War storm, p.20
War Storm, page 20
‘So be it,’ Bolathrax said. The daemon raised one fat paw and spoke a single, deplorable word. Gardus felt his teeth rattle in his jaw from the force of the word. The gathering clouds of flies suddenly spilled towards the Stormcast lines.
‘Shields up,’ Gardus roared, setting his feet as the deluge of insects drew close. Only now they weren’t just insects, but other things. Long limbed, bloat-bellied shapes appeared in the cloud, loping towards them, dragging rust-pitted blades behind them. Plaguebearers, Gardus thought. Similarly with Bolathrax, he had never seen them before, but he knew them all the same. He recognised them in the pit of his stomach and at the base of his mind, as one mortal enemy knows another. One-eyed, their rotten entrails leaking out, the plaguebearers radiated the same wrongness as Bolathrax himself, though to a lesser degree… as if they did not belong in the world.
More of them emerged from the cloud of flies. They were on all sides of the Hallowed Knights, and their numbers increased with every moment. So quickly had they formed that the Stormcast Eternals were surrounded within moments, their retinues hemmed in on all sides. The daemons droned monotonously as they advanced, as if in mimicry of the flies that had given birth to them.
‘Form up around me,’ Gardus bellowed. ‘Fall back, circle formation, but keep the line. Make them pay for every step, my brothers.’
Was this how I fell, before? The thought reverberated through his head, like the droning of the daemons. Before Sigmaron, before his Reforging, was this what he had faced? Was this how he had died? He forced the thought aside, trying to focus on the threat before him, rather than one long past, skinstealers rushed at him, spears wet with the blood of his acolytes. Reaching out for one of the four-foot iron candlesticks, he caught it up and his hammer snapped out to pulp a plaguebearer’s skull. He parried a disease-forged blade with his own sword, shattering the daemon weapon. Aetius had moved up beside him, shield raised to cover Gardus’s flank. He stepped forward and swung his hammer out in a wide arc, sending daemons reeling.
‘Who will be triumphant?’ Gardus shouted, trying to ignore the persistent hum of flies and forgotten voices.
‘Only the faithful,’ came the response from the throat of every member of his Warrior Chamber. The cry rose above the din of battle, above the sound of hammers cracking bones and the drone of daemons. Gardus smashed a plaguebearer from its feet, splitting its leering features, the candlestick heavy in his hand as he caught up its twin and stepped out of the hospice.
‘If we should fall, who will be reborn again?’ he shouted, shaking his head to clear it.
‘Only the faithful!’
‘Only the faithful,’ Gardus said hoarsely, as he blocked a blow that would have split Aetius’s head. He chopped the daemon down and cast a quick glance over the battlefield. The Hallowed Knights were fighting as warriors born, but the foe’s numbers were limitless. They needed to counter that advantage. We need room to manoeuvre, he thought. Gardus looked up, and swept his runeblade out, signalling to Tegrus. The Prosecutors dropped from the sky, hurling their celestial hammers. The weapons struck, slamming home into the ranks of the enemy with meteoric force. Dirt, mud and broken bodies were hurled into the air with each impact. For a moment, the enemy’s relentless advance stalled.
Gardus seized his chance.
‘Aetius, lock shields!’ he roared. ‘Feros, to me!’
Aetius barked an order, and several retinues of Liberators slammed their shields together, forming a solid wall of gleaming sigmarite. As Gardus had hoped, Solus and his Judicators recognized what was required of them, and they retreated swiftly, collapsing their ranks behind the defensive perimeter provided by the shields of their brethren. Feros and his Retributors moved through the retreating ranks of Liberators and Judicators, their great two-handed lightning hammers clearing away those daemons closest to the Hallowed Knights’ lines. Feros laughed as a blow from his hammer reduced a loping daemon to ash.
‘Sigmar be praised for this bounty,’ the Retributor-Prime bellowed. ‘Enemies to smite, and time enough to enjoy it.’
He stepped forward and drove his hammer into the ground. Lightning erupted from the black earth, catching plaguebearers in its crackling embrace. The daemons jittered and burned. Between them, the Prosecutors and Retributors were keeping the enemy at bay, but Gardus knew that it was only a temporary reprieve.
