Redwane fought with a tribesman whose body had swollen to gargantuan proportions, his muscles corded with veins like ropes, whose armour had ruptured into fragments. Crossbow bolts peppered the giant’s body, but they were little more than irritants to the berserk warrior. Redwane held the beast at bay long enough for Jutone spearmen to drive the maddened creature back to the wall, where Unberogen swordsmen finally hacked it down.
In the centre of the Norsii charge, the ghastly altar of skulls and brass pulsed with unholy light, a foul beacon of dark sorcery. Its dreadful power surged through the Norsii. Beside the altar, the warrior in bloody armour laughed with the sound of thunder.
It had to be destroyed or this battle was as good as over.
A mass of screaming, maddened tribesmen stood between him and the altar.
Only one group of warriors had a chance of reaching it.
‘King’s Blades!’ shouted Sigmar, vaulting the wall to land in the midst of the Norsii. ‘With me!’
The rocks swarmed with beasts, and Pendrag fought to keep his feet as snarling monsters with the heads of black wolves and lean, sinewy bodies snapped and bit. Blood fell like rain from the top of the Fauschlag Rock, and the ground underfoot was slippery with the stuff. A screeching beast with a cat-like face hissed and pounced towards him, and he buried his axe in its chest. He kicked the body from his blade as an arrow clattered from his breastplate, and he glanced up long enough to see a winged creature with a face like a bat swooping through the air above him. The skies swarmed with such beasts, showering the men below with crudely-made arrows tipped with sharpened flint. Most such missiles either missed or bounced from helmets, but every now and then a warrior would fall as an arrow found a gap in his armour. The archers placed in the buildings behind the defenders at the wall tried to bring them down, but the beasts were fast-moving and difficult to hit. Pendrag had ordered them to ignore the flying creatures and save their arrows for the climbing beasts.
A black-shafted arrow slashed out from his archers behind him, taking the monster in the chest. It squealed in pain and vanished from sight. Pendrag smiled as he watched it die, glad that one archer had thought to disobey his order.
He returned his attention to the battle around him as the beasts roared and howled, clawing their way up the craggy slopes to the low wall at the city’s edge. White Wolves and Middenlanders fought side by side, battling furiously to deny the beasts a foothold in the city. Bodies fell from the rock, pierced by arrows or cloven by axes and swords. The creatures fought with fangs and talons, for it was next to impossible to climb with a weapon, and they had come close to gaining the city on four separate occasions.
Myrsa killed with a clinical efficiency, his mighty hammer sweeping out with killing strikes that smashed skulls from shoulders. Where the Warrior Eternal fought without emotion, Pendrag’s blows were struck with the knowledge of all that would be lost should they falter.
Along the circumference of the wall, the White Wolves sang songs of battle as they fought, while the men of Middenheim hacked at the beasts in grim silence. These men fought without cries of fear or anger, simply attending to the business of battle with as much emotion as they might butcher cattle. Their foe attacked without strategy or intelligence, simply using their hatred and hunger. Pendrag’s axe hewed furred limbs from bodies and split snarling jaws, his arm moving like a mechanical piston on one of Master Alaric’s steam bellows.
An enormous, bull-headed beast with a spiked collar reared up and both he and Myrsa leapt to meet it. The Warrior Eternal ducked a savage sweep of its clawed hand and swung for its belly. Pendrag slammed his axe into its side. The blade bit barely a handspan before thudding into hard bone.
The creature reared up, tearing the axe from Pendrag’s hands, and slashed its horns towards him. Pendrag leapt back, but not fast enough. The razor edge of the horn caught the leather strap securing his breastplate. He was wrenched from his feet and lifted high into the air as the tip of the horn gouged into his side. Mail links parted and the sharpened horn of bone gored his side. Blood streamed from the wound as the horn sawed through the leather strap of his armour.
Pendrag felt himself falling and landed with bone-jarring force. He rolled, seeing sky and rock swirling above him as he tumbled downhill. He scrabbled for purchase as he slid, his limbs battered bloody by the rocks. Suddenly, there was nothing beneath him and the world dropped away.
