Chapter 26. The Last Stand
As
the Great Unclean One pressed to the front, Caneghem felt a sensation that made
his teeth jangle.
The
command, "Come," formed wordlessly in his mind. "Bring the cube, and your kin."
"Brothers!"
Caneghem shouted, "Our Lord calls
us to bring the solar cube to him!"
The
four lizardmen warriors nodded and waited expectantly. From his position on Bessie's howdah, the
skink priest grasped the mystic cube at the heart of Chotec's solar engine and
tugged. The cube did not budge. Its depleted active face glowed sullenly.
"Rodekhil! Help me with this."
The
ogre joined him on the howdah. Even
using his considerable strength, he could not release the cube from its five
finger-like clamps. He used one of his
falchions as a lever. The blade bent
double and then splintered into shards.
"Argsplat!" Rodekhil shouted, "Buy us some time!"
"Right!"
The
misshapen ogre stumped part way down the ramp.
He was alone, but for his meat axe, bladed hook and elegantly carved
Queen Anne style peg-legs.
*****
When
the wave of pestilent things of Nurgle seemed ready to flow over him, he held
his meat axe high. "I CHALLENGE!" he bawled.
The
wave ebbed and parted. The Great Unclean
One advanced to the head of the path that had been opened for him.
"None
shall pass!" Argsplat squared his
shoulders and brandished his weapon.
The
Great Unclean One paused midstride and emitted a loud coughing gargle. Ropes of mucus quivered between his fleshy
lips. Paroxysms gripped him and his
shoulders quivered. It took Argsplat a
moment to realize that he was laughing.
"I
have no quarrel with you, brave ogre, but I will mount this bridge," the daemon snickered.
"Then
you shall die." Argsplat swung his
meataxe and severed the creature's right arm with one mighty blow. "You are defeated. Now stand aside."
The
daemon couldn't contain his mirth. More
choking sounds and shudders ensued.
" 'Tis but a scratch!"
"A
scratch? Your arm's off!"
"I've
had worse."
"Actually...
I know how you feel," Argsplat
mused.
The
daemon grinned and swept his Bale-sword low, splintering Argsplat's wooden
legs.
"Right! I'll do you for that!" from Argsplat's new, somewhat lower position,
he had an unobstructed view of the daemon's oedematous legs. The meat axe swung twice, and the daemon
joined him on the ground.
The
Unclean One grinned at his oozing stumps.
"Just a flesh wound. I'm
invincible!"
"You're
a looney...."
"Nurgle
always triumphs! Have at you!"
With
his one remaining arm he struck a heavy over hand blow with the bale
sword. This would have split Argsplat
from right shoulder to left waist had the ogre not raised his hook in a
desperate parry. The blow was deflected,
but the hook was torn from its socket.
The
daemon's follow through left him vulnerable for a split second as his festering
arm crossed his body. The meat axe swung
true, and the daemon's sword arm joined the growing pile of appendages on the
pavement.
Argsplat
pointed at the daemon's limbless torso with his axe. "Victory is
mine."
The
daemon coughed and gargled again. This
time it was not laughter. A stream of
corrosive bile spurted from the daemon's mouth and onto Argsplat's outstretched
arm. Flesh and tendons melted from
crumbling bone.
Argsplat
paused to assess the damage. His arm
below the elbow had been dissolved.
"All
right. We'll call it a draw."
The
daemon gargled in mirth again. From the
oozing stumps of his arms and legs, yellow headed boils erupted. They swelled and burst, releasing stinking
pus and tiny vestigial limbs. The limbs
quickly regenerated to their original size.
"I
like this game," the daemon giggled as he lifted Argsplat by the
shoulders.
Argsplat's
eye swam. This close to the daemon's
face he was unable to escape the daemon's feculent halitosis. He pulled his head back as far as he could.
"Time
for round two?" asked the daemon.
"You
cheated!"
Argsplat
slammed his rocklike head into the daemon's brow.
The
head butt made a hollow sound, like pair of colossal coconut halves being
clapped together. The impact caused a
depressed fracture of the creature's skull.
The intracranial pressure build up was sufficient to force the daemon's rotten
brains to ooze out of his blobby ears.
"Victory
is mine." Argsplat declared as he
dragged himself back to the ogre lines.
The remaining daemons of Nurgle began to mill about in disarray.
Caneghem
and Rodekhil had tried brute strength, leverage, hammer blows and bad language
on the cube of the Old Ones with no success.
Chotec's engine stubbornly refused to release its grasp.
Rhodekhil
glanced over and saw that Argsplat had squirmed back to the ogre line. "Argsplat!" he yelled desperately,
"Lend a hand will you!"
Argsplat
apologetically held up two ragged stumps.
"A
hand? That's it!" Caneghem cried, "Rodekhil come here!"
