The forces of Da Maw Dat Walkz batter at the gates of Grung Esik, all the while attempting to escalade the walls. Orruks roar, Ogors bellow and Grots shriek, while their undead allies either fight on in silence or wail and cackle. Monstrous weapons hack into Amasya’s defenders, accompanied by bursts of magic that either unleash terrible violence or turn fallen allies into traitors, fuelled by necromantic power.
To lieutenant Gandayo of Amasya’s Average, it is a nightmare that never ends.
“Repel climbers!” he calls desperately out, surging over to where the next set of ladders dock. He knows that it’s useless; what soldiers he has left have already seen the threat, and his orders won’t magically summon more. If he had that power he’d have already called for an entire Stormhost or two, and a Cogfort to feel safe in.
As it is, he has only a little less than a hundred volunteers, well-equipped only by virture of having scavenged weapons and armour from their fallen comrades. Some are trained, but most are amateurs with some experience under their belts at best.
And Gandayo is the one in command of this sorry crew. An Ironweld civil engineer turned officer by shining epaulettes, a gilded breastplate and a plumed helmet. He had hoped that his and his unit’s inexperience would have meant that they’d been given a safe posting, something that would free up better warriors for the front lines.
But there are not enough better warriors, and Dave’s Average are needed to plug gaps in the defence. Now, as Gandayo hacks wildly at the thin, fanged head poking over parapet, his hopes are reduced to simply surviving another hour.
The Average weren’t fast enough to keep the assaulting ghouls from mounting the wall, and a small pocket is formed where they get a foothold. The volunteers’ one advantage of a wall negated, the ghouls begin tearing into them with inhuman ferocity, and the pocket widens.
Gandayo finds himself screaming and flailing at a monstrously huge ghoul wielding a bone like a club. To his horror what blows the ghoul doesn’t block inflict wounds that heal quickly. If anything, the monster seems more amused than hurt, as it prepares a blow Gandayo knows he has neither the strength to parry nor the skill to dodge.
Before the blow can land, a flash of energy flies over Gandayo’s shoulder and hits the ghoul in the head, pitching it backwards. More bolts, some coming single, powerful shots, others rapid volleys, scythe into the ghouls, cutting them down with miraculous accuracy that leaves the Average unhurt.
Gandayo releases a breath, giving a prayer of thanks to Sigmar that the Stormcast fight with Amasya.
The volleys cease as quickly as they came, however, as other threats draw the Vanguard-Raptors’ attentions. The ghouls try to rally, but this time the Average have the momentum.
That is, until a greasy feeling shrouds Gandayo’s skin.
Magic!
A thin hand grasps the ladder behind the ghouls, pulling up a man who looks to have one foot in the grave already. His vitality seems propelled solely by the madness dancing in his eyes. Cackling, he drops behind the ghouls and begins chanting.
“Stop him!” Gandayo calls out, trying to fight his way through the ghouls. “Stop him before he-“
Too late. The mage raises his cracked nails up to the sky, intoning the last syllable of a spell Gandayo recognised and dreaded from his briefings.
The Purple Sun.
It had been a suicide mission all this time.
Gandayo screams for his Average to retreat, already knowing that they’re too close to escape. As the amethyst light expands in the mage’s hands, Gandayo finds that his last regret isn’t that he’d never asked the Wanderer Yttime back in Hammerhal Aqsha to go on a date, or even that he hadn’t gotten the opportunity to tell Dave to shove his preaching of the power of the ordinary people’s spirit where Hysh doesn’t shine. It’s that he never got the chance to try the duardin khuri sold out the small shop at the end of his street, no matter how many times he’d passed it and smelled its aroma.
Just as that thought flashes through his mind, the mage suddenly squawks and goes cross-eyed, then erupts into a pillar of dark flame. The fire parts, and Gandayo was only spared the vistas of hellish insanity by a daemon blocking his vision, a horrible, pudgy thing with limbs that waved unnaturally, and a maw that didn’t open and close so much as it did change dimensions.
The Blue Horror screeches and leaps through the portal, hands already afire with sorcery, but before it could even touch the ground a light pierces the portal. It burns the daemon and the ghouls where it touches them, provoking terrible shrieks of pain, but where it falls upon the Average it healed wounds and renewed their courage.
The daemon’s agony is ended when a huge, dark form steps out of the portal and cuts it in half with a sword as tall as Gandayo. Two Brimstone Horrors briefly manifest from its corpse, before with screeches they fizzle out under the intensity of the light held in the giant’s hand.
In a few brief seconds, the ghouls share the daemon’s fate.
The giant stands before Gandayo, the light obscuring its form. He raises a hand to block out the light, trying to decipher their identity.
“S-Sigmar?” He hazards.
