by Various
‘You brought the wood in, sold it to unsuspecting buyers and somehow opened a path through the city’s defences,’ Gage said, circling the chanting acolytes, keeping them between himself and Tarn. There had to be some way to break the spell.
‘It took years. But I learned patience in service to the Changer of Ways.’ Tarn lifted a sheathed sword into view. ‘I learned many things. Like the best way to harvest cursed wood from a god-touched forest and use it as a pathway back to that same forest. Though granted, I had some help with that.’
Gage lifted his own sword. The crewmen descended and spread out around him. Daemonic faces leered at him from the walls and beams of the hold, laughing silently at his predicament.
‘You think you’ve won, don’t you?’ he said.
Tarn laughed. ‘No. This is but the beginning.’ He drew his sword and gazed down its length. Ugly, gash-like sigils marked the blade. ‘This city is well defended. But there is an army on the other side of the gate – the blessed children of change wait for us to open the way from this side. Hammerhal Ghyra will fall to the warflocks of the Hexwood. Then, Hammerhal Aqsha. And after that – who is to say?’
Gage shook his head in disbelief at such hubris. Men like Tarn always spoke with conviction, even when they said the same words a hundred men before them had already said, and a hundred men after would say too. It was always the same. Domination. Conquest. Hubris.
His sword still extended, Gage cast a quick look around. He needed a distraction.
The deck above bowed and burst, raining jagged chunks of planking down on the congregants. They did not cease their chanting, though slivers of wood pierced the chests and arms of several. Tarn stepped back, cursing, as Carus and the fatemaster slammed into the floor in a cloud of splinters.
‘That’ll do,’ Gage said.
The two warriors were on their feet almost instantly, neither giving ground. Their swords crashed together with hurricane force, and daemon-winds lashed through the hold. Crewmen were lifted and hurled back against the hull. The flames snapped and surged.
‘Aek, take the fight away from here – we’re too close now!’ Tarn howled. He drew his own blade and lunged for Carus.
Gage intercepted him. As their swords scraped together, Gage caught hold of Tarn’s robes and swung him into the flames. It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective. Tarn screamed in agony as the mystic fire blazed up, seemingly consuming him. Hearing his screams, the fatemaster glanced around, as if in concern. Carus seized the opportunity, and his judgment blade crashed down on his opponent’s helm, splitting the metal.
The fatemaster groaned and swept his sword out. A typhoon of wind sprang up and caught at Carus. Slowly, the Lord-Veritant was forced back by the building tempest. His armoured boots dug shallow trenches in the deck as he was pressed back towards the place where the skycutter had impacted the Hopeful Traveller. The smaller vessel shook as the mystic winds lashed it. With a trembling roar, it was ejected from the hull of the larger airship, hurtling away and down towards the city below.
The winds built to a screaming crescendo. Carus spun his blade and stabbed it into the deck in an attempt to anchor himself. Even so, Gage could see that it wouldn’t hold for long. Unless he acted quickly, the Lord-Veritant was going to be swept out of the hold.
He lunged, thrusting his rapier through a gap in the fatemaster’s armour. The creature stiffened and whirled, dragging the winds along with his blade. Gage was flung backwards, perilously close to the flames; he rolled aside, only just managing to avoid them. As he rose to his feet, he saw that the eldritch flames had spread, consuming the circle of chanting acolytes. Their seated shapes burned like hunched pyres. They hadn’t even tried to escape. The spell had consumed them utterly – there would be no easy way to break it now.
He turned back to the fray as a hurled axe struck the fatemaster in the chest, knocking him flat. Kuva leapt down into the hold, reaching for the haft of her axe. The fatemaster lurched up, driving her back. He tore the axe from his chest and cast it away. The aelf ducked aside as the warrior hacked at her, and his blade split a support beam. The hold groaned as the flames crept higher. More of the heat blister images formed. They drifted through the hold, momentarily distracting the combatants. Among the new images, Gage saw a forest and the silver-armoured forms of Hallowed Knights, locked in battle with tzaangors and daemons. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t isolated to Hammerhal Ghyra.
