Wardens of the Everqueen

by C. L. Werner

  Bit by bit, a change began to occur within the circle of menhirs, a shifting of the air that wasn’t unlike the distorted shimmer of a heat haze. Through that phantom veil, the shades of a distant landscape began to take shape. Instead of the grey moorland over which the menhirs loomed, it seemed the boughs of some great woodland were becoming visible.

  With shocking abruptness, the Lady of Vines silenced her song and let the energies she’d tapped into flow back into both menhir and dryad. The phantom landscape winked out, evaporating back into nothingness. The radiant glow of the queen-seed flickered, but quickly began to burn with a greater light. The branchwraith cradled the soulpod in her clawed hand as she turned from the standing stones and gazed back down towards the shore.

  There, making their way through the piled tumuli of tribal kings and the windswept statues of a forgotten race, a file of shapes was making its way towards the stone circle. A gladness flared within the branchwraith’s being when she saw some of the sylvaneth from Athelwyrd marching towards her. She’d thought them lost on the ice, condemned to destruction by the jotunberg’s tremulous anguish. To see them again eased the burden of guilt she bore for commanding them to stay behind while she fled with the queen-seed. Her cheer soured when she saw how few were left. Many had fallen to the blades of Torglug and his warriors, many had been thrown into the sea by the dying jotunberg.

  Others marched with the sylvaneth – the silver Hallowed Knights and other Stormcast Eternals wearing the white armour that Knight-Azyros Diomar had worn. The Lady of Vines was surprised by the sense of relief she felt when she saw Lord-Castellant Grymn leading them. She was even more surprised by the concern she felt for his condition. Grymn’s armour was rent in several places, scarred and dented by vicious blows. His battered warding lantern hung at his side and even his gryph-hound was limping. More, she saw the grisly stump where his hand should be. Her arcane senses told her of the ghastly putrescence that afflicted the wound, filth of such malignity that even the Stormcast’s vitality was being sickened by it.

  In all the ages of her existence, the Lady of Vines had never felt sympathy for anything human. She considered the quick-bloods to be too rash and impetuous, too individualistic to ever be trusted. They were too brief, their lives vanishing with such rapidity that they soon faded from memory. The Stormcast Eternals were a different breed, she understood that well enough. Perhaps they truly did enjoy an existence as lengthy as that of the sylvaneth. Perhaps they could focus upon needs and goals that took centuries to achieve. Yet, for all of that, they had seemed to her as kindred to the tribesmen of the Jade Kingdoms.

  Now, as she looked upon Grymn, as each step nearer the circle made his injuries and suffering clearer to her, the Lady of Vines repented her earlier disdain. The Hallowed Knights had suffered and sacrificed much to protect Alarielle; they had fought harder even than the sylvaneth to defy the Treecutter. Their ordeal was nowhere more manifest than in the battered shape of their commander.

  The Lady of Vines stepped away from the ring of dryads, motioning to them to remain where they were. With rapid steps, she climbed down to the tumuli of the old kings and met the advancing survivors.

  ‘Fortune favours you,’ the branchwraith greeted Grymn. ‘I had just begun the rite that opens the gate to the Path of the Purified. Had your arrival been much later, you could not have crossed the doorway.’

  Lorrus Grymn looked up at her, his gaze grave. ‘My lady, if there was the least chance of slipping away, you should have taken it.’ He groaned and leaned against his halberd, trying to suppress the cough that shuddered through him. ‘Our lives don’t matter. The only thing that does is keeping the queen-seed safe.’

  ‘The Treecutter has been left behind us on the ice,’ the branchwraith declared. She pointed at the winged Stormcast in white armour who marched in Grymn’s party. ‘Your Diomar met the plaguelord in battle and gave me the chance to escape.’ Her tone dipped with reverence. ‘I don’t think he prevailed, but he did keep the enemy from pressing his pursuit. With the jotunberg’s throes splitting the ice, the plaguehosts will need another way to cross. For the moment, we are beyond their reach.’

  ‘All the more reason why you cannot delay,’ Grymn said. ‘Torglug cannot have the queen-seed.’