‘Aetius, shieldwall,’ Gardus said, signalling the Liberator-Prime. Aetius raised his hammer, and the front rank of the shieldwall knelt, planting the bottoms of their shields on the ground. The second rank moved in behind them, slamming their shields atop those of the front rank. Those Liberators not a part of the shieldwall moved forward to join Aetius and Gardus as the first line of defence against the enemy. They broke away, forming themselves up into groups of five or six warriors, and took up positions between the Retributors.
Soon Solus’s Judicators were firing from behind the wall of shields, as Gardus and the others tried to hold the plague-ranks back. Thunder rumbled and lightning snarled as Solus and his warriors peppered the enemy. Soon the air was full of smoke and noise, but the daemons continued their droning advance, taking no notice of the punishment inflicted upon them. More and more of them flowed out of the Gates of Dawn to join their vile kin in an unceasing assault upon Gardus’s Warrior Chamber. They strode over the charred and broken bodies of their fellows, clambering over heaps of daemonic corpses in order to reach the Hallowed Knights.
Gardus and Aetius fought back to back.
‘We’ll be overwhelmed if this keeps up, my lord,’ Aetius said, knocking a plaguebearer back with a swat from his shield. As the daemon staggered, he ripped his sword through its midsection, like a woodcutter hewing at a tree. The daemon fell in two squirming halves.
‘While one of us yet stands, hope is not lost,’ Gardus said. He took in the battle at a glance, seeing the Retributors, like lone islands in a sea of filth, and the Liberators, fighting back to back in small retinues. None of them were doing much to blunt the advance, despite the toll they were extracting from the enemy. Plaguebearers hacked at the shieldwall, occasionally pulling down a Liberator and dragging him out and away from his fellows to be butchered. Gardus felt his heart tighten with every death, a strange sense of having lived through this before, as he watched his flock fall to the spears of the skinstealers. He shook off the errant thought. These enemies were not skinstealers, whoever they were. He heard Bolathrax’s laughter slither over the battlefield, and looked up to see the Great Unclean One squat down on his flabby haunches and lean forward, the very picture of an eager spectator.
‘Yes, fight hard,’ Bolathrax called out. ‘It will not matter in the end. The tallyman will collect his due, no matter how well you swing your little hammers.’
Gardus longed to smash the smirk from the creature’s face. Anger boiled up in him, and as he fought, he saw half-remembered faces superimposed over the sigmarite masks his warriors wore. He heard voices he did not recognize, and the green horrors of the Ghyrtract Fen wavered and seemed to give way to another place, another time. He saw blood spatter white sheets as the skinstealers howled and tried to shake it off, to banish the clutching fragments of memory, but the hospice was burning and they refused to release him. He slashed at a plaguebearer and the grimacing warrior, clad in crimson and brass armour stumbled back, his scarred skull crushed by the iron candlestick in Garradan’s hand.
‘Sigmar,’ Gardus roared. More warriors closed in on him, savage, saw-toothed axes raised and he whirled, runeblade licking out to lop off arms and shatter plague-swords. Those swords, he knew, were stained with the blood of his flock, and it drove him to fury. A plague-sword struck him, causing him to stumble and he felt the spear as it dug through his robes and pierced his vitals, and he fell to one knee. ‘Sigmar, give me strength!’
‘My lord… Gardus,’ someone shouted. He hesitated. Who is Gardus? My name is Garradan, he thought as a heavy body struck him and knocked him sprawling. Jolted from his memories, he rolled over and saw Aetius stagger as a plague-blade slid under his guard and tore through his belly. Gardus froze in shock, but only for a moment. As Aetius sank down, he surged to his feet, blade in hand. His runeblade sang out, and the plaguebearer lost its hand. It stepped back, its single eye widening in shock. That expression quickly vanished in a spray of pus and bile as Gardus’s hammer slammed down on its skull.
Gardus shook his head, clearing it of lingering memories. He’d lost focus, letting his anger overwhelm his discipline. He could not afford such lapses, not now. Aetius was hunched over, his hands clasped to his belly.
‘Aetius, can you stand?’ he asked.
Aetius grunted and, with Gardus’s help, rose to his feet. Blood dripped from between his fingers as he threw an arm over Gardus’s shoulders and sagged against the Lord-Celestant. Gardus uprooted his blade and, with one arm around Aetius’s waist, he hacked them a path back towards the shieldwall. As he handed Aetius over to a pair of Liberators, he turned back towards the Gates of Dawn.
