Bitterly, the dwarfs left the field of battle. Their hammerers and ironbreakers guarded the retreat, but the greenskins did not pursue. The Paunch had not come here to taste dwarf flesh, nor did he want to fight a siege against an intractable foe. As the dwarfs fell back, so too did the way into the lands beyond the pass open. Here was the Empire, the heartlands of the greatest realm of men.
Iron Gate shut its hold tight with a forbidding clang and as the last of King Bragarik’s warriors came to stand with their brothers, darkness reigned in the outer hall.
‘Keep ’em doused,’ the dwarf king snapped at his lamplighters. They could see well enough without light.
‘Think of brothers lost,’ he said, his voice sounding louder in the gloom. ‘Remember the dead. And remember aid asked for but not given. Men have no honour this day. They break old pacts sworn by High King Kurgan. They bring dishonour to his name too.’ King Bragarik was breathing hard and fast, his anger only just contained. ‘Let the grobi go, and the urk and the troll. No rangers will oppose them, no watchtowers will warn of their approach. Umgi-men are alone in this,’ he swore in a voice that held enough canker to scour iron. ‘Let them look to themselves against the greenskins. For the dawi will not come. We will not come.’
Chapter One
Rousting in Reikwald Forest
Reikland border, domain of Prince Wilhelm III,
185 miles from Altdorf
Crouched in the lee of a gnarled oak, Eber adjusted his sallet helm for the fifth time. Unlike the rest of his Reikland uniform, it was too big. It kept slipping over his eyes and obscuring his view of the shadowed boughs of the Reikwald. His grey-white tunic and red-slitted hose stretched to contain his bulk, but the buttonholes still gaped with the tension from his muscles.
Eber was his family name. His first name was Brutan, given to him by his father. A cruel joke as it turned out. Even as a boy, it summed up his intimidating physique. ‘Dumb ox’, ‘clumsy oaf’ and ‘fat brute’ were some of the less flattering appellations his father had also chosen when the mood took him or when he had no more coin to stay in the tavern.
Those nights were the worst for Brutan and his waif-like mother. Violent, drunken, red nights; they were filled with accusation, ridicule and resentment. Brutan was tough, like a slab of butcher’s meat, and his father had turned to his frailer wife when he’d been frustrated at the tenderiser’s block. Brutan still remembered her pleas, her screams. Sometimes they went on into the night even now, years later. Brutan had clenched his thick, ham-like fists, but had done nothing. By the time he grew out of adolescence he was twice his father’s size, but years of indoctrinated fear had left him scared of the man. Not a father; more a monster, like those he hunted in the forest at this very moment.
No, Brutan had lacked the courage to act then. Instead he had simply balled his fists impotently by his sides and stared at his feet, his large, ungainly feet, and done nothing.
‘Hsst!’
The sound came from Eber’s left and broke his unhappy reverie.
‘Eber, advance!’
It was old Varveiter, glaring at Eber out of his good eye, giving him his parchment-cracked voice. The other eye was misted over with cataracts, but old Varveiter often claimed that he’d lost the sight in it fighting orcs in the Middle Mountains.
The veteran soldier had seen greener years. His beard was wiry and thin, with more grey in it than brown. The leather hauberk he wore under his plate cuirass was a similar texture to his skin, only not as cured, and black instead of tan. But he was strong and held his halberd haft with a soldier’s purpose.
Varveiter nodded ahead as the line began to move: Eber, Rechts, Lenkmann and Varveiter with Sergeant Karlich at the centre keeping them spread out and steady. Masbrecht and Keller ranged on the extreme left and right, each guarding a flank.
About fifty feet ahead were the scouts, Volker and Brand, their advance low and silent. Heinrich Volker had a hunter’s gait, a trapper’s poise. He went without a helmet and his short, black hair was bound with a band of crimson cloth. He led the way towards the beastman encampment. Whilst scouting, Volker eschewed his halberd for a long dirk. Markus Brand was no poacher, but he moved with silent menace. He wore a tan leather cap with a short, protruding feather over his helmet. A long vambrace up his left arm supported three small knives. Brand was a killer, a quiet man but with violent urges that he sated on the battlefield. He too carried a long dagger, but its blade was serrated and the metal dark from use.