  ‘He will not touch my queen,’ the branchwraith hissed, her branches shifting angrily. ‘But keeping her beyond his reach is a duty I share with Sigmar’s chosen.’ She pointed up at the circle of menhirs. At her gesture, the sylvaneth began climbing towards the stones to join the ring of dryads already there. ‘Your warriors must join my people,’ she told Grymn. ‘All of you must stand within the circle, that I may bring you to the Path of the Purified.’ She hesitated, then pointed to Grymn. ‘And you must stand with me at the centre of the ritual.’

  Bidding Tallon stay behind, Grymn let the Lady of Vines lead him up to the stone circle, allowing her to help him when his step faltered and he had to use his halberd as a crutch. She kept looking at the stump of his hand, at the crust of filth that was sending streams of plague into his veins. She tried to hurry him, recognising the bite of Torglug’s axe and remembering much too well how swiftly its foulness had brought low even the oldest forest spirits. It was astounding to her that Grymn had endured this long.

  Drawing Grymn into the middle of the ring of dryads, the Lady of Vines took his hand in hers. She saw the look of awe and shock that filled his eyes when he felt the warmth of the queen-seed pressed into his palm.

  ‘You have given much to defend our queen,’ the branchwraith told him. ‘Now let her give something back.’

  She had no more words for Grymn. Again the enchanting song rose from her, drawing out the energies of the menhirs and the sylvaneth. The skein of power surrounded her, spilling down into the queen-seed, reaching out through the ley lines to once again summon a phantom landscape, to create a gateway between distant places.

  The branchwraith only partially observed the opening of the way. Another part of her watched the effect of the Everqueen’s power upon the warrior who now held her soulpod. Her arcane sight could see streams of emerald fire racing through his body, burning away the black rot of Nurgle. Grymn was being purged of the contagion, scoured of it in both flesh and soul.

  Then the Lady of Vines saw something even she hadn’t anticipated. The healing power of Alarielle was doing more than simply burning away the infection. A green stalk spread from the mangled stump of Grymn’s wrist, thickening and expanding until it became an entirely new hand. Even the battered warding lantern hanging from Grymn’s belt was shining once more, its lingering enchantment restored and revitalised by the Radiant Queen.

  As the ritual continued to gather force, Grymn’s entire being was bathed in the glow of the goddess. The Lady of Vines became anxious, wondering how much of the divine power he could withstand. Carefully she retrieved the queen-seed from his hand. Just as carefully she raised a gnarled finger and pointed to the shimmering forest beyond the stone circle. The sylvaneth began drawing away from the ring, filing out into the phantasmal forest.

  Grymn hesitated, but a gesture from the Lady of Vines had him shouting orders to the Stormcasts and the warriors followed after the sylvaneth. As her followers and the Stormcasts withdrew, the gateway began to close. The branchwraith braced herself for one last effort. Drawing only upon her own power and that of the queen-seed, she forced the slightest crack to remain open. With a bounding leap, she threw herself through the magical slit, hurling herself from the stone circle to the forest beyond.

  The sylvaneth waited for their mistress, standing sombre and stolid among the slender trees of the woods. The Stormcasts were gathered around Grymn, marvelling at his regrown hand. He turned from them when he saw the Lady of Vines appear.

  ‘You have worked a mighty magic,’ he said, flexing the fingers of his new hand and gesturing at the forest around them.

  The branchwraith reached to her breast and repla
ced the queen-seed in its hollow. ‘We will need mightier magic still,’ she said. ‘We must set upon the Path of the Purified and cleanse ourselves of any trace of Nurgle’s taint.

  ‘Where we would go, we must bring nothing of the enemy with us.’

  The ice cracked and spluttered all around them as Torglug led the last of his putrid blightkings towards the shore. Only seven of them had braved the cataclysmic upheaval of the sea to reach him. The warlord was dismayed that so few of his minions had proven themselves so devoted, but he took solace in the auspicious aspect of their number. Seven, after all, was the sacred number of Nurgle. For seven of his bodyguard to endure was an omen, a sign that the Grandfather was guiding his favoured vassal.

  Small groups of battered, bloodied figures emerged from the fog, drawn towards the noxious presence of Torglug like iron filings to a lodestone, called to him by the noxious blessing Nurgle had bestowed upon him, the diseased mark of the Plague God’s touch. Remnants of marauder tribes and beastman warherds, lone Chaos knights and mutants, clutches of armoured warriors and clumps of squirming nurglings, the survivors of the plaguehosts returned to their warlord. To the very last they had fought against their enemy, but in the end the elemental fury of the jotunberg was too much to endure. Now they were falling back to the deathbloom fields where at least the giant’s wintry hold wasn’t so fierce.

