slope Theuderis could see a group of figures, horned heads visible beneath the cowls of their robes, staffs hung with grisly baubles and runes made of sinew and bone.
‘Shamans,’ snarled the Lord-Celestant.
‘They summon fresh forces,’ Voltaran added.
The lower slope was filling with all manner of mutated creatures – hounds and wolves with mutated spines and misshapen heads, slug-like, tentacled abominations and gangling monstrosities with snapping jaws and blade-like limbs. Baying and howling broke out, accompanied by whining and mewling from the Chaos spawn.
The forest started to shudder, shedding leaves and snow. A trunk snapped as a gigantic figure pushed through the press of trees, its heavy tread setting the other boughs shaking. Several times the height of a Stormcast Eternal, the gargant heaved and shouldered its way forwards, tree limbs snapping, gigantic feet sinking into the soft mulch and earth. It was clad in a crude jerkin and trousers of patchwork furs and hide, its engorged belly testing the rope-like stitching. A roughly shaped and poorly welded helm wobbled on its head, while pieces of ancient plate and broken shields tied with belts and scavenged horse harnesses made for vambraces and gorget. In its hand it trailed several long staves spliced together, cart or chariot axles perhaps, three axeheads wedged into the length to make a fearsome polearm.
There were more beastmen coming, following the packs of dogs – ungors with short bows that scampered up into the trees and bestigors clad in thick mail hauberks and coifs. In the sunlight from the gap in the trees made by the giant, Theuderis estimated another two or three hundred goat-headed fiends. Other creatures prowled the shadows, eyes glinting, their growls and snarls audible even at this distance.
A glance over his shoulder confirmed to the Lord-Celestant that his Knights Excelsior were still holding against the attack from above. The outer line had been pushed back, forcing the Judicators behind their companions in the retinues of Decimators, Protectors and Liberators battling with the beastmen. Trajos was doing his best to stem the flow of attackers trying to encircle the line but time and numbers were against him.
‘Enough!’ snapped Theuderis. ‘Attaxes, report to me!’
The call for the Knight-Heraldor went along the line but it was a while before Attaxes appeared, running down the mountainside from the fighting at the head of the column. His armour was dented and scratched in several places but he had no obvious wounds.
‘We cannot hold like this,’ Theuderis said. Looking from Attaxes to Voltaran. ‘We must attack.’
‘As you command,’ the Stormcast Eternals chorused.
‘What battle formation, my lord?’ asked Attaxes, readying his clarion.
‘Divine Vengeance, Jaws of the Dracoth drill,’ Theuderis replied. ‘Signal the storm of wrath to Samat.’
The bray-shamans were ordering their latest wave of attackers up the slope as Attaxes lifted his instrument and let out a series of peals and blasts, ascending and descending sharply. He repeated them twice, but the army was already in motion before he had started the third.
The Silverhands collapsed together, the vanguard and rearguard falling back towards the main body, each retinue withdrawing a few paces while its neighbours held off the beasts, and then in turn they fell back and others continued the defence. Even as the Stormcasts settled their line, retinues of Liberators, shields locked, advanced into the brunt of the fighting, weathering the storm of missiles, blades and mauls to push forwards again on the flanks, while the centre continued to withdraw to form a ‘v’ of retinues into which the beastmen were guided.
The Prosecutors descended through the canopy, a hail of mystical javelins scything down dozens of gors and bestigors. Samat and several other Knights-Azyros led a charge against the bull-beasts and other large foes still assailing the left flank, the light of the celestial beacons burning bright beneath the leaves. The energy of Azyr rippled along the hammers, grandaxes and grandblades of the winged Stormcasts as they fell upon their foes, circling to attack with a whirlwind of crushing and slashing blows.
To counter the threat from the lower force, Theuderis moved his Judicators to cover the approaches, their celestial missiles bursting forth once more against these fresh targets.
‘Clear the ground,’ Theuderis told Trajos. ‘Hinder their advance and leave them no sanctuary.’
Trajos passed the order to the other Primes and the next salvoes sliced not through flesh but wood, felling trees across the line of advance. Another fusillade from skybolt bows and thunderbolt crossbows set branches ablaze, forcing the creeping ungors to the ground. Here they were targeted by the Judicators carrying shockbolt bows, every crackling arrow that hit causing a chain of lightning to leap from one beastman to the next, slaying several score of foes in a few volleys.
Fresh torrents of fire continued to shred and rip through the forests, leaving a blackened, smoking swathe of destruction littered with burning and charred corpses.
The ‘Jaw of the Dracoth’ was starting to close on the beastmen, the two flanks of Liberators pushing hard towards each other, not using their hammers or blades, but simply presenting two walls of white-and-blue sigmarite that the beastmen could not pierce or break.
Theuderis joined the attack as dozens of Decimators and Retributors became the fangs of the dracoth, sallying forth between the ranks of the Liberators, who parted briefly to let them through. Axes cleaved flesh, hammers pulverised bone, the dead and dying beastmen wreathed with crackling remnants of celestial force.
The beastmen, even the more disciplined bestigors, were ferocious but unskilled. Theuderis abandoned any finesse and waded into his foes with his hammer swinging in wide arcs, scornful of any attack that might be directed at him. Leaving trails of blood and blue fire, his tempestos hammer swept aside every enemy before him. To his left and right the other Stormcasts were advancing over a carpet of beastmen dead, their weapons spitting and hissing with vengeful energies.
