The Stormhosts’ vanguard plunged on towards the fortress. Vandus and Calanax ran past them all, until they were in front. The sense of magic on the air intensified and the outline of the tower and the fortress walls blurred into obscurity. There came a soft wash of air, and a tremor set the ruins shaking. The ground quaked and the Stormhosts stumbled.
‘No!’ shouted Vandus. He spurred Calanax into a gallop, gritting his teeth at the jarring pain in his shoulder. Buildings came down around him, ancient crystal shattering and metal tearing with mournful groans. The ground buckled under him, rising up as if turned by a plough. A fresh ridge rose up in the ruins, a wrinkle in the earth that upset the remains of the city, making them lean drunkenly on footings of broken stone.
Calanax surged up the ridge as it stopped growing and the tremors ceased. At the summit, Vandus’ worst fears were realised.
The Hammerhands clambered up behind him. Ionus and Andricus arrived at his side. Not a soul amongst them spoke. Before them was a crater, wide and deep.
‘It’s gone,’ said Lord Vandus dully. ‘And the hammer with it.’
‘So we go after it,’ said Ionus Cryptborn. ‘We keep going until we find it.’
‘But how, if some fell power has claimed it and taken it who knows where?’
Cryptborn shrugged. ‘Fear not, Lord Vandus. We will find a way.’
Chapter Five
Dragonfate dais
The leaders of the Stormhosts gathered atop the crater’s crest. Tempers ran hot and bewilderment ruled. No decision had been reached as to what to do next, and as the day grew old none seemed to be forthcoming.
Ionus did not take part in the debate. He found a block of stone to one side and sat upon it, removing his helmet to allow his pale skin to feel the sun and the sweat to dry. He remained there, facing west, as the day’s shadows lengthened and the great wyrm shone in the evening, its flames becoming brighter as the sky darkened. When Chamon’s sun had slunk past its coils and dipped behind distant Knatrok, a shimmer in the air resolved into a lithe figure.
Ionus stood and bowed, his hand over his heart.
‘Celemnis, the Silver Maiden. I give you greetings of the night. We are kin, you and I. United in death.’
She said nothing, but floated forward, the silver of her lower body flowing over the freshly turned rubble of Elixia. She gave Ionus a sad, lingering smile. Her face had lost its ferocious aspect, and Ionus presumed that aside from her skin of metal she looked now much as she had in life: a beautiful, proud face haloed by red hair. She bowed her head and reached out a hand. From it sprouted a long tendril of rippling silver. It steadied itself and became the sword Ionus had gifted her from his reliquary. She took it in both hands and offered it up to him much as he had offered it to her.
Ionus took the returned blade. Its edges glimmered sharp and silver, and he marvelled at the change.
‘Your work?’
She smiled again.
‘You have done me a great honour, my lady.’
By now, others had noticed what was occurring. The arguments of the war council subsided, and the lords of the hosts turned to watch this strange exchange.
Ionus carefully replaced the hilt of the sword into the clasped hands of the skeleton on his staff. ‘Perhaps you could do me another. I would not ask, as you have done so much for us already, but we have come to an impasse. Your efforts are important. If we succeed here, then this city might live again, and you could go to your rest.’ He smiled. ‘Or you might linger, and remain its guardian.’
She tilted her head to the side, awaiting his request.
‘Thank you, my lady. Firstly, tell me – where has the castle fled to?’
She looked upwards at the Great Crucible and pointed.
‘I see. And how might we venture there with so great an assemblage?’
She smiled again, and beckoned. Without waiting to see if Ionus followed, she set off west into the city. The Lord-Relictor went after her, tilitng his head to meet Lord Vandus’ gaze. Vandus nodded and motioned for his men to follow.
A sepulchral quiet was on the city, and Vandus had no desire to break it in case the maiden’s magic be broken also.
‘Sound no trumpet and say little,’ Vandus said, ‘but spread the word. The Silver Maiden shows us the way.’
The Stormhosts gathered themselves rapidly and said nothing as commanded. They had marched for days and fought for much of the morning, but the magic of Sigmar made them strong and unwearying. Sleep they could stave off for days, if need be. And so it was, for Celemnis did not halt to let them rest, but continued westward at a steady, unhurried speed.
