by C. L. Werner
‘Khorgoraths,’ Neferata whispered the word. ‘Wolves of the Blood God.’
Makvar tightened his grip on his runeblade. ‘Whatever they are, they are in our way.’ Whipping his stormcloak around, he sent a flurry of sigmarite hammers crackling into the glowing sockets that served the monsters as eyes. The assault worked no great harm upon the Khorgoraths, but the dazzle of crackling lightning was enough to blunt their charge, allowing the Anvils to take the momentum away from them.
No war cry rose from the Stormcasts as Makvar led them to the attack. Amidst the confusion of battle, the clash of blades and the screams of death might be unremarkable, but invocations of Sigmar’s holy name were certain to draw attention, whatever spells Neferata used to conceal their presence. So long as there was a chance of striking at the Bloodking, the ebon knights would do nothing to worsen those chances.
Makvar’s runeblade slashed across the leg of one Khorgorath, causing a slop of syrupy gore to bubble from the wound. The beast retaliated by bringing one of its huge claws snapping at him. Shaped like the disembodied skull of a dracoth, the bony claws narrowly missed him as they ripped the left pauldron from his shoulder.
One of the Liberators was rushing to support Makvar’s attack when the warrior was struck by a ropey tendril that erupted from the Khorgorath’s body. Shaped like a spike-tipped spinal column, the tentacle stabbed into the knight’s chest, punching through his plate and bursting from his back in a welter of gore. The impaled Liberator struggled for an instant as the spinal cord wrapped about him and dragged his dying frame back to the Khorgorath.
Makvar saw the flash of light as the Liberator’s spirit deserted his mangled flesh. He saw something more however. He saw a scarlet glow infuse the Khorgorath’s body. The wound inflicted by his runeblade was closing, healing as the murderous aura spread across it. The monster was regenerating.
The Lord-Celestant glared at his hulking foe. He refused to accept that the thing was unkillable or that the death of the Liberator had been in vain. Strengthened by a zealous defiance, he lunged back to the attack. This time his sword met the downward sweep of the reptilian claw. Lightning seared through the Khorgorath’s arm as the runeblade sheared through one of the bony claws and sent it spinning. The monster swung around, bringing its other arm pounding downwards, seeking to smash him like a bug. Makvar rolled beneath the blow, raking the edge of his weapon across the underside of the arm, splitting the crimson hide and severing the thick knots of sinew and muscle within.
Roaring more from frustration than pain, the Khorgorath reared back. Again the ropey tentacle of bone shot out, hurtling towards Makvar this time. The Lord-Celestant threw himself forwards, using the monster’s own bulk to shield him from the attack. He slashed his runeblade across the beast’s flank, sending a half-dissolved skaven skull spilling from the wound.
Makvar risked a glance at the other Khorgorath to see how his comrades were faring. Huld and Vogun kept the beast disoriented by alternating the rays of their lamps. The Lord-Castellant would shine his light from below and when the brute lurched away, Huld would swoop down to assault its senses with his celestial beacon. Whichever of them wasn’t distracting the Khorgorath with the light would rush in to hack at it with halberd and sword. All the while, the last Liberator was circling around the monster and darting in to bludgeon it with his hammer.
The frenzied roar of his own foe set Makvar charging back around the beast. When the Khorgorath’s tentacle shot at him again, he leapt past it and raked his sword across the rune etched across its chest. The monster staggered back, forgetting the Stormcast for an instant as it pawed at its newest injury. The skull-rune had been disfigured by Makvar’s slash and the light that had suffused it was fading away.
Bellowing in outrage, the Khorgorath stomped towards Makvar. Even as it did so, ghastly shapes whipped around the beast’s body. Spectral hands clutched at the crimson hide, withering it with their deathly touch. Phantom teeth bit into coils of muscle, worrying at the monster’s strength. Charging forwards on the back of Nagadron, Neferata pointed the Staff of Pain at the brute, a spear of dark magic leaping out to strike the abomination’s head. Tusks crumbled into dust as the Mortarch’s hideous necromancy ravaged the Khorgorath.
