03 - Sword of Vengeance (55 page)

Then it died, failing back to dull grey. The bloodfire flared
around it, swirling in one last angry eddy, and went out.

The bodies were slumped on the earth as if sleep had stolen
upon them all. Bloch was dead, and his muscles had grown cold. Verstohlen still
lived, but his pulse was shallow and his flesh pale. He lay next to his comrade,
insensible to the thunder of battle around him, lost in a private struggle
against the poison within.

Standing over them, holding the line against the ravening
horde beyond, Schwarzhelm heaved his sword back, dismembering a dog-soldier with
the trailing edge of the Rechtstahl. All around him, his men fought on. The line
was intact but thinning. Any pretence at an advance had long been given up. The
Imperial forces were exhausted, driven to the utter reaches of fatigue by the
unending masses of enemy troops before them. The walls of the city were no
closer than they had been hours earlier, and the plain still swarmed with
lilac-eyed soldiers. Averheim would not be taken by force. The best they could
hope for was to hold for the dawn and organise some kind of withdrawal. In the
face of the surviving war engines, the retreat would be ruinously blood-soaked.

“We’re losing this fight!” came a familiar voice.

Kraus fought his way to Schwarzhelm’s side. He’d lost his
helmet in the melee and his forehead was shiny with blood. A hasty battlefield
tourniquet had been wrapped around it, but it didn’t do much to staunch the
bleeding.

“You forget Helborg.”

Kraus snorted, and launched into the enemy troops before him.
The wound didn’t seem to have slowed him down much.

“He’s one more sword,” he spat, his arms working hard. “Just
one more sword.”

Even as he finished speaking, though, something changed. A
vast, rumbling boom resounded from the city, still half a mile distant and
shrouded in smoke.

All felt it. Some stumbled as the earth reeled, their tired
limbs no longer able to absorb the shock. The dog-soldiers halted in their
tracks. The cultists around them went limp. Weapons fell from their slack hands.

Another boom. The bloodfire, that vast column of thundering,
writhing flame, shuddered. The massive pillar of aethyric matter wavered like a
waterfall cut off at its source. More crashes resounded out from the city walls.
Above them all, the Tower loomed darkly, still wreathed in its corona of fire.

“Stand fast, men of the Empire!” roared Schwarzhelm, raising
both swords above his head.

All down the exhausted lines, halberdiers and swordsmen
looked up in sudden amazement. The enemy had stopped attacking. Grosslich’s
mortal troops stood immobile and listless. In the heavens, the circles of cloud
broke open, exposing the dark blue of the sky beyond.

There were more distant rumbles, and a cloud of ash and dust
rose up from beyond the city walls. The lesser towers crumbled, one by one,
falling back in on themselves with stately majesty.

“What is this?” asked Kraus. His face betrayed his hope.
Before them, the dog-soldiers fell to their knees and began to claw at their
faces. The dread power that had animated them had been withdrawn, and the agony
of their twisted bodies now flooded into them. All across the plain, the Army of
the Stone descended into a frenzy of pain and self-destruction.

Schwarzhelm didn’t smile. He spun round, looking east. The
night sky was stained with a faint blush of grey.

“This is the dawn,” he said. His raised blades caught the
first glimmers of light.

The Iron Tower, huge and dominating, began to shed its high
spars. Cracks ran up its massive flanks, stained red like the wounds of a living
thing. Plumes of black soot rolled up from its foundations, effluent from the
mighty machines still turning in the deep catacombs. As vast as it was, the
withdrawal of the malign intelligence that had built it was too great a strain
to bear. It was falling apart.

Men, freed from the incessant fight for survival, gaped up at
the sight, their jaws hanging open. Some wept with relief, falling to their
knees and crying praises to Sigmar and Ulric. Others vented their pent-up rage,
wading into the supine rows of the enemy, laying waste to the defenceless
thousands who still stood on the plain.

Kraus sheathed his sword, watching with dismay as the
dog-soldiers in front of him clutched at their ruined bodies. Some ripped off
their iron masks, revealing their horribly stretched faces. The Empire soldiers
around him looked up at him uncertainly, caught between their hatred and
confusion.

“What are your orders, my lord?” asked Kraus, looking as torn
between instincts as they were.

Schwarzhelm sheathed the Averland runefang, keeping the
Rechtstahl naked in his right hand.

“Keep the men together,” he said. “The bodies of Verstohlen
and Bloch are to be taken from here and preserved. If any apothecaries still
live, tell them to minister to the counsellor. I would not see him die. Not now,
not after all has been accomplished.”

“And what of you?”

Schwarzhelm began to stride through the writhing mass of
dog-soldiers towards the city. None hindered his passage.

“The field is yours, captain,” he said, and his voice was
free of the anguish that had marked it since the Vormeisterplatz. “My
brother-in-arms has been victorious, and homage is due.”

Ahead of him, the titanic pillar of flame faded and flickered
out. The thrum of its burning died away, exposing the charred and crumbling
spires of Averheim beneath. Free of the crushing, oppressive weight in the air,
a cleansing wind tore across the battlefield. Tattered standards rippled back
into life. Shattered detachments of soldiers regained their feet.

With an ominous creak, the Tower listed to one side. More
spars fell from it, raining down on the shattered cityscape below. More cracks
raced up its sides, breaking open the sigils of Chaos and cracking their
symmetry. Real fire flared up from the dungeons beneath the base of the mighty
columns, licking at the buckling iron, replacing the sorcerous flames that had
wreathed the metal for so long.

There was a final rolling clap of thunder, born deep in the
heart of ravaged Averheim and sweeping up into the soot-clogged air. The Tower
reeled, shedding spiked buttresses and crossbeams. Its jagged crown tumbled,
disintegrating as it spun from the pinnacle, and crashed to earth in a surging
cloud of ash and fire.

