Warbeast, p.11
Warbeast, page 11
‘Free whom, my lord?’ asked Dolmetis, catching his commander’s last words. ‘And whence does Hastor speed?’
‘The Queen of the Peak has provided and I must pay her price or be dishonoured. It is in the hands of Sigmar Almighty.’
‘You think he would set her free?’
‘I do,’ said Arkas, looking skywards. The clouds were turning dark, edged with a cerulean gleam. ‘It was he that imprisoned her, after all.’
Dolmetis said nothing and looked up as well. Streaks of power lashed across the bulging mass of the thunderhead forming over the gorge. As when he felt the touch of the celestial beacons of the Knights-Azyros, so now Arkas bathed in the presence of his master and creator.
With a thunderclap that shook the bridge and caused flocks of birds to launch from the forests far below, a single bolt of light flashed down and struck the top of the tower’s dome. Ice exploded like glass splinters, showering down into the chasm beneath. A blast of wind howled, swirling up from the gorge around the two Stormcast Eternals. Arkas thought he heard a whispered farewell.
The last reverberations of the thunderstrike echoed away.
The cocoon of ice that had encased the fortress and the queen’s tower started to shear away, crumbling into sparkling fog.
‘That is freedom?’ asked Dolmetis.
‘Oblivion,’ said Arkas. ‘All that she has craved for countless lifetimes of men. I swore once to end her existence, and now Lord Sigmar has delivered on my promise.’
‘Perhaps you might have invoked the power of our God-King whilst on solid ground,’ suggested Dolmetis, pointing his warhammer at the rents and cracks spreading up the far end of the bridge. As the enchantment failed the whole of the duardin stronghold plummeted into the valley, foundations and vaults and barbican as one, a deluge of stones and mortar following it.
The two warriors broke into a run as the bridge collapsed, pounding down the span just a few paces ahead of the falling masonry. Making a last leap for safety, they threw themselves over the edge of the parapet, falling towards the ledge beneath.
Both landed heavily in a fountain of snow while chunks of stone rained down, glancing from their armour. Arkas pulled himself back to his feet and looked down into the gorge where the fallen castle had ploughed a massive furrow into the trees far below.
‘Perhaps I should have thought that through,’ he admitted.
‘I forgive you, my lord,’ said Dolmetis. ‘I am sure the warriors we left stationed on the Icemere will be equally understanding. When they dry out.’
Chapter Fifteen
Theuderis seized a beastman by the throat as it swung a hatchet at his head. The axeblade glanced ineffectually from the side of his helm. He snapped its neck and used the corpse to swat away an ungor that was trying to ram a dagger into the back of his knee.
‘Attaxes, let us up the tempo of this dance. Signal stormfall. Voltaran! It is time to bring the hammerstrike.’
As the rising notes passed along the line, the Stormcast Eternals battling the horde of gors broke from the fight, retreating from the enemy with swifts steps. Stunned, the beastmen scrambled away or milled about, unsure whether to retreat or attack. Behind the melee ranks, the Judicators did likewise, falling back before the oncoming rush of monsters and bestigors. Their Primes shouting out swift commands, the two lines passed through each other and turned, smoothly swapping positions.
Now the bray-shamans attacked, and a horde of beastmen and spawn found itself hurtling towards a bristling line of hammers, axes and glaives, shimmering with celestial heat. The Judicators unleashed their projectiles into the gors and ungors fleeing up the mountain, scything them down in a hail of crackling bolts and eruptions.
In the midst of this, Voltaran held aloft his icon.
‘Lord of the Celestial Realm, heed our call,’ the Knight-Vexillor shouted. ‘God-King, saviour, avenger, let free your wrath upon these cursed beasts!’
The gilded lightning strikes that tipped his standard started to glow, turning from shining gold to a bright, pale blue. A fierce wind swirled upwards, ripping trees bodily from the ground and hurling them into the sky. Above, stormclouds boiled into existence, dark and low, seething with celestial energy. The beastmen and their leaders cowered beneath this display of divine might.
