Soul Wars

Chapter sixteen Grand Tempestus

‘The desert burns,’ Knossus said, staring at the horizon. He looked at Balthas. ‘The enemy is close at hand. Can you feel it?’

Balthas nodded. The temperature had dipped precipitously over the past day. The heavy braziers set at intervals along the eastern wall struggled to hold the cold at bay. Flames snapped and whipped in the wind that moaned across the ramparts.

He gazed along the wall’s length. The great cannons of the Ironweld were arrayed in batteries as far as the eye could see. Glymmsforge’s arsenal was the largest in Shyish, and growing by the year. But all the powder and shot in the realm would not be enough to stop what he suspected was coming.

Still looking at the cannons, he asked, ‘Any word from the fort?’ Fort Alenstahdt had fallen silent as the fires on the horizon grew brighter. Galen Sleekwing, Prosecutor-Prime of the Anvils of the Helden­hammer’s Angelos Chamber, had demanded the right to send out patrols of Prosecutors, but Knossus had refrained. There were things abroad in the dark skies that no warrior, no matter how skilled, could face and survive.

‘None. Not for three days. If anyone is alive out there, they have other things to worry about.’ Knossus leaned against his staff, looking surprisingly weary. Balthas could tell that the responsibility was wearing on him. They possessed superhuman vitality, but even it had its limits. And the city was under siege, even if there was no enemy in sight yet. The dead rose in greater numbers than ever before, despite the usual precautions.

In the past day, drowned corpses had surfaced in the Glass Mere to attack the villages that clustered along the shore-wall, and the effluvia of an abattoir in the tannery quarter had congealed into something monstrous and hungry. Each day brought new horrors, necessitating some form of intervention. Which further distracted from the efforts of the city’s defenders to prepare themselves for the attack that was almost certainly coming.

Out among the dunes, Balthas heard the cry of a jackal. The eerie sound rose and quavered out. As if in reply, the howling of dogs rose over the city. The soldiers on the wall glanced at one another nervously. Balthas could see the fear that tinged their auras. He sent a whisper of power through his staff, so that its glow blossomed suddenly, washing across the wall. The fear in those nearest to him eased.

‘Compassion, brother?’ Knossus asked.

‘Pragmatism. Fear sharpens the senses, but too much can overwhelm them.’ Balthas looked up at the dark sky. He couldn’t see the stars. A flicker of unease gripped him, but he said nothing of it. ‘They must be alert.’

‘As must we.’ Knossus looked out over the desert. ‘Death draws closer with every breath we take. It feels as if the underworld itself is closing in about us. As if Nagash has us in his fist.’ He sighed. ‘I thought I had seen my darkest days already, but this feels unsettlingly familiar.’

‘Have you found the weakness in the city’s wards yet?’

‘No. But I am drawing close.’ Knossus gestured to the north. ‘There is a tang in the air, there – a musty note beneath everything. It is there, I think.’

‘We must seal it, then, and swiftly,’ Balthas said. ‘While it exists, the city is weakened. Its defences are incomplete.’

Knossus blocked Balthas’ path with his staff. ‘I will deal with it. There is something else that you must do. The Grand Tempestus.’

Balthas paused. ‘I was under the impression that it was protected.’

‘It is. By you.’ Knossus smiled. ‘Sigmar sent you here for this purpose, brother. Defending the city’s walls is my responsibility. You will defend its heart. I have already sent word to Calys Eltain, placing her under your command.’

Balthas bowed his head. ‘My… thanks, brother.’

‘You will not be alone. The Grand Tempestus sits amid the main artery of the city – I have despatched forces to hold the surrounding streets. They will be of some help to you.’

‘Mortals?’ Balthas said, doubtfully.

‘Lynos and Orius are needed elsewhere. It will be up to us to hold the enemy on the walls. Hopefully, you will not see a single spectre or walking corpse.’

Balthas looked back towards the desert and the witch-light glow dancing on the horizon. He did not share Knossus’ seeming confidence. Whatever was coming, it would take more than walls and mystic wards to stop it.

But he did not voice his concerns. Instead, he simply turned away. ‘I hope you are right, brother. And Sigmar help us if you are not.’

