Hammerhal & Other Stories

by Various

  ‘Heavy Hand,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, my lord,’ said Feros. ‘Speak, and we shall do.’

  ‘Make a joyful noise, my brother,’ Gardus said, scraping the edge of his blade against the face of his hammer. ‘Let them know who has come to call.’

  Feros laughed loudly. He slammed the ferrule of his hammer down on a stone and raised the weapon up. ‘You heard him, brothers and sisters. Let us sing them the song of our people.’

  He started forwards, and the other Retributors advanced with him. As they strode towards the cleft, they slammed their hammers together, weaving a ponderous rhythm. Cobalt sparks flickered with every crash, until the head of each hammer was wrapped in crackling brambles of azure light. The sound echoed up, pushing back against the dolorous beat of the unseen drums like the crash of the sea against the shore.

  ‘Where I walk, no gate shall bar the way,’ Feros rumbled. ‘No wall, no bastion shall halt my advance. I am faithful, and my faith opens all doors.’

  As they reached the cleft, the Retributors lifted their hammers as one. They moved without hurry, but steadily, a millstone of silver and azure. Their lightning hammers snapped out and the rock face… ceased to be. Dust filled the air as the cleft ­crumbled, and the slope shook. With every impact, more lightning ravaged among the stones, reducing them to rubble or uprooting them entirely.

  ‘Loose formation,’ said Gardus as he advanced into the billowing dust, his light acting as a beacon to those following behind.

  As they walked, Serena and the other Liberators began to strike the flats of their shields with their hammers and warblades. Behind them, the Judicators’ voices rose in song – a hymn from the Age of Myth, remembered now only by a few scattered tribes of desert dwellers and those who had been raised up from among them. The song flew ahead of them, riding the crashing wave of destruction.

  The Retributors forged ahead, widening the cleft with every swing of their hammers. The rock face crumbled beneath their assault, and the slope quivered as avalanches were set off nearby due to the rhythmic destruction. Over the noise, Serena could hear the panicked cries of beastkin. Undoubtedly, they had been guarding the path, but there was no defence against such unbridled destruction. As the Stormcasts advanced through the dust, she trod on broken bodies – tzaangors, caught by falling rocks or the ricocheting bands of lightning that erupted with every hammer blow.

  ‘We seem to have ruined their ambush,’ Ravius said. ‘Pity.’

  ‘There’s more where they came from,’ Serena said. Somewhere above them, on the shuddering slopes, dark figures raced. Screeching brays sounded as avian bodies leapt down into the dust and thunder, seeking silver prey.

  Serena pivoted, and her blade caught a tzaangor in the neck. Its head spun away in a cloud of gore. Behind her, a Judicator fell beneath a swarm of bodies. His essence thundered upwards, and tzaangors rolled away, beating at the flames that clung to them. Ravius crashed into them, scattering them.

  Gardus moved through the fray like a pillar of fire. His voice rang out, a clarion call cutting through the noise. ‘Whose deeds shall be written upon stone?’

  ‘Only the faithful,’ Serena panted, choking on dust. The others echoed her.

  She drove a tzaangor back against the crumbling rock face with her shield and slid her blade into its midsection. She let the body fall and stepped back, instinctively seeking the safety of the formation. Maintenance of the battle-line above all else was drilled into the Stormcasts from the moment of their apotheosis. Only by working together as a single mechanism of war could they hope to be victorious.

  ‘Who will find redemption, at the end of all things?’ Gardus roared out, somewhere ahead of them. His light flared, and she caught a glimpse of him, surrounded by darting beast-shapes. The tzaangors were drawn to the Steel Soul like moths to a flame.

  ‘Only the faithful!’ she cried, advancing to his aid. Arrows shrieked overhead, punching tzaangors off their feet or pinning them to fallen trees.

  ‘Who shall weather the storm of storms?’ Gardus called, backhanding a beast with his hammer. He lunged smoothly, spitting another on his blade.

  ‘Only the faithful!’ Serena bulled into a tzaangor shield-first as it made ready to strike the Lord-Celestant. She bore it under and stamped on its head, bursting its narrow skull. ‘Only the faithful!’ she cried again. The words filled her with strength, easing the weariness that threatened to slow her limbs.

