Bladestorm

by Matt Westbrook

  That was the last of them. Crazed, panicking beasts still spiralled and whipped through the air, shorn of the limited control of their dead riders. The surviving Prosecutors – Goldfeather winced as he saw the full toll they had suffered – formed up around him.

  ‘We go straight down their throat,’ he roared. The joy of battle pumped through his veins, filling him with fervour. ‘Sigmar is watching, warriors of the Ceslestial Vindicators. Let us show him our worth.’

  The orruk was colossal, even by the standards of those they had fought thus far. It towered above even the Stormcasts, a mountain of green flesh that radiated sheer, terrifying power. It killed with contemptuous ease, whipping a jagged cleaver about itself with a fury that belied the precision in its movement. An almost casual swing to the left sent two Vindicators tumbling, blood seeping through ruined chestplates. A downward slice split another warrior in two. Lightning claimed both segments of his body as they fell away.

  It roared a challenge in its rough and brutish tongue, and from all sides the brave champions of Mykos Argellon’s Warrior Chamber answered. As the Lord-Celestant fought his way towards the behemoth, he watched them all die.

  Patreus, the warrior who had held the Shining Door against the roiling, surging tides of the Pandaemonium fell, his head crushed by an axe blow. Liberator-Prime Thayon, the Hero of the Flamepeak, was cleaved in two. Olren, Tavos, some of the best and brightest warriors of his chamber. Killed and thrown aside by this creature as if they were little more than mortal serfs.

  Mykos roared and charged, bringing Mercutia down from a high guard in a diagonal slice aimed at the beast’s neck. The orruk leader did not feint or move to avoid the blow, but simply shifted and let it fall across his chestplate. The blade screamed as it gouged a jagged line through the strong iron, but it did not reach through to wound the orruk, who returned the strike with a backhand swing of his axe. Mykos dropped to one knee in the dirty water, leaning back. He heard the orruk’s wicked axe rush past his face, mere inches away. Then he was up, spinning and putting distance between him and the monster. It laughed, enjoying the game, and advanced after him, sloshing through the mud and gore.

  ‘Drekka Breakbones claims your skull, little man-thing,’ it chuckled, in a voice like an avalanche. ‘I’ll ’av that little pig-sticker you got there, too.’

  ‘Come and take it,’ Mykos muttered, turning Mercutia in his hand, searching for a weakness he could exploit.

  He could not see one. The creature was huge, but not so huge that it could not react with frightening speed. It was aggressive, but it did not fight like a blood-crazed cultist, all power and rage. There was cunning to its attacks. It rushed at him, swinging low with that great axe, forcing him backwards, then feinted a sideways step. Instead of the cleaver it swung a mighty punch with its left fist, upon which it wore a band of heavy iron tipped with needle-sharp blades.

  Mykos just got his sword up in time to block, but the power of the blow sent him reeling backwards to crash against the carcass of a war-beast. On came the orruk leader, swinging its axe down in a vertical chop aimed to split the Lord-Celestant in two. Mykos barely shifted aside in time, and felt the splash of blood across his armour as the axe cleaved the dead boar in half. The orruk’s eyes narrowed in frustration as it tried to tug the weapon free, and Mykos took advantage of the momentary distraction to hack into the monster’s hip, at the join between two armour plates.

  It roared in pain, and struck out with its bladed fist. The strike was blindingly fast, and Mykos could not get his blade back up to block it. It struck him square in the chest with astonishing force. He flew backwards to splash in the mud and gore, gasping for breath. Looking down, he saw great rents in his sigmarite plate. As he stared, blood began to seep through the holes. The orruk’s weapon had punched deep. He groaned and got to his knees, feeling around in the sticky, foul-smelling mud for Mercutia. He found her at last, and took comfort in her familiar heft as he focused through the stabbing pain in his chest and hauled himself upright.

  ‘Got me good, little ’un,’ the orruk leader spat, chortling happily as reeking blood poured over the ugly yellow of its armour. ‘Drekka remembers the last one who got him that good.’

  The orruk’s great, gnarled finger tapped the fanged skull it wore upon its left pauldron.

