The Hammer of War, Chapter 60

Name: Amir Azad
Title: War-Summoner
War Points: 0
STR – 88(300)
DEX – 80(300)
VIT – 202(300)
—

Hours later, the citadel sat in front of us like a problem that had waited a long time to be solved. Square towers. Low, thick walls. No banners. No decoration. No gates, either. Just a gap that looked torn open with hands and horns. The air coming out of that gap hit the throat like hot iron dust.

We’d bled the plain on the way here. The ground behind us was a long trail of dead that steamed and popped and wouldn’t stop stinking. Ninety thousand Hormagaunts had gone down to buy the road. They’d be back after the cooldown, but not in time for this. I had a hundred and ten thousand left. It was still a sea chitin and claws.

“Form the ring,” I said.

The swarm spread on the move. No sound from them but chitter and claw. Lines folded and refolded without confusion. Our heavies took the corners. Baneblade set into a shallow depression with the hull down. Exocrene crawled up the low broken ridge to our right and hunched there, vents glowing, mouth boiling. The Carnifexes paced like bulls on chains. The Nobz couldn’t stop grinning. The Carcharodons moved in a straight line to the breach and waited there like posts. The Custodian Guard stood in the center of the killing ground, spear grounded, helm tilted toward the torn gate. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. The Culexus drifted just far enough off my flank to keep everything that lived on warp-stuff irritated.

I let the [Blank] roll out and hold steady. Not high enough to choke my own swarm. Just enough to keep the air mean for anything born wrong.

“We’re going straight for the boss,” I said.

The citadel answered for itself. Something inside inhaled and then exhaled through its teeth. The sound shook dirt out of the tower stones and made a fine red dust cloud that drifted and clung. The gap at the front widened. A pressure came with it. The front ranks of my gaunts hissed and pressed closer together without me telling them to.

He stepped out.

Kuzgrath the Eternal Destroyer. That was the name the System fed me in a cold flicker across my vision. The thing that wore it walked on cloven feet that bit stone and left slag. Black-red hide. Brass armor hammered into plates that fit without comfort. It carried a two-handed axe with a head wide enough to take a car in one chop. A length of chain hung from its other hand, studded and slick. Its wings were torn along the edges from old fights. The horns were curved and massive, shaped like the horns of a ram. Its eyes found me past a hundred thousand bodies and didn’t blink.

It roared and the entire dungeon shook.

“Go,” I said.

The swarm went.

They hit the daemon from all sides. They ran up the broken walls and vaulted off the stone. They came in low under the swing of that axe. They leapt from rubble and from other gaunts. They climbed its legs. They sank their talons into the plates and the gaps between plates. The first hundred that reached the waist died too fast to understand what killed them, but the next thousand didn’t care and kept going. Claws raked first. Teeth took whatever the claws found.

Kuzgrath moved like a murderous mountain. One sweep of the axe sent a row of gaunts spinning. The chain smashed a knot of them into paste. Its hoof came down and crushed three at a time. It bent and tore and shook. It wrenched bodies off by handfuls and threw them into the towers. It turned in a half circle with the axe held out and made a line of dead ten bodies deep. It worked for every inch it got.

And still they climbed.

I kept the [Blank] steady and walked with the Squiggoth until I could see the boss clearly from the howdah’s rail. The Exitus Rifle stayed in the rack. No point in a headshot this early. The Baneblade’s main gun tracked and tracked and didn’t fire. Not yet. The Exocrene’s sacs bulged and dimmed as it dialed in. Patience.

Kuzgrath spread its wings and snapped them out hard. The wind off that move lifted dust and tossed corpses and shaved the first layer of gaunts off its back. Fifty feet around it went clear. It crouched, shoved off the ground, and tried to climb.

“Ground it,” I said.

The Exocrene vomited a line of green-white plasma that lit the side of the world. The first shot hit the daemon square in the chest. The armor took half of it and then failed. The second shot found the wing joint on the left and burned the membrane into a smoking hole. The third caught it under the jaw and turned a third of its teeth into bright chips. The Baneblade’s main gun fired on the same count. The shell hit the right wing at the humerus and snapped bone with a noise that came after the impact.

