He turned in his saddle and spotted Fosko and his remaining men falling back, past the first battleline of Sequitors. Porthas moved to cover their retreat in his own inimitable fashion. The Sequitor-Prime roared and swung his greatmace out, casting deadwalkers into the air. ‘Come then, come and set yourselves in the path of the storm See what it profits you!’ He bellowed an order, and his warriors fell in behind him, creating a wedge of sigmarite, with Porthas as its point. He strode into the melee, greatmace swinging.
With every thunderous impact, deadwalkers were reduced to drifting cinders. Nighthaunts swooped towards him, wailing. Porthas set his feet and swung. A gheist exploded into rags of smoky effluvia, banished from the Mortal Realms. ‘Shields up,’ Porthas snarled. With a rattle, soulshields were angled to protect the Sequitors from the nighthaunts trying to pounce on them from above. Ghostly weapons bounced harmlessly from the shields, and the nighthaunts retreated in disarray.
As they fell back, Quintus shouted, and his Castigators fired. Aetheric energies burst upwards, as the bolts slammed into the ground beneath the nighthaunts. Several of the spectres were disincorporated by the blazing energies.
Balthas turned Quicksilver back towards the Grand Tempestus. ‘Porthas - cover the Glymmsmen’s retreat,’ he shouted, as the gryph-charger leapt over the heads of the Sequitors. ‘Mara, advance ten paces and set shields - hold until Porthas is clear.’ He galloped towards the temple, trusting in his subordinates to do as he’d ordered. They would clear back the deadwalkers and nighthaunts, before retreating themselves.
The surviving Glymmsmen were reforming near the steps. Fosko was shouting orders, gathering his soldiers into defensive squares. Nearby the duardin survivors had done much the same, warding their kin as they retreated up to the portico. Their shield wall was more precise, but Balthas could sense their agitation. He urged Quicksilver towards them, ignoring their glares and discomfited grumbling. ‘What is it?’ he demanded, without preamble. ‘Something is amiss.’
‘Our thane is injured,’ one of the duardin growled. ‘One of those spirits damn near plucked his heart from his chest.’
Balthas slid from Quicksilver’s back. ‘Take me to him’
The duardin grunted and led Balthas through the shield wall, to where several duardin crouched over another, clad in rich robes and silver-plated gromril armour. Balthas recognised Grom Juddsson, though the duardin looked the worse for wear. His flesh was pale, almost translucent in places, and his breathing laboured. He clutched at his chest, and his eyes were squeezed shut.
Balthas sank down beside him His storm-sight showed him the extent of the injuries done to the burly duardin. They weren’t merely physical. Whatever sort of spirit had attacked him, it had left traces of itself on his soul - a sort of spiritual frostbite. If not treated, it could eat a mortal hollow in a few days, or even hours.
‘Which one are you, then?’ Juddsson gasped. ‘Hard to tell with those helmets.’
‘Balthas.’
‘I don’t know you.’ Juddsson arched his back and grunted in pain. ‘Feels like there are rats in my chest, trying to claw their way out,’ he growled.
‘I can help you with that. But it will hurt.’
‘It already hurts.’
‘It will get worse.’
Juddsson’s grin wasn’t quite a rictus, but close. ‘Manling magic?’ he gasped. The other duardin murmured in distaste and glowered at Balthas.
‘Of a sort.’
Juddsson laughed harshly and lay back. ‘Do it. I’ll not die on my back, from wounds I can’t even see.’
Balthas placed his palm on Juddsson’s chest and murmured an incantation. The aether contracted around him. The air sparked and writhed, as thin rivulets of corposant ran down his staff and along his arms into the chest of the wounded duardin. Juddsson bucked. ‘Hold him down,’ Balthas snapped.
Two duardin dropped down, gripping their leader as he writhed. Balthas kept his hand in place for another moment, until the lightning seemed to illuminate the duardin from within. Then he ripped his hand clear, drawing the flickering energies out. A puff of blackness burst from Juddsson’s lips as he went limp.
‘You killed him,’ a duardin growled, lifting his weapon. Others followed suit.
