War storm, p.14
War Storm, page 14
As the fire went out, Eldroc saw the shape it had concealed. Upon a spinning disk of purest gold rode a tall man in dark robes with long, pointed horns. A gangrel sorcerer, a disciple of change. He plucked at the air with long fingers, dragging power from the stuff of creation and hurling it at the centre of the Bladestorms’ line. These flickering bolts of multicoloured magic transmuted themselves into spears of burning quicksilver as they flew. One burst through the Stormcasts to Eldroc’s left. With a peal of thunder, the warrior discorporated and a flash of light raced upwards, back to the Reforging chambers of the Sigmarabulum. The warriors of Chaos were mighty foes, and there were more of these departures. But the Bladestorms would not yield. With each death, the Liberators bunched tighter, allowing no gap in their shieldwall. Skybolts arced over the front ranks, blasting Chaos warriors from their feet. The Chaos infantry were fully invested in the fight, but as yet the knights of Chaos had not engaged. They stood ready, mutant horses snorting, but they remained unmoving.
‘Stand ready, my brothers!’ yelled Eldroc. The footmen were attempting to pin the Stormcasts’ flanks in place, pressuring them so that more Stormcasts were drawn from the centre while it was further weakened by the magic of their leader. To the west, the Lord-Castellant caught sight of Thostos embattled, but lost him in the press of warriors gathering there again. Eldroc judged that the knights were waiting until the line’s middle was sufficiently depleted so that they could burst it asunder with their charge.
If that were the foe’s plan, it was failing. The Stormcasts did not weaken. The line remained tight; no gap opened up.
The sorcerer hunched forward. He licked his lips with his long purple tongue and cast a wary glance to the narrow valley leading to the platform. There the others of the Bladestorms were mustering. Already they had abandoned their watch on the mountain way and thundered down the stairs to join their brothers. In moments they would be upon the Chaos flank. Running out of time, the sorcerer paused in his bombardment and raised a long finger. Red light burst from it. At this signal the cavalry reared up. Their mounts screeched with hellish voices and they plunged forward, lances dropping into position. The knights clashed into the centre of the Stormcast Eternal line. Few lance points found their way past the sigmarite armour, but the warriors of Azyr were bowed by the sheer impact of the mass of twisted horseflesh, steel and Chaos-swollen men coming at them. Armoured feet squealed on rock as they were forced backward.
Eldroc’s armour sparked with fury. He stepped outside a lance’s thrust, and welcomed his attackers.
‘Vengeance!’ he called. ‘Vengeance!’
With a terrible joy he sang his battlesong, and laid about him with his halberd, spearing one giant with the tip and throwing him from his horse. A snarl announced the attack of Redbeak. The gryph-hound leapt from Eldroc’s side and bore a second Chaos knight backwards off his mount. His halberd whistled overhead and Eldroc’s heart swelled. This was what he had been made for, this was his gift from Sigmar. In another time and another place there had been another man. The life of that man had been destroyed to the sound of evil laughter – his wife, his children, his family and his tribe, all slain with wanton cruelty. He had fought, aye, but he had been bested and taken to their torture tables. As his own life was about to end he had prayed to Sigmar. He had asked not for salvation, but that he be permitted revenge. As his blood mingled with his tears, he had shouted his hatred of Chaos. He had shouted to the skies for the strength to bring down the minions of the great powers as they had hewn down his tribe and trampled their flesh into the dirt.
A vain plea, but of utmost sincerity. His prayers had been answered. Flashes of memory, long dormant, flickered through his mind. Every crushing blow sparked a recollection of pain and dread. These nightmares from the past lent greater strength to his arm. Far from tiring, he became stronger, his need for vengeance impelling his arm as much as Sigmar’s powers. Hell-forged armour cracked and shattered. and the steel-clad heads of horses were cloven through. Many great champions of Tzeentch came against him, but none could stand before his wrath. He was vengeance incarnate. His song became a wordless cry of rage and he pressed on, heedless of the danger. The line of Liberators behind him forced themselves forward against the press of the foe, following their leader into the heart of the force. Gore splashed over them as Eldroc’s halberd did its deadly work. He hacked with the axe blade and stabbed with its spear tip, smashing apart dark armour and tainted flesh alike.
