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Sacrosanct & Other Stories – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter one

Thunder rolled above the vast forest, shaking needles from the ancient pines. Birds took wing, screeching in fright as they rose into the clouds. They wheeled away from the great stream of lightning that crackled through the air. With the storm to spawn it, a bolt struck earthwards and crashed amongst the trees with a deafening roar. A great pillar of smoke and dust was thrown into the sky, rocks and splinters pelting the ground miles from where the lightning struck.

A vast swathe had been gouged from the forest, the ground blackened and the trees knocked flat for a hundred yards in every direction, as though a titan’s paw had pressed down upon them. Thick and dark with earth, the pall caused by the impact billowed outwards, throwing a gritty fog across the woods.

Figures moved in that fog, striding from the very midst of the devastation. In such daylight as pierced the smoke, they became more than indistinct shadows. Hulking men clad in armour of gold and blue. Their countenances were hidden behind crested helms with glowering masks. Upon their shields they bore an emblem: a twin-tailed comet, the divine symbol of the God-King, an announcement to all who beheld them that here were Sigmar’s mightiest warriors – the Stormcast Eternals.

Reaching to his helm, one of the Stormcasts removed the mask he wore. The countenance locked behind the sigmarite metal was revealed as handsome and cultured. His black beard had a rakish cut and his dark hair was tied back in a plaited braid. There was a severity about the set of his jaw and a troubled cast to his pale grey eyes. With a flourish, the warrior swept his sapphire-hued cloak across his back and knelt upon the ground. His mailed fist reached to the earth, seized a handful of soil and brought it up to his nose. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

A tall Stormcast approached the warrior smelling his handful of earth. ‘Something is amiss, Knight-Incantor?’

Knight-Incantor Arnhault of the Hammers of Sigmar opened his eyes and stared at his interrogator. ‘No, Penthius,’ he replied. ‘We have indeed descended upon the realm of Ghur. The earth carries the smell of its magic.’

The Sequitor-Prime, Penthius, merely bowed his head. Arnhault was far more versed in the strange laws that governed the storm of magic and its disparate winds. Each of the Mortal Realms was governed by those winds, drawing more heavily from one than all the others combined to define its shape. ‘Have you any way of knowing how far we might be from our objective?’

Arnhault let the soil sift through his fingers. There was a faint suggestion of a smile on his face. ‘There is a familiar quality to its aura. Something that tells me we are not so very far from where we need to be.’

‘Then I shall call your command together,’ Penthius said. ‘The sooner they are assembled and organised the more–’ He cut his words short and stifled a colourful oath. Through the dissipating fog, gold-and-blue-armoured warriors bearing hefty greatbows dispersed between the trees. ‘Nerio,’ he grumbled. ‘Already he breaks with protocol and indulges his whims.’

‘The Castigator-Prime would call it instinct,’ Arnhault reminded Penthius. ‘There is more to strategy than the strictures laid down in tome and treatise. There are times when it is prudent to attend to what one feels rather than what one knows.’

Penthius shook his head. ‘Instinct attends to but one possibility while doctrine seeks a plan flexible enough to confront many possibilities. Nerio’s Castigators will be exposed the way he has deployed them. They will not have my Sequitors to guard them. We should adopt a block formation with the–’

Penthius’ speech fell into an abrupt silence. Through the forest, a great rumbling could be heard. It took some moments before the noise became distinct enough to be discerned: the cracking of tree trunks and the crash of mighty boles against the earth. There were great pounding impacts as well, as though an avalanche were rolling through the woods.

One of the Castigators, his helm adorned with a great spiked halo, shouted from the periphery of the clearing. ‘Knight-Incantor! Something approaches our position!’

‘Pull your warriors back, Nerio!’ Penthius shouted. ‘If there is an enemy come to oppose us, my Sequitors will unleash Sigmar’s storm with hammer and shield while your Castigators put a volley into them.’

