Two duardin dropped down, gripping their leader as he writhed. Balthas kept his hand in place for another moment, until the lightning seemed to illuminate the duardin from within. Then he ripped his hand clear, drawing the flickering energies out. A puff of blackness burst from Juddsson’s lips as he went limp.
‘You killed him,’ a duardin growled, lifting his weapon. Others followed suit.
Balthas ignored the implied threat and rose to his feet. ‘He’s not dead. And he’ll stay that way if you get him into the temple. In fact, all of you fall back. You can do nothing more here. Go.’ He hauled himself back onto Quicksilver, as the duardin slid Juddsson onto a shield and carried him up the steps. The last few ranks of their warriors followed, after a final volley with their drakeguns at the approaching deadwalkers. Balthas signalled to Fosko. ‘Fall back with the duardin into the Grand Tempestus,’ he called out. ‘We shall hold here.’
Fosko shook his head. ‘This is our duty as well,’ he shouted back. He flinched as the celestar ballista roared again, and streaks of blue fire pierced the air.
‘And it is my duty to deny the enemy resources. Your men will only add to the enemy’s numbers. Fall back. This is our war, now.’ Balthas spoke flatly and forcefully.
Fosko grimaced, but nodded.
Balthas turned back to the plaza. Porthas and Mara’s cohorts backed towards the steps, shields facing the foe. Quintus and his Castigators were arranging themselves into a volley-line. They fired bolts into the nighthaunts that drew too close, scattering them before they could mass.
‘More of them than I’ve ever seen,’ the Castigator-Prime said, as Balthas drew close. ‘It’s as if they’re all being drawn here by something, my lord. And the aether – it’s twitching.’
‘Something is drawing near. This attack is but the preamble.’
Quintus hefted his greatbow and tracked a skull-faced gheist as it raced down towards the Sequitors. He waited until almost the last moment before firing. The gheist was ripped apart, and the resulting snarl of lightning played across the battle-line, reducing several deadwalkers to ambulatory torches. ‘Let it come. We will despatch it, whatever it is.’
‘Your confidence is appreciated,’ Balthas said. He stiffened, as the aether spasmed and tensed. Quicksilver squalled, disturbed. He twisted around in his saddle, searching. Nighthaunts clustered thickly about one end of the plaza, as if awaiting something or someone. More and more of them were gathering on the rooftops and in the shadows. These were not mere chainrasps, but spectral stalkers and reapers, strong with the stuff of death.
‘It’s an army,’ Mara called out, as she and Porthas hurried towards him. Their cohorts stood arrayed before the steps in a solid wall of sigmarite, facing the shuffling mass of deadwalkers that was slowly approaching. ‘Two armies, if you count the deadwalkers.’
‘The corpses are a distraction,’ Porthas said, glancing back. ‘Keeping us occupied, until something worse arrives.’ He tensed. Balthas felt it as well. They all did. Like a cold wind, wailing through the hollows of their souls.
Balthas straightened in his saddle. ‘You are right. And I think that it has.’
Pharus strode over the bodies of mortals he might once have fought alongside in life. Indeed, he had fought alongside them. They and their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers. How many years had he spent enslaved by the tyranny of the cold stars? How much blood had he spilled in the defence of a lie?
He stepped into the plaza, surrounded by ravenous gheists. They clutched at him, like fearful penitents seeking comfort. But he had none to give them. Contrary to his former assumptions, the dead were not silent. Indeed, they were a riot of noise. The spirits floating in his wake murmured and whispered to themselves and each other without ceasing. They had only grown louder after the living had retreated. Like hungry animals, denied a taste of meat.
He glared up at the Grand Tempestus, looming over the plaza, picking out the weak points in the ancient walls with instinctive ease. It was a solid edifice, and warded against his kind, but there was a way in. There was always a way in. He had learned that much, in his former life. But there were other obstacles to consider.
A wall of fire – or something as good as – separated him from his goal. It blazed cobalt, and he found it hard to look at for long. There were warriors in the flames. Stormcasts, but not any he was familiar with. Like the ones they’d fought in the northern gatehouse. ‘They wait for us,’ he intoned, with a certain amount of satisfaction.
‘They defy us,’ Rocha said, at his elbow. She ran a bloodless thumb along the edge of her axe, her features twisting from glee to grimace as the floating skulls of her victims caught at her hair, or the noose about her neck, gibbering recriminations. ‘They seek to stop the inevitable. Hubris. They will be judged and found wanting.’
Pharus glanced at her but said nothing. Once, he might have challenged such certainty. Now, he cared only that she make good on that promise. She existed only to make good on it. As he existed only to do as Nagash willed.
He looked down. The bodies of dead Freeguild soldiers lay at his feet. ‘Awaken them, Dohl. Draw them up. We will need an army to overwhelm them.’
‘What Sigmar has abandoned, we shall remake,’ Dohl murmured, from behind him. As the light of his lantern washed across the broken bodies, they began to twitch and moan. Something like mist seeped upwards from them, and things that might have been faces or limbs twisted within it. ‘Thus the light of Nagashizzar calls to the wicked and draws them from their undeserved rest, so that they might shed their sins in honest labour.’
‘Were they wicked, then?’ Pharus asked. But he knew the answer. There was evil in even the most innocent of men. A kernel of darkness that might flourish, given time. Soldiers might be worse than most – or better than some.
Dohl gave a sad laugh. ‘If the light calls, what is wicked in them will answer.’ Misty, stretched shapes, like shrouds caught on a breeze, rose around him as he floated after Pharus. Newborn gheists rose from the bodies, whimpering and howling. Soon, the corpses would join their other halves, stumbling mindlessly in the wake of their own tormented souls. ‘They seek refuge on sacred ground,’ Dohl continued. ‘Can you feel it? The heat of Azyr rises from those cursed stones. I cannot bear it.’
‘You will bear it. You must. They cannot be allowed to hold us at bay. The way into the catacombs is below the cathedral. We must open the path and soon.’
‘Impatience is a vice of the living,’ Dohl said, studying the cathedral with almost mocking solemnity. ‘You would do well to cast such things aside. What is time to such as we?’ He looked at Pharus, his eyes glowing dully within his helm.
Pharus stared at him. ‘What?’
‘Time is a part of eternity, and eternity is a slave of time. Each moment drips into the next with a dim monotony, and eternity stretches across epochs.’ Dohl studied him with ghastly eyes. ‘For the living, there is no difference between moment and epoch. They are like beasts of burden, bowed beneath a weight they do not understand.’
Pharus shook his head. ‘But the dead know different, do they?’
‘We perceive the weight for what it is. We see, and in seeing, understand. And in understanding, we are driven painfully sane.’ Dohl looked up at his lantern. ‘The light of truth burns away all the comforts of madness, leaving the stark face of the thing, stripped bare of illusion.’ He bowed his head. ‘To be dead – truly dead – is a glorious thing. It is given to us to bear witness to the clockwork of infinity. You should rejoice.’