Attaxes let forth a refrain from his clarion. The noise rose in volume, swiftly becoming a deafening call to arms. It reached a crescendo and crashed like thunder, a shockwave of power exploding from the Stormcast. The wall of sound sped out, churning mud, cadavers, splintered trees and ice. When it hit the beastmen it lifted them from their feet and skewered them with broken branches. The wind hurled the survivors into each other, tossed them into tree trunks and sent the ragdoll carcasses spinning and skidding across the rough earth.
Just as the peal of thunder dissipated, the storm cloud burst into violent life, raining down strike after strike, every bolt centred on a mutated Chaos creature. Dozens of blasts fell in a matter of a few heartbeats, blinding in their intensity. Celestial power crawled across the ground like a tide of serpents, writhing up the shattered trunks of the trees and coiling tentacle-fashion around the legs of Chaos spawn as if to drag them down.
Theuderis strode into the fire and bolts with his Paladins at his back and flung out his hammer, casting it into the air in a looping arc. It thudded into the ground not far from the bray-shamans, who were berating their bestigors, trying to restore some semblance of control after the fury of the storm.
‘Let the hammer of kings strike!’ the Lord-Celestant bellowed, drawing his runesword, the pommel and blade etched with symbols that were the bane of Chaos. His thrown hammer shook with a life of its own, sending out sparks and fronds of blue lightning that fizzed across the ground.
The Stormcast Eternals advanced. Another blaze of power erupted above. The strikes did not lance towards the foe, but this time were met by streaks of energy leaping out from Theuderis’ hammer.
Where they touched, a Stormcast Eternal appeared, fresh and ready for battle, Liberators bearing great axes and swords, or short warblades and shields.
Flash after flash, the tempest grew in magnitude with every heartbeat until the smoke-shrouded clearing reaped by the Stormcasts was bathed in blue light and filled with giant soldiers. An entire Redeemer Conclave burst into existence in the midst of the foe, reserves from the Celestial Realm that Theuderis had been waiting for the right moment to summon.
At their heart the cloud descended for a moment, a funnel of darkness and lightning touching down with a crack of thunder. Another Stormcast Eternal materialised in its heart. His armour was black, and wrought into the plates were bones that glowed with celestial energy. His helm-mask was fashioned in the shape of a skull, its eyes gleaming with a cold red light.
In one hand the Stormcast Eternal bore a massive hammer, a silver thunderbolt trailing from its head. In the other hand he bore a huge staff, not unlike the standards of the Knights-Vexillor. Its head was no icon of the Silverhands, but an open sarcophagus. The bones within were bound with shroud and corpse-tatters, its dead eye sockets filled with the same scarlet energy as the bearer.
Lord-Relictor Glavius, lodestone of the power celestial, guardian and champion of the Silverhands.
Still wreathed in the last vapours of his summoning, Glavius lifted his hammer high. The head started to glow, channelling cosmic energy from the raging storm above until it shone like a star. The Lord-Relictor thrust the hammer towards the beastmen and lightning leapt across the gap, slicing through their depleted ranks.
‘Glory to the God-King!’ Theuderis roared.
The Silverhands charged.
Chapter Sixteen
The Stormcast Eternals thrust as a white spear into the dark innards of the beastmen army. Wherever they struck, the creatures of Chaos fell. The freshly arrived Redeemer Conclave formed the point of the spear, already in the midst of the enemy. They drove onwards through gors and bestigors, those armed with grandhammers and grandblades at the forefront, hewing into the enemy with their double-handed weapons. After them came the Liberators with warblades and sigmarite shields, guarding the flanks and backs of their brethren in the vanguard, cutting down any that survived their assault. Lord-Relictor Glavius walked in their midst, urging them on to the greatest effort, blanketing them in the energies of the Celestial Realm.
On their heels advanced Stormcast Eternals with paired warhammers or dual-warblades, spreading out from the incision made by the assault formation, widening the breach for Theuderis and his warriors to exploit.
Hound packs, mutated wolves and centigors tried to evade the oncoming attack, peeling away from the blasted clearing into the thicker woods to the left. Samat and the other Knights-Azyros followed them, darting between the trees with inhuman speed and skill, the rest of the Angelos Conclave following swiftly behind.