He thrust his silver hand out, the metal gouging rock and sending sparks flying. The dwarf-forged metal bit, and Pendrag’s shoulder wrenched in fiery agony as he jerked to a halt. Breath hissed from behind clenched teeth as he swung helplessly from the edge of the rock, suspended thousands of feet in the air. His vision swam and his stomach lurched at the vertiginous drop.
Far below, swarms of beasts climbed the Fauschlag Rock, and yet more winged creatures took to the air. Larger than the bat-creatures with their short-bows, these beasts carried others in their claws, though the distance was too great to make out who they were. He heard sounds of battle, and bodies fell past him, both man and beast. A monstrous creature, part-hound and part-bear almost dislodged him, but as his grip began to loosen, a hand grabbed his and hauled him back over the lip of the rock.
Pendrag swung his other hand around, and clawed his way to safety, laughing hysterically at his survival. Hugging the rock, he looked up at his rescuer, a man he didn’t recognise, but who wore a blue and white ribbon of cloth around his upper arm.
‘I’ve got you, count,’ he said, hauling him upwards.
‘The beasts?’ gasped Pendrag.
‘Driven off. For now. Now come on, don’t let’s be hanging about down here, eh?’
Pendrag nodded, scrambling up the slope through sticky patches of blood and broken fangs. His legs were shaking by the time he reached the wall. With infinite care, he hauled himself upright, and the warriors of Middenheim cheered to see him alive.
He lost sight of his rescuer as the man returned to his position on the defences. Myrsa pushed his way through the press of fighting men, and his face broke apart in a wide grin.
‘Gods, man! I thought we’d lost you!’ said the Warrior Eternal.
Pendrag bent double, still in shock at the nearness of his death. He held out his battered silver hand, and said, ‘I have the craft of Master Alaric to thank for my survival.’
Myrsa looked at the battered limb and said, ‘Then I owe him my thanks too.’
Pendrag lifted a fallen axe.
‘If we live through this, we’ll travel to King Kurgan’s halls together and thank him,’ he said. ‘But there are more beasts on the way.’
‘Stand to!’ shouted Myrsa, and the warriors around them braced themselves at the edge of the wall, spears and bows aimed down the slopes. There was no panic in these men, no undue haste and no fear, simply duty and courage. Pendrag had never been prouder to be their leader.
‘Men of Middenheim, this is your hour!’ he shouted, and no sooner had the words left his mouth than a hundred or more beasts with wide wings and broad shoulders flew up past the edge of the rock. Most carried strangely twisted warriors that thrashed and howled, while others bore robed figures that crackled with sorcerous light.
‘Bring them down!’ cried Pendrag.
Flocks of arrows slashed upwards.
Hundreds of feet below, in a lightless cavern beneath the city, Wolfgart listened to the dark. He had presumed it would be quiet down here, but he could not have been more wrong. Metal scraped on stone and the tumble of pebbles and dust echoed from far off caves and distant passageways.
His breathing sounded impossibly loud, and he could feel his heart thudding painfully and fearfully in his chest. Behind him, the heavy breath and muffled curses of a hundred men armed with long-bladed daggers, picks and heavy maces filled the lamplit darkness.
‘What was I thinking?’ he whispered as Sargall stooped at the mouth of a rough-cut tunnel in the rock. The miner stopped to examine a cut mark on the wall, listening at a holl
ow in the rock before grunting and moving to another tunnel. The man seemed to know his way, but how anyone could navigate this labyrinth of hewn passageways, high caves and rocky galleries was a mystery to Wolfgart. Moisture glinted on the walls, reflecting the lamplight, and Wolfgart wiped sweat from his brow.
‘Is it hot or is it just me?’ he asked.
‘It’s just you,’ said Steiner, little more than a silhouette beside him.
Steiner was a siege engineer, a thin, nervous man more at home with calculations, measuring rods and diagrams of castle walls than a weapon, but he had been pressed into service to aid the warriors who volunteered to fight below the city. Like Wolfgart, he was uncomfortable below ground, but where Wolfgart was a warrior, Steiner was an academic.
Nearly five hundred warriors had gone into the secret tunnels beneath Middenheim, split into five groups to better cover the known passages and watch for intruders. Voices and shouts from the disparate groups echoed weirdly through the rock, but it was impossible to tell how much distance separated them.
