If Ramus and Vandalus had stood together and been clad in a single piece of armour, they could not have been as large.
‘I’m da Great Red,’ the megaboss bellowed, voice so deep it seemed to come up out of the ground. The beast snorted and dragged its knuckles over the floor in an agonising screech. The Ironjaw glared at Ramus with his one eye, then twisted to mark Vandalus with a squeal of metal plates. He turned back to Ramus. ‘Kill my boyz, take my stuff, you fink you’re big enough to take Korruk da Great Red?’ He dropped his heavy jaw and roared with laughter.
Ramus planted his reliquary into the metal between them. ‘This land has been claimed. From the Celestial Realmgate to the Junkar Mountains and beyond the forests of Cartha, this land is Sigmar’s.’
At the name ‘Sigmar’ power lashed from his staff and stung the hulking Ironjaw a blow to the shoulder. Korruk jerked back, bellowed in pain and shock, electric spasms forcing out a grunt of annoyance as he involuntarily yanked on the chain attached to his mount’s spiked collar and locked his thighs down on its neck. It choked out a growl and instinctively threw out a battering-ram punch that smashed Ramus in the gut and off his feet.
His legs flipped over his head. Light to dark. Sky to metal. His face plate smashed the top of the crenel spike, a crack spidering from the left eye socket of his helm. Dark to light, the sky above him. He flung out a hand and caught the spike. His arm snapped taut and jerked him back, slammed his body hard against the fort’s metal wall. Ramus’ feet slid across the wall without getting any kind of purchase.
‘Haha!’ roared the Great Red. ‘Maybe you should both have a go. Hah! Take turns, maybe.’
A flash of light burned like forked lightning through Ramus’ shattered orbit as Vandalus explosively took wing. There was another bark of pain from the Ironjaw, and the clash of blades.
With a grimace, Ramus tested his bicep against his weight and heaved. He began to lift, bellowed as his shoulder passed his elbow, and then tossed his reliquary back inside and hauled himself after it. He collected his staff and rose, lightning pouring into him until the metal beneath him turned blue.
Vandalus and the Great Red were fighting high up above the fort’s roof. The Azyros flitted agilely around the Ironjaw’s monstrous axes, leaving a glowing trail where he passed as though it were a net, cleverly lain to trap the brute in his own savagery.
The megaboss’ metal teeth glinted hungrily, one booming growl rising from his vast jaw without any apparent need for breath. He was a green storm, destruction made manifest, his brute physicality merely the solid housing for a force of nature. His axes flashed down together, forcing Vandalus into a parry that sent the Azyros spinning. The maw-krusha’s claws clenched as though taking the air in its grip and then lunged out. A paw like a gargant’s spiked mace smacked the careening Azyros, and hammered him back down.
Vandalus hit the roof in a blaze of spinning pinions and rolled until he hit the inside of the parapet. Ramus could hear armoured boots pounding up the staircase below. It would be Cassos.
‘Sigmar is the true lord here, beast!’
Lightning stabbed from Ramus’ staff and coursed through the megaboss and his monster. The Ironjaw sprayed Vandalus in phlegm before he could grind his metal jaws shut. Blood ran down his chin as his enormous body seized. Howling, flapping with erratic fury, the maw-krusha crashed back down. Exhausted, Ramus recalled the flow of current and turned to check on Vandalus.
The Knight-Azyros stood up, almost fell right back over, but steadied himself with a widened stance and shook out his light wings, creating a dazzling show of might and colour, as if to ward off a rival or a predator. To Ramus’ surprise, Korruk gave a rumbling chuckle. The Ironjaw dismounted with a gravely structural clang and kicked his war-beast out of the way.
‘You fight good for thunder men. Better than the big boss I killed at the thunder door.’
Vandalus started forwards, only for Ramus to hold him back.
‘Take him,’ hissed Skraggtuff, down by his hip. ‘While his guard’s down.’
Of their own volition, Ramus’ muscles tensed to lift his reliquary, but then he frowned. ‘I did not summon you.’
‘He’s too strong. He doesn’t need you. He won’t listen. End him while you have the chance.’
Ramus lowered his staff. ‘That is Skraggtuff’s voice. But those are not his words.’
