In the latest installment of the Dawnbringer Chronicles, we witness King Brodd’s relentless quest for vengeance against Sigmar for the death of his father, Behemat. He leads a formidable crusade of Mega-Gargants, and the city of Stallenbreak is their first target.
The little ’un in the church steeple was waving a sword and shouting something about storms and lightning and vengeance for the people of Stallenbreak. King Brodd put his fist through the roof and the priest alike, sending tiles and glass flying. His fellow gargants guffawed and slapped their thighs, but Behemat’s prophet – as ever – failed to see the funny side. The single working eye in his craggy face narrowed as he looked upon the human strongpoint that squatted upon the ruins of Tor Bellar like a nest of insects.
‘Stinkin’ little vermin,’ he bellowed. ‘I’ll squash the lot o’ you!’
Once upon a time, the runt-tribes of the Scabrous Sprawl had known their place, which was beneath Behemat’s heel. They’d grovelled before the World Titan as was right and proper, raising temples in his honour in the hope he wouldn’t stomp them into mush. Temples like the one that had once stood here, before the Godling’s mortal whelps had knocked it down and built atop it.
‘Trespassers!’ Brodd roared, as he kicked a horse and rider so hard they flew over the strongpoint’s palisade. ‘This ain’t your place, you little rats.’
The humans answered with musketry. Atop the second level of the strongpoint, where a second, inner wall was constructed along the edge of a rock ridge, there were lines of gun-wielding soldiers, and cannons whose barrels protruded from a heavy shield. Steam-spewing war engines rumbled forwards. With a thunderous eruption these weapons fired in one fearsome volley, sending up gouts of smoke and flame and unleashing a hail of metal that smacked into the advancing Mega-Gargants.
Old Humbo Headsquasher staggered, belly blasted open. The salt-haired sea gargant Maggrun took a cannonball to the knee, hopping about before collapsing upon a row of vine-thatched buildings, squashing them flat. Stokey the Smasher’s head exploded, splattering those next to him with chunks of skull and brain.
King Brodd stood, unflinching as the enemy’s barrage thundered down around him, ignoring the pain as bullets bit into his flesh. He saw only the fortified war-huts of the Godling-worshippers, built into the bedrock of the mountain shrine where fearful little ’uns once paid tribute to his sire. Each and every sacred, rune-marked stone of this ancient place had been hewn and sundered, torn down to make room for a den of puny wretches.
Worse, Brodd saw that they had raised a shrine of their own: in the courtyard of Stallenbreak’s bastion there was a statue of a silver-armoured warrior kneeling with hammer and sword raised to the heavens. The little ’uns had not only desecrated this holy place, but erected a tribute to one of their own pathetic saints!
King Brodd raised his warclub, running his calloused fingers across its stone headpiece – taken from a sacred pillar that had once touched the brow of the World Titan himself. He set his feet, and felt the fiery heat of his rage emanate from him, causing the very air to shimmer and crackle. His eye flared with white-hot rage, and he roared so loudly that every unbroken window in Stallenbreak immediately burst into pieces. Humans collapsed to their knees, quivering in terror and pain as they clutched bleeding ears.
‘Pummel ’em to dust!’ Brodd screamed at the top of his lungs, and then he began to lumber forwards, charging right down the throat of the enemy’s guns. Hollering madly, his gargants followed close behind – even the grievously wounded Old Humbo, who was now holding his guts in with one hand while brandishing a tree-trunk in the other.
The little ’uns turned and fled. Those that didn’t died, crushed and kicked and stomped to paste, or picked up and flung a hundred metres into the air. Brodd seized a cannon by its red-hot barrel, ignoring the sizzling sound of his flesh cooking as he swept it along the ramparts, smearing fleeing soldiers against the stones. A rattling contraption came towards him – it looked to Brodd like an iron shoe with a cannon poking through a hole in the front – and spewed a cloud of steam that scalded the Mega-Gargant’s thigh red. He howled and brought his club down on the turret, caving in the Steam Tank’s hull, and taking grim pleasure in the screams of the humans within as they were boiled alive by their own malfunctioning engine.
Behemat’s prophet oversaw the utter annihilation of Stallenbreak. His Mega-Gargants even dragged down the floating metaliths that were chained outside the city, guffawing as they slammed them together until the floating islands smashed and split asunder, soaking the ground with their precious water.
When the mayhem was done, there was only one pipsqueak left alive in the strongpoint. His legs shattered by a hurled boulder, an aged, pot-bellied war-priest lay slumped against the silver statue of the Stormcast warrior, still clutching a warhammer and spitting hatred at the gargants that loomed over him. King Brodd elbowed his way through the crowd, pushing a limping Maggrun aside as the Kraken-eater raised his fist to splatter the little ’un across the stones.
‘Dull-witted savages!’ the human screamed, eyes wide with terror and pain but still brandishing his puny weapon. ‘We shall be avenged, you wretched oafs, do you hear me?’
Brodd leaned down, glaring right into the human’s face.
‘Who’s coming to help you, runt?’ he snarled. ‘Your precious Godling?’
To his credit, the priest did not cower.
‘Saint Steel Soul will hunt you down, gargant,’ he spat, pointing at the statue behind him. ‘Word has already been sent to Fort Gardus, and they will soon know of your outrages. His holy knights will deliver unto you the God-King’s justice, and you will beg for—’
Brodd growled, and the priest’s defiance evaporated in an instant.
‘Your saints are nothin’ to me but sacks of meat to squish between my toes. Darin’ to squat here on the ruins of my father’s temple? To spit on his memory by raising statues to them, what slayed him with their storm-magic?’
The Prophet of Behemat stepped forward and seized the statue of Gardus Steel Soul. Veins stood out on his weathered neck as he strained with all his might, until the sound of shearing marble cracked out across the corpse-strewn strongpoint. King Brodd ripped the silver Stormcast from its base, and stood holding it aloft like a trophy, while his lads howled and roared and slapped each other on the back. The wounded priest whimpered as he stared into Brodd’s one good eye, which shone with a holy fervour that outstripped his own. The statue of Gardus Steel Soul loomed over him, and for once the priest found no solace in its noble visage.
‘I’m coming for your saint and his silver wretches,’ Brodd growled. ‘I’m gonna do to his precious castle just what I done here today. And when he’s lying there at my feet broken and bloody, I’m goin’ to squash him like a bug. Just. Like. This.’
And with that, Brodd brought the statue crashing down
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