Wardens of the Everqueen

by C. L. Werner

  Torglug hefted his massive axe, specks of foulness spilling from its blackened blade. ‘God-King is abandoning you,’ he told Grymn. ‘He is leaving you alone to be facing wrath of Torglug.’

  ‘Sigmar has blessed me with the honour of ending your atrocities,’ Grymn snarled in the warlord’s face.

  ‘Too late is fanatic learning despair,’ Torglug laughed. ‘First I am killing your light. Then I am killing your faith. When you are begging for death, then, perhaps, I am killing you.’

  Exhibiting a speed Grymn thought impossible for a man of his size, Torglug rushed at him. The Lord-Castellant whispered a prayer to Sigmar. Not for victory in this fray, but that he could hold the warlord long enough for the Lady of Vines to slip beyond his reach.

  Chapter eight

  Torglug’s axe swept towards Grymn’s side. The blow was brutal and vicious with the might and malignity of the plaguelord’s bulk behind it. What the attack lacked was discipline and finesse, skill to complement strength. Grymn twisted away from his enemy’s strike, catching the blow on the haft of his halberd. The collision of blighted steel against holy sigmarite sent a metallic trill ringing out across the frozen sea. Grymn rolled with the impact, turning his block into a sliding parry. Before Torglug was aware of the manoeuvre, the Stormcast drove the blade of his halberd into the warlord’s ribs.

  Grymn felt his weapon pierce the diseased warlord, heard the blade slice deep into his corrupt flesh. A soupy broth of blood and maggots streamed down his halberd as he drew back. Against a normal foe, it would have been a mortal wound. Torglug, however, didn’t even seem to notice. Instead he lunged at Grymn once more, chopping at him with a downward sweep of his axe that would have split the Lord-Castellant from crown to hip had it connected. Again, Grymn exploited his enemy’s rage, using Torglug’s own fury and impatience to provide an opening for retaliation.

  It wasn’t long before the warlord left himself exposed. Torglug’s axe was a blur as he delivered a blizzard of attacks, trying to cut down Grymn. The assault fell into a rhythm before long, a pattern a more controlled warrior would never have allowed himself to slip into. Grymn followed that pattern, blocking and dodging until he found the opening he was waiting for. When Torglug swung his body around to strike at Grymn’s leg, the Stormcast plunged ahead, driving the edge of his halberd against the warlord’s hip. The sigmarite blade slashed through Torglug’s armour, leaving a jagged strip flapping against his knee. The body beneath was no less savaged, bile gushing from a wound in which the white of bone glistened.

  This time Grymn knew better than to trust the severity of the injury to cripple Torglug’s counter. Instead he raised the warding lantern, shining its light into the cluster of blemished eyes. More than his wound, it was the stinging rays from the lantern that caused the warlord to stagger back.

  Grymn glanced past Torglug. The way was clear for the warlord’s blightkings to range out across the ice and resume their hunt for the Lady of Vines. Instead the hideous throng stood idle, diseased spectators to the fray betwixt their master and the commander of the Hallowed Knights. The warbands crossing the living bridge displayed no desire to press onwards while the fate of their warlord was in question. By holding Torglug here, Grymn was delaying the strongest and fiercest fighters in the warlord’s entire legion.

  A moment before, Grymn had cursed the abominable vitality that preserved Torglug and allowed the warlord to keep fighting. Now he was thankful for the dark blessing that hung over his enemy. Alive and fighting, the warlord would make the greater part of his legion tarry here, waiting to learn his fate. Grymn had to draw out their duel for as long as possible.

  For a third time, Grymn’s halberd slashed into Torglug’s body. This time the blade gnawed at the plaguelord’s swollen gut, slicing across his skin. The instant the blow landed, Grymn pulled back, blunting the impetus behind the stroke.

  He had no need of the warding lantern to fend off Torglug’s retaliation. The warlord withdrew of his own accord, retreating several paces. As Grymn’s halberd cut into his body, Torglug had felt the sudden lack of force behind the blow. Now Grymn could see the gleam of suspicion in his foe’s eyes. Taking another step back, the warlord called out to his men.

  ‘Worms of Crow God!’ he shouted. ‘You are being across crevice. Path is being clear for you. Be finding Radiant Queen!’ Torglug raised his axe, catching Grymn’s halberd on its haft and pushing the Lord-Castellany back.

