[Empire Army 01] - Reiksguard

by Richard Williams - (ebook by Undead)

  Delmar pushed towards it, his determination such that the soldiers around him gave him a wide berth. His hand was ready on the pommel of his sword, that same sword he had been so honoured to receive when Griesmeyer presented it to him, now only a reminder of his shame at being so completely duped. Griesmeyer had bought his devotion with the very instrument by which the knight had ensured his father’s death.

  The Reiksmarshal’s guard were already mounted. Helborg, as ever, was eager to check the battleground ahead of the fight. Their horses shivered in the cold, snorting smoke through their nostrils as though ready to breathe fire. There his father’s murderer was, Delmar saw him, sitting upon his mount, talking amiably with a sergeant beside him.

  “Delmar!” Siebrecht cried, appearing beside him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Siebrecht? I…”

  “Come, we must get to our banner. You will not believe the tale I have to tell you.” The excitement shone in Siebrecht’s eyes. “Come on, quickly, they’ll ride out without us.”

  Delmar could see the Reiksmarshal’s guard readying to leave, and when they did Griesmeyer would be gone.

  “Wait a moment. I have to…”

  Siebrecht saw the object of his brother-knight’s fixation and let him advance. “Griesmeyer,” Delmar stated.

  The knight of the inner circle turned from his conversation with the sergeant beside him and regarded Delmar calmly.

  “What is the matter, Brother Reinhardt?”

  “Do not call me that,” Delmar snapped. “You have no right to say that name.”

  That surprised the knight; but Delmar wanted it clear that he was not Griesmeyer’s pet novice any longer. The knight turned his horse and looked down upon him.

  “Be careful of your tone, Delmar. It takes liberties that I cannot believe you intend.”

  “I spoke to Brother Wolfsenberger.”

  The words hung in the frosty mountain air between them. For all his anger, Delmar still clutched a tiny thread of hope that Wolfsenberger had been wrong. That the faded knight had some personal vendetta against Griesmeyer and wished to slur his name. But the look Delmar saw in the older knight’s face at the mention of the name was all the confirmation Delmar needed.

  Delmar gripped his father’s sword and tried to drag it free. He found his arm restrained, however; Siebrecht had grasped his arm and was holding tight.

  “Delmar! In Sigmar’s name, what do you think you are doing?”

  Griesmeyer was even more outraged. “Delmar, you dare…?”

  Delmar tried to wrestle his weapon free, but Siebrecht was equally determined that he should not destroy his career and perhaps end his life. While they struggled, the Reiksmarshal’s standard was raised and a trumpet blared. As one, the knights around them spurred their horses. Griesmeyer had no choice but to follow.

  “Brother Matz!” Griesmeyer shouted back. “Take care of your friend; he suffers like the last, but do not allow him the same fate. On your honour. On your name, Matz.”

  Siebrecht thought of Krieglitz’s body being dragged from the water. The Reiksmarshal’s guard rode out, and Siebrecht released his grip upon his brother. Delmar shoved him away.

  “I shall kill him when I meet him again, Siebrecht. I shall kill him.”

  Siebrecht took hold of him and dragged him off in the direction of their banner. Siebrecht knew he had failed Krieglitz, but he also knew he would not fail another.

  “Kill him tomorrow, Delmar,” Siebrecht told his friend, as he pulled him away from his insanity. “Today, just do not kill yourself.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  REINHARDT

  The clouds hung low that morning, blanketing the valley below the Karlkopf. The Reiksguard knights had ridden ahead to surround the mountain on the southwest and east faces, leaving the militia behind.

  The bergjaegers had stayed to bring them along, and the militias followed them through the mist. These ordinary men of Averland had weathered a battle, frozen during the night and had been disturbed from their sleep before the sun had risen, and yet once they were marching they did not grumble. They saw their officers’ excitement; they sensed their advantage, that this time it was they who had the upper hand. They had seen the foe beaten once, and now they were going to finish them. Yesterday, they had been burghers, cattlemen, vintners and apprentices; this morning though, they were hunters.

