Conquest Unbound, page 15
Our likeness ended there. Power coruscated in the wake of their movements. Cleansing fire wreathed their stormstaves. The mage-knights’ crackling tempest blades were as portentous as dark clouds, limned in the same lightning.
I’m no fool – I’ve never worshipped your God-King – but these Evocators, as you had told me they were called, gave me hope. It wasn’t just their zealous confidence, which I’d heard enough of from Far-Keep’s weakling temple friars. I sensed in these warriors Ghur’s own brutal vitality.
The Evocators punched through the skaven centre, buying time for the fleeing Freeguilders. A brave handful of inspired guard accompanied the Evocators’ sortie, but most were retreating. I watched from one of many crests scarring the pine flats as the Stormcasts’ counter-attack sliced through the skaven lines.
Ratmen corpses trailed their advance, but the Azyrites’ move was doomed. At the rear, vermin packmasters whipped lumbering rat ogors forward. Beside them trudged stormfiends: walking tumours of muscle and rust, patched together from grafted weapons and mutant hide. Fire the colour of plague ran in their veins, a repellent animus.
The Evocators met the heavy-footed grotesques head-on while Freeguilders secured their flanks from lesser vermin. Matched one for one, the relentless Stormcasts might have carried the day, but the sheer numbers of the skaven monstrosities had evened the odds. An errant strike from a maddened rat ogor split open the neck of one distracted Evocator. Blood jetted from the wound before he exploded in a spectacular blast of light, the aura of his soul coalescing and lancing into the heavens.
The Azyrites’ numbers were shrinking. Even as the skavenslaves and clanrats began breaking, the rat ogors and stormfiends were pushing the melee in the skaven’s favour.
I couldn’t throw my life away with a careless charge, but I could make a difference. The Freeguilders might be able to cover the Stormcasts against clanrats, but they were looking into the eyes of the bigger beasts and flinching.
Hunting monsters was my trade.
I stalked closer. The stormfiends were nigh invulnerable. Foul energy infused their finger-thick armour plating. Maybe the Evocators could pierce that, but I would snap my troggspear if I tried.
The closest stormfiend turned its cannonry against another foe, and I glimpsed a wicked little creature dangling from its spine. Ratkin, yes, but atrophied, locked in a foetal huddle, its cranium so swollen with mutation I could see its brain pulsing inside.
I nocked an arrow and loosed, as simple as taking a breath. The arrow thumped into the vermin’s head with a wet smack.
The mountainous stormfiend spasmed. Before I could tell if I’d killed it, the nearest Evocator seized the advantage, driving her tempest blade into a gap in its warp-forged plate. Electricity and cooked gore sputtered from the wound. The stormfiend thrashed as the last shreds of twisted life gurgled from its throat, tearing the Evocator’s masked helm off before it fell.
The Evocator recovered and met my eyes. Motes of pure power danced in her gaze, electrified by arcs of sacred energy. Her hair was tied into a simple braid, her temples shaved, and her face painted with tribal patterns of lightning. ‘Behind you!’
That was a good time to run. Over my shoulders, a rat ogor bore down on me: twelve feet of dark invention, its flesh pulled so tightly over its swollen frame that I thought the stitches holding its fused limbs together would split.
It charged, a living avalanche. I dropped my hunting bow and dived, clutching my troggspear from the dirt, reassured by its familiar weight. I angled the pronged head up, bracing the haft just as the howling beast crashed into me.
The creature swiped with the pitted scythe capping its forearm. I toppled. I feared it had taken my head from my shoulders, but the blade had only just caught my hair, yanking me off my feet.
The thing should have flattened me, but the finishing blow never came. The din of combat receded from the glade, replaced by bemused quiet.
The rat ogor had thrown itself on my spear with such force that its chest had caved open. Malevolent life rattled from its lungs, and the seams on its ribs finally split. Malformed guts slopped into the hungry dirt, steaming with hideous vapours.
‘Defiance!’ the thing’s handler hissed. Sneering skavenslaves turned grubby, hateful glares on me. ‘Kill the fool-meat!’
Vermin skittered closer, but rallying handgunners covered me with scattered fire. I’d bought them valuable time. The Stormcasts had ceased their battle cries, and I wondered if they weren’t all dead. Pillars of that glorious light had been collecting them back to their Celestial Realm without end.
