So much blood, so much blood, was all he kept thinking.
Eber was staring at him when he turned back. An incongruous look of serenity softened his face.
‘I always thought of you…’ he said with the last of his breath, ‘…like a father.’
When Brand and Lenkmann arrived, Karlich was crouched down shaking his head. His eyes were rimed with tears. It would be easy to give in then, but the battle wasn’t done. A prince fought for his life, fought for all their lives in the valley below.
‘Help me carry him,’ said Karlich in a distant voice. Gazing down into the cauldron below, he hoped the sacrifice they’d made would be worth it.
For a fat brute, Grom was quick. And he fought with the fury of a caged boar. A savage punch sent hot spikes of agony rushing through Wilhelm’s jaw where the goblin king had connected. His eyes filled with white needles that threatened to turn to black. The prince shook off the nausea and disorientation that tried to overwhelm him. He bit his lip, finding clarity in pain, before fending off Grom’s bearded axe with Dragon Tooth’s blade.
Around him, the prince’s charges fought so their lord might get his chance, his one chance to defeat the Paunch and end the war – at least for Reikland. Greatsworders from the Carroburg Few, led by their grizzled champion, fought side by side with spearmen from Auerswald and citizen militias from countless villages and small towns. The Reikland had rallied for their province and their prince. Wilhelm was determined not be found wanting, but reward their faith in him.
Grom came again, the low thwump of his axe like a death knell when it swept overhead. It met Wilhelm’s runefang with a dissonant clang and forced the prince back a step. Another swing, overhead and hard. Wilhelm parried high, pushing the axe blade out and wide, before driving into the beast with his armoured shoulder.
It was like hitting a wall of lead. Grom’s flesh was as unyielding as it was obese. Though he’d jarred his shoulder, Wilhelm was close enough to yank the dagger from the belt at his hip and stab the greenskin king in the neck. He drove it deep, one-handed – the other gripped Dragon Tooth – until the fat brute squealed.
Grom used his bulk to drive Wilhelm off, the dagger wrenched from the prince’s grasp but still embedded in the goblin’s neck. Grom yanked it free with a spit of dark blood. In moments the wound closed and the Paunch smiled through spine-like teeth the colour of rust.
Wilhelm rolled Dragon Tooth around in a circle, tracing arcs of flame in the air that vanished in seconds.
‘Just a taste,’ promised the prince, but inwardly he despaired at the goblin’s apparent invulnerability.
Grom snorted, belched and came at him again. One solid hit from his axe, which was no ordinary blade, and Wilhelm was sure he’d be maimed or dead. Anger made the goblin king reckless. His first strike cut thin air. Wilhelm went to counter, but Grom’s wrath also lent him strength. Another punch crumpled the prince’s fauld and sent lances of agony into his abdomen. This time he embraced the pain and fashioned a lunge into Grom’s exposed thigh.
Dragon Tooth went deep and the rancid stink of burning meat clouded the air. Wilhelm ignored it, goring with his blade, dragging a deep and painful cleft in the greenskin’s seemingly regenerative flesh.
Grom squealed, porcine and high in pitch. So close, their bodies touching, he leaned over to bite the prince’s shoulder. Wilhelm’s pain escaped in an agonised yelp, but he kept the pressure up and drove his runefang deeper. Grom stopped the biting when he threw his head back to squeal again. Wilhelm was reminded of hunting swine in the Reikwald Forest. Stuck boar made a similar noise. This was no prize to mount on the mantle, no hog roast to enjoy by a roaring hearth; it was a dire foe that had brought the Empire to its knees.
‘I’ll cut you dow–’
Grom butted the prince hard, stalling his vow. Wilhelm’s sword didn’t leave his grip as he fell back, and the blade pulled out from the goblin king’s leg with the tearing of flesh. The axe blow that followed would have finished the prince were it not for the last Griffonkorps selling his life to save his liege-lord. Plate parted before Grom’s crimson-edged blade, cutting the gallant knight in two and spilling him all over the field like offal.
Wilhelm feared the goblin king was restored again and back for more, but when the dizziness abated he saw the wound Dragon Tooth had scored was not closing. That last axe strike was the lashing of a desperate beast in terrible pain. The skin on Grom’s leg was burned black, seared by a captured flame.
