Wardens of the Everqueen Page 24

  Just as Grymn fought his way through a warherd of pestilent gors and found his path to the Great Unclean Ones clear, the slobbering laughter of the daemons died away. He could see the horned monsters turning their heads from side to side, trying to spot the Celestant-Prime’s battered body as it came crashing back to earth. When no such vision rewarded their search, the fiends craned their fat necks back and stared up at the storm-swept sky.

  From those turbulent heavens, a winged shape appeared, darting down out of the clouds. Only for a heartbeat did Grymn mistake the figure for that of the Celestant-Prime; he quickly realised it was in fact Giomachus. His white armour gleaming with the lightning of the storm, the Knight-Venator hurtled downwards. He had an arrow nocked, his powerful arms holding the weapon taut against the winds that buffeted his plunging form. Lower and lower he descended, his aim never wavering. At last, the archer took his shot.

  One of the greater daemons howled in agony as its leprous eye was pierced by a blazing arrow. Purifying magics surged from the star-fated arrow, pulsing through the obscene corruption of the daemon’s bulk. The Great Unclean One wailed and writhed, pawing towards its brother daemons in search of aid. Still calling to its brothers, the bloated daemon began to dissolve, its horrible essence collapsing under the purging force of the arrow. Soon all that was left of the monstrosity was a pond of bubbling muck and slime.

  Other winged warriors dived down through the storm. Grymn could see his old comrade Tegrus, a hammer gripped in each hand. He dropped down towards the Great Unclean Ones, casting his crackling hammers into one of the swollen abominations. After him came the rest of the Prosecutors Grymn had sent to scout Blackstone Summit. They had seen the stormstrike from which the Celestant-Prime descended, and now they were lending their strength against the obscenities that had attacked Sigmar’s champion.

  Trying to drag the Prosecutors from the sky with gouts of acidic vomit, Guthrax brought himself nearer to Grymn’s vengeful blade. Despite the hideous stench and sight of his enemy, regardless of the festering aura of sickness and death that swirled about the daemon, Grymn lunged at the putrid bulk. Shouting the war cry of the Hallowed Knights, he swung his halberd into the monster’s knee.

  Sludge oozed from the wound Grymn visited against his foe. Guthrax’s bulk shuddered under the halberd’s bite. As the hulking daemon swayed around, he brought his flail crashing against the earth. Grymn dodged the pulverising smash of the hideous weapon. Lifting his warding lantern, he shone the holy light full up into the blemished eyes of his abominable foe.

  Guthrax roared in agony, blinded by the divine light. Furious, he leaned downwards, trying to seize Grymn in a flabby claw. The Lord-Castellant braced himself. ‘Only the faithful,’ he vowed as he saw his opportunity. Firming his grip about the haft of his halberd, he thrust upwards with the weapon. Rotten flesh parted before the blade as he drove it deep into the Great Unclean One’s breast and impaled the diseased triple heart that throbbed within the obscene enormity.

  Grymn ripped his weapon free and withdrew from his stricken foe. With a slobbering groan, the abominable bulk of Guthrax slammed face-first into the dirt. A final shudder and the daemon’s vitality abandoned his rapidly decaying carcass.

  Grymn had no time to savour his triumph. A powerful blow sent him tumbling across the ground. Flat on his back, he looked up as the last of the Great Unclean Ones came waddling towards him, its blackened sword raised for a killing blow.

  Before the daemon could strike, something flashed down from the sky above. Grymn felt his spirit soar as the Celestant-Prime hurtled back to the fray. Sigmar’s champion was returning to the battlefield. His wings seemed as if they were threads of lightning. His armour looked as though it were sheathed in flame. The head of Ghal Maraz burned with the brilliance of the sun, blinding in its majesty.

  The Great Unclean One followed Grymn’s gaze. It was afforded the merest glimpse of its own doom in the instant before Ghal Maraz struck it down. Supercharged in the middle of the storm, the godhammer’s impact evaporated the daemon’s horned head, reducing it to naught but a steaming sizzle of pollution. The decapitated monster slammed down, decaying with the same intensity as the corpses of its brothers. The Celestant-Prime hovered above the vanquished abomination, his blazing wings fanning the air.