‘How far down do you think we are?’ asked Wolfgart.
Steiner shrugged. ‘Perhaps a few hundred feet?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I can’t see anything, and we’ve twisted up and down through these rocks more times than I can count. How am I supposed to know for sure?’ snapped Steiner.
‘Quiet, both of you,’ hissed Sargall, appearing next to them from the darkness. ‘Listen.’
Conversation ceased, and Wolfgart swallowed hard, trying not to imagine all the horrible things that might be lurking somewhere in the dark: oozing black insects, slimy creatures of the night that hated sunlight and feasted on the decaying bodies of those lost in the tunnels…
He shut out such thoughts and tried to concentrate.
‘You hear that?’ whispered Sargall.
‘Aye,’ said Steiner, bringing the lamp closer to the wall. Wolfgart couldn’t hear anything and pressed his ear to the rock. He still couldn’t hear anything, and opened his mouth to say so when he heard it: a tiny tink, tink, tink sound. It was like a long fingernail gently rapping on an iron breastplate.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Sounds like a drill of some sort,’ said Steiner. ‘Nearby. Parallel to this gallery I think.’
‘Close?’ asked Sargall.
‘Close enough,’ agreed Steiner. ‘Too close.’
‘So what do you think it is?’ asked Wolfgart. ‘Invaders?’
‘Who else would be stupid enough to be down here?’ asked Sargall.
The noise was getting louder and faster. Wolfgart drew his dagger and unhooked the iron-headed mace from his belt. Though it had grieved him to leave his sword in the city above, it simply wasn’t a practical weapon for tunnel fighting.
Steiner placed his head to the rock once more, his face creased in puzzlement.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s like a drill, but it sounds much closer now. No drill can go through that much rock that quickly. It must be an echo from somewhere, perhaps a bell chamber that’s magnifying the sound.’
‘Then we need to find it,’ said Wolfgart, ‘quickly.’
A sharp crack of splitting stone shot through the tunnel, and cries of fear echoed from the walls as everyone hunched down and looked at the ceiling. Rock dust drifted down and a groan of cracking stone rumbled from somewhere close by.
‘What in the name of Ranald’s staff was that?’ demanded Wolfgart, hearing what sounded like a distant rock-fall. Screams sounded close by, and he brought his dagger up as he heard a metallic scraping sound, like a groundbreaking auger.
‘The wall!’ he cried. ‘Get away from the wall!’
But it was too late. The deep crack of stone split the wall next to Steiner and a roaring, whirling cone of metal speared from the rock. It slammed into the engineer, and the tunnel was suddenly filled with screams and blood. A spinning drill punched into his back and exploded from his ribs. Gouts of red sprayed from the man’s convulsing body. Rocks crashed from the wall, and a strange green light filled the tunnel as dust and smoke billowed outwards.
Lamps fell and shattered. Men screamed, and a chittering mass of rats boiled from the hole in the wall. Wolfgart cared nothing for vermin; it was the enormous creature standing in the newly-opened cave mouth, its arm ending in a bloody, spinning auger that captured his attention.
Taller than the mightiest warrior, it was a monstrously swollen, patchwork beast of furry flesh and metal piercings. Though it stood upright, it was no man, for its head was that of a gargantuan rat. Filthy bandages matted in blood wrapped its arms and head, and brass circlets with thin golden wires trailing from them were sewn into its shaven scalp.
Scars and welts covered its body, and it roared with a deafening screech. Shapes moved behind it. Scores of hunched forms in rusted armour bearing jagged swords, pushed past the great beast and into the tunnel.
‘Into them!’ shouted Wolfgart.
Nineteen
Heroes of the Hour
Tattooed Thuringians dropped from the wall at the head of the viaduct, and followed Sigmar as he charged the mass of screaming Norsii. The first warrior Sigmar reached was a bearded giant with dark skin and eyes that smoked with shimmering fire. A great skull was branded on his chest, and he came at Sigmar with thoughtless hate.
