Wardens of the Everqueen Page 22

  Torglug raised his cleaver-like axe. The warlord favoured him with a mocking salute, gesturing with the filth-encrusted weapon as though to promise the Lord-Castellant that this time he would lose more than just his hand.

  Grymn heard the Lady of Vines raise her voice in a song of enchantment, the radiance of the queen-seed spilling from her outstretched hand and flowing across the trunks of her followers. This time the melody was harsh, rolling like the tramp of marching feet and the crash of war drums. The sylvaneth joined in her song and as their deep groaning voices rose, their bark began to darken, hardening into steely armour. The claws of the tree-creatures lengthened into spear-like talons, their branches sharpened into sword-like barbs. With an eerie unison, they closed around the Lady of Vines, surrounding her in a wall of arboreal fury. They would protect the queen-seed to the last, a living bastion against the enormity of the plaguehosts.

  Grymn ordered his warriors into formation, drawing up the Liberators to form a wall of sigmarite, grouping the Judicators where their skybolt bows could be concentrated into murderous volleys. The stamina and conviction of his Stormcasts would be tested sorely, for the enemy outnumbered them by several orders of magnitude.

  A lesser man would have been smothered beneath the burden of leadership in such grisly circumstances. The overwhelming enormity of the enemy, the frustrating closeness of their destination. These would have crushed even the noblest king with despair. It was not in Grymn’s nature to despair, however. The God-King Sigmar had brought him to this place. Grymn was the instrument Sigmar had chosen to lead His warriors into battle. This was all Grymn needed to know. Whatever courage and valour could accomplish here, the Stormcasts would see it done. Hallowed Knights and Knights Excelsior, they would stand before Torglug’s legion of daemons.

  ‘Only the faithful,’ Grymn whispered to himself. He looked across the ranks of his warriors, his brothers in arms. Raising his halberd aloft, he roared a wordless battle cry that echoed across the plateau.

  The Hallowed Knights repeated the battle cry of their Stormhost: ‘Only the faithful!’ The words rolled like thunder across the Blackstone Summit. The mortal warriors of Torglug’s legion drew back a pace, glancing anxiously at their warlord as the ferocity of the shout cracked against their ears.

  ‘For Sigmar!’ The cry filled the voices of the Knights Excelsior as well as the silver-clad Hallowed Knights. This time even some of the daemons drew back in anxiety.

  Grymn felt his heart swell with pride at the courage of his warriors. Whatever happened here, of one thing he was certain. The plaguehosts would not win this battle easily.

  Torglug laughed when he saw how few the sylvaneth and their meddlesome allies were. It almost seemed embarrassing to him that after the long search for Athelwyrd, the hunt through the Cascading Path, the numberless battles on the Sea of Serpents, that it should all end like this. Not that he had anything against a massacre – it just felt anticlimactic.

  Some of the plaguelord’s hubris faltered when the Lord-Castellant who led the motley assemblage of lightning-men and sylvaneth raised his halberd and shouted his battle cry. Torglug realised he should find such foolish defiance amusing rather than threatening, but he couldn’t still the trepidation that stirred in his gut. The rotworm nestled there was warning him against overconfidence.

  Torglug could feel the uncertainty that surged through the daemons and monsters around him. The stink of skaven fear-musk seeped into the air as the ratmen chittered in fright. He refused to share in their trembling. Like a rotten mountain, the champion of Nurgle stood unbowed and unconquered. He knew his hour had come. It only remained to teach the enemy how futile their resistance was.

  ‘Be killing their leader,’ Torglug snarled at Slaugoth Maggotfang. He pointed at the ranks of lightning-men. ‘From these fools be cutting out the heart.’

  The sorcerer raised his staff, words of power crawling onto his tongue. Like an arcane parasite, he drew upon the miasma of power exuded by Torglug’s blessing, weaving it into his own magic.

  Even as he began his incantation, Slaugoth’s spell faltered. The worms in his mouth retreated behind his teeth, curling up into little coils of fright. His eyes strayed upwards. Beyond the green fug of pollution rising from the plaguehosts, past the stony branches of the summit, storm-clouds swiftly gathered. Thunder growled and lightning flashed with divine ire. Stone branches were blasted asunder as a boiling lance of lightning came smashing down to strike Blackstone Summit. Chaos warriors and daemons howled in pain as hail came pelting down at them from above.

