War storm, p.19
War Storm, page 19
‘It will be done.’ Aetius saluted crisply, raising his hammer to his brow. Then he turned and began to bellow orders. Stormcast Eternals hastened to obey. Gardus watched the other man go about his duties and shook his head. He knew the source of Aetius’s irritation, or at least suspected he did.
The Hallowed Knights had not been chosen for the spearhead – that honour had gone to the Hammers of Sigmar, as was fitting. Nonetheless, the waiting had been its own burden, and not just for his subordinates. The longer it had continued, the more uncertain Gardus had grown, wondering if their training and discipline would be enough for the conflicts to come. He had been reborn to battle, but it had been so long since he had last tested steel against steel and strength against strength anywhere other than the training fields of Sigmaron.
I wonder what Grymn would say, if he knew, he thought. Gardus had never known the Lord-Castellant of the Steel Souls to show hesitation or doubt. The man was a rock, capable of weathering any storm. Of all those in their Warrior Chamber he alone could match the Lord-Celestant blow for blow, but he was not one to seek reassurance from. Neither could Gardus admit his concerns to his fellow Lord-Celestants, as they readied their own Warrior Chambers for combat.
Gardus had shared his uncertainties with only one other – Zephacleas, Lord-Celestant of the Astral Templars. Gardus smiled as he thought of the other Stormcast commander. Zephacleas had been a big man, even before his Reforging. After it, he had become a veritable giant, standing head and shoulders over Gardus. Clad in armour as dark as Gardus’s was bright, Zephacleas had seen to the heart of the latter’s uncertainties, speaking words of encouragement as they stood together, looking out at the stars in those final hours before he had been called to battle. And true to Zephacleas’s assertions, his doubts were all but dispelled now. They had met the enemy, and they had been victorious.
He recalled those first few moments after their arrival, his mind and body invigorated by the celestial lightning that had carried him from Azyr, as well as the fierce joy that had surged within him as he saw the corrupted warriors charging towards him. The Hallowed Knights had fought like warriors born, executing his orders or countering unforeseen threats on their own with a skill far beyond that of any mortal servant of the Dark Gods.
And now, the Gates of Dawn were theirs.
Gardus turned and let his gaze ascend towards the arched realmgate, high up the stone steps that climbed the craggy hillside. It did not look as he imagined it. He had thought that such an artefact would be a massive portal, swirling with powerful energies. Instead, it was an innocuous ruin, covered in creeper vines and sagging slightly, like an old man bent by age. Was this truly a gateway to Aqshy, the Realm of Fire?
He shook his head. It didn’t matter. He had been sent to claim it in Sigmar’s name, and that was what he had done. From behind him came the sound of cracking stone and the shouts of his warriors at work. There was a friendly rivalry between the different hosts of his Warrior Chamber, seeking to outdo one another on and off the battlefield. Some of his peers frowned on such boisterousness outside of Sigmaron, but Gardus knew that laughter was like sigmarite for the soul.
And in any event, it’s a celebration, he thought. Our first battle, our first victory. He looked up, wondering if Sigmar was watching them. We will not fail you, my lord.
A tall obelisk, larger than any three of his men, toppled over after a concentrated effort by Feros and Aetius, eliciting cheers. As their voices rose, a new sound intruded – a droning hum that pierced the jubilant mood of the Stormcast Eternals and swept it away as it grew louder and louder. Men looked around, trying to find the source of the noise. Gardus, closer than the others to the Gates of Dawn, found it first and felt the taste of victory turn to ashes on his tongue.
He felt a chill creep along his spine as he turned to look at the realmgate. His limbs felt leaden and the air grew thick and close. A miasmic fog had risen up from the ground, clinging now to his legs and the edges of his warcloak. A vile stench filled his nose, and he gagged as the sound grew louder, spreading, becoming something else. Something worse.
Laughter.
‘Oh no, no, no, my friends. This will simply not do. The game has barely begun, and already you celebrate victory? No, this will not do at all,’ a hideous phlegm-roughened voice chortled. It echoed from everywhere and nowhere, slithering across the minds and ears of every man present. It rose from the mud, and pulsed from the festering vines that clung to everything. Gardus raised his hammer and his men fell instantly into formation, shields raised, weapons ready. Something was coming and they needed to be ready to meet it.
