Lord of Undeath Page 6
‘Advance!’ Makvar called out to his knights. The clatter of sigmarite armour became a dull rumble as the Stormcasts moved on the hill, surging towards it like a black tide of retribution. Those marauders and beastmen that had escaped the assault of Makvar’s dracoth and Kreimnar’s spells were now confronted by unyielding ranks of ebon knights. Retinues of Paladins emerged from gaps in the Liberators’ shield wall, charging into the confused mobs of barbarians with gigantic mauls and enormous axes. What followed was more massacre than melee, but after the carnage they had seen in the streets of Nulahmia, there were none among the Anvils inclined to offer the Slaaneshi honourable combat.
Inhuman shrieks and roars rattled down from the winding path above the Stormcasts. Makvar looked up to see a clutch of goat-headed monsters struggling to send a stone sepulchre from some hillside tomb crashing down upon the heads of the knights below. Judicators sent a flight of searing arrows up into the monsters, the lightning lancing through the fur and flesh of the beastmen. For each brutish corpse that went sliding down the slope, another half-human savage rushed out to take the place of the fallen. Just as it looked like the gors would send the sepulchre crashing downwards, a strike of celestial fire pelted them from above. The heavy slab of marble exploded as the elemental force slammed into it, slivers of stone ripping through those beastmen not slain outright by the blast.
By calling down the power of Sigmar’s wrath, Kreimnar destroyed one threat to the Stormcasts, but in doing so, he left opportunity for another. The barrage of lightning he’d invoked against the path ahead had been diverted against the beastmen, and mounted warriors were swift to exploit the respite. Huge knights on hideously mutated steeds came galloping out from the first bend of the switchback, levelling barbed lances and hooked spears as they charged downwards. Behind them, leaping and lunging with alluring abandon, was a pack of claw-armed daemonettes.
The sight of such merciless foes charging towards them would have strained the resolve of even the bravest mortal warrior. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer were more than mortal, however. They had transcended many of the limitations of mere flesh, their valour magnified to superhuman degree by their Reforging within the armouries of Sigmaron. Instead of dread, the Stormcasts felt a rush of expectancy, even eagerness to come to grips with their obscene enemies.
Makvar smiled behind the stern visage that fronted his helm. His ploy had worked. The Chaos commander had taken notice of the Stormcasts’ advance. The enemy was now sending some of his stronger warriors to assault the Anvils. When they vanquished the Chaos knights and daemonettes, the warlord would have to send more of his forces back down the hill – perhaps even some of those he was using to push his way to the summit. Every fighter the Stormcasts could lure down was one less blade trying to pierce Neferata’s defences.
Foot by foot, foe by foe, Makvar would cut his way up the Throne Mount.
Lascilion lifted the skeleton impaled upon his glaive high into the air. The undead myrmidon continued to slash at him, refusing to return to the grave its masters had called it from. The warlord leaned away from the struggling skeleton, keeping out of the reach of its sword. With a savage shake of his glaive, he dislodged the bony body and sent it hurtling down the hillside. He watched it for a moment, seeing different bones fracture and shatter as the creature tumbled down the slope. By the time it reached the Slaaneshi warriors on the path below, the skeleton had lost both its arms and one of its legs. The boot of a barbarian jarl crushed the snapping skull and extinguished the stubborn spark of animation that lingered in the dismembered husk.
The warlord’s steed slithered back, allowing some of the Amethyst Guard to move forwards and engage the fleshless defenders. Ancient spears scraped against their baroque armour in a futile effort to bring down the elite warriors. The blows from the jewelled axes and gilded swords of Lascilion’s bodyguard were far more telling, shearing through both iron mail and the bony limbs within.
Lascilion drew his mount upwards, unfolding its coils so that he might observe the battle raging both ahead and below. Before him, the undead maintained their stubborn defence, their numbers seemingly as vast as they had been at the start of the fighting. A few arrows flew at the warlord from archers deep behind the front ranks, taking advantage of his momentary exposure. The missiles glanced from his enchanted armour, and those that stabbed into his daemonic steed merely caused the beast annoyance, its unnatural flesh excreting them in a slime of ichor.