“No.” The giant responds.
The light in her hand dies down enough to reveal it issuing from a lantern. As Gandayo’s eyes adjust, he sees a massive Stormcast, one black-armoured instead of bearing the gold armour of his immediate allies. A greatsword is held in one hand, and he briefly wonders at the strength of the Stormcast to be able to carry it, let alone wield it in battle.
“I’m just a soldier, just like yourself.” She interrupts his thoughts.
Gandayo gapes at her, then swallows.
“As you insist.” He weakly mutters.
She turns to look back at Amasya.
“This is a Free City?”
Gandayo nods. She turns around to look at the horde beyond the walls.”
And they would destroy it?”
“They do.”
She nods to herself, then hefts her blade to a shoulder.
“Then that is all I need to know. I shall fight alongside you.”
She looks down at Gandayo. Despite the violence contained in her body and the circumstances of her arrival, he feels oddly reassured just listening to her voice. Without making the promise aloud, she makes him feel that everything could turn out alright.
“What do you need from me?”
Gandayo stares up at the giant, completely at a loss. The last thought he had before her arrival occurs to him, and he murmurs it aloud before he can stop himself;
“Khuri.”
The Stormcast tilts her head, curious.
“I can make some after the battle.” she says. To Gandayo, she seems a little amused.
Before he can respond, a voice shouts from further along the wall to spare him from his embarrassment;
“I know that sigil anywhere!”
He turns to see one of the Vanguard-Raptors racing down the wall, throwing down his bow as he runs. He roars and leaps to tackle the new arrival, and for a brief second Gandayo fears that they’re about to fight.
That impression is reversed when the Star-Beckoner begins to laugh as his arms wrap around her.
“Blackhammer! Only one of you would be boneheaded enough to use the Realm of Chaos to get here!”
“And only a Star-Beckoner would be careless enough to embrace a friend in the middle of a battle.” The giant replies, but she hugs him back regardless.
“Sigmar above, I forgot how cold you lot could get!”
Still roaring with laughter, the Star-Beckoner relinquishes his hold on the Stormcast and backs away a step.
“A Blackhammer, here! Karjeon’s going to dance when he gets back! We’ll throw a feast! Da Maw Dat Walkz doesn’t know what’s going to hit her!”
The Blackhammer reaches out to place a hand on the Raptor’s shoulder, as if to physically still his giddy excitement.
“I wish I could linger after the battle, but I’ll have to leave again.”
“It’ll be for an important reason, at least?” The Raptor asks, refusing to let his joy be marred. The Blackhammer nods in response.
“I’d tell you, but you’d insist on joining me, and you will be needed elsewhere.”
“Fine! Keep your secrets. We’ll just sneak after you.”
The Raptor scoops up his bow. When he stands back up straight again, his mirth is more subdued, though his joy shines as brightly as ever. He taps his chest, then offers out his arm.
“We’ll share one battle, at least.”
The Blackhammer returns the salute and takes his arm, holding it in a warrior’s bond.
“It will be my pleasure.”
With one last nod of farewell, the Raptor turns to rejoin his retinue, calling out the happy news to them.
Gandayo’s attention returns to the Blackhammer as she looks back down at him.
“Now, where am I needed?”
“Everywhere.” The lieutenant replies frankly. He waves a hand, encompassing his Average.
“We can’t hold the walls and the gates. There’s not enough of us, we’ll be spread too thin.”
The Blackhammer nods, then looks down at the gates, rocking under the blows of the army behind it. She seems to make an internal calculation, then starts heading towards the stairs.
“Then hold the walls.”
“Where are you going?” Gandayo calls after her.
The Blackhammer descends down the stairs, taking them three at a time with ease.
“To hold the gates.”
Gandayo gasps.
“By yourself?”
She places herself behind the gates, blade held at the ready. Her lantern begins to glow more fiercely, making Gandayo’s eyes water.
“Yes.”
The gates shake, and a splinter flies off it to embed itself in the earth near the Blackhammer’s foot. She doesn’t seem to notice it, her attention solely fixed on the faces leering out through the breach.
“Let others fear death,” She intones, as another rent is carved into the wood. With one last groaning shudder, the gates explode inwards, and the horde charges in.
“For I walk in Blackhammer’s footsteps.” The Blackhammer finishes, leaping forward with blade flashing and a star’s light in her hand.
Another assault on the walls takes Gandayo’s attention away from her. He turns back to his own private battle, though he can still hear the carnage being wreaked below him.
It sounds like she’s winning.
Despite the crushing despair of the last few days, the overwhelming force arrayed against Amasya… Gandayo begins to feel hope that they will prevail.
“Amasya Stands!” he calls out, and as the warcry is picked up by his fellow defenders, he starts to believe it.