Calys Eltain descended the steps of the Grand Tempestus, leading her cohort of warriors into the wide plaza that stretched before it. The cathedral rose up above and around her, an imposing edifice of celestine and marble that always smelled of ozone and rain. A massive statue of Sigmar the Liberator stood over the main doors, hammer raised to smash the chains of the oppressed. More statues, these of saints, Azyrite and otherwise, lined either side of the colossal, slabbed steps. Some were of Stormcasts but most were of mortal humans – men and women, sages and warrior-priests, great warriors and healers.

It had begun to rain, diffusing the glow of the storm-lanterns hung from the high posts at the bottom of the steps. The circumference of the plaza was interrupted by twelve streets, each demarcated by a high archway of stone that stretched between the buildings to either side. Freeguild troops in the uniform of the Glymmsmen marched through one of the archways, their voices raised in conversation or song.

Calys stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up. She could not see the stars. The sky resembled a black wound. She frowned, uneasy. Beside her, the gryph-hound, Grip, chirped softly. Calys looked down, watching as the mortal soldiers filed into the plaza. Some had begun to unlimber artillery pieces, while others were banging on the doors of nearby shops and dwellings.

The order had come down from Lord-Arcanum Knossus that the Grand Tempestus was to be reinforced and made ready. She knew that the other temples in the city would be seeing similar activity, as would many of the larger buildings and gatehouses. By dawn, the city would be a chain of interlinked, if somewhat makeshift, fortresses, ready to repel an enemy that shouldn’t even be able to get past the outer walls.

‘He is late,’ one of her warriors said. He was behind her, spread out with the others along the bottom step. There were eleven of them. Twelve counting herself. One for each entrance to the Grand Tempestus. ‘He could not even do us the courtesy of being here on time, this lord-arcanum.’

‘Stop grousing, Tamacus,’ Calys said, more harshly than she’d intended.

‘It is not seemly. This duty is ours.’ Tamacus half drew his blade and thrust it back into its sheath with a rattle.

‘Your duty is to obey me,’ Calys said. She looked back at him. ‘And mine is to obey him. That is the way of it.’

Tamacus bowed his head. Calys stared at him for a moment longer, just to ensure he understood. Then she turned back. As she did so, she heard the familiar screech of a gryph-charger. Her new commander had arrived.

The Stormcasts trooping into the plaza wore the black of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, which was something of a relief – at least these were from the same Stormhost. The lord-arcanum climbed from his gryph-charger’s back, and his mage-sacristan joined him. ‘Calys Eltain – step forth,’ the lord-arcanum said. He had a softer voice than she’d been expecting – like thunder, but far away. A distant rumble rather than the bone-rattling voice of Knossus Heavensen.

Calys stepped forwards, her helmet beneath her arm. The rain ran down her face, but she ignored it. She met his cool gaze without flinching. ‘I am Calys Eltain, lord-arcanum.’

‘I am Lord-Arcanum Balthas Arum, called by some the Grave Warden. You are under my command now. Is this amenable to you?’

‘If it were not, would it matter?’ The question came to her lips before she could consider it. ‘You are here now.’ She studied him. He was taller than she was – not massive, but simply tall. If he’d been mortal, she might have called him lanky, but clad in armour as he was, that was more due to how he held himself. But there was a power to him. The air crackled about him, as if there were a storm in the offing.

‘I am. You are observant.’

Calys blinked, startled by his sardonic tone. Before she could reply, he went on. ‘You were from Ghur,’ Balthas said, looking through her. She hesitated.

‘I have no memory of my mortal life.’

‘Nevertheless, I see the threads of amber running through you. Mingled with purple and blue. More than most. Born in one realm and died in another. You were forged recently, then. After the realmgates were secured.’ He looked away. ‘You have come far, for one so young.’

‘I seek only to do my duty,’ she said, stung by his tone.

‘As do I.’ He looked back at her. ‘I do not seek to take this responsibility from you. I only seek to do as I have been commanded.’ He gestured towards the Grand Tempestus. ‘You will guard the doors, as you have been ordered. I will see to the outside. Between us, we shall protect the Ten Thousand Tombs from the enemy.’

