War storm, p.9
War Storm, page 9
As the lightning flash diminished, it left behind a scorched ruin of skulls and something else.
Vandus rode the lightning and for a moment became engulfed by an all-consuming storm. It ended swiftly, the brief lightness of his being soon growing heavy again as his body returned to flesh and blood.
Calanax was with him, no stranger to the storm path, and bellowed a warning as he looked up towards the summit of the pyramid.
Vandus followed his gaze, and saw Khul poised to claim right of ascension.
Memories were fleeting of the old life, of the man he had been before the apotheosis, but even when he had fought Khul as Vendell Blackfist, the warlord of Khorne had been prideful. He had honour of a kind. Vandus would use it against him.
‘Khul!’ He bellowed above the tumult and the din of war unbound. ‘Korghos Khul! Slayer of the Direbrand tribe! Face me now, or I name you coward!’
So close…
Gripping the immortal’s head in one hand, Khul reached out with the other to clamber the last few steps to the summit when he heard the challenge.
He could almost taste the promise of daemonhood in the sulphurous air and the taint of blood on the breeze. Khorne would deny him if he turned his back now. No exalted champion could refuse a challenge and still believe himself worthy of the Skull Throne’s greatest honour.
Khul slowly turned to face his accuser. His gaze met that of the golden warrior, and for the first time he saw Vandus Hammerhand and not the blacksmith chief who had escaped death by luck.
‘You have no true understanding of what it means to be chosen,’ Khul whispered through clenched teeth. ‘Of my sacrifice.’
Anger rose up within him, volcanic and incendiary. He looked to the blackening skies, pride and ambition clashing violently within him.
Khul screamed with insensate rage and vaulted from the side of the pyramid.
Shimmering, azure rain pelted from the sky. As it met the smouldering earth of the Brimstone Peninsula, it turned into a vaporous mist that clouded the battlefield in an eldritch gloaming.
Lightning struck, cascading in a barrage from the storm-wracked vaults above. Ionus smiled grimly as it sheared loose an avalanche of skulls from the side of the pyramid and buried the bloodreavers below. One macabre feast was usurped by another as the skulls gnawed and snapped at the tribesmen drowning amongst them. Ionus saw one of the bloodreavers attempt to surface before being dragged under by a mass of bony teeth.
His attention turned to the Lord-Celestant.
‘It’s just you and him now,’ Ionus whispered, as Vandus spurred Calanax through the deluge of skulls to meet Khul.
‘Die, fool!’ roared Khul, his axe promising eternal damnation as the raw magic of Chaos bled from its blade.
Too late, Vandus saw the momentum was with the warlord as Khul leapt down upon him, and though he tilted in the saddle to prevent himself from being cut apart, the fight had really begun.
The whispered screams of the souls claimed by Khul’s axe filled Vandus’s ears, and for a moment he thought he could hear Jactos’s voice amongst them. Another cry drowned them out, that of Calanax.
Khul’s axe was embedded in the dracoth’s flank, but not deep enough to kill him. Through godly intervention or simple fortune, Calanax was spared his soul being wrenched into the Realm of Chaos but was still badly wounded. As Khul wrenched the axe loose, the beast sagged and fell onto its side, almost taking Vandus with it.
Crying out in anger, the Lord-Celestant leapt from the saddle and came at Khul with Heldensen.
By now, the two were fighting on the red earth at the foot of the broken pyramid and Khul wrong-footed Vandus to sidestep the crushing blow. Viperously, he swung the cleaved head of Jactos into Vandus’s face, making his helm ring with the impact.
Vandus gagged as blood spattered his gilded mask, finding its way into his eyes, nose and mouth. He tried to recover, but the daemon-hound was upon him before he could raise Heldensen. He stumbled, and for a brief moment felt doubt. Khul was a warrior-king, a warlord who had enslaved an entire region to his Goretide. He had fought countless battles, slain numberless enemies. He was unbeatable…
‘No. I am the lightning. Sigmar’s storm manifest.’
A bolt arced down from the heavens and Vandus knew what he must do.
As the flesh hound lunged at him, Vandus smashed his vambrace into its snarling mouth. As it clamped down, he threw his arm out and the hound with it, smashing it into a welter of skulls.
