‘Speak your mind plainly, man,’ Duke Corentin demanded, reaching out a hand to steady himself against the crenellated rampart. By the Lady, he was tired
‘My lord,’ the chancellor began uncertainly, before ploughing on. ‘You must rest, we feel–’
‘Who?’ Corentin demanded, drawing himself to his full height despite the weight of the full plate armour he had worn all day. ‘Who says what of me? Speak!’
‘Your knights, sir,’ Erwin continued, ‘Your companions, your guardians and your peers. All feel that–’
‘My peers?’ the duke raged, one hand gripping the pommel of his sword. ‘I have no peers! All of them have fallen, all of them have given their lives in service to the land and to the Lady!’
‘Yes, my lord,’ the chancellor said, his arms held out in placation. ‘But you must rest, for tomorrow…’ He let the sentence trail away.
‘Tomorrow?’ said Duke Corentin, knowing now what he must do. Pushing the chancellor away, he spun to face the west and the enemy encamped on the plain before his beloved city. With a ringing of steel, he drew his sword and brandished it before him, before turning it point down with a single motion, and setting it to rest tip-first upon the stone floor. Bracing himself upon his weapon, the duke went down upon one knee as he had the night before in the grail chapel, and he bowed his head in prayer.
‘Go,’ the duke ordered through gritted teeth. ‘I order you… go.’
Six hours later, the sun was rising and Duke Corentin’s armour glistened with dew. Slowly, he became aware that he had been locked in prayer throughout the long, cold hours of the night, and that the city was stirring all about him. Opening gummy eyes, he realised that so too was the camp before the city walls, thousands of cruel invaders busying themselves with preparations for the inevitable battle.
Grunting, the duke braced himself against his sword, and pulled himself upright. Pain shot through his every joint and he staggered to bring himself to his full height. Attendants, who had been lurking out of his field of vision, rushed to him. He thrust out his free arm to push them away.
‘Back!’ he barked, consumed with anger and frustration. ‘I have a battle to win… Erwen?’
‘My lord?’ his chancellor said as he appeared nearby, bent almost double in genuflection.
‘Order my war steed made ready!’ the duke bellowed, flashes of long gone battles strobing across his mind’s eye once again. ‘Gather the knights and prepare to open the gates!’
‘My lord, I cannot…’ Erwen started, before stuttering to a halt, his eyes impossibly wide in his hawkish face. The duke regarded his chancellor with confusion for a moment, before turning as he followed the man’s gaze. High above the invaders’ camp, the black dragon soared directly towards the tower on which the duke and his attendants stood.
With an incoherent roar of denial and pain, the duke drew his mighty sword, its blade flashing in the morning sun. Bracing his legs wide, he raised the sword that had served him so well over so many campaigns, and waited as the dark elf lord approached.
The sound of the oncoming black dragon was as a storm descending from an otherwise clear sky, the beating of its wings a savage, deafening roar. Erwen and the other attendants were buffeted to the stone floor as the huge beast passed directly overhead, but Duke Corentin strained every sinew in his body to remain upright. He yielded to no man, and especially not to an elf.
‘Then this is your answer, old man?’ the dark elf called out as his mount banked over the wall and began a majestic return to the invaders’ lines. ‘This is the fate you choose?’
‘Aye, vile one!’ Duke Corentin bellowed in answer. ‘This is my answer!’
With a final expulsion of reeking, poisonous gasses from its nostrils, the black dragon was away, and every war machine in range opened fire upon it. The chances of even the best crewed trebuchet striking a flying target, least of all one moving rapidly in the opposite direction, was remote at best, but one huge stone projectile did sail dangerously close to the dragon, causing a roar of approval to sound from the massed ranks of defenders upon the city walls. But the cheer was short lived, for even as the black dragon receded into the distance, the countless war hydras upon the plain started forward, the ground actually trembling so heavy and concentrated was their tread.
