Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

He gritted his teeth, fists hammering like pistons, sigmarite gauntlets buckling under the impacts. Arkas started to feel something, the first pangs of pain in his hands. It was not enough. Blow after blow he rained onto the wall, each strike sending a cascade of ice shards falling. When he felt the bite of breaking metal on his knuckles it only drove him on into a greater fury, desperate for some release.

Snarling and growling, panting between blows, Arkas’ started to slow his assault. He snorted, throwing one last strike, driving all of his might down his arm and through his fist, punching elbow-deep into the ice.

He leaned his head forwards, the chill of the ice wall seeping through his helm, cooling his anger. Arkas laid his other hand against the wall, fingers splayed, their tips seeking the undulations and cuts.

Generations of labour. Clinging to an ideal he had embodied.

Not survival. The Bear-clad had not fought for survival, he had fought for victory. Arkas knew that he could not have won. Every rational part of him recognised that his alliance had been doomed, that he could not have been victorious. The logic of the God-King’s intervention was clear. Arkas was here, now, to deliver on his oath, given the means to do so by Sigmar. A longer view. A godly perspective.

Straightening, Arkas inhaled, enjoying the coldness in his lungs. His first breath had been of this chill air. It was as much a part of him as anything else.

The rage was a memory now, no longer a living part of him, exorcised through his bloodied hands, returned to the well of Ghurite power from which it had come.

He knew what he had to do. It would not be easy. He had to find Katiya and tell her to prepare to leave. For good or ill, the Ursungorans would hide no more.

As he came to this conclusion something pricked his attention. A sound, much muffled by the distance and tunnels. Shouts.

Screams.

Arkas exploded with celestial energy, his fists remaking themselves as he drew forth his weapons.

He ran.

Theuderis was not sure what was happening. The Ursungorans were calling out in their tongue. Amongst the panicked bellows and shrieks there was one word again and again, but he could not fathom its meaning.

He raced after Katiya, who had set off like a coursed hare, gathering a trail of Ursungorans as she went. More followed behind the Lord-Celestant. Despite the tumult, everyone seemed to know what was happening, enacting a well-rehearsed drill in which youths snatched up infants and the able-bodied readied their weapons.

They passed into one of the larger chambers, not far from the surface. Several hundred Ursungorans were coming and going. Katiya grabbed some of them, speaking quickly.

‘Is it an attack?’ Theuderis demanded.

Katiya paid him no attention. She snapped off orders, pointing, directing, speaking with quiet assurance to some. Theuderis did not wish to interfere, but set forth to look for more Stormcasts.

A Celestial Vindicator burst into view ahead, blazing with celestial energy. He had a warhammer and runeblade, and his hammer-tipped cloak was blazing with light.

‘Arkas!’

The Warbeast turned, surprised.

‘What is it?’ demanded Theuderis. ‘Have the Chaos tribes returned already?’

‘No.’ The Warbeast shook his head.

‘What are they saying? What does that word mean?’

Arkas hefted his weapons and looked at Theuderis.

‘Vermintide.’

Across the dead of the battle they swarmed. Up from the Black River, down from the forested slopes, emerging from every crack and crevasse in the ice field. A living carpet of fur and fangs and glinting eyes. Many were simple rats, bodies slicked with grease and blood from the corpses, each no bigger than a fist. But there were thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Others were far larger — warp-mutants as big as dogs, collared with rusted iron, naked tails as long as broadswords. Some were scaled, some naked but for protrusions of bone, some even skinless with visible muscle and flesh and strands of rope-like sinew.

From across Ursungorod they had come, white as snow, grey as ash, black as pitch. The air was filled with the nerve-jangling scratch of claws on ice and armour, the slither of dark bodies over flesh and the rustling of cloth, the chittering and squealing — a nightmare orchestration.

The wave moved as one, possessed by the singular will of the Great Horned Rat, directed by the malevolence of Poxmaster Felk. As an undulating mass, the swarm welled up from the ravine of the Bear’s Fangs and slithered across the glacier from the valley walls. The rats burst out onto the snowfield, surging like a storm front.

With them came a sorcerous mist. It streamed from hex-laden bodies like green smoke, a trail of pestilent vapour flowing from fanged mouths, heavy with foul enchantment.

A band of Ursungorans had been burning the dead of the battle. They were taken in a few heartbeats, vanishing into the ravenous swarm with barely a shriek. The lookouts had just enough time to shout warnings before the dark wave was scampering up tower-mounds and into window slits, pouring down open sally ports like filthy water. Beacon fires stayed unlit, bells and horns unsounded. The guards screamed, the only alarm calls they could muster before they were overwhelmed by biting, clawing horror.

Into the tunnels washed the deluge of rats, pooling and bursting in waves, overrunning everything. Some of the Ursungorans tried to run, others fought. Neither were successful; whether dragged down from behind or with weapons in their hands, it made no difference. Armour was no defence against a foe that was dozens of slashing claws, scores of gnawing fangs. Flailing and shouting, flesh turned to bloody ribbons, they fell.

Such was the scene that confronted Arkas as he and Theuderis burst into one of the great chambers, dozens of Stormcasts converging from different directions. The massive warriors waded into the vermin, laying about with maces, swords and hammers. Dozens of the foul creatures died with every sweep of the enchanted weapons but there were dozens more to take their place. Against the armour of Sigmar’s chosen, claws and fangs were small threats, but in turn the Stormcasts could not slay enough. Their greatest weapons, tempest-wreathed javelin, crossbow and bow, were useless against such a heaving mass, the warriors unable to unleash their full power for fear of harming the few Ursungorans that continued to battle vainly in the midst of the vermintide.

‘Knights-Azyros! Samat!’ Theuderis forged waist-deep through the leaping, snarling rats, carving a furrow through them with metronomic swings of his celestial hammer. ‘Glavius!’

No specific order was needed. The Silverhands’ warriors knew exactly what was required. The Lord-Relictor plunged into the morass of vermin, spearing a gigantic rat with the haft of his morbid icon. Planting the mortuary standard, Glavius thrust out his hammer towards the swarm. His divine icon shimmered with the power celestial. Forks of lightning crawled down his arm and across his body to spear from his out-thrust weapon. Where they struck, bursts of blue fire erupted, incinerating the vermin a score at a time.

Samat and his fellow Knights-Azyros could not take flight, but that was not their intent. Flanking Theuderis, they strode through the snapping, hissing rats, oblivious to their scratching and biting. Holding aloft their celestial beacons, they called in unison for the power of the God-King to smite their foes.

The blast of Azyrite light that filled the chamber blinded even Arkas, who had left mounds of dead rats as tall as himself in his wake. Blinking clear his vision, he saw hundreds of smouldering rodent corpses littering the chamber floor. Closer to the ring of Knights-Azyros, the corpses were ash mounds, and at their feet nothing was left but dark grease stains on the stone flags.