But Khul was already on him, axe swinging as Vandus stepped back again. He felt heat at his shoulder and realised that he had been herded to within a few paces of the Gate of Wrath.
‘Your skull will be mine after all,’ the warlord growled.
The haft of Heldensen rang as Vandus desperately parried the blow. He lashed out, finding strength from anger, but Khul was swift and already within the Lord-Celestant’s guard.
‘You are nothing without your drake,’ Khul sneered, his unbreakable grip around Heldensen’s haft.
Vandus roared, unable to wrench the hammer free. He lunged instead, smashing his head against Khul’s face and splitting the skull mask in two. He saw a glaring, angry visage beneath.
With a sharp twist, Khul disarmed Vandus and threw the hammer aside.
‘I was wrong about you,’ he said, spitting blood and teeth. ‘You are still Vendell Blackfist, doomed to fall by my blade. Die now!’
I am the lightning. The words came back to Vandus, as did the image of the bolt striking down from above. Before Khul could end him and condemn his soul to torment, Vandus leapt from the killing blow to land crouched within a handspan of the Gate of Wrath.
As he rose up, Vandus reached out and gripped the edge of one of the pillars of the gate.
Khul was close, blood-crazed and frothing…
‘I am the lightning,’ whispered Vandus, as he closed his eyes. ‘I am Vandus Hammerhand.’
A crash of thunder sounded overhead.
‘Lord Sigmar, strike thy servant now!’
God-lightning seared from the turbulent sky, an arcing blast so powerful that it shook the earth.
Vandus saw light: a blinding, searing luminescence so bright it eclipsed all sense of being and self. Then he was gone.
Now…
Ionus unshielded his eyes to see the Gate of Wrath utterly destroyed. Nothing remained but steaming, molten rock.
All around it for a hundred paces or more, both Stormcasts and Bloodbound had been thrown off their feet. Tendrils of corposant writhed across their bodies as the storm bolt was slow to dissipate.
There was no sign of Vandus Hammerhand or Calanax. Sigmar had reclaimed them, and in so doing vanquished the realmgate to Khorne’s domain.
A great cheer rose up from the Stormcast Eternals.
‘Azyr! Azyr!’
Only Ionus did not raise his voice. Instead, he watched Khul as he beheld the ruination of his plans. The Red Pyramid collapsed, skulls tumbling from its flanks in an avalanche that spilled amongst the Bloodbound in a flood. In moments it was nothing but a swathe of shattered bone, destroyed, its power broken.
As the warlord bellowed his impotent wrath to the uncaring night, Ionus knew they had struck a telling blow, but the war was not over.
‘Not yet…’ he whispered, as the victorious Stormcasts swept down upon the remnants of the Goretide like a living tempest.
CHAPTER ONE
The death of a prince
The guilt Thostos Bladestorm felt for spending the last days of his mortal life away from home had never left him. Not through his first Reforging, nor through his second. No number of rebirths could purge such regret from a man’s soul. When the cause was lost to him, the guilt stayed, a distillate of pain. Forever it was his spur, his strength and his weakness.
One last time Thostos relived the moments of his first death as Prince Caeran, in light and pain, when he was reborn at the God-King’s behest.
This is how he remembered it.
Then…
Warm wind sang through the pass of Unnumbered Birds. Scent is the key to memory, and the smell of the place was the last thing that Thostos forgot. In later days, when many lifetimes had passed him by, he would catch a reminder of it and search his broken memories for a full recollection. Alas, he would always be frustrated.
The strongest above all was the sharp smell of the birds themselves. Many nests crowded the cliffs either side of the narrow road, their guano streaking the rocks. There were other, subtler smells beneath that rich stink. The wind ran over the plains to the mountains, all the way from the distant sea. Even in the high mountains there was saltiness upon the wind still. This too Thostos remembered, and the blood and the ash that had come to taint it.
On that last day, the mountains preserved the semblance of peace. There the land seemed as it always had, as wild and free as any place in Amcarsh before the coming of Chaos.
