The End Times | The Fall of Altdorf

by Chris Wraight

  ‘Send this to the Reiksmarshal’s office immediately,’ said Martak, handing over the ink-stained letter. ‘Ensure that it is placed before him at the first occasion – he will want to read it.’

  The servant handled the letter nervously, as if it might be a mortar primed to go off in his hands. ‘Very well, my lord. Where shall I tell him he may find you?’

  Martak snorted. ‘Find me? He’ll have trouble.’ He looked around him. The corridors and chambers of the Palace were still mostly a mystery to him, a vast web of tunnels and spirals and shafts and towers. ‘But you can help me with one small thing.’

  The servant looked up expectantly. Martak smiled darkly, already enjoying the thought of what he was going to do.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what is the quickest path to the Imperial Menagerie?’

  THIRTEEN

  The wind was bitter and never-ending, driving down from the high peaks with the shrieks of fell voices echoing in its wake. The skies had turned from a screen of blank grey into a churned mass of violent thunderheads, surging and boiling as if some immeasurably vast pair of hands was tearing the heavens apart.

  As Leoncoeur rode up to the head of the pass, wrapped in his cloak, the deluge drummed on the rocks around him. Rivulets poured down from the rising land ahead, slushing and bubbling as the torrent picked up pace, and the stony track up to the entrance to Axebite Pass was now little more than a stream of gushing water.

  Ahead of the Bretonnian column reared the mighty peaks of the Grey Mountains, piled up into the tortured sky in ranked visions of granite-headed immensity. To Leoncoeur’s left soared the double-headed summit of Talareaux, called Graugeleitet by the Imperials. To his right was the colossal bulk of Findumonde, which the Empire dwellers called Iceheart. Both summits were lost in the haze of storms.

  Gales were always strong in the passes, but those during this passage had been unreasonably ferocious. Baggage wains and valuable warhorses had been washed away on the precipitous pathways, and at times every footfall had been treacherous. Progress had slowed to a grim crawl. Each night, Leoncoeur had sat sullenly around the campfires with his lieutenants, noting the growing gap between where they were and where they wanted to be.

  Still, they had persevered. The highlands had slowly fallen behind, replaced by the jagged, hard country of the mountains proper. The last of the pasture disappeared, replaced by a stone-land of sheer, hard-edged severity. The rain stung like ice, and the wind whipped it into wicked eddies, creeping into every fold of fabric and armour-joint.

  The raw enthusiasm of the crusade was hard to sustain in such conditions. Battered by the ferocity of the elements, the knights kept their dripping heads low, saying little. The hundreds of peasant workers in the baggage train suffered worse, their coarse woollen garments offering little protection, and many succumbed during the frozen nights, left behind in scratched, shallow graves by the roadside.

  As the head of the pass loomed before them at last, Leoncoeur called a halt. He peered ahead towards the high entrance. Slushy snow lay in grey-white drifts higher up, draped across the striated shoulders of the mountains. The winding road ahead was overlooked by near-vertical cliffs of broken-edged stone, narrowing near the summit to a gap of less than thirty feet across.

  His eyes narrowed. He sniffed. It was near-impossible to sense much in the shifting gales, but something registered. Something he felt he ought to recognise.

  Jhared drew alongside him. Of all of them, the flame-haired knight had retained his humours the best, but even he looked windswept and rain-soaked. ‘Why are we halting, lord?’ he asked, shivering as the driving sleet bounced from him.

  ‘Can you hear it?’ asked Leoncoeur, inclining his head a little.

  Jhared listened, then shook his head.

  Leoncoeur was about to speak again, when a hard, massed roar suddenly broke out from up ahead.

  Every knight in the entourage knew that sound – it had been engraved on their minds from their earliest days. The ancestral enemies of the Bretonnians could be purged, burned and driven back a thousand times, but they would always come back.

  ‘To arms!’ cried Leoncoeur, drawing his sword in a spray of rain.

  The column’s vanguard formed up immediately, kicking their horses into a line and drawing weapons. Each knight carried a heavy-bladed broadsword, and they threw back their cloaks to expose moisture-slick breastplates marked with the livery of their houses.

