Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

In response, the Judicators knelt and loosed the latent celestial energy that coursed through their heaven-forged weaponry. Great, glittering arcs of lightning smashed into the tower, crumbling the cursed stone and sending chunks of shattered masonry tumbling to the ground. While those warriors wielding powerful boltstorm crossbows turned the fortress’s deadly defences to rubble, skybolt bows sent a cascade of light pouring over the perimeter wall to find its home in the tainted flesh of the Dreadhold’s defenders. Smoke rose from the battlements where the devastating barrage of lightning scorched and burned the unworthy.

Shields raised and clattering under the incessant rain of projectiles, the Liberators pushed towards the great gate of the Dreadhold. The sky boiled above them, blood-red clouds swirling and reforming furiously, thunder bursts rolling across the battlefield, almost drowning out the calamitous sounds of battle. Then a sudden, violent crack split the air, louder even than the hammers of the great forges of Azyrheim. Tendrils of violent scarlet energy trailed across the main tower of the Dreadhold, wrapping around its surface like a cluster of vines. Mykos Argellon turned his eyes to the heavens, and felt a soft tapping sound on his mask and across his armour.

The blood rain fell. Inside the Dreadhold, the warriors of Khorne whooped and shrieked with joy at this sign of providence from their monstrous master. They turned their faces to the sky and let the iron taste roll down their tongues. They beat their chests and brandished their weapons and howled. Above them, the sky darkened and swelled, and the tendrils of fell energy crept over the edge of the tower. The sorcerer Xos’Phet stood upon the battlement, laughing in delight.

‘It begins!’ he chortled. ‘The gate swells in power. Now we must feed the link between this world and the other.’

He looked at the prisoner that the gorepriests held, a straggle-haired man with wide and frightened eyes. ‘This is your task, my friend. You are truly blessed.’

The knife was in his hand in a flash, and he cut the man’s throat with one swift motion. The prisoner’s eyes rolled back in his head, and the gorepriests hurled him into the oval pit at the centre of the tower. Blood spilled, and seeped through the grilles cut into the floor.

‘Fetch me another!’ said Xos’Phet, grinning widely.

Despite the rain of projectiles and the blood that now churned the earth and bogged them down, the Celestial Vindicators pushed to the main gate, a monstrous slab of iron covered with foul symbols and wrapped in dust-dry human skin.

Here the phalanx of shield-bearing Liberators peeled apart, allowing the breaching teams to rush through. First came the Knight-Heraldor Axilon, and the men cheered to see him raise his war horn, the blessed instrument of Sigmar that all of his rank carried.

‘What say we play an old Azyrheim tune for this Chaos filth?’ he roared above the clatter of weapons and the belching fire of the wall defences. He raised the horn to his lips.

The note that issued forth was one empowered by the fury of Sigmar’s storm, a pure wave of destruction that swelled the heart of the faithful and echoed in the ears of the damned as a promise of obliteration. The strong metal of the castle gate crumpled in the face of its awesome power, as if struck by the armoured fist of a towering giant. The gate was bound and reinforced, and it was not breached, but in the wake of Axilon’s strike, the tall warriors of the Paladin retinues that carried wondrous starsoul maces came forwards, and began to beat a furious rhythm on the ruined surface. Explosions of storm-light marked each strike. Shards of metal and chunks of stone fell, and the gate groaned under the assault. Axilon even found time for a theatrical bow as the Celestial Vindicators beat their shields and chanted his name.

Rusik watched as, one after another, his people were led to the slaughter. This next one was of his own retinue, and his eyes were full of terrified anger as the pallid, nightmarish creatures that served the sorcerer dragged him over to the pit of corpses.

The knife tore flesh, and Rusik did not look away.

‘Betrayer,’ hissed a voice at his back, and he turned to see Alzheer, leg bloodied and one eye swollen shut with blood. She gripped the bars so tightly that her hands were white. ‘Faithless, murdering scum.’

He turned away as the next prisoner was dragged forwards.

‘You are right,’ he said. ‘I am faithless. My faith died along with my family and my friends.’

‘And murdering others gives you peace?’

‘There is no peace,’ he spat. ‘Nowhere. There is only war and bloodshed. An eternity of slaughter that will not cease and cannot be quelled. Varash and his men understand that, and so do I.’

‘Zi’Mar sends his heralds,’ Alzheer said. ‘You see them for yourself. We are not alone. The light of humanity shines on, even in such darkness.’

Rusik whirled, his dark eyes burning with rage.

‘They come now, when we are already lost,’ he shouted, and he could taste the blood rain seeping into his mouth. ‘We are already dead, woman, you are just too blind to see it. I will no longer hold on to what is lost. If this is our future, I embrace it.’

Under the combined assault of Knight-Heraldor Axilon and the hammers of the Retributors, the gates fell inwards, and the Celestial Vindicators met the enemy face to face. The true enemy, not the simple-minded bloodlust of the enemy’s reavers, but warriors who had fully embraced the touch of Khorne. These were hardened killers, tall and broad, encased in ornate plate armour of imposing design and wielding vicious, jagged axes. They did not fall before the charge of the Stormcasts, but leapt and charged into the mouth of the storm, hacking and slicing, songs of devotion to their twisted god upon their lips.

The two waves crashed together, the gleaming turquoise of the Celestial Vindicators and the spoiled-meat red of the Bloodbound warriors, and the carnage was total.

Many Stormcasts fell in that initial clash, even their mighty warplate unable to defend them from the enemy’s wild, delighted frenzy. A screaming fiend with a bronze crest took the head from a Liberator with his twin axes, then was crushed under the heavy swing of a sigmarite hammer. Drooling and chortling, a warrior wearing a flayed orruk-hide cape ground a Celestial Vindicator’s face into the ground, hacking at the stricken figure’s back with a wide-bladed gladius as he did so.

Mykos Argellon put his blade through the warrior’s back. The man gasped and choked, and Mykos kicked him free to sprawl in the dirt.

‘Push forwards, brothers,’ he shouted above the grind of battle. ‘Forge a breach!’

They were in the gatehouse tunnel, which stretched for a dozen yards ahead, culminating in a wide staircase that led up. Dull red light shone down those stairs, telling Mykos that if they could push the enemy back they would emerge in the fortress courtyard, below the main tower. Easier thought than achieved. The forces of the Dreadhold outnumbered the two hundred fighters that Mykos commanded at least four to one.

‘They’re thick as a rat swarm in here,’ Axilon shouted, his own broadsword wet with gore, and a great rent torn across his breastplate. ‘We’ll not get past them easily, and more are on their way.’

‘Come on, Bladestorm,’ Mykos said, searching for a gap in the line where he could bring his sword to bear. ‘Where are you?’

Up came the Prosecutors, over the wall of the Dreadfort, nimbly weaving past the poorly aimed missiles that were hurled their way. First, they cleared the ramparts with a flurry of their own. Lightning swept aside the throng of bloodstarved that garrisoned the wall next to the central tower. Celestial hammers and javelins hurled Chaos-warped figures to the courtyard, where they broke upon hard stone.