“And what if the greenskins will not be baited or if they maintain their order?”
Kogswald swung his gaze over to Ledner. He shook his head. “They are orcs,” he said, confused at what his fellow captain was implying. “Ignorant beasts that are easily distracted and dissuaded. It is their nature. They can no more fight it than you or I could renounce our duty to the prince. It is what they are.”
Ledner’s eyes never wavered. He met Kogswald’s indignant steel with silken guile. “And yet, the question remains…”
Kogswald laughed again, not bothering to hide his scorn and incredulity. He looked about to reply when he went to the prince, instead.
“My lord—” he said, half as a question, half exasperation. Kogswald opened his palms as if to say, Are you going to listen to this snake’s drivel?
Wilhelm breathed deeply, his eyes blind with thought. Wrong-footing them all, he turned to Meinstadt.
“Master of the Guns, how much artillery do we have?”
The engineer adjusted his monocle, by way of nervous affectation. He loudly cleared his throat.
“Six great cannon, one volley gun, three mortar and ninety-six harquebus, my lord.”
Stahler was taken aback at Meinstadt’s rapid inventory. He’d heard little and seen less of the war engines in the army’s arsenal. True, there were wagons driving out of Mannsgard with machineries aboard but he had not known of the volley gun, nor had he appreciated the sheer numbers. Engineers were secretive bastards, and evidently Meinstadt believed in that clandestine code, but they were also notoriously eager for “trialling” their weapons of mass destruction. Stahler assumed Prince Wilhelm had instructed most of the artillery be held back and saved for breaking the siege at Averheim.
“Keep a portion of the guns in reserve,” said the prince. “I’ll leave it up to you, Meinstadt, to decide what is appropriate.” Now he addressed the entire council. “If our attack falters, or the orcs surprise us all and hold their ground, we’ll cover our retreat with artillery. Nature or not, no mortal creature would gladly walk into a fusillade of shot if there are easier pickings elsewhere.”
The engineer was nodding at this wisdom when Wilhelm glanced at him. “Do it now. Make your preparations.”
Meinstadt was already leaving when the prince spoke again.
“We are done, my captains. We march to Averheim, to glory or death.” He nodded with a knowing sort of fatalism. “To blood, certainly. Fight for me,” he added. “Fight for the Reikland and the Empire. Turn the tide.”
The gathered captains stood a little straighter, a little taller and saluted together. Hornschaft was nodding again. With all the feathers on his hat, it put Stahler in mind of a bird pecking at its feed. Vogen puffed up his chest with war-like pride. Kogswald was imperious as ever. Ledner gave away nothing.
These were the men that would deliver Averheim or see it fall, of this Stahler felt sure. The air felt cold. It was the touch of death closing, of Morr’s heavy sword above all their heads. It only made Stahler more determined.
“Faith in Sigmar,” said the prince. His captains answered as one. “Faith in Sigmar!”
It would need to account for much in the hours to come.
As the officers departed to their regiments, Stahler made an excuse to linger behind. Ledner and the prince were still inside. With the others gone, he went around the side of the tavern. When Stahler was sure no one was watching he bent double, hands on his knees to hold himself up. Sweat cascaded off his forehead as he removed his hat and helm. It felt as if an anvil were lying on his chest.
“Gods…” Stahler was surprised at the breathless rasp that came out of him. At Blosstadt the orc’s wound had gone deep—deeper than he’d realised. He clutched at his breastplate, it was like a vice seizing his body. When he drew away his hand it was dappled with blood.
When Karlich returned to the regiment, a surprise awaited him.
“Refugees from Averland,” Lenkmann explained after a crisp salute. Karlich eyed the new recruit in his ranks wearily.
“Just one? Doesn’t seem worth it,” he chuntered to himself.
“Welcome back, sergeant,” Lenkmann added facilely. He stood forward of his comrades, as if distancing himself in the relative pecking order.
“I’ve hardly been away,” Karlich muttered and approached the fresh blood. He was young, that much was obvious, with the slight tan of a life lived on the Averland plains. The uniform was mismatched with yellow, black hose and a red tunic. The leather jerkin he wore over it had a crimson and white ribbon tied to one of its straps. He had one around his arm too. A metal gorget protected his neck and he had a peaked helmet.
