Blacktooth and his beast aimed their malign gaze at the Grimblades. There was a form of low intelligence there, capable of much cruelty.
“T-tur…” Karlich could barely speak.
Run, run! his mind pleaded.
Try as he might, he was fixated on the terrible wyvern and its master. Something else was moving behind the orc hordes too. A caustic stench came with it. Karlich thought he could smell sulphur.
Were all the creatures of the dark beneath the world coming for them?
A bright light surged into being to Karlich’s right. He blinked, fighting the after flare. Dimly, he was aware of the greenskins squealing in pain. It took a supreme effort of will to tear his eyes off the wyvern and look past it but, with his vision returning, Karlich saw the greenskins in front of them were blinded. They scratched at their eyes, thumped their kin with clubs or hacked with cleavers. Enraged and afraid, the orcs were cutting themselves to pieces.
The cold dread he had felt was scoured away by a sensation of heat. Suddenly emboldened, Karlich followed the source of the light.
Father Untervash glowed with an inner glory. His every pore exuded stark and blazing fury. It filled his eyes and made them burn. The warrior priest’s voice resonated with power as he stepped forward from the front rank of the greatsworders.
“Denizen of the deep, foul spawn, with the wrath of Sigmar I will smite thee!”
Holy fire coursed over the priest’s warhammer, flickering along the haft and up Father Untervash’s arms. He swung it three times in a wide arc then planted the head into the ground where a pulse of fire erupted. Orcs within its path were seared. Blacktooth and his wyvern were assailed by the backwash but didn’t yield to it.
A horrible, bestial grunting came from the orc shaman when it was over. The sound was deep and abyssal, drunk with unfettered power. Blacktooth shucked up and down. It took Karlich a moment to realise the orc was laughing.
“In Sigmar’s name, I denounce thee wret—”
With a serpent’s reflexes, the wyvern snapped at Father Untervash and seized him in its jaws. Blood spewed from the warrior priest’s lips, preventing him from finishing the holy diatribe. Gasps of shock echoed through the Imperial soldiery as their keeper of the faith slowly drowned in his own blood when his chest was crushed.
Defiant to the end, Father Untervash spat through red-rimed teeth and tried to lift his hammer. His pain and anger ended when the beast snapped its jaws and him in two.
“Morr protect my soul!” One soldier from Auerswald fell to his knees, awaiting the end. Several more from the same regiment ran, discarding their banner as all hope faded.
The light, in many ways, died with Untervash.
Ragged halves of his torso fell out either side of the wyvern’s mouth, trailing ribbons of red meat and crumpling to the ground like scraps. Somewhere farther down the line another regiment fled. The gruesome display and the presence of the monster had unmanned them. Karlich felt the shift all the way to the front rank. Part of the second front was overrun, the pressure telling at their flank. They at least had to hold.
Without the priest to repel them, the orcs returned. Mercifully, Blacktooth took to the sky but Karlich sensed he was far from done with them. Guttural chanting infested the breeze as the shaman channelled a more powerful spell.
Remembered terror still numbing his bones, despite Untervash’s holy aura, Karlich was fighting for his life again. The orcs were badly burned by the priest’s holy fire, and they were angry. In the madness, it felt as if there was no end to them.
They’d barely begun to swing their halberds again when darkness loomed above the Grimblades. At first Karlich thought it was the wyvern returned to devour them but then he saw the giant orc foot manifesting in the clouds. One of the hulking orc deities laughed and snorted as it prepared to flatten them.
Even as he cut and hewed at the enemy to his front, wary of the devilry above, a feverish sweat overcame him. Karlich’s hackles rose. His armour became hot to the touch. Glancing skyward between thrusts, he saw tendrils of green cloud spool off the giant foot as it plummeted with inexorable finality.
Ahead, the stench of sulphur got stronger as the trolls reached them.
“Helena, forgive me…” He used his dead wife’s name like a blessing.
But the orcish foot did not fall. Winds billowed from the west, carrying a figure of silver and azure. Borne aloft on a wisp of cumulonimbus, Sirrius Cloudcaller stalled the wrath of gods with sorcerous will.
