The Empire Omnibus

by Chris Wraight

  A small arena of dirt had grown around the two combatants, despite the efforts of the Empire troops to reach their lord. Wilhelm was glad of it; at least he didn’t feel like a drowning man anymore. When the black orc attacked, it charged like a bull. When it passed for a third time, Wilhelm heard deep grunting before its bulk was reduced to a shadow in the fog. It struck a glancing blow to the prince’s pauldron. Only the virtue of the armour’s forging kept his shoulder from shattering. The monster came again, turning quickly on its heel and resolving through the gloom. Something hot struck Wilhelm’s face. Belatedly he realised it was freshly shed blood from the black orc’s axe.

  This time the prince stood his ground. Dragon Tooth had taken on a strange, dull glow in the fog. An overhead swipe drove towards his head. He only just parried it, jarring both arms, but deflecting the blow downwards. The axe was buried deep in the ground. Pounding greenskin feet had loosened the soil at the valley bottom and the earth received the blade gratefully.

  Wilhelm took his chance. The effort of parrying sent his runefang away from the black orc, but he used the momentum of the attack to carry on the swing. It went full circle in the time it took for the black orc to realise his axe was snared, and impaled the monster’s skull.

  The black orc shuddered, the pathetic halfling corpses around his neck quivering as if they were dancing. Wilhelm pushed hard against bone until his runefang pierced the greenskin’s tiny brain. The black orc let go of its axe, still refusing to yield and acknowledge it was dead. Wilhelm wrenched Dragon Tooth free. The enchanted blade tore through the monster’s head, decapitating it from the chin upwards. The slab of stinking skull and meat sloped off the ruddy stump like a cut from a butcher’s block. Its claws stopped grasping, inches from the prince’s throat and the giant black orc slumped into a heap.

  A spike of dissolution shot through the other black orcs, stunned at the chieftain’s death. Sensing a turn in the fight, the Carroburg Few drove even harder at the greenskins. Together with a large regiment of Auerswald spearmen, they broke the black orcs and sent them reeling. Several goblin mobs which had previously been eager to join the winning side lost heart and fled too. Wilhelm ordered the line to hold and reform.

  ‘Draw out the warlord,’ he shouted. The prince was still stranded in the open, unaware that he already had.

  He was marshalling his strength when a spectacular explosion lit the ridge behind him, sending burning shrapnel into the ranks below. Men standing several feet away were struck and killed. Wilhelm turned, along with others in the army, to witness a massive fireball ignite the ridge.

  Karlich tasted earth as he was thrown down and scattered with the other halberdiers by a tremendous blast wave. Heat pricked the hairs on the back of his neck and despite the grubby tang of soil in his mouth, he embraced the instinct to sink his face down further.

  It had come from the vicinity of the volley gun, he guessed, though it was hard to tell with his senses momentarily shredded. He still couldn’t see or hear properly. Soot stained the air black, making it hard to breathe. Somewhere amidst the deafening explosion of blackpowder a horse shrieked.

  ‘Come together, come–’ Karlich’s voice was choked by coughing. Smoke filled his lungs and he brought up thick black phlegm. Wiping his mouth, he looked around. Shapes emerged as the black clouds slowly cleared. He was still dazed, only vaguely aware he was alone, when he noticed dead men strewn upon the ridgeline. War machine crew and harquebus gunners were the main casualties. Meinstadt’s voice rose above the panicked clamour, attempting to restore order. Karlich thought the engineer had been with the volley gun and wondered briefly how he’d managed to survive the blast before he saw the dead horse.

  Though peppered with hot metal from the sundered cannon, its insides now its outsides, Karlich recognised the steed as Ledner’s. Following the unfortunate beast’s path, he found its master not far away, rolling on his back, dazed. He was quite far from the summit of the ridge. Ledner had been moving away when the volley gun misfired. If not, he’d surely be amongst the dead.

  The world had dimmed into a narrow half-blur, as if he was seeing it through an underwater tunnel. Karlich’s hearing was still affected too, but he didn’t let it stop him stumbling towards the spymaster.

  ‘On your feet,’ he snarled, feeling his hate for the man anew. Karlich seized Ledner’s hand, almost got him level, then slipped, sending the two of them back down again.

