Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

All were set with grim faces turned towards the darkness approaching from the mountain depths — the zienesta abisal , the Shadowgulf. While the coming ratkin horde spread out from scores of tunnels and caves, the air above them seethed with corrupted power, churning and frothing like a maelstrom.

The high walls to either side thronged with three thousand of Arka’s spear- and axe-wielding warriors, for the most part guarded against harm by nothing more than layers of leather and wool, and wooden oval shields painted with the rune of their new overlord.

The outer wall of Kurzengor, the settlement itself but a small fragment of the immense city built above and dug below Ursungorod, stood five times the height of a man, and thick enough for chambers within. But it was broken in places, shattered by the constant upheavals that wracked the mountain range, the breaches filled as best as possible with dull brown bricks, mortared stones and thick planks.

It was not ideal, but it was the best place to meet the squealing, shrieking mass of half-man rat-things that boiled up from the tunnels below. The wall itself was nothing, it was the men and women who held it that would decide the course of the battle.

Arka held up his axe, its long haft in one hand, the crescent moon blade glittering in the light of the accursed storm. He lifted his voice above the growing rumble.

‘This was the weapon of my mother. She took it from the fist of my father when he fell at Nijholli, already bathed many times in the blood of their enemies. Scores of foes — human, gods-tainted and ratkin — fell beneath it from my mother’s hand. She lived for the battle, but the cowardly vile-rats did not give her the peace of a war-death. Their corruption, their filth, spewed forth on noxious clouds, and plague heralded their attacks. In her bed, choking on lung-rot, every gasping breath an agony, that is how she died.’

He paused, eyes closed as the memory of that sight sank its claws into his throat, stifling his words. Taking a deep breath, Arka continued.

‘Before her final moments, I, a child of eight winters and seven summers, took this axe from her. I bid her farewell, and swore that I would see every one of the rat-filth slain. Every day since, I have cleaved to that oath. Long I have waged that war, and now they are goaded into showing themselves in the full light of day. Today shall live long in the legends of our people.’

Arka spoke the words with passion, but as he looked down at Radomira, who had nurtured him after his mother’s death, he shared her sadness — though he could not show it.

‘The omens do not give us hopes.’ Her words appeared in his thoughts, not passing her lips. ‘On the day you were born, the Ursungorod shook and the earth cracked beneath the Skagoldt Ridge to throw up the fires of the deeps. I saw a storm that day, and in its depths comes your ending.’

‘You knew as much when you took me as your son,’ Arka replied without speech, as he had been able to do with Radomira since that day she appeared at the house of his dead mother and bid him to leave with her. ‘You also spoke of great things that will happen this day. Our people will be saved, you said. If that needs my death, so be it.’

‘I did not say our people would be saved,’ she chided. ‘You must pay attention to detail, I have told you before. I said from the events of this day our lands will be freed.’

‘It is the same thing,’ grumbled Arka.

Accelerating, Arkas gloried in the touch of the frozen ground beneath his feet. The air was crisp and clean in his nostrils, at once so familiar and yet an almost forgotten memory. It instantly brought to mind childhood hunts and stalking the other youths of the Greypelt clan.

Darker recollections encroached, fuelling his long stride. Much had changed, in the lands as well as in his form and knowledge, but still his heart burned with the same furious thirst for vengeance. Sigmar the mighty God-King had furnished him with the means to finally fulfil that oath to his dying mother, gifting him with an immortal reforged body and weapons of celestial power. He was Greypelt no more. His clan loyalties were insignificant compared to the brotherhood ties of a Strike Chamber. All of the old titles were nothing compared to the epithet he had earned from Sigmar himself — Arkas Warbeast.

The kin-eaters were foolishly brave, not knowing the full nature of the warrior that attacked. They saw a solitary figure and perhaps thought to overwhelm him with the first rush of their counter-attack. He pounded up the slope, vaulting toppled stones and bounding across crevasses that had once been tower chambers. Arrows from short bows and stones from slings clattered and cracked harmlessly from his plated body.

‘The Lord Sigmar sends this message to all that nestle in the bosom of the Dark Gods,’ Arkas roared, his voice carrying like the wind of a storm.

He swept out the trails of his cloak and a flurry of hammer-shaped bolts flew across the gap, slashing golden wounds through the cannibalistic Chaos worshippers. A dozen strides later, he met the first of the kin-eaters’ warriors. Arkas’ sword flicked out, trailing lightning bolts, its tip parting the depraved barbarian from gut to chin. His hammer smashed the heads from two others. Pig iron blades and studded cudgels clattered ineffectually from his silvered armour.

It was more than the earth underfoot and the air in his lungs — the subtle nature of the Realm of Ghur stirred within him, calling him back to his roots, unleashing the war-beast that had always been part of him. When he had been known as the Bear-clad it had been something of a madness, coming upon him in the heat of combat. As the bloodfever rose he understood now that something more primal was aroused — something in the fabric of the mountains of Ursungorod that ignited inside him.

The leading edge of the storm was no more than a bowshot from the walls. Putridity, foul and yet sweet, carried on the strengthening wind. The rankness of the vile-rats came before them, accompanied by the chittering and squealing of warriors with matted fur and ragged robes.

‘There are fewer of them than I expected,’ Arka joked. The pestilentzi numbered at least five times that of his host. But in truth he did not think it too many; his warriors were a match for that number, and the walls, though broken, gave them even more advantage. He started to think that perhaps Radomira’s dire prophecy was wrong. It was not unknown for her to misinterpret the signs.

A shout from the left brought his attention to the upper end of the valley. There were shapes moving through the rocks of the gorge, the sickly light of the storm glinting from rusted armour and weapons. Men with unkempt locks and filth-crusted beards skulked through broken boulders and stunted trees. Their womenfolk came with them, their hair teased out into untidy braids slicked with human fat.

‘The ghoul tribes,’ sneered one of Arka’s companions, a wiry uzteki called Timur. The one-eyed warrior spat on the stones. ‘They are already cursed by the foul powers, and now they have made an alliance with the ratkin.’

‘No matter,’ Arka replied, though the confidence he had felt moments earlier was starting to ebb. ‘They are hardly better fighters than the scab-rats from below.’

He eyed the storm, which washed over the grand fortifications, bringing with it choking fumes. Men and women on the battered ramparts coughed and retched as foul-tasting smog obscured everything.

‘Archers!’ Arka bellowed, knowing that the pestilentzi would use the cover of the cloud to advance quickly. He had marked their approach carefully and had expected such a ruse — this was not the first time the ratkin had unleashed the foetid breath of the Horned One. ‘Loose to one hundred paces!’