02 - Empire

by Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead)

  Sigmar refrained from pointing out that those warriors had died when the Thuringian King had led a reckless charge against the breach without support. Even as he admired the man’s courage, he disapproved of such reckless disregard for the order of battle. Raw courage had its place on the battlefield, but battles were won with discipline and courage alloyed together in the right balance.

  Instead, Sigmar pointed to the fleet of mercenary ships beached on the sandy bay below them.

  “You may not get a chance, my friend,” he said. “If that breach breaks open as wide as I hope, then it is likely that those warriors will sail south. Those men are paid to fight, but they will not die for Marius.”

  “Only a cur would fight for money,” snarled Otwin, flecks of blood dribbling down his chin as he chewed the inside of his mouth. “And only a coward would pay others to fight his battles.”

  “Marius is no coward, Otwin. He is a canny warrior, who has kept us at bay for nearly two years. We need to harness that and turn it to our advantage. Think how much the empire will flourish if Jutonsryk joins with us.”

  “You expect too much, Sigmar,” growled Otwin. “Marius will never submit to you. Even if I am wrong and he gives you his Sword Oath, the line of Marius will always have a troublesome streak of independence.”

  “Perhaps,” allowed Sigmar, “but that is a problem for another time.”

  A week later, the wall had still not fallen, though Sigmar’s engineers assured him that it was only a matter of days until they formed a practicable breach. The first snows had not yet arrived, but the promise of their coming was on the northern winds.

  Sigmar’s camp was shrouded in darkness, with only a few fires scattered over the flatlands to keep the thousands of warriors warm through the night. As had become the custom each night, the leaders of the army gathered in Sigmar’s tent with skins of wine to tell tales of their homelands and lay plans for the following day.

  Goblets were filled, but the talk was muted, for the Jutones had driven yet another escalade from the walls. Six battering rams had been lost, three siege towers toppled and another four burned to ashes. The butcher’s bill had been high and the screams of the wounded carried from the surgeons’ sheltered camp.

  Sigmar studied the faces around the fire, each as familiar to him as his own, for they had spent the better part of two years on campaign together. Otwin was still vast and threatening, but the years of battle had thinned him considerably and his ribs were clearly visible on his chest. Aldred too was thin, his features pinched with grief. The Endals had led today’s assault and the majority of the dead were his warriors.

  Wolfgart and Redwane had visibly aged since marching from Reikdorf. The young White Wolf had matured, and though his reckless spirit still burned brightly, he had seen too much death on this campaign to ever forget. Sigmar knew Wolfgart ached to return to Reikdorf, for his daughter would be nearing her second year, and he had not seen her in all that time. Sigmar had given Wolfgart leave to return to Reikdorf, but his sword-brother had refused, claiming that he would not be shamed by leaving a fight before it was done.

  More wine flowed and as Sigmar outlined his plans for the assault on the Namathir promontory, Wolfgart commented on the oddness of the name, wondering aloud which tribe had chosen it.

  “My father believed it was a word in the language of the fey,” Aldred said, not looking up from the fire that smouldered in the brazier.

  “A fey word?” asked Wolfgart. “How did Marbad know their language? They’re long dead aren’t they?”

  “I heard they sailed across the ocean to paradise,” said Redwane.

  “No, that’s not right. I heard they betrayed their oaths of kinship with the dwarfs and were driven across the sea as a punishment,” put in Otwin, making the sign of the horns over his heart. “Our wise men say they covet this land and leave changelings in the cribs of unwary mothers.”

  “Why do they do that?” asked Wolfgart.

  Otwin shrugged, and a thin line of blood leaked from the scars around the spikes he had driven through the muscles of his chest that morning. “Out of spite, I suppose. This is a land of men, and they hate us for it. Why else do we have so many charms for newborns? You should know that, Wolfgart.”

  Wolfgart nodded and said, “The priestess of Shallya made sure that Ulrike was well protected.”

  Sigmar saw the sadness on Wolfgart’s face as he spoke.

  “You will see Maedbh and Ulrike again soon, my friend,” he said.

