Fatigue gnawed at him now, like an unwelcome guest who wouldn’t leave. Karlich felt like giving in. They’d endured almost a half hour of unbroken fighting. Across the line, it was beginning to hurt. Troops that had regrouped from the original front were moving in support, plugging inevitable gaps, but they could only do so much. Every man was tiring. Karlich had hoped the enemy would be too. But they showed no sign of doing so; the greenskins’ stamina seemed limitless.
Chapter Nineteen
The death of honour
Outside Averheim, capital city of Averland,
483 miles from Altdorf
Stahler knew wizards had power, but until he’d seen Sirrius Cloudcaller summon the chunk of flaming rock, he’d not realised just how much. Deep down, it frightened him that some men could wield such a thing like he would wield a sword. He wondered at the price of it, at the sacrifice it must require.
His awe had banished his fear at least, and with the wyvern gone he could concentrate on the battle. It stuck in his craw that he couldn’t commit to the fight. He had to lead, to guide tactically, so as many men as possible survived the next dawn, if there was one.
The left flank was beginning to push the orcs and goblins back. Though, to Stahler’s chagrin, both the centre and right flank were making better progress. Buoyed by victory, the regiments commanded by Vogen were forging ahead. It meant the line angled awkwardly and Stahler wished he could haul them back, but he was too far away.
Behind him, smoke and fire billowed across the embankment. It was hard to make out but it looked like one of the great cannons had misfired and exploded, killing its crew. Meinstadt was still alive, labouring to free an iron ball stuck in the mouth of one of the mortars. Through the fog, Stahler discerned another of the cannons had slipped down the hill, part of the makeshift embankment crumbling beneath it. Gunnery crews pushed and heaved on ropes to bring it level again but were making little inroads.
The war machines had done their part. Meinstadt’s reserves remained, but only in extremis. That left one cannon. It was up to the infantry now. They were fighting hard, gaining ground, but it was a ripple against an ocean.
Stahler had no illusions. Prince Wilhelm needed to break through and release the army inside Averheim very soon.
Wilhelm and his knights punched through a trailing warband of orcs, burst right through their flank and scattered them. Kogswald sang ancient war ballads as he slew, whereas Ledner was deathly silent and killed with brutal efficiency. Both such fine warriors, such contrasts in light and shade.
Dragon Tooth was well bloodied by now. The orc filth slipped off its blade like water, leaving it bright and unsullied as if newly forged. The Griffonkorps and the Order of the Fiery Comet hadn’t lost a single rider. There was still some way to go, a field of orcs and goblins stretched ahead of them, but the Averheim gates were in sight.
Wilhelm’s eyes narrowed, akin to when a hunter in the Reikwald spots prey. Free of the orcs, now either dead or fleeing, he was able to focus his attention on a figure standing out amidst the thronging battle for Averheim ahead.
It was distant, glimpsed through a clutch of swaying beasts and banners, horns and totems. Wilhelm could not believe the creature’s size. The rumours, all he had heard and largely discounted, did not prepare him.
Grom the Goblin King was immense.
At first, the Prince of Reikland mistook him for an orc. No goblin had any right to be that big. Grom’s girth was incredible, the paunch for which he was so famed. It spilled out from under dirty chainmail in a solid mass of flesh and muscle, pockmarked with warts. A helmet fashioned from a horned skull sat on his ugly, leering head. A necklace of claws and finger bones looped around his neck. The furry hide that served as a cloak was spattered with dried blood. Grom was in the killing mood, and Wilhelm need rely on rumour no more as he could now see the goblin’s strength and prowess for himself.
A sortie of templar knights who’d possibly seen Wilhelm’s gambit was trying to fight a route through to him and open up the way to Averheim. They had stalled upon hitting a vast swathe of miniscule greenskins. Though weak and diminutive, the creatures known in the Empire as snotlings were in such numbers that the brave knights were dragged down and engulfed. Vaguely, Wilhelm made out a mass of tiny jaws with teeth like pins gnawing at the stricken templars. The snotlings inveigled their way into armour plate, under chainmail, hungering for soft, yielding flesh they could feast upon.
