The Legend of Sigmar

by Graham McNeill

  Sigmar ignored Wolfgart’s question, and looked deep into Pendrag’s eyes, seeing an understanding of what he had ordered Trinovantes to do in the full knowledge of what that order entailed.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Sigmar swinging the heavy length of Ghal-maraz as though it weighed nothing at all.

  ‘King Kurgan’s weapon is earning its name,’ said Wolfgart.

  ‘Aye,’ said Sigmar. ‘A kingly gift, right enough, but there’re more skulls to be split before this day is out.’

  ‘True,’ agreed Wolfgart, hefting his great sword meaningfully. ‘We’ll get to them soon enough.’

  ‘No,’ said Sigmar, swinging back onto his horse, and looking north to the battle raging at the bridge, ‘it won’t be soon enough.’

  Blood pooled in Trinovantes’s boot, a deep wound in his thigh washing blood down his leg, and sticking the wool of his tunic to his skin. An orc cleaver had smashed his shield to kindling, and cut into his leg, before he had gutted the beast with a swipe of his axe.

  His arms felt as though they were weighted down with iron, his muscles throbbing painfully with the effort of the fight. Screams and roars of hatred echoed deafeningly within Trinovantes’s helmet, and sweat ran in rivers down his face.

  The warriors with him fought with desperate heroics, their spears stabbing with powerful thrusts that punched between the gaps in the orcs’ crude armour and into their flesh. The pale, dusty ground beneath their feet was dark and loamy with blood, both human and orc, and the air stank of sweat and the coppery promise of death.

  Spears and axes clashed, wood and iron broke apart, and flesh and bone were carved to ruin with no quarter asked or given from either side.

  The warrior next to Trinovantes fell, an orc blade smashing through his shoulder and cutting deep into his torso before becoming stuck fast in his chest. The orc fought to drag its weapon clear, but the jagged edge of the sword remained wedged in the man’s ribs. Trinovantes stepped in, his leg on fire with pain, and swung his axe in a furious two-handed swing that smashed into the orc’s open jaw, and cleaved the top of its skull away.

  ‘For Ulric!’ shouted Trinovantes, channelling all his hatred for the orcs into the blow.

  The body swayed for a moment before dropping, and Trinovantes screamed as his injured leg threatened to give way beneath him.

  A hand reached out to steady him, and he shouted his thanks without seeing who helped him. The noise of battle seemed to grow louder, the cries of dying men and the exultant roars of the orcs sounding as though they were bellowed right in his ears.

  Trinovantes stumbled, dropping to one knee as his vision greyed, and the clamour of the fighting suddenly diminished from its previous volume to something heard as if from a great distance. He planted the blades of his axe on the ground as he tried to force himself back to his feet.

  All around him, the warriors of the Unberogen were dying, their blood spurting from opened bellies or torn throats. He saw an orc lift a wounded spearman and slam his body down on the stone parapet of the bridge, almost breaking him in two before hurling his limp corpse into the river.

  Goblin archers on the bridge loosed shafts into the midst of the battle, uncaring of which combatants their arrows hit. Trinovantes felt the warmth of the wet ground beneath him, the sun on his face and the coolness of the sweat plastering his body beneath his armour.

  However, for all the death around him, there was heroism and defiance too.

  Trinovantes watched as a warrior with two spears punched through his back spread his arms, and leapt towards a group of orcs forcing their way past the flanks. He knocked three of them from the bridge to drown in the river. Sword-brothers fought back to back as the numbers of Unberogens thinned, while the orcs pressed across the bridge with even greater ferocity.

  A spear thrust towards him, and instinct took over as the sights and sounds of battle returned with all their vicious din. Trinovantes’s axe smashed the blade from the spear shaft, and he pushed to his feet with a cry of rage and pain. He swayed aside from the blunted weapon, forcing down the pain of his injured leg, and swinging his axe at his attacker.

  His blade cut the orc’s arm from its body, but its charge was unstoppable, and its sheer bulk carried him to the ground. Its blood sprayed him, and he spat the foul, reeking liquid from his mouth.

