by Various
‘Only the faithful,’ he muttered, and followed.
There is one gate. Ramus repeated the mantra, over and over in his mind as foul, corrupted lightning lashed at his panoply of faith and etheric winds buffeted him, howling with the many voices of the unquiet dead. There is one gate. If he were to look then he knew he would see many, but they were falsehoods all and so he did not look. Eyes could be deceived, but the truth he kept in his heart where no evil could violate it.
There is one gate.
His Hallowed Knights were beside him. They shared a spiritual bond and their faith was his strength even as he felt them ripped away, one by one, cast into mirror portals that exited all across the physical battlefield. They would survive the experience as Vandalus had, but isolated from their allies, swamped by undead, their separation would ultimately prove fatal.
‘Sigmar demands much of those to whom much is given,’ he bellowed into the maelstrom, seeking with his words and his will to anchor their souls to Azyr and to the divine storm – but he could not even hear himself.
There went his second, Sagittus. The Judicator had questioned him often, and Ramus was aggrieved, but not surprised, that he should be amongst the first to falter. Then went Cassos. Ever prideful, ever arrogant. The Protector-Prime tumbled onto the Sea of Bones and disappeared under a shrieking mob of flesh-eaters.
There is one gate.
As far back into his mortal existence as Ramus could recall, he had always been a priest. There had been no life for him before Sigmar. He was without vulnerability, without vice. The Lord-Relictors were warrior priests, but for him, the ‘warrior’ part of that dyad had always come a distant second.
Discarding his hammer, he took up the shield, Sigmar’s Gift. Many lies shone upon its silver face, but it carried only one true reflection. It had delivered the God-King’s fire unto the Betrayer, and it remembered. He turned his head in the direction it pointed.
Portals whirled there like stars, a nightscape that had been hyper-accelerated in order to watch the full lifespan of creation in a few short seconds.
There is one gate.
But which one?
Suddenly, Vandalus was there beside him, and the celestial radiance of his beacon showed the pale imitations of Azyr’s light for what they were. The false portals dimmed and faded and the one true gate shone like the last star at the universe’s end.
‘There is one gate!’ The Knight-Azyros yelled into his mind.
The bedlam of energy and noise came together into a blinding wall of light and then shattered.
Ramus was kneeling as though in prayer on a rampart flagged with tiles of bone. Steam rose from his armour. The wind hissed. Bone shards hit sigmarite with a forlorn little sound like pebbles being dropped into a votive well. He looked up. A handful of Retributors and Judicators had made it with him, and Vandalus. They stood, lightning winding around their armour.
Their faith was a source of inspiration and joy.
At their backs, the realmgate sputtered and glowed. It was cold, sealed by Sigmar, a charcoal blue ember that was slowly guttering down. Ramus wondered whether it might be reopened, and how. The God-King had the power to seal the gates to his realm, but only from the other side could such gates be unbarred.
A hiss of fury came to him through the soul-gale. Mannfred von Carstein stood on the other side of the metal-over-bone rampart. The vampire’s white hair was wild and lashed about in the wind. His teeth were longer than when Ramus had first encountered him, broken and caged in the Land of the Dead, and his eyes were redder. An animal kind of madness affected them, a symptom of this realm perhaps, or the energies he had been attempting to barter with. Ramus focussed on the vampire’s face. His patrician features were horribly burned. The mark of Sigmar’s lash.
Stiffly, the vampire bowed, as though acknowledging the honour Ramus showed him by presenting himself thusly on his knees. The muscle-clad ghasts that surrounded him flexed and drooled.
With a scowl, Ramus rammed his reliquary between the bone flags.
At the same time, Mannfred drew his ancient, basket-hilted sword. In his other hand was the oily curve of the Fang of Kadon, wrested from the ghouls of Helstone with the good faith of Hallowed Knights. It was about the length of a dagger, and it dripped with power.
There was a crunch as the dread abyssal, Ashigaroth, descended on a nimbus of keening spirits that wefted and wove about its bulk, and clamped its claws onto the parapet behind its master. Even amongst the deathless horrors to which Mannfred had bestowed unlife, it was a rare and unique terror. Ramus had personally witnessed the beast swallowing a man’s soul, and savage a charging gryph-hound with the barest twitch of its beak.
