‘What is this, what’s going on?’ Calys asked. She had retained her footing, but only just. ‘Is this normal?’ The chamber was shaking, as if it had been caught in the grip of ague. Pillars cracked and crumbled, and the web of chains clattered below.
Pharus snarled in frustration. ‘No. It’s an adventure every day down here.’ He thrust the ferrule of his halberd against the floor, bracing himself. He saw priests scrambling for safety, and heard the cries of those still caught among the chains in the abyss. He thought of Elya and felt a moment of fear for the child. Briefly, he considered sending someone to search for her, but pushed the thought aside. He had a duty to protect the catacombs, and what lay within. Elya would have to look after herself. At least for the moment.
From somewhere within the labyrinth, funerary bells began to ring, sounding the alarm. He held up a hand. ‘Listen – the bells.’ Each of the twelve major thoroughfares in the catacombs had its own set of bells, with their own particular tone, high up in a reinforced tower. When a thoroughfare came under threat, the bells would be rung by the priests stationed there, summoning aid from the rest of the catacombs.
Some were silvery temple bells, while others were great, brass monsters, looted from ruined citadels. All of them were ringing now, thanks to the shock waves tearing through the catacombs, but only one set was doing so with purpose – a ponderous sound, like the thunder of inevitability. ‘The Black Bells of Aarnz.’
‘The what?’
‘This way. Along the Avenue of Souls.’ He started in the direction of the bells, Grip at his heels. As he strode out of the chamber, navigating against the convulsions, he gestured to nearby priests. ‘All of you – get to safety. Let the chains look after themselves. Go!’ The mortals streamed away, the able-bodied helping the wounded. Calys hurried in his wake.
‘My cohort,’ she began. They passed fallen stones, and Pharus saw broken, ash-smudged limbs sticking out from under piles of debris. Groups of priests worked frantically to free those who might be trapped, and Pharus was forced to send them on their way with gestures and curses. Anyone caught under those rocks was dead, or soon would be. He heard screams, echoing up from distant tunnels, and the crash of stones.
‘Your cohort will already be heading in that direction, if they have any sense.’ He glanced at her. ‘Can you taste it? The air has gone sour.’ Chunks of loose stone pattered against his war-plate. It felt as if the catacombs were collapsing in on themselves. For a brief instant, he had an image of them being buried under tonnes of mouldering stone, like the mortal priests. He shook it aside.
The Avenue of Souls ran along the northern rim of the abyss, beneath an uneven archway of hundreds of stone buttresses, illuminated by innumerable flickering candles. The buttresses had been fashioned at Pharus’ request by the craftsmen of the Riven Clans – duardin, long dispossessed of their ancient homelands, who had come to Shyish seeking new ones. In Glymmsforge, they had found such a place.
The ramparts held back an unmoving mass of tombs and mausoleums, piled atop one another in untidy fashion. Once, they had lined the slope in neat rows, with great steps and porticos to connect one row to the next. But time and disaster had rendered them into a morass of stone, held from complete collapse only by the duardin-crafted ramparts.
A mausoleum broke loose from its perch and tumbled down the slope, smashing aside smaller vaults in its plunge, before finally crashing into a buttress and collapsing it. An avalanche of broken stone swept dangerously close and spilled across the pathway, momentarily obscuring everything in a grey haze of dust. Coughing, Pharus waved a hand, trying to clear the air. His eyes narrowed as he noticed motes of purple light dancing through the cloud. ‘Oh, no.’
‘What?’ Calys coughed.
‘The air – feel it? It’s…’
Grip snarled a warning. Pharus, acting on instinct, swept his halberd out. A decaying corpse slumped back, minus its head. More bodies stumbled out of the dust, reaching for the two Stormcasts with crumbling fingers. They were wrapped in burial shrouds, their mouths sewn shut and their eyes hidden behind folds of cloth. None of this seemed to hamper them, however. They pressed close, in eerie silence. Purple sparks danced across their juddering limbs and through the rents in their decaying flesh.
Grip darted forwards, beak snapping shut on a desiccated leg. The gryph-hound jerked the deadwalker off its feet and began to drag it away. Calys swung her shield into position as a corpse lunged towards her. Her warblade snipped out, removing the groping hands at the wrists. Pharus watched her fight, analysing her technique even as he swept his halberd out in a wide arc. The way a warrior fought was as good a look into their soul as any.
Calys fought like a miser. No movement wasted, every twist of her blade a thing of precision. She created a cage of steel about herself, and then expanded or contracted that cage depending on the needs of the moment. It spoke to a certain efficiency.
A corpse floundered against him, broken fingers scrabbling at his chest-plate. He swept it aside and smashed it from its feet. More of them staggered out of the dust, twitching as the magics that animated them flared and pulsed, out of control. The ground shuddered beneath his feet. There was a sound like thunder, tolling up from below. He could hear screaming as well, and shouts.
More bells had begun to ring throughout the catacombs, as his warriors reacted to the threat. Pharus had devised a number of stratagems and drilled his warriors in them. The order in which the bells rang would tell them what to do, where to go. But never before had so many bells rung – and never all at once.
The dust grew thick on the air, coating his war-plate. He lost sight of Calys for a moment, as the cloud roiled. He felt the ground shake as another pillar fell. The ground shuddered so wildly he barely kept his feet. Stone ruptured and chains burst. Spectral faces congealed in the dust, only to dissipate moments later. He saw Grip drag another walking corpse to the ground as he spun his halberd in a tight circle, momentarily casting the deadwalkers back. There seemed to be hundreds of them, pressing in from all sides.
Calys fell back towards him. ‘We’re cut off. Nowhere to go.’
‘Then we hold what we have,’ Pharus said. He considered unhooking his warding lantern, but dismissed the thought. Its holy light would have little effect on the dead. Better to deal with them the old-fashioned way – brute force. He thrust his halberd forwards, crunching it into a deadwalker’s chest. He heaved the twitching carcass up and hurled it into its fellows, knocking several of them to the ground. But more pressed in.
The air parted suddenly, as something fast and bright pierced the gloom. A sizzling arrow punched through a corpse’s skull, spinning it around and casting it to the ground. More arrows followed the first, plucking the dead from their feet. The dust tore like cloth as Stormcasts charged through, falling upon the deadwalkers like wolves.
A trio of Retributors forced their way through the press, their lightning hammers casting broken corpses from their path. Liberators and Judicators advanced slowly in their wake, finishing off any deadwalker that managed to avoid the crackling arcs of the Retributors’ hammers. Pharus recognised the warrior in the lead – Briaeus, Retributor-Prime.
He was clad in the heavy bastion armour of his conclave, decorated with tokens of death and good fortune. He swung and spun his hammer with graceful ease, wielding it like an artist might wield a brush.
He called out to Pharus as he smashed a quartet of corpses to the ground. ‘Ho, lord-castellant, are you in need of aid?’ One of the deadwalkers hauled itself erect, and he caught it up by the neck, as if it weighed nothing.