Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Gradually, the dust began to settle enough for him to peer a dozen or so yards ahead. Chaos. Dull, dust-covered turquoise clashing with ugly yellow, blood spilled on both sides. Orruks hacked away in a graceless but effective frenzy, hollering and chortling in their idiot voices as they did so. Celestial Vindicators fought with ruthless competence, despite the disarray. They clustered in makeshift groups, forming ad-hoc defensive formations, islands of calm order amidst the swirling madness. Orruks died by the dozen around them, bludgeoned by warhammers, hacked down by axes or sliced open by measured cuts from sigmarite blades.

Above the sound of battle could be heard the clear notes of Knight-Heraldor Axilon’s battle-horn, and it was towards this rallying sound that Kyvos headed. As expected, he found the man in the midst of the thickest fighting, backed by several worn-looking Liberators and the few surviving members of a Paladin retinue. His armour was stained with blood and grime, and his helm had been split by a vicious cut that ran down to his collarbone, but still he wielded his broadsword with deadly skill. As Kyvos came closer, the Knight-Heraldor glanced at him.

‘Who’s that there?’ he said, and Kyvos could hear the undercurrent of pain that ran through his words. The Knight-Heraldor had been wounded, and badly. ‘All this cursed dust everywhere, I can barely see. Of course, no one to blame for that but myself.’

He laughed and spun, spitting an onrushing orruk on the tip of his sword. The creature gurgled and fell to splash in the knee-high water that swelled around them.

‘Decimator-Prime Kyvos, my Lord,’ he said, raising his thunderaxe and taking position next to Axilon.

‘Ah, good man. Where are your warriors?’

‘I do not know,’ he said, and felt a stab of worry and shame. He had called and looked for them, but it was impossible to find anyone in the middle of such chaos. ‘Several fell in the last charge. The rest I could not find.’

‘No matter, son,’ said the Knight-Heraldor. ‘What say we meet this next lot together? Give them something to remember us by?’

A fresh mob of orruks was advancing through the filth towards them. He could see the eager bloodlust in their tiny, pitiless eyes. They scrambled over the heaped corpses of their fellows, splashing and stumbling in the mud in desperation to get at the Stormcasts.

‘It’s been quite a day, has it not, Kyvos?’ said Axilon. ‘Quite a day. Tell me, do you remember your past life, before all this madness?’

Kyvos nodded. ‘I was a baker,’ he said, and the memory brought a sad smile to his lips. ‘Before my village burned. Before I took up the sword. And you, my Lord?’

‘A fat and foolish king, whose only honour came in death,’ Axilon roared with laughter and clapped the Retributor-Prime on the back hard enough to make him stumble. ‘The baker and the king. Look at us now, eh?’

Goldfeather alighted on the back of the creature, so deftly its dull-brained master did not even notice his presence until it was too late. He grabbed the orruk’s head, forced it down, and stabbed his javelin deep into the neck. Blood drenched his armour, and the rider gurgled and choked. He slashed the precarious series of leather bindings that kept the orruk in place, and it slipped free, falling into empty air.

That was the last of them. Crazed, panicking beasts still spiralled and whipped through the air, shorn of the limited control of their dead riders. The surviving Prosecutors — Goldfeather winced as he saw the full toll they had suffered — formed up around him.

‘We go straight down their throat,’ he roared. The joy of battle pumped through his veins, filling him with fervour. ‘Sigmar is watching, warriors of the Ceslestial Vindicators. Let us show him our worth.’

The orruk was colossal, even by the standards of those they had fought thus far. It towered above even the Stormcasts, a mountain of green flesh that radiated sheer, terrifying power. It killed with contemptuous ease, whipping a jagged cleaver about itself with a fury that belied the precision in its movement. An almost casual swing to the left sent two Vindicators tumbling, blood seeping through ruined chestplates. A downward slice split another warrior in two. Lightning claimed both segments of his body as they fell away.

It roared a challenge in its rough and brutish tongue, and from all sides the brave champions of Mykos Argellon’s Warrior Chamber answered. As the Lord-Celestant fought his way towards the behemoth, he watched them all die.

Patreus, the warrior who had held the Shining Door against the roiling, surging tides of the Pandaemonium fell, his head crushed by an axe blow. Liberator-Prime Thayon, the Hero of the Flamepeak, was cleaved in two. Olren, Tavos, some of the best and brightest warriors of his chamber. Killed and thrown aside by this creature as if they were little more than mortal serfs.

Mykos roared and charged, bringing Mercutia down from a high guard in a diagonal slice aimed at the beast’s neck. The orruk leader did not feint or move to avoid the blow, but simply shifted and let it fall across his chestplate. The blade screamed as it gouged a jagged line through the strong iron, but it did not reach through to wound the orruk, who returned the strike with a backhand swing of his axe. Mykos dropped to one knee in the dirty water, leaning back. He heard the orruk’s wicked axe rush past his face, mere inches away. Then he was up, spinning and putting distance between him and the monster. It laughed, enjoying the game, and advanced after him, sloshing through the mud and gore.

‘Drekka Breakbones claims your skull, little man-thing,’ it chuckled, in a voice like an avalanche. ‘I’ll ’av that little pig-sticker you got there, too.’

‘Come and take it,’ Mykos muttered, turning Mercutia in his hand, searching for a weakness he could exploit.

He could not see one. The creature was huge, but not so huge that it could not react with frightening speed. It was aggressive, but it did not fight like a blood-crazed cultist, all power and rage. There was cunning to its attacks. It rushed at him, swinging low with that great axe, forcing him backwards, then feinted a sideways step. Instead of the cleaver it swung a mighty punch with its left fist, upon which it wore a band of heavy iron tipped with needle-sharp blades.

Mykos just got his sword up in time to block, but the power of the blow sent him reeling backwards to crash against the carcass of a war-beast. On came the orruk leader, swinging its axe down in a vertical chop aimed to split the Lord-Celestant in two. Mykos barely shifted aside in time, and felt the splash of blood across his armour as the axe cleaved the dead boar in half. The orruk’s eyes narrowed in frustration as it tried to tug the weapon free, and Mykos took advantage of the momentary distraction to hack into the monster’s hip, at the join between two armour plates.

It roared in pain, and struck out with its bladed fist. The strike was blindingly fast, and Mykos could not get his blade back up to block it. It struck him square in the chest with astonishing force. He flew backwards to splash in the mud and gore, gasping for breath. Looking down, he saw great rents in his sigmarite plate. As he stared, blood began to seep through the holes. The orruk’s weapon had punched deep. He groaned and got to his knees, feeling around in the sticky, foul-smelling mud for Mercutia. He found her at last, and took comfort in her familiar heft as he focused through the stabbing pain in his chest and hauled himself upright.

‘Got me good, little ’un,’ the orruk leader spat, chortling happily as reeking blood poured over the ugly yellow of its armour. ‘Drekka remembers the last one who got him that good.’