A sepulchral chuckle issued from the skull. Not one, in fact, but two, an eerie echoing effect as though he were being laughed at from both sides. The first was gruff and breathy, recognisably Skraggtuff, while the other was the sound of courteous good humour. Korruk ground his thickly armoured slab of neck around, one eye narrowed in annoyance. It was that, rather than the voices from the other side, that turned Ramus’ insides colder than the desert wind.
Ramus was the conduit for the divine storm, the beacon for the soul-eternal.
Only he could speak with the dead.
‘Awake, Skraggtuff,’ whined the skull in a wheedling falsetto. The ogor’s voice was gone, replaced entirely by the urbane imposter that Ramus recognised all too well. ‘So tediously stentorian. Where is Mannfred, Skraggtuff? You are connected through the aether, Skraggtuff.’
Now that it was presented to him, it was clear that the voice had always been there behind the ogor’s words. How had he not heard it before?
‘That voice,’ breathed Vandalus.
‘The Betrayer.’
‘Here, O conduit of the tepid squall, beacon of arrogance eternal. Tell me, are the Stormcast Eternals prone to delusions or is it just you? Imagine, believing that your quaint, half-mastered talents could begin to rival mine.’
The voice tutted, and Ramus realised that it was no longer coming from the skull. A hazy human figure had appeared, wavering about a foot above the rampart. His black, ridged armour was dented and scratched from countless battles, and the red cloak he wore, though magisterial still, was tattered. The wind blew through him, his long dark hair fluttering in some other breeze. His hair was wilder than Ramus remembered, his teeth longer, his eyes redder. His patrician features were horribly burned. Sigmar’s gaze was not so swiftly healed.
‘Poor, pathetic hero.’
‘You brought me here,’ Ramus yelled, fury making his voice crack. ‘You led me by the damned nose. Why?’
‘Temper, temper, Lord-Relictor. What kind of example does that set the peasants?’
‘Why!’
Mannfred laughed. ‘I think we demonstrated back in Cartha that I have little to fear from you.’ He half turned towards Korruk, one melted, hairless eyebrow suggestively raised, like a school master trying to goad the proper answer from a well-intentioned but slow-witted pupil.
‘Me?’ rumbled the Great Red, scrunching up his face in thought.
‘Where have you just been?’ Mannfred prodded.
‘The thunder door.’
Vandalus’ face dropped in understanding. ‘Just think, my friend. Had you gone straight to your Realmgate as you suggested then I might never have been able to get by the Ironjawz to take it.’ The megaboss drew up at that. ‘Of course, Great Red here would have killed you out of hand, but we can’t have everything can we, and as he’s likely going to do that anyway, that would have come at no real cost to you.’
The apparition turned to Ramus and bowed. ‘Of all the Stormcasts I have encountered, dear friend, you are the most rigid.’ He grinned, teeth sharp and somehow brighter for their transparency. ‘I appreciate rigidity in my friends. It makes them so much easier to bend.’
‘I am no friend to you, Betrayer,’ Ramus spat, but Mannfred continued as though he had not heard, and turned to the glowering Ironjaw with a long, low bow, cloak falling to a floor that was not there.
‘It will be I, not you, who will be the first to cross the Sea of Bones. The march of my horde will be felt in the Realm of Death.’ With an elaborate flo
urish, he rose and turned back to Ramus. ‘I will hold our mutual friend Tarsus with affection, when he is my prisoner instead of Nagash’s.’
With a spluttering cry, Ramus thrust his reliquary into Mannfred’s wavering face and cried out to Sigmar for lightning. His staff pulsed blue-white and sprayed power in indiscriminate, arcing forks that carved through the apparition without effect. The vampire replied with a tolerant smile, swept his cloak across him and became a cloud of red that disintegrated on the wind.
‘Dwell upon your failures, Stormcast,’ came the disembodied voice, ‘as I make the Sea of Bones mine.’
Korruk’s sudden howl of fury struck Ramus from any fixation on his own boiling blood. Stomping around without another intelligible word, the Ironjaw jumped onto his maw-krusha’s back and kicked the beast into the air. It gave a bellow, flung out its vestigial, leathery wing-flaps and leapt from the parapet. It dropped into the pall like a stone.