Kuzgrath fell. The fall cracked stone and pushed a ring of gaunts outward. They flowed back in before he’d finished the second breath.

“Again,” I said.

The Exocrene kept it up, measured, disciplined, punishing any attempt to spread those wings. The Baneblade fired shots across the torso and legs and didn’t waste ammunition on what didn’t matter yet. Sponsons scrubbed the yard around to keep space for the next volley. The lascannon scribed fresh seams in the plates. The heavy bolters cut down Bloodletters that tried to pour out of side slits to relieve their lord. The Stormtroopers took those slits under fire and kept them plugged.

Kuzgrath tried a different approach. It lowered the shoulders and charged straight through the closest tower, used the weight to rip free, then ran along the inner wall, pulling itself clear of the mass like a man coming out of a swamp. Gaunts held on. Claws cut deeper. Joints disappeared under living layers. He smashed through another tower. Stone rained. The inner wall split. He came out on the far side with a cloak of chitin and blood.

“Keep the pressure,” I said.

The swarm didn’t need the reminder. They rode its spine. They hung off the wing bones like ornaments. They packed the crooks of its elbows and the back of its knees, and every time it shook them loose, the ones below climbed into the gaps. The Hormagaunts weren’t brave. They weren’t stupid. They were hungry and they were mine. More and more filled the citadel interior until the floors looked like a living tide that reached the knee.

Kuzgrath planted the axe, braced with both hands, and spun himself on the haft. The move threw a circle of gaunts like a flail. He straightened, grabbed two by the torsos, and crushed them into one piece. He snapped his head forward and bit a third in half. He stamped and stamped and stamped. The impact juddered in my knees even where I stood. He lifted the axe high for a downward chop that would have taken out a Carnifex if it had been standing there.

“Anchor that arm,” I said.

The nearest twenty thousand gaunts went for the bicep and shoulder in a single intention. The swing came down off-angle and buried halfway in the floor. The jerk up stalled. The chain-hand tried to clear them. Ten thousand hands stuck. The weight of them made the movement a grind instead of a whip. Kuzgrath roared again and it wasn’t for pride this time.

He looked at me.

I watched his eyes narrow and understood that if he got a clear line he would come for me just to make the noise stop. That was fine. I wasn’t the fight today.

A horn blast carried from inside the citadel. Another wave of Bloodletters tried to pour out of a side corridor and immediately ran into a line of gray armor and chains. Carcharodons worked without chatter. One took the point by stepping into a narrow doorway so that only one enemy could swing at him at a time. The others cut right and left to keep his flanks clean. They stacked bodies fast enough to build a chest-high barricade. No emotion in it. No style either. They just did the work.

On the other side, the two Nobz had a different approach. They charged screaming into a knot of red and started chopping like they were in a butcher’s stall on payday. One of them used a Bloodletter as a club until it fell apart. The other ripped a plate the size of a door off a wall and began battering the nearest daemons with it while laughing loud enough to ride over gunfire.

The Carnifexes took the base of the wall, each one finding a footing in the broken stone and leaning in to keep the line from folding. The Exocrene repositioned on my cue and started hammering the inner courtyard wherever the boss tried to sprint. The Baneblade stayed steady and punished anything large enough to be worth the main gun.

Kuzgrath gathered himself and tried to fly again. The wings snapped wide and caught enough of a lift to clear the first ring of bodies. He took five heavy footfalls and sprinted into the citadel’s center yard. He ran at the far wall and leaped, aiming to grab the top and haul himself over.

“Now,” I said.

Exocrene—impact under the neck again. Baneblade—shell to the hip joint, lascannon to the wing root. The daemon caught the top with one hand and then the shoulder blew out under the next volley. He lost grip. He fell back into the yard on his side, crushing a wedge of his own lesser daemons that had run in to die for him. The Hormagaunts were on him before he finished cursing.

This went on.