  The tremulous impact of the stormstrike shook the plateau as though it were in the grip of an enraged colossus. Thick smoke billowed from the impact crater, flaring embers shining within the black drift. Then, from behind the angry clouds above, a blinding light hurtled downwards.

  Smoke evaporated in that descending brilliance. As it cleared away, a mighty figure was revealed. It was the armoured shape of a lightning-man, great wings of light stretching out from his back, a golden halo framing the stern and unforgiving mask of his helm. In one hand the warrior gripped a long sceptre tipped with a fiery twin-tailed comet. In the other he bore a massive warhammer, its head engraved with runes of such arcane might that Torglug thought they would burn themselves into his eyes as he gazed upon them.

  Only the three Great Unclean Ones could bear to look upon the winged lightning-man. The rest of the daemons hissed in pain, turning their faces at the sight of the hammer the hero bore. Many of the nurglings squealed in agony and burst into foul puddles of slime and ichor simply from chancing to look upon the warhammer.

  Torglug had been disappointed to think the hunt for the Radiant Queen would end in a simple massacre. Now he regretted the arrogance that had made him look askance at the good fortune the plaguehosts had enjoyed so briefly.

  Grymn looked on in amazement as a twin-tailed fork of lightning smashed down in the space between the two armies. The mighty peal of thunder that roared across Blackstone Summit was unmistakably that of a stormstrike. For an instant he dared to believe that Sigmar had sent an entire Stormhost to reinforce them, that when the blinding flash faded from his visions he should see rank upon rank of stolid warriors arrayed against Torglug’s vile legion.

  Instead, what he saw was a single warrior. Engaged in conflict throughout the realms, the God-King’s resources were committed to the struggle against the Ruinous Powers on many fronts. To draw even a single warrior chamber out of battle would have been to jeopardise whole campaigns.

  Blazing wings of light supported the armoured warrior as he hovered above the plateau. Flickers of lightning snaked across his armour of blue and silver, the roaring lion sculpted upon his breastplate picked out in gold. The halo of golden spikes that framed his helm formed a solar nimbus around his head. In his left hand he held a mighty sceptre, celestial power pulsing through its enchanted sigmarite.

  Gripped in the hero’s right hand was a weapon mightier still. It was nothing less than the godhammer itself, Ghal Maraz, forged in the dim mists of time in the world that was. Now the God-King had entrusted the warhammer to his mightiest champion, the one hero worthy of such honour. The Hallowed Knights had heard rumours of such a hero, but never before had they beheld his awesome manifestation.

  The Celestant-Prime.

  Almost without realising what he did, Grymn fell to one knee and bowed towards the divine champion. Around him, he was dimly aware of the other Stormcasts doing the same. Hallowed Knights and Knights Excelsior, all were in awe of this legendary hero. None of them had felt the presence of Sigmar’s champion before, had experienced the divine aura that surrounded him and radiated from him with a fiery intensity. Grymn felt his heart gripped by a righteous wrath, the clarion call of justice and retribution. Many were the outrages and atrocities of Chaos, sins unnumbered that cried out for vengeance. The Celestant-Prime was that vengeance manifest, the great avenger who would set to
right the offences of the Ruinous Powers.

  As the Celestant-Prime turned the stern visage of his helm towards the plaguehosts, he raised Ghal Maraz high. The heavens themselves roared in answer, booming with divine rage. He glared at the sea of daemons and monsters that had flocked to the banner of Torglug the Despised. For the Stormcasts and sylvaneth, his avenging presence carried the promise of triumph. For the pawns of Nurgle, it held only the inevitability of destruction.

  Chapter twelve

  Long had Tornus struggled against the malign might of Nurgle. He’d led his people again and again onto the field of battle. By the score, by the hundred, by the thousand his armies had diminished. The noble dead, lying upon a field of honour, fighting to the last to turn back the fiends of Chaos. The cowards who fled, seeking to hide from the invader and preserve their own worthless lives. Most vile of all, however, were the traitors, those who abandoned hearth and home to bow before the abominations of the Plague God.

