He looked up then, gazing west across the heads of his men towards the Iron Tower, visible in the distance as a spear of darkness at the foot of the shaft of fire. Clouds of smoke billowed around it, driven into great eddies by the unnatural storm. There were blackpowder plumes among them.
“Enough talk,” he said, and his expression was dark. “The threads gather on the loom. We’ve done what we can to prepare. To the city.”
Gruppen wheeled his steed around under the shadow of the Averpeak and prepared for the charge. It would be his third foray into the enemy ranks. Of his original squadron, only six remained. He quickly commandeered more troops from two of the other depleted detachments, making up a restored line of twenty-two knights.
“One more time!” he yelled, his voice cracking. The resistance around the big guns was tough, far tougher than he’d expected. Two more of the bronze-bound monsters had been destroyed by cannon fire but the rest still thundered out, reducing any exposed Imperial positions to scorched earth and scraps of bone.
In order to survive, the bulk of the Empire troops had piled forwards, locked in close melee combat with the enemy infantry. They fought bravely, but they were outmatched by Grosslich’s troops. Things had been done to the defenders. The Averheim troops fought without fear and their formations never broke, no matter how savagely they were mauled.
That was just the human soldiers. There were others among them, more like beasts than men. Gruppen had nearly been felled by one such creature on the last withdrawal, a vast armoured brute with a face like that of a dog. Rumours ran wild along the ranks that there were worse horrors along the east flanks: scuttling fiends with talons for hands, unstoppable killing machines tearing a swathe through horrified Imperial companies.
Gruppen shook his head. No point in worrying about that. The battle was on a knife edge. The enemy had been hurt by the initial barrage of cannon fire, but now the field was swinging back their way. Above it all, the Tower glowered, dark and forbidding.
“Stay close!” he bellowed at the knights mustering around him. The men were gathered at the base of the ridge where the squires had hurried to avoid the worst of the artillery punishment higher up. “Tight formation, keep on my shoulder. We strike fast, we strike hard. Remember who you are! For Myrmidia!”
The knights shouted back the name of their goddess, fists clenched, their martial spirits undaunted. The Knights Panther were the finest soldiers in the Imperial ranks and they knew it.
“Come about!” bellowed Gruppen, kicking his charger into position. “Charge!”
Just as before, the line of riders tore across the battlefield, lances lowering, accelerating towards the enemy lines with a thunderous chorus of hooves.
Those lines were closer than they had been. Gruppen had barely made full gallop before the first defenders came into view. A company of the hideous dog-soldiers was loping up towards a beleaguered regiment of Empire swordsmen, halberds held two-handed and faces hidden behind iron masks.
“Take them!” Gruppen roared, spurring his horse even faster, feeling the beast’s muscles strain as it propelled the burden of man, armour and weapon. His men remained at his shoulder, lances down, visors closed, all moving as a single body. As he ever did, Gruppen whispered a prayer to his patron goddess before bracing for impact, teeth clenched, heart pounding.
Impact came. The line of knights slammed into the dog-soldiers, knocking the foremost aside and riding them down. Six of the mutants took lances full in the chest. The wooden shafts shattered as their victims crumpled to the earth. One knight was unhorsed as his lance shattered against a breastplate, spinning through the air before crashing headlong into the ranks of fresh terror troops. The rest tore onwards.
Gruppen speared his victim, feeling the sharp recoil as the lance bit deep. He dropped the shaft and reached for his sword. A dog-soldier, eerily silent as it moved into position, swung at his horse as it charged on. Gruppen leaned out, switched grip on his sword and plunged it into the creature’s neck before wheeling away, kicking at his mount’s flanks to maintain momentum.
“Onwards!” he roared, pointing his bloodstained blade ahead. “To the engines!”
His horse bounded forwards, leaping over the grasping hands of another dog-soldier and riding down a second. The surviving knights thundered along beside him. Three more had been felled, but the dog-soldier column had been utterly torn apart. The charge remained strong, sweeping resistance before it as the Knights Panther bore deep into the heart of the defenders.