She hesitated, but only for a moment. He was offering a compromise, of sorts. She nodded. ‘As you say, lord-arcanum.’

‘Good. See to your duties, then, Liberator-Prime. And I will see to mine.’ He turned away, and she knew that she had been dismissed. She gestured curtly, and Tamacus and the others began to climb the stairs once more.

She studied Balthas for a moment longer, and then followed.

Whatever else, she would do her duty.

The deathlords met in a circle of witch-light, a day’s march from Glymmsforge.

Skulls wreathed in eerie green flame hovered attentively around them, bound by the magics of Crelis Arul. The mistress of the deadwalkers had caught up with the nighthaunt vanguard a few days after the fall of Fort Alenstahdt. Her horde stumbled through the sands to either side of them – a flood of tattered meat and twitching limbs, moving unceasingly towards the city in the distance.

Nearby, the silent legions of Grand Prince Yaros awaited their orders. Unlike the shambling deadwalkers, they could be trusted to reach the walls in good time and thus were held back. Despite Malendrek’s claims to the contrary, the deathrattle warriors were the solid core of the army making for Glymmsforge. It would be up to them to hold whatever ground the nighthaunts and deadwalkers took.

Pharus’ own host was close to hand. He could feel the warmth of Dohl’s lantern and hear the constant, impatient murmur of the chainrasps. The guardian of souls had awakened the dead as they travelled the desert paths, and now the broken spirits of those claimed by the Zircona served him alongside those twisted phantoms culled from the Great Oubliette.

Despite his impatience, Malendrek had halted their rush across the desert to wait for the other deathlords to catch up. He was no fool, whatever else, and Pharus had not complained – something told him that he would need every advantage to accomplish the task before him. Now, he maintained his silence, watching as Malendrek laid out his strategy.

‘There is a hole in their defences,’ Malendrek said. ‘I know this because I created it – it was the price Nagash demanded, and I paid it gladly. It is the bleeding wound in Glymmsforge’s side. We must capitalise on it.’ A pale talon clenched into a knotty fist. ‘I will lead the assault. My forces will flood the city and disrupt the enemy. You will follow, consolidating on our gains.’

‘And leave you to reap the lion’s share of the glory,’ Grand Prince Yaros said. The wight king gestured with his axe. ‘Perhaps I should lead the assault. My legions are unbreakable. We have weathered the storms of Azyr before.’ It was more a boast than a demand. Neither Yaros nor Arul seemed inclined to challenge Malendrek – but they seized every opportunity to prick his ego.

Malendrek whirled on the skeletal warrior, his gaze pure balefire. ‘I am in command. Nagash has commanded it thus, and all must obey.’

‘We would not think of doing otherwise, O Knight of Shrouds. Your nighthaunts shall spearhead the assault, and cast open the gates for those of us who must stride on solid feet.’ Crelis Arul stood flanked by her wolves. Their rotting jaws were wet with effluvia, and their eyes squirmed with maggots. She stroked their fraying manes idly as she spoke. ‘We are content to follow at our leisure and make war on your leavings.’

Malendrek turned his fiery gaze on the Lady of All Flesh. ‘Carrion does as it must,’ he said, dropping his hand to the hilt of his blade. ‘The honour of the vanguard is mine. Thus spoke Nagash, and his will cannot be denied.’

Pharus drifted forwards. ‘No. It cannot. And thus, I shall accompany you.’

‘What?’ Malendrek peered at him. ‘Is it the little spirit, then? Still here, little spirit? I thought you lost to the desert wind, by now.’

‘I am not so easily swayed as that,’ Pharus said. Malendrek had done his best to ignore Pharus after the fall of the fort. Together, they had reaped hundreds of souls, but the Knight of Shrouds saw only those he had taken personally. ‘And my own task is equal to yours, Knight of Shrouds. There is something in the city I must claim in our lord’s name. The sooner I do it, the sooner victory is ours.’

‘You are nothing next to me,’ Malendrek snarled. His sword sprang from its sheath. Pharus interposed his own at the last moment. Their blades locked with a screech, like that of enraged beasts. Pharus felt a wave of cold pass through him, and for a moment, it seemed as if the desert were alive with the sound of jackals howling.

