by Death
And these men behind him had followed him here without question, perhaps to their deaths. Morgan turned his mount with a twitch of the reins to look up and down the lines. Perhaps two hundred men on horseback stared back at him, arrayed in two ranks. Their pennons whipped and snapped in the rising breeze, and the snow was already spotting the manes of their horses. Morgan touched the flanks of his own mount with his heels and the big animal limbered forward, kicking up the snow. He clicked his tongue and spoke to the animal softly, sensing its weariness. ‘Ho, now, Arion, my brave. Head up for the lads. Come now, boy.’
The big warhorse seemed to understand him. It lifted its gaunt head and pranced a little under him. Poor Arion was half-starved, as were they all. Not much for a horse to pick at, up here in the steppes of the Troll Country.
He rode down the lines, catching the eyes of the men as he passed, nodding, smiling, raising his gauntlet to the officers. They grinned back at him, hollow-cheeked and unshaven, many mounted on scrub mountain ponies for want of better. They wore an eclectic mix of harness: light brigandines of leather reinforced with iron scales, chainmail, and here and there a few pieces of white plate, relics of past glories. Their lances were all pointed skywards, butts in the stirrup-cups, pennons snapping. The lance-shafts were all of pine, here. In past years they had been of ash, down in the forested Empire, and cornel-wood in the foothills of the Grey Mountains.
At the pommel of every man’s saddle were two leather holsters, and from these protruded the grips of his matchlocks. They had not yet lit their match, but that time was almost upon them. It would be soon, now, very soon.
The traditional ribaldry, or a skeleton of it, flashed out as Morgan rode down the ranks.
‘General, any chance of a drink? I’m pissing hailstones.’
Morgan smiled. He saw faces which had been riding at his side for a decade – though precious few of them now. And he saw faces which had been part of his command for only a few months, like young Arundel. They all met his eyes – that was good. They would be here with him until the end.
He reined in his horse, and stood upright in the stirrups. A flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye: Jubal had raised an arm, and the banner bearer, young Kyriel, was slowly waving the battle-flag at the centre of the line.
‘Light your match, lads!’ Morgan called out at once. ‘It’s time to melt those icicles!’
He kicked Arion into a canter, wheeling him around on the spot. The big horse leapt forward off his haunches, like some huge, predatory feline – he had caught the sudden quickening of his master’s mood.
Morgan galloped back up the line as the men uncovered their firepots and began blowing their match into life. They clicked their lances into their back-straps so as to have both hands free, and soon the evocative reek of gunpowder was eddying down on the breeze. Morgan wiped snow from his face and reined in Arion. The big destrier was snorting and blowing and prancing now as though he were a colt again; he always loved the moments before battle. He had been bred for this.
As was I, Morgan thought.
‘What do we have?’ he snapped at Jubal.
The big man tilted his head to one side, looking north-east down the slope to the grey blade of the river. On the far bank the eaves of the forest loomed, dark and ominous.
‘I think our friends are making their move, Gabriel,’ he said mildly. Then he donned his helm, a battered, disreputable bowl of iron with a beak-like nose guard.
Morgan stared at the gloom-wreathed foot of the wood. There was movement there, all along the riverbank. For perhaps four hundred yards the forest was bristling with half-guessed moving shadows.
‘Take Garnedd’s squadron forward,’ he said calmly to Jubal. ‘Get them down to the water.’
‘Cold day for a bath,’ Jubal said, and his eyes narrowed in cold humour. He raised an arm. ‘First squadron, on me – at the trot – hold your ranks, you lazy bastards!’
A dry cheer went up, and horses whinnied up and down the line. The long-awaited battle was happening at last.
Morgan turned to the little knot of aides who had come forward out of the ranks as he waved his fist.
‘Krauz, go to Briscus and tell him to break off and get his wing back here at all speed. Tell him they’re going to force passage of the ford. Feldtir, you go to Harpius. He’s to make his way here at a walk. Tell him to keep an eye on his right flank as he advances. They may yet feint out to the east.’
Both men slapped gauntlets to chest, and galloped off in a cloud of flurried snow.
