Dread Marshes
Crucible of Life, Aqshy
The going was hard and slow, the path they followed rough and uneven, frequently rising without warning or dropping away into deep, boggy pools that smelled of rotten vegetation and death. Though they had covered all their heads with stinking sacks, their captors made no effort to keep the prisoners quiet, nor themselves – they made a terrible racket, baiting and insulting one another, fighting over which tracks to follow, laughing if one of them tripped and fell, frequently devolving to curses and blows when the mood struck them. At least once, Tivrain was knocked off her feet by two battling orruks and landed face down, the feet of several tramping hobgrots and her own heavy armour making a quick recovery impossible.
Finally, they trudged through a long, deep, muddy bog trough before climbing upwards out of the muck onto a broad hummock. The slope was so steep that Tivrain slipped and fell several times, her boots refusing to grip the stones. When she fell, they beat her and urged her upright again. In time, the ground levelled out and the air seemed to change, becoming slightly less vile and rancid.
Tivrain was suddenly thrust against her companions, their armoured shoulders clanking together as they were gathered into a tight knot. The stinking sacks were torn from their heads.
All around them came the sounds of cheers and jeers.
Their surroundings were lit by scores of crackling, smoking torches whose emanations burned her eyes and stank of rotten pitch. The Kruleboyz camp lay in a wide depression between a tight cluster of low, stony hillocks. Stunted trees, drooping ferns and spongy moss clung to the stones, but overall the hillocks were bald and weather-beaten, moist from the marshy air. The warband appeared to number nearly a hundred, an assembly of all shapes and sizes, from tall, ropy-armed orruks of the spear-wielding Gutrippaz to brawny Bolt-boyz to child-sized, dagger-toothed little hobgrots jostling and jouncing amid their larger brethren.
The Breaka-boss who’d led the party that surrounded them rode on his troggoth’s warty shoulders, shouting and exhorting all present – singing his own praises and bragging upon his coup, no doubt – even though all gathered seemed to pay him no heed, more keen on hurling insults at their captives and chattering amongst themselves.
Tivrain looked to her companions, taking hasty roll – Ibon, Ordys, Ansonnir, Tarros, Heldymion, Athelys, Vornus, Barastus, Saran, Pharena…
Rysain! Where was Rysain?
He took to the skies, to scout ahead, Tivrain reminded herself. He could be up there right now, or hidden in the treeline, watching.
The jostling of their captors yanked her out of her reverie.
Tivrain counted only one sloggoth, the very same bent-backed, crawling thing that had borne those three green-grots in their midst when they were captured, but she saw at least three Mirebrute troggoths towering above the gathered troops. That meant that there were at least three separate clans commingling here, each with their own Breaka-boss.
That was good. Perhaps they could find some means of turning them against one another?
But it begged the question, if the three Breaka-bosses visible with their lumbering troggoths were merely the heads of the separate bands gathered here, where was their great leader?
Something flashed off to her right. Tivrain jerked her head round just in time to see a huge, one-eyed Gutrippa bring Barastus’ enormous hammer down upon the skull of one of his spear-wielding companions. Charged as it was with the raw, celestial power of Sigmar, it threw crackling skeins of lightning and sparks as it made impact with its victim.
The hammer-wielder was shocked by the lightning and sparks emitted following that first blow, but its gape-mouthed, wide-eyed amazement soon gave way to violent delight. Cackling derisively, it brought the hammer down again and again upon its already dead companion. A few orruks nearby snarled and hurled threats – kin or comrades of the dead orruk, no doubt – but by and large, no one seemed to care. They were just entertained by the wonderful light show resulting from the hammer’s lethal employ.
Lowering her eyes, Tivrain regarded the manacles upon her wrists. They seemed to have been made specifically for Stormcasts, being heavy, wrought with care and craft, with clean edges on the cuffs, well-oiled pins holding their hinges and heavy linked chain connecting them.
Tivrain realised those manacles were not orruk work – they were far too artful. Nor did they look aged or rusted.
Who made them, then?
A high, keening howl suddenly split the air. Every orruk, beast and hobgrot present shrank and went silent as the source of the drawn-out cry strode forward into their midst – a mangy gnashtoof bearing, saddled upon its back, a tall, square-shouldered, colourfully adorned Killaboss.
As the gnashtoof’s howl trailed off, the Killaboss let his darksome gaze glower down upon all present, forcing his savage, mismatched troops to avert their eyes and drop to their knees as he passed. Those who had claimed the prisoners’ wondrous, crackling weapons lifted them high, presenting them as prizes for their imperious leader. A hobgrot who’d managed to snare Athelys’ aetherwing, Myrmourn, held the flapping raptor up by its bound talons.
