Warbeast, p.5
Warbeast, page 5
‘Understood, Lord-Celestant.’ The Prosecutor-Prime stood up and lifted a crackling javelin as a salute. Turning gracefully, he sprang into the air, taking his warriors with him.
‘Dolmetis!’
The Knight-Vexillor hurried to attend his commander.
‘Form the army for attack. Trident formation, Judicator vanguards.’
‘It shall be done, my lord.’
Arkas set off again along the faint trail through the snow, trusting his Knight-Vexillor and the Primes to implement his command without delay. He knew the Icemere well and was surprised that it had changed so little over the many centuries. It had to be the influence of the Queen of the Peak. In a land wracked by constant upheaval, she was stasis personified.
With their Lord-Celestant setting a relentless pace, the Stormcast army soon came upon a band of thick forest, beyond which lay the Icemere. As Arkas had ordered, the host broke into three detachments, the general leading the central tine while Dolmetis and Doridun commanded the others. Forming the points of the trident, Arkas’ thirty Judicators advanced just ahead of the main columns, their various bows and crossbows well suited to taking down any patrols or sentries set by the foes.
Arkas’ force was small but formidable, its warriors elite even amongst the Strike Chambers of the Celestial Vindicators. He could sense the anticipation for battle in his host, infusing the ever-present aura of Ghur with a predatory hunger. The skirmish with the Bonekeepers had been a simple execution. True battle awaited.
They had not long passed under the shadowy eaves of the woods when one of the Judicator-Primes returned to report to Arkas. He led the Lord-Celestant to where his retinue were waiting amongst the trees, a broad clearing visible ahead of them. The ruined stones of a road passed directly into the pale sunlight.
‘There are watchers in the trees, my lord,’ said the Judicator-Prime, indicating half-seen shapes in the branches of the pines to either side of the track. From what Arkas could see, the sentries did not appear human – he caught glimpses of grey flesh and leathery wings.
‘Harpies?’
‘I don’t believe so, my lord. Something else, but we cannot see them well enough to say.’
Arkas looked more closely, crouching next to the trunk of a huge mountain pine. As he laid his hand upon its bark to steady himself he felt a tremor through his fingers. Glancing at the tree, he saw knotholes blinking, and within, green eyes looking back at him. He recoiled to his feet, seeing other eyes opening on the trees around him. Turning his attention to the trail ahead he saw that the ‘beasts’ in the trees were in fact twists of branch and leaf, forming humanoid shapes.
The dark bark of the tree he had leaned against started to split, the splinters of wood forming a maw. A low moan issued from this hole.
‘The trees are tainted,’ he snarled to his companions. ‘The trees are the sentries!’
The warning groans were getting louder and the branches were swaying, their rustling alarm rippling outwards.
‘If we cannot be stealthy, speed and shock will do. The Icemere is only three hundred paces more from the break of the trees,’ said Arkas.
He looked back to see the warriors of his command picking their way through the woods, their turquoise armour catching rays of weak light and then plunged into shade as the wind moved through the canopy above. He could hear the snap of twigs and thud of heavy boots even through the muffle of old leaves and mulch. ‘I do not think Sigmar was concerned with us sneaking around when he bid Grungni to forge our armour as he did…’
Looking through the trees, he spied the other Judicators, their Primes looking to him for some sign of what to do. He raised his hand as a sign for all to halt and then looked for his Knight-Heraldor. Doridun was at the head of his column a hundred or so paces away to the left. With two simple gestures, he passed on the command to sound the charge and then turned back to the Judicator-Prime.
‘Move now and kill all that you can. We shall pass through you. Guard our backs.’
‘Kill what, my lord?’
‘The trees! Burn them!’
‘As you will it, my lord.’ The Judicator-Prime moved his hand as though pulling a string on his bow, a lightning bolt appearing in place of where an arrow would be on a mortal weapon. The sparkle of others doing the same lit the trees. A heartbeat later the bolts flashed across the clearing, searing into the treetops.
Like candles, the trees lit with flame, sap crackling, needle-swathed branches thrashing as blue fire leapt from one to the next. The moaning became a higher pitched keening as another volley of enchanted missiles streaked into the arboreal watchers.
