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Acts of Sacrifice – Evan Dicken

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Realmgate Wars: Volume 1’

A Black Library Publication

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Acts of Sacrifice

Evan Dicken

Sir Anaea knelt alone in the shadowed recesses of the chapel vault, hands clenched at her sides, head bowed in silent prayer. A muffled boom from outside caused the chapel to tremble, dust trickling from between the heavy stones overhead. Anaea opened her eyes at the sound of distant shouts, the clash of arms, but ignored the desire to leap up and join the rest of her Order as they tried to hold at bay the shrieking, gore-spattered mob that beat at the fortress walls like waves against a stony shore.

With a deep breath, she steadied herself. The Order of the Ardent Star was more than Anaea’s desire for vengeance, more than the creeping loss that seemed to shadow her every thought. Master Vaskar had taught her that. But Master Vaskar was dead, cut down by the Khornate champion Sulkotha Godspite, not two hundred paces from where Anaea knelt, his body lost to the numberless horde outside. That had been three days ago, when the Chaos army was not so large, when there had been enough Order knights to sally forth in hopes that the ravagers could be driven off. The images were scarred into Anaea’s memory – her comrades pulled down one by one, Vaskar falling to Godspite’s vile blade as he fought to buy the other knights time to withdraw. It had been all Anaea could do to retrieve her master’s sword, and the failure ached like an old battle wound.

Anaea exhaled and focused upon the statue of Myrmidia that presided over the chapel. The warrior goddess seemed a being of deadly grace, standing triumphant although her armour was scarred by blade and arrow. The burnished gold of her shield was bright even in the fading torchlight, and her spear seemed to glitter with the blood of defeated foes.

‘Stella Invicti.’ Anaea whispered the Order’s motto as her gaze fell to Vaskar’s sword upon the altar. As if to echo her darkening thoughts, there came another deep rumble from outside, followed by the roar of inhuman voices and the harsh crackle of balefire.

‘Blessed Lady Myrmidia, grant your loyal servant peace.’ Anaea reached for the blade, its well-worn hilt fitting comfortably in her hand. She set it before her, point resting on the chapel tiles. The metal of the pommel was cool against her forehead as she bowed once more. ‘Let his shining example light the way along the dark paths we must tread.’

It was a quick eulogy, far less than Master Vaskar deserved, but already more than Anaea could afford. She bowed, then turned away from the statue. Although Myrmidia cared little for genuflection and prayers, Anaea could not let her master go in silence. Moreover, she had needed time to focus, to prepare herself for what must be done. All that mattered to the Goddess of War was triumph. This time, however, there would be no glorious victory, no salvation.

All that remained was survival.

Anaea stepped from the chapel, striding across the courtyard with new purpose, but by the time she had crested the wall the ravagers had been driven off. So it had been since the siege started – Godspite raking the walls with hellcannon fire before sending her shrieking horde charging towards the fortress.

‘We beat them back.’ Master Karon stepped to Anaea’s side, removing his helm to scrub a hand through his thinning white hair. ‘Stella Invicti.’

Anaea echoed the old master’s words, but her stomach clenched as she surveyed the wreckage. Corpses sprawled across the battlement, the unholy sigils cut into their flesh marking them as followers of the god of slaughter. Most of the newly slain wore beaten, blood-red armour, but here and there her eye caught the glimmer of knightly plate, as though a handful of golden coins had been scattered amidst the carnage.

‘How many of our brothers and sisters were lost in doing so?’ she asked.

‘Too many,’ the old master conceded with a sour frown. ‘But they met a noble end.’

‘And how many remain?’

‘Less than one hundred.’ Karon shook his head. ‘Not enough to defend the eastern rampart, let alone the curtain wall. We shall have to pull back to the chapel.’

Anaea surveyed the horde, one of the seemingly numberless warbands of Chaos ravagers that had swamped the Flamescar Plateau like a bloody tide. ‘Have we received any word from Sir Leta?’

Karon’s silence was answer enough. They had dispatched Leta to the Burning Cliffs many days ago on a mission to seek aid from the Hermdar Lodge. The fyreslayers had never been friends to the Order, but the looming threat of annihilation made for strange alliances.

And yet, no one had come.

The Hermdar must have refused, if Sir Leta had reached them at all.

‘Duardin wretches,’ Karon said, echoing Anaea’s thoughts. ‘Hiding in their holds as if gates and stone could shield them from the end of the world.’

Anaea glanced at the old knight, but Karon’s attention was fixed on the horde outside. He stood like a man steeling himself to charge into cannon fire.

Below, the ravagers had drawn up just outside of bow range. They laughed and jeered, the clash of their weapons causing Anaea’s jaw to tighten. Smoke obscured the smoldering sun of Aqshy, the field of cracked basalt painted in crimson tones, red as the blood of the fallen.