Theuderis did not look back, trusting to the Judicators to finish off any threat from the rear. As he ran he pointed his sword towards the cabal of bray-shamans.
‘Pierce the heart and the body will die,’ he commanded.
Out of desperation more than bravery the beastmen were rallying against the attack. Several score of bestigors had survived the tempestuous assault of celestial energy. Snarling and bleating, they held their ground between the oncoming Stormcasts and their masters, presenting a thicket of spears, axes and shields. Several bullgors that had fled from the earlier counter-attack returned from the darkness, bloody with wounds but still formidable. A few mindless spawn and writhing mutants flopped and scampered along the periphery, hauling bloated carcasses towards the gleaming ranks of the Stormcasts, smaller creatures chittering and shrieking, leaping and gambolling through the burning trunks and felled trees.
Theuderis felt the air around him changing, the ground underfoot shifting. At first he feared another earthquake, but he soon realised that the sensation was something far more supernatural.
The bray-shamans were summoning the power of Ghur, dredging it from the deepest earth and draining it from the trees. The magical energy coiled like a trapped serpent, the corruption of Chaos bubbling through its loops, polluting and blackening where it spread. The trees surrounding the fire-ravaged clearing started to sway with violent life, their bark blistering with sores that spat hissing gobbets of acidic sap while grasping root appendages thrust from the mulch-covered earth to snare and trip.
The ground became boggier, sucking at Theuderis’ feet as he reached the bullgors. Almost losing his footing, he brought up his runeblade just in time to meet the downward arc of an axehead the size of his breastplate. The metal of the bullgor’s weapon shattered against the sigmarite of the Lord-Celestant’s. Shards of iron slashed into the enormous beastman’s flesh and pinged from the Stormcast’s armour. Grunting in surprise, the bullgor stepped back, but not far enough to elude the tip of Theuderis’ blade, which found the creature’s throat a moment later.
Dragging his boot free from the mud, drenched in the congealing blood of the brutish monster, Theuderis pressed on. His Paladins to either side laid into the bestigors, bullheads and Chaos spawn heedless of the poor ground underfoot, overcoming the worsening conditions with raw strength.
Across the furious din of battle, the Lord-Celestant heard a disturbing, ululating cry. It emanated from the bray-shamans, and echoed back in strange ways from the surrounding trees. Increasing in pitch and intensity, the call stirred up the polluted Ghurite energy frothing around the beast army, sending it soaring into the sky like a fountain. Here it met Sigmar’s Tempest, and began pushing back the celestial clouds to disperse across the forest.
Theuderis had no idea what this spell boded, but he was determined to win victory before the consequences made themselves apparent. His force had joined with the Liberators of Glavius, dividing the beast army into two almost equal parts. To the eyes of the beastmen, it must have seemed as though the Stormcasts had allowed themselves to be surrounded. Grunting and roaring orders, the gors and bray-shamans sent all of their forces into the attack.
Above the throng of hairy, deformed bodies flew tattered and patched banners, and grim standards of bone and wood. Held aloft by the fiercest warriors of the assembled warherds, these standards became the focal points of the attack, leading the beasts directly to Theuderis’ host. Every ungor, gor and bestigor threw itself at the Stormcasts, trying to break the line of ivory and blue. Though there was little guile to the attack, the feral intensity of the Chaos-born beasts threatened breakthroughs at several points. Though not classic strategists, the leaders of the beastherds could sense areas of weakness and threw themselves into the fighting with ferocious bellows. The battlefield shook with the crash of weapons and shouts from both sides, bestial howls competing with the sonorous war-chants of the Silverhands.
‘Blade of the Triumphant, Purifier formation,’ Theuderis told Attaxes, judging that the moment had arrived to deliver the killing blow.
The Knight-Heraldor’s trumpet signalled clean and clear through the cacophony of war. Hearing its command, the Silverhands acted as one. Paladins and Redeemer Conclaves moved through each other, while the Judicators guarding the rear fell back to join the rest of the army. All the while fending off the savage assault of the beastmen, the Knights Excelsior formed into a kind of wheel, with the Judicator Conclaves as the hub and the other Stormcasts spearing out like axle-blades, each two rows of warriors back to back.