  Shrieks of panic rose from the surviving daemons. With Guthrax and its kin destroyed, without the bindings of Slaugoth’s magic to hold them, the plagued throng began to dissipate, receding into the shadows rather than face the wrath of the Celestant-Prime.

  Grymn looked up at the victorious hero, but already the Celestant-Prime was in motion. His fight with the daemons had been brief, but in even so slight a delay, the powers of darkness had been active. While they were destroying the Great Unclean Ones, the Stormcasts had presented an opportunity for their enemy to snatch a still greater victory from them.

  Once there had been a great hero named Tornus, warrior-­guardian of the Everdawn tribe, defender of the Lifewell upon which the very existence of his people had depended. He had been heralded as a scion of human perfection by his people, worshipped as an aspirational paragon to inspire the dreams and ambitions of king and druid alike. The desires of Tornus had been neither for wealth nor for glory. Improvement, the achievement of a greater and purer kind of perfection: this had been the vision that ruled his heart.

  When the plaguehosts descended upon his people, Tornus had fought them to the very last. He had endured within the Pit of Filth, surviving upon the basest and barest of essentials. For a time, he had continued to cling to his ideals, his vision of perfection of body and spirit. Within the pit, however, his flesh began to decay, his body corrupted and defiled. With the contamination of his flesh, seeds of despair were sown in his mind. Through that despair, his soul was enslaved by Nurgle. Tornus the hero became Torglug the Despised.

  In the depths of his hopelessness, Torglug reviled his old aspirations as naivety. There was no such perfection of body and soul as that which he had struggled to find. All a man could wrest from his existence was power. It was in might alone that a mortal exhibited his worth. Power, raw merciless force, was the only reality. Only through his capacity to conquer and destroy did a man prove his value to the gods.

  Such were the truths Nurgle whispered to Torglug as he fell into despair. How long he had lived by the diseased mantra of the Plague God, he couldn’t remember, but there were times, moments of doubt, when a flicker of the man he had once been stirred within him. In such moments he looked upon the bloated, ghastly horror he had become, considered the atrocities he had exacted as tribute to the very power that had inflicted this fate upon him. He recognised the stubborn pride that drove him on for the madness it was. He understood how low he had fallen.

  Seeing the Celestant-Prime, Torglug knew everything he’d been told was a lie. It was impossible to deny the majestic perfection of Sigmar’s champion as he struck out against the daemonic hosts of Nurgle. The aspirations that had stirred the heart of Tornus were possible. It would have been better for him to have perished in the Pit of Filth than to lose the hope that had once ennobled him.

  Torglug staggered back to his feet, his body blasted and broken by the comet hurled down upon him by the Celestant-Prime. The warlord’s physical injuries were nothing beside the doubt that roared through his spirit. His fealty to Nurgle flickered, withering before the divine might of the Celestant-Prime.

  The eye of Nurgle was yet upon His favoured champion, however, and He would not allow His slave to slip free of His domination so easily. The queen-seed was within Torglug’s grasp. All that was needed was a slight push, a tiny infusion of power, and the plaguelord would prevail.

  From the heavens, malignant power once again descended upon Torglug, but this time it was to strengthen rather than destroy. A bilious shower rained down upon him from the poisoned sky, a stream of toxic contagion that seeped into his corrupt flesh. Broken bones were infused w
ith abominable vitality and scorched skin hardened into leathery endurance. The thousand pains that wracked the warlord’s body were transformed into naked, brutal power, saturating his mind with images of carnage and destruction. Snatching his ghastly axe from the scorched earth, Torglug lifted his horned head and slobbered a renewed oath of fealty to his grisly god.

  Around Torglug, the putrid blightkings likewise rose from the dissolution that had threatened them. Wherever the spark of life lingered, the profane infection of Nurgle’s obscene baptism revived flesh and corrupted soul. A gibbous light shone from the eyes of the warlord’s entourage as they surged once more to the attack.