  ‘Indeed, sister. Only the faithful.’ Gardus wrenched his runeblade free of a dying tzaangor. ‘Keep moving, brothers and sisters. Do not slow your pace. Do not hesitate. We are the blade of Azyr, and we seek the enemy’s heart.’

  The Hallowed Knights advanced as one, following the trail of destruction carved by Feros and his fellow Retributors. The cleft widened into an immense vale, like a wound within the heart of the slope. Trees clustered as thick as a ghyrlion’s pelt, rising from the uneven ground in clumps and bunches. Rocks rose among them, thick with phosphorescent moss.

  At its heart, a cyclopean circle of crystalline shapes rose from the blighted soil. They loomed like the prongs of some vast, hateful crown, and the light which emanated from them warped everything it touched. A glowing mist rose from the torn earth, faces and shapes forming and dissolving within it. Those trees closest to it had become nightmarish growths of flesh and scale, rather than bark. Their roots twisted and thrashed like snakes, and their branches tore at the air like claws. Serena had seen such a thing before – a flux-cairn, raised by the beastkin over sites of great magic.

  Phantasmal daemons capered within the twisted grove that surrounded the stones, singing an abominable hymn. They gave no sign of noticing anything save the monstrous colours pulsing and flickering deep within the milky facets of the flux-cairn. Nor did the ring of tzaangor drummers and pipers show any awareness of the enemy who had come upon them so suddenly. But the vale had more defenders than just bestial musicians and daemons. Tzaangors swarmed through the trees, screeching out war cries as they raced to intercept the invaders to this, their most sacred of places.

  As the Hallowed Knights entered the vale, Serena saw that Feros and his Retributors were already locked in battle. They fought with a group of heavily armoured tzaangors, larger than the others and led by an eyeless brute. Feros and the creature strained against one another, their weapons locked.

  Gardus stormed towards them, smashing aside any beast that sought to bar his path. ‘Who shall carry Azyr’s light into the darkness?’ he cried.

  ‘Only the faithful!’ Serena shouted as she fought at his side.

  They were outnumbered. The vale was full of beastkin, but the creatures did not press their advantage as one might expect. Instead, only the bare minimum needed to slow the Stormcasts’ advance threw themselves into the fray. The rest of the tzaangors loped into the blazing facets of the monoliths as if they were doorways. The surfaces of the great crystals churned like whirlpools, greedily enveloping the beastkin as they plunged into them.

  ‘Where are they all going?’ Serena shouted, bashing a beast from her path. ‘Where are they sending them?’

  Gardus didn’t reply. The Lord-Celestant steadily pushed his way towards the centre of the clearing and the cairn, chopping down or smashing aside anything that got in his way. Feros and the surviving Retributors fought to clear his path against the heavily armoured tzaangors, but there were simply too many of the beastkin. Even with Serena and the others aiding them, their progress was slowed to a crawl.

  Then, the eyeless tzaangor broke away from Feros and lunged for Gardus. The Retributor-Prime roared in fury, but found his pursuit blocked by another of the creatures. The tzaangor’s spear carved a black trench across the Lord-Celestant’s side, staggering him.

  ‘Kezehk has seen you, Bright Soul,’ the creature bellowed. ‘Seen you in dream and portent. Now Kezehk will slay you, in the name of the Feathered Lords.’

>   The creature spun its spear with impossible speed, launching blows, driving Gardus back step by step. Off balance, the Lord-Celestant absorbed these blows, turning with them.

  Serena and Ravius fought their way to his side. Ravius got there first, and managed to interpose his shield, catching a blow. The force of it knocked him to one knee, and before he could rise, the tzaangor was on him. It kicked him in the chest, knocking him prone, and drove its spear down through his body, pinning him to the ground. Ravius screamed. Lightning billowed upwards, separating the tzaangor from Gardus. It staggered back, losing its grip on its spear.

