Wardens of the Everqueen

by C. L. Werner

  He could see the beckoning glow, the radiant flicker of Alarielle, shining behind the veil of mist and falling snow. There were many among Torglug’s plaguehosts who could feel that radiance even if they couldn’t see it, men and monsters in which the corruption of Nurgle’s blessings was great.

  The warlord’s forces were closing in upon the prize now. It would have been easy to surround and exterminate the rearguard of lightning-men and tree-creatures that had tried to bar his path. A less determined warlord might have succumbed to the temptation to massacre his enemies. Slaughter, however, wouldn’t be enough to exalt Torglug in the eyes of his god. The offering Nurgle demanded was Queen Alarielle; nothing less would satisfy Him. Though many of his chieftains and champions demurred, Torglug had driven them onwards, bypassing the rearguard, leaving behind the great brayherds and some of the smaller marauder tribes to tie down the lightning-men and use their own strategy against them – trappers caught in their own snare.

  Overhead, a few plague drones came buzzing back to rejoin the horde. Torglug had sent advance elements of his army to harass and delay Alarielle’s guardians at every stage of the hunt. Relays of warhounds, flights of plague drones, howling packs of forsaken, herds of centigors. Anything that could hit the enemy fast and even if only for a few minutes throw their retreat into disorder. It was a sacrifice of resources, but while Torglug’s army bled warriors, the enemy was bleeding time. Of the two resources, Torglug’s losses were the easier to bear.

  Scratching the boils along his neck, Torglug glowered at his followers. Infested with superstitions and tribal atavisms, the barbarians would fight harder now that they’d seen Slaugoth perform his divinations with sacrificial innards.

  ‘Nurgle is smiling on me,’ Torglug declared, pointing his thumb at the butchered body. His legion didn’t need to know the particulars of Slaugoth’s divinations, only what their warlord told them. ‘Be serving me, and you too are being granted Grandfather’s favour.’ He raised his blackened axe high. ‘None are escaping us! All are sharing in our contagion and discovering glory of decay!’

  Torglug brought his axe chopping down, pointing the blade at the swirling snow behind which he could see the light of Alarielle shining. At his gesture, a chorus of shrieks and war cries rose from his diseased legion. The vast horde surged forwards, marching towards the unseen enemy.

  Through the snow gale a dark outline could be distinguished. As the horde continued to advance the shape resolved itself as a wall of trees before which stood a line of tall warriors in shining silver armour. Expecting their enemy to be fleeing before them, the sight surprised the Chaos host. For just a moment, their onward rush lost its impetus. In that moment, arrows came flying out at them from the ranks of silver warriors, each missile transforming into a bolt of lightning as it came searing down to pierce a marching tribesman or strike down a galloping Chaos knight.

  The smell of blood, even that of their own comrades, goaded the plaguehosts forwards once more. Again the tolling of rusted bells and the pounding of primitive drums echoed across the ice, the bubbling cacophony of men and monsters invoking the favour of the Plaguefather. Black armoured knights charged through the swirling snow, mobs of tribesmen marched with sinister determination across the ice, and clutches of half-reptilian dragon ogres clawed their way over the frozen sea. Daemons waddled on batrachian legs or slithered on slug-like bellies. The putrid blightkings, the greenfly guard, the pox-bringers and all the other chosen of Nurgle moved towards the enemy.

  Torglug chortled in delight. Alarielle’s guardians had surprised him in the most pleasant way. They’d come to appreciate that there was no escape for them. Instead of trying to run, instead of fleeing further across the frozen Sea of Serpents, they’d turned to make a fight of it. Some noble and delusional notion that they might accomplish something by giving battle to their pursuers. The warlord wasn’t certain if it was mad or pathetic. The whole of Ghyran was being devoured by Nurgle – did these fools think they truly stood any chance? There would be none who would remember their last stand as anything but an impotent absurdity.

  More arrows fell into the advancing horde, striking down dozens of Torglug’s warriors. They were small losses in the grand scheme of things. Final martyrs rendered up in anticipation of Torglug’s ultimate victory. The archers of the lightning-men couldn’t stem the tide of Chaos. A wave of axes and swords, fangs and claws would soon come crashing down upon them. Against the might of the plaguehosts, the silver warriors would be crushed to nothing, the sylvaneth behind them utterly annihilated. From their carrion, Torglug would seize the queen-seed and deliver to Nurgle the prize He demanded. Nothing would stand between the warlord and his destiny.