As they strained against one another, the howling grew louder and louder, until Pharus could hear nothing else. Amethyst sparks spilled from between their swords, and in the polished shadeglass length of his blade, he caught the briefest glimpse of a skeletal countenance – not his own, but Arkhan. Or perhaps Nagash.

With a snarling cry, he tore his weapon free of Malendrek’s and retreated. All at once, the jackals fell silent. ‘If I am nothing, it is only because Nagash has willed it so,’ he said, sheathing his sword without flourish. ‘If you are something, it is only because he wishes it. Or do you set yourself higher than our lord and master?’

Malendrek eyed him balefully. ‘Nagash is all,’ he said, after a moment.

‘And all are one in Nagash,’ Pharus replied.

The Knight of Shrouds seemed to fold in on himself, wrapping shadow and spite about his lean frame. ‘If you wish to walk into the eye of the storm with me, little spirit – so be it. But the glory of the assault will be mine. You will content yourself with opening the gates. Then you may lose yourself as you wish.’ He turned away, muttering to himself. Pharus stepped out of the circle of witch-light, one hand on his blade. He did not expect Malendrek to attack him again, but there was no sense taking chances.

Out among the dunes, he heard the lonely cry of a solitary jackal, and wondered if it was a warning of some sort. Perhaps it was simply a reminder that all things passed and had their end. Even deathlords.

He climbed a dune, the soft amethyst sands barely disturbed by the chill breeze of his passing. His feet did not sink into the sand, did not press it flat or make any indentation. There was no sign that he had passed that way at all. A part of him – small and distant – felt sadness at the thought. It was as if he were nothing more than a dark dream, set loose from the confines of a sleeper’s head.

A sea of ragged tents spread out below him. The dead did not make camp, save when it amused them to do so. Yaros’ death­rattle had raised the tents scattered about the dunes in a parody of military discipline. Fleshless menials, indentured in death as they had been in life, moved among the tents, hard at their unceasing labours. They followed ancient routines, gathering buckets of sand from long dry wells and butchered non-existent game animals. Nearby, death­rattle soldiers erected field defences that would see no use – had seen no use in decades.

These slaves of the Grand Prince ignored him. He suspected that they could not perceive him. Or that if they did, he appeared much differently. He passed among them, unnoticed and unhindered.

It was rare that he was alone, since leaving Nagashizzar. Dohl hovered ever at his elbow, drowning out his doubts with the glow of his lantern. And if it was not Dohl, it was Fellgrip or Rocha. He could not say which of the three he found more distasteful. They were no more his warriors than he was Malendrek’s. They were loyal to Nagash alone. As he was. As he must be. To be otherwise was unthinkable.

He turned back the way they had come and saw the black radiance on the horizon there. A watchful flame, burning in the night. It would grow, in time, until it ate the stars themselves, and turned the sands of all deserts to glass. And he would be a part of it.

Pharus felt no joy at the thought. No fear. Only a dim satisfaction. The way a blade might feel, could it feel, when it was wielded with true skill. He tore his gaze from that dark glow and looked out over the dunes, towards the city on the opposite horizon. Satisfaction faded, replaced by anticipation as he watched the shuffling columns of the dead advance endlessly across the moonlit sands.

He stared at the city. Until recently, he might have stood on those walls and stared out at the dead as they massed for their assault. ‘Reflections and shadows,’ he murmured, flexing a gauntlet. He could not feel the weight of his armour. He’d found that to be the most disconcerting thing about being dead. War-plate should have weight – solidity. But his felt no more substantial than cobwebs.

Only the sword had weight. Too much, for its size. It had grown heavier, the farther they travelled from the Nadir. As if it had become more real, somehow. Or perhaps he had become less so. The thought was not a comforting one. Now, he felt content – felt whole – only in the glow of Dohl’s lantern.

He was sure now that he had once borne a similar artefact. A thing infused with the false light of Azyr. Sometimes, he found himself reaching vainly for it, as the memories fluttered vainly at the edges of his perception. It was as if some part of him were attempting to remind himself of what he had once been. That longing was akin to a wound that would not heal, and only added to the agonies he felt. He had been a part of something, and now was not. And that absence made him angry.

