[Age of Reckoning 01] - Empire in Chaos

by Anthony Reynolds - (ebook by Undead)

  The sun was just beginning to set, and he opted for the latter. He had no wish to be shamed by her again today.

  Tomorrow I will seek her out and set things right, he thought. Tonight I will drink.

  Grunwald frowned deeply as he scanned the faces of the Empire citizens arrayed before him. He stared at each in turn before he shook his head to the sergeant, and the people were escorted away. With the men at his disposal he had been rounding up the hundreds of dispossessed, desperate people all afternoon. So far his search for the man he had seen amongst the crowd had proved fruitless.

  He sighed heavily. It was to be a long night then, for he would allow himself no rest until the witch was discovered.

  Hours later Annaliese found the preceptor. Everywhere she went she was hailed by the soldiers who looked at her with hopeful eyes. She found it exhausting.

  He was sitting away from his comrades, and it was clear he had been drinking. She hesitated for a moment. She had wished to speak to him, but seeing him morose and drunk, she decided against it, and turned away. Before she could slip away he spotted her, and she cursed inwardly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his words slurred. “You are right. I am a fool.”

  “Yes you are,” she said, moving to sit down beside him. She pulled her legs up to her chest, hugging herself for warmth and rested her chin on her knees, staring into the fire.

  He fumbled around, rising unsteadily and placed a blanket around her shoulders. She smiled her thanks.

  “I’m sorry for hitting you,” she said at last.

  Karl rubbed his jaw. “It was a fine punch,” he said with a grimace. She laughed. He offered her his bottle but she got a whiff of the strong fumes and pulled back from it. “How can you drink that poison?”

  “A soldier takes what he can get,” he said, his voice heavy, and she suddenly realised just how drunk he was. A warning bell inside her rang, and she decided she wanted to get away.

  “I think I will turn in,” she said. “Tomorrow will likely be a long day.”

  “It will,” said the knight, staring into the smouldering flames.

  “Don’t drink any more tonight, alright? Goodnight, Karl,” said Annaliese, putting her hand lightly on his shoulder as she rose.

  He grabbed her trailing hand and stood, his face flushed. With one hand around her slim waist, he pulled her roughly in close to him, and kissed her passionately. She struggled against him, and he held her tighter, until she pushed back away from him violently, her eyes flashing with anger.

  “Go to sleep, Karl. You’ve drunk too much,” she said softly, though there was a hard edge to her words.

  “Just the right amount,” he said, his words slurring slightly. She took another step back and the knight’s face flushed with anger.

  “Damn it woman! What’s the matter with you?” He stood over her, a full head-and-a-half taller than her and easily twice her weight. He reached for her again, and she punched him in the face, her fist cracking sharply against his cheek.

  He reeled backwards in shock and surprise, blinking his eyes. When his eyes cleared, they were filled with anger and lust.

  With a snarl he stepped in close, grabbing her wrists as she tried to strike him once more. He held her as easily as a child, and he closed his eyes, the smell of her hair intoxicating him.

  The next moment he felt a sharp, cold point against his neck, and his eyes flicked open. Eldanair stood at his side, the tip of his slim blade touching his neck. A tiny bead of blood ran down the silver edge of the knife.

  Karl let out a dry laugh, and pushed Annaliese away from him. The elf stepped away from the knight, his blade still raised, stepping protectively towards Annaliese.

  “I see,” said Karl, nodding his head and laughing softly to himself. “I see what’s going on here.”

  “There is nothing going on here except you being a lecherous drunkard,” snarled Annaliese.

  “You refuse me because you already have a lover,” said Karl stabbing a finger at Annaliese.

  “You are a fool,” she snapped. “You see nothing.”

  “Oh no, I see it all now, Maiden of Sigmar,” he said mockingly. “You’ve been parading yourself as some virtuous, devout woman, and all the time you have been rutting with this one. Not even a true man!”

  “You go too far, Karl,” said Annaliese dangerously.