With terrible slowness, the gigantic framework of Natassja’s
citadel crumbled in on itself. Iron ground against iron, throwing sparks high
into the air. Like a landslip of the high peaks, the abomination slid gracefully
into ruin.

A vast cloud of smoke and smog rose up in its wake, huge and
threatening. Then it too was borne away by the wind from the east, ripped into
nothingness and dispersed as the dreams of those that had made it had been
dispersed.

The Tower was gone. The battle for Averheim was over.

In the annals of Imperial history, the victory at Averheim
would be recorded as a triumph for the Grand Theogonist Volkmar. Honourable
mentions would be given to the Lords Helborg and Schwarzhelm, as well as glowing
tributes to the heroism of the martyred Rufus Leitdorf. The loremasters would
record in exhaustive detail the tactical genius of the Empire commanders and the
craven collapse of the forces of the great enemy. As ever, they would use the
example of Grosslich’s defeat as evidence of the futility of opposing the
all-conquering Empire of mankind.

The archivists would not mention the destruction of the city.
They would remain silent on the deaths of Averheim’s entire population, either
killed in battle or during the construction of the Tower. None of them would
mention that, out of Volkmar’s army of forty thousand, less than a quarter
survived to return to Altdorf. Nor would they see fit to record the litany of
mistakes and treachery that had led Grosslich to be crowned elector instead of
Leitdorf. Confident in the faulty memories of those they wrote for, they knew
the passing of time would erase such inconveniences. The important thing was
that the enemy had been defeated and the rule of Karl Franz reimposed.

The physical devastation, however, could not be hidden.
Averheim was in ruins, scorched by fire and reeking with the residue of
corrosion. The river was clogged with ash and the streets wine-red with
bloodstains. Though the daemons had disappeared with the passing of the
bloodfire, their spoor of madness still hung in the shadows.

It took months to cleanse the place. Hundreds of witch
hunters were summoned from surrounding cities. Volkmar himself presided over the
ritual exorcism and stayed in the heart of the shattered city for several weeks.
His army remained too, though their swords were swiftly replaced with picks and
shovels. The task of demolishing the remains of the Tower and restoring what was
left of old Averheim was long and arduous.

In the days after the battle ended, there were many, Helborg
among them, who counselled that Averheim should be abandoned. The stain of Chaos
ran too deep, and the losses had been too grievous. It was Volkmar who overruled
them. The greater war still ground on in the north, soaking up resources and
manpower, sapping the will of the Empire. The populace needed a sign of victory.
They needed to be shown that the lost ground could be recovered.

So he ordered the city to be reclaimed. Broken houses and
streets were repaired with the labour of his men. Merchants, soldiers and
families were enticed from the nearby towns with the promise of property and
wealth. Grosslich’s treasuries were discovered and the gold used for the work of
reconstruction. Only the iron of the Tower was not reused. The ruins were
cordoned off for weeks as a phalanx of priests ritually destroyed the
foundations. The reek of molten metal hung over the city in a pall of bitterness
long after the last of the iron had been turned into ingots and shipped away.

Beneath it all was the Stone. Only Volkmar descended back
down to the hidden chamber during the long months of recovery, and he never said
what work was done there. As the autumn faded into winter, the wide courtyard of
the Tower was finally paved over again, and the last of Grosslich’s gold used to
sponsor the construction of a cathedral on the site. In later years, the Church
of Sigmar the Destroyer of Heresy rose up in place of the Tower, vast and
opulent, a counterpart to the restored Averburg across the river. It would
become a centre of pilgrimage as the years wore on, drawing supplicants from
across the southern provinces of the Empire. Few priests wished to serve in its
incense-soaked naves, however. It swiftly developed an evil reputation for
ill-luck, and the clerics were prone to bad dreams.

Though it took many more years, Averland recovered much of
its prosperity. The people of the province were fertile, the land was still
good, and memories were quick to dim. The destruction of Averheim was the making
of some families, just as it was the doom of others. Trade resumed along the
Aver, and the last of Grosslich’s edicts were repealed.

A new Steward was appointed. Klaus Meuningen was a surprise
choice, taken from provincial obscurity in Grenzstadt and given command of the
capital. He proved capable enough, however, and loyal to the Emperor in most
things. Under his rule, the clamour for a new elector faded again. Whenever the
issue was raised, some excuse was found to shelve it. All knew that the matter
would have to be returned to at some point in the future, but all also knew that
it would be long before Averland was ready again.

In the immediate aftermath of the great battle, none of these
things were obvious. Volkmar’s troops were mostly just glad to be alive. Under
Kraus’ leadership, they gradually went about the grim business of finishing off
Grosslich’s will-bereft forces. When Volkmar returned from the city to resume
command, huge pyres were constructed for the dead. As at Turgitz, one was raised
for the corrupted, another for the uncorrupted. The latter burned with a pure,
angry flame. The former would smoulder for weeks, tinged with lilac.

All knew that the vista would never be the same again. The
old fertile soil had been ruined by Natassja’s poisons, and the Averpeak now
slumped into ruin where the war engines had demolished it.

Even there, though, the grass would grow again. It just took
time, the great healer of all wounds.

Verstohlen lay on a pallet and gazed at the roof of his tent.
Despite the blankets and cloak that covered him, he shivered. The wind from the
east was bitter, and the last shreds of summer had been driven away. Four days
since the battle, and he had barely slept. Worse than that, the poisons still
worked within him. Thanks to the expert attentions of one of Volkmar’s
apothecaries, he had survived the worst of it. He was enough of an alchemist to
know that the damage done to him was severe, though. He still couldn’t walk, and
his vision was cloudy. Perhaps that would improve in time. Perhaps it wouldn’t.