02 - Empire

by Graham McNeill

  “Pendrag gave it to Redwane when you parted company at Middenheim, and he carried it south to Reikdorf,” said Wolfgart. “Go on, take it.”

  Hesitantly, Sigmar reached out, and slowly wrapped his fingers around the rune-encrusted haft of Ghal Maraz, flinching as the last of the golden crown’s influence was purged from him by the dwarf rune-magic. He smiled as the weapon settled in his grip, just as a well-made cloak which had weathered the harshest winter would feel after being warmed by the fire.

  Wolfgart reached into the bag again, and pulled out another gift.

  The crown fashioned by Alaric the Mad.

  Sigmar took a step back.

  He shook his head.

  “No, I do not deserve to wear it,” he said.

  “Of course you do,” said Wolfgart. “You’re the only man who can. This has been a dark period, but it’s time for you to be our Emperor once again. A fresh start. What do you say?”

  Sigmar looked into his friend’s eyes, seeing devotion and forgiveness he did not deserve. Through everything, Wolfgart still believed in him. “I do not deserve a friend like you,” he said.

  “I know, but you’re stuck with me,” said Wolfgart. “Now take your crown.”

  “No,” said Sigmar, dropping to his knees before Wolfgart. “If this is to be a fresh start, then I want you to crown me anew.”

  “I’m no Ar-Ulric, but I think I can manage that.”

  Sigmar bowed, and Wolfgart placed the crown upon his head. Like Ghal Maraz, Alaric’s crown welcomed him without reservation or rancour, and the wisdom and love that had gone into its craft filled him with strength he had not realised had drained from him.

  He stood and looked out over the marshes. The sun was breaking through the clouds and clearing the mists away. Sigmar felt the sunlight on his skin and smiled. It felt good to be alive, but even as he relished this rebirth he knew there was much yet to be done.

  “We must get back, my friend,” said Sigmar at last. “The empire is in great danger.”

  “Isn’t it always?” asked Wolfgart.

  “There are two counts of the empire I need to set free,” said Sigmar. “I have behaved shamefully towards them, and I only hope they can forgive me.”

  “Ach, they’ll be fine,” said Wolfgart. “Krugar and Aloysis know they did wrong, and one thing’s for sure; they’ll not be sending raiders into each other’s lands again any time soon. But that’s not what you meant, is it?”

  “No,” said Sigmar. “The Norsii return to reclaim the lands I took from them. Hundreds of Wolfships are already crossing the Sea of Claws, and the north is virtually undefended.”

  Wolfgart shrugged.

  “It was only a matter of time until they came at us again,” he said. “At least I’ll get to put that sword above the fire to good use, though you’ll be the one explaining to my little girl why her father is going to war again!”

  BOOK THREE

  Empire of War

  Twelve swords, one for each chief,

  And holy Sigmar bade each to wield it

  In justice for his people,

  And pledge to fight for one another

  In undying unity,

  Thus did every chief’s hall

  Become a stronghold in the realm of men.

  ——

  Wolves of the North

  They had lost.

  Dawn was minutes old, and the army had been on the march for eight hours already. Thousands of warriors in ragged bands of bloodied survivors marched south in the shadow of the Middle Mountains. Sigmar watched each man as he passed, seeing the same sullen disbelief in every face.

  They had lost.

  The armies of the empire never lost a battle.

  It hadn’t quite sunk in.

  No one could believe it, least of all Sigmar.

  It had been a bright spring afternoon, the perfect day for a battle. Sigmar had felt powerful and invincible as he sat atop his horse and watched the Norsii of Cormac Bloodaxe march out to give battle. Eight thousand warriors of the empire—Udose, Unberogen, Thuringians and Jutones—stood in disciplined ranks on a forested ridge some fifty miles from the northern coast. Each of the tribal contingents was led by its count, and Sigmar had relished the chance to march alongside Otwin and Marius.

  The counts had gathered the previous evening to plan the coming battle, and Sigmar found himself missing Wolfila’s garrulous company more than ever, for the Udose chieftain who attended the war council was a dour, humourless man named Conn Carsten. Since last spring, the Udose lands had been riven with skirmishes as the clan lords fought one another to claim the title of count, but the Norsii invasion had put an end to the feuding long enough for them to name Conn Carsten as their war-chieftain.

