Hammers of Sigmar

by Darius Hinks

  ‘But what can they do against that?’ I wave my staff at the vile daemons smashing into my ranks of spearmen. And yet, as I look back at Sigmar’s knights, I find myself wanting to believe. Even from here I can see that they are unlike anything I have ever seen before. They’ve battled across a world that was long thought lost and they have remained utterly defiant, still trailing their elegant pennants and shimmering with the power of the storm.

  As they enter the crater that surrounds the skull, they tear through my army, blasting them back with huge explosions but, rather than feeling enraged, I find myself replaying my conversation with Boreas. Things have to change, and we have to change them. Could he be right?

  ‘Could we really turn back Chaos?’ I say.

  I’m not addressing Giraldus but he hears me. His eyes blaze in their sunken pits. He points past the boiling mass of daemons to the brass skull. ‘If Sigmar’s army could seize this realmgate, I believe they could. I’ve heard such tales, Menuasaraz. This army is just one of many. Sigmar did not abandon the realms, he’s just been waiting for the right moment to strike.’

  We’re jolted further down the steps as my spearmen are driven back by the daemons. I look back at the blood portal and see that they’re flowing through my skeletons – tearing them apart in their desperation to advance.

  ‘Hold them!’ I cry, waving hundreds more of my spearmen up the steps. They advance in cold, fearless lines, but the steps can only handle so many of them; most of my army remains trapped around the base of the skull or spread out across the vast crater.

  Giraldus waves his sword at Boreas’ army. ‘We should help them, not fight them.’ He gestures at our combined armies. ‘We could hold the daemons here so that Sigmar’s knights can reach the skull.’

  I look up at the daemons tearing my army apart and shake my head. ‘We need to leave, Giraldus. We were fools to come.’

  ‘Where would we go?’ he demands. ‘Do you think they won’t hunt us down? Do you think you can hide in your library forever? They’ll find you, Menuasaraz. It’s only a question of when. They’ll find you, they’ll burn your precious books and then they’ll mount your head on a spike.’

  Suddenly I know this is true. I’ve tasted the bloodlust that drives these fiends – they will never stop until they have butchered every living being in the realms as a tribute to their furious lord.

  I’m about to reply when a series of red shapes slam into my coven throne, causing the spectral steeds to rear and scream.

  I howl a curse as a winged daemon hurtles towards me. I lash out with my staff and there’s a flash of phosphorous as the magic-charged wood connects.

  The daemon screeches and tumbles away from me. The attack was so fast that I only get a brief glimpse of crumpled, bat-like features and black, leathery wings.

  It loops around and dives at me again but, before it reaches the Coven Throne, Giraldus cuts it down with his greatsword. There’s another blinding flash as the daemon explodes.

  More of the furies pour out of the fumes surrounding the base of the brass skull and I raise my staff, crying out a word of summon­ing, calling my greatest warrior back from the battle, but it’s too late. The daemons are seconds away and the morghast will never make it in time.

  Giraldus comes to my aid with his knights at his side, hacking down those daemons he can, but dozens more are diving towards me.

  Suddenly a blaze of white light envelops the steps. The clouds part, unleashing great columns of lightning. They slam into the daemons, blasting them away and causing my Coven Throne to lurch and judder.

  I manage to hang on to the throne and as I do I’m blessed with an incredible vision. As I slump in my chariot, hundreds of winged warriors loop and soar down from the clouds. Their golden armour shines brighter than the dawn and there are javelins of pure energy hurtling from their hands.

  Their lightning spears erupt upon landing, engulfing the daemons in holy fire, and Giraldus cries out in delight.

  ‘We have to help them!’ he cries. Without waiting for a response, he waves his knights back up the steps. ‘Hold the daemons back!’ he cries, charging after them.

  For a moment, I can do nothing but watch the incredible scene unfolding before me. As the golden figures plummet from the heavens, blasting Khorne’s daemons into crimson dust, Giraldus and his knights lead a heroic counter-attack on the gate of blood. It’s hopeless and glorious at the same time. The daemons are pouring from the skull in such numbers that nothing could hold them back for long, but the sight of so much defiance in the face of inevitable defeat stirs something in me that I thought long dead.