Balthas ignored the implied threat and rose to his feet. ‘He’s not dead. And he’ll stay that way if you get him into the temple. In fact, all of you fall back. You can do nothing more here. Go.’ He hauled himself back onto Quicksilver, as the duardin slid Juddsson onto a shield and carried him up the steps. The last few ranks of their warriors followed, after a final volley with their drakeguns at the approaching deadwalkers. Balthas signalled to Fosko. ‘Fall back with the duardin into the Grand Tempestus,’ he called out. ‘We shall hold here.’
Fosko shook his head. ‘This is our duty as well,’ he shouted back. He flinched as the celestar ballista roared again, and streaks of blue fire pierced the air.
‘And it is my duty to deny the enemy resources. Your men will only add to the enemy’s numbers. Fall back. This is our war, now.’ Balthas spoke flatly and forcefully.
Fosko grimaced, but nodded.
Balthas turned back to the plaza. Porthas and Mara’s cohorts backed towards the steps, shields facing the foe. Quintus and his Castigators were arranging themselves into a volley-line. They fired bolts into the nighthaunts that drew too close, scattering them before they could mass.
‘More of them than I’ve ever seen,’ the Castigator-Prime said, as Balthas drew close. ‘It’s as if they’re all being drawn here by something, my lord. And the aether - it’s twitching.’
‘Something is drawing near. This attack is but the preamble.’
Quintus hefted his greatbow and tracked a skull-faced gheist as it raced down towards the Sequitors. He waited until almost the last moment before firing. The gheist was ripped apart, and the resulting snarl of lightning played across the battle-line, reducing several deadwalkers to ambulatory torches. ‘Let it come. We will despatch it, whatever it is.’
‘Your confidence is appreciated,’ Balthas said. He stiffened, as the aether spasmed and tensed. Quicksilver squalled, disturbed. He twisted around in his saddle, searching. Nighthaunts clustered thickly about one end of the plaza, as if awaiting something or someone. More and more of them were gathering on the rooftops and in the shadows. These were not mere chainrasps, but spectral stalkers and reapers, strong with the stuff of death.
‘It’s an army,’ Mara called out, as she and Porthas hurried towards him. Their cohorts stood arrayed before the steps in a solid wall of sigmarite, facing the shuffling mass of deadwalkers that was slowly approaching. ‘Two armies, if you count the deadwalkers.’
‘The corpses are a distraction,’ Porthas said, glancing back. ‘Keeping us occupied, until something worse arrives.’ He tensed. Balthas felt it as well. They all did. Like a cold wind, wailing through the hollows of their souls.
Balthas straightened in his saddle. ‘You are right. And I think that it has.’
Pharus strode over the bodies of mortals he might once have fought alongside in life. Indeed, he had fought alongside them. They and their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers. How many years had he spent enslaved by the tyranny of the cold stars? How much blood had he spilled in the defence of a lie?
He stepped into the plaza, surrounded by ravenous gheists. They clutched at him, like fearful penitents seeking comfort. But he had none to give them. Contrary to his former assumptions, the dead were not silent. Indeed, they were a riot of noise. The spirits floating in his wake murmured and whispered to themselves and each other without ceasing. They had only grown louder after the living had retreated. Like hungry animals, denied a taste of meat.
He glared up at the Grand Tempestus, looming over the plaza, picking out the weak points in the ancient walls with instinctive ease. It was a solid edifice, and warded against his kind, but there
was a way in. There was always a way in. He had learned that much, in his former life. But there were other obstacles to consider.
A wall of fire - or something as good as - separated him from his goal. It blazed cobalt, and he found it hard to look at for long. There were warriors in the flames. Stormcasts, but not any he was familiar with. Like the ones they’d fought in the northern gatehouse. ‘They wait for us,’ he intoned, with a certain amount of satisfaction.
‘They defy us,’ Rocha said, at his elbow. She ran a bloodless thumb along the edge of her axe, her features twisting from glee to grimace as the floating skulls of her victims caught at her hair, or the noose about her neck, gibbering recriminations. ‘They seek to stop the inevitable. Hubris. They will be judged and found wanting.’
Pharus glanced at her but said nothing. Once, he might have challenged such certainty. Now, he cared only that she make good on that promise. She existed only to make good on it. As he existed only to do as Nagash willed.
