Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden

by Josh Reynolds

  Above and behind her, the galley thundered through the heart of the city, its hull wreathed in cobalt fire and lightning. A tower of stone burst as the lightning played across it. A bridge crafted from the jawbone of some long dead monstrosity was reduced to splinters. A vessel sank into a torrent of water, a smoking wreckage. The inhabitants of the city fled in all directions as the galley passed, leaving destruction and fire in its wake. Wailing daemons danced in agony as they were caught by the strobing light of Cadoc’s beacon, or consumed by lightning.

  Lord-Celestant Gardus stood braced on the prow of the galley, Cadoc’s chain of light wrapped about his arms and torso. She didn’t understand how the magic worked, but she had faith that it did and would, until Sigmar decided otherwise. And when that moment came, they would die as the God-King willed. As only the faithful could.

  Such fatalism would have once been alien to her. In lost Cypria, the inevitable was to be fought. Hope was doctrine. But Cypria was gone, and soon, she would be as well. This place would claim them all. But their deaths would have meaning. That she believed. The Stormcast Eternals were the arrows in Sigmar’s quiver, to be drawn, nocked and loosed when the time came. And if this was her time, she welcomed it.

  A shout from below caught her attention. Cadoc gestured downwards with his starblade. Beyond the glow of his beacon, she saw a second, smaller gateway, reminiscent of the one they’d used to enter the city. It was closing. Mechanisms of rusty iron and mushroom-covered wood clicked and stuttered as gangs of mortal Rotbringers laboured beneath lashes wielded by daemon overseers. The mortals hauled on chains, forcing ancient hinges to swing shut. Her wings folded, adding to her speed. She loosed three arrows in quick succession, dropping a Rotbringer with each. The operation stuttered to a halt as the Rotbringers panicked. Enyo sent a fourth arrow into the skull of one of the daemonic overseers as it tried to restore order.

  Rot flies swarmed towards her, their riders droning curses. She banked sharply and began to ascend, as Tegrus and two of his Prosecutors swooped past, summoning their hammers. She drew the plague drones up and away as the Prosecutors sent their hammers hurtling down onto the gate mechanisms.

  Smoke and fire belched from the gateway as daemons and mortals fled the destruction. The gates themselves hung half shut, and the Prosecutors slammed into them, forcing them to open. Cadoc led the galley through, and the fury of the vessel’s passage finished the task the Prosecutors had begun. Lightning ricocheted through the daemonic mechanisms and set the pustulant wood aflame. Daemons squealed as they burned in the ensuing conflagration. Enyo plunged through the billowing smoke, Periphas beside her. The bird’s plumage shone like the stars it had once called home.

  More gates waited ahead. She lost count after the fifth. Each one sealed off a new level of horrors. Streets made from leprous tissue, and buildings crafted from screaming, infected bodies; a district built from innumerable square blocks of crimson-veined stone, the facets of which were marked with yowling, bestial faces; pleasure palaces of pus raised up from within city-sized wounds; a market full of fleshy tents and inhuman merchants whose strange wares wept and howled; a garden of singing flowers, their bulbous blossoms wet with unshed tears.

  All these things and more she saw as she followed Cadoc’s beacon into the darkness. Legions of daemons, some in periwigs and armour, others in hauberks of wyrm-skin, and some clad only in the filth of their creation, mobilised in the streets and alleys around the galley, racing to cut them off. Plague drones hurtled in their wake, not quite fast enough to catch up, but gaining with every obstacle. Tegrus and his Prosecutors dropped back to dissuade them, and Judicators loosed volley after volley into the streets around them.

  But it wasn’t simply the inhabitants who were opposed to them. The city itself seemed to be contracting around them. Walls and streets pressed close, and the omnipresent rumble drowned out all but the loudest of her thoughts. She recited the Canticles of Faith as she descended, drawing strength from the words set down by the first of the faithful.

  And then she saw it. Their quarry.

  The black galley sped along a concourse of water, far ahead. It sailed perpendicular to their course, moving downwards. Tattered sails plumped with an ill wind, it crested a torrent, and dropped to a parallel course. They had the lead, but she could catch them. They were sailing towards another gate, larger by far than the rest, and more ornate.

