01 - Sword of Justice

by Chris Wraight - (ebook by Undead)

  He spun round, scything the Sword of Justice through the fire-flecked air. Helborg gave ground. His face was intent, careful. He wasn’t pressing forward. He was trying to contain Schwarzhelm’s attack.

  That was a mistake. A master swordsman always attacked. Schwarzhelm pressed home the advantage, hammering away at Helborg’s defences with growing speed and assurance.

  Dimly, he was aware of the men around him. He could hear the continued sounds of fighting as the darkness gathered. There was a mood of savagery in the air. The entire space seemed to have been given over to the settling of petty feuds. Somewhere close by he knew that Leitdorf was amongst the Reiksguard. Maybe Grosslich too. Perhaps they watched. Perhaps they fought amongst themselves.

  No matter. Such paltry squabbles were no longer his affair. The greater battle lay before him. The architect of his misery was in his hands at last. He remembered the corpses by the road, the death of Grunwald, the sense of powerlessness.

  Schwarzhelm shifted his grip, letting his left hand take the greater weight of the sword. He fell back, opening up a small gap between him and his adversary. Helborg filled it quickly, his runefang whirling with deceptive speed. It was the orthodox response. The one he’d expected. Helborg wasn’t fighting at his full potential. For some reason, the man held back.

  Too bad.

  Schwarzhelm drew the attacking thrust, then countered with his left-handed grip bringing the Rechtstahl in lower. Helborg was slow to close it down. The blade shot under his defence, taking only a glancing parry from the Marshal’s sword. Schwarzhelm felt the edge bite deep into Helborg’s thigh before he pulled it away again.

  Schwarzhelm stepped back out of range, easily fending off the resultant flurry of blows. Helborg still moved quickly, still kept his guard up. But now blood trailed down his left leg. It looked black in the twilight. As a traitor’s blood should be.

  “Your heart’s not in this, Kurt,” he growled. “Guilty conscience?”

  It was Helborg’s turn to stay silent. The Marshal stepped up his swordplay. The runefang spun into the attack again, glimmering darkly. But Schwarzhelm could see he was troubled. For the first time in his long and illustrious career, the Marshal knew he was being matched. The Swords of Justice and Vengeance met again, and sparks showered the stone as if from a blacksmith’s forge.

  It was then that Schwarzhelm knew he would win. Helborg’s guilt slowed him down. The traitor was always weakened by his crimes. Schwarzhelm alone fought for the Empire now, he alone guarded the flame of faith. He shifted his weight into an attacking posture, feeling strength coursing through his sinews, and launched into the assault again.

  Leofric von Skarr tried to fight his way back to Helborg. He was surrounded by riders. Even as he attempted to turn his own horse, two more engaged him. He swung his sword in the face of one of them, forcing a swerve. Then the Reiksguard around him pushed forward, driving Grosslich’s men away a few yards.

  Skarr looked around him, trying to make sense of what was going on. The whole square was crawling with men. The cavalry were all Grosslich’s troops. Between them and Leitdorf’s mob, the Reiksguard were heavily outnumbered. Despite their superior skills, they couldn’t hold against a melee of hundreds forever. This was not going according to plan.

  He tried to spot Helborg and Schwarzhelm, but they were lost in the flickering light. Until the tide of battle had pushed him away, he’d seen their ruinous duel start up. He hadn’t expected to witness such a scene in his worst nightmares. Skarr had had a long career in the Reiksguard and had seen many things he’d rather not have done, but watching Helborg and Schwarzhelm batter one another into submission was horrifying. His horse shifted uneasily under him. Even the beast could sense the sickness in what it saw.

  He looked over to where his men guarded Rufus Leitdorf. The knights held their formation, holding out against ferocious attacks from Grosslich’s troops. The man himself was raving about something, waving his arms from the saddle and trying to break their grip. He stood no chance. The man was a typical effete nobleman, and the troops around him were as tough as any in the Empire.

