Reluctantly, his entourage did as commanded. Rusik stared into Thostos’ eyes with a mixture of fear and anger.
‘We will do as you ask,’ he said. ‘If you wish to die under the shadow of the dreadhold, I will lead you to its gates. Release me.’
Thostos lowered the man to the floor.
Two of Rusik’s men rushed to help him as he stumbled, but he battered their outstretched arms aside angrily.
‘Very well, noble sky warriors,’ he spat. ‘I will gather my men. Night falls, and we had best leave soon if we are to reach our destination before dawn.’
With that he stalked from the tent, retinue in tow. An uneasy silence remained.
Eldroc placed the warding lantern on the ground and kneeled in front of it. The celestial energy washed over him, and suddenly his burdens were lifted and his heart soared as if he was back in the throne room of Sigmar, in the presence of his beloved God-King. Doubts and worries vanished in the soothing luminescence. Redbeak growled softly at his side, and the Lord-Castellant ruffled the gryph-hound’s neck fondly.
‘What do you make of these people?’ came a voice at his side, and Eldroc’s hand instinctively went to his halberd. Lord-Celestant Thostos stood in the shadows of a nearby tent. He glanced pointedly at the weapon.
‘Apologies, Lord-Celestant,’ said Eldroc, shaking his head. ‘I did not notice your approach.’
Thostos said nothing.
‘I think these Sky Seekers are a brave and loyal people,’ Eldroc said, gathering his thoughts. ‘To have lost so much, to be torn down and hunted like beasts yet still retain their faith. It is humbling.’
‘You believe they can be trusted?’ asked Thostos.
‘I do. Though I am not sure we have much of a choice in the matter regardless.’
The Lord-Celestant nodded. They stood together awhile, watching the sun dip below the far horizon. Mortals moved quietly around the camp, lighting torches and cooking fires.
‘The lantern, it gives you comfort?’ asked Thostos eventually.
‘It… does,’ Eldroc replied, surprised at the question. ‘It focuses my thoughts, banishes my doubt. ‘
‘You have doubts,’ said Thostos. ‘About our purpose.’
Eldroc considered his answer. ‘Not our purpose,’ he said. ‘Chaos must be banished, and the rule of law and justice erected in its stead. I question myself. My role in this war. The true cost of fighting it.’
‘I do not remember doubt,’ said Thostos, and his voice was a mere echo of his usual harsh tone. ‘I simply act. The battlefield shifts, and I move with it. I anticipate, I react.’
‘Do you remember anything, my friend?’ asked Eldroc.
Thostos shook his head. ‘Sometimes an image, a sensation of recollection. Then gone. Like grasping smoke.’
‘Sit with me, my friend,’ said the Lord-Castellant, gesturing to a spot next to Redbeak. ‘Let the lantern’s light soothe you. I will tell you of our time in the Gladitorium. It will all come back, if we give it time.’
Thostos hesitated, then took a step forward.
Redbeak rolled upright, feathered ears narrowed to daggerpoints, eyes shining in the light of the campfires. He let out a harsh shriek, and pawed and scraped at the ground.
Eldroc and Thostos had their blades drawn in an instant. One did not ignore the warnings of a sharp-eared gryph-hound. From the darkness beyond the ring of tents, dozens of flaming projectiles launched into the air, arcing up high to fall into the camp. The screams began.
‘Ready the men,’ said Thostos, and his voice was pitilessly calm once more. ‘Take Phalryn and his Liberators and secure the camp.’
Without a single glance backwards, the Lord-Celestant charged off through the tents, into the darkness.
Arrows whickered through the air, pinpricks of searing light amongst the darkness. The flaming arrowheads slammed into the rawhide tents, and fire spread across the village as dry brush combusted. More screams rent the air.
Out came the Stormcast lines, Liberators angling their great shields up to intercept the barrage, while the Judicators searched the horizon, looking for targets. The Stormcasts could pick none out in the pitch black, though the arc of the flaming arrows revealed their likely position some hundred yards away from the tribal camp.
‘Take them down!’ roared Thostos, and a torrent of silver flame rippled away into the darkness as the Judicators loosed. Liberators advanced under the storm of fire, trusting in the skill of their brothers as projectiles whipped past them.
