by C. L. Werner
The tide of battle began to turn. First around the knots of templars and soldiers, then across the whole of the perimeter, the ratmen began to die. Vengeful swords smashed verminous skulls, vicious bludgeons dashed rodent brains, cruel knives opened ratty bellies. Squeaks of fright sounded above the snarls of fighting men, at first only a few but then growing into a terrified din. The pungent stink of spurting glands washed across the battlefield.
Across the line, the imposing black-robed hulks of Sigmar’s warrior priests shouted encouragement to the faithful. Swinging their warhammers, the priests splashed bestial blood across the paving stones, their voices raised in echo to the battle-cry of the Grand Theogonist. ‘For Sigmar!’
The skaven host, only moments before an almost elemental force of unstoppable destruction, broke before the stalwart valour of the defenders. Initially, only a few ratmen turned, but their panic spread like wildfire through the packed vermin. The craven nature of their slinking breed subdued the feral bloodlust of moments before. Wailing and whining, the skaven began to flee.
‘Run them down!’ a bold warrior priest shouted, swinging his hammer overhead to draw the eyes of his compatriots to him. ‘Run them down!’ he repeated, rallying those close to him to the pursuit.
Before the priest could chase after the fleeing skaven, a sharp crack sounded from the window of a building overlooking the square. A few keen-eyed men saw a flash of flame and a puff of smoke, a glimpse of the lurking jezzail hidden inside the house. None, however, could fail to see the gory effect of the ratman’s shot. The priest’s bald head exploded like a melon, leaving his headless corpse to flop to the ground.
More shots cracked from the buildings as other jezzails fired into the defenders, seeking to blunt the impetus of their pursuit. The snipers targeted mounted knights and shouting priests, the plumed helms of Imperial officers and the ruffled collars of nobles. It was a concentrated effort to eliminate the commanders, to slaughter the leaders behind the human opposition. The skaven were only too familiar with the kind of rout that would result should their own teeming swarms be deprived of the malefic threat of their chiefs.
Again, the vermin failed to understand their foe. Instead of blunting the attack, the cowardly sniping only evoked a dull roar from the charging humans, a savage cry of rage and indignation.
Then an opportunistic jezzail-wielding sniper, perhaps more calculating than others of his kin, fired at the glowing priest standing upon the steps of the Great Cathedral. The report of the shot seemed to somehow ring out above the din and clamour of battle, reverberating through the ears of all in the square. On the steps, the Grand Theogonist’s body was thrown back by the impact, blood flying from the wound. Knocked against the huge doors, his body slumped against the twin-tailed comet carved there, Gazulgrund’s arms drooped, the bulk of Thorgrim hanging limp in his hands.
All eyes turned to the doorway, man and skaven alike appreciating the enormity of that single shot. A hush fell upon the battle, both sides watching with bated breath, one with eagerness, the other with dread. After the hideous havoc wrought by the other jezzails, there were none who doubted that the Grand Theogonist would fall.
Gazulgrund defied their expectations. Pushing himself away from the door, his body surrounded by a nimbus of light, he strode out to the edge of the topmost step and raised Thorgrim on high once more, hefting the immense mattock as though it weighed nothing. ‘For Sigmar!’ he roared, his voice like the bellow of a titan.
A mighty cheer sounded from the defenders, drowning out the shrieks of terror that rose from the ratmen. The skaven were now thrown into complete disarray, fleeing in a crazed crush of furred heads and scaly tails. Awed by the divine aura of the Grand Theogonist, the jezzails didn’t dare fire again, but quit their sniper nests with obscene haste.
As the skaven scurried back into the streets, abandoning the square and their siege of the temple, it seemed the battle belonged to Altdorf. Then, from those skaven trying to flee southwards, there sounded a new note of terror. The beasts began to scatter, many of them turning and trying to dash through the very ranks of their pursuers. A moment later, the reason for such abject desperation made itself known.
Great sheets of green flame shot out from down the street, incinerating those skaven who had not yet fled the avenue. Dozens of men were caught in the vicious blast, their bodies bursting into flame as the fiery green vapours engulfed them. Behind the fires, two wagon-like machines were dragged into the square, burly ratmen working the nozzles of hoses to spray the caustic demi-fluid across any who tried to approach the street they guarded.
