Warbeast, page 26
‘I will speak to Lord Silverhand and then we attack,’ he said, pushing past the knot of Stormcasts.
The Silverhands parted at his approach. Theuderis saw the Warbeast’s mood and bade his officers to depart a short distance. His dracoth snorted and snarled as Arkas approached, nostrils flaring. The Silverhand dismounted and offered a salute.
‘Your mount takes a dislike to me,’ said Arkas, meeting the hostile glare of the dracoth. It backed away several steps.
The Silverhand patted the monster’s shoulder. He turned his gaze back to the Warbeast, his tone clipped and precise. ‘We will attack in a single, coordinated assault.’
‘We will,’ replied Arkas. He reigned in his emotions, leashing the animal that was trying to break free. ‘I will lead, you will follow. We kill everything we meet until there is nothing left to kill.’
‘Yes, but we n–’
‘We strike now.’ Arkas drew in a deep breath through his nose, pushing the bestial growl from his voice. ‘The skaven still fight with the tribes. They cannot both attack and defend.’
He feared what might happen if Theuderis prevaricated further and so turned away. His officers fell in beside him, silent, cowed by his demeanour.
‘Warbeasts!’ He raised his hammer, a signal for mustering. When the Stormcasts had assembled, he lowered the weapon to point to the city below. ‘We fight. We kill. We win.’
‘We fight. We kill. We win.’ The chorus growled from the throats of his immortal warriors, echoed from their masked helms. ‘We fight. We kill. We win. We fight. We kill. We win.’
With this martial chant filling the air, Dolmetis raised the standard of the Warbeasts high and Doridun let forth a blast from his clarion. The call became a thunderous roll from the storm and a single stroke of lightning flashed to crackle down the icon of the Knight-Vexillor.
‘Sigmar commands it,’ laughed Dolmetis. ‘He blesses the deaths of our foes.’
‘We fight!’ Arkas’ voice rose over the continuing tempest-clamour in the skies. ‘We kill! We win!’
Chapter Forty-Eight
Ignoring the insult of Arkas’ actions, Theuderis watched with detached interest as the Celestial Vindicators commenced their bellowing and chanting. It was quite unseemly, the display of brute emotion, but he remembered the words of Sigmar: Let them be free and they will take you to the realmgate. Considering the words again it seemed that they were not so much an instruction as a foretelling. Did mighty Sigmar have insight beyond the present? Could he know what would happen?
Every part of Theuderis’ calculating mind railed against another impetuous, ad-hoc assault into the undercity. It made no sense that what had failed before would succeed this time, even if the skaven were currently occupied with trying to retake the city from the humans.
Yet his master had commanded, and the part of him that was the loyal knight could not refuse Sigmar’s will. Oaths had been sworn, promises must be upheld.
‘Follow the Warbeasts,’ he told his officers. ‘All brotherhoods.’
‘What of a rearguard, my lord?’ asked Attaxes. ‘The city is filled with foes that might fall upon us as we pass.’
‘My orders were clear, Knight-Heraldor. Sound the general advance.’
Progress through Kurzengor was even swifter than during the Stormcasts’ first assault. Without delaying to secure their flanks or finish off the scattered bands of humans or skaven that crossed their path, the Warbeasts and Silverhands had slashed their way through to the centre of the city by the time dawn was rising, fully a day after their initial attack had begun.
Knowing that speed was more valuable than stealth, Arkas led the force not to the slave-pit where they had descended before, but to an area of the city where many of the buildings and streets had collapsed and subsided, undermined by the skaven tunnelling below. Where the duardin parts of the city had been extended by the gnawholes of the skaven, entire districts had been swallowed. In the twilight before sunrise, the unnatural gleam of fungi and warpstone lit cracks and holes from below, a dull beacon that drew Arkas on.
The army of Sigmar’s chosen plunged down through the ruins by chasms and caves, bursting into the cellars of toppled mansions and the crypts of looted temples. They came upon an immense cavern dominated by the piled ruins of the buildings that had fallen from the surface.
