Swords of the Emperor

by Chris Wraight

  The crowd started to murmur again. Helborg’s words held them rapt.

  “This is why we march!” he roared, sweeping out his sword and holding it aloft. “To take back our birthright. To hold our heads high and resist the usurper, the heretic and the traitor. I will lead you in this, men of Siggurd. I, who have commanded armies that made the very earth tremble, whose holy blade has run dark with the blood of the Emperor’s enemies. I, Grand Marshal of the Reiksguard, Hammer of Chaos, Kreigsmeister, the hand of vengeance!”

  His voice rose in fervour. Men below were shouting in acclamation now, fists clenched, roused to a pitch of emotion. They would do anything for him. Leitdorf watched in awe as Helborg moulded them to his will. So this was why he inspired such devotion.

  “Go back to your villages!” he roared, sweeping his sword down and pointing the tip at each man in turn. “Bring your men to me and I will make them killers. With me at your head, no army shall dare oppose our will. We will not relent until we have cleansed the city of the filth that squats in it. They sowed the seeds of this war through treachery, but we will repay them twenty times over in their own blood. March with me, men of Averland, and I will deliver you! For the Empire! For your elector! For the holy blood of Sigmar!”

  As one, the men below rose up, shaking their fists and repeating the cry. They were seething, ready to sell their lives for the cause. The army had been born.

  As For the Empire! rang out across the courtyard, Helborg swept his imperious gaze back to Leitdorf.

  “How do you do that?” asked Rufus, still watching the frenzied crowd below.

  “Learn from it,” snapped Helborg. “And learn it fast.”

  As he pulled back from the balcony, Helborg winced. His wounds had not entirely healed.

  “I’ll not wait here any longer,” he rasped. “The time has come to lead these men. War calls, Herr Leitdorf, and I will answer.”

  The mayor of Grenzstadt was no fool. Unlike in Heideck, the proximity of the eastern town to the Worlds Edge Mountains had bred a certain toughness in the place. Klaus Meuningen was a lean, angular man, grey-haired and clean-shaven with a warrior’s bearing. In his youth he’d commanded a regiment of mountain guard, and knew the ways of a soldier. When Schwarzhelm’s commander had passed through the town on the route to Black Fire Pass, he’d spared every man from his garrison that he could. The news that none of them would be coming back was an unwelcome reward for his generosity.

  “And what I am supposed to do about the defence of Grenzstadt?” he asked, placing his pitcher of beer heavily on the table in front of him.

  He sat behind the desk in his chambers facing Bloch once again. The commander looked like he’d taken a few more knocks in the mountains. He’d lost weight, and his stocky frame was beginning to look ravaged. The man’s aide, Kraus, was at his side, still in his plate armour and looking as grim-faced as he had before.

  Bloch shrugged.

  “Why do you need a garrison here, mayor?” He seemed impatient, as if some pressing need was nagging away at him. “The passes are secure. We’ve done what we came to do.”

  Meuningen sighed. Many things had been preying on his mind recently, and this was unwelcome in the extreme.

  “Matters have moved on since you left for the passes,” he said. “News has come of the new elector in Averheim, Count Heinz-Mark Grosslich. The issue has been decided.”

  “You must welcome that,” Bloch said. “Schwarzhelm has given his verdict. That’s what he came for.”

  Meuningen shrugged.

  “Schwarzhelm? I’m told he’s left the province. We’re alone again here, ignored by the rest of the Empire, just as before.”

  Bloch frowned. Despite his blunt manners and street-brawler appearance, the man was as astute as his master.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “Of course.”

  Meuningen reached for the roll of parchment lying on the desk and took it up. His eyes scanned the message for the fourth time.

  “This arrived yesterday by courier from the Averburg. It’s signed by Grosslich himself. By revealing the contents to you I’m breaking the first order my new liege-lord has given me. Perhaps now you understand why I’m feeling rather exposed without my garrison here.”

  “Just tell me what’s in it.”

