Mortarch of Night

by Various

  The grots were broken almost as the first Prosecutor fell to earth amongst them, and they were already fleeing for their weird ironclad paddle ships.

  ‘Ardboyz!’ bawled the heaviest brute in the block of Ironjawz ranks, clacking a big, clunky grabber claw, all rivets and red paint, at the second mob of black orruks. ‘I has this. Go sort out those ones with wings.’

  The second mob wheeled one hundred and eighty degrees and tramped back towards the grounded Prosecutors.

  ‘The centre holds,’ called Sagittus from somewhere nearby.

  ‘Judicators to the flanks!’ shouted another Stormcast.

  Ramus drove his boot heel into the face of an Ironjaw that was trapped under his dead boar. Cassos’ stormglaive hummed around him like an angry guardian spirit. Somewhere amidst the smoking remains and the iron clamour, Ramus could hear the orruk warchanter pounding away with his bone sticks. A vicious tempo that the orruks strove to match with their weapons.

  ‘The brutes rally to him,’ growled Cassos. ‘See how they shield him.’

  An Ironjaw rose up in front of Ramus like a wall. It was the claw-toting boss, and the brute alone occupied the width of two others. Ramus dropped his shoulder and slammed into the Ironjaw’s pectoral before he had the chance to turn his weapons on him. Air woofed out of him, but he did not yield an inch. The grabber claw champed shut inches in front of Ramus’ neck. The Lord-Relictor swayed back, whipped up his hammer and deflected the moon-shaped axe that had been scything for the crown of his helm.

  A crackling stormglaive spat across his turned shoulders. The Ironjaw bent out of reach, swatting the blade gruffly aside on the back of its claw. It was a split-second distraction and Ramus took it. His hammer dented the iron cladding the Ironjaw’s right side and drove all the brute’s weight onto his left. It gave a threatening growl and paddled its arms for balance, but had nothing free to stop Cassos punting his stormglaive into its throat and tipping it onto its back.

  Ramus knelt over the big boss and smashed the brute’s helm open with a blow from his hammer.

  ‘Sagittus!’ he roared, as Cassos moved protectively in front of him. The warchanter’s tempo had picked up, and it seemed to thump out of the bloody air. Ramus caught glimpses as the rest of the Ironjawz mob pressed forward to defend the performer. Its eyes shut, mouth open, it played through the grip of some wild, degenerate rapture. ‘Take him down, Sagittus.’

  Heavy bolts hammered into the Ironjawz but they held firm, too thickly packed for the missile fire to get through. Even the Prosecutors that had managed to retake to the skies before the black orruks’ charge had hit home found their javelins and thrown hammers blocked or knocked out of the air. And driving it all to ever greater heights of aggression and fury, was that drumming beat.

  ‘I have him, brother.’

  Vandalus swooped in behind the block of brutish heavy infantry, and there executed a barrel roll that dragged him across the rear of their formation. He unshuttered his golden lantern. Ironjawz howled as the wondrous light of Azyrheim burned across their backs, bled through cracks too slight for any boltstorm bolt or stormcall javelin to reach, and even tightly shut as they were, brought green smoke from the warchanter’s eyes.

  The orruk’s demented chant bubbled off in a rabid scream.

  Ramus saw the Ironjawz waver, enough for him to barge through the heavier orruk warriors and put the warchanter out of his torment with a hammer blow to the temple.

  That was enough for the remaining black orruks, who immediately began to break off and run after the scattered grots. The Ironjawz however, outnumbered and surrounded, fought on.

  Vandalus flung out his wings and speared upwards into the rain. The pall around him thickened. Lightning flashed. Ramus felt the hairs on his body respond to the rising charge and sparks dance along the points of his reliquary’s sigmarite halo. The Knight-Azyros slid his lantern’s aperture to its widest setting and the full force of its illumination seared the dark of the storm away. For a moment, for one divine moment, Ramus felt the eyes of the God-King upon them all.

  The throaty screams that greeted his gaze were affirming – the sudden, burning blindness of the apostate. The sky cracked open and lightning jabbed again and again into the desert floor like a chisel against a tooth, until the rain-soaked ground was cloaked in bone dust and all Ramus could see were the flashes.

