03 - Sword of Vengeance (40 page)

Grosslich knew his history, as did the silent commanders who
now stalked among his legions. So it was that the camp was set in opposition to
the Averpeak, and the trenches cut off the lines of assault from the high
places. The old road was dug up and embankments raised across it. As if the
embellished walls of Averheim with their six subordinate towers were not
deterrent enough, the plains before the gates had been turned into killing
fields, laced with instruments of murder and marked with rivers of unholy fire.

All this Volkmar saw as he crested the summit of the
Averpeak. He rode at the head of the army, the first to come to the edge of the
ridge and gaze down on the plain below. As the view unfolded, he halted, staff
in hand, and was silent.

Behind him the rest of the army took up their positions.
Maljdir, Roll and the warrior priests lined up in the centre, standing grim and
resolute with the light of the fires reflecting from their breastplates. The
battle wizards came behind them. There were two Celestial wizards, including the
recovered Hettram, their sky-blue robes reflecting the fires like mirrors.
Alongside them were three Bright wizards, their staffs already kindling with
flame, and a triad of Light magisters clad in bone-white robes and already
making preparations for their communal spellcasting.

Once the command retinue was in place, the massed ranks of
halberdiers, spearmen and swordsmen spread out across the Averpeak, arranged in
assault formation. They too were silent. There were no songs of defiance as they
edged towards their positions. They stood in their companies, mutely staring at
the horror below, only half-listening to the hymns of hate and defiance droned
out by the priests. On the far left flank, to the east of the battlefield, came
the light cavalry, pistoliers and handgunners. The horses, even those used to
the ways of war, stamped nervously.

Only when the artillery was hauled into position did
something of a cheer run through the ranks of men. Mighty iron-belchers were
dragged into place by their teams of sweating horses. Piles of cannonballs were
unloaded from the heavy carts and made ready. Helblasters, Helstorms and mortars
were brought up from the engineers’ caravan. There were dozens of them,
alongside over thirty cannons of various sizes. The broadside from such a
collection would be monstrous indeed.

Volkmar had chosen to place his heavy guns on the right flank
of his army, to the west of the city. Here the Averpeak came closest to the city
walls, and the cannon had a devastating view over the plains. As soon as they
were in position, earthworks were raised around them. Six auxiliary companies
fell into place to guard the guns from assault, bolstered by a detachment of
greatswords decked in the colours of Altdorf.

Behind the front lines, Volkmar placed nearly five thousand
men in reserve. For the time being they were deployed among the baggage train,
though no one doubted they would be called into action before long. There were
also archer companies, fast-moving and lightly armed, held back behind the front
ranks for rapid deployment. These took their allotted places as nervously as the
rest of their peers, double-checking their strings and anxiously making sure
fresh arrows were close to hand.

Aside from Volkmar and the warrior priests, only one
detachment of the entire army truly marched without fear. Gruppen was last into
position, his four hundred Knights Panther having held back to allow the rest of
the army to spread along the ridge. As he took his station with the artillery on
the extreme right flank, the cheers from the men around him took on some real
enthusiasm. His men were decked in their full plate armour and exotic pelts,
mounted on chargers with broadswords at their sides. Their pennants were raised
defiantly against the swirling winds of the storm, a forest of leaping panthers
and slender figures of Myrmidia.

Leonidas Gruppen was foremost among the knights, his visor up
and his harsh face exposed to the horrors below. He went proudly, his armour
draped in the hide of a black panther from furthest Ind, his standard-bearer at
his side. The preceptor gave the word and the banner was unfurled, a glorious
tapestry to Myrmidia picked out in gold and ivory.

Gruppen turned to Volkmar’s position and raised his fist in
salute. As he did so, the remaining banners of the army were swung into
position. Standards of Reikland, Nuln, Middenheim, Talabecland, city-states of
Tilea, Averland and the mercenary companies all flew out, caught by the buffets
of the storm and exposed in all their varied splendour.

