For all his strengths, Martin had a weakness too, and one of the most human, forgiveness. Jaeger had been disgraced, humiliated by Vorster, and had turned into a laughing stock amid the rank and file, but Martin had found it in him to give the man a chance at redemption. No man, the count said, deserved less. He had served in several of the smaller skirmishes, acquitting himself well. It was as though in shame he had decided to become a hero, placing little value on his own skin. So Jaeger had the cavalry with Martin’s blessing.
The landscape, and a huge slice of luck, would decide this battle. Martin had every intention of drawing Mannfred in, blindsiding him with the grandest of ambushes.
In the calm before the battle, a priest of Morr walked within the ruins before the bowed heads of the Black Guard, bestowing upon them the blessings of the god of death and dreams. Four thousand of the fearsome black armoured warriors hid within the old fort, another thousand at the farm. Each warrior carried with him a pouch containing two silver pieces. The coins were an offering to pay their way into the afterlife should they fall on the field of battle.
Although he was not one of them, and did not wear the lacquered black plate and hauberk of a true Black Guard, Vorster took the blessing gratefully. He, like every man in the regiment, had worked his way up through the ranks, earning his place in the battle with deeds and courage not birthright and patronage. He was proud to stand beside them and would be equally proud to fall with them. Beside him Vladimir Ludennacht, champion of the Elector Count of Ostland, bowed his forehead until it touched the hawk’s head embossed upon the gleaming hilt of his zwei-hander great sword. The weapon was truly a thing of beauty eager to cleave undead flesh and bone.
It would not have to wait long.
There was no signal that Vorster could see.
When Mannfred’s army came it did not pause to bluster, to wail, to gnash or to goad. It simply continued its eerily silent advance until the skeletal riders and a vast regiment of bone-white infantry under prior orders from the Vampire Count altered course and made directly for the old fort on the right flank of Thunder Ridge.
With that one simple manoeuvre the battle of Hel Fenn had begun.
“Hold,” Vorster whispered. “Hold.” He held up a hand to stay the men under his command, and from his vantage point, continued to watch the creeping advance of the undead draw ever closer to their hiding place. The bones were here for one purpose and one purpose alone. They were not here to frighten or to send a message of fear to the humans. There was no need of fear now. No, they were here to kill them.
The skeletal riders surged forwards, cantering across the no man’s land. They met no resistance. The lie of the ruins was inviting, but entering would have forced them into a narrow formation, compressing their flanks. Their commanders were reluctant to sacrifice their mobility before the skeletal foot soldiers were in place.
Ludennacht was itching to attack. “Why don’t they come?” he whispered, barely breathing the words.
“They are looking for the advantage. We must not surrender it to them,” said Vorster calmly. “Hold.”
The dead crept forwards inch by inch without pause or thought as they clogged into the funnel betwixt and between the rubble.
Vorster had the spot all marked out: three paces, two, one.
“Now!”
All four thousand of the Ostland Black Guard came out of hiding, swinging. The dead had no comprehension of what hit them. Slow to react, the first lines were reduced to nothing more than shattered bone and weeping marrow within minutes as the Black Guard’s great swords cut a swathe through their ranks. Not once did the undead cry out as they fell beneath the barrage of blades. For a moment Vorster dared to believe that it might be over quickly. It wasn’t. He ducked a wildly swinging blade. The edge caught him high on the shoulder. A little higher and it would have opened his neck. As it was the blow glanced off his armour harmlessly. The man beside him fell, only to be replaced by another. A corpse stumbled at Vorster’s feet. Before he could banish it to whence it came, the creature lashed out, scratching Vorster across the face with foetid fingernails. A ribbon of blood ran down the warrior’s cheek. He did not wipe it away—another corpse swung for him before he could. Vorster matched blades with the undead as they continued to surge forwards in wave after wave of rusted metal and makeshift weapons. The ruins stank from the rotting marrow of their broken bones. With each blow that cracked open a bone, the stench intensified. The Black Guard’s repel was fluid. As the undead army probed for weaknesses the Black Guard shored up their line, never once allowing them through. This would have remained a precarious defence, but Martin had had the foresight to prepare a masterful counter-strike.
