Sword of Vengeance, page 37
‘Hurt them, yes. Kill them, no.’
The daemons swooped back between the houses, their claws now dripping with blood. As they came, the wind howled around them.
Helborg watched them come again, keeping his sword poised to strike. One of them dropped down low, spinning as it dived towards the earth, its face lit with a malign grin of exuberance. It went for the Reiksguard on his left flank, ignoring the bearer of the runefang. The man stood his ground, his trembling hands holding his broadsword in place to ward the impact.
Fast as a stab, the daemon took him. Helborg sprang. Leaping up at the sinuous figure, he whirled the Klingerach down across its kicking legs. The sacred blade sank deep into the daemonic flesh, sinking deep and severing aethyric sinews.
The daemon wailed, dropping its quarry and twisting away from Helborg. The Marshal pursued it, spinning the sword into a two-handed grip and preparing to plunge. The creature spat at him and disappeared. It re-emerged twelve feet away, cradling its wounds and wailing in agony before kicking back into the air. It soared upwards, leaving a trail of purple blood in its wake.
In the meantime more men had been plucked from the midst of the dwindling band and carried up into the high places to be dismembered. A steady shower of blood and body parts rained down on the survivors, evidence of their comrades’ fate.
‘No more of this,’ snarled Helborg, turning to Skarr.
The preceptor looked scared. He never looked scared.
‘What, then?’
‘We run.’
‘Where to?’
Helborg gestured to the Tower, still distant over the roofs of the houses. Lightning flickered across the devastated cityscape, picking out the ruined frames of the buildings, now squatted on by daemons licking their blood-soaked fingers.
‘There.’
Without waiting for a response, Helborg broke into a sprint. Needing no orders, his men did likewise. Leitdorf and Skarr went alongside him. The preceptor loped like a wolf, though no longer grinning. Volkmar took up the rear, keeping his staff kindled and doing what he could to ward the attacks from above.
The ravaged company ran through the streets, assailed at every step. The daemons were in their element, sustained and buoyed by the bloodfire, impervious to mortal weapons. The warrior priests had the most success at fending them off, swinging their icon-studded warhammers and slamming the unwary creatures against the charred walls. The big man with the standard still roared out his hymns and hefted his mighty weapon. Bloodbringer, he called it. It was a good name.
Despite the fragmentary successes, the sprint was a nightmare. Knights and halberdiers, both with little defence against the monsters of the aethyr, were plucked from the midst of them almost at will, destined for an agonising death in the spires of the city. With each corner the company rounded, another dozen were taken, whittling them down further.
Helborg was torn between anger and horror. There was nothing worse than a foe that couldn’t be fought. He did his best to interpose himself between the daemons and his men, but they slipped past his guard all too easily. He was forced to listen as dying men’s screams rang out across the rooftops, accompanied by the echoing laughs of the killers.
‘We’ll all be dead before we get there,’ panted Leitdorf, his cheeks red with the effort of running. He’d managed to cast off some of his armour, but he was making heavy work of the chase.
‘Then go back,’ spat Helborg, unwilling to indulge the man’s fears. ‘I will find the one who did this.’
A phalanx of daemons screamed low across the heads of the fleeing band, pursued by Volkmar’s inaccurate castings. Three of them had struggling bodies locked in their talons, all enclosed in plate armour. They were picking off the Reiksguard first.
‘You think you can kill her, if you can’t kill these?’
Helborg ramped up the pace, driving his men harder.
‘The runefang will finish her,’ he growled, his breath ever more ragged. His shoulder wound had opened again and he could feel the hot stickiness under his jerkin. The Tower was still too far away. ‘Count on it.’
As he spoke, a daemon tore into them from the roofs on their left, diving down into the press of bodies and scattering them. It had miscalculated, coming in too fast. It rolled across the cobbles with its prey, unable to leap back into the bloodfire quick enough.
Skarr, further back amid the men, was on her in an instant, hacking at her with his blade to free its prey.
‘Skarr, no!’ roared Helborg, shoving his way through the jostling bodies to reach him.