As if summoned from some abyssal pit, Sulkotha Godspite stepped from the horde of muddied bronze. She was a head taller than even the largest of her mad followers, her armour set with spikes and cruel, barbed hooks, fire gleaming in the eyes of the daemonic faces etched into her breastplate. In one gauntleted fist, she carried a broken greatsword, its blade notched and pitted from hard use, foul sigils scored into its jagged length. Her other hand dragged a long, spiked chain. The barbed links writhed like a beheaded snake, lashing out at any of Godspite’s followers too slow to retreat.

‘Myrmidia has abandoned you!’ Godspite roared, as she had every day since her horde first besieged the chapel fortress. ‘Show more courage than your pitiful god. Die like warriors, not like rats cowering behind pathetic walls.’

As the champion stalked forward, Anaea could see the end of Godspite’s chain was wrapped around a body in battered armour. The corpse left a smear of old blood as the champion dragged it across the stony ground.

‘Come, brave knights. Join your leader.’ With a heave of her massive shoulders, Godspite hauled the chain so that the corpse flopped forward.

Anaea felt a shout building in her throat, hot and furious. The corpse’s armour was cracked and broken, its face a mask of dried blood, but even through the gore Anaea recognised her former master.

‘Abomination,’ Karon hissed at Anaea’s side, drawing his sword. ‘This cannot be allowed.’

Anaea grabbed his wrist and forced him to halt. ‘You would give her what she wants,’ she growled, quashing her own rage.

‘And why not?’ He jerked from her grip. Vaskar had been Anaea’s master, but he had been like a son to the old knight. Karon shook with barely restrained fury, his scowl equal parts pain and rage. ‘Cut the head from the serpent and her horde will scatter.’

‘You know as well as I that killing Godspite would solve nothing,’ Anaea said.

Karon gave a low, angry grunt, but slammed his sword back into its sheath. ‘What do you propose?’

Anaea’s gaze fell upon the battlements and towers, a long expanse of wall scattered with those few knights who survived. ‘This fortress cannot be held with what forces remain to us. We must seek a more defensible position.’

‘The hordes are everywhere,’ Karon said. ‘Where can we ride?’

Shielding her eyes from the burnished sun, Anaea scanned the horizon. Godspite’s warband ranged across the cracked plain surrounding the chapel fortress, seeming to stretch almost to the Desert of Glass in the east. Although Anaea could not see them, she knew somewhere in the distance lay the Burning Cliffs. There, the Hermdar fyreslayers hunkered behind their great walls, safe in the knowledge they could weather any siege. The Order needed to do the same, to preserve what remained of its forces, to focus on survival.

‘The Redoubt,’ Anaea said, at last.

Karon frowned. ‘Drakemount is three day’s ride across the desert, even with no enemies barring our path.’

‘The Redoubt is defensible, difficult to assault, well supplied and located near the centre of the Flamescar Plateau,’ Anaea replied. ‘It is the logical choice, for there we will find those chapters of our Order that still survive.’

‘If any survive.’ Karon sighed, considering.

‘How many more of Godspite’s assaults will we survive?’ Anaea tightened her grip on Vaskar’s blade. ‘This is not a war we can win, master.’

Karon winced as if Anaea’s words were a knife drawn across his flesh. He regarded her for a long moment, then gave a quick nod, turning to the group of knights who had drifted over to watch the exchange. ‘Gather the others and harness the demidroths. We ride for Drakemount.’

As the others hurried off to spread the word, Karon turned back to Anaea, his voice tired. ‘And if you are wrong? If the Redoubt has fallen? If we cannot win through Godspite’s horde?’

Anaea took a long, slow breath. ‘Then you shall have your noble death, master.’

The knights waited, still as statues in the fading afternoon light. Once the Order’s warriors would have filled the courtyard to bursting, bright and golden like stars fallen to earth. Now they seemed dwarfed by the high walls, diminished in number if not spirit.

‘We have but one chance.’ Anaea turned her mount, a reptilian demidroth, to face the assembled knights. ‘The time for grand strategy has long passed. We must simply draw the savages out and create a gap. If we are lucky enough to hack our way through, we ride for the Redoubt.’

Master Karon urged his mount next to Anaea’s. ‘And if we are not lucky, we shall die gloriously, our blades singing Myrmidia’s praises.’

Anaea looked to Karon, frowning, but the old master held her gaze.

At Karon’s nod, the knights dragged open the fortress’ gate. The great iron-bound doors slammed against the walls with a resounding boom.

With a grim smile, Karon turned from Anaea, raising his blade even as he spurred his demidroth forward. ‘Stella Invicti!’

The others echoed his call. Although few in number, the Knights of the Ardent Star charged as if there were an army behind them. Arranged in a serried wedge, lances lowered, they streaked west across the broken field mounted on their large, lizard-like steeds. Far smaller than their draconic cousins, demidroths lacked both fiery breath and molten blood, but were no less fierce. Anaea could feel the vital pulse of her demidroth’s muscles as it bounded across the rough stone, the powerful expansion of its lungs as it drew in a great breath.

Her mount roared, and Anaea roared with it.

