Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

‘And who are you to speak for us then, Woodsman?’ Otto Glott said, spinning his scythe like a child’s toy as he stepped out from the trees, trailed by his brothers. Ethrac leaned on his staff, his robes stiff with grime and his face hidden beneath a cowl. Ghurk shoved a tree over as he followed Otto and Ethrac, his enormous lumpen features slack with disinterest. ‘Think you’re the wormy apple of Grandfather’s eye now, Despised One? You haven’t found the Hidden Vale any more than we have, so don’t go getting ideas above your station.’

Torglug glared at Otto, but said nothing. He did not like the brothers, but he knew better than to challenge them openly. Otto scratched his chin and grinned. Then he gave a satisfied sniff and gestured to his brother, Ethrac. ‘Now that we’re all here, any ideas what Sigmar’s whelps might be looking for, second-most-beloved sibling?’

‘Same thing we are, brother from my mother,’ Ethrac said with a shrug. Torglug grimaced beneath his helm. The Hidden Vale, he thought. The secret bower where the so-called Radiant Queen, Alarielle, had hidden herself away when Grandfather’s grip on her kingdoms had become too much for her frail soul to bear. He, the Glottkin, Slaugoth and a host of others had spent centuries searching for it, even as they warred with the ferocious treekin and the few remaining free tribes of Ghyran. It had become something of a game for them, all except Torglug. He knew Grandfather’s mind better than any, and he knew how serious a matter Alarielle’s capture was, whatever the Glotts thought.

‘Yes, kinsman-mine,’ Otto countered, brushing flies from his open gut. ‘Even Ghurk knows that and he can’t count to one, bless him.’ He reached up to pat the muscular arm of the third Glott brother, who loomed behind him. ‘But since we don’t know where that is, it might behove us to learn, don’t you think?’

‘I am open to suggestions, Otto,’ Ethrac said. He looked at Torglug. ‘What about you, Ghyranite? What sort of ideas are percolating in that sour brain of yours?’

Torglug hesitated. Then, with a grunt, he gestured to Vermalanx.

‘The rats,’ he said. ‘Let them be earning their keep.’

Vermalanx hissed, startled. Then, slowly he nodded.

‘Yes-yes, my folk can do that. I know just the rat,’ the verminlord murmured. If bare bone could take on a cunning expression, Vermalanx had one. The rat meant treachery. They couldn’t help it. It was in whatever passed for their blood. Torglug extended his axe, so that the edge just brushed the verminlord’s chin.

‘You are thinking carefully,’ Torglug said, his voice deceptively mild.

‘Now now, Torglug, no need to threaten our furry ally,’ Otto said, stepping forward, his scythe held lengthwise across his shoulders. ‘I’m sure he’ll do just what we ask, won’t you, my fine, bare-tailed friend?’

Vermalanx hesitated. Then he nodded. ‘Of course, yes-yes. We all serve the Great Corrupter, do we not?’

Torglug lowered his axe. Despite his suggestion, he didn’t trust the rat-daemon to do anything but seek its own advantage. He didn’t trust any of them, in fact. They were all competing for the Grandfather’s affections, in their own way.

But only one of them was truly worthy.

And soon, Torglug thought, I will prove it.

Chapter Six A soul returned

Tegrus of the Sainted Eye, Prosecutor-Prime of the Hallowed Knights, stood at the top of Profane Tor and looked down into the clearing at his newly-returned Lord-Celestant and the host of Stormcasts who surrounded him.

‘How can this be?’ he murmured. He wondered still if it were an illusion. It would not be the first such shade that had appeared to lure unlucky Stormcasts to their doom. And surely this was not truly Gardus sitting upon the dryad-borne throne like some Ghyranite saint of old. ‘Aetius, Solus… are you seeing this?’ he asked his companions.

‘Hard not to, given the clamour,’ Solus said. The Judicator-Prime of the Hallowed Knights was a man of few words, who had an internal serenity that Tegrus could scarcely fathom. He sat on the bole of a toppled tree and ran a cloth across the gleaming blade of his gladius. His boltstorm crossbow sat at his feet. He and Aetius had, along with Tegrus, volunteered to oversee the retinues engaged in destroying the foul icons and symbols that littered the top of the tor. None of it could be left standing, and the air rang with the sounds of the Retributors’ hammers and the Decimators’ axes as they smashed idols and chopped apart the crude gibbets that had once hung from the hag tree.

‘It cannot be him — it must be a trick,’ Aetius said. The Liberator-Prime was not a man to whom trust came easily. ‘No one, Stormcast or otherwise, returns from the Realm of Chaos.’ He tightened his grip on his hammer.

‘But it is,’ Tegrus said. ‘Grymn and Morbus are down there already, with Zephacleas and Ultrades.’ He looked at his fellow Stormcasts. ‘We should be down there as well.’