Swords of the Emperor

by Chris Wraight

  Helborg drew his sword. It left the scabbard with a whisper, and the blade shone coldly in the pale light of morning.

  ‘Viscount d’Alembençon,’ said Helborg, inclining his head a fraction.

  The viscount drew his own sword. As it emerged into the air, a faint golden sheen spilled from the mouth of the scabbard.

  ‘Reiksmarshal,’ replied d’Alembençon.

  The man’s voice was unearthly, as if subtly altered by something. Even in those few syllables, the resonance was far deeper, far richer than any mortal man’s had a right to be.

  Helborg’s eyes flickered across to the Bretonnian’s ornate livery. He remembered something about their legends—stories of a grail, quests and blessings of the deity they called the Lady.

  For the first time, he wondered if he should have paid more attention.

  ‘You’re bound by your word of honour,’ said Helborg, gripping the hilt of his own blade. ‘To the death, and the army of the vanquished quits the field. You accept those terms?’

  D’Alembençon nodded. Even that slight gesture was suffused with some strange, indefinable quality. It was as if the man were animated by subtle witchery, making his every movement smoother and more decisive than it should have been.

  ‘I do,’ said d’Alembençon, and brought his blade into guard.

  For a moment longer, Helborg waited. His practised eyes scanned his opponent, looking for weak points in the armour, searching out flaws in his stance.

  None were obvious.

  ‘Then let Sigmar be the judge of it,’ said Helborg.

  ‘He cannot judge anything,’ said d’Alembençon. ‘Not here.’

  The two weapons moved at the same time, blurring through the air before clashing together with an echoing, biting clang. Helborg applied more force, pressing the metal home, testing out the knight’s strength.

  It was formidable. D’Alembençon matched Helborg’s pressure, then added more of his own. The two warriors maintained the position for several heartbeats before finally spinning apart.

  Helborg moved his blade round quickly and pressed in close again, sliding it fast and low. D’Alembençon parried, taking a step back before pulling his sword up and hammering it down two-handed. Then it was Helborg’s turn to block. He took the impact above his chest. The shock of the blow sent him into a half-stagger, which he corrected instantly. D’Alembençon pressed the advantage, recovering ground and forcing Helborg back further.

  The strikes got heavier after that. The two duellists rocked back and forth, probing each other’s defences, teasing, feinting, looking for the way in. Helborg quickly assessed the calibre of his adversary: d’Alembençon knew how to hit hard, but also kept his defence intact. His long blade moved quickly and smoothly, carving through the air like a rapier.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Helborg, feeling sweat trickle down the inside of his helm. ‘For a master of peasants, not bad.’

  D’Alembençon never said a word. The unbroken silence of his fighting quickly became eerie. Helborg found himself wondering if some awful deception had taken place; that perhaps his foe was something more or less than human under all that glittering armour.

  You will still die, he thought, handling his blade with assured deftness, stepping back out of a furious challenge before committing to one of his own. You all die, in the end.

  Throughout all of that, Helborg was only vaguely aware of the presence of the two armies standing around them. He got a blurred impression of them as his body twisted: rows of men, static and impotent, all held rapt by the contest before them, watching for the result that would determine their next move.

  D’Alembençon’s technique was formal, as Helborg would have expected of a Bretonnian. Helborg tried to undermine that with improvisation—darting stabs launched from nowhere, sudden reversals, sham errors.

  Nothing succeeded. Helborg heard his own breathing grow ragged. Handling a longsword in full plate armour was exhausting, and he felt the first stirrings of muscle pain in his arms.

  ‘So you know how to use a sword,’ he rasped, turning out of a challenge before planting his trailing foot and pushing back into the attack.

  ‘I do,’ said d’Alembençon, speaking at last. His voice was the same as it had been before—calm, resonant, otherwordly.

  Helborg stepped up the ferocity of his attacks, discarding finesse for brute force. The blades clashed again, sending showers of sparks spiralling out into the frigid air, making the shafts shiver. He stayed on the front foot, whirling the steel edge ever faster, bringing it down in tight, whistling arcs.

  Nothing had any impact. The viscount kept on fighting, doggedly resisting every attempt to knock him out of his stride. As Helborg’s attacks got nowhere, d’Alembençon launched into some of his own, driving forward, keeping up the pressure, restricting the scope for movement and withdrawal.

  Helborg felt his armour weighing him down, slowing his movements by precious fractions. He pulled back, step by step, blunting the force of the incoming strikes, searching for a way to turn the tide of precise, controlled aggression.