  Grymn fought in earnest now, his gambit for delaying the plaguehosts undone. While he fought Torglug, diseased warriors streamed out across the ice, charging into the snow as they tried to find the Lady of Vines. He couldn’t hold back that plague-addled tide – all he could do was try to hurt the enemy as dearly as he could before he was overwhelmed. If he could cut down Torglug then the slaves of Nurgle would be thrown into confusion, plunged into bickering among themselves while they decided upon a new warlord to lead them.

  Now it was Torglug who fought with cold detachment and steely discipline. Gone were the reckless, brutal assaults. Instead the warlord fought with insidious craft, exploiting to the full his monstrous strength and uncanny speed. Grymn found himself giving ground to his foe, hard-pressed to fend off the relentless string of attacks with his halberd in one hand and his lantern in the other.

  One advantage yet remained with Grymn. The light of his warding lantern continued to vex Torglug, nettling the warlord and causing him to instinctively flinch from it. It was a slim advantage, serving only to blunt some of the precision and ardour of the warlord’s blows.

  Torglug abandoned the heavy-handed attacks he’d been inflicting. Taking up his monstrous axe in one hand, he swung the weapon with horrifying ease, trading the sheer strength of his double-handed strikes for the speed of single-handed chops. Grymn found it harder to intercept the swifter blows, but far less arduous to parry. After a minute or so of falling into a pattern of strike and block, it was Grymn who became the victim of settling into the rhythm of battle.

  With shocking abruptness, Torglug suddenly tossed his axe from one hand to the other. In almost the same motion, he brought the blackened blade slashing upwards. The diseased axe clove across the face of the warding lantern, quenching its holy light. The blade swept on, crunching through the broken lamp to hew into the hand that held it.

  Grymn cried out in agony as his hand was severed by Torglug’s axe. He saw it go spinning away, sliding across the ice. The stump burned with the putrid bite of the unclean blade, sending pain lancing through his body. Blood bubbled up from his torn flesh, spraying across the ice and snow. Even his endurance struggled to overcome the agony of his mutilation; only his devotion to Sigmar and to the duty entrusted to him by Gardus kept him standing.

  As he was struck, Grymn heard Tallon snarl. The dutiful gryph-hound lunged at Torglug, his beak snapping shut around the warlord’s arm, savaging his putrid flesh with sidewise twists of its head. Torglug howled in pain and brought his armoured boot slamming into Tallon’s side. The hound cried out in pain and was thrown back, ripping a grisly gash in its enemy as its beak was torn free.

  Grymn cried out in rage, flinging himself at the warlord. Torglug swatted the Lord-Castellant aside, mocking him. ‘I am killing the master then his dog!’ he chuckled.

  Torglug was back to swinging his axe with both hands again. The warlord expected his crippled foe to be easy prey. A snarl of surprise and aggravation rattled from behind his helm when Grymn refused to be slaughtered. ‘Fanatic is not knowing when to quit,’ he spat at Grymn.

  Grymn chopped at Torglug with his halberd, nearly striking the plaguelord’s leg. ‘Duty ends only in death,’ he told the diseased monster.

  ‘I am being ending your duty,’ Torglug snarled. The warlord spun his bloated bulk, putting all of his weight behind a murderous blow that slammed into Grymn’s side. Sigmarite plate stove in as the axe smashed into him. He felt ribs splinter, slivers of bone stabbing thro
ugh his flesh. The impact knocked him from his feet, sent him hurtling across the ice.

  For an instant, Grymn tried to regain his feet, unwilling to concede the field to Torglug. He’d failed in his mission, such was the thought that tormented him as darkness began to blot out his vision.

  As the darkness settled over him, a prayer tumbled from Grymn’s lips. ‘Mighty Sigmar... do not forget the faithful.’

  Surrounded by his acolytes, Slaugoth Maggotfang peered at the entrails he’d removed from a slaughtered rot fly. The omens he read in the cancerous organs were anything but reassuring. For a moment he tried to tell himself that the calamity he read there represented the fall of Guthrax into the Sea of Serpents.