The preceptor’s blade passed harmlessly through the daemon’s flesh, biting into the stone beneath and kicking up sparks. The daemon hissed at him, dropped her intended quarry and coiled to leap.
‘Get back!’ roared Helborg, almost there, Klingerach in hand.
Then the daemon sprang, catching Skarr full in the chest and hurling them both free of the men around. They crashed into the nearest wall, shattering the stone. Helborg saw Skarr’s helmet bounce jarringly from the impact and the knight’s limbs go limp.
Helborg burst free and leapt after them. The daemon crouched again, ready to tear up into the skies with her latest morsel. The Klingerach was quicker, tearing deep into the lilac-fleshed back, runes blazing as it bit.
The creature screamed, arching back, limbs flailing, trying to turn round. Skarr fell from her grasp, sliding down the stone and leaving a slick of blood on the wall.
Helborg withdrew the blade and the daemon spun to face him. The Klingerach flashed again, carving through the daemon’s neck and severing her head. A powerful snap rippled through the air, radiating out and knocking the airborne daemons back up into the heights. For a moment, the severed head of their fallen sister still breathed. It looked up at Helborg with a mix of fear and amazement, before finally rolling over listlessly, lifeless and empty.
Leitdorf rushed to Helborg’s side, his own blade drawn, too late to intervene. The surviving troops gazed at the Marshal in awe.
‘Nothing is immune from the Sword of Vengeance,’ panted Helborg, gazing at Skarr’s unmoving body. His voice shook with emotion. ‘You ask me how I’ll kill her? This is how.’
Then he turned on his heel and motioned for the race to the Tower to resume. Far above, the daemons began to circle again, gauging the moment to strike, wary of the blade that had the power to extinguish them.
Along the twisting streets, the stone blackened with ashes, Helborg’s men sprinted into the heart of the city, half their number slain, the Tower still distant, and the scions of the Lord of Pain on their backs.
Volkmar ran. His robes curled tight around his huge frame as he went, slowing him down. His bald head was glossy with sweat, both from the exertion and from the pressing heat. Every muscle in his body screamed at him to stop, to hold his ground, to face the creatures that swooped on them.
Perhaps, if he did, he’d take a couple of them down. Maybe half a dozen. He could flay their unsubstantial flesh from their unholy bones, rip them into their constituent parts.
He knew Helborg was right. They couldn’t fight this foe, not for any length of time. The bloodfire sustained the daemons, filled their unholy bodies with energy and power. This was their place, a city of mortal men no longer.
The ragged band of soldiers, whittled down to little more than a hundred, kept going. Laggards had been left behind, easy picking for the rapacious daemons. Those that remained huddled close together, gaining what protection they could from Volkmar and Helborg.
They passed over the river. The water boiled black, choked with ash from the fires. The Averburg, the ancient seat of the electors, was an empty shell. Its stark, flame-blackened walls rose up into the raging maelstrom, broken silhouettes against the burning clouds of crimson.
The daemons came at them again and again, giving no respite. With every pass, another man was taken, swept up into the spires for an agonising end. As the cries rang out across the ruins, Volkmar felt hot tears of anger prick at his eyes.
He wanted to stop. He knew he couldn’t.
‘My lord,’ came Maljdir’s voice from his shoulder.
The priest still ran powerfully alongside him, despite carrying the standard in one hand and the warhammer in the other. Though his beard was lank with sweat and his face as red as the fires around them, he hadn’t given up yet. Damned Ulrican intransigence.
‘So you were right,’ snarled Volkmar, hardly breaking stride.
Maljdir shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, his words coming in snatches between his laboured gasps. ‘I was not.’
He looked up at the looming Tower, now dominating the sky above them.
‘Your zeal led us here.’ Though effort etched his every word, there was a kind of satisfaction in his voice. He looked back at Volkmar. ‘I should have trusted you.’
Volkmar just kept going. There were no certainties any more. For a moment back there, he’d been close to losing his mind. Above them, the daemons were gathering for a final pounce. There were dozens of them. The portals of the Tower were visible, dark and gaping, but they’d be lucky to make the nearest of them.
