03 - Sword of Vengeance (41 page)

“I could prevent you,” Natassja said, and the sadness in her
voice was unfeigned.

Grosslich shook his head. “I don’t think so. My skills are
greater than you think.”

Natassja knew that wasn’t so. She could kill him with a word,
but to do so would solve nothing. Out of affection, she would give him a final
chance, after which he would have to make his own decisions.

“If you leave the Tower, I cannot protect you. If you stay,
you will remain safe. You have my word. You will never be the master, but you
will be provided for. You may yet become truly mighty, a regent worthy of long
service.”

Grosslich smiled to himself, as if a joke he’d heard a
lifetime ago had suddenly made sense.

“A
regent.
Tempting. I’ll bear it in mind.”

He bowed low.

“Farewell, Natassja. When I return, master of the armies
you’ve created, perhaps our negotiations will go differently.”

He turned on his heel flamboyantly and marched out of the
chamber. Natassja watched him go. Despite everything, despite the centuries of
malice and intrigue, she was not unmoved. There had been a path for the two of
them she’d foreseen, one of discovery, knowledge and enlightenment. The fact
that he’d chosen to reject it was regrettable.

“So you let him go,” came a sibilant voice from behind the
throne.

A daemon curled up from the floor, her naked flesh snaking
lewdly across the obsidian. Natassja ignored the gratuitous attempt at
provocation. For beings of infinite intelligence and power, daemons could be
tediously infantile.

“Of course,” she replied. “Maybe it was wrong of me to expect
more of him.”

The daemon laughed. “Or maybe he decided his position was no
longer secure. That
is
a mighty army out there. It will make him feel
safer.”

Natassja turned to look at the daemon and frowned with
disapproval.

“Did you plant that idea in his head? If so, I’ll rend you
apart.”

The daemon giggled, though the laughter was suffused with a
note of fear. She darted away, hovering near the outlet to the shaft.

“That’s not in your gift, my queen,” she reminded her.

“Not yet,” said Natassja, rising from the throne. “But watch
yourself.”

She began to walk from the chamber.

“Are you
starting
it, then?” asked the daemon
excitedly, following at a safe distance.

“Why not? I have the city to myself now.”

The daemon whooped with pleasure. “Then you’re not worried
about their armies? Helborg draws close, and he carries the sword.”

“What can he do now? His time has passed.” Natassja turned to
the floating daemon and gave her an affectionate, tolerant smile. “Return to
your sisters, dark one. There’ll be more play for you before the day is out.”

Then she turned back, heading down the long gallery and
towards the spiral staircase.

“The Chamber of the Stone will be warded until all is
complete,” she warned. “Wait for me outside the Tower. It is, at last, time for
my birth.”

Out on the plain, something had changed. The legions
continued to take up their positions, but a new presence had come among them.
Volkmar strode forwards, peering down into the smog-clad gloom of the
battlefield.

“My spyglass,” he snapped, and a priest hurried to bring it.

He swept across the ranks of enemy troops. Some were men,
clad in Grosslich’s colours, their eyes glowing strangely. Others were obscene
corruptions of men, their legs twisted backwards and crouching like dogs.

Then he found his quarry. The gates of the city had opened, and a man had
emerged, mounted on a coal-black charger. The horse was as corrupt and twisted
as everything else in that host. It had clawed pads in place of hooves and a
scaled hide in place of skin. Its mane and tail shone like polished onyx and had
been plaited and decorated with jewels. Tabards decorated with forbidden sigils
hung from its flanks, and its eyes smouldered like hot embers. It was massive,
at least a foot taller and broader than a mortal beast, and when it trod on the
broken earth the claws sunk deep.