Blades slammed together with a crack of steel. Carus had regained his feet, and the fatemaster met him. Even wounded, the servant of Chaos seemed determined to prevent them from interfering with the flames in any way.
Kuva caught Gage’s eye from across the hold. She glanced up, and he saw Bryn standing above, at the edge of the hole in the upper deck. The duardin lifted a pistol meaningfully. Gage nodded, and he and Kuva moved to flank the fatemaster. Carus wouldn’t thank them, but that was a problem for later. Needs must, when daemons drove.
A drakefire pistol roared from above as Bryn made his contribution to the fray. The fatemaster staggered. He turned, eyes glazed with pain.
‘Nowhere to go,’ Gage said, lifting his rapier. Kuva raised her axe and stepped forwards. Carus stepped back, a disgruntled look on his face.
The fatemaster tore off his battered helmet, exposing pale, saturnine features, covered in blood. ‘There is always another path,’ he said, smiling slightly. Then, with a single awkward step, he dived into the flames, dragging his screeching blade in his wake.
Startled, Gage made no move to stop him. The flames blazed up, licking at the walls, and the fatemaster vanished. Whether dead or simply gone, Gage couldn’t say, and he didn’t particularly care at that moment.
‘Carus – we may need your lantern,’ he shouted, gesturing to the flames. ‘Whatever they’ve started, I know of no way to stop it.’
‘We have to destroy this ship,’ Kuva said, glaring at the flames.
‘That alone will not be enough,’ said the Lord-Veritant. ‘The daemons have already breached the wards of the city. We must collapse the paths they’ve created and draw them back into the Realm of Chaos.’ Carus stared into the flickering flame, his face set, his expression grim. He whistled sharply and Zephyr appeared in the hole above, head cocked. The Lord-Veritant looked up. ‘Bring me my staff,’ he called out. He steadied himself with his sword as the hold shook.
Gage frowned as he caught hold of a support beam. The ship felt as if it were about to shake itself to pieces. ‘Can you do it?’
‘If I could not, I would have suggested something else.’
Gage looked up as the bubble containing the image of a warrior chamber of Hallowed Knights fighting in a forest drifted by. Was that the Hexwood that Tarn had mentioned? The only Hexwood that Gage knew of was a forest on the slopes of the Nevergreen Mountains.
A harsh sound filled the air – a scream of pure, infernal malice. It ripsawed through them, and Gage staggered, hands clamped to his ears. Even Carus shuddered, squinting against the monstrous pressure. Only Kuva didn’t flinch. She looked around.
‘Daemons,’ she said flatly.
‘Where?’ Bryn demanded from above.
Even as he spoke, something long and pink erupted from the splintered end of a broken plank and swiped at him. The duardin jerked back with a curse as the pink horror hauled itself towards him, a twisted grin on its malformed features. His hammer snapped out and crushed its head. It flopped to the deck, still partially merged with the wood.
Daemonic chortles echoed through the planks, and ugly faces swam across the interior of the hold. Hands and talons oozed out of the grain of the wood on all sides, reaching for them. Gage stabbed a leering face as it bulged towards him, bursting one yellow eye.
‘Carus – whatever you are planning, make it swift,’ he said.
A muffled shriek sounded as Zephyr reappeared, clutching Carus’ staff in her beak. The gr
yph-hound leapt into the hold, bounding from broken plank to beam, agilely avoiding the burning talons of the daemons that swiped at her. Carus caught up his staff and slammed the ferrule down. Light blazed from the lantern, bathing the hold. For a moment, the daemons retreated. But only for a moment.
‘Go,’ he rumbled. ‘Get above decks.’
Gage hesitated. ‘What about you?’
‘I am where I must be.’ Carus met his gaze. ‘Much is demanded of those to whom much is given. The time has come to pay down that debt.’
The fires roared up suddenly, licking across the ceiling and spreading across the floor. Gage and Kuva were driven back towards the steps leading to the upper deck. Carus gestured with his sword. ‘Zephyr – go!’
The gryph-hound shrilled, as if in protest, but leapt over the growing flames to join the others. As they backed up the stairs, Gage’s sword split a daemon’s leer, and Kuva’s axe finished it. Blue horrors rose from the bubbling remains, and Gage punted one of them into the spreading fire. The other was split into two burning, cackling daemon-flames by Kuva. Gage stamped on them, snuffing them out.
