[Age of Reckoning 01] - Empire in Chaos

by Anthony Reynolds - (ebook by Undead)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The carriage rocked back and forth as it continued through the darkness. Annaliese unconsciously toyed with the symbol of Sigmar around her neck, biting her lip. She stared blankly at the slatted side of the carriage, her mind filled with doubt.

  “You are troubled,” said a deep voice, making her start. She looked around to see the Sigmarite witch hunter, Udo, staring at her. His eyes were dark, his face serious. She smiled lightly at him.

  “I’m sorry, I was miles away. What did you say?”

  “I said you are troubled,” he repeated, his dark eyes intense. “What are you thinking of?”

  Annaliese sighed. “A week ago, after I had awoken in the temple, I felt like my purpose was clear. My vision had been so strong. But now? I am doubting myself. What purpose could Sigmar have for me? I’m no warrior—I don’t know anything of real battle. I don’t know… I don’t know what good I can do.”

  The witch hunter frowned. He looked like a warrior, Annaliese thought. Big, strong, brutal. Scarred.

  “Describe your vision to me.”

  “I saw a griffon—powerful, majestic and dangerous. It was beset on all sides by enemies—savage dark men dressed in furs and black metal. It tore and ripped at them, cutting them down—they couldn’t touch it. Their swords bounced off its body, and their axes were blunted against its hide. But then the proud beast caught fire—its fur and its feathers were ablaze, and its wings were flaming. It screamed in pain.” Annaliese shuddered with the memory. She could smell the stink of burning feathers, could hear the painful cry of the creature tearing at her heart. “The blades of the enemy could hurt it then, and they plunged lances, spears and swords into the body of the griffon. It fell beneath the dark tide surrounding it, and I cried out.”

  “I ran forwards, and the sea of enemies parted before me. I was surrounded by blinding light, and they recoiled from me, clearing a path. I knelt beside the dying creature. I cradled its heavy head in my arms and stared into its unblinking, piercing eyes. The flames died, and the griffon grew strong. It reared up, its wounds healed, and the enemy fled before it.”

  Annaliese shivered, and looked up at Grunwald with a frown. “I… I can’t remember the rest of it. It’s fading with every passing day. But I know that I have to find the griffon—and I know that it lies in the north. A week ago I knew this was my destiny, but now—I doubt myself. What if it was nothing more than a meaningless dream brought on by my injuries? What if I go north only to find death, destruction and war? What good can I do? I am but a girl. I cannot affect anything.”

  The witch hunter was silent, his face thoughtful. “I don’t know if it was a vision from Sigmar or not,” he said eventually. “But a single person can make all the difference. Sigmar himself was a single man, and yet he united the scattered tribes and defied the enemy. Magnus the Pious was a single man, and yet he defied Chaos at Praag. The Emperor himself is but one man, and he holds the Empire together.”

  Annaliese gave a cold laugh. “These are the great and mighty, witch hunter. Individuals yes, but not individuals like me.”

  “They were not always great and mighty. They each were born as helpless babes, crying and suckling at their mothers—by their actions they were made great and mighty. The actions of a single man—or woman—may yet determine the fate of all of us.”

  “Forgive me, witch hunter, but I cannot see how the actions of a simple girl of seventeen summers could affect the outcome of the war.”

  “I’ll put it another way,” said Grunwald. “Battles are won and lost by the decisions of single men. Often these are the decisions of the so called ‘great and mighty’—generals, commanders and elector counts. But more often it is the decisions of the average soldier that determine the outcome of the battle. An individual decides to stand and fight. Others are inspired by his resolve, or driven by shame not to run when this man stands defiant. And so the army stands. On the other side, amongst the enemy, a single individual chooses to run. His fears overcome him—he is thinking of his wife, his child, his mistress or his fortune—he doesn’t want to die, and so he flees. Others see him fleeing, and they are filled with doubt. Was there a call to retreat that they did not hear? Did this soldier know something that they did not? By that one soldier’s decision to run, he has doomed his entire army. Others turn and run with him—and if everyone is running, where is the sense in standing alone, or the loss of honour if they too flee? There is none. And so the day is lost. That first man to run is like a single rock falling from a mountainside—soon others join it, until there is an unstoppable avalanche. But if that first man held, if that first rock did not fall—would they have been victorious? Would the mountainside have collapsed anyway? Perhaps. Perhaps not.” The witch hunter shrugged.