It wasn’t the archers that concerned Lascilion, nor the deathly magic of the necromancers who guided the skeletons. His worry was the vampire commander and the zombie dragon. So far, the pair had taken no direct role in the fighting. That worried Lascilion. He had fought vampires before, and though they could be as duplicitous and cunning as a Tzeentchian sorcerer, they weren’t known for timidity. The undead general was waiting for something. Try as he might, Lascilion couldn’t figure out what strategy his enemy had in mind.
Looking below, towards the foot of the hill, Lascilion could see the sable ranks of the lightning-men steadily gaining ground. He had sent a good portion of his reserves down the pathway to hold the knights back, yet the infusion of fresh troops hadn’t stopped their advance, merely slowed it. He felt a sense of both fascination and disgust at the formidable magic the dark warriors deployed against his horde – sheets of eldritch lightning drawn down from the heavens that blasted smouldering craters into the hillside and left even the stoutest formations shaken and mauled in their wake. The leader of these knights, himself mounted upon some manner of dragon-beast, wasn’t as shy of battle as the vampire general. He pressed the attack at every turn, bolts of lightning blasting out from his steed’s maw to cut through the Slaaneshi ranks, his own gleaming sword flaring out to claim any opponent bold enough to stand against him.
The Lord of Slaanesh grimaced, his forked tongue flickering in irritation. There was only one thing that could stop the advance of the lightning-men – an attack at their rear, something to put them on the defensive. Where was Mendeziron? Had the Keeper of Secrets become so lost in his perversity that he was defying even the Crying Tower’s profane Cup of Sorrows? Had the dominion of the lost god become so fractured that even his daemons no longer trembled before his authority?
A shrill horn blast sounded from among the lightning-men. The note was of such strange and pristine nature that Lascilion could feel it sting his ears. His daemon steed hissed its own irritation, offended by the noise. He clapped his hand against its wormy neck, trying to soothe its displeasure. The warlord had already forgotten his own discomfort. From his vantage, he could see why the lightning-men had sounded their horn. It was a call of alarm.
Lumbering out from among the burning buildings and ransacked palaces was the enormous figure of Mendeziron. The streets around the greater daemon teemed with his smaller kin, the infernal scavengers that had followed him through the Jackal Gate. A swarm of clawed fiends scuttled towards the base of the hill, long tongues flashing from their crustacean maws. Packs of daemonettes pranced through the rubble of fallen temples, their squeals of delight and depravity rising even to the Pathway of Punishment. Behind them all, the gigantic Keeper of Secrets himself marched forwards. Lascilion could feel the daemon’s eyes staring up at him, peering into his very soul.
Mendeziron is no mortal’s lapdog. Lascilion could feel the daemon’s words shiver through his mind. By pact and by promise do I suffer the summons of flesh. But though you live a hundred lifetimes, know the humility of flesh. Know that when death takes Lascilion, his spirit belongs to Mendeziron.
The daemon’s threat reverberated through Lascilion. For just an instant, he felt a tremor of doubt. Angrily he crushed the fear. He was a Lord of Slaanesh, marked and favoured by his god. He had been granted dominion over Mendeziron and his ilk. Even if such power one day was withdrawn, for now it was his. And he would use it.
‘Obey,’ Lascilion snarled. The sound of his command wouldn’
t reach Mendeziron, but the daemon heard it just the same. Throwing back his horned head, the daemon vented a shivering roar and charged towards the hill, heedless of the lesser daemons he crushed beneath his hooves. The lightning-men had fared well enough against Chaos warriors and marauders, but an enraged Keeper of Secrets would be a far different foe. Doom was upon the ebon knights.
The sound of great pinions fanning the air drew Lascilion’s eyes back towards the slope above. A foul, rancid stink washed over him as he saw the zombie dragon take wing. The rotten corpse sprang from the roof of the mausoleum upon which it had been perched and circled above the massed legion of skeletons packed onto the pathway. The warlord called out to his sorcerers and warlocks. It was against this menace that he had held them in readiness, conserving their magic to protect his vanguard from the dragon’s breath.
