[Age of Reckoning 01] - Empire in Chaos

by Anthony Reynolds - (ebook by Undead)

  It cawed and opened its beak aggressively towards Grunwald as he stepped towards the dying creature. He killed it beneath his heavy black boot, crushing its fragile bones and silencing its raucous, disturbing cries.

  The ravens overhead circled once more before screaming back overhead, flying low over the land towards the rise of moorland. Like a flowing carpet of black feathers the fell birds of the enemy flowed up the rising, rocky earth and disappeared over the crest of the moors.

  At that moment, the first dark figures could be seen at the crest of the highlands, standing dark and motionless, silhouetted against the flashes of lightning behind them. They stood immobile, like ancient statues of long-dead, infernal warrior-gods, a line of them that spread along the crest, dark, imposing and deadly.

  It was as if the ravens had metamorphosed into these terrible warriors. Grunwald wondered if they would turn back into the hateful carrion birds at the battle’s end to pick over the corpses and pluck at their eyes.

  The horned helms of the motionless warriors of Chaos could be seen clearly against the backdrop of flashing light. Huge standards were held before them, and although the images upon the human-skin banners should have been hidden in shadow, they could be seen clearly—twisting, blasphemous glyph-shapes of blue fire that flickered with cold light of their own.

  A ripple of fear ran through the Empire line as the soldiers saw the warriors of the Chaos gods.

  The warriors were massive, each easily a head taller than any man of the Empire. They were raised as brutal fighters from birth, the weak amongst them ruthlessly culled. They were taught to hold a sword or axe from the moment they could stand, and before they had reached eight summers they were already seasoned killers, preying on those weaker than them and offering up their souls to the dark gods of Chaos.

  Only the strongest and fiercest of them reached adulthood, and every one had proven himself before their daemonic gods.

  But as nine bolts of lighting struck the earth below the ridge simultaneously, the figures that had been mere silhouettes were thrown into sharp focus, and the sense of terror and pervading doom amongst the Empire lines was redoubled. For these were not average warriors of Chaos, but the chosen elite of the Raven Host.

  Each warrior was fully armoured in dark metal, and wore an enclosed helmet tipped with curving, daemonic horns. In the centre of every helmet was a glowing blue gem fashioned in the shape of an unblinking eye. They hefted brutal killing weapons—swords, axes and heavy spiked mauls—that a normal man would be unable to lift in two hands, let alone one as many of these warriors seemed to do effortlessly. Many bore tall shields tipped with spikes and barbs, and each of these also had an unblinking blue eye on its centre. Cloaks of raven feathers were thrown over the massive shoulders of these elite warriors, the chosen of Tzeentch, and they surveyed the village and meagre lines of quaking Empire soldiers unmoving.

  To either side of the motionless chosen warriors more of the enemy appeared, and massive stakes of metal were driven into the ground along the ridge. Each of these was easily fifteen feet high, and upon each was spitted a man wearing the purple and yellow of Ostermark—clearly Empire soldiers slain in an earlier confrontation, perhaps in the fall of Bechafen itself.

  No, not slain in an earlier battle, Grunwald realised—a great groan of horror rose up amongst the Empire ranks as they saw that these soldiers were not dead at all. The impaled figures twitched and flailed in agony, kept alive and in torment by the fell magics of the enemy. The moans and cries of the tormented men of the Ostermark echoed down from the ridge to the village, and Annaliese covered her mouth as she heard their agonised, desperate wailing.

  A thousand stakes were raised along the ridge, and larger ones too were hefted into position with ropes and chains—each of these had five or more soldiers impaled on them. Ravens landed on many of these tortured men, tearing strips of flesh from them and pecking at their faces—but not one of them was dead.

  “Why don’t they attack?” said Annaliese, her voice strained.

  “They are trying to scare us,” said Grunwald.

  “It’s working,” said Annaliese. She swallowed with difficulty, her mouth and throat dry.

