Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

More of them emerged from the cloud of flies. They were on all sides of the Hallowed Knights, and their numbers increased with every moment. So quickly had they formed that the Stormcast Eternals were surrounded within moments, their retinues hemmed in on all sides. The daemons droned monotonously as they advanced, as if in mimicry of the flies that had given birth to them.

‘Form up around me,’ Gardus bellowed. ‘Fall back, circle formation, but keep the line. Make them pay for every step, my brothers.’

Was this how I fell, before? The thought reverberated through his head, like the droning of the daemons. Before Sigmaron, before his Reforging, was this what he had faced? Was this how he had died? He forced the thought aside, trying to focus on the threat before him, rather than one long past, skinstealers rushed at him, spears wet with the blood of his acolytes. Reaching out for one of the four-foot iron candlesticks, he caught it up and his hammer snapped out to pulp a plaguebearer’s skull. He parried a disease-forged blade with his own sword, shattering the daemon weapon. Aetius had moved up beside him, shield raised to cover Gardus’s flank. He stepped forward and swung his hammer out in a wide arc, sending daemons reeling.

‘Who will be triumphant?’ Gardus shouted, trying to ignore the persistent hum of flies and forgotten voices.

‘Only the faithful,’ came the response from the throat of every member of his Warrior Chamber. The cry rose above the din of battle, above the sound of hammers cracking bones and the drone of daemons. Gardus smashed a plaguebearer from its feet, splitting its leering features, the candlestick heavy in his hand as he caught up its twin and stepped out of the hospice .

‘If we should fall, who will be reborn again?’ he shouted, shaking his head to clear it.

‘Only the faithful!’

‘Only the faithful,’ Gardus said hoarsely, as he blocked a blow that would have split Aetius’s head. He chopped the daemon down and cast a quick glance over the battlefield. The Hallowed Knights were fighting as warriors born, but the foe’s numbers were limitless. They needed to counter that advantage. We need room to manoeuvre, he thought. Gardus looked up, and swept his runeblade out, signalling to Tegrus. The Prosecutors dropped from the sky, hurling their celestial hammers. The weapons struck, slamming home into the ranks of the enemy with meteoric force. Dirt, mud and broken bodies were hurled into the air with each impact. For a moment, the enemy’s relentless advance stalled.

Gardus seized his chance.

‘Aetius, lock shields!’ he roared. ‘Feros, to me!’

Aetius barked an order, and several retinues of Liberators slammed their shields together, forming a solid wall of gleaming sigmarite. As Gardus had hoped, Solus and his Judicators recognized what was required of them, and they retreated swiftly, collapsing their ranks behind the defensive perimeter provided by the shields of their brethren. Feros and his Retributors moved through the retreating ranks of Liberators and Judicators, their great two-handed lightning hammers clearing away those daemons closest to the Hallowed Knights’ lines. Feros laughed as a blow from his hammer reduced a loping daemon to ash.

‘Sigmar be praised for this bounty,’ the Retributor-Prime bellowed. ‘Enemies to smite, and time enough to enjoy it.’

He stepped forward and drove his hammer into the ground. Lightning erupted from the black earth, catching plaguebearers in its crackling embrace. The daemons jittered and burned. Between them, the Prosecutors and Retributors were keeping the enemy at bay, but Gardus knew that it was only a temporary reprieve.

‘Aetius, shieldwall,’ Gardus said, signalling the Liberator-Prime. Aetius raised his hammer, and the front rank of the shieldwall knelt, planting the bottoms of their shields on the ground. The second rank moved in behind them, slamming their shields atop those of the front rank. Those Liberators not a part of the shieldwall moved forward to join Aetius and Gardus as the first line of defence against the enemy. They broke away, forming themselves up into groups of five or six warriors, and took up positions between the Retributors.

Soon Solus’s Judicators were firing from behind the wall of shields, as Gardus and the others tried to hold the plague-ranks back. Thunder rumbled and lightning snarled as Solus and his warriors peppered the enemy. Soon the air was full of smoke and noise, but the daemons continued their droning advance, taking no notice of the punishment inflicted upon them. More and more of them flowed out of the Gates of Dawn to join their vile kin in an unceasing assault upon Gardus’s Warrior Chamber. They strode over the charred and broken bodies of their fellows, clambering over heaps of daemonic corpses in order to reach the Hallowed Knights.

Gardus and Aetius fought back to back.

‘We’ll be overwhelmed if this keeps up, my lord,’ Aetius said, knocking a plaguebearer back with a swat from his shield. As the daemon staggered, he ripped his sword through its midsection, like a woodcutter hewing at a tree. The daemon fell in two squirming halves.

‘While one of us yet stands, hope is not lost,’ Gardus said. He took in the battle at a glance, seeing the Retributors, like lone islands in a sea of filth, and the Liberators, fighting back to back in small retinues. None of them were doing much to blunt the advance, despite the toll they were extracting from the enemy. Plaguebearers hacked at the shieldwall, occasionally pulling down a Liberator and dragging him out and away from his fellows to be butchered. Gardus felt his heart tighten with every death, a strange sense of having lived through this before, as he watched his flock fall to the spears of the skinstealers . He shook off the errant thought. These enemies were not skinstealers, whoever they were. He heard Bolathrax’s laughter slither over the battlefield, and looked up to see the Great Unclean One squat down on his flabby haunches and lean forward, the very picture of an eager spectator.

‘Yes, fight hard,’ Bolathrax called out. ‘It will not matter in the end. The tallyman will collect his due, no matter how well you swing your little hammers.’

Gardus longed to smash the smirk from the creature’s face. Anger boiled up in him, and as he fought, he saw half-remembered faces superimposed over the sigmarite masks his warriors wore. He heard voices he did not recognize, and the green horrors of the Ghyrtract Fen wavered and seemed to give way to another place, another time. He saw blood spatter white sheets as the skinstealers howled and tried to shake it off, to banish the clutching fragments of memory, but the hospice was burning and they refused to release him. He slashed at a plaguebearer and the grimacing warrior, clad in crimson and brass armour stumbled back, his scarred skull crushed by the iron candlestick in Garradan’s hand .

‘Sigmar,’ Gardus roared. More warriors closed in on him, savage, saw-toothed axes raised and he whirled, runeblade licking out to lop off arms and shatter plague-swords. Those swords , he knew, were stained with the blood of his flock, and it drove him to fury . A plague-sword struck him, causing him to stumble and he felt the spear as it dug through his robes and pierced his vitals, and he fell to one knee. ‘Sigmar, give me strength!’

‘My lord… Gardus,’ someone shouted. He hesitated. Who is Gardus? My name is Garradan, he thought as a heavy body struck him and knocked him sprawling. Jolted from his memories, he rolled over and saw Aetius stagger as a plague-blade slid under his guard and tore through his belly. Gardus froze in shock, but only for a moment. As Aetius sank down, he surged to his feet, blade in hand. His runeblade sang out, and the plaguebearer lost its hand. It stepped back, its single eye widening in shock. That expression quickly vanished in a spray of pus and bile as Gardus’s hammer slammed down on its skull.