‘Keep your warriors where they are, Nerio,’ Arnhault countermanded. ‘There is no time to redeploy. We must face the foe from the ground on which we stand.’

The rumbling in the forest was growing louder and seemed to have gathered impetus. The crack and crash of trees was ever more rapid. Now there could be felt tremors that shivered through the ground each time the pounding impacts slammed home. Arnhault knew what it meant, the terrible regularity of those impacts. They were the footfalls of some horrendously immense creature.

‘Hammers of Sigmar! Brothers! Whatever comes, it will not stand between us and our duty to the God-King!’ Arnhault raised his staff of office, letting its runes catch the fitful light drifting through the fog. At the sight of the Knight-Incantor’s staff, a thundering war cry issued forth from the Stormcasts. ‘Glory to the Heldenhammer!’

The defiant shouts of the Stormcasts enraged whatever moved through the forest. The violent charge picked up yet more speed. The tremors shaking the ground became a steady shudder. Trees leapt upwards as they were ripped from their roots and thrown into the sky. A heavy, musky stink spilled down into the clearing and caused such small animals as remained in their holes after the stormstrike to flee deeper into the forest.

Trees bordering the clearing were knocked asunder, crashing groundwards and forcing several of the Castigators to scramble from their path. In a spray of splinters and pine needles, a colossal shape emerged from the forest.

Towering over the Stormcasts and even many of the trees, the creature was covered in thick, shaggy black fur that was matted into twisted tangles and clotted with dried gore. Each of its four pillar-like legs was covered in a pebbly crimson skin, and its feet were broad pads with thick, plate-like toes. It had a large hump behind its short, thick neck – a slab of fatty tissue that was almost bald at its very top. The head of the creature was long and broad, with a wide mouth and enormous ebony tusks that curled back upon themselves. Its eyes were small and sharp, clouded with a scarlet sheen of frenzied fury. From the front of its face, a long snake-like trunk sagged and swayed – at least until its beady eyes sighted Knight-Incantor Arnhault. Then the creature reared up on its hind legs and raised its trunk to the sky. A deafening trumpet sounded from the mammoth, and when its tremendous bulk slammed back down onto all four legs, the tremor was such that Arnhault could feel it pulse through his bones.

He could also sense the malign energies that exuded from the creature. It was at once more and less than a mere beast of Ghur. The corrupt touch of Chaos was upon it, twisting it in both body and spirit. Arnhault felt its pain – the mammoth was wracked by the torment of isolation and consumed by a fratricidal madness that had caused it to slaughter its own herd. The bloodlust of Khorne ran through its gigantic frame, manifesting outwardly in spiky knobs of bone that protruded from its shaggy pelt. When the beast trumpeted a second time he detected a belligerence beyond that of a simple animal, rather the fury of a thing lost and damned.

Anger pulsed through Arnhault’s veins – not the blind fury of Chaos but the righteous indignation of Sigmar. In his mind’s eye he saw an image of what the mammoth should have been, a vision of the magnificent creature before it had been corrupted. Memories flickered before him of great herds of shaggy giants striding across autumnal plains, lending their mighty strength to the last harvest of the inhabitants in return for bushels of fruits and bundles of spring sweet grass. Those mammoths had been wise and gentle, far removed from the crazed beast that now opposed the Stormcasts.

‘I will end this torment,’ Arnhault vowed, staring into the beast’s red eyes. He raised his staff, drawing upon the magic of the storm.

The mammoth bellowed once more and charged towards the Knight-Incantor. The instant it started to move, the Castigators arrayed around it began to shoot. The bulky thunderhead greatbows roared as they loosed a deadly barrage into the immense beast. Mace-like quarrels slammed into the shaggy hide, their crystalline heads exploding in bursts of celestial energy. The condensed breath of Stardrakes was sent crackling across the mammoth’s body, searing its fur and scalding its skin. In a heartbeat, the bulky feeder atop each greatbow set another mace into place and the Castigators sent another volley into the raging beast.