Pistoliers and musketeers rained down a ceaseless hail of lead from the upper levels of the ruins. The cacophony was deafening.
Runners raced frantically to fetch shot and blackpowder to keep the volleys going.
A rusted blade nicked Vorster’s shoulder. He battered it away, barely ducking beneath a wild swing meant to separate his head from his body. Crouching low he drove his sword into the wretched creature’s gut, opening it wide. The creature fell at his feet.
More gunshots cracked, raining down death from above, and it was not long before a cloud of billowing smoke from the sheer volume of shots enveloped the fort.
For the first hour the right flank held.
For the second hour the right flank held, barely.
Nameless men fell around Vorster, good men who had lives and all the accoutrements that went with them. Those same good men began to rise, drawn back to hellish unlife by the Vampire Count before they were bludgeoned to broken bone and mashed flesh by their friends. And still the dead kept coming.
From his horse, Martin von Kristallbach watched the battle unfold and prepared himself for Mannfred’s next move, sickeningly sure of what it would be.
Martin had read it right. True to form, the Vampire Count readied his forces for an attack on the left flank. Behind the walls of the farmhouse, the remaining one thousand Black Guard lay in wait alongside heavy cannons and a regiment of ordinary footsloggers, but the foot soldiers were not battle-hardened like the elite guard. Martin had bet everything on Mannfred attacking the right flank first. As a result the left was inherently weaker. He feared it would be the first to fall, and with good reason.
He watched and he waited, and he feared.
“Sir! Sir!” a runner cried, stumbling across the snow-packed sod.
“Runner, report,” Martin said, not taking his eyes from the field of battle for a second.
“Look to left flank, sir!”
“What about it?”
“There are dwarfs arriving, hundreds of them. Their leader pledges his allegiance to the flag and vows to fight until every shambling rotten undead piece of filth is dead again. Those are his words, sir, not mine.”
Martin sat forwards in his saddle, unable to believe his luck. He spied the tree line and within it, the first stirrings of movement. “By Sigmar! We will win this day! Send word to their commander, what’s his name?”
“They come under the banners of Karak-Kadrin, Zhufbar, and Karak Raziac, sir. Their leader calls himself Stormwarden.”
“Then send word to this Stormwarden that the Empire thanks him for his bravery and will not forget this day. Tell him to marshal his might and remain hidden within the tree line. Let the vampire think we are weak, and when he tries to press his advantage, crush him.”
“Very good, sir.”
The runner sprinted for the trees.
For the first time since the fighting began, Martin allowed himself the ghost of smile.
Mannfred’s army advanced with speed on the left flank, hoping to catch the living off guard.
Chariots at the fore, manned by skeletal archers, flanked by dire wolves and trailed by peasants, they saw the gap in Martin’s defences and rushed to exploit it with a would-be hammer blow.
The Black Guard rose heroically, presenting themselves
as a target.
The undead charged them at a frightening clip. The sickle-shaped scythes set into their wheels sliced through the air, and as they met the living, sawed through their knees.
It was an undead victory that would not last long.
Kallad Stormwarden whirled Ruinthorn above his head, leading from the front as the dwarfs came streaming out of the trees, accompanied by the rapid-fire volleys of their quarrellers. His blade rasped through the ranks of the enemy, opening up a bloody path. Kallad plunged into it, bellowing his rage as he swept Ruinthorn around in savage arcs. The axe was lethal close up. The dwarfs charged in behind him, hammering into the backs of the dead, cutting them down. Axes shattered skulls and ribs, and cleaved through pelvises and every other foetid bone in their stinking bodies.
The dead fell silently.
Kallad drove his axe into the ribcage of a cadaverous brute, splintering it in two. The stench was sickening. Ruinthorn cracked the skeleton open as if it were the brittle shell of a nut. A scythe cut the air beside his head, slicing into his helm. The blow rattled his brains. Reeling, Kallad answered it by disembowelling the offender. The battle raged around him. He was a rock. He would not fall.