  “Or they are waiting for something,” said the witch hunter. He craned his neck, looking back to where the citizens crowded, back behind the lines of soldiers. His gaze passed over the mass of desperate humanity, but he did not see the face he sought—the heavily lined face of the witch he knew was lurking back there somewhere.

  Karl sat astride a massive destrier, glad at last to be back in the saddle. He felt the horse beneath him trembling with fear and anticipation. Leaning forward he patted it heavily on its neck, talking in gentle, comforting tones. He knew how it felt.

  The knights’ steeds stamped their hooves, ears flat against their heads. They were uneasy and tense. Such was generally the way before a battle, but the fear that washed down over the Empire lines was almost like a living thing. It washed around them, making men sweat despite the icy chill. The sky continued to darken, the massing cloudbanks encircling the village almost completely.

  Karl wished the enemy would just advance, so this waiting would end. Battle would be met, and then the killing would start, and he could lose himself in the melee.

  He tried to push away the thoughts of the previous night’s encounter with Annaliese, but her shocked and angry face kept appearing in his mind’s eye, the look of fear as he had pulled her roughly to him haunted him. He gritted his teeth and shoved the image to the back of his mind, but it kept rearing up within him, taunting and painful.

  He felt shame tear at him. What had he been thinking, he wondered? What evil had overtaken his senses?

  She had brought it on herself, said a dark voice within him. She had tempted him for weeks, with her seductive looks and luscious eyes. She had led him on, making him think that there was something between them. But all the time she had been laughing at him, her and that cursed elf.

  Karl closed his eyes against the maddening thoughts, striving to drive them from his mind. Had the enemy infected him with some vile sorcery? No, he answered—this was but jealousy and desire, very human emotions, and they had been enflamed by drink.

  What a fool he had been! He had blown his chance with the girl, and he had no one to blame but himself.

  It mattered little now though, he thought darkly, as he gazed up at the enemy standing motionless along the ridge of moorland. Soon, he would lose himself amid the cacophony of battle, and it would not matter anymore.

  Feathers sticking up from soft caps bobbed up and down as Karl watched around two thousand archers, handgunners and crossbowmen moving lightly forwards, angling their lines opposite the marshy dip at the foot of the moorland crest.

  Phalanxes of state soldiers marched forwards more slowly behind them, halberdiers and swordsmen, their wildly fluttering banners flying. In the centre of the line were the greatswords, a block of hard-bitten soldiers with massive two-handed blades resting on their right shoulders. Great plumes topped their conical helmets, and they stepped forwards in perfect unison, for they were the elite foot troops of the army, its most seasoned and veteran soldiers.

  Light cavalry hung back from the main line, and further regiments of spears, halberds and pikes stood motionless along the edge of the village. An unruly rabble of refugees was arrayed; thousands of desperate survivors from outlying villages and towns that followed the army. They stood watching over the battlefield from whatever vantage point they could find, waiting to see the outcome. Karl knew that if the day were lost, then they would all be slaughtered.

  The Empire commanders had tried to force these stragglers to leave the area, but it was an impossible task. In truth, Karl could understand that they did not wish to be away from the army and the protection it gave them. Though how long that protection would last would soon be determined.

  Karl wondered where Annaliese was. He turned in the saddle, looking across at the soldiers’ frightened faces
. He spotted the witch hunter Udo Grunwald first—he was hard to miss standing amongst the soldiery, wearing his trademark heavy black greatcoat and wide-brimmed hat. He stood with a small group of soldiers to the rear of the gathered forces. He seemed to be looking for someone, staring around him.

  Karl’s eyes widened as he recognised Annaliese standing alongside the witch hunter. She wore a close-fitting sallet helmet, though her face was bare, and her head was held high as she stared fiercely across the battlefield towards the motionless enemy. Her hammer was held in one hand, and she wore a circular shield upon her arm. Plates of armour protected her arms and shoulders, and the hem of her long chainmail coat could be seen beneath her red and cream travel-worn robe.

