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Chapter One – Extract

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Chapter One

The groaning roar of the arboreal colossus rippled through the ravaged wood. Braying beasts and howling marauders fell silent as the primal fury of the sound came smashing down upon them. It was a rage beyond flesh and bone, a hate at once elemental and remorseless, the last tremendous defiance left in a land violated and despoiled. Warriors who had mocked the defiance of mortal nations, who had butchered entire kingdoms without remorse, now felt dread quiver through their hearts. Almost before they recognised what they were doing, the vanguard of the horde began to fall back, to shrink away from the ferocious bellow and the giant that gave it voice. That roar held within it the wrath of all the victims that had withered on their blades, the curse of vengeance unsatisfied.

The secret vale of Athelwyrd was dying. Its glades had been trampled by boot and hoof, its forests gashed and torn by axe and claw, its meadows scorched by the fires of sorcery. Once pristine streams of crystal water had been transformed into trickles of diseased muck, as black and rancid as the souls of the rampaging invaders. In all the realm of Ghyran there had been no place better hidden, better protected than Athelwyrd, but now even this sanctuary had been discovered. This fortress would fall to the conquerors, but while the rest of the vale was even now being ravaged by the invaders, here alone did one last foe rise to oppose them.

Huge and ancient, the enormous tree-creature lumbered out from the depths of the wood. It stood five times the height of a man, its branch-like arms ending in gigantic talons of blade-sharp bark. Its face was a cluster of knotholes that pitted the creature’s trunk, a sylvan glow shining deep within their depths. The mouth was a jagged gash lined with fang-like splinters, groans of enraged anguish rumbling continuously from within. Roots still clotted with the rich dark soil of Athelwyrd dragged behind pillar-like legs as the creature surged towards the massed invaders.

For only a moment did terror hold the horde back, for fear of the treelord couldn’t eclipse the greater fear that infected each of the invaders: fear of the infernal god they served and the remorseless warlord who bore that god’s noxious blessings. The sylvaneth colossus could, in the end, only kill them. Plaguefather Nurgle could do far worse, and through his mortal general, such retribution would be swift in coming.

Bellowing their own war cries, the legions of decay turned upon the wooden hulk. All across the realm of Ghyran, the diseased hosts of Nurgle had erupted like a plague, ravaging the Jade Kingdoms and despoiling the once vibrant and fecund forests. Step by step, blow by blow, they were transforming the land into a new garden of disease and corruption for their obscene master, but none of those innumerable conflicts could match the duty that had been entrusted to the invaders of Athelwyrd. To them had been bestowed the honour of claiming for their god the prize he desired most keenly. Success would increase their unholy vitality and grant them leprous boons beyond measure; failure would result in shame and endless suffering.

So it was that human warriors in corroded armour and with blades pitted by rust and verdigris flung themselves at the hulking treelord. Bestial gors, their mangy fur peppered with grisly rashes and cancerous blisters, sprang upon the creature with axes of bone and flint. Wizened daemons with leprous eyes and oozing sores prowled towards their foe with blackened swords of raw corruption.

The glow in the pits of the treelord’s face burned with even sharper malignance. Again the creaking groan rumbled through the forest. The forest spirit brought its immense feet crashing down, the trailing roots stabbing into the earth, sinking down to bind it to the ground it defended. Charging foes came howling towards it, weapons raised for the kill.

A sweep of the treelord’s great claw hurled the broken bodies of half a dozen pox-ridden warriors into the air. A downward swipe of its fist burst an advancing plaguebearer like a pimple, the daemon’s foul essence spattering across a herd of beastmen, sizzling against their fur and flesh. A bloated gor, its diseased body swathed in strips of mail and patches of steel plate, was caught in the forest spirit’s hand and raised high into the air. The treelord tightened its grip and crushed the creature to bloody paste.