The threatened attack never manifested. Instead of striking at Lascilion’s warriors, the dragon peeled away, diving down the far side of the hill. The warlord could see it soaring towards the ruined temple district. At first, he thought the vampire general was moving to intercept Mendeziron, for it was clear that the greater daemon’s arrival upon the battlefield was what he had been waiting for. But the dragon made no move towards the daemon or to prevent the assault against the lightning-men. Instead, it wheeled around the base of the hill and towards one of the defiled temples. Lascilion saw the rotting beast land amid the rubble. The vampire on its back stood in the saddle, gesturing at the Throne Mount.
Lascilion could almost see the necrotic magic suffusing the vampire lord as he invoked the dark powers. The hordes of Chaos had imagined their foe to be trapped on the Throne Mount. Now the Lord of Slaanesh wondered who had trapped whom.
Rusted gates and hidden doors creaked open in answer to the vampire’s call. Timeless catacombs and secret crypts gaped wide as necromantic spells called out to the entombed. From yawning tunnels all across the hill, mouldy legions of the undead emerged. A host of bone warriors and deadwalkers, the carcasses from untold generations, shambled out into the streets. By the hundreds, by the thousands, the armies of the dead surrounded the hill, moving with the uncanny precision of the unliving.
Once the undead encirclement was complete, the vampire lord drew his sword, crimson fire glowing deep within its blackened steel. His voice snarled across the smoking rubble as he ordered the ghastly host to the attack.
‘Kill!’ the vampire commanded. ‘Kill! Kill! Kill them all!’
The purifying light of Lord-Castellant Vogun’s warding lantern brought blessed oblivion to the grisly trophies that lined the Pathway of Punishment. Bodiless heads shrivelled under the purging glow of the lantern, caged skeletons crumbled into ash. From each corpse, a mote of luminance rose, flickering away almost in a heartbeat. None of the Stormcasts could say to what fate the released spirits were bound, but it could be no worse than their tortuous imprisonment upon the hillside.
Lord-Celestant Makvar detached a retinue of Decimators to guard Vogun as he brought mercy to the long-suffering spirits. As the Anvils moved up the Pathway, the opposition was growing steadily more fierce – too fierce for Vogun’s gryph-hound to protect its master. The warding lantern’s light was anathema to all creatures of darkness, repulsing daemons and rousing the ire of corrupted mortals. Packs of mutant hounds and clutches of beastmen tried to quench the offending light, rushing at Vogun from the shadows of blasted shrines and shattered ossuaries. Once, a troop of Chaos knights drove past the Liberators in an effort to reach the Lord-Castellant, heedless of the peril they invited by turning their backs on the Stormcasts. The silver-armoured leader of the knights had actually managed to strike Vogun with his lance, but had been cut from the saddle by a sweep of the officer’s sigmarite halberd in return. The Lord-Castellant’s personal crusade faltered for a few moments as he turned the healing magics of his lantern upon himself to mend the wound he had been dealt.
It was more than mercy that made Makvar agree to Vogun’s entreaty to bring peace to the cursed dead. The Stormcasts were filled with an even firmer resolve when they saw the relief Vogun bestowed. The palace atop Throne Mount was still far above them, but these damned souls were all along the road. Every yard, every step they gained brought with it an immediate and visible victory. It now became something of a personal affront to the Anvils, the persistent defiance of their Chaos foes. They had become more than just a hated enemy. They had become an obstacle between the Stormcasts and those they would help. Never did the Anvils of the Heldenhammer fight with more ferocity than when they felt the helpless crying out to them.
Makvar brought his sword shearing through the shoulder of an armoured beastman, its perfumed blood splattering across Gojin’s scales. A kick of his boot knocked the dying foe free and the carcass tumbled down the slope until it became caught in one of the gibbets.