  “I miss their warmth,” said Wolfgart. “It feels like a piece of me is missing.”

  No words Sigmar could say would comfort his friend, so he simply nodded towards Aldred.

  “You were talking about how the promontory got its name,” he said.

  “Yes, it was when my father discovered Ulfshard in the depths of the black rock. He loved delving into dark places in search of the past, and it was during one of his many expeditions into the rock beneath the Raven Hall that he found a secret chamber. It was hidden well, but the enchantments concealing it must have faded over the centuries, and my father was able to gain entry. He found Ulfshard unsheathed and stabbed into the rock floor, surrounded by ancient bones that must have once belonged to a dwarf.”

  “See!” said Otwin. “I told you they betrayed their oaths.”

  “Well, it certainly looked like whoever had last wielded Ulfshard had killed the dwarf,” said Aldred. “Though it was clad in strange armour that crumbled to dust as soon as my father pulled the sword from the ground.”

  “What else did he find?” asked Sigmar.

  “Some golden coins, some clothes and a few books. He couldn’t read them, but he spent his every free moment trying to translate them. He didn’t get very far, as the language was very complex and seemed to have lots of subtle differences in meaning that relied on pronunciation to make them clear, but he did manage to understand a few words. He deduced that Namathir was part of a larger name that hadn’t survived the passage of years.”

  “So what does it mean?” asked Wolfgart when Aldred didn’t continue.

  “My father couldn’t say for certain, but he thought that Namathir meant ‘star gem’.”

  “Then perhaps there are gems hidden beneath Jutonsryk?” suggested Wolfgart hopefully.

  “It’s possible,” allowed Aldred. “Though surely the fey would have carried any such treasures across the ocean with them.”

  “They left Ulfshard behind, didn’t they?”

  “It might be an idea to let that circulate among the men,” said Otwin. “Could give them an extra incentive to get over the walls if they think there’s treasure buried beneath the city.”

  “No,” said Sigmar emphatically. “When we take Jutonsryk there is to be no looting or unnecessary killing. Do you all understand that?”

  Silence greeted Sigmar’s pronouncement, each man weighing up how best to answer him.

  “That might be easier said than done,” said Wolfgart eventually, with sidelong glances at Otwin and Aldred. “You know what it’s like in the heat of battle, especially in a siege. When you’ve fought as long and as hard as we have, and suffered so much loss, it’s an easy thing to lose control when you’ve battled your way over a wall. Warriors who’ve seen their sword-brothers killed aren’t too choosy about who gets in their way when they’re out for vengeance.”

  “Wolfgart speaks true,” said Otwin. “When the red mist descends upon a Thuringian, there’s no man can stop him until the killing rage is spent. Well, apart from you, Sigmar. You choked it out of me on the battlefield, but I do not think there will be many men like you beyond Jutonsryk’s walls.”

  Sigmar stood and lifted Ghal Maraz, holding it out before him. “Tell your warriors that any man who disobeys me in this will pay with his life.”

  “You have to allow the men some reward for taking the city,” said Aldred. “They have camped out here for nigh on two years, and they’ll need something to take back home or they will be reluctant to
march out again.”

  Sigmar considered Aldred’s words and nodded.

  “You are right,” he said. “Tell the men that when Jutonsryk is ours, I will send a portion of its wealth to each of the counts to distribute among the warriors who fought to capture it for as long as they live. Will that suffice?”

  “I think it might,” said Aldred. “We can work out what that portion is later, but if our warriors know they’re going to get some reward if the city is kept safe, then that should help stay their hands.”

  “It had better,” warned Sigmar. “I want to bring the Jutones into the empire, but that won’t happen if we burn their city to the ground and murder its inhabitants.”

  Flames from a burning siege tower flickered and danced on the timber walls around Sigmar, and the smell of mingled wood-smoke and seared flesh set his nerves on edge. Reaching up to wipe sweat from his brow, he felt the tension within the upper compartment of the siege tower he travelled inside. Sigmar wore his silver armour and a golden helmet, and bore an iron-rimmed shield with a spiked boss in one hand and Ghal Maraz in the other.