A massive brute of a man clad in brass fell to the ground and Eldroc drove the spike of his halberd through his stomach with a feral cry. He drew the weapon out and swung it in a blurring arc that had the enemy’s horses rearing in fear; one could not control his steed, and Eldroc decapitated him in a spray of gore. He roared at the sight.
A gap opened around him, as the minions of Tzeentch dared not chance their skill against his. Eldroc’s rage lifted. He panted hard. For the first time since his transformation he felt the ache of exertion trouble his muscles. He yearned to leap forward and slay, but as much as he desired to let his fury take him, he could not allow it. He must lead. Berserk rage was the way of Chaos; he was a servant of Order. With a shuddering breath he willed his heart to slow and climbed atop a dead steed. From there he surveyed the battle.
The remaining Bladestorms were coming to Lord Thostos’s aid through the defile from the mountainside, and their arrival pressed the Chaos warriors there hard. In return, the Chaos worshippers moved more of their number to bolster their efforts, so that only a small knot remained embattled to Eldroc’s left. The Stormcasts were moments away from being able to turn the line. Now the Chaos army risked losing its centre.
The sorcerer had come off his platform and was calling the powers of Chaos to aid him. Magic flowed into the armour of the dead, bringing the wargear unnatural life. Animated suits lurched forward, carrying the corpses of their wearers back into battle. On those still living, broken armour flowed together. The weapons of the sorcerer’s men glowed potently.
Eldroc laughed. ‘Are such magics intended to intimidate me, mage? See here the power of Sigmar Heldenhammer manifest!’ He held aloft his warding lantern, the seat of his power and symbol of his office. Brilliant light blazed forth. Where it lit upon the Celestial Vindicators’ sigmarite, dents popped out of scarred metal, and gashes in flesh knitted themselves shut. The Stormcasts were invigorated by the light of their God-King, and redoubled their attack. But where it touched upon the scions of Chaos they reeled back. Wounds closed by the sorcerer burst open once more, and the suits of armour brought to life fell back to the ground.
The charge of the Chaos knights had been broken. The last was brought down, his steed letting out a grating, reptilian whinny as it was tripped and pushed over. Both rider and steed were obscured by hammers rising and falling.
Only the sorcerer’s bodyguard remained in the centre of the enemy line, a grim company of wicked murderers dressed like kings and armed with a daemon’s plunder. Dangerous, but few in number.
The tide was turning. It was time to press the advantage.
‘Judicators, protect the flanks!’ yelled Eldroc. His battle shout pierced the tumult of battle. The irregular rain of stormbolts ceased and two distinct barrages set up. Two-thirds of the gleaming bolts fell on the greater numbers of Chaos warriors by the entrance to the mountain path, while the other third speared down onto the small knot by the eastern flank. The stormbolts there did swift work, breaking up the formation of the warriors and leaving them at the mercy of the Eternals’ hammers and swords.
‘Liberators, to me!’ Eldroc called. Without waiting for his men, he ran across the narrow gap and plunged into the sorcerer’s bodyguard. Halberds with gibbering faces flowing over molten surfaces rose to greet him, but he smashed them aside. Screaming his oath to Sigmar over and again, he hacked his way deep into the enemy’s ranks. A solid crash came behind him as the Liberators’ shieldwall impacted the foe. He was impetuous, carving a passage alone towards the sorcerer. He spun his weapon, whirling it round his head and turning his body about to maintain its momentum. Redbeak came at his side, ripping at those few who evaded Eldroc’s wrath.
With a final crash Eldroc put down his last foe. It took him a moment to realise he had burst right through the dread regiment. The sorcerer stood just a few yards from him. They locked eyes a moment, then the sorcerer turned and fled back towards his golden platform.
Redbeak leapt after him, but the sorcerer waved a hand at the gryph-hound, sending it spinning aside.
‘Judicators, bring down the curse caster!’ roared Eldroc.