  “You sound like an orator,” said Annaliese.

  “Ha!” scoffed Grunwald. “Far from it. It is a speech I heard once, when I was a soldier, and my retelling is a far poorer version. But it is true nonetheless. One man choosing to hold against the enemy, one man choosing to run—that is the difference between victory and defeat. Good commanders know this—they make sure that there are strong, heroic warriors scattered throughout the ranks who will stand defiant and who will either shame or inspire their soldiers to do the same.”

  “My father used to say something similar,” said Annaliese.

  “A wise man then,” said Grunwald. He stared at her for a moment, and she felt a shiver run through her. His eyes were intense, and there was violence within them. Still, he was a templar of Sigmar.

  “I am honoured that you are coming with me,” she said. “Though in truth why you are accompanying me is a mystery.”

  The carriage jerked, and Thorrik’s snoring was interrupted. Grunwald saw the elf’s eyes flick towards the slumbering dwarf, his face unreadable. Thorrik began snoring again a moment later.

  “You are… unusual,” said Grunwald, picking his words carefully. “The young acolyte at the temple claimed to see an aura around you when you somehow retrieved that hammer of yours—a hammer said to have been lost for centuries. And it is claimed that you healed the boy you brought to the temple with your touch. Such claims are rare, and are in need of investigation.”

  “I never claimed to have healed Tomas,” said Annaliese quickly. “And there was nothing mystical about me retrieving the hammer. It was just there, and there were enemies that needed to be faced.”

  “You do realise that there was no mortuary alcove where you claimed to have retrieved the hammer,” said Grunwald softly.

  “What?” said Annaliese, alarmed. Hearing the tone of her voice, Eldanair looked at the girl then at Grunwald, his face cold. “That is not possible.”

  “No matter,” said Grunwald. “And the boy? You say that you healed him—how did you manage such a feat with no training?”

  “I never claimed to have healed him. I thought he had suffered a mortal wound, but when I held him I realised that he had not.”

  “So you say.”

  Annaliese smiled ruefully. “You think I am a witch, Grunwald?”

  “If I thought that you would already have been burnt alive at the stake,” he replied. “You wear the symbol of Sigmar around your neck, and you wield a weapon of a long dead priest. Yet you have had no religious training—it is in the best interest of the church for you to be accompanied by a member of temple. To instruct you, to guide you and to protect you should your… talents be true.”

  Annaliese stared hard into the witch hunter’s eyes. “I have never claimed to be anything, witch hunter.”

  Grunwald smiled, which if anything made him seem more dangerous. “And I am not claiming you are anything, Annaliese. Think of me just as… someone watching over you. Helping you make the right choices. In Sigmar’s name, of course.”

  She heard the threat in his words, but felt suddenly calm. She smiled. For all his words and his occupation, she felt that there was little guile within Udo Grunwald.

  “I like you, witch hunter,” she
said, as surprised by the truth in her words as he was, judging by the look on his face.

  “Why?” he said simply, looking at her as if she were mad.

  “I think I know where I stand with you,” she replied. “Which is something.”

  The carriage ground to a halt, amid blasts of venting steam and the groan of metal.

  “What’s this?” growled Grunwald, the sudden lack of vibration waking him.

  “We are at Karak Kadrin,” said Thorrik dourly.

  Grunwald glanced out the slats in the carriage walls—it was still dark out there and he wondered for a moment if night had fallen—he had completely lost track of time beneath the ground.

  “Is it night?” he said out loud, voicing his thoughts. The dwarf snorted.

  “Manlings,” he scoffed. “It nears mid-afternoon. We are still below ground—we travel the last distance to Kadrin Keep by foot—we shall not see the surface until we leave Kadrin.”

  “We?”

  “Aye, we. I’ll deliver this,” he said, patting the oil skin wrapped object that had barely left his side the entire journey, “and then I’ll be on my way back to rejoin my clan—in the state of Ostermark.”

