Wardens of the Everqueen

by C. L. Werner

  ‘It will need more than courage to stand against that obscenity,’ Angstun told Grymn, pointing to the hideous bulk of the Great Unclean One as it waddled across the bridge, drawing ever closer to the formation of Liberators at the other end. The daemon chortled hideously as it crushed marauders and Chaos knights under its bulk or grabbed hapless beastmen from the ice to drop into its gash-like maw. The abomination’s mere presence caused the ice to become blemished, crusted with a leprous foam.

  Lord-Relictor Morbus added his agreement to Angstun’s words. ‘Like the claw of Nurgle himself,’ he said. ‘A trial to test even the most stalwart.’ Tallon snarled as though to add his own support.

  ‘We must hold,’ Grymn swore. ‘The daemon can’t be allowed to break through. Every heartbeat we keep them here increases the chance for the Lady of Vines to escape.’

  ‘You’ll need the reserves to meet Torglug when he crosses that damnable bridge he’s made,’ Angstun said. He looked to Morbus, waited for a nod from his skull-shaped helm. ‘Let us stop the daemon for you, commander.’

  Grymn hesitated. Angstun could appreciate the Lord-Castellant’s dilemma. The risk was enormous and if they failed, the Hallowed Knights would be deprived of two of their leaders. To do nothing, however, would see the daemon break through. Alone the monster would be capable of holding the bridgehead, and the plaguehosts would pour across. Whatever his reservations, Angstun knew Grymn would do what was necessary to protect the queen-seed.

  ‘Sigmar watch over you,’ Grymn said, laying his hand upon Angstun’s shoulder. ‘Whatever it takes, hold the daemon.’ He looked back to the living bridge and the advancing mass of Torglug’s champions. ‘I will keep the plaguelord from crossing here.’

  Angstun saluted Grymn and hurried towards the span threatened by the greater daemon. Morbus lagged just behind him, the Lord-Relictor’s stamina drained by the lightning storms he had called down from the skies. Some fell power was interceding on behalf of the plaguehosts, distorting the bolts as they came crackling down and denying them the precision and power they usually possessed. Efforts to bring the fury of the heavens raining down on Torglug and his monstrous bridge had only sent slivers of electricity sparking across the surface of the sea.

  ‘Nearer to the enemy I may be able to defy the magic that strives against my powers,’ Morbus told Angstun as they ran, giving voice to the Knight-Vexillor’s concerns.

  ‘What can be done will be done,’ Angstun replied. ‘Sigmar grant that it is enough.’

  The obscene bulk of the Great Unclean One lumbered nearer to the shield wall. Arrows from the Judicators continued to slam into the daemon, but without effect, provoking only a glottal cough of amusement from the fiend. As it trudged along, a string of bones and slime oozed out from one of the monster’s hands, hardening until it became a gigantic flail. The daemon dragged the loathsome weapon behind it, cracking it from side to side in its impatience to close with the Liberators.

  Morbus stopped as they approached the defensive position. Holding his relic hammer high, he tried to call down the celestial fury of Sigmar upon the Great Unclean One. Divine power suffused the head of his weapon, but at once he realised something was wrong. A discordant vibration was burrowing its way into the energies he was summoning.

  ‘Torglug’s sorcerer strives against me,’ he growled through clenched teeth. ‘But he shall not prevail.’ Crouching down, he set the heft of his hammer against his knee. Ancient prayers of appeal, entreaties to the God-King, issued from behind the skull-faced helm.

  For an instant, Angstun saw the celestial glow surrounding Morbus’ relic hammer intensify. The Hallowed Knights nearby, reserves waiting to support the shield wall, gasped in awe at the power the Lord-Relictor was calling upon, but awe gave way to revulsion as a sickly green luminance began to infect the divine glow. The grisly taint cast eerie shadows across Morbus, lending his aspect a sickly and perverse quality.

  ‘The daemon lends its power to the sorcerer,’ Morbus hissed, his voice creaking with the strain of defying his arcane foes. ‘They turn the foulness of their Crow God against me.’ He raised his head, staring at Angstun. ‘Leave me! All of you!’