  Before the knights could charge, the gorge before them filled with what looked like a rolling tide of earth and rubble. It was accompanied by throaty bellows of challenge, rising quickly to a deafening crescendo that ripped through the scything curtains of sleet.

  ‘Charge!’ roared Leoncoeur, digging his spurs into his steed’s flanks.

  With a hoarse battle-cry, the Bretonnian vanguard surged along the throat of the gorge, picking up speed rapidly despite the treacherous footing. Accelerating to the gallop, ten horses abreast, they thundered towards the landslide hurtling towards them.

  Except that it was no landslide. A host of green-skinned monsters had burst from cover, their red eyes blazing with fury. The rubble that came with them was flung from their backs as they emerged from the ambush, and stones the size of fists thunked and rolled about them. There must have been hundreds of orcs before them, all jostling and tearing down the funnel of the gorge, sliding on the slippery rock and trampling their own kind like cattle on a stampede.

  When the two forces collided, it was with a sick, hard smash that sent the bodies of both orc and human flying. Bretonnian warhorses were huge, powerful beasts, and their whirling hooves were quite capable of cracking skulls and snapping ribcages. The greenskins were battle-hardened monsters, each of them far larger than a man and with corded, muscled limbs that hurled axes and mauls around with plate-denting force.

  Leoncoeur crashed through the hard glut of the toughest of the orcs, laying about him in flamboyant sweeps of his blade. He rode his mount with imperious perfection, compensating for every buck and rear. As the greenskins clawed for him, he laid waste to them, hammering with all the pent-up strength of the long ride.

  Jhared remained close by, working his own blade furiously. ‘For the dead of Quenelles!’ he thundered, his lank hair thrashing around his un-helmed head. ‘For the dead of Lyonesse!’

  Every knight of the company fought in the same way – with a cold anger generated by the many humiliations suffered by their realm. They were devastating on the charge, as pure and violent as the cascades around them. The orcs died in droves, and soon the rivulets at their feet ran black with blood.

  Leoncoeur wheeled his steed around and thrust his sword point-first into the open maw of a slavering greenskin. He ripped the blade free in time to meet the swiped challenge of another, and a dull clang of metal on metal rang out. Two swift parries, and he had dispatched the next challenger.

  The impetus of the orc attack was already failing. They began to retreat back up the gorge, desperate now to escape the close-serried Bretonnian onslaught. There was no escape for them that way, though, for the pegasi plummeted from the clouds, drawn by the scents and sounds of battle. Even without riders they were deadly, swooping low to lash out at the stumbling herd of greenskins.

  ‘Let none escape!’ shouted Leoncoeur, riding down a stumbling orc and spurring his mount towards the next. The Bretonnians loosened their formation as they gained momentum. Gilles de Lyonesse, a rider with a love of the chase that exceeded even his hunt-obsessed brethren, broke clear with a small band of like-minded brother-knights and galloped up the gorge’s flanks, aiming to cut off the rearmost greenskins. Leoncoeur and the main body of warriors advanced up the centre, cutting into the heart of the orc herd. The pegasi continued to dive and swoop, bludgeoning the slow-moving greenskins with impunity, and so the orcs were soon assailed from all sides.

  The remainder of the fighting was little better than a slaughter, with the last of the creatures surrounded by a ring of stamping horses.
Leoncoeur killed the last orc himself, as was his right, and lifted its severed head high in triumph. Gore slopped in a torrent from its serrated neck-stump, mingling with the deluge of crimson foam below.

  ‘First blood of the crusade!’ he shouted, and his knights returned the cry with genuine gusto. After so long suffering from the grinding cold, it was good to indulge in their proper calling again.

  De Lyonesse soon returned, and the slower-moving infantry of the baggage train caught up, hauling their wagons over the broken ground.

  In normal times the peasants would have been employed to drag the bodies of the slain for burning, for allowing the corpse of a greenskin to moulder in the open air was asking for trouble. On this occasion, though, Leoncoeur suffered none of them to waste time. The way was cleared for the passage of the largest wains, and the bodies of fallen knights were retrieved and buried with all honour, but no funeral pyres were lit.