The Order’s banner snapped in the wind as its bearer led the charge. Even now the sight of the banner filled Anaea with determination. A golden star blazing on a field of purest black, it was inscribed with the Order’s war cry. Said to have been a gift from Myrmidia herself during the ancient days, the banner had been borne by Knights of the Ardent Star in a thousand battles.

Up ahead, Godspite’s ravagers laughed and brandished their cruel weapons, seemingly undaunted as they were ridden down by the wave of steel-plated doom.

The knights cut into the horde like a lava flow. Ravagers fell away, impaled by broken lances or gutted by demidroth talons. Anaea brought Vaskar’s sword down again and again as if hacking through stubborn rope.

A man leapt at her from the press, axe in hand, his eyes mad with bloodlust. Anaea ducked the wild swing and drove her blade between his ribs. He fell back with a look that seemed almost disappointed, there to be torn apart by the claws of her steed.

For a moment, the combat eddied around Anaea. She sat back in her saddle to quickly scan the lines of battle. The knights’ charge had cut deep into the howling mob, although not deep enough for the reavers to fully envelop them.

She waited, her throat tight. At last, the moment came, thin as a knife’s edge. Frantic to spill blood, the horde had shifted to the west, following the knights’ charge. Anaea caught Karon’s eye and nodded.

‘Withdraw!’ The old knight’s word rose above the clamour of battle.

With the precision of a lifetime of careful drill, the knights wheeled their mounts to charge through the closing gap at their rear. Roaring, the demidroths pelted across the pitted field, racing parallel to the ravagers’ lines. The frenzied horde turned in on itself as reavers fought their own comrades, frantic to reach the knights.

For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, Anaea felt the weight lift from her shoulders. Godspite’s horde was fierce, unshakeable and driven by mad bloodlust. The knights could not hope to face them in the field, but the Order could use their strength against them.

Anaea held her sword high, a wild shout building in her throat. The bulk of the horde was behind them, a few scattered bands of ravagers all that remained between the knights and the Desert of Glass.

The cry died on Anaea’s lips as Sulkotha Godspite stepped from the milling crowd before them.

The Khornate champion spread her arms wide in welcome, her great blade sheathed across her back, the spiked chain writhing about her feet. Laughing, she raised Vaskar’s severed head, his blood staining her armour. ‘Blood for the Blood God.’

‘Veer around her!’ Anaea gestured with her blade, teeth gritted against the upswell of fury that screamed at her to cut the champion down. She could feel the hesitation in her comrades, her desire for vengeance echoed by every lowered lance and raised sword.

With a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders, Godspite tossed Vaskar’s head to the ground, grinding it to pulp beneath one bronze-shod boot.

‘Defiler!’ Master Karon wheeled his mount to confront the Chaos champion.

‘Keep formation! We cannot afford to be bogged down!’ Anaea called after him, but the moment was lost as the knights followed their master. With a curse, she turned her demidroth towards the waiting ravagers.

Godspite watched them come, seemingly unconcerned. A moment before the charge connected the Chaos champion pivoted away, her spiked chain lashing up to tangle the legs of Karon’s mount. The demidroth pitched forward and the old knight was tossed from the saddle. He stumbled to his feet just in time to duck a heavy slash from Godspite’s blade.

The combatants were lost from sight as the knights hammered into the Chaos ranks. A pair of ravagers rushed at Anaea. The blades of their huge axes gleamed crimson in the dull red light of Aqshy’s sun. Using her legs, Anaea steered her mount towards the attackers. The great demidroth lunged forward, covering the distance with a speed that set the reavers back on their heels. It pounced on the first man while Anaea shifted in her saddle as a blow cut the air where her arm had been a moment before.

Anaea’s return cut took the reaver’s arm off just below the elbow, flesh and bone parting like clouds before the tempered edge of Vaskar’s blade. One-handed, the ravager tried to raise his axe to parry her next blow, but the weapon was too unwieldy and her stab slid easily into the hollow of the man’s throat.

Drawing in a great whooping breath, Anaea glanced back. The bulk of Godspite’s horde was closing in; if the knights didn’t win through soon they would be surrounded and cut off.

Anaea cast about the battle, spying Master Karon.

The knight’s demidroth was down, surrounded by a knot of ravagers who hacked at the dying beast with wild abandon, leaving Karon to face Godspite on foot.

Undaunted, the master launched a flurry of slashes and stabs, his blade seeking the joints of the Chaos champion’s armour. With a scream that seemed equal parts joy and rage, Godspite brought her greatsword arcing around, forcing Karon to drop to one knee to avoid the slash. He responded with a cut to Godspite’s knee that set her back a step. The two champions exchanged rapid blows, Karon moving like a man half his age.

Around Anaea, the charge’s momentum had stalled. To her left, the Order’s banner bearer was dragged from her demidroth, still slashing even as she disappeared amidst a knot of blood-spattered reavers. Anaea kicked her mount forward, and the demidroth tore into the foe just as the banner slipped from the bearer’s hand.

