The warriors of Middenheim howled as the power of their god touched them, and their eyes shone with the light of winter. Their blades were death, and the Norsii saw the defeat of the dread lord of Kharnath in the cold, merciless eyes of their foes.
At each man’s side, whether Middenlander or not, a shimmering wolf of blue fire snapped and bit at the Norsii, tearing open throats, and clawing flesh from bones with ghostly paws. No blade could cut them, no armour could defy them, and the phantom wolves tore into the Norsii with all the power of their master.
Terror overcame the Norsii, and they scattered before the tide of fiery wolves and winter warriors. The viaduct became a place of certain death, with the wolves of the north and the men of the city hacking down their fleeing foes without mercy.
Amid the howls of wolves and the screaming winds, there came another sound, a sound the defenders of Middenheim had almost despaired of hearing.
Great horns, blowing wildly from a host of men.
They came from the forests: the swords of ten thousand men from all across the empire.
From the east came the Asoborns, the Cherusens and the Taleutens. A thousand chariots led by Queen Freya smashed into the Norsii, swiftly followed by the Red Scythes of Count Krugar. Howling packs of Cherusen Wildmen fell upon the scattered beasts and men, their painted bodies glowing in the fire atop the Fauschlag Rock.
From the south came the Endals, the Brigundians and the Menogoths, warriors who had marched day and night to reach their Emperor and fight at his side.
The Raven Helms of the Endals rode down the Norsii fleeing from the viaduct, Count Aldred cutting a path through the northern tribesmen with arcing blows from Ulfshard. Princess Marika rode a midnight horse at his side, loosing arrows from a gracefully curved longbow.
Merogen spearmen drove Norsii horsemen onto the blades of the Menogoths and the Brigundians, and Markus and Siggurd relished the chance to lay waste to their enemies from afar. Ostagoth blademasters cut down Norsii champions with sword blows that were as deadly as they were elegant, while Count Adelhard’s kingly blade laid waste to any who dared come near.
Within the hour, the Fauschlag Rock was surrounded by warriors of the empire, and the Norsii were doomed. By nightfall, the Flame of Ulric had retreated to the ruined temple, the winter winds and ghostly wolves returning once more to the realm of the gods.
Only two souls escaped the empire’s vengeance: a weeping swordsman in silver armour and a screaming madman whose eyes ran with blood.
They fled into the shadows of the forest, where the beasts were waiting for them.
Sigmar met his counts at the head of the viaduct.
Krugar and Aloysis stood together, brothers once more now that they had seen what might be lost should their friendship falter. Freya was as magnificent as ever, her golden armour streaked with Norsii blood and her fiery hair unbound. Count Aldred and Princess Marika, resplendent in gleaming black armour, smiled warmly as he approached.
The southern counts, Siggurd, Markus and Henroth, bowed grandly as he approached, their faces haggard from the long march, yet elated to have arrived in time. Adelhard of the Ostagoths swept Ostvarath in a dazzling flourish, ending by sheathing his ancient blade and bowing to Sigmar.
Conn Carsten, though not yet appointed a count of the empire, had earned the right to stand with such heroes, and his normally sour expression was banished in favour of a thin smile at this great victory. Behind them, the pipes of the Endals and Udose entwined in triumphant harmony.
Bloodied and weary, yet no less magnificent, Otwin and Marius held each other upright. They made for unlikely brothers-in-arms, but they had fought and bled at each other’s sides and shared great heroism and hardship.
Only one count was missing, and Sigmar’s heart ached with his loss.
Alaric, Wolfgart, Redwane and the new Count of Middenheim stood over the body of Pendrag, his fallen sword-brother and oldest friend. All three were hurting, but none would let this moment pass without their presence. Myrsa’s face was impassive, but Wolfgart and Redwane wept openly. Even Alaric, a warrior of a race for whom the lives of men were but a brief moment in time, had shed tears for Pendrag.
Sigmar’s sword-brother was wrapped in blue and white, for the warriors of Middenheim had fashioned his shroud from the banner of their city, and Sigmar could think of no more appropriate a gesture. Myrsa now bore the runefang, but to honour Pendrag’s passing, he laid the mighty blade upon his fallen lord’s chest.
Though Sigmar’s body was on the verge of collapse, he held himself tall before his counts. To do any less would dishonour the men who had fought and died to win this day.
He tried to think of words that would convey how grateful he was, how blessed with such fine friends he was, but the words would not come. Sigmar stood amid his counts and wept for all they had lost this day, for friends who would never laugh with them again, and for brothers, fathers and sons who would never return to their families.
Count Siggurd stepped forward, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
‘I did not know if you would come,’ said Sigmar at last.
‘You called for us and we came,’ said Siggurd. ‘We will always come.’
To Anita. For everything.
BOOK ONE
Danse Macabre
Thus Sigmar wept not for Middenheim
Nor did he weep for his burned lands.
But he wept on seeing his brother lie dead
While all his people wept for themselves.
From that day upon the Fauschlag Rock
We did not speak boldly;
And we passed not either night or day
That we did not breathe heavy sighs.