  Less than two hours later, the cavalry column was on the move again, snaking higher up into the mouth of Axebite Pass. The clouds above did not relent, but poured out their violence ever more intensely, washing the blood from the rocks and sending it tumbling down the throat of the killing ground.

  Leoncoeur let his knights pass first, led by de Lyonesse, who had started singing hymns of praise to the Lady for deliverance. The old king remained at the site where he had slain the last of the greenskins, lost in thought.

  ‘You were right,’ said Jhared, nudging his mount past Leoncoeur’s and preparing for the final push towards the summit. ‘First blood. A good omen.’

  For a moment, Leoncoeur did not reply. The severed head of his victim lay on the near-frozen earth, gazing blankly up at the heavens. ‘I do not recognise them,’ he said at last.

  Jhared looked down at the piles of corpses, then back at Leoncoeur, then shrugged. ‘They look much the same as any I’ve killed.’

  Leoncoeur leaned down in the saddle, poring over the piled heaps of the slain. Jhared’s confidence was misplaced – the orcs’ wargear was like nothing a greenskin south of the mountains would have worn. Leoncoeur had travelled far across the Old World and had fought in a dozen different lands. The different tribes of greenskin fought amongst themselves even more than they warred with other races. Each strain had their own territory, which was only breached on the rare occasion when an exceptional warlord would unite them into the rare explosions of aggression that gouged trails of carnage across the civilised lands.

  This was not one of those occasions. The slain orcs’ wargear was in poor shape, and their armour – to the extent it could be called that – hung from their bodies in tatters. It was clear that many of them had been wounded before the fighting had even begun, and their bulk was far less than it should have been.

  ‘They did not come here to attack us,’ said Leoncoeur.

  Jhared laughed. ‘Then why were they here?’

  ‘They are from north of the mountains. The Drakwald, I’d warrant. They have been driven south.’ Leoncoeur looked steadily at Jhared, letting him be in no doubt what had happened. ‘They were fleeing. Whatever waits for us, it has cleansed the forest of orcs.’

  Jhared started to laugh again, but the sound trailed off. He forced a smile. ‘The forest can never be cleansed.’

  Now that the fervour of battle had faded, Leoncoeur could reflect on how poorly the greenskins had resisted. He had never seen them give up, not so completely, not so quickly.

  ‘They were hunted,’ he said, finding himself strangely appalled by the thought. ‘They were scared.’

  ‘Of us.’

  Leoncoeur smiled wryly. ‘Believe that if you wish.’ He kicked his horse’s flanks, and it began to move again. ‘I do not.’

  He looked up, to where his knights wound their way ever northwards, passing under the night-dark shadow of Talareaux. It looked like they were snaking their way into the underworld.

  Perhaps that is so, he mused. In which case, the Lady willing, we will soon set it alight.

  The sun had only just risen, and its light was grey and diffuse, barred by the heavy layer of cloud that had hung over Altdorf for weeks. The parade ground was sunk into a kind of foggy twilight, part-masking the movements of the men out on the sand.

  Helborg barely remembered the last time he had seen a clear sky. Ever since the first stirrings of the hosts in the north, the heavens had been masked by a grimy curtain, washing all the colour out of the world and plunging it into a dreary fog. Everything was dank, wet, sopping and grime-encrusted. Under such a constant weight of oppression, it was easy enough to believe that the gods had deserted the world of mortals at last, and that the little remaining light and heat was draining out of reality one sodden day at a time.

  It got under the skin after a while, the lack of blue in the sky and freshness on the breeze. When the air tasted foul for day after day, and the nights were clammy and the days were humid, and the rain kept coming in a fine drizzle that made everything mouldy and turned the earth underfoot into a spore-infested mire, it crushed the spirit. Even if the tensions of the impending battle had not been there, the city’s people would have suffered badly under such unrelenting misery – their sleep would have been as fitful, and their nightmares just as vivid.