With a cry, Anaea leaned in her saddle to catch the falling banner, her blade arcing out to split the skull of a marauder who sought to wrench it from her grip.

‘To me!’ Vaskar’s blade cut a bloody path through the snarling horde as Anaea urged her mount towards Karon, banner held high.

The old master pivoted to avoid Godspite’s sweeping blade. Like a gargant beset by a gryphon, the Chaos champion roared and swatted at the old knight, but Karon was far too quick.

As she burst from the press, Anaea spied Godspite’s chain slithering towards Karon, but her shout came too late.

The daemonic chain wrapped around the master’s leg, its spikes punching bloody holes in his armour even as it pinned him in place. Unable to dodge, Karon barely parried a vicious chop from the champion’s greatsword.

Anaea put her heels to her mount’s flanks and it bulled into the Chaos champion, knocking Godspite from her feet. Rather than press the attack, Anaea hacked down at the chain binding Master Karon’s leg. The first strike drew a spray of angry sparks and the chain writhed like a wounded snake. Godspite roared as if Anaea’s blade had struck her rather than her weapon. The chain tried to unwind, but Karon drove his sword through its links to hold it in place. Anaea hewed at the chain, her nose thick with the smell of scorched metal. At last, the foul thing gave way before the blessed steel. Bleeding black ichor from its severed links, it writhed away, leaving only the portion wrapped around Karon’s leg.

Godspite’s howl of pain brought a grim smile to Anaea’s face.

Fortunately, whatever foul sorcery had animated the chain had fled the severed length, and Master Karon was able to tear his limb free.

Suddenly, the air was full of steel-armoured forms. As if summoned by the banner, knights descended upon the struggle, sword and talon driving back the shrieking ravagers. The breaking of her chain had apparently sent Godspite into a frenzy. She hacked at those around her, seeming not to care if they were friend or foe. Other fights broke out amidst the horde as the ravagers turned on each other, the warband like a snake devouring its own tail. Sprays of blood rose like flies from an old corpse, the air thick with the stench of gore.

‘We must move!’ Anaea shouted at Karon, bringing her demidroth down so he could swing up behind her. The old knight sagged against her, his breath quick and ragged. Whatever holy vigor had possessed him seemed spent.

Anaea thrust the banner forward, and the surviving knights advanced, cutting through the scattered reavers to break free just ahead of the charging horde.

Anaea glanced back as they hurtled across the wide expanse of basalt. Even driven mad by bloodlust, Godspite’s warband seemed a huge and terrifying thing, Anaea’s surviving companions little more than a candle set against a bloody storm of destruction. The Desert of Glass would be difficult to traverse, but Anaea had no doubt Godspite would follow. There would be no rest until they reached the Redoubt.

She only hoped she was not leading her comrades to their deaths.

‘Leave me here,’ Master Karon said through clenched teeth. ‘I can buy you time.’

‘You will slay many ravagers, master, but not this night.’ Anaea glanced across at the old knight’s injured leg, the black-and-gold armour glistening with dried blood. Although in obvious pain, the knight had refused assistance, stubbornly riding the demidroth of one of their fallen comrades. There had been no time to treat his wound. Godspite’s warband had found its feet more quickly than expected, following the warriors of the Order like gryph-hounds scenting prey.

The ragged column of knights had spent the better part of a week crossing the brutal expanse of the Desert of Glass, a vast field of volcanic obsidian left by an ancient lava flow. Although the demidroths seemed untroubled by the heat and razored spines of broken glass, their human riders were less well adapted. To wear armour was to slowly bake in the punishing sun, but to remove it was to risk being flensed by flecks of windswept obsidian.

It seemed impossible that anything could survive such cruel conditions, but the forces of Chaos were everywhere. No matter how far or fast the knights rode, they seemed unable to escape the flash of bronze on the horizon, or the distant roars carried to their ears by the furnace-hot winds. Worse, the desert had claimed a bloody toll. Knights slipped from their demidroths, overcome by wounds, their hearts stilled by the punishing heat of the sun. Those who still breathed were lashed to their saddles, while the dead were left for Godspite’s monstrous hounds, which loped through the black sands, snarling and snapping at any who fell behind. Twice, Anaea had led charges to drive them off, but the beasts always returned, like flies to a corpse.

But the Order of the Ardent Star was not dead yet.

Survive.

It had become a mantra, a prayer, whispered through cracked lips as Anaea approached the smoke-shrouded peak of Drakemount.

They would be safe there. The Order would live. They would regroup, combine their numbers and defeat the foe.

‘We should turn now and fight,’ Master Karon said, as if reading her mind.

Anaea was about to admonish him once again when the Redoubt finally came into view.

The ancient citadel stood like a breaker against the clouds of red-tinged smoke that gave Drakemount its name.

With a hoarse shout Anaea raised the banner once more, her shoulder numb from the strain of holding it aloft for so long. She gritted her teeth at the pain – a penance of sorts – as the surviving knights urged their mounts into a shambling trot.