Kogswald had been right about the trolls, and the goblin king’s miraculous healing was due to the physiology of those beasts. Fire was anathema to them, and so it was to Grom. The Paunch was in agony. Two large savage orcs held him upright as he cursed and frothed. With their overlord’s wounding, the fight was ebbing from the deranged greenskins. Their berserker’s fervour was almost tapped. A rank of the beasts went down to spears and greatswords as the Empire men fought to hold the advantage.
Grom looked about to rally, digging deep of his pain to find the molten anger at its core. When Wilhelm showed him Dragon Tooth and flared the blade into fiery life, the goblin king faltered. He shied away from the ancestral sword, fearful of its burning edge, afraid for his precious flesh and acutely aware of his own mortality.
Goblins were craven creatures, even brutes as large and cunning as Grom. He knew this was a fight he was unwilling to pay the cost to win. Snorting in the crude language of the greenskins, Grom ordered the savage orcs to withdraw and bear him away from the fire-blade into the bargain.
Across the valley, the Empire and their allies sensed the balance shift in their favour. At either flank they pressed the greenskins even harder, a final effort to send them from the field. Wilhelm led the centre, his victorious warriors butchering the orcs and goblins too belligerent to buckle with their warlord.
From the ridgeline harquebuses cracked, harrying the greenskins at every step, until their shot and powder were exhausted. As the smoke settled and the noise of battle died to be replaced by the sullen moans of dying, the Empire was left on the field.
They had bloodied Grom’s nose. The Paunch was far from defeated, but they had repelled him from Reikland and kept Altdorf safe.
Wilhelm would learn later that Grom had turned northwards, across the border and into Middenland. Todbringer would have to face the greenskin horde now and see if his armoured bulwarks could weather the vented storm as he had hoped.
For Reikland’s part, they let the goblins go. The battle was won but there were precious few troops left alive in the valley to savour it. Certainly, there was not army enough to follow the Paunch north all the way to Middenheim.
Instead, Wilhelm raised the army’s banner. It was soiled and bloody from where it had fallen in the earth as the last Griffonkorps had died. Still, it fluttered proudly in the prince’s grasp. He lifted Dragon Tooth to the heavens and a great cheer went up, hounding the greenskins all the way past the border.
Victory was Reikland’s.
And upon the ridge, a sergeant and his men praised almighty Sigmar for that.
Epilogue
Reikland prairie, on the outskirts of Altdorf,
Eight miles from the new capital of the Empire
The grey day matched Karlich’s mood as he surveyed a steel sky from a rocky outcrop. It was a day of reunion and remembrance. Four years had passed since Waaagh! Grom had blighted the Empire and brought his country to its very knees.
Karlich was proud to have been there at the end, at least for Reikland. Tales still drifted down to southern provinces of the razing of Middenland and the destruction of a temple of the White Wolves at Middenheim. Grom’s anger hadn’t been sated at Nuln, that much was obvious. After that, the beast had carried on northwards to the ocean and lands far beyond the Empire’s and even the Old World’s shores.
It was a day of great change, too. Altdorf, in all its magnificent glory, lay below. W
agons entered the city in their droves. For three days and nights it had been thus, as the Golden Palace of Nuln was stripped of its ostentation and Dieter’s ill-gotten wealth redistributed. Even years later, there was much that needed to be rebuilt. Grom’s invasion had left a lasting and destructive legacy behind it. The poorer villages and hamlets felt its bite more than most. Here was where the money was needed. Wilhelm, Saviour of the Reik, would see it was spent wisely.
It turned out the assassins and the dealings with Marienburg were but scraps of a larger treachery, some of which was, admittedly, perpetuated by Ledner. Karlich didn’t know many details, save what he had heard down the years. It seemed Dieter’s Golden Palace, all of his accumulated wealth, had been garnered from bribes. Marienburg had recently seceded from the Empire, its independence bought through Imperial corruption. At his prince’s behest, Adolphus Ledner had uncovered documents and witnesses that would attest to Dieter’s role in it. Many were sick of his indolent rule and like sharks scenting blood, descended upon the Emperor. It had taken time to expose these dealings, especially in the aftermath of the war, but in the end an emergency council at Volkshalle in Altdorf had seen the then Emperor deposed. He’d fled to Marienburg, in fear for his life. Rumours abounded that an army from Reikland was headed to the Wasteland to bring him back. Wilhelm was his worthy successor. With a new Emperor came a new capital, and for the first time in many years that honour was Altdorf’s again.