The outer parts of the skaven city were a maze of hovels, ragged tents and reclaimed buildings patched and reinforced by a mad scattering of debris. As well as covering the brick-strewn ground, the city teetered up the bases of massive stalagmites, the towers crisscrossed with bridges and walkways, ratlines running from the roofs to the tips of hollowed stalactites. From the midst of this scavenged urban tangle, a causeway of masonry and mud cut back and forth out of the buildings until it met with the broad stones of what had formerly been the vaulting arches of a human temple.
This dismal edifice speared like a living mountain from the effluence and trash of the undercity, in places shaped by the hands of humans, in others crafted by duardin skill, all smeared and smashed together with reckless abandon by the Chaos ratmen.
The pilaster of decay was wreathed in fumes and vapours that issued from smokeholes and chimneys and rose from streams of filth and sluggish rivers that dribbled from stolen gutters and cracked sewer lines.
Its peak seemed broken, a tangle of splintered wood and split rope, collapsed gear housings and huge wheels piled atop each other. The remnants of something bronze embedded in the structure glinted in the witchlight of countless warpstone-fuelled lanterns.
Though a great many of the skaven contested the city above, their undercity was not undefended. Streams of ratmen poured forth from the filthy warren, setting upon the Stormcasts from all sides. From the depths of the central mass marched forth columns of robed plague monks, swaying in time to the bells and gongs, thirteen tendrils of matted fur and dirty cloth each led by a ranting plague priest.
Arkas and the Warbeasts speared into the heart of the skaven, driving deep through their line and across the causeway leading to their shrine. Possessed by his fury, Arkas paid no heed to defence, but such was the ferocity of his coming none survived to land a blow upon the plates of his armour. His hammer and runeblade slew everything they touched, killing with single blows, their celestial power fuelled by his rage.
Commanded by Theuderis, the Silverhands were more deliberate but no less swift in their encroachment. Like the horns of a bull, brotherhoods of Paladins swept out around the cavern, each tipped by winged Prosecutors. The Lord-Celestant and his Redeemer Conclave formed the centre, pushing steadily through the ramshackle huts and streets, churning through skaven warriors with irrepressible force.
There was little thought to Arkas’ approach. Even the simple mantra, ‘We fight. We kill. We win,’ had devolved into something even less specific – a primal desire to destroy. A need to slay. Pure animal fury, defending the nest, the attack of a predator, the battle for dominance of the herd. Unthinking and savage, it pushed Arkas further and further into the undercity, the spirit of Ghur that writhed in his gut calling him deeper and deeper into the belly of Ursungorod.
Chapter Forty-Nine
The plague monks attacked Theuderis directly, trying to break between the Knights Excelsior and the Celestial Vindicators. The Silverhand could see the crude strategy unfolding like jittering clockwork – a spasmodic mechanism that was easy to disrupt. He called to his Judicators and before the skaven had made much headway they were confronted by volley after volley of flaming missiles and celestial bolts.
Impetus was the key, and he did not allow the attack to sway him from his course – his brotherhoods had to keep pace with the haste of the Warbeasts’ advance. Yet for all his endeavours, he could not prevent a separation occurring. His army was simply more unwieldy than the compact force of Arkas, and more prone to delay by the unforgiving terrain and surging assaults of the plague monks.
Arkas was almost gone from view, forging towards one of the corridors to the lower levels, when another factor further impinged upon Theuderis’ evolving strategy. From upon the walls and buttressed towers of the massive temple, catapults hurled festering payloads of rocks and waste. Encrusted pots and slime-covered boulders crashed into the Knights Excelsior. The impacts were severe but it was the splash of noxious, warp-strengthened filth that proved the greater threat. Like the fume cloud of the plague rats and censer bearers, these missiles carried a toxic mix of infection and acidic vapour that hissed and bubbled across the armour of the Silverhands.
Prosecutors sped up from the city, unleashing salvoes of lightning-wreathed missiles against the crews of the machines and falling upon them with blazing hammers. Freed from the swooping attacks of these warriors, the plague monks below charged down the causeway and thrust up from the catacombs, attacking with renewed fervour.