  Suddenly, the storm began to abate, blue skies emerging from behind the clouds. Torglug could hear a strange keening song. As he listened to the eerie melody, he noted a change in the harmony, a shift in pitch and tone. Ancient and inhuman, there was something threatening in that song, something that made him feel like a bird caught in a snake’s gaze.

  As the snow gale ebbed and some of the storm faded, Torglug’s blemished eyes looked upon an impossible sight. A gargantuan shape rose up from the frozen waves, incredibly colossal in its proportions. It was big as a mountain, its craggy body locked in the ice, pained shudders rumbling through its frame as it languished. An almost forgotten sense of dread swept through Torglug as he looked upon the living mountain and realised that the ancient song he heard was calling out to the trapped behemoth.

  A moment before, Torglug had believed victory within his grasp, that he’d trapped Alarielle’s guardians. As he looked upon the stirring jotunberg, he wondered who it was that had been trapped.

  Angstun raised the standard of the Hallowed Knights high, pouring new determination into the ranks of the Liberators. The Stormcasts had been fending off wave upon wave of Torglug’s diseased minions, littering the snow with the ruined husks of putrid daemons and black-armoured Chaos warriors. Again and again the forces of darkness crashed against the shield wall, pushed back only by heroic effort. Behind the Liberators, the Judicators loosed volley after volley of sigmarite arrows into the oncoming horde, shafts of crackling lightning slamming down into the barbaric legion.

  Shouts of alarm rose from the left flank of the shield wall. Angstun turned to see several silver-armoured warriors flung into the air, swatted aside by a monstrous creature. It was a hulking beast of chitinous plates and reptilian claws, massive horns curling away from its savage face. A nest of tongues stabbed out from between its fangs jaws, punching through the sigmarite armour of the Stormcasts they struck. The beast’s great forepaws hurled aside those who moved to close the gap, tossing them as though they weighed nothing. Smaller paws slashed and tore at those warriors who were able to slip past the mangling swipes of its forepaws, crumpling armour and shattering bone.

  When he saw the daggers protruding from the beast’s back, Angstun knew what sort of beast his warriors faced – a Slaughterbrute, a diseased atrocity created by the corrupt energies of Chaos, a living engine of carnage and destruction.

  Lightning crackled about the head of his standard as Angstun called out to Agrippa’s retinue, praying they would catch his signal. Liberator-Prime Agrippa lifted his own sword high, alerting the Knight-Vexillor that he was ready for his orders. Angstun paused. It was no easy thing, what he contemplated. Left alone, the beast would open a gap in the shield wall that other foes could widen. If they let the monster through, the Liberators would be able to close ranks behind it, slamming the door in the face of Torglug’s legion.

  It would also leave the monster free to rampage among the sylvaneth, perhaps even force its way to the Lady of Vines.

  There was no other choice.

  ‘Preserve the wall and let the big one through!’ Angstun commanded. The Liberators disengaged, allowing the slavering brute past, then reformed the shield wall before the Chaos warriors could come pouring in. The Kni
ght-Vexillor could hear the monster’s howl of ferocious glee as it sprang past Agrippa’s men and rushed towards the sylvaneth.

  Spinning around, Angstun snapped orders to the paladins he had kept in reserve – Diocletian and his Decimators.

  ‘Bring down that monster we let through,’ he ordered. ‘Stop it before it can get to the Lady of Vines.’

  Diocletian saluted the Knight-Vexillor, then hastened to lead his paladins after their quarry. The beast wouldn’t be hard to follow. Exhibiting the same primitive ferocity it had at the shield wall, the beast was hacking its way through the sylvaneth, leaving the ice littered with broken tree-creatures and shattered dryads.

  Angstun could spare no more time for the Decimators and their hunt. Cries of alarm rose from the ranks of tribesmen and Chaos knights assailing his part of the shield wall. The attackers parted, falling to the wayside as they hurried to clear a path for the forces now stalking into battle. An oily, reptilian stink accompanied their advance, the musky reek of dank caves and forsaken grottos. The creatures that now moved against the Hallowed Knights were huge brutes with grotesque lizard-like lower bodies, from which sprouted hideous humanoid torsos. Their leering faces were twisted with pitiless hate and their eyes burned with an almost elemental fury. In their hands, they carried massive axes, fell runes etched upon the blackened blades.

