[Empire Army 01] - Reiksguard

by Richard Williams - (ebook by Undead)

The last crate was placed aboard the boat and his men gathered up Herr von Matz’s personal belongings.

  “I am a patriot in my own way,” he continued. “No one will acclaim me as they will your friend Reinhardt, no one will sing sagas about me as they will for Gausser. But everything I do is done for the good of the Empire.”

  “So you are the good man, with the righteous cause.” Siebrecht spat.

  Herr von Matz paused as the memory of their conversations in Altdorf clicked into place.

  “Now that, my nephew, is simply impolite. That quick tongue of yours will get you into trouble wherever you go. Let us just hope that your sword stays quicker.”

  “It will. It will be quicker than today.” Siebrecht scowled at Twoswords and, able to do little else to him with his blades around his neck, stuck his tongue out at him. Twoswords smiled back, and then opened his mouth and displayed where his tongue had been cut out.

  “I know,” Herr von Matz said, climbing over the side of the boat, “that’s why I shall watch your future career with keen interest.”

  At that, Twoswords sheathed his blades and stepped into the boat just as it pushed off from the bank. Siebrecht rubbed his neck where the sharp steel had pressed against his skin, and watched the boat row away.

  “So,” Siebrecht called after his departing uncle. “Reinhardt will have the acclaim and Gausser will have the sagas?”

  “Yes?” Herr von Matz called back. “Then what will I have?”

  “You get the best of it, my lad. You will have the choice!”

  Still smarting, Siebrecht traversed the base of the Karlkopf. The mountain was surrounded now with pillars of smoke: from pyres cremating the corpses of the goblins and from the fires lit by the dwarfs and the Reiksguard to flush the tunnels clean of any goblin survivors. It was a forlorn task, they all knew; the grobi, as the dwarfs called them, could never be finally defeated, they were a disease that infested these mountains. Their power in this area had been broken for a time, but it would not be long before their kind migrated once more from the west and south and took up residence again.

  Snow was beginning to fall, blowing over the peaks and down the valleys with bursts of chill wind. Down on the plains, Siebrecht knew, Rhya still held sway, but up in the mountains Ulric, the god of winter, had taken residence. Two riders approached him along the bank of the river. They were Delmar and Gausser. Siebrecht raised his hand in salute.

  “Brothers!” he cried, against a flurry of snow.

  They reined their horses in, Delmar in the lead. “Siebrecht, we heard that you might have left with your uncle.”

  “Not a chance, brother. Not a chance.” Siebrecht looked past Delmar and nodded at Gausser. “Where are you headed?”

  “Sternberg has taken command of Osterna’s and Jungingen’s knights. They are to remain behind to guard the wounded and the bodies of our fallen brothers. The rest of the order is to chase after the ogres. Zollner’s banner will lead the way and we have permission to join them…”

  “I am coming too,” Siebrecht stated suddenly.

  “I am glad to hear it,” Delmar replied, “for we have brought your horse for that very purpose.” Delmar looked behind him and Gausser, a look of deep satisfaction upon his face, led forwards the spare steed.

  “You are good brothers indeed,” Siebrecht declared as he mounted up. “To victory or death!”

  “No, Siebrecht,” Delmar amended, his gaze fixed down the Reik valley and into the green lands beyond. “Just to victory.”

  Count von Walfen, the Chancellor of Reikland, strode briskly through the halls of the Imperial Treasury. His haste was not caused by urgency, but by eagerness. This was to be a great day for him indeed.

  He arrived at his destination: a vault, unlocked and empty aside from the neat stacks of crates and a single figure. Walfen bowed deeply.

  “My Imperial Majesty.”

  “Let us proceed,” replied the Emperor Karl Franz.

  “As you say, majesty.” Walfen stepped forwards and unbolted the nearest crate. Normally, he would not have performed such manual work himself, but he had done far worse in order to keep this secret. The bolts loosened and he opened the lid.

  “Pistol shot,” the Emperor stated.