  “The elector knows of your presence at Black Fire Pass, and knew you’d come back here. He’s ordered me to detain you in Grenzstadt until his men arrive in force. He says he wishes to convey you back to Averheim with a guard of honour. As it happens, I’m forbidden to reveal these instructions to you. Make of that what you will.”

  Bloch was unmoved. He looked as if some suspicion he’d been cradling had been confirmed.

  “Detained, eh?” he said, and a wry smile creased his weather-worn features. “Some reward for what we’ve done. I don’t take orders from him, mayor. Until I receive notice from Schwarzhelm, I’ll go where I please and when I please. We’ve earned that right in blood.”

  Bloch spat the last few words out forcefully. Meuningen could appreciate the sentiment. He’d lost men under command too.

  “I agree entirely, commander,” he said. “If I didn’t, do you think I’d be telling you this?”

  He took another swig of beer. As he did so, he noticed the trembling in his hands. He was getting too old for these kind of risks.

  “I’ve seen many years of service in Averland,” he continued, wiping his mouth. “A man learns a few things about the arts of state as he ages. Grosslich will want to install his own man here sooner or later. He’s sending a battalion of troops already, and I’m not stupid enough to think they’ll take orders from me.”

  He leaned forwards, hoping Bloch would be wise enough to see the danger.

  “We owe you a debt of thanks in Grenzstadt. Take this advice as repayment. Grosslich has no love for you, and nor does he wish to have an army in his province that he doesn’t control. You should leave. Now. Find your Schwarzhelm if you can, or get out. There’s only room for one victor in Averland.”

  Bloch sat back in his chair, pondering the tidings. He didn’t look massively surprised by them, though the news that Schwarzhelm was missing clearly bothered him.

  “What’ll you do when we’re gone?” he asked, rubbing his stubbled chin. “Grosslich won’t be slow to send more men.”

  Meuningen smiled coldly. “Make the best of it. What else can we do?”

  Bloch turned to Kraus. “How soon can we leave?”

  “We could be on the road at dawn. You’ll have trouble pulling the men from the taverns until then. They haven’t seen a tankard or a woman for a long time.”

  Bloch didn’t smile. “Me neither,” he said ruefully.

  “Where will you go?” asked Meuningen.

  Bloch sighed, and ran his hands through his cropped hair.

  “I said to the men we’d go back to Averheim. We’ll have to head west for a while, maybe as far as Heideck. We’re small enough to keep out of trouble until then, and I’ll have a look at things when we get closer. I’ll not run across the fields again like a fugitive. There are two hundred of us, all battle-scarred. If Grosslich wants to bring us in, he’ll have to work for it.”

  Meuningen nodded.

  “Very well. The grace of Sigmar be with you. You deserve it.”

  “As do you, mayor,” replied Bloch, looking sincere enough. “So I hope he has grace enough for the both of us.”

  The villagers crowded round, suspicion heavy in their dull, stupid faces. The settlement of Urblinken was as unremittingly grim as most of the hamlets on the slopes, untouched by the prosperity of the lower Aver valley and left to scratch a living on the unproductive highlands. In that respect, it resembled many of the grimy places of the northern Empire, beds of poverty, incest, disease and superstition.

  Perfect recruiting grounds, mused Skarr, sweeping his gaze across the murmuring throng, gathered in what passed for a marketplace. All around him, low, mean building
s crowded. Their wattle and daub walls were streaked with filth and stained from cooking fires. Chickens pecked through the refuse and children splashed through grimy puddles. An ill-repaired wall ran around the perimeter of the houses, crumbling at the summit and with a flimsy iron gate at the opening.

  The Reiksguard, all twenty-seven of them, looked like messengers from some mighty deity compared with the mean folk who’d clustered to hear him speak. Their armour flashed in the afternoon sun and the iron cross of their regiment fluttered proudly from their banner. The villagers had no real idea what Reiksguard were, but they knew the power and reputation of knights. If Skarr had told them the Emperor himself had sent them, they would have believed him readily enough.

  “How many men can you muster?” he asked the headman, a slack-jawed, unshaven brute with a lazy eye and unspeakably foul breath.

  “How much’re you paying?” asked the man again, fixated on the idea of gold.