  Grosslich was of more concern. After the first clash, the rival elector had been driven off, perhaps to rally what remained of his entourage. Despite Leitdorf being taken into custody by Helborg, his own men still fought with an unexpected savagery. Something in the very air around them seemed to be goading them on. Holding both sets of combatants off was beginning to become difficult. Though they were Reiksguard, the finest soldiers in the Empire, they were but one company. If the anger of the masses were to be turned on them, he wasn’t sure how long he could hold them back.

  Skarr hefted his broadsword. His knights were becoming strung out, drawn into the undisciplined brawl around them.

  “Reiksguard!” he roared. “To me!”

  Some of the knights were able to cut their way to his position. Others remained isolated, trapped in a sea of enemies. It didn’t matter whether the massed brawlers fought for Leitdorf or Grosslich, they seemed equally intent on bringing as many knights down as they could.

  “Sir, it’s getting hard to hold them back.”

  The voice at his shoulder was that of a young knight, Dietmar von Eissen. He was a good soldier, already tested in the fires of battle, but his eyes betrayed uncertainty.

  “Remember your training,” Skarr hissed. “You are Reiksguard. Hold the line.”

  Even as he finished speaking, a gang of Leitdorf’s men piled towards him. They looked drunk with bloodlust. Three of the closest Reiksguard moved to intercept. Two of them felled their men, but the third was born from his saddle by the frenzied charge. More hurried up behind them, a whole mob of them. There were too many. The fighting had become a quagmire.

  Skarr kicked his horse into action. He reached the first of the attackers, pulling his sword back and letting it swing back. The blade took the head clean off the nearest combatant. The bloody mass span off into the night, spraying gore across the struggling bodies beneath it. A second thrust eviscerated the soldier’s companion. That cowed Leitdorfs men, but still they held their ground.

  On either side of Skarr the knights were beginning to form up. At last, they were carving some kind of formation out of the mess. They’d been driven into disorder by Grosslich’s intervention, but that was slowly changing.

  “Charge them!” he bellowed, pointing his sword directly at what looked like the ringleader.

  The line of horses sprang forward, hooves ringing out against the stone. The Reiksguard moved as a unit, bearing down any infantry in their way. Faced with a concerted wall of steel, Leitdorfs motley collection of fighters broke and fled. Those too slow to turn were dispatched, either by the blades of the knights or under the churning legs of their steeds.

  “Halt. Re-form the line!”

  Already Grosslich’s riders had seen the danger and were massing to attack them. If it wasn’t one, it was the other. What had got into these people?

  Skarr looked across the fragile line of knights. His men were still being drawn into the melee around them. This couldn’t last forever. At least Grosslich appeared to have been taken out of the fighting for the moment. Despite his best efforts, Skarr could see no sign of him. Nor could he catch a glimpse of where Schwarzhelm and Helborg were. Somewhere, hidden by the sea of men around him, they still fought. He had to get to them.

  “What are your orders?” asked Eissen, pulling his mount up beside him. The man’s sword was running with blood.

  “Find the Marshal,” said Skarr, looking at the approaching horsemen grimly. “We’ll cut these fools down, then we sweep back.”

  He turned back to face the approaching riders. Around him, those knights that could had formed a defensive line. The footsoldiers kept coming at them. The world had gone mad. This was wasting precious time. He needed to get back to the Marshal. He didn’t know what madness had come over Schwarzhelm, but Helborg couldn’t be left to face it alone.

  “Raise your blades,” Skar
r shouted, seeing the knights around him take up their swords. The metal gleamed. “Kill them all.”

  Helborg felt the Sword of Vengeance become heavy in his practised hands. Every move he made with it seemed to come a little too late. Schwarzhelm was fighting like a man possessed.

  He drove the image from his mind. That possibility was too grim even to entertain.

  Helborg let the sword curve round to meet the latest flurry of blows from Schwarzhelm. Each impact felt like a hammer blow. As the shocks ran through his body, he was forced back. Schwarzhelm had always been strong. Now he was quick. Breathtakingly quick.

  Helborg leapt back, making half a yard of space. He whirled the sword around, shifting the balance to his right side. Schwarzhelm advanced, his own blade darting after him. The light was failing. It was hard to keep up with the flickering path of the steel.