I hoped I had swung the pendulum of fortune in the Azyrites’ favour, but a gout of warpfire banished the thought. Another despicable stormfiend lurched forward, grisly cannonry riveted to its arms. The verminous horror trained its weapons on me, swaying with the weight of the chugging generator on its back before steadying its aim.
Before it could end me, I glimpsed the Evocator from before. Stern rage lined her painted features. Furious light snapped in her eyes, company for the storm in her weapons.
She attacked, bolts of energy searing from the strike, annihilating the warp-forged metal protecting the stormfiend’s tiny head. A charnel crater smoked where the beast’s neck had been, but no blood flowed from the wound. Lightning had incinerated the creature’s corruption, inside out.
‘Stop them!’ the skaven chittered. Yet none harkened. They fled to reunite with their fellow ratkin and regain their advantage. It was a flight worthy of mockery: hunchbacked packmasters whipped the skavenslaves, tripping them, sacrifices offered for their own survival.
Triumphant Freeguilders cracked odd shots into the fleeing mass, but they were preoccupied with their own withdrawal. The Stormcasts’ arrival had bought the rest of the army time to regroup; now these soldiers could consolidate with the others.
I gathered myself and approached the closest Freeguilders. Whatever regard I’d purchased by slaying two of the skaven’s alchemical monstrosities was gone. The longest exchange I had was a crestfallen glare from a halberdier helping his wounded comrade limp away.
‘We’d be wise to join them.’
I turned. The Stormcast with the tribal braid stared at the empty earth between mounds of bleeding dead. The heavenly lightning of her brethren’s departure had etched twelve-pointed stars into the floor of the pine flats, the canopy above miraculously unburnt.
She retrieved her helmet and clipped it to her armour, facing me, but she might as well have still been wearing the mask. Beneath her unforgiving features, her thoughts were unreadable.
Yet grim determination diffused from her like an aura. ‘You’ve got fight in you, woman. I’d be metal on the anvil without you. Your name?’
‘Luda. Yours?’
‘Greta Wolfclaw, Evocator-Prime of the Sacrosanct Chamber of the Astral Templars.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Long name.’
Greta’s eyes sparked. ‘The stench of vermin carries on the air. If we want another go at the skaven, we’ve got to regroup. Come. My gut tells me you’ve a part in this fight yet.’
I shook my head. ‘We only just started, Wolfclaw. A company of vanguard has been ambushed yonder. Ratkin captured the survivors. We have to save them.’
‘I was sent to destroy the fell portal the skaven are using to replenish their numbers. Attempting a rescue by ourselves offers nothing but a bold death. Better to wait for reinforcements.’
But I knew that if you were alive, time was of the essence. ‘More soldiers with tall hats won’t help us, Wolfclaw. I saw you fight. You’re worth an entire company of those men.’
‘Not Freeguilders, Luda. Knights Excelsior. Sigmar’s chosen, like me, marching from Excelsis as we speak. When they arrive, we’ll course the skaven to their gnawhole and free any captives who live.’ Greta grimaced. ‘But I wouldn’t hold my breath for the mercy of vermin.’
She wasn’t biting. I needed a different bait. ‘I’ll take you. I’ve found openings into their den, underground. Their gnawhole must be down there, yes? Alone, we can find it. We’ll move fast. Burn it down.’
Greta’s brow wrinkled. ‘Even with me, attacking the gnawhole without more backup is suicide.’
I pointed to the star branded in the dirt, its symmetry smeared by Ghur’s devouring wind. ‘Your brethren ride that lightning. I’ll bring you to the gnawhole, and you’ll summon them. Two of us can do something a whole army couldn’t manage, Wolfclaw – sneak in, right under the rats’ noses, then call down the thunder.’
Greta narrowed her eyes. ‘Reforged are waiting to strike, yes. But we’d be fools to think the skaven won’t sniff us out.’
I glanced at the glut of corpses in the glade, too much even for the feasting sands. The rat ogors’ mutant carcasses were rank with corruption, but they were abundant. ‘We’ll mask our scent with that blood.’ It would likely blight our flesh, but I thought that worth leaving out.
