And then he and Grandfather Nurgle were robbed. He should have seen the body burst open with maggots and worms. It should have blackened with the proliferation of life, become a new mound for the garden. Instead, the corpse vanished, transformed into a blast of light. It shot from the ground. It cut through the clouds, and was gone.
These beings would not even die properly.
The falling night rang with the clash of blades and the shouts of combatants. Bule took down more Stormcasts, but their line remained unbroken. They tightened their ranks with each loss, and held the Rotbringers back from the temple’s foundations. The bowmen sent volleys of lightning into the rear ranks. Winged Stormcasts swooped out of the sky, their hammer bolts smashing into the flanks of the warband.
‘Break them!’ Bule shouted. ‘Loose the maggoth!’
The ground shook as, from the rear, the beast thundered forward, a huge mass of festering muscle and horns. It stamped into the Stormcasts with legs thick as tree trunks. Its arms were longer than its legs and batted the foes aside with broad claws. Its multi-forked tongue lashed out from a circular maw, grasping warriors in an armour-crushing grip. It lumbered into the line of Liberators, and broke the formation.
A Stormcast with a skull-faced helm cried out to the skies, and they answered. Lightning stabbed down at his command in a night-shattering, blinding maelstrom. The maggoth vanished, burned out of existence, and across the wide swatch of scorched earth, the Stormcasts surged forward once more, trampling Bule’s Rotbringers into the dead stone.
‘There is no retreat!’ Bule shouted. ‘There is only victory for Grandfather Nurgle!’ He wielded his axe with one hand. He spread his arms wide and grabbed two Stormcasts by the neck, yanking them from their shield formation. He used his massive bulk to immobilize them. He reached deep into the Plaguefather’s blessings. His strength was more than physical. He was disease made flesh. To see him was to sicken. To approach him was to die. He roared, and his voice was the vortex of contagion. His reach was enormous. He embraced his warband. He embraced the enemy. He grasped the length and breadth of the temple. In the ecstasy of his decay, he turned the air into a roiling mass of death.
His roar became the lead voice of a choir. It was joined by the shouts of his fellow Rotbringers, the ratcheting, coughing, gurgling cry of plague at war. The warband fought with greater ferocity. Each warrior’s own manifestations of disease blossomed, polluting the air even further. From inside the temple came the cries of the prey. The men and women who had been singing in praise now fell to coughing and spluttering. He could not reach their souls as his forces had with their earlier attack, but his grasp eroded their bodies. Skin turned slick. Lungs filled with fluid. Bones softened.
His assault hit the Stormcasts too. They shouted in defiance, but those near him weakened. They coughed. They staggered. The two he clutched sagged. When he released them, they clawed at their helms. Their movements were slowed, clumsy. One of them managed to pull his helm off. He gasped for air. His face was cratered. His tongue, swollen by layers of sores, filled his mouth. He could not breathe. Bule left him to suffocate. The prolonged death gave the Lord of Plagues the satisfaction of seeing a Stormcast rot before returning to the sky in that hateful light. He decapitated the other before wading in against the next, slamming his axe left and right, and at last he broke through the line.
The temple wall was only a few yards away, sealed and featureless. The route to his destiny was still blocked. The momentary triumph brought him no closer to his goal. A swarm of flies whined about him, calling and urging, but clarity eluded him.
In the moment of Bule’s hesitation, the leader of the Stormcasts leapt from the upper floor of the temple. His leap took him over his own men, and he fell to earth like a meteor. He broke the spine of a barbarian as he landed, causing the swollen marauder to burst open in a spray of pus. The Stormcast Eternal wielded a rune-marked blade and a hammer. He tore his way through the Rotbringers, gutting, severing heads, and chopping warriors down with a single blow. Three knights of Chaos charged him at once. The ground shook with their heavy steps. Their swollen, suppurating muscles expanded through the gaps in their spiked, filth-encrusted armour. They came in with halberds, axes and blades gripped in both hands. They swung with strength that had felled trees and infected entire cities.
