03 - Sword of Vengeance (50 page)

Helborg watched them come again, keeping his sword poised to
strike. One of them dropped down low, spinning as it dived towards the earth,
its face lit with a malign grin of exuberance. It went for the Reiksguard on his
left flank, ignoring the bearer of the runefang. The man stood his ground, his
trembling hands holding his broadsword in place to ward the impact.

Fast as a stab, the daemon took him. Helborg sprang. Leaping
up at the sinuous figure, he whirled the Klingerach down across its kicking
legs. The sacred blade sank deep into the daemonic flesh, sinking deep and
severing aethyric sinews.

The daemon wailed, dropping its quarry and twisting away from
Helborg. The Marshal pursued it, spinning the sword into a two-handed grip and
preparing to plunge. The creature spat at him and disappeared. It re-emerged
twelve feet away, cradling its wounds and wailing in agony before kicking back
into the air. It soared upwards, leaving a trail of purple blood in its wake.

In the meantime more men had been plucked from the midst of
the dwindling band and carried up into the high places to be dismembered. A
steady shower of blood and body parts rained down on the survivors, evidence of
their comrades’ fate.

“No more of this,” snarled Helborg, turning to Skarr.

The preceptor looked scared. He never looked scared.

“What, then?”

“We run.”

“Where to?”

Helborg gestured to the Tower, still distant over the roofs
of the houses. Lightning flickered across the devastated cityscape, picking out
the ruined frames of the buildings, now squatted on by daemons licking their
blood-soaked fingers.

“There.”

Without waiting for a response, Helborg broke into a sprint.
Needing no orders, his men did likewise. Leitdorf and Skarr went alongside him.
The preceptor loped like a wolf, though no longer grinning. Volkmar took up the
rear, keeping his staff kindled and doing what he could to ward the attacks from
above.

The ravaged company ran through the streets, assailed at
every step. The daemons were in their element, sustained and buoyed by the
bloodfire, impervious to mortal weapons. The warrior priests had the most
success at fending them off, swinging their icon-studded warhammers and slamming
the unwary creatures against the charred walls. The big man with the standard
still roared out his hymns and hefted his mighty weapon. Bloodbringer, he called
it. It was a good name.

Despite the fragmentary successes, the sprint was a
nightmare. Knights and halberdiers, both with little defence against the
monsters of the aethyr, were plucked from the midst of them almost at will,
destined for an agonising death in the spires of the city. With each corner the
company rounded, another dozen were taken, whittling them down further.

Helborg was torn between anger and horror. There was nothing
worse than a foe that couldn’t be fought. He did his best to interpose himself
between the daemons and his men, but they slipped past his guard all too easily.
He was forced to listen as dying men’s screams rang out across the rooftops,
accompanied by the echoing laughs of the killers.

“We’ll all be dead before we get there,” panted Leitdorf, his
cheeks red with the effort of running. He’d managed to cast off some of his
armour, but he was making heavy work of the chase.

“Then go back,” spat Helborg, unwilling to indulge the man’s
fears. “I
will
find the one who did this.”

A phalanx of daemons screamed low across the heads of the
fleeing band, pursued by Volkmar’s inaccurate castings. Three of them had
struggling bodies locked in their talons, all enclosed in plate armour. They
were picking off the Reiksguard first.

“You think you can kill her, if you can’t kill these?”

Helborg ramped up the pace, driving his men harder.

“The runefang will finish her,” he growled, his breath ever
more ragged. His shoulder wound had opened again and he could feel the hot
stickiness under his jerkin. The Tower was still too far away. “Count on it.”

As he spoke, a daemon tore into them from the roofs on their
left, diving down into the press of bodies and scattering them. It had
miscalculated, coming in too fast. It rolled across the cobbles with its prey,
unable to leap back into the bloodfire quick enough.

Skarr, further back amid the men, was on her in an instant,
hacking at her with his blade to free its prey.

“Skarr, no!” roared Helborg, shoving his way through the
jostling bodies to reach him.

The preceptor’s blade passed harmlessly through the daemon’s
flesh, biting into the stone beneath and kicking up sparks. The daemon hissed at
him, dropped her intended quarry and coiled to leap.

