‘That, I think, is as close as we’re likely to get to a formal truce,’ said Eldroc from the shield wall.
‘Follow me,’ said Mykos. ‘And keep your hand near your blade.’
Mykos and Eldroc led the way, armour gleaming bright turquoise in the midday sun, in stark contrast to the dull, crude metal scraps and chains that the orruks had wrapped around themselves. Thostos walked behind them, his eyes locked on the warband’s leader. The orruks snickered and hollered amongst themselves in their crude tongue, and one began a mock drumbeat upon its chest plate. Its fellows roared with laughter at this lack-witted attempt at humour.
Behind his battle-mask, Mykos couldn’t help but sneer. Orruks. It never failed to amaze him how such a savage, dull, self-destructive race could be so resilient. They possessed no honour, no discipline or ambition beyond finding their next brawl, and yet the foul creatures propagated in every corner of the realms. One of the first tasks of the Stormcast Eternals, after their forging in the halls of Azyr, had been to clear the wilds of the Celestial Realm free of orruks. They had torn down the creatures’ crude icons and the totems erected to their bestial gods, and put the beasts to the sword. The greenskins had fought savagely – orruks always did – but against the plated fist of Sigmar’s avenging warriors, their only fate was death. Mykos remembered those battles with little fondness. It had been a grim task, valourless butchery that was necessary before the Stormcasts took their war to the true enemy.
Despite his disdain, Mykos could not help but note the difference between these hulking creatures and the wretched, feral scraps that they had ground underboot in Azyr. Their armour, for one. These orruks had bound themselves in thick plates of black iron, with wicked armour spikes upon the joints. Whereas the sigmarite armour of the Stormhosts was sculpted to artisanal perfection, the orruks’ plate was worn, scratched and dented, and daubed haphazardly with slashes of red paint, forming fangs and jaws on greaves and vambraces. The quality was crude, and the effect should have been ludicrous, but on the heavily muscled, scarred forms of the orruks, it instead spoke of blunt efficiency, of the race’s atavistic, uncultured love of war.
They were bigger, too, broader and more heavily muscled, and marked from head to toe with scars, burns and all the other trophies that battle bestowed upon a warrior’s skin. Most wore pot helms decorated with horns or more wicked spikes, though others went bareheaded. The leader, an anvil-jawed monster with a wicked scar that cut an angry red line across his porcine right eye as it travelled down to his jaw, was as tall as the Stormcasts. He leered at the Celestial Vindicators and swaggered forwards to meet them. His warriors spread out in a semicircle around him, hands resting on jagged axes and spiked mauls. Mykos felt his hand drift down to Mercutia, who yearned to break free of her scabbard. There was a pregnant silence, broken only by the howling wind, and then the orruk leader spoke.
‘Ain’t seen yore kind before,’ he rumbled in a crude tongue that the Stormcasts could understand, licking his lips like a starving man presented with a bountiful feast. ‘Very shiny, ain’t ya?’
His warband rumbled with amusement, their leader gave a broken-toothed grin, and Mykos resisted a strong urge to slice his head off. Eldroc stepped forward.
‘We are the Celestial Vindicators, the blessed swords of Sigmar,’ he said in his deep, resonant voice. ‘We have no quarrel with you or your kind, but these humans are now under our guard.’
‘’Sat right?’ the orruk growled, scratching one filthy ear with a yellow-taloned finger. ‘Here,’ he turned to his warriors, cocking his great head, ‘who ’sis land belong to, boyz?’
‘Ironjawz!’ they roared as one.
‘An’ who says what goes around ’ere?’
‘Drekka! Drekka! Drekka!’
The orruk leaned in conspiratorially. ‘There’s that then,’ he chuckled. ‘Reckon I won’t take no orders from some tinpot git dropped outta the sky. We’ll be taking those humies, and they’ll go right t–’
A sword whipped through the air and buried itself between the orruk leader’s eyes.
The momentum of the throw hurled the creature back into the orruk standing behind him, knocking both to the ground with a clatter. Mykos turned and saw Thostos drawing his warhammer, an empty scabbard at his side.
Silence. A sharp peal of astonished laughter came from Goldfeather. Then the orruks charged.