The Killaboss’ motley armour was garish to the point of absurdity, but when Tivrain realised that some of the thin streamers trailing from the crest of his conical helm were, in fact, scraps of flayed skin, all its ridiculousness vanished.
Foolish he might appear, but he was cruelty and malice incarnate.
Tivrain and her companions met his stare, all quietly refusing to grant him the same deference that his troops had.
‘Dey make big, burny tracks through da forest – now, dey my prisoners,’ the Breaka-boss atop the troggoth declared, thumping its battle axe against its chest. ‘My prizes!’
‘Yours?’ the Killaboss asked, glancing up at his bragging subordinate.
The Breaka-boss immediately realised its mistake.
‘Mine to take,’ the Breaka-boss said apologetically, ‘and so, mine to give. I give ’em you, Killaboss Glackaragg. Dees blackbirds, dey’s my gift a’ you.’
A number of the Breaka-boss’ Gutrippaz and Slittaz babbled in agreement.
The ones bearing the confiscated Stormcast weapons crowded forward, shoving them into their boss’ face. They all babbled, eager to draw the Killaboss’ baleful gaze and earn words of affirmation.
‘Quiet!’ the Killaboss roared.
All fell silent. His authority over such a chaotic group was, Tivrain had to admit, impressive.
Slowly, Glackaragg surveyed their booty… then, the prisoners themselves.
A malign smile cut across his broad face.
‘Me crocs,’ he roared, ‘is ’ungry!’
Filthy hands pawed the lot of them, herding them along roughly through the gathered crowd of filthy, stinking swamp-dwellers.
Pharena was shoved close to Tivrain for an instant.
‘Fear not,’ Tivrain whispered to her, not sure if Pharena could even hear her over the howls and jabbing. ‘We’ll bide our time, and when the moment arrives–’
Something hard and heavy struck Tivrain on the head. Her vision blackened and she reeled.
‘No talking, you!’ an orruk snarled.
Tivrain nearly fell, but managed to stay upright, borne along by her captors. When she opened her eyes again, she felt something hot and wet upon her face and knew that the blunt strike had drawn blood.
Pharena was no longer beside her. In the jostling, she’d been pushed forward. Now Ansonnir was at her elbow, trying to help her along, even with his hands bound.
‘I trust there’s a plan brewing?’ the Knight-Relictor asked, as quietly as he could.
Tivrain shot him a fell glance. ‘I’m open to suggestions.’
‘I count a hundred, give or take,’ Ibon whispered on Tivrain’s left. ‘Ten to one. What say you to those odds, Knight-Incantor?’
The leading edge of a skareshield suddenly smashed into Ibon’s face, just above the bridge of his nose. The Liberator-Prime was thrown back, falling hard into Tivrain, nearly toppling her.
‘I’d like those odds better if just a few of us could recover our weapons,’ Tivrain muttered under her breath.
Their path wound between the knobs of several low hills before they finally arrived at another open area with a great depression at its centre. The pit was six or eight horse-lengths across, ringed with sharpened stakes and tall, smoking torches that provided muddy, uneven light.
Before Tivrain had even seen the bottom of the pit, or what it contained, several orruks barked orders. With a terrible swiftness, Barastus and Saran were separated and dragged forward towards the pit’s edge.
At the precipice, they were halted, the orruks around them wrestling with the manacles on their bound wrists.
‘Blasted fings!’ one hissed.
‘Here now!’ another snarled. ‘You do it all wrong!’
‘Where’s da forger?’ another growled, scanning the crowd. ‘We need dese cuffies off!’
Questions and calls rippled through the crowd. Suddenly, in their midst, Tivrain saw someone short and squat shoved and passed among them. In moments, the prisoner had been thrust before the two chained Stormcasts.
It wasn’t an orruk at all, but a duardin.
At first glance, he looked like most of his kindred – squat, strong, a broad face full of sharp planes and deep furrows, a long, shaggy beard of auburn shot through with streaks of grey, the greasy hair atop his head gathered in a hasty braid.
The forger, they’d called him. Of course! The manacles that bound them were his work – the steel trap that had ensnared Barastus as well, no doubt – and finer work than the Kruleboyz deserved.
Tivrain was ready to curse the duardin under her breath for a coin-grubbing traitor, but then, as he was shoved towards Barastus and Saran, she saw that he had a number of small rings threaded into the skin of his face and shoulders. The rings were all connected, by both fine and heavy links, to a chain leash held by a brawny orruk looming behind the smith.