Behind them the Judicators were falling back once more as the gargant and other large monsters crashed towards their line. The beastmen were clearly content to allow these enormous creatures to lead the charge, loitering close behind to dash in and pounce on the Stormcasts once they were engaged.
‘Samat!’ Theuderis smashed his hammer through another three beastmen and pointed it towards the approaching monster. ‘The gargant!’
The Knight-Azyros saluted with his starblade and leapt into the air, disappearing through the branches in a heartbeat. A bullgor charged at Theuderis, horns lowered, distracting the Lord-Celestant for a moment. He crushed the monster’s bull head with a single blow and rolled over the body as it ploughed into the dirt. Theuderis came to his feet and looked back in time to see Samat’s descent.
It seemed at first as though a thunderbolt had struck the giant creature, but the flash of light resolved into Samat, blade in two hands, his lantern on his belt, wings stretched to the full as he swooped head first towards the ground. At the last moment the Knight-Azyros spun feet-down, landing smoothly a few paces from the gargant.
Samat took a step backwards and looked up, the gigantic figure framed by two trees blazing with pale blue fire. It twitched and then parted, two halves neatly slewing away from each other down a cut from the top of its head to its groin. Samat leapt to avoid the wave of blood and offal that spilled out. Pieces of bisected vertebrae and ribcage washed across the ground beneath him.
A great cry of woe went up from the beastmen as their enormous ally degenerated into a fleshy, shapeless mass. Caught in the vice of the advancing Stormcast retinues, many of them turned and fled, but the Prosecutors fell upon them in moments. They flitted between the trees, summoning celestial power to cast javelins into the routing gors and ungors while their companions hunted them down with their hammers, sweeping and wheeling through the boles to shatter spines and pulp heads.
Even so, it was no easy task to overcome the remaining foes. The bray-shamans grunted and barked at their underlings, forcing them into a fresh assault while the Stormcasts were still occupied driving through the remains of the first wave. Chaotic energies churning around their horned heads, raised fists and staff tips glowing with infernal magic, the shamans themselves joined the fray, escorted by scores of heavily armoured bestigors that advanced like a solid wall of fur, metal and horns.
And there were still several hulking mutants shambling closer, their skins pocked with sores, vestigial limbs waggling like cilia, plates of bone and chitin sliding and scraping. The centigors had abandoned their taunting attacks when the Stormcasts had withdrawn but now they returned, their broad-headed spears tilted ready for the charge. The yammering of the hounds intensified, carried through the crackle of flames up to the Stormcasts with the grunts and snorts of boar-like creatures and the coughing barks and low bellows of the beastmen.
‘For Sigmar!’ Theuderis raised his hammer above his head as he issued the shout. The echoing cry from his warriors rolled along the mountainside like thunder, shaking the ground. While the Decimators and Retributors of his Paladin Conclave continued to wreak bloody mayhem upon the last of the gors and ungors, the Lord-Celestant rallied the Redeemer Conclave’s Liberators and Protectors. ‘We are the God-King’s knights of vengeance. Our weapons are his wrath, his faith our armour. We are the righteous death, born for battle, created to kill. Hold back no ire and harbour no mercy. Death to the unclean!’
Chapter Fourteen
Arkas opened his eyes and found himself standing on the far side of the barbican, outside the demesne of the Queen of the Peak. He harboured the idea of returning but stopped himself from passing back through, aware that he had pushed his previous relationship as far as possible.
He broke into a run, remembering the attack about to unfold. As he powered up the bridge he thrust his hammer thrice into the air.
‘Hastor!’ he bellowed as he reached the top of the bridge. ‘Attend to your lord!’
In a flash of colour the Knight-Venator rose, trailing particles of ice. Arkas called out his orders as he skidded to a stop in a spray of snow. Hastor signalled his understanding.
‘Speed towards the dawn and seek them in the forests of the southern valleys,’ said Arkas. ‘Fly as swift as Sigmar’s scorn!’
The Knight-Venator made no comment and raised no question, but simply dipped a wing to wheel away, a flash of rainbow colours and gold that soon disappeared into the clouds that were closing in on the mountain once more.
Dolmetis started to climb from the base of the bridge, his hasty steps betraying his concern. Arkas turned to look back at the queen’s tower. Her presence was everywhere, and in every icy sparkle and frosty glimmer he felt her gaze upon him. Had she played him false, out of spite showing him the peril of Theuderis when it was too late to act? Had she known what would happen on the walls of Kurzengor when Skixakoth had issued forth from the deeps to sweep away mankind’s last reign over Ursungorod?
Despite his doubts, Arkas could not ignore a simple principle – an oath was an oath. It was not his place to judge the Queen of the Peak but to measure himself by the standards of his spirit.
He lowered to a knee, head bowed, hammer in both hands with the brow of his mask against the haft.
‘God-King, my Lord Sigmar, Protector of the Faithful, Shield of Mankind, I beg leave of you for a boon.’ Arkas could hear Dolmetis’ rapid steps approaching and spoke quickly. ‘Grant peace to the Queen of the Peak, and forgive any wrong she has done in worlds past and ages forgotten. Through her I have received wisdom and guidance, in this life and in the other, and she has earned freedom from the curse laid upon her. Reward her loyal service and free her.’