  Helborg watched them from above as they advanced into the valley. He did not like to have militias under his command. Each man ate the same as one of his knights, yet they were worth far less in a fight. It was more than that, though. They were not soldiers. They were workers. They were the ones who would rebuild each time soldiers trampled across their lands. They produced, whereas soldiers only destroyed. They were the men that their towns could not survive without. To lose them here would devastate their communities in a way an invader could not.

  And yet, as great as their worth to others, as little as their worth to him, he could not win this battle without them.

  He regarded their target again. Voll had called it the Karlkopf. What he had not known, and what Helborg now knew, was that the mountain the Averlanders called the Karlkopf was also called the great stone goblin by the tribes of the Black Mountains. That was Thorntoad’s lair.

  The Ten Tribes of Thorntoad were so called for a reason. They were not a single force: they were ten forces, cobbled together by the iron will of a single leader. That was how these greenskin hordes functioned; Helborg had fought enough of them to know that. A strike at the head, that was the surest way to halt them. Thorntoad had had its chance to eliminate the Reiksmarshal on the Achhorn, and the blow had been parried. The goblin warlord would find Helborg’s counterstroke far harder to evade.

  Thorntoad sat perched upon his palanquin as he was carried amongst his Death Caps through the tunnels behind the great stone goblin. After a defeat such as this, any warlord was vulnerable. If he locked himself away, as he might wish, then his fiends would whisper to each other. Bargains would be struck, one would rise and declare that their gods’ judgement was upon their warlord, and then they would come for him. Thorntoad knew this, for it was how he had seized control of the Death Caps two years ago.

  As much as he longed for the peace of his web, he had to stay out. Keep each one of his Death Caps in his eye. Have each of them know that he was watching them, and that if they stood against him, then they would stand alone.

  If he held his Death Caps, he would hold the great stone goblin. If he held the great stone goblin, he would hold the Ten Tribes still. Yes, he had taken losses, but he had left five of his tribes to maintain the sieges of Karak Angazhar and those were untouched.

  He would not look to meet the armoured men in battle again and fight as they wished. No, he had learned that lesson well. He was a goblin. He would fight as goblins should. Run when the enemy is strong, hide when they search, then strike when they show weakness. He would let the men march on, if they so wished. They could parade into the dwarfen kingdom with standards unfurled for all he cared. Then he would close the path behind them and they would be trapped there by the winter, with all the more mouths to feed.

  These mountains would be his again, and then he would turn his attention to those who had betrayed him. He would make himself a new throne, and there he would sit upon the skull of Burakk Craw.

  Jungingen’s banner rode quickly. The low cloud gave them some cover, but there was little chance goblins infesting the Karlkopf would not see them nor hear the thundering hooves. Speed then, speed was what they had. While the army of the Empire had been able to gather and move within half an hour of the orders being given, the goblin tribes had dispersed back to their warrens across the heights, the Predigtstuhl and the mountains around. And it took time for a goblin chieftain to kick and prod his warriors into action. But once they did, they would come and the Reiksguard itself would be surrounded. So, speed was the knights’ weapon for now, and the knights pushed their horses as hard as they could
.

  Falkenhayn, carrying the squadron’s banner, and his falcons rode at the head of their squadron. Delmar was behind them, speaking to no one and listening only to his daemons. At the rear Gausser and Siebrecht kept up as best they could.

  Siebrecht thumped up and down in his saddle as he rode the uneven path around the mountain. Though it did his bones few favours, at least it kept him awake. The fight at the Achhorn, the hours he had spent beneath that rotting ogre corpse, his sickness, the battle at the Dragon’s Jaw, his uncle’s late-night escapade and now Delmar losing all sanity moments before another fight, it was too much!

