War storm, p.2
War Storm, page 2
A trumpet clarioned, and Calanax echoed it with a shrilling cry of its own, but even the usually strident notes of the Hammerhand heraldor were robbed of clarity by the miasma.
‘My lord…’ muttered a Stormcast, Baered, shoulder to shoulder with his brothers in the shieldwall and advancing slowly. ‘Do you see that?’
Vandus saw it well enough, and nodded grimly. Apparitions had begun to coalesce in the fog. At first they were indistinct, mere wisps of cloud that struggled to hold their corporeality, but they quickly changed, anthropomorphising into souls long dead and cruelly brought back.
Every man beheld a different form: a wife, a daughter, a son. The only thing the apparitions had in common were that they were dead, nothing more than revenants whose only purpose was to torment.
And they were not silent.
Centuries ago, Vandus had been Vendell Blackfist, a blacksmith chief and tribesman. He had lost everything to Chaos, his entire people. Every one of them returned to haunt him now, their bile-yellow figures made manifest in the fog. Though he knew them all, these were not the men and women of his former life but spirits formed from bitter memory who meant to harm.
Help us…
Kill us…
Betray us…
Vandus quickly shut his mind to them, and urged his warriors to do the same.
‘Have the courage to banish these unquiet devils.’
The shieldwall clenched closer, as if withered by the onslaught of the spirit host.
How Vandus wished Ionus Cryptborn were with them now.
A spectral hand reached for him… his dead wife, with the ghostly figures of his sons cowering at her feet. The mask held his emotions firm, but he wept behind the cold metal.
‘Begone…’ he rasped, voice trembling, but found his resolve. As he lashed out at the spirit forms, their aspect changed.
Talons grew in place of fingers, and the eyes of the once beloved became hollows in hundreds of fleshless skulls. As one, the spectral figures shrieked their final death cry and the shieldwall buckled as men fell to their knees or chased after illusory versions of their loved ones.
‘Hold firm!’ Vandus roared, reaching down from the back of Calanax to seize Baered by his gorget and haul him into formation. ‘Dacanthos,’ he cried, hoping his Prime could help restore order, but it was already too late.
The stench of blood rose in Vandus’s throat. The Bloodbound were here, warriors of the Goretide.
A guttural war cry ululated through the murk, echoing wildly so Vandus could not tell where it originated from. He barely parried the blow aimed at his neck, before Heldensen’s haft came to his rescue. The grunting brute, a bloodreaver, snarled at him and tried to carve through the hammer with his axe. Vandus kicked him hard to the ground. Then Calanax lurched forward and took off the bloodreaver’s head as he was still sprawled on his back.
Another ran in from the right and this time Vandus caught sight of the warrior and turned, crashing Heldensen down into the bloodreaver’s shoulder. Bone shattered as the hammer drove on into the warrior’s chest, spraying Vandus’s armour with gore.
More attacks flew in, not just against the Lord-Celestant but against all the Liberators in the broken shieldwall. It began sporadically at first, isolated clashes of blades, but grew in intensity.
Soon, a surge of brawny warriors in bloodstained metal and furs charge into the gilded throng of beleaguered Stormcasts. Some made it through the gaps in the Liberators’ line and began to cut down the Judicators. A few of Malactus’s men panicked, unleashing their skybolt bows heedlessly. Their Prime bellowed for them to cease as fellow Stormcasts were struck in error.
‘Dacanthos, reforge the shieldwall and protect Malactus’s retinue,’ said Vandus, as the Liberator-Prime appeared through the fog.
His armour rent and battered already, Dacanthos nodded wearily and ran back into the fight, hurling orders like they were spears to unite his warriors again.
Hundreds of skirmishes unfolded at once as Vandus fought in a sea of indistinct figures. Bellowing until he was hoarse, he managed to corral a small host together. They locked shields, an island of gold amidst an ocean of bloody red.
Vandus rode on into the miasma with Calanax, the beast clawing as his rider swung left and right with his hammer.