  The decimation of his legion didn’t disturb Torglug. He would have expended all their lives to secure for Nurgle the queen-seed of Alarielle. That they had died by the hundreds without accomplishing the task he’d set them was what worried the warlord. It would take time to enslave and recruit the warriors to rebuild his army – time that would allow the Lady of Vines to slip away and carry the faltering essence of the Everqueen beyond his reach. He couldn’t allow his enemy such respite. He had to resume the hunt, maintain the pressure and drive his enemies to destruction.

  Out from the snow, the ghoulish shapes of Slaugoth Maggotfang and the remains of his plague coven emerged. The sorcerer leaned heavily upon his staff and even the eldritch glow in his eyes seemed faded. Torglug didn’t know what magic Slaugoth had worked to aid his legion or what spells had exacted such a toll from the man. All he knew was that however great the sorcerer’s exertions, they hadn’t been enough to bring him victory.

  ‘You are daring to come creeping back to me?’ Torglug snarled at Slaugoth. He raised his axe, pointing the blackened blade at the sorcerer. ‘Your vaunted magic is failing me, spell-spitter! You are letting Radiant Queen be slipping through my fingers!’

  Slaugoth drew back, his hands grasping at talismans blackened by Morbus’ lightning. Better than any of the plague warriors, he could sense the might of the blessing Nurgle had bestowed upon Torglug. Fear fought with anger for mastery of his features as he spoke. ‘The Grandfather offered you the glory of securing His prize. The Grandfather gave you this chance to show your devotion to Him. The victory would have been yours, so don’t presume you can escape the blame for failure. You have come far, but the higher you rise the further you can fall.’

  A roar of inarticulate rage bubbled up from Torglug’s bloated bulk. The warlord lunged at Slaugoth, seizing the weakened sorcerer in his fist and lifting his obese frame off the ground. Blightlord Goregus and the other putrid blightkings converged upon the plague coven, cutting two of them down in a heartbeat. The adepts retaliated with a skein of spells that reduced one of the bodyguards to a smouldering heap of mush and left the rest reeling.

  Torglug drew Slaugoth towards him, holding the sorcerer so close that the warlord’s horn stabbed into his cheek and drew a trickle of brown sludge from his pierced flesh. ‘You are being useful in past. What are you doing for me lately? What are you doing for me now?’

  A cruel smile flashed across Slaugoth’s face, exposing the masses of worms wriggling between his teeth. ‘I can keep the rats from gnawing your miserable bones.’ Drained as he was, Slaugoth exhaled a blast of noxious wind, sending the sorcerous gale smashing into the fog. The veil of mist and snow rolled back, revealing the shingle of the shore. Hundreds of bodies were strewn across the beach, cast there by the turbulent currents that raged beneath the ice and through the great rifts created by the jotunberg’s spasms – the dead of Torglug’s legion, both beast and man, spat up by the Sea of Serpents as though the very waters were disgusted by them.

  Others were far less discriminating. Swarming over the dead, tearing weapons from cold fingers, stripping armour from icy flesh, cutting hunks of meat from bloated bodies, was an army more loathsome than even that which Torglug had led. A mass of humanoid rats had descended upon the wreckage of the plaguehosts, scavenging off the carrion. The warlord recognised the horns and white pelt of the vermin who led the swarm of skaven. It was the same plague priest he had beaten down in the tunnels. Poxmonger Kriknitt had rallied its routed minions and driven them in pursuit of Torglug. The vermin had intended to simply plunder the leavings of his army, but finding the legion so weakened he knew it wouldn’t be long before they exacted a far more vicious retaliation for the invasion of their tunnels.

  ‘Kill me and they will pick their fangs with your bones,’ Slaugoth said.

  Torglug threw the sorcerer down. ‘Same fate is being hanging over your head,’ he snarled. ‘Whatever magic you are having left, it better be good.’

