by Warhammer
Snorri clutched his head and groaned, apparently more concerned with his hangover than the prospect of death before them. Occasionally he would break off from his moaning long enough to shout what sounded like dwarfish obscenities in the direction of the Chaos worshippers for interrupting his slumber. Bjorni stood nearby with one arm round Sasha and the other round Mona. Felix wondered how he had managed to smuggle the bar girls onto the wall with him, and how he had managed to convince them to come with him to this place of imminent danger. Money most likely, although judging by the way they held him close, they seemed to feel some genuine affection for him. It was a funny old world, Felix thought.
Ulli stood nearby, looking pale and thoughtful. His hand played with his stubby beard and he looked up at the sky a lot as if not wanting to look too closely at the enemy. Felix could not blame him. Not too many people liked to watch certain death approach them. Not even Slayers.
Max and Ulrika stood near the duke and his retinue. Max peered off into the distance as if viewing things only he could see. Ulrika did not even look in Felix’s direction. He felt he should have been hurt more than he was, but it was obvious that their affair had run its course now, and even in the unlikely event of both of them surviving this, it was most likely they would part. A shame, he thought, but there it was.
The duke looked stern and commanding, and his soldiers were doing their best to put a brave face on things. Under normal circumstances, they would have managed it too. The winged lion fluttered from every tower, and from the pennons of a hundred companies. Heavily armed men crowded the battlements: swords, spears, and halberds clutched in gauntleted fists. Units of archers made ready to fire as soon as the enemy advanced. Mangonels, ballistae and other war machines rose from the ranks every fifty paces or so. Felix knew that in the honeycombed walls beneath them, more archers made ready to fire out through the arrow-slits and murder holes. He could smell boiling oil being heated, and hot pitch being made ready to pour on the stumps of the wounded. The canisters of alchemical fire were in the open now, ready to be loaded into the siege engines. He wished he had eaten nothing this morning but now it was too late.
He saw more movement in the distance. A vast cloud of harpies rose from the mass of Chaos worshippers and seethed and wheeled above it like a flock of swallows circling a temple spire on a summer’s evening. Not the most apt analogy, Felix thought. More like flocks of daemons rising from some fiery hell to seek prey among the lost souls beneath them. He hoped the archers and wizards were ready for them. He did not relish the prospect of fighting off a horde of those foul-smelling bat-winged fiends. Vivid memories of his narrow escape from them in the Chaos Wastes came back to his mind far too easily.
The harpies began to slowly circle around the city spiralling higher and higher until they were simply small dots in the vast blood-red sky. Obviously they were not planning on attacking just yet. Motion on the ground attracted Felix’s attention once more. Hordes of beastmen were making their way through the humans and forming up slightly ahead of them, leaving gaps through which other units might pass. It was like watching a huge chessboard on which the pieces were made of flesh and blood and were constantly in motion. Now, the black-clad Chaos warriors advanced to the beating of huge drums. Ranks of cavalry rode over the ramps across the forward trenches of the Chaos lines. Massive war altars were carried on the shoulders of tattooed fanatics.
Suddenly there was a deadly silence. Felix raised his spyglass to his eye and focused on the great silk pavilion in the centre of the army. From it emerged Arek Daemonclaw, his warlords and his wizards. Felix could see the two evil-looking albino twins, gold-robed and black-robed, and a horde of lesser mages, all clad in thick raiments covered in oddly glowing symbols and all bearing staffs that looked as if they had been carved from bone and topped with human skulls. Judging by appearances, Felix guessed that some sort of argument was taking place between the Chaos general and his wizards. He was gesticulating angrily and pointing at the city walls, while the mages at first shook their heads, and finally nodded.
What was going on over there, Felix wondered?
Arek Daemonclaw was livid. All night he had listened to the bickering of his warlords as each sought a prime position for himself and his followers in the coming assault, and attempted to persuade Arek to place them ahead of their rivals. All night he had listened to the foolish carpings of his wizards telling him that the time was not quite right for their spells, that the stars were not correctly aligned, that the ultimate force had not been summoned yet.