He caught Feros’s eye, and the Retributor-Prime nodded grimly. Tegrus’s Prosecutors hovered overhead, their weapons ready, and Solus’s Judicators had formed up in their firing retinues just behind Aetius and the other Liberators. Eyes sought his, and he stepped forward so all could see him.
‘Hold position,’ he said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. Whatever was coming, whatever had spoken, was unlike anything he had ever encountered before. Its words had squeezed his heart, and nearly stripped his courage from him. If he’d been a normal man, he might have broken in that moment, but he was a Stormcast Eternal – fear had no power over him.
Above him, the Gates of Dawn began to shudder, shedding vegetation and dust, as the ancient stones ground against one another. Something indefinable bubbled beyond the frame of the arch, and a stinking chill rippled through the suddenly cloying air.
‘Grelch was loyal and dutiful, and his blood serves as well or better than that of any puling slave,’ the horrid, burbling voice continued. ‘Blood is the key and it has turned the lock. Knock knock, little storm clouds, let me in.’ A black void eddied and frothed beyond the arch, like a ragged wound torn into the very air, and Gardus’s ears echoed with the buzzing of innumerable flies as a chill rippled through the air. The gate began to shudder and twist, as if the very stones were in agony.
And then, before Gardus’s horrified eyes, two immense rotting hands reached out from within the arch. They caught either side of it, and within moments, something abominable began to squeeze its impossible bulk through the Gates of Dawn. Broken, rotting fangs clashed in a bulbous jaw as the monstrous daemon began to chortle with glee. The archway rocked alarmingly as the thing pried itself free and lurched through the realmgate. Those Stormcast closest to the gate rushed forward, as if they might reach the summit in time, but falling rubble from the contorting gate smashed them aside. Those who avoided the debris were caught in the flood of acidic froth that spilled from the now-warped gate. Gardus bellowed for the remainder to fall back.
‘Greetings, whelps of a tiny god,’ the greater daemon of Nurgle – for such Gardus knew it must be – thundered cheerfully. It slapped its grossly distended belly and leaned forward on crooked legs. ‘Allow me to introduce myself… I am Bolathrax. Your souls are mine.’
Chapter Two
Beyond the Gates of Azyr
Zephacleas, Lord-Celestant of the Astral Templars, sat, eyes closed, and listened to the crackle of the storms that raged over the aetherdomes that ran along the great platform of the Sigmarabulum. He thought he could hear the agonized screams of the fallen in each crash of thunder or snap of lightning as their spirits underwent the process of Reforging. Victory at any price, he thought, with a grim smile.
He opened his eyes and leaned forward, head tilted so that the light of the broken world bathed his battered features. Zephacleas gazed up at the great sphere that hung in the heavens above the fabricated ring. It was but a fragment of the world-that-had-been, yet still its iron core was as large as any moon. It gleamed with a strange iridescence, casting long shadows across the vast forges, laboratories, armouries and soul mills of the fabricating ring.
Beautiful, in its own way, Zephacleas thought. Even so, he wished he were elsewhere. His brother Stormcasts were at war in the Mortal Realms, fighting to throw back the servants of the Ruinous Powers. But of the Stormhosts chosen to assail Ghyran, the Astral Templars had been held back in reserve. Soon, though, they would be called forth to wreak Sigmar’s vengeance on the Ruinous Powers and all of their twisted followers.
Zephacleas looked forward to it. He had a taste for war and longed for the clangour of battle. It had awoken old memories in him, and stirred the ashes of the man he had once been, before Sigmar had brought him to Azyr. The same had been true of them all, he thought, from the mighty Vandus Hammerhand to the quiet Gardus, Lord-Celestant of the Hallowed Knights.
Gardus, he thought, with a smile. He shook his head. The Steel Soul was the best of them. In him was a devotion to duty that far outstripped that of any other Stormcasts save perhaps that of Ionus Cryptborn himself. He wished him glory wherever Sigmar had chosen to send him.
Gardus had been left out of the assault on Aqshy, much to his disappointment. The Hallowed Knights had yet to be blooded, and when their Warrior Chambers had been selected to take part in the assault on the Jade Kingdoms, Zephacleas had seen the uncertainty in Gardus’s eyes. As if he and his men would not live up to Sigmar’s trust.