‘And our tracks?’
‘I’m Ghurite, Wolfclaw. If I couldn’t cover tracks, these lands would’ve taken me long ago. My senses are sharp, my skills proven. These trousers are squig hide. This spear is for killing troggoths. A lair is nothing.’
Greta shouldered her stormstave and reached for her totem, running delicate, clinking bird skulls between her fingers. Some distant memory clicked in her cool eyes. ‘You’re a tusk-maiden.’
I nodded, encouraged. She knew these grounds well. My tribe’s name carried weight.
That was enough to convince her. All the better, because precious little time remained. The war chant of a skaven column emerging from another hole in the pine flats could be heard. The insult of our recent victory had renewed their malicious valour.
Greta Wolfclaw signalled for us to move, falling in behind me. I found a gully to conceal us. The final traces of lightning had just ebbed from her bootprints when the skaven column broke the circle of the glade.
I held my breath until they had passed, warding my fear with thoughts of you.
Then we moved deeper into the Mawlands.
Many Azyrites live in Far-Keep, with blue eyes like yours, and snow-white skin kissed by the light of another realm. I know what they thought of me, clad in a tusk-hunter’s garb, skin scorched by a lifetime beneath our harsh sun. To them, I didn’t look much different from an orruk, and no wonder. Ghur carves its folk from rock.
You were different from them, but different from the Tusked, too. We worship strength. Our affection ends after death once our remains are swallowed by the Burning Gorge.
We don’t dwell on the departed, but you promised your love was as eternal as Sigmar. You’d be there until the end, and thereafter.
So would I.
We approached the skaven den in stolen moments, invisible to the clanrats marching past in ragged jerkins and rusted mail. A slick coat of stormfiend offal masked our scent but poisoned our moods.
‘Putrid,’ Greta said, still expressionless. Chunky stripes of mutant ichor marred her patterned warpaint, dribbling down her cheeks.
‘That’s the point,’ I said. ‘They won’t smell us.’
‘The logic is not lost on me, Luda. It will mask my aetheric magic, too.’
I shrugged. I was no tusk-witch. I hardly knew Ghur’s native spellcraft, let alone that of the Celestial Realm, but Greta’s fluency in sorcery reassured me. The tingling from the stormfiends’ entrails was less comforting.
After we entered the skaven den’s mouldering darkness, teasing out your tracks again proved impossible. I followed the anarchic flows of ratmen pawprints, seeking the gnawhole. I doubted you’d be there, but that was where Greta could call down her thunder. Once her brethren lanced the rats’ canker, I’d find you.
The deeper we descended, the more it reeked. Half-collapsed corridors stank of urine and damp fur. Queekish chatter and the green glow of poisonous technology marked chambers better left unvisited. When the skaven were near, their musk was choking. That stench helped us avoid wandering patrols, but we killed any we couldn’t avoid.
And in the narrower passages, brimming with blackness and tainted by the warp-light glow, those were many.
Hours of tortured creeping, doubtful pauses and dead ends eventually cracked Greta’s faith in me. ‘We’re lost, Luda.’
I turned. Greta was barely visible but for the torch flickering on the sagging tunnel wall, her maroon plate and fur-trimmed tabard soiled with vermin filth. She had whispered, but from a behemoth warrior whose essence was the storm, even undertones were as sonorous as thunder.
I held a finger to my lips. ‘We’re not lost. We’re close.’
We continued. ‘I wasn’t asking,’ Greta said. ‘We’re lost. If the gnawhole’s out of reach, we must strike where we’ll harm the vermin most. Come. It’ll mean more for the innocents of Far-Keep than this thoughtless scrabble through the dark.’
I bit down. Greta had already told me much about her Stormhost, the Astral Templars. They were beast slayers as much as I – with none of a true hunter’s restraint.
‘Reveal ourselves now and we’re dead, Wolfclaw. Patience.’
‘Patience is not the virtue of the storm.’
I scoffed. ‘Where was that fire before? The raids on Far-Keep have been growing for months. The friars prayed, but no one came. And when the Freeguild finally marched, your God-King saw fit to send five.’ I spoke from a place of irritation, not wisdom. Long pent-up resentment had been unleashed by your capture. By Greta’s doubt.