In the centre of the ridge, Volkmar gave Maljdir a curt nod.
The burly Nordlander strode forwards, Bloodbringer swinging from his belt. He
carried the Imperial Standard in both mighty hands. Planting the shaft firmly in
the soil, he let the Theogonist’s own banner stream out. The golden fabric
rushed into view, exposing the Emperor’s own coat of arms: two crimson griffons
rampant flanking a sable shield with the initials
KF
emblazoned in
dazzling argent. At the sight of the famous colours, the most revered in all the
lands of men, the infantry regiments cried out with genuine fervour. If the
Emperor had gifted Volkmar his own devices, men reasoned, then all hope had not
gone.

With that gesture, the army was in place. Forty thousand
troops deployed along the ridge, all facing south, all armed and ready for
combat.

Volkmar looked back over the plain. The enemy army waited
silently a mile distant, sprawled before the walls of the city in their sullen
magnificence, spread like a vast black contagion over the once pristine plains.
No banners flew. No brazen trumpets called them to arms. Instead, the braziers
continued to belch smoke, the fires continued to blaze, the engines continued to
churn.

Then the sign was given. High up in the Iron Tower, a lilac
star blazed out briefly, cutting through the columns of fire for an instant. A
sigh seemed to pass through the distant ranks of waiting troops. Drums started
to beat across the walls. All over the waiting host, men—or things like men -
took up their crystal halberds and locked them into readiness.

Volkmar looked across the enemy formation impassively. The
traitor host was larger than the Imperial army, though the smog made it hard to
gauge by how much. This Grosslich had been busy. Now his designs would be put to
the test.

“So we come to it at last,” he growled to Roll, taking up the
Staff of Command. The gold reflected the distant lightning, glowing proudly
against the gathering dark.

“Sigmar preserve us,” said Roll grimly, drawing his sword.
“Sigmar preserve us all.”

Natassja waited in the throne room. The doors to the shaft
beyond had been closed and the roar of the fires was subdued. She could feel the
power beneath her feet growing, though. The time was fast approaching. Both her
body and mind were changing. Her awareness, already more acute than the limited
senses of mortal women, had magnified a thousandfold. She could feel the
heartbeat of every soul within the city, could feel the slow burn of their
stunted emotions as they readied themselves for the coming assault. From the
augmentation chambers in the pits of the Tower to the daemons circling above,
they were all transparent to her.

The transformation had some drawbacks. Her grasp on the
material world was becoming ever more tenuous, and she had to concentrate to
ensure that she retained her proper place within it. This was a dangerous time
for her. If she lost her grip too soon, before the Stone had reached the
appropriate pitch of awareness, the process would never complete and she’d be
left torn and rootless.

That would
not
happen. Not after so many decades in
the preparation.

Ever since her youth, almost forgotten on the plains of
Kislev, she had known she was destined for greater things. The life of a serf
had never been enough for her. Even before she’d known of any existence other
than the casual brutality of the ice-bound villages, some voice had reassured
her that the future held improvements. That voice had never left her, her
constant companion as the years had worn on.

It had all changed with the coming of the dark ones. Out of
the wastes they’d ridden, tall and slender and bearing the curved scimitars of
raiders. She’d loved them at once, relishing their cruelly and skill. The
villagers hadn’t stood a chance. The headman had been the last to go, roaring
with pointless resistance right up until the lead horseman put a spike through
his temple.

Then they’d taken her. She’d been pretty and young enough to
be worth corrupting. Ah, that had been a hard time. Even during the worst of her
misery, manacled in the hut of the bandit chieftain, subject to the crude tastes
of a savage and ignorant man, the voice hadn’t gone away. The raiders were His
people, and He promised to deliver her from them. If she was just patient for a
while and accepted the trials He sent her, then the path would open up to worlds
of discovery.

And so it had proved. In the far north, there were wonders
fit for a mind of her subtlety. Her knowledge grew, fed by the snatched tutelage
of shamans and their slaves. Beauty was an asset amongst such people, and in
time she learned to use it. Each night she abased herself before the Dark
Prince, and He gifted her luck. When she finally escaped the chieftain and was
free to explore the fringes of the realm of madness, He gave her the Vision. She
could remember it as clearly as ever. It had been
so beautiful.
By
comparison, the bleak steppes became dreary and tedious to her. So she worked
harder as she traversed the hidden realms, studied forbidden books, learned
secret rites, delved into the wellspring of Dark magic which gushed so fulsomely
on the edge of the mortal world of matter.

