Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

Vandus was interrupted by a whooping screech. He looked upwards, towards the top of the cliff, and saw tendrils of dark magic. A titanic rumbling growled across the Vale of Anvrok, building to a deafening cacophony, and a long swathe of the cliff face peeled away and came down. Calanax reared, backing into the Knights-Vexillor following Vandus and Ionus. Thostos’ Stormhosts ahead threw themselves into a desperate run as a mountain’s worth of ore-rich boulders crashed down upon them. Many could not get clear in time, and were swept away to their deaths or buried alive. Vandus’ Hammerhands surged behind him, desperate to get to their buried fellows and pushed by the weight of the column still marching up towards them.

‘Back, back! Do not approach!’ shouted Vandus.

All heeded the wisdom of their lord and halted. From higher up the mountains a second avalanche rushed from the high peaks, dislodged by the collapse of the cliff face, dumping thousands of tonnes of ice and snow atop the rocks.

‘Stop the march!’ Vandus raised a hand and a frantic series of trumpet calls rang back down the road. The column came to a stumbling halt.

The noise stopped. Stray boulders bounced only yards from his position. Puffs of storm-magic burst from the landslide, whisked upwards to join the distant thunderheads as trapped men succumbed to their wounds.

Dust sifted through the air. By now it was late afternoon and the sun coloured the metal-rich cloud a pale yellow. For a moment shocked silence reigned, to be shattered by braying laughter drifting down from the mountains above.

‘Beastmen,’ Lord Vandus shouted. ‘At them!’

Calanax roared and his draconic voice carried far back down the road. A score of Lord-Celestants broke from the leading three Stormhosts, their dracoths leaping to the mountainside. Vandus leaned forward as Calanax bounded upwards, his sharp claws and momentum propelling him up the nearly sheer surface. They reached the top of the cliff where the main road ran. There, the Bright Tor Mountains intruded deep into the valley, and five peaks reared their snowy heads high above. The scaled beasts bounded onto the slopes beyond the main road.

The beastmen, a strange copper-skinned breed, occupied a shallow ridge cutting out from the mountain. They were spread some distance along the road, but there was a thick knot of them on a canted ledge, grouped around one that Vandus assumed to be the leader. The beast-chief, a shaman of some sort, was a heavily built mutant, his aura alive with dark power. Vandus headed right for him. To his left and right, beastmen broke and ran, their nimble goat’s legs granting them unnatural agility on the steep mountainside. But the dracoths were quicker, as surefooted as mountain lions. Terrified bleating echoed through the peaks as the dracoths ran down their prey and tore them apart.

Vandus burst through the shaman’s bodyguard. These were larger and better armoured than the feeble specimens the other Lord-Celestants slew, but Calanax ripped them to pieces with his heavy claws just the same. Crude weapons bounced from Calanax’s peytral, and those that hit his body were turned by his thick hide. The dracoth bit down hard on a creature and shook his jaws viciously, casting the broken body aside. Vandus was intent upon the leader. The shaman raised a staff of black oak that burned with unholy power, but Vandus smote the creature on the head, slaying it instantly. The ledge was cleared.

‘Back, back to the column!’ shouted Vandus. He waved his hammer around as a signal then slid from Calanax’s back, bent down to the corpse of the beast-shaman and took his prize.

The Lord-Celestants returned to the column. Vandus rode up to Ionus and cast the head of the beastlord to the ground.

‘Swift vengeance,’ said Ionus.

‘Aye,’ said Vandus. ‘Yet the damage to the Celestial Vindicators cannot be undone.’ He was concerned, and a little afraid. ‘Some of these men meet their third deaths today. One wonders what they will become.’

Vandus called to his signallers and his Knights-Heraldor.

‘We must hold the march. Get men to the top of the cliffs and send Prosecutors to the mountain tops. And find me our scouts. I want to know how this ambush was missed.’ Vandus surveyed the fan of rubble burying the road. ‘Send back to the gate for workers and wizard-wrights. We can go no further before we have cleared the way.’ He looked back angrily down the stalled column. ‘This will cost us at least a day.’

Chapter Four The Shattered City