  Hard to like, Carsten was nevertheless a canny soldier who knew the land well. Under his command, the northern clans had slowed the Norsii advance, and given Sigmar time to gather a sword host. But for Carsten, the north would have already fallen.

  With plans drawn and the courage of their warriors bolstered by the presence of the Emperor, the army had marched out to victory. Every warrior could taste the sweetness of triumph, the honour and glory that would be theirs. The tales of blood and courage they would tell upon their return home were already taking shape in each man’s head.

  But they had lost.

  No sooner had the counts taken the field beneath a wild panoply of colourful banners than malformed storm-clouds swelled in the clear sky. They crackled with gleeful lightning, fat with the promise of rain. Howling storm winds blew, and a sour, battering downpour began, like the legendary floods said to have drowned the world in ages past.

  Arcing bolts of lightning slammed into the earth as the storm broke, and tremors of fear rippled along the empire line at such unnatural phenomena. Worse was to come.

  Sigmar rode with the White Wolves in the centre of his army, and each warrior sought to restore their honour after the war against the Roppsmenn.

  The thunder of their hooves was the sound of victory.

  Then a shrieking bolt of azure lightning had struck the bearer of the White Wolves banner.

  The warrior fell from his horse, his flesh blackened, and the symbol of the Emperor’s Guard afire. The banner fell to the ground, its crimson fabric utterly consumed by blue flames that were apparently impervious to the endless rain. Horrified cries rang from the forested ridge, but it was too late to quell that fear. Torrential rain turned the ground to a quagmire, and the advance became a trudging hell of sucking mud and blinding lightning strikes.

  As Sigmar’s warriors floundered, the Norsii attacked with a savage bray of war horns. The host of Norsemen marched out beneath the skull-banner of Cormac Bloodaxe and fought with discipline, courage and, worst of all, a plan. Instead of the usual mass of charging warriors, the Norsii gave battle in imitation of Sigmar’s army. Norsii fighters marched in tightly-packed ranks, moving in formation with a hitherto unheard of cohesion.

  Whooping tribesmen with dark skin and short-bows rode horses of black and gold to encircle Count Otwin’s Thuringians and hammer them with deadly accurate blows. Otwin’s advance faltered, and a host of Norsii warriors, mounted upon dark steeds taller than any grain-fed beasts of the empire charged the scattered Thuringians. Led by a mighty warlord in bloody armour, a warrior who must surely have been Cormac Bloodaxe, the Norsii hacked the Thuringians down without mercy.

  Jutone lancers drove back the marauding warriors, but not before Otwin had taken a lance to the chest. Marius led the countercharge, and carried the wounded Otwin from the fighting slung across his saddle. Even now, the camp surgeons fought to save the Thuringian count’s life.

  Sigmar’s stratagems were met and countered at every turn, his warriors hurled back time and time again. As afternoon waned into evening, he realised the sick feeling in his gut was despair. The battle could not be won, and Sigmar had ordered the army’s clarions to sound the retreat. Only here, at battle’s end, did the discipline of the Nor
sii finally break down, the tribal champions leading their men in an orgy of slaughter amongst the wounded.

  As terrible as it was to leave the wounded to their fate, the vile appetites of the Norsii ensured there was no pursuit, and Sigmar was able to lead his men from the field of battle unmolested. The night march had been cold and cheerless, with the wounded treated on the move or during one of the infrequent breaks from the retreat.

  Wolfgart rode alongside him, the flanks of his horse lathered in bloody sweat. Sigmar’s sword-brother had come through the battle unscathed, save for a long slash along his jerkin that had missed cutting his gut open by a hair’s breadth.

  “Long night, eh?” said Wolfgart.

  “It won’t be the last,” replied Sigmar, “not now.”

  “Aye, you have the truth of it, but we’ll get them next time.”

  “I hope you are right.”

  “Do you even doubt it?” asked Wolfgart. “Come on, man. They’re barbarians, and looking at how many totems I counted, there’s a lot of war leaders there.”

  “Is that supposed to be a good thing?”