One hand halted the foot’s descent, a gulf of turbulent air between them. The other hand spilled lightning from its fingertips. Forks of it lanced down and burned the trolls to charred meat. Even their incredible regenerative powers were unable to mend them.
Blacktooth bared his fangs, sweeping down to confront the Celestial wizard up close. The shaman growled and clenched his fist. The orcish foot descended again but crashed against a shimmering, azure shield. Sparks cascaded like dying comets as Sirrius Cloudcaller put all of his effort into resisting Blacktooth.
The magical shield glittered like a false firmament of stars. It cracked with the immense pressure, but held. Taking a deep breath, the Celestial wizard exhaled a blast of wind that forced the shaman back. Even his wyvern could not keep them from spiralling.
Sirrius soared into the storm-wracked heavens after him. Soon he was nothing more than a shadow chasing another, climbing, ever climbing into the sky above.
A patch of fiery amber began to glow in his wake. It tinted the clouds where the Celestial wizard had pierced it to pursue Blacktooth. The edges of the ragged hole slowly blackened and there rose a sound like the world cracking along its seams. Incredible, intense heat turned the clouds to steam as a flaming meteorite tore through the gloom with a blazing tail.
The fire-wreathed rock struck somewhere far behind the orcs. Hundreds died in the crater, their bodies reduced to cinder. A wave of fiery debris claimed hundreds more. The din of its impact was felt all the way to the Imperial line and brought the Grimblades and the rest of the soldiery to their knees. Mobs of orcs and goblins were destroyed utterly. Others were left decimated.
The tribe fighting Karlich’s men lost three rear ranks in a single blow. The rest were seared by heat and left dazed and dying when the Grimblades charged. Karlich hadn’t wanted to grant them mercy, but their deaths were swift.
A few hundred greenskin dead counted for little in the overall scheme of the battle, but it meant the way lay open for the infantry to advance.
The entire left flank butchered their way through the orc and goblin remnants at the edge of the meteor blast and marched onto the still smoking ground, slightly awestruck by what they’d just witnessed. Already, though, orcs and goblins were moving through the heat haze. Earth turned to glass crunched beneath their feet.
Wiping off his blade, Karlich cursed when he saw the Steel Swords advancing. Eager to chase down and slay a mob of shattered goblins, they had gone too far and left the Grimblades’ flank exposed. The Middenlanders were heedless to the risk, ploughing on. A disingenuous part of Karlich believed the other regiment had endangered them deliberately.
“Sturnbled and that rabid dog Torveld would see us dead,” griped Rechts, beating the order to march on his drum.
“They may not have long to wait,” said Greiss, pointing from the second rank. A band of wolfriders was loping through the carnage. A manic goblin in the lead was cackling and pointing back. Its warriors did so too, sharing some unheard joke.
Karlich knew what it was. In moments they would be engaged by the vast goblin mob to their front, only to be charged a second later by the wolfriders. They’d be fighting towards two aspects at once.
“Wheel formation!” he shouted, causing Lenkmann to signal with the banner and Rechts to alter the tune of his drum. They’d try to face both enemies to the front. The Grimblades slowly pivoted on their right flank, the left shuffling forward using it like a fulcrum and angling their frontage.
A low ex
plosion suddenly erupted behind them. It sounded distant, as if it came from the embankment. Leiter, who’d replaced Keller in the front rank, turned to look but a goblin arrow from the wolfriders pierced his neck. Gushing blood, he fell and Ensk took his place.
They braced halberds when the goblin mob struck but, to Karlich’s dismay, the wolfriders arrested their charge at the last moment and skittered around them. The slight delay was hardly costly. They engaged the Grimblades’ flank.
Pressured from two sides, the rear rankers found it hard to lend their support. Karlich felt the goblins pushing incessantly, even as he cut at them with his sword. It only got worse when the sergeant glanced to his left and saw Vanhans and his soldiers of faith. The witch hunter met his gaze and glared briefly before Karlich lost him in the ebb and flow of the melee.
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.
Dragontooth 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 sh
ield 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 light 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 watch-tower at the roadwarden’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.
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