  Across the ice, Torglug saw the skaven pointing at the plague warriors, squealing in their shrill voices. The white-furred Poxmonger Kriknitt leapt atop the shoulders of a massive ratman and began shrieking commands to the scavengers, who dropped their loot, glancing around in uncertainty. The increasingly vicious harangue from their priest made them draw weapons and form a rough battle line along the shore. Torglug sneered at their cringing display of bravado. It was seeing how few his warriors now numbered that was giving the vermin courage. Driven by the prospect of more plunder and the promise of an easy victory, the skaven rushed out onto the ice. A squealing, squeaking tide of gnashing fangs and rusted blades charged towards the decimated legion.

  Torglug’s fist tightened about the haft of his axe. He could see Kriknitt goading a pack of frenzied plague monks straight towards him. Like its minions, the skaven priest was eager to slake its vengeance. ‘If you are doing something, be doing it,’ the warlord snarled at Slaugoth.

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ Slaugoth chortled, eyes agleam with ghoulish mirth. ‘My spells have hidden the blessing the Grandfather has bestowed upon you. Too late will they discover what you’ve become.’ He pointed at the white-furred plague priest. ‘You will need to take that one… alive.’

  Torglug nodded. Some of the skaven were now reaching the survivors, hurling themselves at the warriors with rabid ferocity. More and more of the vermin were rushing onto the ice, lured by the smell of blood and the din of combat. Thrusting their way through the swarm were Kriknitt and its rabid retinue. Torglug noted that the filth kept well behind its troops, content to let others finish the warlord for it.

  The sight and smell of Torglug caused the skaven to falter. Closer now to the plaguelord, they could sense the terrible power that squirmed within his flesh, the awful might of the Plague God. A censer bearer, more frenzied than the rest of its ilk, scurried towards the warlord, poisons billowing from the weapon it bore. Torglug waded through the noxious cloud, withstanding fumes that would corrode iron and melt flesh. His axe came chopping down, tearing through the ratman and splitting it from crown to groin. The bisected halves of the skaven flopped onto the ice. Torglug laughed as he trampled the corpse underfoot and charged towards Kriknitt’s plague monks.

  A squeal of horror rose from the skaven as their glands spurted the pungent musk of fear. The easy prey they had hoped to overwhelm now looked far less appealing to them. Kriknitt raised its voice in a panicked screech, torn between the urge to run and the fear that it would be trampled by its own bodyguard should it turn its back to them. Torglug eased the plague priest’s dilemma. Calling to
his putrid blightkings, he drove into the mob of skaven, his black axe shearing through them in a riot of gory havoc. The ice steamed with the rank black blood of slaughtered ratmen, verminous carcasses strewn in his wake. Each step, each cut, brought him closer to his enemy.

  The plague monks broke before the malign fury of Nurgle’s champion. Shrieking in terror, the robed ratkin fled back towards the shore, but there was to be no escape for Kriknitt. Cutting down the last robed vermin between them, Torglug rushed the priest. Cornered by its enemy, Kriknitt lunged at him with its sword, faking a slash at the champion’s neck before treacherously stabbing at his belly. The serrated blade pierced Torglug’s gut, eliciting a squeak of triumph from the skaven. The squeak ended in a choked gargle as the stricken warlord seized Kriknitt by the throat.

  ‘If it is being so easy to be killing me, I am being dead long ago,’ Torglug snarled at his terrified prisoner. Carrying the struggling ratman as though it were no more than a child, he marched back towards Slaugoth. He wasn’t certain what use the sorcerer had for Kriknitt, but he trusted it would be something unpleasant.

  The sorcerer bowed before his master, touching his head to the ice in a show of abject devotion. ‘The Grandfather has truly shown you His pestilent favour!’ he gasped in delight. Slaugoth could feel the bilious energies seething within Torglug’s flesh and spirit, energies which he could use to work mighty spells for his master.

  ‘Your plaguehosts have been diminished,’ Slaugoth told Torglug. ‘We will need a new army to settle with the branchwraith and her guardians.’ The sorcerer laughed, one of the worms tumbling from his teeth. ‘Fortunately it is in my power to summon the troops we will need. Have your men gather up the dead – our own and those of the ratkin. Pile them upon the shore. I will call upon the Grandfather’s own household to provide us the warriors we need.’

  Torglug nodded, unable to doubt that the sorcerer could do exactly what he promised. The frightened whimpers of Kriknitt recalled to him the existence of his captive. He held the trembling plague priest towards Slaugoth. ‘And what am I doing with this?’