He was sure this was all just an excuse. His spies, and there were many of them, had brought him word that Lhoigor and Kelmain had been visiting many of his warlords. When challenged they had claimed they were simply doing their best to hold the army together and reassure his followers that all was going well. Arek was having none of it. He knew they were plotting against him, and that it would only be a matter of time before one or more of his generals rose against him. This constant inactivity, this protesting about stars and omens, was simply buying his enemies time during which the army was becoming bored and restless with inaction, and ripe for rebellion against their rightful leader. Worse than that it was giving his enemy time to gather against him. Scouts reported that the Ice Queen’s army was but a few days away, and there was a force of skaven advancing from the north. True these forces were tiny, but Arek knew that many mighty armies had been routed due to being attacked from the rear at an inopportune moment. This was not going to happen to his force. All thoughts of rebellion and inaction were going to end today.
He was not going to give them time for that. Soon all his army was going to be too busy to be bothered plotting against him. Soon he would give them a victory that would unite the entire horde behind him once more, and give those who would challenge him pause for thought. Today they would sweep over the walls of Praag and claim final and total victory.
Max Schreiber watched the mages of the Chaos horde advance to the fore. He had a more than professional interest in this. Very soon his life and the life of the woman he cared about might depend on his understanding of what he saw here.
He watched the two twin albinos closest of all. There was something about that pair that set them apart. To Max’s trained senses, they almost glowed with power. They were the mightiest mages he had ever seen, far stronger than any of his old masters, or Max himself. The others with them were almost certainly their acolytes. They watched the twins with a wary respect, and seemed to hang on their every word and gesture.
The two mages advanced to the clear ground in front of the horde, still well out of bowshot of the walls. They stood silent, heads down for a moment, then glanced at one another, raised their arms and began to chant. At first nothing seemed to happen. Max detected only the slightest stirring of the winds of magic and then only because his senses were keyed up to the highest pitch. One by one the mages around the albinos bowed their heads and began to chant too. And as they did so, Max began to feel a subtle change in the air.
The winds of magic swirled stronger now, as did the real breeze. Cool fingers of air touched Max’s face. Tendrils of power flickered out from the staffs of the twins and touched the mighty war engines around them. Arcs of power jumped from engine to engine forming a latticework almost too intricate for Max’s eye to follow. As he watched beam after beam reached upwards and outwards touching the glowing clouds overhead. Thunder rumbled. Lightning flickered downwards.
It was no normal lightning, Max could tell. It was pregnant with all the power the Chaos horde had drawn down from the Northern Wastes. The huge bolts all lashed downwards and struck the tips of one of the twins’ staffs. As they did so, the mages seemed to swell with ominous power. To Max’s trained eye their auras became ever brighter. Their voices swelled until their chanting could be heard from the walls of Praag. The words were full of evil import and repeated the name of Tzeentch constantly. As Max watched, the snow around the sorcerers melted away from around their feet unti
l an area fifty strides across was clear, and the brown earth was visible beneath.
As the thunder rumbled, the clouds began to swirl, like water in a whirlpool. In their midst a gap opened revealing the sky above. Through that gap the evil Chaos moon Morrslieb glared down. It glowed bright as a small sun, and more than once the aura surrounding it seemed to form a wicked leering face with a gaping mouth and a massive tongue that gazed down hungrily on the city.
Max heard people close to him whimper and moan. He knew why. That wicked face was depicted on tapestries in the palace and in sculptures on many buildings. It was the same malevolent visage that had glared down on Praag during the last siege. The air vibrated with energy. A monstrous rumbling began as the light of the moon fell on the huge siege engines. Auras flickered around them. Their metal forms shuddered and vibrated and began to move. It was a terrifying and awe-inspiring sight, like watching a field of massive metal statues spring to life.