  The blades clashed again, and fresh sparks sprung into the air. For a moment, Schwarzhelm’s face was lit up in savage relief. His eyes were wide and staring, like a wild cat’s. This was not about pride or prestige, or even the debacle in Averheim. Schwarzhelm wanted him dead.

  Helborg dropped down to his left, letting the guard down, inviting the stroke. Schwarzhelm was too sharp for that. He brought the Rechtstahl tearing down against his protected right flank, trusting the force of the blow to deliver the result.

  Helborg spun against it, using the Klingerach as a shield. The Rechtstahl bit deep, tearing a notch from the runefang. The splinter spiralled from the blade. Too late, Helborg ducked out of the way. The shard lodged in his cheek, searing like a snakebite. He staggered backwards, teeth clenched, frantically warding off the cascade of blows from Schwarzhelm.

  The pain was agonising. He kept his eyes fixed on the swipes and feints of the Sword of Justice as it angled to penetrate his defences. Helborg kept it out, but only barely. His arms began to wilt as the blades clashed again and again. The rest of the battle around him drifted out of focus. There was only one thing in the world, only one thing that mattered. He slipped into that strange place that swordmasters occupied in the heat of combat, the realm where all reality was composed of the movement of blades, the shimmering play of metal against metal.

  Eventually, even Schwarzhelm tired of the attack. He withdrew, panting heavily. Helborg kept his sword held high. The assault had been horrifying. He’d never had to endure such a sustained period of brilliance, even from Schwarzhelm.

  . “Your blade is notched,” said Schwarzhelm.

  Helborg stole a quick glance at the surface of the Klingerach. The runefang hadn’t been so much as scratched in all the days he’d worn it at his side. It was one of the twelve forged by Alaric, one of the dozen mightiest talismans of mankind, bound by runes of warding, infused with spells of ruin and destruction. Nothing could break a runefang. Only its wearer could be harmed.

  And yet, the sword was notched. Even now, he could feel the shard buried in the flesh of his cheek. The pain was like a brand of fire. The trail of blood ran hot down his neck. Schwarzhelm, of all men, had been the one to break the symmetry of the Klingerach. After more than two millennia, the sacred blade had been marred at last, not by a Chaos warlord or beast of darkness, but by the Emperor’s Champion himself.

  Maybe only Schwarzhelm, alone in the entire Old World, carried a sword capable of doing such a thing.

  Turning away from the desecrated shaft, Helborg felt the last of his restraint leave him. He’d been unwilling to let himself go until that moment. Schwarzhelm was clearly under some kind of madness or paranoia, the knowledge of which had stayed his hand. But now the final bonds had been broken.

  With a roar of anger, Helborg swung the Klingerach into position once more. Ignoring the pain of the wounds across his body, he tore into Schwarzhelm, wielding his blade with all the ferocity his years of training had embedded in every sinew. The Klingerach whirled in a tight arc, perfectly balanced, perfectly aimed. As the last of the natural light faded, all that was left to illuminate the clash of the two men were the flames rising higher on either side.

  With Morrslieb riding high and the Vormeisterplatz echoing with the sound of slaughter, Kurt Helborg launched his assault on Ludwig Schwarzhelm. It had the air of a final push. One way or another, only one of them would walk free of it.

  Verstohlen punched the soldier in the stomach, putting every scrap of energy he had into the blow. The man reeled backwards but stayed on his feet. He looked like one of Leitdorf’s irregulars, and wore an archaic leather jerkin and iron skullcap for a helmet. Most of his teeth had been knocked from his jaw and his nose was broken. As Verstohlen hung back he grinned, exposing the holes in his mouth. This kind of vicious struggle was the thing such scum lived for. He’d probably have joined in even if he wasn’t being paid for it.

  Verstohlen gripped his knife tightly. The pointless combat was draining. He needed to get out of it, clear his head, come up with some kind of a plan.

  The mercenary charged, brandishing a heavily notched short sword. Wearily, Verstohlen prepared to meet the assault.

  It never came. Before he could close on Verstohlen, the man was knocked violently to one side. He swung into the air, his arms flailing. He staggered for moment, looking confused and angry, before he saw the spider of crimson spreading across his chest. He fell to his knees, coughing phlegm and blood, before finally toppling on to his front.