Anaea squinted at the flames lining the edges of the narrow path up to the Redoubt. The blaze was surely unnatural, for the rock did not melt or run like lava, nor did the fire consume it. Whatever the cause, the ancient builders of the Redoubt had placed their fortress well, the unquenchable flames making the approach treacherous.

‘Our brothers and sisters await us within,’ she called back to her tired companions. Unspoken was Karon’s dire caveat: if any survive.

They came to the gates, and Anaea felt the spark of hope in her chest flutter and go dark. The great steel doors stood broken and ajar, a knight slumped in the opening, the gold of his armour almost invisible beneath scorches and burnt blood.

Smoke from the fires pricked Anaea’s eyes as she dismounted to approach the knight. She didn’t need to open his helm to know he was dead – the man’s arm was missing, what flesh Anaea could see pocked and bloodless as old leather.

‘Search the Redoubt.’ Master Karon gestured at the gates, the grim lines of his face sharpened by the flickering firelight.

The courtyard was a scene of slaughter, knights and ravagers sprawled in a deathly, violent tableau. Anaea could almost picture the scene – a thin line of black and gold arrayed against a sea of hungry, blood-flecked bronze – she had lived it often enough. Heat had dried out the bodies, reducing the corpses to little more than mummified skeletons. It was a small blessing, for Anaea had fought many times alongside these chapters. She didn’t think she could bear to recognise any of the dead.

Her comrades picked their way through the carnage, climbing winding stairs and forcing doors blocked by piled corpses. The Redoubt was large, but wholly dead, and in less than an hour the knights had their answer. They gathered in the shadow of one of the Redoubt’s high walls, one of the few places not choked with bodies.

‘The stores have been raided, the armoury emptied,’ Anaea reported, conscious of the gazes of her fellow knights – the men and women she had led to their doom. ‘But the treasury is untouched.’

‘What use have madmen for gold and silver?’ Master Karon shook his head, his scowl sharp as an axe blade. With a wince, he straightened, limping over to address the group of solemn knights. ‘There is much work to do and little enough time. Repairing the gate should be our first priority.’

‘This place is a grave.’ Anaea met the old knight’s pained gaze. ‘I thought there would be other survivors, that we could hold the walls, but too many have fallen. We cannot remain here.’

‘Your plan was a good one, Sir Anaea. Vaskar would be proud.’ Karon’s tone was firm, buttressed by a sense of solemn resignation. He took a slow step over to lay a hand on her shoulder. ‘But some wars simply cannot be won.’

Anaea pulled away. Turning to the others, she shook the banner so that the star glittered in the crimson light. ‘Myrmidia revels in victory, but there is no shame in retreat before a superior foe. We may very well be the last of our Order, and you would cast your lives away? Master Vaskar died to protect our traditions, our knowledge. To protect you.’

Her comrades stood as if cut from ash-streaked obsidian. None would meet her gaze.

‘We can hide amidst the mountains, perhaps even find shelter with the Hermdar.’ Frustration edged Anaea’s words. ‘While but one knight survives, the Order cannot die.’

‘Some things are more important than survival.’ Master Karon turned away from her, his voice booming across the courtyard. ‘Arm yourselves, clear the battlements. We shall sell our lives dearly and break the back of Godspite’s host.’

There were nods and affirmations from the other knights as they set about preparing for battle. Anaea stared, unbelieving. Karon was giving a battle speech.

So great shall be our legend that for generations, our foe will shun this place.

Banner in hand, Anaea backed away from her former comrades. They looked so foolish, heads bobbing like coal gulls as they rushed around the courtyard, welcoming the wave of lava that would obliterate them.

They will look upon these walls and shudder, knowing only death awaits them here.

Anaea slipped onto one of the healthier-looking demidroths, grasping the reins to turn it as quietly as she could. The others might be willing to see the Order of the Ardent Star cast into ruin, but Anaea would not let it fall.

She put her heels to the demidroth, and it surged towards the open gate, bowling past a knot of knights trying to secure the broken door. Their surprised shouts were eclipsed by the pounding of blood in Anaea’s ears.

She pelted down the switchback, running her mount close to the fires so the smoke would mask their flight. In the distance, Godspite’s warband spread like lava across the dunes. It didn’t take a master strategist to see they would arrive long before Karon and the others could repair the gates.

Anaea kept her head down, leaning low in her saddle as she unhooked the banner and discarded its pole.

‘Forgive me, goddess.’ She stuffed the rolled cloth into the front of her breastplate. At least there was one thing she could protect from Godspite’s filth.

As if to mock Anaea’s hopes, a howl echoed from the soot-smudged cliffs. Drawing Vaskar’s sword, she turned to see that a pack of the champion’s monstrous hounds had broken from the main horde to give chase.

The beasts fanned out, seeking to surround and harry their prey, eyes glowing like bilious lanterns amidst the smoky shadows. With a shout Anaea urged her mount forward. It bounded up an ash-covered escarpment, stones shifting beneath its hooked claws. Smiling grimly, she bore down on the hounds that sprinted to bar her path.