  Furious, Serena drove the rim of her shield into the back of its skull, knocking it onto its hands and knees. There was no finesse to the blow, only anger. As the beastkin shook its head and tried to rise, Serena drove her blade down through its neck.

  The creature lurched away from her, gagging. It swept its fist back, catching her on the temple. She fell, her helmet rolling away. The tzaangor stumbled after her, one hand clamped to its ruined throat. It was dying on its feet, but was determined to avenge itself. She pushed herself upright and sprang to meet it. She smashed the tzaangor back and hewed at it. It caught at her shield, gurgling imprecations as she forced it backwards, plunging her sword into it again and again. She lost sight of Gardus – of everything save the creature before her. In that moment, it seemed to be the sum of all that was foul in the Hexwood.

  Abruptly, it fell away from her, dragging her shield from her arm. Dead, it toppled backwards into one of the facets of the flux-cairn, and vanished with a sound like a stone falling into mud. Bewildered, she looked around, and realised that she’d somehow managed to force herself a path through the melee. The light of the flux-cairn caught at her gaze, drawing her eyes towards the pearlescent shimmer in its depths.

  She could see great pathways of twisted wood stretching backwards into a kaleidoscopic void. The pathways rose and fell with no rhyme or reason, like a tangle of dark thread. Daemons and beastkin raced along most of them, hurrying towards a mote of green light in the distance. Flying monstrosities hurtled through the void above, riders bearing twisted standards hunched upon their backs. She could hear the scream of infernal horns and the crash of war drums. An army on the move, but heading where?

  It all made sense now. The tzaangors had never intended to drive them from the wood. This was no army here, but a rearguard, meant to protect this hideous gateway until the last of their forces were on the march. But… there was something else there too. Something at once impossibly far away, and yet within arm’s reach.

  Entranced, she looked into the heart of the flux-cairn, and saw… light. A purer light by far than she’d expected. Silvery shapes pulsed in that light, shapes that were all things and none. There were faces there, childlike and androgynous, calling out for aid. She felt the desperate trill of their song in her bones, and took an unconscious step forwards. The surface of the facet rippled, as if in eagerness.

  The sounds of battle faded to a dull clamour. Lightning flashed, casting its glare across the clearing. She took another step towards the light. She felt the song grow in her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw lean shapes, inhuman but beautiful for all that, watching from among the trees. No – from within the trees. They were singing as well, singing to the silvery shapes, calling to them, reassuring them.

  Trapped. They were trapped. Prisoners. No… They were hostages. She shook her head, trying to clear it, and she raised her warblade. If she could free them…

  Pain flared through her, and she staggered. More pain – flames licking over her armour, reducing the holy sigmarite to white-hot slag. She spun, instinct guiding her blade, and sheared through the end of a staff clutched in the talons of a tzaangor. Another shaman, to judge by the primitive decorations it wore. The creature screeched at her as it cast aside the ruined staff and drew its knife. The shaman leapt onto her, knocking her backwards. Her warblade whirled from her grip. The beastkin was stronger than it looked, and its eyes burned with fury.

  ‘You will not!’ it shrilled in a croaking parody of a human voice. ‘The crooked path will remain open. Open!’

  Its knife pierced a join in her armour, seeking the flesh beneath. She grunted in pain and struck the creature. It reeled, beak splintered by her blow. She shoved the creature back and lurched upright. Bleeding, weaponless, she lunged towards it, hands reaching for its throat. The shaman gave a screeching laugh as she bore it back. Why was it laughing?

  The song in her head rose to a mournful ululation. There was fear there, and despair. Pain. She glanced at the flux-cairn, and at the shapes within it. They were starting to dissolve.

  ‘Too late,’ the shaman hissed, grabbing her. ‘They will feed the path with their death. It will remain open.’ She didn’t understand what its words meant. Whose death?

  The blade of its knife threaded a gap, and found her abdomen. She gasped. The edge of her world turned azure, and she wondered if this was what Ravius and the others had felt. Was this what it was like to become one with the lightning, to die again and be reforged? There was blood on her hands, and in her armour. She reeled back, vision dimming.

