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The Fist of an Angry God – Extract

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The Fist of an Angry God

William King

All around, the buildings pulsed. Tall crystal towers flickered from pink to orange to lime, then for an eye-deceiving moment looked like ordinary stone before beginning their kaleidoscopic shimmering once more. Their ever-changing radiance transformed the underbelly of the red storm clouds of Aqshy into something far more sinister.

Balthus had a moment to notice this after he dispatched the blue horror with his blade. The thing burst asunder in a shower of magical sparks, the last of its foul kind to fall in this skirmish. A sense of relief filled him. No matter how many times he faced these creatures of Chaos, he always feared the things might go on splitting and replicating forever.

He wondered whether the city’s unnatural light served any purpose other than to confuse the eye and make the mind wander, then realised that as far as the worshippers of Tzeentch were concerned that was probably enough.

Thunder boomed. Lightning slashed the sky then struck the nearest tower. At the point of impact, the shimmering lights went out, their colours frozen at the instant when Sigmar’s wrath descended. On the rooftops and battlements, the lightning coalesced into the massive armoured forms of Balthus’ fellow Stormcast Eternals. A Judicator unit seemed born of the storm, crackling missiles pouring from their shockbolt bows, raking the oncoming wave of acolytes from above and to the flank, smiting them with the chained lightning of Sigmar.

The Chaos worshippers fell, only to be replaced by tzaangors – horned and beaked beastmen who howled and shrieked as they advanced, brandishing their massive blades in challenge. Still, fewer of them were sallying forth to face the wrath of the Stormcasts. Was it possible that their reserves were finally running out?

Balthus gestured for his men to follow, sweeping his sword downwards and pointing with its lightning-lit tip to where the strongest enemy loomed. Just for a moment, he felt a sense of deja vu. He had made the gesture a score of times since his reforging, but it always felt like the thousandth time, as if he were repeating something from a previous life.

He raced forward, broken shards of crystal turning to powder beneath his armoured feet, releasing the smell of incense, lovely at first but with a sickly aftertaint – a smell he had come to associate with the cultists of the Changer of Ways and their sorcerous rituals.

‘Onwards, brothers! We’re almost there. Just one last push!’

The Liberators responded to their Prime’s shout, their war cries torn from their throats: ‘For Sigmar! For the storm eternal!’ They raced towards the daemonic horde, determined to take revenge for the enslavement of their realms and the killing of their kin.

It would be soon now. This was the last of the nine great fortresses of Azumbard. Over the past eight months, the others had fallen one by one to the fury of Sigmar’s faithful, their sorcerous defences cracked, their fanatical occupants slain, and their souls sent tumbling to eternal damnation. Now the last citadel loomed. It had held out longest, its approaches trapped, its walls seemingly insuperable, protected by the mighty magics bound into every stone.

There had been times when Balthus had almost despaired. Almost. They had fought for every stride of their advance. Slowly, pace by pace, they had taken the surrounding territory. It seemed at last that victory was within their grasp. This area would be cleansed, purified and freed from the taint of Chaos.

He lengthened his stride, determined not to let any warrior of his chamber plunge into the melee before him. He leapt a low crystal wall and aimed a blow at the twisted, bird-beaked features of a tzaangor, his blade arcing down, splitting its skull and splattering brain stuff in the faces of the surrounding cultists.

He stormed through the ranks of the Arcanites, killing a score, their weapons bouncing off his armour, each blade making the heavy sigmarite ring.

He fought his way into an open square, flanked by defensive towers. Once again, he was struck by the resemblance of the place to somewhere he had once known. There was a sense of having been here before, but he could not say why.

Perhaps it was the resonance of the incomprehensible sorcery of the Tzeentchians. They often worked strange spells, the purpose of which no sane mind could understand. Over the long months of fighting, there had been moments when Balthus had seen the shouts of his foes and felt the sounds of their battle cries in his bones. Of course, Sigmar protected him, and such lapses were soon overcome. Perhaps this was just another effect like those.

His Liberators smashed their way to Balthus’ side, moving into tight formation around him.

‘We have them on the run now, Liberator-Prime!’ Tulius’ bellow carried across the din of battle. Balthus heard the confidence in his voice and the sense of inevitable victory. Today, they would win! Today this accursed place would finally fall!

Balthus pushed the thought to one side. Victory was never certain until the last foe had fallen or fled the field. Nothing could be taken for granted, particularly not here and now. The warlord who held the tower had proven the most cunning of foes, the most tenacious of defenders. Too often in the past month, they had lost comrades when victory seemed assured. Traps had sprung. Ambushes had enveloped them. Destructive spells had torn defeat from the jaws of victory.

‘Perhaps they have finally run out of reinforcements,’ Pindar said, descending from above on golden wings to join his friends in the eye of this storm of sigmarite. The Prosecutor sounded cool and calm, as if he had spent the past hour soaring above quiet farmlands instead of the killing grounds outside a citadel of humanity’s greatest foes. The stormcall javelin in his hand showed his readiness for combat.