A nimbus of light flared from Arnhault’s staff as he swept it towards the mammoth. Flung from its head, the light expanded to become a withering wind, hot as the stars and cold as the void. The stellar storm swept across the charging beast, and in that arcane gale its shaggy pelt was peeled back, ripped from its hide in ragged clumps and gory strips. The denuded skin beneath was scarred and wet with blood, pockmarked with the malignant mutations of Chaos. Obscene growths quivered and writhed with loathsome animation as the divine wind ravaged the beast.

The wind Arnhault had drawn down into his staff was enough to bring a gargant to its knees, but the ferocity of the mammoth was such that it thundered onwards, refusing to be bowed despite the magnitude of its injuries. The very gore that bubbled from its wounds gave the beast renewed strength, for the Blood God did not care overmuch from whence the blood flowed.

‘Sequitors! Shield and hammer!’ Penthius’ commanding tone rang out across the clearing. At a run, a dozen warriors stood between the mammoth and Arnhault. Swinging their broad shields before them as the beast pounded forwards, the Sequitors raised their stormsmite mauls. Blue energy crackled about the head of each weapon, an aura of power drawn from the very essence of Azyr, the God-King’s realm. Before the mammoth reached their line, that blue glow was drawn away from the hammers, passing instead into the gilded faces of their soulshields.

When the mammoth struck the line of Sequitors, a titanic shudder swept across the clearing and knocked branches from the outlying trees. Coruscant energies flittered through the air, crackling away in a dazzling display of power. Incredibly, the Sequitors held their ground, their line unbroken. Before them, the giant beast stood swaying from side to side, stunned by the calamitous impact of its charging bulk upon the nigh-impenetrable bulwark of the soulshields.

‘Castigators! Loose!’ Nerio raised his own greatbow and sent thunderhead maces exploding against the mammoth’s flanks. Again the condensed Stardrake’s breath was sent searing across the beast’s mutated frame.

‘Hammer and shield!’ Penthius shouted to his own warriors. With the command, the glow left the soulshields and once more infused the heavy mauls the Sequitors bore. As arcane energy crackled about their weapons, the Stormcasts brought them crashing against the mammoth’s pillar-like legs and tusked head. Flesh sizzled under their blows. Teeth were shattered in the beast’s jaw. Blood turned to steam as it spurted across the glowing hammers.

Yet still the mammoth did not fall. Trumpeting its rage, its trunk coiled around one of the Sequitors. With acute awareness, the beast chose Penthius for its victim, pulling the Sequitor-Prime from the very midst of his Stormcasts. It lifted him into the air, his sigmarite armour creaking as the creature’s trunk curled itself into a crushing grip.

Before the mammoth could destroy its captive, a thunderhead mace exploded against its trunk. Nerio, alerted to Penthius’ danger, sent the shot slamming into the base of the extremity with unerring accuracy, the missile streaking past the curl of the tusks to detonate against the beast’s face. A great mass of flesh and sinew was blasted away by the concentrated Stardrake’s breath. All animation fled from the mammoth’s trunk as it sagged limply against the ground. Penthius rolled clear of the lifeless coils and brought his maul cracking against one of the tusks. A jagged crack rippled through the ivory, and the mammoth reared back in shock.

‘It is time to end your torture,’ Arnhault intoned. For all that the mammoth was a crazed and corrupt beast of Chaos, he could not feel anything but regret for the pain his retinue had inflicted upon it. The most merciful thing that could be extended to the beast was the oblivion of a swift death. His voice dipped into a low cadence, invoking the spells of the Sacrosanct Chamber and the lore of High Azyr. A different light gathered about the staff he bore, a pearlescent glow that rippled with celestial power.