Roaring more with eager battle-lust than any feelings of betrayal at their leader’s death, the orruks poured forwards. The Retributors met them, hammers drawn and swinging. The close quarters robbed the majority of the momentum from the charge, but Mykos saw Stormcasts go down under the greenskins’ boots and blades, trampled and broken. As a bellowing orruk wielding two axes charged him down, he drew his sword, spun to the side and let his momentum add power to a lateral swing. Mercutia sliced straight through the creature’s torso, opening its belly horizontally, spilling its innards to gush over Mykos’ boots. The dying orruk attempted a wild swing at the Lord-Celestant, but he avoided it easily and put his boot in its chest, sending it crashing backwards to land in a crumpled heap.
By now the front ranks of the larger orruk mob had reached the fray, though Mykos could also hear the stomping of heavy boots and the battle-hymns of the faithful as the Liberator shield wall abandoned its defensive position and rushed forwards to protect its leaders.
Eldroc had set his halberd, and Mykos saw him skewer an orruk though the shoulder blades, twist his weapon and send the creature spinning to the floor. Another charged him from the side, and the Lord-Castellant retracted the halberd and thrust again, driving its heavy spike deep into the beast’s gut. It squealed in fury and hurled its axe in a last desperate act of spite. It sailed past Eldroc, staving in the chest armour of an unfortunate Stormcast, who collapsed immobile on the ground. Redbeak snarled and hurled himself at the dying orruk, tearing out its throat and ending its defiance.
The ridge ran red with blood, orruk and Stormcast, but the impact of the orruk leader’s death had swayed the momentum in favour of the Celestial Vindicators. Without his bellows and beatings, whatever strange, mob mentality bound the orruk band together in battle was shattered by the rage of the Stormcast Eternals. They were simply too strong and too skilled for the artless form of warfare that the orruks favoured. Liberator shields intercepted axe blows, then were shifted to one side for a killing thrust of a sword, or the crushing blow of a warhammer. Retributors swept their heavy hammers from side to side, breaking bones and smashing skulls to pieces.
Thostos was a blur of turquoise fury at the heart of the melee. He had replaced his thrown sword with a gladius, holding the short blade in a reverse grip and using it to stab and drag the nearest greenskins towards him, where he bludgeoned them to the ground with his warhammer.
It quickly became a slaughtering field. Not a single orruk left the ridge alive.
The runeblade was still lodged in the foul creature’s idiotic smirk. Thostos put his foot on the dead orruk’s forehead and wrenched his weapon loose. It came free with a spurt of gore, yellowed teeth splinters and torn flesh.
He heard boots thumping towards him on the hard earth. Two pairs, one fast and angry, one slower, more tentative.
‘What in the name of Sigmar was that, Bladestorm?’ barked Mykos Argellon, loud enough to draw the stares of several Stormcasts who had been dispensing Sigmar’s mercy to any injured orruks. ‘We were at parlay. They did not threaten us.’
‘They have killed children of Sigmar,’ Thostos said. ‘That is reason enough for them to die.’
‘They are cruel, unthinking savages, but they are not our enemy here. Sigmar gave us this righteous purpose, and you would risk it all to sate your bloodlust,’ Mykos spat. ‘We could have avoided all of this. Men have died for nothing.’
Thostos rolled the orruk over with his boot. ‘Look at this one,’ he said, his voice betraying not a hint of tension. ‘He dec
orates his flesh with trophies. Human bones, hands, ears. He keeps a tally upon his armour, see?’
It was true. The dead orruk’s chain hauberk was heavy with knucklebones, stolen jewels and other trinkets, all recognisably of human origin. Thostos reached down to snatch a trophy from the brute’s belt. It was a gauntlet of spiked black iron, and upon the palm there was the eight-pointed star of the eternal enemy. Eldroc cursed, and Thostos threw the gauntlet for Mykos to catch.
‘Have you ever known orruks so bold?’ he asked. ‘Look at their armour, their weapons. Hardly the sticks and stones that the greenskin rabble brought to bear on us in the Amaris Foothills. These are stronger, more vital. They are blooded and battle-hardened. They have met the forces of the Dark Gods in battle and triumphed.’
‘They did not attack us,’ insisted Mykos, ‘not until you gave them reason to. This is not the first time your reckless fury has cost us lives.’