  A bestial cry echoed from farther down the valley, tinny with the explosion still reverberating in Karlich’s skull. Orcs had broken through the first line, part of the east flank crumpling when one of the militia regiments had made for the edge of the valley in utter terror. They were big, not the size of black orcs, but burly and thickly armoured.

  ‘Get up!’ said Karlich with more urgency than bile this time. His hearing came back in a crash of sound. He staggered at first, but quickly composed himself. ‘I said up, you bastard.’

  Ledner smiled, drooling blood from where he’d lost a couple of teeth. He had a cut across his forehead, too, and held his wounded arm gingerly as he rose.

  ‘Here’s your chance, Lothar,’ he said. ‘I’m at your mercy. I can see it in your eyes!’

  Karlich had his dirk and Ledner was injured and unarmed. A swift glance behind revealed they were separated from the rest of the men, a belt of thick smoke clouding the view.

  No one would ever know.

  All the things Ledner had done, the way he’d manipulated them. He’d cost Karlich friends and comrades, forced them to compromise their own morals to serve his shady ones. This was a man willing to sacrifice his prince and liege-lord. However noble the cause, nothing could excuse that. Karlich had him by the scruff of the neck.

  It would be easy.

  All this flashed through the sergeant’s mind before he made his decision.

  ‘No.’ He pulled Ledner up, helped him onto his shoulder. ‘I killed in cold blood before,’ he said, walking him back up the ridge. ‘I did it for love. I won’t do it for hate, not for you. And in any case,’ he added, whispering into Ledner’s ear, ‘your death will come soon enough. I saw the blood on your lip in the alley. Lung rot is a painful way to go.’

  The mask slipped for a moment before Karlich looked away again, all of Ledner’s insecurities and fears revealed to him. Let him die in agony; Karlich’s conscience would be clear.

  Ahead of the two men, the Grimblades were reforming. Mercifully, it looked like no casualties had been sustained in the blast, just pounding heads and grazed knees. Karlich was already shouting up to the great cannon, warning them about the approaching orcs when Ledner found his wits and pointed to the opposite side of the valley.

  ‘No, there!’

  Meinstadt never saw Ledner. His eyes were on the orc mob advancing on the war machines. Fearing they’d be overrun, he ordered up pails of coins, nails, spoons and anything else they could find to stuff the cannon with and fire grapeshot. It would render the weapon useless for the rest of the battle but at least they’d survive a little longer. The beasts were bearing down on them. By the time the cannon was turned and primed, they’d be too close for an iron ball.

  Karlich followed Ledner’s outstretched hand. He saw Grom, riding a lop-sided chariot, heading for the prince who’d just despatched a monstrous black orc and hadn’t seen the goblin king.

  He looked back down the ridge. The armoured orcs were clanking up the slope, gathering momentum. They looked tough. The Grimblades were still shaken from the explosion. Across the valley, Prince Wilhelm stood in the path of the goblin king’s chariot. The cannon couldn’t pepper the orcs with grapeshot and fire on the chariot. The latter was a risk, but without intervention the prince would be run down.

  Grom was getting close…

  Karlich made up his mind. He had to shout to be heard.

  ‘Save the prince, we’ll hold off the orcs.’

 
Meinstadt, a dishevelled, slightly blackened figure, nodded and ordered the great cannon turned about. He was already giving out miniscule adjustments to elevation and amounts of blackpowder when Karlich resumed his position in the Grimblades’ front rank.

  Ledner was alongside him.

  ‘This is my captain’s sword,’ he told the spymaster. He drew the blade and it shone star-like in the light. ‘I don’t plan on dishonouring it today, nor should you.’

  Ledner had picked up his own sword when they’d staggered back up the ridge. He held it in one hand, shakily due to his injuries.

  ‘I knew you had balls, sergeant,’ he rasped. ‘That’s why I’ve always liked you. That’s why I haven’t had you killed.’

  ‘Sigmar be praised, then,’ Karlich replied. The orcs were close enough to taste their foetid aroma on the breeze.

  Ledner gave him a quizzical look, to which Karlich answered, ‘That you spared me long enough for this bloody end.’