Anaea might be hunted, but she was not prey.

A warhound leapt at her, and Anaea shifted to ram the point of her sword between the beast’s slavering jaws. Her demidroth reared to catch another hound in its talons, tearing the snarling creature in half with almost contemptuous ease. But, like their cruel masters, the hounds seemed without end. Two more loped from the gloom to snap at the demidroth’s legs.

Anaea swung Vaskar’s blade in a low arc, the heavy steel cutting deep into one of her pursuers’ necks. The other hound leapt, and Anaea turned too slowly, her strike missing the beast.

It crashed into her. Claws scrabbled on steel plate, its jaws like a vice on Anaea’s shoulder. With a tortured shriek her pauldron began to buckle. Anaea felt herself being dragged from the demidroth’s back. She tried to bring her blade to bear, but the hound was too close.

Myrmidia taught that there were times for strategy, for skill, but there were also times for brute force.

Teeth clenched against the pain, Anaea hammered the pommel of Vaskar’s blade into the hound’s skull. Again and again, she brought the heavy weight crashing down, feeling the beast shudder and kick. At last, bone gave way to steel, and the hound tumbled to the blackened stone.

No more beasts slunk from the murky haze, but there was no time for Anaea to catch her breath.

She urged her mount on. The demidroth leapt from boulder to smoking boulder, nimble on the broken terrain of the mountain. Thick smoke stung her nose, and Anaea coughed, guiding her steed up above the flames so she see the Redoubt once more. She paused upon a cliff to overlook the battlefield.

Godspite had moved quickly. Already, masses of shrieking, foam-flecked ravagers swarmed the approach. The first of the attackers crashed into the thin cordon of knights. Even from here, Anaea could see Godspite in the thick of battle, her jagged blade rising and falling, her daemon chain lashing out to bind and crush.

Anaea squinted through the pall of smoke. She could see gold-armoured shapes fighting upon the battlements, more arrayed across the broken gate. They glittered in the gloom like diamonds tossed upon a muddy field.

It was not too late to join them. Anaea could charge back down the mountain, banner in hand, to test herself against Godspite. Perhaps she might even defeat the Chaos champion. Perhaps her brothers and sisters would carry the day, scattering Godspite’s horde to the sands.

But there would be more. There would always be more.

Anaea’s mount shifted under her, echoing the furious shrieks of its kin. Anaea urged it to silence as the first of her comrades’ screams drifted up, carried on winds of ash. Each clash of distant blades seemed a slash across Anaea’s flesh, each pained shout an arrow aimed at her heart, but she did not turn away.

She watched her companions dragged down, one by one, rivulets of blood dripping from the walls to puddle on the stony ground. Despite the seemingly numberless foe, despite the knights’ wounds and exhaustion, the battle was not over quickly.

Master Karon had been true to his word. The Knights of the Ardent Star died noble deaths, yet still they died.

No matter what, Anaea would remember their sacrifice.

After what seemed an eternity, the killing stopped. A roar of triumph echoed from the cliffs, the howling call ripped from a thousand savage throats. The rightness of Anaea’s choice was no balm against the guilt and shame that warred within her chest. She would hide in the mountains, craven and callous as the fyreslayers Master Karon had so reviled.

Head bowed, Anaea nudged her mount away from the Redoubt. The past held nothing but ashes. She tugged off her gauntlet, working her hand beneath her breastplate to grasp a thick handful of the banner.

‘Stella Invicti.’ The words came like a prayer, but she knew Myrmidia did not hear them.

Triumph was all that mattered to the Goddess of War, and survival was the only victory Anaea could yet win.

About the Author

Evan Dicken has written the short story ‘The Path to Glory’ and the novella The Red Hours for Black Library. He has been an avid reader of Black Library novels since he found dog-eared copies of Trollslayer, Xenos and First and Only nestled in the “Used Fantasy/Sci-fi” rack of his local gaming store. He still considers himself an avid hobbyist, although the unpainted Chaos Warband languishing in his basement would beg to differ. By day, he studies old Japanese maps and crunches data at The Ohio State University.

An extract from The Realmgate Wars: Volume 1.

The bolt struck Vandus Hammerhand like a spear flung from the heavens. First there was light, a searing luminescence so bright it eclipsed all sense of being and self. Then pain brought him back with white daggers of pure agony. Heat, fury, and the drumbeat of immortal vigour rushing through his veins reached a crescendo so loud it turned into deafening silence.

Then peace, a feeling of true solace and quietude.

Vandus would come to learn it was always this way. This is what it meant to be born of the storm and borne by the storm.

Reforged, wrought anew. Brought back. This is what it was to be eternal. But as with all such godlike deeds, this apotheosis did not come without a price.

Before…

After defeating Korghos Khul, the Hammerhands went north.

Though the Goretide were scattered, their ranks would swell again. The war against the dominion of Chaos was far from over, but Sigmar’s Stormcasts had won a great victory at the Gate of Azyr. Now that momentum had to be seized upon were it to mean anything.