For all that Arkas and his warriors crashed into the foe with unmatched ferocity, these fresh attacks dragged at the flanks and heels of the Warbeasts, slowing their impetus. Skaven forces arriving from deeper into the mountain swarmed up the tunnels, confronting the Celestial Vindicators head-on, choking the path to the depths with a mob of hissing Chaos vermin.
The horns of the attack had also stalled, not quite encircling the cavern as Theuderis had intended. Glavius fought at the head of one tip, trying to break through to Arkas’ increasingly beleaguered position, but the weight of enemies before him was still increasing. On the other flank, Theuderis could see the icon of his Strike Chamber amongst the broken buildings where Voltaran had similarly been swamped by skaven.
The situation threatened to spiral out of Theuderis’ control. The whirring gears of his mind processed every extant aspect of the battle, analysing and assaying possible strategies, discarding them all in turn. Even as Tyrathrax spat lightning and his blade bisected wailing skaven, he focussed his thoughts on a single purpose.
The realmgate. Deliver the Warbeast to the realmgate.
Cursing his own stupidity, he realised that he did not have to be with Arkas to protect him. If the Celestial Vindicators could reach the realmgate their icon would act as a lode-star for Durathos, who was waiting with an entire Strike Chamber in Sigmaron. Theuderis just had to protect the Warbeasts’ backs to allow them to get close enough.
Before he could enact his plan, the atmosphere in the cavern changed. A foetid wind blew across the burning, broken skaven slum, bringing with it the acrid taste of warpstone and an even deeper stench of decay and ruin.
The verminlord.
It was silhouetted against the dawn light at one of the gashes into the city above, towering over a sea of its verminous followers. A spark of warpfire from its spear lit the air.
At the same time, almost directly opposite Skixakoth, the chief plague priest appeared at the gate atop the causeway. Theuderis remembered the wound in its chest, and could see the gleam of warp-power from beneath the creature’s robes.
It mattered not. Theuderis’ disparate trains of thought came together, the pieces of the plan sliding into place like the levers of a carefully machined duardin engine. At its centre, the gear around which it all revolved, was Arkas. One piece of wisdom from the God-King shone bright in Theuderis’ mind, perhaps another semi-prophetic pronouncement, masked as a question: Have you ever considered that I might want Arkas to be angry?’
‘Samat!’ The Silverhand’s call cut through the clamour of weapons and shrieking of rat-warriors. Even as the Knight-Azyros heard his lord’s command, he turned on glittering wings and sped down.
‘What orders, my lord?’
‘Take this to Arkas and make him listen.’ Theuderis followed with his message, clearly enunciating every word. ‘Say it exactly as I told you. Make sure the Warbeast hears it.’
Whether he understood the implications of the message or not, Samat flew away, shafts of dull sunlight from above catching his white form as he cruised over the battle.
Theuderis cleaved his way free of the skaven that had been pressing up around him. His gaze moved from the plague priest to the verminlord, assessing the validity of the two courses of action before him. To attack one left his forces vulnerable to the other.
‘A reckoning,’ he told his dracoth, turning her towards the verminlord. He raised his voice to a thunderous bellow. ‘Silverhands, today the plan is simple. We fight! We kill! We win!’
Chapter Fifty
Fatigue was a greater enemy than the Chaos-tainted rat-creatures that fell beneath Arkas’ blade and hammer. As a fire burns its fuel, so the celestial force that powered the Warbeast – the very same essence of Sigmar from which his entire being was formed – was consumed by the rage of the Lord-Celestant. He could feel his power waning, sapped by every blow that decapitated and eviscerated.
Around him frothed waves of magic, swells of Ghurite energy trying to pierce his will as the skaven weapons tried to pierce his armour. It sought the chinks in his consciousness, flashing memories of standing upon a wall looking down upon a desolate field as the skaven poured forth on their conquest. It was a voice inside his head, saying nothing, but its panting, bestial presence was a constant temptation to free himself.
