The roaring of the orcs grew louder with every passing heartbeat. The wall of hard, green flesh and armour drew closer. Shields were turned to face them, each one decorated with leering faces, fanged maws or crude tribal symbols, and long spears were thrust towards the riders. Arrows and javelins flew from Astofen with renewed hope as the warriors rode onwards, and the giant orc at the centre of the horde bellowed and roared, his orders accompanied by sweeps of a great spear with a haft the thickness of Sigmar’s arm.
The orcs were so close that Sigmar could smell the rank odour of their unclean bodies, and see the terrible scars of tribal markings worked into the flesh of their arms and faces. The eyes of the orcs were a hot red, deep set in blunt, porcine faces with enormous fangs jutting from their lower jaws.
Just as it seemed that the thundering line of horsemen must surely crash into the jagged wall of iron, Sigmar hurled his spear with all his might. His throw was true, and the heavy iron tip smashed through an orc shield to impale its bearer. The sharpened tip exploded from the orc’s back and plunged into the greenskin standing behind it. Both fell to the ground as a hundred more spears slashed through the air, and orcs fell by the dozen. Sigmar gripped his horse’s mane, and pulled hard to the side while pressing his knees against its flanks.
The stallion gave a snort of protest at this harsh treatment, but wheeled immediately, and galloped along the length of the orc line, less than a spear’s length from the enemy blades. Sigmar howled in triumph as black-shafted arrows leapt from goblin bows, but flew wide or over his head.
He heard a whooping yell, and saw Pendrag behind him, a trio of arrows wedged in the timbers of his shield, yet Sigmar’s crimson and black banner still held proudly aloft. His friend’s face was alight with savage joy, and Sigmar gave thanks to Ulric that neither Pendrag nor the banner had fallen.
The orc line was still a solid wall of shields and blades, but already Sigmar saw that it was beginning to buckle as orcs sought to get to grips with the horsemen.
Another thunder of hooves announced the arrival of the second line of Unberogen horsemen, and Sigmar saw Wolfgart charging at their head. Each horseman carried a short, recurved bow, the strings pulled taut and arrows nocked as they controlled their wild ride with pressure from their thighs.
Wolfgart blew a strident note on the war horn, and a hundred goose feather fletched arrows flew straight and true into the orc line. All found homes in green flesh, but not all were fatal. As Sigmar wheeled his stallion once more, and drew another spear, he saw many of the orcs simply snap the shafts from their bodies, and hurl them aside with bestial roars of challenge. Another volley of arrows followed the first, before Wolfgart’s warriors wheeled their mounts around violently and rode away.
This time the greenskins could not restrain themselves, and the line of shields broke apart as orcs charged wildly from their battle line in pursuit of Wolfgart’s riders. Spears and arrows gave chase, and Sigmar yelled in anger as he saw wounded warriors fall from their mounts.
Wolfgart’s horse pulled to a halt beside Sigmar, and his sword-brother put up his war horn to draw his great sword from the sheath across his back. Wolfgart’s face was a mirror of his own, with a sheen of sweat and teeth bared in ferocious battle fury.
Pendrag rode alongside, his war axe unsheathed, and said, ‘Time to get bloody!’
Sigmar raked back his heels and said, ‘Remember, two blasts of the horn and we ride for the bridge!’
‘It’s not me you need worry about!’ laughed Pendrag as Wolfgart urged his mount forward, his huge sword swinging around his head in wide decapitating arcs.
Sigmar and Pendrag thundered after their friend as the pursuing mob of orcs drew near. The re-formed Unberogen horsemen followed their leaders, charging with all the fury and power they were famed for, a howling war cry taken up by every warrior as they hurled their spears, before drawing swords or hefting axes.
More orcs fell, and Sigmar skewered a thick-bodied orc, who wore a great, antlered helmet, the spear punching down though the creature’s breastplate and pinning it to the ground. Even as the spear quivered in the orc’s chest, Sigmar reached down and swept up his hammer, Ghal-maraz, the mighty gift presented to him by Kurgan Ironbeard earlier that spring.
Then the two ancestral enemies slammed together in a thunderclap of iron and rage.
