The surviving soldiers, under the command of the veteran Reiklander Karl Reimann, had taken turns to keep watch, manning a border guard around the temporary camp within the ruins of a ruined sheep farm. They took turns to keep watch from their strong vantage point on the slope of a hill and looked down over the canopy of the brooding forest to the smoking devastation that had once been the mightiest of the northern marcher strongholds.
The toppled towers and fire-gutted brick shells that had once been buildings could quite clearly be seen, even from almost a league away. Drifts of white-grey smoke, the colour of dead flesh, washed over the brittle ruins and through the gaps in the lightning-blackened curtain wall. The castle of the elector count of Ostland was now nothing more that a skeletal shell. Fires still burned within the castle. None among the survivors hailed from among Valmir von Raukov’s household, and none knew of the Elector Count’s fate.
The writhing Chaos-possessed storm had finally consumed itself, blowing itself out when the Chaos sorcerer who had summoned it disappeared. With the first light of dawn the following day, winter had been banished again. The snow and ice thawed to slush with the changing of the seasons and the ambient heat of the burning city. By late afternoon there was hardly a drift of cloud left in the Nachgeheim sky.
Now, days later, much of the fire that had ravaged the city had burnt itself out too. There had been nothing anyone could do, with the Chaos horde in command of the land around Wolfenburg, other than leave the fire to take its course. Some buildings still smouldered and smoked even now. The ancient sentinel city had been razed to the ground.
Gerhart Brennend sniffed the air. The soft, decaying touch of autumn showed in the surrounding landscape, particularly in the turning leaves of the blankets of woodland. The air was turning colder, and it bore the smoky odour of bonfires. The land was in the grip of leaf-fall.
He too had burnt himself out, collapsing at last amidst the fire-blasted ruins of a guild house, his powers spent and his body physically exhausted. At least that which he feared so greatly—of going so far into the grip of his sorcery that there was no way back—had not come to pass. However, when he woke and his senses returned, so did the overwhelming feelings of shame and guilt that he had lost control of his temper.
He had left Wolfenburg in the wake of many of those now huddled within the refugee camp, and had been one of the last to reach the Imperial encampment. He had trudged up to the cordon of sentry-guards from among Captain Reimann’s halberdiers, who took a while to recognise him, as his face, hair and robes were stained black with soot. He resembled a ravening flagellant of the Cult of Sigmar more than a grand battle-wizard of the colleges of magic. No one else had joined the refuge for the last two days. There would be no others now.
Captain Reimann approached Gerhart. The fire wizard would not claim for one minute that the halberdier captain had been pleased to see him, but Reimann at least acknowledged his presence after all they had experienced. Gerhart still felt, however, that the Reiklander didn’t really trust him.
Even now, inside the camp, Gerhart sat apart from the other refugees who were sitting in a huddled, shocked silence.
As Gerhart looked down on the distant smoking ruins he was reminded, with a gut-twisting pang of guilt, of Wollestadt. It had been his family’s home for generations. Gerhart’s elder brother had been groomed to take over the family’s wool business from their Averland father. Gerhart, the second son, had been sent to Altdorf to study at the colleges of magic when he displayed some aptitude for scholarship and magic. In time his father retired and Gerhart’s brother had taken over the business. Gerhart gradually lost contact with his family, as he rose through the ranks of the Bright order, from apprentice to respected battle-wizard.
However, when Wollestadt had come under threat from the skaven vermin-kin, Gerhart had been at the head of the Imperial army that was sent to deal with the vile ratmen. When the Imperial troops arrived and saw how the town had already been desecrated by the skaven, Gerhart had lost his temper. In his haste and wrath he brought the fiery wrath of Aqshy to bear against the children of the horned rat. The winds of magic blew strongly over the Averland downs that day and fanned the fire left in the wake of Gerhart’s magical attacks so that the close-packed buildings of the town had caught alight.
The skaven were denied their victory but the conflagration grew, consuming the whole town. The disaster came to be known as the Great Fire of Wollestadt. The Imperial rescuers, and the town’s populace who could escape, retreated. The cost had been high indeed but Gerhart believed the ends had justified the means. The greater good had been served and the skaven destroyed.
It was only later that Gerhart discovered his whole family had burnt to death amidst the flames, including his father, brother and his brother’s family. The Brennend line had been completely wiped out. He had destroyed the very people he should have saved.
People had been shocked and appalled by what the fire wizard had done. From that time on he had lived with the guilt of the knowledge that he had caused the deaths of his family as well as much of the populace of Wollestadt, not to mention the destruction of the town itself.
He had been vilified for what he had done and exiled from ranks of the battle-mages of the Empire. He had left the Bright college taking up the life of a wandering wizard, trying to make amends for what he had done, by fighting the Empire’s enemies where he found them. At first he had seriously considered relinquishing his kommission and never using his magic again but he had been unable to abstain—it was bound to every fibre of his being, and had been for many years. But Gerhart had always feared that one day he might lose control of his powers again, with reason, as it had turned out.