Gruppen knew the danger. If they plunged in too far, they’d not be able to cut their way back out. Despite all that, he was unwilling to withdraw just yet. The enemy continued to fall back before him, dropping under the advance of the knights’ hooves and blades, opening up a road to the towering war engine ahead.
Gruppen surged onwards, slashing left and right, heedless of his personal danger. The engine had to be taken down. He held his speed and the horrific machinery drew nearer. The enemy melted away before him.
They were drawing him in.
The realisation hit him too late. Gruppen pulled his horse up sharply, twisting around in the saddle, trying to gauge his position. Only ten of his squadron had followed him so deep. They formed up around him, facing outwards, swords held ready. On every side, dog-soldiers and mortal troops recovered their structure and began to turn back in. The space around the knights shrank. They’d come too far. The nearest Imperial ranks were distant, kept busy with desperate combat of their own.
“Easy, men,” growled Gruppen, keeping his nervous, bucking steed under control. “We’ll cut our way back. Take the—”
“Leave him.”
The new voice came from up ahead. It dominated the sounds of battle, slicing through the bedlam like a knife through cooked flesh. It was thick with a world-weary scorn, echoing into the night and resounding from the iron belly of the war engines close to hand. It was no human tongue that spoke the words, though it belonged to a speaker who had once been a man.
Gruppen wheeled round, feeling a sudden chill strike his breast The ranks of dog-soldiers parted. In their midst was a figure on a dark horse, clad in crimson armour and carrying a black sword. The rider came forwards slowly, deliberately, singling out Gruppen and lowering his blade towards him.
“You can take the others,” Grosslich snarled to his men. “This one’s mine.”
Volkmar strode down the slope and into the thick of the fighting, his staff burning with a corona of golden flame, his face locked into a mask of mania. The Bright wizards flanked him, pouring bolts of screaming orange brilliance into the ranks before them. Warrior priests came in their wake, deadly and unbreakable, swinging their warhammers to crack the skulls of any who survived the magisters’ barrage. Maljdir was among them, holding the standard aloft, bellowing hymns to Sigmar and rousing the troops in earshot. Behind came the columns of regular infantry, pulled along by Volkmar’s spearhead, sheltering behind the white-hot path he carved through the sea of enemy blades.
None could stand before the Grand Theogonist. Working from afar, the Light wizards had cast at last, and their protection was on him. He shimmered beneath an aegis of swirling luminescence. Those closest to him in the Imperial ranks could see that he’d lost all semblance of control. His whole being was suffused with the searing drive of faith. His armour blazed like the morning sun, throwing spring-yellow beams of dazzling brilliance into the heart of the horde. Grosslich’s troops, immune to fear, blundered into his path only to be blasted apart limb from limb, ripped into flapping shreds of flesh by the power of the Staff.
Stride by stride, the golden vanguard ploughed deep into the massed ranks, an isolated pool of streaming light amid the spreading cloud of ash-streaked darkness.
“There!” roared Volkmar, pointing ahead.
A war engine loomed out of the fiery gloom, surrounded by ordered ranks of iron-clad infantry. It was preparing to fire again. Coils of steam rose from the furnace at its base and a dozen St
one-slaves crawled across its surface, adjusting levers and mumbling prayers to the Lord of Pain. The daemon-bound machine soared into the night, vast and terrible, as large as a siege tower and glowing with the angry sigils of the Dark Prince.
Undeterred, the Theogonist raised his bare arms into the air and swung the tip of his staff at the mighty construction.
“Shatter!”
His staff exploded in a nimbus of blinding light. A ball of golden fire kindled in the heart of the cannon barrel, shining in the well of darkness like the full face of Mannslieb. The florescent sphere grew, rushing outwards, bulging at the iron flanks of the massive machine and cracking its metal hide.
The infantry around it surged forwards, crystal-bladed halberds lowered, lumbering towards the bellowing Theogonist. From within their narrow visors a lilac glow bled out, and a low canine growl rumbled in their iron-cased chests.
“Forward!” roared Maljdir, rushing into the fray to protect his master, swinging the standard aloft as he went. Warrior priests swept around Volkmar and crashed into the advancing ranks of masked dog-soldiers, their warhammers coming into play with devastating, neck-breaking force.
