Plague-infested daemons and columns of putrid warriors weaved across the battlefield to reinforce the hordes of Nurgle battling the sylvaneth warhosts of Aspengard. Shaddock and the Forest Folk of the Arkenwood used the ailing Wyldwoods to cover their approach. With virulent pus showering from the canopy and infected trees reaching out for them with root and branch, Shaddock and the dryads had to take as much care with the forest as they did with the servants of Nurgle.
Those plague lords and rancid champions that did spy the approach of the sylvaneth despatched warbands to deal with the interlopers. Believing that they were isolated spirits of the Aspengard fleeing the slaughter, they never for a moment considered that they were reinforcements searching for their Radiant Queen. Withdrawing into the wailing thickets, Laurelwort and her dryads prepared an ambush for the Rotbringers. They moved through the roots and branches of the fevered Wyldwoods, hiding, stalking and striking at their infested foes. They gutted bloated warriors who were ready to burst. They sliced the throats and stabbed at the rusted helms of passing outriders from concealed nooks and hollows. They garrotted Rotbringers with noose-like vines that they heaved up through the canopy, leaving the hanging warriors there to choke.
While the Forest Folk stabbed and sliced their way through the servants of Nurgle, Shaddock drew them into a clearing. As corpulent knights charged from the trees, Shaddock whirled his blade around in an amber flash. The wardwood cleaved through corroding plate and diseased flesh. He swept ripe warriors aside with the flat of his blade. He kicked a leprous champion apart and chopped clean through the trunks of warped Wyldwoods, burying Rotbringers under toppling trees.
As they moved from copse to copse, Shaddock and the dryads found the wastelands between crowded with marauding warbands. With the searing song of Alarielle getting louder, the wardwood marched on towards his Everqueen. Towering above the hordes, he impaled daemons on the length of his sword and stamped down on plague knights in green plate. With the creaking sinew of his sword arm guided by his age-old form, the wardwood smashed a path through the scourges of Aspengard. Picking their way through the corpses Shaddock left behind, the dryads of Arkenwood swept in on half-dead foes. Stabbing warriors and skewering the hearts of felled champions, the dryads followed the Spirit of Durthu through the death and disease.
Before long, the sylvaneth reached the centre of the battlefield. The bloated servants of Nurgle were crushed up against each other, the plate of unclean knights crumpling against the brawn of cyclopean daemons, as scythe-wielding champions chanted foul prayers astride monstrous maggoths.
Like a constricting wall of muscle, the hordes of Nurgle surrounded what was left of the Aspengard glades. Known as the Silver Dell, argent oaks and mirrorwoods formed the centre of the besieged forest and stood uncontaminated amongst the mud, blight and destruction. The dell was teeming with the silver-barked spirits of Aspengard — Forest Folk who had fallen back to protect it and the treelords who ruled from there.
While the dryads entangled the servants of Nurgle in a thicket of thorns, the roots of treelords burst free of the earth behind their enemies. They bludgeoned grasping sorcerers and champions into the ground before dragging their smashed bodies beneath the surface of the soil. Silvered Wyldwoods swung their heavy branches, sweeping hordes of sickly warriors aside with bone-breaking force.
As Shaddock strode through the packed ranks of Chaos warriors, axes and spears embedded themselves in his bole and branches. Forging a path through the crush of corrupted bodies with sweeping sword and stamping feet, the wardwood pushed on. The air rang with the sound of wood snapped, split and cleaved in two by rusted blades. Nurgle’s servants fought with an indomitable fervour, rank after rank of diseased warriors gladly walking into blood-slick talons and the pulverising sweep of branches.
The wardwood tried to block out the sickening cheers. He concentrated on the song of the Everqueen, fighting his way through the hordes to reach Alarielle.
‘Stay close to Great Shaddock,’ Ardaneth called to her dryads as they were swamped by a wave of sour bodies. Horned daemons and Rotbringers were attempting either to smash the sylvaneth to kindling or visit their myriad contagions on the Forest Folk. As the dryads of the Arkenwood began to shriek and fall, Shaddock’s mighty blade passed like an amber blaze through the packed ranks. It sheared off elephantine limbs, cut swollen warriors in half and clipped fat heads and helms from shoulders.
Ardaneth and Laurelwort whirled about one another in a deadly dance. A mighty daemon warrior swung a rust-eaten sword at the branch nymph, forcing her to duck. Sprigs and leaves were chopped from her head as the cursed weapon sheared through the tips of her foliage. Laurelwort charged at the monster, slamming her body into its own. Its cyclopean eye rolled in its socket as the branch nymph knocked it back. Ripping furiously into its swollen belly with her talons, Laurelwort tore the rancid guts out of the thing.
The daemon would not be stopped, however. Grabbing her with unnatural strength, the plague-ridden monster tossed her at Ardaneth. Both of them fell back into the stinking ranks of Nurgle’s servants. As the daemon stomped towards Ardaneth with its blade held high, she reached out at the Nurglites surrounding her. As the petrifying power of her talons touched their slimy flesh, their bodies were immortalised in standing stone. Immortality, however, lasted only the few seconds it took for the daemon to smash through the wall of statues.
‘Help me,’ Ardaneth called to the branch nymph as the daemon crawled over the rubble to get to her. Laurelwort came up behind it and entangled its limbs in vines that sprouted from her branches. Seeing her chance, Ardaneth lunged forwards and placed her talon squarely on the daemon’s horned face. As the creature turned to stone, Laurelwort let it fall, its head snapping off at the neck where it struck the rubble.
‘Where is she?’ Ardaneth called up to the wardwood. ‘Where is our Radiant Queen?’
‘I don’t know,’ Shaddock told her. Alarielle’s song was all around. He looked about the blasted battlefield and argent oaks of the Silver Dell but the Everqueen was nowhere to be seen. ‘She should be here.’
Something suddenly gave. The hordes of Nurgle were never-ending, but up to that point the sylvaneth of Aspengard had proven immovable. Neither army had given way. Sorcerous catapults, however, had finally reached range through the crush of foetid warriors. Mouldering barrels leaking a horrific green concoction were flung through the air, high over the heads of Shaddock and the diseased hordes. Smashing into the canopy of the Silver Dell, the shattered barrels hung in the shimmering branches, cascading fell liquid down on the treelords and forest spirits holding the dread masses at bay. Some kind of acid ate its way through the trees and the sylvaneth below, stripping leaves and burning through bark. As a dirty silver cloud rose over the dell and a further barrage of barrels were fired up into the sky, Shaddock could hear the sounds of horrific suffering amongst the argent oaks.
‘Radiant Queen,’ the wardwood roared. ‘Where are you?’
Looking over at the siege engines, Shaddock saw that they were not the only reinforcements to arrive on the battlefield. Walking mountains of festering corpulence were making their way towards the Silver Dell, wading through the Plague God’s jubilant hordes. With the bombardment intensifying and the sylvaneth faltering, these daemons were advancing like shock troops to break the siege and lead the horde into the ancient glade.
A monstrous daemon had assumed command near the catapults and brought the siege engines forth. The abomination was not one but three bloated creatures conjoined — an echo of the symbol carved into Shaddock’s bark. The Spirit of Durthu realised that he was looking at Feytor, the Thrice-Father, the daemon he had prevented from manifesting at the Ebon Tarn. The monster that had taken his arm and sullied his essence. A sound like thunder boomed from the wardwood as the golden fire of his wrath burned bright.