* * *
Talk and rumour were rife within the camp as the survivors tried to make sense of all that had happened. They were starting to gather updated information regarding the deployment of the enemy. They were also desperate for news of other Imperial forces that might come to their aid still, even after so long. They could not believe that news of what had befallen Wolfenburg would not have reached the ears of other Imperial commanders and that they wouldn’t send their own troops to their aid.
Some said that the other great cities of the Empire had also been beset by the invading Chaos armies. There was also talk of the Kislevites mobilising to fulfil old vows that they had once sworn to Ostland. Some said that the Grand Theogonist Volkmar had been slaughtered as he led a crusade into the bleak lands of the Troll Country. It was even rumoured that the Emperor Karl-Franz himself was dead, killed in battle.
So it was that the survivors sent out their own scouts to find out what was happening.
And that morning, two scouts—wearing the livery of the elector count’s standing army, and wearing the badges of their injuries, like medals, with pride—had returned to the camp and reported what they had found. Huddles of people, civilian and soldier alike, gathered around at their arrival, as they made their report to Captain Reimann.
“They’re turning back,” the burlier of the two said as he dismounted from the horse he had been riding, his face a mess of swellings and livid bruises.
“They’re leaving?” Karl asked.
“Yes,” the second scout confirmed. He was leaner and shorter than his partner. “They’ve abandoned the charnel house they’ve made of Wolfenburg and are definitely heading back north towards Kislev. Every warband, and they are taking their infernal siege engines with them, their camp followers, their beasts, everything.”
“They are all leaving?” Karl repeated.
“All. All are heading north.”
“There was just one group we saw heading south from the fringes of the Forest of Shadows towards Wolfenburg,” the second scout pointed out.
“What? Who are they?”
“We couldn’t tell, captain.”
“Were they on horseback?” Karl asked.
“One of them is, sir.”
“Are they adjuncts to the main Chaos hord
e?”
“Unlikely. I thought they looked more like holy men.”
“Could they be Chaos cultists?”
“It is possible,” the burly scout agreed.
“But whatever they are, they’re heading this way.”
“And whoever they are, they carry the Wolfenburg Standard.”
The curtain wall of the once great city rose up before the warrior priest’s party like the blackened and broken teeth of a giant. Beyond the fractured fortifications smoke continued to rise. Lector Wilhelm Faustus stopped. His entourage, numbering only six, came to a halt behind him.
The priest said nothing as he surveyed the ruins of the city through his one good eye. His features were set grim like the carved image of one of the statues of the Heldenhammer in the grand temple of Sigmar in Altdorf. The Wolfenburg Standard flapped vainly in the autumnal breeze.
The lector had been right. The doom he had predicted had indeed visited Wolfenburg. In spite of all they had achieved in recovering the legendary war banner from the unruly beastherd, they were too late to save the city.
The legends had been right after all; the fabled Wolfenburg Standard had been lost and Wolfenburg had fallen.
For the first time in a long time, despair welled up in the weary priest’s heart. A less devout and god-fearing man might have begun to doubt the power of the Lord Sigmar. It truly seemed that the End Times were here. But this wasn’t over, not by a long way.
“Your holiness,” one of the zealots said, daring to break the silence. “The city has fallen. What should we do now?”
“This is what the infamous city of the damned must have looked like,” Wilhelm said distantly, as if he had not heard the man’s question.
“I beg your pardon, your grace?”
“After Sigmar’s Hammer—the comet—struck Mordheim.”
“Lector!” another of the priest’s followers called out, breaking through his reverie. “Riders!”
He was aware of a drumming sound. Galloping down the slope of the hill to the west of the city was a party of riders matching the warrior priest’s entourage man for man. From this distance he could not yet discern features and uniform, but from what Wilhelm had seen of the Chaos horde’s foul behaviour he thought it unlikely that they would be sympathetic to the priest’s cause.
Wilhelm prepared to make one last stand. He doubted that his exhausted and battle-weary warriors could prevail now. They had had to fight too hard and for too long already.
The riders were rapidly closing the distance between them, bearing down on the dishevelled troop of the holy man and his henchmen. Wilhelm hefted his warhammer into position and kicked Kreuz into a gallop. He was holding the Wolfenburg Standard aloft in his other hand. He thanked Sigmar that his steed had escaped the beastmen’s predations and that the priest had been reunited with the noble Kreuz in his flight from the clearing.
“For Sigmar!” Wilhelm bellowed, his battle cry rolling out across the ruined meadow towards the approaching strangers. “And for Wolfenburg!”
He would satisfy his anger at the atrocity that had been done to Sigmar’s people and make these riders pay in blood and pain for their sins against god and man. Divine rage was on him now. He would not be stopped until all of the riders were dead or his own dead body had been trampled into the mud of the field by the savage, daemonic steeds.
Kreuz’s hooves were pounding the ground too, and kicking up great clods of earth, closing the ground between the incensed priest and the unknown riders even more quickly. Wilhelm heard a faint cry, that was quickly whipped away from him by the wind in his ears. Then it came again.
“Lector Faustus,” the voice shouted. “Those men are Imperial soldiers!”