  “What does he keep so well hidden, wrapped in leather?” asked Annaliese later, as they walked down the metal steps away from the hissing steam engine of Grimgrandel.

  “I’m not sure,” said Grunwald. “Some kind of heirloom, he says. Something that he is oath-bound to deliver.” He gave the girl a look. Her face was bright, and she looked rested and curious of the goings on around her. The resilience of youth, he thought. He felt sore, tired and irritable. “The dwarfs seem to take their oaths particularly seriously.”

  “Maybe it’s some magical relic of old,” said Annaliese, her blue-grey eyes lighting up, making her look even younger than she was.

  “Perhaps,” said the witch hunter noncommittally.

  They waited for Karl and his thirty knights, who led their snorting warhorses from their carriage. The young preceptor smiled broadly at them as he approached. His steed stood a massive twenty hands tall at the shoulder—a purebred Averland destrier. Its eyes were wide, and its ears were pulled back—it was a fierce beast, but it clearly did not like the unnatural hissing of the steam train, nor being underneath the ground.

  “Well that was a much shorter, if more uncomfortable, journey than by horseback. Over five hundred miles! That would have taken weeks—but here it only took what—three days? Truly a marvel this steam engine. Imagine if these were constructed all across the Old World! Our troops could be transported from Altdorf to Kislev within days. Much faster than by ship even.”

  “All the coffers of your Emperor would be emptied a thousand times over to fund such an undertaking,” growled Thorrik, who had turned back to them to hurry them up. “But come, enough of such foolish talk. We must make haste. There is grim news—the keep is besieged. Peak Pass is contested.”

  Peak Pass was one of only two ways through the towering mountains that formed the nigh-on impenetrable eastern border of the Empire. Over five hundred miles to the south lay Black Fire Pass. The only other clear route through the Worlds Edge Mountains lay almost six hundred miles further north, in the uppermost reaches of the inhospitable lands of Kislev, the Empire’s northern neighbours. There lay the High Pass, through which the Chaos forces spilled during the titanic Great War two hundred and fifty years earlier.

  The three passes were the key to the defence of the Empire. Thus was the message hammered home into would-be military commanders and their subordinates. The passes meant life or death, and if they fell, so would the Empire.

  But if even one of the passes fell to the enemy, then it spelled disaster. The Empire was almost destroyed during the Great War, and in that time both Black Fire Pass and the Peak Pass had held strong—through the High Pass the bloodthirsty hordes of Chaos erupted, overtaking northern Praag and spilling southwards.

  If two passes fell, or Sigmar forbid all three, then there could be no hope for the Empire of man. Grunwald’s thoughts were dark as he marched along the cavernous dwarf under-road leading into Kadrin Keep.

  It was a marvel of old fashioned dwarf engineering, and Thorrik pointed out the details of the massive expanse with pride in his voice. The way was lit with thousands of torches and oil-burning lanterns, and massive arches rose hundreds of feet above them. The scale of the place was beyond comprehension—indeed the highest building within any of the great cities of the Empire, even Altdorf, would be able to sit within the archways with hundreds of feet to spare above the highest parapet.

  Bearded, horn-helmed faces glared down at them, totem-heads that rose as high as a castle tower. Beneath arched, braided moustaches gaped open mouths broad enough to allow ten carriages to pass side-by-side. Columns perfectly square, each side easily a hundred feet in width, rose into the darkness overhead. Square-cut balconies and platforms were hewn into their sides, betraying the fact that they were riddled with rooms and stone chambers.

  They passed beneath arched bridges, vast passageways that led to other parts of the hold. Everywhere there were titanic statues and pillars, all intricately carved with spiralling patterns and weaving lines that formed depictions of battles, warriors and the dwarf ancestor-gods.

