Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Mantius loosed a trio of arrows, trying to gauge where the blade had come from. As his arrows pierced the shadows, their attacker uncoiled from the darkness and dropped towards the remaining Prosecutors of Darius’ retinue.

It was akin to a skaven, but far too large and muscular to be a member of that breed. A number of curved and ridged horns rose from amidst its shaggy, greasy mane, and surmounted its fleshless skull like some hideous crown. Its bifurcated tail lashed about it like a whip and its boil-encrusted flesh clung tightly to swollen muscles. Daemon, Mantius thought. He’d seen similar beasts in the Jade Kingdoms, in Ghyran.

‘Die-die for Skuralanx,’ the monstrosity shrieked as it dropped, its sickle-blade opening an unlucky Prosecutor from skull to midsection. Even as the warrior came apart and vanished in a flare of lightning, the daemon was falling towards the next, tails lashing. Its blade slammed against the Prosecutor’s crossed hammers. The force of the contact caused the combatants to twist through the air.

A swooping Prosecutor had his neck snapped by a piston-like blow from the daemon’s cloven hoof. The verminlord spun through the air, somehow keeping itself aloft through sheer savagery. It leapt off a Prosecutor’s back and drove its hooked blade into the throat of another warrior, reducing him to a writhing streak of lightning. As it struck the opposite tower, it tore its hurled blade free and lunged back into the fray.

Mantius cursed, unable to draw a bead on the quicksilver shape of the rat-daemon. The creature seemed to be there one moment and gone the next, as if it were only a trick of the light. It sprang from tower to tower, ricocheting between them with inhuman grace. Another Prosecutor perished before Mantius at last had a clear shot. He loosed the arrow, but only managed to splinter one of the creature’s worm-eaten horns.

The verminlord sprang back, seeking refuge in the shadows.

‘Aurora,’ Mantius snapped. The star-eagle screeched and shot forward, talons spread. The raptor intercepted the daemon and drove it back in a flurry of glittering feathers. The rat-daemon dropped, digging its blades into the side of the tower. It looked up at him, eyes flaring with hatred. Mantius reached for the star-fated arrow — daemon or no, few creatures could resist it.

As if guessing his intentions, the daemon tore its blades loose and dropped to the street below. The remaining Prosecutors hurled their hammers after it, obliterating the sides of the tower and filling the air with debris. Mantius knew that the beast was gone before the air cleared. A coward, just like its followers, he thought, as he flapped his wings and rose.

‘Proxius, Caledus,’ he said. ‘Gather the other huntsmen. There will be time enough to mourn later. For now, we must clear those ramparts.’ He surged up and away, swooping around the curve of the fallen tower and over the thick ramparts of the Dorsal Barbicans.

As he rose over the walls, he spotted the slave-stockades inside the inner courtyard. Prosecutors swooped to join him. The stockades were domed cages of bone and setae, and each one held dozens of mortals, most of them undernourished, maltreated or dying. The skaven were using them as pox-hosts, ammunition and food, he knew. The vile creatures valued nothing save ruin.

Between the seraphon advancing on the central gates and the Stormcast Eternals climbing the fallen towers towards the ramparts, the vermin had little attention to spare his efforts. He was determined to make them regret that.

At his signal, Prosecutors crashed down across the barbicans and into the courtyard, smashing apart the cages, freeing the sick and the wounded. Mantius dropped lightly onto one of the cracked minarets which rose over the ramparts, releasing an arrow as he touched down.

Other Prosecutors hurled their hammers to shatter the walkways between the slave-stockades and the skaven racing towards them. From his perch on the crumbled minaret, Mantius loosed three arrows at once and pinned a trio of squealing rat-monks to the collapsing rampart by their tails.

‘Free them, brothers — free them all so that they might take back their city,’ Mantius growled, as his arrow took a skaven overseer in the throat. ‘For Sigmar and the Realm Celestial!’

It was all going horribly, terribly wrong, Squeelch thought. And it was all Kruk’s fault. The one-eyed fool of a plague priest had led the Congregation of Fumes to its destruction at last. Squeelch’s only satisfaction arose from having played no part in such foolishness. It wasn’t his fault, no-no! He had done the best he could, under circumstances that would have tried even the legendary patience and skilful might of the most revered of pox-masters.