  Behind them, the great cannon boomed.

  Wilhelm was alone when the chariot burst out from the greenskin ranks. Grom had weaved around the back of his mobs, waiting until the last moment to charge. Bearing down on Wilhelm now as it did, there was no time to mount a defence against the deadly machine. Its spinning scythed wheels were mesmerising… The cries of Wilhelm’s men rushing to try and save him were moot, their desperate actions fated to always be too late.

  In the wake of the fleeing black orcs, a mob of tattooed greenskins with bones through their noses, wearing animal hide and wielding crude stone axes charged into the open ground, wailing.

  Caught between a goblin king and a sea of frenzied green, thought the prince.

  Wilhelm saluted his forefathers and then his enemy. He levelled his runefang at Grom and prepared to meet him.

  ‘Deus Sigmar…’ he murmured, and closed his eyes.

  At the sound of splintered wood and half-heard goblin curses, he opened them again.

  Grom’s chariot was wrecked. The Paunch was flattened underneath its carriage in a heap. One of the scythed wheels was still spinning, but pointed harmlessly in the air. The other had broken off and rolled away somewhere out of sight. The wolves were dead, crushed or impaled. A cannonball was lodged in the ground nearby, exuding smoke. It had upended the machine, flipping it dramatically to land just short of the prince.

  When Grom didn’t move at first, Wilhelm dared to hope the goblin king was dead. But then a piece of debris trembled atop the wreckage and fell off. Other larger pieces followed until the Paunch was back on his feet. He wrenched a stake of wood from his chest. Wilhelm’s eyes widened as the wound closed behind it, and he saw all of Grom’s cuts and bruises heal as if they had never been there. He recalled Ledner’s words about the rumour the warlord could not be killed. Despite the evidence of his own eyes, he forced himself not to believe it.

  Abruptly, Wilhelm became aware of Empire troops rushing to his side.

  Grom’s minions did the same. The savage orcs subsumed him into their ranks, while the Paunch’s standard-bearer laughed and capered beside him. A brutal cuff from Grom to the little wretch’s head curbed his enthusiasm.

  Seeing the prince, Grom snarled and spat a gob of blood on the ground. He brandished his axe meaningfully before ordering the charge.

  Up close, Grom looked even bigger. Eating troll flesh had done this to him, so it was reckoned. It accounted for the creature’s massive belly, swollen with carnage, glutted on war.

  Wilhelm allowed himself a murderous grin that narrowed his eyes. ‘What do we do with trolls…’ he said, before muttering a word of power that ignited a bright red flame along Dragon Tooth’s blade.

  Kogswald’s reply in the war tent returned to him in a whisper as the Empire men charged.

  We burn them.

  Several of the armoured orcs rushing up the slope towards the war machines jerked and fell but the desultory harquebus salvo didn’t slow them.

  ‘For Reikland and Prince Wilhelm!’ cried Karlich, before storming down the slope with his men to meet them.

  Even Ledner roared, a hoarse unsettling noise, as a fatalistic abandon gripped the Grimblades.

  Despite the fact they occupied the higher ground, the impact of the armoured orcs was brutal. Heifer and Innker, two recent stand-ins for the front rank, died at once. Heifer lost his nose and most of his face when a spiked club staved it in; Innker slipped on his own innards before realising he’d been opened up by an axe and died spewing blood down his tunic. Others, who Karlich failed to recognise in the maddened scrum of the fight, moved up from the back ranks to replace the fallen.

  Eber took a blow to the stomach, more haft than blade, and grunted in pain. He stuck the orc on the end of his halberd and kept pushing until it was dead. Gore streaked the haft when he jerked it loose.

  Brand abandoned his polearm completely, having dragged a hammer from the carnage and used that to bludgeon the greenskins. Bone chips and brain matter flicked off every strike he made. Stooping in the melee, he picked up a fallen sword and wielded it in his free hand. Stabbing and swiping, he was more frenzied than the savage beasts escorting the goblin king down in the valley. There was no finesse in this, no killing art. It was raw and primal with men reduced to beasts, desperate for survival.