‘Spirits of storm and sky, let your wrath flow through me.’ Arnhault gestured with his staff and the glow leapt from its length, stretching out to become a flash of lightning. The unleashed energy struck against the mammoth’s forehead, searing a black hole into its skull. The beast reared up, one foreleg kicking at the air, and then it came crashing down. The impact of its fall sent a shudder through the forest.

Smoke rose from the hole Arnhault’s magic had burned into the mammoth’s head, yet still the beast clung stubbornly to life. Its eyes retained a berserk fury as they focused upon the Knight-Incantor. Arnhault shook his head. He could not hate this beast any more than he could hate a rabid dog. It was a sick and maddened thing, a creature that had to be destroyed out of necessity. It was pity, not ire, that caused him to turn towards the Sequitors. ‘Orthan,’ he called out. ‘Deliver Sigmar’s rest.’

From amidst the ranks of the Sequitors a lone warrior marched forwards. Though armoured in the gold and blue of his brothers, Orthan had forsaken the maul and shield they bore. Instead he carried an immense mace, a weapon with a haft as long as the Stormcast was tall. The head of the weapon was a black bludgeon of enchanted sigmarite through which flickers of divine power flashed. Runes and sigils extolling the might of the God-King were etched across the dark surface and about its neck was a band of purest gold adorned with the emblem of the Hammer, holy Ghal Maraz itself.

Orthan advanced upon the fallen mammoth and halted beside the beast’s smouldering head. ‘For Sigmar!’ the Sequitor howled as he lifted the stormsmite greatmace upwards. The flickers of divine power became a halo of might, suffusing the weapon and the warrior who held it. In a single stroke, Orthan brought the bludgeon crashing downwards. As its smashed into the mammoth’s skull, pebbly flesh thick as a man’s palm evaporated, inches of skull reduced to crackling cinders. An instant only, and the mammoth’s head was reduced to ash. The beast’s enormous frame quivered in a final spasm of pain and then was still.

While Orthan visited death upon the mammoth, Arnhault drew a silver vial from a pouch on his belt. An arcane song of eternity whispered across his lips as he held the vessel towards the beast. The instant the creature’s life was driven from it, the magic he evoked reached out to the fleeing spirit. He could feel the Chaos contamination drifting apart from the core of the beast’s essence, and it was this essence that his spell ensnared. With fingers of aetheric force, Arnhault’s magic drew the mammoth’s spirit down into the vial, pouring it into the tiny vessel until it was filled with the boiling energies of the vanquished giant. Only when he was certain he had drawn all that remained uncorrupted did Arnhault bring his song to an end. For a moment he could actually see the dark belligerence of Chaos lingering above the mammoth’s carcass. Then it began to fade, seeping back into the cursed regions from whence it had come.

Arnhault stared at the vial for a moment and then quickly pressed a sigmarite stopper into the neck of the vessel. A powerful rune fashioned by duardin demi-gods adorned the underside of the stopper, forming a barrier no spirit could penetrate.

Castigator-Prime Nerio approached Arnhault as he returned the vial to the pouch on his belt. ‘Forgive my impertinence, Knight-Incantor, but is it wise to try to trap such a spirit?’

Arnhault tapped his fingers against the pouch. ‘For all the enormity of its flesh, the beast’s spirit is a simple thing. Were it otherwise the taint of Chaos would have befouled it as completely as it defiled its body.’ He shook his head. ‘No, it is no reckless testing of my arts which you have beheld, merely a practical application of knowledge you too may prove worthy to learn.’

‘Nerio would first need to learn how to confine himself to the structure of his lessons.’ Penthius walked around the dead bulk of the mammoth to join his brothers. ‘I do not think it would be prudent to train an acolyte who insists on learning how to conjure magic before he knows how to safely dispel it.’

The Castigator-Prime rounded on Penthius. ‘A versatile mind understands the difference between recklessness and initiative.’

‘Yes,’ Penthius agreed. ‘A versatile mind does.’

Nerio patted the thunderhead greatbow slung over his shoulder. ‘If I were not versatile that beast would have twisted your armour into such a state that you would now pass for a marsh crab.’

