by Various
‘Not when there’s easier prey about,’ Mannfred said. He peered out into the storm. ‘They will glut themselves on the enemy and perish in the storm, or the sun that comes after. And even if they do not, we will be gone by the time they return. We must go. Now.’
Tarsus shook his head. ‘We will stay until the storm has passed. The people here are under our protection and they will not survive either the storm or those beasts should they return looking for easier prey.’
Mannfred looked as if he wanted to argue, but said nothing. He swept his cloak about him and stalked back down the corridor, leaving Tarsus and the other Stormcasts in silence.
It took a night and a day for the storm to die down. All signs of battle in the courtyard had been buried beneath the sand and dust. The seventy-seven Restful Brothers had not come back, either in one form or another, for which Tarsus was grateful. As the weak sun faded to dusk, the Stormcasts readied themselves to depart.
‘What will you do now?’ Tarsus asked, as he stood on the steps of the temple. His Stormhost was already on the march, heading west towards the mountains.
Aisha shrugged. ‘We came to serve the brethren for as long as they require, until they go back to their contemplations. And so we shall, when they return.’
‘If they return,’ Tarsus said.
‘They always do,’ Aisha replied, with a sad smile. ‘It is our duty to care for them, as best we can, so long as they allow. The dead hold their honour sacred.’
‘Can the living do any less?’ Tarsus asked. He extended his hand. Hesitantly, Aisha took it, clasping his forearm. ‘Much is demanded, of those to whom much is given,’ he said. ‘That is our saying, but I think it holds true for you as well, Aisha of Morrsend. Hold fast to your duty, and may Sigmar hear your prayers when the song of swords is begun.’
‘May a good death be yours, Tarsus of the Hallowed Knights,’ Aisha said. She released her hand and turned to rejoin her people, hammer across her shoulder.
‘So worthy,’ Mannfred said. ‘Such devotion, such dedication, to creatures who deserve neither.’ He spoke absently, as if thinking of something else entirely.
Tarsus examined the vampire where he sat atop his monstrous steed, casually stripping the flesh from a bloodreaver’s severed head. Mannfred had one leg thrown over Ashigaroth’s neck and was leaning back in his saddle, the very image of insouciance. It was a good performance, but the Stormcast could see the tension beneath the mask. Mannfred was eager to be away. Tarsus decided to take that as a good sign. He strode towards the vampire.
‘I did not thank you earlier.’
Mannfred did not look up from the bloody skull he’d been idly carving crooked sigils into, but he said, ‘Nor did you have to. I owe you a debt, Stormcast. We travel the same road and for the moment, our causes align.’
‘And what is your cause, Mannfred?’ Tarsus said. ‘You never said why you were in the temple. What were you looking for?’
Mannfred looked at him. ‘A sign, my friend. A sign that I am on the right path.’
‘And did you find it?’ Tarsus asked.
‘Yes,’ Mannfred said. He kicked Ashigaroth’s flanks, and the beast rose to its feet. ‘Yes, I believe I did,’ he called down, as the dread abyssal flung itself into the sky.
Tarsus watched the vampire swoop over the heads of his Stormcast, Gerot’s words echoing in his head. The dead, like the living, come in many shades, he thought. And that one bears watching…
The Lords of Helstone
Josh Reynolds
Nagash has risen.
The ur-death stirs and the worlds tremble. That is as it should be, and yet… there are things I cannot see. All souls belong to me. All the dead of all the worlds above and below are mine. Nagash has risen and all must pay fealty.
But some do not. Some flee to realms I can but dimly perceive, the how or why of their leaving a mystery even to me. They are snatched from me, as a thief might pilfer coins. Who has taken them? Who denies me my rightful bounty?
WHO?
Whoever they are, they are my enemy and they shall know my wrath.
Though I have grown weak and weary, though my body slumps on its basalt throne, its hollows and crevices filled not with strength but with worms and spiders, they shall know my wrath. The enemy draws near. The Starless Gates are blistered by the heat of war, as the servants of the mad gods hurl themselves against my defences in an unceasing assault.
Their champions call for me to show myself. They mock me. They think me nothing but a memory, an old ghost, forgotten and fallen. Nagash is dead, they say. The Great Necromancer is bones and dust and nothing more.