  Cassos laughed as cries of ‘Sigmar!’ greeted the Azyros’ display of might.

  The cloud began to settle, thinning as it did to reveal the glitter of maroon and gold, perfect as gemstones. Two dozen Stormcast Eternals, fresh from the barracks of Sigmaron and perfect to the finest facet of their war-plate, gave voice to a thunderous cheer and charged the Ironjawz’ rear.

  Breathing heavily, Vandalus landed beside Ramus.

  ‘Difficult to win an audience when everyone’s dead.’

  Ramus smiled grimly. ‘The Astral Templars were not part of the embassy to Shyish, were they, my friend?’ With an amused snort, he pointed over the determinedly fighting Ironjawz to the scrap fortress, seemingly abandoned on its lonely, bone-top promontory. ‘A day or two of rest will serve us well. We will regroup, resupply, and recover the Betrayer’s trail. And maybe someone will show up to reclaim it.’

  The Ironjawz’ clan hall was cold. Air came in through a pair of iron-grilled fireplaces in the long side walls and ruffled the dyed skin hangings. A long feasting table filled most of the floor space, a mishmash of metals so beaten, rumpled and chewed on there was not flat space enough to set a jug.

  Ramus took it all in with a cursory sweep of his gaze. He stood with the open door behind him where it was coldest, dust circling, the big fireplaces either side, the table extending before him to a large, bloody iron throne. A hide banner covered the whole wall behind it, depicting two crudely drawn glyphs on a red background. He knew little of the orrukish languages, less of their written forms, but these he had seen everywhere.

  Great. Red.

  ‘We have searched the compound thoroughly, Lord-Relictor.’ Sagittus stepped in from outside, letting in the dull clangour of pots and pans, strung up wherever they might catch the wind. Mist clung to his grim-faced silver mask. His boltstorm crossbow hung by his side in one heavy gauntlet. ‘It is empty.’

  ‘Very good,’ Ramus murmured. In his mind he pulled those two symbols apart, turned them over, searching for the hidden complexity that was so jarringly absent.

  ‘Lord-Relictor?’

  ‘Look again.’

  ‘My lord, I assure you.’

  Ramus turned his head towards his second, the deep sockets of his skull helm boring in. ‘When I feel assured, I can guarantee that none will know of it before you.’

  The Judicator gave a stiff bow from the neck. ‘Very well, my lord. Once more.’ His boots clicked on the metal floor as he walked back outside.

  Ramus returned to his contemplation of the fluttering banner. Sagittus had not been part of the Warrior Chamber at the Bridge of Seven Sorrows and had not experienced the Reforging. He had not been given the time to reflect on the consequences of that quest’s failure. Tarsus was Sigmar’s and he had been stolen. To Ramus’ exhaustive knowledge of the histories, such a viol­ation had never befallen another Stormhost and the shame of his participation in it seared. And if he should fail to recover the Lord-Celestant now…

  The Hallowed Knights were a company of immortals. There was no precedent for the elevation of one of their number to leader.

  He touched his fingers to Skraggtuff’s skull and closed his eyes, giving himself to the cold. His lips parted in a wisp of vapour. They were numb and pinched.

  ‘Awake, Skraggtuff.’

  ‘Mmmmm,’ came the answering echo, the dull murmur of a dreamer.

  ‘How much ground has Mannfred gained on us? You are connected through the ether, Skraggtuff.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ Ramus felt the
impression of a wretched spirit, tossing and turning, eyes flickering between sleep and wakefulness. ‘Not far. Time to sleep maybe. Just for a bit.’

  Ramus withdrew his fingers with a start and opened his eyes, his perceptions suddenly, jarringly normal. He blinked a few times, licked his lips, worked his fingers to restore them to some kind of warmth, and as he did so a door clicked open at the far end of the hall where there had been none. It put a ruck into the banner that had been draped over it and blew dust in underneath. A golden gauntlet felt under the fabric, swept it up and back over the top of the thick metal door. Vandalus peered around, looking slightly lost, then turned to Ramus and pointed to the ceiling.

  ‘I came in from the roof. Don’t be too harsh on Sagittus, it was bolted from this side.’