Hauling himself in with the reins, he drew close to the dracoth’s neck. ‘We must break up this assault, old friend, and give our comrades time to reorganise,’ Vandus told him, receiving a growl in reply. His eyes went skyward as he prayed for some sign of the returning Prosecutors, but the vile fog was too thick.
As he looked down again, something lumpen and horrific loomed out of the miasma. A khorgorath. It savaged a band of Liberators who had strayed away from their brothers, tearing down their defence as if it were parchment and not god-forged sigmarite. One of the warriors shuddered as the khorgorath’s bone tentacles impaled him. Another lost his head, swallowed down the beast’s grotesque gullet. Two more lost limbs, dying in crumpled heaps of blood-flecked gold before the storm reclaimed them.
The khorgorath bellowed in exultation.
Vandus had fought these beasts before. This one was as wretched as the others. Incarnadine skin wrapped around a muscular body. Its legs were thick and ended in hooves. Its arms ended in claws. The tiny eyes set in its tusked and horned skull betrayed the malice which drove the beast.
The filthy cloud seemed to retreat in the khorgorath’s presence, as if fearful to approach, or perhaps it parted so the beast could hunt all the easier. The thought that the fog might be sentient brought a tremor of unease to the Lord-Celestant, as did the sight of his warriors being slain so easily. It took an act from his dauntless mount to overcome it.
Calanax knew these abominations too. He spewed forth a gout of crackling storm breath at the khorgorath. The beast howled, engulfed by lightning. Calanax did not relent. Pulling against the reins, he galloped towards the khorgorath, his rage unceasing until the monster was nothing but charred meat.
It was only once the carcass had shrivelled to a blackened mess that Vandus realised his mistake. The dracoth’s unruly zeal had separated the Lord-Celestant from the rest of his chamber and now they were too far away. Silhouettes of his men were barely visible and, worse, they were dying. Lightning flashes broke amidst the fog, searing the image of the dead in frozen memorial before vanishing with an echoing crack.
Thunder rolled above, the God-King’s anger made manifest.
Knots of warriors were managing to band together; Vandus saw some lumbering blindly as they got close to him. Others fought alone. As the shieldwall broke apart, so did the martial coherency of the entire chamber. Heraldor Skythunder attempted to restore some order but a thrown axe struck his neck and he fell.
‘Mercy of Sigmar,’ Vandus breathed. And the thunder boomed in answer.
They were being slaughtered. Above the din of battle, he heard another sound like a fell humming. Belatedly, as he was about to turn Calanax around, he realised what it was.
Chanting.
Something else loomed from the sulphur fog, dredged from the hellish depths of the Realm of Chaos. A host of red-skinned daemons, snorting and spitting as they loped towards the Lord-Celestant on bent-back limbs.
Vandus felt the furnace heat coming off their bodies as the bloodletters closed, a ring of eight with black blades clenched in their wiry fists.
As the daemons bore down on him, Vandus heard the chanting intensify, coming not just from one throat but many. A ritual was taking place, a dark sacrifice that had brought these creatures into existence.
As the daemons sprang at him, Vandus swung Heldensen in a wide, looping arc. Three of the bloodletters were smashed back and discorporated in welters of dark ash before they could hit the ground. Calanax caught a fourth in his jaws and snapped its body clean in two. The dracoth reared up, trapping a fifth under his claws, then bellowed in pain as a hellblade bit through his scaled hide.
Vandus fended off a blow against his vambrace, but felt searing in his side as one of the bloodletters breached his armour. He crushed both their misshapen skulls with his hammer, before Calanax gored the last of the daemons with his horns.
But obscured by the fog, a second summoning of the bloodletters fell upon them, this time in droves.
‘Back, Calanax!’ Vandus cried urgently, realising, isolated as they were, that they would be overwhelmed.
The dracoth growled his agreement and retreated. All too quickly, the onrushing daemons that had been nought but shadows in the fog began to take form as they got close.
Their loping gait was unearthly fast, and Vandus realised with a sick feeling in his gut that he and Calanax would not escape the trap.
But they would die with honour.
