by Various
It was a skeleton, the mountain-sized remains of a Titan of the Age of Myth, and cold proof, were it needed, that Mannfred von Carstein could never be allowed to possess the Sea of Bones. The skull was buried under a massive dune, vertebrae arching high up into the dusty sky where a scrap heap of rust-brown walls, towers and metal gangways vied for height and space. Ribs that had been weathered smooth by aeons of wind curled beneath it like a dead spider’s legs. Sand devils whipped and swirled around the half-buried bones. Partially sheltered under the gargantuan cavity, a fleet of ironclad war-junks – ships of all things – creaked and listed and banged together.
Vandalus had told him that orruks liked to build high, that the size and towering nature of a boss’ stronghold spoke directly to his status. The Ironjawz seemed even more itinerant and warlike than the orruks of Ramus’ experience, but they were every bit as territorial. Whatever warboss ruled from this structure was surely very high indeed.
Perhaps even the legendary Great Red himself.
Green shapes cavorted over the distant walls, jeering. The scrap fort’s windswept turrets clattered and clanged with gongs, cymbals and pans.
‘Rank up, shields ready, weapons high, Prosecutors in formation,’ Ramus barked.
He looked left, seeing the two lines of Hallowed Knights, mixed Paladins front, Judicators back, glittering silver and blue, as straight as statues in the wind. To his right were the Liberators of the Astral Templars, their battered maroon and gold decked out in eclectic war paint and charms that wagged about them like animals’ tails. Above, Astral Templars Prosecutors hung in the sky like baubles of light. The harsh wind tugged at their fur cloaks and the strips of scripture stuck to their war-plate. It had even managed to tease some of the hair from under their sealed helms and whipped it giddily about them as though triumphant at what it had done. They had been beaten hard, but they were all the more magnificent for it. By Sigmar, they stood yet.
‘Let them see what the strength of the finest two chambers in Sigmar’s host looks like. Who shines with his light?’
‘Only the faithful!’ shouted the Hallowed Knights, and even a handful of the Astral Templars, gamely attempting to out-shout their brothers-in-arms.
Bursting with pride in them all, Ramus returned his attention to the fort.
‘Three of its sides overhang the monster’s ribs,’ observed Vandalus, pointing them out. ‘An aerial assault on that quarter would almost certainly find the orruks’ defences unprepared.’
‘You have not the numbers to carry out such an attack,’ Ramus returned.
Vandalus clapped his shoulder. ‘Which is why I’ll need my brother to relieve me.’
Ramus shifted his gaze to the gate. According to millennia of military theory, it should have been the weakest point. The Ironjawz were clearly unfamiliar with this theory. Their gate was a lump of iron that, at first glance, actually looked fractionally too large for the frame it had been wedged into. It would take a monstrous application of force simply to get it open, much less to knock it down.
The approach to the gate however was the first, and arguably greater, obstacle. An uncertain-looking stairway of iron planks, not all of them flat, zig-zagged up the titan’s spine towards the fortress. It was presumably stable enough to bear the tremendous weight of an Ironjaw but it was a challenging path, and every second that the Stormcasts’ attention was on not falling to the desert floor was a second in which the wall’s defenders would be showering them with missiles.
‘Restrain yourself, Azyros. We do not need to take their position outright, just impress upon their leader our strength as allies.’
Vandalus waved a clenched gauntlet in the direction of the fort. ‘What did you think I was proposing?’
‘But first,’ muttered Ramus. ‘To get their attention.’
Ramus raised his reliquary and muttered a grim prayer. The sky began to bruise, deeper, blacker, and a sudden wind blew against Ramus’ back and swept the dust off it to leave the smell of thunder and fresh rain. Sheet lightning flashed. The thunderhead folded and churned, the wind whipped into a howling cyclone with Ramus the eye of the storm.