‘Get every company to the walls,’ the duke barked to an attendant, and the man departed at speed to pass the order on. In moments, the thousands of warriors defending the ramparts were being reinforced by streams of additional defenders streaming up the stone steps. ‘Attendants,’ he shouted. ‘Where is my steed?’
Now the walls themselves trembled to the approach of the massed hydras, yet the duke cared more for the readiness of his own mount. Losing patience, he made for the top of the flight of steps that led down the tower and into the courtyard far below where his knights had marshalled, but was interrupted as Sir Peirrick, the greatest knight of his household, emerged.
‘My lord,’ the knight greeted the duke as he bowed his head and struck a mailed fist across his armoured chest in respectful greeting. ‘I am told–’
‘Peirrick,’ said Corentin. ‘Good. Is my steed ready? Are the knights marshalled?’
‘No, my duke,’ the knight set his bearded face in a grim mask, his intense eyes betraying his concern.
‘Then see to it, man!’ the duke bellowed, flinging an arm wide in a gesture that took in the vast monstrous horde stampeding across the plain towards the wall. ‘We have but minutes, and I would sally forth before it is too late!’
His face betraying his utter horror, Sir Peirrick stood resolute as his liege made to push past him towards the stairs. ‘No, my lord,’ he said with conviction. ‘Your knights shall do as you bid, but you shall not lead them.’
The duke recoiled as if the knight had struck him across the face. Draining of colour, he fought for words to express his outrage.
‘Let others shoulder this burden,’ the knight pleaded, though his mind was clearly decided. ‘Your place is here, my lord, commanding the defence of your city.’
‘My place is leading the charge against the horde of filth even now bearing down upon my realm!’ Duke Corentin thundered. ‘And yours is upon one knee, or else following my banner!’
‘No, my duke,’ Sir Peirrick said coldly, barring the duke’s way. ‘We shall not allow you to take to the field this day, nor any other henceforth, though every one of us would willingly give his life upon your word.’
The duke bit back a cry of anguish, and looked past the knight to his chief advisor who waited off to one side. Erwen nodded sadly, and it was clear that he felt compelled to agree with Peirrick. The thunder of the approaching host of hydras grew ever louder, so that the duke barely heard his own reply.
‘Then go,’ he bellowed over the roaring of dozens of monsters. ‘Lady deliver us all.’
The charge of the knights of Brionne was a feat of epic glory. Hundreds of mounted warriors formed up into squadrons and streamed through the gates and sally ports of the city walls, fluttering pennants and proud banners boldly displaying the heraldry of countless knightly households. Their armour gleamed in the rising sun and their lances were as densely formed as an impenetrable forest. Those lances lowered as the squadrons spread out, forming a thunderous wave of steel and colour as it raced headlong towards the onrushing dark elf beasts.
Seeing this new enemy, the beast handlers cracked their whips and drove their charges forward in a frenzy of bestial savagery. Locking eyes upon their foe, the countless beasts roared in challenge, the air filled with deafening screeches and cries. The Hydras vented thick clouds of noxious fumes and the morning light was tainted with a creeping, stinking fog that threatened to strike man and horse down before battle was even joined.
Yet still, the two waves came on. The knights drove through the billowing clouds of poison, and truly the blessing of the Lady was upon them for not one fell to its effects. The hydras redoubled their charge in response, and seconds later, the two waves slammed int
o one another.
At the very point of impact, steel-tipped lances drove into stone-hard flesh, even the hides of the monstrous creatures unable to withstand weapons anointed in the holy waters of the font of the Lady. Black blood arced into the air and spattered across shields and armour as beasts fell, yet moments later, the true battle began.
Those beasts not slain outright fought back with snapping maws atop writhing, serpentine necks. Each creature bore five such necks and five sets of ferocious jaws, and only upon the decapitation of the fifth were they finally slain. Bold knights were cut in two by heads that darted in from all quarters, or torn apart as rival heads affixed to the same body fought jealously over the kill. Lances cast aside, the knights hacked and stabbed with blessed swords, and soon the fight was a desperate struggle for life and death.
