Wardens of the Everqueen Read online

  ‘This doesn’t concern you, Stormcast,’ the branchwraith declared.

  ‘Step away,’ Grymn ordered the Lady of Vines. He waved his halberd at the collapsing radiance. ‘Whatever her purpose, I can’t allow her to sacrifice herself!’

  For just a moment, Grymn thought he saw a flicker pass through the branchwraith’s burning gaze, a lessening of that threatening glower.

  ‘You cannot stop what must be,’ she warned. The Lady of Vines stretched her hand towards him. A spray of splinters and thorns shot out at Grymn, blinding him momentarily. He took a staggering step back, but the branchwraith made no move to press her attack. Instead she turned towards the dwindling light of her queen.

  ‘It’s too late,’ Morbus told Grymn. ‘The damage is done.’

  The glow of the Radiant Queen was collapsing now, rapidly vanishing. Alarielle’s power was expended, but it was more than that. To his horror, Grymn could see no body behind the light – she was vanishing with her power! Before his eyes he saw the glow shrivel and wither, becoming ever smaller and smaller.

  The skies overhead darkened, great storm-laden clouds boiling outward from the horizon. The warm, almost foetid air grew cold. Life itself seemed to be draining out of the land. Snow fell from the grey skies, carpeting the fields and glades in a deathly mantle.

  ‘Why?’ Grymn asked himself. ‘What was worth such a sacrifice?’

  As if in answer to his question, Grymn saw far away to the east a shudder of motion. One of the distant mountains started to tremble, great avalanches of rock and snow crashing down from its peak. While he looked on in wonder, the terrain lurched upwards with a mighty heave. He could feel a tremor pass through the ground under his feet.

  It wasn’t his imagination. The mountain was moving.

  Tall as a man, yet cast in the revolting shape of a rat, the monster bled sickly black blood across Torglug’s axe. In its death spasms, the verminous creature snapped at the warlord with its yellowed fangs and raked at him with its clawed fingers. Torglug pressed the ratkin against the earthen wall, putting his immense strength and bloated bulk behind his blade. There was a delicious sound of crunching bone as the axe chewed its way deeper into the skaven, polluted blood jetted from severed arteries and torn veins. The creature’s anguished flailing became even more frenzied, its thrashing causing the axe to saw even deeper into its flesh.

  When the light of suffering drained out of the ratman’s eyes, Torglug ripped his axe free. The body of his foe clung to the wall, plastered there by its own gore. He spun around, hewing through the shoulder of a second skaven seeking to strike at his back. The vermin squealed as the blighted axe ripped through it and sent its carcass spinning through the air. A pack of scrawny spear-armed ratkin abandoned their charge towards the bloated warlord as the mangled body crashed among their ranks. Squeaks of fright and a musty reek rose from the skaven as they turned tail and scurried back down the passage.

  Torglug looked around for something to kill, but there was only the pile of dead ratkin strewn about his feet. The tunnel was monumental in its dimensions, stretching hundreds of yards across, and of such height that even Guthrax didn’t need to crouch as it waddled down the corridor. The walls were like black stretches of solidified shadow, pitted and scratched with the marks of shovels, picks and drills. Crude supports of onyx and malachite propped up the blackness of the roof in sporadic fashion. Beams of grey crystal leaned against walls where they’d started to sag inwards, or lay toppled to the ground where the entropic miasma had come spilling in anyway.

  Skaven infested the tunnel, scurrying from tiny side-passages, popping up from rents in the floor or dropping down from tears in the ceiling. Cloaked in filthy robes, froth bubbling from their mouths and frenzied madness gleaming in their eyes, the ratkin swarmed to confront Torglug’s legion. Squealing mobs of plague monks wielding staves of diseased wood and daggers of polluted metal charged into herds of goat-headed beastmen, the ringing of profane bells and the snarls of obscene chants goading them onto the horns of their enemies. Packs of decayed monsters with their fur sloughing away from their putrid bodies rushed into the armoured ranks of Chaos warriors, exploding in bursts of burning pus when their foes struck them down. Grisly ratmen, their twisted bodies hidden in crusty robes, waved smoking censers at tribes of marauders, the vile fumes causing armour to rust and rot off the stricken men. Chittering their shrill war-cries, the hordes of the Clans Pestilens fought to drive the plaguehosts back up to the surface.