‘I am Ramus of the Shadowed Soul,’ he roared. The wind stole his voice from his mouth, but it rumbled from the black clouds like the anger of the storm itself. Rain lashed the scrap fort, deadening the chaotic clangour. ‘I am Lord-Relictor of the Hallowed Knights, the Fourth-Forged of Sigmar’s Eternal Host. I seek embassy with your leader. The one that calls himself the Great Red.’
‘That should do it,’ Vandalus yelled.
Thunder rolled, unappeased, and the rain picked up. Ramus saw several of the Astral Templars turning their faces towards it, letting the water rinse the dust from their faceplates. The Hallowed Knights stood still, statues come rain or storm. From the fortress however, something moved.
A horn was blasted, a set of deep drums enthusiastically pounded, and in a tooth-aching squeal of metal along bone, the scrap fort’s great gate began to grind open.
As Ramus watched, a huge orruk in garb garish enough to be seen even through the downpour danced through the opening gate. It was clad in a spiked and heavily decorated half-plate of mismatched iron scraps and painted bone that clapped as it dropped, leapt and spun down the stairway. It was unarmed in the conventional sense, but carried a club-like length of bone in each hand, using them to slap its thighs, its wrists, its iron garb and each other, in a frantic, strangely thrilling rhythm.
A mob of black-skinned orruks in conventionally wrought heavy armour, full helms and shields stomped out behind the weird warchanter.
Following them with a swagger came the true Ironjawz themselves. Ironclad behemoths, each one clanked inside a personal battle-frame that made the black-skinned orruks look like whelps, wrapped for their own safety in foil. They nodded metal-encased heads to the warchanter’s rhythm, bashed axes, maces and articulated fist-claws to the beat.
‘I’d say they weren’t impressed,’ shouted Vandalus, wings shrieking into energetic life as he lifted himself off the ground.
‘Lines of battle,’ Ramus snapped.
The Astral Templars clumped forwards and locked shields. His own Exemplar Chamber bore no shields – wielding instead a deadly blend of two-handed thunderaxes, stormstrike glaives and lightning hammers – and simply took a forwards step to maintain a perfect line with their more eager Astral Templar counterparts.
As they positioned themselves, the first of the greenskins reached the rain-packed desert floor. There they spread themselves into battle lines that mirrored those of the Stormcasts, except for being half again as long and several ranks deep. Ramus estimated that they were outnumbered at least three to one. The big Ironjawz brutes held the centre, flanked by disciplined detachments of the sober black orruks. On the left flank, opposing the Astral Templars, was a vast and unruly mob of grots, armed with anything that was going and cursing shrilly across the rain-driven gulf. On the opposite flank, two full ranks of boar cavalry drew themselves into a roughly unified mob and snorted impatiently for the signal to go.
‘No flyers,’ Ramus muttered, choosing to focus on that advantage, however small.
The Protector, Cassos, scoffed at his Lord-Relictor’s attempted optimism. He was the last of that particular calling left. Ramus had never seen a man more adamant in avoiding his return to Sigmar’s keep.
Ramus thrust his reliquary above his head and looked down the line. ‘Who fights with Sigmar by his side?’
‘Only the faithful!’ sang the Hallowed Knights.
‘Who will be victorious?’
‘Only the faithful!’
The warchanter took the last few steps in a leap and began to flap about in the sand, hunched over as he danced up and down the greenskin line, sticks a blur, huffing and grunting in a singsong growl. Faster, louder. The orruk sank to his knees in front of the Ironjawz brutes in an ecstatic crescendo, b
one sticks drumming on his thighs. The rain lashed his upturned face as he roared, and the entire greenskin line erupted with him.
First to break forwards were the brutes, then the black orruks. The boar cavalry, for all their impatience, got themselves together last but quickly pulled ahead as the vicious beasts thundered into a gallop. Only the grots held back, loosing a volley of arrows that sucked wet sand well shy of the Astral Templars.
‘Hold,’ Ramus muttered, conscious of the Astral Templars edging forwards, then turned to glance over his left pauldron. ‘Judicators, loose.’