As the duardin strode forward, his handler yanked playfully at the chain, tugging at those flesh-embedded rings.
‘Sigmar’s light,’ Ordys muttered beside Tivrain. ‘They’ve literally got him pierced and leashed like a hunting hound.’
The duardin, whose scowling face suggested he’d endured the haranguing of his captors often enough to ignore it, did as bade, swiftly and surely undoing the manacles upon Barastus and Saran. The moment he’d completed his task, he was yanked back violently by his chain, teeth gnashing in agony.
The orruks at the edge of the pit shoved Barastus and Saran, one after the other. Down they went, dropping out of sight.
The orruks and hobgrots herded the rest of them right up to the edge.
The pit was twenty feet deep, with sloping sides like a great cauldron. Barastus and Saran had rolled down to the nadir. They crouched in foetid, ankle-deep water and scum-covered mud. Their night-black armour was filthy, almost entirely brown. As they rose to their feet, they wiped muck from their eyes.
Two low pens were burrowed into the far inner slopes of the pit, their entrances covered by primitive, barred cages. As Tivrain watched, both cages rose on pulleys.
Almost in unison, two long, low, enormous forms slithered out of the pens into the pit, snouts long and sabre-shaped, jaws lined with hundreds of terrible, jagged teeth.
‘Crocodroths,’ Tivrain breathed.
The smaller of the two beasts launched itself forward, using both its stubby legs and its long, thick tail to propel itself. It lurched towards Saran, jaws gaping wide, gullet deep and empty.
Saran countered with equal force, leaping towards the charging crocodroth. Beast and Stormcast met in the air, entangled, and splashed down into the mud, thrashing.
The orruks and hobgrots cheered and shook their fists.
The larger crocodroth, slower but clearly stronger, raised its enormous head and tried to take a large bite out of Barastus.
Barastus caught the reptile’s jaws, as long and broad as tear-shaped shields, and held them wide, even as the crocodroth shoved and thrashed and tried to snap them shut.
Again, the orruks cheered.
‘Your friends, the beasts,’ a voice said beside Tivrain. ‘They don’t care who wins, they just want to see someone – or something – lose.’
There beside Tivrain stood the duardin prisoner, frowning at the spectacle below. The chain leash that bound him trailed aside to his handler, just a stone’s throw from them.
‘I take it you’ve seen this before?’ Tivrain asked.
The duardin glanced askance at her in disgust.
‘Too often,’ he said. ‘If they cannot find prisoners, they throw a couple of their own down there.’
In the pit, Saran had his crocodroth on its back. He was hammering wildly on its exposed underbelly with his gauntleted fists as the beast swung and flopped, struggling to turn itself upright once more.
Nearby, Barastus had mounted its larger companion, legs clamped on to its thick torso, hands struggling to hold its enormous jaws shut. The crocodroth whipped and bucked beneath him.
A few of the orruks and hobgrots seemed to have soured on the match. They surged forward, cursing and shouting that the prisoners were cheating, that someone needed to show them their place. Others, however, seemed delighted by the reversal in the crocodroths’ combined fortunes. They cheered louder. Several urged Barastus to tear the crocodroth’s jaws loose.
Tivrain looked to the duardin beside her.
‘Listen to me, duardin,’ she said, making no effort to mask the desperation in her voice. ‘You’ve clearly been a prisoner here for some time, and we have no desire to tarry. We may be your best chance to escape.’
The duardin seemed to study her for only a moment, assessing her. After an instant’s consideration, he gave a curt nod.
‘Can’t argue with that,’ he muttered. ‘Belengir Kraeksson, at your service, Stormcast.’
‘Tivrain Greymantle,’ Tivrain answered hastily. ‘Knight-Incantor of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer. How can you aid us, Belengir? We’re running out of time.’
The duardin quickly glanced around, to make sure that none of the enemy stood too close or were paying attention to them.
‘There are hidden releases,’ he whispered, standing up on his thick tiptoes so that he was closer to Tivrain. ‘On the manacles.’
Tivrain’s eyes grew wide.
‘Stop gawping,’ the duardin hissed. ‘I knew a day like this might arrive. I’ve been here nigh on twenty years, seen hundreds of prisoners come and go, even tried to enlist the aid of a few – but none were equal to it. Or they stalled and got themselves slain before they could free me. But you lot, you’re my best chance, or I’ve got no chance at all.’
The crowd suddenly cheered. Tivrain swung her gaze back to the pit.