Karlich beckoned the lad forwards. He came to stand beside Lenkmann.
“You a halberdier, son?”
“As sure as Siggurd!” the lad answered forcefully. The perplexed look on Karlich’s face made him go further.
“I mean, yes sir, I am. Gerrant Greiss, formerly of the Grenzstadt 5th,” he added.
Karlich sized him up. He scowled as if unimpressed. Behind them, Rechts and Volker were trying to keep a straight face.
“You’ve fought ‘the Paunch’ many men are speaking of?”
“Not face-to-face, but our lord general did. At the Averland border, our army watched the western end of Black Fire Pass. We were amongst the first to resist the greenskins.”
“Your lord, where is he now?”
“His head is mounted on the goblin king’s banner, sir.”
Averlanders were a straightforward, earthy people. Perhaps it was why they enjoyed such good relations with the dwarfs. Even still, Greiss’ forthrightness caught Karlich unawares.
“I see,” he said, recovering. “Rejoin your comrades. Welcome to the Grimblades, Greiss.”
Karlich looked around at the growing army. Blocks of troops were discernible now. An order of march, come through from the returning officers, was slowly being established. The Grimblades had yet to learn of their position in it. Stahler, much to Karlich’s relief, still hadn’t shown up.
He did see that other regiments, besides his own, had been swelled by refugee recruits too. Some, like Greiss, wore spare uniforms or elements thereof. Many looked incongruous amongst their new postings, however, wearing only a regimental ribbon on their arms to identify them.
“Reappropriated after Captain Ledner’s instructions to the quartermasters,” Lenkmann said when he saw his sergeant surveying the army.
Karlich remembered the charts and scrolls in the counting house. He vaguely recalled a number of the so-called “death-books” amongst them.
As his gaze continued uninterrupted, Karlich noticed further additions. He saw a large regiment of dwarfs, probably expatriates from the Grey Mountains given their obvious penchant for Imperial trappings such as feathered helms and slitted tunics. Karlich had met Worlds Edge Mountain dwarfs before, and they did not dress like that. He also saw halflings, likely travelled from the Moot. More diminutive than dwarfs, but not as stocky and without beards, halflings were regarded as something of a nuisance in the Empire. Still, they were braver than they looked and fairly stout on account of their well-fed bellies.
These halflings were an odd band, well-armed despite the shortness of their weapons and stature. They carried short bows and a variety of small daggers and dirks.
One wore a kettle for a helmet, another a pot with a ladle tucked in his belt. Karlich spotted forks and spoons too, even a frying pan. Satchels slung over the halflings’ backs were stuffed with vittels. A chicken’s foot poked from one, the stopper from a jug of mead from another.
“At least they’ve brought their own food,” said a familiar voice. Von Rauken blew a plume of smoke as he chewed on his pipe. He smiled when Karlich saw him.
“Are you jesting, greatsworder? That’s just a morsel to those gluttons!”
Von Rauken laughed with a sound like grinding iron and the two men shook hands warmly. “Aye, you’re probably right,” he said.
�
��Once done with the supply wagons, they’ll be on to the horses,” Karlich replied.
Von Rauken laughed louder. His humour was infectious and as far removed from the grim champion as Karlich had ever seen.
“Levity is good before battle,” he said, the dourness returning. Something unspoken passed between the two men, a shared desire that both should survive what was to come at Averheim.
Von Rauken clapped Karlich on the shoulder and nodded.
“We’ll drink to it after.” With that, he turned away and went back to where his greatswords were waiting.
Karlich replied in a quiet voice, “Aye, after.”
“The army grows, but why does it feel like the end of times, like our last battle?” Lenkmann asked after a moment of silence.
Around them the infantry was almost ready. Heavy horse could be heard above the muttered voices of the throng. The cavalry was leaving Mannsgard. They were about to begin marching to Averheim.
“Because it is, Lenkmann,” Karlich told him. His tone was slightly wistful. “It probably is.”