He was the last son of Karak Sadra. He was not fighting for himself, for the living. This was for the dead. His dead. The living rallied around his glittering axe. Blood flowed.
Again, the flanks held, despite all the odds.
It was painfully obvious to Martin that should one fall it would be a disaster.
Mannfred was forced into engaging the centre.
The undead army moving across the plain was vast. Blocks of skeletons marched in perfect unison, thousands strong, shattering the silence by crashing their spears against their shields. Zombies shuffled, gnashing their teeth, and scores of dire wolves slavered behind them. The air above the host was black with bats, blotting out the sun. It was mid-morning, but it was as though dusk had come early.
“Good,” Dietrich Jaeger said to the waiting cavalry around him, We shall have our battle in the shade.”
The stump where his hand had been itched. He scratched at it. It always itched when he grew excited. He was reminded of his shame.
“It will not happen again,” Jaeger pledged. Today is ours for the taking boys!”
The air thrummed with the beat of wings and the ground shook under marching feet.
Martin von Kristallbach wheeled his mount around to see the full extent of the slaughter. They were so many, the dead. Legion. The living could not hope to stand against their might.
“If we are to die here, then we die,” he said to the dispatch rider beside him. The man looked terrified by the prospect. Martin could not blame him. “But let’s see if we can’t drive them all the way back to hell, eh?”
He sent orders to the artillery on Thunder Ridge—hold the line at all costs. The men cheered as the great cannons and mortars boomed and kicked into action, blasting shot at the approaching dead. Clods of mud were thrown into the air as the cannon balls hit the ground and on the bounce battered the skeletal ranks. Gaping holes appeared in their masses, bones shattered, bodies breached.
Martin kept the reserve firmly hidden behind the ridge and sent only the front ranks forward to weaken the enemy advance. This thin line was dubbed the forlorn hope by the men who waited behind it.
Jerek sheltered in the trees.
He wore the face and body of a huge dire wolf.
It was fitting that the final moments of the White Wolf of Middenheim should see him transformed thus.
From his vantage point he could see both sides of Thunder Ridge clearly.
He watched as Mannfred’s forces engaged a weak looking centre. The spearmen of the Empire stood in ranks only four deep. Though they fought valiantly, they had nowhere to go but to slowly retreat up the hill, back towards the artillery.
Jerek could not help but smile as, invigorated by this turn of events, Mannfred ordered the bulk of his army to surge forwards with renewed vitality, victory in sight. But Jerek could see what the vampire could not, that Martin’s forlorn hope was nothing but a clever feint to draw the Vampire Count in.
As each defender fell in the weak looking line, another would race up from the hidden reserves behind the ridge to replace him, so in effect the wall was eternal and could never be broken while appearing to Mannfred to be forever on the verge of collapse.
It was ingenious.
With so much of his army committed, it opened up a gap at Mannfred’s end of the battlefield, giving the Elector Count of Stirland the chance to decapitate the Vampire Count once and for all.
“Ride!” Martin gave the order to Dietrich Jaeger.
The shamed soldier spurred his mount forwards, answering the order.
Vorster watched as Stirland’s cavalry spread out across the plain, their trot increasing to a canter as they advanced around the ridge. They gave the horses their heads, galloping. Their wave of steel and courage smashed into the undead and broke them utterly.
Jaeger brandished his sword in his left hand, a relic of his duel with Vorster. The soldier felt no guilt at the fop’s ruined hand. He could easily have been left dead on the duelling field instead of maimed. At least fate had given him the chance of redemption, claiming another small victory.
And there it should have ended.
The cavalry charge had achieved more than the allies could have hoped, but they should have turned back to the Empire lines, regrouped and made ready towards another foray.
Vorster watched in disbelief as Dietrich Jaeger succumbed to vanity.
