There was little discipline in their attack. Whilst the baron’s army ground forwards like some vast mechanism, the beasts came in a tide of unreasoning rage, a mass of fang and fur and steel above which standards and totems bobbed like flotsam on a storm-tossed sea.
“Come along, sir,” Sergeant Hobbs said, raising his voice above the bestial howl, and Viksberg realised that he had stopped marching forwards. The men behind him shoved none too gently and he rounded on them.
“Hold your formation,” he snarled and, with a last regretful look, put the cork back into his flask.
“Sir, we must maintain the line of advance,” Sergeant Hobbs told him, shouting as the thunder of the enemy’s hoof beats drew ever nearer. “We cannot give the enemy a ragged line to exploit.”
“Yes, all right,” Viksberg said and began to dawdle reluctantly forwards. The regiments on either side had already started to edge ahead of them. More fool them, thought Viksberg as he saw the rush of the enemy.
Ahead he saw that some of the larger beasts had already outstripped their comrades. They looked like boar, these monstrosities, but boar from some fevered dream. Their skin was as raw as if they had been roasted, and the squeals and shrieks they emitted made them sound as though they were being roasted still.
Even at this horribly shrinking distance Viksberg could see the spines which erupted from the rippling muscles that worked beneath their tortured hides. The weapons slashed through the air as they ran, as sharp as porcupine quills but as large as cutlasses. There was no courage in their charge, only the frenzied fearlessness of ravenous bloodlust.
Viksberg fancied that he could see the hunger glittering in the vicious slits of their piggy eyes.
When the creatures were no more than a bowshot away a cacophony of trumpets blared out the order to halt. On either side of Viksberg’s regiment the line rolled to the stop, individual regiments shuffling slightly to preserve the perfect edge of their front.
Only then, with a blare of their own trumpets, did a company of swordsmen advance forwards to meet the porcine fury of this wave of beasts. They marched no more than a dozen yards out from the front of the army when, with a shuddering impact, the first of the beasts hurled themselves onto their prey.
The noise of the slaughter was horrendous. Men roared as they fought and screamed as they fell. The beasts squealed with glee as they tasted blood or shrieked with pain whenever steel found its way past their spines and into their flesh. And all the while more of their kind barrelled into the swordsmen who stood like an island of steel amidst an ocean of savagery. Soon they were surrounded by a seething horde of the enemy.
“Why don’t they fall back?” Viksberg asked, glad that they didn’t. Glad of anything that distracted the enemy from him.
“Wait for it, sir,” Hobbs bellowed, mistaking the quiver of emotion in his supposed commander’s voice. “The greatswords know what they are doing. We won’t advance until the enemy is well and truly stuck to them.”
At that very moment, as if in answer to Viksberg’s question, the swordsmen’s trumpet sounded.
“Charge!” roared Hobbs, and the call was echoed all the way down the line. The rest of the front, which had been waiting with the tension of a drawn bow string, surged forwards into the flanks and the rear of the enemy, who now completely surrounded the swordsmen.
Viksberg was carried along with the charge, and with a shriek he suddenly found himself crushed up against the enemy. He held his sword out before him in trembling fingers, the gesture more one of supplication than defiance, but it didn’t matter. They had caught the foul beasts completely unawares, and most were still trying to join their comrades in feasting on the swordsmen when they died.
All around Viksberg his men’s axes rose and fell, beating out a metronome of chopped flesh that filled the air with squeals and a pink misting of blood. Viksberg cowered amongst them, his face a rictus grin of sheer terror, and allowed himself to be shoved ever further forwards.
Eventually they stood level with the swordsmen and the rest of the line straightened out into a new front. Behind them the shattered carcasses of hundreds of beasts lay in the bloodied ground.
“That’s how it’s done,” Sergeant Hobbs said, and slapped Viksberg on the back. The sergeant was splattered with blood, but it did little to dampen the savage joy which blazed on his face.