  Too close for a proper strike, he slammed the haft of his axe against the orc’s face, the fangs splintering beneath the blow. The orc’s head snapped back, and Trinovantes rolled from beneath it, rising to one knee, and hammering his axe into its skull.

  Shrieking pain exploded in his back, and Trinovantes looked down to see a long spear jutting from his chest, the blade wider than his forearm. Blood squirted from either side of the metal, his blood. He opened his mouth, but the weapon was wrenched from his body, and with it any breath with which to scream.

  Trinovantes dropped his axe, strength and life pouring from him in a red flood. He looked around at the scene of slaughter, men dying and torn apart by orcs as they finally could stand no more.

  His vision dimmed, and he slumped forwards, his face pressed into the bloody ground.

  His axe lay beside him, and with the last of his strength, he reached out and curled his fingers around the grip. Ulric’s halls were no place for a warrior without a weapon.

  The squawking cry of something out of place penetrated the killing sounds of slaughter, and he lifted his head to see a large raven sitting on the stone of the bridge, the depthless dark of its eyes boring into him with an unflinching gaze.

  Despite the carnage, the bird remained unmoving, and Trinovantes saw his banner flutter in the wind behind it, the green fabric bright against the brilliant blue of the sky.

  The pain fled his body, and he thought of his twin brother and older sister as he lay his head down upon the rich earth of the land he had fought and died to protect. He heard a distant rumble through the ground, a rising thunder of drums, a sound that made him smile as he recognised its source: the sound of Unberogen horsemen on the charge.

  Sigmar saw Trinovantes fall to Bonecrusher’s spear, and let out an anguished howl of anger and loss. The orcs were across the bridge and had fanned out past the trees in a ragged line of charging bodies. After the hard fight at the bridge, any cohesion to their force was lost, and though Trinovantes and his men were dead, they had reaped a magnificent tally of orc corpses.

  The orcs were in the grip of their battle lust, and Sigmar saw Bonecrusher desperately trying to form his warriors into a fighting line before the horsemen reached them.

  However, it was already too late for them.

  Riding at the tip of a wedge of nearly a hundred and fifty horsemen, Sigmar rode with fire and hate in his heart, Ghal-maraz held high for all to see. The ground shook to the beat of pounding hooves, and Sigmar scented the sure and certain tang of victory.

  Pendrag rode to his right, the crimson banner snapping in the wind, and Wolfgart was on his left, his blade unsheathed and ready to take more heads.

  Sigmar gripped the mane of his stallion tightly. The great beast was tired, but eager to bear its rider back into battle.

  Arrows leapt from bows, and spears filled the air as the Unberogen riders loosed one last volley before impact.

  Orcs fell before their spears and arrows, and cries of triumph turned to bellows of pain as Sigmar’s charge hit home.

  The wedge of Unberogen horsemen cleaved through the orcs, weapons flashing and blood spraying as they avenged the deaths of their brothers in arms. Sigmar’s hammer smote orc skulls, and crushed chests as he screamed his lost friend’s name.

  Strength and purpose flowed along his limbs, and whatever he struck, died. No enemy in the world could stand before him and live. Ghal-maraz was an extension of his arm, its power incredible and unstoppable in his hands.

  Blood sprayed the air as the Unberogen riders trampled orcs, easy meat now that their numbers were thinned and they were scattered. With room to manoeuvre, the horsemen were in their el
ement, charging hither and thither, and killing orcs with every spear thrust or axe blow. Orcs were crushed beneath iron-shod hooves, smashed into the ground as the horsemen circled and charged again and again, now that they had the open ground in their favour.

  Sigmar killed orcs by the dozen, his hammer sweeping out and crushing the life from them as though they were little more than irritants. His stallion’s flanks were drenched in orc blood, and his iron-hard flesh dripped with their gore.

  At the centre of the host, Sigmar saw the mighty orc who led the greenskins. Unberogen warriors surrounded Bonecrusher, eager to claim the glory of killing the warlord, but its strength and ferocity were unmatched by any orc his men had fought, and all who came near it died.

  ‘Ulric guide my hammer!’ shouted Sigmar, urging the stallion towards the furious mêlée surrounding Bonecrusher. He leapt piles of orc bodies, smashing aside those greenskins foolish enough to get in his way with wild, magnificent sweeps of his hammer.