Sigmar ducked a decapitating axe blow, and swung his hammer for the warrior’s legs. Ghal-maraz smashed into his kneecaps and tore his left leg off below the thigh. The warrior screamed and fell, but still swung his sword as Sigmar ran past him. Ulfdar the Berserker led her King’s Blades from the wall, a wedge of painted warriors like savages from the ancient days of the empire. They cut into the Norsii, and Sigmar was struck by the notion that whatever sorcery empowered their foe might also speak to some part of his own warriors.
Though their enemies were engorged with dark magic, Ulfdar and the Thuringians gave no heed to it, for the red mist was upon them and they thirsted only to slay. The warrior with the black banner drew a sword of darkness, its blade etched with runes that mocked those hammered upon Ghal-maraz. Sigmar felt his ancient weapon’s hunger to destroy them.
Thousands of Norsii pushed up from below, but the tight confines of the viaduct denied them the advantage of their superior numbers. Warriors swirled around Sigmar, hideous aberrations of flesh twisted by this shrine to the Dark Gods. Flesh melted, burned and ran beneath its power, yet those afflicted by such change howled in ecstasy to be so touched by the power of the gods. To either side of him, the Thuringian berserkers cut a bloody path towards the debased shrine. They fought without heed for their lives, always attacking, and the Norsii fell back in dismay before these warriors who killed and killed and never retreated.
Sigmar fought through a mob of warriors whose skin had erupted with thorny growths, smashing them aside with deadly sweeps of Ghal-maraz. They split apart as they died, their bodies disintegrating to mulch as Sigmar pushed onwards.
The warrior with the banner stepped towards him, and the Norsii cleared a path for their champion. A full head and shoulders above his fellow tribesmen, the warrior planted the banner beside him, its substance seemingly woven from a thousand rippling black snakes. Waves of malice poured from the banner, and Sigmar recognised the touch of purest evil in its creation.
‘You die, mortal!’ yelled the warrior, leaping to attack with his sword raised.
Sigmar turned aside the blow, and spun away from the reverse stroke. The blade came at him again, faster than he would have believed possible, but once again he was able to parry the warrior’s attack. Each time the black sword and Ghal-maraz met, sparks flashed with colours that Sigmar could not name. He felt the unholy strength of the warrior, but knew that it was not his own, it was a gift from the gods he called master. Sigmar’s strength was his, earned upon countless battlefields and by right of victory.
The sword lanced out, and Sigmar swayed aside, slamming his hammer into the warrior’s helm. The strength of
the blow drove the warrior to his knees, and Sigmar kicked him in the face, toppling him over onto his back. Before his foe could rise, Sigmar swung Ghal-maraz in a mighty overhead blow, as though hammering a stake into the ground, and smashed the warrior’s skull all over the viaduct.
A great wail of anguish went up from the Norsii at the champion’s death, and the Thuringians answered with a howl of triumph. Ulfdar cut down the writhing banner with her axe, and lines of smoke unravelled from its disintegrating substance as it fell, its fate entwined with the champion that bore it.
The battleground before the walls was littered with twisted corpses, and nothing now stood between Sigmar and the damned altar. Howling with manic fury, the Thuringians charged the terrible construction of bone and bloody brass, but the daemon-steeds reared and crushed any who dared come near. Their breath was like furnaces searing the air, and anything that came near them died.
Ulfdar staggered over to him, her naked flesh bruised and streaked with blood. She had been wounded several times, yet appeared not to notice. Her eyes had a glazed, faraway look, and purple liquid dribbled from the corners of her mouth as she pointed at the deathly altar.
‘How do we destroy it?’ she asked, her words slurred from the enraging narcotics.
‘Like this,’ he said, turning to face the half-built towers at the top of the viaduct. He lifted Ghal-maraz high and swept it down. A hundred bolts slashed out and hammered into the smoking shrine. The daemon steeds yoked to it screamed as they were cut down, collapsing into mouldering heaps of arrow-shot flesh. The heat from their bones died, and their dark hearts were stilled as the spell that breathed life into their forms was broken.
‘Now we kill it,’ said Sigmar, hooking Ghal-maraz to his belt and running towards the torn-up shrine. The surviving Thuringians ran with him and skulls tumbled from the monstrous shrine as they took hold of it. Closer now, Sigmar saw that the horrific construction also housed a grotesque reliquary of bones, and a swirling cauldron of blood.
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