  Wolfgart stood next to him, his enormous sword held at his side. The blade was safely in its scabbard, as the Unberogen warriors were too closely packed together within the siege tower to risk unsheathing it until the wooden ramp crashed down on the parapet.

  “Ulric preserve me, but I don’t like this,” said Wolfgart. “We could die without even being within striking distance of the Jutones.”

  “Don’t remind me,” said Sigmar, looking through a gap in the timbers.

  Yoked oxen, draped in shields and breastplates, hauled on thick ropes attached to a windlass mechanism set behind a covered position built in a patch of dead ground at the foot of the walls during the night. Each strained pull of the ropes drew the tower closer to Jutonsryk and an end to the siege. This high up, the tower rocked and swayed as it crossed the uneven ground, and Sigmar tried not to think of what would happen should it topple before reaching the walls.

  A hundred warriors were packed into the siege tower, divided through the four levels, and a dozen archers crouched behind movable screens on its roof. Sigmar had positioned himself in the uppermost level of the machine aimed at the ramparts, closest to the towers protecting the city gates. The fighting was sure to be heaviest there, and that was where he needed to be.

  It had taken the catapults another three days to finally smash down the damaged section of the city walls to the point where an armoured warrior could climb the rubble slope and still fight. A fresh sense of excitement galvanised Sigmar’s army as the news of the breach spread. Swords were sharpened and armour polished to shine like new. This was to be the final battle and the gods would be watching, so every warrior desired to look his most heroic.

  As Sigmar had predicted, the mercenary warriors who had sailed into Jutonsryk early in the campaign took to their ships soon after the wall collapsed. Though he understood why they were leaving, Sigmar felt nothing but contempt for these men. To fight for freedom, for survival, a noble ideal or to protect the weak were just reasons to go to war, but those who fought for money sullied the warrior ideals upon which Sigmar had founded the empire.

  He had ordered every warrior in his army to fight, gambling everything on this assault, for there would be no second chance if it should fail. The camp that had housed Sigmar’s army for the last two years was dismantled, sending a clear signal to the Jutones that the battle was ending one way or another.

  Six more siege towers had been constructed and sheathed in soaked animal skins, bringing the total number of towers to twenty-five. Taleuten archers built hundreds of mantlets to shelter behind while showering the ramparts with arrows, and every sword band fashioned dozens of scaling ladders from the detritus of the camp.

  The Red Scythes, Raven Helms and White Wolves mounted their horses, ready to repulse any sallies from the city gates, and Cherusen Wildmen howled and screamed alongside Count Otwin and his Thuringian berserkers as they worked themselves up into a battle frenzy. Otwin had requested the task of storming the breach, and Sigmar had agreed, knowing that there were no better shock troops in the army. The Thuringians had failed to carry the breach once, and honour demanded they not fail again.

  A series of heavy thuds on the armoured front of the siege tower told Sigmar they were within crossbow range of the walls. The mercenaries who had come to Jutonsryk may have left, but their new weapons had stayed behind. Once this siege was over, Sigmar resolved to have such weapons distributed throughout the empire.

  “How long do you think?” asked Wolfgart, and Sigmar was surprised at the fear he heard in his sword-brother’s voice.

  “Not long,” said Sigmar, hearing a wild roar as the Cherusens and Thuringians charged the breach. The intensity of crossbow impacts on the front of the siege tower grew in volume, and, with every pull of the oxen, Sigmar saw the barbed tips of the bolts punch further and further through the hide and timber coverings draping the tower. Something bright struck the tower, and Sigmar smelled smoke as burning arrows thudded into the wood.

  “Ulric save us, we’re on fire!” cried Wolfgart.

  “No we’re not,” snapped Sigmar. “The Jutones are loosing flaming arrows, but we’re safe. The tower was soaked before we moved out.”

  His words calmed the warriors around him, but the sheer volume of fire the tower was attracting would soon cause the timbers to catch light, regardless of how much water had been poured over it.

  Screams came from above them, and a body fell from the top of the tower. Sigmar could hear the shouted curses of the Jutones and the thud of hooves on cold ground. The clash of iron on armour and the screams of the dying drifted over the battlefield.