Scores of invaders were smashed and crushed by the treelord, their corpses heaped around its feet. The attack faltered, warriors drawing back as they wondered whether the death before them was worse than that threatened by their pestilent god. The tribal marauders snarled obscenities at their foe, jeering at the monster, steeling themselves for another attack. The beastmen growled and snapped at one another, trying to force the weakest among them to engage the enemy. The daemons gibbered and muttered, distracted by the fresh corruption spreading through the glade and by the timidity of their mortal allies.

One of the tribal chieftains charged forwards, hubris emboldening him where others quailed. He was mighty in the councils of their warlord, honoured for his ruthlessness and ferocity, and his abject devotion to the decayed glories of Nurgle. For all of this, a single glare from the treelord’s glowing eyes sent the man cringing away in fright, retreating back into the diseased mob.

An awed hush fell across the putrid legion, beasts and men, mortals and daemons falling silent as a grotesque figure pushed his way through their ranks – a huge warrior, his belly swollen with rot and putrescence, a gigantic axe with a blackened blade clenched in his scarred hands. A massive pauldron guarded his left shoulder, through which a clutch of immense bony spines had erupted from his flesh and through the corroded steel. The warrior’s face was locked inside a horned helm, only the eye-slots marring the smooth mask. There were three of these, spaced in the triangular pattern of the fly-rune, the diseased emblem of Nurgle himself. From each of the openings, a blemished eye glowered at the hesitant marauders.

A violent, cough-like cry bubbled up from the horned helm. Without further warning, the huge fighter brought his axe swinging around. The blackened blade sheared the arm off the chieftain who had retreated, pitching the maimed barbarian to the earth. Before the man could even scream, the wound he’d been dealt was a blackened mass of necrotic tissue, the sorcerous pollution of the axe rushing through his veins to infest the rest of his body. Those around the man drew back, gazing at his agonies with a mixture of horror and awe. They glanced from the dying chieftain to the one who’d struck him down with the same regard, for this was no mere champion of the Dark Gods, but the chosen of Nurgle, the warlord who had been granted the distinction of laying waste to Athelwyrd. This was Torglug the Despised.

Brandishing his axe, Torglug advanced alone towards the treelord. He nodded his horned head towards the writhing body of the chieftain he’d cut down.

‘This is being the fate of my enemies.’ Torglug’s voiced seeped from behind his helm. ‘Being through cowardice or defiance, I am sparing none who are opposing me. Be looking upon your destruction, vine-blood, and knowing despair!’

The treelord reared back, its roots still fastened deep in the earth. From the depths of its mighty frame there sounded a cachinnation of primordial hate. The claws tipping its hands appeared to lengthen, darkening into black thorns. The sylvan glow of its eyes blazed ever brighter.

Torglug wasted no more threats upon the monster. His words had been for the benefit of his warriors, a reminder to them that he was the chosen of Nurgle. A warning to them all of what it meant to be the favoured champion of the Crow God.

Storming towards his hulking foe, Torglug brought his axe cracking around in a double-handed strike. He caught the treelord’s claw, shearing through the oaken talon in a spray of splinters and sap. His foe flinched back, more in surprise than pain, stunned that the weapon could inflict such damage. It was only when the severed stump of its claw began to change, began to turn a ghoulish grey, that a moan of suffering rippled through the treelord. Its glowing eyes stared at the ghastly discolouration, watching as it began to spread. Mould, virulent and rapacious as any fever, now infested the creature’s bark.

The treelord’s wail of pain turned to a creaking snarl of fury. Whipping around, it brought its other hand hurtling towards Torglug, intent upon smashing the warlord into the ground. Exhibiting an agility that belied his bloated bulk, Torglug dived under the plummeting hand, rolling past the creature’s guard. As he came out of his roll, he brought his grisly axe chopping into the treelord’s leg, tearing a great chunk from the pillar-like limb and delivering a second infection of mould even greater than that infesting the creature’s hand. The grey contagion spread rapidly through the mutilated leg, crawling upwards and outwards with ferocious speed.