‘Save your energy for the daemons,’ rasped Volkmar, watching as the first of them plunged downwards. ‘You’ll need it.’
The daemon hurtled towards Helborg, only turning out of the path of the Klingerach at the last moment. The Marshal ignored it. Unless they made a mistake, they were too fast to engage with. The curtains of fire in the air buoyed them. This was their element. More screams from behind him told him they’d found another victim.
He turned a final corner and ran down a long, straight street. At the end of it, the rows of shattered houses finally gave out, revealing a pair of enormous iron-rimmed gates. Two pillars flanked them, crowned with fire. Beyond the gates, a wide and featureless courtyard opened up. The Tower stood in the centre. Up close, its scale was even more daunting.
‘Volkmar!’ he shouted, keeping up the pace. ‘The gates!’
The Theogonist responded instantly, summoning bolts of golden flame from his staff and hurling them at the iron. The gates shuddered from the first impact, broke on the second. The metal slammed back hard, bouncing from the stone pillars as the hinges strained. Then they were through, the ever-diminishing company tearing across the open courtyard, harried and pursued at every step.
‘I can sense her,’ said Leitdorf.
The man was suffering. His red face still carried too much fat, and the sweat was running in rivulets down his cheeks. Just as he’d predicted, though, the daemons ignored him. The Wolfsklinge had a heritage they feared. Or maybe it was something more.
‘Then you’ll be the guide,’ said Helborg, gazing up at the column of ruin looming over him.
The Tower was massive, a soaring dark skeleton of iron over a throbbing core of magma-red. Above the pinnacle, the ring of clouds had broken, exposing Morrslieb again. The power that had drawn the storm in over Averheim was beginning to dissipate.
Volkmar felt it too.
‘Weakness?’ he asked.
Leitdorf shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Its work is done.’
Helborg didn’t ask how Leitdorf knew that. He risked a look over his shoulder. A few dozen men were left, all haggard and panting from the sprint across the ruined city. No regular troops had made it. The remainder were warrior priests and a scattering of Reiksguard, the only ones with the stomach to endure the horrors of the air. The Tower would be no kinder to them.
‘Once we’re in, which way?’ he asked Leitdorf, watching as the massive Tower gates loomed up out of the fire-flecked dark.
‘Down,’ replied the elector tersely. ‘She’s beneath the earth.’
Volkmar shook his head. ‘There’s nothing human in there.’
Helborg said nothing, but forced the pace once more. The gates drew close. Pillars of adamant framed the huge curved doors, glinting in the firelight. Sigils of Slaanesh adorned the iron, sunk deep into the metal in a sweeping pattern of silver. The vast bole of the Tower rose up into the night, soaring three hundred feet to the summit. The base of it was mighty, bound by pillars of obsidian and engraved bands of iron. The rumble of machines working in the deeps crept across the stone, and bloodfire rushed up the flanks of the enormous structure, washing over the colonnades and parapets as it raced to the apex.
The daemons came for them again, swooping down the sheer sides of the Tower, arms outstretched and ready for more feeding. There were dozens of them now. They’d been waiting for this, their last chance to pick them off in the open.
‘Get those doors open,’ snapped Helborg, but Volkmar was already working.
The Theogonist swung his staff round and hurled a stream of leaping fire at the barred doors. They shivered, but remained closed.
Then the daemons landed, crashing to earth and sinking their talons deep into the unprotected mortals below.
‘Sigmar!’ roared Helborg, tearing into them with the Sword of Vengeance. They darted away from the blade, cowed by the rune-wound power of the steel.
‘Averland!’ cried Leitdorf, though his meagre voice was carried away by the roar of the furnaces. He swiped wildly at the spinning creatures, and they evaded his blows easily.
Volkmar unleashed another volley, and the gap between the doors fractured.
The daemons kept coming, sweeping more troops up in their terrible embrace and tearing them apart in mid-air. One of them came for the big warrior priest with the standard. He stood his ground and brought his heavy warhammer round with incredible speed. The faith-strengthened head of it slammed into the oncoming daemon. Bright light blazed from the impact, knocking the creature back yards. It hovered for a moment, dazed.