Together, they were the front rankers of the Reikland 16th Halberdiers, also known as the Grimblades. The rest of the forty-strong regiment waited several hundred feet back in a partial clearing. Surprise, according to Sergeant Karlich, was best effected in smaller numbers.
The foul stench that had polluted the shallow breeze wafting through the forest for the last hour abruptly intensified and Volker raised a hand for the halberdiers to stop.
Karlich didn’t need to relay the order to his men. A low clanking of metal breastplates and tassets sounded in response to Volker’s warning. It lasted just a few seconds as each man in the rank became still and watchful.
Hunched silhouettes cavorted in the gloom ahead. Karlich saw the suggestion of horned heads and shaggy-hided bodies in those shapes that parodied men. Hooting and braying carried on the charged silence around the Grimblades. Wood smoke and something else… burning meat, supplemented the rank odour of the beastmen. Somewhere in the Reikwald depths a fire cracked. There were no animals here, no deer, no birds. Beastmen were unnatural creatures, their very presence was repellent to the native denizens of the forest.
Volker was moving again. Karlich could only just make out his route through the undergrowth by the faintest tremble of bracken or a carefully parted branch. Brand matched the scout’s step exactly. Karlich saw him pull a knife from his vambrace before he too was lost from sight. He ordered the rest of the front rankers forward.
Masbrecht and Keller closed in on the flanks. Rechts and Lenkmann kept close to their sergeant. Varveiter just about kept pace, sweating profusely under the weight of his armour and his years. Eber stayed close to the old soldier. They were only fifty feet or so away, close enough to taste the corruption emanating from the beasts, when Eber set off a poacher’s trap with the haft of his halberd. The trap sprang shut with a loud clang, disturbing a flock of ragged carrion crows. Kindred of the beastmen, the wretched birds cawed loudly as they pierced the forest canopy overhead.
The cavorting stopped abruptly, and the beastmen snarled and brayed at the men in their camp. Once Volker had established the likely spot of the beasts, Karlich had chosen to approach downwind of them. Like most animals, natural or otherwise, beastmen had a strong sense of smell and Karlich wisely didn’t want to alert the creatures to the halberdiers’ presence by their scent. That mattered little now. The beasts had seen them and bayed for the taste of man-flesh. Snatching up crude spears and bone clubs, the beasts charged straight at the Grimblades.
Volker and Brand were the first to be discovered. The Reikland hunter rose from the foliage to stab a beast in the arm. The creature howled and made to strike back when Volker cut it again, this time across the belly, spilling its rancid guts. They were ungor, the smallest of the beastmen broods, but no less vicious or bloodthirsty. Brand took one in the throat, ramming his dagger in all the way to the hilt before yanking it free and releasing a long spurt of blood. The ungor crumpled with a burbled rasp. He killed a second with a throwing knife, the beast’s head snapping back with a jerk as the blade filled its left eye socket.
The element of surprise lasted seconds. After their initial kills, Volker and Brand were on the defensive, ungors chasing them as they ran.
Karlich swore. Abandoning his initial plan, he turned to Rechts and Lenkmann.
‘Sound the attack, signal the rest of the regiment!’ He drew his sword. ‘Grimblades! Forward!’
Re
chts beat out a battle rhythm on the small drum lashed over his shoulder for his brother soldiers to follow. Lenkmann found a clear spot and unfurled the banner that had been on his back. Swinging it back and forth, he signalled their position to the other Grimblades.
Cursing his own stupidity, Eber snapped the end of his halberd haft with his foot to free the weapon from the trap, and stormed at the beastmen.
From either flank came the growling of hounds, the ungors’ whelp creatures, too muscled and hairy to be mere dogs. Out the corner of his eye, Eber saw Masbrecht and Keller move to intercept the hounds. A tract of heavy scrub and bracken stood between him and his fellow halberdiers.
Volker had given up the fight now. He was simply running for his life. Brand lingered, stopping occasionally to gut an ungor. One that had got ahead of the fleeing halberdiers raised its club to stave in Volker’s skull before Brand used the last of his throwing knives to kill it. The hunter flinched as the blade whipped past his face, but nodded a hasty thanks to Brand.