  ‘Did you–’

  ‘No,’ Vandalus sighed. ‘I did find a grot hiding back here, but I suspect it was his duty to open the door for whoever sat in that throne.’ He pointed to it and gave a dead-eyed smile. ‘Orruk bosses prefer high spots. It shows everyone else how important they are, and lets them see everything that’s theirs.’

  ‘See how far?’

  ‘The dust covers everything. Not far.’

  ‘Show me.’

  White, as deep as the eye could show. The one thing from his experience that Ramus could compare it to was being trapped in mist. It looked like mist, superficially perhaps, but to stand within it was to know what deceptive devils appearances could be. It was bone dry and bitingly cold. The wind hissed. Bone shards tinked against his armour and further out where he could not see, all around, the chitter of bone whispering across bone was constant. If the dead were to converse away from the ears of the living, then Ramus knew by the chill in his soul that this was how it would sound.

  He moved to the spiked, metal rampart, set his gauntlets on the sharpened edge, and peered down. White. All the way. He could not even see the spiral stair any more.

  The wind moaned against his helm’s frozen sides. Sound moved strangely in the Sea of Bones. It hung in the air, making it seem sometimes more like being under water than on a desert. The dull mutterings he heard could have been an army passing under his nose, a lone beast trumpeting a thousand leagues away, or even the tectonic wars of the Junkar, far, far behind them.

  Something on the rampart beside him blew its nose and he turned his scowl upon it. He had reasonably assumed that ‘found a grot’ meant ‘killed a grot’ but now the wretch was looking up at him with wide wet eyes, ears flat back against its head, Ramus had to concede that the mood was not exactly on him either.

  Gorkamorka had once been part of Sigmar’s great pantheon, he reasoned. It was belligerence, rather than fundamental theistic differences, that set the two powers at odds.

  ‘We are looking for the Great Red,’ he said, speaking firmly. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘’s not here,’ the grot squeaked.

  ‘I see that. I asked where he was.’

  ‘Gone.’ The grot swallowed, the big lump in its throat bobbing up and down. ‘Gone to fight at the thunder door.’

  The scrawny greenskin nodded vigorously.

  ‘Why?’ asked Ramus.

  ‘To fight.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To be first over the Bone Sea. Think of the fame. Even the old Junkar never did that.’

  Ramus turned to Vandalus, over by the door onto the stairwell.

  ‘The desert nomads that greeted us on our first arrival believed the Sea of Bones went on to the edge of the world. In Cartha’s libraries, we found texts describing distant lands, so far across the lifeless plain that even the Age of Chaos had yet to reach them.’

  Ramus snorted. ‘Stories told to give hope to children.’

  ‘’s true,’ piped the grot. ‘And the Great Red was all about to head off too. Had his boats loaded and everything, before the dead one snuck in and took his thunder gate.’

  Ramus’ jaw clenched. His chest had gone suddenly cold.

  Mannfred.

  ‘He means the Celestial Realmgate,’ said Vandalus, moving across.

  ‘There’s another fort there,’ said the grot quickly, warming to its theme. ‘’s very important. The Great was gonna use it to bring in stuff and store it. ’s a long way over the Bone Sea.’

  ‘Tell me about the dead one,’ Ramus demanded, dropping down beside the grot and eliciting a terrified squawk. ‘Tell me everything you know about Mannfred.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Vandalus, turning to the deep white view and cocking a gold-helmeted ear. ‘Do you hear that?’

  Ramus gave an irritated wave, but as soon as he did it he realised that the distant susurrus had changed. It was no longer so distant, for one. Drums. It was scores and scores of big, deep drums. The cracked chant of guttural voices. The tramp of armoured feet.

  ‘Clear the skies,’ said Vandalus urgently. ‘As you did before.’

  Though he ached body and soul from his efforts in the battle, Ramus raised his reliquary and gave voice to a doleful prayer. The wind picked up and the dust pall began to thin, the sky so cleared blackening and producing a rumble of distant thunder.

  ‘There!’ Vandalus shouted.