  “Was she good?” the preceptor asked the elf, speaking loudly and slowly as if he were deaf rather than did not understand Reikspiel. The elf regarded him coldly, no emotion showing on his face. The knight made a crude gesture, and Annaliese stepped towards him, her fists clenched.

  He blinked then, as if realising his actions, and he wiped a hand across his brow, swaying slightly. He half-fell, half-sat back down and reached for his bottle, taking a long swig.

  Annaliese and Eldanair stood there still.

  “What?” Karl said eventually. “Was there something else?”

  Annaliese shook her head in disgust.

  “You were a man I regarded with high esteem, Karl Heiden. It seems I was wrong to have thought so highly of you,” she spat, before turning on her heel and storming off into the night, Eldanair following.

  Karl took another long swig from his bottle, staring into the fire. He gulped down the last of it and threw it onto the flames. He swung around to see if Annaliese had gone. She had.

  “Well that went well,” he said to himself.

  A moment later, he was on his knees, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the ground. He heaved and brought up everything, until he finally sat gasping, and wiped at his face.

  He stood unsteadily and walked to a barrel of water nearby, plunging his hands into it. Ice had begun to form on its surface and it cracked beneath his fingers. He washed his face in the freezing water. Scooping water, he drank deep, until his fingers were numb. More sober now, he thought back over the last half an hour.

  “You are a fool,” he said to himself, realising the damage he had done. But then the image of Eldanair’s face popped into his mind, and once again he felt anger, hot and fierce.

  Curse them both, he thought, and staggered back towards his tent.

  Dietrich crept forward in the snow, worming his way through the darkness. His every sense was alert; he saw the silent form of an owl as it passed overhead and could smell the unmistakable stench of burning flesh on the wind. The glow of fires lit up the perfect darkness of the night over the hillock just ahead.

  The elector had hand-picked a group of scouts and sent them out earlier to judge the strength of the enemy and gauge its approach.

  The elf was somewhere up ahead, an invisible ghost in the darkness. They were in awe of his skills. They had moved out as the silver moon had reached its zenith overhead, moving swiftly into the night toward the enemy. Dietrich knew that he would never have dared to approach had the elf not been leading them—dozens of times through the night they had been saved by the elf, who urged them down into the snow. Moments later, enemies had passed by them, moving through the darkness with no torches to light their way.

  They took two of these enemy bands, their shafts hurling the warriors from their horses, leaving none alive. The elf had led them through the enemy patrols and they climbed up a hillock to overlook the enemy encampment.

  Dietrich crawled on, ignoring the biting cold. He almost cried out when Eldanair appeared before him like a phantom, a finger placed on his lips. Dietrich quickly signalled for his men to freeze, and they sank into the snow, motionless at his command. The elf disappeared up ahead, and Dietrich lay there unmoving for long minutes, wondering what was going on. Had they been discovered? No, there had been no warning shouts, or sounds of alarm.

  A moment later the elf was back, beckoning him forwards. Edging around an ancient rock, Dietrich came upon the first corpse. The body of the enemy warrior was huge, and his powerful arms were covered in golden torcs. Countless rings of metal pierced the flesh of his bearded face, and he wore a circular black iron bre
astplate over his heavily muscled torso. A helmet lay in the snow beside him, tall horns cut from an animal that Dietrich did not recognise rising from it.

  He saw Eldanair rise to his feet like a shadow behind another sentry and clamp his hand across the man’s mouth and nose. A blade flashed in the night as he stabbed through the heavy fur cloak of the enemy warrior, again and again. The hulking figure was easily twice the weight of the elf, but he was dead in seconds, and the elf lowered the body into the snow.

  Dietrich inched through the snow to the elf’s side, and his eyes widened as he overlooked the enemy encampment.

  The size of the army was immense. Campfires spread as far as the eye could see. There must have been tens of thousands of enemy warriors here. And not just men—chained in long pickets were massive hounds covered in thick fur, beasts almost the size of ponies. They lay sprawled on top of each other as they slept, jaws hanging open to show huge fangs and lolling tongues. Further away from the encamped warriors were other, larger shapes. Their forms were hidden in darkness, but they were huge, easily the size of the largest bears that Dietrich had even heard of, but he instinctively knew that these were not natural creatures. No, their shapes were perverted and mutated from decades of exposure to the warping effects of Chaos.