The years passed. Others aged, and she did not. When after so
long in the far north she finally discovered the old bandit chieftain again he
was in failing health, ready to put aside the cares of mortal life and join the
symphony of souls in the hereafter. Natassja kept him alive for another fifty
years, every day of which was a fresh and unique agony. By the time she was
ready to let his shrivelled soul slink into oblivion, her powers had become
swollen and overripe. The hunt for a greater challenge was on. She needed to
find a way to fulfil the Vision.

She never regretted leaving the steppes. The warmer lands
were so much more interesting, bursting with opportunity and places to practise
the art. Over the long, wearing years she’d lived in many places—Marienburg,
Altdorf of course, Talabheim, the heart of the Drakwald, a Lahmian citadel in
the Middle Mountains, a hundred other places great and small. The world aged and
grew colder while her blood and flesh remained hot and vital. The Vision never
left her. She was just waiting for the right moment.

She thought it had come with Marius, but he’d proved
impossible to subvert. Then she’d found Lassus, and the possibilities began to
coalesce. Four hundred years of searching, and the Vision had been vindicated in
Averheim, that most provincial of Imperial cities. Turning the dull, prosperous,
strait-laced pile of dung into a cacophonous oratory to the Lord of Pain had
been the most pleasurable thing she’d ever done. The men of Averland were no
better than the cattle they reared, and their fate was well and truly deserved.
It was an appropriate place to begin her new life, and her gratitude to the Dark
Prince was profound and sincere. To those that pleased Him, He asked for so
little, and gave so much.

Now she’d passed beyond the power of any in the province to hinder her.
Helborg, for so long the one she’d feared, could do nothing in the time that
remained to him. Schwarzhelm even less so. Volkmar and his little band of
sword-wavers might be an irritation, but her vast legions stood between her and
the Theogonist. All she needed now was a breathing space, just enough for the
harmonies to reach their optimum pitch. It wouldn’t be long.

“Natassja!”

Grosslich’s voice was thick with anger. She turned to see him
framed in the doorway to her throne room. He was still dressed in his ridiculous
red armour. The Dark Prince only knew what had made him design such a thing. He
carried his bone wand in one hand and a black-bladed sword in the other.

He looked hugely annoyed. She didn’t blame him for that. If
she’d been him, she’d have been hugely annoyed too.

“My love,” she murmured, walking over to the throne and
taking her place on it. The little gestures were important, even now. “What
brings you—”

“You know damn well what brings me here,” Grosslich said,
advancing towards her. There was a powerful aura about him. He’d grown strong.
In another place and another time, he’d have been a mighty warlord. The waste of
it saddened her.

“You seek Eschenbach.”

“Seek? No. I know full well what you did to him. Sacrificed
to your power, just as you intend to sacrifice me.”

“And why would I want that?”

“To rule this place alone,” spat Grosslich, eyes blazing.
“That’s why you made it a home of capering devils. None of this is what I
wanted.”

Natassja raised an eyebrow. “Then stay here with me. I’ll
show you how to enjoy it. I never lied to you, Heinz-Mark. Believe me. If you
stay in the Tower, there are still many things we could accomplish together.”

Grosslich laughed harshly. A fey light had kindled across his
features. The power he’d accumulated was already leaking, spilling out from his
fingertips like water. He couldn’t handle what he’d been given. Ach, the
waste.

“Perhaps you’d like that,” he said. “Perhaps that would give
you all you wanted from this arrangement.”

He laughed again, a bitter, choking sound. “I won’t do it,
Natassja. There’s one role left I know how to play. Your army needs a commander.
I’m leaving to take them. I’ll destroy the challengers, and then I’ll make my
next move. Perhaps I’ll bring them back here. Perhaps I won’t. You’ve given me
the tools to carve out a realm of my own—it doesn’t need to be here.”