  ‘I’m honoured… to be in such esteemed company,’ said Mykos. The creature boomed with laughter again, then rushed forwards, seemingly unworried by the vicious wound it had been dealt.

  Too many. Kyvos had slaughtered a dozen or more of the creatures, crushing their heavy iron chestplates under devastating blows of his thunderaxe, dashing skulls to pieces or slicing through legs to leave their owners drowning in the stinking quagmire at his feet. On they came, an endless, howling swarm of them, and the more they slew, the more eager they seemed. These warriors fought on foot, either fresh troops or riders who had been dismounted and had been lucky or thick-skulled enough to survive the fall.

  ‘Is this all you have, you mindless wretches?’ roared Axilon at his side, kicking another dead orruk from his blade and letting it tumble down the mound of dead they had created. ‘I thought your kind lived for war? I’ve barely broken a sweat.’

  His words brought a tired cheer from the remaining Vindicators, but despite his bluster it was clear to Kyvos that the Knight-Heraldor was tiring. Gone was the deft, cultured bladework for which he was known throughout the halls of Azyrheim. His broadsword looked heavy in his hands, and he was favouring his right leg.

  And on the orruks came.

  Axilon rested a hand on Kyvos’ pauldron, and the Retributor-Prime heard him gasp a ragged breath.

  ‘My time draws near, son,’ said the Knight-Heraldor. ‘When I fall, you lead them on. You kill as many as you can, you hear?’

  ‘Aye, sire,’ Kyvos said. ‘Though I’d say we’ve accounted for our fair share already.’

  ‘Not enough. Not nearly enough.’ Axilon shook his head.

  ‘Then let’s draw them in,’ said Kyvos. He looked up at the canyon wall. Axilon’s previous efforts had brought down a huge chunk of stone and gouged a great hole, but now that they had been forced back several dozen feet they were underneath another overhanging ledge. ‘As many as we can. See if we can’t add a few more to the tally.’

  Axilon nodded, and Kyvos could hear a wet, pained chuckle.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ said the Knight-Heraldor.

  He stepped forwards, stabbing his broadsword into the dirt and raising his battle-horn. Kyvos formed the remaining Liberators in a defensive line around the Knight-Heraldor. Axilon drew in a breath.

  ‘All right, you gutless lot,’ he bellowed, and blew an ear-shattering note from the battle-horn. ‘Call yourself warriors, do you? I’ve seen cellar rats that fight better. You’re a disgrace to your cretinous gods, you weakling cowards. Not a one of you has the stones to take me down, and I’m fighting with half my organs carved in two!’

  Whether the orruks understood a word of what the Knight-Heraldor was saying, Kyvos had no idea at all. Regardless, his booming voice and the clarion call of his battle-horn drew them like moths to a flame. There were hundreds of them now, mounted on their war-beasts or charging towards the Stormcasts on foot. They were an island in the middle of a surging sea. Axes clattered against the Liberators’ shields, and the press of bodies began to crush the Vindicators back into the wall of the canyon. Kyvos headbutted an orruk that pressed its leering face into his, then drew his gladius to stab it in the gut.

  ‘Knight-Heraldor, do it now!’ he shouted, and felt an axe slam into his shoulder. Suddenly he was on his knees, and all he could see was a forest of yellow iron. Something struck him in the face, and he spat blood. ‘Now!’

  He glanced up, trying to see through the mass of bodies. The Knight-Heraldor still stood, ignoring the barbed spears that pierced his chest. He raised the battle-horn to his lips as the swarm of bodi
es reached up to haul him down into the fray. The last thing that Kyvos heard was the sound of thunder and falling stone.

  Mykos Argellon’s world was a storm of sigmarite and iron. He had never fought a battle such as this, so furious that it was governed by sheer instinct and reaction, rather than skill at arms. This Drekka was so fast, so blindingly fast. No sooner had the Lord-Celestant picked off one attack, than he was forced to adjust to another, and another. He was being driven back, and in the bloody mire in which they battled that was dangerous indeed. One wrong step, one moment too long in pulling his boot free from the grasping mud, and the orruk would have him.

  His beloved Argellonites were dying around him. Against the numbers that now came down upon them, there was no chance at all. From the corner of his eyes he could see his warriors fall, surrounded and hacked to pieces. Flashes of light signalled another lost friend, another sent back to the forge to be recast and remade. He would join them soon.