  Walfen nodded. “Who would take special interest in cases of pistol shot? But beneath the tarnish they are purest silver, majesty. The first instalment of the war loan from High King Thorgrim.”

  “Ingenious.”

  “This is nothing, majesty. The true ingenuity was your persuasion of the High King, that he might put his silver to work rather than add it to his hoard.”

  The Emperor ignored the flattery. After two decades of rule, he did not hear it anymore. “Will it be enough?” he asked. “Will it be enough to rebuild the walls, to replant the crops, to bandage the wounds of my broken realm and set its lifeblood flowing again?”

  “It will, majesty.”

  The ghost of a smile tugged at Karl Franz’s lips, and a fraction of the heavy burden he always bore lifted from his shoulders.

  “And who else knows?”

  “A few on the High King’s Council of Elders, also King Gramrik. Recent events aside, Karak Angazhar is a far better route for future payments than Black Fire Pass. It is far quicker down the Reik, and those dwarfs’ preference for isolation greatly reduces the chance of discovery.”

  “I believe we can rely upon the dwarfs’ discretion,” the Emperor said.

  “And then just you and I,” Walfen replied.

  The Emperor, though, appeared thoughtful, and so Walfen continued. “We agreed, majesty, the common citizenry is not ready to know how indebted we are to the dwarfs. As we rebuild all that has been destroyed, your citizens must believe that it is a result of the strength of our great nation, and that we are not subordinated to any others, even to our oldest allies. Should the mob prove fickle, it would imperil the safety of every dwarfen citizen of your Empire.”

  “We did so agree,” the Emperor concurred. “And none of your couriers knew what it was they were transporting? None of those sent to retrieve it after Karak Angazhar was besieged?”

  Walfen’s instinctive response was to agree, but then he caught the stern look in the Emperor’s eye. The same look that had faced down kings and elector counts, and held the fractious Empire together throughout twenty years of strife and war.

  “There is one, majesty.”

  “And you trust him?”

  “I have done for many years.”

  “Keep a watch on him, nevertheless.”

  “I will, majesty.”

  “You shall have to tell Chancellor Hochsvoll, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  The Emperor raised an eyebrow at Walfen’s quick response.

  “It will be her responsibility to keep this money safe, to spend it where we need it most and, ultimately, when we are strong again, to make our repayments to the High King. She must be told. You cannot keep your secrets from all your fellow council-members. Though I know you would prefer it that way. And you might consider some reconciliation with the Reiksmarshal. This came at some cost to him.”

  Walfen stood firm. “My only desire is to serve you as best I can.”

  “Yes, my councillor, yes,” Karl Franz relented. “And you have done that today.”

  “My thanks, majesty.”

  “No, count. My thanks to you.”

  Count von Walfen bowed again. Karl Franz took his leave, his mind already turning to other matters.

  EPILOGUE

  THE FEAST OF AVERLAND

  The foothills of the Vaults

  Early 2523 IC

  The ogre once known as Burakk the Craw stumbled and fell upon the stony ground. Each time he did so he found it that much harder to rise again. The ever-present hunger within his gut maddened him. He could not think, he could not reason, all he could do was drag his emaciated body towards the mountains rising in the distance. His clothes hung off him, slack; his prized gut-plate had long sinc
e slipped off his shrinking belly. He lay face down upon the ground, mouth slowly trying to grind the dirt in his teeth. He did not have long left; starved this way, the ogre body turned to consume itself. Its last act of worship of the Great Maw.

  It should not be like this. He had been a tyrant, he had had a tribe of bull-ogres of his own, and a thousand goblin servants to wait upon them. The land of men was defenceless, an open larder filled with the plumpest stock. His first days had been glorious, his ogres had run wild through the villages they reached, plucking beasts and men from within their flimsy homes with ease and gorging upon them. The Feast of Averland, they had called it, a banquet with a table the size of a province, and as many courses as there were men and beasts remaining.

  Even then, though, Burakk had sensed that something was amiss. His bulls ate their fill time and again; the scraps were plentiful, though the goblins still squabbled over them as was their way; but he, no matter how much he consumed, could not quench his unnatural hunger. He ate all he could, until his jaw ached with chewing, taking what food he wished even from the mouths of his bulls. It was all for naught, for his hunger still burned.