Beside her, Ordys nodded towards the far lip of the cauldron.
‘There,’ she said grimly. ‘Taking aim.’
Tivrain saw what Ordys referred to immediately – a brawny Boltboy shouldering his way up to the pit’s edge, raising his manskewer, sighting down the straight length of the shaft…
He was taking aim at Barastus, who’d just been thrown off his crocodroth and was now splashing through the muddy water as the enormous reptile whipped its head to the side and snapped at him, trying to catch a limb as he scrambled clear.
Instinctively, Tivrain lunged forward. The nearest orruks held her back.
The Boltboy loosed his bolt.
The thick shaft splashed into the water mere inches from Barastus’ right leg but did not find its mark.
Barastus was too busy racing away from the crocodroth to even notice. He splashed and evaded, upright one moment, then tripping, lunging, flopping this way and that in a mad dash for safety. The beast was hot on his heels all the way, enormous, toothy jaws snapping.
On the far side of the pit, Saran wrestled with his own crocodroth. It had managed to slip out from under him and once more position itself upright, but now the hulking Decimator had its jaws held wide, mid-bite, just as Barastus had managed when the fight began.
Tivrain leaned towards Belengir.
‘What happens if they slay the crocodroths?’ she asked.
Belengir turned troubled eyes up at her. ‘They’ve worse things to send into the pit, Incantor – including their own.’
Barastus sped round his adversary, snatching up the manskewer bolt from where it stood upright in the muddy water. Even as he yanked up the makeshift weapon, the crocodroth swung its head sideways. In an instant, the creature had turned fully around, its head and tail switching places.
Barastus threw his entire body upon its crown and snout, clearly trying to use his enormous mass to snap its jaws shut. The gambit worked, but the croc corrected a second later, struggling to shimmy backwards from under Barastus’ heavy form.
Barastus plunged the manskewer bolt into the crocodroth’s skull, just between its sculpted eye ridges.
The beast jerked its head sideways, aware that something was amiss.
Barastus threw all of his weight on the blunt end of the bolt, driving it home.
The crocodroth convulsed explosively and lay still.
Some of the crowd continued to cheer and jeer, delighted that anything in the pit bled or died, but the incredulity of those who saw that the Stormcast had managed to slay their hungry pet rose as a cacophony of curses and denials.
Across the pit, Saran still wrestled with his own beast, its jaws inches from snapping shut upon his uncovered head.
Barastus leapt up from his slain adversary and plunged awkwardly through the mud towards his comrade. He threw himself bodily on the crocodroth and held tight, the creature thrashing beneath him.
Saran’s mouth fell open and a wordless roar escaped it as he summoned all the reserves of strength left inside him. As Barastus kept the crocodroth pinned, Saran forced the monster’s jaws open so wide that its mandibular joint snapped and tore. With a strange, agonised cry, the crocodroth shuddered, the sudden pain too great to bear. In the instant that it was overwhelmed, Saran completed his bloody task – he lunged, using all of his considerable body mass to bend the crocodroth’s upper jaw and skull backwards on its hinge. There was a wet tearing, a violent, bony snap, and suddenly, the crocodroth was still.
Saran disengaged and stepped back. He continued to roar and howl, wordless and wild, as though the sounds he made could send the dead reptile hurtling even faster into the afterdark. Tivrain could see that his face was covered in mud and blood.
Barastus yanked himself up off the dead crocodroth and strode to his friend. He tried to meet his gaze, to hold it, but Saran was too maddened, too broken, to be subdued. He continued to roar, even shrinking from Barastus’ touch when the Retributor reached out and tried to draw him into an embrace.
The orruks were already chanting for new victims and new beasts.
Below, Barastus finally managed to place his bloody hands on either side of Saran’s face. He held his friend still, forcing him to look into his eyes. Saran’s howls subsided, the fury finally fleeing him and leaving only grief and pain in its wake.
Saran drew his comrade into a strong embrace, holding him tightly.
Rough hands fell upon Tivrain, yanking her towards the pit. She had been chosen, along with Heldymion Dawnslight, who snarled and struggled against his bonds as they forced him towards the precipice alongside her.
Tivrain looked to Belengir. Helplessly, she displayed her manacles.
The duardin mouthed something, hands making signs in the air, suggesting where the manacles’ secret release might be.
Then, amidst the noise and clamour around them, Tivrain heard the blurt of a thunderous war-horn. A moment later, the howl of something feral and wild. Before Tivrain could determine the source of the sound, she saw a fracas erupt far off to her left, at the back of the orruk horde around the pit.