It was a hard thing, to reconcile himself to the cruelty Neferata displayed across the Pathway of Punishment. Still, Makvar could only imagine the necessities that had demanded such extremes. With the whole of Shyish consumed by Chaos, the call of the Dark Gods would have reached even to the sanctuary of Nulahmia. To keep her own people from surrendering to Chaos, to drive the corruption from her city, the Mortarch had to present them with a threat even greater than the horrors of the Ruinous Powers. Only terror of their queen had kept Nulahmia from rotting from the inside. Without the light of Sigmar to guide them, any land could be driven to tyranny in its desperation to survive.
The strident blare of Knight-Heraldor Brannok’s battle-horn drew Makvar’s attention away from Vogun and his cleansing of the Pathway. The call Brannok sounded was one of not only divine wrath but of alert and alarm. Positioned with the Stormcasts’ rearguard, the clarion report could indicate only one thing. Enemies were moving upon the Anvils’ backs. Not the deranged stragglers that had harassed them throughout their march across Nulahmia, but a force large and powerful enough to pose a real threat to them.
‘Vogun, hold the advance here!’ Makvar called out to the Lord-Castellant. Until he knew what manner of threat had come stealing out of the conquered city, it would be imprudent to ascend further up the hill. By the same token, Makvar refused to surrender an inch of ground his warriors had fought to wrest from the foe. It was his conviction that no patch of earth was worth bleeding on twice.
Vogun saluted the Lord-Celestant as Makvar rode his dracoth back through the ranks of Liberators and Judicators. ‘Kreimnar, with me,’ he called out to the Lord-Relictor as he began a hurried descent. As a precaution, he also drew two retinues of Paladins from the flanks. On the Pathway, their thunderaxes and lightning hammers were seeing only sporadic use, striking down the odd Chaos warrior hiding among the funerary shrines. Below, there might be more immediate need for their weapons.
The rush back along the Pathway soon revealed to Makvar what had alarmed Brannok enough to sound his destructive battle-horn. Packs of daemons were slinking out of the ruins. Not by the ones and twos, but by the score. Obscene fiends of Slaanesh scuttled across the skull-strewn roads on chitinous legs, clouds of musk oozing from their slimy bodies. Demure daemonettes danced through the rubble, their laughter at once enticing and murderous.
Brannok winded his battle-horn once more, unleashing a violent thunderblast that roared through the daemons. An ancient temple toppled into the street, its foundations shattered by the pulverising clamour. Tons of rubble smashed down upon the daemons, bursting them in foul sprays of ichor. Yet still more of the abominations rushed towards the Anvils.
Makvar felt the presence of the Keeper of Secrets long before he saw the daemon’s bulk striding through the streets. It was an oily, repulsive sensation that seemed to seep through his armour, a sickly sweet stench that reached inside him and tried to defile his soul. Images of corruption and abandon struggled to plant themselves in his mind, fumbling to pierce the bulwarks of faith and devotion that fortified every Stormcast against the lures and lies of Chaos.
Mendeziron. Makvar felt the name thrust itself upon him. A sneer stretched across the enormous daemon’s monstrous face, exposing the gigantic fangs lining his leech-like maw.
Kreimnar raised his relic-weapon, drawing down once more the celestial fury of the God-King. Lightning crackled all around Mendeziron, searing into the horror’s loathsome body. Flesh bubbled and bone melted in the divine wrath pronounced by the Lord-Relictor, but it wasn’t enough to overwhelm the daemon. Saturated in the essences of the victims he had claimed in the sack of Nulahmia, the Keeper of Secrets channelled his own magic, drawing on the perverse energies of his god. Destroyed bones re-formed and scorched flesh regrew. In just the time it took the Stormcasts to cover a few dozen yards, the huge daemon was whole and restored.
Brannok and the rearguard were under attack when Makvar reached them, beset on all sides by the smaller daemons of Mendeziron’s circle. The thick, reeking musk of the scuttling fiends saturated the air, a fug that crawled down inside the Stormcasts’ armour. Few were the mortal men who could withstand the allure of that reek, but those reforged upon the Anvil of Apotheosis carried within them the celestial fires of Azyr. The soporific musk that could drown a man’s mind found small purchase in the fastness of a Stormcast’s resolve. The daemonic foulness could discomfit the ebon knights, but it couldn’t debilitate them.