  Then those men in armour, with banners of red and white, had come after him. Mounted on their heavy horses, they charged his greenskin servants down and ran his bulls through with their lances. Some of them were killed, of course; his bulls tackled their steeds, and then crushed the fallen knights with their mauls. But the rest came on, unfearing, unwavering, relentless in their pursuit. While their number seemed without limit, each bull Burakk lost could not be replaced.

  Food was no longer so plentiful. The easy meat had fled beyond their reach, and now these knights herded them even further distant. As each skirmish bought fresh losses, Burakk’s hunger grew even more intense. His body began to waste away. As his proud gut diminished, his bulls began to drift away, no longer in awe of their leader. As they went, so their goblin servants went with them. These splinter tribes struck out on their own, and more than most were quickly fodder for the avenging knights.

  Then Burakk had been left with only one bull-ogre to follow him. The first morning this last survivor saw Burakk was alone, he drew his carving knives and set about to make Burakk his meal. Burakk was weak, but was no birthling, and it was he who broke his challenger’s bones and drank the marrow from them.

  Yet even as he consumed the body, his hunger ate at him from within. He was done. He had nothing left. He set his sights upon the nearest mountains, those mountains that reminded him of his distant home, knowing he would not reach them.

  And here he lay, alone on some nameless slope, no victor’s sword at his throat, no cannon shot through his chest. His final foe, the betrayer he could not best, was his own body which had turned on him and judged that he must die. Why it had, Burakk did not know. The Great Maw was calling, and he would go.

  As the sun dipped low, the ogre’s corpse began to cool. Its blood no longer flowed, its muscles would not move. But there was motion still. A pulse, a beat, within that barrel chest. A shape that grew larger, pushing up with violent smuggle.

  “Ah! Freeeeee!” Thorntoad screamed, as he pulled his broken form up through the ogre’s slack throat and out its lolling mouth.

  “Freeee!” Thorntoad cried again, his regrown thorns still glistening with the ogre flesh to which they had clung to keep him from the ogre’s stomach.

  “Free…” Thorntoad said once more, before collapsing as his exhaustion took hold. He had survived, though survival was too grand a word for the baseness of his existence these last few weeks, living an inch from destruction, feeding on the masticated bola that came down the ogre’s throat. It had been plentiful at least for a time, and then it had ceased. But Thorntoad’s starving time was over now; his head dipped down across the ogre corpse and his razor teeth took a bite. Burakk the Craw would attend one last meal, not as the diner, but as the feast.

  “Is this the place?” Delmar asked.

  “No. It was a little further down,” Griesmeyer replied.

  The two knights guided their steeds carefully down the snow-covered slope.

  “Was it as cold as this then?” Delmar wondered.

  “Worse,” Griesmeyer stated, with great bravado.

  Delmar chuckled. Griesmeyer pulled his horse up and looked in each direction to check his bearings.

  “This is it?”

  Griesmeyer paused a moment. “Yes, it is.”

  Delmar swung himself out of his saddle, patted his horse and took the last few steps to the edge of the bank on foot. He looked down its length. It was smaller than he thought it would be. Such a small gap, and yet twenty years before, in this very place, two hundred men of Nordland had lost their lives. Two hundred men of Nordland, and one Reiksguard knight.

  “Is there anything left?” Perhaps it had been a foolish wish, but he had thought, had hoped, that there might be something left; something to mark the event that once happened here.

  “Perhaps, beneath the snow.” Griesmeyer knew Delmar’s wishes. “But there is nothing left of him here, Delmar. All that remains of my brother is in you.”

  Delmar nodded and looked out across the endless grey of the Sea of Claws. He had wanted to see this place, wanted to gaze upon that same horizon as his father had done at his end. But Griesmeyer was correct. There was nothing of his father on this ugly coast.

  “Come on, Delmar.”