  The legion of Torglug, however, wouldn’t be denied so easily. His tribesmen trampled the bodies of their own dead to reach the vermin waving the censers, dragging the plague monks down one after another and hacking them apart with cruel axes and serrated swords. Enraged gors carved a path through the mobs of ratmen, rending them to pieces in their fury. Vengefully, the Chaos warriors pursued their tormentors, ignoring the scores of tribesmen they left writhing on the floor in their determination to cut down the slinking ratkin. Cyclopean plaguebearers and swarms of nurglings scrambled towards the sorcerous gongs the skaven were striking, their daemonic essence immune to the diseased magic of the ratmen.

  Across the tunnel, Torglug saw a plague monk cowering in front of Guthrax, apparently overcome by the monstrous daemon’s aura. Its squeaks turned into wails of terror as the obese monstrosity fixed its malignant gaze upon the ratman, hideous lights blazing from its rheumy orbs. The skaven shrieked as its body was engulfed in Guthrax’s magic, fur sloughing away and flesh breaking out in black sores and red boils. The sorcerous plague leapt from the shrieking chanter to infect the monks around it, spreading its virulence to dozens of the vermin before its malign impetus was expended.

  Nearby, a hunched plague priest was locked in an arcane duel with Slaugoth Maggotfang. The skaven magician sent tendrils of withering energy leaping from its paws. Ratmen and marauders fighting in the space between the plague priest and Slaugoth were struck down by the corrosive magic, the spell making no distinction between friend and foe. Yet when it came rushing towards the sorcerer, the spell fizzled into a cloud of greenish vapour. While the plague priest was snarling in frustration, Slaugoth retaliated, laughing as he sent a bolt of putrid fire exploding from the head of his staff and streaking towards the skaven. Some spell or charm preserved the ratman from the worst of the sorcerer’s fury – while the vermin around it were reduced to puddles of slime, the only effect upon the plague priest was a green tinge to its mangy fur and a layer of muck upon its robes.

  Torglug left Slaugoth to settle the contest on his own. The warlord had spotted a more immediate problem much closer at hand – a large swarm of skaven warriors sweeping around to smash against the right flank of the plaguehost. Unlike the other ratmen, their robes had been fashioned from flayed hide, foul symbols inked into the leather, and in their hands were filthy swords that blazed with fell and corrupt energies. They moved with a confidence and discipline absent from the rest of the horde. At their fore was a white-furred chief bedecked in a rathide cloak and robes. Guthrax had told him that this was the leader of the vermin infesting the tunnel, a high priest of Pestilens named Poxmonger Kriknitt.

  The threat to the flank of his army was enough motivation to send Torglug running towards the fight, but he also had an idea to bring the fray to a quick end. Each warrior he lost fighting his way past the skaven was one less fighter he could bring against the Everqueen’s protectors. Skaven were slinking, cowardly creatures, bold only when they were confident of victory. There were two ways to break that confidence – butcher most of their horde or kill their leader.

  Torglug reached the Threespine tribe securing his right flank just as the skin-robed plague monks thrust their way through an intervening pack of smaller skaven warriors and struck the front ranks of the barbarian fighters. The fell energies of their filthy blades smouldered against the steel mail of the humans, shearing through what armour they wore. Cruel hooks on the heads of the blades ca
ught in flesh, dragging warriors from the midst of their comrades to be hacked apart by opportunistic skaven.

  The Threespine were faltering when Torglug joined them, but the presence of their warlord fired their determination and made them redouble their assault against the ratkin. Torglug pushed his way through the press of warriors, shouting for his enemy. ‘Kriknitt! Be facing me, prince of vermin! Be facing me, digger of holes!’

  Thrusting his way to the front of the battle, Torglug brought his axe chopping down into the head of a plague monk, splitting both the ratman’s manskin cowl and the skull beneath.

