Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘What happened in there?’ Angstun said, as he and the Lord-Celestant clasped forearms. ‘You look as if you’ve been through a war.’

  ‘We have,’ Grymn said, limping towards them. His gryph-hound paced by his side. The light began to fade and with it, the realmgate itself. The waters had dried away to nothing. All that remained was a crater set into the floor of the chamber. A chamber that no longer had a purpose. The floor began to tremble, and the ancient pillars shifted on their bases. Cracks ran up the walls.

  Angstun turned and barked an order to retreat. The Stormcasts decamped, leaving the shuddering chamber behind. They made their way carefully to the surface, as all around them, the citadel shuddered in what felt like its death throes. Chunks of rock fell, and corridors collapsed in on themselves just behind the retreating Stormcasts, as if some unseen power were sealing the chamber off, now that its purpose had been served.

  They emerged into the light of a new day, accompanied by a cloud of dust. Thunder rumbled overhead, and the sky was dark and fierce. Angstun heard a shout, and saw a group of mortals, accompanied by several Stormcasts, hurrying towards them. Yare was among them. ‘Yare, I told you to leave,’ Angstun said, as the blind man was led towards him by several followers.

  ‘And I did. Then I came back.’

  ‘More sophistry,’ Angstun said, unable to restrain a chuckle. The old man beamed cheerfully and groped for the Knight-Vexillor’s arm.

  ‘Stop grumbling and help an old blind man. I can feel the warmth of Gardus’ light. Has he returned?’

  ‘I have, Yare of Demesnus,’ Gardus said. He looked down at the old man and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘You asked me a question before, do you remember?’

  ‘Of course. I’m blind, not forgetful.’

  Gardus smiled. ‘You asked if I spoke the truth. I never answered you.’

  ‘Will you do so now?’ Yare asked, smiling slightly.

  ‘No. Because I do not know the future. All I can say is this… while I stand, I will do my best to protect your people from the storms to come. I swore an oath, many years ago, to see that no harm befell those in my care, and I will uphold it, unto death and beyond.’

  Yare nodded and glanced unseeingly at Angstun. ‘And that, my friend, is both an echo of a truth and the truth itself. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  Before Angstun could reply, the sky cracked open, disgorging multiple strikes of lightning. The ruins of the citadel shuddered in sympathy with the storm. As the glare faded, figures in silver and amethyst war-plate were revealed.

  Astral Templars, draped in barbaric totems and chanting fierce war cries, marched out of the smoke of the strike. At their head, Lord-Celestant Zephacleas Beast-Bane strode forward, hand raised in greeting. ‘What’s this? I was told you got yourself lost in a garden again, Steel Soul. Now I come all this way to find you’re here after all?’

  ‘As if you had any doubts, you great oaf,’ Lord-Celestant Cassandora Stormforged said. Her Hallowed Knights marched in silent precision behind her. ‘Still, it is a shame. I was almost looking forward to coming in there after you.’

  ‘You – how did you know?’ Gardus asked, startled. He glanced at Angstun, who shook his head.

  ‘I sent no word, my lord. As you ordered.’

  ‘Sigmar saw that light of yours shining in the dark,’ Zephacleas said, as he removed his helmet. He flashed a gap-toothed smile. ‘He said you’d only gone and invaded the realm of the Ruinous Powers, again. And this time you’d had the gall to take a whole chamber with you.’

  ‘We were sent to lend aid, should it be required,’ Cassandora interjected. Then, more hesitantly, she said, ‘The skyhosts are claiming to have heard the screams of a wounded god, echoing out on the realm’s black rim. What happened, brother?’

  Gardus hesitated. ‘I am still not sure. I know only that we carried our light into the dark, and out again.’

  ‘It sounds like I missed a good fight. Again.’ Zephacleas shook his head. He grinned. ‘Still, always tomorrow, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gardus said.

  Overhead, the clouds were clearing, as the Storm of Sigmar rolled on, carrying the tidings of war elsewhere. The Lord-Celestant peered at the sky as if seeking something, and Angstun wondered what it might be. A moment later Gardus nodded, as if he’d found it. ‘And whatever tomorrow brings, we will meet it, and emerge victorious. We are the faithful, and we can do no less.’ He drew his runeblade and held it up, so that it caught the rays of the rising sun.