They passed back along the Anvrok highway, past the turn to the Bright Tor Gate. There Vandus sent messengers down to the encampment and others to the entrance of the Silverway, and bade them take news of their progress back to Sigmaron.
On for a dozen more miles the Stormcasts proceeded, before Celemnis took them up an unassuming spur of the road into the Bright Tor Mountains. In this part of Anvrok there was no sign of the Stormhosts’ recent invasion. They trod secret paths shown to them by Cryptborn’s strange ally. Chaos tribes that had yet to face the Stormcast Eternals launched attacks, but they retreated soon enough. Once three had been bested, the army was attacked no more.
Celemnis and Ionus led the way, the others keeping a wary distance. Cryptborn could be seen speaking with the ghost and listening attentively. What they spoke of was his alone to know; he was too far ahead for his words to be heard clearly, and from her they heard nothing at all.
Before the eighth day was out, the Stormhosts emerged from a narrow pass and Vandus stopped in amazement.
‘The Argent Falls,’ he said.
For the last three days the confines of the mountains had hidden all but hints of the crucible and its strange guardian. Now revealed, Argentine filled the horizon, its coils impossibly vast. The Great Crucible formed a halo around Argentine’s upturned head. The roar of the dragonfires that heated the crucible were loud. The mountains there rose up high, but gusting, hot winds blew over them from the drake’s fires and molten silver, keeping them warm and free of snow.
The Argent Falls plunged from the edge of the crucible, falling miles through the air in a wide sheet. The surface was silver, but the orange glow of smelting was visible in the folds of the liquid. Where the falls struck the rock of Anvrok, gobbets of precious metal splattered across the mountainside, and a wide area around the river’s headwater was covered in globular formations of pure silver. The remains of catcher channels could be seen half-buried in the metal. These ruins of industry were far below the Stormcasts, who looked down onto them from a high road.
Beyond the falls was a little more of the land of Anvrok, then the mountains stopped abruptly and the skyvoids began. The road they were on curled downwards, closer to the falls, before it crossed a bridge over a ravine. Smaller roads led off to the works there, and then the main road rose up again to a township on a crag opposite the army, as ruinous as every other city in Anvrok. At the brink of the cliff the circular platform of a dais rose up on an artfully coiled staircase. Six statues of dragons stood around its circumference.
Vandus was close to Ionus and Celemnis, and heard his Lord-Relictor speak.
‘A dragonfate dais?’ Ionus said. ‘How can that aid us?’
Celemnis pointed a long-nailed finger at the dais and disappeared.
Vandus waited a moment before calling out. ‘Has she departed?’
‘No. I sense her still,’ Ionus replied.
Vandus rode up beside him.
‘I am glad. She is a good ally.’
‘She is in great pain,’ said Ionus matter-of-factly. ‘This place must have been fabulously wealthy. I have seen many dragonfate shrines, but never one rendered in solid silver.’
Calanax made a growling purr.
‘Calanax
approves. This is a fitting honour to the great drakes. Silver is favoured by them.’
Vandus stroked between Calanax’s horns. ‘And yet, against the barbaric hordes of Chaos, the protection of their old gods availed them little. There is only one god who can stand before the Four, and that god is Sigmar. What would the Silver Maiden have us do, I wonder?’
‘Let us consider the question upon the dais,’ said Ionus. ‘The answer may come to us there more easily, and that is where she pointed.’
‘We cannot all go – look at the road. The town is small.’
‘We should not go alone. We have suffered several ambushes already. Summon Thostos and let his Warrior Chamber come with ours. He is deeply involved in this affair,’ said Ionus.
Vandus nodded. He raised his hand and horns blew. The Hammerhands and the Bladestorms came forward. Together, they went down into the valley and up into the ruined town of Silverfall.
The rumble of the Argent Falls drowned out all other sound. The heat of the silver was intense, and Vandus marvelled that men had lived there at all. Roofless houses and workshops stretched up the mountainside behind the crag for some way, exhibiting that mix of duardin and mannish craftsmanship that was the hallmark of Anvrok’s dead civilisation.