The tree-creature tried to swing around, to withdraw its roots and smash Torglug flat, but the treelord’s crippled leg remained fast, only its left limb obeying. Unbalanced, it teetered for a moment. It was the only moment Torglug allowed it. Charging into the paralysed hulk, he hacked away at its free leg, gouging deep cuts into the trunk where it joined the supporting limb. The grey mould exploded across the colossal sylvaneth with each blow, sinking deeper and deeper into the heartwood beneath the bark. As the infection intensified, the trunk became rotten and brittle, each attack wreaking greater and greater havoc.

A cough of laughter escaped Torglug as the creature’s leg gave out beneath it. The huge treelord crashed to the ground, its momentum tearing its frozen leg from the earth, roots and all. The exultant warlord leaped atop the trunk, hacking away with vicious, vindictive blows of his axe. As he chopped away, gibbering daemon-spawn capered out from the ranks of his legion to gnaw at slivers of heartwood and lap up the sap oozing from the treelord’s wounds. Torglug allowed the hideous, toad-like atrocities their sport. Nurglings were minuscule echoes of the Grandfather, cast in the dreaded god’s image. Even Nurgle’s chosen warlord would not deny the mites. The rest of his warriors, however, knew better than to intrude upon his triumph.

Triumph? The word had a bitter taste for Torglug. As delicious as it was to feel the ancient sylvaneth withering beneath his boots, as much as he savoured the agonies of the treelord as mould and disease gnawed away at its essence, he knew that this wasn’t triumph. This was only a delay, an interlude standing between him and true victory.

Torglug watched the glow gradually fade from the pits of the treelord’s face. How much more satisfying it was to watch these creatures die than the armoured warriors of Azyr. When penetrating the illusions that concealed Athelwyrd, Torglug’s legion had been opposed by a great company of the lightning-men. There was no satisfaction smiting such foes, no delicious transition from the suffering of life to the decay of death. The moment the spark was extinguished, they simply vanished in a blaze of blue lightning. It left Torglug bitter to be cheated of his pleasures. Strange and eerie as they were, at least the wooden creatures of the Jade Kingdoms were real enough to suffer for him while they died.

The last ember faded from the treelord, its spirit finally extinguished by the contagion Torglug’s axe had brought to it. The warlord stared down into its empty face, then brought his boot stomping down again and again into the rotten bark, obliterating the visage utterly. He turned and glared at his waiting legion. All through their march across Athelwyrd they had been drawn into petty battles with the sylvaneth and the lightning-men, meaningless conflicts that delayed them while the real prize threatened to slip out of their reach.

He wouldn’t let that happen. Torglug had fought too long and hard, had endured too much to fail now. It was his horde that had found the vale of Athelwyrd, his warriors who had penetrated into the refuge of their enemy. Victory, true victory, was within their grasp. The enemy had fled – all the protections that had guarded her for so long were falling away. She was in retreat, nothing more than hunted prey. The great prize Nurgle had coveted for so long would soon be rendered up to him.

When the Everqueen, Alarielle, was given to Nurgle, Torglug would transcend the limitations of mortality. He would be free of the frailties of flesh. He would become eternal, a prince of the Grandfather’s blighted empire.

Torglug thrust his axe outwards, pointing it towards the copse from which the treelord had emerged.

‘She is escaped!’ he shouted to his warriors. ‘Be upforming! We are marching and bringing Grandfather Nurgle a mighty prize! You are finding her or Torglug is teaching you all what it is to despair!’

The warlord’s eyes gleamed with murderous ambition as he watched packs of beastkin and barbarians rush into the woods. They would find the trail. Whatever the sylvaneth threw at them, his troops would find their trail.

It was only a matter of time.

Amber light streamed through the soaring canopy, stabbing earthwards through a maze of silvery branches and alabaster leaves. Flowers endowed with the vibrant lustre of emerald and sapphire blossomed from a cascade of hanging vines and spiralling creepers. Great strands of coruscating moss spilled from ancient boughs, alight with faerie brilliance and fey luminance. The groans and creaks of swaying trees melded into a harmonious melody, a sussuration that throbbed through both flesh and soul. The rich loamy smell of fertile soil flowed into the enticing fragrance of petal and bloom. The very air was filled with a warm adoration, a celebration of vitality and the shifting cadence of life itself.