  She was a shining, radiant light amongst the soldiers. The Maiden of Sigmar she was, and truly she looked the part as she waited fearlessly for the battle to commence. He stared at her in open awe and admiration. Then the shame of his actions pounded in at him, and he turned away, cursing himself.

  “Why don’t they damn well come?” growled Thorrik, stamping his feet, trying to get some feeling back into his cold toes. He stood in the front rank of a phalanx of halberdiers, the other soldiers towering above him. The men around him were silent, their faces grim. Further along the line, the purple and yellow standard of the Ostermark whipped loudly in the rising winds.

  At last there was movement from the ridge, as warriors lowered their heads and moved respectfully out of the way of a giant figure upon a snorting black steed. The figure wore ornate, fluted armour of gold, and its gleaming helmet was topped with coiling horns that twisted around each other. An eye of blue fire the size of a man’s torso hung in the air between these horns, the flames burning fiercely with unholy light. A large black pupil hung within the centre of the burning blue iris, and as another bolt of lightning slammed into the earth before the Chaos lord, this pupil contracted sharply so that it was little more than a vertical black slit, like the pupil of a serpent.

  The fell steed stamped its hooves, and its eyes blazed with pale fire. It was armoured with ornate, fluted gold barding in the same manner as its lord, and a similar array of twisting horns coiled from its head.

  The massive warrior wore a long cloak of feathers, and it billowed behind him like a death-shroud. He hefted a huge bladed glaive one handed over his head as his infernal steed reared up on its hind legs, and lightning arced down from the heavens once again, striking this long weapon. Electricity coursed over the figure, crackling over its armour before it earthed itself into the ground beneath the daemon-steed’s hooves.

  The sound of the lightning bolt striking reached the Empire lines a second later, and it sounded like the earth had been split down the middle. Horses reared and screamed in fear, and the knights struggled to bring them back under control.

  The last electric flickers of lightning coalesced across the Chaos lord, and he began to speak. His words were those of a daemon, and they rolled out before him like a deafening wave, reaching the ears of every man standing upon the field of battle, as if the fell lord of Chaos screamed in their ears.

  It sounded as though there were a thousand roaring voices bellowing as one, and the Empire soldiers around Thorrik took an involuntary step backwards as the wall of sound struck them. There were screams and roars of fury and pain in that voice, and the cries of tortured souls.

  The words were alien and meaningless to the men of the Empire, but great was their power. There were moans of fear amongst the soldiers around Thorrik, and several fell to their knees, covering their ears in a futile attempt to block out the horrendous din. Thorrik himself gritted his teeth and gripped the shaft of his axe tightly, grimly weathering the storm of screaming, incoherent words.

  Grunwald felt the power of the words of Chaos battering against his sanity, and he resisted their power. Annaliese at his side grasped her pendant of Sigmar and began mouthing words of prayer, her face defiant. The witch hunter felt the building of power, and clenched his teeth as he felt the electric tang of magic charge the air.

  A regiment of soldiers standing some fifty paces ahead of his own position were suddenly engulfed in a blurring maelstrom as the fabric of reality was shredded.

  A hundred men fell to the ground as a surging wave of daemonic energy enveloped them, screaming and roaring. They convulsed madly and those nearby backed away, horror on their faces. The men began to writhe, screaming, and their flesh seemed to ripple and contort. Bones bulged beneath flesh as they grew uncontrollably, bursting through skin to form giant pointed growths. Spinal columns became twisted and erupted from men’s backs, spikes of bone growing from vertebrae and impaling other wildly mutating men. Feathers sprouted along the forearms of some, bloody and covered with mucous, and tentacles burst from the chests of others, reaching to the sky like questing leeches.

  Mouths were forced open far beyond their natural limits, and massive tusks of bone burst from jawbones. Other men were drawn together, their flesh merging, and eyeballs weeping blood opened up in their skin alongside fang-filled mouths that screamed in agony.

  Thunder rumbled overhead as the soldiers’ flesh mutated and altered maddeningly, as if the fell daemonic gods of Chaos were pleased.