Their blows never landed.
The Stormcast made a sweeping gesture. His cloak billowed as if caught in a wind of its own creation. Lightning and shadows clashed within. In a storm of gold as bright as the Lord-Celestant’s fury, a hail of spell hammers slammed into the knights. Amour exploded into fragments. The hammers pulverized limbs. They reduced torsos to jellied pulp. They punched through the skull of one knight and his body took two confused steps before the fact of its death sank in, and it collapsed.
Bule saw the tide of the battle turn again. The Stormcasts reformed their lines and moved to join their leader. They brought ruin to the Rotbringers between them. When the warriors met, their wedge would cut the warband in half.
The hammers of lighting came in volleys from above. The winged Stormcasts were besieging the Rotbringers, always beyond reach, beyond revenge.
Bule snarled. As the Stormcasts nearest him pulled back in order to create a more powerful formation, a fist to smash his forces, he started to pursue. But more of the enemy leapt from the upper floor of the temple to engage him. Three were on him. He welcomed them with rage. Let them gaze upon the three-eyed blankness of his helm. Let them see the mark of the fly, the mark of the Plaguefather.
And let them die.
He turned to drive his spiked pauldron up through a Stormcast’s gorget. The spike was as long as Bule’s forearm. The warrior choked, impaled through the throat, then up into the brain. Bule turned his gaze from the glare of the Stormcast’s dying light. He used his anger at the purifying burn to power his axe swing into the next warrior. He cut an enemy’s sword arm off at the shoulder. The third stabbed him in the gaping sore in his belly. The corruption of his organs hissed against the steel. This was no common blade. It burned him with a god’s anger, but his own god’s blessing reacted against the assault, keeping him alive on a foundation of plague. He slammed his axe into the Stormcast’s chest plate, hurling the warrior back. The sword slid out of his body. He pressed his advantage, blinded by pain, furious with determination. This battle was more than a struggle between two hosts. It was a war between gods.
Bule was willing to die for the glory of the garden. No matter the numbers of the Stormcasts, he would fight them, ripping them asunder with his bare hands if need be. If this was his final battle for Nurgle, he would make it a brutal one.
But no, not here. The conviction was too strong. The buzzing call was deafening. His duty was not to make a final stand. He must answer.
The call was not just coming from inside the temple. It was coming from below.
Bule looked beyond the Stormcast with which he wrestled to the left of the temple wall, at the polluted river. It flowed behind the temple, but part of the structure’s base extended into the water.
Flies clustered at that corner. The swarm took on a shape. There was the suggestion of robes. A hint of a hoe-shaped head with many eyes. A long, clawed hand pointed down, to where the river flowed beneath the tower.
Bule ran at the Stormcast. He wished the warrior could see his smile behind his helm. It was the smile of revelation. He collided with the Stormcast. The thunder of their impact shattered the air. The ebon-armoured knight drew his arm back and stabbed Bule again. Bule moved forward on the blade. His axe shattered the Stormcast’s mask. Corruption spread over the warrior’s face. Bule struck again, cleaving the hated visage in two. The Stormcast fell. Bule pulled the sword from his own gut. Steam rose from the blade and he hurled it into the night.
The path was clear to the river. Most of the combat had moved to Bule’s right as the Rotbringers sought to mob the Stormcasts’ w
edge.
‘Hold them!’ Bule shouted to his army. ‘Destroy their illusions!’ He pointed to a group of knights and marauders nearest to him. ‘With me,’ he cried. ‘We go below!’
He ran for the river. It was blacker than the coming night. It was the sanctuary of life’s final degradation, unspoiled by the repulsive purity of the Stormcasts. Insects and worms squirmed in their millions over its surface. Its depths promised worse. They welcomed Bule as he plunged into them, closing over his head in a foetid embrace.
