Abruptly, Wilhelm became aware of Empire troops rushing to his side.
Grom’s minions did the same. The savage orcs subsumed him into their ranks, while the Paunch’s standard-bearer laughed and capered beside him. A brutal cuff from Grom to the little wretch’s head curbed his enthusiasm.
Seeing the prince, Grom snarled and spat a gob of blood on the ground. He brandished his axe meaningfully before ordering the charge.
Up close, Grom looked even bigger. Eating troll flesh had done this to him, so it was reckoned. It accounted for the creature’s massive belly, swollen with carnage, glutted on war.
Wilhelm allowed himself a murderous grin that narrowed his eyes. “What do we do with trolls…” he said, before muttering a word of power that ignited a bright red flame along Dragontooth’s blade.
Kogswald’s reply in the war tent returned to him in a whisper as the Empire men charged.
We burn them.
Several of the armoured orcs rushing up the slope towards the war machines jerked and fell but the desultory harquebus salvo didn’t slow them.
“For Reikland and Prince Wilhelm!” cried Karlich, before storming down the slope with his men to meet them.
Even Ledner roared, a hoarse unsettling noise, as a fatalistic abandon gripped the Grimblades.
Despite the fact they occupied the higher ground, the impact of the armoured orcs was brutal. Heifer and Innker, two recent stand-ins for the front rank, died at once. Heifer lost his nose and most of his face when a spiked club staved it in; Innker slipped on his own innards before realising he’d been opened up by an axe and died spewing blood down his tunic. Others, who Karlich failed to recognise in the maddened scrum of the fight, moved up from the back ranks to replace the fallen.
Eber took a blow to the stomach, more haft than blade, and grunted in pain. He stuck the orc on the end of his halberd and kept pushing until it was dead. Gore streaked the haft when he jerked it loose.
Brand abandoned his polearm completely, having dragged a hammer from the carnage and used that to bludgeon the greenskins. Bone chips and brain matter flicked off every strike he made. Stooping in the melee, he picked up a fallen sword and wielded it in his free hand. Stabbing and swiping, he was more frenzied than the savage beasts escorting the goblin king down in the valley. There was no finesse in this, no killing art. It was raw and primal with men reduced to beasts, desperate for survival.
For a fleeting moment, Karlich thought they could win. He felt determination in his troops and an overwhelming desire to live. Even injured, Ledner was devastating, a true swordsman compared to his own clumsy efforts. Stahler’s sword was the leveller, though, shearing armour like parchment and cleaving off limbs like they were dead twigs.
But it wasn’t enough. Karlich’s misplaced optimism crumpled when Volker’s lifeless body spun away from the orc chieftain leading the mob, impelled by the cleaver blow that had ruined his face and ended his life. The Reikland hunter disappeared in the mass as he fell and was trampled underfoot. Karlich wanted to reach for him and save Volker the indignity of being ground into the dirt but it was impossible.
Someone cried out. It sounded like Eber. Pain or anguish, it was hard to tell for sure.
They were losing. Karlich felt it in the surge of hopelessness that threatened to end him. A back step became three. Lenkmann looked to him for a sign. His left eye was gummed with blood. Karlich couldn’t actually see it for sure. It didn’t appear to concern him. Lenkmann’s banner, his charge and solemn responsibility, was flecked with a comrade’s blood.
Volker’s dead.
“Hold! Hold!” rasped Ledner, shoving Karlich’s shoulder in a gesture of defiance.
If they fled now they would not escape. The greenskins would catch them and they’d be slain to a man. Do or die—Karlich knew it was this he’d agreed to when telling Meinstadt to save the prince. No sacrifice comes without cost.
Behind them, men were running. Karlich heard the distant bootfalls getting closer and realised they weren’t running away.
A burst of staccato cracks sounded near to his left, or was it his right? He wondered if he’d got turned around in the battle. Several orcs fell dead with smoke oozing from holes in their armour. The cracks came again, to much the same effect. Then a band of brawny gunnery crew led by Meinstadt slammed into the side of the orcs and laid about them with hatchets, hammers and other tools. With their machinery’s ammunition exhausted, the engineer had pressganged the mortar crew into combat.
Meinstadt discharged his pistol at close range. The repeating mechanism fired three shots that sank an orc to its knees where he finished it with his sword.
Renewed hope filled Karlich, and the sergeant used it as a vessel for his anger. Armoured orcs died beneath Stahler’s blade. It was the like the old captain lived on through it.
The greenskins thought they’d broken the Empire men. When they held on, rallying to Lenkmann’s soiled standard, the orcs’ pugnacity faded. The Grimblades had fought back the ground they’d lost, grinding the greenskins back down the slope, when a cry came from the ridgeline.
“Down!”
To a man, the halberdiers and gunnery crew dropped. Above them, a burst of grapeshot shredded what was left of the armoured orcs and broke them, but finished the last of the war machines.
None of the halberdiers gave chase. They’d hung on long enough for the great cannon to reload. Several of the Grimblades were dead, Volker with them. Karlich and Brand dragged his battered body from amongst the fallen.
They tried not to look at the dead man’s face. They wouldn’t have recognised it anyway. Brand shawled the poor sod with his cloak and dragged him farther up the ridge. Karlich ordered them all up there. With the cannons spent, it made no more sense to stay below them, they might as well occupy the highest vantage point where they were not so far from the ranks of harquebus. Grief was a luxury to feel later.
Karlich noticed Eber had not moved. He was on his knees, half sunk in the blood-soaked earth. His halberd rested limply in the crook of his arm like a fallen flag. The sergeant winced as he went down to him. A cut in his leg gave him discomfort, but he neither cared nor had time to staunch it.
“Higher ground, Eber,” he said, aware of the battle raging below them and that another greenskin breakthrough could be imminent. “Come on, I’ll help you up.”
He reached under Eber’s thick arm but it was like heaving dead weight. Then he saw the burly Reiklander holding on to his sides. He was whispering something.
“Sergeant!” Lenkmann cried. The banner bearer’s tone was urgent but Karlich waved away his concern without looking. Instead, he leaned in and listened.
“Like thread, like thread…” Eber muttered, and Karlich noticed the big man’s fingers were ruby red and slick with his own blood. “Feels like… sides splitting… I’m coming undone…”
“Lenkmann! Brand!” Karlich cried when he saw the wounds reopened in Eber’s ox-like chest.
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 Dragontooth’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 Dragontooth—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 Dragontooth 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.
Dragontooth 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 Dragontooth 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 Dragontooth 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 Dragontooth 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,
8 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. Wagons 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 emergen
cy 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.”
[Empire Army 04] - Grimblades Page 31