The priest roared his defiance, keeping the standard aloft, whirling the warhammer over his head in triumph.
‘Smite the mutant!’ he bellowed. ‘Purge the–’
A claw punched through his back and out through his chest. He coughed up blood in gouts as he was lifted from the ground. More daemons flocked to him, snapping at his flailing limbs and biting deep into his flesh. Too quick for Helborg to reach him, they dragged the heavy figure into the air.
‘Fight the darkness!’ Maljdir roared through his blood-clogged throat, still crying aloud as half a dozen daemons struggled to bear him aloft. He dropped the standard but kept swinging his warhammer, slamming more of them aside even as he was taken beyond the reach of help. ‘Dawn will come again! Trust to faith!’
Then he was gone, hauled up the flanks of the Tower, his increasingly weak cries of denunciation and defiance echoing down from above before they were silenced forever.
Volkmar summoned fire a third time and the gates blew inwards, crashing back on their enormous hinges. A sickly jasmine stench rolled out to greet them. Beyond the portal, a corridor stretched away, dark and forbidding.
‘Inside!’ roared Helborg, pushing his men across the threshold, doing what he could to protect the swooping daemons from their backs. They hurried in, those that were left. Leitdorf was at the rear, followed last of all by Volkmar. As the Theogonist passed under the dark lintel, he turned and smashed his staff on the ground. A ball of force raced outwards, a shimmer in the air like the backwash from a massive explosion. The daemons were hurled away, wheeling into the high airs and screaming with frustration.
‘Close the gates!’ Helborg shouted, seizing a door and pushing against it.
There were fewer than twenty of them left. The priests and Volkmar took one door, the Reiksguard and Leitdorf joined Helborg. Slowly, agonisingly slowly, the gates began to grind shut. Outside, quickly recovered from Volkmar’s casting, the daemons rushed back, screaming for more blood. Helborg saw the foremost tearing towards him, her eyes alive with bloodlust.
‘Harder!’ he roared, straining every muscle. The gap closed too slowly. The daemons hurtled towards it, reaching for the diminishing space. If they got in, then they were all dead men.
At last, groaning and creaking, the mighty iron doors slammed into place. There were heavy thuds from the outside as the daemons crunched into them, followed by howls of petulant anguish. The iron doors buckled but did not break.
‘There are wards here,’ panted Volkmar, leaning on his knees.
‘That won’t hold them,’ said Leitdorf, drawing huge, shuddering breaths.
All around, the surviving troops slumped to the polished marble. Helborg felt impatience prick at him. They needed to keep moving.
‘How long have we got?’
Leitdorf shrugged, his shoulders shivering with fatigue.
‘They know this place better than we do,’ he said without conviction. ‘Not long.’
Helborg looked over his shoulder. The corridor yawned away into the dark, lit only by faint blushes of lilac. The walls were dark and smooth, polished to a high sheen. The muted thunder of the bloodfire still thrummed throughout the walls. The interior of the Tower was filled with strange, echoing sounds. The immense superstructure of iron creaked. From far below, unearthly noises rose up, warped and distorted by their passage through the catacombs. The stain of corruption was everywhere, thick and cloying.
At the far end of the corridor there was a huge spiral stairway leading both up and down. Flickering light, bright and unnaturally blue, came from below.
‘Time to move again,’ Helborg said. His voice was harsh, his expression unforgiving. ‘And I hate to keep a lady waiting.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Schwarzhelm kept his weight perfectly balanced, watching for the counter-thrust. The raw power of his anger flowed freely, but it did not master him. The duel was too evenly poised for recklessness, and Grosslich was too strong. His natural skill as a soldier had been magnified by his corruption, and he matched Schwarzhelm’s blistering assault stroke for stroke.
All around them, the battle was similarly poised. Schwarzhelm’s men, a mix of the many companies Volkmar had brought into battle, were locked in combat with the dog-soldiers. Neither side had the mastery, and the line of grappling men stayed static, locked over the same patch of blood-soaked land.
