So close.
“Sir, there’s movement on the plain.”
Bloch pushed the halberdier away irritably.
“I can see that, lad. Stop waving that blade in my face.”
He peered forward, shading his eyes from the rain. There were men running across the base of the Cauldron towards the Bastion. They looked like insects.
“Grunwald,” he breathed. “Has to be.”
Above them, a trumpet sounded. There was the clatter of arms. All the men on the south-facing flanks had seen it. A few hundred survivors. Half of Grunwald’s command, no more.
Behind the running figures, towards the edge of the Cauldron, the beasts had broken cover. They poured from the trees in all directions. Tattered banners lurched along with them, daubed with crude figures. The eight-pointed star was on many of them. From others, mutilated human corpses hung. The drummers came out into the open. The noise rose even further. The Bastion felt like an island in a sea of madness. Soon the tide would be lapping at their feet.
Bloch glanced back down at the fleeing men. His mind working quickly, he gauged the distance. They’d be overtaken. Unless something was done, he’d have to watch as his comrades were butchered before his eyes.
Not on his command.
“Fourth Company!” he cried, striding from his vantage point. “Form a detachment. We’re going down. Ninth Company, remain in reserve.”
To their credit, the halberdiers of the Fourth got into position quickly. They could all see the beastman horde approach. Some, the less experienced, looked ready to vomit. Even the old dogs of war said nothing. This was dangerous. But Bloch didn’t ask the men to do anything he wouldn’t, and they knew it. At heart, he was one of them. The trappings of command would never change that.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The company filed along their defensive terrace and down the slope towards the Cauldron’s floor. As they descended, the noise grew. At the base of the Bastion, it was deafening.
“Keep tight,” warned Bloch. In the distance, he could see the first ranks of the beastmen. They weren’t far away. The remnants of Grunwald’s regiment were closer. They looked at the end of their strength. “Let’s get them home.”
He broke into a run. Behind him, his men did the same. Halberds were lowered. Even in the driving rain, the sharpened steel glinted menacingly. Bloch trusted his men. He’d drilled them hard. They stayed together, running in close formation. The distance closed.
Bloch felt his heart begin to thump harder. This was it. The first action. He gripped his halberd tightly, lowered the blade, and sought out his target. The rest was up to fate.
Verstohlen ran along the southern terrace. They could all see what was happening. Grunwald’s men would be slaughtered. The halberdiers moving to intercept them were too few. No other commanders would leave their defensive positions. He had to find the general. Losing Grunwald would be a disaster. Losing Bloch would be, if anything, worse. He began to regret his intervention with the halberdier captain.
He caught sight of Morgan, the captain of the Fifth Company of handgunners. He was standing with his men, watching. It was like some grim kind of spectator sport.
“Where’s the general?” Verstohlen snapped.
Morgan shrugged.
“You tell me,” he said. “If he’s got any sense, on the road back to Altdorf.”
Verstohlen shot him a contemptuous look.
“Watch your tongue,” he said. “If you knew him, you’d never say such a thing.”
Morgan was about to reply, but there was a commotion on the terraces above. Men were moving down to the lower slopes. Hooves clattered on the rock. Horses were being led down the winding paths from the summit. The Knights Panther. In the incessant rain their elaborate heraldry was soaked and sodden, but they still looked formidable in their plate armour and exotic hides. Their massive horses, enclosed in heavy banding, trod proudly. There was a whole company, nearly a hundred knights.
Verstohlen felt his heart leap. He rushed over to the preceptor, a tall, grim man with a hooked nose and scarred cheek. He knew him by reputation only. Leonidas Gruppen, scourge of the lower Drakwald.
“Preceptor, you’re riding out?” he asked.
Gruppen looked down at Verstohlen warily. They all did, these soldiers.
“Those are my orders,” he said. His voice was as hard as the rain-beaten rock beneath them.
“Wait for me to join you,” urged Verstohlen. “You could use a good shot.”
Gruppen kept walking.
“This is a time for warriors, counsellor,” he said. All around him, his knights were preparing to mount up. Squires hurried to their sides with lances. Helmets were donned, and the visors snapped shut. They were calm. Icy, even. The soldiers clustered around gazed at them in awe.
