Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Zephacleas gave a great cry and smashed a charging daemon aside with his hammer. ‘Aye, he’s done it,’ he said hollowly. All across the battlefield, the few Stormcast Eternals still standing redoubled their own efforts. Weariness and wounds were forgotten as Hallowed Knight and Astral Templar alike plunged recklessly into the ranks of the foe — all thought of discipline lost in a tide of grief and rage.

Gardus had been respected, loved by his men and those who had known him, and Zephacleas had neither the heart nor the inclination to restrain them. Indeed, he joined them fully, bellowing oaths and curses in equal measure, fighting with a wild abandon.

‘If this be our dying day, let’s make it one to remember,’ he roared.

He hooked a plaguebearer’s horn with his hammer and dragged it forward, so that the sigmarite of his helm crunched against its rotting skull. The daemon reeled and Zephacleas chopped it down, splitting the dazed creature from shoulder to groin with one blow.

‘Fight, for Gardus! For Sigmar! And for the Realm Celestial!’

‘Very stirring,’ Gravewalker said. ‘You might have a future as Lord-Celestant yet, Zephacleas.’

The Lord-Relictor had planted his standard and stood before it, swinging his hammer in quick, precise strikes. Frothing skaven fell with every blow.

‘Cease prattling and fight, Gravewalker,’ Zephacleas snarled. A skaven lunged for him, its pox-ridden blade shattering as it struck his side. He drove his elbow into its skull and pinned it to the ground with his foot. His hammer put an end to its struggles. More skaven pressed in, clambering up the locked shields of his Stormcast, their blades digging for eye-slits and their bludgeons crashing down on war-helms.

Gravewalker extended his free hand towards the Liberators before him and began to murmur harshly. A soft blue glow suffused his dark gauntlet and then spread to encompass the Liberators, who straightened as if his words had purged them of all exhaustion and ills.

Zephacleas pulverised a skaven in mid-leap, and turned to block a daemon’s blade as it dug for his vitals. Caught between rabid vermin and daemons, he thought, shoving a plaguebearer back. It wasn’t exactly the way he had imagined he would meet his end.

He looked around, hunting for the verminlord. If he was bound for Reforging, he wanted a fine memory to carry with him into the fire. He caught sight of the creature, perched on one of the obscene obelisks scattered about the fen. It exhorted its followers shrilly, tail lashing in frustration as the remaining Stormcasts refused to break beneath the unceasing onslaught of the plague legions. The Lord-Celestant smiled and clashed his weapons together. He was determined to come to grips with the rat-daemon.

Before he could take a single step, however, the noisome air was split by the winding call of a hunting horn. Then another, and another, until the surrounding woodland rang with the sound of them. The skaven ranks began to boil with panic as something struck their flank. Zephacleas pulverised a robed ratman, and tried to catch a glimpse of the newcomers. There had been no lightning, no thunder — this was not Sigmar’s doing, he knew.

Zephacleas took advantage of the distraction to charge towards the verminlord. Whoever they were, the newcomers’ sudden arrival had given the Stormcasts a chance of survival and he intended to make the most of it. As he ran, he heard the sound of wood cracking and popping as a plague-claw catapult was torn apart. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw ratmen flung into the air or snatched from sight.

The verminlord hissed in consternation as it cut its eyes towards the dissolving flank of its forces. Zephacleas reached it a step later and drove his hammer into the menhir it was crouched upon, cracking and toppling it over. Screaming, the verminlord leapt from the falling rock, trailing wisps of stinking smoke, and the curved blades in its paws scythed towards the Lord-Celestant.

But Zephacleas swung his sword up and blocked the downward stroke of the curved blades. Before the full weight of the falling rat-daemon could crash into him, he rammed the head of his hammer into its belly, doubling it over and shoving it backwards. The giant beast chopped at him with its blades, scoring his armour again and again as the Lord-Celestant’s momentum carried them into the fallen stone. They staggered back and fell. He landed atop the verminlord and swiftly drove his forearm into its hairy throat, keeping it from biting him. It flung him off, and he landed in a rattle of sigmarite.