The daemons swooped back between the houses, their claws now dripping with blood. As they came, the wind howled around them.
Helborg watched them come again, keeping his sword poised to strike. One of them dropped down low, spinning as it dived towards the earth, its face lit with a malign grin of exuberance. It went for the Reiksguard on his left flank, ignoring the bearer of the runefang. The man stood his ground, his trembling hands holding his broadsword in place to ward the impact.
Fast as a stab, the daemon took him. Helborg sprang. Leaping up at the sinuous figure, he whirled the Klingerach down across its kicking legs. The sacred blade sank deep into the daemonic flesh, sinking deep and severing aethyric sinews.
The daemon wailed, dropping its quarry and twisting away from Helborg. The Marshal pursued it, spinning the sword into a two-handed grip and preparing to plunge. The creature spat at him and disappeared. It re-emerged twelve feet away, cradling its wounds and wailing in agony before kicking back into the air. It soared upwards, leaving a trail of purple blood in its wake.
In the meantime more men had been plucked from the midst of the dwindling band and carried up into the high places to be dismembered. A steady shower of blood and body parts rained down on the survivors, evidence of their comrades’ fate.
‘No more of this,’ snarled Helborg, turning to Skarr.
The preceptor looked scared. He never looked scared.
‘What, then?’
‘We run.’
‘Where to?’
Helborg gestured to the Tower, still distant over the roofs of the houses. Lightning flickered across the devastated cityscape, picking out the ruined frames of the buildings, now squatted on by daemons licking their blood-soaked fingers.
‘There.’
Without waiting for a response, Helborg broke into a sprint. Needing no orders, his men did likewise. Leitdorf and Skarr went alongside him. The preceptor loped like a wolf, though no longer grinning. Volkmar took up the rear, keeping his staff kindled and doing what he could to ward the attacks from above.
The ravaged company ran through the streets, assailed at every step. The daemons were in their element, sustained and buoyed by the bloodfire, impervious to mortal weapons. The warrior priests had the most success at fending them off, swinging their icon-studded warhammers and slamming the unwary creatures against the charred walls. The big man with the standard still roared out his hymns and hefted his mighty weapon. Bloodbringer, he called it. It was a good name.
Despite the fragmentary successes, the sprint was a nightmare. Knights and halberdiers, both with little defence against the monsters of the aethyr, were plucked from the midst of them almost at will, destined for an agonising death in the spires of the city. With each corner the company rounded, another dozen were taken, whittling them down further.
Helborg was torn between anger and horror. There was nothing worse than a foe that couldn’t be fought. He did his best to interpose himself between the daemons and his men, but they slipped past his guard all too easily. He was forced to listen as dying men’s screams rang out across the rooftops, accompanied by the echoing laughs of the killers.
‘We’ll all be dead before we get there,’ panted Leitdorf, his cheeks red with the effort of running. He’d managed to cast off some of his armour, but he was making heavy work of the chase.
‘Then go back,’ spat Helborg, unwilling to indulge the man’s fears. ‘I will find the one who did this.’
A phalanx of daemons screamed low across the heads of the fleeing band, pursued by Volkmar’s inaccurate castings. Three of them had struggling bodies locked in their talons, all enclosed in plate armour. They were picking off the Reiksguard first.
‘You think you can kill her, if you can’t kill these?’
Helborg ramped up the pace, driving his men harder.
‘The runefang will finish her,’ he growled, his breath ever more ragged. His shoulder wound had opened again and he could feel the hot stickiness under his jerkin. The Tower was still too far away. ‘Count on it.’
As he spoke, a daemon tore into them from the roofs on their left, diving down into the press of bodies and scattering them. It had miscalculated, coming in too fast. It rolled across the cobbles with its prey, unable to leap back into the bloodfire quick enough.
Skarr, further back amid the men, was on her in an instant, hacking at her with his blade to free its prey.
‘Skarr, no!’ roared Helborg, shoving his way through the jostling bodies to reach him.
