Mortarch of Night

by Various

  Vandalus raced towards it.

  Bone crunched under Ramus’ boot. He was surrounded, packed in tight by rattling, whispering dead. Sacrificing what would have been a vital forward step, he shoulder-barged the spear-warrior pressing his right side. It crumbled under the might of sigmarite, the press of bodies knocking down several others behind it. The ground trembled slightly underfoot, but he ignored it. With space to swing his hammer, he swung – a fierce underarm swipe from right to left that launched a grinning skeleton warrior six feet into the air.

  ‘Who is the hammer in the God-King’s hand?’ he yelled.

  ‘Only the faithful!’ came the fierce reply.

  Just a few paces behind, the small Exemplar Chamber of Hallowed Knights crunched in his wake. Their armour gleamed silver and gold under the weak sun, and the weapons they carried crackled with the energies of the divine storm, responding to the power of their Lord-Relictor’s reliquary as though challenged to demonstrate their potency.

  ‘The line is uneven,’ called Sagittus.

  ‘It will do,’ Ramus returned.

  A pity it had taken the exploitation of his own failings by Mann­fred von Carstein to teach what it was to forgive.

  ‘Of the sixty cast into the hell of Cartha to bring vengeance upon the Betrayer, few of us now are left,’ he shouted, the dead falling to pieces under his hammer with every word. ‘Lesser men might waver, but there is naught lesser about we Hallowed Knights. Every one among you is a proven hero, tested in battle, and remade in the fury of the Reforging. Each of you has called upon Sigmar’s name in battle and been heard. Who will shed his mortal flesh in the name of the God-King’s righteous cause?’

  ‘Only the faithful!’

  The ground trembled again, more vigorously this time, enough to shake the Bones of Heroes stored in Ramus’ reliquary.

  ‘Do you feel that?’ spat Cassos, the warrior’s stormglaive humming with protective energies.

  Ramus turned the deep sockets of his mortis helm towards the coming horde. The fell glow of their eyes turned the churning soul-winds an uncertain blue. A huge bone formation rose into the cloud behind them, a lattice of dim, dark lines that wavered like dead trees in a storm. There was a dull thump, and Ramus felt the tremors run through his armour.

  With a roar he raised his reliquary. Lightning arced across the morbid imagery of faith, death and the storm depicted thereon, spitting between staff and sky and back again.

  ‘Who is the lightning in his heart?’

  ‘Only the faithful!’

  To the shouts of his warriors, the snap of bone, the clap of thunderaxes, lightning sprayed from his staff in a blazing torrent. The reliquary shook in his hand as he commanded the current to widen, and roared as he drove it deep and hard into the horde. Bone blackened and cracked as armour cooked. Bodies were blown apart, lightning scything through the enemy ranks again and again until all before him was black and ruined.

  With muffled whoops and yells, the Ironjawz mob on the Hallowed Knights’ right flank spilled into the opening, shinned aside blackened, grasping hands, and began to wade ahead. Ramus could hear the heavy thunk of their armour on the sand, even over the wind, and the insults they shouted at each other and at the Hallowed Knights behind them. More distantly, dim cries of ‘Waaagh!’ wove in through the howl.

  Ramus’ hard-earned humility slipped away in a moment as he sneered at the raucous display. The Ironjawz lent sheer numbers to the Hallowed Knights’ measured advance, but it was on the shoulders of the Stormcast Eternals that victory or defeat would ultimately be carried. Mannfred was here. Somewhere. The warmth of the shield, Sigmar’s Gift, slung across his back attested to it. In punishment for the wrongs done upon the Hallowed Knights, the relic had delivered unto the Betrayer the God-King’s fire, and it remembered. Ramus ardently prayed that Mannfred’s undying flesh remembered it too.

  ‘They are coming again!’ came Sagittus’ cry. ‘Decimators to the fore. Judicators, loose.’

  The ground shook again, violently. Ramus swayed with the tremor. A bolt whizzed loose over his head as the Judicator retinue moving up behind the Paladins stumbled. Ramus watched it whisper into the dust, already high and rising, and a second later heard it dink off something massive. Ramus grasped his reliquary and looked up as the soul-storm swept away from that lattice of bone shapes to admit a ribcage the size of a war-barge. A kneecap wider than a Liberator’s shield swung forwards. There was a thunderous shake as the skeleton’s giant foot slammed into the ground.