Through this marvellous landscape, a great exodus trod an ancient path. A vast throng of tree-like beings flocked to a trail none had set eyes upon before but which each knew deep within its heartwood. Smaller figures shared the path, armoured shapes mightier yet not dissimilar to those of men. Fewer in number, they kept apart from the tree-creatures, sharing their journey but not their confidence. The Hallowed Knights, one of Sigmar’s great Stormhosts, had shared many of the ordeals endured by the tree-like sylvaneth, but they were still not wholly accepted by their uncanny companions.

Lord-Castellant Lorrus Grymn’s fingers tightened about the grip of his halberd, every muscle in his body growing tense as he spun to confront the faint blur of motion he’d caught out of the corner of his eye. With eerie silence, the bushes on the edge of the path were shifting aside, pulling themselves out of the way of the creature trying to move past them. He caught himself before moving to intercept the inhuman shape that suddenly emerged. The spindly figure, its head crowned by a crest of leafy branches, fixed him with its weirdly luminous eyes before striding off down the path.

‘I sympathise with you, commander.’ Grymn turned to find Angstun beside him, the sheen of the halo that circled the Knight-Vexillor’s helm dulled by the shadow of the forest canopy overhead. ‘It is hard to think of something so cold and inhuman as friendly.’

Grymn watched as the sylvaneth joined several similar beings marching along the forest trail. There were hundreds of the tree-like creatures in the procession, some much larger than the one that had just surprised the Lord-Castellant. Every moment brought another out from the forest and onto the path. They moved with a chilling silence, passing without a trace across the wooded trail. Though he sensed no threat from them, Grymn couldn’t shake an impression of restrained hostility smouldering within them.

‘They are our allies,’ Grymn corrected Angstun. ‘Do not mistake them for friends. If not for our common foe, I don’t know that they would suffer us to be among them.’ He looked ahead, his gaze fixing upon a brilliant light shining far down the path. ‘Certainly we wouldn’t be permitted so near to their queen. Emissaries from Azyr were turned from her court even after the plaguehosts breached the realmgates and descended upon Ghyran. No, they travel a different road than we can follow. For a space, that road may lead in the same direction, but that is all we share.’

Angstun pointed towards the light. ‘She isn’t like the sylvaneth,’ he said. ‘Queen Alarielle is no spectre of bark and branch. Her shape is one of beauty, a visage of wonder and marvel. To gaze upon her is to feel serenity, even with the hordes of the plague god snapping at our heels.’

Grymn stood silent for a moment. He envied Angstun’s serenity. For the Lord-Castellant, even the thought of the Everqueen made him feel as though a great burden was pressing down upon him. Angstun had called him ‘commander’, but it had not been so when the Hallowed Knights entered Athelwyrd. Their commander had been Lord-Celestant Gardus, a courageous warrior and a great leader of men. It was he who had been entrusted with this mission, not Grymn – charged with rescuing Alarielle from the legions of Nurgle. Gardus had fallen in battle against the hordes of Torglug the Despised, his body and soul flung back to the holy halls of Sigmaron. With his passing, command of the expedition had become Grymn’s. Defending a position or building fortifications, these were the duties he was accustomed to, the tasks for which he was best suited. This retreat was something different. The necessity of it was unquestionable, for only in flight could Alarielle be protected, but there was no glory to be had running from the enemy. The other Hallowed Knights could satisfy their honour in the knowledge that they were obeying orders. Grymn had no such recourse, for it was he who issued those orders.

‘Do you think that is how she appears to them?’ Angstun asked.

Grymn shook his head, missing the Knight-Vexillor’s meaning. Angstun pointed to a spindly dryad as it stepped out onto the path. ‘She is a goddess, so I wonder if her appearance changes to suit the senses of those who look upon her. To us, she is a woman of unmatched beauty, an echo of lost wonder. To the trees, perhaps she is a slender willow with golden leaves.’ He paused, glancing down the path at the forest behind them. ‘I wonder how she looks to our enemy?’