  Wearily, Ramus looked in the direction the Knight-Azyros pointed. The stamp and clank of massed ranks rolled in from the desert plain towards the scrap fort. Several score of the damnable warchanters cavorted ahead of armoured columns, each a thousand strong, beating out a marching rhythm that held little in common with their neighbours’ to create a raucous banging. Steaming between the formations, vast ironclad paddleboats, top heavy with crowded siege decks and bristling with artillery, chugged through the sand. Energy coursed through them and occasionally arced off. Ramus could see one of the strange Ironjaw shamans enthroned on the main deck of each monstrous vessel. He could sense their power, swollen to near god-like proportions by the weight and vibrancy of their greenskin kith around them, and somehow understood that these vessels served equally as troop transports, shock weapons, and amplifiers to ward off the grindworms.

  The Great Red had planned his warclan’s migration well.

  Searching the marching files, Ramus saw him at last.

  ‘There he is. The Great Red.’

  A dark shape, a knot of ill-defined aggression, hung over the front ranks, mounted on a lumpen monstrosity of a creature that beat furiously at the surrounding air as though to physically subdue it with its small but muscular wings.

  Ramus was aware of Sagittus shouting from under the iron floor beneath him, Judicators charging for the walls and priming crossbows.

  ‘So many,’ Ramus muttered.

  ‘Too late to worry about that now,’ Vandalus snapped. ‘You wanted to impress the Great Red and I’d wager that’s him right there. Impress him. Be strong, show no fear, and if he doesn’t kill us both then maybe he’ll be intrigued enough to hear your piece.’

  Nodding his understanding, Ramus turned back and channelled his voice into the storm. ‘I am Ramus of the Hallowed Knights, orruk, and I have been waiting for you. Come to me, and let us settle this as equals.’

  He strained to catch the Great Red’s reaction as the wind failed and cloaked the space between them in dust. The last thing Ramus saw was the Ironjaw’s beast pulling ahead of his army and striving for height.

  ‘A maw-krusha,’ said Vandalus. ‘I saw one in the Carthic Oldwoods once. The native ogors used to leave living prey in the forest to keep the monster from their tribes.’

  Ramus caught the grot staring at him in open-mouthed, wide-eyed, and flat-eared horror. He grunted and turned to Vandalus. ‘Will he come?’

  ‘He will. No orruk would let a challenge like that go unan–’

  The Azyros looked sharply up. Ramus heard it at the same time. It sounded like–

  ‘Waaaaaaggh!’

  Ramus pushed himself back against the spiked battlemen
t as an armour-plated boulder smashed into the centre of the rampart.

  The structure tilted sharply and squealed. Ramus clung grimly onto the rampart spike with one hand, arm hooked behind it and grinding on the metal. He saw the grot tumble past him, smack once against the wall, again on the skeletal structure, coming apart like a ball of yarn and disappearing into the pall.

  Unconcerned by the swaying tower and the alarmed clangour of chimes and bells, the maw-krusha unfolded arms and legs and rose up onto knuckles the size of Ramus’ fists. Forelimbs covered in hard scales, some of them carrying faded red paint, opened out like a pair of shield walls to reveal a head that was almost all mouth. A massive underbite, made even more pronounced by a muzzle of huge prosthetic fangs, chomped up over its small red eyes.

  Stooped under a mass of wargear with ironclad thighs around the monster’s neck and toes scraping the ground, was the largest greenskin Ramus had ever seen.

  He had had cause to say that many times over the past months, but he doubted he would ever have another. The brute was gigantic, clad in thick armour daubed half and half in red paint and black, with massive, clawed gauntlets and spiky boots, dull red with old blood. Only its head was exposed, the black and red pattern reversed with a slash of red paint over its brutalised, dark hide. One eye was nailed shut with an iron plate, a wandering green eye crudely drawn over it. The megaboss grinned down at the Stormcast, a slow, ape-like drawing in of muscles to reveal a mouth full of sharp, oversized metal teeth, bloody where they must have bitten into the roof of its own mouth.

  If Ramus and Vandalus had stood together and been clad in a single piece of armour, they could not have been as large.

  ‘I’m da Great Red,’ the megaboss bellowed, voice so deep it seemed to come up out of the ground. The beast snorted and dragged its knuckles over the floor in an agonising screech. The Ironjaw glared at Ramus with his one eye, then twisted to mark Vandalus with a squeal of metal plates. He turned back to Ramus. ‘Kill my boyz, take my stuff, you fink you’re big enough to take Korruk da Great Red?’ He dropped his heavy jaw and roared with laughter.