The Bright wizards stood back and sent a hail of crackling bolts spinning into the flanks of the war engine. The bolts caught and kindled on Volkmar’s holy fire and exploded in their turn. The cannon barrel expanded further, stretched almost to breaking point by the vast forces unfurling within it. A filigree of cracks, each leaking golden light, rushed across the beaten iron. The furnace began to stutter, sending rolls of soot-clogged smoke coughing into the night.
“Shatter!” Volkmar roared again, eliciting a fresh inferno from the Staff of Command.
Still the war engine resisted, somehow maintaining its structure in the face of the onslaught. The swirling maelstrom within it bulged further, bleeding golden incandescence from the growing web of cracks. Metal, hot as coals, showered down from the hulking barrel as the iron fractured. Bronze bindings broke and spun free. The furnace choked out and flared back up again, knocked out of rhythm by the ceaseless, grinding power of the Theogonist.
Then there was a great crack, a rolling boom. The air shuddered, and the earth rocked. With titanic force, the vast war engine blasted itself apart.
The huge shell of iron flew high into the air, pursued by a deafening explosion of shimmering gold. The carcass of the monster was cloven into pieces, reeling in all directions as the heart of the cannon was torn asunder. Men and beasts alike were blasted from their feet, lost in the whirling storm of consuming power.
Volkmar’s fire flared up against the daemonic energies locked in the core of the device, flattening the troops beyond and tearing up the earth on which it rested. Priests were bowled over alongside the creatures they grappled with. The wizards were hurled back and the Imperial standard ripped from Maljdir’s desperate grip. A backdraft of green-tinged flame rushed out in a corona of destruction, spiralling into the night and blasting aside all in its path. Men were thrown up like leaves in a gale, their armour shattered, and hurled into the cowering forms of their comrades further back.
Only Volkmar stood firm, his robes rippling against the howling aftershock of the cannon’s demise. He kept his arms raised, defiantly screaming his wrath amid the shards of spinning iron. The halo of unleashed power expanded further, ripping through the ranks of soldiers, shaking the ground and echoing out across the plain.
As the worst of the backwash passed, Maljdir clambered to his feet and staggered back to Volkmar’s position. All was confusion. Bodies, twisted and broken, were heaped up against the steaming hide of the ruined war machine. Dog-soldiers lay amongst warrior priests, steeped in a cocktail of their own blood. The Empire spearhead was in ruins. The device had been destroyed, but at a massive cost.
“What are you doing?” Maljdir roared. This was no strategy, no tactical advance, just a headlong charge into the heart of darkness. Already the vast hosts of enemy soldiers were coalescing around Volkmar’s position, drawn by the destruction of one of their totems. Elsewhere across the plain the Imperial forces were being driven back. Only Volkmar pressed forwards, carving his way deeper into peril. The unity of the army was fracturing.
The Theogonist looked back at Maljdir, hardly seeming to recognise him. His eyes were wild and staring. His knuckles were white from grasping the Staff of Command and a sheen of glistening sweat covered his exposed flesh. His torso shivered with hatred.
“I will find him, Odain,” Volkmar hissed. “Do you not see it? He is here.”
Maljdir recoiled in horror.
“You do not—” he started.
It was too late. Volkmar brushed past him, striding through the wreckage of the war engine, his staff a golden halo amid the fire-wracked gloom.
“Everchosen,” he whispered as he went, and his staff kindled again with snapping, crackling fire.
In his wake came the surviving priests, the limping wizards, the remnants of the halberdier vanguard. Inspired by his rampage, the Empire troops just kept on coming.
“Tears of Sigmar,” cursed Maljdir, ignoring them and stooping to retrieve the charred standard from the blood-soaked earth. Efraim Roll came to his side, emerging from the press of men, his sword running with blood. The confessor had a long weal across his neck and his armour was dented. The man had been busy.
“We’ve lost him,” reported Maljdir grimly. “He’s gone mad. You should’ve let me restrain him at Streissen.”
