03 - Sword of Vengeance (42 page)

“I’d rather have one enemy than two.”

Kraus shook his head irritably.

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “He hasn’t turned. And I won’t
believe he made a mistake either.”

“You said yourself he was acting strangely.”

“The man’s commanded armies for thirty years. He’s no
weakling.”

“Skarr never said he was. This is the great enemy.”

Kraus said nothing, and turned his eyes away from the angry
sky. On the far horizon there came a low, grinding rumble, as if the earth were
as troubled as the heavens above it.

“We should be glad we made it back here, Kraus,” said Bloch.
“We’ve been part of this from the beginning. It’ll all be decided in Averheim,
one way or the other. Couldn’t miss that.”

Kraus remained stubbornly quiet. Bloch looked up, watching
the way the clouds were sucked across the sky into such a massive, slowly
rotating spiral. He knew as well as anyone that their army couldn’t fight power
of that magnitude, whether or not Helborg rode with them. Just more crazy
Reiksguard heroism, a final fling of bravado before they all died.

That suited him. Fighting was what he’d been born for. It had
to end some time or other, and it might as well be against a decent enemy. All
he’d need was a sign that the sacrifices had been worth something and he’d
happily march into that storm of fire, halberd in his hand as always, searching
for the next victim, doing what he’d been put on the earth to do.

Hettram was first to cast. Raising his hands high, he cried
aloud, summoning the storm to his aid. His companion, barely out of his twenties
and with a lean face, joined him, adding his raw power to that of his master.

Above the battlefield, the clouds swirled fast. The storm,
already raging, accelerated into a frenzy of anger. Lightning slammed down from
the boiling tumult above, immolating all it struck and sending fresh fires
blazing up from the heart of the beleaguered city.

“Storm, unleash thy wrath!” roared Hettram, summoning fresh
power from the elements.

Rain began to hammer down, whipped into flurries by the wind.
It bounced from the streaming barrels of the war engines, fizzing and hissing.
Bolts of silver fire scored the heavens, streaking and tearing into the
lumbering hosts below.

Another of the war engines tilted over, hit by a thunderous
blast from the skies and cracked down the length of its gaping muzzle. Still it
was dragged on, listing in the mud, gouging a huge furrow as the horses strained
against their chains. The beasts had been driven mad by whatever foul
experiments had been performed on them, and they foamed against their halters,
churning up the mire until it became a blood-coloured soup.

“We’re not stopping them,” muttered Maljdir, watching darkly
as the rest of the guns were hauled into their firing positions.

The Imperial cannons roared out again, sending blackpowder
plumes rolling into the heart of the maelstrom. More lightning slammed down on
to the field, burning brightly as it plunged into the heart of Grosslich’s
legions.

Still the engines came on, rolling as the chains pulled
tight, islands of iron amidst a morass of men.

“More power!” snarled Volkmar, seeing the engines settle into
place and chains being run across their armoured backs.

The Bright wizards joined their Celestial counterparts. Their
art was better suited to close-pitched combat, but they raised their staffs and
summoned up the Wind of Aqshy. Chanting in unison, they called the words of
their pyromantic craft aloud and shook their blazing shafts, eyes wide and
riddled with sparks.

Now the lightning was laced with a consuming fire. The bolts
summoned from the skies smashed into the advancing horde and burst into waves of
hungry flame. The immolation spread quickly, taking the shapes of ravening
wolves, sweeping across the ranks of glow-eyed figures and wrapping them in an
agonising, rolling death. Every artillery impact exploded in a ball of orange,
surging across the blasted land and leaping up into the braziers and trenches.

Hundreds perished in that onslaught, burned alive by the
sheets of fire-laced lightning, caught up in the heaven-summoned inferno. Two
more engines were consumed, wreathed in leaping tongues of flame before
exploding in a halo of spinning iron and bronze. Horses screamed and reared
against their bonds, tugging the vast engines out of position. Another toppled
over, lost in a welter of chains, hooves and struggling limbs. Cannons bellowed
again, and the shell was cracked.

Still the rest came on.