  Leading the dragon-bodied monsters was a gigantic specimen of their breed. The fly-rune of Nurgle was branded upon the creature’s chest, a filthy mix of blood and pus oozing from the loathsome scar. Strips of armour, bent and distorted from the plate of human warriors, covered the huge beast’s arms while in its clawed hands it carried an enormous axe that seemed fashioned from obsidian. The monster’s face had a crude resemblance to that of a man, but blotted with a mire of boils and lesions, the dubious blessings of the Plaguefather.

  The Judicators loosed a volley of arrows from their skybolt bows at the huge dragon ogre. As the sigmarite missiles changed into bolts of lightning and crashed down upon the reptilian monster, it threw its head back and bellowed. It was a cry not of agony but of exultation. Far from being harmed by the lightning, the creature was revelling in it.

  ‘Stand down!’ Angstun cried to his archers. ‘Do not shoot the dragon-beasts!’

  Across the din of battle, the immense dragon ogre seemed to hear him, a grisly smile twisting its already hideous face. Hefting its huge axe, the monster charged towards the shield wall, dozens of its smaller kin rushing behind it. Without the Judicators to hold them back, the reptilian brutes would slam into the Liberators with the intensity of an avalanche.

  Angstun pushed his way to the fore of the battle line, ready to confront the hulking leader of the dragon ogres. Their one hope, fragile as it might be, was to slay the huge chieftain quickly. That might break the courage of the others – if indeed such inhuman foes were capable of fear.

  When he felt the ice trembling beneath his feet, Angstun thought it was the fury of the charging reptiles provoking it. Then the violence swelled, increasing steadily. The pack began to shudder and shake, jagged fissures snaking through the ice. Great chunks went crashing into the suddenly exposed water below. Crevices opened up beneath bands of Chaos warriors, sending them plummeting to the bottom of the icy sea. Pits swallowed mobs of daemons, plunging them beneath the waves. Knights were thrown from their saddles and tribesmen were sent sliding across the pack.

  Angstun marvelled as the ice ahead of the shield wall split apart, a great gash opening up in the pack. The huge dragon ogre, rearing up on its hind legs, ready to bring its gigantic axe slamming down, was swallowed by the gap. The massive creature vanished beneath the surface, sucked down by its own weight. A dozen of its fellows, unable to arrest the impetus of their charge, were likewise sent crashing into the sea, floundering for a moment on the slippery surface before being dragged under by their prodigious bulk.

  It was more than accident that directed the tremors which had split and shattered the ice. Angstun could see at once that the quake’s force was focused against Torglug’s legion, sparing the Stormcasts and their sylvaneth allies. The plaguehosts were thrown into disarray, retreating before the elemental wrath that had been turned against them. Where but a moment before their diseased claws had been closing around the refugees, now the horde was flung back, sent reeling back into the mist.

  Looking out upon the ice-field, Angstun felt his relief tempered by cold realization. The fissure that had swallowed the dragon ogres, the pits that had consumed bands of marauders and daemons, were scattered and disparate, leaving several bridges across the churning sea. Torglug’s attack on the column had been disrupted, but the plaguehosts still had an avenue to resume their assault once their warlord rallied them.

  Through the fog, Angstun sighted huge figures approaching the nearest of the ice bridges. It seemed some of Torglug’s horde had rallied already. ‘Judicators!’ he called out, raising the standard high. ‘At my signal…’

  Before Angstun could give the command to loose, a figure came hurtling down from the stormy sky. The Knight-Vexillor was shocked to see Tegrus descending towards him. Moments before, the skies had belonged to Torglug’s daemonic plague drones. One glance at the blood and ichor staining the Prosecutor-Prime’s silver armour told him that the winged warrior had had to fight his way back to the column.

  ‘Stay your arrows,’ Tegrus told Angstun, pointing towards the men advancing towards the ice bridge. ‘That is Lord-Castellant Grymn’s command you would loose against!’