Thunder trembled in the heavens. Lightning drew jagged arcs across a steel-grey sky a moment later. Karlich’s eye was drawn to a desolate heath, a mile or so from the town. There he made out the wizard he had met in the war tent. He was channelling the storm in and out of his body, like a lightning rod. His hair stood on end, ablaze with celestial fury. A tempest was growing to the east. The faintest echoes of it whirled around the army and tore one of the banners free from its pole. Karlich watched some men reach for it, but it got caught up in the wind and gusted away. Ragged and forlorn, it sped back towards the Reikland.
The thunder came again with renewed vigour, filling Karlich’s world with noise.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BESIEGED
Outside Averheim, capital city of Averland,
483 miles from Altdorf
The earth trembled under the hooves of Wilhelm’s horse. Loud and deafening, the guns reminded him of thunder.
The great cannons fired one after the other, each fresh report adding to the resonance of the ones before it. Smoke spewed from their iron barrels, the ends fashioned into the mouths of mythical beasts, and thronged the air with the stench of blackpowder. A second percussive blast provided a deeper chorus, just beneath the sound of the cannon. These were the mortars, their fat shells whining overhead to land in the packed greenskin ranks.
Wilhelm tried to follow the destructive course of the war machines but was too far away. Together with the cavalry, amounting to six lances of templars and a roving band of pistoliers, Prince Wilhelm occupied the far right flank of the battleline. He was nearly a hundred feet from what could be considered the war front. The refused flank was a well-known military theorem in the Empire. Here, on the killing fields before Averheim, it would be tested in practice.
Averland’s capital looked like a broken silhouette in the distance. Like most large cities, it was surrounded by a wall. It had suffered badly under the attentions of the greenskins. Their crude catapults were too far advanced to be hit by the Imperial cannonade. Mangonels and onagers loosed relentlessly. Walls and towers, even sections of the heavily fortified gatehouse, resembled the nubs of broken teeth. Even at a distance, Wilhelm could tell that men hung dead in some of the ruins. The clouds of flies made it gruesomely obvious.
At other parts of the wall, the orcs launched continuous assaults with ladders, ropes and log rams. Through a spyglass, the prince made out an orc slavemaster urging a band of trolls to heave a battering ram against Averheim’s main gate. The ornate carving that had once adorned it had been bludgeoned into oblivion. Dust and grit from the neighbouring gatehouse walls shook loose with every fresh blow. Wilhelm could already imagine it splintering. It was making the wait worse, so he lowered the spyglass.
To his left, he knew, was the rest of the army.
The rear was anchored by Meinstadt and his war machines. Two brace of cannon and a pair of mortars comprised the battery. The remaining engines were primed but left unfired.
Five regiments of handgunners stood sentinel before the larger guns above and behind them. Little did Wilhelm know, but Utz and his sergeant, Isaak, were amongst them as part of the Grünburg contingent. Due to their longer range, four regiments of Averland crossbowmen were stationed a step above them.
In order to accommodate the blackpowder troops and the gunnery crews, Imperial sappers had been forced to raise earth embankments. They did this by digging trenches and then heaping up the mud. It had to be packed hard so the weighty machineries didn’t sink. It also needed shoring with timber along its sides. Palisades were erected at the base by way of a makeshift rampart to protect the handgunners. The trenches were filled with abatis as a final deterrent. It was backbreaking work and the labour gangs earned their bread and coin that day, but it was also necessary. The land around Averheim was very flat and Meinstadt needed elevation for his guns if the plan was to succeed.
Militia were interspersed between the blackpowder troops. Their ranks were much deeper, their frontage narrow by comparison. They were to act as foils should the greenskins break through to the guns.
In front of them came the infantry.
A huge wedge of Empire soldiery dominated one half of the plain beyond the ersatz embankment. Three lines, ten regiments each, made up the infantry throng. Swordsmen and halberdiers took the back line. The dwarfs from the Grey Mountains were deployed here too, together with large groups of militia. No regiment was less than six ranks deep.
A second line of halberdiers and swordsmen stood in front of the first. Here the Grimblades were stationed. Von Rauken’s greatsworders were nearby, occupying a central position. His smaller regiment was in addition to the main body of troops but no less imposing for its smaller size.