The peal of Doridun’s clarion reached Arkas’ ears and he launched into a sprint, hammer in one hand, runeblade in the other. From all along the treeline the Stormcast Eternals burst forth, thundering into the cloud-shrouded sunlight, the flicker of the Judicators’ lightning bolts catching on their armour as they ploughed through drifts of snow on the uneven ground.
Arkas surged ahead with his Retributors close at hand, their lightning hammers at the ready. Glaive-wielding Protectors followed Doridun and Dolmetis to either side. Made of unalloyed sigmarite, their thick armour was no encumbrance as they raced across the clearing.
Shouts from ahead warned that the enemy knew that something was amiss, but there was no chance they could know the nature of the foe about to fall upon them. Soon brash horns and drums called them to arms.
The clearing widened out as they neared the banks of the Icemere. Its surface was mirror-smooth, reflecting the tall trees around its edge and the grey sky above, stretching to the horizon to the left, where Arkas knew it became a frozen waterfall. To the right it was bordered by the stumps of the duardin walls that had dammed it in ages past. The enormous piles of a bridge still rose from the ice.
The Chaos tribe had spread across the banks and part of the lake opposite where the road had once run down the perimeter of the water. The scene was just as it had been described by Venian, with tents of all sizes arranged haphazardly on the snow-covered shore and frozen tarn, interspersed with bivouacs and more permanent structures of wood, hide and bone. Drifts of smoke rose from the fires of the previous night and five mighty pillars had been erected in a circle at the centre, held in place by thick rope cables.
Arkas could see the bold shapes carved into the wooden totems and recognised four of them immediately as interpretations of the Chaos Gods – Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh. The fifth caused him some surprise, a rendition of a horned figure crouched upon a spiralling tower of skulls and bones covered with swarming vermin. The Great Horned Rat.
Why was the fifth member of the despotic pantheon, the skaven god, being worshipped by an Ursungoran tribe?
Chaos worshippers boiled out of their tents and rough hovels, leaving Arkas no time to ponder this question. Though they could not have expected to face a Strike Chamber of Stormcasts, the Chaos followers were well prepared to attack at short notice, and judging by the trophies and human remains that adorned their altar-pyres and totems, they had gained considerable success doing so.
Horsemen erupted from the woods, bringing with them baying packs of hounds. Riders, steeds and mastiffs all showed signs of Chaos mutations – horns, scales, sting-tipped tails, fiery eyes and burning manes, along with myriad other deformities. Rather than attack directly, the riders and their hunting packs circled to the right, along the lake shore, using their speed to outflank the oncoming Stormcast Eternals.
Marauders in mail and leather armour formed quickly into war-groups ahead of Arkas’ charge, at least two hundred of them clustered beneath tattered banners and standards made of bone and sinew. Here again there was skaven influence, triskele symbols similar to those of the Pestilens among the runes of the Blood God, Lord of Decay, Changer of Ways and Pleasure Prince. Brandishing spears and axes, the Chaos thugs jeered and hollered abuse. They crashed their weapons on wooden shields daubed with thick blood, taunting the Stormcasts and defying their own fear.
Warriors in a mix of heavier plate, gilded fishscale and banded laminar jogged into position to the left, facing the onrushing column led by Doridun. Many sported crab-like claws, tentacles, tusks and immense fangs, some of them bursting from their armour in places with unnatural muscles and tumorous growths, several easily as big as the Stormcast warriors pounding towards the lake.
Holding out his hammer, Arkas redirected the charge, acting as a pivot for the entire formation. The Warbeasts responded immediately, wheeling left towards the most dangerous foes. Arkas and Doridun speared into the heavy infantry while Dolmetis and his retinue of Protectors and Decimators redirected their assault towards the marauders in the centre. They would trust to the Judicators behind to waylay the cavalry encircling the oncoming host. Overhead, the glitter of artificial wings showed the progress of the Prosecutors as they headed over the lake towards the ridge beyond, their arcane missiles scything down the shrieking harpies that had escaped the initial attack.