Though they struggled, once off their horses the knights were as good as dead. Other, larger goblins armed with nets and barbed tridents hurried in stabbing and prodding at gaps in their armour.
Bravely, some had broken through and Grom was cutting them down. They barely made it twenty feet from the gate when the goblin king was amongst them, his double-headed axe cleaving limbs and reaping a bloody toll.
The knights didn’t last long. None returned to Averheim.
Wilhelm was horrified. This menace had to be stopped. His determination to meet Grom in single combat and end the war grew.
The small tract of open ground they’d found upon smashing through the orc mob was coming to an end. A band of night goblins – hooded creatures that usually dwelt in caves and seldom fought in the day – scurried into the path of Wilhelm’s knights. Ranting on behind the Paunch was his standard bearer. The nasty little creature spat and stuck his tongue out as he raved at the other goblins, urging them to charge.
Several mobs had allied together under a single banner, a jagged, bleeding eye. There were maybe eighty to a hundred of them. Wilhelm gauged they’d last less than half that number in seconds against his knights.
Just as he leaned in, lowering his body closer to his steed for the initial impact, he caught a final glimpse of Grom, looking at him over his shoulder, before he sidled away.
Was the goblin warlord grinning?
Seeing another opportunity to bloody his lance, easy pickings at that, Kogswald spurred his knights.
‘Allow me, my lord,’ he said, slamming down his visor and kicking his steed. ‘H’yar!’
He’d scythe the goblins down like chaff.
Moments from impact, the other lanceheads just a few seconds behind him, Kogswald’s eyes widened and he tried to rein in his horse. The other knights followed suit but some were too slow and piled up behind those in front. A stray lance raked a horse’s flank, tearing into its barding and eliciting a whinny of pain. Others crumpled against the armoured backs of the lead animals. Necks and limbs broke with an audible crack of bone. Men fell from their saddles and were crushed underhoof. But the carnage had only just begun.
Bursting out of the night goblin ranks came six greenskins each wielding a massive ball and chain. They swung the ridiculously huge weapons in an arc, slowly at first and then gradually gaining momentum until the displaced air from them whirling around created a low whomp with each successful circle. Frothing at the mouth like rabid dogs, the goblin fanatics were clearly insane. Their maddened voices were oddly distorted as they spun, like a reverberant howl growing and diminishing at rapidly increasing intervals.
One of the horses strayed into the whirlwind of iron and was instantly bludgeoned. Its rider raised his shield ineffectually. The desperate knight was battered into a greasy paste before he had time to scream. Unperturbed, the goblin fanatic carried on trammelling through the warriors behind. The other five inflicted similar devastation, their course unpredictable but deadly. One of the Griffonkorps tried to stab down at a greenskin with his longsword but succeeded in only snapping his blade and then losing his arm as it was dragged in to the goblin’s killing arc and crushed.
In just a few seconds, Wilhelm’s proud lancehead was in tatters. Almost half of his knights were dead or dying. The attack on the Averheim gate ground to a terrible halt.
Brand stabbed a goblin wolfrider in the neck, releasing a plume of gore just as the rain began to fall. It was lig
ht at first, a low plink, plink against their armour, but then it grew to a downpour. Tunics and hose were quickly sodden, leather stained dark like blood. It was so heavy it became hard to see much farther than a foot or so in front of their faces. Brand didn’t mind. He only needed to see what he had to kill and that usually fell into those parameters. Disembowelling a giant wolf, he decided the rain had done nothing to cool the battlefield. In fact, the heat was more oppressive than ever. If anything, it made it more clammy and humid. As it died, the wolf upended the goblin on its back into a worsening swamp. Brand put his boot on the creature’s head, holding it down while he fought another. A line of sweat was rekindled down his back and made him itch. He would have scratched were it not for all the greenskins on the flank trying to gut him.
