Acts of Sacrifice - Evan Dicken Read online

  Godspite’s howl of pain brought a grim smile to Anaea’s face.

  Fortunately, whatever foul sorcery had animated the chain had fled the severed length, and Master Karon was able to tear his limb free.

  Suddenly, the air was full of steel-armoured forms. As if summoned by the banner, knights descended upon the struggle, sword and talon driving back the shrieking ravagers. The breaking of her chain had apparently sent Godspite into a frenzy. She hacked at those around her, seeming not to care if they were friend or foe. Other fights broke out amidst the horde as the ravagers turned on each other, the warband like a snake devouring its own tail. Sprays of blood rose like flies from an old corpse, the air thick with the stench of gore.

  ‘We must move!’ Anaea shouted at Karon, bringing her demidroth down so he could swing up behind her. The old knight sagged against her, his breath quick and ragged. Whatever holy vigor had possessed him seemed spent.

  Anaea thrust the banner forward, and the surviving knights advanced, cutting through the scattered reavers to break free just ahead of the charging horde.

  Anaea glanced back as they hurtled across the wide expanse of basalt. Even driven mad by bloodlust, Godspite’s warband seemed a huge and terrifying thing, Anaea’s surviving companions little more than a candle set against a bloody storm of destruction. The Desert of Glass would be difficult to traverse, but Anaea had no doubt Godspite would follow. There would be no rest until they reached the Redoubt.

  She only hoped she was not leading her comrades to their deaths.

  ‘Leave me here,’ Master Karon said through clenched teeth. ‘I can buy you time.’

  ‘You will slay many ravagers, master, but not this night.’ Anaea glanced across at the old knight’s injured leg, the black-and-gold armour glistening with dried blood. Although in obvious pain, the knight had refused assistance, stubbornly riding the demidroth of one of their fallen comrades. There had been no time to treat his wound. Godspite’s warband had found its feet more quickly than expected, following the warriors of the Order like gryph-hounds scenting prey.

  The ragged column of knights had spent the better part of a week crossing the brutal expanse of the Desert of Glass, a vast field of volcanic obsidian left by an ancient lava flow. Although the demidroths seemed untroubled by the heat and razored spines of broken glass, their human riders were less well adapted. To wear armour was to slowly bake in the punishing sun, but to remove it was to risk being flensed by flecks of windswept obsidian.

  It seemed impossible that anything could survive such cruel conditions, but the forces of Chaos were everywhere. No matter how far or fast the knights rode, they seemed unable to escape the flash of bronze on the horizon, or the distant roars carried to their ears by the furnace-hot winds. Worse, the desert had claimed a bloody toll. Knights slipped from their demidroths, overcome by wounds, their hearts stilled by the punishing heat of the sun. Those who still breathed were lashed to their saddles, while the dead were left for Godspite’s monstrous hounds, which loped through the black sands, snarling and snapping at any who fell behind. Twice, Anaea had led charges to drive them off, but the beasts always returned, like flies to a corpse.

  But the Order of the Ardent Star was not dead yet.

  Survive.

  It had become a mantra, a prayer, whispered through cracked lips as Anaea approached the smoke-shrouded peak of Drakemount.

  They would be safe there. The Order would live. They would regroup, combine their numbers and defeat the foe.

  ‘We should turn now and fight,’ Master Karon said, as if reading her mind.

  Anaea was about to admonish him once again when the Redoubt finally came into view.

  The ancient citadel stood like a breaker against the clouds of red-tinged smoke that gave Drakemount its name.

  With a hoarse shout Anaea raised the banner once more, her shoulder numb from the strain of holding it aloft for so long. She gritted her teeth at the pain – a penance of sorts – as the surviving knights urged their mounts into a shambling trot.

  Anaea squinted at the flames lining the edges of the narrow path up to the Redoubt. The blaze was surely unnatural, for the rock did not melt or run like lava, nor did the fire consume it. Whatever the cause, the ancient builders of the Redoubt had placed their fortress well, the unquenchable flames making the approach treacherous.