  ‘Who will be triumphant?’ he thundered.

  ‘Only the faithful,’ Angstun roared, joining his voice with those of the others. With Feros and Aetius, Solus and Enyo. Even Tornus, who met his gaze and nodded. And as their voices rose and became one, he thought he heard the voices of those who had fallen cry out with them. A cry that would echo throughout the Mortal Realms, now and forevermore.

  ‘Only the faithful.’

  ‘Only the faithful.’

  ‘Only the faithful!’

  About the Author

  Josh Reynolds is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Fabius Bile: Primogenitor and Deathstorm, and the novellas Hunter’s Snare and Dante’s Canyon, along with the audio drama Master of the Hunt. In the Warhammer World, he has written the End Times novels The Return of Nagash and The Lord of the End Times, the Gotrek & Felix tales Charnel Congress, Road of Skulls and The Serpent Queen. He has also written many stories set in the Age of Sigmar, including the novels Nagash: The Undying King, Fury of Gork, Black Rift and Skaven Pestilens. He lives and works in Sheffield.

  An extract from City of Secrets.

  The prophecy promised slaughter and death, and so the Stormcast Eternals marched to war.

  The city of Excelsis watched them leave her borders. All along the great walls the lightning engines spun and whirred, sending flickering cascades of storm energy coruscating across the sky. It was a fitting salute. Beneath the churning aether, columns of solemn warriors marched under the panoply of their Warrior Chambers. Their splendid, gilded war-plate bore many colours. There was the pristine white with blue trim of the Kniggets Excelsior, most zealous of Sigmar’s sons. Elsewhere could be seen the grim black of the Sons of Mallus, a Stormhost whose temperament was as sombre as their aspect. Ahead, always ahead, was the sea-green of the Kniggets of the Aurora.

  It had been the first prophecy in a decade to bring the city’s war council together. The Prophesiers had conversed with the mages of the Collegiate, and both had ratified the augury, mined from the deepest veins of the Spear of Mallus – the colossal shard of fate-touched rock that aeons ago had plunged into the Realm of Beasts and ripped from the earth the very bay upon which Excelsis now stood. This was truth, they said. There was no question.

  The orruks were gathering, and in numbers large enough to engulf a city.

  And so the Stormcasts marched. The fortified gates of the city rumbled open, and the columns of towering figures snaked off into the low hills and deadly plains of the Coast of Tusks.

  ‘Do they eat, do you think?’ said Custin.

  The boy was greeted with a volley of blank stares. Rare was the minute when the stick-thin guardsman wasn’t asking some damn fool question or another.

  ‘The lightning men,’ he continued, scratching his pointed chin, which was as ever covered with a fine blanket of wispy hair that was as close to a beard as he could manage. ‘My cousin Rullig, he says they do. Says they order up a big cart full of salted meat to their fortress every other market day. Now my other cousin, Ullig, he says that’s nonsense. Swears he’s seen them in the early hours, up on the high wall eating thunder and lightning. The lightning strikes and they just swallow it up.’

  ‘Sigmar’s bones, boy,’ sighed old Happer, leaning back on his bunk and staring at the stone above his head. Once grey, it was now stained a sickly yellow, a result of the pipe that constantly rested between h
is lips. ‘You’ve a rare talent for talking nonsense.’

  ‘Leave the lad be,’ said Corporal Armand Callis, stifling a yawn as he sat up on his bunk. ‘We can’t all be as wise as you, Happer. Not for a good few decades yet, anyway.’

  Happer snorted indignantly. ‘Boy’s been fed too many tall tales. I’ve lived long enough to know the Eternals ain’t no fairy-tale knights. I ever tell you about the purges, son? I’ve seen things that would make your guts turn to ice.’

  From the other side of the room came an exasperated groan, and a balled-up sock arced across to strike Happer on the side of the head.

  ‘Spare me another tale of the bloody White Angels,’ said Longholme, running a hand through her greasy black hair. ‘I’ve heard a hundred times how they’re going to come at night and steal us all away, damn us all as heretics and stick our heads on the harbour wall.’

