And not before time if you ask me.
Nassam turned to me. ‘Lord?’
‘Wait here.’
I opened the portal and stepped back out into the hall.
The far end wall was gone, along with most of the ceiling. Whether it had been felled by sorcery or by artillery I didn’t know, and both are equally low forms of warfare in my estimation. A malevolent amethyst fog pressed through the breaks in the masonry like a primordial creature of Death, the surviving wards on the blessed stone hissing as the fog smothered them one by one. Human warriors in quartered liveries of burgundy and gold screamed in terror as they fled the encroaching mist. And worse. As I watched, hexwraiths, armoured skeleton knights riding on aethereal steeds, galloped from the Endless Spell, a foam-crested wave of vague horse forms upon which scythe-wielding warriors were cast against the broken Freeguild.
I felt terrifically selfish and unworthy of the soldiers’ sacrifices just then.
Nassam was right. In my heart, I knew I should have been out there with them when the attack had come.
There was more than one Champion of the God-King in this fortress.
From where I was standing, there were hundreds.
‘Warriors of Sigmar, to me!’ I bellowed, stepping fully into the inner courtyard and waving my halberd above my head. ‘The Bear-Eater stands here! Retreat to the Stormvault!’
A shriek split the air. I looked to the jagged rent in the ceiling fresco.
The sight both lifted my heart, and then spitefully crushed it.
Aeygar tumbled out of the sky, her golden body entwined with that of a ghastly skeletal drake. The two behemoths bit and tore at one another. The aetar princess outspanned her undead rival almost twofold, but the rising strength of undeath had given it undue weight. Its bones were black iron and indestructible to any mortal blow. Powerful spirit energies boiled from the sockets of its skull, and from between the gaps in its bones. It was a creature I knew well.
I breathed its name as though uttering it aloud would cost me my soul.
‘Ashigaroth.’
Its presence meant one thing.
Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Being a Pain In My Neck, sat high in the abyssal’s saddle. With a wave of his pale hand, a gout of insubstantial fire washed over Aeygar. The eagle shrieked. Her armoured torque glowed white hot. Ashigaroth sank its teeth into her neck, buckling the enchanted metal scales. Aeygar raked furiously with talons the length of sword blades. Precious metals rained to earth as the eagle screeched mournfully. Ashigaroth trumpeted as she pulled herself from its clutches and withdrew, shaking the Stormvault to its foundations.
I watched the princess depart, but all I could think of was death. The jaws of the abyssal on my chest. Crushing the life from me. The lure of the spirit hosts in its gullet. Pulling me under as Death sought to devour me. Even as the tug of Sigmaron pulled against it. The promise of oblivion versus the agonies of Reforging.
Even now, I’m not sure I got the better deal.
I gulped down a breath, used it to compensate with a roar of my own.
‘To me,’ I yelled, stepping forth as though I had never before known fear, to behead a hexwraith and usher fleeing soldiers through the door behind me. Bellowing in fury, I swung at the fleeting shade of a dread knight. It bled into the mists from whence it had threatened to strike, and my blade swept through it, two more warriors ducking under the sweep of my arm and escaping inside.
I bellowed against the rising tide, chainrasps scratching at my sigmarite greaves, spirit hosts pulling on my beard, and only when it became clear that no lesser a being than Sigmar himself was still alive out there did I step back into the Stormvault myself. I tried to haul it shut behind me but the pull of the dead held it fast. I walked backwards to give myself room to fight, twirling my halberd in readiness.
About two-score human spear- and bowmen had escaped the slaughter and had mustered with Nassam in an almost instinctual circle of protection around Ansira. The old priestess was recumbent on the dais, head in the seat of her chair, unsurprised and apparently unmoved by the approach of our demise. With all of that being so, I found myself somewhat envious of her ability to rally the shattered Freeguilds to her.
I was going to have to up my game.
‘Whatever comes through that door!’ I bellowed, turning towards it with my halberd gripped two-handed. I bared my teeth. ‘Face it without fear, for Hamilcar will be facing it first and he will show you how it’s done.’
Bolts of Azyrite energy blitzed the open doorway, and in spite of my bravado I covered my eyes and retreated from the shrieks of the twice-slain.
There is, I suppose, some irony in the fact that the only power I truly fear these days is that which flows from the same source as my own.
Lord-Celestant Settrus and a Thunderhead Brotherhood of Imperishables swept into the Stormvault even as I drew my hand from my reddened eyes. The Liberators pivoted on the heel, locked shields, and planted them on the ground with a clang. The Judicators then turned, automata following the same clockwork routine, laying boltstorm crossbows on their brothers’ shoulders and volleying the corridor with lightning.
Settrus strode towards me.
Then past.
He dropped to one knee before the cosmic orrery and signed the hammer across his breast. ‘Sigmar, Lord of Heaven, forgive this unworthy trespass.’
His gaze slid across the moving wonder of the Penumbral Engine before settling on the old woman.
She returned it quite evenly.
I loved her, I think. Just a little bit.
Settrus’ fist tightened around the grip of his hammer. ‘Who is this? And how did she come to be in here?’
‘I think they actually built it around her,’ I said.
‘I do not understand you.’
‘It means she has protected this Stormvault far longer than you or I have been around.’
Settrus took a moment to scrutinise the spinning orrery.
He was as much a Lord-Ordinator as I am a Knight-Incantor, but this, as I know, is no reason to refrain from professing unwavering certainty on a subject upon which countless lives would ultimately depend.
‘Then she can do so again,’ he said.
Ansira shook her head. ‘No.’
‘You will.’
‘No.’
The Lord-Celestant took a step towards her, his gaze practically drilling into her. ‘You will.’
‘There is nothing you can threaten that will be worse than what I have known. I am old,’ Ansira wailed. ‘I have already given Sigmar so much. Why can’t you just let me die?’
Settrus made a sound of disgust and looked away.
‘Sigmar has commanded it, and so it must be–’
‘They are here!’
The shout came from the corridor.
An explosion of purple-edged fury took out the Liberator shield wall and most of the doorframe, and threw the bodies inwards, the immediately slain breaking down into lightning before they hit the ground.
‘You prayed for death,’ I roared, turning my head to Ansira. ‘I think death heard, my lady, but not death alone.’
‘Warriors to me,’ Settrus commanded.
‘Freeguild to me!’ I roared.
‘Give no ground,’ Settrus went on. Even then, in the face of battle and next to me, the Lord-Celestant did not raise his voice. He would not concede the dead even that much. ‘Let the ground give. We who have claimed death will yield it nothing.’
The surviving Liberators re-formed into a short line with their Lord-Celestant at its centre. They hoisted shields as one, as a wedge of heavily armoured, definitely corporeal foot knights rushed through the ruined archway. They came in spiked and fluted armour, night black and deep, deep purple. Batwing motifs, which I now know heralded them as household knights of the Shyishan state of Carstinia, adorned helmets and rondels and pinned cloaks to pallid necks. They hissed as they sprinted at the Liberators, delivering challenges in accordance with some chivalric code and attempting to transfix them with the glare of bloodshot eyes. They crashed into the Liberators as though someone had thrown a bucketful of swords at a shield wall. They were blurs of speed, centuries of blade skill allied to vampiric strength, and the equal of the Liberators in every way but numbers.