The charging horsemen hit the orc line like the fist of Ulric that had flattened the top of the Fauschlag rock of the Teutogens in the north. Shields splintered, and swords cleaved orc flesh as the bone crushing force of the charge crashed through the scattered greenskins.
Sigmar swung his hammer, and smashed an orc skull to shards, the thick iron of its helmet no defence against the ancient runic power bound to the weapon. He smote left and right, each blow crushing heads, and splintering bone and armour. Blood sprayed his naked flesh, his hair thick with gobbets of orc blood, and the head of his hammer dripping with the gruel of their brain matter.
Axes and notched swords rang from his shield, and his horse snorted and stamped with its hooves, kicking with its back legs to stove in the ribs and skulls of goblins that sought to hamstring it with cruel knives.
‘In the name of Ulric!’ shouted Sigmar, urging his mount deeper into the disorganised mass of orcs, and laying about himself with mighty sweeps of his hammer.
At the centre of the horde, Sigmar could see the enormous orc that led this furious horde, the warlord known as Bonecrusher. Its massive bulk was clad head to foot in armour forged from sheets of dark iron, fastened to its flesh with great spikes. A horned helmet covered its thick skull, and bloodied, yellowed fangs jutted from its oversized, pugnacious jaw.
It seemed that the beast was aware of him too, for it jabbed its thick spear towards him, and the press of orc warriors around the Unberogens grew thicker and more vicious. With every stroke of his hammer, Sigmar knew their time was running out, and he risked diverting his attention from immediate threats to see how his sword-brothers fared.
Over to his right, Wolfgart’s great sword swept left and right, hewing half a dozen orcs to ruin with every blow. Behind him, Pendrag’s mane of hair was as red as the banner he carried, the curved blades of his axe cleaving through armour and flesh with deafening clangs and thuds. That Pendrag also carried Sigmar’s banner seemed not to hamper him at all, and it too was a weapon, the iron point at its base smashing through helmet visors or punching through the tops of unprotected skulls.
Sigmar wheeled his horse, sending one orc sailing backwards with a mighty underarm swing of Ghal-maraz, and crushing another’s chest with the return stroke. All around him, Unberogen warriors were cutting a bloody path through the orcs, but for all the carnage they caused, the orcs had the numbers to soak up such death without flinching.
Hundreds more were pushing forwards, and as the furious impetus of the charge began to diminish, Sigmar could see that the orcs were massing for a devastating counterattack. Packed in like this, with their backs to the walls of Astofen, the orcs would eventually overwhelm them.
Unberogen warriors were being dragged from their mounts one by one, and horses fell screaming as goblins opened their guts with quick slashes. The noose was closing in, and it was time to make their escape.
‘Wolfgart!’ shouted Sigmar. ‘Now!’
But a knot of howling orcs, their axes and swords tearing at his armour, surrounded Sigmar’s sword-brother. Without a shield, Wolfgart’s hauberk was battered, and links of chain mail hung dripping from his body in weeping sheets of iron rings. His sword hacked and cut, but for every orc that died, another two stepped in to fight.
‘Pendrag!’ cried Sigmar, lifting his bloody hammer.
‘I’m with you!’ answered Pendrag, urging his mount onwards with the banner held high.
Together, Sigmar and Pendrag charged into the creatures attacking their sword-brother, hammer and axe forging a gory path through the orcs. Sigmar’s hammer smashed the head from an orc’s shoulders, and he shouted, ‘Wolfgart, blow the
horn!’
‘Aye, I know!’ replied Wolfgart breathlessly, putting his sword through the chest of the last of his attackers. ‘What’s the rush? I would have killed them all in time.’
‘We don’t have time,’ said Sigmar. ‘Blow the damned horn!’
Wolfgart nodded, and switched to a one-handed grip on his sword, before lifting the curling ram’s horn from the loop of chain around his waist and giving voice to two sharp blasts.
‘Come on!’ bellowed Sigmar. ‘Ride for the open ground across the bridge.’
Barely had the echoes of the war horn faded when the Unberogen had turned their horses and were riding hard for the south with practiced skill. Sigmar waved his hammer, and shouted, ‘For Ulric’s sake ride hard, my brothers!’