Running down the sloping shore, Arkas caught a glimpse of the larger beasts reported by the Prosecutors. They might have been men once, or perhaps bears, it was hard to say. They lumbered forwards on their hind legs, a handful of moaning, snarling creatures covered in dark fur, chained together at the neck by thick iron links. Like the warriors, they bore signs of gross mutation, their flesh in places thick with pale chitin plates and pustules, while metal rivets had been driven into their bodies to make a kind of studded armour. Whipping pseudo-limbs thrashed back and forth, each lined with vicious barbs.
For all that the Chaos tribe was organised and experienced, it had never faced attackers like the Warbeasts. Armoured in sigmarite, the Stormcast Eternals cared little for the damage the enemy weapons might deal. Arkas applied the same principle to his strategies, training and drilling his warriors to drive into the thick of the enemy army, to seek out as one the toughest foe, just as he had singled out the Gore Maiden when he had first arrived. They had but one concern – to bloodily rip the heart from the opposition, destroying their best warriors and most fearsome beasts first. The Judicators and Prosecutors were well equipped to finish off those that remained.
So it was that Arkas was the first to fall upon the enemy, hammer and sword at the ready. Halberd blades and jagged maces rose to meet him as he leapt.
‘Death to the unclean!’ he roared, smashing into the Chaos warriors’ ranks, his weapons trailing twin tails of gore like Sigmar’s comet, celestial energy exploding through the ranks of the foe at his impact.
He crushed one beneath his weight as he landed, rings of mail scattering when the Chaos follower’s ribcage exploded. Crouching, Arkas smashed his hammer through the legs of three more, greaves and armour no defence against the sweeping blow. As he straightened, his blade carved a diagonal furrow across a pair of full-plated foes who were still drawing back their enormous maces.
Two heartbeats more, three more foes sliced and crushed.
The Retributors crashed into the foes pressing around Arkas, their hammers unleashing a blazing storm of lightning that split open armoured plates and charred the warriors within. Starsoul maces cracked like thunder, their touch bursting apart the bodies of the Chaos-tainted. At the centre of this celestial tempest the Warbeast struck the head from a foe with his runeblade, his hammer slamming into the chest of another.
‘Spare none!’ he roared, though his followers needed no such instruction. Driven by a hate aeons in the making, finally given true release in battle, the Stormcasts of the Celestial Vindicators let free their vengeance in a bloody outpouring of rage.
A fighter as tall as Arkas loomed out of the blood-spray, a jagged sickle-like blade in each hand, slabs of thick steel painted black covering his flesh. He wore no helm, and a reptilian third eye protruding from his forehead fixed the Lord-Celestant with an inhuman gaze, the regular orbs a glossy, sightless white beneath. Lips wrinkled back, revealing teeth like glass shards in bloodless gums, and a bulging black tongue.
‘Spawn of corruption!’
Arkas’ runeblade crashed against the Chaos champion’s upraised arm, red sparks flying as Chaos sigils burned in the hexed metal. The shock of the impact sent a tremor up Arkas’ arm and he stepped back, flexing his numbed fingers around the hilt of his sword. The Chaos champion let out a gurgling laugh and hacked at the Lord-Celestant, both weapons aimed for his throat.
Arkas raised his hammer in time to catch one blade on its haft, the sickle’s edge skittering over his gauntleted hand and leaving a furrow through the sigmarite. The other passed over his rising runeblade and struck him just above the left eye, whipping his head back.
Snarling, Arkas swung his hammer at his opponent’s midriff, but the blow fell short and was turned aside by a timely parry. The Chaos champion’s defence left him open, however, and the Lord-Celestant’s boot crashed into the man-beast’s chest, driving him from his feet.
The Retributors needed no urging and fell upon the toppled champion with hammers and maces, pounding incessantly upon his armour until the heads of their weapons glowed white with power and the runes of his plate burned yellow. The champion rolled to all fours, trying to escape the deluge of blows, but a starsoul mace cracked against his skull with an electric detonation. Bone and blood flew and the champion slumped, his collapse only drawing an even more incensed assault from the raging Stormcasts.