The sorcerers did not cease their chanting. The haze surrounding the army seemed to clot and congeal, drawing itself together into massive blocks of reddish light. Then these seemed to shrink and dwindle and at the same time concentrate. As they did so the outlines of humanoid figures began to appear. At first they were only vague, monstrous shapes, but as the long minutes went on, and the chanting of the wizards continued, they became solid featureless figures of light, then took on shape and definition until thousands of obscenely-shaped figures were present.
Max recognised many of them from the forbidden tomes he had studied. Those things which somehow suggested evil animated fungi were Flamers of Tzeentch, lesser daemons of considerable power. Pink beings with massive heads where their torsos should have been capered and danced on the open ground.
Now other mages in the vast army began to join in. Max guessed that it was the priests and sorcerers in the service of other powers, taking advantage of all the dark magic Arek’s house wizards had summoned. As Max watched aghast more and more daemonic figures emerged from nothingness into being.
He recognised the Daemonettes of Slaanesh: odd androgynous figures with one bare breast, hairless heads, and one mighty claw like a crab’s pincer. They had a strange and disturbing beauty. Some units of them rode on odd bipedal beasts with long flickering tongues, others marched afoot and brandished long blades.
Amid the ranks of black-armoured Chaos warriors, other figures were materialising. Mighty hounds with teeth of steel and great collars of flesh emerging from their necks. Huge armoured warriors bounded onto the backs of mighty red and bronze steeds far more massive than any horse, whose eyes blazed with an eerie blood-red light. Strange slithering slug-like things bubbled into being ahead of the diseased ranks of the followers of Nurgle. All of them were surrounded by a halo of power that told Max of their daemonic origin. In all of his life, he had never witnessed such a potent summoning, or seen so much mystical power unleashed in one spot.
He doubted he would live to see its like again.
Felix watched the Chaos horde begin its advance. It was all he could do to keep himself from whimpering with fear like some of those around him. He wondered whether he would survive an hour. Massive metal siege towers carved with the effigies of hideous daemons began to rumble forward. Teams of sweating, near-naked men drew some of them. Others moved under their own sorcerous power, rumbling ever closer to the walls. Huge trebuchet arms swung backwards and forwards sending loads of massive stones tumbling towards the walls. Felix heard screams and shrieks from a distant section of the line as their cargo of death descended among the defenders.
Now tens of thousands of marauders, beastmen and Chaos warriors began to charge forward, racing through the snow towards the walls. Their shouts and screams were terrible to hear. Mighty drums were beaten. Huge horns sounded. The wind brought the odours of brimstone and corrupt bodies to Felix’s nostrils.
He gripped his sword tight and fought to steady himself. It was difficult. He recognised some of the things racing towards them from the time he had spent in the tunnels beneath Karag Dum. Those hounds, for example, were daemonic things whose flesh no normal blade could pierce. He wondered how the defenders were going to stop them. Gotrek’s axe was capable of killing them, but the Slayer could not be everywhere at once, and not even he could kill the small army of daemons advancing upon them.
‘Ask them to keep the noise down. Snorri has a bit of a hangover,’ said Snorri.
Felix almost smiled. Some of the tension eased out of him. He decided that whatever approached and however powerful it was, he was going to give as good an account of himself as he could. If there was nothing else he could do, he was at least going to take some of those Chaos-worshipping bastards with him.
Overhead the harpies ceased to circle and began to spiral downwards. Their long descent was nothing like the swooping dives Felix had seen them perform in the Chaos Wastes. He could only guess that they had been instructed to time their attack to strike just as the siege towers were hitting the wall. They would provide an additional distraction that the defenders could not afford to ignore. Someone out there had indeed been planning this for a long time.
The Chaos horde moved ever closer. Most of the warriors and the daemons clustered around the mighty siege engines, seeking shelter in their shadow. A few bolder, more foolhardy or more desperate for glory rushed ahead. The defenders on the wall watched tensely. Soon, Felix knew, the Chaos worshippers would be in range. Now was the time to whittle away their attackers.