‘You do not look as hale as the last time we met, Betrayer.’
‘Nor you, Stormcast.’
‘Looks can deceive.’
‘Most things will, if you allow them to.’
‘Distract the beast, Azyros,’ growled Ramus, eyes fixed on Mannfred’s. ‘The rest of you... the vampire is all that matters here.’
With an ululating war cry, Vandalus leapt into the air. The Hallowed Knights thundered forwards, as did Mannfred’s ghasts. The turret of the Ironjaw fort was too narrow for either side to build much momentum, but the two sets of inhumanly massive bodies carried force enough of their own to smack together with a sound like mallets softening up raw meat. Ramus saw Vandalus dart away from Ashigaroth’s snapping beak and disappear around a bartizan that projected from the turret’s corner. Then Ramus found his full attention occupied.
Mannfred strode towards him.
‘Step away from the realmgate.’
‘Never.’
‘I do not ask twice.’ Face twisted by a predatory snarl, Mannfred lunged for his throat with the tip of his sword.
Ramus swung his shield into it, knocking it aside. It was only then that he realised that he still did not have a hammer. He muttered a prayer, his reliquary bursting into Azyric light as he swung it like a mace and cracked the dead hand that wielded the Fang of Kadon. Mannfred cursed and spun away.
The vampire dropped low and stabbed under Ramus’ guard. The blade nicked his faulds before Ramus could counter. He stepped off in a bid to keep the distance between them that favoured his staff’s length, but the vampire was quickly on him. He danced, feinted, eyes everywhere, moving like a snake. The Fang of Kadon scraped an ‘X’ across the face of Sigmar’s Gift.
‘Behold the glory of Sigmar, vampire!’
Ramus stamped his staff’s black ferule onto the ground. Ribbons of energy stroked across air and ground, driving the vampire back. He took the moment granted to take in the carnage. A ghast took a thunderaxe in the gut and exploded outwards from the midriff, splattering everything in pink. Another ripped the right arm clean off a Judicator’s body and used the crossbow still in its grip to club in the screaming warrior’s helm. He heard Ashigaroth’s shriek and saw Vandalus crash through the bartizan’s iron walls. A beam of light sheared back through the jagged breach and drove the dread abyssal higher, out of reach.
‘Marquess,’ Mannfred hissed, still swatting at the tendrils of energy that ran across the dark ridges of his armour. ‘Take this one and I will see to it that you take Angar Utrech’s throne.’
The powerfully built creature he spoke to glanced hungrily towards the Stormcasts. Hulking, grey, peripherally female, it loped towards Ramus on its knuckles and opened its heavy jaws. Ramus slammed it aside with his shield, broke its neck, and used its momentum to propel himself into Mannfred as he lashed the shield back across him.
Mannfred recoiled in pain and shock. Blood was dribbling from a shallow diagonal line that joined his right temple to the left side of his mouth.
‘Only the faithful!’ Ramus roared as the vampire’s cut began to bubble and the blood dappling the blade-rim of his shield began to steam.
It remembered.
And behind him, the realmgate responded.
It opened just a crack: not physically, but with the unsubtle energies of the divine storm. Light streamed through the opening with a pure clarion note like the trumpet call of Heaven, and Ramus felt all his bruises and aches soothed. The vampire shuffled away from him, blood dripping onto the metal flags.
‘What have you done? How?’
The skin sealing the gate vibrated like an ivory horn in the moments after it had been blown, and a shadow formed against the Azyr blue. It was a human shape, larger than a man, rounded by the bulk of armour. There was a rippling snap of discharge as the burly figure stepped through. He bore a long, gold-hafted halberd in one gauntlet and an ornately filigreed lantern in the other. His armour was the deep purple of sunset. As Ramus recognised him, his heart soared on the storm winds of Sigmar’s miracle.
His name was Hamilcar, Lord-Castellant of the Astral Templars, Eater of Bears, and Champion of Cartha.