He looked down. The bodies of dead Freeguild soldiers lay at his feet. ‘Awaken them, Dohl. Draw them up. We will need an army to overwhelm them.’
‘What Sigmar has abandoned, we shall remake,’ Dohl murmured, from behind him. As the light of his lantern washed across the broken bodies, they began to twitch and moan. Something like mist seeped upwards from them, and things that might have been faces or limbs twisted within it. ‘Thus the light of Nagashizzar calls to the wicked and draws them from their undeserved rest, so that they might shed their sins in honest labour.’
‘Were they wicked, then?’ Pharus asked. But he knew the answer. There was evil in even the most innocent of men. A kernel of darkness that might flourish, given time. Soldiers might be worse than most - or better than some.
Dohl gave a sad laugh. ‘If the light calls, what is wicked in them will answer.’ Misty, stretched shapes, like shrouds caught on a breeze, rose around him as he floated after Pharus. Newborn gheists rose from the bodies, whimpering and howling. Soon, the corpses would join their other halves, stumbling mindlessly in the wake of their own tormented souls. ‘They seek refuge on sacred ground,’ Dohl continued. ‘Can you feel it? The heat of Azyr rises from those cursed stones. I cannot bear it.’
‘You will bear it. You must. They cannot be allowed to hold us at bay. The way into the catacombs is below the cathedral. We must open the path and soon.’
‘Impatience is a vice of the living,’ Dohl said, studying the cathedral with almost mocking solemnity. ‘You would do well to cast such things aside. What is time to such as we?’ He looked at Pharus, his eyes glowing dully within his helm.
Pharus stared at him. ‘What?’
‘Time is a part of eternity, and eternity is a slave of time. Each moment drips into the next with a dim monotony, and eternity stretches across epochs.’ Dohl studied him with ghastly eyes. ‘For the living, there is no difference between moment and epoch. They are like beasts of burden, bowed beneath a weight they do not understand.’
Pharus shook his head. ‘But the dead know different, do they?’
‘We perceive the weight for what it is. We see, and in seeing, understand. And in understanding, we are driven painfully sane.’ Dohl looked up at his lantern. ‘The light of truth burns away all the comforts of madness, leaving the stark face of the thing, stripped bare of illusion.’ He bowed his head. ‘To be dead - truly dead - is a glorious thing. It is given to us to bear witness to the clockwork of infinity. You should rejoice.’
‘I feel no joy.’
Dohl looked at him. ‘You will, in time. Not that pale sensation that afflicts the living, but the true joy. The joy of knowing your ultimate place, without doubt or fear. This is the truth of the Corpse Geometries. The black formulae, which encompass all things.’
Pharus twitched, annoyed by the creature’s apparent need to spout philosophical musings at every opportunity. What did such mutterings matter to such as them? But he said nothing. Let Dohl blather. Let them all chatter and weep and whisper as much as they liked, so long as they fulfilled their purpose.
A horn blew suddenly, echoing out over the cathedral grounds. The nighthaunts began to shriek and wail in agitation. The stones reverberated with the force and fury of the sound. As the echoes faded, Pharus heard the crash of boots on cobbles. A moment later, a battle-line of Stormcasts marched out from between the buildings on the opposite side of the plaza.
His hand fell to the hilt of his sword, and he could hear the sands shifting in the hourglass. And something else, as well… A rattle of bones and the slow, stentorian chuckle of a god on his throne.
A volley of crackling arrows arced over the heads of the newly arrived Stormcasts, and struck many of the milling cadavers that crowded the plaza. Bodies fell for a second time, blackened and smoking. But others pressed forwards over them, lurching now in the direction of the newcomers.
‘Fellgrip. Attend me,’ Pharus croaked. He looked at Rocha, who floated nearby. ‘You as well. Their leader is mine. Carve me a path, executioner.’
Rocha grinned, displaying her broken teeth. ‘It would be my honour, sweet lord.’ She launched herself towards the approaching Stormcasts with a wild shriek. A clamouring of chainrasps followed her, until the air was choked with them.
Pharus looked back at Dohl. ‘Continue your ministrations, Dohl. Call up more souls. Keep the rest of our foes hemmed in. They wish to defend that temple, let them. But do not let them come to the aid of the Gravewalker.’