The wheel started to rotate, the Stormcast Eternals keeping in perfect step whether moving forwards or backwards. Missiles and lightning bolts flared from the centre while the Stormcasts cut down everything before them. With warriors in front and behind, the beastmen were thrown into anarchy once more, unsure where to direct their attacks. Unable to simply hold position against the relentlessly advancing ‘spokes’, the beastmen were either pushed to the centre where they fell to the missile fire, caught by the swords, glaives and hammers of the Silverhands, or forced to try to break free.
The Stormcasts’ formation slowly moved across the clearing, pace by pace. The warriors stepped over and past burning logs and piles of dead beastmen, weapons still swinging, the whole army functioning as a single perfect machine.
A raucous screech from above drew Theuderis’ gaze away from the righteous carnage. His eye was drawn immediately to the large shape swooping down through the break in the celestial storm. Tendrils of Ghurite energy trailed from its leathery wings and sword-long claws. Evidently the magical call of the bray-shamans had attracted it from its hunting ground further up the slopes. More winged shapes in the distance betrayed the approach of other creatures that had also heard the summoning cry.
‘Manticores!’ he shouted, heart sinking. His warriors were in no position to defend themselves from an aerial attack, but to change formation now, in the heart of the enemy’s force, would be equally disastrous. He glanced at Attaxes. ‘Signal for the Angelos, now!’
Attaxes had raised his clarion but before a single note had been sounded a light streaked across the sky. Theuderis’ eyes adjusted to see a winged figure in armour of turquoise, a rainbow-coloured bird at its shoulder, a golden bow in hand.
Even as Attaxes sounded the alarm, the newcomer’s wings flared with a thunderous crack that could be heard on the ground, bringing him to an instant halt. He loosed a single bolt from his weapon. The missile blazed across the sky, a comet trailing white and blue fire.
The star-fated arrow struck the descending manticore full in the chest, becoming an inferno of colours that engulfed the monster with licking flames. The diving beast was quickly consumed by the fireball, thrashing and howling in pain as it disappeared from view and crashed into the forest some distance away.
Samat and the rest of the Angelos Conclave raced from the trees, abandoning their pursuit at Attaxes’ signal. The newly arrived Knight-Venator met with the Knight-Azyros and a moment later was directed groundwards while the Knights-Azyros and Prosecutors turned to face the following monsters.
Theuderis’ made his way back along the line of Paladins, allowing himself to be absorbed by the Judicators at the centre. There was a space two dozen paces across in the heart of their formation and into this gap dropped the Knight-Venator.
The Stormcast’s appearance confirmed Theuderis’ guess – a warrior of the Celestial Vindicators, doubtless a Warbeast despatched by Arkas. The Lord-Celestant feared the worst, unsure what the warrior’s appearance foreshadowed, and spoke before any introduction was made.
‘How fares your master? Do the Warbeasts still fight on?’
‘To the best of my knowledge, Lord Silverhand,’ the Knight-Venator replied, taken aback by the demanding tone of the Lord-Celestant. ‘He fares better than you, I would wager.’
‘What purpose brings you here, Warbeast?’ Theuderis had little time for jest, and this was certainly no occasion for levity. ‘You distract me from the course of battle.’
‘I am Hastor, Knight-Venator of the Lord Warbeast,’ the other Stormcast said formerly, giving a slight bow as he furled his wings. His star-eagle settled on a nearby bestigor corpse and started plucking at its exposed innards. ‘I bear a warning from my lord.’
‘A warning?’ Theuderis wondered what further strife could befall his host. Since arriving in Ursungorod they had been beset by misfortunate and enemies at every step.
‘Yes, Lord Silverhand. Lord Arkas wishes you to know that the skaven have stirred a great alliance of beasts against us and they are setting ready for ambush in the forests.’ He looked around and shrugged. ‘I apologise for the untimely nature of this news...’