‘If you had kept your archers in formation, we could have settled with the brute before it got to grips with anyone,’ Penthius growled back at him. ‘It is not for nothing that established procedures are observed. At least by a disciplined warrior.’

Arnhault interjected himself into what he knew would swell into bitter argument if allowed to escalate. Many times he had undertaken missions with Penthius and Nerio in his retinue, but never had he seen them agree upon anything when it came to tactics. Penthius was too hidebound and rigid, doggedly adhering to martial tradition. Nerio, by contrast, was impulsive and headstrong.

‘We will save the tactical discussion for a later time,’ Arnhault decreed. It was all he needed to say. If there was one thing Penthius and Nerio could agree upon, it was the depth of their loyalty to the Knight-Incantor. When Arnhault gave an order, it was obeyed instantly. The disagreement was forgotten until fresh provocation caused it to return.

Penthius turned towards the Knight-Incantor and bowed his head in deference to Arnhault’s rank. ‘Your knowledge of Ghur is formidable. Have you any awareness of this place? Do you know how near we may be to where our duty would take us?’

Arnhault’s eyes closed as he considered the questions posed to him. ‘We stand now in what was once the Wood of Gyr.’ He looked to the trees from whence the mammoth had emerged. ‘There is a crispness to the air in that direction, a trace of ice on the breeze. If we were to travel that way, we should find Frostmoor and its screaming glaciers. Long ago, it would have been a journey of many days’ march.’ Arnhault gestured to the pines that dominated the forest around them. ‘But I speak of when the Wood of Gyr was home to willow and palm. The land has changed. As the screaming glaciers crawl further from Frostmoor, they drive the beasts and plants of the taiga before them.’ He pointed his sigmarite staff at the mammoth’s carcass. ‘There was a time when these beasts were unknown in Gyr and rare in the Kingdom of Kharza.’

‘Kharza is near then?’ Nerio asked.

‘It is near enough,’ Arnhault supplied. ‘The royal house of Kharza would ride to the Wood of Gyr to honour the Rites of Taal and hunt the golden boar with jade-tipped spears and sacred leopards trained to hunt no other prey. Their entourages would spend a fortnight travelling to the hunt and back.’ He swung around and nodded towards the trees to his right. ‘The journey will take us less time,’ he stated. ‘We are not encumbered by the regalia of royalty and the baggage of the hunt.’

‘For all that, we too are hunters,’ Nerio said. He reached to the quiver of crystal-headed maces that hung at his side.

‘We are not hunters,’ Penthius corrected him. ‘We are protectors. Our duty is not to simply track some wild brute to its lair. An appeal has been made and that prayer has been heard. We are come to save the faithful of Wyrmditt from the evil that besets them.’ He looked back to the mutated mammoth. ‘Evil far different to the beasts of Chaos, but no less deadly.’

Nerio shook his head. ‘It will not be enough to defend these people. We will have to root out this menace and destroy it utterly if we would bring them a lasting peace. Make no mistake, brother, we are hunters.’

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A Black Library Publication

‘A Dirge of Dust and Steel’ first published in the Black Library Events Anthology 2017/2018 in 2017.
‘The Old Ways’ first published digitally in 2017.
‘The Dance of the Skulls’ first published digitally in 2017.
‘Shiprats’ first published in the Black Library Events Anthology 2017/2018 in 2017.
‘Auction of Blood’ first published digitally in 2017.
‘The Sands of Grief’ first published digitally in 2018.
‘The Witch Takers’ first published digitally in 2017.
The Prisoner of the Black Sun first published as an audio drama in 2015.
Great Red first published as an audio drama in 2016.
‘Wrathspring’ first published digitally in 2018.
‘The Volturung Road’ first published digitally in 2017.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Lie Setiawan.

Sacrosanct & Other Stories © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Sacrosanct & Other Stories, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78030-891-3

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