The fire-throwers made no effort to advance, nor did the armoured warpguard who assumed positions on their flanks. Their orders didn’t include capturing the temple or killing the humans. Those tasks were being left to the warpcaster.
Shortly after establishing their perimeter, the vanguard of Clan Skryre heard the crackle of Sythar Doom’s voice barking orders to his warp-engineers. A moment later, the ground shuddered as the siege engine arm was sent crashing against the crossbeam.
The crystalline sphere hit high upon the face of the cathedral, flashing with ghoulish luminescence as its malignant energies vented themselves against the facade. Sculptures withered in that burst of corrosive power; gargoyles were sheared from their moorings and sent plummeting to the plaza far below. Glass melted, dripping down in grisly streams that marred the once unblemished marble. It was a terrifying display, but far less than Sythar Doom had hoped for. The Grey Lord’s whiskers twitched as he wondered if, just perhaps, some divine power did defend this man-thing temple.
Irritably, the Warpmaster snapped fresh orders to the crew of the warpcaster. He hadn’t failed to notice the shining aura emanating from the Grand Theogonist. They would put the power of this man-thing god to a real test — by unleashing the might of the warpcaster against something far less resilient than marble and stone.
Adolf Kreyssig dug his spurs into the flanks of his destrier, sending the great warhorse bolting down the narrow street. The animal’s steel-shod hooves stove in the verminous bodies of the skaven that blocked the way, crushing them beneath its bulk. His sword licked out, slashing right and left at the ratkin who snapped at him in their dying agonies or who thought to clamber up into the saddle with him to escape the destrier’s stamping hooves. Behind him, a squadron of Kaiserknecht and mounted Kaiserjaeger slaughtered the maimed monsters he left behind.
It was a desperate gamble, risking all in this frantic effort to relieve the siege around the Great Cathedral. Given his own choice, Kreyssig would have tried to hold the Imperial Palace, a structure that had been built for defence, not worship. The choice, however, wasn’t his own. Bitterly, he reflected that it had been he himself who had allowed the decision to be taken from him. By seeking to control and exploit the Sigmarites, he had caused their faith to regain much of its faltering prominence among the peasants of Altdorf. He had used Sigmar to rally the people. Now he had to back his wager. If they lost the Great Cathedral, then they would lose everything.
Kreyssig struck out with his boot, kicking fangs down the throat of a lunging skaven. The brutes they encountered now were less organised, more frantic than the packs of looters they had seen up on the hill. It occurred to him that these might be refugees from the battle unfolding around the Great Cathedral, that against all reason and odds the Sigmarites had somehow turned the tide.
Then his gaze was drawn skywards by a bright flash of light. Kreyssig saw the sphere crash against the temple wall, watched in mute fascination as the very stones began to corrode beneath the unleashed energy. His hopes of only a moment before were dashed. Some of the skaven might have quit the field, but others were still on the attack and they had brought with them some unholy weapon.
‘We must hurry,’ Baroness von den Linden called out from behind him. It was uncanny, the horsemanship she displayed, urging her slender mare to feats that even a destrier would balk at. Further evidence of the witchcraft at her co
mmand. Witchcraft, she seemed to think, was no longer a thing to keep hidden.
Kreyssig frowned and urged his own mount further into the swarming press of skaven. Half a dozen of the beasts crumpled under his lunging horse, two others fell beneath his sword and still the path ahead was engulfed in vermin. ‘We’ll never get through!’ he cursed. There were other streets they might try, but that would mean falling back, retracing their steps to the Imperial Palace. The idea of turning his back to the ratmen made the flesh between his shoulders itch, almost as though it felt the point of a skaven spear pressing against it.
Baroness von den Linden shook her head. ‘I will save this city,’ she vowed in a voice that was like a razor. Once again, Kreyssig felt the deathly chill of magic in the air. The witch’s eyes faded into pools of amber light, her crimson hair flowing about her in a spectral breeze. Thrusting her hand forwards, she pointed at the ratmen.