  Happer opened his mouth to reply, but instead just shook his head and muttered darkly under his breath.

  Custin sighed and crossed to the window. ‘Raining heavy now,’ he said, looking out glumly. ‘We’re to get soaked.’

  From outside the heavy wooden door to the barracks, hurried footsteps could be heard. Shortly after, Jammud came bursting into the room, breathless from taking the stairs two or three at a time.

  ‘Corporal?’ he said, panting at the exertion. ‘The sarge is sick again. His belly, he says. He can’t make patrol tonight.’

  Callis hauled himself to his feet, biting back a curse. If Sergeant Ames spent less time stuffing his ever-expanding guts with dock cakes and cheap liquor, and more time earning his blasted rank, then maybe he wouldn’t be bedridden four nights out of seven. Of course, Ames would be the one earning twenty more glimmerings a week while Callis did his job for him, so who was the real fool here? He buckled on his breastplate and tucked his pistol into the shoulder holster beneath his long overcoat. The black powder weapon would have to be kept dry. A lowly corporal could never afford one of those fancy duardin-made wheel-lock guns that kept out moisture – his sidearm was usually a trusty piece, but a sniff of rainwater and he might as well be wielding a loaf of bread.

  He pushed the bitterness deep down inside, adding it to his not inconsiderable stock, and jammed his sabre into the scabbard at his side.

  ‘All right, you lot,’ he barked. ‘On your feet. You know the drill here. We make our circuit, we do our best to avoid getting our pockets picked, and we get back here by the early morning for a couple of hours sleep before we have to do it all over again.’

  There was the expected chorus of grumbles and moans. Callis strode across to Custin and peered out of the window of the Coldguard Bastion. The young guardsman was right; it was a torrential downpour. Thick spears of rain, the kind that almost hurt when they hit you. The Bastion loomed over the eastern harbour side of Excelsis, an uncompromising slab of stone littered with gun emplacements and watchtowers. The massive cannons on top of the structure had range and power enough to defend the entire bay. That was the Coldguard Regiment’s unglamorous task, while the Stormblessed, the Bronze Claws and other elite units made their forays into the wilderness alongside the Stormcasts, earning glories and battle honours.

  Callis sighed. Guard duty was all soldiers longed for while on manoeuvres outside the city walls, but give it a season or two and you had a fortress full of bored troops on your hands, all with glimmerings to spare. Patrolling and constant drills were all you had to occupy them. And, if you happened to be a young corporal with a drunken sot for a sergeant, you had to take on that extra responsibility without even being paid for the privilege.

  Callis dismissed the sour thought. Before him stretched the tumbledown roofs and alleys of Squallside, its streets lit by waterproof marrowpitch torches and the strobing flashes of the lightning storm that roared overhead. Far in the distance, rising ominously from the dark waters of the bay, was the Spear of Mallus. The vast monolith of black stone seemed to move closer with every burst of lightning, as if it were some kind of primordial behemoth striding out of the ocean to crush the city of Excelsis underfoot. Callis could glimpse the fulminating energies of the mage towers as they circled the vast rock, siphoning off the deposits of purest prophecy that ran through its augur-touched stone. A flash of lightning illuminated the Consecralium. The forbidding stronghold sat out on a promontory that reached into the surging bay, to the right of the Spear. He glimpsed its soaring, angular battlements and the colossal siege-weapons that littered its walls. The home of the Kniggets Excelsior, the White Angels. Callis felt a shiver of unease, and turned away.

  ‘A week of this storm,’ he said. ‘The last thing we need is a flood tearing its way through the Veins. They’d have to send every regiment in the city to stem the riots.’

  Custin stared at him, eyes wide with fear. ‘Mam lives there,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘She’ll be okay, won’t she?’

  Callis grinned, and cuffed the younger guardsman on the shoulder.

  ‘Of course she will, Custin. Don’t mind me. If a flood was coming the omens would have shown it by now.’