Morgan began to hum, an old hymn he had learned as a child. He patted Arion’s neck as the warhorse snorted under him.
It’s been a long time coming, he thought, but it ends here today.
He stared at the blank eaves of the pinewood across the river.
And you brother, are you there now, watching me from the shadows? Can you remember who you were, and what we did together, or is there nothing of your memories left now but the crazed mire of the Dark Gods?
Michael Morgan, my brother, eldest and best. My brother, whom I loved, and who must die today.
It had been ten years. Ten years of restless journeying, of fighting under a half dozen different banners. Once, the brothers Morgan had led a legion of volunteers, soldiers from Altdorf and Nuln and Talabheim and Middenheim; the great cities of the central Empire. Such had been the glory of their name that men had flocked to fight under the twin eagles of their banner, and the Grand Theogonist himself had blessed their undertaking. He had recognised in the Morgans two men of incorruptible virtue, who fought for glory and for the gods of men, who scorned every attempt to buy their services, who travelled freely about the Empire and pitched in wherever they were needed with their famed cavalry. They had fought orcs in the Black Mountains, ratmen in the Forest of Shadows, and beastmen in the Reikwald. Their numbers had been decimated many times, but always a hard core of veterans remained, and there were always more than enough young soldiers ready to make up the numbers, to share a little in the glory. They had become something of a legend.
And then there had come the news from the North, rumours of a great Chaos host rebuilding itself after the wreck of their armies at the Ulricsberg, eight years before. Michael and Gabriel had taken the army north, past the Middle Mountains, up to the Troll Country. Close to the haunted ruins of Praag. There, they had encountered a great host of Chaos warriors, still forming, and had pitched into it with their customary savagery, relying on the punch of cavalry to smash open the enemy ranks and put them to flight.
And they had prevailed.
Gabriel Morgan thought back on that day, the last time he had seen his brother alive.
‘We have them, Gabe,’ Michael cried, grinning. He beat the flat of his sword against his armoured chest. ‘One more push and they’ll run all the way to the sea!’ He turned to his trumpeter, old Gimmelman. ‘Sound me the pursuit, Lars. And keep blowing it until every mother’s-son of us is on their tail.’
The battle-horn rang out in the wild halloo that signalled the pursuit. At once, the ordered ranks of the cavalry opened out across the plain, the compact fists of the squadrons unclenching. Now the hard fighting was over, and something like sport could begin. The pace of the cavalry quickened. They set up a great shout and let their horses have their heads.
For perhaps two miles, the hosts of the enemy were running for their lives, a serried crowd of lumbering men and beasts in muck-spattered armour, snarling and slavering as they ran. Michael had killed their great champion, Graakon, in single combat, before unloosing the heavy horse. The Chaos hordes had held for almost an hour before breaking. Now they were a scattered mob, intent only on making their way to the rocky hills and forests to the east, wherein they had their filthy lairs.
Jubal Kane rode up and joined the brothers as they watched the destruction of the Chaos army, the wild pursuit that harried it to its death.
‘A fair morning’s work,’ he said. ‘I have the reserve in hand, ready
for your orders.’
‘What of our own casualties?’ Gabriel asked him.
‘Too soon to say. They were heaviest out on the left, where Briscus and Harpius held the line. Good men, those.’
‘Yes,’ Michael said at once, eyes still fixed on the crowded, teeming battle-plain before them. ‘They should be promoted. They did well today
Gabe – do you see that, out to the north-east?’ He pointed with one bloodied hand.
‘They’re reforming,’ Gabriel said. ‘Maybe a company of them.’
‘I’ll be damned,’ Jubal said. ‘General, let me take a squadron out and teach them some manners.’
The Chaos warriors were cohering into a distinct line, just on the lower slopes of a small, rocky knoll maybe a third of a league to the right of their main body. Perhaps a hundred of them had halted there, and more of their fellows were joining them moment by moment, pulling out of the general rout.
‘We don’t scatter those bastards quick, we may have the morning’s work to do all over again,’ Jubal rumbled.