Instead of breaking away and fading in search of a more accessible target, Jaeger continued the charge towards Gothard, looking to bring his head home to Martin as a trophy.
The fop chased the Black Knights until he was deep beyond the undead lines. He fought like a daemon possessed. The cavalry rallied around him, cutting and killing, opening corpses and flesh eaters alike. But it wasn’t enough.
Disbelief turned to horror as Mannfred commanded his elite grave guard to form up into spear blocks and cut off the cavalry’s escape.
Jaeger, who had been so focused on bringing down Gothard, failed to notice the gravity of his error. Vorster had no such blessing. He stood slack jawed as Mannfred’s counter ensnared Jaeger and all of his men. Their horses were exhausted. With nowhere to run as Mannfred’s noose tightened, no amount of hack and slash from the riders could prevent a thousand undead spearmen from goring the horses to death. With the riders either crushed beneath the weight of their dying animals or left to fend on foot, Mannfred’s necromancers were quick to raise the horses from the mud and snow to trample their former masters to death.
Dire wolves prowled closer in packs, hungry for the flesh of horse and man.
Vorster watched with barely suppressed fury as the blowhard Jaeger tried to rally his troops. Around the battlefield the cannons fell silent, the gunners frightened of hitting their own men.
The distraction cost him dearly. A callow-faced flesh eater grabbed hold of his legs and pitched him into the sludge of snow and mud. Two more were on top of him in a heartbeat, trying to claw through his armour to his heart. He struggled to fight them off but they were relentless, in his face, biting, tearing their fingers bloody trying to open him up. And then the skull of one opened, crying blood down on him where the back of it had been cleaved in two. The second fell across him, a huge gaping wound in its back where a steel blade glittered red, slick with ichor. Vorster rammed his own blade up into the throat of the last one and rolled clear.
He didn’t see who had saved him. All around him swords flashed wildly as men fought for their lives.
And then, for a moment, respite in the frenzy.
“So much for redemption,” he breathed in the lull, his words carrying.
In the midst of it, Dietrich Jaeger cut and ran for his life.
For a moment he was master of his fate, and because of it, Dietrich Jaeger died a hero. For all that, Vorster could s
ee the terror in his eyes as he ran at the dead, hacking a path through a shambling horde of zombies.
He fell to an arrow in the back.
Jaeger’s folly had cost Martin his cavalry.
Mannfred von Carstein watched in delight as barely one hundred knights managed to scramble from the encirclement and make it back to the Imperial lines.
He felt buoyed by this success.
He ordered his reserve to finally be brought into play. They joined the grave guard bringing up the rear. The entire strength of the undead rolled forwards, giving no quarter to the living.
He could taste victory.
It quickly curdled in his mouth.
An ink-black bat swooped low, out of the maelstrom above, skimming across the bleached-bone skulls of the skeletal horde, its leathery wings beating urgently. In one swift tumbling movement the bat’s shape shifted, and a grim-faced vampire scout stood before him. He delivered a dire warning about the shape of the battlefield.
“My liege,” the vampire bowed low. “Reinforcements march for Stirland beneath the banner of the Knights of the Divine Sword. The Grand Theogonist himself leads them.”
“Does he have the damnable book?”
“I cannot tell.”
“How long until he joins the fray?”
“An hour, maybe two, but no more than that.”
Mannfred was again swayed by the sight of the forlorn hope across the ridge. He clenched his fist in bitter frustration. “Surely one decisive blow will break them.” It occurred to Mannfred that the reason the flanks had resisted him thus far was down to Stirland’s folly. The man had obviously committed the bulk of his troops to them. Mannfred had been fighting the battle under the misconception that Stirland was stronger than he was and had withheld a reserve force out of sight somewhere. The arrival of the priest told him otherwise. The Knights of the Divine Sword were the reserve and they had not even reached the battlefield. Time was of the essence. The living were stretched thin, to the point of breaking. He could not afford for the wretched priest to take up his position and bolster them once again. “Would someone rid me of this damnable holy man?” No one answered him.
[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution Page 29