And so the Hammerhands went northward.

Thousands clad in unalloyed sigmarite crossed the Igneous Delta. Liberators bloodstained and begrimed by war marched with grandhammers slung across the burnished plate of their shoulder guards. Dour Retributors strode in grim silence, their massive lightning hammers held firm across their chests. Above the infantry, retinues of unearthly Prosecutors had taken wing and soared across the blighted sky. At the clarion sound of the warrior-heralds’ war horns, their masked brethren below would close ranks and raise shields, knowing an enemy horde approached.

There had been many enemies, for the Igneous Delta and its surrounding lands were overrun by those bound in blood to Khorne.

It would fall to other Stormcast Eternals to hold the realmgate they had opened to Azyr. At least now they had a foothold at the Brimstone Peninsula, something to defend. But the vanguard could not rest. They had to forge on, despite the lead in their limbs.

Only when night had fallen and they reached the crags did they stop to make camp on a sheltered plateau of rock. Here the army had mustered, whilst a few of its leaders had walked up the shallow incline to a second smaller plateau from which they might gauge the best route onwards.

‘This is a strange land,’ murmured Dacanthos as he regarded the rime of frost around the fingers of his gauntlet. He clenched it in a mailed fist, shattering the ice that had formed.

‘Agreed,’ said Sagus, leaning on the head of his lightning hammer as the caustic wind of the delta tried to sear his armour. The air was rank with the stench of blood and cinder. It carried a foul cawing, like the mockery of crows, only deeper, as if uttered from the throat of a larger beast. Several carrion-creatures had already been seen.

The Hammers of Sigmar had left the scorched desert behind them. Here, on the rugged crags and low hills, a deep winter prevailed.

Snow hid some of the land’s deformity, its hillocks like the petrified claws of some ancient leviathan, a golem trapped forever in its final moments of agony. Eight stunted crests rose up from the smothering tundra like horns, and there were hollow cavities where eyes might once have been.

‘It is a grim place, enslaved to darkness,’ uttered Vandus, his voice deep, his distaste unmasked. From the edge of a rocky promontory, he looked out across the Igneous Delta and beyond. Swaths of forest colonised much of the eastern lands, but the trees looked unnatural, bent and tortured, their limbs petrified.

The Lord-Celestant’s eyes narrowed. He could have sworn he saw something stir within the dark heart of the forest. His gaze went skyward to an even greater and larger mountain fastness than the one his warriors had camped on. Clad in ice, it appeared more like a glacier. Oily mists crept from its footings, lathering the earth below in a foul tar.

Further north, Vandus discerned the forbidding silhouette of an immense tower, obscured behind scads of pyroclastic cloud. It was one of eight brass towers that surrounded Khul’s domain. Here then was their god-given mission, though he knew his own destiny lay elsewhere.

‘Rank indeed,’ snarled Vandus as he turned away to speak to his men. ‘But there is worse below…’ He gestured for Dacanthos and Sagus to join him at the cliff edge, certain those below them would not notice three figures watching from on high.

Sagus’s gauntlets cracked loudly as he clenched the haft of his hammer, and when the Retributor spoke it was with barely restrained anger.

‘Wretched filth… I would see them seared from this land, scraped away like dirt from a boot.’

Dacanthos had no words. He merely stared through the lifeless eyes of his mask, his body trembling with righteous anger.

Far below in a smoke-choked basin of tar-black rock, shawled by drifts of ash and snow, were mortal followers of Khorne known as the Bloodbound.

Hordes of the warriors had gathered to rest, after a long march. A great fire burned, spilling a column of smoke that almost reached the promontory where the Stormcasts were watching. Garbed in spiked leather and furs matted with dried blood, the tribesmen left their arms and torsos exposed. These Vandus and his men had come to know as bloodreavers. The lesser of the vast and mighty Goretide, they were nonetheless brawny and muscular fighters. What they lacked in skill, they made up for in aggression and devotion to Khorne.

Bellowing and fighting, they revelled around the fire. Long shadows cast by their bodies contorted in the fell light, transformed into an echo of what they might become should they live long and worship with enough devotion. A bloodreaver’s altar was the battlefield, his offerings slaughter and death.

They were a rabble, but a dangerous one. Their blades were thick and sharp, notched by battle and stained black with the blood of innocents. But of late they had grown arrogant and complacent.

‘When do we bring the storm’s wrath, my Lord-Celestant?’ Dacanthos said at last.

‘Soon,’ said Vandus, half-turning as he felt the presence of eyes upon them. ‘After I have consulted with our Lord-Relictor.’

All three warriors turned as one to face Ionus Cryptborn. The Lord-Relictor emerged from the shadows, as if he were a part of them and they him. Morbidity clung to Ionus like a curse, and his skull-helmed visage gave him a grim aspect that was entirely in keeping with his demeanour.

Ionus gave a shallow bow, disturbing the oath scrolls attached to his golden war-plate. He rasped, his voice like the last stirrings of a disquiet spirit.