The horsemen needed no encouragement, leaning low over their mounts’ necks as the orcs howled in triumph at their enemy’s flight. Sigmar held his horse from riding alongside its fellows as he scanned the battlefield to make sure that he left none of his warriors behind.
The ground before Astofen was littered with the detritus of battle: bodies and blood, screaming horses and shattered shields. The vast majority of the dead were orcs and goblins, but too many were armoured men, their bodies already being sliced apart by knife-wielding goblins, or bludgeoned unrecognisable by roaring orcs.
‘Are we waiting for something in particular?’ asked Pendrag, his horse nervously flicking its head, as the orcs gathered for the pursuit. Orc captains bellowed orders at their warriors, and lumbering mobs of greenskins with axes held in each fist set off towards the retreating Unberogen horsemen.
‘So many dead,’ said Sigmar.
‘Two more if we don’t move now!’ shouted Pendrag over the roar of charging orcs.
Sigmar nodded, turned his horse to the south, and let loose a mighty curse on the heads of greenskins everywhere as a spiteful volley of arrows sliced through the air. He heard the despairing cry of the folk of Astofen as he rode south, their hopes of salvation dashed as cruelly as if they had never come.
‘Have hope, my people,’ said Sigmar. ‘You are not abandoned.’
Deep within the shadows of the trees on either side of the bridge, Trinovantes watched the retreating horsemen with a mixture of excitement and sadness. Too many of the horses galloped towards his position without their riders, and he felt an aching sadness in his heart as he recognised many of the mounts and recalled which riders they had borne.
‘Stand ready!’ he shouted. ‘And Ulric guide your thrusts!’
Beside him, twenty-five warriors in heavy hauberks of mail and plate stood with thick-shafted spears with long, stabbing blades. These were the heaviest, strongest men in Sigmar’s force, thick of limb and stiff of back: men for whom the concept of retreat was as unknown as compassion was to an orc. Another twenty-five were hidden in the trees across the road: fifty men with very specific orders from their young leader.
Trinovantes smiled as he remembered the pained smile upon Sigmar’s earnest face as Trinovantes had stepped forward when Sigmar had asked for a volunteer to lead this desperate mission.
‘I’m counting on you, brother,’ Sigmar had said, taking him to one side before the battle. ‘Hold the orcs long enough for us to rearm and reforge our strength, but only that long. When you hear a long blast of the war horn, get clear, you understand?’
Trinovantes had nodded and said, ‘I understand what is expected of us.’
‘I wish–’ began Sigmar, but Trinovantes had interrupted him with a shake of his head.
‘It has to be me. Wolfgart is too wild, and Pendrag must ride at your side with the banner.’
Sigmar had seen the determination in his face, and said, ‘Then Ulric be with you, brother.’
‘If I fight well, he will be,’ said Trinovantes. ‘Now go. Ride with the wolf lord at your side, and kill them all.’
Trinovantes had watched Sigmar return to his men, and raised his sword in salute before swiftly leading his hundred men around the eastern hills, hidden from the orcs, until they had reached this place of concealment on the other side of the bridge.
Looking at the faces of the men under his command, he saw tension, anger and solemn reverence for the fight to come. A few men kissed wolf-tail talismans, or blooded their wolf-skin pelts with cuts to their cheeks. There were no jokes, no ribald banter or ludicrous boasts, as might be expected from warriors about to do battle, and Trinovantes understood that every one of them knew the importance of the duty they were about to perform.
Retreating Unberogen horsemen rode south towards the bridge in ragged groups of three or four, scattered and tired from the frenetic battle. Their arrows and spears were spent, and their swords bent and chipped from impacts with orc weapons and shields.
Their shields were splintered and their armour torn, but they were unbowed, and rode with the soul of the land surging through them. Trinovantes could feel it, a thrumming connection that was more than simply the thunder of approaching horsemen.
In the last few moments left to him before battle, he instinctively understood the bond between this rich, bountiful land and the men who inhabited it. From distant realms they had come in ages past, and carved a home amid the wild forests, taming the earth and driving back the creatures that sought to keep them from what the gods had seen fit to grant them.
Men tended the land, and the land returned their devotion tenfold in crops and animals. This was a land of men, and no greenskin warlord was going to take that which they had worked and fought to create.