The witch’s voice rose in a keening wail, a sound that had in it the shattering of glass and the shriek of quenched steel. It was a banshee cry that sickened the comparatively dull ears of men. To the hyper-keen senses of the skaven, it was an aural torment, a scourge that set them squeaking in agony. Wracked by pain, clamping their paws over their ears, the ratmen turned and fled, hacking their way through their own kin in their desperate rout…
When they had ridden from the palace, Kreyssig had contrived to remove all the other prominent leaders from the effort to reach the Great Cathedral, sending Duke Vidor to coordinate his fragmented army, dispatching Grand Master Lieber to the river and warning Arch-Lector von Reisarch to keep inside the fortress lest the ratmen claim all the hierarchs of the temple in one fell swoop. He hadn’t been able to resist the baroness’s demands to accompany the group, however. It had been enough of an ordeal just to get her to keep to the rear ranks. He knew that if they succeeded the leader of the charge would be adored as a hero by Altdorf. He would be that hero.
Now, however, he found himself pushed aside by the witch. Baroness von den Linden urged her mare down the road, her eyes still aflame with the power of her sorcery. The monsters didn’t make any more attempts to scurry up the street, but instead decided the witch was more terrible than whatever they had fled in the square.
The plaza around the Great Cathedral was a chaotic scene. Ratmen swarmed seemingly everywhere, some intent on fleeing, others, cornered like the rats they so resembled, putting up a vicious fight. Corpses littered the square, the stones soaked with the red blood of men and the black filth of skaven. Upon the steps of the cathedral, his body aglow with an unearthly nimbus, stood Grand Theogonist Gazulgrund, his voice booming out in a paean of battle. At one corner of the square, a disciplined brigade of armoured skaven fended off the ragged assaults of peasants and flagellants. Assisting them in their efforts were two grisly, flame-belching contraptions.
In the street behind the fire-throwers, Kreyssig could see the palanquin of the spark-toothed rat-sorcerer. There was no mistaking that disfigured abomination. Towering behind the sorcerer was what looked like a clockwork catapult constructed on a monstrous scale. Even as he watched, the long arm of the machine sprang forwards, slamming into the crossbeam and flinging another sinister glowing sphere into the sky.
As the sphere came hurtling earthwards, Kreyssig was nearly blinded by a flare of brilliant blue fire close beside him. Overhead, the orb exploded in a burst of similar brilliance, showering a dark miasma that crackled with green lightning onto the heads of the armoured skaven and across the bulks of the fire-throwers. The skaven wailed in agony and terror in the brief instant they had to grasp what had happened.
A third flare of blinding light, but this one wasn’t silent as those from before. The crackling miasma that rained down upon the skaven sizzled on their armour, incinerated their flesh and ignited the combustible fuel that fed the fire-throwers. Green fire blossomed from the wooden casks, immolating the entire corner of the square. Hundreds of skaven were reduced to embers in the firestorm, the fire-throwers exploded into charred splinters.
Kreyssig looked from the skaven to the persistent glow beside him. In horror he beheld the body of Baroness von den Linden seemingly wrapped in a mantle of blue fire. The witch’s hair and gown billowed about her wildly, caught in a tempest that was so confined that even the mane of her steed failed to suffer its touch. Whatever she had done to the sphere, there was no concealing her magic now. Hundreds of awestruck peasants and clergy were watching her as she calmly trotted her horse towards the flames.
Cursing under his breath, Kreyssig spurred his warhorse towards her. ‘Are you mad?’ he growled, trying to catch her reins. ‘Everyone will see. Everyone will know!’
The witch pulled away from his approach. She favoured Kreyssig with that familiar coy smile. ‘Let them see,’ she said. ‘After I save this city, not the Grand Theogonist himself will dare touch me.’
Rushing masses of peasants came charging across the square, eager to come to the aid of their miraculous saviour. Savagely, they cut down the few skaven who had escaped the holocaust. Somewhere, someone gave voice to a shout, a cry that became a frenzied chorus: ‘The Lady of Sigmar!’