As the monster languished in the grip of Neferata’s sorcery, Makvar sprang at the Khorgorath. His runeblade crunched through the beast’s wrist, leaving one of its claws dangling by a strip of meat and skin. He followed the attack with a lunge that brought him flying at the skull-like head. Makvar’s sword flashed with holy energies as he brought its edge cleaving through the blackened pate, not relenting until the crackling sigmarite edge had ripped through not only the skull but the enlarged jaw beneath it. When he dropped back to the ground, he could see the Khorgorath stumble backwards, its head split in half by his attack. Crashing to its side, the monster made one futile effort to rise again, then was still.
Makvar turned away from his fallen foe to aid the other Anvils with their own adversary, but found that they too had prevailed, though with the loss of the last Liberator. Satisfied that Huld and Vogun at least were unharmed, he turned towards Neferata. ‘My thanks for your intervention, my lady. We can only pray that there are no more like these between ourselves and our objective.’
Neferata had a distant look in her eyes as Makvar spoke to her. A cold smile finally spread across her face. ‘I think the Bloodking’s armies will have other concerns to occupy them now.’ While she spoke, the sounds of conflict took on a new tone of agitation. The discordant strife sounded at its loudest at the back of the cavern, away from where the Bloodbound struggled against the skaven of Clan Septik.
It took Makvar only a moment to pick out the crack of thunder and the shouts of Stormcasts in these new sounds of combat. He wondered for an instant if this was some spell or illusion conjured by Neferata or Nagash, but the longer he listened, the more convinced he was that the noise was real. He could hear the war cries of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. Somehow, his warriors had been brought to Nachstreik.
‘I can sense Kreimnar and your knights,’ Neferata told Makvar, verifying his thoughts. ‘With them marches an undead legion commanded by Arkhan. They close against the Bloodking’s horde from the rear, trapping them between the ratkin and themselves.’ A frown tugged at her mouth. ‘This is Nagash’s doing,’ she said, ‘but I fear that our forces are still too few to prevail.’
Makvar looked past the dead hulk of the Khorgorath, watching as the nearby tribes of Bloodbound reacted to this new threat. Chieftains and bloodstokers strove to control their crazed warriors, alternately trying to push them ahead to continue the fight with the skaven or else trying to turn them around to engage the Stormcasts and undead. For all their numbers, it was confusion that reigned over the Chaos horde. Fratricidal attacks between bloodreavers and wrathmongers unfolded before him as the Khornate host struggled against itself to reach its enemies. How much greater would that in-fighting and confusion become with Thagmok’s death?
‘They can gain us the time we need,’ Makvar declared. ‘We can yet reach the Bloodking.’
Lightning crashed down upon the battlefield, blasting great chunks of buildings from the ceiling as the thunderbolts speared through the roof. The debris smashed down upon the Chaos hordes below, crushing scores of barbarians beneath tons of stone. The thunderstrikes themselves immolated dozens more, hurling their smouldering remains across the cavern.
The greater impact was the turmoil the elemental assault wrought upon the Bloodbound. The minions of Chaos were stunned by the devastation, their senses reeling from the thunderous impacts. All but the most deranged among them was shaken, their rush to attack lost for several precious moments. Into that void of indecision, the legions of Arkhan charged.
Necromantic vitality pulsated from the Mortarch of Sacrament, infusing his skeletal warriors with increased speed and agility. When they struck the mobs of barbarians that had hurried to
confront the menace to their rear, the undead attacked with the supernormal vigour, stabbing and hacking their enemies with a ferocity that nearly equalled that of the Chaos warriors.
From above, the hulking shape of a terrorgheist swooped down upon the Bloodbound, its deafening shriek rupturing organs and deafening entire tribes of bloodreavers. Still bearing the scars from its battle with the Anvils, the terrorgheist now flew alongside its former foes. Black-armoured Prosecutors dived down in the wake of the mammoth bat-beast’s assault, hurling their stormcall javelins into the disordered Khornate ranks. The explosive missiles sent limbs and bodies tumbling through the air.