It was then that Viksberg vomited, earning himself a sarcastic cheer. But even before the jeering had died away the main bulk of the enemy was upon them.
This time there were neither manoeuvres nor tactics. There wasn’t room. Instead there was just the lethal crush and the desperate, animal need to survive.
Even amidst the roar of the battle that raged around the city, the explosion was deafening.
Provost Marshal Steckler, who had been hiding behind the weight of a mortar carriage, felt it suck the air from his lungs even as it punched into his ears, silencing the world around him with a high-pitched whine.
A column of smoke and debris towered up into the sky. It carried with it shattered stone and singed earth and other, less distinguishable shards of debris. Ignoring the lethal rain of this detritus, Steckler clambered to his feet and peered through the acrid clouds of dust to the city wall.
“Thank Sigmar for that,” he said, although beneath the whining in his ears even his own voice was inaudible.
The hole his engineers had blown in Barwedel’s southern wall was as neat and wide as he could have wished for. The only other entrance was the barred city gate which lay on the other side of Barwedel, in the midst of the dark heart of the beasts’ horde.
“Come on,” Steckler bellowed, waving at the overburdened column of men and horses and cannon who waited behind him. On either side their comrades were fighting a desperate battle with the beasts which lapped around the outside of the city walls, and the longer they dawdled the more desperate that battle would become.
“That’s it!” Steckler shouted encouragement as the column began to move. Only the soreness in his throat gave him any idea of the volume at which he was yelling, and he guessed that his engineers, their faces also distorted as they barked orders, were calling out just as loudly and just as inaudibly.
With the column now moving towards the city Steckler decided to leave them to it. The baron had given him the most important role in the battle. It was a simple goal, an impossible goal, a goal which he had every intention of achieving.
“Find high ground and clear lines of fire for the artillery,” the baron had told him before galloping off to lead the southern flank.
Steckler had taken one look at the congested plain of fields around the city and known that there was no such ground. Then he had looked up at the battlements of the city itself and, in that moment, Sigmar had shown him the way.
Now, as he bounded forwards over the rubble and into the city he was already looking impatiently for the quickest way to the battlements on the far wall. His brow furrowed as he looked at the confused tangle of streets his demolition had revealed.
As he tried to decide on the best way forwards a mail-clad guardsman followed by a phalanx of men rushed towards them. The man was red-faced and his mouth was working as he gesticulated towards the ruined wall. As he did so Steckler heard a pop and his hearing returned.
“…curse the lot of you,” the officer was yelling as he pointed to the wall. “You’ve killed us all. How will we defend that from the enemy? Oh.”
The man’s tirade ended as the first of the cannon, the great bronzed bulk of it rattling on its mighty carriage, was dragged into the city. Some of the gunners were busily clearing debris out of the way as, behind the cannon, a mortar was wheeled along, the permanent iron roar of its mouth pointing defiantly up towards the sky. Then another cannon, this one lighter than the first but still big enough to fire a man’s head, and behind that the precise clockwork machine of death that they nicknamed the helblaster.
“That’s how,” Steckler said smugly. “Now then, my good man. I need to get t
hem up onto any walls strong enough to take them. Can you help?”
The officer, who realised his mouth had been open, closed it with a snap.
“Yes,” he said, and although his face was still mottled his eyes were wet with gratitude. “Oh yes, sir.”
“Lead on then,” the provost marshal said, and gave him a friendly slap on the back. “Lead on and let’s get the slaughter begun!”
Gulkroth rode on the chariot with a perfect balance. As it bounced and rattled beneath him he scarcely paid any attention to the movements which had already thrown off one of his retainers. Instead he kept his mind locked on the battle that was raging around him.
So far he had kept his own bloodlust in check. He knew that without his direction the herd’s discipline would evaporate in the joy of battle as quickly as dew beneath the heat of the sun.
But even though he knew it, restraining himself was hard.
