Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Ionus halted, and shot him a wry smile. ‘You have tidings you wish to share,’ he said. ‘But take a moment, lord, to consider what has been done this night.’

‘And just what has been done, Cryptborn?’ asked Vandus, feeling the weariness of the long fight catch up with him at last. ‘We are conquering a burned wasteland. Whatever evil we succeed in slaying, we come too late.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Ionus. ‘Perhaps not. Come — I have something to show you.’

Throughout the night of horror, they had never moved. They had hugged the stone, burrowing down as if they could somehow tunnel their way out of harm’s way. The sky itself had burned, riven with flames of both bronze and silver, and the rocks below had groaned and cracked.

Of all the fears she had endured, that had been the very worst. Kalja had long been resigned to her own life ending in bloodshed, but this was different — the world was ending, tipped on its axis, dissolving into a screaming vortex of madness.

At the start, she had been glad to see the bloodreavers retreat, but then she had seen what they were retreating from. The storm-borne were daemon-kind, surely, thrown down from the fiery skies and sent to visit anguish on the mortals below. Their faces were horrific — golden masks that gave away nothing — and they bore enormous weapons of fire and steel. Each one was far taller than a man, and their voices were fell and strident.

The others of the tribe had been shaking by then, locked down, caught between the gathering of armies too vast to comprehend. Their long flight across the delta had ended at the hill of the three towers, and Kalja’s faint hopes of holding off their pursuers amid the ruins had at last been exposed.

But then, slowly, the shape of the battle had changed. Kalja had seen the daemon-kind take on the bloodreavers, and after them the larger horde that had followed. All the fighting had been concentrated on the massive arch-ruin, and the hill-side where they sheltered was forgotten.

They were not daemons. She saw that as she had watched, half in terror, half in fascination. Though they inspired fear, it was not the mind-numbing dread of the aethyr-born, but a cleaner fear, one generated solely from their warlike mien and savage bearing. They were brave, astonishingly so, throwing themselves into the very centre of the great army that had followed them over the plains. For a long time they had been isolated and heavily outnumbered, surely destined to die below the ruins they were striving so valiantly to hold, and at one point she had got to her feet, ready to race down into the inferno to join her blade with theirs.

Svan had pulled her back. ‘Are you mad?’ he had hissed. ‘Leave them to slaughter each other!’

But this had not been just another of the endless feuds between rival powers — this had been something new, something that no one had witnessed before. She had continued to watch, desperately urging the newcomers to prove their worth, even when it looked like their demise was imminent. When the Gate had opened and the second great host of gold had emerged through it, she had had to quash a cry of joy, burning up from inside and threatening to spill from her mouth.

After that, the battle had raged with even more intensity. The storm had thundered and the lights had become blinding. She had not seen the end, for the noise and the elements’ torment had at last pushed her back down into the meagre protection of the stones about her, crouched like an infant, her hands clamped over her ears.

Right at the end, though, when the horde had finally been broken, there had been fighting at last. Some of the warlord’s warriors had fled in their direction, and Kalja and the others had taken up arms in their frozen fingers. She had killed one blood warrior, catching him unawares as he vaulted the walls, but then others had rounded on her, their blades glinting by the light of the fires.

She had hissed a curse at them and prepared to die with as much ferocity as she could muster, when one of the golden knights burst among them. His movements had been of a different order to those he fought — his warhammer had flown in a blur of speed, crushing and maiming with every bone-jarring hit. Those he had not slain quickly fled, limping off into the dark and carrying life-ending wounds. Then the masked killer had turned on Kalja, his warhammer angled to end her too.

She had been too shocked to move. As the rain had scythed down, she had stood stock-still, her blunt knife dripping in her hand. The masked killer had hesitated, clearly unsure. Others of the tribe, scattered by the blood warriors’ attack, had crept back, all of them gaping up at the newcomer, like her too overwhelmed to intervene.

‘If you are here to kill me,’ she had said, forcing the words out through fear-tight lips, ‘then do so now.’

On hearing the words, the gold-armoured warrior had relaxed his grip on the hammer. He had fallen to one knee before her, bringing his head to a level with her own, studying her face intently. Kalja had suffered the scrutiny, feeling wretched and filthy set beside his splendour.

‘You are whole,’ the warrior had said, and his voice had been deeper and more resonant than anything she had ever heard. There had been something else there, also — astonishment, perhaps. ‘By Sigmar, you are whole.’

Vandus listened to the mortal tell her tale, not interrupting until the end. Ionus stood besides him, as did Avaren, the Liberator who had discovered her. Smoke from the pyres drifted across the plains below them, a dirty brown that stained the overcast sky.

The Lord-Celestant tried to resist the urge to stare openly at her. Part of him was appalled by her very existence — she was a wretch, her bones protruding starkly, her rags hanging from a skeletal frame in layers of filth. For all that, she stood proudly before them, her shoulders pushed back, her fingers fidgeting at the knife-hilt tied to her belt. There was defiance there.

Once she finished speaking, he went up to her, falling to one knee as Avaren had done. Even stooped he was far taller than her, and set beside his war-finery she looked almost comically fragile.

And yet, he thought, they endured here throughout all the ages of darkness. Could we, with all our gifts, have done the same?

‘What are you called?’ he asked, speaking as gently as he could.

‘I am named Kalja,’ she said.

‘How many of you are there?’

‘Just what you see, lord.’ Less than twenty had survived the night, and all those who remained were sick and famished.

‘And are there more, out in the wilds?’

‘How many, I know not. If others live, then they are hunted as we were.’

Those words made him angry. These were the children of humanity, the last remnants of a once-great people. For them to be chased down like beasts was the darkest of the blasphemies that had been visited on this cursed land.

‘Do you know what we are?’ he asked.

The woman stared at him blankly. He might as well have asked her how best to compass the moon. She had known in her life nothing but the theology of Dark Gods, and the name of Sigmar had never been uttered in a mortal’s hearing. The sigils he bore on his armour were as esoteric to her as the icons of Chaos were to him.

Seeing her confusion, he reached up and lifted his helm from his head. For the first time, she beheld him as he truly was. There was immediate recognition there, for although Vandus was an Eternal, changed and augmented by the powers of the Celestial Realm, his features were still those of a man.

‘We are salvation,’ he told her. ‘We are the end to pain and the beginning of hope. While one of us draws breath, you will never be hunted again. We are the warriors of Sigmar, and this is the dawn of his Age.’