Wardens of the Everqueen Read online

  ‘This night!’ Vandus cried, and his words swelled and filled the gulf before him. ‘This night, we open gates long closed.’

  The host fell silent, rapt, knowing these would be the last words they heard before the void took them.

  ‘This night, we smite the savage,’ Vandus said. ‘This night, we smite the daemon. We cross the infinite. We dare to return to the realms of our birthright.’

  Ten thousand golden helms looked up at him. Ten thousand fists gripped the shafts of warhammers. The Liberators, the greater part of the mighty host, stood proudly, arrayed in glistening phalanxes of gold. All of them had once been mortal, just as he had been, though now they bore the aspect of fiery angels, their mortality transmuted into majesty.

  ‘The design of eternity brought you here,’ Vandus said, sweeping his gaze across the sea of expectant faces. ‘Fate gave you your gifts, and the Forge has augmented them a hundredfold. You are the foremost servants of the God-King now. You are his blades, you are his shields, you are his vengeance.’

  Amid the Liberators stood the Retributors, even more imposing than their comrades, carrying huge two-handed lightning hammers across their immense breastplates. They were the solid heart of the army, the champions about which the Legion was ordered. Slivers of pale lightning sparked from their heavy plate, residue of a fearsome, overspilling power within.

  ‘You are the finest, the strongest, the purest,’ Vandus told them. ‘In pain were you made, but in glory will you live. No purpose have you now but to bring terror to the enemy, to lay waste to his lands and to shatter his fortresses.’

  On either flank stood the Prosecutors, the most severely elegant of all the warriors there assembled. Their armour was sheathed in a sheer carapace of swan-white wings, each blade of which dazzled in its purity. Their spirits were the most extreme, the wildest and the proudest. If they were a little less steadfast than their brothers, they compensated with the exuberance of flight, and in their gauntlets they kindled the raw essence of the comet itself.

  ‘We are sent now into the heart of nightmares,’ said Vandus. ‘For ages uncounted this canker has festered across the face of the universe, extinguishing hope from lands that were once claimed by our people. The war will be long. There will be suffering and there will be anguish, for we are set against the very legions of hell.’

  Besides Vandus stood the great celestial dracoth, Calanax, his armoured hide glinting from the golden light of the hall. Wisps of hot smoke curled from his nostrils and his long talons raked across the crystal floor. Vandus had been the first to tame such a beast, though now others of his breed were in the service of the Stormhost. The dracoth was the descendant of far older mythic creatures, and retained a shard of their immortal power.

  ‘But they know us not. They believe all contests to be over, and that nothing remains but plunder and petty cruelties. In secrecy have we been created, and our coming shall be to them as the ending of worlds. With our victory, the torment will cease. The slaughter will cease. We will cleanse these worlds with fire, and consign the usurpers back to the pits that spewed them forth.’

  As he spoke, Vandus felt the gaze of his fellow captains on him. Anactos Skyhelm was there, lean and proud, master of the winged host. Lord-Relictor Ionus, the one they called the Cryptborn, remained in the margins, though his dry presence could be sensed, watching, deliberating. If the lightning-bridge was secured, those two would be at the forefront, marshalling the vanguard to take the great prize – the Gate of Azyr, locked for near-eternity and only unbarred by the release of magics from both sides of the barrier.

  And yet, for all their authority, only one soul had the honour of leading the charge. The God-King himself had bestowed the title on him – Lord-Celestant, First of the Stormhost.

  Now Vandus raised both hands, one holding Heldensen aloft, the other still clenched tight. His weapon’s shaft caught the light of crystal lamps and blazed as if doused in captured moonlight.

  ‘Let the years of shame be forgotten!’ he declared. ‘The fallen shall be avenged and the Dark Gods themselves shall feel our fury!’

  The glittering host below clashed their hammers against their heavy shields before raising the weapons in salute and acclamation. The entire vault filled with the fervour of voices raised in anticipation.

  ‘Reconquest begins, my brothers!’ Vandus roared, feeding on their raw potency. ‘This night, we bring them war!’

  A great rumble ran across the floor of the hall, as if the earth were moving. Arcs of lightning began to snap and writhe across the golden walls of the vault. The sigil of the comet blazed diamond-­clear, throwing beams of coruscation across the hall’s immense length. Something was building to a crescendo, something massive.

  ‘This night,’ Vandus cried, glorying in the full release of the divine magic, ‘we ride the storm!’

  A huge boom shook the chamber, running up from the foundations to the high roof. The howl of thunder-born wind raced through the hall, igniting into white flame as it reached the full pitch of extremity. The golden ambient light exploded, bursting out from every part of the walls, the arched roof and the glistening floors, and lightning came with it in beams as thick as a man’s arm.

  There was a second rolling boom and the space between the walls was lost in a maelstrom of argent fire. The world reeled, as if thrown from its foundations, and the sharp tang of ozone flared, bitter and pungent.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, the lightning snapped out, the brilliance faded and the winds guttered away. The hall remained, suffused with a glimmering haze of gold, still lit bright by the light of the comet-sigil.

  Only now the marble floor was empty. No voices remained, no warriors stood in ranks – nothing but the receding echoes of the colossal detonation lingered, curled like smoke across the walls of gold.

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  First published in Great Britain in 2016.

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