‘Like prey,’ Grymn said. He clapped his hand against Angstun’s shoulder. ‘But they will not catch their quarry. Not while a single Hallowed Knight still stands.’

The Lord-Castellant turned away from Angstun and began to make his way back along the trail. Tallon, his gryph-hound and loyal companion, fell into step beside him. The creature’s canine body was tense, rippling with agitation. Its eyes roved along the edges of the path, its sharp eagle-like beak snapping with alarm each time the bushes stirred or the trees swayed.

The eerie sylvaneth were growing in number with every moment that passed, more and more of them striding out from the deeper forest. Some were slight, almost frail-looking things, near human in their proportions. Others were great towering giants, many times the size of a man, their heads bent down so they did not tear the forest canopy above them. Smaller, wispy beings fluttered about the dryads and treelords, glowing shapes with gossamer wings, as phantasmal as a cobweb. Watching the sylvaneth creep out from the forest, Grymn realised he was wrong to describe what was happening as a retreat. This was an exodus, an abandonment of Athelwyrd. The sylvaneth were conceding their last stronghold to the plaguehosts.

A sense of frustration rushed through Grymn. They should stand and fight, should turn right now and meet the legions of Torglug. The path through the forest wasn’t wide. It could be held. The Hallowed Knights could hold it. Even with the sacrifice of Gardus and the warriors left behind as rearguard, there were enough Stormcasts to contest Torglug’s advance. Tegrus and his winged Prosecutors, Markius and his stalwart Retributors, the valiant companies of Judicators and Liberators. They could make a fight of it. They could force Torglug to pay dearly to conquer Athelwyrd.

Grymn shook his head as he watched the armoured warriors of his chamber marching past him. Yes, they could bleed Torglug’s army white, but that wasn’t their task. Their duty was to rescue Alarielle from the grip of Chaos, to protect her until she was safely beyond the enemy’s reach. That was their purpose. Later, when their duty was done, they could think about driving the foe from Athelwyrd and the whole of the Jade Kingdoms.

Still, Grymn lamented the necessity of such a choice. Every hour the plaguehosts were left to ravage and despoil, their filth corrupted more of the forest. More of Ghyran became consumed, distorted into a diseased shadow. Every step back left that much less to save when the time did come for the Stormhost to fight.

A retinue of Decimators, their mighty thunderaxes slung over their shoulders, marched past Grymn, each of the paladins saluting their commander as he drew near. Of all the Hallowed Knights, the sylvaneth seemed to especially shun the Decimators. Early on in the retreat, Grymn had decided to move those Stormcasts to the back of the line so they might avoid the tree-creatures leaving the forest to join the column. A misunderstanding between the paladins and newcomers might be enough to shatter the fragile alliance.

After the Decimators, only a dozen Judicators were left to bring up the rear, each warrior armed with a deadly boltstorm crossbow. The bulky weapons could unleash a vicious barrage of sigmarite bolts in rapid succession. Within the cramped confines of the forest, that quality made them a greater asset than the longer reach of the skybolt bows carried by most of the Hallowed Knights’ Judicators.

Marching alongside the Judicators was a macabre figure. Though he was clad in the same burnished sigmarite plate as the rest of the Hallowed Knights, this man’s helm had been cast in the semblance of a leering skull. A halo of sharpened spikes rose above the death’s head, each metal stake inscribed with invocations and funerary lamentations. This sinister warrior was Lord-Relictor Morbus.

‘The queen’s court grows,’ Morbus stated as Grymn fell in beside him. ‘The sylvaneth rally to her. They leave their secret places to join her in exile.’ He chuckled darkly, the sound echoing strangely within his helm. ‘Let us pray to Mighty Sigmar that her court does not grow so substantial that she finds no further need for us.’

Grymn turned to the Lord-Relictor, shock in his eyes. ‘You think Alarielle capable of such treachery?’ His tone was accusing, bordering on outrage.