Thus it was that Death carried off
Pendrag, whose strength and vigours had been mighty
As it will every warrior
Who shall come after him upon the earth.
One
Fire and Retribution
Lord Aetulff was dead, and they carried the body from his village in a long procession through the snow towards the surf-pounded shoreline. Those that had served under him, those despised few who had survived the long flight from the vengeful blades of their enemies, followed the solemn bier with their broken swords carried before them. Their lives were forfeit, but there were few enough men remaining along the coastline to put them to death for their cowardice.
The chieftain’s favoured huscarls carried the body on a palanquin of broken shields, the body wrapped in a tattered flag brought from the south. The body was light; a wasting sickness had eaten the flesh from his bones upon his return from the disastrous war. Zhek Askah had said it was punishment from the gods, and none dared gainsay him.
Broken in spirit, Aetulff’s wounded body had lingered six seasons after the defeat before finally succumbing. He had been strong, and he took a long, painful time to die.
His sons were all dead, slain in battle as the gods decreed, and none now remained to preserve his line. He had died in the knowledge that no living creature would carry his name into the future. He would die unremembered and his bloody deeds would be forgotten in a generation.
The womenfolk did not follow the body, and his shame was complete.
The shield bearers followed a path to the water, where a fire burned in a pit hacked into the frozen ground. The waters of the ocean were dark, cold and unforgiving, and a storm-battered ship rose and fell with the surge and retreat of the tide. Sturdily built from overlapping timbers and tar, a rearing wolfshead was carved at its prow. It was a proud vessel and had carried them through the worst storms the gods could hurl from the skies. It deserved better, but if the last year and a half had taught the people of the settlement anything, it was that this world cared nothing for what was deserved.
The warriors following the body climbed aboard and turned to help lift the dead chieftain onto his ship. They were strong men and it took no effort to manoeuvre him onto a tiered pile of precious timbers and kindling. One by one, th
e warriors slashed their forearms with the broken blades of their swords. They spilled their blood over their dead war chief and dropped their useless weapons to the deck. Blood shed and swords surrendered, they climbed over the gunwale, which looked bare without lines of ranked-up kite shields and banks of fighting men hauling at the oars.
One warrior with a winged helm of raven’s feathers waited until the others had splashed down into the sea before upending a flask of oil over the body. He doused the ship’s timbers with what remained and tossed the flask to the deck. The raven-helmed warrior tugged a tied rope at the mainmast, and the black sail unfurled with a boom of hide.
He turned and dropped over the side of the ship, wading ashore to take his place with the rest of his forsaken band. Their war chief had died, yet they had lived. Their shame would be never-ending. Women would shun them, children would spit on them and they would be right to do so. The gods would curse them for all eternity until they made good on their debt.
The freezing wind caught the sail, and the ship eased away from the shore, wallowing without a steersman to guide it or rowers to power it. The tide and wind quickly dragged the ship away from the land, twisting it around like a leaf in a millpond. The treacherous currents and riptides around this region of the coast had dashed many an unwary vessel against the cliffs, yet they bore Lord Aetulff’s ship out to sea with gentle swells. Gulls wheeled above its mast, adding their throaty caws to the chief’s lament.
The raven-helmed warrior lifted a bow from the shingle and nocked an arrow to the string. He held the cloth-wrapped tip in the fire until it caught light and hauled back on the string. The wind dropped and he loosed the shaft, the fiery missile describing a graceful arc through the greying sky until it hammered home in the ship’s mast.
Slowly, then with greater ferocity as the oil caught light, the ship burned. Flames roared to life, hungrily devouring the rotten meat of the dead man and setting to work on the oily timbers. Within moments, the ship was ablaze from bow to stern, black smoke trailing a mournful line towards the sky.
The warriors watched it until it split apart with a sound like a heart breaking. It slid over onto its side and with a final slurp of water vanished beneath the surface.
Lord Aetulff was dead and no one mourned him.
From a cave mouth high on the cliffs above the village, a man in tattered furs and a cloak of feathers watched the last voyage of the doomed wolfship. His face was bearded and long hair hung in matted ropes from his head. Once it had been jet black, but it was now so wadded with mud and dirt that its true colour had long since been obscured. The filth of living in a cave encrusted his skin and his arms were rank with sores and rashes that burned and tingled pleasurably in equal measure.
The villagers called him Wyrtgeorn, though he could make little sense of the word. What he had bothered to learn of their language allowed him only the most basic understanding. A fetish-draped shaman had spat it at him a year and a half ago when he and the wizened immortal stepped from the wolfship that now burned to ashes. Though he did not know its meaning, it was a name to hide behind, a shield to hold before the deeds of his true name.
The immortal had left the village, imploring him to travel onwards into the northern wastes, but he had refused, climbing the cliff and making this cave his home. He knew he should have gone; his presence here would draw the hunters, but something had kept him from leaving, as though invisible shackles held him here.