‘Move, Grimblades, move!’ Karlich raged. He held the line with Lenkmann but could have overtaken Varveiter who was finding the pace hard to match. Eber outstripped the old soldier by many yards, spurred on by guilt.
Rather than negotiate the foliage, Eber just barrelled through it. He met Volker first and kept on going, smacking straight into a chasing ungor with all the force of a bull. Eber used his shoulder like a battering ram. He felt the crunch of bone as he met the beast, the impact throwing it off its feet. Another came at him from the shadows, shrieking like some mutant swine. Eber swept his halberd in a high arc and cut off the ungor’s head. He impaled a third with a thrust. He cried as a club smashed against his shoulder guard and dented the metal. Numbness spread up his arm like ice, and he nearly dropped his weapon. To be disarmed was to die, so Eber held on.
A slew of blood arced from the ungor’s neck and it fell, Varveiter’s halberd following it.
‘Eager for the killing, eh, Eber?’ Varveiter said between breaths.
Eber nodded as a deeper cry tore from the forest depths. Ungor corpses littered the floor, but more were coming and something else, something larger.
A muscled gor, a much bigger beastman kindred, emerged out of the gloom. A coiled goat’s horn hung from a ragged belt attached around its thick waist, and it clutched a rusty cleaver in its massive hand.
Tilting its head back, the gor released a ululating bellow that resonated around the Reikwald, setting a tremor off in Karlich’s spine. The remaining ungor gathered to the stronger beast, acknowledging its superiority. More whelp hounds stalked at the periphery of the group.
‘Hold, lad,’ gasped Varveiter. ‘We need to wait for the others and form rank.’
But Eber was already plunging forward to meet the gor’s challenge.
‘Wait!’
Eber wasn’t listening. He was determined to make up for his earlier mistake and if that meant fighting the gor, then so be it.
With the gor easily a foot taller, even the mighty Reiklander appeared puny next to the brawny beastman. The lesser creatures seemed to sense the challenge unfolding between their herd-leader and the man-skin and didn’t interfere. Instead, they sped forward on reverse-jointed limbs to fight the others.
‘Eber!’ Varveiter cried out as the gor loomed over his Reikland brother. But his attention was quickly forced elsewhere as the ungor came at him. He blocked a knife slash with his haft then punched the creature in its snout to daze it. Ignoring the pain in his fist, Varveiter swept his halberd around to cut the goat-like legs from under another creature whilst the first ungor staggered. A thrust to the belly did for that one too.
‘Eber!’ he cried again, only able to take a few steps before another ungor blocked his path. Its spear thrust was deflected by Varveiter’s tasset, but it deadened his leg and he half-collapsed. Seizing its advantage, the beastman dropped its weapon and tried to rip Varveiter’s throat out instead. The old soldier turned just in time, putting his armoured forearm into the creature’s mouth. He roared when the ungor bit into the leather of his vambrace. Though small, the beast had a jaw like a blacksmith’s vice and kept on pressing.
Its foul breath assailed Varveiter, redolent of rotten meat and dung. Just when he thought he’d pass out from the pain, the ungor’s eyes widened and it let go.
Brand was revealed behind it, wiping the flat of his dagger on his tunic. His cold, dead eyes regarded Varveiter for a moment before he offered the old soldier a hand up.
‘Thank you, son,’ he said as he was being hauled to his feet.
Brand gave a curt nod.
‘Are you hurt, Siegen?’ It was a voice like a blade being drawn from a scabbard, but it held a note of familial concern. Brand was not Varveiter’s son but the killer regarded him like a father figure nonetheless, and was the only Grimblade left who used his first name.
‘I’m fine. Go help Eber.’
The brutish Reiklander was holding his own against the gor. Trained to use polearms in the Grünburg barracks, Eber made the most of those lessons now and kept the beastman at bay with sharp thrusts from his halberd. But the tactic also served another purpose. The gor was getting more and more frustrated, and increasingly reckless. It stomped and snorted, aiming savage swipes that sliced only air or clanged against Eber’s blade. One attack overstretched it, bringing its head forward. Seeing his chance, Eber lashed out and cut off one of its ram-like horns. Howling, the gor backed off a step and the Empire soldier came forwards. Eber jabbed his halberd into the beast’s thigh and drew blood. But it wasn’t enough to slow the creature, let alone kill it, and the gor came on with renewed fury.