Ramus listened as the megaboss’ livid cries receded. He bowed his head as though in prayer. His eyes stung. It was impossible to hear the Ironjaw and not be reminded of the same unthinking rage that had driven him to this place. Despite it, his heart hammered for further vengeance.
If only his own intemperance could be soothed away as readily as the bone cloud took the Ironjaw’s.
‘Vandalus. Brother, I–’
‘What’s done is done, brother. Sigmar will judge you, but not I.’
Ramus hung his head. Such a covenant should have been reassuring, but for some reason the prospect of receiving Sigmar’s judgement gave him a flutter of apprehension.
The Knight-Azyros spread his wings, stowed his starblade and offered Ramus his hand. ‘What are we waiting for, brother? Would you leave all the fighting to the Ironjawz?’
Ramus lifted his face to the golden light of the Azyros and felt an icy peace quell his heart – the peace that only a certainty of purpose could bring. The Hallowed Knights had departed Azyrheim to renew old alliances, and perhaps a truce with the warriors of Gorkamorka had always been Sigmar’s will.
‘They will have all the fight that they please,’ he said as he clasped the Azyros’ gauntleted hand. ‘But Mannfred is mine.’
FURY OF GORK
by Josh Reynolds
Still in search of allies for their war against Chaos, the Stormcasts brave the Ghurlands... but someone else is there, a champion of Tzeentch seeking a mighty weapon. Only a dangerous mission into the Howling Labyrinth can stop the sorcerer before it’s too late.
Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com
Wrathspring
Gav Thorpe
Something noisome carried on the wind. The reek was born of blood and rotten offal and rodent droppings. It was a harbinger, the vanguard of a thoroughly loathsome tide. Not just the air carried the taint. The Wrathwaters knew what was coming. Even the springsfed surge churning down from the peaks of the White Stair could not clear the pollution from the winding waterways and rising pools. The trees drew in their roots, sickened by the presence of the corruption. Fish lay gut-to-sky, rotting amongst withered leaves and decaying rushes.
In the heartwaters below the rivers and lakes, deeper than the delving of millennia-old trees, the miasma of decay spread through the veins of the forests. The font of wyldmagic – the essence of life, the meltwater of souls – thickened into sluggish swells, bloated and bubble-ridden like a stream choked with noxious gasses and rank sludge.
Diraceth, Leafmaster of Clan Arleath, felt all of these changes – upon his bark, in his sap, on the tips of his taproots. The cloying, stifling Chaos taint was like a fungus on his spirit, leeching his essence, spreading fibrous tendrils through the lands of the Wrathwaters into every part of him.
It was hard to rouse himself, even with the strength of the long-awaited blooming forcing rivulets of life energy into his body. All of the worldwood sickened – it was folly to believe that the Wrathwaters could hold out. Better to succumb, to give up the last clinging vestige of life. Oblivion was preferable to further torture, the never-ending gnawing of soul and strength.
‘Lord!’ Callicaith, the branchwych, had climbed into his upper limbs and was dragging her wood talons against his rough bark – insistent but not painful, nor deep enough to draw sap. Her heartsong was a distressed twittering like the alarm of a bird. On her shoulder, a glimmersilk grub twitched with agitation. ‘Lord Diraceth! The ratmen, they come at last. They come for the lamentiri!’
He opened deep green eyes and looked at the slender tree maiden.
‘The soulpod groves?’ His voice was sonorous, as deep as the earth into which his roots ran. He quivered at the thought. Diraceth’s drooping branches scattered leaves onto the surface of the lake. Around him the bloodwillows responded, straightening their trunks, pulling up ruddy-leafed limbs.
Beyond his copse, other spirits were answering the growing strength of the clan-song. His fellow treelords rumbled echoes in their diminishing slumber. Sylvaneth warriors stirred in the dappled gloom at the water’s edge. Polished wood and firestone of bared blades caught the scant sunlight, scattering glints like water droplets.
‘No more pestilence, no more sickness,’ Callicaith continued. ‘Ratmen with blades, with spears. Creatures we can fight. Creatures we can kill!’