  ‘Our brothers and sisters await us within,’ she called back to her tired companions. Unspoken was Karon’s dire caveat: if any survive.

  They came to the gates, and Anaea felt the spark of hope in her chest flutter and go dark. The great steel doors stood broken and ajar, a knight slumped in the opening, the gold of his armour almost invisible beneath scorches and burnt blood.

  Smoke from the fires pricked Anaea’s eyes as she dismounted to approach the knight. She didn’t need to open his helm to know he was dead – the man’s arm was missing, what flesh Anaea could see pocked and bloodless as old leather.

  ‘Search the Redoubt.’ Master Karon gestured at the gates, the grim lines of his face sharpened by the flickering firelight.

  The courtyard was a scene of slaughter, knights and ravagers sprawled in a deathly, violent tableau. Anaea could almost picture the scene – a thin line of black and gold arrayed against a sea of hungry, blood-flecked bronze – she had lived it often enough. Heat had dried out the bodies, reducing the corpses to little more than mummified skeletons. It was a small blessing, for Anaea had fought many times alongside these chapters. She didn’t think she could bear to recognise any of the dead.

  Her comrades picked their way through the carnage, climbing winding stairs and forcing doors blocked by piled corpses. The Redoubt was large, but wholly dead, and in less than an hour the knights had their answer. They gathered in the shadow of one of the Redoubt’s high walls, one of the few places not choked with bodies.

  ‘The stores have been raided, the armoury emptied,’ Anaea reported, conscious of the gazes of her fellow knights – the men and women she had led to their doom. ‘But the treasury is untouched.’

  ‘What use have madmen for gold and silver?’ Master Karon shook his head, his scowl sharp as an axe blade. With a wince, he straightened, limping over to address the group of solemn knights. ‘There is much work to do and little enough time. Repairing the gate should be our first priority.’

  ‘This place is a grave.’ Anaea met the old knight’s pained gaze. ‘I thought there would be other survivors, that we could hold the walls, but too many have fallen. We cannot remain here.’

  ‘Your plan was a good one, Sir Anaea. Vaskar would be proud.’ Karon’s tone was firm, buttressed by a sense of solemn resignation. He took a slow step over to lay a hand on her shoulder. ‘But some wars simply cannot be won.’

  Anaea pulled away. Turning to the others, she shook the banner so that the star glittered in the crimson light. ‘Myrmidia revels in victory, but there is no shame in retreat before a superior foe. We may very well be the last of our Order, and you would cast your lives away? Master Vaskar died to protect our traditions, our knowledge. To protect you.’

  Her comrades stood as if cut from ash-streaked obsidian. None would meet her gaze.

  ‘We can hide amidst the mountains, perhaps even find shelter with the Hermdar.’ Frustration edged Anaea’s words. ‘While but one knight survives, the Order cannot die.’

  ‘Some things are more important than survival.’ Master Karon turned away from her, his voice booming across the courtyard. ‘Arm yourselves, clear the battlements. We shall sell our lives dearly and break the back of Godspite’s host.’

  There were nods and affirmations from the other knights as they set about preparing for battle. Anaea stared, unbelieving. Karon was giving a battle speech.

  So great shall be our legend that for generations, our foe will shun this place.

  Banner in hand, Anaea backed away from her former comrades. T
hey looked so foolish, heads bobbing like coal gulls as they rushed around the courtyard, welcoming the wave of lava that would obliterate them.

  They will look upon these walls and shudder, knowing only death awaits them here.

  Anaea slipped onto one of the healthier-looking demidroths, grasping the reins to turn it as quietly as she could. The others might be willing to see the Order of the Ardent Star cast into ruin, but Anaea would not let it fall.

  She put her heels to the demidroth, and it surged towards the open gate, bowling past a knot of knights trying to secure the broken door. Their surprised shouts were eclipsed by the pounding of blood in Anaea’s ears.

  She pelted down the switchback, running her mount close to the fires so the smoke would mask their flight. In the distance, Godspite’s warband spread like lava across the dunes. It didn’t take a master strategist to see they would arrive long before Karon and the others could repair the gates.