  The two knights crested the last hill. Arrayed before them stood the army of Nordland. The grizzled regiments of halberdiers and spearmen had covered their blue and yellow uniforms with thick coats to keep out the cold, and, in the centre of the line this time, the Reiksguard knights had swapped their scarlet cloaks for furs. Delmar broke company with Griesmeyer and returned to his brothers. He touched his gauntlet to his visor in salute as he passed his squadron’s standard-bearer.

  “Your errand is done?” The hulking knight handled the standard with ease.

  “It is.”

  “Then rejoin our squadron, Brother Reinhardt.”

  “At once, Brother Gausser,” Delmar smiled.

  Delmar directed his steed towards the far end of the line of knights. He nodded on his way to Bohdan and Alptraum, the Averlander’s grin crinkling the scar running down his cheek. Delmar turned his horse about and stepped into formation. The knight beside him raised his visor.

  “I have had a letter from home,” Siebrecht said.

  “It reached you all the way here?”

  “Aye, Delmar, they have civilisation beyond the borders of Reikland, you know,” his friend admonished. Siebrecht pulled off one of his gauntlets and produced a parchment. “It is in the hand of my father, though I believe we both may guess who the true correspondent is…”

  Delmar readily agreed. Herr von Matz had not reappeared since they broke the siege of Karak Angazhar, but the sight of each devastated Averlander village in their pursuit of the ogres had been reminder enough.

  “My father writes,” Siebrecht continued, adopting a haughty tone, “to posit to me that once this campaigning season is done, I might consider interrupting my time with the order for a while. Apparently, an opportunity may arise to raise the family’s fortunes, should I join the service of my uncle.”

  “And how have you replied?” Delmar inquired.

  Siebrecht looked pointedly at Delmar, and then slowly began to tear the letter to pieces.

  “I would not be so hasty if I were you,” Delmar said. “We may need the parchment for kindling.”

  The two of them laughed at that and, as if in agreement, their horses snorted underneath them. Their merriment was interrupted by another rider who drew level beside them, a rider who gripped his reins in one hand and with the other drummed upon his saddle, even though that hand had no fingers.

  “Still the disrespectful tongue, Matz,” Master Verrakker said pointedly.

  The two young knights turned to their master. “How goes the training of the Nordland troops?” Siebrecht asked.

  �
�We will see today,” Verrakker judged, “how they will fare against a real enemy.”

  “It is strangely fortuitous timing Brother Reinhardt, is it not,” Siebrecht said archly, “that Elector Count Theoderic should have had such a sudden change of heart on the Reiksguard to invite them to come and train his new army, just before this new threat is spotted off his shores.”

  “Stranger still,” Delmar replied, “that the Reiksguard should have agreed so readily and dispatched a whole banner commanded by Lord Griesmeyer, a banner that includes the elector count’s grandson, no less, to escort the three fightmasters.”

  Verrakker harrumphed without further comment.

  “A suspicious man,” Siebrecht concluded, “might be led to believe that all was not as it appeared to be in the grand province of Nordland. Would you not agree, Master Verrakker?”

  Verrakker gave Siebrecht a baleful look. “Griesmeyer was right about you, Matz. You perceive secrets and shadows, when the truth could not be more clear. Both of you!”

  “Brother!” Fightmaster Talhoffer called. He and Ott were mounted, both upon the same steed. Ott sat behind his brother; his eyes were bandaged against the light, but he had a great smile upon his face as he drew deep breaths of the sea air.

  Talhoffer continued, “We are needed, brother…”

  Talhoffer looked to say more, but then saw the other knights listening “about that certain matter”.

  Verrakker shook his head at Talhoffer’s clumsy attempt at subterfuge, then turned his horse, and the three masters trotted off together.

  A stir went through the army: some news had been received. Sails had been spied on the horizon, the foe had been spotted. Delmar and Siebrecht could see the gonfanonier preparing to raise the banner’s standard. Griesmeyer rode to the head of the knight squadrons. He drew his sword and pointed it straight in the direction they would take.

  “Reiksguard!” he called. “To battle!”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR