Cries of anger and dismay suddenly went up from a group of flagellants as a crude rattling chariot charged across the battlefield at breakneck speed. Resembling nothing more than several large pieces of lumber nailed and strapped together, it was drawn by two hulking creatures that looked like wild boars mutated into huge horned and tusked monsters.
The tuskgors—for that was the name these warped animals were known by—ploughed through the ranks of the Sigmarite army, dragging the shaking chariot behind them. They crushed any who got in the way of their heavy hooves or the iron-banded wheels of the wheeled platform they hauled.
One man was impaled on the horns of one of the tuskgors and then tossed high into the air as it threw its head back. The unfortunate wretch landed amidst a pack of ravening, battle-frenzied ungors that proceeded to tear him limb from limb.
Smashing another beast-creature to the ground with his now flame-wreathed warhammer, Wilhelm took stock of the battle. What his men lacked in formal weapon training they made up for in sheer zealous aggression and determination.
Close by a man was whimpering, half his face was hanging off as he had been dealt a vicious blow by a cleaver-weapon. The human fighters were being cut down by axes and huge gutting knives. Arterial blood was fountaining into the air from stumps of limbs and half-severed necks. Something that might once have been either a wolf or a wild dog took down a half-armoured flagellant and tore off his head with distended, crushing jaws.
The priest knew that he had to do something or the battle would be lost. He kicked out, and planted his foot in the pug-face of one of the lesser beastmen, booting it aside. He turned Kreuz towards the beastman champion that was cutting a bloody swathe through the ranks of his army.
The shaggy-haired, goat-headed abomination wore the curve-horned skull of another of its kind on the belt about its waist. No doubt the skull had belonged to a rival this monster had bested in combat to become the wargor champion. However, the goat skull was not only a sign of the beastman’s status, it could also be used as a weapon.
As Wilhelm bore down on the beast the creature thrust itself towards an unfortunate halberdier, taking the man’s eye out and ripping off half of his face. At the same time he beheaded the man behind with the blade of his chariot axle.
“Against the children of Chaos we trust in the light of Lord Sigmar!” the warrior priest exclaimed and, with the holy power of the Heldenhammer surging through his every fibre, he struck the champion’s weapon a ringing blow. What was left of the axle shaft splintered in two and was knocked from the monster’s grip.
The wargor grunted but before it could react Wilhelm had struck again. A flash of light burst from the head of his hammer as he did so and the beast howled in pain as the searing golden glare blinded it. As the creature flailed with its filthy talons in front of its face, Wilhelm struck again and again.
Neighing wildly, Kreuz reared up on his hind legs and crashed his hooves down upon the great barrel chest of the beast. The wargor stumbled backwards and toppled over completely. There was a sickening crunch, like a pumpkin being pronged by a pitchfork, and the tips of sharpened stakes burst through the creature’s face and torso.
Wilhelm had not realised how close to the outskirts of the village his charge had taken him. The blinded beastman had been driven back onto the staked defences erected on Walderand’s outskirts.
A howl went up from the nearest beastmen that was soon taken up by the rest of the herd. Their champion was down, slaughtered like a beast in an abattoir. It was just the breakthrough Wilhelm’s entourage needed.
The herd broke apart in panic, turning from the battle and bounding back to the cover of the darkly brooding woodland. At first only the ungors fled from the battle. Then their larger cousins, seeing their numbers dwindling against the increasingly incensed attacks of the humans, also turned tail and ran. Within moments the beastmen were gone, their hoots and brays echoing back through the trees to the ears of the victorious Sigmarites.
Lector Wilhelm Faustus’ victorious rabble were not prepared to leave it there.
“The enemy are in rout,” someone yelled.
“This is not over until we have run to ground every last one of the foul beasts,” a flagellant shouted.
“Not one of the twisted spawn must be left alive!” echoed another.
Paying little heed to the dead and dying who lay on the blood-soaked meadow, those still in a condition to fight followed the dwindling cries of the beastmen into the encroaching forest, straight into the beasts’ own territory.
“Sigmar’s teeth!” Wilhelm cursed, his breath coming in great heaving gasps after his exertions.
If he was to save what remained of his zealot army, the warrior priest knew what he had to do, even though the thought of such an action went against his better judgement. Pushing Kreuz to gallop once more, Wilhelm drove his steed up the slope and into the green gloom of the forest, the domain of the beastmen.
Beneath the trees it was as dark as dusk. Wilhelm left Walderand behind as he penetrated the twisted depths of the primeval forest in pursuit of his overzealous entourage and the beastmen. He could hear the shouts of the men who had sworn to follow him into battle against the hordes of evil receding into the distance.
Just for a moment Wilhelm Faustus wondered if he had been a little too hasty to pursue his men and the routed herd. Perhaps he had allowed his religious fervour to drive him to recklessness in his determination to purge the land of the children of Chaos. He had rushed headlong into the woods on the heels of his entourage just as they had raced after the fleeing beastmen. This was the beasts’ territory after all.