Morbus laughed again. ‘Calm yourself, Lord-Castellant. It is naught but a conjecture crafted from observation. The sylvaneth do not like us,’ he said gesturing with the relic hammer he bore, indicating the Decimators ahead. ‘Perhaps we remind them too much of the plaguehosts with their blades and torches. Or perhaps they blame us for bringing the enemy into Athelwyrd.’

‘Ridiculous,’ Grymn scoffed. ‘We came here to defend the vale, not expose it to the enemy!’

‘The Hallowed Knights know that,’ Morbus said, ‘but do the sylvaneth believe it?’ He shook his head. ‘I think you may content yourself that at least the Radiant Queen knows us to be friends. You are right, she will not abandon us, not if every tree and shrub were to uproot itself and march to her banner. However much her subjects may resent us, they won’t–’

Morbus broke off, his attention fixed upon a creature marching towards them from the fore of the column. It was one of the more human-sized sylvaneth, its trunk-like body having more definition about it than the usual dryads, its contours flowing into a woman’s form. Its branch-like limbs were more like true arms and legs than others of its kind had, the moss and leaves that topped the creature’s head approximating the tresses and locks of a maiden’s hair. The echoes of femininity faded around the face, formed from jagged cracks in the bark within which embers of faerie light pulsated. Around the wispy body, great lengths of green vine were coiled, entwined about each limb and every curve, their leaves full and healthy.

Grymn had seen this creature before – it had nearly killed him when first they met – and he recognised it for the handmaiden of Alarielle. The Hallowed Knights had taken to referring to it as the ‘Lady of Vines’. Somehow, the title felt like more than an affectation bestowed upon her by the Stormhost. He thought it was something that belonged to the sylvaneth in fact as well as fancy.

The branchwraith stopped before Grymn and Morbus, her glowing gaze piercing into each man. There was an unmistakable enmity in that gaze, and Grymn felt his sense of guilt swell within him as the accusing stare fastened onto him. Fighting down his own uneasiness, he forced himself to meet the sylvaneth’s glare. The Lady of Vines simply raised one of her branch-like arms and pointed at the forest behind them.

Almost reflexively, Grymn and Morbus turned towards the trees. All that greeted them was the same maze of greenery that had surrounded them ever since their withdrawal. Grymn swung around, to try and get some explanation from the Lady of Vines. The branchwraith was already gone, walking back towards the light of her queen.

‘Are we being dismissed?’ Morbus wondered. ‘Is this her way of telling us to leave?’

Grymn shook his head, his gaze returning to the trees. ‘We’ve sworn to protect Queen Alarielle. No mere handmaiden will relieve us of that duty.’

A low growl from Tallon drew his attention to the gryph-hound. The creature was glaring at the path behind them, its hackles raised. As uneasy as the sylvaneth made it, Tallon had never reacted to them with such hostility. Something wasn’t right. Something was different than it had been only a few moments before. Grymn lifted his halberd as the sound of rustling in the undergrowth reached him.

‘More of the sylvaneth rallying to their queen,’ Morbus said.

‘You’ve been at the rear of the march,’ Grymn told the Lord-Relictor. ‘The sylvaneth make no sound when they move through the forest!’ Spinning around, he called to the Judicators around them. ‘On guard, brothers! The enemy has found us!’

The moment the warning left his mouth, Grymn saw a shaggy, muscled shape leap out at him from the forest edge. He brought his halberd slashing around, striking the beast before its powerful jaws could reach him. The broken brute crashed to the earth, its paws scratching at the dirt as life fled from it. Grymn could spare no more than a glance at the huge mutated hound before a second canine horror rushed at him from the trees. The beasts seemed enraged by the light of his warding lantern, drawn to it like murderous moths. Tallon lunged at one of the monsters, bearing it to the ground, the gryph-hound’s beak clamped about the dog’s throat.