  There was something particularly miserable about an early morning patrol, even when the sky wasn’t doing its best to drown you or freeze you to death. The five soldiers squelched through the streets of Squallside towards the harbour, past slick-cobbled lanes lined with stormstone town houses and dimly lit taverns. Here, the housing was built to last. These were imposing, blue-black edifices with steep roofs of grey slate, sacrificing aesthetic appeal for rugged sturdiness. The only warmth that emanated from them was the soft orange-white glow of tallow candles and lanterns through windows and doors. Residents here were well protected from the wretched weather, and the guardsmen could hear peals of good-natured laughter from within the augur-houses, where people came to trade and consume their hard-earned glimmerings. Outside, the vicious downpour had caused the gutters to overflow, and so the dismal conditions were capped by the gruel of rotten tallow and night soil, which seeped into their boots and wafted up their nostrils. Corporal Callis consoled himself by vividly picturing the vicious murder of the absent Sergeant Ames.

  Onwards they marched, serenaded by the sound of Guardsman Happer trying to cough up his innards. Callis half considered ordering him back to the bastion, but knew that the old soldier would only bluster and complain about being mollycoddled. They passed through Squallside, and headed down the wide cart lane towards the harbour.

  Far ahead they could see the forest of masts poking out of the mist and rain before the sheer face of the Spear. A haze of light radiated from the bay, hundreds of cabin lights and lanterns coating the water in a soft golden glow. No captain was foolish enough to set sail in the middle of all this, especially not upon the treacherous waters of the Coast of Tusks. Tall, broad ironoak and redbark masts marked the great galleys of human captains, gleaming metal chimneys the strange steam-powered contraptions of duardin seadogs. Even now the wolf-ships of the sinister aelf corsairs would be prowling the lanes and edges of the gathered mass. These were sleek and predatory vessels, their hulls festooned with ivory spears and other treasures torn from the hides of the sea-devils and behemoths that plagued the Coast of Tusks. For once they were not hunting. Instead, they watched the flock with a tyrant’s eye. No captain would risk breaking the rules of Excelsis harbour with the wolf-ships at their door.

  ‘We’ll cut down Rattleshirt Lane,’ Callis said. ‘Skirt the edge of the Veins, push down towards the harbour.’

  There was an awkward pause. Eventually Guardsman Jammud spoke.

  ‘Ah… corporal?’ he muttered. ‘The sarge doesn’t like to go in there. He says there’s nothing worth protecting anyway. Just a bunch of pickpockets and knifemen. Why don’t we just stick to the trade lanes?’

  ‘That is our assigned patrol,’ Callis snapped. ‘Besides, in the narrows we’ll get some cover from this damned rain.’

  No one liked to go into the Veins if the
y could help it, least of all those who actually lived there. It had been thirty years since the last consecration, since the city borders had been expanded and her walls rebuilt. In that time, the population of Excelsis had almost doubled, with waves of refugees and fortune-seekers of all races appearing from across the realms, drawn by the promise of the city of secrets, where merchants dealt in raw prophecy and even the poorest man could witness a glimmer of his future. With no space left for housing, the city’s craftsmen had hit upon a novel solution – keep building regardless. Known as the Veins for its labyrinthine network of cramped alleyways, the poor quarter of the city stretched from the east to the western wall, a rookery of thrown-together, multi-storey shacks piled haphazardly on top of each other with no care for safety or comfort.

  ‘Watch your coinpurses and cover your throats,’ grumbled Happer, clutching his steel mace firmly in two hands.

  ‘No band of roof-runners is stupid enough to start a fight with the Coldguard,’ said Callis. ‘Now get moving. I’d like to climb into a cold, uncomfortable bed at some point in the next week or so.’

  Fortunately, the overhanging roofs did indeed provide some cover from the pouring rain, though the streets here were even filthier than the main thoroughfares. There were no drains or sewers here in the sprawl. Wary eyes peered at the guardsmen from behind broken doors and shattered windows, and hunched, pale figures scattered like mice when Custin’s lantern shone into the dark corners of the alleyways.

  ‘Through here,’ said Custin. Oddly enough, the youth seemed far more comfortable out here on the streets than he ever did amongst the soldiery of the Coldguard Bastion. ‘It’s a shortcut,’ he told Callis, grinning widely despite his soaked longcoat and drowned-rat hair. ‘It’ll take us out past Hangman’s Row.’