  The Hallowed Knights might have demurred, reluctant to abandon a leader in such distress, but Angstun could hear the strain in Morbus’ voice. It wasn’t fear for himself, but concern for his warriors that tore at the Lord-Relictor. Better than any of them, he knew the malignity of the magical forces the enemy was bringing to bear and what havoc might be unleashed. Raising their standard, Angstun called the Hallowed Knights to attend his command, ordering them back, leaving Morbus alone among the ice and snow.

  It pained Angstun tremendously to leave Morbus, but almost at once his decision saw validation. The pestilent green glow continued to grow, expanding into a cloud of diseased miasma. Ice steamed within that noxious fog, falling snow sizzled and sparked as it struck the foetid vapour. Just visible within the veil of sorcerous contagion, Morbus struggled on, trying to defy the atrocious evil that was turned against him. Smoke rose from his armour as even the sigmarite plate began to corrode beneath the aura of decay.

  Ghastly shapes leapt into being all around Morbus, rising up with the foul vapours. Daemonic creatures conjured by the magic of the Lord-Relictor’s foes, the monsters converged upon him, dragging him down onto the ice. From the midst of the grisly melee, Morbus’ voice reached Angstun. ‘Forget me! Stop the greater daemon!’

  Angstun forced himself to turn away. He had to concentrate on the daemon and prevent it from crossing. With the Lord-Relictor gone, there was no chance to stop the beast before it reached the shield wall. He looked across the warriors acting as reserves for the Liberators. A retinue of Judicators with boltstorm crossbows, a wargrove of sylvaneth and, most formidable of all, Decimator-Prime Diocletian and his paladins.

  ‘Diocletian, your men will support me. I’m going for the daemon.’ He looked to the Judicators and cast a hopeful glance at the tree-creatures. ‘If we fall, it will be left to you to turn back our enemy.’

  The daemon’s lumbering steps finally brought it to the shield wall. Even as sigmarite arrows rained down upon it, the Great Unclean One struck at the Liberators barring its way. The obscene flail lashed out, whipping across the stolid ranks of Stormcasts. Some of the armoured warriors were flattened by the heavy, skull-shaped bludgeons fixed to the ends of each ropey chain. Others were snagged on the spikes and spurs that thrust out from the surface of the flail, hooked on the putrid barbs and dragged out of formation by the daemon’s prodigious strength. Before the reeling Liberators could recover, its clawed hand swept out, swatting them over the edge of the bridge.

  The Hallowed Knights held fast, closing together where the daemon’s attack had claimed their comrades. Swords and hammers flashed as they struck back at the abomination, but the monster would not be denied. From its plague-infested innards, a bilious stream of corruption spewed across the silver warriors. Shields lowered, weapons faltered as the searing slime boiled against sigmarite plate. Again, the Great Unclean One surged forwards, its flail cracking down to annihilate a dozen Stormcasts. The daemon drove its decayed enormity full into the shield wall, crushing more warriors beneath its waddling obesity. Swarms of diminutive nurglings erupted from the Great Unclean One’s exposed gut to fall upon the injured.

  A bubbling cry of malicious triumph rattled from the daemon’s toad-like maw as it slaughtered the Liberators and reached the far side of the bridge. Its grisly humour only increased when it found Angstun and the Decimators moving to block its path. Clearly the daemon considered this small group of adversaries an insignificant obstacle.

  Angstun could see the flashes of vanquished Hallowed Knights flaring behind the daemon, testimony to the carnage it had wrought. He was determined that it would pay for what it had done. He would make it pay for the loss of Morbus. He would show it the divine might of Sigmar, the God-King.

  ‘Only
the faithful!’ Angstun cried out. The Knight-Vexillor brought the standard slamming down into the thick pack ice. From the great icon at its top a shaft of blue light leapt skywards. The bolt vanished into the stormclouds.

  Obscene laughter slobbered from the daemon’s maw as it reached for Angstun. Whatever power the Stormcast had called upon, it seemed it wasn’t answering. Before it could close its flabby claw around its prey, however, a blazing ball of fire came hurtling down from the heavens. A twin-tailed comet, the manifestation of Sigmar’s godly wrath.

  The comet slammed into the ice, fracturing the thick pack, sending great slabs crashing down into the sea. The bridge the greater daemon had crossed collapsed, pitching dozens of Chaos warriors and beastmen into the churning waters below. The daemon lord itself stumbled, sliding back towards the gap behind it.