Brand was at the ‘hinge’, where the front and rear ranks met. He protected Masbrecht’s back, who was in the front rank fighting the horde of goblins on foot. Alongside him was Greiss, the recruit from Averland. The man was skilled and held his own. He had an aptitude for killing. His tally rivalled Brand’s own.
At the front, Brand was dimly aware of Karlich shouting curses at the greenskins and encouragement to the men. Brand generally hated officers, but he respected Karlich. Not as much as Varveiter, but he held the sergeant in high regard. It was the only reason he hadn’t killed him after he’d seen him break down in the watchtower at the road warden’s rest. That was a distant memory now, only Keller’s face remained and the sense of his retribution being denied that Brand felt at the other soldier taking the coward’s way out.
It was hard fighting, some of the toughest Brand had faced. The noise was intense and blended together into a hellish sort of din. Some men, if they survived, would not get over it. It would likely drive them mad. Brand had known soldiers, harder men than those around him, who had taken their own lives because of it.
Pressure could be felt on both sides, ever pressing. It was a task just to keep the goblins back, let alone defeat them. As he killed another wolfrider, Brand heard a man farther down the flank gurgle a death cry as one of the mounts ripped his throat out. Greiss still refused to yield. For Brand, it was like looking into a mirror, a cracked and slightly dirty mirror.
Karlich disliked the Middenlanders almost as much as he hated the goblin hordes trying to kill them. After hacking apart a goblin’s skull with his sword, he spared a glance at Vanhans’s men. They were true butchers. The ruthless mercenaries and insane flagellants laid into a band of orcs with bloody abandon. Like madmen, they died in droves but fought without fear. The paid mercenaries were more careful but equally brutal. A promise of further coin was all that kept them in the fight, though. Karlich only glimpsed the witch hunter, a sliver of black, a flash of silver, but his voice was wholly apparent. Every cut came with a curse, a hateful catechism spat with phlegmy vitriol. If animus was a weapon then Vanhans’s blade was sharper than the keenest diamond.
Ahead was no better. After plunging forward heedlessly, the Steel Swords had now stalled, forming a shieldwall against a mob of heavily-armoured orcs. Trying to stay alive and kill his enemies at the same time, meant Karlich couldn’t see how they were faring. He cursed the Middenlanders all the same for having left his own regiment vulnerable, goaded by the promise of glory denied them at the Brigund Bridge. He only regretted he wouldn’t get to pay them back for their dissension.
Just as Karlich was preparing to make a last stand, to be reunited with his wife and daughter in Morr’s afterlife, the pressure on the flank lifted. Looking out the corner of his eye for as long as he dared, he saw the telltale black and red of Carroburg.
Sigmar bless his blade, von Rauken had come to their aid.
With greatsworders cleaving into them mercilessly from behind and the halberdiers giving them hell from the front, the goblin Wolf Riders scattered and fled. The few that weren’t slain in the retreat barrelled southward for the Black Mountains. Karlich fancied even Grom could not get them to turn, so badly had the Carroburg Few mauled them.
The goblin horde fighting to the Grimblades’ front capitulated soon after. Worn down by Vanhans on one side, and the greatsworders on the other, Karlich and his men were at last able to overwhelm them and put the creatures to flight.
Several still lived, eighty or more goblins from the same tribe, but their will was broken. Their retreat left a short spurt of open ground before them. Karlich used the time marching into it to catch a breath and share a word with von Rauken.
‘A good time to repay a debt of honour,’ he said.
The greatsworder champion merely grinned, showing a lost tooth.
‘There’s more blood to be shed still. Don’t thank us yet,’ growled the Carroburger.
Karlich’s reply was arrested by the storm cracking above. He looked up and saw the Celestial wizard and the shaman duelling inside a massive thunderhead. Lit from behind by lightning, they appeared as frozen silhouettes. Every flash revealed a new vista, as if held in transparent amber, only for it to fade and reappear a moment later in a different duelling pose. Wizard and shaman were just ephemeral shadows painted on the underside of clouds, so high, so far away. It was impossible to tell who was winning.