  Tornus fought through the bleak tarns and across the desolate moors. In the fog-shrouded forests and in the craggy hills, he met the enemy with axe and sword. Battle upon battle, he led the tribes, pitting mortal flesh and mortal courage against all the monstrosities born of Nurgle’s diseased corruption. Daemons and beastkin, sorcerers and mutants, all had been set loose against the steadings of his people. One after another the villages burned. One after another the castles were torn down. One after another the temples were defiled.

  The tribes lost heart as the legions of Nurgle claimed victory after victory. They cried out to the gods for deliverance, prayed for mercy from the divinities that had watched over their people since the dim ages of myth. The only answer was silence, the cold indifference of oblivion.

  Time after time, Tornus led his people into battle against the forces of Chaos, until, in the end, he was the only one left to fight. The only one who still dared to hope that the gods would not abandon them.

  Outrage boiled in the bloated body of Torglug the Despised. When he saw the shining figure descend with the lightning strike, he at first thought Sigmar Himself had come to Blackstone Summit to take the field of battle. He thought the God-King was personally intervening to preserve the queen-seed and its guardians. Bitterness welled up inside him, a spiteful rage that eclipsed any fury he’d ever known before. Sigmar had left nations to be destroyed and enslaved, forsaken entire peoples to the cruelties of Chaos, abandoned even the most innocent to the savageries of beasts and daemons. Torglug had presided over the slaughter of kingdoms, yet Sigmar had failed to rescue so much as a single life. For the God-King to reveal Himself now was an insult to all Torglug’s victims.

  The warlord’s massive gut rolled in amusement when he realised his mistake. The figure who hovered before him was no god, only another of Sigmar’s lightning-men. Torglug should have known the God-King wouldn’t show Himself, staying safe behind the fastness of Azyr while others fought and died in His name.

  Sapphire flame blazed from the head of the sceptre the winged champion bore as he raised it high. Far overhead, in the swirling storm-clouds, a shimmering light appeared. Swiftly the light grew in size and intensity, plummeting down through the heavens. A fiery ball of celestial fury crashed into the sea of diseased daemons, immolating scores of plaguebearers in a blinding flash of annihilation. As the deafening clamour of the impact shuddered across the plateau, another sound rose to overwhelm it.

  ‘Only the faithful!’ The battle-cry of the lightning-men was like a clap of thunder. The silver warriors surged forwards, weapons and shields held before them as they charged across the plateau. At their head was the warlord Torglug had fought on the ice, the blade of his halberd shining in the glow of the Celestant-Prime’s blazing wings. Across from the silver warriors, the white-armoured lightning-men shouted their own battle-cry as they swept out to strike the plaguehosts on their left flank.

  Inspired by their winged hero’s arrival, the lightning-men were committing themselves to the attack, charging into the plague horde. Torglug scowled behind the rusted mask of his helm. He had savoured the notion of dismantling the tiny retinue that clung to the Lady of Vines. He’d relished the vision of plucking Alarielle’s soulpod from the branchwraith’s dead clutch, of trampling the carcasses of her defenders underfoot as he celebrated his triumph. The last thing he’d expected was that these fools would have the temerity to steal the initiative away from him. The absurdity of it caused his swollen gut to roll with laughter.

  Raising his blackened axe high, Torglug bellowed to his followers. ‘Be killing them all!’ The cry was both command and threat.

  Mortal and daemon alike, those who marched under the decayed banner of Torglug understood that the warlord would spare none who failed him in this battle.

  In a seething, bubbling wave of corruption and decay, the plaguehosts rushed forwards to meet the oncoming lightning-men.

  Grymn brought his halberd shearing through the horned helm of a Chaos warrior, splashing the barbarian’s brains across the shield of his comrade. The foeman raised a flanged mace to retaliate, but Grymn’s blade struck down the second warrior as readily as the first, punching through both shield and breastplate to leave the enemy impaled. He shook the dying warrior free, casting his body into the howling mass of madmen and monsters. Each blow he visited against the enemy was delivered with righteous fury. Now that the Hallowed Knights were in battle with the minions of Nurgle once more, his warding lantern crackled with energy. An echo of Alarielle’s radiance glowed from the lamp, a nimbus of green light that shone about Grymn like a beacon to both friend and enemy alike. Stormcasts rallied to his side, drawn by the jade light. Tallon snapped at the foe with frenzied viciousness. Daemons and Chaos warriors converged upon him, lured by the eerie luminance.