The Great Unclean One wove his hands in obscene gestures. With every pass of the greater daemon’s hands, the archway flexed like a thing in pain, and an ugly light seeped out from between the aged stones. The insect-drone in the air had grown louder, and it was accompanied by a new sound – the stomp of great feet, growing closer.
‘I did try and warn you, you can’t say I didn’t,’ Bolathrax croaked, as the archway shuddered down to its keystones. ‘I gave you a chance, little pustlings, but you spat upon my kind offer.’
The daemon glanced slyly in Gardus’s direction, somehow finding him amidst the confusion of battle. Behind the daemon, the stones of the archway seemed to tremble with the reverberations of whatever monstrosity approached. ‘Though, I expected no better from the spawn of Sigmar.’
As the name of his god left the beast’s blubbery lips, Gardus hesitated. Bolathrax’s smile widened, sensing the reaction his words had caused. ‘Yes, I know who you serve. I recognize that sign, on your armour. And I do not fear him, pustule. I withstood his wrath before, and I will withstand it now. I have outlived many gods. Bolathrax was there at the Battle of Black Skies, when the Great Necromancer fell. Bolathrax corrupted the Skyoak and broke the champions of mankind in the Allpoints War. And it was Bolathrax who cracked the City of Branches and made Alarielle weep tears of jade.’
With every boast, the Great Unclean One slapped his rubbery chest.
‘Bolathrax, pustule! Bolathrax, blessed above all of Grandfather Nurgle’s children. Bolathrax, greatest of all those who dwell in the garden.’
Bolathrax extended one wide paw, as if in command, and roared out, ‘Heed me, my sons. Come forth, brothers in bile, come forth my rotguard!’
Chapter Four
In the halls of Azyr
Zephacleas moved quickly through the celestine vaults. Gardus was his friend – in many ways, his only friend – and the thought that he might be in danger was not a pleasant one. Stormcasts could not die, as such, but the Reforging process was not easy. Those who fell and returned were… different. No one could say how or why, but they were, and that thought lent speed to Zephacleas’s stride. He did not want Gardus to change, to be something other than the man he was now. He did not want him to endure the agonies of rebirth a second time.
I do not want to lose my friend, he thought. As he passed the Forbidden Vaults, he averted his eyes, as tradition and prudence demanded. He was not the only Stormcast moving through the halls. The turquoise war-plate of the Celestial Vindicators was in evidence, as well as the golden armour of the Hammers of Sigmar. The great mourning bell was ringing steadily, its despairing song echoing everywhere as he made his way to where his Warrior Chamber waited.
He caught the arm of one of the Celestial Vindicators. ‘What news, brother? How goes the war for the realmgates of Chamon? What of the Hanging Valleys of Anvrok, of Thostos Bladestorm and Lord-Castellant Eldroc?’
The other Stormcast pulled his arm free of Zephacleas’s grip. The Celestial Vindicators were not known for their even temperament, and Zephacleas stepped back, hands raised.
‘Peace, brother, I am merely curious.’
‘The battle goes well,’ the other Stormcast rumbled. ‘The Silverway is ours. Chamon will follow.’ He cocked his head. ‘What of Ghyran? Have you heard?’
‘Badly,’ Zephacleas said, tersely. ‘I go now, to see that it fares better. Sigmar be with you, brother,’ he added, extending his hand. They clasped forearms, and turned to go their separate ways. Before Zephacleas had made more than a few steps, however, a voice called out to him, stopping him in his tracks.
‘Hold, Beast-Bane,’ a rough voice said. ‘I would have words with you.’
Zephacleas stopped, more out of curiosity than any respect for the speaker’s authority. He’d earned his war-name in the wilds of Azyrheim, hunting the monstrous beasts that still lurked in the high crags and deep canyons of the mountains of the Celestial Realm. He’d fought the Black Bull of Nordrath and harried the beast-packs of the Antarktos Ridge to extinction, slaughtering the white-furred goat-headed servants of Chaos to the last ungor. He turned.
‘Hail and well met, Lord-Castellant. Shouldn’t you be with the remainder of your Warrior Chamber, waiting for the order to march?’
‘Who are you to say where I should or should not be?’ Lorrus Grymn, Lord-Castellant of the Steel Souls, said.
