And by Sigmar, the smell…
Fortunately, the wind favoured us. The worst I suffered was the mulchy odour of the swamp itself, with only the occasional eye-watering gust from the hill.
Shielding my eyes from the low sun, I looked up. The disc-riding beastmen that had downed one of King Augus’ scouts earlier in the day crisscrossed the sky, shadowed by the lazy drone of pustulent rot-flies. I counted about a score of each.
Nuisance numbers. Nothing more.
With a decent corps of missile troops Kurzog and Manguish might actually have been able to make me think twice about taking their hill. I stress might. I’m not generally one for thinking more than once, and even that is largely something that I wave through as a formality.
The Slaves to Darkness had never really taken to ranged warfare.
In fairness to them, neither had I.
Confronted with the terrain I was going to have to fight them on, a small part of me did quietly kick the larger for leaving behind the Justicar Conclave that Akturus had offered me. Akturus did love his Judicators. Nothing threatened to bring the Lord-Castellant out in a smile like putting together a line of boltstorm crossbows behind a Liberator shield wall and watching a determined enemy make the hard running. His predilection for standing still is, I contend, why they call him ‘Ironheel’. As much as I enjoyed teasing him for it though, it was all in good humour, and I wouldn’t have minded one of his Thunderhead Brotherhoods just then.
I had five Vanguard-Hunters and Barbarus’ realmhunter bow. I didn’t see Brayseer Kurzog shedding too many fleas over that, and though I had over a thousand Freeguild archers their short bows were too limited in range, or power, to be effective.
‘Sly old goat,’ I muttered.
My gryph-hound emitted a growling chirp and bit my knee in answer.
Crow had the hind quarters of a Celestine Leopard, fur as smooth and as white as mother-of-pearl and with eyes of a fierce intelligence. His head was that of a bird of prey, plumage shimmering with the pale blue of the Azyrite dawn. Crow had been with me since my last reforging and subsequent return to the Ghurlands. After a hundred years, he continued to give the impression that he knew something important that I didn’t. I scratched him idly between the ears, and he released his beak from my knee with a low chirrup of pleasure.
‘I count barely three and a half thousand men and beasts. A bit less than I was expecting. Vaguely disappointing.’
‘It will be a bloodbath.’
No one but Lord-Relictor Xeros Stormcloud could say that and look as though he was fighting to keep himself from licking his lips. Like me, he preferred to go bare headed. Unlike me, his skin was dark and distinctly reddish. His head was shaved bald. The pieces of his fearsome mortis war-plate had been individually crafted by the Six Smiths to resemble bones, transforming the cruel-eyed warrior-priest into the likeness of a giant skeleton with the unholy face of an immortal. Glyphs of death, rebirth and the Storm Eternal had been carved into the skinned carcasses of rabbits, birds and squirrels, hanging from the many flesh hooks that projected from his harness. Lightning arced and crawled from his reliquary staff. The mummified remains of a human cadaver were encased within, behind a rippling screen of Azyrite force. It was wizened, foetally folded, clutching a sword in claw-like hands and bedecked in an elaborate – albeit largely disintegrated – headdress of animal skin, gold leaf and precious jewels.
I had no idea who the figure was. Xeros was always prophetically vague about the subject, which suggested to me that he was less than certain himself. I found that mildly reassuring, and not a little pleasing.
‘You need to look on the bright side, brother,’ I said.
One corner of Xeros’ mouth pricked into a smile, as if drawn into it by skilled flesh artists with needles. ‘I was.’
I felt myself deflate. The Stormcloud had that effect.
‘It was unwise to leave the Imperishables’ Justicar Conclave back at the Seven Words,’ he said.
‘Wisdom is for Sigmar, and he is welcome to it.’
‘Conquest and murder is Sigmar’s work,’ said Xeros, staring flatly across the snowy marsh, never raising his eyes to make contact with mine. ‘From across the Pantheon he drew the gifts that went into the making of the Stormcast Eternals, and from those who did not give freely enough he took, by deception or force. That is the god we serve, brother, and it is my great honour to do so. I would kill his foes in their beds, hack them from their mothers’ bellies if I could but tell friend from foe therein and Sigmar would not dissuade me from it. He would not care if we slaughter these beasts and their allies with arrow or hammer or with our own two hands.’ He raised his for emphasis. They were big, butcher’s hands, encased in osseous sigmarite.
‘You do like getting your hands bloody, Stormcloud.’
The Lord-Relictor’s eyes became glassy. ‘At least allow me to call upon the storm. Let me strike down the heathen beasts. I will purge the blight from their rotten flesh and purify their unclean souls. I will wrap the blessed rains of Sigmar about my fist and make of them a lash to flay the meekness from the proselytes to Nurgle’s despair…’
I did my best to ignore him.
I’d become rather good at it over the decades.
In his mortal life, Xeros had been a shaman and a vizier of formidable power. Beyond that he recalled little and shared less. I doubted it was pretty. The Relictor Temple and the Winter Fortress of the Astral Templars were rife with rumours. Ritual bloodlettings. Slave-taking campaigns that swallowed whole nations and put all but the bloodiest atrocities of the Ages of Chaos and Blood to shame. Orgies of human sacrifice that would conclude only when the knives of the priesthood were blunted and even Xeros’ fiery soul had been glutted on murder.
I believed them all.
‘…will sear their skin from their bones and make of them an ash that I might scoop from the soil and present to Sigmar as a token of my cleansing. I–’
‘No lightning,’ I said. ‘Not until I say so.’
Xeros turned his scowl heavenward. ‘The eagle-kin are faithless and untrusting barbarians. A wise leader would not place all his faith in them.’
I threw my arm around the Lord-Relictor’s shoulder and pulled him to me. ‘There you go again, Stormcloud, wishing I were wise.’
‘Hope is like the fires of Dracothion,’ said Xeros, blank-faced. ‘It burns eternal.’
‘Am I interrupting?’ grumbled Broudiccan, my faithful shadow coming up behind me in a clatter of heavy sigmarite.
With a broad grin, I released the Lord-Relictor, clapped Broudiccan gamely on the shoulder and waved for Frankos.
My Knight-Heraldor was busy ordering the Freeguild units into lines of battle. They were forming up into a crescent facing off against Kurzog’s Hill. The Astral Templars he had broken into retinues, spacing them amongst the mortal units to be the metal studs in my wooden shield. I, it went without saying, would be the boss. It was a difficult set of compromises he had to balance. Spread the mortal units too wide and he’d be unable to direct sufficient strength to break Manguish’s shield wall. And that was going to be hard enough as it was. Too narrow and he’d be inviting a counter-charge from those tuskgors and centigors. From what I could see he was making a more than decent fist of it, but then he had learned his business from the very best.