The disc bobbed in the air, rotating at stately speed until the sorcerer approached, whereupon it stopped and sank low to the ground. With a single bound, the sorcerer jumped upon it. The disc’s revolutions restarted and quickened as it rose up, bearing the sorcerer over the heads of the combatants. A hail of stormbolts came at the sorcerer. None hit their target. A fresh wall of blue fire erupted around the disc, and the bolts clashed off it harmlessly. Shrinking rapidly in on itself, the ball of fire darted up and away, heading off over the duardin ruins and then to the south.
Eldroc noted its direction, but could spare little time in consideration of pursuit. The damned warriors, seeing their master gone, were fighting all the harder, and Thostos’s flank was being pushed back before their fury.
‘Slay them! Slay them all!’ called Eldroc. He and his men laid low the remainder of the wizard’s bodyguard, then turned to the mountain path entrance to fall upon the rear of the Chaos warriors fighting there.
Minutes later it was all over. Stormcast Eternals stood, hammers suddenly heavy in their hands, chests heaving. The broken bodies of Chaos slaves lay on the sand and rock of the platform floor. The statues of the duardin on either side of the arch looked on impassively. Eldroc let the haft of his halberd thump to the floor as Thostos came to join him.
‘Finally,’ he said. ‘Vengeance begins.’
‘And it is a beginning only. Did you see the way the sorcerer fled?’
‘To the south.’
‘Aye,’ said Thostos, and there was grim pleasure in his voice. ‘Towards the ruined city of Elixia. Towards the great fortress.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Glimmerlands
Once the battle at the platform was done, the wounded ministered to and the tally of those returned to Sigmaron calculated, Thostos elected to take fully two-thirds of the Bladestorms off the mountain by the stairs in pursuit of the horned sorcerer, leaving Eldroc to his duty as guardian of the Silverway.
As they descended, it became apparent that the ruins were even more expansive than they had originally thought. They marvelled that such a site could have been hidden from view for so long, for the tumbled buildings stretched down to the lowlands and there were many shafts and hewn caves visible in the rock of the mountain besides.
They left the ruins of the duardin behind and headed south, following the directions of Prosecutor scouts towards the other city and the fortress that filled its centre.
By the end of evening they had reached the edge of the Glimmerlands. Thostos ordered a halt, and his men set up camp within a ruin upon a low hill. Once a palace, its walls were cast down and towers broken, so that no portion stood taller than a man.
Thostos watched strange night fall over Anvrok for the fifth time. The sun went into the rippling fires of the great wyrm Argentine. A long shadow fell on the valley as the wyrm obscured the light, only for the sun to return a quarter of an hour later an exhausted red. The sun had fought its daily battle with the wyrm’s jaws and it had lost, as it did every day.
Argentine’s coils filled the western sky. Through the day its vast bulk was pale as the daytime moon, but night lent it solidity and it became ominous. Towards the lands of the deepest east, a haze of metallic dust tinted the air the colour of brass, purple beyond where night marshalled itself in the void, ready to march on Anvrok. From the west, a new light came to conquer the sun’s dominion. In the valley of Anvrok, the land danced already to the endless writhing of Argentine’s fire. Shadows leaped around rocks frantically, as if seeking to avoid being seen. The Silver River lost its sheen and glowed, the intense heat it harboured revealed by the gloaming. And so the battlefield was set, dark night against the Chaos-tinged fire of the wyrm.
Liberator-Prime Perun came to stand beside his lord. He rocked a loose stone in the wall. The mortar was dry dust and frittered away to nothing on the hot breeze. He grunted, hollow behind his helm, and reseated the stone. ‘Better than nothing, I suppose,’ he said.
Thostos made no indication he had heard. He did not take his eyes from the great wyrm. ‘I grew to manhood in Amcarsh, before the God-King took me to his side and made me anew. In that realm were creatures as tall as towers, and fiercer than the storm. Only in a few places fenced in by sea or mountain could we make our homes, so mighty were they. But I look at that wyrm in astonishment. I have never seen anything like it.’
Perun nodded. ‘It defies belief, Lord-Celestant. I see that and the crucible it warms. But I cannot credit it a rightwise part of this realm. It seems more a whim of Chaos than a thing of Order.’
‘But it is a thing of Order, or was.’ Thostos turned away from the dancing fires of the creature and looked Perun in the eyes. ‘I am told that it was a celestial dragon, a creature as noble as our dracoths, but turned to fell purpose by the great changer. It gives me hope.’