The front line had the pike and spears. Vanhans’ mercenaries and desperadoes pitched their banner here too. It would fall to all of these brave souls to bear the brunt of the greenskin attack and weather it if they could. Once battle was joined, they’d narrow their formations and allow the rear line to engage.
Roaming just in front of the formal infantry wedge were free companies, huntsmen and archers. The halflings were amongst them. It was the job of this skirmish line to frustrate and disorganise the orcs as much as possible before they charged. By pulling and dividing them, it was hoped the greenskins wouldn’t attack as a cohesive mass, thusly making it easier to resist them.
Across the line, drums beat and horns blared. They were challenges, designed to goad the greenskins and bolster the Empire’s fighting men.
They will need it, Wilhelm thought grimly, donning his helmet as the orcs began to turn.
The greenskin army was like a tide.
“Have you ever seen such a horde?” Lenkmann uttered from the front rank. Even the banner he carried sagged in assumed defeat.
“I can feel Morr’s breath on my neck,” said Volker, one rank behind him. His mood had turned maudlin ever since the death of Dog.
“Enough of that!” snapped Karlich. “It doesn’t matter if there is one orc or a hundred thousand. You can still only kill them one at a time.”
But even he had to admit the enemy was vast.
Unlike the precise and militaristic order of the Empire army, the greenskins were a densely packed rabble.
Through gaps in the Empire’s own ranks Karlich made out tribal banners that appeared to unify certain mobs. To his dismay, several carried the desiccated remains of Imperial soldiers. Other greenskins could be identified by markings and tattoos. Brawling was mandatory. Smaller goblins bickered continuously, whilst their larger cousins engaged in more violent acts against their own kind. Rival clans fought tooth and nail in the rear masses.
Even as the cannon balls bounded through their ranks, chewing up bodies and ripping off limbs, they still brawled. Only when explosive mortar rounds blasted them apart, separating combatants, did the orcs stop fighting one another and turn to the “humies on the hill”.
/> It was slow at first, like a boulder rolling down a lightly canted slope. It took time to build and spread like an angry flame through the greenskin ranks. But gradually, and with fearsome momentum, the orcs began to charge.
Bellows and war cries accompanied the shuffling gait of greenskin feet. The dark sea surrounding Averheim rippled. They thumped their chests and smashed cleavers against chipped wooden shields. Standard bearers rattled totems, cursing the weakling men who had chosen to pick a fight with them. Huge flesh-skinned drums beat. Raucous pipes screeched. The ocean of green was moving.
Amongst the bestial mob were larger beasts, creatures that shared the greenskins’ desire for carnage and cruelty. Lumbering trolls, pugnacious ogres and gangling giants roamed alongside orcs and goblins of every tribe.
Hooded in black cowls and cloaks, festooned with bone charms, armoured with thick dark plate—the one known as “the Paunch” had allied a massive and diverse horde together. With guile, intimidation, sheer strength or perhaps all three, this warlord, this “Grom”, had overcome the single greatest weakness of the greenskin race, the one thing that had, until now, prevented their wanton destruction of the Empire—animosity. Gathered in warbands, orcs were fearsome and tough enemies. Amassed in their tens of thousands, they were nigh on unstoppable.
The end of times, indeed, thought Karlich with a morbid smirk.
As the greenskins came on, surging full pelt at the waiting Empire infantry, riding beasts broke out from the ranks. Wolves and boars scurried and snorted in packs, but Karlich also caught flashes of other things bearing greenskins to battle. Hulking cave spiders carrying tattooed goblins scuttled hideously. Ovoid squigs, all fangs and rough, red hide bounded on two legs, their hooded riders hanging on by their claws. Karlich hadn’t realised the monsters grew to be that big.
The roar of the guns intensified, as desperate as their firers. Cannons boomed, loud and dissonant behind the infantry. The sharp cracks of harquebus accompanied them in a ballistic symphony. Though they were far from the front, overlooking the battlefield on the embankment, the artillery batteries and their ranks of gunners could still hear the rage.
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