  It happened as he stepped backwards over a body left half sodden and bleeding in the murk. Something grabbed his foot. He looked down, and saw that the orruk beneath him was not dead. Its porcine eyes glared up at him maliciously. It snarled as it drew a short, broad knife and attempted to drive the blade deep into the Lord-Celestant’s leg. Mykos stamped his foot down upon its neck and ground it deeper into the mud, then brought his grandblade up to intercept the inevitable attack from the pursuing Drekka.

  He was too slow, by a fraction of a second. The orruk chieftain’s axe skipped from the edge of Mercutia, and Mykos did not have the strength left to deflect the blow. It tore through the sigmarite armour at his elbow, and sheared the limb free. Pain blurred the Lord-Celestant’s vision, and he fell to his haunches.

  Drekka Breakbones loomed over him, and he heard the creature’s cruel laughter echoing in his ears, as if from a great distance.

  ‘That it?’ the orruk asked, and Mykos looked up to see a gap-toothed grin cross its ugly, scarred face.

  He heard the sound of thunder roll across the battlefield again. He saw the confusion on Drekka’s face, and glanced to the left. Another rent had been torn in the canyon wall, even greater than the last. He saw rocks the size of carthorses scything and spinning through the orruk ranks, crushing scores of the creatures to death. One last gift from Axilon, then. He would see his friend back in Azyr. Would they recognise each other, he wondered? All they had been through together since Sigmar had opened the realmgates and hurled them out into the world – would they recall any of it? All those moments of heroism, of sacrifice. Would they be lost? Mykos Argellon did not want to die. He did not want to come back like Thostos, cold and distant even to those he had once called brothers.

  The orruk chieftain raised the axe high. As the pouring rain hit the dull iron, blood ran down the blade to drip aross Mykos’ war-mask.

  This was not the end. He feared what would become of him, but he did not regret his choice to give his life for a moment. This was the truth of the Stormcast Eternals. They would make this sacrifice, over and over again, so that one day no mortal would have to. For some reason he thought of the priestess Alzheer, and hoped she yet lived. She was the bright future, the hope that he gave his life for.

  He closed his eyes.

  Goldfeather saw the towering orruk bring the axe down. He saw it strike his Lord-Celestant in the side of the neck, and he saw a brief, bright flare of lightning as Mykos Argellon’s body toppled to the floor. Then the cloud of dust from the shattered rock on the left-hand side of the canyon rushed across the battlefield, and he could see nothing at all.

  They had killed the Lord-Celestant. The chamber was shattered. The Prosecutor-Prime could not see a single speck of turquoise amongst the sea of green and yellow below. It was over.

  ‘We must go to his aid,’ shouted Galeth. ‘We will kill the beast that slew him.’

  ‘No,’ said Goldfeather softly. Something was there, at the back of his mind. Some vital memory that he was missing. There was a way to tip the scales here, a way to make these wretched savages pay for every Stormcast lost this day.

  ‘No?’ echoed Galeth incredulously. The shock of this defeat had made him forget himself. ‘Are you craven, brother? We must avenge this insult. We must kill these beasts, even if we die doing so.’

  ‘What we must do is win,’ shouted Goldfeather. ‘Do you wish to die alongside our brothers, and render their sacrifice meaningless? Or do you wish to follow me, and win this battle in the Lord-Celestant’s honour?’

  ‘Follow you where? To run from the battlefield in shame?’

  ‘Trust me, my brothers,’ said the Prosecutor-Prime. ‘One last time. Do so, and we will kill every last orruk on the field.’

  It was against every instinct that had been drilled and forged into them, to leave that field with the fight still raging. Galeth and the remaining Prosecutors swayed, on the verge of rushing to their deaths, and for a moment Goldfeather thought he had lost them.

  ‘You have never led us wrong, Prosecutor-Prime,’ said Galeth at last. ‘We will follow you.’

  He had never been more proud of his men.

  ‘We must make haste,’ he said, and with that he opened his wings and flew out over the canyon where the Argellonites had fallen. He soared away from the Dreadhold and towards the grasslands of the plain, hope surging alongside the sorrow in his heart.

