‘The soul-mills are repaired. The aftershocks are fading. The dead…’ Knossus hesitated. Sigmar glanced at him.
‘The dead do not rest easy,’ he said.
Knossus nodded. ‘Even in Sigmaron, they rise and attack. The Vaults of the Firmament cracked wide in the cataclysm. Thousands of suddenly ambulatory corpses have spilled out into the streets, attacking any they come across. Some are no more than feral husks. Others are possessed of more malign awareness. It is as if a call to war has gone out, and now even the honoured fallen turn on us.’
‘A call to war,’ Sigmar repeated. ‘Perhaps that is what it was.’ He was already aware of everything Knossus had told him. He could feel the dead, clawing at the insides of their tombs, and hear the wailing of souls driven to madness.
He looked out, past the edges of the Sigmarabulum and down into Azyr itself, where high, snow-capped mountains rose over great plains and seas. The dead walked in Sigmaron, as Knossus said, and in Azyrheim, below it. In every great city of Azyr, the dead stirred. And not just there. Wherever one of his cities rose, he could see. Deadwalkers stumbled through the streets of Excelsis and Greywater Fastness. Cackling spirits threatened the Phoenix Temple in Phoenicium, and long-forgotten armies of fleshless deathrattle warriors stirred themselves from the boiling mud-flats and marched on the walls of Hammerhal Aqsha.
The embers of his rage flickered, threatening to blaze forth once more. He watched all that he had built in these scant decades since the opening of the Gates of Azyr come under attack, and his hands itched for the weight of his warhammer, Ghal Maraz. He longed to take it up once more and hurl himself down into Shyish. To at last answer the questions that lay between himself and the Undying King. But he had learned his lesson.
He turned from the wall and strode past Knossus. ‘I suspected this day would come the moment Nagash chose to reject my offer of alliance. He was always stubborn. But I hoped he’d see sense.’
Knossus followed him, shaking his head. ‘Perhaps there is method to his madness. We have pushed back the dark gods on almost every front. They are not defeated, but they are on uncertain ground. The other gods rally against them, and even Archaon cannot be everywhere at once.’ He hurried to catch up to Sigmar’s longer stride. ‘This may well be Nagash’s only chance – we are stretched thin, and our eyes are on other foes.’
Sigmar slowed and glanced down at him. ‘There is more to this than simple strategy. I think this was the culmination of something set in motion long ago. Nagash has always taken a longer view than most gods. Even myself. I think in terms of centuries. Nagash thinks in terms of epochs.’ He stopped. ‘He has already foreseen the moment that the last star flickers out, and prepared accordingly.’
‘Surely that will never happen.’ Knossus sounded aghast.
Sigmar looked around before answering. The detritus of the battle against the lightning-gheist lay scattered everywhere. Scorched weapons and torn armour lay mixed among the rubble. Half a dozen Celestors and a mage-sacristan had perished, attempting to bring the rogue soul to bay. That the lord-arcanum known as Balthas had managed to survive, and defeat it, was a testament to his strength.
Balthas. There was a soul to be watched. An old soul. Sigmar glanced up, at Mallus, and then away. Balthas had requested that his Chamber be sent in pursuit of the escaped soul. Sigmar was still considering that request.
He glanced at Knossus. ‘It is not in my power to say what will happen, or won’t. All things move towards their end, whatever the will of men or gods.’ He picked up a crumpled helmet. The warrior who’d worn it was now in one of the soul-mills. He could feel the last moments of their life and the echo of their death. He could hear their soul screaming, begging for release. Sigmar closed his eyes. The helmet fell to the ground. Someone would clean it up later. It would be reforged and made ready for war again. All things could be reforged. Even gods.
‘But that end is not here yet, my lord,’ Knossus said.
Sigmar opened his eyes and looked up at the dark curve of the sky. He could see every star, and beyond. In the quiet between battles, when the affairs of the realms did not distract him, they sang to him, sometimes, calling down to him, bidding him join them in the eternal dance. He felt their pull now and knew that one day, he might no longer be able to resist their call. But not today. Not until the war was won.
‘No. It is not. You will go to Shyish.’
Knossus bowed his head. ‘As you will it, my lord.’
‘As it must be, Knossus.’ Sigmar approached the Anvil. The mage-sacristans who had been working to cleanse it retreated, bowing low. Sigmar gestured, catching up some of the skeins of magic that emanated from it. He could feel the heat of the world from which the substance of the Anvil had been drawn.
Mallus. It’d had another name, once. In another age, in another life. Once, it had been as vibrant as the realms and dearer to him than anything. Now, it was simply raw materials for a war beyond comprehension. A world and all those who might have once lived on it, made over into weapons.
‘As it must be,’ Sigmar said, again. ‘Until the war is won.’
Balthas whipped his staff up and about, striking the dead thing as it lunged for him. A skull, brown with age, cracked, expelling a violet light. The corpse, a scarecrow of leathery skin stretched over thin bones, wrapped in mouldering robes of azure and rusted armour, collapsed in a heap. It was not alone. A dozen more stumbled along the parapet towards the lord-arcanum, clad in the finery of ages. They wore the tattered vestments of healers and philosophers, generals and diplomats. In life, they had been heroes. In death, they were little more than beasts.
Some stumbled on limbs that did not function correctly. Others scampered across the crenellations of the World-Wall – the highest rampart of Sigmaron, and the closest one to Mallus – with simian ease. Balthas braced himself as the quickest of these leapt for him, fleshless jaws champing. He swept his staff up, catching it in the chest and pitching it over the side. For a moment, Sigmaron seemed to fall away from him, in descending tiers of pale stone. A vertiginous slope of towers and buttresses. Now, clouds of smoke obscured some of those structures. He turned back and reversed his staff, thrusting it out to catch a second corpse. A brittle sternum crumpled, and he drove the deadwalker back with two quick steps.
As the corpse reeled, Balthas slammed his staff down, a corona of corposant playing atop it. A bolt of lightning thundered down, striking the cadaver and immolating it. Smaller chains of lightning leapt out to strike the rest, one after another. The celestial energy cascaded through the dead, reducing them to ashes and blackened bones. He watched them burn with no small amount of satisfaction.
‘Neatly done, my lord. Even if you have once again declined the use of your blade.’
He turned as Miska joined him on the parapet of the World-Wall. She eyed the smouldering lightning scars with approval. ‘Then, you have ever possessed a talent for the aetheric.’ As ever, her voice rasped across his hearing, like a whetstone across a blade.
‘It was but the work of a moment and of no import,’ he said modestly. ‘Any aether-mage could have done the same.’
‘That is true.’
He ignored her dismissal. ‘The others?’
‘Scattered along the World-Wall, as you ordered. We have cleansed all but the lowest tiers of these hungry corpses.’
Balthas nodded in satisfaction. He had claimed the honour of cleansing the World-Wall for his chamber the moment Sigmar had ordered their chamber despatched to Sigmaron. ‘Good. We will regroup and descend to the lower tiers.’