From his vantage point atop his tower, Duke Corentin raged. His heart ached to be down there, upon the field of battle, leading his brave knights against the countless beasts that assailed his city. Yet, he could see what most down there could not, and he knew deep within his soul that Sir Peirrick had been correct. The knights were being slaughtered, their numbers simply too few to repel the monstrous host. With a pang of sadness, he saw that Peirrick had known this all along, and in his love for his duke had saved him from a fate he was simply too aged and too tired to repel.
Yet, Duke Corentin raged, what right had the young knight to determine the fate of his master? Why should he not meet his end in one final, hopeless charge against such a foe?
Because he had a city to defend, he knew. Thousands of warriors and many times more defenceless innocents relied upon him, for no other would deliver them from the invading host that was even now charging en masse towards the city walls.
The air filled with the blaring horns and shrill, cruel war cries of the foe as the war hydras cut down the last of the bravest knights Duke Corentin had ever had the honour to see in battle. The beasts surged onwards, crushing the remains of the knights into the churned plain, the bright colours of their banners and shields smeared with mud and gore, and the once gleaming steel of their armour and swords dulled with filth. Roaring their bestial victory cries, the beasts came on, closing on the walls even as the hosts of dark elves behind them began their march.
Nothing would stop the beasts, Duke Corentin knew as they reached the walls. Claws and teeth ground into the fair masonry, hauling down brickwork set there centuries before. The tower upon which the duke and his attendants stood shook violently, and the defenders upon the walls fought to keep their footing as more and more of the huge creatures clawed their way upwards, great chunks of masonry discarded in their wake. Flaming arrows arced downwards like screaming comets, burying themselves in beast flesh and causing the hydras to screech in deafening pain, yet still the enemy came on.
A wave of panic passed up and down the wall as a sickening impact caused great cracks to spread throughout its fabric. A beast so large that it carried a howdah bristling with spears upon its back had joined the fray, stampeding its way through the press of monstrous bodies to slam headlong into the walls. Even as the defenders concentrated their flaming arrows upon this new, terrible enemy, the hydra dug its claws into the crumbling wall and began to haul itself upwards.
Only the insane could stand in the face of such a monster. Even as it climbed, it gouted great clouds of black gas up towards the ramparts. Men fell, their skin blistered and their eyes bulging, as five heads reared above the ramparts upon writhing necks. Each darted and snapped, and with every attack a man was snatched from his place at the wall, tossed into the air and swallowed whole by a gaping maw. That was all the remaining defenders could take, and those on the neighbouring sections broke in terror, fleeing from the inevitable.
In an instant, the defending army broke. Men streamed from the walls down flights of steps so choked with bodies that dozens fell screaming to their deaths below. With a sound like a mountain collapsing, an entire section of the walls crumbled, the towers on either side toppling downwards and slaying hundreds in the process. Through the billowing mushroom cloud over the huge breach, the black dragon of the Beastlord Rakarth soared, the beat of the massive wings parting the rising dust so that Duke Corentin could see his foe clearly. As the first of the war hydras pressed in through what the duke knew was only the first breach in his fair city’s walls, the host of dark elves pressed in behind, and soon the cruel enemy was spilling forth into the rubble-strewn courtyard and streets beyond.
‘Attendants,’ the duke ordered, his voice grim and resolute. ‘Arm me.’
None could argue, for there was clearly nothing to be gained or saved from doing so. With silent reverence, the duke’s attendants presented him with his lance, set his shield upon one arm and his helmet upon his head. Though the panoply of war had never felt so heavy, Duke Corentin bore the weight as he bore his duty to the land and the Lady. He descended the stairwell of the tower and emerged into the courtyard before the city’s main gates. The area was strewn with rubble cast from the walls above, and cowards were fleeing in all directions, except towards the foe. Screams rent the air, those of the monsters now rampaging through his city, and those of the first of his people to be overtaken by the cruel dark elves. Even now, as he pulled himself up into the saddle of his war horse, his beloved subjects were being dragged screaming back to the Black Ark waiting out in the sea. He cast the tragedy from his mind as he set his steed in motion, the gates parting before him though he could not see who did so.