They reached the dais. The base of its supporting stair rose from a village square and a low wall edged it, but much of it had fallen away, leaving a dangerous drop to the rocks and silver accretions below.
‘Thostos, Ionus, Andricus – come with me onto the dais,’ said Vandus.
No sooner had he said the words than a deeper roar undercut the thunder of the Argent Falls: the unnatural grind of machinery. It came from thin air.
‘To arms!’ he yelled.
‘Another bloody ambush,’ growled Andricus. ‘Judicators! To higher ground. Liberators, shieldwall.’
All around the assembled brotherhoods, slivers of green light split the air. Green-black drills ground through each, ripping wide the fabric of reality before withdrawing.
‘Stormfiends!’ said a Liberator. ‘Skaven!’
His warning was cut short by a hail of bullets. Giant, rat-like monsters shouldered their way out of the tears in the weft of the world. Some bore multi-barrelled guns in the place of fists, and they fired as they came. Dozens of Stormcasts were shredded, falling to their knees before disappearing in blurs of azure lightning. Behind the gun-beasts came more giants, these armed with whirring drills and grinders. They bowed their heads and charged.
‘Stand ready!’ called Vandus.
‘Judicators, loose!’ yelled Andricus.
A storm of bolts spat through the air, felling one of the giant rat monsters. It collapsed face first into the dirt with a pitiful grunt, revealing the swollen-headed rat-thing bonded to its back. This twisted ratling mewled horribly until a hammer stroke ended its misery. Liberators charged the stormfiends. Those warriors that were not knocked flying by the swipes of the creatures’ arms rained hammer blows upon knees and ankles, hoping to bring the giant beings low. Vandus drove Calanax into the fray, but the stormfiends proved more than a match for the Lord-Celestant and his steed, and they were driven back under the shadow of the dais. The stormfiends grunted in recognition, seeming to single him out, and soon Vandus was surrounded by three of the things.
‘Protect the Lord-Celestant!’ he heard Andricus shout.
The rest of the battlefield was a blur to Vandus, his attention was focused solely on fending off the hammering blows of the stormfiends. Calanax gutted one and Vandus smashed the shoulder of another, but there were more coming and were it not for the might of Heldensen, he would have been overcome.
Behind the stormfiends came a flood of the lesser ratmen. They leapt from the tears in the world and ran for cover with preternatural speed. Once established there, they opened fire with their rifles, the force of their magical bullets punching through sigmarite and knocking Stormcasts from their feet. The noise of battle rose high enough to challenge the falls: the racket of the skaven’s hellish weaponry, the whoosh of slain Stormcasts departing for Azyr, the clang of weapons, the shouts of men, and a frantic chittering at the edge of hearing.
Vandus parried another deadly blow. Calanax was forced closer to the edge of the cliffs.
Then Vandus saw turquoise armour amid the gold of his own men. Thostos roared, and in that war cry was something of the man Vandus had known before. He and his warriors ran full tilt into the stormfiends.
‘Vandus! Vandus! We come!’ shouted Thostos. He cut a stormfiend’s leg free, sending it toppling. Hammers smashed into its head and the grafted rider, bludgeoning both to death.
‘Slay the leader!’ bellowed Vandus.
The warlord was larger than his servants, more metal than flesh, surrounded by a bodyguard of heavily armoured, black-furred henchmen. Thostos rallied his men about him and began battering his way toward the warlord, while Vandus was fully occupied deflecting the blows of a stormfiend. The next thing Vandus saw was a gout of black-green fire washing over his friend. Thostos’ men fell, incinerated within their armour.
‘Thostos!’ shouted Vandus, and his blow slew a further stormfiend, smashing its ribcage with a blast of energy. He urged Calanax forward but the dracoth was shoved back.
Another blast of fire. What Vandus saw next almost fatally distracted him.
Thostos strode forward, unharmed. The warpfire of the skaven beast washed over him with no effect, and he slew the creature with a whirl of hammer and sword. Thostos pushed on for the warlord. The stormvermin bodyguard, somewhat tentatively, moved in to engage, but their halberds broke upon the Lord-Castellant’s inviolable skin, and Thostos struck them down in seconds. The leader fled, leaping up the stairs in fear. Andricus was close by and went after him.
