In the forefront of the charge were Gabriel, Jubal Kane, Garnedd and Kyriel, the young standard bearer. These four stayed together, whilst behind them their line was chopped to pieces, and the warhorses were brought down neighing and screaming one by one, their riders pulled from their backs and torn to pieces on the ground. Dismounted men fought back to back with sword and pistol-butt and finally with their fists and teeth. The enemy mobbed them, dragging them down by sheer weight of numbers. Four and five of the Khornate warriors would attack a single trooper at a time, and though one or two might go down, the rest would smash blow after blow into the beleaguered soldier until he was on his knees. Then he would fall to the ground to be mutilated, his innards spread far and wide, his limbs amputated and held aloft as trophies.
Arion had taken a deep stab wound in his stomach, from which a rope of intestine was protruding, but still the valiant animal kicked and fought and answered his master’s rein. Atop him, Gabriel fought as he had never fought before. He had never felt so alive, so in tune with his surroundings, so aware of each and every movement of his blade. Never in all the years he had been a soldier had he ever known such savage joy in battle. All his life, he felt, had prepared him for this. It was the culmination of his existence.
‘Michael!’ he bellowed out the word with a kind of happiness. His brother was mere yards away, and turned his head. He took off his helm, and the thing which was underneath was indeed Michael Morgan, and yet it bore little resemblance to the handsome, dark-haired knight that Michael had been. The hair was gone, the skin was sallow and ridged with scars, the lips were blue and hacked, drawn back from long yellow teeth, and in the eyes there was a light like that of a wolf’s eye caught in lamplight. But the essential bones were still there; the face was still a shape that Gabriel knew.
‘Gabriel!’ the thing shouted, grinning horribly. Its tongue was long and black, and seemed to have changed the voice also. There was nothing human about it.
‘Come, make way there for my brother, you scum! I wish to embrace him!’
The ranks of the enemy opened out before Gabriel. He kicked Arion forwards, hardly aware of the cataclysmic roar of the battle all about him. Behind him, Jubal and Garnedd and Kyriel and a few others were still fighting desperately for their lives, but no enemy warrior raised so much as a knife against Gabriel Morgan as he rode forward to meet with his brother.
Michael dismounted from his misshapen steed and drew a sword, a crooked, uneven blade with a serrated edge. He wore red armour trimmed with fur and hung about with chains, and seemed taller than he had ever been before. He towered over Gabriel as his brother dismounted also, old Arion wheezing and grunting with pain.
‘You have come a long way,’ Michael said, still grinning, his black tongue slipping in and out from behind his teeth like a snake.
‘As have you,’ Gabriel said calmly. He rested one arm on Arion’s neck. In his other hand was his sword, and blood was dripping from the point of it to make a dark circle in the muddied snow. The tiredness was seeping into his bones now, but he stood up straight, taking strength from the dying horse beside him.
If Arion can stay on his feet, then so can I, thought Gabriel.
‘I have missed you, brother,’ Michael said, and stepped forward. ‘I cannot tell you how much I have wanted this moment, how I have desired to see your face again.’
‘And I yours,’ Gabriel said, and meant it.
What did they do to you, for the love of all the gods, my brother, what did they make of you – what agonies did they inflict to bring you to this?
Despite himself, Gabriel felt the heat of tears start behind his eyes. He had not expected that – he had not thought he could still speak to his brother.
‘You are here to kill me,’ Michael said. ‘I know that, and do not blame you for it. It is what you are. You are the best of men, little brother, the very best of men. It is for that reason I speak to you now. Gabriel–’ Michael drew closer, until Gabriel could smell him. He stank like a beast, and there seemed to be a heat off him, something unearthly, preternatural. The light in his eyes was hard to meet. Gabriel dropped his gaze.
‘I wish to have my brother back again, at my side,’ Michael said. ‘You and I together again, riding at the head of an army – it is what we were born to do, Gabriel, is it not? Join with me. Cast aside your delusions, the half-baked fancies we had bred into us from childhood. The hard, real world is not what we think it is. Reality is not all that it seems
’
He drew closer. ‘There are great and wonderful powers within and without this petty little world we stand upon, powers which are eternal, and who know how to reward good service. We could rise very high, you and I. Gabriel – listen to me! We could become immortal.’
Gabriel raised his head, and met his brother’s bright eyes. A tear ran down his face, cutting a streak of white through the blood. It must be done now.
‘No,’ he said.
His sword came up, as quick as an adder’s strike, the point aimed at his brother’s throat. He put all of his remaining strength into the blow, and felt the pure, perfect movement of his arm as his thrust went home–
And was beaten aside. The sword was flicked out of his hand in a movement too fast for the eye to follow.
Michael shook his head. ‘You disappoint me, Gabriel. You are a grave disappointment. I had not thought my brother to be a fool.’ He backed away. For a tiny moment, a flicker of something like grief passed over his face. Then it was gone. To the warriors who stood clustered around he snapped: ‘Kill him. Kill him now, and that damned horse beside him.’ He turned his back on his brother, and walked back to his monstrous beast.
Gabriel swayed on the balls of his feet. The Chaos warriors around him hacked at Arion. The big horse was too far gone to fight back, but he strove stubbornly to stay on his feet. Then he fell to his knees on the ground, and Gabriel leant against him as a sword-blow took him on the shoulder, numbing his left arm. He bowed his head, seeing Arion blow bright bubbles of blood out into the snow as they stabbed him in the lungs, feeling the cold steel enter his own body as they thrust at him, and saw under his nose the worn leather of the saddle-holster. He opened the flap, gripped the pistol within, raised it and cocked it all in one smooth, fluid motion. A nub of match remained, still smouldering a dull red on the wheel.
In a clear, cold voice, he called out: ‘Michael.’
His brother turned.
Gabriel pulled the trigger.
The Chaos host opened out and broke like a rotten apple. A small group of still fighting men, all on foot, held together as something like a wave of panic engulfed their enemies. These men cut their way south, away from the river, as mobs of the enemy flashed past them, somehow bewildered, lost, hardly caring to even make a fight. At the top of the hillside upon which the cavalry had formed up that morning, Jubal Kane finally called a halt. He looked around him like a man who had woken up in a strange room.
‘Who have we here? Garnedd, Harpius, Arundel? How many are we?’ he closed his eyes, swaying.
‘The general did it,’ Garnedd said. ‘Their leader fell. They fell apart straight after, like ants when you kick open their nest.’
Jubal straightened, and looked down into the valley below, a charnel house where the dead were more populous than the living. The enemy companies were wading in disorder back across the river, disappearing into the trees of the dank forest beyond. It was hard to make them out as anything else than a dark stain on the snow, for darkness was finally upon them, and in the dark the snow was thickening.
Perhaps a dozen men stood around him, all of them bloodied in some fashion or other, all with that look in their eyes, the tired resignation of men who have seen enough. Even as he noted their features, they seemed to fade into the darkness, faceless men who had expected to die today, and were somewhat taken aback to find themselves still alive.
‘The brothers Morgan are no more,’ Jubal said in a stronger voice. ‘One of them undid the s
in of the other. Both were my friends, whatever became of them. They were the finest men I have known.’
‘They’ll be drinking with Sigmar tonight,’ Harpius said in that clear, singer’s voice of his. ‘I honour them. They are at peace.’
‘And what about us? What do we do now?’ young Arundel asked, shivering.
Jubal sighed, and lifted his face to the invisible kiss of the snow.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
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