The dracoth held its ground as Vandus bellowed his defiance at the daemon horde.
‘Sigmar! Glory to the God-King of Azyr!’
None knew what truly happened when a Stormcast died. Whatever his fate, Vandus resolved to meet it with fierce courage in his heart.
Dacanthos and a host of Liberators rushed to their Lord-Celestant’s side. Their shields locked just as the daemon horde reached them. Hell-wrought steel met Azyr-forged sigmarite and failed to breach it.
‘Part! Part the line, now!’
The Liberators responded at once to Dacanthos’s order, the shieldwall folding back in an inverted spearhead to let the daemons in.
Sagus and his waiting Retributors were arrayed behind the wall. They fell upon the bloodletters as the daemons barrelled through, and utterly destroyed them with their lightning hammers.
Overhead, Vandus heard flights of skybolts as the Judicators let loose.
Partial order had been restored. Under the leadership of its captains, the chamber had alloyed together again and forged towards their leader.
‘How, brother?’ Vandus asked Dacanthos in a brief moment of respite.
‘Your armour, Lord-Celestant,’ replied the Liberator-Prime. ‘It was our beacon.’
Only now did Vandus realise his war-plate had taken on a refulgent glow, as celestial light poured forth from every piece of it. The glory was fading now, but it had been enough to anchor his men and bring them back together.
Vandus raised Heldensen aloft in salute.
Thank you, Sigmar…
For who else could have intervened on his behalf?
With the daemons vanquished, the Sigmarund could be reformed. This time, Vandus took his place in the shieldwall with Calanax.
Despite the turn in fortune, the Bloodbound did not relent. Nor did the hellish fog lessen.
‘We are still fighting blind,’ said Sagus from the rear ranks.
‘Aye, and if anything, their numbers have swelled.’
A great broiling clash had erupted, hordes of bloodreavers and blood warriors driven to frenzy and hurling every ounce of fury they had against the Stormcast Eternals. Time and again, the shieldwall would fold, and the Retributors would attack and the Judicators let fly.
All the while, the chanting persisted, growing louder and more urgent with every passing moment. No further bloodletters came, but Vandus felt the oppression on his soul as he had in the Igneous Delta when the blood priest had called forth the Realm of Blood and Brass.
But this was something different, some manifestation that came from the very twisted nature of the land and how Chaos had corrupted it with its malign presence.
Something else was coming, invigorated by the slaughter.
Vandus knew he had to end the battle swiftly. His warriors needed to attack, but the blinding fog would render such a move suicide as they would be cut apart piecemeal again. Maintaining formation would ensure survival – but not if the Bloodbound sacrificed enough to Khorne to bring forth some hell-beast from the red pit.
Death or damnation lay in either choice.
As a blast of clarion trumpets broke through the clamour of battle, Vandus realised it was not his decision to make.
Kyrus had returned.
From the high vantage above the cloud, Prosecutors swept down in small flocks to unleash their celestial hammers against the Bloodbound.
As his warriors continued their harrying attacks, having cut a small swathe of open ground between the Bloodbound and their other Stormcast brothers, Kyrus landed nearby to speak to his lord.
‘Lord Hammerhand, it seems we have arrived back just in time.’
A pair of crackling hammers materialised in Kyrus’s gauntleted fists and he flung them at a clutch of bloodreavers who had tried to resume the close quarter crush.
Kyrus was joined by a host of his brethren who interceded against the Chaos horde so he could give his report.
‘I saw the miasma overhead as we returned. It clouds only you and your chamber, Lord Hammerhand.’
‘It follows us?’
‘Akin to a cloud of sulphurous flies, yes. I also saw something beyond the ridge, another Warrior Chamber.’ He turned as a trumpet sounded, the signal to take wing.
Lightning crackled across Kyrus’s gilded pinions as he arched his neck to the heavens.
‘Prosecutor,’ Vandus said quickly, knowing the prospect of reinforcement close by meant nothing if they failed here. ‘Fly high and turn back this cloud for us. Once our sight is returned, I shall order the attack and crush this vermin.’