  Bellowing in rage, the Great Unclean One tried to escape the crumbling shelf. Angstun and the Decimators still stood in its path, however. The Knight-Vexillor struck at it with the end of his standard while the paladins brought their thunderaxes chopping at its flanks. Something akin to panic seized the daemon as the ice continued to collapse behind it.

  Angstun thrust the end of his standard into the Great Unclean One’s grasping claw. Puncturing the rancid flesh, the weapon became embedded in the daemon’s palm. Snarling in wrath, the monster jerked its arm upwards, pulling Angstun into the air. The monster stared hatefully at the dangling warrior, then its frog-like tongue shot out, wrapping around its helpless enemy. Angstun struggled against the daemon’s grip, but was unable to break the crushing embrace of the slimy coils.

  Decimator-Prime Diocletian cried out to his paladins. Together they hurled themselves against the hulking daemon, hacking at it with their thunderaxes. The daemon swatted at them with its flail, trying to drive them back, while its tongue retracted into its sickly maw.

  Angstun felt his armour crumpling under the mounting pressure of Guthrax’s tongue. His very soul recoiled in disgust as the daemon’s maw loomed before him. Death was the sacrifice every Stormcast was ready to accept, but this would be a terrible end. If only he could content himself with the knowledge that he’d succeeded in thwarting the daemon’s assault and prevented it from continuing its pursuit of the Lady of Vines.

  As if in response to the Knight-Vexillor’s entreaty, the ice around Guthrax rumbled. The cosmic violence of the comet had weakened the shelf terribly, but the daemon’s own efforts with its monstrous flail had finally decided the matter. In trying to ward off Diocletian’s warriors, the Great Unclean One had sealed its own fate. Angstun sneered as he saw Guthrax react to the groan that shuddered through the ice.

  ‘Darkness cannot prevail against faith,’ Angstun spat, even as he felt his bones breaking in the daemon’s coils.

  With a monumental clamour, the ice crumbled away. Guthrax was sent plummeting into the sea, but with it the daemon dragged Angstun and the Decimators to destruction. The Great Unclean One’s push had been thwarted, but not without sacrifice.

  From where he stood at the end of Torglug’s living bridge, Grymn watched Angstun and the Decimators die as they followed the greater daemon down into the sea. He saw the bright flashes of light as they were sent hurtling back to Azyr and into Sigmar’s keeping. Tallon whined sadly, but the gryph-hound’s master could afford no sorrow. There was no time to mourn their loss or even to salute their valour. Grymn had his own battle to fight.

  The grotesque figure of Torglug the Despised advanced across the abominable bridge formed from the bodies of his slug-like daemons. With the warlord came his mightiest and most depraved fighters, his bodyguard elite. Hideous warriors, their bloated bodies spilling out from rents in their armour and splits in the corroded mail that straddled their frames, all Torglug’s entourage bore the ghastly fly-rune branded upon their flesh. Gigantic cleaver-like axes and obscene swords were clenched in the fists of each man, vile talismans and trophies tied about their hafts or hanging from their guards. A diseased, slobbering cough dripped from the barbarians, a paean to Nurgle himself. Behind the warlord’s retinue, careful to keep their distance lest they trespass upon Torglug’s victory, packs of skin-clad marauders and one-eyed plaguebearers marched.

  Grymn knew only too well how little he had to oppose Torglug and defy the plaguelord’s attack. A pair of treelords and a retinue of Protectors armed with stormstrike glaives were all that stood with him to hold the enemy back and buy more time for the Lady of Vines to make good her escape. Perhaps Lord-Celestant Gardus would have taken different measures, adopted a better strategy to oppose the warlord, but Grymn had done all he could. His mission wasn’t to destroy the enemy, but to keep him from capturing Alarielle. To achieve that, he needed something the Stormcasts couldn’t provide.

  His greatest weapon in this struggle wouldn’t be the Hallowed Knights, but Torglug himself. Grymn held his warding lantern higher, letting its purifying light shine into the faces of the warlord’s bodyguard. Pained snarls and foul curses sputtered from the lips of the advancing foe. The divine energies of the lantern acted as a restorative to the Stormcasts, but for the slaves of Chaos they were a withering affliction. They were not enough to destroy villains steeped in such infamy as Torglug’s elite bodyguard, but they could still weaken and distract these diseased foes.