It took an hour to grind down a thing like that without sending in the heavies for a straight kill. I kept it that way on purpose. Let the swarm do the ugly work. Make the boss spend everything it had on the constant weight. The world narrowed to orders and impacts and the steady count in my head. I kept the [Blank] pulsing light at the edges to make regeneration a little slower each time it happened. I felt when the daemon’s energy pushed against it and broke thin and smaller than it had been. It still came back. It came back worse.

Kuzgrath smashed four towers down before the hour was up. He plowed through a wall. He fell three times under his own weight because of the bodies clinging to his legs. The axe bit the ground too many times and each strike got sloppier. The chain lost some of its snap and became a club with spikes instead of a whip. His wings stopped trying. Bloodletter squads that made it close enough to matter died under the Carcharodons without getting in more than one cut each. The Nobz still laughed, but it was an ugly sound now. They were tired and happy anyway. The Stormtroopers kept lanes clear with short bursts and grenade tosses that bounced exactly where they needed to. The Culexus drifted into the interior after the fourth tower fell and the boss hated that enough to turn its head and roar in the assassin’s direction. The roar turned to a cough halfway out.

“Time to end this, I guess.” I whispered.

“Custodian,” I said.

The Custodian started walking the second I said it, spear up, coat-of-gold catching light that didn’t exist. The way cleared for him because there wasn’t a person or monster in that yard who didn’t understand what he was.

“Baneblade—break the stance.” I marked the daemon’s forward leg. “Carnifexes—hamstring and hold. Carcharodons—guard the Custodian’s flanks. Nobz—noise and pressure. Incubi—tendon work. Keep it blind on the left.”

It unfolded in a clean line.

The Baneblade’s main gun bucked and the shell hit the inside of the forward knee. The plate there had been bent and straightened a dozen times already. It shattered. The joint screamed. The lascannon snapped into the same spot and burned whatever was trying to knit it back together. The daemon shifted weight to the other leg. A Carnifex barreled in and took that ankle with two scythe-hands at once. Another Carnifex leapt and punched its claws into the hamstring and hung there, ripping out cable by cable. The Exocrene hosed the far wing with two timed shots so the boss couldn’t use it as a brace. The Nobz rushed in yelling and slammed their crude blades into anything soft, then dove out before the chain could smash them.

The Incubi moved low and precise. One got under the whip-arm and carved the inner elbow without a sound. The other rose up on the daemon’s right and cut a line from armpit to lat with a single slow draw that left the arm weak. A Carcharodon stepped in and took a Bloodletter’s head that had tried to save its master. Another set his boot on the chain to keep it still while the Incubi worked.

Kuzgrath tried to lift the axe. The Custodian arrived.

He crossed the last five yards in a straight line, knocked the axe aside with the haft of his spear, and put a short thrust into the daemon’s ribs to mark his place. The point sank up to the guard. The daemon tried to backhand him. The Custodian stepped half a foot to the right and let the arm go past without touching his armor. He took another step forward into the daemon’s reach and the spear came back out and up with a twist that ruined something inside.

The boss screamed again. 

The Carcharodons pressed in to keep the edges clean. They cut down anything that tried to break our circle. The Carnifexes leaned and leaned and kept the legs busy. The Nobz hammered. The Incubi carved. The Exocrene and Baneblade stopped firing to keep from hitting our own.

“Finish,” I said.

The Custodian stepped in under the devil’s chin, reversed his grip along the shaft, and drew the blade in a rising line that started at the sternum and ended through the neck. The spear cut without catching. The head lifted clean off the shoulders in one smooth motion and turned once in the air. It hit the stones with a weight that surprised me and rolled until a horn caught a crack and stopped.

The body stayed kneeling for a second like it hadn’t gotten the message. Then it collapsed.

I stood there with the sword I’d stolen off a Bloodletter earlier and watched the last twitch in its hands stop. The Hormagaunts crowded forward as far as the smell would let them and then settled. The yard went quiet in a way I’d learned not to trust, but it held.

Kuzgrath the Eternal Destroyer was done. The Custodian flicked black blood from the spearhead without ceremony and turned his helm toward me.

“Good work,” I said.