  “Of course,” said Wolfgart. “You put that many barbarian chiefs together, and they’ll fall to fighting each other soon enough.”

  “I am not sure, my friend,” said Sigmar, recalling the deadly precision he had seen in the Norsii, in particular a warrior in glittering silver armour, who fought with twin swords. “I swear it was as if they knew our every tactic. We will lose the empire one battle at a time if we think of the Norsii simply as barbarians.”

  “You’re giving them too much credit,” said Wolfgart. “I can teach an animal to do tricks, but that doesn’t mean it’s clever.”

  “No, but the way they fought… It was as if they had a warrior schooled in the empire leading them, someone who knew how we fight. All through the night, I have gone over the battle, picturing every clash of arms and each manoeuvre, hoping to find some due as to how the Norsii beat us.”

  “And what have you come up with?”

  “Time and time again, I come back to the same answer,” said Sigmar. “I underestimated them, and my warriors paid for that mistake with their lives.”

  “Then we’ll not do that again,” stated Wolfgart, and Sigmar was forced to admire his sword-brother’s relentless optimism. He had faith in Sigmar, even in defeat.

  Wolfgart rubbed a hand over his face, and Sigmar saw how tired he was.

  Since Sigmar’s attempted execution of Krugar and Aloysis, Wolfgart had spent virtually every waking minute with the Emperor. The two counts had been freed, and Sigmar begged their forgiveness on bended knee. It took the combined skills of Eoforth and Alfgeir to avert what could have been a devastating civil war but, in the end, both Krugar and Aloysis accepted that Sigmar had been under the dread influence of the necromancer’s crown.

  Their slighted honour demanded recompense, however, and both counts returned to their castles laden with gold, land and tides. Sigmar could only promise that what had happened would never happen again, for the hateful crown was buried deep in the heart of Reikdorf.

  Wolfgart had wanted to hurl it deep into the marsh and be done with it, but Sigmar knew he could not so casually dispose of such a dangerous and powerful artefact. Lifting the crown with a branch broken from a rowan tree, he carried it straight to High Priestess Alessa at the temple of Shallya. With solemn ceremony, the crown was sealed in the deepest vault and warded with every charm of protection known to all the priests of Reikdorf.

  Never again would the crown see the light of day, and if its maker ever dared come to claim it, he would find it defended by every warrior in the empire.

  A contingent of painted Thuringian warriors marched past Sigmar and Wolfgart, each with a twin-bladed axe slung across his shoulders. They were bloodied and angry, having lost many comrades on the battlefield, men and women both. They wore little armour, for these were the King’s Blades, the fiercest and most deadly of all the Thuringian berserkers. They escorted a covered wagon pulled by horses more usually employed to carry Jutone lancers, but which Count Marius had offered to serve the wounded Berserker King.

  Sigmar saw a familiar face among the Blades, and nodded to Wolfgart. Together, they rode alongside the tattooed warriors. A berserker woman with long hair pulled in right braids, naked but for a mail corslet and bracers, looked up at them with eyes haunted by defeat.

  “How is he?” asked Sigmar.

  “Ask him yourself,” said Ulfdar, the berserker warrior Sigmar had defeated when he had fought the Thuringians to secure their king’s sword oath. Her mail was torn and links fell to the muddy road with every step.

  “I saw you fight,” said Sigmar. “I lost count of how many you killed.”

  “I don’t keep count,” replied Ulfdar. “I remember little of battles. When the red mist is upon me, it’s hard enough to tell friend from foe.”

  Sigmar lifted his voice for all the Thuringians to hear.

  “Yesterday you fought like heroes,” he said, “every one of you. I watched as the enemy bore down on you, and not one of you took a backwards step. That is iron courage that cannot ever be broken. The Norsii proved a stronger foe than we remembered, but we are better than them. They are far from home and we are defending our homelands. No force in the world can compare to the warrior defending their hearth and home and loved ones.”

  The Thuringians marched past without acknowledging him, and Sigmar could not tell whether his words had any effect on them. The wagon bearing Count Otwin approached, and he waited for it to reach him. The Blades parted before him, and a hatchet-faced Cradoc pulled the canvas flaps at the rear of the wagon aside.