  Eldanair got his attention with a light touch on his shoulder, and pointed into the distance, to the north. At first Dietrich could see nothing, squinting over the glowing remains of five thousand fires, but at last he saw movement. Mounted figures were riding across the open land away from the camp.

  There must have been around three hundred of them, riding for the north. Heavy chariots pulled by midnight steeds rolled out amongst the mounted warriors, snow kicking up behind their metal-studded wheels.

  Dietrich knew that this was vital information that he needed to get back to his commander, for it certainly appeared as though the enemy was sending a fast moving force to circumvent the Empire line—and quite possibly attack it from an unexpected angle once battle was met. He knew that such a move could tip the balance of the battle.

  Taking one last look over the enemy encampment estimating their number, he began to crawl backwards down the hillock away from the enemy. Once in open ground, the scouts began to move as swiftly as it was safe to do, dogging the enemy horsemen. They would follow them for a few hours to gauge their direction before turning back towards the Empire lines.

  It was dawn, and Grunwald, sitting just outside his tent, was stripping down and meticulously cleaning his weapons. They were laid out on an unrolled sheet of leather, and he polished and oiled the mechanisms of first his wheel-lock pistols, then his heavy, black metal crossbow. The barrels of the guns he cleaned out with a fine cloth and a ramming rod, gazing along the barrels to ensure not a speck of dust or dirt was within.

  He was angry, and the simple act of maintaining his weapons calmed him somewhat. His night’s work of scouring the citizenry had garnered nothing, and the dull thumping of a pressure headache made him even more irritable and tense.

  He was angry with himself for taking his eyes off the man, and was frustrated that he had been unable to discover his whereabouts. He had even begun to doubt himself—perhaps the man had been nothing more than a frightened peddler—but he knew deep inside that he was not. The fact that the man had clearly hidden himself was evidence enough of his guilt.

  Annaliese found him there, and sat alongside him in silence as he worked. The witch hunter enjoyed the quietness of early morning, and made no effort to talk to the girl, and he was glad when she too seemed content to remain in silence. “I am scared about the battle,” she said at last.

  “It’s only normal,” he replied, blowing an errant speck of dust out of the wheel-mechanism of one of his guns.

  “You don’t seem too worried.”

  “It would be a fool indeed who didn’t have some fear in him on the day of a battle,” said Grunwald, casting his careful gaze over his weapon, turning it in his hands, seeking any fault or tarnish. “Either that, or a madman.” Finding no defects, he turned his attention to the black metal bolts of his crossbow, studying the tip of the first. Satisfied, he lifted the bolt and stared along its length, ensuring that it was perfectly straight, with no deviation in it that would effect his aim.

  “I am neither a fool nor a madman,” continued Grunwald. “And so, I fear the coming battle. But it is what that fear does to you that is the important thing. Either you master it, and use it to your advantage, or you let it master you. Let it master you and it will grow and grow within you, until you are nothing but a slave to it.”

  “Use fear to your advantage?” said Annaliese, furrowing her brow. “How is fear an advantage?”

  “Fear keeps us alive. It is fear that tells us not to walk on the cliff edge in a billowing gale.”

  “But only a fool would do that.”

  “Or a madman. But another example—if controlled, fear lends you strength, speed and crystal clear clarity of mind. If it is left unchecked and controls you, it will work against you—cause you to react slowly, if at all.”

  Annaliese nodded. “I remember being out hunting with my father once. We were surprised by a bear. I froze—unable to run, to shoot, to do anything but stare at it. It would have killed me had my father not been there.” Annaliese’s eyes were glazed over as she remembered. She looked up at the witch hunter, snapping herself out of her reverie. “What happens if I freeze up today?”

  “Then you will die,” said Grunwald simply. “My advice? Don’t freeze up.” He lifted one of his pistols quickly, testing the wheel-lock mechanism. “It doesn’t matter if you are scared—you just must ensure that the Maiden of Sigmar does not show it.”