  Or at least, Siebrecht smirked to himself, it would be too much for a lesser man. But for Siebrecht von Matz, who had trained at the taphouses of Nuln, who had drunk and danced for two days straight without releasing his partner or his glass, who had paraded in the burning sun before the Emperor whilst his brain pooled in his boots, this was nothing!

  With a kick, he spurred his horse faster up the slope. He was Siebrecht von Matz, and he would sleep when he was dead!

  “That look upon Delmar’s face,” Gausser said beside him. “I have seen it before. In your face, brother.”

  “And I have seen it too, in another,” Siebrecht replied. “Are we agreed then, in our wager?”

  “I do not need to gamble on a brother’s life,” Gausser said. “My oaths are enough.”

  Siebrecht shook his head. “My family does not have your honour, Theodericsson. We do not understand brotherhood. My father does not, my uncle does not, and, in my heart, I know I am the same. We are driven only by grasping self-interest, and so it must be my interest that Delmar von Reinhardt lives to see another morning.”

  “Then in this case I accept.” A trace of amusement showed in the Nordlander’s strong face. “I shall owe you a crown if Delmar survives the day…”

  “And I shall owe you ten thousand if he does not,” Siebrecht finished with a flourish.

  Gausser smiled with a big, open grin. “You are a strange man, Siebrecht.”

  “At last, brother, you understand me!” Siebrecht cried as they rode on.

  * * *

  Trier’s banner, crossing the valley directly to the Karlkopf’s northern face, reached its positions first. The knights rode as high as they could up the slope, and then dismounted, handing their reins over to the sergeants who would stay behind and wait for the casualties. In the northern war, Trier’s knights had fought together in the Middle Mountains. They knew their objective, and they knew what to do without further instruction. Reiksguard armour was strong, but so fine was its construction that its weight was no greater than that carried by a fully laden mountaineer. Trier’s veterans knew that even a mountain could be conquered, with time and a steady pace.

  Helborg ordered his personal guard to go with them, for this northern face would be the hardest-fought assault. It looked towards the Dragon’s Jaw and it was the gentler slope, so Helborg expected Thorntoad to send every one of its Death Caps to defend it. Once Trier had broken through, Jungingen was beyond the valley to the south-west, and Zollner and Wallenrode were riding around to the eastern slopes, to cut off the goblins’ escape in those directions. The goblins would be forced down into the depths, and there they would meet the dwarfs coming up.

  Somewhere between the Reiksguard’s hammer and Gramrik’s anvil, Helborg prayed, Thorntoad would be caught.

  And then there was the militia. Helborg had had them bring the entire supply train with them. The wagons were dragged to an exact position that he had specified to make a rudimentary fort. It was nothing like the mighty wagenburgs of Kislev or the armoured caravan trains that made the perilous journey east, but it was a barrier. It was a boundary. It said to the men of the militia, that whilst the land beyond might belong to the goblins, inside it was the Empire. Helborg looked over the ragged but proud militia regiments as they cut the draught teams loose and chained the wagons together to build their fort in between the heights and the Karlkopf. They, Helborg knew, were soon to be caught on an anvil all of their own.

  “Brother-knights,” Preceptor Jungingen told his knights as they dismounted, “goblins are cowardly creatures, but even cowards will stand and fight to protect their homes. No mercy! No prisoners! Remember, they do not take prisoners; they take food for their pets and sport for their blades. We are not here to defeat them. We are here to eradicate them. In Sigmar’s name!”

  The preceptor’s tone shifted as he moved onto more practical matters. Jungingen knew that the Reiksmarshal did not expect much from his attack. Their slope was the steepest, his knights less experienced, but Jungingen had no intention of simply meeting the Reiksmarshal’s expectations.

  “There is no room for regiments, for grand manoeuvres. You cannot wait for orders; you must advance up wherever you can find purchase. You must look to the brothers in your squadron. They are your regiment, they are your banner today. Follow your standard, and if you should lose that, follow another. If you keep climbing, you will not go wrong. The dwarfs will be attacking from below, we from above; make for the summit for there we believe we shall find Thorntoad, and it is that creature’s death which is our goal.”