“Restrain him?” Roll shook his head in disbelief. All around them the Imperial troops piled forwards, filling in the wounds in the defence rent open by the Theogonist’s inexorable advance. “You’re the madman. He’s the only hope we have left.”
“But his soul…”
“Damn his soul!” Roll’s voice shook with fervour as he barged past Maljdir in pursuit of Volkmar. “This is about survival now. Keep waving that damn flag, priest. If we falter now, all our souls will be forfeit.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Grosslich flicked an armoured finger and his dog-soldiers surged forwards. They crashed into the circling Knights Panther, studiously avoiding the one he’d picked out. The preceptor was soon isolated, cut off from the battle raging around and left for Grosslich to deal with. Gruppen remained on his horse, raging pointlessly as his comrades were driven further from him, hacking at the dog-soldiers swarming around them in ever greater numbers.
“You have doomed them, knight,” said Grosslich, waiting patiently.
The preceptor whirled to face him. His visor was still down and his expression hidden, but Grosslich could sense the anger boiling within him. He knew he’d pushed too deep.
“Do not speak to me, traitor!” spat Gruppen. “You disgust me. You’re filth. Worse than filth. The lowliest serf on my estate—”
Grosslich snapped his fingers again, and the tirade stopped. The preceptor would never speak again. If he’d wanted, Grosslich could have killed him then with a single casting, but he had no intention of doing so. Sorcery was a useful tool, but it was no substitute for proper combat, fighting the way a man should. Despite all Natassja had done to him, Grosslich had still not forgotten his roots.
“Save it,” he said, wearily. “You’re a dead man, so at least try to make this worthy of a song.”
He kicked his steed, and the hell-beast lurched forwards. Gruppen did likewise, sword whirling, and the two men crashed together. The preceptor was quick. He got his blade round sharply against Grosslich’s flank before he could respond. The metal bounced from the spell-wound armour and the knight was nearly knocked from his saddle by the recoil.
Then Grosslich brought his own blade to bear, lashing heavily with his broadsword. The edge of it bit hard, carving through the knight’s plate and digging into the leather beneath. The preceptor pulled back, somehow managing to haul his steed round in the tight space and drag himself away from the assault. Grosslich pressed the attack, bringing his blade back for a decapitating lunge.
Instead of pull
ing away, Gruppen darted back towards him, displaying incredible mastery of his steed. He ducked low to evade Grosslich’s blow and slashed at his mutant steed instead. The knight aimed truly, slicing into the warped creature’s scaly face and pulling the flesh from the bone.
The monster reared, almost throwing Grosslich from the saddle. Its clawed legs kicked out in agony. Grosslich cursed, trying to bring it under control, reeling around and out of position. The knight pursued the advantage, landing a heavy strike on Grosslich’s back. Again, the armour was his saviour, though the force of the blow knocked him forwards, further maddening his pain-deranged mount.
Grosslich snaked back round in his saddle just in time to see the knight’s blade coming back at him again, aimed for the head and moving with bone-breaking force. Grosslich snatched his gauntlet up. He grabbed the sword-edge and held it tight. Gruppen frantically tried to pull it back, seizing it with both hands and yanking at the hilt.
Smiling beneath his helmet, Grosslich crushed his fingers together, squeezing the metal and bending it out of shape. With a final twist, the sword shattered. Still the knight didn’t give up. He continued to attack, jabbing with the broken stump of his weapon, trying to find some way to penetrate the spell-soaked armour.
Grosslich kicked his steed forwards and the pain-maddened beast lurched straight into the knight’s skittish mount, knocking it sideways and causing it to stumble. Whip-fast, Grosslich grabbed Gruppen’s cloak and hauled him from the saddle, hurling him to the ground with a sickening crack.
Gruppen tried to rise again, dragging himself to one knee and bringing his broken blade up for a new lunge at the mutant’s shanks. The beast was now in range, though, and the animal knew the author of its pain. With a throaty scream it reared again, scything its clawed feet before bringing them down on the still-rising preceptor. One taloned hoof slammed against his breastplate, crushing the plate and cracking the man’s chest. The other crunched hard against his helmet, breaking the metal open and shattering his skull.
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