  When the first wound came he barely felt it. The attack slipped under his guard, striking him above the waist. Helborg snatched himself away, immediately correcting his stance, before realising he’d been hit expertly—the shell of his armour had been driven in, pinching the flesh and grinding up against his ribcage.

  He limped away, parrying the flurry of blows that followed with difficulty.

  Now this gets interesting, he thought.

  Ignoring the pain, he pressed home the attack. Head down, legs bent, Helborg swung the runefang hard. For just a moment, driven by little more than cussedness, he gained the ascendancy. He thrust his blade with pace and flair, loading power into every blow. He felt the familiar rush of superiority; the knowledge he was seizing mastery of his opponent. D’Alembençon stumbled before the frenzied attack, nearly losing his footing, and Helborg pounced.

  Just as before, he never saw the wound coming. One moment, he was racing to finish the task, the next he was staggering away, frantically defending himself against a hail of withering strokes.

  It had been a feint, a beautiful, subtle feint of the highest order. Had he seen it done on the parade grounds of the Imperial Palace, Helborg would have smiled knowingly and with pleasure. As it was, he barely prevented the manoeuvre from costing him his life.

  He retreated, feeling the pain from newly broken ribs throb through his torso. His breastplate had been cracked, making it hard to breathe. For a few more moments he held off the assault, but then the inevitable came. More thrusts hit their target. He missed his footing, feeling the earth rush up to meet him, and fell heavily on to his back.

  As he scrambled to lift the Klingerach into guard, d’Alembençon loomed over him and pressed the point of his sword to his neck.

  ‘So now you die, Reiksmarshal,’ said the viscount, sounding as impassive and ethereal as ever. ‘You should not have fought me.’

  Helborg stared up at him. He felt neither fear nor anger, only astonishment; astonishment that someone had beaten him at last.

  ‘What… are you?’ he asked.

  D’Alembençon reached up to his helm, and pulled it free.

  The man’s face was human enough—lean, taut features, a ruddy complexion, sea-green eyes, thick hair the colour of sand. He looked the very image of a Bretonnian lord, save for one thing.

  Everything shone. His skin shimmered like ivory in moonlight. The effect was subtle, just on the edge of perception, but impossible to ignore. When he spoke, opalescent light spilled from between his lips.

  ‘I am blessed by the Lady, Reiksmarshal,’ he said. ‘I have supped from the Grail and taken on its power. Did you not recognise my devices?’

  Helborg’s eyes slipped down to the image of the goblet on the viscount’s armour.

  ‘A warning,’ he muttered. ‘How admirable.’

  D’Alembençon drew the tip of his sword up, ready to plunge it into Helborg’s
exposed throat.

  ‘I regret killing you,’ he said mournfully. ‘You fought—’

  His words were obscured by the sudden crack and boom of artillery fire ringing out across the empty plain. From the north, out on the far left flank of the Bretonnian lines, plumes of rolling smoke began to boil up into the sky. A whole barrage thundered out, sending mortar shells whistling into the close-packed ranks of infantry.

  The effect was immediate—peasant soldiers broke into a stampede, clambering over one another to escape the bombardment. Helborg heard the frantic neighing of horses, followed by the horrific screams of men being ridden down.

  D’Alembençon’s head snapped round, his mouth open. His sword wavered, just for a moment.

  ‘How is this—?’ he started, his voice weak with disbelief.

  Helborg knew he only had seconds to act. With an almighty heave, he smashed the viscount’s sword aside and hauled himself back to his feet. The runefang felt light in his hands, as if the spirit of the weapon knew what deceit had been practised and approved of it.

  Helborg swung two heavy blows into the knight’s torso, sending him staggering back. D’Alembençon’s poise had been completely undone. He parried hurriedly, but his blade was smashed out of his hands. It flew away, end over end, before landing in the mud and lodging fast. Before d’Alembençon could go after it, Helborg jabbed his sword up, pinning the viscount by the neck.

  The roles were reversed. As the two men stood facing one another, the roar of more artillery filled the skies. Helborg heard the sound of his own men breaking into the charge, ready to exploit the disarray in the Bretonnians and turn confusion into slaughter.

  ‘Faithless!’ hissed d’Alembençon, his face scarlet with rage and disbelief.

  Helborg pressed the edge of the runefang’s blade into the viscount’s neck, parting the flesh.

  ‘You don’t have to die,’ he said. ‘Call the surrender, and lives will be spared.’

  For a moment, d’Alembençon hesitated. The noise of his men dying punctuated the ongoing rumble of the guns going off. He looked agonised, rocked to his core by the deception.