It was an uncertainty that he himself had felt before his first taste of battle. He remembered the moment that silence had fallen across Sigmaron the day the war had begun. The clanging, grinding din that had been so much a part of the daily fabric had stilled, as the great forges and mills had ceased all labour. It had been as though they were holding their breath, waiting for some long and hoped-for moment. And then, into that grim silence, had come a sound. A lone bell tolled. It was a doleful, soul-aching sound, and it had carried the length of every great avenue and into every barracks and vault, reaching every straining ear in the Celestial City. The mournful toll had echoed off each of the vast pillared structures and swelled to fill the empty plazas until it too at last faded into silence.
Then had come the booming clap of thunder that signalled the opening of the Gates of Azyr and the beginning of the war. Zephacleas had is first texperience of real fighting – not merely training in the gladitorium or orruk hunting in the wilds of Azyrheim – in the assault upon the Brimstone Peninsula after the Hammers of Sigmar had taken the Igneous Delta. He found that he had a taste for it.
Zephacleas flexed his hands, clad in their gauntlets of sigmarite. With hammer and sword, he had cut down Chaos-twisted Aqshian tribesmen and lumbering khorgoraths alongside the Stormhosts of his brethren. He and his Warrior Chamber had fought their way across the Brimstone Peninsula before returning to the celestine vaults so his warriors could heal. There, Zephacleas attended a war council with the other chamber leaders of the Stormhosts and learned how the cloying presence of Chaos had twisted many of the realmgates. His fellows had spoken of sentient flames that burned on the Bridge of Fire and the streams of contagion that burst forth from the archway to the five gates of Ghyran. It was as if the very fabric of reality itself were under assault. The Ruinous Powers waged war on the Mortal Realms.
To Zephacleas, all of this was merely proof that Sigmar had been right to cast the Stormhosts into battle when he had. Battle had been joined and would only end in victory or death.
‘As it should be,’ he said out loud. The Stormcasts had been forged for war, and were ready for whatever awaited them beyond the Gates of Azyr.
The sound of his voice was swallowed by the vastness before him. Stars pinwheeled about the fraying edges of swirling nebulas and shimmering galactic coronas – it was a sea of colour and light, but eerily silent and stretching into an impossible infinity.
He’d never truly understood Gardus’s fascination with the precipice of the Sigmarabulum, and what lay beyond, but he had to admit that the sight was soothing in its way. He laughed. Soothing, yes, and also invigorating. Here was the sum totality of existence, wrought upon celestial canvas and laid out for his eyes. There was a chill beauty to it, but also a ferocity – the stars lived and fought and died even as men. Brief flickers of light against the dark, soon forgotten, but always replaced.
And if that does not describe the Stormcast, I do not know what does, he thought.
No, Zephacleas. Never forgotten. Never that, a voice rumbled in his mind. It was a warm voice, but powerful, like a summer storm. Nonetheless, Zephacleas found himself bowing beneath its weight.
‘My lord Sigmar – is it time?’ he asked, fighting to hide the eagerness in his voice. The question was moot. Sigmar would not have deigned to speak with him unless the need was great. ‘Are we to be cast once more into battle?’
Yes, Zephacleas. The Astral Templars are needed.
Sigmar’s voice echoed through his skull like the peal of a bell, shaking him down to his marrow. The God-King spoke with the voice of the heavens themselves, and in his words could be heard the roar of comets, the hum of nebulae, and the endless echo of the black between the stars.
‘Where, my lord, the Greenglades? The City of Branches?’ he asked, wondering which of his brother Stormcasts was in need of aid. Where in the Jade Kingdoms would Sigmar cast his thunderbolt? Wherever it was, it was long past time, Zephacleas thought. He’d had enough of quiet contemplation. Now he wanted a fight.
The Ghyrtract Fen. The Hallowed Knights are beset by an enemy far beyond them.
An image filled Zephacleas’s mind – he saw figures in shining armour confronted by something massive and foul, the sight of which filled him with an icy dread. This was no brute monster or champion, swollen by the power of its fell god, but a shard of a god itself. A creature beyond any single Stormcast, Lord-Celestant or not.
