Vale heard a shout and saw the black-armoured form of the Vulture lurch into motion. The warrior-priest’s hammer snapped out in a looping blow, and a gheist fell away. The spirit crumbled to dust and tatters. Kurst stomped forwards through its drifting remains, his croaking voice raised in a battle-hymn.
‘Up – up, you sons of Sigmar,’ the warrior-priest snarled, as he smashed another gheist aside. ‘Up, you gentle princes of Azyr! There is work to be done. Fasten your hands to the plough, and turn the soil – cast the dead back, and bury them deep! Up, you cowards and fools, up and look to the stars – there is courage there, if there be none in your gizzards!’
He reached down and jerked Vale to his feet. ‘Draw your sword, captain, or I’ll crack your skull here and now. Time to put in honest effort for your pay.’
Vale shoved the priest away and drew his sword. He didn’t quite extend it between them. ‘I’m no coward, but what good is steel against these things?’
‘It is better than the alternative,’ Kurst said. ‘And it’ll do well enough against those.’ He pointed his warhammer at the inner gateway, where a line of Stormcasts had locked their shields against a flood of groaning deadwalkers. The corpses clawed at the armoured warriors, pressing them back through sheer numbers. ‘Get the men up, Vale – we’re needed.’
Vale swallowed and nodded. The Vulture was right. The northern mausoleum gate was his responsibility. Whatever else, he didn’t intend to make a bad showing – he had his prospects to consider. He turned and, in what he hoped was a suitably heroic tone, shouted, ‘Men of the Third – on your feet! Sigmar’s chosen require aid.’
‘Let someone else help them, then,’ a soldier shouted back.
‘Unfortunately for you, Herk, we’re the only poor bastards around,’ Vale snarled, grabbing the dissenter and dragging him out of hiding. ‘Our only choices are to fight or die. And I don’t plan on dying anytime soon. Now get moving, or I’ll send you to Elder Bones myself!’ He shoved Herk into the street and looked around. ‘That goes for all of you. Up, or I’ll give you to the Vulture – up!’
The men closest to him rose, if reluctantly. There was no time to see if it was all of them, and there was nothing he could do about it if it wasn’t. ‘Get moving,’ he shouted. Vale let the Vulture lead the way, allowing room for the warrior priest’s huge hammer. A Stormcast glanced back as they approached, and Vale saluted.
‘You handle the gheists, my lord. We’ll handle the corpses–’
Vale’s bravado disintegrated along with the Stormcast. The warrior crumbled to flashing sparks of azure light as Vale watched, wide-eyed. A sword – as black as night and shining like wet glass – retracted, and a grotesque, iron helm appeared. Eyes like balls of balefire met his, and Vale stepped back, trying to scream but unable to find his voice.
The warrior, wrapped in black iron and grave-shroud, turned, almost lazily, and cut down another Stormcast. Lightning flashed, but didn’t go far. Something hunched and horrid cast rusty chains about the warrior’s soul, ensnaring it. Vale thought he heard the trapped soul scream in horror and despair.
‘Blasphemy,’ Kurst roared, striking at the hunched thing. His blow caught it on its warped helm, and it spun, smashing at him with its chains. Howling spirits rushed at the priest, obscuring him from view, though Vale could hear him cursing. More spirits boiled through the gateway, followed by shambling deadwalkers. The gheists hurtled away, streaking through the streets to either side of him. His relief was short-lived, as the deadwalkers lurched towards the line of Freeguild soldiers, groping blindly.
‘Hold – hold fast,’ Vale stuttered to his men, hacking at a deadwalker. His soul felt like ice in him, as he watched the dark warrior slay another Stormcast. How could such a thing be fought? How could it be faced?
He shook himself, trying to concentrate on the threat he could fight, rather than the one he couldn’t. The deadwalkers were just as deadly as the gheists, and they were more interested in him than the spirits seemed to be, at the moment. He could hear the screams of the men on the walls, and still in the courtyard. They wouldn’t last long, even with the Stormcasts there. ‘Hold them back,’ he shouted, chopping a deadwalker off its feet. Its icy fingers tore strips from his sleeves and left rotten smears on his breastplate.
More gheists streaked overhead, their wails digging into his eardrums. Dozens of them, then a hundred. Until the sky was all but blotted out by rotting, tattered shapes. There was a sound like bird wings flapping against the wind, as they kept coming. They passed through the walls as if they weren’t there, and squirmed into the buildings on the other side of the street. He heard screams, but ignored them. The street was a tangle of confusion. More and more deadwalkers were pushing out into the street beyond the gatehouse. There were bodies slipping and falling all around him, men dying, corpses twitching and lurching. He ignored it all. The only thing that mattered was the dead thing in front of him. ‘Keep fighting,’ he screamed, trying to spot the Vulture.
A man beside him yelled as a deadwalker bore him to the ground, jaws champing. Vale kicked the corpse in the head and bisected its skull when it turned on him. ‘Get up, Doula.’ He hauled the soldier to his feet.
‘We can’t hold them,’ Doula gasped. ‘There’s too many.’ Vale shoved Doula towards the others – pitifully few of them now.
‘Fall back, all of you. Fall back! We’ll regroup at the lych-gate. Regroup…’
Something grabbed him, and he screamed. ‘Shut it, boy,’ the Vulture rasped. The old man looked like death warmed over, and his armour was coated with hoar frost, but he’d survived his brush with the nighthaunts. ‘Call them back. Got to hold the line. Got to–’
He grunted. Vale looked down. The tip of a blade jutted from between the plates of the old man’s armour. It was retracted with a wrench of metal. A gust of frosty breath emerged from his lips as he sagged against Vale. A tall figure, dressed in archaic war-plate and bearing a staff with a lantern atop it, looked down at him. The flame of the lantern burned with an ugly light that threatened to sap the strength from Vale’s limbs.
‘Have you heard the voice of Nagash, little mortal? Can you feel his hand upon your shoulder?’ the nighthaunt intoned, its voice shuddering through Vale. ‘Shall I speak of what awaits you, at the end of the last, long night? Would you hear the voice of Omphalo Dohl?’
Vale shoved Kurst’s dead weight aside and turned to run. A Stormcast staggered across his path, clutching at his neck, lightning bleeding between his fingers. The warrior collapsed to his knees, losing cohesion. The hunched thing, wrapped in its chains, swooped down like a bird of prey, pouncing on the warrior’s soul as it jetted upwards.
Before it could capture its prey, however, a streak of lightning cut across its path, driving it back. Vale turned and saw a gryph-charger rear up over him, its talons dragging a gheist from the air. From its back, Lord-Arcanum Knossus roared out an incantation, and another gheist was reduced to a cloud of ashes. ‘Back, grave-maggots. Back, shadows! This city belongs to the living.’
Vale ducked as gheists shot past him, towards Knossus. Lightning seared the air, immolating spectres and deadwalkers alike. Something caught his leg. He raised his sword, before he realised it was Kurst. The old priest was still alive, somehow. ‘Thank Sigmar,’ Vale began, as he reached down. The old man groaned and caught at him. His eyes were empty and white, like the belly of a fish. His grip tightened, and Vale stumbled. Kurst fumbled for his throat, jaws wide – impossibly wide.