More Anvils of the Heldenhammer came marching forth, a solid wall of shields and hammers that wheeled alongside the fleshless regiments of Arkhan’s army. Volleys of lightning arced up from behind the advancing Liberators as the Judicator retinues rained death upon the enemies who thought to rush the Stormcasts. A pack of wrathmongers, swinging their brutal flails overhead, managed to withstand the punishing archery, but before they could reach the shield wall they were beset by the Paladins who emerged from behind their comrades. Thunderaxes sheared through wrath-flails, lightning hammers melted armour and flesh, stormstrike glaives impaled snarling bodies and slashed through blood-gorged bellies. The infernal aura of madness and murder that emanated from the wrathmongers enflamed the zealous disdain with which the Paladins held their foes, goading them to the most savage violence.
Lord-Relictor Kreimnar raised his relic-weapon and drew down another bolt of divine lightning from the unseen heavens. Again, the holy storm lanced through the roof, sending a cascade of broken streets and toppled buildings slamming down upon the enemies below. One of the massive slaughterpriests saw the havoc and recognised its source. The shaven-pated berserker rallied a great company of blood warriors to him, leading them straight towards the skull-helmed Stormcast. Blood dripped from the enormous axe the madman bore, steaming as the hot liquid fell upon the cold earth. His scarred body devoid of armour, trusting to the savage beneficence of Khorne to guard him, the slaughterpriest charged Kreimnar.
The berserker never reached his prey. Lumbering out from behind the Liberators, Gojin swung his reptilian head towards the fanatic. A bolt of lightning shot from the dracoth’s jaws, searing through the slaughterpriest’s torso, evaporating his guts in a flash of electrical violence. Blinking in disbelief, the crazed champion slumped to the ground, horrified that no blood flowed from the charred mutilation he had suffered, that in death he had nothing to offer his god. The blood warriors who followed the slaughterpriest hesitated, stunned by the abrupt dissolution of their hero. Before they could recover their momentum, a retinue of Judicators levelled their boltstorm crossbows at the barbarians, unleashing a fusillade that annihilated them in a matter of heartbeats.
Arkhan himself led the advance on the opposite wing of his army. Troops of malignants galloped on their skeletal steeds while sinister morghasts flew overhead. A gruesome mortis engine glided forwards on a tide of phantoms, their ethereal essence supporting the exhumed reliquary of the cadaverous corpsemaster who guided the swirling ghosts with the gnarled staff he bore. Rank upon rank of skeletons marched behind the cavalry and mortis engine, the clatter of bones and corroded armour rolling from them like the rumble of an angry sea.
The Mortarch of Sacrament had called to him once more the grisly abyssal steed Razarak, the Doom of Traitors. Spurring the skeletal monster onwards, Arkhan loosed bolts of withering magic from his staff, draining the vigour from the Bloodbound before his undead warriors struck them. Weakened by the necromantic spells, the slaves of Chaos fell as easy prey to the charging malignants.
The combined forces of Arkhan’s undead and Kreimnar’s Anvils were cutting a path through the Bloodking’s horde, but despite the impetus of their attack, they had done little more than to seize hold of the Chaos host. Their advance was certain to falter as more and more of the crazed barbarians rushed to confront them. The fatal sting would have to come from another quarter.
Even from deep within Mannfred’s sanctum, Nagash watched the ebb and flow of the battle raging outside the walls of Nachtsreik. Whatever his Mortarchs saw, whatever they heard, was communicated back to the Great Necromancer.
The onset of Arkhan’s attack combined with the continued resistance of the skaven had broken the cohesion of the Bloodking’s horde, creating an opening through which Neferata and Makvar were pressing their advance. Nagash concentrated his focus upon the Mortarch of Blood and the Lord-Celestant, watching with grim evaluation as they stole towards the tribe of skullreapers who surrounded Thagmok.
The concealing illusion Neferata had woven around herself and the Stormcasts was shattered when they closed upon the mutated barbarians. Howling in alarm at the abrupt appearance of foes so near to them, the skullreapers hefted their massive weapons and rushed to the attack. Neferata’s sorcery slaughtered the first dozen before they had taken even a few steps, the fangs and jaws of Nagadron settled for half a dozen more. Makvar’s runeblade crackled as he brought his sword sweeping across the vicious steel of a spinecleaver, severing the head of the axe from its haft and rending the scarred hide of the mutant carrying it. Vogun’s halberd raked through the horned helm of another snarling barbarian, a twist of his blade sending the man sprawling into the arms of the tribesmen behind him. Huld, rising above the press of bodies, shone his celestial beacon down upon the crazed horde, seeking to burn the ferocity from their brains with the divine light of Sigmar.