As the portal yawned open, blinding light spilled through, light so white and so pure that the duke knew it was natural. Time slowed to a leaden crawl as his steed passed through the gate, its speed building as it bore him onwards. There beyond the gate was the enemy, the dark elf host laying siege to Brionne, the greenskin horde at Quenelle, the heretics at Trantio, the unquiet dead at Castle Darkheart, the stinking swarm of Skaven spewing through the pass in the Irrana Mountains…
One last enemy, the duke’s heart sang. One last battle. One last, glorious charge before death finally claimed him.
We Are One
John French
‘Victory and defeat are a matter of definition’
– from the Axioms of War, Tactica Imperialis
I have grown tired in this war. It has eaten me, consuming everything I might have done or been. I have chased my enemy across the stars and through the decades of my failing life. We are one, the enemy and I, the hunter and the hunted. The end is close now. My enemy will die, and at that moment I will become something less, a shadow fading in the brightness of the past. This is the price of victory.
My fist hits the iron door with a crack of thunder. The impact shatters the emerald scales of the hydra that rears across their width. Inside my Terminator armour, enfolded in adamantium and ceramite, I feel the blow jolt through my thin flesh. Lightning crackles around my fist as I pull it back, the armour giving me strength. I bring my fist down and the metre-thick doors fall in a shower of splintered metal. I walk through their shattered remains, my feet crushing the scattered ruby eyes of the hydra to red dust on the stone floor.
The light glints from my armour, staining its pearl-white surface with fire and glinting from eagle feathers and laurels. The chamber beyond the doors is silent and creeps with shifting shadows. Burning torches flicker from brackets on jade pillars, the domed ceiling above coiling with smoke. Targeting runes and threat augurs swarm across my vision, sniffing for threats, finding only one. The shackled power in my fist twitches like a thunderbolt grasped in a god’s hand.
He sits at the centre of the chamber on a throne of beaten copper. Void blue armour mottled with the ghost pattern of scales, swathed in spilling cloaks of shimmering silk, face hidden behind the blank face plate and glowing green eyes of a horned helm. He sits still, one hand resting on the pommel of a silver-bladed sword, head turning slowly to follow me as I advance.
‘Phocron of the Alpha Legion,’ I shout, my voice echoing through the shadow-filled
silence. ‘I call you to justice at the hands of the Imperium you betrayed.’ The formulaic phrase of accusation fades to silence as Phocron stands, his sword in his hand. This will be no simple duel. To fight the Alpha Legion is to fight on a shifting layer of deception and trickery, where every weakness can hide strength and every apparent advantage may be revealed as a trap. Lies are their weapons and they are their masters. I am old, but time has armoured me against those weapons.
He moves and cuts, his blow so quick and sudden that I have no chance to dodge. I raise my fist, feeling the armour synchronise with the movements of my aging muscles, and meet the first strike of this last battle in a blaze of light.
Ninety-eight years ago - The Year of the Ephisian Atrocity
Knowledge can make you blind, some say, but ignorance is simply an invitation to be deceived. I can still see the times when I knew little of the Alpha Legion beside a few dry facts and half-understood fears. I look back at those times and I shudder at what was to come.
The death of my ignorance began on the mustering fields of Ephisia.
Millions of troops stood on the dust plains in the shadow of soot-covered hives, rank upon rank of men and woman in uniforms from dozens of worlds. Battle tanks and ground transporters coughed exhaust fumes into the cold air. Munitorum officers moved through the throng shouting orders above the noise, their breath forming brief white clouds. Above it all transport barges hung in the clear sky, their void pitted hulls glinting in the sunlight, waiting to swallow the gathering mass of human flesh and war machines. It was the mustering of an army to break the cluster of renegade worlds that had declared their secession from the Imperium. It was a gathering of might intended to break that act of folly into splinters and return a dozen worlds to the domain of the God Emperor. That was the intention, though perhaps ours was the folly.
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 133