‘He has done it,’ Gravewalker said. ‘The gate is closed. They will receive no more reinforcements.’ Lightning speared down at his gesture, obliterating a knot of plaguebearers.
Zephacleas gave a great cry and smashed a charging daemon aside with his hammer. ‘Aye, he’s done it,’ he said hollowly. All across the battlefield, the few Stormcast Eternals still standing redoubled their own efforts. Weariness and wounds were forgotten as Hallowed Knight and Astral Templar alike plunged recklessly into the ranks of the foe — all thought of discipline lost in a tide of grief and rage.
Gardus had been respected, loved by his men and those who had known him, and Zephacleas had neither the heart nor the inclination to restrain them. Indeed, he joined them fully, bellowing oaths and curses in equal measure, fighting with a wild abandon.
‘If this be our dying day, let’s make it one to remember,’ he roared.
He hooked a plaguebearer’s horn with his hammer and dragged it forward, so that the sigmarite of his helm crunched against its rotting skull. The daemon reeled and Zephacleas chopped it down, splitting the dazed creature from shoulder to groin with one blow.
‘Fight, for Gardus! For Sigmar! And for the Realm Celestial!’
‘Very stirring,’ Gravewalker said. ‘You might have a future as Lord-Celestant yet, Zephacleas.’
The Lord-Relictor had planted his standard and stood before it, swinging his hammer in quick, precise strikes. Frothing skaven fell with every blow.
‘Cease prattling and fight, Gravewalker,’ Zephacleas snarled. A skaven lunged for him, its pox-ridden blade shattering as it struck his side. He drove his elbow into its skull and pinned it to the ground with his foot. His hammer put an end to its struggles. More skaven pressed in, clambering up the locked shields of his Stormcast, their blades digging for eye-slits and their bludgeons crashing down on war-helms.
Gravewalker extended his free hand towards the Liberators before him and began to murmur harshly. A soft blue glow suffused his dark gauntlet and then spread to encompass the Liberators, who straightened as if his words had purged them of all exhaustion and ills.
Zephacleas pulverised a skaven in mid-leap, and turned to block a daemon’s blade as it dug for his vitals. Caught between rabid vermin and daemons, he thought, shoving a plaguebearer back. It wasn’t exactly the way he had imagined he would meet his end.
He looked around, hunting for the verminlord. If he was bound for Reforging, he wanted a fine memory to carry with him into the fire. He caught sight of the creature, perched on one of the obscene obelisks scattered about the fen. It exhorted its followers shrilly, tail lashing in frustration as the remaining Stormcasts refused to break beneath the unceasing onslaught of the plague legions. The Lord-Celestant smiled and clashed his weapons together. He was determined to come to grips with the rat-daemon.
Before he could take a single step, however, the noisome air was split by the winding call of a hunting horn. Then another, and another, until the surrounding woodland rang with the sound of them. The skaven ranks began to boil with panic as something struck their flank. Zephacleas pulverised a robed ratman, and tried to catch a glimpse of the newcomers. There had been no lightning, no thunder — this was not Sigmar’s doing, he knew.
Zephacleas took advantage of the distraction to charge towards the verminlord. Whoever they were, the newcomers’ sudden arrival had given the Stormcasts a chance of survival and he intended to make the most of it. As he ran, he heard the sound of wood cracking and popping as a plague-claw catapult was torn apart. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw ratmen flung into the air or snatched from sight.
The verminlord hissed in consternation as it cut its eyes towards the dissolving flank of its forces. Zephacleas reached it a step later and drove his hammer into the menhir it was crouched upon, cracking and toppling it over. Screaming, the verminlord leapt from the falling rock, trailing wisps of stinking smoke, and the curved blades in its paws scythed towards the Lord-Celestant.
But Zephacleas swung his sword up and blocked the downward stroke of the curved blades. Before the full weight of the falling rat-daemon could crash into him, he rammed the head of his hammer into its belly, doubling it over and shoving it backwards. The giant beast chopped at him with its blades, scoring his armour again and again as the Lord-Celestant’s momentum carried them into the fallen stone. They staggered back and fell. He landed atop the verminlord and swiftly drove his forearm into its hairy throat, keeping it from biting him. It flung him off, and he landed in a rattle of sigmarite.
Quick as hate, the rat-daemon was on him, blades flashing down towards the joints of his armour. With desperate speed he squirmed backwards through the muck of the fen, blocking the blows as he went. Sigmar, he’s a fast one, he thought. The rat-daemon leaned in and struck, its curved blade screeching off his war-helm in a shower of greasy sparks. Zephacleas drove his feet up into its gut and sent it flying over his head. It slammed down a few feet away, its fleshless snout digging a trench in the mire.
Zephacleas rolled to his feet, hammer in hand, narrowly avoiding a flailing kick from the verminlord. It scrambled around on all fours, body contorted in a bestial fashion. Its tail lashed out, and the bladed tip tore the weapon from his hands with stinging force. He flung himself aside as the rat-daemon pounced. Sweat coated his face, and his breath rasped in his lungs as he rose to one knee and clawed for the hilt of his runeblade. He jerked back instinctively as the verminlord’s bladed tail skittered off his helm, nearly blinding him. Quickly he reached out and caught the ropy length of the tail as it curled back around. In the same motion, he drew his blade and chopped down, severing the twisting, squirming appendage. The rat-daemon squealed in agony and rage.
Zephacleas flung the still-writhing lump of flesh aside, but the verminlord hissed and charged with arms wide. The creature’s blades tore one of Zephacleas’s pauldrons loose as he lunged forward. Frantically he twisted, bringing his sword through its chest and out of the rat-daemon’s back in a gout of brackish blood and foul-smelling steam. Its weight carried it past him and he ripped his weapon free as it fell, body already beginning to dissolve into clumps of mouldering hair and rotting meat. Hairless, blind rats squirmed out of the sagging mass and scampered away, squealing obscenely.
Zephacleas had little time to see to the vermin. The remaining skaven were fleeing with high-pitched squeals of panic, clawing at one another in their haste to escape the enemy. The daemonic legions, however, showed no indication that they were at all concerned by the rout of their allies. Plaguebearers lurched towards the thin line of Astral Templars and Hallowed Knights, as nurglings burbled ahead of them in a cackling wave. He tensed and readied himself to meet their charge, only to be knocked to one knee. The ground suddenly erupted in thrashing tendrils of bark and vine, obliterating daemons on all sides.
They were not alone in their fate.
All around him, great roots burst from the ailing soil as quick as bolts from a Judicator’s crossbow. The roots rent and throttled daemons wherever they found them, and those creatures that escaped their deadly grasp were torn apart or stamped flat by the vast talons and crashing feet of the thing storming towards them with earth-shaking strides. To Zephacleas it resembled a tree, but one imbued with hateful purpose and ferocity far beyond any creature of common flesh. It towered over the foe, and pummelled them with heavy fists as it stomped past him.