‘The Stormhosts are stretched thin protecting the Mortal Realms,’ she said. ‘We defend far more than minor castle-towns on the frontier of civilisation. We’re here to help you.’
‘You’re here to rule us. You wait until we need you before you strike. You save us, then leave bearded statues behind so we know who to pray to. Be grateful for the worship of fools. I see through your God-King.’
‘Less gracious Stormcasts would slay you for those words, Luda. Don’t test me.’
‘Nothing’s stopping you from proving me wrong.’
‘The Knights Excelsior march to Far-Keep as we speak. But even if they didn’t, the Stormhosts do not serve at your leisure. Holy Sigmar does not answer to your beckon.’
‘I’ve gathered the bones of enough kin to know that, Wolfclaw. It doesn’t shock me that you’d let us die. The realm devours. But you claim to protect us–’
‘He sent a Sacrosanct Chamber for you. Mages of the highest–’
‘Magic didn’t save your friends’ lives! And if the rats find us now, it won’t save ours.’
I wiped spittle from my lip, regaining my calm. I’d said too much. I feared Greta would abandon me for my words, leaving me to slink through the skaven den alone, but she merely glared. ‘Death today would not be my first.’
The lightning in her eyes had receded. In the feeble torchlight, her crystal gaze resolved into clarity.
Greta, whatever else she was, was also a woman. Human.
‘We’re forged after our mortal lives,’ she said. ‘I’ve not forgotten those struggles. Not yet.’
I scrutinised her. ‘I’ve seen the dead, after the Necroquake. You’re nothing like those Nighthaunt phantoms.’
‘No. The God-King spirited my soul away before Nagash could lay his fingers on me. Holy Sigmar took me into his forge, and his smiths remade me upon the Anvil of Apotheosis. Every flaw within my mortal shell was discarded.’
‘Flaws? That… happens to everyone?’
Greta scanned me, head to toes. ‘I don’t think it will happen to a heathen.’
I glanced down. ‘I’ve never died before. I’d prefer to keep it that way.’
We emerged from the knot of tunnels into a sweeping chasm as deep and wide as Sigmar’s ego. An old cannibal cavern, a natural horror which waited centuries before sweeping unwary prey into its maw. Blighting skaven magicks had killed it, corroding its cliff jaws into slick, weeping stone. Virulent green mist and abyssal midnight swallowed the ravine’s course in every direction.
A lowered drawbridge crossed the chasm nearby. It looked about as reliable as a grot’s courage. We approached, studying the mess of tracks before us, then the questionable array of cogwork and warpstone machinery which worked the drawbridge.
I didn’t see them. Tall, black-furred stormvermin on the far side, bullying a handful of clanrats. They were carrying wicked glaives, armoured in knife-tipped plate.
I stopped mid-stride and stared with dumb surprise. The stormvermin took notice.
Greta, unhesitating, advanced. ‘What are you waiting for?’ she said. ‘Kill the rats.’
The stormvermin snarled and dashed across the bridge as Greta’s dormant power crackled to life. Energy hissed along the crests in her armour, and cleansing heat cooked filth from her plate in long, nasty peels. She was a movable fortress, bracing herself before the drawbridge, using it as a choke point.
I dropped my troggspear and began loosing precious arrows across the canyon, killing the clanrats scurrying away with well-placed shots. Greta made short work of the stormvermin. She locked their unwieldy glaives in place with her stormstave, then danced her tempest blade through their guard with practised ease. She dispatched them one by one, sending each tumbling into the mists below until she had finished them all.
It was a quick slaughter, not worth dwelling on. We reunited at the mouth of the drawbridge when something squeaked beside its rusted tackle.
A last clanrat, mangy and trembling, brandishing its miserable dagger at us.
I batted the knife aside and seized the skaven by its scruff, dragging it out, flinging it into the cave floor mire. Pinning it under my knee, I scowled up at Greta. ‘You thought we were lost? Vermin always know the way down. The gnawhole, rat. Where?’
Greta’s presence had put the fear of the God-King into the clanrat. Its measly eyes danced in its sockets, drunk with pathetic, rodent terror. ‘Gnawhole? Close, yes-yes!’