The Stormcast whirled his halberd one handed and decapitated a ghast with a splitting blow to the side of the neck. ‘The Bear-Eater has your scent, undying,’ the Lord-Castellant bellowed with a thunderous laugh. ‘He has come back for you!’
Two more Astral Templars emerged from the gate behind him, and then two more, marching in column. Beside them, walking in a metronomic lockstep and also in ranks of two, came something that Ramus could never have dreamed to see marching under the light of Azyr – not given the outcome of his embassy to the Lands of the Dead. They were wights, encased in black armour, and clad in the bitterest, most unforgiving chill. The liche that led them out half a length behind Hamilcar’s giant stride was clad in ragged robes and encased in ridged armour of archaic design that rattled loosely against his bones. He carried a long staff, around the tip of which strange black flames pulsed, and a tomb-blade that summoned actual tears from the streaming souls it touched.
‘Arkhan the Black,’ said Ramus in disbelief. He turned back from the gate and thrust his blazing reliquary towards the no-longer-so-distant Heavens. ‘The gate between Sigmaron and Stygxx has been unsealed!’
Mannfred slithered back like an adder. He shoved a ravenous ghast into Ramus’ and Hamilcar’s path. Arkhan gestured with his staff and the flesh-eater was withered on the spot, consumed in a puff of black flame. Mannfred pressed back against the spiked metal battlements and cast about in desperation. Spotting something that Ramus could not see through the intervening combatants and the debris thrown out by the wrecked bartizan, he dropped down. When he sprang back to his feet he had his sword arm locked around Vandalus’ throat and the Fang of Kadon pulsing over the Knight-Azyros’ heart, a crowing sneer on his lips. The Astral Templar looked dazed.
‘No closer, Stormcast.’
Hamilcar gave a mocking laugh and impaled a ghast to the halfway point of his weapon’s haft. ‘Look at who you’re speaking to. Do you think I fear for my brother’s life?’
With a scowl, Mannfred turned to Arkhan. ‘The Sea of Bones is our freedom. I could have conquered this realm and lived as a god. Imagine, if you can, what we could do together.’
‘I know my duty as I have always done since the earliest of days,’ the liche returned, his voice sepulchral and harsh. ‘The Undying King raised you high. You are one of his Mortarchs. But your fear of him and your jealousy of your fellow servants has unmade you.’ He lifted his staff. ‘It is, as always, my pleasure to serve him as his instrument in this.’
‘Ramus,’ said Mannfred, wheedling, turning from the heartless liche. ‘Do you think that Nagash will ever release the soul of your Lord-Celestant? Do you think he would ever release a soul of his? I am your only chance if you want to see Tarsus made whole again.’
‘I too know my duty,’ Ramus intoned. He barged aside a ghast that was wrestling with a Hallowed Knight for his thunderaxe, and made to run at Mannfred – only for a hulking orruk-zombie to clank into his path. Its axe thumped into Ramus’ shield.
‘A less craven cur would jump,’ said Arkhan. ‘The fall is long, but Nagash’s vengeance on you, prodigal, will be eternal.’
‘Let Nagash’s wrath atrophy as he does. He shall never claim me.’ Mannfred glared at Ramus and Hamilcar and raised the Fang of Kadon high. ‘And neither shall Sigmar.’
‘No!’ Ramus screamed. He knocked back the armoured zombie and hurled his shield.
It emitted a discus hum as it carved through the air, slicing the vampire into halves through the belly at the same moment that the Fang of Kadon plunged through Vandalus’ breastplate and impaled the Stormcast’s heart. Both howled as though struck by lightning. The channelled energy of the active realmgate pulsed from the Fang and through them both, suturing them together with stitches of Azyr-light. The vampire’s pale skin shone white. The Azyros glowed like a forge through the joins in his armour as though his blood had been transformed into thunder.
The light emitted a shrill, bat-like scream, and the two bodies folded into one another, flattened, thinned, dragged towards a central point around the Fang of Kadon, and then slurred out into a spitting portal. It was purple, as though discoloured by blood, and larger than any that Ramus had yet seen manifested over the Sea of Bones. But it lasted for barely a second. Blood spatter and bent bits of roasted armour fell over the tower top as it collapsed back on itself.
There was nothing left but smoke and a black stain on the ground.