  Inspired by the presence of the Celestant-Prime, Grymn fought with a ferocity unmatched by any of the diseased disciples of Chaos. That Sigmar would dispatch His mightiest champion to aid them in their moment of greatest need was a blessing beyond measure in the Lord-Castellant’s mind. To him it was vindication of his leadership over the Hallowed Knights since the fall of Lord-Celestant Gardus. All of his uncertainty, all of the doubts about the choices he’d made and the paths he’d taken, had been extinguished the moment he’d seen Sigmar’s living avatar emerge from the stormstrike. His efforts had brought his warriors to this place, his protection had kept the Lady of Vines and her sacred charge safe until this moment. He had achieved all it was possible to achieve. Now the God-King would help them to reach their journey’s end.

  Torglug’s obscene throng was far from defeated, however. Rot flies swept down from the green miasma overhead to assault the sylvaneth formation. The foul daemons were ripped out of the air by the defiant tree-creatures, impaled upon arms that were like pikes and mangled by rending talons of wood and thorn. The immense Haldroot caught one of the bloated monstrosities in his hands, squeezing it in a tremendous grip until the abomination burst like a rancid pustule. Such injuries as the aerial attackers visited upon the sylvaneth began to mend almost immediately, torn bark knitting together as the energies of the queen-seed swirled around them. Above it all, the warlike song of the Lady of Vines sounded.

  The Knights Excelsior were charged by a troop of grotesque Chaos knights, their armour pitted with rust and decay, their steeds branded with obscene runes. As the riders ploughed towards the Stormcasts, Giomachus lifted himself into the air above his warriors. Blazing arrows flew from his bow, striking down several of the foremost riders while his star-eagle shot forwards to claw the face of the leading knight. The charge faltered as the riders following behind stumbled upon the bodies of their own fallen comrades. Before they could regain the impetus of their attack, Giomachus ordered the white-armoured line forwards, rushing at the diseased knights with hammer and sword. Judicators from the Knights Excelsior sent a volley of sigmarite arrows searing down into the routed cavalry as they tried to flee.

  As the Ha
llowed Knights smashed their way through the motley assemblage of marauders and plaguebearers that hurled themselves upon the Stormcasts, new enemies swarmed forwards. A fume of poison billowed across the formation of Liberators as the grotesque ratmen scurried to the attack, pushing their rotten carriage ahead of them. The noxious cloud boiling from the swinging censer smothered several of the valiant warriors, seeping inside their sigmarite armour to choke the men within. The skaven were swift to leap into the gap their insidious weapon created, chittering and squeaking with despicable glee.

  Grymn swung around to meet the skaven surge. His halberd slashed and chopped at the fiendish vermin, cutting them down like weeds. A driving blow from his blade hacked through an entire file of the creatures, tearing through their mangy fur and rotten robes. The ratkin who found themselves pitted against him squealed in fright, their eyes round with terror, but the pressure of their own frenzied comrades pushing at their backs forced them forwards. Black ratkin blood steamed against his armour and his boots slogged through a morass of skaven dead, yet still the monsters came.

  A white-furred ratman arrayed in leathery robes appeared before Grymn, thrusting at him with a notched sword and a curved dagger that dripped with arcane poisons. Flecks of foam dripped from the plague priest’s fangs and its beady eyes gleamed with bestial frenzy. It slashed and hacked at him with inhuman speed and craven cunning. When Grymn parried a feint of its sword, the rat-chief would stab at him with its envenomed dagger, gouging his sigmarite plate as the enchanted poison burned the metal. Tallon flung itself at the crazed ratman, but the vermin struck the gryph-hound down with a swat of its blade, leaving the creature stunned and bloodied on the ground.

  The larger conflict raging around Grymn faded to the edge of his awareness as his fury fixed itself on the skaven leader. In strength and skill, the vermin was laughably outmatched by the Stormcast, but its devilish nimbleness and contemptible dearth of scruples rendered it more dangerous than a more refined opponent. Its long, scaly tail slapped at his legs, trying to trip him and leave him vulnerable to the creature’s blades. Spittle flew from the ratman’s mouth, spattering across the mask of Grymn’s helm as the skaven tried to blind him.