Volkmar watched as the first engine was made secure,
protected by earthworks, crowned with a bristling cordon of spikes and
surrounded by the massed ranks of Grosslich’s elite guard. Fresh fire was
kindled at its base and huge piles of shot were unloaded behind it, ready to be
hoisted into the unholy mechanism and hurled into the waiting ranks of Empire
troops.

Volkmar looked round at the Light wizards. They were still
preparing their magic, locked as it was in complex rites and rituals. The
Celestial wizards were beginning to tire, and their powers would be needed
later. He had no more to give. The advance of the guns had been slowed but not
halted. Their deadly power would soon be unleashed.

He turned to Maljdir.

“We’ve done what we can,” he said. “Give the order to
charge.”

Out on the far west flank, Leonidas Gruppen heard the trumpet
blare out and his heart leapt. The moment had come.

“Lances!” he roared, and his squires rushed forwards with the
steel-tipped shafts, staggering as they tried to keep their footing on the
slippery ground.

All around him his knights formed up into squadrons of
twenty, each man with a lance and all prepared for the first, vital charge.
Behind them, the second wave waited impatiently. In two sweeping assaults, all
four hundred Knights Panther would slam into the enemy lines, clearing a path
for the infantry and carving their way towards the war engines. They were the
tip of the spear, the sharpest instrument in the armoury of Sigmar’s heirs.

More trumpets resounded from the centre of the ridge and the
massed host of halberdiers began to run down the shallow slope of the Averpeak,
hollering cries to Sigmar and Ranald as they went.

Gruppen looked down at the battlefield below. Less than half
a mile distant, the first ranks of the enemy waited. They’d had time to dig in,
but not enough. Empire artillery had blasted huge gouges in their lines of
trenches and swathes of the vanguard were in disarray from the bombardment.

He picked his target and took up his lance.

“For Myrmidia!” he cried. All around him his brother knights
did likewise, and for a brief moment the shout of the Knights Panther drowned
out the rest of the Imperial army.

Then he snapped his visor down and kicked his horse down the
slope. The squires sprinted clear and the squadrons tore towards the enemy line,
picking up speed as they hurtled towards the front ranks.

Gruppen felt his heart thumping within his armoured chest as
his steed accelerated into a pounding gallop. The gap between the armies shrank
rapidly. As at the Turgitz Cauldron, the knights formed into a wall of steel,
their lances swinging down into position as each man picked his enemy.

Gruppen narrowed his eyes. The battlefield was a riot of fire
and smoke. Flashes of lightning still arced down, exposing the vast extent of
the enemy formations in vivid detail. He saw men lumbering into his path,
hauling pikes into place to frustrate the charge.

Too slow. The ride of the Knights Panther was like a sudden
deluge from the high peaks. Travelling at speed, their hooves a thudding blur,
the squadrons smashed into the lines of defenders.

Gruppen was at the forefront. He aimed for a knot of men
trying to erect fresh spikes. They tried to pull back when they saw him bearing
down, but they had no chance. He spurred his charger on, sweeping through them
and impaling the leader clean through with his lance. On either side of him his
knights did likewise, slicing open the defences and scattering the loose
formations.

Then they were amongst the press of men and the charge ground
into its first resistance. Gruppen dropped his lance and drew his broadsword,
whirling it round in the air as it left the scabbard. His men ploughed deep into
the enemy ranks, crunching aside any obstacle. At this range, Gruppen’s horse
was as deadly as he was. His charger’s hooves lashed out as it slowed from the
gallop, crushing skulls and cracking ribs. His blade followed up, sweeping in
mighty wheels to slash out at any infantry foolish enough to get close.

Gruppen spurred his horse on further, maintaining the
momentum, carving his way towards his objective. It loomed up in the dark, far
larger than he’d guessed from atop the ridge. The war engine towered thirty feet
into the air, a heavy muzzle of iron and bronze, studded with rivets and
underpinned with its growling furnace. Iron-masked men milled around it like
ants, readying it to fire.

As the knights swept closer the defence became more stubborn.
Grosslich’s heavy infantry, rendered impervious to glancing blows by their plate
armour, formed a defensive line between the knights and the war engine.