Howls and snarls rose all around Grymn as more and more of the twisted hounds charged out onto the path. The crack of boltstorm crossbows boomed out, the Judicators loosing a fusillade of searing sigmarite into the attacking brutes. Yelps and whines of agony clawed at the air as the barrage brought down a dozen of the beasts. The path became strewn with dead and crippled hounds, yet still more of the monsters came loping out from the darkness.

Lord-Relictor Morbus pulverised the skull of one Chaos hound with his enchanted hammer, the maimed brute’s body flung back into the trees by the force of his blow. Others converged upon him, seeking to drag him down by sheer weight of numbers. Tallon rose from the carcass of his first enemy to lunge at a second, raking it with his paws and slashing it with his beak. A few of the mutant dogs weathered the storm of sigmarite bolts to drag down a Judicator, savaging the warrior in their grisly jaws. Behind the hounds, there now came a shrieking mob of skin-clad barbarians.

Grymn speared the hound snapping at his throat, kicking the dying beast from his blade as he turned to meet the charge of the marauders. They were abominable parodies of men, their bodies pitted with grisly sores and hideous lesions. Every manner of blight and blemish marred their flesh, proclaiming far louder than the cursed fly-rune daubed upon their armour and shields that here were the diseased slaves of Torglug.

Bolts from the Judicators struck down the first wave of marauders. Grymn’s halberd met the second. The Lord-Castellant was a whirlwind of ruin, tearing his way through every foe luckless enough to tempt his blade. A shrieking axeman, his eyes transformed into rheumy pits of pus by his afflictions, was cut in half. A howling savage with an extra arm growing from his neck fell with one leg severed at the knee.

‘Only the faithful!’ The war-cry of the Hallowed Knights thundered above the crash of blades and the crunch of bone. Decimator-Prime Diocletian was leading his paladins into the thick of the fray, energy crackling about the blades of their thunderaxes. Behind the Decimators came a formation of Liberators, their shields locked together to form a moving wall that stretched from one side of the path to the other. Even as he fought the barbarians assaulting him, Grymn felt proud that his warriors were adhering to the plan he had developed. There would be no great rush to the rear to meet the foe. If it were but a ruse, a feint to cover for an attack elsewhere, the enemy would find more Stormcasts waiting for them.

A fearsome howl rose above the cries and screams of fighting men. Through the press of marauders, Grymn saw a mounted chieftain gallop into view. Ghastly sores and profane brands peppered the flesh of both man and horse. The stallion stamped the ground with iron-shod hooves, chomping its teeth at the shrieks of the injured barbarians it trampled. The rider raised a double-headed axe in one fist, then crashed the weapon against the iron shield he held in the other. A challenging howl rose from his mouth.

Grymn met the grotesque jarl’s challenge, smashing his way through the marauders around him to rush at their leader. The stallion reared back, its hooves slamming into Grymn as he lunged at the chieftain. The Stormcast staggered back, his head ringing from the crack of a hoof against his helm.

The chieftain swung at him, his axe flashing downwards in a butchering sweep, all of the warrior’s weight behind the blow. His murderous eyes blinked in shock when Grymn’s halberd blocked the attack, when the Stormcast’s strength defied the malign power behind his assault. A sideward twist, an outward thrust, and the axe was ripped from the chieftain’s grip.

Whinnying in alarm, the stallion backed away, smashing down those marauders too slow to get out of its path. The chieftain glowered at Grymn, his savage face curled back in a feral snarl. From the belt that circled his waist, he withdrew a brutal instrument of chains festooned with blades and spikes. Armed with this gruesome flail, the rider forced the horse back into the fight and circled Grymn at a gallop, lashing at him with the chains.

‘Stay your bolts!’ Grymn ordered the Judicators. ‘Tallon, heel,’ he commanded his gryph-hound as the creature moved towards the chieftain. ‘The villain is mine!’

Even as he declared his intention, the warrior’s flail came whipping across his chest, drawing sparks from the sigmarite plate and slashing the strips of holy parchment fastened to his armour. Grymn swung about to confront his foe, but the rider was already galloping away, circling around to lash out at him from the other side. The fury of the second blow caused the Lord-Castellant to stagger back. A third strike knocked him to his knees.