The preceptor’s blade passed harmlessly through the daemon’s flesh, biting into the stone beneath and kicking up sparks. The daemon hissed at him, dropped her intended quarry and coiled to leap.
‘Get back!’ roared Helborg, almost there, Klingerach in hand.
Then the daemon sprang, catching Skarr full in the chest and hurling them both free of the men around. They crashed into the nearest wall, shattering the stone. Helborg saw Skarr’s helmet bounce jarringly from the impact and the knight’s limbs go limp.
Helborg burst free and leapt after them. The daemon crouched again, ready to tear up into the skies with her latest morsel. The Klingerach was quicker, tearing deep into the lilac-fleshed back, runes blazing as it bit.
The creature screamed, arching back, limbs flailing, trying to turn round. Skarr fell from her grasp, sliding down the stone and leaving a slick of blood on the wall.
Helborg withdrew the blade and the daemon spun to face him. The Klingerach flashed again, carving through the daemon’s neck and severing her head. A powerful snap rippled through the air, radiating out and knocking the airborne daemons back up into the heights. For a moment, the severed head of their fallen sister still breathed. It looked up at Helborg with a mix of fear and amazement, before finally rolling over listlessly, lifeless and empty.
Leitdorf rushed to Helborg’s side, his own blade drawn, too late to intervene. The surviving troops gazed at the Marshal in awe.
‘Nothing is immune from the Sword of Vengeance,’ panted Helborg, gazing at Skarr’s unmoving body. His voice shook with emotion. ‘You ask me how I’ll kill her? This is how.’
Then he turned on his heel and motioned for the race to the Tower to resume. Far above, the daemons began to circle again, gauging the moment to strike, wary of the blade that had the power to extinguish them.
Along the twisting streets, the stone blackened with ashes, Helborg’s men sprinted into the heart of the city, half their number slain, the Tower still distant, and the scions of the Lord of Pain on their backs.
Volkmar ran. His robes curled tight around his huge frame as he went, slowing him down. His bald head was glossy with sweat, both from the exertion and from the pressing heat. Every muscle in his body screamed at him to stop, to hold his ground, to face the creatures that swooped on them.
Perhaps, if he did, he’d take a couple of them down. Maybe half a dozen. He could flay their unsubstantial flesh from their unholy bones, rip them into their constituent parts.
He knew Helborg was right. They couldn’t fight this foe, not for any length of time. The bloodfire sustained the daemons, filled their unholy bodies with energy and power. This was their place, a city of mortal men no longer.
The ragged band of soldiers, whittled down to little more than a hundred, kept going. Laggards had been left behind, easy picking for the rapacious daemons. Those that remained huddled close together, gaining what protection they could from Volkmar and Helborg.
They passed over the river. The water boiled black, choked with ash from the fires. The Averburg, the ancient seat of the electors, was an empty shell. Its stark, flame-blackened walls rose up into the raging maelstrom, broken silhouettes against the burning clouds of crimson.
The daemons came at them again and again, giving no respite. With every pass, another man was taken, swept up into the spires for an agonising end. As the cries rang out across the ruins, Volkmar felt hot tears of anger prick at his eyes.
He wanted to stop. He knew he couldn’t.
‘My lord,’ came Maljdir’s voice from his shoulder.
The priest still ran powerfully alongside him, despite carrying the standard in one hand and the warhammer in the other. Though his beard was lank with sweat and his face as red as the fires around them, he hadn’t given up yet. Damned Ulrican intransigence.
‘So you were right,’ snarled Volkmar, hardly breaking stride.
Maljdir shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, his words coming in snatches between his laboured gasps. ‘I was not.’
He looked up at the looming Tower, now dominating the sky above them.
‘Your zeal led us here.’ Though effort etched his every word, there was a kind of satisfaction in his voice. He looked back at Volkmar. ‘I should have trusted you.’
Volkmar just kept going. There were no certainties any more. For a moment back there, he’d been close to losing his mind. Above them, the daemons were gathering for a final pounce. There were dozens of them. The portals of the Tower were visible, dark and gaping, but they’d be lucky to make the nearest of them.