To return to the mountains from the hell of the lowlands lifted the heart, even that of Prince Caeran, who would be Thostos, for he was burdened with many worries. But on that day, he breathed free, clean air, and returned home in victory. Secured to the flank of his horse was a bloody sack. Within languished the head of Sur Jactyr, Great Lord of Chaos and Reaver of the Sixteen Cities. His sharpened teeth would never again bite into flesh, and his golden eyes would see no more atrocity wrought in his name. Silver thread bound the sack shut, keeping the dead lord’s evil from corrupting the one who carried it. It was a successful hunt, enough to make Caeran forget for a moment the horrors of the world.
He was accompanied by Tarm, his childhood friend. No matter what evil they faced together, always they came back side by side. As was Tarm’s habit, he goaded his prince for sport as they rode.
‘My father says to me that the duty of an heir is to remain at home and learn the ways of governance. And yet here you are riding out on the hunt.’
Caeran laughed, though there was annoyance in it. ‘And what would your father have me do, work the fields and build terraces?’
‘That he would,’ said Tarm.
The pass was narrow, little more than a gully, and their voices echoed from the sides. Sunlight cut down from blue skies that were still untouched by the bruises of Chaos. The shadows of crags divided the rocky landscape into patches of delicious heat and pleasing cool.
‘Ask your father how I can remain at home, when evil brings all good things low and every month sees another city razed to the ground? Ten years ago, my father said that we would be safe within our valley, that the Warding Hounds of Garma would keep us safe, that Chaos–’
‘Hssh!’ Tarm said.
Caeran dropped his voice. ‘What?’
Tarm’s eyes were fixed upon the sky. Caeran raised his own gaze.
‘I see no birds,’ said Tarm.
The skies were empty. There was no sign of any birds at all.
Without exchanging a word, the warriors spurred their horses into a gallop. Their steeds were born for the rough terrain of the mountains and picked their path without faltering, haring along the rough road as sure-footed as goats. Soon enough, they rounded the kink in the valley where it opened onto the Great Glen of the Wolf.
‘Smoke!’ called Tarm. He slowed and stood in his stirrups for a better view.
Caeran thundered past him.
‘Wait, Caeran!’ Tarm shouted. ‘Be careful!’
But Caeran did not heed him. His stomach churned with sickening dread, an utter conviction that the worst had happened, and that his life was over.
The mountainside curved away, the glen broadened, and Wolf Keep, seat of Guild-King Glothian’s power, came into view. The keep was set high on the mountain, backed onto a soaring crag so that it looked out over the wide grazing lands of the glen. The Woolguild’s isolation had been its salvation. The mountain walls that yielded such meagre crops barred the advance of Chaos, and Glothian had kept the clans of his guild safe; once from the great and terrible beasts of Amcarsh and later against the depredations of hell-spawned monsters.
That is until then.
Caeran galloped past a burning cottage. The corpses of the farmers were pegged outside its blackened walls, cruelly mutilated. Hayricks blazed. Smoke rose from every building in the valley, thick over the four villages and thickest over Wolf Keep.
Fire licked from the windows of his home, black fumes pouring from the roof. He did not need to ride any closer to be able to see what the pale bundles hanging from the walls were.
‘No!’ screamed Caeran. He spurred his horse harder, foam frothing at its mouth. The steed’s flanks were lathered with sweat, but he did not relent.
The sky rumbled. A thunderhead was building over the mountains, black and heavy as an anvil.
He came across the first warband minutes later, a motley collection of beastfolk and savage tribesmen. They sat in the ruins of a hamlet around a fire of broken timbers, gorging on the flesh of innocents. The beastfolk were drunk, butting bloodied horns with each other. The men laughed bitter, empty laughs. The humour of the desperate and the insane. Without thinking, Caeran drew his sword and rode at them.
The first man turned at the thunder of his approach, only to die with his skull split open. Another pair were barged aside by the weight of Caeran’s horse, weapons falling from limp fingers. Others flung themselves aside. A beastman lunged for his reins. Caeran reared his horse, its hooves crushing the head of the creature. A second beastman ran at him, head bowed to impale his horse upon sharp horns, but Caeran cut it down and it died with a gurgling bleat.
Caeran wheeled his horse round and lashed out at another of the children of Chaos, but the impetus of his charge was spent, and the creature parried his blow with a maul of bloody iron. His horse’s breath came raggedly, exhausted; the animal was close to blown. The men and beastmen were gathering around him, a circle of brutal, shouting faces that kept out of the reach of his sword.