  Grymn hoped to provoke a further reaction from Torglug’s retinue. He wanted to enrage them, to fan the flames of fury in their corrupt hearts, goad them into a reckless attack that would be fought not with a mind towards strategy but simply with the raw instincts of berserk beasts.

  Torglug hung back as his bodyguard spurred themselves forwards at a run. The first of the hideous plague warriors were snatched from the bridge just as they reached the ice, caught in the wooden talons of the treelords. The huge sylvaneth flung their diseased captives from them in an almost human display of revulsion, sending the warriors hurtling into the sea.

  Other warriors followed, rushing at the treelords as the sylvaneth threw the first wave into the icy waters. Many of these were confronted by the Protectors, the mighty paladins skewering their corpulent enemies upon their glaives, ripping apart the plague-infested warriors with the searing energies bound within their weapons. Over and again the silver-armoured Stormcasts sent a cursing adversary crashing to the ice, rancid blood spurting from severed limbs and ruptured organs.

  Yet Torglug’s bodyguard were no normal enemy. Their bodies infested by the most virulent of Nurgle’s diseased blessings, their souls corrupted by the sting of the daemonfly, they fought on despite their wounds. A hulking warrior, his face lost in a mass of pustules and sores, crawled down the length of the stormglaive that impaled him so that he could smash the skull of a paladin with his spiked mace. Another monstrosity crawled out from under the stomping foot of a treelord, chest collapsed and splintered ribs tearing through his flesh, so that he might slash at the sylvaneth’s roots with a crescent-bladed scythe.

  The filth encrusting the blades of Torglug’s elite troops brought ruin to the treelords. From each cut and gash, a vile stream of contagion crackled through their wooden bodies. Bark whitened and split, falling away in wormy strips. Blood-sap bubbled up from ruptured roots or dribbled from withered branches. Even as they smashed their enemies underfoot or crushed them in their mighty hands, the treelords were being destroyed by the noxious wounds dealt to them.

  With death coursing through their bodies, the sylvaneth struggled to push through Torglug’s bodyguard and reach their ghastly leader. Though their language was alien to him, Grymn knew the treelords recognised Torglug, and with that recognition came a terrible rage. To destroy the plaguelord, the sylvaneth were willing to trade their lives. Unfortunately such a bargain wasn’t in the offing. The plague warriors brought down their towering opponents, hacking them apart with ugly axes and splintering their trunks with brutal mauls.

  The treelords were the first to fall before the warlord’s elite troops, but they weren�
��t the last. As more of Torglug’s bodyguard charged onto the ice, the Protectors found themselves overcome. One after another the paladins were cut down, ravaged by the sorcerous contagion bound within the diseased blades of their enemies.

  At the centre of the fray, Lord-Castellant Lorrus Grymn continued to hold his ground. Bearing the warding lantern, he had become the target of choice for the enraged servants of Chaos. His halberd had ripped the head from one of Torglug’s bodyguard, shorn the clawed arm from a second and pierced the heart of a third. Tallon ripped at the vile enemies, savaging their diseased flesh with his beak and claws. A heap of mangled bodies lay strewn about him, yet still they came, determined to extinguish the hurtful light and the one who bore it. The assault only abated when a vicious snarl cut through the howls and shrieks of the plague warriors.

  ‘This man being mine! He is belonging to me!’ The voice was like the gargle of a bog and the death rattle of a toad, an auditory stench of corruption and obscenity. The warlord’s troops withdrew from Grymn, making way for their master’s advance. Grymn commanded Tallon to keep back. If the plaguelord wanted a duel, then he would oblige the fiend.

  Grymn had only seen Torglug at a distance before. Closer now, he could appreciate the horror of this monstrous servant of Nurgle. He was a huge man, powerfully muscled despite the bloated, corrupt swell of his gut. What little armour he wore was pitted and stained with corrosion, though each segment looked solid despite the patina of decay. Upon his vambrace the fly-rune had been daubed in a crust of filth, glowing with a foetid vitality. A single horn curled outwards from the helm that encased his head, only three holes affording a glimpse of the monster within.

  Grymn looked through them into Torglug’s blemished eyes, studying their spoiled depths, seeking some clue as to the mind behind them. Through the infestation of depravity, he saw a pitiless hate. A hate now directed against him.