  “You needn’t worry about that,” said Skarr coldly. “Have you no idea of honour? Your lands have been usurped. You can be part of the campaign to take them back.”

  The man looked blank.

  “All recruits will be paid,” Skarr added grudgingly. “They’ll be fed too. If they fight well, the Lord Helborg will find ways to reward them.”

  At the mention of the Marshal, a ripple of excitement passed through the crowd.

  “Helborg!” gasped several of the men.

  Skarr never ceased to be amazed by that. Even in the darkest corner of the Empire, the name was spoken with reverence.

  “Is it true he can summon fire from the heavens?” blurted a hulking blacksmith. He wore a fearsome beard and his head was shaven. Piercings glinted from his muscled arms. He looked as belligerent as an orc, but at the mention of Helborg’s name his expression had taken on a childlike curiosity.

  “Is he really twelve foot tall?”

  “Can he level the hills?”

  Skarr looked at the throng contemptuously. Just by talking to them he felt sullied, dragged down to their bone-headed level.

  “Yes, and more,” he said. “If you march with him, you’ll be able to tell your children’s children of it.”

  Some of the younger men gained an eager light in their eyes. Getting out of the village always appealed to the young bucks who hadn’t yet been crushed by the tedium of rural life. They had aspirations, girls to impress, dreams of riches and adventure to nurture.

  Even the headman looked fleetingly interested.

  “We’ve fifty men who can bear arms here. There are more in the valleys to the north.”

  Skarr nodded. The forces were coming together. Grosslich hadn’t penetrated this far east yet. Until he did, these men were Helborg’s.

  “Then muster all you can,” he said. “Every man will need his own boots and must be ready to march at an hour’s notice. We’ll provide the weapons.”

  He let a sliver of threat enter his voice.

  “You’re under orders now, headman,” he said, holding the fat man’s gaze. “Don’t let me down. I’ll come through here again in two days. If your men aren’t waiting, the vengeance of Helborg will be on your heads.”

  The man’s eyes widened and a murmur of fear passed through the crowd.

  “Don’t worry,” said the headman, looking over his shoulder for encouragement. “We’ll be ready.”

  Skarr turned away from them, indicating to his men to pass through the crowd and get a closer estimate of numbers. If even half of the villages provided what they said they would then he’d have added over a thousand men to the Marshal’s tally. This whole region was ready to march, for gold if for nothing else.

  Adro Vorster, his deputy in Eissen’s absence, strode up to him.

  “Word from Drakenmoor,” he said, clutching a roll of orders in his hand. “The Marshal’s back on his feet. We’re to press on south of Heideck and continue the muster, but the march won’t be long now.”

  “That order can’t come soon enough,” grumbled Skarr, brushing some accumulated grime from the edge of his cloak. “These people sicken me.”

  Vorster smiled in sympathy.

  “They’re scum, sir,” he agreed. “But they’re our scum.”

  “And Sigmar be praised for that,” muttered Skarr, shaking his head.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Night in Averheim. Fires burned in the braziers placed across the city. The dull sound of massed chanting resounded along the narrow streets. Broken clouds circled the pinnacle of the Iron Tower, ripping away from it as the arcane energies thrumming along its massive flanks flared and whipped around the six-pronged crown.

  The citadel was complete, glinting darkly, a vast spike of curling metal erupting from the very heart of the corrupted city. It dominated the entire valley, thrusting into the tormented air from the great circular courtyard below.

  No sane man could possibly have doubted its baleful intent now. Lilac tongues of flame licked at it from pits sunk deep into the heart of the earth. Vast engines had been chanted into life by gangs of shackled supplicants, constructed in secret by scores of mutated workers and branded with smouldering icons of ruin. The machines churned with a deep, pounding murmur, gouts of coal-black smoke rising around them like pillars, billowing up through deep-sunk vents and fouling the air above the ground. Deep vibrations cracked the older buildings of Averheim, shattering walls that had stood since the very foundation of the Empire and jarring the rich merchant townhouses into piles of rubble.