A huge muscled creature with the head of a goat pushed its way forward and thrust its spear deep into the horse’s breast. With a scream the horse reared up and toppled over, and Caeran was thrown free. He rolled, and an axe buried itself into the ground where his head had been. He sprang to his feet, driving his blade up to the hilt in a beastman’s gut. It screamed in Caeran’s face as it died, and he snatched out his sword before the creature fell down. Its fellows hesitated; Caeran did not.
‘Vengeance! Vengeance! Vengeance!’ he cried, and leapt among them, slaying all who came close. The sky was clouding over rapidly, pregnant with the promise of rain.
Then Tarm was there, bursting through the crowd on his horse and sending them down hard. He cut at the warband with his sword, slaying two and scattering the rest, then brought his horse to a staggering halt and held out his hand.
‘Get up behind me. There are hundreds coming!’
The beastmen and tribesmen lay dead or dying. One man pawed ineffectually at his ruined throat, attempting to stem the flood of blood. Caeran scanned the destruction, everywhere he looked revealing a new horror. He screwed his eyes shut at the sight of the torn corpses. Thunder sounded closer.
‘It’s going to rain,’ Caeran said.
‘Get up!’ shouted Tarm, looking behind his friend and beckoning again frantically. An awful, bleating roar brought Caeran out of his fugue.
Through the burning cottages of the hamlet strode a great beastlord, half as tall as Caeran again. In clumsy fingers it gripped an axe shaft as thick as Caeran’s thigh, the blunt head atop it dark with gore. It wore a mask of pale leather over its animal face, and a shallow helm covered its low skull. A dirty black and white crest rose from this between two pairs of horns. The first pair curved around its cheeks like a ram’s horns, while the second pair stood upright. These were sharp as scimitars, and dripped with blood. Crude mail studded with roundels and square plates protected its torso. Its hooves were shod with spiked iron, but its arms and the legs were unprotected, a sign of its confidence in its own might, perhaps. There were few who could hope to survive its ire.
‘Caeran!’ shouted Tarm.
‘No, no!’ said Caeran. ‘I will not run while our kinsfolk lie dead and defiled.’ He raised his sword in a double-handed grip, and prepared to meet the creature’s charge.
Tarm swore and charged past his friend, his horse leaping over the corpses of the fallen. His sword sang through the air, but the beastlord was swift. It stepped aside, punching Tarm’s steed with a huge fist. Hefting its axe, it swung hard at the reeling horse, a woodsman’s chop that half-severed the head. A tremendous spray of blood fountained from the horse’s neck and it fell sideways heavily, trapping Tarm beneath.
The beastlord raised its axe again, aiming for Tarm’s head. Caeran screamed and ran, swinging his sword with all his strength at the creature’s unprotected thigh. His blade bit deep, but the creature did not appear to feel the wound, and twisted its massive body to intercept the prince. A swipe from its arm caught him in the chest and knocked him back six feet to crash into a cart. He flipped over the back, landing in the offal of slaughtered farmers. Caeran scrambled to his feet, barely keeping his revulsion in check. His sword he held ready. The beastlord only smiled, thick lips parting around the flat, square teeth of a grazing animal stained pink with blood. It blew out a steaming huff of breath. Red eyes glowed with menace, and it laughed: a bleating corruption of human joy.
But the beast-thing was mistaken if it thought to kill another brave guildsman defending his home from the tide of Chaos. This was a prince before him, a mighty warrior sworn to protect his father’s people to the last, and he was wild with vengeance.
Lightning flashed, whiting out the valley. The beast lifted its axe and charged at Caeran. The prince waited for his moment, stepping aside and backward at the last possible second, and extended his sword to take the creature in the chest. The momentum of the beast forced the weapon’s point through its armour and deep into its chest just below the heart. Caeran’s sword was wrenched painfully from his hand as the beastlord stumbled past him, its axe biting into a splintered timber. It shook its head, and turned again, unaware that it was already dead. One step it came on, then another. The beastlord groggily raised its axe. Dark blood pumped from the wound. The creature never made the blow, but fell forward dead.