Over the spreading flames, he saw Carus raise his staff. The Lantern of Abjuration glowed with a light that rivalled that of the flames. The Lord-Veritant was chanting as daemons rose up around him, bleeding from the floors and walls. The creatures tore at him, their cackles taking on a frenetic quality. Lightning bled from his wounds and crackled within his eyes. His voice thundered above the wind and the howling of daemons. His sword slashed out, spilling daemon-ichor, as his prayers reached their crescendo.
‘Come, Gage, hurry,’ Kuva said, catching Gage’s arm and hauling him up the steps. ‘Whatever he’s planning, we won’t survive it this close.’
He allowed the aelf to pull him out of the hold, but he couldn’t look away from the Lord-Veritant’s final stand. The flames encircled Carus like the talons of some great beast. His cloak burned away to ash as Gage watched, and his armour blackened and warped, its gilding dripping away as the sigils etched into the plates glowed white hot. But still he stood, holding his ground against innumerable foes and the heat of foul magics. Azure light bled from him, rising in crackling motes from his armour and exposed face.
Despite all of it, he was smiling. That was the last sight Gage had of him, as he scrambled above decks with the others. Bryn hurried towards them.
‘The crew – what’s left of them – scrambled the driftboats a few moments ago,’ he said. ‘Think they know something we don’t?’
Cobalt lightning lashed upwards through the holes in the deck. It ravaged the masts and upper decks, tearing at the wood. Somewhere, daemons were screaming – not in joy, now, but in pain. And, Gage hoped, fear. Whatever Carus was doing, they didn’t like it.
A moment later, a column of lightning blazed upwards through the deck, scattering boards in all directions and nearly deafening Gage. One of the masts cracked and slammed down, knocking them all sprawling. Overhead, the gasbag rippled as lightning tore across it, leaving burning punctures in its wake.
Daemons tried to free themselves from the wood, only to be caught by the strands of lightning and hauled back towards the hold, dragged screaming into the radiance that burned there. This was not the sickly glow of the ritual fire, but a purer light: the light of Azyr, of Sigmar’s cleansing storm, unleashed at the heart of whatever ritual the foe had enacted. The ship bucked beneath the touch of the lightning. Whole sections of the hull cracked and fell away, raining like burning comets over the city.
Gage looked at Bryn. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a driftboat left?’
Bryn grinned and patted his hammer. ‘I thought you might ask that, so I made sure of it.’
He turned and clambered off, moving as fast as his thick legs could carry him. Zephyr bounded ahead of him, screeching in encouragement, and Gage and Kuva followed as quickly as they could. The Hopeful Traveller was cracking apart even as it drifted over the city. Lightning crawled across the shaking deck, as if urging them on.
The driftboat was a curved leaf of massive proportions, folded and shaped by the Greenpriests of Hammerhal Ghyra into a vessel which could catch the wind and carry its occupants safely to the ground. It hung from the side of the rail, and they hastily clambered aboard, settling themselves on the rounded benches. Kuva’s axe easily sliced through the ropes holding it attached to the airship, and Gage’s stomach leapt into his throat as they dropped away from the lightning-wracked hull of the Hopeful Traveller.
The city rose swiftly to meet them, before the driftboat caught the wind and levelled out. Below them, Hammerhal Ghyra was burning – or at least parts of it were. Even from such a height, Gage could hear the crack of gunfire and the bellicose grumble of Ironweld artillery.
‘He’s dead, then,’ Bryn said, watching as the Hopeful Traveller succumbed to the forces within its hold. The night sky blazed bright for a moment as the airship exploded and the last of the lightning savaged its way towards the stars and Azyr. ‘That sort of lightning only crackles when one of Sigmar’s chosen falls.’
‘Yes, but in death, he’s beaten them,’ Gage said, and knew it was true. The raw power of Carus’ sacrifice would surge through the mystic pathways that Tarn’s cult had created, hopefully collapsing them. Without constant reinforcements, the remaining daemons and tzaangors would swiftly be overwhelmed by the city’s defenders.