But Nagash endures.
A grave wind gathers in the dark as my loyal Mortarchs gather and my servants heed my call. Soon, I must stride forth and break the bones of those who would stand against me. I shall crack their limbs and sew up their skins, filling them with mouldering air so that their wails echo forevermore.
Nagash has risen.
I shall not be denied. Not by those who face me openly, or by thieves who come in the night. Nagash shall cast down the citadels of his enemies and make of them habitation for night-birds and hoofed things.
But first, I must seek out my secret foes, those who sicken me and steal the strength from my limbs. For I have seen them, at a distance, their souls glowing with lightning and power. My power, stolen from me by an old enemy. I am betrayed by the storm, and his laughter is in every peal of thunder and flash of lightning.
The dead are mine and they must learn their place.
I shall hunt them in the Vale of Sorrows and across the Blood Plain. I shall peer through the eyes of carrion birds, and through the hollow sockets of fleshless horrors. I shall hunt them, these thieves, for they hold the key to my weakness.
They know what I must know.
And so I shall run them to ground. I shall tear their secrets from them.
Nagash will not be denied.
Nagash must not be denied.
NAGASH SHALL NOT BE DENIED.
Tarsus slammed his shoulder into the beastman’s stomach and flipped the goat-headed creature over his back. As it tried to scramble to its feet, he twisted about and crushed its skull with a blow from his hammer before whirling back around and opening the throat of a second gor with the tip of his sword.
‘Come then,’ he shouted, clashing his weapons together. ‘Come and meet the storm.’
Beastmen spilled out of the overgrown ruins all about him, scrambling through once-majestic archways and the fire-gutted structures that made up the gateway to the mountain city of Helstone. They had sprung their ambush with characteristic ferocity, but the brighter creatures were beginning to realise that they had caught more than they had bargained for. A foamy-jawed bestigor, clad in rusty armour, hacked at him with a two-handed axe. Tarsus avoided the blow and thrust his sword through the beastman’s chest, killing it instantly. He wrenched his blade free.
‘Smash them, sons of Sigmar,’ he roared. ‘Drive them back – let no Chaos-touched beast bar your path!’ All around him, the retinues of his silver-clad Stormhost surged forward, slamming into the enemy with a sound like thunder. Their heavy shields, upon which the sigil of Sigmar was emblazoned, were thrust out to absorb the blows of axes and clubs. Hammers wreathed in crackling lightning rose and fell, pummelling the foe to the ground.
Tarsus kicked a beastman back against a broken pillar and pulped its skull as it staggered. Though the Lord-Celestant had been forged anew in Sigmar’s realm, the man he had been was born here, in the Realm of Death. And now, here I am, fighting the enemies of Sigmar in these lands once more, he thought, as he drove his war-helm into the face of a beastman and knocked it sprawling. Before it could stand, he drove his sword through its chest, killing it. Lands that might once have been mine, he thought, as he jerked his sword free.
He spun as
he heard the scrape of steel on stone behind him, and swept his sword out. He pulled his blow up short as he saw the black and golden creature crouched atop the crumbled wall behind him. It screeched and he stepped back warily as it snapped its heavy jaws shut on a dead beastman’s head. Bone crunched and popped as the bat-like jaws drew forth a squealing wisp. As Ashigaroth swallowed the wretched scrap which passed for the beastman’s soul, its master laughed.
Mannfred von Carstein leaned forward in his saddle. ‘I did warn you not to make so much noise, my friend,’ he said. ‘One would think you Stormcasts wanted to call the enemy down upon you.’
‘It’s easier to kill them if we don’t have to look for them,’ Tarsus said as he parried a blow from an axe and gutted its wielder. ‘In any event, they were in our way.’
Momentarily free of the press of combat, he scanned the battlefield. Vaulted archways, broken by calamity and age, rose above the overgrown paving stones of the enormous courtyard. Tumbledown walls marked where guardhouses and the inner keep of the great gatehouse had once stood, before it had fallen to ruin. Yellowing vines and a brittle brown moss clung to almost every flat surface.