  Giraldus vanishes beneath the avalanche of horrors, but I’m already raising my staff. It’s as though someone is speaking through me, someone greater than I thought I could be.

  ‘Hold them back,’ I demand, turning to face my grinning, skinless captains and their bristling ranks of spearmen. I turn the Coven Throne around and find myself leading a charge back up the steps. Daemons are now pouring down the walls of the skull in their hundreds. There is no way I can survive but, somehow, I no longer care. I can think of nothing but Boreas and his belief.

  ‘Things have to change,’ I whisper as I level my staff at the Chaos creatures and hurl my army at the face of the Blood God.

  Daemons crowd onto my chariot, but my staff is charged with more power than I have ever felt before. As I strike them down, the blows crack like thunder and their crimson flesh detonates in a series of spectacular explosions. All the while, Sigmar’s tempest is raging overhead, spewing golden knights from its thunderheads. They add their hammer-headed bolts to the carnage, ripping more of the daemons apart.

  Countless hundreds of terrible monsters sprint into my ranks of spearmen. For every skeleton they destroy, dozens more rush to fill the gaps, but there’s no end to the skull’s profane outpourings. Gradually they drive us back down the steps, ripping my army to pieces with the ferocity of their sword blows.

  Death is rushing towards me but an incredible vigour fills my limbs. As the white bolts slam down all around me, I blast daemon after daemon back from the Mortal Realms. The princes whirl around the Coven Throne, binding the daemons with death magic and hacking at them with phantom blades. They fight so heroically that none of the horrors can reach me. I look back through the inferno and see Boreas’ army hurtling across the crater towards us and my heart swells. They are going to make it. Boreas will never know it, but I have bought him the chance he sought.

  One by one the princes are devoured and, finally, I am surrounded by snarling, blood-slick daemons. They pause for a moment, sniggering at my ruined body, then they fall on me with their vicious blades. There is pain, but it is dwarfed by my pride. After all those years cheating death, my final breath is the first taste of life.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lord-Celestant Tylos Stormbound

  The morning sun blinds me as we soar higher. We’re so high I can now barely see the crater below.

  Air explodes from my lungs as we crash into a wall. The woman and I roll across marble steps and the monster spins off through the clouds, dazed by the impact.

  I glance around and see that we’ve smashed into one of the drifting fragments of the Nomad City, a vast, broken wing of white marble, the feathers of which spiral up towards a white, crumbling eagle’s neck.

  The monster soars away and I charge after it. Pain fills my head, causing me to stumble as I climb the steps. The song of the ghosts is deafening now that I am actually in the ruins. It’s as though the soul of the Nomad City is all around me. I stagger and only manage to stop a few inches from the edge of the wing. My stomach turns as I look out over a mile-high drop.

  As I back away from the edge, the bone monster dives back towards me with its sword raised.

  I draw Evora and, to my relief, the runeblade’s otherworldly song eases the agony in my head, drowning out a
little of the ghost’s pain.

  I easily dodge the monster’s blade and plunge Evora into its chest as it smashes into me.

  The sword passes cleanly through the empty ribcage and I only succeed in jamming the hilt between the bones. We roll across the marble wing, locked together as we clang and clatter towards the precipice.

  Seconds from the edge I manage to draw Evora from the monster’s chest and bring her round in a wide arc, slicing through one of the monster’s shoulder blades and hacking part of its wing off.

  The monster opens its weird, bat-like jaws and mouths a silent scream.

  I throw all my momentum into a hammer-blow, smashing Grius into its chest and sending the creature tumbling through the clouds in a rain of broken bones.

  The bone monster loops and prepares to launch another attack, but before it can, it pauses in midair, beating its wings as it looks down on me from the clouds, suddenly unwilling to attack. For a moment, it hangs there staring at me, then it banks away and dives back towards the battle below.

  I stagger to the edge of the ruins and look down across the fighting.