The figure mounted on it was no less impressive. Enclosed
from head to foot in crimson armour, glistening from the fires around him, the
master of Averheim had emerged. He wore a tall helm crested with a plume of
gold, the only opening of which was a narrow slit for his eyes. In his right
hand he carried a black-bladed broadsword with a serrated edge. It looked as if
molten pitch were continually dripping from the dagger-sharp points, pooling
like blood on the earth as he passed into the heart of his men. In his left hand
he bore a wand of bone.

As he made his way through the ranks of soldiers they
withdrew silently. Perhaps once they had fought under him as mortal men, hopeful
of the new dawn he would bring to Averland. Now such memories were lost,
subsumed beneath the crushing will of the Stone and its mistress.

With their commander among them, the legions began to
advance.

“So it begins,” said Volkmar, handing the spyglass back. “The
master has left his lair. Give the signal.”

Trumpets blared out from the command position and passed down
the line. The gunnery crews sprang into action. Just as they had done at
Streissen, they worked quickly and well. These were crews from Nuln, the best in
the Empire, and they were masters of their deadly trade.

Orders roared out, cannonballs were rammed home and rags
doused in flame. Crews and escorts scrambled to get out of the way as the
iron-belchers were primed and loaded. Seconds later the thundering boom of
ignition shook the earth and a wall of death screamed out from the Averpeak on
to the plain below. Huge clouds of blackpowder smoke billowed from the gun-line,
swept up into the air by the swirling storm and dragged across the battlefield.

The enemy vanguard continued to advance into range, heedless
of the power of the artillery. They were cut down in clumps, blasted apart by
the sudden wrath of the heavy guns. Heedless and undaunted, they came onwards,
clambering over their fallen without pause. Like a massive pall of black fog,
the enemy rolled across the plain, marching slowly, claiming more ruined ground
with every step.

“Maintain fire!” ordered Volkmar, looking down at the enemy
ranks. All along the ridge, men were poised to counter-attack. Soldiers fingered
their weapons, sweat on their brows and ice in their heart. Minutes passed while
the iron-belchers reloaded. The waiting was the worst part.

The cannons bellowed out again and a fresh cloud of
blackpowder discharge tumbled down the slope. This time the barrage was laced
with the scything fire of the Helblasters, slamming into the front ranks of the
Army of the Stone and tearing open whole companies of marching troops. In their
wake the fizzing trails of Helstorm rockets screamed, spinning into the sea of
men and detonating with devastating effect. Limbs were torn free and armour
shattered by the volleys as they thudded home, round after round of murderous
power.

But Grosslich was no savage or raving maniac in his order of
men, and he didn’t send his vanguard idly into harm’s way. After the advance had
gone so far, they halted, halberds raised, and began to dig in. Spikes the
length of a man were brought up from the heart of the host and rammed into the
ground. Earthworks were raised and the ground behind them cleared. Under
withering fire from the Imperial guns, the forces of Grosslich toiled with
neither fear nor hurry. Whenever an exposed company was torn apart by a
well-aimed salvo, another would take its place. The artillery barrage was
costing them dear, but it couldn’t dislodge them.

Horns blared from the walls of the city, and the reason for
their death-clogged advance became apparent. Huge engines of war, each forged in
the hells of fire beneath the Tower, were dragged from the open gates by
straining teams of mutated horses. Their wide mouths gaped twice as wide as the
largest Imperial cannon. Each device was decorated with writhing bands of bronze
and encased in a spiked cage of iron. Smoke poured from beneath them where
furnaces had been stoked and fuelled to a flesh-blistering heat. Stone-slaves
crawled all over them, polishing the bronze and adjusting the spider webs of
pistons and valves even as the towering constructs were hauled towards the
forward positions. As the line of guns ground on, each monstrous engine was
flanked by whole companies of heavily armoured infantry, all covered in thick
iron plate, their faces hidden behind masks in the form of leering beasts.

From the angle of those mighty barrels, it looked as if their
range was less than the Imperial guns. What they lacked in distance, however, it
was clear they made up for in power. As Volkmar gazed at the rumbling tide of
death his eyes narrowed, calculating the distances and gauging the outcome of a
volley.

