Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden by Josh Reynolds

Author:Josh Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2017-04-06T14:49:43+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

A TOWN CALLED DESPAIR

Aetius Shieldborn cursed and ducked away from the groping hands of the vine-snared corpse. Splintered nails clattered against the face of his shield as stinging flies spewed from the sagging jaws. He bashed the hanging body aside and crushed its skull, blocking the torrent of insects. Immediately, he was beset by another. There were too many corpses to avoid, and possibly more than even he could handle.

The enormous, cracked archway above was thick with a shroud of yellowing vines. The innumerable corpses trapped within them had twitched into motion the moment the cobalt-limned galley had swept beneath them. The flickering starlight that danced along the rails and mast kept most of the dead at bay but, even so, there were simply too many of them. Bodies flopped and fell to the deck, smothering the azure radiance long enough for more of the dangling corpses to descend and attack.

Dead hands groped and battered at unwary warriors, as the bodies descended towards the ship like twisted spiders. More and more of them with every passing moment, attacking the Stormcasts on the deck, and those rowing as well. The galley shuddered with their weight. The decks were a riot of struggling forms, as Stormcasts fought back to back against the deluge of leprous corpses. ‘This is intolerable,’ Aetius said, glaring up at the clutching canopy of hands and teeth that groped for him.

‘I shall pass along your complaints to the Steel Soul,’ Solus said, sheltering beneath another Liberator’s raised shield. The Judicator-Prime loosed a scintillating arrow, and nodded in satisfaction as it thumped into a corpse’s skull, rendering it limp.

Aetius ignored Solus and concentrated on the task at hand. ‘Berkut – keep that shield up,’ he growled, jostling one of his warriors. ‘Serena, Tomas – brace and step, make us some room. Taya, stop playing with that thing and get back into position.’ He moved to help the warrior as she struggled with a particularly stubborn corpse. The diseased carcass clung to her shield with fierce tenacity, its crushed jaw flopping against her war-mask.

Aetius scraped the thing away and trod on its head, pulping it. Taya nodded her thanks. ‘These things smell worse than orruks,’ she said, coughing.

‘Then breathe through your mouth,’ Aetius said gruffly. He spotted Gardus fighting at the prow, where the dead were thickest. Tallon fought at his side, savaging corpses with his beak and claws. The Lord-Celestant blazed with an elemental radiance as he struck down corpse after corpse. Truly a sign of Sigmar’s favour. Tearing his gaze from the Lord-Celestant, he slammed his shield into a corpse as it swung itself towards him, and smashed its crumbling face out of the back of its skull. A blow from his hammer caught another in the spine and dropped it to the deck.

Everywhere he looked there were vines, and bodies wriggling through them. They needed to clear this place – to purify it, all at once. Even as the thought occurred to him, he caught sight of Feros and his Retributors swatting corpses from the air.

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