  From deep within the dungeons of the Tower, ranks of dog-soldiers emerged. They marched in close formation, wheezing and growling, their humanity now long forgotten behind masks of beaten metal, riveted to their tortured bones and daubed with the blood of their live human prey. They swung crystal-bladed halberds fresh from the underground forges where packs of Stone-slaves toiled without hope of release. The dog-soldiers fanned out from the Tower and into the streets, thousands of them, all once men, now turned into voiceless, inexorable bringers of death.

  The populace of Averheim had been addled by joyroot, now billowing in vast columns of lilac smoke from furnaces all across the city. The six lesser towers burned night and day with the narcotic fumes, dousing the houses, garrisons and taverns with the mind-altering cocktail prepared in hulking underground vats. As the twisted warriors marched to their allotted stations, mortal men cheered them wildly, lost in a haze of visions. None slept. None had slept for days. The houses were empty, and the squares were full. Madness had come to Averheim, and the debased populace revelled in it.

  At the summit of the Tower, out on the open platform at the very pinnacle of the huge citadel, Grosslich and Natassja stood alone.

  Natassja was revealed in all her dark majesty. The wind, whipped up by the latent forces surging beneath Averheim, screamed past her, rippling her black robes and tousling her long raven hair. Her body now glowed a deep, luminous blue, and tattoos as black as night writhed across her exposed skin. Her white-less eyes glittered in the night air and her lips were parted. She gazed on the maelstrom, and the maelstrom gazed back.

  “It begins,” she murmured.

  Grosslich wore a new suit of armour, blood-red and forged from some unnatural alloy created in Natassja’s forges. It shone like an insect’s shell, jointed with astonishing precision, encasing his entire body below the neck. In place of a sword he carried a slender wand of bone, carved from skulls and fused into a single channel for his forbidden magicks. He was a sorcerer in his own right now, gifted by the Dark Prince for the damage he’d wrought to the Empire he’d once called his homeland. His expression was eager, though there was a note of uncertainty.

  “The lesser towers are lighting,” he said.

  One by one, the six smaller spikes of iron protruding from the old city walls burst into sudden flame. Each was a different colour, vivid and searing. As the torches kindled, the fluorescent hues mingled in the air above the rooftops, turning the deep of the night into a bizarre and perverted copy of the day. Sha
dows swayed wildly across the city as the illumination switched from one shade to another. All of Averheim was ablaze, drenched in a riot of sorcerous, sickening colour. Only the central Tower, massive and nightshade-black, remained untouched by the luminous blooms. It was waiting, biding its time, holding for the moment.

  More mutant soldiers, some bearing bronze studs in their flesh as the handmaidens did, began to file from the gates at the base of the Tower, marching behind the dog-soldiers to take up their places within the city. The ranks of troops emerging from the surgeries and dungeons seemed endless, hundreds upon hundreds of twisted creatures who’d once been men. The mortal inhabitants of Averheim cheered them on, their own senses distorted and insensible to anything but a vague impression of excitement. The madness was now universal, soaked into the walls and stained deep at the roots.

  Below it all, the Stone waited. Its spirit was alive, sentient and searching. In its hidden chamber, Achendorfer read the rites endlessly, the blood flowing over his chin and dripping to the polished floor. It remained as black as a corrupted soul. As the chanting continued, it became more black, sinking into an utter absence of light impossible to create in the world of untainted matter. As Achendorfer stumbled over his spells, the glossy sheen disappeared, replaced by a purity of darkness he’d never seen before. It deepened, falling away to a shade he could only describe as oblivion.

  Out on the pinnacle, Natassja sensed it. She sighed, flexing her long, taloned fingers. The aethyric energies surging up the Tower resonated with her body, fuelling the transformations within. She felt subtle harmonics, so long cultivated, shift into alignment.

  “Here it comes…” she whispered.

  Far above, the clouds broke. High in the sky, the Deathmoon rode, as yellow as a goblin’s tooth, full-faced and leering. Morrslieb, bleeding corruption, was abroad. As the final shreds moved away from it, baleful light flooded across blighted Averheim, blending with the fires on the walls and drenching the Aver valley in more layers of diseased virulence.