He shook off such gloomy thoughts, and watched the wolfship slide beneath the waves. A rolling fogbank crept in from the south, obscuring the horizon and making the air taste of wet cloth. He watched the warriors as they trudged through the snow to the village, all too familiar with the shame they bore for their survival.
He threw a guilty look over his shoulder, wincing as the wound that would never heal flared with old pain. The immortal had given him a cloth-wrapped bundle as they fled across the ocean, and even without unwrapping it, he knew what lay within. How such a thing was possible was a mystery. He had thrown it away in the wake of defeat, yet there it was.
He kept it wedged in a cleft at the back of the cave. He knew he should hurl it into the sea, but also knew he would not.
Something moved in the fog, and he lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the winter sun.
A phantom of the mist, or something darker?
His right hand twitched with the memory of slaughter, and his gaze slid towards the settlement as old instincts and new senses prickled with danger.
From out of the fog, a dozen ships cut through the water towards village.
Powerful sweeps of oars drove the ships onward, and their decks were crammed with armed men in gleaming iron breastplates and full-face helms of bronze. They clutched axes and swords and spears, and he sensed their anger, even from high on the cliff. He looked back into his cave, but closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had feared this moment ever since he stepped onto the shore, but now that it was here, he found himself utterly calm.
The same calm he felt before a duel. The same calm he felt before he killed.
He watched the ships surge through the crashing breakers and slide up the shingle beach. The village’s few warriors ran to meet them with axes held high over their shoulders, old men and youngsters mainly. Fifty men of sword-bearing age were all that were left to defend the village.
Nowhere near enough.
Whooping war shouts echoed from the stony beach as women and children ran towards the cliffs. There was no escape there, just a postponement of the inevitable. These warriors would leave no survivors. They never did.
Even isolated in his cave, he had heard the recent scare stories of the seaborne raiders, the killers from across the ocean who wiped out entire tribes in their vengeful slaughters. Their crimson and white sails were the terror of the coastline, a sight to drive fear into the hearts of those that had once been masters of the ocean.
A score of armed men dropped from the lead ship, led by a warrior in gleaming silver armour and a gold-crowned helm. He bore a mighty warhammer and smashed one of the village warriors from his feet with a single blow. More ships beached, and in moments a hundred warriors were ashore. Arrows leapt from the decks of the ships, serrated tips slicing into proud flesh, and flame-wrapped barbs landing amid the tinder-dry homes of the villagers.
A dozen warriors were dropping into the surf with every passing second. Though the defenders of the settlement were hopelessly outnumbered, they fought with the fury of warriors given one last chance to reclaim their honour in death.
Lightly armoured men with bows fanned out onto the beach, taking aim at the fleeing villagers and cutting them down with lethally accurate shafts. Iron clashed with iron on the shore as the last of the defenders were overwhelmed. He watched the raven-helmed warrior hurl himself at the leader of these reavers from the sea with his axe slashing down over his head. The warhammer swept up, and the blade slammed down on its haft. Such a blow should have shattered any normal weapon and split the enemy’s skull, but he knew that this was no ordinary warhammer. Nor was the warrior who bore it any ordinary foe.
The warhammer spun in the warrior’s hand, faster than any weapon of such weight and power should move. Its head slammed into raven-helm’s face, caving his skull to shards and knocking him to the red snow.
‘No pyre for you,’ he said as the warriors from the sea advanced into the settlement.
Its buildings were burning and its people dead, yet the raiders kicked them down, leaving nothing standing to indicate that anyone had once called this bay home. This was no raid for gold or slaves or plunder. This was an attack of destruction.
The raiders hauled the bodies of the defenders from the sea and began stripping their helmets. One by one, the warrior with the warhammer bent to look at their faces, but each time he would shake his head in disappointment.
Wyrtgeorn chuckled as the warrior shook his head and hissed, ‘You won’t find what you’re looking for among the dead.’
She reached the ledge before his cave and collapsed onto her knees. Her eyes were frantic. Only seconds of life remained to her and she knew it.
‘Wyrtgeorn,’ she said in a language not her own. ‘Save… my… children.’
He backed away from her, shaking his head.
‘You must!’ she said, thrusting the youngsters toward him. He saw they were twins, one a boy, the other a girl. Both howled with uncontrollable sobs. The woman’s eyes closed and she swayed as death reached up to claim her. The woman’s daughter threw her arms around her mother’s neck and the pair of them fell from the cliff, falling a hundred yards into the sea.
The warriors on the shoreline saw them fall, their eyes drawn up to the cave on the cliff. He knew he was invisible in the shadows, but the boy stood on the ledge as plain as day. Four warriors ran from the beach towards the cliff paths, and the man cursed. He felt a tugging at his fur jerkin and looked down into the coldest blue eyes he had ever seen. The boy stood with his fists bunched at his sides, and there was pleading desperation in the way he met the man’s gaze.
‘You are Wyrtgeorn,’ said the boy in the man’s own tongue. ‘Why did you not come down and fight them?’
‘Because I have no wish to commit suicide,’ he replied.
‘They have killed my tribe,’ wept the boy. ‘Why won’t you kill them?’
The Legend of Sigmar Page 73