The thought brought Diraceth further from his slumber, drawing up an influx of the essence of Ghyran, the magic of the Realm of Life streaming through his sap.
‘A poor move,’ he growled. He let his roots fall away and drew up a foot. ‘Skaven, always impatient. Another hundred seasons and we would be quite beyond resistance.’
‘There are many, lord.’
‘There always are, my glade-daughter.’ Diraceth levered his other foot out of the sodden lakeside bank and took a step, his sap continuing to rise. It felt good to move again. ‘Rouse the clan. We go to war!’
The wailing of trees competed with the deafening chitter of rats. Arboreal screeches and thrashing leaves beset the river glades of the Wrathwaters as the skaven advanced within a bank of burning mist. Tainted by warpstone, the deathfog of Pestilens scorched leaves and blistered bark. Droplets of warp-touched acid settled on the pools and meres, sinking slowly into the waters with greenish trails.
Diraceth waited, ignoring the pulses of pain that ran through him from the wickedly deep cut across his trunk – a wound that still seeped with the corrupted taint from the blade of the plague priest that had struck him. He wept streams of thick sap, the agony of his body nothing compared to the injuries inflicted upon his domains. The treelord ancient could feel a shudder of misery throbbing through the pools and rivers every time the filth-ridden missiles of the catapults crashed through the canopy. A dozen of the accursed engines had pounded the last scraps of territory for two days, littering the banks and water with heaps of steaming, disease-ridden offal and corrupting shards of warpstone.
Most of the trees were dead, and the rest had retreated with the sylvaneth. Beyond the painfully slender ring of forest sheltering Clan Arleath, the Wrathwaters had been turned into a steaming mire, a wasteland of sucking marsh and drifting, suffocating clouds.
They waited, the last Wrathwater scions of Glade Winterleaf. They waited without hope. At their backs lay the lifepool, the last vestige of their home. Heartseeds covered the surface, but the replenishing waters did not rouse the spirits within. The taint of the skaven came before them, quelling the life force that sustained the lake of the sacred grove. Even more faintly luminescent heartseeds gleamed beyond the perimeter of the clan’s remaining realm – lost in the fog, overrun by the skaven, beyond reclaiming by the branchwyches.
As the last of the warp-wounded trees succumbed to the deadly miasma, the Wrathwaters fell silent. The impenetrable mists surrounded the dell, obscuring everything beyond a bowshot of the water’s edge, revealing only dim silhouettes of trees bowing beneath the effect of the toxic cloud, cu
rling like parched leaves. Diraceth shifted, sensing that something approached through the mist.
Drums. Slow-beating drums. The death fog muted the sound, every percussive rumble seeming to come from all directions. The distant crack of catapults had stopped too. Diraceth could hear the rustling of his glade-daughters and the creak of the other treefolk as they shifted, turning to and fro to watch the closing mists.
‘We die here,’ the Leafmaster told his glade-kin. He looked down at Callicaith. Like all of them, the branchwych bore the injuries of furious battle against the Chaos ratmen. Her leaf-limbs were snapped, her arms scored by deep marks from notched, rusted blades. ‘On the shore of our life-grove, we fight to the last. No more retreats. Without our soulpods, there can be no Clan Arleath.’
The sap in his veins felt clammy and cold. The last of the Wrathwaters were succumbing to the encroachment of Pestilens. Diraceth could feel it like claws dragging at his spirit, trying to pull him down into the ground to suffocate him.
‘There!’ hissed Callicaith, pointing a talon towards the fog.
Others were calling out, indicating a growing darkness in the mists, the approach of the plague monks. Along with the sombre beat of the drums drifted the sound of feet splashing through the swamp.
Screeches split the air a few moments before individual shapes solidified and burst from the fog bank. Fanatics bearing fog-spouting censers sprinted towards the line of sylvaneth, faces flecked with saliva, thick tongues lolling, eyes wild. They swung their censer-maces in wide arcs, surrounding themselves with wreathing spirals of poisonous fumes.
Diraceth let his will flow back into the sustaining pool. He pushed his essence out into the remnants of the Wrathwaters, tapping into what little life magic remained. He felt a reciprocal force, as the Wrathwaters themselves sought a response to the invaders.
Sacrosanct & Other Stories Page 33