  The sheer scale of the place stunned Grunwald, and Annaliese stared with her mouth wide in astonishment and awe. Thorrik seemed pleased by their reactions. For nearly a mile they walked along the underway, towards one towering statue that rose even higher above them than anything else they had seen so far. Filling the arched expanse, hundreds of feet high and hundreds of feet wide was a giant carved likeness of a fierce dwarf warrior, his deep eye sockets hidden in shadow. Stone braids hung down from his face, curling around themselves and falling to the ground. They hit the ground and extended out before the grand statue to form high-sided walls that reached hundreds of feet before the statue. The statue seemed to grow larger as they approached it, rising into the air above them. Indeed, it seemed as though the arched roof far above was supported on the shoulders of this mighty king—that he bore the weight of Kadrin Keep itself.

  The statue’s chest and legs were heavily armoured with overlapping plates of rune-inscribed armour, though his muscular arms were bare except for powerful bracers that encircled his forearms and coiling dragon-torcs that wrapped around his massive upper arms. The stone that was carved to form this armour had veins of gold running through it, so that the statue glittered and shone in the torchlight. Over his shoulders he wore a cloak of dragon scales and fur.

  In one hand the behemoth held a stone helmet. Giant scaled stone wings extended up from it, merging into the ceiling almost a thousand feet above, forming pillars and supports. The front of the helmet was carved in the likeness of a dragon’s roaring visage. The dragon’s wide jaws would frame the warrior’s face, and there were dozens of sharp teeth carved of pure white stone that protruded from the monster’s gums. In his other angular, thick-fingered hand the king held a hammer of giant proportions, engraved with blocky dwarf runes lit up from within, glowing with orange light. Similar runes blazed upon the warrior’s helmet, as if the fury of a furnace burnt inside it.

  Scores of dwarf warriors bowed their heads and ran their hands over thick strands of stone hair that formed the giant braids that hit the ground, intoning oaths and sacred words of greeting or praise. The passageway continued beneath this mighty statue. Grunwald saw that the dwarfs walking beneath the statue struck their fists upon their chests, above their hearts, and began chanting as they walked, a deep throated, mournful drone.

  “Behold mighty Grimnir, ancestor-god of courage and mighty deeds,” spoke Thorrik, his voice solemn and reverential. “Karak Kadrin guards the Shrine of Grimnir. It is a place of great reverence, and thousands of dawi-kind travel from their holds to pay homage to the ancestor-god here every year.”

  “How do those runes glow with light?” asked Annaliese, her voice full of wonder. “Is it magic?”

  “M
agic? Pfah!” snorted Thorrik. “The dawi—dwarfs as you know us—have no use for magic in the way you mean. No, it is something more mundane, yet no less impressive for that. The most skilled stonemasons of Karak Kadrin carved them but the stone of those runes of courage, kingship and battle is as thin as parchment. There is fire behind them that will never grow dim until the dawi are no more, and it is the light of those flames that you see through the stone.”

  Annaliese raised her eyebrows, clearly impressed. “Stone as thin as parchment… Surely it would shatter?”

  Thorrik chuckled. “Aye lass, if carved by any but dwarf hands, it would. None in all the world can match a dwarf in craftsmanship.”

  “I can believe that looking upon this,” said Annaliese softly.

  “For such short folk, you certainly build tall,” said Karl “Almost as if you were making up for your lack of height.”

  Grunwald smirked involuntarily but was amazed at the knight’s lack of tact for daring to say such a thing, however apt, in the presence of Thorrik and his kinsmen, before such an awe-inspiring statue of one of their great gods. It was clear that the knight had little experience of dwarfs.

  Thorrik rounded on the knight glowering with rage. Karl was forced to halt, and the giant steed he led snorted and stamped its hooves. Though the preceptor towered over the dwarf who came barely to his chest, Annaliese and Grunwald breathed in a little and backed off a step from the simmering rage that threatened to overwhelm the warrior.

  “Utter such a remark again, beardling, and as Grimnir is my witness I swear that I will cut the legs from under you so that you will look at the world from the same height as I,” growled the ironbreaker, his hand closing on the haft of his axe threateningly.

  Several of Karl’s knights frowned and their hands reached for their own swords, but Karl raised his hand to stop them. His eyes still glimmered with humour, but his face was serious.

  “I apologise—to you and your gods—brave warrior. I mean no disrespect. This place is… beyond words, and I fear my mouth ran away with me. My deepest apologies, once more, Thorrik Lokrison,” he said earnestly.