by Warhammer
Volker smiled. ‘Good to hear, Sora.’ Sometimes, he wondered how she felt about being referred to as a ‘son’. Then, given what he knew of her, he doubted she thought about it much at all. Sora was a pragmatic soul.
She stared at him for a moment, and then chuckled. She rubbed his head, nearly knocking him from his feet. ‘Sometimes you remind me of my grandson, Owain.’
‘Oh?’
‘Then I remember that he’s dead, and I am sad again.’ Sora was the friendliest of the Iron-sides, though that wasn’t saying much. She shook herself, as if to banish the old hurts, and said, ‘They will return.’
‘They always return, sister. That, too, is a constant of their foul race.’
The newcomer’s voice was deeper than Sora’s by a distinct magnitude. It did not echo so much as simply crowd out all other sound. The Stormcasts turned as one, and bowed their heads in respect. Volker turned as well.
The Lord-Celestant had come. He stalked down the trench line, one palm resting on the pommel of his sheathed runeblade, his hammer held low by his side. His sigmarite war-cloak was immaculate, despite the mud, blood and soot that stained everything else. His black war-plate seemed to soak up the light of the lanterns. If Sora was a giant, then Lord-Celestant Gaius Greel was a giant among giants.
His broad frame barely fitted in the trench, and he had to step carefully to avoid cracking the duckboards. As he approached, men and women sank to their knees or bowed their heads reverentially. It wasn’t often that one of Sigmar’s chosen walked among them. ‘Are you well, sister?’ he rumbled, looking at Sora.
‘I still stand, Lord-Celestant.’
‘So I see. And you, gunmaster?’ The black gaze slid towards Volker. Greel’s eyes were like chips of obsidian flecked with silver. His gaze was a solid weight on Volker’s soul. The gunmaster fought the urge to kneel.
‘I am unhurt, thanks to Sora,’ he said, fighting to keep his voice even. ‘Thanks to all of you. The Ironweld owes you a debt.’
Greel reached up and unclasped his helmet, pulling it off with one hand. ‘It is good of you to say, son of Azyr.’
‘He is a considerate boy,’ Sora murmured.
Greel snorted. ‘As you say, sister.’ His features were the colour of marble, beneath a shock of night-black hair. He looked like a statue that had come to life, rather than a man. Volker had heard the whispers – Greel had fallen in battle more than once, and had returned twice over. Each time, he had come back… changed. Less than human, more than mortal. Even his own warriors seemed uncomfortable in his presence at times.
Greel himself was the very image of gloom; a permanent scowl was etched into his pale features. Up close, Volker could see that his black armour was pockmarked with impact craters and the marks of enemy blades. Twists of hair bound in silver and other trinkets hung from his gorget and shoulder-plates. Volker had heard from others among the Ironweld that these items had been collected from the innocent dead, as if Greel sought to make himself into a walking memorial for those whom war had unjustly claimed.
A shout from the outer trenches drew Volker’s attention. He turned, lifting his rifle. ‘Another attack?’
‘Refugees,’ Makkelsson said, peering through a telescope. ‘Looks like they’re trying to run the gauntlet.’ He frowned as he said it. ‘Poor fools. The freeguild won’t let them through.’
Volker cursed. There were more than a few people left out there, in the slums the skaven had claimed. Sometimes, after an attack, they made a run for it. They rarely made it. ‘Are they turning them back? That’s tantamount to murder!’ He whirled, glaring up at Greel. ‘Tell your warriors to help them.’
‘I will not.’
‘They’ll die.’
Greel nodded. ‘Perhaps.’
Volker stared at him. ‘The skaven will kill them. Or worse.’
‘Your concern does you credit, though it is foolish.’ The Lord-Celestant of the Iron-sides loomed over him, his expression mild.
‘Better a fool than heartless,’ Volker retorted.
Greel stared at him for a moment, before turning away. ‘Perhaps you are right,’ he said, simply. ‘But it is a discussion for another time.’ Shouts from the forwards trenches filtered back. Volker heard the crash of guns. Greel pulled his helmet back on. ‘Eyes front, Iron-sides. The enemy is upon us.’