  The adepts of the Plague Coven called out to the sorcerer as their rotten familiars came flying back to them, buzzing and cawing as they reported Torglug’s victory over the leader of the lightning-men. The way ahead was open to the plaguehosts now. Entire tribes and warherds were charging across the bridge Slaugoth had formed from the Slothcrawlers. The frozen sea would soon be rife with hunters seeking the Lady of Vines. The Everqueen’s guardian might elude them for a time, but she wouldn’t escape.

  How to explain the ominous portent he saw in the guts of the rot fly? Should he seek out Torglug and warn him of the ill omens? Slaugoth was at a loss for an answer until a peal of thunder drew his eyes skywards. At once he could see the change in the clouds. They had become even darker and more violent than during the worst of the snow-storm, and to his witchsight there was an unmistakable glamour shining behind the clouds, an aura that was as hateful as it was familiar. It was the same brilliance that burned within each lightning-man, the despised light of Sigmar.

  Slaugoth watched as the storm descended, sending sheets of hail splattering down upon the frozen sea. Lightning and thunder hurtled down from the sky. It was no coincidence that the storm’s fury struck in the path of Torglug’s hunters. The sorcerer chided himself for his arrogance. He had felt the pestilent hand of Nurgle reach out to help his followers when they needed to cross onto the ice. Now a different god had intervened to aid the enemy. Slaugoth should have anticipated such a possibility and taken whatever steps he could to offset it.

  As the lightning crashed downwards, Slaugoth caught hold of a worm-eaten vulture, the consort of one of his acolytes. Wringing the creature’s neck, he sent its spirit soaring into the sky, seeing in his mind what it saw with its spectral eyes. Where the lightning had struck there now stood dozens of warriors, lightning-men arrayed in armour of white and gold rather than the silver and blue of the enemies they’d been fighting. Sigmar God-King had answered the prayers of his followers and sent them reinforcements from Azyr.

  The Plague Coven sensed the sorcerer’s alarm. They began to murmur among themselves, fright pulsing through their veins. Slaugoth quietened them with a threatening glare. By calling upon Nurgle, he had drawn the Grandfather’s attention to himself. If Torglug failed it wouldn’t be the warlord alone who suffered their god’s wrath. The sorcerer was determined to escape such a fate. A second Stormhost was a formidable obstacle, but one that might be offset by summoning allies of their own.

  From the crest of a frozen wave, Slaugoth and his acolytes could see the churning waters of the Sea of Serpents. They could see the marine reptiles that feasted so greedily upon the warriors who fell within their reach. Slaugoth could feel the contagion that polluted those mighty monsters, the diseased infestations that had altered them when the Jade Kingdoms sickened. Already they were changing, becoming creatures of the Plaguefather. All it needed was a comparatively simple ritual to make them servants as well, to bind their ophidian minds to the will of Nurgle.

  At a gesture from the sorcerer, his acolytes fell upon one of their own, dragging the weakest of the adepts into the circle within which the rot fly had been butchered. Slaugoth drew his dagger across the man’s throat, silencing his screams and sending a spray of arterial blood shooting across the snow. With his staff, the sorcerer dragged the blood across the ice, pulling it into sinuous shapes and sigils. Old magic coursed through his body as he drew upon arcane forces ancient beyond imagining. The bloody shapes began to writhe and wriggle in a noxious semblance of life. In the water, the vast serpents copied the movements of the pictures Slaugoth had drawn from the acolyte’s blood.

  ‘Go,’ Slaugoth hissed to the sea monsters. ‘Go. Find. Seek. Kill.’ A black-toothed smile crawled across his face as he watched the serpents submerge and slip beneath the ice. The Stormcasts might intercede with Torglug’s hunters above the ice, but there was precious little they could do to oppose the serpentine hounds the sorcerer had sent to stalk the Lady of Vines from below.

  The sylvaneth could feel the thinning of the ice beneath their feet, sense the flowing waves underneath them. They were closing upon the far shore of the frozen sea. The Lady of Vines would soon be on firm ground again and much closer to the ancient places where she hoped to take the queen-seed.

  Suddenly, the ice split open only a few yards from the branchwraith. A gigantic serpent boiled up from the rent, hissing and snapping as it struck at her. The creature’s grey hide was mottled with foul red growths, and clumps of black mites scuttled between its scales. The mark of Nurgle was upon it, shining in its eyes.