The swirling phantoms that billowed around Neferata swept forwards to strike at the Chaos horde, but before they drew near the Bloodbound, they were dissipated by a crimson light. The Mortarch herself tried to conjure them once more, only to lurch back in Nagadron’s saddle, a stream of blood rushing from her nose. She felt the brutalising reverberation of a force inimical to magic, a blast of blood-soaked violence that streamed from the very realm of Khorne.
Through his Mortarch, Nagash could sense the source of this vibration that deadened her spells. The power pulsated from the bloodsecrator and the immense icon he bore. Hostile to all sorcery and magic, the Blood God had bestowed upon his disciples ways to oppose such powers when they were brought against them. The Great Necromancer hissed a warning to the vampire queen. Channelling energies straight from the domain of Khorne, there was no knowing the limits of the ward the bloodsecrator had created. It might even be enough to withstand the Lord of Death’s own necromancy.
‘Makvar!’ Neferata cried out. ‘The icon-bearer! He stifles my magic!’
The Lord-Celestant realised that without the arcane support of Neferata they would quickly be overcome. Calling to his fellow Stormcasts, he plunged into the mass of barbarians, leaving a litter of mangled bodies in his wake. Vogun followed at his side, guarding his commander as they ploughed a path through the skullreapers.
Before they could reach the bloodsecrator, a crimson glow appeared in their path. The skullreapers fell back, even the most crazed among them unwilling to fight Makvar and Vogun now. The two Anvils had drawn the attention of Thagmok, and now they were the Bloodking’s prey.
As the barbarians parted, their gorelord was revealed. He was an enormous man, prodigious in his brawny proportions. Plates of red steel edged in bronze guarded his body, each piece of armour pulsing and flowing with a grisly light. The red patina that covered each piece of mail dripped and flowed, bubbling like molten blood. Lashed to his back was a crest, the skull-rune cast in gleaming bronze and adorned with the withered heads of fallen enemies. A cape that looked as though it might have been cut from the wing of a terrorgheist fell from his shoulders. The helm that encased his face had been crafted from a bleached skull, grisly sigils cut into its forehead. Thagmok’s eyes stared out from the pits of his mask, red-rimmed pools of homicidal ferocity.
In Thagmok’s hand he carried an immense double-headed axe that pulsated with the murderous power of Khorne. His other hand gripped the steel
chain that restrained a gigantic creature that appeared to mix the worst qualities of lizard and hound. A frill of leathery skin unfolded around the daemonic beast’s neck as it strained to reach the Stormcasts.
‘A poor offering for the Skull Throne,’ Thagmok growled, each word spat with a fury of contempt. In a single motion, he loosed his flesh hound, leaving the daemon to rush at Vogun while he hurled himself upon Makvar.
Makvar tried to parry Thagmok’s axe, but for once, he found a weapon that was the equal of his runeblade. The lightning of his sword sparked and fizzled, unable to penetrate the bloodthirsty essence bound into the axe. The gorelord brought his fist cracking around, smashing into Makvar’s mask. The Anvil staggered from the blow, narrowly blocking the savage sweep of the Bloodking’s weapon.
Through Neferata, Nagash could see the deadly energies rippling across the Bloodking’s axe. Like the icon carried by the bloodsecrator, the axe could cleave a rift between the Realm of Death and the brazen hell of Khorne. Only the axe wouldn’t extract energy from the brass hells – it would send something through. Let so much as a drop of Makvar’s blood touch the blade and he would be rent from the reality of Shyish and descend into the Blood God’s domain.
The loss of Makvar would inconvenience Nagash’s own plans, yet he wouldn’t expose himself while the icon of Khorne yet had the power to deflect his necromancy. At his urging, Neferata cried out to Huld as the Knight-Azyros started to dive down at the Bloodking. ‘The icon! You must break its power!’ The vampire queen herself was beset by a vengeful crush of skullreapers. Without her magic, it was all she could do to fend off the barbarians. Huld was their only hope of striking down the bloodsecrator.