Michael donned his helm, a high, silver-inlaid affair with a black plume. His face disappeared; he became a shining mask, one that struck terror into his enemies.
‘Jubal, bring up the reserves. I shall lead them in. Gabriel, keep up the chase with the main body. We must cripple them before they reach the forests.’ He reached out a hand, and Gabriel took it. ‘I will see you before dark, brother.’
‘Tonight. We’ll drink on it,’ Gabriel said.
Then Michael Morgan turned his horse and cantered off, the two hundred cavalry of the reserve coming up around him with Jubal Kane at their head, the twin eagle banner snapping above them.
Afterwards, when the fighting had ended, and even the most savage of the army’s veterans had tired of the slaughter, they sat around the campfires in the long night that followed, too weary to even march far from the battlefield. Around them the jackals and wolves of the Troll Country padded in packs, feasting on carrion and other, nameless things feasted with them in the darkness, a night unlit by stars, the moon hidden by heavy cloud.
The wounded had been laid in lines upon the frozen ground, and the army physicians were at their bloody work among them. Now and again the night would be rent by an agonised scream as they pieced slashed flesh and broken bone back together. Gabriel sat on a discarded saddle, staring into the fire, and around him were clustered most of the senior officers of the army, all silent, all aghast at the news Jubal had brought among them. In the firelit gloom the rest of the army were as silent as a great host can be, as though trying to listen in on their betters. Only in the horselines was there any noise, as the tired destriers bickered amongst themselves and shifted restlessly, surrounded by the stink of blood and dead flesh.
‘How did it happen?’ Gabriel asked dully.
If men were trees, Jubal Kane was an oak, a stout, massive, unyielding oak which would break rather than bend. But now he could not meet Gabriel’s eyes, and in his own there was a shadow, a memory of horror which even he, as hardened a veteran as ever walked, could not yet bring himself to recall.
Jubal had taken a sword-cut to the face; by his eye the flesh had been stitched back together. He touched it now, as though that contact could somehow bring back the memory of the evening’s work. About him, the officers of the army waited, staring, and beyond them thousands more about a hundred other campfires sat quiet in the firelight, as though they, too, could hear his words.
Only Gabriel did not look at Jubal Kane. He stared into the fire at his feet, his eyes bright with tears that would not fall, his face as set as something hewn out of stone.
‘Speak, Jubal,’ he said.
‘We piled into them head-on, a sword-charge. We hadn’t bothered to reload the matchlocks. They were standing along a line of broken stones, so a lot of horses went down in the first contact: cartwheeling, broken legs, a pile-up here and there. We smashed their line though, broke it into pieces, and they withdrew up the knoll in front of us. Michael – the general – he reformed us, and decided to dismount to finish off the survivors, because the knoll was bad going for the horses, all crags and loose scree. We left the horseholders at the foot of the hill and continued up on foot, some seven score of us in an extended line. We outnumbered them maybe two to one. Men were laughing as they slogged up the hill, and the general was talking about how good a tall beer would taste round about then.’
Jubal paused. He seemed unwilling to go on. Then Gabriel raised his head and stared at him, a red light in his eyes.
‘The last of the enemy gathered in a huddle at the summit of the knoll. They did not even seem to be aware of our approach. There was chanting, a kind of drumming we could feel right through the soles of our boots, and then a weird light started up from the midst of the enemy, and a stink, Sigmar help me, a reek that was as foul as anything I have ever known. Like corpses in high summer, or living flesh scorched on a griddle. Our line halted maybe fifty yards from the enemy; it became hard to will oneself to go on. We froze there. Finally the general laughed. He made himself laugh, I’m sure of it. He doffed his helm and shouted at us, called us milkmaids and poltroons, to be scared of a little witchery. He strode forward alone, and he was smiling. But I saw sweat pouring down his face, and his face was as white as a tablecloth.
‘But he shamed us with his courage. Men stumbled forward after him – as did I. We followed him up that hill, though I was more mortally afraid at that moment than I have ever been in my life before.