This was the Forest of Shadows, a vast expanse of ancient, untamed woodland. Legends and rumours abounded about the place, about what was supposed to lie within its haunted depths. There were tales of greenskins and mythical Chaos-warped leviathans of another age, along with stories of beastmen encampments and long-forgotten barrow mounds.
It seemed that the beasts had vanished after entering the twisted tangle of trees and dense undergrowth. The lector could no longer hear the sounds of the fleeing herd that had crashed through the undergrowth, hollering and braying.
Wilhelm abruptly reined Kreuz to a halt. He heard a rustling from somewhere in the darkened canopy above him and looked up.
A beastman came crashing down on him from the branches of the tree. The full weight of the feral creature collided with the priest, knocking him out of the saddle and onto the root-knotted ground. Panicked by the sudden attack, Kreuz bolted off into the trees.
Wilhelm tried to pick himself up as the beastman rolled aside, only to find himself surrounded by more of the degenerate creatures, ungors and their larger goat-headed cousins. The warrior priest reached for his holy weapon.
“Sigmar’s hammer!” he cursed, his voice booming between the twisted trees over the jeering snarls and whoops of the beasts.
Once again it seemed that brute cunning had won out over human courage and intelligence. He was surrounded and horribly outnumbered, in the territory of the herd, cut off from all other help.
Wilhelm began to form a prayer to Sigmar to call down his patron’s divine wrath upon the foe. He raised his consecrated weapon to smite the nearest of the animals.
He heard the crack of the spear-shaft striking the back of his head before he blacked out and then he was aware of nothing more.
NINE
Chaos Ex Machina
“When asked, What is the name of the noblest of metals? Thou shalt respond: ‘Gold’.”
—From The Training of
the Alchemist by Balthasar Gelt
The party had been travelling for several days and had cleared the enemy cordon surrounding Wolfenburg. Just as Konrad Kurtz had promised, the secret tunnel leading from the dungeon in the castle had brought them out south of the city, at the foot of a wooded hill. The nearest Northmen camp was roughly half a mile away.
As the soldiers emerged from the narrow cave-mouth into the tw
ilit summer night they saw the flickering glow of camp-fires and heard the bestial carousing of the Chaos forces as they readied their weapons for war, or paid homage to their foul pantheon of Dark Gods. As far as the wizard and the Imperial soldiers could tell, none of the enemy host had seen them.
They had moved as quickly and as quietly as they could, keeping to the cover of grassy hummocks and straggly trees growing from the uneven ground. After a couple of miles of cross-country travel. Captain Reimann had led the party onto the road and the speed of their progress improved. Just before dawn they had rested within the depths of a dense coppice, with at least two men keeping watch at all times.
If at all possible they wanted to try to avoid any encounters with the enemy at such an early stage. They were one regiment supported by one wizard after all, and they had no idea how far they might have to travel before they found the missing cannon train. And even then they had no idea what they would have to deal with when they did find it—if they did.
They were travelling steadily south-west, towards Schmiedorf a distance of seven leagues from Wolfenburg all told. They had two scouts ahead to warn of anything approaching on the road. They had seen neither hide nor hair of any forces, Imperial or heathen, in all that time. However, neither had they seen any sign of the cannon train or the Templar knights that had been sent to escort the guns to Wolfenburg. Too much time had passed for there to be any tracks left to read on the road.
The journey had been a quiet one. Karl Reimann’s men engaged in occasional muttered conversation but they never included the wizard. He knew they were wary of him, and uneasy about having him in their party. The only time their captain spoke to him was when he wanted Gerhart’s opinion on a suggested course of action, or if he wanted the wizard to read the flow of the winds of magic and warn them of approaching danger, which wasn’t often.
As they trudged on Gerhart found himself considering what would happen on their return to Wolfenburg. If they were able to complete their mission and make it back to the beleaguered city he doubted very much that the tunnel would still be open to them. In all likelihood it would have been blocked, in case their exit had in fact been observed by any of the Chaos troops.
Besides, Gerhart thought, with a glimmer of untypical optimism, if they completed their mission they would not need to use the tunnel to make it back into the city. They could simply blast their way through the enemy lines with the recovered cannons.
“Captain, look at this,” one of the halberdiers said.
The soldier’s commanding officer moved to where the man stood. They were currently following the road to Schmiedorf through a rocky defile. Grass-tufted cliffs of limestone rose up thirty feet on either side of them. There was no mistaking the signs of what had happened here. The black soil of the road at the bottom of the gorge was churned with hoof-prints and parallel gouges, which looked like wheel marks. Although it had probably rained since the marks were made, they were still very deep.
“Well at least we know what happened to the cannon train,” Gerhart said gruffly from the back of the huddle of men.
“You think this was them?” Reimann asked as he poked and prodded at the churned ground.
“I think it very likely.”
“It was an ambush then?”
“I would say so. There were no such marks further back up the road. I expect whoever attacked them launched their attack from the top of this gorge, blocking their way forward and then following through with an assault from behind,” Gerhart said, scanning the sides of the gorge around them. “There would have been no way the guns could have been brought to bear and obviously their escort, knights or no, were overwhelmed.”
“You said ‘whoever’ attacked the cannon train,” Karl pointed out, picking up on the precise words the wizard had used. “It was the enemy, surely.”