Kreyssig could only stare in wonder as the baroness rode towards the flames. He could see the skaven beyond that wall of fire, frantically trying to reload their catapult. He saw their spark-mouthed sorcerer threatening and shouting at them. The jewel-eyed rodent glanced back, flinching as he saw the glowing witch approach. Self-preservation overwhelmed his lust for victory. With a loud yelp, he leaped from his palanquin and scurried off down the street.
The skaven operating the catapult weren’t so fortunate. Raising both her arms, thrusting her palms in the direction of the strange siege engine, the baroness invoked a spell of devastating potency. The orb being loaded into the catapult shattered as it was being set into the bucket. The rampant energies flashed into a blinding coruscation. Other flashes of light followed the first, one after the other, as steady as footfalls. The detonation of the first sphere had caught the ones behind it, igniting them inside their wooden boxes.
Kreyssig could only marvel at the devastation, the utter decimation of the skaven. With her magic, Baroness von den Linden had broken the back of the skaven assault.
As he was considering what that meant, what the chorus of shouts from the mob might mean, Kreyssig was suddenly seized and pulled from his saddle. He crashed to the ground, landing on his side in a painful sprawl.
He expected to feel the fangs of a ratman at his throat; instead, he saw a man in the hooded habit of a monk looming over him. ‘You brought the witch here!’ his attacker accused. ‘You brought her here to deceive the people with her sorcery! But Solkan is not fooled so easily…’
In those murderous tones, Kreyssig recognised the voice of the witch-taker. Once before the fanatic had tried to kill him. Then he had been thwarted by his own penchant for ritual and the timely intervention of the skaven. This time, Kreyssig knew neither factor would sway the killer’s hand.
Instead, rescue came from the most unexpected source Kreyssig would have imagined. As Auernheimer brought his sword arm up to deliver the killing blow, he was himself struck from behind. The witch-taker crumpled, the back of his skull shattered like an egg. Bits of the Solkanite’s brain dripped down the jewelled haft of Thorgrim. Grand Theogonist Gazulgrund stared down at the man he had just rescued, a strange look in his gaze.
‘You rescued me,’ Kreyssig said, not daring to move while the priest held the mattock over him. The nimbus of divine energy was fading from the Grand Theogonist, but there was still a terrible power in those eyes.
‘It was the will of Sigmar,’ Gazulgrund said. ‘You brought relief to the temple. You saved the house of Sigmar from profanation.’
The priest’s voice was far from grateful. Kreyssig felt his spine tingle when he noticed that Gazulgrund’s awful stare wasn’t directed at him. He was looking past the prostrate Protector. He was looking at the cheering mob surrounding Baroness von den Linden. Lis
tening to those blasphemous chants.
‘I saved you because you are the only one who can do what needs to be done,’ Gazulgrund said. ‘You are the one who can save the people from delusion.’
Kreyssig guessed what the priest expected. His answer was a sneer. ‘She is my ally and my mistress, why would I side against her?’
The Grand Theogonist impiously kicked the corpse of Auernheimer. ‘As long as she lives, you will never be free of such fanatics. The cult of Solkan, the Inquisition of Verena, even the zealots of my own Temple. They will not abide such overt witchery. They will not rest until it — and those tainted by it — have been destroyed.’ He gestured with Thorgrim at the cheering mob. ‘Today the people cheer, but tomorrow they will remember the holy manifestation of Sigmar. A true miracle leaves its mark on a man’s soul. Sorcery, even employed benevolently, leaves only nightmares.’
Gazulgrund’s shoulders sagged, the great weight of Thorgrim causing him to hunch over. Whatever sacred power had briefly manifested within him was draining away. Still there lingered that terrible power in his eyes, in his voice. ‘Choose your side well, Protector. You may either profit by what has happened here today, or become a victim of it.’
Kreyssig watched the priest slowly withdraw towards the temple, his last words echoing through his mind. He turned his head, studying the mob, seeing them cheer and praise Baroness von den Linden. To them, the witch was nothing less than a living saint, a miracle worker. The Temple of Sigmar wouldn’t dare refute such beliefs because to do so would be to admit that sorcery had succeeded where the power of their god had failed.
No, the Sigmarites wouldn’t dare act against her now.