  Like the others, it resembled a massive trapdoor, albeit with pimple-like watch-towers rising from its surface. It was shaped like a sneering, daemonic countenance. Bloated and toad-like, it seemed to gaze up at the approaching vessels with something akin to pleasure. The huge winches and pulleys encrusting its outer rim went into motion, and the face split in two as it began to swing open.

  The black galley would be through it in moments. ‘Periphas – find Tegrus,’ she called. The Prosecutors would notice the gate soon, but not soon enough. She had to slow it down.

  Enyo raced in pursuit. Her bowstring thrummed as she sent arrow after arrow whistling down towards the vessel. Daemons were knocked from the deck, their bodies tumbling up past her, before vanishing in the torrent of water. She caught sight of the hulking figure of the ship’s captain on the aft deck. A bloated, betentacled monster, with a single-bladed axe resting on one shoulder. The creature twitched a tentacle towards her, as if in invitation. She loosed an arrow in reply.

  The arrow streaked down, gathering speed as it punched through the air. At the last moment, a glistening tentacle snapped out and snared it. The shimmering tip halted, mere inches from the captain’s featureless helm. The tentacle twitched, and the arrow snapped, releasing a burst of searing light. The captain tossed the pieces away with a roar audible even at such a distance.

  Enyo folded her wings, adding speed to her descent. She had to reach them. She could see Lord-Castellant Grymn bound to the mast, sagging in his chains. She could not tell whether he still lived. She muttered a quiet prayer as she closed the gap. If she could just reach him, she might be able to pluck him free before his captors could stop her.

  Glowing hammers whirled past her, sending up sprays of water to either side of the black galley. Prosecutors shot by. A hammer exploded against the galley’s hull, rocking it in the water. One of the winged warriors sped towards the captain. A hammer snapped down, and was intercepted by the haft of the monstrous axe. For a moment, the two struggled across the heaving deck, trading blows. Then, more quickly than she thought possible, the captain whipped his axe out in a blow that tore through the Prosecutor’s chest and shoulder. The Prosecutor fell back, struck the rail, and tumbled away and up.

  Even now, after having seen the others who’d fallen here, she was taken aback by the lack of dissolution. The body didn’t dissolve, didn’t rupture into a thousand motes of lightning. Instead, it remained in one piece, his soul trapped within. To let his body vanish into the depths of this place would be to consign him to eternal torment.

  The Prosecutor’s body hurtled past her, trailing lightning. Instinctively, Enyo turned. She snagged the corpse’s ankle and drew him to her, even as she turned to continue her descent. Below her, she saw the galley vanish through the gateway. The gateway slammed shut with an echoing crunch, and she landed atop it with a crash.

  Daemons spilled from the watch-towers and lurched towards her across the steeply angled surface. Dozens of rotting, rancid bodies pressed in on her from every direction. Those first to reach her thrust barbed spears at her, as their droning chants assailed her ears. She backed away, still cradling the body of the Prosecutor.

  Then came a shriek from above. Periphas swooped over her head, talons extended. A plaguebearer reeled back, wailing, as the star-eagle clawed out its single eye. A moment later, Tegrus and his remaining Prosecutors landed in a clap of thunder. Celestial hammers lashed out, pulping inhuman flesh.

  ‘Lady Enyo, are you well?’ Tegrus asked, as he swatted a plaguebearer from its f
eet.

  ‘I am, but your warrior is not.’ She booted a daemon in its split abdomen, doubling it over. As it staggered, she caught it in the jaw with her knee, snapping its head back. It stumbled into Tegrus’ hammer, and its head burst like an overripe fruit.

  ‘I was not quick enough. I sent them ahead, to aid you,’ the Prosecutor-Prime said, his voice harsh with emotion. ‘But our foe escaped again. Again.’ He made a sound that was almost a snarl, and whirled about to fling one of his hammers towards the distant control mechanisms. The hammer gathered speed as it plunged through the daemonic ranks, and its glow grew brighter, until it shone like a falling star. When it struck the winches and pulleys, it did so with a cataclysmic roar. The gateway dropped away beneath them, and the daemons fell howling into the void.