  It was then that Helborg knew Skarr had been right. The Bretonnians had planned to keep their word. The notion that anyone might behave differently hadn’t occurred to them. The idea that Helborg might use the distraction of the duel to bring his artillery into position and shatter the balance of power hadn’t occurred to them. The full measure of Helborg’s determination, his obsession, his utterly unswerving devotion to the prestige of the Empire—none of it had occurred to them.

  D’Alembençon moved. He lunged for his sword.

  Helborg had known that he would. He thrust out with the runefang, aiming the blade perfectly. The ancient sword severed d’Alembençon’s head and the man’s decapitated corpse thumped to the ground, just inches from where his own weapon had lodged.

  Helborg looked down at him, breathing heavily.

  Even in death, the man’s profile was magnificent. His armour was far finer than any he’d seen in the Empire; beside it, his own felt gaudy and overblown. The strange moonlit lustre lingered for a while on his skin, glimmering like silver fire, before finally flickering out.

  Helborg bowed his head. He felt drained. His whole body ached. He’d been taken to the limit.

  ‘Lord!’

  Skarr’s voice roared out from close by. Helborg snapped out of his reverie and looked up.

  Skarr’s squadron had ridden up across the no-man’s-land between the main ranks, eager to press on into the enemy.

  ‘I have your horse, my lord,’ said Skarr, gesturing to a riderless charger that had been led behind his own. His eyes were alive with the pleasure of the coming fight. ‘They’re falling back—we’ll tear them apart!’

  Helborg grabbed the horse’s saddle and dragged himself up into it. He kept the runefang in hand, blood darkening the metal. Once mounted, he could see the truth of the preceptor’s words: the Bretonnians were retreating across the whole length of the field. The artillery brought up stealthily along their left flank had caused havoc, breaking their unity and causing widespread panic. All around him, Empire troops were advancing in formation, moving in for the kill with commendable discipline.

  Helborg was about to kick his horse into a canter when he caught sight of the infantry captain who’d spoken out at the council. Bachmeier was marching at the head of a unit of pikemen. Unlike Skarr, he looked far from eager about the killing to come.

  ‘So what say you now, captain?’ shouted Helborg. ‘You still believe we won’t break them?’

  Bachmeier looked up at him. The expression on his lined face was ambiguous. Helborg thought he caught something like disgust written there.

  ‘Not by honourable means,’ Bachmeier said.

  Helborg kicked his horse over towards him, riding so close that he nearly forced the man to slip backward into the mud.

  ‘Honour’s for pig-herders and virgins,’ Helborg snarled, fixing Bachmeier with a stony gaze. ‘This is war.’

  Bachmeier returned the glare. For a moment, he remained defiant, as if he were tempted to protest further.

  Then, something stopped him. Perhaps he finally understood the necessity of what had happened, or perhaps he simply realised how dangerous it would be to bandy words with the Reiksmarshal.

  Bachmeier bowed stiffly in submission. When his head rose again, there was a measure of reluctant respect in his expression, an acknowledgement maybe, of the choices made by those in command.

  ‘There is still duty, though,’ he said. ‘Mine is with my men.’

  Helborg watch him trudge away, back to where his soldiers waited for him.

  For a brief moment, he almost envied the man’s certainties. Perhaps, once, he too would have balked at using such tactics to destroy his enemies. If he had ever felt that way, though, the habit had been beaten out of him long ago. Now only the cold purity of success remained with him—the will to conquer, to endure, to achieve victory by whatever means proved possible.

  That was the difference between men like Bachmeier and him, the reason that Helborg had risen to the pinnacle of command and Bachmeier hadn’t.

  There were times when Helborg wasn’t proud of what a career of constant battle had made him into. There were times when he reflected on another life, one in which the finer instincts of mankind were preserved, not suppressed.

  But such thoughts seldom detained him long. The need for violence was ever close at hand, dragging him back to the front, demanding the use of his peerless capacity to rally his men, to drive them onward, to make them lethal.

  Honour was optional; duty never slept.

  Helborg turned away from Bachmeier, pointing his charger back toward the enemy. What remorse he felt for d’Alembençon’s death was already draining away. In its place came resolve—the iron-hard resolve that had carried him to a hundred victories and by which the writ of the Emperor was maintained across a world of endless war. That was what sustained him, what defined him, what made survival possible; anything else was a luxury he could never indulge.

  ‘For the Empire,’ Helborg whispered, lowering the runefang and preparing to charge. ‘For there is nothing else.’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chris Wraight is a freelance writer based in the south-west of England. He has written a number of books and short stories for Black Library set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe, starting with Masters of Magic in 2008. His most recent title is Iron Company.

  For more information please visit

  www.chriswraight.wordpress.com

 

 

 
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