‘Grim day for a coronation,’ remarked a voice Karlich knew from behind him.
‘Lenkmann!’ He shook hands with his old banner bearer in the manner of a firm friend.
Since the war, the Grimblades had been disbanded. There were so few of them left that there seemed little point in going on. Even with recruits, it wouldn’t have been the same regiment – not anymore.
Lenkmann wore a sergeant’s silver laurels on his lapel now. Karlich had heard the lad got his own command. It was well deserved.
‘Pristine as ever, I see,’ he said, clapping Lenkmann warmly on the shoulders and looking him up and down. Not a buckle out of place. He was immaculate in his dress attire.
‘Some things don’t change,’ Lenkmann replied, with a note of sadness he couldn’t hide.
‘And this?’ asked Karlich, pointing to his eye.
He’d lost it during the battle in the valley, which the poets had dubbed ‘Glory at Bloody Gorge’. Well, the bards were right about one thing.
‘I think the patch gives me an air of danger.’ Lenkmann laughed, not deigning to touch it. Several years without his left eye, but he still hadn’t fully adjusted. Perhaps he never would. ‘We all lost something that day, though.’
Karlich smiled but his face still matched the brooding sky.
‘I heard you’re no longer serving in the army,’ Lenkmann ventured after a moment’s silence.
Karlich looked to the city. Several regiments were already trooping through Altdorf’s gates to observe the pomp and ceremony. He recognised the banner of von Rauken’s Carroburg Few and hoped the veteran champion was still amongst them. Their ranks, so badly battered during the campaign of four years ago, had been swelled by fresh blood.
‘Not sure it’s in me anymore. I only joined to escape the past. This’ll be the last time I don armour and uniform,’ he said.
Unlike Lenkmann, Karlich felt ill at ease in the dress attire he’d been given. The coronation not only celebrated the crowning of the new Emperor, it also commemorated and honoured those who had fallen to secure Reikland’s sovereignty almost five years ago. Karlich was amongst the esteemed guests, one of few that no longer served but had survived the battle.
‘Ledner’s dead you know. You’ve nothing to fear from him or his lackeys anymore.’
He’d told them all, those who still lived amongst his closest companions, about Vanhans and even Grelle the Confessor. Not a man amongst them raised so much as an accusing eyebrow, not even Von Rauken. It was past, another life.
‘Lung rot, I heard.’
‘Painful way to go,’ said Lenkmann.
‘He’d earned it.’
‘Yes he had.’
Karlich took out his pipe. Smoke drifted on the breeze after he’d fired it up, carried down to the city below them.
‘Did you bring it?’
When Karlich faced him again, he saw Lenkmann was cradling a dusky-looking bottle in his arm.
‘Wasn’t easy to procure.’ Lenkmann held it up to his eye. ‘But this is it. Middenland hooch. Rechts must’ve had a stomach like a horse.’
‘And a face to match,’ added Karlich.
They laughed at that, but not for long.
Karlich surveyed the sloping outcrop behind them. It was studded with rocks and wild grass, but nothing else.
‘Doesn’t look like he’s coming. Shame that,’ he said genuinely.
‘Let’s get to it, then. Captain Vogen will flay me if I’m late for the Emperor-elect.’
Lenkmann offered the bottle to Karlich, who declined. ‘First honours are yours, Bader.’
Lenkmann gave his old sergeant a reproachful glance, before uncorking the hooch and taking a swig.
Coughing and spluttering, he handed it over to Karlich. The ex-sergeant was more of a hardened drinker and took the pull without complaint.
‘Not to your taste,’ he smiled, wiping a trickle of brown liquid from his lip.
‘I prefer something with taste other than that of neat alcohol, if that’s what you mean.’
