As he did so, every knight in every company readied himself. Lances were lowered, visors were closed. Final prayers were whispered, and the sign of the comet was made across breastplates and leather jerkins.
A huge clang broke out as chains were hauled over iron wheels. The mighty gears of the gate-doors shunted into position, and steam vented from the brass valves. The doors ground open, running on their iron rails across stone flags. The heavy portcullis was released, and fell open with a dull thud against the earth.
On the far side was a vision of pure madness. The sky danced with fell energies, and the earth boiled with countless bodies. The front ranks of the enemy saw the gate opening, and surged towards it, weapons in hand. They looked infinite.
Helborg picked his target, lowered his lance, and tensed.
‘For the honour of the Empire,’ he roared, ‘charge!’
‘Seal the gates!’ shouted Margrit, hurrying from the garden and towards the temple’s entrance. ‘For the love of the Lady, seal the gates!’
The order wrenched her heart – there were thousands still trying to push their way into the temple enclosure, praying that the building could give them some kind of respite from the hells unravelling outside the walls. When the plague-rain had started, the sisters had done what they always did – ushered as many wounded and infirm into the healing gardens, assessing the grades of sickness, binding wounds and whispering prayers of restoration.
But then the daemons had come, gibbering and slobbering, dropping out of the sky like hailstones. They were flung from the shrieking walls of the vortex, crashing into the sides of houses and smashing straight through mould-weakened walls. Shards of green-edged lightning danced amid the tempest, skewering men even as they ran for cover, and the sound of maniacal voices rang down every reeling alleyway.
The defenders had been caught wanting. With the emphasis on the walls, whole areas of the city had been stripped of watch-patrols and state troopers. Margrit had been forced to watch from the safety of the temple as swell-bellied grotesques had chased down and slain those who were left behind – the old, the children, the weak. Her every instinct had been to storm out onto the streets, raging, doing what she could to banish the stalking nightmares that were literally falling out of the sky.
She resisted. The powers of Shallya ran deep, but they were not martial powers. Her duty was clear – to endure, to resist, to remain pure. Once the storm hit in full, Margrit ordered the shutters to be locked, the doorways to be sealed, the precincts to be purified. The last of the temple’s priceless blessed water was handed out to the remaining sisters, carried in earthenware vials to be sprinkled around the temple’s perimeter. That might halt them for a while – as painfully insignificant as it looked, such gestures had proved their worth in the past.
All was at risk, though, as the panicked crowds outside surged towards the temple walls, ripping down the tents in which they had been tended to and wailing for sanctuary. The outer doors had been forced open, and the mob now beat at the gates to the inner courtyard, which were only lightly barred.
Margrit rushed along the walls, crying out more orders. From her vantage on the top of the battlements she could see down into the inner courtyard, where the temple guards were struggling to barricade the gates with whatever they could find – wooden planks, heavy metalware from the sacred chapels. She could also see outside, across the heads of the milling crowds and over the roofs of the houses beyond. The volume of screaming was terrific, and the stench of human fear nearly masked the ever-present musk of the Rot.
As she neared the main gatehouse, the air was ripped apart once again by the stink of magic. Bright magisters, three of them, had appeared on the far side of the grand platz before the temple, and were unleashing withering bursts of flame against the daemons that ran amok. At the same time, finally, a troop of soldiers charged into the square from the north, where the streets ran towards the river’s-edge. They bore the white and red of Altdorf’s own, and looked disciplined and prepared. Defying the slime-deluge, they barged their way through the crowd towards the clots and gluts of daemonic creatures, crying out prayers to Sigmar and Ulric as they came.
The new arrivals broke the momentum of the crowd. Caught between the battle wizards and the aethyr-creatures, many of the sick broke for easier cover, limping into the shadows of the burning townhouses. Those that remained were easier to repel, and the pressure on the inner gates lessened.
Margrit reached the gatehouse, where Gerhard, her guard captain, and many of her priestesses were gathered. All of them had pale faces.
‘Will they hold?’ asked Margrit, panting heavily.
‘For now,’ said Gerhard, watching the battles breaking out across the square with some trepidation. ‘But if they rush us again...’
Margrit turned to one of the sisters, a dark-skinned woman named Elia from the distant south whose Reikspiel had never been perfected. ‘And the well?’
Elia shook her head. ‘Some waters remains. We did not wish to make all dry now.’
‘Draw the rest. All of it. Take every last drop and make a seal around the inner sanctum. They will not cross the line, not if the ring is unbroken.’
Elia bowed, and was about to rush off down to the sacred wellsprings, when a fresh bellowing broke out from the far side of the square. All faces on the gatehouse snapped around, ready to witness whatever fresh terror had been unleashed.
Something was emerging from the eastern end of the platz, pouring out of the narrow, overlooked streets and into the rain-drenched open. Margrit saw petty daemons spill from the shadowed openings of burned-out houses, their jaws streaked with blood and their claws dragging clumps of entrails.
The Bright wizards, who had by now taken the fight to the centre of the square, rushed to staunch the new invasion. Flares of crimson flame shot out into the gloom, making the daemons squeal and pop as they were caught. The Altdorf state troopers rushed to support them, forming a ring of halberds around the three magisters.
‘My place is there, sister,’ said Gerhard, strapping his helm tight and making ready to descend to ground level.
‘Your place is here, captain,’ said Margrit, her voice hard. She could sense something coming, something far greater than the squalid daemons that had so far shown themselves.
‘They are fighting back,’ protested Gerhard, gesturing to where the Bright wizards were going on the offensive, backed up by their company of bodyguards.
‘Stay in the temple,’ Margrit ordered. She turned to the other assembled sisters. ‘No one leaves. We have done what we can – now we tend to the wards and keep the gates locked.’
As she finished speaking, a great crack rang out from the square’s eastern end. With a boom, one of the massive wooden-framed houses disintegrated, its beams snapping and its brickwork dissolving into a cloud of reddened dust. Something was thrusting up through it, tearing it apart from the foundations. The wizards retreated, launching bolts of fire at the house’s carcass. As the smoke and dust cleared, something enormous waddled into view.
Its girth was phenomenal, far greater than any mortal creature had any right to possess. Slabbed flanks of grey-green, pocked with warts and sores, overflowed in a pyramid of scarce-contained blubber. The monster crashed through the remains of house, crushing the rubble under two stump-like legs. An obese belly dragged in its wake, mottled with sticky residues. A flat, grinning head emerged from the ruins, topped with a heavy coronet of slime-slicked antlers. In one claw the creature carried a thick-bladed cleaver; the other was free to clutch, rip and maim.