‘Is this all that is left?’ he muttered. ‘Are these shattered ruins all that remains of Helstone?’
‘Of the city that was? Yes,’ Mannfred said. He gestured, and cold black flames wreathed his fingers. All around Tarsus, the newly dead began to twitch, like sleepers waking from a nightmare.
‘Stop,’ Tarsus said. ‘There is no need for that.’
Mannfred looked at him and sneered, but he lowered his hand, snuffing the flames as he did so.
‘What did you mean, “the city that was”? Is there another?’ the Lord-Celestant asked.
‘Of sorts,’ Mannfred said. ‘The city once sprawled wild across this very slope which overlooks the acrid waters of the Bitter Sea. Its towers once stretched into the very clouds themselves.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Now, they stretch to the very depths…’
Before Tarsus could press him further, he heard the winding of hunting horns. The Chaos pack was in retreat. The beastmen had chosen the site for their ambush well, but they had not been prepared for the speed with which the Stormcasts had reacted. Now, all save a determined handful were vanishing into the ruins, leaving the dead and wounded behind. The handful in question, a pack of armoured bestigors, continued to hack and smash at the shields of the Liberators.
‘Allow me,’ Mannfred began, raising his hand.
‘No need,’ Tarsus said, and barked an order. The Liberators began to fall back, drawing the bestigors after them. ‘Ramus, finish this,’ he said, glancing at his Lord-Relictor, who was standing on a broken plinth, surrounded by his Paladins and the shattered bodies of beastmen. As Tarsus spoke, Ramus raised his staff and murmured a sonorous prayer. He thrust the staff forward as the blue light about it grew almost unbearably bright. In a voice like thunder, Ramus uttered one word.
‘Burn.’
Lightning zigzagged down through the shattered roof above, arcing along the crude iron weapons and armour of the bestigors and burning them to ash and bone. Ramus wrenched his staff aside like a man pulling a rope taut and the burning beastmen came apart in clouds of charred flesh and scorched metal, which spattered the shields of the Stormcasts. He turned back to face Tarsus and inclined his head.
‘The rest flee, Lord-Celestant,’ he said, stepping off the plinth and striding towards his commander. ‘The beastkin have little stomach for real battle.’
‘They will return,’ Mannfred said, cleaning his sword with a scrap of cloth. The vampire sheathed his blade with a flourish. ‘There are thousands of them and worse things besides, roaming the ruins, warring on each other. We must hurry and descend into the depths before their courage returns.’
‘The depths? Have you led us to one of the Nine Gates at last then, vampire?’ Ramus growled. ‘Have you finally made good on your debt to us?’
‘If I recall rightly, I owe you nothing, Stormcast,’ Mannfred said looking down at the Lord-Relictor. ‘Tarsus freed me, and I repaid him by saving your life.’
‘No, Ramus – this is not the way to Stygxx,’ Tarsus said. Ramus looked at him, as did Mannfred. Tarsus shook his head. ‘I am not so much a fool as that, Mannfred. You were far too evasive when you guided us here. What was it you said, in Sepulchre? Our paths run together, but they are not the same. There is no way into the underworld here, is there?’
Mannfred was silent for a moment. Then he looked away.
‘No,’ he said, patting Ashigaroth’s neck. ‘No, there is no gate to Stygxx here that I know of.’
‘I thought not,’ Tarsus said. ‘Yet you brought us here for a reason – what is it?’
Mannfred did not turn as he spoke, instead keeping his gaze on the city, which spread out below them. ‘Coming here was a necessity, I assure you. There is something here which we must acquire, before we can continue on our journey.’
‘What is it?’ Tarsus asked. He stepped in front of Mannfred’s steed and looked up at the vampire. Ashigaroth stirred, but Mannfred calmed the beast.
‘Speak, vampire,’ Tarsus said calmly, giving no sign that he had noticed the dread abyssal’s restlessness. ‘You owe me that much at least, by your own admission.’
‘The Fang of Kadon,’ Mannfred said, after a moment. ‘An artefact which can point the way to the Nine Gates. The gates are born anew every nine months, and they grow and age and die in the same span, crumbling to dust before appearing elsewhere. An endless cycle of death and rebirth. That is why the Dark Gods have yet to find Nagash, for none can predict where and when the Nine Gates will open. But with the Fang…’
‘How did such a potent item come to be lost?’