The water was thick with chunks of rotting matter. Its textures washed over him as he sank. It flooded his wounds with new parasites and infections. As he fell into the dark, he discovered it was not absolute. The glow of decomposition lit his way. In the wavering strands of green, he could just make out the black mass of the temple’s foundations.
He touched bottom, Fistula and the others following a few moments later. Already his lungs were straining. He took slow, heavy steps toward the wall. His boots disturbed the muck of decay. Bones, rags and heavy putrescence floated upward, wreathing him in a nimbus of greater filth. The sounds of battle filtered down through the water in muffled echoes.
Bule neared the wall, and it was all he could do to hold his breath, to not shout in exultation. There was an archway before him. He tried to run. Destiny was open to him. The call was so intense, he thought he could hear the buzzing of the flies underwater.
And even now, he did not know what called. He did not know what answer he must give.
He entered the archway. Now the darkness was complete. He was blind, yet his steps were sure. There was only one direction now. There were no barriers.
His lungs cried out for air. His head filled with the sounds of his body: the strange beats of his pulse, the bubbling in his blood, the wet rustling of flesh disintegrating and reforming in distorted configurations. The slowness of his movements turned the expectation of triumph into agony.
Then he found steps. He mounted them, rising into a sickly green aura again. At last he broke the surface. He drew the air into his lungs. It was close, stale and thick with spores. Bule found himself on the edge of a wide dais in the middle of a domed chamber. The curved walls and the dais dripped with fungi and lichen, which were the source of the glow. They were green-black, bulbous with disease and formed a carpet thick enough to distort the lines of the masonry. At the centre of the dais stood a high archway.
A gate. Bule approached it. He stared at it while Fistula and the others gathered on the dais. Flies circled it endlessly. The call had brought him here. This was his goal. But the gate was inert. There was no passage here. The buzz of whispers was the most insistent it had ever been, but even now they were not clear. He had no answer. Revelation was withheld.
‘Why have you brought us here?’ Fistula snarled. ‘There is no way up. All we have done is ensure our defeat.’
‘Destiny has brought us here,’ Bule said. ‘This was commanded.’
‘By whom?’
Bule didn’t answer. He didn’t know. Again, he felt that paradox: the command was not Nurgle’s, but if he served the master who called, he would not be betraying the Plaguefather. He might even be pleasing Nurgle.
There was no way through the confusion except forward.
Fistula was correct, though. There were no other exits from the chamber. There was no way of moving upward into the temple and turning the tide of the battle from the interior.
Yet this was where Bule was supposed to be. He examined the growths on the archway. They looked different from the rest. They were a pure, glistening black. No glow came from them. He reached out and his hand sank deep into their moist, fleshy texture. They were not fungi. They were naked tumours. They were the material of disease itself. The pure, unfiltered gifts of Nurgle.
They were inspiration.
New strands of pestilence ate into his flesh. They turned his blood to slime. He became their master. He was a Lord of Plagues, and he commanded his vassals to multiply.
To spread.
To march.
The garden of Nurgle exploded into voracious life. The black growths of the archway infected those on the dais, remaking them. Darkness poured from the gate. It spread over the waters. It rose up the walls. The green glow fell into the devouring corruption.
So did stone.
This concentration of disease was so virulent that its hunger surpassed flesh. Whatever could be eroded fell into its jaws. Bule willed it into the mortar. He sent it gnawing into the fissures in the stone, widening them, destroying structural integrity. His soul was a thing of uncounted hungers, and he would eat the temple.
Sigmar, Brennus thought. That was the name the divine warriors called out as they fought. They were not gods, as much as they appeared to be. They served Sigmar, and how resplendent must be his glory if these beings were his servants.
‘Sigmar!’ the warriors shouted as they cut into the Rotbringers with light and sword.
‘Sigmar!’ Brennus called too, and his fellows joined him. Many could not shout. They were too weak. Brennus could barely stand, but he leaned at the edge of the ramparts and he used his bow. Heccam was further gone, but with the coming of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, he had recovered his will to fight. He slumped against the wall. He could barely draw his bow. But he fought. And he whispered, ‘Sigmar.’