Squat and built like a low wall, he was accompanied by two other silver-armoured figures. One was Morbus, Lord-Relictor of Gardus’s Warrior Chamber. Zephacleas thought he recognized the other as Machus, one of Grymn’s paladins and Decimator-Prime. The double-bladed axe he carried was a wicked-looking thing, its edges polished to a blinding gleam. His eyes were unreadable, and his expression was hidden behind his featureless war-helm, but Zephacleas suspected that he was as worried as his superior must be, to accost the Lord-Celestant of another Warrior Chamber.
Zephacleas held up his hands. ‘My apologies…’ he began.
Grymn cut him off with an impatient gesture.
‘You are forgiven. Sigmar calls for you to lend aid to the Steel Soul,’ Grymn said, eyeing the Lord-Celestant critically.
‘He has,’ Zephacleas said. The gryph-hound at the Lord-Castellant’s side growled low in its feathered throat, as if it disapproved of his levity. Zephacleas fixed the animal with a cautious look. It was a heavy-bodied creature, with the limbs and torso of a great hunting hound and the head of a bird of prey. It could have the throat out of an unarmoured man in a matter of moments, and could give even a Stormcast a few uncomfortable minutes, if it was of a mind. This one was looking at him as if he were a bit of meat on the end of a stick. But then, so was Grymn, having a reputation for ferocity in word as well as deed. More than one Stormcast had been reduced to spluttering anger by the Lord-Castellant’s words.
Grymn patted the creature’s head. ‘Easy, Tallon,’ he murmured. He looked at Zephacleas. ‘Gardus is a great fighter, a warrior without peer, but… he is untempered.’
‘Yes,’ Zephacleas said. ‘As are you. As was I, once.’
‘It is more than that,’ Grymn said insistently. ‘Morbus has seen it, in his dreams.’
‘He is in danger,’ Morbus said. The Lord-Relictor was an imposing figure, his weapons and armour replete with icons of faith. It fell to him to keep the souls of the Hallowed Knights in his Warrior Chamber from the gloom of the underworld, and Morbus, like Ionus Cryptborn, or even the Astral Templars’ own Seker Gravewalker, was too close to that fell realm for Zephacleas’s comfort. ‘Dark forces gather about him, Lord-Celestant.’
‘I am well aware, Lord-Relictor.’ Zephacleas gestured for Morbus to move aside. Morbus hesitated, his burning gaze turning to Grymn. Impatient now, Zephacleas made to push past. Every moment he delayed was a moment wasted in aiding Gardus.
Grymn quickly stepped forward, blocking him. His sour face was twisted in an expression so unpleasant that Zephacleas thought at first that he had been done some injury. He appeared to be struggling with his words.
‘Say what you wish to say, Lord-Castellant. Some of us have battles to fight,’ Zephacleas said.
‘I would have you see that he comes to no harm, Lord-Celestant,’ Grymn said. ‘Whatever else happens, keep him safe.’
Zephacleas blinked. ‘What?’
‘Gardus,’ Grymn said. ‘See that he comes to no harm, Astral Templar. Or you shall answer to us.’ As he spoke, he poked a finger into Zephacleas’s chest, eliciting a dull sound as sigmarite struck sigmarite. Zephacleas smiled.
‘You truly fear for him.’
‘You will say nothing of this, you great oaf,’ Grymn growled, as Zephacleas pushed past him. ‘Concentrate on keeping him alive, rather than making mockery of us.’
‘As if I would do anything else,’ Zephacleas said. He stopped and glanced over his shoulder: Grymn stared at the floor, hands flexing uselessly, Morbus stared at Zephacleas, his expression indecipherable, and Machus leaned on his axe, head bowed.
Ah, my friend, any remaining doubts you might still have would vanish in an instant, if you could but see the way they worry for you, thought Zephacleas. A Lord-Celestant was not simply a leader; he was the heart and soul of his Warrior Chamber, and on his shoulders rode all of the hopes and courage of his warriors.
‘Lord-Castellant,’ Zephacleas said, loudly.
Grymn’s head shot up, and he fixed the Lord-Celestant with a glare. More softly, Zephacleas said, ‘I will see him safe, Lord-Castellant. Else my soul join his in Sigmar’s forges.’