Karlich grinned, before assuming a solemn expression. He turned to the horizon and slowly upended the bottle. The dark liquid trickled out over the grass, a last drink to old friends.
‘To the fallen,’ he said, drawing Stahler’s sword and planting it in the alcohol-soaked ground.
‘Aye, to Varveiter and Eber, to Keller and Rechts…’
‘To Volker and Masbrecht,’ said Karlich, ‘to all the Grimblades. And to Stahler,’ he added.
‘May Morr take them to his breast and Sigmar welcome them in the halls of heroes.’
Karlich let the bottle fall after Lenkmann had finished.
‘It’s done then.’
‘It’s done.’
Lenkmann faced him, saluted once and outstretched his hand. ‘It’s been an honour, sir.’
Karlich ignored the hand and hugged him warmly like a brother.
Lenkmann was taken aback at first but reciprocated the gesture.
‘Come on,’ said Karlich as they parted. ‘Mustn’t keep Emperor Wilhelm waiting.’
They left the outcrop together just as a shaft of sunlight poked through the clouds.
When they were gone, another figure came out of hiding to stand upon the rocky ridge overlooking the city, a mean looking mastiff following at his heel.
Remembrances were best observed alone, Brand always thought. Besides, a reunion would only raise awkward questions. He had no intention of returning to Altdorf or the army. An old profession had come calling again and Brand meant to heed it. This would be his last act as a Grimblade.
He regarded the spilled alcohol and the gleaming sword. He was tempted to take it, such was its craftsmanship, but that would dishonour the captain and he couldn’t have that. Instead, he saluted once, a final acknowledgement to old friends and an old life.
Brand didn’t linger. He was bound for the port of Marienburg where a ship would take him to Tilea. He hadn’t been there since he was sixteen but had heard of openings in various guilds for men of his calibre.
The small parcel in his hands contained his old uniform. Beneath the paper, it was still stained with blood. Brand laid it down and walked away.
‘Come, Volker!’ he snapped, and the mastiff dutifully followed.
Chapter One
Tannhauser’s Gift
Captain Kurdt Tannhauser was dead. His heart was still hammering fierc
ely beneath his breastplate, but he knew that each powerful thud only took him closer to the grave. As his charger tore onwards through a blur of steel and fire, the screams of his dying men trailed after him. There would be no triumphant homecoming tonight.
Most of the soldiers who had struck out from Mercy’s End had fallen far behind; or just fallen. Bergolt and Gelfrat were still alive, but they were mired in a forest of axes and swords. The panthers emblazoned on their banners were scorched and torn and their sword strikes grew weaker with each desperate blow. Within minutes, they would be dead. The artillery had fallen silent and even the roguish Ditmarus and his pistoliers had vanished from view. Tannhauser could only assume they had finally achieved the glorious end they had always joked about.
Turning away from the bloodbath that surrounded him, he steered his mount towards a single glittering point. Perched on a nearby hilltop, surveying the carnage was a dazzling figure: a sliver of light in the darkness, sat calmly amidst the shadowy hordes with six shimmering wings arching upwards from its back.
Freed from the twin constraints of fear and hope, Captain Tannhauser charged up the hill towards this beautiful horror. Axes and spears hurtled towards him, but his speed confounded even the most practised aim. He rose up in his saddle and held his sword aloft, so that the light of the moons ran along its battered edge. With his other hand he removed his helmet and cast it down onto the mud, revelling in the wind, rain and blood that lashed into his face. ‘Join me, Mormius,’ he whispered, as he raced towards the gleaming figure. ‘Join me in death.’
At the brow of the hill, a wall of tusks and muscle barred his way. Towering men in greasy animal furs and crude iron armour charged to meet him as he neared their champion. The pounding rain blurred their forms, making iridescent ghosts of them, but even the terrible weather could not shield Tannhauser from the extent of their deformity. Elongated arms reached out towards him through the downpour; arms contorted beyond all recognition, ending in cruel, serrated beaks. As he bore down on them, Tannhauser struggled to distinguish one shape from another: arachnid limbs, twisted muscles and gnarled tusks all merged into a nightmarish whole.
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