  The sylvaneth were before them, the wounds visited against them by Torglug’s first push regenerated by the healing radiance of the queen-seed. Limbs hacked away by the axes and swords of the blightkings had regrown, and bark gouged by the disciples of decay had knitted together. The decimated wargroves were restored, ready to defend the Lady of Vines and the sacred burden she bore.

  It was an eerie battle as Torglug drove his retinue against the sylvaneth. Flushed with the obscene power of Nurgle, the putrid blightkings were walking engines of destruction. The wounds caused by the forest spirits regenerated as swiftly as the cuts they dealt in return. Two unkillable forces locked in merciless battle. Haldroot seized Goregus in his gnarled hands, lifting the blightlord high before applying a tremendous pressure that threatened to rend the warrior to pulp. Goregus, even as his body was tortured out of any semblance of shape, hacked away at the treelord, stripping away slivers of heartwood that were restored the instant his blade pulled free.

  The malign might of Nurgle was invested too heavily in Torglug to be defied by the diminished energies of the Everqueen. Where Torglug’s axe struck the sylvaneth, a crust of corruption was left behind. Limbs shorn away by his blackened blade regrew as weak, twisted things, devoid of the strength to oppose him. While his bodyguard languished in futile conflict, Torglug was able to press on, driving a wedge deep within the ranks of the tree-creatures.

  At last the warlord found himself cutting down the file of dryads surrounding the Lady of Vines. A guttural laugh drooled from behind his horned helm as Torglug found himself alone with the branchwraith. His three eyes focused upon the radiant glow of the queen-seed she clutched in her hand.

  ‘That is mine,’ he hissed. ‘Too long are you keeping it from me. You are cheating me of my prize no longer!’

  Rushing forwards, Torglug brought his axe swinging around. The Lady of Vines expended some measure of her power, conjuring a web of thorns that erupted from the ground to ensnare her enemy. The vines wound about the warlord’s body, stabbing his flesh with their spines, but the impetus of his charge was barely blunted. He drove his swollen bulk through the thorns, defiant of the ruin wrought upon his body. This close to the prize he’d promised Nurgle, Torglug would not be denied.

  The filthy axe of the Treecutter slammed into the branchwraith, ripping deep into her trunk. The Lady of Vines slashed at him with her claws, but even with the power of the Radiant Queen to empower her assault, it wasn’t enough to overcome Torglug. Gloating, the plaguelord brought his axe hewing down once more, chopping into the crown of branches atop the Lady of Vines’ head. Lifesap sprayed from the grisly wound. Propelled by the infernal might that rippled through Torglug’s polluted frame, the axe dug deep, splitting the branchwraith’s head, gouging a ruinous cut down the middle of her visage.

  The Lady of Vines crumpled at Torglug’s feet. Down came the blackened axe once more, shearing through her arm and sending it rolling across the ground. Again the foul blade chopped into her, ripping through her trunk in a spray of gooey lifesap. Splinters of wood flew from her mangled body as the plaguelord hacked away at his beaten foe. All the frustration of his long hunt was visited upon the branchwraith. Each gash, each cut, was delivered with vengeance. When he had finished, the Lady of Vines had been reduced to a heap of kindling.

  Torglug bellowed with delight as he reached down to rip the glowing queen-seed from where it lay amid the hewn remains of the Lady of Vines.

  Before he could seize the prize Nurgle had coveted for so long, Torglug heard the rumbling fury of the remaining sylvaneth and the enraged shout of the surviving Stormcasts. Even as his pestilent fingers stretched down, doom descended upon Torglug the Despised.

  Storming from the sky, the Celestant-Prime dived upon the bloated warlord. Crackling with the vengeful wrath of the God-King, Ghal Maraz came hurtling downwards at Torglug. He raised his fell axe to parry the two-handed blow, but the iridescent fury of the avenging angel would not be denied. The warhammer shattered Torglug’s foul axe, exploding the weapon in a spray of black sorcery and rusted shards. Ghal Maraz drove onwards, its momentum unimpaired by the destruction of Torglug’s blade. The plaguelord’s horned helm shattered like an egg as the hammer crashed down upon it, the head within reduced to a mire of diseased pulp. A filthy miasma of green vapour spilled from the carcass, sizzling and steaming as it stained the earth around the body.