Tall, bizarrely muscled forms waded into the crowd. Many orruks and hobgrots broke and fled, while others stood their ground or leapt to attack, only to be beaten down by barbed flails in the hands of striding man-things enrobed in clouds of foul, coppery mist.
Then Tivrain saw the dread icon bobbing above the fray on a herald’s pike, livid in the torchlight.
The crimson rune of the Blood God, Khorne.
Bloodbound poured into the broad gully between the low hills, Flesh Hounds surging before the horde, ripping a path through the masses. On the heels of the hounds came lumbering Wrathmongers wreathed in roiling, bloody mists, barbed wrathflails breaking bones and tearing flesh. As the Flesh Hounds and Wrathmongers broke massed formations and cleared a route through the belligerent orruks and grots, slavering, snarling Bloodreavers brought up the rear, their slicing reaver blades and meatripper axes forbidding reprieve or escape.
The crowd around Tivrain and her companions surged forward as the orruks overcame their initial shock and rallied. In haste, they fell into loose formations, pikes levelled, and charged the invaders.
Strange, Tivrain thought, that these cunning Kruleboyz were taken unawares by the Bloodbound of Khorne. Perhaps they were so delighted at having captured the lot of us that they relaxed their vigilance, rendering themselves vulnerable.
Tivrain’s snarling captors seemed to forget all about her, rushing to meet the invaders. The edge of the pit was mere inches from where Tivrain’s boot now dug into the mud. Just a little bit further and she would’ve been over the edge.
‘Knight-Incantor!’ someone shouted.
Tivrain’s attentions returned to the fray. A loping, long-limbed orruk flew towards her, mouth wide and screaming. An instant later, she saw the duardin, Belengir, driving the orruk forward from behind, shoving it with all his strength.
The orruk wasn’t attacking – Belengir had overpowered it, and now delivered the brute right into Tivrain’s waiting hands.
She lunged, meeting the oncoming orruk’s momentum with her own, then yanked her manacles down, digging the chain into its thick throat. She crossed her arms and tightened the chain noose, eager to keep the orruk from struggling.
Beside her, Heldymion had grabbed hold of one of his captors. He had the orruk’s face buried in the deep mud, drowning it slowly as it shuddered and shook.
Tivrain’s orruk thrashed and spat and swatted at her, but her hold was ironclad. It was ferociously strong, the corded muscles in its throat almost refusing to yield under the constriction of Tivrain’s chains.
Then Belengir was upon the brute, wrestling with his outstretched hands, yanking his trailing leash chains from the orruk’s thrashing grip and hastily looping them around the creature’s forearms. The orruk continued to cough and struggle, but now that both its throat and arms were bound, the fight was all but won.
And yet, it felt like an eternity before the orruk finally sagged limp in Tivrain’s murderous embrace.
Tivrain loosened the makeshift noose she’d made of her chains and let the body fall. Belengir quickly snatched up his leashes, wrapping them around his own broad shoulders and muscular arms so that they would not trail behind him. Chains secured, he landed a series of hard, savage kicks to the dead orruk’s gut.
‘I promised you!’ the duardin snarled, tears pouring from his eyes. ‘I promised you, more than once, I’d have you in the end, you foul cur!’
Tivrain let the duardin expend his long-pent rage upon his tormentor, nervously scanning the press and rush of bodies around her. Through the crowd, she saw her companions, separated from one another in the chaos, struggling to work their way through the orruks and hobgrots, ignored by their captors now that more pressing opponents haunted their doorstep.
Belengir grabbed Tivrain’s manacles and yanked her closer. As she watched, the duardin’s cunning fingers located the secret releases he’d forged into the manacles and activated them. Tivrain’s opened and fell to the mud with a dull clank.
‘My friends!’ she shouted over the cacophony around them. ‘You have to release them!’
‘Aye, that!’ the duardin shouted back. ‘Then we’ll all find a way out of this mess!’
An inhuman roar sounded at Tivrain’s back. She and Belengir spun to find Barastus struggling to climb over the lip of the pit, grip slipping in the foul mud. Tivrain and Belengir snatched each of Barastus’ mud-smeared hands, straining to lift him over the edge. In seconds, the Retributor lay at their feet, laughing with sinister glee as though he’d just endured a most bracing adventure.
‘Did you see?’ he shouted. ‘Did you see how we destroyed those foul beasts?’
Saran Doomsmaul scrambled over the lip a moment later, bracing himself between two planted stakes. Knight-Arcanum Tarros appeared at Heldymion’s side to help their enormous companion clamber back onto solid ground.