Mannfred laughed. ‘It was forgotten by the Mortarchs as they carried the broken remains of Nagash into the underworld. Left behind in the care of Uzun, sage of the Sorrowful Order, who made his way from the Vale of Sorrows to Sepulchre, and thence to Helstone…’
‘Why this place?’ Tarsus asked. Uzun, he thought, the name plucking some chord deep within him. He pushed the thought aside, trying to focus on what Mannfred had said. The Vale of Sorrows was where they had discovered the vampire, and Sepulchre… They had just left the ruins of Sepulchre, only a few days before.
‘Helstone was a place of resistance, in those fear-fraught final days,’ Mannfred said softly. He turned away, gazing out over the ruins, his narrow features taut. ‘Where those who could stood for those who could not. As the legions of the dead crumbled beneath the storm, the living held firm. The fortress-state of Helstone was a bastion against the assaults of Chaos, and it was here, in the days after Nagash was cast down, that the full might of the Dark Gods fell.’
He looked down at Tarsus. ‘Uzun brought the Fang here, it is said, so that the people of Helstone might flee to the underworld and seek sanctuary in the halls of the Amethyst Princes.’ He grinned mirthlessly. ‘Alas, it was not to be. Nagash alone knew the secret of its use. Nagash… and one other.’
‘You,’ Tarsus said. Mannfred inclined his head.
‘We cannot trust him,’ Ramus said. ‘He has deceived us, Tarsus. We should have left him where we found him.’
Mannfred laughed. ‘And if you had, you would still be wandering aimlessly, looking for something you had no hope of finding.’ He looked at Tarsus. ‘Tarsus, my friend… I swear, on my very blood and bone, that I am not lying. We need the Fang, else we could search for an eternity without finding that which we seek.’
Tarsus paused, examining the vampire’s face for any sign of deception. ‘Why not simply tell us what you intended?’
‘Would you have trusted me?’ Mannfred looked at Ramus as he spoke, and Tarsus could feel the anger radiating off the Lord-Relictor. A seaborne wind hissed through the ruins, bringing with it the far-off wail of war-horns. Mannfred was correct – the beastmen were returning, and in streng
th.
‘Enough,’ Tarsus said, before Ramus could speak. ‘This place is vast, and, by your own admission, full of enemies. How will we find this artefact of yours?’
‘Simple. We shall ask the lords of Helstone.’
‘They yet live?’ Tarsus asked. At the thought, something awoke within him. A flare of heat, as if he had been in darkness and was suddenly standing in the sunlight. Mannfred looked down at him, his expression puzzled, but he nodded.
‘Yes. They live. In the depths below.’
‘Take us to them,’ Tarsus said.
Mannfred wordlessly kicked Ashigaroth into motion. Tarsus raised his hammer. His Stormcasts fell into formation smoothly with an instinctive discipline. They marched as one, Tarsus and Ramus taking the lead. Prosecutors, led by Zarus, swooped out over the ruins ahead of the column, assessing the lay of the city.
More than once, Zarus or one of his retinue brought word of beastmen lurking nearby in the ruins. But no further attacks came. The beastkin were not ones for strategy. They knew only one way, and that way served them badly when they faced a foe that was prepared for them. Badly enough, perhaps, that they were reluctant to try again. Even so, Tarsus remained alert, for the sound of horns never faded entirely.
He was not alone in being tense.
‘I do not trust him, Tarsus,’ Ramus said, as they followed Mannfred. ‘He leads us to one ruin after the next, as if we were the servants, and he the master. I would teach him the error of his ways…’
‘I have no doubt that you would, my friend,’ Tarsus said. ‘And in truth, my faith in his intentions wanes by the day. But… we are close, Ramus. I can feel it. We are on the cusp of… something. The end of our mission. Mannfred, despite his deceptions, can lead us to Nagash. And if he says we must find some artefact to win an audience with the Great Necromancer, then we will do so. I will not fail. We will not fail. We will do what we must, even if it costs all of us our lives. We can do no less, and still call ourselves Stormcasts.’