‘I am on my way, my lord. The Astral Templars shall not fail you,’ Zephacleas said, pushing himself to his feet. He rose smoothly, despite the weight of his armour. Helmet under his arm, and hammer in hand, he turned back towards the magnificent halls of Sigmaron. He could smell death in the air, but whose he could not say.
Hold on my friend. I am coming.
Chapter Three
Where strides Bolathrax
Gardus knew what the beast was the moment it revealed its full bulk, though he’d never seen one before. Great Unclean One, he thought. Sigmar guide me, and lend me strength. ‘Steady,’ he said, glancing to either side. A murmur of uncertainty swept the ranks of the retinue behind him. It fell to him to see that it went no farther. ‘Hold your positions.’
The greater daemon of Nurgle was an imposing sight, perched atop the stone steps. Rippling folds of fat marked its wide frame, and its flesh was by turns stretched tight or else torn and oozing, exposing the foulness within. Swollen entrails spilled from these ragged canyons, dripping bile and tarry blood upon the stones. Immense pustules flowered at its joints, and boils shiny with poison decorated its leering countenance and flabby chest like gaudy jewellery. Its sloping head was little more than a lump upon its shoulders, and two great antlers of stained and stinking bone rose from the sides of its skull. Tatters of spoiled meat hung from the horns, flapping like obscene battle standards as the creature swayed and laughed. It wore a rust-pitted pauldron and spaulder on one arm, as well as a ragged hauberk of grimy mail, which gaped over its belly, and it clutched a gigantic, filth-encrusted chain-headed flail in one hand.
‘Form up,’ Gardus boomed, fighting back a wave of nausea. The thing was every foul thought given form, and he felt sick just being in its vicinity. A nearby Liberator staggered, vomit spewing from the mouthpiece of his mask. Gardus caught him and helped him stand.
‘Easy,’ he murmured. The man began to speak, to try and explain himself, but Gardus silenced him with a shake of his head. ‘There is no shame in it,’ he said softly. ‘Take your place in line, Stormcast.’ He turned as the reverberations of the word shivered out into a hum. A black cloud rose from the tree line – flies, he realised. More of them spilled out of the archway, and even erupted from the diseased flesh of the daemon.
‘By the realm celestial,’ he muttered, as the clouds of flies wove together, coalescing about the Great Unclean One’s antlered head. ‘Form up, on me,’ he roared out, striking his weapons together. Lightning snarled at the point of impact. ‘Fall back and form up. Hold the line, whatever else comes through that stinking portal.’
Around him, the Steel Souls hastened to obey, pulling back from the corrupted stone idols and the archway. Gardus grunted in satisfaction as he heard his command repeated up and down the line of retinues by his subordinates. Feros and the others could be counted on to do as he ordered, without hesitation.
‘Form up, form up… so disciplined,’ the daemon rumbled. ‘Like a row of children’s toys, lined up neatly for Bolathrax’s amusement, ready to play.’ The great horned head tilted, and the bulging eyes fixed on Gardus. ‘But this is not a game you can win, whelp. If I were you, I would run home and tell my god that this place belongs to another.’
The daemon’s eyes burned into his own. For a moment, he felt a terrible heat, as if he’d been struck by a fever. Then came a terrible tugging sensation, as if long fingers were stirring through his thoughts, and plucking out those of interest. He saw the rows of cots, upon which moss-lepers and flux sufferers lay in agony. He felt weak, and heard the screams as the invaders crested the wall and entered Demesnus Harbour… he almost stumbled where he stood, but the strange sensations faded almost as quickly as they’d come. Bolathrax grunted.
‘Tough mite, strong… stronger than I expected. The quality of your essence has much improved since last we met.’
‘We have never met, beast,’ Gardus said. He knew, even as he spoke, that he shouldn’t bandy words with the daemon. It was a lie made flesh. But something, some nagging urge, compelled him on. ‘I think I would remember one as ugly as you.’
His words echoed across the clearing, and Bolathrax leaned forward, eyes narrowed. A slow smile crept across the daemon’s blubbery face as the ranks of Hallowed Knights began to ring with the sound of hammers striking shields. The slow, steady rhythm drowned out the humming buzz of the daemon’s arrival, and for a moment, Gardus thought that the noise alone might drive the creature back into whatever hell had spawned it. But instead, it shook its head like a disappointed parent.