  ‘Bone gargant!’ Ramus yelled, holding his reliquary for stability as the Ironjawz poured forwards. A flurry of bolts chipped the monster’s skeleton to little avail.

  It was at least seven... eight... no nine times taller than a man. Its brow was flat, shoulders heavy and hunched, arms long and thickly boned, but despite its gross misproportions it was roughly man-shaped. In one hand, it dragged the thighbone of a beast that must have been even larger. The witch glow from under its ridged brow was piercingly bright and evil. In unnerving silence, it drew its bone club up over its head and smashed it down on the Ironjawz.

  Where there had been a hulking slab of armour brandishing an axe, there was a squeal of metal and a bloody splatter. A hunk of meat soared through the air and slapped wetly into Cassos’ rerebrace. An orruk bellowed at the crushed ruin of its foot while, on the other side of the club buried into the sand between them, another gawped over its shoulder plating to where it remembered having an arm.

  The rest of the mob surged forwards with a roar, only to be brushed away like dead leaves by the sweep of the giant’s club. A kick broke an Ironjawz brutish boss in half and sent him back at the Hallowed Knights like a missile.

  ‘Down, Lord-Relictor!’

  Cassos dragged Ramus aside, and the mangled body hurtled past and smashed down a following Judicator. The Stormcast’s broken body took on a glow, then dissolved into Azyrite energy and blasted the hero’s soul back to Sigmaron.

  Pushing Cassos aside, Ramus raised his reliquary high. Fear had no hold on him now, and what little he still remembered of the feeling had been beaten out in successive Reforgings. But even had he still been mortal, he did not believe that he would have been afraid. He would surely have laughed as he laughed now.

  ‘The Betrayer sends his mightiest against us. He is close. Our hands are around his dead heart, and all we need do is squeeze.’ His voice broke with fury. ‘Who will rip the Betrayer’s head from his inhuman neck?’

  ‘Only the faithful!’

  ‘Only. The. Faithful!’

  He could feel his reliquary being drawn skywards, charge dragging on monstrous charge. With a godly effort, he pulled it back, the sky itself seeming to split open as he drew a titanic bolt of lightning from the heavens. There was a flash as it struck the giant’s elbow. Its bones were lit black, the gaps between them white. Thunder rattled every piece of armour for miles around, and the goliath’s arm was blasted off at the shoulder in a blizzard of splinters.

  The Hallowed Knights shouted words of glory and praise as bone fragments pattered across their armour.

  Ramus raised his hammer for discipline. A strange corruption of the familiar scent of the divine storm gusted across him. It was foetid water, languid energy. His spiritual sense, that which even as a mortal had marked him apart, jangled like a string of bells. It bade him look up.

  He had the impression of corporeality being split, of things that should not have been being made. A besmirched sliver of Azyric light bled through the soul-wind and sputtered wide.

  ‘The realmgate,’ cried Sagittus in confusion. ‘How can this be?’

  With eyes trained to the soul-eternal, Ramus thought he saw something. For a moment, he glimpsed an iron turret and a red-cloaked figure in ridged black armour, clutching some manner of arcane artefact. He was surrounded by slavering ghasts that fawned over his every gesture, the jewels
around their clawed fingers in stark contrast to the bloodied rags draped over their shoulders.

  Betrayer.

  Into that singular moment was also forced a dozen dizzying perspectives of the battle being fought around him. Orruks charging. A clatter of spears. Ghouls tearing skywards on ragged wings. A bloom of green-tinged fire. Perhaps this was how Sigmar or Nagash might see this battle played out, but it was too much to carry. His final impression was of Mannfred. The vampire seemed to turn to him, to see him across the void, and grinned.

  ‘It is not the realmgate. Sigmar must have sealed the way once he was aware of Mannfred’s tampering.’

  ‘Trapping us here,’ Sagittus muttered.

  Ramus nodded. The least of their concerns. ‘It is a copy. The vampire taps the energy of Sigmar’s gate. He is directing it somehow to open new portals at will.’

  ‘If a few miles is the best he can muster then I am not worried,’ Cassos sneered.

  ‘We all should worry, Cassos. He practices on us. With such a weapon, and the Sea of Bones at his disposal, the Betrayer will be a formidable enemy.’