Kyrus nodded curtly, leaving with his warriors and soaring aloft with peals of thunder.
As the Prosecutors departed, the Bloodbound rushed in again and the press of battle resumed. It did so only for a short while longer. Above, the storm rumbled and thunder broke heavily across the sky.
A tempest was born in the heavens, and it drove the poisonous fog away.
Above, Kyrus’s retinue were beating their celestial wings in concert. And as soon as Vandus could see the warrior-heralds through the rapidly dissipating sulphur cloud, he knew it was time.
‘Break ranks and attack!’ he yelled, Calanax rearing up in belligerent abandon.
The shieldwall split as the Liberators allowed the heavier armoured Retributors to come forth. Well-drilled Judicators moved to the flanks and loosed an endless enfilading arrow storm into the scattered rear ranks of the Bloodbound horde.
With the Retributors unleashed, the Liberators broke up into smaller warrior-bands and struck down any who had escaped the wrath of their brothers’ lightning hammers.
Riding at the speartip of the attack, Vandus spurred Calanax into a loping run. The dracoth’s ground-eating strides soon had them leading the charge. The Goretide warriors were still numerous but had been scattered by the sudden attack and disorientated by the disappearance of the fog.
Vandus saw the bodies of their dead, men he knew the Stormcasts could not have slain, and balked at the blood price Khorne’s worshippers were willing to pay for their lord’s favour.
One of the Skull Lord’s chieftains still clung to the hope that his dark master would avail them. But the shadow of the Realm of Chaos was fading, just as the sulphur clouds receded into nothing. Towers of brass and pyramids of skulls, the crimson rain of fury unbound and the brazen bellowing of daemons from beyond the veil; all became as smoke and echoes.
It had felt different to when the bloodsecrator had unleashed hell before the Gate of Azyr, but no less disturbing. Vandus would be glad to burn this patina of blood and violence from his armour.
He would begin with the chieftain.
From the back of Calanax, Vandus levelled his hammer at the brutal-looking warrior.
The dracoth quickly despatched the few followers the chieftain had left. Vandus then dismounted, his eyes never leaving his prey. Bellowing with fury, the chieftain came at the Lord-Celestant with a flanged maul.
Vandus parried his reckless attacks, before crushing the chieftain’s shoulder and disarming him. Calanax pounced, pinning him down.
‘Is this the graven image of your lord?’ asked Vandus with disgust, regarding a sigil burned into the chieftain’s chest. Tattered remnants of images persisted in the wake of the blood sacrifice, and Vandus found it hard to keep a rein on his anger. In his mind, he saw himself crushing the chieftain to pulp, grinding his bones and devouring his heart, rending his limbs and…
Vandus slowly closed his eyes and made his heart still. When he looked out again, he was calm and the blood rage had passed.
‘It is fell, indeed, isn’t it,’ spat the chieftain through red-rimed teeth. He rasped, finding it hard to breathe with his chest crushed beneath the dracoth’s claw. ‘Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows…’ he murmured, as a horrible gargle rose up from his throat.
Vandus glared at him. ‘Your warlord, the one known as Korghos Khul – does he yet live?’
Despite his fatal injuries, the chieftain laughed.
‘One such as he is not so easily killed,’ he said. ‘You seek a reckoning? He said you would.’
‘He is here?’ asked Vandus, his voice suddenly agitated. ‘Where?’
The chieftain laughed again, coughing up gouts of blood before he continued.
‘At the Red Pyramid, you will meet again,’ he said, growing more animated with every word. ‘Your severed head in his hands…’ blood foamed and frothed in his mouth, ‘…held aloft for the glory of–’
Calanax tore off his head and swallowed it down.
Vandus released the grip he had on Heldensen. His body trembled with anger, and he had not realised how tightly he was clenching the hammer’s haft.
Sack the Red Pyramid, and then defeat Khul. End him this time. It was as he had said to Ionus Cryptborn, and so it must be.
‘Gratitude, my friend,’ Vandus murmured, stroking the scales on the dracoth’s back and eliciting a rumbling growl from the beast.