“It may well be but we can’t be sure yet,” Gerhart replied.
“If you are sure it was the cannon train how can you not be sure it was ambushed by the enemy?” the veteran infantryman persisted.
“I said I thought it was likely that it was the cannon train that had been attacked here.” The fire mage fixed the captain with a beetling black stare. “You would do well to remember that there are other things that prey on travellers in these parts.”
“Very well,” Karl conceded. “But where are the Schmiedorf cannons now?”
“That is what we need to find out,” Gerhart replied.
“And where are the bodies?” Karl added, as if the thought had only just dawned on him. “Why would the ambushers have taken them?”
“Now that, captain, is a good question,” the wizard said thoughtfully.
How could he have not realised earlier? There had been so little traffic on this road that it seemed unlikely that anyone else would have moved the corpses, had they found any. It certainly wouldn’t have been the work of scavengers: animals would have gnawed upon the bodies where they found them. There would have been body parts and clothing, weapons or armour left behind. Even if they had been looted, there would have still been evidence that someone had died here. And if there had been any survivors surely their own party would have encountered them by now.
For all the cannon train’s entourage to have been taken, the dead as well as the living, and their horses, suggested to Gerhart that this could indeed have been the work of a Chaos warband. Possibly greenskins, but it all seemed too well organised.
“The cannon train was attacked, its defenders overcome, and then everyone and everything was hauled away,” he said.
“So what do we do now?” one of the halberdiers asked.
“The guns may well still be intact, in which case they can be recovered,” Reimann said with confidence. “Von Raukov himself laid the responsibility of this mission upon us. He commanded us to hunt down the missing reinforcements. We might have found signs of them, but so far we have not found the cannon train itself. Our mission is not over until we have determined its fate and done what we can to rectify the matter. So, we follow these tracks back and see where they lead us.”
Karl’s halberdiers continued as they had before, with the bright wizard in tow, following the trail left by the captured cannon train as it wound its way up into the surrounding hills. They kept low as they moved over the ground, always looking out for the enemy These hills were only the foothills of the Middle Mountains, whose imposing peaks were still snow-capped even in the middle of summer.
It was the wizard who first noticed the distant smoke. In fact, he seemed to be aware of it before the rest of them. Karl guessed his enhanced senses were linked to the eldritch powers at the wizard’s command.
At first the rising smoke was a barely visible charcoal line against the cerulean blue of the cloudless summer sky. After half a day’s travel Karl’s troop of soldiers could all see it clearly: a column of grey dissipating into the atmosphere, unruffled in the still air.
The following morning, as they crested a chalky peak among the craggy hills, it became quite clear that the clouds of thickening smoke were rising from a point not far away. Their quarry was within reach at last, Karl was sure of it.
Yet still they had seen no sign of anyone, friend or foe. This state of affairs would change very soon, the old veteran was certain.
“There it is,” the halberdier captain said in a harsh whisper as the party peered over the lip of the precipice.
Gerhart Brennend, lying on his front next to the veteran peered over the edge of the cliff into the quarry. Karl Reimann had been correct in his initial assumption as to who had attacked the cannon train. The Chaos encampment appeared to have been set up within the open, chalky scar of an abandoned stone quarry at the heart of the hills. Of course, whether it had been abandoned when the warband and its prisoners had arrived Gerhart had no way of knowing.
This camp was very different from those of the Kurgan host outside Wolfenburg. For one thing Gerhart didn’t believe that these followers of the Dark Gods were Northmen maraud
ers. This warband was quite different to the tribal gatherings of the barbarians. Gerhart knew there were wandering warrior bands that had dedicated themselves to the service of those malign entities that would see creation unravel under their influence, and they had never travelled beyond the realm of the Empire. He had fought such warbands in his days as a battle-wizard.
Figures in spiked armour moved amongst the flickering fires that cast an orangey glow on the quarry walls. The Chaos warriors were clad in black armour embellished with brass and gleaming iron. The plate mail was ornamented with sharp arrow points, leering, fang-mawed iron skulls, spikes and dagger-blades. Their narrow-slitted visors were adorned with curving horns much like those favoured by the Northmen marauders. The Chaos warriors’ weapons were of superior quality, huge, and heavy and deadly sharp blades. Many possessed long shields again adorned with the symbols of their blasphemous gods.
Some of the Chaos warriors were putting their huge curve-bladed axes to work chopping up wood of other gun carriages and wagons to fuel the fires built around the encampment.
The wizard’s party had come upon the Chaos camp as night was falling and suddenly all their questions were answered. The remnants of the cannon train lay at the centre of the ruined quarry workings. Gerhart was appalled to see that a number of the great guns had been destroyed, either dismantled or blown apart, probably with the barrels of gunpowder that had been carried with the cannon train. Several large pieces of blackened, twisted and melted lumps of iron lay around the quarry camp. A makeshift forge had also been erected, possibly utilising equipment that the Schmiedorf cavalcade had brought with it.
Had the great cannon made it to Wolfenburg, the wizard was sure they would have broken the Northmen’s siege of the city.
[Warhammer] - Magestorm Page 13