  ‘Now what have you done, Boreas?’ I mutter as I see what’s happening. The vast army of skeletons is no longer battling my army. They’re charging towards the skull instead, rushing to engage the crimson host that is tearing its way into the world. I can only assume this is another sign of my brother’s burgeoning power.

  As Evora’s kill-song dies away, the giant’s cries hit me with redoubled force, driving me back to my knees. The pain centres on the eye that Boreas healed, and blood is rushing from my golden mask again.

  ‘Let me help,’ says a voice.

  I lurch to my feet, readying Grius for another blow, and see Hakh’s woman rushing towards me. Her skin is pulsing with sorcery and her eyes are featureless white orbs, but, as before, I sense that she means me no harm.

  The lights in her skin fade and the colour returns to her eyes as she reaches my side and places her hands on my mask.

  She sings a few quiet words and blessed relief pours through my skull. I can still hear the ghosts’ lament, but it’s just a sound now. The horrendous pain is gone.

  ‘I’m Vourla,’ she says, looking at my scorched, dented armour. Dawn blazes across the metal, dazzling her as she tries to look at me. ‘What are you?’

  I study her in silence.

  She backs away from me, looking anxious.

  ‘You need not fear me,’ I say, sheathing Evora and holding out a hand. ‘You came to my aid. I owe you a debt.’

  She looks away, as though in pain. ‘You owe me nothing.’

  I shake my head, confused, and follow her up the steps of the stone wing.

  There’s a clatter of metal as Prosecutor Sardicus lands on the ruins. He folds his blazing wings and rushes towards us.

  I’m about to greet him when I see a shocking sight. The brass skull is now aflame with morning light, but I’m blind to anything beyond the figure rising from the open top of the cranium. A crimson horror is drawing itself up from the boiling blood. As hundreds of lesser daemons flood from the skull’s mouth, a mountain-sized nightmare is rising from its open crown. The world unravels before its unholy power. Colours and shapes tumble into each other, forming a rippling kaleidoscope.

  As the daemon, Khurnac, drags itself into the world I see black, canine flesh and vast, blood-red wings. Looking upon such perversion turns my stomach but I refuse to avert my gaze. Such virulent, blasphemous hate cannot be ignored.

  ‘I did this to you,’ says Vourla, sounding appalled.

  She’s sitting on the edge of a crumbling step, paying no attention to the daemons, but staring at me.

  ‘Why did you save me if you despise me so?’ I say, managing to shield my thoughts from the abomination forming below us.

  She shakes her head. ‘I don’t hate you. I just didn’t believe…’ Her words trail off. ‘It’s only now I see you that I understand.’ She stares at me again and her voice fills with panic. ‘I never considered that you might actually have a hope.’ She rises to her feet, shaking her head furiously. ‘I sent your storm astray. I did this to you. I still had a remnant of power in me and I saw a chance to use it before I died. I thought that you were doomed whatever happened, so why not use you before you met the same fate as all the others?’

  Rage jolts through me as I realise what she’s saying. ‘You delayed us?’ I glance at the skull. Khurnac is beginning to thrash and grow. The blood that spews from its movements forms limbs and jaws as it drops. The hordes of the Blood God are here.

  ‘I couldn’t let Hakh live,’ she replies, talking to herself rather than me. ‘Not after so much pain, so much cruelty.’

  ‘So you used me as your executioner? And delayed Sigmar’s vengeance?’

  My body is shaking with fury and I see that Sardicus is the same. I draw Evora as we walk towards the dazed woman.

  Vourla makes no attempt to flee, she just nods her head in shame, waiting for my blade.

  The runeblade lifts its voice in reply to my bloodlust. I’m hardly conscious of raising it but, as I near the priestess, I see myself reflected in her terrified eyes and pause. I look like every other monster in this pitiful ruin of a world. I look like the man I was long ago.

  ‘No.’ I lower the sword and back away. Not that. Of all the ways I could fail Sigmar, I would not become the thing he sent me to kill. I sense that this is the power of the skull at work. It’s twisting my thoughts.

  ‘I won’t harm you,’ I say, turning my back on the Crucible of Blood. ‘I’m here to save you.’