“Target those embankments!” he roared, and the order went
down through the ranks.

“We have to
advance
,” hissed Maljdir, his hands eager
to clasp Bloodbringer. “Once those things—”

A fresh boom of cannon fire echoed across the battlefield,
backed up with a hail of rockets. The gunnery crews weren’t fools, and had
adjusted their aim to meet the new threat. One of the rumbling war machines was
hit by a whole flurry of artillery fire. It cracked open, leaking green-tinged
flames. The horrific structure listed for a moment, wracked by internal
explosions, then blasted apart, showering the troops around it with white-hot
metal shards.

A cheer went up from the watching Imperial forces, but it was
short-lived. Other war machines were hit and suffered little, protected by their
thick iron plating. More than a dozen still remained, all crawling into
position, all aimed up at the ridge. The nearest drew up to the allotted
positions, their bronze-lined maws grinning like hungry wolves.

Still Volkmar held back the charge.

“Magisters,” growled Volkmar, determined to delay the
engagement until the last possible moment. “Destroy them.”

The Celestial wizards strode forwards, staffs crackling with
sapphire lightning and their robes rippling from winds seen and unseen.
Alonysius von Hettram, the senior battle wizard of the entire army, gave the
Theogonist a proud look.

“It will be done,” he said, and the winds of magic began to
race.

Bloch watched the column of fire grow as he rode west. The
sight was enough to render him mute. He’d seen nothing like it in his life, and
he’d done a lot of campaigning. The spectacle at Turgitz had been something, but
the destruction of Averheim was on a whole different register of impressive.

Kraus was beside him as ever, riding a grey steed and keeping
his mouth shut. The honour guard captain hadn’t liked what he’d heard about
Schwarzhelm any more than Bloch had. The big man inspired near-fanatical loyalty
from the fighting men close to him, and hearing of his actions at the
Vormeisterplatz had made sobering listening.

Behind the two of them, Skarr’s army of infantry streamed
out, marching in a semi-organised rabble. A rabble, that was, except for Bloch’s
own halberdiers, who stuck to the well-drilled squares he’d insisted on. They’d
keep their discipline even in the fires of hell.

Ahead of them rode the Reiksguard. Skarr hadn’t spoken much
to Bloch since they’d exchanged their stories. He was still angry. Bloch
couldn’t help but think the preceptor would have liked to punish him for
Schwarzhelm’s alleged crimes just to make himself feel better. Typical
high-born.

Despite it all though, he couldn’t entirely blame the
preceptor. Bloch remembered the strain on Schwarzhelm’s face east of Heideck.
His words had remained with him.
Since arriving in Averland I’ve not felt
myself. It’s been as if some force has turned against me, weighing down on my
mind. The city is at the heart of it. It may be that Averheim is perilous for
me.

Perhaps he’d been right about that. There was little else
that could explain Skarr’s testimony. The few details Bloch had been able to add
- Leitdorf’s treachery, the long process of legal divination, the Imperial
armour on the greenskins—hadn’t really helped matters.

Even after the preceptor had allowed Bloch to accompany him
to the rendezvous with Helborg, much still remained to be settled. The
Reiksguard were suspicious, and their blood-oath against Schwarzhelm remained
intact. Bloch found himself confronted with the terrible scenario of marching
against his old master. For all he knew, Schwarzhelm
had
turned to
darkness. He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that, but the thought
wouldn’t leave him alone.

“So is this what we drove the orcs out of Averland for?”
muttered Kraus, staring sullenly at the distant red clouds.

Skarr’s column was little more than a day’s march from
Averheim, summoned by Helborg’s orders of a muster. At the appointed location,
Skarr’s two thousand troops would join up with Helborg’s three thousand. Not
much of an army to take on the forces of the great enemy, especially as over
three-quarters of them could barely point their sword in the right direction
without being shown how.