A rattling volley of sigmarite-tipped war-bolts fizzed towards their distant targets, arcing up, up into the rain, and droning down, their accuracy and potency far superior to the missiles fired by their greenskin counterparts. The bolts fell amongst the boar cavalry, thunking into heavy armour. One boar-beast slammed to the ground with a foot-long bolt in its shoulder and crushed its rider. The beast behind barged it out of the way on its tusks without slowing down. The rest rode on, armour bristling with shafts and crackling with Azyrite power.
‘Again. Loose.’
Another volley shot across the distance. This time there was no need to correct their aim for range. The boar cavalry were a wall of scrap iron and bludgeoning power. The ground shook. Another Ironjaw rider took an impaling hit in the belly, grunted, but did not fall. To the right, an Astral Templar in shining bright maroon and gold, called only recently from Sigmaron to Vandalus’ beacon, aimed high, and drew back on his enormous shockbolt bow. There was a rush of charged air as the giant arrow twanged from the bowstring. It looped over the running black-skinned orruks, fizzing like a firework, and exploded amongst the grots in a storm of lightning.
The boars picked up speed. Wet sand flew from thundering, iron-shod trotters. They were now just moments away – close enough for Ramus to see the red of their slathering mouths. Grasping his reliquary, Ramus closed his eyes. He could hear their grunting breaths, feel the shaking of the ground, but he set it aside to focus his senses on the rampant energies of the divine storm that raged around him. It was untouched, as wild as Azyr’s Eternal Winterlands.
‘There is no shaman here,’ he muttered as he opened his eyes.
‘That will level the field,’ said Cassos.
‘Yes, it will.’
Feeling his power rise to fill him, Ramus lifted his reliquary. He felt its unsubtle pull, as though it would lift him from the ground and make him as one with the broiling storm clouds if he did not fight to control it.
‘Sigmar, lord of lightning!’ he roared. ‘Bare their flesh to Azyr’s fire.’
He blasted a lightning bolt into the onrushing cavalry, reducing orruks to ash and turning their brutish mounts into running meat. Teeth bared, he unleashed his power again and again until his body glowed. Lightning blitzed the terrified beasts, bolt after searing bolt, until armour bubbled over scorched flesh, and hulking warriors squealed like pigs as they rolled in sand to quench the flames.
‘Sigmar!’ he cried, breaking into a charge with his steaming reliquary held aloft. ‘He fights beside us!’
The two armoured blocks slammed together in a splintering squeal of shields and blades and split pig-flesh. A thunderaxe hacked off an Ironjaw’s arm at the elbow in a clap of noise. A riderless boar impaled a Retributor on a tusk. Bolts whistled from behind. An orruk bellowed a curse, and a moment later was spit through. Weapons hummed with Azyric charge. Two Ironjawz shoved towards Ramus, barding grinding until it shrieked. There was a snap of energy, a crimson blur that cut left to right, and both orruks slumped headless from their mounts. Cassos swept in front as the boars pulled apart and galloped past, stormglaive whirling with such venom it looked as though he must be holding two of them. It threw a barrier of spattered red between Ramus and the press of Ironjawz, and flicked the desultory shower of grot arrows waspishly from the air.
The Retributors and Decimators surged into the break, the Astral Templars a yard ahead as always. Ramus heard the Stormcasts’ savage howls and the ring of starmetal as the Liberators crashed into the black orruks and through to the brutish Ironjawz behind. Smashing and killing. War as the God-King had always meant it to be.
Vandalus lanced overhead, beams of light from his lantern punching golden holes through the orruk ranks, then rolled left while the Prosecutors that followed peeled right.
Flight alone was a mighty task for these angels in armour, and to do it with grace demanded not only a fluidity of body, but a finesse of mind and will that transcended even the superhuman. Wielding javelins like lances and celestial hammers two-handed, they thumped into the terrified grots like comets. Bodies flew, and to a cacophony of ululating war cries, the Stormcast barbarians set about tearing the light skirmishers apart.
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 its 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 on the Ironjaw’s right side and drove all the brute’s weight onto its 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 forwards 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 shu
t 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 danced 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.’