‘Save your energy for the daemons,’ rasped Volkmar, watching as the first of them plunged downwards. ‘You’ll need it.’
The daemon hurtled towards Helborg, only turning out of the path of the Klingerach at the last moment. The Marshal ignored it. Unless they made a mistake, they were too fast to engage with. The curtains of fire in the air buoyed them. This was their element. More screams from behind him told him they’d found another victim.
He turned a final corner and ran down a long, straight street. At the end of it, the rows of shattered houses finally gave out, revealing a pair of enormous iron-rimmed gates. Two pillars flanked them, crowned with fire. Beyond the gates, a wide and featureless courtyard opened up. The Tower stood in the centre. Up close, its scale was even more daunting.
‘Volkmar!’ he shouted, keeping up the pace. ‘The gates!’
The Theogonist responded instantly, summoning bolts of golden flame from his staff and hurling them at the iron. The gates shuddered from the first impact, broke on the second. The metal slammed back hard, bouncing from the stone pillars as the hinges strained. Then they were through, the ever-diminishing company tearing across the open courtyard, harried and pursued at every step.
‘I can sense her,’ said Leitdorf.
The man was suffering. His red face still carried too much fat, and the sweat was running in rivulets down his cheeks. Just as he’d predicted, though, the daemons ignored him. The Wolfsklinge had a heritage they feared. Or maybe it was something more.
‘Then you’ll be the guide,’ said Helborg, gazing up at the column of ruin looming over him.
The Tower was massive, a soaring dark skeleton of iron over a throbbing core of magma-red. Above the pinnacle, the ring of clouds had broken, exposing Morrslieb again. The power that had drawn the storm in over Averheim was beginning to dissipate.
Volkmar felt it too.
‘Weakness?’ he asked.
Leitdorf shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Its work is done.’
Helborg didn’t ask how Leitdorf knew that. He risked a look over his shoulder. A few dozen men were left, all haggard and panting from the sprint across the ruined city. No regular troops had made it. The remainder were warrior priests and a scattering of Reiksguard, the only ones with the stomach to endure the horrors of the air. The Tower would be no kinder to them.
‘Once we’re in, which way?’ he asked Leitdorf, watching as the massive Tower gates loomed up out of the fire-flecked dark.
‘Down,’ replied the elector tersely. ‘She’s beneath the earth.’
Volkmar shook his head. ‘There’s nothing human in there.’
Helborg said nothing, but forced the pace once more. The gates drew close. Pillars of adamant framed the huge curved doors, glinting in the firelight. Sigils of Slaanesh adorned the iron, sunk deep into the metal in a sweeping pattern of silver. The vast bole of the Tower rose up into the night, soaring three hundred feet to the summit. The base of it was mighty, bound by pillars of obsidian and engraved bands of iron. The rumble of machines working in the deeps crept across the stone, and bloodfire rushed up the flanks of the enormous structure, washing over the colonnades and parapets as it raced to the apex.
The daemons came for them again, swooping down the sheer sides of the Tower, arms outstretched and ready for more feeding. There were dozens of them now. They’d been waiting for this, their last chance to pick them off in the open.
‘Get those doors open,’ snapped Helborg, but Volkmar was already working.
The Theogonist swung his staff round and hurled a stream of leaping fire at the barred doors. They shivered, but remained closed.
Then the daemons landed, crashing to earth and sinking their talons deep into the unprotected mortals below.
‘Sigmar!’ roared Helborg, tearing into them with the Sword of Vengeance. They darted away from the blade, cowed by the rune-wound power of the steel.
‘Averland!’ cried Leitdorf, though his meagre voice was carried away by the roar of the furnaces. He swiped wildly at the spinning creatures, and they evaded his blows easily.
Volkmar unleashed another volley, and the gap between the doors fractured.
The daemons kept coming, sweeping more troops up in their terrible embrace and tearing them apart in mid-air. One of them came for the big warrior priest with the standard. He stood his ground and brought his heavy warhammer round with incredible speed. The faith-strengthened head of it slammed into the oncoming daemon. Bright light blazed from the impact, knocking the creature back yards. It hovered for a moment, dazed.
