The Empire Omnibus

by Chris Wraight

  Like cattle fearing the drover’s whip, the beasts took flight. Some reverted to all fours, galloping awkwardly alongside the hounds; others jerked with two-legged strides.

  Karlich felt the rest of his regiment at his back and found his confidence renewed.

  ‘All Grimblades,’ he rallied, ‘advance!’

  Rechts drummed the pace as Lenkmann raised the banner. The forest was thinning and the beastmen headed to a clearing.

  Forty men drove nigh-on seventy beasts, broken by their good order and stolid defence.

  About twenty feet from the forest’s edge, Karlich called a halt. He could see through the trees and scrub to the broad clearing beyond. Caught up in a fleeing frenzy, the beasts didn’t stop until they burst through to the other side.

  Captain Leorich Stahler waited for them there with a block of fifty Bögenhafen spear and two lines of twenty handguns from Grünburg.

  An explosion erupted in the previously peaceful clearing as all forty handgunners discharged musket and shot. Smoke billowed in a vast cloud, swathing the field and drenching it with the acrid stench of blackpowder. Those beasts that survived the fusillade wandered from the grey smoke pall dazed and confused. A clipped command from Stahler sent the spearmen forward to mop them up. Some of the ungor at the rear of the herd had the sense to turn and flee but were swept up by Karlich’s Grimblades in short order.

  It was all over in a few bloody minutes and by the end all seventy-six beastman corpses were accounted for. Stahler killed the gor himself, when the two balls of shot embedded in its chest didn’t stop it. His sword flashed once with military efficiency and the herd-leader’s head was parted from its shoulders.

  ‘No trophies,’ warned the captain calmly, as Karlich’s halberdiers emerged from the tree line. ‘Burn them all, every one.’

  Stahler was a tall, stocky man with a thick moustache and a dark beard. His lacquered armour was black and etched with Imperial motifs, amongst them the blazing comet and the rampant griffon. His longsword carried a laurel emblem just above the hilt and the pommel flashed as its embedded ruby caught the sun. A hat and helm sat snug in the crook of his arm, and his black hair was lathered in sweat from where he’d taken the headgear off.

  ‘Well met, Feder,’ he said warmly, using Karlich’s first name and seizing his hand in an iron grip. ‘Any casualties?’

  ‘Mercifully none, though it was close.’

  Stahler raised an eyebrow, but the sergeant shook his head.

  ‘Nothing that troubled us unduly, sir.’

  ‘Good. We’re making camp in the next clearing. This one will stink to high heaven by the time we’re done with the pyres.’ Stahler’s nose wrinkled as if he could already smell them. ‘The Reikwald is our pitch for the night. Come the morrow, we cross the Reikland border into Averland.’

  Karlich nodded.

  ‘Shall I have my men help with the building of the pyres, sir?’

  Stahler clapped him on the shoulder and leaned in. ‘You’ve done enough for one day, Feder. Head for the clearing and break camp. Your men have earned a rest.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Rousting’s over, Feder,’ Stahler continued, staring into the middle distance. ‘Prince Wilhelm is on the march and all musterings are to meet up with him on the Steinig Road, four days’ march from Averheim.’

  Several days ago, word had reached the western provinces of an incursion from the east through Black Fire Pass. Though it was impossible to substantiate any of the reports, the news from road wardens and outriders that had made it across the Averland and Stirland borders was that a huge greenskin army was on the move, sacking towns and burning villages. The Emperor’s response to the threat was, as of yet, unknown, at least to the likes of Stahler and Karlich. By contrast, Prince Wilhelm III of Reikland had raised what regiments he possessed, as well as a good number of citizen militias from his provincial villages and hamlets, and ordered them to march forth in defence of their eastern brothers.

  ‘Any news from the other provinces?’ Karlich asked. ‘Are we to ally with their forces on the border or at some other strongpoint?’

  Stahler laughed. It was a hollow sound, without mirth, and did nothing for Karlich’s confidence.

  ‘You know as much as I do. Though you’d think an orc and goblin invasion through Black Fire Pass would get some attention, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Aye. But I’m surprised we’re not marching for the pass itself in that case. Couldn’t the dwarfs hold them?’

