Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

The Lord-Castellant yet lived, but waved Jactos away.

‘Leave me. Marshal them! Bring the host together or it won’t matter either way.’

A gryph-hound seized Neros’s shoulder in its powerful beak and began to drag the Lord-Castellant towards the waiting Retributors. Neros had dropped his halberd, but still had the warding lantern. With the other hand, he grabbed his loyal beast’s harness and held on as it took him, trying to keep them both alive a little longer.

What had begun as certain victory had cruelly turned to abject annihilation.

Jactos saw his chance at glory fading, his opportunity to show his worthiness to his God-King. How deeply he had wanted to be first, how much he had envied Vandus Hammerhand for the honour that had been bestowed upon him. Jactos knew his fellow Lord-Celestant warranted such a boon, for there was something about Vandus, something fated and undeniable. But if the honour of leading the vanguard was not to be his, then at least Jactos could forge his own glory elsewhere.

Now all of his ambitions were ashes, and he tasted the bitterness of that failure as if choking on them.

‘Shieldwall!’ he cried, trying to wrench something back from this debacle, but the Liberators were too far away and some had rightly gone to the aid of their beleaguered comrades in the Judicators.

Thinking fast, he turned to Priandus, the leader of his Retributors. He had only moments, for soon they would be engulfed by the warriors rushing down to meet them. As he spared a glance at their killers, Jactos saw another army silhouetted on the ridge line, and knew that their doom was assured.

‘Priandus…’

Priandus had clenched his two-handed lightning hammer across his chest. His gaze was unwavering as he regarded the foes that would surely end him. A handful of Retributors stood with him, shoulder to shoulder.

‘Go,’ Priandus uttered, grimly. ‘They won’t come for you until all of us are dead. Our sacrifice will mean something, at least.’

Jactos led the bulk of the Retributors off at a pace towards his Liberators, hoping to bring his scattered forces together.

At Jactos’s command, one of the hulking warriors hauled Neros to his feet and half-carried the Lord-Castellant as the gryph-hound loped along after them.

Through sheer desperation, Jactos brought the disparate factions of what was left of his men together. As they formed ranks, locking shields and standing side by side, the Lord-Celestant spared a last glance for Priandus. But the Retributor-Prime was lost from sight, swallowed by a barbaric host of blood-sworn warriors.

‘Make them pay,’ he bellowed to his men, the rancour he felt filling his heart until it overflowed. What few Judicators remained let fly. Retributors and Liberators stood beside each other to meet the charge that would surely end them all.

The Bloodbound army met them. Both of its armies, twin bloody mauls of seething violence and unfettered destruction.

Caught in the middle, the Stormcasts’ defence shuddered, but held, a circle of gold that defied the darkness. Jactos fought hard, determined to be the exemplar for his men. The act of bravura was a pointless one, but he sought to make amends anyway. At least Neros was alive, protected by the Judicators and around them the Liberators and Retributors. At least, for now.

Jactos began to despair as he saw the third host descend, the one shown in silhouette on the ridge line.

His despair quickly turned to hope, then joy, as golden war-plate, not the blood-red of Khorne’s disciples, shone in the blazing sun over the Volatus Ridge. Seeing reinforcement, his warriors fought even harder. They shouted their defiance and roared in exultation of their saviour.

‘Vandus! Vandus! Vandus!’

Their cry became a mantra, and it armoured them better than a thousand sigmarite shields.

Hammerhand he was called, and he led his Stormcasts down the ridge with cloak flapping and a call to arms upon his lips.

‘Hold fast, Jactos!’

Vandus rode a dracoth as he spearheaded the vanguard, and in his wake he brought death.

The battle did not last much longer after that. Between the Hammerhands and the Goldenmanes, the Bloodbound were crushed. Ground down beneath armoured boots, pinioned by skybolts or smote by the celestial hammers of winged avengers, the slain were many.

It was over. Jactos lived, as did his shame.

Vandus approached him during the aftermath, as the Prosecutors chased down the few survivors.

‘Well met, Jactos,’ said Vandus, offering his hand.

Jactos nodded, grateful but weary.

‘Your arrival was timely, Lord-Celestant.’ He regarded Vandus with a deep sense of respect, taking off his war-helm before he shook the other warrior’s hand. Long, golden hair flowed from beneath, making it obvious how Jactos’s honorific came to be. He had a noble bearing, so very different from the barbarian blacksmith lord who looked back at him.