  Anaea kept her head down, leaning low in her saddle as she unhooked the banner and discarded its pole.

  ‘Forgive me, goddess.’ She stuffed the rolled cloth into the front of her breastplate. At least there was one thing she could protect from Godspite’s filth.

  As if to mock Anaea’s hopes, a howl echoed from the soot-smudged cliffs. Drawing Vaskar’s sword, she turned to see that a pack of the champion’s monstrous hounds had broken from the main horde to give chase.

  The beasts fanned out, seeking to surround and harry their prey, eyes glowing like bilious lanterns amidst the smoky shadows. With a shout Anaea urged her mount forward. It bounded up an ash-covered escarpment, stones shifting beneath its hooked claws. Smiling grimly, she bore down on the hounds that sprinted to bar her path.

  Anaea might be hunted, but she was not prey.

  A warhound leapt at her, and Anaea shifted to ram the point of her sword between the beast’s slavering jaws. Her demidroth reared to catch another hound in its talons, tearing the snarling creature in half with almost contemptuous ease. But, like their cruel masters, the hounds seemed without end. Two more loped from the gloom to snap at the demidroth’s legs.

  Anaea swung Vaskar’s blade in a low arc, the heavy steel cutting deep into one of her pursuers’ necks. The other hound leapt, and Anaea turned too slowly, her strike missing the beast.

  It crashed into her. Claws scrabbled on steel plate, its jaws like a vice on Anaea’s shoulder. With a tortured shriek her pauldron began to buckle. Anaea felt herself being dragged from the demidroth’s back. She tried to bring her blade to bear, but the hound was too close.

  Myrmidia taught that there were times for strategy, for skill, but there were also times for brute force.

  Teeth clenched against the pain, Anaea hammered the pommel of Vaskar’s blade into the hound’s skull. Again and again, she brought the heavy weight crashing down, feeling the beast shudder and kick. At last, bone gave way to steel, and the hound tumbled to the blackened stone.

  No more beasts slunk from the murky haze, but there was no time for Anaea to catch her breath.

  She urged her mount on. The demidroth leapt from boulder to smoking boulder, nimble on the broken terrain of the mountain. Thick smoke stung her nose, and Anaea coughed, guiding her steed up above the flames so she see the Redoubt once more. She paused upon a cliff to overlook the battlefield.

  Godspite had moved quickly. Already, masses of shrieking, foam-flecked ravagers swarmed the approach. The first of the attackers crashed into the thin cordon of knights. Even from here, Anaea could see Godspite in the thick of battle, her jagged blade rising and falling, her daemon chain lashing out to bind and crush.

  Anaea squinted through the pall of smoke. She could see gold-armoured shapes fighting upon the battlements, more arrayed across the broken gate. They glittered in the gloom like diamonds tossed upon a muddy field.

  It was not too late to join them. Anaea could charge back down the mountain, banner in hand, to test herself against Godspite. Perhaps she might even defeat the Chaos champion. Perhaps her brothers and sisters would carry the day, scattering Godspite’s horde to the sands.

  But there would be more. There would always be more.

  Anaea’s mount shifted under her, echoing the furious shrieks of its kin. Anaea urged it to silence as the first of her comrades’ screams drifted up, carried on winds of ash. Each clash of distant blades seemed a slash across Anaea’s flesh, each pained shout an arrow aimed at her heart, but she did not turn away.

  She watched her companions dragged down, one by one, rivulets of blood dripping from the walls to puddle on the stony ground. Despite the seemingly numberless foe, despite the knights’ wounds and exhaustion, the battle was not over quickly.

  Master Karon had been true to his word. The Knights of the Ardent Star died noble deaths, yet still they died.

  No matter what, Anaea would remember their sacrifice.

  After what seemed an eternity, the killing stopped. A roar of triumph echoed from the cliffs, the howling call ripped from a thousand savage throats. The rightness of Anaea’s choice was no balm against the guilt and shame that warred within her chest. She would hide in the mountains, craven and callous as the fyreslayers Master Karon had so reviled.