‘Their curiosity was all that stayed their blades, and that would have lasted scant moments longer. Your indecision would have endangered us, and so I acted in your stead.’
Mykos started forward, but Eldroc placed himself between the two Lord-Celestants and slammed his halberd down into the earth.
‘Enough,’ Eldroc hissed. ‘The men are watching. Remember yourselves.’
Mykos glanced back. Thostos’ men stood there, staring impassively. His own warriors were looking at each other in uneasy confusion. He could not see his warriors’ faces beneath their battle-masks, but he could sense their tension, and he cursed himself for losing control.
Thostos sheathed his weapons.
‘You are right, brother,’ he said, staring at the hewn corpse of the orruk leader. ‘They are not our enemy here.’
He turned back to look at Mykos, who returned his blue-flame gaze without flinching, no matter that he felt that familiar ache of discomfort.
‘But they are never allies,’ Thostos growled. ‘Sigmar’s light has been gone from this place for too long, and these savages have grown bold in its absence. We will meet them in battle again, do not doubt.’ He stalked away.
Mykos Argellon had never felt true anger at a fellow Stormcast before. He tried to calm his breathing and centre his humours, but all he could feel was a white-hot fury and an aching sense of betrayal. How could he command this expedition alongside a man who trusted only in his lust for battle? Thostos could not be reasoned with, and his recklessness had already cost them lives that they could ill afford with such a lengthy, dangerous quest ahead of them. His anger was so keenly focussed that he barely noticed Lord-Castellant Eldroc was still standing beside him, until he sensed that the man was about to speak.
‘Say nothing, brother,’ Mykos warned. ‘I do not wish to hear it. Do not tell me that he needs time, or tell me of how he has suffered. Tell it to the Stormcasts who fell here, when they make their own return from the forge.’
He turned to Eldroc, daring him to say a word in his lord’s defence. To his credit the warrior did not avoid the Lord-Celestant’s wrathful gaze. Neither did he speak. Instead, he simply gave a sad nod and strode off after the Bladestorm, leaving the lord of the Argellonites standing on his own on the blood-soaked ridge, amongst the dead.
Chapter Two
Righteous Blood
‘You put your trust in witchcraft?’ spat the masked warrior. Bloody phlegm dribbled over his gore-encrusted chestplate, trickling down past obscene runes of devotion and damnation.
‘I put my trust in this,’ said Varash Sunken-Eye, raising his wicked blade, a hand-and-a-half of cruel obsidian. ‘It has never failed me.’
His opponent circled, as did the warrior’s two accomplices. A rabid pack, pink-eyed and drooling with hunger. Not hunger for sustenance, but for carnage, for spilt blood and shattered skulls.
Though to any true warrior of the Blood God, such things were as vital as water and bread.
Varash kept in step with his assailants, a wide grin splitting his ravaged face. It had been a while since anyone had challenged him – no surprise after what he had done to the Eyegouger and his men. Varash had kept his killers largely in check while the sorcerer did the necessary work, but a Bloodbound warband needed… pruning every now and then. If you wanted to lead, you killed your rivals so brutally, so painfully, that nobody dared to step across your path. Then you repeated that process any time they showed signs of forgetting who was in charge. It was a pattern that he had repeated a hundred times over the decades he had spent slaughtering in the name of the Blood God.
‘The sorcerer works a ritual at my command,’ Varash said. ‘No weakling magic, but an offering that will tear down the veil between worlds and free our blades to make murder once again.’
He said this for the audience’s benefit, of course. Hakkos and the two fools he’d brought along in this failed bid for power were dead already, they were just too foolish to realise it. They had staged their ill-considered ambush in the main courtyard of the dreadhold, under the great shadow of the Everchosen’s statue. The colossal monument had been repaired and enlarged since the orruks’ last attempt to tear it down, and now towered over even the mighty fortress. Sword raised, imposing horned helm proclaiming his dominance of not only the dreadhold but of this entire realm, the statue captured just a sliver of the real Archaon’s astonishing presence.
The dreadhold itself was a wedge of black metal built into the mountain, its walls lined with bronzed skulls and jagged spikes of obsidian. Daemonic faces glowered from beneath the battlements, eyes burning like hot coals, and banners of stitched skin marked with vile runes flew from the three watchtowers equidistant along the wall. Hooting, snarling, scarred killers formed a circle around the duelling warriors, or peered down from the skull-adorned ramparts.