Tivrain took stock. Heldymion and Tarros were beside her. Ordys, Ibon and Pharena had fallen in just steps away to build a defensive cordon, having overpowered their orruk captors and confiscated their fearsome serrated pikes.
Tivrain was about to step in between Ibon and Ordys when Heldymion suddenly roared behind her.
‘Move! Quickly!’ he shouted, throwing himself onto the three of them. One of the Mirebrute troggoths, its Breaka-boss master perched on its shoulders, lumbered by the edge of the pit in the next instant, taking long, eager strides towards the Khornate horde. The casual swing of its huge war club nearly took Knight-Relictor Ansonnir’s head off as the giant passed.
Belengir hastily moved among Tivrain’s companions, undoing their manacles. She scanned the insanity around her, seeking an easy means of egress.
In the fray, she saw an orruk shaman marching forward, exhorting its hump-backed comrades to press the attack and hold the oncoming horde. It carried its own primitive staff in one hand and Tivrain’s Incantor’s staff in the other.
Tivrain did not think – she moved.
She bolted forward, wending a swift, indirect path towards the shaman, evading charging orruks and retreating grots. Something large and heavy howled and split the air just inches before her face, and she realised it was one of the Flesh Hounds, either smashed by a strike of the troggoth’s club or tossed like an empty barrel. A hobgrot leapt upon her, intent on subduing her, its serrated slitta thrusting towards her throat. Tivrain ripped the blade from the little monster’s child-sized hands and gave it back to the creature, point first, in its belly. She left it dying in the mud.
Tivrain lunged towards the orruk shaman, took hold of her staff and yanked.
To her chagrin, the shaman’s grip was ironclad. Realising that the staff’s owner sought to reclaim it, the shaman threw down its own staff and laid both grubby hands upon the Stormcast’s, determined not to surrender it.
Tivrain let her staff recognise her presence, let it awaken and respond to her. In short order, power coursed up and down the length of the shaft in tingling, serpentine skeins. She could feel those energies invading her own body, rushing up her arms, directly to the heart of her.
Blinding white light shone from her eyes. It made the orruk shrink and squint, but still the creature would not relinquish the staff.
Tivrain called down the storm.
A blinding tower of lightning blasted out of the sky, engulfing Tivrain and her struggling adversary. For an instant, her world was a bright white flash, her ears filled with the lightning’s snarl, the massive reserves of energy and elemental force coursing through her and lashing out in every direction.
It was warm – familiar.
The shaman, however, was not so fortunate. The lightning engulfed every inch of its body, even plunging inside to cook the organs within in a single, agonising moment. When the lightning vanished, Tivrain was left holding her Incantor’s staff, while the scorched husk of the orruk shaman lay at her feet.
Tivrain surveyed the battle around her. Every troggoth and Breaka-boss fought at the fore, engaging the Wrathmongers. Rank-and-file Gutrippaz and Slittaz fought to hold back the onrushing tide of Bloodreavers. Green and ruddy-red bodies heaved and jostled back and forth in blood- and sweat-slicked knots.
So much. Such a garden of evil and malign intent. I could make short work of them, Tivrain thought, grip tightening on her Incantor’s staff. Wade right in amongst them. Summon a spirit storm to tear them all to pieces, orruks and Bloodbound.
This is what I was made for.
To fight.
To kill.
To die.
But… if I die, our mission fails.
The realisation bloomed in her consciousness unbidden. It filled her with a shameful, contrarian rage.
This is not your fight, Tivrain. Your fight waits for you in Har Kuron.
Gauntleted hands yanked Tivrain out of her reverie. Ordys Stormwall stood at her side, urging, shouting.
‘This way! We think we’ve found a path out!’
Tivrain let Ordys lead her. They fell in behind the others, skirting the edge of the pit towards the far side. Heldymion alone lagged behind, staring at the chaos and conflagration raging where the followers of Khorne reaped orruk flesh for their bloodthirsty master.
The Annihilator had recovered his meteoric grandhammer. He watched the battle, gaze fixed as though he longed to dash into the fray and start swinging.
Tivrain, dragged along by Ordys, knew that Heldymion too felt the call, the siren song to slaughter and, if need be, to die – a wordless, animal impulse as undeniable as hunger or exhaustion.
He cannot, Tivrain thought. If he meets them, he’ll fall, and if he falls, we fail. We’ll need every hand in Anvilgard if we’re to have any hope of succeeding in this!
What have I done? Have I consigned my companions to the same humiliating perdition as those who captured our comrades in Anvil-gard?