“You dare to speak to me thus?” said Verstohlen, his impatience rising. “I have the ear of the general. Has he ordered this? Where is he?”
Then, from the midst of the knights, a new figure emerged. He was clad in full plate armour, heavy and ornate. His horse was a sable charger, a hand taller than the others, led by a squire in the livery of the Emperor. Imperial emblems had been draped across its flanks. Foremost among them was the Imperial Seal, flanked by griffons rampant, the personal device of the Emperor. A laurel wreath crowned with an iron skull encircled his helm, and a pendant in the form of Ghal Maraz hung from his neck. His visor was raised, exposing his war-battered face. A voluminous beard hung from the close helm. Under the raised visor, his eyes glittered darkly. He carried himself with the utter assurance of command. Old scars covered the little skin that was exposed. Beside him, the formidable warrior Gruppen looked as callow as a milkmaid.
As he approached, the knights withdrew respectfully. Even against the towering pinnacle of the Bastion, wreathed in wind and lashed by rain, he seemed the most immovable object in the whole landscape.
“He is here,” said Ludwig Schwarzhelm, the Emperor’s Champion. At his side the Rechtstahl, the famed Sword of Justice, glinted. The blade was naked and rainwater ran down the steel. “Give Verstohlen a horse. Then we ride.”
Chapter Two
Bloch felt a lurch in his guts. Out on the Cauldron floor, mere yards ahead of his position, the beastmen had caught up with Grunwald’s men. He saw some of them get taken down, dragged to the rock floor. It looked like there were less than three hundred of them, a poor return for those who had set off towards the ridge.
“Faster!” he bellowed to his own men, and squeezed a dram more effort from his labouring thighs. All around him, the halberdiers responded. They were closing in on the slaughter, coming closer with every footfall.
A few heartbeats more and they were in amongst them. Some of Grunwald’s men, seeing the halberdiers arrive, tried to turn and fight. They looked near death from exhaustion.
“Get to the Bastion!” roared Bloch, pushing them back towards the pinnacle. “You’re no good here.”
The beastman vanguard was made up of their faster creatures, not the heavy gors. They were slim-limbed and flighty, bizarre amalgams of deer, dog and man. Already Bloch’s troops were in the thick of them. They’d kept close formation on the run. Now they sliced through the beast attack, forming a cordon around Grunwald’s stumbling troops, giving them the time to get back to the Bastion.
Bloch ploughed on. A fawn-coloured monstrosity, more whippet than man, leapt up at him. Three rows of teeth snapped at his face. Bloch’s halberd flashed, and the creature span into the mud, whimpering. A sharp downward blow and it was silenced. These frontrunners were easy to dispatch. When the gors caught up, then things would get interesting.
“Captain!” came a weary voice. Grunwald.
The commander limped towards him. His face was grey, his uniform caked in blood and grime. Beyond him, Bloch’s halberdiers rushed to hold the oncoming beasts back. Cries of battle, human and inhuman, rose into the gathering dark.
Bloch rushed over to him, catching him just a
s he stumbled to the ground.
“Are you the last?”
Grunwald nodded breathlessly.
“Anyone behind has been taken,” he panted. “The forest is alive.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Grunwald looked up at him, his breath gradually equalising.
“You must pull back! They’re all over the Cauldron.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” muttered Bloch, looking up to appraise the situation. It was getting difficult. The greater mass of beastmen had caught up with the outrunners. The line of halberdiers held against them, but they’d soon be overwhelmed.
“Get back to the rock,” said Bloch, pushing Grunwald roughly to his feet. “We’ll manage the retreat.”
Grunwald, his face drawn with fatigue, began to run again, limping after the straggling remnants of his command as they staggered towards the rock. Bloch turned away from him. Now his own detachment was the priority.
“Fall back!” he shouted, joining them at the front line. “Keep your face to the enemy. Run, and you’ll never see home again.”
He hefted his halberd, pushed his way past one of his own men, and brought it tearing downwards. With a satisfying crunch, it pierced the skull of a roaring horror on the beasts’ frontline. On either side of him, his troops worked their own blades skilfully. They struck in sequence, guarding each others’ flanks, maintaining the curtain of steel. After each offensive stroke, every successful rebuttal, they fell back in unison, letting the beasts come after them.