  Stahler’s gaze narrowed and he turned to Karlich again.

  ‘By all accounts, the dwarfs stepped aside.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stahler admitted darkly. ‘We follow orders, Feder, you and I both. As soldiers that’s all we can really do. Prince Wilhelm marches, so do we.’ He allowed a long pause as if deciding whether or not that made sense to him too, then added, ‘Faith in Sigmar.’

  ‘Faith in Sigmar, sir.’

  Eber watched from a short distance as Captain Stahler departed. He was overseeing the other regiments in the muster, making sure every single beast was hauled onto the pyres erected by the village militias and then set on fire.

  Sergeant Karlich walked past him, but didn’t meet Eber’s gaze at first.

  ‘You’ve earned a reprieve from pyre duty,’ he said without smiling. ‘Volker, we’re setting up in the next clearing. Go on ahead and lead us through.’

  The Reikland hunter nodded and peeled off into the forest. Nearer to the Reikwald’s edge, the dangers within lessened. The Grimblades had driven the beasts some distance in the end, and the next clearing took them even farther from the forest’s arboreal depths. A stream could be heard, babbling through the trees. There was a village nearby too, Hobsklein it was called. Some of the militia had come from here. They, like the rest of the village’s inhabitants, were grateful to the Empire soldiers for rousting out and destroying the beastmen, and were only too happy for them to share a patch within sight of their stockade walls.

  ‘The rest of you, stay in formation until you’re on the other side,’ the sergeant continued. ‘Then you can break ranks.’

  Karlich let them go on alone, turning his back and pulling a stubby pipe from his tunic pocket. One of the village militia came past with a torch and Karlich stopped him so he could stir some embers to life in the cup and light his pipeweed.

  When the militiaman was gone, he took a long draw to steady his nerves. It was closer than he’d let on to Stahler. A bloody miracle, in fact, that no man had died in the forest. The bones scattered around the beasts’ squalid encampment could quite easily have been theirs.

  ‘You have your orders,’ he said to thin air.

  Eber shuffled into his sergeant’s eye-line.

  ‘Sir…’

  Karlich’s face was hard at first. They’d been lucky and no thanks to Eber’s lack of concentration, but the halberdier had fought well in the end.

  ‘It’s all right, Eber. Any of us could have sprung that trap.’

  The big Reiklander’s expression suggested he thought differently.

  Karlich sighed and his face softened. ‘Go on, join the others.’

  Eber nodded, hurrying to catch the rest and take his place in the front rank.

  ‘Saw the way you faced off against that gor, Eber,’ said Rechts from down the line, smiling through his ruddy beard.

  ‘He cut off its bloody horn!’ added Volker, alongside him.

  Varveiter chuckled but was robbed of his humour by the pain in his leg and grimaced.

  Eber felt a little lighter, but he still knew he could have cost them all their lives.

  They emerged through to the next clearing – there was only a relatively short tract of sparse forest between it and the last one – and Rechts drummed for them to break ranks. Baggage train camp followers were already
pitching tents and lighting fires before night crawled in. The watchtower torches of Hobsklein were visible a few hundred feet distant. Some of the Grimblades shook hands, patted one another’s backs or expressed other gestures of camaraderie as they wandered off into smaller groups.

  The clearing was a broad expanse, mainly flat ground of soft grass and loamy soil. Had the villagers dared to, so close to the forest, they might have planted seeds in the patch of ground and a very different group of rank and file could’ve held sway in it.

  The Grimblade front rankers stayed together and made for the nearest pitch. Other regimental troops were slowly making their way through in dribs and drabs. Volker would return soon, hopefully with game, but the others were content to wait.

  Eber was about to follow when Keller crept up alongside him and leant near his ear.

  ‘Fat oaf,’ he snarled. ‘Get yourself killed next time and spare us all your idiocy.’

  Like a shadow passing over the sun, Keller drifted away, calling and joking out loud to the others.

  Eber stopped. An ache was building inside him. He hated Keller, hated him for saying what he’d just said; hated him for making Eber hate himself. He wanted to lash out, to strike Keller and wipe away his cocky smirk. Instead he merely clenched his fists and looked down at his feet.