Respite was brief. More orcs and goblins were coming.
Karlich cast a glance over his shoulder. Smoke was wreathing the embankment, spilling down onto the battlefield in a creeping, grey veil. Something was happening up there but he couldn’t tell what. From the sound of the explosion he heard earlier, it couldn’t be good. Peering through the smog he noticed that the back line had moved up and a good hundred feet or so now separated them. In the tight confines of the battlefield ahead, it felt like a gulf.
Gaps were forming in the battle. Whereas before it was clogged without room to manoeuvre, fleeing regiments and mobs had pulled at both armies. Formations and battle lines were breaking down. Together with the natural ebb and flow of combat, discrete masses were slowly emerging. A regiment from Grünburg and another from Streissen fought a savage orc mob and a horde of forest goblins. A stolid wedge of halberdiers struggled against a smaller band of trolls, their numbers dwindling. A force of pike and swordsmen clashed with a grunting tribe of orc boar riders, keeping the beasts at bay with a wall of shields and polearms. Each fought their own personal battle. Suddenly the wider war had become less important and immediate than merely living out the next minute.
Stahler knew how to read an engagement as easily as he discerned the palm of his own hand. The struggle for Averheim was reaching a crucial stage.
Between the fighting, patches of open ground strangled with the dead and dying were revealed. Like pulling back a dirty curtain, broken blades and shields, bloodied leather and mail was found cluttering the earth like scrap. From every struggle, fresh horrors emerged from underfoot as man and orc jostled for superiority.
The Imperial infantry was pressing ahead. Stahler knew it was important to maintain momentum, especially with such a large army arrayed against them, but he was weary about leaving the rear line and their support so far behind. Soon the men would tire too. Nothing could be worse than being stranded beyond help, surrounded by foes and with a heavy sword arm. They had to press on, though. If they could hold, even break through to Averheim, then the two armies would surely crush the greenskins. Perhaps the war could be won here after all.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, old man. Damn fine way to get killed.
A wry smile turned to a grimace on Stahler’s face when a jab of pain shot up his arm and side. Clutching his chest, he gasped. It was like breathing piping hot cinders. A clatter of metal announced he’d dropped his sword. Stahler watched it hit the ground. Sagging in the saddle, he almost followed it. Seizing the reins with his other hand, he tried to hold on.
Can’t… see me… like this; even the voice in his head sounded agonised. He needed to get up. He thought about reaching for his blade.
Forget it, there’s no way.
/> Stahler realised if he dismounted or leaned down to retrieve it, he might never get back up again.
‘Merciful Shallya,’ he rasped. The sound was wet and ragged. Stahler tasted copper in his mouth.
Darkness blinded him for a split second before he blinked it away. Tremors of mild panic went with it. The soldiers’ backs were still hazy. It might have been because of the smoke. He wasn’t sure.
Blackpowder smoke was creeping down the embankment. It swept the field in a dark grey fog from the constant discharge of harquebus, mortar and cannon. The rear echelons of the army were smothered and it was slowly layering the entire plain. Still groggy but mastering the pain, Stahler saw a scattered band of goblins approaching him through the murk. Some of the greenskin mobs had overshot or been left behind in the massive push by the Imperial infantry. Crossbowmen and handgunners were picking them off with isolated clacks of their weapons, but some were still getting through. Most of the greenskin remnants fled but some were prowling the dead and dying, stealing and murdering as they went. They wouldn’t tackle a regiment, but a lone rider would be fair game.
Stahler realised abruptly that he was separated from the line, in a sort of grey no-man’s-land. Mist and gunsmoke coalesced into a dark fug that made it hard to see. The goblins were coming for him. He sneered, annoyed with himself.
Easy meat.
Stahler drew a pistol from his belt. He had already dropped his shield when he went for the reins. With both hands free, he wrenched a short sword from its scabbard on his steed’s barded flank.
Something told him he was dying, that the wound he’d received at Blösstadt was mortal, only he hadn’t known it. Until now.
The Empire Omnibus Page 54