‘I would not count on that,’ Balthus said. ‘They always seem to be able to summon more.’

‘No sorcerer possesses inexhaustible reserves of energy, no citadel holds an infinite number of guardians,’ said Tulius.

‘It feels like this one does,’ said Balthus, wondering at the despondency he felt. Perhaps there was sorcery in the air, subtle and demoralising. He should not feel this way when the light of victory glowed in his comrades’ faces.

‘Look, the Towerbreaker comes. Its day has finally arrived,’ Tulius proclaimed. Balthus glanced back and saw the great battering ram carried forward by a hundred Stormcasts. Lightning glittered around its tip. ‘Let’s clear the way. No Hallowed Knight is going to beat the Knights Excelsior through the Final Gate of Azumbard!’

They charged forward before the arcane siege engine, hewing through the last of the beastmen and clearing a red road of ruin to the pulsing gate of the citadel. A one-eyed symbol of Tzeentch blazed like the sun on its crystal frame. The heavy, regular tread of the ram bearers announced their arrival. Balthus looked up, fearing hot oil or crystal lava or noxious spells, but he saw only a scant few defenders, lobbing missiles desperately.

‘Heave,’ shouted Sacristan Engineer Sextus, positioned at the head of the ram. The Towerbreaker swung forward and hit the gate. The lightning stroke of impact blinded Balthus. When his vision cleared, he saw that the gate still stood. The air stank of ozone and incense.

‘Heave,’ shouted Sextus. Once more the Towerbreaker crashed into the portal. The lightning was so bright this time that Balthus feared more than temporary blindness. It took longer for his sight to return, but when it did he saw that the gate had buckled, the crystal had fractured, lines of fire spreading through a web of cracks.

‘Heave, brothers!’ The thunder was so loud it was deafening, the lightning so intense it felt like the end of the world. The earth trembled and the towers shook. There was a shattering sound, and the echo of a thousand tinkling bells. When Balthus opened his eyes, the gateway was gone as if it had never been.

‘I told you it would be so,’ said Tulius.

Pindar was already soaring forward into the tunnel. Balthus raced after him, eyes scanning left and right, looking for murder holes, or trap runes, or arches through which their foes might pour. They encountered no resistance and emerged into a vast courtyard, and an eerie silence.

Ahead, another archway pierced a great gatehouse, but this one had no door. It yawned before them like the gateway to Death’s realm. Balthus liked the feel of this less and less.

He strode forward and the warriors of his chamber surged around him, racing towards the gaping entrance. Behind, he heard the feet of the Towerbreaker’s bearers as they advanced in unison, even though there seemed no gateway ahead for them to shatter.

He wanted to shout at his companions to wait. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, but they all seemed caught up in the exaltation of victory, of achieving their long-awaited goal of invading the final citadel. They rushed forward headlong, seeking foes to slay.

Were they right to? Had the cultist attack been merely a last, suicidal sally – an attempt to drag their foes down to death with them? Balthus thought it unlikely. Their foes had shown nothing but cool cunning and determination previously. He could not believe that they had transformed into mindless berserkers in their final hours.

Why not? part of his brain whispered. Tzeentch is the master of change. He wondered whether that thought was his, or if it had entered his brain wafted by the perfumed breeze and the sparkling air.

Perfumed breeze? Sparkling air? His troops glanced around bewildered. Were they also victims of subtle sorcery? He clutched the amulet on his chest and the confusion receded from his mind, as the cool, clean power of Sigmar flowed into him.

Behind him he heard the tinkling of bells, and something else, something that sounded like a portcullis dropping. He saw that the doorway, so recently shattered by the Towerbreaker, had reformed. The way out was blocked. Thin horns sounded. Colours swirled, forming mandalas in the air from which capering daemons spewed. From the towers around the courtyard, hordes of acolytes emerged.

‘Form up on me,’ Balthus shouted, rallying his men into a shield wall against which the Chaos horde would break. He knew that it would not be enough. There were too many foes and they were cut off from their own allies. For every cultist who fell, another charged forward. When a Stormcast died, they discorporated in a flash of lightning, returning to Sigmar and the storm.

Balthus fought on till he stood atop a pile of cultist corpses. In the distance, he heard a woman’s voice cry, ‘Do not kill them all. I want one alive, for my experiments.’

Something slammed into his head. Sparks flickered across Balthus’ field of vision. He twisted to strike at his attacker and another blow crashed into the back of his skull. He tumbled forward into darkness.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in the Age of Sigmar anthology Oaths & Conquests in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Nuala Kinrade (Knight Excelsior helmet) and Roman Tishenin (Lord of Change).

Fist of an Angry God © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Fist of an Angry God, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78999-839-9

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