  Chapter Two

  Campfires

  Village of Hobsklein, on the Reikland border,

  190 miles from Altdorf

  Evening had drawn in, but the sky above was dark and clear. Stars shimmered in the firmament and the moon was full and bright.

  By now, the campfire was burning well and gave off the succulent aroma of cooking guinea fowl. Volker had caught the birds an hour earlier, plucked the feathers and spitted them over the hot flames. Fatty juices dripped from the birds’ carcasses, six in all, and made the fire below spit and crackle.

  ‘Smells good,’ said Keller, licking his lips.

  ‘Better than trail rations at any rate,’ added Rechts, taking another pull on the bottle of Middenland hooch. The drummer was a resourceful alcoholic and had procured the liquor from a peddler he’d met on the road to the Reikland border.

  ‘Nothing wrong with salt-pork and grits,’ said Varveiter, stretching out his injured leg and hissing through his teeth as he eased it into position.

  ‘Aye, if you’ve got a stomach like a warhorse or your tongue is so old and leathery that you’re past caring about taste.’ Keller laughed, and the others laughed with him. All except for Brand, who kept a yard or two away from the rest. He stayed to the shadows, sharpening his blades on a whetstone. Occasionally, the light caught in his eyes and they flashed with captured fire.

  Varveiter grumbled something derogatory about Keller’s mother under his breath and went back to massaging the stiffness from his leg.

  There were several separate campfires set around the clearing. The sounds of good-natured jostling, tawdry songs and the clatter of knives on plates emanated from them. Smoke from slowly-burning kindling and pipeweed scented the cloudy air. Tents stood in ranks or half circles, blades and polearms racked outside or leaning against trees. With the destruction of the beastmen, the mood was relaxed. Even the sentries stationed at all the cardinal points of the encampment looked undisturbed. It was a good time, and those came very rarely on campaign.

  ‘By Taal, you’re a good hunter, Volker,’ said Rechts when he was given his first strip of guinea fowl. He devoured it whole, wiping the juices from his bearded chin and sucking at the heat baking his tongue. ‘Why did you end up joining the army as a halberdier and not a huntsman?’

  ‘State troopers’ pay is better,’ Volker answered simply. ‘Even if the company’s not,’ he added with a wry smile.

  Now it was Rechts’s turn to laugh out loud, so hard that he jarred the shoulder wound from the ungor’s blade. He winced and clutched at the bloodstained bandage.

  ‘I could see to that for you, brother,’ offered Masbrecht. As well as something of a Sigmarite puritan, Masbrecht also had some skill as a chirurgeon. His father had done it as his profession, and passed some of his skills onto his son before he died of pox nearly ten years ago. The death of the man he had idolised had hit Masbrecht hard and the youth fell into bad ways for a time until he found religion and the cult of Sigmar.

  ‘It’s fine,’ snapped Rechts, as the mood abruptly soured, ‘and I’m no brother of yours.’

  ‘We’re all brothers of Sigmar, Torsten.’

  Rechts stood, leaving the rest of his guinea fowl but taking his half-empty bottle. ‘Piss off, Masbrecht, and leave your sermonising for someone else. Don’t call me that, either. My friends call me Torsten. You’re just another soldier I happen to serve with.’ He turned, stumbling a little with the grog, and stalked off.

  Silence descended for a while before Keller let out a long, high-pitched whistle.

  ‘What crawled up his arse and died?’

  Masbrecht paled and kept his mouth shut.

  ‘I heard he was victimised by zealous preachers when he was young,’ said Brand, so grim the air seemed to get colder with his voice. ‘Executed his family, left him for dead.’

  More silence. Brand had as much of a knack for killing the mood as he did for killing in general.

  ‘Ah, don’t worry about that miserable whoreson,’ said Keller, trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘Come and bless me instead, Masbrecht. Sigmar knows, I need it!’

  He laughed again and drew some humour back out of the night.

  Volker chuckled, though it felt forced.

  ‘What about you, Eber?’ Lenkmann piped up, his opening a little awkward. He was better accustomed to polishing his tunic’s buttons or pressing the creases from his hose than conversing with his comrades. ‘Why did you join up?’