Vandus was now embattled with only two of the giant ratmen. Calanax clamped his jaw around the leg of one while Vandus battered back the second. With a mighty heave, Calanax sent it toppling from the precipice.
The second fought on. Calanax rounded on it while it was still reeling from Vandus’ blow and bit off its head. Still it fought. Whirling blades topped the stumps of its fists and these caught on Heldensen, juddering hard until they pushed the hammer aside. The creature smashed into Vandus’ injured shoulder and reopened the wound Maerac had dealt him. He cried in pain, backhanding his hammer into the beast’s chest and slaying it finally.
A second wave of stormfiends were emerging from the cracks between the worlds. Two came from a slit nearby, squeak-roaring with idiot rage. A pair of Prosecutors swept over them, blinding them with blasts of their hammers. Vandus and Calanax leapt at them, the impact of their charge sending one of the creatures back into the hole it had come from. Vandus directed Heldensen against the second, obliterating it.
Then green lightning was all about him. A bolt of it sent Calanax to his knees. Vandus urged him to rise, but Calanax was dazed and unresponsive. The Stormcast looked up to see a bizarre, clattering machine bouncing down the ruined streets, spitting more lightning.
‘Up, Calanax. Up!’ he shouted.
Bright white light speared down. The war machine exploded, raining wood and iron all over the town. A large wheel bounced down the street, and hurtled off the edge of the cliff. From the steps to the dragonfate dais, Ionus nodded at Vandus, the afterglow of his spell lighting his face.
The ratmen were wavering. A strange stench filled the square. As one, they turned and fled, shrieking in terror. They melted into the ruins and vanished.
The noise of battle ceased. There were three isolated crackles of fire, then the roar of the falls reasserted itself. Thostos came to Vandus’ side, drenched in blood. He raised his sword.
‘Victory.’
‘Victory!’ Vandus cried, and clanged his hammer against Thostos’ blade. He turned to raise a salute to Andricus upon the dais.
Andricus raised his own blade. A final gunshot r
ang out. Andricus Stoneheart buckled and fell, vanishing in a blur of light a moment before he could hit the street.
Vandus, Ionus and Thostos stood upon the dais. The view over the falls from the shrine was glorious, but Vandus spared it no glance. His jubilation at their victory was ashes in his mouth; Andricus would be sorely missed in the coming fight.
‘We cannot call upon the God-King’s beneficence again,’ protested Vandus. ‘The others look to us. We must show strength, not weakness. And how are we to speak to the heavens?’
‘Call upon the Great Drake,’ rumbled Thostos. ‘These statues are raised to him.’
‘That was Celemnis’ intention,’ said Ionus. ‘I am sure of it.’
Vandus glanced from one man to the other. His eyes lingered on Thostos’ cool blue stare. Would Andricus be that way when he returned? He felt a shiver of unease around Thostos where before there had been only friendship. ‘But… I know not how,’ said Vandus.
Calanax roared and rumbled as he prowled up the stairs to join the lords atop the dais. The dracoth looked down upon his master, head cocked to one side in question. Vandus nodded hesitantly, unsure if he understood the beast. ‘Very well. If you intend to talk with the Great Drake, go ahead. What harm can it do?’
‘You must retreat to the edges of the dais,’ said Ionus. ‘The dracoth intends to speak with his father, the Great Drake Dracothion, the first and greatest of their kind.’
For an hour the dracoth bellowed and roared at the sky. None of the men understood his speech, but the urgency of it was arresting. In ones and twos the Stormcasts ceased combing the ruins for the skaven and came to a halt, all eyes on the dragonfate dais. Upon the other crag where the majority of the army waited, the dracoths of other Lord-Celestants assembled, adding their voices to Calanax’s roar one by one.
Darkness fell. The stars were dim against the brightness of the silver wyrm’s fires and the town flickered in their perpetual firelight.
Finally, Calanax ceased his petition. The stars grew brighter, and brighter, until they outshone the fires of Argentine. The sky blazed as gloriously as those of Azyr. Stars moved, and the night rippled and resolved itself into a smiling reptilian face as wide as the sky.
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