The
skink priest inspected the hand shaped imprint on the back of the engine. The four fingered lizardmen could release the
power stored in the cube by pressing a hand into the print. What would happen if five fingers were
inserted?
Caneghem
gestured to Rodekhil to press his fingers into the depressions. Then he cringed back.
Rodekhil
seemed equally reluctant to perform this experiment. He gingerly placed his fingers into the
grooves one by one, and finally pushed his trembling thumb home.
With
an unimpressive click, the clamps released.
The cube tumbled onto the howdah.
Caneghem snatched it up and scampered to the temple mouth. "Come!" he called over his shoulder.
The
other Lizardmen turned to follow, but were distracted by a commotion at the
base of the ramp. A well ordered phalanx
of Bloodletters of Khorne were thrusting through the disorganized swarms of
Nurglings. At their head was a winged
fiend many times their size.
"Fall
back! Fall back to the temple!" Rodekhil herded his remaining ironguts through
the arch and dragged Argsplat behind him.
Bob, Joe and Rychek moved to follow.
"What
about Bessie? And Rudolph?" Mahtis asked.
"They
can't fit through the door. Come
on!" Joe urged.
"We
can't leave them." Mahtis planted
his feet.
"It's
okay," Rychek held up his hands in
a placating gesture. He whispered into
Bessie's ear-hole and stood well back.
The
usually placid beast's eyes bulged, and she bellowed with apprehension. She tucked her head down, presenting a wall
of bony plates, and thundered blindly down the ramp.
Rudolph
the Rhinox saw his sweetheart disappearing, bellowed, and gave pursuit. Those daemon's that dodged or survived the
bony wrecking ball had scant time to recover before confronting the tossing
horns of the battering ram that followed.
The pair careened off the ramp and into the wild night beyond.
The
phalanx of Khornelings was no longer quite so well ordered.
"I've
seen you do that before. What do you say
to her?" Bob asked.
"Oh,
I just tell her that the Karak Andstick Combined Pipes and Drums are coming
back." replied Rychek.
*****
Bob,
Joe, Rychek and the fretting Mahtis entered the jaws of the Dinner Gong
Chamber. Caneghem had already passed
through to go to his master's side.
The
ogre troopers had somehow released the great brass gong from its chains. They rolled it across the gaping arch as soon
as the lizardmen came into the refuge.
They began to reinforce the barricade with the kitchen supplies that had
been neatly stacked on one side of the chamber.
The
lizards found Rodekhil binding kitchen utensils onto the stumps of Argsplat's
legs with lengths of rawhide. He already
had a rolling pin and frypan lashed to his arms.
"What
are you doing?" asked Rychek.
Rodekhil
looked up, "I'm assembling my troops...."
"No
time for that! Come!"
Argsplat
waved him away with the pan. "The
lads will hold for as long as need be.
Go."
Rodekhil
blinked tears from his eyes and looked to clasp hands with his most trusted
trooper. He eventually settled for
tugging Argsplat's left earlobe. The irongut
himself snapped a crisp salute and knocked himself out cold with the frypan.
The
clang seemed louder than it should have.
Then it echoed again and again. Rodekhil
saw that the brass gong was being struck with heavy blows.
"Ironguts!" Rodekhil addressed the bare half dozen that
still stood. "You will hold here,
by whatever means are necessary."
The
battered soldiers nodded grimly as he lumbered away through the arch and onto
the bridge.
*****
The
Exalted Bloodthirster of Khorne was still experiencing the after effects of the
sensual attack of Slaanesh's Keeper of Secrets.
In addition to his usual rage, he found that other emotions continued to
intrude. On the whole, they were not
unpleasant.
He
had felt satisfaction as he broke the physical body of the hated Slaaneshi and
banished his essence back to the Chaos realm.
When
he called the Bloodletters to his side, he felt pride at their disciplined
savagery.
As
he approached the barricaded temple, he felt anticipation. Soon Lord Khorne's thirst would be slaked
with the blood of a mighty Slann Mage Priest.
He
struck at the brass disk which sealed the temple and felt delight as it gave way
slightly under the onslaught of his dully glowing axe. He struck again and again until there was a
thin rent many feet across.
Impatience
possessed him, and he cast the axe to the ground. He seized the edges of the fissure with two
powerful hands and bent the edges back until the hole was wide enough for him
to thrust his head and shoulders through.
On
the other side he was confronted by six puny ogres. The amusement he felt lasted until he saw
what they held in their hands.
Each
one held a spork, laden with steaming mashed potato. On the shaft of each spork was a gleaming
dwarven rune of accuracy.
The
Bloodthirster experienced a new feeling.
This one started as a hard knot in his stomach and rose to flood his
whole body with debilitating weakness.
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