‘And it happened. It was like standing next to a Nuln bombard as it goes off, only without the noise. There was a great flash of red light. The enemy soldiers on the hilltop were flattened, and we were staggered, some men falling. Even Michael fell to one knee.
‘And out of the light erupted a great shape, a roaring, scarlet-winged fiend. It spread its black wings and rose above us in a great spray of gore. It was as tall as a tower, horned, with a beast’s face and cloven hooves and a long tail
’
Jubal stopped. His face was slick with sweat. He wiped it with the back of his hand and dragged open a stitch in the middle of his wound, so that it seemed he was weeping tears of blood.
‘A daemon prince,’ Gabriel said into the shocked silence that followed. ‘They called up a daemon from their realm.’
Jubal nodded, the blood running unheeded down his face.
‘It swooped down on us like a storm, scattering men like skittles. I was knocked off my feet. Men threw down their swords and ran away. Others froze like statues, their fear petrifying them. But Michael stood fast. I saw him kiss his sword-blade. He was smiling, Gabriel, I swear he was still smiling. And he launched himself at this thing, one man alone. He was transfigured.’
The fire cracked, loud in the silence. No one spoke for a long time. Finally, Gabriel said. ‘So it’s true. He is dead, my brother. It killed him.’
‘No.’ Here, Jubal’s face twisted in grief and shame. ‘That is the thing. That is the terrible thing. Gabriel, it did not kill him.’
‘What?’
‘It took him, Gabriel. It grasped Michael in its claws and took off into the air like some monstrous bat. It flew off with him. It took him alive.’
There was a flurry of exclamations and denials, the quiet around the fire shattered by this news. Gabriel rose from his seat. He grasped Jubal Kane by the shoulders.
‘Jubal, by the blood of Sigmar, are you sure of this?’
The older man nodded.
Dark, slim Harpius spoke up from the shadows, his clear voice rising above the others. ‘We saw it, out on the right. We saw it fly away in the distance, and did not know what to make of it. It went north, deep into the Troll Country.’
‘We must go after it!’ Briscus snarled. ‘Hunt the bastard down – if we have to burn out every bolt hole from here to Norsca.’
A chorus of agreement was shouted about the campfire, the officers of the army gesticulating and arguing with one another, all rank forgotten. Gab
riel drew a deep breath, his hands falling from Jubal’s shoulders.
‘Quiet!’ Gabriel shouted. At once, a hush fell.
‘I command this army in my brother’s absence. And I say this – yes, we will go after him. We will hunt down the thing that took him and we will free him, if he yet lives. We will do this thing – I swear it to you.’ He looked them up and down, dominating them with the glare of his bloodshot eyes. ‘But not tonight, nor yet tomorrow. We fought a hard battle today, and we have wounded. We are low on fodder for man and beast. The army must rest and be refitted ere we take up this quest – do you hear me? We must go back, back south. This will be no easy campaign, and we must prepare for it. In the morning we bury our dead and ride for the Empire. That is my will. Those who disagree can leave this army now, and make their own way.’ He hesitated, and then added, ‘It is what my brother would have done.’
That had been the better part of two years ago. Since that night, Gabriel Morgan had led the army of the twin eagles up and down the wastes of the north, hunting down every rumour, every scrap of story and tall tale he could find, trying to discover the whereabouts of his brother. They had fought innumerable battles, had frozen and starved in the crags and forests of the desolate places of the world. And they had bled and died by the hundred, the thousand, until they had become a mere remnant of what they had been. The new recruits had slowed to a trickle, without Michael Morgan’s name to draw them, and the grim quest in the deserted north did not have the glamour of their former campaigns in the Empire.
They became a hardened band of grimy warriors, kept together by the promise they had made, and by their loyalty to the one surviving eagle, the younger brother, who in Michael’s absence had grown into a hard-faced general, a leader of men whose exploits still inspired songs and stories. But Gabriel Morgan had become something else, and his men with him. In the Empire now, they were spoken of in whispers. Men said they were all doomed, destined to ride forever, until the enemies of man finally accomplished their destruction. Their luck, it was said, had deserted them.