  As the banner stood ready, Siebrecht and Gausser stood close beside Delmar. Unlike the other knights who looked up the slope, Delmar stared straight ahead, unmoving, his mind a thousand miles away.

  The clouds had risen and the sun had broken over the peak of Karak Angazhar to the east. The Empire army in the valley would now be in plain sight.

  The Death Caps on the lower slopes squawked their alarm back up to their fellows above. Thorntoad climbed up his web and out a hole near the very peak. The men were here! Their army covered his valley; the armoured ones were already slaughtering his fiends that were too slow to get out of their way down below. They were coming straight for him! How did they know? Traitors, again. Everywhere he looked, there were traitors.

  Thorntoad dropped, and swung down to the throne room’s floor. He pulled his shaman from his hole. The goblin growled at him and Thorntoad smacked him twice about the head to remind him of his obedience. The warlord snapped two of the toadstools growing on the cavern wall and then climbed back up again, dragging the shaman with him. He shoved the shaman through the hole and out onto the mountain. The goblin hissed and recoiled at the early morning sun. Thorntoad twisted the chain around his neck and pulled him against the rock. The shaman yelped in pain and the warlord shoved the two toadstools in his mouth, then held him down and forced him to swallow.

  The shaman kicked a little, and lay still. Then he began twisting and writhing under Thorntoad’s strong arms. Thorntoad pulled him up, the shaman’s eyes burning green with power.

  “Call them…” Thorntoad hissed in his ear. “Call them all!”

  The shaman struggled free, body popping and spluttering with each step. Then he curled down into a ball, hugging his bony knees. The green glow expanded from his centre until it enveloped him completely. The shaman threw his body back, reaching up to the sky. The power shot upwards, keeping the goblin’s shape and growing until, for an instant, a greenskin god appeared above the mountain, roaring its call, its arms outstretched and beckoning.

  Within every mountain around, the goblins heard. They grabbed their weapons and obeyed.

  All in the Empire army heard the greenskin god’s call. The militiamen each took a step back in fear. The knights each took a step forwards; they had been shown where their enemy was.

  Helborg had been expecting it ever since he had led his army into the valley. Every goblin would be on the march now. They would surround the knights on the Karlkopf and there they would trap the Reiksguard and slowly destroy them. Unless, that was, a more tempting target lay in their path.

  Fourteen hundred militiamen sat in the valley, guarding the wagons and tending the herd, and lying across the path from the goblin warrens in the heights and the Predigtstuhl. Six thousand goblins and three dozen ogres would now be heading towards them.

&nbs
p; This was the role that the militia would play, the purpose they had marched all the way from Averheim and Streissen and Loningbruck to serve. They were there to hold their ground, to stand and die, to give his knights the time to finish their task.

  Helborg rode amongst them, and they cheered him as he passed. He told his gonfanonier to fly the order standard as high as he could. Helborg wanted to be seen, not only by the militiamen but also by the red eyes in the hills. He wanted to draw the goblins all into this valley and hurl themselves at the militia. And when they did, they would find Helborg waiting for them here.

  Helborg wanted to be fighting alongside his brothers and conquering the Karlkopf, but they did not need him to accomplish their task. As he saw the ordinary men of Averland, far from home, look up with hope, confident that their Reiksmarshal would assure them victory, Helborg knew that this was where he was needed.

  “Cover, Falcons. Falcons, take cover!” Falkenhayn shouted with the last of his breath, as he scrabbled up the steep mountain path into the safety of an overhang. Black arrows and rocks bounced harmlessly down either side of his hiding place. His Falcons, Proktor and Hardenburg, were with him, and he was sure his squadron had surged ahead of every other. He had sprinted ahead lower down, where his effort would be seen by the preceptor. Now, higher up, he could take his time to recover. The goblins had rolled a pair of boulders into the path ahead in any case, and were defending them like a barricade. He would have to find another way around.