  Below them, Enyo saw a grey expanse stretching out into infinity. They’d breached the last gate of the city and passed through it. The fifth tier of Nurgle’s garden awaited them. She felt a tremor go through her and, for a moment, she thought that the emptiness below twisted suddenly into an inhuman countenance, as wide as the realm itself and possessed of a malevolence far beyond the limits of her experience. Eyes like dying suns stared up at her, and she felt her soul shudder in its envelope of flesh and bone.

  ‘Gardus was right. It is a trap,’ Tegrus said, his voice hoarse with fear. She felt some relief that she wasn’t alone in witnessing the apparition, but not much. ‘The Plague God is waiting for us.’

  The great eyes suddenly blinked, as if stung. Light swelled above them, and Enyo felt her fears diminish as the radiance spilled over her. She looked up and saw Cadoc and the galley approaching. In their wake, the capital city of Nurgle’s realm burned with cobalt fire. Rot flies tumbled from the air around them, caught by lightning and arrow.

  The way was clear. The Hopeless City had been conquered.

  Chapter Nineteen

  OLD GHOSTS

  The galley sped through the mist-soaked air above the featureless mire. Grey sludge stretched in all directions, broken only by a few scraggly trees and sluggish inlets scattered about in haphazard fashion. The mist clung to everything, and stank of old, dark places and forgotten waters. Gardus felt his soul curdle as he contemplated the emptiness. This was a place where hope came to die. Nothing lived here, save that which had not yet died. There were no shrieking birds, no monstrous shapes. Only the turgid squelch of the grey waters, as they swirled slowly towards the garden’s black heart.

  There were no shapes to break up the monotony of the sky above. No leering faces, no ominous clouds. Only a colourless, infinite, expanse. Everything here was grey and washed out. So oppressive was it that even the vibrant hue of their vessel had grown dull, and the distant bobbing of Cadoc’s beacon was barely visible. Gardus kept to his post, anchoring the chain of light. His limbs and back had begun to ache, and he felt a soul-deep weariness within him. He wanted nothing more than to cease. To sleep.

  Garradan… sleep, Garradan… sleep as we sleep… sleep and dream no more…

  Gardus blinked, trying to keep his eyes open. His grip on the chain slackened.

  Help us, Garradan… why don’t you help us… don’t leave us…

  He felt the feather-light touch of hands on his war-plate. Heard the whisper of many voices in his ears, asking him to sleep, to rest. The chain grew slack.

  Garradan… help us, teacher… burning up… it hurts… Garradan…

  Gardus jolted awake. His fists clenched around the chain and he hauled back on it, looping it more tightly about his forearm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, softly. But he did not know who he was apologising to.

  ‘You hear them as well, then.’

  Gardus glanced over at Morbus. The Lord-Relictor had startled him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘As do the others.’ Morbus spoke quietly, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘Seeing things, as well as hearing them. Things that grow worse, the closer we get to…’ He trailed off. Gardus knew what he meant. Their guide had been quiet since they’d left the Hopeless City behind, as if dumbstruck by their persistence. Despite this, they knew where they were going. Everything here was moving, however slowly, in the same direction.

  ‘And you? Are you seeing things? Hearing things?’

  Morbus was silent for long moments. Then, ‘I hear only the voices of those whose souls are in my keeping.’ He held up a hand. Light flickered between the gaps in his armour. Not the soft light that Gardus had become so familiar with, but the harsh, burning light of the storm. ‘At times, their cries crowd out my own thoughts.’

  ‘You should not have come,’ Gardus said.

  ‘If I had not, their souls would be lost.’ Morbus looked at him. ‘Yours as well. There are more subtle enchantments here than we have faced – lights that can draw souls into abyssal bogs, horrors stalking through the poison clouds far above. We have faced only the least of what this place has to offer, thanks to my rites, and Cadoc’s lantern. Without those protections, we would have lost more warriors than we did.’ He shook his head. ‘Why did we really come here, Gardus?’

  ‘You have asked me that before.’

  ‘And you did not answer me then. Not really. You said you did not know. Do you know now?’