Bloch began to work up a sweat. He felt his muscles bunch in his arms. The stench of the beasts was everywhere, and their dark blood splattered against his face and chest. As his blade worked, he began to sense the strange, feral enjoyment that always accompanied the thick of battle. The line was holding, his company was maintaining its shape, and the Sigmar-forsaken beasts were falling under the blade. This was battle as he liked it.
Then the gors arrived.
With a horrifying roar, two massive beasts powered their way through the ranks, pushing their squealing kin aside. Their skin was black and their squat bull-faces burned with feral malice. The eight-pointed star had been scored into their chests and old blood laced their thick hides. When they bellowed, the pools of rainwater shivered. Heedless of anything but their battle-lust, they hurled themselves at the fragile halberdier lines.
Bloch manoeuvred himself into the path of the biggest, holding his halberd tightly in both hands. The angle would have to be just right. He felt his mouth go dry.
The bull lurched towards him, roaring some obscene mockery of language. One of Bloch’s men, knocked off-balance by an unlucky stroke, blundered into its path. The bull swatted him aside casually with a vast clenched fist. Bloch heard the spine snap cleanly. The monster launched itself at Bloch. Spittle flew into his face, thick and stinking.
Bloch roared his defiance in turn. He thrust his blade at the creature’s chest. The aim was good, angled upwards and left. The bull leapt to one side, evading the tip. Bloch had been expecting the feint, and twisted the shaft to match. The blade struck the creature’s flank below its enormous rib cage.
The bull bellowed. Ignoring the wound, it ground onwards, churning the earth with its cloven hooves. Bloch was pushed back, his halberd still in his hands. It was wrenched free. He grasped for the sword at his belt. Too late. The hammer-fist struck him on the shoulder.
Bloch flew back, landing heavily a yard distant. His vision swam. He could feel hot blood trickle down his stomach. The earth under him swayed. The bull, now just a blurred mass, charged him again. He tried to rise to his feet, but his legs felt like congealed fat. The ground drummed, as if a whole herd of horses was thundering across it. His shaking fingers found the pommel of his sword and he drew it from the scabbard. The bull came on.
Bloch raised the blade, trying to clear his vision. He saw his own halberd protrude from the monster’s flank like a mockery of his weakness. But there was no giving ground now, no escape.
Feet apart, heart thudding, head low, he waited for the collision.
The afternoon was waxing, and the last of the meagre light was fading. Heavier clouds rolled across the Cauldron from the north. Verstohlen stood with the company of knights at the very base of the Bastion where the rock surface gave way to the level surface of the Cauldron. Out on the plain he could see the hordes of beastmen charging from the tree cover. Closer to hand, he could also see the knot of fighting around the halberdiers. In moments they would be overwhelmed. Time was running out to effect any kind of rescue.
As the knights did around him, he mounted expertly. His steed, a chestnut rider’s horse as opposed to the massive chargers of the Knights Panther, was agitated. They always were when the beastmen were present. The steeds seemed to recognise the unholy spoor of the twisted creatures. His mount whinnied nervously, shaking the bridle.
“Easy,” whispered Verstohlen, bringing the nervous creature under control quickly. It was important the knights saw he could be relied on to master his steed. Schwarzhelm knew his quality, but the others didn’t. Anonymity had its price.
The Emperor’s Champion said no more, snapped his visor shut and kicked his horse into a trot. The knights fell in behind him, a glittering column of dark metal in the rain. Verstohlen joined them at the rear, keeping one hand on the reins and one on his pistol. If he was lucky, he’d get two shots away before switching to a blade.
The knights picked up speed. They left the defensive terraces behind. The hooves rang out against the stone. Verstohlen began to feel his pulse quicken. Out in the gathering darkness, the howling and drumming was getting wilder. Beasts were pouring into the Cauldron, drawn by the aroma of human fear. Soon the knights would be right in among them.
“Merciful Verena, ward all harm,” he whispered devoutly.