  The battle around him faded until it was little more than a backdrop to his charge, a muted chorus to accompany his performance. His every sense turned inwards until all he could hear was the roar of his breath and the frenetic pounding of his heart as he rode towards his foe.

  Bonecrusher saw him coming, and bellowed a challenge, bloody foam gathering at its fanged jaws as it spread its arms wide. Its spear was aimed towards Sigmar’s horse, and as the stallion leapt the last pile of corpses, Sigmar released its mane and hurled himself from its back.

  His mount veered away from the thrusting spear as Sigmar sailed through the air, taking his hammer in a two-handed grip.

  Sigmar loosed an ululating yell of ancestral hate as he swung his hammer at the warlord.

  Ghal-maraz smashed down on Bonecrusher’s skull, and destroyed it utterly, the hammer driving on through the body, and finally exiting in a bloody welter of smashed bone and meat. Sigmar landed beside the body before it fell, and spun on his heel to deliver a thunderous blow to the headless warlord’s spine.

  The greenskin chieftain, who had once been the scourge of the lands of men, toppled to the ground, its body pulverised by Sigmar’s fury.

  He swept his hammer around, slaying the orcs who stood close to their chief in a furious, unstoppable carnage. Within moments, the largest and most powerful orcs of the horde were dead, and Sigmar bellowed his triumph to the skies, slathered from head to foot in blood, his hammer pulsing with the light of battle.

  A horse drew to a halt before him, and Sigmar looked up to see Wolfgart staring down at him with a look of awed disbelief and not a little fear in his eyes.

  ‘They’ve broken!’ shouted Wolfgart. ‘They’re running.’

  Sigmar lowered his hammer and blinked, his senses turning outward once again as he took in the scale of the slaughter they had wreaked upon the orcs.

  Hundreds of corpses littered the ground, trampled by horses or cut down by Unberogen warriors. What little remained of the orc horde was fleeing in disarray, the power of their lust for battle broken by the death of their leader.

  ‘Chase them, brother,’ spat Sigmar. ‘Ride them down and leave none alive.’

  Three

  Morr’s Due

  From her vantage point in the hills surrounding Reikdorf, Ravenna thought the view towards the south quite beautiful and, for a moment, she could almost forget that the young men of her settlement had ridden there to war and death against the greenskins.

  Below her, Reikdorf sat on the mud flats that spread from the riverbanks, squat and unlovely, but home nonetheless. The high wooden palisade wall looked bare without the usual complement of warriors, and Ravenna sent a prayer to the gods to look after those who had ridden south.

  She shielded her eyes, looking for some sign of Reikdorf’s warriors returning.

  ‘I can’t see them, Gerreon,’ she said, turning towards her younger brother, who walked beside her on the rutted track that led from the cornfields around Reikdorf to its fortified gate.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Gerreon, shifting the leather sling that bound his broken wrist to his chest to a more comfortable position. ‘The forest’s too thick. They could be almost home and you wouldn’t see them.’

  ‘They should be back by now,’ she said, stopping to loosen her knotted headband and run a hand through her dark hair.

  Gerreon paused with her, and said, ‘I know. Remember, I should have been with them.’

  Ravenna heard the bitter note of regret in her brother’s voice, and said, ‘I know it was your time to ride to battle, but I am glad you did not.’

  He met her gaze, and the anger she saw in his pale-skinned face surprised her. ‘You don’t understand, Ravenna, they already make fun of me as it is. Now I’ve missed my first battle, and no matter how courageously I fight from this day on, they’ll always remember that I wasn’t with them the first time.’

  ‘You were injured,’ said Ravenna. ‘There was no way you could have fought.’

  ‘I know that, but it will make no difference.’

  ‘Trinovantes will not allow them to mock you,’ she said.

  ‘So now I need my twin brother to look after me, is that it?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ she said, growing weary of his petulance, and moving off down the path once more. Her brothers were dear to her, but where Trinovantes was quiet, thoughtful and reserved, Gerreon was quick-witted, handsome and the terror of mothers with pretty daughters, but he could often be cruel.