Hakkos dashed forward, axe raised. At the same time, his two lackeys came in from each side, one swinging low, one aiming at Varash’s back. Perhaps they hoped that the ruined left side of his face wouldn’t catch the flanking attack.
Fools.
The Chaos lord was unthinkably fast. His bastard sword snapped out low, deflecting the attack from the left and hooking underneath the axe blade. He dragged the blade to his right, and sent the unfortunate warrior stumbling into the path of Hakkos. The traitor’s swinging axe struck him in the side of the neck, and a spurt of crimson arced out, splashing across Varash’s armour.
He didn’t waste a moment to savour the taste, but instead untangled his blade, and somehow got it raised in time to meet the axeman on his right. He stepped in close and smashed the pommel of the sword into the man’s face, pushing him back into an awkward stumble, then turned again and kicked the dying warrior on the floor into Hakkos. The traitor went down under the dead weight. Varash swept his blade in a figure-eight pattern, and roared in laughter.
The crowd roared with him.
‘It’s a great shame, Deathbringer,’ he said, smiling broadly as Hakkos scrambled to his feet. ‘The carnage. The mountains of skulls that we will tear from the orruks once Xos’Phet completes his ritual. The oceans of blood we’ll bathe in, Hakkos. You’ll miss it all.’
‘Your time is done, cripple,’ snarled Hakkos. ‘I’ll put out your other eye when I’m done here. I’ll flay you alive and hang you from the ramparts.’
He charged again, his accomplice in tow. Varash quickstepped back, dodging and blocking, letting Hakkos’ mad swipes rush past him. The man was devilishly strong, but faced with a competent opponent he had no answer but clumsy rage.
Varash ducked a wild swing and cut a gouge into the remaining accomplice’s leg. The man dropped with a howl, and the Chaos lord turned with the momentum of his strike, spinning and bringing the blade across in a backhand slice that swept the fool’s head from his shoulders.
‘Blood for the Blood God!’ he screamed. ‘Skulls for the Skull Throne!’
Hakkos bellowed in return and leaped at him, axe leading. Varash s
idestepped and sliced the traitor’s leg off at the knee, sending him skidding and bleeding across the floor. There was a roar from the crowd, and the lord of the dreadhold raised his blade in salute to his warriors, drinking in the applause.
He approached the stricken Hakkos, grabbed the warrior around the neck, and hauled him upright to stare into his ruined face.
‘You betray me?’ he growled. ‘You think to cut me down? You? I am here by Archaon’s command, you pitiful worm.’
He smashed a fist into Hakkos’ face, and hurled the broken man to the floor.
‘Witness this, you filth,’ he roared, and he felt blood trickle from his shattered eye socket. It had never healed, but he welcomed the agony, drank it all in. ‘Follow me and I’ll lead you to a slaughter that the Blood Lord himself won’t be able to tear his gaze from. Challenge me and I’ll tear the skin from your bones. I’ll drink your blood, you witless vermin.’
He drew his flensing knife from his belt, a short, wicked blade with a pronounced curve. He kneeled down beside Hakkos, felt ropes of bloody saliva drape across his chin.
‘Flay me alive, will you?’ he laughed, grabbing a fistful of the man’s lank hair. ‘Put out my eye?’
He leaned in close, and the smell of gore, sweat and fear was exquisite.
‘We can do better than that,’ he hissed, and brought the knife down.
Hakkos’ scream was a pitiful, high-pitched thing, drowned amongst the blood-crazed cheers of the men of the dreadhold.
Sun broke across the Roaring Plains, drenching the land in soft crimson light. The sky was a blood-red promise of agony and slaughter. Lord Varash Sunken-Eye savoured it like a fine wine.
The warrior stood at the very top of the great Manticore Tower, looking out across the jagged, broken earth towards the west. From here he could see the mouth of Splitskull Pass, beyond which were camped the numberless orruk hordes, mere miles from his position. He glanced down and smiled as he looked upon the flayed, ruined corpse of Hakkos, impaled on the spikes of the fortress wall. A satisfying kill, but little more than a momentary distraction from the real enemy.
Bladestorm Page 4