  Thorrik appeared from amidst the bustle of soldiers busying themselves before battle, stamping heavily to get the snow off his boots. His face was thunderous, and he sat down heavily and pulled his dragon-headed pipe from a pouch.

  Grunwald raised a questioning eyebrow to the dwarf.

  “North!” Thorrik spluttered. “My clan has gone to the north!”

  “North? We are in the north,” said Grunwald.

  “Kislev! They have marched into Kislev with an army from Reikland!”

  “Kislev? But the war is here, in the Empire. What the hell are armies doing marching there?”

  “Seems that this so-called Raven Host is massing north of Kislev. What is here already is only its vanguard. Your Emperor has sent an army into Kislev to fight it and my kinsmen have marched with them!” The dwarf harrumphed loudly, and began muttering to himself in his own language.

  “So, if we survive the day, you will march northwards then? What, to the city of Kislev itself?”

  The dwarf snorted. “Further than that—the army marches on Praag.”

  Grunwald’s eyes widened. Praag was far to the north of the Kislev, thousands of miles north of their current position. It would take weeks, months to travel there. He whistled in awe.

  “Ah well,” said Thorrik. “We have this battle to get through first. You will be fighting too I hear, lass?”

  “I will,” said Annaliese.

  “I will be in the front ranks. That’s where an ironbreaker fights. I just hope you humans will stand firm alongside me.”

  “We will,” said Annaliese with grim determination. “We have to.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The clear blue morning sky was slowly overtaken by the relentless, brooding dark clouds clawing their way across the heavens. Shadow engulfed the Empire lines and Grunwald shivered as the temperature dropped. He was alert and wary for the reappearance of the magos he had seen in the crowd the previous day, certain that he would rear his head before the day was out.

  Lightning crackled through the heavy clouds, rippling back and forth with intense flashes, accompanied by the relentless dull rumble of thunder. Bright bolts seared down to the ground beyond the crest of the moorland, jagged lines of power and light that were followed a second later by deafening booms that made the k
nights’ horses whinny in fear.

  The storm was moving forwards like a living malevolent being, and it seemed to carry with it powerful, hateful emotions that promised death and destruction.

  Grunwald noted that Annaliese was breathing heavily, her face pale, as she watched the cloudbank rolling towards them.

  It was like a black mountain spur, its tip heading inexorably in their direction—a thick wedge of darkness that slid ever closer. The apex of this elemental force halted above the crest of the high moorland, just beyond the shadowed village, as if it had hit an invisible barrier. The weight of the clouds built and they darkened so that they were now almost black and began spilling around the sides of the village like a pair of giant horns, surrounding it menacingly.

  A great shadow of darkness that seemed to ride before the cloud mass detached itself from the storm and flew low towards the village. Grunwald saw that it was a mass of black-feathered birds, thousands of them flying together, and they filled the air with their raucous cries. Diving low, they flew over the heads of the Empire soldiers, their harsh cawing a deafening chorus and the beating of their wings disorienting. As a single living mass flying as one, the ravens blocked out the sky completely, and they flew low enough that men were forced to duck their heads, and many of those who did not wear helmets suffered cuts from stabbing black beaks and lashing talons. The living mass wheeled again, a maddening maelstrom of black feathers, and dozens of soldiers fired crossbows and handguns into the mass before their sergeants restored order with harshly barked commands.

  Scores of ravens fell to the ground, their wings shattered by bolt and lead shot, their bodies broken and flightless. They flapped on the ground uselessly, feathers drifting down in their wake, wings hanging limp behind them. One struck Annaliese as it fell, and she cried out in shock. It cawed deafeningly and its long beak and talons lashed out, drawing blood on her neck before she managed to frantically hurl the creature to the ground before her. It flopped around in a circle, its left wing and leg a bloody ruin, and it fixed Annaliese fiercely with one beady eye. Anger burnt within the shiny orb, simmering rage and malevolence projected from the raven that was as large as a small dog. Up close Grunwald could see that its feathers were not truly black, but rather a shimmer of colours could be seen on them, like the rainbow of oil on water.