  ‘Kriknitt! Torglug of the Twelve Plagues is for challenging you!’ the warlord bellowed as his blade hacked through the arm of another plague monk. Off to his right he could see the skaven leader, its white fur standing out in stark contrast to the mangy pelts of the vermin surrounding it. Kriknitt looked in Torglug’s direction, its ears curling close against the sides of its head and its eyes going wide with fright.

  ‘Be facing me! Be facing the favoured son of Nurgle!’ Torglug butchered his way through the intervening skaven, leaving the Threespine tribesmen to finish those foes he merely maimed and injured in his vicious advance.

  The poxmonger fled, slinking back through the ranks of its warriors, pushing hapless ratmen into Torglug’s path, squeaking angrily at those of its minions that tried to protest their leader’s retreat. It appeared that Kriknitt wanted nothing to do with Torglug or the diseased axe that could wreak such carnage among its warriors. With unabashed cowardice, the ratman left its fellows to face the warlord’s onslaught. Soon, despite the murderous fury of Torglug’s assault, Kriknitt had withdrawn from the pack of skin-clad monks and was scurrying down one of the side passages. Frustrated, Torglug flung the head of a decapitated skaven after the fleeing ratkin.

  Squeals of fright now rang out all across the tunnel. The air became rank with the stink of musk, smothering even the necrotic reek of Torglug’s followers. Clutches of ratkin followed the example set by their high priest, abandoning the fight to slip down holes and scramble into side passages. Swifter even than the sorcerous plague Guthrax had conjured against the skaven, terror spread among the ratmen. The retreat of a few became a general rout, swarms of vermin fighting and clawing at one another as they sought to flee.

  Torglug cut down the plague monks near to him, carving a gory trail through them. The broken skaven retreated before him, but their flight was blocked by other packs of routed ratkin. The fight had left the vermin, but Torglug’s legion was of no mind to offer them mercy. They pursued their enemy, massacring them as they tried to climb over one another in their eagerness to escape.

  Torglug the Despised drank in the cries of panic and pain. However many of the ratkin managed to escape, they wouldn’t rally for another attack. They’d make no move to interfere with the plaguehost’s march through the tunnels.

  Dismissing the skaven from his thoughts, Torglug anticipated finding his quarry and how he would steal her from her protectors.

  Impossibly vast, a living mountain lumbered out from beyond the horizon. Every step of its craggy legs made the earth shiver and sent a tremble rolling across the landscape. Its stony shoulders seemed to scrape the clouds, and veils of mist and fog spilled down the cliffs of its chest. Mighty boulders ground against one another as the giant’s rocky arms swung at its sides. Slabs of granite and limestone clashed together, groaning with the deafening bellow of an avalanche. As the titan slogged across field and stream, an atmosphere of bitter cold and driving snow swept ahead of it. Frost seized the vegetation, ice grasped at the waters and gales of pallid snow blanketed the land.

  The animate mountain trudged along the edge of the sea to the south, each step cracking the earth. Snow came swirling across the fields of deathblooms now, smothering the diseased growths under a white blanket of oblivion. The giant, oblivious or indifferent to the destruction it provoked, lumbered on, making towards the great expanse of water ahead of it. It seemed impossible to Grymn that such a gargantuan being could exist, and much less that it could be summoned by even the mightiest of magic.

  It was the thought of magic that broke the awed fascination that held him. Alarielle! The Everqueen had sacrificed herself to call this titan, expending the last of her essence to work her spell. Grymn might have stopped her if not for the interference of her handmaiden. He tore his eyes from the awesome sight of the walking mountain to glare at the Lady of Vines. The branchwraith still had her back to him, turned instead to the spot where Alarielle had stood. A keening harmony sounded from the handmaiden, a melody of both loss and promise.

  ‘In any language, that sounds like a song of mourning,’ Lord-Relictor Morbus told Grymn.

  ‘She kept us from stopping Alarielle,’ Grymn snarled, clenching his halberd tight. ‘We’ve failed in our mission, and I’m going to find out why.’

  Grymn marched towards the Lady of Vines, Morbus following behind him. He could hear Retributor-Prime Markius and his paladins coming up behind them. It wouldn’t be long before the warriors and their lightning hammers were available to support him. He risked a glance at the vast gathering of sylvaneth that had accompanied their queen on her final journey. If the tree-creatures supported the Lady of Vines, Grymn knew his small group of Stormcasts would be overwhelmed before the rest of the Hallowed Knights could reach them. The sylvaneth, however, were silent, as still as the trees they resembled. There was an expectant quality about that silence, like the quiet before a storm.