  Head bowed, Anaea nudged her mount away from the Redoubt. The past held nothing but ashes. She tugged off her gauntlet, working her hand beneath her breastplate to grasp a thick handful of the banner.

  ‘Stella Invicti.’ The words came like a prayer, but she knew Myrmidia did not hear them.

  Triumph was all that mattered to the Goddess of War, and survival was the only victory Anaea could yet win.

  About the Author

  Evan Dicken has written the short story ‘The Path to Glory’ and the novella The Red Hours for Black Library. He has been an avid reader of Black Library novels since he found dog-eared copies of Trollslayer, Xenos and First and Only nestled in the “Used Fantasy/Sci-fi” rack of his local gaming store. He still considers himself an avid hobbyist, although the unpainted Chaos Warband languishing in his basement would beg to differ. By day, he studies old Japanese maps and crunches data at The Ohio State University.

  An extract from The Realmgate Wars: Volume 1.

  The bolt struck Vandus Hammerhand like a spear flung from the heavens. First there was light, a searing luminescence so bright it eclipsed all sense of being and self. Then pain brought him back with white daggers of pure agony. Heat, fury, and the drumbeat of immortal vigour rushing through his veins reached a crescendo so loud it turned into deafening silence.

  Then peace, a feeling of true solace and quietude.

  Vandus would come to learn it was always this way. This is what it meant to be born of the storm and borne by the storm.

  Reforged, wrought anew. Brought back. This is what it was to be eternal. But as with all such godlike deeds, this apotheosis did not come without a price.

  Before…

  After defeating Korghos Khul, the Hammerhands went north.

  Though the Goretide were scattered, their ranks would swell again. The war against the dominion of Chaos was far from over, but Sigmar’s Stormcasts had won a great victory at the Gate of Azyr. Now that momentum had to be seized upon were it to mean anything.

  And so the Hammerhands went northward.

  Thousands clad in unalloyed sigmarite crossed the Igneous Delta. Liberators bloodstained and begrimed by war marched with grandhammers slung across the burnished plate of their shoulder guards. Dour Retributors strode in grim silence, their massive lightning hammers held firm across their chests. Above the infantry, retinues of unearthly Prosecutors had taken wing and soared across the blighted sky. At the clarion sound of the warrior-heralds’ war horns, their masked brethren below would close ranks and raise shields, knowing an enemy horde approached.

  There had been many enemies, for the Igneous Delta and its surrounding lands were overrun by those bound in
blood to Khorne.

  It would fall to other Stormcast Eternals to hold the realmgate they had opened to Azyr. At least now they had a foothold at the Brimstone Peninsula, something to defend. But the vanguard could not rest. They had to forge on, despite the lead in their limbs.

  Only when night had fallen and they reached the crags did they stop to make camp on a sheltered plateau of rock. Here the army had mustered, whilst a few of its leaders had walked up the shallow incline to a second smaller plateau from which they might gauge the best route onwards.

  ‘This is a strange land,’ murmured Dacanthos as he regarded the rime of frost around the fingers of his gauntlet. He clenched it in a mailed fist, ­shattering the ice that had formed.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Sagus, leaning on the head of his lightning hammer as the caustic wind of the delta tried to sear his armour. The air was rank with the stench of blood and cinder. It carried a foul cawing, like the mockery of crows, only deeper, as if uttered from the throat of a larger beast. Several carrion-creatures had already been seen.

  The Hammers of Sigmar had left the scorched desert behind them. Here, on the rugged crags and low hills, a deep winter prevailed.

  Snow hid some of the land’s deformity, its hillocks like the petrified claws of some ancient leviathan, a golem trapped forever in its final moments of agony. Eight stunted crests rose up from the smothering tundra like horns, and there were hollow cavities where eyes might once have been.

  ‘It is a grim place, enslaved to darkness,’ uttered Vandus, his voice deep, his distaste unmasked. From the edge of a rocky promontory, he looked out across the Igneous Delta and beyond. Swaths of forest colonised much of the eastern lands, but the trees looked unnatural, bent and tortured, their limbs petrified.