When the humans’ army had first arrived he had been enraged by the interruption. His followers had been preparing to seize the city, and although a few hundred of them had fallen to the arrows and bullets of the defenders, thousands more had taken their places in carrying the siege ladders. Then, with the taste of victory in their mouths, it had been snatched away from them by the arrival of the baron’s army. In a single bloody hour the new arrivals had pushed Gulkroth’s forces back from the far side of the city and moved out to contest the flanks on either side of it.
At first this had seemed like misfortune, but now Gulkroth was thanking the Dark Gods for the baron’s arrival. The open ground around Barwedel’s walls was confined on all sides by forest, and there were so many men and so many beasts that there was hardly any room for manoeuvre. Soon the battle had degenerated into a brutal, mindless crush of bodies. And soon after that, Gulkroth’s herd had started to win.
It was a slow, bloody, drawn-out victory, but it was turning into a victory nevertheless. Yard by yard the beasts were pushing back their enemies, trampling over the dead and the dying as they did so.
The humans used what tactics they could to make the beasts pay for the ground they took.
Sometimes a lone unit would stride forwards, allowing itself to be enveloped. Only when the beasts who attacked it were blind to all else would the following regiments advance, slaughtering the beasts where they caught them in the rear.
At other times a company would seem to flee and the herd would pour into the gap it left, in the humans’ line. When that happened the beasts who pursued the fleeing men would invariably find themselves surrounded by waiting regiments. The steel-skinned warriors would then close in on them in a trap that left their corpses piled high and stinking.
Occasionally perfectly timed charges of knights would punch forwards into the horde, biting out a little island of them that the following regiments could easily chew through.
But even when Gulkroth understood these tactics he did nothing to stop his followers pushing so blindly forwards. He had faith in their purity of aggression and, despite the humans’ discipline and stratagems, that faith was being rewarded.
Already he could sense a real panic gripping his enemies. He could smell the delicious scent of their ripening fear and sense the stale-sweated desperation of their increasing exhaustion. Where bloodshed made his followers stronger it drained the humans of energy, and if they were weak now, how much more so would they be when the Chaos Moon rose to cast its blessing over the land?
He was contemplating his victory when the ancient shaman Ruhrkar appeared beside him and tapped him with his staff.
“My lord,” the ancient said, rheumy eyes wet with discharge. “We must withdraw and lure the humans back into the forest.”
“Withdraw?” Gulkroth snarled, a low, venomous hiss that had the beasts around him cowering on the floor.
“To the embrace of the forest,” Ruhrkar repeated. “If we draw the enemy in after us we will destroy them.”
For the past three days Gulkroth had been restraining the eternal rage that coursed though his body. He had been forced to by the need to orchestrate the campaign. But now, with victory in his hands, he allowed himself to snap.
It felt glorious, like diving off a high cliff into a deep pool. A feeling of utter bliss came over him as he turned and struck at his tormentor in a single, fluid movement. The blow would have killed any of his herd, and it should have killed Ruhrkar too. But the shaman, it seemed, was not quite as tired of living as he claimed.
Before Gulkroth’s outstretched claw could hit him he flitted to the other side of the gnarled old stick he carried and muttered a word. Green fire flared from the wood and ran along the ancient’s withered frame, there to circle and writhe.
Gulkroth roared as he recoiled from the sorcerous defence, and the air was suddenly full of the smell of his singed fur. He held his forearm up to examine the pink skin which had been revealed by the flame, and suddenly his loss of temper was no longer a matter of choice. It was as inevitable as the turning of the seasons or the falling of a stone.
Leaping from his chariot he swung his axe in a blurred arc that plummeted down towards the shaman. The metal shrieked as it hit the fire, and for a second the blade glowed orange. Then it hit its target and there was a hiss and the smell of boiling blood as it bit down through skull and vertebrae and ribcage, cleaving Ruhrkar’s body in two as easily as if it had been a log on the chopping block.
Gulkroth could feel the ancient’s life leave him, and as it did so a wave of unravelling energy washed over the beastlord. He stood with his arms outstretched, revelling in the wild smack of raw magic, and howled with the savage joy of life.