“Get back!” roared Helborg, almost there, Klingerach in hand.

Then the daemon sprang, catching Skarr full in the chest and
hurling them both free of the men around. They crashed into the nearest wall,
shattering the stone. Helborg saw Skarr’s helmet bounce jarringly from the
impact and the knight’s limbs go limp.

Helborg burst free and leapt after them. The daemon crouched
again, ready to tear up into the skies with her latest morsel. The Klingerach
was quicker, tearing deep into the lilac-fleshed back, runes blazing as it bit.

The creature screamed, arching back, limbs flailing, trying
to turn round. Skarr fell from her grasp, sliding down the stone and leaving a
slick of blood on the wall.

Helborg withdrew the blade and the daemon spun to face him.
The Klingerach flashed again, carving through the daemon’s neck and severing her
head. A powerful snap rippled through the air, radiating out and knocking the
airborne daemons back up into the heights. For a moment, the severed head of
their fallen sister still breathed. It looked up at Helborg with a mix of fear
and amazement, before finally rolling over listlessly, lifeless and empty.

Leitdorf rushed to Helborg’s side, his own blade drawn, too
late to intervene. The surviving troops gazed at the Marshal in awe.

“Nothing is immune from the Sword of Vengeance,” panted
Helborg, gazing at Skarr’s unmoving body. His voice shook with emotion. “You ask
me how I’ll kill her?
This
is how.”

Then he turned on his heel and motioned for the race to the
Tower to resume. Far above, the daemons began to circle again, gauging the
moment to strike, wary of the blade that had the power to extinguish them.

Along the twisting streets, the stone blackened with ashes,
Helborg’s men sprinted into the heart of the city, half their number slain, the
Tower still distant, and the scions of the Lord of Pain on their backs.

Volkmar ran. His robes curled tight around his huge frame as
he went, slowing him down. His bald head was glossy with sweat, both from the
exertion and from the pressing heat. Every muscle in his body screamed at him to
stop, to hold his ground, to face the creatures that swooped on them.

Perhaps, if he did, he’d take a couple of them down. Maybe
half a dozen. He could flay their unsubstantial flesh from their unholy bones,
rip them into their constituent parts.

He knew Helborg was right. They couldn’t fight this foe, not
for any length of time. The bloodfire sustained the daemons, filled their unholy
bodies with energy and power. This was their place, a city of mortal men no
longer.

The ragged band of soldiers, whittled down to little more
than a hundred, kept going. Laggards had been left behind, easy picking for the
rapacious daemons. Those that remained huddled close together, gaining what
protection they could from Volkmar and Helborg.

They passed over the river. The water boiled black, choked
with ash from the fires. The Averburg, the ancient seat of the electors, was an
empty shell. Its stark, flame-blackened walls rose up into the raging maelstrom,
broken silhouettes against the burning clouds of crimson.

The daemons came at them again and again, giving no respite.
With every pass, another man was taken, swept up into the spires for an
agonising end. As the cries rang out across the ruins, Volkmar felt hot tears of
anger prick at his eyes.

He wanted to stop. He knew he couldn’t.

“My lord,” came Maljdir’s voice from his shoulder.

The priest still ran powerfully alongside him, despite
carrying the standard in one hand and the warhammer in the other. Though his
beard was lank with sweat and his face as red as the fires around them, he
hadn’t given up yet. Damned Ulrican intransigence.

“So you were right,” snarled Volkmar, hardly breaking stride.

Maljdir shook his head.

“No,” he said, his words coming in snatches between his
laboured gasps. “I was not.”

He looked up at the looming Tower, now dominating the sky
above them.

“Your zeal led us here.” Though effort etched his every word,
there was a kind of satisfaction in his voice. He looked back at Volkmar. “I
should have trusted you.”

Volkmar just kept going. There were no certainties anymore.
For a moment back there, he’d been close to losing his mind. Above them, the
daemons were gathering for a final pounce. There were dozens of them. The
portals of the Tower were visible, dark and gaping, but they’d be lucky to make
the nearest of them.

“Save your energy for the daemons,” rasped Volkmar, watching
as the first of them plunged downwards. “You’ll need it.”

The daemon hurtled towards Helborg, only turning out of the
path of the Klingerach at the last moment. The Marshal ignored it. Unless they
made a mistake, they were too fast to engage with. The curtains of fire in the
air buoyed them. This was their element. More screams from behind him told him
they’d found another victim.

He turned a final corner and ran down a long, straight
street. At the end of it, the rows of shattered houses finally gave out,
revealing a pair of enormous iron-rimmed gates. Two pillars flanked them,
crowned with fire. Beyond the gates, a wide and featureless courtyard opened up.
The Tower stood in the centre. Up close, its scale was even more daunting.

“Volkmar!” he shouted, keeping up the pace. “The gates!”

The Theogonist responded instantly, summoning bolts of golden
flame from his staff and hurling them at the iron. The gates shuddered from the
first impact, broke on the second. The metal slammed back hard, bouncing from
the stone pillars as the hinges strained. Then they were through, the
ever-diminishing company tearing across the open courtyard, harried and pursued
at every step.

“I can sense her,” said Leitdorf.

The man was suffering. His red face still carried too much
fat, and the sweat was running in rivulets down his cheeks. Just as he’d
predicted, though, the daemons ignored him. The Wolfsklinge had a heritage they
feared. Or maybe it was something more.

“Then you’ll be the guide,” said Helborg, gazing up at the
column of ruin looming over him.

The Tower was massive, a soaring dark skeleton of iron over a
throbbing core of magma-red. Above the pinnacle, the ring of clouds had broken,
exposing Morrslieb again. The power that had drawn the storm in over Averheim
was beginning to dissipate.

Volkmar felt it too.

“Weakness?” he asked.

Leitdorf shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Its work is done.”

Helborg didn’t ask how Leitdorf knew that. He risked a look
over his shoulder. A few dozen men were left, all haggard and panting from the
sprint across the ruined city. No regular troops had made it. The remainder were
warrior priests and a scattering of Reiksguard, the only ones with the stomach
to endure the horrors of the air. The Tower would be no kinder to them.

“Once we’re in, which way?” he asked Leitdorf, watching as
the massive Tower gates loomed up out of the fire-flecked dark.

“Down,” replied the elector tersely. “She’s beneath the
earth.”

Volkmar shook his head. “There’s nothing human in there.”

Helborg said nothing, but forced the pace once more. The
gates drew close. Pillars of adamant framed the huge curved doors, glinting in
the firelight. Sigils of Slaanesh adorned the iron, sunk deep into the metal in
a sweeping pattern of silver. The vast bole of the Tower rose up into the night,
soaring three hundred feet to the summit. The base of it was mighty, bound by
pillars of obsidian and engraved bands of iron. The rumble of machines working
in the deeps crept across the stone, and bloodfire rushed up the flanks of the
enormous structure, washing over the colonnades and parapets as it raced to the
apex.

The daemons came for them again, swooping down the sheer
sides of the Tower, arms outstretched and ready for more feeding. There were
dozens of them now. They’d been waiting for this, their last chance to pick them
off in the open.

“Get those doors open,” snapped Helborg, but Volkmar was
already working.

The Theogonist swung his staff round and hurled a stream of
leaping fire at the barred doors. They shivered, but remained closed.

Then the daemons landed, crashing to earth and sinking their
talons deep into the unprotected mortals below.

“Sigmar!” roared Helborg, tearing into them with the Sword of
Vengeance. They darted away from the blade, cowed by the rune-wound power of the
steel.

“Averland!” cried Leitdorf, though his meagre voice was
carried away by the roar of the furnaces. He swiped wildly at the spinning
creatures, and they evaded his blows easily.

Volkmar unleashed another volley, and the gap between the
doors fractured.

The daemons kept coming, sweeping more troops up in their
terrible embrace and tearing them apart in mid-air. One of them came for the big
warrior priest with the standard. He stood his ground and brought his heavy
warhammer round with incredible speed. The faith-strengthened head of it slammed
into the oncoming daemon. Bright light blazed from the impact, knocking the
creature back yards. It hovered for a moment, dazed.