‘Not all of them, I hope,’ Bryn said. ‘Be a dull affair if we go through all that and miss the battle because we’re too busy riding a flying leaf.’
Kuva laughed. ‘There are always more daemons to kill.’
‘She’s right.’ Gage leaned back. ‘Somehow, I think we’ll find a way to keep busy.’
He reached out and stroked Zephyr’s flat skull. The gryph-hound settled beside him, chirping. If she was dismayed by the fate of her master, she gave little sign. Then, perhaps she knew she’d see him again, sooner or later. Gage looked up, watching as the burning wreckage descended across the horizon.
‘Hurry back, my friend,’ he murmured. ‘I fear we’ll need your light again, and sooner than we think.’
Chapter Eight
FIRES OF LIFE AND HEAVEN
With Hyrn and his Verdian tribesmen leading the way, the Steel Souls’ march through the Hexwood was swift. Around them, the pine trees shook, as if caught in a great wind. Wisps of light danced across their tops and flames licked at the horizon, as the battle in the glade began anew. Serena wondered whether Creel, Shael and the others in the Faithful Blades regiment would survive the coming hours. For a Stormcast, death was inevitable – they had been forged to die, and die well. But mortals were more fragile. The Stormcast Eternals fought and died so that mortals could live; to see them die so brutally, and so permanently, sickened her to her core.
She tried to push the thought aside. ‘Much is demanded of those to whom much is given,’ she murmured. The first canticle of the Hallowed Knights, the words by which they lived and fought. Sigmar had given them great strength, and in return, he asked only that they use it in a righteous cause. In his cause.
Even as she repeated the words, she caught glimpses of what might have been faces staring at the marching Stormcasts from knotholes and strange shapes that loped from one trunk to the next, moving within the bark like shadows, keeping pace. Serena tried to ignore them, but they pressed close, and more than once she thought she heard the whisper of voices, just at the edge of her hearing.
The Steel Souls were being followed.
Whether by foes or something else, she did not know, but she suspected the latter. At least twice, their small group had nearly run right into a warflock of tzaangors – loping towards the battle in the glen, or away from it – but the beastkin had not so much as paused, despite the wind being at the Stormcasts’ backs. In both cases, Serena thought that the trees had somehow bent, as if to obscure them. As if the forest were seeking to hide their ap
proach from the beasts who now ruled it.
‘Halt.’
Gardus’ voice carried easily through the dark. Serena and the other Liberators spread out automatically, falling into a skirmishing line among the trees. The Judicators stayed close, arrows nocked. Feros and his surviving Retributors stood at the centre of the line, arrayed to either side of Gardus. They had come to a cleft in the slope where the trees thinned. Great eruptions of rock, marked with strange carvings and sigils, cut through the forest floor, rising like irregular parapets. Thick scrub covered the ground and clung to the rock.
From beyond the stones came the sound of drums, the same ones they had heard at the beginning of the earlier attacks. There was light as well – a watery glow, shimmering up into the murky sky above.
Hyrn spat and unslung his bow. ‘This is it. The forbidden vale is beyond these rocks.’
Though he spoke softly, Serena heard him as easily as if she had been standing beside him. The cleft was narrow and unwelcoming: the perfect place for an ambush, or a stalling tactic, depending on how far back it travelled.
‘Those carvings on the stones,’ Ravius murmured from beside her. He’d been chosen to go as well by Aetius. ‘They’re sylvaneth. I saw them at the Blackstone Summit.’ He looked around warily, scanning the trees.
‘And in Gramin,’ Serena said. ‘But they’ve been defaced.’ The crudity of the desecration offended her, though she did not recognise the original purpose of the sigils.
‘Other gods rule here now.’ Gardus drew his runeblade. His voice silenced all conversation in the ranks. ‘But not for long.’ He looked down at Hyrn. ‘You and your people will stay here. This battle is not for you. If we fail, you must carry word back to the others.’
Hyrn made as if to protest, but fell silent under Gardus’ calm gaze. There was a weight to that gaze, Serena knew – not a harsh or hateful one, but heavy all the same, and few could bear it for long. The tribesfolk melted away into the trees, silent as shadows. Gardus watched them go, and then turned back to the cleft.