  Reports were coming in of rioting in all quarters. Brawls started up over the most trivial of disputes, triggered by hunger, or despair, or the kind of futile anger that came simply from waiting for the axe to fall. Food shortages made the situation worse – unspoiled grain supplies were running low, despite the heavy guard placed on the remaining stores, and water was little better. Most of the populace avoided water in any case, preferring the strong beers brewed by the alemasters and the few dwarf refugees still lingering in the taverns. They said that beer warded against the Rot. Perhaps they were right.

  Helborg had not had a decent drink in days, and it made his nerves brittle. The wounds across his face still had not healed, and the pain was getting worse. Whenever he found a scrap of sleep, the lacerations would flare up, waking him in sudden pain. His apothecaries could not do anything – their old remedies, never reliable, had long since ceased to work at all, and the best they could offer was to bandage the lacerations and apply a soothing salve.

  Helborg refused. He would not walk around the Palace with linen strapped to his face, and nor would he seek to dampen the raw pain of the daemon’s wound with potions. The pain was a reminder to him of the price of weakness. Moreover, it kept him awake, which with his chronic lack of proper rest was becoming essential.

  ‘Make them do it again,’ he rasped, running his hands through days-old stubble and resisting the urge to scratch the itching weals.

  Von Kleistervoll, standing by his side, barked out the orders, and together, he, Helborg and Zintler watched the drills unfold.

  They were standing on a narrow balcony overlooking the parade ground. The sandy surface had begun to go black from rot, despite the incessant raking from the groundskeepers and near-endless prayers from the arch-lectors.

  Down below, formations of men began to move. Sergeants yelled out the drill orders, and troopers formed up into squares and detachments. The orders kept coming, just in the same sequence as they had been for the past two hours, rehearsing the various defensive tactics set down in Robert de Guilliam’s great compendium of martial lore, the Codex Imperialis, that had provided the cornerstone of Imperial defence since the time of Mandred.

  Helborg watched the detachments wheel around one another. He watched the halberdiers shuffle together, keeping tight in the first rank and holding their blades stiffly. He watched them perform the feints, the fall-backs, the rallies, all under the hoarse expletives of their taskmasters. Five hundred men moved across the parade ground, their every movement orchestrated like a masque in one of the old grand balls.

  Except that there were no grand balls anymore, for the gowns had rotted away and the ladies’ rouge and face-paints had mouldered in their tins, and the glittering halls where they would once have b
een worn were carpeted with dust.

  ‘They are holding up,’ remarked von Kleistervoll, looking for the positives.

  The Reiksguard preceptor had taken a personal interest in improving the readiness of the standard Altdorfer garrisons since the defeat at Heffengen. Cohesion was everything to an Empire army – in any conflict, an individual human trooper was likely to be weaker and less well equipped than his enemy, but coordination with the warriors on either side of him made up for this deficiency. A Chaos horde charged into battle in ragged bands of berserk ill-discipline, against which the only defence was tight-ordered rows of steel. If the enemy managed to breach Altdorf’s outer walls, as it surely would before the end, then such disciplined ranks would be needed to hold them up for as long as possible.

  Zintler looked less sure. ‘They grow weary,’ he said, watching one squadron of pikemen fall out of step, and stumble as they tried to make it good.

  ‘We’re all weary,’ snapped Helborg, observing the proceedings with a critical eye. ‘Keep them at it.’

  Then he turned away from the balcony’s edge and stalked back inside, followed by Zintler. Von Kleistervoll remained where he was, scrutinising his charges like a kestrel hovering over its prey.

  Helborg strode down the long corridor leading away from the balcony and into the Palace interior, and Zintler hurried to keep pace.

  ‘How stands the gate repair?’ Helborg demanded.

  ‘The work was complete,’ said Zintler. ‘As soon as they finished, more defects were found. The engineers are working through the night. The West Gate will be complete by the end of this day; the others, a little longer.’

  Helborg grunted. It was like trying to build with gravel – as soon as one wall was shored-up, another opened with cracks. ‘Did the Gold magisters answer the summons?’

  ‘They are working on the problem,’ said Zintler. ‘But in Gelt’s absence–’

  ‘Do not talk to me of Gelt. I do not want to hear his name.’