Disease wracked Brennus’ body, but he had hope. He believed in the defeat of the plague. When a portion of the Rotbringers had broken off and disappeared into the river, the struggle shifted decisively in favour of the Anvils. The evil would be vanquished. The land would be purged of the foulness. So would his body.
‘Sigmar!’ he called, and drew his bow.
The roof cracked. The tower trembled.
Brennus stumbled, his arrow flying wild. He clutched at the crenellation to keep from being pitched out to the ground below. Darkness seeped up. Tendrils of multiplying growths spread over the roof like talons. Dust burst from the walls. The sounds of breaking stone became deafening. The tower shook harder. It groaned. The temple was diseased, and it was dying.
The blackness shrouded Brennus in a cloud of jagged flakes. His throat and eyes were on fire. Breathing felt like drowning.
The Anvils of the Heldenhammer remained in their positions. They unleashed their lightning on the Rotbringers. But their bolts dimmed. The darkness spread up their legs, the black of corruption seeking to cover the gleaming black of retribution.
Tendrils became talons. Talons became tentacles. They uncoiled from the tower and reached into the land. Perfect putrescence covered the battlefield. The Rotbringers rejoiced. They fell upon the Anvils with renewed fervour, propelled by the wave of unleashed plague.
‘Sigmar,’ Brennus croaked. He had found his light in the darkness. He would not release it. He would have this victory until the end.
The temple shuddered. It swayed. The blackness closed its fist completely around the tower. All that remained was for the grasp to close, and crush everything.
‘Sigmar.’ A desperate whisper against the night.
But then a great shout…
‘SIGMAR!’ The Anvils of the Heldenhammer roared at the night, and though Brennus could see nothing, he could hear a still more ferocious clash of arms.
And he knew that where the Anvils fought, the monsters could be defeated.
He was fuelled by a power far beyond his own. Bule felt the tower and the land contained in his hands. They were his to turn into the most perfect flowering. He had tended Nurgle’s Garden faithfully, and now he would make it bloom through the heart and bones of the enemy. The strength of a thousand plagues was his. He was the plague.
The dark was complete. The light was gone from the temple. His power reached its apex. And in that moment of completion, something else was accomplished.
The gate sprang to life.
The cent
re flashed. It twisted and coiled. Paths opened before him. He saw them with the myriad eyes of insects, a compound vision of choices. One choice dominated all others. It came into being with the activation of the gate. The power he held had opened the way, and now he must pass through or bring the temple down.
Behind him, the other Rotbringers were shouting victory as the walls shuddered.
‘Drop the walls!’ Fistula shouted. ‘Crush the lightning men!’
But Bule heard the call again, and it came from the other side of the gate. Archaon awaited.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Fistula demanded.
‘Archaon…’ Bule whispered. Louder, he said, ‘We pass through the gate.’
‘And leave the field again?’ Fistula was outraged.
Yes, Bule thought. They would leave. ‘Yes!’ he shouted. ‘Archaon calls!’
He stared at the path through the gate. It flickered. It led into a grey void. A cold wind blew in Bule’s face. It felt like emptiness, like the wail of the tomb. There was no garden at the end of this path. There would be nothing to cultivate. The call demanded he step away from any recognisable trace of Grandfather Nurgle’s dominion.
He made his decision. I will go, he thought.
The passage exploded with swarms of hungry flies. A welcome.
Bule looked back at Fistula and the rest of his warriors. His chosen few, he saw now, much as he had been chosen. ‘We do not abandon the field,’ he said. ‘We march to a grander one. A magnificent flowering.’
He entered the gate, abandoning the temple to its illusion of hope. Let the Stormcast Eternals triumph here. How meaningless that victory would be. How bitter it would taste for them when he returned.
Knight of Corruption Page 3