Felix raised his spyglass and ran it over the oncoming horde. Faces leapt into focus. Brutal barbarians, mouths open in screams of fury, froth spilling from their lips, veins standing out on their forehead, muscles distended, filled his vision. Beside them were massive beastmen, ram-headed, horned, furred, eyes filled with red malice, inhuman muzzles raised to bay their bestial cries. Black helms, rune-inscribed, hid the faces of the Chaos knights, all save their strangely glowing eyes. Daemonic visages shimmered in the wicked glow of the witch moon. Felix wrenched his sight away from them and studied one of the siege towers.
It was taller even than the walls of Praag, a structure built from wood, and sheathed in the black iron of the Wastes, doubtless drawn from the daemonic forges beneath the ruins of Karag Dum. The plates were moulded into the shape of leering daemon heads, or inscribed with unspeakable runes whose evil light hurt the eye. The tower that Felix gazed upon had a massive cast head of Khorne attached to its front. Its wheels were embossed with faces similar to that of the great bloodthirster he had faced in the lost dwarf city. It gave the impression of immense size and solidity. It seemed more like a mobile tower from some iron keep than a mobile engine of war. And yet it moved, powered by sorcery, lumbering forward as fast as a man might trot, bouncing on the rutted ground, crushing any beastman unfortunate enough to fall in its path.
A huge two-headed battering ram flickered from Khorne’s gaping maw, for all the world like the tongue of some vast snake. At the tower’s top a crew of tribesmen manned a small ballista, and were frantically bringing it to bear on the defenders. Through dozens of small windows in the machine’s sides, Felix could see the shadow shapes of the warriors waiting within.
Felix heard the chant of prayer and spell close to him now. Fireballs erupted from the walls of Praag, arcing outwards and downwards into the oncoming horde. Bolts of lightning flickered out of the turbulent sky. Odd golden glows appeared over the heads of bellowing Chaos warriors. Most of the spells spluttered and died, absorbed by the eerie haze surrounding the evil army, or neutralised by the work of the horde’s own sorcerers. One or two hit home though. As Felix watched a fireball exploded amid a regiment of beastmen. A score were blown to pieces where they stood. A dozen more caught fire and raced randomly among their brethren, blazing like human torches, till they were cut down or trampled underfoot. At the sight, a cheer went up from the warriors on the battlements. It was a first, small victory. Felix hoped there would be many more.
A creaking followed by a loud twan
g announced to Felix that one of the mighty catapults near him had been brought to bear. A mass of huge rocks arced out over the besiegers and then, with what seemed like appalling slowness to the distant onlooker, crashed down, killing anything beneath them. It heartened Felix to see that the catapult did not just kill its immediate targets. Many of the marauders who sought to avoid the stonefall were trampled under the hooves of their beastmen comrades. That section of the approaching line was thrown into disarray by the milling of the mob, and the advance slowed. Those coming on behind them trampled more, as the press of bodies caused a huge pileup of man and beast.
More and more catapults and ballistae opened fire from the walls. More and more beastmen and marauders fell to their projectiles. More and more crushed and maimed bodies blocked the advance of at least part of the Chaos army, causing eddies, currents in that vast sea of flesh to rival anything in a real ocean. Kegs of alchemical fire descended on the horde, turning men and beasts into blazing torches that not even the chill of the snow could extinguish.
The defenders were not having it all their own way though. The huge trebuchets at the back of the enemy lines lobbed their own cargoes of death at the walls of Praag. Felix ducked as a mighty boulder passed overhead, and flinched at the sound of it crashing through red-tiled roofs behind him. Shouts of alarm and the smell of burning told him that either it had upset some fire or stove within the broken building, or the stone had born some sinister enchantment that caused a blaze where it fell. Felix frantically hoped it was the former but suspected that it might all too easily prove to be the latter.
Amid the horde some mages, either forgetting what they knew of the defences of Praag or too filled with their own sense of superiority to care, sent spells hurtling towards the walls. As Felix watched a fiery ball in which was visible a leering evil face arced towards the defenders. The ancient enchantments held good and the spell fizzled out paces from the battlements, sending the sour stench of brimstone into the nostrils of the warriors manning them. Shouts of triumph and relief from along the line told him that the old enchantments still held there too.