  As if the vampire had been listening, the portal flashed and a second gargant made of bones staggered through. It stamped on a tottering Ironjaw and sent another flying with the smash of a splayed metal club. A third colossus walked into the other’s back. It was half as tall again with long, slender bones.

  ‘Hallowed Knights, forwards!’ Ramus roared. ‘For Sigmar, for Tarsus, and for the soul-eternal.’

  The Stormcasts gave a roar, echoed by faceplates and distant voices, and broke into a charge. Ramus turned from them, hammer drawn back, and spotted a glimmer in the sky. He glanced towards it and it brightened, firing a beam of golden light that sheared cleanly through the taller bone gargant.

  Vandalus shot through the rising plume of bone dust.

  The Knight-Azyros shone like a solitary candle in a storm, his battered war-plate a magnificent gold, finished with the Astral Templars’ purple. The second gargant swung its metal club. Vandalus dodged agilely out of the way, and the club smashed through the other’s spine. Vertebrae sprayed out and the already struggling monstrosity collapsed as though hidden necromantic wires had been cut.

  The surviving Ironjawz, and those clumping forwards to reinforce them, pumped their weapons in the air. Warring shouts of ‘Gorka’ and ‘Morka’ gave way to uncertain cries of ‘Sigmar.’ The Knight-Azyros swung about and brandished his golden starblade, which the Ironjawz lapped up with an approving roar.

  Vandalus came heavily into land, balancing uneasily on the carpet of bones. Ramus strode towards him while the exuberant Ironjawz and the Hallowed Knights pushed on, making brutal work of the remaining gargant.

  ‘We’ve found him,’ said Vandalus.

  Ramus indicated the guttering portal, now slowly fading. ‘I saw.’

  ‘The Liberators of the Astral Templars hold the right flank as you do the left. The Ironjawz advance slowly, but advance they do, and Korruk himself now drives for the realmgate citadel.’ He turned and pointed with his shuttered lantern. ‘The Great Red is about half a mile in front and fast pulling ahead. He is like an engine, brother, built for killing. We may win this yet.’

  ‘You doubted?’

  Vandalus shrugged.

  ‘Part of me wonders how we will rid the citadel of the Ironjawz once they have reclaimed it,’ said Ramus.

  ‘I’m tempted to let them keep it.’ Vandalus laughed at Ramus’ sudden glare and held up his hands to show that he was not serious – at least not entirely. ‘One battle at a time, brother. Worry first that the Great Red will be done with the vampire before you catch up.’

  ‘Never!’

  Vandalus spread his wings and prepared to take flight once more. ‘Then up your pace, brother. One way or another we drink this eve in Sigmaron.’

  His Imperial Majesty Angar Utrech XVI, Abhorrant Ghoul King of the Carthic Oldwoods, growled and slurped a string of jellied consonants. One heavy hand formed a ring around his eye. It was a sickly, sightless yellow, and a jelly-like substance oozed out of the tear-duct as he squinted. The left hand made another ring about nine inches in front of the right, slowly rotating the focus of an imaginary eyeglass.

  ‘I see no sign of these would-be besiegers, Lord von Carstein,’ was what he thought he said. Mannfred allowed the flesh-eater’s warped reality into his mind so that he could hear him properly.

  The vampire leant over the thick Ironjaw battlement, the oily cool of the Fang of Kadon between his hands, the point wedged into the graffitied metal. He had used the artefact to locate the hidden gates to Nagash’s underworld, but its powers over the lesser portals that existed within realms went far beyond mere divination.

  ‘Trust me,’ he whispered, strained, almost forgetting to add, ‘my liege.’

  As potent as he was at his full strength, the flesh-eater court was, as a group, still more so, and he was far from his full strength. The Stormcast priest, Ramus, had seen to that.

  The sand that blew into the melted ruin of his face cut like silver. The beating hearts of the ghastly court pounded in his ears. He heard their rasping breaths, the distant clangour of steel and the incongruous rattle of silverware where he knew there was none.

  Click, click, click, went the imaginary dial on the imaginary eyeglass.

  He tightened his grip on the Fang and murmured a calming incantation.

  His monstrous legions would hold the Stormcasts at bay. And if by some miracle they did make it into his citadel, then Utrech’s court was always hungry.