  The big Reiklander had been quiet until then, content to fade into the background. His guilt still felt heavy, like a lead ball in his gut, and he was hoping the night would pass without any further attention. The others were of the same mind, only poor old Lenkmann was about as intuitive as a rock.

  ‘I, er… used to be with a band of travelling carnival folk–’

  ‘A bumbling klown, no doubt,’ quipped Keller, keeping his malice hidden from everyone except Eber and, unbeknownst to him, Brand too.

  ‘Strongman,’ Eber corrected.

  To Keller’s annoyance, the others appeared interested in Eber’s secret life.

  ‘What did you lift?’ asked Volker.

  ‘Ale barrels, anvils, that kind of thing,’ said Eber. ‘Once, I lifted a cart mule.’

  Lenkmann was impressed. ‘What, over your head?’ He mimed the feat as he imagined it.

  ‘Aye, just so.’

  ‘Sounds likely…’ Keller’s sarcasm was biting.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Eber, quietly. Evidently, the carnival was not a place of happy memories for him either.

  ‘I believe him,’ said Volker.

  Keller sniffed impatiently, shaking his head. ‘Aw, why are you even talking to the lout? He almost got us all killed today,’ he said, adding under his breath. ‘Dumb ox.’

  Eber heard him, and it made him angry. ‘Don’t call me that.’

  ‘What? Dumb or ox?’

  ‘Leave him alone, Krieger,’ Volker pleaded. He had been looking forward to a quiet evening of simple pleasures, of good food and reasonable company, when they could leave the horrors of the Reikwald behind them, if just for a night. Everyone else on the patch was getting on, why not them?

  Keller turned on the huntsman.

  ‘Why? But for Karlich’s quick thinking, the oaf’s stupidity could have seen us all dead.’

  ‘Everyone makes mistakes, Keller,’ offered Lenkmann, distinctly uncomfortable at the sudden turn.

  ‘Mistakes that’ll get us all killed, one day,’ Keller replied, focusing back on Eber. ‘Should’ve stayed at
the circus, klown.’

  Socially awkward as he was, the banner bearer could think of no way to defuse the rising tension. Volker had said his bit. Masbrecht was content to stay out of it, after Rechts’s earlier outburst. He looked to Brand for support, but all he got was cold, hollow eyes, narrowed like knife slashes in the campfire gloom. In the end, it was old Varveiter that had the answer.

  ‘He showed more bravery than some.’ The old man was staring into the dark, picking at his guinea fowl idly.

  Keller bared his teeth.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means that I saw you, more than once, skulking in the shadows on the flank, keeping your head down and your blade unsullied.’

  ‘I’m no coward, Varveiter.’ Keller was on his feet. Brand made to move, too, his hand disappearing into the dark folds of his tunic before the old soldier warned him off with a look.

  Varveiter fixed the other halberdier with a stony glare.

  ‘Well, let’s just say all of your enemies usually have their wounds in the back.’

  ‘I outmanoeuvre, you bast–’

  Varveiter cut him off.

  ‘No need to sour the evening. And in my day,’ he added, ‘that kind of… outmanoeuvring was called cowardice.’

  Keller snorted, backing down a little when he realised the old soldier was actually spoiling for a fight.

  Lenkmann caught onto the ploy late: Varveiter was baiting Keller, just like Keller had been baiting Eber. It took the attention off the big Reiklander who didn’t have the wit to match him and was already torn up with guilt so as not to be thinking that straight.

  ‘In your day, our troops wore loin cloths and tattoos.’

  ‘That so? I must be ancient, then. Well you should have no trouble besting me, should you?’ Varveiter got up with a grunt and a grimace. Unbuckling his breastplate, he let it fall to the ground.

  ‘Now, come on…’ Lenkmann began, half an eye on the nearest campfires, but was far, far too late. The wheels had been long in motion by the time the danger presented itself to him.

  Varveiter raised a hand. ‘It’s all right, Lenkmann. Keller wants to show us his skill. I’m happy to let him. Don’t tell me you’ve never brawled with comrades before? Good for camaraderie, or so we old campaigners say…’ He glanced at Keller, who suddenly looked less sure of himself.