The chieftain rushed in for another attack, arching down to hit his fallen opponent. It was then that Grymn revealed his deception. Leaving his halberd on the ground, he caught hold of the chains as they struck him. Mustering all his prodigious strength, the Stormcast pulled on the flail. The chieftain was dragged forwards, the flail torn from his fingers. Unbalanced for the instant, the horse wasn’t able to retreat out of Grymn’s reach as it had before. Arms widespread, Grymn rushed the steed, wrapping one arm around its leg while he put his shoulder against its side. Roaring with effort, straining every muscle in his mighty frame, he forced the brute upwards. The animal came crashing down onto its side.

Grymn leapt over the horse’s kicking hooves, pouncing upon its trapped rider. The chieftain tried to fend him off with his shield, but the Stormcast drove the iron disc back into the man’s face. Briefly they struggled, then Grymn pushed the shield down against the chieftain’s head. Now it was he who put all his muscle and weight into his attack. There was a grisly cracking sound as the marauder’s shield-arm snapped under Grymn’s assault. Then there was a garbled shriek as he pressed the iron implement still lower, smashing his enemy’s head beneath it.

The gruesome destruction of their chieftain brought horror to the surviving barbarians. The marauders turned, retreating into the dark forest. To lend speed to their rout, the blazing bolts of the Judicators chased after them until they were lost in the gloom.

Grymn rose from the chieftain’s carcass, marvelling that anything that smelled so foul in life could reek even worse in death. Tallon rushed over to him, nuzzling his head against Grymn’s leg. As he turned away from his fallen enemy, he found Decimator-Prime Diocletian waiting for him, extending to him the halberd he had discarded.

‘Losses?’ he asked.

‘Two Judicators,’ Diocletian replied. ‘One to hounds, the other to the marauders. We’ve claimed over fifty in return.’

Grymn ripped a strip of cloth from one of the dead barbarians, using it to wipe the blood from his blade. ‘Were any of the sylvaneth killed?’

‘Our allies took no part in the fighting,’ Morbus answered. The Lord-Relictor’s armour was scratched and bloodied, but the man within appeared to have suffered no injury beyond a darkening of his mood. He gestured down the path, towards the radiant glow of Queen Alarielle. ‘Perhaps they didn’t feel it was their fight.’

‘No,’ Grymn corrected him. ‘The Lady of Vines brought us warning. They know this is their battle as much as it is ours.’

Diocletian was puzzled. ‘Why then did they not render us aid?’

Morbus considered for a moment. ‘They are uncertain of us. They are putting us to the test, trying to determine our value. Trying to find our quality.’

Though it struck at his warrior’s pride, Grymn could find no argument to contest Morbus. As he turned his own eyes towards the radiant light, he knew the Lord-Relictor was right. They were being tested.

Now it was upon them to prove equal to the test.

Grymn felt the change that pulsed through the air, the flicker of energy that swept through the forest around them. The Stormcasts around him shared the same impression of unleashed power and vibrant energies. He could sense the fountainhead of the weird emanations.

On the path ahead, looming over the trail, was an impossibly gargantuan oak. The tree’s trunk had a great crack running through it, a titanic gash through which a strange coruscating glow was shining. As he watched, Grymn saw the crack widen, stretching outwards to become so incredibly vast that when the tree-creatures began to file into it, they looked to be no bigger than blades of grass. He shook his head, unable to reconcile the uncanny perspective, unable to decide if the crack was widening or if the sylvaneth were diminishing, or perhaps both at once. Whatever the truth, it was certain that the Everqueen and her people were passing into the gigantic oak.

‘There is powerful magic here,’ Morbus stated. He looked to Grymn. ‘Lord-Castellant, what are your orders?’

Grymn couldn’t determine what was happening on the path ahead. All he could be sure of was that Alarielle was taking the sylvaneth through the tree. ‘Our duty is to protect the Everqueen. To do that, we must follow her. Wherever that takes us.’

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First published in Great Britain in 2016.
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