He had sworn oaths, to serve Sigmar, to be Stormcast. The God-King granted him life, an immortal existence, in exchange for his service. The celestial force that ebbed from his body was the same power that sustained him.
A shout pierced the ruddy cloud of his thoughts. A name. His name.
He stepped back, allowing his Decimators to push on around him, hacking and crushing, their axes and maces glowing with mystical force. The voice called again and he looked up to see an angelic being above, ivory and blue lit by a halo of distorted sunlight.
Something arced down towards him, catching the light. The Knight-Azyros, Samat. He hovered just above Arkas, his wings of lightning flickering with power.
‘A message, Warbeast!’ the Knight Excelsior called down. ‘From my lord, Theuderis Silverhand. “The taint will be purged. Your people are dead”.’
Shaking his head, Arkas did not grasp the importance of the words. His mind laboured over their meaning, but intellectual thought was made impossible by a rising tide of pure instinct, a subconscious understanding that swept through him.
Pain. The pain of memory. Katiya lying on the bier, plague eating her from the inside.
But not Katiya. His mother. No, his sister.
Confusion, torment, the agony of failure.
An oath. Words spoken on the deathbed of his mother-sister. A promise older than his fealty to Sigmar.
A promise unfulfilled.
Snatched away by the God-King. Friends, companions, family left to die and be enslaved.
His land abandoned.
Ursungorod betrayed.
But he would save his people. The omens...
The words came to him, crystal-clear across the vast ages.
‘I did not say our people would be saved,’ Radomira chided. ‘You must pay attention to detail, I have told you before. I said from the events of this day our lands will be freed.’
Failure. Again.
Arkas tore off the mask of his helm and howled, feeling the rush of Ghurite energy pounding into him like water through a broken dam. The spirit of Ursungorod filled him where the power celestial had diminished.
This time he did not fight it. He welcomed it.
He barely noticed his Stormcasts moving away, forming a defensive circle around their stricken commander. Arkas’ thoughts were a vortex of pain.
The Lord-Celestant accepted the pain, took it as his own. It was a burden he had carried as Arka Bear-clad, a role he had abdicated as Arkas Warbeast.
He let the Ursungorod pit pull him down, funnelling his pain into a bright star of frustrated rage, drawing him into the heart of the mountain – into the Shadowgulf where all light and hope died.
Here the power of Ghur found its home.
Arkas touched something vast and cosmic. He felt it stretching out into the impossible gulfs between realms. A fragment, an avatar, a memory from the world-that-was. The spirit of Ursungorod, trapped and in agony for countless lifetimes, ravaged by the fires of Chaos, split and rent and broken, a body of fallen mountains, chasms and cracks. His flesh crawled as he felt the aching emptiness of skaven gnaw-ways burrowing through his immortal frame like worms and maggots, trying to corrupt him from within.
He shuddered at the pain, and the world above shuddered with him.
Arkas ascended again, sent up through the rock like a mote lifted on a geyser, a channel, a conduit for the eternal rage of the spirit buried under the mountains. With a bestial roar that shook the cavern of the undercity, he burst back into his body, immolating himself with the power of Ghur, burning with the vengeful fire of the beast.
The mountain broke.
Chapter Fifty-One
The power manifested itself as a monstrous bear, a churning maelstrom of erupting force that hurled half of the mountain skywards with its eruption. Thousands of skaven were drawn up by the raging beast as its slavering maw and immaterial claws swept through them, their terrified squeals and shrieks swallowed by the earth-shattering boom of the roar it shared with Arkas.
The undercity was ripped asunder, its jagged innards exposed by the rising of the beast. The incarnation of Ursungorod’s spirit became a thick cloud, a creation of dust and shattered stone that roiled away into the dawn light, leaving sunbeams lancing down into the heart of the broken peak. Skaven bodies fell like hail.
Panting, snarling, infused with the beast-magic, Arkas squinted against a painful light. Something blinding and golden shone in the depths. The realmgate sat fully exposed on its dais, the cities of men, duardin and skaven scoured clear. The archway was alight with magic, flames licking from the stones in fluttering golden waves.