“I had begun to believe that with the fall of Wolfenburg all was lost, that the invaders would sweep through Ostland, burning all before them,” an elderly scholar was saying, “until they were beating on the doors of the Emperor’s palace in Altdorf.”
“Some say that the Chaos-lovers’ dark messiah has set his sights on Middenheim,” a crossbowman reported miserably.
“Archaon?” the scholar scoffed. Those assembled around the campfire gasped and made the sign of the holy hammer or touched iron to ward against evil. “The dread lord of the End Times is nothing but a bogeyman, a child’s nursery phantom. There is no such one war-leader guiding the Chaos invasion. It is merely a group of like-minded opportunist warlords, their synchronous attacks working for each other’s mutual benefit. They will fall upon each other before the year is out and the Empire will then be safe from their predations for another hundred years.”
“How can you stand there and say that,” the warrior priest growled, taking a step forward and putting an ironclad hand on the haft of his slung warhammer, “after all you have seen?”
The scholar took a nervous step back and gulped audibly. “I was merely saying that there could not possibly be one mortal man behind—”
“The mastermind behind this invasion is no mere man,” the priest interrupted. “Of that I am certain. If you had witnessed what I have you would know to think otherwise.”
The scholar opened his mouth as if to speak again and then retreated back into the huddle around the campfire. He shied from the fierce glare on the face of the lector-priest and the survivors of his warband.
The atmosphere in the camp was one of shock, disbelief and denial. The people gathered there, Gerhart thought, had lived through the destruction of Wolfenburg and still couldn’t quite come to terms with the fact that they were alive, or where they were supposed to go from this point. They had glimpsed hell and lived to tell the tale.
The scouts had returned to the encampment at the ravaged farm with the Sigmarites in tow. The arrival of the priest and his band had provoked mixed reactions. For many of the camp residents it brought a slim glimmer of hope, that there were still others out there, allied to their cause who sought to rid the land of Chaos. If there were these holy warriors, then there could be others too.
To the Sigmarites however, it seemed that their arrival at the refugee camp made the mood more grim. For their very existence reminded the warrior priest of the destruction of one of the ancient bastions of the Empire and how much had already been lost in this new war against Chaos. But at least they were all gathered together now and strategy could be discussed and subsequently acted upon.
“Permission to speak freely?” asked one of the Reiklanders from Captain Reimann’s own band.
“Permission granted,” Reimann said.
“If the Northmen are returning to the unholy lands that spawned them, then the banishing of the accursed Chaos sorcerer that you and the mage achieved must have broken the Chaos horde. Without the warp-wizard’s sorcery they are nothing,” the halberdier said. His tired ringed eyes had sunk into shadowy hollows, but they were now flashing with excitement.
“That’s right,” another person agreed. “Why else would they be turning on their heels now, after such a victory? What is to stop them simply marching onward into the heart of the Empire and ripping it out?”
“And with the Wolfenburg Standard returned, there is still hope,” a greatsword said.
“Yes, Wolfenburg will rise from the ashes once more,” a zealot proclaimed.
“Then it’s over,” a young man wearing the outfit of an apprentice blacksmith said, tears of relief cutting channels through the grime covering his face. “We can begin to rebuild our lives.”
“No, it is not over,” the bright wizard said, cutting in at last, countering the young smith’s words. “No, it is only just beginning. I can still sense the unease present in the winds of magic. Mark my words.”
Almost as one man, the people gathered around the campfire turned to look at the wizard on the edge of the circle. No one said anything but their looks said it all: despair, anger, grief, hatred. He had stolen the last glimmer of hope from their hearts, and for that they hated him almost as much as they hated the Chaos hordes that had robbed them of their homes, th
eir livelihoods and their loved ones. Somewhere a child began to cry.
Gerhart knew he wasn’t welcome here anymore. The people didn’t trust him. Even Reimann seemed to be avoiding him. For he had seen first hand, with his own eyes, what could happen when the fire mage lost control of his temper: and the wizard’s temper was terrible, a feral beast that seemed untameable.
It had been in no small part thanks to him that the Chaos sorcerer had been banished. These people had claimed that his actions had helped save the day. But now that the battle was over it was plain that no one wanted him there any longer. The only reason that no one had told him so was because they feared him and what he might do. That fact stuck in Gerhart’s craw in a knot of indescribable guilty pain that nothing could assuage.
Muttering to himself under his breath, the dishevelled wizard rose from the log he was sitting on, helping himself up with his staff. He felt old and tired. His body hadn’t ached like this since the beating he had suffered at the hands of the witch hunter’s torturer. Gerhart turned and walked away from the assembly at the campfire, heading west.
Nobody called after him, to ask him where he was going or to ask him to stay. In no time he was descending the hill towards the sheltering trees of the smoky woodland that clothed the foothills of the Middle Mountains and the land beyond as far as the eye could see.
A gentle breeze was picking up. It ruffled the straggly tangle of his hair and beard and worried at the hem of his robes.
The winds of change were blowing; Gerhart thought, and he would go where they took him. Somewhere others would be in need of a wizard’s counsel.
Magestorm Page 19