  Quickly, Angstun warned the archers to hold their fire. A moment later he recognised the glow of Grymn’s warding lantern shining through the mist. Seldom had he seen a more welcome sight.

  ‘I must alert you,’ Tegrus reported. ‘Torglug’s horde bypassed the rearguard. His main force could be upon you at any moment.’

  Angstun laughed and shook his head. ‘I fear your warning is late, my friend. But I am happy to say you’re still in time for the fighting.’ He turned and gestured to the sylvaneth column at his back. The tree-creatures were moving again, but the trail of carnage left by the Slaughterbrute was still visible. ‘One of Torglug’s monsters broke through. I sent Diocletian and his Decimators to attend to it, but I’m certain they wouldn’t mind your help.’

  Tegrus opened his wings. ‘I will leave you to welcome the commander then,’ he said as he climbed back into the sky. He circled above the Liberators, then peeled away to pursue the Slaughterbrute.

  Angstun turned his attention back to the advancing force of Stormcasts and sylvaneth. Even with Grymn’s warriors to bolster their strength he wondered if they would be powerful enough to hold back Torglug’s legion.

  The murderous roar drowned out the sullen creaks and groans of the sylvaneth. The Slaughterbrute lashed out with its vicious claws, snapping limbs and splitting trunks with each swipe. The monster’s stabbing tongues pierced the heartwood of dryads, provoking a frustrated growl from the beast when it found not blood but only sap within the bodies of its victims. The mutant clamped its jaws around the trunk of a knotted tree-creature, shaking its prey with such rage that branches were shorn away with each twist of its neck.

  ‘Only the faithful!’ The war cry of the Hallowed Knights rang out as Decimator-Prime Diocletian brought his thunderaxe chopping into the chitinous hide of the monster. The Slaughterbrute snarled, a spasm of pain causing its jaws to clench tight and crack the body of its last victim. The severed halves of the sylvaneth crashed to the ice, limbs twitching as vitality slowly faded away.

  Diocletian glared at the mutant, vowing that the tree-creature would indeed be its last victim. The rest of the Decimators were following close behind their leader, but for the moment it was he alone who held the Slaughterbrute’s attention.

  The monster snarled at him, its claws slashing out at him. Diocletian dodged from the raking talons and struck out once again with his axe. This time the blade slashed deep into the
beast’s hide, drawing a spurt of greasy blood. The Slaughterbrute shuffled backwards, sniffing at its own wound. When it looked back at Diocletian, the fury in its eyes was even more malignant than before.

  Even as the Slaughterbrute made ready to spring at him, the beast’s body quivered. Diocletian could see weird, eerie lights flickering around the daggers embedded in the monster’s back. Without so much as a snarl, the brute swung around, hurling itself against the sylvaneth, once more trying to claw its way through the tree-creatures and dryads. Slowed by the cold, they couldn’t match the berserk magnitude of the assault.

  Diocletian rushed after the crazed monster. ‘How dare you ignore me!’ he growled, hacking at its hind leg with his axe. The weapon crackled against its scaly flesh, crunching through one of the bony plates that protected it. Shrieking in pain, the Slaughterbrute swung around once more. This time the paladin wasn’t swift enough to dodge its paw. He was sent tumbling across the ice, landing in an armoured heap among sylvaneth crippled by the brute. He expected to feel the monster’s weight slam down on him as it pounced on its fallen foe. Instead he saw the beast again turn and charge into the sylvaneth ahead of it.

  ‘My prime, are you hurt?’ The question came from Brother Scipio, one of Diocletian’s paladins.

  Diocletian waved aside the warrior’s concern. He pointed at the starsoul mace Scipio carried. ‘The beast thinks it can ignore us. It is time we taught it otherwise.’ Recovering his axe, Diocletian led the paladins after the Slaughterbrute. Whatever sorcery controlled the monster, he hoped the magic of the mace would act as a countermeasure – at least enough to disrupt the beast’s rampage so the Decimators could surround and kill it.

  The sylvaneth might be unable to thwart the Slaughterbrute’s advance, but they were able to slow its progress. It was a gruesome exchange, splintered carcasses littering the monster’s path. The sight encouraged the Decimators to greater speed, knowing each moment lost would bring death to more of their allies. When they caught up with the monster, it was smashing its way through a nest of dryads, trying to win its way clear.