The priest roared his defiance, keeping the standard aloft, whirling the warhammer over his head in triumph.
‘Smite the mutant!’ he bellowed. ‘Purge the–’
A claw punched through his back and out through his chest. He coughed up blood in gouts as he was lifted from the ground. More daemons flocked to him, snapping at his flailing limbs and biting deep into his flesh. Too quick for Helborg to reach him, they dragged the heavy figure into the air.
‘Fight the darkness!’ Maljdir roared through his blood-clogged throat, still crying aloud as half a dozen daemons struggled to bear him aloft. He dropped the standard but kept swinging his warhammer, slamming more of them aside even as he was taken beyond the reach of help. ‘Dawn will come again! Trust to faith!’
Then he was gone, hauled up the flanks of the Tower, his increasingly weak cries of denunciation and defiance echoing down from above before they were silenced forever.
Volkmar summoned fire a third time and the gates blew inwards, crashing back on their enormous hinges. A sickly jasmine stench rolled out to greet them. Beyond the portal, a corridor stretched away, dark and forbidding.
‘Inside!’ roared Helborg, pushing his men across the threshold, doing what he could to protect the swooping daemons from their backs. They hurried in, those that were left. Leitdorf was at the rear, followed last of all by Volkmar. As the Theogonist passed under the dark lintel, he turned and smashed his staff on the ground. A ball of force raced outwards, a shimmer in the air like the backwash from a massive explosion. The daemons were hurled away, wheeling into the high airs and screaming with frustration.
‘Close the gates!’ Helborg shouted, seizing a door and pushing against it.
There were fewer than twenty of them left. The priests and Volkmar took one door, the Reiksguard and Leitdorf joined Helborg. Slowly, agonisingly slowly, the gates began to grind shut. Outside, quickly recovered from Volkmar’s casting, the daemons rushed back, screaming for more blood. Helborg saw the foremost tearing towards him, her eyes alive with bloodlust.
‘Harder!’ he roared, straining every muscle. The gap closed too slowly. The daemons hurtled towards it, reaching for the diminishing space. If they got in, then they were all dead men.
At last, groaning and creaking, the mighty iron doors slammed into place. There were heavy thuds from the outside as the daemons crunched into them, followed by howls of petulant anguish. The iron doors buckled but did not break.
‘There are wards here,’ panted Volkmar, leaning on his knees.
‘That won’t hold them,’ said Leitdorf, drawing huge, shuddering breaths.
All around, the surviving troops slumped to the polished marble. Helborg felt impatience prick at him. They needed to keep moving.
‘How long have we got?’
Leitdorf shrugged, his shoulders shivering with fatigue.
‘They know this place better than we do,’ he said without conviction. ‘Not long.’
Helborg looked over his shoulder. The corridor yawned away into the dark, lit only by faint blushes of lilac. The walls were dark and smooth, polished to a high sheen. The muted thunder of the bloodfire still thrummed throughout the walls. The interior of the Tower was filled with strange, echoing sounds. The immense superstructure of iron creaked. From far below, unearthly noises rose up, warped and distorted by their passage through the catacombs. The stain of corruption was everywhere, thick and cloying.
At the far end of the corridor there was a huge spiral stairway leading both up and down. Flickering light, bright and unnaturally blue, came from below.
‘Time to move again,’ Helborg said. His voice was harsh, his expression unforgiving. ‘And I hate to keep a lady waiting.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Schwarzhelm kept his weight perfectly balanced, watching for the counter-thrust. The raw power of his anger flowed freely, but it did not master him. The duel was too evenly poised for recklessness, and Grosslich was too strong. His natural skill as a soldier had been magnified by his corruption, and he matched Schwarzhelm’s blistering assault stroke for stroke.
All around them, the battle was similarly poised. Schwarzhelm’s men, a mix of the many companies Volkmar had brought into battle, were locked in combat with the dog-soldiers. Neither side had the mastery, and the line of grappling men stayed static, locked over the same patch of blood-soaked land.