  She looks up at me, her eyes full of tears and confusion. ‘But can’t you see?’ She nods at the scene below. ‘There’s nothing to save. It’s too late.’

  Khurnac is wrenching its brimstone flesh from side to side, straining against an enormous chain that binds it to the rim around the skull’s open crown. An axe has formed in its claws – a weapon that must be thirty or forty feet long. As the daemon thrashes around it slams the axe against the walls of the skull, consumed by an immemorial fury, attempting to hack itself free. Every blow sends out a dull, tuneless clang and each one heralds the arrival of hundreds more daemons. They’re flowing from the skull in a crimson tide and pouring into the crater below. Through gaps in the clouds I see them scampering and sprinting into the ranks of skeletons. Nothing can stand against them. The undead crumble like kindling and, wherever my Stormcast Eternals are, I know that even their sigmarite shields will not stand against this. Clang after clang tolls out and the torrent becomes a storm. The writhing, ephemeral shapes become a vast wall of hate, pounding down into the crater.

  I grab my honour scrolls and recite the runes. Pain may be my flesh. Death may be my fate. But victory is my name.

  I know that Sigmar would not send me here without hope. I just need to look harder. I need to find Sigmar’s face in the darkness. I need to hear his voice. His voice… I remember the ghostly cry still circling my head and finally recognise something that has been at the edge of my consciousness since we reached the Nomad City. The dead titan is not howling in pain, but frustration. He sounds as though he is forever trapped in sight of a prize that’s just out of reach. It’s like he’s calling me to witness something.

  I look around, trying to locate the source of the cries, and my eyes settle on the white tower at the top of the stone wing – the soaring, graceful neck of marble that rises away from me into the clouds.

  Vourla’s still staring at me and follows my gaze to the tower.

  ‘It’s too late,’ she says, sounding almost angry at my persistence. ‘I’ve murdered you.’

  I place a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re no murderer.’

  She closes her eyes, holding back tears. ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘The Crucible of Blood is a gate between two worlds. It leads to the heart of Khorne’s realm. It l
eads to the birthplace of his whole empire. This skull feeds his armies. Every dawn, when Khurnac pounds that axe, he sends fresh legions. We have to–’

  My words are interrupted as Khurnac strikes the skull again, vomiting more daemons onto the already swamped skeletons. I start to imagine what must have become of my men, then crush the thought before it can take hold. I’ll grieve when the realmgate is sealed.

  ‘We have to close it,’ I say, I racing up the steps towards the tower with Vourla and Sardicus rushing after me.

  ‘Lord-Celestant!’ cries Sardicus. ‘What about the Kuriat? The Lord-Relictor has the key to the realmgate and he’s still on the far side of the crater. If he’s even alive, daemons and the dead lie between him and us.’

  I look back at him and shake my head. ‘The heart has been lost. Boreas bought our passage through the Anvil with it.’

  Sardicus falters. ‘Then we will…’ His words trail off as he considers the significance of my words.

  ‘We can no longer claim the realmgate for Sigmar.’ I lift Grius and turn it so that light plays across the sigmarite. ‘But we have one card left to play.’

  Sardicus stands proud despite the fear he must be feeling. ‘You will not go alone.’

  Words will not suffice. I grasp his hand in silence.

  He glances down at the boiling ocean of daemons where my army once stood. ‘But how will we get to the gates?’

  I turn back to the tower, sure that Sigmar is already giving me the answer. The voice of the dead titans is so loud here that I can feel it buffeting against me. The more I listen, the more sure I am that this is a message from the God-King.

  The tower is a stone shell, with no stairs and, as I step inside, I see that it’s open to the sky. Sunlight beats down on me through vast, serpentine windows, blinding me.

  I hold Grius up to block the light and, as my vision clears, I look back through the centuries into the Age of Myth.

  Overhead, one of the giant ghosts is clearly visible, frozen in the midst of a heroic dive; preserved at the moment of his death. The sunlight beats through his vaporous flesh and I can see clouds through his billowing spear, but his eyes are as fierce and vital as my own. They’re locked on something below, something on the Crucible of Blood. He’s showing me something; calling to me.