  Torglug slopped to the ground. From his ruptured head, a bright blue light leapt into the stormy sky, vanishing into the celestial tempest of Sigmar’s justice. A single peal of cosmic thunder boomed above Blackstone Summit. Nurgle’s favourite had found his doom.

  Lord-Castellant Lorrus Grymn led the last of the Hallowed Knights towards the broken husk that had been the Lady of Vines. Giomachus and the surviving Knights Excelsior maintained the battle line, falling back towards the ruined sylvaneth formations while keeping the remaining plague warriors at bay. The Celestant-Prime, after defeating Torglug, returned to the battle, hurling the awesome might of his vengeance against the enemy ranks.

  The sylvaneth stood around their lost leader, mourning her in their sombre fashion. Strangely, none of the tree-creatures had moved to take the queen-seed from the branchwraith’s hand. Instead they were forming into a defensive ring around the body of their fallen mistress. The great treelord Haldroot noted the approach of Grymn. There was a look of acceptance in the creature’s gaze now, a mark of respect for how keenly Grymn had tried to fight on their behalf.

  Grymn looked down upon the fading light of the queen-seed, and wondered whether Alarielle could ever be safe here. What if another and mightier plaguehost descended upon Blackstone Summit before her powers were replenished? Could the Ruinous Powers be defeated a second time?

  Grymn cast his questioning gaze across the faces of Lord-Relictor Morbus, Prosecutor-Prime Tegrus and all the other Hallowed Knights who had survived the long campaign. Tallon, limping to his master’s side, turned and growled at the battle yet raging on the plateau.

  The Lord-Castellant was happy to see his companion again, but he took more than comfort from the gryph-hound’s simple display of devotion and service. Tallon didn’t question the shadows of the future. For him, the demands of the moment were all that mattered.

  ‘Liberator-Prime Agrippa!’ Grymn called out. ‘Form a shield wall ahead of the sylvaneth! Judicators, take position at the flanks! Prosecutors, support the Knights Excelsior!’

  As his warriors hastened to carry out his commands, Grymn took his place among the Liberators, the light of his warding lantern shining upon them, reinvigorating them. This was their purpose, to defend the innocent against the ravages of Chaos. They would not stray from that purpose. For as long as Sigmar asked it of them, they would hold back the tide of darkness and keep safe the ember of hope than shone within the Everqueen’s soulpod.

  Victory was measured in moments, but enough moments bound together would build the future.

  About the Author

  C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax, the Age of Sigmar novella ‘Scion of the Storm’ in Hammers of Sigmar, the End Times novel Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The
Black Plague series. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the worlds of Warhammer 40,000 and the Age of Sigmar.

  An extract from The Gates of Azyr.

  They were gazing up at him – ten thousand, arrayed in gold and cobalt and ranked in the shining orders of battle. The walls around them soared like cliffs, each one gilt, reflective and marked with the sigils of the Reforged.

  Vandus stood under a dome of sapphire. A long flight of marble stairs led down to the hall’s crystal floor. Above them all, engraved in purest sigmarite, was the sign of the Twin-Tailed Comet, radiant amid its coronet of silver.

  This thing had never been done. In a thousand years of toil and counsel, in all the ancient wars that the God-King had conducted across realms now lost, it had never been done. Even the wisdom of gods was not infinite, and so all the long ages of labour might yet come to naught.

  He lifted his hand, turning the sigmarite gauntlet before him, marvelling at the manner in which the armour encased his flesh. Every piece of it was perfect, pored over by the artificers before being released for the service of the Eternals. He clenched the golden fingers into a fist and held it high above him.

  Below him, far below, his Stormhost, the Hammers of Sigmar, raised a massed roar. As one, they clenched their own right hands.

  Hammerhand!

  Vandus revelled in the gesture of fealty. The vaults shook from their voices, each one greater and deeper than that of a mortal man. They looked magnificent. They looked invincible.