  Like her, his hair was the colour of jet and worn long as was the custom of the Unberogen, and was his pride and joy. Only the previous week, Wolfgart had teased him about looking like a Bretonii catamite, such was the care he lavished on his appearance, and Gerreon had attacked him in a fury.

  Gerreon was no match for the older boy, and had ended up flat on his back, nursing a cracked wrist. Trinovantes had stopped Gerreon from making any further rash mistakes, and helped him from Wolfgart’s booming laughter to Cradoc the healer, where his wrist was set and a sling fashioned.

  When the time had come for Sigmar to earn his shield and ride out to do battle with the greenskins ravaging the southern territories of the Unberogen, Trinovantes had made it clear that Gerreon could not ride with them.

  ‘What use is a warrior who cannot hold onto his horse and bear a weapon?’ Trinovantes had said gently, and Ravenna had been glad, for the thought of both her brothers riding off had worried her more than she cared to admit.

  Ravenna scanned the trees across the river as she made her way home, looking for a telltale glint of metal, but again she saw nothing. Early evening sunlight scattered bright reflections from the sluggish river as it meandered along the edge of the village and, despite her worry, she could appreciate the beauty of the place.

  Since dawn, she and Gerreon had been amongst those bringing in the summer harvest, him wielding the sickle with his good arm, and her with the basket upon her shoulders. It was hard, thankless work, but everyone had to take their turn in the fields, and she was grateful for Gerreon’s presence, despite his foul mood. Though he could not ride to war with the others, he could still wield a sickle and help in the fields.

  Now the day’s work was done, and she could look forward to resting for the evening and eating some hot food. The harvest had been plentiful, and thanks to the new pumps installed by Pendrag and the dwarf, Alaric, many acres of land that had previously been thin and undernourished were now irrigated and fertile.

  The storehouses were full to bursting, and surplus grain left every week in wagons escorted by armed warriors for the east, to be traded with the dwarfs for weapons and armour, for no finer race of metalworkers existed than the mountain folk.

  Gerreon caught up to her and said, ‘I’m sorry, Ravenna, I didn’t mean to make you angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry,’ she said. ‘I’m just tired and worried.’

  ‘Trinovantes will be fine,’ said Gerreon, his voice full of pride and love for his twin. ‘He’s a great warrior. No
t as elegant a swordsman as me, but handy with an axe.’

  ‘I’m worried for them all,’ she said, ‘Trinovantes, Wolfgart, Pendrag…’

  ‘And Sigmar?’ asked Gerreon with a sly grin.

  ‘Yes, for Sigmar too,’ she said, avoiding his teasing smile as she said Sigmar’s name for fear of blushing.

  ‘Honestly, sister, I don’t know what you see in him. Just because he’s a king’s son doesn’t make him special. He’s like all the rest of them, boorish and just one hot meal away from being a savage.’

  ‘Hush!’ said Ravenna, rising to his bait, and cursing herself for it when he laughed.

  ‘What? Afraid Wolfgart’s going to come and break my other wrist? I’ll gut him first.’

  ‘Gerreon!’ said Ravenna, hearing genuine venom in his voice, but before she could say more, she saw her brother’s eyes fix on something behind her. She turned, and followed his gaze across the river, her brother’s harsh words forgotten in an instant.

  A column of horsemen was emerging from the trees, their pace weary, but voices triumphant. Spears and banners were held high, and the warriors cheered at the sight of Reikdorf.

  Answering cries came from the settlement’s walls, and the men and women of Reikdorf ran to the gates as word spread that the warriors had returned.

  Ravenna felt relieved laughter bubble up inside her, but it died in her breast as she saw a group of warriors in full battle armour leading the horsemen and carrying a litter of shields, upon which was laid the body of a fallen hero.

  ‘Oh no,’ cried Gerreon. ‘No… please, by all the gods, no!’

  Ravenna’s heart sank as her first thought was that the fallen warrior was Sigmar, but then she saw that the king’s son helped to carry the litter, and that his crimson banner was still held aloft.

  Her relief at Sigmar’s survival was then crushed savagely and heartbreakingly as she recognised the emerald green banner that covered the dead warrior: Trinovantes’s banner.