‘How so?’ Perun removed his helmet and shook out a mane of dreadlocks. His skin was dark brown, eyes a piercing green. A native of some desert land, overthrown like all the others.
‘Because if Lord Sigmar believes that we are mighty enough to challenge the likes of that serpent, perhaps rid it of its taint, then truly we can accomplish anything. We shall be victorious, Perun.’
At night the land changed. The mark of Chaos upon the Hanging Valleys became more evident. The Alchemist’s Moon clambered high up the ladders of heaven, its louring face crisscrossed with strange patterns. Weird fires sprang up from nowhere, pillars of multicoloured flame that twisted their way across the slopes with sinister purpose. Perhaps they sought to taunt the Bladestorms, but the Stormcasts of Sigmar paid these sprites no attention. They did not run from their camp nor loose shots, but watched carefully, hands close to their weapons. Odd noises sounded out in the dark, and the bleating calls of beast-folk echoed from the crags. But the creatures were craven, and none dared approach the camp of such mighty warriors.
The Celestial Vindicators were therefore disappointed until the following day, when they encountered their next resistance.
With a cry of pure fury, Thostos swept aside the Chaos knight’s sword with his runeblade and slammed his hammer into the warrior’s chest. Armour cracked under the weapon’s heavy head, pulverising the flesh underneath. Blood spurted from the rents in the metal. The knight slumped sideways drunkenly, and Thostos finished him with a blow to the chest that stove in his ribs. He whirled his sword around his head, reversing the point and driving it through the steel hide of the strange beast the knight rode. Despite its bizarre appearance, it had a heart, for it collapsed and died. ‘Sigmar!’ called Thostos, holding his hammer aloft. ‘Vengeance!’
All around him his men were slaughtering the Chaos warband. The Chaos warriors had approached confidently, almost eagerly, seeing the Stormcasts as worthy foes. Little did they realise how outmatched they were.
The clash of arms and shouts lessened, until all the warriors lay dead.
‘We have finished them, my lord. Victory!’ called Perun.
‘Victory! Victory!’ chanted the Bladestorms.
Thostos looked down at the man he had killed. The knight had been huge, granted great strength and size by his patron. The fashioning of his armour would have bankrupted a good-sized kingdom of the old realms, being set with precious stones and rare metals. Thostos cleaned his weapons with a thought, the magic of them boiling off the blood from hammerhead and sword edge. He sheathed his runeblade and bent down, reaching for the knight’s helmet with his free hand.
‘What are you doing, Lord-Celestant?’ asked Perun.
‘I would look upon this man that I have slain.’
The helm slid free. Unlike some they had slaughtered, the armour had not fused itself to the man’s flesh, and the face beneath was untouched by the warping power of Tzeentch. His eyes were closed, his face slack.
‘Look at him. In death there is no emotion, no wickedness. He seems to sleep, and his face could be that of any man.’
‘Aye, but it is not any man,’ said Perun. ‘He is a follower of Chaos, a traitor to all mortal kindreds. He bartered his soul away for power.’
‘He did,’ said Thostos. His gaze remained fixed upon the dead man’s face. ‘But I wonder how much choice he had in the matter. Did he take the road willingly, or was he forced down it at sword point, for fear of his family’s fate?’
‘We all had our choices, lord,’ said Perun angrily. ‘And we took a different way.’
‘Those were different times,’ said Thostos. ‘In those days men threw in their lot with the Dark Powers for gain, that is true. But to be born into this.’ He extended a hand and swept it around the barren mountainsides, the bare valley cloaked in thorny scrub. ‘What choice would he have?’
‘They die. We have our vengeance, that is what matters.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Thostos. He cast the helm aside. ‘But our anger might be better spared for the masters, and not the slaves.’
Already carrion birds were alighting upon the slain with a clatter of bronze feathers. Two spread their wings and darted their heads at one another. They hissed puffs of steam from pistons in their wings as they contested for the choicest scraps. A third hopped onto the chest of a fallen follower of Tzeentch and began nipping through the breastplate with a serrated beak of steel more akin to forge shears than the mouth of a living creature.