  “Don’t tire him out,” warned the surgeon. “The lance broke three of his ribs and nicked his right lung. He’s lucky to be alive, though to hear him you’d think he’d just cut himself shaving.”

  “Damn it, man,” said Otwin from behind Cradoc. “I’ve been hurt worse after a night on the beer. Come morning, I’ll be back on my feet.”

  “It is morning,” snapped Cradoc. “And if you try to stand you’ll die.”

  Cradoc lowered himself from the wagon, looked up at Sigmar, and said, “I have others to treat today, so keep an eye on him. And don’t let him up from his bed. If he dies, I’ll blame you.”

  “I understand. You have my word he will not leave this wagon.”

  The irascible healer nodded, and wearily made his way towards more of the walking wounded. Sigmar walked his horse behind the wagon and looked in at his wounded friend.

  Count Otwin reclined on a cot bed, his upper body completely wrapped in linen bandages. The Berserker King’s skin was waxy and pale, his chest rising and falling with shallow hiked breaths. He smiled weakly, and Sigmar saw how close to death he had come.

  “I hope you listened to what Cradoc told you,” said Sigmar.

  “Ach, surgeons, what do they know about being wounded in battle?”

  “Plenty, you old rogue,” said Wolfgart. “Cradoc’s stitched my wounds more than once, and back in his day he swung a sword as well as a wielding a needle and herb bag.”

  “Fair enough,” conceded Otwin, “and I heard what you said to the Blades. Good speech, but they’re not big on fancy words.”

  “So I saw,” said Sigmar. “But it needed to be said.”

  Otwin nodded. “Aye, it did. The damn Norsii handed us a beating and no mistake, Sigmar, so I hope you’re giving that same speech to everyone. The men need to hear how those bastards got lucky and that we’ll drive them back the next time we face them.”

  “That’s what I told him,” put in Wolfgart.

  “So how many did we lose?” asked Otwin.

  “We’ve still to tally the final butcher’s bill, but it looks like we lost close to a thousand men,” said Wolfgart.

  “Shallya’s tears, that’s a lot,” cursed Otwin. “And the Norsii?”

  “Hard to judge,” said Wolfgart, “but I’d wager no more than three hundred.”

  “A
ye, a beating,” repeated Otwin, shaking his head. “It would have been more if not for Marius. His lancers and crossbows really pulled our arse out of the fire.”

  “That they did,” agreed Sigmar.

  The Jutone count had surprised them all with his courage and steadfast resolve in the face of defeat. Mercenary cross-bowmen with pockets lined with empire gold hammered the rampaging Norsemen with merciless volleys of iron-tipped bolts, covering the retreat and preventing it from becoming a rout.

  “Who’d have thought it, eh?” asked Otwin with an amused grin. “Bloody Marius. I’ll bet you’re glad I didn’t let you kill him at Jutonsryk, aren’t you?”

  “More than you know,” said Sigmar.

  Otwin took a drink from a wineskin, grimacing as his stitches pulled tight. He slumped back on his bed, his brow sheened in perspiration, though the day was still chill.

  “So what now?” asked Otwin when he had recovered enough to speak. “I trust you have a plan to send these bastards back across the water?”

  “I think so,” said Sigmar. “This Cormac Bloodaxe is a clever general, but the very savagery that makes his warriors so fierce was our salvation. Had they been disciplined enough to mount a pursuit, they would have destroyed us. Cormac will not make that mistake again.”

  “What about the other counts?” asked Otwin. “Is there any word? We need their strength.”

  “I know, but it will take time for them to gather their armies and march to our aid.”

  Otwin hesitated before saying, “And you’re sure they’ll come? I mean, after what happened with the Roppsmenn and that… unpleasantness with Aloysis and Krugar.”

  “They will come,” said Sigmar, with more conviction than he felt. “If for no other reason than the Norsii will surely turn their axes on them if we fail.”

  “There’s truth in that,” agreed Otwin. “So how will you buy the time they need to march?”

  “I underestimated the Norsii,” said Sigmar, 'but I will not do that again. We need to draw them to us and destroy them as a surgeon lances a plague sore.”