Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Hakh shoves me aside and glares down into the pit of charred stone. ‘Where is he?’ he demands, his voice a low snarl.

‘What?’ I mutter, hypnotised by the skull’s bloody stare.

Hakh rounds on me, trembling with rage. ‘Where is the golden champion?’

He goes into a kind of spasm and swings his sword. The blade smashes into the ground a couple of feet from me, creating an explosion of black, glinting splinters that knife into my legs.

I cry out in pain and try to back away, but immediately bump into the armoured bulk of Khorlagh. He locks one of his white-skinned hands onto my shoulder and holds me in place.

‘He’s on his way!’ I cry, waving back through the ruins. ‘He’ll be here within minutes.’

Hakh is too angry to speak for a moment. Veins bulge from his tree trunk neck and he clutches his head.

‘Dawn,’ he manages to snarl finally, jabbing his sword at the brass skull grinning at us from the bottom of the crater. ‘We must be gone by dawn.’ He looks up through the ruins at the quickly vanishing stars. ‘There’s no time.’

I nod eagerly. ‘There is time! I’ve foreseen your victory. There’s still an hour before the sun rises and…’ I glance at the skull and lose my thread.

‘She’s lying,’ says Khorlagh. His flaccid lips brush against my cheek as he holds me tighter. ‘I saw that she was tricking you the moment you arrived.’

Hakh reels away from us, teetering across the lip of the crater, drunk with fury. ‘Tricking?’

Khorlagh pulls a long, rusty hook from his belt and presses the point against my trembling stomach. ‘We should gut her and leave.’

Hakh grabs one of his horns and starts wrenching his head from side to side, as though trying to shake understanding from his skull. ‘Tricking?’

Then he halts and his expression goes slack. For a moment I wonder if his anger has broken his mind, but then he grins and strides towards us, raising his sword.

I struggle to free myself but Khorlagh tightens his grip.

Hakh swings his sword and I find myself lying on the hard rock in a pool of blood. The warm liquid pumps over me, filling my eyes and mouth but, after a few seconds, I realise I’m not in pain. I’m still alive.

I feel my blood-slick throat and find that my head is still attached to it.

I wipe my eyes just in time to see Hakh reaching down to take my hand. He hauls me to my feet and I see Khorlagh’s corpse. Hakh’s blade has sliced down through the top of his skull and travelled almost to his waist. I find myself wondering at just how much blood can emerge from a single body.

‘Another fool,’ says Hakh.

I slump in his grip, weak with shock, unable to do anything but slap feebly at my clothes, trying to clear away bits of Khorlagh’s insides.

‘You didn’t lie. Khorlagh did,’ continues Hakh.

I’ve no idea what he’s talking about until I see what he’s looking at.

Tylos. I didn’t dream him. He’s here.

Boreas lives on at least, even though so many others are lost. He’s delirious with pain, muttering and flailing at shadows as though surrounded by ghosts only he can see. He’s struggling to walk, too — one of his legs drags awkwardly as we help him across the black rocks. Before we moved on from the lake I asked him if he needed to rest, but he just stared at me in proud silence until we continued our gruelling march.

As we crunch over the blasted basalt, we make a very different sight to the army that crashed down onto the bridge of birds. Along with the warriors dragged skywards by the lunar storm, I must now count those we lost in the battle for the Anvil and the retinues of paladins that were hurled into the lava attempting to defend Boreas. They will all find their way back to Sigmar’s halls, but I would have preferred to have them marching at my side. Nearly half of my army is gone and as we near the Nomad City I can’t mistake the pale glow of an approaching dawn. Anger simmers in my gut, testing me, daring me to revive my barbaric past. It is as though part of me is still in a vaulted chamber, watched carefully by the God-King himself. I will not fail the test. I suppress my rage and wave Castamon on, leading the lines of Liberators with calm disdain.

As Zarax carries me towards the city, I have the overwhelming sensation that I’m walking into a dream. After all the noise and violence of our crossing, these drifting ruins seem eerily calm. Strange, incongruous sections of rooms hang next to each other like an unsolved puzzle. If the scholars of the Celestial City are right, the ruins were left by a god. The fire of the spheres was still blasting through my bones when they told me the bloody history of this place. It’s hard to imagine such violence now, as the warm breeze whistles through the drifting towers, but I can see the skull clearly enough — a vast dome of brazen metal, flickering beyond the lip of the crater, just half a mile into the city. It’s so big I can barely comprehend it.

Between us and the realmgate lies our final challenge. Waiting in shadows beneath the city is another host of Khorne worshippers. These aren’t the bare-chested rabble that attacked us on the bridge, but lumbering, red-armoured knights, just like the unstoppable killers we faced at the Anvil, and this time they are not on foot but are mounted on horrific steeds that I recognise only from the darkest legends. Juggernauts — massive, hulking beasts, clad in plates of serrated steel and brass. As their riders sit patiently in their saddles, the metal creatures paw at the ground with blood-caked hooves, spewing gouts of steam and oil from the hinges in their flanks.

The lead rider is the largest knight I’ve yet seen and, even from here, I can tell that he is barely human. He has a pair of low, swooping horns jutting out of his forehead and his eyes burn like a pair of tiny dying suns.

I turn to face my men and draw a deep breath, preparing to rouse them from weariness and despair. My words fail on my lips, unneeded. They’re already preparing for battle, readying their hammers with silent, unshakeable faith. They’ve watched their brothers be butchered, hurled into the void and boiled alive, and now they face an army more horrific than anything we’ve yet seen, but not one of them shows any fear. My breath catches in my throat as they raise their shields and form a perfect wall of gleaming sigmarite.

Drusus lands just a few feet away with his remaining Prosecutors and they drop to their knees in silent genuflection.

The faces of my men may be hidden, but their nobility is not.

I sit taller in my saddle and lift my chin. The barbarian in my soul slips away.

‘Look at them,’ I say, levelling Grius at the red knights. ‘How different they are from us. Can you feel their hunger? Their desperation? These aren’t men, but animals, scrapping for dominion over a debased pack. They fight for power over their kin and to hold these broken lands for their own. They fight for everything that is meaningless.’

Zarax starts to pace beneath me, pawing at the ground, sensing that the battle is about to begin.

‘But you, my sky-born brothers,’ I say, raising my voice. ‘You fight for truth.’

They bring their hammers down against their shields, filling the night with sparks and noise.

‘And for Sigmar!’ I roar as we advance.

‘Curse Boreas,’ I say, slamming the palm of my hand on my desk. Dead insects tumble away from my fingers and dust fills the air. ‘How dare he wait so long to come back here and then try to fill my head with his religious nonsense? After all I taught him, how can he have fallen for a creed? And then try to drag me down with him?’