They are made to fight, yet I deny them that satisfaction.
They are made to die, yet I deny them that sacrament.
Ordys made the decision for her.
‘Heldymion! Hurry!’
The Annihilator half turned, clearly hearing Ordys but wanting, needing, to ignore her and wade into the melee. He glanced back over his shoulder, burning gaze catching Tivrain’s own.
Tivrain held that gaze for a moment, knowing that he was asking something of her.
She said nothing, only nodded.
Heldymion seemed to draw a breath, a breath he’d been holding, but then Ordys shouted again.
‘Heldymion, move! This is not where we die! Not this day!’
Ordys’ exhortation broke the spell. With a grimace of disgust, Heldymion Dawnslight fell in step, trailing after them as they made the far side of the fighting pit.
Behind them, orruks screamed, cursed, roared. The Bloodbound of Khorne tore into them, laughing and singing vile, barking hymns to their lord and master.
Dauntless Hall
Har Kuron, Aqshy
Malascyra did not wait to be announced but strode right past the sentries posted outside the Hall of the Grand Conclave. To their credit, they made no attempt to bar her entry, only shifting their feet and watching, puzzled, as she laid all her weight upon the great doors and pushed through.
Imreth waited just within, standing only a few steps beyond the entry, assessing her torture web from a distance like a satisfied painter stepping back from her latest canvas.
The queen regent, the Witch of the Web, looked mildly irritated when she turned to find Malascyra approaching her without having been expressly bade into her presence.
‘The Bloodbound are coming,’ Malascyra announced, not waiting for a greeting or an invitation to speak. ‘They shall be battering at the city gates by morning.’
Imreth seemed strangely disinterested in such deadly news.
‘Are the defences in order? The weapons manned?’
‘Aye,’ Malascyra said. ‘All seen to. If I could beg a few spellcasters–’
‘Impossible,’ Imreth snapped. ‘The daily rites cannot be interrupted. Our mistress and master must receive their homage.’
‘And you, your reinvigoration,’ Malascyra snarled. ‘I am not asking, queen regent, I am informing – every Hag Queen, Slaughter Queen and Bloodwrack priestess that can be spared shall be placed upon the city walls.’
Imreth rounded on her, jaundiced yellow eyes boring into Malascyra’s.
‘Do you expect these malcontented barbarians, this bloody rabble, to batter down the gates of Har Kuron, Malascyra? I think you overestimate the Bloodbound of Khorne. In the field, they are fierce adversaries – outside these walls, they barely pose a threat.’
‘I would ordinarily agree with you,’ Malascyra countered. ‘Need I remind you of the signs we found inside the city walls of Khorne worshippers among us? They could already have agents placed in our midst. Agents or no, what this horde may lack in artillery or heavy weaponry or siege engines, it makes up for in numbers. Our scouts say they are five thousand, maybe more.’
That number – five thousand – finally seemed to penetrate Imreth’s overbearing self-righteousness. For a moment, her mouth hung half open, as though she had been on the cusp of replying and now could not recall what she’d intended to say.
‘Little matter,’ the queen regent finally spat. ‘This city has repelled larger invasion forces for months on end. Seal the gates and bombard them with blood magic and the fury of our artillery. They shall lose interest swiftly enough. The Bloodbound are not known for their patience or tenacity.’
Malascyra sighed. ‘You heard me, did you not? Five thousand. Nearly twice the number we can muster.’
‘I am well aware of our troop strength,’ Imreth snapped. Her preternatural lassitude was unravelling. ‘Say the word and I shall command our Darkling Coven and Scourge Privateer allies to bolster our troops.’
‘A half-thousand more, at best,’ Malascyra said. ‘Insufficient, queen regent, and you know it.’
‘Did you come here to insult me?’ Imreth asked, voice growing sharp and cold.
‘I came here to inform you of my plans to defend this city,’ Malascyra answered slowly, patiently, as though speaking to a dull child. ‘I only need your permission for two specific actions, queen regent. First, I need to shut down the defoliant cannons. Second, I need to call out and reconstitute the Freeguilds that defend this city.’
Imreth raised one sharp eyebrow.
‘There are no Freeguilds in this city,’ she said coldly. ‘We eradicated them.’
Malascyra shook her head. ‘We quelled a handful of rebellions, sacrificed the leaders and participants in those rebellions, and convinced ourselves that the Freeguilds were no more. But you know they remain, if only as a memory.’
‘What good would these memories be to us now, when what we need are fighters?’