At the head of the column, Schwarzhelm reached the floor of the Cauldron and the pace rose again. Trots turned into a canter, and the canter into a thundering gallop. They headed straight for Bloch’s embattled halberdiers. Ahead of Verstohlen, the knights lowered their lances and adjusted their formation. With complete precision, moving at increasing speed, the charging formation extended into a line. Verstohlen manoeuvred himself behind the left flank. He’d be no good in the first clash, but his pistol would come into its own when the ranks were broken.
Hooves hammering, Gruppen’s company flew towards the oncoming horde, the rain-driven wind rushing past their ears. The lance-tips lowered further, each knight picking his target. The seething mass of approaching beastmen neared. With every thrust of the horses’ powerful muscles, the enemy came into sharper relief.
Verstohlen crouched in the saddle, peering out into the gloom. His heart raced. There they were, the halberdiers. Surrounded, overrun. He glanced down at his flintlock. The cool weight was reassuring.
The knights needed no orders to engage. Gruppen was as silent as the rest of them. Like the dread wings of Morr, the mounted formation swept past the knot of beleaguered troops and into the horde of beasts beyond.
The clash was sickening. Lances ran the creatures clean through, lifting them from the ground or shattering into wickedly sharp shards. The force of the charge knocked even the heavier gors backwards. Some were ridden down, others cut apart where they stood. The knights surged on, discarding their broken lances and pulling long broadswords from their scabbards for the return sweep.
One of the monsters, a massive bull-creature with a halberd protruding from its flanks, stood its ground. Denied its prey by the sudden charge, it roared defiance at the charging knights. The halberdier captain, looking shaky on his feet, staggered out of harm’s way. Schwarzhelm, right at the apex of the charge, kicked his charger towards the gor. At the last moment, in a move of superlative horsemanship, he drew the head of his steed aside. The bull-creature lunged and missed. Schwarzhelm’s sword flashed, and the gor’s head slipped down its chest, severed clean from its shoulders. The mighty body toppled, crashing into the mud.
Verstohlen galloped along in Schwarzhelm’s wake. A second huge beast rose from the wreckage and made to leap on to the back of a passing knight. He took aim and sent a piece of shot between its eyes. The creature snapped back, rolling its death-throes across the mire. Verstohlen kicked his horse’s flanks, and it leapt smoothly over the writhing horror. He flicked the mechanism on the flintlock, bringing the second barrel into play. An ingenious device and one which had never let him down.
He raised the pistol to fire again, but the beasts were fleeing, loping back the way they’d come, waiting for more of their kin to reach them. For the moment, the charge of the knights had broken them. Despite losses, the halberdier company had survived.
Verstohlen looked about him. The halberdiers were taking their chance and were staggering back to the Bastion as fast as they could. Below him, the one Schwarzhelm had rescued was struggling to keep up. The face was familiar.
“Herr Bloch!” Verstohlen yelled, pulling his steed around and shifting forward in the saddle. “Mount up behind me!”
Bloch, looking up blearily, took a moment to recognise what was happening. He was wounded, and his eyes weren’t focussing properly.
“What in the name of damnation are you doing here?” he said, his speech slurring.
Verstohlen laughed, extended a hand and helped pull him up. The man was heavy, and the horse protested, but they managed it.
“Don’t expect much respite when we get back to the rock,” said Verstohlen, following the knights as they regrouped and began to ride hard back to the Bastion. Already the gap they had cut was filling with beasts. “We’ve got you out of this mess, but the fighting has only just started.”
With the retreat of the knights, the Cauldron was left to the beasts. Uncontested, the hordes swept across the open space. Viewed from the temporary safety of the Bastion, it seemed as if the entire bowl was filled with howling shapes. More and more emerged from the woods. Capering dog-faced creatures were pushed aside by heavy gors from the heart of the forest. They strode to the front of the crowd, lowing and growling as they came. More tattered standards were brought forth from the trees, each decorated with some rough image of Chaos. Some of the men unlucky enough to be caught out in the open now hung from the wooden frames, carried aloft by massive, hulking bearers. Even from the vantage point of the rock, it was clear that they were still alive.
[Heroes 01] - Sword of Justice Page 3