  The song changed. It pierced the fog of pain. She shook her head, listening – truly listening now, for the first time – and took another step back, closer to the shimmering cairn. The tzaangor shaman pursued her, screeching imprecations. She ignored it. Turned. And saw cerulean lightning erupt suddenly from within the flux-cairn. It boiled up from somewhere deep within the green light at the other end of the pathways and cascaded across the crystal edifice, cracking the stones and disrupting the light.

  Serena shaded her eyes, and felt the familiar pulse of Azyr within the lightning. Somehow she knew that, on the other end of that daemonic pathway, something disastrous for the foe had occurred. Acting on instinct, she lunged forwards and plunged into the lightning-wracked facet before her.

  It felt like diving into a storm-tossed sea. She was buffeted on all sides by unseen forces as she entered the pallid void. In the distance, distracting colours swirled through a great empti­ness, broken only by innumerable fibrous pathways, twisting like mangrove roots away from her and into the green distance. The silvery motes hung suspended at the heart of this root-like web, and she stumbled towards them. The pathway undulated beneath her feet, as if in pain from the lightning crawling across it.

  More than once, she nearly fell, due to either her injury or the writhing of the pathway, but something kept her on her feet. She felt as if someone were beside her, helping her walk. The wound in her side wept lightning, and it crackled and crawled over the silver surface of her armour, burning it clean of filth. She heard a faint roaring in her ears, and thought it might be a voice, urging her on.

  She stretched her hands towards the silvery motes, fighting against the silent winds that swept through the void. She knew what they were now. Soulpods – the future of the sylvaneth race. They cried out for aid, and through her, something answered. Their warmth enveloped her; their song welcomed her. Driven by some instinct she could not name, she gathered them to herself, protecting them against the scouring wave of lightning as it filled the hollow space between moments.

  Ignoring the pain, she cradled the silvery pods, hunching forwards to absorb the impact of the lightning. It cascaded across her, and she sank to one knee on the spongy surface of the wooden pathway. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw many of the other twisting pathways crumble, one by one, as the cerulean energies lashed through the ranks of the army attempting to traverse them. Screams tolled in the void like bells, and the sound of splintering wood threatened to deafen her.

  Eyes half closed, she huddled, wondering when it would end. The pain in her side grew, spreading through her, and the lightning clawed at the edges of her sight. She heard the plaintive song of the infant spirits in her care, and the voice of the lightning, whispering in her head. She could see a watery reflection o
f reality back the way she’d come. She rose to her feet and stumbled towards it, intent on carrying her charges to freedom. Around her, the empty place between moments convulsed like a thing alive. Lightning strobed across its impossible dimensions, burning more pathways and streaking off into the iridescent emptiness.

  The essence of the void caught at her like quicksand, slowing her. Even as it was consumed by the lightning, it was trying to prevent her from leaving with its prize. She stumbled, and felt the panic of her burden. So close to freedom, and yet… so far.

  Then, a beam of light punched through the colourless murk. The voice of the lightning thundered wordlessly in her head and soul, urging her on towards the radiance. A silver gauntlet emerged from within its blinding heart, reaching for her. She caught hold and was hauled out of the void, even as the lightning collapsed the pathway behind her.

  Gardus dragged her back into the vale with a shout of triumph. As she tumbled to the bloody ground, her burden slid from her grip. The soulpods rose into the air over the vale, their radiance growing stronger with every passing moment. Where it struck the tortured earth, foulness was cleansed. Twisted trees burst into purifying flame as the steaming soil expelled the sourness within it. Daemons screamed as they were consumed by light and lightning both. They wavered and vanished like burst soap bubbles.

  ‘Up, daughter of Azyr. Now is not the time for rest.’ Gardus caught Serena’s hand and hauled her to her feet. ‘There is work yet to be done, and a war yet to be won.’

  ‘My warblade,’ she began. Her body ached, but she felt no weakness. It was as if the lightning had reinvigorated her, drawing her back from the cusp of death.

  ‘Take mine,’ Gardus said, drawing his runeblade and passing it to her. He looked at her. ‘You did well, sister. Whatever comes of it, know that.’