  Chapter Six

  Chosen of Sigmar

  The torrential rain finally ceased as the first figures began to emerge from the mouth of Splitskull Pass. They did not wear the sea green, white and gold of the Argellonites Chamber of the Celestial Vindicators. They were stout, savage-looking creatures wrapped in bands of yellow-painted iron. Some strode on foot while others were mounted on fearsome, tusked beasts.

  ‘He has fallen then,’ said Eldroc.

  ‘As we knew he must,’ said Lord-Celestant Thostos Bladestorm, standing at the Lord-Castellant’s side upon the battlements of the Manticore Dreadhold. ‘Let us hope Lord-Celestant Argellon took as many of the orruks with him as he could, before the end.’

  Eldroc nodded. Even as they spoke, the essence of Mykos Argellon was being carried home upon the celestial storm, back to the halls of Azyrheim. There he would be reforged anew, to be sent out once more against the forces of Chaos and darkness. But immortality did not come without a price. The Lord-Castellant glanced at Thostos. His friend was the living embodiment of such sacrifice. Once he had been a thoughtful, introspective man, a counter-balance against the raw fury and desire for vengeance that was the hallmark of the Celestial Vindicators.

  The Reforging had taken that from him, had hollowed him out until all that was left was the fury and the need for retribution.

  ‘He will fight beside us once more,’ said Eldroc. ‘He is strong. He will be remade, and he will emerge through the flame as a better man.’

  ‘No,’ said Thostos, and his voice was soft yet filled with surety. The Lord-Celestant turned to Eldroc, and looked him in the eye.

  ‘It will break him,’ he went on. ‘He will enter the storm and it will break him down, tear him apart until there is nothing left of the man he once was. This is the sacrifice we made, brother. We are all here because we swore the same oaths. We knew there would be a price. It is one worth paying, for what we must do.’

  Without another word, Thostos made for the interior stair that would take him down to the inner courtyard of the fortress. Arrayed at defensive positions around the Dreadhold were the two hundred and fifty men at his command, securing weak points and stacking barricades at the breached main gate that would hinder the orruks’ progress if they decided, as they inevitably would, on an all-out frontal assault. Two-score of that number faced in the opposite direction, a wall of sigmarite that guarded the Manticore Realmgate, the structure that the Celestial Vindicators had been sent here to secure.

  Eldroc and Thostos crossed the inner courtyard, and made
their way up the wide stair atop of which lay the gate. The structure stood on a wide plinth carved into the mountain, and it was here that the Stormcasts had organised their defensive position.

  ‘Keep up your guard,’ said Thostos, as they passed the men. ‘The forces of Chaos may come pouring through this portal at any moment.’

  The Lord-Relictor Tharros Soulwarden knelt before the structure, still working the magic that would cleanse the taint of Chaos from the portal and allow the Stormcasts to pass through.

  ‘He has not spoken or moved since the daemonic incursion?’ asked Thostos.

  ‘No, my Lord,’ said Liberator-Prime Arestes, a stolid, reliable warrior known for his lack of humour as much as for his skill at arms. ‘But the gate’s fell light dims by the moment. Whatever the Lord-Relictor is doing, it is quelling the power of this Chaos-warped thing.’

  ‘But not fast enough. Our time has run out,’ said Thostos. ‘The orruks march on us, and we have not the men to hold back their numbers.’

  ‘The fortress can hold out a little longer,’ said Eldroc. As Lord-Castellant, he was responsible for the fortification and defence of locations that the Stormcasts had claimed. ‘We have little choice in the matter. We must give Tharros as much time as he requires, and hope that Sigmar is watching over us.’

  Thostos nodded. ‘You will defend the wall, Lord-Castellant. I shall take the gatehouse. Despite the damage to the main gate, we can bottleneck them there as long as the ramparts remain clear.’

  Eldroc nodded, even though he knew as well as his Lord-Celestant that they could not possibly hold out. Oh, they would bleed the orruks, they would make them pay a heavy price for every inch of ground, but in the end it would not be enough. The sun broke through the clouds once more, rising behind the great statue of Archaon, and the figure’s shadow fell across the valley floor ahead of them.