That was the one thing that all of the dead had in common – anger. Anger at the pain they had suffered, at the glories denied them or the promises broken. A righteous anger, shared by the lowest cadaver and Nagash himself. Anger at the living. Anger at the realms themselves, for their defiance of the inevitable.

As the anger rose so too did the cold and the hunger. One fed the other, and he wanted to shriek aloud, to join his voice to that of the feral gheists that prowled the dunes. To scream in rage for an eternity, until all else was silence.

‘It is beautiful, is it not?’

Pharus turned. Crelis Arul stood behind him, accompanied by her wolves. They snarled at him, flashing broken fangs. He gestured with his sword. ‘If they attack, I will slay them,’ he rasped.

‘They are no more alive than you are, little spirit.’ She stepped forwards to join him, ignoring his blade. ‘It is beautiful. So much life, and death. I can hear them, the harvested, in their houses of stone, crying out to us. Can you hear them?’

Pharus peered at her, and then at the city. ‘I hear voices on the wind. In the sand.’

‘Innumerable souls drift about us, unseen and unheard save to those who stand upon the border between life and death.’ Arul cocked her head, as if listening. ‘They say that we are in Lyria – where the dead are given succour and strength through the celebration of their mortal deeds. There are a thousand or more underworlds in Shyish, you know. They rest within one another, like pearls in an oyster. We are a realm of nested secrets – peel back one layer and a new one presents itself.’

She took hold of the flesh of her arm and stripped it back, revealing bloody bone beneath. There were words and sigils in an unfamiliar tongue carved into the bone. ‘See? Secrets.’ She patted the torn flesh back into place.

Pharus sheathed his blade and looked away. ‘If there are spirits here, why do they not serve Nagash?’ He was almost offended by the thought. Death was the end of all lies, of all defiance – so how could such a thing be?

Arul laughed. ‘Nagash is god of justice. And these souls have earned their reward. Why would he bend them to his will, when there are more fitting tools to hand?’ She tapped a crumbling finger against his chest-plate. ‘If we are cruel, it is because we must be. Because it is required that we be so. Did Arkhan not teach you that?’

‘I do not yet know what the Mortarch of Sacrament has taught me. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. A lesson’s worth is judged in the field.’ The words came unbidden to his lips. They were from his other life. He heard a voice, and a name – Lynos. He bowed his head. He was cold and empty. His sword shuddered in its sheath. It, too, was hungry.

Arul watched him, her eyes gleaming behind her veil. ‘Cruel,’ she repeated, ‘because we must be. Nagash has stripped you of warmth and joy, so that you might be a better weapon. As you have stripped the life from others, so that they might join us and see the beauty that awaits them, on this side.’

‘I can hear something else,’ Pharus said. He touched his sword. ‘It echoes, with every swing of this blade – a single voice, calling out of the deep places. Urging me on.’ He looked at her. ‘Do you hear it as well?’ Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he added, ‘What does it say to you?’

‘If you were wiser, you would not ask that question.’ She looked towards the distant city. ‘We all hear it, and it tells us all different things. It whispers to us in our own voice, but it is his.’ She turned to him. ‘You know this.’

‘Arkhan said that the Undying King would always be with me.’

Arul nodded. ‘As he is with all of us.’ She tapped her arm, where the ripped flesh had sloughed back together. ‘Inside us. Watching through our eyes, listening with our ears. We are him, and he is us.’ She folded her hands, as if in prayer. ‘As all things will be, in time.’

‘Yes.’

Pharus heard a sound, as of waves crashing against the shore, and an unnatural wind kicked up, casting the sand about in all directions. He looked up. Shrieking chainrasps were hurtling towards the city on a wave of eldritch energy. Among them were scythe-wielding wraiths and heralds of disaster, tolling deadly bells. Malendrek was at their head with his host of spectral riders, riding high, like foam on a cresting wave.

Pharus knew at once that Malendrek was seeking to claim the glory for himself. That need drove the Knight of Shrouds. Arul clucked her tongue. ‘So impatient, that one.’

Pharus did not reply. Instead, he sped back, to where he’d left Dohl and the others. If Malendrek intended to enter the city tonight, then Pharus would be right there with him.

As Nagash had commanded, so must it be.

The deathstorm had begun.