Varveiter looked on as Brand ploughed into the forest after Eber. He could barely move, the pain in his leg was so bad. The bruised flesh pressed against his tasset as it swelled and drove hot pins of agony in the old soldier’s thigh. Despite the danger, he bent down to loosen the buckle and strap. A shadow passed across him as Varveiter came back up and was face to face with a snarling ungor. He scrabbled for his halberd, ramming the tip of its haft into the ground like a defensive stake. The charging ungor impaled itself, spit through like a boar, but left Varveiter defenceless as a pair of whelp hounds scrambled through the brush to savage him.
The old soldier licked his lips before balling his fists.
‘Come on then, you ugly bastards.’
One of the hounds leapt at him, as the second rounded on Varveiter’s blind side to come at his unprotected flank.
He grimaced, but the expected impact didn’t come. There was a loud thunk of flesh on metal as Sergeant Karlich put his shield between Varveiter and the leaping hound. A yelp came from the second as Keller stuck it with his halberd’s point. Masbrecht, also returning from the flanks, staved in the creature’s skull with a hammer.
‘Sigmar’s breath, they do stink!’ he spat.
‘No worse than Eber,’ laughed Keller, a cruel smile splitting his hawkish features.
‘Aye, and he’ll be worse still dead,’ said Karlich. ‘Now shut your mouths and follow me.’
The sergeant led them the rest of the way to Eber, forcing back the ungors and what was left of the hounds. More were coming though, summoned by the death cries of their herd and the reek of blood.
‘Form rank!’ shouted Karlich when Rechts and Lenkmann had joined them.
‘The rest of the regiment is just behind us,’ Lenkmann reported, planting the banner and drawing his sword.
Rechts beat out the order to form up with his drum. The others fell in dutifully.
When it saw the gathering of men the gor backed away, recognising a threat. Eber was content to let it go. His muscles burned from the effort of fighting it, but he still took up his post in the fighting rank.
‘They’re regrouping for another charge,’ said Varveiter. He’d freed his halberd and levelled it forward at the same angle as the others. Volker t
oo had his familiar polearm, as did Brand, both collected from Rechts who’d strapped the weapons to his back before the engagement.
‘Hold this line!’ hollered Sergeant Karlich. The beasts outnumbered them, but they were a rabble. The front rankers only needed to keep them back until the rest of the regiment arrived. Already, he could hear soldiers crashing through the undergrowth behind them.
The gor herd-leader roared, snarling and lashing at the ungor trammelling the foliage to close with the man-skins.
‘Brace and meet them!’ bellowed Karlich. In response, the angle of the halberds lowered again by just a fraction. Each man put his foot behind the base of the haft. Maddened by bloodlust, the ungors and whelp hounds struck the thicket of steel and were scattered. Some were shredded, others impaled. Any that got through were cut down by Karlich’s sword or brained by Masbrecht’s hammer.
‘Thrust!’ came the sergeant’s next order and each man drove his halberd forward to strike a second wave of ungor. Rechts cried out when a rusty blade pierced his shoulder. Karlich battered the creature senseless with a blow from his shield before it could follow up, then Lenkmann stabbed it in the throat whilst it was prone.
‘Stay together.’
At least a dozen more dead and injured ungor littered the ground, but with the gor at their backs the rest dare not falter.
‘Taal’s mercy, how many more of these swine are there?’ asked Volker.
‘Come on, come on…’ Karlich muttered under his breath. The sound of reinforcements was close, but was it close enough?
The battle was fierce, and Karlich dare not avert his attention from it for even a second. In the end, it was the ungors that gave him his answer. The vigour drained out of them like air from a pig’s bladder and they retreated. Even the brutish gor lost its nerve. The scent of so much man-flesh and Empire-forged steel spooked rather than emboldened it. Bringing the coiled horn to its bovine mouth, it blew a long discordant note.
The Empire Omnibus Page 33