Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Fifteen hundred bows were lifted and fifteen hundred dark shafts disappeared into the gloom. Eyes stinging, Arka could not mark their flight beyond fifty paces, but the fog could not wholly muffle the shrieks and squeaks of pain a few moments later. The archers reloaded and sent another volley, more ragged than the first, and another.

‘Fifty paces!’ Arka cried, seeing shadows emerging from the greenish mist. Overhead, the thunder cracked, shaking the ancient city wall to its foundations. Jade lightning crackled down, striking at several points along the rampart, each blast cutting down half a dozen warriors. Another bolt struck just ten paces away, blackening Aslanbek in his cracked armour, molten droplets of bronze spattering those nearby.

‘Clear the storm,’ Arka snarled at Radomira.

The sagesayer withdrew, her cabal of magicweavers gathering about her, brandishing a variety of rods, staves and wands, the jingle of their amulets and clatter of bone talismans a distraction for a moment.

The ratkin did not come for the gate, but threw the weight of their numbers towards a repaired breach about seventy-five paces to the left of it, where they clearly intended to scale the wall and meet up with the ghoul tribes coming from further along the slope. They brought no ladders or grapples, but simply climbed the wall with thin, clawed fingers, finding easy purchase in the pitted surface of stones laid countless decades before.

The first crash of metal on metal rang out along the rampart. Another immense roll of thunder caused Arka to glance up. It seemed that the tempest was changing, crackles of blue splitting the green, cerulean clouds bubbling through from the midst of the green sky. He did not know what Radomira was doing, but it seemed to be working. The fog that swathed the wall was swirling away in many places, revealing the skittering horde of ratkin approaching below.

Without any need for a command, a storm of javelins and throwing axes descended into the onrushing mass, sending the front-runners tumbling to the bloodied ground to be trodden down by the ratkin that followed.

The din of battle increased, the shouts of both sides and the clash of weapons echoing back from the inner wall some four hundred paces behind Arka. Checking to the left and right, he was reassured to see that his warriors were holding. Axes, swords and spears were relentless in their deadly welcome. Every ratman that made the rampart was met by two or three speartips or blades.

‘They use their numbers poorly,’ remarked Marta. She pointed with her tulwar, moving the tip along the wall to the right. ‘They should draw us out along the entire length, not throw themselves at one place where their mass counts for nothing.’

‘Do not expect sound strategy from verminous filth,’ replied Ljubo. ‘They do not count losses like warriors.’

This last comment stuck in Arka’s thoughts. The pestilentzi truly did not care how many died. He had seen twenty perish just to drag down one of his warriors. He stepped up to the wall and looked out, turning his gaze to the left.

The ratmen thrown at the walls were spindly, ragged creatures with bubo-pocked fur, armed with shards of stone, wooden clubs and crude daggers of rusted metal. A terrible choice for a first assault. What was needed was a spearhead of armoured, experienced warriors to create an opening for the masses to later exploit.

There were certainly such fighters in the pestilentzi ranks. He could see them advancing behind the slavish horde, decked in blackened armour, banners and tri-barred icons carried above their more orderly regiments. And then there were the sergahulla — plague-frenzied verminkind that wore thick robes and shrieked disturbing chants. They hurled themselves fearlessly at their foes. Either would make better siege breakers than the scum being tossed up against the walls.

Tossed up against the walls…

He leaned out further to look down at the ground at the base of the great bastion. Already hundreds of dead ratmen were piling up.

‘They are using the bodies of the dead for ramps!’ he cried out. ‘Fetch oil and brands, we must turn them into pyres!’

While this order was passed along the wall, a new wave of pestilentzi reached the defences, thrusting through the milling crowds of slaves. They were bigger, darker furred, with swords, halberds and shields. Arrows and sling bullets met the next assault but made little injury to the numbers of the foe.

Arka was about to order part of his guard to move down to the wall to form a mobile reserve when he felt a shift in the wind. He spluttered and others around him coughed and retched as a noisome reek blew along the wall.

‘What sorcerous…’ The words drifted away when Arka spied the answer to his question.

The ranks of the elite vermin were parting, the filthy ratkin throwing themselves to their knees and stomachs in obeisance. Through the gap advanced a monstrous figure, more terrifying even than the bekevic that haunted the mountain meres and could swallow a warrior whole.

A frightened muttering broke out through the stratzari. Warriors who had faced battle dozens of times whispered curses and flexed sweating palms on their weapons. Arka felt his mouth dry as he watched the approach of the creature.

Incensed, driven along the teetering line of insanity between abject terror and suicidal desperation, the kin-eaters tried to drag down the Stormcast Eternal. Crudely forged blades shattered on his armour, and broken fingernails caked in blood scrabbled at his plate. He bulled his way through, crushing bodies underfoot and slamming his foes aside with sweeps of his arms.

Arkas had once been a man of flesh and blood. Now he was something far greater, fashioned by the spirit of Sigmar and armed by the great duardin god Grungni. Reborn, reforged, remade in an ideal — hope and nobility, courage unsurpassed, strength tempered by humility.

But here, now, on the slopes of Mount Vazdir, where he had seen his people fall to the filth of the Pestilens skaven, he was simply death incarnate. His runeblade and hammer had been created in the great foundries of the smith-god, made from purest sigmarite, but in his mind he bore an old crescent-headed axe given to him by his mother. In spirit if not in any physical sense, the weapon lived on.

‘Know this, servants of darkness! Your end has come! The Light of Sigmar falls upon Ursungorod and by his beacon shall the warriors of the storm be guided to his foes.’

Enemy blades shattered at the touch of his sword, leather armour and crude mail no guard against the weight of his lightning-wreathed hammer. In the Gladitorium of Sigmaron, Arka Bear-clad had finished his transition to Arkas Warbeast, Stormcast Eternal, herald of Sigmar’s wrath. It was not until now that he fully appreciated the changes wrought upon him by his Reforging. The kin-eaters fell to his sword and hammer like wheat before the reaper, leaving a dismembered trail in his wake as he cut and smashed his way towards their leader.

Not only in prowess had he been altered. The magical energy of the Mortal Realms, the essence of Ghur that sustained the Realm of Beasts, flowed around him, suffusing the landscape. He saw it escape the bodies of his foes as they fell, returning to the great flow of the wild and untamed world. He felt it in his body too, as he had once felt the enlightening power of Azyr open his mind to the full truth of the universe.

Arkas had desired revenge, but the sensation of justice fulfilled as he cleaved apart another handful of foes was unlike any feeling he had encountered. It was a redemptive force, payment for the agony of his Reforging, the reward for enduring endless trials and hardships to become a Stormcast Eternal.