  ‘A thousand marks says that the greenskins won’t make the outer walls,’ said Utrech, sliding his brawny hands smartly together and slipping the ‘eyeglass’ into a nonexistent coat pocket.

  A growling chorus of ‘hear hears’ from the courtiers and sycophants in attendance intruded spontaneously into Mannfred’s pained reality. The backs of fingers were clapped lightly in bloody palms. Rings were rapped against the rampart’s thick iron cladding.

  Mannfred hissed in pain and tried to ignore it.

  When this strange court of ghouls had first found him, half-starved and barely alive, scrabbling through the Carthic Oldwoods for worms to feed on, he would have been easy prey. Instead they had fed him, feted him. By the rules of the odd little fantasy that the semi-vampiric Utrech lived through them, he was akin to visiting royalty. Through the blood of theirs he had taken, he had come to know glimpses of their world.

  ‘What say you, Sir Othamar?’ said Marquess Corinne, her drooling growl coming via her August Majesty’s imposed delusion as a lilting flutter of genteel elocution. She turned to the brooding templar standing guard on the stairs, hulking and obtrusive in black armour, the red paint scuffed out. ‘Would you not rather be bloodying your sword on these unruly savages?’

  Sir Othamar, however, was an orruk and a dead one, commander of the garrison left behind by the self-styled Great Red, and said nothing. The Marquess pouted hideously.

  A stabbing pain passed though Mannfred’s head, and he moaned. It was a sensation he dimly associated with the bringing up of vomit. Another imperfect reflection of the Celestial Realmgate split across the sky with a sound like shattering glass.

  ‘Bravo!’ slobbered the Viscount Henzel von Kurze.

  Mannfred closed his eyes for a moment’s inner peace, then looked up to share the ghast’s wonder at what he had wrought. Scores of fizzing, intermittent portals pulsed feebly in the soul-tortured air. Some were side on, slits in the air. Others faced away. They seemed to contain eerie reflections of Mannfred and his court, but in every one there was something subtly incorrect in the image. There he was, cadaverously thin, the Twelfth Mark of Final Death hanging over him. And there again, surrounded not by fawning courtiers, but naked, horribly muscled beasts eyeing him with rapacious hunger.

  The original realmgate stood within an arch of bone tha
t by some arcane vicissitude had been braided with marble by Sigmar’s original settlers. It put Mannfred in mind of a man near death, suspended on the rack and somehow managing a fitful sleep between bouts of torture. Sigmar had abandoned it, left it for dead, a sacrifice to preserve more valued lives. But life was determined, whatever form it took. There was power in the gate yet, and the Fang of Kadon would drink it all.

  He felt an ache in his gums, and his own fangs began to lengthen. The Sea of Bones was just the beginning. The Realm of Ghur was but the first step. Nagash would beg him to return, or he would cower in his crumbling keeps.

  ‘I require more time if I am to raise the mightiest and most ancient creatures,’ he said, speaking softly and patiently. ‘The Titans of Myth that sleep under the Sea of Bones. And the Fang needs far more of the realmgate’s power if I am to extend a portal to the lands beyond the Sea’s far border, where the gateway to Shyish is to be found.’

  ‘Time, is it?’ dribbled Utrech.

  He waved over a hunchbacked ghoul bearing a tray that was at once half of an old wooden table and a fine silver tray. Utrech picked up a raw piece of spare rib. The last piece of Skraggtuff’s ogors, Mannfred presumed.

  The delusory self-image the Abhorrant King shared with his court was of a young man with the swagger and errant confidence of birthright.

  What he was was an abomination with no place in a world once trodden by gods. His breathing was quick and shallow and gurgled from his mouth. Long teeth for the ripping of uncooked flesh and powerful muscles for the grinding of bone had thickened his jaw and it hung low down his neck. His arms and chest were bare, a greenish grey, and ugly with hard slabs and cords of muscle.

  The obliterated rib fell back onto the tray with a loud thunk.

  ‘You’ve been fair by us, von Carstein. You gift me a dragon to ride and an army to lead, and what time I have to give in exchange is yours.’

  ‘Most kind,’ Mannfred murmured, offering a brief nod of the head as the Abhorrant King turned with a swish of imaginary tails and sloped past the brooding Sir Othamar.