Malascyra drew in a deep breath. She knew this would be the most difficult thing for Imreth to accept. Nonetheless, she had to accept it.
‘No doubt we purged this city of a great many of its most ardent, belligerent defenders,’ she said. ‘But more remain. If we inform the inhabitants of what now threatens them, allow them to unfurl the old banners and re-form their long-scattered guilds–’
‘No. Impossible. To raise enemy banners within the walls? While we still hold the city?’
‘They are not our enemies, queen regent,’ Malascyra insisted. ‘They are our citizens, our subjects. If the Bloodbound penetrate the city, those subjects will die beneath their blades and flails. If we give them this opportunity to join us in the defence–’
‘Then we look weak,’ Imreth hissed. ‘And foolish, in the bargain! No, Malascyra, the Freeguilds are no more, forever. They cannot be resurrected. If we want our subjects’ – she snarled the word with notable contempt – ‘to remain subject to our overlordship, we must show them that we can defend them. They are the sheep, and we the hunters protecting them from hungry wolves. But wolves do not stand, shoulder to shoulder, with sheep.’
‘If they are merely sheep,’ Malascyra countered, ‘why do you fear to arm them? To reawaken their sense of duty to this city that they call home?’
‘My decree is final!’ Imreth roared. ‘The Freeguilds shall not be invoked or reactivated! Another word on the matter and I shall remove you from your command, Malascyra Stormwrack!’
Malascyra was on the cusp of calling her bluff, of urging Imreth to do what she threatened to do, but she knew the Hag Queen might well follow through. Even if Morathi might eventually return and command Malascyra’s release, her imprisonment would not aid in their defence of the city.
The city might not even survive her removal from the duty appointed to her.
The fact that Imreth Daemanta could not clearly see that was most worrying – but not surprising, in the least.
‘Very well, then,’ Malascyra said, biting back the urge to press the issue. ‘What of my request to shut down the defoliant cannons?’
‘Shut down the defoliant cannons?’ Imreth repeated.
Malascyra nodded. ‘The no man’s land standing between the city walls and the Crucible of Life will be filled with dense and deadly vegetation by morning if we shut off the cannons now, before the moons rise. Every hour that passes, every day that the Bloodbound linger on our threshold, the jungle will continue to assert itself. My aim is to leave only the defoliant cannons flanking the Burnished Gate in operation, while allowing the jungle to encroach everywhere else.’
‘Will that not provide them with cover, to better creep up on our defences?’ Imreth asked.
‘Far from it,’ Malascyra said. ‘The vegetation is dense and dangerous in its own right, but I’ve already spoken to the temple Hag Queens about how their spellcraft can make it more so. Their enchantments will make the jungle impassable and deadly for a distance of five hundred yards from the walls in every direction. The Khorne worshippers will be concentrated, ensuring that we won’t have to fight them off on several fronts simultaneously.’
Imreth’s expression was dark, disbelieving.
‘That jungle is hungry, Malascyra – alive. If it gets a foothold in the walls themselves, or even manages to creep over them–’
‘We can deploy crews on the walls to defoliate strategically. But if we want to funnel our besiegers into the smallest corridor possible, to better control them, we need every other approach to the city impassable.’
Imreth withdrew for a moment, wrestling with what Malascyra had told her. Malascyra had expected no less – it did not matter that this was her realm of expertise, that she was appointed by Morathi herself as protector of the city, that she had decades of experience in fortifying defensive positions and repelling enemy attacks that Imreth Daemanta did not possess.
None of that mattered. Imreth could not countenance Malascyra’s inherent skill, let alone her penchant for acting independently, without hindrance.
If only I could forcibly remove her, Malascyra thought. Toss her over the walls into the waiting arms of the Bloodbound…
‘Very well,’ Imreth finally said. ‘I shall send word to the defoliant factory that they will obey your commands and shut down the cannons as bade. I shall also roust out our allies.’
‘The handful that we may boast,’ Malascyra muttered.
‘Did you say something, Malascyra?’
Malascyra mustered an embittered, venomous smile.
‘Nothing at all, queen regent. My thanks for your attention.’
She pivoted on her heel and strode towards the great doors.
‘They are barbarians, Malascyra,’ Imreth said as she took her leave. ‘Monstrous, misshapen, without self-control or discipline. So long as they cannot breach the walls or batter down the gates, they pose little threat.’
Malascyra paused long enough to speak over her shoulder.
‘I pray to holy Khaine you are correct, queen regent.’
And with that, she departed, her contempt for Imreth Daemanta boiling with new intensity.