  For a fleeting moment, Karlich thought they could win. He felt determination in his troops and an overwhelming desire to live. Even injured, Ledner was devastating, a true swordsman compared to his own clumsy efforts. Stahler’s sword was the leveller, though, shearing armour like parchment and cleaving off limbs like they were dead twigs.

  But it wasn’t enough. Karlich’s misplaced optimism crumpled when Volker’s lifeless body spun away from the orc chieftain leading the mob, impelled by the cleaver blow that had ruined his face and ended his life. The Reikland hunter disappeared in the mass as he fell and was trampled underfoot. Karlich wanted to reach for him and save Volker the indignity of being ground into the dirt but it was impossible.

  Someone cried out. It sounded like Eber. Pain or anguish, it was hard to tell for sure.

  They were losing. Karlich felt it in the surge of hopelessness that threatened to end him. A back step became three. Lenkmann looked to him for a sign. His left eye was gummed with blood. Karlich couldn’t actually see it for sure. It didn’t appear to concern him. Lenkmann’s banner, his charge and solemn responsibility, was flecked with a comrade’s blood.

  Volker’s dead.

  ‘Hold! Hold!’ rasped Ledner, shoving Karlich’s shoulder in a gesture of defiance.

  If they fled now they would not escape. The greenskins would catch them and they’d be slain to a man. Do or die – Karlich knew it was this he’d agreed to when telling Meinstadt to save the prince. No sacrifice comes without cost.

  Behind them, men were running. Karlich heard the distant bootfalls getting closer and realised they weren’t running away.

  A burst of staccato cracks sounded near to his left, or was it his right? He wondered if he’d got turned around in the battle. Several orcs fell dead with smoke oozing from holes in their armour. The cracks came again, to much the same effect. Then a band of brawny gunnery crew led by Meinstadt slammed into the side of the orcs and laid about them with hatchets, hammers and other tools. With their machinery’s ammunition exhausted, the engineer had pressganged the mortar crew into combat.

  Meinstadt discharged his pistol at close range. The repeating mechanism fired three shots that sank an orc to its knees where he finished it with his sword.

  Renewed hope filled Karlich, and the sergeant used it as a vessel for his anger. Armoured orcs died beneath Stahler’s blade. It was the like the old captain lived on through it.

  The greenskins thought they’d broken the Empire men. When they held on, rallying to Lenkmann’s soiled standard, the orcs’ pugnacity faded. The Grimblades had fought back the ground they’d lost, grindin
g the greenskins back down the slope, when a cry came from the ridgeline.

  ‘Down!’

  To a man, the halberdiers and gunnery crew dropped. Above them, a burst of grapeshot shredded what was left of the armoured orcs and broke them, but finished the last of the war machines.

  None of the halberdiers gave chase. They’d hung on long enough for the great cannon to reload. Several of the Grimblades were dead, Volker with them. Karlich and Brand dragged his battered body from amongst the fallen.

  They tried not to look at the dead man’s face. They wouldn’t have recognised it anyway. Brand shawled the poor sod with his cloak and dragged him farther up the ridge. Karlich ordered them all up there. With the cannons spent, it made no more sense to stay below them, they might as well occupy the highest vantage point where they were not so far from the ranks of harquebus. Grief was a luxury to feel later.

  Karlich noticed Eber had not moved. He was on his knees, half sunk in the blood-soaked earth. His halberd rested limply in the crook of his arm like a fallen flag. The sergeant winced as he went down to him. A cut in his leg gave him discomfort, but he neither cared nor had time to staunch it.

  ‘Higher ground, Eber,’ he said, aware of the battle raging below them and that another greenskin breakthrough could be imminent. ‘Come on, I’ll help you up.’

  He reached under Eber’s thick arm but it was like heaving dead weight. Then he saw the burly Reiklander holding on to his sides. He was whispering something.

  ‘Sergeant!’ Lenkmann cried. The banner bearer’s tone was urgent but Karlich waved away his concern without looking. Instead, he leaned in and listened.

  ‘Like thread, like thread…’ Eber muttered, and Karlich noticed the big man’s fingers were ruby red and slick with his own blood. ‘Feels like… sides splitting… I’m coming undone…’

  ‘Lenkmann! Brand!’ Karlich cried when he saw the wounds reopened in Eber’s ox-like chest.