The sound of hooves rose in pitch, and Trinovantes looked up from his thoughts to see the first of Sigmar’s warriors riding hard across the timbers of the bridge. The structure was ancient and dwarf-made, the timbers pale and bleached by the sun, laid across stone pillars decorated with carvings long since worn smooth by the passage of centuries.
Horsemen rode across the bridge, pushing hard for the fresh weapons that Trinovantes and his men had stacked beyond the trees further south. Scores rode past, their horses’ flanks lathered with sweat and blood.
‘Who would have guessed Sigmar would be the last to quit the field of battle, eh?’ shouted Trinovantes as he saw Wolfgart, Pendrag and Sigmar riding at the rear of the galloping horsemen.
Grim laughter greeted his words, and Trinovantes snapped down the visor of his battle helmet as he saw the orcs pursuing the riders with relentless, single-minded purpose. Obscured by the dust clouds thrown up by the riders, they looked like misshapen daemons of shadow, their bodies hunched, and only the inextinguishable coals of their eyes distinct. Despite their graceless, thick limbs and monstrously heavy iron armour, their speed was impressive, and Trinovantes knew that it was time to perform his duty to the king’s son.
He hefted his axe, the blades polished and bright, and kissed the image of a snarling wolf worked into the spike at the top of the shaft. He lifted the weapon towards the sky, and felt a cold shiver as he saw a single raven circling above them.
The last of the horsemen rode across the bridge, and Trinovantes looked down in time to see Sigmar staring straight at him. As the moment stretched, he felt the simple gratitude of his friend fill him with strength.
‘Unberogens, we march!’ he shouted, and he led his men onto the road.
Sigmar spat dust as he halted his horse with a sharp jerk of its mane, and circled the cache of spears and swords left beyond the bridge by Trinovantes. The weapons were stacked in such a manner as to naturally form the horsemen up into a wedge aimed at the bridge, and Sigmar saw Trinovantes’s touch in the cunning of the design.
‘Hurry!’ he cried, leaping from his horse and accepting a skin of water from a warrior with bloody arms. He drank deeply, and emptied the rest over his head, washing the blood from his face as he heard the roar of charging orcs and the clash of weapons behind him.
Sigmar wiped a hand over his dripping face, and pushed through his warriors to better see the furious combat raging at the bridge.
Sunlight flashed on sta
bbing spears, and Sigmar saw the proud green of Trinovantes’s banner borne aloft in the heart of the battle. Orc war-cries rose in bellicose counterpoint to the shouted oaths to Ulric, and though the spearmen fought with iron resolve, Sigmar could already see that their line was bending back under the fearsome pressure of the attack.
‘Get fresh spears and swords, and remount!’ shouted Sigmar, his voice filled with fiery urgency. ‘Trinovantes is buying us time, and we won’t be wasting it!’
His urgings were unnecessary, for his warriors were swiftly hurling aside their bent and broken swords, before rearming themselves with fresh blades. Every man knew that this time was being bought with the lives of their friends, and not a second was wasted in idle banter.
The name of Ulric was roared, warriors offering the kills they had made to the fearsome god of battle, and Sigmar let them rejoice in the exultation of battle and survival.
Pendrag nodded to him, Sigmar’s banner stabbed into the earth as he ran a whetstone over the blades of his axe. ‘Trinovantes?’
‘Holding,’ said Sigmar, angrily wiping the head of Ghal-maraz with a ragged scrap of leather, unwilling to allow the orc blood and brain matter to foul its noble face a second more.
‘How much longer?’ asked Pendrag.
Sigmar shrugged. ‘Not long. They must sound the retreat soon.’
‘Retreat?’ asked Pendrag. ‘No, they won’t be retreating. You know that.’
‘They must,’ said Sigmar, ‘or else they will be lost.’
Pendrag put out his hand, and stopped Sigmar’s furious cleaning.
‘They won’t be retreating,’ repeated Pendrag. ‘They knew that. As did you. Do not dishonour their sacrifice by denying it.’
‘Denying what?’ bellowed Wolfgart as he rode to join them, his expression eager as though they fought a skirmish against disorganised bandits instead of blood-maddened orcs.
The Legend of Sigmar Page 4