Arkhan and Hamilcar advanced together. The liche poked at the ground with his staff while the Astral Templar sniffed at the air.
‘Is he dead?’ said Hamilcar.
‘The dead are not so easily destroyed, and that one lingers more determinedly than most. He will be somewhere within this realm. The Fang of Kadon manipulates the pathways that exist within worlds.’
‘I’ll find him,’ growled Hamilcar.
‘And I,’ said Ramus, solemnly.
‘Not you,’ said Arkhan. ‘I bring a message from Sigmar. Your work here is done. Mannfred is beaten, his ghouls broken, and his army will crumble before the sun sets. Your lord has other duties for the Hallowed Knights.’
Ramus’ bow was forced. The thought of Mannfred finding justice at the hands of another – any other, he thought, with a glance towards Hamilcar – pained him. He sighed.
‘Much is demanded of those to whom much is given.’
‘Quite so.’
Ramus felt himself smile. Perhaps the suffering endured by his chamber had all been part of Sigmar’s plan, had led him to this moment. The champions of the God-King and the Great Necromancer stood together in victory over a common foe. Somewhere in the far, far distance, something big and definitely alive delivered a cry of ‘Waaaggh!’
It was a reminder, if Ramus needed one, that the Sea of Bones must yet see one more battle.
And that not all alliances could last forever.
About the Authors
Josh Reynolds is the author of the Blood Angels novel Deathstorm and the Warhammer 40,000 novellas Hunter’s Snare and Dante’s Canyon, along with the audio drama Master of the Hunt, all three featuring the White Scars. In the Warhammer World, he has written the End Times novels The Return of Nagash and The Lord of the End Times, the Gotrek & Felix tales Charnel Congress, Road of Skulls and The Serpent Queen, and the novels Neferata, Master of Death and Knight of the Blazing Sun. He lives and works in Northampton.
David Guymer is the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned, along with the novella Thorgrim and a plethora of short stories set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Awards for his novel Headtaker.
An extract from Labyrinth of the Lost.
The chamber was vast, its vaulted ceiling lost in shadow. Its walls were smooth marble, black as night and dotted with false constellations of glinting silver. The cham
ber’s floor was formed from irregular flagstones of blue and purple crystal that interlocked in a chaotic tangle. Dark doorways studded the chamber’s walls, seemingly at random, while huge statues loomed menacingly along its edges. Sinister and avian beneath the stone robes that swathed them, these towering figures clutched burning braziers from which unclean firelight spilled.
At the foot of one of the strange statues, a figure stirred. A duardin Fyreslayer, clad in a dirt-stained loincloth and little else. The duardin’s hair and beard were a deep, fiery red, matching the crest that rose from his battered helm. With a groan, the Fyreslayer opened his eyes. He breathed out slowly, muted sparks dancing upon his exhalation. Then he jerked suddenly, as though shocked.
The duardin pushed himself to his feet and cast around frantically. Spotting his axe and pick lying nearby, he snatched them up. Beyond the weapons was his pack, a threadbare satchel, clearly empty. He grasped it close all the same, clutching the meagre thing to his chest as though it were precious ur-gold.
With his belongings secured, the Fyreslayer closed his eyes, taking several deep breaths before opening them again. He dragged the fingers of one hand absently through his unkempt beard as he took in the statues, the crystalline floor, the distant ceiling hidden in shadow. Lastly the duardin inspected his own limbs and torso, eyes resting on the ur-gold runes that glimmered dully in his flesh.
‘No,’ he muttered to himself, the word coming out like the rustle of dead leaves. The duardin coughed, more sparks billowing forth as he cleared his bone-dry throat. ‘No,’ he rumbled again, voice louder now and tinged with something like anger, or panic, or both. ‘This isn’t… It’s not…’
With a sudden cry, the Fyreslayer swung his axe, and forgeflame danced in its wake. He smote the base of the nearest statue, striking sparks and chips of stone from its taloned foot. With a hoarse roar, the duardin struck again and again, momentarily lost to the act of violence. On the fourth swing he stopped himself as suddenly as he had started, eyes widening and head darting left and right like a hunted animal.