Arkas slashed and hammered his way into the press around his companions, slaughtering the Chaos warriors who sought to fall upon his Retributors as they finished off the champion. He cared not who dealt the final blow – it was only pride that led champions to seek to best each other in single combat.
Bursting free from the tangled mass of corpses and wounded, Arkas had just enough time to see Dolmetis’ warriors carving apart the last of the marauders before the gigantic mutant beasts were upon him, snarling, ropes of stinking saliva flowing from their enormous maws.
A tentacle-limb wrapped itself about his wrist as he drew back his hammer to strike the first blow. He hacked at the pseudopod with his sword, parting it on the second attempt. By then, the brutish monster was upon him, bowling him over with its immense mass. Sword-arm pinned beneath the creature’s foreleg and his hammer equally trapped, Arkas head-butted the beast, splintering dagger-like fangs.
Claws raked and gouged at his pauldrons and cuirass, slivers of sigmarite falling like curled thread as another brute joined the attack. He felt blood trickling down his shoulder, the first wound his flesh had known since passing through the pain of Sigmar’s forge. The shock sent a surge of energy through him, firing him with a strength unknown before.
Bellowing, Arkas threw off the hellish beast atop him, rising to his feet. His hammer slammed into the face of the second, snapping horns, tusks and skull, pulping the brain within. Heaving aside its dying bulk, he threw himself at the monster that had trapped him. It howled and launched itself in a counter-attack. Ignoring the tentacles flailing at his face, Arkas speared his sword into the brute’s mouth, following the blade in with his whole arm. Blade and fist punched out through the back of the creature’s bony head. Bracing a foot against the slumping corpse’s shoulder, he dragged his arm free, tearing the head away like a macabre bracelet before he threw it aside.
Doridun’s combined assault with Arkas had torn through the Chaos warriors’ flank as they had been forced to turn towards the Lord-Celestant. The Knight-Heraldor and his warriors battered and cleaved at the last remaining foes while Arkas turned his attention to Dolmetis’ progress.
The Protectors slashed a bloody path through the barbaric tribesmen. They swept their glaives in arcs that left their foes dismembered and bisected, the marauders’ numbers counting for little against the far superior weapons, physique and armour of the Stormcast Eternals. Beyond the Protectors, a spearhead of Decimators encircled the survivors, led by Dolmetis. Their thunderaxes streaked bolts of energy from the corpses of their slain foes, the ice underfoot lit by the fury of the war-storm.
The carnage lasted for a little while longer as Hastor and his winged Stormcasts ran down the hounds and horsemen that had attempted to circle, and others fell upon the Chaos followers breaking for safety towards the far end of the lake, heading for the ridge leading to the Queen of the Peak’s lair. Not one survived to reach the shore, incinerated by heavenly shafts and javelins, pierced on the tines of the Prosecutors’ tridents.
The ice was cracked in places, amongst the red wash of freezing blood and the scattered remnants of limbs and bodies. Arkas noticed a few of the Stormcasts gazing down at the sheer surface, concerned.
‘No need to fear for your footing,’ he declared to them, stamping a heavy boot. ‘The Icemere is sustained by the magic of the Queen of the Peak. All year round it could take our weight.’
‘Who is this queen?’ asked Diocletus, one of the Protectors-Prime. ‘Such sorcery is surely Chaos-born.’
‘Not so,’ snapped Arkas. ‘Do you think I would seek her aid if that were the case? No, her power comes from the strength of Ghur, the pure wildness of Ursungorod rendered into magic. The legends claimed she was a goddess in the World Before, but I cannot say that is true. She is powerful, certainly, but a goddess? All that matters is she will know me.’
‘I did not mean any insubordination, my lord,’ Diocletus said, offering a bow in apology, the long blade of his glaive dipped in submission. ‘I sought knowledge. I do not understand why we need the assistance of… a witch.’
‘When I last fought for these lands I had nearly all of the clans at my side and it was not enough. The grip of Chaos is tight and the pollution of the skaven runs far. I would talk to the Queen of the Peak and find out the extent of the power of both.’
‘She can be trusted, Lord-Celestant?’