  Screaming and bellowing in pain and anger, the monstrous spawn-creatures created from the flesh of the Empire soldiers lashed out around them with barbed limbs and powerful claws, snapping bones and ripping their erstwhile comrades apart. Mouths filled with rows of teeth snapped out, locking onto arms and necks, crushing and killing. Upon legs broken and malformed, the spawn crawled and staggered, reaching towards the soldiers of the Ostermark with flipper-like appendages and whipping, worm-like tentacles.

  The soldiers fell back from these monstrosities that were moments before their friends and comrades, and scores of them were killed beneath the ripping jaws and flailing limbs of the spawn. Grunwald stepped out from the line of soldiers he had chosen to accompany him in his hunt for the witch. He turned around on the spot, his eyes flicking around.

  At last he locked onto a dark figure standing in a crooked eyrie on top of one of the village buildings. A strange rotating metal globe turned on top of the building, a mechanical, clockwork contraption that showed the position of the moons and passage of the sun. The figure of the man he had been searching for all night was standing there, his staff raised above his head as he mouthed an incantation.

  As the attention of the entire army was directed at the enemy lined against the sky and the monstrous, horrific creatures that were causing havoc, no one had looked back and seen this dire figure.

  Suffer not the witch to live was one of the mantras of the witch hunters, and Grunwald had no intention of letting this one live any longer.

  With a barked order for the soldiers around him to fall in behind, he began running towards the building, keeping his eyes on the morbid figure. He roared as he ran, ordering the terrified crowd of citizens out of his way. They melted back as he ran, soldiers running at his heels.

  Still, the press of people was too great for a path to be cleared before him, and he bashed people out of his way in his eagerness to close in on the enemy. People fell screaming to the ground, only to be trampled beneath the press.

  “There! Go!” shouted Grunwald, directing the soldiers towards the building, and he hefted his crossbow to his shoulder, taking aim at the witch who was still incanting on top of the eyrie.

  The black bolt sliced through the air, thudding into the wooden banister an inch from the magos. The figure jerked, his incantation interrupted and stared down at Grunwald with hate-filled eyes.

  Snarling, the witch thrust his staff in Grunwald’s direction, and a searing burst of blue flame shot down towards him. The witch hunter gripped his icon of Sigmar tightly, mouthing a prayer and bracing himself. He felt the icon heat up in his hand as the hellfire roared towards him. Daemonic faces could be seen within the licking flames, snarling and hissing. People screamed and ran, and the flames burst around him like a raging inferno.


  But they did not touch him. Instead they washed harmlessly around him, as if they had struck a physical barrier. He could see the malevolent forms of daemons as they clawed at him, and they hissed and spat as they were denied. Still the blue flames pushed in at him, and he dropped to one knee as he felt the wave of evil energy beating at him. The temperature rose sharply as the flames burst around Grunwald, and steam rose from his damp clothes. His face was hot from the raging conflagration just feet from him, and he shielded his eyes against it, but it did not touch his skin and a second later it was gone. He stood in a tight circle of melting snow, though all around him the ground was scorched and blackened from the fire.

  Feeling a presence behind him, Grunwald turned to see Annaliese standing there, her hammer held high. Wrapped around her wrist was a chain from which hung her pendant of Sigmar, and it seemed to glow with fading light. Her eyes were locked onto the fell sorcerer, and truly she looked like the Maiden of Sigmar that people were claiming her to be. Grunwald wondered briefly if it had been her faith or his own that had protected him from the enemy magic, but it mattered not—all that mattered was that the witch was alive—and he needed to die.

  Grunwald saw that the panicked masses had halted in their mindless flight, turning to look upon Annaliese with awe-struck eyes.

  “The Maiden of Sigmar!” someone shouted, and he felt the raw power of their belief.

  “Stay back here!” shouted Grunwald to the girl as he saw the dark shape of the enemy sorcerer snarl and abandon his post. His heart burning with hot fury and anger, the witch hunter began to run once more towards the building, pushing through the motionless crowd who were staring at Annaliese in awe.