  As he walked towards the Lady of Vines, Grymn noted that her aspect had changed once again. Her bark had lightened, taking on a rich amber colour and becoming smooth as a river rock. The vines twined about her lithe shape had lost their thorns, the leaves becoming rich and full with little clusters of berries hanging from them. Her hands had lost their claws, shifting into delicate fingers that were curled around–

  Grymn looked in confusion at the object the branchwraith held. At first he thought it was some kind of jewel, so brilliantly did it sparkle. Then he appreciated that the shine wasn’t the play of light upon the object but rather a glow that emanated from within it. A few steps more and he realised that the radiance was familiar to him, exuding that same atmosphere of comfort and invitation he’d felt in the Radiant Queen’s presence. Peering closer, he could see something beneath the light, an ovoid shape about the size of his fist.

  It was a seed!

  The observation spurred a thousand questions in Grymn’s mind. Was this what Alarielle had intended, to expend her energies until all that was left of her was this seed? Did she think this was the only way she’d be able to escape Torglug’s legions? What was the power of this remnant, this relic? Was it simply a talisman, a legacy left to the sylvaneth, or was it something more than that? A promise for the future?

  The Lady of Vines closed her hands protectively around the glowing seed. Still singing her keening song, she turned from Grymn and walked towards the massed sylvaneth. When she was only a few feet from the edge of the exiles, she held her arms out to them, showing them the relic she held. A sound rolled through the living forest, a great thrum unlike anything Grymn had ever heard before. There was a sense of both adoration and praise in that sound. The sylvaneth were swearing a vow, but the nature of that promise was something Grymn was unable to fathom.

  ‘Leave her be,’ Grymn told Morbus as the Lord-Relictor moved towards the branchwraith. He looked across the masses of sylvaneth, struck by the reverent sense of loss and promise that rose from them. For the Hallowed Knights, the Everqueen had represented honour and duty, but for the sylvaneth she had been everything. ‘Leave them to their sorrow while they have the chance to indulge it.’

  The Stormcasts withdrew, falling back from the shingle and letting their allies pay respect to their queen.

  Grymn turned his attention back to the lumbering mountain. Many of the Stormcasts were gazing in awe at the colossus. The behemoth w
as nearer now, though the pace of its quaking steps had slackened. It was still circling around the edge of the sea, though Grymn noticed its path wasn’t one that would bring it towards the sylvaneth but rather out into a bay a league or so away.

  ‘It is a jotunberg,’ Morbus said, giving name to the giant. ‘They are supposed to be few in number, stewards of Ghyran’s seasons, heralds of the dying time.’ He pointed at the immense titan; at each step, boulders and slabs of rock tumbled away from its body, smashing to the ground in an avalanche of destruction.

  Grymn watched as the jotunberg stumbled onwards through the haze of snow and fog spilling from its body. Had the giant truly come in response to Alarielle’s magic? If so, to what purpose had she called this behemoth, and why did it now turn from the sylvaneth? He shook his head. Puzzles without answer and of little consequence now that the Radiant Queen was unable to answer them.

  ‘Forget the giant,’ Grymn said. ‘Our purpose here has changed. Queen Alarielle–’

  Before the Lord-Castellant could finish speaking, a blast of icy air rushed past him, turning his breath to frost. He looked as the jotunberg stepped out into the sea. A quaking groan boomed across the land as the behemoth stumbled. Then the living mountain pitched forwards, slamming down into the sea in a cataclysmic crash that set the earth itself shivering. The water displaced by its impact flashed outwards in mighty waves, then hardened into crests of ice. The chill raced outwards from the fallen giant, coursing through the sea and freezing its surface. In the matter of only a few heartbeats, a distance of several hundred yards around the giant had been turned to ice, expanding outwards quicker than Grymn’s eye could follow. The skies unleashed their fury in earnest now, great swirling gales of icy snow whipping across the land.