Dohl inclined his head. ‘As you will it, my lord.’ His gaze flickered strangely, and Phams hesitated. Was there amusement there, in the dead man’s voice? He turned away, drawing his blade. The sands raced through the hourglass as he swept the sword out and flung himself towards the enemy.
The wave of nighthaunts crashed over the Stormcasts, shrieking and howling. Some among these spirits bore heavy scythes, or rang great bells and wailed hymns extolling Nagash’s eternal glory. Sigmarite shields held against the sweeping blows of the scythes, but only for a few moments before the blessed metal parted, and the rust-streaked blades bit into the warriors behind.
Rocha led the reapers in their harvest, her great single-bladed axe rising and falling in mighty arcs. She was laughing, as she fought, but Pharus could make out the tears of blood streaking her countenance. Crackling arrows hissed towards her, only to shudder to pieces as the disembodied, chattering skulls of her victims interposed themselves.
The Stormcasts’ shield wall bowed, as the nighthaunts spilled over it, and past. Pharus followed more slowly, watching as chainrasps pulled down a struggling warrior and thrust their crude weapons through the gaps in his war-plate. That he might once have known the warrior’s name gave him little pause as he gestured to Fellgrip. ‘Take him.’
The jailer gave an eager hiss as it flung itself on the dying warrior. Heavy chains slammed down. The Liberator’s helm crumpled as Fellgrip finished what the chainrasps had begun. As the warrior’s soul erupted upwards, Fellgrip swept its chains out, ensnaring the lighting before it could escape.
Pharus had seen to it that Fellgrip collected as many Azyrite souls as possible since they’d breached the gate. The jailer’s chains shook with imprisoned souls, and Pharus could hear them screaming, if he bothered to listen.
They scream only because they do not understand. They do not see. But they will come to do so, as you have done. All are one in Nagash.
‘Nagash is all,’ he rasped, as his sword licked out and danced across the back of a Liberator’s neck, killing her instantly. ‘All are Nagash.’ He whirled, chopping through the upraised arm of the warrior behind him. The Stormcast sagged back, and Pharus thrust his blade through one of the eye-slits of the wounded warrior’s helm.
Yes. Free them, Pharus. Help them escape the cage Sigmar has built around them.
‘I will help them,’ he snarled, tearing his sword free. As he left the soul to Fellgrip, a heavy blow c
aught him on the side of the head. His helmet was torn free in a burst of celestial radiance, and he wavered where he stood. Snarling, he turned and slashed at his attacker. Their swords connected with a harsh scrape, and Pharus saw his opponent for the first time - the lord-celestant of the enemy forces.
Their eyes locked. The shadow of half-forgotten memories fell over him. In his mind’s eye, he saw a hard face, worn to sharp edges by a century of duty. Another slave of the stars, bound in chains of light. One who had once been as close as a brother. A name floated just out of reach, and he snarled in frustration. He knew this warrior - so why could he not remember his name?
All useless things are discarded. What purpose does such a little memory serve?
Pharus hesitated. He felt a hand clap against his shoulder. He heard a great, bellowing laugh - rare, that, for Lynos - was that his name? - almost never laughed. He felt the weight of his lantern, shining with all the glory of-
Their blades sprang apart with a screech of steel. He dodged a wild sweep of his opponent’s hammer and backed away. He bent and reclaimed his fallen helm. As he placed it over his head, he felt his doubts recede.
He lunged, blade raised.
Chapter nineteen
Broken Souls
Elya climbed through the stone canopy of the Grand Tempestus. As she climbed, she listened with half an ear to the babble of panicked humanity rising from below. Her father was somewhere among them, trying to crawl into a bottle. Maybe his last.
She’d left Halha with him. The trader seemed eager for something to occupy her time and was keeping Duvak from making a mess of things, or getting into a fight. Normally, that responsibility was Elya’s, but it was hard to sit and do nothing but watch her father pickle himself and talk about people who weren’t there anymore.
People were screaming and crying. The air throbbed with tension, and the sounds of battle from outside were only making things worse. She’d had to climb to get away from it. There were many people, in too small a space, despite the fact that the nave of the temple was as wide as a city boulevard, and almost as long.
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