  The Lady of Vines leaped from the path of the striking reptile, its jaws slamming into the ice at her feet. Before it could strike again, the last of the Hallowed Knights in her retinue rushed forwards to engage the monster. A mixed force of sword-armed Liberators and Judicators with skybolt bows, they harried the monstrosity, pinning it down while shouting to the branchwraith to press on without them.

  It was a scene that had been repeated several times since the Lady of Vines had left so many of her defenders behind to guard the bridges. Rushing up from the depths, the mammoth serpents had shattered the ice in their vicious efforts to stop the branchwraith’s escape. Some of the snakes had ripped open their own hides when they smashed through the frozen surface, striking at everything around them in agonised fury. Others had displayed an eerie craftiness, smashing a series of holes from which to surprise and confuse their prey.

  With each encounter her retinue was lessened until all that was left to her now was a bodyguard of dryads. Even these might have been enough if the branchwraith could have crossed the frozen sea faster.

  The sea serpents conjured from the depths of the sea were but one obstacle. Another was the mounting tremors caused by the jotunberg. The giant hadn’t relapsed into a deathly sleep as it had when summoned by Alarielle. The jotunberg shivered and quaked as its body was slowly consumed by the rot of Nurgle. Each movement sent a rumble through the ice, fracturing and splitting the surface, causing the dryads to sink their roots down lest they pitch and fall. The very storm that concealed them from the plaguehosts wrought its own toll, chilling the blood-sap flowing through the sylvaneth and slowing their bodies.

  The Lady of Vines refused to waver from her cause. The queen-seed cradled in her hands spurred her onwards. Nothing could make her abandon the task before her. The radiant light of Alarielle could not be allowed to depart from Ghyran.

  Ahead, the Lady of Vines could just see the shore, which was lined with statues, their huge forms rendered shapeless by age and decay. The race was nearly won. Beyond the statues were the ancient places where benevolent enchantments could still hold sway.

  This near to the shore, far from the fallen jotunberg, the ice was thin, crackling beneath the probing steps of the dryads. Cautiously, the sylvaneth tried to advance, but a mighty worm-like horror erupted from beneath the ice, gulping down a pair of dryads in its quivering maw. The Lady of Vines and her court retreated before the revolting monstrosity, watching for it to sink into the depths.

  Suddenly, the Lady of Vines turned, the glow of her eyes dipping into a baleful light. On the verge of escape, the enemy came for her once more. Out of the swirling snow and ice she could see hideous figures
marching towards her. At their head was one no sylvaneth could forget – the one-horned figure of Torglug Treecutter.

  Caught, cornered between the gigantic worm and the advancing warriors, the Lady of Vines altered her song once more. The keening wail became an angry screech. The slight aspects of the branchwraith and her dryads darkened, their hands lengthening into dagger-like talons. The time for running was over. Now it was time to fight.

  Torglug roared at his warriors, goading them on through the raging storm. He cared not for the driving rain or the crashing thunder. His attention was fixed upon the radiant glow of the queen-seed, the prize he would capture for Nurgle. He alone could see the glow of the seed through the fog and snow.

  It was enough that he could see it. His role was to lead; it was for others to follow him to glory.

  That glory was near enough to taste when Torglug stalked out of the fog to see the Lady of Vines standing before him. The branchwraith had stopped running and had turned to confront her pursuers. Torglug smiled when he saw the gigantic worm lashing about the shallows behind her. The last stand hadn’t been her choice then, but rather a gift from Nurgle. He didn’t feel cheated to find his quarry already trapped. After such a long campaign, nothing could spoil the taste of victory for him.

  Torglug motioned his putrid blightkings to stay back while he approached the Lady of Vines. His armoured boots crunched across the ice as he closed upon his prey. He was disappointed that even now he was incapable of detecting anything like fear or despair in the branchwraith’s visage. The sylvaneth were an eldritch breed. The eight realms would be better once their kind were exterminated.

  The warlord forgot about the branchwraith when he saw the glowing object nestled in the hollow of her trunk. He could feel the vital energies that pulsated from the queen-seed; the parasitic rotworm nestling in his gut writhed in response to that invigorating aura. The light shining from the seed was different than the harsh glare of the warding lantern, though unsettling in its own way. The warding lantern had felt hard and condemning, while the radiance of the queen-seed was mournful, redolent of disappointment and regret. Torglug could recognize the entreaty, even if it had no power over him. He had been damned long ago. It was too late for mercy.