That was when the cannon ball hit him.
It took him on the shoulder, and as the bone-shattered echoes of the impact spread though his entire frame. Ribs snapped, ligaments tore. He realised that he was spinning through the air a split second before he landed. The ground bounced beneath him, and when the air in his lungs was driven out he saw that it was flecked with droplets of blood.
Around him a terrible howling went up as his guard looked on in despair. Gulkroth ignored them as he breathed, drawing in a lungful of air that felt so sharp that it might have been full of thorns. Ignoring the shards of ribs that moved freely within the muscle of his chest, he clambered back to his hooves and looked around him.
The cannon ball which had struck him had not been alone. Even as he looked towards the city walls he could see the flare of more artillery from gaps which had been knocked in the battlements, and the acrid stink of blackpowder drifted towards him.
Another cannon ball whistled past his ear and crunched into the beasts who stood behind him. He ignored their screams as he clambered back onto his chariot and took stock.
The flow of the battle was already turning. As well as the lethal trajectories the cannon were slicing through his ranks, explosions were also starting to mushroom up as the mortars coughed their own charges into the fray. The packed ranks of the beasts made a perfect target for the artillery, and as he saw the slaughter which was raining down around him Gulkroth felt his anger rising.
This time he kept it in check. His body was already knitting back together as the magic flowed through it. Bones re-knit and sinews writhed back together like bundles of mating snakes.
Ruhrkar, it seemed, had been right. It was time to pull back and draw the enemy into the forest. There, hidden by the canopy, they would be able to do their killing safe from the lethal attentions of the guns.
Afterwards, when the army was gone, they could worry about winkling the gunners out of their carapace of a city.
With a raised arm Gulkroth summoned his messengers to him. They swooped down from where they had been circling in the thermals above, their shadows skittering over the battle below.
One by one he took their misshapen heads in his hands, leant forwards and said: “Withdraw to the eastern forest.”
When they repeated the message their voices rumbled with the same low, terrifying tones of their lord, and on
e by one they flapped back up into the air to carry his orders to all corners of the battlefield.
Gulkroth watched the last of them go and, ignoring the sudden cloud of shrapnel and body parts which erupted to his left, told his chariot driver to carry him back to the forest.
He was halfway there when he realised that it wasn’t only blackpowder smoke he could smell. He paused and sniffed. Then his eyes widened as, flickering amongst the dark fastness of the forest, he saw the first of the flames.
He had ordered the herd into a forest that was on fire.
An image of Ruhrkar’s mocking visage darkened his vision, then disappeared as the racing flames licked up one of the trees. Soon it was burning like a torch, and he could smell boiling sap as well as the thickening pall of smoke.
So it was that, caught between steel and fire and raked with artillery, the herd found itself confronted by the Gentleman’s Free Company of Hergig.
“Keep together!” Erikson cried, his voice lost amongst the roar of the quickening flames. He had regretted the audacity of his plan almost as soon as he had executed it but now, with the fire they had started out of control, he had little choice but to race it out of the woods and into the rear of the beasts’ army.
He needn’t have wasted his breath on encouraging his men. The fire was devouring the tinder-dry forest with a ravenous hunger on either side of the company, and the heat was herding the men forwards like a flock of sheep. Even when they started to run, crashing through the undergrowth in something approaching panic, it nipped at their heels, singeing their hair and heating their armour into something you could fry an egg on.
“Run!” yelled Erikson as, just ahead of them, a tree collapsed in an explosion of sparks.
It was another redundant order. The company was already sprinting forwards, armour and weapons clinking as they vaulted over obstructions and shoved each other out of the way.
But as fast as they ran, the fire ran faster. It flew from tree to tree in the canopy overhead, and their path was veiled with showers of burning twigs. Erikson snarled defiance as he rushed through them, brushing away the sudden flashes of scalding pain on his hands. As he did so a small, wiry shape bolted past him and he watched as Porter took the lead.
Broken Honour Page 29
