Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Torglug hesitated. Then, with a grunt, he gestured to Vermalanx.

‘The rats,’ he said. ‘Let them be earning their keep.’

Vermalanx hissed, startled. Then, slowly he nodded.

‘Yes-yes, my folk can do that. I know just the rat,’ the verminlord murmured. If bare bone could take on a cunning expression, Vermalanx had one. The rat meant treachery. They couldn’t help it. It was in whatever passed for their blood. Torglug extended his axe, so that the edge just brushed the verminlord’s chin.

‘You are thinking carefully,’ Torglug said, his voice deceptively mild.

‘Now now, Torglug, no need to threaten our furry ally,’ Otto said, stepping forward, his scythe held lengthwise across his shoulders. ‘I’m sure he’ll do just what we ask, won’t you, my fine, bare-tailed friend?’

Vermalanx hesitated. Then he nodded. ‘Of course, yes-yes. We all serve the Great Corrupter, do we not?’

Torglug lowered his axe. Despite his suggestion, he didn’t trust the rat-daemon to do anything but seek its own advantage. He didn’t trust any of them, in fact. They were all competing for the Grandfather’s affections, in their own way.

But only one of them was truly worthy.

And soon, Torglug thought, I will prove it.

Tegrus of the Sainted Eye, Prosecutor-Prime of the Hallowed Knights, stood at the top of Profane Tor and looked down into the clearing at his newly-returned Lord-Celestant and the host of Stormcasts who surrounded him.

‘How can this be?’ he murmured. He wondered still if it were an illusion. It would not be the first such shade that had appeared to lure unlucky Stormcasts to their doom. And surely this was not truly Gardus sitting upon the dryad-borne throne like some Ghyranite saint of old. ‘Aetius, Solus… are you seeing this?’ he asked his companions.

‘Hard not to, given the clamour,’ Solus said. The Judicator-Prime of the Hallowed Knights was a man of few words, who had an internal serenity that Tegrus could scarcely fathom. He sat on the bole of a toppled tree and ran a cloth across the gleaming blade of his gladius. His boltstorm crossbow sat at his feet. He and Aetius had, along with Tegrus, volunteered to oversee the retinues engaged in destroying the foul icons and symbols that littered the top of the tor. None of it could be left standing, and the air rang with the sounds of the Retributors’ hammers and the Decimators’ axes as they smashed idols and chopped apart the crude gibbets that had once hung from the hag tree.

‘It cannot be him — it must be a trick,’ Aetius said. The Liberator-Prime was not a man to whom trust came easily. ‘No one, Stormcast or otherwise, returns from the Realm of Chaos.’ He tightened his grip on his hammer.

‘But it is,’ Tegrus said. ‘Grymn and Morbus are down there already, with Zephacleas and Ultrades.’ He looked at his fellow Stormcasts. ‘We should be down there as well.’

Ever since Gardus’ disappearance in the final moments of the battle for the Gates of Dawn, Tegrus had wondered if there was anything he could have done differently to have prevented what happened, and had come to no good conclusion. Nonetheless, he had been unable to shake the sense of his own failure. He had not been fast enough, observant enough… Somehow, somewhere, he had failed his Lord-Celestant. But now Gardus had returned and Tegrus felt angry, confused… joyful.

‘After you,’ Solus said. He extended his gladius and peered down the length of the blade. ‘If it’s him, and not some trick of the light, he’ll find us in his own time.’ He looked at Tegrus. ‘But then, you’ve never been the patient sort, Tegrus.’

Tegrus laughed. ‘No.’ He looked at the Liberator-Prime. ‘Aetius?’

‘Someone must stand sentry,’ Aetius said, gesturing to the still-smoking remains of the Dirgehorn. ‘Gardus or no, I’ll not shirk my duty.’ He hesitated, and then added, ‘But Solus is right. You are not so bound.’

He looked at Tegrus, and the Prosecutor-Prime could see the unspoken plea in the other man’s eyes. Aetius rarely saw eye to eye with his fellow commanders in the Warrior Chamber, but he was their brother nonetheless, bound by oaths and bearing the same Reforging scars on his flesh. And he too had known Gardus, and flourished under the ever-patient Lord-Celestant’s command.

‘You’re right,’ Tegrus said, clapping Aetius on the shoulder. Then, with a snap of his great wings, he was hurtling out over the tor. As he left the ground far behind, he was tempted, as always, to simply keep flying. To rise and swoop forever, lost amongst the untold glories of the heavens. But the green skies of Ghyran were not the blue horizons of Azyr, and there was no peace to be found in these clouds. Blight-flies and worse things choked the air even now. Where the servants of the Ruinous Powers went, the world sickened and changed.

Tegrus had seen it often enough, and as a result, was always ready to cast down the worshippers of the Dark Gods wherever they were found. But in order to smite the foe, one first had to find him — a skill which Tegrus had honed in the Nihiliad Mountains during the cleansing of Azyr. He had rained blazing arrows down upon the Chaos warbands that had infested the crags, and exposed their positions to Sigmar’s armies. Those had been good days. He had learned his true purpose there, swooping through rumbling thunderclouds to bring fire and fear to the enemies of the Celestial Realm.

Indeed, he had been so good at it that Sigmar himself had offered Tegrus a place as one of his trusted hunter-assassins. A high honour for any Stormcast, but Tegrus had refused it — his place was with his Warrior Chamber.

He swooped low over the crowd of Stormcasts gathered about the foot of the tor, huddled in the cleansing light of Lorrus Grymn’s lantern. With a snap of his wings he dropped from the air to land in a crouch before the newly returned Lord-Celestant. As he stood, other Stormcasts backed away.

‘Is it you, my lord?’ Tegrus asked as he stepped forward.

Gardus turned towards him and Tegrus felt his heart swell as he examined the face of the man before him. Gardus held his helm beneath his arm, as if to reassure his fellows of his identity.

Then, is that not what Gardus would do? Would he not reassure us, and speak kindly to us?

Some maintained that Gardus was too soft-hearted to lead, but Tegrus knew the truth of it — Sigmar had zealots aplenty, but the Stormcast Eternals must be more than swords… they must be heroes. And that Gardus surely was.

‘If it was not, I expect you would be the first to divine it, my friend,’ Gardus said. He extended his hand. Tegrus hesitated, then clasped his Lord-Celestant’s forearm in a warrior’s greeting. Gardus pulled him forward into a brief embrace before releasing him. Tegrus peered into Gardus’ eyes.

‘Where did you go, Steel Soul?’ he asked. ‘What did you see?’

‘The Gardens of Nurgle, my friend, and horrors without end,’ Gardus said softly. ‘I ran for weeks, pursued by things too foul to name…’

‘Weeks… but you’ve only been gone a few days,’ Tegrus said.

Gardus closed his eyes, and his body tensed, like that of an animal fearing the lash. The last vestiges of Tegrus’ bitterness fled as he saw the pain in Gardus’ face.

What happened to you, my friend? he wondered. He made to speak, but Grymn cut him short.

‘If you’re through getting reacquainted, Tegrus, we were discussing matters of import,’ the Lord-Castellant growled. Tegrus glanced at Grymn, a retort on his lips, but kept his mouth shut. Grymn had a sharp tongue, but he had led the Hallowed Knights safely through the innumerable terrors of Rotwater Blight. Tegrus remembered Grymn’s quiet words of reassurance as the drone of the Dirgehorn ate away at their courage and sanity. The Lord-Castellant had been a rock, immoveable and unstoppable.