  Gardus looked at him. ‘No. It is merely a thing I must do. Back there… I heard a voice. Telling me that this must be accomplished, whatever the cost.’ He held up a hand, watching the light play across the silver of his gauntlet. ‘This light… it eases the pain of some, and causes injury to others. Am I like Cadoc’s beacon – a tool of judgement? The souls here cower back from me, the vegetation withers. To what end?’

  Morbus sighed. ‘Sigmar’s.’ He said it as if the answer was obvious. ‘This war of ours, it is not waged solely with runeblades and hammers. And there are battlefields less tangible than even this place. The Ruinous Powers forced Sigmar back – broke his Great Peace, and shattered his allies. Thus, we were forged. Symbols and swords in one. We are the sound of the hammer, beating the world into shape. We purge the land, raise walls… Where we stand, order holds true, and Chaos is cast back.’

  Gardus nodded, for Morbus’ words were familiar. But the Lord-Relictor wasn’t finished. ‘We are also a message. A challenge, cast into the teeth of the foe.’ Morbus bowed his head. ‘That we stand here now, battered and weary as we are, is a sign of Sigmar’s contempt for his enemies. And a warning as to his intentions.’

  Gardus hesitated. ‘You think he knew, then? That this would happen?’

  ‘I think he sent us to the Plains of Vo for a reason. I think there is a purpose behind every command, whether we understand it or not.’ Morbus leaned heavily on his staff. ‘I think… if it was not us, it would have been someone else.’ He chuckled. ‘You are not alone in surviving a journey to the realm of the Dark Gods. Others have done it… Thostos Bladestorm, Orius Adamantine. None for so long as you, but it has been done.’

  ‘And now we are doing it again.’

  ‘But for it to mean anything, we must walk out again. And that is the true test. That is – ahgk!’ Morbus bent forward, limbs twitching. The lightning crawling across him grew darker and fiercer, driving Gardus back. Morbus’ staff fell from his grip, and he dropped to his hands and knees. The Lord-Relictor screamed. Lightning snapped out, carving black gouges across the deck and mast.

  Gardus threw up a hand to shield his eyes. Morbus screamed again, and it was not his voice alone that cried out. His scream was echoed five, six, seven times. Gardus heard Osric and Kahya’s voices among them, as well as others who had died since entering the garden. Their shapes were superimposed over that of the Lord-Relictor, mimicking his agonised movements. Their pain was his.

  Worse yet, as Morbus writhed, the chain in Gardus’ hand began to crumble away into flickering motes. The galley shuddered, as if caught by an unseen wave. The radiance that had protected them since they’d begun their journey was fading. The hull creaked a
s the galley began to lose altitude. The sails flapped and tore as their descent grew swift. ‘Hold on,’ Gardus cried, as the last motes of light slipped between his fingers.

  The galley did not plummet like a stone as he’d feared. Though the magic was fast fading, it did not vanish all at once. But the descent was not gentle in the least. The vessel spun through the air like a leaf caught in a downdraft. It rolled end over end, losing pieces of itself as it fell. The hull cracked, spilling the contents of the hold like blood. The oars split and shattered, the splintered remnants streaming upwards. Stormcasts held on where they could, using their weapons to anchor themselves to the rattling deck boards.

  Eventually, the galley slammed down with a tooth-rattling crunch. The mast snapped and fell, crushing several rowers’ benches. The remaining oars burst into jagged shards, and the keel cracked. The sails were torn loose from the fallen mast by a sudden wind, and flew out over the mire.

  Gardus shouldered aside a broken section of mast and rose to his feet. Others did the same. Gardus saw no bodies, smelled no blood, and felt a wave of relief pass through him. Aetius clambered towards him. ‘Everyone is alive,’ the Liberator-Prime said. ‘For now.’

  Gardus looked around. They were wedged at the mouth of an inlet, caught among the remains of several barren trees. The mire stretched out around them, flat and featureless. Desolate. ‘See to Morbus. Do what you can for him.’ He moved to the mast and dragged Gatrog to his feet. The Rotbringer had come through the crash intact, and was still bound tight. He grunted as Gardus slammed him back against the broken base. ‘How much farther?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Gatrog said. ‘This is where it ends.’