  “Stand ready!” shouted Sigmar, gripping the haft of Ghal Maraz, and feeling his heart race and his mouth go dry as he picked up his shield. “Every man on his knees and get your shields ready. When that ramp goes down, get onto the walls as quickly as you can!”

  The warriors around him lifted their shields and crouched on the wooden floor of the tower, a feat that was only accomplished with some difficulty given how many warriors were crammed together.

  Sigmar felt the yardstick on the front of the tower strike the wall and shouted, “Ulric grant you strength!”

  He smashed the locking pin securing the tower’s bridge free with a blow from Ghal Maraz, and daylight flooded the tower as the winch spun and the bridge dropped. It slammed down onto the ramparts, and a flurry of black-shafted arrows slashed into the tower. Many went high, but many more found homes in Unberogen flesh despite their shields and armour. Half a dozen arrows hammered into Sigmar’s shield, but it was of dwarf origin and proof against such irritations.

  With a fearsome war cry, Sigmar surged to his feet with his shield held out before him. A pair of arrows bounced from his shield, and he grunted in pain as another scored across his bicep. He sprinted across the ramp, and leapt to the ramparts, swinging his warhammer in a murderous arc. A Jutone tribesman with a bronze breastplate and armed with a short stabbing sword ran at him, but Sigmar smashed him from his feet before he could draw back his arm to strike.

  Warriors poured from the siege tower, but the Jutones were not about to give up this section of wall without a fight. Unberogen fell with arrows jutting from their chests, and the Jutones dragged them from the walls with hooked pikes. The press of bodies from the tower was forcing the Jutones back and more and more of the Unberogen were gaining the walls.

  Sigmar pushed towards the squat tower at the gate, kicking one enemy warrior from the walls and slamming another to his knees with the edge of his shield. His hammer struck left and right, killing with every stroke, and he pushed deeper into the mass of Jutone warriors.

  Wolfgart fought with deadly sweeps of his enormous sword, killing handfuls of men with every stroke. The size of his blade ensured that he fought alone, but he was clearing the way for more warriors from the tower.

  Smoke billowed from somewhere nearby, but Sigm
ar could not spare the time to see where. The Jutones had been driven back along the ramparts by his and Wolfgart’s wild charges, but were gathering for a counterattack.

  “On me!” he yelled. “Wedge formation!”

  Sigmar ran at the Jutones, hammered Ghal Maraz through an enemy skull, and threw his shield up to catch a pair of arrows loosed from the tower. Jutones surrounded him, and a lance stabbed into his side. The blade snapped on Sigmar’s dwarf-forged armour, and he backhanded his warhammer into the lancer’s face. More enemy warriors pressed him, but he drove them back with a wide sweep of his hammer that shattered armour, crushed ribs and splintered limbs.

  The Jutones fled from his fury, jumping to the courtyard below or fleeing towards the great tower protecting Jutonsryk’s main gate. More arrows arced downwards, but they flashed past Sigmar and clattered harmlessly from the battlements. A clash of iron and the scream of horses sounded from beyond the walls, and Sigmar looked down to see a mass of his cavalry fighting in the shadow of a burning siege tower. The oxen that had pulled it close to the walls were dead, skewered by heavy spears.

  Sigmar realised what had happened in an instant.

  Jutone spearmen had charged from a concealed sally port at the base of the tower to kill the oxen dragging two of the siege towers. They had succeeded, which left the warriors within the towers trapped and burning as archers loosed volleys of flaming arrows at their timbers. Before the Jutone raiders could escape, the Raven Helms had caught them and were cutting them to pieces.

  Count Aldred, resplendent on a black gelding, plunged Ulfshard’s blade into the chest of a Jutone captain armed with an enormous axe, as Laredus drove the rest of the Raven Helms towards the sally port.

  “Unberogen!” shouted Sigmar. “The tower! We need to get on the ground!”

  Sigmar ran towards the tower as the last of the Jutones dragged the door shut. It was a thick slab of heavy oak banded with black iron, virtually impenetrable and proof against anything short of a battering ram.