“Onwards!” roared Gruppen, kicking his steed back into speed,
knowing they had to break them on the charge. The knights swept into range,
still in formation, their line intact and deadly. They crashed together, a solid
bastion of iron against a thundering curtain of steel.

The assault instantly descended into confusion. Knights were
knocked from their steeds, hurled back in the saddle by halberd jabs. Defending
infantry were tossed aside, trampled into the mud, their armour cracked.

Gruppen felled his target, riding him down and swinging
heavily with his sword on the follow-through. His right-hand man was not so
lucky, steering his horse into a thicket of blades and being dragged from the
saddle by a dozen armoured hands.

Gruppen whirled his steed round. He needed to keep moving. A
soldier lumbered towards him, halberd stabbing at the flanks of his horse. The
charger kicked out at him, shattering the staff before Gruppen could bring his
sword round in a decapitating arc, aimed precisely for the gap between helm and
breastplate.

Gruppen looked up. The knights had carved a trail of death,
just as they’d been commanded. Now the melee would undo them. Already four of
his men were down, and the rest were struggling.

“Withdraw!” he roared, kicking his steed back into motion.

As one, displaying their peerless horsemanship, the knights
pulled their mounts round and fought their way free. Another rider was dragged
to earth as they turned, unable to escape the grasping fingers of the defenders,
but the rest broke clear.

“To the ridge!” cried Gruppen, urging his horse onwards. The
knights swept back, pulling away from the avenue of death they’d created. As
they galloped back for fresh lances and fresh steeds, they swept past Imperial
infantry heading the other way, swarming along the cleared territory, desperate
to engage at last.

Gruppen smiled. His blood was up. Another pass and the engine
would be destroyed. The enemy seemed to have no answer to the sudden cavalry
charge. Just as the beasts had found at Turgitz, there was little in the Empire
that could withstand their driving wedge of steel.

Then the engines fired.

The massed boom of their report made the earth itself reel.
All along the enemy lines, the infernal devices detonated their charges and sent
their cargo of death sailing into the sky. Vast streaks of blazing red fire
scored the storm-wracked heavens, tearing through the bolts of the Celestial
magisters. Whips of flame wrapped themselves like serpents around the
discharges, flicking and snapping angrily. The massive engines slammed back hard
from the recoil, crushing the men behind them before the binding chains went
taut with a shower of sparks.

The Averpeak ridge disappeared. As the shot impacted it
bloomed into a screaming inferno, hurtling across the exploding earth as if
kindled on a lake of oil. Lilac and crimson blasts ripped the skyline apart,
flaring up with sudden, eye-watering brilliance. Echoes of the impact resounded
across the battlefield, swiftly followed by the anguished cries of men caught in
a sudden and terrible wall of fire. It felt as if the world had been shattered,
cracked open by the devastating power of the Chaos engines.

As the backwash from the explosions rippled out, the vast
plumes of lilac-edged smoke rolled clear. Huge sections of the ridge had been
demolished, crushing men beneath the earth, burying them under the bodies of
their comrades. Fires kindled on nothing, sweeping through what was left of the
defences. Some standards still flew, but whole companies had been destroyed.
Gruppen couldn’t see Volkmar’s position for the smog.

One of his knights rode up alongside him, pulling his steed
to a halt. Gruppen did likewise, shaken to the core by what he’d seen. Nothing
could resist that degree of firepower. Nothing.

“Orders, sir?” the knight asked. The man’s voice was tight.

Gruppen took a deep breath, looking about him for some
evidence that his senses had deceived him, that what he’d just seen hadn’t been
quite as devastating as it looked. None came.

“Send the second wave in,” he growled. “Then get a fresh
horse. We’ve got to get those engines down, or this’ll be over in an hour.”

* * *

Volkmar picked himself up from the ground, his robes covered
in mud and blood. He tried to stand, and staggered, falling to one knee. His
vision was black, picked out with spinning points of light. The roar of the
battle rushed back to him slowly, as if coming from far away.

“My lord!” Maljdir was at his elbow, helping him up. The
priest was similarly covered with debris. All around them men were regaining
their feet. Others didn’t get up.