Through his range-finder, Volker watched the skaven advance once more. This was the largest assault yet, and the refugees scattered, seeking their hiding places. With a start, he realised the previous assault had just been a probe, testing the strength of the forwards trenches. The skaven swept forwards in a great, chittering swarm, thousands of fur-covered figures packed so tight that Volker had trouble telling where one ended and another began. The front ranks carried crude wooden shields, marked with ruinous sigils, and cruel spears.
Behind the ranks of spear-rats marched a line of armoured overseers, who cracked barbed whips over the heads of the scuttling warriors and shrieked orders. Around them flowed a tide of less uniformly equipped skaven – malnourished beasts, wearing little more than rags. These frothed and squealed shrilly, and the resulting cacophony rolled ahead of the advance, washing over the trench line.
Volker didn’t bother to pick his targets. He couldn’t miss at this range. And every dead skaven was one less that could kill him. The artillery detachment spoke eloquently, sweeping the front ranks of the enemy from existence. But still the skaven came on, desperate now to get under the range of the guns. They scrambled over the dead and dying, flinging themselves into the forwards trenches, attacking the volley gun crews and the freeguild soldiers. Men died beneath wave after wave of hairy bodies.
The Stormcasts stationed in the trenches moved to cover the mortals’ retreat. But even fighters as doughty as the Sons of Mallus could be dragged down by sheer weight of numbers. The crackle of ascending lightning marked the death of more than one of Greel’s warriors. Volker whispered a prayer as another bolt of azure lightning arced skywards.
The skaven weren’t stopping this time; even a barrage of rockets wasn’t enough to dissuade them. Worse yet, they were bringing up their own guns. Volker spotted jezzail teams moving into position, setting up their heavy pavises to best take advantage of the freeguild’s own defences, as the rest of the horde scurried on.
Wounded men were carried through the travel trenches, back towards the city. Fresh units of handgunners and freeguild guard from the Stormblessed regiment moved to bolster the defences. A powder barrel went up nearby, filling the air with smoke and dirt.
Volker’s hands ached, and his eyes stung from the heat and powder. He continued to load and fire, his actions automatic and unconscious. He could hear little save the roar of the big guns and the screams of men and skaven. Then, there was a roll of thunder. He paused and turned. The Sons of Mallus thumped their shields again.
‘Remember Hreth,’ Greel rumbled, as he clambered over the lip of the trench. His warriors echoed his words as they followed him into battle. Even Sora. They advanced towards the oncoming skaven, hunched behind their shields, swords extended through the gaps. Warplock jezzails cracked as skaven claimed the trenches for their own. Several Stormcasts were punched backwards as warpstone bullets tore through their shields.
Volker concentrated on picking off the skaven gunners. His fingers grew numb, so swiftly was he reloading. The Sons of Mallus crashed into the enemy like a battering ram. The skaven broke and flowed around them, racing towards Volker’s trench. ‘Makkelsson,’ he called out, ‘they’re still coming!’
‘I see them, lad,’ the duardin roared. Besides the pistol shoved through the engineer’s belt, he and his crew were armed only with their tools. It would have to be enough.
Volker set his rifle aside and drew one of his repeater pistols. The skaven were too close now. The freeguild were falling back – regrouping, he hoped, rather than retreating. The
skaven swept forwards in a red-eyed wave, their chittering filling the air. Volker backed away from the edge of the trench, the heavy pistol levelled.
He pulled the trigger as the first pointed snouts appeared. Skaven shrieked and fell, but more poured into the trench. He dropped the emptied pistol and clawed for the second. He was forced to use it to parry a spear thrust. His fist snapped out, catching his attacker in the snout. The skaven tumbled backwards. Another darted past it and he readied himself, but it wasn’t him it was after.
The skaven raced towards the stack of powder barrels, its eyes bulging in terror or frenzy, or both. It was carrying a hissing, crackling device in its paws – an explosive of some kind. Volker turned, too slowly. He fired. The skaven pitched forwards, but the explosive kept going. Volker looked up, a warning on his lips. He saw Makkelsson’s eyes widen. ‘Oh, kruk,’ the duardin said, in the moment before the barrels went up and the world went white. Time seemed to shatter, and Volker’s perceptions with it. For an instant, everything stopped.
Then the force of the resulting explosion slammed Volker backwards, into the wall of the trench. He collapsed, wheezing, his skull echoing from the explosion. Dazed, he searched for Makkelsson. The barrel of the ancient cannon had split open. Fire raced along the trail of spilt powder and oil, filling the trench with smoke. Volker pounded on his head, trying to clear it. He spotted Makkelsson lying nearby, a look of surprise on what was left of his face. The rest of the cannon’s crew had suffered the same fate as their engineer. They lay where the force of the explosion had hurled them, flames crawling across their broken forms.
His vision blurred. Pain stretched across his scalp, and he reached up. His fingers came away red. Unable to focus, he stared into the flames. Something took shape within the flickering haze of oranges and yellows. At first he thought it was a cannonball. But then he realised that it was a head – a duardin head, but stretched and swollen. It twisted in the flames. No – it was the flame, and the smoke as well. A face made from heat and cinders. A face he recognised, for it was emblazoned on every forge, and on the memory of every mortal who’d ever picked up a rifle.
Grungni. God of Metal. The Master-Smith.
A voice thrummed through him. It did not speak in words, but in sound: hammers striking hot metal, the hiss of molten gold, the roar of the forge. Volker sagged back, clutching his head. It was too loud, too much. He screamed.
His cries were answered by chittering laughter. Dark shapes sprinted along the trench line, their blades gleaming in the firelight. Skaven. He fumbled for the artisan pistol in his belt, but his hands were numb. His panicked breath thundered in his ears. He didn’t want to die this way, in front of the god.
Grungni turned. Flames roared up, sweeping down the line. The skaven went up like torches, without even a squeal to mark their passing. The god turned back, his forge-spark eyes fixed on Volker. He nodded, his mane of smoky hair swirling. Then he was gone, as if he had never been. Volker lay back. He heard a voice call his name. Dazed, he turned. Sora clambered towards him.
Volker blacked out before she reached him.
Kretch Warpfang, Grand High Clawmaster of Clan Rictus, studied his lieutenants through slitted eyes. They were nervous, which was good. The fear-musk rose from them in pungent waves. They had failed to take the enemy trenches, and knew well the consequences of failure. He was in no hurry to pass that judgement, however. It was more satisfying to let their fear build to a crescendo – sometimes, the weaker ones even went insane.
He slumped on his throne, shrouded in war-plate that was now too large for his shrunken shape. The throne, once the skull of some subterranean monstrosity, was now a conglomeration of bone and scrap metal, covered in jagged runes, carved by the hands of slaves. Those hands now decorated the top of the throne, their fingers sealed in animal fat, and made over into candles. The light they cast was sufficient to fill his command-burrow.
The dim glow played across the plunder of a thousand campaigns – the barest scintilla of a grand collection. The light was reflected, too, in the eyes of the dozens of mutated plague rats that squirmed noisily in the tall iron cages hanging from the ceiling of the burrow. The cages were strangely formed, with esoteric mechanisms built into the underside of each.
Warpfang was old by the standards of most mortal races. By the standards of the skaven, he was impossibly ancient. For more than a century he had crouched at the top of the bone-heap that was Clan Rictus, sustained by potent magics and an enduring savagery that had not dimmed with age. His fur was the colour of dirty snow beneath his war-plate, and old scars ran through its thinning follicles, twisting and turning on themselves. They were a map of a life violently lived.
There were more than scars marking his withered limbs, however – his body was shot through with flickering veins of eerie green light. An oily jade miasma seeped from his pores and stained the edges of his armour black. Part of his splotched muzzle had calcified into a scar of shimmering warpstone. The replacement fang that had earned him his name had set strange roots within him. The warpstone fed on him, even as it sustained him.
It had changed him, somehow. Made him stronger. Smarter. It had given him the strength to claw his way up through the clan hierarchy, until he found himself at the top – alone and unchallenged. A good place to be, for any skaven.
A sure sign of his status were the guards who surrounded his throne. Few skaven leaders were brave enough to allow large bodies of armed underlings in their presence. Especially guards like these – the deathvermin. Greybacks, larger even than the black-furred skaven who filled the ranks of the stormvermin. They wore slate-coloured armour over thick crimson robes, and razor-crested skull helms, which concealed all but their fangs and whiskers. Each was armed with a heavy, serrated blade, taller than a clanrat, and hooked at the tip. The hilts of these blades were wrought to resemble the face of their god, and at its core, each weapon had a hair plucked from the mane of the Horned Rat himself.
The deathvermin were no more loyal than any other skaven, but they were far more impressive-looking than most. And even in his decrepitude, Warpfang had few doubts as to his supremacy as a warrior. Had he not earned a place of honour in the councils of the Scarlet Lord? Had he not collected the beards of the Firewalk Kings, to make himself a cloak? Even now, he could throttle any who dared challenge him.
Warpfang lifted his paw and flexed it. He felt the strands of warpstone grind against his bones. Green light flared briefly beneath his skin, and his lieutenants drew back. Warpstone was valuable, but deadly. It could make a skaven’s fortune or kill him stone-dead. Warpfang chittered in amusement. The braver lieutenants were quick to join in, eager to ingratiate themselves. He silenced them with a gesture.
‘Well, what have you to say for yourselves?’ he growled. His voice had assumed a particular resonance since the warpstone had spread to his larynx. It was deeper now than any skaven could hope to replicate. At the sound of it, the quicker-witted lieutenants flung themselves to the floor, grovelling for all they were worth. The rest followed suit a moment later. Warpfang took note of the last to do so, and twitched a talon at the clawleader of the deathvermin. The big skaven hefted his serrated blade and stalked forwards.
The offending skaven, realising his mistake, squealed and attempted to flee, but too slowly. The deathvermin pounced, heavy sword sweeping down with finality. The lieutenant dropped, skull cleaved, legs twitching. Warpfang grunted in satisfaction. ‘Either be better fighters, or quicker, yes-yes?’ he rasped, studying the surviving lieutenants.
The lieutenants nodded agreeably to this wisdom. The stink of fear filled the burrow. He gestured to one of the lieutenants. ‘Skesh – stand. Report-explain, yes?’
Skesh stood, hesitantly. The melted remains of numerous candles clotted the bridge of his helmet and the grooves of his shoulder-plates. Dirt stained his armour and he stank of machinery. His dark paws clenched and relaxed, just above
the hilt of the war-pick hanging from his belt. ‘We have made greatly-much progress, Clawlord, yes-yes.’ He began to rub his paws together. ‘Much tunnelling and digging and gnawing, oh most savage of potentates.’
‘Yes,’ Warpfang said. It was an obvious lie. Skesh’s scroungers were in charge of the sapping efforts. They’d gnawed hundreds of tunnels since the beginning of the siege, few of which had proven to be of any use. The cursed duardin had tunnels of their own beneath the city, and they were prepared for such efforts. Skesh was a veteran tunnel-sneak, but he had his limits – and he was out of his depth here. Warpfang considered killing him, then decided to allow the lie to stand. Skesh would repay his mercy by redoubling his efforts. ‘Good-good. You please me, Skesh.’
Skesh twitched in surprise. The other lieutenants glared at him murderously, even as they murmured in unctuous agreement. Warpfang fastened his gaze on another – a scar-faced starveling called Kleeskit. ‘The latest attack failed. Explain.’
Kleeskit voided his bowels.
Warpfang leaned forwards. ‘Was that an apology?’
Kleeskit shuddered, causing his war-plate to rattle. Up until the bowel voiding, it had been suspiciously clean. Warpfang had no patience for warriors who did not fight. He leaned further, crooking a claw beckoningly. Kleeskit stumbled forwards, whining. Warpfang’s paw snapped out, catching him by the muzzle. With a sharp jerk, he snapped the other skaven’s neck. The body collapsed at the foot of his throne. ‘Krizk – you are clawleader now. If you fail-disappoint me, I will gorge on your innards, yes-yes.’
Krizk, a heavy-set skaven, clad in the scavenged remnants of what might once have been duardin war-plate, grovelled in thanks.
