Sacrosanct & Other Stories

by Various Authors

  ‘Do they not know who we are?’ Orthan wondered. ‘Can they not guess why we have come here?’

  Penthius shot the Sequitor a stern look. ‘We came here to fulfil our mission and execute our duty, not for accolades and glory, brother.’

  From his tone, Arnhault could guess that Penthius shared some of Orthan’s disappointment. It was only natural. They had come to Wyrmditt in part to deliver it from its enemy. Instead they found the inhabitants seeking to placate that enemy and hiding from the warriors who would rescue them from the darkness.

  ‘Honour is a seed which everyone nurtures within their own heart,’ Arnhault declared, casting his voice so that each member of his retinue would hear him. ‘Only your own deeds will make it grow, not the cheers of the crowd.’

  He raised his staff, gesturing to the mist-cloaked street before them. ‘We turn at the next corner,’ Arnhault commanded. ‘From there we will be where we need to be.’ He thought of the tall building he had seen poking up through the fog. ‘Where we belong.’

  The Stormcasts marched onwards, still unchallenged by the townsfolk. Occasionally they would hear a door slam shut somewhere in the distance, but otherwise the only sound was their boots upon the cobbles. Except for a few prowling cats and wandering chickens, nothing moved through the streets.

  The change came when Arnhault led them towards the tower-like structure. The Stormcasts bowed their heads in reverence when they saw the carved hammer that stood above the building’s entrance and the banners that hung to either side of it, the twin-tailed comet stitched across their blue fields. A temple not to Nagash but to Sigmar. Here, if anywhere in the town, they would be recognised and welcomed.

  ‘It seems deserted,’ Penthius said to Arnhault. He indicated the tattered nature of the banners, the faded state of the hammer. Thick clumps of moss clung to the stonework, the wooden supports were splintered and warped, and the paper panels were torn in many spots. Everything about the temple screamed of neglect.

  Arnhault kept his gaze fastened upon the building. More attuned to the aetheric harmonies, he could sense the difference between a sanctuary that had been abandoned and one in which a sincerity of faith persisted. ‘All is not always as it seems,’ he advised Penthius.

  A moment after Arnhault spoke, the temple door slid open. An aged man in a ragged robe stumbled forwards. His skin was almost white in its pallor and the few strands of hair that clung to his scalp had a silvery sheen. Around his neck he wore a heavy chain from which a tiny golden hammer hung. When he turned his wizened face towards the Stormcasts, the eyes that regarded them were white with blindness.

  Just the same, a look of ecstatic joy seized the old man’s features. Clasping the hammer in both hands, he fell to his knees and began to weep. ‘Sigmar, mighty God-King, receive my unworthy gratitude! Hear my praise, oh Sigmar, for in your unmatched benevolence you have sent your divine warriors to aid us in our direst need!’

  ‘How can he know who we are?’ Nerio asked. ‘He cannot see us.’

  ‘He does not need to see us,’ Arnhault declared. He stepped forwards and gently lifted the old man onto his feet. The man’s thin arms clutched adoringly at his gauntlet.

  ‘I have prayed,’ the old man said. ‘How I have prayed that this day would come!’

  ‘I am Knight-Incantor Arnhault of the Hammers of Sigmar. How are you named?’

  The old man held the hammer icon to his lips before answering. ‘I am Friar Mueller, the keeper of Sigmar’s faith in Wyrmditt.’ Emotion welled up within him, almost choking his words. ‘When all others lost faith, I would not lose hope that Sigmar would deliver our town.’

  Hilda stepped out from among the Stormcasts and took hold of Mueller’s hand. She turned towards the armoured giants. ‘Friar Mueller lives here,’ she said, ‘but nobody else has come here in a long time. Not since the Shrouded King.’ She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘He used to see, but every­one was afraid he would make the Shrouded King angry…’

  ‘The scum,’ Nerio snarled, his hands tightening around his greatbow. He glared at the buildings around them, as though he wouldn’t leave anything for the undead to lay claim to.

  ‘Do not blame them,’ Friar Mueller begged the Stormcasts. ‘They were afraid and it was naïve of me to think I alone could match the Shrouded King’s evil.’ A smile pulled at his face as he nodded his bald head. ‘But now, now you are here. Now this evil will end!’

  Friar Mueller turned and began shouting into the streets. ‘Cowards! Wretches! Why do you hide? How can the blind man see and you cannot! Sigmar has heard my prayers! In his divine mercy he has sent his holy warriors to fight for us! Come out! Come out and greet those who will deliver you from the Shrouded King’s horrors!’

  One by one, across the town, the sound of doors opening could be heard. Gradually figures appeared on the streets, men and women who slowly moved towards the Temple of Sigmar and the armoured warriors arrayed around it. As they came nearer, the suspicion Arnhault saw on their faces changed into wonder. Their pace quickened and soon a large crowd was gathered around the Stormcasts. An excited babble rose from the assembled townsfolk. They gazed in open admiration at the huge warriors and the massive weapons they bore.

  Arnhault turned and addressed the crowd. ‘We are come in answer to the prayers of your Friar Mueller,’ he announced. ‘His unwavering faith has brought us down from Azyr to vanquish the darkness that threatens you.’ He shook the sigmarite staff at the gathered villagers. ‘A darkness that you have too long sought to appease.’ The crowd fell silent at the reproach in his voice. ‘You did what you did out of fear. The weight of those deeds is a burden each of you must bear alone. But know this – there will be no more appeasement. The Shrouded King will take no more of your people.’

  Arnhault pointed to Hilda. ‘This child has told me that her brother is being held as an offering to the Shrouded King. He is to be released. At once.’

  A man and woman emerged from the crowd and hurried to Hilda. Gathering her in their arms, they bowed at Arnhault’s feet and sobbed in gratitude to the Knight-Incantor. Arnhault’s attention, however, was fixated upon another pair who had come creeping out from among the townsfolk. One was a fat, elderly man arrayed in a fur-trimmed coat and wearing a jewelled pectoral. The other was a lean slip of a creature, only his thin face poking out from the hooded cloak that enfolded him.

  ‘Burghermeister Vanholf,’ Arnhault addressed the man in the coat. ‘I have heard much about you.’

  The man in the hooded cloak shook his head. ‘Surely you will not lend too much credence to a child’s stories.’

  Arnhault spun around and pointed an accusing finger at the cloaked man. ‘I have heard even more about you, Pater Mathias.’

  The thin priest threw his head back and tried to assume a haughty posture. ‘I did what was needful to save this town. How could we trust that Sigmar would answer our prayers?’

  ‘So you started feeding people to the undead,’ Nerio snarled.

  ‘Better that the few die in order that the many should live,’ Mathias said, trying to defend himself.

  ‘Spoken like a true acolyte of Nagash,’ the Castigator-Prime retorted.

  Mathias winced when he noted that Nerio’s greatbow was aimed towards him. ‘The rituals of the dead must be observed,’ he protested. ‘If the spirit is not received by Nagash and allowed passage into the Underworlds then it will wander endlessly, without form or purpose.’

  Arnhault stepped forwards. Before Mathias could react, his hand had seized the front of the priest’s cloak and he lifted the man off the ground. ‘It was you who communed with the Shrouded King and made this obscene arrangement.’

  The priest’s eyes were wide with fright as he saw the disgust in Arnhault’s gaze. ‘He demanded tribute! Tribute! The Shrouded King claims all the lands of Kharza as his own and will have tribute from all who dwell there.’ H
e cast an appealing look to Vanholf and the other villagers. ‘The Shrouded King did not want gold or riches. He demanded lives, vassals to serve in his domain.’

  ‘And you gave them to him,’ Arnhault hissed. Contemptuously he flung the priest from him. Mathias crashed down upon the cobbles amid the stunned crowd. ‘Leave here, priest! Leave before I think better of my mercy.’

  Pater Mathias did not need to be warned twice. Picking himself up from the ground, he shoved his way through the crowd and ran off into the mist.

  Arnhault turned back towards Vanholf. The burghermeister’s face was beaded with sweat, his eyes bulging in fright. ‘You have been led astray, Vanholf. You have attended ill counsel for too long. Now you will listen to me.’

  ‘Of course,’ Vanholf gasped. ‘Whatever you say, my lord. Whatever you need, Wyrmditt will provide it.’

  ‘Good,’ Arnhault told him. ‘First we will discuss the layout of your town and what happens when the Shrouded King comes to claim his tribute. Then we will make our plans and decide how Wyrmditt will be redeemed from this evil.’

  Within the silent depths of his throne room, the dark essence of Sabrodt stirred. The Shrouded King looked across the mouldering finery of his funereal palace. The splendour he had coveted for so long was hollow to him now, as empty as an open grave. It would take more, much more, to satisfy him.

  In a rush of shadow and malice, Sabrodt swept through the desolate corridors of his cairn, past the sepulchres of ancient knights and legendary heroes, past the urns that held the ashes of princes and barons.

  Arise, the malignant spectre thought as he passed. Wisps of shadow crawled out from the tombs in his wake. Gradually they took on the merest semblance of shape, the faint echo of form – wraiths called into being by the decree of their sovereign.

  When Sabrodt emerged from the hulking barrow mound that held his throne, a seething morass of darkness followed him into the moonlight. Phantasmal skulls leered from the folds of ghostly robes, bony hands grasped spectral blades. Sabrodt turned his crowned head towards the aethereal throng. Among them he could recognise the most powerful warriors of his father’s reign and the most renowned heroes of Kharza’s long history.

  His! All his! Sabrodt whipped around, staring across the barren plain on which his barrow had been raised. It was a place soaked in the blood of battle and the stink of death. How many had died here in that final battle? Thousands? And all of them his to command. Conquered and conqueror alike, all forced to recognise his dominion over them! It needed but a single word, a single command, and they would rise from where they’d fallen, a host of the dead whose only purpose would be to obey!

  What other priest-king of Kharza had been so mighty?

  Even as Sabrodt exulted in his power, his gaze fastened upon a discongruous patch of green upon the desolate plain. The Shrouded King gnashed his bony jaws in rage as he looked on this defiance of his rule. He knew it would be useless to try to destroy it by force or spell. The grass would always come back, as vibrant and alive as before. More than the sight of this stubborn life in his domain of death, it was what the greenery represented that fed Sabrodt’s anger.

  Yes, all the souls that had perished in that final battle belonged to Sabrodt, were his to command. All except one – the spirit of the warrior who had fallen where that grass now grew.

  Hate welled up inside Sabrodt, a hate that had been with him from the very cradle. A hate, he realised, that had become even stronger than his desire for the Dragonseat.

  Somehow, some way, Sabrodt would yet slake his hate.

  The Shrouded King turned back towards his shadowy followers. ‘It is time to claim my kingly tribute,’ he told them. ‘It is time to add another vassal to my domain.’

  Sabrodt closed one skeletal fist. In response, the earth before him split open and an aethereal steed pawed its way out of the ground. Corroded barding and a tattered caparison covered the phantom stallion, leaving only its fleshless legs and skull exposed. The light that glowed in the recesses of the creature’s head echoed the gibbous glow that blazed in Sabrodt’s.

  With a thought Sabrodt was mounted upon the grisly charger he had conjured from the earth, the Shrouded King’s shadowy essence blending with that of his mount. The wraith reached to his side and drew a pitted sword from its rotten sheath. As his bony fingers tightened around it, the corroded blade was transformed, restored into a sharp-edged weapon aglow with a grave-sent power.

  Sabrodt held the ghostly sword aloft and called to his spectral warriors. ‘To Wyrmditt,’ he commanded them. ‘To Wyrmditt and the tribute that is my due.’

  Chapter three

  The elders of Wyrmditt had a hard time meeting the gaze of Arnhault and his warriors. The burghermeister and his council kept looking around them, frowning in embarrassment as their eyes chanced upon a splintered panel or a faded wall hanging. There was no need for the Stormcasts to accuse them of anything. The cobwebs and dust that lay everywhere already did that far more forcefully than any words could.

  The Temple of Sigmar was in a wretched state, maintained for far too long by only its blind priest. Friar Mueller had tried, but the care of the temple was beyond his abilities alone. Decay had set in, as sorely within as without. A few more years and the structure would be a dilapidated ruin.

  Arnhault stood with Mueller at his side, beneath the icon of the Hammer behind the altar. He wanted to impress on the elders the depth of their faithlessness and to remind them that it had been the priest’s devotions that had brought deliverance to Wyrmditt. Guilt was the quickest way to subdue any opposition that might have presented itself to Arnhault’s plans. It was a pragmatic solution to the problem, if not exactly a sympathetic one. The Knight-Incantor was not without an appreciation for the townspeople, but he would not allow such considerations to influence him. To do so would cost Wyrmditt the thing it could least afford.

  Time.

  ‘The tribute you intended to render this Shrouded King.’ Arnhault’s solemn tone rolled across the town leaders. ‘I understand it was to be claimed in the Shrine of Nagash upon the rising of the new moon.’

  The elders looked uneasily amongst themselves, no man wishing to be the one who confirmed the Stormcast’s statement. Finally, in a faltering voice, Vanholf addressed Arnhault. ‘The Shrouded King has always taken his… tribute… from the Shrine of Nagash. It… he… rides through the middle of town. His very presence causes the flowers to wilt and milk to sour. None sleeps when he makes his midnight ride, and all await the… the scream when he claims his due.’

  ‘There will be no scream tonight,’ Nerio stated. His hand patted the quiver of crystal-tipped maces at his side. ‘Unless the Shrouded King finds his voice when he does not find his victim.’

  Arnhault nodded and pointed his staff at Vanholf and the elders. ‘I can see the doubt you feel. I can smell the fear that hammers inside your hearts. You have lived in horror of this monster for too long. You have almost convinced yourselves that he is invincible, that there is nothing which can be done except to appease him.’ His voice dropped to a low whisper of wizardry, drawing magic to him. He let the power flow down to the end of the staff. A nimbus of lightning crackled and flashed about the head of the staff in a display of arcane power. The elders backed away, their eyes wide with awe, their tongues muttering in fright.

  ‘This time, the monster will not be appeased,’ Arnhault told them. ‘This time he will be challenged. This time he will be vanquished.’ He laid his huge armoured hand on Mueller’s shoulder. ‘By the might and glory of Sigmar God-King, this darkness will be banished from Wyrmditt.’

  ‘But… but the Shrouded King is…’ Vanholf held up his hands in a hopeless gesture. ‘When first he came upon us and made his demands, there… there were men who stood against him. They tried to kill him with swords and with spears and with arrows. Nothing could harm the Shrouded King. He is not a thing of flesh and bone as we a
re.’ The burghermeister closed his fingers into a fist and shook it in despair. ‘He is more ghost than anything else, as intangible as the steam from the geysers.’

  Mueller smiled at Vanholf. ‘Have faith, friends. Great Sigmar knows all and would not send his warriors to us if they could not prevail against our enemy.’

  Arnhault held the crackling staff higher. ‘There is a dark magic which empowers your tormentor, but we too have magic. We have the magic of Sigmar’s storm, the essence of sacred Azyr, to pit against the fell undead.’ He let the power gradually ebb from his staff. ‘I have fought for Sigmar’s justice in more battles than I can remember and against enemies too horrible for you to imagine. Always the power of Sigmar has sustained me and never have I seen daemon or spectre that could deny the God-King’s might.’ He nodded towards Mueller. ‘Be guided by your priest. Have faith. I do not expect any of you to face the enemy. All I ask is for your faith and conviction. Sigmar will deliver Wyrmditt.’

  ‘You will lay a trap for the Shrouded King?’ Vanholf asked. ‘When he comes to receive his tribute, then you will confront him?’

  Penthius stepped forwards, sweeping the elders with a stern look. Of all the Stormcasts, the Sequitor-Prime had the least forgiveness for the obscene bargain they had struck with the Shrouded King. ‘The wraith will answer for its evil,’ he stated coldly. ‘We do not want any of you near when we depose your undead king.’ He tapped his golden breastplate. ‘We have the armour and weapons to confront this monster. We have the resolve and discipline to defy its evil.’ He waved his hand towards the doorway. ‘Go and take your people from Wyrmditt. Stay away from your homes this night. When you return in the morning, you will be free.’