Figures emerged from the gloom. Burly, heavily muscled men in scraps of leather armour and chain, wielding axes and spiked clubs. Their eyes gleamed in the darkness, burning with foul bloodlust.
As strong as the battle-joy of the savages was, the rage of the Celestial Vindicators was equal to it. Of all the Stormhosts of Sigmar, they were the fiercest and most implacable foes of Chaos. Every single one of the turquoise warriors had lost something irreplaceable to the depredations of the Dark Gods, and though the trauma of Reforging had stolen the memory of that loss from many a Vindicator, the white-hot, raging hatred of Chaos remained.
They met the enemy head on, and neither side gave a solitary moment of quarter.
‘Death to the servants of Chaos!’ roared Thostos, leaping into battle with his sword leading. His blade pierced the chest of a loping warrior, and as the dying wretch collapsed to the ground, the Lord-Castellant spun expertly to crash his hammer into the bare, scarred chest of another.
These were scraps, he realised. Not the heavily armoured, battle-forged avatars of destruction that formed the elite of a Khornate army, but the filthy, gore-drunk masses that comprised its meat. Numbers, and not skill, made such creatures dangerous. This was a raiding party, searching for fresh meat to devour, and not a warband.
Against the roused fury of the Celestial Vindicators, the enemy would be completely outmatched.
Judicators lit up the night with streams of starfire, their bolts and arrows illuminating the carnage of the assault and burning smoking holes through any servants of Chaos unfortunate enough to get in the way. The ripples of glowing ammunition strobed across the darkness, lending a bizarre, dreamlike quality to the battle.
Thostos saw a tall, broad-chested creature barrel towards him, its bloated forearms capped with blood-soaked, rusting cleavers. The afterglow remained etched across his vision as the archers reloaded, and he made a split-second guess as to where he should strike. He held his hammer up defensively and swiped across with his sword. There was a wet impact, and a howl of pain.
Again the battlefield was washed in blinding light as the archers loosed again, and Thostos saw the brute reel backwards, belly opened.
‘Leave none alive,’ he shouted above the clangour of battle.
Rusik crept through the night, curved blade drawn and readied. He had already cut down two howling, shrieking bloodreavers that had rushed at him from the darkness, swinging their meat cleavers and drooling bloody spittle. He had savoured the scrape of bone as his sword ran down the spine of one, laughed as he took the hand from the second with a savage swipe.
He remembered leaning down beside his stricken opponent, enjoying the fool’s last gasps of desperate agony. His blade had come down, again and again and again. Things had gone black for a while, and when Rusik had regained control of his senses there was little more left before him than a gutted, ruptured pile of flesh. He could taste blood at the back of his throat, and his hands were caked with gore.
He shook off his disturbing thoughts. What did it matter how he killed the enemy, so long as the job was done? Leave Alzheer and her rabble to their endless talking. He would do what no one else could. He would protect their ancient lands, against the orruks and against whoever else tried to take what was his.
Rusik came around the side of a burning tent, stepping over two dead warriors. Besik and Tavo. Alz
heer’s loyal men, so no great loss. Men who would rather run and hide from the greenskins than meet their fate in honest battle. Cowards. Arrows protruded from their chests, still smouldering. Besik had also taken one in the neck. Rusik smelled burned flesh.
He looked up, and he saw her again.
A shiver ran down his spine, and his heart hammered in his chest. There she was, as beautiful and strong as the day they had met.
‘Zenia,’ he whispered, and the figure turned to him and smiled. Then she faded into nothingness.
‘No!’ he shouted, scrambling across the carnage of the battlefield towards the spot where she had stood. ‘No! Zenia, come back to me!’
With the encampment aflame, the enemy dropped their bows and drew their crude weapons, desperate to shed blood face to face. They charged into the burning camp, expecting, perhaps, to meet beleaguered mortal warriors in battle. Foes that could be hacked apart, torn down and excruciated, their remains carried off to the cooking pits for the night’s feast.
Instead, they met a wall of unyielding sigmarite, and the blades of the Celestial Vindicators.
Oh, it was good to match blades against the eternal foe once more, thought Mykos Argellon, smiling broadly as he sliced Mercutia diagonally through the torso of a shrieking berserker. The filth fell apart in two neat pieces, and the Lord-Celestant slammed the pommel of his grandblade into the face of another screaming warrior. The blood-starved wretch spat teeth, and staggered backwards. Mykos followed, crashing the pommel into the man’s face again and again. Finally his enemy toppled to the ground, his skull little more than a ruined crater.
This was what they had been created for. This was the honest freedom of battle against a hated foe.
Another volley from the Judicators rippled through the ranks of the blood-crazed enemy, and dozens came apart in a lightning burst of gore and scorched flesh.
She waited for him at the twins. This had been their place, once. They had sneaked away in the night, he from the warriors’ tents, she from her father, who had never approved. They had never had much time together. There was always the hunt, always the threat of a warband appearing on the horizon. They had lived their lives in snatched moments, even when the priestesses had blessed them and their son had been born. Even afterwards.
As he clambered onto the taller of the two rocks, he saw her. She turned to him and smiled.
‘Husband,’ she said. ‘Do you remember?’
The figure shifted, becoming an insubstantial cloud of mist. Within its limits Rusik could see the same images that had haunted him every single night since he had lost her. He saw the charging orruks, raising and swinging their jagged cleavers. He saw his son, brave little Achren, fall, trampled under their iron boots. He saw Zenia, her own sword wet with enemy blood, a song of vengeance upon her lips. Spears ran her through from all sides, and she arched her back and screamed in agony. She turned to him. Her dead eyes bored into his own, and Rusik felt her agony, her sense of betrayal. A pair of mighty hands closed around her neck, gauntleted in jagged yellow iron. There was a sickening snap. Zenia fell, and so did Rusik.
‘I tried to reach you,’ he sobbed, collapsing to his knees. ‘I did. I rode my steed until it collapsed, and then I dragged myself for miles across the plains. I was too late.’
‘Such bravery, husband,’ his dead wife snarled. She lay in a pool of blood, her head swivelling on a broken neck with a groan of creaking cartilage. ‘Tell your dead son how you tried so hard to reach him. Tell your fellow tribesmen, left bleeding and broken.’
‘Zenia, please,’ he begged, hot tears running down his cheeks.
‘You were weak,’ she snarled, beautiful face twisted with pain and hatred. ‘You let them die. Worse, you left them unavenged.’
‘I have killed so many of them,’ said Rusik, shaking his head.
‘You think cutting down a few scouts assuages your sins?’ Zenia spat. ‘You think our tortured souls can be soothed by such paltry offerings? No, husband.’ She made the word a curse.
‘Only when the plains run red with orruk blood will we be calmed,’ she continued. ‘And your pitiful Sky God cannot give you the strength to do this. He has abandoned you, husband. You know it to be true.’
‘He sends warriors,’ said Rusik. ‘Giants in fine metal armour.’
Zenia was silent for a moment. ‘And these warriors have pledged their aid to you in destroying the orruks?’ she asked.
‘No,’ growled Rusik. ‘They refuse to aid us, and say they have their own mission here.’
‘Then they are no servants of Zi’Mar,’ said Zenia. ‘They are impostors, and they mean to use our people to achieve their own ends. They are not to be trusted. There is only one power in the realms that can offer you what you seek.’
‘Tell me,’ pleaded Rusik. ‘I will do anything to avenge you, my love.’
Zenia smiled a blood-red smile.
Eldroc strode through the wreckage of the camp, Redbeak at his side. The Lord-Castellant’s anger rose as he passed fallen mortals riddled with arrows and burned by the rising flames. The surviving tribespeople stared out from the ruins of their tents, faces blackened by smoke. He saw no fear or anger on their faces, just the weary resignation of a people worn down by constant war. He leaned down and gathered up the body of a fallen youth, pale hands clasped around the wicked arrow shaft that had pierced his belly.
The Lord-Castellant laid the corpse down in a row next to a score of other casualties. The boy’s dead eyes were wide with pain and shock. Eldroc brushed them closed, snapped off the arrow shaft, and crossed the dead youth’s hands over his chest in the same manner as his fellows. He caught Elder Diash’s eyes, and the old man nodded gratefully.
‘I am sorry for your losses,’ said the Lord-Castellant. He felt as if he should say something more, but words escaped him. He was not used to dealing with mortals.
‘We will commit their flesh and their souls to the Sky God,’ said Diash. ‘They will return to the earth, where they will remain with us, always.’
Eldroc bowed, intrigued by the strangeness of the nomads’ rituals. Stormcasts were deeply faithful, but that faith was rooted in the physical presence of a living, breathing god. These mortals had survived centuries without a glimpse of their deity, and even in the midst of terrible loss and hardship, they still believed. That impressed and terrified him in equal measure. Would he fight so hard in Sigmar’s absence, he wondered? He supposed he had, once. That was the hallmark of a Celestial Vindicator’s ascension, after all.
The Lord-Castellant was shaken from his musing by the sound of armoured boots. He turned and saw Mykos Argellon approach, wiping his grandblade clean of gore with a few strands of grass.
‘They have scattered,’ he said. ‘The scum didn’t put up much of a fight.’
‘I don’t believe they expected to find us here,’ replied Eldroc. ‘They meant to draw the tribespeople out. To capture as many of them as they could.’
‘For what reason?’ asked Mykos.
‘Who knows?’ replied Eldroc. ‘Perhaps they require slaves. Perhaps they require food.’
Mykos shook his head in disgust. ‘Cannibals. How does a man fall so far?’
‘I have long since ceased asking myself that question,’ Eldroc replied. ‘Where is Thostos?’
‘Somewhere out there,’ said Mykos. Eldroc could tell his friend was attempting to keep his tone neutral. ‘He took a score of warriors with him in pursuit of the fleeing enemy. He wants them all dead, so none can reveal our presence to the main host.’
‘Sound strategy,’ said Eldroc.
‘I suppose so,’ replied Mykos.
Eldroc sighed. ‘Speak, brother, I beg you. I have suffered enough brooding silences of late to last me several lifetimes.’
‘You wish me to talk directly?’ said Mykos, a hint of anger in his voice. ‘Very well. The Bladestorm is a
danger to his men. He is no longer the hero that led your chamber to victory at the Eldritch Fortress. You must see it.’
‘I see a man traumatised by the torture he has suffered in pursuing a just cause. I see a man who has survived unthinkable agonies, and yet continues to fight against the darkness with all the strength he can muster.’
‘Lord-Castellant–’ Mykos said, shaking his head.
‘With respect, Lord-Celestant,’ said Eldroc, ‘you are yet to experience the true cost of this war we fight. You have not been reforged a second time.’
The Lord-Castellant stared out across the field of corpses.
‘Agony,’ he said at last. ‘An infinity of torment. And at the centre of it all, a sure knowledge that you will never be the same even if you survive. It almost broke me, Argellon.’
‘Yet you remain calm. Thoughtful,’ said Mykos. ‘You do not carelessly risk your life or those of our fellow warriors.’
‘I can afford to be the voice of reason. Thostos must lead. He must be the epitome of what every Celestial Vindicator aspires to be. That is no easy task, especially for one suffering as he is. Yet despite your concerns, Thostos has not led us astray.’
‘He has been reckless,’ insisted Mykos.
Eldroc turned to the Lord-Celestant.
‘Are you sure it is the Lord Bladestorm that concerns you, my friend?’ he asked, softly.
Mykos bristled. ‘What do you imply, Lord-Castellant?’
‘Thostos unnerves you because you know that in time every Stormcast Eternal will fall in battle. Including you.’
‘I do not fear death,’ said Mykos.
‘But we do not talk of death, do we?’ Eldroc replied. ‘You are a man who prides himself on his humanity, and the thought of losing your grip on that is what you fear.’
Mykos said nothing.
‘I tell you truly, my friend,’ said Eldroc. ‘The Reforging was a crucible that almost destroyed me, but I came out of it a stronger man, and a greater warrior. Thostos will too.’
Mykos shook his head. ‘I hear your words, my friend, but I know you do not believe what you say. I see the way you look at him. I hear the concern in your voice when you speak his name. You are as afraid at what is happening to Thostos as anyone.’
Bladestorm Page 7