  Verstohlen looked up, waiting for the next challenger to fend off. Instead, Grosslich was there, mounted, surrounded by horsemen of his household. Amidst all the confusion, his company was a rare island of order.

  “I’ve found you, counsellor,” he said, motioning for his men to fan around them. A spare horse was brought forward. Recovering himself, Verstohlen mounted quickly.

  “About time,” he said. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Since you diverted me into Leitdorfs men? Fighting my way back to you. I could have you run through for that treachery.” He smiled. “Glad you’re still on your feet.”

  Suddenly, the memory came rushing back. Helborg. That was why he’d spurred his horse into the path of Grosslich’s, to prevent the clash that would have undoubtedly killed him.

  “Leitdorf has the Reiksguard fighting for him,” said Verstohlen, feeling his earlier fear and confusion return. The joyroot in the air was addling his mind. He couldn’t think straight. He knew he was missing something.

  “That he does,” said Grosslich grimly, wheeling his horse around and preparing to carve his way back into the melee. “What devilry has passed between them is anyone’s guess. But Leitdorf still lives. Helborg is distracted. We have a chance to strike.”

  Verstohlen kicked his horse into a canter, keeping up with Grosslich and his horsemen as they began to cut their way through the ranks of fighting men.

  “Helborg distracted? With what?”

  “You’ll see, counsellor. Ride with me. All will become clear.”

  Verstohlen held the reins tightly, willing his tired body to stay in the saddle. He reached into his coat and withdrew the pistol. He still had one bullet left. Not much, but better than nothing. Ahead, the press of Reiksguard knights waited. They’d seen the threat, and were moving to meet it. In their midst, the pathetic figure of Leitdorf cowered. He knew it was over.

  Verstohlen kept the gun cradled at his side. He’d wait. If nothing else, it would suffice for Rufus.

  The sun had set. Over the Vormeisterplatz there was only the red light of the fires and the ivory sheen of Morrslieb. Leitdorf’s forces, bereft of their leader, had finally begun to buckle. Many of the mercenaries had started to flee where they could, streaming out of the square and into the dark alleys. Grosslich’s men pursued them hard, and the sounds of bloodshed soon filtered into the winding passages of the poor quarter. Under the baleful light of the Chaos moon, the death and pain was spreading throughout the city. Soon nowhere would be free of it.

  Schwarzhelm ran his finger along the edge of the Sword of Justice. Even with the lightest of touches the blade dr
ew blood. It was the perfect sword, a flawless instrument of death.

  He looked up at Helborg. The Marshal stood in a defensive posture a few paces away. He was ashen-faced. With satisfaction, Schwarzhelm glimpsed at the shard of the Klingerach lodged in the man’s cheek. It was a badge of shame, the mark of treachery. The scar would be with him forever.

  “So what price did he buy you with?” Schwarzhelm asked bitterly, letting Helborg recover himself for his next assault. “Or was the prospect of seeing me fail here enough reward for you?”

  Helborg was breathing heavily.

  “You’re really that insecure? Look around you, Ludwig. This is your doing.”

  As Helborg spoke, a sliver of doubt entered Schwarzhelm’s mind. Somewhere, deep within, he could hear a small voice of warning. Like glimpsing the sun through a gap in the clouds, the Marshal suddenly seemed to him the way he always had. Upright, stern-faced, the embodiment of Imperial martial pride. They were brothers, the two of them. They’d always been brothers.

  And yet.

  The stench of Chaos was everywhere. Leitdorf was stained with it. Verstohlen had seen the evidence of it. From the first hours he’d spent in Averheim, Schwarzhelm had been aware of it. The visions in the night, the terrors and portents. They’d been trying to break him. They’d all been trying to break him. They’d failed.

  He lifted the Rechtstahl a final time. Overhead, lost in the gathering darkness, there was a distant rumble of thunder. The weather, so unbearably hot for so long, was breaking at last. A storm was coming.

  “No more words.”

  He lunged forward. He kept the Rechtstahl high, holding it two-handed, unmindful of his defence. Helborg met him, swinging the Klingerach heavily to meet the incoming downward plunge. The blades met again. Again, they were forced apart.