‘I crave your ear, Lord Hammerhand.’

Hanging his tempestos hammer, Heldensen, on his belt, Vandus nodded at the other two warriors, who departed with muttered reverence to the relic-keeper.

Only once they were gone, back down to the plateau where the army mustered, did Vandus speak further.

‘I shall not be dissuaded, Ionus,’ he warned.

‘You have spoken to me of the Red Pyramid of skulls, and I now understand that is not something you can ignore,’ said Ionus, slowly taking off his helm to reveal a gaunt, sinister-looking face. ‘I only wish our paths were conjoined. That you, like I, were headed to the brass towers as Sigmar has ordered.’

There was rebuke in Ionus’s tone, regret that they would be parted for the battles to come. It sat ill with him, but his Lord-Celestant had fixed his gaze on thwarting Korghos Khul and destroying the dread Gate of Wrath.

‘But I know your purpose is unwavering, my friend,’ Ionus concluded.

Vandus nodded. He was smiling as he turned towards Ionus and removed his war-helm, holding it in the crook of his arm. In sharp contrast to the Lord-Relictor, Vandus had a noble face and the clean, chiselled features often represented in the statues of heroes. Those monuments to old glories, to an age torn down, were gone but Vandus would see them rise again. He extended a hand to Ionus.

‘Fate shall see us together again, brother.’

The corners of the Lord-Relictor’s mouth only curved up a little, but he clasped his Lord-Celestant’s forearm in the manner of warriors.

‘Aye. The tower shall fall and I’ll make for your brotherhood. United, we shall triumph against any fell beings who claim lordship over these lands. The domination of Chaos is at an end.’

Vandus’s good humour faded, as he was reminded of what he had seen and the desperate battle they had fought and won at the Gate of Azyr.

‘It is possible he survived?’ Vandus asked.

‘Khul?’

‘Who else?’

‘He lives.’

Vandus raised an eyebrow. ‘You sound certain, brother.’

‘It is a feeling. Nothing more.’

Vandus caught an inkling that it was much more, but kept his silence for now. The ways of the Relictor were veiled to him, and perhaps that was for the best. But if Khul did yet live, as Ionus professed, then that meant the vision could still be proven true.

Vandus’s head, cut off and brandished aloft by Khul, exulting as he capped his dread pyramid.

‘I saw my own demise, Ionus,’ said Vandus, after a moment.

‘The vision we spoke of, the one that is leading you to the Red Pyramid?’

Vandus nodded.

‘And you would still step into Khul’s domain, knowing it means your death?’

‘I would.’

Ionus frowned. ‘But why? Unless you believe you can defy prophecy.’

‘Have you not said before that we are architects of our own destiny?’

Ionus gave a curt laugh. ‘I say a great many things, but not all are intended to be heeded on face value alone.’

‘I follow this path because I must, my friend. If I do not stop Khul then who else will?’

‘And if you challenge him, you may end up fulfilling his prophecy for him.’

‘Then that is a chance I have to take.’

Ionus regarded the Lord-Celestant for a moment, and not for the first time was reminded why Sigmar chose Vandus to be the vanguard of his storm.

‘Yes, I believe it is. Still, I hope he does not kill you, Vandus.’

It was meant in humour, but Vandus grew serious.

‘Are we truly immortal? If fated to die, can we?’

‘We are as immortal as Sigmar’s will, but even the God-King does not always get his way.’ Ionus gestured to the Bloodbound they had come to vanquish, then to the land beyond and all its perfidy both seen and unseen.

They stared at the revelling hordes below, and after a brief silence had passed Ionus said, ‘They think they are the death of these lands. They think they have already won.’

Vandus laughed. ‘They are not death, brother. We are death.’

He slammed his helm back on, demonstrably belligerent, and turned at last to the Lord-Relictor. ‘And it’s past time that we dealt our gift to those heathens beneath us.’

He raised Heldensen aloft, so the warriors amassing on the plateau would see it, and cried out in a clarion voice. ‘Stormcasts, to arms! This night, we mete out death and Sigmar’s judgement!’

A great cheer rose up from the golden throng, loud enough that the hordes below heard it. Some of the wretched tribesmen began to look up at the Stormcasts who now emerged above them, others scrambled for blades, a few even began barking orders.

‘Vermin,’ snarled Vandus, as he felt the armoured tread of an entire chamber of Hammers of Sigmar gather at his back. Ionus was at his side, skull-faced once more. It would be their last battle together for a while. If Sigmar willed it, their paths would cross again.

‘Scurry all you like, it will avail you nothing.’

Heldensen flashed like a golden flame against the darkness. This time, more than a thousand hammers joined it in salute.

Ionus roared, unable to hold his righteous fury at bay a moment longer.

‘Smite them and cleanse this land!’

And the storm descended on burnished wings and in a crushing tide of gold.

Click here to buy The Realmgate Wars: Volume 1.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Neil Roberts.

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ISBN: 978-1-78030-777-0

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