Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Vandus smiled at the irony of Kyrus’s words, eyes narrowing as he tried to find Jactos Goldenmane in the throng below. His good humour quickly turned to horror as he saw a second enemy force had amassed, hidden in the crags on either side of Jactos’s triumphant scrum of warriors.

‘They haven’t seen them,’ muttered Kyrus grimly.

Vandus scowled, and lifted Heldensen.

‘Hammerhands, to me!’

The others were coming. They needed to move quickly.

Victory was near. Jactos could feel it, and revelled in exultation. His warriors had attacked a large warband of the debased wretches claiming dominion over this land, and defeated them in short order. The remnants had fled and now, led by the Prosecutors, the Stormcasts gave chase, determined to run the barbarians down.

‘Glory to the God-King!’ roared Jactos, fighting alongside his Lord-Castellant, Neros, and a retinue of paladins.

Jactos watched his Prosecutors soar after the fleeing bloodreavers, ruthlessly casting down their hammer bolts. The warrior-heralds were the only retinue capable of outpacing the zealous Lord-Celestant, who cut down his foes with runeblade and warhammer.

Jactos was a peerless swordsman, and had a quickness of thought and reaction even before he had become Eternal. Now, he put his god-forged talents to use destroying the Chaos worshippers. A thrust through the heart of a blood warrior had the man spitting gore. As Jactos pulled the blade free, he advanced, turning on his heel and slashing the next foe’s midriff. His warhammer came down in the same movement, cracking skulls, and his warcloak spun around as he sundered a host of bloodreavers.

‘Hunt well, Eriad,’ he murmured, smiling ferally behind his gilded mask as he watched the Prosecutors arc through the sky like spears. He could almost imagine the destruction they would reap. How Sigmar would exult at this triumph.

The voice of Neros arrested his reverie. ‘Our forces are spread thin, my lord. Should we slow and consolidate?’

Jactos glanced over his shoulder. They had left the Judicators behind and even his Liberators were struggling to hold the pace. Only at the Lord-Celestant’s urging had the hulking Retributors managed to keep up.

‘I want this victory, Neros. Our foe is nigh on defeated. Let us revel in it and show the Chaos gods that Sigmar has returned, and that he means to take these lands back.’

Jactos’s zeal was infectious. The Lord-Castellant nodded, brandishing his halberd.

‘In Sigmar’s name, destroy them all!’

Jactos laughed. So full of belligerent joy was he that he failed to notice how the valley had narrowed into a ravine, or that the Prosecutors had not returned from their sortie.

Oblivious to all but his imminent triumph, Jactos drove on.

It was only when he saw that the crags had taken on the aspect of skulls and the fell wind whispered his name that he realised something bad was about to happen.

On foot, it took some time to reach where the Prosecutors had harried their enemies, and the narrowness of the ravine had obscured the end of it from sight. Until now.

A deep basin of rock awaited the chamber of Jactos Goldenmane, and the slope that led to it was thick with ash. But what caught his eye first was what lay at the base of the sheer-faced cliff.

A golden Prosecutor and half of his retinue, impaled on claws of iron thrust out of the very earth like talons, dying like spitted boar. It must have happened quickly.

The cry of anguish from Jactos was louder than a death knell. ‘Brothers!’

Neros was about to raise his warding lantern to call the other Stormcasts to their side when something whipped down from out of the crags. The Lord-Castellant jerked and grunted, an axe protruding from his chest. He sank to one knee, blood spoiling the front of his golden war-plate as it flowed from a terrible wound.

A second axe hurtled down at them. Then came a third. A deluge of black iron followed.

Jactos parried the blades out of the air, coming to Neros’s side, but many of the Retributors were not so swift.

Lightning flashes lit up the crags as a thunderhead of desolation erupted amongst the Stormcasts. Sigmar was reclaiming the souls of his warriors. As the flares died down and the fallen were cast heavenward, the macabre skulls in the rock appeared to be grinning wider than before.

‘Stormcasts, to me! To me!’ Jactos bellowed, hearing the urgent clarion of his heraldor.

The tumultuous roar from the crags swallowed the trumpet calls and obliterated them.

Droves of Bloodbound warriors spilled like vermin from hidden caves and fissures missed by Eriad’s Prosecutors.

The other retinues hurried urgently to their Lord-Celestant’s side, but were strung out across the valley. As they entered the mouth of the narrow ravine, Jactos realised his second fatal error.

‘Wait! Hold fast, hold fast! Don’t—’

Too late. Another horde emerged from their hiding places to engulf the Stormcast rearguard. Khorgoraths held back by the whip of a bloodstoker were unleashed to reap heads. Running at the very back of the warriors, the Judicators turned too late. They had barely unleashed a single skybolt when the Chaos monstrosities fell upon them.

Jactos faltered, caught halfway between Neros and where his much-depleted Retributors prepared to meet the charge of a vastly larger force.

The Lord-Castellant yet lived, but waved Jactos away.

‘Leave me. Marshal them! Bring the host together or it won’t matter either way.’

A gryph-hound seized Neros’s shoulder in its powerful beak and began to drag the Lord-Castellant towards the waiting Retributors. Neros had dropped his halberd, but still had the warding lantern. With the other hand, he grabbed his loyal beast’s harness and held on as it took him, trying to keep them both alive a little longer.

What had begun as certain victory had cruelly turned to abject annihilation.

Jactos saw his chance at glory fading, his opportunity to show his worthiness to his God-King. How deeply he had wanted to be first, how much he had envied Vandus Hammerhand for the honour that had been bestowed upon him. Jactos knew his fellow Lord-Celestant warranted such a boon, for there was something about Vandus, something fated and undeniable. But if the honour of leading the vanguard was not to be his, then at least Jactos could forge his own glory elsewhere.

Now all of his ambitions were ashes, and he tasted the bitterness of that failure as if choking on them.

‘Shieldwall!’ he cried, trying to wrench something back from this debacle, but the Liberators were too far away and some had rightly gone to the aid of their beleaguered comrades in the Judicators.

Thinking fast, he turned to Priandus, the leader of his Retributors. He had only moments, for soon they would be engulfed by the warriors rushing down to meet them. As he spared a glance at their killers, Jactos saw another army silhouetted on the ridge line, and knew that their doom was assured.

‘Priandus…’

Priandus had clenched his two-handed lightning hammer across his chest. His gaze was unwavering as he regarded the foes that would surely end him. A handful of Retributors stood with him, shoulder to shoulder.

‘Go,’ Priandus uttered, grimly. ‘They won’t come for you until all of us are dead. Our sacrifice will mean something, at least.’

Jactos led the bulk of the Retributors off at a pace towards his Liberators, hoping to bring his scattered forces together.

At Jactos’s command, one of the hulking warriors hauled Neros to his feet and half-carried the Lord-Castellant as the gryph-hound loped along after them.

Through sheer desperation, Jactos brought the disparate factions of what was left of his men together. As they formed ranks, locking shields and standing side by side, the Lord-Celestant spared a last glance for Priandus. But the Retributor-Prime was lost from sight, swallowed by a barbaric host of blood-sworn warriors.